Promise you will come back by Calendille

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Promise you will come back

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Where would you have me start, Uncle? For if you and I are to speak of my father’s end, it would be too weak a story to start when I stepped on his last battlefield.

I cannot pinpoint with ease when his long agony began; when the father I cherished disappeared to let a maddened tyrant take his place. Losgar? The Curse of Namo? Alqualondë? The death of Finwë? Our exile? I guess they were too quiet at the beginning, the symptoms of the darkness closing around his heart, and when we finally saw them, the net was woven too tight. Or perhaps my father was never truly gone, and I liked to pretend because it was easier to hate him.

I will start from the moment Fëanaro sought to cut you from his life: when he burnt the fleet.

I believe this event will look so simple in a few centuries, when the lore masters of our people (should our people still stand then) will write down our history. They will write Mad King Fëanor set the ships alight, and perhaps that Curufin helped him while I stood aside. They will not write that my father meant to send them back at first.

Our first camp was a bridge head, and we started to fortify it, aiming for a temporary port.

I remember his inflamed eyes, that first night: “Carnistir,” he said, because Caranthir, apart from myself, is the one most interested in urbanism and architecture, “I want you to plan for a fortress, for a city, for thousands of boats. They will understand, they will come after us, and when they do they will need quays and walls to disembark safely.”

It was not always clear who they were supposed to be. There were moments when in the secrecy of our close circle, Fëanaro believed the Valar would change their minds, or Ingwë, or Arafinwë, or anyone else who would finally understand the truth of his words and follow him; moments when he said: “When Nerdanel will join us here, we will…”

Sometimes, he was delusional enough to believe even Olwë would see he had been right.

So Caranthir started to plan, but first we went scouting and we raised palisades of wood. The night was dark, the Moon not arisen yet, our eyes unaccustomed to shadows; we were lost, nervers, and my father never fared well when he had to calm rather than inflame his followers.

Then came the second night. The ships were half unloaded, and we started to quarrel about them: “Who shall join us first? Findekano?”

And that was the start of it. I should have known better, but I was less wise than I praised myself to be. We were all too raw. Maglor denied me and started to spit that I would plot with you. His accusations sounded ludicrous – but I had always feigned not to see how much he resented Fingon for being dearest to my heart, how much hurt he had carried ever since my soul had started to sing for your son. I had let my brother down, and he repaid me back.

“Let the traitor’s brood learn their lesson,” Celegorm said. “Let us bring Aikanaro and Angarato first!”

I will not recount all those nights of debate, nor all the angry words that rolled in our mouth and twisted our tongues. We all had reasons to strike in petty revenge – against you, against ourselves. We meant to send the ships but did not know for whom. We wished to go back to you, but we had no idea who should sail back on the treacherous sea. My father believed I was half a traitor, for in private I openly criticized his decisions, and was less vocal against you than I should have, had I understood how you scared him. Curufin’s name was on the table, but his wife’s parents had drowned, and she would not let him sail again, and Celegorm wanted his own friends first, and it all became poison between us.

It was Caranthir who dropped the subject first. “We should just burn those things,” he said. He had been silent for a long time, letting anger eat him alive as we quarreled around him. He said that not as a jest, not in any serious manner either. It was just the kind of thing anyone may say in such a situation to calm his nerves, and it was just the kind of things that had the power to worm its way into my father’s sick mind. It must have settled there, have burnt a little every time he looked at those ships, at the stained decks, and thought of their cost: the Teleri, his sunken friends, the blood on his hands, the quarrels, and you. You, Finwë Nolofinwë, the looming menace behind his back; and now that we were in Middle Earth and it downed on him, perhaps, that he did not know how to kill a Vala, the threat of you became unbearable.

And so, the ships burnt, and they burnt because of careless words. I do not even know why Fëanaro decided to set them alight when he did. He had gone to sleep, and then he was there giving orders to burn them. We quarreled. He won.

Perhaps I should have fought harder, but I did not. I was not ready to betray him yet; almost, but not yet.

Then we were alone.

We all knew there were, probably, too few of us. We moved out of Losgar, that first city that should have been Fëanaro’s triumphant first settlement and left nothing but carcasses of smoking hulls, sinking into the dark waters of the bay.

 

***

 

One would think the matter of ships went in ashes with Losgar, but it did not.

For some months we settled by lake Mithrim, hearing nothing of Morgoth. The land was scarcely inhabited, but we managed to find some natives or, most likely, they found us. My father loved them at first sight. He wanted to love everything that was new (clean, he said, of the toxic machinations from Tirion). He started to learn their languages, traded half his jewels for their bracelets, clothes and stories; one night I went into his tent with Caranthir to plan for the new city and found some local girl piercing his ear. Apparently, her tribe liked to keep their lucky trinkets attached to their body. Caranthir threw a fit, as if my father’s new fashion statements were of great relevance to our mission here, and the feud lasted for a full week.

Can you imagine, Uncle? We were camping at the doors of disaster, and we still managed to fight over such silly things.

Celegorm mapped the land, Caranthir planned anew for a city. We heard of orcs and they did not sound like an overwhelming threat. We received Thingol’s welcomes and warnings, accepted the firsts and ignored the seconds.

And then, we heard of the Havens.

The Havens, uncle. They meant ships, and what was I imagining? That I just needed one and Fingon would still be right where I left him, waiting for me? Yes. I tried not to overthink all of this. I liked to believe my father was mad, and yet I never questioned how irrational my obsession to bring back Fingon could be.

It was a stormy council.

“Not our problem”, Caranthir deadpanned. He wanted us to secure our position, which was a sound strategy, and Curufin concurred. But I wanted my ships, though I did not phrase it that way, and Celegorm, too, because he said nothing but collected small tokens, dried plants and feathers of birds unknown, which he kept in a box for Aredhel. Maglor? Maglor believed not helping the Havens would be a blotch on our father’s record.

For Maglor, Fëanaro was the Spirit of Fire, and his song would have been disappointing if the Spirit of Fire had ignored the calls for help.

It could have swayed either way, really. At this point my father had no real strategy. He had been fleeing forward ever since Finwë died, and now that he had no clear enemy to fight, did not really know where Morgoth was and how to destroy him, he was trying to do everything at once in a confused state of overactivity. Curufin was a strong orator, but three of us against him? It was a lost battle to begin with.

So we got my father’s approval, took half our army and went down to save Cirdan’s people.

“Come back to me,” Fëanaro said before I went. He stood by my horse on foot, his hand clutching mine. He knew his words sounded liked he worried, so he struggled to keep his voice down so my retinue would not hear him. There were black circles under his feverish eyes. “Promise me you will come back.”

“We swore too many oaths,” I answered. It was a cruel thing to say, but I was still angry he had left Fingon behind. My hand slipped away from his to fiddle uselessly with… I cannot even remember. I just wanted to deny him the small comfort of touching me.

His face hardened. We left.

That was the last time I spoke to my father.

 

***

Thus begun the Battle under the stars.

I commanded half of the Fëanorian troops, Maglor with our heavy cavalry, Celegorm leading the lighter, unarmored horsemen. We went south aiming for the besieged cities of the Falas when Morgoth’s armies, which had been encamped here for months, suddenly moved north. We decided to keep well out of their way, for we had never fought a full army before, until Celegorm’s and Naswë’s scouts could give me a clear picture. Only when I felt we knew what we were up against (though we did not, in truth) did I attack.

I sent Celegorm out to ambush them by striking from the East while I would come from the West – and this time I was the one looking up to him, holding his hand as I suddenly felt I may be sending him to his death.

“Come back,” I asked.

He promised.

Celegorm rode out, and by the end of the hour I received news and understood why the orcs had gone North: Morgoth was out for us at last, and my father only had half an army to meet them.

 

***

 

Maglor and I lead our troops north, and for ten nights we fought. Skirmishes here and here, hunting for stragglers, for we had unknowingly trapped the orcs in the Fen of Serech. At some point messengers came from Celegorm to say he had met the King’s army. Fëanaro was victorious: our camp had weathered the first assault, then he had driven the orcs back through the pass of Sirion and down the plains, where Celegorm’s arrows unexpectedly found them. And so it is that despite our inability to look at each other with anything but suspicious, my father and I were still winning.

Ten nights. Ten nights is a long time, and I was exhausted when I finally joined Curufin’s banner. Father had put him in command of most of his troops along with Caranthir and Ambarussa and taken the vanguard for himself, and all we needed now to rejoice and feast on victory was for our king to join us. So high were our spirit we forgot about the Doom, Losgar, the long night and the impossibility of our task; I wanted nothing more than to walk my horse by Fëanaro’s, take his hand and say: “I have not promised, but I came back nonetheless.”

So we rode, quite stupidly as it could have been the death of eight instead of the loss of one; we rode together at the van until we saw the smoke. It covered everything like a choking mist, orange in places where low bushes were still burning, pitch black everywhere else.

A horse came out of nowhere and passed us by, his saddle empty.

We rode.

Celegorm spotted the standard first: Finwë’s, abandoned in mud and sooth. There was no one nearby, but we, seven trained hunters, spotted all too easily the heavy footprints: someone left it there, but we were not able to track them. At some point the trail just disappeared as if whoever had made it had never existed.

We rode, and then we found the first corpse; and another one, and another, and another and another and another until the world around us was nothing but bodies burnt black, disemboweled horses and smashed chests.

I remember.

I remember the moment when Caranthir stopped, embraced the twins (one arm for each) and said: “Enough. Enough.” We left them there, Amras curling against Caranthir to weep against his shoulder, Amrod looking at us with pleading eyes.

We kept going: Celegorm, Maglor, Curufin and his wife Aicahendë walking hand by hand; Curufin whose eyes darted everywhere, uncomprehending.

“Father?” He started to call for. “Father?”

He kept repeating that. Over and over. Father. Father. Father, father, father. He checked every corpse he could find. Father. He bent to take a closer look of a burnt face. Father, where are you? He grabbed the shoulders of a warrior whose red clothes could have been Fëanaro’s. The armor was still warm, and he yelled, then started to cry, sobs so great he could not even stand. Aicahendë turned the corpse with the scabbard of her sword.

The body was not father’s.

Curufin kept crying. Father! Father! Father! Celegorm could not stand it. He grabbed him by the shoulders and started to yell that Father was alright and there was no need to cry (though of course Fëanaro was not alright, but we were not as quick as Caranthir to accept the truth).

We found exactly one survivor: Norimo, who had been one of my father’s first apprentices, though we recognized him only by one specific ring he wore. His armor was filthy with blood and sooth, his face badly burnt; what remained of him was a mane of black hair, hints of oxblood where his clothes weren’t soiled, and one pristine hand with a ring.

I do not know if Maglor thought immediately that Norimo could look like Fëanaro from afar, but by the time we reached Caranthir and Ambarussa all his plan must have been in order: he covered the dying smith with Finwë’s banner, got the ring away from his finger, hastily plaited the very specific braids of the King instead of Norimo’s and let them hang down the stretcher. And I watched him do this, and said nothing, for I felt like I was sleepwalking. Some part of me opposed reality. Fëanaro could not be gone. He must be waiting somewhere for me to come back, to take his hand and promise I would always return.

We joined out troops, seven sons, one daughter-in-law; eight of us carrying the fallen banners and the stretcher with a badly burnt smith who, from afar, could have been the king.

No one investigated. No one would even dare think this was not Fëanaro.

As we walked back to Mithrim, our troop’s mood decayed from high to morose.  I knew I should do something – for if my father was gone or dead, then I was the king… but there was nothing. I was empty, truly empty.

We climbed the pass. There Norimo started to cough, a great, wet cough, and his throat was so scorched his voice was nothing elven. He moaned one last time and stopped moving.

The king was dead.

A long murmur shook out troops like wind flattening barleys.

Fëanaro was dead; we had been defeated. Hope was gone. We were lost. We were all going to die.

Something had to be done. I knew that. I was the king. I should have done something. But all I could do was watch Norimo’s corpse while Curufin resumed his sobbing.

Maglor gave orders for a pyre to be built. We felled some trees, far too many to burn a single body, and built a pile so high we couldn’t even see Norimo’s corpse up there. Finwë’s banner had been spread over him. Again, no one suspected the body was not father.

One of us should have said something. I cannot explain why we did not; perhaps we were all so tired and so shocked we were ready to follow the first leader with a plan. And Maglor, Maglor for all his faults had a plan, and feigned confidence well, and we needed that.

We all plunged a torch in the pyre, the eight of us at the same time. Maglor’s idea, of course; it was like sealing a new Oath between us, Fëanaro’s sons and his almost-daughter, that from no on this corpse was father’s and no one else’s.

Then, as the flames rose, Maglor started to Sing.

Silence fell upon our troops.

Maglor Sang of our father’s last battle, though he had seen nothing of it. Upon the confines of the Land of Great Dread, Fëanaro with few friends… for long fought on, undismayed… In our minds he replaced the sight of a dying smith with that of a great warrior, and as he Sang, his silhouette a black shadow framed by the burning flames of the pyre, it was as if the flames danced to his command. They soared to the sky, soared so high they were as the wings of birds taking flight.

“Thrice I curse the name of Morgoth!” Maglor shouted, and we shouted with him, six sons and one daughter, seven voices bending to his will. “We shall hold to our Oath!” We flashed our swords in agreement, and they shone red in the flames, as they had in Tirion. “VENGEANCE!”

Vengeance!

               Vengeance!

“FOR FIRE UNVANQUISHED! FOR FIRE IMPERISHABLE! FOR FËANARO!”

 

We Sang with him, and for a glorious moment felt as if we had won.

 

***

 

We built an unmarked cairn above Norimo’s ashes and went back to our camp. Maglor remained silent for some times, resting his voice, and when our troops started to tire once more, he resumed his singing, hymns for the great victory we had won. Our father’s song he sang over and over again, improved every time, making small changes so that by the time we were home, there had been no pyre built and Father had burnt by his own rage alone; and those who came to greet us back, the token force, the women and children at the camp, those learnt that Fëanaro, as he died, swore one last time with us rather than rattle an ugly cough as Norimo had.

Can you believe, Uncle, how easy it is to rewrite the past? But we were exhausted. Ten days of battle, many of riding, wounds and loss made us easy preys for Maglor’s voice. His songs hammered unto us; not that we resisted. We wanted to be victorious, and his version was easier to swallow.

While Maglor sang for our people, I went to the High King’s home. Was it supposed to be mine now? It did not feel like it. I am a tidy person. My father is not. It was full of those silly native things, primitive sculptures of wood, too simple tapestries with naïve subjects, a great table where laid the abandonned remnants of my father’s last council. A servant must have cleared out the food and tableware, but the maps, wax tablets and birch bark pieces from the scouts were still everywhere.

Suddenly, I felt deadly tired, and the silence in the house crushed me. I dragged myself to Fëanaro’s chamber, which was even more encumbered than the rest of the house. There was a bright blue scarf laying on the bed that had been gifted to him by a chieftain. It was embroidered with white flowers, and quite simple, but apparently the dye to make it was very hard to get in North Beleriand. I thought: Father, you silly, how could you forget that, what if you get cold? What was Curufin thinking when he let you go out without it? As if Fëanaro could ever get cold.

There was a box from Valinor under my father’s bed. It was warded with spells of conservation like none other in the room. I opened it wondering what treasures, what secret, what meager slimmer of hope my Fëanaro could have left inside; it must have been something of great import, greater than the jewels and books piled everywhere.

There was a strand of my mother’s hair, and under it dozens of letters addressed to Finwë.

I took the first one with trembling hands. I had not known Fëanaro wrote to grandfather. I doubt anyone did.

I was sized by the mad hope he would spell everything I needed to do. Some Great Plan to defeat Morgoth, get the Silmarilli, get back to Finwë and Mother somehow; explanations on how to be the king I was supposed to be now.

I opened the letter and beheld the first lines.

Finwë, my father, my king.

What should I do now?