Chapter 4
"Have you had anything to eat, Adariel?" Idhreniel asked a few minutes after Gandalf had left. The little girl nodded in reply even though she hadn't eaten much more than a slice of bread. She wasn't hungry, only sad and angry. Why had he left her behind? Why could he not have taken her with him? Adariel did not want to live here, with this family. She would much rather stay with Mithrandir.
"I'm tired. Where can I sleep?" Adariel asked. Innas opened his mouth as if to say something but closed it again before telling Saereth to show her new sister to her bed. Adariel followed the older girl quietly up the stairs, not paying attention to her surroundings. As Saereth opened the door to the room, she said something about sharing it with her and that she was not to touch any of her things. The younger girl barely registered her words and sighed as she looked around the room she had just stepped into.
There were two beds with a table and an open window between them. Adariel walked over to the bed she had been told was hers and placed the two pairs of clothes the healer's apprentice had given her on the pillow and moved toward the window. As she looked at the street illumined by the lights of the houses on either side of the street, the black-haired girl remembered that the old man had stopped at the stable on the way to her new house. He had been telling the head groom that he would be leaving in a hurry the next morning and so to have his tack put out. By the time Saereth had left, Adariel was grinning as she climbed into bed. The child had a plan.
Adariel was awoken by the quiet snoring of someone to her left. Remembering that she was no longer in the House of Healing, she guessed that person was Saereth. She also remembered the plan she had made just before falling asleep. Quietly, she climbed out of bed and looked out the window to see whether the lights were still on downstairs. The street was illuminated only by a solitary lamp up the street a little ways. Adariel knew she would have to be very quiet if this was to work, fortunately she had learned how to be quiet when she had been avoiding the wrath of Uncle after he came home drunk each night.
Tying her bed sheet to her blanket, she soon realized that her makeshift rope would not be long enough to reach the bottom without falling. She would have to do this the hard way; by walking downstairs and out the door or through a window. Both ways would make noise that could wake anyone if they were light sleepers. Thinking about the family that had agreed to take them in, she remembered that her leaving would hurt their feelings. If Adariel had known how to write, she would have left a note, but seeing as she could not, she just whispered goodbye and her apology into Saereth's ear, hoping that would be enough. She would not risk going into the room of Innas and Idhreniel for fear of awakening them.
She opened the door slowly – grateful it wasn't creaky – stepped through and closed it behind her partway. So far so good, at least she hadn't woken the other girl. Turning to face the stairs, she tiptoed down, testing for creaks in the wood. When she found a step that was creaky, she would stop for a few second to listen for any noise and then continue, passing over that stair quickly. It felt like an eternity going down those stairs. The distance from the stairs to the door was covered with woven rugs that slightly muffled her footsteps. She stopped when she heard a sound above her and stood stock still for a few minutes, holding her breath. Adariel heard it once more, but that was the last time. She let out the breath she had been holding and continued towards the door, pausing only to slip on her simple leather shoes before leaving the house. Desperately she hoped the door did not have a lock.
When she reached the door, she slowly put her hand out and touched the door knob with her finger tips. Inhaling deeply, Adariel grasped the handle more firmly and turned it, the noise sounding thunderous to her ears in contrast to the silence. She opened the door a crack and listened for any noise. When she heard a soft thud above her, the girl opened the door quickly, afraid she might have woken Idhreniel or Innas, and scurried over the threshold, barely remembering to close the door behind her before she broke out into a run down the street.
Her heart was pounding in her ears as she ran, keeping to the shadows. The girl's knuckles were white from clutching her bundle of clothes to her chest. Adariel ran with fear behind her, whipping her to move faster, pushing her to cover more ground. Her black, tangled hair trailed behind as she darted around corners, taking back routes where possible as she headed towards the gate to the next lower level of the White City, where the stables were kept.
When she got to the gate, she waited until the guards patrolling above it had passed on to another part of the wall for that level and stole through the shadows of the open archway. The inner gates would only be closed in times of emergency though the gate to the highest level was closed every night as well as the city's entrance. She ran the rest of the way to the stable they had passed, though it was getting harder to breathe as she tired. At least the road was downhill.
When she reached the stable, she used vines to climb the wall of one of the few horse pens they could cram into the city. When Adariel reached the top of the wall, she sat on it for just a moment before falling into the hay-pile just below. Though the hay helped to soften her landing, it still jarred her already bruised body and the child barely kept herself from crying out loudly. She would have paused for awhile longer but the two horses in the pen were coming over to see what was in their food. Rolling off the hay, the girl approached the barn while looking for an opening. Unable to find one, Adariel curled up into a corner of the pen to wait out the night and hope the horses wouldn't trample her or give away her hiding place. Exhausted, the child soon fell asleep in the shadowed corner, listening to the sighs of horses.
A shrill whistle woke the girl from her slumber. Opening her eyes to the pale grey sky of dawn, she looked around to see what the noise was. Peering around the water trough, she saw the groom they had met the day before, standing in the barn door with a lead shank and halter. He was dressed in some simple breeches and a loose beige shirt. It took one more whistle for the horses in the pen to come to him. Adariel did not know why he did not just go out and get the horses, but was more concerned with whether he had seen her. She had to get into the barn so she could know when Mithrandir was there and decided that, as soon as the groom had gotten the other horse, she would go through that door and hide in a stall.
The stable hand returned soon after he had taken the first horse and was quicker in catching the second. Adariel had only needed to wait a few minutes before she could go through the door. After crossing the pen and reaching the barn door, the little girl peeked inside and saw three hands mulling about, working on the morning chores of mucking stalls and feeding horses. This seemed to be one of the smaller stables in the city. When two of the grooms disappeared into a room that seemed to be the feed room, and the third was mucking out a stall, she ducked into the stall with a horse munching away contentedly. The hand in the nearby stall looked up when he heard the door open but went back to his task, shaking his head as if his ears were playing tricks on him.
Turning to face the stall's interior, Adariel noticed the horse in the stall was one of the two the girl had spent the night with. The mare had stopped munching on her grain to look at her but returned to her feed when she realized it was only the girl that had slept in her pen. The child decided that the best place to hide for now would be under the feed bucket hanging from the stall wall. Because of the placement of the bucket, no one would see her unless they actually entered the stall, though she was somewhat afraid of being so close to the horse's hooves. The girl just hoped that no one would enter the stall until Mithrandir came, but just in case, she started to make up stories to tell her discoverer, should she be found out.
She waited there for what seemed like half an hour without anyone coming to check on the horse, even after the mare had finished eating her grain. As the girl waited in hiding, the beating of her heart was louder than the snorts of the horses and the sounds of the morning stable chores. At last a saddle and bridle were placed over the stall door, followed a few minutes later by a pair of empty saddlebags. After what seemed like an eternity of anxious waiting, dreading and hoping for the sound, she heard his voice drifting over the sounds of the stable.
"Thank you for your service. Have this as a token for taking such good care of this mare that has borne me over long distances. I will call you if I require your further services, but I plan to leave here without incident," the unmistakable voice said. Mithrandir had come.
Adariel held her breath as the latch was lifted and the door opened, the old man muttering softly to the horse. The child watched as he walked up to the horse and patted her smooth chestnut coat, whispering to the horse in a language that sounded like the Sindarin she heard some grown-ups speak. She guessed that the mare's name was Lotheg, for it was repeated many times. As he spoke to his horse, his back had been turned to her, but when he turned away from the animal, he saw the girl almost immediately. Fear gripped her as she saw his face go from kind and warm to stern and unreadable. She suddenly felt like shrinking to the size of a mouse and crawling down a hole, where he could not find her. What stung even more was when he said in a quiet, stony voice, "What are you doing here?" Now she wanted to be a fly, a tiny insignificant fly.
She didn't reply, but the silence weighed heavily on her and she did not raise her head to look at his eyes, afraid of what she might see. He wouldn't take her with him; she would live in Minas Tirith with Saereth and her family and never see him again. Mithrandir would leave her behind. But... The voice that had ruled her mind over the past night grew again, though it had been squashed temporarily by the tension in the air and the tone of his voice. She would not let him leave her behind.
"Well?" the old man asked. He would not just give in and take her along with him. He was, after all, the one that had arranged for her to live with Idhreniel and Innas. Adariel opened her mouth but changed her mind twice before settling on what to tell him. She sat there silent for a little while longer, trying to think of a story to tell him, but she couldn't stand the tension any longer.
"I-I-, I want you to take me with you!" she burst out, standing up; "I don't want you to leave me behind! Idhreniel and Innas are nice and all, but I want to go with you!" Adariel wasn't sure if he would take her with him, but she desperately prayed that he would allow her to follow him. He couldn't leave her behind, he couldn't.
For a few moments they stood there in the stall, the wizard looking at the little girl before him and the girl looking at her feet, holding back the tears that would flow any second now. Mithrandir turned back to the horse and grabbed a brush from the bucket he had brought in. As he brushed the horse quickly, he asked Adariel why she wanted to follow him. She just stood there silently before grabbing a brush and starting on the other side of the horse, copying the old man's brisk strokes, though her motions were slower. As she developed a rhythm to her brushing, she opened her mouth several times, trying to say something but then closing it. At last she said, "You have been so nice to me and I don't want you to leave me behind."
"The road is hard to travel and you wouldn't have a lot of things that you are used to. It is dangerous to travel so far and although I would protect you, you would have to listen to me, which you have failed to do so far. I told you to stay with that family."
"I don't care about the danger. I'll do whatever you tell me to do. I promise. Just let me come."
"I'm very busy and I cannot have a little girl slowing me down."
They were silent once again. Adariel realized that Mithrandir had finished his side of Lotheg and was watching her as she finished the horse's back legs. He started to brush the places that an eight-year-old girl could not reach and when they were both done he told her to stand in the corner while he picked out the mare's hooves. The girl obeyed. She could be obedient.
When Mithrandir had finished with the horse's feet, he walked over to the stall door and grabbed the saddle. He lifted it over the Lotheg's back and slid it backwards into place, telling Adariel that he did this because the hair had to lie flat. Otherwise it would bother the horse. The girl watched with fascination as he did up the mare's girth without her trying to bite him. She had heard from a few of her friends who's father's worked with horses that most mares disliked having the strap done up under their bellies and were not shy about showing it. Ardithen's father had worn a bandage over his arm when a mare bit him one day.
"Would you help me pack these saddle bags?" Mithrandir asked. Adariel replied and walked over to the door, where he had put a few satchels and packets. Following his directions silently as he told her which packet went where, she began to forget her doubts of not being able to go, becoming absorbed in her task and trying to prove herself to him by following his instructions.
At last, when all the packets and satchels were in the saddlebags, Mithrandir said, "You know, I can't afford to be slowed by a young girl such as yourself." The doubt returned and her spirits sunk back down to her feet as he said this. It seemed he would not take her with him after all. So absorbed was she with her disappointment at not being able to come that she almost didn't hear his words when he continued, "But I think I am missing one more thing in these bags. Could you get me that little parcel in the corner?"
Confused, Adariel followed his finger with her eyes to where her clothes were partially covered with straw. Confused, she looked back at him as his mouth started to twitch into a smile. Suddenly it dawned on her. If he was packing her clothes, he was planning to take her with him! She would be able to go with him. Looking back at him she could definitely see the beginnings of laughter. Elated, Adariel ran up to the man and jumped on him. She felt such joy as she had not felt since before her mother's death.
"Well, you can't come unless you promise to listen to me and follow my instructions," he said as he broke away from the child's hug, "That starts with adding your clothes to this bag." Nodding, Adariel scurried over to the corner where she had hid just a little while ago. She scooped up the bundle and placed it neatly on top in the bag before tying it shut for Mithrandir. She was so happy she could almost fly. The old man laughed warmly as she jumped in the air, before telling her that she would upset Lotheg.
Apologizing quietly she stood by the door as the bearded man placed the saddlebags over the horse's withers and attached them to the saddle. Next, he took the bridle from where it had been hanging and approached the mare's head. He slipped the bit into Lotheg's mouth and pulled the headpiece over her ears. Adariel watched impatiently as he did up the straps on the bridle. At last, he brought the reins over her head and, asking Adariel to open the stall door, led his horse out of the stall and into the barn aisle. She followed him and the horse out of the barn and into the courtyard just outside, barely able to contain her excitement.