LOTR Fic: A Bird in the Hand

[martasfic]

Title: A Bird in the Hand
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Characters: Barahir (Fourth Age)
Prompt: BMEM09 Days 27, 29, & 30; fanfic100 prompt #3, ends
Word Count: 2,132
Rating: Teen for violence
Summary: In the Fourth Age, Gondor grapples with the legacy of Numenor that was.

********************
Note: Barahir is the grandson of Faramir and Éowyn, and the author of many of the sources collected in The Lord of the Rings appendices. Beyond that, anything we know about him is fanon. In my stories he is a child of one of Faramir’s younger daughters, though that point isn’t horribly important.
********************

The rain struck Barahir as somber. It was almost as if Gondor’s clouds were crying; as well they should, with the king dead and all. Barahir would be tempted to call the raindrops the tears of the Queen, were he a man more given to flowery turns of phrase. He was not such a man, though, so he would not say it; a historian dealt in cold facts. Still, it seemed there was something in the air today. Did Gondor’s very air mourn the old king’s death?

It struck Barahir as odd that he should be so palpably affected. He had not known the king overly well. Perhaps he had seen him more often than many did, even among the nobility, and in smaller gatherings, but Barahir was the younger son of a lesser line, and so to him the king had always been more of a patron than a family friend.

Perhaps that explained why he felt so driven to get away from the festivities. The new king had been crowned that morning, but somehow Barahir was in no mood to celebrate. No, the aviary fit his mood much better. It had always been where he went to be alone, even as a child; few people ever came up there except for the messengers, and they were unobtrusive enough. Barahir had more need of thought than revelry, even if he had been in the mood for it, and so he dragged his aging legs up the long flights of stairs, wine-skin and messenger’s case in hand.

At last he reached the aviary, and he looked over at the window. Should he look out? It was humbling, somehow, to see the City from this height and know that those tiny men below could just as easily be him. And there was the school, a private academy a step above the common schools all boys might attend; as a lad he had enjoyed looking down on them.

For Barahir, who had grown up cloistered away with his tutors, the possibilities of such a world were exhilarating. Their futures were not yet assured; they might do well and turn their success into opportunities, or fail and so be consigned to mediocrity. For Barahir, privilege had always been guaranteed by virtue of his birth, and so there was little risk in coming of age. He was surrounded by the legends since before he could remember: Éowyn Wraithbane, and the Hero of the Causeway Forts, and other men besides.

But as for himself, he was the child of his grandfather’s old age, the one fated to stay by the prince’s side and keep him company. Whatever quests he might find, they would have to be of a different sort than the ones enjoyed by those who had come before them. He had tramped through the tidy accounts of past quests, great deeds that he knew could not have been quite as bloodless, quite as neatly divided between good and evil as the minstrels made them seem. For Barahir, to find the truth in such quests had always been the only adventure he could find.

He wanted to lose himself gazing out the window, if only for a while, but there was a task at home. No, Barahir would not let himself be drawn into those school-boys’ world. Taking a deep sip from the skin of wine he had brought with him, Barahir lowered himself against the cool stone wall. A messenger-pigeon flew down from her perch high above and rested on Barahir’s shoulder. Her head cocked to the side, she looked almost like the cats back home did, when he had pestered them with questions no man wanted to hear.

That made Barahir smile. “Could you answer why he gave me this task, if I asked you?” Barahir cocked his head to copy the pigeon. He was far beyond the stage of life when he might expect an answer, but it was nice to ask the question and not be thought odd.

Outside,, the thunder rolled throughout the city. It always seemed so much more ominous here than it did in Ithilien, bouncing off buildings and echoing against the stone walls.

“Very well, then; I’ll tell you, shall I? The Elessar“ – the pigeon cooed, and Barahir guessed she recognized the name – “he left me something in his will. He said that I was more learned than any living man he knew, and said that perhaps I’d acquired some wisdom along the way.” Barahir waved the messenger’s case knowingly, a leather canister shut with wax and marked with the old king’s seal. “But such compliments always come with a price, don’t they? He willed me this, without so much as explaining what I should do with it.” Barahir took another sip of his wine. “I haven’t even worked up the nerve to open it.”

The pigeon clicked his bill disapprovingly, and Barahir felt his cheeks flush a little. To be so embarrassed by what a bird thought of him! As if the bird thought anything of him at all, and as if he – Barahir of the House of Húrin, distinguished scholar of the Order of Ereinion and all – should care what a bird thought. Yet Barahir thought that anyone would be flustered, in his place. The king had entrusted him with this artifact, and he’d done it through a will rather than speaking to him. And a braver man than Barahir might be unnerved by that. For all his talk of battling metaphorical dragons, truth and history and the like, he was no hero.

But hero or no, he was a loyal servant first and foremost. Before he could talk himself out of it, he broke the wax seal and twisted off the canister’s lid. He coughed on the musty air, and the pigeon hissed at him before flying off again.

A fleeting thought crossed his mind at that. He remembered a parable his grandfather had once told him. Truth, so the story went, was like so many birds in an aviary: sometimes near at the hand and known with certainty, and sometimes fluttering about the rafters so that you could hardly be sure of what you knew; but it was always there. He chuckled at that memory, for it called him back to simpler times; yet he also wondered how much truth there was in it. More than he often gave the story credit for, he supposed, if not as much as many men seemed to think. “Come back!” he called up at the pigeon good-naturedly, as if having a bird nearby would keep his thoughts where he could no them clearly; but no answer came.

Turning his attention back to the messenger’s case, he felt his face grow serious once more. He upended it so its papers fell out in his lap, and he began reading. There was of course the usual archivist’s insignia, declaring the contents authentic, but it was no sign that he could recognize. Rohan, then? But no; his Rohirric kin had made some progress in such literary matters since the war, but these pages were too old for that. Reading more carefully, he saw some names he had seen before. There was Thorontur of Imladris, a name he had seen in many of the manuscripts brought south by the old queen. And there was a Mithrandir, who had seemingly carried the text east across the sea –

The case fell from his hands, its metal studs clacking loudly as it rolled across the stone floor. Barahir looked down, surprised. He had not even realized he still held it, let alone that he had let it go. He was a bit taken aback by his own reaction, for he had never put much stock in the fairy-tales of a mythical land beyond this world. That was Elvish mischief, to make them seem like the last remnants of a glorious past rather than the insignificant beings they were. Surely? But Thorontur was a name Barahir had come to trust, and his grandfather had always spoken of Mithrandir as being honest. Could Thorontur be so deceived? Or had his grandfather have been misled by that Mithrandir? Was it not more likely…

Barahir read on. The pages were not written by that Mithrandir; it seemed he had only carried them back to Middle-earth. The true author’s name was marked out, erased by the author or perhaps just worn away by time, but “of the Vanyar” was still legible enough. For a moment Barahir wrinkled his nose at that – all of the Vanyar he had heard of were poets, and poets made poor historians – but then he caught himself. There was sometimes more truth in ballads and odes than in the histories sanctioned by kingdoms. And why should Barahir assume the Vanyar were all of one sort anyway? That was hardly true of Gondorians.

Whoever this author was, he knew some things that suggested the treatise was old, whatever might be said of its truth. He spoke of a great Armada of ships dyed with scarlet and gleaming with red and gold; that at least matched records unearthed in Annúminas since the war. And the numbers of ships matched what Gondorian lore remembered, more or less. Barahir could find little ground to doubt him on those grounds.

Would that the account had stopped there! Barahir could have stood the truth that there really was a West and that Númenor really had fallen; but there was more. The Vanya wrote of how the mighty ones, those the Elves called the Valar, had laid aside their power; and how that fabled Eru Ilúvatar had broke their world and sent waters out from the deeps to drown the isle that had been given to men as a gift. Of course he had heard of the Akallabêth – who among the Dúnedain had not? – but he had long comforted himself with the thought that the floods could have just happened, and not been sent. Blights might ruin Pelennor’s crops one year and not the next, and Rohan’s winter might last an extra two months without reason; why should Númenor’s floods be any different?

That thought was the only thing that kept the nightmares away. For years he had dreamed that he was trapped in this very tower, with the stairs flooding and the waters rising steadily. The pigeons had all flown away, and the owls and eagles as well; but Barahir could not fly. It was a wave dream of sorts, not unlike the one that had always troubled his family’s sleep. Somehow it made Barahir feel more safe, to think that such floods could happen but would not be directed toward him.

Outside, the bell tolled announcing the last hour of the day, and before long the faint song of boys’ voices began to loft up toward the aviary. Barahir knew that song; he had heard it often enough as a boy They taught it at the school below; it was a way to learn proportion and harmony, and a practice in long-dead languages as well, and the boys sang it every day at sunset. It occurred to Barahir, though, that it might once have been a prayer. The song asked to be carried away when the storm was near on a sea of calm; it was a call for help. But to whom could such a prayer be addressed? Not to the One, for His mind could never be changed. To the mighty ones, then? Perhaps the Faithful had not known then what Barahir knew; perhaps they could still pray.

In spite of himself, Barahir imagined Manwë sitting on his mountain. Had he seen the shepherds scrambling up the mountain in a vain attempt at escape? Had Varda turned his ears so that he could hear their cries? Could they have seized up their power, then, or were they beyond such choices?

They might not have heard; Barahir could never know. Such knowledge was beyond him: a bird fluttering about the aviary that he could never hope to grasp. For his own part, though, he knew what he had read, and he knew he could not forget. He would write the Vanya’s story, translate it into words that men of his own age could understand. And he would lay aside his rage so that none would mistake history’s fact for diatribe.

Barahir would tell their story.

Comments

Sneak preview of an MEFA review

[just_ann_now]

What a labor of love is Marta's Back-to-Middle-Earth-Month collection! Twenty-seven stories, encompassing The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, obscure historical tidbits and letters, food for thought, romance, humor - something for every fan of the Ardaverse.

This particular tale is rich in detail, canonical and imagined history, echoes of philosophy and theology from our world that also resonates well with Professor Tolkien's. The Professor gave us a name, Barahir, and a slight framework of biography (Faramir's grandson, Historian of Arda). Fanon breathed life into Barahir, just as we did with Théodred, Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, and Elboron, among many others. Marta has built upon that community to provide a unique portrait of an aging historian, protected by the illustriousness of his family name from the obscurity he almost seems to seek, about to have either greatness or infamy thrust upon him - for not everyone will welcome the truths with which he has become entrusted.

I wish I were more articulate, more well-read, able to discourse more intelligently on the thought-provoking topics that Marta has touched upon here: the diffusion of history and legend, the shock and outrage (poor Barahir!) when presented with incontrovertible proof that history *is* history, not mythology or folktales or fables to frighten children. Suffice to say I read the story open-mouthed with awe and delight, and have pondered it happily for many hours since.