Author's Note:
Thank you all for reading and your encouragement - Elfinpoet, Angelic Lawyer, Lady Lenna.
Aathiya Lia…you crossed over once again – thank you for reading! ;-)
And…ladies and gentlemen…I present…Faramir…and a revisionist version of LOTR's chapter The Steward and the King. All the characters have…issues...Hee hee hee ;-P
Chapter 6: Unexpected Changes"Gimli, do we not visit our friends in the Houses of Healing?"
With narrowed eyes, the Dwarf watched the Elf approach, joyed by the uncharacteristic impatience that Legolas Greenleaf was showing. He smiled briefly, and the Elf looked curiously askance.
"Aye, laddie." The Dwarf paused from the arduous task of sharpening his axe. "That we are. Let us go then, while the healers still permit."
Elf and Dwarf walked together among the thronging mess of Minas Tirith, not oblivious to the gaping stares that followed their every step to the Houses of Healing.
The White Lady of Rohan lay unmoving as a rosebud filled with snow, a watery basin of Athelas sitting by her side. Aragorn stood, masked by the shadows of the corner, bleak and vexed. Suddenly he moved swiftly, bending over her with a gentleness so opposed to his initial strides. His hand slipped from the tip of her head in a gesture as thickly sleek as molten brass; as though the heavens heard, they closed in heavily, as though sympathetically acquainted with Athelas in the healing hands of a King. The skies split and lightning flashed free, unaccustomed to a King gracing its grounds; a torrential outpouring encircled Gondor, hefty droplets hitting the hard and dry ground of Pelennor in columns of white.
"She lays near death."
Legolas marvelled at the grim yet defiant of Gondor's new ruler – aided by the insight and the haughty souls of the Eldar, he wondered if the unending wrestle against the seemingly impossible indeed characterised the mark of Elessar Telcontar's rule. At that moment, he wanted to sing, a ritual of pleasure that was the rebellious counterpart of Aragorn's proclamation.
As the rain slowed to a slothful drizzle, the Elf opened his mouth, and the melody came haltingly at first, for he was suddenly seized by a burgeoning panic, flinching, knowing that he already did not fully trust in the power of song. But daring and exaggeratedly elaborate after its initial blossom on shaky ground, the dams burst in a cadenza again, hinged on a singular plea…and all who stood in the confines of the chamber were gladdened, for the doubts in them were strong and genuine.
A Elbereth Gilthoniel o menel palan-diriel, le nallon
Sí di-nguruthos! A tiro nin, Fanuilos!
Legolas felt a heavy hand on his shoulder and looked up to see Gimli thereafter striding away, realising with surprise that he knew not when Aragorn had taken his leave. The heaviness of the past weeks broke him; the Elf hunched over the still form, and started speaking.
Call to her…"Eowyn… A tiro nin…Tolo dan nan galad…" he whispered fretfully, passing a warm hand over her brow as Aragorn had done. Suddenly frustrated, he pressed his fingers to his head, splaying them apart, moving to cover his face. "Awake, Eowyn, all darkness is washed clean!"
Then his tongue loosened, as though his words breathed animation into the dying, willing the unmoving form to gulp the lingering freshness of Kingsfoil.
Legolas spoke to her as one spoke to living men, leaping easily over the breach into memory…from the chilled memory of Dunharrow…to the sharp sting of the sea's call when they raided the Cosairs…and finally to Pelennor. All that he saw in his mind's eye took the shape of words – a broken branch, a withered, curling leaf. They shrank, made barren by the cursed of the cursed in Dunharrow.
Frost embroidered on the mountain as thick as deceptive speech, each step dancing closer to the edge of sanity. An elfling stood, hand outstretched, a curled, dried leaf gently descending, coming to delicate rest on his palm. It lit, burning paper bright and flamed a sheer crimson, disappearing into smoke and ash. In a flash he knew it was him – smiling at his sire –
Legolas pulled from his mind disparate fragments together, caught in lacquered, ecstatic moments, seared by memory. He jerked back into the tangible by the clang of armour below.
It was time. But this room still lay silent, the White Lady unmoving. Eowyn of Rohan lay as one counted among the dead – and there seemed naught else he could do.
"Ned Minas Tirith le beriathar aen."
With a deep sigh, the Elf stood, and readied himself for the march to the Black Gates.
Eowyn awoke with a start, fists clenched and dissatisfied, with her head turned east. She detested suddenly the fact that she still lived; it would have seemed a fitting – and childish – punishment on those who had not valued her worth as a shieldmaiden.
A vague and woeful melody turned repeatedly, as a corporeal breath that sighed unceasingly. What was there to do, but sit obediently as they set her arm in a linen sling, enduring their half-hearted quips intended to bring her good cheer?
The Warden worried about her state of unrest and finally brought her to walk in the Gardens of the Houses of Healing.
"You will meet the Steward of Gondor, the Lord Faramir, my Lady. Perhaps he, as a prisoner of the healers too, will share your very own sentiments," he had told her kindly.
So meet Gondor's Steward she did, on a day when the round blue sky impaled the even the darkest hearts of men and lovers of meadows hummed with tender joy.
"Does not the Black Gate lie beyond these fields, my Lord?"
"What do you wish for my Lady?" This perplexing woman who was bred among men of war stirred his curiosity. "If it lies within my power, I would do it."
"I would have you command the Warden, to let me go."
"I myself am in the Warden's keeping, and still heed his counsel," he trailed off uncertainly, as though struck by the unbending pride that whistled thinly through her words. A pride that was her remaining possession, a pride that kept her pale face resolute. "Would you not heed his counsel?"
"I wish to ride, my Lord, with my brother Eomer – and for Theoden King, who died for honour and peace."
Seeing no sign of the melting of the bitter frost in her, he took his hands in hers gently, all too aware of the inappropriateness of the gesture.
"Lady, the Captains are gone away. It is indeed too late. We must, at this time, face with great patience the hours of waiting."
"Must we really?" Eowyn sighed, resigned. "We shall leave this for now, my Lord."
He concurred, and no more was said.
Yet as the day lengthened she grew even more restless; she saw Lord Faramir occasionally when he visited her with a flattery that she grew used to. And it came to pass that all would change.
They stood together once more in the gardens when time halted and all light failed. Encircling, vagrant wisps of black breath rushed through chambers and antechambers, making all feeble with fear as the city walls quivered – wind blew hard in the arms of noise, filling the space that light vacated, bringing in its breath harsh cancellations of the prime of springs and foretellings of the dimmest of winter.
As soon as it appeared, the astounding phenomenon receded quickly.
"It reminded me of…Numenor," Faramir finally spoke, finding his voice still hushed with wonder.
"Of Numernor?"
"Aye. Of the Land that was second most West of the Blessed Realm, washed into memory by dark waves over its green hills. And onwards, ever onwards…I often dream of it."
She turned and stooped over the blooms that had sprouted over the heels of the bench, not wishing to see his face. What was there, in the face of the Steward, that also held a foretelling of doom?
"Darkness inescapable," Eowyn murmured, fingering a blossom in the garden, breaking its head in a sudden motion. It fell, with a soundless thud, onto the soft, green grass, next to her bare feet. "Just like Numenor, as you have said."
"Does it not look like we stand at the end of days? Great evil has befallen, and yet my limbs are light, and my heart sings. Ease my care, Eowyn –" he enthused happily. "For it may be the end of days, yet darkness cannot endure when I have found what I hope I cannot ever lose."
"Lord Faramir…"
"Eowyn of Rohan, I say to you that you are beautiful…as fair and bright as the flowers on our hills, but never one as sorrowful as I have seen till now" She watched him in amazement, not knowing what to utter but his name.
What did he speak of?Of parallel dreams that would converge –would she but reply the affirmative.
Faramir faltered too, yet he was more filled than her – there seemed to lie within him now a great resource of poetics that she could not abide, not when she thought he was spurred onto such musings by an all-consuming yet temporary joy that came from the departure of Shadow.
"We both…you and I…we passed under the wings of the Shadow –" It was his turn to shake his head in amazement, "but we were pulled back by the same hand."
The hand of the King, Eowyn thought dolefully. The heavily sensual hands that innocently touched to heal – for her.
Her heart leapt in her breast at his declaration, a shock that faded as soon as it appeared. Yet his words were as daggers that slit her skin as the Morgul wound had broken her arm; in a cynical manner she suspected that it merely meant a confinement of another sort, a political cage that laid the foundation of bilateral ties and alleviated the signing of future treaties. It was not a path she would willingly pursue on eager feet – an uncanny, foolish selfishness that she wished to preserve even at this advanced stage of the war that demanded absolute altruism, for it meant to her a personal preservation of herself, even if no one else seemed to understand, even if she was berated for such pettiness.
Without warning Eowyn's tears spilled, loving the gracious way in which he delivered his suit, aching that her reciprocation would result in a union equal only in name.
"My Lady…I…" The Steward was not to say the least, confounded that she wept, not knowing the obscure reason to her obvious display of distress.
That this dread had assailed her, Eowyn still found that she did not know what to say.
He was an honest man, upright in all ways, and a valiant fighter. What, in theory, had she – or Rohan – or Gondor, for that matter – to lose?
"My Lord Faramir – 'tis folly indeed, if I am to rightly understand what you meant," she shook her head and paced the garden; its beauty seemed to grow unto unnatural brightness and oddly serrated colours, and no longer moved in harmony with the softly soothing calm of the breeze. "My Lord…I would ease your distress I could…"
"But you do, my Lady!" He interrupted harshly, sinking down upon the bench. "It has been days – each day more golden than the other, each that holds unnameable promise…"
She knew of the lands he would possess once he returned to Minas Tirith. Whispers among the ladies brought the word that Ithilien was to be his.
Ithilien. It rang true and sweet as honey, a cascading perfume that richly vibrated with allure.
"I wished to be loved by another," she said, grasping at a reason she could throw, yet even then she saw that her effort was futile.
"Another?" Faramir echoed in disbelief, and his face changed, from the malleable form of confusion to the impenetrable hardness of carved stone. "You desire the Lord Aragorn and his love that he cannot give." She heard the tinge of bitterness in his voice, a beseech for pity, and the delusion that men and women fell under when they believed themselves in love – and the jealousy of a lover spurned that assailed them thereafter. "He is high, and all the laudable glory he carries will be yours too, should you have him. Aragorn then, is to you admirable…I do not think…you…" he made a wild gesture, "yet do you not realise that he is merely to you – you a young soldier who falls at the feet of a great captain?"
And then she remembered clearly what the Ranger had said to her the night he left before Dunharrow – and with rawness she repeated them to him.
"It is but a shadow and a thought that you love."
She did not think she would ever forget the hurt that appeared on his face, thinking that perhaps it was this same expression that she had worn on that night.
Fading…as she was, fading into the light of common day. Glories, as bright, friendless stars in the night they were, carried neither heat nor light. Eowyn looked down – her arm was still filled with pain, as her heart was – but now the colours of the garden had returned to normal, slotted into a thousand extraordinary shades that was Minas Tirith. Turning, she touched instead the sceptre of its kindness before it crumpled to dust.
The Steward spoke plainly, but she had not. Perhaps she owed him the same –
"Eowyn…look at me!" Faramir urged, his hands tight around her shoulders, his voice loosening, as a bind loosened, into gentleness. "You have won yourself renown – yet I pitied you before when I saw your sorrow. But with the passing of such golden days, you have grown in my heart…" He paused, as though grasping at straws. "Can you…will you not love me – or sing…and rejoice by my side of this victory? Is this suit of mine then doomed to fail?"
Faramir's words were sun-lit, nonetheless crystallised under the fragile, settling air. He promised her a house, a colony of her own to rule alongside him – and another chance at forgetting all that had previously transpired. But for now she saw that he grew upset – at her indecision, and at his inability to convince her otherwise. His effervescent joy merely increased her sorrow.
"Do you not wish for a life with me?" With a start she realised Faramir still spoke; he seemed genuinely confused, unused to a persistence still unrewarded. "Had it not been days that I have –"
"No, my Lord. Words desert me now when I wish to say –"
He surprised her by his next words, tinged with a dramatic and unkind frustration that roused her anger.
"Do you then wish to return to Rohan? What lies there that Ithilien does not match –what is the house of Eorl but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among the dogs?"
Eowyn bristled.
"You see me then, as a wild Shieldmaiden of the North that needs taming. I do not desire to be a queen, my Lord. Perhaps not even the Lady of Ithilien having heard you spoken so," she declared appalled, stirred in the same way a thousand doves were released to flight.
"Forgive me…Eowyn…I am – I am sorry. I did not guard my words," he apologised immediately, contrite and equally appalled at himself.
"My Lord Faramir," she said gently, and there was an unexpected candidness in her manner, which shamed the Steward greatly. "Rohan is to me, still the more familiar of the cages."
Eowyn knew then, that this house was to her hence, the blessed of dwellings – it was the day that she broke the chain that bound her to another kind of duty. Over the new, she had chosen the old – a return to the tradition of Rohan's shieldmaidenhood.
"Goodbye, my Lord Faramir," She drew back and dipped slightly, the Rohirric protocol asserting itself in her physique.
She would return to Rohan, to Edoras with her brother as soon as the Warden granted her release from the Houses of Healing, having made the decision – which she did not herself yet understand fully – to walk back to the familiar cage she had been in previously.
It was as though the waste of past worlds was forgotten when Aragorn was crowned Elessar Telcontar. The white city had been made ready for celebrations, filled with the untainted light that now shone brightly through its windows – bells chimed, banners were raised, and the best of minstrels released their epic tales in melody. In the day, people rejoiced under the sun; at night they sang under the sapling White Tree of Minas Tirith.
Arda exhaled with a long, oval breath. Unbeknownst to the company that made merry through the days, Mordor's collapse brought a groan deep from the earth.
Far in the west out of the raging seas, a dull-looking gem emerged, yet the clinging mud loosened quickly as it rose in a lingering manner from the deeps of the ocean. With each shrug of its muddy, perennial cloak, its dimensionally unwavering, fractal light of a fused silver-gold emerged from each delicate cut of its side, until all the sea roiled with unnatural brilliance, aloft with awe.
Waves crested and crashed against the shore carried the fiendishly bright canvas of a painter of light – where there was once tranquillity there was now turbulence; where there was once a dark chill there now swelled unbearable heat.
Reflected in the sky a comet trail stretched as far as the eye could see, and at its tail a sudden spark of brightness rivalling Arien's vessel and her unbodied form.
Along the shores where the waves boiled, pain seared the feet of one who stood in and sang to the beloved sea so long; he jumped back in unbridled fright and incredulity, murmuring a prayer for deliverance.
Far into the East where the first Elves and Men awoke, a dust bowl shook and fell away as strange, brilliant flowers lit, burned and extinguished with scarlet plumage and fiery blossoms – a riveting cry to Earendil's unmoving, unfeeling star.
A recall of perfection and glorious days, briefly reconstructing a lost era, remodelled as a fey beginning.
The emaciated crater shrunk rapidly, struggling against the irresistible force of the pressure, a palpably weakening landform against the vastness of Arda's cracking subterranean chambers. Fissured deeply by the burst of leaping silver water, the moist surface cooled greatly as though unseen lips pursed tightly together blew a cooling mist.
Voluminously shrouded by a tarrying steam, the area bubbled and stilled repeatedly. The entirety of silence descended after the tumultuous swirl of phantasms, coloured by a gentle tint of a new dawn.
Deep from the Void, a disfigured eye opened, free of its nailing grave and epitaph.
Deep from Cuivienen, answering, manifold blinks of forgotten fidelity came from another opening eye, then another, and another, roused from millennia-long slumber.
Far removed from all Circles of Arda, the Great Song of Illuvatar grew discordant – a memory replete with undecipherable horror.
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A Elbereth Gilthoniel o menel palan-diriel, le nallon
Sí di-nguruthos! A tiro nin, Fanuilos!
- O Elbereth Starkindler from firmanent gazing afar, to thee I cry
Here beneath death-horror! O look towards me, Everwhite!
Tolo dan nan galad
- Come back to the light
Ned Minas Tirith le beriathar aen
- In Minas Tirith you will be safe