Home Is Behind by grey_gazania

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Chapter 4

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My dearest Ianneth,

 

We’ve suffered three different attacks these past two weeks, so I am greatly relieved that you and Ereiniel are safe in Eglarest. As much as I miss you both, it’s a tremendous comfort to me to know that you are beyond Morgoth’s reach. If any harm were to befall either of you, I would be devastated. I love you both dearly. Please don’t ever doubt that.

 

On that note, when next I come to visit, I would like us to talk – privately, out of our daughter’s earshot. I realize I owe you an apology and an explanation, and I hope you will at the very least hear me out before drawing any conclusions. I will say it again: I love you, Ianneth. You are my daughter’s mother, and you have been a true helpmeet and friend to me these past thirteen years. I am bereft without you by my side. We must speak honestly when next I see you.

 

On to more mundane subjects: I am greatly pleased to see that Ereiniel’s penmanship and spelling are continuing to improve. How is she faring with mathematics? Do you judge that she’s ready to begin learning multiplication, or is she still struggling with subtraction?

 

Our government continues to tick along as best as I can make it in the absence of my father. Henthael still glowers at me every time he lays eyes on me, but he does his job well and he had my father’s deepest trust, so I have decided that I will keep him in his position of chief scribe. Gurvadhor has taken over the defense of Hithlum in my stead, now that I must take up a permanent place here at Barad Eithel.

 

I miss you, my love. I will come to see you and Ereiniel once things have settled down here. In the meantime, please keep writing. Your letters bring me comfort.

 

Your loving husband,

 

Fingon

 

Ereiniel, mírë, my treasure, my jewel,

 

I hope you are making friends, paying heed to your mother, and working hard in your lessons. I miss you every day, but it brings me great comfort to know that you and Nana are somewhere safe, where no harm can befall you. Still, I miss your hugs and your laughter and your smiles, and I think of you every night.

 

I know you miss me, too, but it’s important that you be as far from the front lines of this war as you can be. Whenever you’re feeling lonely or missing me too much, I want you to go outside and look at the stars, and to remember that the same stars that look down on you are looking down on me. We may even be staring up at the stars at the same time! I think of you every time I see the night sky, Ereiniel Gilwen, my shining star.

 

I’m sending along some new books for you to read; I know you have yet to finish all of the books your mother brought with you, but it’s important that you read widely and learn all that you can. I’m glad to hear, too, that you’ve been practicing your archery. It’s equally important that you be able to defend yourself, and archery is good practice for life. Steady hands and a steady heart will get you far in many things.

 

I will visit as soon as I can, but for now there is much that I must do at Barad Eithel. It is one of the unfortunate things about being High King; I belong to all the Noldor now, not only to you and Nana.

 

Work hard, mírë, and continue to write to me. Your letters bring me such joy in these grey times.

 

All my love,

 

Ada

 

Fingon sealed both letters and set them aside to be given to the messenger that he would be sending to the Falas the following week.

 

“You have official missives as well, your highness,” Henthael said from where he was sitting at his desk in the corner. “One from Círdan of the Falas, one from your cousin in Nargothrond, one from your father-in-law in Mithrim, and one from your cousin in Himring. The messages from Nargothrond and Himring are both marked urgent.”

 

With a sigh, Fingon rubbed a hand over his eyes. It seemed that, when one was king, there was no end to urgent matters. Turning his mind from his family to his duties, he said, “The one from Finrod first, please.”

 

*************

 

Ereiniel and Maewen soon became fast friends, spending their days playing near the market or, if the weather was poor, at Maewen’s house while her mother worked at her loom. True to her word, Ereiniel made herself into a wall between Maewen and those who sought to bully her. For her part, Maewen showed Ereiniel more of Eglarest than any of Lord Círdan’s guides ever managed.

 

“I like it here,” Ereiniel said one day as they dried off after a swimming lesson. It was a commonly held opinion among the residents of Eglarest that, since they lived on the water, all children should be taught to swim, and Lord Círdan had obliged by arranging for groups of volunteers to teach in various parts of the city. While Ereiniel already knew how to swim, having been taught by her mother and father in the waters of Lake Mithrim, she was new to salt water and the tides of the ocean. She was learning new skills now – how to stay afloat in the waves, how to spot a rip current, how to avoid being swept out to sea.

 

Maewen smiled at her. “I’m glad,” she said, flicking a bit of water at her friend. “I like that you like it here.”

 

Ereiniel returned the gesture, landing a drop of water on Maewen’s nose. “Well, I like that you like that I like it here,” she said with a grin.

 

This quickly devolved into an exchange of flying water droplets and giggling, until Maewen said, “Let’s go home. It’s lunchtime anyway.”

 

Ereiniel took her friend’s hand and followed her down the street, skipping over a cracked cobblestone. “I hope my father comes to visit soon,” she said. “He said in his last letter that things are still too busy in Hithlum. But I miss him a lot.”

 

“He’s a soldier for the Golodhrim king, right?” Maewen said. “That’s what you told me.”

 

A tendril of guilt knotted itself in Ereiniel’s stomach, and she felt her face heat. “I…kind of lied,” she confessed in a small voice. “Not to be mean! Just because…well, I was worried you wouldn’t want to be my friend if you knew.” She took a deep breath, braced herself, and said, “He is the Golodhrim king.”

 

Maewen stared at her for a moment, then grinned and, quite cheerfully, said, “You’re a liar.”

 

“I am not!” Ereiniel protested.

 

“She’s not, actually,” said a lofty voice behind them. Turning, the girls saw that Erestor had been tailing them as they walked, so quietly that neither of them had noticed he was there.

 

“It’s her name,” Erestor said, smirking at Maewen’s look of puzzlement. “Ereiniel. That’s how they say ‘kings’ up north – instead of say erain properly, they say erein.” He rolled the R in erein for an extra long time, exaggerating the way Ereiniel and her mother spoke, and Ereiniel bristled at the mockery.

 

“Fancy you not figuring that out,” he continued, assuming a sneering, better-than-thou expression that Ereiniel longed to wipe off his face.

 

Maewen was blushing in a way that indicated that she was deeply embarrassed, but she managed to gather herself up enough to say, “Oh, go away. Nobody wants you here.”

 

“I just thought you should know,” Erestor sniffed, before stalking off with his nose in the air.

 

It was a relief to see him go, and Ereiniel took Maewen’s hand in hers once more. They walked in silence for a few minutes, and then, her voice very small, Maewen said, “Well, now I feel stupid.”

 

“Don’t,” Ereiniel said immediately. “Most people don’t think that hard about other people’s names. I mean, I don’t even know what Erestor’s name means.”

 

Maewen snickered and said, “I don’t either. I’m not sure my aunt knows what it means. I think she just liked the sound of it.” Her eyes remained crinkled with mirth while the two of them giggled together, but then her expression sobered. “Look,” she said. “If your father is the king, that makes you a princess. So why aren’t you doing princess things?”

 

Ereiniel pondered this for a moment, and then, puzzled, asked, “What kind of things are princess things?”

 

“I don’t know,” Maewen said. “Don’t you?”

 

Shaking her head, Ereiniel said, “I’m doing the same things here that I did in Hithlum – playing with my friends and practicing archery and doing lessons with my mother. I suppose I’ll have more responsibilities when I get older. What my father really needs is for me to have a brother, so he can have an heir, but he and Nana want to wait until I’ve grown a bit before they have another baby.”

 

“I’d like a brother,” Maewen said. “Instead all I have is a big meanie of a cousin.”

 

Ereiniel leaned over and kissed Maewen on the cheek. “You don’t need a brother,” she said. “You have me to watch out for you.”

 

“I do, don’t I? You’re better than a brother, anyway, I’ll bet. Glaureth has a brother and she says all he does is poke her and pull her hair. Boys,” Maewen added in a long-suffering sort of voice.

 

“Not all boys,” Ereiniel said, trying to be fair. “I have a second cousin on Nana’s side, Thelion, and he’s always been nice to me. He used to go swimming with me in the lake.” She frowned at the memory, remembering the separation that lay between her and nearly all her family now. “I miss him,” she admitted. “I don’t know when I’ll see him again. We can’t go home yet, Nana says. It’s too dangerous. Morgoth keeps trying to break through the mountains and attack.”

 

“My great-grandmother said Morgoth attacked us here, a long time ago, but the Golodhrim drove the orcs off,” Maewen said. “Back before we had the sun, she told me.”

 

Ereiniel nodded. “That was one of Ada’s cousins, I think. They don’t live in Hithlum anymore. They’re all off in the east. But Cousin Maedhros used to come west to visit sometimes. He’s Ada’s best friend. He’s really tall,” she added. “Really tall.”

 

She’d always enjoyed Cousin Maedhros’ visits, rare though they’d been. He made her father laugh, and talked about plants with her mother, and was generally willing to play with her, picking her up and letting her ride on his shoulders so that she was taller than everyone – at least until he put her down. Hopefully he would still be able to see her father despite Morgoth’s attacks; Fingon deserved to have visits from someone who made him happy, even if those visits couldn’t come from his daughter and wife. And Maedhros could defend himself from orcs, unlike Ereiniel and her mother. Her father had told her that the orcs were frightened of Maedhros, and that they would flee rather than face him in battle.

 

If Ereiniel had been an orc, she would have been scared of her father, too, not just of Maedhros. Everyone said that he was a brave and ferocious warrior – Fingon the Valiant! – and she had watched him training with his soldiers. He moved like a blur, striking fast and fiercely, and he nearly always won his matches. Hopefully her father would be able to defeat Morgoth’s orcs and make Hithlum safe again, and then Ereiniel would be able to go home.

 

She liked Eglarest, and she especially liked Maewen, but Eglarest wasn’t home.

 

The girls reached Maewen’s house, where Maewen’s mother, Aearwaloth, was waiting for them outside with a pair of combs for them to use to work the salt and sand out of their scalps, so that they wouldn’t mess up her clean floors when they came inside. They obeyed, Ereiniel unbraiding her plait and Maewen taking down her ponytail. Ereiniel thought Maewen had the most beautiful hair she’d ever seen, glossy chestnut curls that bounced around her face as they played. Her own hair was black and straight and boring, like most elves, nothing special at all.

 

Once they’d combed their hair out, they came inside, changed into the fresh clothes that had been left there this morning before they went to swim class, and then settled down at the table for lunch. People in Eglarest ate a lot of fish; that was one difference from Hithlum, where venison and mutton had been more common and fish, like boar, had been an occasional meal rather than a staple food. But Ereiniel didn’t mind. Salted herring, it turned out, was just as good as salted pork, and smelts were smelts, whether they came from the lakes of Hithlum or from the estuary at the mouth of the River Nenning.

 

Maewen had promised, too, that she would show Ereiniel how to dig for soup clams once the weather got a little warmer, and that her mother would make them into a kind of soup Maewen called chowder. Clams were new to Ereiniel, but she had found already that she liked them, and she was looking forward to trying chowder. And while Maewen had been shocked that Ereiniel had never eaten clams or scallops or oysters, Ereiniel had been equally shocked that Maewen had never eaten venison or squirrel or boar.

 

But perhaps that was understandable; the land around Eglarest was devoted to farming, raising wheat, barley, flax, and sheep, with the closest forest some fifty miles to the east. Fishing made more sense than hunting. Still, Ereiniel felt a little out of place surrounded by people who couldn’t skin a squirrel. And she missed going hunting with her father, staying out in the woods of Hithlum for several days and helping Fingon prepare the squirrels he’d shot to make squirrel and butter bean stew.

 

She missed her father, period, missed his warmth and strength and brightness. Ereiniel thought her mother must miss him, too; young as she was, she’d still noticed that Ianneth had been different since they’d left home – a little quiet, a little unhappy, a little brittle, almost.

 

It was hard, leaving home. At least Ereiniel had made a friend to help her adjust to life in this foreign city. She could only hope her mother, too, would make some friends at the Houses of Healing who could help ease her current troubles.

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Chapter End Notes

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