Noldolantë by Dawn Felagund

I. Nelyo

I. Nelyo

"--eight, nine, ten. Ten! Ready or not, here I come!"

I uncover my face and spin around. The garden behind me is empty and very, very quiet. The leaves of the beech tree against which I'd hidden my face whisper with secret laughter. I scowl at them and press my fingers to my lips, but the wind surges harder, and if my brother betrays himself with a sound, then I do not hear it.

Nelyo is eight years older than me--nearly twenty!--and very clever, but I will find him this time before he makes it back to the beech tree. All it takes is a touch with a single finger and he wins, as he has in too many games past. Every game past. I prowl around the tree, nervous about wandering too far, checking every place I can think to hide, even as I know that he would choose none of them. I hear a noise behind me and whirl, prepared to leap at it, but it is a robin skipping across the flagstones, and when I flinch in its direction, it flutters into the beech tree and chatters angrily at me.

"Sorry, sorry," I say under my breath, and suddenly, the silent summer day is full of noise--birds and leaves and wind and squirrels--and none of it Nelyo. I hear myself growl with displeasure. My footfalls are thunderous. I lurch to a stop, rooted to the spot, afraid to move any further and certain that he is going to leap out at any moment and make a dash for the tree. Certain that he is going to win again, and no matter that I am just his little brother, I cannot abide with that. Atar will ask after our games--he always does--and I will be forced to again admit defeat, and he will make a sympathetic, insincere noise, and Amil will pet my hair, and Nelyo will try not to look triumphant, but he must be! I want to know what that feels like.

I imagine that triumph must sound the like the cornets that blare Grandfather Finwë's fanfare--sparkling noise upon still air, romping and crashing like the light-kissed waves at Alqualondë--that makes your chest feel like it might burst wide open. I shiver at the thought, and my eyelids flicker shut.

And the summertime noise is disrupted by the sudden pounding of my brother's feet. He is halfway to the tree already, hand outstretched and teeth bared, prepared to win again. His long legs have devoured half the ground yet remaining before I have even flinched into action. With a shriek, I leap for the tree, for him, for elusive triumph.

My foot catches a flagstone, and Nelyo and the tree are tipped from my vision. Flagstone fills my vision, and I am in the sickening clasp of gravity, being dragged to the earth, with barely time enough to raise my hands to keep my face from smashing the rock. Nonetheless, my chin hits the ground, my teeth split my lip, and I feel the skin peeled away from both knees.

The scream of anguish that explodes upon the still summer air is nothing like triumph.

Nelyo veers from the tree; his long legs carry him to me instead. Pain sizzles along my entire body and blood drips into my palms with the rhythm of my heartbeat.

Thin arms--still a child's arms--gather me from the ground. From inside the house comes the noise of banging doors; Amil or Atar or both have seen, and comfort is imminent. Yet I weep.

A tremulous voice buzzes against my ear. Slowly, he rocks me, but I hear his heart pounding where my head rests on his chest, as I slowly soak his tunic with my blood. He is singing to me the first thing to come to mind: the silly song that Atar devised to teach us our Tengwar. Atar sings it bright and merry but Nelyo's voice is low and full of hurt, like he is taking my pain and making it his own. It is a song of comfort: warm and insidious, like the flush one gets inside after swallowing a cup of hot tea, and the pain subsides; the pain is almost gone by the time Amil comes running across the flagstones toward us, and the bleeding, almost stopped.