The House that Fingon Built by Himring

Chapter 2

Years of the Trees

‘Here!’, I said, almost defiantly, and jabbed my finger at a blank space on the map that would eventually turn out to be slap in the middle of the cow pastures of Brithombar. ‘That is where I am going to rule!’

I was afraid you would laugh; it was so very unrealistic, a mere daydream. But you smiled at me and made it our next big educational project.  And so, for about a year, we designed Dream City, without ever quite discussing whether it was just a theoretical exercise or something more than that.

We enthusiastically revised the law code, about four or five times. We drew architectural plans and sketched views from the front and the side of every kind of building, starting with the town hall and the court of justice, all the way down to the public conveniences and the cattle troughs.  We modelled the economy of my future kingdom in three different ways, based on different hypotheses about the physical environment that of course eventually turned out to be completely wrong—all of them.

I was just musing that I might have to readjust my ideas about agriculture just a bit, when you regretfully cleared your throat and brought to my attention that after all my kingdom lay in Middle-Earth.

‘What of it?’, I asked.

I hadn’t yet, you pointed out to me rather hesitantly, spent a single thought on defence.

I remember the regretful expression on your face, as you began cataloguing what you knew of the dangers of Middle-Earth for me. You were sitting to my left, the table between us covered in sheets of paper of various sizes and, among them, tottering stacks of books—half a research library, not that there was any systematic description of Middle-Earth or Beleriand available in Tirion then. Most of those who had marched from Cuivienen had been only too glad to leave those places behind.

I was so much in awe of your greater experience and your superior knowledge, so grateful to you for encouraging me in what Father would at best have regarded as an absurd whim, at worst as blackest ingratitude. I did not see then that you, too, were young and happy to dream of a freedom for me that you could not quite envisage for yourself even in theory. And I never had spelled out to myself that if I ever ruled any city in Beleriand, the eldest son and heir of Feanor would hardly live next door to me...

‘No, look’, you said to me, ‘you have been misled by all those blank spaces and by the different scale of the map. It is a lot farther across Beleriand, from the Blue Mountains to the Sea, than from Tirion to Alqualonde.’

‘Ah, yes, of course’, I said intelligently—and never felt a premonition how I would one day come to curse that distance, those endless leagues across Anfauglith.