Whoo! My first LOTR ficcy! I'm a native of the Yuugiou and more anime-centric fandoms, so this is a big deal to me.
Anyway, dedicated to Meggles. Or, ahem, Lady Phedre. Because I figured I should write something for you to read that you actually liked. So I hope this is a suitable offering, m'Lady.
Oh, and my lovely readers, please please forgive me if a few details are off here. I lost my copy of The Lord of the Rings when my house got destroyed by a flood, and I was never able to finish reading it.
Without further adieu…
The Horse Queen
Have you ever seen wolves hunting? The virgin she-wolf is the best, the prime hunter, swifter than an arrow from a bow. And the mother of the pack, the alpha female, is the lady of life.
Have you ever seen horses running? The female runs alongside the male. The mare is a supreme mistress to them, for it is through her that all life comes into being. Stallions will kill for the honor of fathering her children.
When I was a child, I used to sit on a hill among the long grasses and the wind and the silence, and watch them. For they are what I was, or wish I was. The Lady of the Plains, the Horse Queen. But in reality I am only a human woman, and human women are more abject slaves than the dogs that lie at their feet. Royals worse than most women, for they must be servants also to the good of their people.
The she-wolf hunts with the male, the mare runs alongside the stallion. They are equals in this world.
Why is this not so with human women? We are not people; we are property, like a domestic dog or mule owned by our men. If we are so much better than the beasts of the field, why do we treat our women as less than all of them?
Does this make us more or less than the wild ones?
My greatest fear is a cage, and this fear has already come to pass. I live with it each day. This cage in which I lie is of my own making, though not of my own will.
Human society imprisons itself. We are bound hand and foot, and expected to lie docile in our cages of taboo and tradition, war and law.
I have fought this cage all my life. And if this fight has made my heart cold as the steel itself…well, there is no help for it.
I swing the sword in patterns around me, slicing the wind, a lone dancer upon the hill. Fighting something that cannot be seen. Uppercut, lower cut, block, parry, so fast that it sings in the air.
Sometimes, when the sun strikes it just right, it looks as though I am wielding a sword of light.
Alone now, I remember what my uncle said to me when he began my training in arms, back when I was just a child.
"Would the she-wolf not be taught how to hunt, the mare not taught to run across the plains? Then would I not teach you this, the legacy of the warrior Queens and Kings whose blood flows in your veins?
"You are born into a world of perpetual conflict, and in it you must rule. It is a truth that all people understand, war and its necessity. All good things must be defended. And I will teach you how."
My parents, I never knew; they died before I was old enough to remember them. All my life, my uncle the King has been both mother and father to me.
And now even he is gone. An empty shell bearing his face sits upon the throne, poison whispered in his ear.
The rhythm of my swinging sword does not falter, here on the hill high above the plains. I spend most of my time here now; there is nothing left in the human world for me.
A darkness has fallen over these plains, and over the hearts of men. My brother Eomer, my companion, my solace, is now an exile fighting a war we have already lost, fighting, fighting until he finally falls and cannot get up.
And always, as a reminder of what comes with the ultimate defeat, Grima Wormtongue in the shadows picks me apart with his snake's eyes, waiting for his chance to finally have me alone.
Even now, those eyes haunt me.
The horses and the wolves are gone. Those not wise enough to flee have been slaughtered and left for dead as the forces of Mordor rage like wildfire over these darkened plains. And I know that humanity is fated likewise.
Alone on a hill, I watch as Rohan falls.
And then, through all this suffering and all this darkness, he comes.
Aragorn. The crownless king with his motley band who might just save us all. Bearing his sword of legend, a man like a jewel in the rough, beautiful…beautiful to me.
I offer him drink, trembling, my heart full as the cup before me. And I feel things long frozen begin to melt in me; the cold of my heart opening like a flower to the light of his face.
Here was a man who did not demand my heart and soul, and for that, if for nothing else, I could give them to him. A man who would not cage me with spinning wheels and cooking pots, or the strictures of royalty; a man who would let me be free as he himself was free, racing across the grassy expanse of eternity.
Here was a King whose Horse Queen I could be.
But in my heart, I know it is over before it ever really begins. I love a man who loves me not; his heart belongs to another.
Bitterness. Nothing comes close to the pain of unrequited love. And disgust, at myself, that I could ever be brought so low.
War rears its ugly head once more, and the trumpets of battle call all able into the killing fields. But I am left here, for the duty of a lady lies with her people. So it is with them that I must stay, while my kinsmen and my one love ride off into certain death.
And so I wait. I wait. I wait as the sun goes down, I wait through all the long, lonely, trackless hours of the night, until the sun comes up again. And I don't know if I will see him dead or alive, hale and hardy, or as a pale corpse upon the fields of the fallen. Or if I will even see him at all, if he is lost in the dust among the other countless dead of human wars.
But he lived, he came back to me. And I am overjoyed, but in my heart I know that he is lost to me anyway, that he has always been.
I know that if I continue on like this, I will wear my life out waiting and waiting for him, hoping and hoping, for my wandering warrior to came back to me, the one I love who cares nothing for me. I will spend my life in the position of a thousand other women, locked in this cage by my own hand, by my love for him.
I know I cannot do this again. I am too strong, or perhaps too weak.
Tell me, which is worse: to die quickly in battle, slain by an avowed enemy, and accorded the honors of a hero…or to spend your life locked behind whitewashed walls, to wear it out spinning or weaving, cooking or cleaning endlessly, until monotony and despair of the soul finally take you, and your memory lingers only in the darkness that has followed you all your life?
So I ride with the warriors of my people into the final battle, under the disguise of one of them, seeking a last glory before the close of day - or perhaps only the darkness of oblivion.
Regardless, I find neither there. Only the raging screams of war and death.
You can never fully understand love until you have fallen in love, and you can never fully understand the horrors of war until you are caught in their midst. In both, it is too late for me.
It is then that I see my uncle go down under a great shadow.
And for a moment, I don't think of heroism or freedom or my own travails; I think only of the man who has raised me from a tiny child, who has been more than a father to me.
I fly to him, sword raised against this demon from the depths, this shadow upon a dragon.
It is best to strike the mount first. I turn my face to the fell beast, the monster that the monster rides. A scream and a hiss of hellfire in my face, but I swing my sword anyway. I have come too far to falter now. Too far.
I strike the beast, it strikes me back. The casualties mount. But I do not feel these wounds upon my flesh; my soul has transcended my body, and I shall not be moved. I fight, through darkness, pain, the prejudice that has ruled my life for so long.
And I win.
I win.
And now the Rider, the Witch King, turns his eyeless face to me.
I am looking at this monster from my worst nightmares, and I think: If I can defeat all these things that have bound me all my life, these taboos and traditions, then I can defeat you.
The little one, the Hobbit, creeps up and stabs the demon, bringing him to his knees. Truly, we are all brothers and sisters in war, united by the threat of common death that claims victor and vanquished alike. I would smile at him, if I had the strength.
But the Hobbit cannot kill the Nazgul King, no.
The monster roars with laughter. "No man can kill me!"
I fling my helmet off, freeing a cascade of golden hair, and I roar back, "No man am I, but a woman! Eowyn I am!"
It is I who strike the final blow. It is a mere woman who has finally brought down this terrible force.
My last thought is a cry of victory to the skies. And this victory follows me down into a place where there is only darkness.
The Halls of Healing. I wander these grounds like a ghost, as if perhaps I died anyway.
There is no healing for me to be found within these walls, for my deepest wounds are not of the physical.
My uncle is dead, and my brother will ascend the throne. And Aragorn, the crownless, sits on the throne of the King with his beautiful Elven Queen. I have won against the Witch King, but lost so much more.
Once again, I find myself alone.
But it is here, in the darkness of death and loss, that hope and a new life were born for me.
He has a child's face, I thought. Rugged and weathered and wise, yet the tender sweetness of the child shines through as Faramir of Gondor asks me to spend the rest of my life with him.
For a moment I feel like a she-wolf cornered by hounds. But then I look at the sweetness of his face, the almost painful hope veiled there. And I do not feel so alone, I do not feel so empty.
This one, he is not some idol to which I aspire, he is not some idol that I wish I was.
He is just like me. He is my equal.
"I no longer wish to be a Queen."
"That is good, for I am not a King."
Yes, here…here is a man with whom I can spend the rest of my days. Not love to me yet, no, but something far more precious - hope.
The horses are galloping again, across fields once more free and pure. Like a living sea on the plains, racing the very clouds.
The wolves, too, are returning. Beneath the hill where I stood with sword in hand, a mated pair has a den with young, little pups playing in the fields where the dead once lay.
Life goes on. Even in the face of death, lost family, lost love, life goes on. It can be no other way.
FINIS
Forgive the mistakes! :::hides in corner::: I'm pretty damn sure I screwed up some of Tolkien's story here…
But if you're going to review, please don't just tell me what I got wrong about plot and trivial stuff like that. I'd kinda like to know what you thought of the story itself, no matter how inaccurate it was ;;;
Love, peace, and chicken grease. And please review.