On a diary page bruised with the drying juices of varied produce, in script made tight by long work, can be read…
Even called by them, distrust and unease shifts behind their eyes. We have become strange by the divisions set by want of need and want of wisdom, but it is not only this. There is fear that is due, coming summoned by memory and by the heart; and there is fear that exists as fear itself, in the air. I do not feel it settling here, it does not lay as heavy banks of mist. But I feel it as some particle in the air. It blows in on the East wind.
I remember the look of many a land thought safe, many a land beset, and many a land thought healed. Well I know how illness seeps into the earth and remains, like blade oil in a cloth. What is here, it feels to me, has long been here. I fear that it bends its own ear to what I have heard abroad and, so-doing, becomes bold.
Plants wither, blackened from within. The plant does nothing but what a plant does, but by taking up its part of what nourishes it with ordained trust: it finds itself poisoned. Old war and old foe left their wake of muck, diffuse down to the stone past the soil. The poisoned plant becomes, then, an agent of poison. So the Men, so the horses, are poisoned. Here it seems to stop, but in no glad manner.
I explain this to them. Some few know it, some few trust it. They have never known it all their lives or in most their stories, and to hear it from my mouth is to hear it only, and not know, save where they trust.
Elves they know, and those especially that make holds and paths here. But better than these they know stories of Elves, which seem to tend ever-more vague, and ever-less flattering. Eregion was once only a long look East from any nearby hill, and looms in absence yet. Even a shade of unfamiliarity drives a wedge of late, I fear, with little known and much supposed.
Further South, Tornhad, a firm seat of the Dúnedain hereabout, is likely to avail better faith. Arradril, seeming a fine scout, goes ahead there, and my hopes that she be received and the voice of warning heeded goes with her. From there, such voice is likely to find its repeat in strength, and may travel outwards. It must.
For my part, I shall work here in a trust which asserts itself. All foodstuffs whether for Man or animal need be inspected. As what bears this harm shows no outward mark, busy knives find their work. Peeling what may be peeled, bisecting what can be cut, unseasonal work comes in force. Much of what we work through should have been enjoyed ripe and fresh, but what is found suitable must now be eaten in mindful hurry, or preserved. The smokehouses, the drying racks, the great pots and the low fires and the patience to watch them; they were not made so ready as they now need be. It is much, and sudden, and is only the start of all that must be done. Until we can believe this corruption well-cleared, alternate provision must find its way to the Angle. Meanwhile, these good folk are robbed of a Summer.
One spoiled plant we found more Northerly up the bank, but what more our company found in the stores here in Gaerond can only, mercifully, have come from the South. Whatever it is that works against, it seems to have found its crux, its place of highest effect. Still, we must cast a wide eye and sift the earth a depth, the East and West banks, and in prudence we must attend also the river-source.
Mitheithel. How young is our acquaintance? What has been your waters’ dance in the long years before my coming here? Could this affliction be older yet than I know? What stories the Men brought with them, over Ered Luin uncrack’d. The surety of Sirion is long out of sight. I would not see another of our world’s waters lose its course, its glad name, to pollution such as this. I refuse it.
Pollution. I think of hir Glorfingwë, his comments earlier in the day. It seems to me that he muses still, broods; his keen mind searching beyond what his deft hands might reach, crate after crate. He had mused before on what effect thoughtless industry can have in the land: that many things wanted and made, themselves give make to byproducts quite unwanted. A similarity, he detected, in the foulness found here and in potent alchemies gone awry.
I wonder at this, for where this may be the case; is it not also a symptom of the threatened Shadow at work? Where fear walks and panic follows, those frit of siege and oppression turn their hands to the forming of armour and arms, and forget their other cares and duties within and without. This I recall sharp and well: that the forge-air that billows under threat of violence may, in fault, give breath to a violence its own - beyond its first meaning, and beyond defense.
I think at last of my love, Carethril, on her way to make her report to Rín Manadhlaer, and hir Branalph along with her. Branalph’s capability at duty is writ in his very form and bearing: I am glad of his escort, and mind well that it costs him a parting. And what Carethril puts to words, and what she may put words to, far exceed my skill in speech or scrivening. Of their success, at least, I am sure. What wisdom follows from out the hall of Lósengriol is surely needed.
The business of many hands in Gaerond this day has made many capable, and soon it shall do well for me to leave. As we break once more from the work this evening, I see that the narrow focus of good toil has waned, and that grief begins to roost on the brows of Men as sights come to settle on the days ahead. The deep throes of the weight of work are coming to a close, and many crates are decanted to seeming so few sealed clay pots. It is becoming known, felt, what is lost.
Perhaps in vain, but I shall strike some song by the campfire. A harvest ill-enjoyed and here wintered before its time, I shall do what I can to set sights far over the days ahead, to Summers beyond. When there is momentum and cheer enough once more, I shall make for Tornhad.
