Of Draugluin by Huinare

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Nyárë

Lore is given to the werewolves.  A somewhat anomalous and stylized interlude in Draugluin's narrative, answering the Storyteller Challenge.

Additional authorial blathering: This was never where I anticipated this going, but one of the numinous inspirations that have been visiting me lately showed up last night.  Aside from the Storyteller challenge, this was a challenge to myself in various poetic meters which I thoroughly enjoyed.  I've looked these over a few times, but if errrors are found in my meter please feel free to give me a friendly nudge.

Thanks and happy holidays to those who have lent me encouragement in this tale!

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It wasn’t long before I saw that the Nauri would start to question why I no longer left Angband.  How could I tell them I was afraid of my body’s death?  They risked that with every step they took beyond the walls. 

“They will begin to doubt me,” I said to Mairon.

“Not if you come to fill some other function in which it’s reasonable to preserve you from peril.  Instead of instructing the present generation of whelps in hunting or fighting–a job the first generation is already assuming–why not instruct them in the lore of their people, Draugluin?”

“Sir, there is no lore.”

He looked at me for a second as though I was a pitiable case, then grinned and corrected me, “These is as of yet no substantial lore.  You’ll need to provide that.”

“I’m no good with that sort of thing.”

“I daresay you’ve never tried.  Gather the youth in seven hours.  I will tell them the tale I made for their sires, you recall, the time they asked you about death and you had no answers.  They’ve probably heard it before, but I’ve considered some additional details since I first told it.  From there, you shall need to figure out where the mythos goes next.”

Under the dark firs, seated on a boulder while the whelps sprawled over each other and thumped their tails in the red needles, Mairon told this tale.

When the earth was young
And teemed with spirits wondrous
I met a great wolf.

Yet he was troubled
And he told me of his woes
In stately lament.

“Across the wide sea
In a high brazen country
Dwell the oppressors.

And of their number
One spoke a doom on my line
Envying my might.

Jealous Yavanna
Who seeks to rule all creatures
Has cursed my proud race

To a mortal death
By sickness or doting age
Yet all the wise know

No wolf ought to die
Except by valorous hunt
Or boldly fought fray.”

And I was much vexed
By this petty injustice
Against noble ones.

But this greatest wolf
He is named Ancamanar
And cunning he is.

And to me he said
“Yet I will fashion my realm
Beyond earth’s circles

And bring thence my kin
When death flings them from this world
That they may prosper.

Sky their hunting ground
And stars their shining quarry
They shall have their bliss.”

The whelps looked at what sky could be seen through the boughs.  One of the youngest leapt up and batted at the air.  “Don’t be simple,” advised one a bit older, “the stars are too high to reach for now.”

Mairon walked with me further into the trees.  “Tomorrow at this hour, you tell them another one.”

“I’m afraid I have no ideas.”

He looked up at the small patches of sky as he walked.  “If I must give you a hint, recall that rhyme one of the adults made up lately.  The whelps won’t stop singing it, or haven’t you noticed?”

So I went and asked one of them to show me how well she knew the song.  The small wolf tripped over her tail, sat up, sneezed, and began.

Stars on high
Pelts of white
Fell and fleet they run on the sky
Vain is flight
Storm is nigh
Dark clouds gorge on innards of light

I sat by myself in one of the high, narrow courtyards for a long time, with only the wind’s voice for company, until I thought of the story.  When I lay on the boulder, the listeners looked up and twitched their ears and chewed on each other’s fur.  I had never told a story and I was nervous.  Mairon had suggested that, if it helped, I might think of it as giving a report.

Now in the western lands beyond the seas
The enemy called Varda was distressed
To see the pack of Ancamanar hunt
The stars that she had hoarded in the airs.

And sometimes on her mountain tall she stands
And shouts a threat and challenge on the wind.
And then the sky-wolves gather all their might
And make a vast hunt all across the sky.

They go abroad in force and with great noise
Of thunderous howls and flashing of their teeth,
And then their quarry bleeds upon the earth
That enemies might take heed of their might.

Some of the whelps looked west, the direction of Aman, and howled in their piping way.  “Why is Varda so greedy?  There are plenty of stars.  These people across the sea are maggots!”

Lord Mairon was leaning against a tree and watching all this.  When the listeners had dispersed, he sauntered over and said, “You see?  You did just fine.  The story held their interest and got them excited.  This lore we are weaving is tactically useful as well.  Note how much they already dislike certain Valar.”

“Sir, if they’re going to dislike the Valar, there are plenty of reasons to without making things up.”

“Perhaps the Valar would themselves be interested to hear your opinion?  They began this business of making things up about one’s enemies, after all, when they failed to correct their thralls who started referring to me by a particular–epithet.  They even seemed to encourage the widespread usage of that epithet.”  Now Mairon was glaring at nothing in particular, and I knew better than to make any comment. 

The stories went well for a small time.  I found that new tales were easier to come up with when a foundation of related tales was already in place.  If I couldn’t think of anything, I would set the whelps singing instead, or ask them to retell the stories in their own way. 

Then one of the eldest of the Nauri died when he was ranging far abroad with some others.  He fell into a pit, and many bones were broken in the fall, and by the time his fellows had been able to bring help he was dead from dehydration.

They started asking me what happened to wolves who didn’t die in an honorable way.  Surely it brought dishonor to lie in a hole and die, even if it couldn’t be helped. 

I said to Mairon, behind the jagged battlements at the top of one of the three peaks while the clouds moved fast and thick above, “They’re convinced that they can’t become sky-wolves if they don’t die fighting or hunting.  What do you think I ought to tell them?”

The lord of Angband leaned on the battlement and scanned the high plateau to the south.  “I really hope you are able to stop asking me these questions soon, Draugluin.  The lore is now in your own hands, as it were, as well as your progeny’s.  I have many other matters on my mind.  There are more Maiar abroad of late–rangers, spies, something.  If you must know what I think, I think it would be inconsistent with the earlier tales to say that one can come to Ancamanar’s country by way of a dishonorable death.  There’s a very easy way to remedy that, however.” 

“Yes?”

“Give everyone an opportunity for an honorable death.  Something like, say,

Yet all must meet a second death
Who Ancamanar’s realm would find.

The great wolf himself
Shall beset them with bared fang
To slay them anew.

Will that do?”

“It might disturb them, sir.  Ancamanar always comes off in these stories as being concerned for them, not as killing them.”

Mairon glanced skyward as though patience might be found there.  “These actions are mutually exclusive?”

Somewhere off at a great distance, there came a howl.  It did not sound quite like a wolf.  My bones seemed to tingle oddly in their very marrow.

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Chapter End Notes

__________________________Notes on the Verses__________________________
I don't actually picture this as being the way they would have told the stories.  I'm more of a prose person.  This idea was strangley irresistable to me though.

Mairon's story of Ancamanar (Q. ~ 'jaws of fate/fortune/doom'): Haiku in the general sense of a 5-7-5 rhythm.  I'm riffing on my own satirical piece, "Morning People."

The whelps' song: Alluded to in Ch 3--I didn't suspect I'd actually be writing it at the time.  I couldn't figure out a meter I wanted to use for this, so I ended up basing the beats of its rhythm on the song "Sakura Sakura."  Possibly because I had just heard the song played live a few hours before writing this. 

Draugluin's story of the sky-wolves' hunt: Blank verse, one of my favorite things in the world.

Mairon's post-script to the story of Ancamanar: Iambic tetrameter (I was thinking of Tolkien's Dwarven songs) & haiku.  Inconsistency perhaps indicates distraction or impatience.