Sea Birth by Isilme_among_the_stars  

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Sea Birth

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Melian was conceived with a garden full-grown in her thought. It tangled in the deeps of her mind long before ever she rooted herself in the physical world. The garden was mysterious, shadowed and deep. Elwing does not know how she knows this, only that she does. She has walked there, in dreams. Melian tended and compelled, and verdure burgeoned around her. The ancient garden became wild and thick. Elwing stood spellbound, captured by the divine. Shadows twined and blossomed in Melian’s twilit heart; her argent-crowned consort could never have broken free of the tendrils, even had he wished.

Lúthien inspired a hush at her birth. Elwing has heard its echoes. Every creature in the forest stilled, somnolent and spellbound, awaiting the princess of twilight’s song. A captive audience from the beginning had Lúthien, before ever her feet danced daring and deceptively winsome into the black foe’s halls. Melian’s daughter was never so pregnable as she seemed.

When Elwing of Doriath came wailing into the world its waters bent to listen. This she knows, for the memory of their swell is mirrored in the wide eyes of those who bore witness, though long years have passed and she is full grown. Over rocky banks the Esgalduin leapt; the bridge standing guard at Menegroth’s ingress was whelmed by its hungry waters. Seas stalked up the shore in the highest king tide of living memory against all celestial signs, only a day after the neap. When Elwing fell upon Sirion’s sands, all of three years old and as destitute as death, the waves caught at her ankles. They repulsed all attempts to free her from their grasp, as full grown forest-born elves dragged her bodily toward the dunes. It was an embrace cold and welcoming and strange. Elwing has never been afraid of the ocean’s briny grasp, only of the eyes of those that clutched at her limbs as if life depended upon it.

The sea calls to her. It always has.

Waves murmured incessantly in Elwing’s ears as a child. She made her home among the reeds and grew to the thrum of the tides. When she was eight, their voice grew loud. Elwing scrounged among the wrack as waters rose beyond the tide line to caress her ankles. Her nursemaid pressed nervous lips into a thin line and looked away. There were shells amid the dead strands: precious chitinous treasures in as many colours as Doriath’s blossoms. The crab she found among them was dead, its carapace stuffed with sand and weed. The crab was dead until meat and sinews disgorged refuse from its shell and it skittered away on nimble legs.

Elwing watched it dance through the foam. The sea rumbled its pleasure and frothed at her calves. Her nursemaid caught not a glimpse of the creature, dead or alive, but Eärendil, open-mouthed and incredulous, had stared.

The old Bëorian woman stares at her now, disapproving of Elwing’s intent to birth beside the sea. She gathers objections along with the oddly shaped funnel soon to be pressed against Elwing’s taut skin. She frowns and tuts and her deep brown eyes narrow, bright with the remembrance of loss. Among Men, women lose infants at birth sometimes, even with the most attentive of care. Elves, as a rule, do not.

The sea calls, and Elwing listens. It will not be refused.

“Will the sand not irk you?” Eärendil asks. He thinks the notion mad, but has learned from his mother not to gainsay an obdurate woman, particularly when she wears the expression Elwing does. Had Tuor denied Idril her tunnel, Elwing’s husband would not now rest his cheek against her belly, smiling with crinkled eyes as one unborn son tries to unseat him. Elwing would have neither husband, nor sons. Like Idril, she cannot explain the compulsion, only that she is certain it is the kind one ignores at their peril.

“You seek Uinen’s blessing?” asks Círdan. He has no right to eavesdrop, even as an honoured guest. “Such a thing is not uncommon among my folk.” He does not, fortunately, recount the tale told to her previously of the Falathrin woman who, unwilling to be parted from ship and crew, birthed a son as she stood braced against the mizzen. Círdan tossed the placenta to the waves himself, if he is to be believed.

“You see? It is traditional.” Elwing smiles brightly. No one counters that she is no sea elf, but a mongrel. No one dares.

“Good luck to you warming newborns beside the windy sea,” the Bëorian woman huffs. She shoos Eärendil from his squirming perch with her wrinkled hands.

Her husband swallows his misgivings. “It is well our sons are like to be born in summer,” he says. He and Elwing know the children will be sons; they have touched their souls. Elwing is elven enough for that.

Forced to stop her tongue in order to listen through the hollow instrument, the old woman can only frown.

“Is all well?” Elwing asks.

“So it appears.” The old Bëorian never says ‘yes’: she does not like to imply certainty where there is none. A child can seem hale enough in the womb and yet be born still. Elwing holds no fear for her sons (she will not allow dread to master her), but many of her people, both Mannish and elven, do.

Dry, cold fingers test the pliability of the small head lodged within her pelvis. It does not move. “I doubt it will be long now,” the woman declares. Of this she seems confident. None have been able to say with certainty when the children will be born. Men carry for three seasons, elves for four. Mongrels cannot expect to know on which side they will fall. Three seasons have come and gone and no one knows if the children are early or late. Still they wait.

The sea, when Elwing bathes in its waves, wraps her torso like an embrace. The waters know, she is sure of it. They do not tell.

—

In the night Elwing dreams of storms. Winds moan through the grey sky. The sea heaves and churns and casts up abominations on the shore: strange gawping creatures dragged from the depths with fin and tail, their skins tumescent as a week-old corpse, and lungs spewing water.

“They think I should not bear them,” she whispers to Eärendil as he shakes off sleep. “They think we are fools.”

He reaches to stroke the tiny limb that presses against her ribs. She does not repeat the harsher words whispered by those who think themselves unheard. Elwing has heard such things all her life: her hearing is sharper than Man and elf, but none expect such talents from a mongrel. They forget about Melian, and account not for the divine.

“They fret, is all.” Eärendil’s look is fond. “Such is the lot of a pioneer. You must prove wrong their fears, then none will harry our daughters.”

“Daughters?” Elwing swings a pillow at his broad chest. “Who says I shall do any of this again?”

Would that she were as filled with confidence as he who laughs and kisses her on the brow. Echoes of storms churn within Elwing’s heart. She does not listen to their moaning cries.

—

“Pain will come like waves to the shore,” the old woman told her. “It will break and retreat. Remember this when you seem like to drown: always the pain retreats.”

“There may be none,” the Doriathrin elf who had once been her nursemaid countered uncertainly. The Bëorian scoffed. None truly know what of Elwing will prove elvish, and what of Men (few think to account for the divine), yet they make assumptions still. Most are wrong.

The sensation is not one of water, but of a vice; it presses and grasps until her whole abdomen burns like an envenomed wound. Elwing stumbles toward water—never far in her river delta home—but the cool current does not sooth as it would a sting.

“Is all well?” Eärendil calls. He eyes her as she stands waist deep in the distributary with her skirts billowing.

“Yes,” she gasps.

He knows. There is an old panic in him that once accompanied balrog fire and flight. It surfaces with memories of the hidden city and its fall. Eärendil knows much of birth. Women of the Gondolindrim have told her this, seeking to reassure. He let infants born of labour roused prematurely by a steep climb through the Eagle’s Cleft suck on his fingers so they would not cry while Idril tended their mothers with her Elfstone, healing birth-weariness that they might continue their flight. They had no fathers left to hold them. The women have told her how gentle he was with their babes, how responsible. It brings her no comfort, only sadness. Children should not have to take the place of grown men.

“I must go,” she pleads, for it is obvious now that her sons long to be born. Her besieged body lacks the wherewithal to fight its way to the coast alone. Elwing would go alone if she could. She would birth her babes with a strength all her own, with only the sand and the sea for company. No other can she wholly trust. She does not tell Eärendil this, for it would tear his heart. He does not deserve such a wounding.

Eärendil casts his eyes upward. In the sky above gather clouds that grow dark with promise. A storm comes. “You are certain?” he asks with apprehension, but does not baulk when Elwing remains firm. Perhaps he, like his father, hears whispers of prophecy and song in the waters of the world.

—

Hands. So many hands. They touch Elwing constantly and she wishes they would not.

“Get off,” she huffs. They do not heed her.

Eärendil tries to disentangle his body from hers. His strong hands are steady as they grip her shoulder and wrist, guiding her toward the rock on which he leans.

“Not you,” she says, burying her sweaty face into his neck. “Stay,” she says, letting her weight fall against his chest.

Eärendil slips one arm under her own and wraps the other around her back. Elwing wants to be alone. But oh, how she needs him to hold her. Oh, how she wishes to be alone. It burns like acid to be seen this way, with all her vulnerability and strength on display. It is bitter like bile. Vulnerability can be overcome. Strength is a boon. But to be both? That is where danger lies. That is how her foremothers met their fates.

“I must check,” a voice insists. Immersed in the hazy deeps of labour, to Elwing the voice seems only half-familiar: the old Bëorian woman, perhaps.

Fingers stray from her belly to reach inside and she says, “no!” and she begs, “stop!” but they do not. They continue to touch, even when Eärendil objects with his voice rumbling through her body from the force of it leaving his chest. They act upon their own deeming, with no regard for Elwing’s.

“I am sorry.” The voice is not apologetic. “It is necessary to know how well the body opens.”

Among Men, women do not sense their body changing to accommodate a child. But Elwing can feel herself stretching; she can feel her cervix thinning and making ready to move aside. She is elvish enough for that. Even were she not, the trespassing touch would still be a violation.

It is not time. Not yet.

The sea rushes and swells. It crashes against the shore.

“Leave,” Elwing tells the old Bëorian with the deep brown eyes, for it is her, Elwing can see now.

“Someone must be here, to assist you,” the woman argues. There is fear in her eyes that turns them cold. She is thinking of still babies. She is thinking of the ones saved, too, that might have perished had their mothers been alone. Perhaps she could turn back heartache, should a complication arise. Perhaps she could not. Among Men, even the most skilful attendants play witness to birthing bed deaths that cannot be prevented.

“Leave me!” Elwing shrieks. The stones behind Eärendil tremble with the power in her voice. The sand at her feet flies about her ankles. The old woman’s brown eyes become very wide. Few expect such things from her. Most fail to account for the divine.

“I will stay,” Eärendil promises. “I will not leave.” His fear does not turn him hard.

Footsteps crunch along the tide line and away, and Elwing is the closest to alone that she can be (and therefore safest, for Eärendil will not exploit that which he sees).

“I need the waves,” Elwing whispers and Eärendil obliges. He stands as steady as a rock through the ebb and flow as the sea surges around them, restless before the winds. The water crashes against Elwing’s back. It obliterates all other sensation.

Thunder cracks and the sky opens. Elros is born amid the squall. He is quiet in the din, blinking up at her with blurry newborn eyes. Foam flecks sparkle against his vernix-coated skin as lightning flashes in the sky. For a moment, her babe seems clothed in stars. If one of the ainur blesses the child, it is not Uinen, as Círdan supposed.

As another clap of thunder ricochets through the air Eärendil flinches. “We cannot stay here,” he says, and carries Elwing out of the waves.

—

“How long will it be?” Elwing asks.

The storm has passed, short-lived for all its fury, and all that remains are gusty encores along the restless coast. In a sky still obscured by slate-grey cloud, the sun shines desultorily through as it meets the horizon. Nestled beneath white cliffs, Elwing is spared the worst of the wind. The world is almost still about her. Elros dozes contentedly at her breast and her other son is quiet within.

Eärendil wraps around her like a cloak, resting his chin on her shoulder. “It does no good to ask me,” he says as his blue eyes gaze upon their son. He is warm and that feels well against her aching body. Would that she could rest in this moment indefinitely, or speed time onward that the toil may be over. Neither can Elwing achieve, for neither the flow of time nor the inner workings of her body respond to her will in such a way. She has not enough of the divine.

“I wish I knew,” she says.

An hour ago Elwing brought forth a son into her husband’s trembling hands with such effort her eyes felt they might spring from their sockets. The sea has been quiet since and so has her body.

When the vice-grip claims her belly again it is crueller. Pain so breathtaking as to defy description comes steady as a river where before it ebbed and flowed like the sea.

“Elwing?” The voice Eärendil speaks with is the one men obey without thought. His hand rests firmly upon her arm, safeguarding the babe that rests there. “Speak to me,” he urges.

All Elwing can do is stare at the sand growing red between her legs.

There was very little blood when Elros was born: a smear on his crown and the barest trickle after. Why is there so much now?

If Eärendil speaks as he lays Elwing flat on the cooling sand she does not hear it. She curls and writhes and clutches Elros to her chest. She sobs and sobs and the agony goes on and on.

In this moment she is not elvish enough. When her second son is born he comes with a tide of crimson behind his shoulders and afterbirth chasing his heels.

He does not move.

He does not cry.

Eärendil weeps but Elwing has no tears to shed.

Gulls flock, eager to have their fill, but Eärendil waves them away.

“Tie it,” Elwing tells him.

“What?” His voice cracks with grief.

Hers is dull and flat. “You must tie and cut it.” She fingers the soft, gelatinous coil that trails from Elros’s belly. He is shackled to his twin, for they share a placenta. “Do it for them both.” Cut the useless thing away, for it is dead weight: a slippery, treacherous thing dragging them down.

Eärendil holds him: the nameless twin. He cannot do as she asks while the babe is in his arms. Elwing cannot bear the thought of her child laying still and cold in the sand. Neither does she wish to hold him. She held him for an hour too long and it brought them to this. If she holds him now she might not let go; she might crack when they are parted, like chisel-prised slate, and what is left will be brittle and crazed.

Elwing stares. Her son is dark-haired and perfectly formed, just as his twin. Raven-haired and perfect, even without breath.

There is warmth in the still body Eärendil places in her arms. This, of all things, is what turns Elwing’s stomach. Above, the clearing sky is studded with stars like diamond dust. It does not reflect in the child’s eyes, for his lids are closed and they will never open. Elwing closes her own and does not see when the primitive bonds are cut. Would that she could keep them intact forever. Would that they had not already been severed by the hands of fate.

The sea calls, and mocks, and thrashes against the shore.

Come to me, it beckons.

Elwing stumbles after Eärendil down to the lapping tide as he flings the faulty afterbirth to the waves where the gulls cannot take it. The water remains restless, though the winds have all but died, leaving the air to cling like a second skin around her. It is not an embrace, but a suffocation.

Bring him to me, the depths demand. Perhaps it is Ossë storm-bringer. Perhaps Elwing has slipped already into insensible grief.

“You cannot have him,” she cries. “He is not yours.”

Eärendil pulls her and their sons possessively close.

The sea does not keep, child. It takes and it gives.

It takes proud, tall ships and gives back flotsam, detritus and wreckage. It takes broken, rough things, polishes them smooth and hides them in the wrack for the hopeful to find. Tuor once crafted beautiful things from driftwood and sea glass. He pressed treasures into her palm. The sea claimed him and nought yet has it given back.

Eärendil, like she, is practised in letting go. He takes the living child from her arms. “Go on,” he urges. Some time ago her husband swallowed his misgivings and will not take them up again, even now. Always has he had more faith than her. One can when that faith has risen in direst need like a candle flame in the night. Ulmo set in motion his escape from Gondolin, but to the refugees from Doriath no divine help came. Vulnerable without Melian’s guidance, they could trust only to their own strength. Many fell away before they reached Sirion’s welcoming arms. Their bones now grow moss in the forest.

Eärendil does not look for a miracle, but he has come to expect life. Life, he cradles gently in his hands and in his heart and it carries him through calamity and sorrow.

Elwing sinks. There is no life in that which walks into the sea: not in its arms, nor in its heart. Elwing is a dead thing.

What fear can she have as the water comes coiling up her legs, setting its tendrils about her like fetters? What is there left to dread? More death? Would that not be a comfort?

Brine flutters like lace about Elwing’s wrists, capturing the child held in her arms. Brine flows over their skin until it glistens. Brine creeps like fingers into her babe’s lungs and swells his tiny chest. Was it like this in the womb? There, where a miniature sea of her body’s making held both sons fast for long months and filled their unborn lungs. Water spews as incessantly from the child’s mouth and nose as it did from the creatures in her dreams.

The sea swells and writhes.

This soul is not for death, it cries. You must give it breath, it insists.

Breathe! the sea commands, and Elwing does. Tendrils of ancient shadow guide her limbs and an old hush is in her ears. Elwing cradles a head as slippery as seaweed and heavy as a stone. Salt water wets her lips where they press against the soft skin of her babe’s cheeks. And the child must be elvish enough too, for his soul returns to his body undamaged, as a Mannish soul would not. She breathes, and breathes, puff by careful puff until a thin cry struggles past her lips to shiver into the night sky. It is the sweetest of sounds. Elwing spits salt water from her mouth and listens.

In her arms the child squirms as if he were never still. Starlight is bright in his open eyes for above, in the clear sky, divine light shines like diamond dust still. Elrond he will be, her boy that gazes up at the jewelled dome of the wide open sky with wide eyes.

“What will you take for this gift?” Elwing asks of the sea.

Much, it answers with a rumble and a rush. More still will I give.

The waters quiet and speak no more.

—

“They appear healthy,” the old Bëorian woman declares. “I could be surer if I held them.”

Elwing does not acquiesce. Neither will Eärendil suffer the woman to touch their sons. He eyes her sharply as she stands by Elwing’s side. Her dark eyes are hard as stones.

They do not tell her what happened on that beach. Eärendil says that blood came like a flood after the babes were born, for Elwing is weak and pale and shaky with the loss.

“Will you allow me to tend you?” the old woman asks and does not wait for a reply before beginning to paw at her belly.

The stars are veiled, curlews sound their wailing cries, and Elwing presses her lips together until they numb. She submits to the violation of dry, insistent touch.

Stooped over in the chair beneath the window, Eärendil kisses their sons’ soft brows. He offers Elrond his finger to suck as the child begins to squall. It is not sadness that stirs in Elwing’s breast, but tenderness, and anger. The old woman presses and massages and rubs until a gush of wet warmth escapes from between her legs and her womb is firm as stone. All is quiet, save for the suck of small lips and a newborn breathing loudly in sleep, as newborns do. Against the brush of cold hands on her leg Elwing clamps her thighs shut. Fury coils in her chest, and sears her lungs like salt does a wound. The old woman tuts, but Elwing will not yield.

Far in the distance, the sea beats against the shore.

“I must see if the children have wounded you.”

“They have not.” She is sure of this. There is enough elvish in her to know it true, and enough of the divine to realise saltwater scoured her clean.

“My wife knows her own body,” Eärendil says in the voice that men obey without question. The trust he bestows is a gift.

In a few hours she will be free of the old midwife’s ministrations. Elwing hopes to never set eyes upon her again.

But the sea… The sea she will run to as soon as her legs cease to shake, and she will bathe her sons in the water that has blessed them.

The sea takes.

The sea gives.

She must hope the price, no matter how dear, is not too steep to pay.