Home Alone: Forgotten in Formenos by Dawn Felagund

Chapter 6: The Storm

Late that night, the resplendent House of Fëanáro slowly dims, its windows going dark one by one, like the heavy eyelids of a sleeper nodding in its chair, until the last—Nerdanel and Fëanáro’s room—winks out, and the house slumbers.

No one sees the storm begin. Even Tyelkormo, with his vigorous sniffing the wind and scrying the horizon and thrusting a spit-wetted finger into the air, lies flopped on his belly, enclosed by dogs on all sides, snoring powerfully. The last to retire, Nerdanel and Fëanáro—the former busy late with packing, the latter with dishes—lie back-to-back, subtly dissatisfied with each other. If Fëanáro had turned to hold his wife as was his wont, he would have seen the first flakes of snow meandering down; as it is, he is fixated on how he will survive the journey by carriage tomorrow when his tolerance already feels crumpled and broken.

The twins cry themselves to sleep—the jam and bread brought by Tyelkormo left symbolically untouched despite grumbling bellies—and observe nothing.

The wind, which has been steady and ominous, abruptly dies. The darkened house gives a groan as of relief. Carnistir and Írissë stir at the sound but do not waken. The first snowflakes come next, fat and feather-light, as charming as the shreds of tissue that represent snow inside the glass baubles one can find in the market at Valmar. If one were the inspect the first snowflakes, fallen upon the arm of one’s coat, one would observe that they’d proceeded from the Fanyamar to your sleeve with delicate crystals unscathed, so gentle was their descent.

Within the hour, though, the timbre of the weather changes as the storm that has been all day pressing from the north comes suddenly galloping down, hemmed by the mountains to the east and driving the wind before it like quarry flushed from its den. The house braces itself with a ripple of crackles. The trees make a miserable sound and scrabble at each other with their branches. The snow is no longer amiable and soft; it is the fine, driving blitz of shattered crystals, deceptively small but stinging. Were the house still awake and alight and Iniðilêz and Dušamanûðânâz still upon the walls of Formenos, they would have been able no longer to see the splendor of the House of Fëanáro. It has been obliterated by the snow.

In the village of Formenos, the carriage master Roccowë, occupying the very rooms that Fëanáro had intended for his half-brother before being vetoed by Nerdanel, sleeps restlessly. He has not liked the look of the northern horizon and is keenly cognizant that he will be entrusted to convey the two Noldorin high princes, their wives, and the bulk of the Finwëan grandchildren south for the Yule festival upon whatever roads present themselves tomorrow morning. The state of the Fëanorian wagon is not much of a concern—it was built in the north with the bulk and wide wheels intended for traversing slight snowfalls—but the royal carriage Nolofinwë has made his progress in thus far was constructed for the pleasant paved roads of the sunny south, not the rutted dirt tracks of the north, with the added challenge of a handspan of snow upon them.

The sudden resumption of the wind also sends a cascade of small cracks and pops through the inn. Roccowë staggers from his bed—kingly, comfortable, yet he has been uneasy upon it—to the water closet. He abstained the night before from all wine and spirits, having instead the gas-infused flavored water popular in the north among miners who cannot dare inebriation. There is a small window high over the toilet, and he rubs his eyes several times before realizing that the blearing of the lamp across the street isn’t because of the lingering sleep in his eyes but because of snow come so sudden and thick that a light mere yards away is reduced to a golden haze.

This is how, deep in Telperion’s hours, Roccowë winds up pounding at the door of the House of Fëanáro. The wagoner and his two footmen he has dragged already from bed, amid complaints of sore heads (they were not so abstinent as Roccowë), abruptly silenced when they saw the snow, already deep enough to cover their booted feet. At that point, they became equally frantic.

It is Nolofinwë who answers the door. “Are you mad, man?” His eyes are narrowed with sleep and there is a pillow crease across his face. “Wake this house full of children and you might as well kick over a hive of bees!” But when Roccowë explains that if they do not leave within the hour, the snow will become too deep to cross without a sleigh, and (Roccowë carefully emphasizes this part) he will likely be stranded in his half-brother’s hospitality for several days or even longer, then urgency impresses Nolofinwë as well, and he disappears wild-eyed back into the house, yelling to wake the world.

This instigates a repeat of the earlier madcap preparations: clothing hastily donned, trunks slung down the stairs, gifts heaped high, items present at bedtime suddenly gone missing and the ensuing accusations and bickering, all amplified by the surreal sense generated by enacting all of this in the middle of the night. Both Fëanáro and Nolofinwë are bellowing at their respective children, suddenly and sickeningly aware in their irritation at the bellowing of the other of the implications of not making it onto the road ahead of the worst of the storm.

At last the trunks are loaded. “Count the children!” Nerdanel calls to Nelyo. It is a milling mess of brothers and cousins jockeying for the best seats and Nolofinwë’s servants pressing into the fray and footmen loading the wagon with luggage and provisions, but he counts ten heads plus himself, skipping the servants in his uncle’s colors, which makes eleven. He calls this number out to his mother, who is satisfied to give the command to leave. He does not notice that two of the heads—belonging to the wagoner’s two footmen, garbed nondescriptly for winter—peel away and do not join the crush of children trying to push into the wagon all at once but take their positions, one each on the back of the wagon and carriage. Then the whip cracks and there is a tense moment when the wheels stick in the snow, but slowly they begin to turn, the snow creaking underneath their treads, and with the winds of the storm pressing at their backs, the Houses of Fëanáro and Nolofinwë depart into the dark and the snow, south to Taniquetil.

The royal carriage is amply provisioned, swaddled in deep furs and with velvet drapes that hide the snow and muffle the howling wind so that it might be a placid summer’s day outside, except for the occasional skidding of the carriage wheels on the road. Nolofinwë calls almost immediately to the footman for mulled wine, which is delivered into their hands, steaming fragrantly and perfectly spiced. Fëanáro turned up his nose at Nolofinwë’s need for a servant to pour his wine, but he does not turn up his nose at the wine.

But Nerdanel remains uncharacteristically edgy. Her impeccable calm is tarnished and frayed, like a soft and delicate fabric after being trailed on the ground. She sips at her wine but it does not calm her; she sets the mug aside. There is a whisper of a draft from around one of the velvet drapes. She tweaks it and tightens her furs around her shoulders, then sheds them entirely for being too hot. She tries the wine again, but is sets like acid at the base of her throat.

“We are completely safe, I assure you.” Nolofinwë has detected her unease and attributed it to the road conditions and weather. “Roccowë is the finest driver in Tirion and has experience with all manner of weather.”

“You forget, Brother, that we also have experience with all manner of weather conditions,” Fëanáro reminds him, but he’s on his third mug of wine, and the admonishment is almost affectionate.

“It’s not us. It’s the children,” says Nerdanel. It is not, but that is the closest she can put her finger onto her unease. She crosses, uncrosses, recrosses her legs.

“The children are fine,” say Fëanáro and Nolofinwë in unison, both deep enough in their cups not to notice the irony.

“The wagon is ugly and old but that is precisely why it is safe,” Fëanáro elaborates, gesturing with his cup. “I’d challenge any in Tirion to build its like.” He ladles himself a fourth cup of wine, splashing more into the proffered cups of Anairë and Nolofinwë. “You and I traveled through much worse, in much worse conveyance, at their age. Once we make it over the southern pass, the snow will subside, and the journey will be easy from there.”

“It is not the safety of the wagon,” says Nerdanel.

“It is because I did not put the dishes away,” Fëanáro offers in a voice with no room for uncertainty. “And you did not make the bed.”

“It is neither the dishes nor the bed.” Nerdanel feels impatience rising again, the second time in a day, niggling at her like a small child tugging at her hand while she’s preoccupied. She traces the source of the feeling. Fëanáro and his precious kitchen, his precious dishes that must be washed and put away just so. And there it is: the kitchen, the dishes. She waits for the impatience to rise again toward her husband and his self-centered cluelessness, but nothing happens.

“No, that’s not it,” she whispers.

“Try to sleep,” Anairë suggests, ever the practical, seeking to shortcut through life’s difficulties. “By the time you awaken, we’ll be over the pass and the storm will be behind us again.”

But it is the kitchen … no, not the kitchen but the dishes. Not that they weren’t put away; Nerdanel would leave them out every night if it were up to her. It is a waste of effort to put something up just to bring it down again. It is Fëanáro’s idiosyncrasy that the kitchen be left just so. She closes her eyes, as though she were taking Anairë’s advice. She sees a bowl shattering on the floor. She pulls the memory backward, like drawing something out of the water. The bowl reassembles, nestled in small hands. There is a chipmunk printed upon it.

And there it is: the impatience again, of being squeezed on all sides too long and too loudly by the inconsideration of others. This particular offense was not egregious, just badly timed. She really should have been angry at Tyelkormo, or perhaps Írissë. At best, they both knew better; at worst, they incited their young, hungry kin to outrage. Instead, she remembers the feel of tiny hands in hers, of the steep, close stairs leading to the attic, of the defiant, tremulous footsteps of the twins—

The twins. In the attic. The twins in the attic whom she never roused to depart.

“Ambarussa!” she screams.

Chapter End Notes

The "gas-infused flavored water popular in the north" is a nod to the taste for flavored seltzer found here in my own Formenos of northern Vermont.