The Sandglass Runs by Dawn Felagund, NelyafinweFeanorion

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QUIET CAR

They used to release feär from Mandos and let them stagger through Námo's creepy forest until they found their way or died and returned to the Halls. I don't know that the latter ever happened, but having made that journey myself, it is hard to fathom that it never did. Perhaps that's why they installed the metro system between Ostonúmë and the Halls: because rehousing a body is no small investment of time and energy and straight-up horror, and it's a shame if it expires a week later because, after all the test-tube flesh and haunted-house contrivances, it can't find water in a forest constructed of curls of ash.

A letter arrived the other day—plain white paper in a plain white envelope delivered at the usual time—utterly unspecial—and told me that I’d be expected at the halls of Mandos today and to take the metro from Ostonúmë. I had no idea what a metro was—have no idea until I descend a flight of stone steps under a bright blue M that was helpfully pointed out by a village resident. They have cashed in on the flow of reembodied Elves here in Ostonúmë: the streets are lined with clothing shops, therapist's offices, taxi stands, and information kiosks a lot like the one where I work in the Tirion Public Building except that the people seated behind them look like they actually want to help and even call to passersby in the street. I don't think I've called to anyone besides my wife, maybe to ask her if she can bring in a couple of those fresh cookies with her when she comes to bed. I don't generally entice others to associate with me. And they charge money, which I’m not allowed to do. (Not even allowed to have one of those tip jars that seem to have flourished everywhere else.)

At first, the metro is unimpressive: a pair of parallel tracks a lot like what Curufinwë and I used to build and use to race wooden horses fitted upon them. There is a humid, slightly unpleasant underground smell. A pair of Elves stand at either end of the platform where I assume we wait for whatever device will come along the tracks—I imagine it is going to resemble the wooden horses of my youth—and don't seem interested in interacting. That much about this "metro" I like.

But when the train arrives, I must admit that I stop short for several seconds. It comes like a gale through the trees, silver and sleek as a wave before it tumbles to the shore. I stop short for several more seconds, watching the other Elves to see what I must do. Doors slide silently open and expel several Elves; I recognize one wearing the grayish silk garments given to the newly embodied, attended by two chestnut-haired young women who can’t suppress their smiles.

That stops me short too. I do not think of Taryindë often and think of our daughters even less but these two young women and the obvious adoration of the man I assume to be their father—well, it's useless to go on. Findekáno once likened Námo's decisionmaking to flying a kite in a storm: predicting where the kite would crash—who would emerge next from his Halls—involves a welter of wind and rain that tosses in no discernible pattern. My mother said once that one must live as though the one most wanted would follow Míriel's fate, and she would know better than any. Taryindë was still in the Halls when I left, and our daughters had neither entered nor—I discovered once reemobodied—taken ship from the Outer Lands at the end of the Third Age. I expect to never see any of them again. I tell myself this firmly every day.

I certainly don't expect to see them today.

I don't.

But if there was a—

No.

I don't.

The passengers of the metro having disembarked, the two other Elves on the platform hasten forward, and I realize I should follow, so I proceed to the nearest open door. QUIET CAR, announces a sign over the door in paint the color of organ meat. The seats inside are the gray of falling rain and have a fungal squishiness to them. Clearly, the substitution of the metro for the long walk from Mandos has reduced the risk but not the ghoulishness. I am alone in the car.

The doors slide shut, and the metro whispers along its tracks. When we left Valinor in the vanguard with my father, we expected we were taking all the significant talent with us. We imagined leaving Valinor bereft, languishing in its past glories that the Valar would have to fight to keep from the decays of time. We didn't consider the Noldor born after we left, as curious, clever, and ambitious as our people had ever been. One of those ambitious youths had designed this metro. I wish I had thought of it first. It slips into the earth—I feel my ears pop—and misty red lanterns occasionally flash past on walls of dark gray stone. I wonder about its design instead of wondering whom I've been selected to meet. I wonder how it is powered. I can feel the speed of it, a feeling like my stomach is being pressed into my spine.

And then it eases to a stop.

The hazy red lanterns flash by slower and slower, and the pressure of speed against my solar plexus lessens. The complete cessation of motion is too slight to be detected; I know we've stopped only because the doors slide open again.

Námo's servants await in a small huddled herd on the platform. I remember them—their gray raiment, their sexless faces drawn with sorrow, their constructed smiles—from my own reembodiment years earlier. They cheer at our arrival, but their cheers are unsmiling and their pumping arms do not lift above elbow-level. Three do smile and come silently forth, one for each passenger, if the mere baring of teeth can be counted a smile. (Having used it myself many times, I do count it as such.) There are no words, no inquiries. They know instantly the contents of our minds.

One takes my arm with hands dry and powdery as cheap paper. We are walking down a brick-lined corridor; posters adorn the walls every few steps, advertising services for newly embodied feär. I recognize Arafinwë’s hand in that. The Elves depicted in lifelike detail are all in smiling crowds with the pomp and majesty of our previous monarchial system replaced by the sharing and laughing and conspicuous collaboration of Arafinwë’s republic. I am thinking that, were I not being escorted by a Maia of Námo, this corridor would be a perfect place for street art, and I am wondering if it is possible to access it without an escort and planning to tell Amarië about it to see if she knows an artist who is interested—she will find some profound political meaning in it; I will just enjoy breaking the rules right under Námo’s nose—and

We’re no longer in it. The corridor I mean. I don’t perceive it happening, but the bricks are gone, the posters, the tile floor beneath our feet. I am not that long reembodied; I should recall that space and time do not operate under the same constraints here as the rest of the world, Námo having abstained from the part of the song where those particular laws of physics were sung into being (or so the wisdom claims), but these laws are such an unthinking part of our world that it startles me nonetheless. The corridor around us is plush and gray. When I resided here, I felt like I was being slowly digested inside the ashen intestines of Námo himself. My inability to rid myself of such thoughts while I was here—and not because Námo didn’t do his best, and not because I didn’t want that “best” to cease as quickly and thoroughly as possible—is why I do not understand how I came to be reembodied second of my vast, dead family, second only after Findaráto, for the love of Aulë.

To our right, a door has relaxed open. A passage might be more accurate; it reminds me of a sphincter. I don’t want to go into it, but then I’m through it and in the room beyond, which—thank the Wise—actually looks like a room, with sterile white walls and tight, precise corners. There is a cot in the middle of the room. I recognize it, having been awakened upon one myself not that long ago, my throat the same bleeding ruin it was when I died as Námo worked to repair it. (I’m certain he awakened me early on purpose and took his time mending the wound while my new nervous system received its introduction to pain and terror.) I realize that my heart is pounding. There is no evidence of such bloody work this time. Námo was kinder to the figure on the cot than he was to me.

(I want to reiterate that I never expected Taryindë. When I met her in the Halls—she died protecting my unconscious body in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad—there was a shadow about her, and she would flee when I tried to touch her. Her body was never recovered. I’d hoped for a swift death for her. I never believed, though, that even the hope of joining me in a new life would rid her faster of that shadow. That would have been what Curufinwë liked to scornfully call a “fool’s hope.” I never indulged it.)

The figure on the cot is golden-haired. His back is turned to me, his body clad in the gray silk garments they put on new bodies to protect their new skin, which is tender-almost-raw for the first few days after reembodiment. He could be any one of my cousins.

A Maia manifests from the far wall. He/She (It?) holds out a hand to the figure on the cot. When the figure doesn’t move, she/he/it crooks fingers in a beckoning motion. The figure pushes at the cot with his palms, then cries out wordlessly; the pressure hurts as though applied to a new wound. I remember this. The Maiar holds out both of its hands, and the figure rises on the strength of his legs alone, trembling like a newborn colt.

He turns.

Artaher.

He is no more pleased to see me than I am him. No one was here when I woke up, nor Nelyo, nor Findekáno. Arafinwë apparently attended Findaráto’s reembodiment; given that Findaráto was the first of our family to be rehoused and the Valar regard him as especially exalted; nonetheless, forcing a father to watch the repair and reanimation of his son’s body that was mangled by werewolves seems the opposite of a privilege; perhaps it was intended as a statement on Arafinwë’s political experimentation? No matter—I am a father myself, and even for Námo, that “honor” seemed especially cruel. It seems, in any case, that Arafinwë did not merit a second invitation. I’m still not sure why I did.

I feel Artaher reach for my mind, but that is one lesson I was grateful to learn from Námo, and my thoughts and emotions are no longer as available as a bowl of fruit left out on the counter with the choice pieces ripe for the taking. I click my thoughts closed. “Not anymore,” I snap, and Artaher flinches, and so within seconds, our relationship has picked off right where it left off.

And then we’re sitting on the metro again, in the QUIET CAR again, although I’ve realized this time that every car is marked as the QUIET CAR, and I am using that as a pretense to not have to talk to my cousin. I can sense his discomfort—both the physical discomfort of his new, raw skin and the emotional discomfort that I, of all people, was the one sent to fetch him, and he is left to spend his first uncomfortable moments facing what his father, at least, insists is one of his greatest regrets of his previous life.

Chapter End Notes

With thanks to Archon Bun for the name Ostonúmë.

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