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Finduilas of Dol Amroth was a child of the Great Sea. Half of the days of her childhood resulted in her arms and legs encrusted with sand, hair glittering with water beads, lips salted with brine. Her mother laughed and called her her half-fish child, said she should have been born with scales and fins. Her father said it was the Elven blood in her, a strain that ran truer than even the blood of Númenor. Finduilas had never quite understood that—Mithrellas was supposed to have been one of the Wood-Elves, not one of the High Elves—but her passion for the water delved deeper than it did in Imrahil or Ivriniel, and there must have been a source apart for that.
Though Finduilas’s love of the Sea and her home beside it was a dear one, she had counted leaving it for Minas Tirith upon her marriage to be worth the sacrifice it represented. Besides, it was hardly as though she would never again see Dol Amroth, see her home and her family, see the Sea. The length of miles between Dol Amroth and Minas Tirith was a long one, but it was hardly as though they were a world away from one another.
Upon entering that city as a bride, Finduilas found Minas Tirith much the same as she had found it as a maiden: hot and dry, rather dusty in summer months, but warm and welcoming, though the city seemed in a perpetual state of hushed silence as compared to Dol Amroth. This is a fortress town, child, her father told her. You must learn to expect that silence. She was well-loved there, and love could be a balm for many aches, many minor hurts and longings.
Homesickness was one of these things. In the early years of her marriage, Finduilas dwelled on it but seldom. She had many years left in her life, and there would be time enough to see Dol Amroth again, greet the sparkling waters of the Great Sea. Still, there would come moment when Denethor, or one of his sisters, or Ecthelion, or even the strange interloper Thorongil, would come and put their hand on her shoulder—“Are you well? You seem… abstracted.”—and she would find that she had been staring absently out a window, staring west.
-0-0-0-
It was the dead of night, and yet the sky in the East was lit up as though the Sun might show herself at any moment: infernal red and gold on the Ephel Dúath. All the men of the Steward’s household had abandoned their beds in favor of the Council chambers, leaving the women and children of the household to gather by the windows, and stare east. Indeed, Finduilas thought it might have been the first time she had ever had occasion to stare east instead of west.
The light… Finduilas drew her mantle closer about herself, willing herself not to look down and see it reflected on Boromir’s small face. She knew what lied beyond the Ephel Dúath, but it was just… just a fire, wasn’t it? A fire burning out of control in the dead lands; surely the only real threat it posed was in the possibility that the fire would spill over the mountains into the borderlands.
It was only a fire, surely.
So why, why was it that when Finduilas stared into its light, she felt as though something was reaching back into her, something cold and oily? Why did she feel so cold when she looked at that light?
“Finduilas?”
Haleth, Denethor’s younger sister, was at the door, one of her ladies-in-waiting fidgeting in her shadow. Finduilas turned, grateful for a distraction form the spectacle outside, but before she could even open her mouth, Haleth’s dark eyes flashed, and she turned to her pale-faced, rather disheveled lady-in-waiting. She was… Her name was… Her name escaped Finduilas, presently. She knew the woman, of course, had spoken with her countless times, laughed and commiserated with her, but the cold was on her, and she could not remember her name.
“Meleth.” That was the lady-in-waiting’s name; memory came back to Finduilas as sharp as a knife. “Take Boromir back to the nursery, and stay with him there.”
“I don’t want—“ Boromir blurted out, while Finduilas’s voice was still trying to find itself.
Haleth fixed him in a look that was so like her brother’s that Boromir quieted. “I must speak with your mother, little one, and this is not child’s talk. Go with Meleth, now.”
Meleth gave him little opportunity to object, sweeping him up in her arms before he could even squirm. Her face still pale and pinched, she bobbed an awkward, ponderous curtsey to Finduilas and Haleth in turn before leaving the room. Finduilas’s bright gray eyes found Haleth’s dark ones, and the latter sighed and shut the door with a firm click.
“It always puts the city in an uproar when… that starts,” Haleth remarked, looking around the room for something—a water pitcher, perhaps; she was searching tabletops and windowsills. “I had suspected you would be awake, though I’m sorry your son woke to see it too—at his age, well, I would not have wished him exposed to it, in your place.”
“Haleth,” Finduilas said weakly, having found her voice at last. She braced her hand on the deep windowsill, as her pulse pounded in her fingertips. “The light over the windows… Is it some sort of fire, or…” She trailed off, words failing her once again.
Confusion stole over Haleth’s face, but she seemed to understand soon enough. The moment of understanding, signified by her carven features softening in something like pity, was worse than scorn or continued confusion. “Oh,” Haleth muttered. “Oh.”
Haleth was not an especially gentle woman. There were whispers, unkind ones, to be sure, that the reason she was yet unwed at her age was that no man could tolerate her sword-sharp tongue. She was like Ivriniel, solitary by nature, and also like Ivriniel, possessed little patience for those who could not keep pace with her quick mind. But gently did she approach Finduilas now, wrap her arm about her shoulders, and direct her to the nearest chair.
“What is there to say?” Haleth mused, more to herself than to Finduilas, rubbing her forehead as she found a chair of her own. “All of Gondor knows that our Enemy has returned to Mordor. You know this, don’t you?”
The light danced on the wall and the floor between them, shadows rippling in between like dancers dancing some fevered jig. “As you say—“ Finduilas smoothed her mantle down over her abdomen “—all of Gondor knows. Does he…” She could hardly say it; it hardly bore even countenancing. “…Does he prepare for war?”
Does he ready himself to tear down all that we have built, and to crush the Dúnedain beneath his heel?
Haleth shook her head, though whether in response to Finduilas’s verbally expressed words, or what had seized her heart, Finduilas could not say. “We are not rightly sure what it means.” ‘We’ meaning Ecthelion and Denethor, and perhaps Thorongil, though Finduilas would confess that neither she nor Haleth really considered him worth inclusion. “No scout sent up the Ephel Dúath to determine its source has ever returned. Some foul machinations of the Enemy, I have no doubt.” She sighed heavily, a shadow passing over her face. “No doubt we’ll find out, eventually. I only pray I don’t live to see it.”
Finduilas nodded stiffly, and pushed her back into the cushioned back of her chair. She willed herself not to look towards the window, but the infernal light was all in the room now, and there was a wet, oily coldness in her that sank down to her bones.
-0-0-0-
The story Angelimir was telling his two younger grandchildren that day was a tale that they had heard many times before, but that did not matter to Finduilas, any more than it did to Imrahil. If they had heard it many times before, that was only because it was one of their favorites. Truly beloved tales did not lose their savor in being told twice, or so Finduilas thought.
“The founder of our house was a prince of Belfalas, a lord of high Númenórean blood named Imrazôr,” Angelimir began in his low, rumbling voice, his sea-blue eyes twinkling as he spoke. This tale was an old friend of his as well. “He had long been a friend to the Elves—in those days, Belfalas was home to Elves as well as Men, and there was friendship between the two peoples. Though Imrazôr loved the Sea, he loved the forests of Belfalas also, for in the days of his childhood, he had played there with the Elven children.
“As a man, he often rode through the forests of Belfalas, to hunt or simply to seek respite from his duties at home. One day, while riding alone, Imrazôr came upon an Elven maiden.”
-0-0-0-
She was more tired after giving birth to her second son than she had been with the first. Her mother had come up from Dol Amroth to be with her at the birth, and she had thought it might be so. “Your birth tired me more than Ivriniel’s, and you were smaller than your sister, just as this little one is smaller than your Boromir. It’s just… the way of things, I suppose.”
Her mother had come to half-silent Minas Tirith smelling of salt and sunshine, and for a moment, Finduilas had wanted nothing more than to bury her head in her skirt and weep. (There would be world enough and time to visit Dol Amroth. When the boys were a little older, when she was feeling stronger. It was just a moment’s weakness.)
Boromir had been larger and louder than this second son of Finduilas’s, but it was the second son who left her the most tired. Perhaps it really was as Mother said, that the smaller, quieter babies put more strain on their mothers than their larger, livelier siblings. Still, with each day that passed, Finduilas felt her strength come back to her, in bits and pieces.
Her second son was, Finduilas fancied, rather more like his father than Boromir. Boromir had a sharp mind for so young a child, to be sure, but his high-spirited nature reminded Finduilas rather more of a child of her own home, or even of the half-Dúnadan Prince of Rohan who had summered at Dol Amroth once, when Finduilas was a child. Even as an infant, her second son seemed… otherworldly, in a way. Perhaps it was only Finduilas’s imagination, or perhaps it was the insight of a Dúnadan, but she could easily see him grow to be a man like his father: sharp, wise, and discerning.
Speaking of his father…
“He needs a name.” Denethor reached out and pressed his hand to the head of the baby Finduilas held in her arms. He smiled slightly as the child blinked awake and stared sleepily at him. “You wished to name him, did you not?”
She’d never said it aloud, but had found she did not need to. Discerning indeed was her husband, for he had discovered that desire of hers from a single glance she’d given her second son when she’d first been given him to hold. Finduilas nodded. “Yes, I did.”
Finduilas expected resistance, and when she told him, she did indeed receive resistance. That Denethor might balk, she had expected, and she could understand why he would. The last man of any note to bear the name ‘Faramir’ had met a decidedly unhappy end, and when they had spoken of his tale, what seemed like a lifetime ago, Denethor had admitted that he thought the long-dead prince more than a little foolhardy. “Concern for your kin should not outweigh the importance of preserving the line of the kings,” he had argued. Finduilas had always thought Prince Faramir more a tragic figure than anything else. While she was inclined to agree with Denethor’s assessment to an extent, there was a certain strain of desperation to his character that struck a chord in her.
As it stood now, a long-dead prince was not the first thing that came to mind when Finduilas chose the name she would give her second son. She was, indeed, thinking of the Sea.
‘Jewel of the shore.’
When Denethor reached the same thought, his protests died away. Mostly. “You could, perhaps, name him ‘Falavir’ instead?” he suggested, staring dubiously down at their newly-named son, as though unsettled on his behalf.
Finduilas smiled. “No, my love,” and that was the end of that.
-0-0-0-
“The maiden’s name was Mithrellas. She was handmaiden to Nimrodel, an Elven lady who was the beloved of the Wood-Elf Prince Amroth. Mithrellas had been separated from her mistress, and sought in vain to find her for many months, before coming to the brink of despair. When Imrazôr found her, Mithrellas had come to believe Nimrodel lost, and when Imrazôr offered her shelter in his house, she accepted, for she was unfamiliar with these lands, and did not wish to return to the forests Nimrodel had loved, if Nimrodel was not beside her.”
-0-0-0-
In summer, the dry air was murderous. Whenever Finduilas thought her strength had returned to her, it would depart again, leave her weak and sick. Even a walk down to the gardens was tiring, left her leaning on the arm of her companion, as her grandmother had in the last years of her life, when she was shrunken and frail. The One gave men strange gifts, Finduilas thought, but I do not think this—
There was lit over the rim of the Ephel Dúath, from time to time. Red and gold, flickering like a fire, and its cold seeped down into her bones like winter’s deepest chill, and Finduilas wanted nothing more than to depart from it when she saw it. The impulse that made her avert her gaze from the East was something rooted deeper in her than in any of the people of Minas Tirith. They could, if need be, look east upon the infernal light when it danced in the sky, but this daughter of Dol Amroth could do nothing but turn away. Even the faintest glimpse of the light struck her with a deep, ingrained sense of wrongness. It was as if the very earth cried out against it.
In summer, the parched air set to strangle the air from her lungs.
“Finduilas?” The voice that jogged her into wakefulness made her imagine, for one moment, that she was home, but no, that was only sleep playing tricks. Here was Ivriniel’s narrow, chiseled face, Ivriniel’s sea-blue eyes, Ivriniel’s cool hand on her forehead in waking hours, in Minas Tirith. Finduilas remembered now; Ivriniel had come from Dol Amroth to visit with her nephews, nurse her ailing sister. Though Ivriniel was no healer, it was well-nigh impossible to remove her from the sickroom of anyone she cared for, once she resolved to take up residence there.
Finduilas pulled herself upright in bed, noting as she did so that only a little light slanted in through the shutters on the windows. She drew a smile onto her mouth as she looked into her sister’s somewhat drawn face. “Yes, Ivriniel?”
“Your fever is down, nearly gone,” Ivriniel told her, but still, her voice was still quieter than Finduilas thought she had ever heard from her. “I think it would do you some good to walk in the fresh air—perhaps go down to the gardens—but it would be best if we did so before it becomes too hot outside.”
“Yes.” Finduilas smiled—reassuringly, she thought. “I would like that.”
Ivriniel helped Finduilas dress; no need to wake any of the ladies-in-waiting, since they had decided almost immediately that it would be just the two of them that went on this walk. A faint odor of sweat and sickness clung to Finduilas’s skin. Ivriniel dabbed perfume on her neck and the pulse points on her wrists in an attempt to mask it. This effort failed, and they did not comment on it.
“How are the flowers?” Finduilas asked as they traversed a quiet, darkened hall. If Minas Tirith was half-silent at midday, it was positively sepulchral in its silence in the period between night and proper day. She knew that they could not be the only ones awake; there were the guards whose shifts carried through the night, and the kitchen staff had likely been awake for the past two hours, at least. (It used to be that Finduilas would be down in the kitchens by this time, inspecting the meal cooked for breakfast before it went out. Haleth had taken over that duty now, as she had taken over many things when Finduilas first fell ill.) And yet, there were moments when Finduilas could well believe that she and Ivriniel were the only people here at all, and that the city had emptied during the night.
Ivriniel’s rueful laugh was almost jarringly loud, and Finduilas closed her eyes and savored the sound, reminded of home. “They’re starting to wilt with so long without rain. I would be very surprised if the specimens I brought from home survive until autumn.”
Finduilas felt a pang in her chest. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she murmured, the muscles in her jaw tightening. She had asked Ivriniel to bring those flowers up from Belfalas especially to be able to look upon them here, and now it seemed that she had spent so much time in the sickroom that she would be unable to truly enjoy them.
Her sister waved a hand dismissively. “It is no matter, sister. I will bring seeds later this year, and we can plant them together. The next year may be cooler—and wetter. They will likely do better next year.”
That was of little consolation to Finduilas now.
They passed out of the house, and onto one of the walkways. It was only early morning, the city only just beginning to wake, and the pervasive heat was already beginning to rise in the air, with no breeze to alleviate it. In an hour, it would be stifling, and Finduilas knew the walk back would be an unpleasant one.
At home, we would take to the Sea on a day such as this. But the Sea was nowhere in reach. There was only the Anduin, and the Anduin, a pale imitation at best of the Sea, was not a safe place for swimmers with its too-fast currents and hidden rocks.
Finduilas stopped mid-step, her breath catching in her throat. There was… light, in the East.
“Finduilas?” Ivriniel’s voice was laced with concern. “What is it?”
And just like that, Finduilas unfroze, and her mind cleared. It was only the Sun rising over the Ephel Dúath. She smiled, but her sister looked anything but reassured. “It’s nothing. The Sun won’t wait for us.”
It runs deeper in me than in you, and deeper than in anyone here. It’s like… instinct.
-0-0-0-
“Imrazôr loved Mithrellas, and Mithrellas found that she returned his love. They wed, and had two children, brave Galador and fair Gilmith. They were happy, and Mithrellas and her half-Elven children brought a fairness like starlight to the house of Imrazôr.
“But after many years had passed, a change came over Mithrellas. She loved her lord and she loved their children, but love could not keep her there, for she was not one of them, not truly. Elves are ruled by more than the wants and needs that rule mortal Men. What rules an Elf is a hundred, no, a thousand times more difficult for an Elf to overcome than the petty desires of Men. And Mithrellas’s heart was filled with a longing she could not ignore.
“In the dead of night, while all the house was sleeping, Mithrellas left her life in Belfalas behind her. Where she wanders now, no one can say.”
-0-0-0-
Finduilas dreamt, sometimes.
She dreamed of a black wave swallowing a green land, of a torrent crashing around a mountain. A whole race of Men, all the works of their hands and their hearts, was swallowed without mercy, down to the smallest child. The time had passed when these Men could redeem themselves in the eyes of the One. Now, only his wrath was left for them.
She dreamed of a dry, dead land where fell soldiers spilled from towers like ants pilled from an anthill a child prodded carelessly with a stick. Jagged hills were painted with dancing red light, and foul water oozed from polluted springs as pus oozed from an abscess.
She dreamed she was a fish, floundering on dry land, forsaken by any who might return her to the water. Great struggling gasps she took as she stared up at a pitiless blue sky, and her scales cracked and fell away, and every squirming move against the hard earth was like being cut with a knife.
-0-0-0-
The dry air of summer was murderous, but the cold air of nearly-spring was no friend, either.
The door to Finduilas's shadowy sickroom creaked open, and Boromir came bursting through, any pretense to dignity forgotten in his excitement to be allowed to be near his mother again. Finduilas held her arms open, and that was all the invitation he needed to jump up on the bed and throw his arms around her neck. “The healers said you were better,” he mumbled into the crook of her neck. “Why can’t you come home?”
Finduilas winced. Her most recent bout of illness had seen her moved to the Houses of Healing so that the healers could monitor her more closely. She’d not expected either of her boys to take that well, but it would seem the delay in her departure was just as frustrating for Boromir as it was for her. “Soon,” she promised him. “The healers wish to be sure that I am truly recovered; that’s all.”
Denethor came through the doorway, then, far more sedately than their elder son, and carrying little Faramir in his arms. He deposited Faramir on the bed beside his brother, pausing to press his hand to the top of the child’s head, before turning to address Boromir. “Be patient,” he chided, though mildly. “It would go ill if Mother left the Houses of Healing before she was well, wouldn’t it?”
Boromir nodded, looking appropriately chastened, and Denethor asked Finduilas quietly, “How are you?”
Finduilas did not have to fight to smile up at him. “Better.” Faramir was crawling over her legs to settle in the crook of her right arm, his head pillowed against her mantle. “Though I think I would feel better if I could feel the wind on my face.”
The healer had told her, in no uncertain terms, that the shutters on her window were not to be opened. A draught could cause her to sicken again. Finduilas could hardly go wrong guessing that Denethor had been told the same, in equally certain terms. But he looked around the room, frowning, and said in an undertone, “The air is stale here.”
He moved to unfasten the latch on the shutters, and let fresh air (and light) into the room. The room faced west; she had practically begged for that, and the healers, though not understanding why, had granted her request. There would be no shadow of the East here, no infernal light dancing on the walls. Finduilas would have respite from that here, at least.
Denethor threw the shutters back, and white light lanced the room in two. After so many days in candlelit gloom, sunlight was like staring directly into the Sun herself. Finduilas grimaced and shut her eyes against the glare. I pray that I don’t spend the rest of my days in half-light. I would hate to grow so unaccustomed to the Sun that I could only go out under Moon.
When Finduilas opened her eyes, the light was still nearly overwhelming, and her husband still stood by the window. She looked at him, dark spot against brilliant light, and for a moment, she saw him wreathed in flame.
“Finduilas?” Something must have shown on her face for concern to show itself so nakedly in his voice.
This time, the smile was forced. “It’s nothing. For a moment, I thought the wind off of the Anduin was a sea-breeze.”
And she thanked the Powers that her husband, no matter how discerning he might be, could not tell when she was lying.