Home Alone: Forgotten in Formenos by Dawn Felagund

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Chapter 18: Herringbone


Night has fallen, and the flimsy sleigh bearing the mummery troupe of Quildë the Dumb, charitably bearing Nerdanel the Wise, is ploughing through the snow at the apex of the mountain. The mountainfolk, undeterred by the fiercest of storms, have resumed their lives, visiting for the Yule, and the track is sliced by the trails left by their skis and snowshoes. Nonetheless, the horses—a pair of heavy draft animals borrowed from a farmer in Falquopelë—labor and puff to pull the sleigh through the heavy snow. In places, it has drifted across the road to the depths of their chests. At these times, the Elves get out and walk beside the sleigh to lighten the load for the horses, stumping through hip-deep snow.

But now they are descending, and the way is mostly clear. Several sleighs belonging to the mountainfolk have already passed, heading likely to the villages in the north for the holiday. The mummer in the striped tights is driving, and everyone in the sleigh but Quildë and Nerdanel are sleeping.

At first, Quildë tries to coax Nerdanel into a conversation conducted entirely in mummery. Her hands flutter out of politeness and then lie still upon the fur blanket in which she is wrapped.

“I am a terrible mother,” she says. There it is: her fear made manifest in sound wrapped in a cloud of breath. Once uncorked, the words flow unimpeded. “I left them. I left them.”

“You’re not a terrible mother,” says Quildë. His voice hitches on the word not like an adolescent at puberty. With his reedy, piping voice, Nerdanel can imagine why he prefers to mime. “Look at us! You’re doing better than any of us.”

“Am I though?” The wit of Nerdanel is legendary: the way she challenges claims with such gentleness that no one realizes their argument has been eviscerated until they see the parts of it in a tangled heap before them. But now a note of desperation gave her voice a honed edge. “I left them. Do any of you have that on your consciences?”

“Begging your pardon, Princess,” says Quildë, “but we are all of us fathers, and yet do you see any children in this sleigh?” He sweeps his arms open and then makes an exaggerated show of peering under blankets. “It is the eve of Yuletide, and we have all left our children.”

“You know what I mean,” she mumbles.

“I do, I do,” he assures her. “And perhaps that is not a fair parry! But I would rejoin that the persistent fatherlessness to which we have left our children—and essential widowhood to which we have left our wives—is far worse than a single and simple oversight. Save for a sennight each season, we travel the roads of Aman nonstop—and it is hardly as though our profession bestows our family with significant means! Rather they endure also the poverty of those still grasping for success, as we have been grasping for yéni. My children would gladly exchange me for a parent like you, who braves a storm and a rickety sleigh brimming with raggedy mimes to return to them, not those same mimes, who brave a storm only in pursuit of their own glory.”

The sleigh slides onto the level road at the base of the mountain. Nerdanel does not answer Quildë; at first, he believes she has drifted to sleep. But when he reaches over to straighten her blanket, he sees her eyes gleaming wakeful, bright with starlight.

They reach a cluster of buildings too small to be even a village, and the driver stops the sleigh. “The horses can go no farther,” he calls over his shoulder. “We must rest them until morning, but have no fear, we will make the village and the festival.”

The mummers watch Nerdanel disembark, for she cannot—will not—wait. In the back of the sleigh are several worn skis, given them in case they became caught in a drift, so that some of them could return for help. They are ill-fitting on her feet, but she dutifully straps them into place as best she can. When she rises, Quildë says, “It is too far to Formenos,” knowing she will not be persuaded.

“I have gone much farther before. I was younger, but never was I pressed as I am now. I will be fine.” She catches his hand. “Nor will I forget your kindness to me.”

She has not forgotten the striding rhythm that devours leagues of snow as she glides. There are steep hills that she must ascend with strenuous chopping strides, her skis turned in at the heels. Her breath comes fast and hard then, and she sweats inside her winter clothing. But then she slides down the other side, letting her legs rest and her burning face cool in the frigid air. She and Fëanáro used to ski in the winter months in the north to move from place to place, camping overnight under the open sky, dependent on none for their conveyance. She knows the patterns of the stars overhead and where to point her skis to bring her home to her sons.

Another hill. She turns her skis into the herringbone step; her aching legs want to keep the steps short and slow but she forces them to lengthen, bearing her faster to the top of the hill. She pauses just long enough to loosen the scarf around her neck before bringing her skis together and tipping forward to race down the hill. Another barrier between her and her sons slips away behind her.


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