Home Alone: Forgotten in Formenos by Dawn Felagund

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Chapter 5: Attic Exile

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Nerdanel is renowned for her patience. Her epithet “the wise,” she often thinks, is less about actual wisdom and more about the patience to let wisdom come. Seven sons and Fëanáro’s tantrums and a tangle of family grudges, enough to fill a book, and she stands in their midst with her gentle mannerisms, slow voice, and beatific smile, carefully restoring order in the way that, with slow hands, Eru might have sorted the raw stuff of the Void and made it into stars and water and earth. She casts aside the dark and the unnecessary so that those around her feel their true purpose flourish. The wise. It is not without reason that Fëanáro credits her with half of his success.

But Nerdanel is after all a human. And this has been an incredibly stressful ordeal: the arrival of Fingolfin’s family (after a long expectation of the event that was punctuated by Fëanáro’s clandestine attempts to secure other accommodations for them that Nerdanel had to constantly undo) and the preparations for the Yule festival amid the pending storm and the constant collision of personalities that is the emotional equivalent of throwing stones at a crash cymbal. More than once, Nerdanel has had the creeping thought that, if they were to all try harder, there would be less frenzy for her to calm, less chaos for her to set to order. And then it is hard not to take it personally.

As she leads the Ambarussa away from the disastrous dinner, she can feel the impatience rising within her. It feels like a waterskin must feel to be filled: a climbing distention that cannot be relieved until disgorged. She forces her body into calm. Act calm and become calm. (A lesson she has taught to Fëanáro, that he does not use, and several of her children, that they do not use either.) She makes her hands clasping theirs relax. Her thumbs stroke their skin, still soft and babylike, to remind herself that they are the youngest and far from the only ones to blame in the escapade that just unfolded. But her feet stomp a little louder on the stairs than necessary, and she walks a bit faster than she knows is comfortable for their little legs to keep up.

On the way, she gets the whole story, delivered in half-sentences:

“Tyelkormo started it!” That is Ambarussa, the older one who makes points like a rock thrown through glass. (Much like, ironically, Tyelkormo.)

“All he wants to do is impress Írissë!” Ambarto is more eloquent and perceptive, more like Nelyo but physically fearful.

“And she’s dumb and rude!”

“She doesn’t like spicy food! And she has bad manners and won’t just pretend like you told us we always have to do at feasts!”

“We don’t either!”

“But we’re little and she’s not and Atar made that dish special for us!”

“And Tyelkormo stole it!”

“He stole it and gave it to her, and then he took some himself, and they ate every last bit of it, didn’t even leave a ladleful for us to share.”

“So we would have had to go hungry!”

“And now we’re the ones who are in trouble, which isn’t fair!”

This brings them to their bedroom, its closed door decorated by a pair of copper foxes shaped by her father and engraved with Ambarussa and Ambarto. “You are in trouble”—she makes her voice slow and sweet—“because you struck your brother first—”

“We just pushed him,” Ambarussa interrupts.

Nerdanel detests being interrupted. No matter how angry he is, Fëanáro will let her finish—his face growing increasingly lined with rage—and would not dare to interrupt. He did once, too, early in their relationship, and never did it again.

She closes her eyes and feels her eyelashes quiver against her cheek.

“I am not arguing with the two of you. You are out of line, and it is time for bed.”

“But we’re hungry.” Ambarto keys his voice into a pitiable note, and with his little lip pushed out, she almost does feel sorry for him.

“I’ll have Tyelkormo bring you some bread and jam.”

“Not Tyelkormo!” yells Ambarussa and there it goes, the impatience: It is neck-high now, and she can feel her pulse beating there, too fast. She ought to breathe deep and slow it, allow her thoughts to catch her actions, but in that moment, it feels satisfying to enact something that, for once in her life, will make her own evening easier.

“You will read quietly in your room then until Turukáno comes up, and then you will go to bed. We have an early day tomorrow.”

“Turukáno!”

“Yes. Turukáno. He will be staying with you tonight—”

“But he pinches us and he’s mean!” Interrupted again.

Her eyelids flutter closed. The impatience is ear-high; she can feel them burning.

There is an attic to the house where the family stores the items it no longer uses but can’t bear to part with, or the broken things it intends to fix (but hasn’t), or items still useful but too large to occupy their everyday living spaces. One of the latter is a metal-framed couch that folds down into a bed. Nerdanel herself has slept on it many times, when Fëanáro is restless with one of his new inventions and paces their bedroom without coming to bed; she knows it is comfortable. Outwardly, she is a paragon of calm as she leads them by their tiny, soft hands to the stairs to the attic.

“The attic!” Ambarto gasps. He is afraid of the attic as he is afraid of many things. Ambarussa, on the other hand, yanks his hand from hers and stomps up the first three steps before turning to face her.

“Come on, Ambarussa!” he barks. “Who cares? Let the monsters eat us, then she might feel sorry for sending us hungry to bed in the cold, creepy attic.”

Nerdanel feels a twinge of regret, but she is a parent many times over and knows that walking back a consequence now will embolden them and create a ripple effect of repercussions over the next several weeks of their journey that she will come to sorely regret. A night in the attic might be what they need to remove one chaotic element from her coming ordeal.

Ambarto is crying. He makes it to the second step before turning back. “We’re sorry …”

She closes her heart to his tears. “It’s too late. Go get ready for bed, and I will send Tyelkormo with bread and jam in a few minutes.”

“You suck,” says Ambarussa. His little face is almost as red as his hair. “All of you suck.”

“That’s a terribly unkind thing to say.” As soon as the words are out, Nerdanel wishes she hadn’t responded. Ambarussa is eager to seize on any reaction—even the most insipid, boilerplate reaction she could have possibly given—as further excuse to escalate. Which he does.

“I hope we never see any of you again!” His voice rises to a scream at the end. Ambarto glances at him in alarm and then, to Nerdanel’s surprise, his little face hardens too. He shares, it seems, his brother’s sentiment on the matter.

“Me too,” he whispers.

Nerdanel has trouble feeling her feet. This has escalated most inappropriately. The wise? Hardly! She hears the same feeble admonishment—idiotically ineffectual before and even more so upon repetition—pass her lips, just in a slightly more wounded tone: “That is terribly unkind. You would be sorry if you woke up tomorrow and didn’t have a family.”

“No we wouldn’t,” says Ambarussa, some of the fury gone from his voice.

“Then say it again. It is the season of wishes. ‘Say it three and it may come to be.’”

“I hope you jerks all disappear!” says Ambarussa, and Ambarto echoes in a thin little voice, “I hope you all disappear.”

Nerdanel’s hand trembles as she closes the door upon them. “Goodnight, boys.” She hopes they cannot hear the tears in her voice.