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Eärendil’s Tale  by Bodkin

Eärendil’s Tale

 

Elrond stood motionless, filled with the kind of stillness that requests the world to go away, to turn in its path and abandon the collision towards which it is heading.  Had he been several ages younger, as he had been then, he would have closed his eyes and pretended nothing was happening.  But, if there was one thing he had learned over the centuries, it was that wishing something away was invariably ineffective.

The mist-grey eyes before him glanced anxiously sideways, trying to decide on Elrond’s reaction, but finding it impossible to read the face of the Lord of Imladris, long the bearer of Vilya and one of Arda’s last great Elf Lords.

‘There was nothing else I could do,’ he said apologetically, attempting to bridge a gulf of silence as deep and wide as the Sundering Seas.

Elrond’s mind whirled.  Responses cried into the dark of a thousand nights, rejection of who he was and from whom he had come, rage at a division that had robbed him of his innocence, before he was old enough to realise what innocence was, fought against the calm rationale of a warrior, a healer, a lord of his people.   Experience became history, he thought, and with the space of many centuries he could understand the truth of what he heard.

He spread his hands.  ‘It could not be helped,’ he agreed courteously.

His adar winced.  In some ways it would hurt less to be challenged, to have his son demand to know why the needs of Arda outweighed his love for his children, how he could have brought himself to abandon them to be pawns of Kinslayers, orphans in the home of a High King himself orphaned, to grow up in other people’s houses in the absence of their family, learning to be ashamed of their origins.   Eärendil’s head drooped and he traced a pattern on the gravel path with his toe.

Unexpectedly, Elrond’s lips twitched.  It seemed – odd, to say the least, to see his sons so plainly in the adar he knew by name only.   But then, he thought, the Mariner was barely older than he was himself, and, for most of his long years, he had been bound to the task of piloting Vingilot through the night sky, cut off from both elves and men.  He was aware of a twinge of fellow-feeling.  Was not the fate of all of greater import than the care of two?  And had not he abandoned his own children – grown, it was true, but still wanting his presence and his love – in his need to assuage the pain of Vilya’s loss of power?   It could not be as it should have been – he no longer needed an adar, and had not in more than an age, since he had lost the adar of his heart at Dagorlad, but that was no reason why he could not develop a friendship with Eärendil. 

‘I have long anticipated this reunion,’ Elrond continued.  Well, he thought, there was no need to add that his expectation of meeting his parents had been accompanied by a slightly hollow feeling. 

Eärendil raised his face to meet his son’s gaze head on and Elrond was shaken to see the despair in his eyes.  ‘I had no intention of deserting either Arda or my family,’ he said helplessly.  ‘Had I been offered a choice similar to Lúthien’s,’ he added, ‘to return for a man’s span of life and thence to journey beyond the circles of the world – I would have chosen to sail back to my home shores to see my sons grow.’  He spread his hands before him. ‘But no such choice was given me.’ 

They were beginning to attract attention as they stood eye to eye.  Taking his adar’s arm, Elrond directed him to stroll slowly along the Long Walk towards a distant gazebo.  ‘Legend has it,’ he said, ‘that Elwing – that my naneth chose that you should both be judged among the Firstborn.’

‘True enough,’ his adar agreed.  ‘But the Valar had made it plain that there would be no return voyage, whatever the decision.  And, if never again could I go home, it did not matter to me whether I was considered elf or man – I was happy to abide with whichever kindred made your naneth happy.  And Elwing is elf-kind,’ he said softly, ‘in her heart, as I never was.’

‘Like Elros,’ Elrond told him, the image of his brother’s bright spirit burning in his memory, his throat tight with remembered grief.

Their long robes dragged slightly along the grasses that leaned over the path.  The heavy silk shushed as they walked, echoing the remembered sounds of gentle waves lapping on a pebbled shore.

‘I will never know him.’  There was a desolation in his adar’s voice that offered Elrond an unexpected comfort.  He, at least, had known his twin, if not for long, and he had grown to believe that Elros’s decision had been right for him.  And from the long line of his brother’s descendants had come Estel, returned now to the dignities of his ancestors at the beginning of a new age of hope.

Elrond drew a deep breath.  The air was stronger here, he registered again, the light brighter and the song straightforward and joyous.  A song-thrush warbled a rill of pure notes.  It seemed unjust, he thought.  Had Arda been marred before it even began by the malice of Morgoth?  The contrast should make Aman seem unadulterated bliss – but, strangely, he had seen doubt even in the eyes of his wife’s naneth.  The passage of three ages spent standing up against evil had given those seeking asylum in the Blessed Realm a sense of kinship that they could not explain to those whose strength of character had not been so tested.  They were untempered steel, he thought, so many of these elves of Valinor, bright and beautifully decorated, but untried.  Yet Eärendil was not among them.  He had sacrificed his all to seek help in Arda’s need – and, even then, he had not been granted rest and the praise of his kin, but served to bring hope to those who looked up to the night sky.  It was time to move beyond his long past insecurities and grant his parents the son they had never had.

‘Naneth did not come with you?’ he asked, clearing his throat.

‘She would never have chosen to leave you,’ Eärendil said without answering.  ‘She knew my reason for voyaging so far afield, but her feeling was always that you do not have young ones and abandon them.’  He turned and met his son’s eyes earnestly.  ‘She made her decision only to save you,’ he said with conviction.  ‘Had she and the Silmaril remained, the slaughter would never have ceased.  By carrying it beyond the reach of the Fëanorionnath, she removed their reason for continuing their campaign.’

Elrond thought briefly of his and Elros’s terror as the sons of Feanor wrenched them from those who had cared for them and borne them off into a captivity that had remoulded them.   They had lived, he reminded himself; lived when so many had not, and, in time, they had even come to care for their captors as the only certainties in a world of change.  He felt a wrench when he realised that, after all this time, he still cared more for Maglor than for the adar before him.

‘If you cannot bring yourself to forgive me,’ Eärendil said starkly, taking his son’s silence as rejection, ‘have it in your heart to forgive Elwing.’

‘I have forgiven you both ages since,’ Elrond returned simply, ‘if forgiveness is needed.’

Eärendil’s smile was tinged with disbelief, as if he had come to doubt that anything was that simple.

‘Can you stay long?’ his son asked.  ‘I would like to spend some time learning to know more of you.’

‘Not long,’ the Mariner returned.  ‘Elwing is too anxious to learn whether you wish to know us for me to leave her waiting alone for news.’

‘And -?’ Elrond gestured at the expanse of sky.

‘Ah.’  Eärendil laughed briefly. ‘I am coming to master the skill of being in two places at once.  With the Silmaril’s help I can divide my attentions between my task and other things – else, neither Elwing nor I would ever be able to leave the Doors of Night.’

‘I saw you,’ Elrond said abruptly.  ‘We both did.  The only time I can recall – high in the sky above the battle, bright with the light of the Silmaril as you challenged Ancalagon.’  His voice softened with wonder.  ‘The dragons came upon us, flame and steel, freed from the deepest pits of Angband.  The beat of their wings and the noise of their screams dulled the sounds of battle and the sight of them filling the sky made even the bravest of the warriors falter.  And you came out of the West, blazing with white flame, the host of Eagles accompanying you – and the struggle started again.’

‘The flame drew the dragons,’ Eärendil said almost inaudibly.  ‘It burnt them – I could see the pain it caused them – and it drove them wild, but they were unable to resist its lure.’  He closed his eyes, although whether he wanted to close out the memory or sharpen it, he was not sure.  ‘Ancalagon bugled a call to the others to keep away – I was his and he would brook no opposition, but although they would not defy him, they could not entirely bring themselves to turn their attention away.  The Lords of the Sky seized their chance and Thorondor led the attack.  There were enough Eagles for them to work against the worms in concert – once their eyes had been pecked out they made easy victims of the Great Birds, and any that still lived when they fell from the sky did not long survive on the ground.

‘I had little time to watch the battle,’ he admitted wryly.  ‘Ancalagon was double the size of Vingilot – bigger, perhaps – and he was long and supple and very cunning.  He would not place himself in the way of my arrows – and I really did not want him near enough to be within reach of my sword.’  He paused a while as they walked between the green hedges overlooked by the silvery-leaved birches.  ‘He was hot, too.  Even at a distance the breeze bore from him the stifling sulphurous heat of a fire-mountain.  I was afraid that, if he approached too close, Vingilot would simply burst into flames.  I knew far less then,’ he commented, ‘about the power brought by the Silmaril.’

Elrond looked at his adar.  ‘How did you fell him?’ he asked simply.  ‘I know that you did, for I saw it happen.’

‘You were too young to be there,’ Eärendil said disapprovingly.  ‘Battle is no place for elflings.’

His son smiled.  ‘We were old enough,’ he disagreed.  ‘And it was necessary.’

His adar sighed.  ‘I suppose so,’ he conceded.  ‘You were older, I think, than I was when we faced the dangers of the voyage westwards across the sea.  But what confronted you then was not what we hoped for when we were granted aid.’

‘It never is,’ Elrond told him with weary resignation.  ‘Every apple contains a worm, it would seem.’

‘I was terrified,’ Eärendil admitted. ‘They never mention in the tales, do they, that heroism is in facing peril and death despite your fears.  That Fingolfin rode out not with brainless boldness, but with a desperate courage against an enemy he knew would defeat him.  That Finrod left the caves of Nargothrond in the full knowledge that he was unlikely to survive and died selflessly in the dungeons of Tol-in-Gaurhoth to shield Beren.’  He fell silent for a moment before drawing a deep breath.  ‘I had no idea how I was supposed to deal with the worm,’ he said.  ‘I tried to hold his interest, but stay just beyond his reach – a tactic that would clearly not work indefinitely.  He grew bolder as he became convinced that I was playing mouse to his cat -.’

‘It was like a dance in the sky,’ Elrond interrupted.  ‘You approached and feinted and moved closer to each other and away.  His fire seared the air only to be forced back by the brilliance of the Silmaril.  He flinched and wheeled away as the jewel flashed.’

‘It took me some time to realise that there were more suitable weapons than blades,’ Eärendil nodded.  ‘And that, if I were to have a chance of defeating him, it would come through his lust for the Silmaril.  It drew him.  Drew him as it did the sons of Fëanor,’ he added softly, ‘to his destruction as to theirs.  He attacked in the end,’ he remarked, ‘unable to resist it any longer – and it proved simpler than I could have believed.  As he came to take off my head, and the Silmaril with it, I simply held up my blade and allowed the jewel’s fire to gather round its length.  The smell of burning as it pierced the worm’s brain was enough to sicken even one hardened to the pits of Morgoth, but Ancalagon stiffened and slid back as his wings stopped beating. He simply slipped from my sword and plummeted.’

‘He fell like a nightmare from the sky,’ Elrond said, ‘wings spread wide and his tail lashing as he struck the towers of Thangorodrim.  They crumbled beneath his weight as though they were of no more solidity than an elfling’s bricks and the shaking rocked the ground where we stood.  We knew then,’ he told his adar, ‘that Morgoth was defeated.  It took some time before he was dragged from his pits, but we regained our determination to fight him to the end.’

‘I wish I could have stayed,’ Eärendil admitted, ‘long enough, at least, to see Morgoth chained, but I was not permitted to set foot on the mortal lands – and Ancalagon’s death signalled the end of my time.’

Elrond turned to look at his adar.  ‘We were proud of you, Elros and I,’ he said with clear sincerity.  ‘We gloried in our memories of your fight with the dragon and stored what people said of you.  No-one else had an adar like you.’

‘If your adar cannot be with you,’ Eärendil said ironically, ‘at least you can boast of his peculiarities.  Consorting with the Valar, fighting dragons in a flying ship, sailing the sky as a star.  Not to mention a naneth who can put on feathers and fly.’

‘We are a very special family,’ Elrond grinned.  ‘Disregard us at your peril.’

Eärendil stared at him before tentatively returning his smile.  ‘Perhaps,’ he agreed. 

‘I would like to learn more about your adventures.  You must have seen many things that others have not.’

The Mariner’s smile widened.  ‘That is probably true.  And after all,’ he said, and his voice rang with a cautious hopefulness, ‘I do owe you several ages-worth of bedtime stories.’

 





        

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