A Thousand Winds that Blow by StarSpray  

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Eight

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Daeron woke with a start, expecting to find an orc leaning over him, expecting cold, more pain, more—

There was none of that. It was late morning, and he lay bundled up in blankets in a small cave. Outside birds were singing. Or no—not birds. He tried to sit up, but found it nearly impossible to move. His entire body felt like one massive bruise, and it was only with effort that he even rolled over onto his side. From there, he could see Lossenol sitting just outside in the sunshine, teaching Eluréd and Elurín bird calls. Closer at hand a fire was burning low and warm. Daeron closed his eyes. He didn’t fall asleep again, but his thoughts drifted, weary and slow. There was something comforting in hearing Elurín giggle when Eluréd fumbled a sequence of notes, and the quiet rumble of Lossenol’s voice—such a contrast to the harsh laughter of the orcs. And the soft tones of Menelas. Daeron opened his eyes again as a few tears escaped, slipping over the bridge of his nose to soak into the blanket underneath him. He could not allow himself to dwell on such things. Menelas was gone—if he was not dead he was still far out of reach, and there was nothing Daeron could do now but mourn for him all over again. But not yet—it wasn’t safe.

They could not linger, but Lossenol refused to even consider moving until Daeron was able to get to his feet without help. Daeron wanted to argue, but it was hard when even the smallest of movements hurt. Lossenol disappeared several times a day to scout down the mountain, and every time he returned with assurances that they were alone. One night it snowed, just a light dusting, and Daeron woke shivering even tucked under all their blankets and cloaks, all four of them huddled together in the back of the small cave far out of the wind. 

As soon as Daeron could get up and move around without having to lean on something, though, he insisted they leave. It still hurt, and they couldn’t go very fast, but at least they were moving—going back south, picking their way through the mountain slopes rather than trying to find flat ground or a road. After some days they finally drew near the passes, where they would need to descend from the hills and cross the mountains through the dwarf roads. Passing out into the open filled Daeron with dread, but as far as any of them could tell it was all quiet. 

“All right,” Lossenol said as the road finally came into view, and they prepared to leave the shelter of the trees, “everyone remember not to use real names if we meet anyone else—except me, I suppose, since my name’s brand new anyway. Eluréd is Pínfileg and Elurín is Pínamrent. What about you, Daeron?” Lossenol had come up with Eluréd and Elurín’s names over the last few days, since he had been teaching them the tongues of birds whenever they stopped to rest—and because their singing voices were, Lossenol said, as lovely as those of songbirds. Daeron was just glad he had chosen sparrows and larks, rather than nightingales. 

He sighed. In the past he had used his father’s name, Caladorn, when he felt he needed to, but that seemed too dangerous now. “Oh, I don’t know. Torrandir, I suppose—I’ve been wandering the forests for years now. It’s as good a name as any.”

The names turned out not to be needed. The mountain passes were quiet, which made Daeron just as nervous as he would have been had they been full of other travelers. There were signs of recent fighting on the western slopes, but when Lossenol paused to try to read those signs, he said that the orcs had been driven back west. He took the time to show Eluréd and Elurín how to read a little of what he could in the footprints and scuff marks on the stone. It meant very little to Daeron, who had always relied on luck more than tracking when he attempted to hunt, and knew nothing at all of battle or how to read the aftermath. The twins were sharp-eyed and quick to learn, and Daeron could almost see the skilled and fierce hunters they might one day grow into.

After only a day or so, the land sloped down again, and they found themselves, at last, through the mountains and in Eriador. Free of the narrow paths and the towering and sheer cliffs on either side, with the Ered Luin between him and Beleriand, Daeron felt like he could breathe again. “Where to now?” Lossenol asked.

“I’m not entirely sure.” Daeron looked around. They were high enough still that the land stretched out before them, an unbroken forest as far as the eye could see. The road disappeared into it, and led, Daeron had been told once, all the way to the distant Misty Mountains and the way to the great dwarf city of Khazad-dûm. He did not want to go that far, but… “I had hoped to find some Elves who once lived in Ossiriand who might be lingering near the mountains,” he said. “There used to be a village some days’ walk north of here—but when I was last there they were speaking of moving on, going back east to rejoin Lenwë’s people, and I don’t know if they will still be there.”

“It’s a place to go, anyway,” said Lossenol, “and even if we find it empty, we might find it a good place to stay a while.”

“Yes, maybe.”

“What would we find if we followed the road?” asked Eluréd, slipping his hand into Daeron’s as they made their way down the mountain. 

“Some small kingdoms of Men—the land opens up a little, with downs and good pastureland and some small rivers, and many Men settled there rather than continuing west as the Edain did. I have not gone that way in some time, though, and I do not know what sort of welcome we would receive if we went there now.”

By then Daeron’s various hurts were mostly healed—the bruises had been bad, but they were still only bruises—and he could keep up with Lossenol and the twins with relative ease. The soreness remained, and fear still dogged his heels, though, and his dreams were dark and terrible—all full of people he had once known, their faces now distorted and frightening, all of them reaching out to him with too-long fingers and promises of horror in the dark. They left him tired and jumpy, flinching at sudden movements and sometimes snapping at the twins or at Lossenol. 

The third time he answered too sharply, Daeron watched Elurín’s eyes fill with tears and felt like a monster; he dropped to his knees and held out his arms. “Oh, I’m sorry—I’m sorry, Elurín, I didn’t mean it.” Elurín threw his arms around Daeron, burying his face in his shoulder. 

“Let’s stop here today,” Lossenol said after a moment. He glanced around, and dropped the pack onto the ground beside Daeron before pulling out the bow. “I’m going to see if I can get lucky.”

“Be careful,” Daeron said.

“Of course.”

Once Lossenol was gone, Daeron rubbed Elurín’s back and let him go. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I’m not upset with either of you, I promise.”

“Why are you upset?” Elurín asked, wiping his eyes on his sleeve.

So many reasons. “I’m tired,” Daeron said, “and afraid, and worried—worried that we won’t be able to find Medlinel and her people, mostly.”

“Who is Medlinel?”

“Her brother was Denethor, a king of the Laegrim long ago. He died, and they took no king thereafter, but Medlinel was once a student of your grandmother Melian, and she is very wise and a leader among them, and I’m sure she knows far better than I do how best to take care of you—”

“What does that mean?” Eluréd demanded. 

Oh no. Daeron closed his eyes for a moment. He hadn’t meant to let that slip—he really was tired. “I just—”

“You aren’t going to leave us!” Elurín cried. 

“Elurín—”

“Daeron, you can’t!”

“I’m not! No one’s going anywhere—I misspoke, I’m sorry.” Daeron got to his feet, wincing. “Come on, we need to get a fire started so we can cook whatever Lossenol brings back. Which one of you can tell me the Quenya word for fire?” The Quenya lessons had started as a way to pass the time as they traveled, now that they could let their guard down a little. It also let Daeron practice his own rusty Quenya, which made Lossenol laugh every time he mispronounced a word. Now, however, the twins only answered his questions half-heartedly, and once the fire was started and their little camp made, they climbed onto his lap and refused to move even when Lossenol returned with a couple of small rabbits. 

“What’s the matter?” Lossenol asked as he sat down to skin and clean the game. 

“Daeron wants to leave us,” Eluréd said without lifting his face from Daeron’s shirt. Lossenol looked up sharply. 

“I don’t,” Daeron said.

Like the twins, Lossenol didn’t seem to believe him. “Is that why you want to find the Laegrim?”

It had been, but it wasn’t anymore. “It’s—I—”

“Daeron—”

“I’m not going to argue about it right now,” Daeron snapped. Lossenol closed his mouth and returned to preparing the rabbits. Eluréd and Elurín also fell silent, and clung to him even tighter as though afraid he would get up and disappear then and there. Daeron rubbed their backs and wondered how he had become someone who would be missed if he disappeared. He wondered what Lúthien would say if she could see him then, and quickly pushed that thought away. 

Even when the food was ready the twins were reluctant to let go, but after they ate Daeron was able to get out the flutes and distract them for a while with a music lesson. Lossenol disappeared into the woods again, only returning in the veining when Daeron was preparing to sing up enchantments to keep them hidden so they could all sleep without needing to keep watch. 

After Eluréd and Elurín fell asleep, Lossenol said, “When were you going to share your plans to leave?”

“I wasn’t, because I have none.” Daeron turned his flute over in his hands without looking up. “That was—before the orcs, I did mean to—to find Medlinel and her people and leave the twins with them. I still want to find her if we can, but not for that. Though it would probably be the wisest course—”

“You were going to just—leave them with strangers?”

“They wouldn’t have been strangers. They were born in Ossiriand, and—”

“And left it when they were very small. Daeron—”

“I don’t know the first thing about raising children,” Daeron said sharply, struggling to keep his voice low. “And—and there is a price on my head, Lossenol. It doesn’t matter how far away get get—”

“It does matter,” said Lossenol. “Where do I fall into these plans of yours?”

“I told you, it isn’t my plan any longer—”

“You just said you think it would be wiser.”

“It would be. I just—” Daeron dropped his flute and covered his face. “I hadn’t thought about it,” he said into his palms. “I don’t know what to do. I’ve been guessing ever since Finglas brought you to me. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“I already told you I’m not going back to the Fëanorians. What would you expect me to do if you just slipped away? What were you planning to do when you left? Where would you go?”

“I don’t know,” Daeron said, though the answer was probably that he would have disappeared into the deepest woods of Eriador, found a quiet spot where no one would ever find him, and just let himself fade away. “I just—they deserve to be safe and cared for by people who know how, and—”

“Don’t they deserve not to lose anyone else?” Lossenol asked softly. “You and I have both chosen to walk away from our own lives. They haven’t. They’ve lost everything, Daeron, and they almost lost you once already.”

“They’d forget soon enough—”

“No, they wouldn’t. But say you’re right. Say it would be better for this Medlinel to take them in, whoever she is. Why does it have to be you or her? Why could you not stay too?”

“Besides the fact that there is a price on my head?”

“You said this was your plan before you ever knew about that.”

Daeron lowered his hands to his lap. He was so tired, and his head ached, and he wanted to go home—back to a home that had not existed since long before he had left Doriath for the last time. “I am not welcome among Medlinel’s people,” Daeron said after a moment. “Many of them used to come and go from Doriath—when it was Eglador still, before the Girdle—and they knew Lúthien. They must have known her also when she and Beren lived on Tol Galen in Ossiriand. I—the role I played in Lúthien’s tale—I made so many mistakes, and they have not forgotten. I’ve traded with them once or twice—well, once I threw myself upon their charity, during a bad winter—but only when I had to, and they made their feelings quite clear then. They were kind but not welcoming. Not to me.”

“You think their opinion won’t change when you turn up with Eluréd and Elurín?”

“Medlinel knew me of old in Eglador, when she came to learn all that Melian would teach her. I was still young then, and she thought me foolish and frivolous, and now she thinks me foolish and treacherous—she’s probably right, at least that I’m foolish. And—” Daeron broke off.

“And?”

He shook his head. “I just—if we don’t find her then all of this is pointless anyway. I know Eluréd and Elurín believe we four were meant to find one another, but I cannot help but feel that it will end badly, sooner or later. As I said, my plan when we left the flet was to bring the twins to Medlinel if I could, and to leave them in safety. You, I thought, would part with us at the Sarn Athrad. That is not what I want, now, but—there is still a price on my head, and for all we know there is one on yours too—your people have not only been kinslayers, you have fought bravely for centuries in the north—and—and is it not better to endure a little heartache now than suffer much worse heartbreak in the future?”

“I thought you were not given to foresight.”

“I’m not, usually, but…” There was still a war raging on the other side of the mountains, even if where they sat all was quiet and peaceful, with crickets in the bushes and spring’s new growth beginning to adorn the tree branches overhead. The future remained dark, hope dwindling a little more with each passing year. And, someday, Lossenol might learn that Daeron had not been honest with him about what he knew or guessed. Maybe Lossenol did not want to know—but if he ever did remember, Daeron did not think Celegorm would be forgiving.

Lossenol sighed and tossed a stick onto the fire. In the flickering light the scars on his face stood out, and his good eye glinted with ancient Treelight. “Say you’re right about the rest,” he said after a moment. “Say this all ends terribly, someday. You’re probably right. Doesn’t that just mean we should hold onto what we have now for as long as we can?”

“The Shadow is growing,” Daeron whispered. “It will someday reach beyond the mountains, maybe even beyond the Misty Mountains—”

“I don’t know about you, but if and when that happens I intend to go down fighting.”

“I’m no fighter.”

“There’s a reason the Enemy’s put a price on your head. I think you’re not nearly as diminished as you say you are. I think you could sing down the mountains if you tried.”

Daeron didn’t know what to do with that kind of confidence, that kind of faith. “I think I am a better judge of my own strength than you,” he said. 

Lossenol shrugged. “All I know is—you don’t argue when someone tells you something the way those two do sometimes. With that look in their eyes. When they say the four of us were meant to find one another, I don’t think it’s meant to be only for a season or two.”

It was the same look Lúthien had had in her eyes when she had told Daeron she intended to leave Doriath, to go after Beren. He hadn’t listened, then—fear had ruled him, for her and for them all. Now he looked at Eluréd and Elurín, curled up together under a blanket, and felt that same fear. It twisted around his heart and lungs like vines, constricting, making it hard to breathe, hard to think. But he had learned from his mistakes—he knew better now than to disregard such foresight, even if it was mingled with the desires and fears of lost children. 

Children who love you, a little voice in the back of his mind that sounded a little like Menelas—the real Menelas, the friend of his fondest memories—pointed out. 

He knew what he wanted—but just because they all wanted the same thing didn’t mean it was possible, or that it was wise. His grip on life had been tenuous for years, even before Finglas had turned his entire world upside down in just a few words, even before the orcs had revealed just how much Morgoth himself desired his capture. Having a reason to cling to life wasn’t always enough—especially not when it might be better, safer for everyone, if he stopped trying.

He just didn’t know how to explain that to Lossenol. It wasn’t even that Daeron didn’t trust him, because he did—or he would as long as his memories remained lost and the Oath slept. It was just—he was so full of life, even after such terrible injuries and the loss of everything he had known. What could he understand of fading, really? 

He would have to find a way to explain sooner or later, but for now he just shook his head again. “I don’t want to leave them, and I’m not going to. I just don’t know anymore whether what I want to do is the same as what I should. But—even aside from all of that, there is another reason I want to seek out Medlinel, if we can.”

“What is it?”

“I know you say you do not want to recover your memory—but I’m afraid that it isn’t only lost because you were injured. If there is something else at work—like that shadow I told you about before, I mean—she might be able to tell what it is, and if it poses some other danger to you that I cannot see. Maybe she’ll be able to help.”

“If she will not welcome you, she certainly won’t welcome me. I don’t want a stranger looking into my mind, anyway.”

“I was a stranger when I first did it,” Daeron pointed out.

“And I was half dead,” Lossenol retorted.

“And if I told you she was someone you could trust?”

Lossenol tossed another stick onto the fire, and then pushed his hair out of his face. “Nothing you’ve said of her suggests she’s someone I can trust.”

“Just because she doesn’t like me doesn’t mean she’s not trustworthy. She is a healer. She learned from Melian herself.”

“Well, like you said—all of this only means anything if we find her in the first place. You should go to—to sleep.”

“So should you,” Daeron said as he reached for his blanket. “Your words are slurring.” Lossenol grimaced, but didn’t argue. They were all tired. 

That night, Daeron’s dreams were full of starlit memories of Eglador, of old friends and of his parents, when they had all been so happy—even him. He woke in the morning with tears on his face and a heavy feeling in his limbs that took a very long time to shake off. 

The village he remembered visiting once or twice in recent years was not tucked up against the mountains, but farther east. The woods were thick and wild, and there were few landmarks to go by, but at last they came to the banks of a familiar river. “I think this called the Lhûn,” Daeron said. “The village I want to find shouldn’t be far now.”

“I haven’t seen any signs of people, Elves or Men,” Lossenol said. “I think your friends might have moved on.”

“It’s more likely than not,” said Daeron, “but I still want to find it. And if we go a little farther north and east, across the river, we’ll come to some hills, and beyond them a wide lake—though if that has a name, I haven’t heard it.”

They followed the river’s course north, and soon came to the site of the village. It was, as Daeron had expected but not as he had hoped, empty. There were no signs that the Elves who had built it left in a hurry; nothing of great value had been left behind, and there was no evidence of a fight or of any kind of disaster. The houses all still stood, both in the trees and on the ground. “When last I came this way, a handful of years ago, Medlinel said they were thinking of returning east past the Misty Mountains,” Daeron said, “to rejoin her father’s people.”

“Do you want to follow?” Lossenol asked.

“No. Not yet, anyway. Let’s take advantage of solid walls and roofs for a while.”

“Not a flet,” said Lossenol as Eluréd and Elurín ran off to explore. “If trouble comes we can retreat to one, but I don’t want to always be having to climb things.”

They found a small house with two bedrooms that still had mattresses on the bed frames, though they needed to be patched and refilled—probably why they had been left behind in the first place. There were other pieces of furniture—things too big to travel with—and that made it even easier to settle in. It wasn’t until they had actually finished fixing up the house and the mattresses that Daeron realized he and Lossenol had just agreed to share a bed. 

That in itself didn’t mean much. They’d been living out of each other’s pockets and sleeping next to one another for months now—but it felt different, now that they had a choice. “What’s wrong?” Lossenol asked as he tossed their blankets onto the bed. 

“You know this doesn’t mean…” Daeron gestured at the bed, feeling his cheeks grow warm. “It’s…”

Lossenol looked amused. “You’re very pretty, Daeron, but I’m afraid all I want to do in this bed is sleep, if it’s all the same to you.”

Daeron’s face felt burning hot. “I—well. Good.”

“It just makes sense to share—we’ve only got so many blankets, and in winter it will be warmer.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“I’m not going to try to ravish you in the middle of the night or something, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Before Daeron could answer, Eluréd asked, poking his head through the door, “What’s ravish?”

“Sweet stars above,” Daeron groaned, burying his face in his hands. 

“A root vegetable,” Lossenol said at the same time. 

“What are you going to do with a root vegetable in the middle of the night?”

“Nothing—that’s what I was saying.”

“Radish,” Daeron said into his palms. “That’s the root vegetable, Eluréd—a radish.”

“So what’s a—”

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Daeron said firmly, turning to usher Eluréd out of the bedroom. Lossenol’s laughter followed them. “Come on. I need to sing up a Girdle, and I might as well start teaching you two how to do it. Where’s Elurín?”