On Tides of Light by potorov  

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ÁNI ETELEHTA

Deliver me from the fire, and from what remains when it is gone.

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Long years the white ships kept the eastern waters, and no Falmari set foot upon the land. The war moved north beyond the sight of the fleet. Smoke came back upon the wind; wounded people came down to the coast; tidings contradicted tidings. Masts were replaced. Sails were patched and patched again. Young mariners who had first crossed under another's hand learned to take the watch alone.

At the last, noon went white.

Light struck every sail at once; a moment later the sound reached the fleet. Blocks leapt against the masts. Ash marked the canvas. The Sea drew away from the coast until drowned stones showed black, and then returned above the quays of the Falas.

The Falmari had borne no swords and set no foot upon the land, but ruin found them upon the water. The easiest course was west, away from the breaking shore.

Vencáno put his helm east.

He gave no command to any other ship. His own answered beneath his hands, and for a little while only one white prow pointed into the ruin. Then a second turned. Three more came after it. Ships already deep with wounded held westward; no signal condemned them. Those that still had room followed one by one.

They lowered boats where streets had been and hauled up whoever reached a hand. They laid gangways into water against walls whose doors opened beneath the tide. Morgoth had fallen. Behind the ships, Beleriand went on drowning.

When Tol Eressëa came into view, many ships put in there. The Telerin masters carried the damaged hulls onward to the yards of their making; when that first landing would bear no more, other vessels went with them.

After the long westward passage, those ships came into Alqualondë before dawn, riding so low that the black water seemed already laid across the lower banks of oars. Salt had dried white above the waterlines. Sails made in the Swanhaven were patched with cloth from tents, cloaks, and banners whose devices no one upon the quays knew. As they passed beneath the great arch, the hanging lamps poured gold across torn canvas, and every crystal in the broad pavements cast that light again upon grey blankets and empty hands. The splendour did not soften what had come ashore. It made visible how little those aboard possessed. Reeds were caught in the seams of garments. People slept where rope should have lain. Others stood as if they had forgotten what standing was for.

No trumpet announced them. The first sound from the ships was the knocking of one loose block against a mast.

Victory came ashore with blankets about its shoulders and carried children who did not wake when they were borne from the ships. There were Sindar of the woods and havens; people of Gondolin and Nargothrond; remnants of the Noldor under many houses and under none; and those who had fled once, twice, or so often that they no longer answered when asked of home. Some carried keys. Some carried cups or tools. One man came ashore holding the hinge of a door. Few had anything for which a house remained.

For most, the Swanhaven was a first landing and not a final home; when they had strength, many would pass to Tol Eressëa. But first their names had to be recorded, their wounds washed, and places found for sleep. Healers took over the boat-sheds nearest the quays, while bakers carried bread down the jewelled walks. Beneath the hanging lamps, scribes worked upon sailcloth when paper failed. The queues ran from the harbour arch to the palace stairs. Blankets were counted in the morning and counted again at noon, and the two numbers never agreed.

The Falmari went down to receive them. Along the quay, when one mother's arms began to fail beneath a sleeping child, another slipped her hands beneath them. Together they crossed the stone. Alqualondë asked no one to be healed. Neither would it let them pass unseen.

For years ten thousand households had kept one name apiece beside their lamps. Now they passed among the people coming ashore and asked those names.

Sometimes there was an answer. More often someone had known the named one, had seen the house where they dwelt, or could say only that they had still been alive when winter came. Most often there was nothing. Then the household went home after dark and lit the lamp again.

On the third day Astoron came to the end of one line with a short name in his mouth, and found her.

She wore a grey blanket, and dry roots of river-reeds were caught in one hem. She was thinner than any Falmari had believed one of the Eldar could become. Astoron said, "Círeth," and she looked up.

That was her name.

Astoron looked at the living woman and remembered the shell he had set upon the water year after year. Only then did he understand what Eärwen had done upon the sea-wall. The lamp had carried grief out upon the tide, but it had not sealed Círeth among the dead. It had kept a place for an answer.

She had not died at Sirion. When the armed companies came down upon the haven, she had gone into the reed-beds with half her household. They came out three days later, when no one remained to seek them, and afterwards went north with Círdan's people. Elwing had not seen them. No tidings had passed west.

Astoron tried to tell her that her name had been spoken at his family's table whenever the year returned. He was not a man who explained himself well. He reached the word *table*, stopped, and looked at his daughter. She finished for him. Then she asked Círeth whether she would come to their table. Círeth said that she would.

The scribe brought out the roll made from Elwing's telling. He took a knife to the heading *The Dead of Beleriand* and scraped until the parchment shone thin. Then he wrote, in smaller letters, *The Names Spoken in Alqualondë*.

Yárawë went through the lines four times. No one answered to Lothril, and she did not find the face she sought. The last mariner of the Falas told her that the Shipwright had not come. Círdan had filled every vessel he could with those willing to depart and sent them west; then he had turned again towards Middle-earth, for his people would yet require ships and someone must remain to build them. He sent no gift, and no message but one sentence, which the mariner had been required to learn without changing a word:

"Tell them I will come on the last ship."

Yárawë did not ask when the last ship would sail.

Upon the eastward voyage the Telerin mariners had kept the helms while Finarfin's Noldor obeyed their orders. Now, upon the westward return, they carried Exiles: some who had followed Fingolfin over the Ice; some born beneath the mountains of Middle-earth, who had never seen Alqualondë; some bearing names that opened wounds before any deed of their own could be known. The old shadow had crossed the Sea with the fleet. It did not vanish when the gangplanks fell.

For a while the Falmari helped them ashore without meeting their eyes.

A woman born in Gondolin wore an iron key upon a cord. It opened, she said, a workroom now beneath the Sea. A widow of Alqualondë whose two brothers had died upon the quay set bread before her, stood looking at the key, and took the bread away again. The Noldorin woman made no protest. After a little while the widow returned and set it down once more.

The two women ate at the same table. When winter came, they mended a torn hanging there together.

At another door a Noldorin child was admitted while her father was asked to remain outside. A shipwright shared his tools with a smith of Gondolin for three years before asking his name. Vencáno ate beside those who had followed Finarfin and left any room in which the sons of Fëanor were defended. No king proclaimed a day upon which forgiveness began.

***

When the year came round, the singers performed the seven movements. Those newly come from Middle-earth did not always enter the hall. Some stood outside. Some departed when Sirion was named. Some endured the whole and afterwards could not speak until morning. Círeth attended once, then stayed away for nine years.

The Falmari had made Beleriand out of Elwing's telling: green beneath unbroken stars, lamps still burning in Menegroth, and light lying untroubled upon the water of Eglarest. In their song the tide at Eglarest sounded against the round stones of Alqualondë, and in Neldoreth the night-birds had voices borrowed from the Sea. The survivors corrected what they could bear to hear. The next copy changed. Other errors had no name yet.

The headings changed also. The first copy had named the movements in Telerin. Círeth asked how they could name a song for the dead in words many of the dead had never known. She was right. They set the names down again in Quenya, which the Falmari and many of the newly come shared; but no one said that all the lost had spoken it.

The singers attempted an eighth movement and could not keep it.

One master made a triumph of the fleet's return. It was performed once. When its last chord ended, three households were still standing beside lamps whose names had received no answer. The city would not hear it again.

Another made a lament so beautiful that no one who heard it doubted her skill. It left no room for Astoron returning to his shed, for a child born after the drowning, or for laughter heard unwillingly through an open door. Those who had lived through the night would not sing it twice.

A third made a plea for every voice together. Its final chord resolved into a brightness that no one in the hall recognised.

On the night of its third failure, the youngest singer asked whether Húrin had known that day would return.

No one answered at first.

Then Yárawë said, "No."

"Why did he cry it?"

Astoron had come from the north shed with an adze in his hand, its haft newly bound. He laid it upon the table beside the unfinished score.

"The cry did not fell them," he said.

"No," said Yárawë.

"The axe did."

The singer looked at the blank final stave. "Then what did the cry do?"

Astoron touched the haft once, where his hand had darkened the wood.

Yárawë looked towards Astoron when she answered, though she seemed not to know that she did so.

"It told those who heard why the axe rose again."

The master of song struck out the bright last chord. She did not replace it.

The words that remained were singular.

*Áni etelehta.*

Deliver me.

No choir knew what bound the person beside them. No voice could promise another's release. The master set no music beneath the words and gave no note upon which all must end.

Since then the singers of Alqualondë have performed seven movements. At the end of **OMENTIË** they stand and do not sit down.

Then the eighth begins.

No singer begins it. The doors are opened.

The people go out beneath the harbour arch and walk beside the water with shell lamps: those bearing lamps with names first, and after them those bearing lamps upon which nothing is written. Each bearer carries a separate silence. Most find no answer. They set the lights upon the ebb nevertheless.

The eighth movement has no fixed music. It goes out with them.

Afterwards the shells are gathered where the water returns them, or they are lost. The city goes home. The lamps used for the vigil are dried and put away. Other lights are kindled for ordinary need.

Between one vigil and the next, Astoron placed an adze in the hands of the smith born in Gondolin and showed him how the Teleri joined a keel. The Noldo spoiled the first piece of timber. Astoron rebuked him, and on the following morning gave him another.

The second piece was spoiled also, though less badly. On the third morning the smith came before Astoron and swept the bench. Astoron laid down a third piece without being asked. Neither spoke of the first two. By winter the chalk-line of a keel had begun to lengthen across the floor.

Círeth's household ate twice each week at the house of Astoron's daughter. They disagreed over the names of winds and over whether a mast should sing when it was properly stayed. Once Círeth left in anger before the meal was served. The next day she returned for a knife she had forgotten, and remained to mend a torn sail.

The widow of the quay and the woman with the iron key quarrelled so bitterly in the spring that neither entered the other's house for a season. At harvest the widow fell from a ladder. The Noldorin woman came when called and stayed through the night. Before the winter storms the widow gave her a key to the house. She did not ask for the iron key in return.

At first each such deed stood alone. No one knew whether another would follow it. But after a while the next deed did not always find an empty place. A tool had been laid ready. A door expected a knock. Bread was cut for one more before the guest was seen. None of these things promised the morning. They gave the next pair of hands somewhere to begin.

Children were born who knew Beleriand only through incompatible voices. Ships were repaired. Bread burned. Songs were corrected and corrected again. Some friendships failed. Some wounds opened upon an ordinary word. The star crossed the sky whether anyone watched or not.

The next year the seven movements returned. The smith of Gondolin stood beside Astoron, both their hands scarred by the same adze. Círeth and Astoron's daughter still did not agree whether a properly stayed mast should sing. The widow and the woman with the iron key stood three places apart. When **MITTARË** began, grief came among them no smaller than before. It did not find them as it had left them.

At the end of **OMENTIË** the doors opened. Somewhere upon the sea-wall one voice said, *Áni etelehta.* Farther down another spoke the same words, not in answer, but as a petition of her own. Then another voice took them up. They did not become a chorus. They passed by hearing, as one lamp showed the next bearer where the water could be reached.

The lamp-walk opened another year.

Sixty years after she landed, Círeth entered the hall upon the night of the vigil and stood before the singers.

"You should let it go," she said.

No one mistook what she meant.

"I was at Sirion. You were not. Every year you give the country back to me in voices it never had. Your light lies wrongly upon the water. Your trees make the wrong sound. You have held my wound open in both hands and called it keeping faith."

No one answered.

At last Astoron's daughter rose. She had been young when Círeth came ashore; now she was keeper of the vigil by the consent of the households.

"Tell us to stop," she said, "and we will stop."

Círeth stood for a long while. Her mouth opened, but no word came. The hall waited. No king, mariner, loremaster, or singer spoke into the silence for her.

At length she crossed to the book and laid one finger upon the passage concerning Sirion.

"Not this," she said.

The master of song closed the book. The passage was not sung again. In later copies its place was left open; no one supplied what Círeth had taken away.

She went out with the others. At the sea-wall she chose a lamp with nothing written upon it. Behind her the book remained closed upon the lectern, and no one reopened it merely because she had joined the walk.

Círeth knelt upon the wet stone, holding the shell until the cold had entered both knees. Then she set it upon the ebb. Her hands remained above the water for a moment after the weight had gone.

When she stood, Astoron's daughter was beside her, but did not touch her until Círeth reached first.

That touch did not answer every silence. Círeth had returned and corrected the song. Those whose names had vanished could not.

When the year came round again, Astoron's daughter remained upon the sea-wall after the named lamps had gone, holding one nameless light between both hands. Yárawë remained with her.

"We do not know where those whose names are lost may be," Astoron's daughter whispered. "We do not know whether any road returns them to us."

"No," said Yárawë. "We have no tidings."

Yárawë looked at the small light between the younger woman's hands.

Then she said, *Áni etelehta.*

Astoron's daughter spoke the words after her. The same words did not make the same prayer, and neither claimed to know what the other asked deliverance from.

She set the lamp upon the tide.

Farther along the wall another voice spoke, and another pair of hands lowered a light. No choir gathered the words. The harbour filled with small lights going outward. Dark water lay between them and widened as the tide drew them apart. Above them Eärendil climbed his accustomed road.

Elwing did not walk in Alqualondë, but she never missed the vigil. After Eärendil was set upon his road she went north along the shore, and there the white tower was built for her. The sea-birds came to her there. During the long years in which the fleet kept the eastern waters, she learned their tongue, having once worn their shape.

In the evening she climbed into the wind and watched the light rise over the edge of the world. When it came, she went to meet Eärendil upon white wings. She always had much to tell him.

Once each year she began with the harbour. One year she told him that the blank place at Sirion remained and a new ship had touched the water. Another year a child learned the names of winds from more than one shore. At every vigil the named lamps and the nameless went upon the ebb, and nobody stopped.

In the twilight of spring, amid gossiping gulls, familiar sails filled the horizon. In that brief respite, reunited with her love once more, she never spoke of a promised dawn. She spoke of the countless glimmering lights, each holding total darkness at bay, each fiercely bright upon the boundless dark sea, though dawn made no such promise to them.

 

Aurë entuluva. 

Dawn shall come again.