Arrow in Flight by Zdenka

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Chapter 1

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1. To See the Dark (Hair-raising)

“The Black Rider slowly approached,” Celegorm whispers, his eyes gleaming, “and all around him was a deep darkness that swallowed the light of the stars. He brushed their arrows aside—”

Aredhel leans closer. Her parents don’t know she listens when her cousins tell Cuiviénen stories, but she is thrilled by the hair-raising tales.

Afterwards she wonders: what is darkness like? In Tirion, there is always light, even when the Trees are faintest. Her brother Turgon finds her crouched inside a clothes-chest.

“What were you doing in there?”

“I wanted to see the dark,” she explains, and laughs at his expression.

 

2. Arrows and Quarrels (Hare)

Two bowstrings twang nearly as one, and the fleeing hare tumbles lifeless to the ground.

“You missed,” Aredhel says with satisfaction.

“What do you mean?” Celegorm says indignantly. “It was my arrow that hit it.”

“It was mine!”

They glare at each other. Huan comes up to them wagging his tail, the dead hare held delicately in his mouth.

Aredhel tugs the bloodstained arrow free and holds it up for inspection. “You see, it’s mine—”

“My arrows look the same!”

The next time they go hunting, Aredhel triumphantly shows her arrows’ newly distinctive fletching: one white feather and two grey.

 

3. Huntress (Hairbreadth)

The damp, clinging mist muffles sound as well as hindering sight. They are almost on top of the battle before they realize it.

“Stay here,” Fingon tells her, drawing his sword. Aredhel disobeys, of course, sliding with the others down the sloping dunes.

She is in time to see her brother twist aside as a light Telerin arrow misses him by a hair’s-breadth. Aredhel tracks its path backward to find the Elf who shot it and puts her own arrow through his throat.

She reaches for another arrow, and another. Elves die as easily as hares and deer, she finds.

 

4. Not All Were Guiltless (Heir) - Fingolfin

After Alqualondë, I begin to understand my father.

If I return to Tirion as Finarfin urges, I must hand over my son and heir for judgement. Twelve years’ exile for the unsheathing of a sword; what will the Valar impose for shedding kindred blood?

And not only my son. Fingon stood before me distraught, with bloodied sword. Aredhel seemed calm, her garments unstained until she threw her arms around her brother. I gave my attention, so I thought, where it was needed.

The memory returns only later: Aredhel’s distinctive arrows, fletched white and grey, in the bodies of slain Teleri.

 

5. Necessity (Heirloom)

Many of the Noldor are burdened with possessions, treasures too dear to leave behind. Aredhel would trade all the heirlooms of Tirion for more arrows. There are no trees here.

Some of their host murmur that killing the seabirds is unlucky. Aredhel will slay anything and everything that moves on the Ice and is not an Elf. When there are no birds or seals, she bends a diamond brooch into a hook and waits for hours beside a hole in the ice, letting the sparkle attract fish. Young Idril may be cold and motherless, but she will not be hungry.

 

6. The Other Shore (Hare-brained)

Aredhel watches the lone rider on the lakeshore and fingers an arrow. She could send it just past his ear— Not alone after all, she realizes, as a large grey shape bounds forward with a triumphant bark.

“Found something, Huan?” The rider turns, sees her and freezes. Huan tries to lick her face.

“We thought you’d go back,” Celegorm says awkwardly. “We couldn’t guess your father would do such a hare-brained thing—”

She says with ice-cold fury, “It is not my father whose actions need explaining.”

“Father is dead!” he almost shouts.

The silence is broken by Huan whining softly.

 

7. Preparations (Hair)

Aredhel sits by the shore of Lake Mithrim, testing the fletching of her new arrows. She should make more; another attack might come—

A shadow falls across her work. She looks up swiftly, to see her brother Fingon. “You startled me.”

“Sorry.” He crouches down beside her.

“Do you need more arrows?”

“I might,” he says thoughtfully.

“Take what you need.”

He gathers a handful of arrows, then suddenly leans over to pull her into an embrace. “Be careful,” he says into her hair. “Father has worries enough.”

He jumps to his feet and walks away before she can answer.

 

8. Walls of Light and Shadow (Err)

She stands in Gondolin in sunlight (in the forest at twilight), teaching Idril (teaching her son, her Lómion) to draw a bow, to send the arrows flying straight and unerringly to the target. The child’s father thinks it is needless, but he does not forbid it.

Gondolin has seven gates and high walls (the wood is woven about with enchantment). Sometimes she races her horse around the valley (climbs up into the treetops) only to feel the wind in her hair.

I did not err in coming here. An arrow’s flight goes only forward, not back; I will regret nothing.

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Chapter End Notes

Arrows and Quarrels: A quarrel is also a crossbow bolt. Sorry, bad pun.

Huntress: avanti_90 wrote me a commentfic a couple of years ago that linked Aredhel as huntress and kinslayer, though she did different things with it.