The War of Light and Shadow
By Freddie23
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Disclaimer: I own nothing Tolkien created.
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Chapter 13
Ghosts
Before wandering off into the forest proper to collect firewood, Legolas decided that exploration of some of the other houses up in the nearby trees was in order, hoping that maybe they might hold more that could be valuable to the two travellers. Some lay completely in ruins; empty wrecks, shells where nothing could survive unscathed, but others remained reasonably untouched by Evil or time. He climbed up the first ladder without trepidation – he knew instinctively that no evil lingered here that could endanger them.
The monsters that Sauron sent to ravage the Elven lands had long ago abandoned Lothlorien. With no power remaining in its woods with the removal of the Lady of Light, the comparatively small Elven kingdom would have been all but worthless to the armies of Shadow once its few treasures had been plundered. Once the magically defended borders had been breached, the Evil would have swept through, mercilessly devastating and destroying everything they touched as they went by but they had obviously not felt the need to set up any kind of base here. With the mighty stronghold of Dol Guldur just over the Great River in Mirkwood, it would have been pointless to post troops in the Golden Wood and waste precious resources on a dead and worthless land.
It saddened Legolas to know that seemingly so little effort had been put in by the Shadow to eradicating the splendid kingdom of the Noldor queen and Sindar king; such a meaningless loss of an Elven race. And yet it seemed that the Orcs had spared very little as they had sacked the forest. The ground, which was once carpeted in lush green grass, was now all but bare, scorched by fire at some point in the past and never allowed to regrow due to a pitiful lack of sunlight. The magnificent Mallorn trees had been stripped of their silver bark; their exposed, thick trunks hacked at by crude Orkish weapons until cold metal had killed the spirit inside.
Legolas could so easily imagine their pain, could almost feel their terror and hear the echo of the cries Lorien's inhabitants had heard screeching through the forest as their beloved home was ravaged by the Darkness. Closing his eyes as he briefly paused in between looking up into the houses for supplies, Legolas laid the palm of his hand against the trunk of one tall tree.
Once, these great trees would have sung with joyous abandon to the Prince of Mirkwood but now he heard nothing but eerie silence. Not even a vague ring of the anguish they must have endured in their final years remained behind. Just dead quiet. It was more chilling to Legolas than the shrill crying he had heard from his own forest as it burned.
"I am sorry, my friends," he breathed in whispered Elvish, stepping back away from the trunk.
This forest could offer Legolas' aching heart no more relief. It was long dead; unable to help even itself, so it had no chance of soothing the Elf's pain. Everything in Lothlorien – and seemingly everywhere else on Arda - was now rotten to the very core, the evil of the Shadow having seeped into every single thing that had once been living and joyous. The Orcs had blasted through this land, slashing and burning until nothing recognisable remained.
The aching in Legolas' heart pulsed in sympathy and he raised his hand to his chest in pain. There was no comfort Legolas could offer either these dead trees or himself so he carried onwards along the path, searching for something much more earth-bound, more tangible – supplies.
The majority of houses he searched had been stripped bare during the siege on Lorien and held nothing of use or interest to him. A couple though, held some rather gruesome reminders of the horrors that had undoubtedly occurred in the Golden Wood. As he looked around in one large home, high in the bare branches, he was startled to find a couple of adult skeletons laid side by side on a huge four-poster bed, as if they had one day laid down and simply ceased to live, perhaps believing that death would be more merciful.
Saddened by the pitiful sight, Legolas circled around to the other side of the bed to find a now empty medicine bottle lying on the dust-covered wooden floor. So in a way they had indeed gone to sleep and simply died in peace. Probably feeling they had no other choice in the wake of the onslaught of Shadow, they had each taken a lethal dose of whatever poison they had had to hand in their house, laid down together in bed and gone to sleep, safe from the terrors being inflicted upon their kin.
Ruthlessly pushing down his sympathies for these poor people, who were far beyond aid now anyway, Legolas reached over them and unwound the blanket that was entwined around their skeletal legs, trying not to focus on the task at hand. He shook out the dust, coming to the conclusion that after a thorough wash it would be perfectly alright for his and Aragorn's uses.
Another couple of houses he briefly looked in also contained the corpses of their inhabitants but he passed all these by without rifling for supplies, having no desire to breathe in the scent of any more death. These ill-fated Elves could rest now in peace without him disturbing their graves.
In one home he checked, he was pleased to discover a wardrobe full of clothes. Uniforms of a warrior of Lorien hung neatly from the rail and several pairs of soft leather, light brown boots rested on the floor of the wardrobe.
Grabbing all that he could carry, Legolas decided that he would now call an end to his fairly fruitful yet increasingly macabre searching and head back to Aragorn. Hurrying back along the path through the town, Legolas felt another chill steal through him. Night was beginning to fall and the temperature was starting to drop but Legolas thought the weather had very little to do with the cold currently seeping through him, chilling his heart.
In the twilight of this sad day, Legolas felt the overall creepiness of the deserted forest wash over him again. Ghosts, invisible even to his sensitive eyes, haunted the Golden Wood-turned-Black. Shadows of what used to be glided invisibly around him, causing chills to rip through him. He shuddered violently and looked around himself.
This was absurd, he berated himself severely in his head. There were not and never had been any ghosts here. Such things simply did not exist. Only memories, bitter and twisted over the ravages of horror and time, remained in the Wood and, although sad, Legolas knew that rationally he should not fear them. And yet fear them was all he had done for the years since the fall of his own home and people. Memories were painful and he didn't like to dwell on them, which was probably why he felt so dreadfully uncomfortable in this place full of constant spectral reminders, not only of his time in the Golden Wood itself but also of his own lost kingdom, his own slaughtered people.
Suddenly, he felt the almost desperate need to be back with Aragorn, to be once more amongst the living, the breathing, the complaining, once more. He hadn't realised how much he had depended on the boy for that feeling that there was, in this horribly defiled world, something other than the agonies of death. Aragorn was so vibrant compared to all the other wretched beings Legolas had come across on the Old Forest Road since leaving his beloved Mirkwood behind.
Climbing swiftly up the ladder, two rungs at a time, to the flet where the boy was waiting for him, Legolas threw open the broken door and stepped inside, breathlessly looking around for his young charge.
"Aragorn?" Legolas called out in demand when he didn't immediately see his ward. "Where are you?"
"I'm right here," Aragorn answered in frustration, appearing in the doorway of one of the rooms, obviously having detected the panic in his guardian's voice.
"Don't do that!" Legolas exclaimed, striding into the sitting room and dumping the things he had collected from the other houses down on the table in the centre of the room.
"Do what? I didn't do anything!" the boy insisted.
"Disappear like that."
"I was just looking around."
Legolas nodded vacantly, willing his heart to cease its painful pounding against his ribs, and asked the boy, "Did you finish sorting the Lembas?"
"Yes," Aragorn drawled, as if he wouldn't have completed the task set for him. Legolas was in an odd mood, even stranger than before he had left to search the area and rarely did that bode well for him.
"Good. Here," he tossed a bundle of clothes he'd scavenged into Aragorn's arms. "Sort that lot out; see what fits you. We can adjust it if we need to."
"Where did these come from?" Aragorn asked, shifting the clothes thrown haphazardly into his arms so he didn't drop them.
"I had a look through the nearby houses."
"Oh, right."
"Do that and I'll start a fire." Legolas picked up the wood he had also remembered to collect and went over to the stove, kneeling down and opening the bottom metal door, having to pull hard when it stuck from lack of use. It was easy enough to light even with the slightly damp wood and Legolas for a moment basked in the familiar warmth of the stove.
"Are these for me too?" Aragorn called from the sitting room.
Legolas turned to the boy to see him holding up a pair of leather boots. "Yes. There are two pairs there. Pick the pair that fits you best."
"They look new."
"Uh-huh."
"I've never had new shoes before."
"Well, now you do."
OIOI
The home was far from perfect. Besides the sparse, mostly broken furniture there were very few homely belongings left in the house. Legolas supposed that perhaps the Elf who had once lived here had been one of the lucky ones who had been allowed to leave early enough, probably before the main attacks on the city, no doubt to travel to the eternal peace of the Undying Lands.
At least that was what he hoped had happened. He didn't like to think that maybe the house's previous inhabitant had abandoned the place because he or she had been forced out by Orcs or whatever other vicious creatures had laid siege to Lothlorien.
"Alright, we have heat," Legolas told the boy once he'd gotten the stove burning well.
"Shall I change into these now?" Aragorn asked of the clothes he was still holding onto.
Legolas stood up and strode over to the boy, laying his hand on Aragorn's shoulders and whirling him around before gently pushing him forwards.
"What are you doing?" the startled boy asked in confusion.
"Before you change your clothes you can clean up." Legolas led the boy into the bathroom, having already emptied his canteen of water into a pan from the kitchen. "Get out of those old clothes," he told Aragorn, picking the pan of water up. "I'll be back in a minute."
He returned to the kitchen and placed the pan on top of the stove for the water to warm up. As he did so, he held his hands over the top, hovering a safe distance from the heat. He wasn't cold, not truly cold like he had been in the past, and yet he relished the heat rising up nevertheless; not so much because he not felt this kind of warmth recently but rather the source of the warmth he now felt. It came from a home; like it had done before the final War.
"It's freezing in here," Aragorn's voice shouted from the bathroom, making Legolas smile slightly.
"Just a moment," he called back then held one hand closer to the simmering water, deciding that it was now warm enough for his purposes. Pulling down the sleeve of his jacket to protect the palm of his hand from the hot handle, Legolas lifted the pan off the stove and carried it into the bathroom where Aragorn waited impatiently. He tipped the water into the basin, which was relatively clean given the state of the rest of the house. "Alright, water to wash in."
"Really?"
"A special treat," Legolas smiled grimly. "I presume you are capable of washing yourself."
"Of course," Aragorn answered in annoyance, plunging his hands into the warm water.
"Then use a flannel," Legolas told him, throwing a clean flannel from the cupboard at him. "And soap," he added, handing the boy a sealed glass bottle filled with sweet-smelling liquid.
"Soap?" the teenager echoed, neither understanding the word not the concept.
"You've never used soap before?"
Aragorn shrugged in reply then stressed, "How would I have?"
"Fair point. Alright, here, let me show you." Legolas unscrewed the lid, taking in the wonderful smell, and tipped the bottle up so a blob of the thick liquid plopped out onto his palm. Replacing the bottle carefully on the side, Legolas rubbed his hands together to form a lather, aware of Aragorn's eyes following his every movement in fascination. "Dampen your arm," he told the young man then waited until he had done as asked. "Then you just rub it all over yourself." He laid his warm hands on Aragorn's arm and rubbed the sweet, oily soap onto cold, filthy skin. At first Aragorn winced at the alien feeling of the strange lather touching his skin but then he cracked a smile. "That's actually quite nice. Smell's good."
"That's the point. It's an Elven concoction."
"I'm starting to really like these Lothlorien Elves," Aragorn smiled, testing the feel of the soap between his fingers.
Legolas didn't respond and took a step back. "You can finish by yourself," he told the boy, wiping his slick hands on the sides of his jacket to clean them. "I'll go find you a towel and get rid of these." He bent down and picked Aragorn's filthy clothes up off the floor, balking at the terrible smell. Having never really noticed it before, the stench came as a grim surprise. "Burn them perhaps," he murmured to himself.
Taking the soiled clothes into the sitting room, he dumped them distastefully onto the chair. After glancing down at himself, Legolas realised that he was in the same state as Aragorn. Over the decades of wandering, the only clothing available being that which he managed to scavenge off the few corpses that remained intact after their death, Legolas was not squeamish about how he looked or the way he dressed. In the past, he may have been rather prim and proper, maintaining the image expected of him by the people under his command – in fact, the old Legolas would have been appalled by his appearance and hygiene now – but things were so very different now, he reasoned as he shrugged his jacket off.
Rolling up his sleeves as he walked, Legolas returned to the bathroom, leaning against the door-frame, mouth poised to speak words that fled his mind when he set his eyes on the boy stood before him.
Years of only consuming the bare minimum necessary for survival should have prepared him for what he saw and yet he was shocked and horrified at the brazenly naked body stood before him. Devoid of the majority of dirt that had covered him, Aragorn looked utterly different. Every single one of his bones could clearly be made out beneath his unnaturally pale skin; there was not so much as an ounce of fat on the thin frame. Legolas knew that chances were that he himself looked very much the same and yet seeing the boy like it, it grieved him greatly. He longed to put it right, for Aragorn to be a normal young man, and yet he found he was trapped by this impossible situation, unable to help the child he was charged to protect and provide for.
"What are you looking at?" Aragorn's voice startled Legolas out of his thoughts and he realised that he had been openly staring. Moving his eyes quickly away, Legolas shook his head, trying to recall why he had come in here in the first place. "Am I doing it wrong?"
"Excuse me?" Legolas croaked then cleared his throat.
"The soap," Aragorn explained, holding the flannel out to show Legolas, as if afraid he had said the new word incorrectly. "Aren't I using it right?"
Forcing a shaky smile onto his lips, Legolas assured, "No, you're doing fine."
"Oh." Aragorn shrugged, lowering the flannel. Then with a frown, he asked, "Then what are you…?"
Legolas cut the boy off, shoving a towel towards him. "I brought you this."
"Thank you." Aragorn took the towel, although the explanation still didn't feel sufficient.
"Uh, I'm going to look for a water source."
"Is that safe?"
"There should be one nearby," Legolas said, taking a step backwards. "I won't be long. Clothes are in the sitting room, remember." As he turned to leave, he said, "Don't forget to do your hair as well."
With that, Legolas hastily left the house with the two canteens and returned once more to the forest floor. It was nearly fully night-time now but the Elf didn't mind the dark; it didn't matter whether the ghosts of the past haunted him in the light or the dark, they were bound to be equally unsettling either way. There was a chill in the air, which would normally have warranted a jacket and yet he liked the cold air as it blew through his hair and caught in his shirt; it helped cleanse him.
He walked with purpose, knowing Lorien well enough to be sure where the nearest clean water supply would be located. It was a shorter walk than he would have liked to the covered well but at least the water remained untainted and the pulley system, rather amazingly he thought, was still working. In no time at all, he had filled the flasks up to the brim. Having no other distraction to indulge, he reluctantly returned to the house.
Aragorn had finished in the bathroom when he entered and was sat half-dressed in the warm sitting room on the floor.
"That didn't take long," the boy commented with a smile when he looked up to see his guardian.
"I told you it wouldn't."
Nodding, Aragorn turned grey eyes on the Elf and said, "There's loads of soap left for you."
"Thank you." Legolas placed the two canteens on the side and went to the kitchen, where he began rifling through more drawers. After a couple of tries, he found what he was looking for and laid around a dozen candles on the counter. Next, he searched for a candle holder but all he could find was an old, thin vase, which would have to suffice.
"Legolas?"
"Yes?"
"Can we eat some of that food now? I'm hungry."
Glancing down at the skeletal boy dressed in ill-fitting Elven clothing, Legolas answered quickly, "Of course we can. Come and sit at the table."
"Why?" Aragorn frowned.
"Because it is how people eat."
"You mean used to eat."
"Did you never eat at a table with the Rangers?"
"No, we were outside, usually around a fire."
"Well then you'll experience two new things today – cleanliness and manners. You're well on your way to becoming civilised, uncouth one," Legolas smiled as he bent to light the candle on the flames from inside the stove. He heard Aragorn chuckle then movement across the creaky floor. After putting the candle in the vase, Legolas laid it in the centre of the table so they could see what they were doing as they ate. He then retrieved two plates from the kitchen cabinets then laid them in front of Aragorn's and his places at the table. Snapping off a quarter of one wafer each, Legolas then took his seat. "Tuck in," he smiled over to the boy.
Looking in disappointment down at the small portion in the centre of his large plate, Aragorn asked forlornly, "That's it? That's all I get?"
Chuckling softly, Legolas assured, "Trust me." He took a small bite off his own wafer. "You won't need much to feel full."
Still not entirely convinced, Aragorn frowned down at his nearly empty plate. "If you say so," he muttered doubtfully under his breath. He picked up the Elvish whey bread and nibbled on corner curiously. "Mm, it tastes good."
"Glad you like it."
For a while they ate in silence, both going slowly to better savour the taste of what, for Aragorn anyway, was a whole new and pleasant experience and for what to Legolas felt like a far distant memory. But, as ever, Aragorn could not hold his quiet for too long.
"Did you visit Lorien a lot before…well, you know?" he asked in a slightly hesitant voice.
"Uh, yes, quite a lot I suppose," Legolas replied suddenly falling into deep thought.
"Did you like it here?"
"Of course. It's beautiful. Or was beautiful," he corrected, his eyes set on the plate before him.
"Tell me."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Tell me about Lothlorien, how it used to be."
"It is difficult to describe in words."
Aragorn shrugged. "You could try." At Legolas' continued reluctance, the boy grinned widely at him and reasoned, "Come on, you know how much I hate long silences. Of course, I could fill it with tales from the Rangers again."
"No, I don't need to hear any more of their kinds of stories, thank you very much. And I don't think it was appropriate of them to tell a young child such stories in the first place."
"They are entertaining."
"They are positively obscene," Legolas reproved shortly, his eyes flicking up to meet Aragorn's amused gaze. The teenager chuckled knowingly and then drew breath and opened his mouth to start one of the explicit stories he had picked up from the Men he had travelled with, but Legolas hastily started, "This forest was once a blossoming haven. The leaves golden, creating a canopy that looked for all the world as if it was consisted of pure sunshine. Silver bark of the trees lit the lower levels with shining light, as if it was bathed in star-shine. When the Elves took to the trees and sang the day in, it echoed around the woods, exquisite music composed in honour of the home they adored.
"In the winter, snow covered the land and the people of Lorien rejoiced in it; they danced and played when it came. And in the summer they congregated around the river and swam in the cool waters until night drew in."
Legolas looked up at the boy, who was watching him in complete wonder, hanging on his every word. It took him a moment to realise that the Elf had stopped talking and he blinked rapidly as if waking from a daze.
"Tell me more," the boy prompted eagerly.
"Like what?"
"What were the people like?"
"Great warriors, some of them. They adored the forests and its guardians – Celeborn and Galadriel. There were great crafts-people amongst them too and they often built elaborate homes in the trees."
"Like this one."
"Yes. Although fully intact and drenched in silver light they looked even more splendid than you can imagine."
"Were the soldiers very fearsome?"
"When they had to be. The Galadhrim would defend their lands and their people with their lives. Attacks on Lothlorien were few and far between before the start of the War though."
"Why?"
"Lothlorien's borders were protected by magic."
"Magic." At the mention of something mystical, Aragorn's eyes shone even brighter and he leaned forward over the table.
Legolas smiled slightly at the young man's enthusiasm. "Lady Galadriel was the bearer of one of the three original Rings of the Elves. Before the creatures of Sauron stole it from her, Galadriel possessed Nenya, which she used to cloak her realm from the eyes of Evil and add strength to the defences.
"Galadriel was a Ring-bearer?"
"She was."
Aragorn nodded slowly, mulling over this new piece of information. The legends of how Sauron had risen to power by stealing the three most powerful Rings from the hands of their bearers, an act which brought about the end of peace on Arda were well known to even the uneducated Aragorn. If one so powerful that she could hide an entire realm was unable to stand against the might of the Shadow then it was no wonder they had lost the War.
"And Lord Celeborn was an equal protector. He helped to build the kingdom around the forest and he defended it – no doubt to the last."
"They sound amazing, like characters from the stories my dad used to tell me."
"Yes," Legolas said softly, "they were."
Now picking idly at the crumbs of his food from his plate, Aragorn asked quietly, "What about your home?" He instantly felt the tension shoot up between them, like a physical barrier. "You must have good memories of that as well."
Legolas rocked back on his chair, his eyes roving around the small home. "It's getting late and we'll be leaving in the morning; you should get some sleep."
"Why do you hate talking about your home so much?"
Clearing his throat, Legolas got to his feet. "Are you finished?" he asked flatly, going to pick up Aragorn's plate.
"Yes." Before he had the chance to stop him, Legolas had strode into the kitchen area to clear away the plates. "Legolas, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset…"
The clattering of plates sounded as Legolas dropped them carelessly down on the counter, startling Aragorn a little. "Finish cleaning up then get some sleep," Legolas told him in annoyance.
"But…"
Striding to the door, Legolas snapped, "I don't want to talk about this."
"Well, I do! You know everything about me and I know nothing at all about you. How is that fair when you're supposed to be my protector and I'm supposed to trust you?"
Turning on the boy, anger, fearsome and frightening to the young Aragorn, burned in eyes darkened by candlelight, Legolas suddenly yelled, "My life, my past has absolutely nothing to do with you! Now go to sleep like I told you!"
Standing to face his guardian, Aragorn softened his approach and asked the burning question: "What did you do that you want to forget so badly?"
Rather than the anticipated anger that Aragorn had braced himself for, in the light of the flickering candle, Legolas' features softened and Aragorn noticed a strange, distant look come to his face. He had touched a nerve. After the wave of momentary pride had left, Aragorn felt guilt creeping up. Obviously, this was a sore subject that caused the Elf considerable pain. What right did he have to push for answers when Legolas considered it too private to discuss?
"Legolas, I am sorry."
"Please go to bed like I asked," Legolas told him in a thick voice.
"I…"
"Aragorn, please."
"Alright. Where are you going to go?"
"Out," Legolas said before stepping out of the door and disappearing down the ladder.
Left on his own again, Aragorn closed his eyes in dismay. It truthfully had not been his intention to upset his mentor but the morose, uncommunicative Elf was beginning to really frustrate him and he did deserve to know about Legolas. But he hadn't meant to be hurtful. After all, Legolas had always protected him, had never really demanded anything from him in return. What more did he really want from his guardian? If Legolas wanted to conceal the truth, then he should allow him to do so, respect his wishes. Surely that wasn't too much to ask.
To Be Continued…