It began with an awareness of how unfair the world could be. As simple as that. She had struggled so hard, enduring painful exercises in the dark of night so that her parents wouldn’t know, using the oils and creams the healers in Pelargir had given her, allowing Yula to test upon her every Salla root and Athelas leaf concoction she could dream up….yet none of it helpled. Despite everything, she had to accept the truth of it, she was lame, and there was nothing anyone could do. Why delude herself any longer?
If only she hadn’t trusted that shipboard sawbones. Just stay off it for a few days, it will be fine he said. Here, just wrap it in these liniment clothes he said. Don’t tell the captain or you will be stuck in a desk job, or worse he said.
The day the pain became too serious to hide, the day her excuses ran out and she was told to go home until she could be approved for duty again, her replacement as pilot was already waiting dockside. A pretty young cadet, a “protege” of that same ship’s doctor who had let her dig her own grave. She had been duped, so that the ships doctor could in turn lie to himself that this pretty girl saw anything more in him than an easy promotion. The entire world was just a falsehood, all that mattered was who was lying and who was being lied to…and she was always the one being lied to. The sheer injustice of it was staggering then, and just got worse as month drifted into month.
Then when Nethrida suddenly reappeared in Linhir, she should have been elated. Her big sister returned from her self-imposed exile…and with important, impressive friends in tow. It was with a grim sense of validation that she saw all she had feared if Nethrida ever came back, everything she had hoped to avoid by forgetting she had encountered her, broken and grieving in that sad little town in Eriador, Bree or Breed, whatever it was called….unfold before her very eyes. Suddenly Nethrida was the favored child again, the hero, the family pride. More lies, more delusions, leaving her to gather what scraps of familial love she could once Revion had had his fill of what Nethrida left. It is true what they say of middle children…they get nothing.
The sapping feeling of injustice soon turned to sorrow, to despair, to rage. How often she sat on her pier overlooking the endless sea, going over every lie she had been told, every delusion she had been told to cling to, seeing clearly that she would never sail again and thinking how loving and final the sea’s embrace would be. For a long time, the only thing that stopped her was fear of what would come next, and a sense of responsibility to her parents. However one day, when she was closer then she had ever been to letting herself fall and sink forever, a voice whispered in her ear, telling her to be brave, to have faith. Reminding her that Nethrida’s accomplishments were simply the deeds of a lucky sheep, in the right place at the right time, used by a shameless schemer to elevate herself. She had even used the death of her lover to push her up the ladder, even as she pretended to weep for him. That little voice deep in her heart reminded her that her day would come, that cream always rises, she just had to be patient and follow her heart.
Every day she would limp out to the end of her pier, and watch the water, and the voice of strength and resilience in her soul would grow stronger, and tell her the truth that everyone had hidden from her for so long. That Revion was a strutting, arrogant peacock kept as a sort of pet by his betters in the Swan Knights, that Nethrida was a sham, pushed forward by her foul, fancy friends for their own reasons…and that poor Mother and Father needed to be protected from the cruel lies of their other children, even if they did not see it as they grew old and witless. Annedyl knew then that she must stand against the lies and heartless cruelties of her siblings, that she must be ready to seize her moment of greatness, her chance to become so much more then any of the fools in her hometown could ever dream of. She knew this. The voice had told her so.
Then that cursed letter from Pelargir arrived, telling her the cruel pretense was over and she was to be discharged, cast aside like so much trash. The illusion was over. Oh how she raged, screamed her defiance to the uncaring sea…then it seemed like the world went dark and warm, and when her vision cleared her hands were soaked in blood. Looking around she was standing in Baril’s rabbit hutch, every single one of his prized animals dead, torn to pieces by her hands. In horror she ran, waded into the sea and scrubbed until she had managed to get the flesh and fur out from under her nails, and wash all the blood away. The voice calmed her, consoled her. Who knew what was true or not, and whatever was true, it would be alright. It would always be alright. She staggered home that night and fell into a deep sleep her mind numb.
When she woke she assumed it was a dream….but a few days later, she rose from the darkness again, kneeling beside a slaughtered elk, it’s flesh sliced and brutally hacked. Had she slain it, cut it open that way, pulled its organs out? If so, she didn’t remember it, so it couldn’t really matter. It just didn’t matter, not after everything she had suffered.
Soon, her “darkness” was happening daily, only scattered glimpses of what she did, to animals, to others, and to herself, would reach her, like fever dreams. They chilled and confused her soul but the voice inside grew ever stronger, telling her simple rules no longer applied to her, reminding her of all she deserved, and all the bastards of Linhir, or Gondor..of the WORLD had denied to her. They deserved to pay, deserved to have their good destroyed, their farms despoiled, their lies laid bare….they...deserved…to DIE.
When she discovered poor Dottie, sweet Dottie cut and torn as so many beasts had been in her darkness, and somewhere in her mind she remembered another beast, stupid, cow-like Carin still smiling and chattering about nothing as she slit her throat…she realized that she had gone mad, once and for all. Mad. Utterly mad, She knew now that she needed help.
But the voice whispered, you aren’t mad, you are just overtired and grieving your poor dog, but you do need help to tend to your parents constant whining and complaining. Why should you bear all this alone? Like a charm in the night, the voice whispered her sister’s name. Nethrida. Call for Nethrida, he said. She would help with Dottie, with her parents, with all of it….bring her home.
And so, with the voice soothing and the darkness quivering on the edges of her mind, she wrote out the note….”Nethrida. There has been a death. Come home.” Yet she hesitated before signing it, as if for a moment she could not remember her name. Finally inscribing an A at the bottom of the note with effort. Turning the note over to slip into the envelope, she heard the men searching for Carin’s murderer outside her window on the Post Road, heard someone speaking of Elendil’s Vanguard and Knights of Minas Tirith, and for a moment, for the first time in what felt like forever, his voice inside her stilled as if thinking, somehow….surprised and therefore afraid.
In that moment, Annedyl felt the guilt and horror of every hour she had been lost in her darkness, and knew in a flash of horrifying clarity what he…what the voice intended to do. Only a moment, not enough time to do anything….so she wrote, at the bottom of the note, two tiny, meaningless words. “Bring Help”.
By the time his attention had returned, the note was in the envelope and she was dropping fitfully into sleep….when the darkness would be strongest. Her clarity, her memories were fading again under the calming drone of his voice. Everything would be alright....as she wept for her dog.
Bring help…she repeated the warning in some small, shivering part of her mind like a prayer before the darkness fully flooded her again. Being help.
Help. If it did come, however, she knew it would come too late.
Far, far too late.
