Blue Sky, Night Thunder: The Fool's Errand

[Belin]

That night, Hithduiniel lay quietly in the darkness of the room they'd provided her, reflecting on the suprises of the day. Livia's inn was a large and well lit place in the daytime, and she could see the beauty of it, where the architecture had not been defaced by the chaotic events of many rough nights of brigandry. What had they been doing out here, these mortals? Didn't they know enough to guard themselves and their homes from such people? If she had understood the girl properly, they invited hordes of ruffians into this place, fed them, gave them beds, and cleaned up the bodies they left lying about on the floors. Such foolishness.

The stormclouds had passed, and though the wind wound around the inn like a cry of weak despair, there was a strange quietness as she had not heard in the night since the storm had come. Hithduiniel turned over onto one side, half thinking, half dreaming.

So maybe it was a dream that she heard, and not the sound of hunting horns and rushing feet. Maybe, after all, the voices of men did not close around these walls with a sound like the sound of the wind, and perhaps they were followed by no flurry of hooves. It was possible that they passed so quickly only because they were creatures of her thought, and that the silence she heard when she started back into full consciousness was the same silence that had lain on the room before.

Maybe so. But her mind was full of these sounds, and the search of her eyes that met no object was not unaccompanied by rushing and powerful images in her mind.

"Just to see your shadow," Hithduiniel whispered into the darkness, "once, and never more."

A long moment passed as she lay under the thick blanket shivering. Did she dare?

She dared. Hithduiniel rose quietly from her bed. Nothing to take with her, nothing she needed, only an idea and a long walk.

So. She walked silently past the rooms where those content to stay were sleeping, snoring away in their ridiculous mortal fashion, as if there were nothing better in the world. She made her way down the stairs, opened the door without its usual squeak, and suddenly stood breathing in the night.

She looked eastward over her shoulder, in a sort of apology to her brother, and started off.

There was a light in the stable.

It was, of course, no concern of hers. She cared nothing for either the stable or the--whoever was in there. But the sudden knowledge that she was not, after all, alone in the night jarred her. The sounds she had heard had conferred this time on her, and on her alone, and an intruder--well, at least she should know who it was.

She peered around the door. Somebody with a very small lantern was leading out a horse without any of the peculiar gear used by the Men, whispering something into the beast's ear.

Dineniel, of course. I wonder where she's going. Hithduiniel shrugged the question off. Only another wanderer like herself, then, another rogue in search of something. Hithduiniel nodded to herself, glad both of this kind of kinship between them and the obvious superiority of her own journey. She turned away, satisfied.

"Hey."

Curiosity was a curse. She'd been seen. "Yes?" she said softly, turning to face the Elf again.

"What are you prowling around here for?" asked Dineniel, in the same near-whisper the Green-Elf was using.

"I am not prowling. I am traveling. Why are you prowling?"

"I need a horse for my travels, do I not?" The roguish Elf grinned. "Is it not strange indeed that you would travel back without your brother?"

"We go to different places." At this, Dineniel raised her eyebrows, drawing out an explanation. Something in this rash girl reminded her of a slightly younger and much more careless version of herself, and this was a bit of gossip she very much wanted to hear. She watched carefully as Hithduiniel shifted her weight, considered, reconsidered, and suddenly, impetuously spoke. "I have seen the sun set. I have heard a hunter's horn. I must-- I go west."

Dineniel gaped at her. "What?" she managed finally.

Hithduiniel leaned toward her, with strangely glowing eyes. Her whisper was becoming at once louder and more conspiratorial, and Dineniel had a sudden strong desire to leave.

"We're Moriquendi, Dineniel," she said. "My people are, they say, more darkened than the others, lesser, smaller, stranger. I did not see the Trees. I did not meet the Sun. Orome who met my people is a stranger to me. The Sea? I've never seen it.

But this is no choice of mine. Lenwe led us here, and Lenwe it was who chose to linger among the green trees and lose the sight of the silver and the gold. Some of these things I have heard. And why, O woman of what I may call my kindred"--Dineniel flinched, but Hithduiniel did not notice--"why should I stay upon the whims of a foolish leader, who cannot show me what is my heritage and what the great ones meant me to see? And though the choice was his to turn aside, what choice was mine? Will they keep me here, cooped in a narrow land from tree to tree?"

"Hithduiniel--" murmured Dineniel, alarmed. The words... they echoed something, something important. Her mind groped toward it.

Hithduiniel was shaking her head, speaking excitedly in a voice that continued to rise. "There they stand in beauty, beauty that is not of Middle-Earth. Shall I sit here wondering as they call us the--"

"Shadow-folk," interjected Dineniel. She had heard this, but where?

"Certainly, and while they sit where the mountain rises steep to the sky where the stars shine even brighter, and I feel the sea, Dineniel, it comes closer every day. There it stands still and awaits me who was kept from it by the folly that abandoned hope of it. I will go! Let Lenwe keep his forest!"

"Feanor!" said Dineniel.

"What?"

"It was Feanor. Feanor spoke like that."

"Feanor?"

"Yes! He left Valinor with his sons, don't you know anything at all?"

Hithduiniel frowned. "Curufinwe?"

"Nobody calls him that, Hithduiniel." She sighed at the other's challenging eyebrows. "They call him the spirit of fire, because he was. And when he spoke like that-- do you know this story or not?"

"I know of his sons, the ones that were mad and so pursued the stones that draw madness."

"He spoke like that right before bringing on exile from Valinor and really you should be more careful. Don't speak. Act."

"Did I start this conversation, or did you?"

"That isn't the point. One rogue to another, I tell you, the rule is this: don't become involved anything you can't escape from. Do not make certain plans, do not speak your plans, do not make oaths, and do not set foot in a stronghold. Trust me. It isn't safe."

"What's that got to do with me?"

"If they let you enter Valinor--if they overlook the banishment because you're Moriquendi, and I don't think they will, do you suppose you'll be coming back? Do you think you're planning anything less than the rest of the time in the world here? And if they don't admit you--"

"But it's what I want!"

"Are you sure? Do you know what it is, and what you want? This world, you know--when you want something, you know, sometimes you get it, sometimes, but mostly you look and you're bruised and you meet people and lose them, and in the end it turns out to be nothing more than a fool's errand."


Hithduiniel was thinking. "As the Garoliners sought their daughter," she said slowly, "as the brigands sought the stone."

Dineniel's face changed suddenly. "What?"

[Susan Delgado]

The floor squeaked. He knew it wasn't a part of his dream, though his dream was strange, all water and shadows and horns blowing. Even in all that, the squeak of the floor was so ordinary, so mundane, that it brought him out of sleep. He looked around, confused. Something had changed. What? He rose from his bed and crept to the door adjoining his room and the next. Somehow he was not surprised to find the bed in that room empty. She had always been a wanderer and on some level he'd always known that he would wake one night and find her gone. He moved quietly over to her window overlooking the stable and peered out. He saw the two Elves in earnest conversation, though their voices were too soft for even his sharp ears to pick up the words. He watched the end of their cooonversation and their departure together with a pang of sadness. He had a feeling she was really gone this time, and wasn't coming back. Why had she never told him what she was thinking of? He would have understood, might even have joined her! But maybe that was something she didn't want. Maybe she wanted to be on her own. NNo, if that were the case, she would never have left with that horse-thief. Though Dineniel was a pretty thing, and decent aside from being a thief. With a sigh of bitterness and longing, he sent a wish of good fortune her way and returned to his bed.

Lenilos woke with the sun. He did not look into Hithduiniel's room but hurried downstairs, where he could smell the breakfast the Men were making. He headed off their questions about Hithduiniel and Dineniel--he really didn't want to discuss it, especially not with the shortlived Men--and settled in to eat. It was bacon and sausages and eggs, with biscuits and butter and some sweet light drink he couldn't identify. Good solid fare for Men, he supposed, though it wan't at all what he was accustomed to eating. Still, he ate it all, even the meat, so he wouldn't insult them. They'd worked so hard to help him find his sister that he wanted to leave on as good of terms as he could.

After breakfast, they all went to the stables to find a horse for him. He was not a good rider, but he was determined to improve. Remdil was furious to find that the best horse in the place was gone, however. Evidence of a certain horse-thief, obviously, and now all they could do was deal with it. The owner of that horse would be most unpleased, though. Lenilos hid a smile. Their concerns were so delightfully small! Putting a gentle hand on Remdil's shoulder, he quietly told him that it really wan't that important. Remdil sighed and nodded. He knew that, he really did.

Lenilos remounted his horse and, provided with enough supplies to last a month, turned back toward his home in Ossiriand. As he disappeared into the town's throng, Carathon gave voice to the thought that was in all their minds:
"Do you think we'll ever see them again?"

[Belin]

Remdil felt no need to see them again. He'd given them his thanks and his hospitality, and they were, after all, Elves, a strange and unsettling people. Or so he told himself whenever he found a chance to think of it, in the long years after, as he watched Eolinda grow older, wiser, and (not to his surprise, though others wouldn't have guessed it) friendlier, and as Livia teased her suitors and studied elves. But he wondered, and he hoped. It seemed like a shame for the boy to have lost his sister. He'd seen the way they laughed at each other, and he'd thought--well, they were gone, in any case, and he'd never know.

But in his mind it went like this:

The horse's journey through the mist came to an abrupt halt, and the rider, clearly a man of no great horsemanship, carefully climbed down. His face wore an expression, not of resigned sorrow, but of worry. He had not given up hope, but hope had become a torment to him. Remdil could never decide whether he'd ridden eastward as he planned, or changed his mind and gone west to seek her, but in any case he'd come to a lonely inn, whose bright windows told a story of their own in the houseless mist. Leaving his horse to the stablehand, who frowned at it as if it were familiar to him, Lenilos ducked his head and walked through the door.

There was a bright fire there, and a pure and cheerful laughter that held no trace of mockery. The serving girl (in Remdil's mind she looked like Livia, and the inn like his own in better days) winked at him impudently, and guided him toward the fire, quietly taking away his dripping cloak. They made room for him around the fire, and gave him such welcomes as were native to them there. Perhaps, indeed, he smiled.

And he looked around the circle, and he saw first the wicked grin of a horse thief he'd known not so long ago, just beginning to laugh at some joke of her own, and his heart stopped within him.

And he was right, for there next to her, watching her as carefully as an apprentice watches his master, sat an elven maiden with long black hair and an impatient smile. And he sat back and waited until the joke was finished, and she looked around the room, and she saw him, and with sudden tears she welcomed him, and when they left the inn they left together.

So thought Remdil when between polishing tables and scolding the customers he had a moment to rifle through his memories, and so the story ran when, years later, he told it to his grandchildren.

THE END

[ January 11, 2003: Message edited by: Belin ]