Quickbeam

He had sat under the great tree’s branches since he was a child: first with his mother and brother, and then by himself, when deemed old enough to be on the Pelennor alone. It had always been a favored tree. His mother thought it most peaceful; Boromir loved to climb it; and Faramir loved to listen as the wind played in its branches and the birds sang merrily within its folds.

When first he had been stationed in Ithilien at the hidden garrison of Henneth Annûn, one of the things he found he missed most was riding out of the City on hot days, finding the glade where the tree stood, and resting his back against it. Much to his amaze, he had found a like tree within a league of the cave. ‘This grove of rowan trees is like unto the grove near the City. Of course, it is not the same.’ His tree was the same, and yet it could not be. ‘It is of the same type; this is probably why I think this tree is the same.’ However, he felt an air of familiarity when he sat against it; almost, he could have sworn it was the same tree.

His men oft teased him about his habit of going to the grove and sitting with his back against the smooth bark, but no amount of joking would stop him from enjoying the tree’s company. ‘Enjoying,’ he thought. ‘What a comical notion – to think of enjoying a tree, but that is what I suppose I am doing.’ He leaned back and the tree seemed to enfold him. He spoke to it, as he had done when a youth, and told it of his concerns for his father and his brother, for his men, and for Ithilien. “The land is growing wilder, my friend, as are the animals. There is an air of aloofness that I have not felt before. Father believes it is the one who lives over the mountains; that he corrupts it and Father is probably correct. He is wise.” Faramir shrugged in frustration. “I love this land. I would keep Ithilien beautiful and… friendly, but it seems beyond my purview.” He touched its trunk gently as he stood to leave. “I will see you soon.”

But this morning, after a week’s absence, he found it gone. ‘Nay,’ he thought to himself, ‘not gone. That is not possible, but where is it?’ The rowan trees were all slaughtered, if one could say a tree could be killed, but that is what it felt like – that they had been murdered in their sleep. The very thought choked him and he looked about wildly for his tree. It was nowhere to be found. No stump, no branches, nothing to show where it had stood. ‘A tree cannot get up and walk away.’ Yet sorrow filled him as he made his way back to the cave, never seeing the waving of branches as a tall tree moved away.

~*~

A/N – The idea for this tale came after reading this passage. It seems Quickbeam was not originally from Fangorn. “Birds used to flock there. I like birds, even when they chatter; and the rowan has enough and to spare. But the birds became unfriendly and greedy and tore at the trees, and threw the fruit down and did not eat it. Then Orcs came with axes and cut down my trees. I came and called them by their long names, but they did not quiver, they did not hear or answer: they lay dead.” Quickbeam from The Two Towers: Book Three: Chapter Four: Treebeard.