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Sunlight spilled over Éowyn’s shoulders as she examined the sketches she and Faramir had drafted of the entry of their future home: wide double doors of black lebethron, upon which would be set the White Tree, and columns of white stone, carved in the vining fashion of the Mark, flanking the doors. Beneath the tracework of sunlight, she could see the abandoned lines and ideas that littered the sketches—the blots of ink where they had stalled in thought and the haphazard jots where their quills had fallen forgotten as their conversation ceased in speech.
“We shall have to provide a cleaner sketch,” she said, sharing a smile with Faramir.
“There is one thing more I would have you consider.” He withdrew a piece of parchment, neatly folded, and spread it before her on the small table they had carried out into Meduseld’s garden. Drawn on the parchment was a sketch of another house, similar in fashion to theirs, but smaller—a house of work or of craft. “Your wedding gift,” he said. “It shall be solely for your use, to be named and given purpose as you will. You need not decide its purpose now, but I wished for you to see it before I give the order to begin construction.”
Éowyn spread her hands over the parchment, silent. Tall windows filled the walls of the house, from eave to floor. She thought of the narrow windows beneath the eave of Meduseld’s eastern wall, where the sun touched but briefly on the shadows of morning and then fled, and of the small louver in the ceiling of the hall and its narrow net of stars, and of the pooling darkness of her chambers, pricked only by candle and hearth.
In this house, the sun would walk in every window, and the moon and stars would unspool their glimmering strands in the night’s shadows. In this house, no shadows would cling to her steps, and with them the ragged remnants of memories.
“I have yet to survey the land myself,” said Faramir, “but Beregond says he has found a fair place, near to the main house. A grove of lebethron trees will shade the house from the noon sun, and a stream lies near at hand, from which you may fetch water. There is room for a garden, too, if you wish for another beyond that which will grow in the courtyard of our home.”
“I do not know to what purpose I will put it,” she said at last. “I know so little still of healing.”
Faramir smiled. “Then it is well that I do not seek your purpose, only your consent. Beregond is eager to begin. He wishes greatly to please the Lady of the Shield-arm.”
Éowyn looked sidelong at him, a smile upon her lips. “Does he indeed? Then you may tell him he has.”
Faramir leaned and pressed a kiss to her brow. “He will be glad to hear it.”
Faramir left with the coming of winter and would not return until spring was in its fullness, and the grasses of the Mark rose to Men’s knees and the winds of spring ran streaming upon their green shoulders, and their wedding would be held in the long hall where Éowyn would dwell no more.
Our house and your wedding gift continue apace, he wrote to her in the months after he had left. Winter here is mild, and the rains have not yet come in full. Already much of the house has been laid down, and already it gleams like a pearl cupped within the palm of the hills. If the weather holds, all shall be ready when we return here from our wedding.
I have one last request of you. Think of what sign you would have placed above the door of your house to be the symbol of the Lady of Ithilien. I do not need your answer now, but the stonemasons will wish to have it when you arrive, for they wish to have you witness them place it in the stone. May the days until then pass swiftly!
In his offices in Minas Tirith, Faramir still displayed the signet and white standard of the Stewards, but for his newly constructed house and seat, he would display the symbols of his princedom. A new age ought to have new symbols, and the House of Mardil is no more, he had told Éowyn during the months of waiting and building in Meduseld, and together they had set the sickle moon above the Tree and sent the sketch to Aragorn, to be set in the annals of Gondor as the signs of the princedom of Ithilien.
Éowyn had not given thought to what she would choose as her symbol, but she thought long upon it now—of horse and grass and sword and shield, and of the moonlit hills of Ithilien, and the trees that clad hollow and hillock, and of the tools and work of the healer. And she thought of the days of darkness and dread, and the shade of the dawnless day, and of the sun shining in the Tower of the Sun.
And when spring came, Faramir came through the rippling grass clad in white and sable, with the sun streaming through the pennants of his house, and set his hand in hers before the throne of Meduseld, and the light of the setting sun shone through the doors of the hall and fell upon their hands.
When they rode at last to their new home, to be wedded again in the manner of Gondor amongst the blooming myrtles, their house already rose white and fair from the hollows of the hills, a pearl set amongst the tamarisk and terebinth. Hammer and chisel rang as the stonemasons set the new symbols of the Prince of Ithilien in the lintel above the door.
Bar-en-Ithil they had named it, House of the Moon, for it lay in the heart of the land where the moon went walking over the climbing woods and falling streams, shining upon bough and pool. It was built of the same white marble as Minas Ithil-that-was, so that it shone above the hills like the cresting moon. But it was not the imprisoned moonlight that welled through the marble walls of Minas Ithil long ago, but the gleam of the moon as caught in a mirror, fair and radiant in the hollow of the hills.
It was neither a garrison nor a keep nor a castle, but a simple house, low and sprawling, for they would have no symbols of war, nor of power over Men. No shields lined its halls; no banners of war fell from its walls; no trophies of valor hung above hearth or seat. Through its tall windows, the moonlight welled upon its white floors, polished and plain, for it was a house of work, not of office or rank. In its center was a courtyard in which grew the gardens of Éowyn: herbs for the healing of hurts, and others for the easing of minds and hearts.
And upon its eastern flank, as Faramir had promised, stood Éowyn’s house, shaded by a grove of lebethron trees and girded by a stream. The morning sun shone upon its eastern walls in a wash of gold, and the glass of the windows caught the light and gleamed.
As Faramir led her to the door, he asked, “Have you chosen a symbol?”
Éowyn turned upon his arm to face the dawn and tilted her face to its light. “I shall have the sun,” she said, “for as I stood in the Tower of the Sun and saw the end of the Shadow and knew at last my own heart and was renewed, so now shall I bring renewal. And this shall be the House of the Sun, Bar-en-Anor, and all who come here shall find themselves renewed.”
“So shall it be,” said Faramir with a smile, and he bent and kissed her beneath the morning sun.