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Elenwë’s knees have hit the ice so hard, so many times, that she can no longer feel the individual bruises, only the ever-present pain. She tries to roll as she slips, to sit instead of falling, but it is no use – the slick surface pulls her forward; it gathers her down. In desperation, she throws herself ahead of the slide, all belly and palms, in a slow, unstoppable dive.
Her falling cheek scrapes the surface suddenly clean.
The ice beneath her is beautiful – luminous and clear, azure sinking into sapphire into navy. The water is so cold it barely moves; the finest of bubbles hang suspended in elegant columns that fade down and away, into the midnight depths.
And there are hands against hers, matching palms to her palms. Hair like water-weeds; pale fins – or soft wings? – under water. Dark blue, mysterious eyes. They blink, and a strange mouth smiles.
Then Turgon is lifting her to her feet and brushing the snow from her furs, all anxious attention and care. The wind shifts the snow, and whatever she glimpsed beneath the ice is gone.
But Elenwë cannot forget that strange face, those pale fingers. In her tent, when the stars are still, she dreams she hears a watery voice singing – sweet and smooth, cresting and breaking in a wave of distant sound that sets her bones to ringing, leaves her dancing in her sleep, her hands and feet curving and curling as though parting the waters.
And when she falls again, the same long hands are there, twins to her own as through a looking-glass, and the blue eyes stare.
Turgon prefers the clear days for traveling, but when they walk through snow, Elenwë’s feet are steadier. The crisp froth holds her up; the boiling wind pushes her away from the ice; the settling flakes swirl bracingly around her ankles. She feels more solid, more secure. In a snowstorm, she is able to laugh, to sing, to watch the sky sparkle through her frozen lashes and imagine that at some point, this strange, mindless journeying will end.
It is in the still watches that she slides, and slips, and dives. Down to the slick window on that other world, her face pressed against the ice, her wide eyes seeking.
She starts to crave the falls, reaches for the sleek, strange fingers, sings under her breath in that half-heard, liquid language – sprawled on the frigid plane as though in her own bed, dreaming. She grows numb to the cold, deaf to the sounds of her own people calling as she slides into the dark and falls and falls, laughing when the pale palms find hers from beneath the slab: mirroring, beckoning.
Only Idril tugging at her belt keeps her away from the edges where the Ice splits and the song swells – her child’s warm weight a float that ties her to the surface, keeps her feet sliding on, and on, and on.
Later, Turgon will remember it as the midpoint, the moment in their journey when they are equally suspended between Araman and the Lammoth. The stars wheel above them in unfamiliar patterns and the world is all sharp blue, shadows layered on shadows wherever they turn. The wind falls, and the air stings: brittle and still.
Idril turns to her father with some question on her lips, and lets go of her mother's hand.
Elenwë cries out: The song! The singers!
For the first time, the others see them: finned arms beckoning from the gap between the floes, seagrass hair tossing, blue eyes dancing as they call.
It is such a small splash. The surface freezes over almost instantly, after Elenwë falls.
But oh, the tenderness, the welcome she finds in the sleek embrace of those long, cool hands. The singing mouths have more teeth than she remembered, but nevertheless, they smile.
Elenwë's head rings with the echoing music. She closes her eyes and kicks down and away, matching the beat of those powerful tails as the bubbles of her last breath rise.