"What are men to rocks and mountains? "
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
My grandmother's notions of what a suitable education was for a girl has always been at odds with what the other villagers on the island thought would put me in good stead for my future. My parents were known to be unmarried; that is, no one knew who my father was (or no one wanted to own to it), and my mother had conveniently died in childbirth without mentioning his name to a soul. This was considered disgraceful behaviour in the village - both the lack of decorum in lying with a man outside wedlock and then dying so that they could not shame her to their satisfaction. It's a little facetious, perhaps, to speak of the circumstances of my tragic birth with such levity, but if it wasn't funny it would just be sad. It should be understood that a girl who grew up being referred to by the villagers as Fish Girl has to wrap a thick sense of humour round her like she would a cloak.
Especially if the village boys are throwing fish heads at you.
My grandmother brought me up in her little cottage by the beach, where I fished, caught crabs and lobsters, and she grew vegetables and herbs in the garden. She taught me to question authority, to think on my feet, to keep my composure, swim like a fish, and worst of all, to think for myself. I thank her every day for these skills.
The island was so small, that the lord of the island decreed that all the children should learn their letters and numbers together in a disused room in his hall. It took me a long time to realise that this was unusual for a Gondorian lord, but Lord Jakobi clearly thought that there could only be advantages to a somewhat literate workforce on the island. My grandmother said that it was because the unruly village children (myself included) were making too much trouble. But I suspected it was because his only daughter Lind was lonely. Like me, she had no mother or siblings.
We were somewhat shy of her at first. She was dressed like a little lady, and indeed had a lady in waiting sitting behind sewing some embroidery. Lind paid more attention than the rest of us in her lessons and smiled shyly at us occasionally but for a month altogether did not say a word to anyone other than the teacher.
I told my grandmother, who swatted me with a handful of spindly carrots and told me to befriend Lind. "Minnow, everyone needs friends!" she told me.
I considered it. We were about the same age, and she didn't look like she would steal a fisherman's boat like Denvy or jump off a waterfall with me like the ever adventurous Rosa, but I thought I should expand my friendship group.
So I sat next to her, and talked to her. She smiled politely as I told her about which of the village boys bite, which girls pinch, who was rumoured to have fleas and where I considered the best places to watch for dolphins. I copied her fluent and elegant handwriting as best I could, and she let me use her blotting paper, and mostly ignored me. Until one day she told me that her mother had died in childbirth even though her father had sent for the best healer from Minas Tirith himself, but the healer hadn't been good enough, and her father was very sad about it. I told her that my grandmother was the best midwife on Tolfalas and consequently the whole world and hadn't been able to save her daughter, my mother, and was pretty resigned to it.
After that we were as thick as thieves. She couldn't come to my grandmother's cottage or go swimming on the beach or anything I considered fun, but after a while, I was allowed into the large hall to have tea with her. And then to watch her dancing lessons. And then to participate in her dancing lessons. And then to her and her lady in waiting's embroidery circle.
And then when we were twelve, the other children became fishermen or traders, or joined the navy, or helped their mothers or in the case of one very talented girl, Dena, was apprenticed to a milliner in Minas Tirith. We waved her goodbye as Dena and her father boarded a boat to the mainland. I remember being envious of her freedom.
When I wasn't running wild, I assisted my grandmother with her midwifery, and her other healing duties. I set bones, and sewed up wounds. In one very unfortunate incident of a public outbreak of diarrhea, I spent hours walking round the village, making sure that everyone was drinking water, and the concoctions that my grandmother had distilled. It turned out that there had been an issue with the beer, which is probably the reason I was one of the few people unharmed, but it meant that Lord Jakobi was ill too.
I tended to him as well, as his personal healer was… otherwise detained. Healer Georg was often to be found at the tavern, I understood. I must have impressed the lord with my talents, or perhaps my endless chattering about books I loved that we had been allowed to read in the schoolroom had made an impact on him. Shortly after, our lessons were renewed but this time it was just me and Lind.
"What's the point, Fish Girl?" said Denvy, who bought crabs from me to take to the mainland. "You've got your letters. Why do you need to know anything else?" He noted down the amount of money that he owed me with a pencil, and gave me three coins. I don't think he realised what a gift Lord Jakobi had given us. Denvy's father struggled to do his accounts, but now Denvy did them, and would teach his children, and their children would teach their children.
"There's as much to learn as there are fish in the sea," I said with a smile.
"You may be friends with the lady of the island, but you'll never be one of them. You're the natural born daughter of nobody knows who! Your father was probably a fish," said Hana.
"Leave Minnow alone, Hana," said Rosa. I smiled and waved goodbye, walking back to the cottage on the far side of the island. Rosa's sister was a few years older than us, and not long ago my grandmother had given her something to stop her from conceiving a baby. Hana knew that I knew about it because I had been in the cottage when she came to call, desperate and crying, and that I would never say anything, for that was the midwife's code, but she hated that I knew.
"You're getting airs and graces, Fish Girl!" she sneered in my face the next time I was in the village.
I probably was. Lind needed to know all sorts of foreign things to become a lady, and if I was listening intently to what was required of a lady, what of it? It was more interesting than listening to the fishermen talk about where the schools of fish were likely to move to. Like curtseying, which was a lot more complicated than I had realised. If she was curtseying to a lord or lady of equal status, then she dipped, but if it was a high lord or indeed royalty, it involved a sweep, and the Elves required something else entirely.
"No, you be the Elvish lord, and I'll curtsey to you," she said, showing me what to do under the auspicious eye of her curtseying tutor and lady in waiting and governess.
"Do you imagine you'll be meeting many Elvish lords, Lind?" I asked, standing tall and trying to look enigmatic as I imagined an elf would be.
"They are our allies in the war. Father has met a few," she replied as she stood up, her right hand clasped in a fist over her heart.
"Really?!" I said, grabbing her. "What were they like? Which ones did he meet?
"Why, Miss Minnow, I do not think I've ever heard you so animated?" cried Lord Jakobi, as he entered the room. Lind curtseyed to him, and he bowed.
"I have heard you have been instrumental in Lind's attention to court etiquette and she is racing through her lessons. Perhaps you'd like to stay for supper and I'll tell you of all the elves I have met?" he asked. Lind turned around, with a wide smile and clapped her hands. And so started a weekly tradition, where every Friday I would dine with the lord and lady of the isle, high up in their hall, where I could see the whole isle from one window, and from the other, the sea. If I squinted, or imagined hard enough, I could see a tiny dot which was the mainland.
Lind lent me a few dresses to wear for dinner, and I learnt how to eat with cutlery (Lord Jakobi said my lack of table manners was most amusing but I would have to learn what a fork was if I intended to return to his table), and then how to make polite conversation with whatever dignitary was visiting. It was mostly men of South Gondor, and occasionally a lord of Dol Amroth, and never an elf - or a dwarf - but they were still fascinating because they were mainlanders. Lind knew nothing of the mainland too, so for once I was not alone in my ignorance. Occasionally Lind and Lord Jakobi took the visitor for a trip round the island on one of their many skiffs. It took me a while to realise that these handsome, interesting men of action were not just friends of Lord Jakobi, keen to visit Tolfalas, but were being introduced to Lind as potential suitors.
After a few years of introductions, the visits suddenly stopped.
"It's the war," said Lind, one day when we were in the library, having tea. The library was my favourite place on the island - even including my dolphin watching spot and the waterfall I still jumped from. Lind's mother had loved to read and her father had loved to indulge her. There were a few hundred books in their private library, maybe even a thousand, and they employed a librarian to look after them. There was books about everything - fauna and flora I had never found on the island (even on my midnight trips to collect mushrooms with my grandmother that I was not allowed to speak of to anyone), battle strategies, histories of the Elves, an entire book about dragons with pictures, and a strange book about how women were supposed to be subservient to men which I assumed was some sort of poorly thought out satire.
"Father has to keep the island ready in case the ships from the Bay of Belfalas have to dock here, but otherwise travel is… well he didn't say prohibited but he says that it's becoming harder and harder. I may not be able to be presented at court for my twenty-first," she said sadly.
"I'm sorry," I said, and I meant it, although I had been dreading her leaving me to go to the mainland. Minas Tirith was so far away! She had worked diligently for the last few years to prepare. She practiced for hours at the harp, had made two tapestries on the loom one of which was quite presentable and we had been practicing our Sindarin with her father and the librarian who was a font of knowledge. I had taught her the rudiments of healing, and together we had attempted archery. I enjoyed archery immensely despite a lack of talent, but Lind became very angry if she could not master something immediately and so insisted on practicing for an hour every day. I couldn't imagine when I would ever need it, but it was fun.
"Father says it's about to get much worse. He says we are losing. He says we do not see it because we are so far away but there have been great losses. He says that the king may ask for civilian volunteers now," she said, softly, looking out the window.
"Oh," I said, putting down the book on dragons. We had been at war for ten years now, I knew, but apart from the visitors to the hall, who were invariably high ranking soldiers or captains of great ships, or merchants, who talked about things like supply chains and demands from the crown for soldiers boots, or the occasional explanation of a tactic in warfare that I listened to but didn't really understand, our lives has not been affected. We couldn't see Mordor from the island. We could barely see Gondor. But we sat at the Mouth of Anduin, and all the water rushed past us to the rivers on the mainland. What would this mean for the village? Would the young men volunteer to fight? Would they end up conscripted to fight? I knew such things had happened before in previous wars against the Enemy.
"It is selfish but… I had hoped I would marry soon," said Lind, still staring out the window. "My mother was twenty-one when she married. And I am keen for… well, my life to begin. It feels like I am forever waiting for something just out of reach."
I stood up and put my arm around her. "There is no rush to be married, you are still young. And perhaps we have been living in an idyll without realising it. It sounds like the mainland may be more troubled than we know."
She put her head on my shoulder and cried a little, but only a little. It wasn't long before she drew up more plans for studying and roped in the librarian too. If she was to give up her dream of being presented in court to King Elendil himself, then she had better put her time to good use.
"I have duties and responsibilities," I said, doubtfully, looking at her intense schedule.
"Lady Lind is a tireless scholar," said the librarian, with a smile. "She reminds me of some of the scholars of Minas Tirith. The libraries there are deep, and filled with thousands of years of knowledge…"
"Do not excite her, Librarian Holt!" said Lind with a smile. "It is Minnow's biggest dream to visit a library that she could never hope to tire of!"
"I do not think we need to learn how to make chainmail, Lind," I said, with a laugh, "But I would gladly improve my Sindarin in the hope it will attract some elves to converse with. And I agree that diplomacy and trade laws will be useful. But I think we have exhausted our resources."
Lind smiled at me, and led me to her father's private study, in a tower to the south. It had an equally large library, but it was dedicated to warfare, trading routes, and naval documents. Along with her lady in waiting, who was most patient, we sorted through the knowledge as our twenty-first birthdays passed us.
Our former classmate Rosa married Denvy. We laughed and sang through the harbour following them, as was tradition, and a few months later, I accompanied my grandmother to her (rather early) birth. It was a boy and Denvy was delirious with happiness.
"You'll do the next one on your own," my grandmother told me. I looked at her properly, taking in the puffy white hair, the violet eyes and her strong, wrinkly hands. It occurred to me for the first time that my grandmother was old, very old, and frail. And that she was training me to become the next midwife of Tolfalas and I didn't know how I felt about that.
Lind had made some baby clothes and I accompanied her from the hall, down to the cottage by the harbour that Denvy and Rosa lived in with their new baby for a visit. Lind had never been in such a small house before, and was putting her lessons in diplomacy to the test to appear composed. She had never been out of place before. I was used to it. The dark cottage did smell very heavily of fish, as they were smoking them in the backroom but it was one of the cleaner cottages I had seen. I checked the baby and declared him strong and hale.
We spoke of the time when we all studied together for five whole years, and how long ago it seemed now. "You'll be next, Minnow!" said Denvy. It sounded like a threat.
"Who could she marry, Denvy?" asked Rosa, rocking her baby and pondering. They named several men in the village who were as of yet unmarried, often out on their fishing boats for long periods at a time. I knew all of them. From when I was old enough to walk on two feet besides my grandmother, I had carried her bag for her, passed her bandages, and given the villagers ointments and tinctures. But I was not quite one of them.
"I don't think I'm going to marry any of them, Rosa," I said softly, just as Denvy's sister entered the cottage with a pile of clean linen.
"You think you're better than us, but you're not. No man is ever going to marry you, Fish Girl!" sneered Hana, until she saw Lind and curtseyed in shock at seeing the lady of the isle in her brother's small cottage. We excused ourselves and I walked her home.
"I always assumed that when I went to court you would come with me," said Lind, as we stood by the gate to her hall. "But I did not ask you what you want."
I sighed and looked across the village. "I will stay on the island and tend to the villagers until my grandmother dies. I cannot leave here here. Then I will go to the mainland. I want an adventure, Lind."
"I do too. But there's none to be had here," she said.
"You will have to forget marriage for a time, I think, and just enjoy the island. What are men to rocks and mountains anyway?" I said with a smile.
"One day even you will tire of rocks and mountains!" she warned.
"I certainly will never tire of the sea."
I could say that life went on and nothing much changed for a while but that wasn't true. As usual, I spent my mornings with my grandmother, grinding herbs and making medicines, catching crabs, and visiting the villagers, and my afternoons at the hall where I put on a dress, drank tea with Lind and spoke Sindarin with a peculiar lisp according to her lady in waiting. The weather was temperate, although winter was somewhat savage in its brutality and I wondered how many more my grandmother would be able to live through. The sky turned a strange shade of red some nights, and we whispered in the village that some evil must be afoot but at least it was yet far away. But then raiders attacked our fishing fleets deep into the sea and the men lost much fish, and were angry. And it happened a few months later, except we lost some men this time. And Lord Jakobi sent for the fleet from Belfalas and that put a stop to it, but the men wouldn't fish so far out again.
There was a lot less fish, and that was our livelihood. The boat, a ferry really, that took the fish to the mainland changed from twice a week to once a week. I taught the fish wives how to catch crabs and lobsters. But there was not enough.
Then came the call for men, and it felt like a relief. A big ship, bigger than anything I had ever seen, docked in our bay, and men with a white bird called a swan on their tunics came into the village and spoke at the village hall. "Gondor calls for aid," he declared. He was handsome, dashing even, and looked rich. Lind looked at him with wide eyes, and when he dined with her father that evening, I was sure that there was to be a match announced the next day.
Meanwhile, my grandmother was dying. She could not leave her bed, but instead barked orders at me. She felt she had still more to impart to me, and I'm sure she did, but I didn't have the heart to learn anything more. I knew I wasn't going to stay and be the village midwife and healer for much longer. It hurt me more than I thought it would that I was letting her down.
"Stop crying into the tea! You'll ruin it."
I sniffed and handed her a cup of nettle tea. She took a sip and placed it on the table next to her bed. She closed her eyes and sighed. "I do not have much foresight, but I have some. I wish you could stay in the village and be the next midwife, but I see that will not come to pass. Your spirit is far too wild to stay on the island. You are too much like your mother. And times are changing. War is coming to us."
"Many men will leave in the next few days," I said, sadly. I was worried about them. I wasn't exactly friends with everyone in the village but they had at least stopped throwing fish heads at me. I didn't want them all to die, even if this war was important.
"Promise me you will not make the same mistake as your mother," she pleaded.
"And what mistake was that?" I said, shocked.
"She lay with someone she was not married to and it led to her demise!" snapped my grandmother.
"But that mistake led to me," I said. For all the blunt and forthright talk between us, there were still some things left unsaid. And one of those things was the regret my grandmother felt for losing her daughter so young in childbirth. If she hadn't lain with whoever she had lain with, she would not have had a child out of wedlock. My mother had been about the same age as I was now when she gave birth to me. It was a strange thought.
My grandmother was not usually so judgemental. As a midwife, she had helped birth many babies whose parents were not married to each other. And she had also helped many young women avoid pregnancy when it was unwanted.
"She was in love with him, and he never returned for her. Or you. Your birth was difficult, as it always is between … well it does not matter," she said, and started coughing. I brought her some water and sat on the bed with her.
"I am far too practical to fall in love with someone who does not value me for all that I am, and who is unconstant and disloyal," I told her, trying to reassure her. Indeed, a few of the village men had asked me for the customary walk around the harbour as the sun set, and I had been kissed a few times, but I knew they were not for me. They weren't my match. They were content with the island, and even though I loved the island so much, I needed more.
"Everyone is practical until they fall in love," huffed my grandmother. She pulled out a chain from around her neck. "Your father gave your mother this and only this," she said, taking it off and pushing it into my hands.
"And he gave her me," I said, resolutely. But I opened my hands and saw it was a delicate chain of silver, with a small silver seashell pendant. "It's beautiful."
"If you're wondering why I never gave it to you before now, well, I thought you might be stupid enough to sell it. Or lose it. Don't scoff at me, child! Do not give it away lightly. That represents love, and the sea, and your heart."
"Who knew that you, of all people, were sentimental," I said, wryly. She slapped my hand sharply.
"I know you're about to leave your home forever. I can tell you want to leave the island, as I have never done. I wish you luck, child. You will need it. I have left my funeral arrangements on the kitchen table." And with that, she grabbed my hand and settled back into her pillows.
"I love you, grandmother," I said, trying not to cry. She closed her eyes with a sigh.
"I love you very much, little Minnow," she whispered. A few minutes later, I felt the last breath leave her body. I allowed myself to cry until I was hoarse and then I looked at what she had written on the scroll on the kitchen table and let out a snort. She wanted a funeral the likes of which no one in Tofalas had seen in a thousand years! Of course she did, I thought, my grandmother liked her traditions. I put my father's necklace round my neck and tucked it into my bodice for safekeeping.
I went into the village at the first light to tell them the news. The villagers felt it was a bad omen, the midwife dying as the men decided to leave for war. The handsome man in the swan tunic turned out to be a minor prince of Dol Amroth, and while he was courtly and polite, it was clear he thought it strange that the men who had been so keen to jump in his ship and leave their lives behind wouldn't until they had attended a little old lady's funeral.
"It's not right to leave without paying my respects," said Denvy. "She delivered my son." Little Tomas was talking now, and sat on his father's knee outside the tavern as the men talked.
"I will have the funeral at dusk tonight," I promised the prince. "And then you can sail in the morning. You're welcome to come to the funeral if you like." He nodded, but didn't promise. I knew he thought our remote little island ways strange and parochial and perhaps they were. Lind and Rosa came with me to my cottage, as it was now, to prepare my grandmother's body. Lind had never been before, and looked with wonder at the strange piles of dried mushrooms (useful sedatives and hallucinogens), skulls of small birds that grandmother had collected, the charms and wind chimes, and pieces of paper with recipes for medicine lying everywhere.
"It's a witch's cottage," she whispered in wonder.
"That would please my grandmother immensely, but she was simply a midwife."
"There's nothing simple about being a midwife," said Rosa, who had given birth to a daughter six months ago. I had delivered the baby. She had dark hair like Rosa and strong lungs. "I always wanted to be a midwife when I grew up."
I laughed. "Really? Is that why you spent so much time helping me and grandmother grind herbs? I always assumed it was because we were such good friends, or because you were sick of fish."
Rosa made a face. "I used to be sick of fish and now I wish we had more."
After we washed my grandmother's body, and wrapped her in linen, we had tea, and talked. Denvy was going to war, which none of us really understood, not exactly. Lind and I knew about battle tactics and had used a bow and arrow, and I had seen her father's sword hanging by his waist. But I had never seen two men fight one another with a weapon, unless you count the time the blacksmith beat the baker for cheating him on bread. Rosa was worried, if proud of her husband for volunteering. But she had two small children and didn't want to rely on Hana for help or money. Soldier wages were better than a fisherman's wages, we learnt, but the crown's coffers weren't as deep as we had assumed. Apparently, they had to borrow heavily from the dwarves. Lind had learnt as much from the Dol Amroth prince the night before.
"There is so much we don't know," said Lind.
"It's a man's world," said Rosa, heavily.
"I do not have time to train you," I said, slowly. "But grandmother wrote down much of what she knew, and I've added a bit to it. You can read and you have two small children so you know more than most people about healing."
"Minnow! What are you saying?" cried Rosa, standing up.
"You're the midwife now, Rosa," I said, tiredly. "Grandmother liked you. She would be happy with this choice."
Lind's eyebrows were raised, but she said nothing. I took Rosa around the cottage, explaining where the herbs were kept, where they grew in the garden, and Lind drew a quick sketch to keep the slightly overwhelmed Rosa right. By the time the sun was setting, she was asking questions and Linda was assembling grandmother's loose scrolls into a kind of order, and writing down instructions as I said them. Denvy appeared at the window with a wave. He effortlessly picked up my grandmother's body and put it in the boat by the shore, where she had taught me to catch crabs as a child. The villagers were assembled there.
Denvy had filled the boat with bracken from the hill, and pushed it out slowly into the water. The villagers started to sing the mourning song as the boat floated out to sea. I couldn't sing, but the tears were flowing down my face as I tried to keep my breathing even.
Someone passed me my bow and arrow, and helped me light the tip.
"Aim true," whispered Lind, besides me. I nodded and pulled back the bowstring, and then let go. The arrow soared into the sky, which was slowly darkening, and hit the boat. After a few seconds, I saw that the fire was burning. Someone put a hand on my shoulder.
"Well done, little Minnow," one of the older fishermen said. "Now we drink."
I watched for a time as my grandmother's boat burnt along the horizon, a funeral byre that even the Valar could see. I could hear Lind asking to try the home brew, and the shocked old fisherman letting her, and Rosa telling Denvy about her new position as midwife, and him laughing and saying what a good idea it was, and others talking about her grandmother, and all their hurts that she mended.
The young prince approached me. "My condolences," he said, stiffly. "I've never seen a funeral pyre such as that. I believe the kings of old preferred to burn."
"My grandmother had old fashioned notions, my lord," I said to him, smiling. He bowed and I curtseyed (low for he was high above me), and moved to talk to Lind, but she moved past him and talked to me.
"It is as you said. We board the ship with the men in the morning," she said in a low voice.
"Your father will never let you go. He loves you too much to let you anywhere near the war," I replied.
"There are no men left on the island that I can marry, and I am almost twenty-five years of age." Her face was set. "He is so busy with the war that he has grown lax. I have never been allowed out after dark before." She looked around her. The villagers were dancing on the beach, someone had produced a violin, and the air smelled of beer. They weren't just giving my grandmother a good send off, they were having a last hurrah before they went to war.
"He is handsome," I said, nodding at the prince.
"Handsome is as handsome does. I will stay with their family in Dol Amroth for a time. I dearly want to go to my mother's family in Minas Tirith but it is far and dangerous. But will you come to Dol Amroth with me tomorrow?"
I nodded. My grandmother's boat was now beyond sight. I hugged my friends goodnight and went to pack all my earthly belongings, which weren't much.
A few hours later, I was standing in the crowd of badly hungover men in the harbour, crying goodbye to their wives and loved ones. I had not slept, but had packed all the medicines I thought Rosa could spare, my three dresses, my bow and arrow and my old boots into a small knapsack, along with all the food I had. As soon as I saw Lind, with five huge pieces of luggage being carried by footmen, I waved and fell into step.
"This woman is not on my list," said a soldier with a long scroll, stopping me from boarding the ship.
"She is my ladies maid," said Lind, haughtily. She winked at me, and turned to her father who she embraced. They both shed a tear and promised to write. He bowed to me, and I curtseyed back, and he handed me a book. It was the book about dragons that I so dearly loved. I held it to my heart and smiled at him.
"I'm going to be a terrible ladies maid," I told her. "You should have brought your real one."
"She is too scared to come," said Lind, her face severe.
Neither of us had ever left the island before, and as much as I had looked forward to this today, I was scared and felt alone. I didn't know exactly what awaited me on the mainland, or what war looked like, but I knew I was equal to the task. We held hands and waved to the villagers and Lord Jakobi alongside with the men as the ship set sail, and we kept waving until we could no longer see them.