Work Text:
Paradise Lost by John Milton
Book 8, Lines 493 to 495
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“Giver of all things faire, but fairest this
Of all thy gifts, nor enviest. I now see
Bone of my Bone, Flesh of my Flesh, my Self.”
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Almaren was under siege.
In the far North it began, a sickly cluster of trees along the borders of the thinned, dreary forest that framed the white arch of the inhospitable barren ice at the cap of Arda. In that region, Arda’s shores met the roiling black waves of the Encircling Seas, and their joining was as a flimsy veil of the outermost dark from earthly paradise. All manner of fell things could find their way from those barren regions and the living things there were often plagued when, borne from over the great sea, a foul mist rippled its surface into sharp peaks of obsidian and blew back the ephemeral veil keeping the darkness at bay. So it came then, that when the emerald green of healthy pine turned dark like seaweed drudged from the depths of the Ekkaia, as no surprise to those who observed, distantly, from the safety of Almaren.
‘No matter,’ thought the fair peoples of paradise. ‘The evil will be quenched, and flee before the holy light, as always it has done before.’
But it was not so. Strange tumors began to bubble from the thick, greying bark of the pines, the blight turning the sap as thick and black as tar, the needle-leaves thin and sharp like metal splinters. And the fair peoples of paradise mourned to behold such twisted horror, but they fretted not, for they would die soon- after all, Yavanna had sent a note of command to her creations to forfeit bough and leaf, and to return to the soil.
Yet again! The trees began to grow! As if insolent of their apoptosis, their roots penetrated the hard Northern soil and their highest branches reached the storm-clouds, their trunks growing thicker than the oldest of redwoods, their bark now like silver plaited armor! It was a cancer, the fair peoples began to realize, as the trees towered like Illuin and Ormal and spread down, down, down over the Northern forests, overtaking all else. They multiplied with no heed of the weather, no heed for the other green things that grew, healthy and strong, nor of the axes that hewed them in sudden haste. For every trunk felled four more sprang in its place, twisting and winding around each other in a knot of living contempt. And never did they seem to die when left unhewn: the oldest and most contorted were as towers in the distance, mocking Manwë’s lofty halls with pillars of their own.
Their unstoppable growth was not blind. Intelligent, almost, the people of Almaren knew with some dread, that it was guided by some Power within. A malice drove it, merciless and unyielding, as if for revenge on all the years it was driven back over the Ekkaia and the dark beyond. Aulë leeched the nutrients from the soil, Yavanna sent moulds to cripple their roots, Ulmo and Manwë stopped their rains. It mattered not. Still they stood, immortal, mocking the might of the Valar. Something evil lurked there, something with more power than the will of all the peoples of paradise combined.
The Ainur looked on with growing weariness as ever the pines drew further and further South, creeping ever towards Almaren. It loomed in the back of their minds unbidden, like an intrusion of dark thoughts upon their bliss. The contorted trees threatened them, swallowing their gardens and palaces and fields no matter the offense. The wise gathered together. There was only one thing to do.
A wall they raised, tall and white, wrought of several feet of granite and enveloped with iron bars twisted into sigils of protection and wards from evil. And while the walls kept the tangled woods out of the light and joy of Almaren, a seed had already been planted in their minds, an uneasy fear, as if they were watched night and day, waiting. . .
Whispers traveled from Ainu to Ainu. They knew who it was, not only by the grief of their King, but by the might of the siege. Secretly they cursed Him, cursed Him who they would not name, not even in the vehemence of their growing hatred. It was above Him, to be named, He who was banished from their ranks, He who was doomed to exile and isolation for all eternity, He who was sin.
Ever the needles hissed against the walls, their roots creeping under the soil slowly, into the very soil of paradise. And while many Ainur learned hate secretly in their minds, hate of the trees and of the being that commanded them, there ever was one in their league who learned not hate, but an overwhelming obsession.
Mairon was walking one day in the outer circle of Almaren, right along the walls. Secretly he spent much of his free time there, as much as he was able, pressing his ear up against the thick stone walls and straining his ears, listening intently for every vibration and tremor of the stone. He knew something was wrong with him to be fascinated by the pine trees so, to be taken breathless in a good way by the heights and deeps that they reached. He watched the forest from afar on the mountaintops as it had spread, had catalogued its progression daily. He told no one, not even Aulë, but he had discovered a pattern in its growth, had realized, with a gasp of wonder that sparkled his eyes- he realized that it mimicked all other life, brilliantly and subtly, an endlessly repeating fractal. It was not random and blind in malice, as all the others thought.
It was as this: the trees would spread in colonies, mere acres in length, in the shape of a hexagon. Like blooming snowflakes they would grow until it filled in all the sides much like the micro-animals Mairon had observed would grow on a dish of sugar, mineral salt, and nitrogen. But while the micro-animals Mairon observed would regulate their growth, the trees seemed to crowd together, growing inches apart, commingling and morphing until all the area of the invisible boundary of their hexagon-growth would fill and then. . . then the growth would stop.
A week would pass. Then, on one of the sides, the cycle would continue again. Mairon could not look away, could not stop thinking of the beauty of its replication, wondered at how Aulë and Yavanna could have missed such a thing. Yet he felt no fear. Why should he? The forest- though the trees crowded unusually- followed nature. It was just cancerous: mutated by some theme of radiation. Even as it engulfed the whole of Almaren, breaking on the wall and growing around it, swallowing the white city whole in a green wave as of the far deeps of the ocean, Mairon felt no fear.
He really could not help himself. But what crime was he committing? Was it a sin to walk along the borders of paradise, to study it from afar? He shuddered, running his hands lightly along the smooth surface of the wall and letting his fingers graze against the iron that encapsulated it (like a prison, he thought). What would it be like to be swallowed whole by the forest, to have the living pillars arch around you as you walked? What was His purpose? What power did He have within Him, to make the the trees grow so vigorously? So it was that, Mairon, lost in his own thoughts, came upon it.
That fateful fault- was it his curiosity, or that gaping crack in the smooth, seamless surface of the wall? The suddenness in which he came upon it was jarring, and the Maia, looking about him suddenly, realized that no longer could he hear the gentle patter of water in fountains, nor the birds in the gardens. He was alone in a silent back-alley which he had never before wondered, encapsulated in a pocket in the wall so that he was enclosed by it on three sides, long and narrow, no wider than he himself. He trembled, looking back at the light from Almaren. Why had such a thing been made? He had seen a map of Almaren, and never was there an indication that the walls formed anything but an unbroken ring.
His pulse thudded in his neck as he looked instead towards the end of the alley he had wondered down, and the gap in the wall which he had so suddenly discovered. Needles seemed to prick his flesh in a cacophony of sensation, tingling his nerves with eager caution, his muscles quivering with adrenaline. The mossy, burrowing roots of pine trees broke through the soil, curling around the base of the walls in gnarled tendrils. The probing branches, lichen-bearded, gripped the stone further up the granite walls, rending it apart and splitting the iron bars that caged it. From the broken wall, not more than a slit, there gaped a black dark, an unlight, and a thick wind heavy with the scent of wet vegetation, sweet rot, and ozone.
What had made it, he wondered in delight. What had rent the thick stone and tore through the enchantment of the Valar? His heart beat wildly in his ears and he flushed with sudden doom. He took a single step forward, his step terribly loud. The shadows under the twisted eaves seemed to shift and elude him, and his eyes followed them with some trouble. But there was no mistaking it.
He took another step, closer to the black. To the figure he had glimpsed from under the branches. The wind died down and the air stilled, hot and humid. He took another step. Nothing could stop him. Like honey his blood felt in his veins, thick and stagnant, waiting only for a command to obey his sudden compulsion to flee. Paralyzed he stood, enraptured by the blackness framed by the white walls.
His skin pricked. “Run!” his Fëa screamed, “Run and never look back!” It wrenched on his soul, his heart, his mind, violent and insistent. Were the airs permeated with some chemical, drugging him? His logical thoughts stopped, overridden by another, loud, impossible instinct. “Run! Runrunrunrunrunrunrunrun!”
Mairon succumbed. Fear gripped him, so he ran as a deer hearing the coming of hunting hounds. He ran from the terrible and sudden fear. Mind wild and limbs numb with panic he saw naught but a blur past him. Only he felt his heart throbbing in his neck, his wrists, his chest. Only he heard his ribs, heaving with heavy breath. Only felt cold and clammy with fear. Only felt a deep well of profound confusion. Confusion!- for the fear did not come from the hole in the wall.
It came instead from paradise.
So it was he ran through the forest, far as he could from the white walls and the fair people therein. Deeper and deeper into the forest he ran to rival Nessa- and he ran, towards the North, towards the Source. Faintly he could hear the pines humming around him as he sprinted past, a blur of crimson in deep grey-green. ‘It is the radiation,’ he thought, frantically, ‘The air crackles with it.’ Deeper still he ran, his legs moving at a will of their own, weaving through the thickened, clustered trunks and the uneven stones of crumpled ruins, pushed up in hillocks by the swollen roots of the great bristling trees. The further he went, the darker it became, yet Mairon still ran, fear driving him as far he could from the city. The hum grew to static, then to the purring of deep thunder, sparking and sending his hair on end.
Just as he felt he could no longer go on, his foot caught on a root under the detritus of the forest-carpet, and he fell and rolled harshly on the ground.
He shuddered violently and got up, tense and wild. But all the fear had left him, and his rush faded to an exhausted calm. He was now swallowed by complete darkness, a void in which the malformed shape of branches and roots crowded his vision. There was no telling which way led out of the forest, as the shapes and trunks seemed to shift and morph into new positions. Shouldn't he feel fear again, now that he was lost? He felt instead. . . utterly calm, infused with peace. Like his soul was soaked with an unbroken tranquility he never before experienced. He realized then, that he had surrendered long ago the the enchantment of the forest.
Steady and resolved, he continued in any which way the trees would let him. Were they guiding him? It seemed so, for even as he thought this the trees broke, and the darkness gave way to shadows of soft charcoal and hues of greyed blues and greens. He was in the midst of a small circle of trees around a pond. Like crystal it seemed to Mairon, and a haven to his weariness, for now he stumbled and was impossibly tired from his sprint and sudden fear. The water seemed more beautiful and more perilous than any of Ulmo’s pools, and though it was tiny in circumference, he felt he knew that it was impossibly deep, like a well into the very centre of Arda.
He approached the bank. For once his spinning thoughts were silenced, and he let the serenity of his mood drive him. The beach was made up of thin patches of long grass and large fruiting mushrooms. He drew nearer, to the very brink. A small black patch of earth in a thatch of olive green was hidden amongst the grasses. It appeared as if someone had sat there many a time, gazing into the pond. Mairon walked to it with a gravity he did not understand but which he did not resist. A breeze came over the water, carrying with it scents of oblivion from the perfumed the mists that flirted with the mirrored surface of the pond.
He sat.
The hum of the forest grew around him again, ascending louder and louder, thin and high like a wail and low and rough like a growl. He could not stop himself, stop himself from laying upon that sweetly rotting bed, from peering over the brink of the abyss. As he looked at the surface, its deep sable broke to grey and then to reflections of gold. Mairon gasped in wonder: lo! There was a face there! In the water! Carved of gold it seemed, and fair it shimmered, its features were eerily symmetrical, like the statues he carved in Almaren. Its eyes of purest aurum were wide, fringed with pale lashes, its mouth of dusty-rose red parted in delight and surprise. Who was it that looked back at him, directly in the eyes? Who was it in the water who mimicked his every movement?
Could it be his very Self, staring out from the deeps?
For ages he lay there, or ages it felt since he lay down on the crushed grasses and peered into the water. Since he stared into the eyes that were his eyes. Since he recognized his own Self. The caps of the mushrooms bloomed around him, forming rings of white. Ivy grew over his legs and shoulders and the grass bent towards the glow of his gentle, but pervading light. His clothes, once bearing the mark of Aulë, became threadbare and faded, eaten away by moths which traveled far to gather in the beams of soft gold. He lay there, as a fallen far, frozen in time as all the others wheeled above him and the canopy of thick pines, as the earth turned itself around for another century.
Mairon felt Him then, before He saw Him. The piercing gaze of His eyes went through flesh and glimpsed instead at the spirit. It was, he knew, the shifting shadow from long ago when first he fled into the forest, and he had not forgotten Him. Roots circled Mairon’s ankles as the figure followed the rim of the pond, watching, growling low like the purring static that hummed under the trees. The net of ivy over the Maia retreated so that he was suddenly left, exposed and vulnerable to the gaze of the Source. In the edge of his consciousness for a while the Dark Vala flitted, intense and brooding but impossibly curious. Mairon shuddered- His gaze was a pressure around his body, moulding itself about his angles and curves. But not unwelcome.
Mairon giggled, his voice light and piercing. He knew who he was now, and he could look away from the pool without losing his Self.
The figure was standing now at his feet, tense and uncertain at the sound of Mairon’s little laugh. A deep darkness was around Him, so deep that Mairon’s eyes could not fathom what it was they saw and confused, felt that it was a tear in the very fabric of space. ‘Nothingness. Nothingness that aches to be filled,’ he thought to himself. He smiled kindly, and the figure again tensed and growled.
He was apart of that darkness, inseparable, His form drawn from the very pool of ink He was submerged in. Large and looming, like storm-clouds, Mairon could sense that His form was not wholly one of the Children. Pale skin flushed with the purples and blues of extreme cold could be seen starkly from the shadows, hands long and thin with six fingers per hand and claws caked with mud and blood and ash. Tattoos of giant snake-like things coiled about His arms and shifted along His flesh, alive with some enchantment: their jaws snapped and unhinged to show fangs. Bones hung from the rags He wore and the scraps of pelts, rattling as He shifted unnaturally. His hair fell, long and limp, glistening with gore and dirt. His feet were bare and ice clung to His ankles, frost falling in His step.
Everything about Him was feral and desperate and unbearably cold. As if He had survived through terrible journeys and countless trials of sorrow and madness. His eyes, most of all, deeper than the deepest night, deeper than even Mairon felt the pool before him, bore into him and swirled like a tempest, dripping like oil over his unclad body. He quivered like a leaf ready to fall from a branch and arched his back at that gaze.
But he was not afraid. No. He was aroused.
He spoke. His voice was unbearable and Mairon whimpered. Low and raspy, long unused save in feral growls it sounded like gravel and curdled blood. And yet. . . soft it was, like many whispers of the wind in grass, a mere murmur.
“Lone Maia,” it said, ”Thou art far from thine Master’s halls.”
‘Predatory,’ Mairon thought, savoring the tone. But he guessed that it was not from the Vala's intent- not wholly, at least. The voice simply did not know how to be gentle, and was afraid of failing to be. Mairon did not reply. He couldn’t: the voice made him pulse with each of his heartbeats, made him speechless as he imbibed each compression of sound in the air, that which graced his body.
The man continued.
“Yea, hath the Valar said ye shall not stray from their gardens?” He asked, pacing around his reclining form, slowly, marveling at the Maia laying there. His step was teasing.
Mairon swallowed, his own voice responding automatically, as it were, but with a consideration for the being before him. The Darkness stopped pacing when he smiled, His eyes black holes in His face, terribly beautiful.
“The Valar hath said to me,” began Mairon, “‘Ye shall not stray, neither shall ye speak of that which dwells outside these walls, lest ye die.’”
“Ye shall not surely die,” the man said in a hoarse whisper. Already His voice was clearing more and more. He drew closer. The roots about Mairon’s ankles curled around his calves and the humming was now loud. Mairon clutched the grasses at his sides to keep from reaching out too quickly as the shadows drew near to the light. The man towered over him like the trees, impossibly tall and alarmingly vulnerable- for Mairon saw through Him easily. Had not he studied His Theme reverently from afar?
“The Valar know that in the day ye stray then your eyes shall be opened,” He spat with venom, “And ye shall be as the Valar, knowing good and evil.”
Mairon trembled with the weight of His gaze, with His full attention bent upon him. He could bear it no longer, and brazen, he reached out. The man, surprised and still with uncertainty let Mairon, fearless, take His cold hand, pale and dirty, and He, the Power which resisted the strength of all the Valar combined, was undone by innocence, by that golden gaze which lacked any judgement or contempt, hatred or revulsion. And the Maia did not let go, even as His claws accidentally cut into his flesh, not even as the blood dewed the blades of the grass that made his bed. Nay- the Maia giggled again, light and echoing. The roots that had kept his ankles down yielded, and he, unashamed, pulled the Dark Vala towards the bed of grass that he had lain on for centuries.
“Ye have not looked into the water.” It was a statement, phrased as a question, and the Darkness bit His lip, and it too, bled, and the droplets ran down the pale flesh of His chin. He shook His head. Long He had lain there, in that very spot, but never could He find the courage to look upon His Self.
“Ye believe that your Self is ugly,” Mairon said, softly, “That the waters will indeed reveal a thing not worthy of the Secret Fire. Ye despair, and think indeed that thou art unworthy. . .”
He growled, deep and drawing from the shadows of His Fëa, but Mairon would not let Him pull away. As intense as the shadows first seemed to Mairon’s eyes, so too were the beams of golden light to the Darkness.
“Do not let those white walls fool ye. It is they who lock paradise out. Lie with me, and ye will see.”
Mairon pulled Him, and He resisted, but could not for long. He fell at the Maia’s side, and the warmth and light from his flesh mingled with the coolness from the dark so that they both shuddered. Their bodies moved carefully, cautiously together, like two roots tangling over one another so that Mairon was couched in the black vastness of His shadows and so His hair fell as a curtain of silk across his shoulders as He peered over the brim of the pool. At the points of their contact, little lights erupted and pulsed, and they fell together as celestial bodies crash in space. The Vala’s arms, like the coiling snakes that were pictured on them, wrapped around his smaller form, and His claws stuck like thorns into his sides, the blood beading from their points washed away as suddenly as they appeared- washed by His tears. Mairon knew He didn’t do it on purpose, that it pained Him to harm him. But he only sighed and slipped his fingers over the claws and pricked himself with them, to show Him that it was alright.
Together they peered down into the deeps, and Mairon could see his Self there, and could see the Darkness also looking into the water to see His Self too. His body trembled around Mairon’s and he stifled a moan. And again, ages passed, and the roots and ivy grew on them both so that they appeared from afar as if in a cocoon of living matter, awaiting the maturity of their metamorphosis. The Darkness stopped trembling eventually as He looked down into His own fathomless eyes and found His Self.
Then they looked at each other and Mairon smiled, turning so that no longer did they look at each other in their reflections, but as they were in the flesh. The roots shielded them, so that they were vulnerable to only each other, and the moths left their bodies in a fluttering swarm of grey-brown. The rags the Vala had worn- and even the bones that had hung from His rotting pelts- had turned to naught but dust. Cold and pale He lay like fallen snow, just as bare as Mairon had been when they spoke ages ago. Now He was proud and unashamed. Mairon giggled again.
The Maia opened himself to be received, enfolding his light and warmth so that the Vala may spread His thought within his Fëa and his flesh. His golden light bloomed like the unstoppable growth of the trees- but still following a subtle and natural pattern as all else, a fractal that was endlessly repeating. The humming stopped and the trees stilled.
Mairon buried his face in His neck when he parted his legs and was filled, accepting Him and all that He could give: His harshness and His gentleness. He climbed over His body like the ivy had done, arching and writhing under His dark gaze. Blissfully they sunk deep into the waters of each the other’s eyes, the waves of each other’s thoughts beating upon the shores of their conjoined spirits, with their wed bodies. Nothing else mattered.
For they were as one Flesh, one Heart, one Soul.