Sea Wing by Himring

Chapter 1

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I

Celebrindal, they call her, Silver-foot—and her white ankles are the part of her that I see most clearly, close by, as she walks swiftly past the pallet that I cannot stir from, day-in, day-out. She enters the healers’ house smiling, and the smile seems to be a gift she brings in from outside, like the fruit in the basket on her arm, pears and apples and grapes. The fruit is not for me, but the smile is for everyone. It makes me think of sunshine and a light spring breeze.

It is almost like love, that silent wrenching that I feel inside, as I see her come in, smile and pass me by. I used to have no time to wonder about love; I was much too occupied worrying where the next meal was coming from—or the next beating.  Now I have plenty of time to think about such things, but, mostly, thinking is all I can do. Even lifting my hand or turning my head is beginning to require real effort. And I get few chances to talk to people, even less so since they had to move me a little out of the way, into a corner by myself, because the stink of my wound was beginning to bother the other patients.

It could just be another way my body is giving up on me, another embarrassing bodily process out of control, yet another leakage that needs to be cleaned up by others, because I can no longer do so myself. I was so ashamed at first. I’d been used to doing things for people, not having things done for me—and certainly not anything as private as having my bottom wiped. Not since I was the age of three!

But they are good people, the healers and nurses. Never a complaint, never a grudge at all the work I am making for them—and some of it hard and so very unpleasant. Yet I am a stranger, not kin to them, and I will never be able to pay them back or do anything for them in return at all. They have acknowledged now, reluctantly, that I am going to die. You would think they would be impatient for me to get it over and done with, but not so; indeed one of the healers frowned most fiercely when I mentioned it to him.  ‘Almost still a child!’, I heard him say angrily to the others. They are elves; I guess they see things differently.

I suppose it could be a form of envy. Idril is so beautiful, so strong—so alive! She moves so effortlessly that it seems any moment she might begin to dance, with that basketful of fruit on her arm. She does not; after all this is a house for the sick.

Of course it is not love.  For what have I to do with Idril Celebrindal? She is the Lady of Gondolin! She comes to visit the wounded and ailing of Gondolin that lie abed in this house. She knows their names.  She does not know mine. I do not make the mistake that any of those smiles are directed at me personally; I doubt whether she has ever even really seen me. But she is generous, the way a princess ought to be. Her light shines on all of us.

It does not feel like a bodily affliction. It does not feel like envy. In the face of approaching death, it feels like a last late gift of life.

 

II

 

We had a king like that, too, once. Even after my uncle Sador had died in Turin’s uprising, my mother kept telling me stories about him in secret, stories about our King. He loved his subjects, she said. He would risk his own life to save that of a mere shepherd. He was courteous to everyone, even lowly servants, and showed no favour to the rich or the powerful when he sat in judgement. He was mighty in war; even Glaurung had fled before him. She told me how he used to ride out from Barad Eithel in splendour. Gold gleamed in his raven tresses, and his banner shone above his head in the morning sun, silver and blue.

‘But do they not say he fell in the Great Battle?’, I asked, hesitantly, for I loved those stories.

‘So they would have us believe’, my mother said. ‘But surely even the might of the Dark Foe could not prevent our King from returning to us and defending his people. He is but delayed, but he will come. He will come back to us, you will see!’

‘But even if he survived the battle,’ I argued, almost against my will, ‘will he not be very old by now? It has been years and years since the battle. When Lord Hurin passed through our lands, he was white-haired and broken, changed almost beyond recognition. Will King Fingon have fared any better?’

My mother frowned. It was a sore point with her that none had dared to speak to Lord Hurin when he came. But the death of Aerin, buried under the burning rafters of the house, and of Asgon, hunted down as an outlaw in the hills, had diminished us. Those of Hurin’s household who survived were dispersed, handed over to different owners, and closely watched as potential trouble-makers. My mother had been chambermaid to Aerin, and so she was again, here.

‘No, the King will not be aged or broken’, my mother said, with an air of great certainty. ‘He is an elf, you see, a High Elf from beyond the Western Sea. They live forever; they can endure anything.’

I was not sure I believed her, but it was a good dream to dream. When my back and arms and feet ached from working in the kitchen and stables, when my fingers were chapped and bled, when my belly cramped with hunger, I would dream of the King who loved his subjects. Enough bread for everyone, I dreamed, a warm cloak in the winter and, most of all, no more whippings.

 

III

 

Then came the day when they flogged my mother for a theft she had not committed. That evening, when I returned from gathering brushwood for kindling, I encountered the pitying stares and hushed murmurs of the kitchen thralls. I had barely succeeded in making sense of the fragments of speech that met my ears when I dropped the kindling on the floor where I stood and rushed off to the servants’ hall to find my mother. She lay on her pallet, whimpering piteously, and did not recognize me. My younger brother crouched at her side and wept. The rags and straw of the bedding were soaked with blood.

‘We must fetch a healer to help her’, I whispered, stunned.

‘They have forbidden it,’ sadly answered another chambermaid, who was hovering beside the bed.

I knelt down next to my mother and tried to lift and turn her so that I could see her back.

‘No,’ cried my brother half-hysterically, ‘don’t! Don’t!’

My hands came away sticky and red. The chambermaid took a step backwards. My brother sobbed more loudly. I realized that nobody expected my mother to live.

I turned and walked slowly out into the gathering dark, back into the woods. When I was out of sight of the homestead, I began to run, straight into the black heart of the forest, in the direction of Barad Eithel. Branches whipped my face, briars scratched my shins, but I hardly felt them.

‘Fingon!,’ I screamed. ‘Aran Fingon! Come back and save my mother!’

I almost ran straight into a pine tree, disentangled myself from its branches and ran on.

‘Fingon! You are our King! You have to come back and save my mother!’

I crashed through the undergrowth. The blood sang in my ears.

‘She believes in you! She says you love justice’, I gasped.

I could see nothing at all in the darkness.  I stubbed my toes badly on a large tree root, stumbled into a bush and tumbled flat onto my face.

‘Fingon, Aran Fingon’, I wept into the leaf mould.

He was dead, of course, and could no longer help us. I had known it all along, really. I picked myself up, brushed off bits of dead leaves, and discovered I was thoroughly lost. My headscarf must have been ripped off by a tree branch, for it was gone, and my clothes were torn. No doubt I would be punished for that.

By the time I had found my way back to the homestead, it was dawn and my mother had drawn her last breath without fully regaining consciousness. They told me that the golden bracelet that my mother was supposed to have stolen had been found where the mistress had dropped it, behind her bed.  My brother sat hunched in silence, hugging himself, rocking himself back and forth. I patted his head, but he just went on rocking, taking no notice of my attempts to comfort him.

I went to the well to draw water; I wanted to wash my mother’s body before burial. As I bent to lift the pail off the hook of the well rope, the mistress of the house passed right in front of me. She did not speak to me. I thought that surely she was ashamed of having had my mother killed for no reason whatsoever, that it was shame that did not allow her to speak, and so I looked up to see. I felt I should give her the chance to be seen to be ashamed. But she was not. I looked straight into her self-satisfied face, and it was obvious she simply did not care at all.

It was then that I decided that no more good would come to Dor-lomin, ever again.  Fingon and Hurin were lost and dead, and Aerin was dead and Asgon and Sador, and now so was my mother. In the night after my mother’s burial, I stole as much food as I could, took my brother by the hand and led him off towards Amon Darthir, trying to find the way south.

 

IV

 

I think perhaps it was near the place that used to be Nargothrond that the orcs spotted us. There were abandoned orchards there, full of over-ripe apples and plums that nobody had picked. I was overjoyed, as I thought we would be able to eat our fill, after weeks of starvation, and take some away with us, too. Perhaps we were a little careless—or we just ran out of luck.

I don’t know how we got away. We shouldn’t have, really; our legs had been trembling with hunger and fatigue even as we walked. But panic lent us strength, we ran and ran and ran, and suddenly there were no more orcs—except that one of the arrows they had fired after us had hit me in the arm.

The healers say that if it had only been gangrene, I might just have lost the arm, but the arrow was poisoned, too. By the time we reached the Havens, the poison had been in my body for too long to do much about it. Now the fever comes and goes and, each time it comes, it burns away a little more of my strength.

Even if King Fingon had not died, he would not have been able to save my mother, I know that now. Lady Idril cannot save her people either. In the inner room of the house lie the wounded people of Gondolin. Some are in torment because, like me, they were pierced by the poisoned weapons of orcs ; others were burnt by the thong of a Balrog’s whip. Others show no sign of outward harm; they are fading because they cannot bear the horrors they saw during the fall of Gondolin and because they are deep in mourning for their beloved city or for their lost kin.

Lady Idril never forgets to smile at everyone before she goes in. She never remembers to smile at anyone when she leaves. Her step is heavier when she goes, although her burden of fruit is left behind.

She will not be coming much longer, I hear. The gossip of the sick-room says that the good ship Earrame is almost ready to sail. I have asked my brother to carry me out to see her go, when she leaves. He has promised to do so, and the healers have reluctantly given their consent.

 

V

 

What a magnificent ship she is! Her sails are, in truth, like the great wings of an unimaginable sea bird. My brother admires her even more than I do.

My brother, who knows that I am dying but refuses to admit it, thinks that we are here, together, because I hope that her mission will be successful. He thinks that I hope that Tuor and Idril will manage to persuade the Valar to aid us against Morgoth. My brother is filling out nicely, growing strong on the good food the kind people of the Havens freely give him. He walks straighter and no longer flinches when others approach, as if fearing to be struck.

I want my brother to have things to hope for when I die, so I smile and agree and do not tell him I do not understand this business about the Valar. When I was first taught about them, I was told that they could hear us wherever we were. Now it seems that they are so deaf that they will not hear our cries for help unless we go and shout them in their ears. Was I wasting my time praying to them before?  Or, if they have simply been refusing to listen to us, why would they change their minds now?

Lady Idril has arrived, with Earendil and Elwing and other elves of Gondolin. Lord Tuor emerges from the ship, ready to hand Lady Idril up the gangway. They say he was one of us, once. He does not look it. There may be a few silver threads in his hair, a few wrinkles around his eyes, but it is difficult to imagine he could ever have been a thrall, so lordly is his bearing. It is good to see how he cherishes Idril, though; they pass up the gangway like a pair of young lovers.

Their attendants follow them on board. After a while, Earendil and Elwing return. Lord Earendil’s cheeks gleam wet with tears. The gangway is hauled up; the ship is ready to leave.  Her sails are hoisted to catch the breeze, and she begins slowly to move out into the waters of the bay. Gradually, the crowd begins to disperse.

‘Do not let us leave yet,’ I plead with my brother.

He tries to arrange me more comfortably against his chest. We stay and watch the ship grow smaller and smaller as she sails into the West. Then she disappears on the horizon. I hope my lady Idril is going home, back to the country where the light comes from, the place where she was born and that King Fingon also hailed from, they say.

Meanwhile, the salty breeze feels pleasant on my face. My fever has abated again, but my limbs feel very heavy. The waves lap against the quay; they seem to be murmuring a song about sleep.

And I tell my brother: ‘I am glad we made it to the sea.’

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Chapter End Notes

The way Tuor's decision to set sail is described in the published Sillmarillion sounds to me, as if Tuor had felt the onset of a raging midlife crisis and discovered that it was always his ambition to go on a holiday cruise in the Bermuda Triangle. (I know, my lack of reverence shows that I don't properly understand Sea Longing.) However, since Tuor sails West and given his earlier association with Voronwe, I assume that he would not have left the refugees of Gondolin in such an unsafe situation (or devoted so much of their resources to ship-building), if the official reason for his departure hadn't been to seek the help of the Valar. Others in fanon have made the same assumption, I know, although I'm not sure whether it is confirmed anywhere in HoME (in at least one version, though, Tuor ends up in Tol Eressea).

"Sea Wing" is the published translation of the name of Tuor's ship, Earrame, although in an earlier version it translates as "Eagle's Pinion".