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I. the end of the hunt
Who are you? What’s your name, boy?
Furious inexplicable hate—not his beginning, not him now or ever. Hate is the cruel thing which took family and cool forest breath from him, which pursued him with rifles, which arose from greed and found no end in the death of a people. He does not understand it.
He does not understand why he cannot raise his cheek from the dry wheat that he crushes beneath him where he lies on the ground, but he can feel the way a stone digs into his ribs when someone turns him, pulling on his shoulder.
The sky is blue in the distance, vaguely. The sky is white with sun and heat directly above.
A man calls out from far away, or perhaps it is a coyote. A gun fires, a sharp explosion that crackles across the windless sprawling fields, and the boy flinches—the soldiers are not satisfied with a world, let alone a ruined palm.
Who are you? Oh no, Mablung, is all that blood from his hand?
He tries to speak, but he is too exhausted to even weep. Too hungry, too sharply hurt. He has not slept in days, for in the scarce moments between flight and fear when he has tried to close his eyes, he has seen only the last look of an anguished father, commanding him to leave—
His hand does not ache. It stings cruelly. He sweats in a pale green fever, such as he had done long ago, starves as he also had done long ago, but no vision comes to him now. Of course—he may not live till night, if the soldiers have their way.
They’ve half killed him, poor bastard.
A shadow, shielding him from the sun. And then—thick arms underneath him, lifting him up with the strength of a golden eagle.
Mablung, should I ride ahead t’see that a bed and bandages are fixed up, or should I follow after Beleg and the trespassing dogs?
This third person speaks from a distance, rough and eager for action, but then—
Mablung, will he die?
There is a lesser shadow to the side, the soft voice that seemed frightened of the blood, and then everything darkens and night falls, or the sun turns black even as its heat intensifies.
The boy cannot stop shivering.
No, rumbles the man holding him close to his chest. He continues, Emilio, Beleg will not need your aid. Ride behind us, and keep your gun loose and ready—Thingol will not be pleased as it is, so we must see at least that his daughter is returned in all safety. Wait, help me get the boy up on my horse—where did he come from, I wonder?
The boy’s breath catches ragged on the new question, for he is almost dizzy with pain, and besides his own self, he cannot call to mind the name of his people, cannot recall the stories of the rivers he once drew salmon from, nor even the sound of the water rushing and trickling and foaming.
There is only the buzz of summer insects, the huff of steady breathing (not his), and the dull clip-clopping of a horse’s hooves underneath him.
Do not be afraid, says the voice that was the greater shadow, the voice that was—Mablung. Spanish, and the boy understands enough of that if he does not comprehend the words fully in this moment. Hold on a little while, and I shall take you to the good lady Melian. Do not be afraid.
Not a year ago, the boy’s father spoke similarly, gently, in a tongue more beloved, and the boy suddenly moans at the memory, sharp and dear as it is.
The demons that hunt us—do not fear them more than survival requires. Straighten your back and bend your bow, for we walk side by side, you and I. Do not be afraid, Beren.
Beren. His name is Beren.
II. the well-known and well-loved
Barahir, leader of the Erchamion people, sits with his feet dangling over the rocky cliffside, overlooking the great wide river below. The water sparkles, rosy with light from the newborn sun, shimmering as though a thousand fish with silver scales flick their fins against the surface, but Beren can only cling to his father’s side, where he is tucked under the strongest arms in the world. The morning is cold, and Beren’s feet, like his father’s, are warmed by soft otter-skin moccasins.
The world is before young Beren—for now—but all he wants to do is to watch his father’s lined brown face and wrap his small hands in his father’s loose long hair.
“The day was similar to this,” Barahir says, moss-soft words rushed just a little in the recitation of a precious memory. (Beren has never heard his father raise his voice—he has never needed to, for the entire Erchamion village, or house, know to respect the wisest of its people.)
“At the potlatch near the end of spring,” Beren contributes in a breathless whisper. Breathless, although he knows this story just as well as he knows the tale of the Salmon people, who gave of themselves to feed the tribes who lived on land, and the story of the thunderbird and the killer whale, and their fight that uprooted all the trees in prairie regions south of Beren’s beloved green mountains.
“Yes, near the end of spring,” Barahir repeats with a smile, and his dark brown eyes glint with sunlight. Two eagles drift lazily through the sky, swooping in great circles. “It was a celebration of my sister’s wedding to the leader of another village, but I, not he, received the greatest blessing that day, the most valuable gift.”
Beren wiggles just a little, nestling in to listen to his father’s heartbeat. “But you received two gifts, father. The eight copper bracelets and the robe of yellow cedar bark. From the families who wanted their daughters to marry you.”
“Even so,” Barahir says, and cups his great hand around the back of Beren’s head. This hand has drawn bowstrings, carved wooden creatures of earth, land, and water, and buried loved ones. Now it strokes Beren’s lengthening hair, and his eyes flutter closed.
“The bracelets honored my station in a special way, and the robe, finely woven, signaled the usefulness of the second young woman, but I did not choose to take either of the two gifts, nor the women who gave them.”
Beren smiles, for his favorite part of the story approaches. He squeezes his eyes tight, and imagines that he has never seen a thing, not a tree nor a cloud nor even one of the shaggy mountain goats whose thick hair currently lines the cloak hanging from his father’s shoulders.
Barahir continues.
“The day was like today, and the celebrations were abundant, but when darkness fell, my thoughts grew heavy. While the men of the tribe danced around the fire that night, telling the story of the past, present, and future, wearing their masks painted black, red, and green, I retreated into the forest, troubled by many things. The winter had been hard—prey was scarce still, and the time had not yet come for the building of weirs and traps for salmon. I could not decide if I should take our people to the seacoast, to hunt seal or to search for herring in the coves in which they spawned.” Barahir pauses for just a moment, then says, “Aside from this, my son, I could not have the woman I loved.”
Struggling not to interrupt yet again, Beren rumbles meaningless sounds in his young throat. His father does not cease stroking his hair, nor does he ask Beren to be quiet.
“Emeldir the Blind was of our own village, but she was the daughter of a lowly family, and my elderly father, whom I respected in all other things, had forbidden the union.”
Beren opens his eyes and spies a great big brown bear prowling the shores of the river below the cliff. His father has slain three of the creatures in his life, great events that always inspired dances and prayers, but little Beren loves to watch the living animal pass by unhurriedly, at one with the world around him. Bears’ lives seem wonderfully uncomplicated.
“Why?” he murmurs, because he likes to be part of the story even before he arrives in it.
His father sighs, touches his chin, to see that he looks him in the eye. “To those mired in the ways of the past, it seemed that Emeldir was undistinguished as member of our house, our village, and so they said that any children born by her would be cursed with her lowliness, and that I could not raise them to my height.”
Beren studies his father’s eyes, his nose, his high-carved cheekbones. He feels no disturbance inside of his belly, no hurt in his heart—in the eight years of his life, he has never been made to feel less than worthy.
Of course, he has never seen his father make anyone feel less than worthy. Barahir of the Erchamion has always quietly trusted in loyalty and generosity, and Beren imagines how he subtly changed the thoughts of his people like he was guiding winter into spring, warming their hearts with the work of his hands, loosening the stifled, packed earth.
“Before she saved you that night,” Beren questions, all his love for the story leaping up his throat, “would you have married her anyway?”
His father smiles, warmer than coals and fire and the summer sun.
III. the touch of hope
Doriath, Doriath—a word that Beren does not know, a home that is not his, a haven that in his troubled sleep he dreams into the same tangled, half-burnt wood in which he saw his father stumble and bleed.
Doriath, the dimly lit room in which he wakes from time to time, fear and grief crackling through his veins, in his weakened chest.
Sometimes his healer is there, calmly preparing him another of the draughts that eased him into sleep when he first arrived, half-conscious and trembling. Sometimes there is another—a black-haired nightingale who kneels by his bed in a green silk dress. She caresses his fever-hot bare arm with gentle hands, and when he turns to her, eyes wide, she sings to him, and he listens.
He can breathe then, breathe without thinking of the torturous pain in his hand, or of the way the soldiers crowed when the bullet struck him.
I know it won’t help as I would like it to, but I am sorry for what you have endured. How could they have hurt you so? That is what the nightingale asks later, when they are alone, because the nightingale is not acquainted with evil. Who are you that they should treat you so cruelly?
Beren struggles to form an answer. He is unsure of himself in this place, but for the sake of his comforter, he wishes to reveal himself, to thank her for giving him even a moment’s peace.
What, though, can he say? He has been a warrior, he was before that a child, and, young though he is, he has been all these things—a cornered fox, a leaping salmon, and a blackbird with a broken wing.
He has never been, like his father, a wolf of great wisdom.
It is no matter, speaks the nightingale, Tinuviel, when Beren’s voice and self gets caught in his throat. I should not ask, perhaps. I am a curious creature, and Mama encourages me, but even she says that I must learn when to stop turning the rainbow round.
The nightingale is so light, so lovely, even as she laughs at herself, a hint of apology in her words and tone.
Beren absently lifts his good hand from where it rests on his soft blankets and lays it against his chest. He plays with the bandages wrapped about his burns, scrapes, and cuts there—no serious injuries, only the wear of long flights through brambles and almost-deserts and hurried escapes into rapid rivers.
Rainbow? he says, hesitating a little. Tinuviel—that is not the nightingale’s real name, but it suits her so well—has been speaking with him in English today, having discovered that he understands a little more of it then Spanish.
Still, he does not know what rainbow means.
Yes, Tinuviel says eagerly, leaning forward so that her long hair pools against the bare skin of his right arm. When Beren breathes in, her sweet scent reminds him of the fields of blue flowers that stretched out wild and free from the edge of his old forest home, running down the mountainside and dancing out into the wind and the world.
The rainbow, Tinuviel continues, smiling brightly, you know, when it rains, and afterward the sun shines and there is an arc of colors across the sky.
Rainbow, Beren repeats, lest he forget the roll of the word across his tongue. And then: You can turn it around?
Tinuviel’s peel of laughter is more healing than the chirp of birds in the morning, the trickle of a stream, or the thin metal pipes hung on strings outside his window, chiming gently in the breeze.
It is just an expression about the power of curiosity, she tells him, but then she stands upon her bare feet. The slender girl, perhaps older than himself in age, is younger in grief, and Beren cannot be but mesmerized by the sparkling in her dark eyes as she flings her arms like branches to the corners of the room, her green silk sleeves hanging like moss and vine. Can I turn the rainbow round? I can do anything I like, if only my will is strong!
And Beren believes her.
IV. the way of the mother
As the years go by like leaves on the wind, now floating gently, now spinning in furious circles—leaping high in love and plentiful game, and then dashing downward in sickness and starvation—Beren grows and remains the same.
“How can I be the same?” he asks of his mother as he watches her grind red ochre at the base of her favorite pine tree. He is twelve, and in preparation for the first salmon ceremony, he has spent the day hunting for eagle down, and returned to the village with more than any of the five other boys tasked with the same mission. His face glows slick with sweat, and he is nigh out of breath from running through the forest. The running—the swift-pattered footsteps and the heaving of his chest—are what prompted his mother to sigh over him being the same as he was in his childhood days. “I have grown since last winter,” Beren says, “let me show you.”
He gently raises his mother to her feet, and touches the side of his head to her shoulder.
“Here I am,” he says, and he wraps one arm around her waist.
Emeldir tilts her head, and the ring in her nose flashes under the light of the sun.
“Here you are?” she asks, laughing in her own deep and throaty way. “I trust no voice that tells me how life is, unless it be the voice of Barahir, and I trust no touch but my own. Let me have a look.” And with this, she takes her rust-stained hands and ghosts her fingers over Beren’s nose and eyes, and pinches at his cheeks.
“Oh could it be?” she asks the black-capped little bird chirping on the branch just behind Beren’s left shoulder. “Has my son grown into a man at last? Has he killed his first wolf, or dug his own canoe? Shall he lead in the rites for the eating of our first salmon of the year?”
“Mother!” Beren exclaims softly, but he knows she only teases. Besides, he has dug out his first canoe, and this fall, when the weather grows cold and the wolves travel closer to the village to seek their prey, he will certainly join his father on the hunt.
He has his courage to prove, as well as his usefulness to the village, and it shall be no easy task to live up to his mother.
Oh yes, his mother. While Barahir of the Erchamion is renowned far and wide among the various peoples of forest and river for his wisdom and fairness, it is Emeldir the Man-hearted whom the Erchamion speak of with pride—it is Emeldir the Man-hearted whom the allies and enemies of the Erchamion alike speak of in awed whispers.
It was Emeldir the Blind who—overlooked by her village, unwanted at a celebratory potlatch, forbidden from marrying the chieftan—waited quietly in a glen for the man she loved, and saved him from capture and even death. When three white snakes ambushed Barahir in the moonless woods, threatening him with words of blood and gold, Emeldir heard it all. She drew a knife and slipped through the night and the trees like a shadow among shadows, unseeing and unseen, and threw herself at the greed-hollow snakes like a mountain lioness protecting her cubs.
“Were you afraid?” Beren asks his mother of that night. They stand in the shallows of a swift running stream, catching up fish in nets and baskets, and the stones under Beren’s feet are cool and smooth. “Baragund says in moments like that, there is no time for you to feel fear.”
Emeldir dips a hand in the water and flicks it in Beren’s direction so that some splashes against his sun-warmed chest and some goes directly in his left eye, so that he has to pinch it closed and rub it furiously.
“Your cousin is a fool,” she says over Beren’s laughing protests. “Was I afraid? Of course I was. Love and fear are companions—they walk together in my heart. Because I loved your father, I was terrified, and because I was terrified for the one I loved, I could act. It did not matter that I was blind, just as it would not have mattered if I were mute or lame or deaf as your grandmother. I would have died before I let Barahir be slain, or stolen away for torment and humiliation, and I would do the same for you. I would give anything for the two of you, and almost as much for our people.”
The water is so cold, yet Beren’s entire body tingles for the fierceness of his mother’s words. He cannot speak. His throat is tight and he feels very much like a great storm is circling about him, and in him, but that it has promised to lend its own protection. A sort of lightning striking at his heart, illuminating the green world, but the thunder that follows is an echo of the mountains, the steadiness of his father.
Beren grips his net once more, and says, “Mother, I too will live like this, in love and fear.”
“No,” says his mother, so sharp and quick that Beren cannot help but flinch, startled.
Emeldir straightens, standing tall in the water as it breaks against her bare legs underneath her tucked up skirt, and her voice vibrates with the same strength and timbre of the river.
“No, Beren. I would be cruel to wish such days and nights upon you. I would have you and your own family—wife and children and children’s children—all free from the dangers of the world, so that you may say farewell to fear as a natural friend, and live only with love and the knowledge of safety.”
Beren catches a fish in his net, a shining salmon. The forest has wolves, the mountains lions, the seasons heat and cold and snow and rain. Trees may fall, hunger can bite, and snakes slither with poison and fangs. Villages disagree, and strangers from another world come with kind, insincere words and recklessly clear trees and build great wooden forts closer and closer together. The river has sentinals now that keep watch, claim it as if it were something that could be claimed.
“This...this wish you have, mother,” Beren says carefully, “this world you want for me, is it even possible?” The fish is struggling in the net, flopping about, seeking an opening, seeking the water. Beren has wrapped the net round and round itself.
He waits, but Emeldir turns away from him, and leaves the river in silence.
Beren breathes a prayer, and lets the salmon go.
V. the center of all things
Beren can sit up now, fully. He wishes to do much more, to make his way to the beautiful gardens that Luthien tells him of—and if she would accompany him, keep him steady with just the light touch of her delicate hand upon his arm—
He wishes he could walk unaided, to find his host, the father of his nightingale, to offer him thanks and some act of service in gratitude and payment for this haven where he is not hunted, is not hated, is not feared. Is not mocked for following the last command of his father and turning from certain death.
The door swings lightly open and Luthien dances lightly in, carrying some sort of plate that is mostly covered by a white cloth.
Yes, dances, not in the way of his people, but rather like a bird in love with the wind, a bird who knows herself and knows where she will go.
Beren sets down his knife in his lap, and tucks the wood he has been carving under his blanket, just out of sight.
Well, Luthien says, alighting on the edge of Beren’s bed as though it were a branch grown specifically for her use, I have done as I promised.
What did you promise? Beren asks her, partially because he cannot remember any promises she has made, partially because he is afraid she is trying to lean forward just enough so that she can catch a glimpse of a half-made gift. He shifts his injured hand over the blanket so that there is no such danger.
Dumplings, Luthien says proudly, and Beren’s smile is as much for the funny little word as for the flourish with which she flicks the cloth from the plate. What do you think? she asks, eyes sparkling. Somehow they turned out very neat, even though Mama did not help one bit. I wanted to make them entirely by myself, and so I did. She holds the plate closer to Beren. You do remember me telling you about dumplings, jiaozi, a few days ago?
Beren expends a great deal of effort to look at the flower-shaped arrangement of food rather than at the eager girl before him. Once he does manage to glance down however, he finds himself amused by the delicate creations, the way the dough is pinched tightly together. They are, as Luthien said, very neat. They are set like plump petals around a small bowl half-filled with a dark sauce—the plate itself is deep red, carved, as far as Beren can tell, as though it were a swirl of reeds and five-pointed blossoms.
I remember, he says, but I am not sure I can eat them.
Luthien’s expression flashes with disappointment, very fleetingly, before she asks why.
They are so small, Beren says, that I want to return their covering and keep them safe. A strange mischievous thrill passes through his chest as Luthien tilts her head and presses her lips together in a puzzled smile. He continues, They look like little children all wrapped up in blankets, waiting for their mothers.
Luthien’s laughter is worth a bullet through the hand, a bed-ridden month. The light touch of her hand on his side as she folds over him, wiping a tear from her eye, is something he does not want to lose.
After they partake of her enchanting lovely little meal, and he has given simple and honest praise, inducing her to blush happily, he dares to grasp at the ends of the sash hanging down her skirt.
Don’t go yet, he says, halting her in her rising.
It’s late, she replies, and Mama says you have not been getting enough true rest, and that even her special teas do not seem to aid you.
He does not sleep well because ill dreams always find him, wrap him in fire and gunfire, drain his strength with the slowest of poisons—memory.
I am afraid, he says, and he finds the admission as simple as if he were speaking once more to his father or mother. Luthien makes him feel safe, as though misfortune would not dare raise its snake-like head in the shine of her silver starlight. I am afraid to sleep.
When Luthien sinks by his side once more, fluttering her hands about his face, brushing at his hair in the purest of sympathies, he asks her if he can tell her about his family.
Luthien says yes.
VI. last things, first things
From his mother, he receives a kiss. One presses against black downy hair when he is new to the world, one rests lightly on the warm skin of his cheek, when he promises to return swiftly with his father, returning with enough game to feed the dwindling village.
You won’t, his mother says tiredly, cheeks hollow, and she is right as ever.
Beren and his father’s hunting party find little prey, but in the end it hardly matters. In the end, they return to ash and destruction, too many bodies, and not enough.
Beren never knows if his mother perished, sleeping in her low redwood house as it burned around her. He does not know if she was chased deep into the forest, to be murdered there, or if, by some blessing of her favored Salmon people, she escaped with her life. Not all the canoes remain, drawn up on the river bank.
A single drop of hope, but neither Beren nor Barahir have time to search, let alone weep, for the soldiers return, seeking more blood, and the long chase begins.
From his father, Beren takes a name, and the weight of a people. He is the son of the chief of the Erchamion, and he is their last sure survivor, the only one, man or woman, who walks free, neither prisoner nor dead.
Beren does not know if any prisoners were taken—his father hoped they were not.
It is better to walk into death then into slavery, Barahir once said, but years later, blood mingles with dust in his long grey hair, and he grips Beren’s shoulders and shoves him away from the last remnants of the Erchamion, commanding him to escape. Beren knows then, instantly, that he would rather walk into slavery than lose his father to death.
Still, he listens. Still, he obeys, and suffers all the anguish he foresaw.
From Luthien Tinuviel, Beren of the Erchamion receives new life, and he gives her what he can of his old one in return.
This, he says, very quietly, offering for her consideration the necklace which she had found lying underneath him in the field that first awful day, this was a gift my father gave me when I turned fourteen.
The necklace is a long strand of leather, and on it hangs a beautifully carved bear, sitting on its haunches, painted in deep colors of black, red, and green.
Luthien holds it reverently in her slender hands. It is so smooth, she says. Did he carve it himself?
Beren smiles, his grief easing in his chest for the first time since he cut his hair three days before. He sits now in a chair by the window, its fluttering curtains and whispering chimes, and Luthien is perched on a cushion at his feet, a book lying forgotten in her lap. He did. He told me he wanted me to have something to give me strength, and to remind me of my mother, and her mother before her, and all our ancestors who came before us.
Do bears symbolize mothers to your people? Luthien asks curiously. Beren is glad she has questions for him—he wants to share everything with her, and he is glad she does not shy away from his past out of misplaced sympathy.
Motherhood, and other things, Beren replies. Dreams, humility, friendship. Healing.
I’m glad you have something to remember them by, Luthien says, returning the necklace, and Beren doesn’t quite know what to do with the pain that stabs at his heart.
Me too, he says, and then, because he cannot stay in Doriath forever, because he dreads the day he must leave this haven, he plunges forward with simple courage, pulling from his blanket a wooden whale, carved from his childhood memories, no larger than the palm of Luthien’s hand.
Here, he says. I’d like to give you something to remember me by as well.
Luthien looks at him with surprise, but she turns the whale over and over in her hands, studying it intently.
I’m sorry it is so plain, Beren says quickly, shifting in his chair. I thought the working of the wood might help in the healing of my hand, but it was not so easy. Also, I had no paint.
Luthien looks up at him then, and the delight in her eyes relieves him of all his worries. You have told me stories of your killer whale, she says, the light in her eyes glittering with amusement and something more. Your wolf of the sea. It has slipped my mind, however—do the creatures not hold a symbolism of their own?
Beren feels his cheeks warm, but thinking of the calmness with which his father always carried himself, he says, voice clear and steady, The elders taught us that art or jewelry depicting a—a killer whale could be given to someone who brings harmony to our lives.
Luthien rises to her feet, tucks them back into the slippers that lay disregarded by her pillow the whole afternoon. Ah, she says innocently as can be, nothing else?
Beren gazes upon her standing there, slender and lovely, someone who has swiftly become as precious to him as breath and water, sunlight and wind, memory and hope. He thinks of the way she has cared for him without cause, of the nights she has sang to him, the days she has read to him. The scattered dream-like moments where she has kissed him, brushed his cheek with her delicate fingers, and then hurriedly withdrawn. He cannot speak.
It is Luthien’s turn to flush, and she turns away in a rush, sparing him further confusion. I’m sorry, she says, I am teasing again, and treading where I should not. Mama and Isabella are right, I never know when to stop.
She steps to the door, and Beren, afraid she will leave him and not come back, calls out her name, one of her names. Tinuviel, he says, and Luthien halts upon the threshold.
Yes? she asks, fruitlessly hiding the whale carving in light long sleeves of her dress, as though she wished to steal it away without Beren noticing.
Taking a deep breath, Beren pushes himself up from his chair with his good hand, and sits straight and tall. It’s true, he replies, the gift of a killer whale has other meanings. And—I mean them.
Luthien’s tense shoulders relax at once, and she tucks a long strand of black hair behind her ear. When he begins to speak once more, she flies to his side, and laying a hand on his left shoulder, she presses him so that he lies back comfortably on the cushions of his chair once more.
Shh, she says, but there is a certain joy in her voice that makes something in Beren’s chest flutter like it has wings. I’ll be back presently, she says, keep this safe for me.
Beren holds the whale carving as carefully as though it were the fragile baby bird he had once rescued from a hawk’s vision.
There were months when Beren would have said that he nothing left to live for, other than a weary determination to follow his father’s last request. He is, after all, Beren Erchamion.
Erchamion. There are no more of this people, not even scattered to the four great winds. They have been burnt, and their ashes ground into the earth, or they lie bloodless and open-eyed upon needle-matted forest floors. They stain a scarlet trail from north to south, from cedar to wheat, from wolf to lion to coyote, and their ageless home is crushed now under the carved brutal structure of a white man’s fort.
This is why he has cut his hair, this is why he lies sleepless at night staring into the dark above him, alone, alone, alone.
Except—except even in darkness, he has received a gift, a single star that sings him out of the storm just by her very existence.
Is it wrong to feel this way? Beren wants to ask his mother, his father, but even as he wonders, even as he runs his fingers over his scars, he can hear his mother’s voice grumbling at him fondly.
Beren, my foolish son, didn’t I say that I wanted nothing more than for you to live in peace with someone you love?
Beren curls the whale to his heart, and when Luthien returns, she carries an armful of paint jars. When she returns, she brings a world of hope with her.