Chapter 51

August 23rd, TA 3020

A golden dawn had risen over the settlement, heralding a day of unreserved sunlight. The clouds must've herded together over the night, only to concur on seeking a better fortune elsewhere. As though freshly scrubbed, the sky was pristine as far as the eye could see, from the copper-hemmed mountain ridges in the East, their slopes a bruised shade of blue, to the snowy peaks on the other side of the Anduin. A nightingale song trilled through the forest, halting in surprise as a blackbird's warble answered the call; an indignant flurry of wings shook the dew off leaves, spraying what lay beneath: the grass, the unraveling marigolds…as well as Mehreen's bare neck.

She hissed, unbending to wipe the dribble off her skin before it could make it any lower down her back, using it as a chance to stretch her muscles with a small, stifled groan. In truth, she was almost done with her self-appointed task, and no-one would blame her, should she abandon the herb garden to its fate for an hour or two; but Mehreen had woken before the blackbirds had. With no better prospect than to toss and turn in silence between her tangled sheets until Ahlam rose in turn, she'd tiptoed to the chair that held her clothing for the day as soon as she saw the dawn slide its fingers under the shutters, and out of the room.

Unlike most days, she hadn't gone to the Houses of Healing, heading instead for the herb garden, and an occupation for her hands that'd take her mind off her troubled dreams. Hands at work, thoughts in line, Lalla Zahra used to repeat during her lessons, walking between ranks of downy heads kneeling over their calligraphy, brushes grasped clumsily between slight, ink-stained fingers. Though it'd been a favorite occupation of Hanaa's, Mehreen's strokes had ofttimes more resembled those of a trembling old woman than of a young girl with all her strength about her, so that now that she had a choice in the matter, she sought such alignment elsewhere.

Just like the thing called 'snow' Mehreen had recently learnt about, the nightmare had faded to a murky worry as soon as the sun had touched it; something to do with the pharmacy, Mehreen strained to remember, and with her keeping to knock things off their shelves. She'd kept apologizing, but some implacable, faceless guardian – Redhriel? – had then ordered her out before she could do any more damage.

A bad dream…nothing more.

Bending once more to wash her dirt-covered hands in the watering can that stood by one her feet, Mehreen wiped them on the back of her skirts, rubbing her bleary eyes with the back of her wrist in the process. She parted the fuzzy, silvery leaves of sage to stick a finger into the soil and, when it came out dry up to the first knuckle – she'd read the corresponding page a good dozen times the night before to be sure to remember the correct treatment – picked up the can. Then, with the utmost care, she poured the tiniest of trickles beneath the lower leaves. This was honest, useful work, and though Lalla Laila would've bewailed to see the state of her hands, red with nettle burns and scratches, Mehreen wore them with the same pride as her father his crimson sash, embroidered with black and golden thread; Lalla Laila had wound it around his ample waist before he'd left for war, hiding her fear under a waspish fussing.

A swift, black shadow darted in front of Mehreen's face with a strident buzz, startling her: a bumblebee latched itself to an umbel of yarrow florets, the stem groaning under its weight. Following its example, a bee came to swivel around Mehreen, who retreated in haste, raising the empty watering can like a shield. She could've spent her entire day of freedom happily tending to the plants, but if even the insects conspired to chase her away, she had little choice but to forfeit her position.

The defeat smarted more than Mehreen wanted to admit.

Part of her had hoped for the occupation to keep her mind off the shapeless disquiet still clinging to her brow. Another, more conscientious half reminded Mehreen of her debt towards Beylith – and her formidable grandmother – despite the herb garden looking nothing like the untamed oasis it'd been days before. Now the herbs grew as tidy as children praying on their little rugs, freed from the distracting presence of weeds just as Lalla Zahra had once strived to rid Mehreen of the day-dreams taking root inside her head. Both halves agreed on one thing, however: to frown, in a common voice of disapproval, upon the sliver of frivolity that yearned to look at the squat little rods jutting from the soil like skeletal fingers, and think of Elladan.

Where was he? And how was he?

Had the dawn found him tired, temples taut with worry, throbbing under black hair tousled from a restless night? Or, in the contrary, had he opened his eyes to watch the dew sparkle on grass stems with renewed wonderment, his heart soaring together with a robin's song?

Would it be that Mehreen could see him…touch him. Hold him. Share in his greatest concerns and his smallest joys. Work her fingers through the knots surrounding his heart, kneading out the pain, and find out if a brush against his skin would sear her as sweetly as she expected it would.

Swatting a bee away with the can with a resounding clank, Mehreen tossed the recipient into the grasses and fled, her eyes watering as she squinted against the low-hanging sun. Inside her pocket, a spool of yarn warmed the hand she jammed inside in frustration, like a nest around her fist. Her frustration was short-lived, however, vanishing as soon as she reached the river.

The flat, lazy waters glided along plushy banks, mirroring every branch and every stone as if a world of vivid green existed beyond the surface, undisturbed even by the willows growing on the nameless island off the coast of Bar-Lasbelin and dipping their boughs into the current. Their scaly boles twisted towards the water against the tangerine sky, as if some giant hand had attempted to wrench them out by the roots, in the same manner as Mehreen did with dandelions. A thin layer of mist hovered over the surface, capturing the rays of the sun into a gossamer of spun gold.

All of a sudden, the saffron and cinnamon tones of Jufayrah, its flaking walls and the softness of the dawn on the old bricks of the medina lay before her, and Mehreen's heart tightened to find them here so unexpectedly. This was her home, now. Her land. Her people. Mehreen's nightly fears dwindled in the face of such beauty, along with her guilt. Only the longing remained, coiled right beneath her heart.

Hands at work, thoughts in line.

The copper finials of the sawmill flashed an arrogant red into the face of the sun, its wheel still and silent. The building had been erected from the same pale wood as the rest of the settlement, a smudged ring of drying weeds crowning the sturdy piles along the waterline. A wooden dock ran along the sawmill, from the sloping bank to the wheelhouse, shielded from view by the building itself.

The planks creaked faintly under Mehreen's feet, the gentle sloshing of water soothing her melancholy.

Hands at work, thoughts in line.

Settling with her back against the cladding, her legs stretched out towards the river, Mehreen pulled the yarn from her pocket and set to work. She'd committed to sending Saineth and her daughter a gift. The least she could do, was to ensure it was ready for Elladan's return.

oOoOoOo

Her fingers remembered their old task effortlessly, so that the bracelet took shape as though summoned out of thin air, woven of threads spun from mist and seaweed. Mehreen had opted for a complex weave in threads of white and green, leaving a loop free here and there for beads or talismans to be added according to the parents' wishes: white for the child's innocence, and green for the renewal she represented. Yet, upon seeing the cord grow in her lap, Mehreen suddenly regretted her lack of a more useful skill. Given time, she could've attempted to knit Saineth's daughter a blanket, petitioning another woman for help. One could wonder about the wisdom of such an investment, since in all likeness, Mehreen would never bear a child of her own to wrap into a quilt lovingly made with her own hands. But Saineth was worth the effort, having been the first to deem Mehreen worthy of her time a few months past.

The shore was waking around her. Footsteps both light and heavy resonated on the floorboards above her head, along with the shuffling of boards being moved and the calling out of men's voices. The wheel jolted and groaned, slowly lurching into motion, the paddles slapping the water and startling a flock of ducks into a frantic flight.

Mehreen rose and pocketed the bracelet before making her way along the dock and back onto the bank. She dipped her head ever lower under the greetings of the men who came converging to the flight of stairs leading to the sawmill, their shirts of fresh linen bright against their tanned skin, wrinkling at the elbows where they'd rolled up their sleeves. While some insistent stares prickled her back, most were friendly enough; hopeful, even. A hope Mehreen had no wish to encourage, which was why she took to her left, preferring a longer route along the waterline to the path that led to the dormitories. It'd take her past the forge and high enough upstream to see the turrets of the Houses of Healing playing peek-a-boo through crowns of lindens and beeches, their star-shaped weathervanes glimmering against the azurean sky.

"Módor! Loca hwæt hér is!"

She'd not noticed Dúnwen and her son approach from one of the smaller paths criss-crossing the slope between the Great Hall and the shore; Déordred still clutched a half-nibbled bread roll between his pudgy hands, the undersides smeared down to the wrists with what looked like blueberry jam. Such sweetness was usually restricted to days of celebration, but either Godwyn, or one of the other women from the kitchens, must've given in to endearment at the sight of Déordred's toothy grin, and broken the rule. Mehreen couldn't help but chuckle upon watching him twist around in his attempts to lick it off, like a dog chasing its tail.

What Dúnwen made of her son's appearance was conveyed through a tight sigh and a pained smile. As long as he eats, she seemed to want to say, radiating with fondness despite the lingering dark circles beneath her eyes. She'd gathered her fiery hair into a loose braid wound around her head like a crown, from which unruly bangs escaped to frame her high cheekbones. It suited her, enhancing the oval of her face and the fullness of her upper lip, though her skin remained too pale and too taut to be healthy.

"He wanted to feed the ducks," she told Mehreen as a greeting as she passed them by. Before Mehreen could reply, however, Déordred spotted a hoopoe foraging in the meadow nearby, its feathery coif waddling with every step. He dashed after it, his fingers still glued to the roll. "Déordred!" his mother chided, "don't drop your bread, lufling."

Seeing sense in her advice, the boy paused. With one last, resolved glance towards the pastry, he leapt to his mother, thrust it into her hand and ran away, chasing after the hoopoe which evaded him with a beat of its striped wings.

"As willful as his father," Dúnwen murmured, her wistful eyes following his gallop along the bank.

"What was he like?" Mehreen found herself asking. She'd neither meant to intrude nor to overstay her welcome, but Dúnwen's words had been like a window cracked upon the past – a past that was also her own.

Dúnwen hesitated. "Erkenleth? He was…he was…." Her voice broke.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked."

"No." She raised her chin, pushed a ginger lock out of her face with a hand that barely trembled. "I'll tell you. He is…he was worth remembering." Her voice did not waver, betraying a sorrow of unspeakable depths.

This was no mere absence. It was a rending of the soul; one Mehreen could only begin to imagine. "You must've loved him very much," she whispered, humbled and envious.

How was it that the fair-haired woman had put it, back by the river? What was love, to one who'd never known it? How love went, Mehreen now knew too well: tiptoeing cravenly out of the bedchamber, as had been the case for Lalla Laila, supplanted by one younger wife after another, each one too different from her to pretend her husband sought in them the same thing he'd once found in her.

But how did one recognize it, when it came?

Dúnwen seemed to consider the implicit question while staring at the bread roll she still absent-mindedly held. "Erkenleth had such a booming laugh. It scared me. He was so carefree…so full of life. Everything I wasn't." As Déordred raced along the bank in a spray of pebbles, his hands outstretched towards the fleeing hoopoe who seemed to humor him, she followed, albeit at a much slower pace. "When he declared himself, I'd thought it to be some cruel joke."

Mehreen stifled an enraptured gasp. "Did you refuse him, then?"

Dúnwen nodded. She sucked on a jam-stained thumb before tearing the roll into halves, one of which she offered to Mehreen after a moment's thought. Mehreen took it, grateful for the gesture alone, though her stomach had been rumbling in hunger for a while now.

They'd left the forge behind, the heaving of the bellows resembling the breath of some sleepy, lumbering beast, to meander in and out of the shadows cast by poplars growing by the waterline. If trees had been men, those would've been a group of kindly grandfathers – or, at least, grandfathers as Mehreen had always pictured them to be, with knotty brown hands, deep-set, sparkling eyes and stories to tell. Though their burly trunks stemmed from the same roots, they'd veered away from one another, as though having taken different paths in life. Yet, Mehreen imagined them to be old friends, whispering amongst themselves with every gust of a honey-scented wind.

"But he persevered," Dúnwen continued with a smile of triumph – the first Mehreen had ever seen her wear. "My fears stood no chance against the sureness of his heart."

She bit into her half of the bread roll, her eyelids fluttering closed for an instant as she savored the sugary tartness of the jam. Her cheeks flushed with pleasure, allowing Mehreen to glimpse how beautiful she must've looked to Erkenleth.

It also occurred to her that the kitchen maids' 'kindness' may have been intentional. Déordred barreled ahead on chubby legs, his treat for the ducks long forgotten, as was wont to happen with a hale, well-fed child, while Dúnwen was left to finish his leftovers, as many a mother before her had. Best make sure that the leftovers in question were nutritious enough to add some substance to her long, fragile limbs.

Mehreen smiled to herself, relieved that someone else had taken upon themselves to help her.

"Still, I was wary. I thought he'd mock me for my shyness…for not wanting to dance around the maypole, like the other couples did. I thought if he saw who I really was early enough, before it was too late, he'd change his mind, and no-one would get hurt."

"I'm certain many a girl wished he had."

If the fascination Erkenleth had exerted was anything like the unintentional yearning Elladan seemed to elicit, then more than one woman must've hated Dúnwen for having drawn his eye, only to spurn him after. As for Lalla Nafiyah, she would've deemed her a tease for leading a man on, using her example to illustrate the virtues of a young girl's confinement until her father, in his wisdom, chose her a husband using his head rather than her heart. No heartbreak to be risked, with such an approach; no humiliation, nor disappointment.

But none of the hopeful, breathless longing that pulled at one's very core, either.

You have no idea of what I have done.

Now that had tugged at Mehreen's heartstrings. Not because Elladan thought so little of her; considering what'd happened to Harun, it would've been easy for her to hate him for such a confession. But there'd been defiance in his eyes, daring Mehreen to stay despite it. A visceral form of wantonness, more intimate even than undressing.

No. The worst, most painful moment was when Mehreen had believed him – that he'd killed as many men as he said he had. Had Harun been in his place, he would've returned to Jufayrah a hero, praised by all for having done the world a great service. Unlike her brother, however, Mehreen struggled to imagine Elladan taking any pleasure from slaughter. Perhaps a grim, fleeting satisfaction of a job well done before the sun rose on a world in need of more blood.

An endless task, for hands that would never be clean enough. The world, it seemed, was full of good men thinking they were savages, and savages convinced of being good men.

Mehreen searched Dúnwen's face for a sign there was still hope for the former. "But he didn't give up, did he?"

A sad smile graced Dúnwen's lips. "I wouldn't have stopped him, if he had. But he learnt to be silent, instead. To listen to what I had to say, when I felt like saying it. That's when I knew I loved him."

They both turned to look at Déordred. The hoopoe had tired of their game, abandoning the boy to stand alone amidst clumps of watermint and forget-me-nots. His lips quivered with disappointment and, for an instant, Mehreen thought he'd cry. But he bent to tear out a clump of pale blue flowers with a grunt, before his gaze was drawn to some shiny pebble further down the bank.

The flowers fell into the grass, forgotten.

"Déordred, leof heorte, don't go into the water!" Picking up her skirts Dúnwen hurried after her river-bound son, catching his arm before he could wade into the current lapping at the shore. Mehreen followed, fearing she'd shake him as harshly as she'd once done. "It's dangerous," Dúnwen cajoled, kneeling in front of her son to cup his cheek. "Besides, you'd get your new shoes wet, the ones Lord Legolas gave you for your birthday."

Her eyes grew sorrowful once more, no doubt remembering how the duty of such gifts once fell to another man.

Déordred spared the turnshoes of burgundy leather wrapping his small feet but a glance. He squirmed in his mother's embrace, shrieking with laughter while trying to evade her kisses. "But," he protested, "I wanted to make it jump!" And threw Mehreen a beseeching glance.

In Rohirric, his voice had been that of a child. In Westron, it was the serious tone of one who'd already seen too much, as if the mere act of learning this new language had forced the boy to grow up too fast.

Dúnwen sighed, oblivious of the change. "Stones cannot jump, leof heorte."

"Gea!" Déordred stomped his foot, startling his mother by such sudden anger. "They can! Other boys make them jump on water."

"Skipping stones, you mean?" With an uncertain glance to the river, Dúnwen pinched her lips. "Perhaps another time, my love. We'll find someone who can teach you." She blinked as her hand lingered in her son's copper curls, tousling them. Your father would have, she could've been thinking, only he's no longer here to do so.

Mehreen stepped forward. The gravity of Déordred's voice pressed at her chest, along with Dúnwen's helplessness. "I can teach him, if you want." Under Dúnwen's questioning stare, she shrugged. "Elladan…Lord Elladan, I mean, has shown me how, and I believe he would've liked me to pass the knowledge on."

This, at least, was an injustice she could repair.

A.N.: in the Abbasid Caliphate and the Ottoman Empire, sashes were an important element of military attire. They were worn around the waist, and served as a visual marker of rank and status. High-ranking officers: often wore red sashes, as it was considered a prestigious color and symbolized authority and leadership.

Some words of Rohirric (inspired from Old English):

- 'Módor! Loca hwæt hér is!' translates to 'Mother! Look who's here!"

- 'lufling' = 'darling',

- 'leof heorte' = 'dear heart',

- 'gea' = affirmative expression (in this context, meaning 'yes they can').