Prose Arda: An Anthology of Short Stories about Middle Earth

Mar-nu-Falmar (Numenor, Second Age)

She sat huddled in a corner, clutching her knees close to her hitching chest while tears pricked her eyes. The metronomic sway of the waves coupled with the dim light in the hold could no longer lull her to sleep. It had been days. It was uncomfortable, this hiding on ships without proper cabins and bedding. Ammê had told her it was necessary, as most of the fleet had sailed West with Ar-Pharazôn, and the Faithful could not bring attention to themselves by trying to hire one of the scant ships remaining. Although the King had left to wage his heretical war with the Powers in the Undying Lands, some of his spies remained. To bring attention to themselves would have the men imprisoned or executed for desertion, or even treason. Thus they waited on the nine, ill-equipped ships already moored in Romenna by the Faithful.

Nilûnzil sat upon her meager pallet clutching the one doll she had been allowed to take and lamenting the loss of her lovely feather bed, left behind with all but the most important belongings in their house near the shore of the bay. Having been moored in the harbour for some days, awaiting what, she was unsure, Nilûnzil sometimes snuck above deck to wistfully gaze on her home. Her ship was near enough she could almost make out the sweet smelling flowers of the trailing vines which covered the stone wall encircling the house. The house was built on the edge of the cliff facing eastward over the water and Attô had built the wall to hold the garden in place after losing a fruit tree to the tumbling of rock into the water below. In the morning, Nilûnzil could see the reflection of light on the rough water of the harbour glinting off the glass of the windows; in the evening, the house stood as a shadow against the burning of the setting sun. She liked it better in the morning.

In the musty hold, one could not easily tell the time. Nilûnzil guessed it to be day since Ammê and Attô lay not beside her. Perhaps they were on deck. She dried her eyes on the lavender linen of her skirts, gray in the nonlight of the hold. She clutched the arm of her doll and padded through the hold, weaving around the bodies of sleeping children, her doll swinging from her fist.

---

A pair of gray eyes,  rimmed with impossibly long lashes and reflecting the last bits of rosey light from the sun popped out from behind the mast. On the prow stood Nilûnzil's Ammê and Attô, silhouettes in the fire of the setting sun, shadows just like her house would be if she could spy it from where she hid. Her parents stood with a small group of people, eyes all trained on the western sky. As she crept closer, she overheard a dour old man mutter as he leaned far over the railing, the tip of his long beard twitched in the strong breeze from the sea, "The ragged clouds dark in the fire of Anor fly forth as the Eagles of the Lords of the West. I believe our King has fulfilled his purpose, what now awaits?"

She halted, piecing together what she had just heard and glanced at the sky. She saw clouds, black as night, stretching in thin tatters across the sky blotting out the westering sun. They did not look particularly like eagles in her mind.

"Nili!" cried her Ammê running toward her, "what are you doing on-deck, my child? It is dangerous to be seen. You should be snug in your bed down in the hold." She smoothed Nilûnzil's wild ebony curls as she spoke until they lay tamed and shone with amber highlights in the dying light of the day.

Tears streaked hot down Nilûnzil's cheeks, faster than her mother could wipe them away. "I did not know where you and Attô had gone; neither what time or even day it is. Ammê, when do we return home?"

Ammê glanced quickly over her shoulder at Attô, who was deep in conversation with the dour old man. Her hair, usually straight and impeccably tamed to run in a cascade of jetover her shoulders, whipped in the wind, forming a cloud around her head much like the black clouds rushing toward them on the stiff breeze now blowing from the West. "Nili, I am not sure whether we are to return to our home. The King has broken the ban and tread on the shores of the Undying Lands, and worse yet in arms. We do not yet know what will become of us in the wake of his betrayal. I know you are young and are more concerned about your own boredom than the doom-saying of old men whispering prophecies learned at the lips of the Eldar, but please understand you must remain in the hold and out of the way of those old men. They make decisions now that shape the doom of us all."