Shore Beyond the Shadowy Sea by Quente

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O’er harp and chant in hidden choir

Elfwine awoke once to hear soft harping next to him. Fëanor sat beside him, and somehow, the song eased him.

”Awake?” Fëanor rose from his seat near the banked fire and came to Elfwine. “Drink a bit of Nerdanel’s cordial before you sleep again.”

Fëanor raised a warm cup to his lips and Elfwine tasted a warm flavor, honey and ginger and something like mead. He drank deeply, feeling it ease down his throat and into his body in a wash of comfort.

”Thank you,” Elfwine said, finding his voice was back, if a little hoarse.

”It’s the least we can do, really,” Fëanor said, putting a hand on his forehead. “Sleep, Vandameldo, and fear no foe within these walls.”

At his words, Elfwine slept.

~

The sun was shining through a large window at a low angle when Elfwine awoke; it was not morning.

Glancing about the room, Elfwine saw that he was in a high-ceilinged stone chamber overlooking the top of the woods toward the lowering sun. The other walls of the room had bookshelves, but instead of books, they displayed small clay figures of various kinds.

The figures were of birds, and animals, and faces that Elfwine could not recognize. But some of the figures were of the sons of Fëanor at various pursuits, and these he did recognize. In the middle of the room in front of the window, there was a table positioned to catch the best light. It bore the traces of clay work upon it.

The bed that Elfwine was on appeared to be a small daybed tucked to one side of the room.

Elfwine’s eyes were caught by a series of small figures depicting Celegorm drawing a bow when he noticed the small clacking noises.

There was a long wooden bench beneath the window, and Nerdanel sat upon it, knitting. He saw water near him, and drank.

“Good morning, Elfwine! Luckily or unluckily, your room is my clay-shop,” Nerdanel said. Her red curls were braided about her head in a high coronet that day, and her expression was kindly.

“You are to rest your voice for another day,” she said. “If you are feeling restless, perhaps you could use those young Secondborn muscles to knead water into this for me.” She indicated a bucket of clay. “When you are up and breakfasted, we can begin.”

Elfwine complied. He dressed, and ate as much as his sore throat could stand, and listened silently to Nerdanel speak in her clipped, practical voice about her family, and her work, and her long travels to her house in Tirion and back. They kneaded clay together, and it was a day more restful than he’d had in a long while.

~

When Elfwine awoke the next day, Caranthir was sitting on the bench beneath the window, a pile of weapons on either side of him. He was oiling and honing them, humming a song softly as he did.

When Elfwine stirred, he glanced up. ”Ah, you awaken, little rat,” Caranthir said. “Long have you slept! And yet I deem it did you some good.”

“Aren’t you going to mention anything about the weakness of us Secondborn and how we swoon after a battle or two?” Elfwine said, and realized that his voice was no longer hoarse.

“Why should I, when you have said it for me?” Caranthir grinned at him. “But no, in this case you have more than earned a rest. While you were asleep, the company of Nimloth arrived. Now we are about a hundred strong.

“But instead of deploying us in battle, your music has given my father an idea. He is of the opinion that the wolves are caught by an echo of some discord deep within the great original Song, sent to do battle with us because we have altered that melody.”

Elfwine said, sitting up, “So the songs I’ve been singing have aided in fighting against this deeper discord?”

“Yes, and father believes that another great Singing is in order,” Caranthir said. “Nimloth will lead it, for she knows the music of those woods, and those to the south of here, better than any of us. She is a friend of my brother Celegorm, for reasons I do not entirely comprehend because he ended her life by sword several ages ago, but he will assist her in leading this work; also due to his knowledge of hunting, and of wolves in particular.”

“My lord Elf, before you go on with these words that blend life and death and life again in a manner beyond the understanding of a mere Man, might I have something to eat?” Elfwine looked at him with pitiful eyes.

Caranthir laughed. “I’ll fetch you something, and tease you for it later.”

~

After eating porridge with fruit brought by Nimloth’s company, Caranthir led Elfwine down to the bathing rooms.

Elfwine had not seen anything like this before: the underground floor of the keep contained several rooms that spanned the width of it on one side of the river. One of the rooms held a large pool of steaming water, fed by an underground source that Elfwine could not identify.

Another room held a pool of cold water sluiced in from the Esgalduin, and out again through some piping that traveled back to the river downstream of the keep. In a third room, there was a sauna with a woodstove in it, lined with benches and full of sweet-scented steam. Someone had crushed athelas to add to the water troughs near the stove, and the clean scent went far to mitigate the mineral odor that came from the hot bath.

There were already some few Elves using the rooms, including those of Caranthir’s house, and some of the newly arrived riders of Nimloth.

Orvanis was soaking in the hot pool with more of Caranthir’s household, and Caranthir and Elfwine joined them.

Elfwine noticed that Orvanis looked happier than he’d ever seen her, eyes half-closed, water up to her chin. “Why can’t we have this at Helevorn, lord?” she asked.

“No hot springs,” Caranthir answered. “But I’ll get my brother to draw up some type of machinery to emulate it. I imagine the water can be heated like it is in Gondolin, only we’d need a quantity more of it.”

A woman bathing near them with short-cropped silver hair turned her head when she saw them, and stood to walk over to Elfwine, leaning down to peer at him over a nose both long and crooked.

“What have we here?” she asked, in Sindarin. “You have the look of a Nandor about you, but also something I can’t quite put my finger on. You do remind me of my sons, a bit.”

Elfwine was used to the practicalities of living with shieldmaidens, and kept his eyes respectfully away from her body. He could tell, however, that she had a warrior’s frame. He noticed a scar cleaving her chest in a precise line over the heart and down to her stomach, one that looked to be the kind of scar that would kill a Man, or take even an Elf a while to heal. Elfwine wondered if it was her body’s memory of a killing blow.

“Well met,” Elfwine said in matching Sindarin, and then paused. Should he conceal his identity so as not to expose Fëanor’s pathway, or was the time for that past? He met Caranthir’s eyes, and Caranthir shrugged.

“Queen Nimloth, I present to you Elfwine son of King Éomer, of Middle-earth. He was sended to us by Ulmo, and he is the singer of whom father spoke.” Caranthir’s Sindarin dialect was a little archaic, but comprehensible. “I was about to name you Edain alone, Elfwine – but Nimloth has the right of it, you are also Nandor, from Nimrodel’s people.”

Nimloth leaned closer and closer to stare at him, and Elfwine leaned back, and back, and back…until he overbalanced and splashed down into the water. Rising and spluttering, he heard Carathir and Orvanis laugh.

“Are you a Peredhel, then?” Nimloth indicated the ears.

“Ah!” Elfwine hummed the song that Maedhros had set upon him, and his ears returned to normal.

“Oh,” Nimloth said in astonishment, looking charmed. “May I touch one? I have rarely seen ears like this. Not since meeting Beren, really. Dior and our children looked very much like the rest of us. I suppose there is Tuor, of course, but he is mostly a sea lion these days.”

Elfwine’s eyebrows must have drawn together in distress, because Caranthir caught her hand as it rose to touch his ears.

“Lady,” Caranthir said, “I know more of Edain than you do, and a young Man of this age will be ill at ease if you touch his ears in a bath.”

Blushing bright red at the laughter that followed, Elfwine sank into the water again. Elves, he decided, were a plague upon Men.

~

That night’s dinner was an informal one, coupled with a strategy meeting. After everyone’s appetites had been slaked on the stores of Calissir, buffered by the supply brought in by Nimloth, Fëanor stood, and greeted everyone in Sindarin: “Well met, my friends!”

“We are speaking this accent out of thanks to our guests,” Caranthir said in a quiet aside to Elfwine. “And if you know your history, you’ll know that this is a very large concession from my father. He is grateful to Queen Nimloth, you know, despite the whole…” Caranthir gestured vaguely.

Elfwine caught the gist of it and nodded.

Fëanor cleared his throat, and continued in that language. “Tomorrow, we shall form a ring around Calissir, on both sides of the Esgalduin. The theory of our campaign is this: just as Eru Illúvatar sang a final correction to the song of Morgoth, and set beauty into it that brought light to the darkness, so will we first sing the song of the wolves as they are – discordant and all.

“Then, at Nimloth’s signal, half of us will sing a harmony around it to call it back toward the one great music. My son Celegorm shall sustain the song of the wolves, and Nimloth shall weave the harmony, for she knows how it should sound for the wolves of her domain.”

The company assented to this plan, and Nimloth stood as Fëanor returned to his seat. “I shall teach it to you now, people of Fëanor, people of Doriath reborn! This song I had from Melian the Maia, as she sang her girdle into renewal each Spring. She sang the wolves their correct song, and from it we shall wrest this discord back to harmony.”

Nimloth shut her eyes, calling back the music out of long memory. And then she began to sing, and caught in the music, Elfwine fell into the thrall of her words. He did not understand the language, which was different yet from anything he had heard – but he saw their meaning in his mind as if he was in a dream.

Soft light filtered through trees taller and older than Elves. They stood like a rich canopy, giving air and shelter to the world above and below. Life twined with them, insects to eat the leaves, birds to eat the insects, wolves to eat the birds, Elves to balance the power of the land with their careful hands. And then there was the Maia, Melian, dancing the thrum of all of life there was, her hair a mantle of darkness, her eyes the brightness of stars, her feet bringing the harmony of eating and being eaten, living and dying, growing and changing, while yet she remained.

At the end of the song, Elfwine felt wetness on his cheeks. He wiped his cheeks with his sleeve, and saw that Caranthir was gazing at him with some sympathy. “The songs of the maia are powerful, and not listened to lightly. But we will be with you tomorrow during the singing, and make sure that you are not lost in it.”

Chapter End Notes

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