Ionnath Estel 3

Ionnath Estel

Part 3

Posted: March 2, 2007
Title: Ionnath-Estel (The Sons of Hope)
Author: Kenaz

*****

“Elladan! Oh merciful Elbereth!”

The voice was distant; it swelled and ebbed, a wave lapping at the edge of his consciousness. He tried to sit up but his head rebelled with screeching pain and a roiling tide of nausea. Cautiously, one eye broke open a sliver, but the light was too bright and he shut it tight again, trying to cover his face with his hands before a blazing pain forced him to stillness. He could not even lift his arm; his body was dead, disobedient weight sprawled in awkward angles across the forest floor.

“Please wake… oh, Elladan…please…”

The voice was taut with fear, which in turn frightened him. He tried to remember whose it was… Haldir. It was Haldir’s voice. But this only disturbed him further, for if Haldir were frightened, something truly was amiss… Slowly, the swirling misery in his head transformed to a throbbing ache and more than anything he wanted his naneth, but she was not near. His chin quaked, all the hurt and terror coalescing now into one overwhelming surge of wretchedness. His features folded in on themselves as his entire body was wracked with hitching sobs.

His wail was momentarily disrupted by a splash on his skin. Again, he attempted to peer out from his sole skyward eye, and saw Haldir looking down at him, tears overspilling his own eyes and leaving a salty splatter across his cheeks. Elrohir stood at Haldir’s shoulder, his face stark white, his unblinking eyes wide with horror, and his entire body shaking. Elladan wished he would lie down beside him and hold him as he did when they slept, but could not summon the words to ask.

“Orophin has gone for your mother… she will be here soon. Please, Elladan… I am so sorry! I did not mean to let you fall!”

Though before he had wanted nothing more than Haldir’s sole regard, it came as little consolation now, hurt as he was, terrified, and unable to recall what had happened. He howled anew, plump tears tumbling in torrents, and even Haldir’s trembling hand petting his face was no comfort, none at all.

His mother at last rushed to his side with the Lady Galadriel close behind, and he whimpered piteously as his granddame’s healing hands assessed his injuries. Shivering with the force of his pain, he was carefully lifted into a warm, familiar clutch. A voice whispered soothing words into his ear. Blackness enveloped him.

He awoke some time later, swaddled in his granddame's wide bed with the blankets drawn up tight to his neck, his head still swimming ominously. His arm had been tightly wrapped and splinted. He lifted it experimentally and winced at the sharp shock that ran through it.

“It is broken,” a small voice told him. Haldir was slumped miserably in a chair beside his bed. He looked as if he had not fared much better; his own arm was bound tight to his chest.

“What happened?” Elladan asked quietly. When he tried to recall the events of the day, his head was filled with the angry beating of drums.

“You fell.”

Vaguely now, he could see hazy forms like a half-remembered dream in his mind. Other young elves… sounds of laughter… climbing…

“Then you fell as well.”

Haldir shook his head solemnly. “I tried to catch you. I did catch you. But I could not pull you up, and then your collar tore away. Oh, merciful Elbereth, you gave me such a fright, Elladan!”

“But why is your arm bound?”

“When I caught you, your weight pulled my shoulder out of joint. A healer had to put it back into place.” His face took on a greenish tinge. “It hurt terribly. She says it will heal, but that I will not draw a bow again for some time. ”

Elladan felt a surge of shame. Though the details were still beyond his grasp, he knew full well that he had wanted to climb with Haldir, to make himself useful. And what had come of it? He had caused injury to them both and Haldir would want no part of him now. He sank back into the pillows, willing himself to disappear into their downy depths.

The padding of familiar feet raised his eyes from the bedding. Elrohir peered into the room tentatively, as if to gauge his twin's wellbeing from the distance of the doorway. Finding him tolerably whole, he ran to Elladan’s side, clambered up the bed and then gingerly settled in beside him, tucking a possessive arm around his waist. The consolation they gained in each other’s presence was palpable, as if the entire room had at last released a long-held breath.

But Elrohir’s eyes contained anything but consolation. He held Haldir in an accusatory stare, letting the Galadhel know he blamed him entirely for his brother’s mishap, and nothing would sway him from his fury. Haldir, clearly feeling the dagger-prick of Elohir’s recrimination, rose clumsily to his feet and, with head hanging, moved toward the door. Elladan wanted to call him back, but his tongue was leaden in his mouth, and his brother’s arm tightening around his middle felt as much like a demand for his silence as an embrace.

“Stay, child,” his mother interceded. “Your brother will return soon. The healer has left some herbs for your pain. Your mother will know how to prepare them.”

Haldir's averted face told the tale of his guilt, and he did not reach for the small pouch she offered, as if to accept a palliative would be unjust, as if his pain was penance.

She laid her hand over his uninjured shoulder and turned him toward her. “It was an unfortunate accident, and we are greatly relieved that Elladan will recover. No one holds you to blame, Haldir.”

“I do!” Elrohir piped up mutinously. “It was all his fault!" His look was sharp and his eyes as cold as stars. "Elladan would never have tried to climb so high if not for you!” His countenance was darkened with contempt, gutting with all the spite he could summon.

The swift descent of Haldir’s stomach into his very bowels was stalled somewhat by Celebrían's pointed expression, the reproving arch of her slender brows.

“Elladan knew better than to climb so high, and he ignored Haldir’s warnings. Haldir injured himself trying to keep your brother from falling, and you have him to thank that your brother was not more seriously injured.”

Elrohir’s tart little mouth opened again, but Celebrían's wordless admonition froze him in frustrated silence. He glowered and curled close against his brother’s body, guarding it jealously.

Celebrían kept her hand on Haldir, and his shoulders gave up some of their tension under that gentle touch. Shortly, the muffled tread of footfalls rose outside the door.

“I imagine that is your brother come to fetch you,” she said quietly, and soon the round and kindly face of her waiting woman appeared to announce their visitor.

Yet it was not Orophin who came forward, but Haldir's father, wearing his warden greys, his formal blue cloak, and his silver gorget. His eyes quickly sought out Haldir, who stood forlornly at Lady Celebrían's side, and raked him head to foot. His expression was strained as he made obeisance.

"Once again I find I must beg your forgiveness for my son," he said tightly, and Haldir felt sick with the anger he saw restrained behind the regimented bow, the embarrassment camouflaged by his precisely executed gestures. "Rest assured he will be suitably punished."

"No punishment is warranted, warden."

Lady Galadriel entered with gliding steps, Lord Celeborn following silently behind. Though she had spoken softly, her voice echoed in the chamber. Haldir’s father eyed her warily as he bowed first to her, then to Lord Celeborn. There was a cast of mistrust on his features when he gazed at the Lady that was as unfamiliar and unsettling to Haldir as the presence of Galadriel herself. The Silvans were by nature chary of the Noldor, and she, who was blood-kin to Fëanor through her father’s line, evoked an even greater portion of their wariness, though she was a frequent visitor to Lothlorien and confidant to their king.

"You should take pride in your son's instincts," Celebrían added. Haldir sagged further, as if the weight of a mother's compassion shrank him. "If not for his swift reflexes, we would be passing a far graver night. Yet it has been a trying day for all, and I imagine young Haldir will be glad to see his bed."

"You have a generous heart, my lady," came his father's reply, his clipped delivery making patent his opinion that her generosity was misplaced.

When Haldir dared look up again, he saw the fierce and unyielding expression on Lord Celeborn's face. The Elf-lord had been the only figure in the room who had not yet spoken. Clearly, Celebrían's gesture of clemency was an impulse not shared by her father, and his own father knew it. Not for the first time, he wished that he could simply disappear.

His father bowed deeply to Celeborn, and then to the women, and brusquely shepherded him away. The Lady Galadriel's fingers lit on Haldir's head as he reached the door, and he was shocked by the preternatural warmth and palpable goodwill emanating from her touch.

"You may visit Elladan on the morrow if you wish. It would do him well to see a friendly face."

Much to Elrohir’s obvious annoyance, Haldir nodded gravely and said, "I will."

The silence of their slow march home was like the stillness before a storm: ominous, and pregnant with anticipation. At long last, the thunder broke, and his father leveled him with a single glance.

"How could you have been so careless?"

Haldir had no answer; he did not even try to speak.

"This shames us all, child. This was no ordinary bairn you injured with your foolishness, though that would have been bad enough, but a son of Lord Elrond. I had thought you conscientious, but keeping such high-flown company has made you reckless, and boastful as well. Orophin has told me the reason for this misadventure. I am a poor father if I have raised you to overreach yourself so, and to perform such senseless stunts."

Haldir felt sicker with every step, the weight of his shame and the bleakness of his guilt as binding as his bandages and as miserable as his aches. He stumbled as they crossed the little footbridge that spanned the creek near their home, and his father caught him as he went to his knees.

He seemed to soften then. The frostiness left his features, and as he gently aided Haldir to his feet and assayed his injury he looked simply tired.

"It pains you, I wager."

Haldir fixed his eyes to the boards of the bridge and nodded, not wanting his father to see the muddy tear-tracks on his face primed to yield a path for fresh sorrow. His chin quavered as he stubbornly struggled against further displays of embarrassing emotion.

"You are fortunate Lady Celebrían is so indulgent. Another might have laid blame on you, and rightly so. As it is, you have tarnished your name in Lord Celeborn’s eyes, and that was not well done."

Haldir remained silent as the first ignominious tear forced its way past his defenses and rolled traitorously down his cheek.

"The bairns are of an age that curiosity rules them, Haldir, and they ken not the limits of their strength. You were but a few years younger when your mother had to pluck you half-frozen out of this very stream when you sought to run with your brother, do you not remember?"

Haldir swallowed hard around the ache in his throat. Of course he remembered. He had never been so terrified in all his life-- until today, watching Elladan slip from his grasp.

He had begged Orophin to take him on some outing or other, and Orophin had teased that Haldir still played with a poppet and was unfit company for one as big as he. Haldir was intent on disproving the notion and followed him, the beloved, grubby poppet his brother had so vigorously maligned clutched tight in his hand. He had kept apace until they reached the stream. Rather than walk down to the footbridge, Orophin had leapt from stone to stone across the water, disappearing into the overgrowth beyond the banks, and Haldir tried to follow. But once he had hopped to the second stone, he discovered that the distance to the next was too great and the water too swift. He stood for some time, stranded, and watched the water rush on beneath him. He had been too frightened to go on and too proud to go back.

At last he summoned the courage to jump—and nearly succeeded-- but the moss was slick on the stones, and his feet came out from under him. Even now, he could recall how time seemed to stretch long and thin as the poppet tumbled from his fingers and was taken by the current, one sodden little arm rising as if to bid him farewell as it slipped away down the stream. The icy shock of water bit into him like teeth, and he fell, grasping desperately at the rock, thinking he would surely die and that the cold stream would drag his body away and away, out into the great salty sea. With every passing moment, his sodden clothing weighed him further down and his strained fingers threatened to lose their grip. He had wept and wailed in fright, helpless to do anything but hold tight and scream.

But Nennë had heard him, and she had plucked him from the water and rushed him home, bundling him in furs before the hearth until he ceased to shiver and sob. She had held him tight in her lap and rocked him, singing softly in his ear until he slept, and she had sat at his side through the night, soothing him each time he woke with a startled yelp, dreaming that the stream had taken him. It had been years before the sight of water no longer filled him with fear, and more years yet before he consented to be taught to swim.

"Your little friend is of a great family, and it reflects poorly on you that he came to harm in your company. I would bar you from ever meddling with him again, save that you gave your word to the Lady that you would attend him tomorrow."

The implication was greater than the sum of the words. Haldir had long ago been taught that his behavior, good or ill, reflected on his father, and that reflection had certainly been clear in the grim expression on Lord Celeborn's face.

"Come along," his father quietly prompted. "The sooner you are home, the sooner you may sleep."

They finished their walk as they began it, in silence. Haldir watched the path ahead, willing the familiar glow of candles in his family's talan to appear.

Haldir was put to bed straight away, but his pain precluded sleep. A light rap echoed on the doorframe, and he was taken aback to see his Orophin lingering apprehensively at the threshold. They had shared the little room before Orophin took to the barracks, and he had often let it be known that Haldir camped there purely by dint of his fraternal generosity. Concern, even remorse, was plain on his brother's face as he waited for an invitation to come inside.

"Father was fit to flay," he whispered as he stepped in. "He feared Lord Celeborn would hold you accountable and that the King would reprimand him, or you."

Haldir's head dropped back against the pillow as his unhappiness percolated anew. "Father told me I have tarnished my name with Lord Celeborn, and that I am lucky Lady Celebrían is indulgent."

"Mandos dash it," Orophin cried, striding to his bedside, "I am sorry, Haldir! I thought only to teach you some humility. I did not imagine it would cause you injury, nor your wee friend! I took what blame I could from over your head and took it upon my own. I was to have a fortnight's rest before returning to the marches, but Father has revoked it. He says I have proven myself in need of the border's discipline.

"But that is a small thing," he added, squatting down to look Haldir straight in the eye. "If something had happened to you or the bairn, I should never have forgiven myself." The intensity and earnestness of Orophin’s regard was uncomfortable, and Haldir fought the urge to turn his face away.

Orophin rose. "Wait," he said as he backed out the door. He returned a moment later with Haldir's bow, as well as a sheaf of arrows Haldir knew he had made himself. A peace offering.

"I should have found a better way to make my point than with trickery. Forgive me."

Haldir squirmed beneath the sheets. When had his brother ever asked forgiveness for tormenting him? It seemed wrong, somehow, as if his world were suddenly the slightest bit off balance, and he thought upon his own bold words that had spurred Orophin into action. All he had ever sought was some bit of recognition, and some share of his father's attention that Orophin had ever and always fully owned. But he had only bought his father's disappointment, and he rued all that came in the wake of his childish bid.

A promise to disown the braggart's mantle forever was on the tip of his tongue when his mother came into the room. "Let him rest," she chided softly, and Orophin nodded, stroking Haldir's forehead and bussing her on the cheek before he slipped out.

She perched softly on the edge of his bed, checking his mug to see that he had finished the herbal broth, and favored him with her beatific gaze, stroking one finger down his nose as she had done when he was small.

"Sleep, sweetling," she whispered, her finger tracing its path in a gentle rhythm. It had been years now since he had allowed his mother to bed him down like a babe, but tonight he nearly wept, so needful was he of a mother's touch. He cared not if it marked him for a child. Her touch was love, her voice was relief, and the terrible day at last found its end in the darkness of sleep and the receding strains of her ancient lullaby.

A brisk wind rose up and rattled the branches, and here and there a leaf surrendered its grasp, looping and swirling toward the forest floor. Elladan plucked one from the air with his good hand as it made its indolent descent and rolled the stem between his thumb and forefinger, watching the play of colors from green at its center to gold at its edges. The sun hung low and lazy in the sky though the hour was not particularly late. Autumn was coming.

"Do you think you will ever come to Imladris?" He twirled the leaf between his fingers again and appended, hopefully, "I think you would like it there."

Haldir shrugged, and stopped to tuck a particularly handsome specimen of maple leaf behind Elladan’s ear. "I would like to see it, I think, but I do not think my father would allow it. Orophin once asked if he might go to Edhellond with King Amroth’s envoy to see the great boats of the Teleri, and father said only that the last time the Tawarwaith were foolish enough to leave their home, they came to death on the Dagorlad."

The summer had flown swiftly, but his arm was still bound and coddled, a souvenir of the season's adventures. His youth and mortal blood had conspired to heal him far more slowly than he desired. He could sense sometimes, when Haldir looked at him, that his friend was still wracked with guilt over the incident. Elladan had tried often to assuage him by showing just how strong and nimble his left hand had become, though his suggestion that when he was grown he would learn to fight two foes at once with a sword in each hand had been met with a howl of laughter that had rankled him a bit, for he had been in earnest when he thought of it.

Now his sojourn was drawing to its close, and he knew not when he would see his friend again: his grandsire and granddame had announced that they go abroad to Belfalas and dwell there by the sea for some undetermined time. Once they departed Lorien, there would be no call for Celebrían or her sons to come to the Golden Wood.

There were no Wood-elves in Imladris, no one to teach him the way of the trees as Haldir had tried to do, albeit with only limited success-- and since his accident, only ever from the ground. And even though he often sighed and rolled his eyes, and was sometimes brusque in his words and laughed too merrily when Elladan showed his ignorance of some fact or custom of Silvan life, Haldir was a true friend. He had proved that in the days after the accident when he kept his loyal vigil in Elladan's sickroom, never once complaining when Elrohir ordered that he not sit too near the bed, or that he fetch tea or warm milk or sweet cakes or a story for Elladan to read. By the end of his convalescence, even Elrohir could not deny Haldir’s devotion, and the pair had at least reached a peaceable accord, though Elrohir had still not particularly warmed to the Galadhel.

But soon, too soon, the days had fallen away.

"Will you forget me after I have gone away?" Elladan asked.

Haldir grunted and his eyes fixed on Elladan's sling. "Not likely."

After a moment of narrow-eyed consideration, he continued. "I wager that it is I who will be forgotten. When you are older, you will be ashamed that you counted such a simple Silvan among your playmates."

Elladan reeled around and the leaf dropped from his hand and fluttered to the ground. "Do not say such things! You are my friend and I shall never be ashamed of you! Never!"

"Peace, wee fool! I meant no offense!" Haldir sank to the ground with his back up against a sycamore trunk. "Your brother and grandsire may still bar me from your presence under pain of wounding, however." He laughed then, but it was a strident laugh, and Elladan wished he had not spoken so vehemently.

He sat at Haldir's right side and rested his head against his companion’s arm, surreptitiously surveying the form beside him. The Galadhel's body showed signs of impending maturity that even further highlighted the difference in their ages, and the likelihood that when next they met, Haldir would have left him far behind like an outgrown toy: a broadening of his shoulders, a thickening of his limbs. His own head fell more than a hand short of Haldir's shoulder, his own body still slim and childish. It by turns vexed and intrigued him; Haldir’s frame looked more akin to a grown Elf than a child, while his own body remained caught in youth’s spindly thrall. How long would he have to wait, he wondered, until his own legs filled out and lengthened, until his own face shed its soft curves for strong angles? He could feel the muscles in Haldir’s arm working under the skin as he pulled his little knife across a fallen twig, peeling away strips of bark and pulp. Haldir kept his eyes on his blade, following each stroke as it contoured the wood.

"If I return someday, even if you are old and I am still a child, promise me that we will still have adventures together as we do now."

"I promise," Haldir answered quickly, and Elladan knew, despite his youth, that Haldir had not truly considered his words before answering, but he had made a promise all the same, and Elladan intended fully to hold him to it.

*****

Nennë = "Mama" in the Silvan dialect. This word is entirely my own invention, but I wanted to demonstrate some difference between the Silvan language and the more common Sindarin. I imagine that the Silvans, even while speaking Sindarin in the broader world, likely held on proudly to the vestiges of their native tongue.

Tawarwaith = Silvan Elves

*****

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