Western Lands Beneath the Sun by StarSpray

Western Lands Beneath the Sun

“Well, Sam,” said Frodo one sunny afternoon as they sat together in the garden, “what do you think of Elves, now that you have seen Elvenhome?” He spoke with a smile, and both of them remembered the times before that he had asked the question—after first meeting Gildor and his party and spending the night with them at Woody End, and later at Rivendell, and later still as their sojourn in Lothlórien came to an end. It was practically tradition.

“Well,” said Sam, taking a sip of his tea. It was light and sweet, a pale golden color like nothing he’d ever tasted before, and it was quite nice. “The Elves are the same as they ever were—still rather above my likes and dislikes.”

“But you are quite different now,” said Frodo, smiling. At least outwardly, he had changed very little since Sam had last seen him, sailing away from the Havens with Gandalf and Master Elrond and Lady Galadriel. His hair was more silver than dark, now, and there were creases around his eyes—Sam had been very gratified to find laugh lines replacing the pinched frown lines that had been starting to set when Frodo had gone away—but for the most part the Undying Lands seemed to have an uncannily similar effect to the Ring in slowing one’s aging. In this case, of course, the cause and effect were more wholesome. Sam had noticed himself that his joints did not ache anymore, and he could move about quicker and with more energy than he had in many years.

Sam took another sip of his tea, and inhaled the sweet fragrance of roses and violets and sweet grass, and the fresh clean smell of the sea coming up the hill. The beach was just out of sight, but from Frodo ’s garden they could see the clear blue waters of the bay stretching out toward the natural gateway that led to the darker, choppier waters of Belegaer. “Do you remember,” said Sam, “when I said that standing on Cerin Amroth felt like being inside a song?”

“I do,” Frodo said.

“Well, I rather regret it now, as this is like being inside a song. It’s like everything is singing, and I can feel it even if I can’t hear it, if you take my meaning. There’s the Sea, of course, but even the dirt feels—well, more alive than usual. It’s like Lothlórien, where there’s magic all around but you can’t see anyone working it, it just is.” Frodo hummed in seeming agreement. “And that’s not even to mention the characters from all the tales popping around every corner! I went to the market yesterday and met Princess Idril from Gondolin on a corner gossiping with Princess Finduilas of Nargothrond and Lady Elwing, just as you’d see hobbit gammers on an afternoon in Bywater! And then just down the street there was High King Gil-galad himself bartering over pastries! And all of them were bowing and greeting me as though I were someone of importance! I haven’t blushed so much in years, let me tell you. I rather thought I’d grown out of it.”

Frodo laughed. “I wish I could say that you’ll get used to it,” he said. “But it’s still very strange to me to write out dinner invitations to great names out of the histories. But I did warn you that you would be just as honored by them as they are by us!”

So he had, but Sam had not believed him. He had been tickled to be the subject of songs just after the Quest had ended, but it was one thing to hear such things sung by a minstrel in Gondor or rebuilt Ann úminas, but when the singer was the subject of his own far more marvelous tales—well, that was something else altogether!

And a few days later it happened again, this time when Sam took a solitary walk down the beach early in the morning. Dawn was blushing pink in the east, and there were still stars visible in the western skies over the Calacirya. In the far distance Sam could see a faint glimmer that he knew to be the Mindon Eldali éva. He stopped to sit on a bench that someone had placed just so that the high tide, which was coming in, could wash up over the toes of anyone seated there. The water was cool and very pleasant, and the gentle sound of it whispering up over the sands was comforting. Sam was sitting and humming tunelessly to himself, letting his thoughts wander where they would, when he heard someone splashing through the waves. He looked up to see a figure meandering along the beach through deeper and shallower waters. He wore only a plain tunic and trousers rolled up above his knees—though he’d splashed water onto them anyway—and his hair was held back from his face by a few thin braids in which glinted golden thread. When he saw Sam his face lit up with a smile, and he came forward to bow deeply and elegantly.

“Well met, Master Samwise!” he said.

Sam rose to his own feet and bowed in return. “Well met, Master Elf,” he replied. He wasn’t terribly surprised to be recognized, being one of only two hobbits in the whole of the West; and he thought he knew who this elf was, though he did not wish to assume. “Lovely morning for a walk,” he said, because it was true, and the elf would introduce himself in his own time.

“It is a beautiful morning,” the elf agreed. “And I beg your pardon—I am Fingon. May I join you?”

“Certainly, Your…Highness?” Sam always found titles a bit tricky here: a consequence of far too many kings and former kings and princes running around the place.

“Oh, only Fingon, please!” Fingon laughed as he sat down on the bench beside Sam, stretching his legs out and crossing them at the ankles, so the water swelled up around his feet. “There is no need for ceremony on such a morning as this. Though,” he added, “it is a great honor to meet you at last. Your deeds have been sung of from one end of Valinor to the other. There was great excitement in Tirion when we heard that you were on your way West at last.”

Sam sputtered for a moment, caught off guard. “I hardly did anything worth so many songs,” he protested. “I only helped Mister Frodo— he was the Ringbearer, not me. ”

“But it is said—and by the Ringbearer himself, quite often—that he would never have reached the Cracks of Doom were it not for his stouthearted companion.” Fingon grinned. “But I understand. Such deeds never feel worthy of song in the moment. No one sings about how dirty and battered I was by the time I managed to get Maedhros down the mountain, or how my voice was cracked and worn when I was singing, for it was nearly out of water.”

“Oh, aye, I can imagine,” Sam said. “There were only a few pitiful streams in Mordor, and if we weren’t so desperate for any water at all I never would’ve touched them. Funny tasting, they were—metallic. The way I figured it, the water might kill us, but it wouldn’t do it faster’n orcs would.”

“And I never went into the deepest strongholds of Angband,” Fingon said. “I only wandered the edges of that realm. But I must beg your pardon—I did not mean to dredge up such memories.”

“That’s all right,” Sam said. “It’s been a very long time since such memories troubled me.”

They sat together for some time, until the last stars had faded and the warm colors of sunrise had been replaced by clear blue skies and white clouds. By then Sam was quite ready for breakfast, and invited Fingon back with him. They found Frodo setting out jam jars and fresh bread on the dining room table while the kettle boiled, and Gandalf sat by the kitchen window with his pipe. “Well, here is a sight!” he exclaimed, laughing. Gandalf was always laughing at something these days—or at nothing at all, simply overflowing with joy and contentment. “Fingon the Valiant and Samwise the Stouthearted, two heroes most renowned. Good morning, Your Highness! Forgive me for not rising to greet you, but I have just gotten comfortable.”

Fingon laughed. “Mithrandir, most wise and greatest of the Wizards need not rise to greet me,” he said. “Good morning, Master Baggins!”

“Good morning!” Frodo said. “Do sit down, and don’t mind Gandalf.”

Sam followed Frodo back to the kitchen and set to frying bacon while Frodo pulled out the eggs and a basket of mushrooms that some young elf children had brought to them yesterday. “I like that Fingon,” Sam said. “Very nice, he is, and not very much like those other princes and kings. Has a bit of hobbit sense, you might say.”

“If he were a hobbit, he would most certainly be a Took,” Frodo said. “Even now he is quite adventurous—that epithet did not come out of nowhere, you know! And he loves a good story. The one about you storming the tower of Cirith Ungol is a particular favorite.”

“I certainly didn’t storm the tower,” said Sam, appalled. “The fighting was over and done with by the time I arrived!”

Frodo laughed. “The tale has grown and changed a bit in the telling. You know they always do.”

“Yes, but you could have set them straight!”

“But then I would have missed out on all the different versions! Though I do promise, whenever I have been asked, I tell the version that was put down in the Red Book. And Bilbo made a bit of a project of finding out the real original versions of many of the tales he told to us when we were young. I’ll show you later; he had me write most of them down, as his eyesight was going and his handwriting even worse than it used to be.”

Breakfast was a merry affair with Gandalf there, and Fingon, who was filled with stories that had not made it into the great histories—of childhood escapades and more recent wanderings he had taken with his siblings and cousins, and silly family feuds quickly resolved, and of some of the wondrous things to be seen in the far reaches of Valinor. Frodo had seen some marvelous things too in his travels; Sam had not yet gone farther than Alqualond ë, and Fingon was quick to invite both hobbits to Tirion—and anywhere else they might like to go. Tentative plans were made, and Fingon departed with promises to return very soon.

“I should very much like to see Tirion,” Sam remarked once Fingon had disappeared down the hill. “Is it much like the songs?”

“Oh, yes and no,” said Frodo, “like everything else, the songs don’t quite capture everything.”