A Willing Heart

Three

As soon as the door shut behind Thorin, I ran up to my room and closed the door to the rest of the world.  Leaning against it, I waited till the beating of my heart returned to normal, wondering even then what normal really was.  For everything in my life had never been truly normal, having only the appearance of it.

I touched my face, feeling the heat on my cheeks slowly cool against my fingers.  

How foolish had I been not to have recognized the words that Thorin spoke?  It was a language I had known so long ago, a time filled only with darkness I could not understand.  Yet I still understood it, as if I’d been speaking it all this time.

I walked to the side of my bed, and kneeling, I reached beneath it and pulled out a long rectangular wooden box.  It was a simple box.  There was nothing ornate about it, its edges still in need of some sanding.  But it served its purpose to hold everything of value that I owned.  

It held the few trinkets, including the sword that Jürgen had made me years earlier, its blade unusually broad and flat, so different from the many swords he’d made anyone else.

“This is yours and yours alone, my child,” I still remember him telling me as he placed the sword on my outstretched hands, its blade cool against my skin.  “I tried my best to make it look just like --” 

“Like what?” I had asked then, watching as the older man’s face clouded, as if something dark had crossed his mind’s path and stayed there.  Then he smiled.   “Just like the Narsil that Telchar of Nogrod forged for the King of Numenor,” he said.  “But instead of making it for a man, I made it to suit you, my child,” he said.  “It’s perfect for your hands and hopefully not too heavy to wield.”

“And where will she ever need such a weapon, Jürgen?” Berndt scoffed as he walked past us on his way to the kitchen so he could scoop a few more spoonfuls of soup into his bowl.  “We are not about to war with anyone.”

Jürgen’s face grew hard.  “You forget how your parents were taken from you, Berndt,” he said as Berndt sat back down on his chair and began to eat.   “I want you never to forget that there is always the threat of war at our doorstep and we always need to be prepared for its eventuality.  For there will always be those who seek power over others, whether they be orcs and goblins.  Even men.”

Jürgen had been with my parents when they fell, their bodies found next to the wagon that had been looted of everything the goblins had considered of value.  The food had been taken but they had strewn all the fabric that my parents had bought with all their  hard earned money at Dale.  Out of a caravan of six families that totaled over thirty travelers, only seven were left by the time the orcs fled, the rays of the sun filling the horizon.  

Jürgen and the other survivors had been left to bury the bodies that included his own wife and young son.  It had taken everything in his power not to go after the orcs but he knew it would have been sure death if he had.  Not that Jürgen had wished for death to come so many times afterwards, his tears staining his face as I often found his seated by his kitchen table, staring at nothing before him but his hands that he knew had been useless to save the ones he loved.

I lifted open the lid and just as I expected, Jürgen’s gift was the first thing I saw, sheathed in a leather scabbard he had made for it.  I picked it up with one hand and pulled out the sword, feeling its balanced weight in my hand.  Once upon a time, my arm would have failed to hold it for more than a few seconds, not being used to its weight and balance.  But after many sessions of sparring with Jürgen, I was pleased to see that my arm ceased to tremble anymore.  Nor did my hands drop the sword because of its weight.  

But I had not come up to my room to admire Jürgen’s handiwork.

Setting it to one side, I ran my hand through the many swaths of fabric that lay at the bottom of the box, interspersed by a few jewels that my mother had left me.  Jürgen had collected all the fabric he could find from my parents’ wagon and when he returned, he crafted the box and placing the fabric within it, handed it to me shortly after.