Chapter 2: Gift

[ Setting the scene: the events of this chapter take place in Gondor’s Houses of Healing, shortly after the Battle of the Pelennor Fields with hours of Aragorn bringing Éowyn back to consciousness. Valarin was the language of the Ainur when they first took corporeal form.]

15 March 3019 (Third Age), Minas Tirith

Stiffness in her neck elevated Éowyn from restless sleep to unsettled wakefulness. Her broken arm stung in places and throbbed in others, though there was no part of her body that wasn’t at least sore. Even my...

No, she reminded herself with a shudder, that was only my nightmare. Her dreams were strewn with the emotional wreckage of her ordeal. Yet I am sore. Especially ... back there. How can that be, if it was all just a dream? No one has touched me in that way since ... since...

Her brow furrowed. The all-too-vivid memory of eternal sexual torment was an “eternity” that never actually existed, lasting less than an eye-blink in the real world. She’d eventually have to learn to deal with the contradiction between knowledge and fact, but for now she strained to recall what came before. How long has it actually been?

The answer came as an unexpected shock.

Yesterday! It was only yesterday that Elfhelm came to me amongst the stones. I used him ... giving him an exotic experience to salve my guilt, perhaps, but as usual more interested in my own selfish needs, spending what I thought might be my final hours in abandoned, orgiastic dissolution. And then ... and then...

Éowyn gasped as she remembered the rest. The Drúadain! How many there were I’ll never know ... taking my ass one after the other, filling me with their seed and disappearing into the forest. I never even saw their faces. How could I be so irresponsible? So depraved? What was I thinking?

Though such acts seemed (at least though the lens of her trauma) to have taken place ages in the past, as the memories coalesced so did the emotions that had surrounded them. Pleasure, yes ... but also sexual avarice, desperation, and shame.

So very much shame.

She wept at the depths to which she’d willingly, even eagerly, descended. I can scarcely understand how I live on. That despite all I’ve done I’m still here. Still faced with the same choices as before. And for all of that I must thank ... Aragorn.

A better avatar for her terrible errors of judgment she could scarcely imagine. While he’d healed her — for which she’d be forever grateful — to a great extent she was still trapped in her dark dungeon of erotic horror. I wonder if I’ll ever truly escape. Even now, destructive sexuality suffuses my every thought. Meanwhile, the living, breathing, human side of her was wracked with regret at what was necessary for Aragorn to rescue her from her inner hellscape. Of all the things I’ve done and now regret, my shameful behavior towards him may be the worst of all. Not least because healing me required him to betray both himself and the woman he loves; exactly the betrayal I unwittingly tried and failed to coerce him into at Dunharrow.

“Arwen.” Was that the name he cried? I wonder who she is, and what manner of lady she must be to claim so great a heart. Well, it doesn’t matter. He cannot be mine, and yet I live on. But to what purpose? I welcome what may come no more than I did before, and if there’s a place for me in any future ... save opening my legs for a few hours of forgetfulness ... I can’t see it. What choices do I really have, anyway? Perhaps I should become a whore in truth rather than just in deed, for if a blade is to be denied me it seems the only thing at which I’ve any demonstrable skill.

Marinating in despair, she tried to remember how to be plain, simple, unencumbered Éowyn, but failed at every turn. Time flowed and stilled at random, her memories an undifferentiated miasma of dissolution without hope, and it grew harder to discern if she existed in nightmare or reality. Or worse: if there was any difference at all.

Suddenly, she became aware of a presence at the door. How long he’d been there she didn’t know.

“Could the Lady Éowyn perhaps bear some aged and very tired company?”

Gandalf crumpled his weary body into a chair, staring at and through her from beneath his bushy eyebrows. She felt naked under his gaze and barely managed to steady her voice for a greeting.

“Gandalf, please forgive my condition and my confusion, for I am but newly conscious. What can I... ?”

“You can stop worrying about how you look and indulge an old Wizard’s ramblings. For good or ill the end of everything is imminent, and whether or not there will be a beginning in its aftermath is my great task. I have little time, and even less to spend on idle words. But there is a conversation I cannot leave to another, nor for later.”

She pulled the sheets closer. “I don’t understand.”

His eyes, rheumy and thick with fatigue, continued to bore through her. But there was light in them, and fire, and motivating force, and insight that penetrated all veils. She wished for thicker coverlets and much more clothing than she currently wore, yet she knew neither would suffice to protect her from his gaze ... for it wasn’t her body at which he peered.

“I think you do. I would gentle my speech, Lady Éowyn, but as I’ve said my time is short beyond measure. I am deeply concerned about you, for you may also have less time than you hope.”

“What ... what do you mean? Didn’t Aragorn... ?”

“He brought you out of the darkness and healed your body, yes. Even I could not have done as he did, for his is a lineage the likes of which will never be seen again, save perhaps in his heirs ... should those ever come to be. To me were different gifts given. But he is beset by many cares, and though he bears special consideration for you and thus a greater personal burden than anyone else knows, his attention is of necessity overwhelmed by the enormity of his imminent responsibilities. Whereas I spare a moment to fear what will be for the Lady Éowyn. As, I believe, do you.”

Her eyes widened, but she remained mute with assent.

“You believe, I think, that you lack choices. You tell yourself a convenient lie, for you are in truth confronted by many choices but worried that you will fail at the decision. You believe this because of choices you’ve made and now regret.”

She felt numb, for he pierced to the heart.

“I ask your forgiveness for speaking so plainly, but I see the darkness within you and know its source. I do not mean the lies and illusions of the Witch-king, for you have the strength and the courage to overcome both... if you wish to. Neither you nor I yet knows if you do. Nay, I speak of a different source.”

As if compelled she whispered, “it ... it all started with Wor...”

“Lady Éowyn,” he interrupted with a raised eyebrow, “you need not recall his name nor what he has done. I know all too well the tricks by which that snake plied his trade, both his own and those supplied by his patron. But neither do I speak of him.”

She shut her eyes against the tears that began to flow.

“Wormtongue lied easily and often, but great evil is oft achieved with the truth. You see this even though you do not wish to, for while his designs on you were forever foul he fulfilled them by divining those truths which you would not see within yourself and speaking them back to you as counsel. Yet the malevolence of the counselor does not necessarily diminish the applicability of the counsel.”

Her crying was not stemmed, and Gandalf gentled his next words. “Remember, Lady Éowyn, that nothing is evil in its beginning. Not Wormtongue, not Saruman, not the Witch-king, not Sauron ... not even the Great Enemy that came before all of them. Evil is not born into this world, it is a fall from grace. Lies can serve good, truth can destroy. Any word, thought, or thing can be used or misused. It all depends on intent. On purpose. On what dwells within the heart.”

“You have learned and done much, and not just within the tortured confines of your nightmares. Nay, do not fear my judgment,” he said as her face reddened. “What’s done is done, and in any case it’s not my judgment that matters. It’s yours. You have acted well and ill, for and against love, sensibly and rashly, and at times you have perpetuated evil believing that it was imposed upon you from without. But you must realize this to be untrue. Much of your darkness you have created within yourself. Did you not admit this very truth to Aragorn?”