Stories of Arda Home Page
About Us News Resources Login Become a member Help Search
swiss replica watches replica watches uk Replica Rolex DateJust Watches

Thain  by Lindelea


Chapter 25. Thorn: Of Wind and Wave

On a day when the wind blew blustery and the sky shone silvery grey, Bucca, wrapped in a cloak of Elven-make, sat upon a piece of driftwood and watched the waves curling up the beach. The harbour itself, behind the breakwater, was calm, too calm for his restless spirit. Spring was coming to the land; he could smell it on the wind, and he thought of the rich fields of the Marish, the calls of the birds returning to the land to build their nests and raise their families, the new lambs, the calves, the foals that ought to be coming into the world, the fields that ought to be showing signs of life, though he knew there was no life in the fields; scouts sent out had returned with tales of blackened ruin where hobbit communities had thrived, of empty fields gone to weed and burned-out farmsteads. Where the little folk had gone was a mystery, but all had disappeared without a sign.

Bucca could only hope that his family, and others, still hid in the remnant of the vast forest that had covered the heart of the Shire, remainder of a far larger forest that Cirdan told him had once extended from the Lune southward to a golden wood, and even to a far land where Tree-folk lived and tended trees as shepherds might tend sheep. Certainly Men had cut down many trees in the land, in the past, but as the land that became the Shire stood empty, before a long-dead King of Arthedain granted the Shire to those who followed Marcho and Blanco, the forests had grown up again, from the End of the Woods near the Brandywine River (what the hobbits called the Woody End) all the way to the Far Downs.

But then, great swatches of the forest had reportedly been put to the torch by the army of the Witch King. The great Green Hills, that had been covered with the myriad greens of a forest, now stood bare save the charred skeletons of the few trees left standing. Bucca hoped that the majority of hidden Shire-folk had escaped the burning. There was no way for him to return to the place where his father had said they would meet once more. Was it a true saying? Did his father wait, even now? Or had Thorn said the words, only to comfort his son as he sent him to do his duty to the son of the King?

 ‘Are you not chilled, Master Bucca?’

At the words, he looked around, and then jumped to his feet, to bow low before Cirdan. ‘I am well,’ he said. Pulling his cloak closer about himself, he said, ‘Thanks to the kindness of my hosts, who have provided me with warm clothing, to add to the clothes I was wearing when I came to you.’

A swirl of gulls blew over them, their cries wild and piercing, and Cirdan lifted his eyes to the sky, and then looked farther, to where the clouds and raging sea merged into one.

 ‘What do they say?’ Bucca said curiously.

 ‘There is a great storm, far to the north...’ the Elf lord said slowly, his eyes sweeping the horizon. Did his far-seeing eyes perhaps see the first sails of Gondor’s promised fleet? Bucca peered out to sea, but saw nothing but tossing waves.

 ‘What lies to the north?’ Bucca asked.

 ‘A great ice bay,’ Cirdan answered. ‘Forochel, it is called. Folk live there, simple, honest folk calling themselves the Lossoth, who know little of evil, sheltered from enemies by the harshness of their chosen land.’ He shook his head. 'Though they know enough of Angmar to fear him, and his icy grip.'

 ‘But Angmar would not find it desirable to march into their land, to possess it?’ Bucca said.

 ‘Perhaps, after there was nothing else to conquer,’ Cirdan said. ‘The thought of any folk living free, even the strange and unfriendly Lossoth, is enough to bring his wrath to bear.’

 ‘How can they be strange and unfriendly, and yet simple and honest?’ Bucca wanted to know. ‘And how do you know this? Have you met them?’

Cirdan laughed softly, but did not answer. Instead he began to describe this strange folk, accustomed to bitter cold, who lived in houses made of snow, and ran on the ice without slipping and sliding, with bones strapped to their feet, pulling wheel-less carts that slipped over the ice and snow without need for horses or ponies—not that there was any forage for such creatures anyhow. The Lossoth hunted sea-creatures for their meat, eating it fresh and raw (Bucca shuddered at the thought), and often camped on the south shores of the bay at the feet of the Mountains to gather and dry leaves and berries, and to dig roots in the brief warm of the summer months.

 ‘Some are encamped by the seashore even now,’ Cirdan said, ‘though the time of Quickening comes even later to the far Northlands. They must still be locked in the grip of ice, considering how slow the weather has been to warm, this year.’

Bucca nodded. Somehow Cirdan had received word that the King of Arthedain had escaped to the far north, to hide in old dwarf-tunnels near the far end of the Mountains. Just how he had come by this information, Bucca did not know, but he had heard the Men of Arthedain speaking among themselves in low voices about the far-seeing of this Elf-lord, who seemed to see farther than any other, and in ways beyond the understanding of a simple hobbit.

 ‘Is that where you met them?’ Bucca said. ‘On the south shores of the bay?’

 ‘They trade there with the Elves of Lindon,’ Cirdan said, without directly answering the question. ‘Though they do well with the spears and knives they fashion of bone, they value the metal weapons that we have to trade, and we in turn value the furs they offer, warm and soft. A hood lined with such fur will not freeze stiff from one’s breath, no matter how cold the weather.’

Bucca nodded, rubbing his cheek against the fur that lined the hood of his cloak. What a wonder, that he was wearing something that came from such a far, strange place!

 ‘Will they help King Arvedui?’ Bucca asked. ‘You have said they are simple and honest, and yet unfriendly.’

 ‘They might take pity on a wanderer, lost and starving,’ Cirdan said. ‘In any event, they would be afraid of the weapons of the King and his bodyguard; long swords of sharp metal, spears with wicked tips... Indeed, they would be cautious.’

 ‘Your ship went out many days ago,’ Bucca said. ‘I would have expected it to have been there and back again by now...’

 ‘You and others,’ Cirdan said wryly. ‘The Men of Arthedain are brave soldiers, but sailors they are not. They know nothing of contrary winds, or treacherous seas...’

Another spate of gulls blew above them, crying in sharp and somehow anguished tones. Though their voices sounded little different from the previous flock, Cirdan threw up an arm as if to ward off evil news, and his face twisted with some terrible emotion, becoming suddenly the mask of a stranger and not the calm and unruffled Shipwright Bucca had come to know.

 ‘My lord, are you ill?’ Bucca said in amaze.

Cirdan answered not, but stumbled away without a word, as the hobbit followed, peppering him with anxious questions.

The guards at the gates, seeing their lord’s face, stepped forward with urgent questions of their own, but he silenced them with a sharp word. Bucca, winded, stopped at the gate to catch his breath, and Cirdan disappeared into the crowd of Elves and Men going about the business of the day.

No Elves came to the evening meal, and there were murmurs of speculation amongst the folk of Arthedain, which fell silent as a song of lament arose from the direction of the stony beach, carried on the keening wind.

Bucca, having lost his appetite, crept from the dining hall, and all the way to the gate, which he found guarded by Men and not Elves.

 ‘Where are the Fair Folk?’ he asked.

The soldiers guarding the gate simply pointed in the direction of the trail to the beach. ‘Mourning,’ one of them said.

 ‘Mourning?’ Bucca said. ‘What are they mourning?’

 ‘Perhaps a ship has been lost at sea,’ the other soldier said, and shrugged. ‘How should I know? Why would anyone tell us anything? We’ll likely be the last to know.’





<< Back

Next >>

Leave Review
Home     Search     Chapter List