Born in the Caul

Dear Gwindor,

You'll tease me, like you always do, for writing this note on the eve of battle. You'll laugh and toss your head, and tell me it's bad luck- to leave sentimentality to girls plucking daisies. But regardless, I must write, for I fear leaving things unsaid. I'm not like you- I wasn't born in the caul; can't see the future, don't know if tomorrow will come. So I write in case we don't speak again. In case we don't make it back together this time.

You were always the stronger one. The bolder one. Yet sometimes you suppose I am the better one- gentler in spirit, as our mother was, and less given to those vices of brashness and wrath that marked our father. You suppose you'll end up like him: alone, full of regret.

But you will not. When I'm gone you must tell yourself that you will not, for I won't be there to tell you myself. You must believe, as I believe, that you are good. That you deserve love and joy and peace. Know that I trust you, my elder brother, and since the day of my birth have admired how you always tried to do right, at any cost to yourself.

Do you remember when toy swords were bought for us, inscribed with our names? By mistake, I dropped mine down the gorge, where it was lost. You offered me your own, but, spoiled whelp that I was, I refused it, whining that it bore your name and not mine. Then, brother, you threw your own toy down the gorge after mine, proclaiming that if one of us should be without, then we both would. Such have you ever been.

But no longer after I am gone. You must have your life though I no longer have mine, and you mustn't hold back on following your heart even if mine beats no longer in Arda. Trust it, always, as I do. At our next meeting, I expect to hear that you've lived, and not merely regretted.

I love you.

Gwindor finished reading the letter and folded it along its worn crease.

Then he unfolded it and read it again.

Once he had had boundless words to share with his brother; an eternity with which to share them. Now he had the fading contents of a slip of paper. And but for Gelmir's foresight— foresight that he, Gwindor, would ironically never possess— he would have nothing at all.

He read the letter one last time, then set it carefully back down on the writing desk.

Gelmir had known him, had really known him. They had banded together as boys against the authority of their parents. They had watched one another grow up, all gangly height and cracking voices and first kisses. Two pairs of crystal blue eyes had countless times exchanged secret glances, and laughed at the absurdity that was the world beyond them. He and Gelmir had laid in the grass and talked about the uncles they would be to each other's children. Gelmir had wanted girls, and Gwindor boys.

Gwindor gathered his cloak from where it hung on the door and crossed into the sitting room. He glanced at the nest of pure quartzes in the ceiling from where orange daylight filtered in from aboveground. Early afternoon, and he was running a little late.

"Gelmir?"

Gwindor turned to see his father slumped by the hearth. He had not noticed him lying there. Empty bottles lay strewn about him.

"No, Ada, it's me," he said, "It's Gwindor."

"Gwindor?" Guilin rocked haphazardly to sitting. "Gwindor, where is your brother? Where is Gelmir?"

"He's gone, Ada," replied Gwindor, "He's been gone for five years, remember?"

Guilin's drooping mouth formed inaudible words as he pondered Gwindor's question. Then, slowly, deliberately, he stated, "Gelmir."

"No, Ada," said Gwindor wearily. It seemed like the thousandth time. "He's not here."

He went over to his father and gently pried the empty bottle out of his hand. Then he lifted the frail man by the underarms and half-dragged him over to the stone sitting-room bench, laying him on the cushions.

"Stay here, Ada," he said hurriedly, glancing up at the crystals again, "There's a cake in the pantry. I'm going to the city, Ada. I won't be long—"

Guilin's yellow hands grasped the hem of his cloak.

"Don't go…"

Guiltily, Gwindor pulled the gnarled fingers aside and extricated himself. He threw a blue quilt over his father.

"I won't be long," he promised again, and left.

Despite his tardiness, Gwindor paused to admire the crowded streets as he made his way on foot toward the castle: narrow and wide, straight and winding, weaving over and under each other like branches in the canopy to dwellings high and low within the vast belly of the fortress of Nargothrond. Each was lit on either side by glowing crystal lamps of every imaginable color, rose and smoke and purple and black, catching the light from above and scattering it in every direction. Sprays of color illuminated the faces of citygoers, and color lay strewn in Gwindor's path like a whole carpet of gems.

She was waiting for him at the entrance of the glowing caverns leading to the castle. When she saw him, she smiled inscrutably, then turned around and walked inside. Gwindor followed her.

"It's good to see you."

"And you, Fae. I apologize; it's been very rude of me not to call lately."

"That's nonsense. You've had enough to think about."

They both ducked an amethyst jutting from the ceiling and walked some time in silence. Whenever they spoke nowadays, Gelmir still hung above their every word like a pall. Everything said, no matter how innocuous, seemed to pertain to the dead man. At first it had been so noxious they scarcely spoke at all. But gradually the flights of grief and anger grew shorter and less frequent. The Bragollach slowly receded into memory. Life went on.

The caverns wound steadily upward. Finduilas chattered about parties and balls and court gossip, and to all others it would seem nothing more portentous weighed on her mind. But Gwindor had long since learned to read her eyes: I fear I'm losing you.

Gwindor raised his brows and half-smiled: Why?

It's been five years. I left you to your mourning, but you haven't come back. I want to help you. I want to be with you. But I don't know how.

Aloud, she said, "How is your father?"

"The same," he said, "One minute he knows me; the next he thinks I'm Gelmir and Finrod's still king. But somehow, befuddled as he is, he still manages to sneak out and find more wine. I'll have to start barricading the doors."

"How terrible. Could you keep a nurse, perhaps?"

"They've all quit. Besides, he's my father. I owe this to him, at least." A dejected silence followed these words. Gwindor hastily diverted, "Enough of that. You never told me what Víressë said when a lord proclaimed her skin was 'as a golden pear ripe for the plucking…'"

Finduilas giggled. They had reached the topmost cavern. There was a window here in the rock that overlooked all the crisscrossing streets, terraces, and crystalline lights that Gwindor had passed on the way here. Lush, flowering vines tumbled down from aboveground, framing the window like a woman's hair.

It's time, said the voice in Gwindor's heart, time to speak your mind. Hadn't Gelmir told him to listen to this voice?

Gwindor took a slow, quiet breath and sighed.

"Fae," he said, "I know I haven't been myself lately. You've been more than fair, more than patient. And so I tell you honestly that I'm still trying to make sense of what's happened. Of… of Gelmir dying."

He swallowed. The pure quartzes above had dimmed, and the drops of water began to steal down the vines. Rain. It seemed like a sign.

Bright blue eyes surveyed him, waiting for him to go on.

"I've thought about the last words he left me. Of the kind of man I want to be now that he's gone; of what's important. The old fears I had are no more- it's like they belonged to another man. And—"

Finduilas now hung onto each word as it fell from his lips as though they would change her life. They would. At her pleading attention, at her beseeching face, Gwindor's heart began to race. Wasn't it madness, what he was about to say? How could he have thought himself capable of continuing at all? Another day, perhaps, another time.

At our next meeting, I expect to hear that you've lived, and not merely regretted.

Damn it all, then, Gelmir.

"And you, Fae, I love you. I'm more sure about that than anything my entire life. Someday— not today, not a week from now, but someday soon— I'll ask you to marry me."

Finduilas started. Her face lit up like a sunbeam. She threw her arms around him, crying, "Yes! Yes, I'll marry you!"

Gwindor gave a small, quick laugh of surprise. He had brought no ring, no flowers. He hadn't spoken to Orodreth. He had only meant to tell her, not to ask directly.

But Finduilas's joy could not be dampened. Still giggling happily, she told him that she already had a ring from him. That they had time to figure out the rest. That she couldn't think of anyone she'd rather marry than him. And seeing her like this, all smiles and leaps and happy exclamations, filled his heart with light.

He loved her so very much: she spoke of things to come with such certainty and ardor he had to believe their wildest dreams would come true, in spite of everything, because she believed it so powerfully.

Since his boyhood, Gwindor had had unusual dreams— dreams that foretold realities that would be, and that might be. Born in the caul, the midwives had exclaimed to his mother, the mark of the Seer. These dreams would one day show him the way out of Angband. They would warn him that Túrin's and Finduilas's fates were entwined. But though Gwindor, so it is rumored, could see the future when the Valar so willed, he fully believed that Finduilas could actually change it— that she could make things come true simply by assuring him they would, with that pure and willful smile.

He gathered her into his arms and held her close as they looked back over the city. He wanted to hear her tell him what would happen once they were wed. He wanted her to show him what that lay just beyond the mist of his mind's eye, where she alone could see. All of this he whispered into her ear, touching her face, brushing aside her yellow hair. And Finduilas looked deep into his eyes and lay her own hands over his temples, telling him all he wanted to hear.

"We'll be wed," she began, "On the Nost-na-Lothion, the First of Spring. And all will be invited from across the realm, and all the little children, rich and poor, will play together in the courtyards, scattering crystals and flowers over all the ways. Afterward, you will come live with us in the castle, where your father will come to call as often as he likes."

Gwindor swallowed. He leaned in and pressed his forehead to hers.

"And then, Fae? What comes after?"

She beamed and entwined her slender fingers in his hair.

"Then we'll have children of our own. Lots of them. The littlest heirs of Finarfin will grow up in Nargothrond. We'll raise them gently, to be good, and generous, and wise. We'll tell them stories of the ones who were lost, and the names of Gelmir and Finrod will be on their tongues every day. They'll learn to dance and ride and sing. They'll fall in love, and they'll have their hearts broken, and they'll run into our arms every time."

He opened his eyes. "Ah, Fae," he said, "However did you learn to dream like that?"

"What do you mean?"

"I hadn't dared to believe in a life like that, not till you said these things just now. How can you see the way forward when the path darkens and the rain falls?"

Finduilas turned toward the window. For a moment she let the rain give its own answer. Then she said, "You musn't be afraid."

"Afraid?"

"Of dreaming. So many people are afraid, you know. They shut the windows. They stuff cotton in their ears and muffle the pleas of their hearts. Too hard, too bold, too strange; and haven't I done enough, they say, haven't I dreamed enough, and haven't I had those dreams ripped away? And they go on living these half-lives, full of envy and regret. It's sad, because the right thing to do is so easy-"

She lifted her hand and put it on his chest. "Listen."

Gwindor put his own hand over hers on his chest. He knew she could feel his heart pattering beneath her fingers like a little dog scrambling towards its mistress. This heart of his, if it had a will of its own, would leave his body and hurry to her, would curl up in her hands, and beat just for her while she laughed.

"How can you know?" he asked, "How can you trust it; your heart? It says one thing today and another tomorrow. It storms and shines; it seduces and deludes. Don't men follow their hearts straight into ruin? Fae, I think, sometimes, that maybe it's better not to want so much. That my heart is greedy and callow and I must temper its wantonness with wisdom. I've been so distraught, so angry at the world since Gelmir was taken. Because had I wanted so much more. I had dreams, with him, too, once."

He was pleading with her to prove him wrong, laying bare all the ugly whispers inside him in the hope she could dispel them. And Finduilas said: "My love, it's not wisdom you describe, but despair. If one future's been taken from you, then you must train your sight on another one, a different one. Doesn't it rain every year after winter? But that's when we put seeds in the ground. You must make your life beautiful again. Close your eyes."

Gwindor obeyed. She clasped both of his hands in hers.

"It's twenty years from now. Your wildest dreams have come true. What do you see?"

"My father," he murmured, "Strong again. The children. The river. And you."

Thus Gwindor and Finduilas talked and talked about the shape their lives would take after they were married; how they would live together, happily ever after in the castle of Nargothrond. They talked until their voices turned husky, until the orange rays of sun from aboveground grew dim and the crystal along the roads below shone twilight blue.

Then Gwindor muttered, "Oh, no…"

"What is it?"

"I've left my father at home all this time with no one to look after him- The Valar knows what state he's gotten himself into…"

"Oh, dear," said Finduilas, "Well-! Then we had better-"

"Head back, yes," agreed Gwindor hastily, already walking back the way they had come. "Damn it, if he's wandered off again—"

"I'm sorry!" She gasped, her bright eyes wide as she followed, "It's all my fault; I kept you—"

"No, Fae, never..."

They wound hurriedly back down through the caverns as dusk fell. Then Gwindor slowed to a halt at the parting of their ways and turned to her.

"I just wanted to say," he said, "That I came to you with a hundred fears and sorrows in my heart. But you've made me so very happy."

"I'm happy, too," said Finduilas, radiant as dawn. "How beautiful our lives will be again!"

When Gwindor got home, the front door was locked, as he had left it. A promising sign. He pushed the door open, calling for his father. It was quiet.

Guilin was curled up fast asleep on the bench by the hearth under the quilt Gwindor had thrown over him. He hadn't moved an inch. Relieved, Gwindor quietly shut the door behind him. But his father stirred and groggily lifted his head.

"Gelmir?"

"No, Ada, it's me. Gwindor. Gelmir's gone, remember?"

To his surprise, Guilin nodded. His dark eyes gleamed lucid in the light of the moonlit crystal. "I know. I dreamed of him, Gwindor. I saw his face. I spoke to him."

"Ada?"

Guilin trembled and took a shuddering breath, and Gwindor realized he was weeping.

"I know I can't go on like this," sobbed Guilin, "Drinking myself into senility. Burdening my living son so terribly. But what am I to do? Gelmir's gone in the world where I'm awake. When I can see clearly, he's dead. But in my sleep, in my stupors, I can forget…"

Gwindor reached through the darkness and touched his father's face. Tenderness and guilt coursed through him, guilt for leaving Guilin alone with the grief slowly suffocating him, while he and Finduilas had flown for hours on the wings of their fantasies. Finduilas's parting words played through his head. How beautiful our lives will be again! He felt sick.

In time, Guilin's cries faded into slow, even breaths of sleep. Gwindor stayed beside him, stroking the blue quilt. The raindrops from aboveground drummed evenly down. Little by little, he fell asleep himself to the soft rhythm, resting his head on his father's thin shoulder…

Black mud; searing cold; the smell of blood and excrement thick in the air. Then yellow eyes, a leathery mask of a face, a crooked mouth full of jagged teeth that moved, and spoke:

"Say it, filthy elf. And I might not put out your other eye."

A wraith of a man, dressed in rags, bound in iron shackles that dug into his dirty wrists.

"N-no…"

A clang of metal, a white-orange glow; then, suddenly, the hiss of burning flesh and an endless, tormented scream.

"Say it!"

"All right! All right!"

The hot iron was withdrawn and the man knelt there, shuddering in relief and misery.

"I have no name. I have no brother. I have no father. I serve Morgoth only."

"Again! Louder!"

"I have no name!"

"Good."

The clawed hand reached down as if to caress the man's face. But instead, he suddenly snatched the man by his unkempt brown hair.

"Now look around, elf. This is the last thing you'll see."

"No! No! Gwindor! Gwindor-"

At the sound of his name, Gwindor jolted back in Nargothrond. He awakened still clinging to the scene in his mind's eye, struggling to see what would happen. But the sight, and the scream, faded away and he opened his eyes, panting and whimpering, next to his father.

"Gwindor? Are you all right?"

Guilin rose to sitting on the bench. Out of old instinct, he pulled his grown son into his arms and held him there, steadying him against the earthquake.

"Gwindor, what is it? Did you dream, again?"

And, shivering as though still in that cold, dark, awful place, Gwindor nodded.

"He's not dead, Ada. He's alive. They took him alive. And I'm going to get him back, no matter what."

Apologies for how long this update took! Also decided to revert back to the original cover art- I'm just indecisive like that.

For those of you who got here early, I sneaked in a ninja edit just before the outage, so don't miss that :)