The Strands that Bind by AdmirableMonster

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Boys Like Girls

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There was a neat little row of saucers set along the back row of the table.  Chalcedony peered at them with interest.  She had spent a few complicated weeks traveling all over the neighborhood sticking her nose into dark, moist places, clambering up various trees, and splashing around in ponds that were known to be relatively clear, trying to ferret out samples of different sorts of mushrooms.  

Oddly, she found that Celebrimbor’s cat seemed to enjoy trailing her.  Every so often, she would turn around and find him sitting there, tail lashing, regarding her with his one bright gold-red eye.  Or he would simply stalk over impatiently when she was struggling to find anything, and—point.  There was no other word for it.  He would just stuff his nose into a small dark cranny, and when she looked, she’d find some tiny smear of fuzz that had to be some sort of mushroom.

After quite a lot of this, she had managed to cobble together an eclectic collection of mushrooms and spores and little fuzzy bits and bobs that hopefully weren’t lint.  With Ma’s help in making the growth medium, she had lined up a number of different saucers—all of them neatly labeled with where she had found the sample and when, just as Nimruzimir had done in his own cellar.

The memories did not come so fast and easy all the time—sometimes the necklace would do nothing but lie in her hand growing warm, as if it slept.  Sometimes, when she kept it by her pillow, she would dream, but often the dreams would be fragmented and vanish upon waking like soap bubbles.  There were bits and pieces, though, and most of them helped with what she was trying to do.

She had collected a jar of water from the poisoned pond, too; she hadn’t told anyone about that, although she had put a big sign on it saying “DO NOT TOUCH OR DRINK.”  She had dangled it from the end of a fishing rod to make sure not to touch it, just in case.  Annamir had watched her from the shadows—she was almost certain she had seen the orange gleam of his eye—and she had done nearly the whole thing while holding her breath.

For every one of her precious little samples, she had set up two saucers, both of them with a slice of potato jelly in the bottom.  One had nothing but that and the scrapings of the mushrooms that she had found, while she had used a hollow reed to transfer a measure of the poisoned water into each of the others without touching it.  

Some of the saucers were empty—quite a lot of the ones with the poisoned water were empty—but some of them were not.  She had only half-believed that anything would happen, but after a few days, she had started to see spots on some of the saucers—white and green and grey.  They had grown at different rates—she had a wobbly notebook sitting on the table in which she was taking notes on how much there seemed to be, which was something that Nimruzimir seemed to think was very important—but by now several of them were very evidently growing quite effortlessly.

Many of them were radially symmetric, with either a round central island and secondary rings striped around the outside, or with only a dense ring near the edge.  In some of them, a few isolated little spots poked up in the sparser areas.  They were like the rings inside a great tree, or perhaps more like forests dotted across a flat round plane with a little island in the middle.  They were so tiny it was almost impossible to tell what the individual components were—none of them really looked like the big wrinkled ear-like mushrooms that they ate for dinner, but they maybe shouldn’t.  From Nimruzimir’s memories, that might be a different part of the mushroom, the way you could have a rose-bush growing with no roses on it.

She almost wanted to pet them, they looked so fuzzy and welcoming.  She knew it wouldn’t be a good idea, but she couldn’t help leaning over and peering at them, worrying at her lip with excitement.  “You’re doing so well,” she whispered to the three that were growing happily despite the poisoned water.  

When she glanced up, she saw the jar of poisoned water gleaming in the low light and something made her clutch her hand about the beads of the necklace.  There were no windows in the cellar, and the flame of the candlelight behind it bulged queerly, like a single red-flame eye peering out of nothingness, like…

Shivering in a fever dream, the eyes of the High Priest that she never has met boring into her soul, as if she can see into Lilóteo’s dreams, as if all the blood and torment are for her as well as for him, and she, Chalcedony—

No, he, Nimruzimir—

What would we not suffer for those we love?

Nimruzimir blinked and shivered, tearing his eyes away from the hooded lantern to run his gaze over his neat rows of samples.  Several of them were growing nicely, producing a coat of mycelium across the agar and even in some places what might be small fruiting bodies.  This was hopeful—and more than that, he found himself feeling oddly protective.

“Oh, you’re down here again.” Lilóteo’s footsteps were usually heavy on the stairs, but somehow he had made it halfway down without Nimruzimir noticing his approach.  “Everything okay?”

Nimruzimir found himself flushing slightly.  “It is fine.  I was just…checking on them.”  Even as the words came out, he knew that they sounded terribly foolish.  The fungi would grow, or they would not.  There was nothing he could do about it, other than to check the conditions daily, and he had already done that.  The temperature in the cellar was reasonably steady, and he had already checked the acidity levels earlier in the day.  He had no reason to be back down here.

As ever, he could not read the look on Lilóteo’s face.  He wished, futilely and with a little wistful exhaustion, that he had any ability at all to comprehend the emotions of others.  Was that twitch at the corner of Lilóteo’s lips a smile?  Was it laughter?  Was it a grimace?  He sighed, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand.

“What are you th-thinking?” he blurted without meaning to, then flinched, one hand clutching at the side of the table.

“Just that you look like a mother hen.”  Lilóteo finished descending the stairs and came over to him.  “You’re brooding, Nimruzimir.”

“I am not brooding!  I am in perfectly good cheer.”

That was most certainly a grin, and he rather thought there was some mischief in it.  He still wasn’t expecting it when Lilóteo kissed his forehead lightly.  “I meant brooding as in sitting on an egg.”

“Hardly!  I am b-being quite objective.”

Shrug.  “If you say so.”  One big hand squeezed his upper shoulder gently.  “Hey, Nimruzimir.  This is working.  You’re doing it.  You.”

The unexpected praise hit him harder than a blow would have.  “I—I am only d-d-doing what is n-n-n-necessary.”

“You always have, and that’s what I l—what I admire about you.”  Lilóteo tugged at his beard.  “Sorry, clearly I’m too sentimental today.  Maybe there’s a storm brewing.”

“I hardly th-think a low pressure system would—”

“Could make my arm hurt.  Maybe pain makes me maudlin.”  

“Absurd,” Nimruzimir sniffed, but he snaked an arm around Lilóteo’s waist and leaned against him.  Their reflection wavers, dim and far away, in the glass before them.

* * *

The stars wheeled overhead, distant and serene, hard to see against the warm red glow of the bonfire.  Chalcedony stood well back from it; she felt awkward and stiff and itchy in her good suit, her cravat half-choking her, but it was expected, and she supposed the summer solstice did not come often.  This year was a little better than most: she had managed to avoid having to cut her hair, and she had tucked the necklace underneath her shirt, where no one could see it.  The bumpy outline was not terribly comfortable, but it was comforting.

Elanor approached her, flushed and laughing, and Chalcedony tried not to stare too enviously at the outfit she wore—a light green summer frock, embroidered with yellow flowers at the throat and hem, with a necklace of her own made from little jade stars that twinkled with white gems inset along the chain.  “Boromir, would you dance with me?” she asked, sounding almost shy.

“I’m not much of a dancer,” Chalcedony temporized, wishing that she needn’t, and knowing that she ought to.  She looked around to see if she could find a way out, but most of the hobbits were dancing; only Master Celebrimbor remained seated, with his cat twining about his legs, in the dim half-light just outside the ring of firelight.  “All right, but I’m sorry in advance if I step on your feet.”

Elanor was lovely, she thought, with the way the firelight sparkled in her golden hair, and the way her dress clung pleasingly but modestly to her form. She was beginning to suspect that Elanor was looking for something other than friendship, which would make sense.  They were, after all, very good friends already, and she thought that Elanor was pretty, and they knew each other very well.  They were a little young to do much more than look at one another, probably, though Chalcedony didn’t have a very good idea.  Well, there was the dancing.

Da and Ma were dancing together; they loved to be the center of attention.  Ma’s blue skirt described a round circle, and she and Da leaned back in each other’s arms, dancing twice as fast as some of the other couples, one arm in the air each, leaning back and balancing one another perfectly.  Their feet barely seemed to touch the ground, and they were both laughing.  What would it be like, Chalcedony wondered, with a queer little ache in her chest, to trust someone that much?  To balance them that perfectly?

She felt too big and too clumsy as she stiffly pivoted Elanor in a not-so-tight circle, trying to remember which way to go next while avoiding standing on her feet.  It was mostly automatic, hours of practice meaning that her body remembered the figures on their own, but she felt distracted and at odds in her skin again.

A turn on the boys’ side of the dance brought her face to face with Frodo, who was dancing with Primrose Proudfoot.  The firelight glittered off his hair, as golden as his sister’s, and when he smiled at her as they revolved past one another, she felt as if it warmed her from her toes right up to the roots of her hair.  It was like sunshine; it was like watching the baby mushrooms grow; it was like—

Lilóteo’s stubborn face, his arm around Nimruzimir’s shoulders, the slightly wistful look he got when he stared off towards what had been their home—

She nearly tripped over her own feet as she found herself back with Elanor.  Something cold and terrified unfolded in the base of her stomach, because the way she had felt when she caught sight of Frodo—that first flush of warmth—it was like the way Nimruzimir felt when he woke up in the morning and rolled over and saw Lilóteo snoring on the other side of the bed.

She was a boy; she was supposed to like girls, wasn’t she?

(She was a boy—wasn’t she?)