Aching Wings by Narya

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Chapter 2

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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.