Chapter Twenty-Nine
Éolas
Author's Note: Thanks go to Bekah for the particulars of stall mucking and to Karen for the ideas about equestrian training. Mounting instructions are from The Good Master by Kate Seredy, and Aldor is Diana Galbadon's Old Alec. I had a lot of help writing this chapter, and probably need a lot more getting it right. I have never ridden in my life, so if you have, I'd appreciate your input on things I may have gotten wrong.
Why is it that my plot-driven chapters are shortest and the character-driven ones are longest? Oh well, here it is, the longest and debatably most character-driven chappie yet!
Éowyn rose at dawn, even though we had talked long into the night. I had told her about my plan to get to Gondor, and what I though I would do once I got there. She approved, and had in turn confided to me 'her' contingency plan: to dress in the nondescript armor of a Rider of Rohan, cover her hair with a helmet, and simply ride out. She had obviously been thinking about this for a long time, and we discussed the particulars. I could not remember falling asleep.
Swinging my feet over the other side of the bed, I kirtled up my skirt to look at my leg. I could not tell very much, so I stood up and jogged in place. The skin behind my knee stretched but did not hurt; the leg was weak but did not pain me if I favored it. Feeling grudgingly grateful to Aragorn and his healing hands, I shoved up my right sleeve and flexed my bicep. The same.
Grinning fit to split my face, I crossed to the table and planted my elbow on it. "Éowyn!" I flexed my fingers experimentally as she looked up, grinned, and joined me at the table, having gotten the hint. I shudder to contemplate what a servant might have thought had one stuck his head in and found me arm-wrestling the Lady of Rohan, but none did.
Éowyn won all five times, but I did not give in without a fight. The pain had gone, but so had the strength. In desperation, I switched hands. Éowyn obliged me, a small smile playing over her lips, and proceeded to beat me, if possible, more easily than before. I stared at her, as I've always been quite good with my left hand. And then- "Are you left-handed?"
She nodded and went to finish dressing in a serviceable gown of brown wool. As she was pulling on fur-lined boots, I asked, "Am I well enough to ride now?" Éowyn shrugged. "Can you teach me?" I pressed.
"Teach you what?" She looked up, puzzled.
"How to ride."
Her puzzled look turned to a stare of astonishment. "You cannot ride? I had thought your leg merely prevented you from it."
"It did that." I rummaged through my pack to hide my embarrassment. "But I'd never ridden, even before I took the wound."
She shook her head. "Do women not ride, in your land? How do you go about?"
I simplified quickly. "No one rides, really, except for sport. To travel, we ride about in carts, or sail ships, or walk."
"I cannot countenance such a thing. My father gave me my first pony when I was four. I could ride before I could read, and nearly did not learn that, being prone to escaping from my lessons to go riding with my brother." She shook her head, bending to a bootlace. "But I suppose it is not so in all lands."
"So will you teach me?" I asked again.
"We shall see." She stood and smoothed her skirt.
I thought I'd better do something about clothes for myself. I had found a silver under-tunic and black over-tunic and leggings in my pack, and my other clothes had been washed and returned, but somehow I did not think these appropriate for wear around Edoras, whatever I might be doing.
Éowyn looked over at them, echoing my thoughts. "If you mean to do useful work of any kind, those will not serve you."
I nodded. "Have you something I might borrow?" I hated to keep asking her for things, but there didn't seem to be any help for it.
She crossed to a trunk and rummaged in it for a moment before coming up with a pair of dark wool trousers and a long, off-white shirt, which she handed to me. "These are yours?" I asked, taking them.
"Yes. We are much of a size."
I looked down at my body, swathed as it still was in the nightgown. In the bath last night, I had noticed that I'd lost weight, and gained a bit of muscle. My legs were leaner and my stomach flatter, but I was still wider in the hips that Éowyn. My hands went to my face, feeling the ridges of slashing scars. It had been so long since I'd seen my own face that I could scarcely remember what I looked like. Glancing up, I saw that Éowyn was braiding her hair in a coronet, a tricky task at best, and waited until she'd finished to ask, "You may think me vain, but have you a looking glass, as well?"
She nodded and went to find one. I took advantage of her absence to change into Éowyn's clothes, as well as clean undergarments from my pack. I also found a spare leather tie near my boots, and had put my hair up by the time she returned.
The mirror was polished brass, giving a near perfect reflection even in the lamplight. I sat on the bed and examined my face in the burnished surface. It had grown thinner, but not even the scars could make it remotely fierce. My mouth was still wide, and I was glad my teeth had not rotted all those nights I'd eaten lembas and not brushed. Elvish food was probably cavity fighting. Strong brows and a straight nose completed a face that that might be beautiful, I could not tell. I put the mirror away quickly so Éowyn wouldn't think me narcissistic.
Standing, I asked, "What do you do now?"
"We shall see what the kitchens may have to offer by way of breaking our fast, and then I must inventory and pack supplies for the journey to Dunharrow." Éowyn led the way through a maze of torch-lit passages to the kitchens, still explaining. "It is tedious work, and I have a surfeit of clerks to assist me, so you may do as you please."
As I thought about what I might please to do, Éowyn pushed open the doors and into the smoky miasma of Rohan's kitchens. A cacophony of sights and smells greeted us, as well as a chorus of "Fair morn, my lady," from the cooks and servants. Meat for the midday meal already turned over three spits, and I could smell bread in the great ovens. Pots of various sizes and with various good smells steamed over half-a-dozen hearths, tended by sweating underlings.
Éowyn accepted two bowls of honeyed porridge, I handled two mugs of cider, and we made our way through the bustling throng in search of a table on which no one was chopping vegetables or butchering meat. Eventually we found one and plunked ourselves down at it.
"Why eat here?" I wondered aloud.
Éowyn set down her mug. "You think it not grand enough for the king's niece and her guest?" I shook my head. "When I do not dine in state with my uncle, I come here. This is the first place I felt at home after my parents' death, when Éomer and I came to live in Meduseld."
"How did your parents die?" I asked, stirring my porridge to help it cool. "If you would tell me: I do not mean to pry."
She shook her head. "All here know the tale. You would hear it sooner or later. My father, Éomund, was chief Marshall of the Mark, and wed to the king's sister, Théodwyn. Orcs led him into a trap and ambushed his éored. My mother pined away in sorrow and died shortly afterwards. I was seven and Éomer eleven."
We ate in silence for sometime while I chewed this over. I did not want to apologize for something I'd had no part in, but didn't know how to offer my sympathy another way. I remembered all the people who'd come to me, at Mum's funeral and afterward, with condolences and casseroles, pretending they knew my pain. What had comforted my most, if anything comforted me in those days, had been the silent hugs and touches, and the stories of similar grief. I wanted to let Éowyn know I'd felt her sorrow.
I put out a hand to cover hers. "My mother fell not two years ago, and my father's mind is gone from grief and sickness. My sister cares for him."
She squeezed my hand, and we finished our meal in silent commiseration.
As we took our dishes to the great bank of sinks along on of the kitchens' walls, Éowyn asked me again how I wished to spend the day.
I thought a moment. "Have you some work I might do--hard work to build my strength--that leaves little time for contemplation." The last thing I wanted to do was think about anything and everything. The man I loved was dead, and I'd awakened memories of my family that I'd thought long buried. In addition, my friends had left me behind to ride to a battle of no certain outcome. No, I did not want to think at all.
Éowyn nodded. "Aldor Stablemaster may have need of help mucking out the stalls, for he has been left with many horses and few men to tend them. That is hard work, and mindless. It is also filthy." She glanced sideways at me.
Lovely, manure. Well, I'd asked for it. And I remembered someone telling me that mucking stalls was a good way to build upper body strength. "I care not," I said in my best Boromir imitation.
So, after we bowed our way out of the kitchens, Éowyn took me to the stables. Set just down the hill from Meduseld, the structure looked much like the Hall, though with a lower roof, and was nearly as ornately decorated, like a cathedral to the Rohan's lifeline: their horses.
Waiting for my eyes to adjust to the gloom, I inhaled deeply, smelling hay and manure and, everywhere, horse. Éowyn caught me at it, and we shared a grin. Around us, a thousand small, contented noises greeted our arrival, inquisitive knickers and small whinnies of welcome. I squinted up at the carved pillars, and started when Éowyn said, "Fair morn, Stablemaster."
A squat figure in leather breeks and rough shirt, the man had an air of authority sufficient, I thought, to quell the most recalcitrant stallion. A black cloth patch covered one eye, but, as if to make up for the loss, his eyebrows spouted profusely from a central point, sporting long gray hairs like insect's antennae that waved threateningly from the basic brown tufts.
After an initial bow of acknowledgement, he ignored me and spoke directly to Éowyn. I rather lost interest during a long discussion involving the parentage of several no doubt distinguished horses not among those present, details of breeding records of the entire stable for several years, and a number of incomprehensible points of equine confirmation, dealing with hocks, withers, shoulders, and other items of anatomy. Since the only points I noticed on a horse were nose, tail, and ears, the subtleties were lost on me.
As Éowyn and the Stablemaster became more and more engrossed in their discussion and paid less and less attention to me, my eyes wandered around the expanse of space represented by the stables. I wondered if it might be permissible to simply pick up a shovel and go to. As I looked around for one, I noticed a figure loitering in the shadows a few paces behind the Stablemaster. Squinting, I could only make out that he had blond hair, like the rest of the Rohirrim, and wore a large round something on his left shoulder that flashed even in the dim light.
He was gone a moment later, and I had still not found a shovel. Rolling my eyes at the horsy conversation still going strong, I nudged Éowyn. She ignored me. I cleared my throat. Still no response. I wondered if I should fall over, or if even that would distract the two equine enthusiasts, Sighing, I sidled sideways and trod heavily on Éowyn's boot with the heel of my own.
She winced and shot me a dirty look, mostly, I thought, because I'd reminded her why she'd come to the stables in the first place, and that inventories awaited her up at the Hall. "Stablemaster," she began with a forced smile, "I have found you another hand. If you will in turn find her spade and barrow, she will assist you in mucking out the stalls."
At his dubious look, I removed my boot from Éowyn's foot and nodded vigorously. He made her another bow then, and she took herself off, reluctantly. Motioning me with a gnarled hand, the Stablemaster stumped to a horseless box containing a shovel and a rough wooden wheelbarrow. With another jerky wave at a bank of stalls I assumed must need cleaning, he stumped off, leaving me to stare after him, nonplussed. Saying that Aldor Stablemaster was a man of few words would have bordered on ironic understatement.
I threw open the door of the first stall, and the scent of old dung assaulted my nostrils. The mat of filth and straw that greeted my eyes was even less appetizing. Trying not to breath, I set to work. Chipping away at the caked manure was miserable, like picking at noxious clay. By the time I finished, begrimed and sweating, my muscles trembled with exertion.
The barrow nearly full of various-sized clods, I moved on to the next stall, thinking that the work could scarcely get any worse. A well-fleshed palomino mare occupied this box. She blinked myopically at me as I rootled about under her hooves.
Although this hay had been changed more recently, most of the muck had gathered towards the back, under the horse's hindquarters. I edged around her with my shovel, and then out again with a load of manure. I went back for a second scoop, noticing that her ears had begun to flick back and forth. Shrugging, I shoveled under another clump, shaking the spade to dislodge the clean straw. As I tried to slide between the stall wall and the horse's side, a space that had gotten narrower, the mare sidled closer to the wall, pinning me between her flank and the boards.
Groaning at the position she'd sandwiched my arm, not to mention the rest of my body, in, I tried to wiggle free. The horse did not budge, so neither did I. Certain that neither Éowyn not the Stablemaster would look kindly upon my bashing one of their horses with the shovel, I swallowed my pride and raised my voice in a call for help.
At first, it was answered only by soft horse noises, but then high, dimpled cheekbones and bright green eyes appeared over the stable wall. The face, like mine, was smudged and bore a sheen of perspiration. Bits of straw lodged in the boy's thickly curling blond hair, and the magnificent brooch, enameled in the form of two running horses, nose to tail, on his shoulder told me this was the figure I'd seen in the shadows earlier. He lounged over to the stall's half-door, attitude casual and step oddly bobbing.
"Is it a problem you're having?" he inquired in badly constructed Westron.
"Yes!" I spat in fluent Rohirric. "This horse will not let me out."
He switched back to what was obviously his native tongue. "She's carrying a foal. It makes her touchy." He made no move to help me.
"Yes, I can see that." My patience wore ever thinner. "Kindly call the horse. I have work to be about."
"Stalls you don't muck will be ones I do," he replied, still placid and smirking. Still unmoving.
"Stalls I muck will be ones you don't have to!"'Could he not see reason?'
This drew a scowl from him. "I did not ask for your help."
"No, I asked the work of the Lady Éowyn." I truly did not want to pull rank on him, but he was trying my patience and the horse was hurting my leg.
His eyebrow lifted, and he opened the door, clucking and calling softly to the horse, whose name was apparently Fréa. With a final scrape, she ambled out, leaving me to peel myself off the wall and finish the stall. The stable boy leaned on the mare's neck, watching me.
Limping out with the final shovel-full of manure, I filled the barrow, and then glanced at the boy, who had led the mare back into her box and now eyed me solicitously. "Where should I dump this?"
He jerked his head toward the stables' lower end, and then seemed to change his mind. Snatching the handles from me, he trundled away with my load, leaving me to stare after him. I noticed that the cause of his peculiar rolling gait was a right knee that would not bend. So that was why he, a male of perhaps seventeen, had been left in Edoras when the rest of the men had gone to war: he could not ride.
I plunked down on a bench, rolling up my trouser leg to rub at my scar, and that was how he found me when he returned. I stood up quickly, which my leg did not like, and tried to tuck my pants in surreptitiously.
The stable boy was not fooled. "What's amiss?" he wanted to know, more to gloat that to offer sympathy, I thought.
"I took a wound. To the leg. It is not fully recovered," I explained, to get him off my back. And then, by way of commiseration, I gestured at his frozen knee. "But you know something of that yourself." It was a safe bet, I thought, to assume he'd acquired his injury in some unnatural, likely Orcish way, as well.
As it was, it may have been right, but it was nowhere near safe. He glared at me, muttered something about women's work, and stalked off as well as his limp would let him. 'Well,' I thought, 'that's torn it.' Picking up my shovel, I got back to work.
I had done three more stalls, all comparatively easy, by the time he returned. I didn't know if the Stablemaster had ordered him back to work, or if he'd simply gotten tired of sulking, but now he began banging about with a vengeance. I found my wheelbarrow gone at the oddest moments.
Supposing he was very touchy about his leg, I stuck my head out the stall door as he returned with the barrow and offered, "I am sorry if I have given offense."
He glared at me again, which only served to accentuate the planes of his face, and did not answer
I tried again, gesturing to the wheelbarrow. "We are, after all, here on common purpose. . .friend." No cigar. Suddenly very annoyed with this surly, teenage person, I wondered why 'I' was apologizing to 'him'. He should be apologizing to me. I hated to think of what Boromir would have done to the little prig.
And suddenly, I 'was' thinking of Boromir, even though I had asked for work so mindless and hard it would not let me do so. Blinking against tears that welled up anyway, I glared at the stable boy, who was staring at me as if I might suddenly explode. I did not. Instead, I collapsed back onto the bench and buried my face in my hands, angry with this obnoxious person for setting me off and at myself for letting the tears out, but mostly at Boromir for dying.
The boy patted my head with a large mucky hand, which surprised me so much that I stopped sobbing and stared up at him. "Go away," I blubbered.
He did not go away. Instead, he offered me my shovel back. Mopping my face on one grimy sleeve, I took it. Taking this as a good sign, he reached into he pocket to retrieve a large grubby handkerchief, which he thrust at me, eyes still wary. "Don't cry any more. You'll frighten the horses." His tone made me think I'd frightened him more than I had the horses, at least to the point of arousing his latent chivalry.
"My apologies," I sniffed. "It is only- you have reminded me of my lord and husband, who is dead." Accepting the handkerchief, I blew my nose and blotted my eyes. I was not sure what to do with the now soggy and filthy cloth, so I not-quite-proffered it to the boy. Unconcerned, he stuffed it back into his pocket.
'Eew,' I thought, but decided to be polite. I set the shovel down and offered my hand. "Firiel of Gondor." The words emerged 'Firel of Mundberg', and I gritted my teeth at Mme. Alatar's translation.
The stable boy, whose name turned out to be Éolas son of Folcwine, took my hand with his own large calloused one, and grinned at me. The honest expression completely transformed his face, his teeth shining as white as the enamel on his running-horse brooch. He was beautiful, but he stirred nothing in my heart, which was reserved solely for Boromir of Gondor.
Éolas held my hand a little too long, so I pulled away and took up my shovel, saying briskly, "Well, we have stables to muck, have we not?"
A noncommittal grunt, and he got his own spade and set to work in a box opposite mine. With both of us working into the same barrow, it filled more rapidly that before, so after our third stall each and the tenth barrow trip, I gestured at the cart, and offered, even though my right leg and arm trembled with fatigue, "I can take that, if your knee pains you."
"Yours pains you more. And it is not women's work." He trundled off with the wheelbarrow.
I stared after him, sure he had meant it as a kindness but incensed all the same. It had been so long since I'd been faced with such blind prejudice against my gender that I did not know how to react for a moment. I wanted to shout after him that we'd been doing the same work for two hours, with the same degree of competency and filth. I wanted to smack his beautiful face, or wring his neck, or at least shake him.
I did none of these things. Hitching up my leg, I followed him out a low door into the chill wind. Carved out of the side of the hill on the other end of the stables were a collection of paddocks and corrals, not in use, but clearly frequented, and on the other side of these was the largest pile of manure I'd ever seen.
Éolas added our barrowful to it and then stooped to massage his knee. I did not gloat, give me credit, but remained silent behind him. He saw me watching, though, and straightened too quickly for comfort. The cold made my scars ache too, so neither of us lost any time in seeking the warmth of the stables again.
A messenger from Éowyn waited for me with an invitation to lunch with her up at the hall. I looked down at my filthy clothes and filthier hands, and said "Yes, of course." As the page departed, I caught sight of Éolas' wide eyes and slack jaw, and realized that he must think me a guest of the royal family, slumming. Well, there was no help for it.
Crossing to the wide trough that ran the length of Edoras' stables, I bent and sluiced the majority of the grime from face and hands in the icy water. When I looked up, Éolas was gone. Sighing, I left.
Lunch, a public, semi-formal affair, saw me seated on the dais next to Éowyn, looking down at the lower tables filled with refugees and servants, glad I'd had time to change in my Elvish garments and wash more thoroughly. I had not realized how starved I was until a scullion placed a haunch of venison in front of us, that Éowyn might carve it.
This she did with great aplomb, serving herself and me before passing the platter down to the lower trestle tables. I helped myself to vegetables and what appeared to be a savory bread pudding. When our plates were full, I turned to Éowyn, "How go the supply inventories?"
She made a face. "We have enough for the journey to Dunharrow. Once there, the stores in the caves must hold us. How goes the stable mucking?"
I swallowed my mouthful of carrots before answering. "Well. It is hard work, but I can feel my strength returning." It was mostly true, and I prayed she would believe me. "I shall leave tomorrow, if you will lend me a horse, and perhaps a map."
Three bites of venison, chewed very slowly, before she nodded. "A map we will give you, and supplies. But even a Meara will not carry a rider who knows nothing of horsemanship."
'So far, so good.' "You need not take yourself from your duties, unless you wish to. There is a boy who might teach me, though I he is lame himself." I had to ask myself, though, if I wanted to encourage the torch Éolas seemed to be carrying for me.
"I know the one. My cousin brought him here six years ago. Orcs attached his village, a small one near Snowbourne. He was the only survivor, though his knee was crushed beyond repair." Her matter-of-fact tone shocked me.
Éowyn caught my look and set her goblet down. "No, he cannot ride, and so will never fight or marry. But he lives, which is more than can be said for many who have encountered Saruman's horde. You should not pity him. He will not thank you for it."
She turned back to her plate, and I did the same, mind reeling. It seemed strange that I, who had suffered so much at the hands of Orcs and their masters, should have their evil brought home to me by another's injury. I felt a renewed fury well within me, and a new sense of purpose. 'This is why I must get to Minas Tirith,' I thought, as, somewhere between revenge and righteous ire, my resolve solidified. I finished my food quickly and excused myself.
Once back in serviceable clothes, I returned to the stables and located Éolas. He was currying a huge bay stallion, murmuring to the horse as he did so. "When you are done," I said, without preamble, "I should like your opinion about something."
His look said 'odd girl,' but he put away his brush and came out of the stall. I gestured to the stable proper. "Which horse would you choose for yourself, if any here were gifted to you?"
Fixing me with an insolent look, he wanted to know, "Why? Will you give it to me?"
'No, I'm going to take it myself,' I nearly said, but bit my lip. "A different question, then: Which horse would you choose for someone who'd not done much riding, but must go on a long and perilous journey all the same?"
He tried to size me up while retaining his insouciant expression. "Where are you going?"
I bit back a sarcastic reply. "Mundberg."
"Oh, aye." Éolas cocked an eyebrow at me, turned on his heel, and trotted down the row of stalls, leaving me to trail in his wake. Stopping in front of a box near the 'back door', he blocked my view of the occupant with his back. "I've a question for you, my lady."
Annoyed, I gritted my teeth. "My name is Firiel. Use it." I still could not see past him.
"Firel, then. Will you marry me?"
I took a step backwards. "What?"
"Will you marry me?" he repeated. He did not seem crazed, and even proceeded to explain his proposition in a most businesslike tone of voice. "You've no dowry, and I've no bride-price. You can't ride, so why should you care if I can't, either? I'm strong, and I'm not ill-favored."
I stared at him, Éowyn's words about love coming after marriage, if at all flashing through my head. "And you've the loveliest hair," he breathed, reaching out to touch it. "Like a chestnut's flank."
Too freaked out to be flattered, I backed up until I could back no more with the stall door behind me. "Éolas," I began, trying to keep my voice steady, "my heart is given."
"Ah, but he's dead." As if that solved everything.
I could have slapped him. "That has nothing to do with it." Taking a deep breath, I said, "I'll thank you to find me a horse and teach me how to ride it."
His eyes went leaden before he turned to open the door behind him. "This is Simbelmynë. Her sire was Shadowfax the Great, and her dam had Mearas blood as well. She'll understand what you tell her, and not jolt your leg, even at a gallop."
A fine-boned golden head poked out at me, limpid brown eyes blinking inquisitively. I barely registered Éolas' telling me to blow in her nose so she'd get my scent. I was moving toward her, entranced. Offering my left hand for her to sniff, I reached up to rub her head with my right. It was love at first sight.
Éolas looped a bridle around her neck, handing the rope to me. "Lead her out." I followed him out into a paddock, Simbelmynë trailing behind me.
Once outside, I scarcely noticed the biting wind. Éolas knelt, and I was afraid he'd try to propose again, but he only cupped his hand to boost me onto the mare's back, saying we'd begin without a saddle, to help me learn to move with the horse.
'Go to,' I thought, though Simbelmynë's back seemed very wide and very high once I sat astride it. As Éolas led her around the paddock, I held my arms straight out, as he'd told me, feeling very stupid but gradually learning to arrange my spine into that peculiar mix of slouch and perch that sends one's center of gravity into the pit of one's stomach. My head knew what to do, and it manhandled my body without reserve.
After an hour of this, Éolas helped me down, all business, and retrieved a saddle from the tack room, which he showed me how to fasten on. My hands remembered movements they'd never made before, and, with a prayer of thanks to Mme. Alatar, I adjusted the stirrups.
"Stand at the left side of the horse. Put your left hand on the pommel, with your right hand on the stirrup to steady it. Step in the stirrup with your left foot and swing over," Éolas directed, ignoring the fact that my legs now felt like wet spaghetti.
All the same, I watched and listened carefully, and then tried it. It worked, though I pulled in more inopportune directions than Simbelmynë might have liked. She was very patient with me, and allowed me to practice combinations of leaning and pulling and knee-prodding without offering the slightest protest.
Éolas matched the horse for patience, though I knew it must pain him to teach me what he could never do. I tried to think of something I could do to repay him, and watched the sun set.
He allowed me to dismount only when full night fell, and I slithered off Simbelmynë's back, head pounding with new knowledge. Hobbling back to the warmth of the stables, stiff and sore but deliriously happy, I wished for my staff. Lanterns glowed inside, suffusing the gloom with a dull, warm radiance.
I helped to wipe Simbelmynë down, and gave her fresh oats and water. When we finished, before he could offer to walk me back up to the Hall, or something equally impossible to accept and impolite to refuse, I stepped around the horse to face him.
"Thank you," I began, meeting his eyes. "My thanks for the lesson, and for your patience. I'll care for Simbelmynë, I promise."
His eyes said, 'You'd better, or else.' I pressed on. "You'll make some girl a very fine husband someday, but I'm not that girl. Here," I unfastened the beech-leaf brooch from my cloak and pressed it into his hand. "Now you have a bride-price." Leaning forward, I kissed his cheek, which took all of my nerve.
I turned and headed up the hill, trying to convince myself that I'd betrayed neither Boromir nor the Galadhrim.