Vairë the Weaver

For she had seen it in her mind in those brief moments before the ground started to shake, seen the Army and its banners and then the crumbling rock. And now she could only see it again and again, with no way to block it out. Now she knew what befell them, so many she had hoped to rescue who now would suffer worse than death, worse than madness, a doom that had never before fallen on any person in this world. Faction or not, they were of Númenor and had deserved better, so much better than what she and Calion had given them!

Miriel wept in the way of disembodied spirits, a sound of lost hope and trembling, shifting electromagnetic colors. 

"A-amandil," she cried despondently at hearing the name, writhing in agony against the Valië who held her. "He was the best of us all, and I failed him. How can I tell him? I have to tell him what has happened! And the others - they must have been so s-scared. All the children, I could hear them.” She heard the words the Weaver spoke, that not all of Númenor was gone, but could not grasp them through the mantle of pain that rested on her.

She looked up at Vairë, shaking as if caught again in the cataclysm. The Valië did not resemble her own beloved grandmother, but she was calm and kind and exuded a sense of capability, of comfort. It made Miriel feel young again, young and helpless, but also as if at last she might not be so alone. She took a sort of strength from it and roused, clinging to what had driven her so strongly in Life, but the fraying parts of her spirit seemed to tangle uselessly as if having finally reached their endpoint.

"They must be so afraid," she repeated, gently catching hold of Vairë with something that might have been hands, and holding on tightly. "Are they, those who came here? I must go to them. If I cannot destroy Calion, then I must not leave them. Oh, my lady. How could this have happened? You must hate me, hate us."

Someone watching might have noticed that the raveled ends of the Valië's spirit seemed to move not chaotically, but with purpose. That watcher, if they watched with care, might also have seen that where Vairë touched the snarl of Miriel's spirit the mortal woman smoothed out once more into something shimmering and true, a bright tapestry woven tight and strong. Miriel unraveled herself nearly as quickly as the Weaver wove her back together, however, and the process would be a long one.

But Vairë was nothing if not patient.

"Amandil is here," she murmured. "The children, too, and the mothers, and the elderly, and some of those here are they who would not fight and yet would not leave their homes. No one here is alone, Miriel, and no one here is reviled. All fëar are equal in this place, for all fëar come to this place for the same reason, with hurts all their own and joys, too. My husband gave you his judgment because it is his part to judge. But he does not hate, and nor do I, and nor do any of our Maiar, nor sweet Nienna."

V A I R Ë

«She weaves all things that have ever been in Time into her storied webs»

‘We cannot probe all the mystery of the nature of the Children… When one of the Queens of the Valar, Varda or Yavanna, or even I, departeth for ever from Arda, and leaventh her spouse, will he or nill he, then let that spouse judge Finwë, if he will, remembering that Finwë cannot follow Míriel without doing wrong to his nature, nor without forsaking the duty and bond of his fatherhood.’

When Vairë had spoke, the Valar sat long in silence.

I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realizes an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.

"No, not I, my lady. I lived a dangerous life, dancing in the darkness. Death was no stranger to me, nor I to it. There were times when I thought.." But she turned away from that memory. "No, not I. I do not see it as a punishment, not for myself. It is bitter to me that it should have happened this way, but that is not why I demand his death. It is what Pharazô– what Calion feared most, and I would have him greet it. He sought eternity and it is wrong that he found it in any form, that any shred of him ought to remain within the world. That any shred ought to remain at all. He is a poison in the shape of a Man! I cannot help but fear even now something of him will remain to poison others. I hate him as I have hated no one else, save perhaps one. But, then, if it is as you say?”

She flickered uncertainly. Despite her mercurial nature, Miriel had not been an unintelligent woman, nor one who could not face facts. This end Vairë spoke of sounded perhaps awful enough a prison that it was worthy of devouring her cousin. And Eru Ilúvatar had ordered it.

The dead queen struggled again now, but it was only with herself. The Valar had abandoned her – abandoned Númenor – had not come no matter how much she begged and pleaded and prayed. They had let the island drown, they who had raised it and gifted it in the first place. The anger and sense of betrayal within that thought was too large for her to even grasp its edges, and the thought of facing it filled her with despair.

But had she earned her death as one of the Faithful, racing to Meneltarma to beg forgiveness and mercy, only to abandon her beliefs now? Her hatred weakened slightly more as she tentatively wrapped herself in the same familiar resolve that had been second nature to her in life. A resolve to stand true to her father, to the Faithful, to this being in front of her and those like her. That resolve was no longer whole now, tattered and rent as her spirit was. It did not fit as well as it once had. But Vairë was the master Weaver. For the first time Miriel looked upon the Valië with something other than rage.

But then a horrific realization struck her as the dead queen understood what had actually been said and what those tumbling cliffs meant.

“Those who followed him? The Army?” she asked hesitantly, managing to sound hoarse even without a throat to go dry. “He took every man who could lift a sword. Nearly half our entire population, so many thousands of thousands. The biggest Army ever seen..so many ships sailed west.” The fëa wavered unsteadily, and Miriel wished she had a body once more, that she might faint and escape this hellish moment. But there was no running, no dark alleys where she could flee, no muffling draughts, nothing but the inevitable conclusion.

Calion had not only doomed the women and children and elders of Númenor to death in the cataclysm, but brought also ruin beyond ruin to nearly every man of the star-isle.

“Yes, the Army, too—or at the least, all those who set their feet upon the ground of Aman. Those who did fell under our Ban and met this Doom in the Caverns. They had their chances, their choices—any might have turned back at any point and yet most did not. This punishment is meted out to suit their crime,” she added, a flash of steel in her eyes. Kind though she was, her husband was the Doom Sayer and if his was the judgment, hers was to uphold it.

“In the end, Child, it all comes down to choice,” she murmured, seeing how Miriel flickered and sputtered like a candle touched by breeze, feeling the anger and betrayal that still simmered in the fëa and knowing its source. It was the same anger and betrayal many newly come to the Halls carried in them. “The world we made, this Arda—it does not belong to the Valar, though many of my brethren sometimes forget. We made it for you, and to you belongs its destiny. With every choice you make, the world is further shaped and the ways in which we are allowed to intervene are—limited.”

Misery rose up from Miriel in nearly palpable waves as she fell to her knees, and the Weaver flowed forward, wrapping arms around the fëa this time, for all the world a comforting grandmother in truth and not merely in seeming.

Vairë watched the fëa, thin as a wisp of smoke and pale with it. Some in the Halls were like this, forgetting life and light and love and soon, even the memory of flesh would be lost. Those fëar were little more than smears of light, shapeless balls of pure spirit. She understood that some needed this respite, needed this forgetfulness, that it was healing for them, in a way.

And yet it always hurt her to see one of the Children set aside all that made them unique and retreat into unbeing.

Making a decision, she pulled a seeming about her, a fana with silver-bright hair and an unlined face modeled after the Noldor more than any of the other kindreds.

A challenge of needlework, indeed - and what better to rekindle a little spark of enthusiasm within the one named Ϸerindë?

Women of Tolkien: Vairë of the Valier, Vairë the Weaver

“Threads, she saw. Stitches. Patterns. Stitches to hold fast. Patterns to make boundaries, to cover, to shape. To mimic. Bindings to hold them there. Threads to create. Knots to bind.” - Patricia McKillip

—-

Vairë watched the fëa, thin as a wisp of smoke and pale with it. Some in the Halls were like this, forgetting life and light and love and soon, even the memory of flesh would be lost. Those fëar were little more than smears of light, shapeless balls of pure spirit. She understood that some needed this respite, needed this forgetfulness, that it was healing for them, in a way.

And yet it always hurt her to see one of the Children set aside all that made them unique and retreat into unbeing.

Making a decision, she pulled a seeming about her, a fana with silver-bright hair and an unlined face modeled after the Noldor more than any of the other kindreds.

One piece nearby seemed to depict one of those who had been lost at Cuiviénen; his clothes were rough skins, his hair golden, his only weapons a knife of stone and a blazing torch as he faced a pale being she could not identify. Even as she watched, she felt a chill, a sense of terror, and then a separation of fëa and hröa that made her shudder with remembrance. The tapestry grew dull… and began to depict the life it portrayed once more.

She led Míriel to another tapestry and let her gaze upon it. This life was longer and more complex than the first the broideress had watched. “This is my work, my meaning,” she murmured, looking about her at the Lives. “I am the Weaver of history and time itself unspools beneath my fingers. My domain is—not so conspicuous, perhaps, as that of my brethren. I have not Varda’s silver brilliance, nor yet Yavanna’s vibrant exuberance. And yet without me, could any of this exist? We all play our parts.”

She trailed her fingers through the shimmering threads of the Tapestries and they glimmered and shone, each one a world in miniature. The Halls of Lives were an orrery of sorts, moving in slow orbit about each other.

Miriel cried out in protest, giving off waves of heat that shivered like a mirage around her. At last there was something she could fight against, some focus for her anger and regret, though it was not her cousin. The fëa pushed outward, first testing the threads that wrapped around her and then fighting against them with all her strength. She might as well have tried to tear apart iron armor with bare hands for all her efforts earned her.

"He should be dead, as dead as I am!” she snarled. “He earned his unlife at the cost of my people! He should have no single shred of victory, no matter how empty a victory, nor endurance in the circles of this world! When I find him, he will have none!”

The brightness of her Self flared and dimmed in a cycling exhaustion reminiscent of a physical body gasping for air. The outburst and the force of her exertions took their toll and Miriel fell to a reluctant, unhappy stillness. As she quieted, for the first time she sensed with surprise and a relief she was not ready to admit that the weaving that held her did not hurt, in fact felt more like a protective embrace than one meant to trap.

As she examined it more closely, Miriel realized the falling-apart she had borne for so long and the cracks that tore and trembled were being held together by a strength beyond her understanding. With a sense of frightened wonder, she tentatively relaxed just a little, realizing that if she could not break them purposely, the threads would certainly not unravel if she simply let them hold her together. 

Still, even as she ceased her struggling, Miriel glared at Vairë with the same innate challenge the Weaver had first seen within her.

Slowly, slowly, the woman seemed to calm, to relax, testing the boundaries of the woven cradle of the Weaver’s being. Vairë sent what soothing waves of comfort to the fëa as she could, through those places in which they were joined.

“Even you, Child,” she murmured then, as Miriel quieted in the embrace she offered. “Even you see death as a punishment? Have your Faithful not taught you the truth? Death is the Gift of Men, not their Doom. Death is Eru’s dearest treasure. Even such as I will one day come to envy Men their Gift, their ability to leave this place. Bound forever to the world’s fortunes, are Eldar and Ainur, but the Edain—they are free. But Pharazôn and those who followed him, those who dared break the Ban, shall never taste that freedom. They shall endure, as Ages turn and pass, trapped forever in lightless caverns, not truly alive, but never dying. Their bodies and their minds alike shall become as a torment to them, and yet even the respite of madness shall be denied them. Theirs is the punishment most dire—of achieving their deepest desire and finding it a hollow thing and terrible, but being unable ever to rest again. Unquiet shall they be, discontented and unsatisfied and empty.”

Vairë watched the fëa, thin as a wisp of smoke and pale with it. Some in the Halls were like this, forgetting life and light and love and soon, even the memory of flesh would be lost. Those fëar were little more than smears of light, shapeless balls of pure spirit. She understood that some needed this respite, needed this forgetfulness, that it was healing for them, in a way.

And yet it always hurt her to see one of the Children set aside all that made them unique and retreat into unbeing.

Making a decision, she pulled a seeming about her, a fana with silver-bright hair and an unlined face modeled after the Noldor more than any of the other kindreds.

But amongst them, there was hope, and that she siezed on and clung to. Vairë had said she might not be bound to loneliness away from her kin for ever - and that there might still be some way to seek a little happiness without them. Though the last part she doubted, Míriel was willing to try.

They stood now in one of the smaller chambers which hung from the long corridors like fringe on a woven shawl; the Halls of Lives, the Weaver called these places. Contained within were the Tapestries of Lives. The larger Halls and echoing chambers contained the Tapestries of History, in which the broad sweeps of time were encoded.

But in these smaller chambers hung representations not of History but of personal histories. Each had been woven in consultation with the fea whose life it represented, and though they were called "tapestries," the word seemed too frail to fully describe the works themselves.

For Vaire had woven them not in two dimensions, as most tapestries appeared, but in four. The threads moved through time and space alike, and every moment of each fëa's life was whole there, as the spirit recalled it. No bodily creature could have looked upon the Lives without dizziness and confusion, but the fëar did not have fleshly eyes and could quite nearly live the Lives as they watched the tapestries.

Vairë watched the fëa, thin as a wisp of smoke and pale with it. Some in the Halls were like this, forgetting life and light and love and soon, even the memory of flesh would be lost. Those fëar were little more than smears of light, shapeless balls of pure spirit. She understood that some needed this respite, needed this forgetfulness, that it was healing for them, in a way.

And yet it always hurt her to see one of the Children set aside all that made them unique and retreat into unbeing.

Making a decision, she pulled a seeming about her, a fana with silver-bright hair and an unlined face modeled after the Noldor more than any of the other kindreds.

She stood her ground before the stranger, assessing her appearance in a glance, not understanding who was before her and too incensed to care. She was dead, and who knew what madness was within these Halls? Of course a woman of the race of Men would appear before her! Why not?

Miriel laughed hysterically. Why not indeed? She was dead. Númenor was drowned! Nothing was impossible! What else was there to hurt her? And if it did, what did it matter? Only one thing mattered now, and she clung to it with all the stubbornness within her.

"Then where is he?!" she demanded. "If he has not the courtesy to be dead as he ought, I will go to him and teach him manners as I should have long ago! More fool, I, that I thought there was hope!”

Her lips tightened very slightly and she let the edges of her own seeming--not quite a fully-fleshed fana, here in the Halls, but yet somewhat more than her natural, unclothed state--dissolve into long whipping threads which bridged the space between them and wrapped about the fraying, crackling fëa, holding it together tightly.

Her voice, when next she spoke, owed nothing to the mechanics of tongue and teeth but was an echoing, bell-like presence which would be perceived without the intervention of even the remembered ears which the fëar bore here.

Vairë watched the fëa, thin as a wisp of smoke and pale with it. Some in the Halls were like this, forgetting life and light and love and soon, even the memory of flesh would be lost. Those fëar were little more than smears of light, shapeless balls of pure spirit. She understood that some needed this respite, needed this forgetfulness, that it was healing for them, in a way.

And yet it always hurt her to see one of the Children set aside all that made them unique and retreat into unbeing.

Making a decision, she pulled a seeming about her, a fana with silver-bright hair and an unlined face modeled after the Noldor more than any of the other kindreds.

"I am a fool," she said brokenly, as the first flood of dizzying pain eased. "Or perhaps a coward. I gave up… all I loved. I could not bear the thought of returning to my body,  to that terrible -" She flinched even from the memory. "Like lead weights bound to every inch of my being."

It was strange to the Ainur, was death. They themselves were bodiless spirits by nature, taking flesh to themselves only at their own whim and for their own reasons. The Eldar, however, clung to their flesh so tightly, were made to fill it up and found themselves--lost, terrified, without it. Vairë perhaps understood better than most, having spent so much time with the spirits who had come here already, but still it was strange.

Vairë watched the fëa, thin as a wisp of smoke and pale with it. Some in the Halls were like this, forgetting life and light and love and soon, even the memory of flesh would be lost. Those fëar were little more than smears of light, shapeless balls of pure spirit. She understood that some needed this respite, needed this forgetfulness, that it was healing for them, in a way.

And yet it always hurt her to see one of the Children set aside all that made them unique and retreat into unbeing.

Making a decision, she pulled a seeming about her, a fana with silver-bright hair and an unlined face modeled after the Noldor more than any of the other kindreds.

There were some, perhaps, who would call what she had just done cruel. Reminding Miriel of what she'd left behind, both the good and the bad, had been an act carefully weighed and one which had produced, in the end, the effect desired. Miriel felt once more. Sorrow, perhaps, but still--it was emotion, not the numb emptiness of a moment before. In truth, Vairë had expected anger, and perhaps anger would still come, and would perhaps even be deserved.

But for the moment, she had broken through to the woman inside the ghost, the woman the ghost had been and could be again, and for that she was thankful and joyful both.

Vairë watched the fëa, thin as a wisp of smoke and pale with it. Some in the Halls were like this, forgetting life and light and love and soon, even the memory of flesh would be lost. Those fëar were little more than smears of light, shapeless balls of pure spirit. She understood that some needed this respite, needed this forgetfulness, that it was healing for them, in a way.

And yet it always hurt her to see one of the Children set aside all that made them unique and retreat into unbeing.

Making a decision, she pulled a seeming about her, a fana with silver-bright hair and an unlined face modeled after the Noldor more than any of the other kindreds.

Vairë watched the fëa, thin as a wisp of smoke and pale with it. Some in the Halls were like this, forgetting life and light and love and soon, even the memory of flesh would be lost. Those fëar were little more than smears of light, shapeless balls of pure spirit. She understood that some needed this respite, needed this forgetfulness, that it was healing for them, in a way.

And yet it always hurt her to see one of the Children set aside all that made them unique and retreat into unbeing.

Making a decision, she pulled a seeming about her, a fana with silver-bright hair and an unlined face modeled after the Noldor more than any of the other kindreds.

Míriel turned away, staring down the long hall. What did she want, truly? She had locked herself into the Halls to free Finwë of his bonds to her, and could not even grieve for that loss.

Vairë watched the fëa, thin as a wisp of smoke and pale with it. Some in the Halls were like this, forgetting life and light and love and soon, even the memory of flesh would be lost. Those fëar were little more than smears of light, shapeless balls of pure spirit. She understood that some needed this respite, needed this forgetfulness, that it was healing for them, in a way.

And yet it always hurt her to see one of the Children set aside all that made them unique and retreat into unbeing.

Making a decision, she pulled a seeming about her, a fana with silver-bright hair and an unlined face modeled after the Noldor more than any of the other kindreds.