Work Text:
June 29, 1851
(translated from Tengwar code)
(posted to Ulmo's Bridge, Missouri, where, having arrived on July 12, 1851, it was never received)
Dear Feanor,
I know you too well to think that this letter is enough to make you turn back. Even so, I owe it to you with a friend's gratitude to send warning of how the world has changed.
Simaril is safe. There is your first inquiry answered. But as for the rest of it—
Two months ago a fur-trader arrived, seemingly from the North. He called himself Annatar. I disliked him at once, as I dislike anyone who carries a whip at his belt. But he charmed many of the settlement, and traded fur and trinkets in exchange for meals and a place to stay.
Then three of my men—men who escaped bondage as I have—were found hanged. Hanged and butchered like animals. Feanor, not when I fell beneath the lash myself, not even when he put that collar round my neck, have I felt such rage or grief.
There was no proof that Annatar was responsible, but suspicion fell on him as the newcomer. My men surrounded him, ready to kill, but he threw back his head and laughed.
If you had been there, I think you would have put a bullet in his heart at once. Yet in that moment, his laughter confused us. He told us—and he looked at me when he spoke—that his name was in fact Mairon, and that he acted with the approval of the Ordered Regiment of California.
The O.R.C. are soldiers, lately come into this territory. News had barely reached us of our statehood, or of the Act which directs the increased recapture of former slaves, before they were at our borders.
We let Mairon live, keeping him in a guarded outbuilding overnight. He laughed long and often, seeming not to care for the threat against him. Two dozen armed O.R.C.s arrived the next morning, and showed my men their credentials, approved in Washington, stating that they were authorized to seek his release. They spoke to my friends only; they would not treat with me.
And so Mairon was released. The O.R.C.s did not address him as one of them, but they knew him. I think there was little love lost between them, and that only increased our fear of him, since how could he withstand so many men if he did not wield some greater influence than we had seen?
Since we have done much for mining and cultivation of the land around, the O.R.C. have left us largely alone. This was our first real meeting. The head O.R.C. made a thin apology for the murder of my men, but he assured us that determinations would be made as to the freemen status of our community.
Again, I felt eyes on me.
I came here for freedom. You know that well. Now I stay within the confines of our gated compound, since Mairon has taken up residence in the foothills. After the first fear left us, there were some of my company who cursed his release and set out, without permission, to hunt him down.
Their bodies we found at our gates the next day, their faces cut away. They were young.
Feanor, I anticipated your arrival joyously. How good it seemed to me to welcome you and your wife and sons to a land where we have turned dry soil into something shining. Where we have gazed on the western sky. But now I am caged again, with death at the door, and I beg you—do not come.
Rumil