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“Do you not want to feel the surf, cousin? Even just to wade a little right here at the shore?”
Théodred splashed his foot back and forth in the turquoise shallows, sending a light spray of water in Éowyn’s direction, but she barely looked up from the little shell she was turning idly in her hands. In fact, she had barely looked up since they arrived on the coast earlier that morning, plopping down a few yards from the water’s leading edge and keeping quietly to herself despite Éomer’s numerous entreaties to join him in the waves. She still sat in that same quietude, though she had moved steadily back as the advancing tide claimed more and more of the beach, and she held her silence even as Théodred walked over now to take a seat next to her in the coarse, warm sand.
Shielding his eyes from the sun, he squinted out at the rolling swell, an endless rippling expanse that blended gradually into the blue of the sky in the farthest distance. “They say that out there somewhere is the land where the elves go when they’re ready to leave Middle Earth,” he said, nodding toward the wide vista before them. “Eventually, they all feel the call and sail off to spend the rest of eternity beyond the horizon in a land that can’t be found by any mortal traveler.” He nudged her gently with his elbow. “What do you think of that?”
She glanced up at him just long enough to frown before returning her gaze to the shell in her hand. “It makes no difference to me. I don’t even know any elves.”
“Me neither. But I still like to think about it sometimes.” He stretched out his legs toward a small crest that swept up the sand to lap at his toes before disappearing back into the shoals, leaving clumps of colorful sea grass in its wake. “How might those other shores look? Do they have the same problems and sadnesses that we find here? Do the people there ever miss Middle Earth once they’ve sailed away from it? There are no answers in our songs and poems.”
She gave a listless shrug. “Thinking about all that serves no purpose. Even if that land exists, you’ll never see it.”
“You may be right.” He gave a mild smile and then arched a brow. “But then again, you may not. Lots of things happen in life that we don’t expect, and there’s no telling where you may end up.”
This time she merely sighed in response, and when it was clear that she would say nothing further they sat in silence, listening to the rhythmic washing of water back and forth over rock and sand and the echoing cries of the gulls and terns.
He watched her from the corner of his eye as they sat, marveling at how she had both the fresh face of inexperienced youth and the grave aspect of one who had already endured much. He had worked hard over the years to lighten those somber tendencies, to give her a place of loving stability and protection so that she could reclaim a little of the carefree childhood that she deserved, and his efforts had not been entirely in vain. He had looked on with pride as she slowly transformed from a mournful and subdued little girl into a bright and spirited young woman, full of enthusiasm and mischief and quick both to action and affection. But lately he could see this hard fought progress eroding, wearing gradually away like the boulders that lined the edge of the bay and broke the hardest of the surf. She laughed and smiled less frequently, and she had become prone to long periods of contemplative quiet, holding herself apart from people and things that she loved and reappraising it all with a sharper, more critical eye.
She had declined his many invitations to talk about what troubled her, leaving him only to speculate. But the timing of this change in her bearing — coinciding, as it did, with Éomer’s assumption of his first official duties — spoke volumes to Théodred. He had long perceived that she had the mind and mettle to match her brother deed for deed, though she had yet to voice the inclination and perhaps didn’t even believe it to be a thought worth putting into words.
It was partly for that reason that Théodred had brought her here in the first place. Away from the confines of her daily existence and the familiar plains and valleys whose every golden field and glittering stream she already knew by heart, he’d hoped that she would open up. He hoped she would allow herself to be as boundless and unpredictable as the foreign ocean that was now before her in all its glorious might, so much wider and more mysterious than their own land that was tightly bounded by mountains and rivers. He wanted her to see that her life need not always be the same, and she needn’t always be hemmed in by borders, real or imagined. She could carve a new path — he would help her to do it — if she only trusted herself enough to try.
He knew from experience that she could maintain a silence more stubbornly than anyone, and so after a time he ventured to speak again, putting a hand on her arm and squeezing lightly until she looked up at him at last.
“I’m glad that we’re here,” he said. “I know the sea doesn’t mean much to our people. Most Rohirrim will never even set eyes on it, nor feel the need to, and we get all that we require from the Snowbourn or the Entwash or the Adorn. But there’s a reason I wanted you to see it, cousin, and not just for its beauty. The world is a very big place, much bigger than you can imagine, and even the seemingly endless Storhaern is just one small part. It’s a reminder that there is much still to explore and learn and accomplish out there.”
She laughed, a hollow, mirthless sound with a bitter edge that seemed to speak unsaid words. Not for me. Her eyes flashed in the midday sun but a tremble in her lip tinged her bitterness with sorrow, and she turned aside from him, dropping the shell to the ground with a dull thud. “I’d rather be alone again, cousin, if you don’t mind. Just come and fetch me when Éomer is done having his fun.”
He stifled a small sigh of defeat and made ready to honor her request, but the flat, tired tone in her voice tugged at his heart like the tow of the bay’s undercurrent and he found that he couldn’t walk away without first trying to offer something that might be of comfort. As he groped for the right words, he stared down at the discarded shell, a pearlescent spiral of soft pink with bright whorls of red and orange, and picked it up, tracing a finger across its smooth, hard surface. A memory began to slowly emerge from the depths of his mind. A memory of another delicate shell in a hand much like Éowyn’s. A memory from long ago that told him exactly what he wanted to say now.
“May I share just one more thing, cousin? And then I promise that I’ll leave you to your thoughts.”
She nodded without turning.
“When I was a small boy, I once found a shell just like this one that you’ve been toying with. We were visiting Grandmother’s family, and Aunt Théodwyn took me for a special day at the beach, just the two of us. We swam and watched the boats coming into the harbor, and she buried me in the sand until only my head and my feet were still visible.”
Her back was still to him, but he could tell by the slight tilt of her head that she was listening, caught as always by any reference to her mother.
“My favorite part was digging around in the tidal flats for clams and snails and other creatures hiding in the silt, and we discovered a small crab living in a little pink and orange shell. That shell was meant to protect him and give him a place to rest and grow, and it seemed to do its job well. But your mother told me that it wouldn’t always. As the crab got older and bigger, the shell would start to feel uncomfortable to him. It would restrain him from doing everything he wanted and needed to do, becoming a hindrance rather than a help. And so he would change it. When he felt ready, he’d crawl out and find a new one that suited him better and made him happy. He didn’t have to be trapped forever in the shell he started with. He just needed the courage to claim a different one.” He leaned over to place the shell back in front of her before hoisting himself to his feet. “Sounds pretty smart, if you ask me.”
He dropped a kiss on the top of her head as he straightened up and then left her as promised, heading out to the surf line where Éomer and a few of his guards were gleefully allowing themselves to be battered by the incoming tide. He took only one quick look back to see that she held the shell in her hand once more, staring at it with new intensity, and when she quietly slipped it into her pocket, he smiled.