Disclaimer: If I owned any of this, I'd have other media open to write in. Taurnil is an OC. Eregwen is too, or at least an original name and personality bestowed on the mysterious "Isildur's wife"; all of her children are of the Professor's invention. I did not make up that saying about Númenórean seagulls; it's in Unfinished Tales. The term "woodwose", abbreviated "wose", is Tolkien's – a translation to sorta-modern English of a very old word that meant something like "wild-man-of-the-woods".
I have no idea whether or not Isildur ever saw Middle-Earth before the foundation of Gondor. Then again, his family has a decided naval tradition; and The Silmarillion discusses conditions in the Númenórean colony-havens at the part I'm aiming for. I also assumed that, like American and European children not so long ago, very young Númenórean girls and boys alike wear petticoats instead of pants. Diapers are a relatively recent invention.
A George Orwell quote goes, "In order to hate imperialism, you have got to be part of it." Of course, that got me thinking…
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6. The Havens
A day before the New Year counted 3310 in the Second Age, a light snow coated the rooftops of Rómenna like sugar. Seabirds settled despondently on the masts of the ship that had just reached port, a huge thing returning from the southern havens in Middle-Earth. Aboard, Isildur glanced at the rigging and warily donned an old hat. Everyone knew to expect that, in Númenor. There was a saying, that a blind mariner could still recognize the country by its cacophony of gulls.
He hastened from the quays and turned uphill, sea legs protesting, his chest of belongings slung carelessly across his back. At a road turning, he hesitated briefly.
He muttered, "Grandfather will know soon enough," and turned left. The route took him south of the familiar wooded ridge, away from the house of Lord Amandil.
Toward home.
After the wedding, Eregwen had worried about her mother living alone in the big, empty house that had once belonged to Bereg. The widow was hardly an old woman by their standards – approaching one hundred seventy – but she had never fully recovered from the terror of her husband's arrest. The sea-captain's house was also no place for children; when Eregwen became pregnant, they had moved in with her mother. Isildur paused as a group of neighborhood children raced past him, and he set down his sea chest in the street.
Sure enough, one of the boys halted and returned to tackle him. "Atarinya!"
"Elendur," he answered. "By the Valar, you've grown! You'll pass me if I ever go to Middle-Earth again."
The ten-year-old beamed and released him. "Will I be as tall as Grandfather?"
Isildur laughed. Elendil bore the epithet "the Tall" with good reason, standing almost half a ranga* higher than the average. "Maybe. But there are disadvantages, senya. You'd bump your head in doorways."
"Grandfather doesn't."
"He's used to it. Where is your mother?"
"The marketplace."
"Ai. She'll know the ship is in, then. Go home and tell your grandmother we're coming, all right? Is your brother there?"
Elendur nodded to both, shaking snowflakes from his unruly black hair, and trotted up the street. Isildur set off in the opposite direction somewhat faster. He and Eregwen met halfway and simply clung to one another for a moment, too glad to speak.
"Mae govannen," Isildur whispered, "well met." Though the Númenóreans had once spoken nearly as much Sindarin as the common Westron, the former had been forbidden from public speech for centuries. To the Elf-friends, the words had the sense of a shared secret.
Sounding strangled, she answered, "Two years! Never do that to me again."
"Never fear it," he promised. "I have missed you and the boys, and I have no desire to see the havens again. Elendur I have seen. How is Aratan?"
"Well. He talks now." She gazed at him. "You are a century old this year, and I missed your birthday."
"As I remember, I spent that week swatting flies in trackless jungle. There was little to miss."
"Ha!" They picked up their respective burdens again – Isildur attempted to take some of the groceries from his wife, but she shrugged away the help. "I have not grown weak in your absence, love. Come on, and tell me about Middle-Earth."
"The native people are strange," he began after a moment. He had spent some time reflecting on his story, and did not want to be misinterpreted. "They fear us, and with reason – there are temples in other places than Armenelos."
"Oh, no," Eregwen broke in sympathetically, "those poor woses."
"They are not woses. They have a culture of their own, not as ancient as ours but perhaps as rich, or more so. Númenor would seem no paradise to them, even were our own people more generous.
"Our soldiers sometimes take their men as slaves, for rowing or building," he added, and shuddered. "I will not speak of that unless I must."
"So Middle-Earth has fallen into shadow, just as we have."
"No – only the havens where soldiers are. The Elves dwell farther north, in Rhovanion and Lindon. There is also the haven of the Faithful at Pelargir."
"Mordor is close upon them."
"Mordor is abandoned. We are not yet that far gone."
"Still, it is not a place I would have so near."
"No," he agreed simply. He opened the front door to find a toddler sitting on the floor in the hall, blue petticoats spread around him. The boy dropped his wooden animals and stared up at Isildur uncertainly.
"Aratanya, this is your tatanya," Eregwen prompted gently, turning to hang her dampened cloak on a peg. Her hair was loosely bound in a bronze clasp; it fell in frizzy brown waves over both shoulders. Isildur did not think he had imagined seeing one or two gray hairs, and he promised himself never to leave her again. Aratan clambered to his feet and simply stood, watchful. Evidently, he could not decide what to do about this stranger who claimed to be his father.
Isildur accordingly knelt, trying to remember what Elendil had done in similar situations, and made no move to touch him. "Hey," he murmured.
"Tatanya went over the Sea," the child pronounced with a mixture of suspicion and pride.
"Yes, but he has come back home now. And he has brought you a present."
He paused to rummage through his sea chest for a moment, then held up a painted wooden animal like the toys on the floor. This one was like no animal Aratan had ever seen. "What is that?"
"A Mûmak. They live across the Sea, where the weather is very hot, and the Wild Men ride them. They are much bigger than horses." He placed the carved elephant on the floor.
"Its nose is long!" Aratan sat back down again, pleased.
Neither Isildur nor Eregwen had intended to rise early the next morning, but Taurnil could be inventive in getting the attention of the house. At the third attempt, Isildur gave up and got out of bed. The bedchamber was sufficiently cold to wake him up; Eregwen muttered sleepily and wrapped the covers more securely about herself.
"What is it?" he asked at the door, annoyed and hastily dressed.
"My lord, your father and Lord Amandil wish to see you as soon as may be."
"Are they doing the same to Anárion?"
"Well guessed!" The servant bowed and left, apparently in no better a temper at having to go out in the frigid morning.
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*A ranga is a Númenórean unit of linear measure, about 38 inches. "Manhigh" is two rangar, or six foot four, but the unit is based on paces rather than the average height. It puts Elendil the Tall at just short of seven foot eleven, two and a half rangar – making his epithet one of the biggest understatements in Tolkien.