Where the Ocean Meets the Sky and the Land by StarSpray

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Chapter 9

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Elwing woke suddenly in the grey hours before dawn; it was a few seconds before she realized why. There was a cacophony of birds just outside her window—sea birds and songbirds, all clustered on the railing of her balcony. "What in the world!" She rolled out of bed and flung open the curtains. "What are you doing here?" she exclaimed, though she could hardly hear herself above the noise. But they quieted quickly enough, and before long most of them had flown away. It seemed their intention had been to wake her, but Elwing could not think why.

One of the larger birds, of a kind she did not recognize, hopped off of the railing, and in the blink of an eye was no longer a bird, but a man, all in shades of brown. It was, of course, Aiwendil, who she had met beside the orchard only a few weeks before. "What are you doing?" she demanded, seizing a robe and wrapping it around herself tightly over her light nightgown.

"It's a beautiful morning—perfect for flying!" he said, flinging out his arms, the wide sleeves of his robes fluttering like feathered wings with the movement. Elwing stared at him. "Well? What are you waiting for? I promised I would teach you."

"You said I should come to find you if I wanted to learn," she said.

"Or that perhaps I would find you. And so I have. You've come back to the sea, and what better place to learn! We shall soar over the swells and ride the thermals with the gulls and the albatrosses, and we shall tease Uinen and her maidens in the bay!" He laughed at Elwing's expression. "I will ask again, what are you waiting for, cousin? For so I shall call you, as you are a child of Melyanna."

This was not how Elwing had hoped to begin her day. Yet she found herself agreeing.

And so she found herself standing once again at the top of a cliff staring down into the sea far below. This cliff was higher than the one at Sirion, and though the waters crashed against its base similarly, there were no rocks to pose a danger. And, of course, the sun was shining and the Silmaril did not weigh heavily upon her breast, nor did anyone stand at her back with bloodied swords. Still, she could not stand looking down for very long. On the cliff around her were gathered a handful of birds. A great albatross that Aiwendil said could glide across the Great Sea and back twice without tiring, a few gulls that looked on with keen black eyes, heads tilted curiously, and a hawk in a tree that watched Elwing and Aiwendil rather less than it eyed the gulls.

"How do you propose to teach me to fly?" Elwing asked. "I have no wings. And it was not my power that gave them to me before."

"Ulmo only woke in you what lay there already," Aiwendil said. "I think if another had done what you did, he would have had to resort to other methods of rescue. But you are not so unique as you might think! There are skin-changers among Men, did you know?"

"I did not," Elwing said. "But you have not answered my question."

"Of course I have! The power is inside you, and you only have to reach for it. Command your body! Tell your bones to hollow, and they shall! Summon feathers, and they will come!" He demonstrated by, in the blink of an eye, transforming from a brown-robed man back into a falcon, smaller than the hawk and faster, dropping like a stone toward the waters before spreading his wings and soaring up toward the sky, passing in front of the son so that Elwing's eyes were dazzled and she lost track of him.

Elwing sighed, and sat down on a rock to wait for him to return. The albatross roused itself and walked over to sit beside her. "He's right, you know," it said. Elwing started. "About the skin-changers, I mean. I've seen them."

"I've never heard of such a thing," Elwing said, eying the bird warily. "How is it you can speak?"

She had never thought of birds looking smug, but this one certainly managed it as it settled more comfortably on the stones. "All birds can speak," it said. "But some of us are cleverer than others, and have learned the tongues of Men and Elves."

"Oh. Can other birds speak in our tongues, then?"

"I suppose. I haven't met any." The albatross looked up at Elwing. "Are you going to join old Aiwendil, or not?"

Elwing looked back at the cliff's edge. "I rather doubt it," she said.

"It isn't hard," said the albatross, a little scornfully. "Flying, I mean. Although I suppose having to make wings each time would be a bit tricky, though the Maiar seem to manage all right."

"I'm not a Maia," Elwing pointed out. She frowned down at the albatross. "Don't you have better things to do? Fish to catch, or nests to make, or something?"

"Not just now," said the albatross.

Being looked at like that by a bird, no matter how large and impressive a bird it was, rankled more than Elwing would have thought it would. She got to her feet and went again to the edge of the cliff. She spotted a dark speck in the sky overhead that she thought must be Aiwendil, riding the breezes and, it seemed, waiting for her to do something.

All right, then. She took a few steps back, taking deep breaths to try to calm her suddenly-racing heart. "Uinen catch me," she murmured, as she closed her eyes and turned all of her thought not to the changing, but the being, of wind through feathers, of soaring with effortless, weightless ease over the waves, of hollow bones and wide spread wings. Then she took a running start and leaped off the cliff.

Wind rushed in her ears and unraveled her braids almost immediately. Elwing forced her eyes open and resisted the urge to scream as she focused on feathers—feathers and wings and flying not falling flying not falling flying—

Just as she was about to give up and scream before hitting the water, she felt her body change—it was not like before, when other hands had taken and molded her like clay, it was smooth and painless and thrilling, and she spread out arms-turned wings and caught a breeze that carried her over the water, not quite close enough to skim the surface, and then up, and up. Uinen rose from the waves, hair streaming like silver foam, to lift up her hand and laugh with joy, and her maidens on a nearby beach burst into cheerful song as Elwing soared over them. She was a sea bird, something like an albatross, something like a gull—but not really either one. Aiwendil in his hawk shape swooped by with a scream that must have been what laughter passed for in such birds. Elwing returned the call with a keening cry of her own.

They spent the morning in the air, and on the cliff. After her first thrilling success Elwing had to be caught by Uinen three times before she was able to call on her bird's shape again. Uinen was very kind about it, encouraging in a different, gentler way than Aiwendil's boundless enthusiasm. After that she struggled to return to her own shape, and that was a panic worse than falling into the water.

"There you are!" Minyelmë said when Elwing finally returned to Olwë's palace. It was lunchtime, and she was both starving and exhausted. And she would be sore, she was certain. "Where have you been?"

"Flying," Elwing said. Minyelmë's eyebrows rose. "It seems I am a skin-changer, though whether through Melian or Beren's line I'm not sure."

"Melian, surely," said Minyelmë. "Shall we lunch on the veranda? I'd like to hear more about this skin-changing. Do you need songs for it?"

Elwing had not even thought of that. Finrod had needed songs of power. Had Lúthien? She couldn't remember what the tales said at the moment, or if they said at all.

"No," she said. "I just sort of…tell my body to be a bird, and it is a bird." She shook her head. "I'm going to wash and change."

Minyelmë was delighted with the idea of Elwing's being a skin-changer, and the subject dominated the conversation at lunch. It was just the two of them, Elunis being off with Olwë and Lalindil somewhere and all of Olwë's children having engagements elsewhere. It was a relief to sit back and listen to Minyelmë speculate about what skin-changing for the Secondborn was like. "What sort of things do you suppose they can turn into? There are big cats that live in the mountains. Or horses, or wolves—or bears. I'd like to see someone turn into a bear."

"It would have to be a very large person," Elwing said. She tilted her head back and closed her eyes. A breeze swept down the beach, blowing strands of her hair across her face to tickle her nose.

"That's true. Are you all right?"

"Changing one's skin is very tiring," said Elwing without moving. "At least at first. Aiwendil, of course, was baffled when I told him I needed to go take a nap. He wanted to fly around the bay all afternoon and evening, too."

"Oh, well, Maiar." Elwing heard Minyelmë shift in her own chair. "If you want understandings of bodily limitation you should go back to Lórien. Estë and her people are better about it than most. Aiwendil's one of Yavanna's followers, I think."

"I like him," Elwing murmured. "He's always laughing."

"You should find somewhere more comfortable if you're going to fall asleep," said Minyelmë after a few minutes of silence.

Elwing opened her eyes. That sounded like a good idea—and there was a divan just down the veranda with silk pillows that looked terribly inviting. "All right," she said, sitting up and rubbing her neck, which was already feeling stiff. "Wake me before supper, though, won't you?"

"Of course."

Elwing retreated to the divan and fell asleep almost immediately; she dreamed of flying, over the sea and through the stars.