Healing Hands

Chapter Seventeen: Interlude

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Conclusion to The Fellowship of the Ring

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The forest was silent.

Gone was the advice and reassurance of Gandalf, the laughter and joy of the Hobbits, the warmth of the sunlight setting behind the trees.

Gone was Boromir.

One of the white boats was missing from the shore when the remnants of the Fellowship carried Boromir's body to the riverbank; Frodo must have taken it. Gimli and Legolas laid him in the second boat, and Aragorn gently arranged his hands to clasp the sword lying across his chest. The blades and arrows of the Orcs that he had slain were piled at his feet, to respect the final battle that he had lost, and his split horn was laid beside him. Aragorn kept his leather gauntlets, the ones bearing the insignia of Gondor, and strapped them to his own arms.

Eyrell draped him in pale yellow chrysanthemums, taking a last look at his still face before it was lost to her forever.

She placed her hands on the side of the boat and waded it into the river, barely aware of what she was doing; had she held onto the boat as the current tried to take it from her, or had she simply let him—and all that could have been—drift away from her? Her white dress billowed slowly in the icy water; she had no black ones to wear.

Though she did not remember walking back, she found herself standing on the shore again, watching the small white boat float down the river towards the falls that she had once thought so beautiful. Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli watched with her, silent as a moonless night.

Someone should say something; it would be shameful to let such a proud, noble warrior pass away like a wisp of fog in a red morning.

But saying something would make it real. Saying something would mean that she couldn't wake up from this nightmare to see Boromir sleeping in his bedroll beside the campfire, his steady breathing lulling her back to sleep.

"They will look for his coming from the White Tower," Aragorn said quietly, "but he will not return from mountain or from sea."

Eyrell took a breath, a new wave of grief crashing through her—but no new tears joined the tracks of dried salt on her cheeks. She had none left.

Say something.

"Would you tell me about Rohan?"

Boromir's face had been graced with a soft smile, even there in the dark; he had pushed down his own fear of Moria to comfort her. He deserved for her to push down her grief to honor him.

She took another breath, letting the cool evening air sit in her lungs for a moment before she exhaled and began to sing an ancient song of Rohan, a lament to honor the fallen heroes.

"Bealocwealm hafað fréone frecan forth onsended

Giedd sculon singan gléomenn sorgiende

On Gondor þæt he ma no wære

His dryhtne dyrest and mæga deorost.

Bealo..."

Her voice faded like breath in winter; not even the air could bring itself to echo the song back to her.

Then, another voice broke the silence to join hers, throaty and gentle. Aragorn slowly sang a song that she did not know.

"Through Rohan over fen and field where the long grass grows

The West Wind comes walking, and about the walls it goes.