Songs of the Sea by Raiyana

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Tempest

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Part 6

When the disturbance of the Sea reaches her, breaking through the thoughts whirling in her mind, Uinen looks up in surprise, moving almost before she has decided to do so, her strong tail speeding her body through the water.

Singer’s Cove is under attack; someone is trying to kill her singer!

Her first thought is at once foolish and accurate, watching the waves that pound against the beach, reaching higher than any tide should, the swells easily taller than her terrified singer, standing on a small ledge as the surf boils around him. Overhead, dark clouds whirl, lightning flashing; striking the sea but moving closer to her singer with each hit.

She sees him, then, his face twisted into an expression she recognises with dread. It is fury she has not seen since the War of Wrath, when he brought down dragons from the sky. Had he simply been waiting for her to leave her singer alone, biding his time, planning revenge?

“No!” she screams it, the sound lost in a clap of thunder loud enough to make her ears ring, diving beneath the surging waves. The maelstrom whirls about him, the eye of the storm, battering her form; Uinen is the Lady of the Seas, but Ossë’s power is no small obstacle, even for her.

“Ossë!” she calls, but he does not hear her, all his focus bent towards the destruction of this one Child, this soul she has claimed for her own, and suddenly Uinen’s sadness is fury, matchless in Sea or Air, her strength enough to make land tremble and fall under wave. “OSSË! She calls again, her voice a gale force wind that buffets him hard enough to make him stagger, enough to let her reach him, stand between him and his target, her own form swelled to match him in size.

Behind her, the singer’s words are drowned out, but Uinen pays him little mind, pushing Ossë away from this place, the hurricane over head now her rage, not his, the waves taller and colder than he had used, the chill of the Deep Sea roaring into her hands to defend her singer.

He fights her, his face a rictus of hatred and desperation she has never seen before, even when his rebellion nearly tore the land apart. He should know better, should know that the Deep is far more powerful than the Waves that she can sap the power of the surface, cut it off from her domain.

She is a bulwark, a shield, armoured in water harder than steel, power flowing freely around her, but she is also a sword, cleaving into his strength.

“MINE!” It’s a wordless roar, understood only by those who hear the Music, always, as she throws herself against Ossë’s form, restraining him in bonds of water that obey her bidding, a current of her power that tows him under the roiling surface of the Sea. She glances back at her singer, trembling and soaked through, but brave enough to meet her eyes, an odd wonderment spreading across his face that makes her smile.

Then she dives, leaving behind a choppy but no longer boiling surf as she goes to deal with Ossë, wondering if this is a second rebellion. Anger boils in her mind, her tail flicking furiously as she moves, following the current that keeps him trapped, easing the seas as she passes, gentling disturbed waters with her presence.

 

“Why?” she asks, staring at him, her silence more painful than any angry words she could throw at him. Ossë writhes in his bonds, but Uinen is not swayed. She can feel Ulmo hovering nearby, but he won’t interfere, she knows; the singer belongs to Uinen, and his life is not Ossë’s to claim.

Ossë hisses, anger and hurt competing for space on his features, boiling the water around him. “Let me go!” he demands, but Uinen has no mind to do that, feeling betrayed by his callous act of war. “He does not deserve your protection!”

“He has not earned your ire, either!” she throws back; time may not mean the same to them as it does to the Children, but her singer has lived for many years in Singer’s Cove, harming no one but the animals he hunts for food. Shaking her head, Uinen swims off, needing to think; Ossë will need time to cool down, as well, and she feels the maelstrom of her own whirling emotions threaten to swallow her whole. “I will go see that he is unhurt; we will speak later.”

“Release me!” Ossë cries behind her, “and I will do what you cannot. You need not claim his soul.” His voice changes, becoming soothing, almost, like he is doing this for her.

Uinen freezes. “He is mine!” she hisses over her shoulder, “I have claimed him!” The singer may not be house-less, but his soul was given into her keeping, his treasure with it, and she will safeguard what belongs to her – even against Ossë.

“He cares not for the gift you give him,” he snaps, struggling against invisible bonds. “That Child is unworthy!” Spitting the last word at her feet, Ossë falls silent, glaring at her as though she should agree with him, free him to complete his vengeance, however delayed.

Uinen – for the first time feeling something that isn’t anger – stares at him, lost in confusion. Ossë continues muttering to himself, glaring at her intermittently as if this is all her doing. His fury is a sudden hurricane on a cloudless day and Uinen is beyond confused by his animosity.

“I will return, Ossë,” she says, feeling tired; he is no easy force to hold, and the roiling anger in her heart does not make the task easier.

“He hurts you!” Ossë spits, so venomous it makes her turn back, staring at him so changed from her usual companion. The skin that is usually blue with his joy has turned a sickly green, his coronet askew on his head. “I saw you, saw you together; he does not want you.”

Swimming away, she hears him call after her, something odd in his voice that she can’t place.

“He will not love you, Uinen!”

 

 

“You are unharmed,” she says, rising from the waves and startling her singer, the hand that was plucking a trembling melody from his harp – trying to soothe himself? – falling silent with a screech of metal strings. He curses. One string has snapped; the instrument is weathered by the time he has spent here, more than one string gone.

“I admit, I had thought your wrath would find me sooner,” he admits, fear making his voice tremble like the harp, but he meets her eyes.

“My wrath?” she asks, frowning. Shaping words he will understand is difficult, but her singer’s mind is closed to hers – she has no wish to force the connection – and so she has to try, using language which is so much less familiar to her than Telerin. “I fear you are mistaken; Ossë was the one who was angry at you.”

“You… you saved me?” he asks, incredulous. Uinen frowns. “Why?” He does not sound like he approves.

Tilting her head, she considers him, sitting there on his rock. He is tattered; his clothes torn by wind and sea and time, and his hair ragged and tangled, but he seems unharmed by Ossë’s furious storm, which is a relief.

Uinen shrugs, a wave of motion that brings her closer to the singer, still sitting above the waterline. Sinking down unto the large boulder, she speaks softly, pleased when he does not move away. “The days when I considered claiming your life have long-since passed.”

There is no room for doubt in her tone; compassionate love – as she feels it for all her creatures – has long-since taken the place of loathing in her heart. It has been centuries since she last considered how easily she could snuff out his life; has she not saved him from death, by her own hand, more than once? Except, she realises, she has made him forget ever meeting her in her own form because she did not like to see fear in his face, though she has visited him, sharing the shapes of sea animals for brief spells. He likes seals, and she has spent more than one day lazing on the shore, her dark fur glistening in the sunshine as he plays something almost playful.

He talks to her, when she stays near as an animal, tells her things she already knows, but which still give her glimpses of his soul as he shares stories long-lost to the vagaries of time, talks about his brothers, the two he called his sons, wondering what has become of them, even as he knows they are better off without his presence. His mind is closed to theirs – to anyone’s, bar her, in truth, even if he is unaware of her touch – she has seen the shields, knows he reinforces them regularly, punishing himself with the lack of word in a way that makes her heart bleed.

Now, however, her singer sits stiffly beside her, fear still strumming a current through his soul, but her words make his head snap towards her so swiftly she hears a small crack. “…What!?”

“Ossë would not tell me why he wished you dead now,” Uinen continues, frowning as she stares across the waves, as though Ossë’s motivation can be divined through observing the motion of the water, “but he was beyond furious with you; I have not seen him rage so since we destroyed Glaurung’s flying get. Did you anger him, lately?” She had not thought Ossë spent any time listening to her singer; surely, he could not have played a song that offended so mightily without her realising? Not that such a song existed…

“Perhaps he wished to end the song,” her singer mutters, “the song has gone on far too long; no end in sight though the audience have all tired of hearing it…”

“Are you the song or the audience, Makalaurë?” Uinen asks, trying to puzzle his meaning. Her singer winces.

“Maglor,” he says quietly, fingers clenching the wood of his harp, which protests loudly, the already tortured frame creaking with the pressure. “If this is to end, let it be with the name I chose myself, not the name I was once given by… her.”

“Your mother, you mean,” Uinen replies, looking at the waves before them, but feeling him nod silently. An idea comes to her, then, and much like they had once done on the shores of Aman, her thoughts appear like images floating on the water. Nerdanel walking along a beach, her beloved Eärwen beside her; silently, Uinen shows him her meeting with the red-headed sculptor. Mak-Maglor’s harsh gasp makes her look up sharply, breaking her focus on the memory, the image washing away as the wave laps at the sand. He makes a wounded noise, reaching for the image of his mother, but he does not ask her to reshape it, though the longing is undisguised on his face. “I spoke to her once,” she reveals, “though I heard her before then, heard her voice trying to reach Endorë from the shore of Aman.”

“Ammë…” he whispers, broken. “She stayed; Finarfin came, but she was not with him, not even for Celebrimbor’s sake; she gave up on us, surely.”

“She was not allowed,” Uinen says softly; she did not agree with that decision, and Ulmo had been against it in the council, but Manwë had been adamant. The wife of Fëanáro – Fëanor – would stay in Aman. “The Valar went to war, partly on her urging; but Nerdanel was to stay behind…” She does not mention the statues, or the fiery speeches Nerdanel had given, does not tell him of Ulmo’s laughter as he recounted the way she had harangued Manwë himself, but she feels the way he shudders beside her, as though a great weight has been taken from him at her words. “She asked me to tell you…” the words come easily, now, and part of her wonders if she could have fulfilled her promise long ago, had she not been sorrowed by the way he feared her appearing in the waters; perhaps she should have tried visiting him on land?

Nerdanel’s voice flows between her lips, flowing out of memory as though his mother was sat beside Maglor, rather than the Lady of the Sea: “’My son?’…’Maka- Maglor? He lives?’”

Uinen’s own voice replies, soft as the waves that tickle his feet now, “He lives in Singer’s Cove, where once lay Beleriand,” she says, “He fights the spell of the Silmaril he threw into my waters… It burns him, still.”

Nerdanel’s reply, sharp with grief, fills the silence between them, her singer trembling on the rock beside her as he listens to his mother’s despair, “’Why have you come to tell me this?’… ‘I was told… there should be no pity for them, I should expect to hear nothing after… after.’”

Smiling softly, Uinen continues, making no remark on the tears that slowly fall down his cheeks, her singer’s eyes closed as he weeps silently. “Pity, no, and yet pity and compassion have never cared much for permission… I have watched him for some time, now – and as your son has been commended to my care, I think that I do have compassion for his plight… I have no fondness for many of his deeds, but does that mean I should not grant him a small measure of mercy?”

Changing her voice one last time, feeling the weight of her promise fulfilled lift from her mind, Uinen speaks the last words, the words her singer needs to hear, “’Will you… tell him, tell my son… I love him. Still, I love them all.’” The silence stretches between them, but Uinen feels no need to break it, watching the lazy wingbeats of a gull fishing some ways from shore.

“Am I to die now, then?” he asks, when Arien has moved halfway across the sky, staring across the waves. “Will you end it, now that you have delivered her words?”

“Are you so eager to leave your hröa?” Uinen asks, wondering if he knows what he is asking. Maglor’s laugh is a hoarse broken thing.

“Does it matter?” he retorts. “I could never hope to fight you.”

“Did I not say I had no wish to see you dead?” Uinen asks, stirrings of anger still churning in her soul, churning the waves lightly frothy before them. “Have I not kept you well, here?” Gesturing to the sandy cove where once his feet had been cut by sharp broken gravel, Uinen wonders at the sound he makes at her words, comparing it to the squishy feel of a jellyfish.

“Kept me?” he replies, spluttering. Uinen laughs.

“You are my singer, and this is Singer’s Cove,” she says, “that I have made to home you, to give you shelter, and offer you food – thankfully, you’re better at fishing these days.” His mouth opens and closes a few times, no words escaping. Uinen gives him a wry look; he is still not good at feeding himself, though he has learned some over the years. “I claimed you for my own, long years past,” she reveals, “Ulmo commended your soul into my keeping – though you are not so easy to keep as the other souls that belong with me.”

Maglor splutters something unintelligible – a sound of disbelief, nearly laughter, but coloured by the tears he has made no move to hide from her.

Uinen frowns at him, absentmindedly holding out her hand to catch the small crab jumping from the waves to her palm. Delivering him to his customary place on her shoulder – he glares balefully at her singer, but settles with a light caress; she does not aim to replace him with the Elf – Uinen listens to the small creature. Her singer stares, but he does not understand the voices of the Deep, does not hear the music in her creatures as she does. “This is Eärlinno,” she says, catching the crab before he can scurry off into her hair to hide. “Once, he was an Elf,” she explains, “a singer – like you – who loved me, spending his days upon the quays of Alqualondë composing odes to my savage beauty or upon ships, singing as he harvested the bounties of the Sea with his father.” She smiles, pressing a soft kiss to the crab’s tiny head. He still composes songs for her, even if they are not in a language Maglor can hear. Eärlinno clacks his claw in her singer’s direction, snapping it like he’d like to pinch his nose. “Eärlinno,” she rebukes softly, “be nice to Maglor.” Pausing, she nods gravely, “Yes, I know that his people killed you; and many others besides.” But he is mine now, as you are, my friend, she continues, and I know you like to listen to his songs, too.

“I’m sorry! We never… I truly am… sorry.” her singer says, and Uinen believes him. Seemingly, so does Eärlinno, though he simply turns, scuttling up her arm and hides himself in her hair once more, clacking his claws at Maglor a few times for good measure. It is almost enough to make her smile.

“I asked him to keep an eye on Ossë,” Uinen says, “but still he will not say why he came here.” Frowning, she stares at the waters, still as agitated as she is.

“Your lover is a mercurial temperament,” Maglor says quietly, “though I-”

“My what?” Uinen is baffled, nearly falling off the rock they share in her surprise. “Ossë?” Maglor squints, as though she is the one making no sense.

“All the tales of the Sea – Ossë’s rebellion, the Songs of Ulmo, all of them – say that Ossë of the Waves loves none but Uinen, Lady of Water, whose hair stretches across all the Seas,” he tells her, with the affront of an experienced storyteller feeling his audience questioning his recollection.

Uinen wants to laugh, but instead turns back to look at the water, turning the thought over in her mind; she has never allowed herself to consider Ossë in such a role – has not thought so of anyone – but the idea fills her with a glowing warmth, as though she is only just seeing something she should have known a long time ago. Humming thoughtfully, Uinen feels pieces of an ancient puzzle fall into place. “’He will never love me’… indeed,” she murmurs to herself, chuckling. Eärlinno pokes his small head out of her hair, but seems to sense that she is no longer angry, and so settles himself – scuttling quickly up the strands of her hair – atop her head as is his wont, clinging by one claw to one of the spiky conch shells that make up her crown.

“Does he understand my tongue in this form?” Maglor asks, interrupting her thoughts and staring in fascination at Eärlinno. “Or will you tell him I… I am sorry, for Alqualondë… and the rest.”

“He knows, Maglor,” Uinen replies, wanting to leave, to find Ossë and… she does not quite know what comes after that, but she thinks she’d like to find out. “Eärlinno may not speak your tongue, but he understands your music; we have heard the laments you made.”

“You… you have?” he asks, a light flush appearing in his thin cheeks; he needs more food, she thinks.

“You sang them to the Sea, Maglor,” she replies, getting to her feet and turning to look at him with a small smile. Drawing a fat mackerel from a fold of her skirts, she hands him his supper, “and the Sea listened.”

Turning to walk back into the Sea, Uinen begins to sing, her voice taking up the melody of the first lament he composed.

Behind her, her singer is silent, but when she has almost disappeared beneath the waves once more, she hears his fingers pluck at the remaining harp strings tentatively, weaving the notes of the melody into her voice.

Uinen smiles.