Strange Fates by PerpetuaLilium

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Lothlórien Fish Cookeries

The chapter title is by analogy to 'Greenland Whale Fisheries', one of the more excellent English-language sea-songs of the eighteenth and (in its familiar form) nineteenth centuries. Not too much should be read into this.

The form of the Laws and Customs being followed in Galadriel and Celeborn's Lothlórien in this fic follows the version in Morgoth's Ring in its insistence on extraordinarily strict monogamy and sacramentalisation or near-sacramentalisation of sex. The nature of this sacramentalisation is more animistic among the Sindar and Nandor of what is, after all, by some definitions a part of Rhovanion than among the Calaquendi and imminent Powers of Aman, or the Exiles, fresh of memory, in Beleriand. In Endor after the Breaking of the World stock and stone speak for the Valar, because they no longer have much to say for themselves.

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Síreth got to Eregriel’s talan at dusk, bearing from her day’s sport down by the Celebrant a large net, twisted and tied shut at its open end, weighed down with fresh-caught not-yet-gutted river fish. Eregriel was in meditation, her eyes half-shut, her long black hair held back in a loosely done queue. She stirred as Síreth’s feet came towards her, stood, smiled, her eyes glinting.

‘Is this more ingredients we have with us, then?’

‘Who would I be,’ Síreth replied, ‘to go down to the river and not catch some fish for you?’

Eregriel smirked, folding her arms, her hair blown up over her left shoulder in a sudden gust of north wind that rattled the branches. ‘You might be who you were last week. Do you remember? You were swimming and I was running on the bank. We got almost to the Tongue before coming back. To say nothing of fish, we were lucky to get back with—’

‘I remember, Eregriel,’ said Síreth with a grin. Eregriel gritted her teeth and sat down again on a long low bench of a bough, long legs tangling in the skirts of her thin green robes. She motioned for Síreth to come and sit next to her. ‘Did you not have a good day, Eregriel? You look a little faint and drear.’ The scales of the fish that she put down between them as she sat shimmered and sparkled rainbow and silver.

‘Last night I barely slept at all and this morning Ada was loud on his way out because of his hip. I actually feel fine, but by now I would sleep sooner rather than later.’ Eregriel’s father had hurt his hip slightly a few days ago and had been since then a little less than graceful, but people were saying that he should recover soon; if Eregriel said that he had been out all day—and Síreth indeed saw and heard neither hide nor hair of either of her parents, neither on this level of the talan nor by rumour from the one above—then he, or they, had probably been seeking counsel from the loremasters, and if so there were only a few things that that could be about.

‘Shall we prepare the fish before or after you sleep?’ Síreth asked.

Eregriel yawned and said ‘I want to hear about your day first. Did you spend it all by Celebrant?’

Síreth had become a little worried about this fatigue that Eregriel had shown of late. It was not simply a matter of not getting enough sleep from night to night, or if it was then Eregriel in her maturity, far more so than in their now-passed childhood, simply by nature and countenance needed more sleep than anybody else Síreth could remember meeting. It was in any case concerning but not in any manifest way more so than other species and elements of their lives. ‘I spent the afternoon by Celebrant,’ said Síreth. ‘In the morning I was at home reading books of Adûnaic grammar with Ada. I fear I will come soon to the end of my study of that language.’

‘Yet you will still have the Easterling tongue that you are reading to keep you company,’ said Eregriel, who, on her feet again, hands clasped behind her back with her silver ring shining in the muted light of the mellyrn in the twilight, was looking intently out into the woods where the glow of the day was failing.

‘Yes; and you, and the lore I have been trying to read with regard to our concerns,’ said Síreth. ‘I am afraid I did not do any of that to-day.’

‘I did,’ said Eregriel, turning to her with a wan smile. She was at least smiling, and Síreth felt a little less concerned about her, though more about whatever it was that had brought on such wanness. ‘Would it be all right with you if we talked about this a little later? I would rather we share some news of the day perhaps less connected to ourselves before we have eaten.’

Síreth nodded. Eregriel disappeared further up into the boughs in a flurry of skirts and a few minutes later returned bearing a portable brazier on which lay some flint, a few bags of spices, and a small jar of glimmering golden oil. Síreth unstrapped a knife from the side of her leggings and they went out to clear off the fire pit in a small glade where Eregriel was used to do her cooking. ‘Thank you so much for the fish,’ Eregriel said with a broader smile as they swept aside crinkled sheets of fallen leaves, hands rustling against the soft earth. ‘I need to cook enough for three and a half families for to-morrow, mine and the two in the telain on the other side of the glade and you. I had been meaning to make up a mess of pottage with some beans and onions that we have but I think that this will be a lot better.’

‘You’re welcome. How long have you had the beans and onions for?’

‘The onions are fresh, more or less; the beans we have had for some months now. As such…’ Eregriel let the statement imply its conclusion—the beans had seen better days—and smiled again. She put the brazier in the cleared-out fire pit and Síreth laid out the fish on a bed of leaves for dressing. ‘What news from Caras Galadhon? Were you anywhere near there?’

‘No, but we ran into Haldir and some of the others.’

‘How is Haldir?’

‘He is doing well.—I should go home when we’ve finished this, by the way. I want to do more Adûnaic with Ada, and Nana said earlier that there was something that she wishes to talk to me about.’

‘All right,’ said Eregriel, her face taut as she struck her flints into some dead leaves that she had stuffed into the brazier. ‘Would you fain spend to-morrow together, then?’

‘I think so,’ said Síreth, and smiled. She sighed as her knife cut through the first fish’s belly. ‘There was a rider from Rhûn requesting entrance to the Wood to-day, I heard,’ she said.

‘From Rhûn? Why?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘That could be the most exciting thing that has happened here since King Amroth drowned,’ said Eregriel darkly. ‘Did anybody say why this rider was there?’

‘Eregriel, that comparison was in poor taste.’ Síreth scooped out with precision the blood and guts of the rainbow trout, setting them down on a pile of leaves. ‘Once you get a fire going can you scoop out a hole to bury this in?’

‘Of course. I apologise for that comparison.’ Eregriel bowed her head, looking more contrite than Síreth wanted her to feel. ‘If you would go and get some sticks so we can build this fire up, I can take over stripping the fish for a little while.’

‘All right,’ said Síreth. ‘We can switch for a time, then.’ Eregriel shuddered with sudden indwelling laughter and moved to start digging as Síreth set her knife on the ground and, grey skirts trailing and fluttering behind her, went to gather long twigs and small branches to further feed the dead leaves in the bottom of the brazier now smoldering behind her. She took a cloth from a bag on her belt and fastidiously wiped the blood from her hands, taking special care around her silver ring, before bending down for the first handful. ‘Haldir did not say what the rider was doing or whether or not he had yet been granted entrance or turned away. What business an Easterling would have in the Golden Wood I have no idea. They have not troubled Gondor for some centuries as I understand it.’

‘That’s what I’m given to understand, too.—Ai, these guts are—er—’

‘Do you need help?’ Síreth took up and split apart a forked branch about the length of her forearm. With only a few green parts left in it, it would burn reasonably well, she thought, along with the thin dead twigs that she was gathering and sticking in her belt. Far better at least to get dirt on her tunic than blood and guts.

‘No, thank you. I have a cloth.’

‘All right.’

‘Something came to mind just now,’ said Eregriel after a few more minutes of wood-gathering and trout-stripping. ‘If this Easterling is for whatever reason suffered to enter Lórien, might you not be able to speak with him? How long is it you have been studying one of the dialects of Rhûn; two or two and a half years?’

Now that Eregriel was speaking in terms of years and things that they had spent years doing there was a somewhat different conversation that Síreth would like to have—or to come back to for they had broached it earlier—but it might have to wait until Eregriel was less weary and Síreth less flush from a day of fishing and swimming. There were still patches of wetness weighing down her hair and memory of the force of Celebrant was starting to course again in the muscles of her limbs.

‘I can read the language spoken to the south of Dorwinion,’ said Síreth, ‘at least with glossing; but so far as I have tried to speak it my accent is probably poor. Their writing system doesn’t transcribe into the Tengwar perfectly, and their phonotactics…’ She sighed and came back over with the wood. Eregriel was using her knife deftly, quickly divesting the trout of soft innards and sparkling scales. ‘In any case it looks as if some of these are about ready to start cooking.’

Eregriel looked at the fish stripped so far, four of them, laid out in a neat row on the bed of this year’s fresh golden leaves, their flesh pink as the eastern sky between the mallorn branches. ‘We can start with these,’ she said. ‘If we were eating these for ourselves we might have roasted them whole on spits, as we used to when we were young, but since this is for others as well we have a duty to be a little more…yes.’ She stopped and frowned. ‘We should stop with four, for now, and prepare the rest in the morning. It should be cold enough to-night for them to keep but I would not want to risk it after we’ve already dressed them.’

‘All right. Shall we put them on the brazier?’

‘Please,’ said Eregriel, turning to where she had nestled her bags of spices and bottle of oil between the roots of a young tree.

They cooked the fish one after another for about a quarter-hour each. In addition to the oil Eregriel had been using salt and pepper and turmeric, and asked Síreth to use them while she went back to her talan to see if her parents had yet returned. When Eregriel came back through the trees she was singing, and Síreth looked up to see that the light had gone from most of the sky, its lingering effects and lances still passing down beyond the spires of Hithaeglir, and a few stars now glinted through the softened gold of the dim eaves. ‘Na-chaered palan-díriël, o galadhremmin ennorath, Fanuilos, le linnathon’—the voices joined together now, two, five, ten of them or so, and Eregriel came back to the clearing, eyes half-closed, arms outstretched to the sky, with her parents and two telain’s worth of the other denizens of their little glade.

Síreth stood up and joined in the singing, glancing back and forth between the brazier where the third trout was now grilling and the sky where the first flames of the Elder Queen were stirring. Afterwards she greeted them and they chatted for a little while about the news of the day—more of the Easterling who had come, it would seem, to the far banks of Anduin and hollered and waved a green banner until the marchwardens along the river had taken notice. Nobody was quite sure whether or not they had decided to let him in. The green banner indicated peaceful intent in any case. Eregriel was quiet as they finished cooking and started eating, using small gilt utensils and wooden bowls and plates from a bag that her mother had borne over.

People who were older than Eregriel and Síreth and had actually been in Lórien for the unfortunate events of four centuries ago sometimes liked to point out that ‘A Elbereth Gilthoniel’ had not been commonly sung before the establishment of the Lady of the Garland and the Lord like a Silver Tree. These were people like Alachul and his wife Gennedril, who had dwelt in the Golden Wood since the Elder Days and still lamented Amroth terribly, so much so that they would go about whispering conspiratorially about it. Along with ‘A Elbereth Gilthoniel’ and the other hymns of the Lands under the Wave, it would seem, had come the line of thought that she and Eregriel were trying so hard to bring to some sort of finish.

‘How is the fish?’ Eregriel asked her father. Síreth for her part thought it was good, but could perhaps have benefited from a little more seasoning had they had more time to prepare it.

‘It’s very good,’ Súlvindon replied. There was a general murmur and nod, at which Eregriel looked a little embarrassed. ‘Did you catch these trout, Síreth?’

Síreth nodded. ‘I tarried by the Celebrant with my net after swimming this afternoon. Just another day’s work, so that you can save your beans and onions for the winter months, if they stay good until then.’

‘They probably will,’ said Eregriel, and then they were eating in relative silence again. Súlvindon was sitting on the ground between his wife and his daughter with his legs apart looking more or less unconcerned by any lingering sense of pain there may be in his hip. Mithgael leaned on Súlvindon. Bruilam and Lenhalab looked well, as did their parents, and Laeron and his family were bright and gay in the dwindling evening. When everybody seemed quite finished, the flesh partitioned off and the skeletons beneath laid beside the brazier with its quiet insistent embers, Síreth, looking across at Eregriel in the expectation of being joined, murmured a word of consolation and thanksgiving to the small bones. Eregriel joined in at once, knowing right well Síreth’s thoughts. It had been ninety or a hundred years ago, in one of their adolescent venturings up along Nimrodel towards the slopes of Hithaeglir, when the realisation clear and fair as the full fruit of Tilion had fallen down upon them like the withering wind of summer that stripped the foothills bare: Eregriel first had grasped her arm and brought her down to kneel with her in a copse. They had seen carrion there, a fawn killed, perhaps, by a warg or a bear, and its flesh had sung out to the earth for consolation. Síreth had tried to speak to it, little girl that she’d been, and Eregriel had said starting from later on that that was when she had known she was quite in love with her. For Síreth that had come later in the same day, as Eregriel had embraced her and sung to her by an old rope bridge. They had cried on their way home; they remembered differently who had started crying first.

Probably it had been the deer.

Síreth allowed herself at least this much solemnity.

‘To-morrow morning,’ said Eregriel, standing up and moving to collect the spices and oil and the dishes and forks and knives of those who had finished, ‘I will come back out here and dress and cook the rest of Síreth’s fish. Should we wish it to be it ought to be enough for the whole day, with perhaps some leafy greens or water chestnuts. I think that, having more time, if I can come out here while it’s yet early enough I can fry them. I do want to prepare something else as well.’

And a few minutes after that Síreth found herself standing up in the glade alone, or almost alone—for Eregriel was still tidying up, and from the glances that she gave from sky and pathway to ground debating within herself what to do with the still-hot brazier overnight, and Súlvindon was still sitting gazing at it with fixity.

‘Síreth,’ said Súlvindon.

‘Yes?’

‘I have a new position,’ said Súlvindon, ‘regarding your betrothal.’

Síreth sat again to listen, and Eregriel stopped and turned around at the edge of the trees. In the faint light of the nighttime’s stars and lanterns she was smiling. Síreth leaned forward expectantly, her silvery hair flickering across her face and flaming in the redness still coming up from the bottom of the brazier. ‘Perhaps I should say,’ said Súlvindon, ‘it is not so much a new position as confirmation, to you, that—’ he sighed and threw up his hands ‘—I, at least, have not been able to think of any impediment. There is of course the issue of children, and the question of fëar, what that might mean; yet I see nothing to indicate…’ –And he broke off, the way Eregriel often did.

Watching the red, dimming, phantasmagorical ember-fires, which were themselves somehow a consolation, Síreth said ‘Yesterday I found something that looked promising, in annals from the early days of Amroth, just scant years after the Last Alliance. I was very excited and very happy indeed and would have run to tell Eregriel but the loremasters told me that although one of the relevant names in the annals is considered feminine now, it is thought to have been gender-neutral at the time; so that was not all that I hoped it would be.’

Eregriel nodded, a studied motion. ‘When you said you had a new position, Ada,’ she said, ‘I hoped you meant since this morning.’ She tossed her hair back in the crepuscular dark, and the thought came more strongly than usual to Síreth’s mind that she would dearly like to run to her, to embrace and kiss her now. ‘We went into this knowing how difficult and complicated it would be, I aver.’

‘In six years we have done more than I would have expected,’ Súlvindon said a little stiffly. He got up and went to his daughter. ‘Would you like me to carry those home for you?’ he asked, pointing to the aftermath of the dinner lumped in her arms.

‘Thank you, Ada,’ said Eregriel with a thin grin.

Súlvindon went off down the path back to their talan. It was dim, with lantern-light in a diffused point at the other end; the path from here to Síreth and her family’s talan was lined with enchanted lamps, being longer, and she planned to make for it straight through the intervening woods. Looking to and fro she saw that Eregriel was still standing there at the clearing’s edge, her pale face limned in faintest orange. She came and kissed Síreth; she had apparently decided to be bold! Then she said ‘Before we sleep, let’s read and think of each other. If perchance you should get the chance to practise Easterling someday, I imagine you would be loath to have not done your utmost.’

Síreth nodded and grasped Eregriel’s hand in hers. ‘I will finish my Adûnaic book soon,’ she said. ‘We will spend to-morrow together, then?’

‘Together,’ said Eregriel. They parted, and waved good-bye to each other as they went out from the clearing along the paths to their telain. Their rings flashed in the lamplight.