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When Finrod Felagund returned, Amarië was called to the Gardens by a soft-spoken Maia robed in silver and glow worm green. She’d been expecting it; had been, in fact, waiting. It had been weeks since she’d heard from her parents, but it had been only Arafinwë first and then Eärwen who had been called to him. The name he’d given was nearly unfamiliar, and when Eärwen had come to visit the day before, they’d sounded it out.
Fin-rod. Her mouth stumbled over it and she exhaled at the end where there ought to be a vowel, a lateral or a nasal consonant at the very least (he’d taught her that). His new name was heavy; his epessë, she’d later learn, meaningless in any one language, only an approximate of one she’d never heard anyone speak. But if it was his name, she would say it, and if another language now came easier to him, she would learn it, and if another person had come easier to him as well, in the long years since the sun had risen, she would learn that name too. Amarië was patient, would wait centuries for him, but not not a day longer if he no longer waited for her.
The Maia bade her wait at the flowered gates and a groom took her horse, and as she waited, she rehearsed her words in ways she’d never had, not with him. When they’d been betrothed, they were too young to be nervous at speech. Shy things hiding in the skirts of their mothers until Findaráto had bent to pluck a clover to give her because ‘bees love them so and your dress is yellow’ and she gave her apple to his horse and kissed him on the cheek. He’d gone as red as the apple and she’d laughed. And when they came of age and formally consented to the betrothal, they’d known each other too long for nerves.
But now she whispered to herself and would she have to tiptoe they way they all did, around those who woke at Cuivienen and dreamt of their friends being taken away by the dark, by the screams past their borders and the smell of smoke in the north. Those were the ones with scars, on their bodies and in their spirits, the ones with wild eyes. The ones who’d taught them what to do at the Darkening and placed swords in their hands and after the Slaying had unbraided their hair.
Would that be Findaráto now, with parts of him broken and parts of him toughened? She’d heard snatches of stories, of cities and horrors and ravenous wolves If he was so calloused, now a witness to calamity, would he feel her hand on his skin? She would dig her fingers in if she had to, she decided, until he felt them.
She’d sat down in the grasses when Arafinwë stepped through the gate, humbled Arafinwë, Finwë Arafinwë. She stood and she bowed to the man who might have been her father already had his brothers not settled on sharpened rumor as the preferred vehicle of politics. He’d lost four children and she her betrothed, but there was a way loss had of closing distances and he drew her up and embraced her, just as he had when he’d returned from Alqualondë, sword-shocked and keening-wived.
Daughter, he’d called her then, daughter he called her now, and his face was wet against her cheek. “He lives,” he said and she wondered what it meant for a father to witness the birth of the same son twice. “He’s different,” he continued, but she had expected that already and when he grasped her shoulders and looked her in the eye, she did not flinch from the pain of it. “He’s him,” he said and he let her go to place his hand against his breath, as if he swore an oath.
He offered her his arm and escorted her through the gates and into the Gardens, as brightly colored with flowers and leaves as the glittering mosaics back home. She’d never been here, had never needed healing for anything more severe than a broken arm, and while she knew of those who had sought out Lórien to lift heavy hearts and spirits after the Darkening, she hadn’t gone. Her pain was her own and she’d cradled it, molding it until it could fit inside her chest, hard but forgettable, until she’d move a certain way and it would cut like the gem after which it had been modeled.
Like the family of her betrothed, she too was an artist, and like her own family, she was a cultivator as well. Not of metal and not of pasture, but of the loss of a single person, a special sort of absence, a negative space and she sent a prayer to Nienna that whoever she was about to find would fit into that space, even if not as neatly as she might hope.
She saw his hair first in the distance, darker than hers but only just; he was facing away from her and sitting at the base of a tree. She drew closer and Arafinwë let her go, hanging back as she moved forward, knelt down next to him and reached out to touch his chin and turn him to face her.
Callouses and toughness she’d been ready for, walls and blocks, but Felagund’s skin was softer than ever she had known Findaráto’s to be. She’d heard he’d been ripped apart in the end, a survivor of battles and of ice; he must have been bruised once, and cut and bit and bleeding, but his skin was as a babe’s, her fingers leaving imprints as they brushed against his jaw. New skin, she realized, the skin and body of the reborn, but his eyes were so much older.
“King Finrod Felagund,” she said and he smiled and took her hand, placing it against the white shift at his chest. She’d seen him naked before, at the springs, but she’d never seen him so unclothed. He always loved his sumptuous robes, silks and satins and brocades, loose and light Telerin styles that showed his neck and collarbones off to their greatest advantage, or, more and more in those later days, Noldorin high collars and robes stiff as armor with embroidery. Never did she see him in something so simple and unadorned, not even the simplest jewelry to glitter at his throat, his ears, his fingers.
“Findaráto,” he said to her, his voice soft and nervous and hers and hoarse from not much use. He had been a singer. Was he still?
“Ingoldo,” she said, the name a liberty on her tongue, but it had never offended Findaráto, and if this king of faraway lands was him as he claimed, then he would not protest the familiarity. Her fingers trembled in his and it seemed to her that he squeezed her hand with the same lack of strength one might suffer after sleeping too long on one’s hand.
He spoke her own mother-name then, and he sounded scared; she drew him close against her and kissed his temple where it met his hair and sang a song of homecoming in the Telerin he’d taught her, a song for the fisherman who’d come home with an empty net.
When her voice faltered, he pulled away just enough to look at her and opened his mouth and for a moment, she knew, they both thought he would sing, his stanza following hers, as they’d used to practice.
But he shook his head, a dark and brief panic crossing his face before he lifted his chin and rounded his lips not to sing, but to whistle, and whistled of birds she’d never seen before, of birds from a land across the sea in walled places: birds in forests girdle bound and hidden cities in mountains and caves, birds that flew above ramparts and fortresses and birds that watched as men held siege, songbirds and raptors and carrion, carrion — the whistle faltered and Felagund flinched and squeezed her hand as tightly as Arafinwë had held her shoulder. But Amarië did not flinch, Amarië did not falter, because Felagund had left his hidden city and returned in soft skin and white linen and she would be his ramparts.
He tilted his head up and towards the sky and she saw him like a sunflower chasing the warmth. When he’d left, there hadn’t been sunflowers and there hadn’t been a sun and she wondered if he liked sunbathing or if he prefered the shade, if he loved the moon full or if he missed the stars overshadowed. His skin was almost translucent, far paler than her own, but what did that mean but that his new skin was untouched by sun?
When he died, had he been that pale, trapped in the tower he had built? But he had light now and warmth and colors so dazzling they reflected on his shift and she shut out her own darkened thoughts before he could hear them on her. There was no carrion in the Gardens of Lórien.
The trunk of the great yew where Felagund sat was generous and she joined him there, leaning back against the warm bark and closing her eyes. She took his hand and stretched out her legs and let the sweet smells of the Gardens lull her into a half-sleep and for a moment she was a girl again and Findaráto’s fingers wrinkled from the springs.
When she opened her eyes, the light of the trees mingled, or so it seemed: dusk. Glow worms dangled from the trees and nightingales sang and the leaves on the trees turned a soft silver in the starlight.
She smiled at him and wiped her free hand over her eyes. “All right, Findaráto,” she said and reached out to catch a tear from his own eyes. “What did you bring me from your lands unseen?”
He cast about for a moment and plucked a clover from the ground, handing it to her with so much care it might have been cut from emerald.
Amarië took it and held it first to her eye, then her nose, then her lips, and set it down on her lap. She saw then her own dress. It was bumblebee yellow.