Si la mar fuera de leche by Chestnut_pod

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Chapter 7

Please note that this chapter is particularly heavy on the discussions of suicide. 

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It seemed every person on Númenor stood on the edge of the Second Harbor to watch them return in the last wisps of sunrise, crying out gladly to see them rowing in unhurt and hale. Zamîn stood amongst her spinning ladies on solid ground, carrying bandages and ointments, and, more happily, water and food. 

 

Elros disembarked first, and stood on the seawall to describe the distinct lack of dragons. He made an effort to emphasize the size and strangeness of the whale, for Meril’s sake, and the brilliance of the discovery of the spring. His plans for Armenelos were hinted at enough, he hoped, to spark interest and perhaps a rumor or two. There was not yet enough soil inland for the kind of farming so recently possible at Rómenna, but whither interest, thither effort. Perhaps the Drúedain might be convinced to share their goats a while, to build up the fertile land. 

 

When it seemed his speech had stirred a heart or two, and no negative attention seemed to fall on Meril, he ended with a rousing call for a round song and dance to give thanks for their safety. He sang the first note at an easy pitch, then motioned to Galor to take up the tune, hoping he would let his description of events lie and be happy with the honor. 

 

Galor picked it up gladly and the fisherfolk joined him, and the young people rushed forward to make the inner circle of the dance. Elros made his way to Zamîn, nodding and clasping hands as he went. 

 

Zamîn stood still in the midst of the bustle, her face quite smooth. She lifted a cup to his lips, sweet water sloshing inside. 

 

“Welcome, my king,” she said, and Elros replied, “Thank you, my queen,” and drank from her hands. 

 

When he had done, Zamîn lowered the cup and stood still, a quiet spot in the hubbub. Most were dancing, but Elros felt eyes upon them, the constant surveillance of a people on their rulers in their midst. 

 

“It was not a dragon,” he said, though of course Zamîn had heard his explanation as well as any. “Though it was passing strange.” 

 

“I am glad it was not a dragon,” Zamîn said, and nothing more. 

 

Elros studied her face. It was not so expressionless as he had thought, at first. There was a little furrow between her dark brows; there, a tightness at her cheek, as though she bit it from the inside; there, perhaps, a rim of red around her eyes that bespoke a sleepless night, or tears. 

 

As quietly as he could while still being heard over the tumult of voices, he said, “I think Vardamir and Tindómiel would have missed me, had it been a dragon. I had not a Silmaril, nor a ship of mithril, nor even a cursed sword.” 

 

Zamîn’s lips tightened more, but she said nothing. Elros continued. 

 

“Yet had it been a dragon in truth, I would have still gone, for Númenor’s sake.” 

 

At last, her face eased, and she let out a shuddering breath, lost to the singing. She dropped the cup to the ground, uncaring of where it rolled, and drew him into the dance. 

 

--

 

The summer drew to an end with no more dragon sightings. Only the accustomed small miracles and tragedies of life visited the Isle of Gift, of particular interest to those beyond their subjects only because some were the first seen on Númenor. 

 

Adûnabêl wrote out the first book of Númenor by hand, which he presented to his cruel plant-sage as a courting gift. Númenor’s first justice was named to the (hastily constructed) bench after an incident involving a chicken who had laid an egg on a property line. Elros had found that the number and silliness of incidents requiring adjudication would expand to fill all the time he could spare for them and was glad for the excuse to formalize a more balanced system. 

 

The next new moon also greeted Númenor’s first set of twins. Elros saw them three days after they were born, for their mother had been struck with childbed fever and none could ease her. He crushed kingsfoil beneath her nose to refresh her and shared what strength he could, and when she was out of danger and sleeping peacefully, he braved the cradle where the other parent sat, drawn and tense. The babes were not identical, he saw, and, with a strange ache, made a blessing over them and departed before she woke.

 

Númenor also saw the first return of ships that had carried away its dear ones. As the first pale harriers and landrails of autumn blew, exhausted and hungry, onto Elenna’s shores on their way to winter in Valinor, Elros posted a rotating watch of sailors with a precious spyglass of Feänorian make to look out for Aeglosbes’ sails. 

 

They spotted them on the first morning of Númenor’s first barley harvest, white and proud and swift. Few hands could be spared from the fields, least of all Zamîn, determining which seeds should be kept back for next year’s planting, but Elros sent Zâinabên to alert the families of his seven learners and the priestesses of Uinen. The sails grew and grew and, by high noon, the ship glided elegantly into harbor as though a migratory bird itself. The priestesses sang welcome and thanks, throwing flowers woven of barley straw into the waters, and laughed and cheered when the half-Drúedain boy, Zhân, leapt from the prow to be the first to touch the land again, Aeglosbes smiling indulgently behind him. 

 

Elros proclaimed his gladness at their homecoming and accepted their bows with good humor, before sending them off to greet their impatient families. The night would be theirs to boast and sleep and tell stories. In the morning, Elros would have them tell their tales again before him, Zamîn, Galor, and Adûnabêl, and then again before him alone. 

 

As the last of the seven made their bow and received their blessing -- the young Hadorian alnerwen, at least an inch taller than at their departure just months ago -- Aeglosbes approached. Unlike her temporary apprentices, the months at sea did not show on her ageless face -- yet Elros detected something different all the same. A vitality, perhaps, a contentment that brightened her eyes and lightened her step. She drew up before him, bouncing slightly on her toes, and made her customary shallow bow. The small worry nibbling at Elros’ chest, that she would have carried his insult across the ocean and back, dissipated. 

 

“Welcome,” he said, warmly. “You are most welcome, and it is with a glad heart that I receive you back with all the children of Númenor in your care.” 

 

Aeglosbes grinned. “Tar-Minyatur, my thanks. Your children learned quickly and worked willingly, and I must flatter myself that they are now passable ships’ mates. Moreover, my family found them agreeable guests and commend their courtesy.”  

 

“I am gratified to hear it,” Elros said. “You have sailed in on a harvest day, and I regret that we cannot receive you with much circumstance, but I would hear all the tales you have to tell me now. Tonight, you and your crew must dine ashore, and the parents of your students will honor you.”

 

“We are honored indeed,” said Aeglosbes. “I have much to recount.” 

 

They smiled, and Elros led her to the King’s House to hear her accounts. 

 

Vardamir was spending the day with Zamîn, learning the mathematics of harvest, but Tindómiel was at home and beside herself with joy to see Aeglosbes. In the way of Elves, Aeglosbes received her almost as a child herself, and they bent their dark heads together -- Tindómiel’s hair pulled into puffs, Aeglosbes’ sleek and short -- to speak of all the momentous happenings of her little world. Elros was anxious to hear of the expedition, but the sight of the two of them chattering excitedly was too dear to chivvy away, and he stood next to Losseth, watching indulgently. 

 

Eventually, Aeglosbes cast about for a lifeline, and somehow it was arranged that Tindómiel would practice her fingerloop braiding using Aeglosbes’ ankle as a sturdy pull-point, and otherwise would stay quiet, please, as best she could. 

 

So arrayed, Aeglosbes’ left leg occasionally jerking when Tindómiel pulled her nascent lace tight, they discussed the expedition. The economics of the matter came first. What of Aeglosbes’ stores was available for trade on Númenor before she departed, not to return until the next spring? 

 

Would she bargain for seal oil, as well as whale oil? She would not. Surely in Aman the exotic conveniences of “Feänorian lamps” and “trees” meant Númenor’s need for oil was greater? Perhaps, but its ability to pay was far lesser and she did have a crew to keep; besides, seal oil could not be burned to heat a house of the Númenorean style, and so was only useful for illumination, and Númenor was hardly a reading country yet. True enough, yet Númenor did have one book, written just that summer, and it would be a fine thing to be able to offer this rare and unprecedented bounty of knowledge to the voracious Tiron markets. Now, that was attractive, but what good would only one copy do her, when she was duty-bound to add such knowledge to the scholars’ library of the north?

 

By the time Tindómiel had braided an arm’s length of lacing and was beginning to grouse with hunger, they had hammered out that lending Adûnabêl’s book to Aeglosbes for the season to make fair copies -- the proceeds of which would be split between her, the scribes, and Adûnabêl -- would buy them Aeglosbes’ promise to bargain individually with interested households that came to trade crafts for seal oil. They had not yet touched upon salted cod, smoked salmon, dried meats, arrow-fletching feathers, carving-quality antler and walrus ivory, or furs. 

 

Zamîn was better-suited to those tasks, Elros decided, and adjourned to lunch on the last of the fresh cherries and a cold roast of unfortunate migrating teal.  

 

While they ate, he asked Aeglosbes to describe the training her guest-apprentices had received. It was more comprehensive than he had thought to hope for, he realized, as Aeglosbes recounted her course of study. 

 

“They spoke Sindarin only, except to a handful of crew who tormented them with Quenya. It was difficult at first, but in the early weeks we did nothing where a misunderstanding would have been dangerous and, after all, most of them already spoke it enough for bare comprehension,” Aeglosbes explained. “Knots, ropework, and the marlin spike at first, ship’s manners and safety while they spliced. Next came hullwork and the rudiments of ship carpentry, some sailmaking. Two of them had a real facility for this sort of bosun’s work, Îbal and the young Hadorian, Mían. Once they were comfortable aboard, I sent them to the second mate to learn rigging. They had the responsibility of furling and steering my dear ship one day each on the return, and I did not feel much fear in their hands.” 

 

Aeglosbes took a sip of water and smiled. “There is only so much to be learned in a single summer, but I would gladly take those two on again, perhaps on an older square-rigged ship, as I understand that is what your Great Ships are.” 

 

“As for the rest?” Elros inquired. “I hope they were not laggards by comparison.” 

 

Aeglosbes laughed. “Not at all! The rest found their niches too. That young firebrand of yours, Pharâzindil, wanted to get into everything; I attached her to one of my younger midshipelves to do logistics after the first weeks. I do not think she will make a sailor, but she would make a fine quartermaster.” 

 

Nodding, Elros said, “I had thought to make her my secretary upon her return; I am pleased to hear she performed capably at a similar task.” 

 

“Certainly, yes,” Aeglsobes said. “The rest, I flatter myself, are good generalists. Zhân, though,” she said, a speculative look in her eye, “He is something else again.” 

 

Elros cocked his head, and said nothing. He knew the half-Drúedain boy very little, but his mother held a position in the body of elders who guided the Drúedain’s decisions on Númenor. They had but little to do with the Édain on the island, to Elros’ disappointment, preferring to remain inland, and a distrustful distance remained between the two peoples. He had hoped that perhaps including Zhân might do something to bring the two communities closer in counsel. 

 

“Yes,” Aeglosbes said musingly, and hummed. “He loved the sea. He wanted to know every current, every star map, the name of every fish and the song of every storm. I do not say he was a natural, mind,” she added, “for no one truly is natural to the sea, lest they be a Maia of Ulmo, but he wished to know it and tread lightly upon it. And when we came at last to my family, he of all of them sought to respect the land and those who belonged to it.” 

 

Alarmed, Elros asked, “Were the others unmannerly?”

 

“No, they were entirely well mannered,” Aeglosbes assured him. “But there is a difference between the courtesy shown to a host, whose land is a source of some good to be extracted and brought back home, some place temporary, and the respect of one who knows the people and the land must be honored together, and will be there when one has gone.”

 

She sighed, and looked out again at the waves. “They are my family, and that was my land,” she said, voice low. “I know that it remains while I am gone, for when I return it has changed like the ice in spring. I wish the others might have learned from that child’s example, but I do not know if such an attitude is something that can be taught, only lived towards.” 

 

Aeglosbes gazed out over the ocean, eyes focused on something Elros could not fathom. Then Tindómiel tangled her fingers in her lace and laughed her child’s belly laugh, and Aeglosbes threw back her head to laugh with her.

 

--

 

The evening’s celebration was a fine one indeed. Almost everyone gathered in the just-harvested fields, with a sweet-smelling bonfire made of the barley straw for roasting spitted dormice flushed by the scythes. The parents served Aeglosbes and her crew from their own plates and gave them drink from their own cups, while younger siblings clung inseparably to legs; and the seven were called on again and again to demonstrate what they had learned and tell of what they had seen. 

 

Elros and Zamîn stayed somewhat separate, as was necessary, but ceded their place at the head of the bonfire to the reunited families. To watch from the dark, for once not the center of a constant, low-grade attention, was a pleasure all its own. Harvest and summer and smoke tinged the air as the sky darkened. The Evenstar rose in the distance, and the younger children were taken off to bed. As was inevitable, in Elros’ experience, someone eventually produced a spirit to put hair on an Elf’s chest, and by the time the last dormouse was devoured, the telling of tall tales had begun. 

 

The fisherfolk boasted of enormous fish netted, the old farmers of obscenely shaped vegetables. A reborn Nandorin sailor described in gruesome detail how orcs had lanced him from his charging battle-moose at Oropher’s side in the War of Wrath, and Elros took the cover of laughter and disgusted exclamations to whisper to Zamîn.  

 

“Will you speak with Îbal, Mían, Linglas, and Tôdaphêl?” he asked. “Ask them what they may have learned that they were not taught.”

 

Zamîn glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, the firelight flickering over her lips, her proud nose casting a long shadow down her cheek. “My untrusting husband. Yes. You will do the same with the others?” 

 

Elros made a wry face. “As I am sure you know, Aeglosbes knows, and I know she knows, and on into eternity. Still, I believe many stories make sure knowledge.” He pulled her close by the hips, burying his nose in her coiled hair, enjoying the scent of bonfire in it, the unusual freedom of darkness and irrelevance. “I expect nothing harmful. I merely wish to gather their impressions of Adsirion, as well as they can have gleaned any while sailing in its working fleet.” 

 

Zamîn reached up and ran her fingers through his hair. She leaned in close, and Elros felt a shock of excitement like a youth -- then she nipped his nose. Ignoring his sputter, she murmured, “You think like a king these days.” 

 

Elros watched her stand and melt into the small groups laughing around the fire, singling out Mían and, skillfully as a sheepdog, cutting the somewhat overawed -- and possibly somewhat tipsy -- alnerwen into a conversational posture that foreclosed interruption. 

 

Warm to his bones, he went to do the same. 

 

The fire tossed sparks into the air to blend with the stars, bursts of song and pockets of companionable quiet bubbling through the liquid night. Pharâzindil was easy to find. The center of a gaggle of other young women, half a head again as tall as them and wearing seashells in her hair, she held court in a serious debate about the practicality of canerows for long sea voyages. Elros saw no reason to remove her, and instead encouraged her to show off her knowledge to her friends, asking serious questions as he would of an advisor. 

 

Yes, she said, her impression was that Adsirion was a wonderful place, and Númenor could learn a thing or two -- my king -- and did he, did they all know that it was ruled by election, like some of the Drúedain? Loftily, she opined that the reason was the too-many kings of the Sindar, and Elros wondered ruefully if a spot of electoral politics among the Noldor would have saved Beleriand trouble, or merely accelerated the strife. No, it seemed stable, stable as anything! You could tell -- my king -- because of the sentiments of the laboring class on the ships… 

 

As the talk turned to Pharâzindil’s spinners’ union, Elros drifted away, and sought out the boy Anwion, youngest of the seven, the finest diver on the island. He found him roaring drunk, perhaps for the first time, and of the giddy opinion that Aeglosbes was secretly in love with Elwing-Who-Called, and also that it was terribly unfair that the Nandor and the Sindar and the Avari and all the rest had to go to this strange place they did not know, and maybe they should all get an island too. Also, he wished he could talk to birds like an Elf. Elros found this all rather useful, in fact, but did not hesitate in tracking down the poor youth’s parents for the pleasure of wrestling him home. 

 

Zhân found him. He had been feeding the fire the last time Elros had seen him, and he appeared before him with a nugget of charcoal and a thin stone on which he had sketched a diving pelican. Without probing, he said simply that he hoped the rest of Valinor left them well enough alone, as they should have done from the beginning. Elros had little to say in response to that. 

 

They would speak again in the days to come, but these unfiltered impressions were strong stock to build on, and it was late. 

 

The moon had peaked and dimmed with the bonfire, and the gathering began the slow dissolution into yawning and kissing and sneaking off native to all such parties. Elros looked around for Zamîn, with whom he might sneak off himself. 

 

She had not returned to the fire, nor was she with any of the remaining seven. Had she gone home? No, there she was, at the poppy-strewn border of the field, sitting on a boulder. And the dark head with her -- Aeglosbes. 

 

He approached, careful on the trodden, stubbled furrows. 

 

“--truth, I felt the world a cage,” Aeglosbes was saying, and Zamîn held her hand like a sister. “Can you be anywhere by choice if you cannot leave! Doomed, I felt, with many Dooms, none of them earned. To lose a wife, a daughter, the lands I had walked on since before the birth of the Sun, and to be Doomed to never follow them…Then to try anyway and be trapped all the more, because of kings to whom I pledged no troth and events of which I knew naught. Yes, I hated kings and gods alike, then.” 

 

Her ears twitched, and she and Zamîn turned about on the boulder and watched his approach. She smiled, Elros saw, though her words had wrenched him. 

 

“I came upon your wife on this stone as I came upon your mother on the clifftop below her tower years ago,” she said. “Perhaps the one person in Valinor more trapped than an Elf of the Lossoth reborn and banned from her land, which was melted into the sea besides.” 

 

Elros did not know what to say to this. Something tugged at his breast to see Zamîn and Aeglosbes in each others’ confidence so -- and about his mother. But what was this? It did not seem his to hear, and yet they did not send him away. He sat instead, just at the foot of the boulder, looking up at the two women against the stars. 

 

“She was angry,” Zamîn said, a storm on her brow. 

 

“She was angry, and I was angry alongside her,” Aeglosbes said. “You have been angry too.” 

 

Zamîn laughed, and leant down to tousle Elros’ hair. “Until I was queen, for a queen cannot be angry except in extremity, or cannot admit it.” 

 

Elros frowned, thought of a jest, but her hand was so gentle in his hair, and after all, was he not angry too? 

 

“Well, perhaps this is why she does not call herself queen of Adsirion,” Aeglosbes said dryly. Zamîn laughed, that girlish sound Elros had heard at cradles and the drowning of a continent both.  He could not laugh, and he was not sure what was amusing. 

 

“But she leads there, does she not?” he asked, feeling once more as though his words did not speak his meaning. 

 

Aeglosbes looked down at him now, quite aware, he thought, that an admiral should not look down at a king, and doing so anyway. 

 

“When chosen. Other times, not. She has different aims than power alone.” 

 

Something in it made him bridle. “Power is no evil, treated wisely.” 

 

Zamîn stroked his head again, then slid down the rock to sit on the dirt beside him. She reached out another hand to Aeglosbes, and so remained. “I think the general idea is that power is freedom,” she remarked. “The problem is when people believe that.” 

 

“A lover of knowledge as could teach the Vanyar,” Aeglosbes laughed. 

 

“I do not believe you,” Elros told Zamîn. He spoke to her, yet knew Aeglosbes listened. It felt hot in his belly, but not the kind of heat that burned. Perhaps it was an old heat, too tired to blister any more. “Why should she act as though she has no power and it grants her no freedom?” 

 

Above him, Aeglosbes sighed. It cut through the last pops of the bonfire and the wind off the sea, and Elros looked up to find her as merry and sad as Elrond, perhaps, standing on the chewed coast of Lindon watching him sail away. 

 

“Your freedom is assured without the barest scrap of power, King of Númenor,” she said. “You see, Elwing and I both had meant to die, and could not.”

 

Speech was impossible. It died in his throat. Zamîn held his hand tightly, and he wished she would release him, yet never let him go. He remembered his Choice, how Elrond had begun to look at him with sad eyes behind the mirth of victory. In the harbor below him were ships with his mother’s face painted on them in the burnt Umbar Galor had spent his last metal money on instead of Eressëan food, because he and Elrond and everyone else thought his mother had meant to fly. 

 

“All the Elves left in Beleriand were in a frenzy when Maedhros Self-Slain cast himself into the chasm,” Zamîn said, even-voiced. “Yet none spoke except in tales when Niënor Morweniel did the same, nor when Tuor set sail to seek a deathly mercy; and no one spoke for my love’s father or his mother, when they sought a rescue they thought would destroy them.” 

 

Aeglosbes did not reply, merely sat silhouetted against the stars, and Zamîn did not speak again, but kept hold of their hands and tipped her head back against the rock. A strange tableau they made, like something out of an Elf-gallery in Doriath-that-was; but what Elf would think to include two Men, or the dry earth of harvest, or the bit of dormouse he had just noticed clinging to Aeglosbes’ cheek?

 

From somewhere deep, Elros dredged up a chuckle, which caught the air like a sail in fine wind and billowed to a guffaw. Back he threw his head and laughed out into the night. Zamîn swung his hand in hers, and the soft movement of her thumb tickled him so he laughed harder, ‘til his ribs ached fit to sprout. Above him, Aeglosbes looked on and seemed bemused --  oh, the condescending bemusement of Elves! 

 

“Spare me the torments Elves visit upon themselves!” he exclaimed. “I have decided this very moment; you two are witness to it. Hear me! All your bitter joy and your sweet sufferings are beside the point to me. I declare that henceforth I shall take the practical road and none other! I am going to sleep, right here,” he pointed emphatically at the rutted field, “and in the morning we shall talk of fishing rights and apprenticeships and treaties that somehow do not rely on fealty.”

 

“You mean to say,” Zamîn cut in, “I am finally encouraged to draft up a proper, standard list of offers and requests for a trading relation with Adsirion?”

 

“Yes!” he replied, jubilant. “I hope it is proper and standard enough to bore a bard to barbery. I hope it involves mulch.” 

 

“Mulch?” echoed Aeglosbes. 

 

“Mulch,” he said firmly. “So prepare yourself for the morrow, Admiral Elf, and good night.” 

 

So saying, he drew his cloak over his head, pillowed himself on his arms, and closed his eyes. A piece of straw poked him in the cheek, but he would not stir until his victory was complete. 

 

“Is he…” 

 

Zamîn snorted. “He is the image of his son, is what he is,” she said, and Elros heard the rustle of her skirt as she stood up. “Come down off your promontory, far-sailor, and sleep in your own hammock tonight. You will not wrest the last word from him by winch or lever.”

 

A series of scrapes and bumps marked Aeglosbes’ descent, then he sensed the two women standing over him. 

 

“The Men of my family were not like him,” she said eventually, sounding perplexed. 

 

“You see why we need an island to ourselves,” Zamîn replied, and pointedly wished her good dreams, if she slept. 

 

Her departing footsteps were too soft to hear, but after some moments, Zamîn exhaled on a chuckle. Her warm hand landed on his shoulder, and she shook him back and forth gently. 

 

“You are a nonsense man,” she said. “I am going to sleep in my own bed, and in the morning I am going to draw up an agreement before you can even think about the future implications of Adsirion softwood imports.” 

 

Elros feigned a sleepy murmur, and rolled over onto her feet. 

 

“Oaf,” she said, prodding him with her toe. “Sleep the sleep of the practical. I shall tell everyone this is your manner of giving thanks to Yavanna, and you will be required to do the same every harvest from now on.”

 

Elros pressed a kiss to her shin, eyes closed, and heard her laugh again as she left him to his field. He did sleep not so uncomfortably, in the end, and woke to the first petals of dawn.