Disclaimer: I do not own LOTR, or The Red Tent. See the author's notes at the end for what exactly my crazy little mind did come up with.
"In the city where I grew to womanhood," Kala told me once, in the early days of my apprenticeship and about a day after I had moved the snake herb to another pot, "they believed that the fair ones, the long-lifes, have no souls."
"Why would they think that?" I had asked her, for the tales I had heard of the beautiful creatures that looked only a little like Men claimed that if a long-life died the gods gave their unhoused spirit a new body, a gift that Men would never receive. "The blessed race is immortal, unless wounded to the point of death, or filled with sorrow beyond repair, and if they die then they are reborn in flesh again to replace that which they have lost. Something must be there to depart from the old body and inhabit the new one, if the stories are true, otherwise that would not be the same person. That would just be another person born in place of them."
"But whatever that thing is, is it a soul? Does it truly last?" Kala loved to debate about such things and to encourage me to do so as well. She said that it stretched the mind and broke down barriers of ignorance. "There are stories too that say that when the world ends, as surely it will someday, then the fair ones will cease to exist with it while those who pass beyond will live forever. A soul is immortal; how can the long-lifes have souls, therefore, if they are doomed to end at last?"
She expected me to argue back, and so I did. I reminded her of how the fair ones, while not born to die, could die nonetheless. I told her how the gods were immortal, but one former god – the creature whose name we did not even mention, the lost and evil demon – had been destroyed by his kindred for his wicked acts. Just because something could die did not mean that it did not have a spirit or soul. We soon fell into an argument over what defined immortality, and we talked no more of souls at that time.
We did talk about the fair ones again, though. This time I was in my fourteenth year and Kala had taken me to the market and bought me a new tunic, for my body had chafed by then in my old ones and sometimes it had hurt to breathe and oh, how it had hurt when I had run! I had gone to show myself off to my mother and my aunts and had returned to her full of delight at their words of praise, and she had smiled and said that I would be turning some heads now. I had been even more delighted, for what young woman is not pleased when she hears that she is attractive? It made Kala nostalgic, and she began telling me about when she had been young and she had caught the eye of more than one man. And in the midst of that, she told me that when she had managed to be allowed into the rich land on the north-west of the Sea, she had met two very special, very clever and very handsome men, and one of them was a fair one…
My words when I had heard this nearly made her choke with laughter on the barely water she was drinking. "Which one did you bed, then?"
"Neither, actually" she managed, when she had stopped coughing. "The man was only a boy, really, and betrothed too; and I had no right to insult a bride before her marriage. And as for the fair one, the males never deign to notice us mortal women in that way. Only their women seem to find Men desirable. But my long-life was quite a good friend. We were all friends; the boy in his eighteenth year, the isha in the prime of her life and the fair one with hundreds of years behind him."
The boy had been called Turambar, and the long-life had been called Amdír. Amdír had lived on that coast for more than four hundred lives of men, and he had known Turambar from his birth, and had watched with disapproval as the youth had followed the woman from the East around like a dog following its master. She had smiled as the older creature stared coolly at her, and she had humoured the pale skinned boy, marvelling that he could be so desirous of her. She did not lead him on but still he chased after her, and as he chased her she grew ever more amused, teasing him though never seeking to hurt him and teasing his fuming guardian as well. Somewhere in the teasing and the following and the fuming there was made a friendship between the three, born from jokes and reprimanding and woeful flirting on Turambar's part. They would walk through the vineyards that Turambar's family owned and tended, or they would sit by the many fountains and listen to the sound of running water, or they would sit in the shade and Amdír would tell the two mortals stories of ages past, when the world was greener. He was one of the best story-tellers she had ever heard, better even than the professional ones back in her home city. It was one of the happiest times of her life, or so Kala said.
But in the end she had left that rich green land, for she knew that she could not make her home there. She valued Turambar's friendship, but she did not love him and his love for her had made his family hostile, and the tint of her skin would always set her apart in a land where the darkest men were the colour of sand. The men of the land of vines tolerated the people of the Sea, but she was of Eastern stock and the East would never be fully welcome there. So she left before she might be driven out, saying farewell only to Amdír and promising that she would stay in contact in some way, and she departed from that land of grapes and wine and Men and fair ones that lived together, where no soldier of the One of the South ever came.
"That land sounds like something out of a folktale," I had sighed, when her story was finished. "How could you bear to leave it?"
"Were you not listening?" she retorted. "I had brought the son of one of the most important families there to licking my sandals if I had asked him, even though I didn't want him to. White skins don't take kindly to that, especially if the son is already betrothed. And I am an 'Easterling', after all." I did not know that word, and I told her so, and she explained with a hard smile. "Those people who have grown up around the Sea are excused, since they are raised on worship of the gods and goddesses. But any from further South and East are all gathered together and given that name; Easterling. To most white skins and fair ones, the people caught under that name are all alike, all servants of the One of the South, with no distinction between those of culture and civilisation from those who would offer their own daughters to be the broodmares of shadowed ones!"
She stopped speaking and breathed heavily through her nose, before beginning to speak again. "That place is a bit like a folktale, true, but it is not perfect. Nothing is truly perfect in this tainted world, not any longer, nothing is truly safe. Believe that if you believe nothing else."
We did not talk of the land of vines again, the land that its inhabitants called Dorwinion, but Kala did tell me some of the stories that Amdír had told her: of talking eagles and a hound who was wiser and braver than many men, and trees that walked and herded smaller trees as if they were sheep or goats. There was one story she told very well, that of a great white city full of long-lifes with many sparkling fountains, hidden away in deep hills, and the fair princess of that city who fell in love with a mortal man and who did not lose him despite war and strife. My favourite part of that tale was the courtship of the fleeting man and the immortal woman, and I would listen happily to Kala talking of feet plated with silver and embraces between columns and pillared walks, for while I had no desire for a man I could appreciate when another female snared one for herself. She had a good memory and could even imitate the accent of Amdír to make the stories sound as she had heard them; she would save the stories for when I had done well at something, or when she thought that I needed to be comforted.
And so we went on, ever on.
And then Bilhah died. And after that life was strange, and then it grew terrible. Never had I worried for my mother and aunts as I did then. Sometimes if I thought of when it would be the time for Ishara or Benti or Werru to die I grew distracted and could not concentrate on what I was doing; and if I thought of Rookheeya it was enough to make the tears come to my eyes as I lost my breath. My head began to ache and my eyes swelled and my nose often ran. Even after we had put away our plain cloth robes and had finished our mourning my appearance was enough for my mother to continuously ask after my health, her face drawn with her own sorrow.
"What is it? What is the matter with you?" she would ask again and again, and I would turn my head away to hide my tears and lie that I still missed Bilhah, when in truth I thought only of when she would die and leave me in her turn.
I told no one. I thought that since I was chosen by Laban I should manage my sorrow at death. I believed that I was foolish if I could hear of the ends of thousands of men in laments composed to wrench the hearts of whoever heard them, but could not stomach the inevitable when it came. I tried so hard to keep the tears back. I lay awake at night and thought of myself as a rock, a pillar, cold and untouchable, a queen made out of the cold that lurked in the sky at night, but still I would wake with dampness on my face in the morning.
Ishara came to visit us one day, unannounced, and she took me out walking with Kala's permission. She limped up to the grazing fields with me at her side, leaning on her staff more and more now, and we sat on one of the great rocks that dotted the land and looked down at the village and the temple, and the sea. When she was comfortable my bond-aunt said, "This is not just about Bilhah any more, is it?" I could never lie to Ishara. I shook my head and curled about myself, hoping that she could not see the water in my eyes. And though she asked me to tell her my troubles, I could not answer for fear my voice would crack.
"Then do you wish me to guess at what torments you and makes you weep every day? It will not be a pleasant task, but someone must do it." Ishara rapped her staff against the rock, beating out a child's tune, as she looked away from me and at the ever blue sky. "You're worrying Rookheeya greatly, you know. She can bear her own sorrow quite well, but she could never bear yours from the day you came crying into this world. She's so afraid she thinks that you might actually take your own life." That startled me out of my silence. How could my own mother think that I would wish to hurt her so? Did she not know me at all?
"Why would she think that I would do that?"
My aunt shrugged as she hit the stone beneath us with the staff again. "Fear makes her irrational and takes away her good sense. You certainly wouldn't be the first girl that any of us have known to open her veins or hang herself." And I knew that she talked of the pit deep in the forest, and that it was not just the crushing darkness that had taken their comrades from them, one by one. "You don't look as if you've come to that yet, mind you. But still, you should tell me. Come on, now."
It took far more than those words, but at last she coaxed it from me, all of it. I have forgotten many things, but I have never forgotten what my bond-aunt Ishara told me then, as we sat on the rock and she put her un-withered arm around me and we looked out upon our home.
"All humans die, Adahni. That is how the gods and goddesses made us, or the Almighty One, or whoever it was that fashioned the Race of Men. That cannot be changed or altered. And sometimes, though I pray that you never come to such a pass, sometimes life can come to the point that death is better. Now, we four, I and your mother and Werru and Benti, we all know that, hopefully not too near in the future, we will die. We have never denied it. We have all come close to death more than once in our lives. We are no strangers to such a prospect, and I believe we have spent the time that we have had well enough that we will not regret our lives when the time comes for them to end."
"But I do not want any of you to die." Those were my words, heavy and forced from a sore throat.
"Has anyone ever wanted such a thing for someone they love? Unless, as I said, death is better? But whether you want it or not, Adahni, my dear, it will happen. And when it does, for each of us in turn, I hope that you will weep because you loved us and because we loved you, and because we have left you and because we are gone from this world and will not return. Sometimes our absence will tear at you, and you will long to hear our words or simply to feel our presence and know that you are loved by us, and it is not a sin if you let it hurt. And then, in time, you will smile again, because there is more in the world than just we four for you, and there is more for you to do with your life than weep it away in memory of those who have left it."
I loved her for that, for not blandly comforting me by saying that we would meet again when I passed beyond the circles of the world myself. I loved her for letting me cry until there seemed to be no salt water left in me. I love her for allowing me my grief.
But now, let me tell you something different from anything I have said so far.
When Alamon went with the merchant train to the north-west shore of the Sea in my sixteenth year, I wished to go with him. I was of a mind to see the world before I settled down into my set place, and Kala agreed with me and thought that she could spare me for some months. But Rookheeya did not want me to go, and she refused again and again when Kala asked her and Ishara argued with her and I pleaded with her. Kala told her that she should not worry, that the soldiers of the One of the South, if that dread personage was even still alive, never ventured along the southern and western shores of the Sea, but my mother said no. Alamon promised her that he would protect me with his own life; still my mother clung to me as if I would be dragged off to fill the fate that she had escaped. I told her of my desire to see the lands to the north, I reminded her of my sacred office and how no one would dare to touch me, but in her fear she would not listen to my arguments, and I would not go without her blessing.
But I was determined to leave and so we clashed over it for several nights, until at long last I won out and she said that she would wait for me to return, and held my face in her hands as she made me promise that I would not stay too long abroad. She summoned Alamon to her and she ordered him and Ishara threatened him until he would have carried me on his back all the way there and back again just so that they would stop their talking. And on the morn that we departed she gave me a knife, a sharp thing with a fine curved blade and a handle of bone, and a sheath for it to hang at my side. I told her that I did not think I would need it, but I thanked her for the weapon and I assured her that I knew where to sink it where it would do the most damage in a man's body. She took my face in her hands again and kissed me on the forehead and the cheeks and everywhere, and once more I was in her arms. I was as tall as her, now.
"You must make certain that you spend your time away from here well, do you hear me? After all that you've done to get away, you must not regret it, or I will not be pleased with you at all. So see and do many things, and come back here with new tales to tell us all."
"I will, mother," I told her, and I smiled my brightest and best smile for her and she ran her finger down my forehead and my long nose, and told me that the gods and goddesses looked favourably on me and would not abandon me in my travels. Never had she done that for me, and yet it seemed familiar from her tales of that man in blue in the darkness who gave life to me and strength to her. I told her that I could not believe that I would be in danger, and that I would not believe that I could be in danger. She smiled at how I echoed her, and so we parted after a long embrace, and more tears not quite shed, and embraces from my aunts and from Kala who had come to see me off.
Alamon lifted me up into the small cart that would take the wares he was entrusted with to the port where they would be transferred to the boat; we would sail on that to reach the port we were allowed to dock at, and then there would be another cart to ride in from there. I settled myself among jars of olive oil and fruit preserves and bundles of new rope made from goat hair, and wool, some of it from our family's own sheep, and cotton from further up our side of the coast. I nestled among a cargo of things that, if not quite riches, were certainly desired by many in my village and many others. And we went away, we two cousins, away from our home in the hills and to the port. I waved to the five women who saw me off, but Alamon did not do so, too focused on the mule ahead of us and on keeping up with the other merchants, his first time making this journey alone with only the daughter of an isha beside him.
The goods were loaded on to the boats, ten in all, and we departed at midday. I had never been on a boat before for I had had no reason to sail upon the sea, and I spent much time by the side ready to void up whatever was in me, even if it never quite came to that. For the rest of our time I would stay by Alamon as he sat by the packed goods he was responsible for, and we would talk. I had hardly spoken to him for three years by this time and we had both changed. Such different things were important to us now that we were no longer children; the man who had been a boy who ruled over his siblings and his cousin with such an arrogant joy had had all of that joy leeched from him. There were lines about his eyes and his lips were thin and pressed together more than they should have been, and anyone could tell that he was thinking what to say before he said it. I did not know whether he still thought on his mother, or whether he thought on her at all, but I sat by his side and talked to him and listened to him answer while his thoughts were ever elsewhere. I thought to myself that sometimes it was easier to be a woman than a man, for it is no surprise when women are imperfect and only to be expected. We were allowed to cry, to mourn, and we were allowed to make mistakes to a point, but weakness in a man is seen as pitiful. I wondered how Alamon had learned such a lesson.
He still had his arrogance, though, and he still took charge when it came to me. If any man so much as looked in my direction he would look right back at them until they walked onwards, and whenever I slept, or tried to sleep, he would always sit by my blanket with a frown on his face for anyone who dared to come near. When I tried to tell him that no one would dare touch me, as I had told my mother, he waved away my apprenticeship with the words, "There are some for whom nothing is sacred, cousin." And what could I say to that?
(Four) days we spent upon that boat, and at last we came to a small inlet where we could tie up and disembark. As we came nearer and nearer to the coast I saw three little crafts come racing across the water, faster than our boats could ever have managed, and made of palest wood. I leaned upon my arms on the side and watched them approach, and remarked to Alamon what fine sailors the men in the boats must be. He squinted at them, and then he said that they should be, for they had more time to perfect their skills than any man ever would.
That was the first time that I saw long-lifes, as they sailed alongside our boat and called out to know who was aboard. Two males; and they lived up to the names that people gave them for they were the most beautiful creatures that I had ever seen. One had brown hair, but of a deeper and richer brown than the dullness of the East, and the other seemed to have a wealth of golden threads upon his head. I could not quite make out the colour of their eyes at that time, but later I learned that they were blue. Think of it; blue eyes! I had only ever looked into eyes that were brown or near black or the tawny yellow of my mother; think of having eyes the same colour as the lucky blue sky, the realm of Salim and Adah! Some stories said that the Blue Spirits had eyes the same colour of their robes, and now here were two beings with eyes that matched the high heavens!
And the hair fell against skin the colour of cream mixed with honey, and the eyes were set in faces that were strange and even unsettling in their beauty. The one who was nearest to the side of our boat, the one with brown hair, looked in my direction by chance as he was told who was on the vessel; to me he looked as if he had no more than twenty years behind him, but he also looked as if he had been only twenty for a very long time indeed. He spoke in Westron, and from what little I understood and Alamon translated for me, he said that we were to moor at the dock and prepare for the next part of our journey.
What confused me was that only three of the boats did so; the other seven sailed onwards along the coast without stopping, with two of the fair ones' crafts skimming beside them. I waited until all of Alamon's goods had been loaded into another cart of a design that I had never seen before - with a raised cloth cover - and I was seated beside him as we set off once more on the last part of our journey, directed by the brown haired one and the golden head, before I asked.
The answer? That merchants from the eastern shore were not allowed to simply sail into the great port of Dorwinion;they had to prove their trustworthiness before they could be allowed such easy access. Three times they had to make the journey by land as well as by water, and show good conduct in the land of the vines, before they could dock in the heart of that green country and be welcomed by something more than hearty suspicion at the best and spears and arrows at the worst. Already Kala's warning was being proved; this place was no folktale.
The brown haired one and the golden head followed us, though they rarely showed themselves. Sometimes when I was seated in the back of the cart and was watching the land spread out behind us, flatter and greener than any land I had seen before, I might see a shape on horseback, seated too well for even my untrained eyes to be any man. Sometimes we would see them, and sometimes we would simply know that they were watching us and that it would take very little time for them to be at our side, bow ready if something or someone was amiss. It was not pleasant, and nor was the great open plain that surrounded us as we travelled onwards. I missed the hills that had always broken up my view of the world about me, for there was only a smudge of any hills to the west. I had thought that the blue sky unimpeded would be a marvellous sight, but now that it was before me it was nearly too much. I felt so small - as if the openness of the air was crushing down upon me. I would lie curled on my side amid the goods and barely see the horizon over the top of the cart, feeling the heat of the sun strained by the cloth awning over my head. Alamon feared that I was sickening from something, but I waved him away, telling him that I was merely learning how big the world truly was at last.
When we stopped to let the horses rest from their labour I would lay upon the grass and feel it and smell it, and it struck me how different it felt and smelled from the thin grass on the other side of the sea. And knew then how far I was from home when things that should have been so familiar did not even smell the same.
And the nights were so cold! All the carts would stop and the men would make a fire for us to sit about and talk, though we talked little. Besides me, there was only one other woman in our party, a newly married wife who was just fourteen and who was too timid to do anything but huddle by her husband's side. I stayed by Alamon as we shared blankets for warmth. One of the long-lifes came into the light of the fire once, to ask us coolly how we fared, and refused to share our hearth when we offered it. One of the men muttered, when he was certain that our visitor could no longer hear him, that the fair ones could not even feel the cold, or if they did then they did not recognise it. And then we would settle down to sleep in the carts, after choosing one to keep watch, and I would lie under blankets at Alamon's back as he slumbered and look up at the stars above us and try to think of all the tales I knew of them, before the warmth of my cousin's body pulled me down into sleep.
After four days – or it might have been five – there was a dark line in the distance, and then it grew as we came closer to it, and at last we saw that it was a great wall, made from wood, that stretched out on either side of us and did not stop even when my sight failed. It looked fairly old, and it looked solid, and it looked as if it would not hold off attacking enemies forever, but it would keep them occupied for some time.
And when the fair ones, who were magically with us once more, called out, the gates were opened and out came armed men with skin nearly as pale as their long-life allies, dressed in such strange garments. And they were so tall! If I had stepped from the cart and stood next to one he would have been two heads taller than me, probably more. If Alamon, who was one of the tallest men in the village, had stood next to one of those men, they would still have been taller than him. Once they had heard the fair ones' accounts of our behaviour – or so it seemed; they spoke in a beautiful language that I had never heard before – and then the men turned to ask us questions in Westron.
They seemed to accept most of us, but of course – of course! - they were curious about me. They questioned me and I had to explain to them, through Alamon of course, that I was the daughter of an isha and therefore could choose not to wear a veil; and then of course I had to explain what an isha was, since no one from our land had ever thought or had to had the need to describe such an extraordinary woman. It was difficult to try to capture and hold down for examination something so…so intrinsic, so simple and yet so important to those I had been surrounded by for all of my life. I sought for the right words, failed to find them, and I told them that women scarred on their flesh or in their hearts or minds by warfare had the right to cast away their old roles and take up new lives of independence, and that my mother had been one of them. I do not know if the pale men quite believed it, but the fair ones seemed happy with my words and so they agreed that I should pass by as well. And so they opened the gates wider and wider, and at last we were permitted into Dorwinion.
And oh, the things that we saw there.
Copious author's notes!
'Wine of the Dorwinion' is mentioned in The Hobbit as an alcoholic beverage that can make even Elves drunk, and the land itself lies on the north west shores of the Sea of Rhûn. I chose to have it populated by both Men and a few Elves for the simple reason that there is no solid evidence on which species was living there at this point. The Men are there because most of the Elves left long before; some Elves are there because they're not longing for the sea just yet, or because they've come from the West to organize having wine shipped to Thranduil's court. I've also chosen to have the wall closing off the land from anything further south and letting only certain people through – which will be gone into further in the next chapter, I assure you! - because I seriously doubt that the Elves of Mirkwood would have bought wine from any place that was in league with Sauron, or any perceived evil. Prudence, mixed with just a tad of xenophobia and species-ism.
These are the Elves we're talking about, after all.
The whole 'Elves have no souls' belief of the Easterlings is basically an idea I adapted from the general mythology of fae creatures in this world: being that they are tied to their homeland and when they die or are killed their consciousnesses simply cease to exist, as opposed to human souls that go to heaven, purgatory or 'the other place'. (Sort of like the original version of 'The Little Seamaid'.) Of course most people who live around the Sea of Rhûn know from the stories - or even from being told - that the Elves do have souls and that they do not 'wink out' but get new bodies; but they also believe that humans go on to something more than just reincarnation and are granted a blessed relief. The people around the sea are gradually accepting 'The Gift of Men', although for various reasons it's taken a while – say about four thousand years. Water dripping on a stone, people, water dripping on a stone.
Anyone who has been wondering about isha (perhaps not many, since it's my own invention; but hey, who knows?) will have some questions answered here. Describing what exactly being an isha consists of is rather complicated. In some ways it's rather like being a female eunuch, only without any operations needed (unless the woman is very unlucky); at other times it's like being a female version of an Asian 'Hijira'. A woman who declares herself isha, literally 'reborn',divorces herself from her previous life and any subservient role she might have had, and also abandons some female qualities that are standard for Rhûn such as having children and taking care of the home. She provides for herself and whoever she may choose to make her new life with (usually other isha women), and usually does not conform to the fashions of the ordinary women around her. It's often a tough life and there are relatively few women who choose it, but those who do can turn out quite well and become important, if not altogether accepted, members of their community.
I've got to find a way to work all this in somewhere, because I am just that much of a nerd about my own musings.
And yes, people from Rhûn are shorter than people on the west side of the Sea, and definitely shorter than the Elves. That's all Tolkein, that is.
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