Home Alone: Forgotten in Formenos by Dawn Felagund

Chapter 21: A Slippery Slope

Down the stairs they thunder, Iniðilêz and Dušamanûðânâz, in time to see a pair of small boots disappearing into the dark corridor off the vestibule, opposite the library. This is the curving hallway that slopes gently down to the root and wine cellars, as well as a door that opens at the back of the house and serves as a delivery entrance for casks of wine and crates of vegetables. The door to the outside is made of heavy wood to keep out the cold. The twins have garnished it with a few heavy bars and locks to give it the look of what they imagine how a vault should appear. None of the doors lead to the vault, but Iniðilêz and Dušamanûðânâz do not know that.

Ambarussa earlier constructed a tower of vases and glassware and other fragile things at the bottom of the slope, standing between the corridor and the three doorways, leaving two small portcullises at the base, just large enough for two small boys to slip through. The twins suddenly hesitate. They exchange glances.

Until now, they always kept their contrivances between themselves and Iniðilêz and Dušamanûðânâz. Now they must trust their own alacrity and have faith that the note delivered earlier to the pyrotechnician’s assistant will produce the desired result. Otherwise … the hammering footfalls, the growling invectives: in size and power, they are bested, and neither doubt Iniðilêz’s threats. If caught, the pair of Maiar will be drinking wine from their skulls before Yuletide’s ending, and neither wants to ponder what will transpire between this bookend and that.

“This is it,” says Ambarussa. “We can’t turn back.”

And they both hop forward and let their feet slide out from beneath them. The hallway, heavily greased with soap, sends them sliding toward the teetering vases. Ambarto hears his brother whooping out an exhilarated “Wheee!” before realizing the same sound is coming from him. They can enjoy the velocity, the momentary abstention of control, for only a moment though. They must aim their feet and narrow their bodies to pass through the two openings Ambarussa left. To miss will not only bring their contraption down upon their own heads but, should they walk away from that, lose them precious time.

Many people, in such circumstances, would be overcome with regret at their choices. But they are Fëanárians. What is done is done. For all their skill and power, they know their limits, and turning time is against the law of what they may achieve. They are past the point where they can make a different choice and run to the village for help. They aim their bodies and tighten their arms as small as they can make them, and both sail through the gaps with inches to spare on every side.

When Iniðilêz and Dušamanûðânâz round the corner of the corridor, they see the final vase being tucked into the rightmost gap. Not realizing that the floor is greased, their passage down the sloped hallway is much different, full of wheeling arms and feet trying to scrabble for purchase. They grab at the walls and throw themselves off-balance. Each of them whirls 360 degrees and then starts a second circuit. Iniðilêz smashes into the barrier with his shoulder; Dušamanûðânâz, having completed a full 540, goes in ass-first. The sound is such that nearby birds stir in their nests, and a deer nosing for bark lifts her head and dashes into the undergrowth, white tail flashing. A glass flowerpot clunks Iniðilêz on the head, in the exact spot where the red crystal fell earlier, and Dušamanûðânâz splays into a pile of broken glass like he’s making a snow angel. The rain of glass shards seems to carry on far longer than possible by the laws of physics.

The twins expected this final barrier to serve as a stalling tactic. It does not. An enraged Iniðilêz shakes the spots from behind his eyes and drags Dušamanûðânâz to his hooves. It has not slowed them so much as pissed them off. Both are mostly unscathed, though the same cannot be said for the various attempts as glasswork the various Fëanárians have produced over the years. Now they face the three doors. “That one!” Iniðilêz stabs his finger at the heaviest, adorned with its show of locks and barriers, and from his pointed finger, something pushes that shatters through those barriers. Even he seems momentarily surprised by this, but of course the barriers were not intended to function, only to draw notice and stall the twins’ pursuers. In the latter use, they have also failed.

Iniðilêz and Dušamanûðânâz find themselves not in Fëanáro’s vault but outdoors. It has begun to snow again, the tiny driving flakes produced in the perilous cold. The twins’ bootprints make a clear trail into the night. Iniðilêz and Dušamanûðânâz follow.

The twins have reached the frozen pond. They leap upon the sled they left there earlier, their momentum gliding them easily across the icy surface. Like the wild things of the north, they have an instinctual sense of the ice and when it is safe to pass. The winter is in its infancy and the ice is yet frail, but it will bear their small bodies with speed upon a sled. They hear a crack sizzling along behind them but give thanks for this. All the better to dunk their pursuers when they set foot upon the ice! The twins land unharmed at the opposite bank, with a small poomp into a bank of snow. As though answering a prayer, the snow abruptly ceases, the cloud cover overhead drawing back like curtains upon a stage, ready for their fireworks show.

Iniðilêz and Dušamanûðânâz, however, do not fall for the ice, much less into the icy pond as intended. When they reach the pond, they can see the tracks of the twins’ sled. Dušamanûðânâz hovers a hoof over the ice, but Iniðilêz gestures wildly, and they part ways, each of them circling the pond from opposite sides. They come upon the twins as the first firework goes off with a whistle and a crack overhead that sends snow spilling from nearby branches, and they close upon them like the jaws of a trap.

Grabbing them by the scruffs of their jackets, Iniðilêz and Dušamanûðânâz hoist the boys onto the broken lower branches of a pine tree. Another firework goes off overhead. This one is purple, and the shadows carved in the boys’ faces are those of terror. Their feet drum, reaching for the earth, but they are well clear of what they can reach, being so small of stature, and their boots only drum the tree trunk in a way that makes Dušamanûðânâz cackle with glee. Iniðilêz is more calculating. As the final firework wheezes skyward and pops in a spray of scarlet, the boys can see the hate in his eyes and realize the tales of torment Macalaurë likes to tell are all true.

“Fire and blades will be just the beginning, boys,” says Iniðilêz. “You think you are clever, but my sorcery will conjure horrors you cannot imagine. I will cover you with bees and mine will sting. I will rain rocks upon your head—”

“And chew your little bottoms with piranhas! And make you poop uncontrollably!”

“—and fill your skin with glass till your own mother won’t recognize you and you’ll glisten like one of your father’s lamps. And then—”

From the dark, something whumps against the side of Iniðilêz’s head. He slumps forward, his face inches from Ambarto’s, close enough that Ambarto can see the rivulet of slobber dislodged by the blow and bowing like a little bridge to stick to the tree. Dušamanûðânâz isn’t even given the chance to wonder before the other half of the double-sided oar clobbers him likewise and folds him into a heap below Ambarussa’s stuttering feet.

The Wight lifts them, first Ambarto, then Ambarussa, with the arms of a father, strong and safe, like he once lifted his own children on the other side of the dark waters. “Let’s get you home.”