It is always different, with each person, each realm of darkness that I have to fight my way through to pull the wounded and dying fëa from death’s grasp. Most are murky places of darkness, unformed and unshaped yet filled with terror and loneliness. And what detail I can discern is a corruption of the fea’s experience, a twisted perversion of what life had been. Joyful memories become nightmare; terrible memories turn to horror beyond words. In His wisdom, Ilúvatar has given me the ability to fight through such places, to sense where the wounded soul is lying and bring him – or her – back, but it is always difficult, always taxing, always dangerous.

And never more so than now.

This time I stood before a river, its waters black and oily and foul. I walked along its edge and felt its deadness and knew that this was water that had never given their fealty to the great Vala of the waters. Ulmo had never touched these currents, and even Ossë in his wildness in the sea would find no joy in stirring water such as this. It was a lifeless stream, without song or light dancing on its sluggish waves.

Surely Estel is not caught in that, I thought in dismay.

I stood for a while, watching, listening ... and seeing and hearing nothing.

I finally turned my back on the water, certain that if Estel were somehow trapped in it I would have sensed him, and walked on. Trees, misshapen and frightening even beyond the ruined forest of Fangorn loomed over my head, and their roots twisted and moved like snakes beneath the rocky ground. Several times I nearly tripped as a treacherous root shot to the surface and then disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. It was a horrid sight, that unnatural coiling and winding of them, for although I had seen trees move, like the slow movements of Ents who had become tree-like over the years, or even the peevish shifting of Old Man Willow’s roots, this was different. This was wholly evil, and my mind shied from thinking of just what Estel must have lived through for the darkness of the Black Breath to have created this foul place.

I spied a break in the trees and what looked like a meadow, lit with whatever passed for sunshine in this place, and I ran toward it as fast as I could, but I suddenly fell as several roots rose from the ground to wrap themselves around my ankle. I struggled, crying out in fearful rage as I jerked my ankle sharply, but even as I freed my ankle, a root wrapped itself around my arm. I pulled it off with my free hand and scrambled to my feet before any more of the wicked things could twine themselves around me. I glanced upward, but running through the branches of such a malignant forest would be no better. Nay, that would be to throw myself straight into its clutches. Besides, I was no wood elf, and it had been so long since I had run through the tree tops that attempting it now would be worse than dangerous. So I ran across the treacherous ground, and eventually I reached the edge of the wood.

"Estel!" I called as I broke stumbling away from the trees at last, but there was no answer.

I glanced back the way I had come. The trees had closed behind me and all trace of the river was gone. The sky was a uniform gray. Had this been a natural place I would have thought from the lowering sky that it might snow.

But this was no natural place. I shivered and looked around the dim meadow, which had only seemed sunlit when I was in the darkness beneath the trees. But the sky was open above and there was, if not a freshness, then a lessening of the fetid atmosphere of the forest behind me.

Where could Estel be? I called and called, but no answer came back to me.

I saw a glimpse of movement and turned my head. A stag leaped between boulders. I frowned. I had never before seen deer when searching through these wretched places. But then each victim’s nightmare is its own, and signs came in many forms. I knew how much Estel loved to hunt, so, taking it for a sign, I followed the stag, and found myself climbing. Up and up I went, pulling myself from rock ledge to rock ledge. Now and then my hand knocked loose a rock and sent it falling, but although it bounced against other rocks and sent them tumbling, they made no sound whatsoever.

"Estel!" I cried, and my call seemed swallowed by the air around me. I somehow sensed, deep in my spirit, that this was wrong, that Estel would not be found up among these high cliffs. I had to get back down. I cursed the traitorous stag for leading up such a dangerously false trail, but as I turned to go, my eye caught another movement. A bird, circling overhead. I watched it as it approached and saw it was an eagle. I pressed myself against the rocks, for who knew if eagles were friend or foe in this place.

It let out a raucous, bugling cry that made me jump, so loud it seemed in the silence around me. It looked at me with an eye more fierce than any eagle of Middle-earth, then flew off toward a valley to my right. Beyond the valley was blackness and smoke and a red glow that seemed to be an echo of the fires of Mt. Doom on Arda. Somehow I knew that if Estel had crossed that valley and passed into the smoke, he would be beyond my call.

I had to reach that valley.

I looked up again, searching the sky. Just before the grey sky met black, I spied a small break in the clouds. And in the sky far above the clouds I glimpsed something that sent my heart soaring.

A star.

An eagle ... a star ... Estel had traveled the far corners of Arda using those tokens as his identity. This could be no mere coincidence.

My son was in the valley.

I whispered a prayer of thanks and climbed as fast as I could back down the treacherous cliffs, marking the location of the hidden valley as I went. By the time I reached the bottom, I had spied a faint path wending its way through the murky shadows. My feet seemed hardly to touch the ground, so fast did I run. My heart pounded in my chest; my lungs started to burn, but I did not slow down. I was so close ...

...and then the trail ended in the blank face of another soaring rock wall.

"No!" I screamed, and beat my fists against the unyielding stone. I felt like weeping. I ran as far as I could to the left and then the right but there was no way through, and the wall seemed as smooth as glass, no handholds, no cracks ... no way up.

I bent over, my hands on my knees as I drew in deep breaths. The air felt ... wrong, somehow. It was too thin, yet dragging it into my lungs started to choke me as if I were trying to breathe in water. I backed away from the wall, up the hill and I could breathe again.

But where to go?

"Estel!" I shouted. "Estel, can you hear me? You must come to me!"

Silence was my only answer.

I started to run again, knowing that I could not keep up such a pace much longer but so afraid that if I did not find him soon, all would be lost. My hair worked free of the braids that held it back and fell into my sweating face. I shoved it back but it kept falling in my eyes and I finally had to stop. I roughly jerked it back and tied it into a knot, ignoring the temptation to yank it out by the handful.

As I was doing that, my eyes did not rest but looked every direction for a way into the valley. I could still see the eagle, but he was far away and moving fast. The star still shone, but seemed dimmer than it had been. "Estel!" I screamed. "Listen for my voice! Answer me if you can!"

Fear was now my constant companion. I ran, retracing my steps until I could actually see the valley again, and this time I stood and studied every inch of the land between me and that far green land. I saw the deceptively alluring trail and ignored it and looked for the harder way, the way that looked impossible ... the path that echoed the long and hard road that marked so much of Estel’s life. But that path seemed absolutely hidden. My eye could make out no opening, no break in the seamless wall of rock. I fell to my knees, my eyes filling with tears.

And then I found it.

It was a gap, probably no wider than the length of my forearm, and had I not dropped to my knees, I would never have seen it. It was the only possible way through the impenetrable stone fortress that seemed to guard the valley.

I started running again. My legs felt heavy, but I forced myself onward. Fear is a great motivator, and I was terrified that all my fumbling would cost Estel his life.

I reached the gap at last and saw it was narrower than I thought. It almost looked too narrow to squeeze through, but I turned sideways and eased into it. Rough stone pressed my back and my chest, but I pushed myself with arms and legs and inched my way into the passage. I glanced over my head ... the rock walls loomed so closely together that it might as well have been a cave I was traversing. I just prayed it would not get any narrower.

It did not.

I reached the opposite end at last and stepped into the open, drenched in sweat and shaking with relief, for I had never held any great love for tight places. "Estel!" I called, desperately searching the sere landscape in front of me. It had looked green from a distance, but that had been an illusion, another lie. This valley was filled with dead clumps of grass, jagged boulders and dangerous vents in the ground through which boiled steam and a sulphurous smoke, the same noxious fume I had sensed in my initial search of Estel’s mind.

It was a lifeless place, and it reeked of despair, and somewhere in this dreadful place my son was trapped.

"Estel!" I cried. My voice was growing hoarse. I was weakening far too fast. I had used up too much energy chasing down the false trail. I moved forward but tripped and went to my hands and knees. "Elbereth Gilthoniel, give me strength ... please ... you must help me find my son."

I struggled to my feet. "Estel! Can you hear me?"

Nothing.

I looked at the sky and saw the star nearly overhead, barely visible, so dim had it grown. There was no sign of the eagle. I let my gaze travel downward, studying the far horizon. Stunted trees stretched grasping bare limbs toward the sky, and on one of them perched the eagle.

I stumbled toward the tree, crying out Estel’s name, and for the longest time it seemed like I was running in place, never moving forward, never reaching the place where surely I would find Estel. But finally the eagle took flight, almost as though he knew I was coming at last. As I approached, I saw dark shapes below the tree... a dark-haired man crumpled on the ground, and another standing over him. Even as I watched, the standing man threw something to the side.

"Estel!" I cried, my voice breaking.

The man on the ground did not move, but the standing man turned and looked toward me. I saw that it was not Estel as I thought, but Halbarad. But that made no sense. Halbarad could not be in this place ...and not with such a look of hatred glaring from his eyes. I glanced at the ground, where he had thrown something, and saw a gleam of steel. Narsil! I frowned. Had he taken the shards of Narsil from my son? Why would he treat them with such contempt?

I stared at Halbarad and it came to me. This was more of the Dark One’s foul trickery. I drew my sword. "Be gone, servant of darkness!" I cried. "Leave him be!"

The false image of Halbarad wavered, shifted into its true form, that of an orc, then dissolved into smoke and blew away. I sheathed my sword slowly, fearing that such evil might come back in another form, but nothing moved and no one approached. Then I dared looked more closely at the man on the ground. It was Estel. He lay with his back to me but there was no mistaking. I wanted ... no I needed, in the worst way, to run to him, to take him in my arms and hold him and assure myself he lived, but I could not. Estel had to come to me. I walked as close as I dared and dropped to my knees, a few feet from him. "Estel!"

He did not move, but I could hear his breathing, a harsh, rasping sound that smote my heart and checked my own breath. "Come to me, Estel!" I cried.  Oh Valar, help him to come to me, please...

He moved, then, finally, a listless shifting of his arms ... and it was then I saw the chains that bound his wrists and his ankles. He turned his head and opened his eyes and he seemed not to see me.

"Estel!"

He blinked. "Adar?" he whispered.

"Yes, Estel. It is your adar. I’m here. I have come to take you home."

"Home?" He looked confused. "No ... it is a trick. I will not tell ... not tell you ... who I am ... cannot make me ..."

"Estel," I implored. "Listen to my voice! It truly is me. You must trust me!"

He shut his eyes. "No!" he moaned, a long drawn-out sound so full of pain and bewilderment that my heart felt crushed. "It is a trick... I will not listen!" He curled into a ball, burying his head in his arms.

I felt like burying my own face in my hands. I had never come up against anything as difficult as this. Fatigue wrapped itself around my mind, deadening my wits. "Think!" I told myself fiercely. What could I say to him that could convince him that I was real, that whatever illusion he was trapped in was nothing more than a lie as black and vile as Morgoth himself? The answer came to me. "Estel, a few moments ago you woke from this, briefly. You looked at me and told me that Sauron knew who you were."

I held my breath and for a moment it looked as though he would ignore me, but then he stirred, a shudder more than anything, but he did not answer nor look at me.

Desperately, I continued. "There is more, Estel, things that I would know but Sauron and his minions would not. If you search your mind you will know to them to be true and know that I am true. Halbarad was injured. You brought him to Rivendell. You waited all day beneath the old willow tree, worrying over him, as I worked to remove the shards of the arrow from near his spine and lung. And you were so concerned for his well-being that you ignored your own wound, the splinter wound on your left arm. It has become inflamed, and is giving you fever."

I paused, hoping, but still he did not move. "I followed the eagle, and then the star. You saw them both, from a distance; yea, even followed the eagle yourself to this tree. They are your tokens, my son, and they drew me to you. Just now I saw Halbarad, or the being that was pretending to be Halbarad, swing the chains and hit you. But the chains did not wound you; you were already wounded when you came to Rivendell."

Finally, he stirred, and rolled over enough to look at me. The confusion and terror in his eyes smote my heart. "At Bracken’s Ferry," he whispered, his voice holding only a faint, rasping echo of its normal vigor. "How do you know? I did not tell you..."

"No, but I can see the wound on your arm, and no chain did such damage. Splintered wood, still embedded and festering. Erestor has cleaned it, though, and that was the pain you thought came from those chains." I smiled, as gently as I could. "Come, my son, let me take you home and then you can tell me everything."

He stared at me, seeming to take the measure of my very soul with his piercing, suspicious gaze. Then he looked around at the deadness surrounding us. I could almost see his thoughts as he weighed everything I had told him against the voice of his own heart, and then to my indescribable relief, he stretched out a trembling hand. "Ada, is it really you?"

I put my hand out and he reached forward and touched my fingers, and then let out a joyful cry as he nearly threw himself into my arms. "Ada!" I folded him into my embrace, my heart singing as joyful a song as surely Arda had ever heard, and as I drew him close, the chains fell and a sweet wind laden with the aroma of athelas swept away the toxic fumes. The valley seemed to melt around us. I buried my face in Estel’s hair and wept ....

.... and when I lifted my face, we were in Estel’s room, and he was stirring in my arms. "Ada," he croaked.

"Give him water!" I cried, and Erestor hurried forward with a cup. He held up Estel’s head as I held it to his lips with a hand that was shaking so hard that I spilled some of it down his chest. He seemed not to notice as he drank greedily.

"Slow down, Estel," I said, laughing as I pulled the cup back.

Erestor eased Estel’s head back to the pillow and he lay staring at me as if he still could not quite believe it was me and that he was back safe in his bed. In his home.

"Welcome back," I said, and laid a kiss on his forehead.

"What ..." The look of confusion on his face was almost comical. "How did..."

"Shhh. Save your questions, my son," I said. "You were in a far country, and an evil one, but now you are back home and you will recover." I carefully kept my glance away from his arm. Valar, let him be fine. I smiled inwardly. That word again.

He shifted uneasily on the bed, wincing as the movement jostled his arm. "Your arm was deeply infected," I said. "It will trouble you for some time, I fear, but it will heal." Let my words not be a lie...

He shut his eyes as he nodded. Pain drew deep lines of suffering on his face and he looked... old. Already gray hair shone here and there among the black strands and it seemed in that moment I became fully aware, viscerally aware, that someday I would lose this son of mine to death. That no matter how many times I or some other healer fought to keep him alive, death would inevitably steal him from me, either in battle or on that day when in the fullness of years he finally willingly gave back his life to Ilúvatar. The room seemed to fade for a moment, and instead of seeing Estel as he was before me, I saw him lying in great splendor and beauty, somehow young and full of years both, with a crown upon his head as he slept. But it was not sleep but death that I saw on his brow, and such pain filled my heart that I had to bite my lip to keep from crying out. I would sail long before that moment, I knew, but what of my daughter? What of Arwen? The bitterness of parting would be hers to bear alone.

I shut my eyes tightly against the unbearable sorrow of it.

Valar, where do I hide this pain? Where can I put it so that I can do what you have set before me to do during my time in Middle-earth? How do I not shrink from this grief and seek out the shelter of the West, to not abandon my duty to remain here, to see this age finished and the Age of Man come to its fullness?

Help me, Valar, for the end of Arda will be so very long a time to wait to see my children again.

I opened my eyes, and the answer came gently as my eyes rested on Estel. He was looking at me, those eyes of his – eyes as grey and bright as the sky at dawn’s first touch – boring into mine with an intensity I had only seen in one other man, his ancestor Elendil. "Adar?" he said softly.

I laid a hand against his cheek. The warmth of his skin anchored me again to the present. To this instant in time, and it was enough. My son was alive now, and that was all that mattered. The future and its sorrows faded back into the recesses of my mind, and I smiled.

"Worry not," I said. "I am not troubled. Not any more."