The Holly-Folk of Gondor by AdmirableMonster  

The Dawnless Day

March 10, 3019.

It was dark.  Níniel sat up with a gasp, looking around her.  Her dreams had been terrible, she thought, but they had all fled from her mind in the instant between sleep and waking.  She had only a fleeting impression of a bloody banner flapping in the wind, and a sense of dread and anguish.  

“Noltar?” she said sharply, before catching herself.  Why should he have to wake in the middle of the night because of her foolish dreams?  But his voice spoke from the dimness, unclouded by sleep, “Good morning, Níniel.”

“Morning?  But it’s—”

“Dawn did not come,” Noltar said quietly.  She squinted in the dimness and saw that he was seated on his bedroll, cross-legged, or as close to it as he could get, looking out at a dim blurred glow on the horizon.  It was nothing like the light of the Sun, and Níniel shuddered and looked away from it.  “Atanalcar has gone to gather a little firewood, though I am not certain if a fire is safe.”

Atanalcar.  And why had he come with them, Níniel wondered?  At the last moment before they left, he had simply ridden up and said he would accompany them.  “Did Faramir send you?” Níniel had asked sharply, and he had only shrugged.  

“Let him come,” Noltar had said, so they had.  He had said little, but he had been surprisingly solicitous of Master Noltar, so Níniel had tried to avoid fighting with him at least.

“I’m back.”  Atanalcar strode up, dumping a bundle of dry twigs onto the ground nearby.  Then he turned to Noltar abruptly and said, “I—owe you an apology.”

“What,” said Níniel, blankly.

“Accepted,” Noltar replied, with a half shrug.

“Wh—no!  It isn’t!  That isn’t good enough!” Níniel exclaimed, getting to her feet.  “He hounded you and for years he said nothing of it, and now he only offers an apology and no explanation?”

“Well—” Noltar began, but Atanalcar cut him off with a swift, sharp nod.

“I don’t have a good explanation,” he said, the words coming out clipped and short.  “I—have always wanted to be a hero,” he said suddenly.  

“And what has that to do with—” Níniel began fiercely, voice rising, but Noltar put a hand on her leg.

“Let him finish,” he said softly.  “It’s all right.”

“I was named for a hero,” Atanalcar continued, looking at Níniel from under brows drawn angrily together.  “My grandmother used to tell me stories of the great Atanalcar, the child of an ancient king, and she would say that’s what I should be.  A hero, like him.  But of course I was not a hero—Boromir was the hero, he has always been the hero.  The Steward’s great son, brave and good and kind and—” He snorted, then settled.  “He is—was, I—I suppose,” he said jerkily, and Níniel saw real raw grief in his eyes, so she shut her mouth with a snap.  “But—but when I was a boy—or not that young, I suppose—I thought it unfair.  And I thought, if I could save his little brother from an evil wizard, then I might be a hero too.”  

He spread his hands wide.  “But it all went wrong.  I was wrong.  Of course I was.  And then I thought, well, I could become a hero among the rangers of Ithilien, surely, where they did not know what a foolish thing I had done.  And then Faramir came, as I did, and I could not be a hero even here, because he was more of a hero even than his brother had been.  And I was rude about it—oh, I know I was, I was quite awful.  No wonder you all hate me so.  But—” He strode back and forth as if in agitation.  “Despite all that, Faramir asked me to join you at your New Year’s celebration.  And you—welcomed me.  So—” He spread his hands.  “So I thought, well, I will never be a hero, but at least I can do something for you and Faramir, so I came to make sure you would not be hurt.”  He took a long breath and looked away.

“So I accept his apology,” Noltar said, sounding amused.

“Well, I don’t!” Níniel snapped.  “He wanted to be a hero, so he exposed you to a crowd that might have ripped you to pieces?”

Noltar chuckled.  “You need not accept it,” he pointed out.

“I don’t think you ought to either,” she muttered.

“Ah, well, I am too old to be in the business of holding grudges,” Noltar said, sounding a little wistful.  “Besides, I have forgiven much, much worse.”

Atanalcar shuffled awkwardly.  “Shall we make the fire?” he asked, not looking at Níniel.

“A small one, perhaps,” Noltar said.  “Foul things must be at work in this darkness, for it must have taken a great deal for the Enemy to blot out the very Sun herself.  If he went to such trouble, then his plans are close to fruition.”

Níniel shuddered briefly, but turned to make the fire herself, shooing Atanalcar away.  “I’ll do it.  I’ve far more experience with fires than you do, Sir Hero.”

Atanalcar grunted and seemed about to respond angrily, but Noltar cut in, “I know why you wish to be a hero, and I think it kind of you to give up on it for the sake of something you view as more important, but—it is not such a great thing as you think.  It’s an unpleasant business, being a hero.”

“It never sounded so in my grandmother’s tales,” Atanalcar said, squatting beside him as Níniel coaxed a spark to light to dry grass with her flint.  

“It sounds much better in some of them,” Noltar agreed, a twist of some sorrow in his voice.  “Others, I think, are more true.  What is that rhyme that Elemmirë’s grandmother is so fond of, Níniel?”

Níniel squatted back on her heels as the fire caught and the flames began to lick greedily at the twigs.  “The one that made her ask you why you like holly so much, when it portends sorrow and disaster?” she asked dryly.

He chuckled.  “Yes.”

She tilted her head back and looked up at the relentless blackness of the sky above them, dark and dead, and then she recited,

Open gates and holly trees;

Stone star’s sky.

Where are the folk of Hollin now?

Beneath the earth they lie.

They burned to save Three bright jewels

Under the flaming Eye.

“But they did save the jewels, didn’t they?” Atanalcar asked in a small voice.  “I know little of that story.”

“They did.”  Noltar sighed and scooted closer to the fire.  “But that is much more what being a hero is like.  Either you die, or you watch everyone else die, which is worse.”

“But sometimes someone writes a grand tale about you afterwards,” Atanalcar protested.  “And that seems to my mind to be a wonderful thing.”  He was pensive, though, and Níniel wondered if his mind went, as hers did, to Boromir, who had died with his quest unfulfilled, and sent only sorrow back to his little brother.

“The tales can be grand, it’s true,” Noltar agreed.  “But moreso, I think, if you were not there to witness them.”

Níniel, who was not at all certain she wanted to hear more, cut in and asked, “Should we try to ride under cover of darkness, or remain here?”

Noltar shook himself and blinked.  “I’m sorry, I am being far too grim.  I think we should wait; it will be safer, and I do not think even his power will stretch so far as to plunge the world into such darkness for long.  The Sun cannot be devoured, only hidden, and the greatest danger will be when he is bending the greatest of his power towards that concealment.  Better to wait, at least for a little while.”  His eye crinkled in a smile at her.  “Let us have a song—a quiet one, for safety’s sake, but something a little more cheerful than this discussion, perhaps?”

Níniel nodded, realized she was trembling, and scowled, trying to make the trembling stop.  

“What song?” she asked.

“I think I will sing you one of my uncle’s,” Noltar replied, and he began.