The Rescue of Celebrian

Elrond almost didn’t realize what he had slain until a stray drop of thick black blood struck his cheek, but when a second goblin, and then a third, appeared off to his left, a shift of the knees sent Steady after them. A screech told him there were more to his right, but others would take them. The vermin were headed, he was certain, toward his family. He slew as he went, felling two more before, humped ahead of him and to the right, a great oak stood on a hillock, remarkable for it’s girth and the spread of its branches, stinking of goblin blood. And there also, as he rounded the side of the great tree, a gleaming white form he had seen a thousand times before, but had never feared so much, drew his eye.

Elrond watched Elladan lift a cloak from the ground but cried out in dismay and fear when the white shape, the shade that was by some miracle his wife still living, stretched out the knife she held before her. Their sons, one by one, lifted their hands, the horses stamping and whickering greetings as Steady skidded to a stop at their flank.
#

“It is a dream,” she said, looking around her like one lost. “It is a dream. It is a dream. It can be only a dream.” Then she laughed, a mad sound, as Father’s boots scuttled in the leaves. “And look, here is my brave husband come to rescue me. Which are you, then, disguised this way?”

Seeing our state, Father too raised his hands, slipping his knives back into the twin sheaths across his back and moving slowly in our direction. It was as I had feared as we rode, should he see her this way. Between looking at our mother and each other, Elladan and I watched our father’s heart break. Who would fade first, I wondered, Father, Mother or our sister when she learned of all that had passed from Mother’s failed attempt to see her for her two thousandth begetting day?

I was surprised when still more people arrived, though I realized belatedly I should not have been. Father would not ride out without guards. Moments later more arrived from our rear dragging behind them four snarling, slavering orcs tied at wrists and ankles. Mother’s eyes widened as the rescue party grew and finally the blade drooped into Elladan’s waiting hand.

“We are no dream, Mother,” he said softly tossing the knife aside. “See, here, this is my hand,” and gently as he’d always handled the wounded birds and beasts we often found in the forest, he reached again for our mother. I heard Father’s breath catch when she took it, turning it this way and that in her own hands, testing each nail with her own, a look of astonishment on her face. After a moment punctuated by the blowing and stamping of horses, he offered the other, and she studied it with equal shrewdness. My brother hooked his cloak with a booted toe and slid it toward them, leaving his right hand under scrutiny while he lifted it and shook off the leaves as best he could.

“Are you not cold Mother? Here is my cloak. It will warm you,” he crooned and her gaze fell on the swatch of green in his hand.

“Has she been like this all night?” Father asked, and asked too loudly for Mother’s hand stopped in mid-grasp and she froze like a fawn in the meadow, her eyes riveted on him.

“It is a dream,” she murmured, shaking her head, pulling away, then finally running back to the tree and huddling against its trunk, her head in her hands. “No, it is a dream. It is a dream,” she muttered as she rocked, hugging her knees to her chin. “This is not real. This cannot be. I dream.”

“It is a dream, my lady,” a voice said softly. “Yes. You are right. It has been a dream. Just a nightmare. If you will, my lady, I will take you back to your bed. You may finish the night there in peace.”

“Lark? I have… I have dreamed. Horrible, terrible dreams,” our mother said, and her chamber maid took her outstretched hands as though she were a child awake in the night.

“I know, my lady, I know. And you are chilled with the dew. Here, let me slip this over you,” Lark said and dropped her own surcoat over our mother’s shivering frame. “Now then, shall we go home, my lady? I will make you tea to help you sleep.”

“Yes. I should… Wait!” Mother said, pulling away from Lark and turning again toward the tree. “I have almost forgotten the children,” she said, scooping up the pine cone and acorn she had played with through most of our skirmish. Once again she held them up to the light, studying them as minutely as once she scrutinized her embroidery.

“My lady?” Lark said again reaching for her. “The tea?”

“I… yes. Tea. I should like a cup of tea, I should think. It feels as though yenni have passed since I have had your tea.”

“Then perhaps two cups, then,” Lark said, somehow finding the strength to both hoist Mother onto her horse and offer the shell of her Lady a smile.

Four or five of the others rode around them, the women snuggled together on an already tired sorrel that I would personally see had an extra measure of sweetened grain upon my return. But there was more to be done before we could rest. The women and their guards out of sight, our attention turned now to the captive orcs. Looking down on their snarling mouths, their matted hair, my hand twitched. I thought of my knives. So, I saw, did Father.
#

Elrond stood staring at the creatures near his boots for a much longer time than most expected. It came as a shock, then, when he abruptly snatched up the nearest of them and held it dangling at least two hand spans above the forest floor, locking eyes with the beast with a snarl matching its own.

“How many of you are there?” he hissed. The creature smiled, exposing chipped, greenish teeth, and laughed. Only the flash of a blade gave away what happened, but he had dropped the still kicking remains of the first orc and snatched up a second before anyone realized that their lord had just slain the creature. Again he lifted the beast from the litter, slamming it hard against the trunk of an elm.

“How many!”

“More than you could count,” the beast spat before looking down and catching his guts as they were freed of their confines.

“We’ve no need of the others,” Elrond said as coolly as water over stones, his eyes focused somewhere in the distance that no one save he saw. “Pile their bodies with the rest and burn them. Spare the trees. Make the pit very deep. Leave no trace of them. I want them obliterated from the earth.”

“It shall be as you say, Lord,” Storm replied, and already a few had gone to find an appropriate place, while the twins descended on the remaining orcs with shining steel.
#

“Now then, my lady, we’ve returned,” Lark was saying from the dooryard. “We’ll slip to the kitchens now and get you that tea.

A ball of ice in his gut, Erestor hid in the shadows just inside the library balcony while Lark and some of those who had ridden out at dawn motioned the others away on the lower levels. She had returned. She was alive. She was… broken, in body and spirit, it was as plain as the sunlight streaming down through the trees. To Erestor’s tired eyes, it almost seemed as though he could see the leaves of the dooryard ground through her long, slender feet.

“Wait. I… I wish to see the sun,” Celebrian said, looking up. “I have missed the sun.”

“I see,” Lark said, her hand gently stroking Celebrian’s bedraggled hair. “Perhaps, then, we should take our tea on your balcony, over the gardens? Or a bath, instead? I could have a tub taken to your chambers, with your violet soap and warm towels and your dressing gown.”

“A bath, on the balcony,” Celebrian said, turning toward her own chamber. “With tea.”

“As you wish, my lady,” Lark replied, showing no sign of surprise at Celebrian’s request. And so it was that, when Elrond and his sons returned some hours later, the lady had retired to her chamber and the back gardens were closed to all visitors. The Lady was having her bath in the sunlight, on her balcony, and taking tea.

#


“I have not been this exhausted in a yen or more,” my brother said over the door of a sorrel’s stall.

“Nor I,” I replied, fairly itching with the need to bathe away the stench of goblin blood and sweat and horse, but, Blue Girl and Bloodstone came first. Their rubdowns finally complete, my shoulders burned with the effort it took to hang their feed and water buckets on the wall and close the door behind me. Bloodstone found the slices of apple I’d scattered on top of her feed and whuffed, crunching happily. Blue Girl, in the next stall, slurped her water, an ear cocked toward Elrohir and the sorrel across the way.

“Thank you, light one, for carrying my mother safely home,” he said, scratching the sorrel’s neck, while beside me, Blue Girl snorted.

“Jealous,” I teased, patting Blue Girl on the shoulder.

“The pools or tubs?” Elrohir asked, sensing my foray into daydreams of a bath.

“Tub, for me,” I replied. “I have had enough of cold.”

“And not enough of the chamber maid,” he retorted, nearly smiling beneath the layers of dirt that coated our faces.

“I have not had the chamber maid, Brother,” I replied, never too tired to counter his persistent attempts to link me physically with nearly every single maid in Rivendell.

“You need one,” he chuckled, beating my cloak so a cloud of dust rolled up.

“You are no better,” I retorted, combing my hair back from my eyes.

“And yet I will bathe at the pools,” he said. “Not for the cold, but for the quiet.”

“I cannot,” I said simply, and he nodded.

“Until dinner, then.”

We nodded farewell and went our separate directions, my brother picking his armor buckles apart as he walked. My own pinched horribly and I fiddled with my arm guards as I entered the house, finally freeing the left one as the door drifted closed behind me. Someone had ordered fresh rushes for the floor since last we had been home, and the smell of sweet grass floated up from them. Back in the kitchens, dinner was in the making, and roast fowl and sage teased my stomach into growls. Bread was baking, too, and as always the dry smell of old books came down from the library wing, stirred by frequent passage. The only thing missing was the honeysuckle smell of our mother meeting us at the door with a strong embrace and a kiss on the brow. Instead Niphredil stood looking down the staircase, a smile on her face, but sadness in her eyes.

“You have returned, as you promised,” she said descending with an outstretched hand.

“I have.”

“And your mother is home, safe,” she said, her hand in mine, squeezing lightly.

“She is.”

“You need a bath,” Niphredil continued, her delicate nose wrinkled. And finally, I smiled.