"Statues," for My March B-Day Friends
Yes, I do still write stories! And Silmfic stories too. :)
"Statues" is about how Nerdanel coped with the loss of her husband and children through her art ... and how she may have helped the Teleri to do the same. I've kept it safe for all audiences, though there are some small mentions of violence at the Kinslaying at Alqualonde.
Happy birthday to tarion_anarore, noliel, and allie_meril! (trekqueen, aside from Glorfindel, I'm really not sure who your favorite characters are ... if you're not a Nerdanel fan, let me know, and I'll try to come up with something for you! :) So many March birthdays!
As usual, all comments--positive and critical--are welcome. Or just read and enjoy!
Statues
I found him in the garden, with his back to me, shoulders hunched, busy with something that lay across the lawn. He heard me; I saw his shoulders stiffen. "Fëanáro?" I whispered, and he should not have heard me, yet he did. His head tilted slightly in my direction, and drawing a deep, tremulous breath, I stepped forward.
That which lay across the lawn was a statue of his father done by Aulë and given as a gift, long ago, to honor the King of the Noldor who'd so bravely led his people to the realm of the Valar. In his anger, Fëanáro had pushed it over; broken it upon the earth.
"I wish that the world was filled only with statues," I heard him whisper. I should not have heard him, yet I did, for his voice arrived in a place deeper than my ears, deep inside the intimacy of my mind. I tensed, waiting for pain of intrusion that did not come. He went on. "No people. Just statues. I cannot hurt statues."
His father's statue had broken in the middle, though where blood and viscera should be, there was only dust, white upon Fëanáro's hands. I touched his shoulder. He turned to me. Water quenches fire; how could they coexist in his eyes?
They did.
"I can fix this," he told me. Fire burned away the water. He could fix it, yes, but could he fix what had caused it? Nay, he could not.
For the world is more than statues.
~oOo~
They call me mad: the wife of Fëanáro who is gone. Her sons, gone too. Her mind …
They do not say it--at least not where I can here--but they think it, I know. I used to come often among my people, more than my husband had in fact, though I was not of royal blood and had not his obligations. My words were the comfort of many and my strength admired in the wake of my estrangement from Fëanáro. Nerdanel the Wise. The Strong. Nolofinwë--then king--let me speak for my house at councils in Tirion, at first for pity, then for admiration. Then for need. I counted the long years of Fëanáro's exile upon a block of marble in my workshop: a nick with the chisel for each day of his absence, until the stone was reduced to dust. But this I did not allow to show in my face or my voice in Tirion.
The Wise, they called me, for my deception, for my eagerness to see their point in things. The Strong.
They call me neither any longer.
I have not left our house since the theft of the Telerin ships, since watching them pass, pale as ghosts, upon black seas into the north. I tried to throw myself into the sea that night, to follow them, my feet loud upon the quay and heedless of the tears upon my face. It was two Telerin mothers who caught me and held me back: their sons lost to my husband's malice, their arms now wrapping me, whom they should cast into the sea for bringing forth the seven sons who had murdered theirs. Whispering into my hair as my feet kicked against the quay, propelling me after my children, who went so willingly to their dooms. I screamed and wept that night, but the Telerin mothers said nothing. They knew grief. They knew that it would subside, if they held me long enough.
Groaning upon the restless sea, the fleet of ships became a quaver of light upon the northernmost horizon, lanterns bobbing with the motion of the waves … then nothing. They were gone.
I accepted the hospitality of the Teleri: their spiked tea and warm blankets, a bedroom belonging to a son who went unnamed, his fate untold. I knew. I breathed his scent left upon his pillows that was like fresh-baked bread and cinnamon and could not sleep for dreams where the scents of home began to reek of hot metal. Of blood. Of innocence spoiled.
In the night--for without the Trees, it was always night--I departed without word of explanation or gratitude to my hostesses, who doubtlessly heard my footsteps upon the stairs as they lay, sleepless and grieving, in their own beds. But they did not stop me or question me, and I returned to our house, the house I had shared with my husband and children.
And I have been there since.
~oOo~
At first, I did nothing. For what was there to do? Twice now, my purposes in life had been thwarted. First, my place as a wife and mother had been taken from me. No longer did I have to worry about baking the bread in the morning, about seeing that my sons had clean clothes and freshly pressed robes when they needed them; no longer did I have to concern myself that my restless husband took meals and bathed and slept in a fashion appropriate and healthy for our people. And so, following Fëanáro's exile, I'd taken a new purpose. I'd taken to waiting for their return and healing the damage they'd done with their absence. Maitimo's place on the King's Council was unfilled. I filled it. I knew nothing of the matters described in the many parchments strewing his desk. So I learned.
To heal the rift between his sons, Finwë had set up a monthly council between the three of them. Fëanáro always complained when this day came, loudly moaning about progress stalled and projects forsaken in the name of politics, but I knew that he secretly loved to go, loved the knowledge that he could impart in which his half-brothers utterly lacked. Loved his influence over them, the awe in their eyes that they tried to hide. Loved to see his ideas enacted to benefit all of the Noldor. Every third month, when the council came to our house outside the city, I would listen at the door to their three voices--so alike--joyful in argument. On the day of the first council after Fëanáro's exile, I found Nolofinwë and Arafinwë sitting opposite each other in Nolofinwë's study with their hands upon their knees, their mouths drawn and silent. "I am here to represent the eldest prince of the Noldor," I said, and while Nolofinwë was practiced enough in diplomacy to keep his face an emotionless mask, then Arafinwë's blue eyes went warm with relief. And so I took on that duty as well.
But following Finwë's murder and the death of the Trees and the horror at Alqualondë, I knew not what else to do. I knew not what else to do because I grieved for none of those things as deeply as I grieved for my own selfish loss of my husband and children. And so I locked my doors against the world, and I have not been out since.
~oOo~
What to do, in days of Darkness? Darkness that was not only a lack of light but a lack of hope? Finally, I understood the choice of Miriel Þerindë. Finally, I felt the ache deep in my marrow that spoke of a wish for death. In the midst of the courtyard, I lay upon the stones, myself as still as though graven from marble. Without the Trees, the pleasant warmth typical of Valinor diminished, and it was cold. My skin was raised into bumps, then burned, then grew numb. I imagined death entering me, bit by bit, through the skin and as deep as the stubborn heart still lobbing--aching--in my chest. I imagined myself growing as cold and stiff as stone. Dead leaves fallen from the trees chattered across my body but I could not feel it.
Around me, the ghosts of my children played. The ghost of my husband too. Though I squeezed my eyes shut so tightly that my head ached, I could dispel none of them, not least of all Fëanáro, who knelt beside me in my dreams and kissed my lips, as he'd done so many times, in this very place. The children will hear, Fëanáro … my insubstantial protests, my hands lifting to tangle in his hair. His breath warm and rapid upon my throat. Let me put my cloak beneath you, Nerdanel. You will be more comfortable.
I opened my eyes, and his eyes burned mine, kindled a heat deep within my body that--so long as it smoldered--would mean that I lived.
And our children: Tyelkormo having fallen from the apple tree, breaking his arm in the fall, coming to me with his face pale with pain, lip quivering, determined not to cry. Or finding Macalaurë singing to Vingarië one evening at the Mingling of the Lights, her head upon his lap, his voice so raw with love for her that--though I knew it wrong to stay--I hadn't been able to turn away. Curufinwë with his eyes squeezed shut tightly, parchment quavering in his hands, hopeful that he'd been accepted for a year's study with Aulë but pretending that it mattered not. The twins shouting with delight and coaxing butterflies into their open hands; Carnistir on a silver night with blanket wrapped around his bare shoulders, his face turned to the light of stars that could not be seen beyond the light of Telperion. My dreams were bad, yes, but this place brings me peace. Great things will be born here.
Awaking with a start to find the courtyard empty and the darkness smothering but Carnistir's words as clear as though spoken beside me: Great things will be born here.
How wrong he had been. I wept.
~oOo~
When I first entered womanhood, my father was inspired to make a bronze cast of my hands to remember, he said, the last days when I was still his and did not yet belong to a husband and children. He did not know that my heart already indulged in the foolish hope of belonging to one in particular; that my innocence was already tarnished by a kiss from a prince beneath a star-filled sky outside of Aulë's workshop.
Perhaps it was appropriate, then, that his whimsical indulgence devolved into a trend and similar models came to be quite popular among the more sentimental of Tirion. Babies, young women, wives, and mothers … all had their hands "immortalized"--as the craftsmen who grew rich on such pursuits came to call it--in bronze or copper or even steel. But I was the first.
Some years later, when the hope of love with Fëanáro became a proclamation of the same, he found my "hands" in my father's workshop. I came upon him, matching them to his. "This was you!" he remarked, astounded. "When I first loved you. I will never forget the shape of these hands, though they no longer fit in mine."
"It is not so extraordinary," I said, trying to take the hands to put them away. But Fëanáro would not relinquish them. "We are an immortal people; why confine ourselves to statues?"
"Immortal but evolving, Nerdanel," he replied. "Always evolving. This girl is gone, changed from something she shall never become again. How amazing, then, that that moment is preserved forever! And so you shall live forever in your youth, and I can hold these hands and return there, to that first moment of our love …" His eyes squeezed shut, he returned there. By the peace that spread suddenly upon his face--a peace that we both had forgotten he could possess--he returned there.
~oOo~
I always loathed capturing the precise essence of a person in metal or stone. The ability was mine, true, but yet I resisted, for it seemed a dangerous power to imbue a stone with even a semblance of life … and too revealing of me, well, in my choice of subjects and postures and physiognomy.
Instead, my artworks came strong and strange, called unusual when people were being polite and bizarre when they were not. Brows furrowed and heads tilted; Fëanáro came up beside me, shoulders squared with pride, and kissed me for all to see. "I have married a true genius of the Noldor," he said, "whose talents bypass that which is common and trite, whose gifts instead speak directly to our hearts and minds."
Or to his heart and mind, for he was the only one, I believe, who truly understood my work. Who truly understood me.
For at that time, only once had I brought a true likeness from stone. And it had been him. Flushed with nascent love and frightened by our desire for the other, I asked and he consented to pose for me, and I formed him in clay, touching his likeness as I could not touch him in life. Together, we cast the statue from steel, from an alloy he made that gleamed red in the light, like fire. He was taken from me then, as he often was, by his obligations as his father's heir, but I kept his likeness beside my bed, and for many long days, I languished, aching at the sight of his statue that seemed a manifestation of my most cherished memories and my most forbidden desires. My projects lay unfinished for I could not bear to leave him, and the dual madnesses of lust and obsession threatened to rule my heart. And I began to understand then the danger posed by a talent such as mine--to make from lifeless substances an image as real as that which has inspired it--in taking harmless dreams and making them into something solid that can be possessed and coveted and kept, as I did Fëanáro.
And so my children were born and grew, and fiercely I loved them--almost obsessively--and feared the suasion that they would have over me, the urge to hold in my arms babies who had long since grown into men. My sculptures then were never statues; they twisted into strange shapes and bore the names of emotions; they inspired discourse and debate and more than one heated exchange half-held by my husband. "This," derided one artisan, "is why the harder arts have never been a province for women."
"Nay," replied Fëanáro, "this is why one woman commands the form in a way that your entirety has not."
~oOo~
After Fëanáro's first exile, I busied my hands and mind with the governance of our people.
After the Kinslaying, there are few people left to govern and those who remain have lost so much to my husband that I am ashamed to go before them, for even my husband's tongue could not twist words fair enough to assuage their losses. And I have never expressed myself with my voice but rather my hands, and how can such a gift restore to them the lives my husband has taken? Never before has my talent seemed so empty.
Yet my hands are lost, purposeless, without anything left to do. For many weeks, I sit with my hands hanging futilely between my knees, gazing at the darkness. In the wake of the Darkening, there is even a lack of birdsong and so I cannot even pretend that the first quavering notes of a nightingale's lament are the voice of my fair Macalaurë or that the raucous screeches of crows busy with the remains of the corn as Tyelkormo and Carnistir in argument.
And when I erupt from dreams where they stand so near to me that I feel the heat of their bodies, my hands embrace nothing but air.
And that was how it began.
It began as a concession to my grief: just one, I promised. Then I'd stop. I began with Maitimo, and I made him of marble and formed him as he had been the last I'd seen him in Tirion before he'd left behind his father. I seated him upon a chair in the dining room with a hand upon his brow as though brushing away the hair that he refused to braid properly. I set a place for him and poured him a glass of wine. I had made all of his favorite dishes, though I could never cook as well as Fëanáro, and the risotto was a little burned. I apologized to him. In the throbbing candlelight, he seemed almost to raise his eyes to me; the corners of his mouth lifted into the smile that had become too rare upon his face. "No mind, Amil. It is delicious. I am simply delighted to be at home."
And I laughed, my heart made light again and beating easier in my chest. The candlelight on the marble--red with threads of gold--was nearly the true color of Maitimo's hair. With the tears blurring my vision, I didn't have to leave much more to imagination.
Macalaurë was next, then Tyelkormo; soon, all seven of my sons sat at the dining room table with me each night. How I loved to listen to their discourse, even their arguments! I rarely interrupted anymore, as I had in life, my fingers pressing my temple as I begged, "Please, boys, you are making my head ache." Each night, I made a favorite dish of each, so that they would not fight. "For you, Carnistir," I said, meeting his eyes carved of obsidian. "And for you Ambarussa"--being careful to set the plates right, for despite a likeness in face and the red granite from which they'd been carved, their tastes in foods were nearly opposite.
When the ruse wore thin and I began to see them as statues and no longer as my sons, I crafted them anew. Now Maitimo's head was tossed back with laughter. Now Tyelkormo was getting to his feet to exchange harsh words with one of his brothers, hands pressed flat to the tabletop. Which brother earned his ire depended on the day's events and each boy's mood. Today, he fights with Macalaurë; tomorrow, it may be Curufinwë, who is a common enemy of his. Once, I even sat him opposite of me and let him coax tears from my eyes with the harsh words that he spoke. Sitting back and letting my other sons come to my defense.
The courtyards I filled with statues of a different sort. There, they were young and ever running and playing upon the flagstones: leaping, spinning, fighting, and falling, coming to me with tears in their eyes to lean a small head upon my lap that--with the passage of time and the heat from my body--began to lose the coldness of stone and might be honest flesh, if I closed my eyes. I shot marbles with them or drew scenes with pieces of chalk nabbed from their father's workshop: their father, Fëanáro, the only one of them whom I dared not sculpt.
Yet he was still there: the red-steel statue done in my youth--awkward since I had grown in skill--there beside the bed with his eyes upon me, at once accusing and aflame with passion. For me, I believed. He guided me in the creation of my sons in stone, as he had guided their creation in flesh.
By day, the house echoed with voices, brought forth from the depths of memory--places I swore I'd forgotten--and made tangible in the lifelike lines of their faces. And so I lost track of the years as time passes unmarked in the darkness where, slowly, I was amassing every moment of my sons' lives and immortalizing them in stone.
~oOo~
It happens sometimes that someone will knock upon my door, for I dare not venture beyond the kitchen garden even to shut the gate. "Princess Nerdanel!" someone will shout. An unfamiliar voice. Suspicious. I crouch behind furniture, heart pounding. My sons are good at falling silent in these instances, poised in the midst of running or laughing or turning pages in books. Their voices, once all around me, have gone quiet. I can't even hear them breathing anymore.
"Princess Nerdanel! It is a King's messenger!"
At last leaving the message, adorned by Arafinwë's seal, upon the door. I ask Tyelkormo to retrieve it for me, trembling hands rising to swipe at eyes suddenly filling with tears. "It matters not, Amil," Tyelkormo tells me, "what he says." And so I must go and get it myself.
We require your expertise, sister of mine … assistance in making reparations to the Teleri … in our thoughts … worried … strange rumors of … strange.
Please.
"I told you that it was not important," says Tyelkormo, his voice haughty like his father's. He helps me to feed the messages, when they come, into the fire.
~oOo~
It was Aulë who taught me to sculpt without use of my sight, going so far as to bind my eyes with a strip of silk. "You must learn to see with your fingers and your spirit," he told me. "Your sight cannot be trusted: light and shadows may deceive. This," folding my slender hand in his much-larger one, "is what you must learn to depend upon."
And this is how I created my sons, from the memory of one thousand times holding them, touching them, brushing hair from their eyes and tears from their cheeks. Lacing my fingers with theirs; rubbing the tension from their shoulders as they worked over books.
They left behind closets full of clothes, and I dress them in these so that the wind plays with Ambarussa's tunics as they return from a hunt, poised at the entryway into the courtyard. Or wine spilled carelessly in my haste soaks Maitimo's good breeches, though he restrains himself from jumping to his feet and simply smiles. "No mind, Amil. No mind."
~oOo~
The day is warm and might be summer but for the endless darkness, but I have strung courtyard in paper lamps for a celebration of Tyelkormo's begetting day. Around and around the house we run; he is twelve years old today! We are playing hide-and-seek, and I have just found him behind a tapestry in the western hallway; I have tied up my skirts so that I may pursue him faster. Our joined laughter fills the house with music as he flits around a corner, ephemeral in the darkness.
He reaches the courtyard before I do. He wins.
Bent over, winded by the pursuit, I do not immediately see her. She is standing in the shadows in front of Macalaurë, who is carrying a tray of food to the table. But when I rise with gratitude to my second-born son upon my lips, she steps into the lanternlight.
"Nerdanel," Eärwen says. "Sister."
I scream. Behind her, Macalaurë has frozen in mid-stride, perfect in his poise, and the tray in his hands doesn't even teeter. Quickly, Eärwen comes forth and catches my hands in hers before I can run. I see myself briefly reflected in her eyes: a madwoman. Hair stuck to my sweaty face; my dress tucked up into my underpants. But Eärwen, who has now borne witness to a greater madness than the grief of a lonely mother, does not let my appearance mar her face.
"Nerdanel," she says, "this work is amazing."
And it is then that I see the courtyard through her eyes. And I see what I have become. There are hundreds of statues: my sons at all ages, doing all sorts of things. Sitting upon benches or writing upon parchments; their limbs tangled in mock brawls. Their faces turned to look at the stars. I am mad, I think suddenly, and I realize then how Fëanáro came to such depravity without ever knowing it. I wonder if, far away in the Outer Lands, he will ever look back at his deeds in this place and wonder how his hands could have done so much without leave of his heart and mind. I look at the hundreds of statues and wonder how I could have been fooled into thinking that stone could begin to assuage inconsolable grief.
I am mad! It is madness!
"Nay," Eärwen whispers, and her hands are massaging warmth back into mine, which have known naught but the touch of stone for too long now. "It is beautiful."
~oOo~
Eärwen's idea is simple, whispered into the ear of her husband while I wait, suddenly shy, my fingers twisting in my lap. My brother-in-law's face has always seemed so young to me; before Fëanáro's exile, he appeared younger to me than did Maitimo. No longer. The hurts and cares that he now bears as High King of the Noldor have graven his face; I think of thumbs wearing lines of care into a face made of clay and thumbs wearing them away again.
"I think that it is brilliant," he says at last, softly, as is his way, and the lines in his face smooth as he smiles. "I think that it is a brilliant and beautiful idea."
~oOo~
At first, the Teleri will not come. I see them at the top of the beach, looking at me. I watch the waves and wait. Soon enough, they will be there.
At last, I feel a hand on my arm. It is not gentle. I turn; her face is angry, and her mouth is making angry shapes. The Telerin dialect has never been natural for me, but I know enough to understand that my husband took the life of hers. Tears are spilling down her face, tracing curves that I would memorize and use, was I making a statue of her.
But I am not. Softly, I say, "Tell me of him," and she starts. Her eyes are wary, mistrustful. "Your husband," I add. "Tell me everything that you remember of him."
One by one, they begin to come to me then. The memories begin filled with grief, agony, and anger. "He died in my arms," says one woman of her son, her voice hoarse with a grief I understand too well. Her hands are knotted together in her lap, trembling; she wishes to exact her justice on me, I know. But she will not. "Someone--a Noldo--had cut his back. The blood was so red on the sand …"
But grief exhausts itself. The stories change, as the hours pass. Time is no longer marked here, in this land of darkness, and I let them stay as long as they will, until all of the stories are told. Graven faces twitch into smiles. "I remember one time …" I nudge her to go on. She smiles. She laughs.
I join her.
There are memories of marriages and children born and special moments shared, and soon, those overwhelm even the horror and pain of those last moments together. And each memory becomes mine as well, in the telling, and I take them to my makeshift workshop at night, built upon the sand, and bring each subject to life beneath my hands.
Husbands, brothers, sons, and fathers. Sisters and daughters, sometimes; mothers and wives. With tears blurring all sight of my work, I let my hands and spirit guide me, bringing to life again the likenesses of those lost, who died by my husband's sword, until they shall be healed and brought forth again from Mandos. It is a small comfort to the grieving, to walk upon the beach at Eldamar and take a familiar hand, kiss a familiar face warmed by the newborn Sun.
Sometimes, I return to the house I shared with Fëanáro and our sons. I walk amid the statues but they no longer speak to me and even candlelight won't enliven faces graven with shadows that I was incapable of perceiving in life. Someday, they will return to me, one by one, and this house shall fill anew with the music of voices.
But until then, this is not my place. I lock the doors behind me, upon the likenesses of my children, and return to Eldamar. Where the beach is filled with statues.
~ THE END ~
Notes
In describing Nerdanel's early work as "strong and strange," I borrowed from this passage from Morgoth's Ring:
"... many things she wrought also of her own thought in shapes strong and strange but beautiful."
HoMe X: Morgoth's Ring. The Later Quenta Silmarillion. "Of Fëanor and the Unchaining of Melkor."
"Statues" is about how Nerdanel coped with the loss of her husband and children through her art ... and how she may have helped the Teleri to do the same. I've kept it safe for all audiences, though there are some small mentions of violence at the Kinslaying at Alqualonde.
Happy birthday to tarion_anarore, noliel, and allie_meril! (trekqueen, aside from Glorfindel, I'm really not sure who your favorite characters are ... if you're not a Nerdanel fan, let me know, and I'll try to come up with something for you! :) So many March birthdays!
As usual, all comments--positive and critical--are welcome. Or just read and enjoy!
Statues
I found him in the garden, with his back to me, shoulders hunched, busy with something that lay across the lawn. He heard me; I saw his shoulders stiffen. "Fëanáro?" I whispered, and he should not have heard me, yet he did. His head tilted slightly in my direction, and drawing a deep, tremulous breath, I stepped forward.
That which lay across the lawn was a statue of his father done by Aulë and given as a gift, long ago, to honor the King of the Noldor who'd so bravely led his people to the realm of the Valar. In his anger, Fëanáro had pushed it over; broken it upon the earth.
"I wish that the world was filled only with statues," I heard him whisper. I should not have heard him, yet I did, for his voice arrived in a place deeper than my ears, deep inside the intimacy of my mind. I tensed, waiting for pain of intrusion that did not come. He went on. "No people. Just statues. I cannot hurt statues."
His father's statue had broken in the middle, though where blood and viscera should be, there was only dust, white upon Fëanáro's hands. I touched his shoulder. He turned to me. Water quenches fire; how could they coexist in his eyes?
They did.
"I can fix this," he told me. Fire burned away the water. He could fix it, yes, but could he fix what had caused it? Nay, he could not.
For the world is more than statues.
~oOo~
They call me mad: the wife of Fëanáro who is gone. Her sons, gone too. Her mind …
They do not say it--at least not where I can here--but they think it, I know. I used to come often among my people, more than my husband had in fact, though I was not of royal blood and had not his obligations. My words were the comfort of many and my strength admired in the wake of my estrangement from Fëanáro. Nerdanel the Wise. The Strong. Nolofinwë--then king--let me speak for my house at councils in Tirion, at first for pity, then for admiration. Then for need. I counted the long years of Fëanáro's exile upon a block of marble in my workshop: a nick with the chisel for each day of his absence, until the stone was reduced to dust. But this I did not allow to show in my face or my voice in Tirion.
The Wise, they called me, for my deception, for my eagerness to see their point in things. The Strong.
They call me neither any longer.
I have not left our house since the theft of the Telerin ships, since watching them pass, pale as ghosts, upon black seas into the north. I tried to throw myself into the sea that night, to follow them, my feet loud upon the quay and heedless of the tears upon my face. It was two Telerin mothers who caught me and held me back: their sons lost to my husband's malice, their arms now wrapping me, whom they should cast into the sea for bringing forth the seven sons who had murdered theirs. Whispering into my hair as my feet kicked against the quay, propelling me after my children, who went so willingly to their dooms. I screamed and wept that night, but the Telerin mothers said nothing. They knew grief. They knew that it would subside, if they held me long enough.
Groaning upon the restless sea, the fleet of ships became a quaver of light upon the northernmost horizon, lanterns bobbing with the motion of the waves … then nothing. They were gone.
I accepted the hospitality of the Teleri: their spiked tea and warm blankets, a bedroom belonging to a son who went unnamed, his fate untold. I knew. I breathed his scent left upon his pillows that was like fresh-baked bread and cinnamon and could not sleep for dreams where the scents of home began to reek of hot metal. Of blood. Of innocence spoiled.
In the night--for without the Trees, it was always night--I departed without word of explanation or gratitude to my hostesses, who doubtlessly heard my footsteps upon the stairs as they lay, sleepless and grieving, in their own beds. But they did not stop me or question me, and I returned to our house, the house I had shared with my husband and children.
And I have been there since.
~oOo~
At first, I did nothing. For what was there to do? Twice now, my purposes in life had been thwarted. First, my place as a wife and mother had been taken from me. No longer did I have to worry about baking the bread in the morning, about seeing that my sons had clean clothes and freshly pressed robes when they needed them; no longer did I have to concern myself that my restless husband took meals and bathed and slept in a fashion appropriate and healthy for our people. And so, following Fëanáro's exile, I'd taken a new purpose. I'd taken to waiting for their return and healing the damage they'd done with their absence. Maitimo's place on the King's Council was unfilled. I filled it. I knew nothing of the matters described in the many parchments strewing his desk. So I learned.
To heal the rift between his sons, Finwë had set up a monthly council between the three of them. Fëanáro always complained when this day came, loudly moaning about progress stalled and projects forsaken in the name of politics, but I knew that he secretly loved to go, loved the knowledge that he could impart in which his half-brothers utterly lacked. Loved his influence over them, the awe in their eyes that they tried to hide. Loved to see his ideas enacted to benefit all of the Noldor. Every third month, when the council came to our house outside the city, I would listen at the door to their three voices--so alike--joyful in argument. On the day of the first council after Fëanáro's exile, I found Nolofinwë and Arafinwë sitting opposite each other in Nolofinwë's study with their hands upon their knees, their mouths drawn and silent. "I am here to represent the eldest prince of the Noldor," I said, and while Nolofinwë was practiced enough in diplomacy to keep his face an emotionless mask, then Arafinwë's blue eyes went warm with relief. And so I took on that duty as well.
But following Finwë's murder and the death of the Trees and the horror at Alqualondë, I knew not what else to do. I knew not what else to do because I grieved for none of those things as deeply as I grieved for my own selfish loss of my husband and children. And so I locked my doors against the world, and I have not been out since.
~oOo~
What to do, in days of Darkness? Darkness that was not only a lack of light but a lack of hope? Finally, I understood the choice of Miriel Þerindë. Finally, I felt the ache deep in my marrow that spoke of a wish for death. In the midst of the courtyard, I lay upon the stones, myself as still as though graven from marble. Without the Trees, the pleasant warmth typical of Valinor diminished, and it was cold. My skin was raised into bumps, then burned, then grew numb. I imagined death entering me, bit by bit, through the skin and as deep as the stubborn heart still lobbing--aching--in my chest. I imagined myself growing as cold and stiff as stone. Dead leaves fallen from the trees chattered across my body but I could not feel it.
Around me, the ghosts of my children played. The ghost of my husband too. Though I squeezed my eyes shut so tightly that my head ached, I could dispel none of them, not least of all Fëanáro, who knelt beside me in my dreams and kissed my lips, as he'd done so many times, in this very place. The children will hear, Fëanáro … my insubstantial protests, my hands lifting to tangle in his hair. His breath warm and rapid upon my throat. Let me put my cloak beneath you, Nerdanel. You will be more comfortable.
I opened my eyes, and his eyes burned mine, kindled a heat deep within my body that--so long as it smoldered--would mean that I lived.
And our children: Tyelkormo having fallen from the apple tree, breaking his arm in the fall, coming to me with his face pale with pain, lip quivering, determined not to cry. Or finding Macalaurë singing to Vingarië one evening at the Mingling of the Lights, her head upon his lap, his voice so raw with love for her that--though I knew it wrong to stay--I hadn't been able to turn away. Curufinwë with his eyes squeezed shut tightly, parchment quavering in his hands, hopeful that he'd been accepted for a year's study with Aulë but pretending that it mattered not. The twins shouting with delight and coaxing butterflies into their open hands; Carnistir on a silver night with blanket wrapped around his bare shoulders, his face turned to the light of stars that could not be seen beyond the light of Telperion. My dreams were bad, yes, but this place brings me peace. Great things will be born here.
Awaking with a start to find the courtyard empty and the darkness smothering but Carnistir's words as clear as though spoken beside me: Great things will be born here.
How wrong he had been. I wept.
~oOo~
When I first entered womanhood, my father was inspired to make a bronze cast of my hands to remember, he said, the last days when I was still his and did not yet belong to a husband and children. He did not know that my heart already indulged in the foolish hope of belonging to one in particular; that my innocence was already tarnished by a kiss from a prince beneath a star-filled sky outside of Aulë's workshop.
Perhaps it was appropriate, then, that his whimsical indulgence devolved into a trend and similar models came to be quite popular among the more sentimental of Tirion. Babies, young women, wives, and mothers … all had their hands "immortalized"--as the craftsmen who grew rich on such pursuits came to call it--in bronze or copper or even steel. But I was the first.
Some years later, when the hope of love with Fëanáro became a proclamation of the same, he found my "hands" in my father's workshop. I came upon him, matching them to his. "This was you!" he remarked, astounded. "When I first loved you. I will never forget the shape of these hands, though they no longer fit in mine."
"It is not so extraordinary," I said, trying to take the hands to put them away. But Fëanáro would not relinquish them. "We are an immortal people; why confine ourselves to statues?"
"Immortal but evolving, Nerdanel," he replied. "Always evolving. This girl is gone, changed from something she shall never become again. How amazing, then, that that moment is preserved forever! And so you shall live forever in your youth, and I can hold these hands and return there, to that first moment of our love …" His eyes squeezed shut, he returned there. By the peace that spread suddenly upon his face--a peace that we both had forgotten he could possess--he returned there.
~oOo~
I always loathed capturing the precise essence of a person in metal or stone. The ability was mine, true, but yet I resisted, for it seemed a dangerous power to imbue a stone with even a semblance of life … and too revealing of me, well, in my choice of subjects and postures and physiognomy.
Instead, my artworks came strong and strange, called unusual when people were being polite and bizarre when they were not. Brows furrowed and heads tilted; Fëanáro came up beside me, shoulders squared with pride, and kissed me for all to see. "I have married a true genius of the Noldor," he said, "whose talents bypass that which is common and trite, whose gifts instead speak directly to our hearts and minds."
Or to his heart and mind, for he was the only one, I believe, who truly understood my work. Who truly understood me.
For at that time, only once had I brought a true likeness from stone. And it had been him. Flushed with nascent love and frightened by our desire for the other, I asked and he consented to pose for me, and I formed him in clay, touching his likeness as I could not touch him in life. Together, we cast the statue from steel, from an alloy he made that gleamed red in the light, like fire. He was taken from me then, as he often was, by his obligations as his father's heir, but I kept his likeness beside my bed, and for many long days, I languished, aching at the sight of his statue that seemed a manifestation of my most cherished memories and my most forbidden desires. My projects lay unfinished for I could not bear to leave him, and the dual madnesses of lust and obsession threatened to rule my heart. And I began to understand then the danger posed by a talent such as mine--to make from lifeless substances an image as real as that which has inspired it--in taking harmless dreams and making them into something solid that can be possessed and coveted and kept, as I did Fëanáro.
And so my children were born and grew, and fiercely I loved them--almost obsessively--and feared the suasion that they would have over me, the urge to hold in my arms babies who had long since grown into men. My sculptures then were never statues; they twisted into strange shapes and bore the names of emotions; they inspired discourse and debate and more than one heated exchange half-held by my husband. "This," derided one artisan, "is why the harder arts have never been a province for women."
"Nay," replied Fëanáro, "this is why one woman commands the form in a way that your entirety has not."
~oOo~
After Fëanáro's first exile, I busied my hands and mind with the governance of our people.
After the Kinslaying, there are few people left to govern and those who remain have lost so much to my husband that I am ashamed to go before them, for even my husband's tongue could not twist words fair enough to assuage their losses. And I have never expressed myself with my voice but rather my hands, and how can such a gift restore to them the lives my husband has taken? Never before has my talent seemed so empty.
Yet my hands are lost, purposeless, without anything left to do. For many weeks, I sit with my hands hanging futilely between my knees, gazing at the darkness. In the wake of the Darkening, there is even a lack of birdsong and so I cannot even pretend that the first quavering notes of a nightingale's lament are the voice of my fair Macalaurë or that the raucous screeches of crows busy with the remains of the corn as Tyelkormo and Carnistir in argument.
And when I erupt from dreams where they stand so near to me that I feel the heat of their bodies, my hands embrace nothing but air.
And that was how it began.
It began as a concession to my grief: just one, I promised. Then I'd stop. I began with Maitimo, and I made him of marble and formed him as he had been the last I'd seen him in Tirion before he'd left behind his father. I seated him upon a chair in the dining room with a hand upon his brow as though brushing away the hair that he refused to braid properly. I set a place for him and poured him a glass of wine. I had made all of his favorite dishes, though I could never cook as well as Fëanáro, and the risotto was a little burned. I apologized to him. In the throbbing candlelight, he seemed almost to raise his eyes to me; the corners of his mouth lifted into the smile that had become too rare upon his face. "No mind, Amil. It is delicious. I am simply delighted to be at home."
And I laughed, my heart made light again and beating easier in my chest. The candlelight on the marble--red with threads of gold--was nearly the true color of Maitimo's hair. With the tears blurring my vision, I didn't have to leave much more to imagination.
Macalaurë was next, then Tyelkormo; soon, all seven of my sons sat at the dining room table with me each night. How I loved to listen to their discourse, even their arguments! I rarely interrupted anymore, as I had in life, my fingers pressing my temple as I begged, "Please, boys, you are making my head ache." Each night, I made a favorite dish of each, so that they would not fight. "For you, Carnistir," I said, meeting his eyes carved of obsidian. "And for you Ambarussa"--being careful to set the plates right, for despite a likeness in face and the red granite from which they'd been carved, their tastes in foods were nearly opposite.
When the ruse wore thin and I began to see them as statues and no longer as my sons, I crafted them anew. Now Maitimo's head was tossed back with laughter. Now Tyelkormo was getting to his feet to exchange harsh words with one of his brothers, hands pressed flat to the tabletop. Which brother earned his ire depended on the day's events and each boy's mood. Today, he fights with Macalaurë; tomorrow, it may be Curufinwë, who is a common enemy of his. Once, I even sat him opposite of me and let him coax tears from my eyes with the harsh words that he spoke. Sitting back and letting my other sons come to my defense.
The courtyards I filled with statues of a different sort. There, they were young and ever running and playing upon the flagstones: leaping, spinning, fighting, and falling, coming to me with tears in their eyes to lean a small head upon my lap that--with the passage of time and the heat from my body--began to lose the coldness of stone and might be honest flesh, if I closed my eyes. I shot marbles with them or drew scenes with pieces of chalk nabbed from their father's workshop: their father, Fëanáro, the only one of them whom I dared not sculpt.
Yet he was still there: the red-steel statue done in my youth--awkward since I had grown in skill--there beside the bed with his eyes upon me, at once accusing and aflame with passion. For me, I believed. He guided me in the creation of my sons in stone, as he had guided their creation in flesh.
By day, the house echoed with voices, brought forth from the depths of memory--places I swore I'd forgotten--and made tangible in the lifelike lines of their faces. And so I lost track of the years as time passes unmarked in the darkness where, slowly, I was amassing every moment of my sons' lives and immortalizing them in stone.
~oOo~
It happens sometimes that someone will knock upon my door, for I dare not venture beyond the kitchen garden even to shut the gate. "Princess Nerdanel!" someone will shout. An unfamiliar voice. Suspicious. I crouch behind furniture, heart pounding. My sons are good at falling silent in these instances, poised in the midst of running or laughing or turning pages in books. Their voices, once all around me, have gone quiet. I can't even hear them breathing anymore.
"Princess Nerdanel! It is a King's messenger!"
At last leaving the message, adorned by Arafinwë's seal, upon the door. I ask Tyelkormo to retrieve it for me, trembling hands rising to swipe at eyes suddenly filling with tears. "It matters not, Amil," Tyelkormo tells me, "what he says." And so I must go and get it myself.
We require your expertise, sister of mine … assistance in making reparations to the Teleri … in our thoughts … worried … strange rumors of … strange.
Please.
"I told you that it was not important," says Tyelkormo, his voice haughty like his father's. He helps me to feed the messages, when they come, into the fire.
~oOo~
It was Aulë who taught me to sculpt without use of my sight, going so far as to bind my eyes with a strip of silk. "You must learn to see with your fingers and your spirit," he told me. "Your sight cannot be trusted: light and shadows may deceive. This," folding my slender hand in his much-larger one, "is what you must learn to depend upon."
And this is how I created my sons, from the memory of one thousand times holding them, touching them, brushing hair from their eyes and tears from their cheeks. Lacing my fingers with theirs; rubbing the tension from their shoulders as they worked over books.
They left behind closets full of clothes, and I dress them in these so that the wind plays with Ambarussa's tunics as they return from a hunt, poised at the entryway into the courtyard. Or wine spilled carelessly in my haste soaks Maitimo's good breeches, though he restrains himself from jumping to his feet and simply smiles. "No mind, Amil. No mind."
~oOo~
The day is warm and might be summer but for the endless darkness, but I have strung courtyard in paper lamps for a celebration of Tyelkormo's begetting day. Around and around the house we run; he is twelve years old today! We are playing hide-and-seek, and I have just found him behind a tapestry in the western hallway; I have tied up my skirts so that I may pursue him faster. Our joined laughter fills the house with music as he flits around a corner, ephemeral in the darkness.
He reaches the courtyard before I do. He wins.
Bent over, winded by the pursuit, I do not immediately see her. She is standing in the shadows in front of Macalaurë, who is carrying a tray of food to the table. But when I rise with gratitude to my second-born son upon my lips, she steps into the lanternlight.
"Nerdanel," Eärwen says. "Sister."
I scream. Behind her, Macalaurë has frozen in mid-stride, perfect in his poise, and the tray in his hands doesn't even teeter. Quickly, Eärwen comes forth and catches my hands in hers before I can run. I see myself briefly reflected in her eyes: a madwoman. Hair stuck to my sweaty face; my dress tucked up into my underpants. But Eärwen, who has now borne witness to a greater madness than the grief of a lonely mother, does not let my appearance mar her face.
"Nerdanel," she says, "this work is amazing."
And it is then that I see the courtyard through her eyes. And I see what I have become. There are hundreds of statues: my sons at all ages, doing all sorts of things. Sitting upon benches or writing upon parchments; their limbs tangled in mock brawls. Their faces turned to look at the stars. I am mad, I think suddenly, and I realize then how Fëanáro came to such depravity without ever knowing it. I wonder if, far away in the Outer Lands, he will ever look back at his deeds in this place and wonder how his hands could have done so much without leave of his heart and mind. I look at the hundreds of statues and wonder how I could have been fooled into thinking that stone could begin to assuage inconsolable grief.
I am mad! It is madness!
"Nay," Eärwen whispers, and her hands are massaging warmth back into mine, which have known naught but the touch of stone for too long now. "It is beautiful."
~oOo~
Eärwen's idea is simple, whispered into the ear of her husband while I wait, suddenly shy, my fingers twisting in my lap. My brother-in-law's face has always seemed so young to me; before Fëanáro's exile, he appeared younger to me than did Maitimo. No longer. The hurts and cares that he now bears as High King of the Noldor have graven his face; I think of thumbs wearing lines of care into a face made of clay and thumbs wearing them away again.
"I think that it is brilliant," he says at last, softly, as is his way, and the lines in his face smooth as he smiles. "I think that it is a brilliant and beautiful idea."
~oOo~
At first, the Teleri will not come. I see them at the top of the beach, looking at me. I watch the waves and wait. Soon enough, they will be there.
At last, I feel a hand on my arm. It is not gentle. I turn; her face is angry, and her mouth is making angry shapes. The Telerin dialect has never been natural for me, but I know enough to understand that my husband took the life of hers. Tears are spilling down her face, tracing curves that I would memorize and use, was I making a statue of her.
But I am not. Softly, I say, "Tell me of him," and she starts. Her eyes are wary, mistrustful. "Your husband," I add. "Tell me everything that you remember of him."
One by one, they begin to come to me then. The memories begin filled with grief, agony, and anger. "He died in my arms," says one woman of her son, her voice hoarse with a grief I understand too well. Her hands are knotted together in her lap, trembling; she wishes to exact her justice on me, I know. But she will not. "Someone--a Noldo--had cut his back. The blood was so red on the sand …"
But grief exhausts itself. The stories change, as the hours pass. Time is no longer marked here, in this land of darkness, and I let them stay as long as they will, until all of the stories are told. Graven faces twitch into smiles. "I remember one time …" I nudge her to go on. She smiles. She laughs.
I join her.
There are memories of marriages and children born and special moments shared, and soon, those overwhelm even the horror and pain of those last moments together. And each memory becomes mine as well, in the telling, and I take them to my makeshift workshop at night, built upon the sand, and bring each subject to life beneath my hands.
Husbands, brothers, sons, and fathers. Sisters and daughters, sometimes; mothers and wives. With tears blurring all sight of my work, I let my hands and spirit guide me, bringing to life again the likenesses of those lost, who died by my husband's sword, until they shall be healed and brought forth again from Mandos. It is a small comfort to the grieving, to walk upon the beach at Eldamar and take a familiar hand, kiss a familiar face warmed by the newborn Sun.
Sometimes, I return to the house I shared with Fëanáro and our sons. I walk amid the statues but they no longer speak to me and even candlelight won't enliven faces graven with shadows that I was incapable of perceiving in life. Someday, they will return to me, one by one, and this house shall fill anew with the music of voices.
But until then, this is not my place. I lock the doors behind me, upon the likenesses of my children, and return to Eldamar. Where the beach is filled with statues.
~ THE END ~
Notes
In describing Nerdanel's early work as "strong and strange," I borrowed from this passage from Morgoth's Ring:
"... many things she wrought also of her own thought in shapes strong and strange but beautiful."
HoMe X: Morgoth's Ring. The Later Quenta Silmarillion. "Of Fëanor and the Unchaining of Melkor."