Hold Each Other by Grundy

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Of Elves and Women

Oshun's Just An Old-Fashioned Love Song story has inspired me to work more on this story. (The bones are there, but they need to be fleshed out considerably...)

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Haleth had been uncertain of the newly arrived elf-lord’s motives when he first offered offered the Haladin a fief in the north of his lands at their initial encounter. (Nor does she think she was wrong to be suspicious, for she had never seen elves before, and knew of them only through vague rumor handed down from her father’s generation – rumor which had them kin to the creatures that the Haladin had barely survived battle with.)

Now that they are actually passing through the country he had in mind for them, she was tempted to tell Carnistir that she has reconsidered her earlier decision if he has not changed his mind. It is good land, and she knows they could build not just settlements here, but given time to bring their numbers back to what they had been, villages and towns. They could thrive here, likely for her lifetime and her nephew’s if not longer.

Which makes it all the harder to hold fast to her ‘no’.

It was not just the surviving men of fighting age whose opinions she had asked before giving Carnistir her answer. She had also spoken with the widows and the women who now had no prospect of husbands among their own people, the boys left fatherless too young to be called youths who would be the ones to take up arms in the years to come, and the still beardless youths who were not truly men yet but would have to be if the orcs attacked again.

The ease and speed with which the foul creatures had come down from the mountains had shaken them all. Far better they liked the idea of removing westward, to Estolad where the mountains were far off and a watch could be kept that would not allow for such a deadly surprise a second time – and where they had heard there might be others of their kind. That was no small consideration for the unmarried maids who now had no young men to match them, and the widows who had no children – or those who had many, and no man to help provide for them now.

She had also made it a point to speak to the oldest women among them, grandmothers who could recall the crossing of the mountains. Thanks to their memories, she knew that this was not the first time things had been dire for her people, or that their men had been too few after a fight.

“There will be a season or two where even some whose men have fallen or who had not married them yet may find themselves in need of a groaning stool – overlook it,” had been the advice of her elders. “Act as though the children are all lawful, and the fathers who the women claim them to be. If we wish to live on as Haladin, not be absorbed into whatever Men we may find in Estolad, the babes will be sore needed.”

Privately, it had occurred to Haleth to wonder whether or not any of those babes would have elven fathers. The Allfather knew the elf men were attractive enough, and the older women seemed to think that it was natural to seek comfort in such a way after the battle and death they had recently seen.

She could not say, never having been married herself, and having held to the laws of her people governing relations between man and woman. (And now was not a time for her to begin breaking them, she told herself sternly.)

She also could not avoid noticing that Carnistir was sinfully handsome, and more than that, had never once talked down to her for being a woman. If anything, he seemed to simply assume that any deficiency in her planning or leadership was due to her being new to the role. More than once she suspected he had been trying to teach her as he would a young elf – which generally involved leading her to think things through in a certain way, with the expectation that she would see the solution herself.

She had laughed at her foolishness the first time she found her mind turning over thoughts of what he might think of her as a woman. There were lady elves riding among his host, as beautiful as the men were handsome. (That had been what made her believe he truly meant his fine words about caring not whether she was man or woman, only that she was competent.)

Haleth Haldad’s daughter had never been reckoned a beauty, even in the days when she had just reached marriageable age. She had not grown any prettier with the passing of the years, and at thirty-four she was reckoned by the standards of her people an old maid.

Nor will she be able to change that now. Not unless she cedes the leadership to another – and the only one she will willingly hand it over to is her nephew. There are no unwed men remaining among her own people of an age for her to marry, and she has no mind to take a beardless boy to her bed. Even should they find the other Men the elves say came into Beleriand before the Haladin, for her to marry one of them would be unacceptable to her people until her nephew comes of age.

Haldan is only just turning nine – by the time he is reckoned old enough to lead, another ten years at the least, she will be past her childbearing years entirely. Most would say her marrying at that point would serve no purpose, not when both her position as leader and her nephew will ensure her keep among the Haladin.

A giggle interrupted her thoughts, and she looked up to find a smiling child being taught a complicated clapping game by one of the elf captains.

She has noticed that the elves riding with them – she calls it riding, but it is guarding in truth – all take a great interest in the children, and has found Haldan laughing with one elf or another nearly every time she looked for him.

It took some days before she worked up the courage to mention it to Carnistir, for she did not like to feel as silly and ignorant as she knew she must appear to him. Her thirty-odd years were nothing to his centuries. (Not that she has dared ask his age, or whether he was young or old by the reckoning of his kind.)

“Your people are very fond of children,” she remarked as they set up her tent one evening.

He had given her the tent, on the grounds that a leader should have her own. The smaller one she would have gladly shared with her brother-wife and nephew was left to Haldan and Anleth and doubtless slept two more comfortably than three. And she had quickly enough seen why he thought a leader should have their own tent, for people sought her out to deal with problems at all hours, day and night. Anyone sharing her tent would no more get to sleep the night through than she did.

“Of course,” he agreed easily. “Are your people not also fond of young ones? You have so many of them about.”

“Yes,” she said slowly, wondering how best to phrase what she was thinking.

“But?” he asked patiently, having already learned to distinguish between the many varieties of silence in their conversations.

“Your people seem more keenly interested than we generally are in children not our own,” she said at last, hoping she was not treading on some cultural difference that would give offense.

“Yes, well, I suppose it is because we do not often see any,” he replied thoughtfully. “Elves do not as a rule bring forth children in time of war. As such there have been very few elflings among my people since coming to Beleriand.”

She blinked. From what little she knew, the Noldor had been in Beleriand for hundreds of years, the Sindar for thousands.

“But are not many of your people married?” she asked blankly, trying to wrap her mind around the self-control that must require.

“Yes,” Carnistir said with a frown, as if unsure where her confusion lay. “But it is a rare couple who wish to beget a child while under the threat of Morgoth. Among the Noldor at least. The Sindar feel differently, or so my cousins who have been among them say.”

“So husbands and wives avoid…”

She paused.

Orcshit, but she was all but bound to tread on some taboo or other with this. Clearly elves’ bodies must have very different urges if otherwise loving couples could go hundreds of years without touching each other! Unwed or not, she has some experience of desire, and the usual teenage explorations with the opposite sex to inform her how maddening it would be to need to command her body to deny its instincts for so long.

He looked at her expectantly, still faintly puzzled, and for the first time since they’d been travelling together, looking slightly lost.

Damnation! For all she knew, they didn’t even use the same euphemisms for the act…

“Sex,” she finally got out, hoping her face wasn’t red as a beet. “For centuries at a time?”

Now he looked so totally confused she would have laughed if she wasn’t worried about mortally offending him.

“Stars, no,” he replied. “Why would you think that?”

At least he wasn’t offended. Or laughing at her.

“But if there are no elflings,” she stammered, trying to make sense of it.

“It is a choice to beget an elfling, not an inevitable consequence of joining,” Carnistir replied, and she could hear him trying to keep the tone of explaining things to a young child out of his voice.

“It is?” she asked weakly.

He snorted.

“Were it not, I would most certainly have more than six brothers,” he assured her dryly.

She could think of a good many women of the Haladin who would envy the elf ladies more than just their ageless beauty if word of this got around. More than one matron has heard the talk from the midwives about the need to avoid further pregnancies if she wished to see her children grow up. Many more would simply like to be able to enjoy their husband without the threat of another round of childbearing.

Carnistir looked at her oddly, then asked hesitantly, “Is it different for your people?”

Now it was her turn to make sure she did not talk down.

“Stars, yes,” she replied, echoing his earlier phrasing, since it was sure to be safely non-offensive. “Sometimes when a man and a woman lie together, a babe comes of it, sometimes not. The couple have little say in the matter – they take their chances. There are ways to make conception less likely, but they are far from foolproof.”

As at least one of the younger women of the Haladin could attest, having just that morning been determined to be with child at only fifteen. Fortunately for Meleth, seventeen-year-old Hundar was still among the living, so while she would have the minor embarrassment of a hasty wedding a few years sooner than the norm, she would not face the shame of a big belly with no male in sight to take responsibility. (Haleth suspected that while most women would be understanding of a girl whose intended had been openly courting her before the orc attack finding herself in such a situation, Meleth might not have received the same mercy had Hundar not stepped forward.)

Carnistir’s eyebrows had risen as close as they could manage to his hairline, but he said nothing – plainly for worry of saying the wrong thing.

“I suppose your people are so like to us in form that it had not occurred to me that something so fundamental might be so different,” Haleth said lightly, more to break the tension than anything else.

“Indeed,” he murmured. “At any rate, now you know why we are so pleased to have children around. I imagine the only serious danger your young ones will face while you are among us is being thoroughly spoiled by indulgent elves.”