Once I went out on a merchant ship. A useful exercise for any of our family, even the girls, my grandfather said. Two days were enough for a child of the groves like me. Before we were out of sight of the land a summer squall blew up. The ship pitching and yawing.
My knuckles were white against my skin as I gripped the rail, the waves surging over the scrubbed deck, pulling me towards the dreadful ocean. The solidity of the deck was a betrayal of my trust, each moment of longed for surety snatched away as the ship fell into the cavernous depths or sprang into the air like a frantic bird.
The man behind me says, ‘Enough’. And any solidity I have momentarily gathered is torn away.
His word is simple, but the force of it is like a backhand blow. I feel my being snap back against the weight of it – I, who am used to the giving and receiving of orders.
The command thrills in me, for it cannot be denied, but I am appalled by my own fear and the yearning to bend my knee to such stone-like certainty. It wounds me, because only moments earlier he gave me his rare rogue’s smile.
I am silenced by the command given in an unfamiliar voice, from the lips of a man wearing someone else's face. I stare up at the stars, searching for the mariner to steady myself. But here in this perilous vale the star is hidden by the hills around Imladris. Even this is taken from me - as though all the world conspires to cast me into the ocean. Olwing of the land, searching for a mariner's star, the man behind her denying her a harbour. The irony comes to me later.
The man gives me no time to settle. He steps beside me, clad in sable velvet with the blasphemous, audacious cloak over his shoulders. How has Amlarad come to wear the high arms of Gondor? My anger at this presumption, even from him, to sport the White Tree of the City, and worse, to emblazon it with the stars, forces me to try and find words.
He yields the cloak to me and at the moment of my triumph, upholding the pride of Gondor, I sense the sea shifting again. This is not a simple mistake by the elven folk, providing clothing for an injured man. Beneath the waves I am cast upon, deeper currents pull, though I cannot fathom them. I am not a fool, though I feel one, and the man before me slips and slithers his being like a magician before a child.
He speaks softly in their honey-soaked tongue to the figure behind him. A sword could not sever me from him with any greater efficiency. I am cut away and seperated from the one mortal in this valley. She replies to him in the same tongue. They are alike, suddenly. She named him 'Randir' as she brought me into the valley. And another name - deeper waters still - 'Elf-friend'.
Behind him in a glory so radiant I would weep - if I had space for such a clear feeling – the lady Nimlith stands. She served me wine, barefoot. My heart could break if I could find it, thrown in the ocean swell around me.
