Chapter Three: Findis
The months passed swiftly, but in that fleeting time I felt peaceful and untroubled, spending my days with easy leisure at the edge of the Belegaer. I refused to allow myself to dwell long on the thought of my father, or Indis, or Tirion with its many towers. Now that my thoughts return to that time, I see that, in those indolent days upon the shore, I laid open my heart for the deep-running wound that awaited me upon my return to the mansion of Finwë. But I gave no thought to it then.
In all honesty, my mind dwelt most upon Nerdanel during those days and nights. From the fair season of summer to the tempestuous time of winter, she came almost every day, constant as a guiding star. We would speak for hours at a time, walking along the lonely shores, and during that time I would forget my grief in the sweet constancy of her company.
My favorite times with her were when we would both clamber upon my horse and ride over the dunes. We never talked as we rode; neither of us felt it necessary. In the quiet, I furtively delighted in her nearness, in her pure, loyal friendship. It was on one of those oddly beautiful days that I realized that Nerdanel was my first true friend.
Over the course of the year I told her everything, words falling easily from my lips like rain from the skies. My hopes, people I had known, my fears, tales of my father and mother, my sorrows, my sweetest memories--nothing was too trivial or tedious for her ears.
She would listen intently as I spoke, rarely answering or interrupting my soliloquy. Rather, she seemed content to be silent and merely hear all I had to say. Even my father had never listened to me so faithfully, and in any case I was oft mindful of my words with Finwë out of my respect for him. Every time I spoke to my father of anything as a young boy, I had feared to annoy him or have my talk dismissed as nothing but a child's prattle. He had never expressed such irritation, but I had been afraid of it nevertheless, warily ensuring that my words were few and neutral.
Not so with Nerdanel. She accepted every word I uttered with the endless appetite of one gaunt with hunger for words, and I filled the empty, mute vessel of her unbroken attention with all the talk I could muster.
One night, as I was telling her of my father's memories of Cuiviénen and the Awakening, she abruptly ruptured that silence with a single question.
"What do you think it must have been like to see the stars without the light of the Trees, Finwion?" Nerdanel asked as I paused for breath in my narrative.
I blinked, as taken aback by the words as I would have been had she asked in another tongue. Finally, I recovered myself and replied impulsively, "I have no way of knowing. This was long before my time."
"They must have been bright, though." She turned her eyes to the sky in quiet reverence, then turned to look in the direction of Telperion with the quiet displeasure of one suddenly wakened from a deep sleep.
"My father likes to speak of them as they were then," I offered awkwardly, belatedly finding an adequate answer. Even then it felt as if I were some immature youngling, knowing nothing of what I spoke. "He says they were like hot coals, seen from afar. Or a scattering of bright, milky dew."
Nerdanel sighed at my words and closed her eyes, smiling in soft bliss at the thought. "Can you not see them, in your head, Fëanáro? Clear and magnificent, as they were in Cuiviénen?"
I glanced only briefly at the stars, but then turned my gaze down to her. Her head was still lifted to the sky, and all I could see of her was the fine white line of her slender neck, the dark shadow of her lashes tilted downward across the planes of her face, her body poised as though ready to take wing and lift into the heavens. She was one with the night, yet something apart, something greater and lovelier than anything I had beheld before.
"Yes," I answered in a soft, awed voice, fearful to startle away the timid emotion that crawled to my heart like a wild creature to flame, "I can see them."
It was during one cold, distant twilight in spring that I first thought of my home in Tirion. After a quick calculation, I realized that I had been over a year from Finwë's side. With the thoughts of Tirion and my father came a quick, knifing desire to return, and my contented, fleeting time of rest came to an abrupt end. My serene spirit became like the sea in a tempest, unable to decide what to do or what impulse to follow.
When Nerdanel came to visit me that night, with a little meal brought from home for the both of us, she recognized the change at once.
"What troubles you, Finwion?" Her eyes shone in perfect replication of the stars above as she laid out the bread and fruit upon her spread cloak. Both stars and eyes even held the same fierce, inclement sorrow.
"I must go home," I murmured, ashamed of my own melancholy. Nerdanel's entire body seemed to go slack with a gray despair that was poorly hidden. As she smiled sadly and stared at the forlorn dinner laid between us, the force of her quietly suppressed heartache hit me, and I felt ill with guilt at once. The waves tossed their white plumes into the air, churning and frothing upon the starlit beach. The song of the Sea was suddenly vague and distant, its beauty dimmed by the sad song emanating from my own heart.
"Will you return?" She asked at last.
"Yes. The Sea is not last in the thoughts of my heart." Nor are you, I mused silently, but kept those words within my mouth. It felt strange even to think them. Nerdanel's smile brightened slightly, and I knew that not even the stifled silence that ran fraught with unspoken words was enough to keep her from hearing that mere whisper of a thought.
"You may leave, then. I will not urge you to stay. But, Finwion," her voice grew softer, as if in the urgency of prayer, "Return here when you can find rest enough, and remember also that you shall ever be welcome in the house of Mahtan. I will visit you in Tirion, when I can."
"I shall miss you," I stammered out. For, despite my uncanny wisdom, I was still scarcely eighteen years old, and yet young and unwieldy. But be that as it was, I was not so callow as not to see that Nerdanel's eyes were over-bright with restrained tears.
We ate the meal in pensive silence, preferring the sea's mutterings to our own feeble attempts for conversation. Every mouthful of berries, every swallow of bread became as the tasteless sand of the dunes when it touched our lips, but we ate it unthinkingly, as though we would never stop. When we were left to ponder the last piteous heel of bread, wondering who would reach for it first, I turned my head and clicked my tongue. My horse trotted obediently to me from across the beach, its hooves tossing up the fine white sand. He bent his head and whickered in docile affection, and I stroked his velvety nose for a brief, vacillating moment before rising to my feet.
As I mounted my horse, Nerdanel walked to the animal's side and looked up at me, wiping absently at her eyes in an ashamed unhappiness that echoed my own.
"Farewell," she whispered, almost laughing through her tight-pursed lips but stopping herself, then gently took my loose-fingered hand in hers. I almost forgot to breathe, watching her in spellbound wonder as she pressed her lips fleetingly to my trembling knuckles. Her eyes watched me as she did so, dark irises lit bright with fascination and longing.
But before I could speak or move to touch her in return, she straightened and stepped back, a shuddering sigh leaving her body from the depths of her soul. My breathing ragged with astonishment, I watched her silently for an instant, trying to sketch the memory of her into the pages of my mind. But before I could consider her essence utterly etched into my core, I spurred my horse to a brisk canter, turning and heading for the jagged cliffs that loomed over the beach.
My journey homeward was swift and harsh, for once out of the sight of the Bay of Eldamar, my black dread rose again. Though I bit it back angrily as best I could, it persisted and harried at what remained of my bright humor in lonely moments. But something drove me fiercely onward, fiercer even than before, and I reached sight of the bright towers of Tirion on only the fifth day of my journey.
As I crested the ridge, I looked up upon the fair white city with a mixture of aching desire and dislike. Not for the last time, I wished that the Valar had not cursed me to be so torn betwixt love and hate for my home. Deep within myself then I felt a surge of bravery, and it drove me onward, beyond the grasp of my misgivings, into the gates of the city.
The city had not changed much since the day of my departure. Tirion, like her inhabitants, was immortal, deathless, without need for change or heartache. I had almost forgotten the sweet, radiantly beautiful songs that echoed among the many towers. The trilling birdsong that rang from every slender tree along the white-stoned avenues and alleyways was a sharp contrast to the mewing of gulls that I was so used to hearing. The city, bathed in the light of Valinor's Trees, was familiar, yet unknown to me at the same time. I wove my way through the curving streets, feeling bereft of all emotion. At last I reached the dooryard of my father's lavish house. Even this, the place where I had lived since my birth, seemed alien to me.
I dismounted slowly, and asked a passing steward to stable and water my horse, then walked to the stairway that led to the house. For a moment, I stood at the foot of the sprawling white stairway, almost helpless. Strangely enough, I felt like I wanted to hide, to flee, from the tangled hypocrisy of joy and hate that awaited me in that house, though I determinedly resisted those childish thoughts.
"Finwion!"
I raised my eyes to the top of the stairs, and there stood my father, standing as if frozen with surprise and happiness. He soon recovered himself and hurried down the stairs, taking them three at a time, and embraced me tightly. At first I was surprised, as if an utter stranger was welcoming me home.
It was like seeing him after many ages, not a year--I had forgotten almost everything about him that made him my father: his long, dark hair; his smiling, intensely deep eyes; his bearing of happiness and wisdom all in one. I found myself smiling unseen into his shoulder, wondering why I had ever had the callousness to leave my beloved father for so long. But the answer was not long in coming, and my happiness to return home was not to last.
"Finwë, who is it that comes?"
I stepped away from my father's embrace as a coppery taste, not unlike that of blood, rose in my mouth.
Indis stood on the stairs, resplendent as ever, her hair shining and stirred by a fair breeze, looking as if it were wrought from the purest gold. Her face shone too, seemingly sculpted from some pale, fair marble. Everything about her glowed with a marital-derived bliss that I hated and did not understand. Her arms were folded, and she carried something close in them, but my gaze only dwelt upon her merry blue eyes, so like those of her brother, Ingwë.
She recognized me at once, and said with a summery smile, "Welcome, Finwion."
I nodded my head curtly in response. I had not neglected to notice that she had not said welcome home. But I refused to say anything in reply, feeling my eyes brim over with hatred. Did she really think she could replace my mother so easily, standing on the stairs as if she really belonged here, as Míriel might once have? Did she believe she could exchange the memory of Míriel's silent weaving arts with her bright songs and fair laughter?
There suddenly came a soft coo from the shapeless bundle she held, and, with a horrid wave of revulsion, I knew what it was.
A baby. Finwë's child. I felt light-headed and suddenly unloved, and stepped coldly away from my father, my hands clenching into taut fists. Finwë turned to me and must have read the emotions running hot across my face, for he said softly, "Finwion, this is your half-sister, Findis."
His eyes seemed almost to beg for my forgiveness, but for all my love for my father, I found no pity, only rising sickness and anguish. Had he cast me away, as I had feared?
Half-sister?
The title cut me like a knife. I still refused to believe. I wanted to rail out in anger, to shout, to weep, but I checked those emotions, letting them go unreleased, only heightening my distaste. Indis glided down the stairs to stand beside my father, and held out the snuffling, swaddled babe to me.
"You may hold her, if you like," she offered quietly, face calm, though her eyes were troubled. I still marvel now at her trust.
More than anything not wanting to offend my father, I took Findis in my arms and glowered down at her, wanting to hate this accursed, wrongful embodiment of my father's love for a woman who was not my mother.
But I could not hate her.
Confused, I tried and tried my hardest to loathe the tiny child, brow furrowing in thwarted rage as I gazed down upon her. But all I could do was think of her with an almost protective affection. Findis was innocent of any crime, I realized. At that moment I could only think of Finwë's blood, the blood that bound us together as kin. Findis. So small, so frail, so weak.
In vain, I struggled still to scorn the infant. But my glare and resolve wavered after a brief time, and Findis laughed sweetly, raising a tiny, pale hand toward my nose, fingers straining as her smile widened.
Though her eyes were bluer than the summer sky, I noted with more than a little satisfaction that her hair was as dark as a still lake at midnight, like that of my father. That infinitesimal, superficial similarity softened my heart for a while. Later, yes, I would hate Findis, as I would all of Indis' brood.
But on that day, standing outside my father's house and holding his secondborn, I was incapable of any emotion toward the dainty, mewling babe but the tenderness that wrung so insistently at my heart.
After a minute or so, I returned my half-sister to Indis' waiting arms. My father's wife smiled gaily, thinking perhaps I was now won to her cause, but I only gave her a bitter scowl that clearly stated otherwise. She faltered at my mute rebuff, then went back into my father's house without another word, her pace quicker and brisker than before. Findis was clutched close in her arms, as if Indis sought to make the child's again one with her own.
Finwë turned to me. "You still dislike Indis." It was a flat, colorless statement, without anger or disappointment.
I glanced at where Indis had stood, then nodded sullenly. Finwë sighed and shook his head, almost smiling, though his eyes were dark. "You honor your mother well, Finwion, but let Indis have her peace."
I remained silent, not wanting to oppose my father, but neither wanting to obey.
"So, my son," he said at last, "Where did you go on this journey of yours? You were gone a full year."
I recovered my tongue at last and said, "To the Bay of Eldamar."
"Does your heart then dwell with the Sea now?" Bright laughter was wound through his usually dusky tones, and he watched me with innocent amusement.
I thought of Nerdanel and nodded.
Finwë must have seen something in me I had thought unseen, for he smiled, then turned and walked away up the stairs of the house. I was left to think alone and confused, gazing out over the clarion beauty of Tirion.
Nerdanel and her father, Mahtan the smith, would come to Tirion three years later, bringing with them the characteristically fair, amiable winter of Eldamar.