rulers make bad lovers by Chestnut_pod

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Chapter 18: Elwing

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With the windows shaded, Elwing’s room — Galadriel’s room — glowed like the lambent chamber of a mussel, a cool dimness that cast its own light. The Silmaril was tucked away, and without its dazzle, all Eärendil’s beloved crow’s feet wandered away from the blue of his eyes.

Elwing laid her fingers there on the deltas of his smile, then trailed down to the single crescent wrinkle beside his wide, mobile mouth, faintly quirked as he watched her. His wet hair left a faint web of moisture over the skin of his face, already a shade lighter from a few weeks away from the ocean’s endless glare.

Time passed strangely in this strange land. At the quarter moon, she had leapt from Vingilot’s prow to Eärendil’s side, then sent him off into the forbidding barricade of mountains raised against them. Now, Tilion rose early in pursuit of Arien’s chariot in the lingering summer sky, and Eärendil lay across from her on the unrolled mattress, running his hand from the wing of her shoulder to the crest of her hip, warm and solid and alive.

They had not yet spoken much. Normally, they chattered incorrigibly, unbecomingly. Idril had always chided them to play with the other children; then, later, it was necessary for Elwing to speak to everyone, all the time — to convince Siriondrim to come to council, to forestall Galadriel’s schemes, to gather support and information. It was an exhausting effort, but speaking with Eärendil surpassed silence with any other friend. To be silent with him was as good as a conversation.

This time, Elwing did not know what her eyes could be saying. There was too much, too crowded in. She would let Eärendil speak first. For now, she let him keep stroking her under Galadriel’s cast-off jacket, finer than any dress she had ever owned. His eyes roamed across her face.

After an endless while, during which the mother-of-pearl walls began to gleam with sunset, Eärendil gathered her in so their foreheads touched. In a rough whisper, he marveled, “You found us a fleet.”

Elwing closed her eyes and slid her nose beside his.

Softly, she said, “You changed the minds of the Powers.”

Eärendil’s breath gusted out of him, and he gripped her tighter. They both smelled of Eärwen’s violet soap.

“You were always so good at that,” she went on. She could admit to herseful, guiltily, that it was good that Eärendil followed her lead in most things, and feel sneakingly grateful for how it helped her hold together Sirion in his long absences. It was balanced out by her overwhelming gratitude for his particular gift, not of oratory, but of the face-to-face conversation that yoked people to his own aims, which were hers as well, without his interlocutors being any the wiser. Indeed, eight times out of ten, Eärendil’s partners would leave feeling they had spoken with a dear friend, while she was best at a remove, facilitating a council table or presenting a rousing speech.

Eärendil shushed her. Who needed osanwë like Anairë and Eärwen, when her husband could read her mind so well without it? She knew just what he meant, too. There was no sense in feeling shame for what they had to do; it was done, and done well. She nestled closer to him, throwing a leg over his hip.

Eärendil’s lips began to worry shiveringly at her ear, then the skin of her neck. A glow ran up and down Elwing’s nerves and she clutched at him, pulling him close until she thought they might seem only one person, if Tilion were to peer through the windows and see them.

Under the violets, Eärendil smelled only of himself, rich and clean. She breathed him in open-mouthed, pushing aside Galadriel’s jacket and the too-short robe they had scrounged for Eärendil, clutching at his flanks. She lost herself in the rocking clutch, until the broad blunt head of Eärendil’s cock nudged between her legs. Her breath hissed out between her teeth and she jerked back.

Eärendil’s eyes opened, hazy but concerned.

“Not the right time,” Elwing gasped. Eärendil nodded, but froze halfway through the gesture, arrested by the same thought, surely, that gripped Elwing. What did it matter, if Eärendil pushed inside her and came? If there were a baby, they surely would never know.

During the years of sea-voyaging, at such junctures before a looming cliff, one of them would argue — how could they be punished, messengers, light-bearers, perfect victims? They traded off hope and skepticism. Today, neither spoke.

“Just rub,” she said eventually, and Eärendil buried his face in the crook of her neck and slid against her like the tide.

In the afterwards dusk, he ran his thumb back and forth along her belly, where her stretch marks still lingered. They fascinated Eärwen too, Elwing recalled, though differently.

Muzzily, she murmured, “Do you know that here, the High Elves cannot fathom accidental conception?”

From the general vicinity of her breasts, Eärendil muttered, “We knew that. My mother– my nurse– Galadriel–”

He nosed at her sternum, then nipped. “How did that come up?”

The amusement in his voice was clear. Elwing pushed at his shoulder. “Yes, yes. I took ‘shore leave’ with her. It should be nothing new to you.”

Eärendil hummed. “It is new to you,” he told her collarbones. Pressing a kiss to the notch of her throat, he went on: “Are you well? Did it gladden you? Only you have never done so before.”

Safely out of his sight, Elwing bit her lip. It was not for his sake alone that she had never done the same, not wholly for the delicate balance of power that held Sirion together, nor even for their sons. The electrum-haired ghost haunting this room could say so.

“It helped our cause,” she said, heavy-hearted. “It helped me be… convincing.” She pushed herself up on her elbows, dislodging Eärendil. “But they helped me before, too,” she insisted. “They helped me when they did not have to.” A last faint shiver ran through her, Eärwen’s saltwater eyes flashing through her mind.

“And–” halting “--I was very alone. And the queen of Alqualondë is very beautiful and shrewd. And the queen of Tirion is wise and warm-hearted.”

Eärendil pulled her back down with a thump to rest on his chest. His voice rumbled through her, amused.

“You would require your bedmates to be shrewd.”

Elwing dug her chin into the dip of his shoulder until he yelped and shrugged her off with a thump.

“I go to bed with you, do I not?”

Eärendil tugged gently at her hair, which promptly wrapped itself up his wrist. As he untangled himself, Elwing felt his eyes on her, assessing.

“Was she kind to you?” he asked eventually.

Elwing hesitated. How did the scales tilt, between tearful midnight confessions and tearful midnight calculations; between kisses of passion and kisses of transaction? The sense of being sized up as a pawn was familiar enough — did it matter that Eärwen had also confessed her own episode of feathered madness and taught Elwing to manage hers? And she had fed her from her own table, clothed her in her daughter’s clothing, housed her in her own house, bedded her in her own bed, with her own dear-heart looking on.

Rather than determine what of that was kindness, Elwing replied, “I told them about the boys.”

Eärendil’s hand paused in its stroking of her hair, then resumed.

“They will remember.”

“Yes,” Eärendil agreed, the word dragging out of him. Elwing wondered if his hesitation stemmed from mistrust or an unwillingness to admit the need for remembrance.

She laid her head upon his chest, where the sweat from their lovemaking had dried. The scent of him beneath the violets swelled stronger.

After a spell, Eärendil said, with his deep voice rumbling through the bones of her jaw, just where Eärwen had grasped her that first morning on the beach, “We are summoned back to the Valar’s judgment. Eönwë gave me leave to share the news with you.”

Elwing’s fist clenched of its own accord. Her voice was steady, however.

“When?”

“That was my only instruction.”

Her whole body had seized up. Beneath her skin, feathers itched, to no avail.

“We may as well leave at once,” she said. “There is no sense in waiting. In delaying.”

Eärendil’s arms tightened around her, and he buried his nose in her hair, his warm breath puffing against her ear. Despite it all, Elwing shivered again.

“Not at once,” he rumbled. “Let it wait for tonight. We may go in the morning, but let it wait for tonight.”

Elwing sighed, but made no protest. She drew Eärendil closer in his turn.

Outside, the sunset flared and settled to a blue dusk, the summer day finally exhausted.

When she thought the first star must have risen, and Eärendil fallen asleep, still exhausted from his journey, she was startled out of her own half-drowse by his voice.

“Did you tell the queens about the time the boys tried pushing their cradle out to sea as a rowboat, and became stuck beneath the main pier?”

A snort rose unexpectedly in Elwing’s throat, followed by a stinging. “No. I forgot.”

Eärendil hummed. “We can remember.”

Elwing did not respond, only nuzzled closer to Eärendil’s chest, and felt his ribs push out, and in, and out, and in.

–

They both slept more soundly than Elwing thought right. Opening her eyes in the pearl-gray dawn, she disentangled herself from Eärendil and slipped through the shadows to the back of the Queen’s House, where someone already steamed rice and chopped vegetables.

She and Eärendil ate from a tray in her borrowed, haunted bedroom. It was plain that Eönwë, who, despite being a magnificent spirit of wind and light, clearly had a head for logistics, had told the household of their summons. Barely a moment after they had finished their morning ablutions, Anairë stood once again in the doorway, dressed in the fashion of Tirion.

Eärendil, face still wet, bowed hastily. Anairë shook her head and strode forward to lift him up.

“There is no need for family to do such things,” she said. “I am sorry for my abruptness yesterday. I wish you could stay longer — but the Valar, when they are given to speed, do not wait.”

She reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out a small package wrapped in the five-fingered leaves from the buckeye chestnuts around Tirion. A sweet, nutty scent permeated the air, somehow refreshing — and familiar.

“The last of my recipe,” Anairë said. “Coimas of Yavanna, for weary travelers. You would do me honor if you took it on your way.”

Eyes shining, Eärendil took the parcel, wrapping his hands around Anairë’s. She stood there for a moment, then gently tugged free and came to stand before Elwing.

“Do not lose heart, friend of mine,” she said quietly, eyes intent. “You flew in on the tail of a storm and brought with you clear skies, such as I had not hoped to see again. Do not think your wings will be clipped in recompense. Had I a home, its doors would always be open to you, for my own sake as much as yours.”

Elwing opened her mouth, but Anairë forestalled her, placing two warm fingertips on her lips, then bending in quickly and pressing her mouth to Elwing’s brow.

Straightening, she was suddenly brisk.

“Come now,” she said, and led them out of the room and down to the great flagged courtyard between the royal Houses, where Eärwen stood, gracefully robed, with two elegantly caparisoned horses behind her in the hands of a groom, both bridled.

Elwing met her impassive gaze, looking for the telltale tidal swell beneath. Eärwen made a courtly formal farewell, then took the reins herself and led the two horses forward. She handed Eärendil the reins of the tall, stocky bay with a shallow nod, then turned to Elwing.

“This is Ulofánë, in the dam line from Queen Banilómë’s long-ago mare out of Nahar. My mother’s.” She gave Elwing a significant look. “I expect her to return. I expect you to return her, in a reasonable span.”

She handed over the reins to the dish-faced, slender mare, who stamped one white foot and twitched her black velvet ears towards Elwing. Elwing took the reins, but shook her head, opening her mouth to protest.

Eärwen raised one eyebrow a minute degree, then, with a steady glance at Eärendil, took Elwing’s face in her hand and kissed her full upon the mouth. Elwing, holding the black mare, could not jerk back in surprise, and only kept her eyes open, her vision silver with Eärwen’s abalone hair.

After a prolonged moment, Eärwen let Elwing’s lower lip go and stepped back to a more suitable distance.

“I will hope to see you again, and discuss certain matters that concern your next steps,” Eärwen said, almost too quietly for Elwing to hear over the blood pounding in her ears. Then, in her dignified way, she turned and took up her queenly pose beside Anairë.

“Farewell and good speed to the Ring of Doom,” she declared, loudly enough for a crowd, though it was only the four of them and the groom.

What more was there to be said? That Ulofánë had not startled when Elwing did boded well for the ride, though Elwing dreaded the jouncing almost more than the destination. Eärendil helped Elwing into the saddle, then mounted himself, much more gracefully — the old muscle memory of riding Gondolin’s rocky mountain paths on his pony.

They rode out of the courtyard, through the awakening streets of Alqualondë where the shutters banged companionably open, and at last into the foothills of the Pelóri, where oaks and redwoods and bay trees caught the morning fog in their hair.

“Well,” Eärendil said, after a spell in which Elwing sorted unprofitably through a variety of emotions and worried at her lower lip. “That struck me as a fairly direct statement of intent.”

Elwing looked down at Ulofánë’s ears, where the mare had clearly realized Elwing was only good for the occasional twitch on the rains and let her forequarters fall entirely out of frame.

“She ought not to have done it before you,” she mumbled.

Eärendil muttered something inaudible, then snorted. “I wager she did it at least half to distract you on the way — and then another fraction to tell me what was what. I have no complaints, though she and I must talk, the two of us, when you and I— well.” He fell silent again. Elwing dared to remove a hand from Ulofánë’s mane and press it to her cheek, which was flushed hot.

They rode on. Great firs began to speckle the forest around the path. From the corners of her eyes, Elwing caught flickers of iridescence. When she turned her head to catch them, careful to stay balanced on Ulofánë’s patient back, they vanished into the canopy, or settled into knots and burls on the trunks of the trees.

When Anairë led her from Tirion to Alqualondë, the same had happened, only Anairë had flicked her fingers to them in complicated configurations, and the little Maiar of the chaparral had sometimes paused to twinkle back. They had been more sparse then; now, they glinted thickly along both sides of the road. Sometimes, a feeling like walking through a cobweb would come over Elwing, and Ulofánë would twitch her dark coat.

Eärendil looked curiously about him, calm interest on his face, his hands relaxed on the reins.

“Do you know, we are already almost halfway through the Calacirya,” he remarked, and Elwing twisted unsteadily in her saddle to look over her shoulder. Indeed, the morning fog already covered the steep valley of Alqualondë entirely, though Elwing could not quite remember breaking free of it.

She shook her head, then peered ahead. The dizzying slopes of the Pelóri loomed as high as ever, while the switchbacking path seemed to stretch on just as long as it had a moment ago — but when she twisted back again, they seemed to have climbed another several hundred feet, though the horses only ambled. In the thinning trees, wisps of opaline vapor shimmered, and Elwing had the impression of warm laughter.

The day wore on similarly, the horses striding easily over the well-kept path, moving just faster than they really ought to have. Just before noon, they passed to the far side of the great gap through the mountain-fence. They reined in the horses and stood at the lip where the path turned to descend.

The great sward of Valinor fell away beneath them. Arien had not yet summited the Valar’s guard-wall, and her light dripped from the Calacirya down the inner slope of the Pelóri like a broken yolk spilling down the eggshell, lighting the rocks at Ulofánë’s feet gold, then fading through apricot and flax and, finally, where the white towers of Tirion rose proud and ghostly, the blue of dreaming. A single flicker cried in a twisted pine tree. All else was silent.

Without speech, Elwing and Eärendil locked gazes. Elwing bit the inside of her cheek, and Eärendil’s strong jaw was set, a muscle twitching below his ear.

Elwing broke the silence, urging Ulofánë forward. Eärendil followed her, as he always did, and they went down together into the walled garden of the Valar, heads high, unashamed.

–

They reached Valimar midmorning on the second day, though the post-road to Tirion took days, and Eärendil said he had been weeks wandering through the countryside, even by Eönwë’s side. Elwing shook her head and forebore to speculate, though anger roiled in her gut and made her footfalls heavy and punitive, as if to punish the land itself for bending to her will now, when she least needed it.

Her head of temper was difficult to sustain in the face of Valimar itself. The city gleamed in the morning light in all the warm shades of metal — gold in the roofs, bronze in the doors, copper and brass in the streets. The Elves who came to their doorsteps to watch them ride through the ringing roads were much the same, golden-haired and ruddy-complected, draped in simple garments pinned at the shoulders with brooches of more precious metals. They were few, however, compared to the other beings populating the streets: great butterflies the size of ravens flashing blue in the sunlight, people with the heads of cattle and cats, half-translucent figures draped in gray, a wild alloy of shapes and bearings. This was the city of the Powers, and the Powers watched them enter.

It was small, for all its glory. Elwing thought it would be hard to bear it for long. The great lines of Maiar and Elves who watched them pass in glowing quiet led them through the center of the city, with its grand fountains tossing spangles in the air, and back out again into a meadow of tall, lush grass strewn with flowers of all seasons, perfuming the air with a heady mix of the year entire. In the center of the lea, a hill rose, dreadful amidst the glory of the grass that rose to Ulofánë’s hocks. It was brown, close-mown, and mournful. A gray citadel topped it, its heavy stone gates guarded by gray sentinels who knelt like penitents before the shadowed portal.

“The Ezellohar,” a doubled and tripled voice said, the mournful cooing of a dove behind a man’s grief-wracked lament. Eönwë stood between their horses, a winged vision of luster who had been nowhere to be seen a moment before. Eärendil and Elwing both startled badly, though the horses, who had not so much as nipped at the grass, stayed still.

“There lie the remnants of the days of glory!” Eönwë continued. “Our sorrow does not decrease with the years; the world does not cease its mourning: there lie the Trees, light of all the world!”

Elwing, heart pounding, vision narrowed to a pinprick, found it within herself to think, Not all the world.

“Our path does not lead us there, who never knew their light,” Eärendil said firmly. Elwing glanced at him and saw his knuckles pale with tension, and the uneasy shifting of his gelding beneath him. For a moment, she longed for the power of thought Anairë and Eärwen used so easily. Then, she merely reached out a hand and touched his arm, not caring that Eönwë, his hawk-beaked face startled, had to lean out of her way. What did it matter if she offended the Herald of the Valar? Any moment, they would exact whatever punishment they desired, for all her offenses. If she was a weak mortal woman on undying lands, she would offer what she could to her husband while she had it.

Eärendil clasped her hand to his arm for just a moment, then let her go. Swinging down from his horse, he strode past Eönwë, still standing in dazzling befuddlement, he helped Elwing down, steadying her when she staggered from soreness. It was terrible to pull away from him to stand on her own, so she did not. She would not deny herself this comfort — perhaps this last comfort.

Eönwë, having at last recollected himself, shook his glorious head, which gave both the impression of a splendid mane of hair settling into place, and the ruffling of grand feathers.

“No, your path goes straight!” he cried. “I will announce you before the Powers of the world, O splendors of the Children of the Earth, lights in the darkness, messengers of hope beyond hope!”

Elwing held tight to Eärendil’s hand and followed the messenger of Manwë into the meadow.

In the end, Máhanaxar was very small. A mown circle of shorter grass, where the flowers took advantage of the fuller sun to grow in even greater profusion, a great tapestry of color that dizzied the eye. Elwing focused on each delicate petal, counting I live, I do not live, I live, for if she looked up and saw the great Presences that watched her, she would fall to her knees and never rise again.

Beside her, Eärendil breathed in short pants, though he had not buckled as Elwing had — he had been here before. He had come back. Leaning against him, Elwing forced strength into her legs and poured iron into her spine. Eärendil had stood before this assembly of might and pled their case; her grandmother had dared to dance before it.

She jerked her head up, holding it high and proud, and had she but known it, she looked the very image of all the queens she had ever known before.

A kind of sigh rippled around the Ring — the tree that brushed the stars, the patch of infinite night in the shape of a woman, the giant with wings for eyes and feathers for fingers, the Dwarf-stocky man around whom the air rippled and glowed like forge-ether, the wave-bearded grandfather who looked at her with two seaweed-wrapped hands pressed to his mighty chest, where Elwing supposed he had a kind of heart.

“Little niece,” the Lord of the Waters said, somehow, for his words were the burbling of streams and the roar of the flood tide. He stretched out a dripping hand, and Elwing felt a bone-deep pang, the feathers beneath her skin shivering to attention. She reached out a shaking hand in return and placed it on his cool, wet palm, beneath which all the waters of the world rushed and tugged at the blood in her veins. Gradually, her heartbeat slowed, holding the hand of the sea and the waterfalls, which, after all, she had known from the moment of her birth.

“Elwing,” breathed the wind. Ulu withdrew his hand, leaving Elwing wet to the elbow. She turned to face Thû, Aran Einior, the king of the air in Elwing’s lungs, which even still came short and harsh.

She looked him in the eye, or tried to. Where eyes would be, bouquets of blue wings sprouted, feathers trembling in an unfelt breeze. The feathers of bluebirds and buntings and others Elwing could not name all shone in sky colors, yet Elwing was beheld. She felt it all around her, wherever the air pressed against her skin.

“For the sake of your people, and the sake of your husband, and the sake of all living creatures across the sea, you came to us on my wind, ocean-daughter, forest-daughter. For the sake of love, you braved the shores of the Undying Lands, though they are forbidden you for the span of your mortal life. Yet I knew your grandmother, and her mother, before you.”

The Elder King lifted an arm, where great feathers trailed from his palm to the ground, and from the sleeve of his sapphire robe flew a commonplace brown nightingale, which flew around Elwing’s head and sang a short, piercing song. Elwing raised a hand, but the plain little bird was gone.

Thû spoke again. “Eloquently and bravely your husband spoke for you, Eärendil the Mariner, star of Men. But I would hear you speak for yourself, Elwing of Sirion. Do you plead for mercy, aye, even for those to whom you owe nothing?”

As his voice faded, Elwing found the racing of her heart transmuting. It was not the rabbit-beat of prey or awe, but the hard thud of anger. They called her here because they doubted Eärendil? They summoned her, as though they had decided to make up for time lost ignoring her ships, her drowned sailors, the cries of parents and orphans and all innocents? They asked her if she meant her mercy, when it was all she clung to in the face of her lost world, when they had offered it to her open-handed? Did they think her only a child, a little niece of greater foremothers, to be taken up and transformed and only held to the mildest of expectations?

“We cannot all owe people nothing!” she cried, aware as she did so that her voice roiled and bounced around the hallowed confines of the holy circle, where no Edain had ever stood, let alone yelled. She stamped her foot — she could not be more ridiculous in the sight of the ineffable forces of the world, and she meant it. The reverberations traveled up her legs and into her pelvis and spine, and with a snap of the shoulders, she shook her arms into wings. Let the King of the Air enjoy her feathers!

“I thought you saw all that went on in all corners of the earth, Aran Einior,” she said, and beside her, heard Eärendil huff in shocked laughter. “Have your eyes ever been turned from me? I told the Queen of Alqualondë that my principle is mercy: I believe I know it better than some, or at least, I hope to practice it better.” She flushed. This hectoring was the worst part of her as a mother, she knew, but oh, who would not rail and rant if it was certain a god would hear?

“If you called me here to cross-examine me before you lay on your punishment for sullying your cloister, then make haste. I am mortal, after all.”

Abruptly, her words dried up, her throat closing behind them. She went to place her hands on her hips, which had, after all, always worked with the boys, then found that she still had wings, and no queenly thoughts to banish them. This was, after all, as far as she had ever hoped to get, and she could see no farther.

“You are very like your grandmother,” said a gavel, dryly. Elwing’s whole body shivered as though struck by the reverberations of a great gong. To her right, Justice sat beside Dream, a dizzying combination. Though the stown-hewn figure’s eyes were covered in equally stony cloth carved in harsh folds, she thought she detected an element of mordacity in Bannos’ voice.

“Will you treat with me like her?” asked Elwing shakily. Eärendil sidled closer to her, standing solid and warm behind her right shoulder.

“Manwë,” said Bannos, and turned his carven head to look at Thû.

“We set you a choice, as we set Lúthien,” said the Bird King. “You entered into peril for the sake of your safety, for love of the kindreds of Beleriand. We do not seek to punish you, though mortal lands are forbidden you.”

Do they expect me to be surprised? Elwing thought sourly. The Halls are no place.

“Not the Halls,” said Thû, and Elwing’s heart leapt into her throat. “We offer you a choice. To you is given the freedom to choose your fate: to live the span of your days in comfort in Valinor, then to take up the Gift of Men and pass beyond the circles of the world. Or, you may choose the fate of your mothers, to live on while Arda endures, tied to its destiny, until the end of all things.”

He folded his feathered hands upon his lap. Elwing watched the barbs flutter in the unseen breeze, deafened by the roaring in her ears. Beside and behind her, Eärendil stood stiff as an oak tree caught by frost.

“Go, sit a while, and decide. I will hear you.” As the King of the Powers spoke, the weighty sense of presence vanished, and the Ring of Doom was only a mown patch of meadow, with bees buzzing among the flowers. The only difference was a small spring by Elwing’s feet, which burbled and began to run down towards Valimar as she watched.

Withdrawn from divinity, she sat down hard, as though the strings holding her up had been cut. The tip of her wing touched the water and melted back into her hands, trembling. Eärendil remained standing a moment longer, then slid down beside her into a crouch, his face hidden between his knees.

Elwing watched the dear curve of his ear: not so pointed as his mother’s, not so rounded as his father’s. She lifted her hand to her own ear, different yet than his. The gray strands that had grown in after the twins were born were straighter and finer than the rest of her hair, smooth against her fingers. Her hands moved to her temples, where the beginnings of crows feet showed. Then she let out her breath in a sob and threw herself over Eärendil.

They hunched in the meadow together for a long time. Elwing’s thoughts buzzed around her skull like the bees, never settling, always lifting off and flying away again. What choice was this? Was this, itself, a punishment? If she did not choose, what would happen? Would she be the same as she had ever been, regardless of what she chose?

She held tightly to Eärendil, sure that the same thoughts must be circling through his mind. His shoulders were taut, and he kept his face hidden from her. He mumbled something Elwing did not catch.

“Speak again, beloved,” she said, pressing her head closer to his.

He spoke again, and this time, Elwing recognized the high, archaic speech of his childhood, which he had so carefully trained away in Sirion.

“Choose thou,” he said, his voice thick. “Choose thou, for now I am weary of the world.”

The words were a knife. Elwing bit back a gasp, demands for proof of his safety, a small, forlorn, Why me?

“What if I should choose what you would not?” she asked instead. So it had always been, since they were little children. Eärendil the adventurous one charging ahead, Elwing the little queen telling him where to go. Or Elwing, walking into a room full of grown-ups, and Eärendil following in her wake, proud and fierce at her shoulder. But she knew — this whole listening vale knew — that she did not always choose aright.

Eärendil sighed shakily. “The choice I would make is not a choice of hope. I do not know my own mind. Yet, I would not be parted from you. I told you to stay aboard ship; I was a fool. I will not leap ashore without you again. Where you go, I will go.” He lifted his face, twisted with tears, and buried it in her neck.

Elwing’s own eyes prickled. She lay her head upon Eärendil’s shoulder and stared across the meadow, unseeing.

Slowly, her eyes focused upon the Ezellohar, the tomb of the Trees whose light none of her kin but Elu had ever seen. They had brought light and safety to a few happy souls and left the rest in the dark. When sent out into the world, their radiance had brought with it madness — how well she knew it. Yet, here they were, mourned eternally. The figures kneeling in penitence and grief before the tomb looked as though they had grown out of the stone for the task and would endure into the world’s ending, a sign and symbol of remembrance.

Had her grandmother even paused to spare a glance for the progenitors of her bride-price, when she had come here? Elwing thought she must not have. If she had been old enough to ask, perhaps she would have begged Lúthien to tell her story over and over, the way the twins always wanted Elwing’s stories of travel from Doriath to Sirion and Eärendil’s tale of being towed behind a gray whale through the stormy sea. But she had not been old enough, and Lúthien had vanished into Dor Firn-i-Guinar and left none to tell Elwing how she had chosen, and why.

How had the old song run? “Long ago they passed away, in the forest singing sorrowless.”

And what had she said to Eärwen? “They left their sorrows to us.”

She pressed her cheek harder against Eärendil. She could go back to Eärwen and Anairë as she was, and grow old with Eärendil, and perhaps she would find Lúthien beyond the circles of the world. Might her father and her brothers be there? Might her sons? But if any such thing as a self endured beyond the reaches of the living earth, Elwing had not heard tell of it. And what sorrows would she leave behind, and to whom? And what stories would people tell of her and Eärendil, if they were not there to be asked? Would they remember two more little Sindar boys put to the sword, or would all the young princes of her line be muddled and multiplied and merged into a gallery of like faces, with no one to tell who had preferred their mussels without onions, and who had liked tree-climbing most, and who could play the flute with their nose, and who had died with a gap instead of front teeth, the adult replacements not yet grown in? She had not told Anairë of Eluréd’s teeth. It would pass beyond living ken with her, if she left.

Shakily, she exhaled. Was she weary of the world? She was: stranger, refugee, dispossessed, queen of no people, mother of no living children, failure, craven, suicide. The raw places within her where her family had been ripped away one by one, kelps torn from their holdfasts, ached undiminished.

Yet, Eärendil was warm beneath her cheek. All she had built in Sirion, family and community alike, was ashes. Yet, the capacity remained within her; Anairë had urged her to do it — had even thanked her for it. Every day of her life, perhaps, had been a little death, ever since she was cast out of her home carrying Siron’s salvation and its bane, walking innocently into Dooms laid in motion before she was ever dreamt of. Yet Eärwen touched her body and woke her to more life.

That had been, after all, what Lúthien had demanded. More life: time to live beyond what had been stolen from her. She had been happy; everyone said so. Dimly, Elwing remembered it — her laugh, her smile. But then again, she had passed away; she had left her sorrows to her son, and he had passed away, and left his sorrows to Elwing. And now, Elwing had none to advise her, none to remember how it had been, and what ought to be done. But she had had more life. Years on Vingilot with Eärendil, turning the tiller together. Vibrant weeks with Anairë and Eärwen, braiding and eating and flying and kissing. She would leave sorrows behind her.

She had been crying, she realized. Eärendil’s shirt was wet halfway down his back. Wetly, she laughed a little, and made a last leap.

“I want to live,” she said. “I want to live.”

Then Eärendil rose, dislodging her, and clasped her tightly about the waist. He wept also, dry hiccoughing sobs, and Elwing cried harder, ugly as a baby, fisting her hands in his clothing.

The scent of rain came down around them, a feeling of attention, the sound of many wings beating. Elwing did not raise her head from Eärendil, and Eärendil only held her tighter.

You heard me, Elwing thought fiercely. I want more life.

Somewhere within her — perhaps everywhere within her — something snapped. Eärendil gasped and choked on his breath. Elwing’s knees buckled, but held. The whole world tilted slightly, then was still.

She sucked in one breath, then another. Breathing stuffily through her mouth, she pushed back on Eärendil’s shoulders, holding him at arm’s length and studying his dear, unchanged face with its deep lines across the forehead and its soft, broad mouth, twisted with tears. Her heart went out to him, as it always did, and this time, some other force moved within her too.

Eärendil’s eyes widened. Then, she felt a push back against her own mind, gentle salt breeze and wonder and grief.

“Eärendil,” she whispered, and his warm response made no noise in the clearing, where the attentive presence had been all but forgotten.

Elwing threw her arms around him once again and sent her mind out as far as she could reach, flying without feathers over the land. There was Anairë, there Eärwen. Here with her in the center of all things was Eärendil, flying with her. Offshore, their three companions waited on Vingilot, worried but patient. And oh— oh!

Far, far away, on a distant shore, two minds, two familiar spirits she would know anywhere, though she had never felt them before, shone bright as stars through clear water.