They spent the rest of the day out in the valley, stepping carefully amid the soft plants on the river's edge, climbing high up into the hillsides, in pinewoods and boulder fields and mountain meadows. "Tell me what you see," he would say, and she told him the names of all the plants she knew, and their uses. But she soon realized how pitifully thin her knowledge was; for every plant she named, he told her three more, what they looked like now at the edge of winter, and what they would look like in spring, the color of their flowers, the shape of their young leaves, and what could be done with each. There was joy in the sunshine and the sharp mountain air, but her mind was soon flooded, and she despaired of remembering it all.
Yet he laughed when she confessed it, the first time she had heard him laugh, and it was gentle and warm, and she knew he felt the joy of the day as she did. "Of course you will not remember. But they will be in your mind, whether you can see them there or not, and when you see them in a book, perhaps then this day will come back to you."
They had brought nothing with them, and by the time the sun sank behind the western rim of the valley and shadows gathered beneath the trees, she was tired and very hungry. They chose their way carefully over rocks, or rather, she did – Girith seemed to step as lightly as ever, without sign of hesitation or weariness. Doggedly she followed him, and she was relieved at last to lift her head and see the gleam of lamplight through the trees. Yet in the moment of inattention her feet stumbled, caught on a root, and she would have fallen had her outflung arm not caught a prickly pine branch.
"Be careful, dunadaneth." He did not turn, but she could hear the smile in his voice.
Dunadaneth. She had heard it before, or read it rather, in the histories she had labored through with Silevren. And she thought of those nights, hunched by the older woman's side before a flickering lamp, the calm voice that corrected her when she erred, explained when she could not pull out the meaning despite knowing every word, told her what lay behind and beyond the stories of their people's past.
There were no tears, for it was too far away now, but still she pulled in a sharp breath and then smiled a little, in remembrance. Dunadaneth. It meant, simply, 'woman of the Western people', in the old language. Yet there was more than that. It was not only label but judgment, assertion that a woman was worthy to follow in the way of those who had gone before. A woman so named was not only born into the people of the West, but strengthened them through her life, carried their ways with her and was faithful to them. Yet dunadaneth had not survived the loss of the old language. Though all knew still what it meant, and what it signified beyond meaning, it was not used in daily speech, but only in certain rituals that recalled the old ways.
And so Miriel started a little when he said it, so easily, as if it were nothing out of the ordinary way. Perhaps he does not know…Of course he knows. And her face warmed despite the cold of evening, and she found herself smiling as they came at last back to the house.
A bell rang out, clear in the still air, as they crossed the plank bridge over the stream in the meadow. She lifted her head on instinct, and he called back without turning, "It is the evening meal. We are dirty." He paused on the far side of the bridge and looked her up and down with a faint smile. "But I think they will let us in."
She laughed, and wiped the mud off her boots in the damp grass, and followed him along the path and in through a side door. "This way is closer," he explained. They passed through a bewildering sequence of shadowy corridors, stairs, and empty halls. But at last light and the hum of talk grew ahead of them, and then torchlight and candlelight and firelight blazed through an open door. She saw long tables, and all the Elves of Elrond's household seated at them, or walking gracefully among them.
She felt suddenly, painfully dirty and coarse, her heavy boots loud on the stone flags, and had she been alone she would not have dared to go in. But Girith glanced at her, and said in a low voice, "They will pay no attention to us. Come, I will bring you to your people."
She could not perhaps have found them among all that throng, not easily at least. But Girith made his way without hesitation through the tables, until at last in a corner, just below a high table set on a dais at the far end of the room, there were Anna and Meren.
They saw her before she saw them, and Meren raised a hand to wave her over. But it was a more restrained gesture that was usual for him, and she smiled at it. They moved apart and made space for her to sit between them, and when she turned to bid farewell to Girith, and to thank him, he had already turned away.
"Who is he?" asked Meren, and "Where is the Chieftain?" she asked at the same time, and they both laughed, in relief as much as mirth.
"Up there." He gestured with his chin toward the high table. "Just this side of Lord Elrond." Miriel looked, and there he was, though had she not been expecting his face, she might have passed it by. "Might as well be one of them," said Meren, more quietly, echoing her own thought. Aragorn's face was darker than those around him, showing the wear of sun and wind that did not seem to mark the Elves, their skin smooth and fair as though they spent no time out of doors, though she knew that could not be true. But in the robes of an Elf, and with a joy and peace on his face that she had never seen, truly he was more like to them than to the weathered men of her own people.
But Meren's elbow nudged her side, and she had no more time to think on it. "Your turn. Where have you been all day?"
She told them what she could. But she found there was little to say, that much of what she felt she could not put into words.
"Plants," grinned Meren. "You'll be turning into a regular goodwife next." And then, edging away a little, "Ah, no violence in the grand hall of the immortal Elves. Wouldn't be proper."
"It would not," she agreed. "So you'll just have to watch your back whenever I'm around. For a long, long time. Much more enjoyable – for me, at least."
"I live to amuse you," he growled. But the smile did not reach his eyes, and they both thought then of how long it might be before they saw each other again.
"When do you leave?" she asked quietly.
"Tomorrow," answered Anna. "Chieftain wants to see the garrisons at Stonebridge and Sarn Ford and the Brandywine. Make a last sweep of the Road before winter." But her tone said what they all knew, that winter would come long before they could complete such a journey, and there were many hard, icy miles between them and home.
"Well, one more night of good food and warm sleep, at least," said Meren, more gloomy than bracing. "Though on the whole, I'd take our lot over yours."
They all fell silent then, the hum of talk suddenly loud around them. At last, Miriel said quietly, "We will do what we must do, all of us." A pause and then, forcing a small grin, "You had a girl in Stonebridge, didn't you?"
Meren flushed a little, grumbled, "That was years ago," and she responded promptly, "Was not. It was the summer before last. And she was quite pretty, and quite unattached." Emphasis on the last word, and a meaningful, sidelong glance. He flushed still more, and she laughed, and the next little while was spent in rather in-depth comparison of Tathar and the Stonebridge girl. Anna ate steadily, and ignored them.
The food was good, of course, but Miriel hardly noticed it. She ate what was set before her until she was full, tried to keep her thoughts on them, and away from the knowledge that tomorrow evening she would be eating with only the inscrutable Elves for companionship. Aragorn looked their way from time to time, as if to make certain they had all they needed, but he was deep in conversation with Elrond, and remained so until long after they had finished eating. At last Meren yawned, and Anna rose, glanced at Aragorn but his face was turned from them. "No need to stay." She grunted, shook her head. "If he wants us, he knows where to find us."
She led them down corridors and passages, around corners and up stairs, until at last they found their own rooms. Miriel could hear the others moving around for a time, and then all was quiet. But though her body was tired and her belly full, the room warm and dim in the glow of firelight, she was not sleepy. Her mind felt disordered, too many questions and uncertainties twisting about themselves, and at last she was so restless that she rose from where she had been sitting by the fire and went over to the window. The night was clear, and pale moonlight lay over the valley, and she shivered a little in the cold that seeped through the glass. But she laid her forehead on the smooth pane, closed her eyes and let the cold calm her. Hearing sharpened by loss of sight, she could hear the soft sighing of wind in dry leaves, and thought, I belong in the Wild.
You belong where you are called to be. That is the meaning of the oath. And then clear in her mind, before the Stone in the cold mist of dawn, her voice and then another's, and when after a time there came a soft knock on the door, she knew who it must be. She left the window and the night, crossed to the door and opened it, and he stood there in the glow of the lantern he carried.
He smiled. "I thought you might not be asleep. May I come in?"
"Of course, my lord," she said softly.
He set his lantern on the small table by the corner of the hearth, and between its light and the light of a candle she lit from it, the room seemed bright.
He sat in a chair by the fire, gestured her to the other, looked at her for a time without speaking, and she met his eyes and found that it was no effort to hold them. At last he said quietly, with a small, brief smile, "Girith is pleased with you."
"My lord?"
"He said you speak what is in your heart, and listen well, and question when you do not understand. You are a good student."
At that she could not help but laugh, despite lingering unease, and he raised an eyebrow.
"I…did not find school to my liking," she said in answer, "when I was young."
"Did you not? Why?"
"It bored me. I did not see the use. Neither did Meren, and we were both…asked to leave and not return."
She knew she must speak the truth, though fear crept through her that this learned lord, at home even in the councils of Elrond of Rivendell, would think her only a wayward child. But to her surprise he laughed, and there was mirth in his eyes that she had not seen before. "Were you indeed? Well, I am certain it was richly deserved. Who was the schoolmistress?"
"Teithaniel."
"Ah, she was rather prone to that sort of thing, so I understand."
She frowned. "But you were…not there; you had left before then."
"She was schoolmistress long before your time, and you were far from the first child to run afoul of her." He grinned again. "Halbarad will not thank me for telling you this, but he left school rather earlier than was usual as well, and for much the same reason."
"Halbarad?" She laughed in astonishment. "But he is so—so reserved, so severe. I can't imagine him doing anything of the sort." In truth, she could not imagine Halbarad as a child at all.
"He is now," said Aragorn, his voice suddenly quiet. "He was not always so."
He spoke to her then of Rivendell, its ways and customs, and though she would not have asked, she was grateful for it, for it made the place seem a little less unfathomably strange. "You must keep up your weapons practice, and your strength, I need not tell you that. But you will find it hard, far harder than you imagine. Do you remember what it felt like, when you began to train again after…what happened in the village?"
She did remember, of course, the terrible weakness, the bone-deep weariness and pain, and her heart sank.
"It will not be so bad as that," he said, "but you will find that your body is not itself, not as you have always known it. Be patient with it, and you will learn its ways." A pause, and then more forcefully, "And you must learn, for there will come a time when you must heal in the Wild and then fight again after, and you must know what your body can bear."
"Yes, my lord," she said softly.
A pause, and then, "How do you find Rivendell?"
She knew what he asked, and so she said with a soft laugh, "Different. Not what I expected, from all that I had heard. The Elves are…well, I do not know what they make of us, how they regard us. If they regard us at all."
"They do," he answered at once. "They know our limitations, of course, but also our strengths, better than we do ourselves. But they will not speak much to you, most of them. If it is any comfort, many of them would find ordinary, everyday conversation with you as baffling as you would find it with them." He smiled a little. "But you will not be lonely. My brothers will see to that." Momentary confusion, and then she remembered, and his smile widened at the anxiety that flashed across her face. "Do not fear them. The sons are not the father. And they knew me as a child, so nothing you do will surprise them." She laughed a little, as she was meant to, though still uncertainty churned in her. "You might even get some rather amusing stories out of them, if you ask nicely." His face sobered. "But they have patrolled with us for many lives of men. They know what is expected of you, what you have done and seen, and what awaits you when you return to us. They will look out for you. As they do for me."
She nodded, and tried to take his words as comfort.
"Your work, of course, will occupy you all day and often into the night. I do not know Girith well, but he has trained many of our healers. It will be hard." She nodded. "You do not know yet how hard. But he will lead you in the right way."
She heard something new in his voice then, or rather it had been in the background, a whisper sensed but not heard, but now she could hear it and know it. He is worried. He fears for me. She pulled in a soft breath, tried in vain to calm her suddenly racing heart. If he is afraid…
"Miriel."
She lifted her eyes to meet his.
"I fear for all my Rangers. The oath's burden lies not only on the one who gives, but also on the one who receives. And there is danger in this, in what you do, that is out of the ordinary way. You know that."
Slowly, she nodded.
"And you accept it, as do I. We do what we must do." Quiet, and then he reached out, took her hand where it lay on her knee. She felt him then, for just a moment, warmth and courage and confidence and strength. She felt too the fear whispering beneath it, but it no longer made her afraid. He released her and smiled a little. "You are not alone," he said softly.
It was intentional this time, reassurance but also a test. For me. She must not know. And he schooled his face to quiet, and did not let it show, what whispered through him in answer to the trial. Ir cuian ech natho alerui. Like poking a bruise, to see if it still hurt, as if the evidence of all other senses was not enough.
Yes. It is still there.
But there are many ways it can go. Leave it, for this time.
"Now you must sleep. As must I, warm and dry for one more night at least." He smiled, and rose. "Do not dwell on your worries. They will still be there in the morning."
She forced a smile, but when he had gone, she found that her mind was indeed calmer. She banked the fire and blew out the candle, and she slept.