Skipping Song by Himring

Skipping Song

One, Two

Lalaith wanted to play at skipping, too, although the older girls told her she was too little. She did not have to plead long before they gave in and let her try, but they were right. The turning rope came down and knocked her over and she sat down hard on her behind in the dust.

Turin, who had been keeping an eye on her from some way off, came running, afraid she might be seriously hurt, but by the time he got there, she looked up at him from where she sat and was already laughing again.

‘When I am older, I shall be the best skipper,’ she informed her older brother. ‘You will hold and turn the rope for me then, won’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Turin briefly. No more than that, but Lalaith, who knew him, heard Yes, of course and Yes, always anyway.

Close to them, the stream that had given Lalaith her nickname bubbled and chuckled away.

One, Two, Three

Nienor did not get to play very much. Morwen had not forgotten that, in the time after the Easterlings’s arrival, women and girls had been snatched from her household when they had ventured beyond her immediate protection and kept her daughter close to the house. So Nienor could not have talked to the younger Edain enslaved by Brodda, even if they had not been made to work so hard.

At home, Morwen, never a talkative woman, was more taciturn than ever in those years. And the couple of old men left in her service were often bone-weary with a workload that should have been shouldered by younger men, although Sador, on evenings when his over-strained game leg was not paining him too much, occasionally managed to carve a small rough toy for Nienor or sit with her and tell stories of her brother Turin, who was far away and safe in marvellous, elvish Doriath. It was from Sador that Nienor also learned, one time when Morwen was out of earshot, that her elder sister Urwen, who had died so very young, had once been called Lalaith.

Lalaith was also the name of the stream where Nienor sometimes went to fetch water to help the grown-ups, when no Easterlings had been seen close by for a while. She might have talked to Nen Lalaith, even if she had not known about Urwen. She had so few people to talk to and the stream seemed to have its own voice, clear and merry. She could complain a bit to Nen Lalaith. It would have been rude to complain at home, when everyone was so clearly doing their best and exhausted.

One night, after she had fetched water during the day, she fell asleep and dreamed she was back by the stream and there was a golden mist over the water and, in the mist, there was a girl waiting for her, a smiling girl with butter-yellow curls who held a rope in her hands.

‘You can call me Lalaith,’ said the girl. ‘Would you like to skip with me?’

There was nothing Nienor wanted so badly as that.

‘Then your brother shall help us turn the rope’, said Lalaith.

And she began to chant:

Mother is sad.
Father is away.
Sister needs to play.
Brother, turn the rope!
One, two, three, four…

And out of the golden mist came her brother’s hand and held one end of the rope and Lalaith held the other, as she continued to sing and count, and Nienor began to skip. If she had thought about it, she might have thought that, when she sang, Lalaith’s voice was not entirely that of a girl. There was a watery strain threaded through those notes.

Nienor did not want to think about that, but she did ask, eventually: ‘Doesn’t Turin want to skip, too?’

‘He is happier just turning the rope,’ answered Lalaith. ‘He has always been like that.’

Afterwards, it was hard to remember how long and how often Nienor had dreamed that dream. One summer, maybe two? She did remember that she had got very good at skipping, because she also practised during the day, on her own, and that Lalaith laughed and praised her. She never saw more of Turin than his lightly tanned hand emerging out of the mist and firmly holding the rope but, in every dream, it was there.

Until one night, after they were done skipping, Lalaith said seriously: ‘Nienor, this was the last time.’

Nienor was already living in a world where everything could always be lost in a single moment, but her face must have betrayed her feelings nevertheless, for Lalaith continued: ‘I have stayed longer already than was safe. If I stay longer, I shall be caught. Ulmo’s power is draining from the waters all over the North…’

As she spoke, her voice sounded less and less like a girl’s and more and more like running water and the mist was no longer golden but white and damp and then Lalaith was gone.

And when she went to fetch water again, there was something missing from the stream, although it would have been hard to say what it was.

One

Turin woke up with a start in his bed in Menegroth.

He did not remember much of the dream he had just had. He never did—just that warm feeling of family present, of sisters, and, strong and palpable, the twist of hemp between his fingers that represented both a task he was able to perform for them and a reliable connection. But tonight, he had felt that rope dissolve in his grasp and slip away beyond his reach.

There was no point trying to fall asleep again. He knew the dream would not return, ever again. He got up and blundered away, blind with tears, until he finally emerged from the caves, and then he started running, crashing through the undergrowth, anywhere…

Chapter End Notes

Originally written for the November 2022 challenge at tolkienshortfanworks, for the prompts: spooky or eerie (theme), children's or nursery rhyme (form).