[Cuiviénen. Year 1105 of the Trees. The third dawn after the Sundering]
[Selas POV]
Three days since the break.
Three days of sorting, packing, arguing, of families discovering that an Eldar cousin had taken a pot that wasn't his, or that a pair of snowshoes had vanished, or that a child's favorite carved bird had somehow ended up in the wrong traveling bundle. Most of it was accidental. Some of it wasn't. All of it had to be sorted out before the column marched.
We sorted it out, quietly, mostly without raised voices.
By the time the third dawn came, the Eldar were ready. Bundles tied, goodbyes said. Oromë had let word pass through the settlement that he would return with the rising of the silver hour.
I did not want to be at the settlement when he came.
I took the half-finished bow that had been the companion of the past four years, slung a quiver across my back, and walked into the forest. Not far, just far enough that I could hear the settlement and not be inside it, just far enough to pretend, for a little while, that I was only hunting.
I nocked an arrow, drew, held, released.
The arrow took a knot in a beech at one hundred paces. Dead center.
I drew again.
"Selas."
The voice came from behind me, and I knew it before I turned.
Ilvëa stood at the edge of the treeline, gold hair lit by what little starlight the canopy allowed through.
"You should be with your family," I said. I was aiming for neutral and missed. "The column moves at the silver hour."
"I know." She came a few steps closer. Her eyes were red. "That's why I came. Before I can't."
She opened her hands.
An acorn sat in her palms, large and perfect, smooth and unscarred, the cap still attached. And, I had to look twice to be sure, it was glowing very softly. Gold and green, a small light that had no business existing inside a seed.
"You've been practising," I said quietly.
"On plants. Seeds, mostly." She was talking quickly, "I wanted to give you something. Something that would last. I went to the oldest oak in the forest, the one by the north stream, you know it, and I took one of its fallen acorns, and I…"
She stopped. Started again.
"I put my Light into it. As much as I could hold."
She held it out.
I took it from her.
It was warm. Not the faint warmth of something recently touched, but a living warmth, a small patient pulse against my palm like a second heartbeat placed in my hand.
"Ilvëa."
"Plant it somewhere." She was not crying yet, but she was going to. "Plant it wherever the Avari end up making their home. And when it grows…"
She broke off.
"I don't know what it will grow into," she said, very low. "I tried to… I don't know what I did, really. I only know I put me into it. So whatever comes up out of the ground, it won't just be an oak." Her eyes lifted to mine, fierce and wet. "It will be a little bit of me. Still alive. Still with you."
I looked at the seed in my palm for a very long time.
Then I set the bow against a tree. Took out the first knife I had ever made, the little stone blade I had cut my own hair with three nights ago, the one I had fed Light into until it held a faint silver sheen. I had meant to keep it. I changed my mind.
I held it out to her.
"This is yours."
Her eyes went wide. "Selas, I can't —"
"You can and should." My voice came out rougher than I meant. "I made it myself. I put my Light in it, the way you put yours in the acorn. It won't break and will keep an edge. It will serve you honestly."
Her fingers closed around the handle.
"For protection on the road," I said. "For whatever else you need."
"Selas —"
"Please. Take it."
She did.
We stood there, each of us holding a piece of the other. The woods were very quiet. Somewhere far off a bird I did not know the name of sang three notes and stopped.
Ilvëa drew a breath that shook only a little. Then she lifted her chin and looked straight into my face, straight, not sideways, not down at her own hands, and when she spoke, her voice had stopped shaking at all.
"Keep my gift," she said. "For you and for Avari. Keep me in your keeping, Selas."
"Always."
The word was out of me before I had permission to say it.
She closed the distance between us in a single unhesitating step and kissed me.
It was brief. It was not skilled; neither of us had done this before, and it showed. Her mouth tasted of salt because she was crying after all. It lasted perhaps two heartbeats.
For those two heartbeats, time forgot to move. Then it remembered, and moved very fast, and my own heart moved with it.
She pulled back.
Her ears had gone bright red. Her face was probably the same, beneath the gold hair.
"Goodbye."
"Ilvëa —"
"I can't —"
She turned and ran.
I stood in the woods with an acorn in one hand and the ghost of a kiss on my mouth, and watched her small gold shape disappear back toward the settlement, and did not move for a long time.
I thought, very briefly, about going after her.
But then I closed my hand around the acorn and felt its slow warm pulse against my palm.
No.
The Sundering had happened. Sides had been chosen. I had said goodbye to my family. I had said goodbye to her twice, now. And I had said, in front of my own people and in front of a Vala, I choose freedom.
There was no road back from that. There was only forward.
I closed my eyes, took a long breath, opened them again.
"I'll keep it safe," I said to the silent forest. "I swear it."
The forest said nothing.
But the acorn in my hand warmed, just a little, as though it had heard.
{Image: Ilvëa's acorn}
[Later that morning. The shore]
The horn sounded.
I walked back to the gathering place with the bow across my back and the acorn tucked safely in the pouch at my belt, and the ghost of a kiss still on my mouth.
Oromë had returned, his luminous mount standing tall at the head of the waiting column. The Vala himself looked at nothing in particular and saw everything.
The Minyar went first, all of them, every gold-haired soul in the settlement, led by Ingwë walking at the head of his people.
Then the Tattyar, half of them, Finwë at their head.
Then, last of all, the Lindar.
My people. Or what had been my people. What was still my people, only some of them were walking west now instead of staying.
The ones still wavering had ended up at the very back of the Lindar column. You could tell them apart from the others at a glance: they walked more slowly, they looked back more often, they did not quite fit the rhythm of the march.
Novë was among them.
He caught my eye as he passed, silver hair pulled back, lean and tired, and raised one hand. Just lifted it, palm out. A farewell the way you would salute a friend across a room.
I returned it. My throat had gone so tight I could not have spoken if I had wanted to.
Archean walked further back, his father Lenwë at his shoulder, his mother and two of his sisters close behind. Archean did not look at me at all. He was looking straight ahead at the road, the way he did everything, eyes where they needed to be. I understood. I had the same instinct.
And then, at the very back of the Minyar section, which had already gone past the rise where I stood:
Ilvëa.
She was walking at the tail of her kindred, almost dragging, and she kept turning her head. Every few paces. Every few breaths.
She was crying.
I could see her crying from where I stood. Silent tears, her face wet with them, her gold hair catching starlight in a way that made the whole image look composed, as though some cruel painter had set her up to be exactly that beautiful at exactly that distance.
I lifted my hand.
Just held it there, no wave and no gesture, just: I see you.
Her hand came up to her chest. Closed over the place where the stone knife now hung beneath her tunic, tied by a leather thong.
She mouthed something I could not hear.
Then the road bent. The column moved around a stand of birch. She was gone.
I stood there with my hand still half-lifted until I noticed I was doing it, and lowered it.
I did not move until the dust the column had lifted had settled again.
[Same day. The shore]
The Avari had watched from the side of the road.
Some were weeping. Some looked relieved. Most of them simply looked lost, the way people look when they've just made an enormous decision and are now being asked to live inside the consequences of it with no road map and no second chances.
I let them have the silence. Let the last of the column fade into the treeline. Let the weight of what we had just done settle onto every shoulder that had chosen to be here.
When the road was finally empty, I walked to where they were gathered, and I climbed up onto a low stone so everyone could see me, and I turned to face my people.
"We stayed."
The simplest thing I could say.
Every eye lifted to mine.
"We are Avari now. The name is theirs, the Vala named us. The Refusers. Fine. Let the word be what they gave us. But the thing is ours. We are the ones who chose not to go. We are the ones who are still standing on the shore where we were born."
I took a breath.
"We refused the path of service to the Valar. We chose our own path instead. And from this morning on, our future belongs to us. Our children's future belongs to us. Every choice about how we live, what we build, who we become — ours. Not the Valar's. Not any other power's. Ours."
Something moved through the crowd. Not a shout, not yet, but something smaller and more important than a shout: a slow straightening of spines, a slow lifting of heads.
"But first." I held up a hand before the mood could slip into anything bigger than it was ready for. "First, we need to decide how we live. And who leads."
Silence.
Then a Lindar stepped forward.
I recognised him — Thoron. The very first. The grim-faced man who had walked out of the crowd three days ago with two children in his arms and a third at his leg and had stood behind me in the terrible silence and made the Avari a people of more than one.
"Selas," he said. His voice was plain and not loud, and it did not need to be. "Selas of the Lindar. Fourth son of Enel the first-Awakened. First to refuse. The only child of the three progenitors who stayed." He looked around, taking in the faces of the families who had gathered behind him. "You should lead us."
"Agreed," someone called.
"Yes," came from several places at once.
"Let Selas be Chief —"
Not everyone. I counted the silences carefully even as the voices built. There were people thinking. There were people unsure. That was all right. That was how it should be.
But the voices were enough. More than enough.
I held up both hands for quiet.
"Then I accept." My voice steadied as I said it. "I will do my best by you. I will not always be right. When I am not, I expect to be told. Deal?"
A ragged laugh ran through the crowd, surprised out of them.
"Deal," Thoron said, gravely, and several others echoed him.
Well, I thought. This is happening.
[Same day. Afternoon]
I made them hold the meeting right there on the shore.
No point waiting. The Eldar's dust had barely settled. Whatever shape the Avari were going to take, they would take it faster if we started shaping it before anyone had time to become afraid of the size of the task.
I laid it out in order.
"First: inventory. We need to know what we have. Every pot, every stone tool, every bundle of grain, every scrap of hide. You," I pointed to three of the Lindar elders who looked organised, "you take that. I want a full count by the next silver hour."
Nods.
"Second: food. We cannot live on gathering and hunting alone. Not at this size, not into the future." I gestured at the lake behind me. "Cuiviénen is right there. We are going to learn to fish properly. And we are going to learn to farm. Not just to harvest what grows, but to plant, to tend, to select seeds for the next year, to turn the forest's edge into gardens that answer to us. Caldor," one of the carpenters looked up sharply. "You have an eye for what land can be made useful. Take four helpers. Start mapping the flatland by the south stream."
Caldor nodded, already thinking.
"Third: tools and weapons. Stone has taken us this far. It is not going to take us much further." I found Eol in the crowd. He already knew what was coming; his dark eyes had narrowed before I opened my mouth. "Eol. The forge is yours."
"I've been heating stones in a pit for three months already, Selas."
"Good. Turn the pit into a forge. Find an apprentice. Find five. Start with copper if that's what we've got. I'll get you whatever you need."
He nodded, jaw set.
"Fourth: the settlement itself." I turned a slow circle to take in the sprawl of huts scattered at random among the trees. "We are going to rebuild this. Properly. Tight, organised, defensible. With a wall around it."
That one got a murmur.
"A wall," someone said. Not in challenge, just tasting the word.
"A wall," I repeated. "Oromë warned of a darkness in the north. You can believe him or not, I have my own thoughts about that, but a wall is never wasted. Beasts, strangers, bad weather. A wall answers all of them."
"That will take months."
"It will. We start today."
"Fifth: we split the work. Smiths. Hunters. Farmers. Weavers. Builders. Fishermen. Healers. Teachers for the children, and every child, from now on, learns not only what their family does but what the Avari as a whole do. Not all of us can be everything. But every child should know where every trade lives, so they can choose."
Nods, slower now. People were starting to feel the scope of it.
"And sixth." I took a breath. "We need our own tongue."
A startled pause.
"We speak what we have always spoken," I said, "and that is beautiful. But the Eldar speak it too. They are taking it with them over the Great Sea. If we stay with the same language, in fifty Years of the Trees we will be speaking differently anyway. I would rather choose what we become than drift into it."
"Avarin," Thoron said quietly. "The Avari tongue."
"Avarin," I agreed. "The Avari tongue."
"Can it be done?" A woman's voice from the back.
"It has to be," I said. "So yes."
I let them absorb all of that. Let the murmurs rise and fall. Let the shape of what I had just asked of them sit in the air for a breath or two.
Then I bent down and picked up a thin stick from the path.
Every eye followed my hand.
"One more thing before we start."
I held up the stick.
"Imagine this is one of us. Just one. Any of us, alone."
I waved the stick in a small arc so they could see it.
"Alone, one of us looks like this."
I snapped the stick between my hands.
The crack was sharp and very loud in the hush.
Several people flinched.
I held up the two pieces, then dropped them into the grass.
"That is what happens when one of us stands alone," I said. "Fine. Now look at this."
I bent again and gathered a handful of sticks, maybe twenty, and wrapped my fingers around the bundle.
"And this is all of us. Together."
I braced.
The bundle did not break. Not even a little. Twenty thin sticks that any of them could have snapped singly, now completely beyond my strength, because I could not get a single one of them to bend without all the others refusing alongside it.
"I cannot break it." I held the bundle up. "Will one of you try?"
A young Tattyar stepped out, grinning. He had shoulders like a carver, which he was. He took the bundle from me, set his feet, and gave it everything he had.
Nothing.
He tried twice, face reddening. The crowd was starting to laugh, the nervous laugh of people who are seeing something they didn't expect.
He handed it back, sheepish.
"Anyone else?"
An older Lindar came up. Then another Tattyar, bigger than the first.
None of them broke it.
By the third failure the crowd was no longer laughing. They were watching the bundle.
I took it back.
"Alone," I said quietly, "we break. Together, we do not."
I let my eyes move across the faces, slowly. I wanted every one of them to feel themselves seen in that moment.
"Whatever else you forget from today, whatever rules I make, whatever orders I give, whatever mistakes I'm going to make before we get where we are going, remember this."
I lifted the bundle one more time.
"This. This is the Avari."
[End of Chapter 6]
Glossary
Places
Cuiviénen — The Waters of Awakening. The lake in the east of Middle-earth where the Quendi first opened their eyes.
Arda — The world.
Aman — The Blessed Realm in the uttermost west, across the Great Sea. Dwelling of the Valar. Also called Valinor.
The Great Sea — The ocean dividing Middle-earth from Aman.
Avarin — The tongue of the Avari. A branch of elven speech that diverges from that of the Eldar after the Sundering.
Time and Light
Years of the Trees — The unit of time in the age before the Sun and Moon, when Arda was lit by the Two Trees of Valinor and the stars. One Year of the Trees is roughly ten mortal years.
Silver Hour — The hour of Telperion's dominant light in Aman. Used here as a general marker of time, corresponding roughly to the beginning of a new day.
Two Trees — Telperion of silver and Laurelin of gold. The twin light-giving trees of Aman before the raising of the Sun and Moon.
Telperion — The Silver Tree.
Laurelin — The Golden Tree.
Concepts
The Sundering — The dividing of the Quendi into Eldar and Avari at Cuiviénen.
The Great Journey — The westward migration of the Eldar from Cuiviénen to Aman.
The Shadow — The malice and works of Melkor, felt in the eastern and northern wastes of Middle-earth.