To Sleep by feanorusrex

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Chapter 1

I’ve changed some little details from canon.

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The dead call to Rían and she answers them, not wholly willingly, like a parent, roused in the night by the cries of her child, knowing that, should she ignore it, the consequences will be much worse.

It has always been like this, with her and death. The first time one of them spoke to her was when she was newly arrived in Hithlum. A great flood of rains had come that spring and washes away great sections of earth. Rían was out in a meadow, stepping through the mud, when she saw the skull. It was old, not pure white, but with a yellow cast, covered in dried mud, half hidden but wholly recognizable.

Your assistance, please, it said although it should not have been able to speak with no windpipe. I wish to be covered again.

Rían screamed and ran away, across the field which she was not supposed to be exploring anyway. Back home, the voice left her alone, until nightfall when it began again. It is only the top of my head, please why will you not help? Imagine if your skinny little body was dead and all exposed like such?

She let the voice continue without talking to it, not knowing what speaking back to it will do. Finally she climbed out of her window and found herself on her knees in the dark field, piling clods of dirt on top of the skull. The voice ceased after that, not even a polite thank you. Soon after a late frost hardened the ground, strengthening Rían’s burial. As she climbed back into her window, Rían found her sister awake. Morwen, fourteen to Rían’s seven, easily pulled the whole story out of her. She was not at all frightened. “Some people have strange abilities, the elves are said to be able to speak to animals- why shouldn’t you be able to speak to the dead?”

Why not? thought Rían, though with less conviction than Morwen had said it.

When she did hear from them again, she tried to remember that they had been people too, not demons or orcs. Mostly they were lonely and wanted someone to know their achievements or only names. It was always people, not elves, or dwarves, or dead animals.

All the deceased do not speak to her, and that is good, or she will be overwhelmed. There seems to be no rules for who talks to her, or why. Haudh-en-Nirnaeth is far away, so it is not determined by proximity.

On occasion there are requests: flowers, or wine poured over graves. To be marked. To be remembered. To be seen. How many forgotten dead are there?

Not all their requests are benign, and not all the dead are easily consolable.  Once a woman died suddenly, some unexpected internal bleeding. She had not been ill, though she had not been on good terms with her husband. Their fights were not so great that he would have killed her, so popular opinion ran. True indeed, for the dead woman wasted no time revealing to Rían that she had been attempting to poison her husband whom she hated, more than she let on in public, apparently. But she had mixed up their glasses and drunk the tasteless poison herself. Now she wanted him dead by another’s hand.

Rían would not, and thus learned about silencing a soul. There is much power in old books, if people troubled to read them. She did not know where the woman’s soul goes after she cleans the chalk from her kitchen table, if it has been banished or only silenced. Gone, she hopes, wherever souls go when they go quiet.

This came in handy when an infant died by drowning. The child was too young to know how to speak, and cried unendingly in her mind.

So many dead. The inhabitants of Hithlum know of the results of the battle from messengers, and Morwen’s knowledge of events, and from the host of shrieking souls that besiege Rían as they have for days. She tries to listen for Húrin or Huor’s voices among them, but they are too small to pick out amongst the crowd. Rían’s husband is dead, this they know for certain. There were witnesses to his bravery as he fell. She does not care. Rían misses him, and she will go to Haudh-en-Nirnaeth and set him and the other dead warriors right. She has never dealt with so many at once.

Of Húrin, they have had no word. Morwen says that he still lives, and Morwen is not one to be affected by sentimental hope. “Why must you go?” Her sister asks. “If you do not know if his soul is one crying out to you?” They have had this discussion already. Morwen worries for her sister’s safety. To her, Rían seems weak, always half out of this world, the younger, gentler girl that she protected growing up.  

“I do not only go for him. Others are in need.” But Morwen does not understand compassion for many, for those unknown. “If it was my soul, I would wish for someone to help me. I am going. They will not be quiet until I do.” This her sister can understand. Peace anywhere is to be sought after. Rían embraces her, feeling the thin frame, even as Morwen’s stomach expands with child. She is far too thin. They all are. One crisis at a time.

I am coming, she says to the dead while on the road, but they are not omnipresent- cannot see her walking towards them. She could be lying, so their intentions continue, as she journeys under the gray sky. Alone.

Battlefields are always left deserted. The victor may build upon other conquered lands, and both sides may stash their dead in that earth, but they are not a place to be returned to. Once they have been used, scored with trenches, scorched with fire, studded with swords, it becomes set apart. Infected. This place would have been abandoned, even without the cairn of bodies. Both from the stench and the clamor of insistent voices that arises as she comes into view, Rían nearly faints. It is bad. It is so much worse than she could have imagined.

“A pile of corpses,” people said, but this sentence lacks any meaning next to what she sees. It is huge, more tall than wide, and neatly done too. The bodies are stacked in layers, one with their heads facing towards, the next layer with their heads facing away. It does not lean to the side, but rises in a straight column, although some of the bodies are already turning soft. There are flies and birds of prey cavorting around the thing. She will not get closer. There is no need for her purposes.

It must be midday, now and the sun is out more than it has been for several days. Some would expect her to wait for night fall, but Rían knows her powers do not wax and wane with the light. They are a part of her, and have always been.

“And what if Tuor asks after you?” Morwen had said before Rían left. Her son is a good boy, so cheerful despite being born into such circumstances.

“Tell him that I am helping the survivors of the battle,” Rían replied. In a way is is true. These souls had survived the destruction of their bodies. Many surely regretted dying, but what of those who had gone into battle, wishing for death and had died- gloriously, or ingloriously not, in the end it does not matter- and found themselves still unable to break free of the prison of their sentience? It must be worse than any physical wound. The noise as she prepares does not let up, or become easier to listen to. They do not speak with the same words or cadence and thus produce a sound that changes constantly and cannot be ignored.

But soon it will be over. Soon they will sleep.

“For Quieting,” the title in the book Rían had found after the poison woman had spoken to her. Its language had been arcane, its meanings hidden in twisting sentences. Every line of instruction was like a riddle. Perhaps this was, for the best, for the best part of the book was unreadable due to a black stain, like ash, covering all the pages after one bearing the words, “For Reanimating Corpses,” But this spell has worked so far, and it is not dangerous.

The beginning is simple, gentle. She sings, but not with words, with sounds that come forth from the center of her being. The dead are quiet now, but the quiet of someone in an argument waiting until their opponent concludes to again state their case. Rían pauses in her singing. This is the part where she must light the candles she brought with her. Before she can complete this task, the flames leap into existence on their own. Very tall for a moment, and then they settle down. She has never seen this before- but what could it mean? They are lit now, and she must concentrate on drawing straight chalk lines.

Is Huor watching her? Did he ever guess that his wife’s powers- that she had told him about but doubted he ever set much store in- would be used to help him. She kneels, her fingers gripping the edge of the rock, suddenly feeling overwhelmed by the foolishness of violence, or death. Why must they fight such evils Why must it exist in the first place? She and Morwen should have their husbands back and there would be joy with Morwen’s baby on the way. But instead, she is on a battlefield filled with corpses, and Morwen is sad, and Hithlum is starving.

The spell calls for singing again. It is almost ended. She does. There is compassion her voice, but also a command. Get all the way gone. Away, away, and her vision seems darker at the edges, though the sky does not seem affected. At the end, she is supposed to extinguish the candles. This represents, Rian guesses, life moving on without the dead. A candle is lit in morning and burns out. Grief lessens. Rian breathes on them all at once, waiting for the smoke wisps, and then final silence. The candles do not go out. They do not even waver, as though protected from her breath. She sticks her fingers into the flames, pinching them, but though she burns her hand, they remain. Rían tries again and again, tears from pain, and frustration in her eyes.

In a moment of clear rage, she hates them- the dead.All of them: The skeleton in the field for frightening her, the poison woman, those who wanted remembrance, these dead who pulled her out here to see such a gruesome sight. She hates the voices for the constant reminder that they are: remember, you must die. She does not want to remember, she wants to pretend like her life and happiness are important in the end. The dead picked her because she is compassionate. She wanted to help, to heal what should never have concerned her. Morwen would have broken and burnt the skeleton in the field to ashes with a second thought. She was picked, not because she was special, but because she was soft. She need not be so anymore.

Taking one breath, not too deep, for her lungs feel weak and loose. Rían breathes on the candles again. Get gone. They go out. Something stops within her. Her heart.

Too late, Rían realizes, her mistake. She has slammed the door behind the dead, not realizing which side of the threshold she was on. They have pulled her along with them, or she want under her own power- too much spent on her life going like sand through her fingers. Another body at Haudh-en-Nirnaeth. More food for insects, birds, and wolves. No one will know why she died. Morwen may guess. Rían will leave that up to chance. She will not trouble another child, walking through this place hundreds of years hence one fine spring morning.

Away, away, and her spirit goes.