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“I like to be with you,” Ingoldo says, bumping his shoulder against Makalaurë’s, “because it is so peaceful, to see your end.”
They’re sitting together on the low sloping rooftop of Ingoldo’s father’s house, where they have expressly been forbidden from climbing, to watch the mingling hour. It is a special night indeed; above them a pretty rain of stars falls the sea, their light blending prettily with the rising tide of gold.
Makalaurë takes up his pipe—his father’s pipe, taken also without leave— and takes a long drag of the smoke. Coughs violently. “I don’t know what you mean,” he says.
“Oh, you know,” Ingoldo says, “the after.”
Speaking so he casts his eyes beyond Maglor and into the Fate that is wrapped all about him; the lulling sound of the sea, the cry of gulls, the mournful ringing of a single bell.
“The shore, Káno,” he says, “where you shall go.”
Makalaurë laughs. “What did you smoke, cousin?” he asks. Ingoldo laughs also, by impulse—ever he laughs when other people are laughing—and touches Makalaurë’s mind, looking for the words to describe what he means.
He finds nothing. Makalaurë, he realizes with some surprise, simply does not watch people die.
Ingoldo is three years old.
It is a sunny, mild winter morning. His father, who has taken to bringing Ingoldo everywhere with him, takes him from the arms of his maid and bundles him into a lovely blue coat. Ingoldo is delighted with its sleeves, which are set with pearl, and with the shimmer of the silk in the light, and as they walk down into the courtyard he entertains himself by playing with the buttons.
“Today I will meet with a new steward,” his father says, “for Orvion leaves, as you know, to spend some years in the mountains. I hope you remember well you manners, dear.”
Ingoldo admires at the light caught inside the emeralds in his father’s braid—he is of an age to be an ardent admirer of shiny things—and promises that certainly he shall.
They sit outside, by the grove of silver birches. The new steward comes accompanied by his own son, a quiet dark-eyed boy some five or six years Ingoldo’s senior, and when the introductions are over and the conversation takes a turn into quite boring particulars, Arafinwë puts his hand on Ingoldo’s shoulder.
“Why don’t you go and play with Enedrion, little mouse? You may show him your fort, or take him to throw snow into the river.”
Ingoldo nods—he is a little shy, still, to speak in front of strangers—and hops down from the carved wooden bench. He holds his hand out to the steward’s son, smiling.
Enedrion smiles back. He is plainly dressed and quite ordinary-looking, but his face is warm, his eyes kind. Ingoldo is well prepared to like him.
But then he turns to the light, and sees the boy’s throat is cut open and that red blood is spilling out, that his brown tunic has been pulled to shreds and that something white like whale bone is gleaming underneath, that a little pink tube is hanging from the open hole in his stomach. Somewhere something howls, twisted and awful, and all is dark and it’s Ingoldo’s fault and he’s so so sorry.
He screams, and it must be very sharp and startling because Enedrion screams also, and out of an excess of feeling Ingoldo throws himself on the ground and gets his nice blue coat all muddy and screams and screams and now his father is picking him and asking him what’s wrong, what he’s so scared of, if he’s tired or hungry or hurt, and Ingoldo screams and screams because he doesn’t want to be here with the wolves and blood and the mean grey stone but it’s all his fault so he’s gotta be.
He thinks his father must carry him inside. They have a conversation that goes round and round in circles. He tells his father he’s scared of wolves and the dark and people getting hurt and his father tells him that there are no wolves, and that outside it is quite light, and that no one at all is hurt, and he says yes there are, and his father tells him no there aren’t, and then Ingoldo throws him himself on the floor again and pounds his fists against the ground and screams real loud, and his father says, please explain to me how you’re feeling right now, dear, and Ingoldo is feeling really really bad, probably the worst a little elf has felt, ever, in the history of everything, and so when his father reaches to dry his tears he bites his hand, and then he cries more because he’s really sorry he did that.
So it comes to pass that Ingoldo rides to the Gardens of Lorien, sitting between his mother and his father in the lovely carriage with the plush green pillows. On the ride there his mother entertains him by reading poetry, and his father sits blank-faced and sad, looking out the window. Ingoldo tries not to worry of it, for he was told to be happy so much as he might.
In the garden he forgets his troubles. Huge red and blue flowers hang from deep green vines, and flat grey rocks on the path are perfectly made to jump on, and something smells sweet as honey. And there is the dead queen, lying all alone in the meadow. There he has the bright thought that perhaps he ought to go and brush her pretty white hair. But his father says no, by no means at all, so instead he focuses on the rocks and the wonderful puddles to dip his bare feet into, and almost misses Estë’s arrival.
Estë bends down, and opens her arms to him. Her face is an odd mixture of his mother’s features and his father’s, though she is three heads taller than both of them, and has six arms. Ingoldo is too little to be discomfited by any of it, so he runs up to say hello.
She catches him in her arms, and takes him up. One of her long-fingered hands smoothes back his hair. “What a darling thing you are,” she says, “have you hurt yourself, little one?”
Ingoldo shakes his head no, much too shy to speak.
“He is troubled,” his mother’s voice, far below them, “he speaks of things which are not there.”
“Ah,” Estë says, and then she looks into his eyes for a long while.
Underneath the silver drops in her eyes the are deep black holes, and within them stars. Ingoldo watches them, and feels her watch him in turn, feels her gentle precise hands untangle the messy threads of his thought. She sees something within him that makes her laugh; then she is somber; then clearly charmed. She likes him, he can feel, and so he smiles. He likes to be liked.
“There is nothing at all wrong with him,” Estë says. “He is precisely as he was meant to be, in body and in spirit. Bright and lovely; well-made and well-tended to, with a wonderful ear for music. It is only the Song which is marred, and its healing is beyond me.”
“This will not hurt him?” his father asks.
“That I cannot say,” Estë says. She kisses the top of Finrod’s head, then his two cheeks in turn, then she sets him down on the grass. He looks up at her, and she catches again his gaze. “You need not healing, little darling. You are well as you are.”
Then she holds out one of her hands, in which is a slice of a caramel apple. Ingoldo eats it, quite satisfied with the day.
Ingoldo sits in the theater, between his mother and his father, and watches the play. Little Artaresto is tucked against his mother’s chest, sucking on his thumb in his sleep, and Ingoldo tries not to let the babe bother him. No one else comments on the screams and the fire, the scent of smoke clinging to Artaresto in the just beyond; Ingoldo knows he’s being too sensitive, too childish. He ought to be stronger. He’s a big brother, now.
The first act closes out, the dancers falling to the floor of the stage, red billowing scarves falling over them. The music comes to a crescendo. Falls. Then the curtains close, and his mother rises to slip outside and nurse. Ingoldo watches her, uneasy.
“Does something trouble you, dear heart?” his father asks him, ever sensitive to his moods.
“No,” Ingoldo says, then, “just the play, I think. It frightens me a small bit, yet I am very brave and certainly will weather it well.”
His father laughs, the way he laughs when Ingoldo says things like that, and reaches to run a hand over Ingoldo’s braids, smoothing his hair back behind his ears. “It used to frighten me too, when I was a child,” he says, “but it is all part of Ilúvatar’s plan for us. It was quite frightful before we came here, and yet good came of it; it shall be quite frightful in the end of days, and yet good will come of it, too. Are you not excited to know the other kindreds, when we come to share their fate, and see beyond?”
“I am excited to know the other kindreds,” Ingoldo says, without fully believing it. It is hard for him to picture a kind of person that is not an elf, though he supposes it would be interesting to see one. Perhaps they would have more arms, or eyes, as the Ainur sometimes do. Or fewer, which would be a little alarming. It would be neat, he thinks, if they could fly. “Aulë speaks of dwarves.”
“So indeed,” his father says, “dwarves must be charming.”
Then his mother returns to the theater, and the curtains lift. Ingoldo listens to his new brother’s quiet whimpers and watches a play about the end of the world. He thinks the dancing very pretty.
There are a few sorts of people, Ingoldo comes to learn. There are those—as his two brothers, Angamaitë and Aikanáro, as Findekáno and Russandol, who are his cousins, and Fëanáro, his least favorite uncle—who carry with them fire, and ash. There are others, as Turukáno, whose echoes carry swords and shields, whose bodies lie mangled beneath their shrouds. Makalaurë and little Itarillë find their fates in the sea.
(He hates the horrible, headless thing that follows Tyelkormo, and does all he can to see his cousin as little as he might. Fate lurks behind him all the while, and taunts him, sings. You will not escape him forever. You will not escape him for long.)
But two sorts of people are the most common. Those who have no fate at all that he might see—his parents, his sister, his aunts, his Vanyar cousins—and whose whose song ends in ice, of whom there are none in his immediate family until Turukáno brings home Elenwë and weds her.
He likes the ice so much as he might, for it is in its own way very pretty, for he can see all of their features preserved well under its blueish touch. He draws icy figures often, and puts them in galleries, and is praised for the surreal beauty of his work, and by then he knows to say nothing but that he has heard the chords of it among the great melody.
“We shall all live,” Írissë says, “if only we are careful, and ration well, and remain all close in friendship.” She draws her seal skin tighter around herself, and turns back to look at them. Snow lands in her hair, flecks of white on pure darkness. “Do you not agree, Ingo, Turno?”
“We must remain close in friendship,” Ingoldo echoes, soft.
“We shall all live,” Turukáno says, his voice firm, his words final, “do not entertain any other thought.”
“We shall be fine,” Elenwë agrees, walking next to him. Ingoldo cannot help but look past her, to her mirror-side, where her lips are blue, unmoving.
Finrod Felagund builds a city and watches it burn. It is an odd exercise, a little as setting afire a painting his not yet begun. The dwarven craftsman think him odd, because often he will see a room and weep; but he cannot weep in front of his own men, for he does not wish them disheartened.
“It’s beautiful,” he says, again and again, “it’s hidden. It is just as the Lord of Waters has told me, and he would not lead us astray.”
(It will be frightful, his father’s voice whispers, but something good will come it.)
“Will you not wed?” Galadriel asks him, as they walk along a wooded path.
Finrod feels two sets of chains about him; one of his own making, the silver beauty of elven words tucked against song, the power of an oath, and one dark and terrible, wrought by the hands of the enemy black.
“No,” he says, “I am not meant for such things.”
“I would not think ill of you,” Galadriel says, plainly prying, “if you were to tell me that you wanted—”
“An oath I shall swear,” Finrod says, “and go, by it, into darkness.”
She watches him, her eyes bright, disbelieving. “You cannot tell me you can bear it,” she says, “to hold yourself so far apart. There must be something you desire.”
“Safety,” Finrod says, “beauty. Peace. Redemption, even. Can I desire that?”
“Certainly,” Galadriel says, and chucks a pinecone at him. He thinks she leaves the conversation with the impression he is not much fond of female company.
Finrod had wished, in truth, to hunt with Maglor. How Maedhros had ended up tagging along is no great mystery, and in another mood their combined company would be pleasant to him. But now, the first days of autumn heavy around them, the days short, he is profoundly weary of endings.
“I have heard there was pheasant to be had,” Maedhros says. He is sharpening a knife, an odd thing to do with one hand, the whole business balanced precariously on his knees. Behind him the fire blazes, bubbles. It is hotter than the last time Finrod had seen him.
“Pheasant, then,” Maglor agrees, “I think we ought to move eastwards.”
Finrod makes a noncommittal sound, something they might take for a yes. Then he turns and walks into the woods, barefoot, his pack still on the forest floor, and does not return.
They are not dwarves, and so they must be Men. They are sleeping on the open plain, their faces bare to the moonlight. Finrod stands over them and is overwhelmed by their fate, hanging about them in the air; he has never been seen Sickness so commonplace, and wonders if some awful Doom had been placed upon them, to make them so susceptible to her touch.
An older man sleeps by twinkling embers of their campfire. His hands rest upon a harp, oddly small and bow-shaped, carved out of wood. His is dark yet streaked with grey, sparkling slightly silver in the moonlight. Finrod bends to examine the instrument, and sees instead the man.
Not as he is now; instead before his eyes the man shrinks and withers and fades. His hands shake and his eyes dull, his mind wanders; he calls out for the dead and knows not the living. Illness, Finrod thinks, having no other word for it. But behind that he feels his own bitter tears, grief borrowed from a day not yet come. Their like he does not know.
I can turn back, he thinks, do I hear this now so I need not play the next chord?
He feels his own hands shake. For a moment he can see himself fleeing back into the woods, into the darkness, into the underground safety of his city. He can feel the ghost of a touch on his wrists, his ankles, his neck. It’s cold.
He reaches down and smoothes back the Man’s hair, studies his features, knowing not himself that he looks for. There is something to his skin like the bark of a tree, weathered with age and wind and moss. It’s pretty, Finrod thinks, tree-bark and silver leaves.
Then he takes up the harp, and begins to play.