Learning to make a fire by Lyra

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Learning to make a fire

I hear my father’s cheerful voice: “A few days away from the city, won’t that be lovely? Just the four of us, and the mountains and forests and rivers. Just think of all the new things you can learn!”

I am learning new things all the time. I don’t see why we have to go out to the mountains and forests and rivers for more learning. I have learned how to read and write, and how to make quills and black ink; I am learning to do arithmetics, and to draw faces and animals and paint them with the colours my mother mixes for me; I know how to clean plates and sweep the floor; I can carve sticks with the knife my father gave me for my last begetting-day; I can run and swim and climb trees and walls, and I can stay on a horse if it doesn’t run too fast. That’s quite enough learning, I think, at least until next year, when I am old enough to begin learning the basics of Father’s craft in the forge. If anyone needs to do learning, it’s my little brother, Cáno, who can hardly speak and hardly walk, and certainly he’s too little to learn things I supposedly don’t know yet.

I say so.

Father laughs. “Yes, you are a very learned child indeed, my dear. But there are different teachings that are hard to hear in a city like this, and quite easy to learn out in the woods. You’ll see what I mean. And it will be a nice little adventure to tell your friends about, won’t it? We’ll live like our forefathers when they awakened in Cuiviénen.”

I scowl. Father knows, of course, that I love the stories from Cuiviénen. Even now, when I really don’t want to go, the thought of Cuiviénen makes something in my stomach flutter, something drawing me out to the wild forests and waters. I think it isn’t fair of Father to mention Cuiviénen just now.

“But can’t we wait another week?” I try.

The smile disappears from Father’s face. His lips grow thin, as if he has to press them tight together so something he holds in his mouth cannot escape. “No,” he finally says, “we really shouldn’t. Now is the loveliest season, Nelyo, full of little flowers and birds and young animals. It is not yet too dry, but it isn’t rainy anymore either. If we wait too long, everything will be different. I want you to see the forest in its spring. Do you understand?”

No, I don’t see the big deal. I can see spring right here in our garden if I want to. And besides…

“But we’ll miss Uncle Arafinwë’s begetting-day feast!” I protest, and see something glint in Father’s eyes.

“Yes,” he says. “But Arafinwë will come of age next year, and that’ll be a much better feast. And,” the next part he says very strangely, between clenched teeth, “I can’t be excused from attending then.” He sounds normal again now: “This year we go into the woods, and next year we go to the feast. That is fair, is it not?”

I suppose it is. It’s just that a year is so terribly long!

But Father is what mother calls “adamant” now, and he won’t be reasoned with. What’s worse is that Mother gets thin lips too when I ask her to postpone our journey. “Everything has been packed and prepared,” she says. “There’s no going back now. Your father thinks that it will be a good experience for you.” She smiles in the way that I have seen Father smile at Uncle Nolofinwë: The corners of his mouth move up, but you can see that the heart isn’t in it. That’s how mother looks now. “Think of all the new things you’ll learn!” she says, and then she begins feeding Cáno, who needs to learn eating on his own, too, and I know she’ll be distracted by his antics and won’t listen to me anymore.

- - - 

We have been in the woods for days now, and each of them – and every night – has been rainy. Not the summery kind of rain that comes and goes quickly, but the kind that starts and goes on and on forever. I like to hear that kind of rain drum on the roof when I am reading at home, sitting by the hearth or lying in bed. I don’t like having it soak my cloak and my tunic and my boots and my skin. I certainly don’t like having to walk for miles and miles in this rain, but that’s just what Father made us do. “It’s just a little spring shower,” he said, “it’ll pass.”

That was three days ago.

He also said, “Soon we will be in the forest, where the leaves will keep off the rain.” And that worked for a while, but now the leaves are wet, too, and they’re dripping water all the time. I am cold and wet and angry, and Cáno is crying and screaming and won’t stop, and I think Mother is angry too although she is only talking to Cáno, trying to appease him. Father, on the other hand, turns to me with a grin on his face. “What do you think, Nelyo, should we build a little hut?”

I give him my best glare. “I think we should go home,” I say.

“Ah, we could do that,” he says, cheerfully, “but how long do you think that would take?”

“I don’t know,” I say grimly.

“Have you kept count of the days?”

I try to put more strength into my glare, because he seems not to have noticed it. “Three days,” I say, “and two nights.”

“Three days and two nights,” Father repeats. “So if we were to take the same road back, how long would that likely take us?”

“Three days and two nights,” I say sullenly. “Or maybe three nights and two days.”

“Very good!” says Father, cheerfully. “Do you want that? Walk on for three nights and two days?”

This is a trick, of course. My legs are hurting from the walking and I'm cold because my clothes are wet, and I am tired, too. No, I do not want to walk on.

“Or we could rest here,” Father says, “and build a nice hut to keep the rain out. Would you prefer that?”

I nod without enthusiasm.

- - - 

Father and I have to do all the building alone, because Mother has to take care of Cáno, who is still screaming. If I did that much screaming I think I’d be hoarse already, but Cáno has a very enduring voice. Father says he wouldn’t be at all surprised if Cáno grew up to become a great singer. I wish he could sing now instead of screaming like that.

We collect fallen branches and drag them to the place Father has chosen for our shelter. He wants us to put walls between four trees that form a kind of quadrangle. It is not a square because one of the trees has grown too far away from the others, but when I ask Mother what that kind of quadrangle is called, she says “Good grief, Maitimo, that really doesn’t matter right now.” I find that strange because they told me we were here so I could learn new things, and now I’m trying to learn and she won’t help me. I kick the stupid tree that has grown too far away from the other three (which form a nice triangle). Just then Father returns with his arms full of reeds, and now his shirt is muddy on top of wet. “What did that poor tree ever do to you?” he asks me, dropping the reeds on the ground. “It doesn’t form a square,” I say, and feel rather stupid, “and I don’t know what that kind of quadrangle is called, and I’m supposed to learn something but Mother won’t tell me.”

“Maitimo, really,” Mother snaps, but Father laughs. “Good thing you only kicked the tree, and not your mother,” he says, and stoops to draw a small quadrangle in the mud on the ground, like the one formed by the trees. “Does this remind you of anything?” he asks me.

“Yes. The way the trees stand,” I say.

“Yes,” Father says, “but anything else?”

I squint at it. It doesn't look familiar – neither like a square, which is shaped like a small pillow, nor like a rectangle, which is shaped like a table – until I remember the kites Father and Mother built for Aulë's feast-day last year. “It looks a bit like one of those kites,” I say. “You know, the ones you made when it was so windy.”

“Doesn’t it?” Father says. “And that's just what it's called - a kite.” He draws a line through the muddy triangle. “And do you see what it’s made up of?”

“Two triangles, of course,” I say. “But they’re two different triangles. But they’re both equilateral,” I suddenly realise. Father smiles, and I can see I found the right answer, because he has a special proud smile for when I do well at my lessons.

“Exactly,” he says, just as I expected. “Excellent, Nelyo. This is not what I meant when I said you’d learn a lot here, but I can see you grasp more chances than even I would have foreseen.” He kisses my brow. I feel a little proud, but I’m still wet and cold and tired. It takes far too long to build that stupid hut, so long that Cáno has fallen asleep by the time we're done, and what good is a hut that keeps the rain away when we’re wet already? It doesn’t even have walls everywhere: the smaller triangle has only a roof.

“There must be an opening somewhere,” Father says, “because we’ll want a fire to warm ourselves, and if the smoke can’t get out, we won’t be able to breathe.”
”We won’t be able to have a fire anyway,” I point out, “because there’s no dry wood.” At home we have a shed for drying firewood, and that’s full of logs that already look and feel dry but aren’t good for burning because they take long to catch fire and only burn with lots of smoke. The wood in the forest does not even look dry. We took some firewood from home along, to avoid having to use fresh wood, but everything in our packs is as wet as our clothing. The bread we’ve been eating these past days was disgusting, it was so soaked, even though it had been wrapped in waxed paper. How should the firewood be less wet?

But Father smiles again. I know this smile, too: It means that he knows a secret he is going to share. “Do you see that tree over there?” he says, pointing into the dripping forest. The tree has smooth, white bark broken occasionally by rougher dark patches. “The birch?” I ask him, and he nods. “Go and look for birch-wood,” he says, “and when you come back, I’ll show you how to light a fire.”

When I come back, laden with wood, he is no longer smiling; I suspect there have been Words between my mother and him. They are sitting too far apart, and Mother is fussing with Cáno even though he’s still asleep. She looks up when I come in and drop my load, and gives me a little smile to show that she is not angry with me even if she doesn’t say anything.

Father has a tinder-box, which is made of metal and keeps the tinder safe and dry. Now he makes a heap of tinder and arranges the wood I brought around it. Usually he just puts it in a roughly circular heap; this time he stacks the twigs, two by two, until they form a kind of chimney. “See what I did?” he says, making sure that I’ve been paying attention.

“Yes,” I say, “but the wood is still wet.”

“It is,” he says, “but it is birch-wood, which burns anyway.”

It does. He lets me use his flintstone to light the tinder, which I am not allowed to do at home because I am still too young. Now he shows me how to strike sparks from the stone. It takes a long time, and he asks whether I want him to light the fire, but I’m determined to learn it. Finally I manage to land some sparks in the tinder, and after a moment the thin, wet twigs above it begin to sizzle and smolder; a bit later they have lit the stronger branches. The fire burns with a strange whistling sound, and it pops and sizzles and smokes terribly, but it gives off warmth. Soon it is big enough for cooking tea and for drying our clothes. Father points to a piece of wood, where some dark liquid bubbles and hisses on the surface. “Look, Nelyo,” he says, “that is birch-tar. It’s what makes the wood burn even in this wet state. If you cook it without air, you get a sticky liquid that repels water when it is dried.”

“So could we dip our clothes in it so they keep us dry on the way home?” I ask hopefully. Father laughs. “Unfortunately not. It grows hard when it dries; you wouldn’t be able to wear your clothing anymore. You can use it to make seams waterproof, though, on cloaks or boots.”

“Isn’t that how the Teleri waterproof their ships?” Mother asks, and I can see Father’s relief because she’s talking to him again.

“It is,” he says. “The Teleri were the first to discover and use birch-tar.”

I look at the bubbling stuff amidst the flames. It looks nasty, like boiling mud. Whenever some of it drips into the lower reaches of the fire, the flames surge up, fierce and bright. It whistles, too. Where it has boiled for a while, it grows viscous, the bubbles surviving longer before they pop audibly. I wonder how such a dark liquid can hide in the white birch-wood. The fire smells strangely; partly like burning wet straw, and partly like oil, and partly sweet, as if somebody wanted to candy fruits and forgot the pan on the hearth. It’s very unlike the coal fire in Father’s forge, or the beech fires in our house. Those smell of dry wood and heat. This here smells of something black and wet and smoky. It makes me cough, and Father tells me to sit back so I don’t breathe too much of the smoke.

 

* * *

 

Strange how smells can trigger memories. I had forgotten that miserable hiking trip, and the argument that arose from it, and the cold Macalaurë brought home: I had forgotten it so completely that I didn’t even know I had forgotten it. Now my nose is full of the oily, wet, black, sweetish stench of burning birch-wood, and the memory has returned. I hold it before my mind’s eye, wonderingly. That was, what, the year before Arafinwë’s coming of age? Forty-three years, then. Not long at all. Already it feels like a different life.

Later - much later - I will read in the chronicles written by some Nolofinwëan scribe that we spilled oil and spirits on the ships to prepare them for burning. We didn’t. I have been carrying several of those barrels on shore myself; they were full and sealed, and we used their contents later. The burning was not prepared; none of us (I think) knew that it would be done until Father gave the order. We had planned nothing. And he, of course, knew that there was no preparation necessary; it had been done years ago, when Telerin craftsmen had boiled birch-tar and smeared the cracks between the birch-wood boards with it until the ships were sure to swim. All it took to light the fire was a well-thrown torch.

I still have mine; I did not throw it. I will not. Later on, it will betray my refusal – my treason, as he’ll call it – to Father, and we will have Words, and then never speak to each other again. For now I stare into the fire until my eyes water, not quite certain whether it is the smoke or the sight of those pretty ships burning that have brought the tears about. I cannot see the birch-tar boiling and bubbling this time, but I can hear the sizzling, the whistling and the occasional pop, and the rushing and surging of the flames. Even with the water and the cliffs between me and the fire I feel the heat acutely, making my skin prickle and sting. Aside from the smell and the whistling sound this is nothing like the small campfire in the sodden wood. This is not a nurturing fire; it is a devouring rage. The flames are higher than the cliffs, the smoke is blacker than the night. Findekáno must see it on the other side of the sea, I think, and Nolofinwë will know that he can no longer follow his half-brother, that they have left their homes in vain and have to return, disgraced. I see their faces before me, imagine the shock, the hurt, the anger. I see my ten-year-old self, cold and wet, stare into the flames of the first fire he lit himself, and I feel ashamed of what has become of us. I wonder whether Father, too, remembers the cave-like hut in the forest now. I wonder whether Macalaurë wrinkles his nose and wonders why the stench seems familiar.

I can no longer explain the water in my eyes by the light and the heat; I am crying openly. It does not matter. I doubt anyone is looking at me. The flames are compelling; we cannot avert our eyes, no matter how much they sting and water. There’s more than just the ships burning here tonight. We have learned how to make a fire. We are burning our lives; we are burning the past. We are burning everything that the loss of the Trees has left us. From now on, we will be strangers to ourselves.

Chapter End Notes

As this story takes place in Valinor, long before the characters took on Sindarin names, all names are given in Quenya; for reference:

Fëanáro = Fëanor

Nolofinwë = Fingolfin

Arafinwë = Finarfin

Nelyafinwë/Nelyo/Maitimo = Maedhros

Cánafinwë/Cáno/Macalaurë = Maglor

 - - -

I have used the terms "night" and "day" in this story although of course there are no "nights" or "days" in our sense in Valinor at the time. I am aware that this may cause some raised eyebrows, but I found it far too unwieldy to speak of "hours of Telperion" and "hours of Laurelin" or something of the kind instead. Assuming that the Elves in this story would be doing all conversation in Quenya anyway, and Quenya would doubtlessly have concise, brief words for "the silver stretch of time" and "the golden stretch of time", let's just say that I translated these terms into tolerably close English terms along with the rest of the dialogue. ;-)

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I did not invent birch tar, the stuff really exists. It's been produced and used as glue, waterproofing and fire accelerant for millennia (the earliest findings date 80,000 years back). And it's a convenient explanation for why those Telerin ships burnt so easily...

I learned birch wood burns even when wet when I was in the Girl Scouts. I did not check whether that really works, or how wet is too wet, though.

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