Far Horizons 17:  Loss

‘I did not shoot him, you know,’ Calion said quietly.

‘No,’ Hithien answered thoughtfully, as she looked up from her sewing.  ‘I believe that you did not.’

He flushed.  ‘Why?  Do you think I am too hopeless to be capable of such an action?’

She smiled wryly. ‘Is it hopeless to be too honourable to commit such a despicable act?  Or is it hopeless to be too honest to be able to live with the lie that you are innocent?  I do not think you are hopeless, Calion.  A terrible archer, possibly – I would not know; I have not seen you with a bow in your hands.’

He looked down at those hands uncomfortably.  ‘I know why I have been put here in the nursery,’ he said after a moment, ‘although I did not work it out until after you fought off those abductors.  It is not so that I can look after the elflings, but so that you can look after me.  I am fit for nothing other than being treated as an overgrown elfling.’

‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Calion,’ Hithien told him briskly.  ‘Self-pity is a very unattractive quality.’

‘Yes, Nana,’ he replied with a mocking salute as she looked him over.

‘You have other qualities that are much more pleasing,’ she remarked. ‘And I am not,’ she continued as he blushed to the roots of his dark hair, ‘just talking about physical appeal.’

‘I might have done it if they had told me to,’ he confessed, his voice low with shame, his eyes concentrating on the dancing pattern of leaves the sunlight was creating on the floor. ‘I might even have thought it was noble thing to do.’

Hithien’s hands dropped into her lap.  ‘So you deserve to be punished for it anyway?’ she asked.  ‘Is that why you did not tell Thranduil that you were being treated badly?’

‘No,’ he said indignantly. ‘I am not stupid.  Nobody had any wish to listen to me or any belief in what I said.  How was I to know that Lord Thranduil had not told everyone to make my life as difficult as possible?’

‘Because he is not a savage?’

‘Well, I know that now,’ he said apologetically.

Hithien gazed at him, finally shaking her head in wonder.  ‘We really do make our own problems,’ she sighed, ‘when there are no others available to do it for us.  Do your people truly look on Wood Elves as savages?’  When he did not reply, she picked up her sewing again. ‘If I were Finarfin,’ she observed, ‘I might consider commanding every unattached elf to marry someone from a different culture.’

‘That might not be such a bad idea,’ he muttered, looking up at her.

‘You are not to go falling in love with me just because I am kind to you,’ she ordered him.  ‘You are much too young for me.’

‘I would not do that,’ he agreed.  ‘That would not be a sensible thing to do.  Although I have to add that I am certainly not too young for you.  I do not know if you have noticed, but Surion keeps telling me that I am really quite old.’

***

Nessariel sat in the high window and gazed with unseeing eyes at the treetops blowing in the rain.  He had made no effort to contact her.  She attempted to convince herself that he was probably trying frantically to get messages to her through the network of polite but firm elves who were keeping her securely away from everyone except those questioning her, but, deep inside, she knew that she was no longer of use to him and that she had been discarded.

She closed her eyes and deliberately pictured the day she had met him: his hair so dark it was almost blue in the sunlight and his stormy grey eyes seeing through to her heart.  He had smiled – not the wolfish smile that scared her, the one that said that he would have what he wanted, no matter what the cost – but the sweet diffident smile that begged her to love him.  And she had – from that moment no-one else had mattered.  She could feel the burn of his fingers on her arm, the heat of his lips on her mouth, the fire of his love in her belly.

Food was brought – and left untouched.  People came and spoke to her, asked her questions, pleaded with her to come back from the place where she had shut herself away, but she did not want to return.  She was happy there: where the sun shone on them and he loved her.

‘She is fading,’ Elrond informed Finarfin softly.  ‘Within a few days – a week at most – she will give up her life.  There is nothing we can do to hold her.’

‘I did not want to pity her,’ Thranduil told them.  ‘She betrayed my daughter and endangered my grandchildren – but I cannot help but feel sorry for her.  Has she said anything to give a clue as to the name of the pond-scum who has driven her to this?’

Finarfin shook his head.  ‘She has said nothing at all from the moment we took her,’ he admitted.  ‘It is as if she has ceased to hope for anything from the outside world – as if, without him, life itself is meaningless.’

‘And her life is the only gift she can give him.  Few elves love quite this obsessively, but when they do there is little that can be done to save them.’  Celeborn looked sad. 

‘Have you searched her rooms – looked through her clothes – sought out secret corners where she might have hidden messages from him?  He will have told her to dispose of everything, but she will have wanted to cling on to anything that he had touched,’ Galadriel told them.  ‘She has had little enough of him.  None of her friends or family appear to know anything, except that she had a lover who seemed to keep her swinging between euphoria and despair.  Anything he gave her, she would have kept – and as secretly as possible, for she would not have wanted him to discover her deception.’

‘Perhaps if you were to search,’ Celeborn said, taking her hand and lifting if briefly to his lips.

Galadriel smiled as she turned her hand to caress his cheek, knowing that he grieved for the elleth who was dissolving into despair in the small room behind them.

‘I will look,’ she promised. 

Finarfin turned to the captain of the guard.  ‘We will leave her to you, Captain.  Do what you can for her.’

Nessariel watched from the window as the treetops blew in the rain, but she saw an everlasting summer, with the beautiful elf by her side who adored her and put her happiness before his lust for power, but beneath the surface of the happy image, she could sense the rot; and the darkness swirled around her feet, threatening to suck her into a pit from which there was no escape.

***

‘Where would you hide those little things a lover might send, but that you wish to keep secret?’ Galadriel asked Elerrina, her voice low and meditative.

‘It is difficult,’ Elerrina admitted.  ‘There are so few places that an elleth has that are secure – although it is usually your naneth from whom you wish to hide lover’s tokens.  It is more often safer to have your hiding place away from your room.’  She looked round slowly.  ‘But Nessa was not hiding things from her naneth – and, whoever he is, he could not come to her rooms and remain a secret.  She will have hidden anything here.’ 

‘I agree,’ Galadriel nodded.  ‘Now, the searchers will have looked everywhere that is obvious – and, for they have talented elves among them, they will also have searched many places that are less obvious.  So where might we look that is not obvious at all?’

‘Somewhere she can get at them easily,’ Elerrina considered.  ‘Somewhere portable – so that she could take them with her.’

‘The clothes she is wearing now have been checked,’ Galadriel murmured, turning slowly as she looked at the contents of the room.  ‘She has nothing else with her.’

‘Not even her hair brush?  I seem to remember hiding notes in the back of my brush at one time.’

‘Really?’ Galadriel said with interest. ‘Who might have sent them, I wonder?’  She laughed as Elerrina blushed.  ‘Was it a successful hiding place?’

‘It was not discovered – and that is the main thing!’

‘What jewellery does she have?’ Galadriel opened the box on the modest chest. ‘I used to have a brooch that could be used as a hiding place.’ 

There was little in the casket – either Nessariel did not care for jewellery or she had not been able to afford much.  Most of what was there appeared to be hair adornments, beautifully embroidered butterflies and leaves.  Galadriel picked one up and felt it delicately.  ‘Well,’ she said.  ‘It would seem that we have found something.’

Elerrina grinned. ‘May I be there when we let Legolas’s Adar know?’ she requested.

‘Oh most definitely,’ Galadriel said, as she delicately began to unravel the stitches along the edge of a pretty leaf, easing out a small folded piece of paper.  ‘I am looking forward to seeing his expression myself.’

‘What does it say?’ Elerrina asked as she watched Galadriel’s face.

‘The poor elleth,’ Galadriel said pityingly.  ‘If this is a sample of all he gave her to treasure, she was surviving on crumbs indeed.  ‘Just ‘Meet me’, ‘burn this’ – that is more or less all it says.’

***

Ancalime wept on her husband’s shoulder. ‘She is just a shell,’ she sobbed.  ‘There is no more than a tiny spark of life left within her.’

‘I am sorry.’  Elrond spoke gently, a wealth of grief in his voice.  This was a story he had told before, but he could never accustom himself to it.  ‘There is nothing we can do.’

‘Not even Lady Galadriel?’ Nessariel’s adar implored hoarsely. 

‘It is too dangerous,’ the healer told them.  ‘If she is disturbed in the dream that is all that is supporting her, it is most likely that she will withdraw altogether.’

‘If I meet the one who did this to her, I will kill him,’ he cried in anguish. ‘It will not be kinslaying, for anyone who could do this is no kin of mine!’ 

Galadriel put her hand on his arm.  ‘Do not let Nessariel hear you,’ she murmured. ‘She will do nothing to betray him.  If she thinks that, living, she may endanger him at all, then she will choose to die now.’

‘How can she have chosen to love so completely one who was just using her?’ her naneth mourned.  ‘He has taken advantage of her and drained her and abandoned her.’

‘Did you know that she had given herself to him?’ Galadriel’s words were as chilling as the breeze on a winter morning, and Ancalime shivered.  ‘But the bond was one-sided.  I feel no trace of him in her.’

‘There is no punishment that he can be given that is severe enough.’ Nessariel’s adar said harshly as he held his wife close.  ‘My daughter should have lived in peace and happiness with an elf who treasured her.  He has killed her as surely as if he stuck a knife between her ribs.’

***

The pile of fabric scraps lay discarded on the table between them, pretty and delicate treasures that were now no more than litter.  The brief notes they had released to examination were spread out, pinned down at the corners to stop them from blowing away. 

‘No word of love,’ Galadriel said, aching audibly for the elleth who had worked with a loving hand to conceal these scraps of paper.  ‘Not even in the early ones, where at least he is making some attempt to ask rather than command.’

‘She probably did burn the first ones,’ Thranduil commented.  ‘Before she began to crave every touch of his hand.  He will have kept her wanting – his control would have been greater thus, and we have here someone who desires to be in control.’

‘It is a strong hand,’ Celeborn reflected.  ‘I suppose that is not surprising.  There is no attempt to hide his own style – but then he did not expect anyone to see these.’

‘How will these help us find him?’ Elerrina found tears in her eyes as she looked at the evidence of her cousin’s lover.

‘They will not,’ Galadriel admitted, ‘unless you recognise the writing.  The most they will do is help convict him when he is found.’

Elerrina picked up the scraps of embroidery and concentrated on the small dragonflies and the colourful butterflies to help her control her wish to weep.  Her eyes narrowed and she turned so that the scraps would catch the light. ‘Lady Galadriel,’ she breathed.

Together they looked closely at what had caught Elerrina’s attention, putting aside some of the tiny pieces.  ‘Well,’ Galadriel said finally, looking up at the faces of the curious elves who were staring at them.  ‘It is foolish to under-estimate the power of ellyth – and I believe the one whom we seek may find that he has done just that.  The wings of these creatures have been embroidered using his hair.’

Thranduil stared.  ‘He would not have given her any of his hair!’ he countered.  ‘He would know it could be used to help us trace him.’

‘He would not have done so intentionally,’ Galadriel agreed. ‘But he will not have known.’  She turned to her husband and touched his cheek, sliding her fingers into his mane of silver hair, running them through its thick length.  He fought a shiver, knowing that her touch had more to do with proving her point than passion.  She shot him an amused look that contained both apology and promise, before turning, several long hairs between her fingers.

‘She saved every hair he left on her gown or between her fingers – and used them to create these little jewels,’ she said, ‘so that something of him would always be with her.’

‘Valar, but ellyth are devious creatures,’ Thranduil remarked.

Elerrina shook her head.  ‘He was using her,’ she reminded him, ‘to help him carry out his plans.  But Nessa was not playing the same game.  She only wanted him to love her.’ 

***

Minastan sat in his room.  The last thing he wanted was to be caught attempting this, but, although he had sought other solutions, this was the only safe way he could imagine for contacting Nessariel.  It would not be easy.  The silly elleth had done her best to entangle herself with him and had opened her mind to him, but he had never had any wish to reciprocate and had consistently rebuffed her approaches.

Now he needed to pick up those traces of her and attempt to touch her mind, what there was of it, if he were to succeed in what he wanted to do.  It would require strength – but he had that.  He had the determination, too.  He was not going to let one weak elleth endanger the plan he had spent decades perfecting.

He controlled his breathing and began to reach inside himself.  The threads would be there: the touches of her clinging to his own essence.  They were slight, ephemeral, feather-light, but they were there.  He bound them: from gossamer to thread to wire, so that he might ride them back to her and touch the mind of the one who yearned for him.

In her high room, Nessariel opened her eyes.  She could feel him, like hot steel, tasting of fire, invading her.  She could sense his presence, making her limbs tremble with his intensity, filling her, making her whole:  her love.   A rapturous smile spread over her face and her head dropped back against the frame of the window as he gave her what she wanted of him – and then he took it back.

The shock of his withdrawal made her cry out as the aching emptiness froze her and her heart forgot to beat.  Her hands tightened to claws as her lungs sought air that they could not draw in.  For an infinite moment she held there, arched in the window as her body stiffened with his rejection, and then she fell, spiralling down, like a leaf in winter, sinking into the endless dark, endlessly alone.

He was surprised, in the end, how easy it was.

***

Tarannon stood automatically as his naneth entered the room, but his mind continued to brood and his eyes remained fixed on the floor.  Instead of walking past him to seat herself in her accustomed chair, she grasped his arm and pulled him to face her.

‘Tell me you had nothing to do with it,’ she said, her voice thick and trembling.

Tarannon lifted his eyes to her face in amazement.  Tears stained her cheeks and her mouth was shaking.

‘Tell me you had nothing to do with Nessariel’s death,’ she implored him. ‘I have already lost one son and I do not wish to lose the other.’

Her son’s mouth opened, but he found himself unable to speak.

His naneth continued, gripping his arm and shaking it as if he were a naughty elfling. ‘I know she liked you, my son,’ she said.  ‘Do not let it be you who drove her to give up her life.’  Fresh tears welled in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.  ‘Is it not bad enough that you are involved at all in this stupidity, without you giving me reasons to suspect that you have committed yourself to activities that are both criminal and unforgivably cruel?’

‘Naneth,’ he said earnestly, ‘Naneth, believe me – Nessariel has never been more than a friend.  She never loved me.   I am not responsible for her death.’  He paused, then his voice dropped until it was virtually inaudible.  ‘I bear enough guilt without that.’

Minyariel sobbed.  ‘What have you done, Tarannon?  Please do not tell me you were involved in the attempt to take those elflings – I do not think I could bear it.’

‘I swear, Naneth.  I knew nothing of it.  I knew nothing – but I suspected that something was about to happen.’  Tarannon gently removed his naneth’s hand from his arm and sank into his chair.  ‘Oh, Naneth,’ he sighed, ‘I am so afraid.’

‘Tell me, my son.’  Her voice had steadied.  Surely nothing could be worse than her imaginings. ‘Tell me – let us see what can be done.’

‘I know him, Naneth,’ he whispered.  ‘I know who he is – he met Nessa when she was with me and he captivated her from the very first moment.   He has been leading our group by the nose for months, and I have only just begun to see it.  And he knows me, Nana.  I do not believe I will ever be safe again.’

Their eyes met and she stretched out to brush the hair from his face.  ‘We will find some way,’ she said with determination, ‘to see he gets what he deserves without involving you.’

The conversation in the hallway came closer and Tarannon stood beside his naneth, unsure of what was making him nervous, here in his adar’s house.  The door opened and Artamir entered, all his usual pomposity pricked out of him.

He stared at his son and his wife, before clearing his throat. ‘The High King has decided that my house is under investigation,’ he said. ‘We are under house arrest.’