Faramir

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The fetid stench of blood and smoke stung my nostrils and my sight was obstructed by the dense fog that hung thickly in the air. I dredged through the carnage, stepping over the mutilated bodies and severed limbs of my comrades, ducking and dodging as I wove through the filth and gore. I was then aware of a searing pain in my upper leg and dimly cognizant of the grisly sight of my own blood flowing unchecked from a gaping fissure in my leg. The mere sight caused me to recoil, my stomach puckering and violently lurching. My mouth filled with the repugnant taste of bile and my shoulders shook as I began to heave and choke. I sank to my knees amidst the vile muck, violently retching and emptying my stomach of its contents. Then all became the fractured bits of color and I plummeted to the ground and into a deep, dreamless slumber...

And I abruptly awoke, my sheets steeped in my own cold perspiration. My arm was pulsating with an agonizing, yet familiar, pang and what I deem to be shards of tinted glass reeled around me. I fervently groped in the dark, terror engulfing me.

Then, shallow breathing, harmonizing with my own, drew me from my ghastly reverie.

Beside me, her hair auriferous thread in the moonlight, slept my wife, her chest gently rising and falling with each intake of breath. She was clad in a nearly threadbare chemise, with fraying hems and discolored embroidery, which has slipped to reveal the ivory flesh of her right shoulder. She has told me she prefers this worn garment to any slip of watered silk any may present to her.

Merely the sight of her, her hand cradling her chin as she slumbers, granted me some precious tranquility. I reached out to delicately caress the cool flesh of her pale cheeks, marveling, not for the first time, of how much her appearance had altered since I first laid eyes upon her. Her skin had been swallow, her cheeks sunken, her grey eyes convey an utter lack of hope. Still, despite her pallid, spectral wraithlike appearance she had been peerlessly fair, haunting indeed. Now, the alabaster skin of her face lightly colored pink, her eyes devoid of their former sorrow and despondency, her beauty was unparalleled, at least in my eyes.

She did not stir from her slumber, merely emitted a delicious sigh at my ministrations as I intertwined my fingers in her cascade of golden hair.

My eyes were lured to gaze out the window at the sallow sickle of the moon and the pinpricks in a vault of black abyss that were the stars. The night was fevered. The very air bore the putrid scent of over ripe fruit, blossoms of rotting flowers, and the stench of throngs of beings perspiring in the heat. Summer was gradually ebbing away but the heat had yet to relinquish its tight hold upon the earth. Leafs were withered and curling in the swelter, grass burnt, and flowers decaying. While I yearned to be in Emyn Arnen or even under the boughs of trees, in precious shade, in Ithilien, duty bid me stay in Minas Tirith for the entirety of the humid, scorching summer. And within her white walls the oppressive heat could not be escaped. Night brought only the slightest hint of relief and one could deem the earth was stricken with a fever that would not abate.

I alighted from the bed, ambling over to stand by the open window, fervently and vainly seeking even the most minutes breeze. I rested my weary head upon the frame of the window, wretchedly massaging my pulsating temples. ‘This acute, unrelenting, ruthless heat was enough to make a body ill,’ I mused. Then, raising my head, I cast my eyes downward to gaze upon the parched fields of the Pelennor , stricken with a drought and in dire need of moisture.

Standing there, looking over the field, my dream, nay, nightmare, was brought back to me in sharp focus. Once more I was in mortal peril, under the shadow of black wings, the unbearably shrill shriek of the Nazgul smiting my very ears. Blood ran in gruesome, crimson streams down towards the river. The very air was steeped in the nauseating scent of spilt blood and decaying corpses.

Against my own volition I quit my wives and my chambers, and though I was but dimly aware of it I began to wind through the streets, descending through the circles of the city. No inquiries were made by the souls who guarded the gate at night and it swung open with an ominous grinding and I began to traipse through the sun scorched grass of Pelennor fields.

The serenity of the night seemed to be a mockery of my dismal mood as nary a breeze stirred the grass. I not believed I had escaped the shadow of my past based on any logic but rather because I wished it to be that way. Foolish, I know. I have come to understand that denial is a fickle friend and when it flees you the truth shall appear to be all the more bleak and dour. The harsh reality was that I had yet to overcome ghastly memories the grievances I had endured during the war. And in spite of the distance of two years that have passed since the War of the Ring my memories of those days are vivid and in intricate, grisly detail.

With a sigh I resumed my trek across the field, eyes cast downward to gaze upon the grass. Life is fleeting and fragile. This I know and have known since my mother’s death when I could count the years of my life upon a single hand. My memories of my mother are minimal and obstructed by the haze of time. Somehow, through the tricks time plays upon one’s mind I began to associate my mother with the flowers she loved so much to the point where I was unable to look upon delicate spring blossoms without thinking of her. She was a flower plucked from the soil and placed between the brittle pages of a volume of history, tradition, and court decorum that is Gondor. And within those leafs of parchment she withered and eventually died.

Though I felt more bewilderment then sorrow when my mother passed away I soon learnt of the grisly horrors of death upon the battlefield and how my own blade played a crucial part of the unfolding onslaught. When I was eighteen, naive and guileless, I slew my first man, a grotesque, vile Southron who’s blindly swinging blade came in contact with my arm as he fell. I merely stared at the fallen, maimed creature and it’s black blood upon my blade, numb to the gaping wound in my arm. He labored to draw in his terminal breathes, retching, choking, and sputtering. Unable to endure gazing upon the grisly sight I averted my eyes and with all my might delved my sword into his already bleeding breast. Then with a final shudder he died and with him perished my innocence, my blissful naiveté.

While the slaying of my first adversary caused me great mental and emotion turmoil for weeks it was apparently a reason for much intoxicated jubilance and celebrating with lewd tunes at camp. I was congratulated countless times, mugs of stale ale pushed into my hands yet desiring only to be solitary I escaped to sit away from the flickering illumination of the fire. Dismally perched upon a log, staring listlessly into the mug of ale which made my stomach recoil, I wretchedly contemplated the day anew. My wound had amounted to little more than a scratch that bled rather profusely initially yet when bound with herbs and salves the bleeding was staid. Yet the injury at the appearances of being much worse and being unable to wield my sword I was unable to continue in the fray so I had cut down only one foe that day. My father would be displeased and would rant about Boromir’s great achievement in the cutting down of nearly two dozen orcs in his first day of service to the army.

Lost in these contemplation, I was unaware of a weathered solider approaching and easing himself upon the log beside me until he directly addressed me.

“To you this is not a cause of celebration.” It was a declaration rather than a question.

“Nay, it is not.” I replied merely.

“These men,” he indicated the throng crowded about the fire, “for all their valiance were just as befuddled as you when they first killed. They are apt to forget that, however,” he stated with the barest traces of bitterness. “I never forgot the first being I killed (an Easterling) and though I has slew countless creatures in my lifetime I shall never forget.”

“I wondered, as I stood there above him, if he had a home, a family awaiting his return, a past. And I felt guilt. I have been raised to hate him and he me but I wondered why and thought about the folly of such excessive waste of life. I don’t know....” I was muttering senselessly. “I don’t suppose my disposition is suited towards butchery,” I said with a sigh. “That is not something to be ashamed of,” the weathered solider said softly. “Rather take heart in the fact that you have a heart and are not a cold blooded killer with a thirst for bloodshed,” he said.

Just at that moment an especially intoxicated solider balancing precariously upon the shoulders of another fell to the ground, his face implanted in the muck.

“Fools,” the older solider muttered with the faintest tremor of amusement in his voice, as if he was striving to oppress laughter.

Against my own volition I smiled and he clapped me upon the shoulder in a fatherly manner. “Atta boy. You’ll be fine yet.” With those final words he returned to the gathered mass of the soldiers who persuaded him to sing and play upon a lute as he was allegedly very skilled at. With the slights glance in my direction he accepted the proffered instrument and began to sing a song of valiance of soldiers in the midst of war....

And here, upon the ground beneath my very feet so much blood had been shed.

Gently falling rains had scoured the earth, cleansing the blood saturated land, washing away the physical evidence of the carnage of war from the battered land. Where mutilated corpses of valiant, departed comrades had lain brightly hued flowers sprang out of the ground. Once the land was a grisly crimson hue, as if the ground itself had ruptured veins from which blood surged. Now the grass was laced with the early morning dew and crowned with the delicate petals of wildflowers. Once the Eastern horizon was a black abyss fractured only by the towing heights of the lofty peaks. Now the sky was painted in a spectrum ranging from the palest purple that lightly colored the ivory walls of Minas Tirith faintly violet to the most fiery of vermillions gracing the eastern most sky. The land bore few scars of the war, having obliterated the past with the changing seasons. And, physically, there was naught but the puckered wound upon my arm and the numerous abrasions my body was etched with, to bear reminder to the events of the War of the Ring.

Yet still I was assailed, wracked, with excruciatingly realistic memories.

Caught up in my memories I only dimly heard the remote accent of light footfalls as someone treading towards me. Instinct compelled me to grasp the hilt of my sword and I violently swung it as I veered around to confront whoever approached me.

What I saw loosened my secure grasp upon the engraved hilt of my blade and it clattered to the ground with a resounding twang. Eowyn in her threadbare chemise, her flaxen hair a cascade of tangled gold stood before me. Her upper teeth were delved into her bottom lip as she regarded me. She appeared very pale in the illumination of the thin crescent of the moon and she bore an expression of tender determination.

“What are you doing here? You ought not be wandering about at this hour, especially not outside of the confines of the city,” I said, cringing at the vexation that was so apparent in my weary tone. In truth, my perturbation appalled me yet I have come to understand that humans oft withdraw and deter the aid of those they love at times of dire need. This, an unquenchable desire to be alone with my thoughts and pure exhaustion is the only explanation I possess for my uncharacteristic display of annoyance directed towards Eowyn.

“I would ask you the same question,” she stated gently, her shrewd stare unrelenting. “i followed you. I was worried about you, Faramir. You slept uneasily and when I awoke you were absent.”

“And how did you know where to find me?” I queried, my voice and the slump of my shoulders conveying the utter fatigue that I felt.

“This is where I come when I have memories of the war,” she replied softly.

And then she was enfolded in my embrace, her head resting upon my chest, my face buried in her golden hair.

“Do remember the first being, man or orc, you killed?” I murmured softly into her hair.

She abruptly pulled away to gaze at me, cradling my face in her cupped hands. She nodded. “Aye, I do.” In a hesitant broken tone she continued. “It was upon Pelennor fields for I had not had the opportunity to kill before that. In truth, Faramir, I felt little but rage and a dire need for valiant death in the midst of battle. I was without hope so I possessed no emotions save despair, no thoughts save those of butchery, and no physical feeling save that of acute pain.” Despondently she withdrew from my embrace, an expression of rue and regret upon her pale face. “I sometimes wonder if I deserve you, if it would have been for the better if you never encountered me in the Houses of Healing, if I never demanded to see you, if we never fell in love. Perhaps then you could have a proper wife who would ease your troubles not increase your burden with her own struggles. Perhaps you ought not to have wed a wife who had not only dealt death upon others but tasted it as well.”

Eager to bridge the chasm of space between us, the physical rift and now the emotion fissure, I hastened towards her. I tenderly tilted her ivory chin towards the star embellished sky and peered into her eyes, pools of turbulent grey. She drew in a slightly trembling breath yet did not break the poignant gaze we were held captive in.

“How can you say such things? I love you and am unable to imagine life without you, much less loving another,” I muttered incredulously and unbidden a lone tear fell from her eye. “I love you.” Those words are empty, merely a collection of syllables that rolls off the tongue in a lilting, melodic manner, uttered so often devoid of true emotion some of their meaning has been greatly diminished It is the emotion that bears more significance then the words uttered and this I learnt in the first week of our marriage.

Now she unanticipatedly quietly laughed, a wan smile playing upon her lips. “Of course, it it too late to be rid of me now, even if you wished.”

Then impetuously she surrendered her hold on a tendril of flaxen hair she was winding around her finger and swiftly laid her hands to rest upon her abdomen.

I gazed at her incredulously and with a sense of wonder to which she replied with a rapid nodding of her head.

“Since when?” I inquired, nearly rendered speechless as I attempted to fit fractured and unintelligible thoughts into a coherent sentence. Yet for this once words alluded me. I swiftly contemplated a anew the past few weeks of our existence, seeking fragments of a puzzle to fit together. A child! Eru, this was wholly unexpected yet utterly blissful and blessed!

“Can you not remember? I though you at least could not forget.” she jested.

The tranquility of the night was fractured by my uncharacteristic jubilant yelling as I gathered her lithe frame in my arms.

In a world that was previously so fraught with death, despair, and darkness life was joyously welcomed with open arms and ushered in.

“Thank you,” I murmured into her ear, intertwining my hands in her golden curls.

“For what?”

“For this,” I replied, hands traversing a path down to rest upon her abdomen, smiling as I detected a slight swell. “For life in the wake of death.”