Work Text:
When the history books are published on the western shores of the sea, Princess Findis (second child and first daughter of the late High King of the Ñoldor, and first child of Queen-Mother Indis, Princess of the Vanyar) receives them in a crate alongside her other orders of new releases and the selection of stacked manuscripts and papers that are sent to her by her pupils on a monthly basis. She pays the delivery man his coin, his cart passing onward through the cobbled streets, and makes her way to her office at the University of Tirion, papers and books tucked snugly beneath her arm.
The weekly market is underway, the sounds of haggling merchants and the smell of freshly baking treats wafting upwards through the large windows of her office, which looks out onto the Great Square. Findis shuts them, turning her back and taking a seat. She lifts her feet to rest on her desk, a habit her father always chided her for as unladylike and not befitting of a princess, but which he never succeeded in training her out of.
Absentmindedly, she ties her golden hair back loosely and thumbs through this month’s offerings – mostly usual run of the mill essays on free will and the legitimacy of the Valar’s rule, and the theological implications of intervention versus isolationism from her students. One is a notice for a new lecture series, another is an announcement about the founding of a new university at Tol Eressëa. Findis barely casts this a second glance. The number of recently returned elves settling there makes the establishment of a new institution understandable.
The final item is a leatherbound book which still smells fresh from the printing press.
Quenta Silmarillion, it reads, by the Loremaster Pengolodh.
Well, I’ve never heard of you, Findis thinks. She flicks through its pages distastefully, trying to discern why she might have ordered this, and a note flutters out.
Findis,
Thought you might find this interesting.
Yours, Elemmírë
Interesting is underlined three times, a habit of Elemmírë’s which tells Findis that ‘interesting’ is being used loosely here.
Sighing, she flicks back to the first page and begins to read.
*
“I just don’t understand it,” Findis says over coffee with Lalwendë.
Lalwendë sips a coffee sweetened with syrup that makes Findis’ lip curl as she watches. How anyone can take their coffee so sweet is beyond her.
“If you lived without sugar readily available for thousands of years,” Lalwendë says, catching her look, “you would take your coffee this sweet, too.”
Findis sniffs a little, doubtful, and resists the urge to retort that living without sugar was a choice Lalwendë readily made. Comments to that effect generally aren’t appreciated by returned exiles, whether by sea or through halls of death.
Watching her sister skim through the book, Findis awaits her response as Lalwendë pensively swallows the saccharine coffee.
“What is there not to understand?” Lalwendë asks finally, passing the book back across the table with little thought and catching the attention of the staff to order a refill.
“It’s – ”
“One of the Gondolindrim had a go at writing history. And I use ‘had a go’ loosely. What more is there to it?”
“We don’t exist in it! In fact, there are barely any women in it – ”
“Well, I exist in it.”
“You – what?”
“I’m in it.”
Lalwendë doesn’t elaborate and Findis, suddenly (and somewhat guiltily) remembers the peace she felt when her siblings disappeared across the sea and the Ice, leaving her and Arafinwë a respite from stubborn-willed attitudes and adversarial sibling conversation, as Fëanáro, Ñolofinwë and Lalwendë made war with their words. You went to wage war, she thinks, watching the server pump syrup into Lalwendë’s cup, again, again, again, and we learnt to negotiate. She draws upon the even temper, honed by negotiations with siblings and Valar alike, now.
“Fascinating! Where are you? I didn’t see your name mentioned.” Her words glide, interest poised just so, temper held inside her in a fist that hasn’t trembled in years.
Lalwendë preens. “Well, my stint as Gil-galad made it in there, you’ll see,” she says, taking the discarded book back and flipping to the appropriate page. “During the War of Wrath. Ingwion tried to take control, but there was no way the Vanyar could have led a force to victory without the on-the-ground knowledge we possessed.”
“I notice you didn’t turn away their superior manpower,” Findis comments wryly.
Lalwendë ignores her. “So, there you have it. We are all in this book… well, I suppose, except you.”
The sweetness of Lalwendë’s coffee order has done nothing for her barbed tongue.
Findis blinks, then nods along with her sister, enjoying the confusion that flutters over her expression at her acquiescence.
“Except, I don’t believe that counts.”
Lalwendë frowns. “What?”
“Well, you aren’t named, you aren’t noted as a child and heir of Finwë, or of Indis. In fact, no one would know you were there unless they precisely knew you were acting as Gil-galad at that moment in time, which only proves my point that women – ”
“I led us to victory. I finished what our brothers could not and sent Morgoth to the Void where he belongs,” Lalwendë says through gritted teeth. “Everyone knows that was me.”
Findis picks up the book casually. “Does Pengolodh?”
*
It isn’t difficult to track down interviewees. Perhaps there should be a club of maligned women – invisible women, even – who have picked up Quenta Silmarillion only to find their stories elided.
“He was in Gondolin,” some say. “What could he have known, really?” A walled and hidden kingdom is no place to expect the most credible of information to trickle towards. Reports were haphazard and scarce, borne from the Gondolindrim’s few ventures outside of their citadel, be that for scouting, unfortunate kidnapped princess incidents, or war.
Then why, Findis thinks, if your sources were so poor, would you write an entire book.
Celebrimbor’s mother, Ferinya, snorts when she reads it.
“You would think Curufin just laid an egg.”
Pengolodh has to be a pen name.
He isn’t listed in the directories of scribes and other such professionals that Findis keeps neatly on her desk for correspondence purposes. Nor is he teaching at the university at Tol Eressëa, though Findis supposes one doesn’t have to be credible to write a book – her half-brother more than demonstrated that, churning out treatise after treatise, each a little more unhinged than the last until he stopped using the written word entirely and started screeching in public places. (Giving speeches, is the more measured way she describes it to her students.)
But he can’t be completely unreachable.
It’s all very well commissioning a book in Beleriand that will moulder in the library of an abandoned city. It’s quite another thing to use a mechanised printing press to distribute your text in Aman, where everyone can fact-check you.
Not for the first time, Findis shakes her head. No wonder the author doesn’t want his name attached to it. There are far too many wronged subjects who might track him down and give him a piece of their minds.
Unfortunately for him, he clearly hasn’t met Finwëan determination.
*
The thing about Findis, is that she has published books of her own (none of which Pengolodh has read – clearly.)
Her works moved from carefully printed diaries in her brother’s tengwar, secretive and silent – an outlet for familial tension and teenage angst – to carefully illuminated manuscripts from her initial appointment at the university. Now, her essays are set out in metal letters and printed for publication in carefully bound volumes.
Findis knows typesetters.
And she knows who typeset this.
From there, “Pengolodh” is incredibly easy to find.
He lives on Tol Eressëa in a coastal flat that looks out on the bay. There is a sea breeze that drifts through his curtains and a steadily growing bookshelf. Findis eyes his titles as he prepares a pot of tea, noting a breadth of writings from Beleriand – some battered and ashy, as though they have survived great journeys, fire and brimstone.
“You said you were from the university?” Pengolodh says, pouring tea and taking a seat across from her.
“Yes – Findis,” she says. She still doesn’t know if the name means anything to him. Her digging told her he was born in Nevrast, before following her nephew (one of them, at least) to a hidden city (again, one of them – there were at least two). A part of her wants to toy with him, to press at his knowledge and see just how much he does know, if only to find out exactly what he left out – and why.
“An interesting name,” Pengolodh says, barely blinking.
“After my parents,” Findis supplies but it flies over Pengolodh’s head with such ease that she doesn’t know why she bothered. She picks up her teacup primly and takes a sip.
“Now, I must say I’m very surprised that someone from the university has taken any interest in my little book,” he says, eyes drifting out to the glistening waves in the bay.
“Why is that?”
“Well… the feedback from academic types hasn’t exactly been…” he pauses for the words, and she catches him looking at her side-on, as though trying to assess what might be the least offensive way to phrase his thoughts on his loudest critics. He settles on “welcoming,” and Findis schools her features into gentility.
“Well, that’s precisely why I wanted to speak with you, actually.”
“Oh? Most of my critics have taken to lambasting me in print from a safe distance. That’s quite a journey. I do hope we have enough tea at hand.”
“My family is nothing if not thorough.”
There is still no hint of recognition.
She wonders if she frowned or shouted at him then the family resemblance might become clearer. Ñolofinwë seemed able to do diplomacy – at least, until he suddenly didn’t any more. Did Turukáno count as a diplomat? She doesn’t think so. Walling yourself off and refusing to speak to anyone didn’t cry public relations, unless he was particularly adept at managing squabbling lords. She might have to ask Pengolodh about that.
“I wondered if I might ask about your sources,” Findis begins, but the wry grin that creeps onto Pengolodh’s face makes her hold her tongue.
“My sources are perfectly adequate – I questioned Edain and Eldar alike, sometimes even Dwarves! What you see before you in print is the combination of Gondolindrim and Doriathrin oral testimony. It is muddled, yes. It is contradictory, yes. Because it is what people themselves have told me.”
A deep breath. “But there is a clear perspective that you have failed to include in your writings.”
Pengolodh looks doubtful. “Would you care to elaborate?”
“The Amanyar!” Her voice raises and she chides herself. Her mask clamps firmly back into place before she can let it slip again.
The loremaster across from her – if that’s what he can be called – throws back his head in laughter.
“My dear, why should I consult the Amanyar on the history of Beleriand? Forgive me, but you were not there.”
“There is much of your work that takes place in Valinor,” Findis counters. “Many of us witnessed the events you describe.”
His eyes flicker over her then, curiously.
“This isn’t history as you practise it in Aman,” Pengolodh says. “Facts and figures and dates and such like.” He winkles his nose in distaste and Findis tries very hard not to do the same to him. “This is the telling of history. This is art. Mythmaking. The precise details are irrelevant – although you will find there are precise details woven in there. I do thoroughly question my sources.”
“That sounds like a very roundabout way of saying you made it up.”
Pengolodh sighs.
Findis scowls.
“I fear we may have reached an impasse.”
*
The copy of Quenta Silmarillion is defaced – dissected and annotated, Findis’ neat hand sprawling across the page questioning source and author alike. Who said this? Who was there to overhear? Who is missing?
The questions swirl around and around until Findis is more than irritated by them.
It is not history. It is art.
Art, indeed.
She snorts, snapping the book closed, and considers art.
Art was never her area of expertise.
Fëanáro was the craftsman – desperate to leave the clutches of the family he so hated to take up his apprenticeship with Mahtan, then slaving away over his craft until it transformed into isolated obsession that glimmered with wrathful intensity in his eyes whenever they met at public or family functions. It had been all too easy to overlook – the Silmarils firmly fixed on his brow had more than drowned out his expression.
How would Fëanáro write history? How would any of her siblings, even?
Lalwendë’s pen would march to war across the page, detailing offensives and campaigns, victorious armies sending Morgoth to the Void.
Ñolofinwë’s might speak of holding fast, and then ultimately despair.
And who knew what Arafinwë thought to himself, least likely to ascend to the throne, then made king off the back of his wife’s people’s tragedy.
But it was not only her family’s story – it was hers, too.
How might she craft the narrative, spinning stories from her experiences that weren’t pinned down by the need to be academic, but rather Findis – daughter, sister, princess.
A dash of fiction seems to have worked for Pengolodh.
Lighting a lamp, Findis dips her pen into ink and writes.