Faramir woke to a foot in the guts. A very small foot. Followed by another. It seemed he was being used as a stepping stone on the way to somewhere more interesting.
"Éomer, Éomer, Éomer, get up, get up, get up..."
Faramir looked up from the lower of the two beds to see two small children, apparently sitting on Éomer's head and torso
"Park today. You promised."
"Gnnnung..." Éomer lifted the smaller of the two, a little boy with red curly hair, off his stomach.
"It's Christmas Eve today," said the older, a girl with neatly plaited brown hair and freckles. She added seriously, in the tone of someone imparting a great secret of the universe. "That means it's Christmas tomorrow." Then she replaced her brother, bouncing up and down on Éomer's stomach. He lifted her off with a moan of "Urgh, bladder."
"What time is it?" he added, groggily.
"Breakfast time," said the little girl. "I'm having unicorn hoops."
Éomer's groping hand found the small oblong object Faramir had seen him looking at the previous night. In his grasp, it lit up. "Oh god. 7.00 am. I thought I was on leave."
"Park, park, park," said the little boy.
"This afternoon," said Éomer. Wyn and I have to go with Uncle Theo to see your granny Mary this morning."
~o~O~o~
Which was more-or-less how Faramir found himself sitting cross-legged on the floor building towers out of multi-coloured, interlocking bricks for the little boy – whose name turned out to be Callum – while his sister Kelly sat near by carefully colouring in a picture of a prancing horse (with horn) garlanded with flowers.
At the other end of the kitchen, their mother stood at a counter baking. The kitchen itself was like nothing Faramir had ever seen, a room of sparkling white and shiny metal and light-coloured wood. No open fire, nor even a stove. Instead there seemed to be more miraculous engines and contrivances that heated food without the need for Jane to haul in wood.
"So, have any of your memories come back?"
"Sadly, not of the last few days, Mistress Jane," Faramir replied. "I have no explanation for how I came to be here, nor any real understanding of where I am." He paused for a moment, adding several blocks to the current tower. "It troubles me, I must admit."
Jane dusted the flour from her hands and looked down at him. "I think Wyn's guess is probably the best one – that you'd been either in some sort of pantomime or on your way home from a fancy dress, and the timing of the bang to your head means your brain's somehow decided you are the person you were pretending to be. That's why you have all these confused memories. You know, knights in armour, and sword fights, and arrows, and fights with the bad guys."
Faramir smiled. "Robin Hood, she keeps saying. But I know not this story."
"I'll get it," said Kelly and leapt to her feet. Moments later she returned with a book with brightly coloured pictures. She held it out to him. "Read us a story… Please." Faramir's heart lifted – he remembered that he loved books and libraries. But then fell when he realised he could not make head nor tail of the script in which it was written. He flushed with embarrassment.
His words stumbling slightly, he said, "I fear that I… I seem to have forgotten how to read." He blinked and swallowed. This discovery had hit him harder than almost anything that had happened to him so far.
"That's okay," Kelly replied, with an air of pride. "I'm in year 2 now – I can read it to you." And she proceeded to do so, and the next ten minutes passed amicably enough with tales of weak Prince John, the evil Sheriff of Nottingham, the brave outlaw Robin Hood and the beautiful Maid Marion. At the end of it, Faramir had recovered his composure somewhat.
"Well, whoever I was pretending to be before the bang to the head, I don't think it was Robin Hood. My story has no Maid Marion, and though it does have an absent king, he and his heirs have been absent for millennia."
"Cup of tea," asked Jane, holding out a steaming mug. Faramir got to his feet, feeling rather stiff after so long on the floor with the children, and went over to the counter where she stood. He took a sip – it wasn't quite what he had expected, but wasn't unpleasant. Trying to make conversation, he gestured at the pictures on the wall.
"These are remarkable likenesses." He pointed to the photo of a blonde little girl of about 8, astride a piebald pony.
"That's Wyn when she was little, before I knew them. She and Éomer were both horse mad. Not that Theo and his late wife had lots of money, just enough for a few lessons, but when they got to be teenagers, they started trading jobs in the local stables, mucking out, grooming, that sort of thing, for rides. It stuck with Éomer – that's him in his full guardsman's get-up." Jane pointed to a picture diagonally down the wall.
In the picture, Éomer sat astride a very fine chestnut. He wore a shining breastplate over a red military jacket, and a shining helm with a plume of horsehair flowing from its apex.
"Guardsman first class, he is now," Jane added. "Theo's ever so proud of him." She pointed to another photo a few across.
The figure in this picture wore a helmet and loose tunic of some sort, a sandy colour with smudges of darker colour. Ideal to blend into the background; Faramir recognised camouflage when he saw it. This would be ideal for reconnaissance in the sandy semi-desert of the Debatable Lands. He looked more closely. Those grey-blue eyes, those long, surprisingly dark lashes – he felt as if he would know them anywhere. Wyn.
"She's a field medic in the infantry. Theo was worried sick when she first joined up. I think he's a bit old fashioned about that sort of thing, didn't like the idea of a girl going to war."
Faramir nodded. "I can see that. I would fear for her safety if I were him." Then he looked thoughtful for a moment, and added, "Don't tell her I said that."
Jane grinned. "Your secret's safe with me."
"Didn't she want to be a cavalry rider like her brother?" he asked, glancing back at the photo of a younger Wyn astride her pony.
"She was furious about that. Back when she signed up, they didn't take women into the Household Cavalry. It's only this year the first woman's joined. Mind you, I think she's actually seen more front-line action that Éomer – Afghan, Syria, Iraq."
None of the names meant anything to Faramir, so he contented himself with a closer inspection of those beautiful eyes.
~o~O~o~
Theo's mother sat in the upright armchair next to her bed, a crocheted blanket in various shades of pink tucked over her knees. Theo sat on the upright chair beneath the window, Éowyn and Éomer perched on the bed. Each cradled a cup of tea awkwardly – a vital prop for this sort of occasion. It meant that when conversation flagged (which it did, frequently), they could fill the uncomfortable gaps with a sip of tea. Right now, though, they'd have given anything for an uncomfortable silence. For sadly, the old woman was in mid rant.
Granny Mary, or Nan for short, had never really liked their original foster mother, Sue. But while younger, in possession of her marbles, she'd managed to stay reasonably polite about this dislike. Now, with the onset of dementia, the brakes were off (along with any grasp on what it might, or might not be appropriate to say to a widower). Theo gritted his teeth and gripped the handle of the cup tightly.
"Her and her heathen ways… Never did hold with it. All that gadding about to Stonehenge for the Solstice, all a load of nonsense."
"It was the nineties, Mam. She was a New Age traveller, and I loved her for it. I didn't share her beliefs, but they were good beliefs. All about the good in nature, and the balance of forces for good and evil in people's minds, and how we had a choice what life force to embrace." Theo tried to keep his voice level.
"Mind you, she calmed down a bit when the kids were fostered with you, I'll give her that. Nasty, smelly Gypo kids, though. Dunno why social services didn't just put them in a home. What became of them, Theo love?"
"We're right here," Éowyn said, tightly.
"But you're all grown up. My Theo's only got them little snotty brats social services foisted on him. Who are you two?"
"This is Wyn and Éomer, Mam. They're all grown up now."
"No they're not. And why are you so old? You look like my Theo, but you're all old..." The old woman began to cry. Éowyn swallowed. She'd never got on with the old woman, but whatever their differences, she wouldn't have wished this on her worst enemy.
"Have a piece of cake, Nan," said Éomer, holding out a plate with a slice of the Christmas cake Jane had sent with them. To his relief, it distracted her briefly. Then the conversation circled round over the same ground again. And again. Eventually, after a couple of hours, they felt able to say their goodbyes and leave.
It was a very subdued threesome who sat down to lunch when they got back home.
"The usual?" Jane asked with a sigh.
"I think she's getting worse," said Theo.
"She's certainly getting more racist," said Éomer, bitterly.
"Or worse at hiding it," Éowyn. "I think she always felt that way underneath." She caught Faramir looking at her with a mixture of confusion and concern. "Éomer and I were born into a travelling family. Our parents were killed in a car crash, we were cut out the wreckage by the fire brigade, Uncle Theo and Auntie Sue took us in. Granny Mary doesn't think much of travellers – either the new sort like Auntie Sue was, or the old sort like us."
"Pikeys, Gypos, we had the whole works," Éomer added, angrily.
Jane reached across the table and patted his hand. "My Dad always used to say it was what you made of yourself that mattered. How you treated people. Ignore the old bat." She glanced apologetically at Theo. "Sorry, love. But she is, you know she is."
Éowyn got up from the table and left the room. Faramir half rose to follow her, but Theo gestured for him to stay put. She returned moments later with a wooden box, which she placed on the table. It was carved, the sort of interlinked knotwork design which in Faramir's world was typical of Rohan.
"This is just about the last thing we have left from our birth family," she said.
She opened the lid. There, on a folded woollen cloth, nestled two broaches of the sort that might hold cloaks in place. They were enamelled bronze, equal to the finest workmanship Faramir had seen come out of the northern lands. On one, a white horse galloped across a field of green. On the other, a pale hand grasped the hilt of a sword, picked out in silver filigree. Faramir guessed the horse must be Éowyn's, the sword Éomer's. But he guessed wrong.
"When I was a child, I always wondered why I got the sword and Éomer the horse… Though I guess it makes sense, seeing as he went into the cavalry, and I got good at fencing."
"May I," he asked. Éowyn nodded and he picked up her broach. It sat heavily in his hand. Then suddenly he felt a tingle as if some mysterious power was at work. He also felt a sense of incredible antiquity. And of homecoming.
It seemed a moment of significance, but glancing around him at the family he saw them happily engaged in everyday chatter, oblivious to the strange rush that had passed through him. Even Éowyn simply smiled politely. Only Uncle Theo seemed to have registered anything amiss in his expression; he was looking at him, a thoughtful expression on his face.