The Bird In A Cage by Himring

Prologue

Setting: Hithlum

Characters: Fingon, Turgon

Read Prologue

You want to carry on with your plans, but you still don’t want to tell the Feanorians about them?’, asked Fingon incredulously. ‘Haven’t they proved themselves trustworthy allies during the battle? We couldn’t have won it without them. And already it’s being called the Glorious Victory—but you still want to go and bury yourself in the mountains?’

Turgon’s expression was stern and unyielding—Fingon was valiantly struggling not to call it mulish, because he knew that would be unfair. Fingon sighed.

‘All right, I guess we’ve been over all this before. You don’t have to explain it again. So, in your eyes, our victory changes nothing.’ He paused. ‘But please, do consider this. Whatever they are, our cousins aren’t stupid. When people start vanishing from Nevrast, they will notice. They will start asking questions. If they ask them too loudly, those questions might be heard in the wrong quarters. The Enemy might get wind of it. Are you prepared to risk drawing the Enemy’s attention just because you don’t trust our cousins?’

He took another look at his brother’s face and gave up the struggle. Mulish was simply the only word for it.

Part I, ch. 1: The Red Roan Palfrey

Maedhros unexpectedly meets Aredhel at a horse fair in Ard-galen.

Why didn't she say she was coming and why doesn't she want to buy that horse?

Read Part I, ch. 1: The Red Roan Palfrey

Maedhros was threading his way among the tents and open spaces of the encampment. Each year, the horse fair in the month of Narie on the plain of Ard-galen seemed to grow in size, but already the number of tents was dwindling rapidly, and the fair was almost over. Aegnor had left four days before already, after a brief visit, and, the day after, so had Maglor and Celegorm.

Maedhros had planned to leave together with them, but Celvandil, his stable master, was still involved in tricky negotiations, trying to acquire a couple of brood mares for which the owner was demanding an extortionate price. Maedhros had listened to Celvandil singing the praises of the pedigree of those mares and had decided it might be not be a good idea to leave him to his bargaining without his prince’s backing at this point, so he had stayed on longer than originally intended. The decision had left him with time on his hands. His current stroll had no other purpose than to have another look around and pick up some gossip, maybe, in order to gauge the general mood of the traders and buyers.

He rounded another group of tents and came to an exercise area. A gleam of white caught his eye, a rare and impractical colour here, where the hooves of droves of horses as well as all the elven feet passing to and fro had churned the earth to dust, which hovered in the air and seemed to settle on everything, all over the place. The weather had been calm and dry for two weeks.

As he approached, he saw there was a rider, a woman, trying out the gait of a red roan palfrey while the trader looked on hopefully. It was her clothes that gleamed white, and, as she turned the head of the palfrey toward him, he unexpectedly recognized his cousin Aredhel, competent and at ease in the saddle. That last part was no surprise; Aredhel had always looked good on a horse.

He wasn’t sure whether she had spotted him or not, although he usually was not easy to overlook. Maybe she was focussed completely on the horse she was testing. She turned the palfrey around again. Now that he was closer, he saw that the white of her clothes was liberally speckled with dust, much as anyone else’s.

In Valinor, those white garments had been the bane of her mother’s housekeeper. Anaire’s household, he was certain, had had the highest consumption of bleach in all of Tirion, as Marille had waged unending war against grass stains, lichen stains, berry stains and, worst of all, blood stains on Aredhel’s clothing. Marille had never seemed to understand that, as far as her mistress’s daughter was concerned, white represented the rejection of colour, the opposite of black, not the palest of pale pastel colours, as it were. White, before it had become Aredhel’s hallmark and signatory colour, had been a compromise, he thought. She would have worn unbleached wool and linen, if she could have got away with it. Stains bothered her not at all.

On the other hand, Maedhros reflected, perhaps Marille had understood Aredhel’s position quite well, but refused to give in to such outlandish ideas merely because Aredhel was a princess: two strong-minded women at loggerheads over conflicting definitions of whiteness…

Aredhel turned over the palfrey to the trader’s assistant and said something to the trader that caused his expectant face to fall with sudden disappointment. Then she looked around and it became evident that she must, in fact, have recognized Maedhros, earlier on. However, her expression made him wonder whether perhaps it was not a coincidence that she had arrived at the fair unannounced and at a time when she might have expected the rest of her family to have come and gone. But if she had indeed wished to avoid her cousins, it was too late for him to do anything about it, for she was coming straight towards him now.

He wiped any trace of doubt from his face before she could see it and smiled his welcome.

‘Irisse, how good to see you! A star shines on the hour of this meeting, truly! And that palfrey really suits you! May I buy her and give her to you?’

Aredhel’s brows drew together, and she looked at him warily.

‘Yet another horse?’, she asked.

He reminded himself how much time since their departure from Mithrim she had spent with Turgon in Nevrast and how suspicious Turgon had seemed to be of that first gift of horses he had given to Fingolfin and his followers. He had never quite been able to fathom what Turgon considered to be so sinister about it. Whatever else Maedhros did or did not feel, it was only logical and very much in his own interest, surely, that he should wish to see his allies well mounted?

‘Another horse,’ he answered gravely. ‘I assure you, Irisse, you can accept yet another horse from me without any danger of it corrupting your judgement.’

Aredhel lifted her chin with a jerk. Her cheeks flushed a little.

‘Well, you may not give this horse to me,’ she said. ‘No, nor another one either!’, she added firmly, before he had a chance to ask the question that was hovering on his lips.

There was a moment of uneasy silence.

‘But you can invite me to dinner’, she said, a little grudgingly, as if offering a concession.

‘You are hereby invited to dinner’, Maedhros said promptly, with a mental apology to Naurthoniel and Ceredir, to whom the unexpected task would fall to produce an impromptu meal worthy of Aredhel Ar-Feiniel, White Lady of the Noldor, at a time when provisions must be running  a little low.

Part I, ch. 2: Aredhel Comes to Dinner

Some things don't get said, but a great deal is remembered.

Read Part I, ch. 2: Aredhel Comes to Dinner

Fortunately, Naurthoniel and Ceredir decided to view it as a challenge. Maedhros didn’t quite know how they had done it, but they managed to produce a veritable banquet. Of course, Aredhel had always been a rewarding woman to cook for. No false modesty or irritating daintiness—if Aredhel liked a dish, she showed it plainly and dug right in. Maedhros watched her carefully scraping the last traces of syllabub out of the bowl. She licked the spoon clean and leaned back with a contented sigh.

‘Wonderful!’, she said.

‘Thank you, Ceredir will be pleased when I tell him’, he said and added, answering the question that perhaps it had not crossed her mind to ask: ‘I do very little cooking, nowadays.’

She nodded. A little silence fell, but a more comfortable one, as she sat relaxed and replete, glass of wine in hand. When he had asked careful, polite questions about the well-being of the family and others of her associates in Vinyamar, she had been very reticent. The only subject she seemed prepared to enlarge on was Idril. Now, with the plates cleared away and the wine in easy reach, he decided to try a slightly more direct approach.

‘There have been rumours of disappearances’, he remarked casually, ‘people vanishing from Nevrast without a trace…’

Aredhel sat up straight, galvanized.

‘That was Tyelperinquar!’ she exclaimed.

Maedhros looked at her enquiringly.

‘Turukano is convinced you’re sending him to spy on us’, said Aredhel uneasily, almost guiltily.

‘Tyelpo goes to Nevrast to visit his friend Enerdhil’, said Maedhros. ‘He wouldn’t be Tyelpo if I had to tell him to keep his eyes and ears open. And, yes, he does talk to me when he comes back. But if you mean to tell me that anyone has seen my nephew slink about the back alleys of Vinyamar in disguise, heavily cloaked and with a dagger in his hand, I would be very surprised.’

‘Of course they haven’t’, said Aredhel. ‘It’s just…’

‘Besides’, added Maedhros, ‘he isn’t by any means the only one who has reported those rumours…’

‘Oh, rumours,’ said Aredhel carelessly and shrugged.

That earlier air of satisfaction, induced by good food and good wine, had completely dissipated, Maedhros noted with regret. Either he had misjudged the matter completely, or she was just not ready to talk about it. He poured more wine and nudged her toward the subject of Idril again. Let her talk about things she seemed to be comfortable with.

He himself had hardly seen Idril at all since leaving Mithrim, indeed so rarely that in his mind he had not managed completely to discard the image of the little girl she had been then. He had been to Nevrast only once, for that one quickly aborted visit, which had seemed to begin so promisingly…  Idril had grown a great deal since Mithrim, obviously, but she still must be very young.

Aredhel found much to talk about regarding Idril. She boasted of her niece’s accomplishments, sighed fondly over her faults and flaws—of which Idril seemed to have no more than her fair share, compared to other members of the House of Finwe—and recounted the more acute and amusing of her pronouncements at length. It might have been enjoyable to meet this older version of Idril. By the sound of it, she was a person it would have been good to get to know. Maedhros poured more wine and made all the right noises, allowing Aredhel to ramble on.

***

The evening grew late. A small chill air seeped through the tent walls. Aredhel shivered suddenly.

‘You’re cold,’ said Maedhros. ‘Even in summer, the temperature drops noticeably at night, out here on the plain. Nights are milder by the sea, aren’t they? Let me fetch you a blanket.’

He leaned over her and draped the blanket around her shoulders. She pulled it more tightly around herself.

‘Hmm’, she said appreciatively. It was woven in a distinctive style, from a particular kind of cream-coloured wool that she thought she had not encountered before. ‘Warm and soft! You can give me that, too.’

He did not answer immediately, and abruptly she lost what confidence she had assumed in dealing with him.

‘If you want to’, she added uncertainly and glanced up at his face.

But all she saw was an answering gleam of amusement.

‘Of course I do.’

She recalled the time when she had first joined the sons of Feanor—there had not been seven of them yet—in their exploits. Maitimo, she felt at the time, had been quite unduly impressed by the fact that she was not only the youngest member of the group, but also a girl and had given in to the temptation to try and coddle her, assisting her over stiles and showering her with little gifts and favours.

Given the fact that he had chiefly been blessed with male siblings and cousins, except for herself and Artanis, she now supposed he could hardly help it, perhaps. But at the time it filled her with indignation and disgust. Fortunately it turned out that, unlike some others of her family and acquaintance, Maitimo responded to training.

‘What is wrong with it?’, he asked her, when she held the frilly pink scarf he had just given her gingerly by a corner, with the same kind of expression with which her mother might have held up a rat by its tail.

‘It’s pink,’ she said in profound gloom.

‘Pink is not good?’, he asked.

She drew herself up to her full height and looked up at him.

‘Girls do not like pink’, she pronounced with an air of absolute finality.

‘Really?’, Maitimo asked her anxiously. ‘Do you know that there are a couple of girls that have told me that they do like pink? Do you suppose they were lying to me?’

For the sake of truthfulness, she felt obliged partly to retract her statement.

‘Well, some girls do like pink’, she said grudgingly. ‘I don’t.’

He plucked the offending item from her grasp.

‘All right’, he said apologetically. ‘No more pink.’

‘Maitimo’, she called after him.

‘Yes?’

‘No frills either. And no lace.’

‘Understood’, he promised solemnly.

She figured out afterwards that he had been pulling her leg a bit, of course, especially when Nerdanel’s latest apprentice gushingly thanked her for the gift of the scarf:  Maitimo said you had noticed I like pink. So kind of you to notice that it is my favourite colour!

But there had been no more pink or frills or lace.

After a while, she had decided that she could put up with being coddled a bit, as long as gifts took the forms of perfectly balanced hunting knives. It would have been rather heartless to discourage him completely, after all.

***

‘Thank you,’ said Aredhel. ‘Thank you very much for the blanket and for the wine and for dinner—and for your company tonight.’

‘You’re very welcome, Irisse,’ said Maedhros. ‘Does that mean you’re about to go already? It is not so very late yet.’

‘I think I better had,’ said Aredhel.

He followed her outside to wish her a good night and remained standing for a while in thought, remembering that single attempt of his to visit Turgon, Aredhel and Idril in Vinyamar. He had had plenty of misgivings, of course, before he went, but that very first afternoon, he had thought that maybe Turgon was beginning to relent a little, his resentment over Losgar beginning to soften just a bit. And perhaps that impression was not wholly wrong and even partly explained what had followed.

In the middle of the night, the door flew open and Turgon rushed into his room, dressing-gown untidily thrown on over what clearly were his night garments.

‘Must you make me quote it at you!’ he began shouting. ‘To evil shall turn all things they begin well. Maitimo, I beg you, just, just stay away from me and mine!’

Maedhros had sat up in bed and blinked at the sight of Turgon, usually so dignified, now distraught in his splendid turquoise dressing gown embroidered with golden leaves and blossoms of silver, pleading with him to leave Vinyamar—and Idril as well as Irisse—alone with tears in his eyes.

‘I’m not sure the Curse works that way, Turukano’, he had said. ‘But’, he added hastily, as Turgon opened his mouth to start shouting again, ‘I don’t know how it works. I’ll leave tomorrow morning.’

And he had arranged to get an urgent message that called him away in the early light of dawn. Since then, he had not set foot in Vinyamar and only seen Turgon at general council meetings when all the princes of the Noldor were assembled.

Here in Ard-galen, the sun had just set over the Ered Wethrin, a late midsummer sunset. Beyond the mountain range, there lay Hithlum and Dor-lomin. Somewhere over there Fingon rested this night—and who knew what he thought of all this. Maedhros’s gaze rested broodingly on those peaks at the same time as he recalled how the sea breeze had kept stirring the curtains that night in his room in the palace in Vinyamar and remembered the taste of salt on his lips.

‘Irisse is your sister, too, not only Turukano’s’, he thought. ‘What would you have me do, cousin? Is there anything you would have me say or do?’

That night, in his dreams, he slipped into a memory of the day they had been playing hide-and-seek in the pine grove near his father’s house and he had shown young Fingon, still a recent enough arrival to count as a guest, his favourite old hiding-place, a hollow in the ground concealed beneath a dense thicket of brambles. It had just been a children’s game, a suggestion he had come up with to get the younger ones out of his mother’s hair, but in his dream something went badly wrong and he found himself crouching in the hollow, clutching young Fingon to his chest in panic, his heart hammering in his throat, incongruously aware of the familiar and beloved scent of pine resin, while outside THEY circled, searching, searching…

Young Fingon stirred in his arms, put a steadying hand on his wrist and said quietly—in a very grown-up voice that knew far too much about things that were not supposed to have happened yet: ‘THEY will find us eventually, you know.’

Maedhros started awake and lay staring at the tent wall. He had had dreams that were far worse, but he hated it when the shadows of Angband invaded his early memories, insidiously eroding the past as if he had never been free of them. Did the dream signify anything, apart from that? It might be a warning, perhaps, but if so, against what—putting too much trust in his own ability to protect anyone or putting too much trust in hiding places however well concealed they might seem? More probably, the dream just unhelpfully reflected his fears and offered no guidance at all.

He recalled that he was going out riding with Aredhel in the morning. He had made the suggestion without much confidence of it being accepted and had been surprised how eagerly she took it up.

Part I; ch. 3: A Ride In Ard-Galen

...throws some light on Aredhel's motives.

Read Part I; ch. 3: A Ride In Ard-Galen

They met a little beyond the entrance of the camp in the early morning light. Aredhel was riding a temperamental young stallion, a bay, and Maedhros thought that if Aredhel had ridden this horse all the way up from Vinyamar, then she would have had her job cut out for her on the journey. She kept him well in hand, though, and they proceeded at a sedate pace such as might be considered fitting for Maedhros, Head of the House of Feanor, and his right royal cousin Aredhel of Nevrast.

However, as soon as they were out of plain sight of the camp, Aredhel threw him a challenging glance.

‘This horse wants to run’, she said and, without waiting for him to agree, she was off across the plain, allowing the bay first to fall into a canter, and then into a gallop. The bay needed little urging to do what he had plainly been itching to do all along. He raced ahead at full speed.

Maedhros hesitated a moment, stopping to scan the horizon. Then he spoke quietly to his mare and gave her free rein. At once the mare followed swiftly after Aredhel and her stallion, eager to catch up with the other horse.

Hooves pounded the earth, raising clouds of dust. The wind tugged at their hair and clothes. In front of their running horses, Ard-galen—as yet green and unburnt—stretched away, miles and miles of it, until it changed into the great plain of Lothlann and beyond…

Those wide spaces of Middle-earth! What it was just to know that you could keep on riding, on and on, never stopping, and find anyone and anything out there, things unseen and unimaginable! Even if in fact you never did, tied as you were to this corner of Endore by an Oath and a War and a Doom….

Maedhros caught up with Aredhel, and they thundered on together side by side, straight east, the mare content to remain half a head behind the stallion. When Aredhel finally pulled the stallion to a halt—he was beginning to tire, but being young and headstrong, had not quite noticed yet—she was still a little in the lead. They stopped by a shallow little stream and dismounted to rest their horses.

The White Lady of the Noldor was flushed and laughing a little. She knelt by the stream, dipped her hand in the water and took a sip from her hollowed palm. She looked up at Maedhros. Her eyes shone.

Her elation reminded him, once again, that she was Fingon’s sister. But for all that Fingon’s capacity for joy in the things of Middle-earth meant to him—and to him it was one of the cornerstones of survival in Beleriand—at that moment it was the difference between them that plucked at this heartstrings. For it seemed to him that her joy was the joy of one who has escaped, more intense even perhaps, but with an edge to it…

 ‘You let me win’, she accused him, without rancour. ‘Your horse is faster than mine—except over very short distances, perhaps.’

He had not even thought of it as a race, in truth. But now that she had brought it up, he realized there was more to it than that: in fact, the same thing that kept him instinctively watching for movement out of the corner of his eyes, while she seemed oblivious, completely focussed on what was going on immediately around her.

He frowned slightly and answered, a little hesitantly: ‘I guess it gets to be a habit, out here—not to let your horses run full tilt because you can’t risk them exhausting their reserves completely. You never know when you might need to call on their strength in an emergency…’

He made a gesture with his chin—small but precise—toward the North.

‘Life on the borders!’ she exclaimed, serious now, but by no means quenched or subdued.

‘You sound almost envious’, he remarked.

‘I am... It's not you I envy, though’, she added, as an afterthought.

He considered her, remembering that old long-running and hard-fought competition between her and his brothers to see whose skills in archery surpassed the others'. Often Celegorm had been a little ahead of the other two, but sometimes it was Curufin and sometimes Aredhel.

‘I know it would raise a storm of disapproval in certain quarters if you moved to the Marches, even if you wished to’, he said, carefully. ‘But surely there are other areas along the border you could choose? Why not Hithlum—or perhaps Dorthonion?’

She frowned and looked away.

‘I would not be permitted to take Itarille’, she said.

Silence fell between them. The horses had begun to nibble at the grass. The sun shone overhead. The water of the stream gleamed in the sunlight. There was nobody about.

‘Do you know what I am ashamed of?’ asked Aredhel suddenly.

‘What?’, said Maedhros, startled.

‘Out there on the Ice, during the Crossing—you know—a lot of us died, there were many I tried to save and failed, the hardships were great, but I—for the first time in my life I felt alive. I felt truly free. But ever since then, ever since we arrived in Beleriand…’

She shrugged. Her voice trailed away. The look she gave him was both sombre and—somehow—provoking.

‘Is that not a great irony, Maitimo? That freedom your Father promised us—that I should have gained it only through his betrayal—and at so much cost to others?’

‘Yes’, he said, deeply troubled, and went on, with a great effort: ‘Irisse, I too sometimes felt free on Thangorodrim, but…’

‘That is not the same thing!’ she interrupted him at once.

‘But’, he continued doggedly, having once begun, ‘it is not a freedom you can keep or share.’

‘It is not the same thing at all’, she said fiercely. ‘And I ought not to have come complaining to you. It’s unforgivable of me.’

‘You used to come complaining to me all the time’, he said, shaking his head. ‘Do you remember? You would come and find me in my cubicle in the library in Tirion, when you were really angry about something. I never needed to say much. You would just stride back and forth in front of my desk, arguing with yourself in a loud voice, until you had argued yourself into a good mood again.’ He smiled at the memory. Then the smile faded. ‘You stopped coming, after a while. I guess I stopped being a good listener?’

‘Oh, Maitimo,’ she said, half remorsefully, half impatiently. ‘I started having problems one could not just argue oneself out of. We all did.’

She paused, remembering.

‘What a brat I was!’ she said. ‘You were working, there in the library. I must have interrupted your train of thought. But I never asked your leave or apologized—and you never said anything.’

He looked at her in astonishment.

‘But… Irisse, we had so much time then!’

She started to say something; then she changed her mind. Instead, she reached out and gave him an awkward pat on the shoulder.

They spoke no more of the past after that—or of the future. They mounted again, beginning to circle back at a quieter pace, and he showed her a few things that he thought she might not have encountered yet—a flowering shrub native to Ard-galen, a small dun bird that nested low to the ground—and told her an anecdote or two about life in the Marches.

By the time they returned to the camp, it was late afternoon, and his stable-master Celvandil awaited them, bursting with pride. He had finally managed to secure the broodmares he had been bargaining for, and nothing could stop him from giving them both a blow-by-blow account of what he had said to the owner and what the owner had said to him and how cleverly he had played his cards to bring down the price to a reasonable level. He also assumed as a matter of course that they would now be leaving, for after all those mares were all they had been waiting for, hadn't they?

Maedhros gave him all the praise that was his due and congratulated him on his success. But when Celvandil had departed in triumph to check over his prizes once again and make sure they were well taken care of, Maedhros eyed Aredhel uncertainly. She interpreted his glance correctly.

‘Don’t worry’, she said. ‘I’ll be leaving, too, tomorrow.’

‘You’re leaving so soon? You’ve only just arrived!’

‘I shouldn’t be here at all’, she confessed. ‘They weren’t expecting me to go beyond the borders of Nevrast. Only, on the road, I happened to meet those traders who were going to Ard-galen and whose journey had been delayed by bad weather and a broken axle…’

She smiled, ruefully.

‘I’ll be taking my leave, tomorrow morning’, she concluded.

Late that evening, he sat writing letters. To Fingon, Lord of Dor-lomin, this letter be delivered, he wrote. Then he paused.

‘Well, I’ve made my bid, Findekano, such as it was, and it failed, as it probably ought to have. May it turn out for the best—if only I even knew what the best is, under these circumstances’, he thought. Then he went on writing:

Dear cousin,

Such a pleasant surprise! Unexpectedly, I encountered Irisse here at the fair and, not having seen her for so long, I was delighted to be able to spend a few hours in her company and hear a little news about Itarille…

Part I; ch. 4: Leavetaking

Aredhel departs--but some things get said after all, at the very last minute.

Read Part I; ch. 4: Leavetaking

There were so many traders departing the fair in a southerly or westerly direction now that Aredhel must have found it easy to find another group to attach herself to. The group she had picked was still busy sorting itself out, amid great bustle, and she seemed in no hurry to join it quite yet. She waited a little way apart with her bay stallion, saddle bags ready packed. She was clearly not in the best of moods and, when she saw Maedhros coming towards her, leading the red roan palfrey, she glowered.

‘I told you I didn’t want you to give her to me…!’

‘She’s a loan’, said Maedhros quickly. ‘Send her back to me when you have no use for her anymore.’ Taking care to lower his voice and speak Quenya rather than Sindarin, he continued: ‘I guess there might not be much space for horses where you’re going.’

‘You’, she said dangerously, ‘you think you’re so clever!’

‘Not at all’, said Maedhros. ‘Your father…’

‘He told you everything!’

‘No, no, he didn’t! He told me he knew all about it and to mind my own business and for goodness’s sake not to raise a fuss. After that, it wasn’t too hard to figure it out. I have kept things as quiet as I could, on my side.’

Aredhel gave a half-sob of laughter.

‘Poor Father...!’                                                                                        

She reached out and patted the red roan’s mane. Maedhros took a couple of steps away to allow the two of them to reacquaint themselves. The roan was clearly happy to see Aredhel again and, in the face of such an affectionate greeting, Aredhel could not hold out for long and was soon whispering sweet nothings into her ear. Then she reverted to more practical considerations and started re-organizing the saddle bags.

Now she was mounted and looking down at Maedhros. In the background, the traders also seemed to have finished sorting themselves out and were getting ready to move. It was high time for farewells.

He looked up at her and then after all did what he had promised himself not to do. He put his hand on her wrist and asked: ‘But, Irisse, what about Turko?’

It seemed she had expected him to say something like this. She showed no surprise, but looked at him warily and answered: ‘What about him?’

There was an uncomfortable pause.

‘Well, I guess you can tell him that we are more like each other than I thought. When in doubt, we stick to those who are closest to us.’

Maedhros’s hand tightened a little on her wrist, but he said nothing.

‘What would you have me do?’ she asked, crossly. ‘Am I to be forgiving and patient, merely because I am a woman? Who stood aside at Losgar for Irisse?’

Maedhros recoiled as if she had struck him with a whip.

If he had been in the habit of talking about Losgar, there might have been things he might have said. He might have said that although he had been thinking mainly of Fingon during the crossing—in the brief moments when he was not thinking about how painfully little he really knew about matters such as masts and rigging, sails and oars, backboard and starboard, and about the dangers of the shoreline of Endore, which he had studied so carefully in sketchy maps—however much he had been thinking of Fingon, at the moment when he stood aside he had, in fact, chiefly been thinking of his father and his brothers: What are we becoming? What is becoming of us?

But a whole fleet of ships does not burn all in a moment, however terrifying the speed at which the flames took hold and leapt from ship to ship. There had been plenty of time to think, to wonder whether it was really death he had seen in his father’s eyes as he dared to argue for Fingon—for Fingon, at least—and failed. There had been plenty of time to think of Irisse then and he had thought of her and of all the others, of Findarato and Turukano, of Angarato and Aikanaro, of Artanis and Artaresto and Nolofinwe… There had even been time to recognize that somehow, foolishly, absurdly, he had still harboured the hope that they might one day be able to return at least some of those ships to Olwe intact.

And when they were down to three ships—three ships only remaining un-burnt of all that large fleet—he had wondered whether his father would stop him if he tried to rescue one ship, just one, and somehow sail it single-handedly back across the straits. And he had wondered what exactly it would gain anybody if he succeeded—except that he would have left his brothers and the rest of the Feanorians in the hands of a leader he apparently no longer trusted not to kill his own sons, in a foreign country they knew virtually nothing of and about to face a merciless enemy they probably could not hope to defeat. He envisioned himself stepping ashore in Araman and saying to Fingon: Not only have I shunned you ever since you rushed to save us at Alqualonde and then deserted you treacherously on this shore, but I let them burn all the ships save this one and now I have no help to offer you. And the burning shame of that thought blinded and paralysed him—and when he had looked again, the time of decisions was already past: there were no more ships left.

That was what he might have said but he was not in the habit of talking of Losgar, he did not think it constituted much of a defence—and in any case, it was irrelevant, for it was not himself he was pleading for, but Celegorm, who had not stood aside, neither for Irisse nor for anyone else—and who, shattered as he was by the death of his father and its consequences, had never concentrated quite hard enough on making peace with Aredhel since.

He looked up at Irisse, who leaned down, caught his hand and clasped it firmly, as if to say: Idiot! You know I didn’t want you to take it like that.

‘What would you have me do?’ she asked again.

He shrugged, helplessly.

‘Irisse, the Oath only sleeps’, he said, not even knowing whether it was a plea or a warning.

‘And I don’t know why you think that that, of all things, should make a difference. But maybe it does. I will think about it’, she said, squeezed his fingers a little and let go.

He wished now that he had said nothing, wanted simply to wish her well on her journey but was suddenly afraid to say anything at all to her. Maybe Turgon was right, after all. She shook her head, gave him a small smile and rode off to join the departing traders.

She remained clearly visible for a long time—a single small white dot among all the more practical greys and browns and blacks moving away across the plain.

Part II, ch. 1: I Will Like It When I Get There

Aredhel leaves Vinyamar.

Letters: (i) Fingon to Maedhros. (ii) Aredhel to Maedhros.

Read Part II, ch. 1: I Will Like It When I Get There

Dear cousin,

They are gone, my sister and my brother and my niece. I don’t know how much you know of the matter—probably less than Turukano fears and more than my father thinks. I owe you an apology and an explanation for my silence, but I have no heart to write any more at this time.

The last messenger from Nevrast arrived with a letter from Irisse and a red roan palfrey, which he said must be returned to you. In Irisse’s letter to me, I found a letter to you, which I am enclosing.

I will write again.

Findekano

***

 

Russandol, you guessed right, as indeed I think you knew. The final decision is made. Tomorrow, the last of us will depart from Vinyamar. And I have decided—but was that decision ever in doubt?—to follow Turukano and Itarille to the Hidden City.

I do not wish to go. For myself, I would never exchange what little freedom we managed to gain—and paid for, well more than we could afford—for a dubious promise of safety, abandoning the wide sweep of the northern lands to stoop and crawl into a rabbit hutch. Even more difficult to stomach is the calculation that this plan of Turukano’s inevitably entails—that our father and our brother will fight and fall to defend our secrecy—not to mention our cousins Artaresto, Angarato and Aikanaro, and, yes, even you, cousin!—and that nevertheless our desertion of them, their sacrifice for us, will almost certainly be in vain.

For what has Ulmo promised in truth? Only that Doom will catch up with us in the end! What a prize—to die last of all, mourning those we should have aided!

I would not go; I would even contest our going. But then I look at Itarille, and my heart misgives me. She has lost so much already—and not by her own choice as we did! And all those others who understood even less of the consequences of our actions than we… We have paid far too much for our freedom in coin that was not ours.

Do I not owe it to her, do I not owe it to them, if there is the least chance of escape—if perhaps the Fisherman should deign artfully to rend his net and let a fish or two slip through its meshes—then how could I deny it to them? And I cannot leave Itarille, not yet, and so I swallow my pride and go where my brother, her father, leads us.

Gondolin! No doubt, I will like it well enough when I get there…

The sea is calm tonight. I will miss the sound of the waves and the cries of the gulls wherever we are going, I think. Turukano’s last messenger to our brother departs within the hour.  I have more than one letter to finish…

Thank you, cousin, for the loan of the horse.

Irisse

 

Postscript: You still make a good listener, Russandol.

Part II, ch. 2: The Hawk in Flight

Aredhel and Idril in Gondolin.

Read Part II, ch. 2: The Hawk in Flight

Idril leans against the battlements and watches a hawk hover above the plain of Tumladen.

‘You love me no less, aunt’, she says to Aredhel, without looking at her, ‘but you do not like me as much as you used to.’

‘Nonsense, child!’, Aredhel protests and is horrified to hear her voice sound strangely flat.

‘But I am no child any more. That is the point, isn’t it? The real reason why you agreed to come with us to Gondolin was because I depended on you. But now I seem to depend less and less on you, and nevertheless you are still not free to leave.’

Idril turns around and determinedly faces her aunt.

‘I cannot stay helpless and dependent just to make your sacrifice meaningful, Aunt Irisse’, she says, with a hint of regret. ‘But I do not enjoy being the galling chain that binds you here. Talk to Father! I will talk to him, too, and he will let you leave.’

She sees the unmistakable relief in Aredhel’s face and, with a sob, throws her arms around her aunt’s neck.

‘But do come back to me if you can. I may have stopped needing you in any way that is obvious to you, but I still need you in ways that you do not even begin to see.’

Part II, ch. 3: No Sun In Nan Elmoth

An unexpected visitor and a decision.

Read Part II, ch. 3: No Sun In Nan Elmoth

Today, the trees of Nan Elmoth were speaking Quenya.

‘Irisse,’ they whispered softly, ‘Irisse.’

Nobody in Nan Elmoth called her by that name. She pretended not to hear.

There was silence, for a while, and then the trees whispered again, like a breeze among the leaves: ‘Irisse, Irisse.’

She waited until she was sure nobody else heard them. She waited until she was sure none of Eol’s servants were observing her. She waited until she was quite sure Eol was not concealed somewhere among those trees watching to see whether she would betray herself at the whisper of a Quenya name.

Then she arose from her seat beside the cradle and followed where the trees were calling her—across the threshold of Eol’s house, out of the clearing in the heart of the wood and eastward along the winding path among the trees.

‘Irisse.’

The voice seemed much closer now.

At first, she thought what she was seeing was just a patch of sunlight within the dense undergrowth. But there was no sunlight in the heart of Nan Elmoth. Nan Elmoth was all black and green by day, black and white in the moonlight. The patch of reddish-brown colour was as out of place here as her Quenya name.

She came closer, stared, came closer again. The blur of colour resolved itself into a familiar face, a keen, narrow face under a mane of reddish-brown hair.

 ‘Pityo!’, she whispered, startled even though she had expected the unexpected from the moment she heard her name spoken in Quenya. For who would be coming after her now, after all this time?

 ‘Irisse’, Amrod repeated. ‘It is really you! I’ve found you!’

 ‘Or I you?’, she asked. ‘What are you doing here, Pityo?’

 ‘Irisse, we had no idea where you were! We couldn’t trace your movements at all! Turko finally concluded you had given up on him and gone back to Gondolin. Only, then, just recently, Telvo picked up a rumour in Ossiriand…’ Amrod stopped to catch his breath. ‘Turko was all for storming Nan Elmoth immediately to break you out, but Nelyo said: No, let’s not compound our mistakes, if we can avoid it. So he sent me. Don’t let yourself be seen by anybody but Irisse, he said. Make sure it is her, this “Noldorin wife of Eol’s” they are talking about. And ask her, ask her…’ Amrod stopped again, caught a deep breath this time and asked, solemnly, almost formally: ‘Do you want us to come and get you out, Irisse?’

She could almost hear Maedhros’s voice asking the question, as if, in speaking for all seven of his brothers, Amrod was unconsciously imitating the head of his House.

She opened her mouth to answer and closed it again.

She thought of the child in the cradle. She thought of its father, of her enduring anger at the discovery that she had let herself be deceived and ensnared, her anguished suspicion that she had somehow connived with the deceit, her growing familiarity with Eol and his ways—and how horrified and disgusted both Eol and Celegorm would be if they ever learnt that, in her eyes, they were coming to resemble each other in more respects than she would have thought possible… She thought of her son in his cradle, her Lomion.

 ‘Too late’, she told Amrod, paused and added: ‘Or too early…’

 ‘Too late?! Oh Irisse, we have failed and abandoned you yet again!’

Amrod’s eyes were swimming with tears.

He cares, she thought surprised. But of course he did.  She had gone on thinking of Amrod and Amras as irresponsible children, even after Losgar, but they had no longer been children, even then, and were certainly not now.

 ‘No!’, she said. ‘You came. You asked. It means much to me. Tell the others so.’

She leaned forward and gave him a quick cousinly kiss.

 ‘Go now,’ she said, ‘and at once. It will not be good if he spots you, either for me or for you.’

She stood back and closed her eyes. She heard no sound except a sudden complete silence, but when she opened them again, he was gone, and there was no sunlight in Nan Elmoth, which was all black and green as before.

Only, on her cheek, there glistened a tear. It wasn’t hers. Her eyes remained bone-dry.

---

Chapter End Notes

If something like this had happened, I think it would help to explain Curufin's attitude when he and Eol talk after Aredhel's escape.