It was just dawn as Calla climbed the wide staircase to the door to Nadial's workrooms, the manifold pockets of her belt bouncing against her. She paused for a moment at the top, smiling down on the balcony where Legolas had paced and read yesterday evening. She didn't expect to see him, she just wanted to take a moment to smile down on it beatifically; this morning, she felt like bestowing a blessing on everything that crossed her path. Or singing, or something. Calla settled for whistling as she opened the door and made for her loom. She sat at her bench and looked about for a few minutes before she got down to work. It was a pleasant place, the wide, white room with the early morning sunlight pouring in through the graceful arched windows, the heavy tables mad of dark wood, littered with samples of cloth, and skeins of thread, and pins and shuttles and tape measures. The windows faced east, and the light was just changing from the watery grey-gold of dawn to the warmer morning light. It stained the floor and the walls pale pink and spilled across the room and through the wide doorless arch on the western side which opened into the corridor beyond. There was also a second loom in the room today, near her own, presumably for the other weaver who would be starting today.
Still smiling, Calla bent over her loom and let herself slide into the pattern of the weave. Now and then snatches of the folk songs Shiriel loved to sing floated through her mind, and she hummed them in time to the steady rhythm of her shuttle as she threw it, and outside the windows the sun climbed higher in the sky. She had almost forgotten all about them when Nadial came around the corner and through the arm, leading another girl—a little older than Calla—behind her.
"Calla, this is Chanda. The two of you will be working together for the greater part of this task. Chanda, here is the loom you will be using. Calla will be happy to show you the supplies that we have ready, and as I told her yesterday, if you want anything else, the King will cover the cost of all materials, so feel free to go out and get what you need. Calla, how're you coming along with that silk?"
"Oh, not too bad," said Calla modestly. Actually, the work was going more beautifully and quickly than she had hoped, but she didn't want to give the impression of arrogance her second day on the job. And she didn't want to intimidate the new girl. If Chanda was feeling anything like she had yesterday, she was already nervous enough. Nadial, however, came over and raised her eyebrows.
"Not bad? At least you're not given to exaggeration. Very nice. Chanda, I'd like you to get to work on the gauze overlay for the sleeves of the dress. I'll be back sometime past noon to bring you both lunch and see how you're getting on. I've got some measurements to take and some planning to do in the meantime." And with that she went out.
Calla smiled at Chanda, who didn't seem to notice her, but went to the empty loom and sat down. Calla wasn't sure, but, she realized with faint surprise (and then distaste) it appeared she had just been snubbed. She attempted to shrug it off—probably just nerves, or shyness. Though to be honest, Chanda did not look like the sort of woman who had ever known what it was to feel awkward or shy. She looked, Calla thought, like the sort of woman who had been able to make other girls feel awkward and shy from an early age. She was quite beautiful in a deliberate, unapproachable way. Haughty. The word sprang to Calla's mind.
Oh? And you're a saint, are you? All she's done is not return one smile. You, meanwhile, are not only making up nasty, low-minded—not to mention unfounded—things to think about her—just so that you can have the pleasure of feeling vindictive— you're neglecting your work in order to do it.
Calla sighed and returned to her work. Sometimes she really resented her conscience.
O
In spite of lecturing herself rather sharply about the importance of generosity of spirit and then forcing herself to think of a few possible pleasant things about Chanda, and then doing her best to forget all about her and immerse herself in weaving, so as to leave the whole thing behind, Calla felt distinctly that something about her companion's presence was distracting her. It was only after three silent hours of work that she realized what it was: Chanda kept furtively looking at Calla's loom. At first Calla thought that she was looking at her own warp beam, but as they went on it became slowly clear that it was Calla's own work she was looking at.
It was another hour or so before Calla worked out why she found it so unpleasant; the other woman was clearly treating the work as a competition. Calla, once she hit on this, had to suppress a derisive snort. She settled for rolling her eyes covertly and admiring the slubbed silk beneath her fingers until she was happily immersed in the work, dead equally to Chanda and to her own unpleasant biases.
O
When Nadial came by with lunch a while later, Calla pulled herself away from the loom with her good mood completely restored. So it was with some chagrin that she found herself plunged deep into a prolonged and awkward silence as soon as Nadial left the room. Twice she nearly worked herself up to say something to the other woman, but there was something so icily aloof about her that Calla felt quite crushed and shy. Giving up as a lost cause, she devoured her food so that she could return to work as quickly as possible. She was just brushing crumbs from her hands when Chanda gave her a tight little smile (which did not, Calla noticed, reach her eyes) and at last deigned to speak.
"I'm surprised I haven't seen you about more often. Most of us who do work for the nobility know each other fairly well. Is there some lady's seamstress in particular who has been keeping you a secret?"
"I—no," stammered Calla, feeling herself blush and loathing herself for doing it. "I've never really worked for the nobility before. My friend and I run a little business of our own, just the two of us, taking commissions— and work from—well, just people in general. But this is our first time working for a really noble client, so we're quite—quite excited, and… um…" She trailed off as Chanda's smile became at once wider and more clearly forced.
"Oh, how… nice. For you. Where is your shop?"
"Oh, no, ah, we don't have one. We work out of my house." Calla squirmed as Chanda nodded dismissively. Going back to her loom, Calla suppressed a groan. She could just tell she was going to spend the rest of the afternoon seething.
O
Calla trudged to Shiriel's door in low spirits that evening. Shiriel looked at her concernedly as she flopped into a chair with a melancholy sigh.
"Are you all right, Calla? Come on, put your feet up on the table and tell me about it. And look! I actually found sugar cane today—I'm so glad the war's over— and got some to celebrate our business's triumph. Now, what's wrong? The work isn't going badly, is it? Is it too much? Too hard?"
"The works fine, Shiriel," Calla said, kicking off her shoes and accepting the stick of sugar cane. "It's the woman I'm working with who's the problem. Stuck-up, patronizing harpy. She made me feel about two inches tall today when she condescended to talk to me just because we don't typically work for the nobility, or some such nonsense. What an idiotic thing to be snobbish about—as if we weren't both working girls, as if because she's woven things for the seamstresses of lords and ladies before, that somehow elevates her to levels beyond the comprehension of mere mortals. Lord Faramir isn't like that and he's actually the Steward.
"And it's even more infuriating that I care! I know it's stupid even while she's talking, I know that it doesn't make the slightest difference whether or not we have a shop, I know that everything she says is not only completely absurd, but calculated to hurt, and I'm still reduced to a stammering, blushing—ugh!"
Calla bit down savagely on the sugar cane and sucked it grimly, glowering fiercely at nothing in particular. Eventually she sighed and smiled.
"All right, I'm done now, no more ranting. I just don't understand how—or why—some women do that to others. I am not looking forward to working with this woman every day. But never mind, forget it. Let's talk about something else."
"All right, how set are you on going to the festivities tonight? Because for one thing, you look exhausted and should probably get an early night, and for another thing I want to spend some time, just the two of us, and for another thing I want to talk with you about the wedding arrangements—because in case you forgot, I'm getting married in less than three weeks and there are some things to work out still, and then finally, I want to hear all about this one true love of yours."
"He is not my true love."
"Only because you aren't trying hard enough. Now what do you say, stay in tonight? You can sleep over here instead of going home and just start for work in the morning. I think it would be good for you to take a night to just rest up and let me take care of you. You need to relax, you've been overwrought lately, you have to admit it, and you can't hide it from me, I know these things."
"Well," said Calla with mock reluctance, "I suppose if I don't you'll worry yourself into a frenzy."
O
Calla left extra-early the next morning, feeling refreshed. It was still dark out when she reached the workrooms and let herself in, but she wanted to have some time, before Chanda arrived, to collect herself and get lost in the weaving. After an evening with Shiriel, she felt better equipped to deal with her partner. Her plan was simply to ignore her as much as possible. She would be pleasant, she would be civil, but she would not go out of her way to befriend Chanda, and she would do her best to forget about her and just do her work well. That was what she was there for, after all. Calla sat at her loom in the semi-darkness, repeating this to herself. She took a few minutes to look over her work and was pleased with what she saw; she had been afraid that in her bad mood the afternoon before, she might have lost her lightness of touch, or been careless, but she satisfied herself that the weaving had not suffered. She went round to the back of the loom to check the warp threads were all in order, when there was a light sound of feet in the corridor outside. Calla looked up, wondering what could have brought Nadial to the workroom so early, and caught her breath.
Legolas came around the corner and into the room.
"My Lord," she said straightening up. He gave her a swift smile.
"I thought I might find you here. I've been looking for you in the evenings—I want to continue our discussion. Will you be there tonight?"
"Y—yes, I will." Calla, in fact, had been planning to stay in again, but somehow this had completely slipped her mind.
"Good. Do you get a break during the day?"
"Yes, I stop for lunch."
"Here, if you get a chance, look at this." He moved towards her and pressed a leather-bound book into her hands. Calla grasped it mechanically, scarcely even knowing what it was. She felt her fingers burning where his had touched them. "I've marked a few passages I want to talk to you about. If you have time, read them over. I'll come and look for you tonight at the head of the staircase near the eastern entrance to the hall, as soon as Aragorn leads Arwen to the dance. Can I count on finding you there?"
"You can. I will. Be there, I mean. See you tonight." He smiled again, and with a quick, courteous half-bow, was gone.
Calla was very glad that she had got there before anyone else, because there was simply no way that she could stop herself from spinning around the room, hugging the little brown book.
O
Calla expected the day to crawl by; it flew. At some point, she supposed, Chanda must have come in since she was certainly there when Nadial stopped them for lunch. Abandoning her loom, Calla plunged into the book of poetry Legolas had left, devouring it along with her bread and cold meat. As she returned to work for the afternoon, she let her practiced fingers and feet find the rhythm of the loom, while her mind went over and over the passages. At two, she wondered what common theme could possibly link the parts he had selected. At six, she had repeated them under her breath so many times that she had discovered an unusual metrical quirk common to them all. At half past six, she judged that she had put in enough work for the day and that if she left now, she'd have time to make herself ready for tonight. She gathered her things up, nodded goodnight to Chanda, let herself out, and fairly ran home.
She heated pot after pot of water over the fire until they were steaming and poured them into the great copper basin she used to bathe. She picked up the large lump of yellow animal-fat soap and the harsh bristly brush she usually used, changed her mind, went to her cabinet and took out a piece of clean flannel and a little paper-wrapped package. It contained a soft, white bar of scented soap she had been given as a gift some time ago, and never quite brought herself to use.
She had just climbed out of the bath and wrapped herself up when Shiriel knocked at the door. Calla let her in and shut the door after her, shivering in the chilly evening air.
"Calla, what are you doing? I thought you wanted to stay at home tonight so that you could rest up, and how did you get back early enough to bathe? What's happened, has something come up? You're acting very oddly of late, you know, you're not usually so madcap."
Calla, ecstatically, though perhaps not very coherently, managed to make her understand that she had seen Legolas again, had spoken to him, and that they were meeting. She immediately went into a frenzy of fussing. She brushed out and braided Calla's hair, pillaging her window boxes and planters for flowers to put in her hair, debating, at great length, which of the two formal dresses Calla ought to wear (at length deciding on the grey-blue silk) and then, once Calla was wearing it, straightening and re-straightening it, and removing imaginary specks of lint until she pushed Calla, now completely flustered, out the door, and told her to save a seat while she, Shirel, ran home to change clothes.
Her nerves buzzing as she climbed the stairs to the hall, Calla clenched her fists, dug her fingernails into her palms, and reminded herself to walk, not skip. She sat down at one of the long benches, glancing anxiously at the empty high table. She was suddenly certain that she was wrong about the whole thing—there had been a mistake. He'd been joking, or she'd made it all up in her head, or he had thought she was someone else. But no, the book was real and solid in her hand and she could run her finger along its edge to reassure herself. But maybe he wouldn't come. He might be ill, or busy, or he might forget, or…
Fortunately, she was not able to dwell on it. She had promised Shiriel she'd save her a seat, and now Calla was distracted by fending off newcomers until her friend arrived. Eventually Shiriel slipped in beside her. They glanced at each other, and waited breathlessly until the party of the high table arrived and—yes, of course—he was there, in his usual place. Shiriel gave Calla's hand a squeeze under the table. Calla gazed at him, hoping (dreading) that he would look her way. She saw him gazing around. Was he looking for her? Calla's stomach tightened into a knot. Shiriel spent the meal trying to get her to eat. Calla spent it watching the King and waiting. It had been ages, a million of them at least, she was sure. Maybe he wasn't going to dance tonight. Maybe he was too tired. What would happen then? Would Legolas just give up and not meet her? How would she know what to do? What if he tried to meet her and she missed him? Anxiously, she turned the book over and over in her hands.
And when the King did lead Lady Arwen out to dance, Calla held her breath and looked at Shiriel. Shiriel reached out, put her hands on either side of Calla's face, and pinched her cheeks hard.
"You'd gone all white. You needed some color. Get going."
Calla was never really sure how she managed to stand up, or walk in the right direction without tripping, or keep her knees from buckling when she saw him (and Time, she was sure, slowed to a crawl) standing there with his hand resting on the top of the banister, peering expectantly into the crowd. And then he saw her and he smiled right into her eyes, and all of Calla's nervousness vanished. After all, she was pretty certain that her heart had just exploded, which meant that she must be dead, and who had ever heard of a nervous corpse? She walked up to him boldly, smiled, and handed him the book.
"You know why I marked off those passages?"
Calla grinned and quirked and eyebrow at him archly.
"Bucolic dieresis. In complete unexpected and totally different contexts."
"I first read Mardil poems while he was still alive, and it's taken me this long to notice it. What did you make of it? I'm not sure what to think. Bucolic dieresis is so inextricably linked with the poetry of herdsmen and pastoral scenes. I could have understood if he'd used in lines which were parts of battle scenes and I'd have thought it a nice bit of contrast and a good piece of irony—but like this? I don't know. I going to insult your beloved poet again, so brace yourself: I'm tempted to think he was just being sloppy."
"Sloppy! Did you learn nothing from my last scolding? Mardil does not get sloppy. Here," Calla flipped through the book to one of the passages Legolas had marked. "Here the Soldier and his son disagree about his (the son's, I mean) contest with his friend. If I were to describe this scene I would describe it as a tense disagreement, a definite clash of personalities, but not even actually an argument, and certainly not a fight. The diereses here, here, and here I take to mean a few things. First, I think it's meant to remind the reader that such a confrontation is the sort of thing that takes place almost exclusively in a peaceful environment—and you remember that Mardil was writing this in the first few years of peace after a long and brutal war—since in bloodier, more desperate times, no one has the leisure to care too much about such trivial things.
"Second, and this, I think, possibly more important, bucolic dieresis invariably is used when something genuinely and positively good is happening."
"You think Mardil was portraying family strife as an agreeable thing?"
Well, no. And yes. Sort of. Not agreeable, not pleasant, but good—beneficial."
They had wandered away from the noise of the crowd, down the stairs and were standing in a long gallery that ran at right angles to the staircase. They were standing and facing each other now, framed by an open arch with a view down across the city. The music floated down the stairs and soft light from the torches in sconces on the wall fell across Calla's face. Legolas looked at her, smiling but skeptical.
"You're going to have to elaborate. Familial tension—beneficial?"
"Absolutely! I mean to say, what better opportunity are we given to really force ourselves outside our own preferences and learn to love what's before us? Nothing stretches you like your own family…Oh, I'm saying this badly. Here, let me try again." Calla thought for a moment. "Suppose you knew a man who collected works of art, one who put together his own private museum. Would it surprise you to know that he enjoyed all the paintings, or sculptures, or what have you, in his collection?"
"No."
"Of course not. Because the man chose them himself, so naturally they appeal to his own taste. Now, would you expect the art in the collection to comprise a particularly wide range, a really catholic representation of styles and periods and artists?"
"No, since they had all been selected to suit his precise taste. I think I see where this is going, but continue."
"Right. Well such a man, though he might have rooms and rooms full of works of art, could not really be said to have broadened himself by bringing all this art together into one collection. He would merely have taken what already appealed to him and gone on appreciating that. I think it's the same way with people. We can choose our friends, our spouses, the people we bring ourselves close to. So even a man with an enormous circle of friends can't be assumed to be an openhearted one who welcomes the presence of his fellow men as a blessing on his life. How much effort is there in liking people whom you have chosen as your own friends?
"But family is different. None of us gets a say in who our parents or our brothers will be. Sometimes—often, probably—they are people whom, were we not related to them, we would pass over as friends, people we simply wouldn't bother with. But when you're stuck in a family with these people, you have two choices. You can—admittedly with effort— learn to love and see the value in people whom you have not chosen… Or else you can have a very unhappy family. It's good to be forced to live with others like that. We need to be taught that our own tastes aren't really the measure of all worth. It's only when we've done that that we can really be kind—without being condescending."
Calla stopped and looked at him. Legolas was now gazing down at the little flickering lights throughout Minas Tirith and the dark plane beyond, his blue eyes steady and thoughtful, his expression inscrutable.
Calla was glad of his momentary silence. All this talk of loving one's family had rubbed raw the wound on her heart. She could not have gone on speaking, even if she had not finished her piece, since there was a lump in her throat. She fought it down and blinked back the tears. Legolas nodded slowly and faced her.
"You're right." He studied her for a moment. "You surprise me, Calla. I would not have expected such a response from one so young. Nor one so... clearly expressed." Calla took a deep breath, expelling the last of the tearful quaver from her throat and smiled warmly at him.
"You flatter me, my Lord. If I could express myself better, I would not need so many words to do it."
"The Ents would disagree."
"Oh? The Ents? I've heard stories, rumors, but know almost nothing about them—"
She broke off as a voice called down the stairs,
"Legolas? Legolas!" The silhouette of a Dwarf stood at the top of the stairs. "Legolas, you're wanted by Aragorn. Hurry up!" Legolas waved to him to show he understood and turned back to Calla who could not hide (and did not try) her crestfallen expression.
"Then next we meet, I will be happy to give you a lessen in natural history. But for now I must go." He bowed politely and gave her rueful grin. "Our conversations seem doomed to be too short. We haven't even finished with Mardil yet." With that, he turned and ran lightly up the stairs.
Calla watched him go and practically collapsed against a pillar, where she leaned, hugging herself for a moment, before flinging herself up the stairs. Half way up, Shiriel rushed down to her, smiling.
"Well? Come back, not to the noisy hall, come back home, and tell me all about it, atonce! Oh, Calla, what's he like? He's so terribly handsome! What did he say? What did you say, are you meeting again, and when? You have to wear the red velvet next time, he hasn't seen you in that yet. After that I don't know what we're going to do, except perhaps put up your hair differently each time you see him, and maybe find new things to put with them—I wish you had more necklaces!"
"Slow down, Shiriel!" Calla laughed, but she herself was soaring, giddy, swelling, bursting with happiness. Arm-in-arm, they walked back through the darkened streets towards Shiriel's house, Calla faithfully relating every word, describing every look and shiver and thrill from their short meeting. When they got to Shiriel's door, she went in and turned to Calla with a mischievous smile.
"You know, Calla, just because you swear up and down that this is just a crush doesn't make it true."
Calla slammed the door in her face and danced all the way home.
A/N: Hey there folks! I had hoped to get the first part of this chapter up as a mini-chapter before ffn did it's update thing, but I failed, so I decided to finish it off and post the whole thing. Hope it wasn't too long in coming. I'm interested to hear reactions to this chapter, so, you know the drill. Thanks to all of you who review, I really do love to hear from you all. I have not had time to edit this chapter and my laptop is about to die, so, um. I'll have a look at it in the morning and see what I catch.
Writing a criticism for poetry that doesn't exist is harder than you might think.