Memories of Cuiviénen by Dawn Felagund

Memories of Cuiviénen

Read Memories of Cuiviénen

I lie on my back and gaze upon the stars. It is as though a velvet shroud has been draped over the world and the stars are the places where the cloth is torn, where the Light that never died shines through. In anger, after the Death of the Trees, I’d come upon Celegorm one night, shooting arrows straight up at the sky, at the constellation shaped like a hunter.

“Perhaps it is as Grandfather said,” he’d told me, cleverly keeping his back to me so that I could not see the tears upon his face. But I’d known: One does not nurture six brothers from childhood to manhood without feeling every quiver of their emotions as keenly as though feeling it oneself. “Perhaps the Darkness is nothing but a black cloth tossed over the world, and every good deed cuts another hole in it, brings the world closer to Light.”

Why, then, do you shoot arrows at it, as though an act of destruction and violence will have the same effect as the good deeds Elves like us may never again commit?

But I had not argued with him. How could I? I was no better.

~oOo~

Grandfather Finwë came sometimes to stay with us, and those were happy times. We could have gone to him but we did not; Atar did not like it because, he said, Indis was there.

We did not think to argue, but then, we were young. We trusted that danger existed where Atar said it did, for even the world under the Treelight could be a strange and mysterious place, full of peril, to Elves as young as we were then. Then, it had been just Macalaurë and me—for we were both half-grown by the time Tyelkormo was born—and it seemed perfect, for Grandfather Finwë had two knees and there were two of us: Perfect.

With Atar, it was hard to relax, for it seemed that he’d no sooner settled in a place and we were comfortable in his lap and we were being passed to Amil so that he could flit off to do something he’d forgotten. “Fled my thoughts,” he called it. “It must have fled my thoughts!” Things seemed to flee his thoughts often, and so we were passed to Amil or left on our feet, sleepy and swaying and bereft of his embrace. Even if he held us without springing up to catch that which had fled his thoughts, his hands were restless and turned small objects as though memorizing them or straightened our plaits or even wrote parchments. Sometimes his heart would beat faster for no reason, as though someone was poking and irritating him from within, and the quill would scratch faster, and he would lean forward, forgetting that we were perched on his lap and, one time, upsetting poor Macalaurë onto the floor.

But Grandfather Finwë was a solid and content as a sleepy-warm rock at Laurelin’s zenith, and where Atar was tall and lithe, Grandfather Finwë was not as tall but broader, more content for curling upon. And we did—and his arms circled us, and we listened to his voice telling us tales, where they came from deep in his chest, smiling at each other over what seemed like an endless expanse of meticulous linen robes. Sometimes, messengers would arrive for him, but these dilemmas he solved with a few words and a wave of his hand, as though by magic. (Sometimes, Macalaurë and I would try to clean our bedrooms that way, but it never worked when we did it.)

Atar had built a roofwalk upon the highest apex of our house for he liked to gaze at the stars, although he rarely took Macalaurë and me up there, fearing for our safety at such perilous heights, with only a narrow steel railing to keep our bodies from being tugged by gravity and broken upon the ground. But Grandfather Finwë once waited until Atar was asleep and roused Macalaurë and me from our beds, still groggy and in our nightclothes, and we climbed the narrow, winding staircase that led to the roofwalk.

At the depths of night, when Telperion was His faintest, the stars stood out in pinpricks of light brighter than that which shined from below. Just awakened and still believing in the possibility of dreams, I lifted my hand, believing that—this close to the sky—the stars were mine to hold. I should like to spell my name across the sky with them—or maybe Macalaurë’s. Macalaurë slept in Grandfather Finwë’s arms with his tiny hand curled in a fist beneath his chin, his lips parted slightly and blowing little bubbles of spittle. Macalaurë was still awkward with his letters, and I knew that he’d appreciate such a gift. But when my hand pressed against the sky, I found only air with the stars sparkling like diamonds between my fingers.

Macalaurë awoke with a sigh and lifted his eyes to follow my outstretched hand, and he smiled, perhaps knowing what I’d meant to do and appreciating it even though it was clearly impossible.

Grandfather Finwë sat upon the roofwalk, leaning against the steel railing, letting each of us curl in his lap. “I wished to write Macalaurë’s name upon the sky in starlight,” I whimpered, and Grandfather Finwë laughed. With my ear pressed against his chest, his laughter was as loud as thunder but not at all scary. “No, little one,” he said, “the stars are not ours to rearrange. They were placed there by Varda, to light the Outer Lands, to bring comfort to us in the darkness.”

With Telperion glowing beneath us, darkness was impossible to contemplate. Darkness was under the bed or in the armoire, hiding from Macalaurë during games or from Atar when he was angry. Darkness was secrecy and relief, doors held shut tightly or dust ruffles tugged to the floor, and darkness was also fleeting, interrupted when the doors were forced open by Atar and my tear-stained face was hidden against his shoulder, when he didn’t say that he was sorry but I knew it by the way he would stop for a moment—not running off to catch his fleeing thoughts or fidgeting with gadgets and quills—and when I would look up again, the darkness was gone as though it had never been.

But that was not the way at Cuiviénen, Grandfather Finwë said. There, the darkness was as thick as ink—but for the stars.

“But Grandfather,” I said, “they are not much light.” Indeed they were not: less than a candle flame or less even than one of our father’s radiant stones that he let us keep on our beside tables at night to chase away bad dreams. “Did you not think that one as powerful as Varda could have done better for you?”

Amil had not liked the time when she had laughingly told me that the jewelry she made was not as pretty as Atar’s because she had not learned all that he had of metalworking, and I’d asked if that was because Aulë had forgotten to teach her as well as he did Atar. “He does not forget,” she’d said, and Amil does not become angry—at least not in the obvious way that Atar does—but I could sense her displeasure. “Everything he does is done with a purpose.”

But Grandfather Finwë did not become angry, although Macalaurë stared at me with wide eyes, as though expecting it. In fact, he laughed again, and only when my pulse quickened did I realize the extent of my relief. “The Outer Lands beneath the starlight are a beautiful place, little ones. Yes, the light was meager, but it was just as beloved—maybe, I dare say, more so—by the Elves of Cuiviénen as is the Light of the Trees by the Eldar. And because it was so meager, we felt all the more blessed to have it.”

Sensing my confusion by this, he went on. “If you eat wonderfully rich foods every day, little one, you grow to take them for granted, and that which was once delicious upon your tongue becomes ordinary, and you eat it without thought, while talking or listening to counsel, while allowing concerns to weigh upon your mind. Meals no longer become a special time of pleasure but something done rotely because you must to live, an inconvenience even. But if you eat a bland meal of plain bread and unseasoned meat each day, then when you get such a rich meal, it becomes an occasion worth giving pause to even your weightiest thoughts, and you lose yourself to pleasure and truly enjoy your life, rather than simply living because you must.

“The light of the stars, little ones, is like this. In Valinor, there is never a time of total darkness and so we do not know the fear that this brings, the threat of being left to the mercy of those who live in the shadows, those who do not know mercy. Here, we have designed implements to block and minimize the Light: We draw drapes across our windows and sleep inside of tents. We seek, at times of stress and pain, the ‘peace’ of darkness. But in the Outer Lands, the Elves know each star in the sky for each tiny bit of light is a gift; each tiny bit of light can be the difference between living and becoming the victim of evil things. We would name the shapes of the stars, did you know? And we would call upon them to protect us when the sky was strewn with clouds.”

He lifted our tiny hands in his and, with our fingers, traced the shapes made by the stars. The Hunter. The Guardian. The Eagle. Laughing, Macalaurë and I tore free of his grasp and began to find our own shapes, naming each in turn, trying to make the other see what we did. I found the Smith—Atar shaped in stars—raising his hammer to smite a glittering anvil. Macalaurë giggled as he found the Kettle, complete with a swirling nebula rising like a mist from its spout. And we found each other: The Brothers, one star a dull red and its companion a bright, winking blue.

“It is told, little ones,” said Grandfather Finwë, as I pressed my fingers to the sky and imagined leaving stars behind like fingerprints, the way my hands would leave clear spots in a spill of flour, “that for every good deed, a star is added to the heavens. And so, in the Outer Lands, we tried never to be selfish or petty; we always treated others as we would like to be treated. And we believed that this gave our world more light.”

“Does it?” I whispered. “Even now?” and he smiled and held me close, his chin resting upon my hair and said, “Of course it does, little one. Why else were we blessed with the light of Valinor?”

I leaned over and kissed Macalaurë—again dropped to sleep, his eyelashes dark smudges on his cheeks—on the forehead and watched him smile in his dreams. A good deed? I looked to the sky, and unless I was mistaken, a new spark winked suddenly at me from between The Brothers.

~oOo~

I must wonder then: What bad deed brought the darkness upon us? What was done that was terrible enough to plunge an entire people into darkness? And—after the kinslayings, after the harsh words and treachery of kin on kin—what stars suffered for our deeds? Now, I gaze upon The Hunter and think that mayhap he is less bright, less pronounced, than when I first looked upon him, sitting in Grandfather Finwë’s lap upon the roofwalk. I imagine our futile pursuit of our father’s stolen treasure, leaving a wake of darkness across the land and the sky, until the last star has died for our deeds and Morgoth has succeeded in quenching even the untouchable fire of the stars.

I will die, I decide, before I allow that to happen, even if the Everlasting Darkness awaits. Better than to bring the same upon an entire people.

~oOo~

When Ambarussa were born, our mother was weary, and so Grandfather Finwë came to help Atar care for the newborn twins. We were all grown by then—my four brothers and me—and between courting maidens from Tirion and riding on hunts, we’d often ponder the colored plates between the pages of the lorebooks, crowding five of us around my desk, with Macalaurë kneeling with his chin on my arm and Tyelkormo’s blond hair falling to tickle my neck and Carnistir and Curufinwë elbowing each other for the space on the other side of me.

The man in the picture was unmistakable: Grandfather Finwë. And he lifted a curved blade as bright as starlight against the dark-fleshed beasts that bared their fangs at him.

As children, Tyelkormo and Carnistir’s favorite game to play had been Wild Beasts. Wild Beasts, as far as any of us could tell (for the rules were a secret kept only between them) had involved Tyelkormo as the hunter hitting poor little Carnistir as hard as he could with a suitable sword-type object. (Carnistir, though, never seemed to mind, and at times, it seemed Tyelkormo who came away the worse for wear from Carnistir’s merciless, sharp little teeth.)

Tyelkormo’s first real hunt was a big deal, and he returned, unequivocally happy with the results. My own first hunt, on the contrary, was an experience of mixed emotions for me, for as honored as I was to be grown enough to accompany my father on a hunt, I was also disgusted by the blood and horrified by the notion that—but for me—the stag lying sightless and twisted upon the ground would still be leaping over creeks and fallen logs.

Atar taught us to use our weapons—our swords, bows, and spears—but Grandfather Finwë taught us how to kill with speed and mercy, aiming for the soft vulnerability of the throat. “Never,” he said, “do you want to wound a creature without killing it. No matter how evil.”

Peering over the plates, Grandfather Finwë came upon us and, seeing at what we looked, laughed. “Orcs?” he said, closing the book upon the hideous, contorted creatures that died upon his sword in the picture. “That is heavy material for Elves who have not even reached two hundred years.”

“How many did you kill?” Tyelkormo asked. His eyes were blue and deadly, like the hottest part of the flame. Fully grown, he was tall and broad in the shoulder, formidable, but beneath Grandfather Finwë’s hand that rose to stroke his hair, he might have been naught but a little boy again.

“As many as needed,” Grandfather Finwë said, “and never more.”

“But Grandfather,” quipped Carnistir, a nervous little laugh tingeing his voice, “they’re orcs.”

“And what would set me apart, dear Carnistir, from them and their lord if I killed wantonly, learning to like the sight and smell of blood?”

“But to defend your people—”

“I did what I had to do. But cruelty is cruelty, no matter against whom it is wielded. And we—people of Light—do not use cruelty.” He’d kissed Carnistir’s cheek then, to lessen the sting of his words—lest they be seen as chastisement—and the color in Carnistir’s face lessened a bit.

Not long after, I was alone in the library—Curufinwë having run to the forge and Carnistir and Tyelkormo gone to exercise their horses and Macalaurë to work upon his latest composition—and I again opened the book to the plate. Orcs were a lot like us, I saw: sensible, of course, given that we had the same origins. I wondered at the ease of wielding a weapon bearing even a perfunctory resemblance to the people I was protecting. Just as easily, my grandfather could have been the one stolen in the shadows, and it would be his chest punctured by the blade of a king and memorialized forever in a book of lore.

My brothers, I think, secretly ached for the excitement of Cuiviénen, but when we found ourselves in the Outer Lands, fighting orcs for the first time in a raid against our camp, I found Tyelkormo on his knees in the dirt, his sword cast aside and three orcs piled dead around him, their meager armor easily sundered by our superior steel, their entrails pouring from their bodies in steaming piles.

It was hard to discern one mess from another that day, in the darkness, in the confusion, but when Tyelkormo raised his eyes to mine, I saw that they were red-veined and his mouth quivered with nausea. “I was sick, Nelyo,” he whispered, using the childhood name that sent shivers through me. “Their eyes….”

They are just like ours.

They were: blue-gray and bright in faces that had been marred beyond all recognition of being “Elven,” the betrayal of their origins—the same as ours—and looking into them, it was hard to imagine that the fight was real, that they hoped for your death, that it wasn’t a sparring match or a game of Wild Beasts with a brother.

Not that we hadn’t killed our kin before. Not that we wouldn’t kill them again. One learns, after a while, not to look into their eyes.

One learns to fervently deny—even to oneself—that, after a while, the smell of blood triggers a rush to what we’d once felt riding our horses at a full gallop up a hill in the bright midday light or kissing a pretty maiden in the dancing shadows at the Winter Festival. That we dreamt of it and awoke with a feeling far from horror, our hearts pounding and our eyes dilated as though by passion.

At Doriath, I found Tyelkormo by following the trail of half-dead warriors: arms sliced away from bodies, fingers trying to hold slippery entrails into guts torn open by a careless blade that sought not to give merciful death but to speed hasty passage, and had I not stopped to plunge my blade into their throats, one by one, perhaps I would have been in time to save Tyelkormo.

In the forest, days later, I looked to the sky, to use The Hunter to guide me through the wood that seemed to reel senselessly around me, driving me in all directions, in wild circles, and I could not find him. I convinced myself, somewhere between agony and madness, that he was lost among the thick tangle of tree branches.

Tree branches that were not enough, though, to keep me from seeing the gem-bright star that suddenly cut from the heavens as though falling to the ground, and I believe that a bit of light went out of Middle-earth then.

~oOo~

Now, there is a new star on the western horizon, brighter than all of the others, and even the most loyal among our numbers whisper of hope.

I press my palm to the dark blanket of sky stretched overhead, and the new star shines in the palm of my hand, making a splintery halo around each of my fingers. I’d once held the Silmarils clasped tightly in both of my hands, watching how the light shone red through my flesh as though my flesh had been secondary to the light, and the light had pulsed with the rhythm of my blood, as though the Silmaril had been celebrating my life.

I think of Grandfather Finwë sometimes, alongside Cuiviénen, bringing light to his people one good deed at a time, and bitterly, I laugh. What would he have said if he’d known that his own grandsons would destroy that light one bit at a time, like careless fingers pinching candle flames? And now this: a new star, brighter than all others! What good deed, I wonder, brought this gift to the world?

Once, I would have looked upon such light and held it even in my hands, for it was my right. But now, I look upon it with wonder, for whatever good deeds have brought such a gift to one as undeserving as me, they were not mine.