Do Not Go Gentle by Elleth

Do Not Go Gentle

Read Do Not Go Gentle

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

A drop of sweat ran from Father’s forehead and pooled in the corner of his left eye. Irritated, he blinked – not even that. A twitch of the lashes, a slight wrinkling of his nose, and his lips parted as though even those miniscule movements caused him pain. If he even still felt anything was another matter. He did not cry, at any rate, which for me had always been the prime expression of discomfort or pain. The squalling of six younger brothers during most of my formative years had done it, I suppose.

I knelt again, stiff-legged, and poured a little water into the half-open mouth, swallowing, at the same time, the growing lump in my own throat. It lay like a clump of iron in my stomach. My hands were shaking. Most of the water spilled down the side of father’s face, washing away the red smears at the corner of his lips. He coughed weakly, nobody had thought to hold his head up. A rattling, gurgling sound came from his chest, though that did not really describe the noise he made. Makalaurë had always been the best with sounds, he might have been able to give a more accurate description, but he sat down the slope on a rock, cradling our now-youngest brother who lay half in his arms and half sagged to the ground, like someone whose muscles and sinews had been cut. Ambarussa’s eyes and face were invisible to me, but his thoughts were easy enough to guess: Let not another of us be lost to fire.

Not yet, I wanted to say, but thought that if I opened my own mouth, nothing would come out. Nothing for comfort.

Father’s lips moved again. His teeth were stained red, I noticed, but fighting down another iron lump, I leaned closer nonetheless. If he wanted to speak, it was not my place to prevent him from it, and if he could not, was it not my place to give him voice, however much his words and mine might clash? Weren’t we the ones that speak with voices? Near-silence at the end of a life after so many fell words – in a way it seemed appropriate. But the decision was a moot point anyway. It was impossible to tell what Father was saying.

His hands, which up to that moment had lain inanimate at his sides, now began to move, stretching for the soot-blackened armour we had taken off him during a brief period of unconsciousness, to avoid causing him more pain. “Let me help you, Father,” I said. It was painful to see how slowly the blistered hands moved, the fingers barely bent, when one had seen them at work with frightening precision in the forge before. He pushed mine away. Barely so, a slight pressure against my palms to make his intentions clear, but it was enough. Stubborn as always, he had to do it himself, whatever ‘it’ was, despite the state he was in. But it was good. If he still had the strength to do this, perhaps he would recover.

Finally – clouds had gathered and darkened above us by the time he had achieved his objective, a domed black ceiling blotting out the stars - he pulled the eagle with the green gem free of its fastenings and held it out to me, although he could barely lift his arms far enough. My fingers closed around the outstretched wings, every feather etched in tiny detail into the silver. Curufinwë hovered by my shoulder with a torch; the glare caught in the green stone. Father beckoned to me, just the slightest nod of the head, and I leaned closer again.

“Help.” The word was barely a breath against my ear, not even enough to stir a strand of sweat-matted hair that stuck to my wet cheek. We had ridden far and come too late.

“I cannot, Father. I do not know how.”

All breath went out of me at the realisation that he might die, and I struggled for air – laughable, to think how he was suffering, and there I was, complaining, if only in my mind, about having the wind knocked out of me. “I do not know.” The half-lidded, fever-bright eyes were on mine, with the exact same look that had given me chills when I had rattled yet another delicate sensibility in Tirion and got summoned to our library. He would be seated in his carved chair and hold his silence for a while. Undoubtedly, my face always spoke volumes about my guilt, and my skin flushes too easily either way. Then – explain yourself.

The words jolted me more by their absence because I had so expected to hear them, but underneath the soot and grime the grey eyes still sought mine. Rituals and symbols were a comfort to people, Makalaurë had explained to me once during his studies, and it seemed this had progressed into one, of a sort. In a land where none died, how would you know to cope with grief? We were not used to it, and had to improvise, falling back to the known and the closest approximation. I still clutched the eagle. I had ordinarily given a shamefaced explanation and apology: Listening to the recounting of my deeds was hardly ever pleasant, and the tasks placed on me for punishment drab, frustrating and humbling. Only in a few cases I was released after nothing more than a stern talking-to. It would not be so easily solved this time: Father’s head lolled backwards on the ground, his eyes slid shut. In this light, a fresh trickle of blood from Father's mouth reminded me of the colour of dark cherry jam. The thought made my stomach churn. I had always liked dark cherry jam. A little red-flecked froth bubbled up as well. If he woke again, my refusal to help – I would have, if I could – would come back up between us.

If he woke again – it forced me to assess his condition more critically. It only occurred to me later that a simple ‘there is no Treelight’ might have been sufficiently explanatory for him to calm. The stone had only been tested thrice so far, once on the mare Tyelkormo had brought home broken-legged after an overeager hunt, the second time on our mother when she would not wake for a day after Curufinwë's birth even though he was squalling with hunger. Both times, the bright light from Ezellohar had been present. Father had tried to use the stone a third time in Formenos, far in the North, where the light of the Trees was weak and blocked by rows upon rows of hills that dark creatures lived in, and though it had delivered some scabbing over, the wound to his apprentice’s arm had to be treated by healer Estelindë still. And now the Trees were dead.

I do not want to recount the injuries Father suffered, perhaps because they were grave enough to account for the state he was in. I found it hard to accept that they were. He was my father, surely he would not be defeated by the large, taut, purpling bruise across his chest and the fact that even an alloy of Fëanárian steel could not withstand the thrust of a Valarauka’s sword into the stomach? Even now the stink of the outhouse brings back those moments – I do not like or want this association with my father’s struggle for life, but my mind allows for nothing else, among all the small, relatively minor wounds. The heat of the sword should have cauterized them, but the damage was done. He had nearly been run through, and the armour that should have protected him had nearly had him boiled alive. Elsewhere the skin was blistered from fire. On his palms were marks that suggested he had grasped one of the fiery whips and sought to tear it from its wielder, but it had burned right through the leather of his gloves and charred down to the bone. If he survived, he would not work again; he could barely move his hands as it was, and what kind of life would that be for him? We might cut Makalaurë’s tongue and vocal chords and taunt him by singing bawdy drinking songs as well as continuing to use our hands before Father’s eyes.

If he survived. It was a miracle that he still lived. Curufinwë, the least afraid of fire, had intercepted the final stroke that would have spared Father this suffering, and thrust his soot-blackened sword into the stony ground, laughing as the demons retreated. “Well, what now?” he had asked, at that point largely oblivious of father’s state, but no longer. The march had been in silence, a sped-up funeral cortege, with father’s first lieutenant Ailinello leading the former vanguard behind us as a shield against possible attacks from Angamando.

Father had given us the signal to halt halfway up the rough mountains the Grey-Folk called Ered Wethrin, lifting a hand to have us set the stretcher down. From the corner of my eyes I could see Carnistir’s hands clench and unclench even as he stood rigid, a dark figure against a darker sky, as though he was afraid to come closer. He was glaring the way we had come, Angamando only a smear of dark towers in the distance. Tyelkormo stood, for now, after pacing the perimeter of the small, bare plateau with the dog at his heels. I disliked them both looking so helpless, but I supposed I could not look very different.

Father was not, or no longer, unconscious. His lips opened again, a gesture we had already come to associate with the request for more water, but I still held the Elessar. This time it was Curufinwë who moved first and squeezed a few drops into the waiting mouth. They pooled and ran down father’s chin, and he made to wipe them off. “His skin feels like paper,” he said, and I almost laughed, nonsensically. It was much more uneven than that, with all the blisters. The thought struck, laughter died in my throat, thin yellow bile rising in its place. I hastily turned aside as I retched and spat, and watched the stuff seep into cracks of the rock. At nearly the same time, tears started into my eyes and went dripping down my face. I turned back. It would be any moment now, wouldn’t it?

“There is blood in his mouth. Is he bleeding inside?” Saying it, Curufinwë looked so much like father in my early memories – young – that I could have struck him to the back of his head, for no good reason, or perhaps for the idiotic question from one considered so smart. I wanted to, and would have, had not father’s eyes opened again this moment and found mine. I let my hand sink. “Yes,” I said, “his armour is also dented in the chest. His ribs may be broken. Perhaps they went into the lung. Or perhaps the sword – ” Always the voice of reason, but uncertain. I hated myself for it.

“My greetings, Estelindë,” Curufinwë said, in the same mocking-hurtful tone he had spoken in to his wife before marching off with young Tyelperinquar crying and struggling in his arms. “I had not seen you come with us. Do you maybe want to do what you came for? Heal our father? If not, give the stone to me and let me do it!” Father’s lips twitched. They were slowly turning blue, I thought, though in the shaky light I could not be certain. Curufinwë’s remark went unanswered, for that knowledge there was no need to refer to our healer, and she was not there. If she had been, I doubt even she could have helped him. I lacked the words and the skill, and my fingers remained firmly curled around the eagle's wings. It seemed important, somehow, to not let go.

It would not be long now. His breath was becoming more and more laboured. Curufinwë’s face was darkening as he knelt in my place and watched, and I lingered with the eagle in my hands. There was another treacherous lump in my throat. Tyelkormo and Carnistir stood; Makalaurë was down the slope with Ambarussa in his arms, still. I ought have called them, but knelt at Curufinwë’s side for the watch. Father was awake then, and though he did not speak through the piping, wheezing breaths, he was clearly aware of both of us and the stone I had placed on my knees, but his eyes were on Curufinwë most, more exhausted now. He might make it after all, I thought – let him stare at us - at me - all he wants, I will gladly recount my misdeeds and repent of the standing aside, of not coming to him sooner, or of everything I had or had not done, and face a thousand humbling tasks if only he lived – we were a hardy people, had survived the crossing in the storm and fought off a horde of Valaraukar. We had defeated fire and water, only to come to this? It could not be. We had made camp. Father had unfinished work to end, had only begun a superficial comparison of the features of Northern and Western Sindarin without ever seeing it applied or tested, had not regained the Silmarils. Who should lead the quest if not he?

That moment he stretched out his hands to us in another gesture, up, and I fumbled to lift my end of the makeshift stretcher we had built from spears and cloaks, but again Curufinwë was quicker, as he had been in reaching Father first, and giving him water. Now he slung Father’s arms around him, over his shoulders, grasping the wrists to keep him upright, and spoke something in his ear, too low for me to understand. Before it could gutter out, I picked up the torch he had let fall. The ground was wet from recent rain and mist rose from the stones.

Father stood. Curufinwë was still holding him securely, but he stood on his own legs, and together they tottered toward the edge of the plateau. I saw Makalaurë look up, and Ambarussa jumped to his feet with a cry that was almost joy, in expectancy of a complete, miraculous recovery, as he would tell me later. In truth Curufinwë was pressing a splayed hand to father’s stomach, and I did not want to look at what was between his fingers. Ambarussa meant to bolt past me, but I caught him in my arms instead, he did not have to see it. With the fire so close, darkness fell around us as Curufinwë and Father walked away further, becoming more obscured. The eagle-stone was still in my hand, and where there was no other light to be had, the stone was resourceful, beginning to glow very softly, barely so, deep within, as it bundled the light of the torch. Perhaps it would be enough to be efficient. I raised my hand and meant to call to them, and once again Curufinwë was first. “Brothers!”

Father was leaning heavily on him now, and clearly in pain. I could feel the sharp rocks underneath my feet as hurried to their side, releasing Ambarussa, who hung back uncertainly and would not dare go closer, seeing now that he had been mistaken. The precipice fell away to a steep drop and a spectacular view even in the dark. Makalaurë, Tyelkormo and Carnistir came silently, and stood in a semi-circle around us, Ambarussa with the torch in their middle, protected. I still grasped at the Elessar.

“You are killing him,” I said to Curufinwë under my breath, hissing into his ear. As though this was his fault and father was not dying already. I reached out to steady him and was startled to find the shirt sticky – not sweat but blood, brown in the soft green light from the stone. More was bubbling from his mouth, messily, as he was trying to speak. Curufinwë tilted his head in attention, and at last, to silence Father, laid a finger across his lips. I imagined he could not speak himself, choked up (for at this point he was crying openly), but found a moment later that he could.

“Be he foe or friend, be he foul or clean…”

Gradually we all fell into the Oath, half-chanting. The words still held the same alluring, hypnotic quality they had had in the dark square in Tirion. We all repeated them, and more, after Curufinwë, who spoke in Father’s place when Father no longer could. They looked nearly the same, and now their voices also were near-indistinguishable, the same timbre and quality and the sharp consonant sounds they preferred over the more docile majority. They had reached an understanding. Father’s eyes sought him again, ignoring me, and then flickered away to take in the landscape and Angamando in the distance. But while we spoke and laid curses on Moringotto, threefold and magnified by repetition, mingled voices and the hatred for the Marring of the world, the death of Grandfather Finwë, the loss of the Light, the Rape of the Silmarils, Father’s breathing stopped at last. In absence of the wheezing sound we had all listened for, our own voices died away. In the numb moment after, he slipped out of Curufinwë's grasp, slumped, and fell. This time, Curufinwë and I were both as quick, hands meeting beneath Father’s body before he hit the floor. His eyes had closed, hard lines around his mouth, blood, all unchanged, without some final gentle grace. And he was gone. Just like that. No more rebellion, against the Valar, Moringotto, death or otherwise. I wanted to tell him to, but could get no sound out. Another of those iron lumps in my throat, and my eyes still on our father's still form.

There was still a glow in him, strangely, beneath the skin, along the bones, red like fire lighting the hand cupped around it. It scared me and I nearly let go. Father’s head lolled on my shoulder, and although I would have sworn that he had bled himself dry of every fluid, from the corner of his left eye ran a few drops of tears or sweat that had pooled there, and seeped into my shirt.

Curufinwë had said his skin was like paper, and he was right in the end. Paper burned and crinkled easily, blackening as the flames caught and moved along the edges, flaring, flakes of ash peeling away, revealing only more ashes beneath. It took a long time. Scrabbling to hold on to them, not heeding his own hands that blistered from the embers, Curufinwë scattered them even when he tried to grasp what remained of Father. A wind came up that hurled them into his face and away over the precipice. I rose, looking after them as they tumbled into the dark, and at last turned back.

Curufinwë crouched with two fistfuls of grimy ashes and his face streaked with dirt and tears. I stood with the blood-flecked Elessar and a wet patch on my shirt. It should not be all that remained. My face resolved, I pulled him to his feet.

“We move on,” I said, swallowing more tears and drawing myself up. The eldest. The one with the symbol of office. The leader. “The Enemy will have seen the fire.”

Or not. It had not nearly been glorious enough, not nearly fierce enough, not nearly enough to do justice to father as he had been in life. He had not fought enough.The light of his burning had barely illumined more than the torch did, and though it might be seen far over land from this high place, it was not right. How could I lead them? How could anyone lead us with him gone?

But with no one else to turn to, they followed even me.

As we marched away from the sad place, up into the colder, craggier regions of the mountains, I at last released Curufinwë’s arms that I had taken when he had begun to fall behind. Until then he had walked along mechanically in shock and deathly silence, and my attempts to engage him in conversation, draw him – and myself - away from the bleakness of our father’s death, altogether failed. “Makalaurë,” I called at last, desperate for any sound at all, “make him a song. He should not have gone that way. Make it different. It was undeserved.” It needed no further explanation.

He nodded and began to sing, and I imagined his voice carrying far on the wind down the passes to where the troops marched behind us, so they would never know the truth: Not blood and grime and suffering, instead a last determined but graceful show of defiance, enough time and breath to bequeath the Elessar on me and bless (or curse, I thought, but Makalaurë did not sing that) me as the new leader of the Fëanárrim. His breathing forth was a column of fire, and ashes that fell to smoke on the wind. People needed rituals and symbols.

But in the end, what did it matter? Death was death. He was gone. We marched on.

---

Chapter End Notes

Title and quote in the beginning are borrowed from Dylan Thomas' 1951 villanelle 'Do not go gentle into that good night', and the description at the end is based on the published Silmarillion. The Elessar, according to one version of the histories, was made by Feanor in Aman and gifted to Maedhros before his death.

The names have all been used in their Quenya forms, seeing how the story takes place before Thingol's ban of that language, and they are among themselves. 

Fëanáro - Fëanor

Makalaurë - Maglor

Tyelkormo - Celegorm

Carnistir - Caranthir

Curufinwe - Curufin

Angamando - Angband

Valarauka(r) - Balrog(s)

Ambarussa - Amrod/Amras. I have not specified here which of the two it is, since only one of them is present in this story. I have largely adopted Tolkien's version of the death of one of the twins at Losgar, hence the allusion to losing someone else by fire.

Estelindë and Ailinello are OCs from the cast of my AU and will get more of a spotlight if that is ever finished, revised and posted. 

Thank you for reading.