Work Text:
They said you would drop anything in the well and it would disappear forever, never to return. It was dark and deep and no one could see where it ended, though sometimes the sound of rippling water could distantly be heard. Andreth had looked down as a girl and seen the greenery growing on the walls from disuse and the piercing darkness. She had known, even then, that someone must have dug this well and someone must therefore have seen where it ended. Yet what she had been told did not leave her and she did, in the presence of only her own thoughts, believe it.
She had told Finrod about it once, casually and carefully. It had stayed with her, the well, and she found herself remembering it more in her older years.
He had laughed, his golden earrings glimmering and swaying with the motions of his head, and said:
“Yes, I suppose it must be reassuring to think you can forever be rid of something, no? But you never really can, can you?”
His swift dismissal had stopped her from telling him more. He was an elf of great knowledge and wisdom and his brightness made her eyes hurt. She wanted to turn away.
(Aegnor had never hurt her eyes so – he had been more careful, tender. His brightness had soothed her, like a candle in her dark house. Warmed her. Known her, yet never pressed on, never with that bright light in his eyes, telling her to tell.)
Keep your secrets, she told herself, this one, you keep to yourself only. She had given Finrod her best ones, after all. Her heart, in a way. And he had been kind, in a way – cruel, in another.
No, she had thought as she turned to put more wood in the dwindling fire, let him stay ignorant of this. This, he shall not have. It was yours to give away, only yours, and its loss is yours to bear, alone.
Finrod gave her a smile and began telling her of a legend he had been told by a rather unwilling Haladin – “Do you never tire of wringing our tales out of us?” she had asked, half-joking, but he had turned grave anyway – and she listened and put the thought of the well back in its quiet corner in her mind. The fire crackled.
*
Andreth was eight years old and had gone with her father and brother to a small village on the outskirts of their land. It was summer and the nights were warm and days hot in Dorthonion. Everything was green but the fields, which were filled with flowers grown wild in bright colours, for there were no gardens in Dorthonion, but flowers grew plentiful and beautiful anyway.
While her father had been busy talking to the villagers during the day, she had wandered among the fields between the houses and played with children her age while her older brother played with the older ones. Andreth even helped an old woman who had been filled with tales and advice on how to treat illness. It reminded her of Adanel, who had visited Ladros not long ago. Andreth had been smitten with her aunt – who was called her aunt, yet Andreth could not remember the family ties which connected them – and always stayed by her side, willing to listen to anything she had to say.
She remembered every tale, every herb, every legend; everything had felt important. Andreth had thought every word held a secret answer to something else, or a secret truth. Adanel had laughed at her eagerness but indulged her. She had even jokingly, or maybe not, told Andreth’s mother that her daughter might be a future Wise-woman.
During her helping the old woman, Andreth learned of the well.
“Out in the woods, to the south”, the old woman told her, her eyes only twinkles in her wrinkled face. “Close to an old house – a small ruin, now. The herd still stands, along with some walls. But just south of it – there it is! The well.”
“Everything that goes down, can never return. Forever gone, girl”, she had said with the twinkle in her eyes gone.
Andreth later asked some of the children about it and learned it was not far, but by then it was already evening and she, her brother, and father were to partake in a small feast in their honour. A great fire, enough to make her face hurt if she was too close to it, in the middle of the village and laughter – so much laughter! – and dancing long into the warm, buzzing night.
Andreth and her brother were told to go to bed eventually, for they were to leave the morning after, but before that her father pulled her aside. He hid something behind his back with a big smile on his face. Andreth giggled.
“Apparently, some Dwarves passed through some months ago. They were a little lost and Berion over there-“ her father gestured to a laughing man who was a little drunk and red in the face, “- helped them find the way. As thanks, they gave him this.”
Her father pulled out what was behind his back and held it up before her face. She gasped.
It was a thin, thin, fabric – not meant for ordinary use. White it was and Andreth could see her father’s smiling face on the other side. She raised her hand to carefully touch it and the thinness scared her, yet she marvelled at the softness.
“It is a veil”, her father told her. “Or well, it is probably meant to be used for something else – you see, the Dwarves were given it by the Elves, by a lord Caranthir in the east, and they certainly had it made for another, decorating purpose. Berion gave it to me as a bride veil – for you.”
Andreth gasped again yet smiled, still staring at the veil, the whiteness and fragility fascinating. Her father, on the other side, smiled back.
“You will wear it on your wedding day when we have found a husband for you who you like. You know what your mother has told you.”
“That I should learn cooking and sewing and how to tell people what to do”, Andreth dutifully repeated. “So I will know what to do as a wife.”
“Aye”, her father said and looked a little sad but it disappeared quickly and was replaced by fondness, “and now you have more to look forward to.”
And he handed her the veil and Andreth carefully tried to fold it, though the result was not as good as her mother’s. Then she thought back to the old woman from that day, and Adanel.
“Can I still become a Wise-woman?” she asked, and her father seemed to hesitate.
“Dear, you will have to go to Adanel in Hithlum to learn and be taught in her tales – there are many”, he warned but saw that his daughter did not find that a real answer and sighed.
“When you will come back, you will be grown already and no one of our people will know you anymore”, he hesitated in continuing. “It will be difficult to find a husband then.”
Andreth frowned. “Why?”
“Well”, her father began, uncomfortable. “No one will know you, for one, and no one wants to marry someone they do not know. But also … being a Wise-woman is an important task - a heavy one. Not every man would be willing to take a wife with such a … burden.”
Andreth frowned deeper. “But Adanel is married.”
“To a lord – a lord of the House of Marach. They share similarly heavy duties, one can say. But”, and here her father’s hesitance became alarmingly clear, “there are no more lords like that for you to marry. The Haladin … keep to themselves … I suppose you could marry one of Adanel’s sons, but the Houses of Bëor and Marach are already closely tied; they will want the next lord to marry one of their own … “
As her father listed all those reasons Andreth understood that the answer was no. She could not be a Wise-woman and at the same time a wife. She could not be both. She looked down on the folded veil in her hands.
“Sleep first, dear, and we will talk about this in the morning, yes?”
Andreth nodded and her father smiled again, though not as bright as before. They then parted, Andreth went to her bed and he back to the fire, where some still sang merrily in the warm light of fire.
As she later lay in her bed, her brother’s snoring barely a distraction any longer, she thought and thought and stared at the veil, where it lay folded on a chair with her clothes in the moonlight coming through their small window. And when all outside seemed to have quieted down, she came to a decision.
She was swift and resolute. The fire had burned out and the village was dark and quiet, nearly eerie in how it looked abandoned, sleeping, in the night. She slipped into her clothes and turned south, into the darker forest, veil safely pressed against her chest, plants brushing her legs and the moon shining through the trees. It was summer and not so dark as in winter and Andreth did not slip; she had run in forests her whole life and had her share of adventures in the woods in summer’s dark.
At last she saw the outlines of the old house – it was indeed more of a small, pathetic ruin. Some walls were indeed standing, but only barely, with half of them already bent towards the ground and stones lying scattered among leaves and dirt. She could see the hearth in the middle, in a better state than the walls, yet overgrown with moss and filled with needles from the pine trees. For a short moment Andreth stood on one of the fallen, low walls, where only the first stones at the bottom remained, and looked around, wondered who built this house so far away from anything else.
She forgot her mission where she stood in moonlight, in the quiet, and imagined a man who wished to be alone and preferred to hunt in the forest. Perhaps he had a wife at home, who smiled when he returned and with a babe in her arms. The woman was not the prettiest, nor was the man, but there was no lordly business, no elves, and no tales of darker times in the past. No Enemy to the North.
For a moment, she faltered. But then she saw the well – it was just a few metres south of the house, just as overgrown as the hearth, yet the outline was clear in the moonlight. It was the well.
I cannot be both, she thought.
Adanel’s tales and words swirled in her head. Tales of great grief, happiness, and great worth, but also of small things and not just the doings of great men. Andreth had thought they held a secret truth, an answer to a question she had yet to ask. It is an important task, her father had said.
She warily walked over to the well. It was built strong and enduring, with big stones still fitting perfectly together. The wood which must once have been placed over the dark deep had rotted away. Andreth was tall enough to bend over the edge and nearly gasped when she did.
It was like looking into darkness itself. Perhaps that is what Angband’s dungeons looks like, Andreth thought but then she leaned a little further forward and gasped for real.
She saw a perfect mirror of the moon, deep, deep down there, beyond the black shadows which must have been leaves or plants on the well’s walls. It was small and so far away, but it was the moon. Anor, her mother had taught her in Sindarin, the language of the Elves. And down there it was, perfectly preserved in a well in a forest by a ruin in Dorthonion. It cannot be a bad darkness then, she thought, not all darkness can be like Angband’s. The moon has its own and it is safe.
“Hello”, Andreth greeted and then felt silly. It is only a shining thing in the night sky – you do not greet the sun, do you?
She looked down on her veil. The white fabric seemed to glow in the dark, like the chainmail she had seen on the elven riders who sometimes came by Ladros to speak with her father.
It is beautiful, she thought and felt tears in her eyes, thinking of the imagined wife who used to live in the house; her hair hanging loose; her smile warm as a welcome; her arms around her husband’s neck. So beautiful.
Everything that goes down, can never return. Forever gone, girl, the old woman had said with a sad smile on her face. With a little imagination, Andreth could have imagined how she had looked in her youth, dark-haired and with the same twinkling, bright eyes.
I cannot have both.
“See it as a gift”, she said to the moon and looked up at it in the sky and then down, into the well. “For me, it is a sacrifice, but perhaps it can be a gift for you. Keep it. It’s beautiful.”
I would hate to have destroyed something beautiful.
She held it out, hesitated in just a moment, seeing the silver-like glitter in all its glory held up before her, and remembered her father’s excited smile and her mother’s lessons and then she sniffled and felt her eyes burn and shut them -
And let it fall down, down.
Andreth’s father Boromir did not ask about her veil the next day or any day after, thinking she had stored it away somewhere. But on their journey back to Ladros his daughter told him she wanted to be a Wise-woman and he and her mother need not search for a husband.
“If that is what you want”, he had hesitantly said. “You can still change your mind, though, dear, remember that.”
But Andreth had looked at him gravely but said nothing, and Boromir did not either. But six months later, Adanel came to Ladros once more and when she left, Andreth went with her.
*
They said you would drop anything in the well and it would disappear forever, never to return.