Disclaimer: "The Lord of the Rings" and all related items belong to J.R.R. Tolkien. This is merely an excursion into Middle Earth as it transitions from a land of hobbits and elves to the domain of man.
The Dark Forest – Part XIV
I have had strange dreams this night. A nightingale sings softly to itself somewhere nearby, and a gentle, fever-cooling breeze is blowing through my window. It is not too cool, or too strong – it is quite perfect. Besides my dreams, that also strikes me as strange. This place, beautiful as it is, seems so controlled – as if its inhabitants had power over all aspects of nature.
I dreamt of Mother speaking to me, but in my dream, I was still a child. Young, and infinitely innocent. She used to tell stories to Melin and me, before our brothers were born. The stories were a way of readying us for sleep, she said. She has always had a lovely speaking voice, and, more often than not, Melin and I fell asleep before she had finished telling her stories. When I think of the subjects of those stories, though, I begin to think that Mother had yet another purpose for telling them. They were hardly cheerful tales. Mostly, they were about the Dark Forest and its even darker properties.
Mother's favourite tale was about a princess who lived in the forest. The princess was the daughter of a great and powerful King, who was deeply feared by all of his subjects. When she was still a girl, there was a terrible war, and many died. Soon after the war ended, a young, orphaned man showed up at the King's palace, seeking refuge. The man showed every sign of being exceedingly poor, and was very uneducated in every manner of the word, but everyone supposed this to be the result of living during a time of war. The King, against his better judgment, took the man in, but forbid his daughter to speak to or see the man for he knew well the fickleness of woman – his own wife, the princess' mother, had once set off on a journey to visit her family in another kingdom and had never returned to him.
Of course, as was bound to happen, the princess and the young man met; and they fell in love. Each pledged to the other that they would love no one else for the remainder of their lives; they would be true to each other, even if one should fade to just a memory.
The King's advisors soon noticed that the princess was spending more time than usual going for walks alone in the palace gardens, and that the young man was spending a great deal of time weeding the flowerbeds. When the King heard about his daughter's romance, he was greatly angered. After punishing the princess by commanding her to stay in her own quarters and not walk the garden until he told her she could do so, the King summoned the young man to him.
Now, by this time, the young man had learned a great deal. He had learned how to speak the royal language of the Kingdom, and how to shoot a bow straight and strong; he had become an excellent horseman, and his mastery over poetry and song was an amazement to the ear. Everyone in the palace, excepting the King, loved him dearly, and all were afeared of what the King would say to him.
The King told the young man that there was no longer any place in the palace for him, and he ordered him to leave at once, with naught but the cloak on his back. The young man said not a word, but obeyed his order and departed the palace. When the King finally released the princess from her confinement, she immediately rushed to the garden to meet her lover; not finding him, she confronted her father and learned that the young man had already left to become a soldier in a far-off land.
The princess then confined herself to her rooms, and she cried for many-a-day. Not one of her maids could convince her to eat, nor to drink, though they tempted her with many tasty delicacies. She would not sing, and she would not sew, and neither would she take one step outside of her quarters. She refused to have any flowers from the garden brought in to lighten her bedside, and commanded that her windows and curtains be kept shut at all times. In this way, the princess condemned herself to a slow death.
When her father the King realized that his daughter was dying, he immediately felt remorse, but not so strongly that he would fetch the young man back. Indeed, he did not know where his daughter's lover had gone. What he had told her was true: the young man had joined an army in a land of horse-men, faraway, and with his quick mind and skills, was steadily rising in status.
About this time, the King and his advisors received word of a great warrior in a distant, but allied land, and this warrior, they heard, wished to wage war on a great evil. There truly was such an evil, and its extent was such that it had already penetrated the edges of the King's forest kingdom. There was but one problem: the great warrior needed a sword, and he asked the King for a legendary, much-fabled sword which hung in the palace treasury. This sword was a weapon famed for its biting edge, and its ability to weld itself to the wielder during battle; it was a sword that had been passed down through the generations of the King's family, and it was a weapon that no evil could face and defeat.
The King agreed to send the sword to the warrior, and further, he took it upon himself to deliver the sword. Many said that he left the palace because he could not bear to see his daughter die because of his own actions. The King's party traveled many days and many nights, through snow and through fire, and at long last, they reached the land where the warrior was waiting for them. The warrior had gathered many men and other good creatures about him, and was camped on a great plain. In the dark of the night, the King was led to the warrior's tent, the sword in hand. Even he, ruler of a powerful kingdom and beloved by most of his people, was afraid to enter the tent – some strange fear that he could not identify.
Lo and behold, when he passed into the tent, he came face to face with no other than the young man who had once loved his daughter.
Yet the man was young no longer, and no longer did he seem just a man. He radiated such a sense of power and goodness that the King nearly fled, terrified at what he had once banished. The man towered over the King, but his eyes were kind, and he said to the King, "You have brought me what I wished. I thank you."
"Sire!" gasped the King, falling to his knees and holding the sword above his head. "I give you the Flame." And then the King knew what he must say, and say it he did, still holding the sword. "My daughter is dying for love of you, my Lord, and I ask you – nay, I beg you return to my kingdom and my daughter. Her heart is yours, of one accord."
The man smiled, a world-weary smile, and said to the King, "Long have I traveled this earth, and much have I seen – I have gazed with an eagle's sharp eyes, I have hunted and tracked with the forest runners, I have spoken with the servants, I have seen the last tree dying. Yet this was never enough. Now, as I prepare to ride into battle, the one thing that I have longed for is given to me, and I cannot accept."
The King began to weep when he heard this, for he knew that his daughter would soon die. But the man had one thing more to say.
"If we rid the world of this evil – and you will know if we do, for mountains will burst into flame and cities will crumble – then I say to you, return to your daughter and tell her that my heart is hers, of one accord. If still she loves me – and I doubt it not, for the Princess never breaks her promises – then she must come to the new kingdom and bring with the banner of the new reign. You and I both know of what I speak. Once it flies, unfurled, I will marry her before all peoples."
The King agreed to this, and the man said no more to him. The King was ushered out of the tent, and he set off homewards, to tell his daughter of her lover's conditions. He had no doubt that the man would defeat whatever evil came before him.
At long last, after fearsome and terrible fighting, mountains did indeed become fiery furnaces and long-standing fortresses fell to the ground. The man fought alongside his soldiers, wielding the great sword, until the greatest evils were smothered and defeated. He returned to his citadel with those who survived, and there he waited.
Many days later, messengers brought word of a party on the road. They came quickly, on horseback, bearing many black pennants. The man went out to the road to meet them.
At once, among the black pennants, another flag was unfurled, and this one was a brilliant white, emblazoned with the crest of a many-branched tree. The princess rode towards her lover, and almost before she had dismounted he embraced her. They were married at once.
The man became the first Great King, and she his Queen, and their children were remarkably long-lifed and wise, like their father and mother. Under his reign, no evils or wars plagued the earth, and the peace was good and beautiful. As for the King of the Dark Forest, he retreated into secrecy and silence, and was never heard from again.
I think I have told the story pretty well. This is the way Mother used to tell it to me, and I have heard it so many times that the words stick like sap-stained leaves in my mind. She told it because she thought it was beautiful, and because, as she confided to Melin, who later told me, she thought the princess was an admirable character. I have always found it strange that Mother should think the story was about the princess, when it is so obviously about the King.
I do not know if I believe her when she tells me that this was, indeed, the true history of our Dark Forest. It seems too impossible to believe. A fairy-story, invented for children. Yet is the Dark Forest itself not a fairy-story invented for adults? The townsfolk tell each other rumours of the shadowy darkness that lies within the forest's borders; that there are great, deep secrets that lurk and linger beneath the trees, mingling with monsters and evils too powerful to behold. The wood-cutters venture into the forest only a little ways, and even then they prefer to cut their wood from groves and woods on the other side of the town, and as for herb-gatherers like my mother, sister and me, we tend to stay towards the well-trod path.
It seems to me that the tales told of the Dark Forest have a grain of truth in them – but someone has warped and distorted that truth. How could a place as beautiful as this one, this retreat of gentle warmth and beauty, be a harbringer of destruction and shadow?
The sun is rising. The sky sheds light into my room, feather-soft motes drifting through my window. It is but a few hours until I speak with my rescuer, my saviour – my beloved.
I shall have to think of what to say.