The foreseeing gift of Dol Amroth was ever fickle.
Most often it came to Faramir as sudden sharpened images. Indistinct and tantalizing. Like bright flashes of silver scales in a weedy murky pool or a firefly's flitting beacon above a mist-shrouded twilight meadow. Beautiful yet maddening, for his mind's eye could not let them go nor could it see what clearly they meant.
Sometimes it appeared just as the Wave. Roiling minutes of sweeping dream that threw him forward or farther back. Holding him fiercely fast and then suddenly letting go, to stand shaken, grasping at straws, trying to discern the lesson in their midst.
Rarer, but all the dearer for it, were confirmations of a place. The rightness of it. The sense that he would be there again and all, in time, would and could be well. His heart would swell, he would feel suddenly rooted into the very bones of earth: like a sapling searching for sun and life-giving water, knowing that the music of the world unfolds as it should.
On that day, the thirtieth since Arda's jubilant release, this last vision took him on the Houses' garden steps.
Light and life. Certainty. An ever-lasting precious memory skeins out here.
The shock made him briefly sway, set hand upon a pillar's sun-warmed stone, look south, to Emyn Arnen's woods and hills again.
What had Najir said? The wind tastes like south. It did—the strong rising breeze that brushed his face brought with it the tang of salt from Befalas bay. A taste of summers long ago he had known and that brought a sweetness and a sadness all its own: Boromir with a missing silver button beside their grandfather's bier. His father's deep, bass rumble of a laugh, free for once at some quip by his great aunt. A scent of jasmine as he reached up to take his mother's hand.
Praise Lorien. he whispered. The tide of loss could indeed recede and in its wake leave life with all its tangled threads, uncertain but hopeful. Of this one thing he was assured. What he did now was right.
Even if, at first, he was sent away summarily.
The sense of affirmation spurred his steps.
Faramir strode along the curving paths; past the near courtyard and it's showy beds bedecked with Spring's shy, small, but deeply coloured blooms; past cascades of softer pink and lavender in the wildly early budding trees. The light flirted with the new green leaves and warmed lilacs that lent their sweet scent to the freshness of the air.
He nodded to the passing soldiers and the servants, to Marrit who held a flat basket of pungent herbs against her hip and whose apron was smudged with moistened earth.
Something in his face made the others smile.
At the nearest fork he found the Warden and reassured Hallas he would indeed soon see the White Lady and allay her disquiet if he could. He took the left hand path, happy to pass its many familiar landmarks: the arbored bench where they first sat. The nodding cypress. The burbling stone fountain now cleared of fallen leaves.
By the high curtain wall he found her.
Crouched in a bed of pale blue los- aglar, pulling at the feisty weeds, Éowyn was unaware of his approach. The hem of her linen kirtle was stained and wet, her tresses were unbound: draped down across her back and nearly touching the softly waving grass. The warmth of the simple scene made him smile. Against the pale greens and browns of the garden weeks before, she had at first seemed white and set. Beautiful but sorrowful. Like a lily caught by an unseasonable frost but now, under the warming, shining sun, she was more gold and cream. Her pale skin had tanned a little from their frequent walks, Her hair was lit by streaks of paler flax. Vital and vigorous.
And possibly quite vigorously angry.
He stopped a careful length from the path's north edge.
"The squirrels do not always follow Grandmother Fana's plan."
He had spoken softly, striving not to startle, as Éowyn reached to pluck a lone yellow jonquil that marred the sea of blue and green. The interloper paused midair. The lady sat slowly back upon her heels, wiped a stray tendril of gold from off her forehead and turned to toss the errant flower into a flat wicker basket nestled at the verge.
Her brows were knit in a frown and there were stray blades of green upon the wrappings of her arm. She brushed them off. Rearranged the frown into a politely neutral mask, and then, graceful as an unfurling bud, she rose, turning to meet his gaze.
A carpet of clear, light sapphire and deeper emerald lay all about her feet. The tiny six-rayed blooms, white at their throat and periwinkle at their tips, were set as a myriad of stars amidst a firmament of green.
The sight and her loveliness caught his breath anew.
"My lady, the stars have fallen to your feet."
Éowyn glanced down, a slight flush staining her paler cheeks. Her expression, that had been stern and shuttered, opened just a crack. "Perhaps so, my lord but not for long. Their time is fleeting but for that very reason they are a favourite. They grow wild between the rocks on Edoras' slopes. So thick at times they make rivers of another blue."
"In Ithilien they are shyer and grace only the rocky higher slopes." Relief was pouring down along his veins. Éowyn was speaking to him. Coolly if not easily, but in tones without heavy censure or frustration. It augured well for the awkward conversation still to come.
But did not absolve him of being circumspect.
"May I help?"
Éowyn shook her head and so, loathe to rush or unsettle this temporary truce, he waited patiently, watched while she reached and set the basket on the gravel, brushed the last specks of soil from off her fingers and shook out the folds of her overskirt. A single industrious bee droned as it swerved between the beds. The Tower pennants snapped loudly in the wind. Just when he thought he might have to break the spell and speak, she caught his gaze and inclined her head.
"You did not come here to speak to me of botany."
Blunt and direct as she had been almost from the first. It was bracing but not unwelcome. An icily polite, aloof Éowyn he could not have borne. "No. No. I did not, " Faramir admitted, shaking his head. "I came to offer my apologies."
A calmly apprising eyebrow rose. "Again? And what of this effort this time is to be different?"
He winced. "I deserved that."
"Yes."
It was a hard but accurate assessment. He steadied himself with a deeper breath, waited to organize his thoughts, for though this was not a contest of marksmanship, he had just one throw. It would not do to let words simply pour out like the Anduin in spate.
"Please. May I explain? Anborn tells me I have been an idiot. My uncle reminds me that the skills that served me well before are not needed here. I see that I have been too careful. It does not help to keep my counsel to myself, especially with the one who needs to know my heart unfettered."
That last word made her eyes widen slightly. An eternity wound tighter than a bowstring passed before she gave a single nod.
A chance. A gift he would not mistake.
He licked lips gone suddenly dry and let a long ago lesson from Mithrandir take him through. Begin at the beginning. Keep going through the middle and do not stop until you reach the end. The rightness of it prickled at his nape.
"Lady, at first you wished to be loved by another, that I know," he began, achingly soft and low. "Your hurt was real and raw, but like your body's pains it dimmed with time and you began to see that you could live again. Here in this restful space you took a chance, kept a fellow soldier company and found something that neither of us could expect. Ease. Trust. Happiness. Bravely you opened a piece of your heart to me for you felt, as did I, a light between us. One that I should have recognized."
"Your gift."
"And yours," he breathed, nodding gravely at the wonder of it all. "It is startling and frightening at first, I doubt not you found it so. But I was too blind, caught in my own cares, to realize. Then thoughtlessly, I dealt you another hurt. Left truths unspoken until too late and that new found trust was sullied. For that I am truly grieved." He was. For it had been so very needless. And he would not hurt her for the world. "Éowyn, there is no other. I understand it could seem so but I could never lie to you. In your company, I have learned to harrow my heart and take delight where I can. Set aside the many fleeting arrows of grief and focus upon the present. It has given me a joy I never thought to know and a hope to think upon the future."
He spread his hands in supplication. "Can you forgive me? Give what we have found another chance?"
In the quiet pause thereafter, the only sound was the rustling of almond and lilac leaves. Faramir nervously ran a hand through his long hair. Was what he had said enough? To heal. To nuture the bond that he could feel threaded sure but loosely between their hearts. Would she understand that he had learned. Painfully. It hurt to see the telltale signs of her disquiet: The slight hollowness where her cheeks had begun to fill, the paleness of her cheek below the sun-kissed spray of freckles.
Éowyn gazed at him evenly, clutching her arms close to her chest, seemingly also in no hurry. "Can I?" she asked at last, a little less hard and cool. Warm rivulets had begun to traverse the slopes of snow.
He nodded, at first slowly but then with surer force. "Yes. Trust in this. I know that in life you must chart your own course, but you will not be bound again. I would give all my heart and strength to see it. By your side. Not as Gondor's Steward, or her Captain, but simply as myself. For I love you. So dearly I would lay down all my offices and follow you wherever that you would go. Edoras. Aldburg. A croft in far off Rhun, if it be your wish."
On impulse, he stepped to the garden's edge and held out his hands to her, palms upward to the sun.
Willing her to bridge the bare few feet of green and beauty that felt more like a moat.
"Éowyn, do you not love me or will you not?"
Uncertainty flickered across her gaze, swift as a hummingbird. There and gone, before shrouded by cool grey again. In its wake Éowyn stood tall and proud and still, unmoving though the wind gusted harder, scudding clouds across the sun and lifting the edges of her sleeve and set the blue stars rippling in the long grass. For a moment all was quiet and then there came another gust. It whistled through the swaying boughs and made her shiver. The thin dress was sufficient when working hard but not proof against the cool rush through the battlements.
Faramir cast his gaze about. At first he saw no cloak, worried fleetingly that she had with purpose forsaken his mother's mantle, but then he spied it. Draped across a low stone bench.
He walked around the bed and retrieved the heavy folds, looped them across his arm before stepping back to his appointed place. The blue velvet hung suspended above the verge, waiting for her to take it if she willed or no. He held his breath, not daring to presume.
At last, with a murmur of quiet thanks, Éowyn slowly unclasped her elbows and reached out to grasp the deep blue. She shrugged it about her narrow shoulders and fixed the clasp's lacy filigree. In the flirting rays of slanting sun the mantle's silver threaded stars winked brighter than the carpet that ringed her round.
Neither of them mistook the symbolism of the moment.
Faramir once more held out his hands to her.
.
~~~000~~~
.
You must open your hands if you wish to be held.
It was Hilde's saying to her high-hearted, too-grown-to-accept-mothering young sons that incongruously came to Éowyn.
The steady, practical Marshal Elfhelm's equally steady, practical wife was the closest to a mother that Éowyn knew at Meduseld. Kind, generous, a font of knowledge even as she steered five busy boys to manhood, Hilde had been the one to fill the gap left by Grandmother Morwen. Teach her the laments and lays, the voice of a woman of her station. To instill the truth that to be Eorlingas was to know that the world was ever ringed with uncertainty. That from the first moment to the last, they lived. Not without hardship, not without heartache and pain and grinding effort. But together. Honourably. Seeking solace where they will, and strength when sinews begin to fail.
you will not be bound again…
This man who with his gift read her as a Rider read the shifting winds upon the wold had gleaned her greatest fear. He offered not pity, nor false promise of life's perfection, but simply his heart. And word.
Could she believe it true?
A day of turning Amerith's explanation around from every angle had at last found no fault. The ruse of their attachment was no different than the one her cousin had employed. A sign of commitment, not faithlessness. In the Steward's garden she had touched his thoughts and felt no falseness there; only a strange new sense that fit with the honesty of his actions and apologies. The inattentiveness that further wounded her angered pride was, if she read Ivriniel's story right, the part she must simply learn to forgive.
If she would take a risk and love.
Éowyn looked from her own small hands to his. Both had once been weakened by toil and shadow but were stronger now. Her shield hand would soon lose its bindings. His sword hand would again have small calluses on the tips from pulling on the bow She has felt warmth and life flow in them as they held hands sneaking through a hidden tunnel. In the House's graceful courtyard under Ithil's silver glow she has tasted his passion from just a brush of his fingertips. He yearned, as she did, for a certainty life could never give but would always strive in hope. He loved—intensely; cared— deeply.
And now he would forsake all for which he had fought and sacrificed. For love of her.
She looked upon his already beloved face and knew that he would do this: cherish and support, madden and surprise her. Always. And it would be glorious.
Éowyn crossed the green gulf between them and placed her hands in his.
.
~~~000~~~
.
Faramir at first did not hear lady's words through the thundering of his heart.
Éowyn was smiling. Wide and winsome, shaking her head earnestly as he stood elated and a little dazed, beyond grateful that she had given him this chance. It felt almost as a dream but he could feel the cool of her fingertips against his heated palm, see the capricious breeze drift her hair about her face. South, west, swirling from one direction then the next it made small eddies in the grass,
He stepped closer, held her lightly close, willing her to warm up and stroking his thumbs slowly over the back of her faintly trembling hands.
She sighed and spoke again. "But what say you if I do wish to trade gold and plains for woods and green? Would help to make Ithilien a fair garden once again?"
"You would?!" He blinked, and a smile tugged irresistibly at his lips. "You must understand that I am not neat."
Éowyn nodded. "Your room attests as much."
"And I have been known to get lost in books."
"Lothíriel remarked on it once."
"And I am not inclined to grow a beard."
Her gold head shook. "This is a most unconventional wooing, my lord, highlighting your deficiencies."
"If I am to endeavour to communicate it seems fair to make a clean breast of it." He raised a dark eyebrow. "You would prefer conventional? Jewels and verse and chaperoned, languid walks with my Aunt?"
She shuddered. "Béma, no. And it is a little late for that. I believe we have already danced the proscribed three times in a row. At two separate functions. Is that not a public declaration of intention by Gondor's fusty rules?"
Faramir laughed a little giddily "Oh yes. Anborn has been taking wagers on the outcome for days."
"Then in fair turn-about, I would have you know I am not always easy. My temper and my snap are long ingrained. Would you have the people say there goes a lord who tamed a wild Shieldmaiden?"
He ran his hands gently up her arms, put a wealth of feeling into a light, sure touch. "Not tamed, my lady. Joined."
She made quiet sound of happiness. "Then, yes."
"You will forgive me? Accept my suit?" he asked, heart trying to beat out of his chest again.
"I will accept the proposal that you will give."
"I will gi….?" Stunned, Faramir looked down into her mist-grey eyes. They sparkled. With delight and happiness and something daring that all at once would melt his heart. "Truly?!"
She searched his face in turn. ""It is not what we both want? I will allow that our days together under Varan's care have taught me greater patience, but by now I believe you know how much I hate to wait. Especially for surprises. I love you Faramir of Gondor. I do not need months of elaborate ritual to know my heart."
Nor did he.
They stood so very close and in the warm sunlight, Éowyn's hair was gleaming, streaming out in the wind and twinning with his own long raven strands. The sense of rightness grew. This, here and now, was the moment that he had felt. To surrender to its sheer beauty felt daring. Reckless with joy and certainty that a dream could, would continue.
He slipped his thumb and forefinger into the pocket of his tunic. "Then it is well that I have something for a token." The slim circle of white and blue rested in his sword hand. "Éowyn, White Lady of Rohan, will you wed with me?"
"I would."
The happiest of tears glinted in her lashes. Faramir bent his dark head down, took her in his arms and kissed her. With wonder to know her fear and dark despair and hunger swept away. With joy for all the days of heart's ease and merriness and passion still to come.
Then with a sigh they broke apart, just enough that her fingers rose up to stroke his cheek, touched his lips that yet felt the tingling press. Below his hands she trembled. Without cool or chill or any fear.
"Are you going to do that again?" Éowyn asked,
He smiled and bent his head to catch her lips again.
"Always…"
.
_~~~000~~~
.
Epilogue
Fourth Age 08
Finduilas was a breath of air.
It was not the first time she had been so. Lord Námo on occasion granted her this boon and she availed herself with joy; delighting in the news she spied, the tales she brought back to share with her husband and eldest son.
Most of the Secondborn did not bother so. Once beyond Arda's grey rain veil their fëar had no wish or need to concern themselves with its unfolding music, but Finduilas, her heart tied to Middle-Earth more than most, pined for the sea and the spray and the shimmering new green of the woods.
On the rare golden days that the Doomsman solemnly cast wide Mandos' hallowed doors, she would rush headlong past his lady's tapestries, sweep down the shining marble steps and traverse the Encircling Sea; blowing gales before her in her haste until Manwë's messengers, strong of wing yet kind of heart, would (gently) admonish her heedlessness.
This day they paid little heed. She passed swiftly but with decorum; the birds shook bright plumed heads and continued their revelry for it was high midsummer of the eighth year of Arda's Fourth Age. All those in the Reunited Kingdom, from Annúminas to Belfalas Bay, Langstrand to Ithilien were celebrating.
As was her wont, first she alighted near the Bay. In Dol Amroth's grand palace gardens she set the nascent apricots trembling on their stems, wafted their soft warm sweetness about her nephews and their families, made the azure ribbons in Amrothos's youngest's hair dance like fireworks. At the sight Ivriniel and Imrahil (a little greyer but no less vital) caught each other's eye and smiled, for they too had on a long vanished brilliant day run with their sister up and down the gravel paths, filled to bursting with figs and cherries and sugared sweets.
Finduilas smiled. All there, including Lossarnach's oft-spied Duchess, were well content and so she soared aloft, sped north to the City of Stone where she had lived. King Elessar and Queen Arwen were presiding over perfect mountains of strawberries and cream in a sunlit glowing hall. Their son and daughters, raven-haired and grey-eyed, lithe and strong and graceful as their grandmother, were released from formal ceremony. Ran pell mell down the polished marble and out into the verdant courtyard, where stood a white tree in leaf—silver and opal and tender green. Soon with sunset to burst into clouds of snowy blooms.
Her heart shone with gladness. The city bore only shadows that were a welcome cool respite from the noonday sun and so, at last, she let herself pour eastward. Let need and hope and bridled anticipation take her in the merest beat across Anduin and to the low, verdant range of hills where lived her younger son.
Emyn Arnen, this day, was also celebrating.
On the Estate's rear porch she blew a short cooling gust for Rohan's Queen. Swollen ankles perched on a cushion, Lothíriel fanned her face and brushed a sweat damp lock from off her cheek. "I might have timed this better," she grumbled to her audience, shifting a little uncomfortably, "I feel like a summer melon, full to bursting and ready to split apart."
"Given Elfwine is just past his own name day, I should think you haven't planned at all." Éowyn grinned and shared a knowing look with Godwyn. Beside them, sitting decorously at Lothíriel's feet, Malina blushed red as the rose that climbed the nearest post. She was not yet eighteen. A beauty. With Theodred's glorious wheat gold hair and Godwyn's ice blue eyes, courted by half of Edoras' new recruits and somewhat relieved to be away from the attention.
"Let me, Aunt Thiri," she offered, rising to refill Lothíriel's silver cup. "A drink may help."
"Thank you, swéte." Lothíriel drank deeply of the sweet lemon water, sighing heavily at the heat and took up her fan again. She frowned as she followed her sister-in-law's gaze out past the near herb beds to the gilt and silver glory of a young mallorn tree. "Do you think that they need any help?"
Ithilien's Lady regarded the two men who were kneeling back to back below the spreading branches. They were barefoot. Clad in grass-stained breeches rolled to their knees and light linen shirts that stuck to sweat damp skin. One had his long fair hair tied in a thong. The other's dark locks hung lose.
They were entirely encircled by shouting children still adorned with smears of frosting and lemon cream.
"Oh no," Éowyn laughed lightly. "The odds are just slightly in their favour."
Finduilas soared out from under the stone house's eaves. She swooped low and gently, ruffled the ends of blond braids and dark sticky fringe, settled on the grass to watch a moment long foretold.
The combatants fought not the Pelennor, for those memories were still a little new, but the little known, unsung epic battle of the Goblin Kings against the good folk of Anorien.
The first assault had been futile. Running headlong one by one and pummeling a pair of prodigiously tall and muscled fathers had not make a dent and so a new strategy was hatched. Finduilas' eldest grandchild, the one with his uncle's gay charm and love of battle sport, had his little brother on his back. Théomund trumpeted 'for Gondor!" and as one the pair swooped up, stretched out fingers to their father's ticklish left flank. He twisted and ducked just out of reach, swiftly plucked his youngest from his perch. One hand was sufficient to pin a giggling Theo to the turf. Faramir had begun to 'punish' the little one mercilessly behind his knee when Elboron spied an opening. With admirable speed and force he tried a hold that owed more to fracas on his great Uncle's docks than formal Minas Tirith wrestling. Faramir jerked, scrabbled for a moment to gain purchase on Bron's shirt, then turned it inside out; flattened the lad beside his little brother just before the assault of their fiercest foe.
Finduilas' namesake. Swift and energetic and almost frighteningly bright. The one who one day would dream of waves and green and Númenor rushed in and smacked her father with all her might upon his thigh.
"Ow. Fin, sweetheart, not so hard." Concerned more for Rohan's prince toddling underfoot than for himself, Faramir grabbed his daughter bodily and tossed her softly to the grass, before pulling up into in a protective fighting stance. "I never realized I was keeping up my conditioning for this!" he shot wryly to his left.
"Nor I!" laughed Éomer-King, arms full of fiercely writhing daughters. There was a drop of sweat streaking down his nape and a mallorn petal stuck to his collarbone. 'Accidentally' he loosened his grip; howled in despair as the pair-one fair, one dark-leapt away and mindfully took up their brother's chubby hand.
By now all the defenders had reached their feet again. A most dire situation. Goblin-Faramir raised his 'hackles' and his 'claws', breathed deep and let out an almighty roar.
The troops scattered in a cavalcade of delightfully frightened squeals.
Chest heaving, blades of grass akimbo in his hair, Ithilien's Prince grinned merrily and paused to admire his handiwork. A candle-mark of tumbling has left him scratched and bruised, shirt torn, and absolutely thrilled. A day to savour. He picked up his belt and dagger from their safe shelter by the tree, then paused, head cocked, for suddenly he caught the scent of jasmine and apricot. Strong and sweet and soothing. It made his heart swell with happiness; long for Dol Amroth's tawny sands and sun-drenched waves, for the first moist bite of summer fruit.
Faramir looked up to the house and smiled to his lady fair. Éowyn was sun-dappled, more beautiful than ever to his eye and, of course, focused on the practical. They were to wash off the heat and sugar in the River. He acknowledged her shooing motion with a wave, approved his brother-in-law's plan of first scrounging a mug of ale and began to scan the garden for his littlest. Théo would need a piggy back.
.
All at once a rush of cold air streamed past his heated cheek, It was welcome but startling-
sharply chill and tinged with a breath of snow.
Finduilas, diaphanous, insubstantial as a sigh, coursed through the mallorn's branches and swooped down to kiss her son's furrowed brow.
Once, she might have feared; swirled about the intruding breeze and formed a cordon around her son, warded away the fëa of a foul and cankerous wizard. But not this day. It was naught but Manwe's western wind. Forthright and steady. Coming down from Mindolluin's snows to ease them all.
Finduilas sighed contentedly. All was well and as it should. She brushed playfully at Faramir's dark locks and drank in again the sunny faces of her grandchildren. Her dream had been a beacon for them both—in dark times and glad, through toil and triumph, under shadow and pale wintery sun. The truth was not exact. Not precisely as she had seen but it mattered not. The music changed as Eru willed but the main notes were there.
She gathered their happiness to her like a cloak .
It was time to journey home.
.
Well everyone here we are. I can hardly believe it. This story has been so much a part of my life for so long it feels very bittersweet. I have quite literally begun to learn to write while doing it (if not how to punctuate!) and I owe so much thanks to so many. To Annafan for encouraging me and holding my hand at times. To the Ladies of the Garden of Ithilien for their support and always excellent commentary. To Wheelrider and lately Eschschiziola for betaing. But most of all to my husband and son who have put up with this hobby with good grace and helped me through a year of frightening and relentless illness. I am very blessed; with them, and all of you wonderful readers. Your comments and response have been a sheer delight and I have been privileged to get to know a few of you.
I will say Namárië. Just for a while. And hope our paths cross again...