I have watched two men die beneath golden leaves.

Boromir fell to the arrows of foes at Amon Hen.  We found him there, on ground darkened with his blood and dappled with the gold of fallen beech leaves.  Carrying him to his funereal boat, I watched more leaves of gold and brown slowly drift down past the white-trunked trees.  As we readied him for this final journey, some fell upon him in gentle benediction.  They mingled in the boat with the broken weapons of his enemies and one caught itself in his hair even as Aragorn smoothed it straight.  I saw him look at the leaf for a long moment, mayhap remembering the perfect gold of Lothlorien.  This leaf was torn on one side and mottled with patches of brown.  Gently, Aragorn laid it back upon Boromir’s brow.  I wondered if Aragorn had seen it as I had; a marred leaf for a marred man.

Boromir smelt of fear.  I had seen it grow in him as his eyes had begun to follow Frodo and watch for the glint of gold as he leant forward against the cool evening wind or tossed restlessly in his sleep.  There was a desire building in Boromir that ate away at the man he had been.  I believe the Ring whispered to him that the way to do his duty was to break his word, and Boromir, true son of Gondor, watch house of the West, had begun to fear himself.  Now he lay broken, with those he had protected left to the darkness.  There was little peace for him in death.  We sang for him, the man who would have been his king and his friend and I… and the trees gave him a broken panoply of gold.

It was many years later that I farewelled Aragorn under the clear gold of the mallorn trees.  There was no rank smell of orc and sweet smell of blood here, no churned up mud littered with the dead and dying, no crude improvised bier, no ragged edged leaves of mottled gold…. no frantic battle for life, no bitter tasting failure.  Elessar Telcontar gave up his life freely and in ripe age.  Elaborately carved rock formed his final resting place and he was farewelled in song and music.  They sang for him, his people, in the broad road outside the House of the Kings, beneath the mallorn trees planted by their Elven-born queen.  As I passed among them, their song pierced my heart.

Grey is the sky and cold the wind, dead is our king and gone our hope,

Where shines our light from the north?  Where burns the flame of Andúril?

I paused near the last tree and picked up a mallorn leaf from the cobbled street.  Its clear gold shone like the faintest flame of fire in the broad of the day.  I carried it with me into the shadows of Aragorn’s tomb.  Death among this lifeless stone was strange to me, a wood Elf, and I was glad of the smooth leaf in my hand.  I found his bier ringed by flickering candles and garlanded with flowers and sweet-smelling herbs.  As I knelt by him, I saw the splendour and terrible beauty of Men in his face - and the glory that is bound in them by their very frailty and weakness.  I kissed Aragorn’s hand and whispered, “They will look for you from the White Tower, now.”

I laid my golden mallorn leaf under his hand – and wished for a beech leaf of gold and mottled brown for I was old enough now to know that all men are marred.