Estel
When I return from putting my small brother to bed Eldarion is gone.
I wondered if he might be but the reality of walking into the clearing and finding him absent is like a kick in the guts. No sitting by the fire with him this evening. Already I miss him.
Aragorn-the-King is gone as well. They are off somewhere together I hope and that, at least, must be good.
Finrod, my father and Elrohir are the only ones left.
"Where is Mother?" I ask as I sit beside them.
"She is not pleased with me," Father says with a frown. "Thank you for that, Estel."
I cannot help but giggle.
"How was I to know you had not told her that?"
"Why would I? I do not have a death wish."
"Swimming the rapids?" Finrod looks across at me with a smile. "You have hidden talents, boy. How was it?"
"I do not recommend it."
And he laughs.
Finrod's laugh is a bright and glorious thing. It lifts your soul. I almost forgive him his accusations of childishness earlier.
He pulls himself to his feet then so smoothly it is almost as if he suddenly appeared to stand without moving at all.
"Come on then, Elrohir," he says. "We have work to do."
"What?" Elrohir is startled. Whatever work Finrod dreams of he obviously wasn't expecting. "It is the middle of the night!"
"What better time? No-one will bother us. Let us leave this father and son alone to discuss their problems without us."
Still Elrohir makes no move.
"I am not ready," he protests.
"You will never be ready. That much is obvious." Finrod taps him on the head with the slightest of frowns. "Come on with you. I meant it when I said I see you now. I will not be letting this rest."
"Go, Elrohir," Father says softly. "Go and embrace your destiny. Free that Elrohir who lies trapped inside you."
"But—"
"But nothing. You are no coward. You can do this. You will not fail."
"You cannot know that."
"I do know that."
"Enough!" With that Finrod grasps Elrohir and hauls him to his feet as if he were a child. "We do not have all night. One so powerful he dares to take on the fear of a dying man will not be failing with me."
Elrohir is left looking as if he not quite sure of how he ended up on his feet at all.
"What work does Finrod mean?" I ask my father as we watch them leave, Elrohir trudging despondently beside Finrods deliberate strides. "Elrohir is right. It is the middle of the night!"
"He is going to teach Elrohir to master his power." Father's eyes shine with excitement as he speaks. "Finally, Estel, he will get the training he needs. He will discover his worth. He will understand who he truly is."
I know that is something Father has been waiting for for centuries. He has always been adamant Elrohir has an untapped power that has lain neglected.
But he does not spend long dwelling on it now.
"So," he turns his attention to me and his face is stern. "As Finrod said, enough of that, we do not have all night. Let us pay attention to you. Running away, Estel? You are better than that."
And finally here it is. The reckoning I have been dreading.
"I know, Father, I know. I thought I had destroyed everything. It seemed best—"
"Avoiding your problems is never best. You are a man now, Estel, and if you want me to treat you as one you must act as one."
"You and Elrohir were so angry with one another—" I protest but he will not have it.
"As we have been angry with one another before, and you know that. It was wrong of me to lose my temper with him so badly in front of you and I apologise for that, but the issues that lay between Elrohir and I, you may be surprised to know, had very little to do with you at all. It was something else entirely."
"Aragorn-the King—"
"Aragorn-the-King—" he begins by repeating my words but then stops himself and starts again, "Aragorn and I have survived worse than this. Already we begin to work our way towards forgiveness. It will take more than you and Eldarion to ever come between us. I understand all was chaos and our anger was frightening but if you had stayed to face it things would not have been as bad as you expected."
It is a heavy sigh he gives as he reaches out to ruffle my hair with affection.
"Tell me, have you forgiven Eldarion?"
"Yes." I do not even need to pause for thought.
"He wronged you Estel. Make sure you have thought on this carefully or it will return to bite you when you least expect."
"I have thought on it. I have done nothing but think on it all the trip home. He has explained why he did what he did. He knows he did wrong and he is sorry for it."
"Hmm,"
I think he doubts me but to his credit he does not try to correct me.
"What have you decided then, the two of you?" He goes on.
"We have decided nothing. I have held him at arms length. His intensity scares me and I do not know what to do. I do not wish to hurt him. And yet, in my heart I know I will give in in the end."
"It is not necessarily a bad thing you are frightened," Father replies. "Sometimes the most exciting, wonderful, rewarding moments of our lives are also the most terrifying. It is what makes them worthwhile."
"I have told him I am silvan and will always be silvan," I say. "I have told him if he wishes for some forever love just he and I alone in the sunset forever and ever like his parents have I cannot give him that."
"And what did he say to that?"
"He said he will think on it." I pause before telling him the rest, but surely he already knows it.
"There is a girl he loves, you know."
"Ah," he smiles then. "Rhíwiel. So he has told you about her."
"Not until I asked him. Aragorn-the-King mentioned her and I wished to know what he meant."
"And what did Eldarion have to say?"
"Very little really. I had to drag it out of him. He loves her still, that much is obvious. I told him he needed to find her, for there are no barriers now between the two of them, not really, not if they still want each other. I did think that might be a solution, that the three of us may work as you, Mother and Elrohir work but he said no to that. He would not even entertain it."
"No that would not work." Father says firmly. "Rhíwiel is not Maewen. She would not understand it and it would hurt her."
"That is what Eldarion said."
"Well he still has that sense at least. Will he go in search of her?"
"He says no. He says he wishes to leave her in peace. I think he is simply afraid of what he will find."
"Then you must encourage him to go. No matter what it might mean for you. This is a complicated thing you embark upon, Estel, it really is."
"That does not mean it is not worth it!" I cry defensively.
"I did not say it was not worth it, Estel. I said it would not be easy," he replies softly. "You and I, we choose the difficult paths in life, hmm, difficult, but infinitely more interesting,"
Suddenly he is all intensity, changed from a languid easiness to fidgety tenseness as quickly as only he can.
"Listen," he says, "this is important. I know how hypocritical it is of me to lecture you on your propensity to run. I know that has long been my weakness, something I must constantly work to overcome and often fail at. It never, never has worked in my favour. It has never made things easier and often made them so very much worse. But I have been lucky. I found a girl, fierce and determined, who refused to let me run away, who grasped hold of me and held me still when all I wished to do was disappear. Who forced me to confront our problems and look them in the eye. Who did not let me slide away from difficulties. That is why we are still together today.
"Eldarion is not Maewen. He will not do that for you, Estel. It is not his nature. He is quieter, stiller, and less confident. He does not have that fierce spirit. Tinu? Yes, but not Eldarion. The road ahead of the pair of you is rocky and you must do this for yourself. You must force yourself to hear the things you do not want to hear, to stand and face the difficult times when all you want to do is bolt. If you cannot do that, if you choose to duck and dive and run, as Eldarion will let you, it will all be so much harder and the pair of you will fail."
He is right. I know he is right but I do not like listening to it.
"I am going." I tell him. "I do not want to stay here and listen to how much you think we will not succeed."
But he reaches out and holds my arm tightly as I try to stand.
"You are proving my point, Estel. Stay and listen, tell me how wrong I am if you like, but stay."
"You have no faith in us, in me."
"I have every faith in you."
He loosens his grip at least.
"I want only the best for you, Estel, for the both of you. If Eldarion is your choice so be it. I will support you in that. I want you to succeed. But I see too much of myself in you and I would not have you make my mistakes."
I do not know how to answer that. Instead I sit in what I know is a sulky silence that makes me look as childish as I often protest at him calling me.
"Listen," he says in the end. "I do think it would do Eldarion a huge amount of good to stay here for awhile, to live with us and drench himself in his elvishness as he has never been able to before, but Aragorn and I will leave very shortly to search for Gimli and so Eldarion must go back to his people until we return. If you wish you can go back there with him to spend time together in his town as he leads them."
"No." I know I do not want that as soon as he says it. "Eldarion tells me he wants to begin a new life, to be free to be Elven, to love whomever he chooses. He is desperate for that, but not desperate enough, for when he is with his men he simply cannot do it. I am uncertain he even really wants to deep down. If I went there all would be awkward. It would have to be surreptitious and discreet. He would want me to hide my affections and anything that lay between us. He would be terrified of our discovery. I do not want to do that. I will not hide myself away, even for him. It is better I do not go there at all until he is able to be who he really is with his people. He is a long way from that yet. Anyway," I add, "I must go with Laerion to the Greenwood. He has asked me."
My father is surprised at that! His eyebrows reach for the sky in astonishment.
"Has he?" he exclaims, "I did not know that. Well, much as I would like to take you there myself perhaps it is right Laerion is the one that does it and he will need someone to support him there. It may be difficult Estel, with Iruion, if you find him. Perhaps you—who have never met Iruion—would be best to be with Laerion then. I would be too involved, too tangled in my own emotions."
"I promise I will look after him, Father." I mean it. I watch Laerion when he is with Elladan and I worry about both of them at the end of this trip to the Greenwood.
"What you must do," Father say seriously, "is allow Laerion to follow his own heart, even if that will hurt you. Even if you think he is wrong in his choices, even if you know that choice will hurt another. You can help him think it through, you can remind him of his love with Elladan if distance means the details blur for him, but this is his decision to make and in the end it may not be one we like. As Aragorn and I have listened to you and to Eldarion, and put our fears—how it affects the pair of us—aside, so you must with Laerion. Can you do that?"
To tell the truth I am not sure.
"I will try, Father," I say in the end. "I will try my best to do that."
Suddenly it is a frightening thought—being responsible for Elladan's future happiness.
"So we will all go our separate ways then, for a bit," Father sighs, "Aragorn and I to fetch Gimli, you and Laerion to the Greenwood, Eldarion back to his people, even Finrod gets to search out Nargothrond with Gildor. Poor Elrohir will have to try and keep Elladan on an even keel. I do not envy him that but to be fair, he probably owes Elladan more than his fair share of emotional support over the years."
"Do you truly think you will find Gimli?" I ask him.
"Finrod is certain there are dwarves about," he smiles confidently, "and if there are dwarves there will be Gimli. He would not miss this. He will be looking for us."
I hope with all my heart that is true. I do not want to think on what it will be like for him if it is not.