They Can Nearly Talk by Chestnut_pod  

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Chapter 11

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I believe I mentioned before that when I first began working in Ránanandë, I thought it would be a stopgap measure until Aman recovered from the shock of the various returnees (from the war, Mandos’ Halls, or both). It seemed natural that bright young recently discharged things would gravitate towards sparkling Eressëa, where daring Returned radicals postulated theories on death and the Halls, or reviving Tirion, with its experiments in electoralism. That did not last: if I have not yet made it clear that the hinterlands of Alqualondë enchanted me at once and did not loosen their grip as the seasons passed, I have failed as a writer!

Nonetheless, I did sometimes think in those early years that I might enjoy running my own practice someday, somewhere just a touch more urban. I never did think of returning to my family’s bothies on the eastern slopes of Taniquetil, nor even to make my way to Valmar. Reader, if you dwelt in the war with me, you know the meaning of “Valar-fearing” as I do. To live in the very throne of the Powers is to be exposed to their being as we are exposed to the fierce sunlight, the freezing snow, the thundering storms of lightning by the Great Mountain. As a child, I accepted this, even gloried in it as I lay on steep ledges looking up at the stars only an arm’s-length away — but I have seen other Mountains now, and their crumbling, and I do not think I could once again live that way. I am a Vanya, then and now, but I make my devotions from a greater distance, having been once too close to holiness.

Instead, Alqualondë seemed ideal. A great city of the Eldar, filled to the gills with good food, fierce debates, well-kempt shrines and parks, and beauty, where a newcomer could rent a flet from a kindly fisherman for a reasonable labor tithe and eat salmon every day. Alqualondë was also simply rooty (as we used to say in the region). The ravages of the Kinslaying had deepened and darkened, but not nearly stamped out, its freethinking spirit and open-minded approach to life, love, and so on. The vision of inviting a pretty local meleseldë up to my rented — but stylish — flet while Quildatal got fat on daily oats below attracted me, I must admit. I could see Elquessë every other week, even, on the river boat, and still eat all the Ránanandë grapes and olives I wanted, just from restaurant bars.

Hence my guilty excitement when I received a letter from a publishing house in the North Beach neighborhood of Alqualondë saying that they had seen my article in Deerlore and the small chapbook of my letters home my cousins had published for clan distribution in Valmar, liked them, and wondered if I had more of the latter ready. Near the end of the businesslike letter, they invited me to their building for an interview with an editor. It was high summer, the least busy time of the country leech’s calendar, so I felt slightly less guilty than I might have approaching Elquessë for unscheduled time off.

She steepled her fingers together and leaned back in her chair behind the perpetually chaotic desk in the waiting room, an expression of serene wisdom settling on her aristocratic features. A teetering pile of prescription slips wafted to the floor as she did so, but she did not affect to notice.

“Hyamessë,” she intoned, “You are more than welcome to take your annual holiday now, but please, allow me to advise you, as a friend and elder.” (Let it be noted that I believe Elquessë is a mere three or four hundred years older than I, if one counts yéni as a dozen dozen Years of the Sun.)

She continued. “It is very exciting to be sought after, but the arts scene in Alqualondë is a match for many.” She made several other vague but menacing pronouncements of that sort, all of which I disregarded.

Finally, she said something to which I did attend, namely, that she had a cousin and colleague who would let me assist in his surgery and would be happy to put me up in exchange. For that, I thanked her profusely, for Alparenë had made a begrudging noise about her parents’ home when I told her of my potential voyage, and I did not think either I or her parents were entirely prepared for such a stay.

Thus within the month I had groomed Quildatal to a high shine and left her sadly (or so I feared) alone in her stall and taken the Alpasírë to Alqualondë. My meeting with the editor was at the full moon, so I left in the dark of the month in order to pay Elquessë’s cousin adequately in labor for my room and board.

The cousin turned out to be like Elquesse, in that he had silver hair and birdlike features, and quite unlike her, in that he had the delicacy of manner to match them. He came to meet me at the ferry dock with a guest-gift, a shining length of catgut which, I knew, would never tangle or catch or snap inside a wound. I was glad to have brought a host-gift of my own, a cake of almond paste with marmalade inside made from the oranges of the very trees that lined Elquessë’s courtyard, which would be fit for the king’s table, if I did say so.

I called him by his title, always: Doctor Olwaryion was of a stature, bearing, and birth that would not permit otherwise. He took me by steep roads to his home and practice at the crest of one of Alqualondë’s many hills, surrounded by a bulging hedge that gave patients privacy. It was clear Doctor Olwaryion saw a different class of pet than Elquessë: his waiting room heaved with silken-haired hounds whose owners would never tolerate them being called dogs, pampered rabbits in gilded wicker baskets, and cats with pearled collars. Animals know nothing of such divisions, of course, and behind the clean marble table in the surgery, I felt as at-home as in Elquessë’s own clinic.

It helped that I could feel useful, as I did in Merrilosto, for my surgical knowledge from Tirion. A faster technique for the spaying of cats saves the city leech much time! Doctor Olwaryion would always say the same thing as I placed the final stitch: “A tidy job, Doctor Heriel.”

The warm glow of pride this engendered did not fade, but I did begin to wonder, after a week or so, if the practice did anything but spay cats and prescribe lapdogs eyedrops. Wandering through the higher reaches of Alqualondë was an exercise in amazement, however. Taking in the golden bridges, the pearly public buildings, and the bright colors of the common people’s homes took the edge off the monotony. When I had shipped off to war from the docks, I had seen little but the wharves themselves and the hastily revitalized shipyards. Impressive enough, but not the same as the stretch of street adjacent to the practice which boasted, in a wall-to-wall row, a coffeeshop which seamlessly became a beerhouse in the evenings, a bakery specializing in butter-cakes, an architectural pearl-machining practice that inexplicably also sold Ránanandë wines, a grandly domed temple of Uinen undergoing renovation to glass in its elegant courtyard, and finally, a hairdresser with Maiar-blessed dyes. Even so, I must have spayed at least thirty cats that first week. Tidy jobs all, according to Doctor Olwaryion, but somewhat wearing by comparison to the variety I usually saw.

Doctor Olwaryion also liked his assistants to dine together at table with him, which prevented me from seeking out the meletheldi’s haunts a few hills away. He kept a fine table, and also fine assistants, which soothed the wound somewhat, and I did enjoy the lively, wide-ranging conversations.

“So your father, the prince, is Elquessë’s great-uncle on her mother’s side?” I asked one evening at dinner, trying to pin down exactly how Elquessë, leaf of a silver branch, ended up in chicken practice in the countryside.

“Just so,” Doctor Olwaryion assented. He ate his soup of whole-shell clams elegantly, with a little instrument to pick out the clam meat separately from his spoon, which he always operated in the correct direction. The other assistants and I watched him furtively to remember which way that was.

“How is it that she lives all alone, so far in the hinterlands? From what you have told me, the greater part of your family lives around the palace.”

“Oh, Elquessë was always something of the Ossë of the family, Doctor Heriel. She was always running around the Great Park looking for birds, rather than attending court, and once she was old enough she was away from the city as often as she was at home, exploring, as she called it. I believe she found all the pomp and circumstance of our family rather confining.”

I took another spoonful of soup in the correct direction. I thought it verged on pert to accuse Elquessë of being tempted by Morgoth for the sin of liking birds and fresh country air, but forebore to comment.

“I do not believe I have known her to visit Alqualondë since I arrived, almost three years ago,” I said.

“What is three years?” Doctor Olwaryion asked indulgently. “My little cousin makes sure to visit at least once a century, and that seems to suit everyone nicely. It is too bad that she did not introduce you before, though — we all like to take an interest in her projects.”

Elquessë’s project chewed a final clam.

Doctor Olwaryion mused, “Well, perhaps I should take on that duty. It is the mid-tide tomorrow, which means I am due a visit to my grandfather’s mews — magnificent hawks, Doctor Heriel, superb hawks!” His eyes flashed, and for the first time, I saw some similarity in character between him and his “little cousin.”

So the next morning I donned my dress uniform, which I had admittedly brought in order to charm women in coffeehouses, but which served well enough for an unexpected visit to my employer’s noble ancestors. Doctor Olwaryion led the way past the baker, the temple, and the hairdresser and into the parkland which occupied the northernmost tip of Alqualondë’s peninsula, where the palace and the white houses of the King and Queen’s many relatives lay. I took deep breaths of the fresher air, moist and healthful after a nighttime rain. The streets of the city were broad and clean, but I did not notice until I left them that the air was closer.

We skirted the palace, gleaming white and blue against the blue and white of the whitecapped sea, entering instead into a three-story house, also white, though not so nacreous and glistening, and full of the musty smell of corn and feathers. Though it looked like a house from the outside, standing inside, I could see it had been hollowed out to the studs and rafters, with a staircase spiraling up the center. All around were little stalls, more like the cubbyholes in which students studied in Tirion’s Great Library than the stalls of a stable, with fine mesh grates over their entrances. Everywhere was the rustle of feathers and the surprisingly quiet peeps of the great birds of prey, their yellow eyes gleaming in the dim coolness.

“Well met,” a quiet voice said, and I started, having been entirely distracted by the mews and their inhabitants. A black-haired woman in riding habit, with the braces and heavy gauntlets of a falconer on her arms, stood at the foot of the staircase, struck by a shaft of dusty golden sunlight. It made the features of her face stand out like projections on a crag, beckoning exploration. She nodded to me, then turned to greet Doctor Olwaryion as a trusted colleague. I hardly knew where to look, at the glorious merlins and kestrels on their perches, or at their keeper.

“Doctor Heriel, my bag, please.” Doctor Olwaryion beckoned, and I started up after him and the falconer to a landing where the second floor would have stood. A white-tailed kite was jessed to the perch, a grand female who spread her snowy wings and cackled at our presence. The falconer slipped in before us and offered her a piece of raw meat from a cup fastened to her habit’s belt. The kite took it with her cruel beak and swallowed it whole, golden eyes never leaving the falconer’s. The woman gently urged the bird onto her right arm, stroking her head and crooning in raptor-tongue. In the better light of the stairway, I could see a tumor on the bird’s right leg, bulging between the toes.

“Ah,” Doctor Olwaryion breathed. “Such a sad hurt for such a fine lady, but simple enough to cure. Doctor Heriel, please prepare a table for a small surgery on the ground floor.”

I did so, adding a flourish to my charm of cleanliness. The white cloth over the small collapsible table glowed in the same beam of sunlight that had illuminated the falconer, and I glowed myself when Doctor Olwaryion allowed me to take the knife to the bird, held fast asleep by his song. The feet of a raptor are strong as iron, full of tough muscles the eye would not guess at. The tumor, of the sort that often grew after a small injury, lay clamped between two of those muscles, where it hampered movement and prevented the kite from grasping her prey in the fearsome talons that crowned her toes. As delicately as I knew how, I sliced the thin flesh around the lump, noting with pleasure that the tumor was fully encased, almost as round as a marble and only loosely connected with the surrounding tissue. With a curved scalpel, I scooped it out as neatly as the down from an artichoke, with but a little blood to stain the pure white feathers of the kite's breast, which made even the cloth look dim by comparison.

“Fine work,” the falconer breathed, and I flushed with pleasure, even before Doctor Olwaryion chimed in with his, “Tidy job, Doctor Heriel.”

Neatly as Míriel, I stitched up the clean flaps of skin, massaging the muscle into place as I did so in order to prevent a hollow where the tumor had been. As I placed the last stitch, Doctor Olwaryion laid a single finger on the wound and sang one of those glorious Falmarin descants of healing, and every trace of injury vanished but for the thin seam of the incision.

I could not help but stroke the kite's outstretched wing, careful not to disturb the feathers. However the falconer handled her, she was too fierce for me to touch when awake.

The falconer bundled the bird up and returned her to her perch. Some words of the kite tongue, changed by an Elvish throat, floated down to us below, and I stared up, entranced, as perhaps a fish might when that flashing white shadow shows above the water.

A little chuckle beside me drew me back to myself.

“Poicasíma would have said if there were more than one bird requiring surgery,” Doctor Olwaryion said. “Why don’t you leave me to make my own round. She can show you the stables, which are also a sight to see.”

I flushed again, but was happy to nod my assent. Poicasíma came down ungauntleted, and I saw the marks and scars of talons and beaks on her hands, silvery fine like spiderwebs in the summer field of her fingers.

“To the stables, then?” she asked, and I followed her from the dim mews into the brilliant sunshine, with the air full of brine and the pearl of the palace gleaming like the tarrying moon. Again, we passed it by, walking instead towards the sea, rougher and darker than the Bay. A long, low strip of stable stood white against the spring-green pasture around it, where bays and chestnuts and grays grazed, turned away from the sea wind. As delicately as I would use a scalpel, I reached out and touched the back of Poicasíma’s scarred hand.

“Let us sit here,” I said. “I would look at the horses and hear you tell me of your life here, in Alqualondë.”

Poicasíma turned to face me, black braid whipping in the wind. She held up her hands and laughed. “Of my life, soldier? You have not yet told me your name.”

“Hyamessë,” I said. “I am Hyamessë. I am thinking of making my own life here.”