Work Text:
The threads of the loom have all the color; the waiting walls around the loom all the absence of color. There is a child in the shadows, rolling a spool between two hands. There is a grey woman who knows what the loom means.
To the child, the grey woman says: it is time for an ending.
The room given to Nerdanel once belonged to another. She could not refuse so precious a gift; she could not admit what a dreadful wound it made on her heart. Indis had meant the gesture kindly. Nerdanel had thanked her, and each night she lay under the same quilts that had covered her eldest son, when he was a lonely boy whose heart was guarded, and whose life was not.
They were always very well-mannered, Indis had said, on one of the occasions when she cautiously ventured a story of years gone by. Nerdanel guessed that Indis thought it was not strictly her place. Nerdanel wished she could reassure her otherwise; a mother’s heart had not always the strength.
Maedhros was quiet, said Indis. Maglor was eager to know everything about the city. Maedhros kept often to this room.
Nerdanel undressed with a single candle burning. She had had no stomach for supper. Finarfin and Earwen had gone home and Indis had thanked the servants and sent them away early as well. Indis had boiled water herself, then, and served tea. Nerdanel had not wept any more in the darkling hours of late afternoon; she had recovered enough to show gratitude for Finarfin’s kindness.
But she was alone now.
He wakes, and lies stiffly still, his hands over his mouth. His fingers are bone-cold. The night is a chill one. The twins are snuffling peacefully at his feet, their bedrolls shared as one. He must not have cried out, for nobody in the camp is stirring. Maedhros turns his head to see that Maglor is within reach, sleeping deeply, if miserably. With one touch—
But it would be selfish to wake him. Maedhros moves his hands from his face, flexes his knuckles, and tucks his hands beneath his arms for warmth.
He saw her. He saw her, in his old room in the city, weeping as if her heart would break.
Nerdanel turned down the bed. She had retired before Indis, and with no maid in the house, there were no warm bricks to break the clammy chill. Nerdanel, wrapped in her flannel gown, slipped between the covers and pressed her face against the pillow, as if she needed to hide from the shadows that the candle sent dancing in the corners of the room.
How many times—how many years—had she lain beside her husband, and thought nothing of it but sleepy contentment? Feanor ran hot, and he had been a comforting furnace in winter. In summer she kicked off the blankets before she would curl away from him. He liked to sleep with his arms around her, unless they had quarreled. Then he withdrew from her touch as if she was the one made of something that could burn.
He never knew himself.
It made him seem young.
The last time she ever saw him, she was in his arms. Strong, savage arms—yet he had protected her. Protected her from the rain of fire he had brought.
Nerdanel’s jaw gaped, suddenly, as if to catch enough breath for a sob overlong in coming. But she did not find it, yet. She did not find tears, or that strange, awful comfort of drowning. She remained so, caught in a gasp, realizing again and again what it meant that Feanor was dead.
How to fit the pieces together? She did not know where his burial was, or if it was peaceful. The twins would be so frightened—the twins! Where were they now—where were they when Maedhros was taken—if they lived or died, would Manwe have said? Cruel Manwe, who could not tell her whether Maglor had managed to be eldest for a little while, who did not know whether Caranthir was sleeping aright! Crueler Melkor, who would order the bullet into one heart and shackle another to himself—
He escaped, she told herself, unable to move in the bed that had been Maedhros’. He escaped, her firstborn boy, who left a few of her letters in the chest of drawers, who left his ghost everywhere. He escaped, and that meant, it must mean, that they were all safe now with Fingolfin. Maglor and Celegorm, Caranthir and Curufin, Amras and Amrod. They were all together and Fingolfin and Maedhros would close ranks around them in an alliance born of need. Fingolfin and Maedhros would let no harm come to those they loved. Gentle Anaire would be there too, and Fingon, good, dear Fingon…
But the bridge returned: Feanor’s first death, her death. That night had made them wanted men, and Fingolfin and his family suffered for it.
More nightmares. Fingolfin alone came to Maedhros’ aid, but his family would not take the rest in. Her boys wandering…no, no. Not so long as Fingon lived and breathed, would Maedhros be shunned and spurned.
Forgive, she thought. God, let them all forgive. My poor boys meant no harm…no harm…
Maedhros fired a shot, and it took Nerdanel between the eyes.
She saw his arm as she fell with grief piercing her. (She did not fall.) The gun fused to it as if steel and flesh became one. When she had made clay into something seeming human, she had smoothed the sockets of blank eyes beneath of the pads of her thumbs, much as she wiped tears from her sons’ cheeks. How does life become like that? Something you can shape?
How do you go on when life escapes your shaping?
Feanor!
The threads of the loom are stained red. To the child, the grey woman says, my son lives, but not forever.
The child answers, not forever, with hair stained red.
She did not know what it was to live without Feanor. All this time since their parting, she had thought her grief to be something it was not: something final. Instead, she now realized that she had been waiting. Waiting for the moment when it would be right to follow, or to begin to expect a return.
You fool, she chided herself, beginning to tremble, beginning to open and close her mouth with the same desperate, ugly rhythm of a fish convulsing on land. You fool, he was a wanted man. They were wanted men…Feanor and Maedhros…Maglor…
Every son’s name was another turn to the screws of her heart: every son was a baby with soft dimpled skin, a child with questions in eyes and on lips, a boy grown to uncertain manhood bending down like a sapling to her, seeking her nourishment and warmth. Every one of them needed her, still, and Feanor most of all.
Feanor had needed her, and Feanor had died without her to hold him.
He must have been so afraid.
Nerdanel lost herself then. She lost herself in the pangs of childbirth, in the grip of his hands, in the heat of his mouth, in their wedding vows, in her sons’ baby curls, in the crash and clatter of dishes, in the glow of the forge. She lost herself in questions that could do naught but chase their miserable answers, foxes to their own hounds. She lost herself in Feanor, Feanor, Feanor, stupid but not boorish, brilliant but not wise, whom she had loved.
She wept quietly and violently until she knew not the four corners of the room, not the rejection of the farmer-friends, whose hearts had cooled with the seasons. She knew not Indis until Indis was at her side, a kindly touch pressed to Nerdanel’s arm and brow.
Nerdanel swam out of the deep and surfaced, then, clinging to Indis’ hands.
“No,” she wailed, staring at Indis full in her candle-yellowed face. “No, it cannot be!”
It is, said the grey woman. It is so. And then she was very tired, her head aching with the loss of a son not yet conceived. She left the loom unattended, the threads dancing in the living breezes of dreamland.
The child stayed behind, cowering, eyes fixed upon the picture that the woman had made.
“Hush now,” said Indis. “Hush, my dear, this is the worst of it. This is the worst of it.”
They stayed thus, Indis kneeling at the bedside and Nerdanel crumpled towards her, for some time. Murderous thoughts against Manwe, against Melkor, came and went. Some spoken; some unspoken. Nerdanel broke now and again into sobs. At other moments, she could be coherent. She could speak, worriedly, of the twins’ clothes, and how she feared that only Caranthir would think to mend them and make new allowances for their growth.
“Maedhros would, of course,” she said, “But what other cares he must have! What cares. What…what penance to do, if he is to be made safe with his family. Oh, when I think of their sins…that is what haunts me. That is what…how can Fingolfin forgive them, Indis? How can he stay with them?”
Indis looked older than she did by day. Older and wearier. How evil these hours had been for them both! Nerdanel must not forget that. She must not allow herself—
Feanor, Feanor, Feanor.
“Fingolfin,” said Indis, “is everything a mother could hope or pray for in a son. We must trust him to be himself. If any of your boys were afflicted…and I daresay even if they were not…he would care for them as if they were his own children. And with Feanor—with Feanor gone, he will be sympathy himself. He loved his brother dearly, you know.”
“I do,” Nerdanel whispered. Bitter, bitter the draught she drank, remembering what it was to love Feanor wholly.
“You must try to be calm, if you can,” said Indis. “Not because the grief is not great—oh, I know it is great. But because you do not wish to be unwell. Today we said…we agreed that our work lay ahead, not behind. You must be strong for that, Nerdanel. I believe you can be strong.”
“Do not leave me,” Nerdanel said plaintively, as if she were a child. As if she were Indis’ own child. “Please, Mother. Do not leave me tonight.”
Indis promised she would not.
He could not speak in the dreams he had that felt real enough to be memories. He had not seen—he had not seen her in months. Here on the outskirts of Beleriand, in the frost-burned October night, he had nothing but a hollow heart around which to build himself. Lies and bones; sorrows and fears.
Mamai…
The wind took the word from his lips, and carried it off.