They Can Nearly Talk by Chestnut_pod  

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Chapter 7

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“Hyamessë!” Elquessë called from the breakfast room. Juggling my bedroll and several spare pairs of socks, I wobbled into her presence.

“Good morning, soldier; I’m glad I caught you,” Elquessë said, sipping her chocolate. “I have a favor to ask.”

I sighed and dumped my burdens on one of the empty chairs. It was my habit to leave for my two weeks of rounds in the early morning, taking only some waybread and apples for my breakfast. Elquessë rarely rose so early, unless she had been called out on a case the night before and chose to take Elvish sleep rather than settle into her bed.

Elquessë pushed a basket of rolls towards me and looked sympathetic. I took one, still cheered by the novelty of daily bread since we took on the cook full-time.

“I have a case in the outskirts which I would rather you take than Alparenë.” Elquessë took another sip. “I would take care of it myself, except that you will ride directly past this morning.”

I looked inquiringly at her, and Elquessë shrugged. “It ought to be simple: it is a garden farm, just a few animals. The pigeon message was not entirely clear, but it did not seem urgent: two donkeys with a malaise.”

Delicately, I began, “I am sure Alparenë—”

Elquessë interrupted, “The donkeys are donkeys; their owner is a Kinslayer.”

“Ah,” I said.

“Quite,” Elquessë said. “You see…”

“I do,” I agreed. Alparenë would never, I was sure, neglect an animal because of its owner, but all the same, perhaps it would be better not to subject anyone to her.

The Kinslayer’s home was indeed directly on my route northwards to the river ferry towards Filitambo, where I always began my new rounds with a residency in Sister Turkanta’s boardinghouse. I would miss the earliest ferry, but the noon ferry would do, although it would mean there might be more mounts on board, which was always slightly chancy with my friendly and curious mule.

Said mule and I ambled northwards, enjoying the nip in the air and the frost gilding the carved balconies with silver. Merrilosto’s neat houses thinned. We passed the sprawling fields of Ruanel’s horse farm, then the scattered patches of oak forest, spangled with melting frost like jewels in a carcanet. When Arien’s lower curve finally crested the hills, we came upon an isolated adobe home nestled in a small grove of valley oaks, tall and imposing against their shorter black oak sisters. A small stream ran behind the main structure, invisible from the road except as a line of thicker tree growth.

I had passed this house every two weeks for almost two years now, never really paying it any mind. It was handsome enough, but not particularly remarkable. I dismounted, told Quildatal firmly (if somewhat hopelessly) to stay where she was under the shade of one of the oaks, then walked up the long path to the front door.

It was heavy and unusually plain and rang with a hollow sound when I rapped upon it. There was a pause. Another rider went by on the road at a trot without stopping to hail me or the house. Some winter robins sang in the invisible stream. At last, the door opened a crack with the distinct sound of a bar lifting.

“Who is there?”

“Doctor Hyamessë Heriel, of the leech practice of Elquessë Helwáriel. I am responding to a call about a donkey,” I said in my most professional voice. The cracked-open door opened fully at last.

A very normal sort of person stood there. Roughly my own height, with rusty hair and skin almost the same shade, wearing a few gold earrings and a single gold chain with an onyx bead at the center, gray-eyed and really notable only in the expression of absolute neutrality of his face. Those eyes had none of the gleam of Treelight. He might have been any of the Noldor I had fought beside. There was not a look to Kinslaying, I had learned quickly. Unless, I supposed, one was the only Noldo in a hundred miles, in which case, perhaps your look became the look of Kinslaying.

“A star shines on our meeting,” I said, when it appeared no greeting was forthcoming. The man in the doorway startled slightly.

He repeated my greeting, voice rasping slightly, as though it had not been used in a while. “I apologize,” he said. “I did not think anyone would be along… until later in the day. I am Urundil.”

Bowing shallowly, I said, “May I see the patients?”

The reminder seemed to enliven him. He nodded emphatically and opened the door wide, beckoning me to follow. I followed him through the house, which was long rather than broad and chock-a-block with wooden furniture. Tables, chairs, stools, cabinets, bedframes, and all sorts of household wares gave off powerful, yet pleasant scents of resin and varnish. Passing farther into the house, the objects became less finished and the spice of sawdust began to fill the air. I looked around as I trailed after Urundil, running a surreptitious finger along the arm of a dark-stained oak chair. It was smooth as glass.

At the back of the house was a broad kitchen garden, mostly mulched over for the winter. A persimmon tree blazed with the last of its winter fruit in one corner, while opposite it stood a neat run shaded by a majestic oak, with two small donkeys looking out towards the stream, cooling their hooves in a rivulet that ran along the back fence for nearly its full length before turning downwards towards the creek.

“Here they are, Doctor,” Urundil said. “That’s Netyalalmë and Netyalótë.”

I gave him a surreptitious look, for I had not pegged him as the whimsical type. He did not see, however; he gazed at the donkeys and chewed his lip in consternation.

Whistling a tune of calmness, I climbed into the pen. The donkeys, clearly well accustomed to contact, sniffed me amiably and allowed me to check their mouths, eyes, feet, and temperatures without protest.

“I do not see anything particularly concerning at first glance. What made you call for a leech?”

He glanced sidelong at me. “They are off their feed,” he said. “Four days running, they have not finished their grain, and they pull at their hay but do not finish it. They usually play a little when Arien rises, but you saw them today, standing still. They simply seem off.”

I studied the little donkeys, who studied me back with their long-lashed eyes. Lungs, guts, and heart sounded clear and easy in their work; their spoor was normal, if a little loose. Urundil recited their feeding schedule and its contents in a quiet voice when I asked: also fine. Having exhausted the external signs of illness, I reached out with my fëa. The donkeys were clever little beasts and highly attached to Urundil. Searching in the spirit, I could sense a slight sluggishness, like the fire that ran in them was banked.

Urundil broke into my reverie. “Their hay grows here, but in the winter I buy grain from Linquefas with silver.”

There was an urgent edge to his quiet voice. I eyed him speculatively. It was strange that he bought grain outright — that was, and is, much less usual in Aman than in Middle-earth, where exchanges across kindreds meant the need for standard currency was greater. Then again, the kind of centuries-long relationships of mutual gift-giving and trading that characterized most transactions in a community must be hard to come by as a Kinslayer.

“Do they eat it happily?”

With an unhappy twist to his mouth, but without explaining it, he assented.

“Well,” I said, “They seem just a little off, as you said. Perhaps a small sickness with the changing season. If anything frightened or disturbed them recently, that could also have put them off their feed. I will sing to them to cheer their spirits, and perhaps tonight you could give them a mash or some extra vegetables to tempt them.”

Urundil looked uneasy but did not protest. So I sang until their fëar radiated happiness in my own spirit, the dimness overcome. I felt a little wearier than usual afterwards, but attributed that to my lack of breakfast. As I left, Urundil pressed a silver coin into my palm, not waiting for a bill from Elquessë.

My rounds were uneventful, though a cold rain followed me and I spent far longer standing in puddles and currying the road surface off Quildatal than was my wont. The discomfort was paid for by my patients and their keepers, familiar after my second year in Ránanandë. The towns and farms on my circuit knew me and Quildatal and accepted us into the rhythm of their lives for the day or two we spent with them. I performed my leeching, then enjoyed the generous offers of hipbaths and warm acorn pancakes (and sometimes a nip of the winter perries and ciders). Not only did I provide services for which the farmers and riders and rabbit fanciers of Ránanandë were grateful, I transited half the county each month and took the circulars from Tirion. (No one would subscribe to them themselves, but they did always want to hear the news.) In short, I was a vital link in the Lindar gossip network.

I was also its victim: by the time I reached Ilimmállë’s creamery, I had been asked several times, with varying degrees of subtlety, what I had been doing at Urundil’s house. Link in the news chain I might be, but I had dwelt in Ránanandë only two years, and the intensity of the scrutiny — the fact that sheep farmers twenty miles away knew and cared that a Kinslayer lived just outside Merrilosto — surprised me.

Ilimmállë was one of the more subtle. Her opening gambit was a discussion of buying grain for cattle feed from Linquefas. As the creamery thrived on its own hay and kelp, I was surprised, then quickly came to realize that she was prodding. A spark of indignation made me open my mouth.

“You are fully the twelfth person to inveigle gossip out of me about that man. He had two sick donkeys. Did the county expect that he would murder me as I checked their hooves? Nobody warned me, if so!”

Ilimmállë had the grace to look chagrined. I sighed gustily and turned back to the cow whose blocked teat I was massaging.

“Apologies, Ilimmállë. But it is really such a fuss over nothing, to me. If I had turned my nose up at Kinslayers or those who followed them in Beleriand, I would not have been able to so much as eat my bread.”

The cow leaned her flank into me, and Ilimmállë shoved her back, a practiced gesture. “I had not thought of it that way,” she admitted. “I confess he is the only Kinslayer I have ever met. I do not go into Alpalondë — Vanimorva deals with the restaurants and shops — so I suppose I find it… interesting.”

“Interesting?”

Ilimmállë considered that, stroking the cow’s hipbone. “Interesting to me that he did his restitution in Alpalondë, like all of them did, but instead of hieing back to Tirion, like all of them did, he came out to the hinterlands and set up a furniture-making business. He has been here for thirty years; he was practically the first of them to be released from Mandos, after Prince Findaráto. Even though everyone hates him.”

I frowned. A final tug on the cow’s teat sent a jet of white milk splashing against the barn floor, the blockage cleared. “That hardly seems healthy.”

“Oh, it must be the guilt, or some such thing,” Ilimmállë said — but I had not meant Urundil. In Beleriand, a Noldo had reached into a fuming crevasse which had opened up beneath the baggage train and hauled me out by the arms and hood. We had lain next to each other, panting, bleeding where the jagged ground had torn our flesh. I learned later he had been in the train of Celegorm until the Second Kinslaying.

The gossip and memories depressed me, and when I had passed my off week in Merrilosto and set out again, I decided to pause again at Urundil’s house.

He took even longer to answer the door this time. I had to insist several times that I was stopping by uncalled-for in order to check my work before he led me through the house and into the garden. I had come mostly out of stubbornness, but a look at the donkeys made me glad of my impulsive choice.

Their malaise was back, and worse. Donkeys, horses, and mules can drop weight terrifyingly quickly when something is wrong, and these donkeys’ ribs were more visible than I liked. As I checked their mouths, noses, and temperatures again, one of them, I thought Netyalalmë, released some loose scour.

When I checked their fëar, I found the same dimness as before, but more pronounced. When I tried to sing it away, it took a solid half-hour of dedicated effort, quite a bit more than the last time. I stood back, watching them crop enthusiastically at the new grass poking through the carpet of oak leaves and acorns.

“Are they working any more than usual?” I asked Urundil, who had hovered throughout the procedure.

He shook his head. “I bought them to pull the delivery cart, but there have been no more orders than usual.” I wondered how many that was. He continued, “Mostly they simply keep me company.”

“Any difference in their feed?”

“Well…” he hesitated long enough to make my ears perk up of their own accord. “Well,” he said again, “I bought more winter oats from Linquefas two weeks ago — a week after you visited. That is the only change.”

I frowned. “May I see the oats?”

They appeared to be well within the normal range of oats. I lifted one to my lips, then hesitated.

“For now, move them to another pasture, just in case it is something about their location. If you place a small number of oats in a pigeon envelope and send them to Doctor Helwáriel, she will test them for… mold or other infections.”

Urundil nodded, looking sidelong at me. I said no more, only left several bottles of strengthening draughts and the promise to return again after my circuit.

The circuit was once again aching for news of the Kinslayer in their midst. Once again, each artful inquiry left me unsettled and irate. Irmo was unkind those weeks. Even my at-home week in Merrilosto was plagued with perturbing dreams. Alparenë looked me over one morning and breakfast and sniffed, for I had foregone true sleep for days, and my fëa began to show it.

“Your oats came back unsullied,” she said. It took me — eating my own oats — a moment to decipher her meaning: the oats I had told Urundil to send in for testing.

I set down my spoon. “Ah.”

Alparenë raised a slender eyebrow. “Did you hope for ergot?”

Glaring halfheartedly at her, I replied, “I hoped they would be clean, although it leaves me a mystery.”

Alparenë hummed (sharp, I noted), and returned to her breakfast. I stared at my bowl and pondered my reaction. Profound relief, foremost: the oats were not poisonous whether by design or by error. Irritation, with myself: the ugly paranoia I believed I had left behind me in the wreck of Beleriand was an unwelcome houseguest. Guilt: given that the only person in the region besides myself who had ever killed anyone was Urundil himself, why had I been so willing to believe a neighbor might seek to poison his donkeys? Bemusement: what, if not the feed, could be making those donkeys so mysteriously sick, with no other obvious symptoms?

My puzzlement and gloom remained when I arrived at Urundil’s home (he let me in after only a handful of minutes this time) and beheld the donkeys worse than ever, despite their new pasture along the feeder streamlet, nearer the persimmon tree. The grass of early spring grew up to their fetlocks, triumphing over the acorn and oak leaf carpet, but they only cropped listlessly at it. As before, their mucus membranes and temperatures were normal, but a thick, doughy edema had settled on their lower bellies. A brush through their bodies in the fëa revealed a weakness in the kidneys that I did not like at all, still less when their urine showed rusty. Malaise was within the realm of individual song-healing, but organ failure began to look like a multi-leech proposition.

I gave Urundil a cross-examination about their feed and exercise that would have made a Tirion advocate proud, but to no avail. He had stopped buying grain from Linquefas, and the donkeys had been living on forage, but they were worse than ever. He seemed, if anything, more bitter to be wrong about his unspoken theory than pleased that his neighbors were not poisoning his companions, and I felt a twinge of real dislike — until I noticed the brightness in his un-Treelit eyes and the tightness in his voice that did not come from reticence.

This time, I needed his help to cure the donkeys with song, and I rode away with a heavy heart, knowing the two little creatures would be ill again upon my return.

Early spring meant lambings, and I did find a great deal of joy in separating out the mixed-up twins and triplets, watching the fuzzy little creatures stagger about after their mothers, dotting the green hillsides like frisking clouds. It meant a great deal of time out in the frigid, damp spring nights rather than in the common rooms of inns and farmhouses, which meant less time for questions, also, and my spirit felt lighter as Quildatal and I sped down the last stretch of road towards home.

We were snug in the handsome stable, enjoying some mutual quiet as I brushed her, when Alparenë — who kept her mount at her own home and so was rarely in the stable — leaned against Quildatal’s stall door. Quildatal had learned quickly that she did not like inquisitive nibbles or nuzzles, so rather sulkily turned her back. I ducked under her neck and looked curiously at Alparenë, whose mien was very sour.

“I received an urgent pigeon message for you this morning,” she said. “It is an emergency, so I was going to take it, especially once I noticed it was in my circuit territory. It seems there is a pair of donkeys out on the ferry road who have been ailing mysteriously, and neither you nor Elquessë have said a word about it.”

My heart beat rather loudly in my ears. I began to speak, but Alparenë cut me off with a sharp gesture.

“I do not want to hear it,” she said. “Two sick animals, on my rounds, failing slowly, and not a peep from either of you.”

“You do know–” I started again, and Alparenë’s eyes flashed.

“I daresay I know better than you,” she said. “I was burning that man in effigy when you were still herding goats on the slopes of Taniquetil. Just like he burnt the docks of Alpalondë on his own recognizance, which explains why he was stupid enough to tangle with Prince Daintáro and drown alongside him.”

“Well, so–”

“Do shut up,” she snapped. “Leaving two sick animals to suffer because of their allegiances — what am I, a Kinslayer? Get back on that damned inquisitive mule of yours and let us be gone.”

Tension ruled the ride to Urundil’s home. Quildatal, usually so willing, skipped and danced, continually falling out of her amble and resuming her jarring trot. Alparenë, her jaw set unpromisingly, clenched her hands on her thighs as she rode her fewspot stock horse beside me. A few times I opened my mouth to say something — to explain — but I always closed it again. As we drew near, Alparenë asked me in clipped tones to describe the symptoms, and I did so meekly.

Alparenë’s presence shocked Urundil enough that he actually looked us both in the eye for several seconds before dropping his gaze again. With utterly flat professionalism, Alparenë introduced herself. It could hardly be called friendly, but it was not hostile either. She kept her eyes front as Urundil led us through his workshop and garden to the back pasture.

Netyalalmë and Netyalótë were skeletons with donkey fur, except where the edema thickened their drooping bellies. I hissed through my teeth, and Alparenë shot me a look of profound displeasure.

“You were just brute-forcing the effects of whatever poisoning this is out each time?”

I nodded, feeling defensive. “I have checked and checked again. It is not the oats, or the well water, or any wood or varnish from the shop. The ground is not poisoned, so the grass is not poisoned. The oak trees are normal oaks, so it isn’t the oak leaves and acorns. It is not lead, cobalt, copper — no metal or mineral. Urundil has been propitiating the Maiar of the stream and forest. I have looked at everything, but it has grown worse each time!”

Alparenë looked up into the green mist of buds and young acorns in the overhanging valley oak. Quietly enough that I thought Urundil, hovering nearby, might not be able to hear, she muttered, “Vanyar are always like this.”

I flushed. “Whatever do you mean?” I snapped, taking less care to be quiet.

“Oh, the Lindar are so irrational, so fixated on their grievances; they cannot possibly be trusted with the leeching they trained for!” Alparenë clenched her fists again. “We noble Vanyar will have to swoop in and clean up the mess again, because we know better, even though we never saw a leaf-shedding tree until we skied down from our lofty heights.” She turned on me, rage spots burning on each cheekbone.

“You tested the acorns for poison? The acorns are the poison!”

Stung, I retorted, “They do teach us things in Tirion, you know — I know about oak toxicity, and I watched them for hours to see if they ate the leaves and acorns. They don’t touch them.”

Alparenë jabbed a finger at the donkeys. “It is absolutely classic. The edema, the rusty urine, the scour, the inappetence: it cannot be anything else. They are getting oak from somewhere.”

Before I could reply, Urundil, for the first time, spoke without being spoken to. He looked angry, I thought — the first time I had seen him look anything but uneasy and withdrawn. He folded his arms, unlit eyes snapping.

“If you two are quite finished,” he said. “Please, would you heal these two first and then go looking for the cause?”

I felt immediately abashed. Arguing like that in front of a patient! It was shameful, and the blood burned the hotter in my cheeks. Even Alparenë looked briefly at her feet.

“Certainly,” I said in a calmer tone. “Alparenë is the master here.”

The merest brush of my fëa against the donkeys’ revealed that Alparenë’s presence was a necessity; I could not have forced out the poison myself unless I wanted to drain my spirit utterly. The kidneys in particular struggled, and the donkeys were weak as newborns. Alparenë, also engaged in a diagnostic sweep, looked more certain than I felt.

“Let me draw upon you, like a student,” she ordered me. I held out my hand, unprotesting. The physical symbolism of it helped, sometimes. Alparenë took it and placed our linked hands on Netyalalmë’s neck. She sang.

The Lindar are truly named. They teach their children to sing from the moment they can control their breath, and every moment thereafter. All Elves sing, of course — it is what we do, and all know of Maglor Fëanorion, aping the Teleri on his far shore — but not all Elves sing like they merely dropped the thread of the Music and are picking it up again. The Lindar learn to do so.

Alparenë’s song was not the effective but blunt force of my own songs of healing learned in the university, nor the coaxing, light tunes that I knew from my mountain childhood, but a swirling cascade of notes like a stream over stone. I felt the power in the melody trickling through the donkeys’ tissues, spreading out into their veins, their bladders, the stiff swelling under their bellies, spreading liquid fingers of music wherever poison worked its damage, reminding flesh of its place in the song of things. Deftly, she tugged my own spirit’s fire from me, like a piper breathing in a circle. I breathed through the sensation, watching as the donkeys’ eyes cleared and their stances relaxed. Alparenë’s song ended with a skirl. She staggered slightly. My own limbs felt stiff and heavy, tired from the borrowed effort.

Urundil let out a breath of relief as Netyalótë broke into a shambling trot and butted him with her fuzzy head, searching for treats. Netyalalmë dropped her head to the ground and cropped at the soft spring grass. Alparenë watched the donkey eat. She nimbly avoided the oak leaves and acorns, and I knew we were both wondering what the source of the oak poisoning could be.

After scratching gladly at the donkeys’ ears and feeding Netyalótë a wizened winter apple from his pocket, Urundil turned to us, his face set in stubborn lines.

“I have a song of my own which I use to get nails out of salvage. If you are sure it is oak poisoning after all, then I will sing it, and tune it to the tannins.”

Alparenë, a little pale around her nostrils and lips, nodded, and I gave my assent.

Urundil rubbed between the donkey’s eyes, then took a deep breath and began to sing. His tune was one of those work songs one hears wafting onto the streets of Tirion from workshop windows: rhythmic, major-key, with the words at least as important as the melody. Fitting in “tannic acid” where “iron” should be caused a few metrical problems, but Urundil managed his rubato well. As Alparenë and I listened, we became aware that the ground beneath our feet was humming along. Or, not quite: the carpet of old and new oak leaves seemed to tremble, vibrating like plucked strings. Above us, the valley oaks added a surprising resonance to the song.

Bypassing the leaves and acorns, the fallen branches and twigs, the piles of donkey manure, and even the alarmed donkeys themselves, all shivering finely, I looked for something I had not yet considered. Beside me, Alparenë scanned the pasture too.

Unexpected motion caught my eye. The little rivulet that fed the stream below the house quivered, as though rain fell upon it and disturbed the surface. I ducked through the fence and jogged to see it. The tiny rill flowed smoothly from one corner of the pasture to about halfway through the rear fence, where it bent around a small lava boulder and made a pool, which jumped like a pot about to boil with the motion of the oak leaves at its bottom shivering and shaking. I dipped a cupped hand into the pool and poured a thick stream of water from my palm. In the spring sunshine, it fell brown like tea back into the stream.

Urundil had followed me and gave a soft, understanding sigh. “They do drink from the stream,” he murmured.

I called for Alparenë. She took in the situation at a glance. “You give them well water,” she said, “They must not prefer it to the flowing water.”

Urundil shook his head. “I will move them somewhere where they cannot get at the creek, and build them a bigger trough. But in the meantime, what can I do to stop them from drinking it?”

I had not precisely covered myself in glory with this case, but convincing a donkey not to drink except from its bucket was something I could do, even in my slightly enervated state. When I was finished, Urundil stepped forward once more, apparently emboldened by his success.

“Just in case,” he began, and with no other explanation, began his song again. This time, the trembling limited itself to the leaves and acorns on the ground, which shifted alarmingly underfoot and streamed towards Urundil in a stinging cloud. A pile of mast grew rapidly beside him. I found I was reminded that this timid, awkward man had ridden in the vanguard of Fingon’s force, one of the first to draw a sword against any living creature — surely for a reason. Alparenë’s hands once again clenched into fists, and the pinched lines around her mouth grew deeper.

After that, I made it my aim to leave quickly. With rapid instructions about moving the donkeys, feeding them gentle but substantial foods to build up their strength and mass once more, and the necessity of refreshing the water in their eventual trough, I propelled an unresisting but sullen Alparenë back through the workshop-house and to the front door. There, Urundil stopped me, holding out as always silver coins.

Alparenë, who had been silent since his song, gave her characteristic sniff.

“I do not know why you settled out here,” she told him, and I winced, but she went on, “But you might at least make an effort.”

Urundil looked taken aback. Alparenë, visibly pulling composure on like an ill-fitting robe, said, “You buy from Linquefas with silver, fine. But you know Linquefas keeps pigs for market, and here you have all these acorns, which everyone knows make the best pork. Next time I go help one of his farrowing sows, I want to hear that you are trading him acorns for fodder. There is a right way of doing things among the Lindar, not that I expect you would have learned.”

With that little speech concluded, she turned on her heel and marched to collect her horse. I stammered something, Urundil stammered something back, and I at last could leave that place and that case behind.

The ride home, though less coldly distant, was still unpleasant. Alparenë clearly felt much disturbed, over and beyond her still-burning anger with me and Elquessë. Tentatively, as the roofs of Merrilosto came into view, I inquired what the matter was.

She snapped at me. “All the Lindar know that song. My parents told me. They came, they demanded, they saw that we would defend our Swanships with what fishing spears and harpoons and boathooks we had. So they sang, and all the iron flew from our hands. Then they killed us.” She exhaled hard through her nose. “Yet I still treated those donkeys better than you did.”

She nudged her horse into a canter, and I let her go. All around, spring in Ránanandë turned its lovely face to me, but I felt very much a stranger.