Túrin
"Are the Eldar and their speech unknown to you? Or do you speak the high tongue of the Noldor instead?" Túrin asked, studying the creatures' faces with grave, monotone eyes. Our fates differ after death, he thought of the Elves and the Men. Hence there might be no Elves here?... Yet this is not the hereafter. No proof I have, but it may not be.
He struggled to care, all the same, his eyelids heavy, his soul weary, weary of the oaks and the ashes, the chestnuts and the strange trees he recognised not, and weary of these miniature Shepherds of the Trees, staring at him questioningly like into the stars. He was weary of it all, struggling to look not at them with repulsion. He wished only to drown at last in the thick magma of blackness and oblivion.
Why am I not allowed to die?, he angered inwardly. My deeds were ill, but is death not given even to the worst? To the Orcs, to the dragons?
Does Morgoth have power even over my death?
"The Elves? Quenya?" he tried blankly, to no avail. The little tree-woman may have wanted to say something, but then Níniel moved. Their voices must have woken her.
Brandir limped to kneel beside her. Túrin's heart fluttered, yet he did not leave his place.
"You have asked my name and I shall give it to you," he said to the tree-woman, his long-standing pride not leaving him even now."I am Úben, son of Alnad* and a wanderer from the faraway land. My sister is sick and water we need as much as a refuge for a day or two."
"Come with us, then," the tree-woman offered. "We shall give you shelter."
Túrin agreed with a hesitant, solemn nod. What choice did they have, and did it matter anywise? He glanced towards Brandir, who was sending him a helpless look. Understanding what he meant, Túrin walked to Níniel and, having pulled her out of a shallow basin in the snow that had melted partly from the heat of her body and the fire, lifted her up in his arms.
"Brandir...?" she asked still semiconsciously.
"No," Túrin said as gently as he could. "Brandir is not able to carry you."
Níniel trembled and tensed, yet nodded weakly, then raised her eyelids partially and looked at him with questioning eyes.
"For safety's sake," Túrin replied, keeping his voice low and making it flow liltingly as though he only murmured some sweet words of comfort. Brandir glanced at them out of the corner of his eye, keeping ward the whole time. Meanwhile, the wood creatures shared thoughts in their own slow, long-winded tongue. Túrin suspected it was Entish, he was not sure, however. Were they the Ents, why would they not know Quenya? "You remember the Elves' language from Doriath, do you not, N... Nienor?" His throat seemed horribly dry, and his voice unintentionally harsh. "Though I shall not call you that anymore unless we are alone, and give not your true name to them yourself as well."
Another weak nod, but then she opened her eyes fully and slightly turned her head.
"Who are you?" she asked, astonished, as the wood creatures were presumably not who she had expected to see.
"Men name us the children of the forest," the tree-woman explained when they began to walk slowly into the shadow of the wood as the rear of the group, their boots sinking into the deep, heavy snow, "and we are those who sing the song of earth. You have asked of Elves." She raised her gaze at Túrin and her eyes shone in the greyness enclosed under the domes of the old trees all above, lightened slightly by the torches that the creatures at the front held. "We now know neither the Elves nor their speech, but the Old Tongue knew once their name you use, and our songs in the True Tongue know them too. Though you will find Elves here no more."
"No more?" Brandir asked with feverish curiosity, shoveling away the snow before him with his newfound bough-crutch so that he could somehow walk through. The thick layer reached knees in places and the way was bumpy. "Have they been here once then? What has chanced that they are no more?"
"If they truly were, that was thousands and thousands of years ago, back in the old days, back in the Dawn Age, when Men were none or few, and we as well as the other beings could dwell freely in these lands," the tree-woman said, sadness and rue stabbing her voice like needles. Thousands of years?, Túrin read the question in Brandir's piercing gaze, yet almost imperceptibly shook his head to keep the other man from saying it aloud.
"Or perhaps the First Men only brought the knowledge of Elves along with their language and here they never were. The songs speak differently, and our songs only, for Men's memory is brief, and even if they had really known Elves, they would have forgotten in a flash, and there would have been no place for them here for a long time. In this world of Men there is only place for Men," the tree-woman continued bitterly. "Men are cruel, ruthless, greedy. If your Elves truly existed, were not just the beautiful legends of the songs, then Men destroyed them, slew their souls, so that they faded into oblivion like other creatures. As we too will soon be gone."
She spoke no more for a while, and they walked in silence, the snow cracking under their feet, the two torches leading their way, swaying and winking like glows over swamplands. Túrin mused, staring blankly at them. Their light in its own way was soothing, and the temptation of being soothed immediately gave rise to anxiety in his heart. There was no solace. There was no solace in life, no solace in death. Once he had found solace in Níniel's arms and it had become his gravest wrongdoing. His greatest crime.
He looked down at Nienor, who had closed her eyes again, though he recognised from the tension in her body that she was fully awake and listening. His hands under her back were stiff, cool, uncertain. She is strained, yet beautiful all the same. Should a brother think such thoughts about his sister? Now, however, he was also seeing things he had not noticed before: Nienor was as tall as Mother, but Father she resembled in everything else.
"Are you the Elves?"he quetched when heard the tree-woman asking.
"Yes," he lied as the instinct told him before Brandir could answer, and ignored the other man's rounding eyes that immediately followed his unexpected confirmation. If we are still stuck in the world, what else could we be?, he chuckled bitterly in spirit.
He also at once blessed his lie when the tree-woman, with eyes full of enchanted curiosity, asked, "Thus you were able to return from the land of death? I have heard scraps from what you were talking about before we met and I have comprehended. You've met death and you are no wights. You've been in the land of gods and you have returned. How is that possible?"
Túrin's face made an expression of almost boredom. "Little indeed you do know of Elves," he said nearly harshly. "For foreverness we are fused with this world, and here only is our place. Death may not take the worldly immortality from us either, and upon we die, we are soon restored to our bodies again. Yet," he emphasised, "you must have mistaken our words. Only wanderers we are, albeit weary and unfamiliar with your land."
"If you insist on saying so." The creature smiled slightly, not seeming to resent Túrin's distrust, then nodded eagerly to herself, the twigs woven into her hair rustling, as if his words coincided with her own assumptions. "The songs speak of the traits of Elves that make them close to the gods that live in the weirwoods. I am young, but even I know those songs."
She fell silent then, sinking into her thoughts, and Brandir whispered, with evident difficulty keeping his composure, his Sindarin rough and mangled, yet understandable, "Have you gone mad?"
"What do you think," Túrin glanced at him grimly, "is it easier to be an Elf or a Man rising from the grave? I have lived with the Eldar longer than I have ever lived with Men." Having adjusted his hands under Nienor's back, he looked ahead and melted his gaze into the fires of the torches again. "And more than once have I been mistaken for them."
"You alone - perhaps..." Brandir muttered bitterly.
"At last it will be of use," said Túrin, ignoring his words.
"You are drawing attention to yourselves," Nienor put in quietly, raising her eyes to one or the other, ere turning to the tree-woman. "Who are the gods?"
The creature bored her strange, now clearly astonished eyes into Nienor's face. "You know not?"
"I know not the name..." Nienor explained, a little confused.
The tree-woman smiled. "We call by this name the spirits of the streams and woods, of the rocks and winds, those who are everywhere and possess deep knowledge of things. Those who watch us through the eyes of the trees."
"Ah, so the servants of Yavanna you mean?" Nienor's face lit up in understanding.
"Yavanna?" the tree-woman echoed, bewildered.
"The Queen of Earth?" Nienor tried. "And your mother especially as you were created at her plea. For you are the Ents, albeit small, who else could you be?"
They may be anything..., Túrin thought. The creature furrowed the dark brow, though then laughed lightly, the laugh similar to a sad moan of a wind. "I have wandered the world of Men for many years, yet your names are unknown to me, as mine to you. The one to whom you are led sees and hears much more than I do, though. He will know."
"To whom are you leading us?" asked Brandir, having glanced at Túrin with sudden concern. "To your king or chieftain?"
"We have no king." The wood creature turned and looked up at him over her shoulder. "Men do, especially those who live in the land to the south. Westeros they call that land and their king they call: King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm."
"Who is yon king of Men?" Túrin became genuinely interested for the first time that day, as though a veil of indifference had been lifted from him for a moment. As yet he had known Elven kings only.
"Rhaegar of the House Targaryen." The name of the House told Túrin nothing, but his heart froze and he felt Nienor tremble in his arms, and Brandir halted for a moment in stillness, holding his breath at the tree-woman's further words. "The House of the Dragon."
"Are you still insisting on remaining a Man here?" Túrin peeked towards Brandir some time later, as the three of them began to straggle two yards behind the children. The Halad said nothing to this, so he continued, "The dragon king, the freezing wood. I like that not, nought of it."
"These creatures have hitherto shown us nothing but kindness," Brandir said unsurely.
"You would be gladdened to sell your soul for the every mere tree, let alone the talking one," Túrin mocked, although tried to make his voice sound evenly.
"What other choice do we have?" Brandir muttered, displeased with Túrin's taunt.
To be slain once more by the first willing creature of this wood. Perhaps to die forcibly this time, Túrin thought gravely, he did not dare say it aloud, however, and yet he found reassurance as always in the way the scabbard, heavy with Gurthang, rubbed against his legwear.
"The king of Men..." he shared his musings instead. "The dragon one or not, Morgoth's or not, how is it possible that our king is of the Eldar not anymore, that there are the Eldar not anymore?"
Then, unexpectedly, Nienor started humming something under her breath, yet so quietly that Túrin could not recognise the words. "Nienor?"
"One night," his sister said after a silence, not lifting her eyelids, "whilst we were dwelling in Menegroth, Mother and I, I met queen Melian, sitting alone and chanting, so star gazed that I thought she was singing for Varda. Yet the words were other, so I asked: 'What song is it, lady?' And to this she replied: 'One that has not yet been born.'"
Túrin furrowed his brow. "What are you heading for?"
"Have you not guessed yet, Úben, son of Alnad? " Now it was Brandir's turn to mock, he seemed, however, too uneasy at that moment to try it truly. "Maybe this is the hereafter. Maybe that we have found ourselves in some world elsewhere we did not know existed when we were alive. Yet Nienor forefeels, and so do I now too, that we have awoken in the future. This," he halted and began to draw a half-circle with the crutch as though he wanted to mark each tree with it, "is the future of Arda. The question is: 'How far away?'"
Túrin stopped as well and sucked in a lungful of air to calm the thoughts that had begun circling in his head like a black flock of crowns. A blast of wind pierced him like an arrow, icy as Morgoth's breath. For a moment he thought his heart would freeze. Perhaps he wished it would.
* Túrin names himself here No one, the son of Nothing (Sindarin).
I know after this you may be a little confused or puzzled about who sits on the Iron Throne. Promise it will slowly become clearer :) Ty for reading!