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Haleth was trying to settle Belegor and Gilraen’s dispute over whose chicken, exactly, was responsible for the strangely colored eggs currently balanced in Haleth’s hands.
About the only thing they could agree on was that whoever’s eggs they were, they were definitely cursed, possibly by the elves.
Haleth was just about close enough to the end of her rope to attempt cursing eggs herself when Haldan came running up the dirt path, dust flying up behind the boy’s heels. He skidded to a halt in front of her, one arm windmilling wildly until she reached out to steady him.
He nodded in thanks before managing to gasp out, “The elves are coming!”
“Excuse me,” Haleth said to the two idiots in front of her, who had already fallen to bickering again. “This sounds urgent.”
She shoved the eggs back into their hands before dragging her nephew a few paces away so that they at least had the dubious protection of one of the newly raised wooden houses between them and the increasingly loud argument.
Haldan had started to puff up a little at the implication his news was important.
It was her job to gently and lovingly burst that bubble. “The elves come every other week,” she pointed out. “Sometimes they stay for a week. What’s the issue?” Not that a warning was bad, she supposed, but at this point, it was hardly necessary, and it was probably more important for Haldan to stay at his scouting post.
Although she’d thought Haldan was posted in the woods, not the road –
Haldan was shaking his head. “Not your elves,” he said. “New elves. Lots of them.”
Haleth cursed.
Caranthir had told her, with some superiority, that his people didn’t raid each other as Men did.
He had also admitted, after she had poked at this with well deserved skepticism, that there had been exceptions to this rule. And that resentment over those exceptions was strong, to say the least.
If his, oh so perfect people had picked now to make an exception –
“Ring the bell,” she told him, hand itching for a weapon. “I’ll go see if I can talk some sense into them.”
He nodded and took off running again.
It was only then that it occurred to call after him, “And they’re not my elves!”
For the sake of her nephew not being on punishment duty until he was thirty, she chose to believe she did not hear him laughing as he ran off.
Lots of elves turned out to be an exaggeration. There was an entirely reasonable small traveling party of elves.
What they did have was lots of horses.
On the bright side, since there were no signs that these were horses that had recently been deprived of their riders, this probably meant they were here to trade with Caranthir’s people instead of to attack them.
On the much less bright side, apparently they also wanted to talk.
Their leader had called a halt to the whole procession as soon as he saw her standing in the middle of their path as they emerged from the much narrower trail through the early autumn trees.
She would have liked to have cut them off earlier, but, as she had piously told Caranthir, the gift of Men was creeping up on her, and her joints weren’t what they used to be.
Caranthir had dryly told her that he might not know much about Men, but he did have full faith in her ability to find a way to make her joints last at least until the venerable age of thirty.
So she stood just outside the forest and hoped she wouldn’t regret the lost advantage too badly when the elves’ redheaded leader called a halt and dismounted a respectful distance away.
And it was respectful, she had to give him that much, especially when he greeted her with a slight bow before approaching. She had to give him a bit more credit yet when he got close enough for her to see that the usual eerie elvish prettiness was disrupted by thin scars criss crossing his face and a dusting of grey that was scattered through his flaming hair like ash from the fire pit. She hadn’t thought elves got grey hairs, but she grudgingly had to admit that no one looking at this elf could claim he’d been sitting back and letting others take the brunt of his wars.
“I am Haleth of Thargelion,” she said when he was only a few paces away. “I lead the people here. What business brings you to these lands?”
“I am Prince Maedhros of the Noldor,” he said, his smile tugging at his scars. “I have heard much about you, Haleth of Thargelion; I had hoped to meet you here.”
Maedhros.
Caranthir’s older brother Maedhros?
. . . What exactly had Caranthir been writing to tell him?
She invited them to spend the night in the village. The sun wasn’t setting yet, but it was low enough in the sky that she couldn’t not invite them. They were a cautious people, but let it never be said they were inhospitable.
The sun was setting by the time she got preparations for a proper welcoming meal settled and went to see if the prince needed any special accommodation for his excessive amount of horses.
It was only then that she properly noticed the stark absence at the end of the prince’s right arm that the sweep of the prince’s cloak had concealed earlier.
Definitely not letting others take the brunt of his wars.
The first time Caranthir had written to him about Chief Haleth, Maedhros had thought little of the name and much of the strategic implications.
When his brother’s next letter had mentioned her again, he had made a small note of it.
When after six months, he had yet to receive a letter from Caranthir that did not mention Haleth, he had thrown the most recent letter onto his desk and looked up at Narunith, who was dutifully and very poorly concealing her curiosity at what his letter contained by pretending to be busy with the work she was supposed to be doing in assisting him. “We’re going to Thargelion,” he’d said, and his mind ticked over the hints included in the letters. “We’ll need a gift. Get a small traveling party together.”
It wasn’t that any particular entry was all that revealing. Caranthir wasn’t Maglor; he wrote no poetry. He did not say Haleth was beautiful or captivating or anything of that nature. He did not even explicitly call the woman a friend.
Instead, he said, Haleth complains that my healers are too inclined to poetry when a simple list of ingredients would do well enough, and it was the most sensible thing I’d heard in a fortnight, I don’t know why you insisted I come here with so many idiots, and Haleth has directed her people to construct a new village in a location I think should be far more securable than their last, and Haleth has introduced me to several new dyes her people use, and I’ve prepared an appropriate gift in thanks – and you said I couldn’t handle diplomacy -
In contrast, he’d mentioned his captain and closest advisor once, when the man acquired an injury.
So, yes, Maedhros was quite sure that whatever was going on between his brother and the human chieftain, he needed to know about it.
And as he finally got a look at her tunic, the conclusion he’d been carefully trying not to jump to seemed to be confirmed.
He would know the hand behind that embroidery anywhere.
“Something wrong?” she asked warily, and he smiled reassuringly.
“My apologies,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting to see my brother’s work. He’s refused to do anything but practical sewing for . . . some time now.”
Since Alqualonde, he thought. His brother had not been the only one unable to face the art of creation after the soul twisting horror of that beach. Narunith had been the same, and who knew how many others.
She relaxed a little. “Well, it started as practical,” she conceded. “The first time we actually sat down and talked instead of just shouting across a battlefield at each other, he caught me trying to sew up a tunic that had gotten just about sliced to shreds in the battle. Apparently it offended his delicate sensibilities to see me doing it wrong.” She flashed a grin at this to take the sting out of the words. “I just about took it back from him until I saw what he was doing with it. I still might have if he hadn’t stopped complaining about that and started demanding to know what dyes we used. Said he hadn’t had access to purple since your people started coming east.”
“So you’re the mysterious new trading partner.” He’d known, of course, that Caranthir had claimed the Men were the source of his new dyes, but knowing how secretive Caranthir could be over such things, he hadn’t been entirely certain that it hadn’t been a bluff. “He’s been selling it on to us for all he can get.”
It wasn’t quite a test, at least not for Haleth; if Caranthir was cheating his new trading partners, it would probably do more harm than good for Maedhros to poke at it.
But if Haleth was more than a trading partner . . .
But she was shaking her head in clear amusement. “It’s pretty enough,” she said. “And I shouldn’t complain; it’s gotten us enough gold that I might be able to tempt you into leaving one or two of those horses with us before you take them to your brother.”
That still left the rather large leap from selling his brother dyes to his brother continuing to embroider her clothing, but he left it for now. “Ah! You misunderstand our purpose; the horses were brought for your people, not my brother.”
Haleth reared back slightly, eyes flickering over the horses to reassess the herd. “We could certainly use them,” she admitted. “The orcs took too many of ours. I wish you’d waited a few years, though. We’ve been too busy rebuilding to harvest half enough purple to cover this many.”
This was the delicate part. Caranthir had grumbled about the Men’s pride when he’d described the contract he’d made with them in his first letter.
On the other hand, if there was one thing Maedhros was used to dealing with in delicate negotiations, it was pride.
Caranthir’s very much included.
“Think of it less as a purchase and more of a goodwill gift,” he said smoothly.
“A goodwill gift,” she said flatly, jerking a hand back in a tense gesture at the horses behind them both.
“You forget how well I know my brother,” he said. “When it comes to goodwill, I thought it best to err on the safe side.”
Trading partners, Caranthir dealt well with. Their own people, Caranthir dealt well with. Outsiders – even outsiders that were extended cousins, even outsiders that they needed, even outsiders he was genuinely trying to play well with – no.
And if there was one thing Maedhros was absolutely certain of from the bright cheerful stitches woven in front of him, it was that it was very important to Caranthir that this went well.
But Haleth was frowning. “There’s nothing wrong with your brother,” she said a little icily.
For half a second, he was frozen. Then a small but very genuine smile finally broke over his face. “No,” he agreed. “There isn’t. In that case, please accept them as an apology gift from me for implying otherwise.”
The frown was still present, but it had lessened in severity, if not suspicion. Her eyes swept the horses again, this time lingering on where Narunith was wrangling two of them.
“We don’t need pity,” she finally said.
The remnants of his arm twitched slightly from where it lay hidden behind the folds of his cloak. People had stared, their gaze itching against his skin as their faces twisted at the marring; even the healers had fussed, full of cloying condolences and refusals to believe he could possibly be capable of work. Narunith hadn’t stared, which was how she had gotten her promotion from general scribe to his personal assistant, but on the worst days, even her cheerfully matter of fact assistance grated.
He knew well the stinging clash of pity and pride.
“No,” he agreed with her. “You need everything you can get to fight the Enemy. And I need every ally I can get in doing so. Please: accept this goodwill offering for everything you have done so far, and for everything I hope our peoples will do together in the future.”
She sighed. “They’re not going to do anything strange, are they?”
He hesitated. “Define ‘strange.’”
“My nephew accidentally dropped a scarf your brother embroidered into the firepit,” she informed him.
“Ah?”
“This one,” she said, pointing to the perfectly unscorched cloth tied around her waist.
“ . . . Ah.”
A smile twitched at her lips. “Not that it’s bad,” she conceded. “I just want to know if I’ve got fireproof horses on my hands.”
“No,” he said firmly.
He was, however, now firmly convinced that he had a lovestruck baby brother on his.
. . . This could cause problems.
Dear brother,
I have met your new friend, and I like her exceedingly. Just promise me that you will talk to me before you do anything drastic; or, if you will not confide in me, at least talk to Curufin.
Narunith also has a plethora of advice, which I will spare you from currently as I know you feel burdened enough by your current correspondents, but if you feel a woman’s advice would be of use to you, I am happy to pass it on.
- Maedhros
Dear Maedhros,
I don’t know what you think Curufin could possibly have to contribute to the current situation. Or what Narunith could have to contribute.
Or, for that matter, why you think I need any contributions at all.
Although your contribution to the defense of Thargelion was appreciated. As thanks, I have sent a new shipment of some truly excellent dwarf ore along with this letter. Please consider keeping it for your own use this time instead of sending it on; if I wanted our half-uncle to have it, I wouldn’t spend so much time wrangling with the tax code.
- Caranthir
One incident, she would have waved away. Elves were odd, and at least this time they had been helpfully odd.
That the messengers the prince sent to his brother now had letters for both Caranthir and Haleth was also odd, but it could all be lumped into the one big oddity of the visit.
Then the others started showing up.
The singing one was nice, she had to admit. A little unsettling to reflect on, maybe, when the last echo of his music had faded and she realized just how much time had slipped past without her realizing it, but normal enough the rest of the time if she ignored just how much he seemed to have taken her musical preferences to heart.
(Why he had felt so concerned at her praise of some ballad of unrequited love he had sung, she had no idea, but it was harmless, probably.)
And the twins had contributed freshly killed meat for their welcoming supper, which was a useful and appreciated gift, especially since it was reasonable and repayable, unlike certain other elvish gifts she could mention.
But this one –
This one she was complaining to Caranthir about, she decided, fixing the occasion in her head as a reward for putting up with it now. Not in any official sense, of course, but as an occasion for a good mutual gripe.
(It was possible, just possible, that she was being a little unfair. Maybe it wasn’t really that Celegorm was so much worse than his brothers. Maybe it wasn’t really about him at all. Maybe it was just that - )
(It was just that Caranthir had so many brothers, and she had met almost all of them by now, had met the twins and shoved down all the memories, all the grief, and then another brother had to show up, like salt on the wound, and he wasn’t dressed in all those elvish silks, he was a shadow constantly lurking over her shoulder in furs and leathers, with always yet another demanding question, and - he reminded her, that was all.)
(That they were here, and Haldar was not, and Haldar would never, ever be able to repay the favor and go bother Caranthir on her behalf.)
“I could fight him for you,” Haldan said earnestly, throwing black looks at where the elf was being temporarily distracted by using his much vaunted expertise with animals to judge if either Belegor or Gilraen did indeed have a cursed chicken.
“No,” she said firmly, ruffling a hand through his far too scruffy hair. “If there’s any fighting to do, I’ll do it. And there won’t be any fighting,” she added firmly.
It felt a little too harsh, like she was stifling his initiative.
And he was still young enough to use youth as an excuse for most things.
“If he asks any other weird questions, you can sneak some worms into his bedroll,” she offered.
She felt abruptly as if somewhere her father, brother, and her good-sister were all judging her parenting choices, but Haldan brightened, and she was getting tired of the questions, so –
Good enough.
(Why Celegorm insisted on asking about her intentions, she had no idea. She intended to shore up the wall around her village, prepare for the wheat harvest, and otherwise do what it took to keep her people alive. What more was there to know?)
Maedhros hadn’t told him that little Caranthir was courting, probably because he was concerned about what Celegorm would do with the information.
Maedhros should have known better, really. If he’d instructed Celegorm to stay away, he wouldn’t be here now.
But he hadn’t, so here they were.
Regardless, she was fond of his brother, angry at the Enemy, and in full agreement that from all descriptions Thingol sounded ridiculous, so Celegorm was inclined to approve of her.
This would not, of course, save Caranthir from being teased about it, no matter how oblivious Caranthir insisted on playing at.
Dear Curufin,
I have met the woman in question and was delighted to discover that she hunts quite acceptably, is suspicious of outsiders, and that she has inspired a commendable level of devotion in her nephew. I think she will fit in nicely.
If you still feel unable to leave Celebrimbor alone long enough to meet her yourself, I will be happy to cast your vote in favor of her in your absence.
- Celegorm
Dear Celegorm,
As delighted as I am that all of you enjoyed your time pestering people on my territory, I cannot imagine why you or any of the others imagine I need your approval for anything that does not involve the defense of Beleriand.
I am also increasingly confused as to what you imagine you are giving your approval for.
Please go back to minding your own stretch of defenses, and leave me to minding mine.
Also, don’t think I didn’t notice the splatters on your last letter; I don’t know whose blood it was, and I don’t care. I have, however, included a parcel of my latest experiment with bandages; I attempted to weave a blessing for quicker healing in this batch. Since you seem to have volunteered yourself as an experimental subject, please use them and send a report of how they worked as soon as you may. Hopefully this will prevent any future incidents with your parchment; your handwriting is terrifying enough without mangling it further.
- Caranthir
The next time an unfamiliar elf showed up, Haleth admitted to herself that there was something elvish going on, and she needed to get to the bottom of what it was before it turned around to bite them.
Unfortunately for him, he’d come in the middle of harvest season, which meant he’d just gotten himself recruited for harvesting wheat.
He joined in easily enough at least; no insistence on ceremony, even if she did look a little askance at the overtunic he had declined to set aside. The wind was chill enough to warrant it, but the sun was high in the sky, and the work had most of the men sweating through their shirts; he’d be suffering soon if he wasn’t already.
“Curufin, I assume?” she asked because she’d been keeping track of the brothers.
He stiffened a moment before accepting the scythe she’d offered him. “Aegnor.”
Oh.
Haleth took a moment to reconsider her old raiding fears before reminding herself that the elf had come (seemingly) alone, and that there were certainly better ways to begin a raid than by helping to bring in the wheat harvest.
That left a slightly less disturbing possibility.
“If you want me to pass on a message so you can all continue to pretend not to speak to each other, you are going to need to harvest a lot of wheat,” she informed him.
“I came to speak to you actually,” he said, still a little stiff.
She threw up her hands. “And why do all the elves now come to speak to me?”
He blinked. “All?”
“Half his family tree at least,” she grumbled, at last turning back to her own work.
“It was probably to be expected,” Aegnor told her as he too turned to the work. “The Feanorians are clannish; of course they’d circle up. Their father never liked the idea of the Secondborn, so I suspect they’re wary.” He paused for a moment and said the rest in a rush that she would have liked to have questioned if she’d had any emotional capacity left for it. “And of course the rest of us are curious; none of us have ever married a human before.”
During the battle, there had been moments where the whole world had seemed to go very still around her.
This felt like that.
“What – exactly – has Caranthir been saying in his letters?”
If – if handing her a stupid fireproof sash had been a marriage proposal, and he hadn’t told her, she was going to grind him into chow and feed him to the possibly cursed chicken.
Aegnor was clearly aware he’d misstepped. “I have heard nothing from him directly,” he backtracked. “Clearly my family’s rumors have run ahead of the facts. You are still courting then?”
“It’s complicated,” she said after a long, hideous moment. Then she turned to him, with a smile that had slightly too many teeth. “Now. Since you’re obviously above feeling clannish over dear Caranthir, what were you so curious about?”
She didn’t go riding off to his fortress. She would have felt very silly doing that, and there was a harvest to take care of here.
Instead she waited. Waited for his usual time to ride out to the village; waited through the usual practical discussions of what needed doing; waited until they were sitting in her small house before her small fire with supper finished between them, and Haldan had run off to chase the other boys in the village under the last precious hour of light.
It occurred to her then, now that she had so many other elves to compare it to, that maybe it was a little unusual to sit quite so casually beside him; chairs abandoned in favor of sitting on the floor and leaning back against the table legs, him scowling at her sash, and her handing it over with a sigh before he could ask so he could start furiously sewing at whatever bit he’d found unacceptable.
It was, perhaps, more than a little unusual.
It just also felt inescapably natural. They had met when she was covered in blood not her own and he spitting it out of his mouth; their first meal together had been warg meat stewed almost into edibility as they snarled and spitted their way into realizing they did not actually want such different things after all.
This was a kinder moment than that. The blood had long been cleaned, the wounds long scarred over, the ghosts laid . . . not quite to rest, but closer.
It could remain a kinder moment, a quiet moment before the fire, where neither felt the need to show their teeth to protect anything at all.
And then she said, “Have you always ridden out to this bit of forest every two weeks?”
Caranthir stiffened a little beside her, and it only emphasized just how relaxed he had been. “Someone has,” he said. “To make sure nothing was getting through.”
She nodded. “But not you. You have too much to do.”
His face twisted. “I’m efficient,” he muttered into his suddenly even tighter stitches. “I’ve found time.”
“Because you’re lonely.”
The cabin fell into dead silence.
“You grew up with six brothers, and now they’ve all gone off to the four winds until they get alarmed by your letters and come bother you. I don’t care how many elves you’ve got crammed into that fortress of yours, you’re lonely.”
This was not the house she’d lived in before. It was smaller because it had been built to only hold two people where once they had needed space for five.
She knew lonely when she saw it, and he knew it, which was probably why he didn’t throw her words back into her face.
“Less so, lately.” The words sounded as if they had been carved out of him.
“Good,” she said firmly, and she kept her eyes firmly fixed on the fire. That was something, no matter what came of this next bit. “We’re not married, are we?”
He choked on his drink.
Well, serve him right for leaving her to worry over this for a week, even if he hadn’t known he was doing it.
“No,” he gasped out. “Or – not by any custom of my people. Do yours – “
“No,” she said firmly. “I would have warned you. But apparently no one told your cousin that.”
Even from the corner of her eyes she could see the blotchy redness that always crept up his cheeks when he was furious. It was tempting to turn and look at him head on; she liked that blotchiness, the way it brought life and color to his perfect porcelain face, the way it proved that whatever starlit songs his people were spun from, there was enough of earth and blood in there for him to be something she could reach out and touch.
"What did he do.” It was not quite a question. Under the circumstances, she decided not to insist on one.
“He asked a lot of very strange questions,” she said. “Apparently back in your people’s old lands he was part of some longstanding debates about us Secondborn that he sounded excessively invested in.” Haleth was of the distinct opinion that the elves had all had far too much time in their hands back in their old country, but as they were all mostly involved in far more sensible pursuits now, it felt tactless to bring it up. “But in fairness, he helped a good deal with the wheat harvest, and he managed to convince Belegor that he’d uncursed his chicken.”
This did not improve Caranthir’s temper.
Which was fair. They had lost a good source of gossip in that chicken.
“Also your brothers keep showing up and giving me things. Excessive things.”
“I will – write to them,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Alright,” she agreed with a shrug. It was probably for the best, even if Caranthir’s letters were how they’d gotten into this mess in the first place.
She snuck a glance at him.
The blotchy redness had very much not faded from his face.
“Only,” she said slowly, “I know how much you hate letter writing. So maybe we should try it first. Just to make very certain you know what it is you want to write.”
“Try – “
"Courting,” she said, firmly ignoring any redness creeping up her own neck. “There’s dancing to celebrate the end of the harvest tomorrow. We could – try it.”
When the silence had stretched on just a little too long, she added, “At least until my poor old joints give out on me.”
“You’ll be outrunning your warriors until you’re as old as Beor,” he snapped. Then he took a deep breath and said, “But you’re right. I should certainly avoid writing a letter to my brothers until we have our answer.”
“And to Aegnor?” she asked cheerfully, determinedly ignoring any other reaction.
“I will certainly avoid writing a letter to him at all.”
Dear Caranthir,
My brother reports you are courting a human woman by the name of Haleth! I know you are terribly busy (or at least I assume so, given how long it always takes you to reply to my letters), but I have several questions that I hoped you would be able and willing to answer about how her people’s customs differ from Beor’s descendants. In his last letter, Celegorm did offer answers to several of these, but I must confess I have some doubts – not, of course, that I would ever doubt his earnestness, only possibly his interpretation of events. I have included the first batch below and will send more in my next dispatch.
It has occurred to me that it might possibly be more polite to apply to the lady directly, but of course it would be unspeakably rude to do so without an introduction. It then occurred to me that I could apply to my brother for such an introduction, so if you are too busy to write, please do not concern yourself overmuch.
Your favorite cousin,
Finrod
Finrod,
I have far too many things to do to indulge your curiosity, and so does Haleth. If it will keep you from riding out here like the rest of Beleriand, however, I am happy to forward your questions to Haleth’s people. This first batch of answers was composed by her nephew, Haldan.
Please disregard the caterpillars. I am told they are very traditional.
Your exasperated cousin,
Caranthir