Si la mar fuera de leche by Chestnut_pod

---

Chapter 8

I can't believe we're done!

---

Zamîn’s exceedingly standard and proper proposal took up only a single sheet of tissue-thin bird paper when all was said and done, not much different in its particulars to the agreements they had drawn up years ago with Tirion and Avallónë. To their mutual chagrin, Elros set Adûnabêl -- still resentful of sending his book overseas for a whole season -- and Pharâzindil -- quickly awakening to the unglamorousness of governance -- to make the fair copy, as a training exercise for Pharâzindil. He signed it Tar-Minyatur, set the seal of Barahir upon it, and brought it down to the quay where Aeglosbes made ready to return to Adsirion. 

 

The air blew brisk, the winds making their yearly turn to the west. The cliffs and breakers were alive with mergansers, shearwaters, grebes, gulls, and great cormorants making their way to Aman to winter, perhaps thrilled with this new land to rest over at, perhaps confused still at the loss of Beleriand. Aeglosbes perched on a massive coil of hawser rope, tossing chum fish from a pail at an apricot-legged black stork that raised its head to stare at him as he approached. 

 

Aeglosbes looked him over too, smiling slightly, though Elros thought he could detect a degree of lingering bafflement. 

 

“Is your noble companion strong enough to carry this?” Elros inquired when he had drawn near enough for speech over the cacophony of birds. 

 

Aeglosbes reached out and took the paper in its travelling canister and weighed it in her hand. 

 

“The document is entirely feasible, but I will instead wrap it in oilcloth and tie it with the usual jewelers’ chains. He is strong and willing, but I would not hinder him overmuch, for it is a hard journey even with no burden whatever. So equipped, he will precede us by a week, perhaps.”

 

“Might I expect an answer before your return next summer?” 

 

With a shrug and a tilt of the head, Aeglosbes indicated her uncertainty. “It might be -- that depends on my lady’s ability to find a seabird willing to fly in autumn or winter, when they ought to be fattening themselves and doing as birds do. It depends also on if she and the people find the treaty to their liking; if they require many changes, their response will be delayed. Certainly you can expect an acceptance or counteroffer by the time I return. That may be most likely.” 

 

Elros nodded his acknowledgement, and gestured to her rope throne. “Would I disturb our messenger if I joined you?” 

 

“Not if you pay the toll, my lord,” Aeglosbes replied, holding out an anchovy. Elros took it, gingerly, regretting the slick of fish oil on his fingers. The stork’s neck seemed to lengthen by half again as much, the spiked beak opening wide, and Elros quickly released the fish, which vanished with a snap. With some fascination, he watched a lump in the bird’s narrow, serpentine throat slowly descend, then vanish. Glancing at Aeglosbes, he found her smirking. 

 

“My toll is paid, Admiral.” 

 

“Sit, then, and be welcome.” 

 

Elros sidled behind the stork to settle beside Aeglosbes, and contemplated the shading of its feathers from stark black to white at the breast. 

 

“A handsome livery for a herald,” he said. “Did he take my earlier letter as well?” 

 

He caught Aeglosbes’ shake of the head from the corner of his eye. 

 

“The ocean birds are my lady’s friends, and one should not ask friends for too many favors too soon,” she said. “I sent your letter, which was small, with a skua who came to us on the wing.” 

 

Elros nodded, and they sat quietly for a while while the stork pecked through the pail for fishy remains.

 

“It gladdens me that you stop here on your own migration,” he told her after a spell. “I know it is a gift in its own sake. I will look to your coming next summer with joy.” 

 

“So will I, my lord,” Aeglosbes replied. “Come, let us set this bird on his way, and then I must catch the tide, which does not wait even for Ulmo.” 

 

They settled the message in its wrappings on a mithril chain along the stork’s back -- like an odd, precious avian satchel -- and watched as it beat its way into the upper air and away across the waves. When it was nothing more than a speck, Elros clapped Aeglosbes on the shoulder, and went to gather his family for a more formal goodbye. 

--

 

Autumn shrouded the island in cool morning mists that burned off into mellow afternoons, midday once again friendly to workers turning over the cleared fields and fisherfolk caulking their boats before the angry rains of winter. 

 

Zamîn saw the Angorodin goats shorn before the fall breeding season and was beside herself with the sheen of the staples, and the ease with which they took dye. No longer consumed with finding food during the floods, she plotted out loom construction and who might be spared from the making of sailcloth to experiment. 

 

For his part, Elros decided Vardamir was ready to follow him about his days for an hour or two. This way he might see judgements made, survey the storage of next year’s seed, help plan the first road and the selection of the next sites for creating new soil, even discuss plans for Armenelos. He was willing enough, but always pleased to run off at the end of the day to study with Adûnabêl -- but he was a child, and such was to be expected. He was much more attentive when it came time to help Tindómiel learn to read, a difficult task with no books appropriate for beginning readers available. With a patience Elros had not thought he possessed for things outside his own reading, he copied children’s songs down in chalk on slates, and helped Tindómiel sound out the letters, both Círth and Tengwar. Her favorite exercise was a song Losseth often sang to amuse her, because it was full of birds -- a silly patter tune that argued with itself about the many seabirds Elwing-Who-Called might have transformed into, and how they might each have carried a Silmaril. It echoed through the King’s House at all hours now, whenever Tindómiel was at lessons. 

 

The weeks slipped calmly by, as though all Númenor had realized that winter would not this year be a season of fear and gnawing hunger, only a time to rest and be washed clean by the rains. In the shortening evenings, Elros would walk along the beaches with Zamín and Vardamir and Tindómiel, sometimes greeted by the people, sometimes left to gather their mussels and seaweed in peace. 

 

Despite Aeglosbes’ caution, he had hoped to hear from Adsirion before the winter storms. As the seabirds departed, leaving the rocks bare and the strand quiet, he took to eating on the terrace of his bedroom, where he could see the grey ocean stretch to the far western horizon, and hear the town below him sing its caulking, baking, spinning songs. 

 

The first great storm of winter blew in a few weeks after the equinox, lashing the island with days of rain and striking the Meneltarma with great bursts of lightning. He gave up his watch. No bird would come eastering across the sea at risk of a gale now.

 

It pleased him to keep watch over Rómenna, however, and more and more he took to working at the balcony, glancing up from figures occasionally to see what was toward in the muddy streets. During one such rest from his tasks, he happened to look up past the Second Harbor towards the pale blue horizon. 

 

A bird winged its way towards land, and a passing great one it must be to be visible at this distance, he thought. An albatross, perhaps, blown off course in the storm. 

 

Yet -- something niggled in his chest, in his gut. Something called to him, half-familiar. He leapt to his feet. Could it be? Breath short, he watched the bird approach, coalescing into white wings, a keen beak, a black pouch. 

 

Soon they were close enough to look each other in the eye, and yes, he knew those eyes. He saw them in his children every day, and he had gazed into them set in this same pelican’s skull in the spring. 

 

The bird made as if to dive, pulling up short just when Elros thought she would crash into the room, or onto the terrace. She struggled upwards again, circling, awkward without the winds of the sea beneath her wings.

 

What was she doing? It seemed that she must fall, if she would not land.

 

They shall not ever walk again among Elves or Men in the Outer Lands, came Aeglosbes’ voice out of his memory, and he grasped the situation. In truth she could not come to rest on Númenor’s shores. He hesitated a moment, then ran inside and dragged out Zamîn’s worktable. Did the Valar scruple so? Would two layers of insulation from the soil hide her from their attention? 

 

It was enough, it seemed. She landed clumsily on her webbed feet and stood for a moment, arranging her broad wings until they vanished sleekly into her sides. Only then, without the distraction of her dark pinions, did he see the message case around her neck. 

 

“Oh,” he murmured. “You brought it yourself.” 

 

He did not want to touch her. As dispassionately as he could, he lifted the case from around her neck, those gray eyes watching him all the time. 

 

It was indeed the treaty, sent back with, at a glance, only a few amendments to fishing rights, a clarification about the succession of Adsirion leaders, and a suggestion about future intellectual work. The language spooled across the page neutral as milk, just as the document he had sent on the stork the day of Aeglosbes’ departure had aimed for. A certain satisfaction struggled to sprout within him, but -- 

 

“I suppose it is no use asking why you delivered this yourself, Lady,” he said, glancing at the pelican, then away. Which eye should he look at? Should he delay her, while she was on this journey that was surely forbidden? 

 

“I meant for this to be a simple document, an accord like any other, containing only practicalities and nothing of the two of us. Did you dislike that?” 

 

The pelican was silent. She could not make a noise, he now knew, even if she wanted to puzzle out some code of head nods. Doomed to letters in more ways than one, he thought. 

 

Had she sent anything to Elrond? He had received but two letters from him these ten years, on the scruffy ships Gil-Galad could cobble together and spare on an expedition with no promise of restocking at the end. Neither had mentioned any communication, certainly not an avian visit.

 

The bird cocked her head. Graceful in the air and on the water, she loomed ungainly and huge on Zamîn’s table, out of place. She was out of place. She had always been out of place, a drifting refugee. Elros had a home, now, a home he would leave his children behind to defend, nigh-weaponless, from a dragon. She could not live in it. 

 

Still, she had come. Still, she had sent what she could when she had it. 

 

Haltingly, Elros spoke, hoping she could understand. His voice emerged reedy from his throat. 

 

“I asked Elrond once if he was angry with you. He said, ‘Well, they were right.’ And that was the end of it! He has always been thus, cutting right to the quick of things. The bluntest bolt, I would call him, when he would talk merrily of disaster or solemnly of good hope. Imagine, being told that you were correct, and you saved the world, and that being enough…”

 

There was no reply, of course. A pelican had no face that he could read, either, nor a body whose language he could interpret. Hesitating, he held out a hand, unsure if a touch would be welcome. The pelican stretched out her neck and tapped her huge beak, very gently, on the center of his palm. His eyes stung.

 

“You did, after all, save the world.” 

 

She tilted her head so her beak slid across his hand and wrist, and he snatched his arm away, shivering. 

 

“I think you should not have come, Lady,” he said, scratchy and strained. “Doomed you are to remain in Aman, and Doom will find you soon or late.”

 

Silently, the pelican unfolded her wings, dark and tall and edged. 

 

“I want you to write,” Elros said. Something wretched contorted in his chest, watching the pelican begin to shuffle on webbed feet towards the table edge. “Please write. I will write back. I promise.” 

 

The pelican leapt, beating hard at the air so it thundered. She cleared the railing, just, and began to ascend into the West, the land on which she was bound to live, the living to which she was bound, too. 

 

Elros’ heart rabbited through his whole body, watching her fly away. His heart was all that was quick, and it sounded off his lungs turned to steel and his tongue turned to lead, his thoughts tied to a body whose reactions he did not understand. 

 

He felt he might die, and why? 

 

The thought came to him: For I might; for I am not bound. 

 

The words rose from some unknown place in the body he had chosen, dragging the others that had been hidden these many months with them, and at once the crashing of his heart changed to a bell, ringing, and he called out after her, choking on it. 

 

“Emig!” 

 

He found he could not let her leave without this knowledge, and he screamed again, “Emig!” 

 

The great bird banked, suddenly awkward in the air, and flew in a swooping circle above the terrace. Elros felt the rush of wind of her wings across his cheeks, and his eyes watered. 

 

“They will not have me,” Elros cried. 

 

He stretched out his arms, leaning hard against the balustrade. Elwing made another dizzying, twisting turn, and Elros held himself fast against flinching. At last, she spread her wings across the whole length of the terrace, it seemed, and slammed into his chest with her neck held rigid and her great weapon of a beak pointed to the sky. For all her power and wingspan, she weighed almost nothing -- perhaps as heavy as a cat, or a newborn. Elros held her to his breast, fingers greased with the oil of her feathers, but smelling only salt and, somehow, flax.

 

He felt he must know how bright Eönwë felt, with his mother’s wings swept over his shoulders. He laid his head beside hers, and spoke as if to Tindómiel in the night, though he did not in fact know where her ears were. 

 

“My choice was that of freedom,” he murmured into his mother’s feathers. The words flowed out of him, a creek undammed. “My life and my death are a mystery, for there have been none like me before. I do not know when I shall die, only that death awaits me as the mists upon the harbor’s mouth. I will not know when my children die, or what they will think of me, or what deeds they will do fair or fell, and it is a madding pain. Yet it is my gift to them that they should live in a world where their lives are not already spoken for even beyond their deaths, where their Dooms have a threshold at which all destiny must cease, where they must not be forced to play at making the choices already made for them, or at least, that they will have forever an escape the Valar themselves cannot close. And it is my gift to myself that indeed those mists will roll one day to shore and when they depart, I too shall have freedom unimaginable.”

 

Elros closed his eyes and breathed the sea and linen smell of his childhood. 

 

“Emig,” he said, “One day I will set myself free.” 

 

They stood there on the balcony for long minutes. The wind off the sea ruffled Elwing’s feathers and teased strands of Elros’ hair out of his circlet, grey and black and white together. The gulls and children and markets of the town made their music below.  

 

Behind them, Tindómiel laughed, and the familiar sound of her clumsy feet and ricocheting ascent up the stairs followed.

 

In his arms, Elwing twisted her head down, and plucked out with her hooked beak a clump of the soft, hidden feathers from her breast, a little droplet of blood falling after it to the marble. Her neck in its uncanny flexibility wound back until she could look him in the eye. She dropped them, and they watched together as the feathers glided smoothly to the floor, skimming across it on a cushion of air for a long way. 

 

“Attû,” Tindómiel said from behind them, voice as hushed as a five-year-old child could manage. “You have wings.” 

 

“No, izrê,” Elros replied, turning just enough to catch a glimpse of Tindómiel in her play-clothes standing in the doorway. “Our lady here has wings.” 

 

He stepped once more towards the balustrade, and felt Elwing’s muscles bunching beneath his hands, her vast wings spreading wide and feet pounding near his stomach as if beating the sea foam. 

 

He came to the railing and looked out across the falling-away land and the waves breaking against the shore, and far, far away, the faintest shadow of what might be Eressëa, ultramarine. 

 

“Fare thee well, Emig,” he said, quietly.Then, in the great voice that had called ships to follow him on the day of his Choice, he cried again, “Farewell!” and so saying launched the bird with all his force into the air. 

 

She plummeted, wings outstretched, and Tindómiel gasped and ran to the railings, and then she caught a secret spiral of the air and rose -- circling, weightless -- until she was a bright speck against the bright sky. 

 

When Elros could no longer see her, he turned to Tindómiel and knelt down to her. She still gazed into the sky where Elwing had flown beyond their sight, and she held her grandmother’s feathers cupped in her small hands, so white they glowed. 

 

“Who was that, Attû?” she asked. “Why were you holding a bird?”  

 

“For the same reason I hold you,” Elros said, and reached his arms out for Tindómiel to run into. In his embrace she was soft and solid and smelled of seaweed soup and mischief. 

 

He grunted with effort as he lifted them both up. “You are growing so fast!” he teased. “One day I will not be able to carry you like this!” 

 

“But Attû!” Tindómiel said, refusing to be distracted. “Attû, who was the bird?” 

 

Elros hesitated. Tindómiel looked at him, grey-eyed. 

 

“The bird was a gift from your grandmother,” he said. “The one who lives across the sea.” 

 

Tindómiel nodded solemnly. “She flew so high,” she said, and Elros wondered if she meant the pelican or the woman in the songs. In any case, it was true. She had bought the sky dear with mercy. 

 

“Yes,” he replied. “That was part of the gift.” 

 

Tindómiel wiggled to come down, but stayed pressed by his legs, holding his hand. From the terrace, they looked out over the cloud-reflecting ocean dotted with its fishing boats and watched the waves roll in, ceaseless. After a while, Tindómiel began to sing.