They Can Nearly Talk by Chestnut_pod  

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Chapter 5

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While I was away in Tirion to refresh my equine obstetrics with Professor Lelyalma, Elquessë hired a temporary assistant to take on the inland portion of my rounds. At least, that was the original plan. Upon my return, the assistant and I overlapped for about a week, and it became clear that there was more than enough work in Ránanandë to employ three leeches.

In particular, while the assistant saw to the inland half of my circuit, I found myself with some few extra days at the end of my own round where I was able to assist Elquessë in the clinic in Merrilosto where the town-dwellers brought their housepets. While the farmers who lived on the coast did draw more on my time when I had more of it, they were fundamentally accustomed to being slightly remote and had some skill in healing livestock that limited the number of occasions a leech was called for. The shopkeepers, teachers, dressmakers, and other inhabitants of the town had fewer such skills and more cosseted pets. The benefits of having a greater presence in town were clear.

One morning when I was in Merrilosto, two weeks after the departure of the assistant, Elquessë came into the breakfast room. I hastily stood from the table, as I always did, and Elquessë waved an impatient hand at me, as she always did, before settling down to compose her own plate. The fire blazed against the midwinter chill, and the cook who “did for” Elquessë and the neighboring house had provided great slabs of cheese and bowls of warmly spiced stewed apples to keep us hale on the road.

“Hyamessë,” Elquessë began after she had carefully arranged her bread, cheese, and apples to her liking, “What did you think of Alparenë?”

“Um.” I was a little tired still from my traveling rounds and floundered a little for a response. In the one week I had known Alparenë, we had not, precisely, gotten on.

Our first meeting had taken place as I was removing my boots and bathing my feet in the courtyard fountain after seeing to Quildatal. The fountain’s water stung bitterly cold, but I had not yet lost the hardiness of my mountain youth and the front. The long final ride from the last family farm on my round to Merrilosto was a muddy one in winter, and I had not wanted to tramp muck up three flights of stairs.

Behind me, someone had made a muffled noise. A woman, very beautiful in the classic Falmarin way – straight black hair, tawny skin, and leaf-shaped eyes accented by shells in her hair and piercings – stared at the gap where the second toe of my left foot had been. A patient waiting for a pet in surgery, I thought at the time. She had recovered herself quickly enough, and with a frankness I grudged, despite decades of shifty glances in bathhouses, asked, “Was that an occupational injury?”

“My name is Heriel, the junior leech at this practice,” I had replied, calmly enough. “A wartime injury, as it happens, so yes and no.”

Her mouth had tightened at the implied censure — I thought -– but we might have left it there, had I not followed that up with, “Are you looking to train in leeching? I would not be too concerned about your bodily integrity; the profession can be dangerous, but not usually to the point of amputation.”

Her sea-colored eyes had flashed. “My name is Alparenë, Doctor Alparenë Banilómiel. I am the replacement leech Doctor Helwáriel hired while her assistant is in Tirion.” She pronounced “Tirion” rather like someone might say “open-air midden.”

And we were off. As my readers have likely surmised from her name, Alparenë is a native of Alqualondë, born very soon after the massacre that turned her parents from simple ropemakers to activists. This I learned from Elquessë, for Alparenë had gone off in a huff, leaving me to dry my nine cold toes alone. Subsequently, as we rubbed testily along, we had spoken little. When forced to address me, Alparenë had called me ‘lieutenant’ — the rank given to irregular healers in Finarfin’s army — rather than my name, though Elquessë and I pointedly used informal language with one another. It turned out that she was one of the type who thought that the Noldor should be left to sink into the sea, or not, without the merest aid of Alqualondians, and the fact that I had shipped over in a repurposed fishing boat owned by a fisherman from the very wharves from whence the Swanships had been reaved tarred me with a very sticky brush.

As I flashed through the memories of that chilly week, Elquessë observed me over the lip of her mug of cocoa.

Weakly, I came up with, “She was very… competent with the birds.”

That had, it turned out, been her occupation and her connection to Elquessë in one — she was one of the dedicated leeches for the massive pigeon-homing system that served for post in the lowlands.

Elquessë nodded with enthusiasm. “Indeed! It is not so common a skillset as one might hope. Even your own education did not entirely cover the subjects I would consider necessary…”

Sipping her chocolate, she went on, “We took in a great deal more custom while she was here, mostly townsfolk with their small pets, whom I usually see to in the afternoons. Minor things, mostly — colds, a dog with his snout trapped in a stirrup cup.”

She looked around the room, which was much in keeping with the rest of the house in its slightly shabby grandeur. Comfortably upholstered furniture in slightly scuffed dark wood stood about the solid, scarred table from which we breakfasted. The beautifully tiled, if slightly sooty, fireplace kept it warm despite the gracious, if rather smudged, windows looking out onto the winter-sleeping courtyard.

“That poor dog,” I said, seeing the way the wind was blowing, and hoping I might break it slightly. Elquessë had mentioned to me that she would not mind hiring on the cook full time to act as a general-purpose housekeeper, but had not the funds to make it worth her while.

“Oh, he is a silly creature!” she replied. “If it’s not a cup, it’s a jam jar or a wine bottle. He used to be in practically every week, before the family learned to close their kitchen cupboards. He is the most food-motivated dog I have ever met, and that is saying something.” Taking another bite of breakfast, she shook her head and resettled on the matter at hand.

“I have invited Alparenë to stay for a trial period of three months,” she said, to my dismay. The soft apples looked suddenly rather unappealing.

I must not have hidden my feelings well, because Elquessë looked warmly at me from down the table. “A trial, I said, Hyamessë. She is a good worker, but this practice serves all the county, and she is a city pigeon at heart, with a city pigeon’s opinions. We might not suit each other. And after all— you were here first.”

With that reassurance, I had to be content.

At least Alparenë did not move into the attic room across from my own, instead taking rooms in town. Seeing her at breakfast, which had previously been a merry occasion to start the day, was bad enough. She was not a morning lark, which is not a moral failing, but it was hard to feel that way when she glared balefully at my and Elquessë’s attempts at conversation. Running into her in the small washroom at the top of the stairs would have been too much.

At first, we tried dedicating Alparenë entirely to the clinic, while I resumed my former rounds with an extra week on the road added in, but it turned out that there were not in fact enough local cases to justify it. As I have mentioned, Ránanandë had been very used to Elquessë’s one-woman practice and farmers tried their own medicines before calling for the leech. Generally, this was something we tried to discourage, but changing their expectations was slow going. In the meantime, I mourned the loss of my biweekly days at home, where I could repair my gear, wash my clothing, and sleep in my own bed. Moreover, my absences interfered with my ability to check in on Ulofánë.

Returning to the circumstances of my educational leave worked better. Alparenë took the inland half of my route, while I stayed out on the coast for a full two weeks before returning. Elquessë, as usual, managed the large egg operations in Merrilosto and saw patients at the clinic in the afternoons, and all three of us would see local patients when at home. This seemed to be equal to the needs of our various patients and myself — and I had to admit I loved the rough, redwood-crowned glory of the coastal regions and was happy enough to spend more time in them.

The fact that Alparenë and I did not have to see each other for two weeks at a stretch did help, but when we did see each other, we could not seem to get along.

I am not terribly outgoing. Vanyarin shepherds seldom are; if one enjoyed the company of people above all else, one would not choose to spend days on end in the solitary splendor of the mountains with goats. Even so, I do not think myself a balrog. Alparenë evidently did not agree.

She took the kinds of broadsheets that Sister Turkanta had feared — the genre that would have trumpeted ‘Noldo kills Irmoan votary’s beloved pet with agate stone’ from its flimsy front page. I subscribed to the circulars that still went around in the ex-army of Finarfin, with his emblem prominently displayed in the mastheads. Whenever we took out our reading material at the table, I would feel her sharp glances straight through the paper.

Elquessë liked for me to lead the complicated surgeries at the clinic while she assisted, due to my recent education at the University of Tirion, where such techniques had reached their fullest flowering. Alparenë was a highly skilled singer-healer in the Falmarin tradition, and so was always the one to send the animals to sleep or whistle charms for cleanliness and healing. She felt her skill as a hands-on healer was being slighted, while I missed the ability to use my own charms without clashing with another singer.

I liked to compound salves, draughts, and pills according to Nandorin and Sindarin recipes, for I believed that they had reached the pinnacle of that art in Middle-earth, where they relied so completely on their knowledge of the land and dealt so much more often with mortal health and sickness. Alparenë saw no use in these innovations when a sung incantation would do as well and save the leech the trouble of forcing a pill down a cat — even when they did not do as well, needing frequent refreshment or a longer period of treatment. I believe she also felt that, as I had learned them in the trenches of the war, they were somehow tarnished by the whole enterprise.

In short, she felt I was a vainglorious Noldorin partisan who scorned her as a backwards Teler, and I felt she was a volcanically tetchy princess with a narrow mind.

Such was the situation when the chandler Linyahísë brought in her little cat Nícahalë to get her teeth cleaned. Nícahalë is, to this day, the most adorable feline in Aman, in my broad experience and excellent judgment. Hardly larger than a nine-month-old kitten, round-faced, short-haired, and soft as a gray spring raincloud, she is also wonderfully affectionate, even to us leeches, who never do anything but chip at her teeth and force her to submit to uncomfortable tests on a cold marble table. She is surprisingly robust for such a delicate-looking little scrap, but her teeth are terribly prone to plaque.

Elquessë, who was normally very much a woman of the chicken, had nonetheless raved about her, and when Linyahísë came to the clinic with Nícahalë in a wicker carrier, I felt very fortunate to be at home to tend to her.

That sense of good luck dissipated at once when Elquessë declared, “Hyamessë, Alparenë, I believe I will leave this one to you. I have not seen you take a case yet without me. That is an important thing to check before we take you on permanently! What if I should be called out on an emergency, and you had to handle a surgery alone? I shall observe and provide critique once you are done.” Clapping her hands together once, she strode off to prepare the surgery.

Alparenë and I shared a horrified glance, then looked away quickly.

While Alparenë fetched her surgical robe, I rushed to lay out the dental instruments in my own reach, thereby winning the first battle. Elquessë, done preparing the table, grasped my upper arm lightly and murmured, “Do try your best to get along with Alparenë this time, will you not, Hyamessë? I would so like for this to work out.”

Returning from the laundry, Alparenë saw the tray next to my elbow and scowled, but turned away and whistled to sterilize the surgery. Elquessë took up a seat well out of the way next to the instrument cabinets.

Poor Nícahalë cowered a little when Alparenë set her on the towel spread over the cold table, but gamely licked my wrist with a raspy tongue as I checked her temperature, pulse, and reflexes. My heart melted. Elquessë exclaimed, “What a good girl!” almost involuntarily. Even Alparenë looked charmed and let herself be licked as well, rubbing under Nícahalë’s round cheeks. Elquessë took a note on her pad of paper.

The preliminaries done, it was time to put Nícahalë to sleep. If this seems extreme to Elvish readers well accustomed to seeing tooth-healers wide-awake when the time comes to shed a set of teeth, then I invite my audience to try fiddling around in their own cats’ mouths for an extended period. I recommend protective gloves.

Alparenë won this round. Before I could reach for my precious syringes — still a somewhat newfangled Sindarin introduction to Aman at that time, and thus a source of real pride — she opened her mouth and sang one of her beautiful tunes of painless sleep, full of rippling descending phrases. From the corner of my eye, I saw Elquessë nodding approvingly.

Alparenë sang again. I flicked her a glance, wondering if she was showing off. Then I noticed that, although her ears and tail were in more relaxed positions, Nícahalë looked quite awake. Both of us slid our eyes towards Elquessë, who was taking notes. I thought I had the opportunity to show Alparenë that I was perfectly capable of sending a little cat to Irmo!

“Thank you for the pain-killing charm,” I said, with all the courtesy I could muster. “I will inject her with the sleeping drug now.”

Indeed, Nícahalë did not flinch at all when I slid my needle into a bunch of skin by her shoulder blade. Or at least, when I tried to. The needle, which was wonderfully slender and which I kept quite sharp, met significant resistance. It was Alparenë’s turn to peek at me under her lashes. As gently as I could, I pressed firmly enough to inject a cow, and felt the needle slide home. Depressing the syringe, I gave Nícahalë her carefully measured dose.

Then, we waited. Nícahalë stretched out on her side, fully relaxed now, but she still blinked slowly up at us.

What in Ilmarë’s name? I thought to myself. Elquessë tapped her quill against her pad. Alparene and I shot each other a look, and simultaneously opened our mouths and sang out Alparenë’s tune together, giving special emphasis to the lowest note. At last, Nícahalë’s eyes closed completely, and I could feel in her fëa that she slept deeply and without sensation.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I gestured for Alparenë to gently hold open Nícahalë’s mouth. My beloved instruments, on which I had spent the entire bonus given to departing army officers, glinted welcomingly. I selected the convex mirror and steel scraper and set to gently removing the plaque and other material on Nícahalë’s tiny teeth.

The first few went smoothly, Alparenë helpfully angling Nícahalë’s head to allow for the appropriate approaches. I managed to avoid irritating her gums, slightly inflamed by the dirty teeth, any further. However, as I nudged the mirror deeper into Nícahalë’s mouth to address the back teeth, which were in the worst repair, it clacked on something unexpected. I paused, then gently pressed the little cat’s lower jaw further open, feeling a definite sense of misgiving.

Peering in, I saw, of all things, an extra tooth. Short but sharp, and also covered in plaque, it thrust through the roof of Nícahalë’s mouth near the rearmost tooth on the right. I looked up at Alparenë to see if she saw it too, and found her looking quizzically down at it. Our eyes met, and for once, all we communicated between us was puzzlement.

Leaning closer and exchanging my scraper for a small, stick-mounted Fëanorian lamp, I looked at the tooth again. It did not appear to be irritating the lower gum or impeding Nícahalë’s eating, though it could not be comfortable poking into her tongue. Alparenë and I eased Nícahalë onto her other side to examine the whole of the tooth. From this side, though slightly obscured by the normal teeth, I could see that the tooth had a brown crack running through it. I winced. A broken tooth could be horrifyingly painful, and though surely Linyahísë would have brought Nícahalë in at a run if she had shown any signs of such agony, a deep crack like that was trouble waiting to happen. It would have to come out.

With a somewhat forced calm, I said, “I see a supernumerary tooth, seriously cracked. I would suggest removing it to prevent breakage and subsequent pain and illness.”

From her corner, Elquessë said, “Yes! I concur with that course of action.”

Alparenë took a deep breath and sang a very emphatic snatch of sleep and painlessness, just in case. I nodded to her — who knew what other strange circumstances this examination would turn up? — and a shimmer of surprise crossed her face.

Systematically, I probed all the gums and teeth to ensure that nothing else was amiss, before swapping my mirror and probe for a tiny scalpel and my smallest dental drill.

Alparenë set up a constant, tuneful whistle as I cut a flap into the gum and roof of the mouth around the cracked, extraneous tooth, keeping the blood and saliva at bay. I went so slowly I felt my back begin to cramp, terrified of impinging on the other, healthy tooth snuggled so tightly near to the broken one.

Once the jawbone was exposed, I saw with relief that the tooth had only one root, and said as much.

Unfortunately, when I tried to fit the drill to wear away the bone and expose the whole of the root, it simply would not fit beside the undamaged teeth. Intensely aware of Elquessë watching behind me, I looked up at Alparenë. She blinked at me for a moment, then closed her eyes with a tiny sigh.

“I would like to try a new tune,” she said. “It is most usually used to heal broken bone, but I expect that, if inverted, it would cleave it cleanly. Will you permit it?”

Gratitude suffused me. “Please, be my guest!”

Perhaps that was too much enthusiasm, but it made Alparenë crinkle her handsome eyes. She sang a rather dissonant melody, and I watched the bone part with wonder.

“That is elegant,” I said, half-conscious of it, and Alparenë flushed with pleasure.

“I am glad to have my supposition proven,” she replied.

Once the cavity was made, I was able to carefully fit my tools into its confines and break the ligaments holding the tooth in place. They were weak and already rather loose, presumably because the tooth was aberrant. As slowly and carefully as I was able, I twisted Nícahalë’s perplexing tooth loose.

All that remained was repair. Alparenë began to sing the inverted version of her bone-parting charm, but I held up a hand.

“I would like to lavage the area with a potion that will clean it thoroughly,” I said. “I have found it to be conducive to speedier healing, even though in Aman infection is rare.”

Alparenë hesitated, then jerked her head. “Very well,” she assented, and although it was not the most gracious approval, I was glad for it.

I washed the removal site with my disinfectant potion, which I had learned in a foxhole from one of the last Iathrim living on eastern shores. Alparenë stepped in and sang the bone shut, then the flap of gum. I rubbed a numbing salve against the site in case of lingering soreness despite the healing, then straightened my spine with a crack.

Alparenë carefully rinsed Nícahalë’s mouth with clean water, then closed it gently, massaging the hinges of her jaw. Our eyes met across her little gray body, and we smiled at each other — I think for the first time — out of sheer relief.

Elquessë stood, the suddenness of the movement making us both jump.

“Excellent work, doctors!” she cried, visibly pleased. “I will go tell Linyahísë that Nícahalë is done and recovering.” So saying, she strode out of the room, hands locked behind her back as ever.

Alparenë and I watched her go, then slumped against the same table where Nícahalë slumbered blissfully.

“What was that?” I gasped. “Her skin was as thick as an oliphaunt’s!”

“I have never had an animal resist my sleeping charms,” fumed Alparenë. “She is smaller than a loaf of bread!”

“I think she is a narwhal,” I said. “A whole extra tooth… Ilmarë!”

“I’ve heard of narwhals,” Alparenë said wistfully. She looked down and began checking Nícahalë’s fëa, ensuring that she would wake peacefully when the potion and songs wore off. “Alpalondë is far too warm for them.”

I stroked the cat’s ribs, feeling her steady heartbeat and the delicious softness of her fur. “I saw them once,” I said quietly. “There was not much left living in the far north when the army arrived there, but the sea was always safer. The narwhals would come in pods, like dolphins, and joust in the waves.”

There was a silence in the surgery while I prepared the instruments to be boiled clean and Alparenë carefully placed Nícahalë back in her wicker carrier. As I rubbed down the marble table, Alparenë, her back to me, murmured, “That sounds a rather lovely sight.”

“It was,” I agreed. “I loved to spend time on the ships, where I could see such happy sights, rather than the sights of war.”

Alparenë did not respond, and I washed my hands and left the surgery.

In the waiting room, Elquessë and Linyahísë were laughing together. I walked along the passage towards the sound, then heard Elquessë chuckle, “They finally had to take out that supernumerary tooth of hers! It took them a while to get her down first, though.”

Linyahísë giggled in response, and I ran the last few steps to the doorway.

“You knew about all that?” I half-shouted, before checking myself to a more decorous attitude in front of Linyahísë.

“Oh, I am sorry, Hyamessë,” Elquessë said, turning to face me and not appearing all that repentant. “This cat is a mystery for the ages. I can never get her to sleep on my own without a full ten minutes of singing — and I saw you had a hard time getting the syringe in this time! That one is new.”

I felt Alparenë approach and stop short so close I could feel her warmth on my shoulder.

“You were aware of the difficulties?” she said, more quietly but also more tartly. Elquessë had the decency to put on some slight contrition.

“You two did very well together, as I hoped,” she told us, and I sighed. I had to agree. Alparenë sighed too, and I felt an unforeseen flash of solidarity.

“That is what she is always like,” I told her, speaking out of the side of my mouth, and Alparenë muttered back, “What joy.”

The next morning, when we sat down to breakfast, Alparenë brought a novel to read. I turned a page of my medical journal from the University of Alqualondë and felt a little easier in the bright winter sunlight streaming into the room.

I wondered if the housekeeper would tackle the windows first, or the tile on the fireplace.