He woke with cramped leg muscles, a sore back and an aching ankle – to the sound of rain. Aragorn opened one eye and turned his head on his knees, the better to observe his companion.
Harwan slept like a rock and snored like a mastiff.
He wondered why he had not heard it before, then thought it likely the man had slept no more than he the first couple of nights, and closed his eyes on a sigh, drifting off again, none too anxious to go back out in the downpour. Three days in wet clothes and he was beginning to worry there might be mushrooms growing between his toes; not to mention those intimate parts uncomfortably chafed by the constant wetness.
"Mûmakil offal." Aragorn tried out one of his most disgusting new curses under his breath when sleep refused its oblivion again. He needed to empty his bladder, an insistent compulsion with all this rain, as if the sound of it drumming overhead made that requirement more pressing. He palmed a couple of dates and crawled out from under cover, tending first to the persistent urgency, then shambling off down the mountainside again, working out the kinks another night passed folded in half had crimped in fatigued muscles.
His shoulder was not so bad today, though his ankle still felt hot and tender. He ignored both with the supreme indifference of youth, his only concession being to grab a few more vines and bushes as he slipped and slid down the steep incline, making sure he did not land ankle-deep in the sand this time.
The rain washed beach looked much the same, though the surf no longer pounded the sandy shore with the same intensity. The waves curled low and gentle, gliding in on long soporific sighs rather than with the hissing, boiling, churning of two days ago. He held up a hand to test the wind and felt only rain. It came down as straight as if Ulmo had gathered up all the waters of the world and poured them down directly from the sky overhead.
Aragorn turned to stare out through the sheeting rain, willing sails to appear on the horizon. Any sails, for surely there were no marauding pirates this far north where even the shores of the continent were wild and uninhabited.
Visiting history was all good and well, but living for any length of time on this spit of land in the middle of the Sundering Sea would drive him quickly insane. The valley was larger than the island and Rivendell's secured holdings ranged much farther afield than just the Last Homely House and its surrounding vale. From the time he had been old enough to roam freely, he had been permitted to wander at will inside the borders of Imladris.
In those long days of youth, before he had been deemed old enough to ride with his brother's yrch hunting, he had become intimately acquainted with each fold and crease of the land, every cascade and cliff, both rivers and all the tiny tributaries they had spawned. There was no chasm, cataract, fissure, ravine or gulch he had not explored, no tree he did not know intimately, no animal, mineral, or vegetable he could not name, no plant that he did not know the properties of, no inch of land that wasn't as familiar as the back of his own hand.
And he had chafed under those conditions.
But home called to him, now, like Tol Eressëa must call to elven kind in Middle-earth; with a clarion voice that bespoke surety and safety in a way he had never needed before, and so, had never desired before either.
Aragorn sighed and turned his attention back to the beach. He was incapable of living the elven ideal of what will be will be and anxiety, yet another thing he had little acquaintance with and few coping skills to manage it, continued to mount with each passing hour.
What had happened to the ship? His companions? Borlath? Were they becalmed and bailing to stay afloat with all the water coming down from the sky? Working on repairs? Had ship and crew been swallowed whole by one of those writhing creatures depicted on Borlath's lost casket? His mind struggled to reject the thought but couldn't quite muster the necessary confidence to dismiss it out of hand. He had never believed in sea monsters, but he could hear Glorfindel as if the golden warrior were standing next to him, reminding him that just because he had never seen one, did not mean it did not exist.
He was tired and edgy and things were so out of his control, he gave in to the ten-year-old that wanted to poke and prod at the sea weed and storm wrack the high tide had stranded on the sand. Picking up a stick, he began to wander down the beach, stooping every so often when something glinted unexpectedly or a strange shell, half hidden in the sand, caught his attention.
Instinct warned him not to touch the clear bladders with dark strands of inky blue and purple at their centers, but he wondered if there might be a way to preserve one of the specimens to take home to his father. Many were smaller than his closed fist, but there were quite a few larger than his head. Nothing presented itself as a way to keep any of them fresh, so he strolled on, thinking that if the island ever dried out, he would need to gather more plant samples as well. Those he had collected previously had been pressed between the leaves of a huge tome he had borrowed from Borlath and stuffed in his pack, which could well be travelling the ocean currents somewhere in Doriath by now.
He found what might have been an entire school of blue fish, none bigger than his thumb, enmeshed in a bed of seaweed. A few appeared to be alive still and these he picked free one by one and carried them down into the surf, but they washed right back up on the sand, too long beached and too feeble to employ the miniscule yellow fins on their own behalf. When he found another, similar batch, he let them be and meandered on, prodding things at random until he grew tired of the exploration.
Aragorn squared his shoulders and collected the ten years he had momentarily laid aside, disciplining his mind to more productive thoughts.
Seaweed was edible, he knew, considered a delicacy in places far to the south in Harad, though not in Rivendell. The sea had washed up a lot of it, in a long, unbroken line up and down the beach as far as the eye could see. Utilizing his stick again, he nudged aside the top layer at his feet and leaned down to liberate a hank from its bed. He tasted it tentatively and found it too salty and too viscous for his liking. Though, looking around with more concentration, he saw several different kinds.
So he tried them all, judiciously, and found one that was tender and moist, and though still quite saliferous, not at all slimy. He made a mental note to build a shallow little cache near the high tide mark, something he could line with stones that would allow him to maintain a level of sea water to keep it fresh until used.
He turned again to the water, realizing it was less murky and brighter this morning, as though reflecting a sun not yet visible through the clouds. All thoughts of seaweed gone, he spun in the sand and raced down the beach to where the remains of their boat shifted restlessly with the sighing and soughing of the surging water. He thought the tide was probably as far out as it would go until Ithil grew round again and that would not be for several days yet. Struggling out of his coat, he dropped with all the grace and agility of mûmakil, down on his rear, to wrestle off his boots. He had an idea he might have trouble getting them back on, wet as they were, and if they did not dry on his feet he was going to be in further trouble; however, if he had to swim at any point, he wanted out of them.
The water at the half of the boat still wedged in the rocks was chest height. He was glad it was not over his head and pleased that the tide was no longer sucking like a calf at its mother's teat. Harwan's side of the boat was nowhere to be seen, but Aragorn found both his pack and Harwan's bow snagged on splintered wooden slats jutting out unevenly from the jagged bottom. The bow was undoubtedly beyond battle use, even if they could manage to dry it out slowly, but it might be effective enough to hunt with still, if they were careful with it. And that could significantly increase their likelihood of eating better.
For a moment, relief drenched him as handily as the rain. Slinging pack and bow over a shoulder, he waded in to shore to leave them well above the high tide mark, taking no chances that they might yet float away.
Returning to the water, he began a methodical, sweeping search of the gently shifting sand and rocks first to the left, then to the right of the boat. He found Borlath's chest quite by accident, and only because the rounded edge of the buried box bruised the bare arch of his sprained foot when he stepped on it. He was not far from the starboard side of the boat and had to dive several times before he was able to dislodge it enough to bring it up; the sand had been packed in so tightly around the thing it had required finding a sharp stone with which to dig it out.
Aragorn wondered if it had buried itself in the sand purposely, waiting for him to find it. He wished, without hope, the map - with its certain magical properties - had done the same.
He spent an hour systematically combing the ocean floor over a wide area, tracing and retracing his steps in tight grid patterns guaranteed to turn up the smallest item. He did not find the map, but he did come across more of the clear bladders floating in the sea, long tentacles dangling quite beautifully beneath them. Since his only knowledge of sea creatures had to do with myths and legends he gave them a wide berth, even when it meant having to wait to search an area until they had floated away.
Being no wetter than he had been prior to the map finding expedition, he eventually splashed his way back to shore and headed down the beach the opposite way, wandering with neither purpose nor intent, but paying attention to the smallest little crab that scuttled away at his approach – the big ones too – wondering if they would be better eating than seaweed. He glanced back, as his mind turned over the possibility and how to get at the meat, and saw that he was out of sight of the ruined boat.
He hesitated, thinking it probably time to turn around, considered there was nothing better to do besides drag Harwan up to the new shelter he had found the night before, and so, with a shrug, continued on down the beach.
He estimated he was on the other side of the island, almost directly opposite their beach, when he found it. The slightly dented, circular map case was draped in seaweed and just as slimy as its green dressings, but intact, and when he twisted it open, the map was as safe and dry curled inside its nest as if it had just been pulled from its berth in the ship master's cabin.
Aragorn shook his head in mild disbelief, but he was grinning as he carefully refitted the two sliding pieces together and tucked it under his arm with gratitude.
Magic. His father was wont to descry magical properties as natural science in its rawest form. And when Aragorn's ability to heal had begun to manifest itself, it had been yet a further proof Elrond's premise was based in fact. Both the map and buried box fell well outside the parameters of natural science and it notched up his concern a little more. If a map and a box could contain magical properties, how much more easy was it to ascribe credit to the myths and legends purporting the existence of big fish and even bigger sea monsters? He shoved away the thought, not wanting to believe his new friends were nothing more than fish chum now.
Rather than turn back since he halfway around all ready, Aragorn moved on, but with a lighter step, despite the rain still pouring down, despite the growling of his stomach, despite the corner of his mind that refused to dismiss the sea monsters.
Preoccupied with thoughts of the map and the box, he strode up and around what looked like it might have once been one of their barrels of food. Fifty yards on, what he had seen caught up with his churning thoughts.
He turned back, dread opening up a yawning pit in his stomach full of cold, bitter sea-water-tasting bile, and found himself scarcely able to force his feet into motion. He had no wish to verify what his mind had registered, but neither could he chose ignorance and hope over the reality awaiting his perusal.
TBC