The Bird In A Cage by Himring

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

Aredhel leaves Vinyamar.

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

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.