Homecoming by swampdiamonds

Chapter 1

Read Chapter 1

“We will do this properly, son. We will spare no effort.”

Guilin is animated, nervous, holding the plan before Gwindor like a tray of delicacies. Please, take it. Gwindor considers the offer. He nods. “I should be honored, father,” he says. “Whatever you think appropriate for the occasion.”

Guilin beams. Gwindor remembers to smile, crooked, closed-mouthed, but meaning it. A homecoming feast! His homecoming feast.

 

---

 

They keep setting food before him, so he eats, and they keep filling his glass, so he drinks. After a time the thought comes to him that he is becoming drunk, and that his stomach is uncomfortably full. But there is no accompanying thought of action; he merely observes.

Now the hall is silent, and his father is standing, addressing the crowd. Now Túrin is rising at his side, tugging him up alongside him. He overbalances, puts his hand on the chair-back, and it falls over with a clatter. Turin saves him from following it with a hand around his waist.

Gwindor’s father is crying as he speaks. My son, my son. He puts an arm around Gwindor and pulls him close. Someone brings out the mead and the cup and Guilin explains, for Túrin’s benefit, that his father made this cup in Tirion; that he himself carried it over the ice on his back. Gwindor knows all this already; he has heard the story many times. But not recently.

Gwindor. Gwindor. Would he like to say a few words?

Yes. He would. He takes Túrin’s hand and tugs at it a little, the way he guided him through the wilderness. “You,” he says, enunciating as precisely as he can, “saved me.”

 

---

 

Finduilas grants him the gift of her voice, without being asked. An old song; a sentimental favorite: when you and I walk again in our home across the sea...

He was born in Nargothrond, under a stone roof, with the river running by. If he cannot call this place home, then he has none.

It is difficult to focus on Finduilas under these bright lights. He closes his eyes to better hear the music.

Someone else is singing now. People come and make suggestions to him. No, he does not think he ought to go to bed; can’t they see that he is quite comfortable here? His accosters disperse. Finduilas comes and sits next to him and whispers that she is a little tipsy, and tired, and will he walk her home? She smiles as she asks him, although he cannot see what is funny about it.

He is surprised to find himself approaching his own door. He looks to Finduilas for an explanation, but she is sending her voice echoing down the hall ahead of them (“I say, is anyone here? Bring a light for Lord Gwindor!”) and leading him on through his own dark apartments. Here at last is his bed; it rolls alarmingly, and he clings to the coverlet so as not to fall off. There is someone moving about the room lighting wall-sconces. Finduilas speaks to this person, and then to him, but he must exert all his concentration to stay on the bed.

“Poor Gwindor,” she says, “there will be other feasts, you know. You don’t need to fit them all in at once.”

She comes and sits next to him on the bed and puts her hand on his shoulder. “I have so many things I want to tell you. So many things. I try, and I choke on them. My heart is too full.”

The hand moves from his shoulder to his cheek. In combination with every other sensation, this is too much, too close. He swallows. “I want you to know that I can help you,” says Finduilas. “I know I can. I don’t yet know what you want--what you need--but I can--oh. Oh dear.”

She moves back just in time to save her dress. Some small part of Gwindor detaches itself from the task at hand to observe Finduilas fumbling about his person trying to hold him upright, but he no longer cares where she puts her hands. Then an unfamiliar voice says, “I have him now, Princess.”

And after an age, the same voice says, “Are you quite done, do you think?”

The question is for him, he realizes, and he manages a brief nod. His throat burns. The strange hands run a cloth over his face and move down to begin undoing the fastenings of his outer garments. Where has Finduilas got to? Why have they gone off without Túrin? If he must be jostled about in this way he prefers that it be by familiar hands.

“Oh, be careful of his arm! Let me--.”

Gwindor dares to open his eyes and regrets it immediately, but he sees that Finduilas has not gone far, and is in fact doing her best to take over the stranger’s ministrations. The stranger--who must be a servant in his parents’ household--objects, but does not dare elbow the king’s daughter out of her way. She says, “Princess, please, you needn’t…” and cedes the field. Finduilas releases him from his outer garments, and he falls backward onto the bed, which has settled from its earlier turbulence to a gentle rocking. She moves down to tug at his shoes, and he sees her clearly for a moment: the dim light glimmers off her hair, piled up elaborately but beginning to come undone, and illuminates her flushed cheeks. Not at all like his dreams but beautifully, terrifyingly solid. He becomes afraid, suddenly, that she will strip him down to his skin and leave him there with the stranger. “Don’t leave me alone,” he says, or tries to say, or only thinks.

“Don’t leave. Stay.”

 

---

 

He wakes in the dark, with an urgent ache in his bladder and the vague conviction that Finduilas is somewhere nearby. Indeed, there is a shadowy figure slumped in the chair by his bedside. But its shape resolves before him: he sees that it is not Finduilas at all but his valet Talchim, still dressed in festival clothes, with his cap pulled down over his eyes.

Gwindor feels disoriented. His memories are intact but jumbled, and he cannot tell which are dreams. He sits up and swings his legs over the bed. His head spins; he is not entirely sober, yet. The rug is gone (he remembers suddenly, humiliatingly why), and he can feel the chill of the stone through his hose. He is still wearing them, along with his undershirt. They have come undone while he slept and are bunched around his knees. When he stands they slip the rest of the way down his legs. He kicks them off into a heap on the floor, and goes barefoot and barelegged to attend to his needs.

When he returns, Talchim is stirring and stretching. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here earlier,” he says, “I didn’t notice you had left. Although Lethil thinks I did it purposefully to make more work for her, out of spite, I suppose. I’m afraid the rug is a loss; red wine does stain terribly, you know.”

Gwindor makes no attempt to absorb any of this. He sits back down on the bed. “Where is Finduilas?” he asks.

“Oh--at home, I assume, by now,” says Talchim.

Guessing at the direction of Gwindor’s thoughts, he adds, “I’m sure she will come see you in the morning.”

Gwindor nods. “And where is…” he catches himself just in time, “Agarwaen?”

“Down the hall. In--the other suite. He thought it best not to disturb you.”

His brother’s suite. He tucks this information away to consider later. He lies back down and pulls the covers up over himself. Talchim, taking this as confirmation that his services are uncalled-for, slips off to his own bed.

The mattress is very soft, but he feels exposed, lying on his back like this, presenting such an easy target to passing boots or fists. He thinks about Finduilas sitting here on the bed with him. He remembers the feel of her hand on his face, the heat against his skin. Solid, real, flushed cheeks in the lamplight. He tries to imagine her lying next to him. Shuts his eyes. Concentrates. The image becomes slippery and dangerous, twisting away out of his control. There is a warm weight at his side, a comforting weight, but the scene has shifted to a barren hillside half-buried in snow. They huddle in the shelter of an uprooted tree, pressed in close among the roots. The only sound is the dead leaves rattling in the wind.

He opens his eyes. Sits up, never mind how his head feels, and looks around the empty room. For what? He doesn’t know. The leaves rattle on in the back of his mind.

Gwindor pulls a blanket up and wraps it around his shoulders. He leans back against the headboard and waits for the dawn.