The Strands that Bind by AdmirableMonster

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The Necklace

Chalcedony was hiding in the cellar again.  It was quieter in the cellar, and if she squinted, she could use her candle to reread her storybook from Gondor, and even the damp cellar was quite comfortable with the little lamp oil heater on.  Of course her father would happily read it to her if she asked, even when it was well past dinner-time, but that would inevitably attract a crowd of young cousins, and she was not currently willing to put up with being begged for pig-a-backs and called Boromir until her heart ached.

It shouldn’t ache, she knew: she knew this fiercely, intimately, a sharp spine lodged beneath her breastbone.  She had been named for a hero who had saved her father and his best friend when all hope seemed lost, and he had died for it.  But the name, so glowing and wonderful when it was applied to the Man who had battled against the Ring during the adventures well before she was born, was nothing but a thorn working inwards at her heart, and she didn’t know why.  

(She did, really, if she thought too hard about it or dwelt on it for too long.  She knew why the name Chalcedony felt right—such a pretty gem, especially when it was placed underneath the lens apparatus that Uncle Sam had found in Mr. Frodo’s basement after he left.  It made such patterns as she had never seen before—like feathers and flounces and lace, all rolled into one.  Oh, if she could stitch herself a fine dress of stone and gemwork!  But she was not a lady, and she could not be a lady, and no amount of wishing would make it so.)

Ah, she was too restless to read.  She rose abruptly, the storybook slipping from her lap and falling onto the dusty ground below.  Normally, she took more care with her things—especially the books—but she felt cramped and constrained, itching in her own skin.  She plucked nervously at the shapeless woolen sweater she wore, though it wasn’t really the culprit.

There were boxes piled up to the ceilings in places—more than she’d realized—and she found herself sorting through them just for something to do.  They had writing scrawled on them in Da’s broad, messy handwriting.  In a few places she found her mother’s handwriting as well.  Maybe some of them had never been unpacked when they moved to the larger burrow.

The realization that some of these things might be forgotten piqued her curiosity and made her chest thrum.  Perhaps she could be a famous scholar, searching for answers in the ruins of a forgotten city.  She opened the first one and pulled out a set of earthenware plates that she had not seen in years and barely even remembered.  This would certainly have to be inspected beneath the lens apparatus.  A second yielded three fluffy and rather poorly-stitched sweaters.  She rather thought that Ma might have made those before Da took over all the knitting.  The third—she had not expected what she found in the third.

At first it seemed to be just a series of wrapped packages of odd shapes.  Then as she began to unwrap them, she realized with a queer little thrill that this had been part of Ma’s jewelry.  She must not have realized it was all still down here.  Chalcedony unwrapped a jade pendant and a pair of pretty crystal tear-drop earrings.  There was a brooch, too—a serpent with iridescent, enameled scales coiling across a base of gold.  And finally—

The box itself was wooden, and it looked old.  The careful curlicues of carven flowers had probably once been sharp, but now their edges had worn away into smooth lumps, and in places the carvings themselves had been all but erased.  A white material in the center formed an inlaid pattern of a daisy with eight kite-shaped petals.

The others she remembered.  Somewhere in the back of her head she recalled her ma wearing them.  But this box did not even look as if it had been opened.  There was a wax seal across it, though the wax had melted and run and whatever had been imprinted into it was long since effaced.  For a moment, she hesitated.  She did not want to be in trouble for this.  But the box was warm in her hands, and probably it had been opened before and the wax had just melted over as if it hadn’t.

She broke the seal and pulled up the wooden top of the case, heart pounding loudly in her ears.  It was a little anticlimactic when she found nothing more than another box, small and made of tarnished metal with a series of worn-down grapes imprinted on the lid.  Chalcedony frowned and flipped up the lid, half-expecting this one to be empty.  

Her breath rushed out in a noise like oooohhh.  

The necklace lying on a bed of surprisingly plush velvet was not like any jewelry Chalcedony had seen before.  It was longer—it would probably have come to her mother’s waist and might fall even lower on her.  And although it had been in this box long enough for the wax to melt, the bright yellow color of the little metal beads and the housings of the larger glass ones shone bright and pure.  Chalcedony frowned and reached out to touch one of the purple-brown spheres like fruit clustered on a golden vine.

She is staring at a young Mannish woman, who is frowning and leaning forward, nose nearly knocking against the slightly discolored glass in front of her.  No—it is a mirror—Chalcedony is looking into a mirror at someone who is not herself.  She has a brief moment of terrible disorientation when she realizes that she is falling into the mind of someone who is as uncomfortable with the pretty breasts swelling beneath the dark red-purple gown as she is being still without them even as she nears the halfway point of her adolescence.  Then she is swept away beneath the tide of thoughts and feelings.

Nimruzimir stared at himself in the mirror; he did not like what he saw.  This gown revealed far more flesh than it concealed, and it made him feel even more like a stranger in his own body than usual.  Worse, one of the handmaidens his father had brought with them on the journey had insisted on doing up his face in a manner that he did not particularly appreciate.  His own dull brown eyes peered out from inside a mess of blacks and purples, as if he had been in a fistfight.  It could hardly be called attractive.

But this was what the young ladies of the island were wearing, so he supposed he had no choice.  His father had spent more than a few coins on the necklace, as well, and if he would rather have loitered around the smithy and asked probing questions about the process of its manufacture, well—a proper young lady could not do such a thing.  It would have the smiths whispering amongst themselves about both of them, and the mere thought of that sent a horrible hot blush crawling up the back of his neck.

The necklace was not ugly, at least—it was a beautiful thing, made of dark brown-purple glass beads set in gold, and it had come in a sumptuous little box made of silver metal and ornamented with grapes painted the same color as the velvet interior.  It was like his father’s love for him, he thought, with an uncharacteristic sentimentality—rich and beautiful and intended for a totally different object than Nimruzimir himself.

He wanted to be the perfect daughter, if not for his mother, who had left, then at least for his father, who was trying very hard.  The worried furrow never left his forehead these days.  But he also wanted, so terribly badly, to be able to be himself.

* * *

Chalcedony snatched her hand back as if she had burned it.  Her heart was thumping with a terrible frenetic rhythm in her ears.  What had that been?  Who had she seen?  She flung the little box across the room, and it rebounded off the far wall and landed on the ground with a soft little thump.  One end of the necklace was dangling out of it, as if the box had swallowed it nearly whole but left a bit of its dinner dangling from its chin.

She must have imagined it.  She could not really have been there, in that cramped little dressing room smelling of what she shouldn’t know had been salt water, staring at a body that would have been perfect for her but had been all wrong for its actual occupant. 

Hovering at the edge of the cellar steps, she considered going back upstairs.  Things might have quieted down by now.  She could just leave the necklace here and forget about it.

She started up the steps and then paused and looked back.  It was just a necklace, and it was such a pretty one, too.  What kind of famous scholar would she be if she just left it here, without trying to discover where it had come from?  Nothing had happened until she touched the jewelry itself.  She was being a ridiculous little faunt.

Her heart pounding in her chest, she turned around and ran back across the room, scooping up the box without touching the necklace, and then pounding up the stairs as if the Orcs of Mordor were at her heels.  She reached the top and stopped, panting, feeling rather silly.

Nothing had happened.  Nothing at all.

* * *

She found her parents blowing smoke rings outside on the patio, looking happy and relaxed.  They had probably eaten a great deal more dinner than she had, but then they both seemed to like company more than she did.  Perhaps she would like company more if—

Deliberately squashing this train of thought, she tiptoed up behind her dad—an old game, but a fun one.  Before she could grab his eyes and shout, “Boo!” he had rolled his head back and grabbed her wrist.

“Nice try, kid,” he chuckled.  “But you’re going to have to be faster than that before you get one over on the hero of the Pelennor Fields!”

“Daaaa.”  She extricated herself and sat on the wide arm of his chair, trying to seem casual.  “Do you know what this is?  I found it in the cellar.”

“What is it?” Her mother yawned and leaned forward from her own seat.  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before.”

“Let me see.”  Da plucked the box out of her hands.  “Was it sealed?”

“Um…I’m not sure.  The wax was melted!”  She really hoped she hadn’t done something to get in trouble for.  Her entire family was well aware of the sorts of trouble that you could get into if you delved out cursed jewelry.

Da said a word that made Ma click her tongue at him.  “Ah, sorry, dearest.  But if this is sealed, it means that it was never opened.  And I had planned to give it to my sweetheart if I ever had one.”

This made Ma giggle and blow a smoke ring at him.  “Well, you certainly didn’t do that, Merry.  What is it?”

“I don’t know, it was sealed.  I got it for a few coins in Gondor from a trader who said it had traveled a long way.”

“A long way?  How far?” Chalcedony wanted to know.

“Up the Greyflood and down the North-South road, at least.  Though he thought it might have come further than that.  He promised me it would be very beautiful, but it looks as if Estella’s fool husband—” He smiled at Ma, “—completely forgot it was there.  Well, what is it, then?”

Chalcedony’s heart thumped, loudly, once in her chest.  Then she opened the box, brushing her fingers gently over the necklace inside.  Nothing happened, and her breath rushed out in a whoosh.  She had imagined it, then.  She picked up carefully and held it out, dangling from her hand, the gold and glass glittering in the last light of the evening sun.

“May I have it?” she blurted.  “I, I mean, I want to look at it in my lens apparatus, it’s—so—”  She bit her tongue, afraid of what she might say.

Da chuckled.  “It’s really your ma’s.”

“Nonsense,” said Ma briskly.  “If you want it, my lad, you may have it.  Finders keepers and none of this nonsense, Meriadoc.  You’re the one who never gave it to me.  What would I do with such a gaudy bauble anyway?”

Chalcedony found that she was clutching the necklace to her heart immediately.  It was so pretty—it was the prettiest thing she had ever owned.  And she did, she told herself, want to look at it in the lens apparatus.  Maybe there would be a clue about where it had come from.  A real clue, not something that she imagined out of nowhere.

Yes, she told herself again, she would find a real clue and not imagine any more nonsense.

Chapter End Notes

“Chalcedony” is a mineral, a category of silicones with a number of gemstones belonging to it, including agate and onyx.

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