The Loneliness of the Fishermouse by Clodia

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In 2509 [Third Age] Celebrían wife of Elrond was journeying to Lórien when she was waylaid in the Redhorn Pass, and her escort being scattered by the sudden assault of the Orcs, she was seized and carried off...

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings. 'Appendix A'.

~o~

A bronze beech leaf was caught in an eddy.

It had come over the waterfall in a torrent of winter-melt and now drifted like a coracle between pebble-islands and the mossy bank. A mouse with a paddle might have taken advantage of this vessel floating aimlessly in the sunlit pool. The day was fair and the breeze was sweet; it was a perfect afternoon to lie adrift on a quiet lake with only a dream or two for company.

Would a mouse in a leaf-coracle go fishing for minnows with a twig for a rod and a stolen hair for a line? Did mice even eat fish?

Maybe it was a galleon rather than a coracle, the sort of grand and bloated boat the Dúnedain had once built in Númenor and their more piratical descendants constructed these days down south in Umbar. A crew of earwig-mariners or sailor-ants would be required to man the oar-banks, in that case. Perhaps the ants had long been searching for a way across the river. Their relatives had once gone in search of an idyll across the great watery divide and now they had found a way to cross the pool themselves. Would they find their long-lost relatives awaiting them on the other side?

A dragonfly hummed through his daydreams and landed on the leaf. There went the sailor-ants in their galleon, then. A coracle-bound fishermouse would probably have capsized as well.

"Erestor," said his opponent, quite patiently. "It's your turn."

"Hmm?"

Between them stood a small table netted with red and black playing-pieces. Erestor almost considered concentrating on the game. It was difficult, though, when the green spring was rioting through the gardens of Imladris and the swallows were returning to their nests under the eaves. Maybe when autumn came, he and Melinna should follow the birds south and find out where the swallows of Imladris nested in the winter.

They hadn't gone even as far as Curunír's tower at Isengard for decades. The scent of the south came back to him suddenly: the sand, sun-baked, and the heat rippling off it, a burning world of yellows and browns and brilliant, glinting blues. Swallows sweeping like arrows in silhouette against the sky. Yes, they should go. They had been here too long. As soon as Melinna came back to Imladris, they could leave.

Across the table, Elrond Half-elven sighed.

"If you're going to be like this, we should find Glorfindel and play cards," he remarked. "I might win for once."

"Thank you," Erestor said politely. "I think not."

The dragonfly had abandoned the beech leaf and was flitting through the spray beneath the waterfall. Maybe the leaf-galleon could be drawn by a team of dragonflies in harness. That would certainly bring the sailor-ants more swiftly to their long-lost relatives.

He saw Elrond's expression and moved a piece on the board. "There. Will that do?"

Elrond was intent at once. "Let me think."

"Of course," murmured Erestor and relapsed into whimsical contemplation of the ways in which a crew of sailor-ants might harness dragonflies to their leaf-galleon. Perhaps they could call on the earwig-mariners for assistance. And then there was still the fishermouse...

By the time Elrond slid one of the black pieces over the board, Erestor could see the celebrations that would result when the ant-sailors, the earwig-mariners and the fishermouse in their dragonfly-drawn leaf-galleons all came whirling down from the heavens into the splendid ant-city of the long-lost relatives. He flicked the nearest red counter to a different square. Elrond's reaction was laughably serious. What did he think, that there was some devious manoeuvring going on here?

Apparently so. The ant-city had produced a magnificent feast and the ant-king's daughter was dancing with Lord Earwig the Bold when Elrond sat back in his chair, his smile satisfied. "I know what you're up to," he said. "I know exactly what you're thinking."

The difficulties of dancing with more than two feet. "I doubt it."

"That's just what you want me to think," said Elrond. He selected a black piece and transferred it to a new square with extreme deliberation. "Now what will you do?"

Erestor glanced at the board, shrugged and pushed a piece at random. "That."

A startled look blossomed in Elrond's fair face. He sat forwards, at once intent. The boy could surprise Erestor still. His complete dedication to untangling the cunning strategy behind Erestor's every careless gambit was almost endearing.

What would become of the earwig-mariners, once the sailor-ants had been restored to their long-lost relatives? Would they linger or fly?

Elrond turned a piece thoughtfully in his fingers, tapping it against the board. "I meant to ask," he said and set it down again. His tone was casual, but the upwards flicker of his eyes was sharp. "Is your work going well?"

"My work –? oh, that..."

They would fly. No doubt about it: the earwig-mariners would fly. And Lord Earwig the Bold would carry off the ant-king's daughter to some far-flung place where her father's wrath could never reach them. They might even live happily ever after.

The thought made him smile. Melinna would laugh. What would the offspring of an ant and an earwig look like?

Elrond was examining his fingernails with studious indifference. "I know Lindir's eager to see it finished. He will keep on telling me so. He seems to think I could persuade you to finish more swiftly."

"I can imagine he might think that, yes."

"You were a little cruel, I think." His head was still bent, but he was regarding Erestor steadily now, clear-eyed beneath dark lashes. He had his family's beauty: the clean edge of his profile was straight from Dior, and Lúthien before him. That very familiarity was familiar, but sometimes even now the resemblance caught Erestor off guard and brought it all flooding back, those vivid, terrible days when everything was dangerous and everything mattered. Everything had seemed so important then. "He does admire you so. It was... not kind."

Ah, so this was a reprimand. Erestor yawned.

"I won't finish any faster for that child begging to know my opinion on the third stanza of the second-to-last song Daeron ever wrote," he pointed out. "He seems to think I need company even when I'm not alone."

"Lindir is no more a child than I am," said Elrond, rather coldly. "Despite your great antiquity, Erestor, those of us who were born between Tilion's first voyage and the War of Wrath are quite mature these days. He seeks your company and your work in the service of his grand lay, as you well know –"

"More fool him, then. Melinna's the expert."

"That may be so, but unless I'm much mistaken, Melinna has not been preparing a commentary on Daeron's last songs for as long as I can recall. So perhaps you might be kinder to Lindir while you reside at Imladris?"

"Perhaps I might." There was the dragonfly again, a streak of lurid blue skimming across the water. Erestor was momentarily distracted. "Dior could have made that speech, you know."

The exasperated noise Elrond made was very familiar. "Did you pay my grandfather Dior any more attention than you do me?"

"Oh, a little. Times were different then."

Under an arch of overhanging grass-stems floated the bronze beech leaf. Maybe it was a coracle after all. Past went the fishermouse, dreaming of earwig-mariners and sailor-ants, half-asleep and drifting in the afternoon sun.

How long would it take to finish the commentary? He could have it done by the autumn. Yes. Done by the time the swallows flew their nests. Although there was a very pleasant lake up in Emyn Uial beside ruined Annúminas...

"Your turn," said Elrond, unamused. "What's it to be?"

Throughout the gardens of Imladris, numerous peaceful hideaways and waterfalls were tucked away behind walls or in the shadows of overhanging ledges. This particular one was set deep in the hidden valley, far beyond the bridge without a parapet and safely below the white halls of the house itself. Above rose the mountains, cloud-capped and monstrous, and the waters of the Bruinen spilled noisily down a sheer rock face. The waterfall washed away almost all other sounds and only Elrond Half-elven, of all the valley's inhabitants, seemed aware that this corner of the garden existed. So the brassbound chest beneath the ferns where the game resided grew mossy when Erestor and Melinna were absent from Imladris; and so too the displacement of Elrond's displeasure by surprise as footsteps became audible above the rush of water.

A moment later, a shadow served as an Elf-lord's herald, stalking up the primrose path. Erestor yawned again. "Does it matter? Let Glorfindel decide."

He had spoken lightly and laughed at the look Elrond gave him, although he could see that whatever news Glorfindel brought was not good. A touch of Aman's light was normal for Glorfindel of Gondolin, who was never shy to remind people about his birth in that Day before days in the Blessed Realm, but he rarely shone so brightly that his shadow was cast by his armour alone. Nor did Glorfindel (or anyone else) often go armed in Imladris. The peaceful afternoon must have come to an abrupt end, which was a pity. It was always amusing to watch Elrond Half-elven taking unserious matters very seriously indeed.

"Elrond," Glorfindel said, and did not look at Erestor at all. "Messengers have arrived from your sons. You need to come at once."

Now that was a bad sign.

Elrond's sons had been gone for three weeks. They had gone with their mother to captain her escort on the road to Lórien. The party should have reached the mountain pass by now, even at a pace set by Celebrían and her ladies. Such slow and crowded journeys suited neither Erestor nor Melinna; nonetheless, she had gone. She thought the women of Doriath had once known a way to restore colour to fading tapestries and the Lady Galadriel might still know what that was. Erestor had remained at Imladris with his unending commentary, which was approaching an end at last, and had regretted it almost at once. After five years of idleness and whimsy in the Misty Mountains, he could heard the world calling him on every spring breeze.

Elrond had arisen and stood very straight, his fingertips resting on the gameboard and his gaze fixed on Glorfindel. The set of his mouth and the way he held his head – slightly tilted, chin high, so that the sun caught the light in his starlit eyes – raised Dior Eluchíl's ghost again, in all his pride and beauty. That moment was suddenly so clear for Erestor, Dior standing Silmaril-bright beneath Menegroth's gilded boughs, giving audience to the messengers of the sons of Fëanor, that the bitterness and dread of the time came back vividly as well, along with their despair at the end of all that was beloved in Beleriand.

The voice of Dior's grandson was perfectly, unnaturally steady. "What news?"

"There are Orcs in the mountains above Moria."

Very bad. Erestor was on his feet. "Glorfindel –"

"Continue!" said Elrond Half-elven, more like Dior Eluchíl than ever.

Glorfindel bent his head. His eyes were cold.

"Five days ago," he said, "they were waylaid in the pass beneath Caradhras. Celebrían's escort was scattered. Some were killed. Celebrían and two of her ladies were taken by Orcs. Your sons are searching the mountains. They must have found them by now, but they ask for men and healers –"

"Give the orders. Who was captured? Who was slain?"

That had been Erestor's question. But Melinna would never be caught by Orcs in the mountains above Moria. The thought was absurd. The world was too peaceful. They had come safely through far more dangerous times. She had only gone to ask Galadriel how to recolour a tapestry.

"Roswen and Thindaew were taken. Others are wounded. Eledhîn and Calduin came ahead with the news and – with the dead."

"Who is dead?" said Erestor sharply, hearing Glorfindel stumble.

"Nimaelin. Moralda. Alvellë. Carandol. Adaegas. And..."

"And?"

Strangely, he heard nothing, although he saw Glorfindel's lips move. The rush of the waterfall washed it away. In Glorfindel's hand was a jagged wreck of wood.

He had carved that. She lost them and Erestor carved them. Out on the road, by firelight or beneath the stars. The whorl was broken and stained with mud or blood, or both, which was likely, since it seemed to have been trampled into hard ground. He had carved nightingales around the rim. He had heated his blade and etched a line from the Lay of Leithian into the underside in Daeron's runes, as he always did. He had seen it last hooked under the girdle at her waist.

Red wool still clung to it, matted and tangled. She had been pleased with the colour. It was hard to get a true, living red.

Sound came back slowly. "I'm sorry," Glorfindel was saying. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to be the one..."

It was warm in his hands. He turned it over slowly. Yes, he had carved this.

Someone grasped his elbow. He looked up automatically. He felt stunned, as though hit over the head. "We'll kill them," said Glorfindel in a swift, fierce undertone that shook with rare rage. He had not been like this since first coming to Imladris. "Every last one. My word on it. I'll kill the beast who killed her and bring you his head!"

The fires in his eyes had blackened the stones of Gondolin. "Hush," said Elrond distantly. He was staring into the tumbling froth of the waterfall. "Sit him down. Glorfindel. The families, have they been told?"

Glorfindel's fingers slackened on Erestor's arm. "Yes. They're being told now."

"Where are – the dead?"

"The Hall of Fire."

Elrond nodded. "You've given the orders," he said, which was not a question. "You've already told – I need to go. I need – they need me. She needs me." He turned blindly, knocking the table and spilling red and black counters into the grass. "Have the horses saddled. No, you've done that. I know you have." His gaze brushed Erestor like a nightingale's feather. "Will you come?" he asked. "You know those mountains. Another sword –"

Dior had said that to him once, on Tol Galen. Beren had already turned away. The Queen's message had been delivered; the news from the east was explained. It was too late for Doriath. There was a war to plan.

Yes, Melinna had said. We will come.

And he was there again: standing with her amid the willows, the world falling around them. Bad enough that the King was dead, his blood on the treasury floor and the treasure lost. That the Queen had taken back her Girdle and gone. Everything was changing. Everything was ending. The Dwarves were coming over the mountains and Doriath lay unguarded, unwarned. And they had led their forefathers there, Erestor and Melinna, long ago, in that endless starry twilight before Night was distinct from Day. First of the Elves, they had met the Dwarves in Ered Luin, close by where they had been born.

Dior's bright glance had travelled between them, thoughtfully. Lady, he had said, and bent his head to her, we shall be glad of you.

He had no words. It was ending. The world was ending. Everything they had known.

The ruined spindle slipped from his fingers. He said, "She's in the Hall of Fire?"

His voice was rough. "Yes," said Glorfindel, "but –"

Too slow. Glorfindel might have reached out. His fingertips brushed Erestor's tunic: that, or the breeze. The spray from the waterfall was wet on Erestor's face. "Wait," said Glorfindel behind him, "don't –"

The wind was rising. It hummed in Erestor's ears. He started to run.

He felt shock buzzing in the air as he came to the house. He set foot on the eastern porch and saw a woman standing there in tears: he did not pause to see her face. The door stood open. Beyond were two men, already armed and armoured. "Get back," he said, when they moved to stop him. If any words were spoken, he did not hear them. They moved aside.

Glorfindel caught up with him on the threshold of the Hall of Fire. The fire within was burning, but there was no other light at all. Among the carven pillars, shadows stood in small groups or stooped over uncertain shapes on the ground. There was sobbing. Erestor hesitated between the doors, looking into the gloom, and felt Glorfindel's hand alight on his shoulder.

"Don't," he said, a touch breathless. He had been running in armour and Erestor was faster at the best of times. "Not now. Don't do it."

"Where is she?"

"I don't know. I didn't have time – look, trust me. Just trust me. Don't look."

"Damn you!" said Erestor and broke free.

He was three steps into the fiery dark before Glorfindel caught him again. Dark cloth shrouded them: their lightless faces lay pallid and cushioned only where the shrouds had been drawn back by grieving hands. He looked around and saw only cloth in black folds and the silken spill of unfamiliar hair.

"Don't," said Glorfindel close behind, while Erestor stood there, bewildered and utterly furious and bleeding. He put an arm round Erestor's shoulders, tightly, so that the edges of his armour dug into Erestor's back. He smelled of metal, which was very much like the smell of old blood. Both belonged to older days; to breathe either here was jarring. We shall be glad of you. The ford running red and gold as the sun went down. Menegroth's stone trees and Dior Eluchíl falling beneath them. Melinna beside him: killing together, running together, someone else's blood drying on her face. There had been other moments. Those burned brightest.

"Come away," said Glorfindel's voice in his ear. "It won't help. Not now. Come with me."

He went.

He went in a daze, his head full of blood and unforgotten bitterness. He could not have said where he was putting his feet. "Will you sit here?" he heard Glorfindel say and found himself in Glorfindel's rooms, being edged into a chair still half in the path of the afternoon sun. Nightingales preened on the cushions. He looked at them until Glorfindel turned the cushions away.

"Sit down," he said, and pushed Erestor back into the chair. "Stay there."

Sunlight caught in the yellow petals of the flowers on the table and glimmered in the golden liquid Glorfindel poured into a faceted crystal glass. It was an odd sight. He stood on the carpet with the tapestried towers white behind him, a bottle in his hand and his gloves tucked under one armoured arm. His helm shone on his bright head and his eyes were very blue.

"Drink," he said, and thrust the glass into Erestor's grasp. "If you don't want mortal drink when you're falling apart, you shouldn't have introduced me to it in the first place."

It was brandy. It burned all the way down.

Glorfindel was looking at him steadily. "More?"

This time, when Glorfindel returned the glass, he lowered himself awkwardly to balance on an embroidered footstool at Erestor's feet. His gloves he set down on the carpet. "Drink it," he said, looking up with the sun on his helm and his face alight with inner brightness. "Listen. I can't say anything. There isn't anything that will make it better. And I can't stay. Don't do anything – just don't do – anything. Don't try to see her. Not until I come back. Not if you love me, Erestor. Not if you love any of us."

Erestor closed his eyes and leaned his head back. "So bad?"

It came out more roughly than he meant. He felt Glorfindel's hand on his knee. "Yes," said Glorfindel, and took a breath. "The spindle. They knew her from that. Some other things too. They'll be returned to you. Don't go down there. Wait for me. We'll see her together. Not now. I'll send someone up to you. I can't stay."

His armour clinked melodiously as he got up. "I think you will not be riding out today," he added, very nearly gently. "But I must. Celebrían and her ladies may still be saved."

He set the bottle down on the footstool and went out.

The afternoon was leaking away. There was grey in the corners now, although sunlight still lingered in the bubbles of the glass panes. The moon was up already: a sliver high in the blue sky. Erestor stared at the ceiling and waited for the room to fill up with dark. Before the west was even bloody, though, the door opened and Elrond's daughter came inside. Her hair was wild and her eyes starlit: with the shadows swimming round him, he thought her Lúthien returned and almost cried out. She came to him swiftly. With her arms round his neck and her head on his shoulder, he knew she was not.

"Glorfindel sent me," she told him, not very clearly, because she was clinging very tightly to him. "I want to go with them. I could help. I know what to do. I'm a better healer than any of them, than my brothers. He won't let me. He said if I want to help – Erestor, she can't be – I'm sorry, not Melinna – but what about my mother? Erestor, she's my mother! I should go!"

She was crying. After a long moment, Erestor put his arms round her in turn. He said nothing. He did not trust himself to. Presently, she drew away, rubbing her face determinedly. "It isn't right," she said. "I should go. She needs me."

He had never seen Lúthien tear-streaked. She looked at him through wet lashes. "Won't you go?" she said. "You rode with Glorfindel against Angmar. I know you fought in the Last Alliance. You and Melinna."

After a while, when Erestor did not reply, she took his hand. "Come on," she said. "This isn't your room. You shouldn't stay here."

She led him to his own chambers, where the light was paling. It was still bright enough for the nightingales on the cushions to glow and the loom to cast long shadows up the tapestry fading against the wall. Melian the Maia Queen smiled faintly from the woods of Lórien. His notes were spread out over the green leather of the desk. The silver wings and strings of the nightingale harp shone like wet ink on the page. Arwen shone too: her eyes and her white hands, moving restlessly among the shadows. "I'm going to talk to Glorfindel again," she said. "I will. You stay here."

The door closed hard behind her. Erestor stared blankly at it. After a while, he sat down. The harp was before him. It was placed between the loom and the desk, which stood solidly under the window at the end of the long room. Out of habit, unthinking, Erestor plucked a string and was jarred by the loudness of the note that rang out. It seemed to come from nowhere.

The room was so still. Erestor stared at the loom through the shining bars of the harp's strings. Her work was there, half woven: she was making him a new tunic. Maybe you'll finish it for me, she had said, before I get back.

He rested his chin on the harp and closed his eyes.

The basket by the loom held a rainbow of threads. She would sit in her nest of nightingale cushions and sift out the shades to use next: blues from azure to indigo, perhaps, or a matched bundle to make cloth of one colour for everyday use. When she wove tapestries, she drew out the pattern in advance. There was a box somewhere full of sketches. She had woven cover after cushion cover in preparation for the Queen's winged court. Some of the birds were very oddly proportioned: she had been only learning then.

She had taken to making their clothes when she had taken up weaving. So many hours he had watched her, bemused and entranced. The spinning spindle was hypnotic, once she could work it without snapping the thread, and so was the shuttle flying across the loom. Why do you bother? he would ask her. There were plenty of weavers in Imladris. She had wanted to weave a tapestry. Why bother with plain cloth?

Well, someone must, she would say. Cloth doesn't weave itself, you know.

Once, they had worn skins and leather. Sometimes they still did. All their travelling gear was in a battered old chest in their bedchamber. She had taken her cloak and her leather-covered mail shirt to ride to Lórien and left all else but a knife behind.

Melinna, he would ask, when Daeron composed the Tide's song in 'Of Wind and Water', what was he thinking?

Stop scribbling that nonsense, she would reply. You tease Lindir too much as it is. Come and play for me. What? Whatever you want. As long as it doesn't involve tra-la-la-lally!

He would laugh at her, silently, and lay down his pen. Now would I?

... would I...

A discordant jangle and a sudden pain opened his eyes again. The long chamber was empty. He had snapped half the harp strings and his hand was marked by red weals.

He looked at it blankly. The light was grey now and the chamber had darkened. After a moment, he crooked his fingers and plucked out each of the remaining strings, deliberately, one at a time. He was still sitting there in the dusk with the stringless harp when Arwen came back, dry-eyed, and told him that Glorfindel and her father had gone.

Dragonfly

Read Dragonfly

 

 

A/N: Once again, many thanks to my ever patient beta-reader, Ignoble Bard.

 

~o~

 

 

Once we slept for a hundred years, and when we woke up, the world had changed...

He drew a snatch of melody from the harp and grinned. The children waited breathlessly, three pairs of bright eyes intent. Their father's eyebrow was sceptically raised. No, you're right, he said, I tell a lie. It was only a year. Maybe two. Maybe twenty. The world changed all the same. It was a long time ago. We were very tired...

... drowsing, her dark hair soft in his face. Light slanted through the curtains, light and a salt breeze blowing off the sea. In the distance, seagulls screamed, their cries intermingling with the shouts of the Falathrim sailors. She frowned in her sleep. She was so warm beside him. He yawned and closed his eyes and turned over... time slipped away. A month, two months, a year or more, curled up together on Círdan's isle. Sometimes he woke and sometimes she did, or they shared morsels of food, or washing-water, or whispered dreams, or memories: fragments carried out of the smoke and ruin of Doriath's fall, scavenged from the rubble of Tol Sirion and the skeletons of Gondolin. The friends they'd lost, the few they'd saved. Círdan's pieces of unhappy news. She twisted her fingers into his hair and ran her nails down his chest, hard, and holding her close and closing his eyes, he fell through the chilly dark into a tattered bed of cloaks on the icy banks of the River Sirion...

The lid of the chest knocking against the wall awoke him. He was alone. Darkness filled the room. He could make out only the shape of someone crouching over the chest in which their travelling gear was kept. In his head, he was still in their bed on the Isle of Balar, dreaming away the long nights and longer days. But Melinna had got up. He lay there and looked on blankly while she rummaged through the chest's contents.

He only realised it was not Melinna when he caught the starlight glimmer of her eyes. He raised himself on his elbow. "Lúthien?"

She jumped. The violence of her surprise was not like Lúthien at all: but it was Lúthien's face shining in the dark, Lúthien's arched brows and chin and sweeping cheekbones. She might have worn a cloak of hair; he could not tell.

"What are you doing?" he asked. "What are you looking for?"

"I need a knife," she said tightly. "I know it's in here. Melinna told me."

Erestor shook his head, bewildered.

"What?" he asked. "Why did she do that? Why would you need a knife?"

"She told me in case I ever needed one," said the woman, who was not Lúthien, because Lúthien had gone out of the world long ago. The set of her shoulders expressed determination. "And I do. Go back to sleep."

His head was full of an older tiredness and a different dark. He might have been struggling through the webs of Ered Gorgoroth. He pushed himself up against the pillows, rubbing his face. "Why?" he said helplessly. "What are you going to do?"

She shut the chest. "I'm going to find my mother. She needs me. Don't try to stop me."

It was not until the second door shut that he understood what she meant. He was still more than half in another world, another place, long ago and far away, and the abruptness with which he left his bed did nothing to dispel that. She was already at the far end of the corridor; he caught her on the stairs, which were deep in shadow, since no one had been round to light the candles. "Give that back!" he said and seized her wrist. "You can't go after them!"

Her fingers were white around the knife's bone handle. "Let go of me."

"No!" he said furiously. "Don't be absurd!"

She was very pale, but she spoke steadily. "My mother needs me. You call me Lúthien. She would have gone. Let go."

"I would have stopped her." He said it without thinking. "I would never have told her where to find the knife. You can't go. I won't let you."

He wrenched the knife out of her tight grasp. It was warm from her fingers and still in its sheath; as she lunged for it, childishly, he held it above her head and kept her from jumping with his other hand on her arm. "I won't," he said. "I will not. You aren't going, Arwen. Your father wants you to stay here."

It was a long moment before Arwen ceased to strain against him. Patches of angry colour glowed in her cheeks now and she was breathing rather quickly. "Let go of me," she said again. She bit her lip in a way that Lúthien had certainly never done. "Let me go."

He stared down at her. They were both, he realised suddenly, very close to tears.

When he released Arwen, she leaned mutinously against the wall, rubbing her wrist. Erestor could see the marks left by his fingers even through the gloom. He put a hand on the banister, carefully, and lowered himself to sit on the stairs. He had stumbled into bed without undressing; he could smell the warmth of ancient dreams dissipating from the crumpled cloth into the cool night air. He thrust the knife through his belt. In another moment or two, he thought, he would be able to place himself properly in time and space, and then he might be able to talk some sense into the child.

"You can't stop me," she said, although her voice wavered. "Melinna wouldn't."

He almost hit her. It was an instinctive, irrational impulse, though, and when the dizzy rage subsided, he could take a steadying breath and tell her, "I don't care what she'd have done. She'd have been wrong. She was wrong. You can't have her knife."

This time she said nothing. Melinna, he thought.

"I'm going down to see her," he said aloud. "Don't you stop me."

It was dark all through Imladris and very quiet. Starlight glimmered in the high arches of the windows as Erestor passed by. Distantly, he was aware of Arwen following soundlessly a few steps behind on her bare feet.

The doors into the Hall of Fire were shut and barred. "Glorfindel ordered it," said Arwen, from a safe distance. Her voice was small and echoed oddly. Erestor looked over his shoulder and saw her standing in a patch of moonlight, her face crosshatched by the lead between the window panes. Her feet were very pale on the grey stone floor. "He said we could weep for the dead once we'd done what we could for the living. You taught him that, he said."

Erestor turned back to the great oak doors. Light and shadow stippled the carvings. He seemed to be seeing them for the first time in a hundred years. Birds peered out at him, and squirrels that had once been bushy-tailed and were now smooth, their whittled fur rubbed flat by countless fingers. He traced a grey wing, wonderingly.

"Will you go back now?" she asked behind him. "Erestor..."

The wood was silky under his hands. He set a palm against it, and then his arm, crooked, so that he could rest his forehead in the bend of his elbow and only the tip of his nose brushed the door. He remembered the tree from which it had been made. He remembered the dust and confusion of Imladris rising from the valley, and slipping away from the work for a day or so, or possibly three, and Melinna tracking him unerringly to his leafy vantage-point. The carvings were his. He had lost that knife long ago.

He closed his eyes.

The curls of wood shaved away from beech leaves and sharp-edged feathers were falling around his feet. A fire burned between them. Nightingales, she said, and smiled, and he smiled too. He was there and here: there long ago, where Imladris was a jagged mess of rising walls and war beat Middle-earth like a drum, and here, where time had blunted the edges of the carvings pressed against his fingers. Melinna was on the other side of the great oak doors. He could feel her there. He thought she must be standing there, as he was standing, leaning against the sculpted wood and knowing that he leaned there too.

His shoulders ached. He rested all his weight against the barred doors, which stood as solid and unmovable as that old oak had done. Inch by inch, he slid downwards, his sleeve catching on twigs and talons, until he knelt on stone.

"Erestor?" he heard Arwen say uncertainly, on the cusp of some distant horizon.

"Go away." The words were faraway, as though someone else had spoken them, or as if he only remembered speaking them or imagined himself speaking them in some far-off future. "Just go away. Please."

He could see Melinna kneeling on the other side. His eyes were still shut, but he could see her clearly, her arms folded against the doors, looking up at him through a curtain of glossy black hair. The darkness of her eyes and the twist of her lips. He knew how she would be smiling: sharply, her amusement keen enough to draw blood.

He stayed there until the urgency of that other world became too insistent to ignore.

It began as a murmuring that fluttered and stirred around him like windblown leaves. He was aware of it, vaguely, but only as a peripheral disturbance that might concern some other person, somewhere else and at some other time. The wood was as warm as skin and Melinna's heart was beating. He could feel it. Her laughter brushed against his mouth. When a hand grasped his shoulder, he felt it as an intrusion and reacted unthinkingly, knocking it away. As soon as it was gone, he forgot it. "Leave him alone," Arwen was saying. "Just leave him alone!"

She sounded fierce even from a distance. "Please," he said, almost to himself. "Just go."

Someone pulled him away from the doors. It felt like being woken from deep sleep. He was shaken into morning: aching and cold and utterly furious, his rage a living thing that broke through the stiffness of his frozen limbs. He tore himself free. "Go away!" he told them. "Just go away!"

Sunlight lay dustily on the polished flagstones. Lindir was there, and others crowding round, and Arwen clutching a grey patterned web of a shawl around her shoulders. "Come away," Lindir said. He looked as grim as any of them: he was hollow-eyed and hollow-cheeked and the liquid smoothness of his singing voice had cracked, which Melinna would have said was a tragedy in its own right. He tried to grasp Erestor's shoulder again. "This won't help –"

Erestor shook him off. "Don't tell me that!" he said. "What would you know about it?"

Lindir was looking at him with a curious sort of dignity. "Alvellë," he replied simply and set his hand against the carven wood.

It took a moment for Erestor to remember who Alvellë was. He stared at Lindir, seeing streaks that might have been dried tear-tracks in the creases of the boy's face, until Alvellë came back to him too: a silly, pretty child with the longest eyelashes he'd ever seen, who spent half her time batting them at Lindir and the other half cooing at the songs Lindir composed for her. In a hundred years or so, they were bound to be married. You didn't need Galadriel's mirror, Melinna said, to know that.

A match made in poetry, Erestor had said then. "Ride out, then!" he said now. "Write a song for her, do whatever you think she'd want. Find a waterfall and weep under it. Whatever makes you feel better. But don't try to tell me what will or won't help!"

He was being unkind and did not care. "Just leave me be," he added bitterly. "You've never lost anyone before. Savour it. It'll give you something to sing about."

"As you wish," said Lindir, quietly, after a long moment.

He turned away. Erestor waited until they had all gone before he sat down on the floor and leaned back against the doors, closing his eyes again. Silence settled over him. He knew when Arwen crouched beside him and tugged his sleeve, very gently, although he did not look at her. "Lindir was right," she said, in a soft little voice that was nearly a whisper. "This won't help. Won't you come away now?"

"No."

He heard her sigh. "I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have woken you..."

"Just hush," he said wearily. "Just leave me be."

She sat down instead. Because Erestor knew how stubborn she could be, he opened his aching eyes and let everything come slowly back into focus. Arwen was sitting there with her bare feet tucked under her, leaning sideways against the barred doors. By the shadows in her face, she had not slept either.

"You could come with me," she suggested. "We could both ride out."

"No."

"I didn't really think –" She broke off. "Are you hungry?"

"No."

"Do you want –"

"I don't want anything. Just leave me alone."

"No," said Arwen. "I could get you some cushions."

He exhaled. "If you must."

It bought him a space of solitude, if nothing else. He was weary beyond the point where sleep had any appeal and ached for something other than comfort. Arwen's shawl fluttered like grey feathers as she went off to find cushions. He watched until she had gone, without really seeing her, then let his eyes fall shut. The ripples of Lindir's unwanted intrusion were smoothing out now, leaving him blank again, his mind an empty pool. The point of a carved beak dug into his back.

Time slipped away. He let it. He was deep in another world and the days and nights moved differently there. No one troubled him, although from time to time people drifted past and murmured concerned things to Arwen, who had dragged an armchair under the arch of the window and sat there with a spindle and a basket of red wool. He glimpsed her occasionally, distantly, through his lashes. She had brought cushions and then blankets, and sometimes water or food, and now she sat and span ferociously, in silence. He saw the shadow of the spindle turning and saw Melinna there, perched on her weaving stool in the afternoon sun. With his eyes closed and his forehead pressed against his knees, he knew she was restlessly circling and quartering the Hall of Fire instead, trapped in the dark among the carven pillars and the ashy hearth.

He was listening to her footsteps when the stillness holding Imladris broke. A distant babble of voices bloomed into a kind of vivid alertness that the white halls had not known since their master had ridden out. The footsteps in Erestor's head grew louder and sharper until he could hear echoes reverberating in the stone arches. Then a clatter as Arwen's spindle fell to the floor. "Mother? Have you – is she –?"

She was out of her chair. Erestor opened his eyes, slowly, and saw the spindle first, lying abandoned in a tangle of red thread. Glorfindel stood there, fully armoured, carrying his helmet in the crook of one shining arm and a cloth-wrapped bundle in the other. Arwen danced before him, visibly torn between eagerness and dread.

Glorfindel was looking past her at Erestor, though. "I told you to keep an eye on him," he said to Arwen. He sounded particularly grim. "Why's he here?"

"I am keeping an eye on him!" Arwen snapped back. "That's why I'm still here! Glorfindel, tell me about my mother! Where is she? What's happened, is she –?"

"Your father has her, and your brothers. She's injured, but alive. Roswen too. Thindaew was – beyond help."

"Where are they? Tell me!"

"I believe they carried your mother to her room."

Arwen nodded, gathered up her skirts and dashed off without another word. Glorfindel remained standing there a moment longer, looking down on Erestor; then his mouth twisted and he sat down in the chair so recently vacated by Arwen, his armour gleaming in the dusty light. He set his helmet on the flagstones at his feet, although he held the bundle carefully in his lap.

"You look terrible," he said frankly. "How long have you been here?"

"I don't know." Erestor's voice was rusty. He cleared his throat. "How long were you gone?"

Glorfindel put a hand over his eyes, then seemed to realise he was still wearing his leather gloves. He stripped them off and dropped them absentmindedly beside his helmet. His hair was pinned up to go under the helmet and a few stray wisps streaked gold into his face. "You shouldn't be here. I don't know why they didn't drag you away."

"Lindir tried. I didn't want to go."

"I suppose I should commend him for making the attempt. A brave thing to do."

Erestor said nothing. Glorfindel shook his head. "What can I say to convince you to leave?"

"I need to see her."

"Later."

"No, now."

Glorfindel grimaced and pushed himself out of the chair. "Now, then," he said tiredly. "Though I wish you'd leave it."

The bar across the doors was heavy enough to need both of them to take it down. Glorfindel hauled Erestor to his feet and waited for him to steady himself against the wall. The sudden altitude was dizzying. "You're in a terrible state," he heard Glorfindel say. "If that child of Elrond's had any sense –"

"You had the hall shut up, she said."

"Yes," said Glorfindel, after a pause. "I was afraid you wouldn't wait."

"Well, then."

They set their hands against the bar. It was a hefty piece of wood and working it loose was an awkward task, made all the more so because Glorfindel had only one arm free. The key was a big, ornate piece of ironwork. Glorfindel produced it from a pouch and rattled it in the lock. "This should be oiled," he remarked. "The hall isn't locked often, I suppose."

"Never. That I remember."

The doors swung open. They went into the dark.

It was colder than Erestor had expected. There was no light at all, other than that slanting in through the open doors behind them. The hearth was empty. He had to stop and wait for his eyes to adjust. Then he could see pools of black cloth and the still, white faces floating in the folds of the shrouds and piled-up hair. They should have been dreaming. Alvellë's absurd eyelashes made her look like a child's ceramic doll.

The smell of old blood filled the hall, but not that of rot, as it would have done if the dead had been mortals. Erestor could not see Melinna. "Here," said Glorfindel, making his way between the pillars and bodies. "She's over here."

He knelt by a pillar. A long, covered form lay there, slightly apart from the rest. The shroud was undisturbed, which made Erestor's throat clench: she alone had been laid down and forgotten. "I should have seen her," he said. He pressed his knuckles to his forehead and slumped to the ground. "You should have let me."

What little brightness there was so deep in the hall glimmered in Glorfindel's face and hands. "No. You shouldn't have."

He reached out, very carefully, and drew back the shroud far enough to reveal slashed leather and the wreck of her neck, a truncated ruin of bone and blackened flesh. "No!" he said again, when Erestor's breath hissed in, as if punched in the stomach. He grasped Erestor's wrist and held tight for a long moment, during which Erestor leaned back against the pillar and tried not to think at all. "We recovered – various things..."

He set the bundle he carried on the floor, where her head should have been. "I hoped to spare you this," he added. His gaze was frank and full of light. He began to unfold the layers of cloth.

There were still pearl hairpins in her hair. Erestor saw that and nothing else, because everything was blurring. Her black hair had been washed and combed and braided into perfect glossy coils, then pinned up with pearls. He reached out helplessly to touch the sleek tassel of a braid, and then the matching pins lost in his own tangles.

He closed his eyes. He did not want to see what had been done to hers.

"What happened?" he managed to say. "Why – none of the others..."

Glorfindel sighed.

"I don't know," he replied. The steadiness of his voice was slipping now. "But they found her – Elrond's sons said they found her body on the Dimrill Stair with a few dead Orcs and a broken knife. And – her head – when we found Celebrían and Roswen, and what was left of Thindaew... I don't know what happened. Knowing her, I can guess. Anything more than that will have to wait until Celebrían's talking again."

In the silence that followed, Erestor saw her again, clambering through a different pass in a darker age. He could see the flirt of her cloak and her hair in the wind, but not her face. Overhead shone stars, sprayed end to end across the endless night.

This time, he felt Glorfindel's sigh more than heard it. "Come on," Glorfindel said roughly and put a hand under his elbow. "Staying here won't do anyone any good. Let's go and get drunk. I mean, a drink."

Galleon

Once again, many thanks to my patient beta, Ignoble Bard!

Read Galleon

~ galleon ~

A drink, a drink, and then another. From anyone else, Erestor would not have taken it. But he was awash with the dark and old blood and the shimmer of pearls in the black of her hair, and when Glorfindel poured him brandy, he drank it. He had done the same for Glorfindel often enough, he or Melinna, keeping the glasses full as the evening lengthened, talking or dancing or flying on the wings of the nightingale harp. Then the forests of beech and elm had grown again, and the stone groves been sculpted, and Gondolin’s white towers raised up to the moon and the stars. The old fights had been fought again, and laid aside. All those long nights.

There was light everywhere. His head was swimming. “This won’t work,” he said, or meant to say, but the words came out wrong. He had to shake his head, which did not help, and try again. “It won’t help.”

“Wrong,” said Glorfindel, who stood by the window with the sun blazing round him and a glass in his hand. It burned when he lifted it to his mouth. “I never knew it not to.”

“I should’ve stayed with her. You should’ve let me.”

“No.”

Erestor tried to get up, and failed. The room spun dizzily and so did he, spilling his drink and almost dropping the glass. He fell back into the chair. “I should –”

“Stay there,” said Glorfindel. “I’ll get you another drink.”

When he turned, the light around him blurred and shifted. It was impossible to see his face. A golden glaze filled the room. “No,” Erestor said. “No, don’t.”

Only the ripples of Glorfindel’s shrug reached him. “All right. Then I’ll get me another drink.”

He heard the bottle chime, and Glorfindel’s muttered curse, and the glass being set down slightly harder than necessary. It was cracked. Glorfindel went to get another. He had been matching Erestor drink for drink, Erestor realised, and his voice was steadier than his hands. He came back with it and stood there looking down on Erestor, only his blue eyes clear through all the shifting, blurring brightness. His knuckles were white around his glass.

He had put the pearls back into her hair. It came to Erestor suddenly: Glorfindel with her head on his knees, combing out her hair, braiding it and pinning it back up a pearl at a time. The mountain red behind him and still icy. “When you found it –” he said.

Glorfindel drank and turned away, deliberately. “Not now,” he said over his shoulder. “Another day.”

Her hair in his hands. He must have washed it. Her hair and her head. Erestor sat forwards. “Did you –”

“Not now, I said.”

“The pearls –”

Glorfindel swung back, spilling brandy. “Shut up!” he said angrily. “Just stop asking! Just stop!”

Erestor stared at him. Glorfindel’s bright eyes glistened.

“All right,” he said, after a long moment.

It was impossible to think clearly. His head was full of brandy and black hair and the bloodied edge of her smile. All of it hurt and every question hurt and he was going to ask anyway, he wanted to ask now, to cut himself with questions until he bled too. Glorfindel was already bleeding. Glorfindel, who had gathered up her pearls.

The room was still spinning. He leaned back and closed his eyes.

When he opened them, it was dark, other than a bit of starlight. He was slumped in the chair, his head to one side and his legs askew, stiff and aching. A blanket brushed his chin. He blinked and blinked again, and saw her head rolling on the floor in a stained grey shroud. Then the dim edges of Glorfindel, just visible sitting on the carpet beneath the window, his forearms resting on his knees and a bottle and a glass set between his feet. His head was bowed.

In the distance, the sound that had woken Erestor came faintly again. Then much closer and much louder: a woman screaming. It startled Erestor out of the chair. He stood there swaying in the dark.

“Celebrían. And Roswen.”

Glorfindel spoke so softly Erestor almost failed to hear him. He rubbed his face, looking down. Glorfindel was turning his glass thoughtfully, so that what little of the liquor remained it in rolled in the bottom like oil. “What?”

“They’ve been screaming every night since we found them. They set each other off. When they sleep... when they wake up...”

He shuddered all over and picked up the bottle. “More?”

Erestor sat down shakily.

“Yes,” he replied, looking around for his glass. “Yes, I will.”

It was miruvor. “I finished the brandy,” Glorfindel said. He wasn’t slurring, quite, but his hands were not steady and his voice was rough too. “Pity. It’s better for this. They know how to drink, those mortals. They know – must be because their time’s so short, they burn so briefly. Things matter more. Sometimes I think nothing’s mattered since the old days...”

He broke off. “She had her head,” he added in the same odd tone. “Celebrían. She wouldn’t let go. We had to – Elrond had to calm her down. The things down there... They found it, the twins, but it was a fort, a trap – they had to wait – we cleared it out. Those caves. There were bones scattered – and things – I looked for her hairpins. Found as many as I could. I thought you’d want them.”

The words thank you stuck in Erestor’s throat. He drank his miruvor. It tasted of flowers and summer. Through the window, the stars were shining. It was a moonless night.

Glorfindel set down his glass and put his head in his hands. “I loved her, you know,” he said, not very clearly. “Her and you. I don’t – you understand, both of you. No one here does. So young. They’re all so young. They ask what was it like, what – in the old days, the glorious days – I know you’ll laugh. But it was. It was glorious. You don’t think so, but in its way... but you don’t need to hear that. You don’t need to be told. You know what it was like. In the old days.”

Blood and smoke and fire and grief. And before that, long before the first dawn, diving for pearls in the warm waters around the Isle of Balar.

Tears were rolling down between Glorfindel’s fingers. “It shouldn’t have happened,” he said, the words muffled. “It should never have happened like this.”

Erestor leaned down and put his own glass on the carpet, very carefully.

“What’s it like?” he asked. “Being dead.”

Glorfindel gave an odd, harsh laugh and leaned back against the wall, his face glistening in the dark. “I don’t remember. Easier than living and knowing I’d failed Gondolin. I can’t tell you. You know that. I don’t remember.”

He moved a foot and knocked the bottle over. Only a dribble of miruvor spilled out. Glorfindel exhaled another breath of humourless laughter and kicked the bottle away. “Aren’t you going to tell me I’ve had enough?” he demanded, sounding suddenly angry. “Melinna would.”

A flood of bitter, dizzying rage rushed up through Erestor and roared behind his eyes, so that he had to bite his teeth to keep it in. He held onto the arms of his chair until the dark room paled. “Have you ever killed another Elf, Glorfindel?”

“What?” He was passing a hand back over his hair. “Not all Exiles –”

“I have. Several. In the old days. It was easy. Don’t tempt me.”

Glorfindel stared up with his mouth open, the starlight shining on his wet face.

“We’ve both had enough,” he said at last. He thrust himself to his feet and steadied himself against the wall. “I’m going to bed.”

He staggered away. Erestor forced himself to let go of the chair’s wooden arms and thought about going to his own rooms, his own bed. Instead he closed his eyes again and let himself slip back into the dark.

 

*

He woke a little past dawn. Someone was shaking him. He shook his head muzzily and discovered it was Arwen, who looked as though she had got about as much sleep as him, if not less. She rocked back on her heels and peered up at him with shadowed eyes. “I went to your rooms, but you weren’t there,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

A sullen, pulsing headache was just beginning in the back of Erestor’s skull. He winced and struggled to sit up. “What are you doing here?”

“I couldn’t sleep. I was looking for you. Elladan told me about – I was worried.” She glanced around. “Were you drinking all night? And he scolded me for letting you stay in the hall!”

The bottle was still there on its side, and both empty glasses. “Did he?”

Arwen made an angry sound. “You need sleep. And to wash. And clean clothes. Not that mortal stuff!”

A shadow fell over both of them. Glorfindel stood in the doorway to his bedroom, leaning heavily against the doorframe, as if he would have fallen without its support. “Miruvor too,” he told her. “Brandy’s better. Clears the head. How’s your mother?”

“There’s nothing clear about your head!” Arwen said fiercely and made a point of turning her back on him to look at Erestor. “I know you’ve seen her. Lindir said the Hall of Fire was open. He said the doors were open and someone left the key in the lock. And Glorfindel took it when he rode out. So you can go and sleep in a proper bed now.”

Glorfindel cleared his throat roughly. “I said –”

“She’s fine! She’ll be fine! We’ll make her better!”

Erestor put his cold hands to his aching temples. “Don’t shout.”

She almost softened. “I’m not shouting,” she said, and gave Glorfindel a resentful look. “We will. Are you going to stay sitting here looking ill or come and get some rest?”

 

*

He slept for longer than he would have expected. He did not remember his dreams afterwards, but none of them were good. Sometimes the screaming almost woke him, but only almost. It wasn’t Melinna. She wouldn’t scream.

At some point, Glorfindel came in. He had a bottle in one hand and two glasses in the other and he wanted to talk about her body because, he said, no one else would. He sat on the bed and poured out wine for both of them and asked what they had done with the dead in Doriath. The Noldor had built cairns when they could. He spoke conversationally, as though asking Erestor’s opinion on a line of verse or where to set lookouts, although the careful evenness of his voice betrayed him. It was a long time since anyone had died at Imladris.

Erestor drank wine in the dark and remembered Doriath. “Threw them into the river.”

Glorfindel started back. “What?”

“From the bridge. It was full of blood. And bodies. We swam – I made her swim...”

“Don’t talk about it,” Glorfindel said, after a moment. He put his hand to his mouth and unselfconsciously licked away a splash of wine. “I liked it better it when you wouldn’t. I used to admire Fëanor’s sons.”

Erestor thrust the glass away, although there was still wine in it and he did not see or care where it went. He pushed his hands into his hair and squeezed his eyes shut. “I made her swim,” he said again, distantly, remembering it. “Celeborn went first, and Oropher. I pushed her off the bridge and made her swim. I saw – Ivaeron was there, he fell in the caves, I saw his face. The current took him. It was very fast. There was snow. There was –”

He felt Glorfindel grasp his arm. “Stop it.”

“Blood. There was blood. It was very cold. There were so many of us in the river, so many people I'd known. We never found out what happened to Dior and Nimloth. Their bodies, I mean. We were there when they were killed.”

“Please. Don’t do this.”

He spoke gently, for him. Erestor drew in a long, shuddering breath.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t know what to do. We – I don’t remember any deaths from when we were children, from the mountains. It was so long ago.”

“The others are going to be buried. They chose one of the gardens.”

“Do that. She won’t care.”

Glorfindel nodded and looked around for the abandoned glass. “Her clothes – what she’s wearing...”

Erestor rubbed his face.

“No,” he said, thinking of what remained of her in the Hall of Fire, or trying to. He found it impossible to think of her as that. His memory rebelled. She was lying in the dark in her dark shroud, the pearls in her hair and her hair on her shoulders, her mail shirt gleaming silver where the leather had been slashed open. Almost asleep, like the others. That was all. “I think – I don’t think – I’ll go down...”

He pushed back the covers. Glorfindel got up too, although he was frowning. “You needn’t. Let me.”

“No. I will.”

There was a ewer of washing water on the table beside a pile of neatly folded drying-cloths. Arwen or someone else must have brought it all at some point. Erestor staggered over to it and splashed cold water over his head and face, while Glorfindel went out to wait in the long, airy chamber with the desk and the harp and the loom. It was almost night again. The light from the open door was grey.

“Erestor,” came Glorfindel’s voice from the other room. “Your harp –”

He was standing by it, one hand resting on the silver wings, which were in shadow and did not shine. Erestor leaned against the door. Glorfindel stood in shadow too, although his hair was still the brightest thing in the room. The broken strings curled and twisted at his feet. “What happened to it?” he asked. “How did this happen?”

His quietness was as much grief as shock. Erestor shook his head and tried to remember. It seemed very long ago.

“I did it,” he said eventually. “I... it was...”

He let the words fade. Glorfindel was looking at him steadily. “You haven’t asked me about Celebrían.”

Erestor said nothing. After a moment, Glorfindel gave a slight sigh and glanced down at the stringless harp again, frowning. “Her injuries are improving,” he said. “Roswen, too. Elrond says they’ll both heal. Eventually. So that’s something. Ready?”

By now the hearth had been rekindled in the Hall of Fire. One or two other people were there, but no one spoke. It was warm and dim and the smell of blood was fading into rust. Erestor regretted not finishing the wine suddenly. He followed Glorfindel between the carved wooden pillars to where she lay. It was no easier to draw back the shroud knowing what he would find there. He did it anyway. Then he stared down at her and waited for the sickness to pass.

“The pearls,” he said, when he could. “And her mail.”

They slid the leather-covered jacket gingerly from her body. Erestor laid her body back down in the black folds of the shroud and set her head straight while Glorfindel checked over the slashed mail shirt. “Erestor,” he said, sounding surprised, and held it up to catch the firelight. The mail itself was unscratched, although the leather would need mending. “Is this mithril?”

“Mm.”

He began to unpin her hair. It was possible to concentrate on how her hair felt in his hands, the silk and the blackness of it, and the varying colours of the ancient pearls, rather than on how her damaged face stretched open. Glorfindel set the jacket down and stared at him. “Where’d you get it?”

“Hadhodrond. Years ago, before they woke that thing. They wanted a favour.”

“I thought you didn’t get on with Dwarves. I mean – Doriath...”

“So did they. That’s why they paid so highly.” He extricated the last hairpin and tried not to think how many had been lost. She had had more, he was sure. He certainly did. “We fought those Dwarves at Sarn Athrad. It was a slaughter. We took you to Hadhodrond to commission jewellery for Elrond once. Remember?”

“I remember,” said Glorfindel, so quietly that the words were almost inaudible.

She wore nothing else that could not be buried with her. Erestor replaced the shroud over her face and body and gathered up the pearl hairpins. He had to steady himself against the pillar as he got to his feet. Glorfindel stood up too, holding the mithril mail shirt over one arm. “It’s funny,” he said inconsequentially. “How they took – what they took, and they left this. It must be priceless. They didn’t recognise it. That does explain why they – about her head. It was the only way to kill her. Or the easiest.”

The hall was starting to blur. “Just – stop talking,” Erestor said. “Just shut up.”

He thrust himself away from the pillar and stalked off.

She was buried by the waterfall. Elrond had suggested it, Glorfindel said. The others had been buried in one of the higher gardens. Elrond was there too, although he said very little and looked tired and deep in thought. Arwen held his hand. “My grandparents are coming,” she told Erestor afterwards. “Did Glorfindel –? Well, they are. It’ll help my mother. I want them to bring niphredil to plant on the graves.”

Erestor looked down at the naked earth. It had covered the shroud very fast. The thought of lying down with her struck him suddenly: of curling up on the exposed soil and thrusting his hands into it and breathing its freshness. It was very black and very rich. He could just stay there with her. Just for a while.

He nodded instead and walked away. It was too bright now anyway. Maybe when twilight fell and the stars were out.

He was mostly left alone after that. He was glad of this. Sometimes he did leave his rooms, but only at night, in the gentle quiet of the stars and the shadows. Or he lay in the nest of nightingale cushions with his work and the stringless harp and her loom and the fading tapestry. It was harder to see how the colours had paled in the dark. Once it had always been dark, always twilight, lit only by the brilliant unfading stars. Once they had wandered in a twilit world and met with colour, true colour, only in the halls of the Falathrim or the Dwarves or under the gold lamps of Menegroth...

The cloth on the loom was blue wool. She had spun the thread herself. It was very fine and very closely woven and Erestor had unravelled several inches unthinkingly in a restless, angry moment before he thought how annoyed she would be. He was sitting helplessly on the weaving stool with double handfuls of tangled wool and no idea what to do with it when the door opened.

It was Celebrían. She looked half-faded herself: she was as pale as her hair and almost translucent, her bones like bruises under her skin. Erestor thrust away the wool and the stool, which clattered backwards onto the floor. He stared at her.

“They’re asleep,” she said. She took a faltering step into the room, and then another, as though the effort exhausted her. The door fell shut behind her. “They wouldn’t let me come out. I waited... I needed to talk to you.”

“You shouldn’t,” said Erestor, recovering the power of speech more violently than he intended. “Go back. Rest.”

She looked around dreamily. “I wanted to be there,” she told him. “When you buried her. When she went under the earth. They wouldn’t let me. They said I wasn’t well enough. They said you weren’t well enough...”

Her voice was as pale as the rest of her, little more than a silvery whisper. Erestor picked up the weaving stool and set it upright. “They were right. Go back to your bed.”

“She said to tell you,” Celebrían whispered. “I had to.”

“Tell me what?”

She crossed the room in a sudden, silent rush, then stood wavering before him, so unsteady on her bare white feet that Erestor had to catch her before she fell. She was very light. He eased her onto Melinna’s weaving stool. She clutched his arm and the stool and looked fixedly at the carpet, breathing in quick, shallow breaths. “We didn’t expect it,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do.”

Her head fell back. He stared down at himself reflected in her bright, unfocused eyes and felt the shadows slipping. “It was so sudden –”

– one moment picnicking within sight of the pass, all laughter and play; the next alive with fright, everyone panicking, the clear mountain air full of cries. Such confusion. It was so blue. The sky was so blue and the mountain so red, all the old trees bent over by the force of the wind. They came from under the bowed trees. They came in a wave, roaring like beasts, their armour ringing. Celebrían leapt up from her meal in alarm, seeing everyone scattering and shrieking, trampling the food into the blankets and grass.

Chaos swirled. The horses and the men were everywhere and nowhere. Celebrían stood frozen in the shadow of Caradhras. The attackers were hideous. Everyone was fleeing or fighting. Carandol rolled on the ground, covered in blood – a woman was screaming – horses thundered wildly away, panicked by the sudden attack and the smell and the fear –

They were heading for her. Four or five of their attackers, some on stolen horses, others following after. She saw no one who could help her. She caught up her skirts and ran breathlessly into clear blue sky.

The way up to the Redhorn Pass was rough and pitted, although Celebrían always thought of it as the broad, smooth road it had once been. She could hear her pursuers and the roar of the waterfall beyond the pass, growing louder as her heartbeat quickened, fear hammering in her ears. A horse thundered up behind her. “Celebrían!” Melinna called over the waterfall and her horse’s hooves. She was leaning sideways in the saddle, one hand outstretched. “Here, to me!”

The jolt of being dragged up onto the horse was matched by that of seeing the way back cut off. They were Men or Orcs, and Celebrían had never seen a Man so ugly. Melinna threw one look over her shoulder and urged the horse on towards the pass. The road was steep, but they reached the top and found the Dimrill Stair stretching clear all the way down to the long green dale. Mist hung around the waterfall and the unbroken waters of the Mirrormere lay dark and deep below them. “Hang on!” said Melinna in Celebrían’s ear and sent the horse galloping headlong down the Dimrill Stair.

It was a nightmare ride. The wind hissed past and the waterfall’s spray lashed Celebrían’s face; she clung on for her life, terrified of the horse taking a fall on the ruined road. They careened between the high banks of the Dimrill Stair down towards the peaceful dale. Behind them, far too close for comfort, their pursuers yelled as they came over Redhorn Pass.

At the foot of the Stair, the road was no better. “We’ll fall!” Celebrían cried, seeing the broken flagstones. Melinna reined in and skewed round to catch a backwards glance over Celebrían’s shoulder, then hissed what must have been a curse. “Are they –?”

Melinna thrust the reins into Celebrían’s hands and kissed her cheek. “You can outrun them alone,” she said and swung down from the saddle, drawing a knife from her belt. The wind caught her hair and whipped it into her shining eyes. “Tell him I love him, but this time I’m staying. Ride for Lórien.” She slapped the horse’s flank before Celebrían could protest. “Go!”

The horse took off. Celebrían hung on as the world blurred –

– and blinked. Her nails dug into Erestor’s wrist.

Erestor blinked too and broke free. But he was dizzy and had to lean against the fading tapestry for support, then feel his way carefully along the wall to the desk and his chair. He dropped into it and clutched his head. The dark was spinning. He could just make out the translucent pallor of Celebrían’s bare feet.

“They had her head in the caves,” whispered Celebrían’s faded voice. “They made me, made us – I wouldn’t let her go, I wouldn’t – she tried – I had to tell you what she –”

“Don’t!”

It burst out of him. He felt the anger rising again. He looked up and found Celebrían staring at him, her mouth a little open, her bitten lips bloodless and almost glassy. She was silent. “Don’t tell me anything!” he said. “Go away! I don’t want to hear it! I don’t want to talk to you!”

Celebrían closed her mouth, then opened it again. “I thought you’d want to know.”

“Well, you were wrong.”

He rose as he spoke, since the dizziness had passed. Now only anger remained. He took a few hasty steps around the room, then went back to the window, which was full of starlight. He threw it open, set his elbows on the windowsill and leaned out into the clear, calm night.

“She tried to save me,” said Celebrían behind him. “She slowed them down. It was heroic –”

“It was stupid and bloody and pointless!” Erestor swung back into the room again, abandoning the stars to their silence. His hands were shaking. He was aware of it only distantly and too angry to care. “She shouldn’t have done it! It didn’t need to happen! It shouldn’t have happened! It didn’t make any difference!”

Celebrían clung to the weaving stool as though frightened of falling. “She did. She didn’t have any choice. They would have caught both of us –”

“Of course she had a choice. She could have run! I would have done!”

“You don’t mean that,” said Celebrían, very quietly. “I know you don’t.”

He stared at her. Celebrían’s gaze was unwavering, her eyes huge and feverishly bright in her haggard face. Her hair was uncombed. Erestor remembered her as a child in Ost-in-Edhil, scampering after her parents with all those pale curls bouncing on her shoulders in the sun. How merry Celebrían had been.

“You’re wrong,” he said flatly. “I do mean that. I very much do. It was stupid of her. It didn’t help anything. It didn’t help you. She should have run and hidden on the dale. Or she shouldn’t have followed you to start with. She shouldn’t have let herself get caught like that. She knew better. She knew those mountains, she could have gone after you afterwards and helped you better then. She knew that! You got her killed, but she didn’t stay to save you. That wasn’t the way to do it. She chose to stay and fight and die. She chose it.”

“So would you. I know you would.”

“No! I wouldn’t! And if I’d been there, nor would she!”

Celebrían flinched. She opened her mouth to say something, but the door swung open before she could. Arwen stood there, all wild black hair and shadows, blinking sleepily. It made her look oddly small, although she was as tall as her brothers these days. “Mother!” she said and went straight to Celebrían, who looked up at her dreamily and did not speak. “What are you doing out of bed? Why are you here? You should have woken me.” She gave Erestor a distrustful look. “What’s the shouting about?”

Her mother set her bare feet on the carpet, one at a time, with great care.

“Take me to Elrond,” she whispered to Arwen, who bent to put an arm round her mother at once. Celebrían laid her head on her daughter’s shoulder and closed her bruised eyes. Her movements were slow and tentative, as if she was not quite convinced that Arwen or Erestor or anything else was really there. “I need him.”

Arwen nodded and helped Celebrían to her feet. “Go to sleep,” she told Erestor and led her mother away.

 

Coracle

As ever, many thanks to my patient beta, Ignoble Bard!

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~ coracle ~

When he closed his eyes, he saw again the white smudge of Celebrían’s face.

He had thrown himself onto his bed, which still smelled of spilt wine. The curtains had been drawn for weeks. He did not want daylight and the curtains were open in the sitting room if he needed starlight. It was a long time before he fell asleep.

It was a great deal longer before he really woke again. There were... periods of semi-lucidity, oddly dreamlike, when he stirred in the dark and ate a little of what had been left for him, without tasting it, and attended to the necessary functions, but he might as well have been asleep throughout. Whether he was dreaming or remembering, what Celebrían had seen played and replayed itself before him. The pass and the attackers and plunging down the Dimrill Stair – and her hair in the wind – and the brilliance of her eyes –

At some point he stirred and found Galadriel there. She stood by his bedside, looking down on him with a cool thoughtfulness that verged on melancholy. A misty sort of marshlight clung to her gown, turning her ghostly and pale, and her hair veiled half her face in a silken sheet of Vanyarin-gold. “Erestor,” she said. “You’re awake.”

It might have been still a dream. She was dreamlike enough. The distinction was blurring anyway. He waited for her to vanish or change into another shape.

Celeborn appeared soundlessly at her shoulder. He looked at Erestor gravely, bent his silver head in greeting and murmured something to Galadriel that Erestor did not catch. A sigh escaped Galadriel, stirring her hair. “Perhaps; but we did and he is,” she replied aloud, “now. We were very sorry to hear about Melinna, Erestor...”

“Shocked,” said Celeborn soberly. “A terrible thing.”

The years had not changed Celeborn much. He had been quicker to laugh and his smile lighter, once, and he had seemed youthful rather than ageless then. His hands were on Galadriel’s shoulders, his long fingers smoothing out imaginary creases in her white gown. Around him, the shadows blurred. Erestor closed his eyes.

“Galadriel,” he said, or tried to. “How do you restore colour to a tapestry?”

After a moment, when Galadriel did not answer, he rubbed his face and thrust himself up against the disordered pillows. Time was slipping away from him again: the now and the then, not really distinct any more, if they ever had been, all merging into one seamless, messy present. Shadows and ambushes and sudden death. There had been a time...

They were both of them frowning. He saw them as they had been then and now were too, brilliant and stern and unstained in the shadows of the long, bloody ages. The glorious ages, Glorfindel would have said. So they had been, for the Gondolindrim.

“Tapestry,” he said. “Colour. She was going to ask you. It’s faded. You know the one.”

Galadriel shook her head. “There is no way,” she replied. “I’m sorry.”

“There was. In Doriath.”

“No. There wasn’t. Or if there was, I never learned it. The Queen kept things from fading, I think. I’m sorry,” she said again, gently. “I cannot help you.”

Erestor stared at her. Then at Celeborn, looking grave behind her. The shadows swirled around them, and their shared past. Celeborn’s pale hair had been matted and he had been limping; he had argued with her, with Melinna, then.

“She chose it,” he said. “She chose to stay. Your daughter wouldn’t believe me. Doesn’t understand.”

Celeborn’s frown deepened; he seemed about to say something, and then to think better of it. Galadriel glanced up at him, exhaled another sigh and sat down on the side of Erestor’s bed. Her gaze was clear and frank and deeply sad. “She was very brave,” she told him. “We will not forget it. What she did for our daughter.”

“No, you don’t – that’s not –”

“She was always very kind to Celebrían. When Celebrían was a child... I know Celebrían was very fond of Melinna. It makes it harder for her. But what Melinna did was heroic –”

“Galadriel,” said Celeborn, his eyes steady on Erestor. “I don’t think he needs to hear this. Not now.”

Galadriel looked round at him, surprised. “What?”

“Maybe you should see if Elrond needs us.”

“I doubt –” said Galadriel, then paused and frowned again, seeming to see something in Celeborn’s face. She nodded, rising. “Very well. Stars shine upon you, Erestor.”

She left. Celeborn shook his head. “I thought –” he said, and lifted a shoulder helplessly. “It was very long ago. Doriath.”

Erestor passed a hand over his face. “And you’ve forgiven any of them?”

Celeborn was silent. Erestor slumped back against the pillows. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said bitterly. “I don’t want – I should have been there. Stopped her. Let your daughter fend for herself. It didn’t change anything, did it?” He saw Celeborn’s expression. “You’re not going to tell me I don’t mean that?”

“No,” Celeborn said quietly. “I know you do.”

They were both silent. Then Celeborn took a breath and asked, “Did you break the strings on Daeron’s harp?”

“Yes.”

“I thought it must have been you.” He did not hesitate, quite. “We mean to stay until Celebrían is healed. If you need anything. If we can help.” And then, almost gently, “I think it becomes easier. With time. We will all miss her.”

Erestor shut his eyes and did not open them again until Celeborn had gone.

The next time he woke, it was music that woke him, a silvery ripple of familiar sound. It was impossible to tell how long it had been playing. He had dreamed of it, and woken slowly, and come gradually to realise that he was awake and the harp was still singing. A fraction later, he recognised the song. He was on his feet before he really knew it. The other room was full of daylight, blindingly bright after so long in the dark; he swayed in the doorway and rubbed his dazzled eyes.

Glorfindel sat before the newly strung harp. It had lost something, a particular sweetness of tone, that its ancient strings had given it, but it still sang more sweetly than any other harp Erestor had known. O! tra-la-la-lally, here down in the valley...

He was singing the silly words very softly, almost too quietly to be heard. Erestor leaned against the door. He was shaking. Only when Glorfindel stopped playing and looked up in naked surprise did he realise that he was laughing too, roughly and helplessly, great sobs of laughter shaking loose from somewhere deep inside. Tears ran down his face. There was salt on his lips, in his mouth; he could taste it. He stumbled across the room and collapsed in the nest of nightingale cushions.

Glorfindel got up and came around the desk, peering down in concern, still looking rather surprised. Erestor waved him away impatiently and buried his head in the crook of his arm until both the tears and laughter had slowed. He wiped his eyes on his crumpled sleeve and drew in a long, shuddering breath. “Why that?” he asked. His voice was still dangerously unsteady, if muffled. He cleared his throat and tipped his head back, although his eyes swam too much to make out more than the blaze of Glorfindel’s hair in the morning sun. “Why did you play that?”

Glorfindel was leaning back against the desk, his arms folded, frowning. “I’ve never heard you play it. She didn’t like it. I thought...”

No painful memories. That was what Glorfindel had thought. It was enough to set Erestor laughing again, this time almost without tears. Glorfindel’s expression only made him laugh harder.

“All right,” Glorfindel said, when Erestor finally caught his breath. “What’s the joke?”

Erestor’s ribs ached. He took several deep, calming breaths, until his hands were almost steady. “Who wrote it.”

“What? Lindir did. Everyone knows that.”

“Wrong. I did.”

Glorfindel straightened in fresh surprise. “Really? But Lindir –”

“He’s a child.” He said it with more contempt than he meant. It was hard not to, sometimes. “A poet. Easy to lead. I told him – he was very young then, Gorthaur’s siege had just been lifted – he should make up something to greet visitors, I told him. I don’t remember who was visiting. Someone very serious, maybe Galadriel, maybe Men or Dwarves. He was full of grand epics even then. Even Daeron sang ballads and ditties, I said. I gave him some ideas...”

“Tra-la-la-lally? Seriously? Why?”

“It was a game.” Erestor leaned back among the cushions and stared up at the ceiling. The mad, bubbling rush of energy that had flooded into him with the laughter had worn off just as suddenly, leaving him only very weary. “I won it,” he added. “She wouldn’t play any more. She said she didn’t want to know what I could come up with that was sillier than that.”

Glorfindel was shaking his head. “I don’t understand.”

He wouldn’t. It was not the sort of thing that Glorfindel would find amusing. “It started in Eglador,” Erestor said anyway, “in Doriath, long before they ever carved Menegroth out of the caves. It was peaceful then. We’d just come down from the mountains – we were children ourselves, very young, everyone was young then...” He closed his eyes, remembering. “From Ered Luin. It’s gone now, where we were born. We crossed the grasslands and came to the forests and found the King and the Queen, all their lords and ladies too... they used to sing these unending panegyrics and paeans. You’d have liked it. We thought it was unbearable. I can’t remember – it might have been her idea – we made up our own, the most boring we could, and sang them, and the worse the songs were, the more they liked them...”

“That was the game? Where does Lindir’s song come into it?”

“They wanted to know – the minstrels, I mean, Daeron and Tinfang and Ivaeron and the rest of them – they wanted to hear all the songs and dances we’d had in the mountains. And afterwards, when we went wandering, they’d want us to tell them everything when we came home. They wanted to make songs out of it. They wanted to hear any songs we’d heard, the stranger the better. And elsewhere – among the Green-elves or on Balar – or in Nargothrond, when that was delved – or Ost-in-Edhil, afterwards – or anywhere now – everyone wants new stories, new songs... it became a game. To see what we could get taken seriously. She’d come up with these long, solemn, tedious things, then I’d make up endless nonsense ditties and stories. It got sillier and sillier. No one ever raised an eyebrow. We only had to say we’d heard them somewhere else, or long ago.”

Glorfindel’s mouth was open; he looked genuinely shocked. “That story about me meeting three Balrogs,” he said slowly. “They never told children that in Sirion. I said as much when I first heard it. They couldn’t have done. They never would. It was – the wounds were too fresh, the story was too – silly...”

“You didn’t guess? I’m surprised.”

He meant that. But Glorfindel had not known him or Melinna very well back then. He saw Glorfindel flush, rather angrily, and look away. It would have been easy to tease him. Too easy. If Melinna had been there, she would have said Glorfindel took himself too seriously, at least where his glorious past was concerned.

“The harp,” he said instead. “You put new strings on it.”

Glorfindel still looked less than pleased, but he exhaled and nodded. “Lord Celeborn mentioned it. He said – not much. That it should be done. I agreed. I was sorry to see it like that. I’ve never played a better one. And it should be played.”

Erestor remembered Celeborn and Galadriel as a dream in the dark. Sunlight changed things, made everything sharper and brighter and more starkly real. The cushions strewn all around him and the solid, polished side of his desk, against which Glorfindel was still leaning. The red carpet and the nightingale harp and all the tapestries that had been woven over the years. In the dark, he would have closed his eyes and let it all slip away. Let it blur into a fading, half-remembered dream.

He got up instead. He was still unsteady, but that would pass.

Nothing had changed while Erestor slept except the harp. Everything else was untouched, and growing dusty. The new harp strings were shiny, too much so, and when he plucked one, that slightly diminished sweetness grated on his ear again and made him want suddenly to tear out these strings too. He resisted it. But he did not sit down to play.

The bottom edge of the half-woven cloth was still a mess of blue unravelled wool. Behind the loom, the grass and leaves of fading Lórien showed blue too, where once a deep, true green had glowed against the wall. It was the yellow that had faded, she had said. Only the blue remained.

“Lord Celeborn said you were angry with her,” said Glorfindel. He was watching Erestor from where he still stood leaning against the desk. “For helping Celebrían, rather than saving herself. I don’t see why you would be. Seems like the right thing to do to me. Hard, but right.”

Erestor twisted his fingers into a loop of stray thread, and snapped it. He sat down on the weaving stool. “She didn’t help Celebrían. She didn’t help anyone.”

Glorfindel was briefly quiet. “So you are angry.”

Angry was not the right word. He thought it, almost said it, and then said nothing after all. If it was not the right word, it was very close to whatever the right word was.

“He said something else,” said Glorfindel. “Something she did once, or meant to do, that you stopped her doing –”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Glorfindel shrugged. “Don’t, then.”

He looked troubled, though. Erestor caught one of the loose ends and jerked it until the rest of the blue thread came free. He tied a knot in it, and then another.

“Doriath,” he said. “When it fell.”

Some things could never be forgotten. Some things should never be remembered. “She wanted to stay,” he said. “It was lost. The city was lost. Dior and Nimloth – he’d sent Galadriel to the treasury with the women and children, to protect them if she could – we were trying to reach them – the Noldor caught us on the way.” Hacked down beneath the stone branches of Menegroth’s carved forest. Bright Dior extinguished in his own blood. And Nimloth, screaming. “Everything was lost. We had to run. She didn’t want to. She wanted to stay.”

“Sounds like her,” said Glorfindel, rather distantly. “Don’t see how it matters, though. That was long ago.”

Erestor gathered up the rest of the unravelled wool hanging from the loom and began to straighten out the tangles, looping it from his thumb to his elbow and back again to make a skein, as he had seen Melinna do. He said nothing. After a while, Glorfindel came away from the desk and moved back towards the harp. “May I?”

“Mm.”

This time Glorfindel started up with one of his stately, antique dances, the sort he said they had played in Gondolin when it was in full flower. Glorfindel had played it for Erestor and Melinna before. It always made Erestor regret having visited Gondolin only when the city was already ruined, and having viewed it only from the vantage point of a very high eyrie before then. But from what the Eagles had said, it would have been unwise to venture closer. They had not wanted to be shut up in a secret mountain city, no matter how fine it was or how many old acquaintances from Nevrast they might have found there.

He had been pulling the blue wool taut against his arm; now he found the skein was too tight to remove, at least without twisting his wrist into an impossible position. He should have wrapped it round the shuttle instead. He sat there looking through the warp threads at the faded tapestry, not really seeing it, seeing instead Melinna’s frustration as she tried, over and over, to learn what the other women had said was her first and simplest task: how to spin.

The last shining notes of Glorfindel’s song were still fading when Arwen came in. She did not slam the door open, quite, but it hit the wall almost hard enough to leave a mark. “What did you say to her?” she demanded. “I wasn’t going to come now, because my grandparents said it wouldn’t help and you’d better be left alone and you weren’t really here anyway, not in your head, but I heard you talking. And the harp. What did you say to her?”

Erestor would have risen, but the skein on his arm bound him to the loom. He turned on the weaving stool instead. Arwen had advanced into the middle of the room and stood there fiercely, crackling with a kind of controlled fury. He looked at her wearily. He might have been impressed, at any other time, to see just how much charismatic presence she could achieve when she wanted. It ran in the family.

Glorfindel had in fact risen. “Arwen, child –”

“No.” She did not look at him. “He gets to call me that –” she levelled a finger at Erestor “– because he’s known me all my life, but you haven’t and you don’t. I’m not a child. Don’t call me that. Erestor, what did you say to my mother?”

“Nothing I didn’t mean,” he told her. “She shouldn’t have come.”

“Celebrían came –? When? Why?”

They both ignored Glorfindel. “That’s not an answer!” Arwen snapped. “She was getting better. She was. I didn’t tell my father, but I know it was something you said.”

Erestor shrugged and said nothing. Arwen’s bright eyes narrowed. “She wouldn’t even talk until my grandparents came. And now she’s talking about sailing. We’ll make her better, we will, but she’s talking about it. It was something you said. I saw your face. I heard you shouting at her.”

“You should have listened. Then you’d know.”

She stared at him. “You don’t even care.”

“No. I don’t.”

He thought, by the way her long fingers twitched, that she wanted to hit him. He almost wished she would. Glorfindel was looking shocked again behind her. “Melinna would have cared,” Arwen said through her teeth, as though she could think of no better way to hurt him. “She did care. That’s why she died.”

Menegroth flashed back into Erestor’s head, the darkness and the grief of it, exhaustion thrumming in every nerve and sinew. Blood drying on his hands that was not his own. If you must, he had said to her, I’ll stay. But I don’t want to die here. If you love me, we’ll go. And she had been so angry with him, afterwards, for so long. “Yes,” he said, almost steadily. “She did. She wouldn’t now, though.”

“She’s dead. Of course she wouldn’t!”

Glorfindel winced and put the heel of his hand against his forehead. He seemed tired himself, suddenly, and much older than usual. His golden youth was fading into agelessness at last. “Arwen, you shouldn’t –”

“Shut up, Glorfindel,” she said. “I’m not talking to you. Why won’t you tell me, Erestor? Would you tell my father? What if I really was Lúthien? Would you tell me then?”

“If you were Lúthien, you’d smile at me and I’d tell you anything you wanted to know,” Erestor told her with weary truth. “I saw her grow up too. But you’re not. No. I wouldn’t tell your father. I won’t tell you. Ask your mother, if you must know. Or your grandfather. He can guess. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“My mother doesn’t need the grief!”

“Then don’t. I don’t care.”

Arwen might have growled. She cast a sharp glance around the room. “Stop ruining Melinna’s work,” she told him, with a jerk of her head for the loom and the unravelling cloth. “It doesn’t just grow, you know.”

She turned on her heel and stalked out. “As if I hadn’t spent longer watching Melinna learn how to do it than she’s been alive,” Erestor said aloud. He began to work at the skein to free his arm. That ruined spindle must still be up there by the waterfall somewhere. He tried to remember seeing it when they were burying her, and could not. Maybe it had fallen in the water when he ran back to the house.

Glorfindel was looking at him oddly. “Don’t ask,” Erestor said.

“Celebrían came here?”

“At some point.”

“Why?”

“She wanted to tell me something. I didn’t want to hear it.”

“About –?”

“Yes, of course. What the hell else?”

The skein came free. He doubled it up, knotted it loosely and let it hang there. Then he got up from the weaving stool.

“Where are you going?” Glorfindel asked. He was rubbing a silver nightingale’s wingtip with his thumb, very lightly, almost absentmindedly. His expression did not suggest he was particularly reassured.

“To wash,” Erestor said. He felt lightheaded, still oddly tenuous, although the sunlight made it impossible to fall back into the haven of the remembered past. All he could remember was how bright the tapestry had been when it had first been first woven: how vivid the colours, how sharp their edges. The brilliance of the Queen’s smile. They had taken it from the loom and together they had hung it there and she had turned to him and said, done. We can leave Imladris now.

They had stayed longer than they had ever been in one place before. It had taken her that long to learn how to weave well enough. He steadied himself against the wall. “Change clothes. Take a walk. Clear my head.”

Glorfindel nodded. “Mind if I stay here?” he asked, turning back to the harp.

“If you want. Why would I care?”

Fishermouse

One final note of thanks to my beta, Ignoble Bard, without whom I might never have finished this story. ♥

Read Fishermouse

~ fishermouse ~

 

It was a clear, warm day. The halls were quiet and the gardens empty; Erestor did not hurry down the terraces and the neat white paths. On either side of the valley rose the mountains, shining snow-capped against the sky. Something about the grass and the dark green trees and the flowers in full bloom was peculiarly vibrant; all the colours struck Erestor as too rich and too deep, and the sweetness of the air was almost overpowering. He had almost reached the river before he realised that spring’s pale greenness had given way to the heady heights of summer.

The observation gave Erestor only a moment’s pause. He stopped to watch the river rush past and tried to calculate the missing weeks, and failed, before shrugging and moving on. Time had always been malleable. The longer they lived, the faster it flowed. What if one day, he had said to her, time starts to slow down again, until at last it turns back on itself and piece by piece undoes everything that was ever done...

Ahead, the waterfall roared. The path sloped upwards. He followed it.

No one else could have come to this part of the valley since they buried her there. It was too still. Erestor stood at the end of the path, which had then been lined with primroses, and looked around. There was no table or chairs now and the brassbound chest had been set even further back among the ferns. Grass was growing on the grave, around which slim green stems had been planted like a frame. Celeborn and Galadriel had brought niphredil to Imladris, as their granddaughter had wanted.

The pool under the waterfall was full of sun and sky. A white butterfly fluttered past. Erestor could not see the ruined spindle anywhere. He walked slowly round the edge of the little garden and found nothing but grass, ferns and flowers. It smelled of summer.

The grass was warm when he sat down next to the grave. Springy, too. He lay back and stared up into the unending blue between the peaks. The sun had just passed its zenith.

It was sunset by the time he sat up again. Perhaps he had fallen asleep. He didn’t really think so. The sky had darkened to indigo and only the edge of the sun still glimmered on the very rim of the valley. As he watched, it slipped down behind the mountains and was gone.

She was not here. She never had been. Erestor had known that already. She had made her choice and followed through with it, lacking anyone to stop her; she would not linger after that. He was alone in the garden.

He got up slowly. The light was fading, but it was still warm. The waterfall splashed merrily down the mountainside. He was calm to the bone and deeply tired. “If we meet again across the sea,” he said, looking down on her grave, “if what they say about dying and Mandos is true, we’re going to have words, you and I.”

She would have laughed at him for that. He shook his head and turned away.

Glorfindel was still playing the nightingale harp. Erestor heard its new strings singing as he came up the green terraces to the house. He recognised Glorfindel’s touch on the strings, although Glorfindel was playing one of Erestor’s songs, a light, merry ditty that floated out through the open window into the blue evening. Whether Glorfindel should have recognised it as Erestor’s composition, Erestor could not recall. He thought probably not.

On the steps of the eastern porch, Lindir was sitting with his head in his hands, staring down into the valley. He did not look up until Erestor was actually in front of him. His weary, dreamy expression suggested the throes of poetic composition; he blinked twice and said jerkily, “Erestor – you’re up – I wanted to ask, but Glorfindel said – but maybe I shouldn’t...”

“Ask what?”

“Your commentary. I wondered – will you finish it before – before you sail?”

“Who said I was going to sail?”

“I – oh. Aren’t you? I assumed...”

“Did you,” said Erestor. “I see.”

Lindir looked blankly up at him. “So – aren’t you?” he asked, rather hesitantly. “And what about the commentary? I thought – well – Alvellë was so looking forward to it, she wanted to read it, she would be happy to know...”

Bubbly little Alvellë, desperate to read a poetic commentary? Surely not. “She said that because she knew you wanted to hear it.”

He saw Lindir wince. “Perhaps,” Lindir said quietly, looking away. “Even so.”

Erestor watched him for a moment or two. “Anyone could finish it. You know those songs as well as anyone else in Imladris. You could.”

“But you knew Daeron. You heard him sing them. He even gave you his harp.”

“True,” Erestor said. “I suppose I will, then. Before I sail.”

He left Lindir there and went into the house, where the silver notes spilling from his sitting room led him through the quiet halls and up dark stairs. His door was wide open. He went inside and found Glorfindel lost in music, his fingers dancing over the shining strings, while Arwen sat folded up on herself in the cushions like an unhappy child. She was hugging her knees and was more or less cloaked in her long black hair. Lúthien must have sat like that once in Hírilorn, long ago.

The music ceased. “Long walk,” Glorfindel remarked.

Erestor shrugged and went to sit on the weaving stool. Arwen’s bright eyes followed him; she said nothing. After a moment, Glorfindel said, “We were just talking about you. Well, what I was playing. I had this idea it might be one of yours. Arwen thinks –”

“My father sang it when we were children,” Arwen muttered, burying her face even more deeply in her arms. She glared at both of them. “He learnt it from Gil-galad.”

Glorfindel raised his eyebrows at Erestor, who did not smile. “There you are,” he said. “Not mine. I expect Gil-galad picked it up at Mithlond. I think I heard it there too.”

“I see,” said Glorfindel. “Very likely.”

He raised his eyebrows again, meaningfully, and started up a lilting dance that was entirely his own, one of those he had composed since arriving at Imladris. It was a pleasure to listen to. Erestor closed his eyes and remembered dancing to it with Melinna, although she had always preferred the slower, more formal dances of Doriath and Gondolin. Even with his eyes shut, he could tell the light was almost gone. At the end of the piece, Glorfindel got up to light candles. “I might get wine,” he remarked. “Back shortly.”

He went out. Erestor glanced at Arwen, who glowered. He remembered her accusing him of driving her mother away. “What?” he asked. “Why did you come back? I’m not going to apologise, if that’s what you want.”

Arwen’s eyes narrowed almost to slits. “I know. You never do. That’s what Father says.”

“Well then. Doesn’t your mother need you?” She mumbled something. “What?”

Arwen lifted her head. She was flushed where her face had been pressed against her arms and the glitter in her eyes might have been grief or anger. “She doesn’t,” she said sharply. “She doesn’t need me! I can’t help her! All right? Happy now?”

“What?”

“She doesn’t need me.” She set her forehead against her arms, her hair falling down across her face. “She doesn’t – I can’t do anything, all I can do is be there, but it’s not enough. She needs – I don’t know what she needs. My father. Maybe, I don’t know. He helps. He does help. She’s not going to die of it, she never was. But she’s not – she’s not getting over it, whatever happened to her. I can’t help her. I’ve tried.”

Erestor said nothing. He should have felt sorrier for it, for Arwen’s sake if not her mother’s. Arwen was shaking, very finely. “At least my brothers can go out and fight Orcs,” she said, although she was speaking to herself rather than to him and what she said was not particularly clear. “At least they can do something!”

“Are they going to? I thought those who – I thought the pass was clear now.”

“They rode out days ago. There might be others. Father said – but they wouldn’t listen, I was glad. I would have gone with them, if I could.”

She spoke with a sort of savageness that might have startled anyone else. Erestor looked down on her dispassionately. “They were Elves once,” he said. “Like us. Orcs. They can’t all be bad. You might call it a kinslaying.”

“So? Some kin deserve it! And don’t pretend you don’t think so, I know that’s not true.”

“Perhaps.”

“They said Mother needed me,” Arwen said bitterly. “It’s not true, though. I think – I think she’s going to sail, whatever we do. I don’t think my father knows that yet.”

“Probably not. It’s not easy to face.”

Arwen screwed up her eyes and looked up at him through her lashes. “Are you going to sail?” she asked him, almost hopefully. “Do you think I should? When she does, I mean. I don’t think Father will. She might need me there, even if she doesn’t now. I might – I might be able to help...”

Another one expecting him to sail. Probably they all did. All these children, all grown up to think the salve for all their petty scrapes and bruises awaited them across the sea. Elves had thought otherwise once. “Your father will need you if she does,” Erestor told her. “I – will you do something for me? Melinna left some things undone. I thought – I was sitting by her grave, I thought I should do something about that. Before I sail. I should finish a tunic she was making. And – something else. Will you help me?”

“You want me to finish weaving it?”

“No, just – show me how. I should learn to spin too. She started with that.”

“Oh.” She looked doubtful. “That might take some time.”

“Really?” said Erestor. “I think I can spare it.”

Arwen unfolded herself and got up, then stood there uncertainly for a moment, frowning at him. “I could get a spindle. If you wanted.”

“Yes,” he said. “That would be good.”

She nodded and went out, brushing past Glorfindel, who had been standing silently in the doorway for some time. He came in once Arwen had gone and put the wine he had gone to get on a gap between the stacks of notes on Erestor’s desk. There were cups in a cupboard nearby; Glorfindel brought out three and set them by the bottle. “I never really believed that,” he remarked. “About Orcs and Elves.”

“You wouldn’t. Not glorious. Or heroic.”

Glorfindel glanced at him sidelong, his mouth twisting downwards, but said only, “Something else, other than the tunic. What?”

“She wanted to recolour a tapestry,” Erestor said. “The one behind me. But Galadriel says it can’t be done. The only thing to do is weave a new one.” It sounded oddly decisive, spoken aloud. “All her sketches are still here somewhere. I can use them. I can add to it. She did that, when she wove it. It was patterned on one the Queen wove for us, one we had in Menegroth. In the old days.” That one had never faded, no matter how long it took them to come back to Doriath. He remembered that. “She added the Queen to it. I’m going to add her. Arwen can show me how.”

Glorfindel’s sidelong glance had become one of open surprise. “That’ll take more than some time.”

“Do you think so?”

“I think you do. You’re not going to sail.”

“One day,” Erestor said, instead of telling Glorfindel that he was not going to chase a ghost across the sea as long as he had any reason to remain in Middle-earth. She had made her choice. She could wait for him in Mandos. “Won’t we all?”

“But not soon.” Glorfindel nodded to himself. “I’m glad. Elrond will be, too, if you keep that child of his here. You were right. He’ll need her, if Celebrían sails.”

“I’m not doing it for Elrond.”

“Whatever the reason, I’m glad,” Glorfindel said quietly. “Drink?”

“Please.”

It was elderberry wine. “I wondered if you’d finish your commentary too,” Glorfindel said as he poured it. “I’ve seen Lindir – I think he’d be grateful for something to take his mind off poor Alvellë. Melinna would’ve been pleased too, wouldn’t she? I used to hear her singing those songs. She must have known them by heart.”

Lindir’s look of surprise and sudden, tentative pleasure came back to Erestor. “She did,” he said. “It won’t be much fun without her. But I mean to. You don’t have to talk me into it. I already told him so.” He saw Glorfindel had gone very still, arrested by an abrupt suspicion. “Yes,” he said, before Glorfindel could ask. “Of course. The last song Daeron ever sang in Middle-earth was the Lay of Leithian. Lúthien was all he cared about then.”

Glorfindel leaned on the desk and stared at him across stacked notes and green leather. “Seriously?”

“What, that Melinna wrote the songs or that Daeron wrote the Lay?”

“Now? Both!”

Erestor could not quite smile. “Seriously,” he said. “It was – we were all hurting, all three of us. It wasn’t part of the game. We only helped Daeron with the Lay, only with the things that happened after he’d left Doriath, the things he didn’t know. After he sailed, we went wandering again. She made up those songs then.” He paused, saw Glorfindel’s expression and felt compelled to add, “After the War of Wrath, she made up a whole song cycle by your Rúmil and said she’d heard it from the sailors on the swan-ships. It was exceptionally tedious. It’s still one of Elrond’s favourites. You’ve probably heard it. I almost let her win then.”

Glorfindel closed his mouth and picked up one of the glasses. “I won’t tell Lindir,” he said dryly. “Or Elrond, for that matter.”

Then Arwen returned with her basket of red wool, her starry eyes only slightly reddened, and set it down on the floor to take the glass Glorfindel offered her. Erestor got up to get one himself. The candlelight caught the wine and brightened it almost to ruby, but all it tasted of was elderberries.

He took another mouthful. It helped, a little. It was strong and rough and he could focus on it better than on anything else just then. He needed that. Something was better than nothing, even if it was only elderberry wine.

 

~o~

 

The leaves had begun to turn and the nights were lengthening when Elrond came in. Glorfindel was playing the nightingale harp again, some odd, experimental piece he was probably making up as he went along. He said the new strings called for new songs. The stars were out and the moon was shining; Arwen was walking up and down the room with her spindle humming and Erestor’s lumpy thread had just snapped for the third time that evening. He was bent double trying to retrieve the spindle from under the weaving stool as the door opened.

It was weeks since Erestor had even seen Elrond; he had not spoken to him since the burial. Elrond had been spending all his time caring for Celebrían, Arwen said. He moved like a sleepwalker and looked a lot like one too. He came in without really seeming to see any of them, stood there wordlessly, then turned around and punched the wall so hard the oak panelling splintered.

This appeared to wake him from his waking dream. He rubbed his bleeding knuckles and looked around blankly.

“She wants to sail,” he said to no one in particular. “I can’t convince her otherwise. Celeborn can’t. Galadriel can’t. All she talks about is sailing.”

They stared at him. The harp was still. Arwen had forgotten to keep her spindle turning; it was starting to unspin her fine red thread.

Elrond’s eyes were bright with unshed tears. “What can I do?” he asked. “I’ve said everything there is to say. So many times. I can’t bear this. I can’t bear to see her like this. She means everything to me. What am I meant to do?”

His daughter was frozen in place, her gaze fixed on Elrond with a sort of painful intensity. Glorfindel frowned at the nightingale harp and did not answer, although he emitted a breath that might have been a sigh or the start of a word. The candlelight mingled with the moonlight to cast an odd sheen on his hair.

“Nothing,” Erestor said, because it was clear that no one else was going to. There was an odd catch in his throat, but he ignored it. It was easier to say than he would have thought. “You can’t do anything. Let her go.”

Arwen’s thread snapped; her spindle hit the ground. She dropped her distaff with a clatter and brushed away the trailing wool, almost feverishly, and ran to her father. “It won’t be forever,” she told him, although she had wrapped her arms round his neck and pressed her head against his shoulder, so the words were muffled. “She’ll sail and get better and we’ll sail too and we’ll all be together. It’ll be better. She’ll be better. It’s what she needs.”

Elrond was slow to put his arms around her. He must have been staring into some distant, imagined future; he looked too desolate to be seeing only the faded tapestry. “I can’t sail with her. Not while Elros’s heirs...”

“One day. We’ll all sail one day. We’ll all be together again.”

“But how long will that be?”

No one had any answer. Elrond’s arms tightened around his daughter; he blinked and buried his face in her black hair. She was shaking. They stood like that for a long time, while Glorfindel ran his fingers absently over the harp strings.

At last they parted. Elrond rubbed his face and turned away. “Sit down,” Glorfindel said, getting up and going to get the big, solid chair from behind the desk. He set it in the middle of the room for Elrond, who dropped into it, looking exhausted and unhappy and rather ill. Arwen hovered at his side as Glorfindel returned to the harp. After a while, when no one spoke, he began to play again, something soft and unfamiliar in a minor key. It filled the night air.

Erestor got up and went to the window. No one said anything when he opened it, which was just as well. He might not have heard them. He leaned on the windowsill and began to count stars. Anything was better than looking at Elrond’s face.

The night was cold and very clear. Down below, the gardens dreamed, sloping up from the river running silver in the moonlight. Soon the swallows would fly their nests. He could think of that now: the swallows and the south and the sun on the sand. Curunír’s tower at Isengard. That pleasant lake and those ruins in Emyn Uial. So much for that. So much for any of it. There would be no pleasure in wandering alone. Besides, he had a grave to tend.

In the distance, the waterfall tumbled. Unbidden, he thought of leaves and dragonflies.

“I heard a story once,” he said to the moon and the stars and the swallows under the eaves. No one else was listening. None of them could hear him anyway. The harp was still singing. She would have shaken her head and said it was a good thing too. “In Annúminas. A children’s tale. There was a mouse wandering beside an endless lake...”