Wisp'light Through the Trees by heget

Wisp'light Through the Trees

Read Wisp'light Through the Trees

The moss is cool and soft, feels like the hair of his father under the boy’s fingers, short hair right after it is shorn when the boy rides on his father's shoulders, for the boy’s father wears not the long braids with feathers and beads like Mother and Uncle and Grandfather and the others. Dark hair, not silvery like Uncle Galadhon, or even the dark silver of Grandfather, it does not reflect light. Mother says her uncle, the missing king, has even brighter silver hair, as bright as the stars that pierce down through the trees. They will find King Elu, Grandfather’s brother, by the shining silver of his hair, like a star between the branches. Mother says to always be looking for those glimmers of light behind the leaves, move through the forest with eyes open, to never stop and never forget to see. The boy has spent his whole life searching through the trees, even before he was old enough to know what is was everyone was searching for. He knows each type of tree by the texture of bark under his fingers. He can find his path by the scent of earth and outcroppings of rocks. His mother taught him the names of the birds and other animals by their calls as she carried him in their journeys, then how to hunt them when he grew older. His father taught him how to build snares, to find water when there are no streams, to build a fire when the cold comes, what to say to make Mother pause and laugh.

He is not afraid of the dark forest, to be alone in its shadows, for he has always had his parents, known that he would never be lost, ever unable to find them. Even when he could not see them, he could hear and feel his way back to them, and know that in truth they had never been far. They were never truly separated, never truly lost. The king is lost between the trees, we shall search and find him, see my son, see if you can find him, don't become lost like him. You are not a star; do not wander far. Grandfather and Grandmother worried, the last time they stayed in the same camp, told Mother they disapproved. They worried she and her husband and son would disappear into the trees and never return like Grandfather’s brother the missing king. Mother had laughed then, long and sharp, and Father had rubbed the short hair of his scalp in worry.

Now the boy wishes they had stayed with the rest of his family, with Grandfather Elmo and Grandmother and Uncle. Or that he could find them. Even a glimmer of star-silver hair, though in the back shadow cave of his heart the boy never believed Great-Uncle Elu would be found. It was just a story, like touching the stars with your fingers, or dreams of flying, or that there were songs of the family that forsook them echoing back across the waves whispering 'sorry we abandoned you sorry sorry sorry'.

I’m sorry, the boy whispers to the echoing caverns in his heart. Sorry sorry sorry. I’m lost; I wasn’t listening. Why aren’t you replying to my calls? Mother, Father, come back. Don’t join the missing king in the stars.

The boy feels his youth, too young still for an adult name, though just recently he had begged his father for a true name, a name with meaning, old enough to prove his character, old enough to search on his own.

Now the boy is alone, and rubs his fingers across the cool moss and shivers and wipes away tears.

His eyes water because he is straining them so hard, searching between the dark leaves. He must be confident, he must see. Look, look long enough, and we will find him. Behind every tree, look for the starlight. Mother’s echos are weak without her laughter to give them weight and texture.

Look, look long enough and he will find them.

---

Chapter End Notes

If you read Wall the Heart, you know this story does not have a happy ending.

That Eöl's name has no meaning, and he waited twelve years to bestow a name that celebrates the deductive and insightful eyesight of his son, suggests a possibly cultural practice of temporary child names (perhaps even to discourage evil spirits around Cuiviénen?). And yes, I make Eöl related through his mother to Elu Thingol- though his father's heritage I leave purposefully unclear as to work with other proposed family backgrounds, though my best guess is Tatyar Avari.

Those Wisp'lights Aren't to be Trusted

Years apart this second half is finally finished

Read Those Wisp'lights Aren't to be Trusted

He has found his parents. If he keeps repeating this, reminding himself that the time to fear is over, to calm his racing heart, wipe away this sweat that makes him shiver and cold, it will stop. Mother has knelt in the forest floor, knees crinkling and crushing the decaying leaves, and has opened her arms wide. She calls for him to run into her arms so she may devour him into a hug, her mouth split into a wide smile, the white of her teeth shining like a wisp-light in the darkness. Father leans beside her, neck bent oddly but his face smiling with relieved delight, eyes almost hidden by the creases in his face from the sharp grin. The boy wonders what has happened to his father’s bow, for his hands are empty. Neither parent is carrying their travel packs, and the boy wonders if they lost all the family supplies, if that is but one minor calamity to have happened when they became separated. He has never been separated from his parents, never for this long, and some disaster must have struck to have kept them apart for so long. The boy asks what had gone wrong, how they had become separated from another, why his parents had not heard him calling for them. He had been calling for a long time. Scrambling down an outcropping of rocks, hands skidding on the stone, scrapping away a layer of skin, the boy ignores the pain that blossoms in his palms to reach the lower incline where his parents wait for him. Pressing his injured hands to his side and ignoring the blood, the boy feels the sharper sting of irrational anger. He had called and searched and had panicked for so long because his parents had disappeared. That should not have happened, but it is now over, and his parents are here. And yet his heart is racing like a hare in one of his father’s clever snares. “Where were you?” he shouts again.

His mother does not answer the question, nor any flicker in her eyes show that she acknowledged it. “Come to me,” she calls, her voice low and sweet.

His mother never croons. She has a pretty singing voice, but when she speaks it is always loud and harsh like a jay, and Grandmother bemoaned that her middle child was fortunate to have found a spouse that could handle her thorny temperament. Father is like that, calm and soothing, but he is too quiet, has said nothing.

“Come here,” Mother pleads, as soft as there would be tears in her eyes. But there is none.

Her eyes…there is nothing.

“Come here,” the voice commands. This time the underlying sternness spoils the sweetness. The fingers of her outstretched hands twitch and curl inward like spider jaws. The boy does not run to her, pauses and shifts his weight back, presses against the rocks behind him. 

Something is wrong.

“Hurry to us,” his father says. “It is no longer safe here in the woods. We will take you to a safe place.” This is his father’s voice, and his father’s face, handsome and pale, his black hair grown long to swing around his ears but still recognizably him. And his father is wise, rightly praised by the rest of the Forsaken as clever and cautious. The boy was instructed by all his family that he should never doubt his father’s wisdom, that his sight was keener and clearer that his mother. The boy knew that his grandparents believed his mother to be too reckless, but staying in one spot close to the shore would not find them Great-uncle Elu the missing king. But the boy wishes his grandparents were here, or uncles, even the long missing one. Because something is wrong. And his father has not called him as he normally does, has not said my son. My son, my son, said with such love, such joyous pride, as if there is no other name worthy of the boy, no other words that could contain such deep emotion.

“Come here,” his mother says.

The boy does not wish to disobey, wants nothing more than to run into his parents’ arms, feel the embrace of reunion squeeze away this panic in his chest, but his bloody hands stick to the rock at his back.

Something is very wrong.

“Grab it,” says his father’s voice, and the thing that looks like his mother lunges for the boy. Arms squeeze around him, pulling him down. The boy screams from startlement and fear, the high-pitched sound throttled into silence by the hand around his thin throat, choking him into submission as a second set of arms cage his flailing limbs. Bone snaps. The combination of pains knocks the boy unconscious.

When he wakes, it is to sharp tugging on his scalp and the abrasions of dead leaves, stones, and rotting branches as his body is being dragged across the forest floor by his hair. His mother- or whatever the thing that looks like his mother- is pulling him like a heavy sack, with no more regard to her son than that. His father’s voice is saying something about an Iron Fortress. The boy’s throat is still too bruised to scream, but adrenaline pumps through his veins. He flails his arms up to scratch at the hand twisted through his hair, trying to claw himself free. These are not his parents. He wants his parents, his grandparents, the lost king to save him. For this mother-that-is-not to release him. His small feet pound and scratch fruitlessly at the dirt, his heel catching against a knobby tree root. His eyes are scrunched up in pain so he does not see his parents reach back to still his limbs and thwart his attempt to escape, nor the anger on their faces that does not reach the eyes, nor the way that the boy bleeds on them from the many wounds and scratches and nail marks.

The boy does not see the ax sailing through the darkness of the star-hidden forest to sink into his mother’s back, severing the spine, or the squat strange figure that rushes to his father and cuts through flesh and bone to fell the pale elf as if it were only a sapling. The boy heaves in terror because all he can smell is blood. His fingers claw at the air. Blind by tears and panic, he does not recognize the person that hovers over him is a face until warm hands grab his head in a grip as iron-strong as the hands that had been dragging him - but hands with the heat of a smoldering coal. A strange voice hums over him, making soothing sounds until the adrenaline drains completely out of the boy. It is a misshapen figure, the boy’s rescuer, wild thick hair and pieces of metal and small dark eyes. And an ax still slick with his parent’s lifeblood. The strange creature makes gruff noises until the boy realizes it is a question in an incomprehensible language. The boy shakes his head.

The boy’s rescuer, a man no bigger than the young boy himself but twice as wide, smiles and points to himself. “Bhên,” the dwarf says, thumping his chest.

“Eöl,” replies the young boy.