The Broideress Arc by Gadira

Facing the Darkness

They had always been two, the Broideress and the Healer. Rumours said that they had awoken side by side under the stars, but now the Broideress must face the darkness alone. Part I of the Broideress Arc.

Read Facing the Darkness

Finwë watched the dancing flames wistfully, wondering whether to put the fire off or not before he went to sleep. Fire was a blessing, he knew, and when mastered and controlled it could warm the chill of the coldest seasons, or glow quietly in the eyes of the raven-haired Broideress and Healer as they worked their miracles with their white flower crowns. But it was also the most terrible of monsters, and unwatched, its unleashed power could rise and destroy homes, people and forests.

Pondering this strange case of double nature, the Elf drew closer to the gleaming embers, studying them in fascination. Back when the Eldar had discovered fire, there were some who had burned their fingers as they tried to embrace the beautiful bright flames. He knew that it still happened sometimes, though everybody was aware of its nature since long ago. And it was something that he thought he could understand; the light beckoned to him even now.

A deep whistling sound reached his ears from far away, followed by the cracks and whispers that used to frighten him so much when he was a child. It was the wild, frozen wind, trying to uproot the trees of the forest. He smiled at his own start; it would take much more to shake the foundations of his house, built with far more ambitious materials than the woven weeds of Elwë´s people in the valley - not to speak of Ingwë´s people, most of which did not even build anything, as they rejoiced upon feeling the wind and the rain upon their faces.

Yet another difference, he thought, stopping the chain of his musings in order to consign it dutifully to his long list. Since he had been able to think, he had wondered about the different traits of the peoples he had met, trying as he could to nail the essence of each one of them and its purpose. He had interested his sucessive friends on that subject, and got involved in endless discussions with Elwë, -Elwë loved to argue-, who said that birds had wings and beaks, fish were slippery and had scales, deer had prongs and four legs, but the Quendi all had similar faces, two legs, no hair in their bodies, and could speak, so they all had to be of the same kind. Finwë conceded to this point, but added that not all birds were the same, and that there was a family of birds that used to fly high and prey on animals, while others were whitish, ate fish and could swim, and others were small and sang beautifully on tree branches. They had the same traits, and yet they were not the same, like the different peoples of the Eldar.

"You speak of differences, yet there are differences between each one of us. What about Linwë and me, then?" Elwë pointed at an elderly Elf who was trying to catch a fish in the nearby stream. "We came here together, and we belong to the same people, and yet our traits are different. My eyes are grey, and his are blue. He has fair hair, and I silver. He is very good at catching fish, and I am not. Will we all be a kindred on our own?"

Finwë frowned, exasperated at not being understood. He could see a myriad of links joining Elwë with Linwë, and Olwë, and Elmo, and he could see those same links joining him to the quick-thinking people among whom he had been born. He knew that the differences between the individuals were not at the same level as the differences between his larger groups, and that Elwë and his silver hair was to his own people like a raven with a white spot.

Each of their peoples had originally been awakened at a different shore of Cuiviénen, and sometimes he wondered if their Maker had wanted them to meet and mingle like they had done. Why, then, give them such different approaches, such different likes and dislikes, such different abilities?

It was Ingwë who had heard those much more confidential musings, years later. He had shaken his head with a smile, and asked him why did he think that the Maker had distributed His gifts between their peoples, if not because He wanted them to help each other.

For once, Finwë had felt oddly convinced. Still, he had stubbornly kept consigning all their differences in a list, swearing to himself that one day he would find time to study the matter further.

If this time would come one day, he added now with a sigh, in the ceaseless struggle for survival that he had been fighting daily since his parents were taken by the Shadow. People turned to him because he was the first man in his village to have fought Orcs back, and the first to have killed one of those monstruous beings. As he had gained in leadership and consideration, he had persuaded them to join his friend Ingwë´s village and search for protection in numbers, but the result had not matched his expectations. Lately, there had been a project tossing and turning in his head, of enhancing the protection of their settlement by building a wall around it, as if it were a huge hut, and have people shoot from behind it if a herd of Orcs appeared. Ingwë´s golden people, however, -yet another difference- did not favour this plan, as it would make them feel trapped and miserable, hindered in their free comings and goings.

Finwë laid his head to rest over the earthy floor, eyes still fixed on the fire. What if...? Maybe that could work with this, too. If the fire was trapped by a wall of stone –fire couldn´t eat stone-, he would control it and sleep in safety. But curiously enough, this idea made him feel like Ingwë would; he still preferred to look at it in its full glory, unhindered, no matter the cost.

Some time later, when a knock in the wooden door took him out of his musings, he realised that he had fallen in a doze.

"Ingwë?" he asked sleepily, sitting on the floor to rub his eyes, and checking that the fire was still as he had left it. His friend came to visit him often, and Finwë suspected that he did so out of pity for his loneliness. No Quendi should live alone when they had been given language to speak with each other, or so he said often in their conversations. Finwë kept a stubborn silence.

Instead of pushing the door to enter, however, the visitor knocked again.

"Enter!" Finwë invited, a bit worried. As there was still no answer, he discarded the blankets and stood up to open the door himself.

Two dark, frozen eyes stared back at him, with such raw pain that he felt struck and tempted to reel back into the warmth of his refuge. She was standing still like a statue, no sign of life in her pale limbs except for a persistent shiver. Her black hair hung dishevelled down her shoulders in half-undone braids, and she was clutching a trampled white flower in her hands.

"Broideress." he muttered, in shocked awe. She barely nodded, her charm and her arrogance, her fire quenched under waves of consuming grief.

She was alone.

o-o-o-o-o-o

Some people said that they had been among the Unbegotten, and that they had awoken side by side under the stars instead of alongside their rightful spouse. They both shared a deep black hair, which did not shine and reflect the light of the stars like that of the other Eldar. Small of stature, thin, yet regal, a bright fire burned inside them, gentle for one and fiery for the other. Nobody knew their names, and they took pride at being known only for their abilities.

The Healer was quiet; she seldom spoke, but her eyes could hold many in a spell like insects lost in sticky amber. It was rumoured that she could heal with her sole touch, and still she always came with her bags and baskets filled to the brim with miraculous plants and herbs that she herself had found and named. Many had learned her arts, but none was near as skilled as she was.

The Broideress, though she always walked beside her, had a very different temperament from her sister. She was proud and quick-tempered, and she loved to talk and to argue, stretching language, playing with words and inventing new ones. She had long and nimble fingers, so skilled that they were a source of wonder and endless whispered legends. There were people who believed that she had invented different cooking tools; others, that she was the one who made the first hunting spear, or toys for the children.

Her greatest glory, however, came from the skill which had given her her name. With a substance taken from plants, she had created a strong yet subtle thread, and she had been the first to weave it and make beautiful and light garments to replace the animal furs and skins used by the Quendi. Wherever they went, she scattered her latest creations around, and the thankful people of the countless villages they had visited had offered to build huge houses for them if they agreed to stay.

Finwë recalled the woman who had rejected those offers, defending fiercely her and her sister´s freedom to roam where they pleased, and fixed his glance upon the stirring water on the pot. There was something cruel in the vision of her now, sitting alone, and watching the walls of his hut as if she would never wish to lay a foot outside of them again.

She did not speak.

"Here." he whispered, handing her the bowl of soup. With the barest flash of recognition, she tried to gather it on her lap, but her hands were trembling and she spilled several drops over her dress.

Finwë sat at her side, and slowly covered her hands with his. Many times, he had stood in the crowd behind her, with eyes widened in wonder as he tried to discern something from the blur of swift movements of her working fingers. He could feel them now beneath his, and they were cold and clumsy like those of a child.

He felt the unbearable pain.

"Thank you." she muttered, accepting his help.

Finwë nodded, unable even to mumble a coherent answer. And yet, as she ate the food that he had prepared, he became aware of more and more unvoiced questions tossing and turning in his mind. How had she been able to escape? Why, oh, why hadn´t she asked for help before it was too late? Had it... happened so far away from the village?

Had they followed her, tracking her footsteps like hunters in the wild?

Even more than those things, however, he wanted to know why she had come to him. To him, Finwë, and not to any other. They had done little else than talk, before- and sometimes argue. He was no better than anyone of the many people who would have died to comfort her, to help her, to carry her wishes...

"You always told me." she whispered. Surprised, and seized by the sudden eerie feeling that she had been prying into his thoughts, Finwë turned his glance from the flames to her face again. The proud Broideress stared hard into the bowl of soup, like a contrite child.

"You said that we shouldn´t wander alone. That it was dangerous." she continued after a long while. He tried to remember; it was a distant memory that refused to unfold in his mind without a struggle.

"Many peoples will grieve if you are lost to the Shadow."

"If I am lost, I will cease to be. If I cease to be, nothing else will matter."

"It will matter to others."

"Others cannot make my decisions. They cannot hold me back, as much as they cannot guide my steps."

Silence.

"You might win the argument, but you are not right."

A hard spark. A flame.

"You may be skilled, but you are not wise."

Two dark, fiery eyes glared at him before she turned away and strode past the trees.

"I was angry at you, but she was not. She said that she would want to stay, if she only could. If we only could." she rambled on, inconnexely. "She left our camp to pick her herbs, and I fell asleep. I found the flowers of her hair. Right there, on a bush. One was on the floor, trampled. She would have cried to see it like this. Oh, how she would have cried."

Finwë nodded, still unable to speak. As she leaned closer to him, he embraced her, and let her head rest on his shoulder. It was the first time that he felt her hair against his skin, and to his surprise the opaque blackness felt warm. Her dress, an extravagantly beautiful gown made of hundreds of tatters of different embroiderings sewn together, made a soft noise as it was crumpled between their bodies.

He kept his own memories at bay. He was good at it, he had been for all his life, since the day when a young child had waited in vain for his parents to return.

Her voice became harsh, proud once again.

"Tell me. Tell me that I should have listened."

Finwë inhaled a deep breath, and pulled her closer. How could something that looked so frozen feel so warm?

"Why should you have listened to me?"

Instead of crying, she held him tight, and closed her eyes.

o-o-o-o-o-o

Hours later, Finwë was roused from a fitful sleep by the faint notes of a song. Feeling immediately that something was amiss, he stretched a sleepy hand to touch the space at his side, and realised that the couch was empty.

Remembrances came back in a rush, causing him to jerk up with his eyes wide open. She was gone. Her things were gone. In the place where her warm body had been lying next to his own, there was only a folded blanket, with an embroidery that, he realised belatedly, had not been there before.

Finwë crawled to take a closer look, and saw a woman with dark hair crying in the middle of a forest. Starlight pierced the dark foliage of the trees, with a brilliance that looked almost real to his eyes instead of woven into a fabric, and it made the tears in her eyes gleam with a silvery spark.

Then, he realised that there was another figure at her side, laying a hand on her shoulder. It was darkened by the shadow cast by his own body, and immediately he struggled to his feet and gave a step backwards, to allow the faint luminiscence to fall over it.

His own eyes looked back at him, and she grasped his hand to smile through her tears.

o-o-o-o-o-o

It was so early that not a single movement, not a single sound stirred the village as Finwë hurried among the huts and tents, trying to attach bow, quiver and sword as he went. The only sign of life came from the song he had heard upon waking, and when he reached its source, he found a beautiful maiden making bread of sweet herbs. The light of the stars kissed her brow, reflecting pale threads of gold.

As soon as she saw him, she began to wipe her hands and face in frantic yet graceful movements, song and endeavours promptly forgotten.

"Fair Indis." he greeted her, in a hurry. "Did you see the Broideress?"

Indis nodded, and wrapped a cloak sparkled in magnificent flower patterns around her shoulders with a touch of girlish pride.

"She went into the forest, not long ago. She gave me this."

Muttering his thanks, and ignoring the beginning of a question, Finwë clutched his sword tightly, and ran past her. Soon, he left the site behind, hurrying down the riverside until he reached the first trees. An unknown fear clenched his insides, and he saw the ground full of hundreds of trampled white flowers.

Suddenly, he heard a noise in front of him.

"Broideress!" he shouted, disregarding his own safety. No voice answered him, but the noise became the persistent sound of quick footsteps over fallen leaves.

"Broideress!" he repeated, running towards her. She did not turn back, and when he caught up with her furious strides, she didn´t even lift a glance towards him. The leather bags that she carried everywhere hung from her back, and a crown of white flowers adorned her black hair once more.

"I will not be afraid. "she hissed, then repeated it several times as if she was trying to engrave the words in her own brain. "I will never be afraid."

He grabbed at her arm, forcing her to stop. It burned like fire.

"You will be taken, like her." I won´t let you be taken, the words came unbidden to his mind, and he remembered the heat of her limbs on his own that night.

"If we cannot roam those forests at our will, then we will be all thralls of the Shadow even though we are not taken." she replied, starting to walk again. He followed her.

"Will you inflict your sufferings upon others?"

Her pace grew slower. With one of her hands, she cut a twig from a tree, and absently began to play with it, bend it, braid it at such an astonishing speed that Finwë was unable to follow her movements. Then, she threw it to the floor in the perfect shape of a flower, and for a second he felt tempted to pick it back reverently and remember the great distance that lay between them, but he managed to resist the urge.

"Come with me."

She frowned.

"I will not. "

"Then," his eyes stared into hers, unflinching, "I will go with you, Broideress."

It seemed ages before she finally withdrew her glance, and her gesture proclaimed their silent fight of wills to be over. For the first time since she had knocked at his door in the madness of grief, her lips curved slightly, and Finwë stood there, feeling how everything that had once mattered to him; his friends, his people, and their safety had suddenly vanished with this smile. At that moment, he knew that if it would have been possible to go to the end of the world to find a forest where she could roam freely without pain or danger, he would have done it without the briefest hesitation.

"Míriel." she whispered. He gave her an inquisitive look, and her smile became wider.

"My name. Míriel."

When she turned back to continue her journey, he followed her.

The Last Work of Her Hands

Could an Elf live without a fëa? Part II of the Broideress arc.

Read The Last Work of Her Hands

Finwë saw the boy pause in his work, and observed how a frown of displeasure creased his brow, so similar to hers. The sheet of paper made a shrill noise as it was squashed into a ball by an angry and tense hand.

He opened his mouth, about to speak, but then closed it again, and bit his lower lip. Fëanáro immediately grabbed a new sheet of paper, and continued writing while a deep concentration gained his features once more.

Finwë fought hard against his own frustration. He wanted to tell him that it was fine. That it was more than fine, it was wonderful, prodigious how such a young child could already write with elegant and graceful strokes like a learned adult. He had tried to tell him before, feeling the unfairness of the greatest of the sons of the Noldor thinking that he was nothing but a sloppy, clumsy child.

Fëanaro had stared at him in disbelieving bewilderment, as if anything that didn´t agree with her words couldn´t be a part of his world. There´s a stain in the corner of the paper, she added from her corner. How could you be so careless.

Míriel, Queen of the Noldor, sat behind them, her eyes intent in the dancing flames of the hearth.

o-o-o-o-o-o

At days, she sat on a chair next to the fireplace, drawing so closer to the fire that Finwë feared a stray spark would fall on her dress. He imagined her sitting still and shivering slightly until she died, consumed by the flames.

At nights, she would curl herself into a ball, at the edge of the bed, and refuse to be touched.

o-o-o-o-o-o

"Father..."

Finwë took his glance away from Ingwë´s last letter, and smiled at Fëanáro. The boy had the habitude of entering his workplace easily, as if he belonged there, but this time his pace looked oddly hesitant, and he stopped at the threshold for a second. There were creases of worry in his forehead.

The king of the Noldor frowned, as he encouraged him to come forth. None of the Eldar of the Blessed Realm, least of all the children, should feel any worry.

"To what do I owe your visit?" he asked, in an attempt to lend some lightheartedness to the situation. Fëanáro lifted his face, which had become purple red after braving the unbearable heat to sit on his mother´s lap next to the fire, and swallowed.

"Does everybody have a fëa?"

Doing his best to hide his surprise at the question, Finwë nodded.

"All the Children of Ilúvatar have a fëa, yes."

Fëanáro´s eyes became lost on the words of the letters in his desk, as if he was deciphering them backwards.

"Everybody?" he insisted.

"Everybody."

The boy was still not satisfied.

"And what if someone... maybe... didn´t have it, and people didn´t know?"

Finwë´s lips curved into a smile at his son´s idea, in spite of its strangeness.

"We are the union of the hröa and the fëa." And then, before he could become aware of his next words, he added. "Without a fëa, we would be dead."

Fëanáro´s face blanched. Before his father could ask anything, or give a different wording to his explanation, he turned his back to him and left, as abruptly as he had come.

That night, Finwë touched Míriel´s back as she slept. She felt cold, and he shivered, without knowing very well why.

o-o-o-o-o-o

Her features were colourless, tight like the strings in her loom back when she used to delight in her favourite arts. The clay bird figurine turned and turned in her fingers, as she silently sought for imperfections that a normal eye could not see. At her side, Fëanáro waited in expectation.

Finwë saw her hands begin to tremble.

"You stole it." she hissed, in a mere whisper that grew louder as she repeated it, over and over, until it almost became a yell. "You stole it, you stole it."

Finwë stared at her incredulously, horrified and fascinated at the same time by the first signs of anger, of fire, of passion in her cold and faded face.

"You stole it from me. You stole everything from me!"

Forcing himself to react, the king of the Noldor darted forwards, to protect his child from hearing the words, but Fëanáro had already turned back in silence. Sending Míriel a last appalled glance –which she met with a look of pure and defiant hatred- he followed his son past the door, and through the corridor.

"Fëanáro!" he called him, frantically, painfully, as if the boy was dangling from a precipice instead of walking ahead of him. "Fëanáro!"

The boy stopped, and turned back a face that was proudly tightened to avoid showing his tears.

"Is she dead because of... me?" he asked in a voice that faltered, in spite of his efforts.

Finwë did not answer, not to tell him that he was wrong, or even to ask what she had whispered in the child´s ears in the long gloom of the fireside. Instead of this, he knelt on the floor, speechless, and embraced him fiercely.

o-o-o-o-o-o

Later, as his steps brought him back to Míriel´s rooms, he saw her kneeling on the floor, holding the broken pieces of clay in her hands and trying to sing them together with a hoarse voice that soon became shrill with desperation. After a while, she finally let them go, covered her face with her hands, and started to cry.

o-o-o-o-o-o

Míriel disappeared from their sight after that day. Every morning, she woke up early and hid herself behind closed doors, and each time that Finwë tried to push them open they refused to give way beneath his hand. Fëanáro´s misery could be easily felt, brimming and simmering from his fëa at his mother´s desertion.

Now and then, she came and shared the table with him after their son was asleep. But even then she did not speak, did not answer his questions, and looked so pale and exhausted that Finwë had to repress the urge to feed her himself.

Once, he looked at her thin fingers, which were trying to hold her cup in a grip that was strong enough to venture lifting it to her lips. They were bleeding.

"Míriel." he said, with an intent frown and his most serious voice. "You must seek healing from the Valar."

Her vague glance became a look of intense hurt, which reminded him powerfully of their son Fëanáro. She set the cup back on the table, and bolted away as quickly as her weakened feet allowed her.

o-o-o-o-o-o

That night, he entered his bedroom to see her lying on the bed, awake and staring at some point of the coloured ceiling. At her side lay a sleeping Fëanáro, curled against her lap while her hand kept caressing his hair in distracted motions. Surprised, he stared at her, but she just smiled.

"I will take him..." he began in a whisper. She shook her head, and gestured towards the empty space at her other side.

With exaggerated care, as if he was stepping into a box full of delicate crystal figurines, Finwë entered the bed, spreading the covers over his legs. His right arm, tentative after a long sucession of refusals, sought her shoulder.

Bolting at his contact, Míriel took the hand with hers and pulled closer, pressing against him with a raw need that shocked him to the core. Her embrace was frozen like that of a corpse, but then their eyes met, and hers sparkled with a promise of warmth.

Smiling like he used to do often, long ago, he rocked her to sleep, giving her his heat.

o-o-o-o-o-o

When he woke up, the golden light of Laurelin was dancing over the forehead of his son, who at some point of the night had pressed a magnificent piece of embroidery into his mouth like it was a stuffed toy. Míriel was nowhere to be seen.

Blinking several times, to force the ominous first tingles of awareness to reach his brain, Finwë let his gaze wander around. The bed looked very different from last night, as if someone had dropped a box of ceremonial clothing over the sheets and then forgot to put order into the mess.

The king of the Noldor sat up, extending both arms to grab the heaps of clothes which lay closer to him. They were boy´s tunics, boy´s shirts, boy´s cloaks. He sought farther, and his eyes fell on larger things, with the same colours and blindingly beautiful patterns but made for an adolescent, for a young man, for an adult.

At the feet of the bed, there was a glittering ceremonial cape, similar to the one she had made for their wedding but with different embroiderings. Next to it, almost entwined, there was a bridal dress, decorated in red and coppery hues, and the delicatedly crafted, little robes for the essecarmë ceremonies of seven children, each in a different colour.

Feeling his heart constrain under the gripping pressure of a cold hand, he stood up from the bed, seized by the irrational fear of waking his son up to that colourful and unsettling spectacle. Pieces of embroidered cloth lay scattered on the floor in her wake, as she had left them in the land under the stars before she entered the forests to brave the lure of the Shadow. They were all covered with images, as powefully real, as alive as the best of sculptures, as the vividest of paintings, as reality itself.

There, on one of them, Finwë and Míriel were embracing under the roof of a small cottage. They walked hand in hand across a dark forest, and he left for the end of the world while she watched his departure from the cover of the shadows, a look of unquenchable trust and pride in her eyes. The next shone with the bright colours of their joyful reunion, and he asked for her hand under the mingled light of the Trees.

The last, lying at the threshold, showed her in bed, holding her small son in her arms. She was desperately struggling to show her love, to keep the quenched light of her eyes and the craft in her dead hands for a little longer, only just enough for him to see and remember with pride that his mother had been Míriel the Broideress, first in skill and fire of all the Noldor.

The next step brought him outside, and the corridor was still shrouded in darkness.

Katabasis

Part III of the Broideress Arc. Indis the Fair also has guts.

"Katabasis" means "Descent" in Greek, and especially "descent to hell", as myths about descents to hell were always labelled with that name.

Read Katabasis

 

The first step made her wrap her cloak around her shoulders, as if the light fabric could shield her from a chill that was not in the air. The second took her away from the shining radiance of the Trees, and a cold terror seized her chest under crossed, trembling arms.

Darkness embraced her. It was not the darkness of the land of her birth, but a slick, suffocating, trapping darkness with no starlight to guide her way or wring pale reflections from her moving feet. Indis could not see what was in front of her, or even what she had left behind.

Maybe there was nothing behind her anymore.

Panic seized her heart at this unbidden thought, causing her to shiver and turn bewildered looks around her. The sudden movement made her foot slip, and for a moment she feared she would fall, until she became aware that there was nothing under her but more of the same darkness. There was nowhere she could fall, and this, she realised in terror, was the greatest plunge of all.

She would have fallen to her knees then, if it hadn´t been because her fear of sinking even deeper kept her shaking legs rigid. Still, even without making a move, even without looking around her, she felt an abyss engulfing her at a vertiginous speed, and there was nothing she could hold to, not even hands to hold anything with.

She had no hands. She had no feet. She was lost, and all that remained of her was a shaking fëa, trapped by the Shadow.

In a last, desperate attempt to bring herself back, Indis sang a song of longing for the gold and silver light of Laurelin and Telperion, and the radiance in the eyes of Manwë and Varda. Her voice was choked and hoarse, and upon hearing the hollow notes with her own ears, she went silent in dismay at the blackness which had swallowed her joy, her body, her voice, everything that she had been once.

Indis huddled up under her cloak, and wept. She was lost. She would never see the Treelight again, or Taniquetil, or Finwë...

Finwë. The name was like a sudden beacon, fighting the numbing terror that threatened to tie her limbs forever into that place. Little by little, something gentle began to prod through her fearful thoughts, and she realised that she was holding something.

She had hands.

Still shaking, she became conscious of her body, closed upon itself like a terrified little child. Her grip on her legs softened, and, as she began to test, one by one, the shaking limbs that she had thought lost, she remembered her mission.

o-o-o-o-o-o

It had been Míriel herself who had summoned her. To see her once, face to face, was a condition without which she would never agree to Indis and Finwë´s marriage, she had answered to the Judge´s pressing questions. The faces of those who had heard this had blanched, but she had agreed to go, feeling brave with the love that shone in Finwë´s eyes whenever he gazed upon her.

It was the first time that one counted among the living had been allowed to enter the Halls. The perils were numerous and terrible, or so Námo Mandos had told her while she prepared herself to fulfill her task. She could even forget who she was, believe herself to be dead, and roam the place forever.

Maybe this is what she wants, a small, insidious voice had whispered in her ear back then. Now, indeed, lost and alone, as she felt the truth of the fear that all those faces had shown, and the sparks of inquietude that danced in the brilliant eyes of the Valar themselves, the thought came back to her mind with a destructive vengeance.

Would the proud Broideress wish her lost before she married Finwë? She was assaulted by remembrances of her son´s eyes, so much like his mother´s, staring at her in hatred.

He would want her lost. The intruder. She had no right.

Indis shivered. The darkness had become less pronounced now, or maybe her eyes had grown used to it like they had once grown used to the radiance of the lands of the Valar. Behind her, she thought she could hear a whisper, and she immediately turned back to find its source.

Nobody was there.

Do not pay heed to the voices of the Disembodied, Lord Námo had said. Indis forced herself to continue.

As she had been aimlessly moving her feet for a while, a sound of despaired wailing reached her ears. Feeling her heart brim with pity, and an urge to comfort the owner of such a grieved voice, she turned back, and even walked some steps in the direction of the sound.

"Where are you going?"

She froze. Someone was barring her way, a scowling man dressed as a hunter.

"Answer!" he urged her. She tried, in vain, to form words with her lips. The man shook his head in outraged disdain, and something in the unnatural speed of his move made a terrible realisation dawn in her mind.

Do not pay heed to the voices of the Disembodied.

"You should not be here!" he yelled behind her retreating steps. She ran, ran for a long time, until the fear of losing her way in the dark place as Mandos had said made her stop in her tracks.

"Indis!"

Surprised, she stood still. She hadn´t heard anyone approach this time.

A woman, whose face looked strangely familiar behind the horrible scars which marred it, was bending her head in grief in front of her. Indis stared at her, horrified. Who could have done this to her?

"Alas! I prayed I would never have to see you here. You belong under the sweet light of the stars, shaking your golden hair to the sound of music and laughter. You were so beautiful... Who is looking after us?"

Indis fled her, too, only to find a little girl smiling happily among the shadows.

"Indis! I knew you would come! I was so alone, waiting for you! Let´s play together again!"

This time, her frantic run did not stop until her knees gave way in exhaustion and she fell to the engulfing darkness. Her breath convulsed with sobs, which tore at her chest as she choked with her tears of horror, grief and pity.

That girl had been her childhood friend, in the remote region where people lost their way and never returned. She had left with her parents, in search for a better place to live beyond the High Mountains, and the song they had sung in their last night together kept hammering its notes into her mind with a merciless insistence.

The dead hunter had been right. She shouldn´t be here. The Valar had given their consent, but not their approval. She had only followed her pride, her unholy desire for something that wasn´t meant to be, and this would be her punishment until the end of Arda.

Still, even at the same time that those thoughts made her way into her feverish mind, she felt herself rebelling against the very idea. Why would she be punished? There was no unholy desire in her heart. She had loved Finwë since the first time she had laid eyes on him, since she was a girl feigning to fall asleep on his lap to have him hold her for a little longer. She had loved him always, even after he betrayed her adolescent feelings and left her behind for the elusive flame in the Broideress´s eyes. Enough to wait forever, enough to grieve at the pain in his eyes when his family was shattered, and vow to make him happy again.

Enough to walk the Houses of the Dead for his sake.

It was just as she had this thought, that she suddenly realised that two piercing black eyes were watching her crumpled form in disdain.

o-o-o-o-o-o

She was small of stature yet regal, as she had ever been in life. A cloak, set in beautiful silver embroideries, fell down her back and into the darkness –could it be an illusion conjured by the dead, Indis thought dazedly, or had she been the first to make threads out of mist?-, and unbraided tresses shrouded a thin oval face where eyes whose light had been quenched forever gaped openly like deep pits of blackness.

It was those eyes, Indis realised with a start, the only thing that gave her away as a disembodied spirit. Asides from them, she looked like the proud queen of the Noldor, the same that she had admired, avoided, and, sometimes, in her darkest and most secret hours, resented.

"Fair Indis." she heard her greeting, in a soft and eerily gentle voice that did not reach their frozen coldness. Wondering if she was being mocked, Indis heaped an armful of her courage and forced herself to stand up.

"Míriel the Broideress."

"I remember the first time that we met." the Queen´s fëa continued after a brief pause, absently reminiscing. "You ran to me with wobbly legs, and refused to let me go, holding to my knee until I gave you a bright cloth, a dress or a painted toy."

Indis nodded tenuously. The early feeling that she was being mocked evolved into yet another unpleasant sensation; that the other woman was using subtly chosen words in order to grow in height again, over a pair of eyes widened in childish awe. She tried to break free from the net of remembrances and images that was being woven over her.

Míriel´s spirit was ancient, much older even than Finwë. Nobody knew how many times she had woken to see the light of the stars before the Eldar arrived to the Blessed Realm, but Indis had heard a rumour which made her one of the Unbegotten of legends. After the Valar had assured them that no Quendi had awoken at Cuiviénen without a spouse at his side, the rumour had lost its credibility, yet she knew that many of the Noldor still kept clinging to it out of a stubborn feeling that the mystery that their Queen was could not be explained otherwise. Be it with the son she bore, who grew up –they said- burning with the flame of the One; be it with her death, the sole one to take place in the Immortal Lands and still, somehow, deep and irrevocable like no other, or even with her very birth under the stars, the existence of the woman in front of her seemed to have always challenged the fathomless wisdom of the Powers of Arda.

This thought made Indis uneasy.

"Now, you are a woman, lady of the Vanyar. There is radiant gold in your hair and in your song." Míriel continued, before her voice changed abruptly and became cutting like the steel of swords. "Do you think that you can replace me?"

Indis reeled back, as if she had been struck. Pallor crept over her features, and she was forced to blink at the vertiginous speed at which the reflection of Míriel´s hröa –it was nothing else, she forced herself to remember, nothing else than this- was changing in front of her eyes. The thin traits of her face twisted into a proud expression, her lips curved in an enigmatic smile, and her eyes became bright again with the powerful flame which had lived in her before she died.

Indis felt a scorching burn of dismay, ashamed for not being able to stare back at her with the same light. She felt small and inadequate, a woman who did not have the skill to embroider figures that seemed to come to life as they were made - who was not older than what anyone could remember, who had no dark hair flowing down her shoulders, who was not Míriel the Broideress, the only rightful wife of Finwë and queen of the Noldor.

The intruder. Those had been her son´s words.

"I..." she whispered in a defensive, trembling voice, refusing to meet her eyes. Not even her own ears could hear the words stammered by her mouth, as all the speeches she had carefully rehearsed fled from her mind in an unexpected turn. "I... would try." Ashamed, she realised how pitiful it had sounded, and grabbed a fold of her cloak in a twisted grip as she made a new attempt. "I will try!"

Míriel smiled.

"Those words imply that you do not know the answer yourself." she concluded in relentless logic. "That you, the one who is claiming the right to take my place before the Valar, before Finwë - before myself even-, do not know whether the outcome will be worth the price we have paid, or whether failure will doom you and the man we both love to everlasting unhappiness."

Stung, Indis lowered her head. Vivid images tried to invade her brain, but not with the fierce, unexpected onslaught of true foresight, and neither with the warm and gentle touch of the Valar´s minds whenever they showed their wisdom to the most beloved among the Eldar. It was an insidious, numbing fog which clouded her mind, forcing her to watch herself waste away in grief, alone among strangers who watched their new usurping Queen with suspicion, unable to find a love that matched hers in her husband´s eyes, forever tied to the past, and followed everywhere by the scornful glance of Míriel´s son until she wished she could, too, come to dwell in Mandos´s Halls to escape the living blasphemy that she had become. Out of an instinct which had developed through long years of love and trust, she called to Manwë and Varda for help, then her lips froze as she remembered that no one would hear her in the Houses of the Dead.

But there was one Power- a silver, humid light which could hear her plea. Slowly yet surely, Indis felt the sway of those visions start to weaken under Míriel´s slight smile, and then she began to see other things as well. There was a woman whose cheeks were flushed with happiness, and she realised that the woman was herself. In front of her, Finwë was holding a small child with dark hair, whose features were a perfect mirror of his own as there wasn´t another in Arda. The child babbled a word at him, his little mouth contorted by the effort, and his father´s eyes twinkled in joy and pride.

The golden-haired Vanya inhaled a sharp gasp of breath.

"I will not fail." she said, able to withstand the dark glance again. There would be joys and sorrows in her path, she thought, but wasn´t such a thing true for every being in Arda? She remembered something that Ingwë had said once about their friends who had stayed in their old homes, and how, for them, to tread the same paths and sing to the same stars which had watched over their birth was worth renouncing the light of the Trees, the love of the Valar and the fair land of Aman.

If she could only give Finwë a child, she thought, she would be willing to renounce almost everything.

Míriel´s fëa retreated a step into the shadows, her threat lessened by the new clarity in Indis´s feelings. Something was different in her face now, a tense expression that seemed almost... frightened?

"I have a son." she said in a low voice. The Vanya stared at her, shocked at the sudden vulnerability in her tone.

"Yes." she nodded, tentatively. "I know."

Before she could say anything else, the tide of Míriel´s strong emotions changed once again. Her inquietude gave way to fierce intent, and a spark of determination glittered in her eyes as she set them on Indis.

"Do you know how I died?"

Confused at the question, Indis needed several seconds to understand it and realise its import. She swallowed deeply.

"I... was told that you... became weary of life after childbirth took your strength away from you."

Spoken this way, it almost seemed blasphemous, she thought. It was the curt official version; if she had detailed the myths and legends surrounding the tragedy of the Noldorin Queen, she would have been speaking for a long while. At times, she had felt curious about how would Finwë himself have told the tale if asked, but in the end she had always shied from bringing up such a subject in his presence.

Míriel shook her head impatiently.

"That is not what happened." An unvoiced question died in the Vanya´s lips as she wrung her bodiless hands, as if even as a disembodied spirit she longed for the feel of her skilled fingers. "No, ´tis not true. I gave him my Spirit of Fire. I passed my brightness unto him and became nothing but a shadow, bereaved of my flame, unable to live. I gave him my fëa, Indis."

Her first impulse was to protest, to tell her that this wasn´t possible. Then, she remembered loose tatters of some of the legends she had heard, the uncommon gravity in the countenance of the Powers as they told Finwë that no, that his wife would never return to life.

She saw Fëanáro, staring at her with the same burning, black eyes that had once stolen Finwë´s heart away from her, and commanded the Vanyar´s vague inquietude and the Noldor´s deep admiration.

"Míriel..." she whispered.

"Quiet!" the Broideress hissed. "If I consent to the breaking of our eternal bond between husband and wife, which no Elda has broken before... if I condemn myself to a life of burial in the Halls of the Dead, and then you, Indis" Her smile became sinister now, even while she pronounced her name, "you or your children ever usurp Fëanáro´s place before Finwë or the Noldor, I swear that we will rise with a great fire, and burn you and your family to ashes!"

Indis retreated, letting go of a great gasp. Míriel´s words scorched her with an almost physical wave of hatred, and she shook in fear, in horror of the woman who stood in front of her with a terrible smile in her face.

She had never heard such a thing from the mouth of an Elda; indeed, until today she would never have thought it could even be possible. It was a promise of destruction, a threat of murder such as those that, it was whispered, the fell creatures called Orcs had growled in the ears of the Elves before they slaughtered them in the darkness.

Suddenly, she imagined Míriel´s smile in Fëanáro´s face, as he pressed a blade against her chest to kill her in the name of an ancient curse. She saw her eyes flare in his as he threatened her children.

She saw Finwë stand aside.

"Swear it! Swear that you will never take our place!"

You are not an Elf, you monster! she thought. But in the midst of her repugnance and terror, something prevented her from uttering the words aloud. It was a gentle prodding in her mind at first, and then it became stronger, as if a familiar voice was whispering something in her ear.

Little by little, Indis brought herself to look at Míriel´s face again: at her features, twisted by a fey emotion, and her tight lips curved in a threatening grimace. As her eyes trailed upon them, touched by a different perception, she became able to see what was beneath.

She saw the anguish, the consuming grief of a woman who would be severed from her family forever, while another would take her place in the heart of her husband. She saw a mother who was leaving her son alone, bereaved of protection in a house that would be filled with the offspring of another woman.

And then, she finally remembered the name of the Power who could hear the pleas of the children of Ilúvatar, even in the Houses of the Dead.

"I swear it, Míriel," she said, filled with compassion. "I swear it to you."

Míriel nodded, covering her astonishment –her defeat?- with gratitude. When she realised that this was a form of humiliation, she fell silent, and her features became unreadable.

For an eternity of time, unmeasurable by the count of the Eldar who worked, sang, loved and laughed under the light of the Trees outside, no other word was spoken. When at last the silence was broken, it was Míriel who did it, and it was to voice a strange request.

"Sing to me, Indis."

The Vanya covered her surprise in a blink, and prepared herself to comply, glad at the tenuous peace that had been established between them. Unlike that time when she had tried to sing to drive away her fear of darkness, her song rose bright and melodious above the shadows of Mandos. It was a song of unconditional love for her new home that awaited her with mistrust, for the man who had been bound to another, for the children they would have and for the son of Míriel, who hated her.

As she was reaching the middle of her clear melody, her eye caught the silvery gleam of tears in Míriel´s cheeks. Pain flew towards her in torrents, the pain of someone who would never be a part of this love and of those attempts to rebuild the family that was now lost to her.

Indis´s voice wavered, and she lowered her eyes, unable to continue. A spectral touch shook her with its frozen grip.

"Sing, Indis! It will be the last song I will hear until the end of Arda!"

So Indis sang, smothering her sobs of grief and pity that, once unlocked, could not stop. As the last note still floated over the thick shadows of the joyless land, her shaking knees gave way.

Míriel´s face became unreadable again, every trace of her tears carefully erased from the mist of her face.

"Now," she muttered, even as the lines of her features dimmed and receded from the Vanya´s sight, "go and sing to him."

Closing the Circle

Of Fëanor´s death and the final fate of the Broideress. Warning for extremely archaic notions of thought. Part IV of the Broideress Arc.

Read Closing the Circle

 

When the net began to close upon her, she struggled furiously, anguishedly. Her very fëa shook with her resistance, until she felt a constricting pain and realised that she was screaming.

Chest, Throat. Mouth. Her eyes darted around her wildly, and she saw white limbs in a heap on the floor.

She was cold.

o-o-o-o-o-o

Míriel had never imagined that it would be like this. She had wished, hoped to regain her body of old, the swift and precise tool of her every design. With it, she would have run to the Noldor, through the Great Sea or through the Grinding Ice, and saved her child. Nothing that she could attempt would have been impossible anymore.

Now, as she struggled to her feet in the dark chamber, she cried in frustration, and something wet was spilled over her cheeks like blood. She was still as void, as empty, as frozen as before. Her thin fingers could not grasp, her chest could not burn, and her naked feet felt the ominous cold of the stone floor.

Under the impassive glance of Mandos, Míriel bolted away. She ran through the shadows, leaving a painful train of disruption behind. The grieving and envious faces of the Disembodied passed her by in a blur of no consequence, though Finwë wasn´t among them.

o-o-o-o-o-o

When at last she stopped breathlessly on her tracks, her first instinct was to look up. There was a dark door in front of her, and a shiver shook her to the core as she recognised the forbidden threshold. She had seen it plenty of times in her long dreams.

Míriel knew that she should turn back. She knew that no living being was welcomed here, but her instinctive wish to flee was overpowered by the need to know and to see. Slowly, she laid a foot on the black stairs, then the other, until both of them made a full step. The door opened with a faint creaking, and she entered a warm, strangely welcoming darkness.

This hall had been the abode of the Hidden Lady before the Elves ever came to existence. The Weaver Queen, the Empty Seat in Mahanaxar, the Keeper of Fate and elusive spouse of Námo Mandos sat inside, building the tapestries which showed the doings and happenings of all living beings. At her side, three Maiar aided her in her task, and an empty chair stood among them like one of the many hanging threads that waited for what was to be.

Filled with an overwhelming feeling of reverence, the newly-reembodied fëa lowered her eyes to prevent them from guessing at the lines under the dark veil which covered the Valië´s face. Long fingers worked without pause, weaving threads with the crimson colour of blood, the flaring orange of fire, and the flawless black of darkness.

Míriel could not measure the time that she spent here, the black edge of her desperation forgotten. The subtle rustling noise filled her ears, and she fell in a trance while a tapestry fell over another – like drops of blood.

"Look." a soft voice whispered, and she lifted her eyes. Before she could set them on the last tapestry, however, an unbearable heat exploded in her chest, and Míriel fell to her knees in agony.

No!

A little child with bright eyes, born from the ashes of his mother. A flame burning fey, scorching, turning against him, burning fire.

"Look." the voice repeated, impassively. As she could, Míriel supported herself with both arms and obeyed. The tapestry was in flames.

Posessed by the frenzy of a forgotten need, the Broideress grabbed loom and thread with her shaking hands, and sat in the empty chair to weave. As she performed her task, she felt her old skill come back to her in crashing waves, filling the deep chasm of her heartache and strengthening the grip of her fingers. But the happiness, the delight in her gifts was now gone, replaced by a sombre feeling of purpose.

The tapestry fell on the heap with a soft, sliding sound, showing a cloud of dark ashes scattered by the cold wind of the North. And then, Míriel began to weep.

Had this been the reason why she had been prevented from going to save him? Had he been already doomed, when she left the shadows of Mandos for his sake?

Had he been burning, her precious, her brilliant son, since she first held him in her limp arms?

The Keeper of what Had Been, Was and Would Be shook her head.

"I do not invite you to sit at my side, because you are already sitting." the voice whispered in her ear. "I do not invite you to weave, because you are already weaving."

Míriel stared in puzzled grief at her hands, which kept weaving threads of death though her mind was elsewhere, and her eyes were clouded by tears. And she understood the Weaver´s words; because she was not the one who was weaving.

The Valië´s hands cut the last thread of a tapestry which showed her taking her rightful place at her side, all attachments lost, and all joy gone from her eyes.

"Remembrance." the voice said, and one of the handmaidens, who had been working diligently as if she hadn´t ever seen or heard her, bowed her head. "Reflection. Repetition." The second and third, sitting in front of her, bowed in turn, and only then, the veiled eyes stopped and stared at her for a timeless second.

"Impotence."

She bowed.

And so it was that Impotence wove the Doom of the Noldor with her own fingers, and none among her people ever laid eyes upon her again.