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Pityafinwë Ambarussa
The ships blazed against the starry sky, while on the shore stood a great horde of elves, torches raised in their hands.
Amongst the pack, one auburn-haired elf looked to the right and to the left, counting. They were two elves short. But of course—Nelyo was over there in the distance, arms crossed, back turned. There should still be one more copper head amongst the crowd, but he could not see, he could not—
He felt cold suddenly, and sick, as if he were drowning, but it could not be. He would have known, somehow, he would have felt—
He reached up and grabbed his father’s arm, the one that held the torch aloft. His father turned to look at him. The fire glinted in his eyes and teeth, until he saw his son’s face and his wild grin fell.
Ambarussa could not breathe, but he managed to force the words out in a whisper, because he needed to know that his fears were wrong. He needed his father to tell him that everything was alright. “Did you not then rouse my brother Ambarussa, whom you call Ambarto? He would not come ashore to sleep.”
His father’s face, usually so lively, so expressive, went very carefully blank.
“That was the ship I burned first,” he said.
Ambarussa let go of his father’s arm. The ground swayed underneath him as if he were still on one of the ships with his brother. Someone started shouting—Moryo, he thought—but he could not make out the words. Someone caught him, held him up, but he did not know who. He could not stop looking at his father’s still face.
“Then,” said Ambarussa. He tried again, “then rightly you gave the name to the youngest of your children. And Umbarto ‘The Fated’ was its true form.”
“Pityo, Pityo, breathe,” came Káno’s voice, “I am sure it is but a simple misunderstanding—”
Moryo was still shouting, “Atar, what did you do? Telvo? Telvo? Telufinwë, show yourself right now or I will kill you! Atar—”
There was a flash of silver hair in the torchlight as Turko, hound at his heels, started sprinting towards the flaming wreckage. With a great crack, the nearest boat broke in two and began to sink.
Fëanàro’s eyes were distant as he looked at the flaming boats and his son racing for them, then back at Ambarussa, propped up in Káno’s arms. He said nothing. His face was so still, so still and cold that he looked like one of Mother’s statues, carved from marble.
“Fell and fey you are become,” said Ambarussa.
Then he shoved Káno so hard that he fell into the sand, and sprinted for the trees.
The rest of the elves remained on the beach, watching helplessly as the boats burned. Great flames leaped towards the sky, a towering blaze that could be seen by those with keen-eyes all the way in Valinor. An enormous curtain of smoke seemed to reach all the way to Varda’s stars. It cut off the view of Middle Earth from Valinor, but, to the elves standing on the shore of Middle Earth, it also cut off their view of the ocean.
This was a pity, because if they had been able to look through the blazing fire and the choking smoke and the towering wreckage, they would have seen something astonishing: a lone boat bobbing in the waves, a small swan-prowed skiff, sailing West.
Telufinwë Ambarussa
“I didn’t think Father would react that badly to me leaving,” said Umbarto, The Fated, also called Ambarussa.
The swan prow did not answer, of course, being wooden. If it could answer, it probably wouldn’t, on account of Ambarussa and his family killing its makers and then stealing it to flee across the ocean, and now setting all the other swan-ships on fire. Those kinds of actions did not generally create a friendly rapport between travelling companions.
“Look, I am sorry,” said Ambarussa. He meant it too. “I don’t know what’s come over Father lately. No, that’s a lie, I do. He lost his father and his jewels, his greatest treasures, his masterwork…”
His hand came up and clutched at the necklace he wore, a small stone bird on a chain, his own little masterwork. The hours he had spent peering through a glass, delicately etching the feathers…
He looked back East, where the sky glowed red under the stars. “Then how could he do it?” he asked, his fingers running over the stone feathers of his necklace, his other hand on the swan-shaped prow. “How could he? The Teleri said that you and the other boats were the works of their hearts, just like the silmarils. Father knows what it feels like to lose your heart’s work.”
The swan-prow bobbed on the waves.
“I didn’t think he would do this, I promise!” Ambarussa pleaded, as he adjusted the sail to better catch the wind. “Nelyo just wasn’t listening to me. He kept saying of course Father was going to send the boats back, that it would be ‘tactically unsound’ to abandon our allies, but I could tell Father was afraid of Uncle Nolofinwë, and nobody else seemed to care either way, so I just thought if I went first, then, well Father would have to send the boats, right?”
The little stone bird clunked against his collarbone. It was cold.
“I thought Nelyo would be able to persuade him, at least, if I was already on my way,” said Ambarussa. “I wonder what happened? Why couldn’t Nelyo stop him?”
There was no sound except for the slap of water against the sides of the boat and the snapping of the sail on the wind.
“What’s your name, anyway?” Amrod squinted at the side of the boat, reading the tengwar characters in the dim starlight. “Wave-Skipper? That’s cute.” He looked at the carved and painted face of the swan’s head, which looked quite severe. “I mean, beautiful. You’re a very beautiful and proud swan-ship, Wave-Skipper, not cute at all. My name is Telufinwë Ambarussa, or Umbarto, or Ambarto. My brothers call me Telvo, and sometimes people call me Atyarussa if they’re trying to differentiate between me and my twin brother who is also called Ambarussa, but you won’t have that problem, because, well…”
He gestured back at the red glow of the eastern sky.
“He gets really seasick, alright? It would have been mean to ask him to come.”
The red glow of the East eventually dimmed and faded, and no light came to replace it, no silver or gold of the lost Trees. The stars wheeled slowly overhead, the only sign of time passing. Ambarussa was thankful for the basics that he had learned of navigating by stars on the journey to Middle Earth. He kept the North Star to his right and tried to head in a more-or-less straight line. He would have to hit Valinor eventually. He sailed until he got tired, at which point he dropped anchor and pulled out some of the lembas he had packed and began to eat.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said to Wave-Skipper, with his mouth full, “why not turn around and go back for some of the others, at least so you have some extra hands to sail the boat, especially since you weren’t supposed to do this alone? Nelyo would probably come so he could at least bring back Findekáno.” He frowned. “Well, you’re not thinking that at all, are you? You probably saw Nelyo on deck, but you have no idea who Findekano is. It’s not that important. But we can’t risk it, can we, Wave-Skipper? Because if we go back, Father might burn you too. So we have to do this alone.” He touched his necklace, feeling the grooved stone bird between his fingertips. “Just you and me and a little bit of luck. Albatrosses are lucky; everyone knows it.”
He took his sleeping mat out of his pack and unrolled it. He wrapped himself up as best he could, and lay down underneath the stars, letting the gentle rock of the waves lull him to sleep.
When he woke, it was still dark, of course. It was always dark now, but the stars were scattered overhead like the diamond dust on the floor of his father’s workshop, glittering against the slate-black sky in clusters and whorls and a long ribbon arching over the heavens. He was not yet skilled enough at reading their motion to know how much time had passed. It felt like a while; he felt rested and lighter, somehow, having left them all behind, as if he were a bird that could fly west forever. Ambarussa rubbed the salty grit off of his eyelashes and helped himself to some more of his lembas bread. The only sound was the gentle lapping of waves against the prow of the boat; even the birds were confused by this endless darkness. They never seemed to know when to wake up and sing. The wind had died and the sail hung limp.
“Well, if I have to row all the way back to Valinor, then I will,” he said, cheerfully, to Wave-Skipper, and imagined that the bobbing motion of the prow was the swan nodding its head in ascent, “but I’m sure I won’t have to. The wind will pick up eventually.”
He busied himself with rolling up his sleeping mat and hoisting the anchor. Then he began to ready the oars. “What’s that, Wave-Skipper? You want to know why the Valar are going to send us a wind, even though I rebelled against them and slayed my fellow elves, your makers, and was declared an exile? I’m so glad you asked.” He slotted the oars into their rings at the sides of the skiff. “Well, first of all, they are supposed to be very benevolent and good and forgiving, right? Yes, Námo is Námo, but…” he dipped the oars in the water and gave them an experimental dug. “But he’s just one of the thoughts of Eru, and I’m one of Eru’s children. And sometimes parents say a lot of things that they don’t mean.”
Ambarussa began to row in earnest. “Well, yes, Father apparently did mean that he’d kill anyone who stood between him and the silmarils. But, counterpoint, he also said that Nolofinwë could serve under him, and if he meant that he wouldn’t have burned those boats. So maybe I’ll get lucky and Námo will be in a good mood.” The boat cut through the water as smoothly as a knife through warm butter. “And I’m doing a good deed,” Ambarussa continued. “Look at how seaworthy you are! Now, I’m not much of a sailor, but my twin Ambarussa dragged me along on a great many fishing trips, so I’ve been on my share of little boats and you are easily the nicest one I’ve had to row. You truly are a masterwork, and now you’re the last of your kind. They’re all going to be so happy that you are back that hopefully they’ll at least tolerate me.”
The skip slipped through the water under the stars, and, to his surprise, Ambarussa discovered that there were stars in the water as well. Each drag of the oar through the water was accompanied by hundreds of tiny underwater sparks which glinted to life as the oar passed through them and then winked out in the oar’s wake. As the waves lapped at Wave-Skipper’s side tiny stars flashed, just for a moment, as they struck the wood of the hull.
“Father would love this,” he said, “they’re like tiny jewels that make their own light! Perhaps he could study it and make a new kind of silmaril. You’re right, of course, he’d hate the suggestion that he should make a new kind of silmaril, but maybe if he saw this and how beautiful it is, maybe he’d be inspired to make one anyway.”
He rowed in silence for a while, though he had no idea how much progress he actually made. He stopped to eat, then again to sleep, then to bandage his hands. Ambarussa’s hands were already callused from stonework and from swordplay, but the oars chafed his hands in all new places, and his arms ached. The ocean was calm, the air still, as if the Valar were holding their breath and waiting. Ambarussa began to row again.
A pod of dolphins passed by, their narrow bodies illuminated by the strange sparkles in the water. Ambarussa watched them leaping and diving, the water shimmering around this.
Amarussa spoke, finally. “I think it would help Father to see something beautiful again, to try and create something beautiful again. To have hope that maybe something could be beautiful again. Someone should tell him about this. Someone should show him.”
The dolphins vanished into the darkness.
“No,” said Ambarussa, holding the little stone albatross. “No, not me.”
He slept. He ate. The stars wheeled overhead. He thought he saw the faint shadows of birds in flight. The wind picked up again. Ambarussa was glad to rest his aching arms. He tried singing—childhood ditties, hunting songs, old tales, every song of Káno’s that he could remember. The stars and the water gave no answer.
“I hope I’m not annoying you,” he said to Wave-Skipper. “I’m not used to being alone.”
Ambarussa’s water was starting to run low. He began to eye the horizon, hoping that the band of darkness that he saw in the west was rain clouds blotting out the stars. “Well, I suppose it’s good that it’s just me and you,” he told Wave-Skipper, “so that the rations last as long as possible.”
Wave-Skipper’s mast bobbed once in assent.
“I wonder if I’ll ever see them again,” he said. The mast creaked in the wind. “No, I know, I was just trying to get Father to send the ships back to Valinor for Uncle Nolofinwë, and so I was going to see them again after I ferried Uncle Nolofinwë and his people over. But that plan doesn’t make sense anymore, does it? I’d have to transport them two at a time. And you’re going back to the Teler who made you, so I’ll just have to stay in Valinor. No one could blame me for it; there’s nothing else to do. I don’t have a choice.”
Far up above he heard a distant cry of a seagull.
“And no, I’m not turning around,” he said. “You don’t want that. Father would probably set you on fire, remember? And did you hear that? Did you hear the seagull? That means we’re getting close to land. We’re almost there!”
His eyes swept across the ocean, before alighting on a dark shape on the horizon that did not ripple with the waves around it. “Look! Over there! An island!”
He steered the boat towards it. Wave-Skipper glided obediently through the water.
“We’re almost home,” Ambarussa said again, his eyes on the island. “So we’re not turning around and we’re not going back, and we won’t see any of them for… a very long time.”
He paused, though Wave-Skipper continued sailing towards that small island.
“My twin Ambarussa must be very angry at me for leaving him behind. He always makes sure not to leave me behind, even when I’d rather not go hunting for the third time in a week. He’s always wanted us to be exactly alike, you know, that’s why we use the same name. He doesn’t like when I use my other names. I liked it too, for a long time. It was something special, just for us. We were exactly alike in everything, and no one else was like us.”
The island was coming closer into view, and Ambarussa felt his heart sink. It was disappointingly small and disappointingly barren, more of a grey rock than a proper island. However, it still might be worth an inspection, to see if there were any pools of rainwater left behind that he might be able to use for drinking water.
“My twin was so mad when my hair started to get lighter than his. He couldn’t figure out why, when he was the one who spent all that time out in the treelight hunting and hiking and fishing and I was locked up in a studio carving stone. He kept saying the light should have bleached his hair just the same as mine. He thought maybe we’d offended some Ainu who’d cursed us to try and destroy our close bond, by making it so we no longer looked exactly the same. He cried about it, and then of course I cried too, because it hurts seeing someone you care about so upset, and I felt so guilty.” He stared at the gentle slope of the island in front of him. “I’ll tell you a secret, since it’s not like you can tell anyone else. There was no curse on us. I’ve been bleaching my hair with lemon juice for the last century.”
At that moment, the island moved.
It reared up into the air, revealing itself not to be an island at all but the back of an enormous whale. It reared into the air with an enormous groan, and then splashed back down again, sending a surge of water directly at Wave-Skipper.
Ambarussa jumped back in a panic, slipped, and tumbled over the side of the boat, directly into the water. The cold and darkness closed over his head. In a panic he grabbed at his necklace, desperate not to lose his masterwork, perhaps his only beautiful creation. Mother, he thought to himself. Mother! He felt hundreds of bubbles rush past his skin. He kicked his feet once, then again, and then his head broke the surface and he gasped for air.
The whale expelled a jet of water arcing towards the heavens. It rained down on Ambarussa’s head and splashed into the ocean around him. Wave-Skipper was bobbing, drifting in the current. He kicked his feet again and swam after it, digging through the water in a frantic effort to catch up. If that boat got away it would all be for nothing. Well, maybe not nothing, because perhaps that boat would wash up back in the harbor that bore it, but he himself would drown, and never make it back home…
Gasping and spluttering, he reached the side of the boat. Ambarussa scrambled to grab onto the wet boards. He kicked and pulled and hauled himself back onto the deck, shivering, his teeth chattering.
“That was far too close,” he said. “That whale really doesn’t like the idea of hair dye, does he?”
The whale gave a deep, slow cry, extending one flipper high in the air before sinking back into the unknown depths.
“Or maybe he doesn’t like the idea of lying to brothers. But I couldn’t tell my twin the truth now, could I?”
He reached the rudder and began steering the boat due west again.
“No, not about the hair. About leaving.” Wave-Skipper’s carved and painted swan-face was impassive, not compassionate, but not condemning either. Ambarussa continued, “and no, not because he gets seasick. He was never going to go back to Valinor, so the seasickness wasn’t much of an issue.”
The clouds loomed closer, tall, dark shadows blocking out the stars to the West. Ambarussa breathed deeply. He could smell rain.
“He would have asked me to stay,” he said, in the direction of the storm, “and I would have.”
The wind changed. The rain hit, an unending curtain of water that soaked not only Ambarussa but his pack, his sleeping mat, and even the Lembas was rendered down into sticky mush. Crawling below the deck offered shelter from the rain, though he had to sit hunched with his chin to his knees.
He wasn’t sure how long it had been since the rain first began. Days, perhaps? Without even the motion of the stars overhead, Ambarussa could only guess at the time from the rhythms of his own body, his hunger and exhaustion. He tried to sail through it, tacking against the strong headwind, but he couldn’t even tell if he was making real forward progress.
The wind picked up. The boat swayed in the waves. The boom came loose, swinging madly, and Ambarussa heard a horrible rip as the sail tore.
“No,” he muttered, “no, no, no!” He scrambled to the mast and fumbled at the knots to take it down. “It’s alright,” he whispered. “It’s alright. I’ll fix you later, I promise.”
A swell hit them and the boat tilted to the side. Ambarussa grabbed at the mast for stability. “We have to drop anchor and wait it out,” he told Wave-Skipper. “The storm can’t last forever.”
Not only did the storm seem to last forever, it intensified. Ambarussa held tight to the mast the way he used to cling to the trunks of trees as a young elfling climbing with his brothers. His brothers whom he would never see again.
“I am beginning to think that maybe Námo was more serious about the Doom than I thought,” said Ambarussa.
The wind howled in response.
“Don’t laugh,” he told Wave-Skipper, though the swan’s beak didn’t look like it was laughing at all. “I know it’s Námo. I know he’s serious. But I thought maybe I would get the chance to reason with him, that maybe if he liked me and saw that I was sorry…”
He wiped the rain out of his eyes. “I lied,” he said, finally. Thunder cracked above. “I lied to you when we met, and I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to get Father to send all the boats back. Well, I hoped he would, and I thought maybe it would help, but if that was really all I was trying to do I would have told more people. I wouldn’t have lied to Ambarussa, at least, and just told him I was going to sleep.”
A wave sent the ship into a lurch, and Ambarussa clung tighter to the mast to keep from falling out.
“I was deserting,” he said, between the swells of the waves. Wave-Skipper seemed to leap and dance, gracefully as a dolphin between them. “I was deserting,” he said, again, trying to raise his voice over the wind and rain, though he didn’t really know why, since it wasn’t as if Wave-Skipper had ears. “I didn’t want to follow my Father anymore. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t moral.”
The boom swung wildly, and Ambarussa had to duck to avoid getting hit in the head.
“I didn’t want to kill anyone at Alqualondë!” he shouted. “I didn’t want to kill your makers. I’m sorry. I was scared, and they had bows, and people just started fighting.”
There was a great creaking sound as Wave-Skipper tilted violently in a gust of wind. Ambarussa dug his fingernails into the mast, clinging with all of his might, hoping that the hull would hold. But the craftsmanship of the Teleri was solid, and the boat soon righted itself.
“I should have left then, instead of kinslaying,” said Ambarussa. “But what if they had killed my family? Would it have been more cowardly to run, or more cowardly to stay?”
The wind howled and the water splashed across the deck.
“Am I being a coward now?” he asked.
A bolt of lightning. Thunder boomed overhead. Ambarussa scrambled away from the mast and down the trapdoor below the deck. If lightning struck the mast, if Wave-Skipper burned…
The Valar won’t destroy Wave-Skipper, he reminded himself, she’s the last Swan-Ship, she’s the last of the masterworks of the Teleri. She has a piece of their hearts. The only Vala who would be so cruel is Morgoth.
And Father.
He wasn’t sure how long he stayed belowdeck, wedged next to his dwindling rations, knocking into the sides of the boat as it lurched back and forth. He clutched at the little marble albatross, its wingtips digging into his palms. Albatrosses are lucky. Everyone says so. He remembered his mother, her mouth a thin, angry line as she pressed it into his hands, saying “it sounds like you will need it more.” They are lucky, they are lucky, they are lucky.
Eventually, after countless hours, the storm broke, and the sea calmed. Cold and soggy and miserable, Ambarussa climbed out of the cargo hold and back onto the deck. He could see a glimmer of stars directly overhead, though dark clouds surrounded them. Wave-Skipper was intact, the swan’s head prow held high. The only damage was the tear in the sail, but the fabric was thick and strong, tightly woven with fine-spun thread that barely frayed, clearly the work of a master. It would bear mending well.
“I’m not as skilled a seamstress as those who made this sail originally, but I’ll do my best,” he told Wave-Skipper. “And then when we get back, they will be able to make it beautiful again.”
He dug a needle and some thick thread out of the skiff’s repair kit. Squinting in the dim starlight, he managed to thread the needle and stab it into the thick white cloth. His stitches were large and uneven. “My grandmother Míriel would be horrified to see this, if she had lived,” he told Wave-Skipper. “She invented needlework, and was the most skilled elf in embroidery in all of history. Father has—had—several of her tapestries in Formenos, which are so impressive! There are so many different stitches, but they are all so tiny that you barely notice them, and she got all the colors to blend… I didn’t inherit her talent, though, which disappointed Father. Moryo’s the best of us at it, but he’s still nowhere near as good as Grandmother was.” He had reached the end of the thread. He tied it off and cut a new length, squinting again as he poked the thread through the eye of the needle. “I do have some talent, though,” he said. “I’m not a genius or anything like Father or Mother or Káno or Curvo, but I’m alright at sculpting and stonecarving. My mother taught me. She’s one of the greatest sculptors in Valinor, and she learned from her father, so she was happy to have someone to pass down her skills to.” He set down the needle and held up the little stone albatross, as if the painted swan eyes on Wave-Skipper could actually see it. “I made this for her, you know. Or, you don’t know. How could you possibly know that? I haven’t told you before.”
He glanced down at the white marble, veined with silver, the delicately etched feathers, the slight scalloping of the outstretched wings. “I wanted it to be my masterwork. I put my heart in it. I knew—I knew I was going to go with Father, and I wanted to give her something to show my thanks, not just as her son, but as her student. I know it’s very small, and it doesn’t look like much, but if you look very closely, if you see all of the details… I broke so many stone birds trying to get their wings this thin. I wanted her to see everything she had taught me. And albatrosses are lucky, and I wanted her to have that luck, and to be safe, because I knew I was saying—I knew I was saying goodbye.”
He let go of the albatross and let it slide back down its chain next to his heart. He scrubbed at his eyes and nose with his rain-damp sleeve. “She wouldn’t take it,” he said to Wave-Skipper. “She said that I’d need the luck more than she would. She wanted me to stay. She was angry—she said she knew that all my brothers loved Father better, but she thought that maybe I, at least…”
He trailed off, and went back to sewing the sail, stabbing the needle through the cloth back and forth, back and forth, his stitches jagged and ugly.
“My twin Ambarussa wanted to go,” he said, finally. “He insisted on it. He said we needed to take vengeance for Grandfather, that we couldn’t just sit there like sheep in a pen and wait for Morgoth to come back and kill us. And that made sense but mostly I…” the needle slipped, and Ambarussa gave a cry of pain. He sucked the droplet of blood off his finger before continuing with both his stitching and his speech. “I didn’t want to be left behind. We’re the twins. The Ambarussa. We have the same name. My brother is right—all my other names are too confusing anyway. It’s easier if we just go by the same thing. It would probably be easier if we had the same hair. We’re always together. I don’t know how to be alone. I’m doing a very bad job at it. Look at me! I’m talking to a boat!”
He made a few more jagged stitches and tied off the thread. He gave the sail an experimental tug. The stitches held. He grabbed the ropes and began to tie the sail back to the mast. The little stone albatross swung on its chain and tapped lightly on his chest.
“I lied to you again,” he said to the boat, “when I said that I left because it wasn’t right to follow Father anymore. It wasn’t right from the moment we drew swords on the Teleri. I knew that then. I knew it. But I didn’t leave. But we got to Middle Earth and I just…”
He finished securing the sail, which hung slackly in the eerie calm and stillness that surrounded him. “I wasn’t even thinking,” he said, forcing the words out. “I wasn’t thinking about Námo or the Doom or if I could even do this, if it was even possible to go home. But I had to try. I had to. I couldn’t stay. I just… I just…”
The ocean was vast, and empty, and dark, and cold.
“I just wanted my mom,” he sobbed.
The storms hit again. Wave-Skipper was tossed back and forth, and the little skiff was pelted with rain and hail. It was all Ambarussa could do to keep from being swept overboard. The boards creaked, the mast shook, the swan-prow plunged and swayed as the skiff was knocked from swell to swell.
“Please,” Ambarussa whispered, clutching the mast. Lightning cracked again and the world blazed with light brighter even than Laurelin. He squeezed his eyes shut. He should get below the deck again; that mast would be the perfect target for lightning. “Please,” he said again, louder. The roar of the waves sounded almost like laughter. “Please! I just want to go home!”
“TURN AROUND, LITTLE KINSLAYER.”
Ambarussa had never heard that voice before, but he had heard stories, of course, of the storm Maia who wrecked ships and raged along the coasts. “Lord Ossë, I must continue! Please let me pass!”
“TURN AROUND OR I WILL SMASH YOUR SHIP TO LITTLE PIECES AND FILL YOUR LUNGS WITH SEAWATER.” Ambarussa covered his ears, but that did little to block out the thunderous voice, which laughed again. “WHAT A BEAUTIFUL DAY TO MAKE THE NOLDOR PAY FOR WHAT THEY DID TO MY PEOPLE! THIS WILL BE A FINE START.”
“Your people…” The boat lurched again, and Ambarussa had to let go of his ears to clutch at the mast once more. “The Teleri! The Teleri are dear to you.”
“YES, THE SEAFARING FOLK WHOM YOU HAVE SLAIN, WHOSE BLOOD YOU SHED, POLLUTING THE WATERS, WHOSE BOATS YOU STOLE–”
“This is one of them!” Ambarussa shouted. He wondered if he had lost his mind, shouting at a Maia, but he was his father’s son, after all.
“I KNOW THAT, YOU THIEF, YOU MURDERER–”
“This is the last one! This is the last of the swan ships! The Teleri put their heart into it! You cannot wreck it! If you love them, you cannot!”
And just like that, the ocean went still. The stars were still shrouded, but the rain ceased as well. All was dark, and calm, and quiet.
“I can’t believe that worked,” Ambarussa whispered to Wave-Skipper. He clutched at his necklace. Had it been lucky after all?
And then he noticed something moving underneath the water, ascending towards him. The water churned and bubbled, and then, amongst the froth, the head of Ossë himself breached the surface.
His skin was grey and his eyes flickered and gleamed like the glowing waves they had seen earlier in their journey. He had the long, thin mouth of a whale, a mouth that was as wide as Wave-Skipper was long, and when he opened it, Ambarussa could see rows and rows of sharp, pointed teeth.
“YOU ARE VERY FOOLISH, TELLING ME WHAT I CANNOT DO,” he said. In the relative quiet of the world around them, Ossë’s voice seemed even louder. Ambarussa could feel it rumbling in his chest.
“Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Lord Ossë,” said Ambarussa, trying not to stammer. Where was Lady Uinen? It was said she was the only one who could calm her husband’s rages. “I—I don’t suppose your Lady wife is about?”
“SHE IS BUSY CULTIVATING NEW VARIETIES OF ORNAMENTAL KELP.”
“R-right.”
“YOU DO NOT WANT TO DISTURB HER WHEN SHE IS WORKING ON KELP.”
“Of course, My Lord.”
“AND YOU’LL BE FAR TOO DEAD TO DISTURB HER ANYWAY.”
“About that, My Lord—”
“SO. YOU SAY THAT I CANNOT SINK THIS BOAT, BECAUSE IT IS THE LAST SWAN-SHIP OF THE TELERI?”
“Well, of course you could, Lord Ossë. I don’t doubt your power. You are… very mighty. The question is more whether or not you should. And you should not sink this boat.”
“BECAUSE IT WOULD MAKE THE TELERI SAD?” Ossë’s voice was mocking. “WHAT WOULD YOU KNOW ABOUT THE SORROW OF THE TELERI? DO YOU THINK THEIR SORROW WOULD BE GREATER THAN IT WAS WHEN THEY LOST THEIR LIVES ON YOUR SWORDS, LITTLE NOLDO?”
“I—I don’t know, My Lord. I—I imagine they are sadder about their lost kin.” He squeezed his eyes shut and thought about his father, his father’s rage and grief after the death of his own father and the theft of the silmarils. It was not always easy to tell what he grieved for more. “But they were willing to die for their ships, so they must care about them a great deal. He clutched his necklace. “They put their heart into them. So parts of them are here, in this boat. The last boat.”
“AND, SO, WHAT, YOU THINK YOU CAN MAKE IT UP TO THEM? BY RETURNING ONE SMALL BOAT?”
“No?” He swallowed, looking away from Ossë’s strange glowing eyes. “No. I just…” Wave-Skipper bobbed in the water. The only sound was the gentle splashing of ripples against the hull. “What else can I do?”
“DIE?”
“I—I would prefer not to.” He tilted his head to gaze up into the endless, shapeless blackness of the clouded sky. How would that solve anything? Would that solve anything? Were the Teleri crying out for his blood? His head? Would his death make them feel better? His father and his twin had seemed pretty convinced that Morgoth’s death (or imprisonment, or banishment—could one even kill a Vala?) would make them all feel better. Ambarussa had thought that at least he would feel safer if Morgoth were gone.
Would the Teleri feel safer with Ambarussa gone?
That was an unsettling thought. Ambarussa certainly had no intentions of ever kinslaying again, but the Teleri didn’t know that. And he hadn’t exactly had intentions of kinslaying the first time either. It had just… happened. So how did the Teleri know that it wouldn’t happen again? How did Ambarussa know that it wouldn’t happen again?
“I—” he said. He clutched at his necklace, feeling the grooves of the etched feathers press into his fingertips. He took a deep breath. “I know that there is nothing I can do to fix what I did. I know there is nothing that I can do to bring back their dead people or their burned ships, or properly atone. But if this ship brings them even a tiny bit of comfort, then I… then I have to try. Because I owe them that. That and my apology.”
There was a pause. Then Ossë tilted his massive grey head slightly to the side. Water sloshed, and Wave-Skipper rocked. “VERY PRETTY WORDS,” he said, “BUT HOW SINCERE ARE THEY?”
“Very sincere!”
The wide mouth stretched even wider into a grin, filled with pointed teeth. “OH? ARE YOU WILLING TO PROVE IT?”
“Yes!” he said, “give me a chance, Lord Ossë, and I’d be happy to prove it!”
Ossë laughed, which sounded like crashing waves and sent the boat rocking again. “I DOUBT THAT. BUT HEAR ME, LITTLE NOLDO, BECAUSE YOUR OPPORTUNITY HAS COME. SO, LET US SEE HOW SORRY YOU REALLY ARE. YOU HAVE TWO CHOICES. THE FIRST: YOU TURN AROUND AND SAIL BACK TO MIDDLE EARTH. I DO NOT CARE WHERE YOU GO OR WHAT YOU DO ONCE YOU ARE THERE, BUT YOU ARE BANISHED, NOLDO. THE DOOM OF MANDOS IS UPON YOU. YOU CANNOT RETURN.”
“And the second choice?” asked Ambarussa, his palms sweaty as he clutched at his necklace.
“YOU ARE BANISHED,” said Ossë. “YOU CANNOT COME BACK TO VALINOR, BUT THIS BOAT CAN.”
Ambarussa paused, thinking this over. “But I am on this boat.”
“YES.”
“And if I simply try to sail forward?”
“I WILL SINK YOU AND THE BOAT. YOU ARE DOOMED. IT WILL BE NÁMO’S WILL AND MY PLEASURE.”
Think, Ambarussa told himself. There were so many geniuses in his family; surely one of them could figure out a way to get out of this, and surely Ambarussa had learned something from them. “I don’t suppose you have another boat?”
“I DO NOT.”
Father made sure of that, of course.
“Could I sail somewhere else, such as an island, and leave the boat, and then you could take it to the Teleri?”
Ossë’s eyes narrowed. “I AM NOT AN ERRAND BOY.”
“I am sorry,” said Ambarussa. “This is not an easy choice.”
“IT IS NOT MEANT TO BE.”
He looked at Wave-Skipper, at her sail with his jagged stitching, her proud swan-head prow, her little trapdoor where he’d hunkered in the storms, the mast that he had clung to and which had nearly drawn lightning down upon him. He thought of the watertight boards fitted snugly together, the gleaming white paint, the finely woven sail, the twined ropes, the hundreds of hours and dozens of people that had come together for such a small but sturdy little skiff, and he thought this is a silmaril, not of one elf, but of a community. And he remembered his father raging at the loss of his gems, howling that he could never make their like again, and that if those jewels were broken he would surely die.
He bent down and started drawing up the anchor.
“SO, YOUR WORDS WERE JUST WORDS, THEN.” Ossë’s voice was scornful.
Ambarussa finished drawing up the anchor. He put his hand on the prow and gave it a little pat.
Then he jumped into the ocean.
It was cold, but not shockingly so, and he surfaced, spluttering, almost under Ossë’s nose. “Send it on,” he said.
Ossë stared at him. His eyes were larger than Ambarussa’s head.
Ambarussa was out of time and patience, and his voice was a shout. “Do it!”
A wind picked up from nowhere. The sail went taut, and then Wave-Skipper was darting forward, gliding West into the night.
Ambarussa and Ossë regarded each other in silence. A few stars began to peek through the dark clouds. “What now?” asked Ambarussa, when the quiet became too much. “Do I just… wait?” Wait until I’m too tired to swim any longer? Wait for a shark? A monster? A deadly current?
Ossë simply studied him. Ambarussa heard a single distant seagull cry from somewhere in the west.
“My mother was right when she named me Fated, I suppose. Will you tell her—will you tell her that I am sorry? That she was right and I should have listened to her? Will you tell them all that I’m sorry and that if I could do it over I would do it differently and I would try—I would try my best not to hurt anyone? That I wish I could make it up to them, but I know that I can’t, but that—” he looked up at the tiny patch of clear, star-speckled sky, “that I wish I could spend the rest of my life trying anyway?” He fumbled at the clasp of his necklace, “and if you see my mother, could you give her—”
Ossë lunged.
One moment Ambarussa was on the surface, and the next moment there was a terrible pain in his leg as Ossë’s sharp teeth sank into it, and he was plunging down, down, down. His necklace slipped from his fingers, and he screamed, his air escaping in bubbles, grasping frantically after it, his masterwork, the product of hours and hours of carving and etching and polishing, his luck, the embodiment of all his skill, his love for his mother and hers for him, sinking in the endless depths. The water went ice-cold, the pressure stabbed at his ears, and everything went dark.
“Umbarto.”
There was a gentle rocking sensation, and then a stabbing pain in his leg
“Umbarto!”
He opened his eyes to an endless expanse of stars. He coughed, though thankfully his lungs seemed clear. He was floating. He had been floating for a while. He reached for the chain around his neck, but his fingers grasped nothing at all.
He looked around. There, silhouetted against the stars were the shadows of the Pélori mountains, whose ridgeline he had known since his earliest childhood, yes, there was Taniquetil. And there, sailing towards him, was the familiar prow of Wave-Skipper.
“Umbarto!”
“Mother?” he called, his voice a weak rasp. There was a commotion from onboard, and Ambarussa saw a figure dive off the side of the boat and swim towards him. “Mother?” he said again, as the figure wrapped her arms around his chest and started dragging him towards the ship, but it was not his mother. “Aunt Eärwen?”
“Here, I have him!” his aunt shouted. “He’s injured—his leg is bleeding.”
Someone, a silver-haired figure he did not recognize, tossed a rope over the side, and then his aunt was hauling him up, and then he was back on Wave-Skipper’s familiar deck, and there was his mother, flinging her arms around him and calling his name.
“I lost your necklace,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
“Is that,” said his mother through her teeth, “really the first thing you want to say to me?”
“No. Yes. I don’t—” He gave a shout of pain. Eärwen and the silver-haired stranger were applying ointment to deep puncture wounds in his leg left by Ossë’s teeth.
“I’m sorry for everything,” he said, which was a start.
“Me too,” she said, which was confusing. “And I am sorry about the necklace, which was beautiful. But you can make another one.”
Ambarussa flinched as Aunt Eärwen tied a tight bandage around his leg, which sent such a shock of pain through him that he couldn’t think of anything else until she was done.
“Don’t even think about saying how you can never make its like again,” his mother was saying, “maybe you can’t. But carve something different then. I’ve taught you how to carve more things than birds. And why do you think I care about a necklace when you are here?”
That was true, Ambarussa reflected. It was very true.
Once the wave of pain had subsided from “blinding” to “burning but bearable,” Ambarussa managed to say “I… thank you, thank you but, I don’t understand. How are you here?”
“Your grandmother wove it,” said his mother, gesturing towards the silver-haired stranger, and Ambarussa, through the haze of pain, stared at her until her features rearranged themselves into something he recognized, not from life, but from official portraits. “Grandmother Míriel?”
“Yes,” said the stranger, simply, washing blood off of her hands. “I recognized you in the tapestry I was weaving, floating half-dead on the water, and I figured I had better tell Nerdanel so that we could do something about it.”
“But how are you alive?”
His grandmother pursed her lips in an expression that was very reminiscent of his father. “That is a long and complicated story, for another time.”
“And Aunt Eärwen? Why are you here?”
“This is my boat,” she said.
“What?”
“You didn’t recognize it? Wave-Skipper is my boat. A gift for my two hundredth birthday.”
“Oh,” he said. “It’s a very nice boat.”
“Yes, my father had it commissioned especially for me. I wove the sail myself.”
“The sail!” Ambarussa tried to sit up. “I’m so sorry. I tried to mend it, but…”
“Telufinwë Ambarussa,” she said, “the sail is the least of my worries and griefs right now.”
Oh. Of course. He took a shaky breath. “Aunt Eärwen,” he said, “I am very sorry for… for kinslaying your people.”
The words sounded pathetic. Ridiculous. Wholly inadequate.
Eärwen studied him. “I do not forgive you,” she said. “At least, not yet. But thank you for returning my boat, and I am glad that you have returned as well.”
“We may have a problem,” said his grandmother, staring over the prow. “There seems to be a twenty-foot tall hooded and cloaked man on the beach. Which really can only be Námo.”
“That is a problem,” said Ambarussa. “Since I am Doomed, and he declared that I can’t come back to Valinor.”
“You are injured!” his mother said, putting her hands on either side of his head, as if that would protect him from a Vala’s wrath. “He can’t possibly send you away like this. And where would you go?”
Ambarussa decided to leave out the part about Ossë leaving him to drown, since his mother looked worried enough already.
“I’ll talk to him,” his mother continued, as if Námo was someone you could reason with or plead with instead of the divine embodiment of death and doom. “He will listen to us; he’ll understand the circumstances…”
“HAIL, TELUFINWË UMBARTO,” said Námo, leaning over the boat. His voice was like the slow toll of an enormous bell, and Ambarussa could feel it vibrating in his fingertips. “YOU HAVE RETURNED AGAINST THE DECREE OF THE VALAR.”
“Hail, O Inexorable Mandos,” said Ambarussa, miserably.
“Technically speaking, we are the ones who brought him back,” said his mother, “so it wasn’t his fault. He was only barely conscious.”
“INDEED,” said Námo, dryly, “YOU BROUGHT HIM ALL THE WAY FROM MIDDLE EARTH, DID YOU?”
“Just to the shore, which is the only bit that matters, really. Míriel saw him in her weaving, floating offshore, so really it could all have just been an unfortunate accident—”
“THERE WERE NO ACCIDENTS HERE,” said Námo. “TELUFINWË UMBARTO, WHY HAVE YOU DECIDED TO RETURN?”
“I needed to return a boat,” said Ambarussa, once he could think over the ringing in his ears. Námo’s face remained in the shadows of his hood, giving no indication of his thoughts. “And… my father has… not been well. I was afraid that… that I might be put in a situation where I could be frightened into kinslaying again.”
If Námo was shocked by this admission of Ambarussa’s weak and cowardly character, he gave no outward sign.
“And,” said Ambarussa, finally, “I missed my mother.”
“YOU FORSAKE YOUR OATH BY RETURNING,” said Námo.
“Ah,” said Ambarussa. “Well, if you think about the spirit of the Oath, it was really about returning works of the heart to their respective owners, which, you could argue, I did, by returning this boat to my Aunt Eärwen.”
“THAT DID NOT SEEM LIKE THE SPIRIT OF THE OATH AT ALL WHEN IT WAS SWORN. NOT TO MENTION HOW IT CONTRADICTS THE ACTUAL WORDING—”
“Did you swear it?” Ambarussa demanded. “No! So how could you possibly know the spirit of the oath better than those who swore it?”
“YOU CALLED UPON MANWË AND VARDA AS WITNESSES. THEY SHALL JUDGE WHETHER THE TERMS BE FULFILLED OR BROKEN OR VOID.”
“Right,” said Ambarussa, “but they are in Valinor, so… can I…”
“Please, my Lord,” his mother burst out. “He is the last of my sons, the youngest and the last. He is all I have left. I will do better—I will teach him better. He has done terrible things and made horrible choices, but he is my son and his faults are—”
“HIS FAULTS AND CHOICES ARE HIS OWN, NERDANEL, DAUGHTER OF MAHTAN,” said Námo. “HE ALONE BEARS RESPONSIBILITY. BUT OSSË HAS PLEADED FOR HIM.”
“Ossë?” whispered Ambarusssa, in surprise.
“HE SAID THAT YOUR REPENTANCE WAS GENUINE, AND THAT YOU WERE NOT A DANGER TO THE ELVES. HE SAID YOU REMINDED HIM OF HIMSELF MANY CENTURIES AGO, WHEN HE FELL TO HIS WORST IMPULSES AND JOINED WITH MELKOR, BEFORE UINEN BROUGHT HIM BACK TO HIS SENSES AND PLEADED WITH US ON HIS BEHALF. SO, HE TOWED YOU WITHIN SIGHT OF VALINOR AND CAME TO TELL ME THAT IF WE COULD HAVE COMPASSION FOR HIM, WE SHOULD HAVE COMPASSION FOR YOU.”
“And do you?” asked his mother.
“MY DOOM WILL ALWAYS WEIGH ON HIM,” said Námo, with finality. “HE SHALL HAVE TO WORK TO COMBAT IT, TO HEAL THE HARMS THAT HE HAS CAUSED, IF HE WISHES TO FIND ANY PEACE IN THESE LANDS. IT WILL BE A LONG JOURNEY, A JOURNEY WITH NO ENDING. BUT THE EXAMPLE OF OSSË AND UINEN REMINDS US THAT HE NEED NOT WALK IT ALONE, AS LONG AS HE IS WILLING TO WALK IT AT ALL.”
Ambarusa’s whole head was ringing with the force of Námo’s words. It took him a moment to overcome the shock, but, he thought, it seemed like he could stay. He could stay here, with his mother and aunts and no-longer-dead grandmother and the friends he thought he had lost. And he wasn’t exactly forgiven but he had a chance, maybe, a hope of doing something good, or maybe one day being something good. “I am,” he said, breathless, “I am willing. I will walk forever. That’s better than being lost, I think.”
“VERY WELL,” said Námo, “YOU HAVE BEGUN THE JOURNEY ALREADY, I SEE, AND IT HAS LED YOU HERE, SO HOW SHALL I DENY YOU? WELCOME BACK TO VALINOR, TELUFINWË UMBARTO.”