After the Kinslaying by Deborah Judge  

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After the Kinslaying

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In Middle-earth we kept years by the return of the twelve great fishing boats. Each return there was a bonfire and feast, twelve feasts was a year. My ship, the Plaid Swan, was the last to be built and always the last to return, so the year-end dances began when the priests of Ulmo saw us on the horizon and announced the New Year. In those days we barely bothered to build on land. The Hunter could not build ships so we were safe from him on the water. We retreated to our ships under Lord Ulmo's protection whenever there was danger, setting fire to the forest behind us to catch the Hunter and his cruel servants in the flames. Then we would find a different well-wooded shore and the land crew would set up tents and huts while the seafarers would return to the sea to seek the next harvest.

In Alqualondë the days and years were marked by the distant light of the Two Trees. The Noldor taught us to build houses of stone, theatres and music halls. Young people preferred those over our bonfires. As our people grew we built more ships to catch lobster, shrimp and crab. Still a bonfire was lit every time a great fishing boat returned and held a great feast on the shore to share our catch before the shore-crew got to their work salting and canning.

Here in the farming-village of Míretarwa, with the Trees darkened, we had no idea how to keep time at all.

But let me start from the beginning. My name is Captain Elhen of the Plaid Swan. I wove her sails with my own hands when we first came from Cuiviénen. She was a 200-foot schooner, with forty crew, and when she returned full she brought home a thousand barrels of cod. It took a century to craft her from pine, spruce, birch and oak. She moved on the water like the reflection of the stars, pure white, but inside she was painted with a riot of colors, each of her crew adding colors of their own. In the light of Trees she shone with their light but deep in the water she brought her own light. For more than three thousand years I sailed her and now she is gone.

When the Noldor attacked our ship had only just unloaded and we were deep into celebration, I was in a bar in town with ten of my crew, drinking my third glass of mead. Someone came into the bar and said that Fëanor wanted our ships to take them to Middle-earth against the will of the Valar. We all laughed. It was a joke. We gave up our ships to no one and as sailors we knew better than to set to sea if Lord Ulmo was not with us. Then I heard a scream like I had never heard since the days of the Hunter. I ran to my ship, like we always did then, shouting as I went to all to come to the Plaid Swan and to safety in Lord Ulmo's hands. But instead of safety we ran into a battle. There were screams everywhere and smoke coming from the pier. We had no weapons so I grabbed a fishing-spear and did my best to knock everyone dark-haired into the water for Lord Ulmo to handle. By the time we reached the pier my second mate and bosun were dead and the Plaid Swan was far out in the ocean, in the hands of the enemy.

Later, we learned the fate of the twelve great ships. The cruel Noldor, who had for so long been our friends, took the ships by force, killing all those who would not surrender them. Most of the crew of the Blue Swan, the Red Swan, the Dotted Swan and the Splattered Swan had been killed defending their ships. Of the other crews, about a third had been killed, some more, some less. The captains of the White Swan and the Star Swan were dead. The White Swan, the Blue Swan and the Green Swan were entirely missing. So were the crabbing and lobster-catching boats, the smaller fishing boats, the transport ships, royal barge, the wedding boat, even the grand opera ship, the sea-garden ship and the old art museum ship that contained all the treasures from Middle-earth that we had never gotten aroung to moving to the museum on land. They also took nearly a hundred of our family houseboats. All that was left were small skiffs and dories along with our rowboats and canoes.

Mourning and weeping filled Alqualondë. We wept for those who had died and for our ships that had been taken. We could not count the time we mourned, with no trees and no ships. But after some time King Olwë summoned the surviving captains to his court and told us that the food stores were becoming depleted. It would take some time to build new ships that could go out and bring home the food that Alqualondë would need and our food stores would not last until then. He told us that Fëanor seemed to have lost his reason and there was no telling what he would do but that there was no reason to think the ships would be returned. He asked what we would like to do. And that is how the crew of the Plaid Swan became farmers.

But first we became looters, gathering everything that was left on every abandoned Noldor farm. We travelled quietly and stayed off the road because we did not know what any Noldor would do if they saw us. It was not difficult to hide. The light of the Trees never reached the deep ocean where we liked to sail and fish. The Noldor, who were used to Treelight, carried torches wherever they went. We learned to stay away from them. The closer villages still had lamps lit in their windows so we moved on until we came well into the interior. There we found abandoned farms with crops still in the fields and bales of wheat, barley, potatoes, carrots and corn in the storehouses. We gathered as much as we could while King Olwë arranged for protection on the roads, then we brought our loot back to Alqualondë by cart. We cursed the Noldor in their fields and in their villages, whenever we were hungry, whenever we tried to make a meal out of potatoes and longed for a thick piece of halibut or salmon. We tried not to think of what was lost. It was too much to bear.

Once we gathered what we could it was time to put more seeds in the ground, so the crew of the Plaid Swan settled in the farming village of Míretarwa. It had fifty marble and stone houses arranged in a square around a gleaming white marble plaza. Next to it was a small but elaborate rose garden, neatly tended, with a bewildering range of roses in different colors. Behind one of the houses was a large forge. Four fields stretched in all four directions, one growing wheat, the other growing beans, the third growing potatoes and a fourth left as pasture for absent animals. There were livestock barns but they were empty apparently. Their owners had decided not to leave them to starve, not that they had such mercy on us. Between the houses and the fields were vegetable gardens, with tomatoes and cucumbers and mint and parsley.

The village of Míretarwa was clearly a Noldor village, from the fine and detailed craftmanship in everything from the open gate to the utensils and the gems that glowed with faint light from every doorpost. It had also once belonged to followers of Mandos-damned Fëanor. His star was on the wooden village welcome arch and painted on to half the houses and his banner hung in the village square. We took down the banner and hacked it to pieces with our wood-chopping axe, then painted over a half-dozen of them around the village before we ran out of energy for it.

We worked hard and were tired at the end of every day. All of our work required a great deal of digging, which used very slightly different muscles from raising sails and pulling oars. We also weren't sure that we were doing it right. The plow was made for oxen and we had to push it ourselves. We watered the garden plants but had no idea if we were watering them too much or too little. I ended every day with aching arms, not even sure if I had spent my strength on something that would grow food for Alqualondë. Sometimes when I woke I felt dizzy at the solidness of the earth beneath me. I longed for soothing motion of the waves and for the feel of the wood of my ship under my hands. I steadied myself by sitting near the rose garden and touching the rose petals and thorns.

Each of the great fishing boats had its own personality. The White Swan, the Queen of the fishing-fleet, was crewed by devout sailors who passed their off hours in prayer and meditation. The crew of the Star Swan brought canvases aboard and came home with paintings of starlight on the sea. The Purple Swan was made up into tiny individual cabins where people could retreat to be alone and read by themselves. On the Plaid Swan we enjoyed dice and mead. So we were delighted to find that the damned Noldor had left for us, in one of the village homes, an entire basement full of barrels of beer.

Beer is not mead but is perfectly adequate for getting drunk on when necessary. After two rounds my second mate started on an extraordinarily bawdy song about a Vanyar girl who sampled fish from the twelve ships and found each to be thick and firm. After another round we started on toasts, thanking the brewers of this beer and cursing them to Mandos, or alternatively the Everlasting Dark. Then we brought out the dice and went on with drinking and cursing until three crew members were aleep on the floor. It was the happiest I had been, I think, since I first saw the ships gone.

I woke up in my own bed not that much later to a raging headache and the sound of screams. "Armed Noldor in the village!!" people were shouting. The Mandos-damned Noldor had once again found me drunk. I was out of bed and at the gate, still in my nightgown, pausing only to grab my wood-chopping axe.

There was, in fact, an armed Noldo in the village. One of them, carrying no pack and no torch, with torn clothes and tangled dark hair that was coming out of his long braids. It took me a moment before I recognized him.

"Almasúlo," I said. I remembered him as a beautiful young man selling flowers by the cocks. Once he gave me a rose for no reason and I kept it in my cabin next to my bed until it fell apart. Now he looked like he hadn't eaten since he left Tirion. His only visible possession was the sword strapped to his waist, which he was nowhere near touching, because his hands were in the air. Four of my crew had their bows pointed at his face. "We do not tolerate armed Norldor on our lands," I said and took the sword from his belt. It was the first time I had ever held a sword.

"Elhen," he said. "I'm glad it's you. I come from this village." I remembered the light in his eyes when he spoke about his home.

"You left," I said. "You took our ships and left. This village does not begin to pay for what you owe us but we have taken it in partial payment."

"My sorrow at what I have done is boundless," he said. "Like all the followers of King Arafinwë I regret with all my heart how we have wronged you and yours."

I had no patience for this. I remembered Arafinwë from his early years as a newlywed in Alqualondë, doing his best to row a rowboat without tipping it over. He was quiet and polite when I knew him. Since he left with his brothers as far as I was concerned he was as bad as them, and a traitor to us besides. And now he was sending his followers to take this farm from us, when we needed its food for Alqualondë.

In any case this was not an Arafinwëan village at all. There was still one Star of Fëanor at the gatepost we had not taken down. Well, time to get rid of it. With my axe I chopped it off, then cast it to the ground in front of Almasúlo.

"Step on it, follower of Arafinwë," I said.

There was just the barest moment of hesitation. "Get out," I said. "We do not treat with kinslayers."

He turned and walked back down the road but did not go very far before he stopped and sat down under a tree, apparently determined to sit there and starve at us. I ate breakfast, worked, and went back to find Almasúlo still there. I sent other archers to relieve the ones who were watching him. Then I ate supper, slept, and came back to find very bored archers reporting that Almasúlo had done nothing of interest and no other Noldor had appeared. I went back to my house and came back with a roasted potato. When I handed it to him his eyes widened, then he grabbed it from my hand and shoved it all in his mouth at once.

"I'm not going to let you starve to death," I said. "But I don't believe your repentance for a moment. Tell me what happened. Why King Arafinwë? Where is Nolofinwë? What happened to Fëanor? Is the rest of the village coming back?"

I stood there under the tree with Almasúlo while he told me. The rest of the Noldor, when Almasúlo left, were on the shores of Araman under the leadership of Fëanor and Nolofinwë, who were both calling themselves kings. Lord Mandos had declared a terrible curse on all who followed them into exile. Arafinwë walked through the crowd and in a soft but urgent voice told anyone who wanted to live to please follow him immediately. He led them back to Valinor where he wept before the Valar and told them that he and all those who follow him have nothing but regret for the rebellion of the Noldor and nothing but bitterness towards Fëanor and his House. The Valar did not question any of Arafinwë's followers individually and Almasúlo did not know what he would have said if they had. Arafinwë now the king of the Noldor in Valinor.

Almasúlo had no place in an Arafinwëan village. He didn't know if there were other Fëanorian returnees, he hadn't seen any. There were no others from Míretarwa. Which meant, he said, that the village was doomed. He repeated to me the words of Lord Mandos:

...slain ye shall be: by weapon and by torment and by grief; and your houseless spirits shall come then to Mandos. There long shall ye abide and yearn for your bodies, and find little pity though all whom ye have slain should entreat for you.

"So you wanted to live," I said. He nodded.

"My father and brothers and sisters will not betray Fëanor," Almasúlo said. "Neither will any other Míretarwan. But I am here. I regret with all my heart what I have done. If you like I will step on the star."

Back in Middle-earth, when the Hunter came, it was the responsibility of the ship's captains to get people on the ship, away from the Hunter, no matter what you have to burn behind you in order to do it. That was all Almasúlo was, an Elf running from the Hunter who had come to my ship for safety. I remembered running through Alqualondë with a fishing-spear, pushing everyone dark-haired into the sea. "You can't come back here and act like you own the place," I said. "But if work you can eat."

He nodded. He hadn't been left with many options. As I thought about it, neither had we. My fishing crew was trying to become farmers because the people we used to support needed food. Almasúlo knew how to farm and we didn't.

I told the archers to stand down, then brought Almasúlo into the village and introduced him to the crew. I asked him which house was his and he led me to the house in which First Mate Telpalaco lived with his husband and daughter. Like every house in the village it was finely built of marble and granite, with gems and fantastic carvings adorning the doorposts.

"It's taken," I said. "Find another one."

Almasúlo settled on a small house with no adornments on the doorpost. We searched the house he chose for weapons before letting him in.

In the morning I woke to the sound of forging and ran, terrified he was making swords. Instead he was sworking on what looked like a plow. "A hand-plow," he explained. "It will be easier." He had already set a sapphire in the handle and decorated it with a pattern of flowers.

We worked on the fields by torchlinght and then went to prune the tomato plants. Almasúlo held the torch close, needing the light for his Noldor eyes, though he had walked all the way back without one. "How do you mark time here?" I asked. We had been calling it an evening whenever we went to bed and a morning whenever we woke up but had no way of connecting this with anything ourtside of ourselves. He put his hand on the plant. "It grows this much in thirty Tree days," he said. I wondered how many tomato plants he had seen grow. It occured to me that some of what we had eaten he had planted himself. Maybe he was the beer brewer we had thanked and cursed. By the count of tomato growth we had been in Míretarwa ninety days.

When I first woke at Cuiviénen I had no partner. Later it became clear, the Plaid Swan was the only wife I needed and the sea my only lover. If that was so, I thought, I was no less a widow than any woman whose spouse had died by Noldor swords. I felt anchorless, adrift, though the land beneath me was far too solid. I thought about the harvest that would come in, like so many harvests I had brought from the sea.

Three nights later I was awake at night and went out to the courtyard. Almasúlo was carefully pruning the roses. He wore no gloves and there were small pricks of blood on his hands. He nodded to me. "Captain Elhen," he said, remembering my title this time. I sat beside him and watched him work. I wondered if this was what he had truly come to regret, leaving behind these roses.

"Is this your garden?" I asked.

"It was my father's," he said. "And my grandmother's." I could see the centuries of work crafting each variety of rose and growing it in its proper place. "My great-grandmother brought the seedling for this variety when they had to flee their village in Middle-earth," he pointed.

The Noldor had come from Inland, from villages in Middle-earth like this one, all their wealth fixed in one place, where the Hunter would not have been so easy to escape. I thought of Almasúlo's great-grandmother running from the Hunter carrying a seedling.

In Middle-earth we celebrated the return of each ship by dancing the dance of the sea warriors on the beach, a dance that told the story of our fishing-voyage through gestures and motions. Then we danced in a circle around the bonfire and praised Lord Ulmo for our safe return. As the night went on the dancing got wilder. Though like the Noldor we did not (often) mate outside of marriage there was no sin in dancing close or sharing touches in celebration of being alive.

In Alqualondë we were more respectable. We danced the dance of the sea warriors on the pier and then danced in a cicle holding hands. Then pairs danced, hands on each other's waists and shoulders

In Míretarwa after the wheat harvest we danced the dance of the sea warriors at the edge of the field. We sang to Lord Ulmo, who watches over the Teleri always. We made a bonfire and then argued about what to roast on it, since we had no fish and wheat is not good for bonfire roasting. Eventually someone pulled out some old potatoes. We were doing our best. We did not belong here.

Then in the center of the field Almasúlo stood in the starlight, his hands outstretched. In a clear voice he sang a song I did not recognize, praising Yavanna Lady of Flowers. With his hands outstretched he resembled a tree, rooted in the earth, in a way I had never been rooted in anything since I stepped off the deck of the Plaid Swan. He was born in this village, a child of its dirt and seeds. He was the only person left in Valinor who was. He carried so much for his family, who had taken him with them into murder and then sent him back with King Arafinwë alone to work the fields that were now ours in exchange for potatoes.

As the night went on I danced close with First Mate Telpalaco, my leg beween his thighs and our chests pressed together as he spun me around. Then he passed me to Lookout Fíneapar who eagerly wrapped his arms around my back. It felt like we were back in Middle-earth again, where there was less need to be respectable.. I danced with Oarsman Fuilinquë, then with his wife Alpanis. I loved all my crew, every one.

Almasúlo sat to the side, watching. He was the only one of my crew that I had not touched that night. I thought about the rose he had once given me, that I placed by my bedside. Instead of touching him, I walked with him back to the house that I refused to let him call his. "What did you do here on harvest day?" I asked.

"There was a special cake," he said. "Ten layers, with frosting in between. We danced, but differently, in a line, with partners. We sang to Yavanna with harmonies, each one of us had a different part."

I wanted to be part of it, to connect somehow to whatever history had been here. "Can you teach me a part?" I asked. I felt lost on this land, lost without my ship's deck beneath my feet, without the hands of Lord Ulmo around me. I learned one of the village hymns that night and we sat by Almasúlo's roses and sang together a song to Yavanna.

In the morning the crew gathered for a ritual of chanting of names. I remembered it from the days of the Hunter, when after every feast we counted who was gone. We were lucky, the Teleri, we had our ships, we could not be captured wholesale like those who lived on land. But sometimes there were a few that did not reach the ships. When we regathered to celebrate we ended our celebration by chanting all the names of those we had lost. We spoke the names of Lúnalpa our Second Mate and Váiórë our Bosun. May Lord Mandos have mercy on them and return them to sail with us again.

The next cart from Alqualondë brought a little salted cod and also the surprising and wonderful news that two of the great fishing boats were still in Teleri hands. One was the Green Swan, whose Captain Quesselaiqua was a fellow Cuiviénenion and held on to his instincts from the time of the Hunter. When he saw the Noldor coming up the pier he set it on fire, right after he grabbed any Teleri on the pier and pushed them on board to serve as his crew. Then he raced his ship with all his strength into the deepest part of the ocean. When he returned to Valinor he did not land at Alqualondë but far south along the coast and from there he sent scouts on foot to confirm that the city was secure before bringing his ship home. When he pulled the Green Swan into harbor there were crowds cheering.

The other was the White Swan, Queen of the fishing fleet, crewed by only the most pious of mariners, always the first to set out in the new year. She was already deep in the ocean and had cast her first nets when her sailors heard Lady Uinen weeping. She kept them safely at sea until the Noldor had gone north.

It was a great relief that not everything was lost, but so much had been. The crew of the Red Swan, who hunted as well as fished and came home from their fishing expdeitons with seal pelts and narwhal horns, had almost all been killed when they rushed out to defend against the invaders. So were the athletic crew of the Dotted Swan. The Blue Swan, which had the greatest library in the fleet, was captured with nearly all its mariners aboard and all of them died fighting rather than surrender the ship. The surviving crew of the Grey Swan were doing their best to fish from small pleasure-boats that the Noldor had not bothered to take. The crews of the Striped Swan and the Circle Swan, with the survivors of the Red Swan and the Dotted Swan, had spread out along the coast to fish from the shore. The crew of the Star Swan, with their captain and nearly a third of their crew killed in the fighting, had gone to work as hired laborers for the Vanyar. The Purple Swan crew were, like us, living in an abandoned Noldor village and learning to farm.

The White Swan and the Green Swan were back at sea. Princess Eärwen had enlisted on the Green Swan. She said it was because she longed for distant places, but everyone was certain that it was also to get as much distance as possible from her former husband Arafinwë. Joining her was her dear friend Anairë, formerly Queen, now using no title. The Green Swan was exploring the coast on their fishing journeys, looking for news of the stolen ships and hoping against hope that some could be retaken.

Neither my second mate nor my bosun had returned from the Halls of Mandos. We of the Teleri know that the sea takes its due and and that it is possible to fall into the water in a way that only Lord Mandos can catch. It had still been centuries since I lost a crewmember. Lord Mandos have mercy on them.

That night I sat with Almasúlo by the roses and asked him questions about Míretarwa. He told me how his grandfather had founded it when he followed Finwë on the Great Journey. By the time his grandfather left to move to Tirion his three sons and four daughters had each married and brought their spouses to live here. There were another five families that came from Tirion because they liked the country and enjoyed planting things as well as crafting. He was the youngest of his father's six children. His four brothers and two sisters all had children of their own. The doorposts of their homes told their stories. One doorpost showed a drooping sheaf, with a young woman holding it upright. "That was the year our wheat crops almost failed," Almasúlo said, "until my sister figured out how to improve the soil."

Some doorposts showed what looked like rays of light stretching from the Trees to the soil. Others showed the light coming from gems. It used to be, Almasúlo explained, that Fëanor would come to each village to show them the Silmarils. They were the light of the Trees sacred to Yavanna and, he said, those who work the earth and serve Yavanna needed to look upon them. They had a beauty that made Almasúlo ache to even think about, he said, but he also remembered them as a sign of hope.

I only ever saw Fëanor once, when he came with his father King Finwë to Alqualondë to teach us how to build houses out of stone. Fëanor was very young then, about knee height, but he had a child-sized hammer and chisel with which he carved quite spectacular decorations on the walls of buildings because, as he said, he wanted them to be pretty. How had this earnest child become the greatest enemy of my people?

Ten tomato-days later we were interrupted at work by another shout of armed Noldor in the village. Again I ran to the gates, but by the time I got there the three Noldor were no longer armed, since they had already surrendered their swords to my archers. They were dressed in fine clothes of white, blue and gold and identified themselves as messengers of King Arafinwë.

"Captain Elhen," one bowed to me, showing himself both well-mannered and well informed. He explained that King Arafinwë was sending messengers to all former Noldor villages to find where his people are and what they need. He asked humbly for a cart of supplies to take to a nearby Arafinwëan village, whose crops had rotted in the fields and whose storehouses were empty when they returned. As I had emptied more than a few storehouses myself it seemed only right. Together with Telpalaco I packed up a cart of wheat and potatoes, for which the messenger thanked me.

"I will report to King Arafinwë that this is a Teleri villiage now," he said. "I expect he will write to King Olwë and tell him that the this village is now under his rule."

"That isn't necessary," I said, surprising myself. This place was a Noldor place, the place where Almasúlo belonged as surely as I belonged on the deck of the Plaid Swan whose sails I wove myself before we ever came to Valinor. "We are only here until our ship is returned."

"As you say," said the messenger. Almasúlo appeared just in time to hear the conversation. The messenger looked at his dark hair and said nothing.

"That was generous of you," Almasúlo said, later. It didn't feel like generosity. I had not built any of the houses in Míretarwa, nor planted the rosebushes, nor brought seedlings from Middle-earth. There was a history here that I was only beginning to join.

The next harvest was of lentils and we made a great pot of lentil stew, flavored with tomatoes and parsley from the garden. Again Almasúlo watched while I danced, his grey eyes tracking my movements. When the other crew had gone to bed or to play dice Almasúlo lingered. "Don't you dance?" I asked.

He stood up and I took his hand. He put one hand on my waist and took the other. I let myself sway with him and feel his rootedness in the ground.

The light of the stars over a field of wheat was nothing like starlight on the ocean but still the light reflected through the waves like something almost alive. I had loved the Plaid Swan for centuries and here I was a widow, feeling the land call to me like a seductress. I went alone to the fields that night, where I lay down and pressed my cheek against the earth.

Only a few days later there was news from Alqualondë: the Green Swan had returned from the far north, where they saw the colors of Nolofinwë in the distance. Princess Eärwen and Lady Anairë urged the sailors further and further north until the ice on the water made it impossible to go on. Still they begged and begged until Captain Quesselaiqua told them both bluntly that no ship of his was going to transgress the will of the Valar, that by the will of the Valar the Exiles were on their own, and that no princess outranked him on his own ship. They returned with a terrible question: what were any of the Exiles doing on the Helcaraxë? Where were our Swan-ships? The Green Swan had set out again to find answers and this time the White Swan was with her.

I gathered the crew in the square and told them. No one spoke. Finally Telpalaco told them of the ships being built in Alqualondë. He told them the ships would be ready soon and that there would be a place for all of them. There were some few who found that a comfort.

I walked with Telpalaco that night, needing to stay away from Almasúlo. "You don't think we will see our ship again," he said.

"I don't," I said. I did not want to let myself hope.

"The shipbuilders are working hard," he said. And of course there were, there would be other ships built and looking for crew. None would be my Plaid Swan, whose sails I wove with my hands, whose like the Teleri shall never make again.

None of that made it any easier when the news came from the White Swan and the Green Swan: the ships had been found. Or charred remnants of them, barely visible above the waterline. The ships had been burned.

I gathered the crew in the square and told them. No one spoke. Finally Telpalaco told them of the ships being built in Alqualondë. He told them the ships would be ready soon and that there would be a place for all of them. There were some few who found that a comfort. I did not. I had been a widow before. Now I was something else: a widow whose beloved would never return.

There was so much I had let myself forgive Almasúlo, the boy who had once sold roses on a pier in Alqualondë. Not this. There was no possible need that could justify this kind of destruction, not of our treasures, as precious to us as the Silmarils. Almasúlo had gone to war for someone who would do this. I found him in the potato fields and took his torch from him. "Come with me," I said. He followed me to Telpalaco's house, the house that had once been Almasúlo's. On the doorposts were carvings his family had made, telling their story. I threw the torch at them.

Then I knelt down on the grass and chanted the name of our ships. Blue Swan. Red Swan. Grey Swan. Purple Swan. Dotted Swan. Striped Swan. Star Swan. Circle Swan. Splattered Swan. My beloved, beloved Plaid Swan. The museum ship and the court ship, house shipts and celebration ships, all our treasures, ashes in the ocean. I felt the smoke from the fire of Almasúlo's home. Lord Ulmo, how could the seas themselves not burn with your tears?

Behind me I heard shouting, First Mate Telpalaco calling for help. Then I felt a splash of water. Almasúlo's long fingers were on my shoulders. I looked up to see a burnt patch of grass and a slight stain on the walls of Almasúlo's childhood home. Of course marble does not burn. I felt like an idiot.

We sat a long time weeping, all of us. I told Almasúlo to stay. He might be a Noldor Fëanorian Kinslayer but I didn't want him to go. When we all reached for each other in a shipwide embrace I pulled Almasúlo in and let him slide his arm around my back.

"I think you should tell me what you did at Alqualondë." I said to him afterwards. We were sitting by the field where the new wheat shoots were growing.

He nodded, then took a breath. "The night the Trees went out everyone took their torches and went to Tirion," he said. "We thought we were going to die. We hoped Fëanor or Nolofinwë or anyone would have an idea what to do next. Fëanor had cared for us once. We remembered the light of the Silmarils shining over our fields. Without light nothing could grow.

"My village was about halfway back in Fëanor's host," he said. "I did not hear the order myself but those at the front shouted it to those behind them. We were to take ships, as many as we could. My family ran to a small boat that no one was on. As we boarded it two Teleri archers came from behind us. One shot my mother. I rushed at him, together with my father and sister. My father threw him in the sea. Then there were more arrows. I ran to my mother. She was bleeding from her side. My father had an arrow in his arm. I thought we were all going to die. Then I saw Prince Findecáno, his sword like lightening flashing through the pier, moving more quickly than my eyes could follow. My four brothers ran to join him but Prince Findecáno did not need any help. The arrows stopped. The boat we had found was a small boat that only had room for me, my mother and father, and one of my sisters. The others found places on larger ships. We headed north. My mother died on the ship. The rest of us came to Araman. That is where I saw the daisy. There were other things growing, but I remember the daisy. I always planted them in the best light so they would grow, but there was one growing in the dark."

I suddenly felt like a fool for not questioning it. How had anything on the farm grow without light? How, for that matter, had anything grown in Middle-earth? I had no way of knowing, all our food was from the sea.

The sea, which gives its gifts in light or in darkness. "You thought only the Teleri had a way to get food," I said, "and that we were not going to share."

"I do not know that we thought anything so clear," he said. "Only that we were going to die, that the Light had been taken, and that we needed the ships. But there was still life here, and I only understood that when I saw the daisy. Yavanna's power comes through the earth. Have you felt it?"

I felt it here, on this farm. "That is why you decided to come back," I said.

"We were camping on the shore when King Arafinwë came through the crowd, asking people to follow him. I said I wanted to go. My family fought. My father said it was good that one of us was coming back, so the farm wouldn't be completely lost, so that someone from my family would survive. My brothers and sister said I was a dishonor to my mother's memory. My father shoved me into a line of people following King Arafinwë and told me to live. I'm doing my best."

That was all he was, someone trying his best to live. Like all of us.

I had a sudden terrible feeling. The Noldor were not sailors and they did not know what boats had any chance of getting to Middle-earth. "Was the boat flat-bottomed and wide, with a single mast?" I asked. He nodded.

"That boat is for oystering in shallow water," I said. "It can't cross the sea."

I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth. "They might have gotten on another ship," I said. "Or maybe they walked with Nolofinwë." Or, more likely, they tried to sail to Middle-earth on the ship they stole and instead of crossing the ocean had drowned in it, in the stolen ship for which his father killed and his mother died. Almasúlo knew that as well as I did.

"They won't come back from Mandos," Almasúlo said. "That was the doom." He carried so much, this boy, sent back by his father to carry all the hope that the Noldor had abandoned on the shore.

"I'll speak their names," I said. "I'll pray to Lord Ulmo for them. And I'm sorry for trying to burn your house," I said. "I won't do it again."

"And I'm sorry for...everything." Almasúlo said. "I wish the Silmarils had never been made. We don't need them for hope. There is hope right here, hope that the seeds we plant will give a good harvest and we will eat and celebrate and share our harvest with anyone who needs. You found it when we were gone."

Starlight on grain fields was nothing like starlight on the waters but it had a beauty of its own. His eyes caught the starlight. I have never seen the Silmarils. I did not want to see them. There was enogh here of terrible, shattering beauty.

By the time the moon rose the Plaid Swan II had been built, namesake daughter of our beloved ship. Telpalaco had seen it, he said it was beautiful, though nothing like the original. We all went into town to see.

The great sailing ships were our treasures, we will never make the like again. I could see the shipwrights had worked with all their strength and skill, but there was not a hundred years to carve details, to paint designs inside and out. The sails looked like they had been made on a factory loom, woven by a team of weavers while I was planting wheat and potatoes.

I knew at once that I was not going to captain this new ship. She was a stranger to me, She would doubtless eke a living from the water but there would be no joy in it, not for me. There are things that are gone that Lord Mandos does not return, and the doom of this falls not only on those who have left Valinor.

"You could come back with me," Almasúlo said. "Just for a time. If you do not want to go back to sea yet."

I agreed to go back for a month, by the counting of this new moon. When the month passed I made no move to leave. We married a year later, by the years of the sun. Our silver-haired daughter plays barefoot in the fields and comes home with mud between her toes. Five other crew came back with me. Three brought their families, a fourth fell in love with a Noldor from Tirion and brought her back to the farm. The village is full of silver and dark haired children. I left Plaid Swan II in the very capable hands of Captain Telpalaco.

After consulting the village I wrote to King Arafinwë, with King Olwë's consent, and repeated to the sad Noldor king that, though I would not renounce King Olwë, I acknowledged that Míretarwa is a Noldor village. I thanked King Arafinwe for saving my husband's life. I told him that for my part I forgive the Noldor of Míretarwa, that I speak their names and pray for them and hope they will return from Mandos to live in their homes, although we will have to build new houses when they do.

We keep time by the sun and moon now, but every shipsreturn I go to Alqualondë for the celebrations and return with salted cod. Every harvest in Míretarwa we dance the dance of the sea warriors and sing to Lord Ulmo. Almasúlo bakes a cake with ten layers and we sing together harmonies to Yavanna. As the night goes on we dance close, all the Teleri, and Almasúlo watches until the time comes for him to take me into his arms.

Lord of Waters, who watches over the Teleri always, watch over your people in the village of Míretarwa so far from the shore.

---

Chapter End Notes

For the prompts:

"A great multitude gathered swiftly, therefore, to hear what he would say; and the hill and all the stairs and streets that climbed upon it were lit with the light of many torches that each one bore in hand." ("Of the Flight of the Noldor")

"... many of [Finarfin's] people went with him, retracing their steps in sorrow, until they beheld once more the far beam of the Mindon upon Túna still shining in the night, and so came at last to Valinor."  ("Of the Flight of the Noldor")

"... a great part of their mariners that dwelt in Alqualondë were wickedly slain."  ("Of the Flight of the Noldor")

Other references to unnamed characters that appear in this fic:

"...no ship would they lend, nor help in the building, against the will of the Valar." ("Of the Flight of the Noldor")

"...the white sails were woven by our wives and our daughters" ("Of the Flight of the Noldor")

"...the Teleri withstood him, and cast many of the Noldor into the sea." ("Of the Flight of the Noldor")

"...the sea rose in wrath against the slayers, so that many of the ships were wrecked and those in them drowned..."   ("Of the Flight of the Noldor")

"...though all whom ye have slain should entreat for you.."  ("Of the Flight of the Noldor")

"...the Teleri forgave their ancient grief..." ("Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath")

The Plaid Swan is inspired by the Bluenose:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluenose

If you don't know the song about her it's worth a listen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBW_B8I91wM

The dance of the sea warriors is Soran Bushi:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bPHBPRT6fY

Almasúlo's cake is a Smith Island Cake. The ill-fated smaller boat was inspired by Chesapeake Bay crabbing and oystering boats.