Chapter length: ~1,900 words
Chapter III / The fire of their hearts
[—]their valour and endurance grew with hardship; for they were a mighty people, the elder children undying of Eru Ilúvatar, but new-come from the Blessed Realm, and not yet weary with the weariness of Earth. The fire of their hearts was young, and led by Fingolfin and his sons, and by Finrod and Galadriel, they dared to pass into the bitterest North; and finding no other way they endured at last the terror of the Helcaraxë and the cruel hills of ice. – The Silmarillion: Of the Flight of the Noldor
In the light of the torches that tinge their world with red after the Trees are dead, Angaráto's warm golden hair is fiery and so is his face. His beloved features are distorted by grief and rage.
Eldalótë thinks she must look as devastated, though she tries to keep herself together for Artaresto's sake. Her son is not yet grown to adulthood, and resembles his gentle-hearted grandfather Arafinwë more than his father. Artaresto's spirit must feel as strangled as by the loss and the Darkness as her own.
They stay together during those dark days, Arafinwë and all his children. Eärwen is in Alqualondë with Anairë. The sisters-in-law had skipped the harvest festival this year. Eldalótë wishes they were here to offer more level-headed views to balance Nolofinwë's heated words.
They send word to them, of course, and Eärwen and Anairë come as soon as they can. But they prove no help but to further the breaking apart of the house of Finwë when the time comes to make decisions.
Eldalótë's own parents decide to leave Aman. Eldalótë is relieved, though not surprised. They have been followers of Nolofinwë for a while now, ever since it became impossible not to take sides. They ride alongside her and Angaráto and his brothers as they leave Tirion, among the last of the departing Noldor.
Eldalótë's parents do not look back as they pass through the great gates and down the stairs and away from the fair city on its green hill. Eldalótë, though, finds herself turning to look as long as the high light of the lamp at the top of Mindon Eldaliéva, Ingwë's tower when he was king in Tirion, can be seen.
After that there is only the red torchlight until the lamps of Alqualondë.
Angaráto curses himself, and his father and older brother, for arriving at the quays too late to do anything but hurriedly try to help the wounded before fell Fëanáro and his fierce sons tell them to keep moving.
They do, and the injured Falmari don't appear to consider it a loss. There was hate more than gratefulness for Arafinwë and his house in their eyes. Though the children of Arafinwë are half Falmari, and Arafinwë himself has spent half his life with them, they could see nothing but the Noldor in them in that moment.
'I could not blame them', Angaráto confesses to Eldalótë when they journey north. 'I hated even Findekáno in that moment when I realised he had spilled my kinsmen's blood.'
Yet he has already forgiven Findekáno, Eldalótë knows; Fëanáro he will not forgive soon, and neither will she who also had a second home in the palace above the white quays of Alqualondë. Seeing those familiar places, where many times they had sailed out or greeted others coming back to shore, covered in blood and worse broke some new part of her heart.
She thinks that it should feel impossible for her husband to carry on after that, following his father who follows his brother who follows Fëanáro. She doesn't know how she herself does it, or any of them. What keeps alive the fire in their hearts, here in the darkness and the memory of blood?
Yet there it is, even in hers. She rides beside Angaráto, Artaresto either between them or by Findaráto's side.
She wonders about it more after the dark figure on the high rock speaks the grim prophecy that reaches the words of even those at the very back of the marching Noldor like herself.
Those words sound so terrible as to surely be impossible. Yet the sight of that figure up on high and its tone chill her like nothing before, freezing her in place, forcing her to listen though she can barely take it all in.
'Will you continue on with me?'
Eldalótë looks at Angaráto for a long time: at his familiar beloved face, and his broad, armoured shoulders. All around them the same discussion is being had, spouses with spouses, and parents with children, and sibling with siblings, friends with friends all asking the same question.
Artaresto is with Artanis while Eldalótë and Angaráto talk. Artanis already knows what she will do, and everyone else knows her decision too.
Eldalótë says slowly to her husband, 'My judgement tells me to turn back with your father, and to take Artaresto with me if you let me.' Angaráto's face twists to ugliness from pain.
'My heart', she tells him, 'has been yours since we were children, and I have not the courage to take it in my hands and break it to pieces. I will come with you, my beloved, and so will Artaresto for it is better for him to be with his parents, damned fools though time may tell them to be. I will see this journey to its end, whether it be a new home in a beautiful new realm like you have dreamed, or the grief and torment and death of that prophecy.'
She finds out soon after deciding that her own parents are returning to Valinor with her father-in-law. It turns out that she must break her own heart after all, being unable to both return and go forth.
The betrayal of Fëanáro and the fate of the ships for which many of Angaráto's kin were murdered kindles a new, bitter fire in the hearts of everyone who is of the house of Arafinwë. Eldalótë cries with rage.
'All that bloodshed of our own kin, and the theft of our mother's people's greatest works, only for it to end like this', says Aikanáro, his face pale under the tall mess of his hair.
Angaráto has his hand on the pommel of his sheathed sword though the one he wants to raise it against is a sea away. Eldalótë knows that if Fëanáro were here, the sword would not be in its sheath.
They keep on marching north, further into the cold and the mist that is worse than mere darkness, impenetrable by lamps and torches and even beloved starlight, and ever threatening to creep into their hearts.
Eldalótë keeps her blades handy for there are more dangers than betrayal here in the cold, unexplored land. She is no warrior, nor explorer either like her Angaráto, but she marches on with the boldest of her people.
Where the solid land wholly ends, Eldalótë looks at the immense, jagged, frigid, lethal expanse of ice, and regrets not asking Angaráto to turn back with his father. There is little chance that he would have, with his heart burning as it does, but she should have begged. She would have followed him anyway if he refused her request; but, she thinks wryly to herself, surprised at finding any humour at a moment like this, she would perhaps have had the pleasure of hindsight at least.
Days, weeks, months, years later, as their people suffer and freeze and die of exposure, starvation and falling into the devouring ice, she thinks with bitterness that she didn't even regret enough.
On the Grinding Ice, love is Angaráto putting his tireless arms around her and Artaresto when they stumble.
It is him, and sometimes also her and Artaresto by turns, carrying other people's small children when their parents' strength fails after bearing them over many dangerous places.
It is the whole family, the children of Arafinwë and Eldalótë and Artaresto, squeezed tight into one tent to keep warm at night.
Love is her family-in-law, all of them, inspiring enough strength in her that that she never cries anymore, not from rage or from missing her own family. Tears freeze on cheeks here on the Ice, even in eyelashes, and it hurts more than it hurts not to cry. She does her best to make sure that no one else ever cries either.
'I thought that you would have stayed, or turned back', Artanis says to her one night when they are trying to build a safe fire together. 'So many did. My mother, and your parents.'
'I suppose I should be insulted by that.' Eldalótë huddles in tighter within her furs in the vain hope that it will help her hands shake less. 'I shall choose not to be. We all need to be of one mind to survive this.'
Artanis nods. 'True words.' She pauses. 'Rarely is it a joy to find out that one was wrong about people. You hold more steel in your silences than I thought.'
She gives Eldalótë her gloves, warmer than Eldalótë's own. After some moments of not-uncomfortable silence, the fire catches.
Eldalótë breathes in the warmer air, enjoying the feeling of her lungs not hurting for a moment.
Artaresto grows to adulthood on the Ice, and on his begetting day Eldalótë hates Fëanáro with a new burning passion that chokes her worse than the cold air.
All of Fëanáro's sons had coming-of-age days that were celebrated at Finwë's palace with all the pomp and circumstance and genuine gladness that there was for the king's grandsons, with a great number of guests enjoying the musical performances and the finest food and plentiful drink.
Artaresto gets embraces from his family and a new pair of sealskin gloves but very little besides. He doesn't complain.
That night when they are alone for a rare moment, Eldalótë says to Angaráto, 'I could not forgive Fëanáro for the dark road he led us onto even if he came to me on his knees and begged.'
'This from a woman who has from time to time reminded me that all this darkness began with Morgoth's deeds, not Fëanáro's', Angaráto says with a crooked not-smile.
'I am tired of forgiving', Eldalótë replies. 'This cold has burned it all out of me.'
The next day Elenwë, her friend, is lost in the frigid water amid a creaking of ice that rings in Eldalótë's ears for a long time after.
As they march into Beleriand, finally on safe ground, a new light rises on the sky and fills the new land before Eldalótë's eyes with silver light and blue shadows. The host of Nolofinwë blow their trumpets, welcoming the light and the continent.
And then they march on to a new land of mist, a cool land but fair. The mist here is less dangerous and choking than that on the Ice, and easily penetrated by the rays of the new Sun that rises as they arrive to what will be Nolofinwë's kingdom. The host of the Noldor blow their horns again at the new light, and unfurl their banners. Angaráto carried his father's personal standard when they left Tirion and carries it still for those of his house that kept on the march. Its colours reflect those on the sky as it flares proudly in the wind, blue and yellow, and pure deep gold rays tipped with fire-red.
Aikanáro and Eldalótë and many others raise their voices in song with the trumpets, greeting the light and the flowers that spring into bloom at their feet as they march. It is a sweet moment of victory: not a victory over the enemy, not yet, but a victory over the Grinding Ice and the death and despair that loomed there but did not bow their spirits.
The world is filled with light again, and the Noldor march on.