Oh, Cool Waters…

The low moaned denials that reach my ears cannot be my own; a heart, so seared by this unspeakable pain, surely cannot make a sound.  The world ceases to exist beyond the pale perfection of her face.  Her soft smile still curves upon those rose lips, which were ever ready to part with a word, a song, a laugh.  I gather her into my arms, her body still warm and pliant, and crush her to my heart. My love, my soul, another breath is all I wish, a single word, one final instant.  But there will be no answer to that need.  How can life run its careless course without her hand to guide it?  How can the skies not part with grief and rip the world asunder now that she is gone?

Firm and gentle hands pry her body from me, meaningless murmurs in my ear, pointless actions by pale-faced girls and crones.

“No!”  I tear myself from their insistent grasp to smooth back the lank curls from her neck and face.  “She likes it up, just so…”

“We know, it’s alright…  Go on, go rest…”

Rest.  What rest?  Where in the world, waking or sleeping, will I not see her beloved face beside me in my mind and not miss her all the more?

Blind strides take me past the halls and rooms of our home, which are still full of her joyous presence, and past our dark door into the sweet summer air.  Bright sun strikes my face and I hurry toward the shade of the gray willows downstream.  The water is clear as glass near the bank and dark as honey mead at its heart, where the river races deep and hungry in its channel.

A single step takes me knee deep into its current, dampening my trousers to the thigh.  Two more will place me fully in its embrace and all choice will be forfeit; only one path lies from the river to the sea.  It would be so easy to just let it take me, just let the waters close over me and wash all care from me…

Hard hands drag me back, and I am helpless even to fight them, simply sinking to my knees in the shallows.

“Don’t do this…  Come back…”

The water is so cool on my hands, here in the shadows.

“I can’t… She’s gone.  How can she be gone?  I don’t…  I don’t understand…”

Warm hands grip my shoulders and his hot tears fall against my neck.  I am caught again, chained back from joining her by the living and the loved.

She is gone.

And I remain.

August 1, 1439 - Brandy Hall, the Shire.

On The Other Side Of This…

Four o’clock.  Teatime, but there’ll be no such served in the Hall today.  The black cloth that covers the mirrors throughout the smial plays dark contrast to the riot of colorful flowers that should have brightened every space.  Passing down the long corridor that leads to the Master’s quarters, there is little sound coming from the rooms that lay upon each side.  The nursery, too, is far quieter than it has ever been, although there are nearly two dozen children here today.  Sam’s eldest has gathered most of the youngsters about her, reading quietly from an old storybook, while Rose and Diamond tend to the little ones.  They appeared to have so little in common, our three little wives, thrown together by the friendship of their mates, but their differences masked a fellow feeling no less than ours.  The memories of her are thick in these sun-drenched rooms, where the new Mistress of Brandy Hall has been no less generous in these last seven years than her predecessor, raising the victims of life’s misfortunes alongside her own sons.  Theo has curled up in a window seat with his four-year-old brother on his lap, all teenaged wit and rebellion washed under by his mother’s passing.

Diamond looks up from our month-old daughter’s little face and catches me peeking through the half opened door.  The small shake of her head tells me that he is not here, and I move on without a word.  The arched entrance to the parlor is flooded with summer light and it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust, coming in from the darkened hall.  Reclining in the afternoon’s golden glow, his infant son upon his heart, my cousin looks for one peaceful instant asleep himself.  But he looks up, one hand gently resting upon the tiny back, and I can see his heart still stands upon the riverbank, as it did this morning.  I’ve no wish to disturb this small pause in time’s swift course, to move us all into the next part of this singularly cruel day.  Death, like all things, is for my people an occasion for the comforts of food and company, and when the life has been long and full, it is a joyous celebration, full of laughter as well as tears.  But when the very young are taken, or the loss is so bitterly tragic as today, even we have no heart for song.

Yet many have come, those who were on the way for the child’s birth and those who live near enough to have heard today of Estella’s passing, all of them waiting for the Master of the Hall to open his doors, that they may share the useless comfort of their sympathy.  The words are bitter on my tongue.

“Everything is ready.”

Three small words to say that the grave is dug and her body laid out, awaiting the final farewell of those who loved her.  The next few hours will be an agony of expectation and self-control, each curious glance, each kindly word a trial, when I well know he wants nothing more than to ride into the Wilds where duty binds him not at all to this quiet strength he has taught us all to expect of him.

“Alright,” he says, rising slowly, careful of the sleeping newborn in his arms.

Clouds suddenly pass over the Sun, throwing the room into gray shadow, and as he steps into the darkened hall, the heavy August afternoon breaks into a drenching rain.

Something Like Peace

For one bewildering moment, my grief-numbed mind refuses to grasp what I find before me and instinct throws me back, stumbling against the wide desk in my haste.  The shock of its sharp corner digging into my back recalls good sense and I glance back to get a better look at the dark figure that overwhelms the far corner of the room.  In the intermittent half-light provided by the swinging shutter, the Balrog’s baleful glare glows from its shadowy form, the only hint of color in the large coal sketch, all the more menacing for its lack of sharp detail, all formless darkness, as it had been in truth.  The crack of the shutter startles me from my observation of our fallen enemy and I turn back to the reason I had entered the room, though reluctantly, in the first place.  Reaching over the desk to open the window, my eye falls on another piece, half-finished and abandoned two months since, but painfully relevant today.  There she stands, my love, not three days in the ground but joyous and full of life, of the life that has ended hers, and by extension, mine.  I rub my eyes, painfully dry today, and start to open the window, to secure the clapping shutter and retreat to my own dark rooms in the small house.  Crickhollow is still mine, Frodo’s parting gift and my sanctuary in more unsettled times, but I have not returned in many long years, busy and content.  It appears that Pippin still comes often enough, and I cannot begrudge him the calm and privacy that I know is absent from his life.  I had no idea what he did here until today, and though my nights are now long and untroubled, I used to wonder where my cousin had locked his own darker memories.

Wind sweeps across the desk and into the room, sending the portrait floating to the floor, and a pale sound rises behind me, like the fluttering of many wings.  I turn to stare round at the walls, every inch covered with parchment upon parchment, unnoticed in the motionless half-light when I entered, and now alive with the breath of wind I have inadvertently let in.  Curiosity tugs gently at my battered soul, of the sort I’ve so often reproached my cousin and I find myself securing the shutters wide open for better light.  There are hundreds of them.  Portraits, landscapes, cities and scenes follow each other and sometimes overlap, some fully detailed renderings and others bare sketches, mere suggestions of mood and place.  My own face and those of all our friends and companions look out, memories of our younger years and reflections of our present lives mingled without discernible order.

“Merry?” His clear voice rings out in the hall, and I stand caught amidst his private thoughts like a child with a pilfered pie, unable to speak or run, and already deeply sorry for my trespass.

He pushes wider the half-opened door and steps in, a curious frown upon his face and looking very much for a moment like his father had when we were young, displeased but ready to hear the truth of the matter.

“I…  I’m sorry, the shutter…”

 His smile banishes the lines from his face.  “I always meant to share.  Someday.  I guess today’s as good a day as any,” he says with a shrug.  Reaching down to pick up the fallen portrait, he smiles sadly.  “I was going to finish it this week.  I don’t know if I can now…”

A lurching sob squeezes the breath right out of me and I find my face pressed against his solid shoulder, warm hand on my neck, and I push down hard on the dark wave of sadness that wells up without warning, crushing the frail remains of self-control.

So much unfinished, so much undone, now never to be completed.

The years without her stretch endlessly before me, and I can only weep.  Why didn’t the world end with her last breath?

***   ***   ***

I have been waiting for this.  It has been three days since Estella’s death, three days since I found him gazing blindly into the distance, a single step from the Brandywine’s dark embrace.  The few others who know of this say it was a passing moment, an extreme instant of a grief that will fade, yet still I fear; I fear so much for him.  I know him too well to heed their reassurances, to be fooled by the quiet face of sorrow he shows to the world.  Once before, I saw him look longingly to the other side and every day thereafter was conscious choice for too many long years, until living again became a happy thoughtless habit.  I wish I had been the one to make the choice an obvious one, but it was Estella that had truly broken the darkness behind his eyes.  And now, bereft of her spirit and her sweet council, who will push back the empty night?  I have not the words, not these words that he would know to say, and I have not the kind of courage, of love, that she did.  I do not know what to do, save to stand here with him, to remember him to himself, and simply hope that this time it will be enough.

“I will finish it.  The child should know how happy his mother was to have him.”

“Thank you.”

I don’t like anyone watching me work, which is why I hide this one small thing from them all, but this is different.  This is Merry, this is my brother’s heart, and if there is no balm for him in forgetfulness, then it must lie in remembrance, and that is one of the few things I can offer.  Even now he is considerate, moving to stand by the empty grate as I work slowly in the bright sun that streams in through the window.  She was my cousin twice over, our Estella, with her Tookish spirit graven in the high cheekbones and pointed chin, yet so beautifully rounded out by her father’s generous heart.  Glossy brown curls tumble across her shoulders, lifted lightly from her face and neck by the same ruby ribbon all these long years.  I remember her as a girl, as a bride, and as a mother and a healer too, and the joyous warmth in her brown eyes is the key to making this more than some pale likeness.  A few more strokes, a smudge of light, and I must choose to call it done, closing eyes that ache with restrained tears.  His hand is light upon my shoulder, and I look up to find him smiling, just a little, and it is like a promise:  to try, to live, to endure.  Maybe it will be enough.

A/N:

This was written, felt, and poured over while haunted by this beautiful song, from whose lyrics the chapter titles have come.

On the other side of this, there’s something like peace.

Oh, cool waters, wash over me.

Looking at the winter sky, torn with silver streaks.

Lying, dying in the reeds.

Mary McLaughlin “Cool Waters” Daughter Of Lir