The Work of Small Hands by Dawn Felagund

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The Hungry

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I go to the kitchen to make Arafinwë breakfast, but Anairë is already there, making a concoction with eggs, something Noldorin that Arafinwë has never made and so I have never tasted. It looks sodden and steams obscenely; I grimace.

“He needs his strength,” she says, pushing the eggs onto a plate. There is a tiny, withered orange beside it. I lift it quizzically. “It is all there was,” she says. “The orchards have stopped producing.”

She doesn’t look at me as she dumps a pan full of fried potatoes alongside the eggs.

“If he eats, he can have a draft for his pain. If not, it is too dangerous. It will be absorbed too quickly into his blood; he might be poisoned. Remind him of this, if he refuses to eat,” she says, putting the plate into my hand and nudging me in the direction of the stairs.

Arafinwë is awake when I enter Findaráto’s bedroom. He lies on his back, his injured wrist crossing his chest. He does not blink as I enter the room and close the door behind me, the enticing smells of breakfast curling around the room. Smiling, I carry the plate to his bedside and say, “I am glad to see that you are awake, Arafinwë.”

He closes his eyes.

“I brought your breakfast. Anairë made it. She chose foods that will give you strength and says that you may have a draft for your pain, if you eat.”

He says nothing. His eyes remain closed.

I load a fork with the egg mixture. I poke it at his lips. Aikanáro went through a phase when he was a particularly picky eater; I feel as I did then, a hopeful frustration rising in my chest, as he turns his head from me, listing as though he wishes to roll onto his side but lacks the strength.

“Please, Arafinwë,” I whisper. “You must eat.”

Pools of tears sprout suddenly from beneath his eyelashes and race down his cheeks.

I drop the fork and wrap my arms around him, pressing my face into his neck, while he silently weeps. “Your brother …” he whispers.

I push my finger against his lips. “Please …” I do not want him to go on. But he does.

“I came too late,” he says. “I saw Macalaurë; he was sick, and I went to him, meaning to help. He’d stabbed your brother--or one of them had. Alpaher was still alive, though wounded badly. He--” Arafinwë draws a shuddering breath--“he was screaming. Things were coming out of him, and he was trying to put them back in, and that was why Macalaurë was sick.”

Arafinwë retches then and leans over the side of the bed and vomits. He hasn’t eaten in days and there is nothing to vomit but bile, a frothy liquid that patters against the floor, streaming from his nose and mouth, while I weep and push my hand to my mouth, trying not to be sick myself.

“I was too late,” he gasps. He rolls back onto the bed: His eyes are ringed in red; mucus streams from his nose, covering the lower half of his face. “Too late!” He pounds his fists into the bed, screaming as his broken wrist slams again and again into the mattress, until I catch his hands in mine to save him from breaking his splint, and we wrap around each other and sob our agony into the warm familiarity of the other’s neck, and his breakfast grows cold and forgotten.

~oOo~

I awaken in the afternoon. Arafinwë sleeps, his hand locked in my hair. I gently pry his fingers open, one by one, releasing myself, and I stand and go downstairs.

Anairë is mending breeches in the bluish penumbra of a hissing fire-lamp. She looks up when I enter. “What did he say?”

“Say?”

“About the papers that I gave you. About the construction of the lamps and the need to train more in the forge--” Abruptly, she stops, her face a marble mask, hollowed by shadows in the meager light. “You said nothing to him, did you?”

“I--we fell asleep …”

“Eärwen, it is afternoon!” She leaps to her feet and hurls the breeches at me. The needle sticks into my skin and makes me cry out. “It is afternoon, and you waste your day on sleep!”

There is a feeling inside me akin to the sound made by a twig as it breaks beneath a careless foot, and I take the breeches from the floor and throw them back in her face, careless of the needle. “My brother is dead!” I scream. “I am allowed my grief!”

“Your brother is dead and your husband’s people are starving in the streets! Who do we live for, Eärwen, the living or the dead? The living or the dead?”

She has flown from the settee; her hands clench my arms and she shakes me. The feeling is like being tossed on a frothing, stormy sea, as though each second is being stretched to painful proportions, each motion makes my stomach lurch sickeningly. I can hear my teeth clicking together; her eyes bulge fearfully in her reddened face. She releases my arms long enough to slap me across the jaw, driving me to the floor with the helpless weight of a sack of stone. My forehead cracks the floor; my teeth close on my lower lip and blood dribbles down my chin.

Blackness squeezes the sides of my vision. I see the pointy toes of her prim Noldorin shoes come into my vision; the sounds of her heels against the floor are sharp, driving like nails into my ears. My heartbeat roars beneath, in pain and anger. She reaches down and lifts me by the back of my gown. She tosses me onto the settee.

With a mother’s tenderness, she wipes the blood from my face with a handkerchief. From the folds of her skirt, she produces a vial of salve, which she dabs on the black bruises that she has made on my arms, leaving tingling warmth in the wake of her touch. She takes my chin firmly in her hands. “Eärwen,” she says. “Our crops are not producing. The animals in the forest are slowly starving too, and so we have no meat. We cannot survive on mushrooms and salted venison forever.”

She rises and begins to pace. Her figure is tall and proud, her back forming a soft curve between shoulders and buttocks perfectly poised, feet stepping delicately and noisily against the hardwood floors. Her hands twist at her waist, worrying each other mercilessly. Her stiff hairstyle is beginning to disintegrate; strands tumble about her shoulders. A feeling of numbness settles on me. Let her take control …

But she will not. “Your husband is the king,” she says. Her gray eyes reflect the wild, blue flame of the lamp. “You know as well as I that the people will not listen to you or I--or even Indis--as they will listen to one of Finwë’s own blood. You do not go into the city, Eärwen; you do not know.” Her pacing becomes more frenzied, her heels ringing louder against the floor. “I went this morning. I went to speak with one of the few remaining blacksmiths about training others to make Fëanorian lamps. You do not know. You were not there. You did not feel the desperation. Parents are choosing--" her voice wavers for a moment; steadies again--“parents are choosing to feed their children in lieu of themselves. A farmer’s cart was overturned when it was seen that he had nectarines. More farmers are not coming at all: They are hording their harvests for themselves. Green things do not grow in the dark, Eärwen. Yavanna will help us--in this, I have faith--but the Valar have rightfully turned their attentions to Alqualondë for now. The Noldor here are blameless, yet we will starve for the folly of our kin.”

She comes to me. She takes my hands. Her hands tremble--or maybe it is mine--or maybe it is both. She presses them to her lips. “Surely, you must see, Eärwen. Your husband must come forth and reassure the people. We must devise a solution, but first, he must reassure the people that the rational blood of Finwë prevails in the palace; that the madness has gone with the exiles.”

“But where?” I ask. “Where will we go for food?”

Although I know: I see in my memory, I see the wide fields of seaweed that grew across the top of the sea, nurtured with only the light of the stars. I see the ponderous nets full of writhing fish, strained by the weight, water streaming noisily as they are hoisted to the decks of the white swan ships.

Alqualondë.

~oOo~

I go to Arafinwë’s bedside with a smile painted onto my face.

His eyes are closed, his face turned into his pillow, but he is awake. I hear the change in his breathing as he listens to my movement around the room. In my quivering hands are the papers that Anairë has given me and my notes.

“Arafinwë,” I say. “There are some things that I must tell you.”

His eyelashes flutter, but his eyes do not open.

“The city … the city is not well, Arafinwë. With the light gone, we are having trouble with our harvests.”

He takes a deep, shuddering breath. His fist contracts on the bedclothes, his knuckles whitening.

“The people are hungry, Arafinwë. We must--" I place my hand on his shoulder, to feel the minute trembling of his body. His skin is hot, as though with fever. “We must go to Alqualondë and beg for their forgiveness. You must ask for the mercy of the Valar. We must bring food to the people.”

Slowly, his eyes open, and he lifts his head from the pillow. He does not so much as glance at me as he grabs the pillow in his fist and presses it over his head, blocking the sound of my voice.

~oOo~

Anairë and I work until my eyes ache from squinting at papers in the darkness, until my shoulders throb with the strain of sitting motionless for so long. She writes the letters, for her handwriting is better than mine. The Teleri do not prize letters as do the Noldor. But it is hard to write without light; impossible to see the ink in the darkness, and at times, she dips the quill too deeply into the well or not deeply enough, without knowing it, and a page is ruined, and she must start anew.

And Arafinwë sleeps.

We write that Arafinwë is ill, and we are taking the rule in his stead, until he recovers enough to handle his obligations. We write and rewrite our letters--one to my father and one to Manwë--groping blindly for the thin line between pleading and dignity. I do not even know what time it is; buried as we are in the depths of my house, we cannot hear the noise from the streets except once, when there comes the fearful sound of shouting and the terrified whinnying of a horse and the sound of wood shattering upon stone. Anairë and I sit with our arms around each other, waiting for the inevitable moment when the door will break open and the desperate people of the city will surge inside, to take what they can from us. But that sound never comes.

With Anairë remains a single loyal handmaid, and on occasion, she brings up a meal: tepid mushroom soup with hard, stale crusts of bread; old wizened potatoes that have begun to sprout new plants from the eyes, which she has carved out dutifully, leaving the potatoes pitted with craters. The flesh is dark and tasteless. I begin to add salt but Anairë tells me not to: Animals have begun dying in the streams, having starved, and the water is poisoned.

“We must wait for rain, and we cannot exacerbate our thirst for hedonics alone,” she says tenderly, calling to her girl: “Bring the last bit of butter for my sister, if you would.”

I weep. Anairë catches my tears with her napkin so that they do not fall into my potatoes.

~oOo~

Arafinwë will not eat, but it is just as well. There is not much left to give him.

I wrap his meals and open the door and creep carefully into the streets. Beneath my cloak, hidden with greater shame than I hide the private parts of my body, I wear his sword.

People huddle around fires; I see something that looks like a dog turning on a spit made from a shattered broom, and I kneel, swallowing desperately, for to vomit would waste a good meal on the gutter.

There is a young woman nursing a skinny, fussy baby at her breast; her eyes are much too large in her face. I take her to an alley, away from the hungry eyes of two large men who make no secret of staring at us, blades worn openly at their hips, reddened menacingly with the glow of the flames. The girl kneels in the alley and stuffs the moldy bread into her mouth with trembling fingers while I hold her screaming infant, a trickle of milk more like water dribbling from his mouth. It has been a long time since I have held a newborn infant, but I know that I should not be able to feel his bones as I do. I cradle him with one arm; the other hand rests on the hilt of Arafinwë’s sword. My eyes flicker constantly toward the entranceway of the alley. The girl eats the wizened apple that I have wrapped with the bread, even eating the seeds and the core, suppressing a burp and swallowing it, as though afraid of losing even that little bit of nourishment to the air.

“My Queen.” She takes my hand that rests on the sword and kisses it with thin, dry lips. “My Queen …” Her tears patter against my skin. Sudden disgust and loathing for myself rises unbidden in my bosom; again suppressing the urge to vomit, I hand back to her the caterwauling infant, tearing my hand from hers, and race from the alley, making it to the gutter before my supper returns in painful heaves, undigested gobs of bread and apple mingling with the rotted leaves and filth.

There is an eager scamper of footsteps behind me.

I flee the street and do not look back to see the fate of my regurgitated dinner.

~oOo~

I will leave for Alqualondë the next morning, on Anairë’s horse, and so it is important that I sleep tonight. I go to Findaráto’s bedroom, from where my husband refuses to move. Gone is the fresh, warm smell of my son; the room smells sour, like sickness. Still, he is my husband; I love him. Guilt drives me to his bed, to wrap my arms around his pale, wasting body and press my face into his hair, once as soft as silk but now dry and crackling beneath the meager pressure of my cheek.

His breathing is shallow; his eyes crusted shut with mucus. He moves from the bed only to relieve himself--sometimes, lately, not even then. Not that there is much for him to excrete: He won’t eat and laps only weakly at the water that I dab onto his lips with a washrag. His belly has caved in on itself; it feels as though I could fit my fist underneath of his ribs and place my hand against his weakly beating heart. Perhaps I would understand, then, why he rode so far and faced so much only to choose this slow and gruesome death.

I am making a choice, with each day that I do not seek a healer, I realize: I am choosing to let my husband die. Seeking a healer--knowing that most of them have left with Nolofinwë and Fëanáro’s people--would take hours from the time I spend in counsel with Anairë. I haven’t even had the time for a bath or to wash my teeth in many days--but neither has she, and we politely ignore the reek of the other’s body. Furthermore, bringing a healer here--should I find one--to the palace, would take her from the people of the city who need her more. Who do not choose their condition, as does Arafinwë.

I speak to Arafinwë, uncertain as to whether he can even hear me. I tell him of my journey tomorrow, to Alqualondë. I tell him that I will kneel before my father and beg forgiveness for our people, beg that we ally as we once did, so long ago, that they help us in this time of need. I will plead to Manwë on his behalf, if I can, on the behalf of the Noldor.

I tell him these things, in a frantic whisper. My hand presses his heart; I feel it beat faster with my words.

“So you hear,” I whisper. “You do hear me: Then, why, I must ask? Why do you choose this fate?”

He draws a shuddering breath. I have lost hope.

These words he does not speak, but they seep into my thoughts. Images flicker across my mind, of the days of Light, of our children playing in the garden, of Findaráto on a dark road, turning to look back, his beautiful gray eyes very bright, even in the darkness, but then he turns away, and walks briskly to catch up with his brothers.

“There is still hope, Arafinwë. The Noldor need not fall into ruin. Our children have gone, yes, but that is no reason to let so many more suffer. Please. Don’t you see? Others’ children will die by your inaction. Tomorrow, I will ride to Alqualondë. Why will you not eat, gain your strength? And you shall ride to Taniquetil, to kneel before the Valar and plead for their mercy, for their aid.”

Roughly, I roll him onto his back. His eyes are opened to slits, contemplating me as I loom over him.

Fëanáro was right. And if I go to the Valar, and they won’t help? If I die, they cannot withhold their aid from the innocent for harboring a rebel in their midst. I only wanted to say farewell to you …

I flop back onto the bed beside him. I rest my chin on the sharp boniness of his shoulder; tenderly, I stroke his cheek. “It need not be that way,” I whisper fervently, and his hand rises and weakly clasps mine. He turns his head and places his lips against my forehead.

“You are a fool, Arafinwë.
You will leave me with this burden? Because of your pride? Your fear? If they reject you, then take the road behind our children. Leave the city. But you must try.
Perhaps they do not know the condition of our city, busy as they are in Alqualondë. Because you stupid, proud Noldor--" tears burble in my voice--“in your stupid pride, you will not humble yourselves to ask for help. This is about your pride, Arafinwë. Do not kid yourself. Do not kid me. I have not lived among you and your foolish brothers for so long not to know that.”

He sighs. His bony fingers weakly caress my wrist. “That is not it, Eärwen,” he whispers.

I am so shocked at hearing his voice, the first time in days, that I twitch. He sniffs, the closest to a laugh that I have heard since he arrived back home.

“You and Anairë,” he says quietly, “will lead the Noldor better than I ever could. I was born to the wrong father. I am no king.”

“You have no choice in that, Arafinwë. Eru chose your father. Are you suggesting that Eru made a wrong choice in this?” He is silent; relentlessly, I continue in a fierce whisper. “How unlike you--how deplorable--to choose death rather than the destiny Eru made for you!”

“It is not easy, Eärwen,” he says.

I drive my fists into the mattress. “You speak to me of what is not easy? Do you think that it has been any easier for me? For Anairë? You are not the only one who has lost your children--and she has also lost her husband! And we were not born the son of a king. It is not our place to rule the Noldor. I am not even a Noldo! They do not care to listen to me. They want to hear from you, but you are lingering here in your selfish sorrow while the city collapses around you! And you leave me to sweep up your mess, when I belong with my people! Not yours!”

He is trembling. His heart is pounding beneath my hand; his breath is short. “What would you have me do?” he asks weakly.

“I would have you eat the food I bring you. I would have you leave the bed and not piss yourself like a child. I would have you--I would have you be a husband again. I have been so alone, so afraid. What kind of marriage do we have if we cannot lend our strength to each other, in times like these? I cannot stand alone, Arafinwë.”

His lips touch mine, but it is not a kiss. He slumps in my arms; his eyes fall shut.

And the weight of the mission falls on me.