The search for ‘Discov Road’, where ‘Lady Addwyn’ and her friend ‘the Autumn Spirit’ were sure his own lady must be concealed, takes him several days. But, dirty, weary, and flagging in hope, at last he stumbles on a sign that restores it. As he approaches this little village on the outskirts of Bree-land, he stops a passing resident to ask if they have had any Dwarvish visitors; not only does she answer affirmatively, but mentions that there is more than one family that seems to here reside, on the surface.
That news is what restores vigour to his step at first, and dedication to his quest and the promise of seeing his princess’s sweet beard once more, what leads his feet. But then, as he crests a hill that’s just turning from Bree-land’s winter brown to a fresh spring green, something else hits his ear and begins to lead him: a gentle melody.
In the still air, the sweet notes of a well-made lute carry, and—though Vifi, son of Bifi, is hardly known for his own artistic sense or delicacy of feeling—even he can hear those things in the gentle, thoughtful hand that strums and plucks with great speed and grace. Vifi doesn’t know the name of the tune, nor does he know enough about music to identify the style, but nostalgia still hits him, and he is pulled on as if enchanted.
A second lute begins to sing, the hand on it just as skillful, and it steps into effortless harmony with the first. By practise or intuition, that second player knows just what the first will strum next, and picks delicate chords atop them, filling them out with colour; and the first player knows this, and here and there adds a tender dissonance that is left hanging, for the second player to resolve.
One of them begins to sing, not quite with the same polished skill he has on the lute, but with a rough natural beauty, like an uncut ruby of a deep, rich red. A Dwarvish baritone, singing in Westron, but with a Blue Mountains accent even stronger than the average Longbeard’s, resonating under the light strings:
Listen, listen, to the song of my happiness;
Listen, listen, to my painful sigh.
Deign a glance across the face of your servant;
Without your smile, he will crumble and die.
The lyric is tender; but the way he sings it, and the other’s lute unwaveringly answers, does not break the heart, but fills it. And so, reverent and amazed, Vifi crests the hill and looks down upon them.
Two Dwarves, each with a lute, are seated close, one on a broad old tree-stump, one on the earth. The latter, gazing up at the first with a face full of worship, is the singer: black-bearded and light-eyed, wearing a quilted tunic once dyed rose and now very faded. The one to whom he sings is lighter-haired, cut short on top but with a beard thick and full, dressed in blue workaday clothes that strain a little to wrap around his wide middle, a fluffy-tailed dog stretched out across his feet. He doesn’t look at his fingering, but returns his partner’s look with equal love, glowing forge-hot, but gentle as the sun.
A discreet person, coming across such a scene of chaste but deep intimacy, might give thanks for the music in his heart but quietly turn away. And Vifi, son of Bifi, was not raised without manners; deep down he knows that is the proper thing to do. But he is too delighted to do as he should, and so instead he begins rapidly down the hill, crossing towards the couple to hail them. “My kin, you play with such beauty! I never imagined I would hear such, so far from any mountain!”
The players stop in unison, turning to look at him. Then, suddenly, the lighter-haired of the two turns away and lurches up along the footpath away from Vifi, the little dog leaping up to accompany.
“Oh, ah, don’t go,” Vifi calls, and the Dwarf seems at first to heed him. “I did not mean to cause you discomfort, indeed, and please, I beg your forgiveness for my intrusion! But you must permit me to express how fine I found your music! Indeed, even I could not help but be moved!”
The other Dwarf stays seated on the ground, lute in his hands, blinking with his blue eyes wide in alarm. But the brown-bearded fellow turns, and Vifi sees his fists are bunched, coming up as if to strike or ward off blows. “Must I, indeed.” With a voice raised in a mix of indignation and fury, he demands. “Why are you here?”
Vifi steps back, holding up his hands; though he stares at the lad, he doesn’t immediately recognise him, nor the reason for his hostility. “Beg pardon?”
The lad glowers at him, and one of his hands uncurls to spread across his tummy. “You should leave,” he snaps.
“I don’t—” begins Vifi, though then he stops.
The Dwarf on the ground, rousing from his stupor, lays his lute aside in a hurry and springs to his feet, stepping up quickly to try to stand between them, though the rounder one moves forward to be at his side. Vifi, though, pays the black-bearded one no mind, for his eyes have become now stuck on the other, slowly widening as the smile and colour both gradually drain from his face.
He looks up, at the hair and beard that have changed their style, though not their colour, and registers the face and voice that have not. He looks down, at the lad’s work clothes, the muddy boots, and the round belly that bulges far out over his feet. His face is full white when his eyes go to meet the other’s again. “Fjöra?”
The lad’s cheeks flush deeply, but he shakes his head. “Go away,” he repeats, harsh.
But rather than retreat Vifi steps forward, though a little wobbly on his feet. He looks up and down again, shocked—recollected images in his mind, the sight of a Dwarf-maid with a head of long ringlets, slender-limbed in a modest green dress, long-lashed eyes turned down, nothing at all like this wind-mussed lad with round, ruddy cheeks, and yet—“Fjöra, is it you?”
“I am afraid you are mistaken,” the lad says, no less hostile-sounding for all that his words are more polite, with one hand coming up to keep between himself and this alleged stranger as he wraps his other arm around himself.
“I am not,” Vifi cries, “Fjöra—” but as he reaches for that hand, the black-bearded singer moves forward quickly, and Vifi’s eyes at last go to him. He pauses, stares, looks back quickly to the brown-haired one and down at his middle; Vifi’s hand remains extended, but he puts one foot back, staggering. “Fjöra, what is this!?” To that, there is no ready answer, but ‘Fjöra’ reaches out to pull the black-haired one back to his side. That makes Vifi’s colour start to return, but it is a deep, scarlet red. “He is the one, isn’t he? The one who took you and… did that…!”
“Nobody took me, and—and as to the other, it’s not as if he did it without my consent!”
“What are you saying, Fjöra!” But Vifi doesn’t wait for an answer to that before he lifts his hands to draw his sword. The black-bearded Dwarf, who seemed for a long moment frozen in horror, immediately tries to push his companion back, but that companion is unwilling to cede the front line.
The dog, at their heels, starts a frenzy of barking, as her master demands, “Oh, are you drawing steel against me? I shall call the Watch.”
The sword stays in Vifi’s hands, though his eyes widen again and he points the tip away from them. “What are you saying, Fjöra? I am here to rescue you! No matter what has happened,” and he blinks his bright eyes, “I shall smite him; you need not go with him, nor fear anymore!”
The black-bearded one for the first time utters words not part of a song, low but harsh: “His name is not Fjöra.”
“And I don’t need rescued from anything. Sheath your blade and walk away,” not-Fjöra says.
Vifi does not sheath his blade, nor does he look over at the command. He does at least keep the sword pointed away, but his eyes are locked onto the deeper-voiced Dwarf now. He did not study him closely at first, but now he does, faint memories from the Blue Mountains coming back to him, recently passed years, the coming of Lord Dwalin. “Who are you?” he demands.
“Who are you that you have the right to question us?” demands not-Fjöra.
Now the blade does swing forward, though not to strike, only to point at the two of them. “I am your betrothed,” Vifi suddenly snaps, with a sudden hysterical anger that overtakes the hurt and confusion. “Did you forget!? Vifi, son of Bifi, who promised his life to you and all the riches left him by his dead mother and father!? I have been searching ceaselessly for you for more than a year, wearing holes in my boots, ready to die fighting, if need be, to rescue you! ‘What right!’ I have every right!”
“I never asked for any of that, and moreover, I never promised you or anyone else anything,” not-Fjöra says.
“Only to marry me and be my wife!” Vifi almost screams at them.
“No, I did not,” not-Fjöra calmly replies, while the black-haired one tries subtly to pull him back from the mad-Dwarf waving a sword. “That is the sort of thing I would definitely remember. I have a pretty good memory for that kind of thing.”
“It is signed to our contract!”
“Signed by whom? I never signed anything. Did you ever ask me if I wished to marry you? Try to remember.”
“What?” Vifi gasps, on his shrill intake of air.
“Did you ever ask me if I wished to marry you?”
“What are you talking about!? Of course I did!”
“And what did I say?”
Vifi’s mouth opens, then closes.
“I never said I wanted to marry you. I never said I wanted anything from you. I don’t think I ever said much of anything, did I? I never could have gotten a word in edgewise, even if I had dared!” Vifi’s mouth moves again, but the tables are turned now; the one over whom he had always spoken does not fall silent. “But now I say to you, plainly and clearly, I do not wish to marry you, I never entered into a contract with you, I never signed anything. Anyone who told you otherwise was lying, though I suspect skillful omissions were made rather than outright lies spoken. I am, in any case, quite pledged to another, with whom I am most happy and in love! Do I need to repeat myself yet again? Go. Away.”
Vifi is still and silent for a second, two seconds, though the sword remains drawn and pointed towards them. And then he speaks again; for once in his life his voice is quiet, strangely so, and low. “You can’t.”
“Can’t what, repeat myself? Marry someone I love? Want you to go away?”
“You can’t marry him. You’re promised to me,” and he doesn’t say that as if he misunderstood what was said to him earlier, but as a deliberate, and threatening, step forward. “And that Dwarf—I know who he is. He’s the son of Bysir.”
The son of Bysir grimaces, yet still keeps his arms up towards his partner, trying to draw him away from the armed Vifi and interpose his own body. Which he still is not allowed to do; not-Fjöra scowls at Vifi as he refuses to be drawn away. “I never promised you anything, and I am not some sort of parcel to be bartered off by my uncle to get out of paying his own debts. Stop treating me like a thing.”
“I don’t care,” Vifi just says outright, “you cannot marry him. He is a Dourhand!”
“I am not a Dourhand,” the Dourhand immediately replies.
“And I wouldn’t care if he were,” not-Fjöra adds.
“You wouldn’t!?” Vifi cries, pointing the blade closer towards the son of Bysir. “He’s a Dourhand!” he exclaims again, as if that should be sufficient, though he does continue, accusing him directly now, “Rebel, honorless thin-beard! You consort with goblins, you killed Longbeards! And now you dare lay those filthy hands on a pure daughter of Durin’s Folk!? I’ll kill you!”
“So you’re threatening to kill a Dwarf?” not-Fjöra asks, and reaches out for the sword-blade with his bare hand. Vifi’s face is by now purple with anger—but the advance has its desired effect, and he quickly steps back to take the blade out of range.
But still, Vifi answers, smoldering with hatred, “Dourhands are no longer Dwarves.”
“And I’m pretty sure their leaders said the same thing about Longbeards. But I don’t care what you think—” not-Fjöra continues, even as the Dourhand desperately tries to drag him back to a safer distance, “I was raised without a father, and I will not let you take my child’s father from him.”
At that, Vifi just shakes his head, sputtering.
The son of Bysir speaks, though only when his partner is well out of range of a lunge. “I am not a Dourhand. I renounced them, and swore an oath of loyalty to the King in Erebor—”
“—For which you had to break an oath already sworn to your so-called ‘King’!” Vifi snaps back at him.
That throws the non-Dourhand into chagrined silence, but not-Fjöra is not cowed, and says, again, “Did I ever ask your opinion? No, I did not. I do not care what you think, Vifi son of Bifi. Go home!”
Vifi looks back at not-Fjöra, beard still bristling furiously, though another emotion is beginning to creep in alongside anger. Though he has already been told the answer, several times over in fact, he still asks again, in a tone of total disbelief, “Don’t you love me?”
Not-Fjöra briefly closes his eyes. “No, Vifi-son-of-Bifi, I do not love you. I must admit that I do not even like you.”
Vifi swallows. “But, I love you.”
“Really? What specifically about me do you love?” not-Fjöra asks, more than a hint of bitterness in his voice.
That question throws him. “What?”
“Well, when I think about someone I love, I can call to mind various qualities that person possesses which I admire. What do you admire about me? What do you know about me at all?”
The arms holding up Vifi’s sword slacken a little, as does Vifi’s square-bearded jaw. “You…” he starts, then stammers. At first he is unable to find sure footing, but then he slowly begins, “... You’re Fjöra. I’ve always loved you. You’re beautiful, and… and…” Surely something else follows that. Even Vifi must realize, something must follow that; yet he can’t figure out what it is. “—Refined… beautiful…”
“You already said that,” not-Fjöra interrupts not-so-refinedly.
“I don’t care,” Vifi interrupts in turn, turning strident, “you’re Fjöra, and I love Fjöra for Fjöra. You are the Dwarf I chose, the one and only Dwarf I’ll love. I don’t care that you’re damaged goods,” he says with total, blind, complete sincerity, “or that you cannot ever have a craft, or that you’ve been… been damaged by that Dourhand. I will love you,” and he takes one hand off the hilt to lay on his chest, announcing with confidence in the romance of this statement of self-sacrifice, “no matter what, from this moment to the moment I return to stone.”
“It’s so very selfless of you to love me so much even though I have no real redeeming characteristics,” not-Fjöra says. “Except it’s interesting how wrong you are. For example, I do have a craft. I’m not goods—you didn’t even hear me when I told you not to treat me as if I were an object just a moment ago. I’m not damaged, neither by my husband nor by childhood accident. But I cannot tell you what to do with your own heart, Vifi son of Bifi. I can but tell you that you do not have mine, nor will you have my hand. I never agreed to marry you.”
That last he says loudly enough that the neighbours, the stone, and the sky might all hear.
Vifi stands there, saying nothing, but staying flushed to near-purple. Then his grip again tightens, and he threatens, “You may now.”
“No, I am already quite formally contracted to Byrge, son of Bysir,” not-Fjöra says, and deliberately rubs his belly.
Vifi trembles a little, watching that, but his voice stays low. “You cannot choose a Dourhand over me. It is an insult.”
“Do you know what’s really an insult? Being told you’re damaged goods,” not-Fjöra says.
“Because you are,” Vifi finds himself saying; maybe in other circumstances that would horrify him, but in this moment his rage is heating to white. “You should be grateful that even Vifi, son of Bifi wants you,” spill the words of his haughty and hateful Aunt Líf from his mouth. “No other Longbeard but me could love you, or maybe a traitor and kinslayer,” he sneers at Byrge, “oathbreaker, piece of dirt. You think you’re better than me! You don’t have a whole mountain of suitors to choose from, you know! A high honor you had having a proposal from my family, one you’ve tainted now.”
Not-Fjöra starts to answer, but Byrge, heretofore quiet and mainly concerned with moving him away from Vifi’s blade, actually speaks before him, sharply; his cheeks have begun to flush in anger, too. “How dare you?”
“I don’t care if I have a mountain. I have Byrge—and I think I’m your equal—”
“Apparently you don’t care,” Vifi cuts him off, tone biting. “I can’t believe you’re— You think having a beardling outside of the mountain is a good idea!? What kind of life will that child have? Cast out from other Dwarves, cut off from the sacred language and our culture… What a pitiable life you’d foist on it. For selfish reasons!” He points the sword again, less in threat of violence and more in accusation. “But. I love you, Fjöra. I don’t break oaths. I made a promise to you, and I’ll keep it. Come back with me,” still in a tone of rage, but cold and threatening now, “and I’ll make it mine. Don’t you want your child raised a Dwarf? I can give you that, Fjöra. Your Dourhand can’t. Come. Don’t be foolish.”
“No,” not-Fjöra says, firm and angry. “Raising a child outside the mountain is a much finer prospect than raising a child anywhere near you.”
Vifi puffs, hot anger flashing again, alternating with confusion, even a flash of bewildered, frightened despair. This time it’s he who asks, “How dare you?”
“After how you have spoken to me today, I cannot imagine a single reason which would compel me to look upon you with a shred of fondness. I would sooner kill you than marry you. Do not force me to make that choice.”
Vifi takes a half-step back, eyes flashing wide for a second, intimidated by that vehemence. Byrge reacts, too; he grabs not-Fjöra’s arm and tries urgently to pull him back, as if frightened he might actually rush forward and bare-handedly attack the Dwarf with a sword. That motion draws Vifi’s eye—and the fear and disorientation falls away, his focus narrowing. “You did this. You’ve ruined the honor of a Dwarf-maid, and my honor as a Longbeard,” spat with far more bitterness on the latter.
“You never bothered to learn who I am,” not-Fjöra says, and juts his chin, beard grown longer, toward Vifi. “Are these the braids of a Dwarf-maid?”
Vifi looks again at him; sure enough, he can read it’s a male Dwarf’s style, and besides that, one who is engaged. It confuses him, this Dwarf of little brain, and before he can apply enough thought to comprehend it, he looks over at Byrge and sees the same knot of engagement—and his rage ignites afresh. He points the sword at Byrge.
“I can’t suffer this,” Vifi says, slightly shaking. “Not even I, Vifi, son of Bifi, can. I am still a Longbeard and I cannot suffer this insult.”
Byrge finally forces his partner behind him, putting a hand on his belt, though only a measly carpenter’s hammer is he wearing there, not much for defending them if it should come to blows. Even so, he is defiant. “Tiarvi’s life is not about you,” he says, curt. “This is not about your honour.”
“It is,” Vifi snaps, “and I won’t stand for it. You, Dourhand. You have to answer for this. I challenge you, Byrge son of Bysir,” and his eyes gleam and own chin juts forward, “and will cleanse my honour with your blood. Or word I’ll spread of your misdeeds, what you are, and no Dwarf will ever deal with you, and your child will never see the inside of any mountain.”
Unlike the two angry Longbeards’, the face of the son of Bysir is inexpressive and stoic, fitting what he was accused of being, a Dourhand. But, subtly, the flush of anger leaves it, and cold dread and sadness arrive in its place. Even so, he answers, “... Very well.”
“And I shall be speaking with the Stone Quarter, so they may know that Vifi son of Bifi is attempting to force me to marry him against my will,” Tiarvi says quietly.
Vifi looks back to Tiarvi, breathing out through his nose once in anger, but then cooling, just a little. “I will never force you against your will,” he says, also quietly. “But I will ask you to change it.”
“Do you remember anything that has come out of your own lips these past minutes? Is your mind so truly addled by emotion that you have forgotten your own words? I suppose it must be.”
Vifi flushes again, though this time it is not wholly with anger.
Tiarvi continues, “You have done nothing but threaten and insult me, my husband, and our child since you thought you recognised me—and now you say you will never force me against my will, but will merely ask me to change it? No doubt through dumb force or clumsy cajoling? You are deaf to my words, deaf to anything but your own stupidity and the voice of your aunt. I won’t try to reason with you, for you are immune to reason. Just know this—if you are not sufficiently thrashed in your ridiculous duel, I may choose to thrash you myself, by letting everyone know just how ridiculous you are.”
Vifi’s face twists in anger, but he blinks, too, and his voice is different when he answers. Even after all that, confused again, and, yes, cajoling. “You truly hate me so much?”
“Yes,” Tiarvi says, keeping it simple in hopes that it will penetrate through the Longbeard’s thick skull. “I do.”
Vifi looks at him a long, long time, with many emotions on his face, some of complexity that Tiarvi has never before seen this dull Dwarf wear. But in the end, he says nothing to him, and turns again towards Byrge. “Next week. Here. Wear your armor and bring your weapon.”
“Aye,” says Byrge, with great heaviness.
Tiarvi starts to say something—but finally the little dog at his feet leaps up and tugs at his tunic, and he reaches down to scoop it into his arms. “If you leave my child fatherless,” he says again, “I will end you.”
Vifi scoffs—though at whom, precisely, it is unclear. He doesn’t say anything, and start turning to leave, sliding his sword back into its sheath as he does so. But then, he stops.
His eyes have alighted on a lute, dropped and forgotten in the commotion by the Dwarf who, before Vifi had known who he was, had so impressed him with the tenderness of his singing.
“But I’m not very worried,” cuts Tiarvi’s voice through his thoughts, though it is a little muffled, the lad having buried his beard in his little dog’s soft fur. “Because unlike you, Byrge actually knows how to fight.”
Vifi, about to turn, stops at that last barb, looks at Tiarvi, then looks at Byrge, whose eyes briefly close, pained. His own face, too, shows a flash of pain, then turns once again stony.
And then he moves forward, and he steps on the lute.
