Chapter One: Seeds of Shadow
Disclaimer: JRR Tolkien and New Line Cinema own everything.
3002 – Seventeen years before the Three Hunters come to Edoras with Gandalf
A doll made of sack-cloth and stuffed with straw that bled from the slipped stitches in its sown side was clasped in Éomer's hands. The hair had once been of coarse horse's mane, but had fallen out long ago. It was Éowyn's plaything and he was returning it to her for perhaps it would be a comfort.
Kneeled before the mound on the edge of the village, her fingers threaded among the stems of the simbelmynë. Their yellow eyes smiled from petal faces. They grow where dead men rest and look how cheerful they are! Éowyn hated their impertinence. She tore at the grass, uprooting the flowers and crushed them in her clenched fists. Éomer watched her worriedly and stole a guarded glance at the awed children. They were the sons and daughters of Riders. Men who lived while his father died. Many of the lads had been Éomer's friends, but no more for in a child's cruel mind a boy with no father could never be a man. And now he must fend for his sister as well perhaps.
'Here is your doll,' said the boy tersely and dropped it into her lap. 'Now come away. People will think you are mad.' Vexed because she cried not, but kept ceaseless vigil over her their father's fresh grave – her face as stern as stone – Éomer was also secretly jealous. A day and a night he had wept like a girl in the privacy of his bower.
A thing new and mysterious to Éowyn, though the toy was long in her possession, she considered the dead thing. Like Father. 'I am not mad,' she spoke at last. 'Mother is mad.' Saucer eyes, blue only by the reflection of the sky bowled above Eastfold, looked to Éomer as he stood gangly behind her. 'Where did you get that?' A dagger hung at his side, tugging his belt low over his hips.
'Lord Fréaláf gave it to me. It belonged to Father; it is mine now.' Pride filled his chest to bursting as he inhaled. 'Gúthwinë will be mine, too, when I am old enough.'
Éowyn's palm closed around the blade. 'Can I see it?'
'No, you have your doll! This is not a plaything, Éowyn.' Éomer stepped away from her carelessly, eager to defend his memories of happier times. The blade drew blood. 'Look what you've done!' Tears dammed behind the little girl's lids, milking her older brother's guilt. Using her mourning-scarf, he dressed the sliver, though she squirmed to reach his belt with her left hand. 'Hold still!'
The blade bit into the sack-cloth, tasting straw and the bitter roots of winter grasses. Éomer stared at the doll, pinned to the earth with his dagger, and then at Éowyn. She pouted. Her brows burrowed furiously, seeking shelter from the storm that threatened to sweep across her face. Again she drove her brother's anlace through the doll's breast. And again. Until she lay sobbing amongst the Evermind, beating her wounded fist upon the torn toy, its entrails elevated by the North wind and clinging to her hair.
'He left us! He left us, Éomer! Did he love hunting orcs more than he loved us?' Éowyn wailed. Maybe if she had learned to hunt orcs, too, he might have loved her enough to remain. At least this was the thought in her immature mind.
The scene unfolded before the boy in much the same way that it did for the village children, but he did not point and whisper, nor run for an elder. He no longer cared what they thought. Pulling her into his lap, Éomer held her tightly, his fierce hug suffocating her fears. Yet he could not console her with an answer when it was no more clear to him.
'Don't leave me,' Éowyn whimpered, clinging to her brother. Her tears were subsided except for violent sniffs that soiled his shirt. 'I will learn to ride and wield blade and – and –' Suddenly she became very still.
The simbelmynë moved. Not in the wind. The white flowers did not care for wind or weather. Peeking her red-rimmed eyes beneath Éomer's arm, Éowyn scrutinised the bright eyes. They were laughing, not smiling. Her heart sank as she willed herself to breathe. 'Mother is dead.'
Frown as he might on morbid fantasy, Éomer suspected the flowers. His suspicions were confirmed by the appearance of Éowyn's nurse at the village gate a few minutes later, her skirts gathered above muddy boots. She blanched at the sight of the two small children, though she had often found them together when she called them to the board. Yet her apron was never stained with blood, thought Éomer. Mother's blood. He bowed his head to Éowyn's tousled hair, but her anguish was spent and she did not cry again until they were much older and the misery of their parents began to afflict them in dangerous ways.
TO BE CONTINUED
A/N: Théodwyn "took sick and died". One might argue that this was a euphemism and that her "illness" was depression, and that she commit suicide.