A Beleriand Treasury of Childish Tales by Clodia

“Goldilocks and the Three Balrogs”

taken from

A Beleriand Treasury of Childish Tales

as told to

Erestor and Melinna of Ered Luin

(with apologies of a more-than-orientally-splendid nature to Rudyard Kipling)

Once upon a time, O my Best Beloved, in the High and Far-Off Days when the Sun was new, there was a city in the Shadowy Mountains fifty miles North of the Forest of Brethil and forty miles West of the Pass of Anach (that is magic). Now there are four hundred and fifty-two stories about this city, which was called Gondolin on every day of the year except when the Wind came whistling out of the East, and then it was known as Ondolindë instead; but this is not one of them. It is not the story of the Eagle’s Gossip, or the Man who came from the Sea. It is not the story of the King’s Daughter, or the Mole who loved Unwisely, or the White Wine of Nienna. It is the story of The Most Noble Lord Yellow-Tresses of the House of the Golden Flower; and we will call him Goldilocks, for short. He was not a Sinda or a Silvan or a Teler, or even a Vanya, which he might well have been, but don’t ask me why just now. He was a Noldo, and he lived most cosily in that city called Gondolin (or Ondolindë when the Wind was wrong), and he had ’sclusively yellow hair that shone like gold in the sunlight. (And you must not forget his hair.)

Now attend and listen!

Gondolin-Ondolindë was beautiful. It had white walls, high towers, broad stairways and shining fountains. It was built on an island in a valley that had held a blue lake in the Time of the Very Beginnings; and its builders were Elves who had once lived in Valinor and were quite convicted that they were the most ’scruciatingly brilliant city-builders that ever there were. It was as fair as the mountains that slumbered beneath the Moon, and of all the cities that once stood in lost Beleriand, only Elu Thingol’s Thousand Caves were fairer.

Gondolin-Ondolindë was hidden. Deep under the mountains that snaked round the valley lay the Outer Gate. Past the Outer Gate was a passageway called the Dark Guard; and past the Dark Guard was a ravine guarded by seven gates and the warden Ecthelion, and this ravine was called Orfalch Echor. And altogether apart from all this, the very great Vala Ulmo of the Sea had once come up from the River Sirion dressed like a fish in silver mail and made a Magic for the hiding of Gondolin.

And yet Gondolin-Ondolindë was not safe. The Gondolindrim very seldom went out of the city, and when they did they were sorry for it. Once they tried to win a battle against all the enemies of all the Elves in one week, but on the sixth day a Balrog came out of the North and scattered their army with three blows. The King of Gondolin was very surprised and said, “O Balrog, who are you?” And the Balrog said, “O Elf, may Morgoth reign forever! I am the greatest of thirty thousand brothers, and our home is in the iron vaults beneath Angband. We heard that you were going to defeat all the enemies of all the Elves, and my brothers sent me to ask when your army would be ready.” The King of Gondolin was more surprised than ever and said, “O Balrog, you have scattered all my army that I made ready to defeat all the enemies of all the Elves.” And the Balrog said, “O Elf, may Morgoth reign forever, but do you really call that an army? Where I come from we breed twice as many Orcish soldiers every month from Elven prisoners.” Then the King of Gondolin fell flat on his face and said, “O Balrog! I went to war to show my cousins that the Gondolindrim still remember why the Noldor left Valinor, and not because I really cared about defeating the enemies of the Elves. Now I am humbled, and it serves me right.” So the Gondolindrim went back to Gondolin, and the Outer Gate was closed, and a law was made so that no one who came to the city could ever go out again. After that, all the enemies of all the Elves knew that there was a city in the Shadowy Mountains; and now the real story part of my story begins.

[Picture]

[This is the picture of the Balrog that came out of the North and scattered all the army that the King of Gondolin had made ready to defeat the enemies of the Elves. He was really a very naughty Balrog, and his Daddy had to spank him ever so often and also his twenty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine other brothers that lived in the iron vaults beneath Angband. You know he was the greatest of them all, and so his name was Gothmog, Lord of Balrogs and high-captain of Angband. The Elf on the left is the King of Gondolin and beside him is Goldilocks (you must particularly remember his hair). The warden Ecthelion is on the other side of the battlefield, so I haven’t drawn him. I think it would look better if you painted the Balrog red and the Elves yellow.]

Gondolin still stayed hidden for ever so long. It stayed hidden while Nargothrond fell and while Túrin fought his Dragon; and when Lúthien went out of the World really and truly, it was hidden as well. And when the Man came from the Sea (but remember, Best Beloved, this story is not about him) and told everyone that there was no more Magic for the hiding of Gondolin, everyone was still sure that the city was hidden; and of course they were wrong. Then the Man (his name was Tuor) married the King’s Daughter and the Baby was born, and all of the Gondolindrim as well as Goldilocks were most ’scruciatingly joyful. (Well, all but for one, but this story is not about him either). And presently there came an evening when the Sun glowed red and the sky was dark; and over the Shadowy Mountains to the North came all the enemies of all the Elves.

Then the Gondolindrim were aghast and the King was astounded and everyone knew really and truly that there was no more Magic for the hiding of Gondolin. And the King’s Daughter came to Goldilocks with the Baby in her arms and said, “O Goldilocks, a secret way has been prepared beneath the walls, for I am wise and I believed the Man who came from the Sea. Now let us escape from the enemies of the Elves.”

“O my Lady,” said Goldilocks, “what of your father?”

“My father bids us leave,” said the King’s Daughter, very sorrowful. “For he is a King; and you know what Kings are like.”

So while the enemies of the Elves were breaking down the walls, Goldilocks (you will not have forgotten his hair) ran among the towering spires and marble steps and tumbling fountains with the King’s Daughter and the Baby and the Man who came from the Sea, till they came at last to the square that was called the Square of the King. And there was the Balrog that once came out of the North and scattered the army of the King of Gondolin. Now this Balrog was really and truly great and he had a fiery whip that went cerr-rack! when he cracked it, and Goldilocks and the King’s Daughter and the Baby and the Man who came from the Sea were all very surprised indeed.

“We must go back!” said the King’s Daughter, and the Man said, “We cannot!” and the Baby began to cry as all Babies have cried since the Time of the Very Beginnings and will always cry until the Very Last Changing of the World. And even though Goldilocks knew that the Balrog was too big to fight, he stepped forwards into the Square of the King and said, “O Balrog, let us pass!”

“Who’s that trying to cross my Square?” growled the Balrog and cracked his fiery whip, cerr-rack! Just like that!

“Lord Goldilocks!” said Goldilocks in his bravest voice. “Let us pass!”

“Oh no, you don’t!” said the Balrog. “I’m going to feed you to the Wolves for breakfast!”

And so he would have done, only the warden Ecthelion came rushing into the Square at that very moment and sent the Balrog tumbling into a fountain. Then the fiery whip was all put out and the water hissed and the steam came rushing up in great foggy puffs and fluffy white clouds, and the greatest Balrog of them all was never seen again. So that was all right, Best Beloved, wasn’t it?

On went Goldilocks and the King’s Daughter and the Baby and the Man who came from the Sea. The Dragons had torn the walls down by now and there were Orcs and Wolves and Trolls and all manner of horrid creatures all through the city, but they came almost to the secret way that had been prepared by the King’s Daughter without meeting any of them. As they went, they met many of their friends and dear families hurrying away from the enemies of the Elves, and the King’s Daughter went statelily forward to meet them and said, “What is your trouble, O friends?”

“What is our trouble?” they cried. “We were living peacefully in our white city, as is our custom, when upon a sudden Gondolin was besieged; and now we are trapped in a perilous and noisome city, and the walls are torn down, and Dragons and Balrogs are stalking through the streets! That is our trouble, O Daughter of the King, and we are most extremely troubled on account of that trouble, for it is a troublesome trouble, unlike any trouble we have known!”

Then the King’s Daughter said, “O friends, a secret way has been prepared beneath the walls, for I am wise and I believed the Man who came from the Sea. Now let us escape from the enemies of the Elves.”

“O my Lady,” said the friends and dear families, “what of your father?”

Then up and spoke Goldilocks (have you forgotten his hair?) and he said, very sorrowful, “Wise is the King’s Daughter, who has prepared a secret way beneath the walls; and stubborn is her father, who bids us leave! For you know what Kings are like.”

So on went Goldilocks, and the King’s Daughter, and the Baby, and the Man who came from the Sea, and the friends and dear families, till at last they came to the secret way that had been prepared by the King’s Daughter. And there by the entrance was a Balrog! He was the smallest brother of that great Balrog that had once scattered the army of the King of Gondolin and he had a little whip that went hiss-ss! when he cracked it.

Forwards stepped Goldilocks, sword in hand. “O Balrog,” he said, “let us pass!”

“Who’s that trying to enter my Passage?” squeaked the Balrog and cracked his little whip, hiss-iss! Just like that!

“Lord Goldilocks!” said Goldilocks in his fiercest voice. “Let us pass!”

“Oh no, you don’t!” said the Balrog. “I’m going to feed you to the Trolls for lunch!”

“Let us pass!” cried Goldilocks and, “Let us pass!” cried the King’s Daughter and, “Let us pass!” cried the Man who came from the Sea and the friends and dear families all at once, and they made a most terrible noise. The Baby did not shout, for it was cooing over the Balrog’s little whip.

The Balrog looked at the sword (and it looked very sharp) and he counted the King’s Daughter and the Man and the friends and dear families (and they looked very cross) and he said, “Perhaps I shall not feed you all to the Trolls. Perhaps I shall only feed that Baby to the Trolls. Or perhaps –” (for he saw that this made everyone look very cross indeed) “– perhaps I shall go elsewhere and find other Elves for the Trolls to eat for their lunch.”

Then the smallest Balrog curled up his little whip, and he put his claws behind his back, and he tiptoed away most mousy-quiet. So that was all right, Best Beloved, wasn’t it?

After the Balrog was altogether gone, Goldilocks and the King’s Daughter and the Baby and the Man and the friends and dear families all went through the secret way beneath the walls, and so they came out of the besieged city into the Shadowy Mountains. ’Member these weren’t the Blue Mountains, or the Iron Mountains, or the White Mountains, but the ’sclusively high, stony, icy-cold Shadowy Mountains, where there was darkness and dangerous caves and ’sclusively snow-coloured clouds all over. The Wolf and the Orc and the Troll lived there, and they were ’sclusively fierce and dangerous beasts; but the Eagle, he was the ’sclusivest dangerous beast of them all – a golden-sleek and bird-shaped kind of beast, and he would fly above the Shadowy Mountains and watch out for the enemies of the Elves. This was very bad for the Wolf and the Orc and the rest of them; for he would perch on the crags looking just like a bit of sunlit rock, and when the Wolf or the Orc or the Troll came by he would surprise them out of their jumpsome lives. He would indeed!

[Picture]

[This is the Eagle, King Thorondor, who is Quite the Oldest Bird in all Middle-earth. I have drawn him from a statue that I made up out of my own head, and I have written his name on his crown and on the crag that he is sitting on. I have written it in what is not called Certhas Daeron and Tengwar and Angerthas and Sindar and Quenya and Adûnaic and Westron, all because he is so old. He is not beautiful, but he is very wise; and I should like to paint him with paint-box colours but I am not allowed. The tunic-ish thing about his front is his Aesthetic Cuirass.]

On through the Shadowy Mountains went Goldilocks, and the King’s Daughter, and the Baby, and the Man who came from the Sea, and the friends and dear families, till at last they came to the pass that was called the Eagles’ Cleft. And there in the pass was a Balrog! He was the middling brother of that great Balrog that had once scattered the army of the King of Gondolin and he had a middle-sized whip that went hiss-crack! when he cracked it.

Now this Balrog was neither too big to be fought nor so small that he could be frightened away; in fact, he was just the right size. So Goldilocks stepped forwards and said, “O Balrog, let us pass!”

“Who’s that trying to cross my Mountain?” demanded the Balrog and cracked his middle-sized whip, hiss-crack! Just like that!

“Lord Goldilocks!” said Goldilocks in his most heroic voice. “Let us pass!”

“Oh no, you don’t!” said the Balrog. “I’m going to feed you to the Dragons for dinner!”

So up came Goldilocks – the most noble Lord Goldilocks, always laughing, merriest of the Gondolindrim – and there in the Shadowy Mountains he fought the Balrog. And they struggled and they grappled, and they tugged and they mugged, and they danced and they pranced, and they did some really truly twirly-whirly fighting on the mountaintop – so! Till at last Goldilocks caught the Balrog by one fiery foot and hauled him right over the cliff. Up, up, up went the Balrog into the air... then down, down he fell into the abyss below.

Then the King’s Daughter and the Baby and the Man who came from the Sea and the friends and dear families all rejoiced at once, very noisily, for now they could escape from the enemies of the Elves. But when the middling Balrog fell down into the abyss, he cracked his middle-sized whip – hiss-crack! – and it got tangled all up in Goldilocks’s most ’sclusively yellow hair (now you know why you were not to forget the hair!), so down into the abyss went Goldilocks as well, and neither he nor the Balrog were ever seen again. And that was very sorrowful. But the King’s Daughter and the Baby and the Man and the friends and dear families came down from the Shadowy Mountains, guarded all the while by the golden-sleek Eagle, and they went away in the direction of the Vale of Sirion, Nan-tathren, and the mouths of the River Sirion beside the Sea.

So that’s all right, Best Beloved. Do you see?

Chapter End Notes

This draws on all of the Just So stories, but particularly 'The Butterfly that Stamped' (whence 'statelily') and 'The Leopard that Changed its Spots'. The not-to-be-forgotten hair should be familiar from 'How the Whale got its Throat'.  Oh, and don't forget Goldilocks and the Three Bears, or the Three Billy Goats Gruff...

"The Eagle's Gossip"

taken from

A Beleriand Treasury of Childish Tales

as told to

Erestor and Melinna of Ered Luin

(laud now Lord Dunsany, who has illumined many mysteries of Time and the Gods)

One day the King went out of Vinyamar in the land of Nevrast. And with him went the people of Nevrast and whither they went none knew, but the abandoned halls of Vinyamar upon the shore lay desolate and weeds grew tall through the marble streets.

Two travellers once came to Vinyamar upon the shore and from afar they saw the marble pillars gleaming and all the steps of chalcedony and onyx that led to the sea. But drawing nearer they found that the gates were rusted and Time coming with his dripping hands from battle had cast down the high pinnacles and broken the shining domes with his red sword. And in the streets grew weeds that had not or the King and all the people went out of Vinyamar in the land of Nevrast.

Then wondering at the abandonment of Vinyamar upon the shore, the travellers sought wherefore the King had left the marble halls and steps of chalcedony and onyx and the shining domes. And one said that the Pestilence who lay curled asleep in the marshes beyond had awoken and bared his dripping teeth and come to prowl about the streets of Vinyamar. But there were no bones. And the other said that the Famine who meets with Námo thrice in every hour in some dark chamber to speak two words together,* finding that it was fair and pleasant upon the shore, had crept over the hills and come to nibble the corn and chase the cattle of the people of Nevrast. But in the fields the grass grew green and of that Famine with his dry grey fur there was no sign. And all the while the warriors of Ulmo lay peaceful beyond the steps of chalcedony and onyx and sang their songs of old outrageous wars and battles yet to come while Ulmo, playing with the nautilus that sailed up and down, smiled and nodded his foam-crested head above the marble streets of abandoned Vinyamar.

Then said the travellers:

"Wherefore the King and all the people have gone out of Vinyamar may not in Vinyamar be found. Let us ask elsewhere."

So leaving abandoned Vinyamar in the land of Nevrast, the travellers set out upon the path that climbing eastward brought them after many days and nights into the dusty foothills beneath the dark crags all capped with snow. Then clambering upward through the narrow valleys towards the mountain peaks, they came at last to the great pillar of asdarinth heaped round with great black rocks on which an Eagle called the Windlord had his high eyrie. Young was the Windlord then, for those were the days of olden time.

Then said the travellers:

"O Windlord, who on great wings hath covered all the earth, wherefore went out of Vinyamar in the land of Nevrast the King and all the people?"

Then answered the Windlord:

"That is a Secret that I may not tell."

Then said the travellers:

"O Windlord, who drives the beasts of Bauglir from the peaks with talons merciless, whither went out of Vinyamar in the land of Nevrast the King and all the people?"

Then answered the Windlord:

"That also is a Secret."

Then said the travellers:

"O Windlord, who may one day be Lord of all that wings the sky, be there aught of the abandonment of Vinyamar in the land of Nevrast that is not a Secret?"

Then answered the Windlord:

"This may I tell: there is amid the snow-capped crags a lake that holds no water, being dry. And in this lake that is no lake there is an island that is not an isle, for at its shores no waters lap, and yet smiling above nods the foam-crested head of Ulmo and on its slopes his soldiers sing their songs of idleness and peace. And on this island that is not an isle there is an Elven eyrie whence may come or go no Elves, for that is Law. Therefore shall be forever abandoned Vinyamar in the land of Nevrast until the world shall change."

Then said the travellers:

"Eastward amid the snow-capped crags there was once a lake and in that lake there was once an island and the blue waters once lapped its shores. O Windlord, may there an Elven eyrie now be found?"

Then answered the Windlord:

"That is a Secret."

Thereat the travellers left the Windlord's eyrie on the asdarinthine pillar, and climbing through the narrow valleys and up the snow-capped crags they came at last to one high peak that stood above the black mountains as the Valar stand above the Elves when They walk benignant in the world. And from that peak could be seen a deep green valley where once had been a blue lake far below. Then looking down, the travellers saw that where once had been a stony isle stood now a hill amid the green and from the hill rose gleaming marble pillars and pinnacles and a high citadel adorned with shining domes. And far below they saw the nodding head of Ulmo smiling as the fountains danced and beckoning to heaven rose up the towers and all the steps of chalcedony and onyx beneath the setting Sun. But as the Sun was sinking low behind the peaks, they saw a swart figure striding behind the mountains to the north who furtively peered down upon that hidden city, and dangling idly from his dripping fingers was a red sword.

Then the travellers turned away and whither they went only they know, but of the fate of that city are many histories writ.

* "The End."

Chapter End Notes

This draws on Dunsany's short story collection Time and the Gods. See especially 'Time and the Gods', 'The Coming of the Sea' and 'The Men of Yarnith'. Read Dunsany as well! You may be surprised to see who's been influenced by his work.

A Critical Matter

(apologies for this snippet are due only to the author of The Hobbit)

They had nearly come to the Lone-lands and the hobbit was beginning to feel quite used to the adventure, although of course it was rather a long time since they had last stopped for a meal. Still, it was a particularly fine May afternoon, the sort of afternoon when one can smell spring blossom in the air and the bushes are full of birds twittering merrily about nothing very much, so he said nothing about it (for once). The dwarves had been singing their deep-throated songs of gold and deep caverns and ancient battles ever since breakfast, and Bilbo reflected that they were singing one song for quite the third time that day.

Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away ere break of day,
To claim our pale enchanted gold...

"Funny! that sounds elvish!" said Bilbo, and accidentally said it aloud.

Now this was most unwise of Bilbo, for as everyone knows, elves and dwarves do not get on very well and it is a very bad insult to say that a dwarf is behaving elvishly. Moreover dwarves are particularly touchy about their singing, for the elves themselves sing so delightfully that their fingers itch to pull beards when they hear dwarvish songs. So it was as well for Bilbo that Gandalf chose that moment to look round from under his long bushy eyebrows and harrumph very loudly, as if to say: "You will need a Burglar by and by, and it is too late now to find another one!" Still, they all turned towards him in a most alarming way and Thorin said, "Pray, did you say that our singing sounded elvish?"

"I beg your pardon," squeaked poor Mr Baggins, "in a word, yes!"

You can see quite how flustered he was, or he would certainly never have said anything so impolite. He knew at once that he had made a most dreadful error. Any dwarf would have been cross at being told such a thing and Thorin was no exception. Luckily Gandalf was still wagging his beard meaningfully, so no one cast anything more than a cross look at the hobbit and Thorin merely became very haughty and mentioned once or twice that a person would have to be thoroughly tone-deaf to be make such a foolish mistake. Of course this made Bilbo feel wretchedly uncomfortable and so he became more flustered and bewuthered than ever.

"Well, perhaps I am tone-deaf," he said, around about the fifth time that Thorin mentioned it, "and then again, perhaps I am not. I have heard one or two elvish songs – I had a mother once, Belladonna Took, a most respectable and unadventurous hobbit –"

At this, Thorin let out a long wrathful growl ending in "– elvish!" and he looked so angry that Bilbo begged his pardon at once, and said sorry so many times that at last the dwarf grunted, "Very well, we shall say no more of the matter." But of course he did say more, rather a lot more in fact, and this is more or less what he said.

"Long ago in my far ancestor Durin II's time our family lived in Khazad-dûm, and a deeper, huger, wealthier, more splendid city you never saw. The dwarves of Khazad-dûm had been delving and tunnelling there since the days of Durin the Deathless, and their halls and workshops were stuffed full of gold and jewels, and in addition they had a good deal of mithril too, which I believe they mined from below the city –"

"So they did," interrupted Gandalf, "that was the trouble."

"Anyway," went on Thorin, taking no notice, "they were immensely rich and famous, and all the dwarves of Beleriand (that was the name of all the country west of the Blue Mountains that is now under the sea) used to travel to Khazad-dûm and admire their smithcraft and treat the Kings of Khazad-dûm with great respect. Undoubtedly that was what brought the dwarves of the Blue Mountains there after their own cities were destroyed. For Nogrod and Belegost were both ruined along with Beleriand, you know, and so most of the dwarves who used to live there came down into Eriador and settled in Khazad-dûm. Altogether those were good days, for the Blue Mountain dwarves brought with them such gold and jewels as they had managed to rescue from the ruins of their cities and also a good deal of lore. In those days lore was hard to come by; and so everyone thought that this was a splendid thing and the deep archives of Khazad-dûm became very well-known among everyone who cared for such matters. As well as lore concerning smithcraft and dwarvish histories and many other interesting things of this kind, they knew many songs that had been sung in Nogrod and Belegost long before anyone ever met an elf in those mountains. And so when Durin's Bane awoke and the dwarves fled Khazad-dûm, they took with them many dwarvish songs from olden days that are now sung all over Middle-earth and there is nothing elvish about those songs at all."

You can tell that Thorin was still rather cross, and Bilbo could tell it as well. He said nervously, "Pardon me, but I should very much like to hear more of your songs. I can see now that I was quite wrong to say that they sounded – I mean, I am sure that nothing was ever more dwarvish! I suppose that you have been singing songs from the olden days all along?"

"Yes indeed," said Thorin, "with a few little changes here and there, of course. Solemn songs for solemn days –"

"All the same, there is one point that you have forgotten to explain, Thorin," said Gandalf and twitched his bushy eyebrows. "The archives of Nogrod and Belegost were drowned, you remember, when Beleriand sank beneath the sea."

"True, true," said Thorin.

"Well then, most of their written lore was lost. How any of the dwarves survived I don't know, but I believe that a little help was needed once they were all settled in Khazad-dûm and wanted to preserve their oldest histories and songs, those that had not been commonly heard and so were not commonly known."

"O well," said Thorin airily, "perhaps a little. I did hear that they asked questions of a couple of elves as well, who had been dwarf-friends in the oldest of olden days and who knew something of the dwarvish tongue. I forget their names. There was some matter of a fight that the Blue Mountain dwarves had once got the better of, so they needed a bit of persuading, but as elves are flighty creatures and love shiny things that was not hard. Bless me! but they were well-paid for their trouble. Mithril coats and helms as well, so I have heard, and I can tell you that sort of payment is not soon forgotten. The dwarves of Khazad-dûm treasured the old lore as highly as gold and they were rich enough to let everyone know it."

"So they were," said Gandalf. "And if I am not much mistaken, one of your dwarf-friends still dwells among Elrond's people at Rivendell. That is how I heard of it to begin with. But let us press on! There is a long road ahead and if we go a little faster now we may reach an inn by nightfall."

So on they pressed through the last of the hobbit-country and towards the Lone-lands, where the people were bad and the roads were worse (said Gandalf, making poor Bilbo shiver and think longingly of his cosy hobbit hole). Mind you, matters were not too dreadful yet, for the dwarves were singing their songs from olden days again and the party was actually going along very merrily indeed.

For ancient king and elvish lord
There many a gleaming golden hoard
They shaped and wrought, and light they caught
To hide in gems on hilt of sword...

"And now I know why that sounds elvish!" said Bilbo, but this time he remembered to say it only to himself.

Chapter End Notes

I don't need to comment on this one, do I? The poetry belongs entirely to Tolkien.

"Sleeping Beauty"

taken from

A Beleriand Treasury of Childish Tales

as told to

Erestor and Melinna of Ered Luin

(arising from the non-Euclidean nightmares of H.P. Lovecraft)

On July 16, 1980 T.A., we sank the new shaft beneath Barazinbar. The digging had been a stupendous task, for the ore that might easily be mined was all but exhausted; yet because there remained lodes of true-silver still undiscovered deep under the mountains we let no hardship deter us. The metal had been the source of our wealth since the time of Durin the Deathless, when a chance discovery of intensely fortunate, though largely mysterious, nature had brought to light a material that could be wrought as easily as copper despite being harder than tempered steel. With the greed of the Elves in particular aroused by the alluring sheen of the polished metal, our ancestors had begun to mine true-silver, nor had they ceased to seek out new lodes when that first vein failed. Stimulated by some desire greater than that of gold or eros, and conscious only of the overwhelming beauty of the exhumed mineral, the Longbeards of the Mountains of Mist delved near to Kheled-zârum, the Mirrormere, and there founded the city that before very many years passed had become known as Khazad-dûm.

Khazad-dûm had remained prosperous, though later besieged by the hideous forces of Sauron and somewhat troubled on that account; a trouble made less aggravating by the undaunted valour of the people and the strength of their subterranean halls. During the war our treasuries were retained and our population preserved by the closing of the West-door, the entrance onto the Elven-way to Hollin. Our ancestors, trusting in their defences, had sealed themselves into their city, and with them the mines that assured the continuation of their fortune. The digging of these mines was a very singular occupation, becoming annually more difficult as the lodes sank ever deeper beneath Barazinbar and yet one in which we engaged willingly, for the value of true-silver was ten times higher than the highest value placed upon gold. Increasingly our intricate and cunningly worked mines became the object of the greatest admiration among our kin, but the Elves hated them. They gladly seized the true-silver wrung from the rock by our unending labour, but the mining itself they hated and the deeper we delved, the more regularly came the warnings that no good could come of it. I had not ordered the new shaft to be sunk a week before I knew I should regret it. And this day the alarm has been raised, and soon we shall march to reclaim the mines.

The bare statistics of the operation all had known, together with the fact that the Elves had come to detest our mines under the mountains. Of details, however, they had always been sparing through a policy of reticence that was presumed to conceal superstitious ignorance or otherwise envy of our untouched riches. That they were no less concerned now than at any prior time in their history to possess true-silver was shewn by the chance arrival, shortly after we had begun work on the new shaft, of an Elvish emissary to commission a neckpiece and other jewellery for the Lady of Rivendell. Fair, tall, and somewhat youthful in aspect, this Elf-lord was accompanied by two dark companions who professed an antique acquaintance with our ancestral halls. The truth of this claim having been confirmed by recourse to crumbling records in our archives, all three Elves were admitted to Khazad-dûm and given lodging in the guest chambers near to the East-door. On being escorted through the city, the fair Elf-lord displayed some discomfort; for (as we then assumed) the Elves of Rivendell are not accustomed to underground dwellings, and become unhappy when confined below the surface. His guides did not comment on his obvious unease, but sought with some subtlety to set the Elf's concerns to rest. In this regard their efforts were not without success, or so I was later informed.

I myself was occupied with other matters at that time. The digging beneath Barazinbar required constant oversight and this I was at pains to provide, for as the King of Khazad-dûm it was my duty to ensure the smooth running of the mines. In recent days, however, I had found myself harassed by strange dreams, at first sparse and insidious, but increasing in frequency and vividness as the nights went by. Great smoking pits opened out beneath me, and I seemed to drift through titanic iron-roofed vaults and labyrinths of vast Cyclopean walls with grotesque wolves as my companions. Then the other shapes began to appear, filling me with nameless horror the moment I awoke. But during the dreams they did not horrify me at all – I was one with them; cloaked in their blasphemous darkness, treading their fiery ways, and bowing monstrously before an evil wrought-iron throne.

There was much more than I could remember, but even what I did remember each morning was enough to cast a shadow over the ordinary events of the day. It is not easy to concentrate one's efforts upon mining – not even upon the mining of true-silver – when one's thoughts dwell irrationally and incessantly upon such frantic recollections. One night I had a frightful dream in which I saw the occupant of that impious throne. In His loathsome crown were set two jewels of unbelievable brightness and when He raised His arms in a hateful gesture of command, I saw the charred blackness of His maimed hands. Sinister hieroglyphics covered the walls and blackened pillars, and from some undetermined point below came a voice that was not a voice; a chaotic sensation in that hideous phantasy which I can only attempt to render by an almost unpronounceable jumble of letters, "Belegûr fhtagn".

At that, I awaked with a stifled scream. Those recurring visions, whose burden was always some terrible Cyclopean vista of smoke-wreathed dungeons, had certainly been disquieting; but this new dream of brilliant jewels and charred hands, with that subterrene voice or intelligence shouting monotonous and enigmatical gibberish, had left a profound impression on me. Still, the meaning of this unpleasant verbal jumble was profoundly unclear, and being of a sceptical disposition I resolved to set all nocturnal imagery aside. I can at this date scarcely envisage the callous rationalism with which I dismissed these evil premonitions; but it must be recalled that since no cause for concern had presented itself during the daylight hours, apprehension would have been absurd despite my nightly wanderings. This I truly believed, and when the foreman of the mines mentioned the peculiar quality of the rock through which the new shaft was then being sunk, I suggested that it had been compressed by the unthinkable weight of Barazinbar over many thousands of years, and that even our ancestors had never delved so deep beneath the Mountains of Mist, where the discovery of queer and perhaps valuable minerals should not surprise those of us who mined there for true-silver.

In light of this possibility, I gave orders that samples should be preserved for further study. The material was indeed a mystery, for the soapy, reddish-black stone with its silver or iridescent flecks and striations resembled nothing familiar from the surrounding substrate. Strangest of all, some peculiarity in the cleavage gave the distinct appearance of pictorial diagrams of a sort horribly remote from any usual form of symbolic representation. Of course this was merely an extravagant delusion on my part; though it was true that the foreman had earlier commented on the curious patterns that seemed to sprawl unpleasantly across the new shaft. The rationalism of my mind and the fanciful nature of the whole subject led me to adopt what I thought were the most sensible conclusions, however. So, after thoroughly studying the specimen again and attempting to correlate the foliated texture with the nearby mineral deposits, I determined that the stone was without value and set it aside, expecting to think no more of it.

By this time the Elf-lord from Rivendell and his companions had been in residence at Khazad-dûm for almost a fortnight. Since the cost of the jewellery commissioned by Lord Elrond comprised an unusually large sum in gold and precious gems, I had been at pains to keep his emissaries appraised at every stage of its development, and our meeting that day was neither unprecedented nor unusual. It so happened that most of the work had already been completed, and after exchanging some desultory comments concerning the work remaining to be done, it occurred to me that my venerable interlocutors might have some knowledge of the mysterious stone that had been discovered by those mining beneath Barazinbar. I therefore produced the specimen and set it before them.

I was scarcely prepared for the sensation which my offering created. One sight of the sample was enough to throw the Elf-lord's companions into a state of tense excitement, and they lost no time in crowding around to gaze at the peculiar specimen of stone whose utter strangeness hinted so potently at undiscovered and completely novel minerals. It was not so much the material, however, as the cryptic semblance of writing that excited their interest; for it was bizarrely akin, they said, to the crude scrapings that they had seen inscribed on the ruins of an island tower previously occupied by an accursed daemonic host in the days before the War of Wrath. Besides those ruins, which had long been subject to the cleansing influence of the sea, they had once before seen similar pictorial cryptograms inscribed on stone of this kind under circumstances such that they hesitated to share what they knew for fear of meeting with intense disbelief.

This data, received with suspense and astonishment by myself and the Elf-lord, was doubly exciting and I began at once to ply my informants with questions. There then followed a story to which I could not help but attach profound significance, although it savoured of the wildest flights of Elvish fancy. These two Elves were explorers of no slight note, as the records in our archives confirmed. At a time so ancient that the Moon had not yet arisen and Durin the Deathless still ruled in Khazad-dûm, there had come to their ears rumours of several ruined fortresses that were to be found in the far north of antique Beleriand. Their attention thus piqued, they had determined to make an expedition in that direction, despite the solemn warnings of their friends and acquaintances. After a journey both difficult and perilous, they had come to a desolate wasteland pitted with bottomless chasms and the broken spires of a terrible citadel – the corpse of the nightmare tyrant-city of Udûn, that was built in measureless aeons behind history by the loathsome Being who is still accounted the worst Enemy among all who have ever given trouble to Middle-earth. Of these ruins the Elves spoke little; for instead of describing any definite structure or building, they mentioned only vague impressions of vast angles and blackened surfaces – surfaces too great to belong to any thing right or proper for this earth, and impious with horrible images and hieroglyphics. And it was those hieroglyphics that the Elves claimed to have later encountered in the ruins of Tol-in-Gaurhoth, and which they now recognised, having developed organically through some frightful aberration of nature, in the specimen of the stone that had been found in the mines beneath Barazinbar.

This tale, as I have said, bore some resemblance to the wilder stories of Elvish invention, and yet I swiftly became convinced of their absolute sincerity, for they spoke of the devastated citadel in a manner none could mistake. Moreover I could not but be troubled by the curious parallels between their conversation and the dreams that had of late been disturbing my sleep with weird and terrifying imagery. When I strove to think of some way in which I could possibly have received the frightful impressions, I felt sure that I must have heard a tale of Udûn or its hideous neighbour Angband in some casual way, and had soon forgotten it amidst the business of my quotidian existence. Later, by virtue of its sheer impressiveness, it had found subconscious expression in my dreams. My attitude was still one of absolute materialism, as I wish it still were, and I discounted with almost inexplicable perversity the tremendous coincidence of the dreams and the hieroglyphics apparently embedded in raw stone.

At one point during our discussion, I had mentioned the curious patterns visible on the sides of the new shaft. To this subject the Elves now returned, suggesting with obvious eagerness that they might be shewn the patterns in question. Although it was not customary for outsiders to be permitted into our lower workings, this seemed to me a harmless plan, and so we descended through the city and passed without delay into the mining complex. I was amused to observe the Elf-lord's obvious discomfort as we progressed towards the deepest tunnels, for at that time I thought merely that he was suffering from a very common Elvish complaint; which is to say the distress that results in members of that frivolous and feverishly imaginative race when they are confined without access to the illumination of the celestial bodies. His companions exhibited no such unease, however, and when we arrived at the site of the new workings they went directly to examine the horrible semblance of unintelligible writings that had developed without reason or explanation in the queer, soapy stone.

It was by now clear that this bizarre phenomenon extended throughout the stratum. The Elf-lord's companions immediately proceeded to question the foreman and his miners closely concerning the discovery of this nefandous imagery, which they said was practically identical in all respects to the hieroglyphics that had sprawled over the crazily elusive angles of carven rock in ruined Udûn. There then followed an exhaustive comparison of details, and a moment of really awed silence when both Elves agreed on the virtual identity of the writing common to two inexplicable surfaces so many worlds of time and distance apart. What meaning the hellish text contained was beyond anyone's power to explain, however. Deeply impressed and not a little bewildered, I was about to propose an investigation in the city archives when something quite unexpected occurred. The Elf-lord, who had been examining the uneven rock face that currently brought an end to the unfinished shaft, fainted silently away.

Amidst universal excitement and concern, the Elf-lord was at once rushed to the nearest hospital. There he shortly awaked, exhibiting every appearance of great mental turmoil, and declared in the strongest language possible that he had sensed the presence of something hideous and indescribably malevolent while we had been examining the peculiar writings on the sides of the new shaft. Certain episodes in the distant past had familiarised him with this sensation, but it was hardly possible – certainly it was unthinkable – that the source of his current alarm should be such a being. Nonetheless, he said, some ancient evil undoubtedly lay buried (or perhaps imprisoned) under the awful weight of the Mountains of Mist.

He could tell us no more; but his conviction was absolute and sincere, and he advised us to block up the shaft and cease from mining beneath Barazinbar, lest some creature more terrible than anyone's worst imagining should be roused from timeless slumber. For himself, he would remain in the vicinity for not a moment longer than it took to fulfill Lord Elrond's commission. This resolution the Elf-lord maintained; and when shortly afterwards the last piece of true-silver jewellery had indeed been completed, both he and his companions immediately departed from Khazad-dûm, even though it was late in the day and the weather was far from pleasant. Of this I was not wholly sorry, for it was plainly impossible that the mines should be closed and their wild talk was beginning to alarm the miners. That these recent coincidences were multifarious and troubling was undeniable, and I did not doubt that the Elves had spoken in good faith, but I remained determined to sustain a sternly rational outlook. The mines that had continued to produce true-silver despite the full onslaught of Sauron's forces would certainly not now cease activity merely on account of a curious discovery and Elvish fears of unproven validity.

As I have said, we sank the new shaft on July 16, 1980 T.A. The strange stone having proven peculiarly malleable, the digging progressed at a swifter pace than we had anticipated, so that by the end of August the work was close to completion. Around this time, the men began to complain of unusual conditions on the lower levels of the mines; specifically, the increasingly unpleasant quality and heat of the air. Concerns about the presence of lethal gases having been demonstrated to be misplaced by the application of the usual tests, we were left bewildered by such unprecedented phenomena. We had scarcely begun to develop new methods of pumping fresh air down to the lower levels when the miners at work on the new shaft broke through into the cavern that lay below.

I must be very deliberate now, and choose my words.

The aperture was black with a darkness almost material. That tenebrousness was indeed a positive quality; for it spread perfidiously through the places where their lamplight fell, and actually burst forth like smoke from its aeon-long imprisonment, rushing up through the new shaft and smothering the lights of the miners as it crept away into the unwary upper tunnels on clawing membraneous limbs. The charnel odour arising from the newly opened depths was intolerable, and at length a particularly sharp-eyed miner thought he saw an ominous flicker of light down there. Everyone stared, and everyone was staring still when It arose in an unstoppable surge of flame and shadow and poured Its fiery cosmic immensity through the narrow opening into the fervid air of that hieroglyph-marked exit from the depths of the earth.

The voice of the only surviving miner almost gave out when he spoke of this. Of the nine men who never escaped that shaft, he thinks three perished of pure fright in that accursed instant. The Thing cannot be described – there is no language for such shrieking abysms of blazing and infernal oxymoronity, such eldritch contractions of all matter, energy and divine order. An inferno strode or staggered. Mahal! What wonder that the mind of an Elf had failed on sensing that terrible underground presence? The Thing of my dreams, the blasphemous shadow-cloaked worshipper at that impious throne, had awaked to claim his freedom. After vigintillions of years a great daemon was loose again, and ravening for delight.

Four men were swept up in a tide of fire before anybody turned. Mahal rest them, if there be any rest in Eä! The other six were climbing frenziedly up the workings of the new shaft, and the sole survivor swears that the markings on the obscene walls glowed enough to drive a sane man mad. Only madness or poetry could do justice to the roar that rocked the mines then, but an approximation has been proposed that ensures I shall never sleep calmly again: Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Belegûr Void wgah'nagl fhtagn! Iä! Iä! Belegûr fhtagn! In that infernal moment, five of the remaining miners were shaken loose and thrown back into that screaming, hellish chasm. So only one man reached the top of the shaft, and raced desperately for the upper levels as the blazing monstrosity surged up the shaft and hesitated unspeakably on the edge of the lower tunnels.

That was all. After that I believed the warnings given by the Elves. There are those who still talk of accidents of the sort not uncommon in mines; the only survivor, they say, having heard wild Elvish talk of ancient evils and being the impressionable sort, was driven mad by the explosion; and some even whisper that his tale is a fabrication to conceal his responsibility for the disaster. I know better, for I have seen the origins of the terrible Thing in my dreams. And so the alarm has been raised and the mines evacuated, for within that black abyss It awaits us still. It must have returned there when the man escaped, I suppose, or the lower levels would by now be awash with flames and cacodaemonic conflagration. Who knows the end? What has slumbered may awake, and what awakes may slumber. An inferno prowls and seethes in the deep, and if we hope to delve again beneath Barazinbar for true-silver, the new shaft must be closed down and the Thing sealed up once more behind that obscenely marked stone. The only alternative – but I must not and cannot think! There is no other way. So it is that the men are mustering for battle, and this day we shall march against the Thing in the mines.

Chapter End Notes

Lovecraft is Lovecraft. Read him. See especially 'The Rats in the Walls', 'The Call of Cthulhu', 'The Shadow over Innsmouth'. Among other things, the 'dark speech' here definitely isn't mine. Again, you may be surprised to see who's been influenced by Lovecraft. You may also be surprised to see that he's been reading Dunsany.

Cthulhu fhtagn!

"The Gingerbread Cave"

taken from

A Beleriand Treasury of Childish Tales

as told to

Erestor and Melinna of Ered Luin

(because The Turtle Moves)

Now consider foreshadowing.

Foreshadowing is ubiquitous in literature. Any sensible story flaunts its foreknowledge for all it's worth, much as a seamstress* working in Minas Tirith may "accidentally" show off her assets while walking down the street.** Foreshadowing flirts with exciting possibilities and lets the reader know the story is safely under the narrator's control. When properly applied, it can turn a mere collection of incidents into a Plot.

And then there is reality. A confused and bewildering place where things occur apparently at random and no one knows if anything is under anyone's control. In those parts of the multiverse where narrativium does not exist, things just... happen. Details that would signal oncoming surprises in the hands of any narrator worth his or her salt are left flapping aimlessly in the random onslaught of events, rather like an untethered tent in a hurricane. Omens become ominous only in hindsight, which is 20/20.

And yet people still spend their lives trying to discover the foreshadowing of History in sacred books and the flight of birds and the internal organs of all sorts of rare and delicious animals... before History discovers them. This is because most people, whether they know it or not, are instinctively Ibidians.*** Unfortunately, reality is Xenoian.†

The important thing about foreshadowing is that it only works in stories. Reality isn't nearly organised enough for that.

*

The story takes place in olden days, among dark woods and hills. It ends somewhere else and it began long ago, but at least this part took place in a cave near the Mitheithel river, not far away from the Great East Road.

One of the recurring literary tropes concerns caves.

A party of weary travellers caught out on a rainy night will always look hopefully for an inn or a friendly farmhouse, no matter how wild the wilderness in which they may be travelling. And while inns and friendly farmhouses are hard to find in this part of the world, caves are not. Nine times out of ten, though, caves are also occupied.

This particular cave contains trolls.

Elsewhere in the multiverse, trolls are metamorphorical rock-based lifeforms subsisting on a stony diet, for which Nature has provided them with diamond teeth. As a result, troll-hunting used to be very popular in certain sections of society, before survival of the fittest caught on. It is said that Nature is a mother, and this is true, but those of her children that survive are the stuff of a poor psychiatrist's avaricious dreams.

These trolls are carnivorous and will take care of any hunting going on nearby, thank you very much. Mutton is good and beef is better, but manflesh is best. It is not generally known what they think about elf-flesh, possibly because most elves are bright enough not to take refuge in suspicious caves.

We are about to find out.

It was not a dark and stormy night. The trolls were in their cave, however, since the unhappy effects of sunlight on rock-based lifeforms means that trolls are nocturnal in almost all parts of the multiverse. Over the years, the cave's location had made it prime real estate in trollish terms, although it had been deserted for some time before certain universal instincts had prompted the current occupants to set up their den there. For a troll's cave, it was surprisingly homely. All the bones had been swept to one side. Such plunder as had already accumulated was tidily arranged on new pinewood shelves. Even though the cave had no windows, there were curtains. They were pink. It was clear that, given half a chance, someone would add lacy frills. If they ever found out about cushions, there would be no escape.

"Sam," said the someone and poked her mate. "Dere's someone tryin' to get in."

Psammite turned over, grunted something unintelligible and went back to sleep. Garnet sighed and considered her options. The scuffling noise outside the cave suggested that someone was definitely trying to open the big stone door.

"Nex' time, we goin' to lock dat," said Garnet to herself, thinking of the pebbles lying sound asleep at the back of the cave. For a moment, her thoughts dwelled fondly on little Phyllite and Gneiss, curled up together in the pinewood pen that their father had constructed only last week.

Then she heard the noise again.

"Psammite!" she said and shook him crossly. "Get up!"

"Dur?"

"Dere's someone at der door," said Garnet. "Listen."

They listened. After a while, Psammite said, "It stuck on der brambles."

A steady stream of curses could be heard on the other side of the stone door. Garnet nodded.

"Sam!" she said, as a terrible thought struck her. "It want der pebbles!"

They looked at each other in horror. Then Garnet crept to the back of the cave where Phyllite and Gneiss slumbered in happy ignorance of their mortal peril, dreaming their slow, dark dreams of stone and mountains and twitching now and then as avalanches cavalcaded through their sleep. Meanwhile Psammite took up position behind the door, ready to pounce on the intruder. He had a club in one hand and a sack in the other, because there's no point in turning down a free lunch. With a sound like that of a thousand fingernails molesting hitherto innocent blackboards, the door slid over the stone floor...

... and Garnet, standing guard over the pebbles at the back of the cave, remembered she'd meant to get Sam to sort out the hinges only yesterday...

... and a dark figure stood silhouetted against the bramble-meshed doorway.

"Gosh," it said. "This place has changed a bit."

Whereupon Psammite jumped out, popped the sack over the intruder's head and slammed the door shut. And at the back of the cave, Phyllite and Gneiss woke up.

It has been said that an angry baby troll can scream loudly enough to shake, if not mountains, then at least any reasonably sized hillock resting on particularly nervous geology. Two baby trolls could probably bring down a small village. The sound reverberated around the cave, causing shelves to rattle and bits of stalactite to tinkle onto the stone floor, before it returned as an echo that would have made a nuclear explosion proud. While Garnet devoted herself to hushing their little gems, Psammite slabbed‡ himself down on their wriggling visitor and put both hands firmly over his ears.

For a while, noise happened.

Silence returned a short eternity later. When Psammite risked taking his hands away from his head, he could hear only Garnet's cooing, interspersed by the happy gurgling of Phyllite and Gneiss. He breathed a sigh of relief and got up from his unwilling seat.

"What dis, den?" he said, shaking the intruder out of the sack.

They stared at it. A worried face surrounded by ruffled dark hair stared back at them. It had obviously worked out that it was in the kind of trouble most people only run into once.

"It an elf," said Garnet, looking almost as surprised as their unhappy visitor. "What an elf doin', wantin' der pebbles?"

"Er," said the elf, carefully. "What pebbles?"

In their pen at the back of the cave, Phyllite and Gneiss, who possessed an auditory apparatus of the sort available only to the extremely young or to creatures that prey on other creatures at the bottoms of very dark mine shafts, overheard this reference to themselves and started jumping gleefully up and down. "Us! Us!" they shrieked. "Elf! Want elf! Want elf now!"

The adults flinched. Psammite prepared to put his hands back over his ears. "Shh, shh!" said Garnet hastily. "Bad pebbles! Soon we has nice elf-flesh. First I find how to cook it –"

"Must you?" said the elf, sounding rather pained.

This was ignored. "Roast," said Psammite, with all the confidence of a troll whose grandfather had once been fortunate enough to encounter an elf alone on the Ettenmoors and had been dining out on the tale ever since. "Roast elf very good."

"Hrm," said Garnet, regarding the elf thoughtfully. "I t'ink maybe hotpot –"

She broke off. Beyond the cave, someone was calling out in a singsong tone.

The elf took a deep breath. "Tr– mmphm, mmph, mmph!"

Psammite, with great presence of mind, had clamped his hands over the elf's mouth. He looked around for another sack, while Garnet crept back to the pinewood pen to keep Phyllite and Gneiss quiet. The calling had stopped.

A moment later, someone just outside the door said suspiciously, "Erestor?"

If absence of noise were tangible, Garnet could have made a blanket from the silence inside the cave. She could have stuffed cushions with it.‡‡ The trolls held their breath. Even the pebbles had stopped jittering and waited in breathless anticipation.

Someone thumped on the cave door.

"I know you're in there," said the voice. "There's thread all over the brambles. I only just mended that tunic, you know."

The elf in Psammite's grasp had ceased to wriggle and was beginning to look rather embarrassed. Garnet risked leaving the pebbles to their own devices and tiptoed forwards to slide the door open, just a crack, so that the thinnest possible sliver of daylight crisscrossed with bramble-shadows leaked into the cave's cosy darkness. Maybe they could lure the elf's friend inside...

"If those aren't fresh bones, I'm a Noldo," said the voice, sounding even more suspicious. "Who's there?"

Silence.

"I'm not coming in, you know. You might as well tell me."

Garnet gave up.

"We – er – just nice peoples," she said hopefully. "Come in! Have – er – tea party!"

"Are you trolls?" asked the voice. "Where's Erestor?"

"Er – him at tea party too!"

She nodded to Psammite, who took one hand away from the elf's mouth while making a vigorous strangling gesture. The elf glanced nervously at them. "That's right, dear," it said weakly. "A tea party. Nice trolls. Er. Such charming children – mmph, mmphm!"

The second elf's sigh was audible from inside the cave. "It's all right. There's no need to pretend. I know you want to eat us."

"No no, not eat you, it tea party –"

"Oh, don't worry about it. I'm sure I don't blame you. Things must be terribly hard around here if the best you can get is a couple of stringy elves –"

"It not hard!" said Psammite, offended. "It very good life. Very good cave, too! Lot of manflesh here!"

"Well then, I'm surprised you're willing to settle for Erestor," said the voice on the other side of the door. "He's only skin and bone. Wouldn't be more than a snack for a well-fed family of trolls like you."

"Er..."

"I bet you've never tried elf before, either," the voice went on. "Otherwise you'd know we don't digest easily. Has no one ever told you not to eat anything that glows in the dark?"

Garnet and Psammite both peered at the elf. It didn't seem to be glowing.

Still... elves...

"The thing is," said the voice, becoming confidential, "you wouldn't want to eat Erestor right now anyway. He's far too skinny. You'd have to feed him up if you wanted to get a good meal out of him, and that would be terribly inconvenient. I really don't think you've thought this all the way through."

"We have snack, then!" said Garnet crossly. "You come here, have tea party –"

"Funny thing," said the voice. "I'm much plumper than Erestor will ever be. I could probably feed a family of hungry trolls for days."

That sounded promising. Garnet gave it some consideration.

"So come to tea party?" she suggested.

"Oh no," said the voice. "Not unless you can prove you're not going to eat me."

"It tea party!" said Garnet, exasperated. "We not eat you –"

"You can't expect me to just believe you," said the voice reasonably. "You are trolls, after all. You'll have to prove it."

"How?" said Psammite, who was getting hungry.

"Tricky one," said the voice. "Haven't a clue. Unless, and this is just me thinking out loud, you understand, you sent out that skinny elf to show there's nothing to worry about. That might work."

"Er –" said Garnet doubtfully.

"Yes," went on the voice, "I'd believe him. You should try that."

Garnet looked at Psammite, who shrugged and released the elf. "Okay," he said, while repeating his celebrated impersonation of a skinny elf being horribly strangled to death. "You tell fat elf it tea party. Right?"

"Right!" said the elf and scrambled for the sliver of daylight. A moment later, it wriggled out through the brambles and was gone.

The voice, when it spoke again, sounded slightly unsteady.

"Oh well, now I'm convinced," it said. "Tea party. Right. Er. We should bring cake or – er – something. Don't you worry, we'll be there in no time. Wouldn't miss it for worlds, would we, Erestor?"

"Elbereth, no!"

As the sound of elvish footsteps receded into the distance, Garnet couldn't help noticing a scolding note in the second elf's voice. "Honestly, what were you thinking? You know trolls live in that cave!"

The first elf might have been laughing. "Gildor said it was empty..."

"That was two years ago! Next time, they can eat you. And you can – oh, I know, you can do the cooking from now on. And there's a partridge that needs plucking, so you can do that too!"

"If you say so, dear..."

Back in the cave, the trolls waited hopefully.

"Dey not comin' back, right?" said Psammite at last.

Garnet shook her head.

"Bugger."

*

Funnily enough, five months later when Psammite stumbled unexpectedly across a whole heap of naked human corpses of just the right degree of ripeness piled up in a heap near the cave, both he and Garnet immediately remembered the elves and their promise to bring cake or something to the tea party that had never taken place. Neither of them said anything to the other about it, though. That would have been ridiculous.

Because everyone knows that reality is far too complicated for that.

* Hem, hem.

** A bag of scraps, lots of pins and a good, solid toadstool in case of emergencies. The ability to sew buttons back on can also come in handy.

*** A school of thought named after the famous Númenorean philosopher Ibid, who proposed that the world is basically simple and follows certain fundamental rules.

† A school of thought named after the famous Númenorean philosopher Xeno, who proposed that the world is basically complex and random. Of course, most serious philosophers accept the intermediate position of Didactylos, who proposed that "it's basically a funny old world and doesn't contain enough to drink".

‡ A less stony creature would probably have said 'planked'.

‡‡ If she'd known what cushions were, of course.

Chapter End Notes

All of Terry Pratchett is thoroughly readable. In this specific case, I was reading Pyramids and Small Gods, wherein may be found the philosophers and their philosophies.

"A Correspondence Concerning Fëanor"

selections from

The Nargothrond Dossier

a collection of documents discovered in the ruins of Nargothrond by

Erestor and Melinna of Ered Luin

(edited and translated by C.S. Lewis)

PREFACE

WE HAVE no way of knowing how the correspondence which we now offer to the public came into Finrod Felagund's hands.

Readers are advised to observe the stylistic elements which characterise these letters as a composition of the early First Age at the latest. We think it very likely that the correspondence was produced by an unknown member of Fëanor's household, perhaps even while the Noldor were still in Aman. It seems that satire can provide a means to offer disguised warnings even in the Blessed Realm.

No effort has been made to attach dates to the letters. Number I appears to have been composed after the fabrication of the Silmarils; but in general the Ainurin conception of time appears to bear no relation to any Eldarin chronological system and we have not attempted to elucidate it. We think that the broad outline of events as they unfolded in Aman is clear from the content of the letters.

E. & M.

EREGION
July 5, 1341 T.A.

I

MY DEAR THURINGWETHIL,

What you tell me about this man's relations with his brothers and their mother is very promising. The cultivation of domestic hatred is an old textbook method of temptation and one that often produces very pleasing results. To be sure, we have little hope of the brothers themselves. There is a streak of pride in the elder of the two through which our colleague Gothmog may yet gain a foothold, but the younger is disgustingly insipid and his mother is no better; indeed, I find from the record office that all attempts to convince her to resent her husband's affection for your patient have been in vain. But your patient is fortunately unaware of this and can quite easily be persuaded that his stepmother and her sons devote their every waking moment to turning his father against him. If you can only get him to be sure that the Enemy intends them to usurp his father's crown, the rest of your task will be delightfully straightforward.

Remember, he has not, like you, experienced the might of the Enemy. Never having faced the hosts of the Enemy in war (Oh, that abominable episode!) he doesn't realise what it would really be like to be imprisoned by Them in Valinor. I once had a patient, a simple Quendu, who used to sing under the stars by Cuiviénen. One day, as he wandered along the shore, I saw the shadow of Oromë looming up over the hills. If I had lost my head and fled for safety, I should have been undone. But I was not such a fool. I struck at once and reminded him of the tales of dark Riders and shadowy beasts that roamed through the hills above Cuiviénen. The patient presumably caught sight of the light of Aman in Oromë's face, for when I said "Quite. No doubt He carries fire and intends to use it", the patient became appreciably more nervous; and by the time I had added "Of course more of Them will certainly appear in short order", he was already half way to the woods. Once he was among the trees the battle was won. I showed him an owl's eyes gleaming in the dark, and the branches rustling frightfully above him, and before he reached the deep bushes I had got into him an unalterable conviction that, of all things, the sound of Oromë's Valaróma was the most to be feared. He knew he'd had a narrow escape and has since become one of the founding members of Our Father's armies.

You begin to see the point? Thanks to the limitations of their corporeal form, they are vulnerable to fear and doubt on precisely those points where they should be most inclined towards trust. Keep pressing home on him the deceptiveness of things. Tell him that weapons and armour might one day be useful; do not allow him to consider what they might be useful for. Above all, do not urge him to foment rebellion (I mean, obvious rebellion) among the Noldor as a whole. This will positively encourage him to think about the realities of the situation. If it ever occurs to him that the Enemy could crush him and his people in an instant if They chose, he will realise at once that Their aim cannot possibly be imprisonment (a game in which They are indeed mere amateurs).

Do not misunderstand me. It is quite impossible that Their cock-and-bull story about disinterested love can be anything more than mere propaganda. But it is manifestly obvious to anyone who cares to consider the matter dispassionately that Valinor is not a prison and the Enemy are not holding the Elves captive, and so the trick is therefore to be sure that the patient does not consider this (or any other) matter dispassionately. The best thing to do is to let him obsess over his imagined grievances against his brothers and his stepmother until he is quite certain that the whole world is against him. At that point he should fall into your hands like a rotten apple.

I haven't yet got a report from you on his latest project. I should like it at once. Our Father is very interested in those jewels,

Your affectionate uncle,
GORTHAUR

II

MY DEAR THURINGWETHIL,

So you "think it will turn out to Our Father's advantage in the long run", do you? I always thought you were a trifle too naïf for your own good, and now I am sure. Have I not repeatedly impressed upon you the importance of secrecy?

As you ought to have known, even the vaunted liberality of the Enemy could not survive your patient drawing his sword on his brother. It was entirely predictable that They should summon him to the Ring of Doom, and unless you have him very much in hand They will certainly extract the truth of the matter from him. How can you fail to see that this is the last thing Our Father wants? Can't you foresee that laying all of the patient's complaints out in the open will just disclose the falsity of the grudges which you have been so laboriously teaching him to cherish? And that exposing your own activity to the Enemy is the most dangerous thing of all? That They will realise that your patient's resentment of Their rule by no means springs straightforwardly from his own pride, and that Our Father is likewise less amenable to Their dominion than He has been at great pains to appear? In order to detach the patient from the Enemy, you wanted to keep him and his people away from Them, and had so far managed with some adroitness to do so. Now, all that is undone.

Of course his relations with his family have deteriorated, but that was not the point of the exercise. Remember always, that your ultimate aim is to convince the patient that the Enemy hold his people captive in Aman, and that They plan to rule over Men in the kingdoms of Middle-earth. You want to isolate the patient from his family as a means to this end, not the other way around! Hence, while your work in this respect has certainly born fruit, the results may turn out to be perfectly disastrous. You have observed the punishment meted out in the dungeons of Udûn to those who fail Our Father, I hope? I enclose a set of woodcuts on the subject for you to study at your leisure; the detail is quite exquisite and you will profit greatly from a close examination of them.

You report that his wife has left him. That is good. She was a bad influence and could usually be counted upon to bring a positively unpleasant degree of rationality to bear on any given moral dilemma. But this alone cannot redeem the situation. We shall have to wait on the outcome of your patient's audience with the Enemy.

Do keep a close eye on what he does with those jewels,

Your affectionate uncle,
GORTHAUR

III

MY DEAR THURINGWETHIL,

So! All is revealed – and in the worst possible way – and the patient has gone into exile at Formenos with the jewels. I hope you have taken careful note of those woodcuts of Udûn. Unless we can retrieve this disaster, you will have ample opportunity to experience the delights they depict at first hand.

You can at least take comfort that the fictions you have been spreading among your patient's people have now (as it will seem to these creatures) been confirmed: your patient's father, by following his son to Formenos, has yielded his kingship to his second son. Our colleague Gothmog is exploiting this opportunity to spread further discord even now. Meanwhile, Our Father has determined that your incompetence obliges Him to involve Himself directly. Do not indulge the hope that you will avoid the usual penalties,

Your affectionate uncle,
GORTHAUR

IV

MY DEAR THURINGWETHIL,

Our Father is most displeased by your failure to convince the patient that co-operation would be in his best interests. You may be interested to learn of the importance that He places upon extending the dungeons beneath Udûn and Angband, when He returns to Middle-earth. For the moment, remain in place and concentrate your attentions upon exacerbating your patient's resentment of his brothers and of the Enemy's rule in Aman. Work on persuading him that he has been the victim of a great injustice, rather than the architect of his own downfall,

Your affectionate uncle,
GORTHAUR

V

MY DEAR THURINGWETHIL,

I am delighted to hear of the patient's reaction to his father's death. The best thing would have been for him to die at Formenos alongside his father, but this outcome is certainly the most useful alternative. He is now wedded to the idea that the Enemy intend to steal the jewels from him, and that Their summons cost him his father's life – whereas we know that the summons actually saved his life, since it would certainly have been forfeit to Our Father had he been present at the sack of Formenos. These creatures can never see when they are best off. At any rate, you want to encourage him in this belief. Do not let him recall how the Enemy indulged his selfishness when he refused to turn the jewels over to Yavanna, before anyone knew they were lost. Let him think that They hold a bitter grudge against him, and that he must strike out for freedom before They move to take Their revenge. Your time with the patient is strictly limited – Our Father will summon us all to prostrate ourselves before Him in Middle-earth soon enough – and we had better make the most of it. The Enemy's pretty idyll has been cracked; we want to leave it spoilt beyond repair.

Persuading the patient and his sons to take that Oath was a master stroke. That they could ever harm Our Father is all but impossible; that they can (and will) do great damage to anyone who stands in their way is very likely. Our Father was most amused by the news. You may even be excused one or two of your earlier failures, if the implications make themselves felt in a timely fashion. It is rather awkward that the patient has united with his brother Fingolfin, but that can be dealt with in due course.

Pray do not fill your letters with gossip about the creature's abuse of Our Father. I am not in the least interested in knowing by what name your patient has decided to address Him today. No doubt the matter is of some small significance to the patient, but it matters not one bit to Our Father, Who alone will ultimately decree His Own infernal and abominable titles when the final moment comes,

Your affectionate uncle,
GORTHAUR

VI

MY DEAR THURINGWETHIL,

This is the last letter you will receive from me before we meet again in person. I must commend you on your brilliant success at Alqualondë. The patient reacted better than we could have hoped to the merest hint that his quest might be thwarted. Now that he has once shed Elvish blood, it will be much easier for him or his sons to do so a second time when (as it so appears to them) acquaintances, friends, or even kin seem to stand in their way. The more atrocities they can be persuaded to commit in the name of their Oath, the more they will feel themselves to be driven by it, when in fact it is only their own stubborn pride that drives them. And in the long run, such victories will be claimed by Our Father alone.

There will not be enough ships for the patient to ferry all his people across the ocean. I don't suppose you can persuade him to abandon his troublesome brother in Araman?

Until our paths cross once more before Our Father's throne, I remain

Your affectionate uncle,
GORTHAUR

Chapter End Notes

This draws on C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters. I owe this story to Gogollescent, in gratitude for TEH LINK (this being http[:/]members[.]fortunecity[.]com[/]phantom1[/]books2[/]c._s._lewis_-_the_screwtape_letters[.]htm, for anyone separated from their own copy of the book).

"A Thousand Suns"

taken from

A Beleriand Treasury of Childish Tales

as told to

Erestor and Melinna of Ered Luin

(the guilt is Gogol's, both for the inspiration and the beta-work)

Maglor stands beneath a thousand suns and sings the blood away.

It traps him in a net of ragged words, his oath and curse. Pitiless, the stars shine down like the jewels enchained in iron chests at Formenos. But the brilliance of his memory is cooling now to absent-minded ashes, slipping through the maimed harpist's fingers of his mind like sand beneath the tide that breaks in scarlet shards and froth upon the sunset shore and flees his naked feet, which once walked the shores at Alqualondë. Alqualondë and Doriath's woods and all around the cliffs above the mouths of Sirion.

He washes his guilt away with salt. It tastes of blades and bitter edges.

(Or else, the truth. He knew he shouldn't do it, any of it. He did it anyway.)

Once, wielding his voice like a weapon, he cut a path through all the angry ghosts to silence, so that he could confine the whiteness of their words and their mocking faces into the labyrinthine depths of sleep – when he slept, snatching at splinters of respite between the recollected deaths and battle-fever. But his voice is blunted now, pitted and rusting from the rough sea-breeze, and their accusations ring through his head even in daylight. These days there is no silence. And then sometimes he sees them, too, the ghosts, sprawled out in their unnatural broken poses on the blood-damp dunes.

Sing to us, they say. Sing of your quest, Fëanor's son. Sing how you fell.

"No," he says and finds his voice is gone, cracked into the two salt-crusted halves of a broken dream. No. I will not.

Sing to us, Fëanorion. Why would you make a lay if not to sing it?

He does not recall the reasoning of a time when his hands still stretched over harp strings, the tendons in his wrists standing out sharp and whole beneath thin skin. He shakes his head. The water paints him etched in acid shadows, pale-faced, a ghost himself of all that he had been before the fall. Before the brave descent from crafting jewels and music into those glorious warrior's days of blood and fire. A bruise is darkening plum-purple around his eye, blooming into a bright nosegay of hyacinth shades and jonquil edges. He brought his mother flowers once with clean unbroken hands.

Let it be lost. Let his fall be so forgotten, the bloodshed and the glory. Let his lay and all the horror of his sung deeds pass unremembered into the dusty, lustful dark.

(If no one remembers, will it matter? Where will the truth be then?)

We will sing it for you, say his ghosts, the murdered Elves who drift like smoke and rumours through the childish disorder of his inchoate mind. We will sing of the Swan-Haven and Elwing's plight and those who died in Doriath. We will sing of Dior's sons. We will remember.

No, he says, in his head. Don't. You should forget.

We will remember.

Their eyes are pitiless. He slew and devoured their mercy long ago.

He hears them fading as the thousandth sun sinks low beneath the bloody sky.

Chapter End Notes

This was written a year ago for Gogollescent's birthday.  And let this be counted as a recommendation for anyone interested in Discworld or New Star Trek stories. I drew in particular on And The Mourners Will Laugh (a New Trek fic about the villain, possibly-thrice[.]livejournal[.]#cutid1) and The Eyes of the World (a rare LOTR snippet about Denethor and the palantír, www[.]fanfiction[.]net/s/4355483/1/The_Eyes_Of_The_World).

Teleporno

(empty your cups for Saki, greatest of cup-bearers)

"I don't wish to discuss the past," said Lord Celeborn to his visitors, "which is to say that I intend to talk about nothing else until dinner. 'What a remarkable wife you've got,' people said to me when we first moved here. As a matter of fact, she moved here considerably in advance of my own migration across the mountains; I was rather tied up with some business in Eregion at the time, as you know, or things might have turned out differently. You see, the locals have never been particularly impressed by Noldor, or at least not the sort of Noldor most commonly seen in these parts, for which I certainly can't blame them; but in any case, my wife was as diplomatic as she knows how to be, which is considerably, and somehow managed to produce in every one the distinct impression that she had been simply pining to visit Lórinand ever since the first rumours of Middle-earth reached her ears back in Valinor. Of course Amdír was king here then, so there wasn't any of this nonsense about civilising missions to be heard; he wouldn't have been pleased if he'd thought she was eyeing up his crown for size. Which she might have been, for all I know – I certainly wouldn't care to lay money against it. Anyway, by the time I arrived, the notion was well and truly fixed that we'd planned to settle in Lórinand since the day we met, and that our unaccountably lengthy sojourn in Doriath and Sirion and up round Lake Nenuial and in Eregion and so on was due to a complex sequence of perfectly unfathomable coincidences. Naturally I wasn't too happy about this, but since there didn't seem to be any particular need to expound on the facts of the matter at the time, I refrained from dispelling what appeared to be the generally accepted explanation for our residence in Lórinand."

"Facts are so rarely edifying," said Erestor, with the air of one who has long since parted ways with such dull travelling companions; "after all, the truth has only itself in its favour, whereas a good story may be both beautiful and immoral, as the Númenórean said to the Maia. Did I ever tell you the tale of the dragon and the white wine of Nienna?"

"You have told so many people that Celeborn must have been among them," said his wife. "My dear Celeborn, this is all very well, but a great many absurdities remain to be accounted for. I can't quite make out how the Silvans arrived at the notion that you ever lived in Aman, for example, or why any one would think that Galadriel sailed to Middle-earth. Hasn't all the world heard the excruciating details of the crossing of the Helcaraxë?"

"We have," said Celeborn gloomily; "the Silvans have been spared that pleasure. In any case, this was only the beginning. What with the small matter of the war, and the rather larger matter of Amroth's perpetually fascinating love life, no one was particularly concerned about Galadriel's antecedents until all that nasty business with Moria occurred, and we were invited back to Lórinand on a more permanent footing. Of course the Silvans had become accustomed to discussing the latest twists in the royal romance on a well-nigh daily basis, and to have their chief source of conversation so suddenly removed was a matter of great inconvenience to them; however, a solution to their plight presented itself in the obliging person of my wife. Rather than admiring the latest piece of deathless verse composed by Amroth in praise of Nimrodel's limpid eyes, they began to tell each other all about that terribly witty remark that Galadriel had once made to Queen Melian, and to share her various fascinating anecdotes of life in Valinor before the First Age. And somehow or other, no doubt without any one really intending such an outcome, the stories you have heard came to be circulated among the more excitable inhabitants of Lórinand. I might not find it so embarrassing – I daresay Galadriel is as deserving as anyone of such adulatory exculpation – but I do object to being renamed Teleporno without so much as a by-your-leave. I have become quite accustomed to being called Celeborn; it is the name my parents bestowed upon me, and I feel obliged to retain it in deference to their wishes. Moreover, I take definite exception to being transformed into a prince of the Teleri. I have nothing but admiration for the Teleri; indeed, I believe that I have any number of Telerin relations; but I do not wish to be a Teler, nor do I desire the distinction of hailing from Aman. Insofar as one's past may be held to add lustre to one's present, I am strongly of the opinion that a prince of Doriath may hold his head every bit as high as any exiled Telerin princeling. Unfortunately it has proven quite impossible to quash these peculiar stories by mere repetition of the true history, and I can't think how else to resolve the problem, try as I will."

"That merely shows the limitations of historical truth," commented Erestor. "Now, if every time you heard yourself referred to as Teleporno you removed all your clothes and attempted to drown Haldir in the Celebrant, or summoned every one in the city from their beds at midnight to hear you sing the Lay of Leithian, your academic scruples would receive a much more respectful hearing."

"Certainly from Haldir," said Melinna, "although I shudder to imagine the consequences for the Celebrant. But what does Galadriel think about all this? Surely a few words from her would put an end to all this nonsense."

"Galadriel thinks that the stories are quite harmless," said Celeborn; "at least, that is what she tells me. I am convinced that she takes a great deal of pleasure from them, though, for she never makes more than the slightest protest when the matter is raised in her presence. And when she is obliged to dismiss such fabrications, she does so in the vaguest sort of language, so that any one might imagine that her qualms arose from modesty, rather than the gross inaccuracy of the reported history."

He spoke feelingly; his transference by fictional genealogy to what he held to be a junior branch of the Sindarin royal family, and the willingness of certain Silvans to believe in it, had dealt a definite dent to his pride.

"That complicates matters," said Melinna reflectively; "she is very popular among the Silvans, and unless she can be brought to condemn the tale outright, you will never be rid of Teleporno. All the same, I can't think of a way to convince her to do so. It is such a terribly flattering story, after all."

"It is only flattering conceived as the broadest of outlines," said Erestor. "Set the whole tale down on paper, in thorough and unrelenting detail, and have it 'discovered' somewhere in Lindórinand, and no one will be more eager to disown it than Galadriel."

"Really? Are you sure of that?" said Celeborn.

"Very," said Erestor, "especially if one were to contrast the fictional history with a true version of events. It need not be a particularly lengthy account; the important thing is that it should be written down. A story that passes from mouth to mouth may change its shape a thousand times, and usually does; but once it has been written down, it becomes very difficult to alter the principal features. The written word carries a degree of authority that even the Valar must envy."

"I believe you are right," said Celeborn; "at any rate, it's worth a try. But who would write such a thing? I don't have the time, and it should be most improper for me to take a hand in any case."

His tone conveyed a certain expectation on the part of his visitors; his visitors, for their part, appeared disinclined to return the expected response. "There," said Melinna, "is the nub of the matter. Galadriel is bound to be furiously angry."

"I don't see why that should deter you," said Celeborn; "she will be obliged to accept it as genuine, after all."

"Melinna still harbours the fond hope that Galadriel will one day share all her weaver's secrets," explained Erestor, "and I should be sorry to be banished from these golden woods by your wife's displeasure."

"Nonsense," said Celeborn impatiently; "it is not as though the forest is girdled, as Doriath was, and you may always be sure of your welcome while I am lord here. In any case, these scruples seem distinctly out of place in the compilers of the Nargothrond Dossier. I have a letter somewhere from my son-in-law, discussing the Dossier at some length and bewailing your precipitate departure –"

"Quite probably," said Melinna, "in fact, I expect that we brought it. What has the Dossier to do with the matter?"

"Very little, except that Elrond appears to have made it his current object of study," said Celeborn. "It was most inconsiderate of you, he said, to leave Imladris precisely when your advice would have been so useful to him. He intends to write a monograph on cultural interactions between the Sindar of Doriath and the Noldor of Nargothrond in the First Age, I believe."

"That was certainly his intention when we left Imladris," said Erestor reminiscently. "Having pronounced himself dissatisfied with our assessment of the letters concerning Fëanor, on the grounds that he could identify no stylistic features in common with the literature of Aman from this period, nor indeed any sign that the letters had even been composed by a Noldo, he determined that the letters must be a contemporary Sindarin forgery. The pressing issue then became how to explain the presence of the letters in Nargothrond, of all places – hence his present preoccupation. Whereupon we departed; there are several residents of Imladris who can claim a glancing acquaintance with the First Age, after all, and our involvement might have invited awkward questions. Sometimes satire is more trouble than it's worth."

"I have a great deal of respect for my son-in-law," said Celeborn, discarding his attempts at cajolery and resorting to intimations of blackmail, "but there are occasions when his intellectual keenness impedes his common sense. A word in his ear –"

"That would be cruel," said Melinna; "he is enjoying himself so much."

"It would save everyone a great deal of time," pursued Celeborn, "not to mention paper. I shall have to read this monograph, after all. Celebrían is sure to ask for my opinion, you know, even if Elrond does not."

His visitors glanced ruefully at each other.

"Even Galadriel's wrath can't last forever," said Erestor optimistically. "Might I borrow a pen?"

Four weeks later, Lady Galadriel of Lindórinand burst into her husband's study, brandishing a slim manuscript. "Have you seen this?" she stormed. "It is the most insulting, offensive, ridiculous – what have you got there?"

"A document purporting to be an account of your journey to Middle-earth," said Celeborn. "Erestor and Melinna discovered it recently, you know, and thought I should be interested. It is really quite bizarre. We have decided to make it more widely available; it would be rather good of you to help with compiling the explanatory notes. Elrond and Thranduil have already requested copies of the edited version. What were you saying?"

Decades may pass before the Lady Galadriel will exchange civil words with Erestor or Melinna; but Master Elrond of Imladris has completed yet another acclaimed monograph, and Lord Celeborn of Lindórinand is no longer troubled by the unwelcome spectre of one Teleporno, prince of the Teleri.

Chapter End Notes

This draws on the glorious short stories of Saki, otherwise known as Hector Hugh Munro. I am not going to single out any specific stories as particularly worthy of mention, since doing so would probably double my wordcount; a selection may be found here, however: www[.]readbookonline[.]net/stories/Saki/77.