A Symphony for My Father by Dawn Felagund

A Symphony for My Father

Read A Symphony for My Father

Amil tells me that when I was born, I took my first breath and cried, and the room fell silent for the beauty of my voice. “You did not cry as normal babies do,” she said, and although my cries were born of the stress and fear of birth—and that much was clear—there was something beneath it, like that which runs deep below the earth, erupting in fire, building the mountains and carving the rivers, and Amil forgot her pain, the midwife forgot her tasks and a towel slipped from her hand to the floor, and Atar—in whose arms I lay—for a moment, says my mother, felt peace in his spirit, no longer tormented by the pain of burning.

Yet I class this as a legend, like the stories Grandfather Finwë tells of Arda’s building, for in the years since, never have I soothed my father but often the opposite: I alone of his sons, by sight alone, have the power to ire him, and my music and my voice—that which supposedly soothed him in the moment of my birth—seems the source of that, for that which I create is spun into space and disappears, carrying over the sea until it is detectable only in memory. That which he creates sits amid the elements, yet is not weakened, and will last for all the ages of Arda.

And I am scrutinized constantly by him, and I prefer to imagine that it began at the moment of my birth, rather than delude myself with the false hope of my mother’s legend. Doubtlessly, he measured the length of my body and felt my heft in his arms and was disappointed, for I was less than Maitimo—much less—and as a second-born son, I should have been more. Lying naked and helpless in his arms, he could see me for what I was, and I did not yet know to feel ashamed. Where Maitimo was born with a full head of coppery hair, mine was scant and a pale brown, the color of weak tea, and instead of being curious about my surroundings and awake for much of the day, I slept even through feasts and festivals, held to my mother’s breast, while Atar held Maitimo, who pointed and inquired and watched things with a zeal befitting a Fëanárion.

Not me: the first time I was taken to the forge, I cried and scrambled—full of fear—in my father’s arms, as though the bellows and the roaring fires were monsters who wished to consume me. I kicked so hard that my father, surprised by my reaction, could not contain me, and I fell to the ground and hit my head on the corner of a table, cutting my temple and requiring the healer to be called and close it with ten stitches.

My hair eventually grew long and full, and it darkened also, as I aged, and it covered the scar on my temple. But lying in bed at night, unable to sleep for the music that visited me in the hours when I should have found sleep, I would touch it and feel that tough knot of flesh, the one place upon my body that seemed incapable of feeling pain. In the superstition of youth, I imagined that my music originated there—the first scar of my rebellion against my father—for no one else had such a mark upon him and no one else heard music on the wind, whispering in the night, keeping him awake. I imagined the melodies threading from that stiff, senseless knot of tissue the way nerves no longer did, as though my music, born of my first taste of pain, would never after be free of it.

~oOo~

At the age of thirty-six, I stood shivering at the cliff, wearing naught but my tunic and tugging at that to cover my body as much as possible. Maitimo stood at the edge, his toes curling over the rock, only forty-six years old but already with the body of a man: shoulders broad and arms ropey with muscle. His hair was splendid in the midday light, falling to the swell of his buttocks, and as I watched, he leaped into space and fell with a splash to the safety of the lake below.

“Macalaurë?” And it was my turn.

Amil hadn’t wanted me to jump. She’d said I was too young, but I’d argued, for Maitimo had jumped at my age. She hadn’t said it but we’d all thought it, even me: But Maitimo was much bigger, much stronger, at my age. Somehow, though, I’d thought that this might prove to Atar that I was not small and weak, that I deserved the affection bestowed upon Maitimo and, recently, my little brothers as well.

And as I stood, shivering and pulling my tunic as low on my thighs as it would go, my cold testicles tight and shriveled against my body, the hairs on my arms and legs standing on end, and Atar repeated: “Macalaurë? Shall we go down to the shore?”

I shook my head, feeling my hair whisper against my shoulder, and with trembling hands, I tugged the tunic over my head, trying not to be conscious of the way his eyes slid over my body, which I tended to cover, shamed of my narrow chest and skinny arms. My heart was beating so hard that the skin over my chest trembled with it, and I knew he saw that too, and I knew that he was counting my heartbeats to measure my fear, and I stepped to the edge, before I could think better of it, and leaped headfirst into space.

Dizzyingly bright water rushed at me, my hands pushing the air as though trying to slow my fall, and the brilliant spangles on the water blinded me, dazed me, so that I couldn’t tell how far I had yet to fall, and my body curled in fear upon itself, thinking that I had farther to fall than I did, time to put my feet beneath me so not to expose my head and neck to the fierce, cold grasp of the water, not realizing that I was about to strike the surface, and as I turned in the air, I came down on my neck in the water.

When I awakened, I was on the shore, and Atar was pushing the water out of my chest, while Amil screamed and wept, and Maitimo held her and wept too. My ribs were bruised and ached with the force of Atar’s compressions, but with a reluctant heave, I expelled the water in my lungs, vomiting also with the nausea of death, its cold fingers still tracing my bones hungrily, and I sat up and Atar pounded my back as I choked out the last of the water threaded with mucus and bile. Amil broke from Maitimo then and embraced me, trying to rub warmth into my numb flesh, kissing my quivering lips. I ducked free of her to look for Atar, but he was striding down the beach, his clothes sodden from leaping in after me and sticking to the strong shape of his body, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, and his head tipping forward with shame.

~oOo~

“Macalaurë, I wish for you to sing at the feast in honor of my begetting day.”

It was two years later, and I was deep in thought—toiling over a composition that was coming with great reluctance to paper—when I realized that Atar stood in front of my desk, for once not wearing his soiled forge clothes but a clean tunic and riding breeches, for he’d just returned from Grandfather Finwë’s house in Tirion to discuss the plans for the feast honoring his hundredth begetting day.

Like a fool, I sat, speechless, my mouth flapping open and closed. “But Atar….” I stopped. How was I to tell him that I was afraid?

“You will not honor me?” he said at last, his brow furrowing with—confusion? anger? hurt?

Surely not.

“It is just…I do not feel prepared.”

How could I explain that to put Atar into music is like asking to catch the ocean breeze in a bottle? Or asking for the light of the stars? It was beyond me. But he would expect it; they would all expect it, and the weight of the eyes of the Noldor—

I was afraid.

For a long time, we stood looking at each other—Atar and I—and then he shook his head and strode from the room. “I should have never taught you the harp,” he said, almost so quietly that I couldn’t hear, before slamming the door behind him, and I heard his footsteps recede down the hall, growing quicker at the end, and then the front door slammed too.

~oOo~

As a little boy, I’d sit in my room—alone, for Maitimo preferred rougher outdoor games that frightened and hurt me—and I’d sing the words of books. Atar mostly had books of metallurgy and tomes of lore, so I’d sing of alloys and folding and heat of fusion, and I sang all of the names of the Unbegotten and the Battles of the Valar and the various Ainur and their purposes upon Arda. I sang softly so that no one heard, but under the cover of my song—unknown to me—Atar crept in the room to listen, having come to the house for a pair of gloves. I sang the names of all of Grandfather Finwë’s lords and the formula for my father’s steel, and it was then that he caught me from behind—making me shriek on the word “ore”—and pressed a kiss into my ear, “Do not sing all of my secrets, little one.”

He led me then to a room that was kept behind a closed door, where I’d never been, and in a beam of golden light pouring through the window stood a magnificent harp of wood so polished that it shown as though Laurelin itself blazed within it, each string a sliver of delicate flame, like a spiderweb in the morning’s first light. I stood before it—for it was taller than I was—and traced my finger down the curve of it, feeling a shiver of the forbidden.

“It was my mother’s harp,” said Atar, and I gasped, for Atar never spoke of his mother. For the first eight years of my life, I’d thought him akin to the Unbegotten—but with only one parent—but his names were not listed among the lists that I sang now from memory. He was a branch in the tree that I also sang, letting my voice ghost the name Miriel Þerindë, for it always cracked when I sang the name of my grandmother, as though her name was not meant to be spoken. But there she was, her branch connected to my grandfather’s, and a single tenuous leaf—Curufinwë Fëanaro—sprouting off it.

“It was my mother’s harp,” he said, “and she used to play lullabies to soothe me when I was young.” He pulled a stool up to it and sat upon it, lifting me into his lap. “Sing to me the tune you were singing before,” he instructed, and I did—my voice wobbling with fear—sitting stiffly in his arms, while he found the notes upon the harp and played the song of my voice.

Rarely did I hear my father sing; even at the festivals when we all raised our voices in song, in honor of the Valar, he stood silently, staring at the sky as though hearing a melody that we could not, threading the stars as one might silver beads. But now, his fingers followed my melody, and soon, my eager fingers followed his, and his voice joined mine, and the song cascaded like rain, singing his formula for steel until the Lights mingled to the south of us and the afternoon was gone.

“Beautiful,” he whispered, so close that I felt his lips smile against my ear, and I shivered.

~oOo~

I pondered Grandmother Miriel’s harp, which sat in my bedroom now instead of the closed room at the end of the hall, and my fingers ran lightly across it strings.

A symphony for my father? But how?

I listened to each note fading into space, radiating from its source at my fingers and soaring over mountains and sea, to the Doors of Night and the Outer Lands, to the darkest of spaces between the stars, to what lay beyond. So would go the symphony for my father—but how could I sing of one such as he?

A song of fire, of one who can nurture and wound in equal measure, who coaxes forth life and then snaps—suddenly, unexpectedly—into angry sparks that smite upon my tender skin with the pain of razors. I touched my temple, the place of song, but it was numb and silent, defiant, for it had been born of my father’s proud refusal to understand that my road would not follow his, and it would not do his bidding.

My hands, his hands, upon the harp, he who created me and of whom I could never sing.

But my fingers found that ancient melody of long ago, that which I thought I’d forgotten, and I whispered in song the formula of steel, laughing through my tears, feeling the blood beat at my temple, beneath the insensate tissue, a rhythm of drums, quickening as I remembered the shape of his body striding down the beach, his angry whisper upon departing from my music room, and my tears splashing with the liquid-bright ringing of bells upon the floor, horns braying in angry sobs, but beneath it, the whimsical melody we’d constructed in childhood at this very harp, my hands in his.

If my father is fire, as it is told—as his mother Miriel portended—then it is his nature to rage, and it is my instinct to fear him. But now, I edge closer, holding my hands out to be warmed, exposing my flesh to be marred by his anger, and I allow myself to think of him.

To think of him—to capture him, a spark cupped in my hands like a firefly—as I peek between my fingers as I did as a child, and I ignore the pain to put that fire into music.

~oOo~

And so the “song” is completed and played by Grandfather Finwë’s orchestra at my father’s celebration—and I say to no one, not even him, that it is in fact incomplete, that it will be a symphony, and this is only the first movement. I tell no one, but as he turns and embraces me with unexpected gratitude—something like tears in his eyes, if water could be born of fire—in front of all of the Noldor, who applaud for him and for me, and I realize that this is the only hundredth begetting day he will ever be given, and he shares it with me.