I crave the stain
Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love
*
Legolas was twenty-two, his eye-level at the height of my hand when I stood, when Thranduil marched a hundred of our warriors out to combat a surge of orcs malevolently trying to pick us off because the human towns had been successfully defending themselves. I stood on a balcony overlooking the main gate as I waited for my son to come home. A number of other parents, spouses and siblings trickled in to join me as the hours passed.
Soon we saw the gold glints of our warriors' armor as they threaded their way silently back through the trees. Snow had begun to fall, but elves being nearly impervious to the cold, we who waited did not mind. We would endure far worse for the sake of our loved ones. I held Legolas lightly in my arms, afraid to hold him too tightly with the force of the anxiety that shook inside me, and watched as Thranduil led those who had lived to the front gates.
I had come down from the balcony to await him, not knowing if he would wish to see Legolas immediately or ask me to wait. With his engraved armor smirched with the dark blood of our enemies, Thranduil slowly approached us. Legolas cried out for his father and reached for him, squirming, as I watched the living step slowly inside. Thranduil saw me, but he turned away, and in that moment I knew what my eyes had not yet told me.
"Not yet," he quietly said to Legolas, reaching up to gently cup his face, and then walking away. No blood on his son, then.
I stepped past those who had returned, numbly out into the chill of the white afternoon, holding Legolas close against me. A few of the last soldiers to come inside were laying out their cloth-wrapped brethren who had not survived. I did not need to unwrap his face to recognize my son-I knew the way he fit in my arms, how tall he was, how gallant he looked in his finely wrought armor. I knew every shape of him, and had no trouble picking him out from the others, and sank to my knees in the snow at his side.
"Inladris?" Legolas asked. My son had been like an older brother to the prince, and he wanted to know what this cloth-wrapped form had told me that it hadn't told him.
"Legolas," I said quietly, laying my hand on my son's still chest. "This is my son."
I had to hide the majority of my grief so it would not overburden the living child I still held against me. Soon Thranduil came and lifted him out of my arm and stood behind me, recognizing my despair, but still I could not show it. Eventually Thranduil took his son away, and then I knelt with mine for the rest of the night, and the rest of the next day. I stood only when the funerals began, when those of his company who had lived came to lift him away for me. One of my son's friends helped me stiffly to my feet and walked with me all the way to the grounds where we would bury him, and where many others had recently been laid to rest. A bonfire had burned here all night to soften the frozen ground and I could still feel the heat of it through my feet.
Thranduil and Legolas arrived before they laid my son in the ground. Legolas stood between us, each of us holding one of his hands. I don't remember seeing him but I remember there being tears on his face. He, too, had loved my son.
The two stood with me long after was necessary, since I knew Thranduil had a policy about attending the funerals of those who had fallen while in service to him. More than an hour after my son had been taken by the earth he turned to me and laid a light hand on my shoulder. "I am sorry for your loss."
"If he must have died he would have best preferred doing it in your defense," I quietly replied, still looking at the turned earth beneath which my son now lay.
"The Valar welcome him for his service."
I nodded, my way of both agreeing with and thanking him. Legolas, I could see, did not want me to remain standing in the snow alone, but his father rightfully understood that now that my son had been put to rest alone was exactly how I wanted to be. Legolas opened his mouth, hesitated, then closed it again-the first time I had ever seen him retract a question, and had I been in my right mind the sight of it would have wounded me deeply, as I had ingrained in him since his infancy that he could always ask me anything. But I was not in my right mind, no longer in my right heart or soul or body, and I barely noticed. Swallowing tightly, I said, "I will see you tomorrow." I wondered where Legolas had gone without me there today.
Thranduil had been turning to go and stopped, Legolas having already reluctantly released my hand. "You needn't."
"I shall."
It was my brother Firven who came to retrieve me from my grave long after night had fallen that day. He stood silently beside me for an hour or more before speaking. The snowflakes before us billowed with our breath like shattered pearls on fluttering black velvet.
"King Thranduil visited," he said at last. "He offered to release me from my service."
I sighed, more because I could not understand why he had done this than anything else.
Firven adjusted so he half-faced me. "We lost our father to war, our mother to grief, your husband to an assault and your son to a raid. He does not want us to lose either of the other. We are all we have left of family."
I breathed again, the cold air sinking rows of teeth into my belly and lungs. "Is that what he said."
"It is what I inferred." He met my eyes now, even if I would not meet his. "Why else would he offer me a faultless resignation? Your occupation is primarily safe, he knows he can offer nothing of the sort to you."
"Primarily safe."
"Being loved by any royal is always a risk, even if only a prince. There are those that would shoot an arrow through you if it meant killing him, or use you to cause him pain."
"Legolas is only a child."
"He will not stay that way forever. Someday he will make his own changes on the world." Firven watched me a minute more, and then sighed himself, cupping his hand around my arm. "Come inside, Inladris. Let him sleep. The more rest you give him the sooner he may return."
Numbly, I followed my brother inside. Unlike my dead son I could not sleep. But my handmaid brushed out my hair, drew me a bath, then brushed it again once she had washed it. When she returned in the morning I hadn't moved from my armchair in the shadow by the bed, and I didn't immediately notice her entrance. She draped me in black and silver and drew my hair out of my face, and I left to take Legolas from his father.
Legolas was sitting at the table with Thranduil when I entered. Legolas leaned over a length of parchment with a charcoal pencil in hand as Thranduil indicated corrections on it for him. Both glanced up when I stepped inside.
"Good morning Legolas, my lord." To Legolas I said, "Are you ready for your lessons?" He had them most of the morning now, and training on a variety of subjects in the afternoon. He had his free hours as well throughout, and often spent them either reading, practicing something he felt he ought to have already mastered, or we entertained ourselves in other ways.
With a sidelong look toward his father Legolas stood, hastily folding the paper and tossing it aside. He took up instead his quills, jar of ink and pencils. "Good morning, Inladris," he greeted as he trotted over to me. "Have a good day, Father." He ducked out the door ahead of me, knowing his way around his father's keep possibly even better than those who had lived here centuries longer, and before I could hurry after him Thranduil caught me by my name.
"Inladris."
I remained facing the door even though I knew it was disrespectful. I did not know what Thranduil's face would hold but if I saw its usually impassive planes disrupted by pity I felt I would be destroyed. That which could disrupt Thranduil's calm could surely destroy me. "Yes, my lord."
"You need not attend Legolas today."
"I know."
"Would you not be happier at home?"
I looked over my shoulder at him, lips pale where they pressed together. "When I remember what happiness is I assure you I will seek it out." I curtseyed then, to apologize for my refusal to face him while speaking to him, and swept like a brush of ash from the room and after my charge.
Now that Legolas no longer needed to sit on my lap to maintain his focus for most of his lessons my purpose in attending them was far lighter than it once had been. I could bring my embroidery or other small crafts to occupy myself, and for the most part he minded himself well. At moments he was just as impetuous as other children, when the lessons ceased to either satisfy or interest him, but then I drew my chair up beside his and we took the lesson together, finding ways to return the curiosity to them.
Today Legolas behaved as though he would be richly rewarded for his dedication. I leaned into the back of my chair with my hands half-dead in my stitching and watched with a shallow fascination as he threw himself into each lesson as though he could carry me safely with him if he learned fast enough. The moment I recognized this I wished to stand, fall to my knees beside him, and wrap him deeply enough in my arms that he could be planted in my chest, where he would never be so far away that I could not whisper that I loved him.
But it would not do to interrupt his tutors, so I refrained, and instead tried to lose myself in the way he gripped the quill too hard when he was thinking too quickly.
We had lunch together on one of the terraces, sitting on a balcony without a rail-which I had only permitted this past year, owing that he followed my precise rules for the permission-and watched the snow continue to swirl. Legolas hardly spoke, perhaps because I hardly did. But my words had all either flown away or died. Their plucked feathers remained scattered through my ribcage as though I had been holding them prisoner and they had starved.
My tears trembled on my eyelids when I watched Legolas at his archery lesson. His eyesight was keener than most's, and his instructor frequently pinned such things as leaves or berries to his targets to keep his pupil's gaze sharp. When his lesson concluded Legolas was carefully unstringing his bow when I spoke, smiling, knowing why he twirled the string between his fingers before coiling it because my son had once explained it to me. "You will be a marvelous archer soon enough."
He looked up at me quickly and away, then again, more slowly. "I wanted to learn when I first saw Milir shooting, when you would let me watch the guards practice." His lips trembled. "I wanted to be just as good."
I recognized the clear, shining beasts that rested beneath his eyes and pulled him tightly into me before they could fall. Wrapping my arms around his shoulders and curling over him as though I could protect him, I whispered, voice shaking, "I wanted to be, too, when we used to watch him." I sniffed. "But I am too old to learn now. I think, however, that you may grow to be better than him. He was never so devoted to his lessons as are you."
"I'm sorry," he moaned into the front of my dress.
I kissed the top of his head. "I know, mistletoe. I am, too. But now I will just have to spend more time with you."
"I'm not your son." He shook his head against my stomach and I loosened my arms just enough to sink onto one knee, keeping my hands wrapped around his own arms.
I made sure he was looking at me before speaking again. "You are everything a mother could want in a son, even if you happen not to be hers. I will always love you like a son, whether or not you want me to, because you will always feel like my son to me. Is that all right with you?"
Cheeks damp, he nodded, and through my own misery I smiled too.
I stopped Legolas just short of his front door that evening as I was returning him for supper. I knelt before him again, cupping his face in my hands. "You are kind, you are gentle, and you are considerate, Legolas. Never forget that. Your being talented or good will not make me forget Milir, I promise." I kissed his cheek and stood, gesturing for him to go on inside.
He took one step away before stopping. "You aren't coming?"
I shook my head. "Tell your father 'goodnight' for me; I am not feeling well."
He nodded. "Goodnight, Inladris."
"Goodnight, Legolas."
I sank into the armchair beside my bed, in the shadows, the curtains pulled. How lucky humans were, to be so overcome by emotion and so weak of the heart they could sink into a faint and pass a few painful hours in oblivion. But elves' hearts were stronger and we could not escape our pain. This was why we had been known to die of grief-sometimes the pain was stronger than we were.
But I could not remained cloistered away in my rooms until my grief escaped. There was another son for me to care for still, and he needed all that I could give him.
When I arrived the next morning Thranduil again told me I needn't have come. I fixed him with a steady gaze, my jawline parallel to the ground. "I am more suited to activity than a sedentary melancholy," I told him, and Legolas and I left for his lessons.
Legolas attended his first lesson with the same dedication and attention as he had the day before. He hesitated before we sought out the second, though, and caught my hand. I looked down at him and waited for him to tell me what had snagged his mind. He took his time, arranging his thoughts as he wished, and I let him, since I'd encouraged him to express himself accurately, and his father had taught him to express himself well.
"Father is concerned," he quietly said at last.
I sat on a carved bench along the wall so we could look each other in the eye. "What is he concerned about?"
Aware of my opinion of how Thranduil thought I should handle my grief, Legolas was hesitant to offend me. "He fears you may take after your mother," he murmured at last, and I felt my shoulders droop.
"Legolas. Look at me please, love. I am glad you are brave enough to tell me of something you fear will upset me, especially since it is upsetting you." He met my eyes and I smiled to him, lightly tapping the underside of his chin. "My mother had nine hundred years to fall in love with my father. I only had two hundred years to love my son. And I always took after my father."
He slowly blinked, pale lashes fringing the blue eyes he must have gotten from his mother. "Is it not worse this way, considering how much time you should have had that you now never will?"
I did think it was worse this way, but for the first time I did not tell Legolas the unadulterated truth. "That depends on how you look at it. My mother did not have another husband. But with you I have another son."
One side of his mouth pulled up and fell. "I hope I will be able to fill the space his passing has left."
I held out my arms and when he stepped forth pulled him in close, resting my chin on top of his head. "You already are. Don't stop growing on me yet."
"Don't worry. Father says I will be taller than you someday."
"Oh really? When did he say that?"
"When you told me what I wasn't allowed to say until I was taller than you are."
I chuckled softly into his soft hair. "Well he is probably right. Will you go to your lesson now?"
He nodded.
Legolas and I had always understood each other well. He went in to his lesson, and I sank into my chair a few steps beside him.
I could not allow my grief to touch Legolas, so I grew thorns under my skin and aimed them inward, retreating inside myself until anything that might have hurt him was out of his reach.
(pg26)
> from To Earthward - Robert Frost