Seaside Sojourn by StarSpray

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One

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Late Spring
SR 1284

"Oh, Bella." Adamanta sighed as she surveyed the mess, clothes strewn across the bed and various bits and bobs scattered on the rug of Belladonna's room. In the midst of it, Belladonna was kneeling with several lengths of rope, trying to decide which one would be most useful. "I thought you were giving up on adventuring! You're going to be married, for goodness sake!"

"I'm nearly done with adventuring, Mama," Belladonna replied primly, as she tucked her hair behind an ear and chose a length of rope. She hooked it to the side of her well-worn and much-patched pack, already bulging with supplies. "And this won't be one of the dangerous ones, I promise."

"That's what you say every time," Adamanta retorted, and then sighed. "So where are you off to this time?"

"Not far. I'm going to see the Sea."

"The Sea! Good gracious, Bella, you and Isengar, I don't know what's the matter with you! Not a drop of Brandybuck in you, and you get the most absurd notions. Worse than your father! At least Isengar's young enough still to mind what I say."

Belladonna laughed. "I'm not going to go sailing on it, Mama. That would be absurd. But it's the last thing on my list of things I want to see for myself, and once I'm married to Bungo I won't have the chance, so it must be this summer. And I've told him all about it," she added when Adamanta opened her mouth to protest again. "Honestly, Mama, it's just a jaunt over the Tower Hills. Orcs and trolls don't live on the shore. If I meet anyone it'll be an elf, if I'm lucky."

She set off after bidding her father goodbye. He told her to be careful and to bring him back something pretty, as he always did. He was busy planning his Midsummer party, and as Gandalf was to attend with some truly spectacular fireworks, Gerontius told Belladonna to be sure to be back by then. "You won't want to miss this party, my dear!"

The road to the Sea was not hard to find. As far as adventures went this was one of Belladonna's easiest. She passed through the Tower Hills on a bright sunny afternoon, stopping for a while to look up at the towers, all white stone shining in the sunlight, and wondered what the Elves had built them for, and whether anyone still lived in them. There did not seem to be anyone about, anyway. Once she passed by them she caught a glimpse of a city in the distance. It, too, seemed quiet and empty, but Belladonna hardly noticed that for beyond it lay the Sea, wide and very blue, speckled with white where foam-tipped waves rose. She stood for a long time staring out at it, mouth agape.

Belladonna left the road then. Maybe she'd go down to the Elf Havens on her way back home, but for the moment she wanted to see the shore all by itself. She passed down south and west of the havens, with mountains rising up blue and hazy in the south, marching away with neat caps of snow upon their heads. Some way away from the harbor she came down to the sandy beach, and followed it for a long time, until the Bay opened up and the real Sea stretched out before her. She had known the Sea was big, of course, but until now the biggest bit of water she'd ever seen was Lake Evendim in the north, and had not been able to picture in her mind something bigger than that. She'd not been able to see the other side of the lake. Now she stood on the hillside and found herself uncertain that there even was another side of the Great Sea.

She made her camp among the dunes, all sand and tall coarse grass, and contemplated the likelihood of catching a fish, before deeming it too unlikely and deciding to forage in the brush beyond the beach. It was a good decision: she found a patch of mushrooms ripe for the picking, and had herself a delightful supper that evening, after she found a freshwater stream for water. As she stirred the mushrooms over her little campfire, humming a cooking song, the sun sank down over the sea in a blaze of red and gold and orange that faded to pinks and then to purples. As twilight set in the stars came out, winking down at Belladonna like old friends.

As far as her journeys went, this one was not particularly adventurous. But Belladonna didn't mind. She was, after all, almost of age, and set to be married in a year. Bungo was busy as a bee in Hobbiton building a marvelous hole for the two of them. He had dreams of a large family and magnificent parties. Belladonna loved to tease him by declaring she'd invite Gandalf to every single one so he could set off his fireworks over Hobbiton and scandalize all the neighborhood. Bungo turned a delightful shade of red when teased, but he always laughed along—which was really what had made Belladonna fall for him. A Baggins who liked to hear about her adventures, and who laughed with her—who could have imagined?

A few days into her adventure by the shore, Belladonna hiked up her skirts and walked along with waves swelling up around her knees. The water was cool and pleasant, as was the breeze coming off of it. The sky was cloudless and blue and the sun shone down very hot. As she went she picked up the occasional seashell, gleaming wetly in her palm, or a piece of driftwood that had been broken or worn into a strange and interesting shape. By the time she was ready to go home, Belladonna knew, she would have a large pile of things to sort through and decide which were truly worth carrying all the way back to Tuckborough.

As she hefted a large piece of driftwood half as tall as she was, the breeze changed, and carried with it the sound of a harp, soon joined by someone singing. Belladonna dropped the driftwood immediately. She knew an elf song when she heard it, and elvish singing beneath the summer stars was not a thing to miss! She ignored the sand that stuck to her wet feet and legs as she scrambled over and around the dunes, slowing down when she drew closer to the singing, and then creeping quietly up the last dune to peer through the grass at the singer.

It was an elf, of course, though he was not quite like any other elf she'd met. His clothes were well-made but worn and tattered at the hems, though in other places neatly patched or repaired so that the new stitches were as decorative as they were functional, so that his sleeves were adorned with vines or with sprays of stars over his shoulders. He had a harp carved of driftwood—Belladonna had no idea where the strings had come from—and both his playing and his singing harmonized marvelously with the waves washing up on the sand at his feet. Belladonna knew little Elvish, and did not at all know what he was singing of—but it was full of saltwater, both tears and sea waves. Belladonna lay on the dune and listened until the sun dipped westward and the light turned golden with the coming sunset. By the time the singer stopped for breath—or perhaps it was the end of the song; it was hard to tell—she found she had tears on her own face, though she didn't know what she was so sad about.

Before the elf could start up again Belladonna said, "That was terribly sad. But quite lovely!" The elf evidently had not heard her come up the dune, and started so violently that he nearly dropped his harp into the wet sand. He whirled around, reaching to his belt for a weapon that wasn't there. Belladonna crawled the rest of the way up the dune so she could sit more comfortably on top of it among the grass. "I do beg your pardon, Master Elf! I didn't mean to startle you."

The elf stared at her. His eyes were bright, like two points of polished silver gleaming beneath the shadows of his dark hair. "Where did you come from?" he asked after a moment. Though his voice while singing had been one of the most beautiful things Belladonna had ever heard, in speaking it was rougher, and he had to clear his throat, as though he were someone who hadn't used his voice at all in a long time.

"Up the beach a ways," Belladonna replied brightly, deciding that his abruptness and lack of manners could be forgiven, since it seemed that he had been on his own for quite some time. She slid down the dune, got to her feet, and bowed in proper fashion. "Belladonna Took, at your service!"

"Took?" the elf repeated. "How many of you are there?" He sounded bemused and vaguely aggrieved, as though he'd been finding a Took around every other sand dune that week.

Belladonna considered the question, and whether he really wanted a proper answer; probably he didn't. But… "I'm really not sure I can give a precise number," she said. "We run in large families, us Tooks do. I myself have ten brothers and sisters, and an uncountable number of cousins. And that's not even taking into account the Tooks up in Long Cleeve—"

"Mercy!" cried the elf. His mouth was trying to curve into a smile, though he was valiantly resisting it. "And do all of you take up a quest to find wandering elven singers in your youth? You are the third of your family to find me here by the sea alone—and that is not taking into account those of you I've stumbled upon east of the Ered Luin!"

"Gracious," said Belladonna, and laughed. "I had no idea! They've all kept it quiet, seemingly. But I'll leave you be if you don't want to be bothered by another hobbit on holiday—though of course you're more than welcome to come back to my little camp for supper. No fish, I'm afraid—I'm not sure how one goes about fishing in the Sea—but there's plenty of other forage about."

The elf rose to his feet and bowed, a more graceful gesture than Belladonna had expected from him. "That is very kind of you, Mistress Belladonna," he said. She squinted at him as the sun sank lower and shone into her eyes; it was hard to tell if that was an acceptance or a refusal of her invitation.

"Well, whether you come or no, I won't be hard to find," she said after a moment. "Good evening!"

The elf did not follow her that evening, and she neither saw nor heard him again over the next week as she roamed up and down the coast, gathering pretty seashells and investigating the sandy beaches and rocky coves alike. There were pools in one filled with all manner of strange creatures, some spiky as hedgehogs, others slimy and tentacled, and some that almost looked like spiders, except for all the ways that they didn't—most notably the large pinching claws that nearly took some of the hair off of her toes the first time she stumbled upon one. She spent hours examining the pools, until the tide began to come in and she had to flee. When she came back the next day there were new and different things there, as well as some of the more permanent residents, and she even managed to catch a few small fish for her lunch.

On higher ground where the tide did not reach, she made a new little camp and set about preparing the fish for frying alongside some potatoes she had stashed at the bottom of her pack. As she sliced the potatoes for frying, a shadow fell over her, and she looked up to find the elf there, with his driftwood harp. "Oh, hullo!" she said. "Are you hungry, Master Elf? I have some fish—they're quite small, though—and some potatoes I'm going to fry up."

"You were lucky," said the elf as he crouched down, "to find any fish at all in the tide pools. But I have had rather more luck." He held up a pair of quite large fish, silver and glittering wetly in the sunshine.

"How marvelous!" said Belladonna. "And if you're joining me for lunch would you be so kind as to get those fish ready for the pan? I have the others just here, and I'll slice up some more potatoes. Fish and chips: perfect lunch for a seaside picnic, don't you think, Master Elf?"

"I would not know," he said as he expertly sliced off the scales of the fish, working quickly and with practiced ease. "I have never had—what are they?"

"Potatoes, sliced and fried nice and crisp, with a bit of salt. Have you really never had them?" Belladonna peered at the elf as she poured the sliced potatoes into the pan. They immediately began to sizzle with a pleasant sound. "You did tell me before that you'd met a number of hobbits."

"None of them ever invited me to picnic with them," said the elf with a small and rather crooked smile. "I rather think I frightened them."

"I don't think you're so frightening," said Belladonna.

"Do you not?" asked the elf. He straightened his shoulders and for a moment his eyes flashed, and Belladonna could see that he was old—very old and very grim, with a strange and fell light in his eyes, and sharp features. Then she blinked, and he relaxed, and the vision passed and he was only an elf with tangled hair and patchwork clothes, cleaning fish on the beach beneath the sun.

"Well," she said after a moment, "I suppose if you did that all the time anyone would run away! But I've had my share of frightening adventures, Master Elf, and I can't say that I'm more scared of you than a hungry troll." This startled him into laughter, and Belladonna felt absurdly pleased with herself for it. She placed the pieces of fish into the pan with the chips, and sprinkled a bit of salt over it all, and a few of the herbs she'd been gathering over the last few days.

"Have you met many trolls?" the elf asked.

"Only three. Or—well, two of them were holed up for the morning when I passed by, so I didn't run into any trouble there, but it was a rather nerve-wracking day trying to get as far away as possible before sunset!"

The elf regarded her with something like curiosity and something like—something else, Belladonna couldn't tell what it was. His head was tilted ever so slightly, almost birdlike, as though he'd spent so much time among the gulls that he'd begun to acquire some of their habits. Hopefully, Belladonna thought, not their table manners. She threw a stone at one gull who had begun to approach her pack. It took off in a flurry of wings and a croaking, offended squawk. And thinking of manners… "Will you tell me your name, Master Elf?" she asked. "I can keep calling you Master Elf if you like, but it feels a bit unfair, since you know my name."

He did not answer immediately; the gull had caught his attention and for several long moments he stared out at the water, as though he could see something there that Belladonna could not. But finally he said, "I am called Maglor."

"It's nice to meet you, Maglor," said Belladonna. She placed a pile of fried potatoes and a generous slice of fish onto a plate and handed it to him across the fire, before setting into her own meal. It was very good. She did not know what the different kinds of fish were called, but they were quite good. There was no more talk while they ate, and Maglor ate as much as any hobbit with a healthy appetite.

Afterward she thought of something, though she was almost hesitant to ask. "Maglor," she said, as she piled the dirty plates into the pan for washing later, "you said you'd met several members of my family over the years, yes?"

"An astonishing number, really," said Maglor. He seemed in a mellow mood now, leaning back against the side of a dune with his eyes closed.

"Were any of them named Hildifons?" Belladonna asked. "This would be fairly recently—and I've no idea where you might have met him, really."

"Hildifons," Maglor repeated, as though he were turning the name over in his mind the way someone might turn a coin over in their fingers. His eyes opened as he said, "No, I have not met anyone by the name of Hildifons."

"No, I didn't think so." Belladonna sighed.

"Why do you ask?"

"Hildifons is my brother—one of my brothers—and he went off a few years ago without telling anyone. It's usually a bit hushed up whenever one of us goes off—to keep the gossip in check, you know—but I've certainly never gone off anywhere without telling someone, even if Mama always scolds me. But anyway, that's what he did, and no one's been able to find him since, and he hasn't sent any messages home either."

"I am sorry," said Maglor. "I have lost all of my own brothers—but at least I know what happened to them."

"All your brothers? Goodness, I am sorry, that's terrible."

"Yes, it was." Maglor let his head drop back onto the sand, eyes closing again. "If I do meet with your brother Hildifons, I shall tell him to go home. Your mother must be desperately worried."

"Yes, though you wouldn't know it to look at her. And she has plenty of distractions, running the Great Smials and keeping us all in line. And thank you—if you do see him and send him home, we'll all be very grateful."

After a little while he took up his harp again, and Belladonna taught him all the old Shire tunes that she knew, and the words to her favorite walking songs. In return he sang for her some songs out of the Elder Days, of great heroic deeds and noble adventures, until the sun sank into the west, turning the sky red with the sunset, and the stars came out, and the Evening Star gleamed over the sea.

Belladonna fell asleep to the sweet sound of the harp harmonizing with the soft whispering swish of the waves on the sand, but when she woke in the morning the elf was gone, without so much as a footprint in the sand to show that he had ever been there. Their picnic and afternoon of music might have been a dream, but for the small shell bearing a perfect, glimmering pearl that Belladonna found nestled among her plates and spoons when she started to pack up her things.