Healing Hands

Chapter One: Slipping Away

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Introduction to The Two Towers

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The Four Seekers—for it could not be the Fellowship any longer, not after all they had lost—left the forest behind by dawn the next morning. The land opened abruptly into rolling, rocky hills covered in sparse yellow grass. Eyrell realized with a jolt how close they must be to Rohan; this could even be the borders of the Westfold.

It had been so long since she had seen home ... When had she joined the Fellowship? The last time she remembered taking note of how long it had been was...

"My goodness, I've been on this quest longer than I thought," she exclaimed, her voice echoing in the cave more than she had thought it would. The darkness of Moria seemed so enclosing.

Boromir chuckled a bit. "I suppose it has been at least two months now," he said.

Eyrell shut her eyes and shook her head wildly until the memory of Boromir's smile dissipated.

This was not the time to be thinking of her home, or Boromir, or anything but Merry and Pippin. If she did, if she let all of her heart spill through the dam of her mind...

Her feet pounded on the hard ground, the chilly winter air burning her lungs like a knife. Three days of endless running were tearing her apart from the inside out, but she dared not admit her pain to the others. Legolas and Aragorn appeared to be only mildly fatigued by the ceaseless exertion, completely focused on the task ahead of them while shutting anything else out with remarkable ease.

Nobody said anything to her, but she noticed their stolen backward glances, the way they slowed their pace slightly to let her catch up, and the extra ration they had given her that morning. Even Aragorn had been more encouraging than normal.

Still ... her apathy felt forced, the torpor she had fettered to her heart dulling her mind and body. She had no time to grieve, and no one to truly grieve with.

Only for a little while, she told herself. I must be strong until we find the Hobbits.

And then what? Their part in this quest had ended when Frodo and Sam left them, her part cut short by sudden death. What would she do once they found the Hobbits? She felt she would have no purpose then, no more than Legolas, Aragorn, and Gimli would; their purpose had been to protect Frodo on his journey to Mordor, and they had already failed on that account.

Would she return home, to find even less than she had left with? No hope of the budding love remained to her, no bright excitement of the journey to come. All had drifted down the Falls of Rauros, where she could not follow.

No ... She would be returning home to put the broken pieces of her life together, to tread the path of the mundane so thoroughly that it wore the sorrow down.

Suddenly, that path seemed so sweet, and much better than continuing on this journey in which she had no impact. But could she simply turn her back on the iron bonds she had forged here, on Merry and Pippin? She had promised herself to this quest—would it be her own failure that separated her from it?

"On you who travel with him, no oath or bond is laid to go further than you will," Elrond had said.

If wanting to leave was so wrong ... why did her heart not recoil at the thought of abandoning the ordeal to which she had pledged herself? Why did it instead yearn to pull away, like removing deep choking weeds from the flowers gasping for sunlight?