It is eighteen years before. Two years have passed since the death of Haeneth’s husband, Desten, and the chaos of events that saw Haeneth and Thorvall exiled from the Mark. They have once again claimed a hall in Bree-land as their home, guarded by their warband and the often-unseen visitation of a Ranger...
It was mid-day when Agamaran came walking up the path to the familiar halls. He passed servants in the street, and the door guard gave him an unsavory sort of look as he climbed the steps and wiped his mud-caked boots. There was a time when he would’ve simply scaled the cliff that the hall was built in to, traipsed around the roof, and climbed through a window to avoid all unnecessary attention, but he figured if there ever came a time when he needed these people to be on his side or to help in him some way, then he would need to become familiar with them. Well, perhaps not familiar, but at least recognizable. As he entered the entryway and hung up his cloak and left his quiver, bow, and pack at the door, he took in the smell of the place. He did not care for most of the smells–instead he was trying to find the one smell that had become familiar with him.
Haeneth was busy at the breakfast table, piling apples into a basket and wrapping lamb pies in cloth. She strapped a wineskin across her shoulder and hoisted the swollen leather onto her hip. Then out from behind the table, a tiny hand emerged slow as a snake, sliding towards the platter of biscuits. “Dytha, no.” Haeneth disappeared behind the table, the crown of pale hair just visible as she knelt to lift her daughter. “What did I tell you about stealing?”
He stepped into the hall and watched her for a while. When she picked up her daughter, he cleared his throat and then walked to her slowly. “Preparing for a feast?” he said, looking over the selection on the table.
Haeneth hooked Dytha onto her hip to balance the wineskin propped on the other side. “No, I am taking supplies to Cyndyn. The girl hasn’t eaten in days and the Watch won’t feed much to her.” Even from the height of her mother’s arms Dytha reached for the biscuit, clenching her little fists and straining as if the effort would grow her arms. Haeneth ignored the toddler’s puffed red cheeks and only held her firmly.
He picked up one of the biscuits and inspected it, smelling it deeply. He was fond of the biscuits–not for its taste, but for its smell. The smell reminded him of something dear to him. But that memory was soured when he frowned at the mention of Cyndyn. “I tried to convince her to leave–to come back here and get some rest. That girl will catch death if she remains as she is, and she stubbornly will not see it.”
Dytha began to press her chubby fingers into Haeneth’s shoulder to try and pry herself from the hold, but Haeneth seemed wholly un-phased by the effort. She reached for a few biscuits and wrapped them in a napkin, tying the ends deftly with one hand. “Which is why I am going to her. She sleeps a little when I watch Vini for her, and she eats what I bring her. When he is fit to move she will return.” Her frown inched in. “When I am there I must bring him back with me. There is a cart ready to take me to Bree and fetch him.”
Agamaran sighed under his breath. “You should not be putting yourself at risk like this,” he began, and put the biscuit back down on the table. “And this is Thorvall’s plan? Return the man here and let him recuperate in his halls?” His lips pursed in frustration. “This only puts you in danger instead.”
“In danger of what?” She folds the cloth over the basket brimming with food. “Will he attack me in the cart? He can barely move, can barely endure an hour of pain without an herb to soothe him. What danger am I facing?”
He lowered his voice, as well as his brow, as he listened to her skepticism. “He will heal over time here. He will become comfortable, and you will let your guard down. And that is when he would strike at you, or Cyndyn, or anyone else.” He finally gave recognition to Dytha when he looked down at her as he finished his words.
Haeneth’s eyes hardened as she hoisted her daughter higher on her hip. “I will not let anything happen to her,” she declared with all authority, the scars around her eyes deep as wrinkles.
He said nothing in return, simply picking up the biscuit again and pocketing it within a pouch on his belt. He stared over all the foods on the table and leaned upon it as he took in a deep sigh. “For many years I have counseled the Oathsworn,” he said to her quietly. “For many years they have ignored me on every issue. Elanwen, for instance, never once took the advice I gave to her on whether it was a smart idea to harbor the children of our enemies. Even when the plans ultimately back-fired and calamity struck, never once was my counsel heeded afterward.” He rose again and stood tall before her. “And now I am asking the woman that I love to take my advice this once–just this once–and believe I may have an inkling of what may befall these halls if you bring that villain here, and even she will not heed my words.” He ran a gloved hand through his hair as he sighed deeply and looked down at his boots. It did not sound as if he was finished speaking, but he was.
A sigh brushed Dytha’s curls, making the girl wince. Haeneth bent to set her down, and at once the child was off, scampering to a corner of the hall to find a mouse to chase. Haeneth turned to the Ranger and set her palm on the basket handle. She did not look weary, but only tired, exhausted by the day but ready to rise and face another next dawn. “Very…well,” she breathed, steeling herself. “I will ask Thorvall the wisdom of his plan.” She looked in his eyes. “If he does not change his mind, I cannot disobey him, but I will do for you what I can.”
He came close to her then and held her at her arms and placed a gentle kiss on her forehead. “Thank you,” he said to her quietly, and it sounded as if he meant it. He continued to hold her at arm’s length. He did not look her in the eye, but rather left his gaze to look at the crown of her flaxen head.
Her voice came to him soft as if through rain. “Agamaran, what is it?” She touched his cheek, her fingers rough with callouses, her pressure gentle.
He touched her hair and ran his fingers through the length. “Nothing,” he said somewhat unconvincingly. “You have enough to worry about already.”
She stepped closer, her hand sliding down his cheek to rest on his shoulder. “And you worry too much for the two of us. What is it?”
“It is my duty to worry,” he said to her as he began to play with a strand of her hair. “So let me worry.” He placed another gentle kiss on her forehead then. “I should go,” he said, although it did not sound as if he wanted to.
“Wait-” She pressed closer to him, closing her eyes. “You want to protect me,” she whispered. “This I know, but I cannot protect myself if you keep secrets.”
“Some secrets are best kept as secrets,” he said to her in a low tone as his lips came close to her ear. “I know the years I have over you give you reason to pause, Haeneth. I do not wish to upset you or trouble your mind of my past. It is not important.” He continued to play with a strand of her hair, wrapping it around his finger, then unraveling it slowly and repeating the process over.
She leaned into him, seeking the warmth of his breath. “I am not troubled by how many years are yours, but how few are mine.” Her fingers traced his shoulder laces. “I cannot be the woman you need if you do not let me. How can I grow older for you if you wish to keep me so young?”
“I do not wish for you to remain young, Haeneth,” he said, sighing over her. “You are already older than your true age from the things you have seen and have experienced.” He stopped playing with her hair then. “Every time you leave and return, you grow older. Such is time, which is the only thing that we have.”
“Then share it with me,” she whispered, her tone pained. “Trust me. You are wrapped in shadow.” She kissed his shoulder, his neck. “I do not want to love only half a man.”
“Perhaps,” he said, as he held her at her sides. “One day. But not this day.” He looked over her shoulder to try and find her small child. “This day you have more important things to be concerned about.”
Her forehead tipped against him and she yielded. Breathing deeply of his pine scent and leather, she curled into his arm. “You are here, and you are safe.”
He embraced her fully then, pulling her closely into his chest. “As are you,” he said to her softly. “As are you…” he repeated the words to himself.
She pulled away from him and hooked her finger in his. Guiding him towards the corner of the hall she called for her daughter, who was on her hands and knees looking for knots in the wall where a mouse might hide.
“Dytha, come.” The child looked up, her features snapping out of their scrunched concentration. She pushed herself to her feet and hobbled over, smiling up at the man, though he looked as friendly as the stuffed bear statue growling high above them.
“Bear!” she pointed at the dark scowl and giggled.
“No, Dytha, that’s Agamaran.” She sat down on the floor though the chairs were empty and pulled her daughter into her lap. “What do we say to new people?”
“Wet-soo hawl.” Dytha clapped her hands.
“Westu Hal. That’s right.” She kissed the toddler’s curls, earning a grimace and a fresh rush of rouge to tiny freckled cheeks. “Westu hal, Agamaran.”
Agamaran looked utterly confused as he looked from Dytha to Haeneth and back. “Suilad melon, Dytha,” he intoned back to the small child. He cleared his throat as he came to his knees on the floor before the both of them. He remained quiet as he studied the child like he would some wild flower he did not recognize or know in the wild.
“Sa-lan,” she repeated, then slapped her open hands against her mouth as she giggled. Haeneth wrapped her arm around the toddler’s waist as she fidgeted and almost toppled out of her lap. “You don’t have to be afraid,” she smiled, the worry from before passing away like clouds across the sky. “She only bites when she’s angry.”
He smiled a little as she tried to mimic the words he spoke. He did not look up to Haeneth when she spoke, and instead pondered what he should do next. So he removed the biscuit from the pouch on his belt, and broke a piece of it off and ate it. He then broke off another significantly smaller piece and offer it to Dytha.
Dytha’s arms flapped so hard she almost took flight, but Haeneth held on. The girl strained for the biscuit until buckets of red popped in her cheeks. She squealed and only the munching she viciously set to would quiet her.
“She has always been lively, vivacious,” she smiled and kissed the freckles through her daughter’s hair. “Just like her father.”
He risked a true smile as he watched her greedily devour the piece of biscuit he offered to her. But the smile relented somewhat at the mention of the child’s father. “She is happy to be with her mother,” he said, looking up to Haeneth then.
“I know. I know she is.” She thumbed the crumbs away from Dytha’s swollen cheeks. Looking up at Agamaran, she smiled. “She would be happy to know you better.”
“Hm.” He was unsure of what to say to that, so he simply looked back down at her and watched her with interest. He broke off another small piece of the biscuit then and offered it to her again.
Encouraged by her lover’s distraction, she let slip a mischievous smile. Her eyes glittered though the scars at the corner of her lips twisted. Her hands slackened, and at once Dytha was free. The child collapsed but quickly regained herself, tripping over her mother’s legs as she fought to climb them. She reached for the biscuit and had just tasted victory when she fell almost immediately towards Agamaran’s arms.
Agamaran’s smile was replaced by confusion as Haeneth set loose her cub. As she waddled her way to him, he seemed to straighten. But when she fell, he grabbed her before he could find the floor. He held her by her tiny arms as she stood up before him. He turned his head to the side as he studied her. Slowly, he offered up the piece of biscuit to her face.
Haeneth pressed her own fingers to her lips to hide her growing grin. She leaned back, allowing her hair to fall as an extra disguise half-across her eye, while she watched her beloved at the only task with which she had seen him struggle.
Dytha’s fingers closed around the biscuit to steady it, then chomped down with her gummy mouth around more finger than treat as she drooled down his ancient ring-ed hand.
“Oh, Valar,” Haeneth chimed with a laugh like frolicking. “Have you ever been so beset, Ranger?”
He grimaced at the drool and wiped it off on the child’s clothes. “A nursery is no place for a Ranger,” he said as he tried to turn the child and pointed at Haeneth. “Go,” he said somewhat gently, “Return to your mother.” He looked at her expectantly.
“Oh no, I have to wash that,” she chuckled as she reached for her daughter just as the toddler attempted to climb Agamaran by stepping onto his boot. “No, now. That’s not Caradras.”
He eyed the child with caution as she attempted to explore his person. When she was whisked away by her mother’s arms, he seemed to relax again, although he idly kept trying to wipe his hand clean against his pants. He remained silent, unsure of what to say or do.
Dytha munched on her biscuit, like a pixie, so small she had room for only one distraction at a time. Haeneth peered over her daughter’s shoulder with more probing eyes. “Is this how you will play with our children?”
The air escaped Agamaran as he froze over like the wastelands of Forochel. He tensed and his hands gripped as he was completely caught off guard. “Ah,” he said, clearing his throat excessively, “Well, um.” He looked anywhere but at Haeneth. Finally, he decided on an escape route. “First we must be wed.” He froze again.
Haeneth stroked her daughter’s hair until the child chewed quietly. “When I was a child,” she said, easing Dytha into her lap as the child stared vacantly over her treat. “My father, mother, brother and I shared one bed. We lived in one room. We had no one but each other, and it was my father who taught me to shoot, to skin rabbits, to pluck chickens and carve wood.” She kissed Dytha’s head as the child munched on. “I would hope that maybe, you could have some similar influence on our own sons and daughters.”
He scratched his head absently as he mulled over her words. “I grew up in a household, Haeneth,” he said, and he began to relax again, yet seemed pensive. “We had servants and maids who took care of many of our things. My mother would often try to spend time with us, but my father had…other plans. By the age of six, he began to discipline us in the ways of the city, and what it meant to be of the Dunedain.” He rubbed at his hands absently. “By the age of ten I was serving in the navy as a piper aboard a galley.” He found his familiar boots again, and focused on them. “There was little love in my house, and if there was ever much of a chance it was lost when my mother died. My father was never quite the same afterward.”
Haeneth looked down as the last secret unrolled. She wrapped her arms around her daughter’s waist. The child’s free hands began to braid her mother’s hair, though the attempt yielded nothing but tangles.
“You will be a better father than him.” Her face burned beneath her flesh as she stared at the knots in the oak.
“Hm.” Agamaran did not seem entirely convinced by her assertion, or whether or not it would come to pass. He stood up then, looking around the hall as if trying to find something else to busy himself with. When he could find no excuse to distract himself with, he returned his attention back to her. “Well, I suppose I should be on my way.” The tone was somewhat cold, as if the recent topic had made him more distant than usual.
Haeneth watched him rise, keeping hold of her daughter. A brief pain pinched her features, but it was gone when she looked away.
He bowed his head to her. “I hope the rest of the day serves you well, Haeneth.” He turned to walk out of the hall then.
Haeneth bowed over her daughter’s head, as if needing a place to rest. She breathed quietly into Dytha’s thin hair and stroked her with one bare finger around her ear. The child’s sticky fingers tugged on the chain around Haeneth’s neck and its gold ring wrought from modest skill and great care. Dytha put it in her mouth and rolled it around until Haeneth rescued it and tucked it back into the tunic laced under her robes, cold against her breast. “Come on Dytha, let’s find Thorvall,” she said as she listened to the door close, and kissed the girl between her wide blue eyes
