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"Suddenly out of the dark something fluttered to his shoulder. He started – but it was only an old thrush. Unafraid it perched by his ear and it brought him news. Marvelling he found he could understand its tongue, for he was of the race of Dale...":
- From 'The Hobbit' by J. R. R. Tolkien.
Lake-town
T.A. 2801
Cuineth's back again, Katla signed to her brother.
I see her. Arlan stuck out his tongue, then winked and went back to stroking the thrush that sat on his shoulder. There's nothing wrong with my eyes, sister-mine.
Katla smiled a rueful apology. She waved at the Elf-woman who, on her last visit, had shared berries and sweet spiced biscuits with them as they sat by the lake in the sun. Today the light was wan and the air was laced with the smoke of autumn – a bare, stretching sort of day which had promised little amusement, until the Elven rafts arrived at the Forest River's end.
“Cuineth! Cuineth!”
The Elf's pine-dark hair gleamed, even in the pale afternoon sun. She called back to her companions in her own tongue, and then strode up the banks towards the children.
“I had not thought to find you here today,” she smiled. “Are you not cold?”
“Oh, no,” said Katla airily. “We haven't even had the first frost yet.” She eyed the boxes and barrels being unloaded from the rafts with interest. “What have you brought this time?”
“All kinds of things. Silks; syrups; wine, and dried fruits...”
Katla relayed this to her brother, who made a wistful face and ran a light finger down the thrush's back. The bird bobbed up and down and sang, and in her mind Katla caught the sly thing's response.
This is welcome news indeed; I shall tell the clans, and we will visit town on market-day, and claim our share by stealth!
The children laughed, and Cuineth's fine eyebrows contracted.
“Can you understand him?” she asked.
“Of course.” Katla wriggled; the stone she had perched on was uncomfortable and (despite her brave words of earlier) rather cold.
“Both of you?”
“Yes.”
“But I thought that your brother...” She folded her lips inward. “Forgive me.”
But Katla only laughed. “Arlan can't hear or speak, it's true, but that's not how we understand the birds – it isn't like how I learned small pieces of Elvish from listening to you at the docks.”
Cuineth sat down on the rock next to the children. “Then what is it like?”
“It's like...” Katla screwed her face up as she sought for the words. “It's like building blocks. They sort of...nudge into our mind and slot together. It's not that we work out what her singing means; we just know.”
“I see.” Cuineth smiled a little, her eyes far away. “A kind of ósanwë.”
“Osa-what?”
“Ósanwë. The interchange of minds.”
“Oh.” Katla shrugged. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“Few Elves have any great skill in it these days, and it is not a common gift among Mortals. Among animals it is all but unheard of.” Cuineth reached out a hand to the thrush, who hopped willingly onto her outstretched finger. “Though many birds in these parts are of an ancient race, that flew with the Powers before the Hunter led the First Elves west.”
A great weight of history echoed in her words. Despite the sun pushing through the cloud bank, Katla shivered.
Arlan tugged his sister's sleeve, and signed a question.
“He wants to know if you can understand the thrushes too,” Katla translated.
“Yes.” Her smile grew mysterious. “When they wish to make themselves heard.”
The library was quiet – though not, to Cuineth's ears, silent. The air whispered through the shelves and over the scrolls, stirring up dust motes and a faint scent of decay. It was not, however, neglected; the shelves were carefully organised by topic, with scrolls and the occasional bound book piled, labelled and easy to reach.
“May I help you?”
Cuineth smiled. She had long since ceased to be surprised by Legolas's devotion to his duties as scribe and librarian. “I expect so.” She gave her childhood friend a frank look up and down. “You're quite recovered, then?”
“If I had my own way I'd be back on patrol by now, but my father won't hear of it.”
“Come out on the rafts with me, if you're so very bored. As far as I know, the spiders haven't yet learned to swim.”
Legolas laughed – softly, so as not to disturb the library's peace. “What do you need, Cuineth?”
“Anything on the line of Dale, and their connection with the birds of the Mountain.”
“The ravens?”
“No. The thrushes.”
As they walked, Cuineth explained about the children she met at the edge of the lake, Arlan's ability to understand the thrushes, and Katla's description of the thought-blocks forming in her mind. Legolas's eyes lit, and he tilted his head like a cat.
“I wondered how it was possible,” Cuineth finished. “I knew that some of the Dale-folk could understand the ravens and thrushes, but a connection of the minds...”
Legolas reached for a scroll tucked neatly into the top left shelf in the section for the histories of the Northmen. “Try this one.”
“How in the name of the Powers did you find that so quickly?”
“I've come to know this place well after so many years.” His smile grew soft and wistful. “And besides, it's a favourite of my father's.”
They settled together at a desk in one of the alcoves, and Cuineth unravelled the scroll.
Originally transcribed on the final day of Hithui in the year T.A. 1953, by Findegil of the Greenwood, from an oral history given by the lady Grita. This copy created on the twelfth day of Ivanneth in the year T.A. 2722 by Legolas Thranduilion, at the special request of the King.
Cuineth shot her friend a sharp look. No wonder Legolas had known precisely where to find the scroll.
Legolas shrugged. “Read on.”
The scroll continued:
“When the Wainriders came, they brought fire and death. Our lands were burned and our homes were destroyed. Folk saw the flames rising over the plains, and they fled – some west; some north; some south.
Now my ancestress, Goda, had a fine way with birds. She was a girl at the time, and her greatest friend was the song-thrush that lived near her farm. Day after day she'd sit near its tree to hear its chatterings and warblings, and to sing her own songs in return.
One cold, sharp night, her father saw the glow of fire in the sky, and he told the children to gather their things. “We'll fly to the mountain,” he said – meaning the Lonely Mountain, that you here call Erebor. “Be swift, and take only what you need.” The boys gathered clothes, and rope, and supplies, but Goda only thought of her thrush, for its eggs were new-hatched, and the chicks were as helpless as swaddle-clothed babes.
So she climbed up the tree, and she gathered the nest – thrush and chicks and all. All the way west she carried that thrush, and she tended its young as though they were her own. And when they reached the mountain and the chicks were grown, they all flew free, but the mother-thrush never forgot her debt. She called on the spirits of water and woodland and air to watch over Goda and her kin, and to grant them the gift of understanding when the thrushes spoke. One day, the mother-thrush vowed, one of my children's children will use their gift to aid Goda's folk in their hour of need.”
Cuineth set the scroll gently down on the desk. “Who was the lady Grita?”
“An old family friend.” The corners of Legolas's mouth curved upwards. “I never met her. My grandmother found her wandering in the forest as a child. We returned her to her family, of course, but she visited all through her life.”
Yes, Cuineth thought; she could easily imagine Queen Sírdal bringing home a waif she found lost in the woods. “And the spirits of water and woodland and air?”
Legolas shrugged. “There are notes on Findegil's original copy; apparently, some of the Iathrin believed it was Melian herself who granted the gift, though Findegil found that unlikely. All evidence suggests that she returned to the West when Thingol fell, and remains there to this day.” He leaned back in his chair, and Cuineth smiled fondly at his scholarly tone. “But not all the old earth-powers have names; there are many we don't know of, I'm sure. And it's true enough that some of the Northmen fled Gondor after the Battle of the Plains, a hundred years or so before Grita gave this account. They joined with their kin already living by the Mountain, and later founded Dale. And as far as we know, among Men it is only the Dale-folk that have this ability.”
“So you believe the story is true?”
"Perhaps - at least in part." Lightly, he ran his fingers over the parchment, and his smile grew wide and warm. “I'd like to think that it is.”