Spark by grey_gazania

Spark

Read Spark

“I’m going to visit Mánaiwë tomorrow,” Atto said over dinner. “You should come along, Curvo. It’s been quite a while since you’ve seen Nyellë.”

 

“The last time I saw Nyellë, she hit me over the head with a toy cow so hard that one of its legs came off,” I said. It seemed necessary to point that out. Mánaiwë was a good friend of Atto’s, and I’d known his youngest daughter since we were both small, but my relationship with Nyellë had always been a little rocky.

 

Across the table, Maitimo snorted into his soup. “As I recall, she did that because you kept pulling her hair,” he reminded me. “Because you ‘liked the way her curls bounced’. You were hardly an innocent victim.”

 

“And that was fifteen years ago. I’m sure you’ve both matured,” Atto said, giving me a pointed look. “Mánaiwë tells me she’s been apprenticed to a firework maker. You’ve read a fair bit about pyrotechnics lately. I’m sure the two of you will find something to talk about.”

 

“Do I have to?” I asked, realizing even as I said it that the whine in my voice was unbefitting of a thirty-five year-old. I was more than halfway grown, not a small child anymore, and Ammë was already conveying with the look in her eyes alone that I was acting immature.

 

“Yes,” Atto said. “You have to. You don’t spend time with enough of your peers, Curvo. You know I’m pleased by how hard you work in your lessons with me, but you can’t spend every day in the company of the same half-dozen people. Besides, Mánaiwë has been asking after you. It would be rude of you to stay home.”

 

“Fine,” I sighed. I was comforted only slightly by the way Tyelko caught my eye, indicating with a look that he was sympathetic to my position. Different though we might seem at first glance, my older brother was probably my closest friend, and he understood my reluctance to tear myself away from the things that interested me for a social visit that was bound to be awkward, if not outright boring.

 

Perhaps, once I came home tomorrow, he and I could meet up with Irissë, our favorite cousin. That, I thought, would be a reasonable reward.

 

***********

 

I dressed carefully the next morning, knowing that Atto would be disappointed in me if I didn’t make a good impression on Mánaiwë and his family. Doubtless Atto had been talking up my intelligence and my skills, emphasizing how well I was doing in my own informal apprenticeship. And I was skilled. That was a fact, and something I was rightly proud of. Maitimo had his botany and his talent for diplomacy, Makalaurë had his music, Tyelko had his love of the hunt and the natural world, and Carnistir, already moved out and living with his wife in the heart of the city, had his facility with numbers. But, alone among my brothers, I had inherited Atto’s love of crafting, his deftness of hand and keenness of eye. It was not only in my face that I resembled my father, Prince Fëanáro, the greatest craftsman in all of Aman. Truly, my mother had named me well.

 

Fortunately, it was only a short ride to Mánaiwë’s house. He and his family lived roughly ten miles from us – too far for walking to be convenient, but not so far as to be a tiresome journey. Mánaiwë greeted us warmly when we arrived, and I endured some fifteen minutes’ questioning about my life and studies before he and Atto sent me off.

 

I wandered into the garden, where I found Thelmë, Nyellë’s sister, sitting in front of an easel and scraping a palette knife across her canvas. 

 

“Is Nyellë here?” I asked.

 

“She’s round the back in her workshop, doing something noisy,” Thelmë said, rolling her eyes and gesturing with one paint-covered hand. “That girl’s going to blow her fingers off if she’s not careful.”

 

Somehow, I doubted that that would be the case. My recollection was that, while Nyellë did have a sharp temper, she was also careful and methodical in her work. But I didn’t waste time arguing. Thelmë had always treated her younger sister with a touch of condescension when we were small, and it seemed that time hadn’t changed that. Instead I followed the direction of her pointing thumb, walking around a stand of trees to a stone outbuilding that certainly hadn’t been there the last time I had visited.

 

The workshop door was open, and I could see Nyellë inside, measuring out spoonfuls of some sort of powder onto small circles of paper. She wore gloves and a stained leather apron, and a pair of protective spectacles were perched on her nose. Her curls were pulled back by a scarf -- brightly colored, with a pattern of red and green chilis, but singed in a few places. There was a hint of smoke in the air, too, though I saw no fire burning. I waited until she had paused in her work and then rapped on the door frame.

 

“You can come in, Curvo,” she called, not looking up.

 

“Is my knock that distinctive?” I said, stepping inside.

 

Rubbing her cheek with the back of her wrist, she shook her head. “No one in my family ever knocks,” she said tartly. “Anyway, Atto said you’d be coming.”

 

“Well, I didn’t want to pass up another chance to get smacked with a wooden farm animal.”

 

“That was your own fault,” she said, pushing the spectacles farther up the bridge of her nose and then twisting one of the papers up around the heap of black powder. “And if you’re immature enough to pull my hair today, I’ll throw some of these at you. That’ll make being hit with a cow look like a kiss on the cheek, believe me.”

 

I laughed. “What are they, anyway?” I asked. “Some type of firework? Atto said you’d been apprenticed.”

 

Nyellë nodded. “You know poppers?” she said. “I’ve been playing around with the formula, and I’ve found a way for them to make light, too, instead of just noise.”

 

Picking up one of the paper twists, she motioned for me to step back and then hurled it at the floor. It hit the concrete with a sharp snap!, filling the air with the smell of smoke and sending up a shower of blue and green sparks.

 

“I added some copper chloride,” she said, as I knelt down to examine the remains of the device. “And a few other ingredients that I don’t propose to tell you. Trade secrets, you know.”

 

“Give me some time and I can probably work it out for myself,” I said, holding the scorched paper between my fingers and giving it a sniff. “I’ve done some reading.”

 

“Yes, well, you read everything,” Nyellë said. “But I don’t plan to give you one of these to experiment with, so you’ll need to satisfy your considerable curiosity some other way.”

 

I couldn’t help smiling at her words. “Considerable, is it? You seem awfully certain of that for someone who hasn’t seen me in over a decade.”

 

She shrugged. “You know how it goes. Your father tells my father what you’ve been up to, and then Atto tells me. He thinks I need more friends, and that you’re a prime candidate.”

 

The tone of her voice as she said the word friends sparked a sudden pang of fellow-feeling inside me. “My father’s always telling me the same thing,” I said. “He says I can’t just focus on my studies and only spend my free time with my brothers. But Tyelko and Irissë have always been friends enough for me.”

 

I wanted company that could keep up with me in mind and body, company that didn’t treat me with respect because of my position, but treated me with respect because of my skills and intellect. Though, to be fair to Nyellë, she had never hesitated to make her displeasure with me known when we were small, and even now, she was speaking to me like a peer, rather than showing any deference to me as a member of the royal family. It was actually rather refreshing, even if she was just as prickly as I remembered her being.

 

A porcupine, I remembered her brother calling her once, years ago. Try to say hello and you’ll walk away with your hand stuck full of needles.

 

Nyellë had gone back to her work as we spoke, but now she said, “Friends are fine in theory, but I’d rather experiment. I like what I’m learning. I like working on my own. But it’s always, Oh, Nyellë, why won’t you go to that party? or, Oh, Nyellë, why can’t you be more like your sister? Nevermind that Master Lonáro says I’m the most competent third-year student he’s ever taught. No, apparently that’s not good enough. I can’t just be smart and good at my chosen craft. I have to be a social butterfly, too.”

 

Her pale cheeks had turned red, and the words had come out with such vehemence that I found myself wondering how long she had been keeping these feelings bottled up. I also found myself, once again, feeling a greater surge of sympathy for Nyellë than I ever would have expected. There was a three-legged stool in the corner of the workshop, so I sat down, careful not to stretch my legs into her workspace.

 

“I know what you mean,” I said. “I mean, I don’t mind going to parties and things. I’m not Carnistir. But I’d also rather work than play. Atto doesn’t push me so hard to socialize more often; I think he understands me and understands what I like. But he wants me to socialize more broadly. He says my circle is too small.” I sniffed once more at the charred paper in my fingers, and then added, “That’s why he dragged me along today. But you haven’t hit me with anything yet, so I’d say it’s going well. Better than I expected, anyway, based on the last time we saw each other.”

 

“Well, you haven’t done anything to provoke me,” Nyellë said. My sympathetic words seemed to have calmed her somewhat; the high color had retreated from her face, and her breathing was steadier. She twisted up the last of her modified poppers and then pulled another stool around to face me, sitting down in one fluid movement. She pushed her protective spectacles up over her forehead and looked at me for a long moment, leaving me feeling like I’d been pinned to a cork board.

 

“You’ve grown up,” she said at last. “A bit, anyway.” She added, a tad pensively, “You know, I never thought you’d be the one to understand how I’ve been feeling. I never thought we had all that much in common. Maybe I was wrong.”

 

That made me smile, and I said, only half teasingly, “I admire people who can admit when they're wrong.”

 

“Oh, shut up,” Nyellë said, rolling her eyes.

 

But I thought about Thelmë in the garden with her paints, and Mánaiwë in his forge, and his wife Lalamil and their son Alyeldo beavering away together making the elaborate clocks they were known for. And then there was Nyellë, making fireworks.

 

“Do you ever feel left out?” I asked. She looked puzzled by the question, so I elaborated, saying, “Everything your family makes is something concrete, something lasting – a painting, or a clock, or a piece of jewelry. But what you do, the fireworks – that's more ephemeral. You make them, and then you set them off, and then they're gone. They could be the most beautiful fireworks in the world, but once they've been used, all that's left is people’s memories. Does it ever make you feel like what you do is…I don’t know, less valuable somehow?”

 

She gazed at me in silence, and then said, “Geez, you really are as sharp as your father says you are.” From the look on her face, the question had struck a nerve.

 

“I don’t feel like what I do is lesser,” she said. “But my sister definitely does. And she and my brother are always telling me I'm going to hurt myself, like they think I'm inept or sloppy. That bothers me. I’ve been doing this for three years. I do know what safety precautions are necessary, and I take them. I mean, I’m thirty-seven! I'm not some little kid playing with explosives.”

 

She sighed and then asked, “How about you? How are your studies going?”

 

“They're fine,” I said. “Atto’s teaching me how to work with wire. He's pleased with me; he says I work hard and I have the most talent out of all my brothers. He taught them all the basics, you know, but none of them stuck with it. Which is fine,” I added hurriedly, not wanting to sound like I was denigrating them. “They all have their own interests. But I think it's gratifying for my father to finally have someone following in his footsteps. He loves his craft, and he wants to share it.”

 

“That's how my mother felt when Alyeldo decided to study clock making with her.” Nyellë smiled briefly, a sudden flash of sunlight, and said, “You should see the number of cuckoo clocks in my brother's room. Noon is a riot.”

 

“I’ll bet.”

 

I was surprised to find that I actually felt comfortable, here with Nyellë in her workshop. Maybe we had more in common than I'd thought, too. Maybe spending more time with Nyellë would be fun.

 

Impulsively, I said, “You know, there's a party at my grandfather's next week, and I’m allowed to bring a guest. Do you want to come with me?”

 

She hesitated, saying, “I don’t know…”

 

“Come on,” I urged. “It’ll make our parents happy, for one thing, and it’ll be fun. Besides, I’m enjoying your company today. I like a girl who’s honest and straightforward.” She still looked unsure, so I added, “We could talk about pyrotechnics all night if we wanted to. And the food is always good. Haru’s cooks make wonderful canapés.” I paused, and then, enticingly, said, “I promise not to pull your hair.”

 

“Oh, well, if that’s your offer, I guess I have to say yes,” Nyellë said. But she was grinning now, and I felt a sudden swell of triumph.

 

“It’s a date,” I said. “I mean, not a real date. But I’ll meet you there.”

 

Then again, I never knew my luck. Maybe Irissë wasn't the only girl with hanging out with after all.

---

Chapter End Notes

Atto -- Quenya for dad

Ammë -- Quenya for mom

Curvo -- Nickname for Curufinwë/Curufin

Tyelko -- Nickname for Tyelkormo/Celegorm

Irissë -- Quenya name of Aredhel

Maitimo -- Quenya name of Maedhros

Makalaurë -- Quenya name of Maglor

Haru -- Quenya for granddad (in this case, Finwë)

 

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