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“You don’t want to see?” Galadriel asked. “What Fingon brought back?”
“I have already seen him,” Haleth answers calmly.
Where is my brother? Where is he, if he lived?
She is careful to keep her distance from Finrod’s sister, who is close to her own age, and therefore a danger. Haleth cannot be seen as a child, and though Galadriel does not wish to be, she is the youngest of her family, here. “When he was on his feet,” she explains, after a moment. Then: “I’ll spare him two more watchful eyes while he isn’t.”
Galadriel folds her arms over her chest and juts out her chin. They are standing near enough to a torch-bearing sentry for Haleth to see her fine-boned face. Despite the fine bones and the golden hair, Haleth is reminded of Turgon.
Turgon, who carried his brother away.
They have all come to know each other well, this almost-year. Fingolfin and Finrod are respected leaders; Fingon and Aredhel are almost friends. The rest mingle freely with Haleth’s companions, but she does not have endless room in her own heart for forging bonds.
And none of them knew much about Haldar, until—
She does not want Galadriel to read grief on her. She doesn’t yet know what it looks like on her face, and no one else should find out before she does.
(She always thought they killed him, on that far-off day. There has been no time to understand the loss of him, living, these past years.
No time to understand a grief that stems from so small a space of time itself.)
Haleth prides—prided—herself on being unshakeable. She wishes that Galadriel would leave her alone, as she paces towards the lake, longing for the invisible breeze to cool her cheeks. But Galadriel trails her, cat-like and observant, and Haleth is called upon to smother her sparking knowledge and kindling ignorance, together.
What was he like? Was he afraid? Someone knows. Gwindor might know. Russandol might know.
Do not guess.
Thingol—before whom she has been bold and mad and calm with grief—has not, to her knowledge, lost anything. Despite his deep-sown hatreds, he has a wife, and a daughter, and too many cattle to count.
(He has counted them.)
Thingol is using her. She feels that, sometimes, when she is tired.
“They’re going to save his life,” Galadriel says bitterly. “What a waste.”
The people scattered. Finrod and Fingolfin took their kinsman’s body. The one called Gwindor followed, with Beren’s aid.
Haleth looks at Galadriel, not understanding the words, but tasting the same bitterness. “He is one of the ones who betrayed you.”
“He couldn’t betray me. I never trusted him. I never trusted any of them.”
Not a child, then. Only a woman unseen.
Haleth’s whole body and half her spirit were meant to grow beside someone else. She thrusts her long hands in her deep pockets, and stares at the water she cannot see.
“There’s a long time left for people to die,” she says. “I think you’re the surviving kind. Be careful what you count as wasted.”
“How do you know that?” Galadriel demands.
Because I am too.
“Because you’re easy to know.” Haleth is fond, as she says it, but her tone isn’t. She likes this girl better than she thought.
The words pique Galadriel, as she knew they would, and just like that, Haleth is alone again.
She spreads her coat beneath her and sits on the shore of the lake.
When she wakes in the early morning, cold and dew-dropped, she sees the flash of a redhaired boy, running on the bridge.
It isn’t Russandol.
Funny, how the false sight of someone surviving made the heart leap out of her chest.