Autumn, outside Thorenhad-On one of the last sunny, brisk days before winter set in, an old brown bear sat upon a hillside, devouring a pile of fruits and vegetables with gusto. He alternated his attention between them and a large pot of honey oat mash.
“Can you eat all of it? How is your tooth?” Lilleduil asked him.
The bear made a rumbling snuffle, his mood one of high good humor. “There is no tooth, Honey Hands, remember? The place where the tooth used to be is fine. I can eat all of this. Have I not been eating?”
The elves at Thorenhad had watched, bemused, when Lilleduil had brought Roschanar into the camp some weeks back. She had cast him into sleep with drugged mead which he’d lapped up obediently, and pulled the abscessed tooth that had been preventing him from eating as he ought. They’d been less pleased when the cart of oats and honey she’d ordered from Bree had arrived and their cooking fires had been periodically preempted for the cooking of pots and pots of oat mash as often as she could get out to the camp. Her war steed Braigsul had shared in their displeasure, but for different reasons. He had been forced to carry awkward, bumping bags of fruit and vegetables slung behind his saddle and felt it a great blow to his dignity.
The one elf who actually dared to complain had gotten short shrift from Elrohir. “I know that bear,” he’d told the offended warrior, “and he has killed more of the Enemy in two decades than you have in two hundred years. Leave Lilleduil be. I can always send you up to Nan Tornaeth to play with the wights for a while if it bothers you that much.”
“Diplomacy, brother dear!” Elladan had chided afterwards, when the offended elf had stalked off. Elrohir had simply grinned unrepentantly at him.
“That’s your job.”
It had been a race against time, to get Roschanar fat and gleaming before the winter set in, to build up the stores that would take him safely through the long, cold sleep. And Lilleduil did not delude herself. If she succeeded, it would all have to be done over next year. She would ultimately lose the race-Roschanar’s greyed muzzle and rheumy eyes told her that. But one more year! I can buy one more year at least! Another turn of seasons in the sun for him.
Roschanar was owed, for the countless times he’d interposed himself between her and harm, for the scars that showed as white stripes of fur upon his brown hide. She was not one of the mortal Men who sent creatures off to a graceless death at the knackers when they were no longer of use. He had served her, now she would serve him.
And he had caught up, no doubt of that. The gauntness that had so alarmed Lilleduil in the late summer was gone, and he was glossy again. But she thought there might be less fat than formerly. Was it enough? She couldn’t say, and Roschanar didn’t seem particularly perturbed. He lapped the last few remnants of oats from the bowl, then began working seriously upon the fruits and vegetables. Watching the zest with which he ate was reassuring, so she simply did so in silence for a while.
When the bear was done, he sat back upon his haunches, sniffed the chilling wind for a moment and regarded her gravely. “It is time to sleep, Honey Hands. Do you have the drink with you?”
“I do.” It had become a tradition of theirs, a final toast of the year in the mead he loved so well. She pulled the bottle and the bowl from out of her backpack, uncorked it and poured most of the mead into the bowl, which she set upon the ground before him.
“Till the Spring, best of friends,” he intoned solemnly, before his snout dipped into the bowl and he began drinking with great relish.
“Till the Spring, best of friends,” she answered softly, and tipped the bottle up to her lips, finishing it.
When he was done, the great paws that had crushed so many of their foes gathered her against him gently for a moment before he turned and waddled slowly off towards his lair. Lilleduil watched him go.
Early Spring, Thorenhad-She saw the birds circling as she approached the camp, and she knew, even before Elrohir met her, his face grave.
“He is gone. Come back in a couple of weeks and bring him out then if you want to bury him.” He looked at her suddenly set, blank expression with concern. “Are you all right, Lilleduil?”
She nodded. Her voice sounded raspy in her ears. “I am. It happens. Rather often, in fact. And it was the kindest possible death in the Wild.” She offered Elrohir the early strawberries she’d…liberated from the glass houses as a waking-up gift for Roschanar, but Elrond’s son shook his head.
“The mothers and the new cubs are out. Go see them!” he urged.
So she went down to where the dens were and passed strawberries around to the matrons, who were still looking a bit gaunt. The cubs, however, were fat and frolicsome, their eyes bright. Their antics cheered her a bit. When she still had a few berries left, one of the matrons she’d fed nudged Lilleduil with her great head in the direction of a yearling male, who lingered hopefully about the edges of the group. He’d not yet set out to claim a territory.
“Feed him,” the matron urged her.
So she took the berries over and fed him and their eyes met and she felt the tickling tingle that meant a connection was possible. In the future, when he was older… She’d called a cub only once, by accident and in extremity in Forochel, but she never did so intentionally. The cub, who had been orphaned, had survived the battle and she’d kept him with her a while afterwards, helping him to hunt until he could survive on his own. Perhaps this bear would let her give him a name in a year or so… Somewhat eased in her heart, Lilleduil went back to Thorenhad and rode home to Imladris.
Three weeks later, Thorenhad-Eirallyn’s spade bit into the earth with economical efficiency. Lilleduil was digging too, but the mortal was undeniably better at it.
“Dunedain get lots of practice digging graves,” Eirallyn said, when her prowess was commented upon. She’d come close enough to a grave herself, but recently. Covert observation reassured Lilleduil that the young Dunadan woman was showing no signs of the chest wound that had nearly ended her life in Eregion. Eirallyn had insisted that she was fit again and that the time had come for her to depart Imladris for Annuminas, but she had also offered to help Lilleduil bury Roschanar’s bones beneath his favorite scratching tree, as it was on her way out of the Trollshaws. So there was a picnic lunch in Lilleduil’s saddlebags and they were going to eat together one last time when the burial was done.
“Our own people, of course, and the ones we can’t save because there are just too few of us around,” she continued. “Those are the ones we hate digging the most.” She had fallen silent after that. There had been little left of Roschanar when the scavengers were done-just the bones and some hide-and they carried him easily enough down the hill from his lair on a piece of canvas when the hole was deep enough. Lilleduil got down into the hole to arrange him as if he were curled in sleep, and left the mead bowl and a bottle at his muzzle. Eirallyn smiled.
“Grave goods for a bear?” she inquired gently of the immortal who, though young, had already lived over twenty times her years.
“He liked it so much,” was all Lilleduil could bring herself to say. The young woman reached down to help her out of the hole, then began filling it back up.
“Do you bury all of your friends?” she asked as she shoveled. Lilleduil nodded as she too worked.
“When I can. All but the birds. I always felt it was wrong to cover them in earth. So I find a high crag somewhere, or make a little sort of….nest, high in a tree.”
“You told me you put them all in your book as well.”
“I do. I have a page for each, that tells the deeds we did together.”
“Do you have a page for me?”
“Yes, but…“ Lilleduil blushed suddenly and furiously and spoke swiftly. “I’m sorry! I don’t mean you to think that I think you are an animal, or anything of the kind.“ She kept equating people with wild creatures in conversations and though she meant to be nothing but complimentary most of the time, it never went well… But Eirallyn just chuckled.
“I don’t mind. It is sort of the same thing, is it not? I’ll last a bit longer, but not by all that much in your reckoning. I rather like the idea, to be honest. And the company I’d be keeping is good.”
“You have several pages saved,” Lilleduil admitted. “And I will always remember you, if that is a comfort.”
Eirallyn’s eyebrow lifted. “Immortality of a sort at second hand, eh? Then it may be a comfort to you to know that I will remember you, when the world finally ends as the legends say it will and you are ended with it while I am still out there, beyond the stars.” Lilleduil gave her a startled look. Elf and woman stared at each other for a long moment, then broke out laughing at the same time.
“I think between the two of us, we have things covered pretty well,” Eirallyn remarked, patting a last shovel of earth into place with the back of her spade.
They washed hands and faces thoroughly at the pool close to Thorenhad, then sat down to lunch in the ancient ruined structure near the bear dens. The entirety of the meal was spent most pleasantly, talking of doings in the Valley and of Eirallyn’s studies and Lilleduil’s natural observations.
“I still do not see why you cannot just stay here. Khalis has offered you a trial for your cloak and you say yourself that you love the library,” Lilleduil said very casually, as Eirallyn got up and brushed crumbs from her lap. The Dunedan gave her a knowing look.
“Captain Khalis is very kind. He has assessed my skills and has apparently come to the conclusion that I was having an off day in Eregion. He has also offered me instruction by those who teach arms in the Valley and they are indeed most excellent teachers-once you get them past the ‘practice this move every day for a decade and then come back to me’ habit.” Lilleduil snorted a bit of a laugh at that.
“But while he may think I am ready and you may think I am ready, I do not think I am ready yet. And I have business in Annuminas.”
“Annuminas is all but overrun!”
“So is Eregion, in my experience! And you’ve got huge, magically enhanced giants and beasts in the Hithaeglir! It’s not so much safer here, with the sorts of things the Warband gets up to.”
“But I can….what is the phrase, watch your back here?”
“You can’t say that. You don’t know where you will be commanded to go. Or where I would be commanded to go. You weren’t in Eregion when I was wounded,” Eirallyn reminded her gently. Lilleduil grimaced. “And until I can say that I am good enough to watch your back, I have no business being here.” The elf opened her mouth, but was forestalled by Eirallyn’s upraised hand.
“Calenglad has your name on my letters list. That’s all I can promise.”
“Letters list?”
“The list of people who are to be notified in the event of my death. I promise, I’ll either come back or you’ll get a letter eventually.”
“Is that meant to be comforting?”
“It’s meant to be all I can give you at present. A promise.” Eirallyn gave her a very direct look then. “The thing you do, Lilleduil, when you heal a wild creature and then you send it back to the wild? To take its chances with the snares and the bows and the claws and teeth? Because it is a wild creature and has to live free? You have to do the same for me. You have to let me fly. Because my life, short as it is compared to yours, is my life, and you have no more right than does my father to tell me how to live it.”
There was no particular ire in her voice, but Lilleduil felt ashamed nonetheless.
“I am very sorry, Eirallyn. That was not my intention.”
The Dunadan’s smile was warm. “I know. You are just worried about me. I am fortunate in my friends. And to guard this place with my life seems a good way to spend it. But I need to find my own path back.” She went back up to Thorenhad to give them their spade back and saddle her plain Bree mare, and Lilleduil followed after, watching as she did so and handing the woman her saddlebags.
“Will letters reach you in Evendim?” she asked, as Eirallyn fastened them behind the saddle, tightened her girth and mounted..
“I don’t see why not. They did in Esteldin. I hope that you will write, and I will do the same.”
“How long do you think you will be gone?”
“I’m not sure. It may be as long as a year. Till next spring, then?”
A chill ran down Lilleduil’s spine, but she schooled herself. “Till next spring, best of friends. The stars shine upon your path, wherever it may lead.”
“And upon yours.”
Eirallyn inclined her head and Lilleduil watched as she set out on the road to the Last Bridge.
