The Strands that Bind by AdmirableMonster

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The White Flower

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It looked like some of the mushrooms might be growing.  Chalcedony couldn’t be certain, because she had finally cracked and told Uncle Sam what she had been trying to do, and this time he had insisted on making the trip to the pond with her, which meant he was also keeping an eye on her to stop her from getting what he considered to be too close.  She didn’t bother to protest that she had planted the mushrooms closer, because then he would just have worried more.

At any rate, they weren’t so far away that she couldn’t see the patch of white where she was fairly sure the mushrooms were growing all right.  She could come another day, when he was less worried.  She didn’t have to concern herself with potential harvest and ways to do that safely just yet, anyway.

“I’d never have thought of a thing like this,” Uncle Sam was saying to her.  “It was well done, lad.”

“It’s because of the fairy-sight,” she said, and then remembered that it couldn’t be fairy-sight, because she was a boy.  “I mean…the memories, I suppose.”  This half slip of the tongue felt fearful, so she walked away as if to get a different point of view to look at the pond.  The whisper of a noise drew her attention to the undergrowth, and she saw that Annamir had followed them again.  He seemed almost to arch an eyebrow at her; his tail lashed once.

“I haven’t done anything,” she said, coming back to Uncle Sam.

“You have, you know,” he said gently.  “I know it doesn’t feel like anything, but that’s because you’re the one who did it.”

“We don’t even know if this will work.”

“No,” he said slowly.  “But it’s a thing that’s worth trying.  And it’s a thing that wouldn’t have been tried if you hadn’t tried it.”

Chalcedony had never found it easy to receive praise, and this was worse than most, because it felt like such a queer lie, though she couldn’t really explain why.  She cast about for something else to say, the pressure building inside her as if she needed to speak.  They could just hike back now; it had been a longish trip for poor Sam, but she had been clear that there wasn’t much to see.

He was carefully circling the pond again, keeping his distance, his hands shoved into his pockets.  “You know, when I was young, I used to come out here when I could—it wasn’t always easy, but I often went on long trips when it wasn’t schooltime or planting or harvest.  Master Frodo and I—we’d go on walking tours together, sometimes.”  He glanced at her, his eyebrows drawing briefly together.

“That—sounds nice,” Chalcedony hazarded, not quite sure what he was driving at.  

“It means a lot to me, this place,” Uncle Sam said quietly.  “So thank you for trying to save it.  I don’t have so much of him left in the Shire, you know, it’s mostly places more than anything.  The library at Bag End is like that, but that was always his, not ours.”

He had a wistful look on his face, his eyes soft and faraway, and Chalcedony was struck with the sudden, horrified realization that there were unshed tears gleaming in his eyes.  Even if she had been good at comforting folk—and she was not—she would not have known how to comfort someone more than twice her age.

“That’s, um,” she said.  Annamir stalked out of the bushes and twined round her legs.  “Look!” she said hurriedly.  “The cat’s here.”

“Well, tell him to stay well away from the pond, at any rate.”  Uncle Sam arched an eyebrow.  “Sorry, old fellow, was I making Boromir uncomfortable?  Don’t worry about me, lad, I’m all right.”

Lad made her flinch, somehow, even though she knew it was right, and all of a sudden she had the wildest urge to tell him how she felt.  The words pressed at her mouth like bile, almost impossible to suppress, I know who I am but sometimes I want to be somebody else.  Sometimes I want to be a girl, even though I know that’s impossible.  Sometimes I want to be Chalce—

Light gleaming green-gold on the surface of the water, ducking beneath the black edge of a rain-cloud as it begins to travel onwards.  The rain still striking the water disturbs the surface from a glassy reflection into a churning smear of colors.  With the fine misting rain and the light shimmering through it, the day seems very soft.

Nimruzimir turned the collar of his coat up against the damp, frowning down at the pond.  A small part of him reminded himself that this particular location had been fruitful before, in terms of seeking out particularly useful fungi.  But he was tired, and he did not think he had the energy to try to look for samples right now.

He was not even quite certain what had brought him out here, or how he had remembered what day it was.  Something about the air, perhaps.

“Hey.  I don’t mean to interrupt, but I thought I’d give you a hat.”

He smiled faintly.  “Of course you m-managed to find me.  But th-thank you.  I—” He licked dry lips.  “I d-do not actually want to be alone, I d-don’t think.  I j-just—s-something made me—”  He clutched his fingers about the too-warm necklace.  Something had made him think of it; the weather, or the scents in the air, or the knowledge of it, resting heavy at the base of his belly.  “Th-this was the d-day I left my father.”

Lilóteo gave what might be termed an encouraging grunt and held out an oil-skin hat.  

After a moment, Nimruzimir took it.  “I am not usually this f-fanciful,” he said morosely.

“Fanciful?”  Lilóteo leaned against the willow tree, with its branches dragging towards the earth.  The leaves made a dappled pattern that rippled in the same breeze carrying the fine mist of rain in to film on their eyelashes and skin.

“I am—” Nimruzimir stopped himself with a cough, because he did not know how to word this.  He did not even quite know if he should.  Lilóteo just waited, his eyebrows vaguely raised.  “I am not much of a s-storyteller,” Nimruzimir said stiffly.  Lilóteo remained silent, and he was as incapable as ever of reading subtle facial cues.  “D-Do you s-still want to know?”

“Yes, of course, if you want to tell me.”

Nimruzimir gnawed on his lower lip and walked back and forth.  The Sun was beginning to emerge more, and the rain was lessening.  He felt as if he were emerging from the breaking of a fever, covered in sweat.  The air was very clear, though laden with moisture, the only scent on the wind the scent of rain.  The day he had left, it had been hot and smokey, the light a peculiar faint yellow-gold that arose from its refraction from all the particulate matter in the air.  “I s-simply am h-having some d-difficulty,” he began haltingly.  “It is—my f-father never knew.”

“Never knew what?” Lilóteo prompted, not exactly gently, but with interest.  The intensity in his dark eyes had not bothered Nimruzimir in a long time.

“Me.”  Nimruzimir found his hands were clutching at the rucked cloth of his oilskin coat beneath his elbows.  “It is as if the girl—the g-g-girl that I w-w-was d-died, but no one m-mourned her.”

He thought that Lilóteo might protest that he had never been a girl, which would even have the advantage of being true, but he had no other way to put words round the feeling bubbling inside himself.

Instead, Lilóteo nodded, tapping his thumb against his bottom lip.  “Among the Druédain, it’s common for people like us to be treated like our roj to begin with—sorry, I don’t know the right word in Adunaic, and I think an anthropologist would argue it isn’t exactly the same thing.” He shrugged.  “Anyway.  The point is, occasionally someone slips through the cracks or doesn’t realize or marries into the enclave, and when that happens, they have a ceremony, where they bury a token representing the former self.  Is that something—I mean, would you want to do something like that?”

“Oh—ah,” stammered Nimruzimir.  “I d-d-don’t know.”

“Sometimes it’s not as formal as a burial.  They cover graves with white flowers, so sometimes they just put the token away marked with a white flower.”

“I will—have to think about it,” Nimruzimir wrenched out.  “But, but, th-thank you.  I—”  Why was it so hard to breathe?

“Ah, shit, man,” Lilóteo’s voice murmured, far away.  “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

The vision blurs apart like the reflection in the water with the light rain breaking it up.  Chalcedony’s chest aches.  She sees a little brown box with a white flower emblazoned on it.  A box that she has opened, and what does that mean?

The girl it mourns is dead.

She blinked and shuddered slightly.  “All right there?” Uncle Sam’s voice asked from somewhere far away.

“I,” said Chalcedony.  “There’s something—” she stammered.  Would Uncle Sam listen to her? Would he laugh?  Desperately, she cast about for some way to introduce the conversation.  “Can I talk to you?”

He smiled the slow smile she had known all her life.  “Let’s walk and talk, shall we?  We can gather some herbs for dinner, and perhaps there will be strawberries.”

He was, she rather suspected, trying to give her an extra thing to think about to distract herself, because he was probably aware she was worried and all mixed up inside.  She didn’t think she was hiding that part of it very well.  “Mm, all right.”

Annamir slipped along in the shadows beside them as they went.  Chalcedony normally enjoyed nature rambles like this and was very focused on them, but today her thoughts whirled about, half of them still lodged with Nimruzimir on the bank of a little pond somewhere—somewhen.  He didn’t know she existed, and a little part of her was sad about that.  He’d have been such a good brother.

Uncle Sam didn’t push her.  He never did.  He just offered his presence, and sometimes this just meant you felt better because you knew he was there, and sometimes it meant that you confessed to him that you were the one who had broken the jam jar in his pantry and it hadn’t been any of his children.  Of course, that had been when she was very young.

“It’s something about the festival,” she said finally.  “What would you think, Uncle Sam, if someone felt like, like they’d rather maybe be dancing on the other side?”  The words came out thickly, in a rush.

“Hm,” said Uncle Sam.  “I’d say maybe that’s a sign they might want to explore that.”  He scratched his head, pushing his broad-brimmed straw hat back a little.

“But isn’t that, don’t you think that’s weird?” she pushed.

“I think there’s a great many strange things that people do,” Uncle Sam replied mildly.  “When I was younger, I felt that way too, sometimes.”  He had an oddly far-off look in his eyes.

This ought, probably, to have comforted Chalcedony, but somehow it made her mouth taste odd again.  It was good, she told herself fiercely, that it wasn’t queer of her to feel that way.  It was a good thing.  It was a normal way for a young man to feel, clearly!  When she looked at him, she saw that Uncle Sam’s forehead was creased a little, in a slight frown.  

He didn’t say anything else, and she didn’t know what to say.  “That’s good,” she said, finally, with forced cheer.

She would learn to be normal with time.  And that was what she wanted.