Full of Wisdom and Perfect in Beauty by Gadira

---

Summer Seas

---

Gimilzagar had never seen so many wonderful things together in one place.

Sor was a great city, the adults said that greater than Armenelos even, though it looked nothing like it. It seemed to have exploded, its shards spilling across miles and miles of coast in a meandering sprawl which had the gigantic harbour as its only rallying point, and the colossal statues of the Warrior and the King as its guardians. Ships, hundreds and hundreds of them, came and went from the Arms of the Giant, once built by Ar Adunakhôr for the purpose of holding the wide world, and now increasingly unable to hold the onslaught of traffic they received at every hour of the day.

The Prince of the West and his mother had seen all this from afar, for getting lost in the hustle and bustle of the heart of the city was of course unthinkable. Also from afar, they saw the towers of the merchants, the temple of Melkor, one of the Four Great Temples of old lore, and the large fortress at the centre of the garrison of Sor, the greatest concentration of soldiers in the Island, spreading from the summit of a hill across the surrounding plain which descended gently towards the coast. This second city did not mix with the other one, as a large, heavily guarded fence kept it carefully withdrawn yet vigilant, like the Guards who watched over the ladies in their entourage, never speaking a word to them but ready to pounce if they were threatened by some danger.

Of all those things, however, there was one that Gimilzagar would not be content with just seeing from afar, and that was the Sea. He had never caught a glimpse of it before, in his secluded life behind the high walls of the Palace. Travel would make him sick, they had always told him when he insisted; he was too weak to endure the hardships of the road. So all he had been able to do was imagine it, and dream of it, so often and so vividly that sometimes he awoke with the certainty that he had seen it with his waking eyes. Everything that came from the Sea was the object of his deepest fascination, from the gilded shells used in the games that the women played with him, to the fish brought in a horse-cart to the Palace kitchens to end up in his plate. He used to pretend that he was as tiny as his small finger, and that the pond in his back garden was the Great Sea, which he sailed in one of the toy ships Mother had gifted to him. But none of those things had really prepared him for what he would see once the Mittalmar was left behind, and the coast was suddenly revealed before his eyes.

How foolish he had been! This blue, changing, living immensity that stretched beyond his view could never have been contained by a ridiculous basin of carved stone. On the day of their arrival the sky had been slightly dark, and a strong wind had been blowing, covering the surface of the water with many small jets of white, like the grey hairs that grew in the dark mane of Lord Abdazer, the chief of their escort. The following day, however, once they were already settled in a beautiful villa that stood in the farthest outskirts of Sor, they awoke to a clear, cloudless sky, and the wind was gone. And when Gimilzagar jumped from his bed to look at the Sea from the tiled porch, he was amazed to discover that it was now turquoise blue, and as smooth and even as the surface of a mirror.

At first, it had made him happy to just walk down to the cliff, and stand on it as he watched the waves come and go, noting the movement of the tides as the mysterious force of an invisible moon –or so his tutors said- pulled the water forwards and backwards. But he was not allowed to walk to the beach and get his feet wet, for the water was very cold and he could “catch something”, his nurse claimed with an apprehensive look at the waves. Not for the first time, he wondered what age would he have to be before Mother’s promises came true and he grew strong enough to do as he wanted.

As things were, it took him two days of hard work until he managed to secure permission to visit the nearby harbour of Rómenna, though only to see the fishermen bring home their captures. To go off on a boat, even with Lord Abdazer and the Royal Nurse flanking him like the Warrior and the King, remained out of the question. Still, and despite this limitation, he found it a fascinating experience to lay foot on a harbour. The smells, the sights, the voices assaulted his senses, but not in the negative way he was accustomed to. Everything, from the sight of half-naked men working to disentangle their struggling catch from the folds of their nets, to the woman who skilfully applied her knife to the silvery back of an enormous fish, making its scales jump in every direction, made him curious, and eager to know more.

Unfortunately, his escort had other ideas. Whenever Gimilzagar tried to see any of those marvels from up close, they advanced threateningly towards the people he approached, causing them to drop everything they were doing and kneel before them with looks of great fright. After four instances of this, the Prince of the West grew frustrated enough to complain aloud.

The Royal Nurse frowned at him.

“You are the heir to the Sceptre, my lord prince. Our duty is to keep you safe.”

“But I am safe!” he protested. “They are fishermen, not…. Orcs, or barbarians!”

“There are many Baalim-worshippers in here”, she replied. “And some of them can be more dangerous than Orcs or barbarians.”

Baalim-worshippers. Gimilzagar had heard about them, though he had never seen any of them from up close. But if they could mix with fishermen who went about their business so peacefully, how scary could they be? The lady’s mouth, however, had thinned in that ominous way that meant that Gimilzagar would do better to keep his opinions to himself. He could feel that she was out of sorts, wary of everyone who surrounded them, angry because the hem of her beautiful robes was getting dirty and disgusted by the smell of fish.

Still, swallowing his frustration did nothing to improve his own mood. It was not fair. Why was he never allowed to do anything? He was not sick anymore. He had withstood the journey from Armenelos because he had been so keen to see what lay beyond. And now that he had realized that what lay beyond was far more interesting than he had imagined, he felt rebellious at the notion that he should merely look at it from a distance, as if it was an old heirloom kept in a locked box for thousands of years. He wanted to hold one of those large, slippery monsters of the deep, try to wrest their scales away with the knife. He wanted to walk under the folds of the fishnets, stand on the deck of a boat as it was untied from its mooring, see how it felt to be surrounded by water from all sides. But he could not, and none of these people would ever take him with them or answer his questions. They would not even let him look, for all tasks were interrupted, and every instrument fell to the pavement with a clatter whenever he was in the vicinity, and did not resume until a while after he had left.

In the end, it was his own decision to leave. He was only disrupting the fishermen’s activity and upsetting his escort, the longer he remained in this place. The joy and curiosity he had felt at the beginning were spent, leaving only an increasing self-consciousness: no one wanted him here, and they would not breathe easily until after he had disappeared. The feeling of being subject to unfair treatment grew, until it threatened to extend past the confines of the best behaviour he had promised Mother to keep. It was them, who had made it be like this. They were the mean ones, not him.

After they put him back in his litter, they left the town centre at a faster pace than before. Gimilzagar would barely have had time to look at the small stone houses receding in the distance, even if he had been in the mood for it. As he sat wallowing in self-pity, however, his eyes fell on a rocky stretch of the beautiful beach that fell on their left as they progressed towards Mother’s villa. They had passed it on their way to Rómenna, and he remembered wishing he could sit and let the fine sand trickle down his fingers. Now, the entire landscape seemed to have changed, and even though he knew about tides, he could not help feeling that there was something magic about how those large extensions of bare rock had emerged from under the waves, like the lost cities of tales. For a moment, his amazement even made him forget how upset he was.

“Hurry”, the Royal Nurse’s voice ordered from somewhere behind him. “I do not like this place.”

Upon hearing these words, Gimilzagar’s anger came back in a rush. He stuck his head through the folds.

“Stop. I need to relieve myself.”

He was not sure if he had done it because he needed to thwart her somehow, knowing that she would not be happy with the delay. But when he was taken to a roadside inn, and Abdazer forced all its customers to vacate it so the Prince could visit the latrines in the back, the mad idea, almost unthinkable only an hour before, was emerging in his mind in all its reckless glory. Both the lady and the guard followed close behind him, only falling back behind the last door, the one that gave to the backyard where the latrines were. The smell was terrible, Gimilzagar thought, but he was not planning on lingering there.

“I am feeling sick”, he informed, with all the calm dignity that he could muster. “It will take a while.”

As soon as he checked that they could not see him anymore, the Prince of the West headed for the back door, and for the first time in his life, he broke into a run.

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

Running was difficult but also exhilarating, so much that, for a while, even the stitches in his side and the pain in his chest were not enough to make him stop. When he finally did, and managed to blink back the cloud from his eyes, he realized that the beach was empty, but the rocks were not. Crouching over a number of small ponds that some invisible hand had excavated on them, there were people, engaging in mysterious activities that they briefly paused to give him a surprised look. Still, to his huge relief, no one dropped anything or bowed, and no one seemed about to attack him either. It appeared that, without his escort there to make mean faces at people, he had finally managed to pass unnoticed.

Happy at the realization, Gimilzagar walked towards the closest rock, and climbed on top of it. That part was easy enough, but when he gazed ahead at his next objective, he swallowed hard. Even worse, as he tried to stand erect where he was, he realized that the surface was viscous and slippery and he could not keep his footing. Just in time, he managed to bend his knees and remain on his fours instead of falling face-flat on the first pond, or worse, on the ragged rock. Behind his back, he heard laughter, and belatedly he grew aware of how humiliating his position was.

“There, let me help you”, a voice greeted his ears. Surprised, the boy raised his glance to see a girl perched on the rocks before him, easily leaning forwards to offer him a sun-tanned hand. Though her feet were bound in what looked like the rather flimsy structure of a straw sandal, she did not seem to have problems keeping her footing. A little mortified, he wondered if he could even free his own hands without falling, but luckily he was able to keep most of his remaining dignity intact before her.

“Do not squirm so much”, she scolded, as she helped him to reach her pond step by step. “And stop flapping your arm around! You’re not a seagull, and you can’t fly.”

Gimilzagar tried to follow her instructions, but the tension in his body was so great that he could not stop twisting his every limb as if he was trying to walk on a tightrope. When they finally reached a somewhat more stable ground, he forced himself to stand on his own without her help. Taking the cue from the other people scattered in their vicinity, he crouched before the pond, but the position was so uncomfortable that he did not think he could last long.

The girl crouched before him. As her face stood close to his own, he could not prevent himself from swallowing hard. She looked so different from all the people he had ever met that he had the feeling of having walked into one of his weirdest dreams. Their ages could not be too far apart, and yet she seemed to be here entirely on her own, with no fussy adults hounding her steps. She had raven black hair, like his, tied in a knot behind her face, and her eyes were a stunning hue of grey. She wore no cover and no hat, letting the sun shine freely on her features. The ladies that looked after Gimilzagar hated the sun, because they said that it would burn their skin, so they always covered every inch of it when they were forced to stand outside. But the girl’s skin was not burned: instead, it seemed to have taken a light brown colour, just like her hands.

At some point, Gimilzagar woke up and realized that she was looking at him with the same intensity with which he must be looking at her, and that her astonishment must be a mirror of his own. This made him self-conscious, so he forced himself to focus on something else. His eyes fell upon a bucket that stood next to her, full of strange, crawling creatures whose shapes he could not distinguish very well.

“What is that?” he asked. The girl stared at the bucket, then back at him; there was incredulity in her glance.

“What are you doing so far from the city?” she asked, instead of answering his question. “And where did you lose your servants?”

Gimilzagar was about to lose his precarious position and fall on his rear. How did she know that? Could she know who he was?

“You look like a pampered merchant’s son spending his summer in his father’s villa” she continued, thankfully before he had the chance to betray himself. With what seemed to him like an inordinate amount of skill, the girl manoeuvred an implement, some sort of metal wire, into a hole of the rocks, twisting it until another of those crawling creatures emerged from it, straight into a small net. Still wriggling, she dropped it in the bucket. “You haven’t ever seen a crab before? Not even in the market? Or on the table?”

“Is that for eating?” he asked, horrified. Her incredulity grew, then disappeared as it had come, leaving only a detached kind of indifference in its wake.

“You have to boil them first. And take the shell away. Perhaps you have only seen them baked into a pie or something.”

“Is that why you are catching them?”

“No, I am just playing”, she explained, though there was something odd about her tone. “At the end of the day, I let them all go and return to my villa where the servants have crab pies waiting for me. Of course that’s why I am catching them!”

“I am sorry. I did not mean to offend you”, he apologized, wondering why it was suddenly so difficult to say the right thing. In all his years of life, he had never spoken to a girl like her; the adults around him would never have permitted it. “What is your name?”

If he thought that this line of questioning would be more to her liking, he was sorely mistaken.

“Why do you want to know?” She was struggling to catch another crab, but this one managed to elude her and disappear into his hole as quickly as he had emerged from it. Gimilzagar was feeling quite nonplussed by now.

“Because it is polite to introduce oneself when meeting another person.” Prince Gimilzagar, Child of the Deliverer and Light of the West, Heir to the Sceptre of Númenor and Middle-Earth, the herald’s voice involuntarily rang in his memory, and he felt the urge to cringe. Meanwhile, the girl had abandoned her endeavours and was staring at him again.

“I am Fíriel”, she said after a while, hostility clear in her gaze. “Yes, it’s Elvish, and I am of the Faithful. But if I cry out my cousin will come and he is twice as big as you are. He will break your nice teeth and throw you into the deepest pool before you can even think of calling your servants for help.” After this shocking pronouncement, she seemed to review him again, and shrugged. “On second thought, I could do that myself.”

Elvish. So those were the famous Baalim-worshippers the Royal Nurse had warned Gimilzagar about, the ones he needed an armed guard to protect himself from. He had managed to run into them, and now they were threatening him with violence, though he had done nothing to them. And yet, he thought, there was something discordant about this threat, as if it was but a curtain and behind it lay something else.

For the first time in his life, the boy did not cower from the onslaught of other people’s feelings, afraid that they would spill over him like a jet of boiling water, but instead tried to concentrate in deciphering them. He could perceive no fully-formed thoughts, only a suppressed fear, vibrating in the air like the harrowing echo of what he had felt that fateful day, as he stood near the foot of the altar.

He extended his hands in a placating gesture, which finally made him fall on his rear. The rock was rugged and his clothes too thin, and he felt a brief explosion of pain. This made the connection break momentarily, enough for him to regain his clarity of thought.

“I would much prefer if we were… friends”, he said, savouring this word, which he had never had the chance of speaking before. “I am Abdazer, and my father is a merchant from Sor.”

Fíriel frowned, obviously wrestling with contradictory thoughts. After a long while, she seemed to reach a decision.

“As I said, I am Fíriel. And my uncle is a peasant from the Andustar.”

“But that is on the other side of the Island! Why would you spend your holiday in this sea when you have your own?”

It did not take him more than an instant to realize that he had said the wrong thing again.

“I am not here on a ‘holiday’” she spat, her grey eyes cold. “My uncle had to flee from his home because the wicked priests of the Cave burned his crops and stole his grain and would not leave us alone.”

Gimilzagar had no idea of what to say to this. He had seen priests from the Cave in the Palace before, but they had not looked wicked to him at all, and he would never have believed them capable of doing something so evil. But if they had been up to no good, Mother should have been informed. Or Father, who was the one looking after those things now.

“Why didn’t you tell…?” He interrupted himself just in time,” the Queen of Númenor? Or the King?”

For a moment, it looked as if Fíriel would be angry again. Then, unexpectedly, she laughed.

“Are you kidding me? They are the ones who exiled our lord and left the Cave in charge! And they do not care a flying damn for what happens there. As far as they are concerned, we are traitors because we worship gods that do not ask for people to be burned in their honour.”

Gimilzagar winced, shaken by the memory of the last sacrifice he had witnessed months ago. He remembered the stench of the burning flesh, Father’s bloodstained hands reaching for him, and the thoughts, those terrible thoughts that scorched his mind with more intensity than the flames. Once, he had been told that those who refused the sacrifices were evil people who were disloyal to the Sceptre. More recently, he had heard one of the ladies say that those people would have wanted him dead, since it was only because of this that he was alive.

The frustration he had felt in the harbour of Rómenna came back again, multiplied by a tenfold. It was not his fault. That those people died was not his fault, they were barbarians and enemies of Númenor, and he had not asked anyone to save his life as a baby. He had been too dead for that. Still, he did not dare say any of this aloud, for fear of revealing his identity. If he did, he was sure that Fíriel would hate him, and even though they had known each other for such a short time, she was the closest to a friend he had ever had. He did not want to lose her so soon.

“You spoke of your uncle”, he remarked, trying to change the subject. “What of your father?”

“He died before I was born” she replied, her voice suddenly vibrating with pride. “He was a great hero, and died in battle. Did you know that his father was from Harad? He was half-Haradric, and I am part-Haradric as well. That is why my skin is not burned by the sun, and why you should not mess with me.”

Gimilzagar gaped. This had to be some sort of stupid, made-up story, for there was nothing Haradric about this girl. Granted, he had never seen a Haradric woman, only a few prisoners brought to Númenor by his father, but that was not how he imagined their females to be. Could this girl’s grandfather have been one of them, who escaped or somehow managed to win his freedom like Lord Zigûr had done? But that should have been even before Father and Mother took the Sceptre, back when Gimilzagar’s grandfather had been King.

Once more, the smatterings of a strong emotion began to reach him, and he was curious enough to welcome them again. This time, it was not just a feeling, but a confused jumble of thoughts. In the middle of them, he could see an image, a mosaic, he realized, of a dark-skinned man who stood alone in the middle of a circle of Palace Guards who pointed their swords at him.

When he pulled back, his stomach was doing somersaults, and he wondered if he was about to get sick. It served him right, he thought belatedly, for that had been the excuse he had used to give his escort the slip. Perhaps it had not been such a good idea, after all. He had thought he had found a friend, but instead he had met a half-barbarian Baalim-worshipper whose father appeared to have died fighting the King of Númenor’s men.

“I was only joking!” she cried, aghast at what must have been his expression. She let the net and the metal wire fall with a clatter, and walked around the pool with amazing agility to crouch at his side and lay a hand on his shoulder. “Well, my father was part-Haradric, but he was born in Númenor, and I too. And I would never hurt you, Abdazer, I was just trying to scare you off because… well, because the people of Sor are not very nice people. Once, they threw stones at one of my cousins and he had to walk around with half his head bandaged for a month. He had done nothing to them, they just knew that he came from the West. How is that fair?” So that was the fear he had detected earlier. “We only want to be left alone. The city council of Sor does not even let us settle there, but we are happy enough in Rómenna, there is no need to follow us here, is it? I do not know who your father is, but…”

“No one.” Gimilzagar said this so fast that her eyes widened in surprise and confusion. His cheeks reddened. “No one important, I mean. You would not know him.”

She looked askance at him for a while, then shrugged again.

“All I wanted to say is that, if he is part of the city council, perhaps you could tell him this. You seem very nice, Abdazer. Too nice to be…” She blushed, as if realizing that she had put her foot in her mouth. “Let’s be friends, okay?”

“Yes!” he nodded, a little shocked at his own enthusiasm. Moments ago, he had been thinking of how to escape and find the real Lord Abdazer so he could protect him from such strange folk. But this girl had fascinated him since he first saw her, with her sure movements, her blunt words and that adult security which hid terrible wounds. And her scary edges fascinated him too, he had to admit, half-ashamed at himself, perhaps even most of all. “I would like that.”

Fíriel smiled, a dazzling smile that made the sun shine brighter.

“I cannot have you try the crabs, for we cannot cook them here. But perhaps you can try this.” She stood up again, and offered him a hand, which he took hesitantly, marvelling at her strong grip. “Now, hold on to me. Lay your hands in my shoulders if you must, this way you won’t flail around like a giant bird. I will go very, very slow. And by all the Baalim, mind where you put your feet!”

Gimilzagar obeyed as well as he could, though he found it extremely laborious to advance through this treacherous surface, even with her help. At least twice, his foot slipped and he was about to fall, but she managed to steer him in the right direction. Once again, he was impressed by her deceptive strength, for her body was lean and almost as slight of build as that of Gimilzagar himself, and she was a girl.

“Here we are”, she said at last, stopping next to a rocky edge that protruded from one of the ends of this massive natural pathway. The waves broke against it in endless succession, and Gimilzagar stared in awe at their fury. “Stay here.”

Incredulously, he watched as she took out a knife from her pocket –had she been armed all this time?-  and flexed her feet, as if ready to pounce. But instead of pouncing at him, she walked gracefully through the rocky edge, dodging the waves as they came to break against it. The realization that any of those waves would throw her against the ragged stone, and then probably drag her away to a terrible death by drowning horrified him, but there was nothing he could do but watch helplessly as she reached the farthest side, where a part of the reef emerged so high that it was out of the reach of the Sea. There, she seemed to busy herself scraping something off the stone for a while, which she dropped in her pocket before starting her return journey.  Again, Gimilzagar wanted to close his eyes, upset at her danger, but she had a grin in her face, as if she had not even realized that the Sea had been threatening her all along.

“Here!” she said proudly, laying the contents of her pocket at their feet. They were ugly dark shells, Gimilzagar realized, covered in some kind of weed that smelled strongly of salt. While he was still wondering what he was supposed to do with them, she picked one, and stabbed the thinner end with her knife in a very precise way. There was a weird, squelching noise, as a liquid began oozing from a fissure between the two shells. Fíriel pried them open forcefully, revealing a rich, whitish substance that smelt like the Sea.

“This is for you”, she said, already busy prying another one open by using the same system. “It is very good. Look”, she showed him, eating with relish.

Gimilzagar was not very convinced of this, but he did not want to look like a weakling to her again. Eating was something he could do, at least as long as it was not meat. So gathering all his determination, he introduced the shell in his mouth and tried to suck it just as she had done. The taste was powerfully alien, but at the same time somewhat reminiscent of the fish that he loved, and he found that he could swallow it without a problem.

“That is very good”, he nodded. “Thank you, Fíriel.”

The girl beamed.

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

The strange boy left sometime in the afternoon. Fíriel had tried to teach him to harvest crabs and shellfish, and this had commanded his full attention, though the results had not been on par with the interest he showed. If he had to depend on it for a living, he would probably starve long before he managed to make his first catch. As for the other things that men and older boys did in her household, such as tilling the fields or carrying heavy loads, she had never seen anyone so hopelessly unsuited for any of those tasks. He was quite thin, small enough for Fíriel to believe he was younger than her instead of older, as he had turned out to be, and so sickly pale that Eldest Aunt would have wanted to feed him immediately. She could even see the veins through the translucent skin of his hands, at least before it began to acquire a nasty red colour from the burning sun. And whenever he had been required to make the tiniest effort, he panted and shook as if he had just run to Rómenna and back. If those idiots from Sor who had assaulted her cousin had been like him, they wouldn’t even have been able to lift the stone from the ground. Not that Abdazer would have done such a thing –he was too sweet, for one, and though she had told him she was one of the Faithful, he had still kept gazing at her as if she was the most exciting person he had met in his life.

Still, there came a moment when he could no longer ignore the nagging concern that his whole household must be looking for him everywhere, worried that something had happened to him. Once the thought had entered his mind, it festered there, and Fíriel was certain that he could not stop thinking of how deep in trouble he would be once they finally managed to lay hands on him. As it often was the case with rich families, he was an only child, the sole heir to his father’s wealth and the apple of his mother’s eye, but she still wouldn’t want to be in his shoes today. So Fíriel took him back to the surf, where he could walk normally, and promised that she would be there the next day, if he managed to repeat his visit.

As she watched his silhouette, dark against the light sand, grow smaller in the distance and disappear, the girl felt for a moment as she had when she saw her old home recede in the distance for the last time. But this was an odd way to feel about a boy she had just met, and besides she still could get in trouble too, if she did not make up for the time she had lost before the relentless pull of the tide engulfed every rock and pool in the vicinity. So she did her best to put him out of her mind, until she was on her way home with a basket that was only somewhat lighter than usual.

The moment that the cottage came in sight, she noticed that something was amiss. Her whole family was gathered on the makeshift porch, and Eldest Uncle and his oldest son were there as well. Briefly, she pondered if maybe she had been late enough to miss dinner, but they were not sitting companionably or relaxing after a hard day’s work: they were standing, the tension evident in their rigid pose and raised voices. At once, Fíriel knew what this reminded her of, and her worst fears were confirmed when Grandmother saw her and, instead of scolding her for being late, ran towards her and pulled her into an embrace.

“Praised be all the Baalim in the West!” the woman cried, forgetting even that she was putting the basket in a rather precarious position. Fíriel had just enough reflexes to keep its contents from spilling, and safely put it away before she hugged her back. She sought Eldest Uncle’s expression; what she saw there made her stomach plummet further.

“What happened?” she asked. “The priests of the Cave are not allowed to come here, are they?”

Zama sniffled. She was holding her father’s hand, something she always did when she was distressed, and her cheeks were full of dirty smudges, as if she had been crying.

“Nothing you should worry about”, Eldest Uncle replied in a quelling voice. That was very typical of the adults, Fíriel thought, to pretend that nothing had happened when it was obvious that it had. She had memories of Aunt yelling at her to eat her food and stop asking questions, even while she picked up broken shards of pottery from her kitchen and the air was still heavy with the stench of smoke from the neighbouring field.

“Who was here?” she tried to insist, but Grandmother was already ushering her inside, and putting a plate of tepid food before her. There was no smoke that Fíriel could smell, this time, but the telltale shards were on the floor again, and the whole house looked like a mess.

Zebedin was there too, holding a wet cloth against his swollen eye.

“Who did this to you?” she asked. The older boy shrugged bitterly.

“Some bastard in a Palace Guard uniform.” Grandmother gazed at him in a reproachful way, but he ignored her. “It’s a funny story. It appears that the King’s son is staying around here, and he managed to misplace his escort and get in trouble. But hey, why blame those worthy soldiers for their incompetence when there are so many Faithful around these parts? Let’s blame them instead! Perhaps they think we are keeping their precious abomination hidden in a chest at the back of the granary.”

“Stop that talk, Zebedin!” Fíriel had rarely seen Grandmother so angry. “The Prince of the West is not an abomination, and if some of us did not insist on calling him those hateful names, perhaps the King’s men would not have been so ready to point their finger at us!”

“Ha!” Her grandson did not seem intimidated, and if he had really stood up to the Guards, there was no reason why he should be afraid of her now. “As if they needed a reason to blame us for everything!”

“If they ever have solid proof that even one of us means harm to the Prince of the West, they will do much more than just break into our house. You are too young to know how terrible that situation would be, and how great the danger. That is why you should keep quiet and obey your elders until you are old enough to know better!”

The woman was so carried away by the argument that it was only belatedly that she seemed to realize that Fíriel was listening in. Ashamed of herself, she dropped her contentiousness at once and patted the girl’s shoulder vaguely, as if she did not know what to say.

Fíriel’s eyes narrowed. She had not eaten anything since that morning, but she was not hungry at all.

“Did they find the King’s son?”

If her grandmother was surprised at this question, she did not evidence it.

“That was what Tarik just came to tell us. It appears he was found shortly after they came here. Perhaps he got lost.”

“Or perhaps he was bored and wanted to have an adventure and gave his escort the slip. Why would he care for the problems he caused for other people? He is a prince! Everybody else is just there for his amusement!” she retorted, so vehemently that Grandmother could no longer hide her shock.

“That… could well be”, she nodded along, though her eyes had narrowed a little, and she was looking at Fíriel in a curious way. If she wanted to ask her something, however, she seemed to decide against it. Instead, she pushed a stray lock of hair away from the girl’s forehead, hiding her uneasiness and worry behind a smile. “Eat, my dear. You must be very hungry, even if your stomach does not remember. But sooner or later, it will.”

Reluctantly, and unable to keep her mind from twisting and turning in a hundred directions, Fíriel forced herself to take a bite.

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

The following day, the most rational part of Fíriel did not expect him to be back, for she could not figure out how he would manage to brave the vigilance of his escort a second time, even if he wanted to. But as she was hopping across the rocky path, searching for a suitable pool, she heard his voice calling her name from the surf. Her heart gave a jump, and for a moment she pondered the idea of simply not turning back and pretending not to hear him until he left.

In the end, after making an exaggerated show of examining the holes in the pool, Fíriel could not prevent herself from stealing a peek from the corner of her eye, at the place where the tiny silhouette of the false Abdazer, pretend son of a merchant of Sor who did not exist, waved both arms at her. To her surprise, she saw him climb the first rock, then cautiously struggle to his feet and give a first, hesitant step, his arms flapping wildly at his sides in an attempt to keep his balance. Unable to sit still for any longer, she stood up angrily to rescue him before he could bash his face against the stone and have all the Faithful in Rómenna blamed for it. That was probably what he was used to, she thought, to pressure others so he could have his will in all things.

It was all she could do to hide her fury, as she took his hand and slowly steered him through the uneven, slippery terrain. When they finally reached a flatter area and she let go of him, her mind was busy crafting a plan to turn the tables on him. He needed to learn that she was not as stupid as he thought.

“I have been thinking, Abdazer”, she said, with a simpering smile that did not reach her eyes. “Your family has a house in Sor, where exactly is it?”

His eyes widened in slight surprise, but he recovered soon.

“It is by the Eastern side of the harbour. With a great tower, you can see the Warrior from there.”

He seemed to have spent some time elaborating on his lies from yesterday, she thought. And to think she had been afraid that he would be in trouble.

“A tower! How wonderful! I have always dreamed of seeing the view of the big city from one of them. Will you take me there?”

This succeeded in making a somewhat larger dent in his composure. He hesitated for a moment.

“Would your family let you do that?” His brow furrowed, as in furious thought. “I thought that your… people are not allowed in there.”

“I have no parents, and no one would have to know who I am”, she smiled sweetly. “Come to think of it, you are staying in a villa nearby, aren’t you? You could introduce me to your family, and we could pretend I am a girl from the city who comes to the beach with her servant. I will convince one of my cousins to be the servant. We could also change my name, that should be the easiest thing to do. We only have to make up something off the top of our head, and poof! I will be a different person.”

“I do not know…” he began, half-doubtful, half-alarmed. “You could be discovered.”

“And is your father… what was his name, by the way?”

“Eshmounazer”, he replied, so fast that she was sure he had been purposefully making up a new life for himself. For a moment, a part of her wondered what could be so wrong about his real life that he was so eager to invent another. Abomination, they had called him, but she could not have been feeling less inclined towards pity right now.

“Yes, that was it”, she nodded, even though she had never heard the name mentioned before. “Would your father Eshmounazer mind very much if someone like me walked into his lofty house?”

“I am here with my mother”, he replied. “But what does all this matter? I want to be with you. I- I thought you wanted to be with me, too. You said that we were friends, but now you are angry and asking all these questions and I do not even know why!”

His pitiful expression finally achieved the dubious feat of forcing her to drop her pretence. It was too much.

“When I said that, I did not know who you really were! You lied to me and put my family in danger and I do not want to be your friend any longer!” The words were leaving her mouth in a rapid, burning torrent that she could not hold back or control. Her father’s barbarian spirit, a part of her belatedly thought, reckless to the bitter end. “And I do not care if you are just a spoiled merchant’s son or the Prince Gimilzagar, the most spoiled boy in the West!”

Abdazer –Gimilzagar, she had to remind herself- went pale, which was quite a feat, considering how white the skin of his face already was. His hands began to tremble, and his lips moved as if to utter words, but he could not manage to say anything coherent.

“I… I did not… I am not… h-how did you….?”

“They came looking for you and hurt my cousin. Since you left without telling them where you were going they just assumed we evil traitors had kidnapped you.” It certainly seemed news to him, she thought, as she saw how his dark eyes looked about to pop from their sockets. But it did not matter if he had been aware of it or not. “Now I wish I had broken your teeth, at least.”

He seemed to regain some of his composure at this concrete threat.

“That is a very nasty thing to say.”

“You don’t even know what that word really means,” she spat. “Now, go away and leave me alone. Unlike you, I have work to do.”

If she had harboured any remaining doubts about his true identity, Gimilzagar’s attitude now dispelled them all. Standing straight in his full, unimpressive height, he glared at her.

“You cannot tell me to go away. We are in Númenor, and everything in it belongs to my father and my mother, and to me because I am their heir. You should go away.”

The sound of the rolling waves became a loud roar, pressing against Fíriel’s ears. Her hands clenched against the net until they were almost as white as his.

Go away. Yes, that was what she had been doing for the past years, going away, leaving place after place at the whim of the Sceptre and its evil minions. She could not go back to the land of her birth because of the priests, she could not set foot in Sor without breaking the edict issued by the city council, and now, she could not catch crabs on those rocks because a spoiled brat had wanted to play there.

“Very well” she said, gathering her things and letting her lips curve in a mean smile. “I shall leave the noble heir to the Sceptre to inspect his dominions. I hope he can find his way back on his own, because the tide will cover them soon.”

Without further ado, Fíriel hopped away, following the familiar path back to the beach. But the wild satisfaction she got from ignoring his increasingly frantic cries for help was as glorious as it was short-lived. Soon enough, she found herself looking back in some concern, and what she saw alarmed her even more.

The Prince was panicking. Though he had whole hours to humiliatingly crawl back to safety, he was acting as if his drowning was imminent, trying to take the same route as she had though he still did not know how to walk on rocks to save his life. To her surprise, he managed to achieve a complete step without falling, but his foot slipped at the second, and she almost cried out. Fortunately, he had enough reflexes to bend his knee and put a hand before his face to cushion the impact, though the edges in the rock must have broken his skin and caused him to bleed. His panic was now absolute, and even from the distance, she could see his whole body shake.

Fíriel took a sharp breath, dropping her things to run back where she had left him. She could not let him get hurt. What had she been thinking? If something happened to the Prince Gimilzagar, terrible things would befall her and her family. Even if she should flee, they would come for them merely because they lived in the area. Just the mere thought was able to set her on a rage again. Why did he have to be so helpless?

Upon reaching him, however, her anger abated a little when she realized that he was crying. A skinny knee was protruding from a tear in his breeches, and there was blood flowing from it and from his elbow, though it did not look serious enough to warrant such a reaction. The gist of it appeared to be fear, of being left alone to die or whatever story his mind must have concocted in the meantime.

“I am here”, she said, out of some instinct that suddenly came over her. Kneeling next to him, she pulled him into an embrace; the jerks of his shaking body felt scary against her chest, but she did not let go. “I am here now. Shhh.”

Slowly, she felt the movement subside. The tear-streaked face rose to meet hers, and when it did, she swallowed at the look in his eyes.

“I th-thought you w-were g-gone” he whispered in a hoarse voice. “Th-that I w-would h-have a f-fit and d-die. I h-had them all the t-time when I was y-younger.”

Fíriel’s cheeks reddened.

“I am sorry. I was angry, but I would never have let you die. I am sorry”, she repeated, lamely. To her dismay, he began to cry again.

“No, I am sorry! I sh-should not have lied to you, and I d-didn’t know anyone would be h-hurt!”

So he did know how to apologize, she thought, as the last of her righteous anger fled her chest, leaving a turmoil of confused feelings in its wake. She already missed her clarity of purpose from moments earlier.

“Fine. I forgive you.”

“Do you still want to be my friend?” he asked hopefully. As if it was so easy, she sighed. The crushing weight of the knowledge of who they were, and the gaping divide that stood between them, fell upon her now, without any petty emotions and resentments to cushion the impact. She opened her mouth to say something, but the feeling was so overwhelming that she closed it again.

“Yes”, she nodded at last. He beamed, and it struck her how much better he looked now than he had moments ago. “Now, this may hurt a little, but I should put some water on your wounds so they won’t get infected, okay?” Prince Gimilzagar nodded tremulously. “And then we will go back very, very slowly. I promise I will not let you go.”

To his credit, he did not cry again, and once he had cleaned his face in a thorough way he looked quite presentable, if one did not notice the tearing in his expensive clothes. But that was alright, because he had more, he assured her, in what was probably the understatement of the year.

As soon as he claimed to be ready, she helped him up and they began their laborious way back, he holding on to her with such a tight grip that she had to grit her teeth not to cry out. Her stoicism, however, deserted her the moment she set eyes on the beach.

Three women, dressed in the fancier clothes that Fíriel had ever seen –even fancier than Lady Lalwendë’s clothes, which were all silk- were standing on the surf, looking at them with very forbidding stares. And what was much, much worse: behind them, she could count five Palace Guards standing in formation.

For a moment, Fíriel was about to let go of Gimilzagar. Fear gathered rapidly in her innards, threatening to choke her until she could feel the rancid taste of vomit in her mouth.

“Who are they?” she hissed. The Prince tensed against her.

“She is Milkhaset, the Royal Nurse. And she is with Lord Abdazer of the Palace Guard. They must have followed me here!”

Fíriel’s mind raced. If she dropped him now, they would have to rescue him first, and they were unfamiliar with this treacherous terrain. She could run towards places where they could not easily follow, maybe to the other side of the rocks, which did not break off so abruptly, and then jump into the Sea. Heavily armoured as they were, they would not be able to come after her.

I promise I will not let you go, she had said, just a moment before. And though only an idiot would feel obligated to fulfil a promise in these circumstances, somehow, Fíriel could not let him fall.

The last steps through the rocks were agonizing, almost as if she was a lamb being led to the slaughterhouse, except that she was walking towards it herself. She still harboured the remote hope of somehow managing to elude them by leaving Gimilzagar the closest to the surf as possible and then retreating, but they did not wait that much. Before she had stepped away from the rocks, two Guards were already on them. The first of them took Gimilzagar away, while the second grabbed her by the front of her clothes and dragged her towards the sand. There, he threw her flat on her face, twisting her arms backwards. Two of his companions flanked him, and their rough hands roamed over her body until they found her knife.

“Let me go!” she shouted, struggling fiercely though she knew it was to no avail. Other voices were shouting around her, too, a man barking orders, and Gimilzagar yelling to the top of his lungs. One of her kicks connected against something, but then it was worse because they twisted harder, and the pain became so intense that she didn’t even have the strength to move. Tears started falling down her cheeks.

“Did she do this to you, my lord prince?” a woman’s voice asked, but she didn’t even wait to hear the answer. “Oh, praised be the Great Deliverer that we arrived in time! Did, or did I not warn you that this area…!”

“Let her go right now! You are hurting her!” Gimilzagar shouted. “She was not doing anything to me!”

“She had a knife, my lord prince” the man who had been barking orders said in a cold, scary voice. Fíriel was not able to move her body an inch without the pain increasing even more, but she found a way to twist her neck in a way that she could catch a glimpse of what was happening closest to her. The boy was angry, far angrier than she had seen him when they had their previous fight. He had pushed away both of the women who had begun fawning over him, and now he stood facing the head guard, his hands balled into fists. Though the man was easily more than twice his size, and twice his width, he was not intimidated.

“A knife for harvesting shellfish, you fool! I… I command you to let her go!”

“My lord prince, that is very poor behaviour!” the oldest of the women, the one who had spoken before, scolded him in a scandalized voice. “We are only looking after your safety!”

“Are you?” He bit his lip, retreating when she tried to approach him again, but Fíriel did not know if she had managed to lay hands on him or not, because the muscles in her neck had grown too strained, and she had to look down again. “Then you will let her go, or Mother will be very upset to hear that I fell down and had a fit, and the only person who was there to save me was this girl that you are mistreating. You could even lose your position!”

It still took a while, but finally Fíriel heard another of those barking exchanges, and the pressure disappeared. What a spoiled brat, she thought in amazement, as she clenched her teeth and tried to struggle gingerly into a sitting position. But he was on her side, and that was all that mattered.

“Are you all right?” he asked, rushing to her side to help her. To her surprise, he did not look smug, but shocked, as if a part of him could not believe what he had just done.

Fíriel swallowed. She had to think very carefully of what to say, of how to react in her current situation. She wanted to be angry at the ladies and at the guards, and tell them exactly what she thought of them, but she was still in pain, bruised and out of breath, and she knew that she could not push her luck. She wanted to tell Gimilzagar that it was not his fault, perhaps thank him, but she was not sure if they would tolerate that either. She wanted to pick up her bucket, her net and her tools, which she had left behind her, and above all, she wanted her knife back, for it was the most valuable item that she carried. But if she made the slightest attempt to retrieve it, the Guard would be on top of her again, and she was not sure if even Gimilzagar could save her a second time.

If they ever have solid proof that even one of us means harm to the Prince of the West, they will do much more than just break into our house.

In the end, she stood up, eyeing the adults warily, and slowly stepped away from the vicinity of the armed men. Her mind calculated an escape path that would take her past the women, whose ladylike dresses had not been designed for running. Once that she was standing right where she wanted, she bowed low before Gimilzagar.

“I am very honoured to have made your acquaintance, my lord prince”, she said, in a fancy accent that she had picked up from Lady Lalwendë and her women. “Though I wish you had not felt it necessary to hide your true identity. My family has always been loyal to the Sceptre, and so am I.”

And then, before the boy could even manage to utter a word of reply, she rolled her skirt over her knees, and ran away as fast as she could.