This is dedicated to my father, with his white spindrift hair -- an engineer who, late in life, built two boats for his own enjoyment.  I believe he has always felt it to be the finest confluence of artistry and craftsmanship, physics and faith.

A tall lad of fourteen strode imperiously down a cliff trail as if determined to ignore the quirks time and other feet had put there and imagine it all the straighter to hurry his task.  The late-afternoon sun was making coal fire of his thick black hair and damp, prickly drops of sweat kept infiltrating his high, tight collar.  Reaching the bottom at last he jumped down into the sand and cursed under his breath.  “Rhach-ha.”

How dare they?  How dare they neglect their duty, these so-called ‘guards’.  It was disgraceful – absolutely disgraceful.  And his Uncle!  Allowing it … He never would have, if he were Prince; he wouldn’t, when he was Steward. 

And could it possibly get any hotter?  It had been getting hotter every day since they’d started the journey south, though the palace of Dol Amroth, with its cool granite paths and marble halls spiced with the breath of soft sea wind, had been a welcome relief.

“So, why did I leave it, like a fool?” the lad muttered to himself, setting off again.  His new boots, soft and supple deerskin – Oh! how he’d shown them off at home! – had whispered along the corridors of Minas Tirith but here sank clumsily into the shifting sand.  The fine, tight weave of his court clothes trapped the sun and defied the wind.  The white sand burned his eyes, so used to cool stone.  Memories nagged at him.  It was all wrong.

All wrong but he’d quickly taken up this duty the guardsman all shied from and set off down the cliff trail, every step familiar and strange; all to leave behind his father’s rigid silence, the fatigue that lurked in his mother’s eyes, his little brother’s over-excited yammering – sent all the faster by questions nipping at his heels. 

But now an empty beach thwarted him.  His gaze side-slipped easily with neither stick nor stone for purchase, along the sand into the glittering sea, the shining sky, almost unable to tell where one stopped and the other began.  A few brightly colored fishing boats swung lazily at their anchors but most just lay about, belly up and bleaching.  A small group of skitterling birds chased the ebbing waves but the water rose and fell only idly, as if out of habit.  A small group of ragged fishermen sat still as stones where palm trees made a piebald shade bravely above the kelp line.

Wearied, the lad closed his eyes only to be momentarily blinded by erupting bursts of color, then he settled into cool black.  The wind whistled past his ears and made all else – the sighing waves, crying gulls – seem dulled and far away.  For a moment he took comfort in the strange stillness, then roused himself to open his eyes and raise a hand against the scalding sun.

Somewhere, somewhere in all this nothing, his Grandfather was hiding like a hermit crab.

The lad chewed a lip and dropped his arm.  His options were limited.  He refused to return to the palace his task undone, his mission incomplete.  He’d sworn to restore the Prince (at least sworn it to himself) and to show them all what respect his grandfather was due.  He could not now return alone, so many questions left unasked.

He cocked his head and reconsidered the only other men abroad in the stillness.  It was absurd to think that they – common fisherfolk – might have knowledge of the Prince, and it was against his nature to ask for help, but there seemed no other course.  So he made his way over the rising shoulder of sand, contemplating appropriate modes of address, and into the darker air that crowned the beach.  As his eyes adjusted, he saw the men worked a fishing net over between them, little but their fingers moving in the heat.

They look like women, the lad thought, like cooks’ girls gossiping over shelled peas or old grannies cackling at quilting.  But these men, young or old he couldn’t say, were silent as if the sand, the sea, the birds had said all there was to say in the world and nothing more was needed.

And their silence, their bent heads, white, grey and wild, drew him into their circle, caught at last by how quickly and patiently their scarred and gnarled fingers worked order into the tangled knots.  He came to lean over the net as if looking for his reflection, and then pulled quickly back as a ripple ran through the group.  One by one – smoothly, swiftly – the men straightened and turned.  Then one rose above all the others, taller than the lad would have imagined possible, and he looked up to find surprise mirrored in his mother’s pearl-grey eyes.

“Boromir!”

The lad fell back a step.  He saw silver hair like spindrift, skin tanned and smooth like leather, a few sure and graceful steps then smells of salt – sun-baked – old fish and varnish enveloped him.  Caught up in a gentle but firm embrace the boy gasped against soft, weather-worn cloth and closed his eyes with memory.  In only a moment he felt himself let go.

Then at arms length, boy and man, grandson and grandsire, stood and considered one another.

Prince Adrahil was dressed as Boromir had never seen him, in but a linen shirt half-buttoned and canvas pants rolled nearly to the knees.  His feet were bare and sifted readily into the sand.  His hair, still full and long, had been bound carelessly with a leather cord and much had slipped free to float in the breeze.  His beard, which normally sported a neat trim, had grown scraggly and full.  Only the signet – the aquamarine cabochon carved with a swan and surrounded by nacre – still held his name.  And those eyes, familiar yet fathomless, still sparkled from his face like moonlight on waves, now considering him as if from a great distance. 

The Steward’s Son looked away with surprise and unease; he felt he would hardly have known the Prince, could have walked right passed him; nearly had, in fact.  Then he gathered himself and the rituals he had so often been schooled in, and bowed, stiffly.

“Grandfather.”

“You used to call me ‘Nanadhron.’”  Like faraway breakers the voice rumbled low and softly:  “Come, Boy.  Am I so changed?  Well, yes, I suppose I am, I suppose I am.”

The pearl-grey eyes slipped to one side, briefly, and then returned with a smile showing teeth white as whale bone.  Boromir found himself again clasped in two strong lithe hands.

“Sui gaearon nur, but it’s good to see you, good to see you, Boy.  I didn’t know you’d arrived.  Sometimes they forget to tell me things these days, you know.”  Adrahil leaned forward conspiratorially, and then receded.  “Is your mother here?  Well, of course she is.  And your Father … and little Faramir.  How I’m looking forward to seeing that sprat!  And you – you’ve done more than your share of growing since I was up in the City last winter.  You must be nearly tall as your father now, and I see you’ve taken the look of him.”  The grey eyes narrowed and, for a moment, Boromir felt himself shrink to four years old again when his Grandfather was an imposing and imperious figure.  Then the illusion slipped away and the old man stepped back.  “Well, I see your mother there, too, save her.”

Then, to Boromir’s mortification, Adrahil turned again to the group of men working the net.  One ropey arm slipped proudly around his shoulder.

“Here, Lads, look who’s come – my grandson, Boromir son of Denethor, come down from Minas Tirith itself all the way to our sand!  You best mind your manners, this boy’ll be Steward one day.  Steward!  Can you imagine it, one of mine  ...”

Boromir watched as many of the men exchanged indulgent smiles with each other, murmured deferential greetings, nodded their heads.  He felt himself flush as he nodded in return.  Then he felt the ropey arm tighten about his shoulders.

But the Steward’s son turned quickly to escape the embrace, and took possession of the Prince’s arm instead.  “Come, Grandfather.”  With a gentle pull the old man came easily away and Boromir lead him back into the sun, down to the shoreline, where they wouldn’t be so observed.  He wouldn’t have thought that anything on this beach, so timeless, seeming so unchanged, could have been shifted so easily.  Boromir felt the skin and muscle hanging loosely abound the bone and his pique began to ebb away.

Then Adrahil strung his arm more firmly through his grandson’s and pulled himself close, though his voice came softly again to Boromir’s ears.  “Now, tell me, Lad, what’s brought you all the way down here?  Tell me.  They sent you looking for me, didn’t they?”

“No!”

Suddenly the heat, the salt, the sweat came surging back into Boromir’s throat and sent him spinning in his tracks, sand flying from his boots.  His voice bristled as he turned to face Adrahil.  “No; I took it upon myself, Grandfather.”  He flung the common word out into the air between them just as the wakening breeze buffetted the matted hair off his brow.  Chastised, he dropped his voice:  “You shouldn’t be wandering about, alone, by yourself.”  He reached for the arm again.

But now it was Adrahil stepped away, and drew himself up to an imposing height.  “Well, now; wandering!  wandering … I’m not wandering, Boy, and I’m certainly not by myself.  Oh, and, well, now …” his back bowed and he seemed to shrink again; “they know where to find me, mostly.  No one’s much interested in me, these days.  Besides, I’ve been busy; got better things to do than concern myself with all that fussing and planning going on up there.”  He waved a hand vaguely back toward the cliff, seeming to take in all of Dol Amroth.  “Got better things to do …”

For a moment, Adrahil cocked his head and considered his grandson like a gull that’s just landed a crab, then he leaned his white head forward, and winked.

“You want to see?”

To his own surprise Boromir nodded, and found that he would.

***************

It was a great heaping mound of wood, its arching shell a sheaf of planks folded atop one another like a lady’s fan.  Boromir stared at it.  Rows of rough-hewn piers held it off the sand at enough height for a man to crawl under, if he’d a mind.  It looked to him like nothing so much as some strange sea monster washed up in a storm and left to lie, but even he could see the graceful and tapering line of it.

“It’s a boat!”

“Hmmm.  Spotted that, did you?”  But Adrahil was not teasing; he bent down and ran his fingers along the hull as if in some doubt himself.  Then he straightened, and laughed good-naturedly.  “Well, not much of one, yet, but she’s coming along.” 

Boromir’s skeptical eye took in the tools neatly arrayed on oil cloth out of the sun and water.  He tried but could not imagine the hands that held scepter and sword with such grace raising a hammer.

“You’re building a boat?” 

“Don’t sound so surprised!”  Adrahil’s laugh rolled over the sand.  “But, you’re right; not me so much as Lunt Thavron.  I am too much the apprentice to be trusted with much real work.  But Lunt designed her for me and lets me help:  sighted her in his mind’s eye and then drew her complete in the sand.  Got his boys to help cut the boards to fit.  He’s remarkable, a true craftsman.”

Boromir had never, ever heard a member of his family speak so highly of a laborer before.  He thrust out his lower lip and glared at the boat’s gunwales.

In the boy’s silence, Adrahil cocked his head and considered his grandson, sideways.  Then he took Boromir by the arm and steered him to the shade, and sitting.

“Come now,” Adrahil threaded his arm through Boromir’s again and pulled him close.  “There’s been a question waiting behind your eyes like an ambassador in an antechamber all this afternoon and I can see he’s still not satisfied.  Won’t you give him audience?”

Boromir picked up a dried reed and started scratching at the sand between his drawn up knees, as if writing would be easier.  Afresh the memories buffetted him:  Adrahil tall in the stern calling orders to his sailors; Adrahil intimidating his sailors and tradesmen into beneficial contracts; Adrahil on this very beach wrapping Boromir in a warm cloth, himself barely able to say “no!” through chattering teeth; Adrahil gliding over the sand, Finduilas beside him glowing in an afternoon sun, laughing.  Then Boromir could no longer stem the words:  “Grandfather, what are you doing here?”

“Doing?  Why … I just told you , Boy –”

“But, this place, your clothes, those men –”

Now it was Adrahil’s turn to bristle.  He pulled his arm away swiftly and spoke with measured words, nonetheless pointed:  “Those men are good men.  In all their poverty they want for nothing.  They ask me for nothing.  In fact, they barely tolerated my company at first, I who knew so little of their ways.  They found me capricious!  although they would never use such a word – ignorant, inferior.  Yes!  Inferior.  It was I who wanted of them, wanted their respect, their knowledge, and I had to earn their trust to get it.”

Then he softened, his sudden anger ebbing.  “Listen, Boromir,” Adrahil leaned toware Boromir a little.  “You must understand … Our life is one of privilege and great honor in responsibility, but one on which great demands are made as well.  Surely, you know something of this already?  The boys you share your lessons with – noble’s sons all I’m sure – they treat you differently, don’t they?  set you apart.” 

Boromir dropped his head and nodded, almost imperceptibly.

“Yes, and so it will be all the rest of your life, as it has been for me.  But not on this beach.”  Boromir looked up in surprise and confusion, but Adrahil smiled reassuringly.  “Ruling is what I was born to do, just as you are, and so I have done faithfully now for forty years; I think it’s time I did something just for myself.” 

Then Boromir jumped as Adrahil easily drew the boy’s sword from his hip.

“This is a fine piece of steal, and I hear you’ve become quite with it.”  The old man sighted down the length of the sword; swung it in the wind once or twice.  “Did your father give you this?”

“Yes, for my last birthday.”

Adrahil handed it back and squinted apologetically.  “Thirteenth?”

Feeling both a boy’s umbrage and a man’s chagrin Boromir quickly slipped his favorite possession back in its sheath.  “Fourteenth, Grandfather.”

“Hmmph.  Well,” Adrahil nodded; “do you know how it was made?”

“Of course … Ceredir Megil made it from Erebor steel.  Father said –”

“No, Boromir,” the Prince’s hand on his arm stopped him; “Not where or by whom … how.”

The lad was silent.

Adrahil spoke low as if about to impart a great secret; Boromir found himself almost leaning against the old man’s arm to listen.  “Can you imagine how it feels, my tithenion, to make such a thing?  To fear your own sweat lest it mar your work, to want more than anything to faint from the heat, but must serve the steel?  It is a thing of beauty, Boromir, to make something with your own hands, something graceful, useful.  There is a special pride attached to it, to creation, that I’ve not felt for a long time.”

Then he nodded at the placidly swelling water.  “The sea, Lad; maybe she’s always sung to me, but I was too busy worrying about the land to hear her tune.  Well, now I’m ready to take the dance.  It is a sad thing, Tithenion, to stay too long at the party.”

But, as it had done so often on that afternoon, Boromir’s confusion only deepened.

Adrahil sighed.  “Do you remember your adadhron much, Boy?  Ecthelion?  Do you?”

Boromir straightened immediately.  “Of course.  Well, no … not much.  I remember how stern he was and how … that he scared me, a little, at the end.”

“Yes, well … Quite right.  He was a good man, Ecthelion, a good Steward – strong, fair-minded, and a good father, I imagine, too, yes.  But toward the end of his life people began to whisper about him; say his mind was failing; say he could no longer tell family from friend; say the things they say about me.  But in his case, it was true.  By the time your father succeeded him Denethor had had the rule of Gondor in all but name for some time.  Your adadhron couldn’t let it go, you see, and your father had to wrest it from him, bit by bit in a quiet, bloodless civil war within his own house.  And more sad still, I believe Ecthelion saw his failings, saw what it was driving his son to and it pained him.  Still, he could not bring himself to give up the life he’d been bred for, the greatest thing all his life had led to.  He taught me much.

“I want to save Belfalas, save Imrahil, from that fight if I can, and find other meaning for my life at the same time.  Now, I’m blessed with a good son, a capable son, even as your father is, and I if I leave now I can give him the rule while I’m still around to help him learn it, help him grow into it, not wait until I’m dead or he has to take it from me by force or guile.  I will spare him that, and give Belfalas a ruler she can grow to love, as she will, for his own sake.”

Just then came the gentle low tolling of bells from the city above.  Adrahil leaned slightly forward, and squinted westward.

“There, now, the sunset bells.”  He sighed softly and gazed again at the sand between his long feet.  “The feast will be starting soon and then, tomorrow, I will give up my throne.  Well …” in a swift and fluid movement the Prince rose to his feet and stood tall in the sun’s fading light.  He gazed out to sea for a long moment, and then turned his face to Boromir’s.  “I am ready.”  He extended a strong, tanned arm.  “Are you?” 

Boromir thought a moment and then placed his strong square hand in the long thin one, and stood.  He met the pearl-grey eyes with a level gaze.  “Yes, Nanadhron.  I am.”

Boats to Build  by Guy Clark/ Verlon Thompson

It's time for a change
I'm tired of that same ol same
the same ol words the same ol lines
the same ol tricks and the same ol rhymes

Days precious days
roll in and out like waves
I got boards to bend I got planks to nail
I got charts to make I got seas to sail

- Chorus -
I'm gonna build me a boat
with these two hands
it'll be a fair curve
from a noble plan
let the chips fall where they will
cause I've got boats to build

Sails are just like wings
the wind can make em sing
songs of life songs of hope
songs to keep your dreams afloat

- Chorus  -

Shores distant shores
there's where I'm headed for
got the stars to guide my way
sail into the light of day

- Chorus -

Sometime ago I read Fileg’s lovely “As Truly As The Arrow Flies”   (http://www.storiesofarda.com/chapterlistview.asp?SID=286), in which ‘young Faramir learns about the constellations from his Grandfather’ and began thinking about what Adrahil might have to teach his other grandson.

This is essentially bookverse, but I’ve taken a few small liberties.  Tolkien tells us little about Adrahil, Prince of Dol Amroth, father to Imrahil and Finduilas; we know nothing of the end of his reign or his life although in The Peoples of Middle Earth his dates are given as 2917-3010 TA.  In this story, the math – in terms of dates – is all wrong:  please overlook it.  I imagine Adrahil abdicates in favor of his son when Boromir is 14, old enough to argue with, listen to, and remember his Grandfather.  As per Tolkien’s timeline, Finduilas would have by then succumbed to her illness, but I elected to have her live a little longer..

This story is not deep thought, but it's been on the back burner for quite a while and high time I had done with it.

NOTES ON SINDARIN WORDS AND PHRASES

Rhach-ha:  (Sindarin), literally:  “Curse it”

Nanadhron:  (Neo-Sindarin) - Maternal Grandfather (literaly Mothers’ male parent)
Note: (in fabricating this word, I especially liked the idea that the male term might begin with a female element (Nana = mother); of course, of the corresponding words – Adadhron (Paternal Grandfather), Adadhril (Paternal Grandmother), and Nandhril (Maternal Grandmother) – only one continues the pattern.  Oh well.

Sui gaearon nur:   (Sindarin) an oath:  “as the sea is deep”

Lunt Thavron:  (Sindarin), name of a shipwright, from 'Lunt' = boat and 'Thavron' = carpenter, wright, builder.  Not to imaginative but to the point.

Ceredir Magol:  (Sindarin), name of a swordsmith, from Ceredir = doer, maker  and Magol = Sword. 

Adadhron -   Grandfather, Father’s Male Parent  (Ada + odhron), as above