Faramir Fiction Archive

The Moon Has Waned (PG-13)

Written by Erfan Starled

22 August 2010 | 17300 words

Chapter Nine

“Tonight we rest here,” said Hajiri, “and tomorrow too, through the day. In the evening, we go on into the desert.”

Faramir could smell it. The cold night air hinted of heated sand and the fragrance of plants he knew no name for.

“And for tonight… Come with me, Iraehel.” The word fell into the quiet of the oasis around them.

Faramir’s choices lay before him, his decision still to make between defiance, unlikely escape, survival in captivity, or the honour of last resort his father would expect of him. Or there was this man and his rich smile and dark voice and eyes that spoke of a soul as fiery and still as the desert. The southerly wind would carry no tales. He could trust the discretion of the wind. Could he trust Hajiri’s honour?

Hajiri spoke to his men, and then to Faramir, “We can use the spring to wash.”

Hajiri walked to a damp rock where water bubbled up among loose-rooted weeds, sweet-smelling and small of leaf, that crept along the ground to either side among miniature crevasses, shelter from the sun’s heat. Hajiri’s face had its own landscape of lines scored beside his nose and around his eyes, and on his forehead between his brows. When he laughed with his men they took on their full depth, and they showed now as he looked up from collecting water and smiled at Faramir, who felt his stomach turn over.

Faramir wondered at himself. What in the world was he doing? He took a step back. Hajiri said nothing to stop him, but shrugged ever so slightly and went on filling his curious little bucket of stiff leather, unfolded from his pack. Lined with some fitted waxed material, it seemed fully water-tight.

Slowly it filled with the cold, sweet water that had hurt Faramir’s throat earlier when they trickled it down him, exhausted with the heat. Hajiri set the bucket deliberately on the stone beside him and stripped to the skin to wash. When he was done, he gestured to Faramir, before donning without haste a light shirt he carried in his small roll of equipment.

Faramir went to the bucket and held it to the little trickle of water and then settled himself more comfortably on his haunches for it to fill. When it was full, Hajiri gestured and led him away as voices approached. Faramir realized the men were waiting to use the spring themselves.

There was a place where palms grew, binding sand into a semblance of earth and harbouring grasses in their roots. A small tree, spiky and of slender leaf, held its own among them. Tiny yellow flowers dotted it, open to the night and smelling of something Faramir thought he recognized as the scent on the jihabi. His moment of final refusal had come.

Faramir set down the bucket but before he could speak, Hajiri said, “Do not refuse me.” It sounded more a question hovering on the wind, at one with the night, than a command. “Say nothing. There is no need. I will show you why, if you only wait…” Standing very close, he unwound the folds of Faramir’s jihabi.

“Quietly, quietly, only wait a little…” He dipped a corner of the clean jihabi in his hand into the cold water and brought it, dripping, to Faramir’s face, drawing it around his hair-line, smoothing away the dampened curls.

Faramir held his wrist to stop him, and Hajiri looked into his eyes from his bent head, so that he was looking up. There was an intensity to him that made Faramir pause, their eyes fixed on each other. Hajiri made no move to pull free, but only waited. He, like the desert, seemed to have all the time in world. Slowly, Faramir let his wrist go.

Hajiri betrayed no hint of triumph, acted as if winning were not on his mind. His small smile was warm as if in fellow feeling. He dipped the cloth again and turned Faramir around to bathe his neck. He opened Faramir’s shirt before moving on to his hands, his chest, his back under the loosened cloth. The water, as cold in the night air as when it bubbled from the ground, chilled Faramir’s skin. The cloth’s slight roughness as Hajiri drew it over him in small, cold strokes raised sensations elsewhere, up his spine, in his belly, in his scalp. Faramir started to shiver as Hajiri urged him to step out of his boots and breeches. He felt exposed, not by nakedness, but the vulnerability of feeling.

In only his open shirt and breech clout, he tried to convince himself he was going to walk away. To what, he did not know: to live another day and then what? Escape? How far would he get, assuming he even managed to break away? He was not afraid to try, though he could die making his way home, lost and parched in the wilderness. And yet standing in this desert oasis, isolate in time and space, it seemed to him that what he walked away from was of far greater moment — he could never walk away from himself.

He kept his place and watched Hajiri’s movements, precise, economical, flowing from a balance of body in harmony with itself and its surroundings. The darkness made deep shadows where firelight and starlight did not fall. Faramir watched the shadows move — Hajiri’s hair swinging across his back, shoulders and face alive with its own wiry resilience.

Hajiri wrung out the cloth and drew it up one leg, and then his fingers kneaded muscles in the guise of working the damp silk down against the skin, smoothing hair flat again. Faramir shivered unmistakeably and stepped back.

“You don’t really expect me —”

“Hush, no talk,” answered Hajiri. “Words only get in the way. Iraehel was famed for his beauty but never spoke. His lord fell hopelessly in love with him. Iraehel vowed that if he could not love him back at least no words of his would ever entangle his lord’s heart further.”

He sat back on his ankles, cloth resting in his open hand. “From you, I expect nothing, except bravery, but where I have no expectations perhaps I can persuade… Let me try, at least. Or do I read you wrong, man of Gondor?”

“You would enslave me.” Faramir wished his voice did not sound so hoarse.

Hajiri tilted his head. “That is one way of describing it.” He ran a hand down Faramir’s leg. “A good way, perhaps.” He bent his head and kissed Faramir’s calf, his hand light on Faramir’s skin.

“Holding on and letting go, these are the high arts of life. Between one and the other lies the journey of our hearts. Do you not wish to be held — for this night at least? Would you have me let you go so soon?”

“If I refuse you, you promise no such letting go. You say you will take me to your land and do as you please. You ask me a question and give me no choice.” Somehow Faramir did not feel coerced, though he made the words as terse as he could manage.

“If you say me nay?” Hajiri shrugged. “These are hard times. My men watch and listen… but now they are out of sight and out of hearing. We shall perhaps be good actors, yes? And pretend. My men will be satisfied with my mastery and your meekness and they will believe you pleasured me well. I shall let you go back to your white city, and your trees, and they will laugh and call me besotted. I think you and I will be the poorer — if we only pretend this is so.”

Faramir stared at him. “You let me think, all this time —”

Hajiri gave another little shrug, as expressive as any smile or frown. “I have my reputation and my men to think of. We take great pride in our leaders. It is a matter of — I do not know the word. It is important to them and for my authority, you understand. I am not the only one who understands your tongue: some speak a little for barter with the north.” He gestured largely southwards with his arm. “There are many different peoples in our lands and as many languages. Sometimes, near your borders, we find your common tongue useful between our own peoples. For others among us, it is expected, a part of our learning, though none of my men are such students.” He smiled, wryly. “Your accent is far harder than the words, no?”

Hajiri fell quiet, still on his haunches. Faramir gazed down on him, not finding it hard to see in him a scholar. This man, so at ease with himself, contained so much in his quietude. Sworn foe, soldier, scholar — seducer… Hajiri’s eyes held out his question still.

Faramir heard the desert’s shifting vastness around him, the sand, dark-shadowed by bright stars, hushing as it moved in the wind. He smelled the tiny flowers whose scent filled the air, and saw deep-etched the lines of laughter in Hajiri’s face.

The bucket was still half full. Faramir bent with cupped hands and buried his face in the chill water. He dipped up a little more, rinsing away the last grains of sand as if with them he washed away the last of his resistance. Slowly, he shucked his shirt and his underclout and held out his hand for the cloth. He soaked it and passed it over himself, all the parts Hajiri had not ventured yet to cover. His skin relished the damp cold.

When he was done, he handed the cloth back to Hajiri, who laid it gently across the bucket and stood, drawing Faramir to him.

This time, Faramir did not step back. This time he let his hands rest on Hajiri, lightly at first, his arms, his shoulders, his back. This was a new land to explore and he was without a map, he had only this foreign guide in lieu. Full of wonder, he felt no hurry. That would come later, he suspected, with a sense of unreality. How could he be doing this?

How could he not?

What else would it be but to live a lie if he refused, when all he wanted was to assent? And tonight — tonight fell yet a little short of his captor’s homeland. Tonight lay between worlds… a place where only the desert and a pair of eyes held him thrall.

Tomorrow would see him on his way home but for tonight he would hold on to what Hajiri held out to him.

Letting go was for tomorrow. Letting go was for a new day and another life.

Hajiri kissed him.

Faramir let him.

End of Chapter Nine

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