The Dance by Dawn Felagund

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The Dance

For Allie.

The Dance

"Now not an unkind word from either of you!" Mahtan scolded Nerdanel's sisters. He was trying to keep his voice low, but it was rough and accustomed to shouting in the forges, and Nerdanel overheard him easily. Her face warmed with a blush. "It is her first invitation to a dance, so I think some kindness is in order."

One of the sisters mumbled something. They were ladylike and able to keep their voices low: probably, Nerdanel thought, they were saying something of how no words would best be spoken, then, if critiques were banned. How true, came Nerdanel's regretful realization. She lifted her eyes enough to glance at herself in the mirror. Her gown had been altered more times than she could count upon a hand, and, though of the finest blue-gray satin, it still fit poorly. Excess flesh bulged at the top of the bodice, and where the dress hugged her hips, it rather reminded her of a sausage stuffed into a casing. Deep breaths were out, she realized, as she took what tiny sips of air she could manage in the undersized gown. And she'd scrubbed every last trace of sweat and soot from her face and neck, leaving both blotchy red, and her hair … before she could change her mind, Nerdanel whirled from the room to face her sisters.

Minyaní was reading and Maikwendë was working on her embroidery when Nerdanel eased into the room, wincing at the constraint of the gown when she was better accustomed to the tunic and trousers required for forgework. She saw her sisters exchange quick glances before looking steadily at their work.

"Nerdanel!" She was swept into Mahtan's embrace, then pushed away at arm's length again for inspection. Tears glistened in his gray eyes. He thinks me beautiful, thought Nerdanel bitterly, the fool. It is no wonder that he is so long in coming to success for his work. Clearly, his concept of beauty is lacking.

"You look … stately," said Maikwendë with a forced smile, chancing to glance up from her embroidery.

"Yes, you walk very well in those shoes," Minyaní added.

~oOo~

The message had come a fortnight earlier, sealed with the crest of the High Prince. Correspondence from Fëanáro was not unknown; he and Nerdanel were friends, compelled into the other's company by their shared love of craft and travel. "I need a partner for the upcoming festival dance, and I thought I might ask you," came his surprisingly hesitant inquiry after pages of prattling about research he'd discovered on new methods for folding metal both flexible and strong to make blades for hunting knives. "I have been told that I must attend, and so yours is the company I would like to keep."

Her sisters, of course, had been flabbergasted. "He can't do that!" Maikwendë had burst out immediately upon hearing of it over supper. "You are not of the court!"

"I suspect," Mahtan had been quick to answer, concentrating on his fried potatoes as he spoke, stabbing them onto his fork, "that the High Prince Fëanáro does what he right well pleases." And neither Minyaní nor Maikwendë had much to add after that.

But, later, Mahtan had come into Nerdanel's bedroom to bid her goodnight, and he had closed the door gently behind himself. "Daughter," he said, sitting on the edge of her bed and taking her hands--already calloused from her labors--into his, "there are certain realities, even in this land. I know that Prince Fëanáro is your friend but …" He paused and rubbed at his forehead with his big hand as he did when nervous. "But we are simple artisans, your mother and I. We are not fit to keep company with royalty. And he … I've no doubt of his love for you as a friend. But there are rules, Daughter. There are things that are acceptable and not for him to do. He must accompany a young lady of the court to this dance. It would be scandalous for him to do otherwise."

Before her father even finished speaking, Nerdanel felt herself nodding. "Of course. Of course, I know that, Father." There was a tightness in her throat that made it hard to swallow, but she forced it and forced a smile to ease the worried lines upon his face. "I don't even intend to go. There would be no point."

"No, Nerdanel, you must go," Mahtan said quickly. "To decline Prince Fëanáro's invitation would be seen as an insult. But … I didn't want you getting the wrong idea of what to expect, when he is sure to be there with another. I'm certain that his father or stepmother will choose one of the ladies of the court for him. It is the way that these things must work."

"I know that." She smiled. People told her that there was wisdom beyond her years in that smile. Then why does it hurt so much? she found herself wondering, sliding beneath the bedclothes to let her father tuck her in as though she was, in fact, much younger in years. Wisdom should not hurt. "I will go then, so as not to be rude. But I have--I never had--any expectations. Least of all of him."

"Good. You are wise, Daughter." Mahtan kissed her smiling lips and squeezed her shoulder through the quilts and, finally, rose and left the room. The smile collapsed from Nerdanel's lips then, but it still hurt. She felt her face crumple in the darkness. Hot tears soaked her pillow. I know the way the world works, she thought, so why does it hurt?

~oOo~

Nerdanel had never learned to dance, but Mahtan said that his apprentice Anganer would teach her. Anganer had been married the summer previous and had had to learn court dances for the occasion. He was a skinny, black-haired Elf with long arms like wires. "Well," he said as he and Nerdanel stood awkwardly opposite each other in the clearing behind the forges. He mopped his face with a rag. "I thought I was bloody well on my way to forgetting this rot."

"Stop complaining," came Mahtan's gruff admonishment as his round, flushed face popped through one of the open windows of the forge. "You are in my employ, recall. And I forged your wedding rings on the day of the ceremony when you lost those you made while carousing in Tirion the night prior."

Nerdanel bit her lip to keep from laughing as Anganer's face flushed red. "Well, then," he said, taking Nerdanel's hands in his. His palms were wet, and Nerdanel wondered how he kept the hammer from flying from them. The urge to laugh almost overwhelmed her. I would do well to remember not to walk behind him while he is working steel, she thought. "We'll begin then?"

Anganer was a surprisingly good dancer, even if he smelled of sweat and soot and did have perpetually wet palms. He approached dance like any other science, with a right and a wrong way to learn how to achieve proper results. "No, no, no," he said. "Stop staring at my feet. Keep your eyes looking just over my left shoulder." He chucked her under the chin until she looked up. His skinny face and close-set eyes always made her want to laugh. She trod on his feet. "No! That is a backward step! And always on your right foot because you're a girl. Girls always step right first. Remember: backward, left, left, forward, right, pause. I remember it as blacksmiths love looking for rare plate. B-L-L-F-R-P. 'Tis a mnemonic-- What? Nerdanel, stop laughing!" But he was laughing too and treading on her feet now. "Master Mahtan! I cannot work like this!"

But the result of a fortnight of lessons--and much lost worktime, as Angamer took care to remind her each day--was that Nerdanel could dance quite well. Even if, she reminded herself at the end of each day, once the adrenaline and laughter had both drained from her blood, she would not be dancing with Fëanáro.

~oOo~

This is a mistake. Proper or not, this is a mistake.

An usher had led Nerdanel to a lavishly set table at the side of the room farthest across the dance floor. The dais at the front, where the King would sit with his family, was so far empty, but while passing it on the way to her seat, Nerdanel had seen Fëanáro's name upon one card, to the right of his father, and at his side, a card naming a lady unfamiliar to Nerdanel. And despite the fact that she knew the way it would be, disappointment plunked hard in her stomach. He would be dancing with another.

She was sitting with a group of people she'd never met before who showed little interest aside initially asking how she came to be invited to the King's ball. "I am a friend of--" she stopped herself just in time from using the familiar name Fëanáro had insisted she call him--"the prince."

"Curufinwë or Nolofinwë?" a man asked her, looking down his long nose at her as though unsure whether to believe her.

"Curu-- Prince Curufinwë."

A fanfare sounded then, and a herald called out the names of the royals. "High Prince Curufinwë Fëanáro," Nerdanel caught, and there he was, looking unimpressed and very bored, "escorting--" and after that, she comprehended little else aside from a sonorous, overlong name clearly belonging to someone better than the daughter of artisans, the daughter of some lord of Tirion who Nerdanel's ignorance of--she realized on a sudden--proved why it was the lord's daughter and not her on that dais with Fëanáro.

His left boot was untied. As he walked hastily across the dais, Nerdanel heard the ends of his bootlaces ticking against the stage. The lord's daughter with the too-long name was trailing behind him, taking tiny steps as quickly as her high shoes would allow, trying to keep hold of his arm. Once seated, she kept her hand possessively atop his hand. He unfolded his napkin done in the shape of a seabird and wiped his nose with it, displacing her hand and keeping the soiled napkin balled in his fist. She grimaced and put her hand on his no more.

When all of the King's family were announced and seated, the King rang a chime signaling the start of the feast, and a stampede of waiters whisking trays high over their heads descended upon the waiting crowd, piling plates high with food in front of the guests. Everything smelled delicious but trussed up in her gown, Nerdanel could eat little of it. Perhaps her tablemates were more accustomed to such finery, she thought, for they showed little restraint, and as her stomach grumbled petulantly inside a gown that felt increasingly like having been stuffed inside a too-small wine cask, tempted by the sumptuous odors of the spread before her, glancing occasionally to see the lord's daughter leaning upon Fëanáro's arm, speaking animatedly while he gave her a tight, forced smile (but still a smile), Nerdanel realized that she was quite miserable.

I should not have come.

Polite or not to accept, this is not my place. I should not have come. I am the daughter of simple artisans; I am ugly and-- No. Worse than ugly.

Invisible.

For Fëanáro on the dais had not glanced at her once, even to bestow her with one of the secretive smirks that spoke of jokes and confidences shared in the forges, while one hammered and the other worked the bellows, and she forgot that he was a prince, the heir of the King, and she the daughter of mere artisans.

The plates were cleared away, Nerdanel's still nearly full of food the likes of which she'd probably never have opportunity to taste again. "Not much appetite, young lady?" asked the long-nosed man, laughing as after-dinner wine was poured, and Nerdanel couldn't even risk a forced giggle in answer, suddenly terrified--and knowing well--that if she dared let her face twitch from the rictus into which it had frozen, she would start weeping and be unable to stop.

A trumpet sounded then, and the herald made the announcement that the dancing would begin, and as tradition dictated, the first dance would belong to the High Prince, who was coming near to adulthood and, this night, would begin pursuit of courtship. Nerdanel sneaked a look at Fëanáro, though she did not want to. His face had gone gray, and his mouth was set in a hard line. At his right, the lord's daughter looked positively exuberant, smiling wide and radiantly for all the room to see.

But Fëanáro stood so quickly that his chair nearly fell--indeed, had to be caught by the King--and he walked with haste onto the floor. The lord's daughter--taken unawares by his sudden movement, and his failure to help her from her chair--hastened after him, skirts clutched in her fists and her carefully joyful face at last drooping a bit. Fëanáro! Nerdanel could not hear the girl's call over the rustle of muted conversation, but she could see the girl's lips move in the shape of his name and imagined it hissed in mortified indignation. Fëanáro was halfway across the floor now. Queen Indis was halfway from her seat, and Nerdanel saw King Finwë's hand light upon her arm, his own lips forming a single syllable that clearly said, Wait.

And Fëanáro stopped before Nerdanel.

"You accepted my offer, did you not?" he asked quietly and with uncharacteristic timidity. "Of the dance?" There was something strange in his eyes. Fear? No, surely not! Nerdanel thought. He proffered a hand. The tip of a single finger trembled slightly.

"I did," Nerdanel answered in a whisper, all that she could manage, but her answer was heard by all of the room gone silent. The lord's daughter reached Fëanáro's side then, her icy blue eyes fixed not on him but Nerdanel. "Excuse me!" she chirped.

"You are excused," said Fëanáro quickly, and the two stared at each other then as though in a battle of wills, the girl's mouth opening and closing several times without a word, Fëanáro's jaw clenched: There was naught left to say. At last, he sighed. "You may take your seat. I asked Nerdanel before this arrangement was made." His hand fluttered between himself and the lord's daughter. "You knew that."

With poise Nerdanel never would have managed, the girl did exactly as advised. She climbed back to the dais without faltering and accepted a glass of wine offered to her and even manage to smile in the direction of Indis. Nerdanel, her heart pounding, and Fëanáro, his eyes a maelstrom of emotion, had no such grace. We are each suited to the other, Nerdanel realized with a lurch of her heart.

She laid her hand in Fëanáro's, and he drew her to her feet.

"There is one thing that you should know," he said under his breath as they walked to the middle of the floor. "I never went to my dance lesson. I discovered a formula that day, in the laboratory, for green gems with a heart like golden stars and thought they would look--" They reached the center of the floor, and he said no more, but his eyes lingered upon her for a moment long than perhaps they should have before he admitted, "I do not know how to dance."

The musicians began the opening bar of the song. "Blacksmiths love looking for rare plate!" she blurted in a whisper. She stepped backward onto her right foot. He started too late, overstepped to compensate, and tread upon her toe, making her gasp in pain.

"Of course they--" he said, as she jerked him to the left.

"No, it is the steps to the song!"

How they must have looked, like marionettes wielded in the fists of a young child, for those first awkward measures. The musicians faltered, trying to cover Fëanáro's blunders, and the music dragged, and there was a murmur of one thousand voices: It is that girl! She does not belong with him! Fëanáro's face heated as he realized what they said, twin spots of color flourishing in each cheek. "Blacksmiths--" began Fëanáro, and a light flared in the depths of his eyes then: realization. He drew her closer as he stepped in time with her to the left--love--and she felt the breath of his laughter against her neck. Effortlessly, he took a second step to the left, in perfect time with her. The musicians resumed the normal tempo, and there was a creaking of chairs against the floor as others stood to join them in the dance.

For hours, he held her in his arms, hours that she measured only in the growing aches in her feet and the changing Light outside the tall windows. "See, you did not need that lesson," Nerdanel whispered to him. His hand on the small of her back held her close.

"No, I did. Many are my talents, but the dance is not one of them," he said with a chuckle.

"But I understand," Nerdanel said. "It was for your love of stone that you nearly made yourself a fool in front of all the court of Tirion," squeezing his hand gently to show that she jested. But he did not smile in answer. His face was grave, and his silver eyes fixed upon her own.

"Nay, you are wrong, Nerdanel," he said. "Those green stones with hearts of gold … it was not for their beauty that I missed my lesson. It was because I could think only of how they would look against your hair. It was for thought of you."

Behind them, the music swelled and the Lights mingled; the world ground ever onward through Eä, and the timeless love of Fëanáro and Nerdanel began that night with a dance.

Chapter End Notes

Quenya Name Translations
Fëanáro/Curufinwë = Fëanor
Nolofinwë = Fingolfin

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