Chapter Text
The forest is large and dark for a grown warrior, let alone for a little girl all on her own.
She's smaller than most bushes, never mind the trees that tower up and up and up until they reach the sky.
And she can hear the soft thud-thud of feet, too light to be anyone's from the village, too heavy to be her Da's. Maybe it's a wolf. Or a bear!
She can fight a bear. Mama fought a bear, and everyone says she's just like Mama. So she can fight a bear. And so she's going to be alright.
Secure in her logic, the little girl, barely more than a toddler really, marches on into the forest.
Faintly, far away, she can hear the frantic calls of her mother, accompanied by the telltale clanking that means she's gotten out her armour, but the little girl ignores it even as she knows that it means she's going to be extra in trouble later.
Da is coming today, and she is going to meet him all on her lonesome!
The forest is a little bit scary and dark, but she isn't afraid.
She is brave and courageous. She is a warrior on a quest!
Just like Da!
She is going to fight a bear, and climb a mountain, and maybe swim through a river, and get all muddy and dirty. But that's fine because she's on a quest, and you get muddy on a quest.
So Mama shouldn't be angry at her for getting muddy.
"Little one, what are you doing out here all on your own? Where is your mother?"
The familiar, rich voice so infinitely beloved, distracts her from her self-appointed quest. It slips from her mind, for here is her father, taller and stronger than anyone else in the village.
"Da!" She squeals, and throws her arms around his knees, quest fulfilled even as she forgets it completely. "I came to see you!"
His horse shies at the high-pitched noise, it's foam and blood flecked flanks twitching nervously, but the child pays it no mind. Nothing can hurt her when she's with her Da.
"Oh Halthea." He sighs, and lifts her, setting her on his hip with practised ease. "You cannot run off like that, do you understand me? You must stay in the village, where you are safe."
She sighs and leans her head against his shoulder, his words washing over her. "Yes Da."
A yawn forestalls any more reprimands, for she is, after all, very little and she has walked a long way for her little legs.
If she had not had a quest to follow, she would have been back in her mother's house long before.
Her father sighs again and shifts his grip. "You have been on a great long journey for one so young. Sleep, my little flame."
Halthea yawns again, and nuzzles further into the soft silk of his tunic. She likes her Da's clothes - they're not scratchy like Mama's or Haldan's but soft and smooth. It's nicer to sleep against Da than anywhere else.
He smells funny today. There's black stains on his cloak, and red ones too. All of them are sticky and gross, which is odd because Da is usually so clean and nothing ever ruffles him.
But she is very tired, tired enough not to be curious. She can ask Da about it later.
She is fast asleep by the time her father reaches the collection of wooden huts perched on Amon Obel that is her whole world.
She does not feel him lay her in her little cot beside her brother.
She does not hear the conversation between her parents, the hasty, fearful whispers and recriminations that paint the air the sickly green of fear.
She does not even wake up when her mother wipes her face with a damp cloth, getting rid of all the smudges from the sticky black stuff.
When she does wake up, it is to hugs and scoldings, and to solemnly promise never to wander off into the forest again.
The outside world is dangerous for little girls, after all.
***********
The baby comes in autumn.
She is loud and red and wrinkly, and altogether unappealing.
Halthea says as much.
Da laughs, and says that she and Erestor looked the same.
He doesn't usually lie, but she is sure she would have remembered Erestor looking like that. It's so...ugly.
Then Mama lets her hold the baby. "Her name is Mirrim, and it is your role as her sister to take care of her. Can you promise me that?"
The baby is a warm, wriggling weight in her arms, and just like that Halthea falls in love. "I promise, Mama."
Mirrim opens big, blue eyes and stares right up into her sister's brown ones. She beams, the toothless, guiless grin of very young babies.
"You must protect her as well." Her Da takes Mirrim from her arms, smiling softly down at his youngest child. "She will be curious, just like you. Keep her away from the forest when she learns to walk, yes? She must stay here, where she is safe."
************
It is just them, out in the middle of the woods, a few settlements of Men scattered through the Forest of Brethil.
And the greatest of them, perched on Amon Obel is her home. Her family's home.
Halthea, her Mama and her Da, her little brother, her baby sister, and the people of the village.
And her cousin, she supposes. But Haldan is all but grown up, and he doesn't play with little girls so much, too busy talking to the giggling older girls.
He does look after them sometimes though, when Mama is doing chieftan things and Da is away doing...Da things.
She doesn't actually know what he does in the long stretches of time he spends outside the village. He never says anything to her about it, except to caution her never to follow him into the forest.
Da is spending more and more time away now.
She remembers when he spent every other moon in Brethil with them, and she remembers when he laughed more.
He has visited only once this year, and it is summer already. Even that wasn't as she had wanted it to be - he had barely smiled at all, his eyes tight and worried.
Mama looks like that more and more as well, and there are little lines around her eyes. Her hair has little silver glints to it where before it was a fluffy mass of butter yellow just like Halthea's own.
Halthea is only seven, but she isn't stupid. She can't afford to be when she has Erestor for her little brother.
Something is happening, something outside their little world.
Her Da knows about it. Her Mama knows about it. Maybe Haldan knows about it - he is going to be chieftan after Mama after all, even if he is stupid.
But they won't tell her. Anytime she asks about anything outside of Brethil, she is met with only pats on the head and smiles.
It isn't because she is not clever enough to understand. She is, she knows she is!
Da is always saying that she's the cleverest person he knows, and she can read as well as Haldan already.
It's infuriating! She learned that word from Gildas the other day, and it perfectly describes how she feels.
Maybe when she's older she can run away and find out what's happening outside the woods.
One day. Not today.
She has to look after Mirrim today. She has Gildas' help of course, but it's mostly her responsibility.
Gildas is a grown up, but he's got his head in the clouds. Halthea does not, so she is looking after Mirrim and making sure nothing happens to her while Gildas writes his 'History of the Haladin'.
Erestor can please himself, and he is old enough that Halthea can trust he won't crawl into the fire or something stupid. She doesn't think Mirrim is that clever yet.
**********
It isn't on purpose, mostly.
She barely enters the woods. Not far, not really, just into the shadows of the trees to gather mushrooms.
And then she follows the mushrooms further and further, and before she realises it the trees stretch up so high that they block the sun. And then, well, she's already in the woods, what is the harm of going a little further?
She doesn't intend to disobey of course. She is genuinely absorbed in gathering the mushrooms, which is always a tricky business.
It takes a keen eye to tell one kind from another, and Halthea is only twelve - one of the youngest to be trusted with mushroom gathering. She's very proud of that distinction, and determined never to let anyone down by picking a bad mushroom so she always concentrates really hard.
It just so happens that these mushrooms conveniently led into the forest.
Halthea isn't trying to disobey her parents' cardinal rule on purpose, much.
Only...she feels so trapped in Brethil. All her life has been spent in one small village on a little hill, surrounded by forest.
There is a great, beautiful, terrible world out there, she knows there must be even if her parents refuse to talk about it to her. Even if they tell her it is only terrible and fearful.
Even if all she has ever been told about is the village and the forest, she is certain that the world must be bigger than that. Must be greater and more beautiful.
Their people got here from somewhere after all, didn't they? It's in one of the songs they sing about her mother's exploits - the Journey of the Haladin.
They sang it in the feast hall last night, and it had made the itching need under her skin to see the outside world too much to bear.
So she goes to pick the mushrooms, and if she strays closer and closer to the forest, it is no one's business but her own.
After all, she is only being diligent.
And if she diligently follows the mushrooms through the forest, almost to the course of the great river, well, mushrooms need moisture to grow.
And if she watches the water tumbling before her, and gazes across the river at the faintly visible peaks of the Crissaegrim.
If she breathes the air that sweeps down from the mountains, sweet and sharp and crisp, as if it is a drug she cannot get enough of.
If she watches the eagles soaring high and free above the tallest mountain peak with envy.
Is it really anyone's business?
Her mother swoops down on her as she returns each time, wet and muddy and with a basket brimful of mushrooms, but Halthea finds it easier and easier to misdirect and distract her from just how far she went.
It isn't something she's proud of.
Both her parents have always taught her the importance of truth, and honesty.
Every time she looks her worried mother in the eye and does not tell her every mite of the truth, she feels her stomach twist within her.
She loves her mother dearly, always has. She is her mother's image, golden haired and brown eyed and harsh, with a backbone harder than the tempered steel of her father's sword.
They understand each other in a way Mama struggles to understand Erestor or Mirrim.
Mirrim is too soft, too obedient and sweet for her defiant, strong mother to do more than love and puzzle at.
Erestor is too distracted with the past and abstract thoughts and theories that pragmatic, practical Mama cannot see the use of.
And so Halthea is closer to her mother than either of her siblings. She knows how angry Mama will be if her deception is revealed. She knows how it will hurt her loving mother.
She knows it will hurt her father too, who loves all of them and trusts them deeply. When he questions their deeds during his abscence, it is with the confidence that none of them will disobey.
He knows that sweet, gentle Mirrim will have not even dreamed of disobedience. She is only seven, and already all her days are spent with a needle in her hands. Her stitches are neater than Halthea's.
Da praises Mirrim's sewing, and sits her on his knee to show her new stitches.
He knows that dreamy, clever Erestor will have been too absorbed in his numbers and his stories to consider anything in the real world.
Da sits by the firelight with him, and they write strings of meaningless numbers and argue about them.
He knows that Halthea will not have disobeyed. He trusts her. She is his firstborn, the one he trusts to be responsible and practical. She knows how dangerous the outside world is. She knows why those rules have been put in place.
Da teaches her to wield two long, thin knives that he brought with him when she was ten, after she complains that she is too small of frame to lift her mother's great axe. The stars on the pommel are a comforting roughness against her hands now. His proud smile when she meets his great sword without wavering warms her down to her toes.
Da trusts her. Mama trusts her.
And she has betrayed that trust.
But the brief glimpse of something else, of fresh air and freedom, is worth it. She feels alive, and she cannot regret it.
**********
She wakes up one night and she cannot breathe.
The little wooden house is stifling suddenly. The walls feel too small, the ceiling too low.
Mirrim's soft warmth beside her feels like a brand against her too-hot skin.
She can hear every breath that her siblings and parents take.
The sound presses in on her, making her feel trapped.
Like a wild animal, unable to bear it, she starts up.
Halthea runs from the room, from the house, unable to endure the stifling closeness anymore.
She does not even take a cloak or a shawl with her, too panicked by the suddenly too-small house.
The edge of the forest is clear of any buildings, open to the sky and the softly glimmering stars.
If she fixes her eyes on the stars, she can pretend that when she drops them she will he able to see the mist rising from the river Sirion, and the peaks of the Crissaegrim beyond that.
The air smells of sweat and smoke and all the things that come with human habitation, but with her eyes fixed on the faraway mountains she can pretend.
After a while, she becomes aware of eyes on her, and she whirls around to meet them.
Her father stands in the dirt-trodden path between the houses, his grey eyes almost white in the dim light.
The gentle glimmer of the stars lends him a glow of his own, a soft halo illuminating him and setting him apart from the dark houses around him.
She stares for a moment, and then another.
He doesn't look away, just watching her silently as he stalks towards her.
But for the first time in her life, Halthea feels small and afraid as her father looms silently over her.
He says nothing, only throws a shawl over her shoulders and guides her away from the forest. Back to the too-small house and her bed shared with Mirrim.
Away from the stars and the open sky and the breeze.
In the morning, she is faced with another lecture, and confined to the house until the next full moon, so that she has time to consider her foolhardy actions.
Sitting on the bed and stitching endless boring sheets, Halthea silently resolves to try and avoid the forest and the world beyond it.
Her parents love her, and they are desperately afraid for some reason.
Her mother's face had been white and crumpled as she shouted, her hands shaking. Her father had been flushed with angry fear, his voice almost inaudible.
No matter how right the wind and the free air feels, if they are so afraid then she loves them enough to obey them.
*********
The Haladin come of age at sixteen, and the coming of age celebrations are lavish, full of dancing and merrymaking.
Halthea is given a great celebration, for she is the firstborn of the chieftan.
Her Da arrives with a great boar, crimson-fletched arrows still embedded in it. It roasts over the fire at the centre of the village, bigger than Halthea herself.
The shoulder brooches he gives her are the fairest things she has ever seen, silver coloured but too pale and light for true silver like her mother's earrings. They are covered with elaborate engravings in a style she doesn't know but falls in love with the moment she sets eyes on it.
On the back, the familiar star from her knives is embossed, tiny and perfect in its detail.
She thanks her father profusely, and he only smiles, marvelling at how quickly she has grown.
He glares at Gildas when he steals her for a whirling, laughing dance around the fire.
Mama smiles too as they dance, crinkling the fine lines around her eyes and mouth.
It occurs to Halthea that she looks older than Da as the two stand beside each other, watching the dancers.
When did that happen?
Da's skin is still smooth and unlined, his hair still midnight black without a single thread of gray to break the unrelieved darkness. He still swings Mirrim up above his head without the slightest effort.
When did Mama's skin start to crease and crumple? When did her hair start to grey?
When will the same happen to Da?
Then Erestor takes her from Gildas, and they are making another circuit around the fire, laughing and breathless.
The thought flies out of her head in favour of merriment.
The night is fine, and the food is good, and she is a woman grown now.
Her hair streams behind her like a golden banner, loose as befits her maiden status, a waterfall of tumbling wild curls. It gleams as brightly as the sun at noon against the madder-red of her new hagnerok, a gift from Mirrim embroidered with silver thread that Da brought with him moons ago.
The kirtle beneath is her best, linen sun-bleached to snowy pureness, glowing in the firelight.
Gildas and Brok and Wat and several others who's faces blur together spend the evening stealing her from each other, plying her with wine and food, complimenting her beauty and her grace.
It is flattering to hear their words, and she is young enough to enjoy being told she is fair. But something about it makes her skin crawl, seeing their hungry eyed on her, their sly smiles and their manoeuvring.
Mama and Da watch her the whole time, pride evident in their eyes, their gaze a warning to the young men around her. Nothing happens, but she wishes one or both of them would come over and scatter her admirers.
She leaves the gaggle of men to dance with Erestor every time he asks, and gives the sweetest bits of meat and other dainties to Mirrim.
It is a good night.
She almost forgets the itch beneath her skin that never goes away. She almosts forgets how her skin crawls beneath the eyes of the young men.
Almost. But not quite.
Even in the open sky beneath the stars, she feels stifled, surrounded by the tall trees of the forest.
***************
Since her coming of age, the young men who danced attendance on her at the celebration will not leave her alone, no matter what she does.
The moon has grown and shrunk and grown again several times, and only one has backed off a little.
Even then, only because she reminded him of the time she bit him when they were little and he pulled her hair. She had drawn blood, and the imprints of her teeth are still faintly visible on his hand when the sun shines.
Apparently it had left enough of an imprint on his memory that she can leverage it to get him to leave her alone.
Not that that addresses the issue of the half dozen other pimply, awkward young men around her age who follow her around like love struck puppies. If she wasn't older and at least nominally more in control of herself, she would bite them the way she bit Bors all those years ago.
Halthea thinks she wouldn't mind it so much, if she could not look into their eyes and see that behind the smiles and compliments lie things that make her feel cold inside.
It would not be so abhorrent to her, if she could see genuine affection for her in any one of them. But all she can see is lust for her beauty, or greed for the status that she represents, or ambition for the power that her family holds, or a desire to control her and bend her to their own will.
The latter has her constantly on edge, to the point that she has not dared to sneak to the edge of the woods for several turns of the moon.
It grates on her, the feeling of suffocation growing stronger day by day.
She's been becoming steadily more snappy and irritable, and she's driven poor tender Mirrim to tears on several occasions.
It all comes to a head over the evening meal, Mama and her siblings sitting around the table. Da is away doing...whatever he does when he isn't in Brethil, which he does more and more often now.
While they're eating, their mother has them all recounting their days - where they went; who they spoke to; what they said; what they learned; what they did; what they had done wrong; what rules they had bent or broken; what punishement they thought appropriate for their misdemeanours. Ordinary, dinner time conversation.
Today, Mama comes to Halthea first. She complains about how she was doing their washing in the stream, and how she turned around to find Uthor watching her from behind a tree.
"Oh, how romantic." Sighs Mirrim, eleven and starry eyed, clasping her hands beneath her chin. "Are you going to choose him, Thea? He's always been so sweet to us all."
Halthea feels her lips twist in disdain, and tries not to snap at her sister. It isn't Mirrim's fault that her skin is crawling and itching with every moment she spends confined to one clearing.
"It isn't romantic, it's weird." Surprised, they all turn to look at Erestor. Their only brother has mostly stayed out of the whole affair.
He looks back at them all and shrugs. "What? If I liked a girl, I'd want to talk to her, not hide from her and just look at her when she didn't even know I was there."
Their mother pats his shoulder with a smile. "Not all boys are as forward as you, my strong one. Uthor is only shy."
It takes a great effort for Halthea to swallow down her instinctive retort, but she does somehow. It is not her right to contradict her mother.
She can still put paid to any of Mirrim's fanciful ideas about her favourite coming to live with them. Why Mirrim admires Uthor so much, she has no idea.
"It doesn't matter anyway, Mama. I shan't have him."
Her mother only tilts her head curiously. "Who will you have then?"
"None of them. I don't love any of them, and so I shan't marry any of them. I'll wait for the right man, just as you did."
The smile she is given is the same indulgent, slightly mocking one Erestor got a moment ago. "Love is not the reason we make decisions like this, Halthea. It is an indulgence, not a necessity."
"You married for love!" The anger at the unfairness bubbles out of her, too quick for her to take back the words that directly defy her mother.
But all she gets is a sad shake of the head. Mama takes her hand and squeezes it. "It was a risk I took, I admit, and one that I have not regretted, for it brought me you three. But I would not wish anything that happened to me on you, my daughter."
She tuckes a rogue strand of hair behind Halthea's ear and smiles at her. "You deserve a life of comfort and certainty, not the fear and turmoil I endured. I want you to be happy, my little bird, and I want you to be safe. This will keep you safe, and one day you will thank me."
Halthea only just manages not to pull away from her mother, through sheer force of will, and the look of distant memory in her mother's eyes.
Her skin is crawling, and the walls of the house seem to be moving ever closer. Like a hutch to trammel a wild thing in.
She can see her life laid out before her like a map. Marry one of the boys who chase her like hounds after meat, keep his house for him, bear his children and marry them off. Comfortable. Certain. Safe. Exactly what her mother wants for her.
A life of idyllic peace and plenty, perfect as a picture, and as small as one.
She will never leave Brethil. Never see the world spread around her. Never explore new places. Never learn to ride a horse like her Da's. Never learn to hunt great beasts like in the stories.
She will be trapped.
The smoke from the fire is choking her. It feels as though she cannot breathe, let alone speak.
Thankfully, Mama moves on to questioning Mirrim.
Across the table, Erestor's eyes meet Halthea's, and she forces a smile. Her brother purses his lips, but says nothing. She can see the concern in his eyes.
Somehow, Halthea manages to eat a little more, choking it down past the rising panic in her throat.
The air is growing closer, and more stale with every passing moment. It's all in her head, she knows it is, but she still cannot breathe.
Each second stretches out into a lifetime.
Her head is spinning.
Mama will realise something is wrong soon, and then she will ask what is wrong, and how can Halthea explain when she doesn't know what is happening?
All she knows is that she feels so utterly trapped that she would claw her own skin off if it took away the feeling.
And then, a cool breeze wafts in through the window, sharp and fresh.
Her head clears a little.
"Mama." Somehow, her voice is steady.
"Yes?"
In her lap, Halthea squeezes her hands together. "I just remembered I forgot to collect the laundry after it dried, and the wind is rising. May I gather it now, before it blows away?"
There is an awful moment of silence, stretching on and on and on.
After what seems like an eternity, her mother frowns, and then nods. "Very well, but be quick. Come back before the meal ends or I shall have to go looking for you."
In a flash, Halthea is out of the door and running.
She doesn't know where, only that it is away.
Away from the tiny, stifling house. Away from the young men who watch her like she is a particularly well bred hound. Away from everything.
She runs and runs and runs, until the awful choking feeling is replaced by the sharp chill of the night air in her lungs.
Then she drops to the ground, and falls backward, a strangled exhilarated laugh tearing itself from her throat.
Even though it hasn't truly left, it never does these days, the burning itch under her skin has subsided.
For a while she just lies there, breathing in the crisp air.
When she finally feels somewhat normal again, she opens her eyes.
Trees tower above her, stretching up until she can only make out where they are by the patches of darkness where there are no stars.
She starts to laugh again. Of course she ran to the forest, even after she had promised herself to stay away from it.
Standing up, she walks over and places her hand against a great pine tree. The sharp scent of evergreen surrounds her, calms her. For the first time since her father found her in the woods, she feels as though she can fit into her own skin.
A little behind the tree there is a dead beech tree, and in its shade a patch of scarlet elfcaps.
Out of long habit, Halthea walks over and plucks one.
She looks at it for a long time.
Slowly, she follows the dead beech further into the wood.
After all, she is only gathering mushrooms.
And then when she turns around, she is fully into the forest.
It is dark and full of the noises of animals at night. It is dangerous. She shouldn't be in here. She should be gathering up the washing from the banks of the stream. Mama will be looking for her soon. She is breaking the rules.
But the freedom of the woods after so long is like a drug.
She starts to run, deeper and deeper into the dark wood.
When she thinks back to it, she will never clearly remember anything of that run, mindless and desperate, powered by nothing but the knowledge that she is not ready to stop.
The wind of her speed stings her eyes into tears.
The trees are only dark blurs whipping past her, sensed more than seen.
The night sounds of the forest do not register to her ears.
It used to take her only the better part of an hour to reach the edge of the forest when she was a child, following the trails of mushrooms and berries.
Now she is a woman grown, and a swift runner.
In almost no time, she hears the rushing of water that she knows and loves, the sound that runs through every pitifully small memory of the outside world she has.
And then the trees start to narrow and thin.
Suddenly she is on the banks of the river Sirion, and she can just make out the Crissaegrim against the stars.
For just a moment, she stops and hesitates.
She should turn back. Go back to the village, gather the washing and go to bed in the house she has spent her whole life in. Forestall the inevitable storm when her mother finds her.
This, whatever she is doing, is madness.
But there is a momentum behind her, and a desperate instinctive rejection of returning when she feels so trapped.
She jumps.
In that moment, suspended in the air, everything seems to freeze.
For one heartbeat, for two.
Each echoing in her ears.
Each hanging loud in the quiet night.
Each lasting an age of the world.
Then she hits the river.
The water is freezing and swift running, but some instinct has her pushing through it, swimming more strongly than she had believed of herself.
Never before has she swum against a current so strong or in a body of water so deep.
It is exhilarating.
She pulls herself from the water on the other shore, exhausted and with shaking muscles.
Her mind is calmer now, the mad impulse past.
But with a clear mind, her choice is no different.
Never has she felt so alive as now.
Standing on the bank of the Sirion, streaked with mud and dripping wet, she looks back at the opposite shore and laughs for sheer delight.
Never before has she seen the Forest of Brethil from the outside. Yet here she is, somewhere she has never before been.
The very stars seem brighter, and the air sharper.
When she breathes in, she fancies she can smell the flowers that grow high up in the mountains.
Weaponless, without supplies, still wearing her old day dress, Halthea feels better than she has ever felt before.
Even being defenceless in a strange land feels better than the suffocating closeness of the woods.
As firmly as she can, Halthea turns her back on Brethil and starts walking.