Of the Coming of Fingolfin to Mandos and his meeting with Fëanor by bunn

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“Your houseless spirits shall come then to Mandos...”

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Morgoth’s great foot came down upon him. His body was broken.

There was a brief moment of darkness. Fingolfin, ripped agonisingly from his crushed body, came back to consciousness to see Morgoth limping away, back towards his gates. Fingolfin’s body lay bloody and surprisingly small behind Morgoth, among the black ash and the great pits that his enemy’s great mace had made. The land all around him was dark, under skies black with the roiling acrid fumes from Thangorodrim.

The warming surge of fury that had carried Fingolfin through his last battle was gone, and the cold and horror of Angband struck him like a blow. He felt naked, without blood or heart or breath, more naked than any mere lack of clothes could ever make him feel. The cold that beat out from Angband and struck at his unprotected spirit was worse than any cold he had known even in the crossing of the Grinding Ice. At least that cold had felt clean. This cold felt foul, and it bit agonisingly into the wounds that Morgoth had made on Fingolfin’s spirit.

Something faintly warm and comforting nudged his shoulder, and he turned to see the indistinct shadow of Rochallor, his horse. Out of habit, he reached up to scratch the horse’s neck.

Then he heard the call, like a horn sounding in the distance far to the west, a call clear, merry and unafraid.

“That is for us, old friend,” he told Rochallor. “I don’t know if the Halls of Mandos have stables, but I can’t leave you here. I can’t say I’m confident of my welcome either, but perhaps they’ll have a meadow for you, at least.” He swung back up onto Rochallor’s back, cloudy and shadowed as it was, and set him to a canter, heading south and west, away from the cold and darkness.

The words of Mandos came back to him. “Slain ye may be, and slain ye shall be: by weapon and by torment and by grief; and your houseless spirits shall come then to Mandos. There long shall ye abide and yearn for your bodies, and find little pity though all whom ye have slain should entreat for you.”

That was the promise, or perhaps it could be called a threat, that the Valar had made to the departing Noldor. But there was nowhere else to go.

He was not the only spirit moving west, though there must be a great host before him. The dead of the plain of Ard-galen, the dead of Lothlann and Dorthonion and much of Eastern Beleriand too were fleeing from the shadow.

Fingolfin did not see many of his own people, the watchers of Ard-galen, defenders of the mountain-walls of Hithlum. He looked for his friend Hador, but did not see him. Hador had died in almost the first attack, defending Fingolfin’s rear-guard to buy precious time for the forces of Hithlum to reach safety. He and most of the rest of Fingolfin’s folk must have already gone ahead.

Hador would go on from Mandos, and pass beyond the world. He was already lost to those of his friends who could go only as far as the Halls of Mandos, and must stay in Arda until its end.

But before long, Fingolfin came up with people that he knew: a company of rider-spirits on pale shades of horses, recognisable as Maglor’s people from Lothlann. Clearly they had died in the rivers of fire, for their spirits still showed signs of burning, though they shone from within with the Light of the Trees too. They were moving west, but they were not travelling swiftly. Fingolfin hailed them.

“Well met!” he called.

“There will be no more good meetings,” one of them said to him grimly, although they bowed.

“That is more than I know,” Fingolfin answered. “Who knows now, if meetings will be good or ill?”

“We stood with Fëanor at Alqualondë,” another told him, uneasily. That meant, of course, that they had been among the first attackers there. They had not passed the Grinding Ice, and probably they had helped to burn the ships at Losgar too. But Morgoth was the Enemy, not Fingolfin’s loyal friends and liegemen. Ever since the Feast of Reuniting, Fingolfin had worked to make all his people stand as one, and it was not to be thought of that he should abandon any of them now.

Fingolfin gave them a smile, making an effort not to show his own unease. It was second nature, by now. “We have all held this land as best we could against Morgoth.” he said. “All of you have fought the darkness. No-one could have done more. But we cannot linger here. We are unprotected, and our Enemy will send out necromancers who will seek to use us against our friends. Ride on with me now, and we will find out what comes next.”

The people of Fëanor were the most reluctant of the slain spirits moving west. Fingolfin came on hunters out of East Beleriand, with tall ghostly hounds loping by their side, craftsmen and smiths from Himlad, Noldor traders from Thargelion. All moving west, but slowly, warily. None of Fëanor’s seven sons had fallen in the battle, and so the spirits of his people had no-one to lead them, save for the High King.

Fingolfin gathered them together as he went, and as he rode on, their pale indistinct figures followed.

Before long, he began to meet spirits of grey-elves on the road. They shone less brightly than the Eldar, but their movement was more sure. Among them moved many of the strange flickering spirits of Men, the slain people of Dorthonion. Fingolfin wept to see them there, for they had many spirits of children with them, faint and small, and they walked in grief and fear after their lords, Angrod and Aegnor, the sons of Finarfin. Fingolfin greeted his nephews with sorrow, and gave orders.

The riders lifted the children onto the horses’ backs, and he slowed the pace so that those afoot could keep up. By the time they reached the Sea, all of the elven spirit-horses were carrying the injured, old and young of Men along with their riders. High on Rochallor’s great back, the strange small spirit of a mortal girl-child rode before Fingolfin.

Rochallor paused as they faced the grey waves, and Fingolfin turned to look back at the host of dead spirits that came behind him. Their faces were pale and sad. He looked down at the small child who sat before him, and smiled down at her.

“We are going home,” he said to her. “We shall ride home into the sunset. We should sing.”

“I know a song,” she told him. “A song about cherries on the tree.” It was hard to see her small mortal face clearly. It changed from moment to moment from the child who had died, to rippling echoes of the woman she would never now grow to be. But it seemed to him that she smiled back.

And so as that great host of the dead set out out into the west, high above the sighing waves, they sang as they rode, a song that went with the horn-call that beckoned them on, a song of the cherries of Middle-earth, hanging red upon the tree.

Valinor looked different, seeing it in the spirit, or perhaps it was the land itself that had changed. The mountains were taller, improbably huge and faced on the Eastern side with slopes like glass, a formidable barrier to the flesh, if not the spirit. The gentle slopes and foothills Fingolfin had explored in his youth were lost.

The long trail of spirits went singing high above the mountains, where the air twisted into a ribbon and formed into a road, and led them down at last to Mandos’s tall shadowed gates.

Before the open gates of Mandos’s halls, a great number of the dead were already gathered, passing in. But as Fingolfin came up at the head of that great host, first one and two turned back to to look, and then a few more, until all those ahead of him had turned away from the Halls to join the singers. They parted before him, leaving a wide path to the gate, and Fingolfin nodded to acknowledge them, as the song ended.

Fingolfin handed the small faint figure of the girl-child down, into her father’s arms. “Farewell, and thank you for the song,” he said, and urged Rochallor onwards. Maglor’s riders, who seemed by now to have appointed themselves an unofficial honour guard, followed him with Angrod and Aegnor at their head, and all that great host of the Dead of Middle-earth, Elves and Men, came behind.

Before the gate stood Mandos, tall, severe, the Doomsman of the Valar himself. Fingolfin had no desire to look up at him like a child, and he was grateful for Rochallor’s height.

The Noldor, in their flight from Valinor, had been promised death by the Valar. They had been promised grief too, and Fingolfin had still led them on, even when Fëanor and his sons had deserted them.

Now the third High King of the Noldor was come where his father Finwë and his brother Fëanor had come before him. Fëanor must have arrived here almost alone, for he had fought and died with few friends about him.

Fingolfin was not alone.

He rode up to Mandos and looked at him, though it was hard to look any of the Valar in the eyes.

“You are not the first of the Valar I have faced today,” he said. “We have kept our Enemy penned in Angband all these years, until he called on the power of the earth itself against us. I have wounded the Enemy with seven wounds. Now I answer your summons, Doomsman of the Valar. What doom do you set for my people and for me?”

“You rebelled against the lawful authority of the Valar, and slew your own folk at Alqualondë, Fingolfin, son of Finwë,” Mandos said. “Many died because you would not turn back. You led them into the Ice.”

A deep murmur went up from the assembled dead, but Fingolfin held up a hand and they were still.

Fingolfin looked at Mandos, steadily. “That is true. But in Middle-earth, many lived, because I came across the Ice to their aid. While the Valar sat in joy beyond their mountains, I came to Middle-earth, and found there was a task to do. The Valar sent the Sun and Moon, but we lesser folk too played our part. We stood together against the Shadow. We brought years of peace to Aftercomers and to Grey-elves who had never heard of Alqualondë. The Valar left them to become Morgoth’s thralls. Believe me, that was not a kindness. And though those years are over now, they were bright and joyful nonetheless.”

And Mandos smiled, who rarely smiled at all. “So my lord Manwë said to me,” he said. “I promised you little pity, but you do not need it. Be welcome in my halls, Fingolfin, son of Finwë, and all your people, for the years of peace, and the seven wounds you gave to our Enemy.”