9. Being Landish

Dear Sam,  

As I’ve told you already, we’ve been getting showered with gifts. Someone else was kind enough to give us a book entitled The Arts of Conjugal Love.  Needless to say, I’ve been studying it quite diligently…and cannot believe how much I have to learn! 

Another was a beautiful gleaming white pony for Anemone, Gandalf’s contribution.  Anemone nearly fell over when she saw the creature, and after a few minutes of debating back and forth as to what to name her, she decided on White Gem, no doubt suggested by her pendant. White Gem reminded me of my first love.  I told Anemone of her as we fed our ponies.   

Gemma Goodbody was about twice my age, twenty-one or twenty-two, while I was a mere lad of eleven.  I never actually met her; I simply adored her from afar, and heard others calling her Gemma, or Gem.  Her hair was dark, almost black, but her eyes were rather like Anemone’s, her face heart shaped, her figure slender and graceful for a hobbitess.  Sometimes I made a point of ambling past the market-stalls where I knew she’d stop on shopping-days, affecting a huge interest in fish, or turnips, or whatever it was she was buying, while the vendors looked at me with a touch of suspicion.   

Although I was a cheeky little devil at times, I was shy when it came to speaking to her, and the only word I ever recall saying to her was “Hullo” when she said it to me once, making me the happiest lad in town.  But one day I decided to find out where she lived, and followed her home from a great distance, ducking behind a tree when she glanced back over her shoulder, or turning my back so she shouldn’t see my face, kicking at pebbles ever so nonchalantly, and quivering inside when I saw her go indoors.  I felt pretty pleased with myself, and skipped and whistled all the way home, although I did have to wonder why she had no garden.  But that gave me the idea to pick some flowers for her, and so I picked some from my mother’s garden—I wasn’t allowed to pick flowers from it without permission, but I was naughty and picked them anyway, and took them to where I had seen Gem go in.  I rehearsed over and over in my mind the words I would speak to her…but, you guessed it, I lost my nerve when I got there, and ended up merely laying the flowers on the doorstep.  Then I climbed up into a tree nearby, and waited for her to come out and find the nosegay.   

That’s when I found out it wasn’t her home after all, but the home of her great-aunt, the notorious Lavender Goodbody.  

“Lavender" is a sweet name, but…let’s just say she didn’t exactly live up to it.  I’d heard rumors that she rode on her broom-stick, and I could almost believe it.  She certainly was handy enough with it.  It was reputed that her hole was the tidiest in town, and woe to anyone who dared to cross her threshold without wiping their feet, or brushing the dust off their clothing, and she was allergic to flowers of almost any sort.  So when she opened the door and saw my bouquet, I literally fell out of the tree.  She said a few words I won’t repeat and kicked the bunch off her doorstep almost to her front-gate, screaming imprecations on whomever had left those vile objects to stir up her catarrh.  Yes, she was a little cracked too, I’d heard, and I dare say it was somewhat true, which made her all the more frightening!  Probably she thought the flowers had been left by some practical joker.  Well, I sprang up and fled, for she had her broom in both hands, and I could just see her jumping astride of it and flying after me, turning me into who knows what!  At one point I glanced behind me and saw her beating my poor artistically gathered bouquet with the broom as though it were a rat.

Anemone giggled.  “So did she catch you?”  

“In a way, yes.” I chuckled too as I fed my pony, who was less imaginatively named Toby, after Bilbo's favorite weed.  “She went about asking neighbors if they’d seen anyone lay flowers on her door-step, and I suppose one of them had seen me walking to her smial carrying something with a handkerchief draped over it…and yes, I had taken just such a precaution.  She came to my home and stood outside the gate screaming for my parents to come out—she couldn’t come through because of the garden, which was giving her fits.  She told my mother I was a hideous boy and would come to some perfectly horrible end, then took herself off, with her eyes and nose running like a fountain, sneezing loudly enough to waken a hibernating bear.  Of course I had to tell my mother all.  I thought I would die of embarrassment, and figured I would get a licking for pinching her flowers.  But she just said Gemma was a lovely lass and how she could possibly be related to that creature was a wonder on earth.  I asked was she really a witch and Mum said of course not, she was only a poor old half-mad creature and we should just let her be and not believe all we heard.  But it was a while before I could rest peacefully in my bed at night.”  

“Did Gem ever find out about it?” Anemone asked me as she combed her new pony’s snowy mane.   

“I don’t know.  If she did, she said naught of it to me.  But of course, I was only a small boy.  My father said with twinkling eyes that I should stick with lasses my own age, but I didn’t find them appealing.  They giggled and told secrets, and played games I considered ridiculous, and when there were more than two together, they would hold their noses and wave their hands if a lad came near, then scream with laughter after he left.  Gemma, on the other hand, was mysterious and aloof, or so she seemed.  A distant princess, who didn’t walk, but rather floated, while tiny white flowers sprang from her foot-prints.”  

“What happened to her?”  Anemone looked genuinely interested, like a child listening to a bed-time story.  

“I don’t know.  After my parents died and I had to go live with relatives far away, I never saw her again.  I suppose she married a likely youth and gave him a family.  There really are not many other choices for a hobbitess of the Shire.”  

“Well, I’m sure there quickly came a time when the lasses stopped holding their noses when you approached,” Anemone said impishly, and I laughed.  As we walked back to the house later on, on an impulse I glanced over my shoulder and saw little white flowers spring up where her feet had trod…anemones, of course!    

Tilwen came out with Little Iorhael, and asked us to keep him while she started supper.  She had already fed, bathed and changed him, so he ought to be all right, she told us with a wink.  I had to grin as I watched his daddy holding him.  He had confessed to me that fatherhood had felt to him the way the sea must have felt to me the very first time I plunged into it, unprepared for how cold it really was.   So it was with him.  I wonder if there is a book available entitled The Arts of Parenting?  I’d better ask around.  

Perhaps I could use it myself.  

A while later Tilwen and Anemone came out very softly from the kitchen, no doubt to make sure we weren’t doing anything outrageous with the baby, like tossing him back and forth across the yard, or force-feeding him grog and teaching him bawdy sailor ballads.  Or breathing too hard on him.  They looked vastly relieved to see us innocently sitting with his little basket between us, his tiny left hand gripping my finger and his right one gripping Galendur’s, while I made a bunny of my free hand with my forefinger and middle finger sticking up and made it hop all over my namesake’s tummy.  After reassuring themselves that this foolery would not give him any horrid childhood diseases or warp his little character for life, the ladies cooed and gooed all over him, commenting on his myriad infant charms and speculating on which parent he would come to resemble most, then fluttered back into the house, where we could hear them giggling in the kitchen…about us, no doubt.  And as if he had read my mind, Galendur said they were probably laughing at us, and I laughed uproariously…at what, I don’t know, but it felt wonderful, and he laughed also, and the ladies flurried out again to make sure we didn’t drop the little one on his head while we were bellowing like mooses.  

By the way, I should really have said Gemma was my second love…my first being my mother.  

~*~*~   

“He is getting landish,” Anemone said as she watched her son one evening, where we were sitting on the terrace after supper.  Northlight was patching a small hole in the roof of the spring-house.   

“Landish?” I said, and had an idea what she meant even as I spoke.  

“It happens sometimes when sea-folk spend too much time on land,” she explained.  “That’s why we are warned against getting too curious about the world above the waves.  If we are among land-folk too much, often we get a ‘feeling’ for them, and the sea begins to lose its charms for us.  And either we become discontented and fall into bad ways, or else we end up not leaving the land, and we wither away and die unless we turn back to the sea.  I feared that would happen with Northlight, but there seemed no other way to redeem him.  I think it is what happened with Darkfin—he is another who had curiosity of the land, went there and became landish, until we did not know him anymore.  I’m thinking Northlight will not wish to go back to the sea.”  

“Perhaps he can just stay with us?” I said.  “I’ve grown most fond of him, and don’t wish him to go back.  I know he cannot stay in the house, and would not wish to even if he could, but perhaps he can keep close by…”

“Yes, I can see you have taken strongly to each other, and I am glad of that,” she said.  “But this means he will not be content with his own people any more.  When I was farewelling my kin, some thought I had lost my mind, but others wanted to go back with me to where I had been when I told them of my doings and the people I had met, and most especially, you.  I wasn’t sure what to tell them.  And they told me I had become ‘landish’ for want of a better word.”  

“What if Northlight were to meet a lady?” I said.  “He can be any size he wishes, yes?”  

“He could stay then,” she said.

“I see,” I said, recalling a conversation I had with him while Anemone was away.  We were on the beach, where a bunch of elflings were playing, and I had asked him if any lady had caught his eye here, and he pointed out Marílen saying, “That one.”  

“Marílen?  She’s but a little child.”  I was shocked. I had heard of such things, but surely not our Northlight?

“She will grow, will she not?” He drew his silvery eyebrows together.  

“Yes, but very slowly,” I said.  “I don’t know how old she is, but it will be 60 to 80 years before she is of an age to marry. Your mother never explained this to you?”  

“The subject never came up,” Northlight said crestfallen.   

“And there is no guarantee that she will be willing, when she does come of age,” I said more kindly.  “I am sorry.  I’m sure she is the most beautiful child on the Island, and has a sweet and gentle way with her.  But I think you would do well to look to those who are of age.”  

Northlight sighed:  “I do not see them so much.  It is the young ones who interest me.  They have such wonder and delicate mystery to them.  Like butterflies.”  

“You love the Dance,” I reminded him.  “Do none of the actual dancers take your liking?”  

“I love to watch,” he said, “but I would scarcely dare to approach them.  Sometimes I fear it would take the mystery from them, to know too much of them.”  

One day I took him into the City and we strolled about the streets, watching some of the street performers.  We stayed there well into the evening, took dinner in the Flamingo’s Roost, where I had met his mother in the guise of Silivren, and after we had finished, we went out and resumed our ramble.  And it was there we saw…the Egg-Girl.  

I had not seen her since the day I came home from the Palace after Bilbo died.  The girl who danced blind-folded amongst the eggs without moving a single one, as a male Elf played on a three-stringed fiddle.  I had supposed him to be her father, but he is actually a much older brother.  Guilin is his name.  They were once prisoners of Sauron, their parents murdered by his orcs.  They live in a small flat in the City.  Raven, I call the girl—I heard her real name, but it’s a bit too jaw-breaking for me, so I called her after the color of her hair, and she seems to like it.  She can hear but not speak—she has not spoken since she saw her parents murdered, although I am hoping that time and some counseling will remedy that.  Yet she managed to cleverly use her handicap as a means of escape, for many supposed her deaf as well, and she often pretended to be so, that she might hear plans undetected.   

I introduced her to Northlight, gave her a gold piece and told her he would love to watch her dance.  She was clad, as always, in a short dress of bright colors, with gold bracelets on her arms and ankles, and her feet were bare, her iridescent black hair braided in front with beads worked into it and drawn back away from her face, emphasizing her wide bright eyes.  The bracelets jingled when she danced, her pretty bare feet skipping and leaping so nimbly between the eggs, as always not missing a one, her arms waving gracefully out to her sides, then over her head, then twirling herself about on one set of toes, then springing high into the air with one foot straight out in front of her and the other straight out in back, toes pointed, fingers spread outward like bird wings…and it really did look as though she should crush an egg when she landed, but no.  Northlight watched in the most perfect stillness, unable to take his eyes from her.  

And I can swear he grew an inch, even as he watched.   

And then he asked me if he might give her some money, I said certainly, and he gave her several coins from the little purse of money I had given him in payment for the work he had done on the house, and solemnly thanked her, and she favored him with a most radiant smile.  I thought, I really must invite her and Guilin to the house when Anemone returns; I would love to see her and Anemone dance together.  

But Raven is not yet grown either.  I’m sure it will be twenty to thirty years before she is of a marriageable age.  Can Northlight wait so long?  

Still, his eye has been caught!  

~*~*~  

“We decided on blue,” Lyrien told me this morning.  “For our gowns.  Since you and Anemone both have blue eyes.”  

“But which color blue should they be?” Marílen asked me seriously, as I suppressed a smile at the importance with which Lyrien pronounced the word “gowns.”  “Morning-sky blue like yours, or purply-blue like Anemone’s?”  

“Whichever you like best,” I said.  

“Your blue is my favorite,” Lyrien said, “but Marílen likes Anemone’s blue best.  Can we wear gowns of two different blues?”  

“If it’s all right with Anemone, it’s all right with me,” I said smiling, feeling thankful that my bride-to-be was not of a persnickety sort who insisted on everything being just exactly so and would throw a fit if anything were the least bit out of order.  Since she has never either had nor witnessed a wedding, she doesn’t even know what is right or not, she only knows what she likes, and would therefore be unlikely to make a huge fuss about gowns being two different shades.  

Today we have quite a houseful…save that no one is actually in the house.  Tilwen sits in a swing on the terrace with Niniel and Lalaith  and Seragon’s sister Eilinel, who has come down with Laurewen and Amras and her parents to see the baby and visit with her old friend.  They all sit around Little Iorhael in a little circle of feminine worshipfulness.  Donnoviel sits in the gazebo with Perion’s mother and Seragon’s mother Aerin and Mirimë, while Anemone sits at the terrace table with Lyrien and Marílen and Perion’s younger sister Curíleth, who is somewhere between Marílen and Dínlad in age.  Anemone is drawing several styles for the little bridesmaids to choose from.  They make excited comments from time to time, then spring up to go check up on the baby, exclaiming over him:  

His little fingies are so soffffttt!!

Wouldn't it be nice if he could always be little?

He pokes his lips out when he's asleep like he's dreaming about kissing somebody!  Isn't that adorable?

He burped!

The rest of us, I, Perion and Dinlad, along with Edrahil and Dairuin, Amras, Galendur, Seragon and his father Quellemel, Leandros, Northlight, and Perion’s older sister Gildorien, who is interested in neither fashions nor babies, are pitching horse-shoes near the spring-house.  Eventually Amras’s sister Haleth arrives with her daughters Linwë and Fëariel, and Linwë joins us immediately while Fëariel goes to see what Anemone and the little girls are up to.  But the elflings don’t necessarily like her, because she puts on such airs.  She used to be nice, they say, but lately she has become, in Curíleth’s words, “impossible”, her favorite expression being You’re just too young to understand, along with Really I’ve risen above such things!  They tolerate her with cool politeness as she leans her elbows on the table watching with interest and making comments and suggestions, but I suppose the girls’ lack of cordiality reminds her that she is too old for paper-dolls after all; really she has risen above such things, and she flounces over to the other side where Tilwen and the others sit with Little Iorhael, tells him all about how sweet he is and tickles him under the chin, until it suddenly becomes obvious that he needs a change VERY badly, whereupon she rapidly decides it is time to turn elsewhere.  She skips over to where we fellows are engaged in our game, glancing in the direction of the gazebo where her grandmother and the other older ladies sit chattering and making lace and embroidering and so forth.  Perion and Gildorien and Linwë look surprised and not altogether pleased to see her, and I give her a smile and ask her if she would like to join us.  She glances timidly at Gildorien…who can run like a deer and swim like a fish and climb like a mountain-goat, and is reputed to be almost as much of a crack shot with a bow and arrow as Legolas…and then evidently remembers that she is too feminine for such pursuits, and says ever so demurely that she will just watch.  But horse-shoes is not exactly a spectator-sport, and I can see she is getting bored before long.  She looks again to the gazebo, but who wants to sit with a bunch of old biddies?   

Alas, poor Fëariel, with nowhere to turn!  I am host, and ought to see to her.  But what to do?  

The peacock saves me from the need to make a decision, and I run to the gate, as a great silver stallion with a rider in red appears, along with an ebony-haired lady in dark green mounted on a white palfrey, a lovely little filly skipping along between the two horses.  In a twinkling everyone has gathered at the gate, all shouting and jabbering at once, as Gandalf dismounts and assists his lady while the little girls pounce on Silverdance, and I smile to myself, knowing what news he has come to impart even before he takes Ríannor by the hand and asks Anemone if perhaps she could design a wedding-gown for his bride as well?  High time, I should say!  

And Anemone says, her eyes glittering with what might be happy tears, “I already have.”