Chapter 4

As I Lay Dying

For a long while Boromir sat at the table, fingertips tented together, eyes looking at nothing. He took a few deep and even breaths. He massaged his left arm with his right hand. His breath hitched a little, and he briefly winced. Through all, his old friends waited without comment. They knew that long-held memories need time in the unburying. "How to begin?" he murmured.

"Why, at the beginning," answered Merry. "Then you go to the middle part and then the end."

Boromir smiled. Dear Merry, always the one with common sense and a practical bent. Boromir drummed his fingers on the tabletop, poured himself a small amount of wine, sipped it and set the cup down.

"Very well, from the beginning, then." He drew in a breath, raking his fingers through his hair. "Difficult it was, to watch you two being taken by the Orcs. I had failed all the Company – nay, all of Middle-earth! – when I tried to take the Ring, and failed the two of you in double measure." He sighed, and Pippin patted his arm, while Merry hitched his chair closer and laid an encouraging hand on Boromir’s. Boromir gave them a sad little smile and blinked hard several times. "So difficult to watch," he murmured mournfully, and then he bravely took up the thread of the tale once more.

"But I was wounded, very badly wounded, and I knew enough to know that death hovered at my side, ready to still my breath. As I lay dying, so many thoughts filled my head, but always at the fore were two things: the fate that would meet my two friends, great of heart though small in stature, and the fate of my people. Somehow along the way, I had begun to see the two not as separate matters, but linked. If the Shire was in danger, all things were in danger, including Gondor, for if we could not defend all the Free Peoples, then Gondor had failed. It is, after all, the duty of Gondor to protect her smaller neighbors, and if these are not free and happy, then none of us can be free and happy. Without peace and prosperity in the lesser lands, there was no peace or prosperity for any. There is nothing in this world more precious than freedom, and if it is to be kept, sometimes blood must be shed. Sad, but it is the way of the world. One might wish it not to be so, but wishing will not make it thus. Perhaps some day…ah, but I digress.

“When Aragorn came, I felt some comfort. I am sure he told you of our last words together, and I do not doubt that he was honest in this at the least. There has never been another quite like him, as you two know well. It took me over-long to see this, but in the end, I knew it must be that he would be High King. It comforted me in my dying moment that the last thing I should see of this world was the face of my future King. I remember the light fading around us as I gazed into his eyes, until finally all I could see was his face, like a beacon. How it shone!

“Then all became darkness. I was frightened.” He threw back his head and laughed at the sight of their faces. “...yes, I, Boromir, son of the Lord Steward of Gondor, was very frightened! And then, there in the darkness, that perfect darkness, I saw a fragment of light, white and brilliant as the first star. The light grew, and I felt myself drawn to it, and... words fail me, but there was something of peace and beauty in the light. I began to hear voices, lovely to hear, and sweet to my ears.

“I heard the voices speaking, and I had a sense that something... no, some One, was looking at me, or rather, through me, as if every detail of my life was being considered.” He stared into Merry’s puzzled eyes, but Pippin was nodding thoughtfully. Boromir’s look again grew abstracted as he continued. “Throughout this time I had an overriding sense of peace and bliss. It was like nothing I had ever known, and yet it was full of wonder. It is a thing strange to consider, but I could…feel…well…love, perfect love, and a sense of great welcoming, and I wanted so much to stay, to abide there forever.

“And One of the voices, greater and more powerful than any other, told me I might not stay. How I was crushed! I did not want to go from that place. The Voice said that I might not stay, for there were things left undone, things that I must do before gaining my rest. Hearing this told, I felt an overwhelming yearning, and it seems to me I begged for mercy, though the perfect love had never ceased. At last I bowed my head, but in my sorrowing heart remained a question. The Voice asked what it was I wanted to know, and so I said, "What are the voices I hear? What is this singing?" And the Great Voice said, "This is the sound of Creation Unfinished."

Boromir bowed his head and for a long moment the three old friends kept the silence. At last the man looked up again, a curious smile upon his face.

“And that is the last I remember of that wondrous place. Ever since, I have greatly longed to be within it once more. Ah, it is so very wonderful! But the mercy I had begged was not to be granted, or perhaps a differing mercy was intended. When I woke, I was on the banks of the Anduin, cold and in great pain. I could hear voices, different voices, not like the voices in the light. These were the voices of flesh and blood.

“They were the Wild Folk of Dunland, small and brown, and scarcely clothed. Three of them grasped me and pulled me from the river’s verge to a nearby fire. One of them had a small stick, which had been bored out, of the sort they use to project their darts. He dropped it into a pot of water that steamed and boiled over the fire, and fishing it out again, thrust it into one of the wounds in my chest, and began to suck blood out of my chest. The pain of this was nearly beyond my bearing, but I was too weak to struggle or even to make a sound. After the small man had finished his dreadful task, the little hollow stick was left in place and my wounds were bound. Then an old woman came with a cup, and this she emptied, drop by drop, into my mouth. After this, I slept. When I woke, the tube had been removed from my chest. A terrible weakness consumed me. I could not raise my head, or even a hand. They fed me broth, and more of the brew the old woman had given me, and then I slept more.

“Oft did I wake, and during these wakenings I was consumed by a deep melancholy, for my heart still yearned to return to the Light and the perfect love I had felt there. In my benighted mood, I wondered if this was my fate: to endure torment at the hands of the Wild Folk. Too, I wondered if I was being healed only to be turned over to the Enemy, or to be ransomed. Yet ever did they give me succor and kindness in full measure. Even so, in my heart would I speak to the Light, asking to return, pleading for answers to all my questions. I despaired then, for I felt my pleas went unanswered. What a fool I was! For I knew not that already the answers to my questions and pleas awaited me, biding the time until the student was ready for the Master’s lessons.

I know not how long I stayed with these little Wild Folk, for I had lost count of the march of days, though I have no doubt they were many. After some time more, my saviors built a rough but sturdy little contraption, and they bound me to it, and pulled me behind them on a track deep into the wilds.

I had a burning fever, and I was weak and in terrific pain. My waking moments were but brief, for the brew they gave me to ease my pain kept me in a drowse. But after what must have been many days, I began to come to myself, to see my surroundings, strange though they might be. My clothes had been taken from me, and I wore only the loincloth of the Wild Folk. Their Shaman, who often sang over my sickbed, had painted my body with many spells. I was not allowed to rise, and the people saw to my every need. Day by day we moved further into the wilds, my only shelter a lean-to of oiled deerskin, my only hearth a small, smokeless fire and my only house the earth, under the roof of sun and stars. I began to notice the phases of the moon, and it slowly came to me that I had been with them for over a month. They cared for me as if I had been an infant; it seemed to me somehow I had been reborn to the world, and I began to think of myself in those terms. I was no longer Boromir, son of Denethor. I was a creature made anew, having nothing to do with that previous life that grew ever more distant to my thought. I do not know if this was how things were, or if I was perhaps a bit mad by that time. Whatever might have been the truth, whether rebirth or madness or yet something else, it did not matter. My old life was over with. I had betrayed my people and thrown away both my own honor as well as that of my family by trying to take the Ring, and so I felt I had no place in Gondor. I was now a Wild Man of Dunland.