The Sovereign and the Priest by Dawn Felagund

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Chapter 3: Finrod

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Chapter Three 
Finrod

I was beginning to heal; I was beginning to open myself to the minds of others again.

I would sometimes wake in the mornings and perceive Nargothrond in its entirety, an act much like listening outside a crowded room. While a word here and there might be teased out from the general melee—just like the occasional image or emotion might surface from the churn of thoughts I perceived in Nargothrond—the overall effect was not dependent on these, and they slipped quickly from my memory. I had stood outside of ballrooms and counsel rooms, and the sound of the voices within had been vastly different. Likewise, Nargothrond felt different than, say, Mithrim or the crowd that gathered in Tirion on the night of the Darkening; it felt predominantly of joy, at peace, and most importantly, safe.

There was an almost somnolent undertone to it, like the long and restful sleep that precedes a productive day working at some stubborn and beautiful art, and upon that gray-hued drowse danced the inspirations of the poets and the artisans of Nargothrond: They were as peals of laughter or shouts of delight heard from outside a party, and they invited and enlivened and enticed. In the gray hours of morning, they drew me abruptly awake with a song in my heart.

I realized sometimes that the perception of mornings in Nargothrond, more than perhaps anything, showed how relatively untouched by the Dagor Bragollach we'd been. Yes, there was guilt in that. My brothers had lost their lives, Orodreth his home, and my people chiseled flowering vines and penned love songs to one another. It wasn't that they'd forgotten those of our people who had died, and it wasn't that they ignored them; such pain had not yet touched here, even though I'd marched forth with a contingent from Nargothrond, and many had been lost. But wasn't our safety here the very purpose of our labors? Wasn't it why Ulmo had spoken to me, alone of the Noldor, in a dream, while my kinsmen built villages and strongholds to become targets on Morgoth's map?

I raised such questions with Orodreth, who came to spend several hours each day with me. Mostly, we read and didn't say much; Orodreth had never been talkative and had been often dismissed by those who misunderstood his tendency to stare long at a fixed point upon the floor or wall as his being dull-witted. Behind his slow-blinking eyes, though, I knew that thoughts roiled and turned upon themselves, even moving without himself as only our sister could do. Orodreth had inherited our father's sensitivity without his savvy for turning that empathy into productive—albeit ultimately futile—action. He felt things in the same way that a raw wound will smart from the slightest breath of air across its surface and seemed unable to armor himself against letting that hurt define his existence.

He thought long on my professed guilt while I sketched ideas for carving a new room we'd recently discovered with a hot spring at its center. My leg was finally healed enough for the long hours of standing and climbing that would be involved, and I was eager to get started in order to show my people—and myself—that I was finally healed. "I don't think you should feel guilty for preserving a place innocent of pain, Finrod," Orodreth said finally. "The Valar tell us that this was Eru's intention, to live as we do now. You are doing blessed work. When Morgoth is defeated, our people will emerge having preserved what they could of Valinor."

"But wasn't that part of why Valinor failed, for trying to hold against a marring set in the stuff of Arda itself? When does innocence become naïveté?"

I liked to torment Orodreth with such questions. Speaking them and allowing him to debate them seemingly freed me from the obligation to do the same. I swapped my soft lead pencil for a firmer one and began to sketch in the details on my plan. Of all of us, I believed, Orodreth missed Valinor the most. In those first panicked days after the Darkening, Angrod and Aegnor had cleaved to our cousins Celegorm and Curufin, but Orodreth, oddly, had not followed. He'd stayed at our father's side, softly urging deliberation rather than rash action. On the march north, after our father turned back, Orodreth once disappeared for a few hours. I'd thought nothing of it and ordered no search; I was more surprised when he reappeared some hours later. I'd been certain he'd followed our father back.

"We are not naïve, Finrod," he said after several long minutes. "I will not believe that refusing to adjust our circumstances to invite the effects of Morgoth's marring—to invite fear and pain—is the same as naïveté." And so I was freed again to work by my brother, whom I knew when I'd asked always pardoned the ways of Valinor. I set my heart against thinking too hard about the repercussions of that. I concentrated harder on an intricate design that I was planning for the archway over the door. I became lost in my work, and when I next looked up, my brother was gone.

I walked later along an avenue, my limp nearly gone, taking the long route to the room I hoped to begin carving tomorrow. My plans were rolled and carried at my side, but my mind dove deep into the minds and feelings of Nargothrond. The tone, I realized, had changed after the Dagor Bragollach. I reached an open square, sat on the edge of a fountain, and opened my mind to Nargothrond. There was contentment, yes, but now also relief, the cool, rushing emotion that belonged to those who had known pain and fear and appreciated better than anyone else here the reprieve from them: my cousins' people, I realized. A giddy thought came with the realization: They make Nargothrond that much more beautiful.

I drifted long upon that feeling of relief that way that one might float upon his back on a slow-moving river, warmed by the sun above and tempered by the water beneath. Nargothrond is coming into a new perfection.

An image surfaced then upon my thoughts: a discontentment, a pressing claustrophobia from stone unseen but perceived heavy above, thoughts taking refuge in tall grass … a jumble of indecipherable memories flavored with elation and ecstasy and pain … a pendant upon a leather thong, slipped around a throat …

And, that quickly, I was returned.

I was returned to the square, to the fountain: My people were busy around me, paying me no mind, talking and laughing and trading wares; a painter was working furiously to capture the scene; two small children were weaving amid the legs and screaming with laughter. Someone here is unhappy, I realized, but no, that wasn't quite it: Someone here was happy enough with Nargothrond yet needed more than Nargothrond could give.

~oOo~

As a young artisan, I had wished to please everyone with my work. My Aunt Nerdanel and I planned long for the first showing of my sculpture. We found a gallery in a prominent location and with ideal light; we arranged my work and rearranged it again and again until it was perfect. We set up lamps and lanterns where the lighting was deficient to show off all of my sculptures' best qualities. Then we opened the door and waited.

As was traditional at student exhibitions, there were small cards by the door for comments. The illustriousness of the sculptors and artisans who came through that first day made my stomach turn queasily. They moved among my work, their faces inscrutable, their emotionless eyes scanning slowly down the lengths of my statues until I felt as exposed as though I myself stood naked before them. Here, I was not a prince but like any other student or apprentice and open for critique that might verge on denouncement; certainly, students to precede me had endured this. Aunt Nerdanel greeted each visitor as he or she entered and introduced me. They clasped my hand and smiled tepidly, their eyes ever roving around the room. By the end of the day, the little box of cards was already half-depleted.

Aunt Nerdanel and I sat among my sculptures that night after we closed the doors. On the floor between us, she put the basket where the cards were left after being written upon. She reached across and rubbed my arm in a way that was meant to be comforting, gave me the first real smile I'd seen from anyone all day, and began unfolding the cards.

She read each first, then handed it to me. The cards in her lap began to pile up as I savored the praise written upon each, reading it three and four times. They like my work. They like me. The praise began to melt together into a drone like a perfect chord sustained by a choir, yet I wished for the basket of cards to never end. I unfolded another, and another. The drone grew louder. I unfolded another—

The technique is excellent, as I would expect of a student of Nerdanel. There is impressive detail and awareness of composition. The vision is mediocre.

The last word was like a punch to the gut. I coughed to cover my surprise.

When the basket was empty, Aunt Nerdanel squeezed my hand and asked, "Happy?" and I nodded, and I even smiled—convincingly, I think—but my thoughts were thundering, mediocre, mediocre, mediocre.

Such a terrible word to be, I realized! To be awful was to imply at least having taken enough of a chance to provoke strong emotion. Aunt Nerdanel's work, I knew, had once been deplored by those who, as it turned out, hadn't understood it; now they praised her as a visionary and imitations of her style dotted the streets and parlors of the city. To be mediocre was to walk on safe, seamless ground, never courting so much as a pebble in the shoe much less disaster close to the edge; it was to have a voice but nothing worth saying with it.

I lay awake that night. I had frittered away many hours of work and study, I realized, perfecting technique for no reason. That technique would never advance a vision that mattered. It would perhaps fall back into its proper place making fruit bowls and lamp stands—objects of use where technique and composition were appreciated but not essential—but as far as making the kind of art that caused one's heart to lurch and mind to twist upon itself and eyes to close only to open slowly to see the world anew, I lacked the vision that huddled at the core of any great work of art. Even the rough creations brought to Valinor from the Outer Lands possessed a vision and, therefore, their own savage beauty. They lacked technique, one might say—or, more likely, adequate materials—but were valued more than mine for their vision.

I completed the show because it was expected of me and would have embarrassed my parents had I done otherwise—and they came through on the fifth day and wrote glowing remarks in their recognizable handwriting, each on a separate card—but all of the comments suddenly gravitated upon those two words: mediocre vision. If a card praised at length the lines of my seabird sculpture, I read that I had technique and knowledge of composition enough to create a recognizable seabird, but the commenter was reduced to praising this because my purpose in making the sculpture was inscrutable; the commenter certainly hadn't felt the bird's gratitude for the easy freedom it found upon Manwë's winds. And so it went. Even the kindest words were but covers for my mediocre vision.

The final day of the show was the most crowded, as all of the masters who had not yet come through were forced for an hour out of their workshops to pay due respect to a prince of the Noldor and student of the great Nerdanel—for that is how I'd come to think of myself, not as worthy of their attention in my own right, as an artisan. The basket was crammed full of cards. Nerdanel left the door open an hour later that night, until Telperion's light was only a thin silver sheen to the south of us. By the time the latch snapped into place, I was already hauling out the canvas covers from the room at the back of the gallery and matching each with the sculpture it was meant to cover.

Aunt Nerdanel laughed at me, assuming me industrious: a fair assumption for a Noldo. "Finrod, we still have three days to move out! Come! Sit and let's look at your last basket of cards."

I busied myself with pressing flat a piece of canvas that would only wrinkle again when I wrapped the sculpture with it. "Aunt Nerdanel, I have given it a lot of thought. And maybe I shouldn't continue as your student."

I warded my thoughts against hers and yet I felt it: a stabbing disappointment that I didn't quite know how to interpret. "You have decided to go with a different teacher?" she asked at last, and I realized then that she thought that fault was with her, and I wondered how she hadn't likewise perceived the awful flaw in my work.

"No! It is not that … Aunt Nerdanel, there is no better teacher, but … you are wasting your time with me. I don't need to look at today's comments to know that I have no real purpose here."

Her silence was long and astounded. At last she said, "But you have received only praise, Finrod. You are the fourth student I've seen through an introductory show, and I've never seen so many comments, and all praise. How could you interpret this as anything but an urging by the best sculptors among our people to continue?"

"But it hasn't been all praise!" I was exhausted, I realized, and sounded like a petulant child. My chin even trembled as I turned to fuss more with the canvas covers rather than turn to face her and allow her to witness the shame of my distress. The Noldor valued stoicism when receiving critiques; if any emotion was permitted, it was anger; many a sharp comment had set off an argument that came to be followed and discussed throughout the city as one might a novel or a play, as something possessing plot twists and conflict.

"Did someone say something to you, Finrod?" she asked in a low voice. She was, I realized, becoming defensive on my behalf, assuming that someone had spoken to me out of turn, a significant breach of etiquette. Teachers would fight for the respectful treatment of their students in such instances; the disrespect of the student was assumed likewise directed at the teacher. Her reaction on my behalf, though, only made me feel worse.

"No. No, nothing like that. Aunt Nerdanel … it was on one of the cards."

"I don't remember that, Finrod."

"It said—" The way those two words—mediocre vision—had been ricocheting in my head for the past two weeks, one would have assumed it relatively easy to coax them onto my tongue and into actuality. But I had to swallow hard, and my voice broke on, "I have mediocre vision."

Nerdanel was a mother; she had kissed the slight hurts and nursed the twinged hearts of her five sons. But her tone to me that day was forthright, without coddling: "You are a student and not yet of age. You should be grateful to be seen as having a vision at all, even a mediocre one." She folded her legs and sat upon the floor with the basket in front of her. "Now let's review these cards."

So mediocre vision had been changed in my mind from an insult to praise—however tepid I still believed it to be—but now I worried that I'd angered my aunt and teacher. It took packing up the exhibition and several lessons before I realized that her opinion of me was unchanged.

Grandfather's murder, the Darkening, Alqualondë, the exile, the Ice, the deaths of Angrod and Aegnor—so much loss and pain, and still I was stung by overhearing someone remark offhand that they would have preferred more beeches in the Thambas Yrn. And this—to fathom someone finding Nargothrond inadequate—devastated me. My stomach churned. I wondered who it was.

I was no longer in the mood to work on the new room, and my hands had clenched on my plans so that I crumpled the parchment. The voices in the square collided and melded into a din. Stung, I didn't dare plumb their emotions again. I rose quickly from the edge of the fountain and hurried back the way I'd come, back to my apartment. On my way, I passed my cousin Celegorm, sitting beneath a stone tree with the leaves carved so delicate and thin that the very light of the green lamps strung amid its branches gave it almost a lifelike glow. I steeled myself to feign a joyful greeting and possibly conversation, but he appeared to be distracted by something, and I don't even think he saw me.