Home Alone: Forgotten in Formenos by Dawn Felagund

Chapter 9: Try Magic

Evening falls and the snowstorm slows to a gentle whirl of fat flakes, the snow has drifted waist-deep in places, and Iniðilêz and Dušamanûðânâz contemplate the House of Fëanáro.

“This is it,” Iniðilêz says in a whisper that comes out like a hiss of steam from some foul volcanic fissure. He has been waiting for this moment for a long time, since he cavorted in the footsteps of Melkor during the Great Music. Since the aforementioned cavorting was ignored, Melkor selecting for his special retinue those Ainur of fire-form to grace the halls of Utumno, Iniðilêz was left behind, to wait upon first one Vala and then another, first on Almaren and now in Valinor, successively unseated from positions always by his petty thievery and general waspishness. It was not for lack of trying on the part of the Valar; they pitied him, but pity extends only so far when one discovers one’s servant coining the concept of a black market so as to peddle heirlooms from one’s house.

With Melkor’s release, he applied again to serve the Dark Vala, but Melkor seemed again not to see him, selecting this time mainly Maiar from the service of Aulë.

Iniðilêz intended to win Melkor’s attention at last. When he arrived in Melkor’s hall and presented all of the treasures of the Fëanorian vaults, he would be noticed at last, and when Melkor rebelled again—and, Iniðilêz knew, Melkor would rebel again—it would be Iniðilêz carrying his standard back into the bitter north.

But this first required gaining entry to the deserted house and then discovering and opening the vault. Iniðilêz does not expect much resistance; Fëanáro may be the greatest of the Noldor but he is still but an Eruhín, and Iniðilêz’s sorcery is strong.

Gaining entry, though, will begin with something more brute than magic. Iniðilêz produces a crude metal bar and raises it to Dušamanûðânâz, who garbles with laughter and raises his own to clink them together.

Speaking of Dušamanûðânâz, today he wears a visage like one of those squash-faced cats, though hairless and earless. In fact, his entire body today is shiny, white, and wriggling, like a grub fresh from the dirt, and even in shoes, his feet leave moist prints wherever he passes.

Iniðilêz and Dušamanûðânâz wade through the snow to the Fëanorians’ front door. Normally, they would slither and creep, but there is a deliberate boldness in their step. Iniðilêz kicks the snow in sprays that rattle back to the ground, sounding like a handful of glass beads cast upon a wood floor. Dušamanûðânâz flops and rolls until Iniðilêz scolds at him to “Cut it out already!” on account that he is getting even more soaked and leaving the snow slimy in a way that Iniðilêz finds nauseating. They stride up to the front door. A giggling Dušamanûðânâz even knocks upon it and pretends to talk to an imaginary servant, bowing and simpering, “Why yeees, we would ask entry to the house of your great lord! Why to rob him of course! Of everything needed for a plum position in Melkor’s administration!”

Iniðilêz thwacks him. “Shaddup!” he barks and goes to work with the prybar.

Inside the house, the Ambarussa are washing the dishes.

They have availed themselves of every manner of forbidden fun this day and come back around to the kitchen where their day began. There, instead of Fëanáro’s tidy scullery, they found caramel-caked pots, heaps of ingredients, trails of chocolate upon the floor, and about two dozen spoons once used and never reused for stirring and mixing and serving. Both turned away and grasped the hands of the other, a brilliant idea for more mayhem poised on the edges of their minds—but no idea would come. For several long minutes, they wracked the deepest troves of their most rascally wishes—but nothing.

So they washed the dishes.

Perpetually underfoot and benignly clueless—and therefore annoying—the twins are accustomed to washing dishes, for it is their usual sentence for all manner of misdemeanors. If they do it poorly or incorrectly, Fëanáro makes them redo their work—all of their work, not just that which he found unsatisfactory—so they are good at it too. Ambarto is just coaxing the last of the hardened caramel from the bottom of their father’s saucepan when they hear the knock.

With matched gasps, they flick their faces toward the front door.

“We should—” Ambarussa begins, even as Ambarto says, “It might be Amil.” He remembers too late to forbid hope in his voice.

And they know it is not their mother. Amil would hardly knock on the door of her own home, but they are keenly aware that they are in charge of the house and so the laws of hospitality are theirs to honor. After the snowstorm, they reckon in shared thought, it could be stranded traveler in need of a hot drink and a place to sleep, and they would not dare besmirch their family’s name by ignoring such a request. Many times has their father welcomed such travelers to their table and fire

Nonetheless, they walk on quiet feet. Indeed, it seems that if they are to be heard, then it would be because of their hearts thundering in syncopation to each other, roaring like pistons in a machine, and seemingly very loud in their ears.

The knock does not come again. Decorum suggests a minute should pass before a second knock to give the host time to don appropriate garb and make his way to the front of the house, but if not answered by then, a second knock is polite in case the first was not heard. Both boys pause at the entry to the vestibule. All but the kitchen where they were working is dark, yet by the thin wash of Telperion’s light, they can see the snow is still coming down outside the front windows. The front door—locked and latched firmly—does not seem as though it could have been knocked upon. It does not seem they could be anything but alone.

But then they hear a scratching. A low creaking groan, as of wood being forced. A clatter of something metal falling and a hiss that sounds like a curse. More creaking. Then, “Blast these locks!” in a voice that sounds like the whisper of a snake’s belly across dry grass.

“Try magic!” comes an eager, oddly wet-sounding voice, and the lock—bright brass with an elegant keyhole at the center—begins to glow purple, the color of a zap of lightning.

“Blast!” comes the second curse, and the lock fades back to brass.

In Valinor, there is no notion of theft. But the Eruhíni, shaped by Eru with the full vision of his Eä in mind (not the ideals of the Valar), were given a guardedness against dark things, even if those things do not yet have a name. The twins understand in their atavistic cores that someone seeking to force entry to their home is not seeking hospitality but to claim that to which he does not have rights. And his voice—his voice ripples like a wet feather trailed up their backbones.

They do not even stop to shiver. In opposite directions, they peel away from the door, kindling to light every lamp that happens into their path. Fëanorian lamps are enlivened by breathing upon them—usually just the gentlest of exhales—but these they puff upon frantically, and the lamps sparkle to exceptional brilliance, as though answering the twins’ urgency. Light ripples out and up from the front door, tumbling out onto the new-fallen snow and painting long, cragged shadows behind each tree.

Iniðilêz and Dušamanûðânâz recoil from the door they’ve barely dented. Dušamanûðânâz drops his prybar again. “I thought you said no one was home!” His voice is the simpering snarl of a beast that showed teeth and now anticipates a beating.

“There’s not supposed to be anyone home! I heard it from the cozened lips of Nerdanel herself!” Iniðilêz manages to maintain a frantic authority even through his distress, and Dušamanûðânâz quiets back into his place. “Maybe they decided to wait out the storm? Let’s go!”

The levity is gone from their step. They slosh back through the snow, kicking their knees to their chests to get away as fast as they can, expecting at any moment that Fëanáro himself—who, rumor has it, rehabilitates old weapons from the Great Journey to fighting condition—will throw his shadow upon them from the opened front door, something lethal at his hip.

They are gone, leaving a gash in the snow blanketing the lawn in front of Formenos when one of the shadows wriggles and bulges, then splits into a fresh blot of dark upon the snow, one whose footfalls are so light that they do not so much as dimple the snow. This shadow skitters to the edge of the wood and melts into the darkness there.

The twins, inside the house, quake under their parents’ bed. From the forest, they hear a new sound that freezes their blood: the scrrrip scrrrrip scrrrrrrrip of dragging branches.