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The rider in the distance was a speck of dust against the horizon, but dust could tell its own tales. Now, for instance, it swarmed up in a gold-mist cloud, revealing the rider for just that: someone traveling swiftly on horseback, not to be mistaken as a straying, placid steer.
Luthien scrambled down from the bluff, her smooth braids slapping against her shoulders. They reached past her waist, those braids, and if gathered together they were thicker than her wrist.
"Let it be him," she chanted under her breath, as she ran, lifting her light skirts to run through the waving grass. "Let it be him."
It felt like an age under the shafting sun, but Luthien was well-used to waiting.
At last he swung into view, and she leapt from her crouch some few yards ahead of him.
"Daeron!"
"Mon Dieu, girl! You frightened me half to death!"
This, in French, for Daeron spoke in his native tongue when startled.
Luthien, his long-time pupil, understood him perfectly well. She waited for him to dismount, and then threw her arms around him, breathing in the scent of leather and dust, sweat and pine. "I've missed you terribly," she said, in English, this time. Daeron had been her teacher for English as well as French, though neither had been encouraged by her father. The lessons were conducted out of his hearing, and Spanish was most often the tongue of Doriath-house.
The freedom to speak whatever words she chose, in greeting, was part of the reason she had chosen to come out to the edges of the land to wait for Daeron.
"You shouldn't be here," Daeron said, switching to Spanish as if Papa had ears in the very earth. "How did you escape?"
"I'm not a child anymore, Daeron," Luthien laughed, tossing her head. "I am of marriageable age, save for Papa's standards."
Daeron was quiet.
"You go on ahead," she said, knowing that she would get no news out of him until he had faithfully presented it to her father. "I wanted to be the first to see you, but I'll slink back before anyone knows I'm gone and greet you properly."
Anyone but Mama, she did not add. Mama was good at keeping secrets--though even she would not be pleased to know that Luthien had slipped past the guards. Everyone had been wary, in the months since the dread messenger's arrival with a letter no one read.
Looking a little reluctant, Daeron clambered astride his weary steed and squinted down at her from under the brim of his hat. "Are you armed?"
"Always!" And she drew out the little silver firing piece that Papa had gifted her on her fourteenth birthday. It was the only thing Feanor the Irishmen had left him, when he fled without paying his debts, and Papa, more generous than others thought him, had saved it for her.
Daeron grinned shyly and saluted. Luthien watched the dust fly around him once more, and began to run.
You are thirteen and there is a man at the gate. You are thirteen and when your father and your mother go out to speak with him--together, as they do all things--you follow. You have never been afraid before; why should you be now?
The man speaks smoothly. His face is smooth too, but you have seen the way the sun bleaches the cattle-skulls, and this is too much alike. He wants to buy your father's ranch. You would laugh at that idea even if he was not relegated to explaining this proposal from behind an armed guard.
Papa does not answer him directly; he has Daeron translate for him. Daeron is a Frenchman, and Papa does not like Frenchmen, but he has known Daeron since Daeron was a small boy, abandoned after his parents died of fever in Montreal. In those days, Papa was a traveler, not yet finding a place to settle, and he took Daeron with him as he made his way south-west.
"He is not interested in selling," Daeron explains, and then the man at the gate looks past Daeron, and past Papa's broad shoulders, and sees Luthien standing on the paved stones that lead to the doors of their house.
"Is this your daughter?" the man asks, and Luthien understands, as she has understood everything else--
(Because Daeron has taught her what Papa did not want her to know.)
Papa wheels around and says, "Luthien!" more sharply than she has ever heard him speak.
The man laughs.
"She is very beautiful," he says. "I would rather have her than the ranch."
Daeron flushes darkly, and falls silent.
"Come," Papa says, his voice loud and clear. "My daughter, come to me."
Luthien steps forward. The man is like a skull, and like the condors that pick at them. No one should be both. Luthien holds her head up and does not stop walking until she is between Papa and Mama. Papa's arm circles her shoulder.
"Tell him that he shall be killed if he remains on our lands within the hour," Papa says firmly. "Tell him that he is unwelcome in Elu Thingol's domain."
"I have men with me," the man simpers.
"He has men with him," Daeron translates.
Papa's arm tightens around Luthien's shoulders, holding her close. Keeping her safe. (Luthien will not be afraid.)
Papa says, "He does not have enough."
"Daeron!"
Her father's booming voice was so different from her own, yet Luthien smiled to hear their weary wanderer greeted in much the same way as he had been an hour ago, when his name sprang from her lips. She made her way down the halls carefully, dressed in a fresh gown of sea-blue silk, with Mama's embroidery singing in the form of golden poppy-shapes along the sleeves and hem. Her hair she had unbraided and combed, since her hasty retreat from the far fields and her enterprising climb through her bedroom window. Sleek and dark, it hung behind her like a curtain.
"Señor Thingol." Daeron gripped Papa's hand in his. "It's been a long journey."
"Then we will bring you food and drink, and draw you a bath." Papa waved a hand. "Luthien, my love, do not linger there--see who has returned to us!"
"Daeron," Luthien said warmly, stepping forward. "What a pleasure!"
Daeron bowed. His eyes twinkled, but he did not betray her. "I would welcome food and drink, señor," he said, "But I am eager to tell you my news--if you can bear the road-stink so near."
"We raise cattle," Papa observed, a faint flicker of a smile darting over his face. He proposed that they sit upon the veranda, and Luthien followed them out. This view afforded them not the cattle barns, but the valley field--one that dipped like the bowl of a spoon, and that even in summer, was wheat-brown rather than green.
Luthien leaned against the railing, her ears pricked almost to points with eagerness. She dared not hope that Daeron would have news of him, or if he did (oh, yes, perhaps she hoped a little) that he would say so before Papa, but anything, anything from the outside was welcome.
"Feanor the Irishman," said Daeron, when the drinks were brought out, "is dead."
"Damn him!" shouts Papa, and his fists are clenched but you watch him, all of ten years old and all quite calm.
You are calm because Mama is calm, and because you know your father would never hurt you.
"Speak to Rumil again," Mama urges, her voice smooth. She speaks Spanish--something on which Papa does not insist, but which she does when he is unhappy, for it is the language he loves most. "He was always reasonable, before this."
Papa lifts his head and looks at her. Stooped over his desk, he is still so tall.
"I do not doubt," he says, in a somewhat quieter tone, "That Rumil was ill-used also. He does not have the diamond now. That fiend will have taken it with him--back east, jackal-fast as he is. If Rumil does not yet know that he has been cheated, time will tell him."
"Dead?" Papa repeated grimly, lifting his glass to his lips as if to drink--but only staring at its depths. "I thought he had just arrived. He and all his sons."
Sons? Luthien had not known that Feanor the Irishman had sons.
"Nonetheless," Daeron answered. "They say he skirmished at Utumno, and was wounded. Fatally."
"May his soul be received in its rightful place." Papa drained his glass to its dregs.
"I'll come back to you," Beren promises. "Will you wait?"
"Yes," you answer, and you kiss him so that he will be the one surprised.
"What does this mean?"
Daeron turned to her. "Bauglir has had a hard time completing the railroad that he was commissioned to build," he replied. "For, I learned, Feanor has been interfering with it. His death means that that interference will be--weakened, at least, unless his sons and those at Fort Mithrim take up the cause."
"Feanor's causes were always sole to himself," Papa observed, shaking his head. "But no doubt we can expect more from Bauglir, in the months to come."
"I hear he has been...enslaving native peoples, and Africans from the south." Daeron's hands clamped on his earth-stained knees. "It's a nasty business."
"I knew him to be a thief and a scoundrel when I first saw him." This, almost a growl. "But as long as he stays outside the borders of our land, and does not touch our people, I will not seek a war."
"But if he is keeping people captive, we ought to do something," Luthien interjected.
"He has the government on his side." Daeron sounded defeated.
"We here in Doriath keep our own laws of conduct," Luthien answered, trying to make her tone playful so that it would stoke no quarrel with Papa. "Do you not remember, Daeron? Do you remember nothing of your time with us?"
He gnawed his lip a little, as if he had words to say but was holding them back. "I come only as a bearer of information," he answered at last. His face was a little red, she thought, but it was hard to tell beneath his sunburn. "Señor, you must do what you think best."
"I expect a full accounting of your travels," you say, when Daeron carries a candle down the hall, to where his old quarters are still kept for him.
You mean, an accounting of everything he has heard about Melkor Bauglir's slaves, if such they are, and you both know it.
You mean also--
"I did not find him, Luthien," Daeron whispers, lower than is needed, since a snore that can only belong to Elu Thingol echoes from several rooms away. "Beren. There was no word left, at any trading post."
"And you always asked?" Your hands twist in your skirt.
In the yellow candlelight, you cannot quite see his eyes.
"Yes," Daeron answers. "I always asked."