Faramir Fiction Archive

Treasure Enough (PG-13)

Written by Mira Took

19 June 2010 | 3909 words

Chapter 1

Faramir leaned heavily against a sapling as he looked over the edge of the embankment. The River Isen was at least fifty feet down: not a sheer drop but steep, and slick from yesterday’s rain. Even had he not been exhausted, feverish, and still damp himself, it would have looked a daunting route. As it was, he was having trouble focusing on his next goal. The opposite bank, he supposed, but he had to struggle to remember … a road, he must reach a road because it would be on a road that Cirdan and Lanthir might find him … Lanthir, that was funny, because of course a lanthir is a waterfall and there was the water and now he was slipping, sliding, falling toward it …

When Faramir woke some time later, he was dry and warm. Too warm, between the fever raging through him and the two cloaks wrapped about him. He struggled feebly to free himself from the thick material, making a noise of protest so hoarse that it startled him into stillness.

“Drink.”

The tea was some sort of herbal concoction, cooled enough that Faramir could gulp it as it was held to his lips. When he finished, he became aware of the person who gave it to him. An Elf. With brows too dark and a nose too prominent to be one of the Falathrim from home. A Wood-Elf, perhaps — Faramir had heard that Thranduil’s people were always light-haired. Faramir himself had wished for dark hair as boy: dark hair and grey eyes like so many of the heroes out of legend. And straight locks, not his unruly waves. This Elf’s hair was straight, straight and long and beautiful. Yes, though it was not black like Beren the One-handed’s or Eärendil the Mariner’s, yet it was undeniably beautiful. Golden and fine as embroidery floss …

With a sigh, the boy fell back asleep. The Elf regarded him thoughtfully for a moment and then moved to feed the small campfire at the mouth of the cave. He had not seen many Men while traveling through the land of the Rohan. And so far he had been fortunate enough to see them only at a distance, in good time to conceal himself beneath his cloak. This Man was the first person on his journey that he had met face to face. A good face, the Elf adjudged it, with a noble, open look about it. The reddish beginnings of a beard should have marred it in his eyes — for what Elf could admire such a dwarvish affectation? — but somehow made the young Man seem all the more appealing. For the rest, his clothes were leather and wool more finely woven than the Elf would have expected Man-made clothing to be, but they bore the unmistakable signs of hard wear, even before the final soaking from which the Elf had rescued him. His weapons, too, were good though unremarkable. From the calluses on the boy’s hands, the longbow saw as much use as the sword. His pack had contained a store of food, a few tools, and some common coins. In fact, the only anomaly was a small, fat volume of Quenya poetry, carefully wrapped in oilskin. An unlikely possession for a traveler in the wilds, and a Man at that. But there was nothing in the pack to answer the urgent question that had caused the Elf to search it.

Uttering a sigh of his own, the Elf took a cloth from his own baggage, wet it with water, and moved back over to his feverish charge. Gently, he ran the cloth across the boy’s flushed face and neck. He had no experience of illness, but much of wounds and the resulting fevers. Thus far, the same sort of treatment seemed to suffice. The Man would probably grow worse before he got better, and the Elf prepared himself for a long wait.

Faramir woke many times over the next few days, though often for only moments at a time. At first, he could barely take in his surroundings. More than once he called out for his foster fathers, but an Elf he didn’t know answered instead. Faramir tried to warn the stranger that the Heron was going to sink — that it could not ride the edge of the gale forever — but he was too weak to make his words understood. Later, Faramir realized that he was not on his one-man sailboat, that it had not sunk after all, but he couldn’t be bothered to remember how he had come to be in a cave. In his periods of wakefulness, he simply watched the Elf move around the small space or tried to move in a way that did not hinder his caregiver, who always seemed to be making him drink something.

On the day that the young Man was finally well enough to chew some rabbit stew in addition to the broth he had been swallowing, the Elf decided that it was time to ask for a name. He asked in his own tongue, which the boy had used often enough while he was delirious.

“Faramir, foster son of Cirdan of the Havens and Lanthir his husband.”

That explained the knowledge of Elvish languages and perhaps the strange fashion of a beard, for all knew that Cirdan was so old as to have one.

“And I am Haldir, son of Haidin, and a marchwarden of Lórien of the Blossom.”

“Oh, that explains your hair!” As soon as he said it, Faramir turned red.

Haldir smiled. “Yes, my family are Silvan. My brothers have light-colored hair as well. I’m told we look alike, though the youngest, Rúmil, escaped the family eyebrows. My brother Orophin and I consider him lucky, but he says it makes it more difficult to achieve a proper warden’s glare. When he was young, he used to practice tilting his chin up to look down his nose at everyone.”

As he spoke, Haldir deftly cleared away the remains of Faramir’s dinner and helped him to sit near the fire, propped up against their packs.

“I always wanted a brother,” Faramir offered, when he had been made as comfortable as the circumstances allowed. “The only Elf-child at home was thirty years older and apprenticed to a ship-builder before I could toddle. We came of age at the same time, but it’s only lately that we have had anything in common. I used to pretend I did have a brother — a merry, daring sort of boy, always charging into adventures, which was odd since I’m so quiet.”

“I suppose I’m quiet myself.”

“That likely makes you a good marchwarden.”

“I hope so,” Haldir replied. “The mallorn forests of the Golden Valley deserve careful guardians. I have had business abroad before now — sometimes even with settlements of Men — but never have I longed to be anywhere but home.”

“I wish I could say the same, but I’ve often thought there was someplace else to be. Than my home, I mean. I love my foster fathers dearly, but I don’t believe I should like to be a shipwright or even a fisherman.”

“Or a warrior?” Haldir asked.

Faramir chuckled. “I can’t imagine asking Lanthir to apprentice me to one. He remembers the good old days when no one needed such things and would probably be bewildered by such a request, even having fostered the last High King. Cirdan took over my education when I was of an age to be apprenticed; he said I should learn ‘the Way of the World.’ I’m still figuring out what he meant by that, but it’s certainly not what the dockhands mean when they say it!”

Haldir laughed.

“I learned to use a sword, of course, but I prefer archery,” Faramir concluded.

“Then we shall have to have a shooting bout someday. For now, though, I think we have spoken long enough for your first day of wakefulness. Let us rest.”

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