No Home Here

Chapter Five: Human Contact

Estel was cold, wet, and on the brink of tears. He had finally reached a place where he could most likely find shelter: the evasive village that he could vaguely remember from one of his father’s maps.

The foreboding and unlit wooden palisade, however, had proved to be a significantly daunting task. The young man had assumed, from what little prior knowledge of the villages of men that his brothers had chosen to impart on him, that someone would be there to open the gate and let him in.

But when five minutes and several loud thumps against the wooden wall had not shown any sign of a gatekeeper, Estel began to once again lose hope. After coming so close, he doubted that he could turn around and continue to ride up the road. He had already come a good way off of the great road to seek refuge in the small village, and deep in Estel’s young heart he knew that it would be twice as hard to keep going now that he had turned off the road.

Dejectedly, he began to sing a melody that he had heard nearly every night in his youth: a song that his father and even his brothers would hum or sing when nightmares plagued his sleep and rest would not come to the small, shivering human.

The melody floated farther on the night air than Estel could have known, but to him it seemed that the elven words died as soon as they passed his lips: muffled by the falling snow. Unconsciously he began to contemplate digging himself into a snow bank until morning. Estel frowned at this idea: without any extra blankets the night would be a cold, wet one and the young man was already soaked to the bone.

‘For the sake of the valar!’ He thought. “What am I thinking? My clothes are frozen onto my body, it’s so cold that I can’t even breathe out of my nose any more, and I found a village just to be ignored at the gate! Being a bit more cold and wet can’t possibly hurt me any more!’

But the young man bowed his head in defeat as a different voice in his head whispered logic into his ear. ‘But if you go to sleep now, you might never wake up…” The elven song faltered an died on his blue and frozen lips, and suddenly the man’s throat was too dry to force out even the simple notes that would provide comfort to his numb spirit.

A choked sob was wrenched from his young throat, then another, each a harsh, hacking sign of weakness that tore at his heart and brought tears of shame to his eyes at the involuntary show of emotions. Hurriedly he clamped his mouth shut so as to bottle up the sorrow that seemed to be pouring out of his very soul. The thought that he might not live to see his brothers again, nor be held in his father’s strong embrace only helped to increase the strength of his despair, and calling up thoughts of home brought no sorrow to the pitiful young man, only grief.

So preoccupied was he that he was startled back into reality only when Sadron’s whinny pierced the frigid winter air. He brought a quaking hand out of the folds of his cloak to pat his horse once, twice. The animal seemed to be agitated, as if he feared for something, and though Estel did not look up, but suddenly his heightened senses went on full alert, wondering what this new threat could be.

The hand still concealed inside his cloak went automatically to the hilt of the short dagger that he wore on his hip while traveling, loosening the elven blade in its sheathe. Just as he was preparing to raise his head and search the area for whatever was frightening his horse, which now shifted tensely underneath him, he felt a hand on his leg.

Estel’s young mind was suddenly flooded with wave after wave of panic as the boy realized that he had done the unthinkable and allowed someone to sneak up on him unawares. He had broken the major rule of the hunter, the traveler, the warrior, and the elf because he was caught up in his self-pity.

As he raised his head with a snap the man realized that prolonged exposure to the cold had done something to his head, and when he was no longer looking down he felt fluid rushing down from his head. Estel had but a moment to throw a wide- eyed, startled glance at what seemed to be an old man standing with his hand on the child’s own frozen breeches before he heard a great roaring in his ears and the world suddenly went black, blotting out all the snow.

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

The old man was frozen in place, but it had nothing to do with the cold snow that whipped around his bundled-up body. True, after hearing the song and the crying of the little figure the man had expected a child on the horse’s back.

But never had he expected the person he found to be… quite like this. He caught a glimpse of bright silver eyes that were hard and strong-willed before suddenly the child swayed and the bright orbs clouded over in what seemed to be pain. The dark head lolled to the side, and then the entire body of the boy seemed to shudder before going completely limp and crumpling atop the horse.

Startled for the second time that minute, the man quickly reached up and pulled the child from the animal’s back before he could fall and hurt himself. Long, raven hair spilled out from underneath the boy’s cloak and onto the old man’s shoulder, moving like a living liquid as the man attempted to shift the burden in his arms so that the child’s long legs weren’t dragging along the ground.

Readjusting the limp bundle so that he only supported it with one arm, the man used his newly freed limb to push the dark locks out of the child’s face. Gently tucking the strands of hair behind the boy’s ears, he paused for a moment, and then let out a long sigh of relief. He put a finger to the rounded cartilage, reassuring himself with its feel that the child he held was indeed a man.

The long hair and odd garb had had the old man convinced that his newfound charge was of elf-kind. Not that he was an expert on the eldar, but even the little children in the village knew that elves had pointed ears, no exceptions.

The man resumed his task of baring the boy’s face of hair, but after a few moments of this work he began to wish that he had left the locks of dark hair where they lay. The boy’s face was a stark, unearthly hue of white, which was a stark contrast to his hair and long eyelashes. No heat radiated from his body, and his clothes were stiff and covered in ice crystals.

The old man frowned in worry over this odd stranger. ‘No child should ever be this cold.’ He thought, wondering how long the boy had been riding in the horrid weather. All of a sudden he realized that they were still outside the village, with the gate standing wide open and a blizzard raging all around them.

Mentally smacking himself, the old man started back towards the gate, before remembering the handsome horse that stood next to him, snorting with fear and impatience. Grabbing a handful of leather reins in his free hand, the man wiggled his shoulder until the boy’s head was resting safely on it. Once again he started off towards the gate, this time leading an unpredictably well-mannered elven steed and carrying his precious bundle of cold flesh and light cloth.

Once through, he made a beeline for his house, hardly bothering to secure the horse in the neighbor’s stable, and never sparing a thought for the gate that he left swinging in the wind.