Beneath a Silver Tree by Marta

Beneath a Silver Tree

Read Beneath a Silver Tree

The bench was new, Indis mused. So odd to see a new addition in such a changeless place. The old seat had been a flat seat of hard marble raised on a stone pedestal but with neither back nor rails and no cushion to the seat itself. It was handsome enough, Indis supposed, but with little allowance for the comfort of any who sat there. Its replacement was made of beechwood hewn into lumber planks, covered in pelts that gave it a softness and the scent of living things. There was a back, too, curved out just enough so one could lean back into it.

She had been coming to this peaceful glade for months now. It was peaceful, and set apart, and that alone was a welcome thing. She was with child, hideously so; and all eyes seemed fixed upon her as this latest pregnancy proceeded toward its natural end. Her first child was loved and cherished, but still the pregnancy was largely considered a failure: Findis had been born small frail, with sallow skin and eyes that seemed sunk into her skull. A string of healers had pronounced her first to be suffering from colic, then anemia, then any other number of conditions. The result had been much the same: piteous cries that echoed through the corridors of the royal apartments, dragging Indis from bed so she and the child’s nanny could take turns walking her around the nursery. Finwë had stayed abed but the worry and exhaustion was writ plain across his features the next day; who wouldn’t have noticed? Fëanáro was so full of life (so the civil requirements of courtly speech required it be put; Indis, as one more forcefully confronted with his tempers, might choose stronger words); Finwë could hardly be blamed for his second child’s sickly disposition. But Indis! Those ever-polite but ever-noticing courtiers could not (would not) help but make their displeasures known, and like a hawk they saw and passed their judgment on Indis’s every choice.

She took what escapes she could find. And when the market at Túna proved still too close to those prying eyes, she took what journeys she could further afield. Her sisters were newly married and quite busy with their own life, and Taniquetil had never quite agreed with her. Lorien, however, became a sort of pilgrimage. And why shouldn’t she be drawn there, to the final resting place of the old queen whose presence and legacy seemed for her inescapable everywhere? So she fled first alone on horseback, until her maid pointedly observed that babes had been known to founder in the womb, and the forceful stride of the beast beneath her certainly could not be good for him (oh, let it be a he this time, the whispers implored). Not here, certainly, but before, and who was she to take the chance with the king’s own child? Then a carriage was arranged, and a footman took his ease in other parts of the garden until at least Indis was ready to return home.

He kept his distance from the particular corner of the garden Indis was so drawn to; most of her kind did. It was concealed by the trailing branches of the silver tree like some lovers’ bower, though the only two who trysted there now were the old queen and the new. Fëanáro sometimes came hurtling through the silver curtain, all heedless energy, but then he would see her, and glower down at her and gloomily stomp away. Indis would have been glad of a living companion, or would have ceded the space to her (Míriel was his mother, after all), but such negotiations would have required an actual conversation.

So she came, and she sat, filling the hours with whatever book or embroidery or other solitary pursuit she had brought to occupy her time, and let the wind wisping through the branches tease at her hair and breathe its refreshment against the bare neck it managed to expose. The new bench was a relief. A philosopher might have commented on the reek of death about the new item; once-living in the way hard stone never had been, sacrificed to the relief of the aches known only to a living body so they could sit here and commune with the dead. But Indis was no philosopher, and she was practical enough that she could appreciate this concession to her current condition. Nurturing new life took its toll not only on the spirit but on the hips as well.

She wondered sometimes who saw to her corner of this garden. Certainly she had never seen any attendants or gardeners approach while she was there. Either they did their necessary labors when she was away, or – and Lorien being as it was, Indis could not wholly gainsay this possibility – there was some magic at work in this particular corner, locking it in a frozen moment of time. It would certainly explain the old queen’s state. Míriel could be but napping, ready to wake and ring for her tea any moment. Indis was reminded of how as a girl she’d watched the huntsmen bring in their kills, hang them from the trees to protect them from scavengers until the butchers could do their work. One autumn – she could not have been much older than Findis was now – a sudden storm had forced them all indoors for days, and the deer brought in by the huntsmen just before its onset had gone foul by the time the butcher could return to them. The carcasses had reeked to the heavens, and flies swarmed about, and parts of their flanks had gone mushy with time. They’d saved the skins, but the meat itself had been unsalvageable. That was the natural course of death, Indis knew; not this lifeless, never-changing sameness in which Míriel seemed locked forever.

The place was compelling, though, and the solitude was certainly not unwelcome. Indis sat on the new bench, silently thanked whatever listening spirits might be nearby for the thought to her comfort, and took out the book she’d brought with her. The book sat in the purse of her hip, and she knew she should retrieve it or have the conversation she always came here to have yet never quite marshalled the courage to initiate.

She did not truly think Míriel could still help her, but perhaps it could help – certainly it could do no harm – to discuss the worries gnawing at her with the one person she thought might understand them. Míriel had given so much life to her own child, and it had cost her her own; Indis had played the miser, and been paid in kind with a daughter whose empty wails kept her up half the night, and even to this day was plagued by a hunger that no food seemed able to satisfy. Surely there was a happy medium to be found between Míriel’s reckless love and Indis’s own denial? Could Míriel hear her, impart some wisdom somehow? Was that perhaps part of the staying-charm of this place? Indis longed for a bit of counsel, just the smallest taste of the peace Míriel must now have in such abundance, and she certainly could not give voice to those concerns to anyone in the outside world.

Indis had a bit of hope, at least, in her current discomforts. The first had not left her nearly so weary! She craved food more regularly, pickled cucumbers and spices brought in from the arid southlands, and she fancied that her body was at last nourishing a second life like it should have before. Now she had no troubles sleeping through the night, and often as not she would doze off in the afternoon as well. Had she hit nearer the mark this time? Though of course – here was that never far-off fear clawing its way to the surface – of course only time would reveal the certain truth. Still, she’d take what semblance of hope she could find until her worst fears made themselves more fully known. Perhaps it would be well. She closed her eyes and leaned back into the bench, closing her eyes and straining to hear the far-off sound of birdsong.

“You should bring her,” a voice said behind me. She sat up quickly, the book falling forgotten to the ground, and turned around to see a woman standing behind her bench. “Your daughter; Findis. Only I thought you were thinking of her. I should like to meet her someday.”

Indis looked at her quizzically. “Have we – “ she started, then stopped herself mid-sentence. Indis had seen her often in those gardens, though never here. She was dressed in rough fashion, as one used to working out of doors, in homespun trousers and a huntsman’s jacket and with a leather rucksack across her chest, as one expecting to return thigh-deep in muck. But now that Indis stood so close to her she could not help but see those garments masked a more noble nature. Today she wore homespun trousers and a hunter’s jacket and carried a leather rucksack across her chest. Her hair was near Vanyar-gold, but not quite, and was woven back into a loose braid, the alfirin-blossoms dotting it at regular intervals the only concession she had made to ornamentation.

That was a clue, Indis realized, for they only grew near Ezellohar and the elves were not so brazen as to go there uninvited. Her eyes were another: though clearer than the most flawless crystal and unfathomably deep, they seemed weighed down somehow with heavy burdens, of wisdom or perhaps just having seen. Indis was quite sure she’d never seen their like in the faces of her kind.

“Perhaps if I was in the gowns they require of us at Taniquetil?” the other requested, and suddenly Indis was sure where she’d seen her: at the High Feast, in a gown of deepest purple or midnight blue, the color seeming to change as she shifted from one foot to the other, now standing to the side of her dour husband the Doom-master; now overtaken by his shadow. Indis pulled myself to my feet as quickly as her girth allowed and offer the best curtsey she could manage. “Vairë,” she said, her voice a mixture of delight and awe that seemed odd even to her own ears, before adding in a more somber tone, “my lady.”

Indis felt a thumb under her chin, tilting her head so she could not help but meet Vairë’s gaze, and was surprised to find her laughing. Smiling, at least, which seemed as much the same thing, coming from one of the Valar and in such a solemn place. “We’ll have none of that,” Vairë said; “someone might see.” She offered Indis her arm for balance and eased her back onto the bench before taking her seat beside her. “I never cared for the way your people look at me, when we must appear in full glory at your feasts. As if I were some untouchable thing, a doom of my own to be avoided.” She plucked a flower out of her hair and twisted it between her fingers before placing it so its stem rested in a knot in the wood of the bench’s back, between us. “I do not blame you, or your kind. It is to be expected as a Doom-master’s wife, I suppose.”

The old fears sprung up with full force in Indis’s mind. Had she seen Findis in one of her lord’s feared visions, or did she even feature in Vairë’s tapestries, her life already committed to some fearful legacy? “Is that how you know of my daughter?” she asked at last. “You certainly have never met her at banquet; she was too young at the last one. And I think I would have heard if you’d come to her in Túna.”

“Nothing so lofty as that!” Vairë said, and this time she was laughing in truth. “No; I called on Ingwë your uncle some months ago. He has devised some new lamps he is quite proud of, that illuminate equally well whether Laurelin or Telperion is in bloom. I think that was the whole reason he invited me, so perhaps I might let slip some word of praise or doom over his new invention.”

“Always with the lamps,” Indis said. “He has been talking of nothing else for months; you’d think he’d designed them himself. But the Vanyar are not known for their inventiveness, so I suppose any new thing will seem quite an accomplishment to them. Fëanáro has designed better ones that can light the whole of the cellar, where no outside light can come in, and one lamp will illuminate the whole vast chamber. But we haven’t had the heart to tell Ingwë yet.”

“Let him have his fun,” Vairë said. “I wouldn’t have gone at all, but I was called to visit my sisters and was glad of a reason to go out on my own errand.” Indis smiled before she caught herself, then smiled some more in spite of her companion’s stature, for why not? Perhaps even the Valar could fall victim to a too-full house and the need for a bit of air. “I revealed nothing about his lamps,” Vairë continued, “which was easy enough as there was little enough to reveal. They are quite cunning for this moment of time, but in a century will be wholly eclipsed by your Fëanáro’s design. But there is no need to burden him with that knowledge quite yet.”

Vairë’s brow arched just so, and Indis wondered if this was the tell of a smirk, suppressed for propriety’s sake or some other purpose to which she was not privy; or if Indis was reading too much into a creature whose ways were so alien to her own. “I will say this, my lady,” Indis said after a moment’s pause. “You are quite unlike I would have imagined you: dressed like that, you might well be an ostler, and you laugh as easily as I would have with my sisters in my youth; one would hardly name you one of the holy ones, much less the mistress of the dead. I would know the story of how you two came to be partnered. But first, you still did not answer my question: how came you to know of Findis?”

“There is a certain painting hung in your uncle’s study,” Vairë explained. “Clearly painted by a child, but quite well done; and its artist clearly much beloved by your uncle. As a fellow artist I naturally took a certain interest; and as one who works in foretelling. It had the body of an otter, but with the beak of a duck melded onto its face. Do you know it? They called it a plah-dee-plah.”

Inwardly Indis groaned; then not so inwardly. “Plah-dee-puss,” she corrected. “After the squawk it would make if it saw you coming, then the equally unpleasant squawk if you stepped on its belly was mistake. Findis was quite definite on that. I cannot believe he had it framed, much less hung it for all to see. It was a gift from Findis, yes, made when she turned ten; good enough for one so young but there are certainly more skilled painters in my uncle’s employ.” She paused, then added: “They are quite – quite fond of Findis, more so even than my cousins’ children. She was quite ill for a long time; they likely feared she would die.” She left unsaid the self-pitying observation that she had caused so much pain to so many, with her failures by Findis, and hoped Vairë could not perceive such unworthy thoughts.

“Plah-dee-puss,” Vairë repeated, as if awed; as if one such as she could be awed). “They hung it for love of her,” she continued after a pause, “and of you, not in praise of her skill. Fëanáro is a very different kind of child, you know, and quite ingenious with works of his hands; but to paint such a delicate canvas as silk would be beyond his abilities, even now. The insight in her chosen subject would have been wholly beyond his grasp.” Indis did not know what to make of that so sat in silence, waiting for Vairë to continue. “We crafted an island far to the south of the lands around Cuiviénen. My brothers and sisters and I. It was not foretold.

“You know of my brother Tulkas, He Who Laughs?” Väire continued. “He came last into this world and was a vital hero in our earliest wars against Melkor. But like all of our kind, once he came into Arda he felt a fundamental drive to create new things. The trouble was, he was never the best student of the Song” – Indis started to ask what she meant, but thought better of it, not wanting this story to remain untold – “and the creatures he called into being were – well. Unlike anything imagined beforehand. Some were so vicious, we dared not unleash them upon the beasts of our own design; others were simply odd, and we could not guess how they might interact. Like your plah-dee-puss, with the body of an otter but the beak of a duck. Still, we were not willing to destroy them for that indifference; so we created a home for them, set apart but where they might find what path might be available to them. It is quite astonishing that an elf, and a child at that, should perceive them so clearly. She even caught the name, or nearly; Tulkas insists it will one day be called the platypus.”

“But surely that must be mere chance!” Indis answered. “How could she possibly have known?”

“More likely that she caught a wisp of the truth than that she invented such a multi-faceted thing in her mind, so near to what exists in truth on that far-off island. I mentioned the Song. Before my kind came into the world, we sung it together, were taught it by our father, the One. It was a sort of plan for how the world might come to be. We each remember something of our own parts – with as much clarity as you remember the hymns you sung at the last feast, perhaps, but it is something. And you can hear echoes of it, too, in the tree-leaves rustling in the breeze or the wave breaking against the shore. Estë thinks your kind are too deaf to hear it, particularly your young, but she has spent so much time hounded by your son. He is your son, you know, as much as he is Míriel’s.”

She grinned and shook her had at some memory. “Fëanáro came often to Estë’s gardens in the years after Míriel’s demise, as you might expect. We would never have barred the gates. But he was a rambunctious child, and we had little enough peace in those years. Much more likely to disturb a pond by pelting stones into it than to listen for the water’s meaning. But that Findis should hear the truth and come so near to it, with no one to teach her the ways of the Song: she may have an acuity Fëanáro’s boundless energy drowns out. I would like to meet her, perhaps teach her a little of my art.”

Indis sat stark still and felt her skin grow clammy-cold at that prospect. Míriel had come to these gardens and had been called to sleep forever. Few would find the courage to put it thus, but could one not say Námo had claimed her? And Manwë had given his special permission to allow Finwë to marry again. An artisan could not lay claim to his invention if he built it with materials from another person’s shop; could these Valar not lay the same claim on Findis? “You shall not have my child,” she said fiercely. “Finwë would not allow it. I do not allow it.”

The mirth left Vairë’s expression in an instant, and her eyes, so crystal-clear, betrayed a deep sorrow. “You think I would just steal her away. But I am the Námo’s wife, and this is Míriel’s resting-place. Of course you would think us capable.”

Indis chose her words carefully; ordered her thoughts carefully as well. She had not entirely ruled out the possibility that Vairë could perceive the thoughts she didn’t give voice to, but she would at least attempt diplomacy. “Míriel grew tired of this world and so chose to live in yours,” she said. “You gave me my husband, and without that Findis would not have come to be. But she is mine, as is this new child, and I will not give them over willingly.”

Vairë plucked the alfirin-blossom from the bench between them, wove its stem between her fingers and seemed lost in the breath of the silky threads along its stalk against her skin. “That you could think such a thing of me,” she whispered to herself. Then, directed to Indis: “You asked how I came to be partnered with Námo. I might ask the same of you. You were born a queen, and raised to be the same; you could have had your choice of princes; or none at all, had that been your wish. Yet you chose Finwë. You left your childhood home for him, knowing Míriel’s doom and what led her to it; knew, too, how Finwë had petitioned the lord of all Arda to dissolve his first marriage largely because he desired more children. You cannot claim ignorance where any of this is concerned, and yet you still chose him.”

“Lord Finwë does have – compensating qualities,” Indis answered.

Vairë smiled at that, and something of the doom that had pressed so tightly around them dissipated. “There is a joy to be had in the making of new life; I well remember.”

Indis felt herself blushing red at that implication but shook her head. “I did not mean that; or not only that.” She looked down at her finger, twisted the silver ring inlaid with the tiny pearls Finwë had found down by the sea and devised the method to join together. The gold band on her other hand was a mark of their promise, but this mark of their betrothal had been a fresh invention, in that land where so much was already created that one needed to claw out a space for anything new; and Indis still wore it from sentiment now that its earlier promise had been overlaid by their later vows.

“I have known princes all my life, that is true,” Indis said, “but none like him. So many of the Vanyar are content to sit and learn at your feet.” Surprised at her own boldness, she quickly added, “That is a noble path, and my cousins have been well paid for their attentions; they have become masters of working within the world as it is. But Finwë would pry open clams and find the pearls within. He was eager to discover new things, to find space where things not yet invented might be called into being, and he longed to build a kingdom he might govern under his own authority. The world that might have been; or might yet be.” She righted the silver ring, tracing a finger over the inlaid pearls for a moment more before letting her hand fall to her side again. “He would have welcomed a land like your distant isle, my Finwë, if it came with the peace of Valinor as well.” Indis was smiling now, and saw no reason to conceal it. “I found that prospect – well. Invigorating. And while I grieve Míriel’s fate and fear it might one day claim me as well, still I cannot regret the place I now have with our – my – lord. He is a good man, and with a spirit quite unlike any I have ever known.”

“Now there is the queenly spirit I remember!” Vairë said, grasping Indis’s hand with hers so the alfirin was sandwiched between their palms. She took Indis’s hand in hers, squeezed in camaraderie, and when the vala’s hand fell away the flower stayed sitting in the cup of Indis’s palm. Leaning back again, Indis took a closer look at the flower, feeling that Vairë had somehow given her permission to examine it more closely. “You asked such impertinent questions as a child. Varda’s handmaids, the ones who came to instruct your kind in Túna, came back full of the tales of them. And while Varda likened you to a colt in need of breaking to saddle, I grieved against that possibility. I wish you would remember the ember that so obviously glows warm within your chest. Not the kiln-fire of Finwë; or Fëanáro, the blaze that will give light to the whole world if it does not raze it first. You are a hearth-blaze, burning low and long into the night, less noticed perhaps but no less vital to the next day’s work.

“As for Námo, it was much the same with me,” Vairë added. “Though you probably will not see it. Your Finwë sounds as distinct from Námo as night is from day! I only mean that they both have a quality many people undervalue, that to an outsider might seem quite offputting and even dangerous; but to you and I, with our temperaments so in complement to theirs, they make for quite the alluring match. Quite the good match; he has taught me the need to share my wisdom with the wider world, and I – I hope! – the perils of doing that too readily. Though he still has much to learn on that point, you should have seen him in the earlier days.” Then, turning her attention to the flower now in Indis’s hands, she asked, “Have you ever seen the alfirin? On the hills where they grow wild?”

Indis shook her head. “We do not go their of our own choice,” she said. “It is a holy place.”

“A pity,” Vairë said. “You have my invitation, if you ever want to come there, and I will tell Manwë as much should he raise the least objection.” Her voice seemed to take on a far-off quality, like when Indis’s father had told her tales of Cuiviénen long into the night, as sleepiness crept in around the edges of their storytelling. He would never speak of those days in the plain light of day. “There is such a sense of history,” Vairë continued, “and doom, perhaps, under all the joy and beauty of that place. History that has not yet happened; though the weight of it is plain for those with eyes to see. The alfirin is unusually beautiful, too, even measured against the other flowers that grow there, but in its own way has an air of doom, or fate, about it. Yavanna created it to be a flower to adorn the houses of the dead, of their bodies; and so I thought to plant some here, for Míriel’s remains are the closest we have to such things in these Undying Lands. I had thought to plant them here.”

Indis examined the flower more closely. Its fragrance was sweet, like lilies-of-the-valley but steeped in morning dew; and the petals were silken and white and curved along a gentle slope that fit perfectly in the hand, at least when one was not caught off-guard and startled into nearly dropping it. But the stem was cut off, and there was little hope of replanting. “It won’t take root again.” There was a deep regret in her voice, surprising even her. How odd that she should feel so invested in the replanting!

“No,” Vairë said. “Yavanna meant it as a flower for the dead, and so it will be; but not yet, and not here. Námo revealed to me that it will somehow be carried back across the Sea, and there cultivated by other people like you, Children of the One, though they will die much more easily and have more need of mourning, and also be more blinded to their true nature.” Indis was puzzled at that, and felt sure her confusion was writ plainly across her face; but she thought perhaps she understood enough. That there were others like her, but different; and that they would need the comfort of those flowers more than elven-kind. “Their fathers will grow old with age,” Vairë said; “or not. Some will be culled before their full span of years, and mourned in tragedy as well as in sorrow. But none shall be blessed, or cursed, to endure as your kind must. And when at last they cannot continue, they will be laid down to sleep and not wake again: like with Míriel, only the sons will do the laying. And they will bury the bodies left behind by their fleeing souls under the hills near their homes; the fathers of all the generations before laid out together.”

The flower had fallen from Indis’s hand onto the pelted bench between them. She was struck dumb by those words. She picked up the flower again, if only because it was some task with which she could busy her hands, but then found she didn’t know what to do with it and returned it to the knot in the bench’s back between them. “My kind are all familiar with the fate of these other children, when we remember it,” Vairë continued at last. “We forget so easily. But this morning when Námo told me about the flower’s role in their grieving, and he reminded me of the long history of Eä – of Arda, and of all who will dwell within it. The later children will plant it on the hills above their dead, he said, and they will call It the simbelmynë. That word was quite clear in Námo’s mind, though he could not tell me its meaning, for their language has not yet been invented. But he was equally clear that the flower must carry with it a great sorrow so it will know how to comfort those bearing up under their own losses, and so the seeds carried across the sea must be born of parents planted upon the Ezellohar.”

She seemed to hesitate, and after a moment Indis asked, “I cannot see the purpose of it staying there. Ezellohar is so beautiful, and utterly free of such troubles, or so I have been told.”

“And so it will always be,” Vairë agreed. “Beautiful, I mean; but not always so trouble-free. Námo tried to tell me why, but I would not let him tell me. That would have been to confirm the disaster.”

Indis sat silently as long as she could, but she was no longer a true daughter of the Vanyar; and impertinent questions were no longer the anathema to her they might have been to their cousins. “You believe some sorrow will befall the Ezellohar; here, in the heart of Aman. Surely we must do whatever we can to avert that doom. Why should your lord be muzzled in silence?”

“A worthy question,” Vairë said, and a shadow of her former smile returned, though it was still only a shadow. “But consider this: Finwë and Ingwë, and the rest of your kind, you can make a claim and work out if it in facts mirrors reality. The same is true of much of my kin: Manwë and Varda, Yavanna and Aulë, even – especially – our beloved Tulkas with his plah-dee-pusses. But Námo and I work in wisdom and history. When he tells a thing, or when I weave it, things cannot help turning out as we foretell. If he were to say – and if, Indis; I pronounce no fate here! – if he were to say that an earthquake would strike Ezellohar in a thousand years’ time, and Telperion and Laurelin would be cast into a fiery pit, and all Eä cast into inky darkness, it must happen just as he said; even if it wouldn’t have come to be if he had never uttered those words. His words have the power to shape history, as do my stitches. It is a perilous power, and so I caution him against speaking where silence would do just as well.”

Indis frowned, trying to make sense of those words. Laurelin was shining more brightly by the moment, heating the air as if it were a great oven. Under her skirts the skin around her belly felt chafed, sore and pulled too tight, and even with the advantages of the bench-back she felt a sharp pain between her shoulders from sitting so still for so long. Still, this was one of the Valar; surely it was short-sighted not to grasp what wisdom could be had from a conversation with her; she should at least try. “So by declaring a thing he would be ensuring it happened,” Indis said. “But surely that wouldn’t matter, for how could Námo be mistaken? Particularly if, as you say, he cannot but speak the truth?”

Vairë hummed to herself, noncommittally. “It would become true once he said it, and certainly he would try to speak what would have been true regardless. But surely you must know we holy ones, as you name us, are far from infallible. We were compelled to encourage your kin to leave Cuiviénen, did everything within our powers to bring you to the safety of Aman, yet if Elwë had not turned aside there would be no Girdle about – “ She stopped short, and Indis, in spite of her bodily exhaustion, found herself driven with a sudden interest to hear the rest of that sentence. “You know nothing about Melian, do you?” Indis sat stark-still, as any reply would but close off that line of inquiry. “No, of course,” Vairë continued. “Your tribe left the shores of that land while he was still lost, and just one lost elf among the many. Suffice it to say that truth can be a tricky thing, and it is not nearly so inevitable as it may seem.” Her gaze fell on the bed of flowers not far from their feet. “I may have made that mistake myself, not so long ago, and so Míriel lays in slumber.”

“That is a story worth telling!” Indis all but cried; then, as if remembering to whom she spoke, added, “if my lady would indulge me in the telling.”

“You would not take ‘no’ for an answer, or I would not sit here talking to you,” Vairë said, and her eyes glinted mischievously. “Let Varda have her acolytes; I much prefer those with the spirit and insight to help me question what yet could be. But that must wait, for the tale will be a long time in its telling, and Laurelin has already grown quite bright indeed. I will have a challenging enough hunt finding my spiders as it is. And Findis should hear it, perhaps, for it concerns her as well. But for your present comfort I will say this: Míriel may have had no choice in her fate; or perhaps she made the choice she always would have made. But I fear I saw one future for her and so hemmed in her other possibilities. I am not certain; but I may have. You are a different person in any event, and shall have no shadow of interference from me.”

“Oh, you must tell me more than that!” Indis cried. “Now even moreso.”

“I will; but not today. I only meant to say, whatever Miriel’s choice or whatever reality compelled her death, it need not be so with you. Your kind believe a babe takes its toll on the mother, and there is some truth in that; but it need not be to the ending of her life. You are quite different in your qualities, quite aside from any effect my missteps might have had on the past. And while I will not foretell, you are well-matched with Finwë, and quite capable of finding your happiness with him, fool that he was to prize more children above the qualities a worthy wife might carry in her own being. I hope you will find it, and think you may, so long as you put aside whatever you hear from those nattering fools your lord’s court foists upon you.”

“They mean well,” Indis said gently, “and some I would even choose as friends of my own accord. But some of the rest, I would gladly have fall into a gorge.”

“Then cleave to the good,” Vairë said, “and leave the rest to their own fates. No gorges are needed. And bring Findis when you can; I will be here, and there is much we could learn from each other. Now I must see to my spiders. Will you come with me, or will you sit and read?”

“I have had quite enough of sitting, but I can hardly climb up trees with you.” She gestured at her body and found herself sighing in her frustration. “New life is a blessing and a joy, but I would quite prefer it continue beyond the bounds of my body, soon as may be.” She paused, then added, “Why must you hunt spiders, and here of all places?”

“For their silk,” Vairë answered; “for my weaving. I could just call the silk into being – could so call the whole tapestry if I chose – but then the silk would bear the imprint of my own will upon it; and my tapestries would be weighted in my own way of being. And I would have no reason to leave Námo behind for a time and walk about beneath Laurelin’s warmth.” She helped Indis to her feet and handed her the rucksack. “Come; you can carry the bag and catch the spiders as I find them.”

“Would I be agreeing to have spiders thrown at me, should I agree?”

“Only so long as the light lasts, and I will just drop them in. I never miss; well, rarely.” Vairë pulled the silver curtain aside and started to duck under the branches before turning once more to speak to Indis. “You would be welcome, my lady; but come or come not, Laurelin waits for no woman. The choice is yours.”

Then she walked briskly out beyond the silver leaves, leaving Indis to follow in her own time; and Indis, quite to her surprise, found herself more than willing to hurry after her. If a spider down the bodice was the price of such charming company, so be it. She hurried after, eager that Vairë should not move wholly beyond her sight.

---

Chapter End Notes

”Now it is told that in the bearing of her son Míriel was consumed in spirit and body; and that after his birth she yearned for rest from the labour of living. And she said to Finwë ‘Never again shall I bear a child; for strength that would have nourished the life of many have gone forth into Fëanáro.’ Then Manwë granted the prayer of Míriel. And she went to Lorien, and laid her down to sleep upon a bed of flowers [>beneath a silver tree]; and there her fair body remained unwithered in the keeping of the maidens of Estë. But her spirit passed to rest in the halls of Mandos.

“Finwë’s grief was great and he gave to his son all the love that he had for Miriel; for Fëanáro was like his mother in voice and countenance. Yet Finwë was not content, and he desired to have more children. He spoke, therefore, [>After some years, therefore, he spoke] to Manwë, saying: ‘Lord, behold! I am bereaved; and alone among the Eldar I am without a wife, and must hope for no sons save one, and no daughter. Whereas Ingwë and Olwë beget many children in the bliss of Aman. Must I remain ever so?’

“[…]And in the years following [>But when three years more had passed] Finwë took a second spouse Indis of the Vanyar, of the kin [>sister] of Ingwë; and she bore five fair children of whom her two sons are most renowned in the histories of the Noldor. But her eldest child was a daughter, Findis. […]”

(from “The Earliest Version of the Story of Finwë and Míriel,” Morgoth’s Ring)

“Also the Eldar say that in the begetting, and still more in the bearing of children, greater share and strength of their being, in mind and in body, goes forth than in the making of mortal children. For these reasons it came to pass that the Eldar brought forth few children. […]

“In all such things, not concerned with the bringing forth of children, the neri and nissi (that is, the men and women) of the Eldar are equal – unless it be in this (as they themselves say): that for the nissi the making of things new is for the most part shown in the forming of their children, so that invention and change is otherwise mostly brought about by the neri.”

(from “Laws and Customs Among the Eldar,” Morgoth’s Ring)