Noldolantë by Dawn Felagund

V. Ambarussa

V. Ambarussa

I put off returning to my father's home as long as I imagine that he will tolerate; longer than the standards of etiquette, certainly, but Atar has never been one to appreciate etiquette. A year prior, I answered the birth announcement with a note scrawled about a performance and a symphony in the final stages of completion and this and that obligation, and I knew that he would see the haste in my hand and understand. He does not need to know that I have since sat in the house, alone, unable to produce anything. He does not need to know that the haste came not from productivity but from a drive to dispatch as quickly as I could the pain that his words brought me.

Atar is a father again. Twice a father again. And after too many years of marriage, still, I am not.

He was just as surprised as I; this, I detected in the letter announcing that Amil was with child again, even if I have not Atar's proclivity for languages and undertones in texts. "A fortuitous accident," he called it when last I saw him; he was in the midst of his greatest project yet and surely didn't have the time to devote again to children. Laughing at this to show that he jested, but I saw the doubt in his eyes that he could make it work. Five sons was impressive; seven unheard of. "I'd never have thought it possible," he said, to which I laughed, "But Atar, nothing undone is impossible," wielding his own tiresome rhetoric against him as once he'd wielded it so often against me.

Yet it gives me hope. That I will myself become a father is so far undone, and therefore, not impossible.

When my brothers flocked to Amil's side during her pregnancy, I closed myself in my house, pulling curtains snug across the windows and barring any inquiry with excuses. I am busy. I haven't the time. Vingarië is in Alqualondë again, ignorant of her husband's despair, and I wander an empty house from where the music has gone, wringing hands that once seemed unable not to manifest a song--indeed, once there were too many songs, too many songs to sleep or pause even to eat--and pitying myself.

In the silence of the house, I realize that I do not know how I feel about Atar and his newest sons. My brothers. I do not know, and this frightens me. It frightens me to consider that I might be bitter toward my own brothers; envious of my own parents. How terrible can I be?

When Vingarië writes to say that she'll be returning within the week, then I realize that I no longer have a choice. I awaken one day, alone in my silent house, and dwell overlong on tasks that don't need doing until Telperion is deepening and evening is nigh. The ride to Atar's house beyond the city gates is a familiar one, and I can almost forget my dread. Dread! Yes, I dread that I will be so overwhelmed by jealousy that I will hate my brothers on sight. That this will prove why I am not yet a father: I do not deserve to be one.

Mists are rising from the earth and the Lights are mingling when I arrive at the gates. They are chocked open, and the garden is in disarray, and though it is late, there is not yet a curl of smoke indicating that supper has been started. I turn my horse into the paddock with the others--mud caking their coats for neglect of brushing--and forgo knocking at the door. Atar's house is almost as silent as mine, and this disarms me: Is this not the home of now two young children, probably just beginning to walk and babble, that should be full of scampering feet and laughing voices and the sorts of cries that announce scraped knees?

For a long while, I stand and listen. The urge to call out quickly passes; for weeks now, I have spoken to none save myself, and my tongue was not wont to unlearn this habit. Instead, I walk on silent feet through the house and listen: nothing. I can hear my own breathing and the rush of blood in my veins, so quiet is the house.

But then, there is a trickle of sound: so subtle and unformed that, for a heady moment, I think that the music in my mind has returned. I stop and close my eyes and listen--but, no, this comes not from within. I follow the sound up the stairs, where the thread-thin voice grows louder. Someone is singing, but not in words: a song familiar like I've heard it before; a song that awakens an ache of nostalgia near where lies my heart, so keen that I clench my fist to my chest to assuage it. But it will not cease--not the ache or the song--and I follow the voice that brings it.

Nay, voices. Two children sing in voices so alike that they become as one, and how they knew how one will progress in their wordless song, I cannot answer. The same has been asked of Vingarië and me; how we can play together as one when, in fact, we are improvising. Perhaps the answer was given long ago, when the Music of Eru unfurled throughout the heavens and made Arda and all within it, including our hearts that loved each other.

I come to my parents' bedroom. It is a mess: clothes tossed upon the floor and tangled with toys. Two toddlers have been besting their wearied parents, who never expected more children to raise and re-formed their lives around that certainty. Indeed, both Amil and Atar are stretched across the bed, atop the bedclothes with shoes still on their feet, lying in each other's arms as I remember from my earliest memories, coming to this very room with a tear-streaked face and nightmares to recount to summon them from dreams.

But they are not alone: at their heads sit the toddlers they never expected--red-haired, like Amil, and as bright-eyed as Atar--with a hand each upon our parents' hair. Their voices just learning to babble are low and sweet, the song they sing spun of instinct, and love, and lullabies: every lullaby Atar has ever sung to us, shifting seamlessly from one to the other.

In my mind, the music answers. A harp swells; a xylophone chuckles lightly. My fingers began to move slowly in the patterns they will play.

When the day comes when I will hold my own firstborn child--and one day, it will--then this is the first lullaby that I will sing.