Noldolantë by Dawn Felagund

IV. Curufinwë

IV. Curufinwë

I boggle. "What is it?" I ask.

Curufinwë sits in that prim way of his before the contraption that he has insisted that I see. I had been quite grouchily marking theory exercises for my mentor at the music school. Had Curufinwë not disturbed me, I would be nearly finished by now. Instead, I am standing in Atar's empty laboratory on a chilly evening in just a short-sleeved tunic, debating between using my hands to rub warmth back into my arms or massage away my growing headache while Curufinwë presents a contraption that seems made entirely of scrap metal and bristles like a thornbush made of steel.

The contraption is … I cannot understand it. Not in this state. My hand flutters to my forehead and rubs without much effect. Curufinwë explains.

"This," he says, pressing a hand to a metal disk, "is a tin plate. This is a piece of piping from the bellows. This--"

"Atar will be angry," I interject, feeling childish and petulant, "if you took apart the bellows."

Curufinwë gives me a look as though he is the one married and employed, with a house of his own, and not a child who, just last night, I had to carry up the stairs to bed. "I replaced the piece that I took," he says, "with one better."

"Ah. Of course." I clench my fist to keep it from wandering again to assuage my aching head.

"Anyway. This"--he strikes a flopping piece of metal with the flat of his hand--"is a saw." It makes a low spwoong sound, and I wince.

"I know all of that, Curufinwë. Once, I studied in Atar's forge, you know, and I did my share of chores in the kitchen." And I know that--no matter what you say and no matter that you are his favorite, at the moment at least--he will be angry when he discovers that you are nailing together his forge tools and his cookery to make … this. Whatever this is. "I would sooner you tell me what its purpose is, and why you have called me here to look at it."

"Why, it is a gift for you," he says with the innocent hurt that, coming from a small child, makes my heart ache with guilt for my doubt. He picks up two small hammers that I recognize also from Atar's collection of tools. "Watch me."

The hammers rain lightly upon a row of bottles, and a stream of notes trickle like water across stone. His hand snaps out on occasion to strike one of the pipes or the tin plates or the assorted bits of metal that look like demolished tin snips (oh, Curufinwë, you better hope you're Atar's favorite!) and he palms a hammer long enough to strike the saw with his fingertips. Spwoong. Spwoongwawawa. A zip with the handle along the row of bottles, and a shivery glissando raises the hair on my arms. By the pinched look of concentration on his face, he has worked harder on this song than the strange contraption that elicits it. He keeps rhythm upon a can filled with bolts, from the sound of it, then a can filled with sand. His hands are everywhere at once, the sounds romping with each other, madcap, about the tiny room.

He is breathless when he finishes. Though I have seen my brother hoist hammers too heavy for me but not his scrawny child's arms, he is brought low by a simple, flawed song played upon garbage. "It is not your begetting day," he says, "or a festival, but I finished building it and thought--" There, he stops. Wanly, he gestures at the ugly, unruly device, and I know that he awaits my appraisal of--and my mark upon--it.

I am not quite sure what to say about it. I tilt my head, as though that might make it look better.

"I have an idea," I say as Curufinwë's face begins to fall, hearing displeasure in my long silence. "Atar's begetting day is in a week, and I have been struggling with a song for him--"

Curufinwë's face splits into a grin, remarkably unrestrained. "Really? You will play it for Atar?" he says, and I think that if I'd smiled and informed him that his contraption had in fact wrought the Music of the Ainur, then he could not be happier.

"Yes," I say, and already, I am hearing my song to him rendered in metal and glass. My skin prickles with anticipation, my fingers already beginning to twitch in the shapes of chords. My mentor's students will have to wait a few days yet for their marked theory exams. "But there is one condition," I say to Curufinwë, and he waits, guarded, for me to go. "You must help me play it." At the wide smile upon his face, I trust that this will not be a problem.