It is one of the bad days. The shadows that are always present
in the corners of the twilight room are not thick and sluggish as usual
- but fast and flitting, hungry and ready to pounce at any moment. Gareth
sees these shadows dart over his uncle's face, turning his grey eyes
into the pits of ink-black darkness.
The silence is frail and ringing, having a sound of its
own. Gareth's father uses his fork and knife with extreme precision,
dividing food on his plate into unbelievably neat portions, but barely
puts anything into his mouth. He doesn't look up but his eyelids tremble
unceasingly as if it takes him an effort to keep himself from looking.
Atanar, the only one who isn't affected by the atmosphere,
fidgets on his high chair and dangles his foot in the air with boredom.
Gareth feels almost envious to his little brother for his ignorance.
He tries to focus on the taste of what he's eating but it's hopeless,
it tastes like nothing.
Uncle Boromir's plate is empty but it is to be expected.
His hair is falling over his face, strands dull and tangled. On a good
day his hair looks shiny and smooth, neatly falling to his shoulders
but not now. His hand shakes a little as he raises it and pulls another
strand over his eyes. His gaze is distant, strange and hazy, and it
seems he doesn't see the cozy, warmly lit room in front of him but something
dark and wrong and haunting.
Gareth has been seeing signs of it coming for days by now;
but there was nothing he could do, just like his father could do nothing,
and he would have done if only he could, Gareth knows it. Gareth can
be only seven but there are things he understands very clearly, without
having to ask questions or waiting for explanations. He knows there
is nothing his father wants more desperately than 'it' never coming
again. And he knows that every time it passes, his father hopes, despite
everything, that it was the last time. Even if uncle Boromir doesn't
hope for it.
Boromir's hands, with strong long fingers and heavy veins,
are playing with a fruit knife. It is a flicker of gold in the shadows,
and Gareth feels almost bound to looking at it. And at the next moment,
with the same absentminded, casual motion, the blade goes into Boromir's
hand, into the heel of his palm. Boromir doesn't flinch. Nothing changes
in his face but the knife keeps sawing, going deeper, and trickles of
quick, scarlet blood start dripping onto the dark wood of the table.
Gareth's father whips his head up, and there is a momentary
grimace of distress on his face.
"Boromir," he says with reproach. It seems
the anguish in his voice reaches his brother, even when nothing else
does, and Boromir drops the knife on the plate with a clattering sound.
His look is almost helpless. Gareth can see spreading edges of the wound,
red and gaping, the palm opened almost to the bone. He's nearly used
to the things like that, they don't rattle him any more like in the
beginning.
Besides, he must not show that it upsets him, he thinks,
because it might upset his father even more. Atanar looks at the red
rivulets with his mouth slightly opened and the expression of total
fascination. He's just recently discovered mortality of things and is
morbidly intrigued with everything gory and damaged, can look at a dead
bird for hours.
"Now you certainly made this dinner more pleasant
for us all," Gareth's father says with a chuckle. Gareth knows
he does it deliberately, keeping his voice light as if it is some kind
of a joke, nothing serious - even if his face is pale and his lips quiver
and compress tightly.
"Faramir..." Boromir says as if in surprise
- as if finding himself not where he expected to be. He looks at the
running blood blankly. "I'm sorry."
"And shouldn't you be?" Faramir sighs but
there is gentleness in his voice. He gets up from his place and pulls
out a big white handkerchief. Boromir looks at his face with almost
childish fascination as Faramir takes his hand and wraps it in a white
cloth.
Gareth can see that his father's touches are as light and
gentle as when he cleans and wraps the cut and bruises he and Atanar
get - and even gentler, as if he's afraid that his movements might scare
his brother off. Uncle Boromir looks at him through the messy, uncombed
strands of hair, his eyes with expanded pupils almost entirely black.
The haziness in them steps away but only slightly.
"Here," Faramir says and cradles the wrapped
hand in his palms for a moment. "That's better, isn't it?"
"Yes," Boromir says in a small, obedient
voice. "That's better."
But Gareth knows it isn't better - and won't be for days
yet, until 'it' passes, as inevitably as it comes. And before that there
will be a locked room in the end of the corridor where Gareth and Atanar
are forbidden to go, and even so he still will hear screaming from there,
and wild clanking of chains. And in the end his father will stay there
with Boromir for days, coming only now and then, nearly reeling with
exhaustion, his face ashen. And the shadows will be strong and alive
and hungrier than ever. And later Gareth will see the strips of raw
skin on uncle Boromir's wrists, the traces that will stay even after
everything is over and he will be smiling a happy, relieved, easy smile.
Gareth remembers the time when the world consisted only
of his mother, his father and him. His mother was so fair that her hair
seemed to change color with the light that fell on it, golden in the
sun and silver in the dusk. Her hands were callused, almost as much
as Gareth's father's, and very hot when she cupped them around Gareth's
cheeks and looked into his eyes, sitting on the floor with him.
They lived in Ithilien then, and everything around was green
and bright, and even rocks of the mountains seemed alive. Gareth remembered
how his feet got tangled in the soft, clingy grass as he toddled after
Bergil who laughed and called back for him.
Then Atanar appeared, first as a small, red, screaming creature
that his mother pressed to her chest and his father eyed with pride
and happiness that Gareth couldn't understand. He considered his little
brother rather boring; Bergil was much more fun, big and strong and
knowing so many stories.
But his mother used to take Gareth on her lap and let Gareth
hold his brother's pudgy but very tenacious fingers, and finally Atanar
became a part of his world as well, and Gareth accepted it. He even
admitted that, when Atanar started walking and it was possible to take
him along, he was not so bad to have around.
"You see," he heard his mother saying to
his father once, "I told you they'd get along. I bet your brother
didn't fall in love with you instantly either."
"Aye, I was told he said I looked like a toad."
There was a slightly rueful smile in his father's eyes and voice. "And
squealed like a cat."
His mother laughed, and then grew serious again, saying
so quietly that Gareth barely could discern the words and hardly understood
their meaning:
"Don't worry, I know you won't make a mistake
like your father. You're quite capable of loving as many of them as
there will be."
And Gareth's father smiled, and his mother took his hand
and put it onto her belly, and they both had that strange expression
of conspiracy and connection between them.
Their house was light, the windows huge and open for the
better part of the year, the wind making the curtains fly in and out.
Gareth remembered watching his mother from one of these windows as she
and his father sparred in the yard, swords clanking and his mother's
breath coming in loud gasps.
Gareth thinks shadows appeared for the first time when his
father started coming down in the morning with black circles around
his eyes and looking ill and unhappy, and the motions of his hands became
twitchy and imprecise as if he didn't know what he touched and why.
"Dreams," Gareth heard his mother say. "Dreams,"
Beregond and his wife, Ignia, whispered to each other and shared a strange
look, half-disbelieving, half-desperate. Bergil only shrugged and didn't
want to explain anything, no matter how many times Gareth asked.
Then one day his father left, and a small frown set between
his mother's eyebrows as she stood on the porch and looked at the path
leading through the mountains. And she spent many days like that, looking
and waiting, and there was something strange in her gaze, something
anxious and unsure. She'd never looked unsure before, Gareth thought.
But she wasn't on the porch on that sunset when Gareth's
father came back bringing another man on his horse. The man looked wild
and strange and his hair, brown and grey, reached far past his shoulders.
His pale hand with dirty, broken fingernails clutched on Faramir's cloak
and, when he dismounted, the flaps of the cloak parted, and Gareth saw
tattered, almost falling apart rags of his clothes.
He remembered a sharp intake of breath Beregond took when
seeing the man, and Ignia started crying, and his father was pale as
death and his lips twitched a little as if he was not sure what he wanted
to do, smile or cry, as he held his arm around the newcomer with an
almost defiant protective gesture.
"Mordor," Gareth heard a hushed conversation
of adults, and: "Six years." And, exhausted with Gareth's
nagging, Bergil finally gushed in a quick, hot whisper:
"Don't you know? It's your father's brother.
Everyone thought he was dead but he wasn't. Or maybe he was. And came
back. Some say it's a bad sign, something bad is coming with him. Someone
has to pay for it."
There was something strained in his mother's eyes since
then, and the little frown was never gone from her forehead. She didn't
talk much, and her palms that still cupped around Gareth's cheeks were
getting colder with every day.
And once his father, his eyes glittering feverishly and
a ringing note of rejoicing in his voice, said to her:
"But what could I do? Just leave him there?"
And she answered, her eyes just as flashing as his but not
with joy:
"Why do you ask me now? You've already done everything."
The newcomer's name was Boromir. Gareth saw him again a
few days later, his long hair cropped shorter and his clothes neat and
decorated with the White Tree. He looked at Gareth and Atanar and then
smiled, his smile bright and so much like Faramir's, and squatted to
be on the same level with Atanar, and asked him something about his
pony, and the games he played, and Gareth listened apprehensively at
first. But later something about Boromir started getting into his heart.
Boromir was as good with sword and as good a rider as their
father; and he never turned Atanar or Gareth down when they wanted to
tell him something. And sometimes in his father's eyes turned to Boromir
Gareth saw an expression that he'd only seen directed at him and Atanar
before: as if they were something impossibly valuable to him. As if
he was afraid to look away because this valuable thing could be stolen
once he didn't look.
Ignia told them they were going to have a brother or a sister
very soon. Gareth thought it had to be the reason why his mother seldom
left her room any more. At first he wasn't sure he liked the thought
of another little, yelling creature but then decided generously that
Atanar might as well find out what it was to be a big brother.
Only everything went wrong. He remembered Bergil taking
them for a long walk, and then for a dinner at Beregond's place, and
when they finally went back home, already after dark, there were strange
people there and strange smells. The door of his mother's bedroom opened
and a woman rushed out with a bundle of bloodied sheets in her hands,
and for a moment Gareth heard a quiet, feeble moan that made him feel
as if something turned into a stone and dropped in his chest when he
realized it was the voice of his mother.
There was no brother or sister. In the morning their father
came to their room, his face under wildly messed hair looking old and
pale, and his hands were freezing cold, and he hugged them with desperate
passion, as if something was trying to wrench them out of his arms.
And Gareth knew, knew even though no one had told him, that his world
dwindled instead of expanding, and now there were only three of them.
Then uncle Boromir walked in, his steps surprisingly quiet
for someone so big and angular, and his strong arms wrapped around their
father and both of them, holding them tightly, and it was when his father,
his face buried against Gareth's collarbone, let out short, painful
sobs. Boromir's eyes, dark-grey and sad, met Gareth's gaze over Faramir's
shoulder, and Gareth clenched his fists hard enough to draw blood, struggling
with his tears and failing eventually.
Everything changed. He wanted his mother back. No one has
ever left his world before.
His mother was so pale and her face so small under the golden
band holding her hair. The armor covered her chest, shining dully, and
a sword lay at her side in the coffin.
"Shieldmaiden," Gareth heard, and: "Wraithbane."
And hundreds of people he'd never seen before stood around her grave,
tears running on their cheeks.
And two days later, in the big hall of their house, mother's
brother, uncle Éomer , his face red with wine and anger, yelled at Gareth's
father.
"The Dark Rider couldn't kill her but you managed
it! You paid with her life for the abomination you brought with you!
From the land of the dead - and now she's gone there in his stead."
"It was not an exchange!" His father's voice
was harsh but there was something akin to panic in his eyes. "There
was never any price to pay, you know nothing what you're talking about..."
"I know what I need to know - you ruined her.
You ruined her by bringing this dead man with you, you murderer!"
They left Ithilien. Gareth said good-byes to Bergil who
suddenly broke in tears and repeated again and again: "Why, why
can't you stay?"
"It is only temporary," Ignia said but hesitation
in her eyes did nothing to comfort Bergil and reassure Gareth. "The
land will always belong to your father and to you after him. It's just
that now too many people see things that are not true. Besides,"
she added softly, "maybe the place where he's grown up will be
better for Boromir."
And so they left, Gareth and Atanar in the carts and Faramir
and Boromir on the horses, and Bergil, whose father stayed in Faramir's
stead, followed them with his eyes and waved till the hills hid him
from Gareth's view.
Minas Tirith was huge. Scary and beautiful from afar, and
a labyrinth of stone streets inside, and as they entered it and rode
level after level, Gareth was sure he would never find his way in it.
There were people in the streets, and they stared and said something
to each other, and Gareth saw the tension of his father's shoulders
while Boromir seemed oblivious to them, looking around eagerly.
Gareth missed everything terribly first days. He missed
his mother, the thought of leaving her behind, in the cold earth, never
seeing her again was simply unbearable sometimes. He was too old to
weep and call for her as Atanar did, even if it sometimes seemed to
him it would make things better if he could do it.
He missed Bergil, and he missed grass, and everything seemed
unknown and hostile to him - at least till Boromir found them huddled
in their room and took them outside, showed them places and secret passages.
"Not so much changed here, after all," he
said thoughtfully, pushing his hair away from his face, and his gaze,
distant, for once wasn't as disturbed as it sometimes could be. "It's
almost strange how little changed."
It was Boromir they mostly saw during those first weeks
when their father was taking up his new responsibilities in the city
and came home shivering with tiredness and almost had no strength for
more than a weak smile to Gareth and Atanar.
Their quarters were in the tower, not far from the King's.
The Queen invited them from time to time to play with her son, The Little
One, as he was usually called. He was twice younger than Atanar, big
and silent, with very serious dark blue eyes.
The Queen was beautiful, and gentle, and her palms as she
cupped them around Gareth's cheeks were soft and cool, so unlike his
mother's. And the King, who Gareth saw a few times, was tall and beautiful,
and there was something sad in his eyes as he looked at Gareth and his
brother.
As weeks go by, things start settling down. The city doesn't
look so intimidating to Gareth any more. At least he knows the tower
and its surroundings quite well, has explored almost everything there.
His father seems to handle his position well and doesn't look so exhausted
any more. He again reads to Gareth and Atanar, and wrestles with them,
and listens to what they tell him.
Uncle Boromir works under their father's command. Gareth
knows their father insisted on it being the other way round but he probably
knows himself it is not possible. Not with bad days coming so regularly.
When 'it' happens, there is no going out, no carrying out his duties,
just the locked room and unceasing shadows coming closer and closer.
On good days Boromir teaches them sword fighting, and wrestling,
and helps Gareth mount the horse for the first time, and he smiles easily,
and his face despite his hair being half-grey seems very young in its
fascination.
Sometimes they sit on the carpet at the fireplace, listening
to a story Boromir tells them. And then Gareth sees his father look
at them, and there is gentleness, and pride, and sadness in his eyes.
And Gareth's heart clenches, because he knows what maybe no one else
knows. His father is afraid; afraid that something in his world gets
broken again, someone of them will leave like Gareth's mother left -
and then he wouldn't be able to bear it.
His father is fragile in this fear, even more fragile than
little Atanar, than Boromir with the shadows always so close. And Gareth
feels wrenching pity and vows to never leave, to protect this world
that his father has built for himself and for them and that makes him
happy.
"Don't you touch him," the nursemaid says,
her bottom lip sticking out. Gareth lets The Little One out of his arms
and looks up at her. Her face is crumpled as if she's eaten something
sour and there is no mirth in her eyes. She isn't joking, she means
it. "You filthy brat."
She says it in a hiss, the words feeling like a slap, and
something tightens in Gareth's chest.
"What is it, Madine?" The Little One's mentor
looks at her in surprise. "What did the boy do to you?"
"Filthy, filthy," she mutters, the word
leaving her lips with sparkles of spittle. "Who knows what he can
pick up at home, what he sees there. I wouldn't let him come up to our
Prince for a hundred steps."
"Careful," the man says pointing at Gareth
who stands with his fists clenched, fury bubbling in him. He doesn't
understand everything that happens, just that this woman is saying something
terribly unfair. "Their father is the Steward, after all. You'll
be in trouble if they complain."
Sometimes grown-ups talk in his presence as if he's deaf
or dumb, Gareth knows it. He really wants to find the right words, to
answer them, but he doesn't know what to say. Blood pounds in his ears.
"Unnatural," the woman cuts the man short.
"I don't know why the King allows it in our city. This evil, the
man who was dead... and just to think that the Steward himself brings
this danger onto us! But then there always were rumors they were closer
than brothers should be..."
"Maybe it's just rumors," the man says warily.
"His own brother... What are you staring at?"
she snaps, looking at Gareth. "Leave, both of you, it's time for
the Prince to have a nap."
"It's not the children's fault, even if their
father and uncle..." the man starts.
"Whatever," the woman huffs.
The Little One looks up at Gareth with his serious, very
attentive eyes and suddenly reaches his arms up and makes an insistent,
loud noise, demanding to be picked up.
The boy is older than Gareth, tall and lanky and dressed
in a heavily embroidered tunic and velvet pants. His father is an important
man at the court, Gareth knows, he's seen him several times from afar
but it is the first time he sees him so close. The boy's hand lies with
a possessive gesture on the flank of the grey stallion - as if the horse
is his property. And it is not so - Aster belongs to the King's stables
but Gareth has a permission to feed him and sometimes ride, under someone's
supervision. He isn't going to ride him now, he has a history lesson
in half an hour. But Atanar picked a few carrots and sugar cubes in
the kitchen, and Gareth let himself be persuaded that it was as good
time as any to feed Aster.
The boy looks down his nose at Gareth and keeps talking
with his company of friends. But when Atanar comes up with sugar in
his palm and tries to bring it to the horse's soft lips, he suddenly
pushes Atanar away.
"The horse doesn't need your stupid treats."
Atanar looks up, his huge eyelashes flopping up and down,
and says, as it is his habit recently:
"You stinky."
"Shut your mouth, you little worm."
"You better shut yours," Gareth steps forward,
his eyes burning and his fists clenched. One of the boy's companions
whispers something in the boy's ear.
"Steward's?" The boy's thin, as if plucked
out eyebrows rise. "Ah so. My father says it's the biggest mistake
of our King to allow these perverts in his service at all, still less
let them live here! They would burn at the stake even twenty years ago."
Gareth doesn't know what 'perverts' means, just that it's
something very vile. Like 'cowards', maybe? Or 'evil spirit' - he heard
this word once or twice, thrown at Boromir from the crowd, and Gareth's
father flinched while Boromir's shoulders just stiffened. Or maybe it's
something like 'murderer', as uncle Éomer called their father...
Gareth flings himself at the boy, all claws and teeth and
fists. He even forgets those clever moves that Boromir taught him last
month. There is only fury in him, animal-like and uncontrollable.
Later there is a long explanation with the boy's father
who seethes and recounts: "Boosted lip... both eyes blackened..."
He demands an apology but Gareth only looks at him from under disheveled
hair and sucks blood from his cut lip.
When the man finally leaves, father and uncle tend Gareth's
scratches and bruises. His father looks stern and stops Boromir when
he says in excitement: "The boy is thirteen, just think about it,
brother. Nearly twice his age!"
"Don't give him a notion that he's done something
he should be proud of," his father says but his hands cleaning
Gareth's split knuckles never fail to be gentle. "Will you explain
finally what it was all about?" he asks.
"About nothing," Gareth repeats and sends
Atanar a threatening look forbidding saying a word. His father sighs.
"Come on, brother, don't pry," Boromir says.
It is a bright spring day as his father and Boromir mount
their horses. Atanar holds the reins, nearly hanging on them, looking
up at Boromir and chanting:
"When will you come back? When will you come
back? I don't want you to go..."
Gareth is older, he doesn't allow himself to behave as childishly
but he feels deserted and lonely. He knows it won't be long, two days
at most, and there is nothing dangerous in this trip, no orcs prowling
around as it had been before he was born. But there is some fear in
him of being left behind, the fear that he doesn't want to admit but
that still makes him feel very down.
He bites his lip and digs the ground with the toe of his
boot.
"Look, Faramir..." Boromir says softly,
biting a strand of his longish hair. His eyes are light and laughing
and there are almost no shadows in them. "Why can't we..."
"We can't," Faramir answers sharply, even
before he finishes. Gareth starts wiggling in his place, despite himself.
Boromir shakes his head and says again:
"But why?"
"Don't even think."
Gareth grows really restless now because he knows - or thinks
he knows - what they're talking about. Can it be? Can uncle Boromir
really suggest... but their father won't agree... but if uncle Boromir
insists... Gareth knows their father can never, never deny him anything.
"What harm can it do?"
"Gareth cannot miss his lessons," Faramir
says strictly, and Gareth feels as if the air is whooshed out of him.
Boromir looks at him, a smile wandering on his lips, then at Faramir,
and then he reaches and pulls Atanar up to the saddle.
"Then we can take Atanar," he says, "he
doesn't have any lessons."
And Gareth feels as if his world is falling apart, despair
overflowing him. Life can't be so unfair, it just can't be. In one split
second he already can see them - his father, Boromir and Atanar - leaving,
and him staying alone, with his lessons, and the world is empty and
cold around him.
Then he feels his father's gaze on himself and raises his
head. His lips tremble but he tells himself he must not cry, he's not
a baby, and somehow he manages to keep tears from leaking out.
"Oh dear," his father says softly and leans
down to him. "Come here, Igareth. Come."
He takes his father's hand, still not quite out of the chasm
of his despair - and only when he's taken up into the saddle and feels
his father's hard chest against his back, Gareth finally believes his
luck.
"It was not very noble of you, Boromir,"
Faramir says with reproach. Boromir just laughs.
"I knew you wouldn't bear seeing one of them
miserable, brother," he says, spurring the horse.
The wind is sharp blowing in Gareth's face but his back
feels so warm, protected with his father's chest. The white stones of
the streets flit under them with frightening speed. He can see people
stop and look at them.
"Hello people," Atanar shrieks excitedly
and waves like mad. Some smile and wave back at him. As they ride out
of the gates, Gareth settles against his father and feels warm and comfortable
and happy.
When their tasks are done, they stop on the green clearing.
The grass is soft, young and green and looks exactly as Gareth remembers
it from Ithilien, even if his feet don't get tangled in it any more.
After the better half of the day in the saddle he's quite sore - he
didn't know it would be like that - but he'd better bite off his tongue
than complain.
They eat, and Atanar nods off with a piece of cheese squeezed
in his hand. When he slumps against Boromir's side, Boromir chuckles
and puts him down, wrapping him in his cloak carefully. Atanar smacks
his lips but doesn't wake up.
Gareth himself feels very full and tired, and contented.
His eyelids grow heavy as he listens to the gentle rustle of the nearby
stream.
"I'd like to freshen up a little. And you?"
Boromir says in a hushed voice.
"The water must be icy," Faramir answers.
Dozing off, Gareth hears Boromir get up, his leather armor rustling
faintly. Gareth's eyes break open to see him walk to the brook and remove
his breastplate, then pull off the shirt.
In the bright light of the spring sun scars stand out on
his chest and back sharply. Scars are not new for Gareth - his father
has quite a few of them, from a dart of a Nazgûl, and the King had to
save his life after that (Gareth loves this story), and some faint white
scars criss-crossing his back - his mother said once it was his grandfather's
cane that left them... for Gareth it's difficult to imagine, their father
never hit him, even when he took Atanar for a walk and they got lost
and townsmen only brought them back after dark.
Boromir's scars are different, looking jagged and disfiguring,
as if the wounds they cover are chasms to another world. Bergil's words
come back to Gareth, almost forgotten: "Everyone thought he was
dead..."
He watches with sleepy eyes as Boromir scoops handfuls of
water, splashing on his face and chest. The muscles roll under the pale
skin, shifting the scars. Next to him, Gareth hears a barely audible
intake of breath of his father, and then Faramir gets up and walks up
to his brother.
Boromir turns back and smiles, and Faramir's arms wrap around
him, from behind, pulling Boromir to his chest.
They stand like that, his father still clothed and Boromir
shirtless, Faramir's arms around him, and even from his place Gareth
can see how tightly his arms are clutched - hugging, cradling his brother.
And his father's face is buried in Boromir's hair, and there is no word
they say, no sound they make. Gareth falls asleep with them still standing
like that, close and quiet.
He always knew that there were dreams. Special dreams that
his father had, and his grandfather before him, and it was going on
in the family of Stewards generation after generation - past, present
or future revealed to them.
Yet when it comes to him, he isn't prepared at all. What
he sees, he knows somehow, is something that already happened - and
it is something so frightening that Gareth feels as if his heart rends
under the pressure and bleeds, and he can't stand it any longer, it's
killing him.
His dream about greed and pride and a horrible mistake,
and breaking of the vow, and desperate attempts to make up for it. He
hears swords clashing, and terrible pain pierces his body again and
again until he falls, falls into the darkness.
But the darkness is not the end, and it is worst of all.
There is scarlet flame, and pain again, and horrible faces look down
at him. And he wants it to be over, to be free but he knows he doesn't
deserve it. There is no way to go, and then he retreats deeper into
his mind, and it shreds, and shadows come but the terrible scarlet flame
never goes away...
Gareth screams, his arms flailing, getting caught in the
blanket, and he thinks it is chains that hold him, like the chains in
his dream - or is it the chains he sometimes needs now, to keep him
from harming himself... Scream gets caught in his throat, chokes him.
There is no air but he still screams, soundlessly, and then it is all
gone.
He comes round to a cool wet cloth sliding over his face.
The room is lit with warm, orange light of candles. Gareth's head lies
on his father's lap and his hand pushes away Gareth's hair from his
face. Uncle Boromir runs the wet cloth over his forehead. On the other
bed Atanar sits hugging his knees and staring at Gareth with fascinated
owlish eyes.
Gareth takes a convulsive breath and clutches on something
closest to him, which happens to be Boromir's hand. There are no abrasions
from the chains on Boromir's wrists now, it's been nearly a month and
a half since the last time 'it' happened. But Gareth remembers it too
well. He remembers how the darkness and the fire were so close to him
in his dream and he had nowhere to run from them but to madness.
Boromir doesn't stop wiping his face, and the thumb of his
hand strokes Gareth's hand softly.
As he lies there and breathes, the dream seems to step away
from him little by little, fading, becoming almost unreal. But when
Gareth meets Boromir's eyes, dark in the dim room, he understands that
Boromir knows what he saw.
"So, it started," Gareth's father says,
and his palm caressing Gareth's head is so gentle.
"It won't be so bad after a while," Boromir
says, "you know it. The first time is the most difficult."
"I just hoped," Faramir says, "that
he'll have a little more time."
Gareth meets Boromir's eyes - the eyes that sometimes are
so laughing and bright - and so hazy, alien and suffering on other days;
and he knows that whatever it is, he won't ever forget what he saw.
The edge of Boromir's hand curls against Gareth's cheek,
and it's warm and careful, and as pacifying as his father's fingers
combing his hair.
He feels so warm between those hands, and as he looks up,
he sees his father and his uncle look at each other - and there is silent,
wordless but oh-so-strong connection between them.
Sometimes it seems to Gareth that the whole world consists
only of four of them - his father, uncle Boromir, Gareth and Atanar,
and it is so perfectly symmetrical this way, just as it has to be. And
they can live their whole life not needing anyone else, seeing their
reflections in each other's eyes.
But sometimes it seems to him the world is even smaller,
separating his father and Boromir from everyone else, and it is for
them that no one else exists. And he, Gareth, is standing on the verge
of this world, pressing his palms to the glass wall and trying to reach
them and failing.
It is an early morning, the sun blinding bright pouring
through the tall windows of the arcade. Atanar's bare feet are a distant
padding along the corridor. He has advantage over Gareth, and the bursts
of his laughter reach Gareth from afar.
"Quiet, you silly baby," he mutters, "everyone's
still asleep."
He doesn't get in time. Atanar pushes the heavy door with
both hands - and runs into their father's bedroom.
"You're wake, you're wake, I know you are..."
Gareth is on the threshold of the room when Atanar is already
inside. The curtains are drawn together, and there is only a thin strip
of light breaking in, with dancing particles of dust in it. Their father
raises his disheveled head from the pillow, his eyes puffy with sleep.
"Atanar, what hap..."
"He's just come to keep us company," Boromir
says lazily, turning onto his back. His eyes are sleepy but lucid, the
shadows in them so distant they seem almost completely gone. He stretches
and pushes longish strands of brown-grey hair away from his eyes. "Come
here, little man."
Atanar jumps onto the bed and crawls to straddle Boromir's
chest.
"So, have you waken everyone on your way?"
Boromir asks and bounces him a little, making Atanar giggle.
Gareth leans against the doorjamb, drawing up one of his
feet - the stone floor is cold. He smiles; his father smiles as well,
looking through the messy strands of hair at his brother. His gaze is
tender and warm and protective, and there is something vulnerable in
it that it makes Gareth feel a little sad.
"Can you imagine either of us barging into our
father's bedroom?" Boromir asks turning to Faramir.
"Only in a fit of idiocy," Faramir says
softly. Boromir snorts and tickles Atanar.
Faramir looks at Gareth, and there is gentleness and smile
in his gaze.
"Igareth," he says, "don't you want
to come here? Your feet must be icy."
Doesn't he want to? Gareth climbs into the bed, hastily,
and his feet are frozen, indeed, and his father wraps him into the blanket
and takes his feet into his palms. And now Gareth feels very warm, in
this sleepy, crumpled bed, leaning against his father's chest, with
his father's chin resting on the top of his head.
Atanar shrieks, trying to escape the tickling, and falls
into the hollow between Boromir and Faramir. Gareth hears his father
chuckle. And Boromir looks at his brother, the expression in his eyes
suddenly intense to the point of desperation. Faramir reaches his hand,
and Boromir takes it - and then brings it to his lips, kissing the palm.
It's such a brief gesture, Gareth can almost think he imagined it. But
then Boromir keeps holding his brother's hand, his gaze never leaving
Faramir's face.
Atanar, laughing, tries to climb over Boromir again, and
their hands part, and Gareth feels his father hug him, and he is warm
and comfortable.
He knows his world is perfect, and he belongs there.
THE END
