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Pressed flat against the ground, Tyelko thinks the grass itself might be a forest, or an army of green-bladed spears. He has been digging for an hour on his hands and knees, but the pair of thrushes in a bush, less than a stone’s throw away, have captured his attention.
“Stay quiet,” he orders Huan, beneath his breath, but Huan needs no such command. Hound and master are matched in stillness, while the delicate birds whistle their throaty calls like hushed lovers.
Kanafinwë’s flute could capture that sound. Tyelko sometimes begrudges Kanafinwë’s graceful voice and skillful touch—refuses to call him Makalaurë just for that reason, since the name is too flattering—but he knows exactly why the name was chosen for him.
The flute, the harp, the flight of song: all were given to his second brother.
A branch cracks beneath a boot and the thrushes flutter away. Tyelko leaps to his feet to see Atarinkë picking his way through the woods with a rather sour expression on his thin face.
“Curvo!” Tyelko lifts his hand. Even with the thrushes gone, his heart is no less gladdened—he likes the company of Atarinkë better than any other’s.
“Your hands are dirty,” Atarinkë sniffs, when he comes closer. “In fact, all of you is dirty.”
This is rich coming from someone who spends most days soot-streaked by the forge, who piles his hair atop his head with an awl thrust through it to keep it in place. When out of the forge, however, Atarinkë is vainer than any of them, even Nelyo. Atarinkë wears silver rings in his ears and pins his cuffs with gems like starlight. His hands are scrubbed clean of the ashy blackness, until only the faint scars of sparks remain.
Tyelko plots his revenge for the insult, but for now, he dusts his hands off against the knees of his breeches.
“I’m studying.”
“What, the habits of worms?”
“Tubers, actually. Some are poisonous and some are delicious. Huan helps me sniff out which ones.” Tyelko reaches down to scrabble his fingers between Huan’s drooping ears. “Sometimes his eyes look at me with such light and intelligence, I think him on the verge of speech.”
“If the hound can speak,” says Atarinkë, with a suspicious eye on Huan, “And has not yet done, then you should consider yourself betrayed.”
Huan huffs a disdainful, doggish sigh, and flops down beside his master.
“While you were rooting about for our dinner,” Atarinkë continues, with a thin smile, “Atar has been looking for you.”
Tyelko groans. What has he forgotten, in his heady chase of bird and bramble? “Why?”
“You ask why of our father?” One of Atarinkë’s graceful brows slants upward. “Shall I convey the question to him? But nay—I am too kind for that.” Another one of his thin smiles. “It is your turn today to train the Ambarussa.”
The Ambarussa have not taken to the sword as well as their elder brothers. Nelyo offered to undertake their teaching, but Atar frowned and said that Nelyo’s time was meant for greater things.
If Nelyo disagreed with this, he said nothing. Tyelko has never seen his eldest brother argue with their father; a bowed head and bitten lip is the closest to disagreement Nelyo comes. Tyelko himself has argued, a few times, and it has never ended well for him.
He tucks his tubers carefully in the leather satchel at his side, away from Atarinkë’s mocking eyes, and steels himself to the task ahead.
“How fared your little brothers on the training ground today?” Atar asks at the evening meal. Tyelko prepares to answer before he realizes that the question is directed at Atarinkë.
“Better than hoped,” Atarinkë answers smoothly, refiling his goblet. “Though, I must own it, Tyelko kindly offered to assist, since he knew how eager you were for me to finish Grandfather Finwe's breastplate.”
“Well-done,” Atar agrees, nodding at Tyelko, and then he turns back to his favored son to speak of metalwork.
Tyelko grinds his teeth, and bides his time.
Vengeance comes later, when Atarinkë draws back the coverlets from his bed to find a meal’s worth of dusty tubers, and not a few worms.