Over the next days (if days were counted in Valinor), they roamed together through forests for hours on end, and they talked about many things. Boromir could not remember having ever felt so relaxed and at the same time so full of vigour. He drank in the fresh air of Valinor in deep draughts, fed his body on the wholesome food offered by the wild and his soul on its many colours and sounds and smells. His wounds were healing rapidly now. However he had managed to find it, Galathorn had given Boromir back his own sword, his beloved blade of Gondor. He had moreover presented him with a ranger outfit similar to his own as well as a finely embroidered, light but durable cloak similar to those made by the Elves. Its grey-green, shimmering material seemed to stay warm in the cold and cool in the heat, adjusting to the needs of its wearer.
Boromir thoroughly enjoyed travelling and camping out in the wild again. Wandering under a roof of leaves so dense that they often blocked out the sky, scrambling over rocks and fallen tree trunks, digging his bare feet into cool pillows of ancient mosses, stepping from black walls of fir trees out into sunlit glades bursting with birdsong, following winding brooks and gurgling streams through bog and rushes to deep pools carpeted with water lilies, every now and then noticing little mice scurrying away from almost under his feet or sensing the presence of bigger animals watching him serenely from a safe distance, Boromir had soon lost all sense of direction. He walked as if in a dream, and could not even have told whether they were still in Valinor, or in Middle-earth, or in whichever of the many worlds Galathorn seemed to frequent.
They had come out of the forests onto a grassy plain now, to their right hills growing into jagged mountains as Boromir followed them with his eyes, to their left a vast bogland. The day was fading into evening, and already a cold, clammy mist was drifting over the plain, arising from the moors. Yawning, Boromir looked up at the pale reddish disc of the sun setting slowly behind a shroud of clouds, and he began to wish for a nice supper and warm bed. His eyes roamed over the plain to fathom the distance … and there in the fog he suddenly saw them.
Dark shadows with gleaming red eyes. Roughly of man-shape, but larger, with something like wings, and surrounded by an undulating atmosphere of malice. Less solid forms than emanations of evil. The sky seemed to darken at their approach, to breed a murky red under the gleam of the setting sun, the way the air grows gloomy and oppressive around a smouldering forest fire. For a moment, Boromir imagined himself back in Minas Tirith, as a small boy, reading the history of Middle-earth by the fireside at evening. He remembered the drawing … Shadow and Flame. Monsters of the First Age. Balrogs. The Demons of the Deep.
Shuddering, Boromir recoiled in terror. Captain of Gondor or not, he was not ready to meet such a foe.
They advanced, slowly, in dead silence. All Boromir could hear was his own heavy breathing. Somehow, these shadows felt vaguely familiar to him, and he almost imagined them whispering, beckoning him to do all kinds of evil things, forcing him … Then they suddenly stopped. One of the shadows moved a step further than the others and raised a shapeless arm towards the human. Icy despair crept into Boromir's heart. 'Galathorn!' A wordless cry rose from some corner of his mind like the bubbles of a drowning man from the depths of a lake. Galathorn! Where was he?
Spinning round, Boromir saw his friend – eyes fixed on Boromir and brimming with tears – slowly draw his sword, move his hand along the blade and then forcefully close his palm into a fist around it, into it, taking hold of the pain in grim determination.
'Oh my God,' Boromir thought. 'They are my demons. This is what they have been doing to me! This is what I am doing to him!'
Galathorn's lips moved in silent prayer. Then he suddenly jumped up, gripped his sword by the hilt, eyes gleaming, and with that proud little shake of the head – Boromir's shake before encountering an enemy in battle – he shouted: "Come on, Boromir, let's put them in their place! I have no fear of them!" The blade now glimmered in a searing white, which made the blood – Galathorn's blood – dripping from it look like little sparks of fire. In fact, Galathorn himself seemed to be suffused by a white light. The shadows hissed and snarled in malice, anger, fear.
For a moment, Galathorn turned round and looked Boromir full in the eye. His eyes seemed to Boromir like elven stars in a dark night sky; like Earendil's or Elbereth's radiant gems as once they had arisen before his closed eyes, awakened by the storytellers' magic at Imladris; like the light of Ilúvatar himself, the Secret Flame of Anor. Strength flowed into Boromir, and suddenly all despair, all fear was gone. He gripped his sword and joined Galathorn. Side by side they fought, suffused by one light they charged against the darkness, aflame with one wrath they put the enemy to flight, saw the shadows retreat under ear-piercing screams, watched them fade away into nothingness.
Triumph! Boromir's heart leapt for joy. He felt as if he had been transported from a deep, dark hole onto an open sunlit field stretching out beyond the horizon. Freedom! Nothing was impossible! He danced and frisked down the plain, singing out loud, an old Gondorian song of victory.