rulers make bad lovers by Chestnut_pod

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Chapter 1: Eärwen

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The young woman doubled over on the strand, naked as the day she was born, retching and hacking and gagging. Strings of mucus and spit stretched from her lips to the sand, tangling with tendrils of her black hair.

Eärwen watched from her seat on one of Alqualondë’s southern quays, and considered her instinctive appending of “young” to her description. A child was young, or a kitten, or a cygnet, but no Elf full-grown could truly be said to be young or old at sight, unless their minds revealed some freshness, some attachment to the world. She had not reached out to this mind.

“Goodness,” Anairë murmured beside her.

On the beach, the woman’s head and neck twisted and warped into the fierce, slicing curve of an osprey’s beak and plumage. Little downy feathers trickled down her shoulders and outlined the curve of her breasts, shivering in the dawn breeze. Her scream slid up the scale into the screech of the raptor, and then she hacked again, and passed the pellet.

“I understand this is why Aiwendil does not eat if he means to assume an Elven fána,” Eärwen remarked. “Should we go to her?”

The woman turned onto her back, panting and spent, the feathers and scything beak slowly receding into night-black hair and a proud, arched bridge of a nose.

“I think we had better,” Anairë said. “I do not think she has had anyone to teach her.”

The tide played around the horizon, only beginning to consider its daily sweep up the beach to the toes of Alqualondë. Eärwen waved to the far-off breakers and slid down to the wet sand, then turned and lifted Anaïre down. Anaïre pecked her on the cheek in thanks, and they started up the beach to the strand and the woman lying there sobbing for breath.

She did look young, close-up. That is, she looked like an Elf who had just reached full maturity, except where she did not. Around the eyes she bore little crinkles like the seafarers did, on her heaving belly the lightning-marks of pregnancy, and two fascinating rivers of silver ran into the light-gulping blackness of her hair from the temples. And, of course, there were the feathers.

Eärwen knelt beside her and waited. The woman’s breathing gradually slowed, and the blank panic receded from her eyes, which blinked, took in the Princess of the Teleri and the Queen of the Noldor-in-Aman on their knees in the sand, and squeezed tightly shut.

“There you are,” said Eärwen. “It is a strange bird that blows in from the East alone and sheds its feathers on the shore. I have a robe on the quay which you may borrow, and we will see you fed and dressed and housed, should you so desire, and then you may share with us your tale.”

“What she means to say,” Anairë interjected, patiently, “Is that it is plain you need help, child, and we can provide, and gladly. Come now, to your feet.”

The gray eyes blinked open, passing from Eärwen to Anairë and back again. They were familiar, Eärwen thought, clear and deep-set, not unlike her father’s. The woman drew in a rasping breath and nodded. She got to her feet in a lurch, then stood still, not seeking to cover herself, looking them in the eyes. There was something of the raptor still about her gaze.

Anairë reached out, and after a moment’s consideration, the woman took her hand, and allowed herself to be led towards the quay.

Eärwen followed, considering. Had she seen those eyes before? That light-devouring hair? Those feathers even yet shaking off the light-brown arms? Had she perhaps spoken with this woman before, or seen her among Aiwendil’s followers?

“What is your name, bird-child?” she asked.

In a voice like a viol and an accent never yet heard on the shores of Aman, the woman replied, “My name is Elwing, and I am not a child.”

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The woman with the strange name and the strange voice had almost wept when Eärwen and Anairë showed her the bathing-room in the Queen’s House, indicating the waterfall-shower for rinsing off the sand and the deep tub for soaking. They gave her a wide-toothed comb of driftwood and oil for her hair, then departed, closing the door behind them.

They stood in the little anteroom of robes and towels and slippers and stared at one another.

Eärwen had asked no further questions after the shock of the woman’s -- El…wing’s? -- reply. Presumably, Anairë had had equal trouble pressing words out past the jolt of newness. She overcame it first, however.

“‘Elwing,’” she said. “I have never heard a name like that.”

“At the quarter moon, the fisherfolk told tales of a great light from out of the East coming to rest on the shore south of here, then vanishing into the mountains,” Eärwen replied. Anairë would follow her leaps, as she always did. “Three days later, a child with a strange name and a strange face and strange ways of transformation lands on our beach and almost chokes on a pellet.”

“She said she was not a child,” Anairë countered. “You saw her stomach.”

Eärwen pursed her lips and tilted her head. “A child with a child of her own?”

Anairë curled her lip. “No, you are right; it might make things worse, not better. Also, she almost choked on a pellet; clearly she is no habitual skin-changer.”

The sound of falling water ceased, and they paused in their speculations until the sound of a body slipping into the tub was heard.

“Will you question her?” Anairë asked quietly.

“I must,” Eärwen replied. “I feel no taint in her, but -- she is from the East.”

“She might--” Anairë began, then stopped abruptly, hand flying to her mouth as though she sought to bottle up her own words.

Eärwen reached out and drew her hand away by the wrist. She did not let it go, but kept it, cradling it like a dove. Anairë bit her cheek, then composed herself.

“Perhaps she knows where Nerwen is,” she said.

Eärwen inclined her head, and did not reply. Steam curled in tendrils from under the door. She hummed a little, enjoying the vibrations in her lips and the clarity of the sound, so different from the clarion tone of a swan. The steam swirled briefly in the shape of a cygnet, then dissipated.

A low whistle proceeded from the bathing room, followed by a billow of steam that reared up in the form of a pelican taking off from the water in a frenzy of flapping wings, blown apart by the opening door.

Elwing stood in the doorway wrapped in Eärwen’s robe, her hair unbound and dripping. The bath seemed to have restored some composure to her, for she gazed about the small room and dipped her chin as though taking stock of all it contained, themselves included, and deciding they sufficed.

Eärwen shared a glance with Anairë.

“You look much better,” Anairë said, giving no sign that anything had passed between them. “Come, eat; refresh yourself. Then you may tell us how you came here.”

Elwing made a tiny smile in her direction, but tilted her head -- a remarkably birdlike gesture -- at Eärwen, and waited.

“Yes,” Eärwen said. “This is my home. You are welcome at my table this morning. We will hear your tale and see if you will be welcome there in the afternoon.”

Anairë sent her a pulse of irritation that tingled down her neck, but Elwing’s smile grew. Eärwen had thought she might appreciate the straightforwardness; she was pleased to be correct.

In that bells-and-breakers voice, Elwing said, “I thank you. I have a tale to tell indeed, though it may bring unwelcome ghosts to your table in the telling.”

It was the most she had said so far, and she said it strangely, in a mix of phrases ancient and novel. From somewhere in the belly, Eärwen felt the sparks of hope, long-banked and ashed over with loss and dread and resentment, begin to burn again.