The Lucky One by grey_gazania

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Chapter 3

“I guess the girl doesn’t like being inside,” Amras said over breakfast, a smile tugging at his lips. An exasperated Thíniel had just informed him of where she’d found her patient that morning, and he couldn’t deny being a little amused – not to mention relieved. For the past few days it had seemed as though the girl was poised to die of grief, despite Thíniel’s work healing her physical wounds.

 

Amrod shrugged. “The Nandor live in the trees,” he pointed out, once he’d swallowed his mouthful of eggs. “She may not have ever been inside a building like this before. Besides, I think communication is a bigger problem than where she sleeps. There are quite a few Nandorin settlements by the Legolin, and riding to each one and asking if they’re missing a few people isn’t really the best use of our resources. It would be better if we could put out the word with a name attached. But Nandorin hand signals are designed for hunting; they’re limited in what they can express.”

 

“Yes, I’ve been thinking about that,” Amras said. “I thought of asking someone to sit down with her and go over the alphabet. Obviously she won’t be able to learn to read overnight, but if we show her which tengwar make which sounds, she might be able to spell out her name for us, at least. Perhaps Istonion could do it. He’s patient.”

 

“That’s fine by me,” Amrod said. “And I should teach you the hand signals I know. Now that the construction on the fortress is almost done--”

 

“Thank the stars,” Amras interrupted.

 

Amrod grinned. “Now that it’s almost done, you’ll be able to spend more time getting to know the land and the people,” he finished. “That’s what Maedhros sent us here to do.”

 

Amras made a face. “I hate that name,” he confessed. “I mean, I understand why he doesn’t want to be called Maitimo anymore, or even Nelyo, but what was wrong with Russandol?”

 

Amrod shrugged again and took a sip of milk. He thought he understood, at least a little, but he didn’t think Amras would. The name Russandol belonged to Valinor, to a different time -- a happier time, before any deaths or oaths, before their eldest brother had been forced to endure years of torture at the hands of their grandfather’s murderer. The time spent in Morgoth’s clutches had changed Maedhros, however much he tried to hide it. Perhaps he felt that Russandol simply didn’t fit him anymore.

 

“It’s his name,” Amrod finally said. “He can change it if he wants to.”

 

With a discontented snort, Amras turned back to his meal. Amrod didn’t comment. He knew his twin was still chafing a little under the family’s Sindarin names, though he personally didn’t mind them. They lived in Beleriand now, and the people of Beleriand spoke Sindarin. It made sense for the Noldor to adopt the same tongue.

 

 

Linn eyed the man in front of her warily. She was back in bed, at Thíniel’s insistence, and she wasn’t happy about it. At least her chest ached a little less today than it had yesterday, but the room’s dead air was hardly worth breathing.

 

You inhaled blood, Thíniel had said. Your lungs have an infection. It will heal, but you need to rest.


Then let me rest outside, Linn wanted to say. Maybe she was being ungrateful – after all, Amras and Thíniel had saved her life – but how was anyone supposed to heal when they were walled in behind stone, kept away from the sun and the breeze and the stars? How could anyone live like this, sequestered inside day after day?

 

These Noldor were a strange people indeed.

 

The one who sat beside her now looked much like the others she had met – tall, black-haired, and pale, with bright shining eyes. He held a rolled-up sheet of parchment in one hand, and he greeted her with a smile.

 

“My name is Istonion,” he said. “Lord Amras has asked me to teach you the alphabet, in the hope that you can use it to tell us your name.”

 

Instantly, he had her full attention. Maybe she had had no use for reading before, but circumstances had changed. If she learned the alphabet, she could learn to write, and then she would be able to say what she needed to say – that she had no home to return to, and that she owed a debt and would repay it.

 

Istonion unfurled the parchment and laid it across her lap, and she leaned forward eagerly to study it. But what she saw was an incomprehensible series of lines and curves, and her excitement quickly turned to dismay.

 

Her teacher didn’t seem to notice. “Each of these is called a tengwa,” he said. “Each tengwa represents a sound.” Pointing to the first symbol, he said, “This is tinco. It makes the tuh sound. This one next to it is parma. It makes the puh sound.”

 

She stared at the symbols in utter confusion. They looked identical, and she wondered how she was supposed to tell which was which. But she couldn’t ask, and Istonion simply kept going.

 

“Calma makes kuh. Ando makes duh. Umbar makes buh…”

 

There were thirty symbols in all, and they made no more sense when Istonion was done than they had before he began. Too many of them looked alike, and Linn struggled to distinguish them from one another.

 

Istonion looked at her expectantly, but she simply shook her head. This time he didn’t miss the confusion written on her face, and he started over from the beginning. “Tinco makes tuh,” he repeated, this time going more slowly. “Parma makes puh.”

 

He went over them again, and again, and again. The tengwar didn’t become any more comprehensible to Linn, but she soon had memorized the order of the sounds, and it occurred to her that, even if she couldn’t understand the symbols, she could put the sounds together into words by counting. So when Istonion asked if she was ready to try to spell her name, she nodded.

 

Linn, her mother had named her. Singer. But she couldn’t sing, not anymore, and if she couldn’t sing then she couldn’t be called Linn. She needed a new name, one that wouldn’t be a constant reminder of what she had lost.

 

She’s lucky to be alive at all, Thíniel had said to Amras. Linn hadn’t felt lucky, with her voice gone and her brothers slain. But she was still here. If the orcs had attacked on any other day, she would have been killed, her body defiled and left to rot in the underbrush. Thanks to Amras, that hadn’t happened. She couldn’t sing anymore, but she was alive. In that respect, she was lucky indeed.

 

Painstakingly, the girl who had been Linn counted to the symbol she wanted and pointed to it. Then she slowly moved on to the next, as Istonion mouthed along. Anga. Osse. Lambe. Vilya. Yanta. Óre.

 

“Galwen,” Istonion said when she had finished. “Your name is Galwen?”

 

Galwen nodded, and he smiled at her.

 

“It’s nice to meet you, Galwen,” he said. Then he rolled up the parchment and held it out to her. “Would you like me to leave this here with you so that you can practice?”

 

Again, she nodded. She didn’t understand the tengwar, not now, but she was determined to study them until she did.

 

 

Amras and Amrod were pleased to finally have a name for their guest, but their people had still failed to find any Nandorin settlement near the Legolin that was missing a girl named Galwen. Amrod had to admit that he wasn’t completely surprised; the Nandor made beautiful music, but they were also secretive and good at hiding, and not all of them were eager to befriend the newcomers from the West. It was possible that his people had passed right by Galwen’s home without even realizing it was there.

 

“What are we going to do with her?” Amrod asked his brother. While Galwen had grown strong enough that she was no longer confined to her bed -- much to her obvious relief -- Thíniel hadn’t yet deemed her fit for travel.

 

“Let her stay here until she’s fully healed?” Amras suggested, raising his eyebrows. “She’s hardly a burden.”

 

“That’s not what I mean,” Amrod said, shooting his brother a glare that was mostly for show. “What if we can’t find her people? What if they’ve all packed up and moved on, or been killed, or simply won’t show themselves to foreigners?”

 

All three were possibilities. The Nandor did not always remain settled, nor did they always reveal themselves to outsiders -- sometimes not even to their Avarin neighbors. And while Amrod and Amras had worked hard to clear their new home of orcs, some of Morgoth’s servants still remained hidden in the mountain caves and the deep parts of the forest.

 

“Then I guess we’ll look for a family here who will take her in,” Amras said. “We can’t send her off on her own; she’s a child.”

 

He was uncomfortably aware that he and Amrod were barely more than children themselves, at least in the eyes of some, but they were still sons of Fëanor and lords of the Noldor. Their people were loyal and would support them in their decisions. If they said Galwen needed a home, someone would surely be willing to adopt her.

 

 

As she recovered, Galwen spent much of her time sitting on the terrace near her room and poring over the tengwar chart Istonion had made for her, trying to unravel its secrets by sheer force of will. But she was having little success. She still could not reliably discern tinco from parma, ando from anga, nor any number of other similar pairs. And when Istonion had brought her a short text the day before, a poem he called “Tinfang Warble,” the strangest thing had happened.

 

She had sat beside him, peering intently at the parchment, trying to see if she could puzzle out even one word as he read the poem aloud, but the tengwar had refused to stay still. They shifted on the paper even as she stared at them, rotating and trading places with their neighbors, and she wondered if they were imbued with some foreign magic that only the Noldor understood. Perhaps that was why their pale eyes shone with such light – because their words were enchanted.

 

Perhaps that was why she could not learn to read the tengwar.

 

The idea filled her with dismay. She could communicate, after a fashion, using the same counting method she had devised to spell her new name, but the process was slow and laborious, and it was complicated by the differences between the Noldor’s speech and the speech of her own people. She couldn’t express anything with any nuance, either, and she was left feeling frustrated and slow-witted.

 

She could hear Istonion’s footsteps in the corridor, and when he joined her she saw that he carried yet another roll of parchment. Her heart sank. She still hadn’t mastered the alphabet, and she’d made no progress at all on “Tinfang Warble.” She couldn’t possibly move onto something new already.

 

But what he held out to her was simply another tengwar chart. “I noticed the old one is getting tatty,” he said.

 

He wasn’t wrong. Though Galwen was careful with it, she did carry it with her during the day, and it had started to accumulate some grime and creases. Carefully, she folded it up and tucked it away in her tunic before unrolling the new one and laying it across her knees.

 

“I think we should go over the basics again, before we take another look at the poem,” Istonion said. “Spell your name for me, please.”

 

Galwen glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. Something in his voice was different today, off, like the faint odor of rot that revealed food just starting to go bad. It made her uneasy. But spelling her name was something she could do, so she complied with the request despite her discomfort.

 

“Hrm,” he said. “Now spell my name.”

 

That was a new task. In her head, Galwen broke his name down into its component sounds and counted out where each would go. Then she carefully pointed to the tengwar that she wanted.

 

He didn’t comment. Instead, he took the chart from her, pulled out a pen, and drew two symbols on the back. “Which of these is parma?” he asked.

 

She hesitated, and then pointed to the one on the left. It was a wild guess, and she could only hope that it was correct.

 

But Istonion shook his head. “That’s what I thought,” he said, seemingly half to himself. Then he rolled up the chart and held out his other hand. “May I have the old one back?” he asked. “I think it would be best if we stopped for today. I need to speak with Lord Amras.”

 

Reluctantly, Galwen pulled the original out and handed it to him. Dread had curdled into a heavy dumpling in her stomach. She wasn’t stupid; she knew that she had just failed some kind of test, even if she wasn’t sure what the test had been. Giving Istonion the tengwar chart meant giving up her primary way of communicating with the people around her, too, slow and imperfect though it was.

 

Istonion smiled at her as he left, but Galwen was not comforted by the expression at all.

 

Chapter End Notes

Galwen - "fortunate woman", from the root galu (good fortune, blessing)

Istonion is teaching the alphabet using the mode of Beleriand, which represents each vowel with its own tengwa, rather than with the diacritics (tehtar) found in other modes.

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