Midwinter 2

Orc

All she could see was white.

Where once she had been free to hunt under starlight, now she hunkered down in the inadequate shadow of an overhanging rock, her arms crossed over her eyes, moaning in pain as the cold brightness in the sky seemed to seek her out.

Cold she did not mind, nor the bite of blades.  Him she could deal with – except when he wanted to take her, and that was a brief thing, fierce yet soon over – but the endless white mocked her. 

It shone under the incandescent disc that reminded her of the eye… the eye of the One: that accused her of treachery, of desertion, of weakness.  Reminding her of other gleaming beings with eyes like knives.

She whimpered and dragged herself further into the shadows so that it could not see her.

This white burned: its touch was gentle and it covered the world like a blanket, but it was a deception.  This was the softness in the Dark Lord’s voice, the beauty in his face – this was a softness that would kill as soon as look at you.  Not the gentle, enveloping care of a mother, this.  The swiftly-passing thought choked her with fear and she held her breath to see if anyone had noticed the moment of doubt, of disloyalty.  Echoes of memories she must not permit.  Stirred by this eye-burning white that was relentless, punishing, cruel.

But she was alive, was she not?  And permitted to run free, as long as she did as he wished – and that was better than it had been.  She shuddered involuntarily as her bones recalled the incessant pain, the relentless attention, the weight of his touch, the breaking that had made her what she was.  At least she was no longer confined in the suffocating dark beneath the towers of Angband.

If only there was not so much white.

 ***

Elwing

This was one place she had never been pursued by this punishing white.

Faint memories stirred of the wretched trail from the destruction of the halls of Menegroth, hunted by knife and hunger and the stinging cold – but that was not here, where the land tumbled to the restless sea and the warm damp air from Ulmo’s realm dismissed the bitter weather.

But she could not help but smile as the wide grey eyes of her sons peered over the windowsill in wonder at the magical sight.   Her quiet Elrond was motionless, but, even as he watched, Elros was dancing on the spot in his desperate desire to get outside and discover the joys of snow.

She sent their nursemaid for warm hooded cloaks and boots and wrapped up their wriggling bodies – they appeared to fear that, as soon as they removed their eyes from the hypnotic fall, it would be as if it had never been – and took them outside, their small hands enclosed in hers.

And it was clean and fresh and astonishing and the zig-zagging flakes drifted from an oyster sky – and the twins pranced, chasing each swirling cluster to watch it melt on their hands.

It was Elros, of course, who found that he could pick up handfuls of the enchanting stuff and throw it – and Elrond who thought of constructing towers and walls.  She could not help but laugh, kneel beside them to play in the whiteness, and wish that their adar had been there to see them.

Late at night, when Ithil hung like a silver apple over the glinting cliffs, she stood at the window of her tower looking over the land rather than at the sea.  She was glad it had snowed, she thought.  She had forgotten that what she recalled as terrifying could also be fun. 

There was nothing to fear in a world of white.

*** 

Ent

She knew of a time when the land had been perpetually white.

Ancient eyes the deep green of forest pools considered the deep quilt of snow that buried the roots of her trees and weighed down their branches. 

But then the land had awoken and the stars had shone – and the Firstborn’s endless curiosity had roused the forest.  Yet it had not been until the sky brightened the forest had settled into this routine of fruiting and repose.

This season of refreshment was, she thought, longer and harder than most.  In general, she welcomed the cold – it killed many of the pests that could damage the spring buds, or that burrowed beneath the bark.  But – she moved her twig-like fingers slowly in contemplation of their icy burden – this was on the edge of being too much.

When the forest had been new and she had been young, she had dwelt with him and they had tended their placid flock, but…  She watched Arien’s advancing warmth chase back the white, while snowdrops and wood anemones flaunted themselves.   She had wanted to be more settled, to make the forest bloom, while he… 

Petals dropped and the crop began to swell.   She tolerated the presence of busy creatures stripping ripe fruit and nuts.  Some were noisier and more interfering, but each had his place – and as long as they kept their axes to themselves and their fires under control...  The leaves crisped and fell.

What he wanted had been different.  And they had gone their own ways – but the time of cold reminded her of what she had lost, and the absence of Entings to watch over the trees with their parents.

Wind blew from the north and she bent before it.  The snow it brought was a blanket that protected the forest’s sleep and slowed her deliberation. 

She thought that, on the whole, she liked the white.

*** 

Exiled – Isildur’s Wife

The winters amazed her with their sparkling veils of white.

Númenor had been an island, bathed in warm winds from the west scented with the tantalising fragrance of the forbidden lands, but here the wind blew from the north and brought with it – enchantment.

Dignity behoved her to keep silent and stand behind her husband’s shoulder, ignoring the discomforts and pleasures of the outside world, wrapped instead in the formality of position, but she could not keep her eyes from marvelling at drifting petals of cold white, like apple blossom in a spring orchard. 

She was close enough to study the flakes on her husband’s shoulder – symmetrical and perfect, crystals more beautiful than any that the craftsmen of Armenelos could have created for their king.  Yet transient – a passing treasure, created by Yavanna to adorn these northern winters, gone before it could be admired.  Tears stung her eyes but she blinked them back.  She must not show emotion: she was the wife of the king’s son, the mother of his children. 

The elf saw, of course.  There was not much that escaped his shining, silver eyes.  He might have no wife, but he had a better understanding of her fears than her father-in-law or her husband.  He had been lost, this one: he had seen his home sink beneath the sea and had to start again.  He offered sanctuary – for her and her last-born, too young as yet to offer his blood on the field of battle.

She would be left here, like so much excess baggage, to await a spring that might never come.   The snowflakes settled on her cloak, in her hair, touching her cheeks and pausing in her eyelashes – and still they stood.  If they conversed much longer, she thought, she would become a pillar of ice, frozen in human form.

But she would not mind being absorbed into this crystalline white.

*** 

Dwarf

She had never seen a land so cold and white.

The halls of her lost home had been lit by ruddy flame: blazing fires in the broad hearths, their smoke drawn away through cunningly-planned chimneys; the red-gold of torches glinting on the smooth stone.   And, surrounding the light, there had been the comforting dark and the security of walls of immovable stone.  If they could fail…

She brushed the white cover from the log before she sat down with her plate of stew – nothing but scrawny rabbit, but what could you do in a world where even the water refused to co-operate?  They spent bitter evenings around these sparse campfires bemoaning their gold and jewels, the mithril they had treasured, the forge-fires of their home, but she found she regretted the stored food as much: her hoard of ginger, the sacks of flour, the carrots.  She grinned wryly.  Who would have thought it?  A dwarf who treasured carrots above gold.  Although they parted with enough gold to the men who grudgingly sold them what food they could spare. 

White feathers began again to fall from the leaden sky and she drew her hood so far forward that only the tip of her nose showed.

It galled her to think the dragon had driven them forth into this unwelcoming world – were her people cursed?  Would they never a find a home where they could rest in peace without Morgoth’s vile creatures chasing them out? 

She handed her empty bowl to her son: one of the few young dwarves to make it safely from the panic-stricken halls.  She had been lucky.  She knew she had –even if she had to keep reminding herself of it.  They were alive when so many had been less fortunate.

They doused the fire lest it should lead danger to them and sat huddled together: refugees in a world of swirling white.

***

Éowyn

She could not believe that she had ever been so frozen and white.

The White Lady, they had called her – and she had thought herself named for her white robes and her pale hair.  But she could see now that it had been more than that.  Her very spirit had been as cold as this Rohan Midwinter. 

The white blanket that spread across the green plains had lain across her heart and chilled her until she could not see it as a protection, a shield, a nurturing barrier that kept her safe beneath it.   Instead, it had taken on the image of her true nature, so that she had believed herself as cold and hard as the frozen river.

She had forgotten that spring brought snow-melt and the streams gurgled with enthusiasm over and around the rocks in their path once the thaw had come.

She drew a deep, shuddering breath of the icy air and looked down from the exposed terrace at the figures of her brother’s children and her own, tumbling in the snow with their fathers, wild shrieks of laughter and indignation as missiles flew and found their targets.

Yet now – even the bitter Edoras wind and the lingering drifts from the week-long blizzard could not freeze her.  There was a warmth in her that nothing could chill: a warmth that had found its origins in Faramir’s eyes and deepened it hold on her with the touch of his hand and twined itself around her very being with his love.

Pulling on her gloves, she ran briskly down the steps where once Wormtongue had been thrown.  It might not be ladylike: it might not fit Gondor’s perception of suitable behaviour for the Princess of Ithilien, but she was going to play in the snow with her husband and children.

It would be a shame to waste the gift of all that white.