The Beautiful Ones by Elleth

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Chapter 2

As with the first chapter, a glossary has been attached in the end notes. Many thanks to Indy for her beta, Zeen and GG for the general help and Cait for the geological troubleshooting that saved me from a potentially embarrassing mistake. Any remaining mistakes in this are mine.

 

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The rain had begun to fall in earnest by the time Dess put the comb aside and tucked the last of the bone pins out of her own and into Kalrê's hair.

"You are truly not angry with me?" she asked, looping an arm around Kalrê's waist to pull her closer. "Because I did not mean for that to happen. And you are looking far more lovely with your hair up this way – perhaps I should call you Spindê from now on," she murmured. Kalrê closed her eyes and hummed; she made no objection when Dess tucked her chin on her shoulder and her nose into Kalrê's damp hair.

"I might not have forgiven you so easily if not for the pins – you would not give them up so gladly if you did not mean your apology. I know how long it took you to whittle them down so far, and that you hold them very precious."

"Held. I hold them more precious now that you have them, because I hold you the most precious."

Dess ran a hand through her hair. Although she had undone her own braiding in order to replace the pins that Kalrê had lost unravelling her hair, she did not mind terribly. She kept a few more of the whittled pins in a little lidded box, alongside a strand of Kalrê's hair wound with her own, a heavy, round-edged black rock the length of her smallest finger that her father claimed Elî had sent them to show where to settle, and that her mother had received from Iminjê herself – and a necklace of shells that was the root of Kalrê's jealousy. Tatâ's son had traded it for one of her songs the past summer, and then even made a lot of words to compliment her and her singing – lindâ banjê he had called her. Try as she might to prevent it, her heartbeat still picked up when she thought of that moment, but especially now guilt jabbed through her stomach and she wished she could sing the thoughts away. Kalrê had given her many more names, and many of them, especially Glisî, were far more beautiful and inventive than the compliments of Tatâ's son.

As though Kalrê caught her thoughts, she regarded Dess with a half-amused look, leaning to rest her face against Dess' chest, nuzzling and kissing through the weave of her clothing. "Mikwînê," Dess said and laughed, a little breathless, and pressed a kiss to Kalrê's hair. Kalrê's scent, sweet herbs and earth, rose to her head and drove out the thoughts of Tatâ's son.

Her face was burning again by the time she climbed to her feet, stepping around the puddle that had formed before Kalrê's bedstead where the rain was leaking through the roof.

"Perhaps you should take your things and come to us – all of you - your mother and father, you and your brothers, until the rains have stopped. It would be crowded, but you could share my bed with me..." she said.

Kalrê laughed, still reclining on her bed. Her hair was more mussed than it ought to be, by virtue of Dess' enthusiastic touches, but even the strands hanging into her shining eyes only served to make her more beautiful. "We will consider it," she said. "I will ask my family when they return. If your roof fares any better, that is – but don't think that even with us in one bed I will spend all my strength on yet more games with you, such a brief time before the hunt."

Dess returned Kalrê's wide grin. Her whole body still tingled; and the air that fanned the high colour in her cheeks was deliciously cool. "I may have been hoping for it, but I hadn't considered that. Has there been word when the gathering will begin?"

"Whenever the rain ceases. It will be no use to get soaked on the gathering place; some even say that Mailikô has eyes in the rain." Almost Dess wished that Kalrê had not said that – important though it was to know – because the tingling feeling quickly faded, and then vanished entirely. Kalrê was watching her, tugging on the skin of her lips with her teeth.

"I will talk to my father. I am sure he can tell how to keep the Rider at bay," Dess said, even though she suspected it would hardly be as easy as she made it seem.

Nonetheless she took her leave, and went to confer with her father to find if there were any songs that could be sung to protect the gathering. He did not think so; saying that the Rider had many more ways to hurt them than they knew songs to prevent, and that their trust in Elî and Kêmî would serve them better.

When it was time to rest, Dess slept uneasily. Not merely because of the storm that had begun to scream through the forest and splinter branches off the trees, howling with Olsê's dog, but because the idea of the great black horse coming from the dark at them was frightening in a way that jolted her awake and took her desire for sleep away. It seemed that even the ground shuddered and thrummed with her for a moment only, rattling the storage jars, and shook Ilwê, who had been sitting near the door with her spear to watch, out of her concentration. Quakes like this were no longer very unusual, but no reason for panic. Whatever portents they might be, they did no harm – some said it was merely Kêmî stirring – but with her dream of the black horse, perhaps it – no. She swallowed, and shook her head. If the Rider could shake the ground then he must be many times stronger than they knew, and that could not be – then he could have taken them all already.

Murmuring something – not quite a melody, not quite a song, merely a rhythm that lulled the sound of the rain outside to a dim drumming on the roof, Dess reached for a carrying basket she had begun to weave earlier in the day. Her family could not sleep either. Dess watched them go about their business while she twined strip after strip of reed, until the wind picked up enough to burst into the hut and spiral up embers from the fire in a sudden gust.

Ingô and Ilwê followed Târî with their spears when she went to the other huts to tell them to douse all the fires, keeping only a few glowing embers for rekindling – else sparks from the fire could blow and smoulder unnoticed in the roof wefts until another gust of air would fan it to open flame. One of the Tatjâi families in the greensward dell where they had first woken – their first village – had failed to douse their fire only two handfuls of years ago, and many of them had come to death when the fire leapt from hut to hut. One Mîrî, who had been with child then, had been one of the few survivors of her family. Her besnô had been sleeping in one of the huts, in a heavy, drugged sleep after he had startled a sow on the hunt, and he had not lived. Although Mîrî had returned to her parents in the second village of the Tatjâi, many agreed that her girl was growing up to be weak and strange; it showed in her pale hair and dark eyes, it was said, and that there was none of Elî's starlight in them. Dess would have dearly loved to see her to know if that was true, but she could hardly believe it – any Kwendê worth that name surely had to have at least a spark of it, even little Mîrigseldê. If her body was of Kêmî's stuff, then surely Elî would not slight her, either.

She hummed and resolved to find out more when she could; perhaps she would find someone at the gathering. Weaving by touch needed her whole concentration now; with the fire gone only the embers cast a dim red glow – but it was enough to see that when Târî returned, she looked shaken. Pherenê's hut, she said, where she had lived with her student, had vanished: It had stood at the edge of the hill, near the path to the brook, and the rain had caused the earth to slip and slide down the steep incline with such force that it even tore rocks from the hill itself. Perhaps that had been the shudder they had felt earlier, Kêmî releasing her grip on a fleck of ground that would no longer be needed.

"Then the Rider has taken them indeed," said Dess' father after the first outcry. Târî, who was cleaning her feet of mud, clucked her tongue. "Ñalatô, I knew it for a sign. Speaking the name was not necessary, not when his evil weather is upon us. You of all people should know."

"Idrê," her father said, but before he could reply, Ilwê and Ingô crowded into the hut. They both were sodden to the skin with rain, and Ilwê's spear dripped something dark – not mud, but not blood either, Dess thought, though that too was hard to make out – or at least it was not any blood that Dess had ever seen, until Târî hissed at her, "Do not bring that into our home!" and Ilwê hurried to place the spear outside.

"There was only one," she said, returning. "One of the Lindâi, going by its hair, scavenging near the village," she explained. "Not fully a ñgurukô yet, but no longer fully a heklô either. I found it howling by the refuse pit, and it did not answer when I recited the tale. What I did was healing."

"It was healing," everyone murmured in chorus. Ilwê, who had been called Laibrê before, after all could not take lives unless it was in cases like these, when she could lessen some creature's suffering without her healing taking a toll, and that needed affirming, lest Elî and Kêmî took it the wrong way. It would have been worse if the creature had entered the ring of stones, or even the village itself, but the refuse pit was outside the borders and somewhat hidden. Perhaps the creature had happened upon it by chance. Perhaps. It was an evil portent either way, they all knew.

Dess' father sat, bowed his head, and began to sing a song to placate Kêmî, and then rose with his head tilted toward the roof where various bright stones hung as in the sky outside, to repeat the same words to Elî. Dess joined in.

When the song ended, Târî said, "Be aware of the sounds in the forest; there may be more of the creatures. In evil weather, evil prowls." She settled down on her seat opposite the door to resume the work she had been doing, kneading a ball of fat with a handful of pine needles, scraps of dried meat, and the few grains and berries they still had had in their stores – provisions for the hunt, not for eating now. Dess felt her stomach rumble.

"When do you think the rains will let up?" she asked. "Kalrê said we would not gather until they did."

"Soon, we hope," said Dess' father. "I spoke with Olsê when we saw the clouds rolling in, and she guessed that it might be three times resting."

Dess nodded. "Then we best prepare, is that what you mean to say, Atû?"

"Quite so. And you, you should speak to Ekjarô from the second village. He arrived before the rains started and will make spears for those who need them. Annê and her family gave him space to sleep and work; it is even said that he may be seeking Annassê's love – I wonder if Annê will allow her daughter to marry yet. She is younger than you are."

Dess felt herself staring at her father, finding from the other side of the hut that her mother was also looking at her, but her keen eyes were relaxed and smiling.

"A spear for me?"

Târî said, "I believe now that you are betrothed, you might as well accompany Kalrê. You know how to read tracks and understand the sounds of the earth when animals pass. In case of misfortune the hunters will need someone to sing for them, and Ilwê alone will not be able to carry enough meat for all of us to see us through the winter. Consider this the beginning of your training."

Dess nodded. Her heart was pounding, and her mouth dry. She had expected to be allowed to accompany the hunters to the gathering, but no further (though she had let her fancies run away with her when Kalrê had spoken of the hunt), and to have the knowledge that the plains beyond the forest lay open to her now made her both want to roll into her bed-furs to hide from the wide world, and run outside to yell her fortune so that all should hear, especially Kalrê. That side won out.

Târî caught her eyeing the door, and shook her head. The storm had still not abated, and until it was time to rest again, Ingô instructed her in the use of his spear. His was by far the heaviest, a smooth, sturdy shaft of ashwood longer than she was high, and with a hand-sized tip of near-translucent flint – Pherenê's work, and Dess whispered a "be well" to the the spear in an unguarded moment when Ingô let her rest her burning arm and aching shoulder after practicing the throwing motion again and again in an endlessly frustrating exercise. With no space for throwing inside the hut, that would need to wait; venturing outside while it rained was useless.

Her arm still ached with the constant practice, though more dully, when the clouds finally tore and the steady streams of the water from the sky ceased. It had kept them in their huts for longer than expected, and Dess wasted no time to stretch her legs, even if it was only to fetch water from the brook. Outside, underneath the once more clear sky, people were wading across the mire of slushed earth that the common space had become. It sucked at Dess' feet and oozed between her toes when she made her way over to the hut of Kalrê and her family, but she felt as though she could leap and sing. Her voice rose to Elî while she took in the starlight glinting upon the wet world, multiplied in all the droplets as though Kêmî lay aglow: "Elî-târî, silikjê î-elênî î-Kêmî-târîssi! Ele!"

"Kalrê," Dess called softly when she reached the hut. "It's stopped raining. There are stars again. And I will have a spear! I will come hunting with you!"

Kalrê wasted no time in throwing aside the skin that covered her doorway, and instead of simply stepping outside, she threw her arms around Dess and pulled her close with a jubilant shout that sent Olsê's dog yipping in the next hut. Dess sighed, laughed and pressed a kiss to Kalrê's lips, finding the touch eagerly returned.

She drew back with a caress to Kalrê's face. "Mikwînê," she murmured fondly, half teasing. "But not now - Mother sent me to fetch fresh water; I had best not keep her waiting. Our flour is clumping already, and she wants to make bread for the gathering before it spoils."

"If you are going to the brook, then best make yourself useful as well, Kalrê," her mother called from within the hut. Kalrê deftly caught the water-skin that was tossed her way, and grabbed the spear that was leaning next to the door.

They wound their way among the dripping pines and down into the mist steaming from the forest. The path to the brook was clogged with mudslides and fallen rocks that left it near-impassable; there was nothing to see of the remains of Pherenê's hut save a splintered pillar jutting from the dirt askew – but in a jumble of earth and rocks at the foot of the hill, something shimmered. Dess and Kalrê exchanged a look and clambered toward it.

"Are those bones?" Kalrê asked once they had reached their discovery. "Bones in the rock?"

"I think so! Look here, this is the row of back-bones. Part of the ekmâ," Dess repeated a word that Ilwê had taught her, and couldn't resist the opportunity to run her hand up and down the center of Kalrê's back, then around, over the sickle-shaped bones that formed her chest. Some of the animal's were also showing underneath the muck, in a layer of grey rock. Dess drew her knife but considering the flint blade put it away again. That would only break, and there was no need to risk something so valuable. She returned her attention to Kalrê.

Kalrê leaned into the mapping touch – none of them had had much to eat, it seemed – not surprisingly in the bad weather that prevented even the foraging for the scarce food that still remained. Dess and her family had been chewing pine needles to quench the worst of the hunger, preserving what they might, but even those had grown tough and bitter, unlike the sweet shoots of spring.

"When did you last eat?" Dess asked, but Kalrê was too busy to answer, digging into the earth and scraping the loose mud away by the handful where the rain had not washed the bones free. More of the spine came into view in another boulder, twisting here and there in a long tail, as though the creature it belonged to had thrashed about before it died. It was far larger than they, perhaps twice the size of any Kwendê. Dess rocked back on her heels, watching.

"I wonder what kind of creature it is," Kalrê said. She must have forgotten about her hunger for the moment, busy as she was with the bones. It was exciting, but perhaps it would be best to leave this, whatever creature lay here, alone, and cover it again – after all, the bones that the Minjâi tossed into their refuse pit were either stolen by scavenging animals – that was how Olsê had found a young wolf in the times of Iminjê when they had first built the village, which had by now become a dog, and it seemed even the heklô-creature remembered that some people might be wasteful and toss away bones that still had the marrow or sometimes even scraps of meat to gnaw on – or they returned to the stuff of the world, given enough time. That these hadn't...

"Ow!" Kalrê cried, tossing Dess from her thoughts, and drew her hand from the pile of earth she had been shifting aside. Through the muck that coated her fingers, blood was blooming and rolling down her hand from a gash along her palm.

"I was going to say – this isn't good. We should cover it with earth again – and now it hurt you!"

"Oh, don't be a fool – first you think I'm bleeding in the brook, now you think this hurt me – you are too worried. I just cut myself on a sharp stone!" Kalrê laughed, and plucked out a splinter that still clung to the wound.

"But you cannot dig with a hurt hand," Dess cautioned, taking the stone from her to rub it clean. It was a dun brown and sharp-edged, a tiny, jagged triangle. "Here, look – it did not merely hurt you, it bit you – that is a piece of tooth, and if the wound festers – I don't want you to die, where would I be? Or worse, as some people say, the Lord of Death..."

Kalrê snorted. "This won't hurt me. And dying would be better than being nabbed by one of Mailikô's people. I know he has all sorts of helpers, but --- Mailikô as the Rider has been seen. The Lord of Death I will believe in when I meet him. If a Kwendê dies, she'll return to being clay again - like a tree that is felled and burned, or an animal, and to starlight, as Smaltwê did. I was very little when she died; you probably do not even remember – the Rider tried to take her, but she fought, and his horse trod on her, and she died soon after. This Lord of Death can't be more powerful than Elî and Kêmî. Someone made him up."

"So then how do you explain this? Don't you think that someone must have turned it to stone?"

"But not all of it; only the bones. Maybe Kêmî did this, and she – maybe she wanted it to be found as a warning."

As though spurred on by that realization, Kalrê, uncaring for her hurt hand, began to dig faster. "We should find out what it is."

Within a short time – Dess soon began to help moving handful by handful of earth - they uncovered more fragments, first, a grasping, clawed, three-fingered hand, and then a skull, broken in two, but otherwise whole, from the ground. It was unlike anything they had ever seen before, and in light of this even the tales of the Lindâi walkers and the strange, long-nosed beasts on the plains seemed less incredible. The skull was riddled with large holes like windows, and it ended in a gaping jaw full of knife-shaped teeth – unlike a wolf's or bear's or lynx's maw, but certainly no less dangerous; Dess could not recall anything at all that resembled it. Eventually, crumbling clumps of earth between their fingers, revealed a chunk of rock with a deathly-looking sickle-claw that might once have belonged to a foot. Kalrê, not without hesitation, plucked it from the ground.

"What is it?" asked Kalrê, hushed.

"I don't know," Dess replied, her eyes fixed on the claw. It jogged something in her memory. "But there was... a... legend that I heard."

"A legend?" Kalrê asked. Her eyebrow was rising. "Heard from whom, your father?"

Dess shook her head. "I heard it from... don't laugh! I heard it from a tree – a conifer, one of the oldest and largest ones in the forest; someone awoke it to speak to it – I do not know who did – one of the Unbegotten, perhaps. They talked to all the things. They woke the trees to awareness, though this one was lonely, and always straining and calling to reach both Kêmî's earth and Elî's light. And Olsê took me to speak to it. I shouldn't be telling you. Or anybody."

"Why not?"

"It is secret knowledge. Olsê told me that it was passed along among the wise only, and she and my father want me to become one, why else would he teach me all the songs?"

"And?" Kalrê, undisturbed by the breach of confidence, had leaned forward, the skeleton forgotten for the moment, so rapt that she was almost touching her nose to Dess'.

"And it told me that there had once been other life, as it had learned it from the earth and from the trees in whose shade it grew. Before the Kwendî, long before them – the Rider already walked the Earth. And he already took joy in destruction, and he took Kêmî's creatures and changed them – as he changes the Kwendî now, from what they are into something twisted; and then, fair beings into beasts of horn and claw that feasted on their peaceful brethren and grew bloated on their blood. Lôkaraukâi, that was the word. And there were two great mountains that held Elî's brightest stars, so bright that their brightness covered all the lands and there was not a single star to see in the sky -"

Kalrê giggled. She clamped a dirty hand over her mouth to stifle the laugh, but still her shoulders were shaking, and her eyes slitted in badly concealed mirth. Dess huffed, and pecked a quick kiss on her forehead. Imagining the sky so lit was a strange notion, but that was the way the tree had stated it. It would know, wouldn't it? Or would a tree lie to her?

" - and the Rider meant to spoil that, too – as he covers the sky with his storms because he hates light. And his shape grew as tall as the mountains – and he toppled them, and the stars fell from on high, and all the animals that were – Kêmî's, but also his own creatures - perished in the great burning that followed - save for some small ones, tiny like mice or squirrels, that hid, and survived the burning. And the great forests, too, perished, save in some hidden vales and secure places, and new forests grew in the dark that followed, until Elî scattered new stars over the sky and Kêmî new creatures over the land, and then when all was ready, they made us."

Kalrê was still grinning. "And that is what a tree told you? Not that Elî and Kêmî made us at the beginning of all?"

"It is what the tree told me," Dess repeated. "Maybe it's true, perhaps it is not – but these bones must be older than we are. When Iminjê found this place, the hill was already there, and if this was in the hill, then it must have been there already as well. Besides, nothing like it roams the forests now. We would know if it did."

"Hmmm," said Kalrê. Then, scrabbling for her spear amid the muck, she bolted to her feet, ducked and moved from the pile of earth into the forest and away from the skeleton. The claw she slid into a pouch on her belt. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Dess asked in a hurried whisper, following behind. She wished she already had been able to pick up a spear from the new toolmaker, so Kalrê would not have to defend both of them. "Heklâi? Ilwê caught one while it rained, what if there are more?"

"And you didn't think to warn me? Dess!"

"There!" Dess pointed through the trees below. Outside the gate in the stone circle figures were crowding; she counted five that seemed to stoop there, perhaps to consider Kalrê's paintings if the rain had not washed them off, talking amongst themselves. One of them, she thought, had hair of silver, like the heklô-creature. Her breath stuck in her throat.

Then Kalrê began to laugh softly. "Silly Glisî, silly me! They are Kwendî. That is that strange one of the Lindâi; what was his name, Elwego, Eldîs' oldest son?"

Dess breathed out, and straightened from her crouch. "Him? Then Belekô and Tatâ's son can't be far either, they are hardly ever very far from one another. They must have come to fetch us for the gathering!"

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Chapter End Notes

Glossary:

Spindê: "tress, braid of hair"

lindâ banjê: "sweet[-sounding] fair one", and of course the adjective banjâ is also the origin of the later group name Vanyar, which was in fact given to them by the Noldor because they loved gold and especially the golden hair of the Vanyar. The Vanyar still called themselves Minyar, the Firsts, their ancestral name. Because there are very few hints toward grammar and word order in Primitive Elvish, I borrowed from Quenya in this case.

Glisî: Something of a pun on g-lisi (the stem LIS sweetness/honey, with a strengthening stem prefix g- yields attested PE glisi) plus a female pronoun sî. It could probably be translated as "honey-sweet girl" wrapped into one word.

Mikwînê: Constructed from a stem MIQI, kiss, in the Qenya Lexicon. This looks suspiciously like a full word rather than a stem in Tolkien's later Quenya, though, so I went with that assumption in my reconstruction (with the orthographical change of q > kw that is also found in Quendi > earlier Kwendî) and a lengthening of the final vowel as is common in Primitive Elvish, plus a female agental suffix -ne, which might yield something like "kiss-giver" or "kiss-maker".

besnô: "husband"

Mîrî: "Jewel-woman", Míriel's mother. The story surrounding Míriel's birth is my own invention.

Mîrigseldê: Míriel. Either "Jewel-Crowned Daughter", or (if considered a matronymic) "Mîrî's [Jewel's] Crowned Daughter". Might be either descriptive, because Míriel is canonically envisioned as having silver hair, uncommonly so for a Noldo, or perhaps even a foresighted mother-name. I found both etymologies (jewel-daughter, and jewel-crowned), so went with a – hopefully – somewhat ambiguous construction that might allow for either version.

Laibrê: from laibê "salve, ointment" with a feminine suffix. Could translate as "salve-maker" to hint as Ilwê's function as a healer.

Heklô (heklâi): "waif(s), outcast(s)"

Atû: "Father"

Elî-târî, silikjê î-elênî î-Kêmî-târîssi! Ele!: "Star-queen, you are shining the stars upon the Earth-queen! Look!"- highly hypothetical sentence, and with elements borrowed from Quenya, as very little is known about Primitive Elvish grammar.

Ekmâ: "spine", from a stem *EK, thorn, prick, spine, with an ending -mâ denoting body parts.

Lôkaraukâi: My coinage (though I'm somewhat doubtful about the construction, I couldn't come up with a better one), from the stem LOK "dragon, serpent, reptile" and grauk- "a powerful, hostile, and terrible creature", which probably is ultimately derived from RUK, with strenghtening g-prefix (see above in the entry for Glîsî) and an a-infix for yet more intensification, a collective plural form. It's roughly analogous to the real-world construct of deinos "terrible" and sauros "lizard, reptile". Yes, I went there, and yes, the Fall of the Lamps that Dess describes in her story is in fact intended to allude to a fictionalized K-Pg event (or in layman's terms, the impact that caused the extinction of most dinosaurs).