Over Seas of Starlight by Arveldis

Over Seas of Starlight

Written for Tolkien Gen Week Day 2: Friendship.

Read Over Seas of Starlight

Frodo clutched the railing of the ship, looking over the side of the ship to the fathomless water below. The ocean seemed much greater than it had from the docks of Mithlond, and the stars shone across its wide expanse, stippling the darkness with pinpoints of light until it seemed as if the ship drifted through a sea of starlight. He wondered how far down the roots of the sea lay and what else might be found there—what creatures swam in the darkest depths, alive since the waking of the world.

He tilted his head back to look up at the sky. The stars in the West looked brighter and clearer than Frodo had ever remembered them looking in Middle-earth. He peered up into the dark bowl of the night sky, feeling as if the pinpricks of light that pierced it were so close that he might touch them and slip his finger through the veil of night into the holes of light.

“The first stars in the West were kindled by Varda, long ago in forgotten ages when the world lay under darkness, before even the lamps of Valinor had been lit,” Gandalf said, appearing at Frodo’s shoulder. Frodo had not heard his approach, too lost in thought and wonder.

He glanced up at the wizard. “I thought they were said to be fainter than the stars she kindled above Middle-earth before the coming of the Elves, but they seem brighter than the stars I saw at home.”

“They are fainter when viewed from Middle-earth, but they shine brighter over the Straight Road. When the world was made round, Varda set some of the old stars as guides upon the road to lead the ships of the Elves home, in honor of their great love for her.”

Frodo studied Gandalf, wondering at the familiarity with which he spoke of such things. “You speak as if you witnessed the reshaping of the world.”

“Many things of old are known to me, Frodo,” the wizard said simply. Then he tilted his head and sniffed the air. ‘“It will rain soon, I think. I’ll see that Bilbo returns to his cabin.” He patted Frodo’s hand and left him standing at the railing.

Frodo looked long into the dark expanse of the sea, pondering many things, until the first drops of rain burrowed into his hair and dampened his shirt, and he joined Bilbo belowdecks.

 

---

 

The next day dawned bright and golden, and the breeze from the east that filled the sails of the ship bore the clean scent of recent rain. 

The garden of Bag End and the tumbling grass of the Hill would be the vibrant green that only appeared after rain, Frodo imagined, picturing the image easily in his mind. The steps down from the door would be filled with pockets of rainwater, forming the tiny puddles that he had loved to splash in as a child, racing up and down the steps until his feet and ankles were splattered with mud.

Sam would spend much of the morning in the garden, working until the midday sun burned away the last ribbons of clouds, plucking slugs and snails off of the petunias and shepherding stranded worms back into the dirt. He had always sworn that a garden full of worms was a healthy garden indeed.

A pang of longing pierced him for the Shire that he had loved for so long.

But that Shire no longer existed. It, too, bore the scars of the war, hard as he had tried to save it.

Frodo clutched Bilbo’s hand, and his uncle reached over and patted his hand sleepily before nodding off again, his head resting on Frodo’s shoulder.

They sat in the stern of the ship, on a bench that curved along the railing, which stood on a platform set several steps above the stern deck, which in turn stood several steps above the main deck.

Bilbo murmured snatches of poems in his sleep and leaned upon Frodo. As he combed his hand through the old hobbit’s wiry hair and was warmed by the rising sun shining upon his back, Frodo’s thoughts travelled far away, and he thought again of the memories he had pondered last night after his conversation with Gandalf.

Faramir’s words in Henneth Annûn about Gandalf had returned to him as he stood at the railing: “Olórin I was in my youth in the West that is forgotten.” Frodo had often dwelled upon Faramir’s words after the Quest was over and other pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place—the spirit of Sauron gathering into a black cloud that was then blown away by the wind; Saruman disappearing into a grey mist carried away by the wind. 

So too did he remember what Merry, Pippin, Legolas, and Gimli had shared of Gandalf while recounting their separate times in Fangorn, shortly after the end of the war, when they had spent many days sitting together recalling snatches of memories they had forgotten to share during the initial joy of reuniting.

“‘Very dangerous’ he called himself,” Gimli had said. “The most dangerous person you would ever meet, unless you were brought alive before the throne of Sauron himself.”

Pippin, sitting across from Gimli, had nodded and added: “I wondered, when I watched Gandalf debate with Denethor, how old he might be and what he might be, for he suddenly seemed far older and full of a greater power and deeper wisdom than Denethor. He seemed much more than a wizard then, and I wondered that I had never thought of his origin before then. Treebeard spoke of the wizards arriving out of the West two thousand years ago, but even when he said that, I did not think of Gandalf as one.”

“He is a very great being with power beyond even the knowledge of the Elves,” Legolas had said. “Whether he is simply a wizard or something more, the Elves of Mirkwood have never guessed.” And that had concluded the conversation, for none of them could fathom what “something more” than a wizard might be.

But now, sailing into the Uttermost West, Frodo wondered again about Gandalf’s nature and origin. The wizard seemed both familiar and remote now, somehow. His eyes were as bright and shrewd as ever, and at turns Frodo glimpsed in them the kindly light that he had seen at times when Gandalf was still Gandalf the Grey. And at other times, Gandalf seemed to have become more of Gandalf the White than he ever had in Middle-earth, a very great lord even among the lords and Lady that sailed with them.

As he watched Gandalf talk with the Lady Galadriel on the deck below, Frodo sensed he drew near to the truth, though he could not fathom what it might be. But he pocketed his thoughts away, sensing in his heart that the puzzle would soon be revealed.

 

---

 

That evening, Frodo stood again at the railing, watching the stars. They burned even brighter than they had the night before, if such a thing were possible.

His heart felt a greater stillness beneath the stars of the West than it had ever since the end of the Quest. He tilted his head and let their light wash over his face.

Soft footsteps approached, and Frodo knew without opening his eyes that Gandalf again stood next to him. He heard the scratching sound of flint on steel, and a flame leapt to life out of the corner of his eye. Presently, a thin wisp of smoke trailed in front of him.

“It seems impossible that the stars could grow brighter each night, but they do,” Frodo said, breaking the silence.

“The stars are even brighter and more luminous from the peak of Taniquetil, where Manwë sits upon his throne and sees far across the lands and waters, and Varda sits at his side.” The wizard’s gaze was distant, as if he were remembering a far-off memory.

“You have been there?” Frodo looked up at Gandalf in wonder.

“Indeed.”

“What are you, Gandalf?” Frodo asked, feeling as if he were grasping the edges of knowledge that had once lain far out of reach or ken but now began to lay itself bare. “You are much more than a wizard, aren’t you?”

Something flickered in Gandalf’s eyes, and Frodo felt as if the wizard’s mind had ventured into some realm that he could not enter, and that he must wait until Gandalf returned. “Once, yes,” he said at last.

“Once?” Frodo echoed, glancing up at him.

“I am one of the maiar, the spirits that serve the Valar. All of the Istari were, but we were bound in the bodies of aged men and our powers lessened, bidden to aid the Free Peoples against Sauron with our wisdom and counsel. Now only I remain, for the others did not complete their tasks.”

Frodo looked long at Gandalf, as if seeing him for the first time. In a way, he supposed he was, for though he had caught glimpses of Gandalf’s might and majesty before, he had not known who—or what—Gandalf truly was. He considered what Gandalf had said. “So you did not always appear as you do now?” he asked.

“No,” Gandalf said, and his gaze turned distant again. “Once I was a spirit and passed unseen among the Elves, instilling fair visions of wisdom in their hearts. But when I desired to clothe myself as one of them, I put on the fana —appearance—of an Elf and walked among them.”

“Will you return to those forms now, since your work in Middle-earth is finished? And will I be able to recognize you, or will I not see you at all, if you must return to your duties as a maia—whatever those are?” Frodo peered anxiously up at Gandalf, each question racing on the heels of the former as he realized the implications of what he had just learned. He could hardly fathom living in Valinor without Gandalf. He had thought—foolishly, he now realized—that Gandalf would stay with him and Bilbo for as long as their days lasted, or until they were settled and comfortable.

Gandalf coughed around the stem of his pipe. “Save me!” he cried. “I thought I had left the worst of the inquisitiveness of hobbits behind when I left Pippin on the docks of Mithlond!”

A spark of hope glimmered in Frodo’s chest. Gandalf seemed very like himself still, despite everything that Frodo had just learned about him.

Gandalf’s spluttering ceased, and his expression grew solemn. “I do not know what form I will now have, Frodo. No living maia has ever been bound in flesh for so many years and returned easily to their original form. Melian the Maia, mother of Lúthien, bound herself in flesh for the sake of Thingol for many centuries until Thingol’s death, but because of her marriage and begetting of Lúthien, she was permanently bound to flesh, unless it were Eru’s will to return her to original state.”

“So you will remain Gandalf?” A weight lifted from Frodo’s heart.

“For a time at least, if not longer,” the wizard said, and he smiled kindly at Frodo. “I shall always remain Gandalf to you and Bilbo, whatever happens to me. I have lived too long in this body to forget it. 

“The Valar will deem what my purpose now will be, I expect. If I am to be bound in flesh for a time or more, I cannot fulfill the purposes I once did while unseen. I should think they would allow me to stay or visit with you—Nienna, the Lady of Mercy and my former mentor, would begrudge their decision if they did not.” He knocked the ashes out of his pipe. “And being the only one to have finished my task should count for something,” he added in a mutter.

Despite all of the answers Gandalf had given him, each answer bred yet more questions. “You said that Melian was a maia,” Frodo said thoughtfully, thinking again of the similarity of Sauron’s and Saruman’s demises. “Were there any other maiar who lived east of the Blessed Realm, other than her and the other Istari?”

“Sauron was a very powerful maia.” It was as Frodo had thought. “He was in elder days Morgoth’s most trusted lieutenant, as you know from the tales of the First Age, and from him he learned much of the arts of evil and mastered the art of deceit and manipulation.”

“He was not always evil?” Frodo looked up at Gandalf in surprise.

“Not as evil as Morgoth, no, for he was the servant and not the master; he was but a tool to be wielded then, but in the long days of darkness, he perfected his arts, and his will turned to his own purposes. Where Morgoth wished to unmake and corrupt the world, Sauron wished to rule it and have all the peoples of Middle-earth bend the knee to him. It was no less of an evil; only a different evil.

“He was not the only maia to turn to dark purposes,” Gandalf continued. “The balrog that I battled in Moria was also a maia—a spirit of fire turned to evil in the ancient days, festering beneath the surface of the world until some purpose of evil drew it up from the depths.”

Frodo watched the glimmer of starlight upon the water, thinking. “That is why you were so adamant in refusing the Ring,” he said, “because you would have become like them—a great power of evil, too strong to be defeated by any among Elves or Men, and too turned to evil to return to good.”

“No, Frodo, I would have been much worse,” Gandalf said softly. “I would still have been righteous, but I would have been self-righteous, ruling and ordering things for good according to my wisdom, which would still have been great, though twisted. Though all of Sauron’s works were evil and bred further evil, he at least let ‘good’ remain clearly distinguishable from evil. I would have made good detestable and seem evil, and under my power, you would have grown to hate all that was once good in the world.”

Frodo shuddered. For a moment, he felt a chill spread from his shoulder, and then the moment passed, and the breeze turned. 

“Were there any good maiar in Middle-earth?” he asked, hoping to turn the conversation to more pleasant things. 

“None that I know of, barring the Istari, but the purposes of the Valar are not wholly known to me,” the wizard said. “But I ranged far and wide over Middle-earth and never met another maia in my wanderings.”

“What of Tom Bombadil? Is he not one of the maiar?”

Gandalf smiled softly. “No, Tom Bombadil is a being unto himself, eldest and unknown, even to me.”

“It suits him, I think,” said Frodo. “He would seem a less funny, jolly fellow if I knew he was a maia, and he would not be half so perplexing.”

Gandalf chuckled. “It suits him indeed; I think he quite enjoys it.” He patted Frodo’s shoulder. “The night has almost escaped us. Go to bed, my dear hobbit, and think no more of maiar and evil deeds. It does no good to dwell on evil passed and ended when days of peace and joy lie ahead.”

Frodo turned from the railing and joined Bilbo in their cabin, and it was as if the words of Gandalf had worked a spell upon him, for he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

 

---

 

Frodo could not count how many days they had been sailing, for night and day seemed to pass with a fluidity that could not be marked. Much of the time Frodo sat quietly with Bilbo in the stern of the boat, content to listen to the sighing of the waves as they lapped against the ship and to watch the rays of sunlight gleam upon the water. In those moments, the beauty of the moment eclipsed any memory of pain, and he felt whole in a way he had not felt since Weathertop.

At other times, he would stand with Gandalf and ask questions about Valinor and the Valar, for Gandalf seemed more patient now than he had in any of the years Frodo had known him, and he suffered a great number of questions before he waved Frodo off and begged for a moment of peace and quiet.

Bilbo’s head nodded onto Frodo’s shoulder, and Frodo shifted so that the old hobbit could lean against him.

He thought again of what Gandalf had told him before they left—that the lives of mortals drew on more quickly in the Blessed Realm, for the power of the realm was greater than their bodies could endure. He tucked Bilbo’s hand in his and looked with fondness upon his dear, weathered face. He did not know how he would bear it when Bilbo left him, but Gandalf had said that the pain would be easier to bear in Aman, as would the pain of his wound.

But his days, too, would be short. It was strange to think that his friends in Middle-earth would live long past him. But then he had never expected to see the end of the Quest, anyway; he had thought it would claim his life before his task was done.

The sound of a staff stumping over the deck interrupted his thoughts, and Frodo glanced up. 

Gandalf stood before them, watching Bilbo with a fond expression. Frodo shifted again to make room for Gandalf on the bench, and the wizard sat down next to him, drawing his pipe from his robe. 

“I won’t be going as far as Valinor itself, will I?” Frodo asked, picking up the thread of their last conversation, in which Gandalf had talked of the nature of Valinor and the lands around it.

“No, those of mortal kind are not permitted to set foot upon the westernmost shores, for the power of that land would overwhelm them completely, and their bodies would soon be spent. You will go to Tol Eressëa in the Bay of Eldamar, where live those of the Teleri, the Sea-elves, who never left the island for the shores of Aman, and many of the Elves of Middle-earth who have already sailed west. The power of the West is still great there, but it is not as potent as it is in Valinor itself.”

“What is it like—Tol Eressëa?” Frodo asked, watching Gandalf with curiosity. “The old tales speak very little of it.”

Gandalf exhaled thoughtfully, and a perfect circle of smoke drifted before them. “It has many great forests whose seeds were once brought to Númenor, but whose kind have long perished from the mortal lands, except for the mellyrn of Lórien. All the island is filled with the sweet fragrance of the oiolairë , nessamelda , yavannamirë , lairelossë , vardarianna , and taniquelassë . Birds sing in their branches at the dawning of the day and in the dusk, when the sun falls behind the mountains and hills of Aman. And when the sun falls upon the hills of Tol Eressëa, it kindles them into living gold, for their slopes are covered with elanor and lissuin .”

Frodo listened intently, trying to envision this new country that would be his home until the end of his days.

“In Avallónë, the principal city of the island,” Gandalf continued, “the peaks of the buildings are crowned with silver, for the Teleri love silver more than any other metal, and the spires and domes of the cities shine pale and bright beneath the light of the moon.”

“I can almost see it,” Frodo said, “like the spike of the White Tower of Ecthelion glinting in the light of the rising sun.”

“It is very like it, yes.” 

“Are there many trails to walk upon?” Frodo asked. “That is what I miss most about the Shire, I think—finding hidden trails and following little rivers to their end, walking beneath starlight and the shade of the woods. I spent a great deal of time out of doors exploring the country, and I should like to do so here, too, if I could.”

Gandalf smiled. “I think you will find Tol Eressëa quite to your liking, my dear Frodo.”

Bilbo awoke then and was delighted to find that Gandalf had joined them, and they passed the rest of the afternoon in conversation and laughter until the sun sank behind them and the stars winked overhead.

 

---

 

Frodo stood at the railing, transfixed. The sound of singing drifted over the water and welled up within him, so beautiful that it pierced his heart. With the voices came the scent of a sweet fragrance on the air that not even the falling rain could dampen.

He peered far into the night, blinking away the rain, hoping for a glimpse of the source of the beauty.

“It is the Elves of Tol Eressëa,” said Gandalf, standing next to him. “They sing thus every evening, greeting the stars.”

“And the scent?” Frodo asked, breathing as deeply as his lungs allowed.

“It is the fragrant trees of the island, wafting over the water.” Gandalf suddenly grew still. “Watch,” he said quietly.

The grey rain curtain that had shrouded Frodo’s view turned to silver glass and rolled back, as it had in his dream in the house of Tom Bombadil. Behind it, he beheld white shores stretching across the horizon, and behind, a far green country rose up beneath a swift sunrise.

As the sun leapt into the sky, the shores turned to silver, and the hills that rose behind kindled to living gold.

As Frodo watched in awe, Gandalf’s hand settled on his shoulder, and Frodo glanced up. The wizard smiled.

And as he stood beneath the bright flush of morning, Frodo knew that he was home.

---

Chapter End Notes

I took some creative license with the bit about Varda setting the stars as guides over the Straight Road, but I think it fits decently enough within the history of Arda to not be too lore-breaking.

I drew many of Frodo's guesses about Gandalf's true nature from this interesting Stack Exchange discussion (particularly M. A. Golding's response at the bottom of the page) about Frodo and Bilbo's plausible knowledge about Gandalf's true nature.

Gimli's and Pippin's quotes about Gandalf are paraphrases of their respective quotes in TTT. And Frodo's description of Tol Eressëa is, of course, heavily lifted from the ending of ROTK.

Gandalf's discussion of how he would have been much worse than Sauron with the Ring is lifted from Letter 246, which states: "Gandalf as Ring-Lord would have been far worse than Sauron. He would have remained 'righteous', but self-righteous. He would have continued to rule and order things for 'good', and the benefit of his subjects according to his wisdom (which was and would have remained great)."

An editor's note adds: "The draft ends here. In the margin Tolkien wrote: 'Thus while Sauron multiplied [illegible word] evil, he left "good" clearly distinguishable from it. Gandalf would have made good detestable and seem evil.'"