rulers make bad lovers by Chestnut_pod

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Chapter 21: Elwing

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The Isle of Seabirds was aptly named. As Elwing stepped from Vingilot’s gangplank onto the striated shore of the island, which was small enough that the far shore was easily visible, clouds of cormorants and grebes and terns took flight, the air whistling and clapping beneath their wings. A haughty white pelican nearly as tall as Elwing’s shoulder merely untucked its great beak from its wing, looked her over, then tucked it back under the other. An array of gulls stared at her in a way that itched at her mind, as though almost– almost–

Elwing filed the sensation away for later. They had not much time for experimenting with speaking in the mind to over-familiar birds.

Beneath her feet, the guano had made for a luxuriant carpet of grasses and flowers, even as autumn approached with its red fingers. Elwing prodded at the turf with her toe, feeling out her land legs. Behind her, Eärendil trotted down the gangplank, then stumbled upon reaching dry land. Without having to look, Elwing slipped her shoulder under his and steadied him, still thrilling at the sense of him that pervaded all of her, beyond the rise of her hair when he was near and his scent.

He wrapped an arm around her and they stood gazing about the island. Already, the Falmari had been busy: a white shoot of a tower like a young sapling reared from the center of the island, a white well beside it. A faint air of incompleteness hung about its rough lintels and scaffolded sides, but it had a roof, and a door, and, Elwing was assured, hot and cold running water from a spring specially added by a particularly grateful and excited Maia of Aulë.

“We had better hurry and settle you in,” Eärendil said. Elwing nodded. Turning her back on the gallery of seabirds, she walked back up the gangplank to gather her small bag of possessions. The stocking of the pantry, the pots and pans, the brooms and prosaic sundries of a home all followed after them with the scouts and crew. The inside of Vingilot, at least, was as it ever was. The hull, hallowed and silver, mithril-clad and shining gently with its own light, felt like a gift of guilt, if gift it was. Eärendil had worked hard on smoothing the shiplap siding of the hull, cut from Sirion’s scant trees. In the light of the Silmaril, hanging securely from the foremast on the circlet Aulë himself had forged for the purpose, the mithril-skin wavered and rippled like the skin of a living thing.

She and Eärendil bustled about the spacious, comfortable first floor of the tower. Elwing laid her precious sets of trousers and tunics in the green-painted cedar chest by the foot of the large bed — big enough for two, and more, she noticed. Over the feather mattress, she smoothed the blue silk blanket that had slept with her in her room — what had become her room — in Alqualondë, the same blue as Idril’s dress. A few skillets and lids knocked about the stone-flagged kitchen, likely the masons’ and roofers’.

Elwing hiked up her trousers and went wading in the tide pools that garlanded the island. With a short knife, she pried at the sea-blue mussels and popped a single red abalone the size of both her hands spread out together out of a deep crevice. Eärendil smiled at the bounty as she came in, barefooted and still dripping, and held out a knob of butter in a twist of wax paper, laughing when she kissed him for it.

They ate a quick meal together of ship’s biscuit and steamed shellfish, just like a thousand other meals they had shared before, though they had never eaten together in such a sturdy house all their own.

They had hardly mopped up the last of the butter — so rich! Elwing still marveled at it — when a deep horn sounded from outside. Eärendil sighed, and Elwing reached out to touch his hand.

Their voyage from the newly teeming harbor of Alqualondë to the Isle had been a quiet one, quieter than their wont. There was little more to say that had not already been said. They quietly gathered up the plates and placed them in the deep basin by the pump, then walked back outside.

Near Vingilot, which was not so much moored as tethered, floating above the waves as spindrift floats above the crests, a more commonplace ship laid anchor, if any ship built by the combined genius of the Teleri and the Noldor could be said to be commonplace. Its sunset-colored sails furled, and a happy cry went up as the pilot spotted them standing near the mooring-spot.

In what seemed like only minutes, the island, previously haunted only by birds and, perhaps, a single persistent ghost, bustled with Falmari, some thirty Avari from the mouth of the Alpasírë, and even a Repudiator or two. Scouts, all of them, who leapt at the chance to crew the first ship to sail to the borders of Beleriand, sending back word to the great fleet that would follow behind them. A few individuals — none of the Falmari — wore swords or long knives flashing at their hips. Elwing swallowed and turned away to help Voranna, who bore only a wrench at her belt, heave a crate of dried persimmons into the kitchen.

Eärendil strode among them, clapping shoulders and trading jests: he was all that was golden and princely, and Elwing watched heads turn to follow him as he went, warmth swelling in her chest alongside the melancholy.

Voranna brought in a final box of fine white sea salt, then wiped her hands on her trouser legs and faced Elwing. She went to seek her copper-haired son, and Elwing had put a word in for her with Eärendil to allow her to crew Vingilot. She was not yet much of a sailor, but she was a fine ship’s engineer, and a dab hand with the strange new parts barnacled onto the hull by the Valar, meant to protect the ship from the Outer Airs and what strange beings Eärendil might encounter there.

Elwing nodded her permission to speak — for those who meant to stay with her, she would have to break them of this habit, but for now ,there was no time.

Voranna nodded back, then said, “It is time. Eönwë decrees that it is the hour for the new star to rise and bring hope to the far shore.”

It was only the message Elwing had expected, yet her heart clenched all the same.

Steadily, with all her training, she said, “Please send him in to me, that we may say our goodbyes.”

Voranna assented, and Elwing called out as she turned to go: “I wish you and your son all good fortune and safety.”

Voranna turned back, bowed deeply, then went out the door for Eärendil. Until he came, banging the door open uncarefully, Elwing leaned against the handsome, broad kitchen table and stared at a knot in the wood grain, heart in her throat, feeling the pulse of wings behind her shoulders.

The sight of Eärendil only made it worse. He saw her face, then took three great strides into the kitchen and gathered her up in his arms.

They clung together in body and mind, rocking slowly back and forth. In a way, it was no different from any of the dozens of departures before. In others, it was worse. Hot tears gathered and ran down her nose, soaking his shirt. All the sailors would be able to see, when Eärendil reemerged.

“You must come back to me,” she insisted, pushing her face harder into the rough linen of his seafarer’s shirt. Eärendil ran his hand down her head, smoothing down the feathers where they burst out of her curls.

“If I do not, I know you will find me, and no ocean or chain or bond of love will stay you,” he murmured in reply.

“I will,” Elwing said, and raised her head to kiss him, salt mingling on their lips. Outside, the horn sounded again.

They broke apart, breathing shakily. Eärendil rested his brow against Elwing’s, eyes tightly shut. Into the space between them, Elwing whispered, “If you find the boys, you must do whatever you must to see them safe.”

He nodded against her head. “Yes. You must do whatever you must to keep yourself safe, while I am gone.”

“Yes,” Elwing replied. Sniffing, she kissed him again, a clumsy press of lips and noses, then stepped back, laughing wetly at herself. She dashed at her eyes, then wiped tenderly at the tears on Eärendil’s dear face.

“Eärwen will be here with the new moon,” she said, hoping it might bring Eärendil some comfort. “Then it is only two weeks until your first berth. That is not enough time for me to get into much trouble.”

Eärendil smiled ruefully and placed a hand on his heart. “Far be it from me, lady, to guess at how much trouble you can cause in four weeks’ time.”

Elwing tilted her chin proudly, ignoring the last cooling tear that ran down her cheek to her chin. “You will just have to look down and see if you are right,” she said, with her nose in the air, and then they both laughed.

Together, they walked out of the kitchen. Eärendil waved and shouted to his crew, and Elwing smiled and heaped all the glimmering charm and thanks upon them that she could, that they would take care of her husband on his strange journeys.

They walked up the gangplank to Vingilot, then drew it up behind themselves, and, at last, Vingilot spread its silver sails to their fullest span and lifted, quite like a bird, from the water and into the sky, the Silmaril’s radiance casting a penumbra of dancing light all about itself.

“Your star shines on our parting!” Elwing cried, and from the rudder, Eärendil stretched a last hand out to her in farewell.

Then, the ship turned and rose swiftly through the air until it was only a beautiful silver speck in the noontime sky. Elwing’s bones ached with the desire to hollow themselves into wings and fly after it.

But around her, murmurs of awe and snatches of prayer still wove through the sounds of the island, the seabirds and the lapping waves and rushing wind. She had, after all, stood and watched Eärendil disappear past the horizon many times before. Then, as now, a milling crowd of mixed-up people awaited some direction.

Elwing put an unfeathered hand to her breast and looked one last time at the beautiful spark of Vingilot far above her. Then, she turned back to her duties. There was a ghost to be found and revived, a party of restless young Falmari to dissuade from declaring their fealty, and a tower to complete. Later, there would be Eärwen to receive into her own home, and perhaps Anairë all unexpected on her doorstep, to welcome as she had welcomed Elwing. In four weeks’ time, Eärendil would dock again from his far adventures: bringing hope and scouting out where the force he and Elwing had won might do the most to rescue whatever was left of the lands of their birth. When they arrived, separately or together, they would want for food and loving company and good lodging. The island wanted caretaking and relief from its haunting. The birds, perhaps, would be friends.

If it was not her home yet — if it would never harbor her children — still, it was hers. Still, there were those who would look to her for shelter.

Elwing clapped her hands, looked across the island and its set of fractious new inhabitants, and set to work. Perhaps in the evening, she would go flying.

 

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