In Guarded Lands and Sunlit Glades by Lindariel

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In Guarded Lands and Sunlit Glades

As she picked up the full basket by both its handles, it glinted silver-white under Laurelin's peak brightness. She had twined it herself after the last growing season: harvesting the haulms one at a time, setting them to dry, soaking and working them into the traditional shape in anticipation of these recent days when her basket would be put to use for the first time. She lifted the basket to rest on her head, its cargo of clean grains shifting rhythmically back and forth as she walked toward the milling building. She meditated as she walked on the tasks she had completed thus far on her journey to become a Yavannildë.

Most of the basic Yavannildi training involved learning how to communicate and live in harmony with the kelvar and the olvar. Many Yavannildi were content with the skills of gardening and animal husbandry learned in the first year of study and moved on to study other skills with one or another Power. Others preferred to become acolytes, studying closely with Kementari for a second year and narrowing their focus to either the kelvar or the olvar. Acolytes in the kelvar program learned as part of their training how to serve as birth attendants to the coimas, responsible for elevating the sacred corn from its birthplace in rich, sunny fields to its position at the center of a massánië's larder, leaf-wrapped and life-enhancing.

Artanis had embraced the kelvar acolyte path enthusiastically, choosing trees as her especial study, yet she had found it a little difficult to make room in her heart for the dedicated manual labor that defined the production of coimas. Sowing and growing were pleasant enough, but plucking the individual heads of grain had been slow, exacting physical work. She had only been able to enjoy the work after she and her trainer figured out a way she could make a dance of it, similar to some of the stretching exercises she had been taught when first taking up archery and running. When she learned how to harvest the dry straw, she worked the movements into a second dance herself, one more lissom and graceful than the first dance due to the need to bend more.

Spreading the grain out to dry had not been difficult at all, but threshing had nearly defeated her. Hand-rubbing each of the heads of grain individually, without so much as a stalk to grasp each one by, had been hard on her hands as well as exactingly repetitious. It had taken her even more time to break up the heads than it had to harvest them.

Even so, she thought winnowing was harder still than threshing. Winnowing was nowhere near as physically demanding as threshing, and tossing the flat baskets had readily mutated into a dance for her supple muscles. Artanis found the problem with winnowing rather to be spiritual: it was too easy for her to get distracted. Too much distraction was bad and ruined the coimas; all the acolytes were cautioned to keep their energy serenely focused on the work with the grain at all times. But the strong breezes required for winnowing reminded her of sailing around the bay on her grandfather's swan-ship, and she had needed more than once to refocus her thoughts on separating the grain from the chaff.

Once inside the milling building, Artanis moved to the quern on a worktable in the middle of the space. She set down her basket and ran her hands over the two red-brown basalt stones, the lower dish-shaped one cradling the beehive-shaped upper one. Both were deeply carved on their non-working surfaces with graceful attenuated interlace patterns that flashed with an improbable green. As she grasped the handle, she thought briefly and longingly of the water-powered grist mill near Tirion that supplied the entire city's flour supply. Of all the clever devices her Ataryo's people had invented, that was one of the most useful. But Kementari had decreed that nothing save a hand-operated quern was permitted to touch the grain of the life-bread. Artanis had been longing to touch one ever since Kementari had told her the querns had been shaped and finished by Aulë himself, in one of those rare collaborations of two of the Powers. She turned the handle, forgetting her doubts in admiration for the light, smooth, almost noiseless movement of the upper stone against the lower one. She took up the grinding song she had been practicing for days, fitting her movements to the rhythms of the verses as she slowly fed the first of the grain into the hopper.

* * * * *

Artanis worked through Laurelin's waning until all her grain was ground, stopping about the time the light of the Two Trees radiated through the clerestory at its most harmoniously mingled. The mound of pale golden flour gleamed in the white-gold light. She retrieved the white flour sack marked with her name from the bottom of the empty basket and scooped the flour into it, settling it carefully upright in the basket as it filled. She swept the quern clean with the soft brush hanging nearby, coughing a bit as the little cloud of flour spread. Her voice was hoarse and her body ached with the effort she had given to grinding, but she had accomplished her task. She had buried seeds in the earth, and from the earth she had brought forth the flour to make coimas.

Leaving the basket on the worktable, she took up a wooden bucket from the washstand by the door and stepped outside to fill it from the cascading brook. She poured the cool water into the grey chalcedony basin and reached up to untie the lightly padded linen headdress that bound her hair. She shook down her hair, sighing with pleasure at the feeling of air on her damp warm scalp. Her breath rippled the water-filled basin, catching her eye.

The water stilled as she looked at an image taking shape in it: flame in the shape of a man, with a darkness at its heart. She gasped, and the image disappeared. She shook her head violently in confusion, causing a reflection of her silver-gold hair to dapple the surface of the basin just as her uncle swept across the threshold of the millroom with his customary abruptness.

"Artanis! Your father said I would find you here. My father's wife is waiting the feast on us, and little Itarillë will not let Findaráto play her his new song until you come," Fëanor greeted her. He looked down at the basin and Artanis' eyes followed his. The water in the grey bowl glowed like one of his clever lamps, silver-gold in the twilight. He looked up to her face, eyes bright as a glede as they slid across her cloud of unbound hair. "Artanis," he said again, slowly and thoughtfully, "may I have a lock of your hair? I have an idea."

She gathered her thoughts. What a strange request! She had never heard of anyone asking for a piece of another person's hröa before. She recalled the image in the bowl, that blackness at the center of the flame, and shivered. Something about the whole idea seemed wrong to her. How to say no without angering her most illustrious relative? Perhaps humor would distract him.

"The last time you told me you had an idea, Uncle, Ataryo made me spend half a year trying to learn ancient languages. All I learned was yes, no, please, thank you, and 'this tree is sick.' So no, thank you, Uncle," she replied with a smile. She drew herself up stiffly and repeated it in Common Eldarin for emphasis, with as dreadful an accent as she could muster: "no, thank you."

His eyes still burned, but she relaxed when she saw they were raised away from her face and toward the ceiling. "Never mind," he murmured, "I don't need it yet. First I'll need the right matrix." She did not think it was the ceiling he saw. Abruptly he looked her in the face again. She returned the look as calmly as she could; she could not remember when she had grown taller than her uncle. "Are you ready to go?"

She turned away from the washbasin toward her basket in the hope of distracting him from whatever he had seen in the basin. "Yes," she said. "But I must take this to the bakehouse before I go to HaruFinwë's house."

"Is it so?" Fëanor replied distantly, eyes now on the mingled light outside the door. "I shall go straight back, then. Come quickly, though. You know how children are about their celebrations!" He swept out again, to Artanis' relief. She washed her face and hands thoroughly in the grey basin, retied her headdress, then spent a few minutes carefully securing the neck of her flour sack in order to make sure he was well gone before she stepped outside the door.

* * * * *

Artanis strode through the tree-lined lane toward the bakehouse, striving to reclaim her earlier sense of accomplishment. The interruption by her uncle had unsettled her more than anything ever had, when all she had wanted was to be aware of the steps she was taking toward her first baking of coimas. The light silvered as she walked, and the trees around her relaxed into the coolness of Telperion's waxing. Their tiny rustles and creakings greeted her like the voices of sleepy children, and she slowed to listen to them more closely, breathing in the scent of linden blossoms wafting from the path ahead. The scent swaddled her in sweetness, making her stop entirely and shut her eyes just to enjoy it more completely. After a moment she felt the earth quicken beneath her bare feet, as if every blade of grass willed to stretch itself into a tree, and the basket on her head seemed to pulse with the same energy. "Lady?" she whispered, "are you near?"

"I am always near," said the Lady into her mind, and a warmth suffused Artanis' bones.

"What did I see in the water?" she asked, reverting to osanwë also.

"The Children of Ilúvatar have been gifted with many abilities. You have seen a vision, child. Whether true or false, only time will tell. But all things are part of the Music, which means you have seen what you have seen for a reason. Think on what you have seen, but do not dwell on it," replied the Lady. "And now, take your flour to the bakehouse. Tomorrow will be your first Baking Day, and you must rest well beforehand."

"Thank you, Lady. I will think, and I will bake."

"You have done well, Artanis Nerwen," replied Yavanna, "and your bread will nourish many."

As the presence of the Lady slipped away into the trees, the grass under Artanis' feet subsided into its green slumber. She opened her eyes and stepped forward again, glad to have a clear path ahead of her.

Chapter End Notes

Yavannildë/ Yavannildi (Q) -- maiden acolytes of Yavanna who were the only bakers of lembas

year -- each Year of the Trees was about nine years and seven months in solar reckoning

kelvar (Q) -- animals, fauna

olvar (Q) -- plants, flora

coimas (Q) -- life-bread, lembas

corn -- as in Tolkien's vocabulary, the grain meant is wheat (Triticum spp.) rather than maize (Zea mays)

Ataryo (Q) -- daddy

massánië (Q) -- loaf giver

hröa (Q) -- the physical body of an Elf

HaruFinwë (Q) -- Grandfather Finwë, a children's nickname

osanwë (Q) -- mind-speech

In Quenya, the word for "turn" is "quer-"! The grain-grinding stone in this story is based on early Iron Age beehive querns from the British Isles, except for the part about having been made by a Power.

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