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“Lómion, I said no.”
“But Nana, snow! Snow snow snow you have to let me see it!! Please?”
The dark shadow of his father appeared in the doorway, and Lómion wondered uneasily if he’d heard Nana speak his name. It was supposed to be their secret; children of his line received names, Adar said, only when they were old enough to know who they were. The fact that Lómion was also a Noldo was not to be mentioned. But there was no unhappiness on Adar’s face tonight. “Come, son. It's a good night to visit the trees.”
He wrapped Lómion in hood and cloak and scarf, and pulled mittens lined with soft rabbit fur firmly over Lómion’s little hands. Lómion bit his lip.
“What?”
“They feel weird. I can’t move my fingers.”
“You can’t go out in the snow without them.”
Lómion huffed and decided he could bear it for that. Adar opened the door, and they stepped into a strange and beautiful new world. Everything was hushed; a blanket of white covered the wood, and the only sound was the soft whisper of falling snow. It lay smooth and traceless, and Lómion hated to mar it. His feet sank in almost to his knees, and he carefully watched how his father stepped on the surface and tried to walk the same way.
“Son?” He looked up at Adar, who took his hand and led him into the forest. “Your mother isn’t feeling well. You mustn’t bother her about the snow again, understand?”
“But why?”
“Because a long time ago, her people did something very foolish and crossed the Great Ice, and many people were hurt, and many people died. The memory of that time…it makes her sick when the snow first comes.”
Lómion could feel there was more to the story that Adar wasn’t saying, but he caught only a breath of thought, “And they deserved it, after what they did,” before Adar’s mind hurriedly closed off. “Will she be sick all winter?”
“No. We’ll make the house warm and lovely, and she’ll feel better after a while.”
Lómion nodded, and when Adar set him loose, he turned around and around, staring up at the dim, pale sky and the snow falling ever more thickly. A fat snowflake landed on his nose, and he laughed. The sound rang queerly in the silence and was swallowed up. “Adar?” he whispered. Even that much noise felt like he was breaking some unspoken rule of the forest. “Where has everything gone? It feels so lonely.”
“The animals have all gone home to their beds. The foxes are in their burrows, and the birds are huddled in the fir trees, and the deer nested in their thickets. They're still there, waiting and staying warm.” He turned his head and put a finger to his lips and beckoned Lómion closer. “Look,” he spoke mind-to-mind, and Lómion immediately spotted the ermine slinking along the ground, all white but for her eyes and the tip of her tail. “She thinks she'll happen on prey too sleepy to hear her coming.”
They watched together until she disappeared from sight. Not much farther was a huge, gnarled old oak Lómion knew well.
“Are you ready to say hello?” Adar asked softly. He already had his knife out and had pricked his own fingertip, where a drop of bright red welled. “You don’t have to give an offering if you don’t want to.”
Lómion hesitated. This part was always a little scary, but Adar had never made him, and he knew it would only hurt for a moment, and that the forest gave to them every night of their lives. He held out his hand and studiously looked away while Adar pricked him and squeezed his finger so that his blood fell on the black earth at the tree’s roots. When he turned back, he couldn't tell where their blood had soaked into the frozen ground.
“Put your hands here,” Adar instructed, pressing one against the tree trunk. “When all the wood is quiet like this, you can best hear the trees. They rest, too, but they do not sleep, and they will answer if we call upon them.”
Lómion leaned his cheek against the rough bark and listened, deep down into the heart of the ancient tree. He could sense its rumbling melody, the way it reached into the sky and down into the dark earth, where its roots fed and mingled with others and sang in chorus with all its siblings. “I do hear it.”
“You're never alone here in your own wood, in this land that knows you. This is your home; this is where you'll always belong. You'll be its lord beside me someday, and the wood itself will protect you so long as you walk softly beneath it.”
I'll be a lord of Nan Elmoth and of Nana’s white city too, he thought for himself only. “Thank you for watching over me,” Lómion whispered to the tree, and its branches rustled overhead. Tuned as he was to everything around him, he caught a fascinating twinkle of notes, and he dug through the snow at the foot of the tree, where a little crystal glittered. He plucked it up and rubbed the dirt away until it shone as brightly as the icicles hanging from the twig-ends.
“The stones sing more clearly to you, don’t they?”
Lómion glanced up, unsure how to answer, but Adar was smiling, so it must be all right. “Yes. Does that mean something?”
“It means you’ll make a fine smith when you're older.”
“Just like you!”
“Just like me.”
Lómion tucked the crystal into his pocket and let Adar replace his mitten. The snow held together beautifully where he’d scooped it away, and he started packing and mounding it into shapes, until he realized he could also dig trenches that were almost tunnels, and for the next while he was a mole, exploring all the delights of the underground and imagining the splendid treasures he might find. A strong hand lifted him from the sparkling, frosty maze he’d created.
“Time to go, son. Can’t have you getting too cold; we’ll worry your mother.”
Lómion whimpered a quiet protest, but what his father held caught his interest. “What are those for?” The small bundle of branches hadn’t been snapped into kindling, and Lómion could see they were freshly cut.
“We're going to take cherry blossoms home to Naneth. They're already here, just under the bark, hidden in their buds. Can you find them?”
Lómion pointed to the little rounded sheaths.
“No. That's the bud. Look deeper, and find me the flower.”
Lómion bit at his lip and laid a hand on the branch. Listening to a small piece of a tree, cut off from its roots, was much harder, but he pushed the edges of his consciousness into it, and there it was, a promise of petals tightly curled and waiting with hovering breath. He nudged at them repeatedly, trying different tunes.
“You have to find the way the tree wants to grow and work with it, not try to force it,” Adar murmured into his mind. Lómion frowned and studied the problem again. Tracing the notes he heard that whispered spring, he sang, and when he opened his eyes, the petals had broken through their shell and unfurled into a white blossom tinged with pink. His head hurt, but Adar was nodding approvingly.
“Very good. Now sing with me. We’ll bring all the branches to bloom.”
Lómion waited for Adar to start, then let his voice, reedy but now sure, mingle with his father's rich bass. Starting from the tips, the bare branches clothed themselves in white, and their sweet fragrance filled Lómion’s nose.
“Can I carry them?”
“Only if you’re very careful and make sure not to fall.”
“I will be! I promise!” Adar handed them over, and Lómion bore them proudly, thinking how Nana would smile.
When they reached the door, they were met with the rich scents of maple sugar and the spices Adar brought back from his trips to see the Dwarves. Lómion let Adar take the branches and ran to the kitchen just as Nana was pulling a tray of cookies from the oven. Adar came in behind him. “We brought you snow flowers!” Lómion announced. “Look, look! I helped!” She did seem tired, he realized suddenly, but she knelt and wrapped him in her arms when he hugged her. “Don’t you want to rest? Adar said you didn't feel good.”
“Did he now?” She stood and leaned over Lómion to kiss him. “Thanks, love,” she murmured. “As it happens,” she told Lómion, “I thought something sweet might cheer me up. Would you like to help me decorate these?”
“Yes!” Bouncing with excitement, Lómion climbed into a chair and perched on his knees so he could reach. “Can I eat one now?”
She handed him a golden cookie and bent to whisper in his ear. “I used to make these with your cousin Itar—Idril. Every winter.”
Lómion gave her back a tiny conspiratorial smile and hid that knowledge away with all the other scraps of story he’d collected.
Adar had already put the flowers in a vase and was spreading their wet things by the fire and getting out vegetables to chop for stew. He hummed a quiet tune under his breath, one of the eerie songs he’d told Lómion were sung under the stars by the waters of Cuiviénen.
While Nana lit more candles, Lómion devoured his cookie and decided that just then, the warm, busy kitchen was even better than the snow.