Part II
Sadoc points the Stranger in the direction of Greenwood the Great (Mirkwood?), where he will find big folk settlements. He is not being unfriendly, but it would be best for both parties if the Stranger moved on. The Stranger - still garbed in a grey cloth (which isn’t accidental, I should think) used as sunshield - is depressed. He leans dejectedly against the tree he failed to revive.
He does come alive though when Sadoc hands him a piece of paper.
“The people there can help you find your stars.”
The Stranger takes the paper and unfolds it. It shows the constellation he had been drawing earlier.
(I’m not overly familiar with constellations, so it isn’t saying much when I confess not recognizing it. Should he move North or South? And what will he find there?)
“All I can tell you,“ Sadoc continues, “Harfoot folk haven’t seen them since the days our ancestors lived in parts unknown over a thousand years ago. That’s a long time to wander, even for a fellow with long legs.”
That’s a bit of information the Strangers seems unhappy about. How come he has 'landed' so far away from where needs to be? He looks at the distant cliffs he has to journey beyond. But then he nods. He rises, looks at Sadoc in a silent goodbye, or thank you, and starts walking, still looking dejected. When the camera pans out and moves past the tree, it focuses on a small yellow flower budding in a fold of the bark.
Totally unaware of this, the stranger moves like in a dream, looking left nor right, until a small sound somehow penetrate his cocoon of, what? feeling himself a failure?
He looks up and finds himself in front of the Brandyfoot family. They are sorry to see him go, after having traveled together for probably weeks. Poppy is there too and Nori as well, but she seems oblivious of him leaving, being busy plucking apples. He is about to move on, still unable to speak, when Nori appears, offering him an apple. They look at each other for a long moment, neither is speaking, but Nori is sniffing. Finally he accepts the apple and leaves. (I think it’s the most emotional scene so far.)
Has it turned Nori into a proper Harfoot girl?
“I should’ve just stayed on-trail.” she is telling her mother, while busying herself with maintaining some wheels. “When I saw that star falling, I should’ve just let it alone.”
“Elanor…”
“You tried to tell me, Mother. But now I understand. I’m just a Harfoot. That’s a I’ll I ever be.” Yet she sounds disappointed and angry at the same time.
“Off to bed, Nori” is all her mother can say. But nothing has changed, she doesn’t listen to her mother and keeps on working on the wheels, while looking up at the moon…
“Have you ever lost someone close?” Theo wonders, “To them?” Orcs. “Kin, I mean.”
They are resting somewhere in the woods. It is nighttime.
“My brother, Finrod.” Galadriel answers, handling his dagger, and than reveals, “And my husband.”
“Husband?”
“Celeborn, was his name,“ Galadriel almost whispers.
(Why wasn’t he mentioned before? She only ever mentioned her brother, but never her husband? Unless she believes him to be still alive [which we know he is, as he is present in LotR, in Lothlórien together with Galadriel]. So, ‘lost’ could mean, lost out of sight for good?)
“We met in a glade of flowers. I was dancing and he saw me there.”
Theo turns around and looks at her. “You, were dancing?” he asks as if he can’t believe his ears
(as many of us, no doubt, with what we have seen of this Galadriel so far.)
But Galadriel is far of in the past. “The war seemed so very far away then.” (
This was when they where still in Valinor, I assume, before they sailed to Middle-Earth to join the fight against Morgoth.)
“When he went to it, I chided him. His armor didn’t fit properly. (how un-Elvish!) I called him a silver clam. I never saw him again after that.”
(So, MIA, then. And still is, centuries later. The uncertainty is worse than knowing someone you love is dead. If the writers had used that, to turn her search for Sauron, not one out of revenge but of hope in finding Celeborn, it would have made a huge difference.)
A silence falls. But suddenly Theo sits up. “My Lady, what you said before. You’re wrong. It isn’t your fault. It’s mine.”
“You did not intent for this to happen.” In a way Galadriel seems more open and socially engaging, but quite stiff and distant at the same time.
“I gave power to the enemy. So that makes me responsible.”
“Some say that is the way of things. But I believe the wise also look upon what is in our hearts. And this was not in yours. Do not take the burden of this day upon your shoulders, Theo. You may find it difficult to put it down again.”
“How am I to let it go?”
It is something Galadriel doesn’t know quite herself, does she? After a pause she says, “There are powers beyond darkness at work in this world. Perhaps on days such as this, we’ve little choice but to trust to their designs. And surrender our own.”
Simpler said than done. “My home is gone. Where’s the design in
that?”
“I cannot yet see.” Galadriel confesses softly. And what guarantees are there she ever will?
Footsteps can be heared in the eerily still, lifeless woods. Orcs.
Theo, young, impulsive, full of fresh hatred, wants to kill them all. He unsheathes his new sword, until Galadriel stops him. But the sound of metal sliding on metal was clear enough in the night. The group of Orcs halt. A tense moment follows as one of them goes to investigate and a silent struggle between Galadriel and Theo, keeping him from unsheathing his sword any further.
For once the ashes are a blessing. It is all the Orcs can smell. They move on.
“Rest while you can.“ Galadriel advises Theo, “We move at first light.”
“What light.”
Deep in the mine Durin and Elrond are secretly working to unearth some mithril. Well, secretly, Durin’s pick-axe blows and his grunts are surely echoing through all of Khazad-Dûm. And if not that, the rumbling protests and tremors of the rocks will.
“Another tremor,” Durin looks a bit concerned.
“We need to give the rocks time to resettle.”
Durin silently agrees and sits down, panting heavily. Which, possibly, was a more pressing reason the sit.
When Elrond offers him something to drink, he declines hauntingly. “Self-discipline, master Elf.”
“You think that’ll bring you success?”
Durin chuckles and looks at Elrond, smugly. “It did in our contest.“
“Did it?” is all Elrond asks, confidently. It does take awhile to trickle through Durin’s pantzer of self-esteem.
“No?” he finally exclaims, when Elrond seats himself in front of him, and looking at his face. “You lost on purpose?”
“My aim was never to defeat you, but to gain your ear a while longer.”
“Elf lies,” Durin declares.
Elrond chuckles, then grins. “I was… winded.”
They look at each other, enjoying the moment, challengingly. Durin surrenders. “Blast it,” and gestures for the water flask.
“I always thought you were a mite Dwarvish for an Elf.”
“And you are a rather Elvish Dwarf, Durin. Son of Durin, Grandson of…”
“Scoff if you like. The mightiest thing a Dwarf can do is to be worthy of the name of his father.” But he looks as if there is something he doesn’t say. Like, it depends on how you see your father.
He goes on, “Hmm. We do have our secret names for use only among ourselves. And we reveal them only to family. Wives. Parents. Sisters. Brothers.” He pauses. He seems dying to tell Elrond, taken by the moment.
But when he is about to, Elrond interrupts. “Save it, Durin. For the far side.”
“Aye,” Durin agrees, after a moment. And sighs.
They continue working. The rocks rumble loudly in protest. It is an ominous sound. Durin breathes heavily, feeling the suspense. Yet he persists in their endeavor. His next blows opens a head-sized hole onto a cavern. A vein of pure mithril can be seen through it. He lets have Elrond a look.
It must be a large cavern. The vein runs along way down and is part of a much larger patterns, root-like. A wind seems blowing from below.
Excited, Elrond turns around, “Durin…” and finds Durin staring at his father and some guards.
“Father...” breaths Durin. “It’s more than we ever imagined.”
“King Durin,“ Elrond joins him, “There is a…”
“
Enough!” King Durin shouts, fixing him with an angry eye.
“Father,“ Durin junior pleads, “just look at it.”
But Father doesn’t. “Seize the Elf.”
Moments later, a gate opens in a large empty cave, except for lots of loose rubble and a underground waterfall. Not too bad for a prison, It has running water for drinking and sanitary purposes.
Elrond is pushed inside and the gate closes behind him with an echoing bang and whirring lock.
Another Father and Son talk. And again Father Durin starts with a story, This time about how baby Durin seemed ill and had trouble breathing. There was doubt whether he would survive the first winter, until Father Durin had a vision and saw a grey beard super-imposed on this baby’s face. Then he knew.
“Our son would live and he would move mountains!” He shouts it as a proclamation.
The son looks at his father. “How do you expect me to move mountains, Father, if you fall to pieces when I dig a single hole? You speak of greatness for me, but you suffocate in me any ambition, any desire, any thought that does not originate in you.” His accusational tone rises. It is an age-old (several ages?) generational divide that endlessly repeats itself.
The answer of the father is meant to be wise, yet characteristically unhelpful. “The iron that must bear the most heavy of burdens, must also endure the most rigorous
tempering!”
“Consigning your allies to death is not tempering!”
The father does not respond to that.
With a shuddering breath the son adds, “Elrond is as much a brother to me as if he’s been fired in my own mother’s womb.”
“How dare you…” Controlled, then “HOW DARE YOU! Invoke your mother’s memory to defend your decision to betray your own kind!” The father keeps yelling.
Now the son jumps up, point at his father and yells back. “No! It’s you that’s betrayed our kind! Squandering our future so you can cling to the past! You profane the crown you wear!”
(Don’t you love a good fight, if it isn't your own?)
The father steps close to his son, staring him in the eye. Then slowly raises a hand to the royal crest his son is wearing high on his chest and rips it free from his neck. He tosses it on the floor and silently walks away. The son seems stunned, then bends to pick it up from the floor.
Father Durin hears the clinking, looks back and says, “Leave it. It is not yours anymore.”
Former Prince Durin will need a moment to adjust to that.
Nori awakes to Poppy singing. And eating a big, red, blushing apple.
“What are you doing? We have to save those!”
“Why don’t you take a look outside, and then we’ll talk.”
Outside the world has changed. The burned orchard has changed overnight into a healthy looking one, with branches filled with green leaves and fruits. It is possibly the most bountiful orchard they have ever set eyes on. Everyone is busy harvesting, except for sleep-head Nori.
Sadoc wants to go to market with such a crop. I'm surprised to hear they do such things.
“I don’t understand,” Nori wonders. “How?” Really?
“How do you think?” Poppy says, “He fixed it.”
It saddens Nori to realise that sending the Stranger away was unfair and unjust. And he will never know what he had achieved here.
Largo just underlines it. “Can you believe it, Nori? There is enough bounty here to feast tonight and still have enough left over to Frozen Fish.”
Then there is talk about apple-sausages, no… apple-sauce, and none of it makes Nori look happy.
They pluck and pluck and load their carts to the brim with crop.
Later, as Poppy is fetching water from a little stream in the woods, she spots a large footprint. Shod and human sized. She drops her basket and flees to warn the others.
Meanwhile the basket floats downstream, until it is picked up by the light-blue robed trio. These strangers have followed the Harfoot all the way to here.
At night, when all the Harfoot are asleep or in hiding, the trio can be seen moving up the slope to where the tree stands that the Stranger spoke to as he struggled to restore it to health. Nori and Poppy, in hiding, watch anxiously.
Somehow these strangers can sense where the Stranger has been or used his powers. They look at the tree and then pluck that one tiny yellow flower. It tells them unerringly which way he went. And so they go, moving through the grass that has also profited from the healing and now is filled with flowers, while it must be autumn.
And the girl who said, ‘I’m just a Harfoot’ shoots up out of her hiding, and shouts at the three tall strangers, who look more than a bit unusual, “Wait!”
Poppy gasps.
“You’re going the wrong way!” It seems crystal-clear to her that this trio is looking for the Stranger and not in a beneficent way. Unfortunately, she can hardly know that they instantly know she is lying. The signs were clear.
Nori turns and points in a randomly chosen direction. “He went that way!”
But when she turns back, the trio is gone. Well no, not quite. They were sneaking up on her from the back. What seems to be the most prominent one, plucks a flower from Nori’s head.
Now the whole Harfoot group seems to erupt from their hiding places and starts shouting at them, Largo in front with a torch. In this moment more brave than brains, he threatens, “You harm a hair on her foot, and I’ll brain the lot of ya.”
They are not impressed. The leader just puts her bare hand on the torch and quenches the flames. Next, she turns her clenched hand, opens it and blows at the little sparks. They spread and instantly all the Harfoot carts are bursting into flames. It is a devastating blow. Not to mention that there could be children asleep in the carts annex homes. I don’t see Dilly anywhere. But for these nomads, the loss of their carts, goods and foods could well mean their end.
Who are these petty, maleficent strangers?
To be continued...
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