The Sandglass Runs by Dawn Felagund, NelyafinweFeanorion

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Artaher

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Our grandfather once told Artaher’s father that two of his grandchildren had received exceptional gifts of the mind—not wisdom or scholarship or diplomacy or anything useful. One of those grandchildren was me. The other was Artaher.

Artaher whipsaws through time the way that a skilled dancer achieves movement in the aerial dimension mostly inaccessible to the rest of us. Others in our family received the occasional glimpse of the future—even I had, on a few unsettling occasions—but it was not as vivid or sustained as it was for Artaher. Even our grandfather—himself gifted in the same ways as me and Artaher—did not enjoy such clarity of vision.

I say “enjoy” ironically. With tears brimming in his eyes, Artaher described nothing enjoyable about his supposed gift. Seeing the future paralyzed him. “It’s like standing at a height. You imagine that if you hold still, you won’t fall.” Except that the stillness itself brought about what he’d seen. “And then I thought, if I’d acted differently, the future would be different.”

I realize something. “You told me about this. That night, on the dock …” and he smiles at me wanly, sadly: “Carnistir, I told you about this many times.”

He went mad with it. Those weren’t the words he used, but I’m a Fëanárion: I know madness when I hear of it. It gnawed at him, his knowledge of the future that others crowned as wisdom. He could think of nothing else. Everything, literally, came back to it, a constant, dizzying inward circling. It was like how children will press their foreheads to a pole and turn, turn, turn, then try to walk. He staggered through life. At times, the dizziness would subside, and he was functional, normal then. His years at Tol Sirion were unremarkable, almost distinguished. He was a generous, wise lord to his people and liegeman to his brother. He ruled with kindness and care and a genuine love for his people. But when the attacks set upon him, he was useless, confined to his bed for days, terrified that so much as a wayward breath would set off a cascade of events with unthinkable consequences.

He married a lady of Doriath, the sister to Artanis’s husband Celeborn. It began as a political match, orchestrated by the Arafinwion bookends of Findaráto and Artanis, but they experienced an ardor for each other that matched nothing either had ever experienced. Artaher had had lovers before (I’ll admit, this surprised me) but had never wished to marry until he met her, and then it seemed there’d never been another choice. For many years, they lived in happiness, dividing their time between Menegroth and Nargothrond. When their daughter, Finduilas, was a small child, he had his first vision concerning them, his family. If he sent his wife away, she would be spared. In dream after dream, he came to understand: There was no future where Finduilas was spared.

He tried to make the arrangement innocuous, but his wife was hurt. They hadn’t spent a day apart since their marriage. Yet what could he tell her? That Finduilas would be speared to a tree and made to watch as her mother was tortured to death?

He sent her away. He was cold, unkind, for perhaps the first time in his life.

He saw Angaráto and Aikanáro slain as the flame-engulfed lands behind them closed in. He watched the deaths of Findaráto’s ten companions, one by one, followed by his brother’s fight with the wolf and slow, seeping death from his wounds while Beren paced around him and tried to muster the courage to administer a coup de grâce to the most storied of the Eldar.

He saw Túrin ride to his gates. He saw himself stand firm against building the bridge that the historians had decided showed him weak. He saw Nargothrond linger beyond its fall, only to be incinerated by Morgoth’s dragons and Valaraukar, Finduilas huddled, trembling with terror, in his arms as the flames advanced until they were caught and burned alive.

He allowed the bridge. The end came sooner, and quicker, for both of them.

“There were people who lived if I waited for the second attack. I let them die so that I didn’t have to burn with my daughter.”

Darkness has long fallen and the streetlamps gone out. He is but a speaking silhouette in the bed. I hear his parents come up the stairs; they are talking in soft, pleased tones about the success of the party and their pride toward Findaráto. No one was—is—ever proud of Artaher. I know how it feels. No one is ever proud of me either.

They pause outside his door. I imagine their ears pressed to the wood. We say nothing and hold our breaths in the dark until, with a creaking of the floorboards, they move on.

I reach out my hand. It’s dark; I have no destination in mind. Maybe his hand—but it comes down on his face instead, on his nose to be exact. I correct to his cheek, his ear, his hair. “What did you see tonight?” I ask, but he shakes his head.

“It is my fault,” he says. “I let it in. I wanted to know …”

“Wanted to know what?”

“There is something I have wished to do for a while now. A brave thing—at least, it feels brave to me. I … wanted to know what the outcome would be because as much as I wanted the one thing? The alternative was unthinkable. So I wasn’t brave after all. I opened the part of my mind that Námo helped me to seal, and I let it in …”

His hand rises to clasp mine.

“What was the brave thing?”

I don’t know why I am whispering. Maybe, I tell myself, because Arafinwë and Eärwen are now right down the hall, and I don’t want them to know I’m still here? To come knocking and find me?

“I was,” he says, and he is whispering too, “going to ask you to come to bed with me.”

I do not answer. I do not need to. He has looked; he has seen my answer.