The Last Desperate Seed by Dawn Felagund  

The House

I came with him.

I didn't have to. Nerdanel didn't go with Fëanáro. The wife of the son most like him, I could have taken her example. But I followed Vingarië, whose instruments lay next to her husband's, swaddled into silence. I followed Taryindë, whose brown hand twined with her husband's freckled one. As our belongings condensed into the backs of wagons, I wondered which of us might have the courage to give voice to the possibility of choice? None of us, it turned out.

I took what I could of my horticultural work, repotted into small containers and packed up. Curufinwë had fitted a wagon just for this purpose, but uprooted, shocked by the growing cold as we rattled north, most of my plants died on the way. Those I couldn't bring withered behind me. Abandoned, no one witnessed their deaths.

I felt the pain of those roots stripped raw. I felt raw too, under a sky bigger than it ever seemed in Tirion and that seemed to bleed away all warmth from the land beneath, without the comforts of the familiar and routine: street sounds, the smell of chocolate from the confectioner, small talk with the grocer, tea with a friend.

I wondered at valuation? Why I had tossed those away to go with Curufinwë, why I had valued them, my life in Tirion, less?

Curufinwë intuited my discontent. At night, as I shivered in our tent, he promised me companionship and conveniences in the village grown up alongside his father's fortress: women to befriend, farmers and herbalists who would benefit from my skill. Something other than the chatter of bare branches scratching at the sky—or else silence.

Two weeks, two days into the journey, we crested a hill and his father's house crowned from the barren earth.

Work Song

I knew we would lose ourselves in work and preparation and was grateful for the promise of busy hands. The people of the village had left food in the larder for us, and the brothers immediately set about preparing our supper. My sisters and I carried armfuls of bedding upstairs.

I prepared my son's bed first. Taryindë, next door, prepared her daughters' room. I sang the first lines of a work song and paused for her to answer, but there was no answer. I sang louder, but my voice bashed and died against the thick stone. I sang to myself, I answered myself, I replied in different voices, until the beds were made and a tepid warmth crept past the hearth.

What'll you do with the dust that lays?
Scare! Scare that dust away!
What'll you do with the spider's husk?
Toss! Toss it behind the dust!
What'll you do with the hearth gone cold?
Blaze! Blaze—

"Terentaulë!"

I whirled. Curufinwë stood in the doorway. How long had he been there? "Supper is ready. It has been three turns; what has kept you so long?"

As I followed him through hallways that seemed to double, twist, and switch upon themselves, there was no smell of food, no clatter of a table being laid, none of the banter of hungry voices on the verge of joyful sustenance. He creaked open the heavy door. Candles lit the dining hall. A single fire strove against the cold.

The table, wide enough for Nerdanel to share the space at its head with Fëanáro, was presided over by Fëanáro alone. I flinched. His hair was a swipe of night framing a marble face gone cold, his eyes lost in purpled shadow: something grown, hungering, too long in the dark.

He looked so small there, alone.

"Useless"

Some of my plants did survive. On our first day at Formenos, Curufinwë and his apprentices moved these to the conservatory for me before they even unlocked the forges. South of us, Laurelin was flourishing, and her golden light filled the little glass room. It was the first time I was warm in weeks.

I sought the hurts of each plant and, with love and craft and song, healed them: the leaves shivered at the edges; the raw, hurting roots; the flowers opened, untouched, longing. I hauled water from the well and let it warm before I gave it to them, bestowing each a tear in sympathy with their suffering.

"This is splendid, Terentaulë." I startled at his voice, so near behind me. Before I could swipe it away, he saw the tear upon my cheek, he said, "Now now!" and kissed it away. "These plants show that even those cozened in Valinor can survive as Eru intended! I will invite the lords of Formenos to admire your skill and what it exemplifies: that we need not the Valar but only our own gifts." The kiss he gave me now smacked childishly loud in his excitement, and he dashed from the conservatory.

They did come, the lords of Formenos. They lifted the little leaves of my plants, still tremulous and pale, and let them fall again. They admired my skill to my husband and smiled at me, and when they thought I couldn't hear, they named my plants useless here—where light and warmth are thin and life like stone endures—and certain to die. At my husband's urging, I offered them each an orchid, and they smiled at me with pity, knowing they would not need to tend it long. I watched each plant go. My heart crumpled like frost-scorched leaves.

Secret Architecture

There was something beautiful in their deaths, in their essential shape—stem, petiole, the last desperate seed—seen in silhouette against the silvered light of Telperion. I walked among them in the conservatory gone cold with nightfall and let my fingers brush them, imagining they whispered consolations and absolutions—

learn from us, take shelter, we do not blame you and say this to save you: there is not the light for you to survive here

Similarly, flesh melts from bones and reveals Eru's secret architecture within, unseen in life but illustrative in death. I gathered my plants like children in my arms and carried them deeper into the house—the house of Fëanáro and his seven sons and their wives and our children—the house stone-choked into silence. I followed corridors that twisted upon the secret architecture of Fëanáro's madness. I paused at times outside doors. Hope—that last desperate seed—still clung. A sister, my son, maybe Maitimo, who was also a botanist? Or Carnistir who read sadness like poetry? Might speak to me, not even about my loss, about the corpses in my arms, but about anything at all?

There was a vacant room tucked around a corner that made no sense, on the north side of the house. I arrayed my plants there and was about to start a fire to warm us when I realized the wood was dead life too! I arrayed it with my plants. I might bring bedding later but, for now, the thin down mattress sufficed. The Lights mingled beyond windows slit like grieving eyes. My plants sketched their shapes upon the wall in shadow. My hands followed these shapes upon the air like I was conducting a soundless symphony. I grinned without laughter and held myself, my fingers weaving and dancing, but I no longer felt cold.

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