Down by the Hallowed Pool by Elleth

Chapter 1

Read Chapter 1

The emmer chaff crept everywhere, itching over Ivriluin's damp skin. She wiped her forehead, and her hand came away sticky with a grey grime of flour and sweat. She would have liked to bathe and sluice off the day's labour's and aches, for even at nightfall the heat had yet to break. Instead the Downs had faded into a hazy fog, and the moon hung full and red above the mists.

The thunderstorm would be dire when it finally came, but even so she looked forward to it. The rumble of thunder reminded her of her parents' house, where the beating of hammers and the rumbling of the smelters and forges had been ordinary, loved sounds, rather than the bleating of sheep or the monotonous thunk of flails onto the threshing floor and the groaning of the mill she heard on the estate day in and day out.

"Wistful again, are we?" A heavy hand patted her shoulder and she found herself smiling at Hîmis, the miller's wife, who was hefting a sack of flour over her shoulder with no apparent problems. Ivriluin smiled and shook her head.

"Just tired and itchy, and wanting a bath in the river."

"You could go – there's more to do before the storm rolls in, but you've worked well today. I'll find something to tell the mistress rather than have you standing about underfoot - my lady Zimri," she added with a quirk of her eyebrow.

Ivriluin snorted. "I'm no lady yet, and I am beginning to get used to the new name – don't let the mistress hear us prattle in Adûni. She claims it's too common for her son's bride-to-be."

"Not for nothing that it's called the Common Tongue!" They both laughed. "I don't want to marry him either, so that's all good. I wager I know more about the bread-making than you, but you'll learn all the fine-lady elf traditions yet – threshing's not one of them, or at least I've never seen any elf do any threshing, but we’ve got to do what the fine folk ask. But now with you off, unless you want to keep at it after all! Just so long as you don't go in too far and beware of the forest-folk. They come out at times like this, when storm's threatening or some other strange matter is afoot."

Ivriluin grinned and shook her head. Stories. She didn't wait for the offer to come twice, instead slipping from the mill down into the town and past the roundhouses to the edge of the hill. The palisade gate still stood open; most people were still at work in the fields, for only that same morning Carndur had raged that any rain now would make the emmer burst and rot and spoil the harvest, and how they could not – not this year, especially – afford to lose any of it, for they had barely three months until King Arveleg and his retinue would arrive from Fornost Erain for the Grace-Giving festivities - and the wedding.

Ivriluin banished the thought of them as she ran over a stretch of open ground between the sunken barrow mounds of the first Edain of long ago that began at the bottom of the earthen ramparts, overgrown with heather and flowering fireweed. The forest began just a little below the town, continuing all the way down into the lowlands. She had always been able to breathe more freely in the forest by her parents' house, and even though this wood was denser and thicker, and the air beneath the trees older and stuffier, it was balmier than out in the fields, rich with the scent of herbs and night-blooming flowers. It calmed her, and the prospect of her bath in the river lightened her mood.

The promise of water grew where the footpath dipped into a ravine. The tree-choked cliffsides of the Downs reached up around her like cupped hands, and down ahead the glitter of the moonlight on the river between the willows beckoned. A filmy mist was blurring the edges of things. She kicked her shoes off and only paused at the edge of the water to slip her dress over her head and drape it over a branch. Then she waded in.

Mud squelched between Ivriluin's toes. Her bathing spot – where the Withywindle widened into a broad water-lily pool beneath the cliff – was cool and clear with no current to speak of. In fact the river often almost seemed to drowse. As if the thought itself rather than the day's hard work had made her tired, Ivriluin yawned and dipped her head beneath the surface to rouse herself again.

Her hair swirled around her face and obscured her vision, but between the dark strands she thought she saw a gleam of gold and white slipping by, smooth as an otter, but larger, much larger. Ivriluin wrenched her head free of the water, but her hair clung in wet tangles across her eyes, and the water dripping down her face made her sputter. By the time she had brushed it aside, the pool lay calm again. The water lilies nearest to the cliff bobbed a little, but it was there that a well fed into the pool, and perhaps – nothing. She stood panting, still submerged to the hips.

Ivriluin's heart was racing. Hîmis had warned her of the forest-folk, hadn't she? It hadn't been a snake or a fish, of that much she was certain, but it had not been some spectre of her mind either that had made the water swirl around her legs. How Hîmis would laugh if she came running back again so soon!

She shook her head, waded back ashore, and knelt on a boulder to begin washing away the day's work. Her heart still hammered while she splashed up water to rinse off the sweat and grime, and she resolved to return quickly after all – she could claim that, instead of indulging as she usually did, she had wanted to avoid the storm, or that the water had not been to her liking. She had never been in the forest in weather this peculiar, and perhaps she had been too quick to dismiss the warnings.

Her drying skin began to prickle as if there were midges crawling over her naked back – there were none here, and that was part of the reason she liked this particular spot so well, but the more she rubbed, the more the sensation pestered her and she hopped from the rock to gather her dress and depart.

It was gone.

Ivriluin's innards turned to water. She was certain she had left it there; the imprints of her shoes (also vanished) in the muddy ground still showed where she had left them. It might have slipped off the branch into the reeds or into the water, and the dun fabric would be hard to see in the gathering dark, but even when she groped her hands through the reeds and water, they came away empty of anything except mud. Tears rose hot and choking in her throat. It was her workshift and inexpensive,but she could not return into town naked, nor stay in the hollow until people returned to bed – the threshing would go into the late hours even if the fields cleared when the storm rolled in.

The mist was thickening. What had been fingers and tendrils and a gentle haze before was now starting to form into a dome above the treetops between the cliffs and cut off sight of the darkening sky, rising in apparitions that wafted over the water.

"Please," she called eventually, and hated how her voice rattled. "Please give me back my dress, whoever you are." Perhaps, she thought as she attempted to shield herself against prying eyes, it might be a prank of one of the town youngsters. She was promised to Carndur and everyone knew it, but they might have seen her from the fields and followed her to watch her bathe and perhaps dare their luck to ask a kiss in exchange for her clothes. She'd heard Mareth and Glassil, too, complain about it to their brother, but Carndur had only laughed and confessed that he himself had played his share of pranks and they'd need to watch their clothing better the next time they went bathing. Lothrin had promptly scolded him, and then proceeded to descend upon her daughters, but in the end she had said much the same.

There wasn't a reply. By the well the water bubbled again, almost with the sound of someone laughing underwater.

“Please give me back my dress. I'll do – I'll even kiss you, if that's what you are after!"

The silence continued. There was a rustle in the rushes that made Ivriluin jump, but it might have been anything – the wind, a frog – but when she next spun in a slow circle for any sign of the clothes-thief, the trees appeared to be leaning closer, denser, expectant of something. Again the well bubbled, and this time she was certain – that was laughter.

But no human should be able to keep from breathing this long.

"A kiss? That is poor recompense that you offer for trespassing into my water." The voice was female, and it danced with more of the water-clear laughter, like the mist above the surface of the pool. Through it, Ivriluin could see the vague outline of a woman's body, sudden appearing suddenly as though risen from underwater, moving like one of the mist-wisps to fold herself onto a rock at the other edge of the lily pool, bare-limbed, and beginning to comb her fingers through the wet golden tresses spilling down into the water. For a moment she thought she was seeing – but no. The voice ran different, sweet and lilting.

Her mouth went dry. She knew the stories, of course, though she had never given the possible truth of them any heed. Forest-folk denied their recompense would take it, willing or not, or they'd put a magic on people, or take them away beneath the earth into their kingdom. Sometimes resurfacing into daylight again, one could find themselves wild-eyed a hundred years after, left without kith or kin or home to go. Her grandmother had sworn that her mother's mother's sweetheart had been one such, saying that she'd seen him stumble back and ask for the long-dead before he, too, withered into nothing on the spot. It would keep her from her marriage with Carndur, but to be snatched away -- no. And if she complied, perhaps the woman would let her go this very night, not in a hundred years.

Ivriluin stepped back into the pool and rinsed the mud off her hands, wading slowly toward the woman and pausing just short of the deep water where she could no longer stand. "What else would you like of me if not a kiss? I haven't got gold or silver to repay you with."

The woman laughed – high and clear, sweet and gentle as the pool itself. "Money or riches are no use to me, your name it is I would ask of you, blundering into my domain with no courtesy paid to me. Times have indeed changed for mortals to become so careless, to forget that this once was a hallowed pool."

"Zimri... they call me Ivriluin here," she said. Her voice was shaking, but that was the other thing in the stories. Names, true names, held a power of enchantment, and she would not fall under that by this way at least. "Would you have me bring you bread and milk to make up for the lack? We ground emmer at the mill today, and the ovens still ran at nightfall. It will still be warm."

"That is better," the woman laughed. "Zimri... I see, then - you know tales about us, but never fear. It is not my way to take from you against your will." She slid into the water, setting it to ripple gently, and moved towards Ivriluin.

"What is your name?" asked Ivriluin, suddenly emboldened – perhaps by the fact that the woman coming toward her through the parting mists seemed ordinary after all: her tresses dipped into the water, floating around and after her like a cloak, water lapped against her skin and beaded there. She was beautiful, and her eyes luminous and clear, but she was flesh and bone at least as much as she was mist and magic, and seemed no older than Ivriluin herself.

"Some call me Nîniphel, some Yâpharazî." She halted, and a grin crooked the corner of her mouth. "But these will give you no power over me, if that it is what you came seeking. I am part of this forest, and that has more names than a mortal could speak in a lifetime."

Ivriluin bobbed her head. "I had not meant to... to..."

"No, certainly not. I can see that it is not ill intent that brought you here, therefore no ills shall befall you. But I still I must ask something of you."

Ivriluin's brows knit. "I have nothing more than what you can see – myself, here. You already have my dress and shoes." She spread her hands and lifted her palms, showing they were empty. Carndur had gold, silver and jewels, and she was about to offer those when she saw that Nîniphel's eyes had come to linger on her instead. She approached softly through the water until a strand of floating hair brushed against Ivriluin's stomach and gentle fingers tipped her chin up to look into Nîniphel's face.

"The Forest Is, and all within it also," Nîniphel said softly, and Ivriluin felt herself as though swept up and carried away in a glassy current rising at the bidding of those words. More lay behind them than merely the presence of the forest, and she wondered whether, if she were somehow to go back to the time of the Edenedair who had built the first barrows passing through this country on their westward flight, the forest might still be the very way she saw it now, and the lily pool, and Nîniphel.

"And you – brief and bright, and all the dearer for it. If you could see yourself the way I do, there would be no doubt that you could give more than you yourself do know."

Ivriluin turned her head away. The words trickled past her and faded in the echoes of the long-dead; her heart throbbed painfully. "Will you not hurt yourself, doing such things? It is said that Elves and Men do not mingle because our passing is too swift and grievous for them..."

"There are some who do, and some even who loved one another dearly, so dearly that they altered their very fates – and there will be again, I think. But I am no Elf, and I do not think as they do. I accept the Gift bestowed upon you... even relish it. Without it your brightness would be drawn out until it grows a burden that consumes, but as it is, you are to me like a lightning stroke may appear to you. And what are the chances to hold one, even briefly?"

"I... have never... I had a kissing-friend, but never more than her, and I am to be married soon to a man... but before him I would... I would know..." Ivriluin heard herself stammer. She wondered what Kalinzil would say to hear herself mentioned that way when they'd wanted to spend every waking hour together, when they'd wanted but never quite dared to go for more than kissing, and when Kalinzil had even wanted to give their home the slip, down the Greenway or away on the Great East Road. But that had been before news of the war came, when Ivriluin had had to accept Carndur's summons and Kalinzil had gone after Kastuphûr the miner who liked to sing about her rare golden hair.

Now, Nîniphel seemed very tall and beautiful standing before her and running a warm hand over her shoulder.

"Nothing more than a kissing-friend? If you will, I shall teach you more than kissing."

Nîniphel drew Ivriluin's arm from her chest at last, keeping fingers in a loose ring around Ivriluin's wrist. The cooling night air made her shiver – at least she thought it was the air. Outside the dome of mist that still veiled the sky from sight, it must be growing toward the middle of the night. It was as though the outside world had ceased to exist, except as a dark spot in her mind.

She shook her head. "I should return home. If they have not yet found me missing, they soon will, and I would sooner avoid a scolding than invite one."

Nîniphel paused and cupped Ivriluin's cheek with a gentle hand. "Forgive me. It is easy for me to forget not that you are young, but how very young you are... but if you would stay until morn, a token I will give you will prove that you won the friendship of the forest this night, and none will dare to scold you."

Some lingering worry unknotted in Ivriluin's stomach. She no longer doubted that Nîniphel meant her words; the timbre of her voice and the look in her eyes hid no designs to harm or seek her own advantage in anything more than the clearly-spoken.

"Then I will grant you your desire." Ivriluin closed her eyes, and tilted her head up.

The first kiss came as a brush of lips, slight as the flutter of a willow-leaf. Nîniphel's warm arms encircled Ivriluin. Her breath caught at the closeness even when they broke apart again and the water rippled between them. Nîniphel's eyes were wide and luminous, and her hand, pressing down between Ivriluin's breasts, pushed her backwards toward the bank with gentle force until she came to rest on a raised willow-root. Nîniphel remained before her in the water.

She bent down again for a second kiss – this one deeper, and more lingering against the misgivings in her mind: that this was sentiment and folly, not love. Not Kalinzil, for all the golden hair in the world. But the thoughts slipped away when the kiss continued and her mind began to haze, when Nîniphel burbled laughter against her lips, and the first trickles of want pooled warm and low in her stomach where Nîniphel's hand slid and came to linger, following it down with her mouth over her ribs like rapids gushing over stones, over the curve and hollow of her hips.

Nîniphel's hand held her in place even as Ivriluin's skin began to prickle in the peculiar air that heralded the storm coming, and the sharp blue smell of ozone. She started rocking against the touch, against the ever-gentle jitter of Nîniphel's fingertips against the inside of her parted thighs, the fingers thrumming past her and never in. It made Ivriluin think of the patter of raindrops, not enough to quench a thirst, until she pushed her hips down and forward against the heel of Nîniphel's hand, finally wanting pressure and more than a vague touch that didn't satisfy.

Her head fell back, hearing – feeling – Nîniphel's hum of laughter reverberate under her skin in shudders up her belly, a thunderclap, a flash of light through closed eyelids – and indeed, when her eyes flew open again, the mist above the hollow was luminous, flickering and darkening almost in perfect time and rhythm as Nîniphel began to touch her in earnest, building a pressure fit to burst, but not yet, not yet, a little more.

How long the storm lasted she couldn't say, caught between the sensations of Nîniphel's mouth and fingers, her hair brushing over the insides of her thighs, the rough roots beneath her and the spectacle on the sky, but when the first fat raindrops spattered through the mist and set the pool to ripple in concentric circles, she keened at the sudden shock of cold and let it sweep her away.

Eventually the rain and thunder began to fade, and faint underneath the thinning clouds came the first light of dawn. Nîniphel was beside her, dangling her feet in the water and smiling to herself as she twirled a strand of Ivriluin's hair around her finger, smoothed it again idly, and began again.

Her body ached and her legs felt bonelessly limp, but Ivriluin returned the smile, finally sitting up. "Have I earned..." She cleared her throat and averted her eyes, feeling heat flush high into her cheeks. "I did very little to earn the forest's favour this night..."

Nîniphel shook her head. "You gave what I asked, more indeed than what I asked. I would give you something in return." She lifted her hand, and where it had rested on the bank lay a brooch glittering with blue gems, the colour of the lightening sky mirrored in the pool, a butterfly's wing, the shades of flax flowers at the edge of the fields. Ivriluin's breath caught.

"This, I think, is a fair gift. It was left here long ago by one who held this place a hallow. She has long since passed away westward and beyond the world, but you shall wear it and be just as fair – but more than that, it is the promised token. The world above is swift and often evil, or so it may seem to those within it, but if you are in need, come into the forest with it, and you shall find love and shelter here. I will not forget you."

Nîniphel's smile was sweet and sad as she helped Ivriluin rise, retrieving her dress and shoes from a hidden hollow among the willow-roots. Ivriluin could not think of a farewell, every thought of it slipping from her mind like water – except one. "My name is Zimrilbas," she said, putting on the shift, itchy against her skin. "If you would have me seek you out again, you need but call."

Nîniphel said nothing else, standing still as a flower on a windless day, before she raised her hand in a gesture of fond farewell, and vanished back into the water.

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Chapter End Notes

Adûni: Westron, aka Sôval Phârë, the Common Tongue and presumably the language of Cardolan except the Sindarin-speaking Dúnedain. It is usually rendered in English in the Lord of the Rings for reasons of accessibility and identification purposes, but it didn't feel right here, since the story is set several thousand years before that. Since the Westron Corpus is rather scarce, however, I occasionally included loans from Adûnaic (its predecessor) and even Quenya.

Zimra/i: jewel

Ulbas, ullas: blue? Tentatively isolated from Westron Hamanullas, a blue flower, which may ultimately be derived from the Valarin ullas, water c.f. Ullubôz, the Valarin name of Ulmo. Her name means approximately the same in Sindarin.

Nîniphel: River-Daughter

Yâpharazî: Golden Fruit (fairly haphazard construction from Q yáv-, fruit and Adûnaic pharaz, gold), Goldberry.

As it is commonly believed, the Hobbits were imprisoned in the barrow of the last prince of Cardolan, for whom no name is given. Therefore it seems logical that the brooch should belong to one of his female relatives, and I've decided to give it to his wife. For the inspiration in terms of living conditions, jewelry and weaponry, I've decided to look at the British Bronze Age – in particular the Llyn Fawr period in the Late Bronze/Early Iron Age as their swords were generally leaf-shaped, just as the barrow-blades that Tolkien describes (even though they don't come into the story).

The archaeological record of the real world in early centres of metalworking suggests that first obvious social stratifications were believed to have begun with the growing importance of metal in society, hence Ivriluin's status and eligibility as the prince's future wife despite her non-Dúnedain heritage - not to mention that a match like that would likely negotiate easier access to much-needed resources considering the people of Arnor were in a war with Angmar at that point, and maintaining a leaguer along the Weather Hills.

Tom Bombadil does not come into this story because he was not yet married to Goldberry at the point it takes place (before TA 1409, when the last prince of Cardolan – here called Carndur – died in battle with the Witch-King and a remnant of the population fled into the Old Forest). Of course this hinges on Hobbit poetry being a trustworthy historical source (which probably stretches credibility quite a lot, but let's pretend), but Tom Bombadil's encounter with a Barrow-wight pre-dates his wedding with Goldberry as described in the Adventures of Tom Bombadil, and Barrow-wights did not come into the Downs as part of Angmar's forces until TA 1636, when Cardolan was depopulated of human life in the Great Plague.

There are, however, some references to him and the description of the Old Forest in the story that were closely modelled after the text of LotR, and the description of Ivriluin's brooch, for recognition purposes, was also made to resemble the description in LotR.