Among the reeds by Adlanth

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Among the reeds

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They walk south, till the Echoriath grow dim and low behind them, and vanish at last. South, along Sirion, and onwards to the eaves of Brethil, where a grandmother that Tuor never knew once grew, but from which no messenger comes forth now; south again to the fens of Aelin-Uial, and past the walls of the Andram. Southwards still, to Nan-Tathren where they rest under the willows, and weep, and sing.

South, till at last Tuor smells salt on the wind - a faint, faint scent, and yet one that catches at his heart.

From the mists and the reeds, Elves emerge. They bear great bows, and axes at their belt; and they look upon the remnants of Gondolin, battered and tattered and grieving, and in their eyes there is only pity.

And then there is their lady, or perhaps their queen. A queen, Tuor realises, who is about Eärendil’s age. Seven years old, or perhaps eight, a skinny girl in tattered boots and much mended tunic and trousers, whose sole ornament is the vast grey cloak, which is wrapped at least twice around her. Her hair is black as smoke, and her eyes are grey, startlingly light, and solemn. Tuor has never met her, and yet he knows her, without knowing how.

 

*

 

That night Idril does not go to the tent they have put up just on the outskirt of the Sinda encampment, but remains awake instead, guiding the remnant of the Gondolindrim, helping them set up their own tents, tending to the wounded. Tuor would help her, but he is only mortal, and needs sleep. So does Eärendil.

They lie on the same cot. Eärendil has refused to sleep alone, ever since Gondolin fell. Tuor has never minded his presence. He will not burden his son with the knowledge, but he too finds comfort in the boy’s quiet breathing, and his warmth. Sometimes Eärendil will whimper in his sleep, and toss and turn, but quieten at last when Tuor draws him close.

Eärendil falls asleep first, and Tuor listens to his soft, even breathing. But sleep eludes him, and Elwing’s face keeps returning to him - but it is not hers, not really, only a face that looks like hers, but older by far, a woman’s face, and from such depths of time…

He sleeps, and wakes, with tears streaming down his face from he knows not what weeping, with a name on his lips, but no other memory.

 

*

 

Tuor remembers those early days, shortly after Eärendil was born. It was a custom of the Eldar, Idril had told him, for the grandparents of the child to each bring tokens of their love. For his grandson, Turgon had made with elven skill an image of Belthil and Glingal, in memory of the Trees of old: a tiny marvel made of gold and silver and ivory and wood, perhaps twice as tall as the child’s hand was long, yet with a thousand shivering leaves. From Elenwë, Idril had kept the golden flute upon which she had played, and which she had brought with her across the Ice, and she’d played upon it, drawing from it such strange strains that Tuor could scarce hear them without weeping, but which made Eärendil smile in his sleep.

Tuor had thought himself empty-handed. Bereft. But then, from who knew where, Turgon had found a wood carving which Huor had made so long ago, of an eagle like the one which had brought him to Gondolin. A crude and artless thing, next to Turgon’s delicate trees, and yet Turgon had held it with infinite care, this token of a man who had spent such little time, by the reckoning of the Eldar, in his fair city; and Tuor had taken it, and put it himself next to Eärendil’s little hand.

From Annael Tuor had kept only songs. Of his fostering, nothing that he could touch had survived: Lorgan had made sure of that, had stripped him of all he’d had - stolen what he had thought valuable, destroyed the rest. But still Tuor had his foster-father’s songs - and these were what he sung, that first night, above Eärendil’s cradle.

And from another - nothing.

 

*

 

Days pass, and then weeks. The refugees settle where they may, and the Doriathrim help as they can. These are strange days for the Sindar of Vinyamar who so long ago followed a Noldo king into the mountains, and who are now reunited with their southern kin. It is a grief to them, learning of the ruin of Doriath, and yet there is some relief in finding themselves not altogether alone, in sharing the pain of loss. There are a few unexpected reunions: a grandmother seeing a long lost grandchild again, sisters meeting anew though their paths have separated so long ago.

And the Noldor too, though they are fewer, do at least have kin on Balar. One day the new High-King, Ereinion Gil-galad, comes with many ships bearing timber to build new houses, and food for the empty stomachs of the empty-handed Gondolindrim. Tuor is there when Idril meets Gil-galad, and sees the wonder on her face - she, Fingolfin’s last living scion - setting eyes for the first time on he who is Finarfin’s great-grand-child and, save for one, his last descendant in Middle-earth.

(And Tuor feels a twinge of guilt, upon seeing Gil-galad’s crown, which seems to rest heavy on his head; knowing that if not for him - Tuor - Idril might even wear this selfsame crown. But she will not take it, she says, not now when her child is so young, whose days must be cherished; and she says she regrets nothing - but Tuor does, though he knows what she does not say: that he is mortal and Eärendil may be too, that their days may be short and she does not want to waste them. Even so, she spends much of her time - and of herself - serving their people, avoiding the quiet watches of the night when her father and her city haunt  her.)

Gil-galad speaks of his great-aunt too, Galadriel, away now beyond the Ered Luin, but with a promise to return soon, and upon hearing that name Idril’s eyes light up in joy. 

And then there is Tuor, of the house of Hador, a man alone. But he has lived so long among Elves, from the earliest days of his childhood, and later in Gondolin. He is used to be among them; used to being ever apart.

 

*

 

Elwing is curious about him. About all of the newcomers, Tuor suspects: about Idril who plainly awes her, and about Eärendil most of all - the only child among the Gondolindrim, just as she is the only child in her company. And yet sometimes she will look at him, Tuor. She looks and looks, young Elwing, quiet and ever watchful.

One day, she finds him where he sits, a little way from the camp, atop a muddy bank by the stream, with the fishing net he has been repairing across his knees. She is alone for once, without the counsellors that ever hem her - Celeborn and Thranduil and Evranin. She is still wrapped in her grey cloak, the one he has learned was her father’s: soft and dove grey, with a trim of russet nightingale wings, and niphredil embroidered in silver and white thread.

She greets him gravely, and then she says:

‘You are of the Edain.’

He nods.

‘I am too,’ she says. ‘In part. Did you know?’

‘I did,’ he says gently. ‘There are few who do not know of your grandparents, lady.’

‘I think sometimes people forget.’ Her voice falters. ‘I am glad to have found one of my kindred.’

She comes closer, shows him the underside of her cloak. There - hidden, close to the skin - is Beren Erchamion’s device, which he has not seen before but recognises at once: three peaks, red hand, jewel. ‘My grandfather’s,’ Elwing says. That cloak is far too big for her, wrapped around her too many times, and she is cumbered by it. Too small, too young. ‘And that is the device of the house of Bëor,’ she adds. ‘My house.’

‘Mine too,’ he says.

She blinks. ‘I thought you were of the house of Hador.’

‘In part,’ he says gently. ‘Sometimes people forget.’

Sometimes even he does, but he needs not say this.

In the dirt, he draws a tree for her. At the root is Bëor, and the trunk is Baran, and Boron, and Boromir and Bregor; and Bregor’s daughters three, and his two sons: Bregolas who fathered Beleth and Baragund and Belegund, and Barahir whose son in his boldness did such brave deeds…

(He hopes he remembered well. Annael knew, for the Elves of Mithrim had had some dealings with the people of Dor-lómin in days gone by, after the people of Dorthonion found refuge there, and Rían had told him once in the scant few days she had spent among them; and Turgon knew what Húrin, a boy already in love, had told him of the proud women of the house of Bëor… They remembered so well, these Elves, so easily. And he, Tuor, the heir to all that memory, left to scratch what he scarcely knows in the mud…)

So many boughs, upon that tree, and so many branches cut off. And yet two leaves remain, lonesome on that winter tree: and upon one he writes the name Elwing, daughter of Dior, son of Beren; and on the other Rían’s son writes his own.

He is done, and they remain quiet. This is shifting ground, in Lisgardh among the reeds, where Sirion twists and branches; and the river will wash away what he has drawn. But Elwing sets her cold, small hand upon his, though she remains very still. Apart, alone, akin. A little less alone, perhaps.

 

*

 

Followers of the house of Bëor, so often driven from their homes, whose eyes are haunted; proud men and women of the house of Hador, tall and unbent; the hardy remnants of the Haladin, axe-wielding. They all come from the north, some alone, some in pairs, most in bands of five, or ten. They are ragged and tattered and hungry, dragging with them what little food they have, crude weapons. Old men and women, limping along or dragged on carts, babes still in their parents’ arms.

‘Things are very bad in the North,’ they say. ‘For a little while we had more peace, but that was very short-lived, and now it is worse than ever before.’

‘Since Gondolin fell,’ Idril says grimly.

Even the Easterlings suffer, they say, though they have little pity to spare. Everywhere Morgoth’s creatures harass the remants of the Edain. And so they come.

Such a strange life, amidst earth and water. He remembers that day when he first saw Belegaer, and it seemed as he stood on that cliff that he was poised on the black brink of the earth. It seemed to him sometimes as the sun sank towards the sea that there was a golden path upon the waves… not his to take, perhaps, but it was there. But now the sun seems veiled, in the mists about Sirion’s mouth, and all about Tuor all seem exhausted, desperate, clinging to what little land remains to them, this earth that even now seems to slip from beneath them, and both the north and the east threaten war…

And yet, and yet. Veiled, yet not altogether gone. Idril weeps in her sleep, crying for her father in his tower. Eärendil weeps by day, remembering Ecthelion and Glorfindel and even Salgant who’d once made him laugh. But Tuor does not.

He cannot tell them why: that even now remembering Gondolin in its flower requires an effort of thought, casting back his mind; and even then he sees the valley and the city only an if they were painted, upon glass, fair and green and white and not real. Beyond, a light is shining, so bright it sears away his memory.

All his life it has been thus: a hope beyond words. All his life he has known that he was borne onwards, as on swan’s wings, to something great and bright and good. He can no more resist it than a sail can resist the wind - and he is the sail, not the sailor. He knew it before he ever saw the sea, he thinks, but he was certain thereafter. He knew it even in the dark of Annon-in-Gelydh, and he was certain when he reached Cirith Ninniach, and it was filled with the golden light from the west, and when at last he stood by the sea. Then he was as one besotted, drunk on sea air, and sometimes he thinks he has remained that way all his life - besotted or drunk or mad.

Mad, yes. Turgon knew, had seen it in his eyes and recognised it, but Turgon is gone.

Mad, and borne ever westwards into the light. He cannot speak it, cannot say how glad his heart is to have returned to the sea, not after all that they have lost. Yet he is, glad and full of hope. There is a star yet to rise, and Turgon knew, and Huor who died before his birth knew also, and his own path will lead him ever further, and he will never relinquish this hope, this light…

And behind him, nothing. Not shadows, darkness, or evil alone, not grief, but a deeper, more formless abyss. An absence, a father’s hand that never touched his, a father’s eyes that never rested upon him. Rían, walking towards the hill.

So he has always thought. That this is the price he pays for hope, for joy, for the son that is both.

 

*

 

One of the Edain is a man by the name of Dírhaval - a man or rather a youth, who can’t have seen much more than two dozen winters. He is tall, as are all in the house of Hador, though not as tall as Tuor, gangling and loose-limbed, with long fair hair and a few wisps of hair on his chin, and watery blue eyes; and the very first thing he tells Tuor, before he even names himself, is that he is a poet, and that he is writing a lay.

Tuor is bemused, then bewildered. Dírhaval follows him about with puppyish admiration. He wants to see Tuor wield Dramborleg, although thankfully there is little call for war by the waters of Sirion, which the creatures of the Enemy shun for now. He wants to hear the tales of Tuor’s outlaw days. He wants to hear all that Tuor can tell him of his parents’ kin.

Tuor sighs. ‘You should ask my wife, Lady Idril,’ he says. ‘She knew my father and uncle. Any of the Gondolindrim, in truth, would answer you better.’

Dírhaval tries to hide his disappointment, and fails. He rubs those wisps of hair on his chin. ‘I will ask them,’ he says. He stutters a little. ‘If they will have me. Thank you.’

He turns, strides away on those heron legs. Stops, half-turns, teeters, and then walks back towards Tuor. His cheeks and ears are red.

‘I could sing my lay to you,’ he says. ‘Or part of it. If you’d like to learn about your kin…’ He grows redder still.

But Tuor sits, and listens. Dírhaval does not stutter when he sings, does not hesitate. His voice grows deeper and more assured. Not perfect, as an Elf’s would be, but beautiful. Tuor is not transported, as he is when Idril sings, or when Ecthelion played the flute, but still he listens to Dírhaval’s tale - of an uncle and lost cousins.

 

*

 

He does that, and more. A few days later, Dírhaval comes again. Elwing sits by Tuor’s side, reading. She tugs his sleeve, and that is when Tuor sees the poet.

This time he is not alone. There is a woman by his side, as small and stocky as he is gangly, barely reaching his shoulder, and hanging from the crook of his elbow as she totters through the camp.

‘This is Gileth,’ Dírhaval says once they stand before Tuor and Elwing. ‘Daughter of Beleth. My aunt.’

Gileth looks up at Tuor, then down again at Elwing. Up close, Tuor can see that her brown face is seamed, and that the hair that peeks from beneath her headscarf is scarce, and that although there are still a few dark strands, most of it is snowy white. But her grey eyes are gleaming.

She kneels, then. Or tries to, stiffly, half-dragging Dírhaval down as she lowers herself. Elwing and Tuor step forward at the same moment, catch her as she is about to stumble. Her eyes are gleaming with tears, Tuor realises. ‘My lady,’ she says. ‘Beren’s little one. You have his nose.’

 And then she smiles: a mostly toothless smile, but as merry as a girl’s, creasing the corners of her eyes. She wipes at her eyes and nose with her sleeve.

Elwing blinks. ‘You knew my grandfather?’

‘Of course I did. He was my mother’s first cousin.’

‘I never saw him,’ Elwing says wistfully. ‘Or I don’t think I did, or I don’t remember. I was a babe in arms when he died.’

They go and sit together that day, and listen to Gileth’s tales. Elwing sits by Gileth’s feet, her grey eyes wide and rapt. In truth, Tuor and even Dírhaval are scarcely less enthralled. Dírhaval’s fingers play soundlessly about his harp’s strings, and Tuor finds himself leaning forward to catch every word. ‘Beren was my elder by thirteen years,’ Gileth says, ‘but I had no siblings then. My brother had not been born yet, nor that one’s mother.’ She nods towards Dírhaval. ‘And Beren had no siblings. Of course he was closer to my uncles, but even so, he found time for his little cousin. Even then he loved all the beasts and birds of the forest, and he’d take me to see them, and teach me all their names and songs and their lairs and secret paths.’ She pauses. ‘Ah, but you’ve heard this a thousand times,’ she tells Dírhaval.

He shrugs. ‘I never tire of it,’ he says. ‘And they haven’t heard it.’

So they listen, all that afternoon, as the sun sinks towards the sea and the shadows of the reeds and the willows lengthen.

Beren the Bold. Even in far off Mithrim, he had heard of Beren’s deeds from Annael. But this is different: not a legend, not a name sung in a lay, but a man. And all the rest: Barahir and Emeldir, Bregolas and Bregil and Hirwen and Gilwen, and Beleth and Baragund and Belegund (grandfather, he realises with a shock, not just some name but my grandfather, who must once have held Rían as I hold Eärendil, must have carried her on his shoulders and told her stories…).

He looks aside. The thought, the loss, lodge in his throat and choke him. He has never felt this. Elwing glances up at him, and looks thoughtful. Then she tugs at Gileth’s sleeve, so the old woman turns to her, and she says:

‘Did you know Rían, Belegund’s daughter?’

It is too much. More pain, blooming across his chest. If he could he would stop her mouth, Gileth’s, make them stop. Take back those words - it is better not to know. But he cannot move. There is salt and poison in his eyes, in his throat. Afterwards he will be grateful, grateful beyond words, but not now.

‘Little Rían!’ Gileth says. She smiles again. ‘The last of us to be born in Ladros. She loved the pines and the hills, and once during that last summer before Dorthonion burned, all of us who were grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Bregor went to Tarn-Aeluin, to sport in the sun by the clear waters of the lake. And Rían loved the lake, and she gave us such fright when she ran ahead, all of four and yet the most eager of us, running forth alone and unafraid. She loved the alder-trees, and the flowering heather best of all, and we thought her like them: small and lovely and hardy. When we fled west with Emeldir, she never complained, though she was so very young and the way was harsh and she’d left her father behind. She sang queer songs of her own making as we walked.’

As she speaks Gileth seems more thoughtful, though the smile does not altogether leave her lips, and she looks down at her lap, where she twists her gnarled, old hands together.

‘And then when she was grown, and she wedded Huor of the house of Hador, and then after the battle she went forth alone again. But this time we were too broken down and bereft to run after her, and she was braver - not unafraid, this time, but brave. And we never saw her after.’

She raises her eyes. ‘We never knew she had you. If we had we would have gone to you.’

Later she tells them: Among the other houses, they said we followers of Balan were a proud folk, hardy but proud and lonesome and enamoured of the Eldar beyond all reason. Which some of us were, I own, and perhaps still are. All the same no child of the house of Bëor, whether one half-grown or (and this she adds with a wink at Tuor, though she is otherwise grave) an overgrown one, should be left without kin for too long. You are not ours alone, but it is good that we found you, and that you found one another.

 

*

 

They learn Taliska together - Elwing and Tuor and Eärendil. Eärendil learns fast, and soon chatters merrily with all the Edain, now speaking in the Bëorian dialect, now in the Hadorian, now both together, and with a smattering of Haladin words he’s filched from those few of that house that live in Lisgardh - and all so fast that Tuor can scarcely follow. His son is leaving him behind, he realises, young as he is; for Tuor finds that learning a new tongue does not come so easily to him. Which is to be expected in one full-grown, Gileth tells him. It feels strange all the same.

Elwing learns fast also, yet she remains. She wants to learn everything: all the words, no matter how rare or old, and whence they came, whether from the queer Elves of the east, the Evair and the Tawarwaith, or from the Hadhodrim in their halls of stone; all the names, of each man and woman and each child; all the songs and the stories; and all the lore which the wise-women of her house, Adanel and Andreth and all the others, have learned and taught.

‘If I live,’ she tells Tuor once, as they sit by the sea - and Tuor does not know whether she means to speak of Morgoth and his spreading shadow, or of her nearer fear, the sons of Fëanor that yet haunt her nightmares, or simply of the mortal blood that runs within her veins as it does in Tuor’s son’s. ‘If I should live,’ she says, ‘then I must remember.’

 

*

 

Years pass. One, two, three, four. They grow used to this life, between Sirion and the sea. That haunted look in Idril’s eyes fades a little. She mourns her father and her city still, for the grief of the Eldar runs deep, but it seems less sharp now, and she no longer flees from it into duty. ‘Eärendil grows so fast,’ she says. ‘I cannot waste those years.’

Perhaps Eärendil does grow fast; Tuor cannot tell. He is a bright boy, certainly, quick to laughter, a lover of sea and salt and wind. Nothing delights him more than to go on the deck of one of Cirdan’s ships, save perhaps the company of his parents still - and of Elwing. And if he grows fast she does too - is taller, in fact, by a few inches, than Ardamir.

Sometimes she will spend weeks with them, always coming and going from their house, playing with Eärendil, speaking queen to queen with Idril, asking that Tuor teach her to fish and hunt and row a boat on the river. Sometimes she runs off east, evading her guardians, spending entire days alone. When she returns, her blackest scorn is for Tuor.

My father spoke Taliska from birth, she says. My father fought with the sword his father had given him, and later with his grandfather’s, Thingol’s Ire. This was my father’s ring, whom he had from Beren, who had it from Barahir, who received it from the hand of Finrod Felagund himself.

My father, my father, my father. He understands. Elwing remembers her father, as he does not remember Huor. But Tuor, though he loved Annael as any son ever loved a foster-father, has never dreamed - would not dare - cannot

Not Elwing’s. She will not let him, and Eärendil is enough.

And the Doriathrim would make a thousand monuments for their fallen king, if they had but the stone, and meanwhile do make a thousand memorials in song, as if by song they could make up for the briefness of his life. But stone is not skin, and verse - verse is no quiet voice in the dark, dispelling some nightmare, soft above the roaring of Lanthir Lamath, or the cries of the birds by Mithrim, or the whispering of the reeds in Lisgardh.

 

*

 

One day Gileth dies. Neither Tuor nor Elwing are there when she does, but they are told afterwards: an autumn day, with high winds, and a very blue sky across which white wisps of clouds chased one another. How the reeds rustled, and Gileth’s grandnieces and grandnephews ran and played about her. A niece recalls hearing her laugh at some jape, and how after she’d seemed to doze, sitting up against a willow with the low golden sunlight upon her; and then a child came to speak to her, and found her dead.

 Dírhaval tells them. ‘She was three-score and ten, by her own accounting,’ he says, and wipes at his eyes. ‘The oldest of our kin. She was starting to forget things, but she was happy still.’

In death, Gileth is even smaller than she was in life: a tiny withered thing, hollowed, so light the wind might carry her away. She seems peaceful, and Tuor thinks she may be the first dead body he has seen in many years who was not slain - not since his time among Lorgan’s people, and even then he is not certain. This is his kindred’s lot, though he may forget, and suddenly he feels the hollowness in his own bones - the limbs less strong, the mind less fleet.

When last he spoke to her, she seemed tired. But she smiled nonetheless.

‘I worry,’ she’d said. ‘Times are hard. We have fled so many times, and what refuge is left to us now? But the young ones need not know.’

She was mending some wooden doll which one of her grandnephews had broken, with hands that seemed stiff yet clever still, and she looked towards the north. ‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘I wake up these days and for a few moments I am in Ladros again, and I am a lass again. Young and strong and hearty, always running, always laughing and making others laugh. Yes, yes, we laughed often in those days before Dorthonion burned. The Elves will not put it in their songs, for we were graver in their company. Now I am old, but that girl is still there.

‘We were never the same after we ran from Ladros and our house was no more. Emeldir was ashamed to have fled though she should not have been, and something in Morwen broke. Your mother was so young, it was hard to tell what she felt. And I was confused and scared, but also fortunate - unlike most I had my father as well as my mother, and my little brother.

‘Hard days, yes. But I remember what was before. Sometimes I think I made such great stores of joy then, I can never altogether run out.’ Her hand had sought Tuor’s arm, and she had peered into his eyes. ‘I think you are blessed also, son of Rían, and fortunate, and that you too have great stores of joy, although I do not know where you made them. Did they treat you so well, these Elves who raised you?’

‘They did,’ he’d simply said. ‘And I am.’ He had not explained that his gladness was not for what had been, but for what would come; yet it was gladness all the same.

‘Good,’ she’d said. ‘Good. I have outlived so many now. All that were born before me, and some that were born after. One day perhaps, Tuor, you will be eldest of our kindred. You must take care of the children then.’ She’d seemed almost to sleep. ‘First house, last children, and for them strange fates. So things go.’

 

*

 

That evening Gileth’s kin gathers by the fire. She had no children, Tuor knows, but many nephews and nieces. Once the sun has set, they sing, and share stories of Gileth - some she told them, some she lived - and sing again. The fire burns bright, and then dims down to embers. They fall quiet. The night is cold, starless, and it is many hours yet until dawn. Between his father and the fire, under his blanket, Eärendil has fallen asleep, his cheek ruddy and his hair gold in the dull glow of the coals; but by Tuor’s side Elwing is still sitting up, still awake.

Tuor had thought there would be no grief, or little - for Gileth, after all, has gone without fear or pain. No better death than this. And yet now that the night is darkest, and there is only silence, the crackling of the fire and the whistling of the reeds, and the sky very dark above them, he thinks that he will not see her again, nor hear that wheezing cackle of hers.

And with her gone, so too is one last memory of Ladros, and the pines of Dorthonion, and Tarn-Aeluin whose waters lay clear as glass - one last memory of the house of Bëor in strength and happiness.

One last memory of Rían. (He finds he can think of her now - without pain, without feeling that shadow and that gap behind him.) Not the last, for Gileth’s younger brother yet lives, as does her sister, Dírhaval’s mother. But they will not live forever, and one day, not too distant, the last living memory of her will be extinguished.

(He should be mourning Gileth herself, he tells himself, not what she knew. But somehow he knows she would not hold it against him, for Gileth had had her own losses - Beleth her mother, and Emeldir who had led them to Brethil and known so much of their house, and Andreth whose records had been lost to flames and flight… Gileth would have held his hand in her own leathered ones, he thinks, and told him to mourn him as he could. That she would not have begrudged him.)

The last living memory, but not the last. For it is his now too: his burden and a gift to him. He thinks of what Gileth told him: how Rían loved to climb trees, and had a large scar on her left knee, from a day when she’d jumped after her elder cousin Morwen from a high branch; how she knew the names of all the flowers in Ladros, young as she was, and later those of Brethil, and then Dor-lómin. He thinks that his mother was very young when she went to the Hill of the Slain, just two and twenty, closer to the age Elwing is now than to Tuor’s. He wonders if she too heard the call that he has heard all his life, and that Huor knew also, the whispering of the water, the star in the distance; or if she was simply a woman alone and small and brave.

Across the fire, Dírhaval sits in silence. No youth now, though he is still lanky, and prone to dreaming, and ever and ever adding to his great lay. He has sung all night long, and seems very weary now. His eyes half-close, and then close altogether. And his young daughter, born a year before, sleeps on his lap: peaceful now, and a hearty, merry lass when she is awake, with the brown skin and eyes of her mother, a woman of the Haladin, but the blue eyes of her father, and ready, gurgling laughter. Her very presence - that of a few others of her age - alarms the Eldar, who would not dare beget children in such peril. But this is what mortals do. This little one will not remember this night, or the great-aunt who’d once dawdled her on her knee… but she’ll have her father’s songs, which he made out of the glory and sorrow of the house of Hador, and in memory of the other two.

If she lives. If he does.

Besides him, Elwing shivers. She is still awake, though her eyes are red - with fatigue, smoke, or grief. He holds out his hand, and then feels hers. Small, cold hands. He holds them till they grow warmer. She leans against him, bundled in her father’s cloak; and when he casts a fold of his own around her, she rests her head against his shoulder. She never does this. He remains very still. Her voice when she speaks is very low, barely audible above the murmur of the reeds.

‘Will I forget her?’ He opens his mouth, but then she adds, in a voice quieter still. ‘Tuor, what if I forget my father? My brothers?’

He wonders if his son will ask the same question, many years from now. For Ëarendil may yet have the life of the Eldar. He will have Idril. Aye, and as Idril teaches it, Elwing if she is gifted with long life may yet be reunited with Nimloth her mother. But who is to say where Dior Eluchil and his sons have gone? One foot on land, and the other in the river which runs to an unknown sea.

Eärendil, Elwing - both may live. Or they may not. Or if they have the life of the Eldar, will they have elven memory also? He cannot tell. He - Tuor the blessed, Tuor the fool, with hope unfounded under the light of the sun.

In this starless dark, though Sirion is near, and the smell of the sea is in the air, he has no Vala-given voice, such as spoke through him that day before the Last Gate. No promise, not yet, no voice but his own. But he has that, and she is here, a daughter of the Edain. He will not forget that once she spoke Rían’s name, when he himself could not. 

He tells Elwing what he can, in the language they have learned together, a language carried over from beyond the mountains in the east, a language of bits and pieces, unravelled, forgotten, stitched back together. Son of a forgotten mother, who is he to speak of memory? He tells her what he has learned, what Gileth knew, and Dírhaval does, and his daughter, young as she is, will know in the end. He, Tuor, would have learned it sooner, had his fate not been so closely intertwined with that of the Eldar.

Not if you live, he tells her, but while you live, whether forever with the life of the Eldar, or briefly as is the doom of the Edain. Live and remember what you can, speak and sing, and when you are gone others may remember in your stead, until they do not. The Eldar may make jewels of light undying, undimming; but the Edain pass candles from hand to hand, while the wind blows.

 

*

 

In the east, red faintly tinges the sky. Soon the sun will rise. Auta i lómë, aurë entuluva. And have they not all travelled so very far, from east to west, all the people of the Edain? Over mountains and across rivers, through hunger and hardships, loss and death, through so many defeats. Too few, and battered, and lost, and sad, yet they have come. To this last haven, upon the brink. Tuor cannot think that they shall be altogether extinguished.

The night is going, and day will come, and with it his hope, his joy in the world, in the sea that he loves and that loves him. But for now he and Elwing alone remain awake, in the twilight before the dawn, in Beleriand that is beautiful and broken, listening to the sounds of the reeds.