Ulmo’s Palace by oshun

Vingarië slumped back into her chair, clutching her hands over her all but non-existent stomach and groaning, "I ate far too much. Like a pig! The garlic shrimp was delicious, Terentaulë."

"That's a high compliment coming from you. But I cannot accept it. The recipe is entirely Curvo's."

It pleased Curufin to be praised by his wife, often stingy with her approval, especially to his sister-in-law who did not always think that highly of him.

"I'm afraid I can't take credit either," he said. "We all learned to love shrimp cooked this way when Atar used to take all of us on holidays along the seacoast south of Alqualondë. He would buy mountains of them from the Telerin shrimp boats. Amil would always complain, ‘Ai, Fëanáro! You are far too extravagant! Half of these will go to waste. We will never eat that many!'  Of course, we always did. And he claimed he learned to cook them by questioning Eärwen's Telerin cook. It's hard to go wrong with butter, garlic, and fresh limes. Not to disparage Terentaulë's execution of the recipe." His impersonation of Nerdanel had made him feel uncomfortable, slightly disloyal, in the midst of the all the commotion within the family about the possibility of an estrangement between his parents. His mother, to everyone's dismay, temporarily occupied the extra bedroom at Maglor's house.

 "Do you remember seeing the shrimp boats go out at the waxing of Telperion?" Maglor asked, in his usual dreamy faraway manner that made him sound as if he were talking to himself. "There were dozens of them. Their lights would string out as far as one could see in both directions, winking and glittering along the horizon like jewels on a necklace. Every morning a couple of hours before the peak of Lórien's light the boats would return to shore. Then we would watch the fishermen unload their catch and clean and repair their nets. That's when Atar would buy the shrimp. Not from the market, but right on the beach."

 "Does it get dark in Alqualondë?" Celebrimbor piped. "Someone told me it gets dark in Alqualondë."

 Terentaulë smiled at the boy's interruption with the indulgence of a mother of an only child. "Darker than it ever is in Tirion, because it is farther from the light of the trees. It's bright enough during the light of Lórien, but can grow a bit dim under Telperion. That is why Alqualondë has become known for all of its interesting artificial lights along the quayside. True darkness is similar to what you experienced that time you got stuck in the closet and fell behind the trunks."

 "Does real dark smell like dust and old clothes?"

 "Probably not," Terentaulë answered. "I imagine it must smell like dew on new grass."

Ignoring his wife and his son, Curufin responded to his brother. "Those were good times." He wanted to kick himself for how easy it was for Maglor to draw him into his self-indulgent wistfulness. Terentaulë took his hand under the table and squeezed. He hated that she could read his thoughts so easily. Especially when they revealed that he, like Maglor, could also be prone to driveling sentimentality. Their childhood had hardly been idyllic. It would be dim-witted to view it in that way simply because of the contrast to his mother and father's far worse problems of the moment.

 "Amil and Atar were so happy in those days," Maglor said, predictably.

 "Hardly!" Curufin snapped at him. "You are such a sap, Macalaurë. Talking of halcyon days gone by that never really existed. None of us were stupidly happy, Amil and Atar least of all. They always fought like cats and dogs."

 "Have it your way, Curvo! No one ever changed your mind about anything." Maglor laughed, shaking his fine dark hair out of his eyes. "You cannot deny they were crazy in love though." Curufin had a hard time holding onto his annoyance with Maglor, the most hopeful and good-natured of all his brothers.

 "Crazy is an appropriate word to describe what they have," Curufin said.

 Celebrimbor pulled his thumb out of mouth with a loud plop. "My favorite story is the one about Ulmo's Palace! He lives on the bottom of the sea with the shrimp. I'll bet he shows the Telerin fishermen where to find them." Everyone laughed at once. Celebrimbor stuck out his small pointed chin in umbrage. "I like to eat shrimp. I hate fish, but I love shrimp. I like Ulmo too. I want to see his palace someday."

"If you want to see Ulmo's palace," his mother said. "Then you will have to grow fins and gills like a fish, won't you?"

 "That's disgusting! He would use his magic so I could breath water instead of air."

 "Where do you learn these things?" Curufin asked horrified, shooting a pointed look to Terentaulë.  Everyone laughed at him that time. "I sincerely doubt that Ulmo has a palace in the sea. I never heard any of the Valar talk about it. The only tales I know of any such palace are completely fantastic and based upon folklore circulated by the Teleri."

"Now you are trampling some of my fondest childhood fantasies into the dirt!" Vingarië said with a pleasing tinkling laugh. "Macalaurë, do you remember the mural that used to be on the wall of the room that I told you was the nursery when I was a child? It showed Ulmo holding a trident with huge pearl-encrusted crown on his head surrounded by beautiful women with fishtails instead of legs."

His brother's half-Telerin wife, was a lively, pretty woman. Intelligent also, although she was as ignorant as the day she was born about anything practical or scientific. He often wondered how placid Maglor had won himself a girl of such energy. Like the rest of their circle of artists and musicians, she probably had seen his genius before the rest of Aman had cottoned onto it. No doubt all of their musician friends regard her with envy, he thought. Maglor was the brother Curufin had the least in common with, but he loved him just the way he was and did not begrudge him his spectacular success either.

"Did the ladies with the fishtails have boobies?" Celebrimbor asked.

 "I think they did have," Vingarië answered, "But they had clamshells fastened on them so that you could not really see them."

"Oh, ouch!" said Terentaulë. Maglor laughed and Celebrimbor squealed shrilly along with him, without any idea of what was funny about that image.

"You people are awful!" said Vingarië. "You've seen those pictures with half-shells over the ladies breasts!"

"That's exactly my point," Curufin said. "Not realistic. If Ulmo wanted to build a palace in the water he could not live there as a handsome, strapping fellow, surrounded by women with fishtails. Terentaulë is right. He would need gills. Would not look a thing like those paintings."

Celebrimbor shouted into Curufin's ear, "I know Ulmo has a palace! I have a picture of it in a book!"

"You, little boy," warned his mother, "are overly tired and need to take your bath right now and then allow us to tuck you into your bed."

"No!" he shrieked. "I want more pudding."

"He is just like his father," Terentaulë said.

"Come to Atto, Tyelpo." Curufin stood and held out his arms to the child. "I'll bathe him and put him to bed," he said, leaning down and kissing Terentaulë on the neck. He did not want to let her remark pass without countering it in some way. Playing the dutiful husband and father while soothing his ill-behaved son with gentle patience was an excellent approach he decided. She could make such an issue out of getting the child into bed at night. Celebrimbor allowed him to pick him up and hug him to his chest.

"Please, will you read me the story of Ulmo's Palace?" Celebrimbor asked, taking Curufin's face in his small, soft hands. He never argued with his father the way he did with Terentaulë, but was perfectly willing to use self-aware tactics of manipulation. Celebrimbor's lips curved into a wily smile, his pale grey eyes widening. The luminous, seemingly poreless, skin of infancy had not yet begun to coarsen on him. Such a perfectly beautiful child, Curufin thought, and strangely endearing despite his cheeky recalcitrance. Looking at him and inhaling his clean childish scent, he could almost understand why his father liked bringing so many children into the world. 

"Oh, the damage is already done, little one. What's a story or two more or less? I'll read you any trifling nonsense you would like to hear."

"Hooray!" Celebrimbor shrieked, clapping his hands.

Curufin hustled the boy out of room, out of his clothes and into the bath. Celebrimbor proceeded to babble about the briny deeps, Ulmo's magnificent palace built of sea shells and sand, whales and fantastic sea creatures. Before they had finished the entire bathroom floor was covered with water.

After Curufin had dumped Celebrimbor onto his bed, the boy cried out, "I was very good! Now I want to hear the story of how Ulmo rules over all the waters. It's in this book." Celebrimbor scrambled to excavate a well-worn volume from beneath a pile of toys and stuffed animals. The cover page bore an inscription in a hand that Curufin recognized. He snorted when he read the inscription:

"To our beautiful Nelyafinwë, the most wonderful grandson anyone could possibly have. --Indis and Finwë"

Looking at the date, Curufin shook his head and grumbled, "Easy enough for her to say when he was the only one. She changed her tune when her own sons started breeding."

"What?" asked Celebrimbor.

 "Never mind, Tyelpo. Let's get on with Ulmo's imaginary palace."

Late 19th Century Fantasy Seascape

They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters;
These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.
For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof.
They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble.
They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits' end.
--Psalm 107, King James version of the Bible

At first, only a faint breeze stirred the sails with the lethargy of a lazy, hostile youth. Celebrimbor cursed to himself that the only sailors among the Noldor, inexperienced holiday captains of small pleasure boats, did not have the skills to handle these mighty swan ships. They had unfurled all of the large sails quickly, hoping to catch the recalcitrant winds. Suddenly heavy clouds amassed shutting out the insufficient light of the early evening stars, accompanied by fitful giant drops of water that turned into a steady ice cold rain. The winds rose pulling viciously at far too much sail while the sea roiled and bubbled beneath them.

Celebrimbor clutched the wood work on the side of the ship, looking down the foaming waves, noting out of the corner of his eye his grandfather racing back and forth, apparently with a purpose even if it did have a crazed edge to it.

"Get the boy below!" Fëanor yelled at Curufin, before grabbing Maedhros's arm, who was hurrying by, and pulling him up short. Fëanor had assumed the role of the mad captain of a ship of fools while Maedhros played his sullen, semi-mutinous first mate.

Curufin approached Celebrimbor and put an arm around his shoulders. "Come along then. There is nothing for you here and it is getting dangerous."

"Oh, it's getting dangerous now is it?" he snapped. "I cut and stabbed people. I may have even killed a man." He released a loud sob and swallowed painfully. "I loved the Teleri. I've always loved Alqualondë." He looked down at his blood-spattered trousers. "They were throwing people into the water who could not swim. Firing arrows at them! Like shooting fish in a barrel. What else could I do?"

"Take Tyelpo below, Curvo. Now!" Maedhros growled through gritted teeth.

Celebrimbor allowed his father to hustle him down the narrow stairs, half pulling and half carrying him.

Rows of wounded bled at the feet of incongruously calm healers, most of them of the Old Ones who had survived the Long March. Celebrimbor wanted to cover his ears to shut out the moaning of the injured and the medics' muttering of arcane incantations in unfamiliar dialects. Mystical mumbo-jumbo his grandfather would have said. Some of the medics knelt over their patients packing wounds with poultices or stitching torn flesh. The soothing scent of herbs reached his nose, combined with the sharp alcoholic tang of antiseptics.

Celebrimbor heard a familiar voice: Erestor from his dressage class, the son of Lord Orneminar the architect.

"Will I die?" Erestor asked, his voice ringing clear with stubborn self-control. Just then Erestor spotted him and shot him one of his tender, self-deprecating smiles, which always struck Celebrimbor as hiding enticing secrets.

"No, son," answered a laconic healer, turning Erestor's arm over and back inspecting a short horizantal seam of neat black stiches. "No. You will not. It's only a flesh wound. It probably won't even leave a permanent scar."

I'm not wounded, Celebrimbor thought, though my trousers and tunic are covered with blood.

"Hey, Tyelpo," said Erestor.

"Hey," he answered.

"We are well and truly fucked now, aren't we?" Erestor said grinning. It was more a statement than a question. "Well, at least we know we're right."

"Yeah," Celebrimbor said, not at all sure that was true. Didn't Erestor's arm even hurt? he wondered to himself.

Curufin ignored Erestor and shoved Celebrimbor past the makeshift infirmary, down the corridor, and into an empty cabin. It must have been designed for the captain of the ship, spacious and well lit with bluish Fëanorian lamps. Dark polished hardwood trimmed the portholes and a flamboyant mural of Ulmo's Palace covered one wall. The Vala of the Seas held a gilded trident and sported impossibly broad shoulders and muscular biceps.

"Drink this," his father ordered, shoving a bottle under his nose. "I am so sorry for everything," he said. "You're much too young for this." An unsecured porthole flew open causing them both to jump. Curufin struggled to close it. The last of Celebrimbor's hysteria had already begun to transform itself into numbness.

"Then so is Erestor. Too young, I mean. And he came alone. He can't be more than forty-two or three. I saw plenty of women with children, even infants. I saw a boy about ten years old slip in a puddle of blood and start crying. It was revolting. Poor little kid." Curufin winced. "Remember Ulmo's Palace?" Celebrimbor asked gently, pointing at the garish painting, trying to change the subject.

"Yes," Curufin said. "I am sorry about that too. I should have let you have your childish fancies. But that wasn't how I was raised. I didn't know any better."

"It's all right, Atto," Celebrimbor said. "None of it matters any more. Look at us now? Nothing could have prepared me for this."