They Can Nearly Talk by Chestnut_pod  

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Chapter 12

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“I am certain you say that to all the girls,” Poicasíma replied, amused, but she sat upon the green grass before the palace of Alqualondë and told me stories of caring for the royal family’s hawks.

In return, I told her of Eagles circling above the Army of the Valar, and her eyes shone as though she looked upon their high glory herself.

“To be jessed to the arm upon which such splendor sits is honor indeed,” she said, and though the words were different, I thought I recognized the sentiment.

“You speak like a Vanya,” I told her, and she laughed.

“Vanyar think they are the only pious Elves in all the world. The King of Birds is close indeed when one cares for his children daily. And you, do you swear to the Horse Lord? I see you watching the steeds below.”

I shook my head. “I have sworn at the Horse Lord,” I said ruefully. “He did not seem to mind too much, for here I stand on my two legs. No, I was born beneath the stars, and the Star-Kindler witnessed my naming. It is to her handmaiden I pray first, Ilmarë Who Combs the Starlight.”

A slow smile spread over Poicasíma’s face. “A devotee of the stars living beneath the sea fog? I cannot see it. Why do you want to live here?”

I stumbled through a list of attributes, realizing as I did so that I did not feel any of them terribly strongly, but for the last — entire streets where melehesti sold books, drank tea, strolled about openly. Poicasíma cocked her head.

“I had not heard our hinterlands were so hidebound. That is much more Tirionish; they use the Laws and Customs for more than doorstops there, or they did when I was young. Is there not that one town up the Russanaira River — Filit-something?

“Filitambo, yes,” I supplied, “But it is more of a melotorno’s game there… and I suppose my years in Tirion still outweigh my years here in the north; I find them difficult to shed. Always, even when I was young, I thought that one day I might go to a shining city, to come amongst people like me and live as them. Tirion is not so conservative any longer as you might think, but I have fought my battles abroad and do not wish to fight more.”

Poicasíma smiled and lay back on the grass, flinging her arms over her head so her sleeves rode up and revealed the paler lines where her gauntlets did not cover the skin.

“Shall I bring you amongst my people here, as you say, and show you our battlegrounds?”

I could not help but stammer again, and was grateful that Poicasíma only smiled wider. “Perhaps tomorrow evening I shall come to Doctor Olwaryion’s door and draw you out.”

I practically floated home. Doctor Olwaryion noted genially that he was glad I had enjoyed my study of the stables, and that there were four more cat spays to be done before he shuttered the surgery tonight.

Those were routine, so routine that I felt I could almost do them with my eyes closed, for Doctor Olwaryion insisted on being the one to sing all the charms. My role was simply to wield the knife. I recalled Alparenë’s insistence that she be permitted to take on the surgeon’s role when she first began her work at Elquessë's practice, and felt a rueful kind of delayed kinship. I would have given much to whistle a little sleep or hum a table clean!

The next day was much the same — a floppy-eared rabbit’s sore hocks were a welcome beacon of novelty — but I found it harder to mind in the face of the evening to come. As the sun fizzled out in the bay, I donned my uniform again and neatened the tie of my clubbed hair. A few other assistants cast me gentle smirks as I hopped from foot to foot before the side door, but when it opened, I forgot them entirely.

Poicasíma smiled at me, hand still upraised to knock. The sleeves of her daringly short men’s jacket fell back from her wrist, revealing again the scars and tan lines of her trade.

“Well, come along,” was all she said, and I scrambled to follow her out into the darkening streets, where strings of lanterns, glowing windows, and corner costers roasting pinol cast the city into an archipelago of rainbow lights. She led me up and down several hills and finally to a cross street cutting diagonally across the handsome grid. On one of the narrow corners cut out by the angles, a wooden house painted daringly purple hung a sign showing, of all things, the four pink petals of a Ránanandë clarkia, as jarringly familiar as if Quildatal had been the doorkeeper.

“Self-pollinating,” Poicasíma laughed when I pointed, and led me in. Just as the sign had surprised me with its familiarity, so too was I surprised to find the inside like nothing so much as the upstairs parlor of Sister Turkanta’s boarding house, stuffed with copper cooking implements used as semi-ironic decoration and just as stuffed with Elves in madcap but handsome dress. The unexpected dissonance of familiarity eased into comfort as Poicasíma led me to a corner next to a shuttered window curtained with bent spoons, carefully tuned by some impish artist to chime dulcetly whenever a passing body rustled them.

Poicasíma drew me into a conversation that ranged from hawks to horses, then horses to ships, then to stories of childhood, hers aboard fishing skiffs and mine in the snows and meadows of the great Mountain. Our words seemed to flow as easily as the pleasant cordials from the pitchers of the single server, and there was much laughter. Slowly, however, I became aware of some reproving glances — not so very many, but enough to make me look around nervously when the spoon-curtain tinkled.

Watching me glance at the room out of the corner of my eye, Poicasíma rested her sharp chin on her hand and sighed. “The uniform isvery dashing, soldier.”

At once, a wave of understanding and embarrassment crashed over me. I had thought of nothing but of trim lines and crisp pleats, for, I realized, in Merrilosto and Filitambo, everyone knew me, Hyamessë the horse leech, and did not mind what I wore even if it was the uniform of the army of Finarfin, sent to war from the charred docks of Alqualondë. I closed my eyes and covered them with my hand.

“Do not take it to heart,” Poicasíma said. “It is only a few who dart unfriendly glances. Opinions are never singular anywhere, much less in Alpalondë.”

Her gentle words were soothing, but they could not restore the spell of the warm and thrilling tavern. Poicasíma seemed to sense it, though I tried to be as gay and merry as before. After all, I had less right to discomfort than anyone trying to burn me with the Treelight in their eyes. Even so, the nerves and resentment rather spoiled things.

“Ah, I am sorry,” she said at last. “I thought this would be an excursion of fun: see how we may do things here in the city! I was not thinking like a completionist. Let us go elsewhere.”

She waved aside my protests and stood, settling our tab. My cheeks burned with shame, though I thought it did not show. Poicasíma showed no sign of embarrassment herself, only rested her hand on my arm and guided me gently back out the door and into the night.

“Let us return to the palace point, where we may stand on the gangway in the mews and watch Eärendil rise,” Poicasíma said. “It is a marvel away from the lights of the city looking across the water.”

“Oh, let’s!” I cried, feeling the sense of heaviness lift. “There is a place on my rounds in Ránanandë where you can see him so clearly; it is a sight to dream of.”

So I followed her into the soft, feathery rustling of the mews and up the twisting staircase to the rafters, where a single goshawk cheeped at us and settled back into sleep. A tall, narrow window gave onto the frigid stars. Through puffs of our breaths, we watched them glimmer, hands on the sill, shoulders, arms, and the sides of our hands pressed together as if by chance, warm in the cold nighttime.

Far to the north, a dazzling light lifted from the horizon, a shooting star in reverse. The sky did not precisely flash, or illuminate, but its quality changed, like turning a piece of velvet from the straight grain to the cross. I sighed.

“Aiya Eärendil, elenion ancalima,” Poicasíma whispered in the accents of the Falmari, and I echoed with my mountain Quenya. We pressed closer.

“Do you remember the first time you saw him rise?” I asked.

She replied, “Yes; it was here, in fact, I remember—” she trailed off, my upper arm growing cold as she leaned further into the window. “Oh, look.”

Peering past her, I saw only the Star of High Hope, ever higher in the sky. Then, I saw it. Eärendil did not rise ever higher, but seemed to grow larger, no, closer, yet dimmer. Then a winged shape emerged from the darkness between the stars, like one of the Green Elves’ constellations formed from the black aether. A Maia of Manwë? I wondered.

“Stand back!” cried Poicasíma, and took my hand — my heart leapt — to yank me back from the sill. Like a falcon, the winged being soared through the window and landed in a crouch on the grate before us, dripping stardust from the white pinions sprouting from her shoulders.

I admit I gaped. I had seen many wonders, but never a woman of the Edain winged like a Maia and all aglow in starlight. She looked up, and I realized with a shock that I knew that arched nose, those streaks of glittering silver in the black hair. The ship that had borne me from Alqualondë to the shattered coast of Beleriand had borne her likeness on its prow.

“Poicasíma!” Elwing the Prophet exclaimed. “I hoped you would be here. Help, look–”

From my daze, I realized that Queen Elwing bore a sling upon her chest, and in that sling was a huge white-and-mahogany raptor, an osprey. Queen Elwing gestured with her — my mind stuttered — her wing, which was already shedding feathers and becoming something more like an arm in a process that somehow dazzled my eyes.

“Whatever is the matter?” Poicasíma asked. “She looks terribly unwell.”

The great sea-hawk did look unwell, with a glaze over her golden eyes and a fine shiver through her muscles. Queen Elwing’s fingers finally returned, and she reached up to cradle the bird.

“I do not know,” she said, “She does not know, and I cannot work it out myself.”

“May I look, great lady?” I asked, voice squeaking slightly. Queen Elwing looked startled, as though she had not noticed me.

“This is my friend, an animal leech and colleague of Doctor Elquessë Helwáriel,” Poicasíma said hurriedly.

“What good fortune it is to find you here, for I know the work of Doctor Helwáriel well,” Queen Elwing said. “Can you help, do you think?”

All of a sudden, the calm I had learned on the front marches of the war returned to me. This was no different than receiving an order to attend Prince Finarfin to treat a laceration of the leg of his charger.

“Let us go downstairs, and I will examine her.”

Poicasíma hurried before us to set up the same table Doctor Olwaryion and I had used the day before. Queen Elwing called up a brilliant ball of white light without a single whistle or hum, which illuminated the aviary as though it were dawn. All around us, the hawks and falcons awoke and made noises of disgruntlement. She looked around guiltily and seemed to draw a curtain of soft darkness around the light she held, so we three stood alone in a softly glowing circle. I swallowed.

“Poicasíma, would you please help me lay out the osprey?”

Cooing in osprey-tongue, Poicasíma took the bird from Queen Elwing’s arms. The bird cried out shiveringly in pain, but did not lash out with her wicked talons or beak — a very poor sign. Gently, Poicasíma laid her on her side on the table, for the hawk resisted all efforts to put her on her back. Silhouetted against the white cloth on the table, I could see an unnatural bulge on the bird’s stomach.

“I asked if she had eaten something, but she said she had not,” Queen Elwing said. Poicasíma trilled a snatch of sleep-music, and the bird’s eyes drooped. So quickly I assumed she must be exhausted already, she fell into slumber. I turned her onto her back and laid a finger on the swelling. Cold to the touch: not an abscess. I pressed gently and felt no give at all beneath the bird’s thin skin: almost certainly not a tumor. If the bird insisted to Queen Elwing that she had eaten nothing strange…

“Does she have a nest, O lady?”

Queen Elwing nodded. “She decided Vingilot’s rigging makes for a comfortable nest. She laid an egg yesterday.”

That settled it. “She is egg-bound. That bulge is another egg which she cannot lay, which has hardened inside the body and made things yet worse. When did you notice she was sick?”

“Only when I flew onto the rigging on Vingilot to take off for home. Eärendil could not see her from the deck. She might have been ill a long time.”

“It looks like she has been,” Poicasíma said in a worried tone I could not but agree with. A bound egg poses danger just as serious to a bird as a delayed birth does to an Elvish mother. The osprey had been exhausted and I had seen no evidence of straining, the bird perhaps too weak to even try to lay her egg. If only I had my bag!

“Poicasíma, I need instruments. Have you a kit here?” Poicasíma nodded and strode purposefully to a cabinet by the door, returning with a large box which she opened to reveal a fair kit of materials for the treatment of minor wounds. I dug through it and came up with mineral jelly and padded swabs.

I caught myself thinking that if Elquessë, expert in all things egg, were here, she would surely have a better idea of what to do! But my hands worked steadily, gently lubricating the osprey’s vent and searching out the shape of the trapped egg within her tract. Perhaps I had finally gained enough experience that my worries did not amount to much.

With luck, the egg would slide down the freshly slippery track, eased by the jelly and encouraged by the gentle pressure I applied with the swabs. Carefully, I pressed from every angle, seeking the one that would loosen the egg from whatever prevented its passage. I dared not press too hard, however, for the worst case was the one in which the egg broke within the bird and left behind sharp fragments of shell tearing at her insides.

The egg did not budge. Under Poicasíma’s and Queen Elwing’s eyes, I nudged and pressed, but the egg moved not a hair’s breadth. I closed my own eyes and thought. Surgery was possible, but not with these instruments and no assistant beyond Poicasíma. Could I bring the osprey to Doctor Olwaryion? Perhaps, but I did not like the thought of trekking half an hour or more from the palace, or even of Queen Elwing flying, jostling the osprey and holding her in dangerous positions which might break the egg. It could be done, but I would prefer to finish it here. What could I do?

An image of Elquessë working in the surgery struck me — sitting in the surgery on long evenings when the clinic was quiet, reading my journals and watching her hold an egg before a candle and nudge at the embryo within with a long needle.

Once again, I dug through Poicasíma’s kit. A single long needle, which Poicasíma likely used for repairing jesses and other leathers, emerged from its recesses. I whispered a charm of cleanliness over it and returned to the table, where Poicasíma and Queen Elwing both made the soft noises of osprey mothers over the still-sleeping bird. I laid my hand on her belly and envisioned the chutes and passages of the egg tract, then, achingly slowly, eased the needle into her vent and towards the egg. When I hit resistance, I pressed until I felt it give.

The needle passed into the egg. If I were in a fully equipped surgery, I would use a siphon to draw out the contents, but here song must do. What would serve? Another flash of memory arrived: Alparenë slicing through the bone of a little cat’s hard palate, elegant and clean. Not without trepidation, I sang the dissonant melody again and again, controlling my breath such that I thought even Alparenë would have been proud.

When I go home, I must tell her I used her technique, I thought. Something in the thought nagged at the back of my mind, but I pushed it aside, focusing on the problem of drawing out the egg’s contents. Elquessë’s whistle for sucking away blood came to me, and I pursed my lips and blew, modulating the tone until the insides of the egg began to flow down the needle.

Painstakingly, I pressed again at the eggshell, keeping the membrane intact as I crumpled the shell inwards, guiding any sharp edges inwards and away from the osprey’s egg tract. The jelly began to work as the egg shrank, and I pressed and pulled it out. It emerged with a trickle of blood, where despite my efforts bits of shell had bitten in their passage. But the egg was out and I could feel no others behind it. Breathing deeply once more, I sang a song of healing as powerfully as I could, waiting for the internal lacerations to heal and the bird’s strength to return. Weary from my experiments, my fëa wavered, my breath breaking away from the spirit that filled it. Then a deep, husky voice joined me, something like the crying of a gull, and something like the tolling of a great bell, and I was borne up, music flowing through me like springtime snowmelt.

I finished my song, and a bar or two behind me, Queen Elwing also stopped singing. The osprey lay quiet between us, breast rising and falling evenly. I realized my legs were shaking and leaned hard on the table. Poicasíma slipped her shoulder beneath my arm and I gladly gave my weight over to her, thinking of her gauntlets and jesses and her scarred hands stroking the backs of her hawks.

“What skill, Doctor,” said Queen Elwing in a voice in which, faintly, I could still hear the cry of a gull, now I knew to listen for it. I shook my head, forgetting my formality, but Queen Elwing reached across the table and tapped the back of my hand. “You made a marvel here; I should think any midwife could not have done as well. I am sorry: I do not know your name.”

Leaning on Poicasíma, I looked up into Queen Elwing’s gray eyes, framed by delicate lines like tree branches.

“I am Hyamessë Heriel,” I said.

“Thank you, Hyamessë,” Queen Elwing said. “I will remember you, and I am sure my friend here will as well.”

The rest of the night is something of a blur. I remember blurting out some form of thanks, then Poicasíma helping the queen strap the osprey back into her sling. I remember the strange wrench of watching feathers where skin had been, and the awe of watching a woman take flight, just as Vingilot took flight from its tower in the north. I thought to go back to Doctor Olwaryion, but Poicasíma would not hear of it, leading me, stumbling, instead to a small lean-to appended to the mews and pressing me down into a soft, narrow bed. I slept.

In the blue dawn, Poicasíma helped me shrug back into my uniform, then leaned against the doorway as I left, staring up at gibbous Tilion tarrying in the sky.

“Is it always like that in Alqualondë?” I asked.

“Legends flying out of the stars? Awkward times at melehesti’s bars? If it is not always like that, it is not always different.”

I shook my head. “You live a stimulating life.”

We bid each other farewell and I walked back to Doctor Olwaryion’s practice, where I proceeded to spay five more cats and extract a tooth from a lapdog. As I worked, I thought back to the starlit urgency of the previous night, and farther, to operating on a different table beside different companions, on different cats. The hours which had slipped away under the starlight dragged again. In the evening, I made my way to the publishing house, following the map that Poicasíma had drawn for me. The door fluttered with strings of pamphlets and chapbooks, printed and handwritten. I knocked, and went inside.