What is essential is invisible to the eyes
.oOo.
On a large wicker mat, a warrior with emaciated features laid a deer leg, smoking with promising steam and oozing with caramelized juices. Baranor, the leader of the group, simply nodded: among fighters, both recognition and respect were expressed soberly. Their incessant wanderings in the wilderness, often solitary, had made these rangers taciturn. The pine cones crackled in the hearth, which cast fierce glimmers on the faces of the Dúnedain gathered in the makeshift shelter. Above the half-collapsed vault of the old castle, shimmered cold stars, concealed by clouds from the north.
The warrior drew his dagger and cut the meat soberly, then placed the game back on the embers. A few pastenades gleaned here and there during the patrols refined a pan of mushrooms, which sizzled in the meat's fallen fat. The small rangers company rarely allowed themselves such a feast, a time of rest in the comfort of their retreat, these ruins on the edge of the Northern Downs. But the cool, humid night had decided Baranor to this relative luxury - the test to come would be even more striking.
His comrades heckled the youngest, a careless man who dreamed of the kingdoms of yore, the lights of Fornost in the days of splendour. The kid was still looking for himself. He questioned the ranger's centuries-old profession of faith, as if there were other ways... Baranor had planned a little test for him, his fellows mocked, just to clear his head! Nothing insurmountable, just a sacred high place, to defend alone against the enemy!
The elders, for their part, kept silent, observing these bullying young men like the grave and modest who had stood the ordeal on their own time and knew what it was all about.
Baranor silenced the jokers and sent them to relieve the sentries: for his final vigil, young Ernilion was to meditate in peace.
.oOo.
The collapsed walls of Annuminas, the ancient capital in the north, stood before them under the pale sky. Stealthy and attentive, the Dúnedain glided through the old gardens, which had returned to the forest.
A round platform, ruin of the venerable observatory, overlooked Lake Nenuial. Here, no doubt, the wardens of the palantir, besieged by the Witch King, had probed the stone and questioned the future, in search of some hope denied by their present. Here the oracle had spoken, prescribing the rangers' regulated life, fraught with watch and skirmishes in wilderness. In the silent twilight, the Dúnedain climbed up to the consecrated place and turned to the sunset, breathing into the breeze overflying the lake. The purple sun sank behind the hills, igniting the waters with the memory of Numenor, burned and submerged.
The shadows crawled up the banks. The night flowed like dark slicks in the dislocated alleys, invaded by bushes and deserted by the living. Shreds of mist rose from the black waters, flowing up around the old towers and the last belfry, like memories of pennants lingering on top of ghost poles.
The companions inspected the surroundings, ensuring no creature was lurking in the sacred ruins. In the evening grey, their tense glances crossed in silence - nothing to report...
Ernilion would spend his test night there. His companions, old and young, with a grave face, were about to leave him alone, a hundred leagues from any inhabited land... None now dared to joke.
"Remember! Baranor whispered, as if trying to comply with local spirits. Listen to the Stone... but remain alert to the surroundings... the place can be perilous...
The captain, this tough ranger hardened by years of toil in the moors, was usually lapidary and pragmatic. These warnings, alarming by their ambiguity, didn't sound like him...
"Don't fall asleep! He concluded with a warning, almost hard look.
.oOo.
Ernilion sat down on the stone table in the centre of the esplanade. A nice smooth slab, with a hollow in the middle. It was said that it came from Numenor. It was called the Stone of the Blind, for a famous seer, yet blind, had drawn from the Palantir his most famous oracles on this very stele. It was even claimed that the sage had paid with the apples of his own eyes for his famous omens... The Palantir was long gone, but the slab endured. It was claimed to harbour strange powers, since each generation of rangers increased the rumors with the nebulous memory of their initiation ordeal.
The mantle of Varda1 enchanted the firmament with its thousand twinkling smiles. The eternal vault swirled slowly above the slab, dispensing its fertile and protective glow. The queen of the sky illuminated her lonely child, in the perils of the Middle-Earth. Around the esplanade swept by the cold wind, the trees that had invaded the ancient galleries and the broken patios, rustled gently under the moon.
On his stone island, the Dunadan watched over. His mind probed the shadows' whispering, spied on the veiled threat of the void, rambled out of mortal time. At random from the clouds, the stars reflected on the dark marble slab, combining with the light crystals sown on its surface, to recompose the astral figures of a forgotten sky. A solitary watchman in the northern night, the ranger testified to his fears and courage, on behalf of all his fellow human beings. Young Ernilion felt the vertigo of the ages, enlisted in a warrior and secular vocation, which he had not really chosen.
.oOo.
– If you please…
Ernilion opened an eye. Painfully.
– What?
– If you please…
Ernilion sat up on his slab and raised his hand to the guard of his sword. What a fool! He had indeed fallen asleep! Quickly, the Dúnadan took a look around: nothing!
... except that little pout raising towards him, pale and insistent.
The ranger rubbed his face, waited for a moment for the moon to free itself from a trail of mist, widened his eyes. The boy was still standing there, frail and shivering in the night wind, a strange little guy cluttered with a huge gown and some child's worries.
– If you please…
Ernilion had not seen or heard him approaching. When you feel at fault, you do not dare rebel. He kept to himself the annoyance of being surprised and the questions raised by the boy's inexplicable presence:
"What do you want, kid?"
The child's face lit up, and his little chest seemed to swell with hope:
"If you please, Me-Squire, will you teach me to be reasonable?"
After a long moment of dazedness, Ernilion, newly promoted to Me-Squire, addressed a sad smile to the child:
"If I had any reason, I would gladly give it to you! Reason is just like love: you lose nothing by sharing!"
The small face opened candid eyes and squinted an already serious brow. Grown-ups, usually, there is only one thing that interests them: to be a good kid and reasonable, they know only that. But this one had forgotten! And yet without warning, without even realizing it, he had just given a little bit of reason! He wasn't quite finished as a grown-up, that one!
Dissatisfied with this thoughtless answer, but encouraged by the ranger's grazing goodwill, the boy asked his question again:
"If you please, will you teach me to be reasonable?"
The ranger frowned, impatient already. Where were this kid's manners ? Begging and insisting on adults !
"But I am no wise man, I am a warrior of the shadows... And what would you do with reason in the middle of this desert anyway?
The boy opened his big, astonished eyes even bigger. He seemed sincere, yet the grown-up had done it again! As if it meant nothing, he had given a little bit of reason again! Oh, that wasn't a very frank or solid reason! Giving one's reason without knowing it, without keeping a little to oneself, without applying it to oneself, that was not very clever!
But he was the only grown-up he had close at hand. And despite his irritation, gruffness and hesitations, the grown-up tried to do well.
Maybe reason was to be given like this, in small pieces, at random mood, like a game of patience that had to be reassembled all by yourself…
"And first of all, why would you want to be reasonable at your age?"
The childish lips, a little trembling, creased with an embarrassed look. With his sharp questions, this grown-up seemed a little lost.
And indeed, at the reaction of the child, the troubled ranger somehow got lost in meditations way too metaphysical for him: if the question was reasonable, no doubt it was not reasonable to ask the child. It seemed perilous to use reason, as much as to lack it...
After a long silence of reflection, the boy returned from his anxious reverie and glanced at the grown-up from below:
"Indeed you are not reasonable? … So maybe you can teach me what you know, give me what you have?"
Ernilion felt that the little boy, behind his stubborn logic and extravagant questions in the wilderness, was hiding a deep sorrow. He did not seek to reassure the little one with the false agreed hopes that the grownups serve, but he answered as best he could, with sincerity:
"You know what? I think that is the beginning of reason!"
The boy nodded, his pretty face delighted.
And that is how the ranger got to know the boy.
Slowly, the unlikely duo began to tame each other under the moon's knowing smile.
.oOo.
Who looked after the boy, what he was doing here in the wild, all that was not clear, beyond any reason. But one must agree that spending the night on a cold stone in the middle of a circle of dread, that was not particularly reasonable either! When this similarity had struck Ernilion's mind, he stopped taunting the child with his adult questions, which the boy did not even bother to answer: if everything was to be explained to the grownups, we would not be out of the woods!
From the corner of his eye and ear, Ernilion was watching around, telling his pupil about his existence as a ranger. For his part, the boy followed the winding but insistent path of his childish logic, leaving from time to time, over the course of his questions, a confusing clue to the sagacity of his companion. Side by side, sitting at the edge of the old stele, their legs hanging in the void, the boy and the young man babbled, wrapped in the ranger's coat.
"My Dad, he is a knight, he too hunts enemies like you! Are you a knight?"
"No, I am no knight. Well... not really yet."
"Have you defeated enemies, are you a hero?"
"So you think being a hero is to kill enemies?"
The boy was silent for a long time.
A very long time.
For a moment, the young man and the boy's looks crossed. They read the same loneliness, the same crack, precocious and nagging, the same devouring void left by war. And yet the same shreds of hope, which the same old lady, shrivelled on her work, was weaving tirelessly, with the help of her sparkling needle – love!
The boy broke the terrible silence:
"When I left, my Dad said to me, "Be good with Mommy, when I come back, I want to be proud of you!" But Dad hasn't come back yet. And Mom is too tired to have cried, she sleeps all the time... So I don't think I was reasonable enough…
The boy's tiny mouth, a tear of coral shining under the moon, had ended in a whisper, writhing like that of a schoolboy at fault. The ranger had felt his heart stop for a moment, overwhelmed by the evidence, so cruel that he had not been able to see it before.
The boy realized his elder's trouble and it was he who came to his aid:
"You are not very reasonable either, as a grownup! But you're a warrior, I can tell for you speak like my dad. Real heroes do not say they are heroes. Then I won't say either. But I want to be a hero. If you please, can you teach me how to become a hero?
– ... And if you become a hero, your daddy will be proud of you and will come back, right?
The kid nodded: for a grownup, his understanding was not so bad...
Against orcs and gobelins, Ernilion was ready for anything, but as he felt clumsy to rescue a kid...
"Listen to me, boy..."
Ernilion gathered his courage and sighed before launching:
"Where he is, your daddy is already proud of you, I am sure. You're a little hero to him. Otherwise he wouldn't have left you with your mom. You still don't know it, but it's the only reason you lack – harsh reason that will hurt you, and I'm sorry to be the one who has to impose it on you. Your daddy will not return, because the enemies killed him. And your mother died of grief... I'm the one who came back in their name, in order to look for you.
Ernilion was not proud of him. Relieved to have done his duty, no doubt. For finding words. But what words, as sharp as his sword...
"... All will be fine… I'm going to take you with me..." he tried awkwardly.
The little one sobbed, his face buried in the folds of his gown. The young man took the boy in his arms, wrapped him in all the sweetness he could find in his heart, and the warmth that his ranger's coat could dispense. The kid weighed no more than a newborn, hiccuping in the arms of this clumsy athlete. In the land of tears that the warrior had deserted without return, the bittersweet wave bathed, caressed, cradled the wounded soul of the little one. Wounded by the only friend he had for so long...
.oOo.
The ranger's ear warned him of the danger - a troop of orcs foraged in the ruins to the north, ransacking what was still in the glorious capital to overshadow their rudeness and helplessness. The warrior unsheathed his sword, ready to rush on the ungodly brutes and exterminate them.
But he had a soul to watch upon. Ernilion discovered that it took more courage to escape and preserve the secret, than to gloriously face the odds. Silently, he sheltered the little one with his targe, into the folds of his coat, in the hollow of his left arm. The ranger fled into the shadows to the south.
To escape the orcs, who had not failed to spot him, it took the young man all the skill acquired in the desert moors, hunting down or dodging the enemies of the human race. Hard pressed, he trapped his pursuer, a small malignant orc, a sniffer with prominent nostrils: he thrust his sword into the tracker's throat. Distancing his pursuers, he took advantage of the slightest stream or any strip of dry ground to blur his trail. During hours of struggle as the moon advanced, Ernilion fled relentlessly. Finally, exhausted, he recognized a sign - a secret marker of his kin. The instructions were clear, he mustered his strengths and ran through an exposed valley.
Less than a mile away, at the end of the valley, he was joined by his pursuers, while the first glimmers of dawn were pointing out.
But the rangers held the pass. The orc squad was ambushed and eliminated, without clamor nor state of mind. And without any loss in the ranks of the Dúnedain.
Harassed Ernilion was celebrated like a hero. The dawn restored his colours by pulling him out of the nightmare that had been chasing him for miles.
His coat, folded as on a treasure, held only the boy's memory, his insistent questions and his concerned forehead, his smiles and his tears. But Ernilion was not surprised, nor complained about it. The Stone of the Blind had left in his heart this little scratch, this tiny graft, this small reminder of himself: the memory of a kid who retained hope and dignity when everything had abandoned him.
He wanted to go see his grandmother again, who knows why. Then he might make a trip to Gondor, it was high time for him to explore beyond the secret refuges and the cots of Bree... But Ernilion2 would return to his family in order to, who knows, bring back some of that scent of nobility that he burned to breathe there.
Baranor came to comfort his recruit and gazed at length at his face: Yes, the stele of Annuminas had given him something under the moon of the summer solstice. What exactly? Baranor could not yet perceive it, but his heart knew that the young ranger had found his way. One can only see with the heart : what is essential is invisible to the eyes.3
.oOo.
NOTES
1 Varda is the queen of the Valier, the Lady of the Stars, revered by the Elves. Spouse of Manwë, king of the Valar, she is also known as Elentari, Elbereth, Fanuilos, Gilthoniel and Tintallë. Queen of the gods in Tolkien's Pantheon.
2 From sindarin Ernil, prince, and suffix -ion, son of. Litterally : the little prince… I am pretty sure this tipped you off...
3 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in TheLittle Prince
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