It Shall Be Cloudy Come Afternoon by Huinare

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It Shall Be Cloudy Come Afternoon

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When I first met her, I’d stolen away from the campsite by night–for that was the only way to shake off the attendants which my father insisted upon saddling me with when I went on my expeditions into the downs–and spent the remainder of the dark hours trotting uphill and down. The stars were bright above me, jeweled eyes in a field of cobalt, until a rosy gold blanket drew in from the east to put them to bed. I began to see the smoke of my breath in the dim light, but I was warm from moving all night. I paused a stone’s throw from the top of the hill I was cresting and looked down into the darkness of the vale behind and below. The sun peeped out of the east then, suddenly casting the top of my hill in gold. This was one of my favorite sights, the morning upon the heights in its full glory while the lower regions lay still in shadow and mystery. I moved my gaze back down into the shadow, then up, passing over the glitter of dewdrops in the dawn, all the way up to the hilltop, where a woman stood watching.

I blinked in surprise. She had not been there mere moments before. For an instant I was offended that she had arrived without my knowledge and was watching me watching the downs, but quickly I forgot this; for it was surely more interesting than offensive that another woman should spurn the protective company of men in favor of wandering about the downs on her own, and she looked both powerful and beautiful standing on the crest of the hill with the unconscious certitude of the sun itself which stood opposite her.  

The woman wore a simple white dress belted with a green sash. Here and there on her sleeves and belt, tiny stones or jewels glinted like the dewdrops. She looked very tall. Intrigued, I climbed to meet her. As I drew ever nearer, I was taken with an uncanny sense of awe which I could not explain, but I knew that she was not one of my people and that she was much older than she looked. Yet I was surprised to find, when I stood near enough to see that her eyes were a dark grey, that she was actually my exact height, not tall at all. It was only her being on top of the hill, and her bearing, and her leanness, that made her appear so at a distance. Actually she was one of the skinniest people I’d ever seen in my life, yet she looked strong, like a green reed. Her light golden hair, contrasting with her eyes, was done up in a bunch of braids, several of which had white and blue flowers woven into them.  

She looked at me calmly. Perhaps she might have smiled, but I found it hard to tell, and I was of a sudden embarrassed to be tramping about the downs in well-worn men’s clothing and uncombed hair. I found the preoccupation of many of my fellow noblewomen with clothing and hairstyles to be inane–indeed I rarely gave my appearance a second thought, though I was told that I was “lovely when I could be bothered” and my cousin and soon-to-be husband the prince always gave me looks that said the same during formal occasions–but this strange woman did not strike me as at all inane. She wandered about on the downs unattended and looked immaculate at the same time. Was it possible?  

“A good morning,” I said a little stupidly.   “It is a very fine morning,” the woman agreed.

“The grass is waving banners of dew to greet the sun, though I think that it shall be cloudy come afternoon, and that too shall be very fine.”  

I nodded, not really any less stupidly than I’d just spoken, for her voice was like strange music or like a spring rivulet tumbling among rocks in the thaw. “I have never seen you before,” I finally observed.  

“Yet we have been here, from the beginning,” she answered, her voice youthful and also knowing as a crone’s.  

Wondering at her use of “we,” I said awkwardly, “I fancied myself lady of these lands, but perhaps you are.”  

“Oh, indeed no.”  She shook her head almost vehemently. “Neither of us claim ownership nor lordship. We are with the land, and it is with us.”  

“Us?”  

“My husband. My self.”  

“Oh.”  I wondered what sort of husband a lady such as her must have. Surely a very great and wise lord. “Do you live around here?”  

“Not in these hills, but we know well their faces and their moods.” She gestured vaguely away westward with a graceful hand. “And where do you live? What occupies your mind by day or night?”  

Somehow those both seemed to me to be the same question. “I love rambling on the downs best. I’ve only accepted the prince’s proposal of marriage because I want to have the power to protect my land, and to wander here at will.”

The woman nodded and smiled. Though the dawn’s light now glinted off her eyes as it did the dew, she did not squint. “Wander in the western hills again, in the hours flanking the dawn, and maybe I shall see you again.”  

She was off before I could say a thing more, bounding over the crest of the hill like a doe, her ankle-length garment doing naught to hinder her. I ran to look into the shadow of the next vale, and she disappeared into it in some peculiar way; though I did note her vanishing, all at once I simply could see her no longer.  

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It was nearly two years before I saw her again. By that time I had married. Marriage was, like feasting, something to which I was largely indifferent. It could be pleasant, and it was also a frequent nuisance which got in the way of my doing as I pleased. My husband was not amenable to my going on expeditions alone with the war on in Arthedain, but Arthedain’s border, where it clashed with benighted Rhudaur, was far away to the northeast. It was only rarely that I succeeded in eluding the well-intended escort which was always sent out into the downs with me, and I had almost begun to believe that the strange woman had been a dream when at last she appeared again.  

This time the dawn was nearly obscured by mist, and I was walking in a slow circle around one of the ancient rings of stone when I nearly ran into her circling from the opposite direction. The mist was so thick that I was inches away from her when we came face to face. I started and gasped, but she smiled slightly as though she’d perceived me long before I’d perceived her, which indeed she must have.  

This time she was cloaked and hooded in blue, but her long hair was trailing out of the hood and down her breast. “Again I meet you on a pleasant morning,” she greeted me with a serene smile.  

Liking that she also considered the chilly fog and the lowering stones to be pleasant, I nodded, then said, “I have looked for you before.”  

“Sometimes the moon is in the sky, sometimes it rests behind the curve of the world,” she answered in a sensible tone.  

I found myself a little embarrassed and flustered again. Additionally, my attempts to ramble in a dress, one of which I was currently committing, always resulted in mud and grass stains on the dress. “Yes, of course,” I muttered.  

“I think you are now the princess of these lands,” she smiled.  

“I married him over a year ago,” I nodded. “It’s a mediocre situation. He is nice enough. He sometimes bores me. But I haven’t the power I wanted.”  

“The power to protect, or to wander?”  

I stammered a little, surprised that she had remembered, and felt my face go warm and prickly in despite of the chilly air. I put the palm of my right hand against one of the cold lowering stones compulsively. “To wander. I’d hoped that a higher rank might at least make others bend to my will if I acted queenly and demanding enough, but instead, they’re the more determined to keep their future queen from going off on her own. As for protecting, I haven’t been tried yet.”  I thought of the war, of the distant front which seemed to me so remote and not quite a real threat; but the knowledge that the threat might someday close upon us, upon our quiet hills and their vivid clouds and their holy monuments, had been with me since childhood. A strange and sudden shiver ran through me.  

The woman noticed this. “There is nothing yet to fear from the bright flames and swords beyond the great road. Things may yet change, and then these lands will need your care. But for now, would it not be well to walk and speak of pleasant things?”  

And so I walked with her, for a time that seemed in some way like days and in another way like mere minutes, but enough time for the sun to ascend well above the hills and slowly dissipate the dense fog, and she spoke of many things regarding the downs and the forested river valley to the west. I couldn’t rightly tell whether she was relating a true history, or a legend, or some of both. If it were true, it would mean she was impossibly old, not mortal and probably not even Elvish. For that time, it did not matter whether it were true. Her voice held my reason and my senses enthralled, and I fancied I could nearly see the things she described there before my eyes as though I had been transported over a sea of time. Ancient kingdoms of men waxed and waned, the land itself changed shape and texture as the story stretched back into a time before any speaking creature had awoken upon the earth, spirits of unfathomable might did battle, and finally–or firstly–a world of water and earth arose upon a ball of fire. When she had finished talking, I found that I was walking up a green hillside in broad daylight, my vision swimming with tears, and could hear the voices of the men calling faintly from the other side of the hill.

“I hear that we must part ways for now,” the woman said gently. Her hood was now thrown back.  

I blinked and blinked, and swiped the side of one hand across my eyes in disgust when blinking was not enough. “I do not know when I’ll next see you.”  

She unclasped the brooch from her cloak and held it out in a dazzling sparkle of blue. “This has been with me for a while, and I know it, and it knows me. When you are able to elude your kind friends, hold it and ask for the name of Goldberry, and I will come and walk with you.”  

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“Did you ever have children?” I asked Goldberry one morning, as we sat facing east with our backs against the noon-warm stone of a barrow, vexed and distressed that my husband’s desire for little ones was growing more vocal by the week. I had not told him I’d been taking a concoction to prevent that ever since we’d wed seven years prior. First I had not wanted to be hindered by pregnancy and motherhood. That was still quite possibly true, but in the past few years I had become primarily concerned about bringing children into a world where war had at last come to our doorstep. The front had extended south, and east along our northeastern border, and the news we received at the king’s keep grew ever worse. It was all but impossible for me to slip away, but Goldberry was often able to appear shortly after I held the beautiful brooch and asked the breeze for her, even when it was not close to dawn.

“No,” she said with a slight chuckle. “That would be very strange. I do not think we could have a child; and if we could, why would we?”  

I laughed. “I like the way you think.” But now her gaze was fixed pensively on nothing in particular, and I saw that she wasn’t simply voicing a preference for a life without children, but asking a different sort of question, one which I didn’t understand. I considered for a while. I had always refrained from inquiring about her husband, for it seemed to me that I would rather not know about him, as though it would mar the sense that I had a unique friend all to myself as we walked and lounged in the downs. Now at last I was made curious enough to ask. “Your husband must be the same manner of being as you are?”  

I still wasn’t sure exactly what manner of being that was, other than a thing deathless and possibly formless in its origin. Goldberry nodded. “We are the same.”

The subject now broached, I blurted, “What is he like? I always picture him as very stern and filled with a most fearful dignity.”  

Goldberry burst out laughing. I had never seen her laugh so hard before. She seemed almost out of her own control and leaned on my shoulder laughing, and I fought a nearly overwhelming impulse to run the fingers of one hand through her bright hair. “Oh no, no,” she gasped, gradually containing her mirth. “Old Tom is even merrier than I am. Often he makes me seem dour!”  

“No!” I said in disbelief.  

“Yes!” I tried not to be disappointed when she sat up straight again whilst brushing strands of hair back behind her slightly pointed ears. “Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow. He can hardly go three breaths without singing, or capering, and often he does both.”  

“I was not expecting that. All right, well, what does he look like? I see him as lordly, perhaps a little dangerous-looking…”  

She laughed again, grinning broadly. “He is short and something of stocky, his seeming that of one who would not harm an ant. He goes about in his bright blue jacket and yellow boots, prancing on the downs and in the meads. None has ever caught him!”  

A terrible feeling burned and twisted in my gut. It expanded to make my face prickle and my hands twitch. Outrage it was, that such a one as Goldberry should be–still be, after ages uncounted!–besotted with such a ridiculous-sounding oaf.  

Goldberry was giving me an odd look, her usually wide and bright eyes hooded. “That does not seem well to you. Perhaps you think that only a great lord would suit me.”  

“Or a great–Yes. I hope you’ll forgive my saying so,” I spoke with difficulty, “but yes. I do not understand.”  

“The sun smiles, and is it weak? The wind capers, and is it ugly?”  

“Oh. Well, I hadn’t really thought of it like that.” Yet somehow I was not quite convinced that a jolly little man in yellow boots could be likened to suns or breezes.  

Goldberry looked hard at me, her face now unfathomable, and I shifted uneasily under her gaze. “There is more to this tale. He is me. I am him.”  

“Oh,” I said again helplessly. This must be something romantic that was beyond my understanding and lacking in my own marriage, or perhaps something metaphysical which surpassed mortal ken.  

“We are the same,” she said again, leaning closer, and spoke nearly in a whisper as though confiding a great secret. “A groove of aspen trees, under the ground unseen by walkers in the forest, shares the same roots. So with us. When the world was fire, before our folk took to themselves any shape, Tom and Goldberry were as one mind. We were one thing with one name, and the Valar were confounded that we would not align ourselves in fealty to any of their number. Because none among them could say that we belonged to them, none were there to speak against sending us down. They sent me–they sent us into a great danger, suspecting at least the danger where we suspected nothing; they told us that we had only to do this thing for them and they would never again trouble us about fealty and belonging. I will not speak of it, with the downs in flower before the sun, but he–we were innocent, and we knew no fear and no pain before then. When we found fear and found pain, we could not bear it and our mind rent in twain. Instead of one, trying to understand, we were two, to console ourself where we could not understand. Tom is more like we were, before. He forgets about fear and pain, most of the time. Goldberry must remember it. But I can bear it, because I see that he is not afraid, and he is also me. He makes his songs about how he found me in a pool with water lilies. That is true in its way, for we were in a pool of bubbling mud when we became two, though it was two creatures who could have danced on the end of a hair. I prefer the water lilies.” She smiled again, lightly, as though her voice had not been low and shaking just moments before. “We have always been here though, on this spot, as the land wends through its many changes. Sometimes we sleep under ice when it musters itself into great mountains that walk the earth. When it is warm, we awake to dance and make verses. We will not leave this land before the world breaks.”  

I stared at her, my arms a mess of gooseflesh despite the warmth of the day. How ignorant must I seem to her, how small and petty? I was crying quietly, and what was worse, it was not just in sympathy, but in stupid ugly self-pity and humiliation.

She seemed all at once to see what she had done. She must have thought of me as she thought of the beasts or the clouds, something that was pleasant and interesting to pass a morning with, not realizing what she doing any more than I’d have suspected myself of bewitching a pet beetle. Perhaps I give her too little credit. Perhaps not. What is even the most clever and hale of mortals, to the eternal? Her grey eyes squinted apologetically and she made to reach out and lay a hand on my shoulder.  

I scrambled back and up to my feet, unable to bear her presence a moment longer. “You love this land yet more than I do. I promise you I will fight to my last breath to keep it safe.” I turned and stumbled away down the hill. 

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I practice in the yard with the men and some of the women, the flash and noise of the blades a welcome distraction. This I have done for years, but in those weeks since I walked away from her on the hill, I have redoubled my efforts. There were objections, of course, that a princess of all women need not know how to fight. I answer that a princess of all women ought to know how to fight. I do not add that this was why I consented to be a princess, to protect my land. In any case, I shan’t be forsworn.  

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Usually she wore only hues of hill, river, and sky. That day, for some reason, she’d been wearing, over a white dress, a belt of red. Though I never looked back, I can picture her as though I’d been staring over my shoulder the whole time, a tiny white figure sitting atop the hill against the barrow–the clouds were like bright ships that day!–that one blood-red speck the brightest thing for miles around.  

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When the combined forces of Angmar and Rhudaur, having at last broken through Cardolan’s defenses just south of Amon Sûl and burned their way westward, came to the folded green lands of Tyrn Gorthad, the princess of Cardolan was among the first people waiting for them with bared steel. Her husband the prince, who had considered it meet to remain in his father’s keep, tore out after her when he discovered that she had eluded his will again as was her wont. Any plans he may have cherished of returning her to the keep were foiled, for he arrived just on time to face the onrush of the enemy. It is told that they fought back to back and held up for some time, until the prince fell first and his wife shortly thereafter.  

Days later, remnants of Cardolan’s people crept out of the downs and found that the occupying forces had left the corpses to rot on the field after looting them. The king, prince, and princess were identified with some difficulty, the king presenting the most trouble as he was without a head, and removed in stealth to an empty barrow. Inspired by the barrows and cairns and standing stones which marked a succession of forgotten inhabitants, the people of Cardolan had long interred their nobility in barrows of their own making. Arthedain had decried this practice as idolatrous, but people who did not live among the downs simply could not be expected to understand.  

By some happy chance or providence, looters’ searches had not disclosed a striking brooch, set with blue stones of divers hues and shades, which the princess had been carrying in a hidden inner pocket of her jerkin. It was only sensible to deposit this, along with other jewels and precious metals which the people had saved, in the royal family’s barrow. Better their treasure be guarded in secret by the dead than wrested from their own hands by their foes.  

Unable to flee to the border undetected, the survivors eked out a furtive living in the downs for several generations. Colonists from Angmar and Rhudaur were tasked with bringing about the extinction of Cardolan’s people, and thus hunted them for sport. Yet in the end, plague came upon the land and ravaged all who yet lived without discrimination. The royal barrow with its store of bones and wealth stood forgotten.

In time, the wights found it.

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Tom looked at the brooch for a while. He knew it, because he had given it to Goldberry an age or two ago, though he forgot who’d given it to him before that. He knew its last owner, for Goldberry had told him of her. Goldberry had talked of her friend from Cardolan, and remarked often on how mortal men and women were like mayflies given just enough grace to speak and not enough grace to have time to speak properly of all the things there were to be spoken of. It had been a time of sadness and lowered voices, even in their merry house, when the armies came in from the north and sowed fear and death in Cardolan. But now the downs were quiet by day and pleasant again, and by night there was naught to fear in them for folk like Tom and Goldberry. It was still a fine idea to destroy the haunted barrows when he found them though, since they were bad places for the little folk, and also who knew if any mind remained to those bones when the wights caused them to walk? Not even old Tom knew precisely what happened to the dead, once they were dead. Surely it was best to just let them lie, and not let wights mess about with them. Tom wondered whether the wights had caused the bones of Goldberry’s friend to move. A shadow like a large cloud low over the hills passed across his mind. No matter, the wights were gone now and all was well.  

“Here is a pretty toy for Tom and his lady! Fair was she who long ago wore this on her shoulder. Goldberry shall wear it now, and we will not forget her!”

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Chapter End Notes

Final line quoted directly from "Fog on the Barrow Downs."

I don’t hold with unmitigated vilifying of the Valar, but I also find them very fallible (usually in their lack of openness) and not above misusing a Maia who did not fit into their scheme of things. The precise nature of this misuse has been a vague plotbunny in my mind for a long time, but it didn’t seem like the thing to flesh out here, since the important part for our purposes was its effect on the original Goldberry-Tom entity.