My mother's story, and so in turn my story, starts with the day that she was chosen to go to the West, in her fifteenth year. Before that time she had lived much as I lived, a dull safe life, and so she had never seen the need to tell it to me. The time that came after the safety was grimmer but exciting, and so this is where her story, as she told it, always began.
Orders had come from the West, from the One of the South Himself who had set up residence there, demanding young men as soldiers, and my mother's tribe was one of the first that the decree reached, set as it was in the hills on the Eastern shore of the Sea of Rhûn. And of course where the young men went some young women were always chosen to follow them, though never to fight, for as in many other parts of Middle-Earth the women of Rhûn did not go into battle alongside their husbands. The ones who were chosen were girls whose mothers wept but whose fathers were willing to give them up because they were too expensive to keep, because the family did not have enough for yet another dowry, because they were rebellious, because they were too ugly to ever marry. More girls than could be fed were a burden in the desert, even near the sea as they were, and the families who cared less were only too glad to be rid of them.
But Rookheeya, which means running-water, was not poor or headstrong or unloved or ugly. She was quite beautiful, really; even in a land where such a trait did not last long she carried much of her beauty with her into old age. Her eyes were lighter than others and her skin was the colour of the wild honey that could found in the rocks and caves, and the sheen of her hair was like gold, a sight that is common in the desert but rare in the colouring of its people, though it was seldom seen beneath her headscarf by anyone but me. It was not even her height that settled the decision of the people to sell her, though she was half a head taller than many of the women and as tall as most of the men. It was that she had no one who could speak for her: she had no mother to weep over her fate, for the woman who named her for her gurgling laugh as a baby had died before she had begun to bleed each moon and cover her head, and her father had succumbed to a wasting illness a few months after her sister Bilhah's wedding. Bilhah herself, dark as her sister was fair, fat with her second child and only a year older than Rookheeya, could do nothing to help; her husband had little standing in their tribe and no claim of ownership on Rookheeya to protect her from those eager to send her away to satisfy the troops.
And so Bilhah could only embrace her sister for one last time and sob into her husband's shoulder, as Rookheeya was marched away with the other chosen girls. Many women cried that day, whether truly or only in act, but my mother was not one of them. As far as I know, she never shed one tear as she was taken away from her home.
"I would not cry, because I swore that I would come back," she told me many years later. "I swore to my sister and my brother by marriage as I bade them farewell that I would come back. And I meant to keep that promise. I saw no reason to weep, because I was certain that I would see them again." And so she did not look back in sorrow as the other maidens did when the village disappeared behind the hills of rock, and kept her eyes only on her sandals and the sand that blew over her feet as she marched. All of the women were obliged to walk for that whole long journey, for the horses that the troop had were to be ridden only by the most important of the men.
It soon became clear to the girls why they were being taken along, for the men wished for bed mates both on their journey and when they reached wherever it was that they were to be sent. Many of the maidens that had been given to the troop refused the advances of the soldiers and so were taken by force, but Rookheeya was not among that unhappy number. My mother, wise woman that she was, had no daydreams about keeping herself pure so that she might escape back to her tribe and make an honourable marriage, and she felt that if she was to lose her maidenhead she would at least lose it on her own terms. And so she spread her legs where the others kept theirs closed, and so by submitting to the men she ensured her own survival.
"Because I never refused, I was hardly ever beaten," she would tell me, in the long hot afternoons when we rocked the narrow-necked jars and strained the water from goat curd. "I got good food, better than I would have had if my obedience had been thrashed into me. They were gentle with me, or as gentle as such men can be. It was enough. I never had cause to cry when I was taken, for it only hurt for a moment the first time, but I never found much pleasure in it either. Pleasure in coupling is solely for the men."
The company made their journey slowly around the Sea of Rhûn, picking their way through the foothills on the Western shore, and when they were clear they marched across wilder-land for many days and nights. The ground, though no longer covered in a carpet of hot sand, caused blisters to rise upon the delicate feet of the women again and again until the skin hardened, but still the poor bruised, tired things were pressed on, weeping for the homeland that was left further and further behind them. Still my mother did not weep; she took her mind off her pain and sorrow by watching the lie of the land around her as they passed through it, noting any possible landmark. Her memories of that time and the tales of that march would prove of great use later on, little though she knew it at the time.
She watched her companions as well, and later she would describe them to me as she had described the land. There was Werru, poor little Werru who had only been twelve when she had left the tribe, and was taken by the men at her first blood despite her efforts to hide it and save herself from rape, a girl who would sob in the night. There were Inna and Benti, twin sisters who would have been sold as concubines if their father had not found another use for them, one with curly hair and one with straight who rarely spoke to anyone but each other. There was Ishara, the oldest of all the girls at eighteen, who had been married but had been rejected by her husband when it emerged that her courses had never come and she was barren. Tuki told songs and stories to keep the spirits of the women as high as she could, stories that my mother would remember to tell to me, and Huna would entertain the men by falling to the ground at times and biting and kicking them savagely whenever they came to her and baited the demon in her, froth boiling from her mouth, though Rookheeya always believed that she was ill more than anything else. It took a brave man to bed her, though in their turn all the girls were taken; some willingly and some less so.
After that they turned more to the South and travelled through lands as brown as their name, until they came to the river called Anduin. They followed it until the greenery on the horizon told them that their journey was nearly at an end. It was nightfall when they entered between the trees of the forest rightly call Mirkwood, and came at length to the great stronghold of the One of the South, that many at that time called the Necromancer, that place that the foes of the One named Dol Guldur.
Once there, the girls who were no longer maidens were set to work at once, some to mend ruined garments, some to melt oil for the many lamps that flamed through the shadowy citadel, some to wipe floors and some unfortunate few to strip hides for tanning or to clean instruments of torture – for the stronghold was not only a seat of power, it was also a dungeon from which few escaped. Many prisoners were kept there, Men and the short grown beings called Dwarves, deep in the inner ranks of the stronghold, near to where the One of the South dwelt in full darkness.
Fortune was with my mother, for it was rare that she had to go to such a place since it was her task to help cook food for the many soldiers and prisoners, and on occasion to serve that food to the Men that served the One and to the beings that our people called the 'shadowed ones', the servants of the One who could not bear to walk in the light of the Sun and needs must hide in darkness during the day. Rookheeya never called them anything other than creatures, and she never hid her disgust for them whenever she talked of them, which was not often. She would sometimes allow me to pass my hands over the scars on her arms and back from where they had flicked their whips at her in cruel fun as she hurriedly passed them, though she was certainly never beaten as badly as some of the poor captives held there at the Necromancer's pleasure. By keeping her head down and keeping quiet she avoided their attention, and her loveliness did not draw them as it drew the men. The creatures had no love for beauty, and would have marred it if they could, which was why many girls were often lashed across the face in spite – but not my mother. Not she. She was determined to survive, by any means.
By the time the troop had reached the stronghold Rookheeya had lain with many of the men, and in the months that would follow she was to lie with many more, Men of the East and Men of the South alike. "They were all the same, after a while. It was like tending dogs. Sometimes they would bite, sometimes they would be desperate to rut, and sometimes they were just too sleepy." When she spoke of those times to me or to my aunt or to anyone else, my mother never showed the least bit of shame nor betrayed any desire for any pity that might be shown. "I take no pride in my actions, but I do not regret them," she would sometimes say. "If I had not done as I did, I would have lived only a few weeks in that dank pit."
"Most of the other girls called me whore or slut," she confessed to me as she braided my hair, speaking words I was too young to hear, "but I was not hurt too much by sharing beds and I had enough to eat and some water to wash in at times and to wash my hair, and so I was satisfied. A few of the others were doing the same as I, and we were better off for it. In that hole in the forest where the Sun never came and the air was filled with the screams of those who were being tortured, if you didn't have enough food you did not last long. Good gods, it was a poisonous place. Those who refused to change their ways did not survive; they died like flowers in the high heat. And we knew," she went on, as she tugged on my hair, "we knew it was better than bedding the creatures, at least."
The same poison that struck down her fellows also seemed to kill the babes that formed in her womb. Three times during her imprisonment there her belly had begun to swell, since she had no way of stopping the seed of the men from taking root within her, and then it would flatten again as blood washed away what hopes she might have had, though she probably would have drowned her infants if she had carried them full term rather than let them see with their innocent eyes the horror in which she lived. And even as she was recovering from her third miscarriage she was ordered to prepare meals for a new prisoner who had been brought in and to carry them to his cell. Filled with pain and barely able to walk, she did as she was told; plugging herself with rags to quell the bleeding she made her way along dim stone passages with dry meat and dry bread and thin soup, at last reaching the right alcove in the right wall and peering in at the one who was to receive these meagre rations.
"At first I could hardly see him. But then the torches in those parts of the dungeons were terrible, and so I could hardly see the face of anyone, man or creature alike. And as my eyes grew used to the light I was able to make out his dirty torn blue robes and how loosely they hung upon him; I could see, even though he was slumped against the far wall, that he was very tall, perhaps taller even than me, though I was never to see him stand so that I could measure his height. His long dark beard was matted and there were cuts and scratches on his face and one of his eyes was closed with a bruise; his nose looked like a hawk's beak that had been broken and his breath came heavy and guttural. I doubted that he could actually see me or the guard who stood outside his cell.
"The man shouted out to him that there was food, but he made no reply. I doubted that he could hear either of us as well. Two or three times the guard called, using our own tongue and the Southron language and even, with a struggle, the words of the common tongue of the West, but each time the prisoner was silent. Finally he grew impatient, and opened the door with his key and shoved me through, telling me to go and give the food to him and then come away; he did not do it himself, of course, for the man might be violent and a guard was still more important than a maid. I thought evil thoughts at him as I made my way across the grimy floor, to crouch not too close to the huddled shape over by the wall.
"I told him quietly that I had brought him food, in our own tongue for I had little enough of the other languages I had heard in that pit; I had mostly learned names for parts of the body and little else. Perhaps there was something in my voice which was absent from that of the guard which made him look straight at me at last, with an eye that was huge and shining brown, and made him try to force his face into a smile that looked quite painful. It was pleasant, I think, for him to hear a voice that did not scream or shout, and to see a person who did not threaten him. And I think that it was pleasant, too, for him to see a fair face, for I knew that my looks, though they might have wilted, had not yet been faded by the work I was forced to do both day and night.
"But still he did not speak, and when I took my chances and edged a little closer he only shook his head slowly and fumbled weakly with his hands, to show me what I had not seen from the doorway; that he was too weak even to feed himself.
"So I fed him. First I spooned the soup into his mouth as you would do for an infant or a sick person, and then I tore the dry bread apart with my fingers and softened it in the watery remnants left in the bowl and slipped them between his lips. He was able to chew and swallow most of them, though it took him some time with each mouthful and once he choked and I had to hit his back so that the mess came out in a splatter on the floor. But at last the bread was gone, and then we started on the meat. That was the hardest, I think, for I could not soften it for him save by chewing the strips before I gave them to him one at a time, and he would still have to chew them himself for ever so long before he could swallow, and the guard outside was getting more and more impatient. If it were not for me he would probably have refused the meat outright, but for my sake he continued to chew and swallow, however painful or tiring it might have been.
"When at last we were done he thanked me – for the meal itself or for helping him to eat it, I don't know. He simply said, 'I thank you,' in our tongue, and then he curled up and fell asleep as easy as does a child, and he didn't wake again even when the guard slammed open the cell door in anger and yelled at me to come out at once. I gathered up the bowl and the tray and made my way out of the cell without a word; I was so confused. I had never heard a voice like his. I don't know how I could describe it; I don't think that I could, even now, so many years later. But I heard his voice, and what was more I heard it thanking me. No being, man or woman or creature, had shown gratitude towards me since I had been brought to that dreadful place. Now one man, one prisoner, had been grateful for what I had done, however small a service it was, and for perhaps the first time in that dank hole my heart lifted."
Rookheeya would bring food to this same prisoner for the next two months. As far as she knew he was only given one meal a day, and it was plain as time went on that he was being tortured most brutally in the spaces between her visits to the cell, for the number of cuts grew with each visit and his wounded eye was now useless and blind. She took to bringing with her a healing salve she had stolen from the garments of one who had shared her bed, which she would smear over his many wounds when she was certain that the guard was not looking. They exchanged few words, those two, but it was enough to them. What would they have said, in any case, with a soldier outside the door listening to their every word? She served the ones who kept him imprisoned and who tortured him, and that was all that had brought them together. But she always said to me that something more than that kept them together.
My mother always professed that she loved only three men in her life: her father, her brother who had died before he was fourteen, and Bilhah's husband Rodren. But when she spoke of her visits to the man in blue and her eyes would fix on her hands as they moved over each other so deftly in whatever she was doing, sewing or spinning or cooking, I would think that she lied to save herself. Love is far more than giving your body to someone; love is giving your life to them – and though Rookheeya proclaimed her distaste for men in general for as long as I knew her, perhaps it was because the only man she could ever have married was beyond her reach forever.
It was in the second month that Rookheeya conceived yet again, for she was still serving the soldiers in their beds as she served the captive his food, and once more the knowledge of life within her brought her low. The seventh morning after her moon blood had failed to come she walked in sorrow to the alcove in the wall, certain of the burden she once more carried, and when she was permitted to enter she did not meet the man's eyes as she squatted before him.
I can still remember her words of what happened next, for I asked her to tell me this story again and again because I loved it so.
"I was so ashamed," she would always begin. "I knew that I would not carry this child for long, and it was dreadful for me to know that it would die inside me. It is a terrible thing, to have something that should be safe inside you die, and a horror that I pray you will never know. The pain never grows less, not if you live for a hundred years. I could not look at him; I knew that he was more wounded and in far more pain than I was, but in my selfishness and my sorrow I thought that no pain could be as great as mine. I handed his food to him and did not let my flesh touch his; I wished only to be out of there.
"And then he astonished me; he purposefully reached out and touched my hand. He had never done that before. I was so startled that I could not help but look at him, and I was caught in his shining eye, his only eye now. There was wonder there and such gentleness as I could hardly remember seeing in the face of anyone any longer.
"'Why are you sorrowful?' he asked me. 'You are carrying a girl.'
"I did not know how he could know of my secret. All I knew was that I had been laid bare and open in a manner that defied even the cruelty of the creatures that tormented his fellows, and I hated him for that moment. But I did not let my hatred show. I took my hand away from his and my eyes away from his, and I stared down at the food I had brought him as I spoke, loathing the words that escaped me. 'Then she will die before she is born, as the others did before her again and again; and I will die with her, for I am nearly dead from miscarrying.'
"He said nothing in reply. Perhaps he could think of nothing to say. I took the bowl from the tray and held it out to his lips for him to drink from. But because I kept my eyes on my knees as I did so I did not see what he did with the hand that had touched mine, and so when I felt his touch upon my stomach I nearly cried out, and I dropped the bowl and the soup fell onto his sleeve and his fingers tightened on the flesh beneath my garment. I had felt the touch of many men before that time, on my breasts and neck and back, up and down my legs and between them, on perhaps every part of my body. I was no stranger to the feel of a man's fingers, but the heat of that dry hand on my still flat belly felt far more intimate than any of those times. It was as if he saw beyond me, through my dress and through my skin and flesh, deep into my body where you lay, growing. And for that time it was as if you reached out to greet him, young and unknowing as you were, and I sat there and watched it all. I saw the light grow in his eye and, I swear, I felt my belly grow warm, warmer under his hand than it should have done. I felt strength within me, and new life, and the feeling stayed with me even when he took his hand away at last, and the light did not die from his open eye.
"'I think that you will both live,' was all that he said, and he did not speak another word as I tore up his bread and meat for him. It was as if he no longer needed to speak, that his days of talking were over and done, as if what life was in him had gone into the babe that slept within me, into you. When he had finished eating, I in turn did something I had never done before, to him or to any man. I blessed him: I ran my finger down his forehead and his broken hawk's beak of a nose and I whispered words of peace and joy to him. I told him that the gods and goddesses looked favourably on him and would not abandon him, and he seemed pleased by those words, for he sighed happily. I looked over my shoulder as I left the cell, and I could see by the smile that was still upon his face and the light that was still in his one eye that he was ready to die, that he need do nothing else in this lifetime. The thought both pleased me and hurt me deeply, for I knew that while he was able to escape I was to be left behind, and now without a friend in the whole stronghold."
The news came the next day that the man in blue had died under torture. Rookheeya wept for the one whose name she did not know as she had never wept for her unborn children, but she did not let her grief consume her. She had been given a precious gift, she knew, as she felt life beginning to stir in her and as I began to grow. The man's last words to her had been correct; this child would live, she knew. She did her tasks in silence, and for the first time she refused the advances of the men to share her bed. She professed that she felt a sickness within her that was best not shared, but in truth she wanted nothing more than to keep me, her daughter, safe and untouched by the foulness of any man. She did not even know who the one who had sired me was, but that was no matter to her. She began, again for the first time, to make plans for our escape, for she had no desire to bring me into such a world as she was surrounded by. Schemes came and went as her belly slowly, almost cautiously, began to swell and continued to swell against her garment.
But in the end she did not need to carry out any of her plans, for soon the men and creatures were running out to fight, and the few women hid in corners and prayed to the gods to save them from yet another doom that waited outside the stronghold. Rookheeya sat under a table in the filthy kitchens and hugged herself, and waited for an end to come to the fighting, though not to her or her child. She could not believe that we would die; she would not believe that we could. As the sounds of battle echoed overhead she hoped that the ones attacking the place would win and that they would let her see the Sun again.
It was only when she heard the rumble of falling walls above her that she knew she must get out of the stronghold, now, or perish. She made her way up the passages at a slow run, and still she did not pray to the gods, feeling that they had other prayers to attend to. She trusted to the words of the man in blue. She climbed the rising stairs, and when she found that they had been blocked with stone by the defenders she crawled over the rocks, through dust and grit and the blood that came from the scratches on her skin, and reached for the hole of blue sky she saw above her.
"When I fought my way out of the hole at last, what a sight I saw! I would never forget that day if I live to be a hundred. There were many trees, many dark trees casting shadows upon the ground. There were long-lifes, so beautiful they were, and more than I could count, and they fired arrows that seemed to blot out the Sun. The Sun! It shone down upon their heads and made them gleam with dappled light, so that they looked like the spirits that fly high above in the heavens. I heard screams as some were hit by answering arrows and I saw them fall, but I could also see the walls of the stronghold from where I lay, and as I watched I saw that they were being stormed.
"And then I saw a figure in grey leading more of the long-lifes forward, and shining figures alongside him. They glowed so brightly that they hurt my eyes. The figure in grey held up a staff and pointed it at the walls, and then…oh, it is hard to describe. Then it felt as if a shadow was lifted from the place, and the poison that claimed the lives of so many was gone, all at once. And then there was a cheer from the walls. The fortress was taken; the long-lifes had won. I thought that in the confusion I might be able to escape, but even as I struggled out of the hole some of them saw me and ran over to take hold of me.
"I feared that they would take me prisoner or even rape me and I made to run away, but they ran so fast that they soon overtook me and laid hold of me. They led me, one each holding my arms, down the face of the rock and past many bodies. I saw the faces of men I had lain with, now dead in the dust, and many dead creatures. I was brought before the figure in grey where it was resting, and I saw that it was an old man in grey robes. He asked me in our tongue who I was and why I was there, and when he heard that I was a slave girl brought along by the Men of the East he said that I was no longer a slave and was free to go, though he looked at me the whole while in curiosity, as if I were a riddle he must decipher. But then he spoke to the long-lifes and they led me away, and I saw him no more.
"The long-lifes were gentle to me, and they brought together all the survivors that they found when they searched the stronghold. The men they kept prisoner, but the few of us women that had lived, Ishara, Benti, Inna, Werru and I they led to the edge of the great forest, giving us food and water enough for the journey home and pointing us in the right direction. And so those of us who had come from our tribe set off. That journey was the longest time of my life, longer even than the months in the stronghold. I hated going on, and I hated stopping, I hated my food and I hated not having any food; at time I even hated my companions, but I also needed them and loved them. We kept together, for we knew that if we separated we perished; we helped each other to walk and to live. Even so, in wilder-land we scraped out a grave for one of us along the way: Inna. She had survived with her twin for so long and had seen the Sun again after the shadows, only to die under the hot gaze. We buried Benti's heart with her sister; she would never be the same again after that, as if some part of her had truly gone into the ground, dead. There were times when I was so weary that I thought of lying down and never rising again. But I did not think such thoughts for long at all. I wanted to live, for me and for you and for the one who had given life to both of us. I had been filled with misery in my other pregnancies, now I was filled with hope. I knew that you would live to be born, and that I would live to bear you."
They stumbled into their village in the early morning, close on five months after they had set out from the stronghold of the Necromancer, when the mothers were stepping out of their doors and tents with jars and pots to fetch water from the well. Though they were older and worn and scarred upon their arms and legs and faces, the village people knew them and could not mistake them, and they stared as the ones who had returned hobbled past them; and so did the few men who had risen and left their homes at this time before the full sun. The women needed to say nothing for they had nothing to say to any of them, and only their scars reproached them, the scars which healed to white lines on brown skin but which would never fade and which Rookheeya at least refused to cover up in later life, a testament to the shame of those who had sold her and her companions away. In later years men and women would often avert their eyes from the faces of those who had come back: from Werru, who bore a broken nose and broken teeth from the brunt of a stick that had lashed her across the face, and Benti who was milky-white blind in one eye and who had black scars marring her face and hands from the illness she had caught from raw tanned hides and which she had barely survived, carrying her sorrow that was darker than her scars, and Ishara whose right arm had been burned near to the bone by flames and who limped badly to the day that she died. And few could ever meet my mother's eyes, though she had no great wounds on her skin.
She walked on, on to her sister's house, and she came face to face with my aunt as Bilhah was stepping out for water herself. The breaking of the jar she let fall to the ground and her own scream brought her husband running, to find his wife embracing my mother and weeping, and Rookheeya crying at last, for the first time since she left the stronghold.
My aunt took Rookheeya into her house without a murmur, calling down blessings upon all the gods and goddesses for bringing her little sister back to her, and Rodren kindly had a house built for her so that she should not feel she was living on her family's charity, a house that she shared with her companions whom she now saw as her sisters as well. And that was where I was born some months later, on a mild night with the stars shining overhead and my aunt Bilhah, Werru, Benti, Ishara and the midwife Kala in attendance on my mother.
For her first time my mother was not in much pain, and it took only a few hours of sweating and straining to bring me into the world, all of her sisters making a throne to support her and keep her from falling when she stood on the bricks. Her hips were wide enough so that her flesh did not even tear when I came out, despite my size. I was a big baby; the midwife said I was one of the biggest she'd ever seen, grinning wildly as she held me up in triumph and as I began to wail for Rookheeya's breast. After I was fed my mother slept to recover from her exhaustion, and the women painted my hands with henna as if I were a bride, and whispered charms and spells to defend me against spirits that might come in the night to steal me away. They cooed over me, the three who had gone and returned in particular, seeing me as the child that they would never have. They kissed me and blessed me until I began to cry again, and my mother awoke to take me into her arms and rock us both to sleep.
After the customary two months of waiting until she was considered clean again Rookheeya listened to all the suggestions made by her sisters, both blood and bond, for my name. And then she named me Adahni for the Queen of Heaven who smiles down upon the world and makes the stars shine bright for travellers and those who foretell the future, the Queen whose consort is Salim, the Lord of Storms and Winds; the Queen who had shone upon my birth and cast a lucky future for me.
My story, then, had begun. But the stories of my mother and her sisters were not done yet.