Home Alone: Forgotten in Formenos by Dawn Felagund

Chapter 8: I'll Wait

Pushed onward at the cusp of the storm, the royal carriage cannot stop without stranding its occupants on the upward climb into the southern pass in the heart of a blizzard. As it is, the roads are bad and the snow is fierce, but behind them is a wall of white. They thunder at the verge of an obliterating bedlam of wind and snow. Fëanáro pawed the curtains aside, ready to give the order to turn around, but when he saw what lay behind him, the command died in his throat and he clasped the curtains shut again.

Between Formenos and Tirion, a hook of mountains peels off the Pelóri and curves inward toward the west. While far from as imposing as the Pelóri, this little spur nonetheless offers adequate altitude to break most storms from the north, thus sheltering the warm southern lands that flourish under the Light of the Trees. But until the carriage and wagon cross this pass, their occupants are at the mercy of whatever weather presses from behind.

Fëanáro is frantic, half-shouting names and establishments he knows just beyond the pass who will render aid. Nolofinwë is, as ever, trying to keep pace. Nerdanel says nothing. She stares at the curtained window like there is something to watch while Anairë pats her hand. Every now and then, at a break in Fëanáro’s increasingly elaborate schemes, she says softly, “I’m a terrible mother.”

“You are not,” Anairë reassures her in a voice too matter-of-fact to be reassuring. “We left in chaos and many things were doubtlessly forgotten. For example, it just occurs to me that I forgot my hand cream.”

Eventually, silence falls in the carriage, which clatters along at speed, every now and then skidding to one side or the other and causing the passengers within to clutch at the seats, the curtains, anything near at hand. They feel their ears muffle, then pop, and they must plant their feet to keep from sliding rearward as the carriage struggles through the final ascendancy of the mountain pass. The carriage master yells at the horses, and the carriage slows and slows and nearly stops … then they tip forward and are coming down the other side of the pass.

At the base of the pass on the south side is a village containing the depot from which much of the transport between Valinor and northern Aman originates. The carriage has not even halted before Nerdanel and Fëanáro have disembarked at a run for the station.

The depot is a maelstrom on account of the storm—a light snow has begun to feather down from over the mountains—and the pending Yule holiday. Passenger wagons heading north have been delayed, and the station teems with families sitting upon trunks and eating out of baskets, and transports laden with gifts intended for Northern relatives queue, horseless, awaiting the improvement of conditions so that they can ferry their cargo northward and hopefully on time for the festival.

“We need passenger transport north,” says Fëanáro, having pushed to the front of the line. There is a commotion behind him, but he ignores it. “Something fast and light.”

“Won’t happen,” says the depot master, whose sleepless eyes are showing whites all around and who has begun dropping subjects of sentences as a timesaver. “Pass’s impassable.”

“It is not,” snaps Fëanáro. “We just came over it.” He knows they barely made it, even at the cusp of the storm that plans to rage for another day yet, but his small sons, accidentally abandoned, would excuse even more dramatic fictions if he believed it would secure transport.

“ ’ve got a man on the mountain. Says the snow is calf-deep and coming fast.”

Nolofinwë and Anairë have threaded through the crowd and hover awkwardly behind Fëanáro and Nerdanel. Nolofinwë is doing that wavy thing with his fingers that he does when he wants to get someone’s attention to speak but doesn’t want to interrupt. “Fë— Fë—” he begins futilely a few times. He pokes and tickles the air.

“There must be something,” says Fëanáro with the appalled chuckle of one accustomed to solving complex problems and appalled when others cannot do the same. “A runnered sleigh?”

The harried depot master feigns a sympathetic twitch around his eyes. “’Fraid the last sleigh went over an hour ago. Probably passed it coming down.”

“Fëanáro.” Nolofinwë finally gets out his half-brother’s full name. He draws him aside in that gentle, diplomatic way that makes people think of the kingship when they see him and that has caused so much tension between him and Fëanáro. “Brother, we will not get back over the pass until the storms subsides, and then they must clear the road. Why don’t we head into the village and get rooms at the inn? And when the road is passable again, I am sure they will accommodate you with their swiftest conveyance.”

The depot master is not surreptitious about tipping his ear toward their conversation. He hears “inn” and seizes on the half-heard idea. “ ’ve got a list of accommodations in the village!” he trumpets, eager to get this frantic pair off and unblock his line. He produces a booklet that helpful Anairë begins to immediately peruse.

“Oh! This one serves a traditional Yule breakfast! The children would enjoy—”

In the midst of them in Nerdanel. She has said nothing yet, though as always, she has heard and observed all. Like a mountaineer watching for wisps of snow and listening for chuffing ice to herald an avalanche, she perceives that if she does not act otherwise, she will be borne along with the slide when it comes, into rooms at an inn and a traditional Yule breakfast: a cozy, complacent fate that seems in that moment more intolerable than death. Fëanáro is putting up a spirited fight to Nolofinwë’s suggestion, but a lack of transport is as absolute as it gets—even south of the mountain, the snow has begun to dust the ground—and Nerdanel can see that they will spend the coming days in one of the inns, either the one with the Yule breakfast or the one with the sauna that top Anairë’s list.

“Sir, please,” says Nerdanel to the depot master. She does not have Fëanáro’s bluster or Anairë’s cool command or Nolofinwë’s authority, but there is an urgency to her soft words that momentarily quiets the tumult around her. “As a mother, I beg you. Whatever is in your power. If there is a broken sleigh, we will fix it. If we must go on foot and meet one on the other side of the pass—” she straightens her shoulders—“we have gone farther in worst, Fëanáro and I. It is my sons. My little sons. I must get home to them, to Formenos. I will do whatever it takes.”

The depot master’s face has gone slack. The roister around them stills. Heads are turning. Fëanáro stops mid-shout; Anairë’s finger stops over a hovel that doesn’t even offer private baths.

“Please,” Nerdanel implores in a near-whisper.

The depot master’s mouth flaps for a moment before he recalls the duties of his profession and recovers his brisk efficiency. He whisks out a list of arrivals and departures and pores over it. “Milady,” he says. “I may have—we are all full.” He has recovered his manners and, with them, the subjects of his sentences. “I have a sleigh going two days hence to Formenos.”

“That is too long. I cannot wait that long.”

He returns to the list, his fingers running up and down its timetable. “It is simply not possible!” he mutters. His finger fixes on something. “But wait. I may have a sleigh coming in tonight, late. We may be able to make room. I cannot guarantee—but if you wish to wait here …”

“I’ll wait.”

Anairë chooses the inn with the breakfast. They must get the children into a warm room with a hot meal. Nolofinwë is seeing to their trunks and having the royal carriage stored. Fëanáro clasps both of Nerdanel’s hands in his.

“I don’t—” he says. For once, he is fumbling for words.

“I know. But the other children need you, so that I can go to the twins.”

“I should go!” His swagger briefly reasserts itself but withers quickly. He cannot bring himself to say that he is hardier than she, even though they both know that is where he was headed. In the midst of sorrow and fear, they press their foreheads together and laugh. They both know this is not true. She has nurtured the lives of seven sons and remains yet unflagging at his side.

“I brought a palantír,” he says. “It doesn’t work fully yet, but it may be that I—”

They both know that it doesn’t yet work at all. She kisses him on the mouth. “I’ll wait on the sleigh,” she says gently.

She watches her family pass through the doors of the station and into the swirling snow. Carnistir and Írissë are arguing again, Tyelkormo is speculating on hunting conditions in the snow, Anairë is trying to excite them about soaking tubs and southern fruit for breakfast, Nelyo and Nolofinwë shepherd all with brisk efficiency. Fëanáro departs last and looks long at her before he goes.

She takes a seat on her trunk and begins to wait.