The Strands that Bind by AdmirableMonster

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Epilogue

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The hyphae of destiny thrum with joy. They spread their tendrils through the rich earth of so many possibilities, weaving a thin but durable mycelium that allows the fruiting of those that lead to their own existence, their own joy. One cheerful little mushroom looks like a bright orange-red egg emerging from a churning white veil.

“I love you, Chalcedony,” Da said, and hugged her.  “Forgive me for being a proper Took about all this?”

She giggled.  “Uncle Pippin wouldn’t like to hear you say that.”

“I know.” He ruffled her hair.  “Now you have blackmail material if you need it.”

A cluster of pale yellow-tan caps rising from a thick, branched white stalk.

Nearly all of Nimruzimir’s hair was white, and these days his trembling muscles required a little assistance from an intricately carven cane to get around.  Lilóteo could not walk at all, but he made up for this by moving himself around quite adeptly in a wheeled contraption some of their friends had constructed.  

Nimruzimir still sometimes found it in himself to wonder at the way they were welcomed in the Lond Daer marketplace.  Boann—tiny and these days all covered in wrinkles—called out greetings in Dunlendish while her five grand-daughters ran about to make certain Nimruzimir and Lilóteo got their weeks’ supply of fish dinners and monthly load of agar. 

“Is the traveling merchant you s-spoke of here yet?” Nimruzimir asked Boann, his Dunlendish fluent but forever tinged with a hint of an Adunaic accent.

She nodded, making a swift hand gesture.  “Let Fedelm take you, she likes making bargains and she’ll see you’re well paid for your goods.”

“Oh, well,” Nimruzimir said softly, sliding his hand into his pocket and drawing out the necklace.  “It is more important that he travels far than that h-he pays us well.  Besides, it is only gold and g-glass.”

“You’re still not to part with it for less than it’s worth,” Boann told him firmly and shooed the two of them off in the company of her oldest grand-daughter.

The traveling merchant turned out to be a fair-haired young man with an honest sort of face, which he lived up to by being quite willing to listen to Fedelm’s points about the craftsmanship of the necklace and offering a remarkably good price for it.  This embarrassed Nimruzimir.

“It is only gold and g-glass,” he protested again.

“Hush your protesting, man, it’s beautiful,” Lilóteo said, shaking his elbow.

“It is beautiful,” the merchant agreed.  “Is there a reason you’re willing to part with it?”

Nimruzimir shrugged sharply, his hand trembling as he held out the necklace.  “It is to be a p-present,” he explained.  “A gift to a y-young woman who will l-like it very much.”

“You want me to take it to someone?” the merchant asked, sounding confused.

“Oh no.”  Nimruzimir held up the necklace.  “Where is the b-box, dear?”

Lilóteo produced the box with the white flower, with the necklace’s original silver case settled inside.  It was tarnished now and all the paint had flaked off, a far cry from the exquisite thing it had been when it had passed from his father’s hands into his.  But it was still an illustration of the love his father had borne him, even if he had never understood.  Nimruzimir exhaled shakily and tucked the necklace into its case, then tucked the case into the box and held it out to the merchant.

“Here,” he said softly.  “You are going up the Greyflood? It will make its w-way to where it is intended to g-go.”

“Yes, I should think so.”  The merchant took it, a strange expression coming over his face.  “You’re the prophet they spoke of—the prophet of Lond Daer.”

Nimruzimir cleared his throat, felt, for an instant, the prickle of the Lady’s stare before he shook it off.  He shrugged.

“I’m honored,” the merchant said quietly, but to Nimruzimir’s relief, he said nothing more.

I am sending it to you, little sister.  Wait for it in the future, won’t you?

Brown eyes crinkle in a smile.  I’m waiting, big brother.

A mushroom sprouting from the side of a tree, wrinkled in queer waves like a misshapen horse’s hoof, black with a red band at its base like a slowly-cooling ember.

“It won’t be difficult to thread it again,” Celebrimbor had explained.  “Is there any other ornamentation you would like to add?  To make it your own?”

Chalcedony still felt rather shy of him, especially now that Annamir had saved her life, but he was so calm and quiet and still to be around that she found she could talk to him anyway.  “Something growing, maybe?” she had suggested hesitantly.  “Like the leaves, but—but more?  To show that I’m still growing, too?”

He had nodded solemnly and said that he would come up with a few designs.  Now, she had been summoned to one of the Brandybuck blacksmiths, to find Celebrimbor sitting outside, puffing on a pipe with a stack of papers in his lap.  Annamir was curled up at his feet as usual.  Elanor and Frodo had come along because they were visiting again, and both of them had been interesting in learning more about smithing.

They had both been a little awkward about Chalcedony’s new name and all that accompanied it, but they were trying their best.  Elanor had done Chalcedony’s hair for her in a pretty little plaited crown of flowers, and Frodo had shyly said he would certainly invite her to dance at the next festival, before going red and running away to hide in the kitchen.

“Here are some ideas—I had Diamond sketch them for me.”  Aunt Diamond, who came from a long line of smiths and had forcefully declared that she would give this up over her dead body when she married Uncle Pippin—not that anyone had really expected him to ask her to—was a particularly tall hobbit whose curly hair bounced as she waved at the tweens when they entered.

“Most of these would be made of gold,” Celebrimbor continued quietly, as she started to sort through the papers he had handed her.  “To match the leaves.”

“This one,” Chalcedony said slowly.  “Here—I think this is the best one.”

“Then come with me, and we’ll show you how to make it.”

A wide red-brimmed cap dotted with white, its hyphae entwining with the roots of a great tree.  

“Hold still,” Lilóteo told him.  “It’s not going to hurt that much, but it’ll be a pain if you move around.”

Nimruzimir started to nod, then stopped in some confusion.  “Y-Yes.  I understand.”

His lover smiled at him, bending down to kiss him briefly, those thick fingers brushing gently across his too-clean jaw.  “Thanks for agreeing to this,” he said gruffly.

Perhaps wisely, Nimruzimir did not respond, “Thank you for offering,” much as he might want to.  Lilóteo’s Druédain heritage sat uneasily on him, and Nimruzimir knew he already carried one scar for a friend who had betrayed him.  It was not Nimruzimir’s own legacy, but he understood it, nonetheless: that deep-seated urge to carve a mark upon one’s flesh to echo the mark that had been made upon one’s soul. Not logical, perhaps, but compelling.

The sharp scent of disinfectant suffused the air.  Lilóteo raised the needle, gleaming, to the light.  He bent over, humming quietly to himself, a tune that had become a hymn to the Black Temple but had not originated there.  Nimruzimir held his breath, then hissed as the needle pierced the lobe of his ear.

“Hold still,” Lilóteo warned him again.  “Give me a minute.  Almost got it…”

“Ow,” Nimruzimir protested.

“Nearly—ah, there we go.”  There was a distinct click, and he pulled away.  “Perfect.”  He held up a small mirror, in which Nimruzimir could see now hanging from his ear one of the two beads they had taken from the necklace.  The brown-purple glass lay nestled in its bed of gold—in this form, it no longer whispered woman but Lilóteo’s.

He found that he could no longer keep from smiling.  “Let me do yours n-now, p-please.”

Lilóteo kissed him again.

A cluster of frilled oyster mushrooms making pretty skirts around all the trees.  Estella Bolger yawned and leaned back against the mossy surface of the nearest tree.  It was a lazy summer day, the air heavy with pollen and with moisture.  Fatty and the rest of the boys were all fishing in the pond, but Estella found the day too soporific to even pretend to be doing something.  Every so often, she dropped her hands into a basket of strawberries, teased one out, and popped it into her mouth.

Birds chirruped softly, and the wind rustled the leaves of the trees gently above her.  A squirrel chattered to a jaybird, and a roly-poly made its trundling way across the moss near her head.  This little place was bursting with life of every kind.

Those mushrooms at head height looked delicious.  If she plucked a few, she could fry them up later with the fish, and then the boys couldn’t complain that she hadn’t done her part to provide for dinner.  Yawning again, she stretched up; her fingers brushed their frilled undersides.

A queer grey light seemed to descend across the landscape.  In its passage, the life withered and died.  The birds fled; the flowers wilted; the trees dried up.  Even the mushrooms retreated, pulling back from the little pond as if it were diseased.  A harsh silver sheen glittered beneath the water.

As Estella watched, snow covered the dead pond and melted away, again and again, faster and faster.  The seasons spun on, the light of the Sun harsh and blinding, the light of the moon faint and corpse-like.  Estella’s breath caught, her forehead cold with fearful sweat.

Then a thread of green caught her eye in the awful grey depths of the sterile pond, blooming out through the water like ink or like blood.  Tiny spores sucked at the quicksilver poison, while the snow fell and melted, fell and melted.  Pale tan oyster mushrooms marched back into place along the fallen trees.  Wiry grey-green grass pushed away the dead grey-brown.  A sapling sprouted from the rotten sludge that was all that remained of the great tree she was leaning against, and a one-eyed cat stalked along the bank in close pursuit of a little yellow bird.

Let me show you your daughter, the mushrooms whispered.  

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Chapter End Notes

Estella Bolger married Merry Brandybuck after the Lord of the Rings and they allegedly had at least one son, but things in after-histories are often recorded incorrectly or incompletely.

All of the descriptions of mushrooms in this section are of real different types. In order: Amanita jacksonii, psilocybe zapotecorum, fomitopsis pinicola, amanita muscaria, pleurotus ostreatus