Let us taunt old care with a merry air / And sing in the face of ill by Rocky41_7

Let us taunt old care with a merry air / And sing in the face of ill

            In the fall, Elwing is five, and she builds sandcastles in front of a strange ocean with a boy from a city she never saw, that doesn’t exist any longer, which makes them two of a kind. He grows the same way she does, in odd fits and starts, with no one sure where their milestones are supposed to be, or what their futures will look like. They skip through the wet sand and in the daylight forget the memories of burning trees and clashing blades and running, running, running in the joy of warm sunlight on their cheeks and cups of hot cider pressed into their hands by the adults. If his parents hover slightly, she doesn’t notice, any more than she notices the fretful, haunted eyes always watching her.

            In the winter, Elwing is fourteen, and she understands what she has lost. The howl of the inconsolable waves on the shore echoes the raging in her breast for everything that has been stolen from her; the memory of her brothers haunts the corners of her vision and she introduces herself as Dioriel. Eärendil does not begrudge her her wrath or her grief and sits beside her while she trembles as a storm-tossed sail, while she demands answers of ghosts and apparitions who cannot speak. The Silmaril is in a box in her room and there is bitter pleasure in opening it up to stare at the jewel that cost her family everything, and to know the monsters who did this to her will never have it. Eärendil asks her what she remembers of Doriath, and the resentment is so heavy on her tongue she can barely speak when she replies: Nothing.

            In the spring, Elwing is twenty-six, and she is tired of being angry. She takes long walks on the beach with Eärendil and his parents, and she does not begrudge him their company. Idril Celebrindal presses egg tarts into her hands and Tuor Ulmondil regales her with stories of his journey to Gondolin, and when Eärendil lays his head on her shoulder, she puts her arm around him and asks him what he remembers about Gondolin. Eärendil tells her of the splendid fountains, and of his grandfather Turgon, who would lift him up on his balcony to let him see the entirety of the city spread out at his feet, and of the sweet mountain air. While he speaks, she feels his joy, and not her own loss, and that is how she knows she loves him.

            In the summer, Elwing is thirty, and Eärendil wears a hair clasp emblazoned with the symbol of her house, and she can feel the stirring of life below her ribs. The Silmaril is heavy around her neck, but it shines like a star when it catches the light, and in the mornings when Eärendil is home, he gathers her thick dark hair away from her neck to clasp it on for her. Sometimes when he is away, she sleeps with it on, as if feeling the weight of it against her breast somehow keeps him close. They sit on the edge of the pier in front of a peach sky and discuss what they shall call the baby, and Elwing threatens to push Eärendil into the water when he suggests the name of his father’s favorite goat (who now lives in their own yard). The glorious radiance of the time they have together so outshines the pain of their separation that Elwing forgets what it feels like to say goodbye once Eärendil has come back to port.

            In the summer, Elwing is thirty, and she no longer thinks about “going home,” because she has created a new home for herself, and in this, she hopes the phantoms of her past will finally find peace.

Chapter End Notes

Title is from the poem “In Summer" by Paul Laurence Dunbar.