LOTR Fic: Catharsis

[martasfic]

Title: Catharsis
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Characters: Boromir
Prompt: BMEM Day 10; fanfic100 prompt #51
Word Count: 857
Rating: General
Warning: Deals with (canonical) character death, and with spiritual themes.
Summary: In "Windows on the West", Faramir tells us that Boromir's funeral boat traveled down Anduin and at last reached the sea. But who's to say it stopped there?



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Thus it was that great mariners among them would still search the empty seas, hoping to come upon the Isle of Meneltarma, and there to see a vision of things that were. But they found it not… (“The Akallabêth,” The Silmarillion)

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A grey boat passed out of Anduin’s mouth, seemingly unmanned and unguided; the fine curve of its keel dipped low in the water. A wave pushed against the side, nearly toppling what it carried into the Sea. But only nearly; the Sea rose against the other side, its white foam like the steadying fingers of a splayed hand.

No elf saw this narrow escape, nor dwarf nor any other speaking folk, and no man save one. That man’s eyes were forever sealed by death; no breath lingered in his chest to voice any words. His people would name him Boromir son of Denethor, Boromir of Gondor, but that was not his full tale, and the Sea sees all. The waters sensed his mother’s blood in him, recognized him as the latest son of a long line of mariners, and so steadied his small craft against Ossë’s mischief. Whether he felt the guiding presence, no tale has ever told. He may have, for his soul could not yet abandon his body. Boromir still wandered, for all that he no longer chose his own path, and so his soul would not abandon him.

So it slipped further and further from Gondor’s shores, that small grey boat. It passed the great fleets of warships blanketed in a thick fog, and none of the watchmen caught sight of it. Rainwater fell upon the once-great warrior, washing the grime and blood from his hair and skin. And sometimes a wave would crest too high, fall over the edge of the boat. Gently the waves rocked it so that the water washed over the shields, vambraces, and other stuff of war that lay all around Boromir. Slowly the water wore away the Eye and the Hand; flecks of red and white paint floated over the waters, were borne away beyond sight.

The Tree alone remained.

A month passed, or two or three – for what use have the dead for time? – until at last the waves stilled. If Boromir still had eyes to see, he might have looked down and seen the phantom of a mountain’s peak through the murky water. The first kings of Gondor had sent out sailors to find this place, longing for a glimpse of the farthest West, a peak beyond death, much as the men of Númenor had enjoyed in the days of their glory; but they had failed. Even those few who had stumbled upon Meneltarma had found only murky water over cold stone, and so the quests ended. Yet Gondor’s wise men knew there was a land out of sight, a land beyond reach and seemingly beyond time, that men might be gifted with a glimpse of – should the West will it.

Had Boromir still owned eyes to see, he might have recognized it as Meneltarma; or perhaps not.

By then the sea was working on Gondor’s livery. The silver threads that had once embroidered Boromir’s fine tunic had been worked loose, snagged on floating debris and eaten away by the salt water. The great arc of seven stars along the edge of his shield was no more, the waterlogged wood having broken off and floated away. Even the silver ring that marked him as his mother’s kin was gone, swallowed by some fish or adorning the ocean floor.

Had he still lived, Boromir would have struggled against that. He would have taken off his tunic and wrapped it in his cloak, to protect it from the water a while longer. He might even have held the ring tight in his fist, or gathered up the shield-wood so it couldn’t float away. But he was not alive, he could not hold on to such trinkets. ‘Twas only with the greatest of efforts that his soul still clung to his body. It did not have the strength to safeguard anything else, even who he was. For Boromir was no longer Steward’s Heir or Prince of Dol Amroth, or even Boromir of Gondor; he was now Boromir alone.

He had never dreamed of waves or felt overly drawn to ancient history. Was Númenor his homeland, any more than Gondolin or Elvenhome was? Yet somehow, he felt a kinship to those who had once looked to that mountain. There was suffering here, anguish dulled by time but present nonetheless. Such tragedy leaves its mark on the land – not a blemish, but a testimony to a simple fact: that those who suffer do not suffer alone.

And so Boromir smiled. He smiled as he had never smiled in life, or even in death.