rulers make bad lovers by Chestnut_pod

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Chapter 19: Eärwen

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The first hint of autumn veiled Alqualondë’s pearlescent gleam the day Elwing returned to Eärwen, turning the walls of the houses just slightly insubstantial, like a city in a dream.

She rode into the city heralded by birds and children, a jubilant fanfare rising around the hooves of her mare — whom she still sat like a sack of seaweed — and just about drowning out the hisses and protests.

Elwing wore the Silmaril on her breast, brilliant in its light, almost floating in the rippling glory. Eärwen admired the calculation.

To Eärwen’s keen eye, she looked no different, beneath the wash of Treelight preserved. Her hair, with its lightning bolts at the temples, writhed darkly in its bun. Her clear gray eyes looked about her alertly in their setting of filigreed wrinkles. Something of the hawk followed her movements, sharp and graceful, as she waved and nodded to the gawkers.

Yet, she was different. Standing beside Anairë at the gates of the palace, Olwë seated visibly but not obtrusively behind her, Eärwen narrowed her eyes. She had expected Elwing to come back. Lying awake with Anairë drowsing in her arms, sharing pictures back and forth — Elwing naked on the beach, shedding feathers; Elwing robed in silk before the whole city; Elwing staring at the breakfast table in wondering disbelief — she could not imagine any dark fate befalling her. Even so, the clean tide of relief swept her from head to toe, and she opened the floodgates of her mind to share it with Anairë.

Elwing’s head snapped up. Across the teeming street, her eyes met Eärwen’s. Then, a clumsy, inexpert feather of thought alighted on the surface of Eärwen’s mind.

Untutored, Eärwen thought bemusedly, then watched as Elwing’s face split into a radiant grin.

New, came the response, and then she and Eärendil were upon them, travel-stained and almost the same as when they had left, except that they brought mellow autumn on their heels.

For a moment, before Elwing half-fell off her horse into Eärendil’s arms, Eärwen thought she might have known how Elwing’s people had seen her, a young queen with a star around her neck and laughter in her eyes, tempered by a mouth that had known pain.

In Alqualondë, however, Eärwen ruled. Of late, she had run after Elwing, reacted to her coming — her days had been so much standing dignifiedly waiting for Elwing.

You were indeed waiting for Elwing, I think, chimed in Anairë, amusement sweet in her thought.

Eärwen cast her a sideways glance. Be that as it may! It was high time she began, properly, to act.

It was not precisely easy to corral an excited horde of Falmari into the courtyard, and maneuver Elwing and Eärendil into the position of supplicants, graciously given cushions to report back to Eärwen, but she managed.

Elwing’s story, told with great flair and feeling as well as her powerful osanwë of images, as skilled as her mind-speech was rough, stirred all who heard it. Wavelets of feeling undulated through the crowd as she told of her plea, her Choice, the discovery of her sons alive on that far shore!

Standing calmly, holding a mask of proud indulgence before her face, Eärwen watched the light in Elwing’s eyes flare. If she was not transformed, still she was not the hollow-cheeked vagrant bird blown onto Alqualondë’s shores by the winds of fate. Ensuring that one would not die, neither today nor tomorrow, must be strong wine, Eärwen thought, to one who had never possessed that certainty.

Then, with a solemn ceremony in her gestures, Elwing drew out the Silmaril from around her neck. Even Anairë beside her sighed softly and swayed forward into the embrace of the light, the very same that had been the first thing to strike her babies’ eyes as they opened into the noontide of Valinor. Her father made a small noise, hastily stifled. With resplendence in her hands, Elwing sketched out a new plan hatched between herself, Eärendil, and the Valar: the last of the light of the Trees, shared at last with all the world, far away from any who would hoard it away.

“A new star,” Elwing concluded, her voice rolling over the crowd like the wind over the waves or swaying forest, answering the glory in her hands with light from within.

It was effective, Eärwen had to admit. Moreover, she knew it was a natural end to Elwing’s discourse. She stepped forward, Anairë staying behind, watching her, she knew, with a rueful twist to her mouth.

“A star of high hope shall shine upon all meetings henceforth,” she said, a finger at her throat to make her own voice carry out into Alqualondë’s streets. “You are much to be commended, Cousin Elwing, Eärendil, scion of my love. May it be that its light will hallow the next step we Falmari take towards wholeness, as we build the fleet that will carry your mission to the shores of Endórë.”

The assembly shifted on its feet. Only perhaps a third of the sailors and shipbuilders of Alqualondë had pledged themselves to Elwing’s cause a scant few nights ago — not unexpected, from Eärwen’s point of view. The rest should not have to go; how well she herself understood it! Yet, a queen had other points of view as well.

“Children have been born since the massacre. We have done all we could do to survive and to heal,” she said, and made a gesture of her hands learned from Anairë, a mourning gesture. Some in the crowd echoed it back at her, and she allowed her gaze to rest upon them, so they looked up at her and felt understood.

Elwing, any suspicion carefully kept from her face, slowly tucked the Silmaril back into her collar. Eärwen noted this and went on.

“We will never make or know the like of our Swanships, dearest and departed. And yet! We are the Singers, the wave-runners, the people of the shore and sea. The forests of mast-trees stand untended and unharvested, robbing the sorrel of sunlight. Children of ropemakers run messages in the markets, while sailors quarrel over the privilege of crewing the herring run to Eressëa.”

A few heads nodded; others scowled or stayed impassive. It was only true, however, that however wide-eyed Elwing perceived the city, it was not what it had been before the docks were sluiced with blood. For want of journeys, shipyards stood empty; for want of ships, sailors went about as porters; for want of sailors, canvasmakers and ships’ cooks and petty merchants left altogether, or restively moved from one occupation to another. They were all ripe for a renaissance; so too were they ripe for agitation by a beautiful, mysterious princess with a cause and finely honed organizing experience.

“Those who pledged their hands and tools to Lady Elwing will have use of the Hyalmanendë Shipyard and the Marillandon Shipyard,” Eärwen announced, naming the two largest dry-docks, where the great ocean-going Swanships had been so carefully crafted. “These will be fully staffed, and those staff will be paid for by the Swan Throne, until the fleet departs. So too will those who choose to return to ship-forestry, canvas-weaving, and rope-singing.”

Eärwen turned to her right, where Anairë flashed a subtle smile at her, and beckoned. From out of the throne room emerged Arafinwë, with silk-worked daisies on his collar, composed and princely as he walked past Olwë, bowing his head briefly to him, then more deeply to Eärwen. The onlookers stirred, but no hisses or jeers emerged, only a waiting tension. Eärendil, Eärwen saw, had eyes as wide as the full Moon as he looked upon his uncle — who, Eärwen mused, looked rather like his own warped reflection. Elwing slipped her hand into his.

“For centuries of the Sun and Moon, Noldor who name themselves Repudiators have worked to heal the grievous wrong and injury they did us, by raising swords against us or standing aside when others did so, meaning to profit from their bloodshed.”

To forestall any complaints, Eärwen held up her hand. “The deaths of our people and the loss of our Swanships cannot be remedied by any amount of labor. This does not mean, however, that we must demand the same form of restitution forever. While the fleet is built, the Noldor shall no longer work separately from you, but side-by-side with you, otherwise under the same terms, and still under the supervision of Prince Arafinwë, who has led wisely and responsibly.”

Arafinwë leveled a steady look at her, which Eärwen, steeling herself, returned, with the barest brush of her mind against his. His surprised pleasure set him smiling, and he turned at once with a prince’s instinct to beam out at the people, who, after all, had known him when he was their beloved prince, humble and charming.

Eärwen gestured again to Arafinwë, who stepped forward to stand beside her, in the position at her left shoulder that Anairë had once filled, when they three had stood together before High King Ingwë or in the circles of the Powers.

She said, “Upon the fleet’s completion, they will sail with the Vanyar to war. Where once they meant to leave as thieves in the night, this time, they will leave to redeem our family of long ago, on ships built together for the purpose of healing. Then they will depart Alqualondë, and any wounds that linger must be dealt with each to each, not as a matter of rulers and cities.”

Looking out a final time across the gathered people of Alqualondë, Eärwen’s heart beat steadily in her breast. She risked much, yet she felt calm as the glassy dawn waves in the harbor. Standing before her people, with Anairë and even Arafinwë beside her, and her father absent yet present all around her, she could almost remember how it had once been, in those days before darkness struck Valinor. Then her gaze reached the far left of the courtyard, where Elwing stood with her gray eyes alight with interest and understanding. In those distant days, Eärwen could not have imagined her. Perhaps once, she had dreamed of something of the kind for Nerwen, a bright young power capable and sure in herself — but she had never imagined anything like Elwing.

She drew in a deep breath, and concluded. “We are singers and seafarers, and long have our songs been silent and the waves of our home neglected. You may support this cause; you may think it folly, or insult. But to build ships and travel far is to be Lindar: we must not set aside this part of ourselves forever. To all of us, I say: build strong and lovely.”

Dropping the bit of power that made her voice reverberate across the courtyard and even into the streets of the city, Eärwen turned, making sure her robes flared grandly about her, and went into the King’s House, Anairë and Arafinwë at her back, Olwë bringing up the rear. To her intense satisfaction, Elwing’s clumsy, untutored osanwë nudged at her mind, and Eärwen felt her hurrying after — a united front, in the eyes of a simple dweller of the town. Her city was in her hands.

– –

Grand pronouncements required equally massive, but far less glamorous, mountains of work. The newly reopened shipyards required renovation; lodgings and wages had to be settled for the workers; Arafinwë required consultation almost hourly. The sense of efficient pleasure Eärwen took in setting the tides of her people running smoothly came back to her in waves. Perhaps it had not felt like this all the time, in the great before. She and Nerwen had fought bitterly; Arafinwë’s family caused no end of strain; she had chafed at her own restrictions as the daughter of two gloriously competent and popular rulers. Even so, she could not remember such a sense of wellbeing in many long years.

Even so, she made the time the very day after her grand speech to pull Elwing into the courtyard of the Queen’s House, where the hand-leafed maples only just tipped into their spectacular transformation to crimson and gold.

Elwing, garbed in her strange trousers and tunic — a copy of which Eärwen had seen, modified to wrap and be tied closed with a sash, on a petitioner only that morning — walked calmly in her wake. Every so often, Eärwen would catch a flash of wayward thought, Elwing’s newborn osanwë all in pinfeathers.

A small bench of weathered oak sat in a hollow in the azalea shrubbery, looking out to where jagged basalt boulders from the shoreline imitated Taniquetil and Túna in a sward of fine pebbles. As a girl, Eärwen had often found her mother and father here in the early mornings, half-hidden from view, heads together in conversation before the duties of the day called them away. She understood better now the value of such privacy.

She settled onto it, and, after a moment, Elwing followed. Eärwen studied her. She sat very upright, hands folded in her lap. The same repressed energy, that sense of the mantling hawk, still hung about her, but Eärwen guessed its direction had changed. In the stray moments of privacy, where neither Anairë nor Arafinwë nor any petitioner or courtier demanded her attention, Eärwen’s thoughts strayed to her own children, unreachable in Mandos’ impervious halls. Her own energy eddied and spiraled, reaching out to them, then drawing back.

Elwing cocked her head, birdlike.

“Have you brought me here to gently release me from your amorous clutches?” she asked.

Eärwen inhaled a speck of her own saliva and coughed inelegantly. Elwing sailed onwards.

“Or is it that you wish to make me a daughter of your house and keep me in Alqualondë all my days under your watchful eye?”

It did no good to wonder who had taught her these attacks. It was never Nerwen’s way to brightly toss out truthful nonsense. Eärwen looked hard at Elwing, looking, as she had preferred not to look, at her elegant patchwork, the traces of people in her Eärwen had never known.

Elwing opened her mouth to ask another sunny dagger of a question. Eärwen forestalled her.

“Elwing,” she said, “Are you not tired?”

Mouth open, still showing her small, white teeth, Elwing paused. She slowly closed her jaw, her teeth clicking together just audibly. Her hands twisted in her lap, and Eärwen saw the shadows of feathers chasing each other beneath the light brown skin, like mackerel clouds reflected in water.

Eärwen looked back out upon the garden, Valinor in miniature. A jaunty kinglet perched on Taniquetil’s summit, where only the Powers dared tread, raising and lowering its ruby crest. Beside her, Elwing remastered herself.

“That is a question a friend might ask,” she said, a note of apprehension half-hidden in her voice.

Eärwen bowed her head. “I have not been a friend to you, as such.”

Elwing breathed out a small laugh. “You have been other things than a friend.”

Eärwen’s lips quirked. Perhaps, instead of friends, they had been rivals and lovers and the shadows of other people, but she thought Elwing would be able to see her small expressions, as few others did.

“Perhaps I could be those things still,” Eärwen mused. “Yet, I would also fain be your friend. Tell me: are you tired?”

“Yes,” replied Elwing simply, after only a moment’s pause. “To have come so far– To have made such grand choices– and still, Eärendil prepares to sail away from me. Still, the rhythms of my days are yoked to the Silmaril. My children grace the world, but still, I cannot reach them.” She looked out across the garden. “I am very tired.”

Slowly, as she would reach out to stroke a skittish songbird, Eärwen placed her hand beneath Elwing’s. Slowly, she raised it to her lips. She dropped gentle kisses upon each knuckle, then simply pressed Elwing’s hand to her forehead. Those stray drifting thought-feathers darted around her; she felt Elwing recognize her gentle reference.

She held the pose for a long moment. The kinglet gave its double-noted call, a latecomer as excited as if it were high summer. Elwing sighed, and her hand relaxed.

“I do not mean to keep you here with your wings clipped for my pleasure,” Eärwen told her levelly. She straightened, lowering their linked hands to the bench. “In fact,” she went on, more dryly, “if I did — and the idea has certain merits — the city would be yours in a decade. As you have seen to some extent, mine is not a family that shares the throne well.”

“Am I to go wandering with Anairë then, in this plot of yours?” Elwing enquired — but her hand was soft and relaxed beneath Eärwen’s, and her dark, incongruous voice held a throb of laughter.

“If you wish,” replied Eärwen. “It would make it far easier to keep track of you both. But no, my plot is different.” A sudden pang of unwonted anxiety sent her ears twitching minutely. Elwing caught the movement unerringly, very like the hawk.

Eärwen only drew a steady breath, gazing upon the just-turning foliage, and forged ahead. In this case, as in so few things in her recent life, the worst outcome was only personal.

“All your life, it seems to me, you have had a grand and all-consuming purpose. Queen of Sirion, prophet, champion of your lands and your people. Now, that purpose is fulfilled. You achieved beyond the dreams of the Children, and the Powers too — you did,” she added, feeling Elwing’s hand tense. “That your victory was incomplete is the nature of victories. I believe you know well, perhaps better than I, that the thing to do with an unfinished task is to move on to the next step.”

With her eyes fixed on a mossy lantern beyond the Valinorean scene in stone, Elwing replied, “You make a virtue of necessity.”

“Yet it is virtuous.”

The kinglet called a final time and flew away, leaving Taniquetil somehow diminished by its outsized absence.

“I have a task I would entrust to only a very few people,” Eärwen said, and turned at last to face Elwing. She looked very grave.

“I told you of my time as a runaway marsh-princess—” the self-deprecation might ease the request — “and of how Anairë reawakened my spirit. Alqualondë was a different city, then; Aman was a different land. We were all very different people, to be sure. Anairë now deserves more time away from courts and the business of rulers. It pains me that she seeks to leave — but it is her wish to wander, to learn to dance the Music straight again without the trappings of priestesshood or queenship or regency.”

Elwing listened to her closely, her solemn, winsome face closed. Eärwen went on.

“She will come back to me.” This was a truth as deep in her bones as her children’s fëar had been. “To us, if that is your wish,” she added, “Though that is not quite the point I am making at this moment. Rather, in the meantime, I am needed here– I wish to be here, regardless of what Anairë thinks. I have sent my husband, who is, despite it all, still my husband, across the water to where the last of our children yet survives, because we have lost enough, and it is time to set aside the pain of the loss and reach towards what joy can be found in what remains. There is someone else who could use a similar reminder.”

She took a deep breath. “You have seen signs of my mother here. In her house, in my father. Perhaps, though you may not have recognized it, in me. In my daughter. But she is not here. There is no Queen Banilómë in Alqualondë.”

Elwing shook her head slowly. A cloud scudded over Arien’s face, and Eärwen fought back a shiver.

“Do you remember Alpaphilë? You have met her many times now — what is left of her on the promenade.”

“She taught King Finrod how to sail,” murmured Elwing after a moment. A small line stood between her brows, as though confused by the change in topic.

Eärwen would explain. “She was my mother’s mother. She faded — I was not yet born. She did not do so out of any lack of love for my mother, or this place. She only longed to be elsewhere. When she transformed her spirit, she did so in such a way that she might always be together with her daughter and her grandchildren, no matter how different she might appear. She taught my son to sail — she taught all my children; only Ingoldo was the best at it. My mother spent the summer nights on her deck; I was born there, beneath the mast.”

She breathed in. “She burned. She was burned. My brother died, trying to save her.” Another breath. Elwing’s eyes were liquid with sorrow. “You know- you know how it is, to lose a mother, and a child. To lose them all at once, for a woman born in paradise… She would not remain.”

Elwing laid her other hand over Eärwen’s but did not seek to interrupt. Eärwen went on.

“I was a bad example, recovered though I was. My mother went off with Aiwendil, to a little island in the north, where only the seabirds lived. None have seen her since. Mandos declares she is not in his Halls. Aiwendil professes confusion when I ask him of her — she is there, he says, and cannot understand why I find no satisfaction in his answer.”

“And I know something of what it is to fly away,” said Elwing.

Eärwen nodded once. “So I come, long-winded, to my point. The Isle of Seabirds is quiet. It is a day’s sailing from Alqualondë; a two-day ride upon horseback. Far enough for uncontested settlement, yet close enough for frequent visiting. It is far to the north; it is also far east, leaning into the Sundering Sea.”

This was the sticking point, the fulcrum of uncertainty. Elwing watched her carefully, some mask over her vision, only the downy fuzz of her untrained thoughts to hint at her feelings.

“A tower might be built there,” said Eärwen. “It would satisfy the sticklers to have something to build that has nothing to do with war or the Noldor. A mooring for Vingilótë! A jewel in the north. A gift freely given to long-lost kin. And perhaps– if you found a bird among the many–”

“I could do something,” Elwing finished for her, in a voice so unimpeachably neutral that Eärwen could find no purchase on it.

“Perhaps,” allowed Eärwen.

“I would not be a subject?” Elwing asked.

“No.”

Elwing’s mouth quirked. The familiarity of it smote Eärwen’s heart. “Moreover, I would be just far enough away to make any nonsense I might get up to in Alqualondë terribly inconvenient for me.”

A small smile fought its way onto Eärwen’s lips. The cloud cleared from before the sun.

“You would be perfectly convenient for frequent visits when your husband is away.”

Elwing turned her hand over so Eärwen’s was cradled in hers. “Or, perhaps, even when he is here,” she suggested, the quirk of her mouth intensifying.

She has dimples, Eärwen thought. I never noticed.

“Perhaps,” she said again. Elwing’s hand was insinuating itself below the sleeve of her robe, the heat of her palm diffusing through the layers of silk below.

“Should not the lady queen of Alqualondë fear pernicious influence by my populist ways during those frequent visits, when her husband and her meleseldë are away?”

Eärwen took a quick sip of breath, watching Elwing’s eyes darken, a faint golden sheen running over them. “Family friends, and those doing great boons for the queen and her family, ought to be exempt from such gossip,” she said.

“Well, then,” concluded Elwing, her grasp tight around Eärwen’s arm, tugging her closer. “I must discuss with my husband before he sails away, but, on a provisional basis: yes. I will help you. And I will let you help me in this way.”

Hidden in a maple, the kinglet burst into song. Some last bastion of ice hidden in Eärwen did not quite melt, but cracked. It was autumn, but the birds sang as though it were summer still.