Our Share of Night to Bear by Elleth

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Chapter V: In the Streets

Máriel and Calassë go foraging, but the events that seal the Doom of the Noldor continue. 

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This chapter contains non-graphic animal death (for food purposes) toward the end.

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Máriel’s hand was digging into her shoulder. She had pushed past Calassë out of the house at first, and then quickly fallen behind, looking with wide eyes at every shadow and jumping at the slightest gust of wind. Calassë couldn’t blame her, but Máriel’s nervous prattling started grating on her nerves, especially now that her voice was echoing in the cavernous bakehouse.

"Where is everything? Why is there so little food left?" Máriel asked, and gave a quick glance at the open door looming dark behind them; in the darkness it made very little difference where they were. It seeped into every corner, like spilled ink. "You can't have carried off everything in their pantries as provisions." From the wall, the ovens grinned black in Máriel’s lamplight.

"They didn't," Calassë said, thinking back, and tucked the painted clay bird-pipe further into her pocket. It was Írimellë’s favourite toy, and passing by their house she’d picked it up with a stack of cloth diapers for Toron, who had grown fussy and irritable after they had fed him some water just before leaving Lady Saminquirë’s house.

"What they didn’t loot and couldn't carry they gave away to share with others. Everyone would need food on the journey, and the people who had more gave to people who had less. Elerrínon - that’s the father of Artaldë and Armacil - himself gave my parents bread before they all went. Didn't your family do that?" asked Calassë.

"Oh. Of course they did," Máriel said, but she was glancing to the side and shifting uneasily, and then turned to peer into the ovens, scooping out crumbs with her fingers and licking them off noisily.

“Leave some for me!” Calassë reached in as well; her hand came away with sooty fingertips and very little else. Her stomach clenched. Now that they were searching rather than wallowing in their sadness, she noticed more and more how hungry she really was. She hoped the children under Víresso’s care kept being sad a little longer. It was easier to deal with than the hunger.

Behind her, in some dark corner where empty sacks of flour lay, something rustled.

Máriel and Calassë shared a look and crowded for the door back into the street.

Máriel, when she'd caught her breath and claimed her knees had stopped shaking, suggested looking into the gardens instead of the houses, but in this part of the city with its narrow streets and houses tight on tight there were only a few belonging to the houses of the richer merchants, and they grew flowers more often than anything edible. Calassë couldn't think of anyone keeping chickens or rabbits, either, not in this part of the city - most everything came from the upcity markets.

“It’s too quiet. And it still smells odd out here,” said Calassë, skirting another ice-crusted puddle and clutching the pillow-case she’d meant to use as a bag closer to herself while Máriel knelt and watched as the blue light from the crystal lamp in her hand brought out the sharp edges of the ice. She didn’t seem to care that the air stank like a mixture of leather and old apples, and something sharp underneath that like the stench from a tanner’s shop from further away, or that they’d still not found any food - any food that could still be eaten, at any rate.

“Rats are large, and they’re still fat. I think we should try and catch some of them,” Calassë said. “Can’t you build a trap?”

Máriel looked up from the puddle and grimaced, maybe to keep from crying. Her breath stood in an odd white cloud before her mouth. “We should keep looking. Some of these houses must have provisions that were not raided. Besides, rats are not... well, I do not think they’d make suitable meals.”

“I’d rather eat rats than starve! I haven’t had anything real since before our parents left! I don’t even know how long ago that was!”

Something funny flickered over Máriel’s face then, and she climbed to her feet. “But you did. You went into the kitchen to cook, and when you came back up your knees were dirty and you smelled of vomit. What did you do - gorge yourself to not have to share, and then retch it all up again? I didn’t say anything because the children do not need to be subjected to us fighting and you looked so miserable - and they are afraid already. But that is what happened, is it not?”

Something crept up the inside of Calassë’s throat - wanting to cry, wanting to turn and run. Her cheeks burned. And if she turned and ran - Máriel didn’t know her way around the lower city, probably, and with all the twists and turns they’d taken all the way down to the Bakers’ Lane leading to the east gate and the great stair into the upper city, Máriel’d never find Lady Saminquirë’s house again if Calassë managed to shake her off.

But then she thought of finding her way back without the lamp Máriel was holding, and trying to explain to the others where she had gone, and being all alone in the dark, and that rooted her feet to the ground better than anything else could.

She drew the sleeve of her shirt over her eyes and sniffed loudly to clear her nose.

“I’m not disgusting. I fell asleep, because of the rain. It made me drowsy. And the food burned and I was scared you’d scold me, so I tried to eat some to see if it still was good, and it wasn’t. That’s why I was sick!I didn’t have anything else either!”

“Oh,” Máriel said again, and at least she looked like she was sorry, even though she did not say it in words, staring down at the dirty blotches on Calassë’s knees, and then back up at her face. Máriel’s own shone almost white in the glare of the lamp; the blue washed out any other colour and especially the warm brown of her skin.

“Perhaps we should reconsider and go to the palace after all,” Máriel said after a pause that hung heavy between them, craning her head toward the light that was hanging over the hilltop of Túna, although where they stood, the houses leaned too close for sight of the palace itself, and Calassë looked at them and their dark windows with a queasy feeling in her stomach all of a sudden.

“I wonder how much light they have there.”

“The Mindon. And probably more, judging by the glow that started coming on again. They’ve probably woken again up there,” Máriel replied.

Going there was tempting, almost as much as the idea of leaving Máriel alone. Finally real food, maybe even palace food, the soft white bread that Princess Írimë had sometimes commissioned the bakers to give out to the lower city, or even venison. As if on cue, as if she had been having the same thoughts, Máriel’s stomach growled, and Calassë couldn’t help the giggling that came up - and then she shook her head.

“We can’t. We’ve been out too long already, we should be going back. The east stair’s nearby and I counted it once after Víresso and I made a wager. It’s almost six-thousand steps into the upper city. It’ll be a long time to climb up and back down and if we do then we should take everyone. For now, we’ll find something here. Can you build a trap?”

“You are very insistent on subsisting on rats,” said Máriel. “But… no.” She bit her lip. “I never learned anything like it. But a trap would not be very efficient. It may be easier to simply gather stones and hunt that way. I read about it in a treatise about historical hunting methods in Cuiviénen before we learned to manufacture weapons.”

Soon they had found enough stones in flowerbeds and on the roadside, round ones that lay comfortably in their palms, and they had descended into the narrow alleyways between the houses where the refuse was stored before it would be cleaned away. Calassë stepped around a crate of spoiled things and tried not to breathe too deep; despite the freezing air everything stank and made her want to gag. Her mother had always warned her and Írimellë that they shouldn’t play in such places, and again as before in Lady Saminquirë’s kitchen, Calassë felt defiance bubble up in her chest, and she gripped her stone tighter. If her parents hadn’t left...

Something skittered in a pile of leaves ahead of them.

“There!” Calassë whispered and pointed.

Máriel straightened from a crouch and brushed a cobweb from her forehead, instead leaving a smudge of dirt that she rubbed away with an irritated expression. The lamplight danced wild and blue across the mildewed walls, and in the glare a large rat with a naked tail bounded away.

Máriel threw her stone. It clattered off harmlessly on the wall - another miss - while the rat squeezed through a gap in the masonry and into safety.

Calassë didn’t even know what half the words in Máriel’s curse meant, but she was too busy being relieved seeing something that perfect Máriel couldn’t do to be all upset that they had missed another chance at food.

While Calassë still stood, Máriel was already underfoot again, squeezed past her, and out of the narrow space into the narrow courtyard that the surrounding houses shared. Calassë could hear her call out - a high-pitched cheer that set Calassë’s feet moving. Máriel turned to her with shining eyes that took Calassë’s breath away for a moment, the lovely green of them alight from within.

Against the back wall of the courtyard under an overhanging roof stood a rickety wood-and-wire shed, and within it, a flock of fat pigeons huddled together, crooning and sleepily cocking their heads at the light from Máriel’s lamp. A sack leaned by it, more than half empty and about to topple over, but Calassë stuck her hand in to feel many small, cool beads roll against her fingers. She cupped her hand and withdrew it.

A pile of tiny, round grains lay in the center of her palm.

“That’s millet!” she said, and closed her palm around it, and feeling the little grains crunch against one another a realization came to her. “It’s not just bird-feed! It’s something to eat! And it’s dry; the rain didn’t get to it! We can eat this!”

“They must have forgotten about it when they left, just as they forgot about the birds, or they might have made use of it and set them free,” Máriel added, eyeing the closed door to the wire cage while her face began to change from the satisfied look of having found the courtyard into a happy, even carefree expression. It suited her much better.

“How many should we take?” she asked, grinning widely. “Just imagine - these are not squabs, and my father would be sorely disappointed - he braises them with plums and herbs - but we could make a soup, or a stew, or - shh! What was that?”

Whatever Máriel had heard, it made her start back against the wall, and Calassë felt herself yanked along into the shadow, then Máriel hastily fumbled the lamp shut. “Someone’s coming, there’s someone there, listen,” she whispered frantically, and her hand clenched the front of Calassë’s shirt, pulling the fabric taut. Her hand was warm through the fabric. Calassë winced, and tried to listen over the harsh breath Máriel was trying to keep quiet.

Steps.

There were heavy, quick footfalls coming their way at great speed, or at least sounding nearby somewhere. Once Calassë’s eyes had gotten used again to the lack of light and could see the glow briefly lighting up the alleyway they had come, the source became clear. There were no other noises, so the steps echoed in the empty streets more loudly than they otherwise might; they were coming up from the east gate toward the stairs, once even the sound of someone falling heavily onto the stones, a woman’s voice uttering a muffled cry, and then the steps thudding onward again, up the stair to the palace.

Máriel ducked out of their hiding place, and pointed. The courtyard had a clear line of view up the east stair to the hilltop, and a white figure, with a globed Fëanárian lamp wildly swinging in her hand, was beginning to make her way up, stumbling and bent, obviously at the edge of her endurance. Above her, the palace and its domes and spires were all lit up in warm light and the Mindon vaulting up into the air behind it shone its beacon eastward with a steady white flame. The clouds had cleared and now stars crowded in the sky as they had never done even during Telperion’s hours.

“What do you think that was?” asked Calassë, tearing herself away from the sight while the woman continued stumbling up the stairs. “And who?”

Máriel rolled her shoulders. “A messenger, I suppose - judging by her hair she must be either a Vanya or a Teler, so perhaps from Taniquetil or Alqualondë. We might find out if we followed her.” Something in her voice hitched, although she tried to hide it. “Perhaps she is a herald, and came to announce that they are returning. We should follow her.”

“No,” said Calassë. “I really don’t think so. They won’t. They’re gone. But we promised the children we’d be back soon. And the pigeons, what about the food? I’d rather they didn’t have to stay hungry.”

“But if they are returning…”

“They’re not and you know they’re not!”

Máriel’s face twisted into an unhappy grimace, but she bent and picked something up from the ground that at a closer look turned out to be the splintered end of a broomstick, and hefted it in her hand to swing it downward with enough force to make a whooshing sound.

“Then I would rather not waste more time,” she said, clipped. “I think this will do to make it quick for the pigeons.” She glared at the dovecote, but was worrying at her lower lip with her teeth, took a step, and stopped.

“Once we’ve had food, we’ll go, too,” Calassë decided, and hoped that it sounded comforting. It was obvious that Máriel was uneasy about the thought, and although Calassë didn’t like to think about killing either, she didn’t want Máriel to have to do it, so she took the broomstick from her hand as they neared the cage. “Our parents won’t come back, and it’ll be better at the palace,” she added, to take her own mind off it. “We can’t stay in Lady Saminquirë’s house forever. But first, food.”

Máriel swung the hatch open, and reached for the first bird, cupping both hands around its body and pinning its swan-white wings to its sides. The bird rucked its head and gave an uneasy coo.

“Hold it tight.” Calassë squeezed her eyes shut and swung, but then Máriel shrieked, and there were wings in Calassë’s face and the stench of the dovecote, and the pigeon fluttered up and away. The broomstick slipped from her hand and clattered onto the ground.

“Máriel!” She yelled and rubbed a hand over her face before daring to open her eyes again. The pigeon Mariel had held was gone and tears were pouring down her face.

“I couldn’t, I’m sorry, I’m -” she hiccuped, and then her knees gave way and she slumped to the floor heavily, but continued babbling, and her voice was fast rising from a whisper to a yelp. “You’d have killed it like Melkor killed the King, he just smashed his head, I could not, I don’t want -- ”

"Shut up, you're going to scare them, shut up shut up shut up!" Calassë whispered frantically when Máriel’s words seemed to stir the rest of the birds from their drowsing. She wanted to scream that Máriel was spoiling everything but she couldn't raise her voice, so she dropped to her knees, grabbed Máriel by the shoulders and shook her, to and fro, until Máriel's mouth clicked shut.

Máriel stayed quiet after that, but twitched away from her touch when Calassë reached out to touch her hair the same way Máriel had done for her.

“It’s fine,” Calassë said, even if she did through clenched teeth. “I won’t hurt you.” Hearing the flutter of more wings through the open hatch- another pigeon gone - she reached for the broken end of the broomstick again, squared her shoulders and got up.

“Look away,” she said, over the feeling of her stomach churning at the birds going limp and dead because of her. “I’ll do it on my own.”

By the end of it, Calassë had stuffed three dead white birds into the pillow cover with shaking fingers. Máriel had kept her sight stubbornly away into the eastward dark, and at some point her tears had stopped, even though her face still gleamed wet. Calassë rubbed away the soft down feathers that clung to her sweaty palms and nudged Máriel’s shoulder with as much gentleness as she could muster. “Could you take the millet? Máriel? Are you coming?”

“That sound?” Máriel asked instead of rising. “Can you hear it?”

Calassë had been so focused on the birds that she hadn’t registered the rushing sound that was growing steadily louder from the east, like a storm rolling in from the sea.

“Wind?” she wagered and strained her ears to hear if there was more to it.

Máriel, her eyes blown wide and dark, shook her head. “Not merely wind. If you listen closely… there is screaming.”