The Shapes of Evil by Nitheliniel

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Chapter 1

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“Don't blink. Blink and you're dead. They are fast. Faster than you can believe. Don't turn your back. Don't look away. And don't blink. Good Luck.”

Doctor Who, Series 2, Episode 10 „Blink“

 

Prelude

They had always been there, some would say.

They appeared one by one, others would counter, over the span of an Age.

First, there were none and the next day they were there, another story claimed. Though most were unaware, this tale came closest to the truth. Those who guessed chose not to think about it, carefully avoiding the legends of the marble figures from a time when they had just awakened from their dreams before being.

Whatever the myth, the statues were, indeed, just there, lined up on the border of the realm, like beads on Melian’s Girdle, passive and unmoving. Many had been claimed by vegetation, adorned by wild vine, cloaked in ivy, or strangled by brambles.

“Strangled?” a passing Elf might wonder about his own thoughts. “They are statues! What life is in them that the brambles could take?” But while he would not find an answer, he was not the only one thinking of the statues as more than mere stone.

There were no songs about the statues. Elves made many songs about things beautiful and mysterious, but none ever sang of the eerily lifeless-yet-living figures that watched the borders of their realm. Some minstrels tried, among them the greatest of them all, but even he found that while he lacked not the words and rhymes, his skilful verses would not be wrapped in tunes, whether merry or stern. Every beginning of a song would collapse into disharmony – or worse, into silence.

Chilling tales were told in abundance, though. On moonless nights, or before the moon had even risen to distinguish night from day, on nights with cloud-covered skies deprived of the stars warm twinkling light, on nights when even Elven sight could not detect the pale marble within in its cocoons of ivy and vine – on those nights when the Marchwardens would huddle closer to their bigger-than-usual-fires and shift sentinels more often, afraid those on duty might so much as blink, children would gather beneath blankets, staring at each other in fear and fascination, and tell each other stories.

--

“That is when they move!” Echel whispered to her siblings, well protected in their familiar home and by the comfort of their bed, and still they snuggled together.“When we cannot see them, they move about the border. They cannot be heard, nor be seen, you might feel their presence as a shiver down your spine, but it will be too late. They stretch out a cold marble hand and touch…”

Violently kicking off their blanket, Úndil sprang up and fled from the bed, which had turned from a haven into the sinister home of cold and unfeeling monsters. He wailed and screamed, alternatively for their Nana and their Ada, or for his sister to stop. The story did not find its end in its telling, but by the family gathered together in the large bed, bathed in candle-light. Their parents’ arms were wrapped protectively around their children and Echel was chastised but not banished from the bed.

“We are protected by the Girdle,” Nana said. “Queen Melian assures our safety.”

And after a lullaby, or a story, or both, they all returned to rest – and with the light of day, even marble warmed and cold faces smiled.

--

There were other stories too, telling of how the statues guarded the border of the realm, were even a part of Melian’s Girdle. But these stories were few and seldom believed. After all, if the statues were guardians of the Queen’s design, why did they all face inwards?

 

Elder Days

First there was the Void, and then they were there.

It was their means of travel when traversing vast distances. They would find rifts between dimensions and holes in reality – some as small as a crack in a wall, some gaping ruptures, the residues of a collapsing star – and they would slip through if the other side promised to feed them: a swarm of angelic locusts gorging on the energy of futures never lived.

Coming here, they had followed the energetic eruptions from the creation of a new world in an alternative timeline. Creation had been as strong a force as the destruction that followed suit, and for millennia they had feasted on these many cycles of building and destroying. Later, when the chaotic bursts of energy were reined in after a seemingly final battle amongst the creative powers of this world, many of their race left the way they had come: they found the bridge spanning timelines and did not return. Still, some stayed and fed on the energy that the people who finally settled in this world would call magic. Eventually, those who remained sensed the wakening of life to sustain them.

But the race first born to this new world was not able to still their hunger. Unlike other races known to them, these people with long limbs and tipped ears did not give off energy when being sent back in time. They vanished and re-appeared centuries ago, but left hardly an imprint of a life not lived.

They were hard to prey upon, too, these Firstborn, their senses honed beyond anything they had yet encountered and attuned to life in the dark. Those never-closing eyes pierced even the blackest night and neither could they be approached while asleep. So they stalked upon their prey from behind, one finely chiselled hand outstretched, the other covering their eyes to forgo being caught themselves. Once these lands had been bountiful; now food became scarce.

When the revelation came one day that this race did not die and sending them back in time resulted not in a life not lived, but in a life prolonged, those who had remained were too weak to leave.

They followed the tracks of the Firstborn westwards, hoping – almost beyond hope – that they would lead them to a place more fertile. Eventually they discovered that when their prey was already close to death, they could harvest some energy from a potential, though short, life.

And then there was the lucky day on which chance saved them and after which they no longer wished to leave, though they could have. A victim was sent back not in time, but to another time altogether. From now on they would feed on potential lives with no intended ending – a source of energy that would never still – and once more they grew strong, fast, and deadly.

An age passed. A realm was established, and great magic was cast for its protection. From across the lands they raced in to feed. Swifter than the winds they came in their greed. They were as fast as the blink of an eye – before they were forever still, caught in a magic web, their eyes locked on one another in a great circle at the borders of the realm, unable to move on, or to retreat.

Thus they waited, and they starved once more.

 

506 F. A. Years of the Sun, Doriath – Menegroth

They were carried down the endless corridors of their home, each boy riding piggy-back between a strong warrior’s shoulders. While they ran, two of their personal guards scouted ahead and three brought up the rear. There should have been three more, but Elurín could not say when and where they had lost them. Maybe they were even further ahead? Or just beyond the corner they had just turned? They hastened along hallways and crossed chambers and halls before diving into the next corridor, until those turned into nothing more than tunnels. Long had they left the familiar passages of the Royal Halls and all Elurín was able to see past the flowing hair of his bearer were roughly-hewn walls. Laewil, carrying Eluréd, stumbled, cursed and righted himself – a sure sign for the ground to be uneven, and of the toll the last hours had taken on these well-trained men. But of that the boy did not think.

“Where are we?” he dared to ask, since it had been some while since they had heard other sounds than those they themselves emitted, but the only answer he received was a finger raised to Tríon’s lips, followed by a warning shake of his head. They had been running – Elurín would not admit they were fleeing, not yet – for so long in the almost-dark, he had lost his sense of direction. He hoped his senses did not betray him completely so they were indeed going uphill and thus hopefully one of these corridors would exit into the forest. He had never told Ada, but he did not like the caves very much, for all that his parents called them a palace, or a town, or a home. As young as the twins were, they had felt how important their acceptance of their new surroundings was to their parents. So they tried, very hard. (Also, you just did not tell a king you disliked his halls, even though they were a hole in the ground. Not even, when that king was your father.)

However, even after three years in their great-grandparents’ realm, their grandmother’s home, it had not yet become their own. Outside, in the vast forest, they could still imagine themselves living in another forest, fiercer but more alive, living next to singing waters feeding a quick stream. But they had not been allowed to leave the halls often, and hardly at all since the stern-faced messengers with the haunted eyes had left Menegroth with angry words. In their memories of their young lives they had always been in the open, running through the chequered forest light, unrestrained and unhindered unless by the need to catch their breaths. Back home, Ada would have run and Grand-nana would have danced with them, and Nana would have told them stories while sitting in the soft grass. – Here, they were not free.

He missed his real home so much that when Nana had woken them in the middle of the night and told them they would have to leave, he had for a brief, blissful moment thought, they would go back. But then, she had kissed and hugged them far too long for everything to be alright. The guards had come in and their urgent words had conformed their suspicion:

“My Queen, we need to leave. You must get the princess!”

They had been ushered from their beds without chance to change and placed behind two of the men’s backs.

“My Queen?” the Captain had asked and Nana had shook her head.

“You are right! Do not wait! We will be short behind.” But there had been no assurance in his mother’s eyes when she had spoken these words, only fear.

No-one had yet caught up to them. Many times had Elurín heard running feet behind them, but instead of waiting, they had always sped up. None of the running feet had belonged to their parents, none of the voices had been Elwing’s chatter. Instead, the dominant sounds were cries and shouts, and the noise of battle echoing along the corridors they ran through. He closed his eyes and wished, he could close his ears, too. Unable to hug himself, he strengthened his grip around Túben’s neck. Shortly after, he felt a large hand take hold of his own where it clasped his other arm and squeeze. He started to cry.

--

“Réd? Eluréd, are you there?”

Fear had so far kept him silent and even shut down his mind and thoughts. It clutched at his stomach and made him so sick that opening his mouth, he produced no words but only gagging sounds. It pressed against his chest and made breathing a struggle and speaking impossible. And when he finally found enough room in his lungs to breathe, only sobs came forth.

His head was in such a turmoil he could hardly recall how he – they, surely he could not be alone? He had never been alone! – had come here, or where here even was. Though, not much time could have passed since Laewil and Túben had put them down and ordered them to run and hide, the actual running and hiding felt like someone else's experience. Only his burning hands and knees from when he had fallen and scrapped them on the rough ground reminded him that it was him on the run. And he had lost sight and sense of his brother.

Slowing his breathing, Elurín tried hard to remember what truly had happened, but his thoughts were a jumble of images and sounds without a fixed timeline: of sneering faces, angry cries, the fear in his mother’s eyes, Elwing‘s wailing from the room next door, and all of it accompanied with the constant rhythm of running feet and the clashing of swords. The dreadfully metallic ringing reverberated through his body and scared him the most. Swords, the twins had been told, would protect them. They had not considered the protection to be necessary against the same weapons.

--

Elurín had watched the guards and even his father train with sharp weapons before. Eluréd and he had stood at the side of the training grounds, their hands as so often entwined, and their free hands eagerly touching the wooden balustrade separating the onlookers from the fighting. Many times their mother had taken them, happy to oblige her sons’ wishes. She had trusted their little sister to her nursery maid’s careful hands or, more often than not, had slung Elwing to her back. Elurín liked to reach up and tug on her stubby toes until the sling would erupt with giggling laughter. Soon their mother would join, then Eluréd, and finally, after taking pride in having withstood longer than the other two, Elurín, too, and they would laugh until their cheeks hurt. Elwing did that to them.

“Nana, why do they fight?” he had once asked while watching the to and fro of mock battle.

“They do not fight, muinion¹, not in earnest. They train fighting.”

“Why?” Eluréd had stepped closer to the balustrade to discern the difference between real fight and training, which had so far escaped their attention. With a gentle hand to his shoulder, their mother had held him back.

“So they can protect us from evil,” she had explained, pulling Eluréd back to her side.

The twins had looked at each other, each one's face mirroring the other's lack of understanding.

“What is evil, Nana?” Eluréd had finally asked one of the many questions also swimming around Elurín’s thoughts.

Their mother had taken a long while to reply – so long, in fact, Elurín had feared, they (because they always asked and spoke what was also in the other’s thoughts) had asked the wrong question. She had looked so sad.

“Always be good to your mother,” their father often said, and because he showed his affection in guarding his family, the twins equated being good with not hurting anyone. Least of all their mother, their father, and though they teased her relentlessly, their little sister.

“Evil is what Morgoth brings to these lands. All those dark things and creatures he sends that want to take what is not theirs,” their mother had finally answered. Her words had been spoken in a voice very unlike her own, and though young, Eluréd and Elurín had never quite believed her explanation to have been complete.

So he had asked “Orcs?” for clarification and she had answered “Orcs!” but had left out much more. However, satisfied for the moment, the twins had continued watching the sword training and had felt protected by the sound of ringing swords and the fighter’s shouts and grunts.

Later, in their beds, long past their time to sleep, Eluréd had called to him.

“Rín, you think the Dwarves were evil, too?”

They had both thought about King Thingol’s death and their grandfather’s and father’s fight against the Dwarves on their return to Nogrod. To the twins, history was not yet more than any other story told. They had pondered the question in the comfortable semi-dark of their chamber for a long time. The Dwarves had wanted something that was not theirs, but thinking of them as evil did not feel right. They had never seen a Dwarf, or an Orc for that matter, and in the halls of Menegroth, in Dior Eluchil’s Court, the stories told about either race had a similarly bitter or hateful ring, but still there seemed to be a difference.

“Aulë made them and they make beautiful things,” Elurín had finally tried to put in words what the feeling in his belly had told him, and his thoughts had wandered to their greatest treasure gracing their father’s neck. “Orcs don’t. I don’t know. Maybe. I do not think so.”

And so, when evil found them, they had expected it to be ugly and fell, or maybe stocky and bearded, but never had they expected to find evil in the fair faces of their kin. And the blows of the swords that were meant to protect them marked the death of all they knew.

–

“I am here, Rín!” He was finally answered by his brother’s voice, just as fearful as his own. In the dark of the room they had found shelter in, they crawled towards each other’s voices. When the tips of their fingers met, they each grasped a hand and pulled until they sat closely entwined, legs and arms wrapped around each other, heads buried in each others' shoulders, as much one person as two. Elurín could hear Eluréd’s heartbeat following a rapid beat utterly unlike its familiar cheerful rhythm. Nothing felt right: neither their touching bodies, nor their heaving breaths, nor the soothing tunes of their favourite lullaby which both boys hummed unconsciously. Neither brought the comfort it was supposed to bring. And their heartbeats, unable to synchronise into one, belonged to strangers.

“Do you think they will find us here?”

“It is dark,” Eluréd answered, trusting the logic of children that those they could not see would not see them either. For once, the usually monster-filled darkness comforted them and promised protection. In any other night, they would have called for a light, fearing what might lurk beneath their beds even though their father had so often checked for that space to be void of monsters. Tonight, light had shown them more horrors than it would normally scare away.

“We must be very still!”

Elurín could feel a minute answering nod on his shoulder. If they did not move, they would be safe. He remembered a story told by the Doriathrin children about pale monsters that feasted on souls, and they had been taught that by keeping very, very still, they might just pass you by. He prayed the monsters made from flesh and bone would pass them by, too.

--

“The Girdle protected us,” Echel, chief of their small group of very new friends, had explained matter-of-factly, when Eluréd had wondered how it came they all still lived. In the late hours of the afternoon, once all classes had ended and chores had been done, the children would often meet at her home and Echel would tell a story. Echel had been famous for her stories, especially for those that left her listeners shivering in fear. - Like that of the living statues stalking the lands.

“But the Girdle fell ages ago!” her younger brother had whispered with a meek voice. “So, who protects us now?”

At first, the only answer had been an incredulous double snort.

“Not A-G-E-S ago, silly, Great-grand-nana only left three years ago,” they had corrected as one. They had never met said great-grandmother, but since she was family she needed no other title in the twins’ vocabulary.

“She is still gone,” another girl retorted bitterly. Elurín and Eluréd did not understand what had happened to justify the unique mixture of relief and joy tempered by bitterness and caution the Sindar who had stayed in the remnants of Doriath had displayed upon their arrival. They had asked Ada and Nana, but had only been told they would miss their old King and Queen and had yet to get used to the new royalty.

“Are you afraid?” Elurín’s eyes had darted from his brother to the girl and then to each child’s face, challenging them all.

“No!”

“No!”

“Of course not,” the last of them had added, but none of the answers had convinced the twins.

“Ada protects us. And Nana protects us. And all the warriors that have come with us, protect us, so…” he had continued proudly, only to be interrupted by the first speaker.

“Who.”

Elurín had looked at Echel, confused by this interjection.

“All those warriors WHO have come with you – my Prince.”

Elurín remembered the peculiar feeling of being led astray and the secure feeling of being mocked, but still could not say how it had happened nor why. Unable to help, Eluréd had only taken his hand. And Echel had gone on, her tone turning patronising.

“And MY ada, who is captain of the guard, warns about YOUR ada’s many enemies. So we had better be constantly vigilant, he says.”

A wicked smile had crossed her pretty face and both brothers had shuddered under the scrutinising gaze from beneath dark lashes.

“The guards say, the statues moved!”

She was rewarded with silence.

“And old Iphannel says, during Queen Melian’s and King Thingol’s time, the statues stood in different places.”

She had stood up from the cushion she had been sitting on and brushed out the creases in her blue dress.

“Stay vigilant!” she had counselled the brothers and everyone else, before rushing off.

“Stay vigilant!” a chorus of children’s voices had repeated before the twins were left on their own.

It was hard, making new friends.

 

“You think, they will come?” Eluréd had asked silently later, though they both new the answer.

The tale had sparked such fear, that evening Ada had had to check double behind the curtains, and still the twins had not been convinced their bed-chamber to be free of terrors.

“They are very fast, Ada!” Elurín had explained the need to check one more time. “You blink and then they are there.”

“Who, my dear?” their mother had asked, gently stroking his hair, while their father had made a show of passing behind a tapestry unhindered.

“The statues, of course! Great-grand-nana's Girdle no longer holds them off.”

It had been so characteristic for his parents to not understand, and he had started to explain in more detail so even grown-ups would understand, when a draught caught a curtain and Eluréd had screamed a panicked warning:

“There, Ada, there! Look at them!”

With a resigned sigh the King of Doriath had finally called for servants and all curtains and tapestries had been removed from the walls until neither statue nor fancy could haven hidden in the room anylonger. Their mother had followed the proceedings with an amused twinkle in her eyes, while trying to calm her sons’ fear with a gentle lullaby.

When their parents had eventually left them fully reassured and half-asleep, Elurín had heard his father huff in frustration and their mother chuckle in mirth.

“Children will tell tales and be scared by them, Dior. Come morning the shadows will hold no more threats.”

His father’s cryptic words had followed him into his dreams:

“The shadows may not…”

 

502-506 F. A. Years of the Sun, Doriath

One day, they were free. From one moment to the next, the magic restraining them thinned and dissolved like mist. A cry like a breeze wafted through the forest and took with it the last remnants of the barrier surrounding the land of Faeries. Starved as they were, they could not move for some time. Days came and went by, but they remained entangled in their vines and their brambles, or trapped by roots and bows. Wind and sun had chipped and bleached their surface, and left it porous, open for rain’s torrents, or dew’s tiny drops, and in winter they had cracked. They looked at their hands and saw the signs of the Ages. Their palms, turned protectively towards their faces, had remained eternally young, the backs of their hands had turned from marble to sandstone. They could not see their faces, and never would, and their hands would not feel what time and erosion had done to them. They could only notice how their strength had seeped into the earth. Maybe the surrounding flora had fed on it as they fed themselves on life’s energy.

Unable to do more, they continued to wait. Prey would come their way.

When eventually they were strong enough to move, they crept forwards through the forest, no longer fast as the blink of an eye. But they would be. Soon! Something that had been hidden beneath the trees, buried deep within the rocks of the Old Faery King’s seat, had returned. Something they could feast on for a very long time. Something bright and shiny.

 

506 F. A. Years of the Sun, Doriath – Menegroth

Cruel hands ripped them apart. In the dark they grappled for hold as their owners were unable to see clearly, but skilled enough to find purchase in the twins silken shirts and long hair.

“Cala²!” a harsh voice shouted a word they recognised and finally, the twins screamed as the strange pronunciation³ dispersed all doubts as to who had found them.

“Quiet!” the same voice ordered in accented Sindarin, but they had been told to only listen to their guards, and so they screamed, and screamed, and screamed – until the rough hands clamped over their mouths. Elurín bit into the coarse skin, found it slick with blood, and too late did he wonder whose blood he was tasting. He gagged and spat when the man released his hold, more surprised than hurt, but the other hand remained fisted into his collar and when it twisted to the side, the embroidered hem of his shirt cut into his throat and stopped him from screaming again.

The hand he had bitten returned with a vicious slap to his cheek and tears shot to his eyes. It stung and he could not cry out in his misery. He was too scared and his cheek grew too hot to note the hurt his pride took, too.

“Rín! Rín!” His brother's clear voice and thought cut through the pain, bright as candle-light in the dark surrounding his thoughts and the fight returned to his limbs. He kicked and bucked, and since his forward movement was restricted by the hand to his collar he threw his head back with all the strength he could muster. A grunt was followed by a low whine – he must have hit something sensitive. The strong body holding him bend double and the grip slackened enough for Elurín to finally wriggle free. He tried to call out for Eluréd but could only cough out unintelligible words.

“À túvas⁴!” his attacker grunted an order, the meaning of which Elurín rather felt than understood. He had to run.

Run and hide! Run and hide! Run and hide! - His own thoughts seemed to develop a will on their own and screamed a many voiced chorus at him: His mother’s soft soprano, his father’s comforting baritone, their nurses and guards, the few playmates they had found in this new home, even Elwing’s little voice – all of them distorted by his own fear, almost beyond recognition, high pitched and screeching, thunderous and harsh.

“But not without Réd!” he tried to tell them, his thoughts only sobs. But they would not listen.

Run! Hide! Run! Hide! Run! Hide!

“RÍN!”

Run! Hide! Run! Hide! Run! Hide!

“Réd, where are you? I must...”

Still he could not see. In his rising panic he even wished someone would finally obey the initial order and bring some light. He stumbled over something hard and stubbed his soft-slippered toe. The object skittered over the floor and banged noisily into a wall. He stopped dead and dared not to breathe, while around him people stumbled past, shouting in a language more rhythmic than melodic and he wished just one would speak the tongue of his kin. The urge to start screaming again became harder to suppress with every passing moment, no longer so much from fear as from a pain so deep and vast he could not trace its origin.

“Go away!” he wanted to tell them. They should leave. Whoever they were, he wanted them gone. They might look like kin, feel like kin – be kin, for that matter – but they were not. They spoke in words his great-grandfather had forbidden and he wanted to tell them that, too. The forbidden language made their voices sound alien, the words with far too many hard consonants and ending in stupid o’s. Just one familiar voice in the dark and he would...

Run! Hide! Run! Hide! Run! Hide!

“Run, Rín, run! Hide!” Eluréd’s voice entered the chorus.

But he could not.

Light flared up from a couple of torches and he squinted into the flickering flames. His eyes filled with tears before the light even touched them. He was grabbed again and lifted from his feet, then a hood was thrown over his head so he was in the dark once more.

After that, his world continued to consist of mainly sounds. Their captors spoke in Quenya only, so all Elurín could deduce from their conversation was their insecurity and their anger. It frightened him, but he also dared to hope. Whoever these men were – he suspected, but dared not admit – he could guess what had brought them here. If they were afraid too and so angry, maybe they had not been successful. Evil, he remembered, came to take what did not belong to it. Maybe they had not taken the stone from his father. And if they had not, Ada would certainly come and rescue them. Beneath the hood covering his head, he dared to smile.

“They speak of a lord…” Eluréd, ever the more skilled with languages, provided some very small insight into the anxious conversation they were witnessing.

“Some lord is dead, I think.” A lord, not a king, Elurín thought, and this time his heart sped up in joy.

The air around them grew colder with every step they were carried. Eventually, the cold breeze on their naked legs told them they had been taken from the Halls of Menegroth and had entered the forest. There should be guards close and finally, as the first and also the last line of defence, the Marchwardens. Soon, Elurín reckoned, they would be saved. But his legs turned numb with cold while his head started to swim with the blood rushing into it from how he was carried, and still no-one came to their rescue. Their captors’ hasty feet remained alone in crushing the frozen leaves on the forest floor and no voices ordered them to stop. The longer they ran, the stronger fear returned to the twins.

And then, when they had almost given up the little spark of hope again, something did happen.

The voices around them fell silent and when they returned, they returned in alarm. The men continued running, but a change occurred, so small, at first it escaped Elurín’s notice. Their captors began shouting and even he understood they were calling the names of their comrades. Struggling to understand what was happening, he finally noticed how the number of running feet dwindled.

“They are attacked!” he rejoiced shortly, before Eluréd cautioned him.

“Yes, but by whom?”

They expected the sound of battle, but instead, the forest grew ever more quiet: no more shouts, only anxious whispers. No clashing of swords. No arrows singing through the winter’s night. When they halted, all sounds but the harsh breathing of the remaining men stopped. The loss of the rhythmic running steps, which he had used to measure time and distance, was as disorienting as if his own heart had skipped a beat.

The world tilted when he was thrown on the half-frozen ground, then the hood was taken away. A tall man crouched before him and held his hand threateningly to Elurín’s throat. The men’s face, sun-darkened skin surrounded by dark hair, looked almost ashen in the pale light of the moon. Elurín remembered the eyes. Not this man’s eyes, but eyes very similar to these: haunted eyes in stern faces. And finally he could no longer deny who had come. Neither could Eluréd.

“Feanorians!”

“What is this devilry?” the Noldo asked with the voice they had heard shouting orders when they had first been taken. “Your kind killed my lord and now your forest kills my people.”

The words were perceived with mixed feelings. If their lord had indeed been killed, maybe they were winning after all? But what did he mean by the forest killing his people?

There was another shout from behind a crest, then another, and a third, before only silence followed. With heads cocked in concentration, the warriors surrounding the twins listened to the silence, weapons drawn. When no more shouts followed, most of them turned, facing the forest rather than their captives. Two approached the man in charge and the words they exchanged sounded almost like fighting.

“Leave them here!” someone else said in Sindarin. “There are beasts enough in this forest that will find them a feast. They only weigh us down.”

“No, don’t!” Elurín heard himself cry. The fear of being left alone in the forest that had never become a home surpassed momentarily the fear of the men who had abducted them. But the speakers did not heed him.

From far away voices shouting in Quenya could be heard. Still, for just a moment, he thought he could discern a commanding voice calling their names. Maybe he was wrong, but their captors looked at each other with their fear intensified. Elurín was yet too young to notice the difference between fear of the unknown and fear from knowing what was to come. The servants of Celegorm could hear their lord’s brother shout for the children they had abducted. For a moment, they wavered between the wrath of a Feanorion and the unknown terror in the woods.

“I ondor ména⁵!” a man in his back cried out in alarm and as one, the remaining warriors raised their weapons.

Cold steel glittered in the light of the moon and the stars, and the glitter reflected on white marble skin. Elurín’s eyes fixed on the monsters that to him had always been real and had finally come to get them. From one moment to the next, their captors had become their guards.

Elurín wanted to warn them. He wanted to tell them, that they should stay together. He wanted to explain that their only hope of survival was to look at the statues and not blink.

But he did not.

He felt the same urge in his brother, but neither did he.

Frozen to the ground, they watched in trepidation as the soldiers attacked and, one by one, vanished before their eyes. Still, they could not speak a word.

Finally, Elurín moved so they sat with their backs to each other. He slipped a hand in his brother’s and found it as cold as his.

“Do not blink!” he warned. While they stared at the statues they did not move, their faces covered by their hands – beautifully serene creations of a talented sculptor. The moon shone on them and painted them in milky light. The dark trees, in contrast, looked almost menacing.

He blinked – and before him stood a snarling face, sharp fangs bared, the eyes contracted in hate but reflecting the light of the stars. Claw-like hands stretched out to reach for him.

Elurín’s eyes watered from the cold air, but he did not allow them to close. Tears began to run over his cheeks, and still he did not blink. He only pressed his back closer to Eluréd’s, his brother’s warmth the only comfort he had. He felt Eluréd press back, then he sensed his twin’s fear rise to panic as he struggled to keep his eyes open.

He wanted to shout that he had to hold on. Someone had called for them. Surely someone would come.

Before he could open his mouth, the warm pressure in his back disappeared, leaving it prone to the winter air. For the first time in his life, he was alone.

“No!” he sobbed.

Then he closed his eyes.

--

They were frustrated by their inability to move with the ease they were used to. Painstakingly slowly, they passed beneath the barren trees, and the brilliant source of energy slipped past them unhindered and disappeared from their senses.

They had fed on Firstborn almost dead and not strong enough to run. But there were many of them and eventually they became faster. When they were attacked, even Elvish speed could no longer match them.

Then they found the young ones. Strange they were, these two. They had in them the potential not for one, but for two lives, and the choice had not yet been made.

 

Somewhere, sometime

He woke to a sound similar to that of bees on a summer day, and so close to his ears he pictured himself lying in a warm meadow. But when he opened his eyes, he looked at something incredibly blue that was not the sky. Next to him, he could sense Eluréd stir and beneath his fear he felt deep relief.

“Oh, hello,” a cheerful voice greeted them, and the humming stopped. “Sorry about the noise. I had to fix something, and there's nothing better for fixing than a screwdriver. Good to see you awake. And nice to meet you, too!”

A warm hand took hold of his, covering it whole, and shook it, before the blue was replaced by an equally incredible smile. Still, he shied away from it. The smile, belonging to an Edain woman with blond, rather short hair, only widened.

“Don't be scared. You've run far enough – but you're safe now. It’s what I do best. I save people. Running too; I am brilliant at running! But I'm sure you've had enough of that for a while, so I promise: no running in the near future! Your future, I mean. Not sure about someone or somewhere else’s future. It’s complicated. Some time I'll explain to you about … well, stuff.” She made a distracted and rather wobbly gesture and Elurín, though utterly confused and still a little frightened, almost laughed.

Someone with such a nice smile could not be evil, could they? The evil they had seen and heard of had come in many shapes, but it had never smiled.

He tentatively tried the shaking movement and was immediately pulled into a sitting position. Something dark brown was pressed into his hand, where it immediately started melting. He eyed the strange substance warily, but then he followed the stranger’s explaining motions and licked his fingers. It was sweet and so very good.

“Normally, I prefer tea, but I can't carry tea around in my pockets. So chocolate it is.”

And whatever chocolate was, it was perfect. Much better than tea. Eluréd had already almost finished his. Their pleasure was noted by the stranger, whose face lit up even further.

“Very good! Oh – right – mustn't forget the most important bit,” she said, her warm smile never wavering. “You are safe! I am the Doctor. And I think you might like to come with me.”

 

 

 

 

1 S: dear son

2 Q: Light!

3 As opposed to Sindarin; S: calad (light)

4 Q: Find him!

5 Q: The stones are moving/coming! – I could not find a word for statues.