Spell of Silence by Zdenka

Chapter 1

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Springtime in Doriath was very fair. As Daeron walked through the forest glades by the moon’s light, he saw where new leaves budded on every branch or early flowers rose up from the grass. The ice covering the river had almost all melted away, and the waters of Esgalduin ran freely, rushing onward with a melodious noise. In the distance, he heard the song of a nightingale, sweet and plaintive.

Daeron held his wooden flute, and he knew it could make music sweeter still. He played snatches of melody as he walked, composing a new song half-aloud and half in his head. From time to time, he lowered his flute and called, “Lúthien!” There was no answer. But his music would call her to him, and then she would dance. If the light in her eyes was for his music and the sheer delight of dancing, and not for him, still he took joy in her joy. The river shining silver in the moonlight, the white flowers of niphredil and the nightingale and the fresh breeze: all of these he would put into his song for her.

His springtime-song was nearly finished by the time he found her. He was coming to the end of a phrase when he caught sight of her from a distance, her blue mantle and long dark hair half-visible through the trees. Even without that, he would have known her at once by the grace of her movements and the lightness of her steps. Daeron smiled and adjusted his fingers to call her attention with a joyous trill of his flute. Then he stopped abruptly, and the breath that should have supported his music caught in his throat.

Lúthien was not alone. Beside her walked a stranger, that ragged mortal Man. Daeron had thought—if he thought of it at all—that the mortal would have gone away, or died, or that the Girdle of Melian’s protection would cast him out again. But he was here, walking beside Lúthien, a wretched wanderer hand in hand with the daughter of the King. The look of adoration on his face was only to be expected. But the way Lúthien was looking at him— She gazed at the mortal with shining eyes as she had never gazed at Daeron, and the sight went through him like keen steel.

They were too intent on each other to notice him. Daeron remained still as if turned to stone, his bloodless fingers clutching his flute, until the two of them passed away and were lost to sight among the trees. Then he turned and went in the opposite direction. He tried more than once to express his sorrow in song, or to play a wild lament on his flute, but he could not; each time he fell silent after a few notes, and his voice died away. He wandered for hours without paying heed to where he walked, while the moon set and the sun rose and the morning chorus of birds awakened overhead. Daeron found no joy now in the spring; the soft breeze and the beauty of the flowers seemed a mockery.

At last he looked up and realized his feet had brought him in a circle; he had arrived back in the same clearing where he first saw Lúthien and the stranger, though they were long gone. He knew the place well; Lúthien had danced for him here, while he played for her. He gripped his flute in a convulsive motion. But what use was it now, to be the greatest singer of the Sindar? He could call to Lúthien with music, but she would not come. It would not ease his heart.

A bird had alighted on a branch near him and was singing the same call over and over again: three low notes and one high. He felt a sudden surge of fury that the bird could sing so cheerily when all the world was awry.

At once Daeron raised his flute to his lips. He blew across it softly, barely a whisper; not enough to bring a sound from the instrument. Closing his eyes, he continued to play without breath, moving his fingers in a silent music. And Doriath heard him. Land and water and sky that had so often resounded to his playing, the woods that he loved: he took their sounds into his silence as he had often taken them into his music, and then he took the echoes. A soft sighing seemed to pass through the woods, and then nothing.

Daeron opened his eyes. The songbird’s feathered throat still moved, but silently. No sound came from the drip of melting ice or the river running over stones; the young leaves stirred in the breeze without a rustle. Daeron could feel the spell of silence moving outward through the woods of Doriath. Where it passed, voices dwindled and music died away. Any word spoken or note sung fell flat, without echoes, and was quickly swallowed up by silence. Daeron smiled bitterly and walked away, clutching his silent flute.

All other songs he made, Daeron played again: in grief under the beeches of Doriath, or wandering in regret. That springtime song alone he never came back to, and its last cadence remained forever unfinished.