The Work of Small Hands by Dawn Felagund

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Máhanaxar

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They are going to Tirion, but my destination is a different one. I cannot ask my people to sustain the Noldor forever. The Valar need to turn their sights back to us, to lend their aid in restoring our city in such a way that we can survive, even if the darkness persists.

That is a strange and difficult thought, I realize, as we pass through Calcirya and the lights of Valmar come into view upon the plain. It is impossible to imagine this darkness lasting forever. In my mind, I might wake up tomorrow to Light. As a people who has weathered so much already, the death of hope in the hearts of the Eldar will signal the beginning of our fading. But it is as I told my father: Our lives upon Arda have just begun. We are long from that point. And so, with tears yet upon my face and grief sore within my heart, still I hope. Still I hope.

We pause to rest at the first of the towns. The Teleri give food to all who ask, and many do. The light-bearers, as we have all come to know them, describe how to dry and preserve what is given. And when they depart again, halfway now to Tirion, I follow them no further.

I go to Taniquetil, to Máhanaxar, to beg the Valar for aid for my husband's people.

"Have they not become your people too?" I ask myself out loud as I begin the slow uphill trek from the town to Valmar, a stout walking stick in one hand and, swinging in the other, a lantern that was granted to me by one of the light-bearers; a lantern that had once been darkened in memory of her husband, I know. Now it has flared anew, a tiny light creeping through the dark. "After all of this, you would name your actions only charity and good favor?"

"No," I answer myself. My breathing is loud and labored, but I have no time to feel the exhaustion heavy as lead in the marrow of my bones. Through a haze of exhaustion, Valmar blurs into a smear of light before me, growing nearer with each step that I take. "I--" But I stop there, for I have no good answer. Not for the first time, the thought comes to mind that I have a home no longer. My home was filled with Light and the voices of my children. "What else should I do with my life?" I ask aloud, and my voice is watery and strained. "My children are gone, and Arafinwë is dying, or maybe dead." I walk harder up the road. Valmar shimmers nearer, filling my sights with light.

"It is not fair," I say, continuing my conversation with myself as I walk. My voice is thick with tears: tears of exhaustion and frustration and, yes, grief. Grief, I know, will be a companion yet through all of the days of my endless life. "It is not fair that my people were murdered. It is not fair that I lost my family for the actions--the madness--of Fëanáro." I fall silent and let my thoughts wander to the lonely sound of my footsteps crunching up the path to Valmar. It is true: that statement of injustice. It is not fair. And I know that this would serve perfectly well as an excuse to turn away or to care no longer what becomes of the remaining years of my life or to take Arafinwë's path and die of the grief in my heart. Or even to rest beside the road for a while and think not of the Noldor and the children that might perish of hunger while I tarry. With the darkness upon us, none would question me if I did these things.

"But a lot of things aren't fair," I add. I stride harder. "It is not fair that the Noldorin King was slain. It is not fair that Melkor was released and given leave to spread his lies. It is not fair that Fëanáro--with the single-minded grief of a child mourning his mother--was placed such that he became the soil in which they would grow in the first. It is not fair that Míriel Þerindë died, or that Arda was Marred; any number of things were not--are not--fair."

And each of these injustices, I know, is a preface to more injustice done in the name of hurt and grief and anger, all emotions very justified, but the acts? The acts are those of weak hearts, I know now. The realization falls heavy upon me, and I know that for all of his bold words, Fëanáro was not strong enough for forgiveness or to rise above those burdens placed upon him. Nay, he wallowed in them.

"Not me," I say in a paper-thin voice trumped easily by the crunch of my aching feet against my endless road. In these days of darkness, it is not as Fëanáro's oath, spoken rashly and loudly in a circle of flame; there are none present to hear my words, and perhaps none shall make me keep them.

But I stride harder.

~oOo~

Valmar is a familiar place, but in the dark, it is like meeting a friend from childhood and discovering that she has aged and bears the torment of years, and though her face is recognizable, I no longer know her. Valmar of many bells, it was once called, for at every mark of the hour, each house tolled a bell, and the sound of bells rippled across the city, and they chimed in patterns and chords borne of chance yet no less beautiful for it, and each hour brought a song upon the city that was new and, seemingly, more beautiful than the last. The Vanyar have ever defined "purpose" differently than the Teleri and the Noldor, both of whom tend to act only with a destination in their sights and would not be content to, each hour, set aside their nets and their tools and their bright trinkets to simply toll a bell and set the city alight with music.

In the darkness, I suspect, the Vanyar of Valmar have lost their purpose, for in my long climb up the road, not once do I hear the tolling of a bell.

At the gates, I am met only by a young, reluctant guard who looks shamed for the armor he wears and the sword at his side. He hastens me through the gates without question. "My Princess, it is just that we do not know--" and I shush him and ask in a voice that I try to make strong, would he escort me to Máhanaxar?

The city is dark and silent, and the thought comes to me of the rare days where--by the slow hand of Uinen, we are told--Ossë's mischief is quelled and the sea lies in peace. But no, I realize: It is more as though the sea has dried up, and all of that power and passion and capacity for joy simply gone, disappeared. That is Valmar this day. We pass, on occasion, one of the citizens in the street, and he speaks greetings with the soulless voice of habit. As though he hears my thoughts, the guard says that "Many have gone to your people to--" and there he stops, for he does not need to speak of the healing and the comfort that the Vanyar offer the Teleri; not to me, who knows it too well.

"And the bells?" I ask.

"Oh, they would make sound, if summoned, I am sure," he says. "But it is as if we cannot lift our arms to ring them."

Arafinwë and I were married here, as is tradition for Eldarin royalty, in Máhanaxar before the Valar. We walked these same streets with our procession toward the western gates, and all was festooned with flowers and the bells tolled all the while. It is a different man at my arm this time, and a different purpose.

As we approach the broad avenue that issues from the western gate, the guard tightens his grip on my arm and we stop in the street. He will not meet my eyes. "It is hard to see--" he begins and falters.

After several awkward ticks pass in silence, I offer, "In the dark?"

"No." He shakes his head so that his armor rattles; it is ill-fitted upon him, I see, without surprise. "It is hard to see … them. The Trees. Like they are. Dead," and he lifts his face at last, and the meager light of candles in the windows of the houses that line the street swims and multiplies itself in the unshed tears in his eyes.

I had not thought of that. When Arafinwë and I walked her to be wed, the Mingling was nigh: the symbolism, Finwë said, of the union of silver and gold, Teler and Noldo-Vanya. The fiercest fire of both Lights was quelled, yet still my breath caught in my throat and my footsteps faltered to see them, especially where their branches have come to touch and entwine in the middle, and the irrational thought comes upon me then that one held the hand of the other as together they died, and I think of Arafinwë alone in Tirion with only blankets scented of our son to clutch as he sighs his final breath.

Oh, Arafinwë! That the day of our wedding--our love, the union of our people, the joy of all of Valinor--has come to this!

And though I doubt my own words, I touch the tears from the young guard's eyes with a mother's hand, and I assure him, "I am strong."

So we walk on.

The western gates are open, for who would come here in malice? The damage has been done. There is Ezellohar, the color of charcoal without light to reveal its verdant splendor, and the broad plain around it where the Vanyar used to come and all of us brought our children, when chance took us to Valmar. The hill used to be covered with grass as thick and luxuriant as a carpet and scattered with blossoms of every hue and the Light … the Light was like sinking into a soft bed at the end of a wearying day; the Light was refreshing like the deepest sleep sparkled with dreams of delight from which one never wants to awaken … yet it was wakefulness, the Light. It brought bliss into life beyond what anyone could imagine.

At first, I keep my eyes fixed on the hill as we pass, but my gaze is shortly compelled upward. I have looked on the face of my brother in death, I think, and consigned my husband to the same. How can this be worse? Yet as my gaze reaches the Trees, it is. They twist, clots of shadow, against an already blackened sky. Even the meager starlight cannot gild their branches, and I know that no life will ever arise from them again. Light--and with it hope--is caught in the grasp of Melkor.

So much wasted! I realize: so much light turned to darkness! So much hope squandered in folly!

My breathing is very loud, and I know my escort must hear it. But I suppress the urge to cry out. I look away. I look back at our feet, striding one beside the other in the corona of light from the lantern I still carry. In the periphery of my vision is a shadow that I know is the husks of the Trees: beside us, now behind us. Yet my breathing does not ease and my knuckles have gone white upon the arm of my escort.

"I would like to tell you that it becomes easier with each passing," he whispers. "But it does not. I wonder sometimes: Why is it that it still hurts so badly? So many months have passed--even in the dark, I know they must have!--since the Light was taken and yet--" From the corner of my eye, I catch him glance at me. Perhaps he remembers who he escorts and checks himself, for his next words come, barely audible: "I wonder sometimes how we can survive with this hurt forever," and I have no answers to give to that.

~oOo~

Máhanaxar should be fair-wrought, I used to think, carved from alabaster and graced with gold. If anyplace in Valinor deserved that, then it was the Ring of the Valar, where so much has been decided; where, indeed, the history of my people--the Eldar--began. Yet it is not. It is a ring of stones as humble as a Moriquendi shrine in the forest, each Vala having brought a stone from a different place upon Arda, and each stone worn by the slow caress of time into a throne that perfectly fits the one who sits upon it until she or he seems sprung from the stone itself and made of the same substance as the earth. It is not shaped by chisels but by time, guided only by purpose. It is not fair-wrought and yet it is more beautiful than one can imagine.

I have been here only once before: on the day that Arafinwë and I spoke the Name before all of the Valar and became husband and wife. Even a princess by blood and marriage of all three kindreds, I was never important enough to be invited here again.

It is unguarded. My escort leaves me at the gate, two trees arched low across the path. Dew-laden leaves once bathed one's forehead of the sweat brought forth by Laurelin's heat and dusted one's shoulders with one thousand blossoms no larger than the head of a pin and in perpetual bloom. No longer. The leaves of the trees have dried and curled upon themselves in the absence of Light. Dead petals whisper as they are crushed beneath my feet. Perhaps Yavanna could save them, but there are more important things to be done now. I come to do one of them.

In enter Máhanaxar for only the second time of my life: the mind of the world, I heard it called once by one of the Vanyar, steeped in silence yet sizzling with thoughts crackling amid the dark spaces between the thrones of the Valar.

Once, Arafinwë and I went with his father to meet Finwë's people in the far south of Aman where the land is yet restive and largely barren. There, they pull sapphires from the earth that are the size of my fist and contain deep within the shapes of stars: tokens of the ancient friendship of Varda and Aulë, hidden in the earth at its shaping. Standing in that place--most like to Arda at its beginnings than anywhere else in the world, it is said--there was a deep silence and the feeling of something portentous, of something going on beneath my awareness but soon to reveal itself. Then the earth shifted, a mild feeling like the transference of weight from one foot to the other. And yet the silence--and the feeling--endured.

That is Máhanaxar this day.

At my wedding, in Máhanaxar, the air was noisy with horns and bells and voices lifted in song. But now--now, it is different, and not just on account of the darkness. Now, there is the same feeling as that day in the south of Aman, right before the earth moved. There is the feeling of something much bigger than me doing its slow work and come patiently to fruition. Only I cannot perceive it.

Each Vala sits upon his or her throne, even Ulmo, who prefers the company of my people on the coast to the pomp of Valmar. Yet no voice ripples the silence, and it is as Fëanáro is rumored to have said in his madness to the herald of Manwë: that the Valar sit in idle grief, assailed by impotence. Yet it is not. I feel their voices as a prickling upon my arms and a mutter in my heart.

"Eärwen of Alqualondë." The voice of Yavanna used to make trees sprout from rocks and birds wing suddenly from the empty air. Now, it is wearied. Now, it has done too much. She is still finite, I realize, even though she is Valie. There is not enough of her to sustain a world of Light gone suddenly to darkness, though she is exhausting herself in the attempt.

I bow low before them all. They are shadows piled upon the rocks on which they sit, betrayed only by the sparks of their eyes. For a moment, my body is buoyed, much in the way of a ship when a whale glides, silent and out of sight, close beneath. I know that, beneath my awareness, they speak of what to do with me.

"Eärwen of Alqualondë," says Yavanna again, "if you have come to seek our counsel, then we will let you hear our voices, if you would give your consent."

I nod.

Then the dark is alive with sound and color, even scent and sensation coursing the length of my body, all fused into a single perception that defies anything that can be described by any single sense alone: the voices of the Valar, those that exist beneath words and the perceptions of even the keenest of the Eldar. There is a scarlet hiss of alarm--that is me!--and then a pale blue ribbon of song, meandering drowsily upon a warm breeze, a single low note as one sustained upon our largest flutes: Irmo of Lórien.

Do not be alarmed, Child. His voice comes not as words but as the scent of poppies, for he must have known that I would be frightened by the onslaught of their "voices." But then there is another voice, flashing like the light upon the vertical-slitted pupils of a serpent hiding in the grass, thinking always of utility before mercy: Námo of Mandos. Yes. We have been expecting you. His words are oily and cold. A flickering tongue tastes my thoughts. His perceptions are keen as prescience and, next that I know, my thoughts are flayed before him, and I need not even speak my purpose before he knows it.

It is all there: the panic and the desperation, biting and bright, all underlain with the endless ache of grief. I feel Yavanna's thoughts in a burst of green and then an answering riot of colors like fireworks the Maiar of Aulë used to put up over the eastern sky to delight the children of Alqualondë. I taste tears and the angry, choking tang of metal at the back of my throat. There is a feeling of one launching himself from a chair with his hands; the feel of palms upturned in capitulation, yet the Valar remained seated, shadows except for the glimmer of their eyes. I hear a rain of notes upon a harp that is Nienna pleading for mercy for the Noldor and an answering flash from the serpent's eyes as he strikes this time: an ache of poison delivered deep into the flesh. The same you begged for Melkor. The image of the darkened Trees, seared into my sights; a scream of grief. Then, atop it all, the roar of a gale strong enough to rend even the sturdiest-woven sails and--

Then I am thrust above it, and all is silent.

The Valar sit facing each other in the dark, and they might be stones but for the sparkle of their eyes.

A Maia handmaiden stands touching my arm. "Queen Eärwen? They will have an answer for you on the morrow," and I follow her touch from the circle of stones, glancing back to find only darkness and silence, though the smalls hairs at the back of my neck stand on end and my heart will not be stilled.

~oOo~

I am given a room at the house of Ossë and Uinen, a house that is as ever little-used but familiar from my childhood, for my family stayed here during festivals. It is only after I let the door to my chambers close upon the last of the handmaiden's inquiries that I realize that I hadn't even noticed--much less lamented--how the house has changed in the dark. In the weariness of grief, I realize, I am becoming acclimated.

I am too wearied to feel hunger or thirst or even the filth of my long-unwashed flesh, and so I have turned down all of the comforts offered to me to stretch across the bed without even removing my shoes. It has been many days since I last rested, much less in the comfort of a bed, and it feels strange to have the weight off of my feet without having to shift to avoid the discomfort of rocks. That is my last thought before the dreams of Estë take me deep.

When next I awaken, it is sudden and to find the handmaiden standing at the foot of my bed. Someone has drawn a blanket across my slumbering body that has all the weight of sea foam and retains its blissful coolness, even where it rests against my body. My shoes are aligned neatly beside the bed. "My Lady Eärwen," says the handmaiden, bowing slightly. "The Valar have summoned you to Máhanaxar."

My heart lurches in my chest.

"They have an answer to give you, my lady."

Weakly, I nod. I force a smile, but it feels strained even to me and probably looks more like a grimace to the handmaiden. I realize that this is the moment for which I have strived--Anairë and I have strived. I think of her in Tirion. I wonder, what passes in that once-fair city? I imagine the Valar descending upon it in grace and light, Yavanna restoring the crops and the orchards with a touch. I remember the comforting ribbon of Irmo's thoughts and wish the same bestowed upon the grieving. And Aulë … may Aulë restore their purposes! I think of Anairë's Lightmaker's Guild, hampered by the incompetence of our untrained hands, coming to fruition. Let them! I beg silently. Let them not forsake us!

But my darkened heart knows differently.

Máhanaxar is, as ever, silent. The Maia handmaiden leaves me at its center and disappears with a breath behind me. I bow low. My knees tremble. Confronted with his father's poise, Arafinwë once laughed, "I am too nervous to ever be a king!" Finwë met all news, both good and bad, with a slow nod and a steady gaze; it is said that even word of the exile of his favorite son earned no more than that. And meeting the doubts of Arafinwë the same, he said, "Eru made us well, Arafinwë, for he put our hearts inside the secret darkness of our bodies, where they may pound themselves into a fury of terror or rage, and none ever need know." Smiling, then, for it was a futile question: Arafinwë would never be king.

I think on his words, but they are useless here. The Valar know. I see by the spark in Námo's green eyes that he knows how my heart races. I see by the pity in Irmo's and the renewed tears in Nienna's that they would save me from my terror, if they could. Yavanna's face is placid; Ulmo's full of angry righteousness; Aulë's worn by grief. Manwë is, as ever, inscrutable. But it is Varda who speaks.

"Yours is the first word we have received from the remaining Noldor," she says at last. Her voice is firm yet not lacking utterly in tenderness. Today, I will not be trusted into the midst of their thoughts, nor they into mine, though I sense their unspoken words shimmering in the air around me. "Our griefs here and in Alqualondë have led us to believe that the tithe remaining Noldor survived and persisted in the same stubborn vein as that people has always done. We see now that we were wrong in that assumption.

"Yet we would know of you, Eärwen: Wherefore do you stand in the place of the Noldorin King? It is not the place of a wife of a low-born prince to beg aid in the midst of Máhanaxar, and we wonder: Do the Noldor, in fact, want our aid? And if they do, then why do they trust the humbling task of asking it to a princess not even of their people?"

"They do," I whisper. "They do, but Arafinwë--"

"The third son of Finwë turned aside after the kinslaying at Alqualondë." It is Námo's voice now, and he does not bother with fair words or kindness. All is spoken as a statement of fact, for it is: He has been burdened with sights beyond those of any on Arda. "Arafinwë breathes even as you stand before us in his place," and I gasp, a heart I thought resigned to his death quivering suddenly with new hope.

Arafinwë lives!

"Yes, Eärwen, your husband lives. He lives, and you are here? Why?"

But he knows why. Green eyes kindled in the dark, his robes seemingly made of the same marble as the throne upon which he sits, he knows all that passes and has passed, and much of what will come to pass as well. He even knew--this realization settles upon me with the weight of a stone when the flash of his eyes meet mine--the suffering of those who remain among the Noldor. He watched us starve and strive against each other in the streets for the remains of a trampled plum. He knew, and yet he waited. Why?

My thoughts written plain across the dark heart of Máhanaxar, he answers, "For the King to come forth, Eärwen. The King."

Námo never shouts, yet his voice fills Máhanaxar as high as the dark, star-scattered sky above it. Nienna begins to softly weep. Ulmo leans forward upon a throne shaped of the porous rock that lies beside the sea, hands lifted and pleading. "Now …"

"You are not the King of the Noldor, Eärwen of Alqualondë," says Námo. "You are not and never shall you be. And so the rights of a king are not yours, and that includes begging the Valar for the aid of the Noldorin people. That right belongs solely to the King Arafinwë son of Finwë, third-born among Noldorin princes. Varda my kinswoman spoke truthfully that the pride of the Noldor, as ever, keeps from them what we would gladly give. The foolish pride of your husband who would sooner die than atone for the deeds of his people is why you stand here, no matter the noble cause you believe that you pursue.

"None shall adequately lead the Noldor until their King comes forth to beg for both forgiveness and aid, no matter the purity of her intentions. And that is our word."

With the same finality as a boulder rolled in place across a path, our hopes are no more. Tears fill my eyes, and Máhanaxar becomes a blur of blackness. I think of Finwë and his steady fortitude. Our hearts are not just inside of us! I think. Námo is right that I am no king. My heart is in many places, in Alqualondë as well as Tirion, as well as on the earth of this Ring, free to be shattered. As has been done.

At the sight of my tears, Varda says serenely, "You may come again on the morrow, Eärwen of Alqualondë, and make your case before us yet again, for our wills may yet change," and I perceive many long days of my thoughts ripped open and exposed before them, of reliving the myriad griefs building my road here, and I know by Aulë who will not meet my gaze and Manwë who says naught--and most of all, by the merciless green eyes of Námo witnessing my agony, unflinching--that it will make no difference.