A/N: I'm so very sorry for the length of time it has taken to resolve this WIP. Any readers left have my promise that I will never, ever, ever (are you hearing shades of a Taylor Swift song?) do this to you again. Only finished stories will be posted from this profile from here on out. My humbly grateful regard to all of you who've stuck with it here to the bitter end.
And here is a bit from the end of the previous chapter:
…Harwan only raised an eyebrow, adding a rueful smile of acknowledgement. "I suppose you will have to learn from experience, but I will tell you now, brooding bars the way of contentment. It is a useless occupation." The sailor rose, stretching as though relieving muscles aching with ages of accumulated tension. "Waste as little time as possible on it; your mind will be far better occupied with more important things. I believe I will retire for what if left of the night."
Aragorn twisted his head around to watch the sailor disappear, blending into the shadows beneath the trees as only an elf could do. A tantalizingly sealed scroll, he lamented silently, a living historical record who might well be the only one who could recount the history of Middle-earth from the beginning.
Chapter 14
Never one to sit idle, Aragorn had made his way back to the ruins of Nargothrond from inside the caverns and climbed to the top, using the dead vines like the monkeys he had read about in the places in Harad where the giant mûmakil were bred. The bottom of the steep ravine had been covered in sharp, thorny bushes and required a good deal of circumnavigation to avoid completely shredding his clothing, though he must have emerged onto the beach a wild spectacle indeed, for the far-seeing elf had dropped his fishing line hastily at the sight of the bleeding, porcupine'd figure trudging toward him.
Harwan had made him strip and go immediately to bath in the salt water of the ocean once the last of the barbs had been drawn from flesh.
The elf's curiosity had been roused, though he knew no good could come of it. He had visited kin in Nargothrond from time to time, and, driven by memories probably best left moldering in the dark places of his soul, had returned with Aragorn to hack a trail through the entangling understory of brush.
Some of the vines grew as thick as a man's arm and could be sliced and spliced so as to create makeshift rope ladders, which they did, though an afternoon's exploration accompanied by Aragorn with his excited questions about the distant relations he shared in common with his foster family had quickly extinguished Harwan's enthusiasm. His family history, stretching back to Valinor and Alqualondë, was nothing he had wished to contemplate; particularly not Lúthien's treatment at the hands of his younger brothers.
He did not return again to Nargothrond and the book that was Harwan remained stubbornly closed in the days and weeks that followed that revelatory night and their one afternoon of exploration.
The elf's refusal to return, however, had not diminished Aragon's adventuresome spirit. He had returned again and again to the hidden city, exploring every nook and cranny he could squeeze himself through.
The youth stretched limbs cramped from a long day spent in the ruins as he studied the wall where he had begun marking off the days since the shipwreck. Ithil had waxed and waned and waxed again, though the wall showed markings for less than half that time. He glanced suspiciously at the busily carving elf across the fire.
Harwan did not so much as raise his head, though in the manner of all the fair folk, he knew himself observed. "Why do you attempt to bend time to your will?"
"I do not," Aragorn replied, more than hint of exasperation in his voice, "I am only trying to keep track of how long we have been here."
"To what purpose? You will neither lengthen nor shorten our stay by measuring it."
"I know that." Irritably, Aragorn tossed the charcoal back into the fire. If Harwan did not wish him to keep the tally, there would be no use attempting it further. "I cannot change what happened any more than I am in control of how long we remain here. Sometimes though, knowledge just for the sake of knowledge is neither friend nor foe."
"Then you are keeping an historical record."
"Aye, though I realize it was not accurate, since I did not start at the beginning." Restlessly Aragorn moved to add wood to the fire. "Perhaps one day I will wish to tell others of this experience."
The one thing that had changed significantly with the revelation of Harwan's elven heritage had been their ability to communicate. The elf spoke every language Aragorn knew, fluently, and had any number of others at his command. On this point, he had ceded to the young one's pestering and was teaching him far more than just the odd language of the Hadrim. It would be many years before Aragorn gained enough understanding to recognize the gift for what it was.
Harwan lifted his head, seeking eye contact. "I am sorry. It did not occur to me that you might wish to keep an historical record. It was also thoughtless to amuse myself at your expense. If you wish to reconstruct your calendar, we have been here ninety-seven days in the way time is measured by mortals."
More than three months, Aragorn thought wearily, bending to retrieve the piece of charcoal. If the ship had merely been battered, they would have been back by now. Without a doubt the ship and crew had sunk.
"It's useless," he said on a sigh. "We will be here at least a year. I had hoped…" he trailed off as the mindless words struck him and he laughed hollowly. Still, he retrieved another piece of charcoal and righted the tally.
"You had hoped what?" Harwan inquired softly. He did not prompt again when the silence lengthened, merely waited with a patience that came naturally only to an immortal.
Aragorn lifted his chin, almost as if in defiance, though the toe of his boot rubbed restively at the floor. "I had hoped they survived somehow."
"Do not let despair crawl in through this door you have opened. It is not a pleasant bedfellow." Harwan returned to his whittling.
Soon after the pair of dice had appeared, eating utensils and plates had been brought out to accommodate meal times, and shortly after that, a new bow had taken shape, though it had neither the agility nor power of the salt-water ruined bow.
The reticent elf had pointed Aragorn in the direction of fibrous plant whose leaves could be torn into narrow strips and woven into a malleable bow string. It had taken much trial and error on Aragorn's part before the string had acquired the strength to resist the draw, but its fragility had also augmented his competence with a bow.
Aragorn's weapon of choice had always been the sword; however, when a string required a day to create and gave no more than a draw or two, one quickly learned to sight accurately or go hungry.
Despite the ship captain's intimation that Aragorn's companion had been too long a sailor to accommodate himself to land again, Harwan had quietly and competently met each new challenge. And Aragorn, yet an eager student in all things pertaining to the natural world, had soaked up the impromptu lessons like a wick soaking oil.
An incident early on in their enforced adventure, with a turtle and a much longer swim than Aragorn anticipated, had winkled out another of the elf's inestimable talents.
At Harwan's amused provocation, Aragorn had mounted the back of a giant sea tortoise, riding the lumbering form down the beach and into the water, holding onto the shell until it dove languorously down into the shimmering, green depths. The turtle had not taken him terribly far out into the ocean, but returning against the tide had been far more difficult than either Harwan or Aragorn had anticipated.
Harwan had dragged the exhausted and badly sunburned youth from the clutches of waves not particularly anxious to give up their prize. And Aragorn had discovered the elf housed a veritable wellspring of medicinal knowledge.
He did not remember much of the initial incident, only its aftermath, as the combination of severe muscle fatigue and sun exposure had engendered a light swoon. He did recall spending several days covered in a sticky, gelatinous salve that Harwan had informed him would keep several layers of his skin from peeling off. He had thought there had been more than just the salve at work, especially as he had emerged from the experience with nothing more serious than a deep tan and a deeper appreciation for resisting Harwan's sense of humor. But while the elf had agreed to teach him the more arcane uses of the island's bountiful botany, Harwan had not been forthcoming regarding the sorcerous nature of his healing skills.
Aragorn had learned to channel the earth's energy in his own healing practice, but he'd sensed in Harwan a deeper connectivity than he knew even from his foster father's healing hands. He had wanted desperately to ask if it was just Ages of experience, or if it might not be that the elf was that much more in tune with all life force due to acquaintance with the Singers themselves in another lifetime.
Harwan had consistently turned aside all questions, though with less vehemence after their night on the mountainside. And Aragorn, employing that newly emerging maturity, had eventually quit attempting to pry open the clamshell the elf so often resembled.
Routine became complacency, complacency became peace and Aragorn found himself yielding to a softening of spirit, sensing something unfolding that perhaps would have gone unnoticed had it not been for the enforced solitude.
The map of Númenor had revived the history lessons he had found so fascinating as a boy, and recalled the depthless sadness that had always enveloped Erestor when the subject of Númenor was on the day's lesson plan. It had recalled to mind, too, how the few pictures he had found of the ancient island had whetted his appetite for more.
He had since visited the King's House in Armenelos, viewed the great ships of Rómenna, and wandered the quarries of Forostar. And begun making mental notes against some distant future when the things he was learning might influence a decision on behalf of a kingdom. Thus he had stowed away a wealth of wisdom as he walked the vineyards of Hyarnustar, Mittalmar's sheep pasturage, wandered amongst the merchants of the great port city of Andúnië, returning again and again on subsequent visits to Sorontil, where he had spent long hours engrossed in watching eaglets learn to fly.
"You are Aragorn, son of Arathorn, chieftain of the Dúnedain; heir of Elendil and Isildur. To you belongs the forsaken high throne of Gondor and Anor." The words had woken instincts buried deep beneath layers of puissant protections set to guard him in his youth. With solitude and time for reflection, instincts buried with intent long ago, to be revealed only when needed, had begun to prod his conscious thoughts. Generations of embedded wisdom and knowledge, stored in the very bones of his ancestors, had begun to well up like the spring that fed the pool where they bathed.
Trusting those instincts was a bit like watching the eaglets learning to fly. The tumble from the nest might be a short free fall before instinct opened wings and caught the air currents, or a long arduous descent before intuition whispered instruction in the fledgling ear.
It required an acknowledgement of his mortal frailties, but at the same time reinforced his ascendency, his right to bear the tokens passed down from father to son in a long line. And if fortune smiled upon him someday, the right to pass the Ring of Barahir and the sword of Narsil on to a son of his own.
The thought of fatherhood had startled him. He had little experience with children as there had been precious few born around the time of his fostering in the valley and those had been too small to be playmates for a rapidly growing mortal child. But watching the eaglets tumbling through the clear blue skies over the North Cape, the elders circling beneath the fledglings, ever alert to any serious malfunction in those first flights, drifting upward to bear-up a struggling eaglet, he thought again of his own childhood in Rivendell and could acknowledge with new understanding how often his family had born him up on wings of love and devotion. And knew with an aching longing, that he had been tutored in fathering by the very best.
Should he ever be blessed with progeny, the tenets of fatherhood had been lovingly tattooed on his own heart and would translate into practice with the same instinctual resonance that opened his heart now.
All these things he stored up in his heart, examining each new revelation for the kernel of truth from which it sprang.
Time acquired a new suppleness.
In an attempt to expand their menu choices, Harwan assured Aragorn the inner flesh of the pincer-waving, beach-crawlers was tasty if cooked. And sure enough, the flaky, slightly-sweet, slightly-salty meat turned out to be edible. There being an abundance of the things, they became a dietary staple, along with the seaweed Aragorn cultivated in his little rock-lined pool.
They began to cultivate edible wild plants and from Harwan, Aragorn learned the distillations and herbal remedies of the island's medicinal plants, increasing his herb lore half again, though many of the plants they found no longer grew on the continent. Aragorn learned to dry and preserve them as well and it did not take long for his pack to be overflowing again.
Often he swam with pods of extraordinarily friendly, bottle-nosed creatures that whistled like birds and barked like packs of wild dogs. When he forgot himself sufficiently, and found the ten-year-old again, he played chase with the long-legged birds that came every forenoon to poke about in the sand, eating the littlest pincer-wavers.
The measurement of time ceased, flowing from one day to the next in much the same way his youth had passed. And Aragorn was content to wait.
Having spent an Age or more in far Harad, Harwan had absorbed much of the Easterner's familiarity with signs and portents, and saw many things he did not share with Aragorn, crafting instead, subtle ways of adding to the instinctual knowledge he also saw bubbling to the surface. Because of it, Aragorn learned not only how to navigate a ship, his own creativity was stretched as Harwan tutored him in the making of crude, but effective, navigational tools.
One of the downed, high-elevation cedars, after months of long, intensive labor gouging out its innards became a serviceable canoe. They became quite adept at paddling out to sea in their improvised boat, and Aragorn learned to use a kamal, sometimes called the guiding line, Harwan had informed him, to estimate distances to land. From the kamal, the youngster had graduated to measuring angles, first with a cross-staff, then an octant put together with bits of the tin from Aragorn's shaving mirror and a casing carved from jatoba.
The weather became predictable under Harwan's tutelage, its patterns easily discernible to the practiced eye. Measurements of wind and tide evolved as second nature to Aragorn; he learned to descry the foretellings of the animal kingdom who were the first and most reliable and accurate predictors of bad weather.
He learned to find the art in the wood, as Harwan spoke of it, and put it to use making practice swords. Eventually Aragorn had worn down the elf's reticence to engage even in mock battles, and acquired a teacher whose skill far surpassed the Golden Legend's formidable talent. Which should have been unsurprising given that much of the elf's early life had been spent in combat.
Curiously, Glorfindel's lessons came back, too, as Aragorn's body, settling into its adult height and breadth, began to understand on a muscular level, how things worked together so his arm became an extension of his brain and thought became motion almost without effort.
And an ancient elf, long inured to the weariness he had borne for ages, began to find new pleasure in his existence.
Although Aragorn had grown up in semi-solitude, the only child among innumerable adults, the quality of his solitude had been different, for he had known always there were adults to rely on. Harwan, while not malicious about it, left him to find his own way out of most of the scrapes he got himself into through curiosity or contrariness. And over the months and seasons that passed, turned the youth into a very self-reliant young adult.
A mild winter gave way to a showery spring. Aragorn's naming day passed, though he was not precisely certain of the actual day. And spring rolled into a hot, steamy summer.
According to the calendar on the wall in the cave, Ithil had waxed and waned nine times since their precipitous arrival.
Thinking about their extended stay now, as Aragorn sat fletching new arrow shafts in the shade of one of the towering pines bordering the wide stretch of beach sloping down to the sea, he realized they would not be here much longer.
Somewhere along their journey, the island had gone from expedient refuge, to a place of sanctuary, no longer resented as merely a way station, but fully embraced as a place of insight and respite. For here on these shores, Aragon had emerged from the cocoon that was Estel, and come to accept and even appreciate the bubbling caldron of mixed ancestry he had inherited.
There was no anxiety anymore, when his thoughts strayed, as they often did, to the longed for reunion with atarinya – not his foster father, nor adopted father – my father. Each new experience here on the island had broadened and deepened the perceptions of his heart and he had acquired a bone-deep understanding of what it meant to be raised as a son of the house of Elrond. He knew his welcome home would be untainted by bitterness on either side.
He knew, too, with a surety that made no logical sense, that there were before him, long years of toil and strife. But the knowledge did not daunt him as it might have done at the beginning of the voyage. He had been to the top of Meneltarma, and it had not required the ancient map maker's magic to transport him there. Experience had done that for him, taken him to the mountaintop, the ascent dramatically changing his perspective of himself and the world around him.
A shout from further down the beach interrupted his reverie so he straightened and laid aside the half-fletched arrow, rising to look out to the horizon where Harwan was pointing.
He saw nothing for several long minutes, though the elf continued to wave and point, as Harwan began running toward him, churning sand beneath flying feet – truly the fastest Aragorn had ever seen the sailor move.
"A ship! A ship comes!"
Straining his eyes, shielded from the glaring sun by a hand, Aragorn caught sight of a spec on the horizon, that rapidly became the full-bellied sails of a magnificent ship.
He met Harwan in the shallows, was caught up in a wild embrace by the taller, broader elf and whirled madly so they were both soaked from head to toe, their ecstatic laughter echoing off the calm water.
"Come! Let us make a feast for our rescuers!" Harwan commanded joyously as he released the youth. He judged that landfall was unlikely this day, for the ship would not reach them before nightfall and he did not want Aragorn dwelling overmuch on the fate of the crew.
And so they hurried and scurried like those little pincer-waving creatures, scuttling rapidly from pillar to post as they collected all their stores and prepared everything they had on hand.
Whether the Valar willed it or the winds out of the south were stronger over water than on land, the ship weighed anchor an hour before sunset, small shapes Aragorn's mortal eyes could make out only as ants swarming over the sides and down into the long boat that rapidly shoved off.
Harwan busied himself setting ablaze the bonfire they kept at the ready above the hightide mark, leaving Aragorn to wait anxiously in the shallows again, quivering like the young stallion he so often resembled.
Strain his mortal eyesight as he might, the tiny figure in the bow of the boat would not come into focus, until a piercing shaft of the setting sun gilded the tall frame, glinting off the gold buckles of a well-known pair of knee boots, proclaiming the identity beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Whooping with glee, Aragorn splashed back toward the beach to snatch up the elf and drag him into an inpromtu dance. "They live! They live! It is Borlath and company! And my brothers with them!" Not surprisingly, in his euphoric state, he failed to notice the sly smile that flashed across Harwan's habitually long face.
And as the sun sank in a flash of iridescent green, cloaking the far ship in shadowy night, the sailors in the long boat shifted oars and beached upon the wet sand.
"Well, Master Dúranu," the ship captain boomed as he hopped over the edge of the boat on dry land and claimed the first embraces from the shipwrecked pair. "Are you ready to sail on to Meneltarma?" Borlath, jostling aside the brothers vying for an opportunity to greet their wayward sibling, drew the youth toward the bonfire, the better to look him over. "You are in need of some better-fitting garments I see; you have filled out some in the interim," he observed.
Aragorn met the scrutiny with far more aplomb than he had nine long months ago. "Aye, the eating has been not so bad. And it is as you said," he offered with ungrudging immediacy, "I have been to the mountaintop and do not need stand upon that holy ground with my own two feet."
A grin split the mouth covered by a full beard, showing those juice-stained teeth, but it was to Harwan that Borloth gave his commendations. "You have done fine job, Master Harwan! A fine job indeed! I knew we would not have to wait the full year to return!" He hugged Aragorn again, hard, before twirling him into the embrace of his howling kin.
"Wait?" Aragorn managed breathlessly as he was hugged and pounded on the back simultaneously. "What do you mean wait to return?" This time he did catch the sly smile, as there was no longer even an attempt to hide. "You knew?" he demanded of his smirking ship mate.
Harwan merely shrugged and handed his co-conspirator a newly-opened bottle.
"Aye, he made us wait, indeed," Elrohir shouted above the mad capering of the entire crew as more bottles were opened and the elixir of celebration began to flow freely.
"In Lindon, where he returned after fleeing the storm he likely conjured," Elladan barked.
"I did no such thing," Borlath refuted, pouring half of the bottle down his throat as he sputtered, "and I will gladly refund your gold since you appear to have no wish to journey on. Crewing for the first half of the journey should cover all expenses."
"Father was livid when he arrived back in Lindon without the precious cargo entrusted to him," Elladan announced, pouring the rest of the bottle down his own gullet.
"The ship had to be re-outfitted from stem to stern; we took a lot of damage in that storm, nearly had to rebuild her from keel up! I did not make you wait longer than was necessary to be watertight and shipshape again, so do not be filling the young one's ears with false tales."
Aragorn grabbed the ship captain again and whirled him gleefully about the bonfire. "Keep your gold. I do not care if you did make us wait," he whispered loudly, but for Borlath's ears alone. "It has been a profitable and beneficial time out of time. Whatever your machinations, even if you plotted with atarinya on this, I do not care. But there will be a price, perhaps to be collected years hence, for I know who you are and where you operate and I will find you again when I have need of you. I know who Harwan is as well, and will not hesitate to use it as a bargaining tool," he said pleasantly, releasing the wizard. "It would not do to forget the instrucment you have helped to forge."
Borlath threw back his head and roared with unfettered laughter. "It is a bargain well made, young one!" He fisted a hand to his heart and bowed his head, dark eyes twinkling brightly in the firelight. "I will await your pleasure, Prince of Númenor."
The End