“Tamer’s Tale” by JunoMagic
Chapter 1: Tamer’s Tale
This is a tale of the island of Himling, a wizard, and a woman.
Have you heard of Himling, the island of Himling, in the Great Sea of Belegaer? Or the hill of Himring, the fortress of Maedhros in Beleriand before the world was changed?
No?
Never mind. The names of Himring and Himling were lost to legends long ago, and then those legends were lost, too.
But in the days of the Third Age of this world, Himling was an island in the cold grey seas of Belegaer to the north-west of the green hill-country of Forlindon.
A small island it was, barely twenty-five miles long and no more than twenty miles wide. Twenty-five miles off the coasts of Lindon, its green-grey hills ducked low under the force of the harsh storms blowing down from the icy wastes of the North. On some days it was barely worth being called an island—between the low clouds and the high seas it faded to nothing but a thin line of heather, coarse grass, and hills.
Those hills were nigh on barren. Nothing but thickets of broom and whitethorn, interspersed with a few straggling pines gnarled and twisted by the onslaught of wind and weather, graced their summits. Only on the highest hill a single standing stone reminded of ages gone and forgotten, and of an ancient darkness long ago, conquered at a high price of lives and love.
In the southern cove nestled a village, consisting of a mere handful of white and grey cottages. From afar, the houses looked almost like pebbles or driftwood. And in a way, they were—the very last remnants of an ancient realm and its fortress, and a jetsam of peoples and fates washed up on the beach of Himling over the course of centuries.
That was Himling in the Third Age of this world.
That, and a small cottage, which snuggled into a dell just below the highest hill with its lonely standing stone, facing the western winds: the wizard’s house.
The cottage had always been the wizard’s house, and the women of a certain family had always served him as housekeepers. For wizards do not age, and perhaps they have never been young. This one had the appearance of an old man—grey of hair and white of beard, with sparkling dark eyes and bushy grey eyebrows.
He did not come to Himling often; indeed, one of his housekeepers might live and die without ever having seen her master. Wizards are wanderers; they are travelling folk at heart. Thus they roam the roads of Arda wherever their feet and their work may take them, year after year after year. But even wizards need a home from time to time. Therefore, there was a wizard’s home in Himling, and a housekeeper to keep the house clean, the pantry stocked, and the garden well tended.
The housekeeper’s life might be lonely, but her office was well respected in the small community of Himling, and her services never went unrewarded. Her gardens would flourish even when all other crop on Himling failed. And never a day went by when the nets that her husband would cast out into the sea remained empty.
One of the wizard’s housekeepers was Tamer, later wife of Jehan.
This is her tale.
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