Northern Stars by Idrils Scribe

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Chapter 4

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Elrohir slowly closes and opens his eyes.

Again. And again.

It makes no difference. The approaching Elf-ship remains sharp and clear as sunlight, a star-bright beacon seen with that strange Elvish sense that is not sight.

The will that guides it seeks him, sends luminous tendrils of awareness reaching out with a fierce and focused hunger.

Elrond’s joy at having found him shines out across the waves like a signal-fire in the night. 

He knows that Elrohir is near - Elrohir could not have hidden himself from that deep-seeing gaze if he had tried.

Elrond’s touch is not foul, nothing like the Demon in the desert, but the Elf-lord blazes with that same inhuman radiance of power. Here is an Elf who could kill the way the Demon did, unleash that same horror and the devouring dark, if he wanted to.

The thought is terrifying, even though some mad, equally hunger-crazed part of Elrohir gives a hard lurch towards that ship, clamouring to leap from the yard and fly across the waves to reach it.

“Elrohir?” Glorfindel’s hand comes down on his shoulder, fingers digging in as if to steady him against a fall.

Elrohir startles and blinks as the world beyond his eyelids comes flooding back, the sharp sunlight and the chill seawind yanking on his tunic, the forlorn cries of the wheeling gulls.

“Are you well? Keep your eyes open, if you can.” Glorfindel leans in, his face a frown of concern. Clearly this was not his first attempt at rousing Elrohir.

How long has he been sitting on the yardarm, blinking like an owl in the daylight? This unseen Elvish sight is perilous - a man might lose himself in it. Or lose his grip. Glorfindel is right: Elrohir is lucky not to find himself splattered to a pulp against the deck far below. 

Glorfindel seems to be thinking along the same line. “Come,” he says, and gently pulls Elrohir towards the shrouds. “Let us climb down and get you ready.”

 

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Most of the crew are still singing Ossë’s praises when Glorfindel leads Elrohir to the aftercastle stair, but some of the songs are far more worldly. Thankfully the Sindarin Elrohir has picked up from the crew did not include this particular vocabulary.

They pass a beaming Alphalas, brandishing a hammer and spigot to a chorus of roaring cheers and applause. Galdor has ordered a barrel of Gondorian red brought up from the hold. Like their Silvan cousins, the Falathrim never pass up on an opportunity for wine and song.

Glorfindel politely refuses the offered cups, and steers his ward down the stairs to their cabin.

“Your mother is an artist at the loom,” Glorfindel says as he opens Elrohir’s sea chest. “She made this for you.”

He brings out the finest tunic among the bounty Celebrian sent along for Elrohir, doubtlessly with this day in mind.

Raw silk shimmers in the cabin’s half-light. Celebrían’s dyes have captured that deep blue of a summer dusk, shot through with a shower of silver-threaded stars. With a practised flick he spreads the tunic over the sturdy blanket covering Elrohir’s berth, then bends over the chest once more in search of the matching undertunic and leggings.

When he looks up with more indigo silk spilling from his hands, Elrohir has not moved.

He stands with his back against the door, still in his sea-grey sailor’s clothes, staring at the rich cloth as if it might bite him. It has been long indeed, as Mortals count such things, since he wore anything so fine.

“Your father will sing for joy to see you, even in a beggar’s rags, but there will be a crowd, and Lord Círdan himself among them. You should look the part.”

Glorfindel leaves everything set out on Elrohir’s bed, then turns around, pointedly staring out of the porthole to show he is not looking - the Haradrim ways are not easily forgotten.

A moment’s silence, a deep inhale, and then comes the rustle of fabric.

When Elrohir is finally dressed like an Elf-prince, the sight is joy and sorrow all at once. Glorfindel dearly wishes that he could spare Elrond the way clothes made to Elladan’s measures tend to drape from Elrohir’s shoulders in loose folds.

Elrond’s name is a byword for generosity. The Lord of Imladris lets none go hungry, and the dining hall of the Last Homely House has fed many a lost soul wandering the road. The sight of his own son in this state will be a harsh blow.

The Nemir’s cook has done his all to feed some flesh back onto Elrohir’s bones, but the journey was too short to undo years of hardship.  For the time being, Glorfindel can only take out his knife and hand-punch one more hole into a silver-tooled belt too long for Elrohir’s waist.

Elrohir knows well enough what he looks like. He is clearly nervous, from the way he runs his fingers over the silver-stitched brightness of a tablet-woven cuff.

“Glorfindel …” he asks, looking very young and very lost. “What should I say to him?”

“Sit down,” Glorfindel says, offering Elrohir a stool, and takes up his comb.

“Your father does not expect a formal address,” he says as he runs the carven ivory through Elrohir’s hair with gentle care. The lice are long gone. “He will be beside himself with happiness, no matter what you say. Do not worry yourself about it.”

Elrohir does not answer. Glorfindel cannot see his expression.

His hair is barely jaw length, still too short for braiding. He looks like a Mortal, or else a prisoner newly freed. Neither is far from the truth.

Orcs know the Elvish love of hair, and make sport of roughly shearing their captives. Elrond will think of that the moment he lays eyes on Elrohir’s cropped locks. Yet another sorrow, one Glorfindel will dispel as soon as he can get a private word in. Whatever else may have been done to Elrohir, he did cut his own hair.

For now Glorfindel smooths it  into a gleaming bell of dark silk around Elrohir’s head, and binds it with Elladan’s silver circlet. 

 

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The peaceful interlude that was their journey is about to end. Elrohir always knew it could not last, these calm days wrapped in sunlight and the scent of salt.

He must make himself as ready as he might; ready to be whatever Elrond expects from him.

“Stop fussing with it.” Glorfindel gently stills Elrohir’s hand when he reaches for the circlet’s clasp once again. “It looks perfect. See for yourself.”

With a grand flourish, Glorfindel pulls a mirror from his sea-chest. It catches the midday sun that streams in from the porthole, sending golden brightness leaping along their cabin’s white walls.

At that, Elrohir must smile despite everything. He knew of Glorfindel’s peacockish streak - it is not every man who will carry a comb into battle - but an actual mirror is a flamboyance beyond his wildest imagination.

“Here,” Glorfindel holds the handle out for him to take.

Elrohir hesitates. On the mirror’s back gleams a green field of inlaid jade, each blade of grass lovingly rendered, strewn with flowers traced in gold. He has not held so rich a thing since his days in Umbar.

When he turns it over, his reflection in the glass looks pale and stern above the silver-stitched collar of the Elvish tunic. He wonders if Elladan looks like this, then pushes away the thought. Elladan is not on the approaching ship. Elrohir would know it if he was, of that he is sure.

The man staring back at him is a stranger. A blank, unwritten page. He could be anything. An Elf-prince, even.

Umbarian folktales tell of White-fiends stealing babies and leaving changelings in their place. What a strange irony, that he is their changeling, no longer the same child that was taken. There is no telling what this Elf-lord will do when he learns that he has been cheated of the son he sent for.

“Come,” Glorfindel says, putting away the mirror and directing Elrohir to the door as he straightens the cuffs of his own tunic, a much finer one than he used to wear aboard. “We will wait for your father in the great cabin.” 

He holds the door open, his eyes on Elrohir as he waits for him to go first, like an accused man being walked to his trial. 

 

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Like a restless hound will weave back and forth through its kennel, Elrond cannot keep from pacing the quarterdeck. Forty years of desperate searching have led to this moment. He tries and fails to summon enough lordly dignity to stand at Círdan’s side as both captains manoeuvre the Laegrist beside the Nemir, gunwale to gunwale so the plank can be laid across.

Galdor and his officers have gathered on the Nemir’s quarterdeck, but Elrohir nor Glorfindel is among them, nor with the throng of singing sailors that labour on deck.

Elrond reaches out, searching, but finds Elrohir’s mind closed.

It cannot be borne.

He withdraws a little, judging the distance. He has done this many times before, both in battle and for the sheer daring enjoyment of it. A few steps backward, a quick dash for speed, one foot pushing himself off against the gunwale, the weightless rush of the leap, and the Nemir’s deck rises up to meet him. He rolls, gains his feet in a single smooth step, and then he is standing on the same ship as Elrohir. 

He pays no heed to Ardil landing on cat’s paws behind him.

The crowd parts for him as he ascends the quarterdeck, wildly looking around as if Elrohir would be hiding behind the main mast.

“Elrond …” Galdor smiles, but something like worry is lodged in the captain’s eyes, and cold fear rushes in like the icy waters of the northern sea.

“Where!?” Elrond utters, frantic. Surely Galdor understands that this is no time for ceremony.

“Come.” Galdor’s hand lands on his shoulder, and down into the aftcastle they go, through the white wooden hallway to the great cabin‘s pearl-studded door that opens slowly, and Elrond would almost shoulder Galdor aside because behind that door is Elrohir.

Instead he stops, and breathes, and straightens himself to look composed and calm, a gentle manner and a smile on his face before he crosses the threshold from the dark hallway into the light of the cabin.

Elrohir has risen from his chair at the table, Glorfindel at his shoulder. He is wearing the tunic Celebrían has woven for him. He has his mother’s eyes, and his brother’s way of standing, and his fëa is very nearly flown to Mandos.

“Elrohir.” Elrond keeps the terror off his face as he says his son’s name and comes to him smiling.