Aching Wings by Narya

“As yet no flower had bloomed nor any bird had sung, for these things waited still their time in the bosom of Yavanna; but wealth there was of her imagining, and nowhere more rich than in the midmost parts of the Earth, where the light of both the Lamps met and blended.”

***

The Years of the Lamps

I beheld them first in Almaren, in the mind of Kementári.

“Look,” she whispered as we walked in the shade of her trees, and she opened herself to me, and showed me the wealth of her dreaming – bright creatures like gemstones who danced through the air; great, proud hunters who swept over mountains; plump ground-dwellers with plumage like log-bark; strutting, flightless, solitary creatures with terrible claws; and singers of the Song, whose voices, like water, caught some of our Music and set it flying through the Earth. My soul soared – and yet I felt sorrow too, for the creatures sang in a strange half-light, as though the fire of the Lamps had been dimmed.

“When will they come?” I asked her.

“When they are needed.” She smiled, and her golden eyes shone. She is strange, Kementári. Kind, yes, and generous, and gentle when she wishes it – but wild, and not so meek as the Children's tales might have one think. “Some will hunt their fellow kelvar; others will eat of the fruits of the olvar, and so spread their seeds far and wide.” And she showed me then an Earth in full bloom, covered not only with the joyous greens of her mosses and grasses and ferns, but alight with colour – great clusters of petals turned up to the sky; blossoms through the branches of trees; bold, shouting flowers clinging to succulent desert-plants; tiny blue hoods with delicate veins, peeping up through the forest floor. Each bird she named for me – eagle; nightingale; wren – and to her sister, Vána, she gave the names of the flowers to come.

I went to her often in those days, and I learned the songs of her bright-winged charges, so I might sing with them when the time came. Until then, we waited; the dream slept, and we laughed and ran and danced through the Earth, full of pride and hope and joy.

***

When the Lamps were felled, we fled to Aman. The world grew dark, and our grief was heavy, and the Enemy claimed the lands we had once called home.

For a while I remained with the Healer, whom the Eldar would later name Estë. I had sung with her in the Time before Time, and I heard her music in the voice of the songbirds that dwelt in my heart. With her spouse I tended the trees in their gardens of healing and rest. At times, too, I met with the Young One, Kementári's sister, whose flame had kindled with joy at the promise of flowers. Together we worked, my kindred and I; we sang to the earth and the stones and trees, and all was hallowed and fair. Slowly, our joy returned.

Of the Lady herself, I saw little. She sat alone upon the green mound of Ezellohar, deep in her imaginings – until at last, she called us there, her voice a wild bud in each of our minds. With her voice, too, she called wonder forth from the ground. The Young One danced, and the tears of the Weeper watered the earth, and two shining saplings stretched out of the grass – Telperion, the elder, with silvered leaves and dew; and Laurelin, warm and radiant, young-gold and glorious. We watched in wonder as their light waxed and waned, and at the close of the day, their faint beams mingled.

Yavanna's mind touched my own. Sing now, forest-child – and listen well.

Her voice was weary, as though she had spent her very essence in calling the Trees from the earth – but it was gentle, too, and almost amused. I sought the Song, and found new melodies there, soft like shadow and this strange new dusk. I raised my voice, shaping the Music I recalled from Almaren – for we do not forget, we who came into this world at its birthing, and who cannot leave it even now – and I called out into the twilight.

On the cool, sweet air, their answers came. Delight burst through me, sharp and wild, as I heard the nightingales sing.

***

My kind do not perceive Time as the Children do. There is an echoing back and forth, perhaps because we know the Song from long ago – though the echoes and their meanings are not always clear.

I had dwelt with my love in the forest for long, long years when the dreams began. At first I dreamt of silence, of an un-sound so thick it could almost be felt. There was darkness too, and cold – terrible cold that crept into one's soul.

Later I began to see death. The riotous jungles of Aman's south turned yellow, then black, and rotted away. Butterflies fell cold and exhausted from the sky. I would wake with sylphs and hummingbirds stiff in my hand, and scream – and then wake again, for there were no such birds in Doriath, and it was a trick of my sleeping mind.

I spoke to Elwë of the visions, and he grew fierce and grim. Together we worked to protect our land. As we fashioned our halls, the Khazâd brought dark tales from the North – fell beasts that hunted my husband's kin; wild shadows that preyed on the weak, and drank their children's blood. I reached for the minds of Estë, and Vána, and felt only reassurance, like gentling hands on a startled fawn. Melkor walked their lands, I understood – but he had repented, and was not to be feared.

I remembered the darkness that fell on Almaren. I thought of the grief that had torn through me then, with all we had worked for destroyed. Not to be feared? I wished I could believe it. I closed my mind to Aman, and sang instead to the stones and caves.

In time, Menegroth was wrought. My husband's people marvelled, for never before had the Eldar dwelt deep in the stone – yet the pillars were carved in the likeness of oak and beech, and hung with lanterns, to mimic the Mingling's light. As we worked I had sung to the stones of the forests, and their cool, deep shadows, and the birds that dwelt in their eaves. Perhaps the stones listened, for even to me it seemed they took on the feeling and hue of a woodland at dusk. Songbirds dwelt there with us; they came and went between the halls and the trees, singing all the while.

When my daughter was born, she sang back to them before she could talk.

***

When I dreamt Kementári weeping, I knew what had come to pass. Yavanna could be wild, and strange, and fierce at times, but even when Almaren fell, I did not see her grieve like this. Un-light and Un-sound had come to Valinor. The Trees were gone, not to be remade.

I vowed it would not happen to Doriath. When I set my enchantments at the bounds of our lands, I wove them into the very songs of the birds and trees themselves, pouring forth my own Music as I had not done since the birthing of my child. I called on the echoes and shadows, and the whispers of the forest, and the allure of the nightingale's song. I wove it together, as I had heard the Lady and the Healer and the Young One do, long years ago, binding the threads of Song into something different and wondrous and powerful.

It flooded me and thrilled me like nothing I had done since I robed myself in flesh like the Children, and when it was done I was weary and spent. I thought of Yavanna after the raising of the Trees. Look, I wanted to call to her. By her teachings, a part of what she loved and worked for would be kept safe – but I knew that in her grief, she would not hear me.

And for all my power, I was wrong. In the end, it was not enough.

The Fourth Age

“It is time for you to return.”

I stretched my wings, sought an air current, and came down from the boughs of the trees.

Yavanna smiled. “And it is past time that you changed your form.”

I like this form, I told her, as haughtily as I could. In this form, I am left alone. Except by you.

She shrugged one gleaming shoulder. Today her skin was a warm, smooth brown; her black hair was braided elegantly upon her head, and adorned with fruits and reddening leaves. “Sheep get like shepherds, and shepherds get like sheep – or so I am told. Do you wish to remain as a bird forever more?”

I am useful to Estë as a bird. I can go among the Reborn, and hardly be noticed, and sing her songs of healing and hope – and I do not have to speak with the Children, or look at them too hard.

She slid into my mind then, the feel of her heavy and rich like the summer's last, sweet fruit. He will return, my dear. We have all seen it.

But not yet.

No. She smiled. “I know that it suits you, to play the part of the recluse – but you have been busier than you choose to let on. I know, for example, that you spent time with the halfling, Frodo Baggins, and that he came from these gardens if not cheered, then certainly quieter in his mind.”

I said not one word to Frodo Baggins.

“I know that. But you listened, and you sang.” She gestured around her. “And of late, these trees have blossomed more brightly and fully than they have since the Darkening. That is your doing, Melian; do not be coy with me.” Her eyes – ancient, golden, full of light – fixed me in their gaze. “You are ready. And I have need of you.”

When the Great Ones speak their will, it is as though they reach into one's very soul and pull. It is hard to resist that – and nor, I realised to my surprise, did I entirely want to.

It was true that I liked my nightingale shape, so it was with regret that I let my feathers melt into the evening gloam. I rose, and stood before Yavanna unrobed. What would my Lady have of me?

“The tales of the halflings have made me curious.” And her smile was full of mischief now, much like the Hobbits she spoke of. “I find that I have a great desire to know what passes in the world beyond Aman. It is long indeed since I walked upon Middle-earth – and power must tread lightly now, where it treads at all.” Again her golden eyes fixed me, and pierced me through. “You are far more suited to such a task than I.”

Aiwendil -

“Aiwendil turned aside from his labours.” She did not, I thought, seem entirely displeased. “He may return here, in time, but for now he follows a path of his own choosing. And you loved Middle-earth once, did you not?”

It was true. Before the Quendi came, I had longed to go back to the Hither Lands – and when they woke I led the songbirds in welcome, setting joy aflame in their hearts. I tarried under the trees of Beleriand, pressing into their shadows, whispering secrets, flying with the birds. Even before I wedded Elwë Singollo, I gave much of myself to that cool, quiet earth. I wondered if it still remembered. Can Olórin not give what you seek?

Some of it, perhaps. She opened her arms to me then; naked and formless as I was, she drew me against her, and her soul caressed my own. But I would see it through your eyes, forest-child, singer of the songs of the birds.

And so I went – first, to the south, where I seldom went in ages past. I wore the shape of an old, old woman, and walked the rainforest paths, watching, listening, delighting. Here dwelt creatures I had not seen since I wandered the wilds of Aman – great tusked elephants that strode through the trees; gorillas, who would grunt and beat their chests at my approach, and then quietly croon when I sang; vipers and cobras, jewel-bright; leopards, whose skins melted into the dappling light; spiders the size of small dogs. And the birds – parrots with wings like wild, blooming flowers; sunbirds and lovebirds and bristlebills; rails with bright orange legs; weavers with lemony plumes. The trees grew tall and strong in the sun, and the song they sang was green and content.

I opened myself to Yavanna, let her see it all through my eyes, just as she had asked. It is here. I felt her smile as she watched, her joy like a sun-warmed willow. It is all here, even now – and it is thriving.

At times I encountered the Secondborn. Most lived in small groups, moving from place to place, hunting and trading. Sometimes they would settle for a short while, weaving dwellings from saplings and long leaves, harvesting honey and game – but they never stayed in one place for long, and the great trees they left alone. I showed this to Yavanna too.

They take only what they need, and move on, so the forest can replenish itself. I touched the sickle-knife gifted to me by the last tribe I met. They heed your teachings, and those of your sister, and Oromë, though they may know it not.

Elves, too, dwelt in the forest – Avari, those who had not heeded the call to Aman, and who instead had travelled south. Kinn-lai, they called themselves in their own tongue. They knew me for what I was, I soon realised. They remembered the Powers that had dwelt in their lands of old.

“Do you belong to the Mother?” one youngling asked me. She showed me a figure carved in bone – a woman with full breasts, and many arms like the branches of trees.

You? I asked Yavanna, inviting her into my mind once again.

I haven't used that form for some time. Her delight was unmistakable. But yes.

The child frowned. “Old one?”

“No,” I told her. “I belong to myself.”

The girl grinned. “I belong to myself as well.”

I stayed there for a long time, learning their ways, singing to the trees with them, speaking to the birds, and feeling the forest dream. Sometimes they would trade with the Secondborn, though Men were not permitted into their treetop world – for the Kinn-lai did not live on the ground. They had built a vast network of bridges and flets beneath the forest canopy, and fashioned living houses that burst into bloom after rain. Their stories were woven into the bridges that linked their homes, with this knot or that one meaning fire, or birthing, or death.

At night we would climb to the canopy, and listen to the echoes of the stars far away. Below us, the forest teemed – the thin high thrumming of insects' wings; the low rumblings of elephant-talk; a monkey's shrill, shrieking cry.

“They shield us,” a young hunter told me. “The voices of forest and stars. When we sing with them we ask them to bind together, and shield us, so the Aftercomers cannot find our home.”

Marvelling, I felt my way into the Song. It was just as he said: starlight and tree-song and beating wing, woven together, as they had been in Doriath long ago.

One day I sat on a rope-bridge with Khithwa, who woke by Cuiviénen's shores. Khithwa, like many of her Clan, had obsidian skin and long coils of black hair, and in her eyes burned the light of a much younger world. Tupsê, a great grey parrot of whom I was growing fond, sat in the branches above us and screamed.

“Do the trees still walk, away in the north?” Khithwa asked me.

“Some do, yes.” KAAARRRRK, cried Tupsê. “Though there are fewer than there were.” A thought struck me. “Are there Entwives here?”

Khithwa tilted her head at the strange word. “You mean the tree-women.”

“Yes.”

“Not for a long time now.” Slowly, she tied off a knot in the bridge. “We taught each other some things, when the world was younger. But no. I've not seen one in more years than most could count.”

“A pity.”

“The world changes.” She smiled at me, and for a moment she seemed cloaked in shadow, as though slipping into the twilight realm. “Though if I understand rightly, my kin in the north would have had it otherwise – and look where that got them.”

KAAARRRRK, shrieked Tupsê again.

“Be quiet, you old fool bird!” Khithwa scolded him. She shook her head, slowly, thoughtfully. “They might be out there, your tree-women. I'd like to believe it, anyway.” She got to her feet, and held out her hand. “Is that what you came here to find?”

Is it? I asked Yavanna – but for once, she did not reply.

***

After a time I left them, and went north. Tupsê, to my delight, came with me, sometimes riding on my shoulder, sometimes flying ahead to scout the way. On the ship to Gondor he was a source of delight, learning to mimic the oaths and curses of the crew, so that those on board forgot their seasickness (and if I helped them in their forgetfulness with a quiet song of soothing while their eyes and minds were on the parrot's antics, well, who would be any the wiser?).

I had grown attached to my elderly form; it allowed me to walk the lands without suspicion, and I found that most responded to a frail old woman with kindness, and with offers of shelter and conversation and food. I had no need of the first or the last of these things, but they made my travels more pleasant – and I did like to hear their tales. The King had a new grandson, Araphor, who would one day inherit the throne; the babe's grandparents, from Khand, had sent rich gifts to celebrate his birth. A menagerie of creatures had arrived in Minas Tirith for the delight of the prince and his family, and I gathered were being given into the care of the Elves of Ithilien.

In the forests of Ithilien I walked unseen, though the Elves that lingered there, I think, sensed my presence. The gift-animals from Khand now dwelt in its woodlands, though I was sure that care had been taken that they would not upset the delicate balance the Elves sought to preserve. I wandered the crags and ruins and dove deep into cool blue pools filled with water that tumbled from tarns. I slipped into the trees, and watched from the shadows as the Elves mixed freely with the children of Men. The summer grew high, and the world was alive; the birds of this land were as wondrous as those from the south, and I had not known half of them in my time in Beleriand, though I had seen their like in Aman. Iridescent hummingbirds; flamingos with their long legs and blushing feathers and great flat feet; pipits and finches and owls. I listened and watched as they took fruit from the trees and algae and weeds from the ponds and fish from the rivers and prey from the land and sky, and what they took went back into the land. Seeds spread; habitats were cleared; the world continued to turn. I helped where I could, singing with the birds, and lifting the hearts of those who worked in the woods.

They heal this place, I told Yavanna. The memory of war lingers, but they are remaking the land. I paused, feeling the sorrow that washed through them all, at whiles. Although not for themselves. They mean to move on.

I found time for play, too, as I meandered Ithilien's groves. I chased the lynxes gifted by Khand, as I had run with the wildcats of old, before the Sleep of Yavanna and the marring of the world. I sat beside little mouse-deer, crooning, thinking of Nessa, who even now would enter the world and stroke newborn fawns and guide them to their mother's milk – and my mistress, Vána, who went with her to call flowers from the earth. "Tread lightly on the world", Yavanna had said. I do not think Vána could have done any differently.

If the Elves thought it peculiar that a grey parrot now inhabited their forest and was playing tricks on their folk, then I do not think they minded it.

"Is it a spirit?" I heard one Elf-child ask.

"Perhaps." The boy's mother looked up at the tree from whose branches I watched, and smiled. "Many of the old earth-spirits have faded now, but a few still remain. So mind what you say, and what you do, while you're out in the woods!"

What she said was true enough. Once my kind had filled the land, diving into the deep places, burrowing into stone, hiding in pools, twining into the trees and becoming as one with them. But the world was older now. So many put so much of themselves into the land and stone, that they left only a trace of themselves behind – an echo, a whisper of a song that once rang through the world.

It might have been so for me too, I thought.

I think not. Yavanna's voice in my mind was amused. You are stronger than that, Melian, friend of the shadows and birds. And well you do know it.

Before I moved on I went into the city – just once, unrobed, that I might walk among its people without being observed. By day Minas Tirith was a-bustle with light and life. I kept to the shadows, half-afraid that even without my form I might bee seen or felt, for in the great white citadel I saw so many faces like those I had loved long ago – faces that bore echoes of my daughter, and her children, and on occasion even my husband.

I did not wish to speak to them. For my kind, time does not heal wounds so easily as it does for the Secondborn. I could not stay – but I lingered, and I watched, and as the sun went down I heard the nightingales sing in the city's white tree.

***

North I went again, and westwards, through lands whose names I now knew well – Rohan; the Enedwaith; Arnor; Eriador. Everywhere I saw life, and joy – and death, yes, and sorrow, and the wounds of the war, but the world grew on, and there was much to delight in even now.

I came at last to the land of the halflings. This was, perhaps, not a surprise. Yavanna was right that I had grown fond of Frodo Baggins. I was not sure he had been aware of my presence in the trees above him in Irmo's gardens – but I was not sure that he had not been aware, either. Halflings were not quite like Elves, but they did indeed surprise one, as Olórin found out more than once.

Periannath, I remembered. That was the word used by the Elves in Aman. It was pretty; almost bird-like. At first glance there had been nothing bird-like about the three halflings I saw there, but perhaps, if one thought about it...Samwise, so carefully tending his garden, as the birds might tend to their nests and spread the seeds of trees and shrubs throughout the land...Bilbo, sharp, watchful, quick with a warning peck for those who did not have a care for his kinsman...and Frodo, so fragile, and yet so very strong, like the wing of a soaring bird...

Tupsê liked it here, I could tell. He befriended the children, whose parents at first would not believe their tall tales of a tropical bird making roost in their gardens, but who came round quickly enough when they saw it with their own two eyes. Tupsê was glad to perform his antics for them, stealing trinkets from kitchen windowsills and hiding them in unexpected places, and squawking rude words at the local curmudgeons, who would wave their walking sticks and go back to their pipes.

I remained unrobed, for I knew that halflings were often suspicious of Big Folk, and may not take so kindly to my wanderings in their land. I thought, though, that they seemed content – though there was a sadness too, an echo of loss, and all their cheer and good food and ale and love for the green and growing could not disguise it entirely.

I left Tupsê to his games, knowing that he was safe enough. Nobody here would hunt a parrot. He had, it seemed, arrived at the same kind of accord with the Hobbits that he had with the Avari in the rainforest. Instead I went walking in the woods – such little things, compared to the forests of old. I rested my unclad form both against and within the trees, and I slid through the shadows as I used to do long ago. Here and there a deer lifted its head, or an owl hooted in greeting at my approach.

I did not go into the place that they called the Old Forest. There were things in there which I was not prepared to meet. On the edge of the moors, though, I felt its power – and something else as well, something that set its guardianship at the bounds of this land. There was a barrier here, I thought – a gateway, perhaps, which I could not enter, except by the power's will, or by the will of that which dwelt within. It was skilful magic. I did not think many even of my kind would note it – but I felt it in the song of my birds. There was a shivering waver in their music, as though it travelled around something I could not see.

Yavanna was fond of hobbits, or at least those that had come to Aman. I opened my mind to her.

There is no danger.

Her mind voice was closer by far than I had expected. My kind – especially when we do not wear form – are not given to jumping when startled, as the Secondborn may do. Nonetheless I was surprised to find my Lady here.

If you can still enter this world at will, then why send me?

She chuckled. She, too, walked unrobed, though if she had been visible, I thought she might have been in the form of one of her beloved trees. Her outline shimmered in the space between a great oak and a slender young beech – though a mortal would have seen nothing, and even one of the Elves might have passed it off as a breath of the wind or a trick of the light. I come seldom. But my daughters are here.

The Entwives? I asked.

Yes. I felt her reaching for my mind.  Look.

With her eyes I saw past the gateway, through the enchantments guarding their land. Behind the old sung spells, the Entwives walked. Great lawns dotted with bowers were bordered by flowers and shrubs and herbs. The air tasted of lavender and rosemary; bees thrummed; orchards bloomed, and roses shone bright in their gardens, a riot of joyful colour.

The Old One guards them for me; it is his power that you felt.  Though she could not be seen, not truly, I felt her eyes sliding through me as they had in Irmo's gardens.  You know what it is to miss a child, do you not, and to wish to look upon them, though they perceive you and know you not?

I had not taken form, but somehow, I was the size of one of my nightingales, being cradled in the breast of a great warm tree.

Present Day

The sun sank over the city – this strange metropolis raised on hills that had once belched fire and flame. Further down the hill, children squealed with laughter at the antics of the penguins. Here, outside the parakeet enclosure, crowds had gathered to watch the jewel-winged birds flit about and forage for the food left out for them.

It was a pity, I thought, that it had come to this – that in order to protect these creatures, mankind had been forced to shut them into a cage. I did not blame them, exactly, if it meant that they could be saved. But saved for what? Once again, my dreams were dark. The world had grown old; I saw the birds I loved dying, and the insects were already falling into silence.

Down the hill, a guitarist struck up a jaunty tune and began to sing about life under the sea. Couples wandered about with large ice creams in hand. I watched them all, though none saw me; I found it easier to go without form, these days.

In the centre of the grassy knoll, a tree-shaped sculpture had been raised, and ribbons were tied to its branches. I smiled, and reached for Yavanna, but I felt only a thrum of amused recognition in return. The great powers walked the world no longer, though some of us - myself, Olórin, Aiwendil, others – returned to Middle-earth on occasion, to do what good we may. Darker things, too, remained in the world. Much had faded – but not all, and new threats rose every day.

A soft chitter of pain drew my attention back to the parakeets. Inside the hut, away from the eyes of the visitors, one bird was being treated for a broken wing. I slid into the creature's mind – quietly, gently – and was welcomed as an old friend. I could do little directly; the man and woman treating her would notice if the wing healed instantly and mysteriously by itself. Still, I could help things along. Softly, I sang, though nobody would hear it – not with their ears, at any rate. The parakeet crooned quietly. I set a thought of healing into the bone, and sang of strength and hope.

Outside the light dimmed further. Up the hill, the lions roared. The birds had begun to sing, perhaps sensing my song, or perhaps simply because the day was dying. I slid out of the birdhouse, and observed two young women, standing alone under a tree, looking out at the city, hand clasped in hand.

The world was quietening. Yavanna's trees, here, breathed air that tasted of fumes. But even so, I lifted my voice, and I led the birds in song – and I felt Kementári's mind touch my own, and under the grass, new shoots began to stir.

Chapter End Notes

I am, as always, indebted to the wonderful SWG bios for the characters I write about – this time, in particular, to Oshun's wonderfully detailed analysis of Melian.

I have played about with a few different versions of the Legendarium here – in particular, the Book of Lost Tales version that gives Vána more of a role in the creation of the Trees (she is Yavanna's sister, after all).

The Entwives living near the Shire is a dear headcanon of mine. It sort of has a canon basis (the wandering elm-tree on the North Moors, and Treebeard telling Merry and Pippin that the Entwives would have liked their land) but is not confirmed anywhere, as far as I know.

Melian visiting Edinburgh Zoo is, I'm afraid, pure self-indulgence.