Midwinter

A Darkened Sky

She had always thought of it as white.

When she had been a child, it had seemed like magic – a blanket of soft feathers floating from a silver sky to conceal the everyday world.  She had watched it eagerly through the wide windows and sheltered archways and soaked her slippers dancing in it, turning her face to it as it fell to try to catch the crystal flakes on her tongue.

She had never imagined it could hurt.  She had never imagined it piled high until its weight turned it into sharp-edged shards as sharp as blades: hard as rock tumbled to catch the unwary.  She had never pictured it cut into crevasses hidden by the jagged shadows of the starlit snowfields.  She had never thought that it could kill.

Death came with fire and glinting swords and the desperate eyes of elves confronting elves.  Death was hot and breathless and urgent – stained red with spilled blood, blackened with soot, bright with mocking flame.

Here it came silently, leaching life from those who let it, turning skin as white as itself and drawing out all warmth until the smoke-grey eyes closed and let the ice have its way – stealing children from their parents and robbing a people already robbed of home and hope and honour.

Artanis wrapped her cloak protectively around Idril, tucking up her feet until the child was barely visible under the enveloping folds.  She would not let this child be lost.  Elenwë was gone; her despair too great to enable her fight the bone-breaking cold, but this little one, at least, would be saved from the wreckage. 

She trudged behind her cousins: Turgon between his brother and sister, too lost to seek his own path.  Their cloaks disappeared in the spiteful whirl of steely pellets that bit into their numbed flesh.

She could not believe she had thought of it as white.

***

Vision

She could not believe they thought of it as white. 

It was a matter of perception, she thought.  Starlight broke into rainbows of colour as it caught the crystals, making it a wonder of vividness in a world that gleamed in subtle tones. 

It made her want to leave the prosaic solidity of stone behind her and dance, as her daughter did, in the glades open to the sky – spinning above the surface of the pristine crust, spreading herself upon the air, once more free and unencumbered by this prison of flesh.

But she could not.  She would not.  She had bound herself to him: this elf whose eyes shone with the light of the Trees, who trapped the starlight in his silver hair, whose touch had brought her to earth.  He was her love, for whom any sacrifice was worthwhile.  For him, she would forsake the freedom of the wind and waters.

Once she had floated like the drifting flakes, moving as the breeze took her, but now she had settled, like the snow seeking sheltered hollows and she would nestle there as long as he shielded her.

Yet, as the snow was more than it seemed, so, too, was she.  Serene and beautiful: hair like the shadows of night, skin of alabaster, with the inherent, unsuspected power to change the land they knew and make it other, but gentle, soft: thought of as kind. 

Elu knew differently, she thought.  He knew the flaw in her, the difference, the extent to which her reality was unreal – knew how he held her here in this land of dreams.  Without him, her light would shatter into a million rainbows and blow westwards with no more solidity than snow in summer.

She admired the prismatic lustre of the deceptively smooth surface spread before the walls of Menegroth.

She could not believe they thought of it as white.

***

Surviving the Freeze

She did not know how they would make it through all the white.

It was folly to keep trying to move in the depths of winter – but what could she do?  It was stay and die, or move – and probably die.  They could no longer stay where they were, even if the elves had saved them once.  They had lost too much.  Her father was dead, and her brother, and it was up to her to seek safety.  Estolad had been – all very well, but she had known that it was not right for them, whatever the men had said.

The wind howled down the mountains with the voices of Morgoth’s monsters, but it did not chill her.  It could not, she thought with contempt.  She was beyond fear now.  And at least it scoured clear the path before them, so that no-one had any excuse to fall.  There were woods ahead where they could take shelter until the snow passed.

Haleth drew a deep breath.  It was clean and cold - but it was better than rain.  Rain would have soaked into their tight-woven wool and stiffened their leather, chilling them beyond the power of their small fires to warm.  As long as they could see where they were going, this weather would be a help.  And the snow would cover their passing as it blew into drifts across their path.

It made her eyes swim, though, and her head ached.  There were times when the responsibility seemed too much – but who else would do it?  Who else would guard those whom her father had brought together?

The snow stung her face and made her concentrate.

They needed shelter.  They needed shelter and they needed it now – before they were too weak to be able to make a proper camp.

She did not know if they would all make it through all this white.

***   

Playing with Ada

She could not believe there could be so much white.

She stood stock-still, her silver-grey eyes wide with amazement, like a figure carved out of the snow.   Slowly she stretched her hands out to catch the falling flakes.   The world had changed – and she had no reason to believe that it would ever be as it had been.

And they tickled.  They brushed her cheeks like Ada’s fingers – and, like his fingers, were never there when she turned to look.

She stretched out a tentative toe and drew a circle.  It sat in front of her, looking back like a curious eye. She crouched down and placed her palms down on the snow, snatching them back as her fingers sank into the soft blanket.

A snowball landed in front of her and she jerked back to tumble on the ground.  She laughed and grabbed a handful of the cold powder and aimed it at her ada.  Celeborn shook his head like a dog and growled in mock complaint, making her giggle furiously.

He reached out and gently lifted his daughter to her feet, helping her form a perfect ball of pure white snow.  Together they built up a circular shape about the same height as Celebrían herself and then sought further afield to make another that Celeborn lifted up to place on top of the first.  He tilted his head to observe the creation and used his fingers to comb in a more elven hairstyle and shape the ears.

The little elleth jumped up and down, squealing with excitement.  ‘Naneth,’ she cried enthusiastically.

Her ada raised an eyebrow at their sculpture.  ‘I feel she would not be flattered,’ he smiled.  ‘Come now, little one, it is time to go indoors.’

Celebrían rested her head on Ada’s shoulder and peered back into the cold garden.  She still could not believe there could be so much white.

 ***

Tucked In

She had never thought that she would relish the sight of so much white.

It concealed the scars that marred the forest and drove away the shadow.  It was as if Yavanna had tucked away her child in a great bed of white quilts and sung away the bad dreams that made him restless.

She marvelled at the power contained in its apparent softness.  Its touch was as delicate as the brush of a bird’s wing, and yet it covered all relentlessly: a great silent force that pressed down on the frozen earth and buried beneath it all traces of the world she knew, heaping up in unconsidered corners and softening the angles of the supporting trees.

The creatures of the forest had taken refuge, huddling away in their dens and dreys, tucking themselves into sheltered corners to outwait this seasonal visitor – but she could not say the same of the elves.

After the first awed silence at a world remade, the elflings had taken to their heels in their urgent need to be the first to make their mark on the smooth whiteness.  Snowballs had flown; chilled fingers had dug busily to excavate holes; lopsided snow figures had been constructed and the area before the Stronghold had taken on the look of a bloodless battlefield.

But the snowfall had started again.  Great, lazy flakes of perfect hexagons tangled together into short-lived feathers of crystal drifting downwards and the wreckage had disappeared beneath its mantle like a cygnet taking refuge under its parent’s sleek wing.

At first glance, it was without colour, without form – but it was really a mass of shadows and angles, intensified by the deep green of the pines, highlighted by the angular streaks of the trunks in greyish-brown, sparkling in the light of stars now peering down from a midnight sky.

She thought now it was wrong to call it white. 

 ***

Wolf Winter

She would never have believed, had any told her, that the world could turn white.

Never have believed that the soft curve of the green hills could disappear beneath a frozen cloak of white that burned your feet until you wrapped them in salve-smeared rags.  Never have believed that the river could turn to stone.  Never have believed that yellow-eyed monsters could use it as a road to pick off the unsuspecting.

But it was true.

This was no winter snowfall for children to play in while their elders heated spiced cider and baked potatoes in the embers of bonfires.  This was no romp with a tea-tray on the hillside.  This was no laughter-filled sleigh ride to bring home holly and mistletoe.  This was grim survival.

The pellets of ice scoured her, like salt scrubbing a pot, and she pulled her shawl closer round her.  She had to see to the animals – eke out what little food remained and take one out the back, where she could butcher it out of the sight of the others.  She clutched the knife tighter in her hand.  She had to do it.  The little ones needed the food – and, if she held off in hope that their father would come back, it would not only be the children who would starve.  Death would be a kindness.

She paused and stared blankly out over the unfamiliar fields.  This white was an absence of life, she thought.  A spotlessness that wiped clean the world of all that polluted it, that ate at those who endured it like a great hunger and would not be satisfied until it was able to cover them, too, in its shroud.

Her jaw tightened.  They would survive.  She would see to it.

But she would dye every scrap of fabric in her house the brightest colours she could make.  Never again would she wear white.

 ***

The Courts of Kings

She had not known that she had missed white.

Here in the south colour blazed in scarlet and purple against pale stone; tumbling vines drooped flowers in sulphur yellow and stiff stems presented blooms of blazing orange, but she had almost forgotten the simple beauty of a world clothed in pristine white.

She could not wait to shed the heavy formal gown, dispense with the attendants who wished to cater to every whim except her desire to be alone and fling wide the doors that guarded the overheated rooms.

It was not the same.  Here snow was a wonder, rare and transient, not the drifting crystals of powdery perfection she knew from close on three thousand winters, but…  She lifted her face to feel the delicate touch of feathery flakes landing on her cheeks, melting and sliding over porcelain skin.

She danced.  Easily, lightly, transported by the cold air and the enchantment of the drifting snow.  Her bare feet scarcely touched the unexpected blanket and the swirling thistledown moved around her as if it was joining in her display.

‘I am told that the Queen has gone mad,’ Aragorn said gravely. 

She laughed dizzily and span, her midnight-dark hair spread out like silk and her skirt held high, exposing what Gondor would consider to be far too much leg.

‘But I see an elf who has been too long confined,’ he added.

She took his hand and subsided, laughing, before snatching up a handful of the wet snow and throwing it at him. 

‘It is not your fault,’ she said.  ‘None yet hold you responsible for the weather.’

‘We will visit the North Kingdom,’ he promised.  ‘And spend a winter there.’  He looked at her appreciatively.  ‘You can dance in the snow as much as you like.’

Arwen touched his cheek with her cold hand.

She missed white winters, but some things were more important.

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.