The Sundering Sea by feanorusrex

Chapter 1

The woman poised on the top of a cliff remained still a moment more, and then let herself fall. She fell calmly, not flailing her arms, but not swinging her arms over her head like a diver either. This fall was not an accident or for pleasure.

The water closed over Erendis’ head in a freezing, all encompassing baptism of foam and bubbles. She opened her eyes and her vision was remarkably clear, though the salt stung her eyes. It was quiet. When observed from outside, the sea seemed loud, with the waves crashing against the rocks out and back again, the great storms that blew in from it, the great breathing noise as it surged and retreated in, and the sound of gulls crying. But underneath it all, now, when she has finally slipped beneath its waves, the sea was quiet, so quiet that Erendis’ thoughts thought echo around her own head. She surfaced and her ears were full of noise again, not much, she had not picked a crowded spot for her own death, and no one was around, but the ambient noise of the world surrounded her. But the sea did not care about the world. Even now the water sloshed past her, each time pulling with it bits of the shore, taking.

The water was searing cold, so cold that it defied the meaning of the word. The temperature made her gasp, breath violently tearing itself out of her throat. It burned, and yet the freezing water seemed to sharpen her surroundings, clearing her vision, her mind. It was winter, too cold for swimming. She did not know if Aldarion has ever swum in such conditions. He certainly had sailed- away from her, standing on the dock, wrapped in furs, shielding herself from the salt spray- in winter. Even the chill wind from the water, unescapable on a ship’s decks, did not deter him. Erendis never questioned pressed Aldarion for details about voyages, but perhaps he too had jumped in- though from a the bow of a ship, not over a rocky cliff- during winter. He may have even swum near the base of this cliff.

She had hoped that the fall would not kill her, as Erendis did not wish her corpse to be discovered broken and shredded by rocks, and so she had lept towards an open patch of water. It had been a straight path downwards through the rushing air, and she had landed smoothly. Now her fate was completely in the hands of the sea. The water made Erendis feel like she was in a great bowl, only her, the waves, and the sky, reflecting a dull gray brightness against the water although the day was cloudy. Beautiful.

Her dress swirled around her in the water, like laundry. She was completely immersed. Erendis had never been swimming fully before, her whole body wet, so far from shore. When she was young Erendis had been forced to learn how to swim in a large pond, and even hated that.

Aldarion has attempted press her into swimming on one golden afternoon when the sun glinted off the water, reflecting in a shower of gold. She had refused again and again. After she had come to the end of what could be considered polite refusal, still Aldarion asked her, bringing up the heat of the day and the refreshing look of the water. Erendis had hated the idea, but she knew to bring up her fear would sour their outing, so she had kissed him, desperately, frantic to distract him. The afternoon had taken a different turn after that, better than swimming anyway.

Thus it had always been, Erendis against the sea in contest for his heart, and for a time she had won him, but the sea was unchanging, untouched by time, and had pulled him back, in the end. Uinen, you bitch, she had thought, whenever she sighted the ocean.

“Lonely is the life of a mariner’s wife,” many people said to her. She hated it, and once when an old man at a court dinner had trotted it out, Erendis had responded, “Well, perhaps it would not be such a lonely life, if their wives were actually allowed on the damn boats, and not shunned from ships and docks as bad luck. It seems that this whole situation is the men’s fault, running away from us and refusing to let us sail forth with them despite the fact that Uinen herself, this vaunted deity of the sea is a woman and holds all their lives in their hands.” Erendis had spoken sweetly, but the vitriol in her own words surprised her. Her speech was the uncomfortably close to the truth, and her dinner companion did not respond.

In Emerië, the pastured tree land, her true homeland away from Aldarion, there were rivers and lakes big enough for sailing, and some of her women built boats and pilotted them. Erendis permitted it grudgingly, mostly because who was she to keep women away from what they would do? And freshwater did not displease her so much- it was necessary to keep her forests alive anyway.

Death by the sea was the best thing she could think of to get back at him. She was old, older than Aldarion, not in years but in body, and she did not want to let him win at anything, not even the game of death. Her hair was streaked with white, like the sea and her body was falling apart. She knew that if she did not take measures into her own hands, the creeping specter of ordinary age would do it for her.

She was not a Númenorean and her life would be spent far sooner than his. Erendis was tired of living, and wanted a non-ordinary death to spite Aldarion and his long life. He can choose to surrender his soul to death whenever he wanted to, and now she can too. Suicide, the more crude, ordinary version was unthinkable for his people, but they will pity her, and as for him...

Erendis has not seen Aldarion is years, but he will be notified about her death. She had left no note, no letter, and those who find her body will be perplexed by why she did it, chiefly Aldarion. Erendis was far too old to be inconveniently pregnant, so that female suicide motive could be eliminated, but she hoped that her act will torment her husband. Killing herself in the sea was the best thing she could think of to strike back at him and his love of another that had plagued their marriage. Henceforth, the sea will always be what killed Erendis, and every time he sailed, he will be traveling over her grave. She will have poisoned the main thing that he had left, for there was no lost love between his daughter and Aldarian. Good.

Ancalimë will be upset, of course, furious perhaps, and she will have to deal with the men with power making a great fuss over her taking the throne, but Erendis had taught her daughter well, and she will prevail. Erendis imagined the fierce joy that will fill her daughter's face as she hears the words, “The queen is dead, long live the queen.” Ancalime will be a great ruler, the first in history, and despite the unhappiness of Erendis’ life after she joined it with Númenor, she was exceedingly proud that she has had a hand in bringing this about.

Even had her later relationship with Aldarion been sweet, she would not have born another child, for fear that it would be a son who would take her daughter's rightful claim to the throne. Of course in the later years of their relationship Erendis would not have let Aldarion touch her, not for anything.

Ancalimë was married, but that cannot be helped. A barren ruler and a woman would have been too much to be born at once. She will have a direct heir and, provided her husband stayed out of things, a queenship of her own. Erendis did not care whether Ancalime’s rule does the kingdom well, only that it will be hers, hers despite the men who foam at the mouth at the thought of a female ruler.

She was not drowning properly. After the initial fall, she had bobbed to the surface, and now remained, rocked by the motion of the water, but in no danger. The sea does not seem to want to kill her. The one time when she was completely at its mercy, and she was rejected, ignored. Erendis will have to do the drowning herself. At this thought a wave slapped her face in a desultory manner. The sea did not want her sacrifice.

She knew what death by water entailed: the lungs of the drowned filled with water as the person was trapped underwater gasped for air. Erendis took a deep breathe- then realized that this was defeating her purpose- and ducked her head under the water. Her heart beat faster; she had imagined every detail of this except the actual death part, and now she was faced with it, after an entire lifetime of fearing such when she walked near beaches, or near high sea cliffs, after an entire lifetime of waking from nightmares flailing, gasping.

But she had willingly gone to Uinen, and so Erendis opened her mouth, feeling the water’s salty, almost rancid taste against her tongue. Thinking about the harm she would cause to Aldarion and the royal funeral she would receive, Erendis forced herself to breathe it in.

Instantly she realized that all the songs about brave drowned sailors and brave maidens in watery graves were wrong. They portrayed drowning as passive, peaceful, as letting the water ebb your life away. It was not. The salt water stung as it traveled down her windpipe burning agony like liquid fire, erasing the cold around her. The pain was like nothing she had ever experienced, close only to the pain of childbirth- in both cases she was giving bits of her life away, then to her daughter, now to Uinen.

Now her body became heavy as she thrashed about, trying to reach the surface, although what good would air do, as the water had already reached her lungs and clogged their breathing.

She had taken in quite a lot of water on the first time. Erendis felt her mouth open and gasp reflexively again, before she broke through to the air. This was only for a brief time and she sank back down, her body becoming heavier, waterlogged, with no new supply of air. She closed her eyes to protect them against the raw scrape of the salt, but this loss of vision only added to her disorientation. Salt water leaked out of her eyes, her own version of the sea’s water trying to protect her from the real thing.

She was coughing and gasping, a horrible noise to hear, when she got her head above water. At least under the sea her choking was muffled, quieted by the expansive silence. Even with her eyes open, things were becoming darker. She expected that there would be blood from her torn vocal cords, but the water was clear. After she stopped her thrashing, the water will be untouched. She will have made no mark on this place. This was one of the reasons why Erendis hated the sea, because it was an enemy that could not be touched, that could not be beaten or injured or even contained.

Though she still felt the fierce pain in her lungs and throat, they seemed to be detached from her mind. A different person was drowning. This was a suitable end to her life as any. It was violent, raw, and better than the quiet end anyone could have envisioned for Aldarion’s estranged Edain wife.

It was a shame that she could not leave these waters, free from her fear. For now that she had experienced it, though drowning seemed terrible still, it was now known, faceable. Her new knowledge brought light into the dark of her fear, revealing the monster to be only shadows.

But she will never leave. Erendis thought of her final act against Aldarion, smiled viciously, and surrendered- for the first time in her life- to the sea.