They Can Nearly Talk by Chestnut_pod  

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Chapter 9

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I did not think much on Alparenë’s suggestion for a while, except to be grateful for the overture it represented. Some leeches, with centuries of comparison cases at hand, become prolific authors of scholarly literature. Elquessë is one such, of course, publishing not only in leeching journals but in the wider circles of life-lore as well, where her arguments about inheritance and fetal development, derived from the study of her beloved chickens, are well respected. My own tendency when writing has always been more fanciful, to the dismay of my teachers in Tirion, who demanded more straightforward argumentation and less personal opinion in my reports. Yet, before too many more months had passed since Alparenë proposed it, I did find myself writing a long paper on the inheritance of spotted and painted coat colors in the Beleriandish horse, with Elquessë’s help. The reason, alas, was one of misfortune.

It has always seemed to me that finding one’s own grief at death utterly intolerable and unique is the province of princes. Some princes more than others, to be fair, but it is a fortunate life indeed that is untouched by loss, even among us everlasting First Children. For, as Elquessë says of death, “also in Valinor it dwells.” No parent mourning a miscarriage, no ancient Journeymaker who lost friends and children forever to fading (or worse, to Moringotto’s perversions), and certainly no farmer, lives under the illusion that loved creatures endure forever.

Yet fate is hard, and the little foal that spurred me to write in a scholarly mode died without blame, but also entirely without need.

I was visiting the grange of Voranna the butcher. To this day, most cows in Ránanandë are kept for dairy. However, just as in Elves, for milk to let down in a cow, there must first be a baby. As we all know, the resulting calf is as likely to be a little bull as to be a valuable milch cow. Apart from the stud needed to keep the cows in calf and the milk flowing, there is not much use for a bull except to eat. As such, Ránanandë’s dairies supplied two reasonably large operations which raised up the calves for beef, one of which was Voranna’s. He is a kind but solemn man, which I have always thought suits the nature of his work. He likes his steers to live happy lives before they die, so his grange covers a substantial tract of land, and he moves them about it often on a careful rotation to prevent damage to the delicate hillside grasses. Indeed, he claims – and having seen them, I believe – that his pastures are some of the healthiest grassland in the region, because of the aeration and fertilization his herds provide the ground with their occasional grazing. To effect these rotations, he has always relied on fast, clever horses in the same way shepherds rely on sheepdogs.

He was, therefore, overjoyed to find that the new patterned horses from Middle-earth had been in many cases bred in the vast prairies of eastern Beleriand for precisely that task. Just as my sheepdog on the slopes of Taniquetil would herd by instinct if anything — sheep, goat, or Elvish child — presented itself to be herded, so did many of these agile, clever horses possess a kind of “cow sense” that made them invaluable to any stockperson.

I arrived at the grange at the end of summer, enjoying the cooler nights bracketing the still-warm days. Voranna had requested my presence especially then, for he had for the first time sought to breed his own horse and wanted the leech on hand to assist at the foaling.

He met me at the outermost gate, which I appreciated for the respite from the endless mounting and dismounting that often accompanied my rounds. He was on foot, moving with a certain restlessness I did not associate with him, but which I found infectious, perhaps for that very reason. I swung down from Quildatal, who was already attempting to sniff out any treats in Voranna’s capacious pockets — indeed, he had brought a piece of sugarloaf — and we walked together through the golden fields. We discussed the small fire Voranna had let burn a few acres for the sake of the grass earlier in the season, the fodder he was laying up so that his summer foal would have enough to eat throughout the autumn and winter, and the doings of his daughter, who had taken advantage of her father’s calling and become a leatherworker of some renown. In his way, he was careful to lay out interesting details and seek my opinion, but it was clear his mind was elsewhere, and our pace grew quicker as we approached his house.

Like a horse smelling the barn, I thought with amusement, but I found his eagerness touching. Voranna let us into the small stable beside the house and led me with a bounce in his step to the largest stall, deeply bedded and fragrant with the first of the summer hay. He stood beside the door and made an elegant, proud gesture of introduction that reminded me of nothing so much as the sleeve-dancers of Alqualondë, incongruous on this tall and rather morose-looking Elf.

“What do you think, Doctor Heriel?” he asked. “Is Mótulkë ready?”

Mótulkë, Voranna’s prized Beleriandish cow-horse, was certainly the picture of a healthy broodmare, faintly dappled with wellbeing and roughly as wide as she was tall. My understanding was that she was brought back by a soldier with more means than I, a horse with some mixed ancestry from Doriath and the herds of the Edain, who had ridden them over the mountains and into the west. She was quite plain for a stockhorse of that type, displaying none of the lacy spots of the Sindarin horses and none of the flashy pieing and splashing of some of the horses of the Edain, just a pair of trim white coronets and an off-center blaze marking her glossy bay coat. Voranna had sense; he knew that “a good horse has no color” and prized Mótulkë for her substance. I once watched the two of them cut a single calf out of a running herd, Mótulkë crouched so low to the ground I was amazed at her knees, turning and stopping and lunging with the agility of a dancer. Voranna, in his taciturn way, called her “a fine, useful beast with sense,” which I took to mean he probably personally named her in his thanksgiving to Oromë, and that Mótulkë would be one of those animals who lived forever.

“She looks the picture of health,” I told him, stepping into her stall and beginning the usual examinations. Heartbeat, temperature, reflexes — all seemed perfect, and from what I could tell, the foal was well-positioned. “You have done a wonderful job keeping her in condition. I would not feel any hesitation about encouraging her labor; all seems ready.”

“Thank you,” was all Voranna said, but he stood tall as a prince and looked upon me with great affection as I pulled out the appropriate draught from my saddlebags. Mixed into a mash, it would encourage Mótulkë’s contractions without the nasty jolt of inducing her through the fëa. It would take time, though, so we walked down the line of other stalls to check on the other working horses. I filed a few overgrown teeth, treated a mild case of hives from an insect bite, and performed the myriad small adjustments and healings that horses can always use.

When we returned to the end of the hallway, Mótulkë swished her tail and looked anxiously at her flank from time to time. Voranna and I settled in to wait, the beef steers given over to his assistants. While Mótulkë paced, we spoke of the herds of Nargothrond, where the painted horses of the Edain and the spotted horses of the Sindar were bred together under Felagund’s flamboyant guidance. Voranna had a dream of a perfect stock horse with the height and substance of an Amanyar warmblood, the cow-sense of the Sindarin breeds, and the endurance and gentle temper of the Edainic painted horses. Mótulkë’s foal might be one step closer.

Near noon, Mótulkë’s bag of waters burst and active labor began. I moved into the stall and checked the foal’s position as her contractions began in earnest. All seemed just right, with one hoof slightly before the other and the foal on its belly. A healthy labor should not take a horse more than half an hour. Mótulkë was well in time. Labor is never pleasant, especially for a maiden mare who has not foaled before, but Voranna by her head kept her relatively calm, and nothing at all seemed to be the matter. We cheered quietly when the first small hoof emerged, clad in its golden slippers, then the next.

It was not until the little muzzle appeared that I felt the first twinge of disquiet. The head and neck were quite white, with pink skin beneath.

Perhaps it is very splashed indeed, I thought. That happens sometimes. The foal rested a moment with its hind legs still inside Mótulkë, then a final push sent it spilling at last onto the deep straw. A little colt. Every hair from nose to short, fuzzy tail was pure white under the birth muck. I cleared his nostrils and mouth, healthily pink already, and grabbed a twist of straw and began to rub him down vigorously, noting the strong heartbeat beneath my hands. The foal shook his head and flailed a long, ungainly leg, clearly alive and well. Mótulkë craned her neck over her shoulder, making the deep, interested nicker that so many mares make on first sight of their offspring, and the foal made a tiny noise back.

Voranna, I could tell, was nearly beside himself in his quiet way, stroking Mótulkë’s sweat-dark neck in long, gentle passes. I looked down at the foal again. He opened his eyes as I watched, pale blue as the sky outside.

“I did not expect a color like that out of Mótulkë,” Voranna noted, even voice thrumming with pride.

I did not answer at once. There were such things as dominant white factors, though it usually took at least one white parent. The foal tried again to gather his ungainly legs, shuffling along towards his dam’s flank.

“Voranna, what color was his sire?” I asked.

“Bay painted white,” he answered promptly. “Horizontal splashes on his entire body, nicely mixed, and a white face. A classic pattern of the Edainic breeds, I am given to understand.”

I bit my lip. “Were Mótulkë’s dam or sire also patterned like that?”

Voranna clearly caught my hesitant tone. “I never saw either,” he replied. “The soldier who sold her to me said her parents were both war mixes, a little of everything. They must not have been very colorful, for look at Mótulkë.”

At that moment, Mótulkë struggled to her feet and staggered to her foal, nickering. She nudged the little colt with her muzzle, her off-center blaze flashing in the dim stall.

The corners of Voranna’s mouth turned upwards in a small, pleased smile, but it wavered and vanished when he saw my face. Trying to be hopeful, I said, “I will just make a quick check in the fëa, and then we can try to help him stand to nurse.”

I rested my hand on the white neck, out of reach of Mótulkë’s lapping tongue. The foal’s curiosity at the sudden expanse of the world was a swell of interest against my spirit. Its nerves and heartbeat showed clear and strong in my mind’s eye. The stretch of its new muscles, the pathways and channels of the body— my own heart sank.

“Voranna,” I said, then had to clear my throat and begin again. “Voranna, there is something the matter with the foal.”

He looked at me, then at the foal, still trying to get his legs underneath himself to stand and suckle. When he returned his gaze to my face, I could see that he wondered at my certainty, with the little creature so obviously alive and active.

“I will show you,” I said with a heavy heart. “Feel the bond between your fëa and your hröa; pay special attention to your abdomen and the organs of digestion. See how the passages lie smoothly, neither closed nor ruptured.”

He nodded. I took his hand and guided it to the foal. Mótulkë whickered and left off licking her foal to nudge Voranna. Breathing deeply, I guided Voranna to follow the same pathway in the foal, from the stomach through the intestines. To my muted surprise, Voranna had a poetic mind; flashes of images flickered in my mind as he thought through what he felt: flowing rivers, smooth cataracts, streams through caves. Then dams, choked deltas, dry springs.

It was difficult to look at him, but I forced myself to hold his eyes and say, “This is a little-known danger of breeding patterned horses. There is a name for it in Sindarin; I suppose in Quenya it would be something like ‘qualmefánë.’” I was rambling, I could tell. “You can feel that his digestive organs are not complete. I do not know why, but in Beleriand it was known that two painted horses of that pattern — they call it frame, for how the white is framed in the base color – could throw a white horse who would only live a few days, or hours.”

I looked back down at the little foal, swallowing around a lump in my throat.

“Mótulkë is not painted,” Voranna said.

“I also do not know why this happens, but sometimes a horse with two painted parents looks almost solid, with just a little white. Or, alternately, they can be so painted that they look entirely white, or they are a gray who has whitened completely, hiding the spots. So they are bred to other painted horses with the same pattern, none the wiser, and there is a chance the foal that results is qualmefánë, like this one.”

We watched the colt lift its head and rub against Mótulkë’s forelegs. Voranna pressed a hand over his belly, face impassive.

“What then does this mean for the little one?” he asked eventually.

I closed my eyes. Behind them were the little white forms of the three lambs with swayback Elquessë had taken me to on that first day, a test of my fortitude and the dictates of my conscience against my reluctance to cause pain.

Doing Voranna the courtesy of a direct gaze, I said, “We must give him a gentle death. He seems well now, but he will never pass his first stool, for his intestines do not connect with the outside. If we leave him be, he will first show signs of colic, and within no more than a few days he will die in terrible pain. Better that I lead him out of the world now, before he has time to feel it.”

Voranna did not grimace or exclaim at my words, only dropped his eyes to the small white creature nickering back and forth with his mother.

“What about…” he paused to clear his throat, as much sadness as I had ever seen him show. He tried again. “What about Mótulkë?”

I thought he would not appreciate exaggerated shows of sympathy.

“I will sing the foal out of the world so he feels no pain. We shall leave his hröa here in the stall for a while, and allow Mótulkë to see that he is dead. It is better for her than if he suddenly disappears.”

Voranna nodded slowly, not quite meeting my eyes. “Well then, please do so,” he said gruffly.

“Stand by her head,” I told him. It might or might not comfort Mótulkë, who likely would not realize what was going on, but it would certainly comfort him.

Sitting down cross-legged by the foal, I rested my hand on his neck and began to sing of profound, painless sleep. His fëa resisted not at all, falling peacefully into twilight and then blackness. When I could no longer feel a heartbeat, I let my song end. I could not dwell on the little body on the straw, for Mótulkë stood watching tensely. She nudged at her foal’s hröa, sniffing all over. She turned around, then back, as though expecting to find something different when she looked again.

Voranna looked stricken under his taciturn mask.

“You should go,” I said. “I will watch as she comes to terms with it, however long it takes.”

He nodded jerkily and slipped out of the stall. To Mótulkë, I sang the very song I would sing to an Elf whose comrade fell in battle, or to a woman of the Edain whose babe arrived stillborn. These were songs the Vanyar had learned well in Beleriand, and I had sung them many times before to many Children. Mótulkë examined the foal, turned away, then approached again. While she made sense of what had happened, I delivered the placenta, inspected it for any flaws or warnings, and drew out the precious first milk before singing her teats dry. It took several hours for Mótulkë to turn her back one last time without returning to nudge or gaze at her foal.

I stroked her nose and neck, soothing her with all my spirit. Great Rochallor ran until his heart broke upon his rider’s death; let no one say animals do not grieve. Yet animals and we Elder Children are not the same, facing different fates with different bearings. I thought Mótulkë perhaps understood better than I, or Voranna, how to countenance death.

Arien brushed the hilltops when I emerged from the stable in search of Voranna. He leaned against the doorway with a shovel in his hand. His hat brim shadowed his face, but I thought I would not have learned much from his expression regardless.

“I put Mótulkë in a different stall,” I said. “She will be well soon. I am so terribly sorry, Voranna. There is no way you could have known of the risk.”

The hat brim dipped for a moment. I wondered how Voranna would respond to the loss of his hopes for his favorite mare and this first attempt at a perfect foal for his cherished, well-tended lands. For myself, I felt weary and sick with self-blame for having knowledge without thinking to share it. At war, I learned that such irrationalities attend death.

Voranna took a deep breath. “Well,” he said, “These things happen.”

Farmers have said those words to me many times. Like Voranna, they say it with grief in their eyes, then sow the next crop, deliver the next lamb, build the next fence.

I am not, and was not then, so equable. I stared at the ground, then held out the first milk I collected from Mótulkë, explaining that it might help foals in future if he kept it in a spell of fixity. He took it gently from my hand. Then I explained the actions I would take to help ease Mótulkë’s grief, all of which I am sure he knew perfectly well, though he listened patiently. At last, I was able to look him in the eye and promise, “I will make sure this is a known danger – I will write about it and make sure it is published.”

Voranna only nodded, not unkindly, and went into the stable with his shovel.

For myself, I rode home with a fire in my heart. Elquessë sat at the scuffed oaken desk when I arrived, and I hardly paused for a greeting before I poured out to her all my plans and worries. She rested her elbows on the desk and did me the courtesy of listening until I tapered off into vague snatches of outlining.

“You need more than one observed case, unless you can somehow unearth an Iathrim library from beneath the sea to review. Write letters to the editors of the Proceedings of Tirion and Alqualondë and another one to Deerlore — I will sign them with you — for your conscience. Then go find more cases, for your reputation.”

“My reputation is not my concern, it–”

Elquessë held up a hand. “The reason I work with chickens, apart from their undeniable charm, is that I can see three generations in a year of the Sun. In this race, horses do not pull ahead. I know you are not as invested in scholarship as I am; that is in part why I hired you! That is also why you should listen to me. It is better to have one publication on the firmest bedrock, though it takes time, than one that is too sloppy to even be published.”

She gestured to the chair next to the desk, pulling out paper and ink. I sat down beside her, and so began the outline of the work that first made my name interesting to publishers. Alparenë’s suggestion, Elquessë’s expertise, Ruanel and Ithilloch’s productive efforts, and the kindness of my leeching colleagues (plus, I suppose, my pen and eyes) produced a paper that I still see cited betimes in various Proceedings. The sight of my name between the parentheses produces a little thrill, but it is not one of unmixed pleasure. I believe I have made the dangers of careless breeding from Beleriandish stock common knowledge among those who need it. Even so, handing the fresh copy of Deerlore containing my article to Voranna could never have been so pleasant as guiding the little foal who inspired it into his hands. But these things happen.