Disclaimer: Tolkien wrote a specific type of sorrow, a longing and pain for the world that was and would not be again. It isn't mine.
Beta'd by trustingHim17
"Sleep heavily and know that I am here with you now. The past is gone, and cannot harm you anymore. And while the future is fast coming for you, it always flinches first and settles in as the gentle present."
~ Welcome to Night Vale
"'I must indeed abide the Doom of Men [death itself], whether I will or I nill: the loss and the silence. But I say to you, King of the Númenoreans, not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive.' [...]
But Arwen went forth from the House [of the Dead], and the light of her eyes was quenched, and it seemed to her people that she had become cold and grey as nightfall in winter that comes without a star. Then she said farewell to Eldarion, and to her daughters, and to all whom she had loved; and she went out from the city of Minas Tirith and passed away to the land of Lórien, and dwelt there alone under the fading trees until winter came. Galadriel had passed away and Celeborn also was gone, and the land was silent."
~Tolkien, Appendix A, Return of the King
The different world did not startle Susan. She'd experienced the smells and sounds of another world once before, and she took a moment to breathe, to listen, and to smell. Here the noise of running water seemed to sing, a sweet music speaking of rest and of longing for something lost. The sun shone clearly through the yellow sea of golden leaves, and the trees themselves seemed to promise safety. The air was deep and sweet, rife with life.
Do not leave the forest, the Doorkeeper had said. Susan smiled. She felt no wish to leave. Instead she put the basket over one arm, settled the soft cloak around her shoulders, and headed towards the sound of water.
The water was a stream, the ground between the banks running with dark water.* The edges were steep but the stream itself was shallow. Susan set the basket down. She hesitated, then took off the cloak (grey in the light of this sun and with a hidden shimmer) to lay it beside the basket. Her hands free, she climbed down the bank and stood by the stream, listening.
Listening to the water. The splashing, falling, pattering sound seemed more song than sound of a stream. The water rippled with its own voice, and Susan, listening hard, wondered if she could hear the words. She waited.
But she could not.
After a moment she leaned down and plunged her hands in the stream, feeling the shock of the cold water—not icy like the gateway had been, but full of the cold that calls a sleeper awake, opening their eyes to the world. She leaned further down and splashed her face, feeling so much more alive than she had—even since Before. She let the sparkling drops fall and breathed deeply.
She once belonged to another world. She had forgotten how the very strangeness could call to her, how it could feel like home. There were things that Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve were made for, things in the air and sky and trees that they no longer had in their own world. When she found them in another world, her spirit felt like coming alive.
She walked further into the stream, letting the water ripple to her ankles, then just below her knees. She felt the rocks smooth and cool under her feet. The entire forest rustled, the wind in the golden leaves singing yet another song, and suddenly she spun, arms out, throwing her head back and watching the world spin.
She felt awake.
If Anne could see this world, she would know that hopes always come true.
But the thought made Susan lower her arms. She did not have Anne's hope. The water offered her rest, a washing away of weariness, but Susan wondered suddenly what would be left within her when the washing was done. Anne would have had hope. Susan had none.
So what would she have left? In spite of her anger, her reluctant obedience, Someone had loved her enough to send her here, to find this stream—and to find a person. Surely something in her still remained to save.
Susan sighed, lowering her hands once again to the water, letting the refreshing flood wet her skin. It helped. For the moment—just for the moment—it shut out everything.
Then Susan straightened and climbed back up the bank. She shook her hands and arms, keeping her wrists loose, and gathered her hair behind her head. Then she picked up her cloak and her basket and began to follow the stream.
Hours later she found the falls, the source of the music. The water poured over the rocks in a rejoicing chorus, and the spray sparkled with a glorious rainbow in the sunlight. Almost, almost, she set down her basket and her cloak once more and went to touch the colours of light and foaming water. But she did not think this particular beauty was for her.
The falls were too steep to climb, and the sun had begun to set. Susan looked about for drier ground, wondering if there was any place to sleep. The Doorkeeper had called this forest safe, and Susan believed him, but she still did not like the idea of sleeping by herself on the ground.
We did that in Narnia. I remember. I remember the nights of hunting, when we four rode too far ahead, Peter's brown stallion beating ours, and the tents were behind us, and so we tied our horses loosely and slept among the trees. Edmund and Peter slept on the outside, keeping us safe. She could picture their faces, noble, laughing, calm and joyous all at once. She could picture them more clearly than she ever had.
Yet somehow the memory did not hurt, not here. Here she could see it vividly enough that her siblings lived again. It was almost as if they walked with her, in this new place.
I will tell you about this forest when I get back, she promised them. I will tell you about the golden leaves and singing water. Lucy, I'll describe to you the rainbow that never leaves the falls.
But she still needed a place to sleep.
She looked further from the stream, wondering how far the spray would reach. It was then that she caught sight of something white, high enough she had not glimpsed it at first. She hoisted her basket on her arm and began heading towards it, wondering if it would offer shelter or the night. Then she stopped. She turned back to the stream, walking to the falls and placing her hand on one of the smoother rocks. Steady, she leaned in to drink, tasting that cold water one more time. Drawing back at last, she wiped her mouth, shook her hands dry, and walked towards the white.
The white wood had been built into a platform, high in a tree, with a slender silver rope ladder hanging from a circle in the middle. She looked at the ladder dubiously; it looked too small to hold a child's weight. But when she put her foot on the bottom rung and pressed down, it held, held as firmly as a rope made of four woven strands. She slid the basket up to her elbow and began to climb.
Up, and up, and up, high above the height of her head, and then she found herself on a flat platform circling the tree. The only thing on white wood was a movable screen on one side that appeared to be made of cloth.
She set the basket down and went towards the screen, feeling the wind cease the instant the screen was close. It was covered in silver strands of metal, formed with grace and care to make a beautiful picture of a tree, like the one she stood by, with golden wire creating the leaves. The workmanship was as delicate as the work of any Narnian Dwarf, and she reached out to touch it with one trembling finger, entranced by its beauty.
It moved at her touch. The screen was light, easy to move, and gloriously made.
Several leaves lay on the platform, however, and Susan guessed it was no longer used. She brought the basket over, brushed the fallen leaves away, wrapped her cloak around herself, and lay down to sleep. She prayed quickly to Aslan—a little uneasily, for prayer was no longer something she was accustomed to—that she would not fall off the edge of the platform during the night.
She did not. The morning sun woke her, pouring gloriously through the leaves as she opened her eyes. The songs of many birds—not Narnian birds, for they used no speech of men—mixed with the sound of the water, and Susan smiled. She sat up, reached for the basket, and uncovered breakfast.
It was an English breakfast, a poached egg, cold from staying in the basket overnight. Susan noticed with surprise that, between the cloak and the screen, she had been warm. There was an apple as well, and some bread that Susan did not think she could toast, but that worked well with the small jar of jam inside the basket.
The food felt like a feast, and Susan fell to with a good appetite. It had been a long time since she had enjoyed eating that much.
The memory of why—why she had not enjoyed food—made her lose a little of her appetite. She packed the basket back up, took another look around the platform, and decided to climb down and explore a bit more.
I do not think I will be allowed home until I have met the person I came here to meet. The sooner I start, the sooner I can understand what this world holds.
Though—I do not want to leave. My anger ceases here, and gives some peace instead.
Susan climbed down the ladder, touched the trunk of the tree with gentle fingers in thanks, and set off down the stream, going away from the falls. It seemed as wise a course as any.
She spent the morning listening to the water, to the birds, and to the rustling of the leaves. A few times, once she started looking for them, she saw more of the white platforms. Most had ladders still hanging down, and never, no matter how many times Susan saw them, were there people on them.
The forest would have felt like a place of ruins, had not the wood been so white, the trees so living. It was empty, but it was not dead.
That, Susan thought with a sudden shiver, is better than I am. She glanced towards the stream, and wondered if the running, riveting waters were responsible for the freely-flowing life, or if the forest lived on by the work of something else.
She had not known the past could intertwine with the living present and only add to it.
She sat down for lunch under a different type of tree, one with white bark and green leaves. Beautiful star-shaped flowers dotted the grass around it. Lunch was a simple affair of a sandwich and an apple, and she wondered if the Doorkeeper had packed the lunch basket—if he had that much knowledge on what food would keep, or if someone else had packed her feasts.
She wondered if the food would last till she found the person she sought.
But that anxious question grew hard to hear over the singing of the stream. She did her best to enjoy her lunch in peace. Then she closed the basket, pushed herself up by the help of the tree, and began to walk once more.
In late afternoon she saw her first person, standing quite still at the bottom of a hill. It was a lady with beautiful black hair falling far past her waist, a shadow against a cloak of soft grey. She stood with her back to Susan, looking up at the covering of golden flowers and grass on the hill. There were no trees there. She did not appear to move.
Susan stood uncertainly at the edge of the clearing.
I cannot see her face; I don't know if this is the woman I've been sent to.
Should I speak? Should I hide?
Susan decided to wait; over and over, that had been the advice she'd received. Hester, the Doorkeeper, both had both said the same thing often enough: wait.
In the silence, the woman spoke. Her voice carried as softly as a whisper, as beautifully as the stream, and as clear as a Narnian flute. "Here, Estel, we walked, feet unshod among the niphredil and elanor; here we plighted our troth." The woman raised one white hand, extending her slender fingers towards the hill. "Now you are gone and I remain. Now I taste the bitterness of my choice."
Susan felt her heart cracking. She'd heard the sorrowing say that her beauty was a balm and yet a breaking, a blessing that brought pain even as it blessed. Beauty held out hope by its mere existence. But beauty gave grief a pointed end, more keenly felt; hope pierced, when beauty brought it. Susan had not been on the other side before, but listening to this woman's voice, as fair as the flowers themselves—Susan understood.
And she wanted to see the woman's face.
She paused, looking around the forest.
She seems wrapped up in her memories; will she notice if I go around the hill?
If I can see her face, perhaps I'll be able to tell if she's the one I'm here to find.
Susan took a step to the side, and the woman turned towards her.
Susan froze. The woman's face—even at her most beautiful in Narnia, Susan had not appeared like this. The face looked as pure as the stars, with eyes grey as evening skies. But the expression—
Yes, Susan knew that look.
Someone we have not been able to help, the Doorkeeper had said.
The face surpassed the most beautiful works of art; no marble nor paint could approach its beauty. But there was no life. The face stood like the ruins of the greatest of castles, haunted by a glory that it had once displayed, but now could only call to imagination. The eyes spoke of the knowledge of years and years, holding all their love, and all the hauntedness of that love ended.
The woman said nothing.
Susan cleared her throat. "I'm Susan," she said, trying to hold her voice steady.
"You are one of the race of men." Susan nodded. "Yet you are not of Gondor, nor Rohan; still less of the Men of the East." She said nothing more; no questions, no other statements. The eyes held nothing of curiosity, only sorrow.
Still Susan felt compelled to explain, to give this beautiful stranger the reason why Susan intruded in her forest, her solitude. "I...I was sent here. Sent here to find you, I think. I think it's you."
"Lothlorien is no longer what it was." The eyes flashed a moment, growing alive, and Susan caught her breath at the sudden beauty, as the woman remembered what this place had been—only to watch the life fade away as the woman remembered, as she continued, "and there is little reason to seek it. There is still less to seek in me. Why do you come to one such as I?"
"I do not know yet," Susan said truthfully, though her cheeks grew a little warm. Her ignorance had not seemed to matter much, not before, but in this woman's presence—the wisdom of her glance set in the youth of her face, the agelessness that was as old as any of the oldest things in Narnia—Susan felt like a child, awkward and disruptive.
It was not a feeling she had ever loved. Yet, in the face of the woman's twilight beauty, shadowed but true, she did not feel angry.
"It was not the Varda who sent you, for my choice is made, and cannot be unmade. Even now I would not unmake it if I could. Yet I do not know any others who would send someone seeking me."
Susan swallowed. "I don't know His name here. I'm sorry." And she was. The times when her friends had come over, the intrusions into her grief—those were not easy things to bear. This lady bore a grief as deep as Susan's, and yet here Susan was, shoving into her hurt, just by being there. Those who could not enter into a grief were made witnesses instead of participants, and often grief seems like a private thing.
Yet—the Doorkeeper would not have sent her somewhere she could do unwitting harm. Would he? Not as the captain—the sender—the something of the Walkers.
So Susan would do her best.
"Why are you here?" Susan asked.
The lady glanced back at the hill, rising up towards the sun, shining with the golden covering of living flowers. "This place is the home of much of my past. The mother of my mother made this land what it was, and I live in the memory of what she made." She walked towards where Susan stood and reached out a slender gentle hand, touching the trunk of the nearest tree. "They left for the havens long ago, and there are none left."
"Did they make the platforms around the trees?"
The lady looked at her, eyes burning a little more alive—and a little more sad. "Yes. They made the trees to grow, the flowers to flourish, and the water to sing, but they built watchtowers as well, for the times when evil crossed the border and brought war. They knew such times would come. They defended this place. They kept the land unstained by the shadow."
Susan looked at the trees, glowing till they seemed a part of the sunlight; she saw the soft green grass and golden flowers, still unshadowed. And she looked at the queenly beauty so diminished it was nothing but a shadow. "Then why are you here?" She asked her question softly. Somehow gentleness came easily before such beauty.
The lady did not ask what Susan meant; perhaps she saw Susan's own shadows as clearly as Susan saw the lady's quenched life.
"I came into the shadows late, when my love died. I bring no shadow to blight the light of the forest around me. But resting here, remembering in this remnant of light, eases my grief. The light pierces—but without it, my heart would not bleed, and if it did not bleed, it would not live. Here I may live in the past, the only way I can live now."
"I am sorry."
"That, I can tell. What shadows block your own light?"
Susan looked away. She had not had the words to tell Tom, and even now, admitting the accident—the change—the death to someone—it felt as if each word came sharp, cutting her heart, then her throat, then her tongue. They left her mouth stained with her blood. But they were true. "My family died. All of them." A tear fell down one cheek, as cold as the river and so clear to feel.
She heard the rustling of hair and clothing, and turned to see the lady also looking away. "I too have known the bitterness of the gift of mortals."
Susan had nothing to say. There was nothing to say, nothing to lift that grief from those left behind with only their own life. There was nothing to say when death took everything else.
"Come," the lady said at last. "Spend the night walking with me."
Susan stepped forward, and the lady reached and lifted the basket from her arm. She set it to the side of the hill and began walking up the green slope. Susan walked by her side.
"Here I first learned to love Estel,"** the lady said quietly. Her eyes, grey under the slender eyebrows, did not grow distant as a human's would when one spoke of the past. These grew eyes came more alive, as if the past lived before her while she spoke, and she lived in it. Susan might have seen her own memories; this lady dwelt in hers, as if she moved and spoke and smelled all these things again. "I had met him but once before. He fell in love with me then, he later said. But only here, in this unshadowed realm, when my mother's mother dressed him as an elven prince, did I see his strong unshadowed heart. It was here where I made my choice."
It's twice she's mentioned making a choice. "What choice?" Susan asked, breathless from the climb.
"To sail with my people past the edge of your world and live with them forever, or to stay and experience the doom of men."
"You—are not a Daughter of Eve? Not of the race of men," Susan added, remembering the words the lady had used before.
"I was one of those given the choice, to join the race of men, or the race of the elves. I am Arwen." She stopped. "Perhaps you should catch your breath. I have not walked with a mortal for many years."
Susan looked down at the golden flowers; beautiful, living, and golden, and felt a stir of surprise. She'd forgotten where she was. Somehow, in this lady's presence, the past seemed more vivid than the golden present. "What happened after you met Estel and loved him?"
The lady laughed, quietly, softly, and Susan glanced up, startled at a sound so reminiscent of the stars of Narnia. The lady's eyes were still alight with the past. "Few called him that over his lifetime; it is odd to hear the name on someone else's lips." Her smile—as glorious as a star's shining—faded to something sadder, a star's last blaze before burning out. "He had much to accomplish before we could wed. The darkness must be defeated, the hearts of men kindled; the glory of his house restored, and Sauron must fall. I went back and forth between this place and my father's house. I worked my hopes into Estel's banner, while he went and walked the earth, fighting now as a lone man traversing the marshes, now with the wizard hunting ones who knew what we needed, now riding with the lesser races of men, teaching them and learning of them, fighting with them at their need. We met when we could, and we both endured. But then came the day when we found the means for victory fallen into our hands, and a quest must be taken. He was one of nine who volunteered. He left with them. I listened—every night I listened, as news came to our hall, of deaths of some of the nine, the wizard, the older son of Estel's steward, but not Estel's—not his. And the wizard came back, and together they and their companions forged an army, fighting back the forces of the shadow. The least of the nine, Sauron would have called them, walked into the heart of his land and ruined him. The darkness fell away, and Estel—Estel stood ready to be King. I then became his Queen."
Susan, listening, could almost picture it—of two small men, shorter than dwarves, walking a land more wretched than the desert by Calormene, of a man in grey falling into darkness, of a hero sitting under a tree with arrows in his chest. And she saw the other side, too, a city blazing white in the sun, the songs of riders on horses as they rode over a green plain, and the light dawning as a nameless shadow blew off in the wind.
They were not her memories. But she saw them as vividly as she'd seen Narnia. She glanced at the Queen, and saw her eyes shining—but also glistening with tears.
They left her with a question. "Was it worth it?" All she had seen, was it worth Arwen's pain? Was her endurance, her waiting, worthwhile for a love that ended in death? The Queen had spoken of this land unshadowed, and seemed to value it. Surely she had valued the shadow vanishing from the world in the wind?
"The separation? Yes."
"And—and the choice you made? You said you'd make it again—was it…" Susan wondered if she should ask; if it would tear too harshly into this beautiful woman's memories.
But she had to know.
"Was it worth it?" the Queen repeated.
"Yes—your choice."
Arwen paused. Not to think, for Susan had seen Edmund think; his face came instantly to mind, as if he stood before her, eyebrows furrowed. Or Peter, when she asked him a question where he knew the answer would mean much to her. Lucy, when she thought about Aslan, had stilled and thought deeply. Susan knew the look on different faces, and they passed before her now.
But this woman's face was not furrowed in thought. Her eyes regarded Susan, weighing her, and Susan swallowed. Perhaps I should not have asked.
"Love is worth the cost of losing something," Arwen responded at last. "But I did not know how high the cost would be, when I first made my choice. I did not understand how much I would lose." She looked away, at the trees with golden leaves, then at the ground with its golden flowers. "When Estel had to die, many years beyond the normal life of men, he urged me to go to my people. But I could not; there were no ships to bear me hence, and my heart would not have borne to leave the land where he once had walked. My choice is mine, for all eternity. The cost of loving is high; it took not only time, but my heart."
"Then—if you do not regret it—why are you alone?" The words halted on her tongue, spilling out by force even as she tried to hold them in check. It was more than she should ask, more than a fellow griever should ask, but the answer mattered.
"Why did I not stay in his city?"
"Didn't you have children? A family?" Susan could not imagine that the woman's beauty and love (and Estel's love for her, if he bade her seek her people once more), had left them childless. Unless that had been another tragedy they had experienced.
"Our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren all dwell in the city. Probably their children by now dwell there as well. But I would not stay where he had ruled, and now was not."
Susan thought of her home, of the place she had not been able to give up, of how she needed it because it was haunted by the ghosts of the people she loved, and no longer had. But perhaps—perhaps, because she was younger, she viewed it differently.
And perhaps this land itself woke memories more strongly than the city, in the way it blended the living with the past, making both live. Susan could understand coming to seek that.
"Now I am but a memory," Arwen said in a voice as soft as a breeze, and Susan looked at her again. Arwen spoke the truth; there was within her nothing but sorrow, and a mind that walked among the past. She was a shadow that did not stain the land, but neither did she grow anything in it, not even herself.
Arwen was not living.
As I am not when I walk among the graves, Susan thought with a shudder. That—I do not like that.
And Susan suddenly knew, too, how easy it would be for her to continue doing the same. To live in the house and speak to the ghosts; to go to the graves and speak to the dead; to let the living fall away more and more. To have nothing left in her heart but the past; to have nothing of love but the memory of it.
She looked back at the beautiful withered Queen. For Queen she must have been, ruling with her husband; and even in her ruin she had that wisdom and beauty that made women into queens. But Susan knew that, even if Arwen returned to her city, she could no longer rule. An empty heart could not serve with love. A loveless Queen was a curse.
Arwen had been right to leave; she had been right to choose to be alone.
So what would Susan choose?
"My fate will not be yours," Arwen stated, and Susan came back to herself with a start.
"No?" she bit out, and then, more softly, "No?" She had not meant to make it a challenge.
"You are very young. The old stay still. We walk in memory as often as in life. The young cannot do so. Tell me, for you are a child next to me, what have you lost? What emptied you till you think all you have are memories?"
What do I say to that? My family? My denial? My dreams, hopes, even my desires? I want nothing anymore but an easing of the pain. What can I say I've lost, that expresses that?
"Everything," Susan said at last.
"If you lost everything, you could not walk here, with a basket of food on your arm and the woven cloak of the Elves about you." Arwen reached one gentle hand out and touched Susan's shoulder. "You still have those who care about you, and who push you to live."
I do. Nancy, calling on the phone or visiting; Carol, foolishly and blunderingly trying to pull me back to hoping for the future. Only none of those things worked.
"It's not enough," she told the other Queen.
"It's not enough," Arwen gravely agreed, the shadow falling back over her face. Susan could not bear to look at her eyes. "Not all the love others can give can make up for the loss of what we love most." The Elf turned away.
Without seeing her face, without seeing the beauty and the grief, Susan felt her temper come flooding back. "So what do we do?" she demanded.
Arwen turned back around. "You have seen what I do."
"You walk in the place your kind once dwelt, and you remember." Because you cannot do anything else.
"More than remember—I can live those days once again. It is one of the gifts of my race."
Susan felt a hot flash of jealousy for that, for a mind that could do more than remember. Though she had seen vivid memories here, they had been memories, and she felt the Queen meant more by what she said. "I cannot do that, so what am I supposed to do?"
"You? Tell me, if you lost what you love most, can you learn to love again?"
No.
And you cannot tell me I have to, when you cannot love anything in this time either.
Perhaps Arwen saw that answer before Susan spoke, for the older Queen added, "Or, if that is too much to ask of such a broken heart, can you take up one of the loves you had before, and love it enough to live?"
Susan thought of the Lion on the kitchen table, of Hester and of Anne—both gone now. "Everything I have loved—almost everything I've loved since then, I've lost as well."
"You have not lost your memory of them."
Susan flinched. "The memory of them is not enough to make living worthwhile," she said, but despair made her say it with weary defeat.
The lady took a step backwards down the hill, still looking at Susan's face. "Then find something to love that is enough to live, or only love the past." She took another step. "That is your choice, mortal. I now go back to mine." She turned and walked away.
Susan stood speechless. She watched the grey cloak and the long black hair getting farther and smaller, till she could no longer see them brush the golden flowers as they passed.
She would not see Arwen again, she guessed. Arwen would be another memory. One Susan could not help but love, for it would be beautiful—even shadowed, Arwen was beautiful, with the beauty that spoke to the heart.
And—memories, the ones of Anne, Hester, now Arwen—even of Tom, to a smaller degree—were something that buoyed her up, or at least gave her a place to breathe, and to stand. The memories helped.
In Arwen's case, the story she saw offered her a clear choice. Arwen, beautiful and graceful, the living shadow in an unshadowed land. All she had was the past.
And all Susan wanted was the past, that was true. She wanted the—the far past, when she lived with her siblings and the four of them ruled and loved and suffered together, or even after that, when Eustace and Jill were added to their number, and there were glorious days at the Professor's or Aunt Polly's, teaching and talking and loving—
Loving.
Find something to love, Arwen had said, and Susan thought she already knew what that choice should be. There was one Being that Lucy had loved more than anything else, that Peter swore himself to with all his heart, that Edmund followed without a single glance elsewhere.
A Being she had betrayed.
So did I, she could hear Edmund whisper. And I was forgiven.
But He did not take your family from you, Susan silently argued back. You could trust Him.
Edmund did not answer, but she could feel what he would not say. Susan had left her family long before Aslan made them leave her. The one Susan could not trust was herself.
But how do I love someone who is not here? she asked instead, and Edmund stayed silent in her head. Lucy would be of no help, for Susan knew Aslan was always present to her. And for Peter, having His commands and the memory of His love and goodness was enough.
That is not enough for me.
Especially in England, which is covered in shadows.
But I do not kn—no, I do know. I know this clearly. I do not wish to make Arwen's choice. Perhaps she is right and I am too young; perhaps it's because I cannot remember things the way she can; perhaps it's for a different reason. But it doesn't really matter. I cannot make her choice. I cannot be nothing but a shadow. I could never—I couldn't visit their graves, if that was all I was. I cannot make that choice.
So I must make the other one.
But I cannot leave the past either. I must have my—my ghosts.
And suddenly Susan knew, knew the answer to her quandary as clearly as she knew the love of her family.
She had just described what a Walker is.
Someone tied to the past through deep sorrow, but still able to love those in the present. What was it Tom had said? Someone who knew so much sorrow that they met the broken in the dark?
I could be a Walker. Or rather, I could learn to be, she thought. I am not strong enough right now, but I could begin. I could try to carry my ghosts with me and offer my heart, broken though it was, to the shadowed of the world—and that would be enough to live. To be more than what Queen Arwen is.
I think it would be enough.
But I wish—I wish I didn't have to do it alone.
Susan stayed at the top of the hill, listening to the whispers of the breeze and the rustling of flowers and leaves, till the sun set behind the trees. Then she climbed down the hill and went to pick up her basket, dusting it off with one hand while lifting it with the other. She put it over her arm and looked around. No one was in sight, and no swirls of light appeared.
I am, I think, done with this world. But I have no idea how to summon the Doorkeeper.
"I am—ready," Susan said out loud, trying very hard not to feel foolish. Nothing moved. "I am—" not ready to go home, not that, but—"I am ready to begin learning to be a Walker." It was what she could offer. "To learn to love other things enough that I will keep living."
Still, there was nothing.
Was that not enough? Susan thought back to Hester, to the Walker she had met. Hester, who offered Susan truth and love and passion, offered her own faults, her own wisdom, her own strength, even though the life she lived had been hard. "I—am willing to share their grief, so they too might learn to live," she added softly. "At least, I am willing to try."
A circle of white light appeared on the nearest tree trunk.
*"Here is Nimrodel! [...] Of this stream the Silvan Elves made many songs long ago, and still we sing them in the North, remembering the rainbow on its falls, and the golden flowers that floated in its foam. All is dark now and the Bridge of Nimrodel is broken down. I will bathe my feet, for it is said that the water is healing to the weary" (The Fellowship of the Ring, p. 384).
**For those who do not know, Estel is one of the names of Aragorn, and the name Arwen called him in the appendixes when he died, so I take it as the name she called him by.