Of Ingwë Ingweron by heget

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Of the Three Hunters and the Vala Oromë

 

The Nelyar village was near the marshland of the lake, where one of the rivers that fed the Great Mother Lake spread out into a mesh of channels and reed-beds. The mud squelched under the toes of the young man who would be called Ingwë. He allowed no grimace of discomfort reach his face, for the terrain though wet and unpleasant was familiar to him. The path was not, for Nôwê led not along one of the common paths between the villages but across the sea of reeds and short fern trees. To leave the protective fire ring of the villages was still prohibited by the three clan chieftains and punishment would be swift if they were seen. But the young man that would be Ingwë Ingweron disdained the proscriptions of his chief.

Lizards leapt and skittered as the silver-haired man of the Nelyar guided them through the shifting reeds and leafy ferns. His passage was sure and clean as the breeze, and the man that would be Ingwë followed like a golden shadow.

"Belekô fetched the Tatyar friend of Elwê, the one that talks more than a river over large stones," said Nôwê, pointing with his fishing spear where to ford the stream across their path. "They have been long friends, since before his second brother was born. I was sent to fetch you, for you are wise and strong, Kwendê. Speak sense to my friend, for he plans to hunt the Dark Hunters." The man that would be Ingwë Ingweron smiled to hear the fond nickname that Elwë and Finwë had renamed him in jest, to be Speaker instead of the Unspeaking One, but he did not reply to the silver-haired man. Nor did he ask what sensible words were desired of him, that he dissuade Elwë or join on this foolhardy hunt. The anger that smoldered like hot charcoal in his heart knew which path the outcast of the Minyar preferred. He was the son of hunters, of the swiftness of the wind, and to be caged by fear was anathema to him.

The chieftain of the first tribe had forbidden hunters to go after the Dark Hunters, the voids of starlight that clung like ticks on the backs of horses, the things responsible for the disappearances of so many. They were what could not be hunted and killed and thus none were to venture out to hunt them, so the first to awaken had proclaimed, and his command had been repeated by Tata and Enel, the other chieftains of the Kwendî. Elwë was no hunter as the man who would be Ingwë was, but anger and grief paid this no heed.

The sentry torches that ringed the Nelyar village were half-lit, though the central fire pit was bright. The round huts of the third tribe, woven reed walls packed with clay and capped by large pointed thatch roofs, loosely ringed the central fire like oversized mushrooms. A young man of the third tribe perched atop one of the houses, the firelight gleaming off the dark silver of his hair. Seeing their approach, he scampered sure-footed off the house like a squirrel and shouted to the travellers. Loudly he told them to hurry, that everyone was gathered by the great longhouse where fish were cleaned and smoked and stored.

The man called Nôwê, later Círdan, and he that would be Ingwë Ingweron were last to arrive. Already they could hear voices.

Taller than any of his kin or the man that would be Ingwë, of a height only with the first awaken of all the elves, was the one called Elwë, and his implacable face was visible over the heads of the people around him. He stood before the door of the longhouse, holding a spear in one hand with a cloak of finely-woven rushes and a heavy pack around his shoulders. The long silver of his hair, darker than the near-white of Nôwê or his other brother Olwë, fell down his back in tangled waves of starlight. The remoteness of the stars was in his face and their piercing fire in his eyes.

As nervous as the half-tamed wolves that some Kwendî fed food scraps, the youngest brother, Elmo of the climbing feet and loud voice, joined his brothers and a young woman of the Nelyar whose hands covered the swelling of a child. They watched the approach of Nôwê and the Minya, but the eyes of Elwë seemed to see nothing.

Already present was the young man of the second tribe, whose hands held no spear. Finwë babbled an incessant stream of meaningless words, sounds that flowed beside the grim face of Elwë without touching his ears. The inventive and talkative boy of the second tribe could craft many words, but he did not understand this grief or need. With no memory of parents and no experience of loss, his pleading to Elwë that the older boy not go were useless. The noise was useful at least for the young man his friends called Kwendê to find them.

“He shall go, Phinwego,” proclaimed the man that would be Ingwë Ingweron. “I shall hunt with him.”

The cacophony from dark-haired young man stopped, startled by the firm words from his quiet friend. He turned to look at the equally mask-like face of the friend he knew as Kwendê, then back to Elwë. With a steadiness that would surprise many present, Finwë said, “Then I will join you.”

The young man that would be Ingwë Ingweron smiled to see the courage in the face of his Tatyar friend. That Finwë held a knife of bone with a smooth handle of carved antler in his hand, blocked from view until they had moved in close, was also reassuring. The grip was steady, though the face was pale. Less a hunter than even Elwë, the young man named Finwë had little skill with tracking beasts and knew none of the songs for hunting and killing. Friendship and resolve were their own song, though, knew the young man who had lost his father to a mad-driven beast and the scorn of his tribe, and grief and anger a guide chant as sure as any hunting song of the Minyar Kwendî.

Elwë moved finally, a slow nod of the head and a blink of eyes that spoke gratitude when a tongue could still not speak. His mouth was flat and thin, but the boiling anger of his eyes, the helpless fury that wished to lash indiscriminately as a thunderstorm, narrowed the fury’s purpose to a spear of lightning. Collectively the crowd waited, with the stillness of a fisher on the lake - or the people when a chieftain wished to address an assembly of all of a tribe. “Gather water. We will return only when we find the Dark Hunters or whom has sent them,” Elwë addressed to the gathered crowd. “Wolwê leads until I return. Do not leave the shore.”

Elmo made a cry of protest, but his other brother, eyes red with tears, held him back, and bowed to their eldest. Heartsick and afraid, Olwë would obey. Yet the arms around his youngest brother were tight, as if any pressure were lessened then Elmo would slip away like smoke into the darkness between the stars, become as lost to them as their parents were, as lost as any abducted by the Dark Hunters, as lost as Olwë feared Elwë would be.

Elwë placed a hand atop each of his brother’s heads, made as if to address words to them, but no sound came. Instead he nodded once more.

A woman with a necklace of white shells whispered the story of what happened as she filled a pair of bladder-skins with water and gave them to the young men that would accompany Elwë. Her eyes would dart to the three brothers, like a moth that could not pull away from the flames.

The people of the village had noticed a foul taste in one of the stream channels that fed into the Great Mother Lake and found dead frogs and fish floating near its banks. A dam was hastily constructed to keep the taint from lake, but great concern and debate gripped the tribe. This had happened before, when a dying animal collapsed in a pool or steam and spread its death sickness down the water. Still the people were worried, for the growing malice of the Dark Hunters worsened all fears, and the two leaders of the village decided the need for knowledge of potential danger to the Kwendî was too great, that the ban of leaving the safety of the villages must be disobeyed. The parents of Elwë, Olwë, and Elmo went to investigate upstream. They promised to discover the cause of the taint and carry word back to Enel and Enelyë, chieftain and chieftess of the third tribe of the Kwendî. The waters of the Great Mother Lake were safety and life for all the elves, but most of all to the largest of the tribes whose voices echoed the song of its water. Despair greater than what was already faced would rule if the lake was darkened.

They did not return. Too many stars had circled the dark of the sky, and the people of the village knew their leaders had been taken by the Dark Hunters.

 

Waterskins slung across their backs, spears and knives as well, cloak ties fastened and hair braided away from eyes, the three young men accounted themselves prepared. The man that would become Ingwë reached down into the white clay near the lake shore and painted thick lines across his face. Around his eyes and across his jaw he marked with cool white clay, then quietly and steadily painted the faces of his friends, a line across the brow of Finwë, three circles on Elwë’s forehead and a wide stroke around the brow to circle under each eye. Only a custom of the Minyar was it to paint the faces and bodies before a hunt, or the more permanent markings for feats of renown and victories in the dueling rings. Yet Finwë and Elwë did not question the actions of their friend, or rub at the ticklish marks as the clay mud cooled against their faces. Nor did the man that would be Ingwë tell them that the marks were death-masks.

One of the Nelyar reached a final time to restrain Elwë with a pleading hand. A weaver of reeds with eyes as green as leaves and a face small and brown and worried, he cried to Elwë, "What if you perish too? What shall we do?"

"I shall return," said Elwë in a voice firmer than the black of the sky.

These words and their certainty would long be repeated among the people of the third tribe. The trust of the Lindar was built on these words, for they would be repeated with the same certainty when Elwë went to the Undying Lands. And their echo would hold the heart of his kin when he would go missing in the woods at the Hinder Land's last shore. The weaver and his kin would wait for Elwë, as they waited and watched him leave now. The tall man with hair falling like star-silver down his back faded into the dark shadows of the forest outside the ring of fire. But like the wheeling stars, the people of the village of the reeds knew Elwë would reappear.

 

 

As the three trekked through the fir and peheún[4] forest, the silence of this trip struck them as unnatural. Among these trees near his village Elwë would usually remark how his youngest brother Elmo would disappear into the high branches, leaping from tree to tree under the shadow of the dark needles, only to return under dire threat of brotherly retribution with sap and dirt on his fingers and hair. Or how his other brother Olwë never went into the forest, mostly in fear of their youngest brother and his penchant for lobbing pine cones down on unsuspecting travellers beneath the trees. No laughing reminiscences did the oldest son of the third tribe share this journey.

Even the Tatyar youth, the one that would later be Finwë and first King of the Noldor in Aman, was silent, which would be the most peculiar aspect of this hunt if anyone was to ask the opinion of the young man that would be Ingwë Ingweron.

A light mist of rain started to fall, warm with diffuse droplets more akin to the mists off the lake than the drenching rains of a storm that thundered, and thus the young men were mostly untroubled by it. The young man of the Tatyar, the usually gregarious Finwë, unwrapped the large shawl from his shoulders and arranged it carefully to cover his head, attentive to comb the colorful fringe to hang neatly and smoothly. He was proud of his shawl, for though the thin fabric had been woven by one of the Nelyar, and the paint likewise bartered from the Minyar, it was Finwë who had carefully dyed the long fringe in alternating tassels of bright orange and woad blue.[5] In the bright campfires of the villages the vivid colors made him a figure of attention, and he was always keen to drape his shawl and strings of glass beads to the most flattering effect. The beads had been left at home, and without the torchlight there was no illumination to reveal the bright colors, but still Finwë brushed the long fringe and tucked the ends securely around his neck. “It will be harder to hear anything approach,” he whispered to young man he thought of as Kwendê.

“I shall ask the tree,” said Elwë in a flat voice, brushing them aside to walk up to a tall specimen. His friends looked at each other from the corners of their eyes but said nothing, for they were accustomed to this strange folbile of the Nelyar. In a way it was comforting to hear Elwë speak of such, to show a sign of behavior more alike himself. Grim and silent was not the conduct of the oldest son of the village near the river mouth, for he loved to talk on trips through the forest as much as Finwë prattled while crafting in the village. Deep and unwelcome was the grief and anger that stilled Elwë’s tongue, stopped him from speaking long of his brothers’ antics or the forest they travelled through. Usually when Elwë began addressing the trees themselves, talking to the pines as if they would suddenly answer back, was when his friends would demand he shut up. Now the man that would be Ingwë took it as a good sign, to watch Elu run a hand over the bark of the arboreal giant and question who had passed between its boughs.

The trees were alive, and there was something inside them, as with all things that grew and could die, that thing the oldest of the elves, the ones that awoke on the shore, called a spirit, a phaja. One could sense the phaja with enough focus, though it was common knowledge that the Minyar of the first tribe could feel spirits, even emotion and the edge of thoughts, stronger than the other Speakers. It was one of the unspoken advantages of the hunt, to find prey, to feel the songs of the fellow hunters and know intentions. Yet a phaja did not equal a voice, and it was undeniable fact that only the Kwendî had voices to use and understand. The young man that would be Ingwë found the practice of the third tribe to speak to the trees the height of foolishness. Far better to waste one’s efforts, if one must, on the animals that at least had a mouth in which to make sounds.

With no reply, Elwë used the advantage of his great height to reach the branches of a younger pine, scaling the ladder of branches before leaping to the crown of the taller tree. Soon he was lost to sight high in the boughs, and Finwë shivered and rubbed his arms, nervously glancing from the knife at his belt to the masklike face of his friend to the dark branches that hid Elwë from view. Rain dripped off their faces, rinsing off some of the white clay, removing some of the lines of death-seekers.

Elwë climbed back down from the tree, shaking his head before leaping the last several feet to the spongy earth, the long silver braid of his hair falling behind him like the tail of a cat. He grabbed the spear he had stabbed into the loam by the tree roots and brushed the dirt that clung to the stone blade. With a small shrug he returned to his friends, but his face darkened in concern as he saw the crease of concentration on his taller friend’s brow. “Kwendê, what is it? I saw nothing from the heights, yet you look as if you sense something. You are the skilled hunter among us; what is it?”

The man that would be Ingwë Ingweron hesitated. What he felt was with mind and not eyes or ears, and was faint and moving away from where they stood. He knew it was unlike anything he knew before, but felt like firelight against the skin on the other side of the picket fence, or mist when it was still out in the middle of the lake, or wind that blew coldly across the top-crowns of trees while leaving the air at the ground still.

A muffled echo floated down through the trees, yet it was not thunder.

Three pairs of eyes met and three young men determined they go in the direction of the sound that was not thunder.

The last of the warm light rain stopped, and the three pulled the cloaks from their heads, shook the clinging water from their limbs, gripped the weapons ready at their sides. By silent acknowledgement they agreed that Elwë take point.

The ground sloped up, and the trees began to thin.

Once more they heard the echo of the sound that was not thunder.

Flashes of silver, like fast fading stars, sparked in the distance, but the pinpricks of light were low to the ground, and there was no lake up ahead to reflect starlight, so the vision made no sense. Again three pairs of eyes met and frowned. There was the sound of an animal running through the underbrush, the even gallop of a horse or bison, but the beats were subtly wrong, too widely spaced for a normal creature, and the strange muffled music behind the drumming sound could not be of any herd that had been hunted. His suspicions deepened when the man that would be Ingwë connected the soft pattern of beats to the quick-fading flashes of light.

The sound that was not thunder called a third time, and it was not an echo.

The man that would be Ingwë Ingweron could sense the unknown ahead of them, the thing he had no words for, and moved to shield Elwë and Finwë, to be the first to meet it as it came. Yet it was not out of fear to protect them, for even then he knew whatever approached was not of the Dark Hunters. What he felt was not a void in the starlight, a shadow of terror, something that could harm the people. The man that would be Ingwë knew with the same firmness that the Great Mother Lake was full of water, that fire would burn the hand, that his father was dead and that he loved his newborn sister, that the thing that approached was not dangerous to the elves, would not harm them and steal them away.

Ingwë would later describe the impressions he felt before he saw the Vala Oromë, of the sensations before Nahar rode into the glade, sparks flying from his golden hooves, of what he felt in his mind before he saw the strange form riding what seemed a horse. When Oromë first appeared he would seem a giant figure of tree shadow and caged lightning and dappled pelts and the sound of antlers clashing that somehow flickered and became a person, lessened into a man-sized shape without removing the sensation that a star burned in fusion behind the light of a torch. In lines of poetry Ingwë Ingweron would attempt to capture that warmth and joy and a brightness that the eyes did not see but heard. Of how the figure felt like the spirits of the trees that Elwë talked to and of all the roots of the trees into one great essence, of Elwë himself and his love for those trees, the love for his younger brothers, the angry desire to hunt down and punish those that had stolen his parents. Of how the Vala seemed to echo all at once every hunting song of the Minyar, the ones of watching wolf and lion, of learning the animals, of venturing forth, the long trek to the plains, the swift running of deer and horse and bison, the hunt itself, and the victory or defeat afterwards. That his voice was every song at once and none, that he was also the silence in the forest with only the murmur of the leaves in the wind, the silence of waiting for a snare to spring or the silent nod to a deer with the relaxing of a sling with the decision not to shoot. Of Maktâmê’s laugh as she flung the spear, of Elmo sticky with pine sap, of Elwë declaring he would hunt the Dark Hunters and Finwë’s courage to stand with his friend, of the successful parties of the Minyar carrying a half-butchered buck into the village and smiling and singing as they handed the blood-rich liver and organs to the Tatyar craftsman who made the spearheads. Of the search, be it for food or vengeance or solitude or joy. Of the forest. Never before had he that would be Ingwë seen a Power, seen Oromë, but he recognized the song inside him.

Ingwë lowered his spear and did not cry in alarm as Finwë did or shout a challenge as did Elwë.

He laughed, a heart of joy and wonder as he felt the echo of wonder and surprise from the figure atop the silvery horse.

“You have found us,” he shouted in a glad voice, overcome with laughter at the unbidden thought that the figure had been hunting for them as much as they thought they had been hunting him.

“And what I have I found?” answered a voice like the baying of hounds and the clash of antlers and the gentle rustle of leaves under a favorite tree, echoing the same mixture of laughter and joy and wonder.

Chapter End Notes

[5]  Another name for the monkey puzzle tree. AN: One of the greater difficulties with this fic and setting is adhering to canon about the lack of flowers blooming east of Valinor until the elves arrive and the gap in the Pelori Mountains is opened. I've thus attempted to limit the number of angiosperms around Cuiviénen.

[6] Finwë’s sigil is a bright blue and orange.

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