Naurthoniel and the Heroism of Housekeeping in Mithrim by Himring

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Chapter 3: Friendly Enough

Warning: This is where it gets really rather grim, although perhaps not quite in the way you expect.

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The trees were thinning and, at the same time, the wind picked up. There was a rustling of leaves about them. Above their heads, the clouds tore apart and scattered. Stars shone through the gaps.

They were nearing the Fingolfinian camp. Naurthoniel began to recognize landmarks familiar to her from the time when they themselves had freely roamed the area: a hollow tree colonized by wild bees, bramble patches where she had harvested blackberries last autumn. And here was a birch grove where she had sometimes found chanterelles.

They came to a wide shallow space where a stream ran over clean sand and among boulders before it flowed into the lake. They had washed their clothing there. According to Huntress, so did the Fingolfinians.

Naurthoniel halted in the shadow of an oak at the edge of the clearing. Huntress took another step, noticed at once that Naurthoniel was not following her and turned to look at her questioningly. On the other side of the stream, near the edge, stood a tall lonely figure, waiting. The fitful starlight illuminated her just enough for Naurthoniel to be certain of her identity.

She had come as arranged—Erien, her second cousin once-removed, her closest remaining relative in the Fingolfinian camp. And she had come alone. It was unlikely that she had not told anyone at all who she was going to meet, Naurthoniel thought. But whoever she had told, they had let her come alone. There could have been the High Lord Fingolfin himself out there, waiting to reduce her to cinders in his wrath. There could have been—far more likely—a troop of guards waiting to drag her into the Fingolfinian camp and before the authorities. But apparently there was not.

Slowly, she went down into the hollow, Huntress following now. When they came to the stream, Naurthoniel walked straight into it without remembering to take off her shoes. She shrugged slightly, when she realized, and just went on, under Erien’s unmoving gaze.

As Naurthoniel approached, she could see—with increasing clarity—how gaunt that rigid figure was: the hollow cheeks, the dark rings under her eyes, the bony hands. She came closer and saw that, in more prosperous days, what Erien was wearing they would both have called rags, barely fit for outdoor work in the shed or in the byre. She came up out of the water and could go no further.

She took off her tall basket and sank down behind it—like a propitiatory offering, like a shield wall.

‘I brought some more things’, she whispered. ‘I thought you might want other things than food, but I wasn’t sure what was needed.’

She began fumbling with the familiar fastenings, but now she was all thumbs.

‘Don’t you want to know how they died?’ her cousin asked. Her voice was clear, almost unemotional.

Naurthoniel shrank down over her basket like a hare under a stooping falcon. In the pouch at her belt burnt the letter, the anxious message that she had sent to the one person in the Fingolfinian camp that she had been confident was still talking to her—if only to scold her within an inch of her life. Huntress had returned it to her and, when she had unfolded it, she had read the words, in cramped letters squeezed into the blank space that remained underneath her signature:

Elvea is dead. So are Ninde and Rusco. Erien

‘If you want to tell me’, Naurthoniel whispered now.

‘Ninde died almost as soon as we started the Crossing’, began Erien, as if reciting a well-rehearsed list. ‘She slipped on the ice, fell into the icy water and her heart stopped.

‘Elvea broke her leg, twisting it in a crevasse. Out there—no warmth, no light, hardly any food—the break refused to heal. We pulled her along with us, limping arm in arm or dragging her on an improvised sled, but she became convinced she was slowing us down too much and, when we lay down to rest, she managed to hide from us. We looked for her all round about, but in the dark we could not find her.’

‘Rusco almost lived to see the moonrise. But he kept crying for his mother—and most kinds of food I could find him out there he refused to eat. I woke up beside him and he was dead, already frozen stiff. I was so exhausted I had not felt it when he died.’

Naurthoniel lifted her head and said; ‘You must not blame yourself.’

‘No’, said Erien distantly, ‘I’m not the one who must blame herself.

Naurthoniel shrank down again, cowering over her basket. If anyone had asked her, at any time, whether she wished to leave her relatives and friends behind in Araman, she would have said no. That being so, there must have been a point she had missed—there must have been several points at which she ought to have raised her voice in protest, rebelled, taken a stance, put her foot down. And she had failed to do so.

You would have thought they would have been obvious—those moments at which she ought to have firmly said No—but looking back on events, they had not been. What her memory of leaving Valinor and Araman showed her was a great deal of confusion and uncertainty, a jumble of moments of unsuspected courage and unsuspected cowardice—and the sudden sharp shock with which she found herself staring at the smoking wreckage drifting in the shallows and knew herself twice separated from her kin--those she had left in Tirion and from those she had left in Araman. She ought to have seen that coming, surely—she must have, at least hours earlier than that. It was ridiculous, self-serving, yes, patently untrue—and yet that was how she remembered it: herself in the middle of a knot of four or five friends, staring at the charcoaled hulls in dumb-founded silence.

She bowed her head and pushed her basket forward across the ground until it rested at Erien’s feet. Then she gathered herself, rose up and turned to go.

‘Narye’, said Erien—and when Naurthoniel looked back, her face looked more animated, alive.

‘Tell me, Narye’, Erien asked, ‘is it dangerous what you do—for you?’

We are all in danger, together, every single one of us, thought Naurthoniel. But what Erien clearly meant was: danger from Feanorians, if she was discovered carrying food around the lake.

She shrugged.

‘Oh, probably not’, she said. ‘There has been wild talk…’

Of course there had been wild talk. Moods in the Feanorian camp had been seesawing wildly, ever since the Fingolfinians had unexpectedly appeared in Mithrim—ever since the first tentative negotiations had begun and had almost immediately stalled.

Rumours flourished. Arguments blew up out of nowhere. It was predictable and once she would have assumed it could safely be ignored altogether. But bitter experience had taught her that wild talk could lead to wild actions.

‘Then don’t come here again’, said Erien. ‘Don’t put yourself in danger if you can help it. But keep sending us things. We do need them. Every little helps while we’re learning to live in this land.’

Naurthoniel had had no intention of inflicting her presence on Erien again. But now she studied her cousin’s face and thought that she would have to come again--not soon, but eventually, just to check that those hollow cheeks were filling out a little, that the rings under Erien’s eyes were becoming less pronounced. And if they survived long enough, both of them, they might even talk about forgiveness one day.

‘Send me a list of what you need’, she said.

Then she stepped into the water and began wading back across the stream to where Huntress was standing waiting for her.

She and Huntress set off at a quick pace, back along the route they had come.

They had covered quite a bit of distance before Huntress said to her: ‘She wasn’t very friendly, your kinswoman.’

Naurthoniel blinked. It occurred to her that she and Erien had spoken to each other in Quenya throughout. Huntress had probably not understood a single word.

‘Friendly enough’, Naurthoniel said.

Huntress gave her a frowning, puzzled look. Then she reached out and cautiously touched Naurthoniel’s shoulder. She quickly pulled her hand away again.

It was the touch that did it. Naurthoniel wept, on and off, half the way back around the lake, as quietly as she could.

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Chapter End Notes

Bechdel backfire notice: It is not meant to be implied that only women and children died during the Crossing of the Helcaraxe (or that only the women cared!).