Strange Fates by PerpetuaLilium

---

A Question of Fëar

(Notes will be at the end for this chapter.)

---

The leaves stayed yellow in profusion but had thinned and wilted in the Golden Wood’s attenuated winter. Síreth arose already tired. It had been about a month since she and Eregriel had been at last attacking the heart of the issue that had consumed their emotions and energies of late and in that time they had talked to three different loremasters, one of whom, the second in sequence, neither had ever met before.

*

‘This is Caledhrif,’ Eregriel had said on a day of a rippling wind out of the north, when they had stood at a wooden footbridge across Celebrant with the sward of the Tongue just barely visible around a bend when Síreth glanced off to the right. ‘Caledhrif thought this was an interesting problem.’

‘Where does your expertise lie, Caledhrif?’ asked Síreth, as Eregriel bobbed her head respectfully. Caledhrif stood at the northern end of the bridge in a long grey-white robe, with close brown hair and light green eyes, with a laconic smile and holding underarm a parasol stuck defiantly back into the wind.

‘I have studied the character of fëar,’ said Caledhrif in a sepulchral tone of voice. ‘This case presents an interesting question.’

They started walking as Caledhrif started talking—going north, up into the deeper woods of the Naith, older woods where the mellyrn had taken hold these past four thousand years. In Síreth’s younger days of broader curiosity, when the woods themselves had spoken to her, as they did now but more readily back then, she had had to go back to her grandparents who lived up by Nimrodel to pick their memories when she had been curious about the forest before those trees.

‘Marriage represents primarily the union of hröar. But fëar and hröar are held to be congruent, to the extent that the lore borne from Aman and Beleriand of old tells us that a fëa once unhoused will never be rehoused in a hröa of the opposite sex.’ Stopping suddenly, Caledhrif whirled, the wind rippling the parasol, and gave them an appraising look. So far, thought Síreth, here was a loremaster who was very good at telling them things that they already knew, that they had learned these six and a half years gone or still before, when they had been children being taught together in singsong by Nana and Ada, Mithgael and Súlvindon.

‘In the Grey Annals,’ said Eregriel, ‘we find a much stranger union of fëar.’

‘Of which of the tales of old do you speak? Many come to my mind.’

That did not seem like a fair question to Síreth, to whose mind it seemed clear, or approaching clarity, that it was the union of Thingol and Melian to which Eregriel was referring. In that case there had been an obvious difference from the normal course of a marriage far greater than that which was at issue here and now. Yet she had also heard somewhere that the version of the Grey Annals that existed in Caras Galadhon was of considerably greater antiquity than those in other parts of Lórien, and might contain some material that the copy held in the library to the south of Celebrant would not.

‘I speak of that union which would most immediately come to the mind of one reading the Grey Annals for the first time,’ Eregriel said, shaking a little.

Caledhrif sniffed—Síreth did not like that sniff—and said ‘The abnormality in that case was one which did not attend to the union of bodies, as Melian’s raiment was that of a lady of the Firstborn. The unions that created the peredhil presented greater problems in that respect. Melian was in any case female. The marriage could self-evidently be hallowed by the begetting of a child, as could that child’s marriage.’

Eregriel sat down on a mossy stump and slipped off one of her shoes to massage a sore spot on her right foot. The curve of that foot was smooth where it came out from the hem of her gown and its shape pale against the grey-brown earth beneath it. ‘So the divergence into the subject of fëar got us nowhere,’ said Eregriel. ‘We are, effectively, back to the fëa whose tale is told by the hröa, and Síreth’s and my hröar which are of the same kind; and forgive me, Caledhrif, but I wonder if you intend to render any sort of opinion on this subject beyond the obvious concerns that you have raised without addressing so far?’

Síreth bit her lip and moved to sit down next to Eregriel, who still seemed tense; it did not look as if the massaging was helping very much. The ground rose up towards the cut surface of the stump, levelled off long years ago after this tree had fallen to the predations of a thunderbolt, soft in burned and rotten roots. Gathering her grey skirts beneath her Síreth drew her knees up to her chest and looked quizzically up at Caledhrif, whose gaze had become diffident and somehow seemingly awry.

‘I think that your questions merit the answers I have given so far,’ said Caledhrif in what was probably meant to be an apologetic voice.

‘Other of the Eldar have had—this is not entirely without precedent!’ Eregriel shouted, springing to her feet. ‘Síreth?’ she asked, turning around, looking lost.

Síreth forced her voice down into evenness, her gaze at the triangular midpoint between Eregriel’s face and Caledhrif’s and the top of an old craggy tree that stood like a mangled finger against the blue-white sky. ‘Caledhrif,’ she said, ‘while we have not been able to find any instances of marriage between people of the same gender in Lórien for at least these past two thousand years, there were such instances in Lindon under Gil-galad and in the realm of Thranduil.’

‘King Thranduil abides according to a different custom than we do, a different manner,’ said Caledhrif, ‘and as such is free to see marriage as he pleases, but I would question whatever became of the couples involved in such stories.’

‘That the annals do not say,’ said Síreth. Could not but say it.

‘Fain would we learn why not,’ said Eregriel softly, ‘but I hasten to add that neither do the annals tell of the end of, say, a Bestedis and Bestedir. For all that we know the men who married under Gil-galad may live yet at Mithlond or in Eldamar.’

‘If you would find out,’ said Caledhrif in what was probably meant to be an encouraging voice, ‘I would suggest that you go search for them.’

Within minutes Caledhrif and Eregriel were shouting at each other. Síreth sat on the roots of the stump with her legs to her chest and her eyes boring forward, feeling in a flash a little bit of the weariness that was so often obvious in Eregriel’s mien. In another few minutes she was on her feet in spite of herself, hands raised up in a gesture of peace. Eregriel was crying. Caledhrif stood defensively.

Síreth put her arms around Eregriel and held her as her knees gave out and she came to the ground crying, and they lay together on the stiffening earth of autumn, and Síreth cared not that Caledhrif still stood here, Caledhrif who was after all only trying to help after the fashion of somebody whose interpretation of spirit and law did not admit of the type of help that they sought. After a time Eregriel stood up again and gave a stiff bow. Caledhrif looked confused.

‘Thank you,’ said Eregriel.

They went back towards the Celebrant, Eregriel trudging forward with her eyes cast low. ‘I’ll never be able to ask Caledhrif’s advice on anything again,’ she said. ‘This is unbelievable.’

‘It isn’t your fault,’ Síreth said, and it was really not. Whatever pall it was that had come down especially strongly over Eregriel of late had been in some form present for most of their lives. There was something saddening her or making her afraid. The silver on Eregriel’s finger caught the oblique half-hazy sunlight as she twisted her hands in and out and to and fro against the small of her back. She had her dark hair forward over her shoulders, so that when Síreth trotted in front of her she could see it hanging as if to frame and exalt her drawn face and the wise lump in her throat.

*

‘Daijóbu de aru ca?’ Síreth asked, much later in the day as they sat in Síreth’s talan. Síreth’s parents were making small conversation some platforms and ladders away.

‘What language was that?’

‘The Easterling dialect.’

‘Are you asking me how I am feeling?’

‘More or less. I was asking if you were all right.’

Eregriel twisted her lips and gazed up at the wide deep sky. ‘I think it would be wise to take a break of some time before we assay at addressing this part of the problem again,’ said Eregriel.

‘Yes,’ said Síreth. ‘We can work on the issue of law.’

‘The issue of law is resolved. It is obviously legal even if not actually practised. The Lady and Lord never claimed otherwise. If the first Noldorin King of the Elder Days could convince the Valar to sever his marriage—’ Eregriel spat this, as if the notion called out to all the rocks and trees of Ambar to rise up and rectify such a sin and wrong ‘—then, obviously, there is some flexibility, and we see now that such marriages have been entered into in the past.’

Síreth thought it was best not to bring up the subject of the Lady’s grandparentage right now. Eregriel might see it as a reinforcement of her point—the Lady herself was descended from an unusual, what Eregriel saw as an immoral union—but being reminded of it might also simply upset her.

‘We could simply try to say the oath of marriage and see what happens.’

‘Ada would not approve of that,’ said Eregriel. ‘Neither would either of your parents.’

‘That is very true.’

When evening fell Eregriel sang ‘A Elbereth Gilthoniel’ in a voice far more doleful than usual and, her shoulders pinched together and her head hanging like a pensive umbel of dark blossoms, took up some of Síreth’s parents’ flour and yeast and walked through the lamp-lit woods to the ovens nearest Síreth’s talan and her own. They glared in the dark from half a mile off, and Eregriel seemed to take some perverse sustenance of the mind from her own cringing at the sound of the evening voices.

Haldir was there; as Eregriel set to work, finally loosening a little, as she kneaded the bread allowing herself some minor interjections of gaiety between her grumbles and grimaces in the flickering furnace-light, they greeted each other. Síreth hung back a little, at the edge of the oven clearing, feeling a twisting coiling feeling in her lower abdomen. For a few moments she was not sure what it was, and then when she went and found a privy and came back she found it had lessened but not fully gone away. Whatever it was it was surely stupid. What should she say again? Sensen damé des.

‘What are you doing here, Haldir?’ Eregriel asked flatly.

‘Baking bannock bread,’ said Haldir.

‘Why are you baking?’

‘I have been taken off of the patrol of the river march and need to do something to occupy my time,’ said Haldir. ‘I am not as good at cooking, or baking, or things along those lines as you are, Eregriel, but I can do them in a pinch.’

‘Why were you taken off the patrol?’

Síreth was aware that Eregriel was inquiring after Haldir to distract herself from her own problems but right now there was really not much to be done. If Eregriel dwelt long enough in this state they would double or treble the length of their betrothal while only treading a circle. Anything that broke that circle was good. Once Síreth had asked her who her friends outside Síreth herself were.

‘Haldir,’ she had said, ‘could be characterised as a friend.’

And so Haldir explained, in a mildly frustrated tone of voice—but only mildly—that it was because the strength of the patrol up and down the river had been making the visitor from Rhûn nervous. Eregriel was either genuinely interested in this, either on Síreth’s behalf or her own, or was better at feigning it than Síreth would have expected. She asked a few pat questions and drew Haldir to elaborate. It seemed that said visitor was apparently expecting company and suffered a fear of something going wrong in any subsequent attempt to make contact that no amount of reassurance from the Lady and the Lord had been able to assuage.

Síreth was feeling slightly better about events of late. She sat quietly with them and listened as their halting and morose conversation went on and the bread, loaves and bannock alike, rose in the fires within. She went through some Easterling drills in her head, a little bit. The name for this particular language, in itself, was Mattógo.

From this conversation Síreth learned one thing that worried her and one thing that gave her somewhat greater heart. The worrying thing was that the name of the envoy now awkwardly and mistrustfully hosted in Caras Galadhon was Sogdash. ‘Sogdash’ was unpronounceable in Mattógo; hence Síreth doubted that that was his mother tongue. The comforting thing was that it seemed Sogdash was multilingual, speaking several of the languages of Rhûn along with passable Westron and rudimentary Sindarin. He might be worth talking to after all. Haldir did not know yet why he was here.

Go, go, go!—the sky seemed to be saying to her, but Síreth had no idea where the sky wanted her to carry herself or let herself be carried.

‘How goes your life?’ Haldir asked Eregriel now.

‘Tiring,’ said Eregriel.

‘And you, Glaeronien?’ Haldir looked up at Síreth, whose mind was drifting absolutely elsewhere and came back suddenly like a rockslide.

‘Well,’ said Síreth before thinking. ‘Tiring, though.’ She reached out for Eregriel’s hand in the darkness, hoping that Eregriel would accept such a gesture right now. She did, and they held hands in front of the oven’s orange glare, warm flesh to warm flesh and warm silver to warm silver.

Then at Haldir’s further questioning glance they explained how they had been going around looking for help in resolving that final impediment to their union—an impediment as Eregriel saw it, that of the perceived lack of clarity in the moral or spiritual realm. ‘The Powers preserve and forgive me,’ Eregriel said once or twice, and Síreth wanted to shout Yes, yes, yes!—the sky and the trees and the mountains have already forgiven you, and they speak for the Valar because after the Breaking of the World the Valar have little to say on their own behalf!—but Eregriel had always been like that, so high up that she could feel the sting of Aran Einior’s breath in her nostrils and the flames of Elbereth’s kindled flakes from the Maker’s originary anvil falling on her head like birds of living fire, and the ways of wood and world and water had always been ancillary to the form that the upraising of her soul’s song took. Sometimes Síreth thought that would better serve her herself to have that attitude, and better serve Eregriel to grow accustomed to the speech and habit of the earth. But Eregriel half-believed herself not made for Ennor. If Eregriel ever got near Belegaer it might very well be over then and there. The sea-longing might then straightway become unbearable. ‘The Powers preserve and forgive me,’ Eregriel said once or twice again, and Síreth knew, even Haldir clearly knew, how desperate she was for a plausible way out, a plausible method of assurance that they were, after all, all right by the Valar and the One. There was no reason to believe that their love was not. No reason whatsoever. It was the ceremony of marriage and that alone that was the sticking point.

*

The second loremaster was one whom Haldir had recommended and introduced, his great-aunt, one Saerhalab, an ebullient woman who dressed all in a gentle blue and lived near Cerin Amroth with her husband and son. Her talan was filled with scrolls and medicinal herbs and she was supposed to excel in anaesthetics. Obviously Síreth and Eregriel did not require anaesthetics, nor did they want to require them, but according to Haldir Saerhalab was a steady and practical and creative mind on issues of ritual and ceremonial law as well. Moreover Eregriel was feeling better by this time. She liked the weather this time of year. There was a stronger bite in the air and snow would be general outside the borders of Lothlórien at least as far south as the Gladden Fields. The mellyrn were a little gloomy and the elanor and niphredil had faded a bit for the time being but still the grass was green in the clearings and on the swards by the riverbanks.

‘Ask Ilúvatar for His blessing and it will be clear whether or not it has come upon you,’ Saerhalab said patly. Like most people in the Golden Wood she had heard of the strange girls who wished to wed each other, and according to Haldir she was generally approving of the notion and much more pragmatic in her approach to the lore than most.

‘I am not sure that would…’ Eregriel began, haltingly.

Síreth here decided to say what they had rehearsed, the argument that Eregriel would rather have not brought out. There was no reason why it would actually be needed against somebody like Saerhalab. There was no ‘against’ with Saerhalab; she had been unfailingly courteous and solicitous to them and even allowed Eregriel use of her cereal grains to make a mess of potage that they were eating. It was only that this would be a very good way of cutting off a line of argument that Síreth herself had made so far and Eregriel and Súlvindon had rejected.

‘We could,’ said Síreth, ‘hie away to some cottage far away from the sight of the Eldar and wed there and live out our lives in peace and solitude like Beren and Lúthien of old.’

‘But,’ said Eregriel, a little confused that they were following this script now, ‘for one thing, our families would, obviously, not approve of such a course of action.’

‘Right,’ said Saerhalab with a firm nod. ‘That is important to consider.’

Eregriel nodded back with a faint smile. ‘And it would not actually answer the question,’ she said. ‘Our fëar would burn our hröar away after a time, and we would be together and perhaps happy, but probably removed once and for all from the idea of at last knowing: Do we truly have Ilúvatar’s blessing? Our love is what it is, but it is uncommon enough that I have to wonder.’ She stood up and started pacing around with her hands clasped behind her. ‘Síreth has done much to assuage my concerns that we are doing what is wrong in Ilúvatar’s eyes. Really, I never had such concerns, although one is tempted to think that it does not comport with the design of nature. Rather, I wondered that, even if not wrong, it might not be precisely right.’

Saerhalab was nodding and her eyes were not actually glazing over. Síreth had to admit she was impressed.

‘There are so many things that Síreth and I could be doing that would be in direct contradistinction to the Music of the Ainur. Yet even the text of the ‘Laws and Customs’ received from lost Beleriand speaks of ‘strange fates’ alongside ‘ill chances’. Ours is a ‘strange fate’. There is room for us, even if as castaways, as set apart. But it says that for those Eldar marriage was not ‘the natural course of life’. One of the only groups for whom that was so. Can we simply ask Ilúvatar, and have Him give to us? I wonder. I would pray to Elbereth for guidance.’

At this point Eregriel did in fact incline her head and, unspeakably lovely with her dark hair falling beside and around her pale face so that her nose peaked out white against the silvery trunk next to which she stood, murmured an invocation.

For Síreth to never have that particular question answered: No matter; for Arda itself could answer her. For Eregriel to never know, in the way that she knew the songs of praise and invocation…—Let her try this in Mattógo, to see how clearly this knowledge was sticking in her head, and for that matter how clearly the practical use of the language was. Eregriel ni totté, settai cangaerarenu coto deshó.

‘It really is not a moral concern, but one of mechanics, and the nature of the invocation and the received blessing,’ Eregriel said.

‘If you try it,’ said Saerhalab, ‘you should be able to tell—for all marriages are so hallowed, are they not? All joinings of bodies. If you join your bodies…’ She trailed off. Clearly elaborating on that particular topic was not a prospect that Saerhalab relished. Síreth felt a twist in the stomach.

She would speak. This was what they were supposed to communicate. She cleared her throat.

‘Síreth?’ said Eregriel.

‘I aver that the blessing conferred upon any given marriage is a truth lived by and believed in rather than a fact demonstrable outside its own place,’ said Síreth in a low voice, shamefully aware of the lacunae of disapproval glittering in Eregriel’s dark eyes. Eregriel had never been particularly fond of this argument, in part because it, like that concerning the Lady, reminded her of what she—and in this case all and sundry—thought one of the most sordid tales of the Elder Days indeed.

‘Otherwise,’ finished Eregriel, and there was a fiercer urgency to her words than Síreth would have expected, ‘how could Ilúvatar Who created us and Who loves us possibly have stooped to hallow the union of Aredhel and Eöl?’

Saerhalab laughed. There was a lot that Síreth thought that she could discern from that laughter and not all that much that she wanted to. It was at least good-natured, and seemed to accept the point in the sense in which it was intended. The problem was that it betrayed a lack of inclination to address the implied question at this time.

*

The third loremaster was Sarnon. Sarnon was Síreth’s father.

‘Exchange the vows and see what happens,’ he said.

‘You, and my parents, rejected that solution out of hand years ago,’ said Eregriel.

Síreth’s mind was half on this and half on the practise of Mattógo that she had just finished. In addition to the passive she was also coming to some understanding of the causative. Let the ra go a-sa-ing if it so wished.

‘You believe in the will of Ilúvatar at work among His Children, right?’ said Ada. He seemed more pleased with himself than Síreth thought that whatever point he was driving at probably merited. Nana stood to one side writing on a little page with a charcoal stick, smiling to herself. She had probably imposed at least some of this position upon Ada. Síreth was grateful to her, even though Eregriel looked vaguely bereft about the direction the conversation was going.

‘Yes,’ said Eregriel.

‘Glaeronien?’ said Ada.

‘Yes, Ada,’ said Síreth. Go, go, go!—the trees were saying. The grass was saying it too. To Eregriel as well as to herself.

‘We study languages and lays to learn the ways of the Children of Ilúvatar who do not live like we do,’ said Ada. ‘The memory and thought of the Blessed Realm are dimming even in Imladris.’

‘East of Hithaeglir,’ said Nana, ‘they are all but passed away, if they existed even aforetime outside of the Lady, and even Doriath is fading.’

Síreth remembered Eregriel saying in frustration when they had found out about the marriage under Gil-galad of Helegon and Colvir: ‘If these had been Noldor of Aman the Blessed, born not in the clefts of Thargelion or Gondolin or the ports of Sirion or Forlond, then we would have an answer from this.’

Now Eregriel said ‘Fain would I hold to our own laws and understanding of the will of the One and the Powers.’

Yet, Go, go, go!—the trees now were shouting. Return, return, absolutely return, root, root yourselves as we are rooted, but go! Go, go that you may return! Go!

‘Atashi tatshi no bunca wa, conomama de ari,’ said Síreth. A mumble—it was a promise to herself, which she would repeat to Eregriel in Sindarin once her head stopped spinning. ‘Sósóriocu coso, eiga ni nareru.’

Slipping the bonds of their current situation—getting what some of the younger loremasters more given to apt phrases and smaller, more discrete chunks of thought might call a ‘fresh viewpoint’ or something of the like. It was tempting in its own right, and she could tell now that the trees would that she see to it.

‘Our culture will remain this way,’ she murmured into Eregriel’s ear, leaning against her. ‘Our imaginations might, however, grow and flourish, if…’

‘If?’

‘I would like to go to Caras Galadhon.’

‘To talk the Lady and the Lord again? I think that is important at this remove, yes.’

‘That, and I would like to meet this visitor from the East, and ask him about how things are done in the realms of Men, not to supplant our own traditions but to perhaps grow or change the way we look at them.’

Eregriel leaned back into her, nodding in acquiescence against her shoulder. Their hair tangled and twined in the crook of Síreth’s neck.

*

And so with those three days still salient in her memory she arose this day in winter and pulled on her leggings and put another pair and another chemise and a dress and some riding boots in a bag which she hoisted up over her shoulder. The wind from the West blew her hair stiffly silver out in front of her face as she walked to the clearing where was Eregriel’s talan. And Eregriel came down and joined her, and together they set out to Caras Galadhon to stay there awhile and find out what they could about things from the Lady and the Lord and Sogdash the visitor from the East. As Eregriel had said, if nothing else, it might clear their minds from the knots that six and a half years’ legal argument had got them into.

---

Chapter End Notes

Notes are at the end this time because I wanted to be unobtrusive about the translation of 'Mattógo' (actually something somewhere between contemporary and Heian court Japanese, with spelling differences to indicate that it's being spoken with a Sindarin accent and/or heard through ears accustomed to Sindarin) words and phrases.

Daijóbu de aru ca?=Daijōbu de aru ka?, ‘are you/are things all right?’ (Slightly more formal than this would usually be said. People tend to learn formal Japanese first.)
Sensen damé des=zenzen dame desu, ‘it’s all useless’ or ‘none of it will help’.
Eregriel ni totté, settai cangaerarenu coto deshó=Eregriel ni totte, zettai kangaerarenu koto deshō, ‘for Eregriel, that is something completely unthinkable, isn’t it?’
Atashi tatshi no bunca wa, conomama de ari. Sósóriocu coso, eiga ni nareru=Atashitachi no bunka wa, konomama de ari. Sōzōryoku koso, eiga ni nareru, ‘our culture will remain this way. As for our imaginations, their fortunes may flower’.
Mattógo itself=mattōgo, ‘proper/well-appointed language’.

‘Let the ra go a-sa-ing’ is a reference to a specific element of Japanese grammar (the causative can, depending on the ending of the stem, be the same as the passive except ‘sase’ or ‘se’ replaces ‘rare’ or ‘re’ at one point). It's also a reference to the Shibbloleth of Fem6;anor. I really like the Shibboleth of Fem6;anor. I may change certain aspects of the way I transliterate all this in later chapters, in which event I will go back and edit this one too.

Síreth's Japanese is not supposed to be as good as mine, and my Japanese is not as good as I would like it to be. I can provide kanji/kana readings for any of this upon request if anybody is interested.

Glaeronien is Síreth’s father-name (Síreth is her mother-name). Eregriel’s mother-name, incidentally, is Bronhedil. Síreth’s mother is called Ladbrith.