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Chapter Text

The House of Ingwë:

• Ingwë Ingweron, King of the Vanyar and all the Eldar, who sits at the feet of Manwë.
• Ilwen, wife of Ingwë and Queen of the Vanyar.
• Ingwion, firstborn of Ingwë, who rules as his regent. 
• Ingwírel (or Ingwizel in the Vanyarin dialect), older daughter of Ingwë. Wed to Taimavar, with whom she has issue. 
• Vanimárië, younger daughter of Ingwë.
• Ingil, lastborn to Ingwë, and father of Elerrína. His wife is Almáriel the wine-maker.
• Elerrína, daughter of Ingil. Wife to Macalaurë (Maglor) and mother of Elemmírë and Ilmaría. A poet and singer of some repute.

Kin and associates of Ingwion:

• Findis, eldest child of Finwë and Indis; presently being courted by Elemmundo.
• Ektillë of the Strong Arm, eldest of the sisters of Ingwë and Chieftain of Kôr. Her husband is Halwë. 
• Ilvain the Fair, second eldest of the sisters of Ingwë and wife to Orontar.
• Orontar, chief of Ingwion’s councillors and husband to Ilvain. 
• Elentirmo, a young court page descended from Ilvain.
• Airen, fourth and most pious of the sisters of Ingwë.
• Elemmundo, suitor of Findis; kinsman of Orontar and Airen.
• Indis (see Nerdanel’s housemates).

Nerdanel’s housemates and neighbours:

• Nerdanel, estranged wife of Fëanáro (Fëanor), a skilled sculptress. 
• Indis, youngest of Ingwë’s sisters; the widow of Finwë and once Queen of the Ñoldor.
• Amárië, beloved of Findaráto (Finrod), a mathematician.
• Anairë, wife of Ñolofinwë (Fingolfin) and bosom friend to Eärwen.
• Culurondo and Niélë and their children, Culuriën and Niénon, a family of potters.
• Töarahto, a curmudgeonly old carpenter.

Other rulers of the Valinorean Eldar:

• Arafinwë (Finarfin), King of the Ñoldor in Valinor. Called also Ingoldo, which is his amilessë.
• Eärwen, Queen of the Teleri.

Chapter Text

Morning: the rooster crowed. I rose from my bed and stumbled into the main hall to find the hearth cold and a dim grey light creeping into the room. Distantly came the sounds of sweepers shuffling through the streets as they readied Minyamar for the dawn traffic.

Amárië appeared, grumbling about the early hour, but obediently went off the pump with basin in hand. She returned just as I had gotten the fire roaring again. I filled the kettle and set it over the fire.

“Is there aught else to attend?” I shook my head. “Then I am off.”

Culuriën, the neighbours' girl, arrived with loaves of bread still steaming from the baker’s oven. She trailed me as I went about preparing breakfast, chattering gaily until I gave her a hunk of bread. In the midst of this exchange Indis had woken and gone for the kettle. She gave me a cup of tea before leading the girl out to the back garden where the hens were roosting. Indis, overly generous, would likely send Culuriën off with the greater share of the daily lay.

I had made the breakfast, swept the room, and started on another pot when they returned, Culuriën excitedly showing off the six eggs in her basket. Over her head, I looked at Indis.

She smiled sheepishly. “We have three left,” she said, and then fled. Cheeky Culuriën thanked me for my generosity and scampered off.

Indis emerged gowned and veiled for going out. The sheer fabric over her face could not hide her excitement. For weeks she had anticipated the birth of a child to one of her sisters’ households; she and a bevy of her kin had been caring for the expecting mother. I gathered that a grandniece was involved, although the precise tangle of relations escaped me.

I served Indis tea watched her smile wilt. “I had just put on a pot,” she complained.

“Then you should have stayed to enjoy the fruits of your labour,” I said. She sighed and we sat to break our fast.

Afterwards I saw her off, lingering on the doorstep to gaze upon Taniquetil, a silver glimmer in the rosy sky of dawn. Upon the mountain’s slope, the white halls and spires of Ingwë’s palace gazed down at a city waking to the day’s labour. The artisan’s quarter where I dwelt was already hard at work: thin fingers of smoke were rising from forges and fires all about the quarter, and carts were trundling along the street that ran past our house. Their drivers called out greetings to each other, voices ringing in the clear air of morning.

By the doorstep grew our fig tree, which had put forth a good effort this year and finally borne clusters of green and purple fruit: ripened now, some cracked to expose the pink flesh within. I fetched a basket from the house and set to picking, considering how best to make use of the bounty. We would have the fresh figs with cheese, of course, but also dried ones to last us through the year. Indis adored preserves – I would have to trade with Culuriën’s mother, Niélë, for lemons…

Absorbed as I was in my thoughts, I had not noticed the visitor coming up the street until he called out to me.

“Nerdanel?”

“Ingwion,” I said, dumbfounded. The ruler of the Vanyar stood in the middle of the street, aglow in the morning sun. Too late, I realised that my neighbours had fallen into a reverent silence. A multitude of disapproving eyes fell upon me. “That is— your highness—”

“None of that,” he said softly. The light faded as he came closer and I saw that my friend of old was thinner and paler than I remembered. “This is a reunion of friends.”

In the Great Square of Tirion I had last seen him, returned resolute and sorrowing. His Vanyar, who had trailed the Flight in their mission of mercy, had reaped much in grief; it was said that they had met Fëanáro on the shores of Araman. Afterwards he had vanished into the high halls of the palace, and in the years since the decrees which issued forth were all that I had of him.

“You look well,” he said, seemingly unaware of the stares he was attracting.

“As do you,” I lied, recalling my manners. “What has brought you to my house?”

“May I not call upon a dearly missed friend?”

Dearly missed, indeed! The Sun had risen five years ago. “Then I am pleased to receive you. Would you like to come in for tea?”

His gaze went to the fig clutched in my hand. “I shall not take you from your work,” he said. “Let me help you, and then we shall see about the tea.”

I gave him the basket, by now heavily laden. Together we made short work of the remaining figs and then I ushered him into the house. He paused once inside, his eyes roving over the main hall with its ceiling of pale wood and walls hung with flowered tapestries. To one side was the dining table and cupboards and larder, which Indis so often left a-jumble in the morning. To the other side was the hearth with the kettle hung gently steaming. In the back, a ladder led up to the loft; large windows opened to the garden, and sunlight streamed through to pool bright upon the ground.

“A fig for your thoughts?”

“It suits you,” he said simply.

He did not take a fig. I made a pot of tea and led him to the windows, where we had arrayed couches and tea-tables for entertaining. Out in the garden the chickens could be heard clucking softly as they pecked among plots of herbs, but otherwise it was quiet: the breeze was gentle upon the high green hedges bordering the garden, and the sky beyond was blue, and the sun bright. I settled in my usual place and he chose the couch facing me.

Just last night Indis had draped herself over that couch, wine-flushed and chortling as Amárië relayed the raunchy notes that she had caught her students passing. The former Queen of the Ñoldor had spilled some wine in her careless delight and, though we had scrubbed the coverings immediately after, the purple stain had lingered. Now Ingwion carefully arranged his long limbs in her place. His gaze caught on the stain and a passing mirth quirked his lips, but he did not comment. When I served tea, he peered into his cup sombrely.

“I hope that it does not offend,” I said.

“Not at all,” he said, and smiled wearily. “I have been assured that my taste in tea is hopeless.”

My husband had also harangued me about how I took my tea. Being a smith's daughter, I brewed it strong enough to clench the jaw. I had been mystified by his vehemence about the subtle aroma of mountain teas and the ruin brought upon the leaves by my heavy hand when it was he who forgot food and drink for days at a stretch.

There was a pause as we took our first sips.

“I had thought that you would visit sooner,” I said, for the lack of anything better to say.

“The exigencies of duty did not allow it,” he said. He had grieved Fëanáro as few of the Vanyar had. Had he sought in duty a respite from grief? His wan complexion told that, if there was any to be found, then it was of the cold and barren sort.

Ingwion drank his tea, eyes closing as if he were trying to taste for aromas. Sunlight glittered gold upon his lowered eyelashes and, for the first time in years, my hands itched for hammer and chisel.

Weariness did not mar his beauty. As a youth he had inspired Rúmil to poetry and I knew that inspiration well. He and Fëanáro were possessed of that strange quality which made them almost works of art – something that made them a touch too sharp and too true. I had stared, upon our first meetings. Fëanáro had dropped his hammer on his toes and ruined the moment; Ingwion had waited graciously until I had stuttered out a greeting.

They had been at their most striking as a pair. I could recall the admiring looks they had drawn when they stood together: one mercurial and bold, the other gentle and reserved. The dark and the fair, a study in contrasts. Only later did I realise how unlikely they were to have found each other. Habitual solitude had bred strange inclinations in them. My husband’s faults, and the woes that sprung from them, had been picked over by many greater than I. Less was said of Ingwion, who was of a more elusive character. For all his geniality, he kept his own counsel. To my husband he had given the most of his trust; and Fëanáro was dead.

“What thoughts wrinkle your brow, Nerdanel?”

Porcelain clinked as Ingwion set his cup back on its saucer. My own cup was still mostly full and – I put my hand to it – half-cooled. I dutifully drank the rest. It would have been better hot, but even lukewarm tea could remedy wandering thoughts.

“I was thinking of Fëanáro and you,” I said honestly. “You remind me of him.”

He did not make reply at once, but gave me a long searching look.

“Well?”

“You look well,” he repeated, and his face softened in relief. “I am glad for you.”

“You worried for me. You silly man,” I said, unable to help the surge of fond exasperation. “Why burden yourself so when you could have simply asked?”

“I shall worry for you always,” he replied, not at all chastened. I frowned at him, unimpressed, and he smiled back. “But here I yield to your wisdom and ask how you have fared in these years past. I learned from Findis of the house you keep with mine aunt, but she spoke of little more than that.”

Indis’ elder daughter had gone to dwell at the Vanyarin court. In my memories she had not been particularly close to Ingwion, who regarded the children of Indis with benevolent remove, and her temper and tendencies would not have inclined her towards friendship with him. He must have sought her out.

“It makes for an unexciting tale, but I will tell you what little there is worth telling,” I said obligingly, and gave him an accounting of my living arrangements. In truth I had not expected to collect such a group as my company of abandoned spouses. At first it had been just Indis and I, knocking about in a house that seemed much too large, but in time Amárië had come to us, and then Anairë – though she spent half the year in Alqualondë still – and with their companionship the days had passed into quiet ease. Anairë sewed and Amárië taught; Indis wove, singing as the loom clacked and clattered; and I swept and cooked and gardened, and generally kept the house in good repair. I recounted a number of their more amusing exploits and then my own, for I had few. With others I dealt little, save for my neighbours: humble craftsmen who had welcomed me into their houses without reservation and accorded to me all the simple kindnesses they gave to one of their own. Upon hearing this, Ingwion’s smile brightened his weary face; he proceeded to ask after each of them by name, and I understood why the Vanyar loved him.

Of my neighbours I had struck up a particularly close friendship with Culuriën’s family, who were potters of some repute. They had gifted us with various pieces of crockery over the years. “And I have made a few myself,” I admitted. Working clay for sculpting was unlike working clay into a pot or cup or plate, and I had come to the craft with misplaced confidence. My propensity for experimenting had seen more ambitious creations come out of the kiln misshapen and crumbling. “Teacups mostly, and with their help, of course.”

Ingwion looked at the cup in his hands with sudden interest and I laughed despite myself. “That is not my work. My learning pieces are too ugly to see the light of day.”

“Now you have roused my curiosity.”

“Perhaps I shall make you a gift of one,” I said dryly, “so that you might appall your callers also.”

“I would cherish it,” he promised, entirely in earnest.

“Ah, well…” I trailed off, a little embarrassed. I could have rambled on. Ingwion had said little, but he was a flattering listener and his expressions had spoken for him: in turns attentive and amused, and always fond. Yet a faint air of sorrow lingered about him that my telling had not lessened, and I knew that he heard in my voice the echo of another.

Instead I asked him, “What do you make of my tale, then?”

“You were wise to gather those bereaved in kind,” he replied, thoughtful. “Their understanding is a rare treasure. Grief has come to dwell in Valinor, and yet in many houses finds itself unwelcome.”

“Most of it was not my doing. My companions came to me of their own accord and in their own time,” I told him.

“Yet it is a haven which you have made for them and yourself,” he said. “I would hear more of it, if you are willing.”

“I have told you what is worth telling and the rest are trivialities,” I said. “I shan’t bore you.”

“How could you, when you speak of such happy things?” His voice was gentle and sad.

Pity grew in my heart. Ingwion spoke as one who stood on the threshold and knew he would not cross. He knew only to turn away and endure what he thought was his due. Yoked to duty, lashed by grief – who would ransom him when he was his own captor?

“You should join us,” I said.

“I would be intruding,” he demurred, as I knew he would.

“Not so,” I said, trying to make him understand, “for, as you say, we are bereaved in kind.”

Ingwion was an excellent liar. He must have perceived my meaning at once, and yet he looked unmoved. My gaze was met with a quiet attentiveness that invited my thoughts and revealed none of his own.

“Once, I heard you call him Nárenya.” Fëanáro and I had wed with flowers in our hair. Later it would become the custom to lade the bride and groom with gold and silver and jewels; but those were young years yet, and so we had garlands of golden laurinquelótë and fragrant silver lissuin. I remembered Ingwion taking my new husband aside to congratulate him. I remembered Fëanáro grinning, pleased and proud, and placing a garland upon that fair head. “I felt our kinship, then. Over the passing of years, I divined its source: that both our hearts were given over to him.”

Ingwion’s expression was unreadable. “So you have known for a long time,” he said, slowly, “and still you ask this of me.”

“I have never begrudged your love for Fëanáro,” I whispered. He looked away. Through the window the sun was shining, and his face glimmered pale in the light. “I do not begrudge your grief.”

For a long while he was silent; then he sighed.

“An old epessë, seldom used,” he said, and he sounded very tired. “Míriel named him so. I only wished for him to know that his mother would have rejoiced for him, as I did. I was unwise in using it.”

“I would not have known, otherwise,” I said. “You kept the secret well.”

“I had hoped to keep it even from you,” he confessed, turning back. His regard was inexpressibly tender, the bright sharp point of it piercing deeply and true.“Dearest Nerdanel, wise and good. How could I have burdened you with the failings of my heart?”

My eyes stung. “Then you would not be the fool you are,” I muttered, and he let out a weak, startled laugh. Hastily I wiped at my face. The tea had gone cold. I retrieved the kettle and made a fresh pot. Ingwion peered at me over the rising steam, and his face was weary and white, wounded. His voice, when he spoke, was very quiet.

“What would you have of me?”

There had been flowers in his hair. My father’s kin had been in the wedding party, and he had danced with them, singing the songs to lay blessings upon my bridal bed. “Behold, thou art fair,” they had sung as they whirled in giddy celebration, around and around, and loudest and most joyous of all had been his clear voice ringing: “O beloved, yea, pleasant, and also thy bed is green. The beams of thy house are cedar, and thy rafters of fir.”

My husband was long dead. I had my companions, and this house, where the beams were cedar and the rafters fir.

“My companions and I shall meet for supper in a fortnight,” I told him. “Will you at least consider it?” Let me keep you, as I could not keep him. Let me ransom you.

He lowered his eyes and did not answer.

I had not the heart to press him. We drank the tea in silence and then I led him to the door. The sun had waxed high. Beneath that pallid light we stood, the woman whom Fëanáro had loved and the man who loved him still, and he bowed deeply over my hand. Then he was gone.

Indis returned for lunch in a state of upset. Along the way our neighbours had accosted her and filled her with gossip.

“Could you not have kept him for longer?” she asked me. “I would have liked to tell him of the birth.”

I shrugged. Perhaps some of my weariness could be seen on my face, for Indis patted my hand and began to speak of the four times-great-grandniece she had gained.

Chapter Text

The fool was too accustomed to his secrets. A messenger arrived in the week before the appointed night, bearing Ingwion’s regrets – to my utter lack of surprise – and requesting that we kindly accept his niece in his place. Indis, at loose ends after the birth, had accepted at once.

Now the poor girl stood on my doorstep, peering down at me with uneasy reserve. I stared back.

Amárië came to the door. “Is that Princess Elerrína?”

“I was told that I might find company here,” she said.

“Of course! We have been expecting you,” Amárië hastened to say. She ushered Elerrína inside, frowning at me sidelong.

Elerrína was rigidly silent. Indis and Amárië pressed wine on her and made merry converse. I sat by the hearth and busied myself with preparing supper.

Anairë arrived late in a swirl of glittering fabrics and promptly ejected me from my place. “Back, back! You have done enough!” she declared laughingly over my objections. “Go and drink some of the swill that Amárië has brought!”

My comeuppance awaited. Indis and Amárië had exercised their talents and divested Elerrína of her tense misery, and now she reclined upon a pile of pillows, looking merely resigned at my approach. I could not help but pity her.

“I am sorry for my poor welcome,” I said. “Truly, I am glad that you have joined us.”

“You are forgiven,” she said. Briefly her lips trembled, seized by some sentiment that I did not care to examine too closely.

“Come, try this wine.” Amárië pressed a cup into my hand.

“Terrible, isn't it?” Indis laughed softly, seeing my mouth pucker. “Amárië has outdone herself.”

“There are yet more vintages to explore,” Amárië promised with cheer.

Elerrína swirled her wine and watched their banter with reserve. The austere lines of her face were softened by the warm light from the hearth. It made her look less like her father Ingil and more like her son Elemmírë.

She had eschewed Formenos and returned to the house of her father with Elemmírë. Yet even he had abandoned her to follow Fëanáro into exile. Ingil, with his disdain for all things Ñoldorin, could not made for sympathetic company. Had he been gentle with his daughter, the estranged wife of Fëanáro’s son? I was ashamed to realise that I had not thought about it.

Anairë called us all to supper. She presided over the dining table like a queen, preening as we exclaimed over her splendid new gown, a froth of silver tissue and pearls. “The style is all the rage in Alqualondë,” she explained. “Eärwen has gifted to me an entire wardrobe.”

“You wear it wonderfully,” said Indis, clad in mourning black.

“I could have a set made for you,” Anairë said. Her offer was refused with a sad smile, and she huffed. “One day I shall entice you to dress in the proper style. For now, I suppose I must content myself with adorning Amárië and Nerdanel.”

“And how do you propose to persuade us?” I asked to Amárië's laughter. Anairë grumbled. She prided herself on her patronage of all things sartorial and often despaired of our lacking interest.

“What is your opinion, Elerrína?” Indis asked kindly. “The styles of Alqualondë make for quite a different sight than the ones we are accustomed to.”

She looked at us pensively. “I do not keep up with the fashions.”

Indis' face fell and I cleared my throat. “More wine?”

“Why, Nerdanel, are you developing a taste to match Amárië’s? For shame!” Despite her teasing words, Anairë filled our cups.

“Such slander,” Amárië lamented. “This is a rare find. Nerdanel, you must defend me.”

“You have brought this upon your own head,” I said, smiling. “We have laboured to make a good spread for tonight. How can fine food be enjoyed without a fine wine to accompany it?”

“I can arrange for a bottle of the King's Reserve at the next supper,” Elerrína offered. She paused, looking around the table, and added hastily, “If I am invited. I would not presume.”

“Elerrína, you are now among friends,” Indis said. “You shall ever be welcome in our house, although I admit that a taste of the King's Reserve would not go amiss.”

“To friendship, then,” I said, raising my cup in toast.

“And the finest wine in Valinor!” Anairë added. We drank to that.

The supper came to an end without further incident. We scrubbed the plates and repaired with the wine to the entertaining area. The shutters were closed over the windows and fresh wood was added to the fire so that it burned high and bright.

Now was the time for the sharing of news. Indis launched into a rapturous account of the birth of her four times-great-grandniece that Amárië and I had heard near a dozen times. Towards the end she made mention of Ingwion’s visit and I was lightly teased (“The Prince came to this very house and I had to learn of it from our neighbours. You have truly rusticated,” Amárië sighed). Then Anairë spoke of her time in Alqualondë. To our surprise, she was questioned keenly by Elerrína on the state of the Teleri.

“I did not know that you had an affinity with them,” Anairë said. Elerrína’s face pinched.

“You went on the mission that brought succour to the Ñoldor and the Teleri,” Indis said. “All who had part spoke with horror of what they saw, or so I have been told.”

Elerrína tried to restrain herself, stalwart girl that she was. Yet the four concerned faces turned towards her proved too much. She wavered, and then she broke.

“I was. I turned aside at Alqualondë,” she said wretchedly. “Olwë and his sons were slain. Most of the docks were ash and a terrible storm battered what was left. There were bodies washing ashore. A greater part of the mission turned aside to aid the Teleri then, and would not go on. Elemmírë went with the rest. He worried for Macalaurë and for Ilmaría, but I would not go to them. I stayed to remedy the evil that their hands had wrought. It was the wiser path, I told him. I thought that he would see sense and return to me.”

“It was the wiser path,” Anairë said softly. “I did not leave Tirion. I knew that their Flight would come to ill end. Turukáno hearkened to me, but Ñolofinwë was determined, and we parted with words of anger.”

“I was in Minyamar,” Amárië said. She had railed bitterly against her parents, who had barred her from joining the Vanyarin mission.

Indis touched her skirts, spreading as black as night over her knees. “We were in mourning.”

“We all turned aside, one way or another,” I told Elerrína. “It was our choice, just as it was theirs to rebel. Grieve them, but regret not your refusal to chase them into darkness.”

She stared at me with wide eyes. “That is what my uncle told me.”

“You would do well to heed his counsel.” He had chased Fëanáro to the shores of Araman, I thought: a futile effort. Had he made peace with that choice?

Elerrína frowned. Indis looked at her in worry and then said, “Well, Anairë, what have you to say about Alqualondë?”

“It is quite recovered and more beautiful than ever,” Anairë said reassuringly. “Eärwen is determined that her rule will see the Teleri flourish. The docks have been rebuilt and ships glide about the bay. The people sing again. Perhaps you should travel to Alqualondë and see it for yourself, Elerrína.”

“Perhaps,” Elerrína echoed.

“I can make the arrangements, should you wish to go,” Anairë said. “Eärwen would give you a queenly welcome.”

“I thank you,” Elerrína said, and smiled at her.

We had more wine and then Anairë said, “And I must tell you of the opening of the playhouse upon the harbour – Eärwen would never forgive me if I did not—” and lightly on the conversation meandered, until the last of the wine was drunk and the fire dwindled. Indis opened a shutter to check the colour of the night and declared that our newest companion would return to the palace in the morning, for it was long past the polite hour to send her off. She took Anairë and Amárië with her to prepare the guest chamber and I was left to sit with Elerrína, who looked pensively – and rather blearily – after their departing forms.

“She makes a good case,” I said.

“Have you gone?”

“I have not.” Anairë was the bravest of us. I had not dared to venture to the city of the Teleri, for the red of my hair was too distinctive.

Elerrína looked terribly lost. “What is there to be gained?”

Briefly the thought of making a glib reply crossed my mind. “A sense of conclusion,” I suggested instead. “Alqualondë is no longer as you remember. Anairë has said as much. It is a city recovered – the docks are rebuilt.”

“The docks are rebuilt,” she mused. “Elemmírë left me there, and the docks were ash. Yet I have dreamt of docks shining with blood, of bodies in the bay. Would the sight in the waking world dispel those dreams?”

“Perhaps,” I said.

“Would you go?” She looked at me, searching my face, and her expression grew fraught. “Do you regret allowing them to leave? Your—” her voice broke, but only for a moment “—your sons?”

I had made peace with my husband’s memory, but not my own. It came back to me now in an undimmed tide: swords glinting red in the darkened Great Square; the mad light in his eyes, that ringing voice declaring me faithless; my sons turning their backs, a final barren courtesy that hid their disgust and their pity.

And the red of their torches fading as they marched away north.

Bitterly I regretted my idle remark. I had been doing well. Ingwion had said that I looked well.

“I am sorry,” Elerrína said, stricken.  

“It was not a matter of allowing or disallowing,” I said heavily.

There was a rustle of cushions as Elerrína came to sit by me. “Elemmírë was an obedient son,” she whispered, pleading. I had pleaded with Fëanáro, to no avail. My last words to him, rash and angry, had been a portent of death. What could I say to her?

I took her hand. It was larger than my own. Her fingers, thin and fine, were studded with calluses, and I knew each as I touched them. My sight blurred with tears.

There were words for a child who has lost a parent, a wife who has lost a husband. There were none for a parent who has lost a child. We could only weep.

We wept.

Yet the tears dried eventually, as they always did. Emptied and dumb I sat, wondering if I should try to fill that awful gaping silence. Then Elerrína spoke, in a voice that was hoarse but still sweet:

“Poetry?” My own voice was a croak. She and Macalaurë had been well-matched.

“It fills some of the lack,” she said.

I rested my head against her shoulder and a few more tears slipped from my tired eyes. My daughter by marriage. Poor dear girl. She knew that Elemmírë would not have turned aside, not while his sister followed Macalaurë. My second son had taken the most after my nature. Would he have relented to her pleading? Spared her their children, as I had begged of Fëanáro?

“I think not,” Elerrína said. I had unwittingly spoken out loud. “He and Ilmaría were ever set on their courses. It would have come to nothing.”

“Still you regret.”

Embers smouldered dim in her eyes. “A wretched, vain thing,” she murmured, “and yet as true as the love I bear for them. In time, perhaps, I shall learn to let go of one and keep the other.”

Break, break, break. Macalaurë had cast her aside and she had not broken. She had endured, spinning her grief into art. My son had been wise in wedding her, and foolish in leaving her.

“I have been late in finding you,” I told her uselessly.

“I do not blame you for it,” she replied, gracious in her sorrow. She was a true stalwart of the Ingwëan mould.

The day had passed into memory; the hearth’s light was failing. Shutters creaked and groaned as a furious wind battered our haven. Anairë came to fetch us. Her face softened at the pitiful sight we made. She packed us off to bed without another word, and I was endlessly grateful to her for it.

Thereafter Elerrína visited often, at times bearing from Ingwion a desultory greeting or inquiry. Her old wit emerged as time went on – cautiously at first, peeking out and swiftly retreating as if not quite sure the pursuit was shaken, and then in full: not the quick sharp jabs favoured by the Ñoldor, but quiet observations, long in poetry and short on malice – and I knew that in her reserved way she had become comfortable. In turn she became dear to all of us, and it was hard to imagine our company without her. Amárië especially was solicitous; I recalled that once she had been betrothed to Elemmírë, and might have expected to call Elerrína mother.

For my part I had not found the strength to speak again of my sons with Elerrína, but I could give shape to the grief with my hands. In her honour I would sculpt the ones we had lost. Elemmírë and Ilmaría I would make as I remembered them: he with a harp in his hands, she leaning at his shoulder with an impish light in her eyes. Behind them would stand Macalaurë, with a hand each on the shoulders of his daughter and son. His lips would be parted to let forth a single golden note, preserved forever.

I tore out a plot in the back garden. The hens squawked and fussed, getting underfoot until I fenced them off and began my work. Months passed. My neighbours came and went, spreading excited whispers – they would be witness to the art for which I was famed. At some point Arafinwë and then Eärwen came to Minyamar, and Anairë asked me if I would go with her to court. I shook my head and she stepped back from the cloud of stone dust erupting forth with an alarmed expression. She must have said something to the others afterwards: Indis fretted and once in her distraction tangled the threads of her warp so thoroughly that the knots had to be cut out; Amárië begged off her teaching duties at the Lestailanómë and sat in the back garden, writing out proofs on a slate with spare bits of chalk while I chiseled; but Elerrína beheld the forming figures with wonder, and I drew a measure of peace from that.

When at last I had laid down my tools, I asked her to fetch Ingwion to my house.

“I shall convey it, but you may be waiting long,” she said doubtfully.

“That is well,” I said. I could already see the shape of my next piece.

Ingwion came calling again two years to the day after his first visit. I had begun work on the Ambarussa, who would stand next to Macalaurë and his children in the back garden. The stone for it had been delivered a week ago and I was making the first rough cuts. Dimly I heard the door open and close, and the voices of Ingwion and Indis exchanging quiet pleasantries. Then Indis' voice faded away, as did the sound of her footsteps, and there was only one light tread coming around the corner, until it stopped.

I turned to face him and said, tartly, “So you have finally returned.”

A canopy had been raised over my work area and Ingwion stood just beyond it. He was not looking at me. His eyes, dark and remote, were fixed on the face of Macalaurë.

I cleared my throat and he dragged his gaze away. “Nerdanel,” he murmured. “I am glad to see you sculpting again.”

“Come to see your good work?” He examined me closely. “I would have you ask.”

“I had hoped that Elerrína and you would find solace in one another,” he said. “Was I wrong?”

“You fled to lick your wounds and offered her up in your stead,” I corrected him, “for two years.”  

“I asked after you,” he replied, looking vaguely ashamed. Ingwion was ever aware of his transgressions; the trouble was that he happened to be entirely capable of carrying on as he pleased.

“You put Elerrína in quite the predicament. She is owed an apology.” Doubtless she had been questioned on my state. She had said nothing, but the occasional guilty glances had been evidence enough.

“I shall offer one posthaste. Yet it seems that you are the more injured party.”

“What do you know of the injury you have dealt?” I did not wait for him to answer. “Let me tell you, then. I wept when Elerrína spoke of Macalaurë, for I remembered how he and my other sons had left me. When I went to plead with Fëanáro to spare the Ambarussa—” I stopped. For a moment his gaze had faltered, overcome with guilt. “You knew.”

He looked stricken. “We should not speak of this.”

“You shall explain.”

“It would only serve to hurt you.”

“I would hear it all the same.”

He hesitated. I glared at him, and finally he said, “You know that I went to Araman.”

“You met the Exiles.” The Valar, cloistered away in council, had told us nothing. He had come to the Great Square, and all the remaining Ñoldor had hearkened to him.

“Swan-ships we found along the coast, ruined and run aground by the storms of Uinen. We searched for survivors, finding none, and I feared then that the worst had come to pass. Still there was the hope of learning the fate of those spared, and so onwards we went until we came upon the hosts of the Ñoldor. Those fears for your sons proved false. Forth came all seven, hale and whole, and they were so desperately glad for my coming.

“Yet their wrath had not cooled. Many they had lost to their march, and more to the Doom of Mandos. Words of hate they had for all who would not share in their hardships. Bitterest were those spoken of you—” I drew a sharp breath “—for they claimed that you had begged the twins to break faith, not caring of the cost. Thus did I learn of your plea. More I shall not recount, save that not all spoke against you: Maitimo and the Ambarussa kept their silence.

“I had not the heart to counsel them against it. The doomsaying of Mandos had not turned them back, and mine own had no greater power. I could ask of them only to have courage. That, at least, the Doom could not touch. And I gave to them what I had: the provisions carried by my followers, and my knowledge of the Hither Lands.” He sighed. “Neither shall avail them. They go to war against the ancient Enemy and the Doom foretells their defeat. But I could not bear to leave them with nothing.”

His tale told, Ingwion hung his head and awaited my verdict.

He had counselled Elerrína against regret for her choice, and I had wondered if he had made peace with his own. Now I understood. Ingwion was ever constant. He had held my sons and heard their first cries. He had sung for them, fed them, tended to their childhood hurts. They had called him uncle: their father’s truest brother, bound to them in a covenant closer than blood. He had known the futility of his chase, and he had not turned aside.

Break, break, break, Elerrína had chanted. The Oath had been sworn, the Doom spoken. Red shone the shores of Alqualondë.  My sons had been forsaken by their mother and damned by their father. Ingwion had not broken his covenant – they were so desperately glad for my coming – and in his eyes it was an unforgivable usurpation.

“You said nothing of this before,” I muttered. The failings of my heart, he had said. Had the memory haunted him then?

“What good would it have done?” He shook his head, guilt-ridden and grieving.

“You are right that hearing of it has hurt,” I said, “and so I shall speak on this matter only once. Did you think my choice not final enough?”

His head jerked up and he stared.

“I am not so easily swayed. Aulë warned that the Flight would only lead my sons to death. My own premonitions foretold Umbarto’s end. All this I knew when I chose not to follow.” Faster and faster came the words, every one of them unbearably bitter. “My sons renounced me for my plea, and I knew then that I would not see them again. Yet I did not waver, for their Flight was folly and I would not heap yet more folly atop. Hear me now – my choice owes nothing to yours. Your words stir neither envy nor regret, for I would not have gone in your place. Had you told me two years ago, I would have felt no more.”

“It is one thing to make the wiser choice,” he replied, “another to count its cost.”

“Seven sons have been taken from me. Umbarto is dead!” My chisel struck the Ambarussa and sparks flew. From a far corner came alarmed screeching – the hens. I forced myself to calm. “The worst has already come to pass. How could you think that sparing me of this small hurt would do any good?”

“I wished to spare you of my guilt,” he said quietly.

I wished to strike him. I very nearly did, if only to bring him to his senses – but when I gazed at him, I saw how he lashed himself on my behalf, and knew that doing so would have accomplished nothing. “You are a fool,” I said lowly, and instead flung my chisel to the ground at his feet.

“That is well-established,” he said with a sigh. Stooping, he picked up the chisel and turned it in his hands. “Perhaps I have troubled you enough—”

“Are you an idiot also?” I stalked over. I would not let him retreat again. “I mean to keep you. As recompense for the trouble you have caused, you shall visit with me often and make your own excuses when you cannot. There shall be no more unexplained absences, nor sending nieces to do your work for you. Are we understood?”

In the long silence that followed I began to feel rather ridiculous. I was not Fëanáro, to make such demands on Ingwion. I was dear to his heart and he to mine, but ours was a friendship of affections freely given, neither constraining the other. Presumptuous he might have been; still it was not my place to presume upon him in turn. Red-faced, I opened my mouth to render an apology, and then he returned my chisel.

“You do not see mine acts during the Flight as a trespass,” he said, rueful. “That is not the misdeed which angered you.”

“I am past anger,” I told him. Even for Fëanáro, who had taken my sons, I had no more anger. There was nothing to be gained from hating a dead man.

“And you are not asking me to supper again.”

“You have made your opinion quite clear,” I said wryly. “I shall not ask again, lest I run you off for another two years.”

“I am very sorry for that,” he said, and he looked mortified indeed. Then the guilt came. “And—”

I cut him off. “You gave my sons comfort in a time of dire need. I shall accept no apologies for that.”

He smiled, a little sadly. “You are too forgiving.”

“I have given you my terms,” I reminded him.

“It is no hardship at all,” he said, “but if my company is all you want, then you shall have it. Although I must ask that you allow Elerrína to remain our messenger, for it keeps her visits safe from question.”

“Oh, all right then.” To my mind Ingil was an ass, but Ingwion loved his brother all the same.

“Gracious in victory,” he remarked fondly. “A fine and most commendable trait.”

He did not seem to expect a reply and so I took the lull as an opportunity to examine him. Two years had improved him considerably, and yet he was not as he had been in the days of the Noontide. His old lightness of manner had not returned. I suspected that it never would.

“You look better.”

“Matters at court have settled somewhat,” he replied. “I could recount them in full, if you are interested.”

“I think not,” I said quickly and his eyes brightened with knowing amusement. Later I would introduce him to Anairë, whose inclinations lay in that area. “What have you done besides rule?”  

“Take social calls,” he said, long-suffering. I laughed and he allowed himself a small smile. “Some, I admit, were long overdue; I hosted Arafinwë and then Eärwen in the last year.” He paused, his brow furrowing. “I had an invitation issued to you for the coming of Arafinwë. Did you not receive it?”

Recalling Anairë's attempt to remove me from the garden, I gestured guiltily at the statues.

“I see,” he said, amused. Often had my sons hosted him when inspiration took Fëanáro and me by surprise. “Would you tell me of your process?”

“Gladly.”

Indis came to me after Ingwion left.

“He does not look well,” she said, frowning. I was glad that she had not happened upon him on his last visit. Indis had come to Minyamar in hopes of finding peace. She did not deserve to be laden with yet more cares.

“You have seen him in court.”

“Only rarely and from a distance. He looked quite hale then.” She pondered this for a while and shook her head. “I am glad that you have mended your quarrel with him.”

“Our argument must have disturbed you,” I said apologetically.

“Niélë wanted my opinion on the tortoiseshell weave, and so I went to her house,” she said. She was wonderfully discreet.

“Our argument was over his absence, if you want to know,” I told her in gratitude. “You will recall that he begged off from attending supper two years ago.”

To my surprise she laughed. “Oh, that is an old problem! He dreads flocks of women. My sisters and I put the fear in him, you see.” And she proceeded to tell a whimsical story of the time they had taken Ingwion to be fitted for clothes. He had endured their teasing without protest – until his abrupt escape. Despite diligently searching, they could find no trace of their wayward nephew. “It was Ilwen who dug him out of the root cellar, hours later,” she concluded. “Otherwise I doubt that we would have found him at all.”

“The cellar?” I could not help my laughter. I was about to thank her when the door opened and Amárië’s cry of dismay distracted us.

Chapter Text

Amárië developed a talent for missing Ingwion's visits. He was always arriving after she had left and leaving before her return, and she never caught so much as a glimpse of his back, although he visited often. In this state of affairs did half a year pass, and then she planted herself in the house and refused to leave. “I live here,” she said defiantly when Elerrína chided her.

“He shall not return for the week,” Elerrína said.

“Then I shall not leave in that time,” was the reply.

Later that day Elerrína came to me, perplexed. “Whence comes her fixation on my uncle?”

“It has little to do with him, in truth,” I said. “Anairë has teased her abominably.”

“Then I shall have a word with Anairë,” she said.

I attempted to dissuade her, for she would be departing to Alqualondë the next day, having at last been talked into accompanying Anairë. I did not want their travels to be marred by discord. In any case I doubted that Amárië truly minded the teasing, as she had yet to take it up with Anairë.

Elerrína would not relent. The prospect of her friend’s maltreatment brought out the Ingwëan immovability in her. I had admired it when she defended Macalaurë to her father, but with Amárië it was a misplaced sentiment; one that proved beyond my ability to dislodge. I resigned the task, and on the next morning I waved Elerrína off to the carriage where Anairë was waiting bright-eyed. Then I went back inside to find Amárië sulking on a couch: evidently a parting shot had been made.

“Up with you,” I told her. “I shall not have you wasting your time. You may help me with the work about the house.”

“You said nothing of this sort before!” Amárië said, outraged.

“My art took priority over curing your idleness,” I said dryly and turned to clear away the remains of breakfast. “The broom is by the larder.”

“Bully! Tyrant!” she called after me. But there was laughter in her voice, and she took up the broom without further complaint. We tidied together to the rattling of Indis’ loom, and after a time she said, “That is the end of Anairë’s teasing, I hope! Alqualondë and its entertainments should serve to scour the matter from her mind.”

“Perhaps she will recount it to entertain Eärwen. You know how they love to gossip,” I said. Amárië made a dismayed noise and I shook my head, smiling.

From the garden, I heard Amárië open the door and her bright piping voice falter. I trudged in, feeling rather dispirited – work on the Ambarussa had stalled – but the sight that greeted me brought a smile to my lips. Ingwion stood upon the threshold, peering bemusedly at a bashful Amárië.

“Won’t you greet him?” I teased her. Ingwion laughed.

“Hail, Nerdanel,” he said to me, and to Amárië he gave a gentle smile. “Well met, young Amárië. The masters of the Lestailanómë speak well of you.”

To my great amusement, she blushed. “Shall we have tea?” I asked, taking pity on her.

“Perhaps I ought to make it,” Amárië said with haste.

Ingwion bowed his head to hide his mirth and I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“Do your companions dislike your tea?” he asked me as she rushed off to attend the kettle.

“Amárië is anxious to make a good impression,” I replied. “She has been pining after a visit from you.”

“Nerdanel!” Amárië cried from the hearth. “Please, my prince, pay Nerdanel no mind—” she gave a yelp and we hurried over to find that the kettle had tipped and dumped a great gout of water over the coals, leaving us without a fire to heat the water for tea.

“Are you hurt?” Ingwion asked her.

“No, but my clumsiness has deprived us of the tea I promised,” she said, distraught. “I am so sorry, your highness!”

“Mind it not. And I would have you call me Ingwion, for I consider friends of Nerdanel to be mine also,” he said kindly. She looked at him, uncertain, and then to me.

“I shall sweep out the hearth, since I am grimy already,” I said, surveying the still-smoking ashes. “Amárië, would you show Ingwion where we keep the firewood?”

“I am at your service,” he said to her.

He was only making her more anxious. “Go make yourself useful,” I told him, exasperated.

She sent me a despairing look before he led her out. I had expected them to return swiftly, but I had time enough to sweep away the mess and change into clean clothing before they came through the door, he laden with firewood and she saying, in cheerful biting tones: “—for the old grumblers discourage proofs by other means, thinking the original too elegant to be surpassed!”

“How frustrating.”

“Did you get lost in the forest while gathering wood?” I asked them dryly.

The smile faded from Amárië’s face. “The store was empty,” she said, abashed. I frowned at her: it had been her task to replenish the firewood. “We had to borrow some from the old carpenter Töarahto across the quarter.”

Ingwion came to her defence. “The diversion proved quite worthy. I learned much of the state of the Lestailanómë, and a little of what they teach. It seems that much has changed since its founding.”

She leapt at his prompting, eager to escape my censure. “Did you know that the mistress of the Lestailanómë was once Ingwion’s tutor? I must ask her for stories of him.”

“She would tell you that I gave her little joy,” he said ruefully. “I proved an indifferent pupil, and it was with mutual relief that we parted ways.”

Amárië looked unconvinced. “My explanations gave you little difficulty,” she said. “While I wish not to malign the old mistress, it may be that her method of teaching was not suited to you. It is a common fault at the Lestailanómë, I find: teachers that think too much of themselves and too little of their students, dismissing the ones that flee them as unserious dabblers when they only needed a change of approach. I cannot count the number of talented minds that were stifled. And to think that you suffered it also!” She was speaking quite quickly by the end, her face colouring with indignation. I exchanged a bemused look with Ingwion.

“It is rather too late for me, I fear,” he said, “but I would hear more of your thoughts on this matter. Perhaps my old teacher shall prove amenable to the suggestions of a former pupil.”

Amárië fairly burst forth. Ingwion came to the hearth and together we built up the fire and put on the kettle, and as we waited for it to boil he listened intently. When there was a knock on the door and Amárië trotted off to answer it, he even looked a little regretful.

“You seem quite eager to learn,” I remarked. “I find it hard to believe that your tutors found you difficult.”

“You remember how my lesson with Fëanáro went,” he said wryly.

“That was hardly a lesson,” I said, smiling as I remembered my husband’s ill-fated attempt to teach Ingwion his newly invented script. “You mangled his precious Tengwar a few times and he stormed off after calling your writing – what was it?”

“The scratchings of a cat in heat,” Ingwion said without a hint of shame.

“Yes!” I laughed. “Were he truly of a mind to teach, he would have made you practise.”

“I learned what I needed,” Ingwion said.

“And for the rest there are scribes?” I teased. “You ought to give them a rest and learn to write for yourself.” 

“How shall I entertain them then?” he parried, and turned to address the young court page brought in by Amárië had brought. “You are early, Elentirmo.”

The two of them had been staring at us goggle-eyed. The boy recovered himself and answered, “I am sorry, your highness, but Mother Ilvain sent me.”

“She must have reason,” Ingwion said mildly.

He shrank back. “Your highness, she told me to come now so that you would not delay at the departure.”

“I cannot fault her foresight,” Ingwion conceded, and Elentirmo let out a relieved sigh. I stifled a smile; my friend had overstayed his allotted time on several occasions and made the various attendants sent to fetch him hover anxiously. I gathered that they had been reproached for his tardiness, which seemed rather unfair: being sent to remove the immovable was punishment enough.

“Come to the dining table, Elentirmo,” I said. “We are having tea.”

Elentirmo obeyed. He dwarfed all at the dining table save Ingwion but had the gangly look of a boy still growing. While Amárië made a pot of tea, I went to the larder and brought out the odds and ends left from lunch: boys at that age were nearly always hungry.

He had unusually dark eyes for a Vanya, much like Ingwion’s in shape and hue, and I surmised that this was another of my friend’s innumerable kinsmen. When I set the food before him, those eyes darted towards Ingwion, who nodded. At that he hunched, lowering his head, and then came the sounds of vigorous chewing.

“Do not rush,” Ingwion rebuked him gently. He sat upright with great swiftness. “We shall be a while yet.”

“Indis returns soon,” I said. “Will you stay to greet her?”

“I shall.” He drank some tea. “Perhaps we might go out to the garden ere then. It has been some time since I called upon the Ambarussa.”

I frowned. “I have made little progress.”

The swift and easy making of Macalaurë had been a wonder, in retrospect. I had not held hammer and chisel since the birth of the Ambarussa, but Elerrína, stalwart girl, had lent my hands the strength. I had thought it returned for good, and sketched the designs and molded the models of the Ambarussa in a rush of inspiration. But as their making went on, the old heaviness came creeping back; and this time there was no recourse. The Ambarussa had taken no wives, begotten no children: they had been too young. They had been born in the dying days of the Noontide, and its shadow had followed them from the beginning to the end.

A steaming cup was pushed into my hands. I looked up to see Ingwion turn to Amárië and offer his compliments on the tea; Elentirmo hastened to add his own and Amárië laughed, flattered.

I drank. The tea was weak, and I sighed. After the Ambarussa, I had meant to make the rest of my sons. Now it seemed likely that Macalaurë would be the only one.

“Nephew! Why did you not send word of your arrival?”

Indis swept in, doffing her veil. She turned to Ingwion with intent, but Elentirmo said uneasily, “Your highness.”

“We would be unwise to risk the wrath of Aunt Ilvain,” Ingwion said wryly, and he and Indis shared a speaking look.

“Oh, very well,” she sighed. “Then I shall not delay you. Elentirmo, would you give my sister my well-wishes?”

He promised to do so, and we saw them to the door. Ingwion wished Amárië success in her studies and left with her trailing him to the doorstep. There she stayed, watching as he ambled up the street with Elentirmo at his heels. The neighbours, accustomed by now to his visits, hailed him as he passed, and each time he stopped to return their words in blithe defiance of the wrath of Ilvain.

It was back to the garden for me. As I left, I heard Indis tease, “I did not expect you to be so taken with him,” and Amárië answer, soft and cheerless, “I did not expect him to remind me so much of Findaráto.”

Elerrína returned from Alqualondë with poetry on her lips. We caught crumbs as she muttered to herself, working out the knots. From time to time Anairë would pester her for a performance, but ever she would shake her head and say, “There is not yet a resolution.”

In the end, it was the Ambarussa who inspired her first performance. The afternoon was bright and noisy. A flock of crows had come to inspect my work, and in the hedgerows they chattered away, and in the house my companions did also. I was up on a ladder with hammer and chisel in hand, trying not to mind the din.

Elerrína came out with a handful of corn, which she scattered before the hedgerow. Then her feet carried her before rough-hewn stone, where she stopped and, gazing upon it, spoke:

The crows quieted. Begrudgingly I climbed down (although in truth I had not accomplished much up there).

“Oh, excellent!” Anairë exclaimed. We turned to see her and Ingwion stepping into the garden. “This is the poetry that our trip to Alqualondë inspired, isn’t it? A masterpiece, by the sound of it!”

“I would not name it such,” said Elerrína, but she could not hide the pleased curl of her mouth, nor the expectant glance at her uncle. “It is not complete and shall not be for a while yet.”

“Let us call it a fine elegy in the making, then,” Ingwion said. “I shall be glad to hear it when you deem it done.”

Her smile widened and she bowed her head in thanks. He and Anairë drifted closer. I had taken down the canopy to allow for the ladder, and they were bathed in the soft slanting sunlight of afternoon. Ingwion was meant to come at noon exactly, I recalled.

“Did Anairë keep you long?” I asked him. He smiled and did not answer: she had, then. “I ought to have warned you that she speaks at length of Alqualondë at the slightest prompting.”

She sniffed. “See if I trouble myself to entertain you again.”

“It is known: ask Anairë of Alqualondë at your own peril,” Elerrína said. Anairë looked aghast.

“I am betrayed,” she muttered. “The two of you: absolute ingrates! Ingwion, how can you stand to keep such disagreeable company?”

“I have yet to find them disagreeable,” he said.

“He does not go on so much,” I teased. Anairë rounded on me, but Ingwion laughed softly and her retort died on her lips.

“I suppose that it is poor form to argue before a guest,” she said with a sigh. “Come, Elerrína. You I shall forgive, as this is your first offence. Let us leave Nerdanel to visit her insults upon Ingwion.”

He gazed after them as they went back to the house. “Anairë has done much for my niece,” he said.

“Go to Alqualondë, if you wish to repay her,” I suggested.  

“I could make it a progress,” he said thoughtfully. “It has been seven years since the last. And even longer since I met you and yours on the road.” He gave me a wistful smile.

Ingwion had spent much of the Noontide on progress. Before the Long Night Minyamar had been no great city, but a small and sleepy town. The greater part of the Vanyar had dwelt among in the plains and woods of Valinor, and it had been Ingwion’s custom to walk among them. We had often met him in the course of our travels, Fëanáro and our sons and I, and I remembered well the joy of sighting him on the road: leading his column with spear in hand, his followers singing in his wake: lords and councillors, scribes and smiths and farriers, hunters and woodsmen and trappers and traders. 

Whether we joined him fresh out of Tirion or stumbled upon him travel-stained and weary, his face would always come alight with joy of chancing upon companionship dearly desired. He was ever glad to offer us his hospitality, and we were glad in turn to avail ourselves of it: his counsel for the road ahead was invaluable, as was his aid in shepherding our passel of sons. He could keep them spellbound for hours with his tales of the Hither Lands – when Fëanáro did not see fit to interrupt. My husband liked to quibble over some detail or other that he thought his friend had forgotten; at times, engrossed in discussion, they would slip into Old Quendian, the tongue of our forefathers, and converse long into Telperion’s waxing, and then our parting would be delayed. Once, it had caused us to be trapped in our camp at the base of Hyarmentir, when the spring rains swelled the rivers in the south of Valinor and made the roads impassable. Fëanáro had only laughed and remarked that we could meet Ingwion on the returning as well as the going.

“Those were happier times,” I said absently. Before the Ambarussa were born, and I had lost the heart for the road. “It seemed as if they would never end.”

“The days were longer then,” Ingwion said. “Yet there is sense in taking the road again.”

“Will you go, then?”

“Not for a while yet, and likely not even to Alqualondë; I must speak with my councillors,” he said wryly. “For now it is only a thought. You may well be done with the making of the Ambarussa ere I take my leave of Minyamar.” He turned to consider the Ambarussa, and his voice softened. “I should like that. A good memory for the road.”

I turned also, and a sigh escaped my lips.

The stone had been perfect; my design had been set. The Ambarussa would be racing their horses, which they did often and recklessly, to their mother’s dismay. I had wanted to capture them in that joyous spirit: eyes bright and hands easy on the reins, racing to the horizon fearless.

Yet two years had passed and they had failed to take shape. Rough-hewn lines offered only the merest suggestion of limbs and heads; one breast, unmoving, bore the mark of my angry chisel. They were struggling against the stone, entombed, and I was helpless to give them succour. I had failed them.

“Do not get your hopes up. It will be many years before they are done with me, if at all.”

“So you are indeed still troubled.” I turned to be met with Ingwion’s searching look. “It seems that I was rightly warned.”

“Did Indis get to you?” I grumbled. He smiled, and did not answer. “Worrywarts, the both of you!”

He laughed. “Should your friends not worry for you?”

“To what end? There is naught they can do to help.” I sighed and crossed my arms. “But very well – let’s have it, then.”

“I would rather hear you speak. What troubles you?” he asked. The mirth in his face had faded. “Is it the matter of your parting?”

I shook my head. “That is only a part of it,” I said. “The rest came before. It is all a tangle – there are too many things to explain.”

“Then let us go further back,” he said. “When did it begin?”

I hesitated. “I had laid down my hammer and chisel before the birth of the Ambarussa,” I said, haltingly, “and I thought that I would never take them up again. Not after the naming of Umbarto.”

The name was bitter, unbearably bitter, without wrath to wash it down. I nearly choked on it. Even Ingwion was momentarily silenced; but then he said, sad and quiet, “You regret it still.”

“How can I not?” I asked. Speaking aloud seemed to loosen my tongue, and now the words flowed. “Twice I have foretold his death, and always when he was in dire need of comfort. The first was when he was not even a year old. What sort of mother was I?”

Ingwion sighed. “You asked me that, after the naming of Umbarto. Do you recall my answer?”

“Somewhat,” I said reluctantly.

I remembered better the naming itself, and the aftermath. The twins’ hair had been growing in then, thick and red after nearly a year spent as bald as a pair of eggs. I had named them Ambarussa for it; but then Fëanáro had begged me to reconsider, and I had opened my mouth and answered:

“Then let one be named Umbarto, but which, time will decide.”

When at first the words passed my lips, they had seemed bizarre, impossible. What doom could befall my son in Valinor, where all the land shone with the splendour of gold and silver mingled, and all the people prospered under the watch of the kindly Valar? And yet, as I watched the dread come creeping over Fëanáro’s face, I had felt it seize my heart also. He had asked, feigning confusion, if I had misspoken, and meant to name our son Ambarto. I answered that I had not, and we had parted in the silence of a long chill settling.

Afterwards he had sought Ingwion’s counsel. The Vanyar put greater stock in prophecy than did the Ñoldor, and regarding it they held the greater share of lore. For hours my husband and his friend had spoken behind a door barred and locked. I remembered hearing Fëanáro’s voice rising in fearful anger, the pounding of his feet on stone as he paced like a creature caged.

I remembered walking the halls of my home, a mirror to him. Not a one of my sons had spoken to me, and I had not the words to speak to them. My workshop had offered no comfort; my arms had been too heavy to lift hammer and chisel. Instead my feet had led me to the nursery, and there I had found Ingwion singing to my sons.

“‘What kind of mother am I, to mark her son for doom? How can I look at them and not despair?’” said Ingwion, echoing the words of yesteryear. “And I said to you: ‘Who are you, to find fault in the plan of Eru? Yours is only to love them. Let love be your shelter against despair.’”

“Your answer made it seem so easy,” I confessed, “and yet I failed.”

His eyes pierced me. “How?”

I opened my mouth, and faltered.

How could I explain all the ways I had failed the Ambarussa? Umbarto had become a shadow over all of us. Fëanáro had sought salvation in the making of the Silmarils. My sons had fled to their own pursuits. And I had watched my family fragment and fall apart, and said nothing. I had uttered those fell words and let them fill my heart, echoing, until there was no room left for others. And those words had followed the Ambarussa, skulking at their heels, until—until—

“You will not keep all of them. One at least will never set foot on Middle-earth.” And my sons had turned their backs on me while the torches burned red. Even now the smoke seemed to sting my eyes. I blinked harshly and to my horror felt tears slip free.

“Nerdanel.” I started; Ingwion’s strong fingers were prying open the fists I had made of my hands. “It was never meant to be easy, dearest, and I am sorry that my answer made it seem so to you. But you did not fail.”

More tears welled up and I turned my head away. A handkerchief was pushed into my hand and I scrubbed furiously at my cheeks. How can I weep, when—!

“Gently,” Ingwion murmured. Taking the handkerchief, he lifted my face and dabbed at my eyes with care. I stared up at his face, sad and serene, and felt a sudden spark of anger.

“Why?” I could not help but demand. “After their birth—we were so happy. Why did it have to be ruined? What was the purpose?”

Ingwion lowered the handkerchief and put it back in my hand. “I cannot say. Not even the Valar know,” he said. “For the themes of mourning were woven into the World before it began. We, and they, can only abide.”

The sorrow in his voice smote at my heart, and I drew a breath and listened. In the house, the loom rattled as Indis sang. Her song was woven with the chatter of Anairë and the laughter of Elerrína, the chirping of the birds and the clucking of the hens, the rustling of leaves in the wind.

“So Nienna thought,” Ingwion sighed.

“Do you believe her?”

“She was the wisest of my teachers,” he said wistfully.

“Is that how it is to be, then?” I asked, weary. “The years shall pass, the Ambarussa shall remain unmade, and I shall be shedding tears over my failure forever?”

The words felt true, right; and yet even as I spoke I was bitterly afraid, and the promised tears gathered in my eyes. But Ingwion shook his head.

“I have not the gift of prophecy,” he said, “but the end is clear to me. As the tears of Nienna watered the mound of Ezellohar and brought forth the Two Trees, so shall your tears bring forth the Ambarussa, fair and beloved; and you shall know that you did not fail them.”

“But I did, with the naming of Umbarto,” I argued. I gestured at the Ambarussa, at the angry mark that marred the stone. “And I drew away from them. I feared to love them, and I despaired. How is that not failure?”

“That is not how I remember it,” Ingwion said. A smile came over his face, softly fond. “Have you forgotten? The naming of Umbarto was not long past, when I called you to the nursery. I would not have faulted you for quailing then; and yet you came and nursed the Ambarussa, and then swaddled them and soothed them back to sleep. What is that but a mother’s love?”

His low steady voice was as a balm; it promised comfort, absolution. I shook my head. “Only a moment’s worth,” I muttered.  

“There are many more,” he said. “I shall gladly recount them all, should you wish it.”

“ And if I were to ask you to recount their entire lives to me, all fifty-seven years of it?” I challenged. He bowed his head, smiling still, and I knew that he would. I gave a weary laugh. “I hope that you won’t tire of it, then. Fifty-seven years is a long time.”

“Perhaps not fifty-seven years,” he replied. “I doubt that the making of the Ambarussa shall take so long.”

“How goes your work?” Culurondo asked.

I looked up. “I am coming up on the third year. I hope that it will not take another.”

Culuriën’s father and I were up to our arms in clay. Indis had wearied of seeing me come in from the garden red-eyed, and so had brought us to our neighbours in the hopes that making ugly pottery would serve as sufficient distraction. She was a short ways away, toiling gamely at her own wheel under the watch of Culuriën and her mother Niélë.

“You will be done in your own time,” Culurondo offered.

Indis gave a shriek and we turned in time to see her and her teachers get splattered. The would-be vase spinning slowly upon the wheel was a muddy ruin, and as we watched Niélë delivered her daughter a swat and a scolding for her mischief. The girl grinned unrepentantly. My heart panged: the noonday sun had brought out the glints of copper in her hair.

“That girl! She knows nothing of respect,” Culurondo muttered. “I fear that she sees even the Prince as merely a bringer of sweets.”

Ingwion had become much beloved of the neighbourhood children, mostly for the sweets he carried in his pockets. He claimed that he had learned it from me: as young children the Ambarussa were forever getting into mischief, and I had ever been prepared to distract them with the contents of my pockets.

It was a sweet memory, and not one I knew I had. Like so many others, it had laid neglected in some dim and dusty corner until he had brought it out and rubbed away the tarnish. Sentimental or silly or sad, it mattered not: in his hands, all memories shone. There were days when I could do nothing but weep, overcome by the sheer love with which he spoke of them.

If only tears made as good of a polish! By now I would have finished the Ambarussa twice over. I stared down at my wilting vase and sighed.

“May I?” Culurondo asked.

I nodded and he reached over. Under his steady hands the drooping neck straightened; the mouth of the vase opened, turning and turning on the pottery wheel.

“Some batches take longer in the kiln,” he said. “Still they come out well.”

Chapter Text

“Tell me of the first time you met them on the road,” I said.

Ingwion gave me a searching look and then turned towards the Ambarussa. His gaze became distant as he began to speak.

“I met them on their first journey abroad,” he said. “I had taken a company of woodsmen to inspect the groves of ash trees in the north. The day ill-welcomed travellers: the ground was frosted over, and fog had overtaken the woods and the road. We had heard hoofbeats and sighted distant glimmers, but the fog was such that the Ambarussa had come nearly up to us ere we saw them clearly: two red-haired boys mounted on ponies, garbed in cloaks of brown wool and hoods lined with jewels that glittered in the light of our lamps.” He glanced at me. “It did not seem to me the work of Fëanáro.”

“I sewed jewels onto their hoods in the hopes that it would help their father and brothers to keep a closer eye on them,” I told him. “I had thought them too young for such a long journey, but they pleaded so preciously to go adventuring that I could only relent.”

“We may have given you cause to regret that.” A rueful smile crossed Ingwion’s face. “After them came Maitimo, reproaching them for riding ahead. I would have done well to have taken notice of their mood and kept a closer watch. As it was, I gave more thought to complimenting their horsemanship, for they had excellent form for their age. Then I turned to greet Fëanáro and your other sons; and once we had greeted one another to our satisfaction, we realised that the Ambarussa were gone.”

“Men!” I laughed.

“Your wisdom was sorely missed,” he said fondly. “Tyelkormo and Huan set to tracking them, and Fëanáro and I followed bearing lamps and calling their names. They led us on a winding trail around tree and under brush and over hill and down a ravine steeply cut, and through it all the fog was thick and heavy and cold. We were chilled and weary when we stumbled upon a gnarled old ash and might well have gone past it had a glimmer not caught our eye. In the bole of the tree was a hollow, and there we found the Ambarussa sheltering.

“They were shivering, but they had embraced each other close and shared the warmth of their bodies, and so the chill had not settled in too deeply. Fëanáro did not rebuke them: he could that they were frightened already, though they had striven to brave. He bundled them in our cloaks and carried one back to camp; I carried the other.” Ingwion tilted his head in thought. “The younger, I believe. His hair was a brighter red than his brother’s. He rested his head upon my shoulder and whispered in mine ear that it had been his idea to slip away, that at his urging they had ventured farther than was safe; and he begged that I should tell you none of it.”

“And you agreed?” I asked indignantly.

“He vowed never to wander off again,” Ingwion said straight-faced, as if it had never occurred to him to doubt the child’s word. “We returned to camp forthwith, where we put them before the camp-fire and filled their bellies with hot stew, and I told them of the time I had gotten lost as a boy.”

“That does not a lesson make,” I protested.

“Afterwards Fëanáro and your sons travelled with my party for some time, and we all took turns impressing on them the dangers of the woods. Does that satisfy?” he asked, smiling when I gave a begrudging nod. “But first came my tale. Perhaps you recall it.”

“The one where the stars led you home?” I asked. He had told that tale to each of my sons when they grew old enough to venture abroad. I had thought it a mark of his eccentricity, that he would so carefully teach them to navigate by the stars when my sons travelled in lands that knew not starlight. I had thought that the skill would remain useless forever.

“Indeed,” he said. “That tale was favoured by the Ambarussa. Would you tell it?”

He looked at me hopefully and I could only oblige. I took a moment to gather my thoughts, and began.

“When the sky over Cuiviénen was clear,” I said, “the lake shone with stars, and you would wander along the shore, where reeds grew as tall as a Quendë full-grown. There were snails to dig up, and frogs to catch, and birds piping hidden among the reeds. You had tired of the taste of snails and frogs, and you wanted a bird for your supper.”

My voice wandered with that boy along strange shores, dodging dangers in the dark, looking ever to the stars in the sky. The boy now grown nodded along. At times he put in asides that I did not remember being a part of the tale. These were, I realised, answers to questions asked by the Ambarussa. I imagined them as they must have looked: bundled into rotund little balls with their father’s and uncle’s and brothers’ cloaks, red-nosed and sniffling into their stew, and bright-eyed with inquisitive spirit.

Briefly I closed my eyes, fixing the image in my mind. Ingwion brought me hammer and chisel, and as I worked his voice took up the tale. When at last the image had faded, I examined my progress and sighed.

“A fine day’s work,” Ingwion remarked from below.

I dismounted the ladder, set aside hammer and chisel, and wiped my hands on my apron. “How are your travel arrangements proceeding?” I asked him. “Have you (or your councillors) decided on the route?”

“I shall be going south,” he answered, “first to Kôr, and thence to the villages on the Pastures of Yavanna.”

“When will you leave?”

“Perhaps when you are done with the Ambarussa,” he said.

“I know not when that will be,” I admitted, glancing at the Ambarussa. They paid me no mind, caught up in their course; beneath their hands, their steeds bounded eagerly forth. The joy of horse and rider shone brightly, even on faces still rough and unfinished. They had taken shape; now came the arduous work of carving out the finer details.

“Do not rush,” Ingwion said. “They may be your finest work yet.”

“It is true that they will turn out well,” I said, “but that is to your credit as well as mine.”

He shook his head. “You flatter me, and yet only flattery it is.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Who are you to tell me that I am wrong about my own art?”

“Yours is the mind that begot their shape and the hand that wields the chisel,” he said in patient reasonable tones. “Though I know little of craft, it seems to me that you have good cause to lay sole claim to the making of the Ambarussa.”

“That is only stone,” I told him, exasperated. “My art lies in bringing forth their spirits.”

“And who, I ask you, did that?” he asked.

I crossed my arms and gave him a deeply unimpressed look. He smiled back, equally unrelenting. After a while, I sighed.

“Let us not argue,” I said. “Do you want tea?”

He did, and so we went inside. Indis rose from behind the loom to greet us, and I went to shed my apron and change my sweaty dusty garments. I returned to find Indis eyeing Ingwion with lips pressed thin and he holding up the teapot as if shielding himself.

“Has he given you offence?” I asked her. To him I said, “Let me make the tea.”

Ingwion obediently surrendered the teapot. Indis gave me a long look and shook her head. I scoffed. The Vanyar and their tiffs.

Indis started again at her weaving while I made the tea, and Ingwion and I drank the dark and bitter brew to the rattling of her loom. We said little; the session in the garden had wrung me dry of words, and Ingwion was content to gaze upon me in silence. Once the tea was drunk, he stood and I led him to the door.

“Next week?” I asked, taking his hand.

He nodded. “Be well.”

“And then Atto and I showed them around the forges,” I told Ingwion as I worked the rasp over Umbarto’s hands.

Hair fell into my eyes and I pushed it back, grimacing at the dampness. Clouds had come rolling down overnight from the higher reaches of Taniquetil and blanketed the garden in a thick clammy haze. The sun drowsed beneath a woolly grey cover; the air, sticky and sullen, promised rain. It was unpromising for my work, but I could only abide.

“He had ever been hopeful that one of my sons would inherit both his hair and his love for smithery. Imagine his disappointment when they showed not the slightest interest!” I smiled at the memory. “On the next morning Tyelkormo arrived, and he took them back to Tirion. That was the last I saw of them, before the Darkening.”

Fëanáro and I had thought to stay together until the twins were grown. We lasted barely thirty years. Fëanáro’s mood had taken a foul turn after the making of the Silmarils, and in those years he had begun to speak openly of his desire to leave Valinor, and to repeat Melkor’s lies about the Valar. I had tried and tried to make him see sense; but when he began accusing me of being Aulë’s mouthpiece, I had gone back to my father’s house.

My sons had come visiting, from time to time. But I had seen the growing distance in their eyes, and in the eyes of the Ambarussa, the hurt they had been too young to hide. It mattered not that my quarrel was with Fëanáro, for I had left and made my rejection of their father a rejection of them. And so I was unsurprised when the visits dwindled, until at last they ceased altogether.

“I saw them in Formenos,” Ingwion said.

I turned, setting the rasp aside. “You did? Why did you not tell me?”

“I forgot,” he admitted.

“You forgot?” I said incredulously. “How?”

“I was in the midst of the hunt for the Enemy,” he replied, shame-faced. “When I heard that he had spoken with Fëanáro, I went at once to Formenos to question all that might have seen him pass. Then rumours in the south drew me away; there was no chance to seek you out so that I might speak with you, and the fruitless hunt that followed drove the matter from my mind.” He sighed. “Forgive me, Nerdanel.”

“Could you not have written me a letter while the memory was still fresh?” I asked him.

Surprise came over his face, and then rue. His disdain for writing meant that the notion had not occurred to him, I realised. I shook my head, smiling.

“You are forgiven! Tell me now.”

He obliged, rueful still. “I came upon Tyelkormo and the Ambarussa hunting,” he said. “I told them of my purpose, and they gladly abandoned their chase to escort me into Formenos.”

There he had questioned all of my sons, and he repeated their answers word for word, so that I could hear them recounting their day. Tyelkormo and the Ambarussa had been out hunting; Maitimo and Carnistir had been overseeing the raising of a barn and haggling with merchants; Macalaurë and Curufinwë had been at home, the former shut in the study, the latter at the forge – they had come running at the sound of their father’s cursing, and borne witness to Melkor slinking away.

After that Ingwion had met with Fëanáro— “Although I doubt that you are interested in hearing of him,” Ingwion said.

“Not particularly.”

He smiled, and then spoke of the rest of his time in Formenos. He had supped with them, Finwë and Fëanáro and my sons, and my sons had been speaking over one another in their eagerness to tell Ingwion of the home they had made of Formenos. Maitimo had asked Ingwion’s counsel on the orchards they wanted to plant and the Ambarussa had boasted of the new tricks they had taught their horses, “and that later I would see that I had been surpassed me as a horseman,” Ingwion said with wistful amusement. “Then Tyelkormo reminded them that they were yet middling huntsmen, and they turned on him as one.” Finwë had spoken up then, and they had laughed and subsided, and the rest of the meal had proceeded in like manner.

I sighed; it sounded so much like the suppers that I recalled, the happy noisy table with all seven of my sons. Ingwion paused, looking at me with concern, and I gestured for him to continue.

He had left Formenos afterwards, riding out with the Ambarussa, and they had challenged him to a race which he had promptly lost. As their prize, they had asked him to tell again the tale he had told them on their first journey abroad. “They wished to be reminded of a less troubled time, I think, for they yet had hope of returning to it,” he said softly. “But their exile was not altogether unhappy. They were hale and high-spirited when I met them, and we parted ways in high spirits also.”

“I am glad to hear that,” I said. I tried to smile and failed.

The day of Ingwion’s recounting could have been any day I cared to recall, the supper any other supper. Only I had been absent, and not one of my sons had cared enough to remark upon it. The hurt at my leaving had vanished without a trace.

Bitterness lanced through my heart, followed swiftly by guilt. Was that not for the better? What mother wished to wound her sons so deeply?

“Nerdanel—” Ingwion began.

“No!” I said, whirling on him. “It was my choice!”

His eyes were full of terrible unbearable pity, and I turned and stalked away. After a few steps I stopped, staring into the mist: all I saw were vague grey shadows, and I felt suddenly unmoored. The hens were brooding in their coop; no loom rattled, no voices sang. Indis had tired of my tears and fled with Anairë for the neighbour’s house. Alone, it seemed as if I stood in no time and no place in particular, and at any moment the Ambarussa might come riding through the mist: as young men, hunter-clad, fierce on the trail of their quarry; as boys, on ponies trotting, wearing their little jewelled hoods. Those sights, and so many others, were sights I had never gotten to see.

“Could I not at least have been spared of speaking Umbarto’s doom?” I pleaded. “Then I would not have wasted the time I was given, and earned their hate in the end.”

“You could have,” came Ingwion’s voice, nearing. “And you could have followed where they went, smiling and singing always, and sent them from these shores with love. Still you would have regretted it.” I turned, seeing him emerge from the mist. He stopped and gazed at me, and his face wrenched with misery. “For there was never time enough,” he said, choking. “They are gone, Nerdanel. Those days are lost forever.”

A cry escaped my lips. Ingwion reached for me and I flung my arms about him, weeping helplessly. He drew me in, bowing over like a tree in a storm. His chin dug into my head; I felt his tears trickling into my hair, and I buried my face in his breast and bawled.

Eventually the tears ran dry, and I was reduced to sniffling against Ingwion’s shirt. Then Ingwion took my hand and led me into the house, where we washed our faces, and he went to make tea. I inspected my reflection in the basin and sighed at the blotchy and swollen mess of my face. The sight would distress Indis greatly.

There was nothing for it. As Ingwion puttered about, I went to change my garb. Thus refreshed, I rejoined him on the couches by the windows and took the offered cup, sighing in contentment when I drank of it: the tea was strong and bitter, and entirely to my taste.

“In the end,” I began; Ingwion looked up, eyes intent, “when I begged Fëanáro to leave me one of the twins, he refused me. More than that, he goaded me and I answered like a fool, wrath with wrath – as if flinging Umbarto’s doom in his face was in any way a victory!” I shook my head, resigned and pitying. “And after that he turned his back on me, and my sons did also, and I feared that I had lost whatever love they had left for me.”

I took a draught of tea and then sank back into the cushions with a long sigh. For years I had dreaded to remember that moment. I could think only of how I had failed, and then all my grief would come crashing over me, sweeping me away.

“But there was nothing to be done, was there? They had already sworn Fëanáro’s oath,” I said, and it seemed like the simplest thing in the world.

Ingwion bowed his head. We drank some more tea and I looked out the window. The mist had cleared somewhat, and faintly I saw the shape of the Ambarussa, bent over their steeds as if galloping to meet us. 

They were nearly done, I realised. For all my dithering and my tears, I had called the Ambarussa to my garden, and they had answered. They needed only a little polishing, and then they would shine.

“Yours is only to love them,” I murmured.

Ingwion laughed. “El, ele, el-ā!” he sang: the first part of the lullaby he had sung to the Ambarussa, on that day in the nursery.

“Of course you remember,” I said, laughing also. Turning back, I drank the rest of my tea, and then took the teapot and filled both my cup and his. “I never did thank you for going to them on the shores Araman, nor for all the other times you went to them when I could not.”

He smiled. Tears had not marred his beauty, I noted with absent envy. They had only made his eyes brighter, like stars in twilight. “I wish you had been there.”

“That was your place, not mine,” I told him. “It was enough for you to give me those memories. Without you, the Ambarussa would not have been made.”

“I only kept you company,” he said. “The rest was all your doing.”

“Stubborn fool!” I sighed. “Do you wish to quibble over credit now?”

He laughed again, a bright glad sound, and I could only laugh with him. “Then let us not,” he said.

“Oh, very well,” I conceded, and we spoke of the preparations for his progress until Indis and Anairë returned.

“It is not as if I object to my nephew visiting,” Indis said that evening.

She was tilting gently, as was her loosely-held cup. Anairë leapt forth and rescued the latter before it could tip – although it might have been better if it did. It had been Amárië’s turn to bring the wine, and she had come up with some truly horrid stuff.

“You were practically breathing fire when you chased him off,” I said dryly. Amárië tittered.

Indis frowned. She brought her empty hand up to her mouth and stared at it with betrayal.

I tried to swallow my laughter and snorted, unsuccessful; Amárië giggled and sagged off her chair. Elerrína propped her up and promptly came under assault on the other side by Anairë, teetering precariously on their shared couch as she cackled into her pilfered wine.

“He made Nerdanel weep,” Indis complained. “What was I to do?”

“Left them to their own devices,” Anairë counselled. Indis huffed and consoled herself with a fig. “She will not thank you for ridding her of such a handsome caller.”

“He is helping me,” I told Indis. “Pay no mind to Anairë’s insinuations.”

“Of course not. I doubt that he has given a moment’s thought to a woman since Nienna,” she muttered.

“Oh?” Anairë said, bright-eyed. “Do tell.”

“Gossip of my uncle yields little of interest and less of value,” Elerrína said.

“Speak for yourself,” Anairë replied. “I find this most intriguing.”

“It is no use,” Amárië said to Elerrína, laughing. “Anairë loves rumours of the amorous kind – even if she must make them herself. I wonder how Eärwen bears with her constant gossiping and matchmaking!”

“Eärwen shares my appreciation for a good love affair,” Anairë sniffed. “Whereas you, Amárië, would not recognise one if it bit you on the nose!”

“Slander!” Amárië cried. “I’ll have you know that I matched well! Twice, even!”

“And what have you to show for it?” Anairë retorted. Amárië subsided with a mutinous mutter, and she grinned. “Didn’t you let poor Elemmírë woo you for quite a while before casting him aside to take up with Findaráto?” At this Amárië gave a cry of outrage and leaned over to swat at her, and she fended off the attack, laughing, and turned to Elerrína. “Your poor son!” she confided. “I was grieved to hear of it—”

“Enough,” Elerrína said.

The Ingwëan immovability had struck again. Anairë drew back, mirth falling from her face. I made to speak, but Indis put a hand on my arm and shook her head.

“Think you truly that Amárië played with the affections of my son?” asked Elerrína, frowning. Anairë shook her head. “Then do not make light and call it grief. In doing so you dishonour them both.”

“I apologise. I was too free with my words,” Anairë said. Elerrína looked at her sternly and spoke not.

“But I don’t mind it,” said Amárië suddenly. She faltered when Elerrína’s gaze turned to her, but Anairë took her hand and smiled at her, and she clasped it tight and spoke. “I know that Anairë speaks outrageously. I am glad for it. Elemmírë and Findaráto are gone, but their absence seems easier to bear when she speaks so lightly, and laughs while speaking.”

“For you remember that they did not only give you grief,” Anairë said. Amárië nodded.

Elerrína’s eyes widened. She looked between them and said, quiet with shame, “Then I am sorry for taking offence where none was intended.”

“But you must always take offence!” Anairë admonished. “Our Amárië has need of a stalwart, and she has at last found one in you!” At this Elerrína smiled shyly, and Anairë took her hand and held it to Amárië’s. “Now, let us agree that all is forgiven, and we are best served by making merry! Indis, you may now tell us of your nephew’s attempt to court a Valië.”

Indis sputtered. “He never—”

“Perhaps,” Elerrína said, “Anairë might entertain us by speaking again of Alqualondë. She has yet to extol the virtues of the minstrel newly come into Eärwen’s favour.”

“Perhaps she is learning restraint,” I suggested. Giggling, Amárië flicked a grape at Anairë. The latter gasped in mock outrage and snatched up another grape to return fire, and the evening might have ended in a messy fashion but for Elerrína’s laughter, silver-ringing, which silenced us momentarily.

“But I am most intrigued,” she said earnestly. Anairë turned to her, face shining.

“Elerrína, forget these ingrates. From this moment forth you and Eärwen are my only friends!” she declared.

We all laughed, and then Anairë spoke of Eärwen’s favourite, and Amárië of her students, and the night went on in merriment until all the wine was drunk and all the food eaten. Indis dispatched the younger three to bed and took up a rag. I joined her, and we began to tidy away the remnants of supper in the flickering light of the low fire. For a while we worked in silence, and then she spoke.

“Did I displease you by chasing off my nephew?”

“No,” I said. “But you needn’t have done it.”

She hummed pensively. “Two years ago, I asked Ingwion if he would discourage you from the making of the Ambarussa.” Thoughts of cleaning fell by the wayside; I straightened and stared at her, betrayed. She went on wiping at the dining table. “Their making left you so weary and heartsick. Better for you to give up on it, I thought, than to go on ailing. But he would not hear of it, and when I asked him to share with me your woes at least, that I might understand, he answered that he would not be made a talebearer and then would speak no more on the matter. We have been at odds ever since.”

So that had been the truth of the odd confrontation that I had so swiftly dismissed! And yet I could recall no other signs of discord between then and now. Vanyar and their tiffs! “Why did you not speak with me directly?” I asked, frowning.

“How could I ask you to stop grieving your sons?” She smiled sadly and wrung the rag in her hands. “They seemed lovely boys, but I knew them not at all. Worse, I resented them for the hurt they had given you.” She sighed. “I thought that were Ingwion to agree to my request, then it might not be so selfish after all.”

“I never thought you selfish,” I told her, dismayed.

How could I have forgotten Indis? I had abided with her since Fëanáro’s banishment from Tirion. Finwë had left her to follow his son into exile, and I had come from my father’s house to keep her company. “We abandoned wives ought to band together,” I had told her, and she had laughed, and we had dwelt together ever since.

I had held her as she wept over the death of her husband and the flight of her children. She had held me as I wept over my sons and railed against Fëanáro. We had walked streets left desolate by the Flight, and she had been at my side when I stood upon the Great Square and saw the red of torches aflame, and the smoke rose from my memories to choke me.

Indis had brought me away from it. Without her I might well have gone back to the house of my father and mouldered there, alone among pitying kinsfolk. I would not have my house in Minyamar, and the neighbours with their simple kindness, and the company of Anairë and Amárië and Elerrína and Ingwion. I had forgotten it, caught up in my grief.

“I have neglected you,” I said. I took the rag out of her hands and set it aside, and she looked at me with round blue eyes. “Indis, you are not selfish to fear for me. I think that Ingwion had the right of it, and I needed to dwell with my grief for a time so that I might be released from it in truth. But that was not easy, and I ought to have realised that you would be no more easy for seeing it.”

“You looked utterly wretched, Nerdanel,” she confessed. “I had not seen you in such a state since you learned of his death.”

“Umbarto’s?” I asked, smiling at her surprise.

“So my nephew did help you,” she marvelled, shaking her head ruefully. “Oh, I have wronged him! He looked so unconcerned, and I lost my temper!”

“Nienna was his teacher. It should come as no surprise that he does not consider a weeping woman reason for concern,” I said dryly. She laughed, and her face cleared a little. I took her hands. “I am sorry for causing you so much distress.”

“I am sorry for chasing him off,” she said.

“Don’t apologise! I ought to thank you for making me laugh,” I said. “Ingwion would have thanked you also, had he not been preoccupied with escaping your wrath.”

Indis laughed softly. “Oh, he was playing it up to amuse you,” she said. “He has never been frightened of me.”

Old fool! I shook my head. We did the washing-up and then bedded down for the night. Outside, it had begun to rain. Amidst the soft patter of raindrops, Indis spoke again.

“Will finishing the Ambarussa set your heart at ease?”  

“I hope so,” I said.

“Then I shall hope for the same,” she said. “Sleep well.”

I drifted off after the exchange, lulled by the gentle rain and the slow breathing of my companions, and my mind was quiet save for a few muddled feignings of sculptures I had yet to make. But after some time a familiar music wended through my thoughts, starlight on cool water, and I followed its strains into a corridor filled with soft silver light.

The carpet beneath my feet was red and rich, the walls white and bare of torches. To my left, windows of clear crystal showed the Great Square and the silver tree. To my right was a doorway of pale stone. I knew the day, this doorway; and as I knew I would, I heard a voice softly singing: “El, ele, el-ā!”

I peered into the nursery. Ingwion sat by the cradle, dandling one of the twins on his knee, and he was singing: an ode to the stars, and the words were not Quenya.

He looked up. “Come,” he said. “Sit with us.”

“He might be Umbarto,” I said, as I had said before.

“He might be,” said he, unmoved. “Come.”

My feet carried me to his side. He held Umbarto out to me, and I shook my head, and again spoke the words of yesteryear. “What kind of mother am I, to mark her son for doom? How can I look at them and not despair?”

“Do not despair!” he said. “Instead seek the high hope!”

I was struck dumb by the admonition. Umbarto began to fuss. Ingwion bent over him, singing softly until he settled again, and then placed him in the cradle. The elder Ambarussa flung a sleepy arm over him and together they drifted off into slumber.

Ingwion stood. “Come.”  

I followed him out of the nursery. In the corridor, the silver light was gone and the windows were dark. Alarmed, I looked to Ingwion and saw a white nimbus about his head. The light it gave off had left his face blurred and indistinct, but I thought that there was a kindly cast to it.

The sight settled something in me, and I allowed him to guide me out of the house and onto the Great Square. I gazed about and shuddered. Night had fallen. The stars wheeled over a city barren.

“The hour of doom has passed,” said my guide. “Behold!”

He pointed, and I beheld the east. A lone white star sailed low in the gloom, foundering in black waves restless, and shadows were closing about it. But before my eyes the darkness lifted, and the sky turned to blue and then white, glowing; a rind of light appeared on the sea, scattering shards of copper and silver and gold; and then the Sun came breaking swift over the horizon.

A cry of joy leapt to my lips. I turned to Ingwion, to share it, and opened my eyes to sunlight. The beds around me were empty. From the main hall came the laughter of Indis and Anairë and Amárië, and then Elerrína spoke, and her voice was sweet with the joy of morning:

The Ambarussa were at last complete. Eyes keen and fearless gazed into the golden horizon of late afternoon, and Ingwion gazed solemnly back. He reached out, and his hand skimmed over faces and limbs gleaming until it came to rest over the score in Umbarto’s breast.

“You cannot deny your part in that,” I told him.

Indis clasped my hand. Ingwion came back to join us and gazed intently upon my face, and after a moment his expression eased into a smile.

“I fear that they shall ride down your chickens,” he told me, and I laughed. “Where are your other companions? I had expected them to attend you in your hour of triumph.”

“They did, last night. I thought to spare you from the full flock,” I replied. The previous night had seen the congratulations (and the King’s Reserve) flow freely. “Elerrína has taken Anairë and Amárië to the opera-house – Eärwen’s most favoured minstrel is performing tonight. Apparently he came all the way from Alqualondë at Elerrína’s behest. Did you not hear of it?”

“He must have, for the minstrel was presented at court. He turned quite a few heads, or so my sources tell me,” said Indis, smiling. “Is it not so, nephew?”

“I am no talebearer,” Ingwion said dryly, “but your sources speak truth.”

“They tell me also that you shall soon go on progress,” she said. Ingwion blinked at her, startled, and she frowned. “Are they wrong?”

“You have been speaking with Aunt Ilvain, I see,” Ingwion said, to which Indis gave a resigned shake of her head.

“Ilvain the Fair has struck again!” she said, and they laughed.

“That aunt of yours is a menace, Ingwion,” I told him, smiling. “Perhaps you ought to name her Ilvain the Fearsome instead.”

Aunt and nephew exchanged rueful looks. “Oh, we wouldn’t dare,” Indis said. “Although it does suit, for we have feared her since we were children. We ran about like wild things then!” She sighed wistfully. “Such tongue-lashings she would give, when she caught us straying!”

“She does still,” Ingwion murmured.

“To you,” Indis retorted. “In this matter I agree with Ilvain: it it is the twelfth Year of the Sun, nephew, and high time for you to go. After the hardship of the Long Night our people deserve to see their ruler and to rejoice.”

“We go when I give the word,” he said obstinately.

“Soon, I hope,” Indis said. “Ilvain has promised to bring me word of our sisters.” She let out another sigh. “It has been some time since I have seen them. Even Ektillë comes but rarely to Minyamar, and Kôr is only a day’s ride away.”

“You could come with us,” he offered.

She shook her head, smiling. “I am no longer the girl who chased after you,” she said. “For travelling companions you have Ilvain and our other kin, and I am sure that you shall find more along your way. Perhaps,” her smile turned sly, “you might even find a nice girl in one of the villages—” Ingwion let out a long-suffering sigh, and she broke into bright and merry laughter.

“Indis! Don’t torment your nephew!” I chided her, although I was laughing also. To Ingwion, I said, “Tell me about the places you will go,” and so he did. In turn I told him of my past travels in those parts, and Indis spoke wistfully of the changes that had overcome the land. In the days before wedding Finwë she had run fleet-flooted over field and wood, singing to all things that grew untended.

We spoke until the last of afternoon’s light faded. Then the wind seemed to sigh; the clouds rolled away, and the first stars of twilight crept glimmering across the firmament.

Ingwion paused to look up. His eyes sparkled. These were the stars that had guided him at Cuiviénen, which he had taught my sons unerringly to seek. Perhaps they are also now looking at the stars, I thought, and the ache in my heart was sweet.

“I shall leave you now,” said Indis, laughing. “Do not stargaze for too long, both of you!”

Ingwion laughed. Indis clasped my hand and then went back to the house, and shortly light came streaming through the windows as she roused the hearth to flame.

“The signs portend well for the road,” said Ingwion.

Then go, I should have said. Reluctance caught my tongue. Ingwion looked down, his face softening.

“No harm would come of tarrying for a while yet,” he offered.

“You have been preparing for all these years,” I said. “Do not let me keep you.”

“Then bid me to go, and I shall,” he said. For a moment too long I was silent, and a small smile crossed his face. He knew me too well.

I looked to the Ambarussa, riding fearlessly forth. Choice and circumstance had taken them from me, but he had given them back. I had cut and chiselled and polished, and his memory had lit the way. So we had breathed the spirit of the Ambarussa into stone, and their light lingered in him still. But now he was to leave me, and that light would go with him.

More time, my heart cried out, more time! His journeys would be brief; all roads led back to Minyamar. This I knew. Yet it had been only five years, not the fifty-seven I had once threatened. I wanted those years from him, and all the years of the Noontide from my sons, the long days unending in their bliss. And yet I was not fool enough to ask for the impossible.

“They are marvellous,” Ingwion said. He had followed my gaze. “I am glad that you made them.”

“They did turn out well, didn’t they?” I said. “Despite all the years it took.”

“Years well-spent,” he said, his face was bright with joy. “Now I see them beneath the stars. They are all that I hoped for.”

“You had a part in it,” I reminded him, and he smiled and did not deny it. “But now they are complete. Why stay longer? You have your memory for the road.”

“You desire it,” he said simply.

“You needn’t grant my every whim,” I sighed.

He shook his head. “You did not ask to keep me on a whim, and in the years since you have asked for little else. What more can I give, save for what you have asked of me?” Then he turned to look at me, and there again was that terrible tenderness in his eyes. “Dearest Nerdanel, good and wise,” he murmured. “I would tarry for you, if you would but say the word.”

I opened my mouth to refuse, but then I remembered: “El, ele, el-ā!” Lo! look! see!

So went the Old Quendian lullaby, and when the Ambarussa wanted soothing they would hear no other. Ingwion had lingered long in the nursery,singing starlight as the shadow loomed. But in time it had receded, and with it the need of him. I had learned to love the Ambarussa; my sons and Fëanáro and I had begun to speak again, if only for a little while. And Ingwion’s voice had dwindled, until one day I realised that we were singing without him and had been, for some time.

This was the form his love had taken: an answer to our desires and our needs, given without thought of notice or return. And so he held out his hand and wanted me to take, not only to answer my desire, but his, too.

“Letters,” I said. His eyebrows flew up and I continued, “I want letters from you while you are away. And they must be in your own hand. To dictate personal correspondence to your scribes would be an abuse.”

“I am a poor writer,” he warned. “My hand has not improved.”

“Then you must practise,” I said. “I am expecting accounts of your travels. They needn’t be extensive, but I shall not have silence from you.”

Solemnly he considered this. “If a correspondence is what you want, then you shall have it,” he said, sighing. “As ever you ask so little of me.”

From the garden I led him; but at the threshold, he stopped and took my hand. “Nerdanel,” he said gently: a final offer.

Seven years had passed since he came to me, seven years all too fleeting. The days under this swift new Sun were too short. But the days would never again be long enough for my liking. The stars turned, time ran ever on, and I could only abide.

“Go,” I said, and I released him. “I shall keep.”

Chapter Text

Now on the day of the gathering of first fruits the House of Ingwë went up the mountain of Taniquetil, and many lords of the Minyar went also. They were received by Eönwë the herald of Manwë, and he led them into the manse of his lord; and there among the clouds they rejoiced and feasted at the table of Lord Manwë and Lady Varda and Ingwë their King, and gave unto them much praise, in poesy and in song; but at the end of the feast Manwë rose, and he bid Elerrína to sing of the Trees.

And so Elerrína rose, and she sang the Aldudénië, the Lament of the Two Trees, which was made by Elemmírë her son; and Valar and Maiar and Eldar bowed their heads in mourning, and many wept openly. As stars were the tears upon the face of the Lady Varda, to whom Elemmírë had been so devoted. Great paeans he had devised for her, and many hymns also; to her he had dedicated his treatise on the geometry of the heavens. Yet never again would he gaze upon her fair white face, nor sing in the cloud-white halls upon Taniquetil. For he had gone east into Exile, where the grace of the Valar went not, and the Doom lay black upon him. This Elerrína remembered, and she fell to weeping.

Then her mother Almáriel came to her, and after a moment her father Ingil also; and they led her out of the manse, to a place where snow lay in thick soft drifts, untrodden. There they stopped, and Elerrína was lost to her sorrow.

When at last she came to her senses, she saw that the light was failing. Still Father stood by her, as did Mother; and her uncle Ingwion had come, and her aunts Ingwizel and Vanië also. They were arrayed around her, blocking the wind; her father and mother and aunts murmured softly over her head, but her uncle gazed west unerring. Over his shoulder the sun was setting, kindling on the snow, and the mountain was icy and still.

Elerrína shivered, and he stirred. He settled his mantle upon her shoulders and she hid her face in his arm, as she had often done when she was a little girl.

“Let us go,” said he, low and comforting; and to the others he said, “Then let the progress be now in the harvest season, so that we may behold the bounty of our people.”

So he spoke, and so it was decided.They returned to the palace and announced it before the court, and sent messengers to the lords and the Chieftains, and made all such provisions as needed for the progress, the first in the Years of the Sun.

And then on a fair clear morning, when the sky was blue and the sun shimmering on the mountain’s snows, Elerrína led a choir out from the palace of Ingwë upon Taniquetil. They stopped upon the lip of the mound where the palace stood; the singers were arrayed behind Elerrína, and behind them rose the high hall of the palace of Ingwë, pale-timbered: over their heads the eaves shone as gold, and pennants flew from the tower of the Great Bell as wings upon a white wind. High above, the manse of Manwë twinkled.

Before Elerrína ran a great greensward, tree-lined; birds perched twittering in the trees, and upon the green the court was gathering. They were many, the lords and lawspeakers, loremasters and huntsmen and scribes, the lesser kin of Ingwë; they spoke quietly amongst themselves, fair-haired and white-garbed, and to Elerrína it seemed as if a great flock of white birds had descended upon the sward. But her eye was drawn to the rear, where the glade joined the road down to Minyamar, and she saw arriving her great-aunt Indis, black in mourning’s clad. With her were Nerdanel and Anairë and Amárië. They smiled at Elerrína, and she smiled back.

At length the last of the court arrived, and from Minyamar came the chiming of bells, great and small, brass and silver and gold; and then Great Bell tolled on high, and before its mighty voice all others fell silent. Elerrína raised her hands, and the choir began to sing. Three measures she counted; and then the doors of the high hall were flung open, and two youths marched out bearing banners aloft, and after them came the House of Ingwë. First was her father, Ingil lastborn of Ingwë, and her mother Almáriel; then Vanimárië, fair as the first frost, and her ladies in silver clad; then Ingwizel, stern and golden, and her husband Taimavar and their many descendants; and last came Ingwion, heir of Imin, firstborn and regent of Ingwë Ingweron. Bareheaded he came, bearing a spear of ash-wood carved; he stood it upon the ground, and a hush fell over choir and court and glade.

Few but fair were the words he spoke, marking the progress in the twelfth Year of the Sun, and all bowed their heads at its ending. Then Ingil was called forth and charged with the keeping of Minyamar; he bowed deeply, and Ingwion laid a hand of blessing upon his head, and then he stepped aside. Horses were brought for Ingwion and Ingwizel and Vanimárië, and they mounted.

The singers’ voices rose grave and glad, and away down the mountain road marched the youths, bearing their banner aloft. The children of Ingwë went riding after them, and in their wake the sward slowly emptied. Some followed in the procession, ahorse or on foot; others went their own ways. Elerrína’s father turned and went back ito the palace, her mother at his side; but at the door he stopped and glanced at Elerrína.

Elerrína heeded him not. She went among the choir and spoke with them, giving each singer her thanks; and then she went to meet her friends, who had been waiting for her.

“A fine spectacle,” said Anairë, with great satisfaction; she had complained often enough of the austerity of the Minyar. “And of course the music was most excellent!”

“It was of my devising,” said Elerrína, to which Amárië and Nerdanel and Indis offered their congratulations. Elerrína smiled.

“Shall we go home?” asked Nerdanel.

“Do let’s!” exclaimed Amárië. “The roads shall be impassible once the procession is gone.”

They laughed, and Elerrína said, “Then let us go.”

The main road was heaving, but the side roads were quiet. They arrived at the house expediently, which Anairë declared called for tea. Amárië trailed her chattering and Indis went to retrieve her loom. But Nerdanel walked past them to the windows and flung the shutters wide, and there she lingered.

Elerrína went to her. “What do you seek?” she asked.

Nerdanel did not answer. She gazed out unspeaking, and Elerrína gazed also. There in the garden stood her son Elemmírë, and her daughter Ilmaría, and her husband Macalaurë, beckoning. But then the kettle whistled; Amárië laughed, and the loom began to sing. Nerdanel turned, smiling.

“I was thinking on my next work. But there is time aplenty for that,” said she. She offered her hand. “Shall we?”

Behind her, the sun was streaming in. Rays lit her hair, red as harvest’s promise. Elerrína took her hand, and they went to join their companions.

Chapter Text

I was conducted through Ingwë’s palace and into the Queen’s Gardens by a chattering Elentirmo. He had accompanied Ingwion on his travels, and for a part of it they had stayed in the small villages of the Marchers, where the people lived as they had on the Hither Shore, hunting in the old ways and speaking the old tongues. The unfamiliarity of it all was a matter of marvel to him.

“The Marchers have not changed since my time, then,” I said.

He gazed at me with the surprise of the young discovering that they were less wise than they had reckoned. His eyes were dark, reminiscent of Ingwion’s in colour, and I bit back a smile, imagining my friend at a more innocent age. “You have been there?”

“I once travelled widely with my husband and sons.”

Those dark eyes went to my hair and widened. “Lady Nerdanel,” he said, and bowed. “The Prince bade you to wait here.” With that he departed, leaving me to ponder my surroundings.

Seven sons and a husband I had lost since I was last a guest at the palace of Ingwë, but the gardens of Queen Ilwen were little changed. Wide green terraces rose along the slope of Taniquetil like a staircase for giants. Upon the lowest terrace I stood, a path of grey stones running beneath my feet, flowers like small white stars overspilling from grassy banks. On either side of the path grew great beds of red poppies and yellow mustard and sweet purple hyssop, peering with merry faces at the bright vault of the cloudless sky. Over the flowers were butterflies fluttering and bumblebees buzzing, and birds were singing in the trees that ringed the terrace. The air was sweet with the smell of green things growing.

I walked down the path, drinking in the sights. A playful wind flung my hair over my shoulders and passed laughing over the flowers. I gazed upon nodding heads and fancied that I could see a trail left by childish feet.

It was said that Yavanna was so pleased by the gardens of Ilwen that she blessed it to bloom evermore; and yet that blessing had done naught to protect the flowers from my sons. Ingwion’s mother must have despaired whenever Fëanáro and I came visiting, for it meant that a horde of little marauders would be loosed on her garden. Ingwion had only laughed and made my sons sow what they trampled. It had been his hope that they would tread more gently among flowers that knew their touch.

Those years were lost; those flowers had withered. But I walked in the spring of the holy mountain of Manwë, and I saw here the flowers blooming unnumbered.

I turned to see Ingwion coming along the path, resplendent in a raiment of shimmering white samite. He must have come directly from holding court.

“You have brought me flowers and poetry,” I observed. “Why, Ingwion, are you presenting your suit?”

For the first time since the Darkening, I saw him throw back his head and laugh. The gay music of it set birds in distant trees to warbling, and for a moment it was as if I had returned to the golden days of the Noontide.

“I am afraid not,” he said, once he had recovered.

“A woman might take offence to your laughter,” I said dryly.

“You are the best of women,” he replied, “but there will never be another for me.”

Despite the gloomy words his face was glad. I took his offered arm and we walked along the garden path, flowers blooming at our feet.

“You are in good spirits,” I remarked. “I take it that your progress was a success.”

“Did my letters not relay that?”

I hesitated and he looked dismayed. “Your hand has improved,” I said. That at least was true: the letters I had received were written in a painstakingly neat hand.

“Do not spare my feelings,” he said. “I am your willing student.”

Well, then. “Your letters made for dull and difficult reading,” I admitted. “The tone of your writing puts me more in mind of a record made for the court than of a letter to a friend – it is too formal, too stiff. And your refusal to make use of pointers did not help. Did you not realise the effect it had? Surely you were taught not to—” Ingwion gave a delicate cough. He was looking down at his feet, the image of a chastised boy, and laughter burst from my lips unawares. I covered my mouth. “I am sorry,” I told him, still smiling. “You made a great effort, I am sure.”

“And yet I gave no thought to the tone of my words, nor to the changes in custom since I was first taught to write. There was no such thing as pointers then,” said he, sighing. “I must beg your pardon, Nerdanel, for I have been a poor correspondent to you. But I promise you that I shall make a thorough study of the matter, so as to make the letters to come more pleasurable reading.”

“Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself? You have only just returned,” I said with amusement. Yesterday the Great Bell of Minyamar had tolled the welcome for their returning prince; the invitation to the Queen’s Gardens had been delivered to me only this morning. “And I have yet to get a proper account of your travels thus far.”

“Indeed, I am speaking too hastily,” he said after a pause. “Forgive me: it seems that I am still of a travelling mind.”

“Don’t apologise!” I said. My heart was lightened to see him so eager in his quiet way. I touched his arm and his contrite expression subsided into a smile. “It was only your letters that wanted explaining, but you are here now. Tell me of your progress. You went to Kôr first, as I recall.”

“I believe that I discussed Kôr in my first letter.” His eyes glittered with mirth as he recited in a dreary drone, “‘Greetings from Ingwion to Nerdanel I tell you that we have arrived at Kôr swiftly and on the way we passed the fields of wheat ripening and I spoke to the yeomen driving their crops to market which was the full goodly amount for the harvests had been fulsome for these ten years and the yield of this year was reckoned to be—’”

I laughed. “Tell it properly!”

“Very well,” he said, smiling. He paused to gather his thoughts, and then his voice, unfettered from paper and ink, rose lilting into the air.

I saw Kôr through his eyes: a wide blue sky over golden fields, dotted with the heads of farmers raised to watch their ruler pass; cart-drivers crowding the road, singing as they hauled bushels of wheat to market; streets steaming with dust from hordes of cattle, driven in by herdsmen living out in the plain; the stiff wind that whipped through the town square where an effigy of Yavanna had been raised, sending her crown of wheat ears flying; hooves thundering as a hunting party came riding in, laden with game and laughing.

Ektillë of the strong arm had received Ingwion with her descendants about her, and there had been many glad reunions between cousins. The eldest sister of Ingwë, stern and of few words, had embraced her nephew and her sister (“Ilvain the Fearsome,” I murmured, and Ingwion laughed and said, “Do not speak of that here!”) and then taken them by hand and led them to the feast of welcoming, where much merriment was had, and many tidings also.

Then Ingwion paused, and he spoke with quiet pride of the folk of Kôr, who had endured the hard winter of the Long Night and not faltered when crops failed and wolves came ravening. These hardy folk had bided patiently until the Sun rose and the harvest returned. Then there were many songs made in praise of Yavanna and of Eru, and weddings held after long delay, and the begetting of multitudes of children, and I stopped Ingwion before he could recount all the folk wed in the years of the Sun and the names of the children they begot and what was eaten or worn or said at each of the events.

“I haven’t days to spend in the gardens,” I said.

He smiled, abashed, and released my arm. We had gained the terraces and come before a grove of fir-trees; past it stood the pavilion that Ilwen used for hosting tea parties.

“Perhaps I shall set mine account to writing,” he said.

“You could write addenda for all of your letters. It will be excellent practice, although I shan’t promise that everything will be read,” I said, and he laughed, shaking his head.

“What is a letter unread,” he said merrily, “but a tree felled unheard, a song voiceless sung?”

Neither Ingwion nor I wanted to stop for tea, and so we left the path and picked our way through the trees. The ground sloped gently beneath our feet. Shafts of sunlight pooled green upon the ground; softly came the whisper of wind over leaves, and overhead the birds were singing.

We walked on. At length we passed a narrow rushing stream, and the air grew cooler; and then we came upon a sea of bluebells. There were thousands and thousands of them, rising gently away over the slope; they climbed dauntless over the green feet of mossy trees and played in dapples of light, swaying to the birds and the breeze.

A bold bunch brushed my skirts and I stooped to admire them. They had been crafted with great care, for all that they were small flowers: each bell delicately wrought, each curling petal bright.

“We could pick some,” Ingwion murmured. He hummed contemplatively. “A garland I would make for you: blue for your red hair.”

“Won’t the gardeners object?”

He shook his head. “The bluebells here grow wild,” he said. “It is well to pick them, for they are hardy and enduring, and they shall spring up again next year.”

“Oh, very well,” I said, “but I am not a girl anymore, to go about with flowers in my hair. No garlands!”

He looked disappointed but did not argue. Gathering up his spotless white raiment, he bent to examine the bluebells. The royal laundresses would thank him for it, were they here.

“How have you fared?” he asked. Deft fingers broke off a green stalk. “I received few letters from you.”

I gathered up my skirts – a more sensible brown – and joined him. “I am as well as when you saw me last,” I said. “Nothing of note has happened and I didn’t want to bore you with letters full of trivialities.”

“Your letters made for more interesting reading than the dispatches from the court,” he said.

“Fëanáro used to read those when he could not sleep!” I said. “You are damning me with faint praise.”

Ingwion laughed, and after a moment I laughed too, and then we applied ourselves to picking flowers.

Anairë looked up from where she and Indis had bent their heads together and dropped her embroidery hoop. “Is that a gift from your swain?” she asked eagerly.

I had barely stepped through the door. “Ingwion and I are friends,” I chided as she came over to inspect the posy I held.

She gave me a pitying look. “Do you know the meaning of bluebells? Constancy,” she said, not waiting for an answer, “and everlasting love.”

“I doubt that Ingwion cares for the language of flowers,” I said. “We found them growing wild.”

“There is no romance in you,” she sighed. “I suppose that we must wait for him to make a declaration.”

Indis joined us. “My nephew has more sense than that,” she put in, and we laughed. “These bluebells are pretty indeed. A pity it is that their beauty will fade!”

“Perhaps we could take the seeds and sow them in the garden,” Anairë suggested.

“Not with the herbs,” I said.

“There is space around your sculptures,” Indis said. “What say you, Nerdanel?”

“I should like to see bluebells blooming at the feet of my sons,” I said, “but let us not get ahead of ourselves. The posy is still fresh, and once it wilts there is the question of whether wild bluebells will deign to grow in our garden.”

They thrived. Their seeds we sowed in the turf around the Ambarussa and Macalaurë and his children, and there they grew come sun or rain or chickens pecking; and with the passing of years they crept farther afield, until we were finding bold bluebells mingled in with the turnips. As the turnips seemed unharmed, we let them be.

Ingwion took note and sent more flowers as he travelled: wild things of plain and wood, pressed and dried and folded in with bits of borrowed verse. “I shall not risk such delicate things on my crude skill,” he had written, much to my amusement.

“Do you like the poems?” Elerrína asked. It was evening: our cups were brimming and in the hearth a fire was crackling away merrily. “He asked me for recommendations.”

“I do,” I said, “although I am not the best judge of poetry.”

“I thought they were in good taste,” Indis offered. “What are you pondering, Nerdanel?”

“A letter to Ingwion,” I said, glancing down at parchment lying half-blank on my lap. “I am trying to decide what to write.”

“So that is why you have been brooding!” Anairë exclaimed. She gestured broadly with her cup and Amárië, who had been resting against her shoulder, ducked away with haste. I groaned. “Fret no more, for I have a solution! A play about the star-crossed lovers Ondoher and Palandis has lately premiered in Alqualondë, and I think that the lament of Palandis shall do nicely for your letter. It goes thusly: ‘Observe, I beseech you, to what a wretched condition you have reduced me: sad, afflicted, without any possible comfort—’”

“Nonsense!” I cried, but she continued undeterred.

“‘—unless it proceed from you. Be not then unkind, nor deny, I beg you that little relief which only you can give. We may write to each other; so innocent a pleasure is not forbidden us. I shall read that you are my husband, and you shall see me address you as a wife. Perhaps, by mingling my sighs with yours—’”

I cut her off again. “I wish to ask his opinion on my next work, not to—to make love by correspondence!”

“How boring!” Anairë said with dismay. Then she grinned wickedly. “Write the letter anyhow. Can you imagine his expression upon reading it?”

Amárië let out a shriek of laughter and coughed: she had snorted a mouthful of wine. Anairë pounded her back but was laughing too hard herself to do a creditable job of it. Indis chortled and Elerrína put her hand over her mouth, and in my mind’s eye I saw Ingwion’s disappointed expression, and started laughing despite myself.

It took some time for us to subside, buoyed as we were by the wine and company, but eventually the mirth ebbed, and then Amárië went to fetch rags to sop up the wine that she had spilled on the couch.

“But, Nerdanel,” said Anairë, wiping away a tear, “is there truly no hope for him and you?”

“None, you incorrigible gossip!” She looked deeply disappointed and I crossed my arms, scowling. “You have had your fun, but there comes a time to stop playing the matchmaker. I know how you loved to stir up scandal back in Tirion and I shan’t have you making the same trouble here!”

“If you insist,” she sighed. Amárië returned and commenced to scrubbing.

“Yet you have indeed been brooding,” Elerrína said. “What troubles you now about your work? You were in no hurry before.”

“I think that it is time. I have been feeling restless as of late,” I said. My hands itched. Housekeeping and gardening had done nothing for it, but I thought that taking up my hammer and chisel again would make the feeling abate. “I can’t decide who to sculpt. I have drafted designs, but there is a spark missing.”

“Are you taking suggestions?” Anairë asked.

Amárië tossed a rag at her. “You have harassed Nerdanel enough! Help me with this.”

“Perhaps vinegar will lift the stain. I shall get some,” I said, standing.

As I passed Indis, she touched my arm and I saw concern in her eyes. “My nephew would not mind being called back to Minyamar, should you have need of his counsel.”

“I am not that troubled,” I assured her. “I write for the pleasure of it.”

In the morning, once the street sweepers had disappeared with dawn’s light, Indis and Anairë and I went to the market.

We walked along the western bank of the river Híril. The sun was high and bright, the day clear. North ahead glimmered the Mindon Eldaliéva, reflecting in the snows in the high reaches of the Calacirya whence the Híril sprang. As children my sons had played and splashed in its cold swift headwaters, but the waters mellowed as they flowed south, and the river at our feet was wide and ponderous, green-glimmering with the light of spring.

Across the water rose Upper Minyamar, willow-robed and silver-steepled, chiming with joyous bells. Higher still stood the halls of Ingwë and the lofty manse of Manwë and Varda, and under their watch the Híril wended about the mountain’s foot and ran westwards, joining waters with the many rivers that flowed from the Pelóri and spreading fertile fingers over the pastures to the south. On market days the merchants sailed their goods upriver to Minyamar, setting up shop about the great bridge joining the upper and lower city.

On this day we arrived to find the banks flooded with wares. Morning’s light gleamed on boats and stalls many-coloured, and all about was the singsong of voices haggling and gossiping and laughing. A guard passed by, oaken club belted at his hip. His gaze alighted upon Anairë and I, conspicuous among the fair Vanyarin flock; we nodded in greeting and he went on.

We picked our way through thickets of stalls, hearing the trade-songs of merchants extolling wares brought from lands near and far. After browsing the textiles on offer – “Nothing new,” Anairë lamented, though she and Indis stocked up nonetheless – and stopping to replenish our larders, we went a little further along, to the part of the market where the thronging crowds were speckled with folk darker of hair.

One of their number smiled and waved us over to his stall. This was Vorondil of the Ñoldor, whom I had discovered not long after coming to Minyamar doing a brisk trade in providing the Ñoldor here with the comforts of home.

“I have your tea, my lady,” he said to me before turning to my companions. “And what fine things from Tirion might the fair ladies Anairë and Indis desire today?”

“Certainly not that foul tea,” said Anairë, wrinkling her nose. He laughed obligingly. “Have you any new wares, Vorondil?”

A strange expression flashed over the face of Vorondil, and then he brought out a box of lacquered wood. “If memory serves, my lady is a great friend to Queen Eärwen of the Teleri,” he said. “While I am reluctant to part with these treasures, I think that they shall find no more fitting owners than you and your friends.”

Anairë had been smiling graciously, unmoved by the merchant’s patter. But when she opened the box, she gasped. Gleaming within was a great hoard of necklaces and rings and brooches, all delicately wrought of silver.

Reaching over, I picked up a brooch set with a large lustrous pearl and turned it to see the maker’s mark. “This was made by one of Alqualondë’s finest silversmiths,” I said, surprised. One could not dwell long with Fëanáro without learning something of his craft. But Telerin silverwork was seldom found in Minyamar, let alone such a rich hoard of it. I would sooner have expected such a sight in the markets of Tirion.

“You are most knowledgeable and keen of eye, my lady!” said Vorondil. “Does that piece appeal to you?”

I shook my head and he turned to Indis, who smiled wistfully. “These trinkets are pretty indeed, but I have little use for them in these latter days,” she said. The dowry she had brought upon wedding into the House of Finwë and the treasures accumulated in her time as Queen had all been given or bartered away.

“Such pieces would be a rare find even in Alqualondë,” Anairë said. She had been sorting through the jewelry with a pensive expression. “These days the Telerin craftsmen work mostly in pearl and nacre. Whose heirlooms are they?”

“Mine,” said the merchant, his smile fixed. “I once had dealings with the Teleri, as did my father, and my father’s father, and all his forefathers before him, since the time Olwë first set foot upon these shores. We amassed quite the treasury. But lately my wife has given birth. Now we have two young sons and a grown daughter wanting to wed.”

“Congratulations,” I told him. He smiled wanly.

“Indeed; a new son is cause for celebration,” Anairë said. “I shall take all of it.”

The astonished merchant stuttered his thanks. Anairë made arrangement for payment to be delivered, and then he gave her the box with a deep bow. As he wrapped up my tea, I asked him to spread the word that I was looking for stone from the usual sources. He smiled broadly and promised that I would have the finest stone in the land.

The stall of Vorondil was our last stop in the market, and we went home thereafter. Along the way, Anairë chattered about her intentions for the jewelry. Most of it she would keep for herself or gift to Eärwen, but she had her eye on a piece for Elerrína. “The necklace strung with sapphires,” she said. “Their hue is an exact match for her eyes.”

“My brother’s descendants have little love for finery,” Indis said doubtfully.

“Surely the poor girl would not be shunned for wearing a little glitter!” Anairë exclaimed.

“Oh, certainly not,” Indis laughed, “but they have long held to that custom. I fear that your efforts to adorn Elerrína shall come to naught.”

“She dwelt among the Ñoldor for many years,” Anairë argued.

“And never took to jewelry in all that time,” I said. “Fëanáro made all sorts of pretty things for her, but she only ever wore them at his or Macalaurë’s behest.”

Anairë gave a long-suffering sigh. “Hopeless, all of you!” she muttered. Then, shaking off her disappointment, she turned to me. “So you have commissioned Vorondil to find you stone. Does that mean you have come to a decision?”

“Not yet,” I said. I had sent my letter to Ingwion only a fortnight ago.

She nodded. “Then I have a favour to ask of you, but it must wait until we have returned home.”

This we did, whereupon we saw Elerrína standing on the doorstep with her hand outstretched. A thrush was perched on her finger, scarlet throat bobbing as it chattered and pecked at the birdseed that she had taken to carrying around for the crows of the neighbourhood.

Seeing us, she beckoned us over and offered me a sprig of lissuin. “From my uncle.”

The small silver flowers were fresh and unfaded; they could not have been picked more than a day ago. There was a scrap of parchment twisted around the stem, and upon it was scribed, in Ingwion’s careful hand: “Have faith that the answer shall come, for Eru provides; but I hope that in the meantime you shall enjoy the lissuin.”

“Did his business with the Valar conclude early?” I asked. I had not expected a reply so soon. Not even messengers accompanied Ingwion when he went to the domains of the Valar – they left letters for him to find. I wondered, absently, whether he had been speaking with Aulë. After the Darkening, the Smith and his folk had abandoned their dwellings among the Aulendur, though my father and many of my kinsmen had remained faithful.

“He was making for the western shore when she left him,” said Elerrína, indicating the thrush. “A Maia was with him. He is likely to be gone for the full six months.”

I nodded, setting the note aside, and brought the sprig of lissuin to my nose. The fresh wild fragrance was as a cool draught in the heat of afternoon, and I breathed deeply of it. Even I knew the meaning of sweet lissuin: heart's ease.

“And yet he remembered to send you flowers!” Anairë said, delighted and loud.

Indis tittered and put a hand to her mouth, seemingly forgetting the veil that hid her face. I looked around, seeing the neighbours staring, and shot Anairë a glare. “Inside with you!”

She left smiling and unrepentant. Indis, still stifling laughter, went to meet Niélë. They and the other women of the neighbourhood would spend the afternoon spinning and dyeing, all the while gossiping about Ingwion’s supposed consideration for me. I grumbled and followed Anairë into the house, leaving Elerrína on the doorstep. The crows had spotted her new friend the thrush and begun to circle overhead, cawing jealously.

Inside I found Anairë sorting through the jewelry. She had divided most of it into two neat piles, save for Elerrína’s necklace of sapphires and a ring of beaten silver.

“Here, Nerdanel,” said she, looking up. I was offered the ring. “This is for you.”

I stared at it warily. “If you mean for me to offer my troth to Ingwion—”

She was shaking her head. “I have a favour to ask of you,” she said. “Make Tyelkormo your next work.”

“What does the ring have to do with it?”

“Seeing it reminded me of Tyelkormo,” she said, and smiled ruefully, “and of Írissë.”

“Did she and Tyelkormo plight their troth after all?” I asked, taken aback. I had despaired of it ever coming to pass – not because they were too close in kinship, but because they were both too wild at heart. “When did this happen?”

“Eleven years before Fëanáro drew his sword upon Ñolofinwë in the Great Square. You didn’t know?” Keen grey eyes roved over my face. “He never told you. The telling falls to me, then. He did offer her a ring. She rejected her. That was my fault, I fear.”

That would have been ten years after I parted ways from Fëanáro and returned to the house of my father. My sons, drifting away on their own pursuits, came calling seldom – although Tyelkormo had come the most, accompanied by the Ambarussa or Írissë as they went to and from their hunts. Suddenly, I recalled the time he had come alone. Although it had struck me as unusual, he had seemed to be in good spirits and so I had not pressed. But I had glimpsed a thin chain about his neck, half-hidden by his shirt. Oh, Tyelkormo. Could you not have confided in me?

“I plotted for them to wed,” Anairë said. “Theirs would have been a good match. A convenient one, too!” She sighed. “In those days Fëanáro and Ñolofinwë were at each others’ throats. Why should Tyelkormo and Írissë not wed duty to desire, and make a union to bind their fathers in fellowship?”

“Because it would not have worked,” I replied. “Fëanáro’s resentment of his brother ran too deeply for any marriage of convenience to resolve. Did you not perceive this? It is not like you to be so blind.”

“I was blinded by my ambitions,” she said ruefully. “Peace for the Ñoldor, and who to devise it but Anairë the matchmaker? What a notion! Ñolofinwë disapproved, but he would come around, I thought, if the match was settled before he could gainsay it. He doted so on Írissë, and he would have strived for peace with Fëanáro for her sake. And I thought myself so clever for thinking of it!” She shook her head, chiding herself. “Yet it was only trouble I made. A ring of silver I gave to Tyelkormo, and I arranged for him to come to our house while Ñolofinwë was away. But my design was thwarted. Ñolofinwë returned untimely. He came upon Tyelkormo offering the ring to Írissë, and it made him so livid that I feared he would throw Tyelkormo out! But I had yet hope that Írissë would spurn her father and accept Tyelkormo’s offer. She had ever been willful, that wild child.”

Anairë stared down at her hand where the silver ring laid glinting. “It was Tyelkormo she spurned. She came charging out and flung the ring at his feet. ‘I want your fetters not!’ she cried. I thought then that Tyelkormo would rage at me, exposing my part in the mess, but instead he laughed. He told Írissë that he would gladly wait until she asked to be fettered, and then he bowed to Ñolofinwë and left our house in peace. That boy of yours was in most ways a brute, but he was princely then.” She gave me a wry smile.

I smiled back. “He had not wanted to sow strife between you and Írissë,” I said. Tyelkormo was swift of temper but swifter to forgive those he loved. “She loved you dearly.”

Anairë gave a sad half-hearted laugh. “She also loved him, you can be assured of that. Yet she delayed and delayed, saying that she would not be bound in matrimony, even to Tyelkormo who had her heart’s love. When at last I saw an opportunity to intervene to the gain of all – of Írissë and Tyelkormo and our husbands and the Ñoldor – how could I not take it? But I overreached. Alas that I lacked your wisdom, Nerdanel!”

I shook my head. “My wisdom had only been to turn away,” I said, and she heaved a great sigh. “I gave no thought to making peace.”

I was a blacksmith’s daughter and a craftswoman. I cared not for the schemes of court; clay and stone were what I knew. Anairë, for all her cheerful frivolity, was a high lord’s daughter, raised and wedded to the interests of state. She had perceived the spirit of strife walking among the Ñoldor and saw that close to hand was what she knew: hands fasted to bind alliances. Bodies bartered as coin for peace.

Seeking to wed Tyelkormo and Írissë without the knowledge of their fathers had been underhanded. Ambition, she had called it, but I saw also the shape of fear. Fear for our people, for our family, stalked by an evil then nameless. She had taken up her craft, hoping that it would be enough to save her daughter, to save my son, and seen her hope betrayed.

That was rebuke enough – for me, at least. Did she not remember my Tyelkormo fondly, despite the evil that later came? It was more than I had thought to ask of her – of anyone, save Ingwion.

I gave her the sprig of lissuin and she breathed of its sweetness. Her face softened.

“In the end it all came apart,” she said quietly, “but I like to think that they protected each other at Alqualondë. I have never asked Eärwen if they did. The thought alone is enough to give me comfort.”

For a while we were silent. Then she shook her head and smiled.

“So! That is the sorry tale of the trouble I made with my matchmaking, as you would put it. I thought you ought to know, but you mustn’t tell the others, for I have a reputation to keep!”

“Worry not. The secret will remain between you, Tyelkormo, and me,” I promised. We smiled at each other and she clasped my hands, the ring warm between our palms.

“Is it to be him, then?” she asked hopefully.

“It is,” I said. It felt right.

“Could his sculpture wear the ring?” she asked. “Not upon his finger – Írissë did refuse him, after all – but surely there are other ways.”

“I suspect that he kept the ring Írissë refused and hung it on a chain about his neck,” I told her. “We could do the same with your ring, although it must be treated so that it will not tarnish.”

“And you didn’t tell me? Nerdanel!” she gasped.

“Incorrigible gossip,” I said fondly. “Let me show you the sketches I made.” As I led her along, a thought occurred to me. “What of Ingwion and I? Did you have ambitions for us?”

“Only your happiness!” she laughed. “I shall meddle no more in the affairs of state!”

‘To my friend, Ingwion: I thank you for the lissuin,’ I wrote. ‘You wrote that Eru would provide, and I suppose that He did. It is to be Tyelkormo. Anairë spoke of him on the same day your flowers arrived, and this shall be a joint project of sorts. She remembers him for his love of Írissë. Do you remember how the two of them would go haring off into the wilderness with naught but their bows and spears, Huan baying at their heels? A pair of wild children they were.’

I looked up: Anairë was reading over my shoulder, her embroidery hoop lying abandoned on the couch. “He went to Alqualondë – he is as likely as anyone to know how Tyelkormo and Írissë fared,” I said quietly. “Do you wish for me to ask him?”

She shook her head, sad but serene. “I have never needed an answer.”

I nodded and bent back over my letter.

‘She chose the design for him. I think that you will like it, but I shall not spoil the surprise for you. So come visit!

‘Aside from my decision, I have little else to tell you. Indis has run out of walls in our house to adorn and wishes for me to ask you whether you or your siblings would like a tapestry. Elerrína continues to bring birdseed, and the crows of the neighbourhood grow ever plumper. Every day I must chase them – and her – out of my garden. Anairë is attempting to train her into wearing jewelry, but thus far the crows have shown more interest.’ (Anairë laughed.) ‘Amárië has been keeping long hours at the Lestailanómë, and when she comes home we can scarcely get supper into her before she is nodding off – sometimes at the supper table. She is hot on the trail of a proof for the parallel postulate, which I did not know needed proving. As for me, I am presently at work on Tyelkormo and, as ever, awaiting your return.’

I ended with ‘Your friend, Nerdanel’, and then folded and sealed the parchment. It was doubtful that this letter would reach Ingwion, cloistered away with the Valar; the one before had been a stroke of luck. Nonetheless, I set it aside to await the coming of the messenger, and then returned to my work.

Six months passed; a seventh. There was no word from Ingwion. But on the cusp of the eighth came the tolling of the Great Bell, and then Arafinwë came bearing summons.

The day was waning when he arrived. From the window I heard shouts for carts and horses to give way. Peering out, I saw that a grand carriage driven by a dark-haired Ñoldo was stopped in the street. Upon a device of white and gold the sun glared red-eyed.

I went out to greet him. He flung open the door of the carriage and beckoned.

“It is Ingwion,” he said. “You must come.”

Chapter Text

I had scarce gotten in before Arafinwë shut the door and spoke through the window, and the carriage began to move: slowly at first, despite the driver’s shouting, until it passed over the great bridge into Upper Minyamar, and then it began to fly. Manses and towers skimmed by; streets passed in streaks of shadow and flame.

Feeling a sudden chill, I turned away from the window. Arafinwë was staring at me.

“What happened?”

“He went to Mandos.”

I stared back.

“How did he die?” I asked weakly. What would I tell Indis?

“No, no!” Arafinwë cried. “He came to Tirion alive and—he lives, I assure you!”

“What?” My head was spinning. Umbarto was in the Halls of Mandos. Fëanáro was in the Halls of Mandos. What could Ingwion want with Tirion?

“He lives,” Arafinwë insisted. “He asked to see you. Ai! I should have brought you to him before attempting to explain.” He sank into an anxious silence, and my confusion left me without words to reassure him.

We arrived at the palace and passed swiftly into the gardens. Up the terraces we went, past the flowers and the fountains and the grove of firs, until at last we came to the clearing where the pavilion stood. Within the pavilion sat Ingwion, his sister Ingwírel attending him. Their heads had been bent in conversation, but at our approach they looked up and stood.

The sinking sun cast Ingwírel in red relief, but him it did not touch. There was a light in him, shining through his form and raiment as if through a thin veil; before it shadows fled, and the face that gazed down on me was cold and white and fell.

I faltered. A shade?—but no: I looked and saw again his face, drawn and weary; the hand braced upon his chair. His mantle was heavy: felted wool, too warm for Minyamar’s spring. The dead had no need of warmth. He was ailing, but alive.

“So you are only half-dead,” I said.

Arafinwë gasped and Ingwírel’s face set sternly, but Ingwion bowed his head, saying, “Ah, Nerdanel,” and a small laugh escaped him; and when he raised his head again, it seemed as if something of him had returned. Ingwírel turned to her brother, her expression softening.

“Shall I make it known that you are not to be disturbed?” she asked.

“If you would,” said Ingwion.

The elder daughter of Ingwë bowed and left the pavilion. We were subjected to long thoughtful look as she passed, but no remark was forthcoming, and soon her tall straight form disappeared into the grove.

“Be welcome and sit,” said Ingwion. 

We entered the pavilion. Scattered about were a great many chairs; we chose the two closest to Ingwion. He gazed upon us and did not speak, and I found myself at a loss.

“How did you end up in Tirion?” I asked finally.

He sighed. “The Maia Olórin bore him thither,” Arafinwë said.

“Olórin?” I muttered. The name sounded familiar. I searched my memory and recalled him: grey-cloaked and gently-spoken as he pronounced the deaths of Umbarto and Fëanáro. When asked, he had claimed to be— “A servant of Varda?”

“A meddler,” said Ingwion.

“I am glad that he meddled,” Arafinwë said firmly. “You were too unwell to have made the journey from Mandos to Minyamar alone.”

“You look unwell still,” I said. “What happened to you?”

A strange look came over Ingwion’s face. “I entered the Halls of Waiting,” he said. “Communion with the dead wears upon the hröa. Fear not: it shall pass.”

“I shall fear as I like!” I said sharply. “Taking counsel with the Valar, indeed! What possessed you to go to Mandos? You are a living fool, not a dead one!”

“He went to seek tidings of our kin,” Arafinwë interjected. “That is no fool’s errand.”

“And crossed into the domain of the dead!” I retorted. “How is that anything less than folly?”

“Nienna goes to counsel the slain,” said Ingwion. “As her student, I have right of passage.”

“And see what that passage has done to you!” I cried, but then I gazed upon his pale strange face, and my ire died.

The Valar had decreed that none would hear the laments of the Exiles. Olórin’s visitation had been an exception, I thought: an emissary born of Varda’s pity. He had not returned with the Sun’s rising, and I had resigned myself to knowing nothing more.

And yet, and yet. If any of my sons had died upon the Hither Shore, then they would have passed into the keeping of Mandos, and they would have sought Ingwion. They were so desperately glad for my coming, he had told me, years ago. I knew they would. Did I dare to ask?

Mutely I gazed at him, and he answered.

“They live.”

My strength left me all at once and I sagged into my chair. Arafinwë reached over to steady me, but his eyes were fixed on Ingwion.

“Tell her of how the Exiles have fared,” he urged. I looked at him askance.

“Do you wish to hear it?” Ingwion asked me. “The hearing shall not be easy, for your sons have suffered much at the hands of the Enemy. Yet not all the tidings are evil.”

Arafinwë turned to me, and I saw the yearning on his face. I hesitated.

“Tell me the worst of it,” I said at last. “I shall judge whether I wish to hear more.”

Ingwion met my gaze. In a quiet steady voice he said, “Maitimo was captured by the Enemy.”

I gasped and he caught my hand. His touch was like ice.

“How?”

“The Enemy offered parley after Fëanáro was slain. Maitimo suspected his falseness and went with a great guard under arms, but they were met with greater force still. The company of Maitimo was slain and he was taken to Angamando, which is the fortress of the Enemy; and there he endured much torment.”

Here Ingwion’s lips tightened, and his face lost the last of its colour. Was he imagining the terrible things that my son had suffered, might yet be suffering? A cry escaped my throat.

“Findekáno rescued him,” Arafinwë said hastily. “And an Eagle of Manwë helped also. He is safe, now.”

“Angamando is delved beneath the mountains of northern Valariandë,” said Ingwion, after a pause. “Findekáno went forth alone and searched among them; and he found Maitimo hanging from the highest peak, caught by a cuff about his wrist. He called then for succour, and the King of the Eagles of Manwë came and bore him up, so that he might free Maitimo. Yet the bond was steel, cruelly wrought; no craft of Ñoldor make could break it. And so Findekáno cut off Maitimo’s hand at the wrist, and the Eagle bore them back to the Exiles.”

Findekáno had rescued Maitimo. An Eagle of Manwë had answered his prayers. This was glad news indeed, and yet in my mind’s eye I saw my eldest preening before a mirror, and my eyes grew hot.

“He cut off Maitimo’s hand,” I said thickly. Maitimo, my well-formed one! How he must have grieved! How he must have suffered! I bowed my head, and the tears flowed freely.

I felt a cold hand upon mine. “Maitimo lives,” said Ingwion.

“Maitimo lives,” I repeated, sniffling, and grasped Ingwion’s hand. A handkerchief was pressed into the other. White with gold hemming: Arafinwë’s. I wiped at my eyes and blew my nose. “I am—I am glad that it was only a hand he lost.”

“That is not all he lost. He was dispossessed, and Ñolofinwë is now King,” Arafinwë said apologetically. As if I cared!

“Willingly,” said Ingwion. “He has kept his sense.”

“There is that, at least,” I mumbled.

“The rest of the tidings are gladder,” Arafinwë said. “Tell her.”

Ingwion looked to me, and I nodded.

He spoke of Maitimo’s recovery (less a hand!), and then of him leading his brothers to reconcile with their uncle and cousins. Briefly he spoke of the Exiles meeting the Teleri that had not made the crossing to Valinor. Some of these Þindar, as they came to be called (“—or Sindar, in the Ñoldorin mode—” Arafinwë said) had taken my sons as rulers, and followed them to the lands they had claimed near to Angamando, that they might keep watch.  

Now in those years Ñolofinwë ruled wisely, and sought to gather the strength of the Eldar. He did not disdain the sons of Fëanáro, but called often upon Maitimo’s counsel; and in the twentieth year of the Sun he caused to be held a splendid Feast of Reuniting, where the descendants of Finwë were gathered, and where the embassies of other rulers came also. Even Elwë brother of Olwë, who claimed Kingship over all of Valariandë, had deigned to send messengers.

Arafinwë spoke then: “Artanis brought her suitor – one of Elwë’s grand-nephews, of all people!” I gave him an incredulous look – Artanis had previously taken up with Ilmaría, which was even more scandalous – and he said defensively, “Well, you cannot fault a father for fearing for his daughter’s prospects.”

“From the kingdom of Elwë came also Daeron, who is acclaimed the greatest minstrel of the Eldar,” Ingwion told me. “Macalaurë is said to have matched him song for song, and much was made of which proved the greater. Although it is not said what Macalaurë himself thought.”

Macalaurë would be outraged. He had made a habit of scoffing at those who dared to acclaim him the greatest singer among the Eldar, hating flatterers and critics in equal measure. And yet his face had lit with a peculiar contrary pride when he learned that people had begun to say it also of Elemmírë, his son.

The memory drew a laugh, feeble though it was. I released Ingwion’s hand, which had warmed in my grasp. He sat back and gathered his mantle about himself in a weary gesture.

Arafinwë had been watching the proceedings with concern. “With your permission, I shall take up the telling,” he said, and Ingwion inclined his head. “Now, at the feast there were many alliances made, and counsels taken, and the goodwill between our kin was renewed. Afterwards they went back to their lands, and of the years since we have had few tidings, fair or fell, for the flow of fëar into Mandos has dwindled.

“To our knowledge, the Exiles continue to rule their lands; Maitimo remains in the Ñolofinwë’s counsel; Findaráto serves as the most favoured of Ñolofinwë’s ambassadors. He visits with your sons, and with Ñolofinwë’s sons, and with Elwë – did you know that Elwë had taken a Maia for a wife?” he added. I expressed that I had not, and he smiled proudly. “We have had word of scattered skirmishes, a raid here or there; but the flow of fëar into Mandos has dwindled. It is a good thing, I believe, for it means that there have been no more great battles. The Exiles remain vigilant, of course; they raise fortresses, and patrol their lands, and order their people for war; but does it not lighten your heart to know that they dwell in peace upon the Hither Shore?”

His account concluded, Arafinwë gazed at me with eyes bright and expectant; but Ingwion’s face had darkened.

“Yet it shall not last,” he murmured, “the swords, the walls, the watch. For the Enemy is not defeated. He bides his time. And in the pits of Angamando he is brewing woe.”

Silence fell. Out in the gloom a nightjar called, and after a moment its mate answered.

“Will you tell Anairë of this?” I asked, thinking of valiant Findekáno and wise Ñolofinwë. I owed more to her than either of us had known. “And Indis and Elerrína and Amárië and…” my voice failed as I tried to name all the kith and kin I had remaining that might be hoping desperately for word of those they loved.

“Many have come seeking tidings.” Ingwion gestured at the chairs scattered about us. “I expect many more, as word spreads.”

“He held audiences in Tirion also,” Arafinwë added, “and there he gave solace to many of those bereaved.”

Ingwion sighed. “Yet there were those I could offer nothing: not notice of death, nor of life enduring. Many of the Exiles remain unaccounted for.” He paused, gazing upon me with pity in his eyes. “Fëanáro and Umbarto were among those I could not find. I am sorry, Nerdanel.”

“What have you to be sorry for?” I asked with dawning dismay. “I am not asking you to go back.”

He shook his head and I frowned.

“Isn’t there anyone that might seek tidings in your stead? What of this Olórin?”

“It falls to me,” he said.

“This will come to no good end,” I said. In my house there was light and laughter and green things growing. In the house of Mandos there would be only grief.

Ingwion lowered his eyes, and said nothing.

Night had fallen while we were speaking and now came attendants bearing lamps of white crystal, which they hung from the beams of the pavilion and along its eaves and on posts along the path. Others brought a table which they set before us, and upon it they laid a light repast. Arafinwë was presented with a tea set and a silver kettle on a low dim brazier. Waving off the attendants, he measured dried flowers from a small grey box into three cups, and then lifted the kettle from the brazier and poured. Rising in wisps of steam was a familiar sweetness.

“Lissuin?” I asked.

“Harvested from my house in Tirion,” explained Arafinwë, looking pleased. “Lissuin has overrun the walls, much to the despair of the groundskeeper – he is forever hacking away at the vines. Apparently Ingwion here is to blame for it.”

“I discovered lissuin in the lands of Nienna,” said Ingwion, “and the seeds I sowed in the thoughtlessness of youth swiftly spread beyond my reckoning. Now lissuin grows in all the parts of Valinor where the Eldar dwell.”

“You, thoughtless? I cannot believe it,” Arafinwë declared. “The fragrance of lissuin has ever been known to bring the heart ease. You must have foreseen the need for it even then.”

Ingwion shook his head at that. A crown of lissuin and laurinquelótë he wore when he gave his heart’s love away, and filled his heart with love’s cares thereafter. It had borne him to Alqualondë, to Araman, and now to Mandos. How could any youth, however wise, have foreseen that?

I looked out into the gardens. For a moment I thought I saw him: a golden-haired youth, heart-whole and fancy-free, sowing the grounds with lissuin. I felt a pang of pity for him. Would that Ingwion felt it too.

But the grounds were bare of lissuin. There was only turf from here to the firs, a lamplit path to darkling woods. As I gazed into the gloom, I knew that it was not to be. Ingwion was ever constant. From Mandos he would seek his heart’s ease.

Porcelain clinked and I turned to see that Arafinwë had emptied his cup. He asked, “Shall we see to supper?”

Despite its sweet smell, lissuin made a bitter tea. I drank deeply and sighed, resigning myself. “Let’s.”

We applied ourselves to the food. I cast a discreet eye over Ingwion eating and found Arafinwë doing the same. We looked to one another with surprise.

“He must have given you a great deal of grief,” I said.

“Only by the manner of his arrival,” Arafinwë said. “He was an excellent guest otherwise.”

“Oh?” I said.

Arafinwë looked to Ingwion and the latter nodded. “He appeared on my doorstep a month ago,” he explained. “Well, Olórin appeared carrying him. It was the dead of night, and I had woken to pounding on my door. I answered it only to be greeted by the sight of Olórin, Varda’s servant, carrying Ingwion over his shoulder like a sack of flour! And Ingwion was as white as a sheet and terribly gaunt, and whispering about communing with the dead. I thought that I was dreaming still!”

I was reluctantly impressed. “That is quite the dramatic entrance.”

“It was Olórin’s doing,” said Ingwion dryly. “I would have preferred to enter Tirion by the light of day.”

“What you mean to say is that you would have preferred to hide away in the wilderness so you could lick your wounds alone,” I corrected.

“There was naught for it but time,” he said.

“Is that why you didn’t trouble yourself to tell me?” I said. “Admit it – that was your plan, and Olórin thwarted it.”

Arafinwë had been looking between us; when no refutation was forthcoming, his amusement turned to horror. “I owe more thanks to Olórin than I realised,” he muttered.

“This Olórin seems sensible,” I remarked. More so than the Maiar of Aulë once were, at any rate. They had trouble understanding that children could not be left unattended with a lit forge.

“Oh, for a Maia he is uncommonly so!” Arafinwë said cheerfully. He filled our cups with pale golden wine from the flagon that had been sent up with our supper. Ingwion, I noticed, was offered none. “He was most helpful on that night. Ingwion’s speech seemed to me the ravings of a madman, and I was frantic for him. It was Olórin who settled me with tea and explained what had happened. I wanted to call for healers, but he spoke against it. ‘Healers shall not avail him, for the only treatment is time,’ I was told, ‘although hot meals and cheerful company would not go amiss.’” Arafinwë shook his head, rueful. “Well, once he had left I did call the healers, and they were completely at a loss; and in the end it was Olórin’s prescription we followed.”

“I hope that Ingwion did not trouble you too much,” I said knowingly.

“I would not be so ungracious,” Ingwion murmured, but he looked resigned.

“He was an excellent guest, alarming entrance aside,” Arafinwë insisted. “I was glad for his company in the audience chamber and the fields. I work the land with my people,” he explained at my questioning look. “He insisted on going also. We had to teach him how to drive the plough and seed-drill, but he took to it swiftly, and the farmers to him. I feared that they would ask to keep him on as a farmhand!” He laughed.

“Perhaps I shall return in the harvest season,” said Ingwion, “and learn again to reap and to thresh.”

“They shall be glad to have you,” Arafinwë replied. He drank of his cup and let out a sigh. “A most excellent vintage. You must refer me to the one that keeps your cellars in such fine form.”

“I shall have a word with Ingil,” said Ingwion.

“Your brother?” Arafinwë’s eyes widened and he added hastily, “Well, he must be quite busy.”

I took pity on him. “Perhaps you ought to speak with Elerrína instead,” I said. “She keeps us in King’s Reserve.”

“I did not know that you had dealings with her,” said Arafinwë, swiftly grasping the digression. “It seems that we have been amiss in speaking only of Tirion. How have you fared, Nerdanel? Has Mother given up on keeping hens?”

“I am well, and she has not. Her efforts keep us, and the neighbours, in eggs,” I said dryly, “although I have once again distressed her by tearing up our garden. She frets that the hens will stop laying for the upheaval.”

“So you have decided,” Ingwion said, and for the first time that evening his eyes kindled with the warm light of interest. “Who is it to be?”

“Tyelkormo,” I said. “You are welcome to call upon us and see for yourself how he is progressing.”

“I shall come soonest,” he promised.

Arafinwë looked from Ingwion to me. “Are you speaking of sculptures?”

“I am sculpting my sons in my garden. It is an ongoing project,” I said. “Only Macalaurë and the Ambarussa are finished, and I am working on Tyelkormo presently.”

“I should like to see it myself,” he said, “with your permission, of course.”

“I do not make art to hide it away,” I said. “You may visit when you wish.”

“Then I shall – well, not at the moment,” he amended, looking past me into the night’s deepening gloom. “And you say that Tyelkormo is unfinished?”

“Whether they be finished or not, the works of Nerdanel are marvels to behold,” Ingwion said. He gazed at me, his face softening with artless admiration, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Arafinwë watching intently. “Although they are indeed best seen by daylight. For now we might speak of them.”

“Not with that expression,” I admonished. “You will raise his expectations so high that seeing them will bring only disappointment.”

“Would you deny my delight in speaking of such fair things as the craft of your hands?” he asked.

I sat back and looked at him. He was smiling, his eyes clear and mirthful; supper had put some colour back into his cheeks. The strange light in him was not so apparent in the soft glow of the lamps, and he seemed only a little thinner and wearier – naught that a few hearty meals could not set right. But the shadows upon him were not quite right. About the edges of his face, a cold glimmer lingered.

“Oh, very well,” I said.

The discussion ran long: Arafinwë was intrigued, though inexpert, and asked many questions of tools and materials and process and effect. At first it was mostly Ingwion who answered, but I found myself drawn in more and more. All artists loved to speak of their work, and I was no exception – although the wine might have helped. It was, as Arafinwë said, a most excellent vintage.

I was beginning to expound on Tyelkormo’s process when the fir-grove discharged a man and a woman bearing lanterns. The man I recognised as Orontar, chief among Ingwion’s councillors. The woman was fair of hair and demurely veiled in the manner of Vanyarin noblewomen, but when she glanced up at us her eyes flashed sharply grey.

“Orontar and Findis,” said Ingwion, standing. Arafinwë and I followed suit. “Ingwizel has made it known that I am not to be disturbed.”

“I beg your pardon for the interruption, my prince, but the Chieftain Ektillë has ridden in,” Orontar said. “She is coming up the gardens as we speak.”

“And she is not to be denied,” Ingwion remarked wryly. He turned to us. “I am sorry to end the evening in such a manner, but I must receive her.”

“It is rather late, anyhow,” I said. “I must be going.”

“I shall see Nerdanel home,” Arafinwë said.

“You have my thanks,” Ingwion said to him, and Arafinwë clasped his shoulder. Then he turned to me and taking my hand bowed over it. Three pairs of eyes bored into my back. “I shall call upon you,” he said. I bowed in return and took Arafinwë’s offered arm, and we escaped the pavilion.

“I shall stand with the Prince. Would you show his guests out?” Orontar asked his companion. Findis inclined her head, her gaze cooling as it swept over us. She held aloft her lantern, gesturing for us to follow, and we trailed her through the grove and on the other side ran into what must have been Ektillë’s party.

“Nerdanel, Ingoldo! Findis!”

“Indis!” I exclaimed, seeing among the Vanyar hunter-garbed a woman gowned and veiled in black.

Indis conferred hastily with a tall stern woman and an equally tall man – Ektillë and her husband, no doubt – and they nodded. Brief greetings were exchanged between our party and theirs before they marched off, leaving Indis with us. She gazed from Findis to Arafinwë to me, at a loss.

“Mother,” Arafinwë said, releasing me to hold his arms out. Indis let out a cry and rushed into his embrace. He patted her back carefully. “I am sorry to have not called upon you in such a long time.”

“Oh Ingoldo! There is nothing to forgive,” Indis said tearfully. “You have your duties as King, after all—” I heard a quiet scoff and glanced at Findis: she was staring fixedly, revealing nothing “—and I hear that you have been tending to your cousin. Are the rumours true? Did he go to the Halls of Waiting?”

“He did,” Arafinwë said. “He has brought back tidings of our kin.”

“Oh,” said Indis, pulling back. “He must not be well, then. Perhaps I should have gone with Ektillë.” She turned to look at the grove and stopped at Findis.

“Mother.”

The embrace between mother and daughter was stiff and careful. Findis extricated herself delicately and adjusted her veil.

“Look at you,” Indis murmured, “a proper member of your cousin’s court. Oh Findis!”

“I am showing Ingoldo and Nerdanel out,” she declared, brandishing the lantern.  

“Then I shall come with you,” Indis said. She drifted over to me. “I did not know what had become of you,” she said in gentle admonishment.

“I did not leave a note,” I realised. “I am sorry, Indis. It was all such a rush.”

“I suppose that you cannot be blamed for going to the aid of a friend,” she said with a sigh.

Findis started walking and we followed. The blue-white lights of crystal lamps marked the path down to Ingwë’s halls with its many glowing windows, and along it the night-singers had come out in force. There were crickets chirping and nightjars trilling and the fluting calls of the nightingales; and now and then an owl hooted, frightening all the others into momentary silence.

“Does Ingwion call upon you often?” Arafinwë asked me during once such intermission.

“Nearly once a week, when he is not travelling,” I said, and he turned to me fully.

“He has ever been fond of you,” he said, “but I did not realise that you and he were—”

Indis’ soft laughter forestalled my groan of exasperation. “Oh, it is not like that,” she said. “They are the best of friends, and he admires her work so.”

“Well, he did praise her work fulsomely,” Arafinwë agreed. Findis inclined her head towards us, and I recalled her interest in the arts. Indis shot me an entreating look.

“I am sculpting my sons in my garden,” I told Findis. “The project is not yet finished, but you may come and view them if you wish.”

“To your house,” she said slowly, her gaze drifting to Indis.

“You have a standing invitation,” I said.

“You may come whenever you wish,” Indis said hopefully.

Findis looked back at me. “I hear that you dwell with Amárië and the Lady Anairë also,” she said.

“By the Valar!” Arafinwë exclaimed. “If Ingwion thinks nothing of calling upon them every week, then you can visit at least as often without worrying about your reputation!”

“The Prince is beyond reproach,” she said stiffly, “but the rest of us must mind our associates.”

Was that the reason for Findis’ absence? Indis looked resigned. Perhaps it was so. Or perhaps she was merely watching her children fall headlong into another spat. 

“I sent you and Mother off believing that you would keep her company,” Arafinwë was saying, “but if you are so mindful of the pleasure of our cousin’s court—”

“Perhaps you ought to have minded the other courts better,” Findis said through gritted teeth.

Arafinwë flinched and Indis stepped between them. In doing so she came before the light of Findis’ lantern, and suddenly I realised that we were halfway down the garden path in the dead of night.

“The hour is late,” I said loudly. “We ought to be going.”

Findis gave a small start. “Indeed,” she said, hurriedly lifting her lantern again, “we must go before anyone comes upon us.”

She made to move, but Indis stood her ground. “Daughter,” she said softly, “heed not what Ingoldo says. I am content with knowing that you live well in your cousin’s court, and that you are happy.”

She was answered by a stony stare, and her face fell. Arafinwë took her arm and made to pull her away.

“Wait!” Findis cried. “Might I bring a guest to the viewing?”

“I would not object,” I said, taken aback.

“I am being courted by Elemmundo,” she said: at our blank expressions she added, “kinsman to Airen and to Orontar.”

“Isn’t Airen one of our aunts and Orontar wed to another?” Arafinwë asked.

“Oh, that is wonderful!” Indis said happily. “You could ask Ingwion to chaperone you. He visits often, and so it would be no inconvenience to him or to you.”

“I shall consider it. But first we must be off,” Findis said. She began again to walk, and we followed the bobbing light of her lantern down the mountain.

Chapter Text

The summer rains announced themselves with a slam of the shutters that roused me from my slumber. Peering out the window, I saw great bolts of lightning tear the night asunder; the heavens bellowed, and rain came hammering down.

I rose, hazy, and secured the shutters before returning to bed. As sleep overcame me, my last thought was of the fig tree out front, bowed shivering before the storm. I drew the covers close, turning into my pillow, and fell into a dark and uneasy slumber.

I woke to a morning grey and watery. The storm had broken while I slept, and after a fortifying cup of tea I went out to survey the damage.

Wind and rain had battered the neighbourhood thoroughly. On the roof of one house a weathercock swung crookedly; before another an olive tree had fallen. Our own poor fig tree trembled, naked in the breeze. One limb hung broken, good now only for firewood, and figs lay bruised and bleeding over the length of the street. It was an unpromising start to the rainy season.

“Do you need my help with the fig tree?” asked Amárië from behind me. I turned to her and frowned.

“Perhaps you ought to go back to bed,” I said. She put me in mind of a storm-beaten daisy: wan and drooping, a flower stripped of its bloom. I had not seen her in such a sorry state since she first came to us. “I did not see you returning yesterday. Did your audience go awry?”

She shook her head. “I am being silly,” she said. “Yesterday was wonderful. It was—it was as if Findaráto had been dead, and now he is alive again. All these years, I have prayed for him and tried to have hope, but it was then that I truly felt it.” She fell silent for a moment, her face clouding over. “Only, I fear for him also,” she whispered, half to herself. “But I am being silly. Have faith, the Prince said; and though he walked among the dead, he did not fear.” Her voice grew hushed with reverence, and I looked away to hide my disapproval.

Twice had the month turned since Ingwion’s return. Now he sat upon the mountain, Arafinwë at his side, and with his words he stirred Minyamar afroth. Some were summoned up the mountain by promises of tidings, among them all of my companions save Anairë, who was away in Alqualondë. They returned heartsick and sorrowing, their cares renewed, and my home was once again a house of grief.

The rest were left to gossip, and gossip they did. In the market, Ñoldor spoke hopefully of the Prince’s wisdom. In the streets, Vanyar murmured worshipfully of the Valar’s favour. The accounts of those who had spoken with Ingwion were eagerly sought. To my dismay, I found myself being hounded in particularly fervent fashion. It had somehow become common knowledge that I was among the first to be summoned, and all of Minyamar’s folk, Ñoldor and Vanyar, had taken it to mean that I had been granted some special grace.

It was not grace I was given, I wished to tell them. Tidings from Mandos give only grief, and your prince is a fool for seeking it. But I had kept my peace. The poor fools, blinkered by their awe of Ingwion, could not be made to see his deed for the folly it was. I could only hope that the Valar would prove wiser and bar Ingwion from the Halls of Mandos, now and forever.

Shaking my head, I gazed out upon the fig tree. “A fine mess this is!” I muttered. “Best get on with it!”

We fetched shears to cut away the fallen limb, dragging it before the hearth to dry, and then set about gathering up the fallen figs. After a while I had Amárië bring out baskets, and we filled them one after another.

“There are so many,” Amárië said with dismay. “How are we to eat all these figs before they spoil?”

“Niélë and I shall make preserves,” I said. “Come.”

Niélë’s house was full of warm smells and clattering cookware and children making nuisances of themselves. Her young son Niénon ran about, tugging skirts and bumping legs, until Amárië drew him aside to teach him a counting-game. Her daughter Culuriën, set to washing figs, spent more time sighing ineffectually over the wash-basin and glancing out the window.

“Fretting that the rains will delay the wedding,” Niélë said in a carrying whisper.

“Mother!” Culuriën protested.

“Your carpenter lad will be glad to wed you, however long he must wait,” I assured her, smiling. “Perhaps you might bring him a few of the nicer figs, as we have too many. Where is he, anyhow?”

“At the house he is building for us,” answered Culuriën, her face brightening. She looked to Niélë, who sighed and gave a nod, and at once she shed her apron and laded her arms with figs. The door’s eager slam brought a smile to my face.

“She could have taken a basket,” Niélë murmured.

“Young love,” I advised her, and we laughed. “How go the wedding preparations?”

“Well enough, although we are often less a pair of hands,” she said, fondly exasperated. Taking Culuriën’s place, she made short work of the unwashed figs.

I fetched another basket. “I imagine that the builders have the same complaint of her betrothed,” I said. “My companions and I are willing to make up for the lack.”

Niélë was well-pleased by this offer, and as the figs went into the stew-pot we spoke on the tasks that needed doing and the arrangements that needed making. And then she said, “About the Prince.”

Of course. I sighed. “What of him?”

“Would you ask him to come?” she asked, a little shyly. “The wedding may bring him some cheer.”

The simple kindness of her words struck me, and I looked away. Nearby were Amárië and Niénon. Merrily they played, laughing in the hearth’s dancing light.

I had told Ingwion of Niélë and her family at our reunion, I recalled. Even then, his face had lit up so.

“It would cheer him greatly,” I said. “I shall send word.”

Elerrína, my usual messenger, had been called away to attend her father. Instead I told Indis, who had lately been much at the palace, and she returned shortly with Ingwion’s reply. “He says that you may expect him at the wedding,” she said, after the exchange of niceties, “and he hopes to also make good on his promise to you then, although I know not what he means by that.”

“He promised to visit Tyelkormo. But why not today?” I asked, gazing over our guests with confusion.

Arafinwë had wandered off to poke about Indis’ tapestries. Findis was standing before the door with her head held high, looking every bit the haughty daughter of Finwë despite the austere white of her gown and veil. Her hand rested on the arm of a thick-necked Vanya, who was gazing at me with an expression of curiosity that his blunt features could not quite manage. This was the aptly named Elemmundo, kinsman to Airen and Orontar.

Grey eyes met my gaze. “We have received word that it is Eärwen’s intent to seek an audience with the Prince,” Findis said.

“He is in council with Orontar,” Indis explained.

Findis’ chin rose. “Just so. We have concerns to address to Eärwen.”

“But that is enough talk of the court!” said Arafinwë, coming over. Findis pursed her lips. “Mother, did you weave all of those tapestries? They are splendid!”

“With help from Anairë and others,” Indis replied with an indulgent smile. “Have they caught your fancy, Ingoldo? You may take one if you like, and Findis also.”

“We came to see the work of Nerdanel,” Findis said.

“Then the tapestries shall wait,” Indis said. “They are in the garden. Come, daughter: I shall show you the way.”

Findis seized Elemmundo’s arm and marched him after Indis. Arafinwë offered me his arm, and we followed.

The garden smelled of rain and damp poultry. The hens had come out in force to peck at the mud; they seemed about the only ones happy with the relentless rains. Findis tested the ground and her face pinched. I thought then that she might turn back, but after a moment she swept up her skirts and followed Indis to Macalaurë and his children.

Here at last was something she liked! As she gazed upon them, her expression smoothed into quiet thought. Indis looked on hopefully.

“Do you like it, daughter?”

“There is indeed much to appreciate,” Findis said. She touched Elemmundo’s arm. “Observe the evidence of Nerdanel’s mastery in the clean and forceful lines. See how they draw the eye to the harp, to strings about to be plucked. And so we are invited to consider: what music is being made? What song would transport the singers so? We must imagine it for ourselves, for the stone is silent.” She paused, stroking her veil ponderously, and her expression grew grave. “But might that be the point? One may imagine any song one holds dear; but all the songs of Eldar make are of this world; and are not all the themes of this world encompassed in the First Song, in which the will of the One is made manifest? Thus do we see His hand in all things.”

Out came her hand, flung before her in a grand gesture. This attracted the attention of the hens. They came flocking to peck at her feet and upon finding nothing, rebuked her with loud furious clucks. She gazed down in bewilderment. At my side, Arafinwë looked away, his lips twitching.

“Shoo, shoo!” cried Indis, sending the hens scattering. To Findis, she said, “That was well said, my daughter. I had forgotten your eye for art.”

A smile crossed Findis’ face and she lifted her chin, glancing over. “But of course, the sculptress stands among us,” she said. “What was your intention, Nerdanel?”

“They are my child and grandchildren,” I said. “I made them as I remember them.”

“I see,” Findis said. Her lip curled, ever so slightly. “How very…rustic. Are we to take from it no other meaning, then?”

“You may take what meaning you like,” I said, voice dry. Finwë’s eldest daughter had been renowned amongst Tirion’s artisans as not only a lover of the arts, but an art critic – an inevitability of the trade, all agreed, but only as jackals and vultures were inevitable. Unfortunately, it appeared that Findis’ time among the Vanyar had done little to improve her disposition.

“Well, I know little of all that, but I think that Nerdanel’s sculpture is splendid!” Arafinwë said with forceful brightness. “It is as if Macalaurë and his children were standing before us. What do you think, Mother?”

“I am glad that it pleases you and Findis,” Indis demurred, smiling. “Would you like to see the next one, daughter?”

Findis nodded and we moved to the Ambarussa, where she proceeded in her lecture, her nose in the air. Indis drank of the sight with glowing eyes. Others of her audience was less enthralled. Elemmundo, caught in Findis’ clutches, looked on with dull bovine apathy. Arafinwë smiled, pleasantly blank. I was stifling sighs.

Eventually I wearied and made excuses about putting on the kettle. Arafinwë followed me inside, watching with idle interest as I worked the hearth.

“That Elemmundo,” he said. “I made enquiries about him.He is young, barely sixty; despite that, he is said to be possessed of a sober and serious temperament. Orontar claims that he makes for a fine secretary.”

I shrugged; I had never taken much of an interest in Indis’ and Elerrína’s horde of relatives.

“I cannot see what about him has caught my sister’s fancy,” Arafinwë continued, heedless. “Her taste in companions was quite different, in my memory: all laughing and fair of face, and shared of a fondness for hawking and dancing and drinking fine wine – although not all at the same time, of course!” He laughed a little, pleased with himself. “But we have not dwelt together since I became a man. Perhaps her tastes have changed. What do you think, Nerdanel?”

I turned and gave him an unimpressed look. “I have no desire to gossip about Findis and Elemmundo,” I said plainly.

“I see,” he said, frowning. “My apologies.”

“What sort of tea would you like?” I asked.

“You may choose,” he offered. “What tea do you favour?”

“Nothing as fine as you are accustomed to, I suspect,” I replied. “I favour a tea from Tirion that Indis considers particularly foul. We have other blends that may suit your taste better—”

“You underestimate me!” he laughed, and he proceeded to tell me of his discovery of the tea that Indis had stashed away in the various cupboards and corners of Finwë’s house, where he now dwelt. “Mother would be appalled,” he said, “but it is all quite drinkable, if a bit musty.”

“After fifty-odd years, I am surprised that those leaves are not dust,” I said, amused. “If you like, you may taste those teas afresh. Indis has rebuilt her collection.”

“May I see?” he asked, and so we went to the larder and poked about the tea-tins. We spoke long and pleasantly; Arafinwë was an amiable conversationalist, so long as he curbed his propensity towards gossip. I was beginning to wonder about the kettle when a knock at the door interrupted us.

We emerged and Arafinwë answered the door to find Elentirmo, who had grown into a strapping young man in the years since I first met him. Although not less wary of royalty: his expression as he gazed down at Arafinwë was deeply abashed.

“You must be seeking my sister,” said Arafinwë, waving off the page’s hasty courtesies. Without waiting for an answer, he turned and called for them.

Findis came in Elemmundo’s arm with Indis following. At the sight of Elentirmo she smoothed her skirts and adjusted her veil. “Has Lord Orontar sent for us?” she asked, with what was nearly a smile.

Elentirmo hesitated, darting a glance at her. His eyes were Ingwion’s, I realised, alike in shape and hue. The pity in them brought out the resemblance.

Findis’ face froze. She stood unspeaking, and Elentirmo turned to us. Beseechingly he gazed from face to face: uncomfortable, unwilling, unmoved. None offered the succour he sought.

“I thank my brother for his consideration,” said Indis.

“Oh yes!” Elentirmo replied eagerly. “I shall tell him that you are enjoying the company of the Princess Findis.”

“Do so,” Findis said, stony. Turning to Elentirmo, she commanded of him, “Go,” which he obeyed with alacrity. Elentirmo bid us a hasty farewell and then he, too, was gone.

The slamming of the door sounded as a hammer falling. Findis’ eyes scoured our faces, flinty and grey; after a moment, she turned and stalked away.

“We must have tea,” Indis remarked into the silence. “Sit, all of you – you as well, daughter,” she added to Findis, who was staring out the windows in the back. “I shall see to it.”

Arafinwë and I went to the couches and sat, and after a while Findis joined us. Indis clattered about and then came bearing a finely painted tea-set, which had Arafinwë springing up to help her lay it out.

“I think that this tea shall please you, daughter,” she said as she poured. “Your cousin Elerrína procured it for me, and her taste is as fine as yours. The leaves are stored for a time in casks which once held the King’s reserve, which I am told imparts upon the tea some of the savour of wine.”

Findis took a cup and sipped. She said nothing, and Indis’ face fell.

“I do think I taste it!” Arafinwë exclaimed. Indis turned to him, startled. “A most unusual flavour, but I find that I quite like it. Elerrína procured it, you say?”

“You may have the rest of the tin, although I fear that more shall be hard to come by,” Indis said, smiling at him. “It is made in small amounts, and my brother’s children have the first claim. There is seldom any left.”

“I am sure that asking Ingwion would yield up plenty,” Arafinwë said cheerfully. He made a show of his empty cup, and Indis laughed and moved to fill it again. Quietly I drank from my own. There was indeed a flavour of wine, a faint hint in the back of the mouth, but the tea was too weak for my liking.

Porcelain clinked. Findis had set down her cup. “Should you have favour with the Prince to spend,” she said bitterly, “then it would be better spent upon our people.”

Indis drew back, her smile fading, and Arafinwë put a hand on her arm.

“Does the tea not please you, sister?” he asked, carefully light. “Surely it must. You were ever fond of your libations, if memory serves.”

“When I recall what the Ñoldor have suffered, even the finest wine sours upon my tongue,” Findis said, flatly. “But it seems not to have touched your appetite, brother.”

“Can you not set your grievances aside?” he asked instead. “We are in the house of our mother. Surely there is a better place to address them.”

Grey eyes glittered. “Eärwen shall pass through Tirion on her way to Minyamar. Would you address them then?”

Arafinwë blanched. He stared down at his cup, and Findis’ lip curled.

“Perhaps,” Indis said, “it would be best if Nerdanel were to leave—”

“No!” Findis said. She looked to me, and a hard smile grew upon her face. “She is a daughter of the Ñoldor, is she not? And wife to our late King, no less. Should the interests of the Ñoldor not be hers also?”

“Nerdanel,” Indis urged. I hesitated – a moment too long, it seemed, for Findis was addressing Arafinwë again, in tones of

challenge.

“Would you, King and brother, care to tell Nerdanel of the plight of the Ñoldor?”

“Nerdanel has naught to do with this,” he said feebly to his cup.

“I thought not,” she said, colder still. Rising from her seat, she spoke in a voice high and ringing. “Then hear me, Nerdanel of the Ñoldor: for Eärwen of Alqualondë has wronged our people grievously. She has denied to them the fishery of the Bay of Eldamar and set heavy tolls upon the coastal roads; in the Long Night, she allowed our merchants and craftsmen to be set upon in Alqualondë, to be beaten and dispossessed and driven out!” Here an ugly look crossed her face; raising her chin against it, she carried on. “Many were wounded, more reduced to penury, and yet her wrath was not sated. Now she has turned it upon the Ñoldor of the eastern shore. There they have dwelt since before Olwë’s coming; but now they are fleeing, and the Teleri settle in their houses and enjoy their goods and chattels. What say you to this?”

I stared at Findis, stunned.

I had thought, at least, that peace had come after the Flight. With the Ñoldor so greatly diminished and the Teleri reduced also, who was there left to fight? That had been my consolation in my early days in Minyamar, when its streets seemed cold and its people strange.

But there had been talk, I realised, my heart sinking. The Vanyar had sent much aid to the Ñoldor and the Teleri in the lightless winter of the Long Night, and in Minyamar’s bread-lines I had heard disgruntled folk gossiping. The harvest has failed, and who knows when it will come again? We ought to look to our own, one would mutter. The other kindreds are trouble, another would agree. I hear that our grain has been spilt by Ñoldor and Teleri fighting, and there is disorder in Tirion and in Alqualondë! And then there would be a round of righteous nodding, as if Minyamar had not seen blows exchanged in the bread-lines.

Or so I had told myself. Had I been so eager for peace that I had turned a blind eye to the signs? Arafinwë’s flinch flashed before my eyes, followed by Vorondil’s fixed smile and Anairë’s pensive expression. I glanced over at Indis: she was sad but unsurprised.

“Well?” Findis said.

“It is appalling, of course,” I said, still dazed. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Arafinwë cringing. “But what does Arafinwë have to do with this?”

Her eyes narrowed. “What indeed?” she said. “To all that Eärwen has done, your King has given no answer.”

“I could hardly have hoped to stop her,” Arafinwë muttered.

“And what have you done?” Findis asked, her voice a fine edge of disdain. He looked away, and she rounded on him. “Tirion dwindles; her folk are fleeing away. I have done what may, for those that come to Minyamar. I have heard their grievances and spoken for them. I have begged Ingwion to take pity on them!” she spat, eyes flashing suddenly. Indis made a soft noise of dismay and she released a slow seething breath. “But what have you done,” she said through gritted teeth, “save refuse to rebuke your wife?”

Over her brother she loomed, awaiting an answer. But Arafinwë gave her none. He sat silent and shrinking, more a creature hunted than a King; and Findis gazed down with disgust.

“Nothing,” she pronounced. “You have stood aside and done nothing, as you ever have and ever shall. Shaming our House. Shaming our father—”

“I have shamed him?”

Tea splashed on the ground; the finely painted cup hit the table and shattered. Indis’ face froze with dread. Findis reared back, furious and baffled – standing, Arafinwë overtopped her by half a head, and his eyes burned as blue fire.

“Have you forgotten what was done at Alqualondë?” His voice was tight with anger. “Do you remember what evils our House has wrought? I do! I can never forget it: the smoke and fire billowing, the wailing in the night! The gleam of our brothers’ swords as they cut the gate-guards down; the screams of Olwë’s sons as they tried to make their way to their poor murdered father, as they lost their heads for it! And Eärwen was weeping, cursing me as she tried to go to her kin, to die with them. I held her down. That was all I could do.” The anger had fallen away. A blind, stricken look was coming over his face. “There—there was so much blood. The gates were red with it. So many fallen. I could not think for their moaning and pleading. As they died, their bowels spilled—”

“Enough!” cried Indis.

Silence fell. Blankly Arafinwë stared at her; and then light came back into his eyes, and with it horror. With shaking hands, he hid his face and wept.

“Oh, my son,” Indis breathed, heartbroken, and reached for him.

“Go away!” he pleaded. She recoiled. “I never wanted this. I never asked to be King! What do you want of me?”

“To do your duty,” Findis said.

She had been gazing upon her brother, her face dark with hate and pity warring. Hate won, and her expression smoothed into a thing sheer and cold and pitiless. She drew herself up.

“I want for you to do your duty,” she said, low. “As I did, when you and Ñolofinwë and Lalwen and Fëanáro fled. I sat in the throne you left empty, and all who were left I took into my charge. That is what I remember: my people, who are owed the King’s justice. You are the King, and so you must give it to them.”

But Arafinwë only wept. Findis stared at him, and for a moment it seemed as if the ice of her would crack; but then she turned sharply away, and her face was lost in a flurry of white lace.

Helpless, Indis looked from her daughter to her son. She put a hand to the teapot and rose, taking the pot with her. When she returned, her children had slunk off, and I was sitting alone with the shards of the shattered cup.