Unscaled Heaven It already exploded.
Elves are always uneasy around dead Men. They cannot deal with the finality
of human death. Legolas muttered something about arrows and orc, blended into
the forest before Aragorn could tell him to stay. Gimli followed him. Just
Aragorn and the corpse left. And a dozen—two dozen, countless—dead,
decapitated, mutilated, mauled orcs.
The reek is staggering: abbattoir in reluctantly warming sun. Boromir died
with the stench in his nostrils; he is beyond it, now, but Aragorn can still
smell it. Rich and heady, swifth, gory death and the insides of orcs. He touches
his lips to his own black-stained knuckles and gives thanks for a stomach made
of leather and steel.
The sun is burning away the damp, more orcs are probably marching here to
finish the job, but he's tired, has his own shadow and threat—no:
flame, not shadow. The heated whisper of the Ring, two seconds of it
burned forever into his head. Aragorn has spent eighty years tanning his own
hide to withstand this corruption; he felt it anyway.
Caught him weak and shaken. Fighting orcs helped, but the memory of want has
bit deep. Frodo's milk-white face, tiny hands that shook under the burden. The
Ring.
Boromir sleeps in death, eyes half open. Legolas probably backed off because
Boromir's eyes have the far-seeing look of sleeping elf-eyes. Aragorn has taken
rest with elves and seen them dream waking dreams; Boromir's face is dead,
slack, stupid in death, but his eyes follow Aragorn's movements with stubborn,
primal intelligence.
Fighting rush: there's a joy in turning orcs into mincemeat, more primal
stuff than he normally is made of, wild-man Aragorn taking heads, no need to
stop and think. The orcs are mincemeat and the dregs of the rush pound through
his veins, muted now, strong still.
He licks his lips; tastes orc blood, foul, bitter. A tinge of something
else, the faintest shade. He kissed Boromir's filth-covered forehead, warrior's
farewell. Boromir lay down to take it this time, in death—didn't turn his face
away, didn't knot his loosely curled hands into fists.
So many things between Men that travel together. Boromir said very little;
Aragorn knows he kept secrets, nursed them in his nightmares and let them grow
strong and sharp-toothed. In sleep, his hands reached for the closest source of
heat; Aragorn has pinned Boromir's body to the ground with his before. Always
ended in harsh words and recoil, but moments of sweetness came first.
Surprising; such rugged men, their rugged bodies clashed together and refused to
fit. Once or twice they fit; mostly just anger and need colliding. It worked,
here on the rough trail with the Quest always foremost in their minds, the Ring
shining like a beckoning torch before them. Tenderness was never an issue;
tender is saved for elf princesses and well-bred maidens kept pure for a ruling
husband.
Warmth: the sun has found a gap in the canopy and strokes his back with
heat. Not so Boromir's corpse: it cools as the damp-cold day grows warmer
towards evening. There's no time to linger; Aragorn lingers. The arrows are
sturdy bolts, well feathered and balanced. Legolas would like them, although he
shoots lighter shafts, not these compact bone-crushers.
Pushing the leather aside with smarting hands, fight rush fading even more.
Down to a gnawing murmur in the back of his head. He can feel his body now,
every aging ache, every old scar, every new cut and bruise. If he could find
something to kill now he would, to pay forward his pain and the pain of his
companions, again and again. Frodo looked up into his face with quivering fear—and anticipation, Aragorn thinks. Hobbits aren't made to change the world. Frodo
wanted it to end. Aragorn has felt that anticipation of the End, too. Fighting,
he sometimes sees the sword that could take him and salutes it.
Boromir's last breath was in guilt, and he welcomed it. This: cooling body,
Aragorn's fingers uncensored on his bloodless skin. No easy way to remove his
clothing; the arrows are stuck in bone and muscle and will not move. Aragorn has
done this before, cut killing arrows from dead friends with his own blade. He
knows the blood-welt around the shaft, the marriage of meat and steel. His
fingers never shy from gashes and congealing blood, from gaping, violent
orifices big enough to push fingers into and feel the body from angles never
intended.
Boromir's eyes lose the last of their seeming awareness. Aragorn accepts
that his mind wished any such awareness into being.
Time has passed. Still no sign of Legolas or Gimli. They're out there, going
through orc-spoil, arrows, knives, looking for traces of the hobbits. The little
ones, Boromir said. Boromir knew nothing of hobbits and saw them as children.
Aragorn looked into Frodo's upturned face and saw a man.
His hands have stilled on the jagged wounds. He draws a deep breath—smells
the death-stench and behind it the warm earth-smell of the forest. His legs
buckle for a moment when he gets up, fuzzy-edged swirl in his ears and then he
masters himself and stands. No time to dig a grave and they can't leave Boromir
here to rot with the orcs he killed. It's been decided; he knows Legolas will
comply. Legolas lets him take charge in the affairs of Men. Gimli will not care.
Dwarves think Men are strange and erratic and let it go with a shrug.
He's almost spent, but the dancing silver light of the brook glitters
between the trees, not far. Boromir's body is dead meat, a shot deer slung over
Aragorn's shoulder, a burden to bear with other burdens.
Boromir's sodden hair hangs over his face; upside-down, his dead features
move with each step. Aragorn has not closed his eyes.
By the brook, on a soft patch of damp grass and rotting leaves: undressing
the corpse, he starts reverently, folding every garment aside, holding Boromir's
head gently, not looking into his eyes as they film over. Too much fighting, too
much death and the reek of orc still permeating the still air in the copse;
finally Aragorn leaves dignity in the dust. Tugs at cotton and leather, cuts
straps with his blade, throws everything in a blood-wet heap by the stream.
Boromir lies shirtless and defenseless and the sun shines indifferently on
black-oily orc's blood and dark crimson Man's blood.
Wishing for more time now. Aragorn dislikes goodbyes. He will perform them
eloquently and appropriately: a reverent kiss and soft words for Arwen, a
blessing for a dead comrade. Encouragement to scared Frodo, silent lament for
fallen Gandalf. He performs them, dislikes them intensely. Boromir waits for his
farewell. They clutched each other in dark places where nothing but the
dreaming, unseeing eyes of Legolas watched. Boromir wants a farewell. Aragorn's
sore-beaten body has stored the heat of killing and wants rid of it. Boromir's
empty body loses heat every second.
No words for dead ears: not that kind of farewell. To think "farewell" and
bow down and touch his mouth and feel no breath. To think "brother" and draw
something from this final act. Washing with a rag dipped in cold water, mixing
dull desire with duty, diluted blood streaming over death-pallid skin. Boromir
is too broad, muscle-bound, stubble-stippled for the likeness to be more than a
delusion, but Arwen lies like this next to Aragorn sometimes, in his dreams,
open-eyed and white-still-pale.
The forest is filled with the chatter of birds, mumble of trees, laughter of
moving water. Aragorn is a Ranger, but still only a Man; even he can't hear
Legolas approach. Gimli's short, heavy footfalls scare the birds into fluttering
flight and Aragorn looks up.
Legolas stands closer than he guessed, with his head cocked and his eyes
wide and filled with the chilly sorrow of Elves. Gimli in the background, bowed
head, axe held in weary salute.
A flicker of restlessness in the Elf, and Aragorn knows time draws short. "A
moment," he says softly, to Boromir. Legolas will hear him.
The crack of a twig, soft sigh of wind. A bird calls, its sharp trill
bouncing between tree trunks and when Aragorn looks up again, they're both gone.
Brothers in arms to rely on, both bloodthirsty and full of grace and the pride
of their ancient races. They will kill an enemy and despoil the corpse if they
have to; they don't need to see this. A Man's job.
Time wasted on regrets is time wasted indeed, but Aragorn's heart and
Aragorn's loins don't know time and they regret. His heartbeat has always been
strong and steady; only Arwen can make it waver. Boromir's presence—competition, discord, rivalry, lust—made it quicken, but never falter. This
could be atonement. Always some past sin: thoughtless cruelty, an unnecesary
kill, mistakes made in ruling Men, times he's failed his appointed, his chosen
path. The mistakes of his father and his father before him, a long row of
failures like shadowy ghosts standing behind him. Greatest of all, Isildur with
the cold burn of the Ring glowing around him.
Aragorn will redeem all these ghosts one day; that is his path.
He touches chilly skin with water-cold hands and follows every old scar,
half-healed cut, fresh killing arrow-wound with grimy fingertips. His hands are
permanently dirty, just water won't get the black blood out of the whorls of his
skin. Boromir's chest is sculpted, barely-pliable flesh and after cleaning and
cleaning, Aragorn's fingers leave no dark smudges. The blood is gone and a dead
heart will pump no more to the surface. A bloodless wound is more grisly than a
fresh, gushing one under a fountain of blood, in the midst of battle. Aragorn
has cut the head off a man in combat and stood under the shower of his heart's
blood and tasted it.
His mouth accepts dead flesh as it does living. He's hot now in the sun but
doesn't strip. He washed Boromir's body without allowing himself detachment, he
looked closely and memorised the sight. Always in the dark before, and now
Boromir lies exposed and can't tell him to look away. Aragorn is too old to fool
himself; this is not something Boromir would approve of, despite a yearning for
a farewell to last through whatever journey lies beyond. Boromir would tell him
to go ogle an elf, use his hand and be done with it, use Boromir and be done
with it, but not linger, eyes and hands.
Second-guessing the dead is the luxury of living men with time and safety,
and Aragorn has neither. He touches Boromir and wishes to be done with it. The
taste of ritual, a soft spot above Boromir's collarbone that he once bit in the
heat of the moment. Boromir sneered at him and pushed him away. Boromir was
strict in his beliefs—strict and ungiving where Aragorn has always been
flexible.
Boromir died as he lived, and now Aragorn is left fumbling with his belt in
the steaming-damp afternoon, on this Hill of Sight. Frodo's path has turned to
darkness and solitude and the fiery-breathed whispers of the Ring. The
Fellowship is broken, but some things demand their time.
Aragorn breathes for both of them; for a few brief seconds, he does not
think about Frodo, Arwen or the Ring, nor anything else in Middle-Earth but this
cooling flesh under him.
Boromir lies quiet and takes it. Doesn't ask him to be done with it.
His final word to Boromir is whispered—"Peace." Legolas will sing when
they lay the body in the boat. Gimli will weep out loud, as dwarves do over a
fallen warrior. Aragorn will remember.
Amon Hen, late afternoon: they've watched Boromir's burial boat tip over the
Falls and disappear, Frodo and Sam climb out of their boat onto the shore of
Amon Lhaw and disappear. Legolas's hand on Aragorn's shoulder: beckoning.
Legolas respects the dead, but his restlessness gives him away. He wants to
distract himself from this place until he can dream it into perspective. Gimli
chuffs and grumbles, orcs, orcs, dead orcs, the Fellowship, the mission. He also
wants to be distracted.
Aragorn turns his back on the moving water, the wet grave. Legolas and Gimli
follow him up the hill towards the Path.
A beast stands at my eye.
I cook my senses in a dark fire. Who are the people of this unscaled heaven? The other side of knowing... The Naked Land
by Wax Jism
mon Hen: pale light through the mist. The hobbits
are long gone but Aragorn, son of Arathorn is still here. Took down orcs one by
one but was too late to save Boromir; can't let go of his cold hand now. Legolas
already touched his shoulder, restrained elvish for "let's get out of here."
Legolas is no weakling, but he feels the threat around them deeper than Aragorn;
doesn't want to tarry and wait for it to explode.
The old wombs rot and the new mother
Approaches with the footsteps of a world.
What beckons?
Whose blood hallows this grim land?
What slithers along the watershed of my human sleep?
Caress of unwaking delight... O start
A sufficient love! O gently silent forms
Of the last spaces.
Kenneth Patchen
