Chapter 5

“Tamer’s Tale” by JunoMagic

5. Faithful

She heard his steps in front of the door and hurried to open the door for him, dropping into a deep curtsy to greet the wizard with the respect that was his due.

“Welcome, master,” she said, her voice husky. Then she raised her head and looked at him.

He had not changed at all.

Staff in his right, hat in his left hand, the wizard stood in the doorway and calmly looked at his housekeeper. His hair was windblown where the hat had not kept it down, and the long silky white beard was tousled. His eyes shone with the same dark fire she remembered. The lines in his face spoke of many lonely and dangerous miles walked in twilight and darkness.

“But you have changed,” he said.

She knew that he saw all of her years and all of her dreams then, and she knew from the way he narrowed his eyes that some of the things he saw, he did not approve of, and some things he saw seemed to sadden him. But she did not lower her gaze, feeling suddenly rebellious and defiant, an emotion that was astonishing and surprising and very unlike the Tamer she knew, the woman she had grown up to be.

“I am a woman now,” she replied.

“Yes, you are,” he agreed. “It’s good to be home.”

She smiled then, a tentative smile. Things had changed between them, and she knew not why.

“The stew is already simmering,” she said. “The first potatoes are ripe; and they are very good this year.”

“About the only thing that is good this year,” he sighed. He leaned his staff into the corner behind the door and softly closed the door. She grew aware that his shoulders slumped as if he was bearing a heavy weight upon them. She hurried to take his cloak and hat from him, suddenly worried.

His cloak smelled of the sea and of smoke, of pipe-weed and camp-fire. She noticed a long slash in the cloak, carefully mended, but blackened at the edges—of blood or fire? She could not tell. As she hung cloak and hat on the hooks at the door, her fingers trembling slightly, she suddenly felt the comforting touch of a warm hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t worry, Tamer,” the wizard gave her a small smile. “Wizards always carry the weight of the world on their shoulders; that is what they are wizards for.”

She nodded, but in her heart she felt a strange fear, and for once she was glad that she had not become a seer but had lost that ability when she had turned a woman. What darkness threatened in the East, beyond the sea?

She shuddered. There were some things she did not want to know.

The wizard ate in silence that night, his thoughts still dwelling on the greener shores of Lindon or farther away, on ways and worries she could not fathom. He went to bed early.

It was strange to clean the kitchen that night, knowing that she was not alone in the house. As she moved from the cupboard to the table to the sink where she washed the dishes, she was curiously aware of the fact that in the bedroom above the kitchen the wizard slept again. Even as she carefully put the plates away, he would be lying in the broad bed with its wood dark with age and glossy with polish, on a mattress stuffed with fresh straw and herbs, covered with clean linen, his pillow and blankets smelling of lavender and rosemary, the southern herbs carefully nurtured in the wizard’s spell-protected garden.

How long would he stay this time?

When he appeared in the morning, she almost expected his beard to have vanished, the same way it had done ten years ago. But it was still there, if not quite as unruly as when had arrived last night. As if he read her mind, he raised a bushy eyebrow at her, silently chastising her.

She felt her cheeks flush with shame and served him without another word.

She remembered Jehan’s sad look, her father’s silent reproach when her next oldest brother had married a year ago, and she had only shrugged at the question when she might settle down with a handsome lad.

Suddenly she wondered why ever she had waited so long.

She worked in the garden that day. It was another fair day, unusually warm for an autumn day on Himling. She felt good as she moved through the garden, harvesting the riches a mild summer had left behind. She enjoyed even the sensation of sweat trickling down her spine, when she began turning up the earth of the potato bed. The earth was rich and humid, no doubt the best earth on all of Himling. She hummed as she worked, one of the Elvish songs she remembered from Gandalf’s last stay in Himling.

She never saw him stepping up behind her, nor did she hear him approach. But she smelled him before he spoke, the smoky scent of pipe-weed, and something spicy, a more intimate fragrance.

“So you remember the songs I sang for you,” he said in that husky voice she remembered so well. “Even after ten years.”

She straightened up and found that the work in the garden had calmed her heart, as it always did. She looked at the wizard. “Yes,” she replied, her voice firm. “I think I will remember them for as long as I shall live.”

“Faithful,” he said. “But why do you want to be faithful to me? Why not to Jehan who is waiting for you down in the village, working day and night, with patient labour perparing a home for you?”

She pondered his question, as she had indeed pondered it for many years now, without coming to any conclusion that would appease her father or console Jehan. “I don’t know. But my heart keeps telling me to tarry. Don’t you know about the voice of the heart?”

He regarded her in silence for a long moment. The fire in his eyes paled to smouldering embers. “I do know about that; never doubt that Tamer.”

Suddenly he raised his eyes to the western horizon. “But sometimes I do doubt the ways of the Valar, Eru may forgive me.”

For a moment she had the impression that he wanted to touch her shoulder in a gesture of comfort, but then he turned away wordlessly and went to sit on the bench to smoke his evening pipe, just as he had done ten years ago.

oooOooo


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