Of Ingwë Ingweron by heget

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Of the Birth of Indis

The people of his tribe would say two things about that act of Ingwë's mother, when she lost the use of her arm to drag her husband from the leopard's deadly embrace. First that Maktâmê did it for Alakô was her mate, and it was tribal lore that the first concern of a woman was to the one at her side, he that she saw first when she awoke. That he would always be the primary concern.[3]

Second that it was foolish of her to do it. The man was too badly injured by the predator, and that by going after him all the woman truly accomplished was to injure herself and thus place two burdens upon her people instead of one. She would have better served her son and tribe and the legacy of her husband had she let him die that day, and kept her body strong and whole. So said was the wisdom of the Speakers.

None said what should have been, and was, the truth that should have been said.

That there was one of the Kwendî screaming out in pain, and compassion would not allow anyone to stand aside and attempt nothing to stop the pain of a fellow being.

That compassion was the greatest strength of Maktâmê, and the greatest gift she gave into her daughter Indis.

 

 

The broken man that his tribe called terrible names like Skarwô and Ulgundô, Khyannô and Nukottô had been grievously injured in body, it is true. But the long years of pain had weakened his resolve and spirit. To be so cruelly shunned by one's only home, to have no hope of recovery, no one's strength could have mastered that in the end. Thus the woman with her scarred arms, one that was useless to lift and stroke the faces of her family, held onto the man as he sat by the edge of the camp. Her good arm would thread through his remaining fingers, squeezing them tight in her fear. But the hand she held would rarely echo her gesture.

The father of the young man who would become Ingwë watched the waves that gently lapped the shores of the Great Mother Lake. One day, Skarnâ-Maktê knew, the despair would grow too great, that emptiness that she could not fill, not when there was so little spirit inside her as well, and her husband would walk into the embrace of the lake. When the suffering was too burdensome, the Kwendî already knew, one could abandon the body, return to the stars, or that darkness between. And yet the father of the man who would become Ingwë lingered, held back by the feeling of those fingers.

But his eye was empty and looked out upon the lake.

 

Their son could not watch. To the camps of the Tatyar and Nelyar he walked instead, to find peace among the forest or even to hunt alone among the tall grass, anything to avoid his home. To the Tatyar boy Finwë who had no parents, lost long ago in a tragedy forgotten, and raised as the clever and tolerated nephew of all and none, the man that would be Ingwë went and watched the younger man mold clay vessels for storing food and invent names for the markings Rúmilô drew in the clay. To the Nelyar boy Elwë who had two younger brothers the man that would be Ingwë went and helped his taller friend chase after the boys and their friends, to clean mud from their faces, and learn to swim on the lake. Joy was to be hunted outside his village, thus knew the man that would be known as Ingwë Ingweron. He could not continue to bite his tongue and say nothing as the chieftain and highest among his tribe mocked his parents and him, not after he became a man grown. To improve his family's standing drove him like the need for air and water. And the man who would become Ingwë Ingweron could not bear to be witness to the last fading of his father.

 

One last attempt to save her husband did Maktâmê devise, and begged for another child. A child, she hoped, might give her husband a task to focus on, a reason to not fade. Or at least give her one. And perhaps she knew he was lost to her, and hoped to preserve that last bit of his spirit, create one more thing of joy, something that would be born unscarred.

This plan was mostly unspoken, for it would have been mocked if her tribe learned she wished a child from the weak and grotesque. "Neither of you have the strength for a child," they would have told her. That any child from two with inner fires so low and guttering would be one with a spirit so weakly glowing as to be embers easily stamped out. This was the wisdom of the tribes. But they were wrong, the woman knew, as she watched the first child of her and her husband approach. Her strong son, who carried three dead hares in his hand and knelt before them, swiftly and expertly skinning the animals, spitting the meat and roasting the flesh, then pulling off the best parts to feed his father. All the while with bright blue eyes that refused to release their tears. "My first son is powerful, and learned to make the hunting snares of Tatyar boy," the woman called Skarnâ-Maktê said.

To which, with a helplessness born from many mothers, the young man who would be called Ingwë corrected her, "The snares were from Belekô, a Nelyar."

"It does not matter if the child is not strong," Maktâmê said, "or brings home glory and gifts." Of heartbreaking loveliness was the smile she turned to her son, one that glanced beyond him to where his father sat near the ring of campfires and picket stakes that ordained the border between the safety of the village and the dangers of the dark wild. "But that child would be mine, and of Alakô. A new life, like you, my son." She left unsaid that any chances for another child grew slim. That the call of the water and the darkness was stronger than her voice and her arms.

 

A child was conceived, and this would have been joy. But not soon after, when the faintest signs of the child growing inside were present, did the woman called Skarnâ-Maktê wake to see no one resting at her side. In great fear did she run through the camp, searching for the figure that was so manifestly unlike in silhouette from all other Kwendî. But she was unable to see it, unable to call out the name no one spoke, unable to face the truth she knew the second she awoke and felt a coolness from the lack of another body beside her. The man that had once been so swift as to be named for the rushing wind was gone. The despair had called in the lapping tiny waves of the shore, and the Great Mother Lake had swallowed him.

She that was called Skarnâ-Maktê wept, and spat disdainfully into the lake, turning the burning bitterness of her eyes into a wild challenge to all the Minyar who gathered around her. In anger she cursed and wailed. Imin, the first among the Kwendî, he that claimed the title of eldest and leadership of not just his tribe but to speak for all the Speakers, observed her. He permitted this brief display of grief and defiance, and he cautioned his wife, she that was counted first among the women of the Kwendî, and his children to make no move. What threat was the scarred women, the former hunter with useless arms, to them? In their haughty pride they dismissed Skarnâ-Maktê and her grief.

The burst of fury soon gutted itself, and the hopeless tears, and the woman who was once called Maktâmê and envied and praised among all the hunters of the Minyar, she that once delighted in the carefree laughter of her husband and the feel of the wind-stream from his sprinting, wiped away the emotions on her face. Away from the public center of the camp she walked, looking for her son. At the edge of the village she sat, under the shadows from the tall sentry fires. Long she waited, promising the unborn child whose heartbeat echoed her own that there would be hope and strength. That the young man who would become Ingwë Ingweron could support the child, even if she could not. That not all the paths before this tiny new heartbeat were bitterness and absence.

And when her son finally came back from his foraging in the dark forests around the camp, arms full of cycad stems to leach into an edible food, Maktâmê told him of what happened. Ukwendô was the boy mocked, and in this moment he made no word. He only grasped both hands of his mother, the one that could not feel and the one that could, and squeezed them tight. Nothing, he vowed silently, would be as important as a better life for them.

 

 

For many years dark spirits and evil servants of Melkor had hunted around the lake, shadows of whispering terror masked in shapes to imitate the Valar Oromë who rode Nahar. They were body-snatchers who lurked in the upswept boughs of the pines or the parasitic voids of starlight that clung to the backs of the galloping horses, the subjects of warnings and cautionary songs. The hunters of the Minyar suffered most from the dark hunters. Parties who went on the long treks to the plains where the best game was found did not return, and fear during those long waits shot up like fast-growing trees. There had always been fear of an unsuccessful hunt, or that a hunter may be injured or die, as what happened to those once called Alakô and Maktâmê. But the fear was greater now, for the danger and uncertainty was greater. By chance the smallest of the three tribes, now the Minyar were very few in number, and they quailed with terror of these patches of darkness. To the safety of the great campfire rings they began to cling, turning their songs of hunting into that of being hunted. Tales spread of the disappearing children of the wise tribe, who had by custom long wandered the woods alone for supplies and curiosity. The wails of their grieving parents echoed across the lake. Even the third tribe, who by choice rarely left the shore, tending instead to their reeds and tubers and fish, lost people to these evil spirits. Finally the three chieftains of the tribes, Imin and Tata and Enel, declared that no one was to leave the confines of the camp unless necessary, to always be in range of the light cast by the fires. For safety this was demanded, but now the tribes of the Kwendî were isolated from each other. None suffered as much as the Minyar, who depended on their long hunts for food and had little skill with catching fish or digging in the muck of the shoreline for food. Nor did they have large stores of pine nuts stored in large clay vessels, a crafty precaution common in the Tatyar villages. The man who would become Ingwë Ingweron glared in impotent rage at the dark forest and the back of his chieftain's head. He most among his tribe traveled alone between the camps, needing so to support his kin. This proclamation doomed everyone, but none so much as the new sibling his mother was about to birth.

 

When the labor pains began, the young man watched helplessly. Unlike his friend Elwë, who as the eldest of three sons from the leader of one of the smaller Nelyar villages had been around births before, he that would be Ingwë had little knowledge of what to expect. He was not popular among his own kin, and as a figure of ill-omen none wished him near during an important and auspicious event like a birth. One of the Minyar woman, a young mother of two with a sister who had also given birth, though that child was among the hunters taken by the spirits, came to assist the woman called Skarnâ-Maktê. It was not a gentle birth, but swift, and soon the woman who had first been named Maktâmê for the lovely strength of her arms held in her one good arm the tiny form of her daughter.

The infant girl was small, but not unnaturally so, with perfect tiny fingers and toes and a soft mop of golden curls.

"Wait to name her," the young man who would be called Ingwë requested, for in those days it was sometimes custom for the parent to wait until the child had grown, to observe what traits developed that would best depict the person, even if this was more common among the second and third tribes than the Minyar. "Do not name her now, in this time of fear, clouded by our grief. She is strong, she will grow up loved, her name should be for her glory."

At this his mother smiled, the first gentle smile since before her husband abandoned them to his despair. She told her son to find a good name, for she could not fathom one, and thanked the other woman for putting aside her evasion of the tribal pariahs to help.

 

The inspiration for the name would come from an unlikely place, for soon after one of the Nelyar, a young man with pale silver hair named Nôwê, sneaked into the Minyar camp. He was a close friend of Elwë's brother and a well-liked member of his own tribe, and for the sake of that friend he disregarded the ban placed by the chieftains. He found the young man who would be Ingwë, and with the voice of near panic whispered the dire news. Elwë's parents, the leaders of the small Nelyar village closest to the other two tribes, had been abducted by the shadowy hunters.

Elwë meant to go after them. Wild in grief and need for vengeance, he would dare the dangerous woods and the plains beyond, willingly searching out those whispering spirits that drank in the starlight and gave nothing back, those horrors that preyed on the Kwendî.

 

The man that would be Ingwë Ingweron knew he must join this hunt.

 

Chapter End Notes

[4]  “Thus, the Eldar say, the first thing that each elf-woman saw was her spouse, and her love for him was her first love; and her love and reverence for the wonders of Arda came later.” (HoMe XI) - AN: this quote is one of my least favorite lines from Tolkien

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