No Home Here

Chapter Six: A Stranger’s Healing

Estel woke up to a falling sensation: a short, controlled drop made somewhat gentler by a pair of old hands and cushioned by a warm quilt. His body felt oddly detached, yet he could still feel it shudder and tremble violently.

His teeth bumped against each other, an annoying chattering noise coming from them as they clacked together. The boy’s head spun even though he lay still, and his breathing came harsh and laboriously. Slowly he pieced together what had happened in his last few moments of unconsciousness, and verified his story with a glimpse of the face of the old man leaning over him.

Cautiously he opened his eyes all the way, and then bit his lower lip to keep from crying out. Circulation was finally coming back to his fingers in a rush, but not without the painful feeling of being jabbed with hot dagger points. If he could have seen his face its unnatural pallor would have startled him, but he could tell that the man standing over him was greatly concerned over something.

Estel briefly wondered who his rescuer was, but was quickly distracted. A moan was forced from his lips when the man placed what felt like searing hot hands on his numb face. The young man watched a flicker of concern pass over the old man’s craggy face. The man didn’t seem to understand how much his touch hurt, for he brought his other hand up and held both sides of the young man’s face for a moment before he moved his fingers up to put pressure on the young man’s eyelids.

Estel trembled violently as he felt his eyes being closed with exaggerated care by the old man’s calloused hands. He heard something being said in what he recognized as Westron, and then the scorching hot touch left his face and his body was covered partially by the other half of the quilt that he was lying on top of.

The shadow of the old man receded, and through the ear not pressed against the bed Estel could hear the door to the hut being opened. A violent burst of frigid air swept through the small room, ruffling the pages of an overturned book and causing the young man on the bed to clamp his eyes shut as if the grip of death itself was upon him. As tremors continued to wreak havoc across his slender frame, he wondered how long the old man would be absent, and where he had gone to in the first place.

Estel had no idea what the town was like, nor was he even sure whether or not its inhabitants were friendly to the eldar. He hoped fervently that they were: if not, his hairstyle and speech could cause some tense situations.

Lord Elrond had recently started him on Westron, but even though he was an eager pupil, Estel rarely found time in his schedule between other instruction and his lengthy weapons and technique practices.

In what little time the young man and his father had managed to find for the language, Estel had worked diligently, yet it was his second language. Many a lecture had been given by his father on the importance of knowing Middle Earth’s standard language, but so far the man had never actually needed to use the language.

Now, as he lay shivering on a stranger’s bed, he vehemently wished that he knew more than how to introduce himself and ask the directions to the nearest inn. To take his mind off of his frozen body, Estel rolled over onto his side and opened one eye to scan the hut into which he had been taken.

He assumed that it belonged to the old man who had found him outside the gate, but anything further than that was a mystery to his young mind. The hut was actually rather nice, with quilts hung upon the walls and a comfortable-looking armchair in front of the hearth. The fire itself was stale, and seemed to Estel to give off little warmth.

As he watched the minute flames flicker closer and closer to the log in the grate, the young man’s elven-trained senses heard footsteps coming up to the door. When he hurriedly concentrated on the sounds, he was confident that there were, in fact, two sets of feet that were slogging their way through the heavy snow. Swiftly he turned back over so that he was on his back again with his eyes closed.

He was wary of men: he hadn’t had much experience with them apart from the few times he had gone out with his brothers to meet the rangers. But this was different: the rangers spoke his language and were friendly with his brothers and father. Here the young man had no clue whether the men would aid him or attack him.

Estel held his breath as the door creaked open and another rush of snowy air swirled around the small hut. Sure enough, he could hear the breathing of two men as they came in and shut the door behind them, stomping snowy boots on the doorstep to dislodge most of the slushy substance.

The swishing of material alerted Estel to the fact that they were removing their cloaks, and then with a few clunking steps there were two shadows falling over him. Hesitantly, the young man opened his eyes and looked at the faces looming above him.

The old man was back, along with another man, a burly-looking redhead with a prolific beard and beady green eyes. Without warning, the newcomer reached under the quilt covering Estel and caught the boy’s left arm that had been lying limply next to his body.

The young man flinched and tensed under the other’s sturdy grip, but the man took no notice and instead began to feel up and down Estel’s strong arm. When the boy frowned in disproval the redhead simply laughed and rattled off a string of words in what the boy assumed to be Westron.

Taking a shaky breath, Estel prepared a sentence that Lord Elrond had assured him was appropriate in any situation: “I d-do not speak much of y-your language.” Estel stammered out through chattering teeth, hoping that he had gotten the order of the words correct. This caused the two men standing to look at each other before breaking out into hysterical laughter.

The redhead dropped Estel’s arm and the old man nodded to the stranger before walking over and settling into the armchair by the fire, where Estel correctly assumed that he had been sitting before venturing out to allow the young man admittance to the village.

The other man pulled a short stool from under the bed and then perching on its small seat. This brought him down to about eye level with Estel, who accordingly turned over on his left side, rotating his newly freed wrist. The other man brought his face up to the boy’s, and spoke slowly. “What is your name, young one?”

With a slight wince as the limits of his Westron knowledge was tested, the young man responded with the customary “Estel, and yours?”

The elder smiled. “Gerte is my name. Where do you live that you do not speak the language of men, Estel? Estel struggled with the context for a moment before he worked out the general idea of the question.

“In Rivendell,” He said shortly. “With the elves.” With that Gerte blanched visibly, but quickly composed himself before once again looking down on Estel, but this time with a new appreciation in his eyes.

There was a lengthy pause, which was interrupted when Estel’s body began to spasmodically shake with the cold. Since his body produced no heat, and the dying fire gave off very little, the quilt on top of him was no help to the young man’s cause.

Gerte frowned, but then stood up and moved over to the corner of the hut where a thin door led to what seemed to be a closet. The large man pulled out several folded blankets, which he carried over to the bedside. Brusquely he pulled the quilt off of Estel’s shivering body and let it drop in a heap on top of the others.

He scooped the thin form of the young man off of the now bare bed, and let his feet dangle on the floor while he half-supported Estel with a vice-like arm around his chest. The younger man began to struggle violently against the grip that was crushing his chest and cutting off his oxygen, but Gerte only chuckled and commenced to wrap Estel in the quilt as one might wrap a sausage in a piece of bread.

Now coughing violently in an involuntary attempt to remove whatever was obstructing his air, Estel was deposited back on the bed, having only a brief second’s respite before being cocooned in three other blankets Gerte had produced.

Now fully unable to move his limbs, the young man began to panic over his situation. The years of healer’s training he had received under the tutoring of Lord Elrond and his twin brothers jumped to the forefront of his mind, and Estel tried to pull up the memories of anything he had ever been taught about people exposed to the cold for too long.

He could recall his father telling him to remove any wet clothing, Elladan reminding him that blankets would be useless until the person was out of danger of hypothermia, and Elrohir teasing him when he asked how to treat an elf with frostbite. For some reason he could remember something about soup and tea, and recollect a very early memory of his father bending over a bed and rubbing the limbs of a stiff and blue-lipped patient.

Estel frowned as he tried to roll onto his stomach, much to the annoyance of Gerte. Clucking like a hen, the big man pinned Estel’s light frame to the bed. Seeing the boy’s scowl, the redhead shook his head in amusement.

“You just rest, little Estel. Warm up and keep old Sam company: he should like that, the old goat!” Estel shook his head, which was the only free part of his body, vehemently: not understanding most of the words spoken, but still understanding the gist of what he was being told. He could tell that Gerte was leaving and he was to stay put.

‘No!’ He wanted to shout. ‘Don’t leave me stuck here like this, I will never get warm!’ The big man stood patiently, seeming to expect something, and so Estel, for lack of any better words, forced out “Hannon Le,” ‘Thank you,’ in his own language.

Gerte nodded gravely, looking for all the world as if he understood every word the boy said, and then retrieved his coat and walked out the door to be swallowed up by the night. A shivering Estel was left alone in wet clothes and increasingly soggy blankets, alone with a snoring old man in a drafty hut in the middle of nowhere. And that night, the young man cried himself to sleep.