The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
*
Thranduil was right in saying that one does not grow over their losses, but learn to live around them. I did learn, with the occasional nudge from Firven and frequent embraces of my growing charge, who went a long way toward the growth that helped return me from a diminished thing. Legolas was taller than the height of my elbow now, nearly fifty-six years old, and already carrying his young self with much of the reserved grace of an adult. Already my part in his raising was beginning to feel redundant, but Thranduil insisted that I was not yet useless, and I would never argue for my own departure; I loved this boy too much.
“Are you sure this is where you found it?” he asked one fall, before the orange, red and violet leaves had begun tumbling down, as we strode through one of the narrower roads out of the Greenwood, our small contingent of guards around us, and each of us with a gardening trowel in hand. “You said you were my age when you found it.”
“More or less. I was about your height at least.”
“And your mother let you run around in your fancy dresses digging up springs?”
I laughed. “Oh of course not. We didn’t always wear such fine dresses as I own now, and why do you think I’ve got an apron on today? It isn’t for the style, I assure you. Let’s try here.” I marked a spot with my toe, glancing about at the trees surrounding us, and wondering if this was the configuration I only distantly remembered. My childhood had been a far span away ago.
Legolas and I crouched to begin digging, which we had already done three times before, but we had a bet going on whether or not I could find the spring again.
“When are you going to let me show you how to braid your hair?” I asked him as we dug, scooping the soft, cool soil away and setting it aside.
Legolas sighed. “Father doesn’t braid his.”
“Your father doesn’t frequently engage in activities that cause his hair to get in his face,” I pointed out as Legolas swiped some of his behind his ear again. We’d already been having this argument for a decade. “Besides, your father often wears his circlet or his crown, which you—” I lightly flicked his forehead, “—don’t. That helps keep his hair out of his eyes.”
“I don’t want to fuss with it,” he grumbled. “It’s enough trouble just getting up and brushing it.”
“Well you could always cut it,” I suggested. “Then you might look like a man though.”
Legolas heaved another sigh. “You’ll braid it like a girl’s hair!”
“I will not,” I lightly disagreed. “There are plenty of ways to braid one’s hair without looking like a girl. Captain, don’t you braid your hair?”
One of Legolas’s guards stepped forth and removed his helm, straightening the nearly auburn hair beneath it and crouching with his head turned where we could see. “That I do. Not too terribly feminine, do you think?”
I clucked my tongue. “Oh I don’t know, Legolas. Two braids is fairly wild and ladylike, don’t you think?”
The captain laughed, slid his helm back over his head and returned to where he’d been standing before, eyes out into the forest to search for threats.
“Ah see!” I cried out, as chilled, faint blue water began bubbling out of the side of the uneven hole we’d created. I tickled my fingers through it. “I told you we could find it. I used to come out here with Firven and a few of our friends and we would create entire castles and moats and towns in the mud. I suppose we were a bit younger than you are, then. I suspect playing in the mud has somewhat left your field of interests.”
Legolas dipped his fingers into the water, grinning. “I can’t believe you found it again centuries later.”
I snorted. “Neither can I but I had to at least pretend I was confident I could, didn’t I?”
One of the outer guards shouted a distant warning and our heads shot up. The inner ring of guards—the only ones we tended to see—drew their weapons in a single, synchronized motion.
My legs were still longer than his so I dropped my trowel and threw myself forward, lifting Legolas in my arms and sprinting forward. The guards closed in around us as we made for the keep.
“Orcs?” Legolas guessed.
“I don’t know, tadpole.”
“Let me down, I can run.”
“No Legolas, I’m still faster.”
“You will be faster when you aren’t carrying me!”
“Yes and the guard isn’t here to protect me, Legolas! The guard is here to protect you. You are the one who needs to be fast.” We hadn’t gone far; the keep was in sight through the trees already.
I knew the archers of the outer guard had been breached when arrows began flying to either side of me. The inner guard closed in to protect us, protect Legolas, but within seconds the orcs had caught us from behind and were falling on our swordsmen.
“How many, Legolas?” I panted. Legolas was right that I couldn’t run as quickly while carrying him. But I was still faster than he would have been.
“I count twelve. Eighteen.”
“Goodness me,” I said, determined not to show fear. It, too, could be harmful when it touched my prince.
Legolas’s arms around my shoulders abruptly tightened and I ducked to avoid whatever it was that had frightened him. A heavy arrow flew over our heads and landed a hundred paces short of the bridge into the keep.
“They’re getting closer,” he said, and I could hear the screech and shatter of our weapons slashing against theirs, and the feral snarls of the beasts that pursued us.
“So are we,” I gasped. The doors were already open, reinforcements filing swiftly through them. Thranduil was among them but he didn’t carry his sword—it must have been pure happenstance that he had been leaving when the horn had blared.
Something sharp and vicious burrowed into the back of my right knee and I cried out, toppling. Legolas shouted my name as a guard immediately scooped him from the ground before he even had time to stop rolling and as I struggled to stand. The captain, who always traveled in the rear, was fighting to reach me but then the orcs were upon me too.
I felt the hammering of fists and feet, corners of sharp armor scraping against my ribs and underneath my hands. A shield or something similar bashed against my face, then rough hands wrapped around my arms and in my hair. The captain couldn’t reach me from where he was waging his own assault. Abruptly the squeals and crashing ceased, and the orcs surrounding me parted, leaving a clear path of sight between me where I struggled even to stay on my knees—the many wide hands of the orcs were most of what kept me nearly upright—and Thranduil, who was trying to hold Legolas behind him. As soon as Thranduil saw my predicament he spoke a quiet order to the nearest guard, who stooped and lifted Legolas into his arms, ignoring the prince’s screams as he hurried him away into the keep.
Despite my utter faith in our king his removal of his son was what convinced me I was about to leave Firven as the last of our family. I could feel numerous scrapes across my hands and face, a deeper slash across my left eye, another across my ribs. My dress felt shredded around the hems but at least it hadn’t let me down yet. Blood was pooling in the back of my knee from around the buried head of the arrow I had taken.
Yet another hand fisted itself in my tangled hair and yanked my head back farther than it was supposed to go. I lost sight of Thranduil and felt a coarse blade settle across my throat.
“Leave us,” snarled the orc carrying the threat of the knife. “Let us leave unhindered and we’ll drop her at the edge of your forest.”
I could faintly hear the stir of leaves around Thranduil’s feet as he stepped slowly closer. “I do not expect you will leave her in one piece.”
“We might,” the orc spat back. “But we won’t let her live another minute in the presence of you and your—” He shot out a word in their own wretched language.
I heard Thranduil inhale, and sigh.
The ground whispered as two dozen feet abruptly shifted, elven archers lunging out from behind their many hiding places before and above us, and I heard the orcs around me shrieking as the arrows bit their flesh, flinching away and dropping around me. The orc holding me was one of the first struck down, I felt heat flash across the front of my throat as he fell, and I crumpled down as well.
Thranduil thumped to his knees behind me and cupped a hand around my dripping throat as he turned me enough to see my face. My world appeared to be trembling. Thranduil’s hand tightened but I could still feel the blood welling around his fingers. The ground shuddered as guards surrounded us to check the states of the fallen orc raiders and to produce lengths of cloth to press underneath their king’s crimson hand. He sat back as someone began wrapping the fabric around my neck and tightly tying it, and I gasped like a stranded sea creature because I felt like I was drowning. Thranduil’s hand, still wet with my blood, found one of my dirt-smudged ones and held it tightly as it spasmed.
I could breathe but I felt as though I was suffocating. I couldn’t hold a steady thought any more than I could have danced inside an eggshell. As the shaft of the arrow in my knee was broken to make it easier to carry me and I was lifted between several people Thranduil smiled down at me. I heard his words only softly. “You have done well.”
Elves are stronger than any of the other races. I managed to maintain a fragile state of consciousness as various healers spread their hands over my wounds and began to sing. Once, hazily I saw the king’s face, framed with his pale hair, drifting over me, and felt a hand marked by silver rings resting in my hair. Thranduil spent most of his attendance of me looking out the window and listening to the healers as opposed to watching my seams seal back together under their melodic words. The pain was distant, like the frigid air of winter through whorled glass, and for a while I was terrified that meant I was already in the hands of the Valar and they were drawing me away.
But then the pain returned, and I knew I had lived. The healers wiped blood off my hand, my face, and anywhere else they found it, wrapped my wounds in snowy linen, settled me into my bed and left. My brother arrived, and I was not strong enough to stir and tell him I could hear him. Thranduil had briefly left, but he returned to stand in the doorway.
“Your family has done me many great services,” he quietly said, hands clasped behind him.
Firven turned to glower at our king. “I believe it is time we looked after ourselves.”
“You are always at liberty to do so.”
“Release her from your service. She has given you enough of her time and enough of her health.”
Thranduil’s gray eyes turned cold. “You would decide for your sister what you refused to do yourself?”
“Inladris has never been trained or inclined to fight. A life of blood will destroy her.”
“As will being forcibly removed from a position and a child she loves.”
“Your son is old enough not to need her anymore.”
“And what of what your sister needs?”
Firven grit his teeth together. “She needs what is left of her family.”
“Not all family is drawn in blood. If Inladris wishes to leave my service she is comfortable enough with me to request it, and I shall immediately grant it. But I will not release her without her consent.”
(pg43)
> from Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening - Robert Frost