A Greater Fire by Elleth

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Alqualondë: Silence

As the source material keeps most events in Valinor after the Darkening a secret, this chapter cannot yet be considered more AU than my other stories, but if you are reading carefully, you may just spot foreshadowing in some places.

This chapter, probably, may be considered more of a piece to set the mood for the rest of the story than anything else, but I would dearly love to hear impressions, concrit and other feedback. Thank you.

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I – Alqualondë: Silence

 

More than before, during the time of the Trees, Alqualondë; had become a town of light. Before, lanterns had painted silver drops onto the sea, and rays through the Calacirya had cast a warm twilight while the stars blinked faintly overhead.

She shook her head sadly, marveling that there even was a thing as “Before”- a new idea, a new word that had entered into the language soon after the Darkening, for the Blessed Realm was no longer as changeless as... before. There had been a time before Valinor, a time before the Trees, a time before the world even - but never, until now, a time before the Darkening.

Her gaze wandered along the shadowy beach. From her vantage-point north of the town, through the mist, it looked as though a blanket lay spread over Alqualondë - a blanket of light: The lanterns in the havens still shone, and the stars overhead burned brighter now. But contesting that colder light were countless crystals and candles of all shapes and sizes that outlined every street. Narrow footpaths only remained in the middle of them, so close to the little fires that the heat was palpable. Molten wax made some ways treacherous, and the children were forbidden from running lest they slipped and fell. Guttering torches were fastened on walls and balconies overhead, mirrored and multiplied in pearl-and-silver ornaments, in windows and in silver domes. And upon the sea. Always upon the sea.

The light painted the town orange-red and warm; at sharp odds with the cold silence that reigned. The Teleri had sung their last laments, and now they hardly spoke. Only the sea ever made any sound, a ceaseless murmuring concerto that threatened to send her into sleep when she listened for too long. Not comforted, but calmed, perhaps, by that very song, the people went about their work with quiet efficiency; and in silence they had handed her a spade and sent her to the beach when she had first arrived.

She had dug there until her muscles cramped and the tool slipped at last from exhausted fingers. Next to a long line of heaps covered in flowers, shells and pearls, six more open graves yawned now, pits of darkness in the pearly sand. They were patient, she thought, and pulled her scarves closer around herself as she walked to the water. Shadowy waves rolled in and licked her ankles, kissed their way up her lower legs and touched her knees, rose higher in a sudden surge and briefly rested, like encircling arms, around her hips. And they were the last. She had been here long.

She was tired, and the endless waters that rolled against the shore did not quench her weariness. Bone-weary, down-to-her-heart-exhausted, her posture slumped. Her body toppled forward, the sea swallowed her up. The quiet splash hardly broke the silence. Like blood, her red hair bobbed and billowed in the surf, startling against the foam.

Her lips opened. From between her teeth (through that little nick on her upper teeth from when she had tried to bite a painted apple of stone when she was very young, the one that showed only when she smiled, and that she worried with her tongue when she was nervous) a bubble of air escaped and burst the surface.

Something like a heavy sigh, perhaps the sound of great conches, rose up from the sea. She did not feel it when a wave cast her ashore again, and tendrils of water lingered around her - a moment only - and with a caress slipped back to whence they had come. Indifferent again, the sea ebbed and swelled just as before.

* * *

“We have no need of sculptors, Nerdanel. It is time for you to return to Tirion.”

That was Eärwen's voice, fine and filmy like her silver hair, and stronger than it should be. She, too, had lost her family to a madman's cause. But she was queen now, not only a woman bereft of those she loved. Her father and brothers lay dead in three of the graves and her husband and children had departed, but she had a purpose and a responsibility that helped her bear the grief.

“I would redress more of what my family did.”

“There is no more to redress. The dead are buried and the quays are cleaned of all blood. The slain will in time return and make whole what was torn apart.”

“Teach me to weave. I can work wood.”

“The ships were ours only. Though you are blameless, my people will not let a Noldo work on their ships more than a Noldo would let the Lindai work his gems. I cannot allow you, Nerdanel.”

She surrendered at last, after a stretch of silence and hard looks. The teacup she clenched was scalding her fingers an angry red, but she held on. She had known heat before. She took a sip and welcomed the burning on her tongue and down her throat, for it rendered her incapable of speech but for a moment.

“At least then let me stay.” The rest of the words she had swallowed with the hot, sweet liquid. It had made it easier. Even if I have no more purpose here, I will not dwell in so dark a city, and one so full of ghosts of old.

“What of your father? You will be missed.”

“He knows the feeling of my absence and is not so torn by it as you believe. I lived apart from him for many years, and will at times return.”

Eärwen spread her hands and bowed her head, her voice soft in what – apology?

“As a sister you shall be to me.You may keep this room, or come into the palace as you wish.”

A small light flickered into Nerdanel's eyes, one that might have turned into a smile, but died before it did. She cast the blanket aside and rose. Her dress clung, still moist and salty from the sea, to her body. For a moment it seemed to Eärwen that it curled upon the ground like waves.

“I will come to the palace with you.”

* * *

The palace was a complex structure of interlacing buildings, dazzling chambers of pearl carved into the cliffs on which it stood, and many open terraces that overlooked the sea. Vines snaked around pillars of ivory, obscured silver roofs, and bloomed, despite the darkness, with a sweet, intoxicating scent. The corridors Nerdanel walked were twisted and twisting, with tapestries on the walls and carvings in the rock. A blink, a half-movement of the head, and the stylized lines of waves seemed to play upon the stone. Fishes that glimmered in the light of the torches seemed to leap and accompany her, until her hand brushed it and instinct told her that there were spots of mistaril in the walls, shaped by artful hands to create these illusions.

The rooms she was given were spacious and beautiful. Here a rock wall was inlaid with glass that had paintings behind, so realistic she hardly knew the difference if not for the light. Real windows in their place (if not for the fact that they would have faced inward into the cliffs) would look toward the west and Tirion, and that was what the paintings showed: A white city far-off on a green hill between the mountains, and further still, all faded into a gold-and-silver mist. The shadow of the painted city lay heavy upon the eastern side of painted Túna, and Nerdanel drew the curtains closed to cover it.

“These rooms were Arafinwë's. I thought that you might like them.”

She murmured her assent, but rather looked to the balconies, where, through a mass of pearls on strings, she could see the sea sway as though in slow dance with itself.

“Nerwen made these curtains for her father as a gift one day. She spent weeks diving and nearly drove our cooks to madness by bringing home more clams each and every day. Her father finally told her to take them to town and sell them...”

Nerdanel still looked to the sea, but she sat beside Eärwen as her voice faltered.

“All my wisdom offers little comfort in this matter,” she said. “Your family will in time return, that I know, but more I cannot yet say nor see.”

“All your wisdom amounts to nothing, Nerdanel! Words will not return them to me!”

“Nor mine to me. Little comfort words may be, but comfort nonetheless, if you allow it.”

The room settled back into the silence that had become so prevalent here that even those brief words seemed to stir an angry muttering echo in the air.

Eventually, still wordless, Eärwen rose and left on silent feet.

* * *

It was in that way that many days passed in the palace: In silence. Nerdanel, day by dark day and little by little, felt her former restlessness abate. With few to speak to, she easily slipped into the custom of silence herself. When she sat across Eärwen during dinner they said nothing, consumed their meal in silence (sometimes they ate nothing and just sat until a servant came, also wordless, to take the plates away) and went their separate ways.

It had not been long after her arrival in the palace that Nerdanel had discovered a narrow stairway down her balcony. Nothing more than rough steps hewn into the rock, withered by saltwater and overgrown with lichen and algae (it made them slippery and dangerous, and the first time she had gone down she had scraped her fingers on the rock in trying to break her fall) they led down to a slip of sand no more than a few steps in length and breadth. To this little beach Nerdanel retreated often, and more often during the time the Teleri accounted night. When, curled-up in her bed, she found no rest, she walked instead by the water's edge, and laying down at times on the sand she slept, often with the very water as a gentle blanket. Upon waking it was easy to pretend that the moisture on her cheeks was only spray, and the dull throbbing in her head but an echo of the sea that had invaded her dreams.

If indeed she did as her husband had predicted – dropping vain tears in the thankless sea – at least she could be certain that none saw.

None could reach the beach save across Nerdanel's balconies, or by boat. High cliffs fenced the little cove, and she doubted that any would see this spot worth landing, for nothing more than sand and a heap of wet stones at the far end of the beach. She had perched there often, and watched the crabs scurry about her bare feet. Sometimes she would be startled into laughter against her will when one crawled across her toes or brushed the underside of a dangling foot, but those were brief moments and fleeting. The laughter, too, was. The sea soon swallowed it up, and what settled was the same as always in this town: silence. Sometimes she welcomed it.

In this silence, though, there was a measure of comfort. It was not the hush of no words left to say that she experienced with Eärwen, nor the silence that was a mix of anger, hostility and grief when she passed into Alqualondn5; and crossed the paths of other elves. She had taken to wearing a dark shawl over her hair as the Telerin women did, perhaps to signify grief (she did not know and could not ask), but she was taller and stouter than any in Alqualondë, her figure marked by smithwork and childbearing, not by swimming and sailing and dancing on the shores. Nerdanel was easily recognized, and her presence only evoked hushed words and whispers. “The kinslayer's wife. Their mother.” She went seldom into town.

On her beach she had solitude and no need nor desire to speak. That thought too, had made her laugh once – speak to whom? she had wondered. The crabs or myself? Surely either would make animated partners for discussion. After, she had thought (once more in silence, startled by her very thoughts) that she was finally losing her mind. If with that came also the loss of her memories, it would surely prove a blessing – but if she indeed had lost her mind, she did not forget: In her hours of vigil by the water she always looked to the East.

In silence.

And so time passed. She knew not (nor cared) how long her stay had been, for there was little that ever differed in her days – certainly not the darkness, the silence and the sea – but when a shout from above rang across the beach, she jumped with unexpected, not-quite-kindled hope.

“Nerdanel!”

 

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Chapter End Notes

I must confess I do not know whether or not Olwë and his sons (in the published Silmarillion Finarfin was said to have befriended them, so they must have existed, at least) died in Alqualondë. For plot purposes I did assume that much, as Eärwen will need her father's title and office in a later chapter.

A note on words:

Lindai: According to "Quendi and Eldar" a name, or one of the names, the Teleri used for themselves. The Quenya form would yield Lindar, but as Eärwen is speaking of her own people here, I found the form quite appropriate.

Mistaril: An attempted reconstruction of Sindarin "Mithril". The Teleri were said to have had skilled silversmiths, and though Olwë's palace is said to have been made of pearl, that hardly rules out the possibility of other materials being used.