Clad Much in Grey by Lindariel

Their Hideous Webs

Mithrim, Year 7 of the Sun; early summer

Alatáriel hears astonishing stories about the history of Middle-Earth.  Content warning:  a lot of spiderbabies die.

This chapter incorporates the Vintage Literature challenge prompt "tale within a tale" and the Vintage Poetry challenge prompt "alliterative verse."

Read Their Hideous Webs

The Grey-Elf swung her leg over her horse and leapt down lightly as Alatáriel pulled up beside her in the grove of alder. Alatáriel watched her guide's grey cloak, which seemed to blur as it fluttered in her wake. It would be well worth her own semblance of bowing to Fëanorion manipulation, she thought, if she could learn why that blurring happened. Grey-Elves living among the Noldor around Lake Mithrim, contacts of her cousin, had promised to reveal the secret of the cloth the Noldor admired so much, their light silver-grey stuff that reputedly hid the wearer from casual view. Golassiel had led her to this isolated enclave half a day's ride south of the lake with the understanding that all Alatáriel's questions would be answered here.

Alatáriel leapt from her own horse, relieved to be away from the simmering hostilities around Lake Mithrim for a few days. The claim that no one else in the family understood clothmaking well enough to make sense of the explanation did happen to be true, but that just made a convenient cover for the request that she go. She was sure Russandol had shunted her off on this errand to get her away from all the jockeying for position that was going on ahead of the family council her cousins and uncle had called. Already the run-up to the council had proved to be fraught with rivalries between the House of Míriel and the House of Indis. Russandol had always been kind to her, if a little formal, back in Aman; but the Oath, followed so soon by his horrific ordeal with the Enemy, seemed to have turned his kindness into more of a mask than the former ease of his oldest-cousin manner. And as for the other Fëanorions, especially Carnistir, it was clear they did not want her either her or Teleporno around. Teleporno had just shrugged and set off to visit the Grey-Elven boathouse at the mouth of the southern tributary, where she would probably have to go to fetch him when she got back. Having no horse in the Noldorin race for fiefdoms made it easy for him to ignore all the politicking that was going on. But perhaps if she came back with information that was helpful to her cousins she could bargain for something of value in return.

Two horse-handlers appeared from deeper among the trees. Golassiel spoke briefly with one of them before they led the two horses away, then said, "come, lady, and refresh yourself before I show you the work." She gestured toward a nearby pair of trees with a low table nestled between them. Eagerly Alatáriel headed toward the promise of a wash and something to drink as Golassiel continued, "we have arranged for you to sleep on one of our telain until you are ready to return to your family. Your pack will be placed there, along with everything you need to be comfortable eating and sleeping with us."

Alatáriel looked around. Not far away, under another stand of trees, four Elves sat around a large basket nearly full of something fluffy and grey. Alatáriel tried to focus on what they were doing with their hands, but her eyes kept slipping out of focus. "What are they doing?" she asked Golassiel. "May I see?" Golassiel nodded, and Alatáriel drew closer to the workers. She sat down, close but not in their way, and tried to concentrate on what was happening.

Each woman had a large wooden spool of some dark substance. That, Alatáriel realized, was the source of the visual disturbance. By the way they handled it, the substance was some kind of thread or yarn, but it was hard to see. The basket contained what appeared to be normal down from some small grey bird. The women were using bone pins to open the plies of their supply of yarn, then securing bits of the down into the twist of the yarn. Once she had augmented a length of the yarn with the down, each woman wound the fluffy length onto a wooden yarnwinder. The yarnwinders of fluffy yarn were easy enough for her to see, but the unaugmented yarn continued to elude her sight. She watched the women carefully for a few minutes, focusing on their hand movements.

When she could contain her curiosity no longer, she turned to Golassiel standing nearby and said, "I understand how they are doing it, but what are they making? And why is the yarn so hard to see?"

"They are making yarn for summer blankets," Golassiel replied. "The down is shed by young moorhens that live around Lake Mithrim. If you will come with me, we can answer all your questions at length."

Alatáriel, remembering her thirst, got up and followed Golassiel toward the low table. A large heap of what looked like packing cloth lay on the ground nearby. A washbasin of grey burnished clay and a jug of water stood on the table along with some folded towels. Alatáriel knelt and began to pour water into the basin. As she looked at the basin, an image began to move across its surface. She blinked, trying to clear her vision, but the image persisted. She saw a pair of hands throwing a shuttle across a Noldorin loom, weaving an indistinct grey web. A bright silver ring with a white stone adorned one hand. The ring glinted once, and the image dissipated. As the afterimage of flashing light burned behind her eyelids, she wondered why the water had reflected an unbidden image again, and wondered even more what the image could mean. Abruptly she plunged her hands into the water, splashing to disrupt the smooth surface. Quickly she rinsed her hands and face, then dried herself with the soft linen towel, all the while feeling Golassiel's eyes on her.

Golassiel beckoned to a half-dozen Elves waiting nearby, then knelt at the table across from Alatáriel. Two cleared away the washing things as two others set down trays of food and wooden tableware. Another filled their cups with pale yellow wine from a clay calph before leaving the rest of the jug on the table. The sixth approached slowly, bearing a large net bag with something grey in it.

"This is why you are here today," said Golassiel, pointing to the thing in the bag. It looked like an egg, or perhaps a very large cocoon. The bearer moved closer, so the egg was almost in Alatáriel's face. It was almost spherical, larger than a melon, and fuzzy to look at. It was not just the frayed tendrils reaching up from the surface, waving as if in a light breeze through the meshes of the sturdy net, that made it look indistinct. There was something unaccountable about how difficult it was to focus on the details of the egg. Although its tendrils shone like spun glass, at the same time the thing seemed to emanate a slate-grey shadow.

"This is it?" she asked Golassiel. "This is the secret?"

"This is where it starts," Golassiel replied. She nodded to the Elf carrying the egg, who carried it away again and disappeared among the trees.

Alatáriel selected a crunchy oatcake and spread it with soft cheese. She said "what is it?" just before she bit into the cake.

"Dead spiders," Golassiel replied dryly.

Alatáriel choked on her bite of oatcake. When she had governed her throat again, she said "what? How can that be? That egg is enormous!" She sipped at her pale yellow wine, which tasted of flowers.

Golassiel smiled, with a twinkle in her eye. Alatáriel was sure her reaction had been anticipated and enjoyed. "Allow me to explain." She drew a long breath as Alatáriel took a moment to be grateful that Golassiel had learned to speak passable Quenya. The northern Telerin dialect the Grey-Elves normally spoke was somewhat different from the Falathrin one Alatáriel had been learning these last seven years, and she did not want to miss any detail of this intriguing development. She crunched her oatcake again, with relish and anticipation.

"There have always been giant spiders in the vales of Ered Gorgoroth. They were as big as the largest of hunting hounds. During the Great Journey, the Tatyar lived for a time in Neldoreth. They fought the spiders often, destroying their eggs when they could. At first they only slashed them to pieces, but then one of Finwë's people, a woman named Míriel, became curious about the fibers and asked that the egg sacs be left whole for experimenting. By the time my clan came over the Ered Luin the Tatyar had worked out how to process and twine the silk. In that short time between our coming here and the Tatyar leaving, the Tatyar taught us many crafts, including the making of spider-yarn."

Alatáriel nodded, a little dazed. Her family in Aman had rarely talked about the time of the Great Journey, or about any time in the past; they were more interested in the present, and in developing their skills. At Eglarest, Círdan's reminiscences of his past had taught her something of the early Quendi, but they were short and infrequent, and he wrought no overarching sense of history into them. Golassiel had just given her the largest consistent piece of Elvish history she had ever heard; the world shifted, then fell back into place, and for the first time she felt an emotional kinship with this mortal land, a sense of origin, of home.

Golassiel's voice found a way through the cosy blanket of belonging that had just dropped around her. "Lady? Did I use a word wrongly?"

"No, your Quenya is very good," Alatáriel assured her. "I was just imagining the past for a moment. You said 'spider-yarn.' I understand that a patient spinner can make yarn out of almost any fiber. But that does not explain some of the properties of the cloth you weave with spider-yarn."

"That is true. There is more to the story, but we must skip forward many years." Golassiel sipped at her cup and shifted more comfortably into place. Recognizing the signs of a storyteller settling down to a good yarn, Alatáriel put down her oatcake and poured more wine into both their cups. Whatever it took to get this story, she would give it gladly. Golassiel nodded slightly in thanks for the wine and drew a deep breath before beginning again.

"I did not think it important before," Golassiel said thoughtfully. "But since your people have taken an interest in spider-silk, I have begun to make a song about it." She began to sing in yet another Telerin dialect that sounded more courtly than the northern speech Alatáriel had become accustomed to hearing in Mithrim.

When the world lay     all wan and dim,

blessed not by sun,     before moon's rise,

silver starlight     on darkness shone,

the tangled terror     athwart our trail.

Clusters of clumps     clung to branches,

the spiders' spawn     in spinning wrapped,

sustaining all still     by sticky webs

a nursery of nebs     come not to birth,

the frothing foes     of future wars.

Alatáriel wondered if this were the Doriathrin tongue Círdan had mentioned to her; the tune reminded her of something she had heard long ago in Lórien, almost like birdcalls turned into speech. "It is far from finished," Golassiel sighed, "so I will tell you the rest of the story without song." She paused to drink deeply of her wine.

"Not long before the first rise of Ithil, I went with a small egg harvesting party to the valley beneath the Ered Gorgoroth. We moved cautiously, seeking first the webs that gave warning of the spiders' presence. But since our last trip the vales had changed, had become shrouded in dark so thick the starlight was no longer visible. We blundered into webs much larger and darker than we had ever seen; they seemed to capture and multiply the regular shadows into something more ominous, and we began to wander aimlessly among them, despairing of ever seeing the stars again. In doing so we fell afoul of three spiders that were many times larger than the ones we had always known. Fortunately, the sight of these monsters so horrified us that we immediately set to shooting at them before they could close with us. They were unafraid and did not protect themselves from our arrows, but it still took many to slay them.

"We searched the immediate area for egg sacs, and when we found them they were enormous. We cut down all the ones we could locate, but we had only our packbaskets with us, no containers big enough to carry these bigger egg sacs. We managed to drag them out of the deep darkness on our cloaks, but it was such hard going that we decided to work up some netting to carry them.

"As soon as we came across a patch of nettles, we piled the eggs up in a heap, gathered up the nettles, and settled down to make the netting."

"I have never seen that done with nettles," exclaimed Alatáriel. "Will you show me how?"

"Tomorrow or the next day, lady, if you wish," Golassiel said, her voice prickly. "But it is not important now."

"Please," Alatáriel replied, "forgive me for interrupting. Do continue with the story." She poured more wine for Golassiel.

"We sat down under the stars and began processing the nettles we had gathered. Soon the thumping of the stalks took on a rhythm, and we began to sing as we worked.

"While we were thus diverted, a horde of baby spiders suddenly swarmed us, scuttling up our backs and arms. One of the egg sacs had been mature, and the eggs had all hatched at once. They were the size of ducks, with eyes like flies and sharp beaks and stings where the earlier spiders had none. There were dozens of them, and they were very fast. It was terrible, bloody slaughter to dispatch them all. We prevailed, but three of the party were poisoned by many stings, and they would not have survived to return home had not there been a healer among us.

After we cleared away the spider bodies and tended our wounded, we resumed the netting work, producing large slings to carry the eggsacs. Once we got closer to Doriath, out from under the shadows of the mountains, we noticed there was something special about the eggs." Golassiel moved over to the large heap next to the table and whipped its cloth cover aside.

The heap consisted of giant eggsacs. Each was comprised a cloud of fibers like a giant cocoon and had one or more hole in it through which glabrous eggs, each a greenish yellow and about the size of a full-grown person's head, were faintly visible. The spidersilk fibers were very dark grey, almost the color of charcoal, and they gleamed in the afternoon shade as if covered with pine resin. The longer Alatáriel tried to focus on the heap, the less well she could see the eggsacs.

"Ohhhh," Alatáriel breathed. "So what I saw before was not an egg, but an egg sac."

"A very small one, yes," said Golassiel. "These are more typical."

"Are they... safe?"

"These are safe, yes. After the unexpected hatching of the venomous spiders, we changed the way we harvest the eggs. Nowadays the egg sacs are parboiled immediately, before we transport them."

"Does that not damage their fibers?"

"Not a bit. A lengthy boil is part of the treatment, as you will see. That first brief boiling serves only to slay the spiders, and then they are brought here safely, intact, to be processed into cloth. These sacs here have all been breached, so they will not produce the highest quality thread. We will save them for making regular clothing. The highest quality thread we are working on today will become cloaks, clothing for scouts and hunters, and tents and curtains -- anything we want to be especially protective against enemy eyes.

"Before I take you to the scouring, do you have any more questions?"

"Yes. Why is it so hard to focus on the eggsacs?"

"We are not sure, but some have suggested that the silk from those spiders actually devours light, or perhaps it produces dark."

Aha, thought Alatáriel. Their secret really is a mystery! "Why did the spiders get bigger and poisonous?"

"Queen Melian says it is because they are the offspring of the great spider, Ungweliantë in your tongue, who hid in those mountains for a while after the Enemy's servants threatened her. She mated with the local spiders, and her offspring are much larger and more dangerous than their sires. They have spilled into the plain south of the mountains, and now the area is called Nan Dungortheb, the Valley of Dreadful Death. Harvesting parties have to be much more cautious nowadays; we only harvest when Anor is in the sky."

"What remedies are there for their poison?"

Golassiel hesitated, then switched to her own tongue. "Green plantain leaves, if they are in season, to help draw out the poison; otherwise a paste made of powdered walnut hulls. Willow bark or oil of lavender for pain; oil of peppermint to reduce the swelling and increase the blood flow," she summarized. "But nothing heals the scars entirely," she said more quietly, rubbing her upper left arm. Switching back to Quenya, she said "I am sorry, I do not know their names in your language."

Watching Golassiel remember what surely must be her own injuries from that raid, Alatáriel's stomach roiled. "I think I understood all that," she hastened to say. It was a good thing her Falathrin studies had involved so much herblore. The names of healing plants seemed to differ less between the two dialects than many other words did.

"Shall we move along to the scouring area, then?" Golassiel inquired.

Alatáriel looked down at her abandoned, half-eaten oatcake. "Yes, please," she said. "I think I would rather walk than eat right now."

 

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Chapter End Notes

telain (S) -- platforms set in trees as habitations

calph (S) -- a serving vessel for beverages

Tatyar -- an ancient name for the second tribe of Calaquendi, the Noldor

Known textile-related terms in Tolkien's invented languages are few, but there is a word for silk (samin) in both Qenya and Quenya, and silk and silken textiles are mentioned more often than any other textile type. However, the words for weave (lan, Middle Primitive Elvish), twine (lia-, Quenya), and spidersilk (lhê, Sindarin) all seem related to lan, the Primitive Elvish word for warp or stretch. In other words, early textile terms can be construed to support the idea of spinning and weaving with spidersilk. Discovering this etymological relationship helped me understand what must have made the silky cloth of the Grey-Elves of Mithrim so special.

The description of making feathered yarn for summer blankets is based on a traditional textile technique of the Pueblo nations of the American southwest.

Webs of Shadow

The Mithrim share another secret of their grey cloth with Alatáriel.

Read Webs of Shadow

Golassiel and Alatáriel headed downwind toward a huge wooden cauldron at the edge of the glade. From a clay hearth nearby, two Elves were shoveling large smooth stones out of the fire and plopping them into the cauldron. Water fountained and steam roiled as the hot rocks hit the water. As they got closer, Alatáriel noticed a large wooden spillway leading into the upwind side of the cauldron. Two more Elves stood there, unpacking large nets full of egg sacs and tipping them cautiously down the spillway into the steaming cauldron.

A fifth Elf stood by with a long smooth paddle, alternately stirring the mixture with it and smacking the surface forcefully. As they got closer, Alatáriel saw the great round scars on his face and heard him say as he slapped at the water, "may all the minions of the Great Enemy perish thus!" Alatáriel shuddered. No Elf hröa should be marred by such unholy scarring. He stepped back with the paddle resting over his shoulder, watching her warily. She wondered if he had seen her inability to control her reaction to his injuries.

Her shudder reaction owed itself to more than a face full of battle wounds, though. These eggs were the get of Ungweliantë Laureyulmo, coëval in wickedness with the Great Enemy, and they did not deserve to live. But because they were only eggs rather than giant eight-legged horrors, her pity at their fate was stirred up despite herself. She was going to have to find some way to quietly forget the implications of this part of the processing.

This close to the cauldron it was impossible to ignore the scent rising from the water. It smelt acrid yet familiar to Alatáriel, and she sniffed it cautiously. "Is that wood-ash lye?" she asked. Golassiel looked at her blankly. "Ashes dissolved in water," she amended. The Mithrim dialect was just enough different from the Falathrin one that she felt unsure of her speech again.

"Yes," said the scarred Elf, stepping up and stirring the cauldron again. "Clean ash from cookfires only," he said, "and fresh water. Also a flower." Alatáriel couldn't tell if he were being shy, efficient, or patronizing.

"Lady Alatáriel," said Golassiel, "this is Rethandîr. He is our lhê-herdir, the master of the threadmaking. He will answer your questions here and send you on to the reeling point. I must go ahead and see that all is in order there."

"Thank you, Golassiel," she said as Golassiel strode off upwind, and then "él síla lúmena vomentienguo, Rethandîr," Alatáriel said, turning to him with all the warmth and gratitude she could summon. Rethandîr nodded, but she noticed a flash of surprise in his eyes. He did not expect I would speak his language this well, she thought. He thinks I am just one of the foreign Elves.

Alatáriel approached the cauldron, carefully circling so the steam did not blow into her face. The roiling mixture now looked grey and slick, like a fetid soup with a dozen giant grey-haired heads bobbing in it. "I understand spinning and weaving, but I can see that this is a different process," she said. She stifled a moan as her gorge rose. "Are you cooking them to clean them?" she managed to get out.

"To soften them," Rethandîr replied, "so the short fibers on the outside can be drawn away. There is a gum on the fibers, and the bath helps remove that. It also lightens the color of the silk a bit without lightening the darkness the fiber casts."

"Draw away? What is beneath the short fibers?"

"A spider spins a single long lhê. The outside of the eggsac becomes damaged as it hangs in the trees, and the outermost layer breaks apart. We pull off those short loose pieces with our hands. It is not good for making into yarn. Then we wind off the single long strand beneath."

"How long do you cook them?"

"Three times through 'The Meeting of Melian and Thingol,'" replied Rethandîr.

"Then I will leave you to your singing," Alatáriel replied, thankful she had found such a graceful way to exit the smelly premises.

"Over there," nodded Rethandîr, "you will find the reeling station. It does not smell nearly so evil."

Alatáriel nodded back, and said "thank you for your teaching," over her shoulder as she hurried off in the direction Rethandîr had indicated. A low sound of singing was her only reply.

The reeling station looked much like the scouring station except that there was a table next to the great wooden washtub full of eggsacs and water. Another Elf stood next to the table, leaning over the cauldron and stirring the contents using a stout straw whisk. There was no steam on the water, the acrid scent was much less strong, and the water looked clean. There was no sign of Golassiel.

As she dabbled at the eggsacs, the worker's whisk snagged several individual fibers. She stretched her hand above her head and the fibers stretched parallel. She repeated the dabble-stretch move a few times until a fiber from each eggsac had been caught and stretched. Then she did some quick manipulations with her hand to firm up and even the bundle of stretched fibers. She turned to the table, holding the whisk out before her steadily. On the table stood a wooden reel with a curlicue of dried vine mounted next to it. The Elf pulled the bundle of fibers off the whisk, looped them through the dried vine, and wrapped them around the reel. As she began to crank the reel the bunched, medium grey fibers of spidersilk began to unwind from the eggsacs and wind smoothly onto the reel.

Alatáriel noted how the scouring had lightened the color of the eggsacs. As the spidersilk dried its color evidently grew even lighter; several reels on the table were already full of dried spidersilk in a beautiful, if blurry, dark silver grey. "What happens next?" she inquired, completely fascinated.

"The reeled lhê is twisted into a fine lain and then plied with taw," replied the silk reeler. Alatáriel struggled to keep up with the unfamiliar technical terms. The words were just close enough to their Quenya equivalents that Alatáriel thought she understood. The individual lhê, the silk filaments from several reels, were twisted together to make a fine silk lain, thread. That much made sense. But "plied with taw"? Were they really mixing spidersilk with wool? So that was the secret of those unique grey cloths the Grey-elves of Mithrim wove! She stood watching the reeler without even seeing her work, so struck was she by this new idea. She had to admire the practicality and the genius of it: kill off the enemy, but respect it as a natural resource and create from it an entirely new thing with its evil qualities turned to good use. Wool for insulation from cold and damp, and spidersilk for durability, suppleness, and above all the repelling of light; the implications for natural concealment were enormous.

As she contemplated this new idea, Golassiel reappeared. "Would you like to see the woolworkers now?" she asked Alatáriel, gesturing in yet another upwind direction.

"I would like to see how the lain is made," Alatáriel replied, "and how it is plied."

"You will see that tomorrow," Golassiel said, "but today there is fleece preparation and spinning. Come see that now." Alatáriel suspected she was being managed, but she was also curious about how the Grey-Elves worked with wool. She thanked the silk reeler and, still thoughtful, accompanied Golassiel through a hazel copse without hearing a word she said. On the other side of the copse lay an outdoor work area between a small wooden building on one side and a longer, taller one on the other side. It was busier than the sailweaving workshop she had fostered at Eglarest, and it was familiar ground: it reminded her of the Telerin weaving atelier where her mother and grandmother oversaw the entire sailmaking enterprise at Alqualondë. Many Elves, male and female, were at work, some striding to and fro with baskets of fleece or skeins of finished yarn, others standing or seated in groups. She saw combing, spinning, plying, and skeining all taking place at once. She breathed deeply, appreciating that even the open air smelt like woolworking here.

A nearby group seated in a small circle was combing, separating the locks of shorn fleece into short fluffy fibers and long straight ones. She approached. "May I try?" she asked the closest of them, holding out her hand toward the basket of unprocessed fleece in the center of the group. They all paused, looking at her curiously until one of them handed over her combs to Alatáriel without a word.

Alatáriel sat down in an unoccupied chair and eyed the basket for a moment. It was filled with individual shorn locks of wool, some white, some black. She chose from the mixed basket only the black locks and commenced loading them onto a comb. The others fell back into the rhythms of their work, glancing at her from time to time; she knew they did not expect her to know what she was doing. But wool combing would be second nature to a (half-)Telerin princess as long as there were sails to weave, and it happened to be one of the textile processes she was really good at, so she enjoyed showing off a little bit for them.

Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh went the combs in her hands, and the fibers collected like magic into their two groups. The long outer coat fibers were charcoal black and slightly crimpy. The short undercoat fibers were delicate indeed, short, fluffy as down, and a beautiful shade of pale grey; as she removed them from the comb, she imagined them firmly spun and then plied with spidersilk to make an exceptional weaving yarn. Even though it was obvious, she held up the grey puff and asked the group "where do these go?" The woman who had handed her the combs shyly pointed to the right basket. She looked around the group, and all of them were smiling. Mission partially accomplished, she told herself, emptying the second comb of its bounty of black fibers and depositing it in the correct basket.

The sun westered as Alatáriel sat with the woolworkers teaching her how the Grey-Elves handled their fleece. One woman offered her a smooth linen cloth to place across her lap. When the basket of grey wool was full, they broke their silence for the first time; they began to sing for her, teaching her a song that seemed to make the puffs stretch smoothly into lengths of fluffy sliver with barely a touch from the workers. It seemed to be in the same lilting dialect as Golassiel's song earlier, and Alatáriel wondered if these were some of the folk of Doriath. When she tried to speak to them in her best Mithrim dialect, most of them just looked blankly at her while one or two answered in broken phrases. She soon gave up trying to converse and focused on learning the work.

Someone handed her a distaff in an unfamiliar shape, with a ring at the bottom and a carved swan at the top, and showed her how to dress it with the sliver. Three of the spinners gave her slender beechwood spindles with diminutive whorls, one of burnished clay, another of carved bone, and the third of some smooth green stone, and showed her how they used the distaffs and spindles together. She soon learned how to spin a fine, tight, consistent thread using this tool set. The familiarity of the work, the comfort of shared purpose, and the sweet pleasure of learning something new caused the time to fly past, even without conversation.

Alatáriel suddenly realized that Golassiel had reappeared yet again. How many times does that make, Alatáriel tried to recall from outside her awareness, which was still revolving about her core like a spindle. Golassiel looked at her, a question in her eyes. Alatáriel stood up, offering the tools back to the woman next to her. The woman took the cloth and wrapped it around the spindles and distaff, handing the packet back to Alatáriel with a nod of her head. Alatáriel nodded back at her, smiling broadly, then said to Golassiel "I think I have seen enough for one afternoon. May I go to my lodging now? I want to write this all down while it is still fresh."

"Of course. Soon it will be time to cease work for the day. Come this way," Golassiel invited, walking across the clearing toward a stand of alder trees in the near distance. Alatáriel's head swiveled as she scanned the grassy floor of the glade, looking for the platform Golassiel had mentioned earlier. The Elves of the Falas did not sleep on platforms; they slept on the ground or in tents, or in buildings, or on boats -- in fact, almost everywhere but on platforms. She wondered if the platform in question was meant to have a tent erected above it. That might be practical, she thought, in places where the ground was cold or marshy. But the ground here seemed fine, firm, and entirely appropriate to a lightly forested area in the early summer. Further, she sensed no sign that platforms had obscured any of the olvar nearby in the past growing season. Why would platforms be needed here? And if they were needed, why did she not see any signs of one?

Alatáriel turned to Golassiel with a question on her lips that remained unvoiced as Golassiel clambered up a rope ladder beside the bole of a particularly large alder tree. Looking up, she saw the ladder led to a platform half-hidden in the leafy branches of the tree; this must be the talan where she had been invited to lodge. She sped up the ladder behind Golassiel, wondering what it would be like up there. She had never slept so high above the ground outdoors before.

Emerging through a hole, Alatáriel first saw Golassiel standing on a smooth wood floor nestled among and supported by many small branches. "Is this a talan?" she asked, laughing. "I expected it to be on the ground."

"Yes," Golassiel replied, "that is our word for it. It is safer to sleep up here than on the ground." She showed Alatáriel how to move and affix the low walls that screened two sides of the talan. The walls were about waist-height, basketlike and easy to handle, woven of a combination of alder wattles and bands of the grey cloth. They looked rustic in construction but were very hard to see clearly on account of the grey blur that was becoming very familiar to her eyes.

"I will come for you when it is time to eat," said Golassiel, stepping off onto the ladder.

Alone, Alatáriel looked around the talan carefully. The first thing she noticed was a fluffy blur near the bole of the tree where a grey feather blanket was laid out. Suddenly remembering the first of her day's encounters with the uses of spidersilk, she drew back a corner of the blanket gently, admiring how light, soft, and supple it was. Underneath it were a quilted linen pad for sleeping on and a plump pillow.

She was relieved to find her traveling pack beside the pallet. Egg gathering, scouring, reeling, twisting, plying, featherwork, fleece quality, combing, spinning, and song -- I must write this down before I forget it all, she thought. She was already beginning to formulate what she wanted to set down about her observations as she rummaged through her bag for her journal. Without her portable desk it was going to be hard to write quickly or neatly. She set out her ink and journal on the talan floor and nibbled on the end of her swan quill. Should she write first about the feather blanket, the healing plants, the local fleece type, or the origins of spidersilk? "Some observations on the etymology of textile terms in the tongue of Mithrim," she wrote, and smiled. Maybe she was turning into a linguist after all.

 

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Chapter End Notes

hröa -- body (Q)

Laureyulmo -- The Drinker of Laurelin's Light (Q)

lhê-herdir -- spidersilk-master (S)

él síla lúmena vomentienguo -- a star shines upon the hour of the meeting of our ways (Telerin)

lhê -- spidersilk, filament (S)

lain -- thread (S)

taw -- wool (S)

olvar -- plants (Q)

talan -- platform on the ground (Q); platform in a tree (S)

In the European Middle Ages and afterward, before clocks were common, it was not unusual for a written recipe to phrase durations of time in terms of the recitation of familiar prayers (e.g., "boil it for three paternosters"). Here I have had the Grey-Elf refer to the singing of a well-known Doriathrin song as a duration marker. If this were a Star Trek fanfic I'd probably have picked "Row Row Row Your Boat," which is much shorter than the ten-minute ballad I imagine "The Meeting of Melian and Thingol" to be.