Than All the Roses of the World by StarSpray

Than All the Roses of the World

Read Than All the Roses of the World

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve. 
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

- “Dirge without Music”, by Edna St Vincent Millay

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When their people had left Dorthonion, Beren had not expected to hear any word of them ever again. And so he didn’t, while he and his father did their best to harry Morgoth’s servants, nor afterward on his own long and nightmarish journeys south. And then he had met Lúthien and—well. There was neither time nor opportunity to seek out news of his people.

And even after he and Lúthien settled in Tol Galen, where the air smelled of roses and pine and the nightingales sang merrily through the summertime, word of the outside word came in bits and pieces, often many years late. So it was that he heard of his cousin Morwen’s marriage only after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, when her son was sent to Menegroth, fleeing the occupation of Dor-lómin. Beren wished he could go there himself to bring away Morwen also, and any others of the Houses of Bëor and Hador who would follow him. But Lúthien counseled against it. “Your part in the tale of this age is done, my love,” she said. “Do not forget what happened when you tried to take a second Silmaril from the Iron Crown!” She wrapped her arms around him, and kissed his brow. “If your cousins have even a fraction of your valor, they will save themselves.” Beren did not answer. He did not know who Morwen had grown to become. She had been only a child when he’d last seen her, wide-eyed and frightened in the chaos of the Bragollach. He had picked her up in one arm and little Rían in the other, kissing them both, telling them to be brave. He hoped they were brave, and that they would find a way out of Dor-lómin as Emeldir had found a way out of Dorthonion.

He had been young then, too. It felt like a hundred years had passed since, though it was not yet twenty.

Time continued to pass. Dior grew swiftly, after the manner of Men. He bore his mother’s shadowy hair and starlit eyes, but when he laughed he sounded like Barahir, and his eyes crinkled in the same way that Emeldir’s had. News and gossip trickled down the Gelion from Doriath, not all of it good. The worst was when a small party of Elves from Mithrim came, heading east out of Beleriand after being driven from their homes. It was they who told Beren of Rían’s short ill-fated marriage to Huor, and of his death at the Nirnaeth and her subsequent grief and death. “We tried to stop her leaving,” one of them said, “but it was as though she hardly heard us. She stayed only long enough to name her son Tuor.”

“And what has become of him?” Beren asked.

“We do not know,” said the elf. “I am sorry. We were separated in our flight from Mithrim. He was bright and bold, and loved dearly by all of us. It is our hope that he reached the Havens of Sirion with Annael.”

Beren did not weep until after they left. He sat by the falls of Lanthir Lamath, and for a time allowed himself to be lost in his grief for Rían, little Rían who had been so bright and cheerful, always singing, who had loved flowers and bluebirds and the taste of honey. In springtime she had braided flowers in anyone’s hair who would let her, and rare was the day that Beren did not go about with a tangle of wild roses and daisies about his ears. And now she was gone, her song silenced, and her son’s fate uncertain.

He never learned what happened to Tuor, whether he survived or escaped Dor-lómin, or whether he was killed by the Easterlings. He did hear, at long last, after Húrin had come and gone from Menegroth, bringing the Nauglamír of Felagund, of the fate of Morwen and her children, from one who had passed through Brethil and seen the inscription upon the Stone of the Hapless, that marked also Morwen’s grave. Beren’s tears were bitter, then. They had tried, had tried so hard, and Túrin had done many great and heroic things—and it had not been enough. Even the strongest of spirits has not enough to thwart the curse of the Enemy. Glaurung was no more, but neither was Turin, or Nienor, or Morwen. She had been stern and serious even as a child, but Beren had often been able to coax her into laughter.

“There is no one left, now,” he said to Lúthien, when they were alone. Outside their house Dior played with his sons, their laughter echoing through the trees. “They are all lost.”

“But not their memory,” said Lúthien. She smoothed his hair back from his face; there was more grey in it now with each passing year, and his joints were growing stiff in the cold—reminders that time continued to pass, even in Dor Firn-i-Guinar. “The tale of the children of Húrin Thalion and Morwen Eledhwen shall be sung until the breaking of the world. And I do not think all is lost. Remember Tuor!”

“Tuor is lost,” said Beren.

“But we have not heard that he is dead. My heart tells me that he lives still, and the line of Rían and the line of Beren of the House of Bëor shall be reunited one day. We will not live to see it, perhaps, but there is hope yet.” Her eyes shone with the light of the stars, and her voice rang with a power not unlike that of Melian speaking in the court of Menegroth.

“Perhaps,” said Beren. His heart still ached, but something heavy had been lifted from his spirit. Morwen and her children were gone, but it was something to believe that Rían’s son still walked the earth beneath the moon and the stars, even if they would never meet.