Eggshells by Chestnut_pod

Eggshells

Read Eggshells

The replacement egg was pale green. Its maze of dripping markings were the same rusty black as the cliff rock. It still spun lazily around its sharply pointed end from where the mama murre had taken off in a fright when Linglas hauled herself up onto its ledge, panting.

Intently, she watched it spin, then slowly wobble to a standstill, inches from the edge. This was the second egg. Linglas was allowed to take the first egg, because murres whose first egg was taken always laid a second one. If the second one was taken, however, there would be no more eggs, and, eventually, her own mama said, no more murres. So, no matter how hungry Linglas felt, or how much she could almost taste the slightly fishy richness of the egg, she must not take this one.

Linglas supposed Elves were like murres. Mama said that when they lost their first body, they made another, but she did not know what happened if they lost their second. Linglas only had one body, so she must be especially careful when she climbed the sheer cliffs of Númenor’s eastern shore, where Rómenna hugged the water.

Linglas tried to be careful, but the disappointment at finding only the replacement egg on this ledge made her almost dizzy. She had only been allowed to climb the cliffs for a month, since she turned eight, and already the eggs had helped so much. The next ledge was too high for her, however. She had climbed all this way for nothing.

Sniffing, she pulled her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. If she wanted to eat before the shared pot of barley porridge in the evening, she would have to climb back down the cliffs and poke through the tide pools, or hope to spot a missed egg. Her arms and legs stung with scrapes from the cliff, however, and her stomach rumbled almost too loudly to think. She looked out at the water, blue like Mama’s precious blue-covered buttons, which she said had been her grandmother’s, who had lived with the Elf-queen at Sirion before the Drowning and been given them as a wedding present.

A few white-winged terns skimmed the waves in the distance. Linglas watched them swirl, wishing she could peck a fish from the waves with only her beak. Their pale wings scratched at the horizon, growing larger, and larger–

Linglas sat up abruptly, then had to scramble back on her hands to keep from overbalancing. Out of the flock of terns, white sails hove into view. Earlier in the year, six months after the first fleet landed on Númenor, ships from Lindon and Gil-galad King had limped into port from the east with more people — but these ships came from the west. Squinting, Linglas made out a device on the sails: a white feather, and a star.

The king, who was not an Elf, but looked like an Elf and could not grow a beard no matter how hard he tried, should hear about this! If Linglas were the one to tell him about it, perhaps he could give her a piece of ship’s biscuit, or a precious dried prune.

As quickly as she dared, she shimmied back down the cliff, not even glancing up to see if the mother murre returned to guard her egg. Only one path led into town, lined with the very first trees ever planted on Númenor. Linglas ran up it, waving distractedly at those who called after her.

The King’s House, which was twice as big as her house, and had a stone doorstep, sat all the way at the end of the road. Linglas careened towards its seal-hide doorway, then tripped over that fine black stone and scraped both her knees, knocking her shoulders into the flap and almost falling into the room.

An exclamation from inside the room preceded hurrying footsteps. The king, who was as tall as a mast, thrust aside the flap and stared down at her in concern. Linglas, whose right knee bled sluggishly, and who was still a little dizzy, sniffed and looked down. The king’s face broke into a gentle smile, and he knelt down to her.

“Why, it’s Halen’s little happy-song,” he said in Taliska, with his funny soft accent. “What are you doing here in such a rush?”

As he spoke, he reached out a hand to hover over Linglas’ knee. Linglas, who had seen the king make her mother better after she cut her hand on an old nail and started seizing, nodded. Gently, he laid his hand on the scrape, which stung even worse for a moment, then subsided. The king’s brow furrowed slightly, and his eyes closed. Linglas was glad, and took the moment to sniff and rub her hands across her eye so the king would not see that she had been crying after only a little fall. Maybe he would not let her climb the cliffs anymore if he thought she was a crybaby, and she and Mama needed the eggs.

The king opened his eyes again and removed his hand, revealing unbroken skin beneath, only smudged with drying blood. Fascinated, Linglas poked at it — it felt just like normal. Then she remembered that the king had asked her a question.

“There are ships coming from the west!” she exclaimed, jumping to her feet. For a moment, looking down at the king, who was still kneeling on his fine doorstep, she saw a series of expressions she did not understand cross his face. It scared her a little: some of the expressions looked angry, or frightened. The king noticed, however, and at once he was as kind as summer once more.

He asked her to describe them, and she did, excitedly recounting how the star sigil nestled into the curve of a down feather, and how many sails there were on the seven ships, and how quickly they had emerged.

The king leapt to his feet and ran a hand over his hair. “Let us make ready to greet them!” he said. “Linglas, will you find my lady wife and bring her to the harbor?”

So saying, he reached around the doorframe into the house, and returned holding a square of flatbread. Linglas just managed to receive it politely rather than snatching at it, then bobbed a curtsy and ran back into the village, knocking on the wattle doorposts of the houses in search of Queen Zamîn.

By the time she found the queen consulting with the midwife and towed her by the hand to the harbor, where the great-ships that had brought over her mother and relatives and friends from the drowned lands floated, with shaded huts on the decks like the one where Cousin Îbal lived, the king already stood grandly with his hands folded together, looking out at the ships.

Normally, the king was beautiful and tall and a little strange, but mostly a friendly face who healed whoever asked and helped babies be born. Linglas forgot, sometimes, that his mother had been the beautiful Elf-queen of Sirion, where her grandmother had lived and seen her become a bird with her own eyes. Sometimes, she remembered.

He raised a single hand high into the air, but did not wave. On the closest ship, which had a hull plated in more metal than Linglas had seen in her life, a white flag ran up the mast.

It took several more minutes for the ship to throw down its shining anchor, and then several more after that for the small rowboat to reach the shore, and for an Elf -– a real Elf! — to step out of the boat. By then, all of Rómenna stood behind Elros, including her mama, still wet from diving for shellfish. Even though she was too old for it, really, Linglas clung to her sleeve and watched the Elf approach.

She was as tall as the king, who Linglas had thought was the tallest person in the world. Her hair was glossy and black like a cormorant feather, and ran down her back in a single braid that reached past her hips. When she walked, it was like watching one of the seals in the harbor, something that moved in a different world from Linglas. She stopped before the king and bowed. The king did not bow back.

The Elf introduced herself in Quenya, which Linglas sort of understood because of Grandma Ruanel, even though she had died before she finished teaching Linglas. Her name was Aeglosbes, and she came from Seabird Island, but before then from the very north of Middle-earth, Linglas explained to the knot of other children who gathered around her, who had not had grandparents from Sirion.

The king replied, and this time Linglas did not understand as much of what was said, but it sounded stiff and maybe even angry. The Elf bowed again, and as she straightened, her eyes fell upon Linglas. Mama had said that Elves from the West had glowing eyes, but Aeglosbes’ eyes were black and deep, and as liquid and shiny as a seal’s. Linglas still thought they were the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen, even when they widened in surprise.

She gestured towards them, and the king said, “Children of the island.”

Aeglosbes stepped in their direction, looking at the king for permission. He nodded jerkily, and then Aeglosbes sat right down cross-legged on the ground so she was of a height with Linglas, whose mother held tight to her shoulder. She drew a leather pouch out of her pocket.

Pointing at it, she said a word Linglas did not recognize. When Linglas and her friends only stared at her, she tugged at the drawstring. Inside, wrinkled little orange-brown spheres jostled together and smelled sweet. White crystals clustered in the wrinkles. Aeglosbes reached inside and pulled one out, then placed it gently in Linglas’ palm, miming biting into it. It smelled of sunshine. Looking up at her mother, who nodded, she took a ginger bite.

She had never tasted anything so sweet. Her mouth flooded with honey and faint spice. It stuck and clung between her teeth so Linglas had to chase it with her tongue, finding new pockets of sweetness. The second bite was even better, the sugar on the skin dissolving on her tongue before the syrupy insides burst in.

Seeing her face, the other children crowded in, and Aeglosbes smiled and handed each of them fruits until there were none left in the bag, though there was a furrow between her brow. When the bag was empty, she stood again and looked at the king, gesturing to Linglas.

“She says we don’t have enough food,” Linglas whispered to her friends.

“We don’t!” whispered back Mían, who was ten, and liked to pretend they knew things.

The king replied to Aeglosbes in a heavy voice.

“He says we try our best. Home is just too new for growing — things I don’t know,” Linglas reported.

Perhaps she had spoken too loudly. Aeglosbes glanced at them again, then spoke. This time, her words were in Sindarin, which everyone knew! Her accent was unfamiliar, and even thicker than the king’s — she did not sound like anyone who had been in one of Gil-galad’s encampments during the war — but everyone could understand her now.

“My sails tell you who sent us,” Aeglosbes said, as though to Linglas herself, and a murmur swept through the crowd. Linglas’ heart leapt. Elwing the bird-queen, whom her grandmother had known! “On the ships, there are rocks and tanks with diverse sea vegetables of the tidal zone. There are also kelps for seeding forests beyond the breakers, ready to be planted by skilled divers. All were grown on the Isle of the Seabirds, called Adsirion by some.”

The king made a sharp gesture. Also in Sindarin, he asked, “And what do these gifts bring behind them? Such aid comes ever at a price.”

At that moment, Linglas would have given a whole day’s take of eggs to have Aegosbes kneel down before her once more and teach her the words for magical fruits.

Aeglosbes placed a hand over her heart and bowed to him. “There is no price. We ask for nothing, save perhaps some fresh water to fill our barrels as we journey back to Aman. I do have a message for you, O king of Elenna.” That, Linglas thought, was definitely what her mother called that tone.

The king’s lips pressed together so tightly that the skin paled. “There is no message I would hear that could not be repeated before all of Númenor.”

Aeglosbes bowed again. “Much of the message concerns the proper way to plant the kelps and establish the seaweed beds, and so on,” she said. “The rest: ‘May these gifts be a sign of friendship and lasting love. The glass of the tanks hails from the Council of Tirion; the original techniques from Alqualondë. Every holdfast and frond was grown by my hand or under my eye at Adsirion.’ So it runs. For myself, I want to know: Do you still eat beet soup?”

Linglas watched another series of expressions run over the king’s face, ending in a bewildered look that reminded Linglas of when a murre came back to its cliff-ledge to find the egg gone, but Linglas still there.

“We have done very well here this first year,” the king said, a faint tremor in his voice. “Númenor greens already. Soon, there will be enough soil inland for fields.”

Above her head, Linglas’ mama and the other grown-ups looked sideways at one another, and at the king. Linglas did not want him to turn away the gifts either.

Aeglosbes looked around her, at the restlessly shifting crowd, then again at Linglas, sucking the last bits of sugar off her finger.

Turning back to the king, without bowing this time, she said, “That is the message that was enclosed for you.” Reaching into her coat, she passed the king a packet wrapped in oilcloth. “Keep it safe: you will need the instructions.” Then she folded her hands in front of her, just as the king folded his. “I have another message, that is only mine, in my experience of the Lady of Adsirion. It is that you — and I mean all of you, as well as you, yourself, my lord — are remembered. Your memory is sacred to the star and feather, as is your survival. I tell you, for the sake of the little children here: do not send these ships away still laden.”

Queen Zamîn, who had been quietly and sharply observing Aeglosbes in her habitual way, stepped forward, slow with the bulk of her belly, drawing Linglas’ eye. She murmured something in the king’s ear, and he listened, though his face looked grim.

“We accept these generous gifts,” he said, and Linglas wondered that he did not sound happier. For herself, she whooped, almost unable to keep herself from leaping off the ground. She startled Mían, who punched her in the shoulder, but it barely hurt.

The king looked back at them, and, slowly, his usual smile crept back onto his face.

“Come!” he boomed out. “Help Captain Aeglosbes unload these ships. We will show the star and feather how well we Men do for ourselves!”

Linglas, who was, after all, still hungry, hung back while Mama and the others ran to bring the other ships in. Mían, who was a know-it-all, but still sort of nice, stayed with her.

“Why do you think the king decided to take the food once Captain Aeglosbes said no one forgot him?” Linglas asked.

Mían put their nose in the air. “It’s because the Lady of Adisirion is Queen Elwing,” they said. Linglas scowled at them, but Mían ignored her and went on. “The boats are from his mother, even though she turned into a bird and flew away.” Then they could resist no longer and darted away to the docks, where more rowboats, some laden down with huge buckets and barrels, ran onto the shingled beach.

Linglas stayed another moment, looking out onto the water. Aeglosbes was back in her rowboat, sailing towards the metal-clad ship with the star and feather. Linglas waved, but her back was turned. Her eyes wandered to the other ships, which had sails figured with swans and towers on hills. She remembered Middle-earth; it had only been a year since she mounted the great ships with the king and came to newborn Númenor, still wet with seawater. Somehow, it just did not feel as real as the sharp rocks and dull hunger of Númenor, with its scarlet sunsets and the seabirds that welcomed the fishers home every day.

Linglas licked a last bit of sugar from her thumb, and thought she might still go back, one day, if this was what it felt like to be remembered. Carefully, she spat out the seeds she had saved in a corner of her mouth and stirred them with her finger. She would plant them, and when the trees grew, she could show the king, and Captain Aeglosbes too, how well she could do for herself.