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Once upon a time there was a smith living alone in a dark forest, and while he was at peace on his own, at times he yearned for the companionship of another.
The name of this smith was Eöl, and he wrought twin blades of star-metal. For his quiet life he paid the price of one of these precious swords to the King of the Forest, a fey who had visited the uttermost west and returned to wed a goddess of the night. The people of the forest, distant kin to Eöl, loved and feared the monarchs and their wild daughter, and to be free of their rule Eöl submitted his finest work to the king.
Now after centuries of solitude, a woman clad only in white walked within the wood. She shone from within, glowing with the same light possessed by the King of the Forest, and though she was beautiful Eöl hid from her, for she was fey and fearsome. Her white raiment was stained with blood and she carried a blade with her of a making which Eöl had never before seen. She was one of the intruders from the west, come hither in recent years, come to take the lands of those who dwelt here afore, and Eöl knew better than to trust her.
And yet he could not leave her to wander into foul groves, and he watched her from the trees as she trod his hidden paths. For days this dance was cautious, slow, but the fey woman was wise. She knew she was being watched, and she bade Eöl come forth and show himself.
Eöl was no fool, and emerged from the darkness to greet the woman in white. He knew the ways of the fey, and knew that to turn her from his door would be to lay a curse upon himself, so he offered her his hospitality for the night.
The woman named herself Írissë, in the tongue of west, but in his tongue she was called Aredhel Ar-Feiniel, the white lady of her noble people. For three days and three nights Aredhel slept, recovering from her long wandering, and on the fourth she rose to wash her clothes.
Eöl was enchanted by her beauty, and against his better judgement he followed her as she stripped. The light of her being was brighter against the dark current of the river, and he found himself unable to look away.
Aredhel felt his gaze upon her, for perhaps she had led him hither, and she called him forth to see her in fullest glory. He hesitated, for to entangle oneself with fey courtship led only to death and danger, but she was gentle and kind, and he softened as she revealed herself to him.
Now it was the way of the fey to wed the one with whom they united their bodies, and they became man and wife. In her own way Aredhel was enchanted by him, his craft and his home, his life of quiet and solitude, shared now with her. Let us not say their marriage was wholly unhappy, though it was doomed from the start, for in this beginning-time there was joy in discovery, in curiosity, in a shared existence.
But the fey are restless folk, and Aredhel grew anxious as the years passed. Even the birth of a child could not keep her grounded, and she took to wandering the forest alone, and Eöl feared she would leave him. The thought was dreadful, and he held his son close, unwilling to let him go: for Aredhel loved the child, calling him Lómion in her tongue, and he knew she would not depart without him.
Aredhel spake often of the wonders of a white city, hidden in the mountains, where her people dwelt. To Eöl this city seemed strange and terrible, a realm of fey folk and their twisted laws, and he could not understand his wife's yearning to return when she was free of such constraints in their dark little wood. He half-believed the stories she told of this Gondolin, mostly to the child Lómion, were simply stories, of a mythical land that did not in truth exist.
But the light that filled the eyes of his son, whom at last Eöl gave the name Maeglin, shone like the light of the west, and to see that foreign gleam in a face so like his own filled Eöl with terror. He had learned some spells from his wife and wove them around his home, so that none may leave without his permission: he would not have his happiness taken from him.
Now Eöl would at times leave to treat with the dwarvish folk, with whom he exchanged goods and crafts. He departed on one such journey, intending to return in a sennight, but the deal went swifter than expected and he turned back early with gifts for his family—only to find his home abandoned, the spells smudged, Aredhel and Maeglin vanished.
He knew at once whither they fled, and set off after them toward Gondolin. A kinsman of his wife waylaid him on his journey, but in the end directed him toward the mountains, and Eöl arrived at the gates of the fey kingdom only to be seized by guards in shining armor and dragged before their king.
Now this king was Turgon the Wise, brother of Aredhel, and he looked unkindly upon the dark elf who kidnapped his sister. Eöl plead for his mercy, but the king commanded he remain in the city forevermore, lest the secret of its location be leaked to forces darker even than Eöl himself.
Eöl cried for the aid of his wife, but she turned her face from him. Her heart had changed as fey hearts were wont to do, and now surrounded again by her own kind she saw no more wonder him.
In this Eöl saw the truth: she had taken their son to this place, to make him one of them, to pull the light from his eyes and wrap it around him and turn him bright and fearsome as they. They would corrupt the boy in full, and he would be no more Maeglin the son of Eöl, but Lómion the son of Aredhel.
He begged Maeglin to come to him, to extend his love to his father, to break the enchantment his mother had placed upon him. Maeglin did nothing, so caught up in the wonder of the city that he had no thought for the father who raised him.
Now Eöl had not come forth unprepared; he knew that fey were wily and ruthless, but he knew also they were poisoned by iron. He had seen this himself as his wife refused to cook with iron tools, forcing him to do such work, and so he brought an iron-tipped spear with him.
He drew the spear and cast it before him, aiming for the guards who gripped his son in their clutches, but his aim was untrue. In horror he realized that Maeglin, yet-enspelled, would be slain—but Aredhel leapt before the child, taking the blow in his stead.
Too late Eöl realized that perhaps these creatures were not so unlike him: for though the wound to his wife was deadly, the guards had no trouble removing the spear and pointing it in Eöl's own direction. Eöl cried out, demanding to know if these wise folk from the west were fey or elf, but they heeded not his plea for understanding.
Aredhel perished, and Maeglin turned from him in full, and at last Eöl was once again truly alone. Her kin had no more mercy for him, and Eöl knew they would kill him, but as they cast him from the highest peak he spake one last time to his beloved son: "Here you shall fail of all your hopes, and here may you yet die the same death as I!"
Thus ended the terrible adventure of Eöl the smith, and thus began the hardening of the heart of Maeglin.
In after days this tale was spun, and told by those fey who slew the lonely smith, and pity was not given even to Maeglin. But most treacherous of all was the half-truth of Eöl's last words: for they were no curse, no threat, but a warning: Maeglin was of the same elvish blood as his father, and no fey mother could save him from the terrible laws of the fey.