105. Pain

The exhilaration I felt at the beginning of my child's birth passed as the night wore on.

When the night passed into morning, the world around me began to lose its contours. First to go were the voices of my friends and family, encouraging me and offering advice. They blurred together in rushing sounds that faded into the background like the sound of wind or water.

The next thing that disappeared was their faces along with my surroundings, the images on the tapestries hanging down from the walls and the beautifully carved furniture lining the room and the hallway. I could only see the ground before my feet, the tiles with their fading décor of faintly Celtic knotwork design. My feet began to hurt from our continuous circuit from one end of the hallway to the other. As grey twilight began to flood the corridor, I marvelled at the fact that my endless, fruitless marching had not yet worn a groove into the tiles.

At last sensations began to fade away. The cold draft that had stirred my loose robes at the beginning and that had made my skin prickle with goose bumps. The hard ground under my thin slippers. The tickling of my hair held together at the nape of my neck. What remained were Éomer's strong arms holding me, leading me, as I stumbled blindly along.

But as the twilight of dawn turned into a clear, cold winter morning, finally there was only one thing left of my world: pain.

I'm not good with pain. I'm not a warrior. I'm not a Rohirrim. I'm not used to bearing pain without medication. Not even after three years.

I guessed that if I had had enough breath, I would have cursed Éomer. I would have ranted at my own stupidity to follow a rainbow into another world. I would have raged against the necessity to produce an heir for this stupid kingdom that had me almost screaming with pain.

Screaming.

Around noon I lost control of my breathing and began to scream and sob with the agony of labour.

This made them lead me to the bed, where I was laid down on my back and I felt Elaine's tender touch where the baby should be emerging now.

Through a haze of pain, as if from far, far away, I suddenly heard Elaine's low voice drift to me. She spoke in a very low voice. I did not think she intended me to hear and understand what she was saying.

"She is fully dilated by now… but it is as I have feared: the babe has not turned. It is lying almost diagonally. That way it cannot be born."

Éomer's voice. Filled with anguish. He did not think to lower his voice. "But what can we do?"

"There are a few things we can try," was the healer's calm response. "First, I want her to get down on her knees and hands, on all fours. You have to hold her, my lord. She is already weakening. This position, which is natural to all animals, is said to sometimes induce the baby to turn at the last moment. If that does not help…" Her voice trailed off. Obviously she was not willing to talk about alternatives yet. "Let's try this first."

Try this…

I was quite willing to do anything to bring my child into this world, and to stop the pain. I struggled to sit up, to get up, and then to get down on my knees again. But my knees were weak; my legs were shaking from the pain, and the long hours of walking, stumbling, back and forth through the hallway, all night. If Éomer had not held onto me, I would have simply collapsed and fallen on the ground. But with his help, I made to the ground, coming to kneel on all fours on a soft carpet – red, I noticed, red with white horses. White horses with horns?

Unicorns… Why had I never noticed that there were unicorns on the carpet at the foot of our bed?

As soon as I was on my knees another contraction ripped through me. I forgot how to breathe, I gasped for air, and from far away I heard my own scream, a ragged, hoarse, helpless sound that I barely recognized as human, and not at all as my voice.

Éomer held me against him. He knelt at my side. I could feel his strength around me. As long as he was there, there was hope. In the moment of peace after the contraction I inhaled shakily. I tasted Éomer's scent. That beloved, intoxicating, spicy-male scent that lay so close to my skin, so close to my heart. I relaxed a bit and the frantic beating of my heart seemed to slow down.

"Yes, that's better!" Elaine.

I felt my extended belly almost touching the floor. A cushion was carefully placed between the floor and my stomach. Then I felt gentle hands beginning to lightly massage my belly with an oil that smelled green with herbs. Athelas? Pennyroyal, too; fleabane – the sharp tangy scent made me gag – and coriander, a pungent taste at the back of my tongue.

Suddenly my awareness returned.

I found that I could control my breathing again.

A voice from another world floated suddenly into my mind, a memory of my mother praising the virtues of a completely natural birth, "Lamaze, you know: breathing and relaxation techniques! They make giving birth a joyful and completely natural experience for the mother!"

But you gave birth in the hospital, I thought. You had an epidural.

But the regular, rhythmical breathing did help. Being on all fours helped, too. It felt better that way. The pains did not feel quite as bad, quite as all-consuming. For a while I was able to float with the waves of pain, inhaling Éomer's body scent and allowing it to soothe me in the painless intervals between the contractions.

Suddenly I felt the urge to push.

From somewhere me behind me I heard Elaine's voice. "No, Lothíriel, no, not yet! The babe has not turned! Not yet! Wait, if you can, wait!"

But I could not wait.

This need could not be denied!

The pain was excruciating.

Suddenly I felt warm liquid trickling down my legs.

I was too hoarse to scream now. My vision blurred in greys and whites. I felt myself slipping away, sliding into a welcome respite of darkness.

oooOooo

Legolas waited with Gimli, the harper, Elfhelm, Imrahil and a few other members of the royal household in one of the comfortable sitting rooms behind the Golden Hall. But the elf was not at all comfortable.

The night had passed with no joyful news at the arrival of the long awaited heir of Rohan. The morning had passed with the sounds of Lothíriel's screams growing hoarser and hoarser until they had suddenly stopped.

Now the afternoon was waning and still nothing had happened.

Again and again the elf winced unnoticeably under the onslaught of waves of agony that his acute elvish senses picked up. Mother and child were in pain and there was no progress at all. Of that much the unwed elf was sure. Legolas could feel Lothy's suffering. Her mind had always been almost completely unshielded to his feä, lying wide open before his inner gaze: bright, innocent, straightforward; sometimes selfish, sometimes angry, but always brave and intent to do what was right. Now the pain stripped away the little shielding there was between her soul and his seeing mind, sanwe.

She would not last.

Her strength and the strength of the child were already fading.

When the urge to push forth the child overwhelmed her, Legolas started, startling his friends who were sitting around the room in silence, gazing into the various mugs and glasses of mead and beer or wine they had been served. When he did not comment on his sudden spasm, they lowered their heads again, only to jump up a moment later.

This time, Lothíriel's screams were so loud that everyone in the room heard them.

Gimli paled. Imrahil closed his eyes and swallowed convulsively. Elfhelm gripped the arm rests of his chair so hard that his knuckles stood out white and blue.

Only the blind harper remained unmoved.

Then, as suddenly as the screams, silence.

Lothíriel's mind-touch slipped into unconsciousness, the pain gone for the moment.

Legolas gasped and leaned back in his chair. He had to admit that he welcomed the silence and the relief of the continuous echoes of pain flowing towards him. But he knew it would not last. And if things went badly, there would be no relief of the pain, wherever he would go…

oooOooo

My consciousness returned in whispered words of love and encouragement and the scent of Éomer's sweat in my nose.

I was hurting all over, but as I waited with trembling thighs and arms for the next contraction to come, nothing happened. My failed attempt at pushing the babe that did not want to be born seemed to have stopped the contractions for the time being.

I had lost all sense of time, but my mind told me that this could not have been going on for weeks, that if it seemed to me to be night again, then only one day had passed since the pains of my labour had set in. I turned my gaze to the window. Yes. It was dark again. A deep and dark winter's night pressed against the windows, heavy and cold. A neverending darkness that was reaching for me Waiting for me.

"I will try to use this respite and turn the babe with my hands. But I have to tell you that this is a very dangerous endeavour, my lord. It seems that there clings something to the hands of a man or a woman that can rupture and inflame the womb. If that happens, there will be no hope for your wife." Again Elaine had spoken in whispers, evidently hoping that I would not hear her.

No hope?

But the baby, I wanted to ask. What about the baby? I did not care, as long as the pain would stop. As long as the pain would stop and the baby would live.

But my tongue was not able to form any words and my voice was gone.

When Éomer answered, his voice was thick with tears. His voice was shaking, in fact, when he replied to the healer. "Do what you can. But if you kill her, you cannot stay here. For I cannot promise that I will not hold the death of my wife against you."

"Yes, my lord."

No, my lord! If I had had the strength, I would have turned to Éomer angrily. What kind of king's justice is that? Blaming the healer for things that happen all the time?

Things that happen all the time…

Women die in childbed all the time. Who would have thought that this would be my fate?

I felt hands reach for me and pull me up. My knees buckled, but I was supported left and right. They led me to the bed and laid me down upon it. Éomer knelt down behind me and lifted my head and my shoulders into his lap, so that I ended up in an almost sitting position. I could feel his hands on my shoulders, but I could not see his face. His eyes and his smile – but he would not smile now anyway – were lost in the shadows. I could not move my legs anymore. But I felt strong hands, female hands, take hold of my knee on either side and pull them up, draw them to the side, until my lower body gaped at the room, naked and exposed. Sorcha, I thought. To the left. And Míri, Míri, my Middle-earth mother, to the right.

I would die without having seen my birth-mother again.

Tender touches between my legs again. Elaine doing her work.

Then she reached inside me.
And it felt as if iron claws were ripping me apart.

I found that I could still scream, although there was nothing human left to that scream.
It was the scream of an animal in absolute agony.

This time I simply fainted, with no gentle blurring of my vision to ease me along.

oooOooo

In the sitting room Legolas went rigid, and this time it was his hands that curled around the carved horse-heads of the arm rests of his chair in a vice-like grip. A low moan escaped him.

As an elf he was able to touch the minds of others, elves and men and beasts alike. This ability made all elves aware of the undercurrents of feelings and thoughts around them. They were like a breeze playing around them, or currents in the water; there, but intangible, unreachable for the most part. For in Arda Marred pahta, the closed, the shielded mind, was the normal state of mind for elves and men. However, in times of extreme duress two things might happen. The first: the mind in question might withdraw completely. Normally it required strength and a conscious act of will to withstand the probing mind of an Elda, to build up a shield of avanir, and yet only another Elda would be able to shut him out completely, in an act of aquapahtie. The second possibility was that all shields might collapse, opening the mind completely, releasing all thoughts and feelings in a desperate burst of feä.

Lothíriel's shields had been near non-existent in the beginning. Only Glorfindel's careful instructions had made her able to resist the lure of the ring. Now, in peace and wedded bliss, her shields had weakened once more. Under the onslaught of labour, nothing remained to shield her mind from his – or indeed, his mind from hers.

Carefully releasing his breath, Legolas contemplated shutting off his own mind completely, withdrawing and closing all "doors" to the outside. Blessed, shielded numbness of aquapahtie.

But for some reason Legolas was reluctant to do so. Once the state of aquapahtie was reached, he would not be able to emerge from it at once. It took time, effort, energy to build those invisible walls around a mind, around a feä – and it took just as much time, effort and energy to tear them down again.

Legolas raised the goblet with red wine to his lips, aware that his hand was shaking, aware of the worried expression on Gimli's face. Gimli knew more about the ways of the Firstborn than any mortal being in Arda except Aragorn. The dwarf was worried about the acute discomfort of his elvish friend; and he knew all too well about the chances and misfortunes of birth. Dwarvish women are few and they do not bear children easily. Even more so than men, dwarves are aware of the dangers and sadness that can come with childbirth as easily as the blessings and the joys. Legolas took a deep gulp of the wine and tried to enjoy the tart taste of the Dorwinion red, the soothing trickling of liquid down his throat. He did not really taste anything at all.

For once Legolas was glad that he had no wife yet, and that his wife – should he ever find an elleth with whom he desired to join and have children – would not have to endure such pain. Birth was exhausting for elvish women, too, in body and mind, but it was not the painful ordeal it was for mortal women.

Legolas sighed and put down the goblet.

How he wished he was a healer of his people at the moment! How he wished that there was any way he could help his friend, Éomer King!

The elf closed his eyes for a moment, reaching for his friend with a gentle mind touch. He encountered tight shields, vibrating with fear and turmoil.

As Legolas' eyes flew open again, he felt his heart race with the intensity of the shielded emotions he had touched but briefly. Again the elf debated with himself to withdraw into the deepest places of his mind, effectively shutting away all pain and fear of the men around him. But when he had almost decided to build up these invisible shields between his feä and this world of men and pain, the harper seemed to catch his eyes.

Of course this was impossible; the harper was blinded, his eyes burnt out holes of agony. Yet as Legolas looked at the harper in that instance, he felt the touch of something strange, something infathomable… had the harper been an elf, he would have said it was the touch of a powerful feä telling him silently to remain, not to shield… but of course that was impossible. Mysterious though this blind bard might be, he was not a Firstborn, for none of the wandering harpers of old were left in this day and age of Middle-earth, not since Maglor had been lost…

Legolas exhaled softly and forced himself to relax.

If his friend Éomer could endure this pain and fear with no alleviation at all, so could he. The least he could do was to suffer with his friend.

If only he had chosen the path of the healer and not the path of the warrior…

oooOooo

I was not dead.

Unfortunately, was my second thought, as I shuddered through another contraction.

Then I opened my eyes and stared at Elaine. Elaine stood at the foot of the bed, white-faced, her hands and arms smeared with blood and slime up to her elbows.

My blood. My slime, I thought dimly.

Strangely enough, I did not really care.

The pain passed. Fatigue followed in its wake. I closed my eyes and fell into an uneasy slumber for the few minutes of peace I had until the next contraction woke me, gasping and moaning, legs shuddering, agony passing in visible ripples from my breasts down to my pubic bone.

Faces and words lost their meaning again.

The only anchor to this world were Éomer's hands holding my shoulders.

Of Míri and Sorcha at my sides, holding my hands and my knees I was not aware anymore.

But there were still words, floating through the room like snow in the wind.

"There is nothing left I can do for Lothíriel."

"But what are we to do now?"

"We will have to wait."

"And then?"

"Not here! She can hear us!"

"I can't leave her now! What then? Tell me!"

"When… if… she loses consciousness for the last time… I can cut the child from her womb. It may live…"

"Oh, Eru! Oh, Valar! Be merciful!"

But if my child is going to live, I mused, then Eru will be merciful!

oooOooo

"Is there nothing we can do?" Legolas suddenly broke the silence of the sitting room.

It was way after midnight. There was no news from the royal bedchamber. There were no more screams, not by Lothíriel, nor by a newborn babe.

"My friend," Gimli said in a low, comforting voice, although painful sympathy with the proceedings in the royal chamber was plainly visible in his eyes. "There's naught a man can do for a woman in her plight. And you are one of the Firstborn – what would you be able to do for a woman of the Aftercomers? Especially for her?"

Especially for her… who was not even one of the Secondborn of Arda to be exact. Legolas and Gimli both knew by now, just how far Lothíriel had come to be wife of Éomer King and Queen of Rohan.

"Ai! Why did I not spend more time learning the art of healing? I can mend broken bones and clean wounds left festering by the vile weapons of the orcs, yet aiding a friend in her need I cannot!" Legolas exclaimed, suddenly losing his elvish self-control. The long hours of waiting, the utter sense of helplessness were getting to him a way the dangers of battle and war had never done. "Is there really nothing we can do?"

"No, my friend," this was Imrahil, grief and defeat clearly audible in his voice. "This is a battle our women have to fight alone. There's nothing we can do but wait."

"He's right, Legolas," Gimli said softly. "Tis a woman's thing, to bear a child. A man can only hold his wife in these painful hours and hope. And rejoice afterwards…"

Silence spread through the room.

"…or not," added Gimli in a low voice, well aware of how often there was no rejoicing, but only two burials instead.

Legolas sighed. He sat back down again, covering his face with his palms. He was acutely aware how Lothíriel's last reserves of strength were melting away as the second night of labour passed into morning.

The harper sat unmoving, his sightless eyes trained on some invisible object in the distance, his head slightly cocked to the side as if he was listening.

The hours went by and in the East a clear winter sky began to light with the dawn of a new day.

oooOooo

"Is there really nothing we can do?" Éomer's voice was filled with despair.

Silence.

I heard how I gasped for breath. I was barely aware of how the contraction shivered through my weary body and passed away again, leaving me to this strange kind of dazed slumber between life and death.

"I am so sorry, my lord," Elaine's voice sounded thick, as if she was trying to hold back tears. "I do not think that there is anything left we can do."

Oh well, I thought weakly. I have tried. I have done the best I could.

Would I feel it, when they cut open my body to save the child?
Would I perhaps be able to hear it cry at least one time?

Then the darkness came for me and put an end to all questions.

oooOooo

A/N: The information about the abilities of the elvish mind are from an excerpt of Vinyar Tengwar No.39, Tolkien's essay "Osanwe Kenta".

oooOooo


Please feel free to leave a comment!

Anything at all: if you noticed a typo, if you don't like a characterization or description, if you thought one line especially funny, if there was anything you particularly enjoyed…

I am really interested in knowing what my readers think about what I write.

You can find my replies to the comments in my fan fiction LiveJournal, user name: juno(underscore)fanfic, tagged as "Lothíriel – comments". Simply look for the chapter you commented on and you should be able to find my reply!

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed this chapter.

Yours
JunoMagic