Bright Are The Stars Upon the Margin of the World by Kenaz

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Bright Are the Stars Upon the Margin of the World

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First came the spark, the spiraling current that roused him and called him forth from the lightless depths of not-yet-being. He awoke in deepest gloaming, and found that he Was; he possessed a body, tall and lean, with hands to grasp, and legs to shore him up upon the ground, and eyes to see and ears to hear. But most profound of Ilúvatar's gifts was the mind, for as the blood quickened in his veins and he took in all that was about him, there was understanding: to know without being taught that he might rise and then walk and then run; to know without being told that these were eyes and this a hand and that a mouth. And great was his wonder.

All around him, silent beings stood like sentinels, waiting with the patience of the ancient and the steadfast, great in strength and pride, and these, he knew, were trees. They stretched up bountiful arms in welcome and bade him come and walk among them.

And so, he walked.

The laughter of wind in wood was the first sound he knew. It filled his heart. This, he thought, was joy, and he embraced it. His own laughter became like to that sound: a gamboling breeze caught and held by leaves and buffeted against branches. He learned the deep and resonant hum of the oaks whose sap rose steadily and slow. He learned to listen for the whispers of the birch trees, slender and pale, who shared tidings of the day amongst themselves. He learned to seek water to slake his thirst by following the dancing fronds of the willow. And when he was smitten with pangs, he thought: this must be hunger, and he found that the trees held many fruits that they willingly shared.

He slept, when the need arose, sheltered by the hollow limbs of a black yew-tree. The tree whispered stories of Spring, when Yavanna had sown the seeds of her devising and called the yew into being, and it sank its roots deep into the earth to drink of the hidden streams there, and spread its limbs wide to embrace the stars, and she was pleased by this, and declared that its foliage should ever be green. Then the yew spoke of a darker time, when Yavanna roamed in grief and tears, for Darkness had come to the land and threatened it with blight, and with her magic she sent her creatures into slumber, and gave them dreams of renewal, and of the coming of the Children. The yew whispered memories of early bliss, of light that had been and was yet to come; it whispered memories of the world's beginning, and these became his memories.

In time, he learned that he was not alone. There were others of form fair and strong whose spirits had long been held in stasis, and they, too, had risen from their earthy beds to feel the soil beneath their feet. They spoke with voices, and it filled him with awe, for he had not had a reason to test his own voice, save only to laugh when his joy became too great to hold within. Yet when they spoke, he understood their words. They named themselves Quendi, and bade him abide with them a while. Curious and eager to learn, he did.

Beyond the eaves of the forest, the land spread wide around them, sloping gently with rocks and rises, darkening in the distance as a dark scar of mist-topped mountains surged upward from the core of the earth, baring teeth of stone. A great mere lay before him, reflecting the eventide in swirling arrays of purple and blue. The water breathed in and out against the shore, and its song as it played around the stones beguiled him. He sat down upon a rock to listen. You are children of starlight, the water sang, the fairest and most favored of Ilúvatar's design. Great deeds will you bring forth upon the world. And he smiled and listened still, but in his heart, though born of starlight and culled from dream and song, he was a son of the wilderness who wist no sire but the wood, and he cared little for great deeds.

The wind danced across the surface of the mere, bringing ripples to the placid surface, and the light of the stars danced atop the water, although above him, the sky appeared perfectly still. He turned his eyes to the implacable heavens, and beheld, for the first time, the figure in the firmament: a warrior, terrible and grim, with a red star to mark his shoulder. It seemed to him that the warrior watched him with a firm and solemn stare.

"Who is he?" he asked, but the water did not answer.

"Who is he?" he asked, but his kindred did not know.

The others lingered happily by the water, enchanted by its singing. But the figure remained, standing ever aloft. He felt the weight of its gaze bearing down upon him, and after a time, he could bear its eternal watchfulness no longer.

He sought refuge in the forest where green canopies blotted out the sky, and there he dwelt with the ancient trees, and the birds of the air, and the beasts of the ground, and learned the lore of the wild woodlands. From the hare he learned speed and stealth, and from the fox, cunning. From hart and hind he learned to tread lightly on the ground, and from the trees, he learned forbearance, and the growth of strength by the long and steady path. He slept ever beneath the black yew, and in time he was unmatched in the knowledge of the wood and weary hills. He wondered if the swordsman watched him still. But if he could not see the stars, he thought, perhaps they could not observe him.

 

 

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One day the sound of a great horn echoed through the forest, rattling the very branches with its peal. Many a bird and beast fled, but he had not yet learned fear, and he stood alert though hidden by the trees who had him ever in their keeping. A majestic creature came thundering into the copse on a doughty steed with a coat of starlight and hooves burnished with gold. He was stunned by the brilliance of the bright hunter, the one who named himself Oromë, the huntsman of the Valar.

"Who are the Valar?" he asked. "Are you kin to us, the Quendi?"

Oromë had smiled at him indulgently. "The Valar are the Powers of the world. We are the witnesses to the Vision of Ilúvatar, the All-father."

At this answer, he nodded, though he did not understand.

"And what is thy name?" Oromë asked him, and he could not say, for he had no name. It had not occurred to him that he had need of one. The birds and beasts and trees, after all, did not name themselves.

"Come hunt with me, thou nameless one," Oromë commanded, "for I perceive the woods have taught thee much, and I would fain behold the measure of thy skill."

He rode with Oromë in the deep shaws, Nahar bearing them swiftly upon his back as if the weight of them together was nothing to him. They traveled barren fells and open valleys, and ever he grew in strength and skill. From Oromë he learned to whirl a blade of steel, to whet the sword-blade and weave wondrous words of sharpness over its edge. The crafts of the bowyer and fletcher he was given, and Oromë himself remarked that he took to the bow as if he had been born to it, and as he felt its curves beneath his hands, he knew in his heart that this was so. From the willing trunk of a yew, kin to the tree that had long guarded his slumber, he wrought a longbow of such soundness that no string or sinew could withstand its resistance, but snapped at the draw, and it grieved him, for the bow was a beautiful piece in which he took much pride. He asked Oromë to advise him, but the Vala only smiled inscrutably and bade him wait.

"Thou hast taken well to my lessons, but this weapon thou canst not yet wield. Thou must thy quality demonstrate ere it will draw for thee, but draw it shall, and for thee alone, for none other will have the fortitude to master it."

In their journeys, Oromë spoke often of Valinor, the glorious realm, and how it had been decreed by Manwë, highest in might and wisdom of all the Valar, that the Quendi should be summoned to the West, where they would gather at the knees of the Powers before the light of two great trees.

"My forests are vast and dense and plentiful with game; long couldst thou wander, dwelling amongst the trees that are so dear to thee, free to pursue woodcraft and hunting as is thy wont. A great lord of the Quendi thou might be, with thy fearlessness and prowess inspiring hearts to boldness. Come."

He listened, and he considered, but he had never yearned for greatness, only for the tranquility of the weald around him and the laughter of wind in leaves. Above, the stars flashed with a light akin to fury in the eventide, and he descried that the red star at the warrior's shoulder seemed to burn more fearsomely than ever before, as if in warning.

"Will I see these stars in Valinor?" he asked.

"It is all one sky," Oromë responded, "one mighty dome crafted in the song of the One, but upon the margin of the world, the stars thou observeth upon these shores may seem to thine eyes dim and very distant."

He found, then, that despite the promise of bountiful forests and plentiful game, he was reticent to accept the summons, for though he often looked upon the warrior in the sky with an inexplicable dread, he would not be sundered from him, for in his shining pattern he had read his doom.

 

 

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Often he fared the way alone, for Oromë betimes had business of his own and would vanish, only to return unlooked for of his own volition. Once, when he wandered friendless in an unfamiliar place, he came across the spoils of a battle between beasts: a stag dead upon the mould. Its eyes were filmy and sightless; red blood stained its muzzle and tipped the points of its antlers. He thought to take the antlers for his own use, but as he knelt to claim them, the bruin to whom the carcass belonged came forth and challenged him, and he had naught at hand to repel it but his wit and his brawn and a knife of knapped flint. He called out for help, but there was none, for the trees could not move to come to his aid, and the beasts that were his friends were not fierce enough to lend him strength, and the mighty eagles soared too high to hear his cries. He fought as best he could, though great was his terror, and though the beast was mighty-thewed and thrawn. Yet his swiftness and prowess availed him at the last, and he slipped his knife into the bruin's heart. Roaring death and umbrage, the creature fell.

Oromë came forth then, with spear in hand, emerging like a shadow made manifest from a stand of tall trees. He had not been far away, he said, and had been ready to intervene at need. "But thou," he continued, glinting eyes beholding him in pride and wonder, "thou hadst need of me not at all."

"Now, what is thy name?" Oromë asked a second time. "Thou who art great of growth and goodly - limbed and mighty in strength? I have foreseen great deeds in days to come, and I wouldst ken the name by which to sing them."

He was thoughtful for a time, and then he smiled lightly and said, "If you would call me mighty in strength, then name me Beleg."

And there beneath the stars, Beleg, newly - named, strung his bow with the sinews of the bruin, and though it took all his effort to draw it back, draw it did, and the sinew held. He knew that Oromë had augured true, and that his hand alone might put his bow to use.

"Now thou hast thy quality displayed," Oromë told him, and set a hand upon his shoulder.

Beleg felt the strangeness of his touch and understood at last what he had failed to grasp at their first meeting: that though he roved the lands of Arda in form similar to the Quendi, Oromë was something other and apart, a being of great knowledge and magics, and of ancient wisdom, and of power. Held in his strange clasp, Beleg felt the tumults of a world unseen and the ascendancy constrained by such a meager fleshly form. Beleg then felt his insignificance keenly: a child alone in the wide and mysterious world. He looked up into the heavens, and still the stars were shining brightly down, his keeper brightest of them all: red the shoulder of the sword-arm and brilliant the girdle, fearsome the stance of the warrior eternally suspended against the vault of the sky.

"Who is he?" Beleg whispered to the Vala, for if Oromë could not tell him, who could? But as Oromë gazed long upon the heavens and was slow to answer, Beleg trembled to hear the imminent reply.

When the Vala deigned look back at him again, a shadow rested on his brow. "It is Menelmacar, the Swordsman of the Sky. Varda Star-kindler set him in the heavens that we might remember the strength of the one who will rise up and defy the darkness at the end of days."

"Why does he watch me?" Beleg asked, and it shamed him to hear the pleading in his voice. "I know that he does, that he has since the day of my awakening."

Oromë shook his head slowly. "I cannot say, for even I know not Ilúvatar's design for this world and the beings in it, only my small part."

But Beleg looked to him with desperation clear on his face, as if to say that this was not enough, that there was more he must know.

"It is no small thing to have the eyes of Menelmacar upon thee," Oromë said without speaking, but as an echo resonating in Beleg's mind. "Perhaps thy life is twined with his, and he looks to thee to aid and abet him." He touched Beleg's cheek with a gentleness that chilled him, for in that touch was a portent.

"Yes," Beleg whispered, fey and filled with foreboding that waxed in his heart. "My life must for certes be twined with his for him to hold me so tightly in his sights. Perhaps I must yield my life in service to his cause, and in death will come my valor."

But Oromë only smiled his inscrutable smile. "It is not for me to know the music yet to come, nor for thee. But this knowledge I can impart, Beleg Strongbow: unto the Children of Ilúvatar a deathless life has been given, and thou art before all else a Child of Ilúvatar, even as thou claimest the forest around thee as thy father. So fear not for thy future, nor for thy life, for thy fate wills not that thou shalt drink the draught of death from foes."

At this, the foreboding in Beleg's heart lifted, and he found peace in the heart of the woods amidst the trees and birds and creatures there. Thus, when Oromë pressed his summons, Beleg considered all that the Vala had told him.

"I will go to the West," he decided at last. "I will hunt in the forests of Oromë, and free myself at last from the Menelmacar's adamant stare."

Yet he was loath to leave the lands that had reared him, and he tarried at the fringes of the last of the hosts. With each step, the lights of Menelmacar marked his passage, beseeching him to stay. There came a day when Elwë Greycloak, who had led them hence from the Awakening Shores toward the uttermost West, bade them rest a while beyond the river and before the sea, and Beleg rested, and hoped that his chieftain would not rush to depart. But Elwë went alone into the forests there, and vanished out of time and mind. Beleg waited, and watched the trees of Nan Elmoth grow tall and dark and strong, and the spectre of the swordsman hung ever in the sky above him. He knew then that the distant West was not for him: it was here that the Song had birthed him, and it was here that he would stay.

"Come what will, the wildwood is my home," he told the stars. "I will have dread of you no longer, for I deem you must have some need of me to keep me ever in your vision." He cast off the fetters of his foreboding and laughed as he had not since his earliest days, a sound of gentle winds dancing with the leaves. He threw wide his arms and bared his heart to the swordsman's unrelenting stare. "I am of the deathless born, and so I will await your coming with joy in my heart.

"Long have you called to me," he shouted now, "and at last I shall answer: I am ready, Menelmacar. I will fight at your side, and lend the strength of my sword and of my bow, for I am Beleg the Mighty, and if great deeds of mine have been foretold, then they will be deeds done in your service that the darkness might at last be vanquished." And as each word passed his lips, he spirit was filled with hope, and he embraced what he had long believed he must fear. The great swordsman of the heavens was no grim harbinger, but a brother-in-arms who might lead him toward destiny.

Above him, the wheeling stars measured out years like silver thread, and time pulled taut as a bowstring. Borgil, the everstar, glowed the color of blood in the firmament, and Menelmacar watched the doom of Beleg unfold beneath him in immutable silence from the vast, cold vaults of the sky.

 

 

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Chapter End Notes

Although there is some debate even within canonical sources over the origin of Menelmacar, I have, for reasons that should be patently obvious, chosen the interpretation that Varda placed the constellation in the sky to represent Túrin Turambar, who will be released from death to fight Melkor at the end of days. After some internal debate, I opted to use the name Menelmacar, despite Telumehtar being the oldest given name (thus arguably the most appropriate for a story taking place during the Years of the Trees), but Telumehtar seemed too closely akin to Telimektar, the son of Tulkas, who gives rise to an alternate interpretation of the constellation which was not relevant to this tale. I have, at times, paraphrased or taken directly the words of The Silmarillion, The Lay of the Children of Húrin, and other Tolkien sources. I hope this is taken as the homage it is meant to be. Oshun's biography of Beleg for the Silmarillion Writers Guild was also an incredibly helpful resource.