It is cold as Faramir waits by the river in the thin bright moonlight.  He listens to the soft sounds of water lapping the pebbled shore and of small animals among the reeds.  In the silvery moonlight, the world is bleached of its daytime blare of colours and becomes a study in greys.  It has the remote beauty of a stately shadow play, fit for a king and all his courtiers.  Tonight its only audience is a quiet man dressed in faded earth-coloured clothes who watches through eyes shadowed by memories and half-imagined dreams.

Here it was they would sit, every year at the first full moon after yáviérë.  He struggles to remember the first time; he thinks it was after his mother’s death.  Boromir had shaken him awake in what seemed the depths of night, hushed him, and bid him to hasten and dress.  Impatiently, Boromir had dealt with ties and laces then still in silent haste led him through the night-darkened lanes of Minas Tirith.  Sleepily, Faramir had followed.

Finally, they had stopped here, on a gentle grassy slope shadowed by reeds.  Boromir had sat down, his feet on the pebbly edge of the river, and pulled his brother down on to his knee.

“Watch, Faramir, watch the river,” he whispered.  “Tonight is the night of the gallants.  When the moon path runs down the river they will come – kings and queens, soldiers and warriors, the Stewards and Lords of Gondor.”

Cold, tired and just a little afraid of the shadowy night Faramir had pressed close to his brother.  Boromir had pulled his cloak around so the folds would shelter them both and whispered against his brother’s hair, “Watch the river, Faramir.  Golden cloaks they wear and silver armour and shields carved and finely wrought.  The ladies are tall and fearless with jewels woven in their hair and gowns of silken stuff.  The boats are silvery and high-prowed and sail with no oar or yard of cloth.  They’ll come when the moon runs down the river.”

Tired from the walk and warm and safe in the shelter of his brother’s cloak Faramir had drowsed as Boromir whispered.  Boromir’s sudden sharp intake of breath had woken him.  Boromir’s arms around him tightened and his voice was unsteady as he whispered, “There they are!”

Faramir’s eyes had widened as he saw that past them, stately and slow down the centre of the river, floated proud high-prowed boats.  Along their sides, silvered and ghostly in the moonlight, stood rows of warriors, armed with bow and sword.  Seated in the boats were the lords and ladies Boromir had promised.  They wore the flower-coloured silks and rich velvets that Faramir remembered from before his mother’s death.  They were tall and elegant with an awful beauty.  They made Faramir think of the finest highest notes of the fiddler and piper in the Great Hall.  Years later when he learnt the word ethereal he thought of that river procession in the moonlight and saw again the gay colours and proud faces.

Boromir and he had stayed in their reed-shaded bower until the last boat had faded into the grey horizon.  It had been a long walk down to the river and on the way back, Boromir alternated between carrying Faramir and half-dragging him.  For Faramir that walk became a half-waking dream filled with dragging clouds of sleep and half-heard sentences from Boromir about the Night of the Gallants.  He smiles now, remembering.  It had been strange to see Boromir, the practical one, the warrior, so entranced by something so mystical. Indeed, by the next day Boromir had shrugged off his attempts to talk about it and had instead vanished for a day’s hunting in the woods with his new bow. 

Faramir shifts a little in the cold, clear air, drawing his cloak around him more closely.  He looks down the empty river and wonders how many times he has kept this vigil.  There had been three or four more trips with Boromir, until the autumn after his first campaign.  Then he had smiled his newly discovered patronising smile and said,

“Oh, that old legend!  Certainly, sit on a cold riverbank if you like; I prefer a convivial evening in a snug inn.”

Faramir had gone that night and had continued to make the trip each year, even though increasingly there was nothing to see but a grey-edged night and a moonlight-silvered river.  He wondered if it was a sign of Gondor’s decay and the creeping encroachment of the Shadow. 

Once he was serving in Gondor’s defence he was, like as not, not in Minas Tirith for yáviérë and the river went unwatched.  The autumn he was twenty though he was sent home with an arrow wound that festered and would not heal.  That year, shivering on the bank with the fever that came with nightfall, Faramir had seen once again a procession of boats down the river.  They seemed more distant, almost as though half-veiled by a mist.  The boats were different from those he remembered – flatter bottomed and less ornamented.  The faces that looked out were subtly different too.  They bore more signs of age and while there was strength in them, it was a worn and finely edged strength.  Their clothes were made of as fine and costly material but seemed darker and sterner.  A man in the centre of the last boat looked across at him – through him, maybe – and Faramir recognised the lines and planes of his father’s face, although not his father.  He never saw the boats again.

The moonlight is bright on the river now and Faramir watches the faint ripples of the current trace across the water.  He wonders if one day he will bring Elboron to share this vigil, and knows he will not.  The magic, if there was magic, is faded and dead and he will let this yearly rite die with him, as its origins died with Boromir.  A little stiffly, he begins to get up.  Then the prow of a silvery boat glides into view and he freezes, half-kneeling.  The boat is outlined faintly as though seen through water but it is the same elegant craft that he and Boromir had watched.  It floats down the river without oar or sail and a golden-haired lady stands by a tiller that needs no hand upon it.  Behind her stands a soldier at guard… rich velvet cloak …raven haired…fair of face….  Faramir stifles a cry as his brother sails past – not dead this time but alive and standing in watchful pose as Faramir has seen him do a hundred times as a Guard of the Tower.  His horn hangs once more from his baldric, restored and whole.  Silent, bemused, Faramir watches until they fade from sight, around a distant bend.

Clouds gather and cover the moon and it is in darkness that Faramir makes his way back to Minas Tirith, but peace walks with him and comfort guides his steps.

You shine like the moon over water
And you darken the sky when you leave
Now I want to know how to keep you
Return to me
Turn to me

_{(The October Project)}