Two chapters posted today. 50 and 51
Authors note:
The carving Legolas and Eldarion speak about is in the story 'What Wind is to Fire'
The explanation of Aragorn being the leader of a stone army is in the Finfinfin1 story 'When tne World Stops Making Sense'
Legolas
Maewen has forgiven me by morning.
She greets me when I arise with a steaming cup of tea and one of the strawberry cakes she well knows I especially like.
"Am I forgiven then?" I smile but I do not have to ask. I know I am.
"You should have told me," she says seriously, "but I know that time when Estel was missing in the river would have been an agony for you."
She sits beside me, an arm gently across my shoulders as I eat her peace offering.
"Was it terrible?"
"Some of the worst moments of my life."
I am not exaggerating when I say that and she knows that too.
"Where is Elrohir?" She asks then, head upon my shoulder, smoothing over the unspoken agony of that night I thought I had lost Estel.
"I do not know. He went off with Finrod last night and he has not yet returned."
It worries me that he is not yet back, but I have not seen Finrod either. Surely that means they are still together, not that it has all gone wrong and Elrohir is having to cope with yet another failure. I am certain he will not fail in this.
"Finrod?" She cannot help but be curious, as Maewen always is. It is one of the things I love most about her, this burning need to know.
But this is Elrohir's story to tell.
"Yes," is all I say.
She gets my message. She knows I will not tell her.
"Can you mend the ladder to the flet?" she smiles instead as she pulls herself to her feet. "Rhawion damaged it while you were away, swinging in some nonsense game."
Rhawion is always indulging in nonsense. He is wild, he is curious, he is so much like Maewen, more so than either of our children. His name she chose for him, fits him perfectly. If there is any of calm, steady Erynion in there it is almost impossible to see. Perhaps when he is older we will discover it?
So it is when Eldarion wanders into our clearing I am on my hands and knees swearing at a pile of rope and wood that will not cooperate with me at all.
"What are you doing?" He says behind me. "What is that supposed to be?"
"The ladder from our flet." I throw it from me in disgust. I have never had the patience for this kind of work and I am fed up with it, even though I have only just begun.
But Eldarion, . . . well, working with wood is his strength.
"Shall I do this for you before you break it even more?" he laughs as he bends down to pick up the offending tangle.
Of course he succeeds. Of course he sits there, fingers moving nimbly and produces a straight, strong ladder even Rhawion would struggle to damage again, in the blink of an eye as if it is nothing at all to do.
I am staring at those hands, dancing between wood and twine like a thing of beauty themselves when he speaks.
"I am sorry, Legolas."
"Sorry?"
"Estel accused me of throwing you to the wolves and he is right. I am sorry for that. It was unfair."
Ah, he speaks of him telling Aragorn of Ithilien. Well he is correct. It was unfair.
"I am pleased to hear you say that." I will not make him feel better by telling him it did not matter because that would be a lie. "I was not expecting it. I wish you had spoken to me before your father, or warned me you would be raising it with him."
"I did not know I would be raising it with him until that very moment. I was angry. It came out of nowhere. I did not plan to hurt you Legolas. I swear."
"Then I wish I had known you were still angry with me because of it before I was stood in front of Aragorn defending the indefensible."
He drops his head and does not meet my eyes.
"And are you still angry?" I ask him. "Do we need to speak on this further? Should I explain again why I did what I did, for I am sorry, myself that I handled it so badly, for all of our sakes."
"I am not angry," he says eventually. "Not any more. I have talked to Estel, and my father. I have straightened things out in my head. I understand the difficult position you found yourself in and I know you have tried to put things right many times since then, while I . . . I made my own mess of things with Lord Aderthron and you were the one who paid the price for that."
"Aderthron is over and done with many years ago," I say softly, and I reach out to put a hand over his which have never stopped in their dance with the rope. "No more apologies for that, Eldarion."
But he only sighs. I think he still does not forgive himself that so easily.
"Well," he says after a pause, finally lifting his eyes to look at me as he hands the ladder, now pristine, back to me, "This can be my thank you gift, for Aderthron and Ithilien. For you were right, all those years ago. That love affair would have been a disaster for me. Now we are even."
"You have it wrong," I smile. "It is I who has been in your debt, Eldarion. You brought so much joy into my life as I watched you grow. I am honoured to have been a part of it."
He hesitates then.
"Do you forgive me Estel then?"
"I support Estel in whatever it is he wishes to do. If that is you, so be it. He could have chosen far, far worse."
I am tempted to talk to him about Rhíwiel, to ask where that stands. Is Estel right in saying he still loves her? But no, He is grown, as Estel is grown. I must let the two of them deal with that.
"Where is Estel?" he asks in the end, both of us awkward. Apologies are not something either of us do well it seems. "Have you seen him?"
"Try the beach. I think he has taken our untameable boy there to run off steam."
Since the quiet peace of our settlement tells me Rhawion is nowhere to be seen in it at the moment that is as good a suggestion as any.
He looks over his shoulder at me as he turns to go.
"Elrohir sits by the fire in the clearing." he says. "He seemed not himself when I spoke to him. Perhaps he needs you?" He turns to walk away.
Not himself? What has Finrod done?
"Eldarion!" I intend to ask him what he means. What did Elrohir say to him? But as he spins again to face me I am hit by a thousand memories. Memories I have buried for an age.
His face is open and curious. He looks so young, just like the young man I left behind. The one I helped raise, the one I laughed and played with, the one I taught the bow, and to care for horses—that boy. The one I never bade goodbye.
And so I do not ask about Elrohir. The words change even as I speak them.
"I never told you goodbye," I say, "I lost our last moments and I have been so very sorry for that all these years. I need you to know that."
He is surprised. It is written all over his face.
"You were ill," he says. "You do not need to be sorry for that."
It is what both Elrohir and Maewen have told me many times before. It makes sense but it is no justification for me.
"I am sorry then," I say carefully, "That my illness robbed us of that."
"I admit it was hard to lose you, Legolas, while you barely noticed me amongst the mania, but to tell the truth, though the thought of never seeing you again cut deep, I was happy. Happy you would finally defeat that sea-longing and be free. Happy at last you were able to do what my father wished for you so desperately."
It is a relief to hear him say that. Though I did not manage to achieve the happiness and freedom from grief Aragorn wished for me still there were moments, many moments, I was content—times that were joyful.
"There is one more thing," I tell him. "I should have thanked you for this when I first saw you." I pull it out from deep in my pocket and place it in his hands. A small carving of him as a boy, Aragorn and I side by side, Aragorn's arm across my shoulder, with the boy sitting on his own. The farewell gift he sent across the sea with Maewen for her to give to me when I was capable of receiving it. The crisp, exact lines of his carving have worn away with time. The expressions on our faces are no longer the perfect likenesses he captured but blurred at the edges.
He stares at it, running his hands across the shapes he carved so many years ago.
"She gave it to you."
He looks up at me with a smile.
"I have carried it with me always." I reply.
"I wanted you to see how much I loved you because the sea-longing meant I could not tell you when you left."
And how cleverly he did capture that love. It shone out of that small carved boy's face, and Aragorn's love for me also. Our whole friendship was wrapped up in that piece of wood. It was so much, so painful, I could not even bear to look at it for many, many years though I took it everywhere next to my heart. It was not until Finrod healed my raw edges knitting me back together that I could look to see that love and remember without pain.
He frowns as his fingers find the one flaw. My figure has lost one of its feet, snapped off at the ankle.
"Dagor Dagorath," I tell him, "It snapped as I fell."
He winces.
"That injury of yours scares me. What would have happened to you? Here we all are, reunited. Where would you have gone? Would that have been it for you forever?"
It is a frightening thought and one I have dwelt on often.
"Even Finrod does not know the answers to that." I say. "Still . . . The worst did not happen, and here I still am. Mandos was not that keen to have me after all."
"I need to make you a new one of these." Eldarion says as he hands his carving back to me.
"No. It is perfect just as it is. I like that my figure is damaged. It is who I am, a flawed elf, not as perfect as the rest of them. As much as that was hard to cope with in Valinor I am happy with it now. I am Legolas, take it or leave it. You cannot separate my damage from the life I have lived and I am proud of that life. I would not change it."
I can tell from his face as he turns to go, though he might believe me, he is not so accepting of the flaw now present in his own work.
He is right about Elrohir.
He sits by the fire in our main clearing. It has burnt low, waiting for someone to stoke it into life, yet he just stares into the embers.
My heart is in my mouth as I look at him across the clearing. He is so still.
Surely he has not failed... he has not failed at this. I known he has power, but he and Finrod are always at loggerheads. Did the two of them argue? Elrohir can be his own worst enemy when he is angry, but what would he have had to be angry about?
"Elrohir?" He does not look up when I call his name so I try again. "Elrohir!"
"Leave him be."
Finrod, leaning against a tree next to me, arms folded, startles me.
"Where did you come from? You were not there before!" I am sure he was not. When I walked into the clearing it was empty save Elrohir at its centre.
"I most certainly was. It is not my fault you were unobservant." So he was indulging in his disappearing trick then. I roll my eyes at him. I am going to ignore him if he is in his mood to tease. It is Elrohir I am concerned about. But Finrod grasps my arm as I head for Elrohir by the fire and his grip is firm enough to make me flinch.
"I said leave him be."
"I am worried about him. Eldarion said he was not himself. Why does he not respond to me?"
But Finrod smiles and seems not the slightest bit concerned at all.
"Eldarion tried talking to him before he was ready. Of course he received nonsense as you will do unless you do as you are told. Let him settle into himself. I am standing watch." He flicks his wrist to dismiss me. "Go attend to some of your flighty woodelf business, whatever that may be."
But I will not be dismissed. Not even by the great Finrod who no longer scares me.
"I will stand watch with you then."
And it is his turn to roll his eyes.
"That is hardly necessary and you will spoil the aesthetic, cluttering up my quiet glade with your nervy silvan twitching."
He makes me laugh.
"Hide me then. I am sure you can."
"My days of cloaking people are over, " he sighs, "but if you insist on staying . . . Sit . . . Be still—if you possibly can. . . And watch." And when I have sat myself down by the roots of the trees and look up he is gone. Of course I know he is not. He is right next to me, likely glaring at me, but I can not see him.
"Childish, very childish Finrod." I say into thin air but it does not manage to goad a response.
Whatever 'settling into yourself' involves, Elrohir takes an inordinately long time to do it. Sitting, watching him is all very well but I am not good at sitting still. It is fine for 'I am a Noldor King', Finrod, but I need something to do with my hands. Surreptitiously I pluck a blade of grass to twirl between my fingers.
"Sit still I said!" The disembodied voice from nowhere makes me jump.
"I am!" I have found denying the obvious sometimes works when people do not expect you to but I may have raised my voice too high in denial for Elrohir's head jerks up and he looks straight at me.
"Legolas?"
He says my name as if it is a complete surprise to him that he should find me here in my own wood.
"Yes," I do not wait for Finrod's permission to leap up on my feet and across to him. "Welcome back. Where have you been?"
That confuses him and he looks at me as if I am ever so slightly mad.
"Here. Where have you been?"
"Fixing the ladder to the flet." This feels a singularly bizarre conversation and I wonder why I am informing him of such unimportant domestic details. "But then Finrod had me sitting still in the corner waiting for you to find yourself."
He looks around the glade and then back at me.
"Finrod is not here."
"Well he is. Hiding in the shadows, playing his games with us. You know how he is." I turn toward where I know Finrod stands. "You can go now, Finrod. I can take it from here."
"No, Finrod is not here, Legolas" Elrohir reaches out a hand to gently touch my forehead. "Are you well? I know how fever affects you. Remember the time you thought Aragorn marshalled the very stones against you!"
I wonder how we arrived here. Has Finrod addled his brain?
"I am perfectly well. Why on earth would I have a fever, Elrohir? Finrod is over there against the tree where he has been berating me for not sitting still enough and mocking my silvan nature!"
"If he were here," he says very softly and gently as if I were a child, "then I would know it, visible or invisible, I would know it, Legolas, for he has opened the world to me. These are just imaginings that he mocks you . . . Concerning imaginings."
I have had enough of this conversation.
"Finrod, enough of this," I cry. "Show yourself before Elrohir gets Aragorn involved in trying to cure me!"
His merry laugh floats across the trees that surround us.
He really is the bitter end. He has left us and left me looking foolish.
"No wonder my Father taught me to beware of the Noldor!" I shout back at him. "Do you hear me, Finrod!"
And beside me Elrohir throws back his head and laughs.
Elrohir so seldom laughs. The world is a serious business for him. Always he feels he does not fit. Always he feels out of place. Elrohir is strong ferocity. He is solemn strength, he is fiery temper.
He is not lighthearted merriment. He is not that at all. A smile perhaps, sometimes a grin if I am lucky.
And so I turn and stare.
And it only makes him laugh all the harder.