Shadows

The wood was haunted.  Not by anything as obvious as the shades of those who had died protecting it – that would have been too simple.  As he moved from stump to stump, his fingers brushing over the tortured wood, blackened by the crusted reminders of the flames that had seared the bark and eaten into the heartwood, his ears were taunted by his memory of their song.

‘My lord?’ 

The patrol’s leader was uneasy.  This landscape of burnt trees and drifting ash was – unnatural, and walking though it left him feeling exposed, vulnerable.  It seemed unlikely that stray orcs or wounded wargs remained hidden among the desecration, but here there was no pulsing life prepared to give them warning, no whispers from a gossiping canopy, no hum of alarm from twisted roots. 

‘What is it, Dravan?’ Legolas sounded polite enough, but there was a dullness to his tone that spoke of an ache too deep for obvious emotion.

‘You should not stay here too long, my lord.  It is not safe.’

Legolas could not stop his eyes from travelling across the devastated landscape like an accusation.  He turned his greyed gaze back to the stiff warrior.  It was not, after all, he told himself, Dravan’s fault.  The forces commanded by his father had fought beyond all reason to hold the forest against the gleefully reckless attacks of the enemy.  Only those to whom the land meant nothing would use fire as a weapon.

‘What more could they do?’ he blurted, as memories of the past assailed him.  ‘What is there left to destroy?’

‘The forest will recover, my lord – in time.  The ash will feed the ground and saplings will sprout and grow toward the sun.  We will miss the trees that are gone and welcome their offspring.’  The warrior was stoic.  ‘Lightning has burnt the forest before – many times – and it grows again all the better for the clearance.  This is little different.’

Legolas pressed his lips together, suppressing his desire to proclaim that this – this was different.  This could have been prevented.  This was … this was his responsibility, his blame, for not being here to answer his home’s need, its call for help.

A cautious sideways glance informed the warrior that his prince was not taking his words well.  He suppressed a sigh.  It was, he supposed, part of being a ruling house – this ruling house, anyway – the pointless need to embrace accountability for matters that could not be helped. 

‘I had not realised that the flames came so close,’ Legolas said.  ‘There used to be a village not far from here – one of the last to evacuate to the safety of the Stronghold.’

‘My family dwelt here,’ the warrior said.  ‘One day they will return.  Now the Shadow has lifted we can begin to look forward.’

Legolas passed his charcoal-covered hand over his forehead, oblivious to the marks he spread across his fair skin.  ‘I cannot see that far ahead,’ he admitted.  ‘I can only remember what was.’

‘You had other things to do, my lord.  That kept you from the wood.’  Dravan kept his eyes moving across the twisted ruins of tall trees, watching for movement in this place where nothing lingered.  The prince should not be here, not really.  The patrol had been surprised to see him, still clothed in Feast-night finery, wandering like one of the lost, lit by the low moon.  ‘Perhaps, in daylight, things will seem better … you should go back to the green, my lord.’ 

‘I do not need a nursemaid.’  Legolas hunched a shoulder.  ‘I have spent long enough caring for myself to be able to cope for a while here, no more than a couple of leagues from the Stronghold.’  He turned to the elf.  ‘You should resume your patrol, captain,’ he said, assuming the authority of one who had long held a position of command in the Greenwood’s forces.  ‘I assure you that I am no threat to our security – and,’ he added, ‘that, equally, I am under no threat.’

Dravan hesitated – but he was too new to his post to have his older colleagues’ assurance when it came to disregarding a direct order.  He bowed his head courteously.  ‘As you command, my lord,’ he agreed – and contented himself with deciding that his newest warrior could use up some of his excess energy by returning to the Stronghold to let someone there know the prince’s whereabouts. 

Legolas sighed as the slight sounds made by an elven patrol faded to silence.  It would probably be mid-morning before anyone deliberately sought him out – and, by then, perhaps, he would have had a chance to deal with the most painful memories. A wry grin twisted his lips.  Or perhaps not.  An elven lifetime, in all likelihood, was unlikely to do more than take the edge off his feelings of loss.  After all, it had been – what was it? – some six centuries so far, and the memory of her last breath still had the power to make him weep.

A gentle breeze stirred the ash, briefly making it rise like an autumn mist hovering over a damp meadow before letting it settle in a different pattern, enhancing the dream-like feel of this … shambles that remained of a subdued grove. 

The day had started brightly – a day without lessons, a day to be spent outside in the bright autumn forest.  He had protested the need to wear his warm cloak, but Naneth had insisted and he had been too excited by the prospect of spending the daylight hours with her to protest overmuch.  He knew well enough, even at that age, that defiance would end with the treat withdrawn and a dreary penance intended to teach him patience. 

They had not been alone.  Of course not – that would have been foolish, and Adar would never have permitted his wife and son to be unprotected in a forest that, even then, was no longer safe enough for elves to travel without guards.  Nana’s protectors had ridden with them and she had carried her bow – even if she would have had difficulty using it with him in her arms.

Even so, the attack had been unexpected.  Shocking.  Terrifying.  They had been too close to home, too close to villages where elves dwelt with their children, among friendly trees. 

The first arrow had caught Tildir in the throat – and he had fallen as they stared, unable to believe what was happening.  His naneth’s breath had caught and she had clutched him tight enough to make him cry out as she curved her body round him and turned to ride from the ambush.

Her horse had stumbled, pitching them to the ground, its scream shockingly shrill, and she had snatched him up, heading for the trees even as Golven had urged his bay mare between them and the grey-skinned attackers. 

The tree had welcomed them, drawn them up into its branches, attempted to shelter them – but what could it do, once their guards had fallen and only Tildir’s horse had been able to run … to escape the place?

Naneth could have got away from them – could have fled through the treetops, could have found safety where the pursuers could not have followed … but for him.  With him in her arms, she had been trapped. 

Legolas shook himself.  He had forgotten for so long.  His mother’s loss had left him … almost catatonic.  By the time he had begun to emerge from his numb acquiescence, the details had – perhaps fortunately – faded.  He had missed her – wept for her – lain awake at nights aching for her, but he had shut off the memories of her desperate efforts to save him, refused to remember the arrow, the blood, the slow fading of her breath, the slow leaching of her resolution and the slow cooling of her body. 

Yet the trees had not forgotten.

When he had returned here, he had felt their sorrow.  The wind through leaves, the soft throb of life rising in their trunks, the whisper of roots stretching through the soil had reverberated with regret. 

After that first time, he had returned here often.  Here – ironically – was where he had felt closest to her. She was not the mother who had taught him his letters, who had told him stories at bedtime, who had laughed her way through his earliest years – she was the fierce protector who had guarded him until his adar had come, the one who had stood between him and death – or worse than death. 

It seemed wrong – it had always seemed wrong – that in keeping the memory of her sacrifice alive, he had lost the reason for it.  She had fought to her last breath because she was his mother and his survival mattered more to her than her own, but in return he had only been able to cope by closing the wound of her absence and hanging on to his father’s strength.  It felt like a betrayal.

And now … He looked up to meet Tilion’s amiable stare.  Now there was nothing left.  The place where she had died – the place where he had learned his first lesson in loss, in pain, in the twisted vagaries of life … was no more than the drifting debris of a pyre far greater than any set to burn the remains of a battlefield of fallen elves.

There would be no coming back.

She was not there – had not been there for … she had no way of marking the time.  Her consciousness had sunk into the earth, been drawn through the comfort of growing wood, unfurled in the warmth of the sun, blazed into flame and been freed to drift …  She had never meant to remain.  Despite her closeness to the forest, despite her love for this land, she had never meant …

He stood – tall and fair – tears gleaming with silvered moonlight trailing down his face, marked with the ash of grief, clad in the greys of mourning.  Her son.  Their son.

Her awareness … coalesced.  Sharpened.  She had been … loosened from her hold on the land – her desperate clutch on their tree.  On her child. 

She drifted closer.

It was not until he had long passed his majority – become a warrior tried and tested – that he had begun to untangle the emotions that had made him suppress her death.  Not until he was old enough – and experienced enough – to have lived with the loss of those who should have remained among the trees of the Greenwood until the end of time had he untangled the bottled-up memories that revealed his naneth’s sacrifice. 

It had begun in dreams.

As he rested in bed, his body focused on healing the ragged wound that had been left untended too long, his mind had wandered through paths long closed.  Odd sounds – the gentle laugh of an elleth, the tinkling of distant wind chime, the spatter of raindrops.  Smells – the wintergreen of a salve, the refreshing fragrance of his favourite tea, the sun-dried freshness of clean sheets.  Touch – a small hand rubbing ointment into bruised flesh, a brush smoothing his hair, his father’s cheek against his head.   Quite randomly, something would spark a memory and he would be a child again, watching his mother through adult eyes.

Ash stirred as he picked his way across this most unwelcome glade, but the silence remained undisturbed, almost as if it were sealed in a bubble that shut out the rest of the wood.  Dravan was probably right, he reflected briefly.  It would be easy to let the numbing quiet make wanderers forget the possibility of a threat.  So much of an elf’s instinct for danger was based on the ability to pick up minute changes to the environment – a leaf moving where it should not, the flight of a bird, a slight disturbance in the treesong.  Here, where all that was missing … it was like being deafened and blindfolded.

She watched.  Her elfling had changed.  He was no longer the delicate-boned child whose desperate fingers had dug into her skin and tangled in her hair, whose eyes had trusted her to keep him safe even as his belief in safety crumbled. 

She had held him – so fiercely that, even when his father had arrived, had climbed to their sanctuary to retrieve their son, he had had to fight to break her grip.  And he had wept – her beloved, her Thranduil – wept because the past could not be undone and she was gone and he would never be whole again; not until they met again in the far west – if ever that day would come.   

She remembered how cold she had felt as the warm body was taken from her, the feeling of loss, the emptiness.  She had done all she could – now she must entrust her most precious gift to others.

And, by the time Thranduil had persuaded the little one to let go, it had been too late for them. 

A dark-haired elf – her husband’s personal guard – had detached clawed hands from the tree, lifted her carefully and lain her on the fallen leaves … and her last blood had trickled sluggishly to soak into the loam.  Her fingers had spasmed in a final clasp and storm-dark eyes had settled on her face as she stared back.  She had wanted to speak, to ask him to care for two she left behind, but she had no words left.

A last sigh and it was done.

Legolas brooded.  In a way, he thought, this devastation was not such a bad thing.  He had made a shrine of this place – allowed himself to feel closer to his mother here.  But that was nonsense.  Why should she be closer here, where she had died, than in those places where they had shared their lives?  It was more important to treasure the relationship they had experienced than to wallow in grief and guilt because she had been taken away from him.

It was just … he felt her presence here. 

He had spoken of it to his father once, and Thranduil had shaken his head.  ‘You cannot hold on to the dead, my son,’ he had said.  ‘She is with Námo – and, one day, we will be reunited.  You would not want her to linger here, unhoused.  For all her love of the forest, it would not be right to bind her to it until the end of days.’

The concept of unhoused elves meant little to him then – he had been too young to have any real understanding of life and death beyond the fact that of their existence.  Now – he had seen spirits trapped between the worlds, and he would not wish that on anyone. 

‘If I, in my ignorance, have held you here,’ he murmured, ‘I release you.’   He spread his arms, opening his fingers wide, allowing the slight breeze to pass between them as he turned in a slow circle.   ‘Adar is right – you should not suffer a half-life, but rest and heal and grow in the forests of the Blessed Realm, where, Valar willing, we will meet again.’  He bowed his head.  ‘And, if I have not … if you were never here – then these words will, I hope, release me.’

She had never meant to remain.  Only the urgent need of her child, the ellon who had been born of her body, her gift to her husband and the world – only for him would she have fought Námo’s call.  Only for him would she have risked her fëa and remained.  But the fire had freed her and the breeze had stirred her and his words had untied her. 

She drifted. 

She would go if she could, but was it not too late?  The summons had come and she had not answered it and now she did not know how ...

The breeze strengthened, twisting as it curled around itself, making her son’s tunic flap and blowing his hair around him, making him shut his eyes against the stinging ash.

At the heart of the wind, a hum deepened and began to thrum.  It resonated in her, drew her.  The edge of the spinning air began to tug at her, pulling her towards the sound, taking her home.

She reached out once towards the elf who stood against the wind, then let her awareness fade.  She had done all she could. 

‘Welcome home, child,’ a soft voice murmured.

The sky lightened, took on the flaming colours of an autumn dawn and paled to grey, but Legolas remained motionless in the middle of the ruined wood.  It was a farewell.  One way or another, he had chosen to leave this part of his past behind.

He did not flinch when a hand landed on his shoulder.  ‘Adar,’ he said.

‘I could have been anyone,’ Thranduil remarked.  ‘You should have let Dravan stay with you.’

‘It was not a night that required an observer.’

The Woodland King narrowed his eyes at his son.  ‘Perhaps not,’ he allowed.  He lapsed into silence, waiting for Legolas to speak.

‘She has gone,’ he said finally.  ‘Whatever was here, it is here no longer.’

‘Understandable,’ Thranduil said.  ‘There is nothing else left.’

‘Dravan says the forest will grow again.  Winter will pass swiftly enough, and, with spring, the cycle will begin again.’

‘True enough.’ 

‘I should have been here.’

‘Not even you can follow two paths at once.’  Thranduil’s voice had taken on a dry edge.  ‘Your duty took your elsewhere.  It could be argued that you were more use where you were – since your charge made it through to Mordor and saved us all.’

They turned without discussion and stepped carefully across the top layer of soft ash, working their way to the half-charred trees and beyond them to the undamaged forest beyond, where Thranduil’s ubiquitous guards waited with their horses.

‘Will you come back here?’ his adar asked.

Legolas turned, taking a long look between the trunks.  ‘No,’ he said.  ‘I think not.’  He ran a hand over his hair.  ‘There is nothing here for which to return – nothing but shadows and illusions.’  He turned abruptly to face his father.  ‘Will you ever sail?’ he asked.

‘When the time is right,’ Thranduil said reflectively. ‘There is no rush.’ He reached out to touch his son.  ‘How could I not, when you and your Naneth will be there?’ Legolas caught his breath and his father smiled sadly.  ‘Do you think I did not know?’

He swallowed.  ‘I will not go yet – not while Elessar lives.’

‘We make promises,’ his father told him.  ‘Promises we cannot always keep.  It is not always, in the end, up to us.’  He met his son’s eyes squarely. ‘It was not your naneth’s fault that she could not guide you to adulthood.  It is not your fault that your path takes you from the Greenwood – nor is it mine that my duty keeps me here.  We do what we can.’

‘This place,’ Legolas said.  ‘It feels … at peace.  An old sorrow has been put to rest – although whether it was in me or ...’  He raised his face to let the breeze blow over him and drew a deep breath.  ‘It is over.’