rulers make bad lovers by Chestnut_pod

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Chapter 15: Elwing

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The steps were written in Elwing’s bones, tapped into her growth plates by Idril, then Galadriel, as she grew. Knock on a door. Ask agitating questions. Educate. Win over. That person now leads to the next door, and this time they ask the questions, provide the answers. That person knocks on more doors, and eventually a whole street or family or neighborhood can pass a message quickly, attend a meeting as one, pool resources to sink a new well, stand up against a bully in council.

Idril taught her the way of it alongside Eärendil, to convince the Men of Sirion to come to council, to wiggle around the protective-powerful counselors from Doriath, to win over the stiff-necked remnants of Gondolin. Galadriel showed her the tricks, the cozening, the spinning so the argument caught the light, and then how to recoup the power after it all went slightly wrong.

Somehow, it had never seemed to grow any easier, the available problems awaiting organized action always expanding to fill Elwing’s available time and skill. Not to mention the doors that did not open.

In Sirion, the hard work had not bothered her. The successes shone out from the many faces of Siriondrim around the battered council table, old divisions of kindred and kind left beyond the reed-beds. It rested in the full cheeks of the children, Elwing’s own and the children of her Sirion, thanks to the richness of the new beds raised out of the march by the collective strength of the city brought together.

In Alqualondë, it did weigh on her. It was not only the lack of the structure built up over time in Sirion, making everything slower and more difficult. It was the endlessness, the scale of the goal, the parlousness of Elwing’s own future.

At least the work distracted her from the last of those.

In between the fits of urgency that came upon her and drove her to canvass Alqualondë’s streets and sparkle at meetings, there were lulls, small spaces in which to wonder and explore. Aman was—

It could not be described in a way that satisfied her. Yet, she tried, because Eärendil neared, and however long they would have together, she would use that time to describe what she had seen.

Every corner had a shop or a cart selling food, and it was always different kinds of food. On one street, the vendor offered piping-hot spheres of fried dough with chewy-tender octopus to children running home from school, while on the next, a gracefully roofed teahouse might offer many-colored sweets with fragrant tisanes for bureaucrats scribbling reports. There were shops that sold food from Tirion, and food from Valmar, and food from Avallónë. Elwing had seen a building with no windows in the back garden of an inn, then watched a server carry out a great block of ice to chill some delicacy in the kitchen. Ice! In the midst of summer!

Wood abounded, in all guises. People carved it into houses and benches and children’s toys and even shoes. Trees grew in the streets and in moist, dim copses between neighborhoods. Loggers in the north sent whole trees down the Alpasírë, and fantastically twisted driftwood washed onto the jeweled beaches, where people collected it and to make hanging confections of glass and gems to hang sparkling from their eaves.

There were Elvish children everywhere. Babies blinked from blankets on parents’ backs. Packs of adolescents roamed the streets looking for sunny lawns for lounging. Hip-high hobbledehoys tugged at strangers’ sleeves and asked for directions and attention and sweets.

Elwing drifted through all the enormity of the green-veiled, good-smelling, sun-drenched, star-kissed, tile-roofed, flag-paved, ocean-going city as it spilled from the hills down to the embracing sea. Once an hour, perhaps, she drew in the clean air and felt it rush to her head like sparkling wine; once an hour, she blinked and found that everything seemed almost too bright and too real to be believed.

She wove it into stories and songs as she walked. Eärendil would want to hear about the flocks of liquid-songed blackbirds flashing scarlet patches on their wings, and the red-breasted bluebirds, and the violently yellow goldfinches chattering in the silk-tassel trees. He would want to know that she had eaten raw fish like a slice of sea-suffused butter on a bed of samphire. If he could, he would like to come with her to see the grove of majestic redwoods whose trunks could not be circled by seven people holding hands.

Greedily, she gathered the memories to herself by the armful, and tried not to think of how long she would have to look back over them like a little girl picking through the sand for wave-smoothed glass from ruined Vinyamar.

The pink dawn of Eärendil’s arrival hovered beyond the horizon of Olwë’s ultimatum.

“What did I say to make you listen?” Elwing asked, the night before her great test, daring to sneak a hand up Eärwen’s calf where her robe split apart to show her soft skin beneath the white and blue silks of her underrobes. From the corner, Anairë watched sidelong over her basket-making.

Eärwen caught her hand and held it by the wrist. “You wore me down.”

“What was it I said?”

Like a silent storm swell far out from the breakwater, regal and cool over a well of deep, slow force, Eärwen pressed her down into the floor of her bedroom. Elwing let herself be pressed, thrilling to pretend that she was tossed about and tumbled by a breaker, too disoriented to think of tomorrows.

“You ought to sleep,” Anairë said from her watchful perch, something curious thrumming beneath her words. They did, eventually.

But morning came the quicker for her distraction, and Elwing bolted awake to the unsullied dawn of the West before even Anairë, heart thundering.

Time was her enemy! Aboard Vingilot, the years had dragged their feet; now, Arien mounted her golden chariot with unseemly haste, splashing sunrise carelessly about her. All too soon, she would slip once more beneath Elwing’s own horizon.

There was more to do -– more doors to knock upon, new acquaintances to instruct. Yet, hastily dressed, shivering pinfeathers, Elwing did not do it. Surely the friendly helpers and fierce new organizers she had met knew their business well enough, and like as not she would do more harm than good in this mood.

Before the last straggling fishing boat had passed beyond the harbor mouth, Elwing found herself crouched on the tip of the seawall, fighting back the feathers with every spell of trembling. The bird-mind was quiet, simple. It wanted fish, water, sunlight. It knew fear, of a sort, but it was clean fear, without guilt. Elwing’s jaw ached with the desire to curve and hook.

Eventually, she found her way to her feet, woman-shaped, and ran up Alqualondë’s twisting streets, still half-shuttered. The lanes of trees grew thicker as the ground rose and the houses thinned — past Ninkwitāllë’s house with its small power wearing itself to the core of Arda, past the last paved streets. When her breath knifed her throat too sharply to be ignored, she stopped running. Alqualondë fell away beneath her, nestled into its tilted bowl and spilling into the embracing sea. To the north, a thin peninsula speared the shining waves, connected to the mainland by a thread of rocky ground. Away south, the land curved out of sight. Behind her, the wall of the Pelóri rose, implacable.

Elwing tilted forward, then back, on her toes. The drop to the sea and the city yawned beneath her. If she leant back, the great fence erected to keep out any living thing from the place of her birth would hold her away. If she pushed, no door in the mountain would open. If she passed through the shining cleft to paradise, she might die sooner, and all her people after her. Yet it was this great palisade she must open tonight.

She sat on the rustling grass beneath her, looking out towards Beleriand. Under her breath, she began to practice. What had they wanted to hear in white Tirion? What had they demanded of her in pearly Alqualondë? What had convinced Eärwen? What had moved Anairë to pity? What had Lúthien done, before an unbending audience?

Her lips moved; her body rocked. Arien sped through the cloudless sky. Her stomach rumbled; she ignored it. Her song gathered shape and density, the brocaded face of a figured tapestry.

Only when the west painted itself rose did she stir, springing to her feet with a cry. She would be late!

Dizzy and stiff-legged with her sudden rising, Elwing staggered, slid a toe over the edge of the cirque, and lost the last battle against the osprey. She cried out again, the descant screech of the bird, and flew down the slopes towards the water, where, far away, early lanterns gathered.

–

The bird wanted to fly forever. In its mind, the glinting waves meant fish rising to the surface for their rich evening meal. The darkening east meant home, while the hubbub of groundlings on the land’s edge meant only nuisance.

Somewhere in the recesses of the sea hawk, Elwing remembered her task. Only, how much easier it was to care only for wave-treasure and the stiff wind combing her pinions. She circled above the quay.

A bare forest of snags caught the bird’s eye — good for nesting and drying damp feathers, it thought. Behind its eyes, Elwing recognized the ship-bones.

Ah, she thought. Not there. 

But beside the ghostly remains was a head of silver hair dressed with pearls, which the hawk could pick out one by one, gleaming golden in the twilight. The bird that was Elwing cheeped and stooped into a dive, remembering to land lightly, as on a nest, and not with talons outstretched as fear insisted.

The bird and Elwing recognized her mistake the moment they alighted on the ground before the head of silver hair, which was after all Eärwen, surrounded by her people. She cheeped again, dazzled by the lanterns and the crush. Elwing thought: All of them waiting for a performance. If she flew away now, she could find her mate and—

Eärwen crouched, reaching out a hand. The bird thought about snapping, but remembered a firm grip at the hinges of its jaw and only whistled, mantling. Elwing thought she might prefer the blood tang regardless.

But Eärwen did not touch her, only pressed the cold implacable wash of her mind against Elwing’s, even small and sheltered as she was behind the osprey’s exact, austere thoughts.

“Do your duty,” Eärwen said beneath the crowd’s agitation. Elwing did bite her then — Elwing herself, though it was the hawk’s sharp beak that drew a single bead of blood from the web between her thumb and forefinger, where Eärwen had stretched out a hand after all. She withdrew it sharply, then unbelted her outermost robe and dropped it over Elwing’s head.

True darkness descended. At once, the bird was calm, and Elwing was furious. Eärwen’s advice weeks ago had been to think on queenly things, and queenliness was a performance Elwing had rehearsed every day of her life since she was a child in arms.

She shook free of her feathers and stood, clutching Eärwen’s robe around her — it had been something of a kindness after all — and listened to the cries and murmurs of shock around her.

Out of her human eyes, the crowd was more than a schooling mass, and less. It was only a crowd waiting for her to speak and convince them, a familiar beast.

She recognized Anairë standing beside Olwë behind Eärwen. Her particular organizers peppered the throng, and ships’ captains dotted the rigging of the tall ships for a better view. Nissaratë, from her very first attempt at a conversation here, leant against the wall of the quay, looking determinedly unimpressed. Others bore stronger expressions: delight, shock, fury. Elwing knew perfectly well how to manage a crowd like this; if she had not been born for it, she had been raised to it.

Eärwen’s hand descended on her shoulder, straightening the too-long robe so it sat evenly. Perhaps it was meant to comfort — perhaps also it was meant to reinforce Eärwen’s own power here, to garb Elwing the distressing, the disturbing, the unlooked-for and agitating, in her own raiments.

Tense quiet rippled outwards through Elwing’s audience. She turned to look at its source.

Olwë stood, hands folded in his sleeves. He bore a great scepter of narwhal tooth and nacre in the crook of his elbow, but made no gestures with it. He had only to rise, and the city quieted for him.

“Hail and hark, Lindar,” he said, and though he seemed to speak quietly, his voice found the cracks between Elwing’s teeth and whispered back from the waves. For the first time, Elwing felt the truth of the relation between him and her great-grandfather, the silver tower of her earliest memories.

Olwë continued, “A daughter of my lost brother’s house, Elwing, comes to us from out of the East, from the shores we left behind us. She asks a boon of us —” Not quite, thought Elwing, and kept her face smooth — “that we hear her plea for aid. For action, I should say, for the sake of her home and family. The lady comes to us honorably, with respect for our ways. She demands nothing, she says. She only asks.”

Into the silence that followed his pronouncement, Elwing stepped forward. What need had she for this silk robe? She was the daughter of Dior the Beautiful, granddaughter of Lúthien Tinúviel. Dispossessed, still she had once been a queen. She breathed deep of the fresh sea air.

She sang of home.

Even Arien tarried on her way to hear her describe Sirion as she had loved it, to let her dark torrent of osanwë show it: its whitewashed wattle homes with seashells hanging in chains from the gutters; its striated cliffs of sandstone gently eroding into the wave-burnished beach; its floating fields, each anchored by its sentinel tree, where Mannish children and Elvish farmers perched side-by-side like sparrows in the branches to escape the noontime sun, then would dive into the reed-beds with great shrieking splashes to send the marsh-hens clucking skyward.

In Alqualondë, stars winked into view one by one. Sirion’s stars were different, its constellations a jumble of favorites with names in Quenya, Taliska, Sindarin, Hadorian. Elwing sang of the Men who had told her star-stories when she sat alongside their own children, spellbound to hear of the rabbit in the moon next to the adventures of her own grandfather. Those children then played games of marbles with the many-sided cones of the salt-loving cypresses that marched down to the sea’s edge in dancing shapes, and shrieked and waved on the beach when their parents came home from their wave-riding, their search for safety beyond the western horizon.

For Sirion was not safe, and Elwing sang also of the children who thought the colors of the sky were blue and yellow, and poison in the waters, and the taste of ash in the north wind.

The song itself carried her, it seemed. Even as she sang, the greatness of the work thrummed in her fingerbones and pelvis.

Another sea of rapt faces gazed at her, or beyond her, watching two little boys play with the soft, dun-colored marsh mice, who could be tempted into eating from one’s hand, but only if one could bear the thought of going a little hungry at suppertime.

Elwing’s breath burnt in her throat, but she sang on. The boys looked up and over their shoulders, where the clouded sky began to burn red.

The crowd stirred. Their clothes rustled audibly, for the noise of the waves had vanished. Elwing looked out to the ocean and saw that the surface was once again a smooth mirror, dark and opaque except where it reflected back Alqualondë’s lights and the early stars.

So she had the ear of some Power. Let them hear.

Even much later, after her Choice, when her recollection cut through time as a sharp knife through butter, she never could remember precisely the words or images she had sung into being on the bloodied promenade of Alqualondë. Her memory was of coppery blood in her throat and the eerie silence of the sea. The very gulls had ceased their wailing when she screamed flame.

When she had done, she panted into the silence, swallowing hard and painfully through her raw throat.

The silence stretched.

It was broken by a most unexpected person. From the sidelines against the promenade wall, Voranna, mother of unknown Urundil, who had never agreed to help Elwing in her quest, cried out, “May their blood be avenged!”

The crowd descended at once into a maelstrom of shouts and outrage. Neighbors shook fists in one another’s faces and declared their stances in an indecipherable vociferation. Unregarded, she sank to her knees.

Her eyes were heavy and smarting, as though with smoke or tears; she closed them. So she felt surprise when warm, cedar-scented arms wrapped around her.

Anairë held her, rocking gently, saying nothing; indeed, Elwing would not have been able to hear her had she tried. She only rested her head against Anairë’s warm shoulder, shuddering in each breath.

After an unheeded time, the clamor took on a kind of order. From shouts, it became claps, in an ordered pattern. Elwing raised her head and looked over Anairë’s shoulder.

Olwë stood on the promenade wall, banging the butt of his staff in rhythms the crowd echoed after him.

“Peace!” he shouted, and when some pockets of argument persisted, he put power into it: “Peace!”

One last clap, and quiet fell, though the waves had returned to hush behind Olwë’s voice.

“Do not think to bring havoc and strife to this harbor-shore once more,” he admonished. “You have heard the fate of our sundered kin. My niece has told her tale, but she has not yet finished, I perceive, and you will hear her out in fairness, for I promised her this much: that she might tell all, then request aid.”

He turned to Elwing, still gazing at him over Anairë’s shoulder.

“Elwiyeldë,” he said. “Make your appeal.”

Elwing gathered herself to stand. Another unexpected arm interpolated itself into her awareness — soft, preciously scented. Together, Anairë and Eärwen lifted her up, then fell back when Elwing stepped forward on her own.

Her voice rasped in her throat, more hawk than nightingale, but it carried.

“My appeal is only for my life, the lives of my people, and even your lives, little though you may think it.” Many eyes glinted at her in the torchlight, without her images to distract them. Elwing continued.

“The great Enemy lies in Angband and sends His venom through our rivers and into the veins of the earth. He also makes his home in every moment of inaction, in every stiff neck that turns only to the sorrows of one’s own self. He is in the despair that is almost pride. I know this!”

The space on her neck where the Silmaril had rested tingled, and Elwing pressed a hand to it, feeling her voice vibrate beneath her fist.

“I know this,” she repeated. “It almost destroyed me, my pride in my despair. Do not imagine that you of Elvenhome so-called will be saved by your inaction when Bauglir has cracked the bones of my home and sucked the marrow! If you keep your ships chained in the harbor and say it is vengeance, or restitution, or only what we deserve, then you will be destroyed before ever the shadow of Morgoth’s hand falls over you, for that is only a physical destruction at the last. The true ruination is that which befalls all who value heirlooms over heirs and spite over hope.”

Somehow, the silence persisted, though the expressions on the faces close enough to read were a riptide, calm above and a mystery below.

“I know this,” she repeated. “Once I jumped, I thought, to my death. I was saved by mercy unasked-for and undeserved. I cannot repay this except by begging you, on my knees if I must, for more. Please. Have mercy.”

The words ran out. Unseeingly, she turned from the crowd, and was caught up once more in Anairë’s arms. The crowd behind her was eerily still.

Eärwen shifted as though she meant to speak, and Anairë hushed her.

Elwing had not thought ahead to this moment. Referenda were no way to run a city; still less were they the wise politician’s choice of tool. What would happen now?

Olwë would stand forth again, it seemed. Speechifying, as Eärwen called it.

“Fëanáro’s followers showed us no mercy,” Olwë said. Elwing’s heart sank. Around her, Anairë’s embrace tightened.

“None were spared — not those who begged, or the young, or even, at the end, his own son. Why should we show mercy in return?”

The high, sheer wall of Alqualondë’s cirque called, but Elwing fought back the feathers. Perhaps she could find Eärendil after all…

But Olwë went on. “Yet I find that I require mercy myself. Lady Elwing would have it that we have abandoned the world — perhaps we have. I have abandoned you, my city, my people. I have turned my face from you; I have failed you as you king and as your brother in grief.”

The people stirred restively. Beside Elwing, Eärwen stiffened, then strode forward to stand by her father. He did not turn to look at her, but reached out and rested his hand on her shoulder.

“I mean to abdicate,” he said, and the crowd roared in surprise. He waited them out for long minutes of noise and questions. “Yes,” he said at last. “There has been much of that going around lately. I abdicate–” he raised his voice again to be heard “--in favor of my daughter Eärwen, who has ruled you so well during the long years of my mourning. My last act is not a command. It is only a request of my own. I do not make it as your king; I am no king any longer, and have not been, I see, in some time.

“I ask you for only this: do what the House of Fëanáro did not do. If a ship is yours, choose mercy. Do not fight if you do not wish; merely allow others to do so in the freedom of their choosing. If you desire to lend aid to our kin beyond the sea, the choice is in your hands.”

Olwë turned to face Eärwen, who stared at him, the closest thing to stricken Elwing had yet seen. He smiled and stroked her cheek. Eärwen’s hand flew up to catch his, and he drew their linked palms down to the narwhal scepter. When he withdrew, it rested easily in Eärwen’s grasp.

“Hail to Queen Eärwen,” he said in ringing tones, and bent his knee.

In a great rush like a wave cresting and falling, Alqualondë followed him, though Elwing could see many upturned faces looking on in a variety of expressions: confusion, displeasure, delight, and many combinations thereof.

Eärwen slowly faced them, her face blank once again, though Elwing thought she could still detect the traces of shock.

“Alqualondë,” she said, and then nothing more for a long moment. “Alqualondë. Will you make your choices now?”

“Good girl,” Anairë murmured quietly, and Elwing jumped. Anairë looked down at her from where she had been gazing at Eärwen, smiling slightly. She gave her a small push, and Elwing almost stumbled, but straightened. She and the crowd stared at one another, equally caught.

Jostling at the water-front caught her eye. Someone shoved through the mass of people, though Elwing’s torch-dazzled eyes could not make out who it was. Only when the last row of spectators moved — or were knocked — aside did Elwing recognize brawny Nissaratë.

She stomped to Elwing, then stopped, looking her up and down with her arms akimbo.

“Well then,” she said, pitching her voice to carry. “I am Nissaratë, and my boat is not mine but my nephew’s, the trusty Lintaluntë. He would like it if she had had an adventure while he was with the True Judge.”

So saying, she tapped her fist against her breast and bowed to Eärwen, then to Elwing, and strode away through the crowd.

By force of long habit, Elwing did not stare, stupefied, after her as she shoved through the watching crowd. Following the ruffles of Nissaratë’s passage back to the front, she caught the eyes of one of her young supporters from the shipbuilding quarter.

The young man trembled visibly as he stepped forward out of the safety of his knot of friends, whom Elwing had met and taken tea with, speaking graciously all the while of the pity of Alqualondë’s empty dry docks and the grandeur of her own voyage across Belegaer.

He said, quavering but audible: “I am Telpelamma, and I have no ship, but I have a shipbuilder’s tools, and it would be well to use them in the aid of my grandparents’ kin in Beleriandë.” He saluted as Nissaratë had done, and half-fled back to the cluster of his friends. Though Elwing thought he had turned from her too quickly to see, she bowed towards him in honor of his courage, and to hide the sudden mist before her eyes.

A few people scoffed as she straightened. With alarm, Elwing saw some members of the crowd turn on their heels and storm away — but others were making their way to the front, forming a long snaking queue between other, undecided clusters of observers. One by one, people upon whose doors Elwing had knocked, or who had signed her petition when handed it by Ninkwitāllë, or had been collared by cousins or guildmates or friends, came forward. Elwing watched, heart in her throat.

Four or five spat at her feet, or declaimed wrathful speeches. She stood impassively through them. Most, however, made a pledge following the same formulary, as though they had known it beforehand. Perhaps some steadfast new friend had taken care to write it and share it without her knowing. Perhaps it was her own vanity to assume that it had to be for her and was not some memory of the Falmari from ages before her ken.

Each gave their name, then the name of their ship if they had it. Almost all appended some few words of explanation to the bones of their introductions. For the King’s plea. For my grandparents. For the adventure. For I lost my children too. For you spoke to me in my home. For the songs. For the sake of those suffering as I suffered. For the marsh mice.

Elwing bowed and clasped hands and stood very straight while the strange stars wheeled above her, telling unknown hours. Her spine and the backs of her calves began to ache, but she did not feel tired. This was her fleet. It would sail, with her or without her.

The last person came forward. Elwing noticed with numb surprise that it was orange-haired Lelt of the Avari, smiling his close-tucked smile. He broke the script. Loud enough for all the lingering city to hear, he said in his lilting accent, “I am Lelt. I speak by mandate for my people of Genelt beyond the inland sea. We will go with your fleet. We shall not return with your fleet.”

He did not bow, only made an unfamiliar sort of jaunty salute, and, despite herself, Elwing smiled.

From the space behind Elwing’s shoulder where she had waited through all the timeless night, Anairë threw a mantle around her and drew her close.

Under the weight of her arms and the warmth of the thick wool, Elwing found she was tired after all. Unsteadily, she allowed Anairë to pull her back from the dimming quay, past Olwë still standing irresolutely by Eärwen, through the empty nacred streets of Alqualondë, and at last to her guest room with its window still open to the sea.

Her heart caught up with her all of a sudden, pounding and skipping, and Elwing fell out of Anairë’s embrace onto her knees. She did not register the crack as they met the shining wooden floors, only the sobs that began in her gut and poured out into the room as the Sirion had poured out to the sea.

She had her fleet. They would sail, with her or without her.