In The Interest of Historical Accuracy by Duilwen

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Chapter 3: An oral history of Y.T. 1945 – 1947, which includes (but could not accurately be characterized as) an account of the Kinslaying at Alqualondë

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Our host left the city at once, and camped outside the walls while King Fëanáro and his sons remained to help organize the people of Tirion; we had no desire to remain behind those walls one second longer than necessary, and we would only have been in the way.

For now Tirion had come to life; people bustled through the streets like on the market days of old, gathering things they needed, finding loved ones, trading their delicate goods for durable ones that would stand the journey… they were taking an exceptionally long time about it, of course, and we were impatient to go, but we could hardly begrudge them their time. They were not as eager to leave Tirion as we were to leave Formenos. Morgoth’s evil had not touched them as closely as it had touched us. 

Or that was what we thought at first. When the stars turned through three more days and still their host would not assemble to follow ours, we realized that perhaps Morgoth had done as much harm in Tirion as he had in Formenos – but whereas he had struck at us openly, with all his power, he had struck at them with his subtle lies and done perhaps greater damage.

For still Nolofinwë refused to renounce his claim to the kingship, and many of the people of Tirion still followed him. The rumors ripped through our camp, accompanied at first by disbelief, and later by outright anger: Nolofinwë still called our departure foolishness. Fëanáro had offered Nolofinwë the Kingship in Tirion, so Fëanáro could lead our people to war and Nolofinwë could rule the remainder. Nolofinwë had refused. He was coming with us. As the King of the Noldor – and he had enough followers still to enforce that claim.  

That last claim was repeated to me by my brother, sputtering in outrage. It was hard to imagine what contortions Nolofinwë must be going through to justify all this to himself – usurping his brother’s throne, only to have his people support Fëanáro’s proposal to leave Valinor, whereupon he reversed himself and decided to leave as well, but still refuse to acknowledge Fëanáro as his leader.

Tirion’s betrayal of our King hit us all hard. We could have headed directly to Ennor from Formenos, you know, following Morgoth’s path, but instead we had exhausted ourselves traveling south to reunite with out kindred. We had brought them hope when they were huddled helpless in Tirion, waiting on the actions of the Valar who still had not moved from Taniquetil, nor sent word. They had stood beside us when Fëanáro spoke, and wept with us, and even now it was easy to see the spark in their eyes that Fëanáro had lit – he had shown them hope, purpose, the strength of our united people. And still they clung to Nolofinwë.

“They want to have it both ways,” someone said bitterly on the tenth day of waiting. “They want Fëanáro’s leadership, but they won’t give him their loyalty. They want a King who will demand nothing of them – the way Finwë did – they don’t realize that Finwë had that luxury only in peacetime, that in war it is the right of our King to demand our loyalty, even our lives.” And maybe if we had realized that earlier, Finwë would still be alive. It was never said but always it hung over us, unspoken.  

When Fëanáro at last gave the command to resume our march for the Calacirya, no one much cared if they followed.

But, of course, they did – under Nolofinwë’s banner.

 

The people I admired most, when we saw Nolofinwë’s host trailing after us, were actually those who stayed in Tirion. Courage it took to follow our King, and a different sort of courage to remain behind; the cowards were those who followed and yet held themselves apart, and told each other that this was only being level-headed and sensible.”

At this I had to interrupt her. “Do you still believe this? Or is this what you thought at the time?”

She looked up, startled, as if she had forgotten I was in the room. “I still believe that united we could have defeated Morgoth. I still believe that we should have left Aman under one banner. But – crossing the Helcaraxë was not an act of cowardice. Whatever their failing, it was something different – the conviction, perhaps, that benefitting from the evil acts of others does not make you complicit in them as long as you keep a little distance and shake your head disapprovingly? Were I a Vanya, I would invent a word for that. It is a common enough phenomenon to deserve one.

Now, where were we? This is why you should not interrupt me, child…

Ah, yes. We were at last departing Tirion.

I had never felt as much a prisoner as I did while we waited for the political disputes to be settled and for the people of Tirion to join us. It felt like the sky was getting lower, pressing in, and the choking smell of the smoke from the torches – so different than the smell of a bonfire, somehow, though I cannot explain why – and the grim, shattered statues – have you ever been to a mortal settlement? They have designated places where they bury their dead, which they call grave-yards, and no matter how carefully kept they all have the same feeling about them…. that was the feeling of Tirion.

When at last Fëanáro announced that we would depart, we were ready to leave in almost no time at all. Tents folded, bundles packed, weapons sheathed, food carefully parceled so we could eat a midday meal without stopping… we did it all in only a few minutes, our hearts singing at the mere thought of at last departing. It was like coming to life again. Even the animals felt it.  Our trumpets echoed through the air and I was happier, in that moment, than I ever was in paradise.

Just then a herald of Manwë appeared. It was the most unexpected – they had not come when we were abandoned and bleeding in the woods near Formenos, they had not come to see the body of our King and the destruction Morgoth had wrought; they had not come to starving Tirion, they sat idle atop Taniquetil while we prepared for war… and now they arrived? Some people were angry, I suppose, that they would have the nerve to appear after those repeated betrayals and still expect us to heed them. More people were angry that they had not bother to come themselves and had instead sent a herald. But most of us did not really believe they were evil yet, and so it did not occur to us to be afraid.

 As for what the herald actually said: I can only say that, though the herald advised us to stay, if Manwë had long considered the words most likely to ensure the Noldor continued on their path, he could not possibly have chosen better. Fëanáro and his sons were exiled: a juvenile sort of  ‘you’re leaving? No, we’re throwing you out!’ that even a man far less stubborn than Fëanáro would have scorned. Then the herald warned him that he was no match for Morgoth, to which I imagine Fëanáro, were he not constrained by diplomatic courtesy, would have answered, “I’m well aware of that – that’s why I have an army of a hundred thousand behind me.”

And… that was it. No explanation for the agonizing absence of the Valar since the Darkening; no reassurances; no hope that the Valar were considering a better way to defeat Morgoth; no mention of the dead crops and waning food supplies; no regrets expressed at the murder of our King by their own brother… 

Fëanáro turned his back on the herald and spoke to us, and his words I will remember until my dying day, and they ought to be recorded: “So! Then will this valiant people send forth the heir of their King alone into banishment with his sons only, and return to their bondage? But if any will come with me, I say to them: Is sorrow foreboded to you? But in Aman we have seen it. In Aman we have come through bliss to woe. The other now we will try: through sorrow to find joy; or freedom, at the least.”

Even Nolofinwë’s people wept. The herald bowed deep before our King and departed (and I wondered if some of the Maiar perhaps also began to doubt the wisdom of the Valar), and the trumpets blew again and we departed, and his words rang in my head all through the long march. Through sorrow to find joy.

Through sorrow to find joy.

I imagine that ruined statue of Manwë observed our departure, but I did not look back.

If Nolofinwë’s usurpation and the long days of trying negotiations and delays had hit us hard, that is nothing compared to the effect it had on Fëanáro. Fëanáro had endless patience for important things, but none at all for duplicity and navigating power dynamics. Every day he spent in Tirion trying to marshal our people for departure wore at him; it took him a little longer each day to hide his anguish and manage a smile when he returned to our camp. 

Marching at last restored him. He smiled again, though it was the burning smile of one whose only true joy would come when his father was avenged and the Silmarils restored to our people. When we would stop to rest, he and his sons seemed to be everywhere at once. Did you know that Prince Morifinwe was an unreasonably good carpenter? Our wagons would break and he could always get them moving again in no time at all… and the princes Ambarussa would somehow find time to ride out hunting and stay up all night roasting a wild boar over the fire… they were both excellent cooks… you know, there are times when I think that the greatest tragedy of Beleriand is how it flattened people. The twins? Hunters. Curufin? Sneaky. Moryo? Rich and ill-tempered. Tyelko? Had a dog. Macalaure? Singer. Maitimo? Maitimo Nelyafinwë, the most beautiful of Finwë’s grandchildren, who remembered the names of everyone he’d ever spoken to, who carried our crying children and lulled them almost instantly to sleep, who taught our sons to swordfight when the host paused for rest – a single word of praise from him would have my brother glowing for a fortnight – Maitimo, who had written books on every topic known to Elves, who let my little sister try on his copper circlet once when she asked, who insisted our neighbor ride his horse when she injured her ankle – Maedhros the One Handed. That’s how they remember him. Am I right?”

It was, again, not a question I was intended to answer. So instead, I tried, tentatively, to prod her back on topic. “Alqualondë?”

“Oh, yes, we walked past it after a few weeks of travel and continued north. We did not exactly stop to say hello, but it appeared from a distance to be doing better than Tirion – Ossë had not abandoned them as the Valar had abandoned us, their King had not been murdered, the fish were still plentiful –”

I gaped at her. She pretended not to notice (or perhaps she really did not notice) and continued. “The northern coast outside the Pelori was rocky, the safe passes narrow. The wagons broke down more frequently. King Fëanáro sent scouts out ahead, and they returned with grim news – the mountains grew higher and colder, and swiftly became impassable. The North was a hell of ice. There was no way out.

Just like the Valar! ‘We will neither aid nor hinder you in leaving’, they promised, knowing that without their aid departure was a death sentence. But if they had hoped that we would feel chastened, they were wrong. We were angry. Word sped swiftly around camp – the most extreme of our King’s words had been nothing but fact. We were prisoners here. 

Fëanáro spoke to the lords of Formenos that night, and his eyes were so fierce that, briefly catching a glimpse of them, I thought that he might be able to melt the ice of the North just by looking at it. They conferred for a long time, long enough for the mountains to begin feeling like prison walls pressing in on us, long enough for the darkness to grate at our nerves again, long enough for the rumors to start flying again. The Valar had exiled Fëanáro and his sons; would they arrive soon to enforce their exile? Force us into that nightmarish wasteland?

It was then that my mother raised – for the only time – the question of turning back. “If we have no choice but to cross the ice,” she said softly, “maybe you children…”

“We go with our King,” my brother said fiercely, and I just nodded.

But my father jumped to his feet and nearly overturned the tent. “That,” he hissed at his wife, “is what the Valar are hoping for. They say we cannot defeat Morgoth – well, they’re damned right that we cannot defeat Morgoth if they deliberately sabotage us every step of the way. They know that Fëanáro is right; they are too cowardly to attack him directly, so instead they strike at the loyalty of his people. They ask if we’re afraid to die for him, and then they see to it that we will. We will not turn back. We will cross the ice, if our King commands it. We will swim the damned ocean, if our King commands it. We will show the Valar that the Noldor cannot be so easily turned from our path. We will not be manipulated like a rabble of children!”

It was the first argument I ever heard between my parents. I cried myself to sleep that night and dreamed of Morgoth – only I had never seen Morgoth before, so he bore a striking resemblance to Manwë, whose image was everywhere in Valinor. When I woke up, the thought on the tip of my tongue was that the two were, after all, brothers.

Shortly afterward Fëanáro announced that we would return to Alqualondë and seek the aid of the Teleri in crossing the Sea. 

Nolofinwë’s host followed us, of course. By then our anger with them had died into smoldering resentment, but we rarely looked back and never spoke of the elves who marched behind us flying the banner of a different King.”[1]

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            “Alqualondë. The beaches were strewn with gemstones; I am sure you knew that, because all of the poets like to mention it. The ships were white, and graceful, and in the shape of swans; this you also know. Songs of that day will be sung for a long time, because it is rife with symbolism and tragedy, and poets love both.

If you were a poet I would have turned you away.

Alqualondë. After seeing what occurred in Tirion, I was not surprised that the Teleri did not wish to join us. Distance, it seems, insulates. Every line you can draw in the sand is a reason to pretend that it did not happen to you, that it could not happen to you.

And there are a lot of lines in the sand between Formenos and Alqualondë. Their King was alive and well; gemstones glinted on a crown Fëanáro forged for him, and the walkways of the city were lined with Fëanorian lamps at regular distances. The black vapors with which Ungoliant marred our lands did not reach far enough to poison theirs; their fountains still bubbled with music. I have mentioned already that Ossë and Ulmo had taken at once the steps that Yavanna did not take until later, to preserve the living things under their domain; the Teleri were not hungry.

So I was not surprised that they did not wish to come. They had not seen. They did not know. I was surprised, though, at how vehemently they refused us any aid. They would not ferry us across the sea for any price. They would not loan us the ships. They would not aid us in building our own. 

“Do they want to watch us die?” my mother said angrily, and the terror in her eyes, which had lifted since we had turned away from the Ice, returned in full force. “Our King is exiled; we are condemned to depart by whatever means we can. If they will not help us build boats, that means the Ice, and on the ice we will die by the thousands. Friendship does not bind them to fight beside us, but it does, I think, bind them to offer us what little aid would be required to give our children a chance of a safe journey.” And she looked worriedly at my sister, who was only ten; but she did not speak of turning back. 

We did not know at the time that Fëanáro was having similar words with Olwë, but that evening the echoes of Olwë’s answer spread about the camp.

“The Valar were kind enough to us, too, until we sought to leave their protective custody,” someone spat over the fire that night. “We all believed their lies until  - by their absence when we needed them - they showed their true colors. We can hardly fault the Teleri for being ensnared by the same lies.”

That was the kindest thing said about the Teleri that evening.

“To refuse even to aid us in crafting our own boats… there Olwë slips from disagreeability to outright madness. Are there secrets between our people now? Is the knowledge of how to depart Valinor the special right of the Teleri, the gatekeepers of the Valar?”

“Manwë will not weep to see us die in the Crossing; he has shown already how little he cares for the plight of our people. But Olwë – I would have thought better of him.”

“And who are they, to claim to know better than us whether our parting is folly, and to restrain us from it? If they had seen Tirion they would know that our people will find no joy on this side of the sea. If they had seen Formenos they would know –”

But there he halted. We did not speak of that, though it was, I think, the thought lurking at the back of all that was spoken.

“Clever of the Valar, is it not? We will neither aid nor hinder your passage – but we will order our servants to hinder you as best they can.”

And then Fëanáro emerged from his camp. Again his sons flanked him, and all of us flinched at their expressions, and steeled ourselves for his command. 

‘Tonight,’ he said, (he had been the one to reinstate the custom of speaking of nights and days, which both provided some thankful semblance of normalcy and reminded us how very far from normalcy we were), ‘when Olwë’s guards sleep, we will take the ships from the harbor and ferry our people safely across the sea. When we are victorious we will return the ships with Morgoth’s body and forgive Olwë his effort to condemn our people to our deaths.’

No one argued.”

Here she paused; her hands were shaking slightly and for the first time I could see the weight of two millennia in her face. “I am not sure I can tell you anything useful. It has all been recorded. What more do you want to know?”

Eyewitness accounts to all of the major battles of the First Age – even the ones that are not nearly as emotionally charged as the Kinslaying – are notoriously unreliable. It is a phenomenon that the scholars of Ost-in-Edhil (who have never seen war) call the “fog of war”, and it is the single largest barrier to reliable and accurate reporting on the great battles of the age. People confuse chronology, lose track of time entirely, are utterly unreliable with respect to the number of the enemy… war causes the Elven mind to go just a little bit mad.

Or perhaps you have to be just a little bit mad to survive war. 

She started talking again, and it was only much later, looking back through the transcript, that I realized that I never answered her question. 

“We were all exhausted. Not physically – we had rested for nearly two entire days then, the longest we had remained in one place since Tirion – but emotionally. Elves can die of imprisonment, you know. It’s not the physical restrictions on mobility  - it does something to your spirit, the thought that you are trapped. A voice starts screaming inside you and doesn’t quite stop. By the time we arrived at Alqualondë, we had travelled countless thousands of miles on foot and we had never felt so imprisoned in our lives. We were alone; we were being betrayed at every turn.

If I was to describe the atmosphere that evening, I would have to call it – feverish. Though I did not learn that word for another four hundred years. We were frightened; we were exhausted; we were a people of craftsmen reduced to desperate nomads, a people of song who spoke mostly in whispers, the Valar’s promise of exile hanging over our heads like an anvil poised to fall… and the darkness. Always the darkness. We startled easily… My mother’s hands were shaking that evening when she helped my father and brother put on their armor.

I remember thinking that everything would be all right once we only reached the Outer Lands.

I kissed my father and brother goodbye, mostly envious that I was too young and couldn’t go with them. We didn’t conceive of it as a battle, not really. You have to remember, only two people had died in the Blessed Realm in all of history. If you had asked us, “Would the Teleri think their ships worth killing for? Worth dying for?” I would have stared at you in wide-eyed astonishment… it was Valinor. Nothing was worth killing for. Nothing was worth dying for.

I still remember lining up at the edge of the camp with my little sister’s hand clasped in mine, enthusiastically waving to our departing host with the other. 

When the screaming started we did not believe it.

“Something’s wrong,” a boy a little younger than I shouted, and ducked through his mother’s arms and raced down the hill; I tried to follow but my own mother grabbed my arm. Her grip was weak, her hands shaking, and for a second I thought to pull free, but then I saw the expression on her face, and it froze me in place more effectively than her hands ever could. 

It was like being back in Formenos in those first moments when the Darkness came. The distant screaming, the shock and horror, the dawning feeling that you are trapped inside a nightmare and you will never wake up…

All we saw, from that distance, were snatches of movement against the glowing white ships. Arrows were raining down on the docks. Barbed fishing spears clashing against swords. Our people were being driven backward along the beach, the fallen trampled where they lay. We were too far away to see faces, but people were dying on both sides, we would have to be fools to doubt that… 

I cannot tell you how long it was until Nolofinwë’s host came up behind us. I can tell you that I watched a man drown: he had been thrown off the docks fully armored, and the weight was dragging him slowly beneath the waters as I watched, and he reached out desperately for the pier but an arrow pierced his hand just as it closed around the wood and the waves swallowed him. That one instant seemed to last three Ages.

I did not hear the thunder as Nolofinwë’s host came up beside us, and charged toward the melee; by then there was a strange ringing in my ears. I don’t think I even consciously noted that they were Nolofinwë’s people. But I saw the tides turn; I saw the Teleri driven back across the docks; I saw the ships cut free of the harbor and start haphazardly north. 

The screams stopped. The silence was stifling, absolute, choking. I became suddenly aware that my mother’s grip on my arm had tightened until she’d cut off all circulation (later there would be ten deep bruises in a ring around my shoulder).

And then, all as one, we charged towards the docks, pregnant women and terrified children and grown men alike, all convinced – well, at least, I was – that we would get there and it would all prove to be some kind of terrible illusion.”

She was unconsciously massaging the shoulder that had been bruised two millenia before. 

“Do you need to stop?” I asked.[2] 

“If I stop here, I will never start again.” 

But a long time passed before she continued.

“Alqualondë. The tide was not red with blood; the ocean is enormous, and all the blood of all the elves in Valinor would not suffice to change its color. The people were soaked with blood – leaking out of arrow wounds and the ragged holes left by barbed fishing spears, drenching their swords and splattered across their armor – I vomited on the gemstone-strewn beach and afterwards did not have the strength to stand, so I crawled…

I suppose someone took command and started making arrangements for the wounded. I suppose there were recriminations, arguments, orders given. I do not know, because my world had narrowed to the bodies. Our new swords had proved themselves spectacularly effective; I saw men with their heads only half hanging on, men with glassy eyes and arms still wrapped around their guts as though trying to hold their intestines in. And then I stopped seeing the injuries at all: my vision had gone entirely black except for the faces, as if my mind was trying to shield me. It was far too late for that.

And then I saw them. My brother, haggard and horrified but alive, clutching a bloody sword, his eyes glazed and panicked – at the sight of him strength surged back into me, and I blundered across the sand into his arms, the rest of the world fading from view.

So it was that I did not see the body at his feet until a moment later.

Two arrows had lodged themselves in my father’s skull; somehow, neither had been fatal, because he must have still been standing when someone put a spear through his throat. (Perhaps they did it after he had fallen. But that I refuse to believe.)

I know my mother found us there a minute later, my brother’s bloody hands knotted in my hair as we kneeled together by Atar’s side. I know that she clapped her hands over my sister’s eyes and screamed in anguish and horror, and was ignored; I know that a little while afterwards some people came to lift up my father’s body and take my hand and walk with us back to the camp to continue the march north. I know that we lost more people that day and the next, in the terrible storms that the Valar sent down on the boats and to the lingering injuries that none knew how to treat.

But all this I know because I was told it; I do not remember those weeks at all.

Alqualondë. They ask, did you feel sympathy for the people you slaughtered? Yes, of course; such pain as I suffered that day I would not wish even on Morgoth. But has anyone asked them the same question? 

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[1] There, to my great annoyance, she stopped for the day; I fear that the mundane details of the time that passed before we continued the conversation will bore the reader thoroughly and disrupt the narrative, so I will say only that my dreams were troubled.

[2] In doing so, I displayed a degree of courtesy and emotional maturity which would have been unknown to me ten years earlier.  That it was insufficient… well, emotional maturity is not easily learned from books.