The Fire Within

Mahtan watched the flames, and his apprentice, shrewdly. When the lad cocked his head, Mahtan gave the bellows two steady pulls, then waited. Fëanaro tilted his head again and Mahtan pulled again twice. His eye was growing keener by the day, Mahtan noted. Pity it was taking so long. This iron must be unusually dense, the master smith decided, or the fire not as hot as it seemed.

“This morning,” the older elf said, thinking aloud, “I overhead Ataralasse ask why she is thought unlovely.”

“And how did your wife reply?” Fëanaro asked, shuffling the ingot deeper into the coals.

“By asking why it matters,” Mahtan replied, and he shook his head.

“The wrong response,” Fëanaro agreed. “It played into her fears instead of calming them.”

“It did,” the older elf replied. “But my wife was right to wonder why my Ataralasse needed to ask.”

Fëanaro grew quiet for a moment, studying the iron in his tongs. He must have recognized that it was still not ready, for he thrust it back into the forge’s burning heart. “Much is said in these days, as the wedding is planned, of Melde’s grace and beauty. I think, in regards to her elder sister, Istarnie has come to see herself as an anvil next to a fountain.”

“I agree, and yet as she is my joy, so is Melde my beloved. I hate to see either one discontent. You know this. Their mother, though, does not see past her own similarity to Melde to my Ataralasse’s frustration at their difference; or rather, she sees but does not know how to release the strain.” Irritated by this line of thought and the lengthy wait for the metal, the master sighed and stretched his great arms up behind his head. “Do not marry, Fëanaro, or if you do, make certain that the girl does not seek beauty above all else.”

Fëanaro had long recognized the weaknesses in the ways both Mahtan and Mahtan’s wife treated Istarnie, but wisely he had chosen to say nothing where either of the girls might hear. This, however, seemed a good time to present Istarnie’s case before one of her chief judges.

“If I may speak bluntly, Master?” Fëanaro began, setting the iron aside. At Mahtan’s slight nod, he continued: “Much is said, both within your halls and without, of Melde’s appearance, while her significant gifts with music and weaving and embroidery are overlooked. In your kindness and pride, you praise Istarnie’s skill with stone and wood and metal above all other things, and her appearance is never mentioned. She believes this is because she is not as comely as her sister has grown to be. At the same time, your lady wife simply says nothing about Istarnie’s appearance at all. Istarnie feels that silence is a condemnation as keen as your quickness to praise her skill and those things that make others call her mannish.”

“She has spoken with you on this matter?” Mahtan said, seeing anew the young man he had taken as his student over twenty years before. “These are her words?”

“We speak on many things,” Fëanaro replied, “but she has not been so direct. I assure you, she is proud to be your double in so many ways, but she feels also unable to escape that likeness, and living in the shadow of one so great is a heavy burden.”

“And what cares of yours would my daughter speak so candidly about, should I put her to question?” the older elf asked.

“None,” Fëanaro said simply. “If I had any concern, and if I spoke of it with her, she would not even tell the passing wind on a breezy afternoon. She is a better friend than I,” the younger elf said, smirking at the jest, and picked up his tongs again.

“You know my daughter well,” Mahtan said, catching and holding Fëanaro’s gaze.

“We know each other well,” he replied before turning back to his work.

“See that it stays that way,” Mahtan said. “She will soon have even more need of friends.”

“I do not think her sister’s leaving will upset your Ataralasse as much as you fear, Master, but with your permission I will be glad to spend more time in her company,” Fëanaro replied, deeming the metal finally ready for the anvil and the hammer.

The closest thing to silence that can fall in a working forge settled in around them, now that there was work to be done. After a while, Istarnie entered the forge carrying something delicate and wooden that seemed to sprout leaves from random parts.

“There you are,” Mahtan said in greeting, turning Fëanaro’s iron. “I had expected to see you hours ago.”

“I was planning something,” Istarnie said, her voice barely audible over the ringing of Fëanaro’s hammer. Both men listened carefully as she continued. “I am to make Melde’s wedding circlet. Might I work on it now, Papa, or will I be too much underfoot?”

“You will not disturb me,” Mahtan said fondly. “Fëanaro? Will my shadow trouble your work?”

“She never has before,” Fëanaro said before sparing the quiet maid in the corner one of his rare smiles. “How came this task to you, Sculptress?” he asked, waving his hammer at the thing in her hands.

“I was given the choice of making her jewelry or helping make her dress.” Her father’s wince at the words would have gone unnoticed by any other woman, but Istarnie saw and smiled before speaking again. “My thoughts precisely, Papa.”

“And yet you seem intent to make your sister wear weeds,” her father joked, studying the little thing in her hands. “Were it me, I would likely prefer lopsided stitchwork, and I’m not even a maid.”

“I could not sketch it properly,” she explained, setting the little vine model on the work bench. “So I spent the morning at the willow grove twisting it.”

“Is it big enough?” Fëanaro asked, and then added quickly, “I mean, has she tried the model?”

“She has,” Istarnie replied, the smile Fëanaro’s joke inspired not quite visible. Setting aside his iron, then, he crossed to the table to study the circlet more closely.

“I see it in silver,” she explained, “with gems inlaid along these and these as leaves. I am as of yet undecided on what will comprise the flowers, though since Melde has yet to decide what colors we all will wear for her wedding, this does not concern me overmuch.”

Fëanaro knew this to be an inaccuracy, for Istarnie never did anything without a plan fully formed. Of the pair, he was the one who went head first into excitement— or trouble— and she the cool head that saw their way through it. But he had already said too much that day, he thought, and so held his tongue.

“What will be done for Turotulco, then?” Mahtan asked, his eye on the iron growing cool on the anvil.

“Shackles are the traditional gift, are they not?” Fëanaro joked. Mahtan saw the humor, but Istarnie only cast him a cool glance over her shoulder and went back to the wire she held.

“An arm torque, also in silver, in a matching design. And yes, it fits him as well,” Istarnie said before Fëanaro could ask again. “Though he does not look it, he has the arms of a smith.”

“So your sister tells us,” Mahtan sighed. “Fëanaro, your iron grows cold?”

The apprentice returned to his work, reheating the iron carefully, though his mind lay with the torque and circlet design Istarnie had placed on the workbench before her. She saw the beauty of her father’s orchards reflected in the metal that she loved, but did not see that her sister would deem it unworthy. Fëanaro suspected, though, that he would spend many more days working with Istarnie at his back while the jewelry was done and redone and redone again to Melde’s specifications.

~*~

A trickle of sweat roamed down behind her ear, just at the place where neck met shoulder. Fëanaro thought briefly of following it with his tongue, but now was not the time for such imaginings. Instead he moved behind her, so close that she must have felt his heat as steadily as the forge at which she waited, and smoothed her hair aside, blowing gently across her shoulder.

“Soon enough and it will be over,” he said quietly. It was not strictly proper, the two of them here alone, but it happened often enough and neither the girl nor her father had ever seemed to mind, and so Fëanaro thought no more on it.

Istarnie said nothing, concentrating on heating the fine silver wire again. A pile of glittering gems on the work table behind her reflected the last light of Laurelin onto the facing wall.

“She would not tell you that it was not to her liking?” he asked, knowing his friend needed to talk, but knowing also that she did not want to.

“She made our mother tell me. Three times. She does not want a mere circlet, as would befit her place. Now she wishes a crown!” Istarnie’s cheeks were flushed red and her hair stood out around her face in a frazzle, though most of it was still held back in a tumbledown twist behind her head. She wore one of Mahtan’s old tunics and a pair of remade leggings, her usual forge work attire, and yet to Feanaro’s eyes she had never seemed more female, or more vulnerable.

“And tonight she asked Mother to inform me that my dress is to be changed. I am to be the only female attendant wearing sleeves and a shawl, so that my build does not distract from the bride’s silhouette.” After a calming breath, Istarnie turned and looked up at the prince she called friend. “Why is nothing I do ever good enough?”

“Because you ask the wrong people,” he said simply. “I have never seen better work leave your hands at this forge than what is now melting in that fire. But I have a craftsman’s eye and a friend’s heart.” In reply her nostrils flared once, then again, and her lips tightened. She would not let herself cry, he knew, though he thought that tears after destroying months’ worth of work would be quite understandable.

“I merely wish to understand,” she said after taking a moment to regain her composure. “How can anyone be so hard to please?”

“I do not know,” Fëanaro said honestly.

“And family is always a different matter,” Istarnie said, nodding. Fëanaro snorted. Family was an entirely different matter indeed.

“May I work with you?” he asked after she seemed to regain her calm. “I, too, am making a wedding gift for your sister. Something small, but I think it is only right.”

“Of course. You will not disturb me,” Istarnie said, pushing flyaway hair behind her ears and lifting the crucible from the forge. The once finely wrought silver leaves and tendrils of vine it had been were now a shapeless lump once again.

It was well into the time of Telperion’s glow when Istarnie put away her tools and offered Feanaro a brief bow in farewell before adjourning to her quarters to rest. So it was not until well after her departure that Fëanaro brought from his storage area the little willow and vine model that had been Istarnie’s first design for her sister’s wedding jewels. The ring he had made for Melde was a simple silver band that, when moved, rang like tiny bells. It would amuse one who found her joy in music. Once jewels were decided on for the last incarnation of the wedding crown, he would inlay matching stones on the ring. But in the mean time he had another project, for while his days were spent beside Mahtan working on his masterpiece, his nights before the marriage of her sister were spent working on Istarnie’s.

~*~

With the ceremony done and exchanges of gifts complete, Istarnie had only the dancing to avoid, and she did so by remaining among her father’s friends and keeping a plate in her hand. She drank wine for once, not because she had any feelings about the day, but rather because it was much easier to hold a stemmed glass and a plate at the same time and still be able to eat. In this corner of her father’s great hall, the fine marzipan concoctions of three dozen cooks from twelve different estates graced their plates far less frequently than slices of roast meat and cheeses piled on toast or wrapped around slices of fresh fruits. Also, there was less need for practiced feminine manners: another blessing for Istarnie. After her mother’s suggestion that she perhaps eat lightly in the days before the wedding, Istarnie found that she’d had almost no appetite. That discomfort had fled once the food was served, but now she was for the most part sated, physically at least. Her heart, she had decided long ago, would likely never be completely satisfied.

A squeal of delight interrupted Mahtan mid-sentence while he spoke with Carnion about the best ways to temper glass for the application of color. Fëanaro had arrived, Istarnie saw, peering behind Herenyo’s head and had apparently given her sister the ring he had created. Its chimes could be heard faintly even where the smiths and craftsmen stood at the back of the hall. Obviously pleased, Melde whirled to show Turotulco how the moonstones set around the band matched her dress exactly. Though the conversation could not be heard, her sister’s thinking was somewhat clearer to Istarnie now than it had been a short year before. She had kept the hues of the dress in mind as she helped Feanaro choose the gems, though he had gone against her suggestion of opals in favor of a less expensive and hardier stone. He was still a student, king’s son or no; she could not fault him for the choice.

“Apparently your sister likes this new gift,” Herenyo said.

“I have rarely seen a gift made by the king’s son be received with anything but delight,” Istarnie replied, swallowing the last of her wine.

“That will change one day, I’m sure,” Carnion replied. “He is in his prime now, but someone will surpass him in time.”

“I would not be so sure of this, Carnion,” Mahtan replied. “He is, after all, my student.”

A short time later, Fëanaro joined their group and was greeted with bows and official mentions of his title followed by a healthy slap on the back from Mahtan, and Herenyo in his turn. But it was at Istarnie’s side that he joined the group, and piled a meat pastry and two pieces of cheese onto her now empty plate once their elders had resumed the discussion.

“I fear my eyes were over-large compared to my appetite. Help me with these,” he said quietly, looking suspiciously around the group. Noting his odd behavior, Istarnie took a bite from the pastry anyway. Then she saw what was under it.

“This did not come from the kitchens, I’m sure,” she said, piling the pastry on top of the cheeses to lift a delicate silver chain from her plate.

“Why where did that come from?” Fëanaro asked, and smiled. “It seems rather familiar, somehow. Perhaps you should wear it with this,” he suggested, and he removed from his pocket a circlet. Her circlet, the one she had designed months before for Melde, sat on his outstretched hand. The chain in her hand matched it exactly, down to the identical blood-red fire opals fashioned into shrub roses that peeked here and there from the weave.

“What was that about his gifts always being met with delight?” Herenyo asked when Istarnie simply stared.

“Child, are you well?” Mahtan asked with obvious concern.

“Surprised, is all,” Istarnie said, setting her plate and empty glass aside. “They were melted. How…?”

“I kept your cunning little model, Sculptress,” Fëanaro replied, handing his plate to Carnion long enough to lay the circlet over her hair and fasten the chain around her neck. “No one who has worked so hard for such a day as this should go unrewarded, and it was too fine a piece to be seen only by the maker and her family.”

Istarnie put a hand to the chain about her neck, but when she looked down she could not see it. Perturbed, she took Fëanaro’s glass from his hand to use the reflection in it as a mirror. It was… exactly as she had pictured it being, the gift she would have made for her sister’s first wedding anniversary, had the first circlet been accepted. And instead, now it was hers. She dared not even think of the circlet.

“Excuse me, Istarnie,” a quiet female voice said at her elbow. Her mother stood beside her, smiling. “I could not help but notice…” the older woman said, motioning for her daughter to sit. A few moments of fussing later, the circlet was pinned among the braids that had already started to slip from Istarnie’s hair, gleaming under Laurelin’s light.

“There,” her mother said, a gentle hand lifting Istarnie’s face to her own. “Lovely.”

“Why now?” Istarnie asked, surprised, and her equally startled mother looked at her and blinked before she answered.

“You’re smiling,” she said. “It is rare.”

“What are you on about now?” Mahtan asked his apprentice in the mean time, moving him away from the group by the elbow.

“You told me to continue being a friend to your daughter in these past trying weeks,” Fëanaro replied. “Her heart broke every time Melde rejected her work and she was forced to melt it down again. And yet, three times she threw away all that effort and never once wept or raged or refused. It took greater patience than I command, and I daresay more even than you. She deserves a reward.”

Looking first from his wife and youngest daughter to his eldest and back again, Mahtan sighed. “How is it that you know my own daughter better than I?” the older man growled.

“You are her father. I am her husband,” Fëanaro replied. “Because we will be wed one day.”

“You’re too young,” Mahtan snapped. “She is too young.”

“Now,” Fëanaro replied, calmly sipping his wine. “But it will be so one day, and none of us can deny it. I have tried, myself, to overlook it, for I would not anger you if it could be avoided. But there is simply no choosing; it will be so, one day.”

“You know this? Truly?” Mahtan asked, looking again at his youngest daughter.

“I do,” Fëanaro replied. “But perhaps you should ask her.”

“Not now,” Mahtan said, looking at his wife and youngest daughter again. “I’ve just given one of them away. I should like to keep the other for a time.”

“And I will not take her away from you, ever,” Fëanaro replied, biting into a piece of melon. “She is your daughter first, and will ever be so. I am content to be second in her affections, should it come to that.”

At that moment, a sharp clapping of hands drew eyes to the end of the hall again. “We are changing the dance,” Melde said in her clear soprano. “Come, everyone up! You have had your wine and your talk. I will now have your feet!”

“Melde does rather have a habit of becoming the center of attention, does she not?” Mahtan said still studying Istarnie. Fëanaro said nothing, and shortly made his way back to Istarnie, his plate now empty but a few sips of wine left in his glass.

“Here,” he said when he reached her, handing the glass to Istarnie. “You seem to need this more than I.” She took it gratefully and downed it all in one great draught, but she said nothing.

“You are pleased then?” he asked finally, only the slightest bit of nervousness showing in the fidgeting of his hands.

“I—I am.”

“Then so am I. We should join the dance,” he continued, handing their empty dishware to a passing server. “It will not be long, I’m sure, until your sister calls one of us by name to compel us to do so. It might be best to save ourselves the embarrassment.”

“Do not lie,” Istarnie said, standing finally. “You have no shame,” she teased. Fëanaro smiled, unable to lie to her, and reached for her hand.

~*~

Fëanaro found it difficult, after the wedding, to be in the presence of both his master and his friend at the forge. Tension fizzled through the air when father looked at daughter and future son by marriage, which made Fëanaro nervous. He almost came to regret his honesty on the subject of his love for Istarnie. Almost.

The ever observant Sculptress, though, seemed to catch on to the change, and timed her forge visits so that she and her father were alone, leaving her wanderings of the countryside to be shared with Fëanaro, or simply by herself. However, their walks, even when shared, were often quiet, punctuated only by the rasping of their clothes against the bark of trees and leaves of plants they passed, or the occasional call of a bird. Then one day, on one of those walks, he took her hand. She walked there beside him for a time saying nothing, seeing nothing, and then she smiled.

~*~

For many, many shifts of the light, that simple gesture was all that was needed. Yet, as time passed, Istarnie felt herself growing restless, and she thought long and silently on her growing discomfort in the attempt to understand it fully. Her conclusion came finally, deep in the night, when even the narrowness of a bed made for one was too vast. But, she wondered, turning dark eyes toward Telperion’s light, how young was too young? They had but a year until she was of age, less than that for Fëanaro. Would a year be enough for the planning and the sewing and the infernal waiting? A year. It would be enough. And with this thought foremost in her mind, Istarnie rose and dressed in tunic and leggings, tied her hair in a knot behind her head, and went out to the forge, where always a red light glowed.

She was unsurprised to find him there, but was surprised to see him shirtless beneath his heavy smith’s apron. He had rolled his leggings above the knee, and his calves, which she had never before seen, were as trim and firm as the leg of a carved table. Had he been dressed regularly, perhaps it would have been enough to simply stand at the door and watch his cunning hands at work. But this was not so now. Frigid, shaking fingers reached out for the shadowed blade of a shoulder, but never touched it.

“You are restless, my Sculptress,” he said, unexpectedly plunging the heavy iron in his tongs into the water bucket and turning for her as she snatched her hand away. He caught that hand, his thumb nestled softly in the pit of her palm, and his smile grew slow and mischievous. “And cold.”

As he spoke, he settled her hand against his arm, above the elbow, where the firmness and heat of his muscle bulged against her, seeking her touch. It was not in her to refuse.

Istarnie struggled for something to say, to explain her sudden appearance at the forge, at his back, but no words came. There was no explanation save the obvious one that her raging pulse and trembling hands gave away, and she dropped her head, embarrassed, but could not raise her eyes from the sight before her now. Vaguely she realized she had no idea what she was doing as she untied the strings of the apron he wore, letting it fold down on itself around his waist. She heard him swallow and catch a shallow breath, and watched his flesh creep when her icy fingers trailed down his neck and shoulder to his arm again, then across his chest, whittled hard and lean by the strain of his work. The softest sound she had ever heard, a tiny ‘oof’, jarred the ear when she passed near a nipple, over his heart, and stopped there. The words came to her at last.

“I see it of oak,” she said, the other hand slipping just as softly, just as cool, up the ripples of his stomach. “Polished to a shine, gleaming, as though lit by fire.”

“See what?” he rasped, his breath coming shallow.

“The sculpture of you I will make for our wedding.” She looked up finally in time to see him blink, and she offered the merest hint of a smile. “We have a year, a little more, in which to plan and create. It will be enough.”

“And will I be needed to sit for this gift of yours?” he asked, a hand finding its way to her hip and resting there, heavy and hot.

“I should not think so,” she replied, fingers circling and dipping again. “This I shall never forget.” His answer was half growl, half groan, and it startled Istarnie to realize what something so simple, so animal, stirred in her. She felt him hesitate, but she wished he would not. His fire, the inner flame, was what drew her, the always cool one, the always steady and deliberate. To bathe in that heat, she knew, would calm her unnatural restlessness as perhaps nothing else could.

“You are certain?” he asked, one hand on her hip, the other against her thigh and creeping upward.

“Are you not?” and she felt herself swept airborne and turned, settled on the anvil, her knees parted by the hardness of his thighs. Reaching for his neck was as natural as breathing. Tightening her legs around his own, arching her back, dropping her head back as he curved down toward her: it all came as though preordained, as the flower bends toward the sun. Then again that groan and growl, matched by some guttural sound of her own, and the inner forges flared, finally joined at lips, at hearts, at loins.