#faery queen | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

searchingforserendipity25 · 1 year

Text

Gifts Of The Dawn | Smith of Wootton Major

for @polyshipweek

searchingforserendipity

Alf stays, Ned travels, Nell crowns herself; the Queen of Faery sends her regards.

It happened at last that, after many tiresome meetings spread out over the tiresome winter months, it was decided by the wise and influential of the village that the Great Hall of Wootton Major would be repaired, and added to, and honored with the making of a mathom house.

Behind them was a remarkably cold season, with long storms of hail and howling winds sweeping in across the shivering evergreens from the far mountainsides. Several ancient personages of their group had sadly perished, and bequeathed to the village small collections of old tomes and porcelain crockery and cedarwood chests and windows of painted glass, with few or no interested heirs to step forward and claim them.

The Great Hall it would be; it was Wootton Major's place of pride and common life, and by far the prettiest. Indeed, none thought to dream of a better place to have as a depository of local treasures than those rooms, those painted ceilings and high pillars with their comfortable smells of old resin, burnt sugar and history. On the whole, excepting such unpleasant and rather jealous comments as spoken by one Nokes, regarding the governance of the Great Hall and how it had been done in the days of his paltry rule, this measure was much appreciated by the villagers, many of whom who had longed for a glimpse at the few fine things to be had around their small part of the world.

To that end, it was decided that the constructions would make use of the coming good weather. By March there was much sawing of things and wood-dust every which way, carpenters coming from as far as Wootton-By-The-Water, and of course, it was no place for anyone to stay at in those conditions. None of the many inquiring, overly interested souls of Wootton Major and Wootton Minor and even far Wootton-by-the-Water would have found much wonder at, when the Master Cook moved into the Smiths West-facing guest room for the duration of the great works, and never quite got around returning to the cramped quarters by the Great Halls' Kitchens.

If any of the gossips of the village remembered a time when Alf, called Prentice by some still (though, it had to be said, not by many, time having that curious quality of erasing old names with the old seasons) had not been so often seen outside the Great Hall and among particular friends, that faded from recall with curious swiftness. It had become so common a thing, after the months of the freezing, and the thawing, and the first greening of the land.

Of an evening the smells of his cooking wafted marvelously over the village, from Nell Smith's self-made copper pots; and if anyone had a remark to make it was to comment on how fortunate the Smiths were to have such a kindly lodger, that kept their threshold well-swept unasked for, and liked and was liked by their children so well. Very often one saw Alf the Master Cook carry Mrs. Smith's grocery baskets and pails of ore, or sitting by the forge while Smith worked the hammer and the pliers, and sang his work songs.

Then Alf would join his voice to his, and all those that chanced the path were likely to hover by the great oak-and-iron doors of the smithy, listening as if enthralled to a music that was both familiar and entirely thrilling to the heart, potent enough to call the children from their play, and raise the fine hairs on the back of the sternest matrons' veiled necks.

Spring, too, was the season of Starbrow's travels.

Seldom did Smith meet anyone in his wanderings. But he brought gifts, sometimes: golden brooches left by the side of the desire path up a long slope, as if dropped and forgotten. Rings of garnet and emerald winking slyly near where his head rested for the night while crossing a forest of low, purple ferns - fine, fine chains of gold all threaded and braided together, lined with engraved coins from lands long forgotten, his own land perhaps, brought to him upon the beaks of shimmering dawn-birds.

He held them up to the brightening morning light, or against the the stars clustered around the hem of the sky close enough to cast the last of their warmth over the dew; and he wondered greatly.

There had been tokens of Faery left for him on his way, in some dire times, in the form of heavy boughs of fruits and fruit when his journeys took him through paths lined with many hungry nights. This was not that. Smith knew without needing to be told - for Starbrow he was, and to be the star on one's brow is a right only of the righteous and generous of heart - that the gifts of gold were not to have these things on his own, but burdens to carry as the postmen brought his missives.

He hid and cared for them without greed, folded inside the kerchiefs Nell embroidered for him, and brought them out again only by the light of the fire under the roof of the house he had built.

Nell, who kept the smithy working well while he was away, was no less charmed by the care and craft put into the making of such things than he was. Strange were the irons and golds, lovely almost beyond bearing the refraction of light cast over the walls and their own faces when the jewels were turned to the light this way and that.

For his part, Alf watched them from the wicker chair that had become his own, listening to the conversation of their wonder as if it, too, became his own marvel and disquiet in the listening.

The fire's light and the light of the jewels caught upon the queer eagerness in Alf's eyes, over the angle of bone and sinew, and there settled, and made what was a common guise quite beautiful. No shadow lingered upon the unchanging fairness of his hair.

As ever Smith could not look at him too much without fearing to cause insult or strangeness, though he wished to do it very much. Then he thought to himself that he had not know as much as he had thought he knew, after his years and his travels, if he found only now that it was possible for a person to be very like a jewel, and have many faces, and all with the same changeling light.

But it was him, of course, not so changed after all but only a little revealed. Alf, so often gentle and good-humoured and distant, gleamed with a rare, peculiar brightness when Nell at last laughed and pinned her shawl with the silver brooch, gold coins singing over her ears and shining over her greying hair; and he would not cease the silent and pressing entreaty of his watching, until Smith relented, and allowed him to line princely signets of carved steel and polished jewels over the old burns and marks that littered his large fingers.

"I am only sorry not to bring you letters from the Lady," said Smith, stumbling a little on his tongue.

He was weary from his travels, and a little dazed from all the glittering of gold, grave in his heart with a growing understanding and a growing wonder. For all Nell teased him for being too shy of the things left said and unsaid by their own hearth, some words seemed still too large to be spoken inside the walls of their neat and well-furnished, their simple and homely house.

Your Queen, it should be. Certainly that would not be untrue; but not quite right, either. Alf and the Faery Queen were most particular about precision in word-craft, never more so when it seemed a light thing lightly said.

"The birds tell enough tales, and far too much gossip," said Alf, and shared with Nell a smiling look that spoke of many a twilight spent in shared company, and many a lesson on the language of the doves and the nightingales. "And the gift is very good; as she knew it would be. Beauty is very like a feast, that loses its value for not being seen and eaten by many, and wins it by being shared."

"My Ned," said brave Nell, and it seemed to him that all the grace and wisdom he had known under the crown on her brow in her shone in her eyes, as bright and stalwart a light as ever his star had been to him. "I do not say we must be gracious as hosts are in the receiving of mighty presents, for in friendship there are no such concerns. But is this not the season for the hoarding of treasures? And yet I would gladly say: our Ned, and welcome beauty where it can be found, in your tales of wonders; and in our own small tale as well I daresay."

"You are wise, my Nell," said Smith, slowly and with care. "Still I could not well say to a guest, Be welcome, and play the generous host; when 'tis I that return to joy from joy, and the gifts I carry are too great, and not mine to own."

"More you might yet receive," said Alf, the King of Faery with no shadow upon him. "If you wished it. Starbrow, how far you have gone! And how well it is that you are returned. So do I know the joy of the Road, and the joy of the return besides. By these gifts I know I can say so in truth, and that Nell may have all her gladness; for the Lady too would have you own joy as I do, in full measure altogether."

Smith did not say more, only stepped forward. Many embraces had he had from friends and family, and the dearest one from his wife. But he had had not this one welcome, as dearly longed for in the secret quiet of his heart.

There under the roof of the house by the smithy Master Cook kissed him his cheeks, and his beringed hands, and upon the mouth; and smiling that gleaming smile stroked the weariness from his brow. And Ned of Wootton Major, who was after all a righteous traveler, most beloved of all travelers that ventured into Faery before or since, kissed them both in reply; until the fire in the hearth was long gone to embers, and all the messages from the Queen that dances in the meadows were all properly delivered and perused at leisure.

#smith of wootton major #alf the master cook #ned smith of woottton major #nell smith of wootton major #faery #tolkien #my fic #fic #tolkien fic #faery queen

3 notes · View notes