The Blue Line Between Sea and Sky by sallysavestheday

The Blue Line Between Sea and Sky

Read The Blue Line Between Sea and Sky

Once

There is a sound, like a great gong. Or a very low horn, perhaps, distorted by the water. It is not in his ears, exactly – rather, in his bones, deep and sonorous and wild. Voronwë falls toward it, pulled as though obeying a command.

The salt in his mouth is almost sweeter than air, transformed by that powerful music.

His small legs stop kicking; his whole being twines with the song.

He is sinking toward the weed-bed when the great eyes open, pale and strange in the waving grasses, like fire under the water.

Uinen’s irritation is palpable. She glides toward him, closing an approximation of hands over his ears to dull the great bell of the Call.

“It is not your time, child,” she hisses in his mind, and turns him, pushing him up, fins in the small of his back, bubbles of her breath in his throat as he gasps, and kicks, and rises.

His mother’s hands catch his with a grip of iron. She hauls him back into the boat, dripping and shivering, and leans out over the side to thank the Lady of the Sea. Uinen’s long, pale teeth flash in a grin, and her tail cracks on the water’s surface as she dives.

Voronwë watches a cloud pass over the moon as he lies on his back, drained and weary yet somehow marvelously unharmed. But he is changed; everything is changed. The weather is turning. Soon there will be storms.

 

Twice

They chose him because he was lucky, because he had already died once in the Sea. Uinen’s favorite would guide them through the reefs and wracks and carry them safe and untroubled into and out of tempests, smooth and sure on the tides.

But his luck is only for himself, it seems, as the ship heels and shudders and splits apart, pouring Turgon’s best and brightest into the hungry waters.

Voronwë is not willing to die, this time. He fights it with every muscle in his body. Word must be carried West. He has sworn it; he is bound.

But the waves are too cold and too rough. There are hands on his legs, pulling him down. The ocean Maiar sing a deadly song, and his ears are too tired to resist it. Teeth are in his heels; fingers are in his hair; fins and kelp and long, weedy arms are all winding around him, shrouding him for a watery grave.

The brine is bitter – not the sweet waters he remembers breathing as a child, but full of the salt of grief and regret.

Voronwë musters a last burst of strength and calls out for the Lady, tongue working against the salt water, lungs begging for soft, clean air.

And She comes.

She has more teeth than he remembered, but her eyes are the same: great lamps of pale greenish-gold that watch him with an ancient and terrifying calm while the waves still thrash and churn above them.

Uinen lifts a claw and touches him: lips, throat, breast, belly -- marking him, her venom burning under his skin as her great mouth widens and laughs.

“Not yet, sweetling!” The hiss of her voice is like waves on the sand, a soft sibilance that lulls Voronwë into dreaming as the current takes him and rolls him up and out, beaching him to wake south of Vinyamar in a cold, pale rain.

 

Thrice

Tuor will not stir.

Voronwë has lost track of the time; he is unsure of the number of days – of years – they have spent sailing in what feels like concentric circles on the calm but unforgiving Sea. But it is enough to have grayed the Man’s hair and beard to ash, to have woven webs of wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth, to have softened his grip and unsteadied his step and roughened his sweet, rich voice almost beyond knowing.

Now he drifts in dreams, neither here nor there, his great heart slowed and softly murmuring when they press their ears to his chest.

Idril sets her lips in a hard line and watches the West that never gets closer. The islands shift and move in the haze and the seabirds mock them with their homing cries.

Everything tastes of salt: their bread, their tea, their skin. Even the sweetness of Idril’s palms is gone, worn by the lines and the tiller into something tart and strange. Voronwë cups her hand against his lips as they cradle sleeping Tuor between them. He kisses her callused fingers, whispers a love song into her palm.

When she slides into dreaming at last, open-eyed and yearning and pale, he slips from the bed and climbs to the deck, watching the clouds roll and shimmer in the morning sky. The East is burning behind them; the West still lies under a pall. Too late, too late, his heart whispers, but he will not acknowledge its call.

The sea road is closed to them. There is only one path for a messenger, now. Tuor cannot take it, and Idril must not. This will be a journey for Voronwë, alone.

Voronwë stands at the prow and sings, calling for Uinen, the remembered tones of that great bell of his childhood filling his voice, echoing against the surface of the Sea.

When she rises and reaches for him at last, he laughs. She is all teeth, now, and hungry, her mouth stretched wide like a garden of knives.

Voronwë dives into that maw as into an embrace, shaping his body into a plea and a warning, knowing the water will carry him home.