Echo as of a Child's Voice by StarSpray

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They came to Doriath in the summer, when all was green and cool beneath the trees and the river flowed merrily over the stones, and niphredil blossomed like white stars in the soft grass. Elurín and Eluréd spent their days exploring the woods surrounding Menegroth when the weather was fine. When it rained, or when no one could be spared to go out into the trees with them, they explored the many halls and strange and marvelous rooms to be found in the caves. They made up stories for each other out of the oldest tapestries that Queen Melian had woven long ago. Some they told to baby Elwing, to make her laugh.

Outside, Elwing was kept close to Menegroth, and never did more than splash her feet in the shallow waters of Esgalduin—she was much too small even to crawl, let alone toddle after her brothers, yet. Eluréd and Elurín were permitted to roam farther, but never wholly by themselves. "There is no Girdle anymore," their father told them. "We have our march wardens and our scouts, but they may not catch everything that tries to slip past them. And what is more, pockets of Melian's power remain, and the forest is strange and not always friendly, even to us. You must always be careful, and always come home when you are called."

One bright summer afternoon when the sun was high in the cloudless sky, Elurín and Eluréd discovered a small stream that flowed merrily into the Esgalduin. They followed it for a while, sometimes on the grassy bank and sometimes in the water itself, kicking up the water to watch it fall and sparkle like diamonds back to the water. Then Eluréd halted, tilting his head to listen. "Do you hear someone?" he asked.

"I hear you," Elurín said.

"No, I mean…someone crying. It sounds like Elwing."

Elurín stood very still, and held his breath, but he heard only the flowing water and the wind in the trees. "Elwing isn't here," he said.

"I know, but…" Eluréd shook his head. "Never mind." He picked up a stone from the stream bed and threw it, so that it skipped across the surface of the water before sinking to the bottom. Elurín did the same, and they spent the next few hours trying to see who could skip a stone the farthest, forgetting all about voices on the wind or crying children.

It was a summer of exploration and of blackberries and swimming and singing under the stars. Inside Menegroth the very air seemed heavy, a weight pressing down on the people there that began to lift only slowly after their arrival. Elurín did not like the feeling of it, or the stares of their father's new courtiers, and was more than happy to escape into the forest. Their mother, too, joined them outside whenever she could, with Elwing on a sling at her back and her flute tucked into a pocket. Often they were joined by other ladies, who brought their own instruments or even sometimes hunting gear, and they laughed and sang together, and cooked what small game they caught over open fires by the river while Eluréd and Elurín explored the honeysuckle thickets and splashed in the water. Sometimes even their father emerged from Menegroth, casting off his crown and chasing Eluréd and Elurín into the underbrush, and tossing them into the river or tickling them breathless when he caught them.

It was on one such day, when Dior took them farther into the wood than normal to look for strawberries that the sound of crying floated past them on the breeze. "Do you hear it?" Eluréd cried, tugging on Dior's hand. "Do you hear the crying, Ada?"

"I hear it." Dior stood very still, gazing into a shadowy part of the wood. A stream trickled by their feet; the sound of the water itself seemed mournful. "I told you that Lady Melian's power lingers still in the wood. Perhaps the sound is the forest itself, mourning her absence, and King Thingol's."

"Why did Lady Melian leave?" Elurín asked, peering up at Dior. His face was grave, and he stood so still he might have been as one of the statues in Menegroth, carved long long ago out of hard stone, before ever rose the Sun or Moon.

Finally, he answered, "I do not know. Perhaps she could not stay, once Thingol was dead. She was one of the Ainur." He said nothing more, appearing to listen intently to the weeping on the wind. When it finally faded away, he crouched down so that he could look Eluréd and Elurín in the eyes. "Do you know what that means?" he asked.

"She was one of the Powers from across the Sea," said Eluréd.

"Yes. She was—is—not like Elves or Men. Who can say what happened to her when Thingol died? She had put much of her power into the lands, and into the woods—as you can see, and hear, and feel, for it lingers still—but her heart she gave to Thingol."

"Is it her voice that we hear?" Eluréd asked.

"What do you think?" Dior replied.

"I think it sounds like a little child. But Melian was not a child."

"She was not a woman, either. She was something else entirely. Maybe it is her grief that we hear. Maybe it is the forest's. Or maybe it is something else." Dior gazed off into the trees, and then rose, reaching out his hands to Eluréd and Elurín. "Come. Let us return to your mother. If you hear the weeping again, my sons, do not follow it."

As summer passed into autumn they heard the weeping sometimes, but they always ran back home when they did, and as the leaves changed and fell they were permitted less and less to roam the woods. Winter came quick and hard, with driving snows and harsh winds. Winter also brought the Nauglamír. One morning Eluréd and Elurín entered the great hall to find their father holding court and shining with brilliant light, the Nauglamír clasped around his neck. But beautiful as it was, it meant that Beren and Lúthien were gone, and there would be no returning to the green woods of Ossiriand to dance beneath the summer stars while Lúthien sang and Beren laughed and the falls of Lanthir Lamath shimmered in the moonlight. It was a somber winter.

The next year passed much as the last one had. Spring came with lark song to swell the Esgalduin with snow melt, and niphredil bloomed in a white carpet to replace the snows beneath the trees that burst with a thousand shades of green. And summer brought berries and parties by the river with dancing and singing, and autumn a flurry of activity to prepare for winter as the greens faded away to gold and red and fiery orange, and then to the brown of winter as frost crept back to the edges of the river.

Elurín heard whispers and rumors that he was not meant to hear, of the world outside of Doriath where the Shadow was growing, stretching like long fingers down south from the mountains in the north. The whispers made him shiver, and he fled with Eluréd back into the woods to watch the badgers raise their kits, or to try to follow squirrels up into the trees.

The seasons continued to pass, and the whispers grew more concerned, and Elurín thought that he could hear the small crying voice more and more often. It began to feel as though it were not mourning what Doriath had already lost, but already something that was to come. He tried to tell this to Eluréd, but he could not explain it properly; it was easier to talk of his own troubled dreams, where flames licked at the tapestries in the Great Hall that Grandmother Melian had woven so long ago, and of the fountains running red. Eluréd listened as he paddled his feat in the shallow waters of Esgalduin. They were sitting on a willow root not far from the entrance to Menegroth, though they could not be seen unless they peeked up over the bank. Summer was waning, and soon it would be too cold to dip even a toe in the river. Somewhere nearby a woman was singing a harvest song. Somewhere else a nightingale trilled. Finally, Eluréd said, "What do you think is going to happen?"

"I don't know."

The last of summer passed swiftly, and then autumn seemed to linger. One afternoon Elurín walked down by himself to the Esgalduin, and followed it to one of the many streams that fed it, and turned to follow that until he came to a place to sit in a patch of pale sunshine. He sat with his legs crossed on the thick carpet of brown beechen leaves, and watched others, brown and pale yellow, float down the stream, swirling a little in the eddies. The water was very clear, and had lost none of its cheerfulness with the coming of cool weather. A few birds flitted through the branches overhead, little brown sparrows and finches that did not fly south when the cold came. Elurín watched them and tried to mimic their cheeping calls the way his mother had taught him.

When his mouth grew dry and he grew tired of trying to call the birds down, Elurín yawned and stretched—and froze when he lowered his gaze, for across from him on the bank stood a little girl, no older than Elwing, with golden hair and a pale green dress embroidered with yellow flowers. There was something insubstantial about her, and there were tears in her wide blue eyes. Then Elurín blinked, and she was gone, and the only hint that she had ever been there at all was a faint echo of a child's sob mingling with the flow of water. Elurín scrambled to his feet, slipping in the leaves, and fled back to Menegroth. He did not tell anyone what he had seen, not even Eluréd. He did not know why. The girl had not been frightening, and she had not seemed like something the remnants of the Girdle might have left, or that had come down from Nan Dungortheb or worse places. Having seen her, Elurín wanted to pick up Elwing and kiss her round cheeks and hug her tightly, but she squirmed until he let her down.

Winter came on gradually, and it was not until nearly Midwinter that it began to snow, and then at first it was only a light dusting. And then a little more, just enough to have a snowball fight before the gates of Menegroth. A few days later it began to snow in earnest, with flakes falling so thick and fast that when Elurín peered out of the gates he could not even see the river—nor even Hírilorn just down the lane. He and Eluréd went to bed already planning the magnificent fort they would build the next morning in the snow, a little frozen Menegroth of their own devising. And they would allow Elwing to help them, too.

But it seemed that Elurín had no sooner laid his head down on his pillow than his mother was there shaking him awake, and Eluréd was stirring beside him, mumbling sleepily. "Get up, hurry!" Nimloth said. One of her ladies stood in the doorway with a single lamp, and in the dim light both of their faces were very pale. Elurín heard shouting somewhere farther away. "Get dressed, in your warmest clothes. We must go."

"What's happening?" Eluréd asked, as Elurín rolled out of bed.

"We are under attack," said Nimloth as she fumbled with a chest. She drew out their thickest cloaks and tossed them onto the bed. "Stay with them, Aeneth; I must see to Elwing." And she was gone.

"Who is attacking us, Aeneth?" Eluréd demanded immediately.

"I don't know," she said, setting down the lamp so she could help them pull on their clothes. "I have not seen them. They have not yet gotten past the first halls. But we must hurry!" The moment they had their boots on she grabbed Eluréd's hand, and he grabbed Elurín's, and she took up the lamp and hurried them out into the corridor.

It was chaotic in Menegroth, people racing about, some armed, others still in their night clothes. Aeneth dodged them all and brought them to Elwing's nursery, where both Dior and Nimloth were stuffing things into a small satchel. "There you are!" Dior turned and scooped up both Eluréd and Elurín, giving them each firm kisses. He was clad in mail, and had Beren's sword on his belt. "Go with your mother and Aeneth."

"But where are you going?" cried Elurín, suddenly very afraid.

"I will come to you later," Dior said, but Elurín could see that he did not believe it. He kissed them both again, and said, "I love you both. Do not tarry!" Then he kissed Elwing, and Nimloth, and was gone. Elwing was crying, her face red and blotchy.

"Come!"

It was all a jumble of bodies and shouting and screaming and the smell of smoke after that. Somehow Eluréd and Elurín got separated from Nimloth and Aeneth. Someone else scooped them up, but then soldiers in strange armor emblazoned with a star came around the corner. Elurín had expected orcs, or perhaps dwarves as had attacked Menegroth before, but these were elves, some with strange eyes that shone like stars in the dark corridors. Eluréd and Elurín were dropped, and they scrambled through a doorway just before the swords came swinging. They dropped their satchels and ran, hand in hand, until they were as lost as the soldiers who finally found them, with their bright eyes and sharp swords and strange words. Elurín stared up at them as they debated among themselves, before two of them grabbed both Eluréd and Elurín, carrying them like sacks over their shoulders. Elurín screamed and kicked and squirmed, but he was much too small to do any harm, let alone get away.

The next thing he knew they were outside in the driving snow, and Menegroth and the smell of burning was fading behind them. The strange elves dropped Elurín and Eluréd into a deep snowdrift, and one of them demanded to know where the Silmaril was. "Our father has it," said Eluréd, already with his teeth chattering. "It was our grandmother's—"
There was more debate in the strange tongue, and then with one last kick to Eluréd they left, and after their lanterns disappeared it was very dark, but for the faint glow of the deep snows, and it was silent but for the wind moaning through the trees. It was very cold.

"Elurín," Eluréd whispered. Tears were frozen on his face. "What do we do?"

There was nothing they could do but try to find the way back. But the soldiers' footprints had filled already, and all of the trees looked the same, and all of them were deep in their wintry slumber. Soon they stumbled into a part of the forest that they did not know, for the trees were not asleep but dead, burned by some fire that had swept through in years past, before Dior had brought his family back to Doriath. Perhaps the dwarves had burned them—there was no one to ask.

Hours passed. Or days. Or an Age. It kept snowing, and there were no stars, no moon. Elurín was very cold, and then very tired, and at last he and Eluréd huddled together beneath the gnarled and blackened roots of a great ancient beech tree that had, somehow, survived the fires and battles that had raged around it. They wrapped their arms around each other but there was no warmth left between them to share.

"Do you hear that, Elurín?" Eluréd whispered, always the first to notice something new.

"Hear what?"

"Silver bells." Eluréd stirred a little, but then closed his eyes with a sigh, and after a moment Elurín knew that he was gone. He was too cold to weep, and too tired to feel sad or scared. He closed his own eyes, and heard himself the faint ringing of bells, or perhaps the sound of trumpets far away, or a great voice calling his own name. Elurín. Elurín, it is time.

.

He opened his eyes and expected to see his father standing over them. But there was no one. And he no longer felt cold or tired. Elurín stood up, and turned toward Eluréd, but found himself instead staring down at his brother's body, and his own. Eluréd was not there. He had heard the voice or the bells, and he had gone where he was called. When he looked down at himself he saw—was he truly seeing? He no longer had a body, no longer had eyes. But his spirit remembered the shape, and he wore his favorite summer clothes. Strange to see against the driving snow.

He heard the voice again, and turned towards it, westward, but as he did he saw the girl again, with her green dress and her yellow hair. She ran up to him on light feet, leaving no trace behind on the snow. "Are you leaving?" she cried. "Please don't leave!"

"But I am called," said Elurín. "Don't you hear?"

"Yes. He calls me, too, but I cannot go!" She cried, and it was the sound on the wind and in the river. "I am afraid."

"Don't be afraid," said Elurín. He held out his hands. "I will go with you!" She reached out to take his hands, but he saw that around her wrist was a dark band, thick but insubstantial as smoke, and it seemed that she was tethered to something. "Who are you?"

"Sorrow," she said. Then, "No. That was my sister. My poor baby sister. But she isn't a baby anymore, and she has gone away too, I don't know where. And Túrin, too! I followed him here but was caught in the net and couldn't follow when they went away. I was Laughter, like the river by our house. But I don't remember how to laugh anymore."

Elurín took her hands in his, and all in a rush he knew what she knew and had seen and had done.

.

Lalaith had been the delight of her house and her people, with golden hair and a constant smile, and she had played among the flowers by the river for which she was named. Only her stern-faced mother called her Urwen, and then only sometimes. Even Morwen Elfsheen softened when Lalaith brought her flowers or a river stone worn smooth and silky by the water. She had few playmates, but she knew always that her brother Túrin kept watch over her as she sang to herself. He was dark and quiet and somber like their mother, not given to bright bursts of laughter or cheerful song like their father Húrin or their uncle Huor.

Dor-lómin was a beautiful land, with fertile fields and a full rainbow of wildflowers in springtime. Nen Lalaith flowed laughing down from the snow melt and springs of Amon Darthir that towered like silent sentinel over the seat of the House of Hador. The river sparkled in the sun and fed the fields and pastures where Lalaith played and where the cattle and sheep grazed and the crops flourished. Elves rode by with shining armor and bright banners, and sometimes the king with golden ribbons in his hair paused to speak with Húrin or with Huor. The elves were very tall and bright-eyed and fair, and Lalaith loved to hear them singing as they went by, and to hear the silver bells chiming on the saddles.

Her mother's cousin Rían often walked with her in the meadows, and wove garlands of flowers for them both to wear like crowns. "Did you know there is an elven princess with almost your same name?" Rían told Lalaith one sunny afternoon as she twisted daisies together with meadow grass and lily-of-the-valley to make a garland. They sat on a hillside, and could see the bridge where a party of bright-eyed Elves had stopped to speak with Lalaith's father and her uncle. "There she is, with the silver circlet, Princess Lalwen. See how she laughs!" The elven lady, clad in mail and with a sword at her hip, laughed like Húrin did, loud and long with her head thrown back. Her dark hair shone in the sun, and the silver circlet glittered. She glanced up the hill, and waved to Rían and Lalaith, before riding off with the other Elves, all of them bursting into bright song as they went.

Then one autumn the illness came. It didn't begin so badly—Lalaith was tired and too cold and then too warm, but she was bundled into bed and her father told her stories and her mother brought soup, and Cousin Rían came with her songs and with garlands of autumn leaves and flowers to brighten up her room. But Lalaith did not get better, and soon could not eat the soup or stay awake to listen to the stories. Her chest hurt from the coughing that tore her throat raw, and she could not get warm.

Death came quietly, in the end, in the middle of the night when all were asleep. Lalaith heard the silver trumpets and the calling voice, but she could not follow. Something caught and held her fast to the earth, and she could do nothing but wander through the house, afraid and uncertain.

There were many who died that autumn. And other things besides illness came on the cold north winds, things with creeping grasping claws that the living could not see, but that caught the dead and dragged them away. What the Enemy wanted with the dead spirits of Men, who could say? But Lalaith was small enough to escape their notice, and she hid from them near the waters of Nen Lalaith, which they avoided.

Everything went wrong after that. No one laughed or even smiled very often anymore, not even Húrin. Not even when they all learned a new baby was on the way. By that time the Elves were coming more often, and they did not sing as merrily as they had before, and Húrin and Huor were called away north, until at last they departed with many men in shining armor with swords and spears that caught the bright sunlight, dazzling and sharp and deadly. Lalaith watched them march away from her hiding place in the tree-shadows, and she watched her brother watch them too, standing a little apart from their mother. Lalaith wondered if, should the battle go well, she would be able to leave the world and go where the voice had called her, or if the voice had forgotten her and she would be trapped for ever. That was frightening, and she wept, and when she did she thought she saw her mother look towards her, before calling to Túrin and disappearing into their house, locking the doors tightly.

The skies in the north grew dark. Lalaith could see more things than the living could, and could hear and feel things on the north winds that even the keenest of living beings could not, and she knew before the Easterlings came that her father was not coming back, nor her beloved uncle, nor any of the men that had marched away in shining mail singing songs of hope, and she saw a strange shadow fall over her mother and her brother in the days that followed, a shadow that did not lift even in the brightest sunshine. She followed after Rían when she fled, but turned away when she felt it becoming easier to go on and harder to turn back. There was cold laughter on the wind and it frightened her, and she returned to the tree-shadows beside Nen Lalaith, whose voice was muted now, so that laughter was stilled in Dor-lómin.

It was a hard winter, and hardly any flowers seemed to bloom in the spring. Lalaith lingered by her mother's house and watched her brother as he had once watched her. Once she thought he looked at her as he sat quietly near the stream, but if he saw her he made no sign, only sighed and looked back down at the water. It ran clear but quiet.
Before the new baby was born, Lalaith saw Morwen come out with Túrin, early in the gloaming before dawn, and send him away with a pair of their men who had not gone away to the battle. They wore heavy packs and were clad as though for a long journey, and they slipped away into the mists and shadows. Lalaith began to follow, but stopped and looked back at her mother, standing with her round heavy belly all alone in the doorway of her house, nearly empty now, the windows dark and shuttered like closed eyes, and the open door gaping like a mouth open in a mournful wail.

As Lalaith hesitated she heard her brother's voice carried on the wind from the south, crying, "Morwen, Morwen, when shall I see you again?" His voice broke on the last word, and Lalaith could see him in the distance turn away, bringing up a sleeve to wipe his face. She looked back at her mother who gripped the doorway with white knuckles. One tear, and then another fell from her face, before she turned abruptly and disappeared inside, shutting the door fast. There were runes on the lintel to ward away evil spirits; they had been carved after the illness that had killed Lalaith had swept through the land, and though she was not an evil spirit (she did not think she was an evil spirit; she did not want to be an evil spirit), Lalaith knew that she could not enter.

"Mama, Mama, good bye!" she cried, her voice small and thin and little more than an echo of the wind over the waters of Nen Lalaith. Then she turned and sped away after Túrin, who she could follow more easily than she had followed Rían, for there was no tug of cold and terrible power in the south.

The journey was hard for Túrin and his companions. Lalaith stayed close but not so close that they might hear her; she wept often for the leaving of her home and her mother, stern and hard though she was, and the little baby that she would never see. She would have liked to be a big sister, to teach the baby all of the songs that Rían had taught her, and how to weave flowers together, and to run in the tall grass by the river.

They came at last to a strange wood. There were shadows there, too, but different from the ones that crept out of the north lands. They twisted the paths through the trees, and confused and entrapped anyone who tried to pass. Lalaith quickly got caught and lost, and as winter stretched on she searched for Túrin and his companions but could not find them. She forgot that she was a dead spirit and wept and called for Túrin and for Húrin and Morwen, but of course no one came to find her.

Until someone did.

She was very tall, with dark hair and eyes that burned bright as stars. Lalaith shrank away from her coming, for about her flickered the same shadowy power as the stuff in the wood, and it felt akin to the cold grasping she had felt in the north. But the woman's face was kind, and soft, and she spoke gentle words to Lalaith, reaching out pale hands, as though she were a mother coming to comfort her own child. Lalaith ran to her, and when she reached out to touch her hands her own did not pass through them.

"Little one, what are you doing here?" asked the woman in a voice like birdsong in the morning, or like the flowing of clear water over smooth stones. "Little one, you should not be here."

"But I cannot leave," Lalaith said. "Lady, can you help me?"

The lady's fingers brushed over the dark band on Lalaith's wrist, and pulled back as though she'd touched something that hurt her. "Oh, little one," she sighed, like wind in the beechen leaves. "I cannot. I have bound myself to this place, and you have been bound by another, though you have escaped worse imprisonment. Here in my Girdle the Enemy cannot touch you, but you cannot pass away through it again, unless someone with different power than mine comes, to break the power of Angband so you can pass away Beyond as mortals must."

And so Lalaith was freed from the Girdle, but she could not pass back away through it to return to Dor-lómin, or to go anywhere else. She stayed near the Esgalduin and the little streams that fed it, but none were like the Nen Lalaith at home, and as the years passed she watched her brother grow from boy to man, while she stayed the same, and she wept to see him go away, and wept to see him come back even more changed, a valiant hero but never one who smiled. And the shadow that lay over him did not go away.

Lalaith did not see what happened in the wood that caused the trouble that sent Túrin away for good, but she saw him go. She followed after him, calling out in spite of herself, even knowing that she could not leave Doriath with him. Once he stopped and glanced around, and the look on his face was one of anguish. Lalaith wept to see it, but that only made it worse, until he turned away, his dark hair falling down to hide his face, and he strode off down the forest path.

She never saw Túrin again. Morwen and Nienor came soon after he left, but they did not stay long. There were shadows over them, too, and Nienor was grown, lovely and golden-haired and tall, and Lalaith wondered if she would have looked like that if she had grown up. Morwen was unchanged, except for deeper lines on her face and a hard set to her mouth that did not ease even in the lovely elven realm of Elu Thingol's folk. Lalaith could not follow them when they departed, either. And they did not return.

But the worst coming was Húrin's. Lalaith had thought him dead and long passed away Beyond, where mortals went and where she could not go, but he came with bowed shoulders and both fury and grief in his eyes, and the same dark shadow upon his shoulders like a mantle. Lalaith watched him from the trees. She could not run to him and be lifted up and tossed into the air, or be kissed or tickled until she shrieked with laughter. She wept instead, even though when he came out of Menegroth the shadow was gone, or at least lightened, and there was no more fury in his eyes. Only grief. He did not linger in Doriath at all, and when he was gone Lalaith was left all alone, with only the strange Queen to remember that she was there.

.
And then the Dwarves came and slew the King and the Queen fled in a gale of grief and howling winds, and still Lalaith could not follow.

So there she was, caught up in the remnants of the Girdle and in the fell sorcery of Angband, and there Elurín was, not caught but unwilling to go if it meant leaving her behind. They stood together in the snow and the cold wind, though neither of them felt it. Elurín felt nothing at all, neither warm nor cold, except a slight chill where his ghostly hands gripped Lalaith's.

"Melian was my grandmother's mother," he said to Lalaith as the snow fell around them. Already his body and Eluréd's were covered with a fine dusting of it. "And my grandmother went to Mandos and came back again. Why shouldn't I take you with me, then?"

"But you can't," said Lalaith. "The Queen couldn't, and she was…"

"But I'm different," said Eluréd. "I'm not an Elf and I'm not a Man and I'm not one of the Powers, but I'm all three at once! And I say that you will come with me where you're supposed to go!" As he spoke he grabbed at the dark band on her wrist. As he did so another peal of bells rang far in the west, and it vanished beneath his fingers like smoke. Lalaith gasped.

Elurín took her hand again. "Come on, we're being called!"

Together they turned toward the west, and at last left Middle-earth, to pass into the wide Halls of Mandos. What became of Elurín and his brother afterward, no tale tells, but Lalaith passed indeed beyond the Circles of the World, to join at last Húrin and Morwen and Túrin and Nienor in that place that mortals go that the Elves know not.

Come springtime in Doriath, though none were still there to hear it, there was an echo as of a child's laughter in the waters of Esgalduin, as once there had been laughter in Nen Lalaith far away beneath the mountains of Dor-lómin.