This is 'How the Innuniel, Inlonniel and Ithiniel Came to Be' turned into a novel form.

The first draft was never completed.

Emieli’s Children

One moment and she was gone. Days later, she was buried. Weeks after, he still wept at the thought of her. Other men had lost their wives to the plague, and some wives had lost their husbands. At least they had children to remember each other by. Lonorfin had none.

From the stream behind his empty house Lonorfin carried buckets of silver-blue water to quench the thirsty trees. It had been Emieli’s idea to plant an orchard. As the years had turned on, Lonorfin often wondered if this was her way of raising and nourishing the beauty she could not have in children. Yet she grew more than just plants. Songs and stories too were the gifts wherewith she had been blessed. And all her hand touched was made beautiful thereby, including Lonorfin. He knew she would want him to take care of himself, but it was so much harder to want to now. He would rather tend the trees.

Hours rolled by, and come evening Lonorfin had watered every tree in the long, wide orchard. Yet, even then, his work was not done. Stopping beneath the spreading branches of a towering linden – one of the few trees in their orchard which Emieli had not planted – Lonorfin stood and watched the swaying leaves. A gentle breeze murmured through the branches, whispering green and leafy thoughts into the balmy Summer air. High above, a single bird chirped a cheery tune. Yet to Lonorfin’s ears, it sounded unbearably sad. Slowly, his hand trailed upwards to the fold of his jerkin, wherefrom he pulled a single, round seed. Gazing at the brown, silky nut, Lonorfin’s mind wandered back and he saw it, as at first, resting in Emieli’s thin, pale hand.

“I fear I shall not plant it,” the weak voice murmured, soft as a lament and twice as sad. To Lonorfin’s deep gaze Emieli’s eyes rose. She struggled to keep them open.

“Will you plant it for me, Lonorfin?” she murmured, lifting her wasted hand a little higher than the coverlet, “I cannot, but you may,” she drew a shallow breath, “It is the last one . . . the last little seed. I cannot bear . . . the thought of its never being born.”

Over both seed and hand Lonorfin’s gentle clasp closed. Steadily he held her gaze, struggling to hide the heartache in his eyes.

His low voice hummed softly through the air: “I will,” he said. Like rays of dawn on the Eastern horizon, a brilliant smile glowed across Emieli’s face. With a soft sigh, she closed her eyes and went back to sleep.

Slowly, Lonorfin lowered to his knees on the spongy, moss-cloaked turf. He had pledged and he would fulfill. Laying the nut carefully aside, he dug his fingers into the soil – like he had seen Emieli do so many times before – and pried up mounds of thick, black earth. At last, the hole was made, and into it laid the single, lonely seed. A final, long look at the smooth brown nut, which glowed with a golden sheen like Emieli’s hair, and Lonorfin covered it up, patting the earth down as gently and with as much love as he had so recently done to the soil of Emieli’s grave.

The thought brought stinging tears to Lonorfin’s eyes. A long, rich brown swath of earth lay beneath the linden just behind his hut. Under it, Emieli’s body rested while her soul was borne up and away by the wind. A crown of rose-buds was in her hair and a small branch of apple-blossoms was in her hand. She had looked so angelic before her burial. So alive, Lonorfin could hardly bear to toss the first handful of earth into her grave.

“You must give over,” Lonorfin’s father murmured. Gently he clasped his shattered son’s shoulder, “Let her rest – she will not disdain the earth she loved.”

Nodding as slowly as if in a dream, Lonorfin stooped and taking up a handful of earth, stepped to edge of her grave. She was so beautiful, how Lonorfin wished she would just open her eyes!

“Emieli,” he whispered, and a single tear whispered from his eye. Down it fell into the small mound of soil in his hand, dampening the rich brown earth. Beneath the linden she had wished to be buried, so beneath the linden she would lay. Extending his hand over her forever stilled form, Lonorfin let the earth trickle from his fingers onto her pale, white hands.

[here the manuscript ends]