Noldolantë by Dawn Felagund

VI. Fëanáro

VI. Fëanáro

"Macalaurë!"

The storm tosses harder, and for the briefest moment, Fëanáro loses his footing upon the deck. The confident rhythm of his footfalls--as confident as would have been the Telerin mariners whom they've dispatched from their ships--trips and falters, but quickly, he squares his shoulders again and moves on. The sodden heads that line the railings are dark-haired; the light in their eyes dimmed. "Macalaurë!" he calls again, and he turns to a young woman who wraps the railings with both arms, her mouth quivering with queasiness as the storm plays with the ships. "You! Have your seen my son? It is his turn to sit on the watch."

Her eyes avert to the clouded skies. "No," she says. "No, my king, I have not."

Fëanáro strides away. "King!" he shouts to the rain. "The King is dead! That is why we are here, recall. The King is dead!" A wave surges under the ship, and he staggers, almost falls. "Murdered! Dead!" Using the impetus of his near upset, he continues down the deck, but the confident rhythm of his footsteps has faltered. There is a roar of thunder, and in its wake, the sly word drunk, in a whisper, carried upon the wind. Rancor bristles the hairs on his arms and makes his blood surge so hard that the sound of his heartbeat drowns the rush of the rain. But he cannot tell which of the misery-lined faces has said it. "Macalaurë!" he shouts again and staggers on.

Descending into the hold, he finds Curufinwë and Maitimo kneeling outside the door to one of the cabins, hands clasped between them like they are children again, certainly not kinslayers still with blood under their nails. Neither hears Fëanáro approach, though he does not come quietly, and he opens his mouth to ask why they are not in the scullery, as he'd assigned them, when his blood slows enough that he can hear the music.

Music? It is not even music. It is noise. A pastiche of sound. An ancient song of comfort hastens into a begetting day march, into the song that Macalaurë wrote for his wedding. There is cacophony of the delightfully hideous sort that once Macalaurë played with Curufinwë for Fëanáro's own celebration, then slowing into a lullaby so familiar that Fëanáro's lips shape the words: over and over, these themes--and others--surface and surge and repeat. They are achieving coherence; winding into a single entity that is at once all that they have left behind.

All that we have lost. Fëanáro presses fingers to his lips. Did he speak? The door is in front of his face; his knees force apart his sons' linked hands. The song is coloring into lament. So many moments of joy, gone to gray!

"No!" he shouts. He thinks again of the sweet waters of Cuiviénen and the sight of unclouded stars; maybe his voice even makes sense of those thoughts? He is not sure. Hands are upon him, but he shakes them free. He lifts his fist. He pounds on the door.

The music stops.

But in his heart, it will never end.