Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Out of the north a pale shape came on long white wings, and all around a host of great white gulls, screaming and laughing as gulls always do. The Elves of Avallonë looked up and pointed and called to each other: see where she comes!

Elwing circled the island of Tol Eressëa in albatross-shape for the pure joy of flight. The Sundering Sea shone bright in the light of the westering Sun. Far below, a lone grey ship skimmed over the water, and the golden blaze of sunset seemed to lay out a straight western road before it.

White spray flew up before the lovely prow of the ship, the last ship, coming home from Middle-earth. The wind billowed in its white sails. White sea-birds dipped in and out of the water around it, calling one to another. A bold gull swooped and snatched half a biscuit out of the hands of an elderly Hobbit seated on a coil of rope in the stern. He shouted in disapproval. His nephew, seated beside him, started to laugh.

There was no quay and no jetty below the lighthouse of Avallonë. On the isle's western shore the Elves had built such things. But no one would have dreamed of robbing any new arrival of the first gift of the West: leaping down from your ship into the bright shallows, and feeling the sand between your toes as the waves broke around your knees, and knowing you had come at last to Eldamar, the Elvenhome. A crowd was gathering on the beach. Crowds always gathered, but this crowd was bigger than usual. After all, this ship was the last.

Elwing, albatross, circled once more over their heads and then descended. She took her own shape back to herself as she fell, and as her bare feet touched the sand they were a woman's pale feet and not a sea-bird's webbed toes. A respectful space opened up around her. Once only had the Elves of the West dared to come crowding around Elwing to speak to her and ask her questions; and that had been in Alqualondë, and those Elves had been Teleri, her own people, though long sundered from their Sindarin kin. The Elves of Avallonë were of many kindreds, but most of this crowd were Noldor. The Noldor had become, everyone agreed, remarkably superstitious in Middle-earth.

Elwing did not mind it. She was watching the ship come. It was a beautiful ship, well-oared and trim, and the pale sweep of its lovely lines was the pale sweep of the trees that had gone into its making. Elwing, a shipwright's wife, looked it over and thought: ah, Círdan, you got even better!

Her eyes were sharp and far-seeing, even for an Elf, for she could never quite bring herself to let go of the vision of a sea-hawk, that saw silver fish catch the light beneath the waves. She could see Círdan at the helm, bearded now—it was a very ancient Elf indeed who wore a beard—and solemn, and glad. How long her husband's friend had waited for this day! Yet Elwing thought he also looked sorrowful, and she understood it. This was his first great voyage, and his last. It was almost at an end. He would never again need to cross any wide sea. The skip from Tol Eressëa to Aman proper was hardly a voyage—more a ferry-crossing.

More than two full Ages of the World had passed since Elwing last saw Círdan, who had been her friend too, when she dwelt in Beleriand at the mouths of the river Sirion. It was easier to think about him. But he was not the person she was looking for. He was not the reason she had taken flight from the white tower in the north where she dwelt, for the most part, alone.

Has he come?

Is he there?

He was there.

Elwing saw him leap down from the ship and run splashing through the shallows. He was not looking at her. His eyes were all for another lady, a fair lady who was running towards him as well, the sea-surf soaking her green gown to the hips. Elwing put her hand over her mouth. Her heart was very full as she watched her son Elrond catch his wife Celebrían in his arms. Both of them were laughing helplessly as they embraced, and held onto each other, heedless of the waves of the western shore that broke around them.

He is so tall, thought Elwing. He has grown so tall.

There were others who came into the West on the last ship of the Third Age, but none of them were very interesting to her. She did not pay attention to the Hobbits, or the Wizard. Most of the crowded Noldor were there to see Galadriel, that great Queen of a great house, but Elwing only noticed her when she interrupted the embrace of Elrond and Celebrían in order to hold out her hands to her daughter. Lucky, lucky Galadriel! Celebrían exclaimed in joy and embraced her mother at once.

Might Elwing also have gone down to the water? Might she have held out her hands, and said to her son: here I am, let me hold you?

Perhaps. But she never had to steel herself to it.

Elrond looked up and saw her there. The last time Elwing had seen him, he had been six years old. She had kissed him goodnight, and his brother too. She had whispered, I love you, my darlings. Sleep well. I will see you in the morning.

Before morning, the sons of Fëanor had come.

Elwing wept when Elrond looked at her. She could not do otherwise. She could not make herself go to him. He came to her instead. He had grown so tall! He was taller than his father. Perhaps he was as tall as his grandfather Dior. He had a great look of Dior. To Elwing's eyes, he was plainly a son of Doriath.

Her own memories of Dior were hazy. Most Elves did not understand what a hazy memory was. But Elwing was of threefold race, and her childhood had been a childhood of Men—swift, confusing, all fogged now. As Elrond walked up the beach towards her, memory stirred, and she thought: my father had that dignity, that bearing. My father had that height and those grey eyes. Look at my son.

She had wondered if his memory would be hazy, as hers was. She had thought of it, alone in her white tower at the edge of the world, while Eärendil sailed upon the void: perhaps, if I ever see my son again, he will not know me.

"Mother?" said Elrond.

Elwing wept harder.

Oh, but this was not fair, a mother should not weep: it was a mother's business to offer comfort, to embrace and reassure and kiss away all hurts. I kissed you when you cried, Elwing thought. I held you to my breast. I carried you in my body, I felt your small feet kick at my ribs from the inside, and it hurt—unless that was your brother, it might have been your brother!

I leapt into the Sea. I was sure I would die.

I left you.

"Mother," Elrond said.

They fell into each other's arms. Both of them were weeping. The tears were also joy. He was so tall! Elwing barely came up to his shoulder.

When Elwing was done weeping, she took her handkerchief out of her pocket and wiped her son's eyes for him. It was a silly piece of sentimentality. Elrond did not need a mother to wipe his eyes, and he probably had his own handkerchief. But Elwing had missed every moment that came between six years and six millennia. She did not know how to be the mother of an adult. So she caressed his cheek, and reached up to dab at his damp face with her handkerchief, and tried to say without saying it: I love you so, I do not know how yet, I will learn.

Elrond looked at her with great pity and gentleness, and let her do it. For more than six thousand years there had been a crack right through Elwing's heart. It was not healed, and would not heal. But something knitted together in her, there on the eastern shores of Avallonë.

Elrond then turned and held out his hand. Fair Celebrían had been hanging back. "Mother," Elrond said, "I should like to introduce you to my wife."

Elwing and Celebrían looked at each other with a little laughter. They had met before. Celebrían had come North, seeking the white tower of the Lady of Birds. He wanted to write you a letter, she had said, but he found he could not put it on paper.

But you are not well, Elwing had answered, looking at her daughter-in-law with great concern. She knew the look of a woman badly wounded by the world. She had worn it herself for a very long time. Will you not come in? Will you not stay?

Celebrían had not come in. She had not stayed. She had only come North to deliver a message; her own message, not Elrond's. He thinks of you, she had said.

Elwing had wept that night.

On the shores of Avallonë, Elrond saw their laughter and smiled. "Even if you do already know each other," he said, "I should still like to introduce my wife to my mother—for my own satisfaction!"

Celebrían dropped a deep curtsey. Her green gown was sea-soaked and salt-stiff, and she was laughing. She was much, much happier than the pitiful girl who had stood proud and stark on Elwing's doorstep and tried to be kind. "Lady Elwing," she said, "I am so glad to be properly introduced to you at last."

"Celebrían," Elwing answered, "my daughter!"

Later, when she thought of it, Elwing was surprised that Galadriel had made no intrusion on that conversation of the sundered. Perhaps, like many of the Noldor, Middle-earth had made her superstitious. Or perhaps it had just made her tactful. Elwing did not love crowds, or conversations, or strangers. Or Noldorin royalty. Some Elves accounted her husband a prince of the House of Finwë, tracking his descent through his mother Idril, but Eärendil had never seen himself that way, so Elwing had not either.

She paid no further attention to the crowd on the beach, or the travellers—wanderers, strangers—who had come home at last. She barely remembered to spare a smile for Círdan. Elrond and Celebrían were kind: they talked to each other, and allowed her to listen, so she did not have to find words. You did not get a great deal of practice at saying things that mattered, when you mostly talked to birds.

The conversation of Elrond and Celebrían was not light. Great was the love between them, and great their joy at finding one another again, but sorrow stalked them. Even now, even here. In Middle-earth, in days of darkness, Elwing remembered hearing people say that there was no grief in the Undying Lands. Nonsense. Grief pooled as deeply here as anywhere in Arda. More deeply, sometimes.

"Are they well?" Celebrían said. "Will they come?"

Elrond held her hands. He spoke with gladness and yet his eyes were full of a terrible loss. "Arwen is married."

"Married!"

"She is married to a good man," Elrond said, "to Isildur's heir. She loves him dearly, and she has chosen to walk beside him; to take his shadowed road, wheresoever it may lead."

To a good Man.

So Elwing learned the fate of her granddaughter Arwen, the Evenstar, who had chosen love and death, forsaking her kin and all the world, as Elwing's grandmother Lúthien had done long ago.

Celebrían's eyes filled with tears. But her voice was steady. "And our boys?" she said. "Are they married as well? Are they happy? Tell me they are happy."

"They are happy," Elrond said. "Neither is married yet."

"Do you think they will come?" Celebrían said.

"If even Arwen chose the fate of Men," said Elrond, "Arwen, whose heart was ever closest to her Elven kin—shall her brave brothers ever sail into the West? Or shall they sail some other sea, which you and I may not?" He looked down at his wife. The grief they shared was one more bond of love between them. "I do not think they will come."

Celebrían turned away from her husband a moment. She looked out into the East over the shining, sundering Sea. Elwing's heart went out to her. Today, at last, she had seen her son again. She should have felt only joy. But three of Elwing's grandchildren were still living on the Sea's other side: Arwen and Elladan and Elrohir, one bound already to the brief span of mortal Men, two with the choice of Lúthien still before them.

Would it never end? Would there always be one more mother standing on the shore, looking out to sea, full of a grief made more terrible by hope?

Elwing went to her daughter-in-law and put her arms around her. She thought of the embracing softness of feathers, the warmth of the nest despite all the shivering sea-sharp winds. She did not take on one of her other shapes, but she offered that comfort: here at least you are home. Here at least you are loved. And I know your sorrow—oh, I know—I do know!

Only one of Elwing's sons had come home.

"Well," said Celebrían at last, a little weakly, into Elwing's warm unfeathered shoulder. "I did know what I was getting into, when I married into the line of Lúthien."

The crowd was all but gone. The Wizard was gone, and the Hobbits. The grey ship was moored a little way off the shore, left to sleep on the water. It would never be needed again. Elwing came of the line of Elwë, Elu Thingol, who had been one of the first Elves ever to dare a great journey. The hearts of the Teleri, of whom the Sindar had come, had always been mariners' hearts, and she was the wife of a mariner. She could mourn the death of a ship—was it not death, to be moored forever?—just as she could mourn the death, inevitable, of her granddaughter.

Galadriel came and spoke again to her daughter. Though most of the gathered Elves were gone, there was a little group still waiting further up the beach, golden-haired lords in gaudy Noldorin garb: the House of Finarfin. Elwing knew Felagund, whom she thought of as a rather intrusive person. He had insisted on coming to visit his friend Beren's granddaughter. She did not know the others. But Galadriel and Celebrían went to their kin, and Elwing was left with her son.

Her son! At last, her son!

She was not crying any more, at least.

"I live rather quietly," she said. "I am not sure how much you know about it."

"Elves sailed from Avallonë to Númenor, in happy days that are gone," said Elrond. "And then Men sailed from Númenor to Middle-earth, and brought me letters, which I read, and still have by heart. I know a little—though Elros had very bad handwriting! Our mother lives in a white tower, a tower where the birds come. Our father sails the Void beyond the world. So he said."

"Your father comes home," Elwing told him. "He comes home ever and again. You will see him soon."

For the first time she saw in that grave and gentle face the hope and grief of the child she had left long ago. You will see him soon: that was another lie she had unknowingly told her sons, more than six thousand years before.

"Of course," she said, "you have more important things to think of than your silly old parents. Celebrían has been waiting so long, and you have so much to say to each other! I have guest bedrooms made up in my tower. Whenever you wish to come North, I will be waiting with all the love in my heart—for both of you, of course for both of you. But," she tilted her head at the golden collection of royal princes all gathered around Galadriel and her daughter, "I will understand entirely if you cannot come right away."

"Mother," said Elrond, smiling at her, "you must not talk nonsense. Of course I shall come at once."

She was so proud of him. It was a pride without justification; she had had almost no hand in the person he had become. But it would have been very easy for him to grow bitter or angry or cold. Elwing, robbed of her family as a child, had become bitter and angry and cold. Elrond was none of those. He was noble. He was merry. He was kind.

He glanced past her then, and saw someone else. Elwing saw his expression grow serious. She turned.

There was a woman standing at the far end of the beach, where the strand became scrubby sea-grass. She was a tall lady of proud bearing, a High-elf with the unnervingly luminescent eyes of the original Three Kindreds of Valinorean Elves. She was dressed in a plain grey robe. The veil over her hair was grey also. The sea-wind tugged at the fabric, lifting it and making it dance, revealing underneath that her hair was a dark coppery red, like rust, or old blood.

"Of course," said Elrond softly.

The woman must have been part of the original crowd of Noldor on the shore. She had remained as the others all peeled away. She still remained. She did not come towards them. Elwing was strongly reminded of herself. Not an hour ago she too had stood frozen, watching, still unable to hope, as her son came home at last.

At last, the woman in the grey robe seemed to find some wellspring of unhappy courage. She advanced towards them with a steady pace. As soon as it was clear that she meant to speak to them, Elrond began to walk to her as well. Elwing went with him. It was not that she wished to. She just could not bear to let him go away from her again.

"I think you are Lady Nerdanel," Elrond said, when he met the lady in grey, there on the shore with the waves sounding.

Nerdanel inclined her veiled head and said nothing.

"I sought him," Elrond said. "I looked for him on the western shore. Two times or three, I thought I heard his voice on the wind. I called his name. But he would not come. If he was there at all, he would not come. And the gulls were calling, and the tide was turning, and the ship could wait no longer."

"Thank you," said Nerdanel after a moment. Her voice was deep, for a woman, and had the softness of a person who seldom spoke aloud.

"I am sorry," Elrond said. "I am very sorry."

Sorry for Maglor? thought Elwing. Sorry for that murderer? Or are you just sorry for her, the poor murderer's mother?

"I loved him as well," Elrond said, and she saw that it was both.

Elwing's white tower stood on a green spur of land that projected out into the sea. At high tide, the waters rose over the causeway, and the peninsula became an island. It was a good little island, big enough for a shining tower of white stone which gleamed under the Sun; and big enough too for a small apple orchard, a coop for the chickens, a vegetable garden and a dovecote and a useful little shed. At low tide, you could cross back to the mainland. The hills of Araman were wild and lonely even now, and few Elves came there. Elwing loved to walk on them, or to fly above them. The air was always cool, and the breeze was brisk and wet. It reminded her of home.

The ground floor of the tower was one great round high-ceilinged room, kitchen and pantry and sitting-room all at once. Elwing always kept the doors and windows open, and birds flew in and out as they pleased. There was a pair of rock doves nesting on the rafters over the front door. Elwing had tried to explain the dovecote to them several times, but they insisted they preferred her house. "Please don't mind the mess," she said to Elrond and Celebrían. "I promise your bedroom is neater than this."

The tower had one spiral staircase that went up and up around the walls. Elwing's parlour was the next floor up. She hardly ever used it, because the kitchen was where she spent most of her time, but it was where she put the things that had collected over the years—gifts, mostly, from her Telerin kin, or from her birds, or from the Sea. It was an odd collection: bright pearls of Alqualondë next to pebbles chosen out by crows for their pleasing shine, seashells in all the colours of the rainbow and ancient skeletons of coral. There was a framed charcoal sketch on the wall that Elrond looked at for a long time.

"Is it truly him?" he said.

"Felagund sent it," said Elwing, "and I believe he made it himself. You can ask him if the likeness is good."

There were many images of Lúthien Tinúviel in Valinor. She had lived long under the trees in the starlight, before she met her love and her doom. But few people, even in Doriath, had ever actually laid eyes on Beren. Felagund's sketch was not remarkably skilled by the standards of his people, but it was the only one of his unasked-for gifts that Elwing liked. The Beren who looked out of the charcoal shadows was a square-shouldered young man with a stubborn lift to his chin and the distant, haunted eyes of a person who had seen too much suffering in too few years. There was an old scar on his brow, and his nose was crooked. He had rough-chopped dark hair and the shadow of stubble on his face. He was a Man through and through, and not one of those whom the Elves of Beleriand had once condescendingly called Elf-like, Elf-fair. He was not even handsome.

Elwing had taken the picture in her bird-talons and flown up with it to Vingilot, and she and Eärendil had looked at him together, that hero of Men, the grandfather Elwing had never known. I would have liked to meet him, Eärendil had said. He looks like someone you could trust with the steering-oar.

They went up another floor, and Elwing settled Elrond and Celebrían into the guest bedroom she had made up before flying South. Then she hovered a little while, before she realised she was flapping and clucking and they were too polite to say that they couldn't wait to get rid of her. Celebrían was being extremely gracious, but Elwing knew very well that it was possible to experience an excess of mother-in-law. Her own mother-in-law Idril Celebrindal, Queen-in-exile of the Gondolindrim, had been quietly and firmly one of the most forceful personalities in Beleriand.

"I am upstairs if you need me," she said. "If I am not in my bedroom on the top floor, then you will find me on the roof of the tower. Good night! There will be fresh eggs for breakfast."

Elwing did not sleep that night.

It was not unusual. She did not need very much sleep anyway. And she had learned from long experience that once she was awake, it was no good lying in her bed alone and dwelling on things. So after an hour or two of trying to coax her body into closing its eyes and resting, she gave up, and climbed the last flight of the spiral stairway, and went to sit on the roof of her tower.

The sea was singing softly to itself. There was only one nest up here this year; a breeding pair of ravens had decided the heights of a tower were almost as good as a sea-cliff. Ravens liked to be high up and lonely, and they enforced their personal space firmly. Even Elwing never presumed to disturb them. She sat as far from their nest as she could, perched on the low white wall that encircled the tower roof, with her feet swinging over empty air and the sea below. The night wind blew in her loose silver hair. Elwing tipped her head back.

There he was.

She watched the star that was Eärendil for a long time. From here in the world you could not hear the creaking of sail-ropes, nor the snap of white sails in the solar winds which blew in that other place where he journeyed. Elwing pictured him with his hand on the steering-oar, steady on his course amongst the constellations, the little grin on his face that he always wore unknowingly when he had his gaze turned outwards to a dark horizon. The Silmaril on his brow, of course. Eärendil had never much liked wearing anything on his head. Long ago, he had come home from great voyages with his hair streaked by sunlight and his skin tanned darker than Elwing's, because he refused to wear a hat. But he'd experimented with other places to put the great light of hope—wear it as a necklace? Hang it off his belt?—and it always just seemed to get in the way. It wasn't easy, being not just holy Vingilot's captain but also her entire crew.

She had been doing well distracting herself. But that was a thought of loneliness. And now she had thought of it, there was another lonely figure in her mind's eye. Elwing could not stop seeing her. The grey lady on the beach. Frozen, as Elwing had been frozen. Hoping, as Elwing had been hoping. And denied.

Nerdanel, the wife of Fëanor, who had had seven sons, and lost them all. Nerdanel, the mother of Elwing's enemies.

I am sorry, Elrond had said to the murderers' mother.

Elwing put her face in her hands.

It has been two full ages of the world, her heart cried. It has been six and a half millennia. And what of it, if I am not the only mother who has spent all those years waiting? What do I owe her, a woman I have never met and never spoken to—a woman whose children hounded me and mine, ruined us and robbed us, and finally chased me off a cliff? Very well, so I pity her! So I know how it feels! And I still know how it feels, because only one of my children came home, only one. Elros, my darling, I will never see you again; all the years of your short life were stolen from me, and they were stolen by Nerdanel's sons!

A sob caught in Elwing's throat. Elros had sought news of her. He had written letters to his brother. In terrible, terrible handwriting.

Grief possessed her. It still possessed her. It pooled as deeply in the West as it did in Middle-earth. Elros's tomb, that had stood in drowned Númenor! Arwen and Elladan and Elrohir, far away across the sundering Sea!

Would it never end?

Dawn was breaking, and Eärendil's star dimming against the rosy half-light, by the time Elwing was done weeping. She scrubbed at her face with her hands. She had promised Elrond and his wife that there would be eggs for breakfast.

There was a croaking cry close by.

Many people did not realise just how large the kings of the crow family were. Ravens were so rare and solitary that people confused them with mere rooks or carrion crows, both two-thirds the size. Even an ordinary raven of Beleriand had a wingspan wider than the span of Elwing's human arms. This one was larger still, a Raven of Valinor, a wind-rider cloaked in shadow. He was so great that only an Eagle would dare to argue with him. He perched on the white wall that ran around the top of the tower, a polite distance away, with his head cocked to fix an intelligent black eye on Elwing's distress.

Elwing looked at him. "Thank you," she said. "I am all right, I promise." She swallowed. "But I wonder if you could take a message for me."

The raven gave another of his musical, gurgling croaks. His voice was deeper and carried further than an ordinary crow. Birds mostly belonged to Manwë. But sometimes they did not. Ravens did not.

Elwing looked out at the shining Sea. This far north, when you looked to the east, you were looking towards drowned Beleriand. It was from somewhere around here—a little south of here—that Fëanor and his host had set sail, long ago, in the stolen ships of the Teleri. It was from somewhere around here that the people left behind had seen the light of the ship-burning in the distance.

Elwing thought about that a little more. The raven waited politely.

"There were seven of them," she said at last. "Seven sons of Fëanor. And there is no one who has more reason to feel misery and hatred at the very thought of them than I do. But they were not all the same person. They did not all commit the same crimes."

Ravens were better conversationalists than most birds, but quite vague about the concept of committing crimes. Elwing's friend turned his dark sleek head the other way. In their shared, gigantic nest of broken twigs, built into a crook of white stonework, his mate stirred and called out to him.

When Elwing could finally make herself say it, her voice came out very dry and cool. "I am not a scholar, or a historian, or a judge," she said, "but as I understand it, there are two schools of thought on the Oath of Fëanor. One says that it was fulfilled, and is no longer in force. The other says that it was void from the moment of its swearing, and never had any force. Both agree that it presents no further threat to the world, since there is no longer any Silmaril in the world to be claimed. Of course, it would take an expert on these matters—oaths, dooms—to decide if any of that is true. I am not that expert." She licked her lips. "For my part, well. There were seven sons of Fëanor, and they all committed crimes. But I am told the youngest one only set foot on Middle-earth for about ten minutes, and then he turned around and tried to go home. It would have been much better for everyone if all his brothers had followed his example!"

The raven croaked inquiringly.

"He was still, of course, one of the kinslayers of Alqualondë," said Elwing. "But there is plenty of precedent for pardoning the kinslayers of Alqualondë. If my husband's grandfather Turgon can swan around Avallonë building lighthouses—"

She stopped.

"Naturally my opinion is not the only one that matters," she said. "There is no place in the Undying Lands for blood vengeance that feeds on itself, and grows greater and more terrible in the feeding. If my kin among the Teleri cannot forgive—and why should they forgive?—then that is that. But for my part. For my part!"

The Raven of Mandos watched her intently.

"One of my sons came home," Elwing said. "I cannot say I have forgotten all grief. I cannot say they deserve mercy. But I pity her. Fëanor's son Amrod did no wrong to me. I have no reason to object, if one of her sons should come home."

She was not weeping. But her chest hurt.

"There, that is my message," she said at last. "If your wife can spare you. I would be grateful. I don't think I can bear to go myself."

The raven gave a gurgling, croaking, musical cry. Then he spread his great black wings and took to the air.

Elwing went downstairs to raid the chicken coop for eggs. It was nearly time for breakfast.

The raven returned late in the day. Elwing did not ask how he had fared on his errand. It was nothing to do with her.

How strange it was to have other people in her tower!

Elwing had had guests before. There were few dwellings so far North. If she saw a stranger wandering lonely as she soared above the hills, she would certainly offer them a good meal and a night's shelter, two if they needed it. Kindness had never come naturally to Elwing, but she had been studying it since she was a girl. Hospitality had once been a watchword of the House of Bëor. Elwing had had no way to know that herself, but some of the Sindar who had fled south along Sirion had known her grandfather's kinfolk when they dwelt in Dorthonion through seven generations of peacetime.

Hospitality: Elwing, just eight years old, had held the gaze of Idril Celebrindal at the head of her weary train of refugees—a princess of the Noldor! A kinswoman of the sons of Fëanor!—and said as steadily as she could, you are very welcome here.

Guests was one thing. But Elrond and Celebrían were family.

Elwing could not name at first the feeling that suffused her days. She did what she always did: weeded the garden, fed the chickens, listened to the Sea singing, walked the hills, watched the stars. But she did not do it alone.

Joy, ah, joy! Elwing had not lived a life without joy. All the wonders of the West were open to her. She had chosen this tower and these hills, and chosen them gladly. But it was joy of another sort, to be Elrond's mother again, and come to know him at last. Her son, grave and gentle and merry and kind! She felt an impossible, heartwrenching pride in him. She tried and tried to learn how to be his mother, and he was generous; he let her learn. They talked together for long hours. Elwing sought herself in him, and him in herself. He was the only other of all Lúthien's line who had freely chosen the life of the Eldar. Were they alike? Could they be alike?

Two weeks went past.

Elwing said to her son, "Tomorrow, at dawn."

Dawn found them all on the roof of the tower. Elrond had his arm around Celebrían. There was a rosy mist over the Sea, and no star could be seen. Though Elrond said nothing, Elwing saw again in his face the hope, the grief, the longing, of a child whose father had sailed away in a long-oared ship and never come home again.

"Listen!" she said.

They listened. You always heard it first. The snap of the sail-ropes—the billow of white sails—the creak of shining timbers—the wingbeats of silver oars!

And then, right overhead, sweeping through the upper airs, crossing a shimmering border that no one else could reach: Vingilot the Foam-Flower, hallowed and beloved. Light crowned the star-ship's captain. Elwing tipped her head back, held up her arms, and laughed for happiness as her husband came home.

The minute Vingilot had crossed fully into the airs of Arda—only a shimmer around her stern to show what a great boundary she had just traversed—Eärendil called aloud in a great laughing shout: Hail the port! Where's my wife?

"He always says that," whispered Elrond. "He always said that!"

Elwing laughed. She remembered it too, clean and crisp, the sea-air of the Havens, the ship on the horizon, her small sons waving frantically. Eärendil had made many voyages from the shores of Middle-earth, and come home every time but the last.

Vingilot swung about. Eärendil cast out the sky-anchor, a great dragging billow of sail that hung below the ship and slowed her to stillness. Gulls rose mewing from the Sea to investigate. Elwing cast off her woman-shape and followed them aloft on white wings. She barely noticed the gasps below.

She fell into Eärendil's arms and became a woman again as she fell. He kissed her soundly. The light of his eyes was more to her than the Silmaril on his brow. "Is he there?" he said.

"He came home," Elwing answered. "He came home!"

Eärendil kissed her again. They had shared a thousand thousand kisses over six thousand years. Elwing loved every single one. They did not need to talk any more after that. They had already talked it through over and over, dreamed it, hoped it, dared to long for it: the things they would do, if this day ever came.

Eärendil took off the silver fillet he wore. Holy light danced in all the myriad reflections of jewel dust that coated Vingilot. Elwing inclined her head. Her husband was a little shorter than she was.

The crown of light was not heavy. Eärendil paused and looked at her wearing it. "You look beautiful," he said.

"Anyone would look beautiful in this," Elwing said. "You always do!"

"Not quite a compliment, that," said Eärendil. "Sweetheart, are you sure about this?"

"Of course I am," Elwing said. "Take as long as you like. I can sail her if I have to."

Eärendil grinned and shook his head. They both knew perfectly well he would be back in time for the Vingilot's next voyage across Middle-earth's sky. They cast down the rope ladder together. Eärendil skimmed down it with a sailor's easy grace. Elwing leaned over the ship's rail, watching, as her husband set foot on the shores of Arda for the first time in many long years. She wondered what they would say to each other. Maybe Elrond would start, again, by introducing his wife.

She would find out later. One of them would tell her, or both. But until Vingilot's captain returned, Elwing's family could not be her first concern.

She climbed the mainmast and sat on the crosstree at the top. She could have changed her shape—it was easier to perch as an albatross—but today she felt attached to herself, to the body she had been born to inhabit. The Silmaril on her brow was not heavy. It had felt heavy when Elwing wore it as a young woman, formally adorned as the heiress of Doriath, the last of the line of Thingol and of Lúthien. In those days it had still been set in the Nauglamír.

It had never really needed a setting.

It was the last remnant of the light of ancient days. It was the most beloved of all Middle-earth's stars. It was the hope that Beren and Lúthien had won, a hope that no one had dared to imagine until it happened. And Elwing and Eärendil were its eternal guardians.

Its home was in the heavens. It could not return to Earth. So, while Eärendil embraced his son, Elwing remained in the upper airs, alone on the ship of the stars, crowned with the light that belonged now to all the world.

Eärendil was back before nightfall. Elwing was glad to return the Silmaril to him.

They held each other a long time.

He got so tall, Eärendil whispered before they had to part. The sky was calling. His eyes were bright. Like Elwing, he could often only say things sideways.

Two mornings later, there was a parcel on Elwing's doorstep. The rock doves in the rafters cooed to each other about it: to you? To you? Ooh, to you?

Elrond and Celebrían were still abed. The parcel was something hard, wrapped in a bundle of grey cloth. Elwing had to unroll it several times. The cloth was of the finest possible weave, a grey cloud of surpassing softness. A veil, in fact.

The sculpture was carved from ruddy wood. The sculptor had let the natural warmth and softness of the grain speak for itself. Elwing could see she had watched birds, and watched them properly. A red-breasted robin was a bold and noisy fellow, the bully of the songbird family. The sculpture, a little over life size, caught that spirit. The robin's feathers were all fluffed up in anger, and its beak was open. Rude little monster, thought Elwing, and smiled at it.

"I didn't do it to be thanked," she told the morning air. "I didn’t do anything, in fact. It's all up to Mandos. Really! It's nothing to do with me."

The green morning did not answer.

"Well, I suppose I am happy for her," said Elwing. "And Amrod was the least wicked of the sons of Fëanor. He never harmed me or mine. Let that be the end of it."

Chapter Text

Who stops to count the years of happiness?

Calendars were an affectation. They might be glanced at by scholars, or by people with a stubborn habit of timekeeping picked up in Middle-earth, but no one in the West actually needed to know what year it was. This was the promise of Elvenhome: that the days and months and years would pass, and no lessening would come of it. Today was happy, tomorrow would be just as happy, and a person might look back on all their yesterdays in the Undying Lands and feel no shred of regret for any happiness already past.

Elwing had counted the time.

She had no actual calendar anywhere. None could be large enough, and the memory of the Eldar could number endless days without help. For two ages of the world she had reckoned it: now it has been a century. Now it has been two centuries. Now it has been a millennium. Now it has been six. Now—

Elrond came home, and Elwing finally lost track of time.

He did not dwell in her white tower. He offered to stay on that first visit, but Elwing just laughed. "Do you mean to tell me that my full-grown son, my married son, who was master of Imladris and host to countless friends, now truly wishes for nothing more than to live in the middle of nowhere in his mother's guest bedroom?"

Elrond was laughing as well. "I would still stay, and stay gladly, if you wanted me here!"

"Celebrían might have something to say about it. Or perhaps not! Your wife is the most tolerant lady in the West," Elwing said. "While I am actually the least. If you are truly going to remain, I will need a bigger tower, and possibly a bigger island. I cannot have my eyrie heaving with Wizards and Hobbits and Elvenkings and long-lost friends and slight acquaintances and nosy strangers every hour of the day. The moment Gil-galad shows up, I will have to move house."

So Elrond and Celebrían went away, to establish their own kindly house on Tol Eressëa. But joy did not depart with them. It stayed. It blossomed along with the apple orchard, and sounded in the squawking cries of chickens. It took flight with the fledgling ravens from the nest on the tower's height—how stupid they looked, still half black fluff! Joy put on an apron and made jam from the vast harvest of strawberries Elwing had that year. Joy took wing and soared over the hills on the cool, wet breeze of the North. Elwing rode the winds as swan and pelican, as snowy owl and kestrel, and at last as the lark ascending. She did not often feel called to the shape of a songbird. But joy rose through her in the spiralling flight of the skylark, and sang out its trilling cry to heaven.

Sometimes she flew south and east, across the Sea to the Lonely Isle. Albatross-shape was still the best for a long sea-flight. Elwing skimmed low across the water with her long wings touched by the spray. An albatross might stay at sea for months on end, and still come home to the same nest and the same mate, for all the long years of its life. When Vingilot came home to the world, Elwing would always be there, waiting with love in her heart.

Between those times she could visit her son. Sometimes, as well, he visited her.

Time did not matter. Some sixty years went by.

Springtime covered Elwing's island with wildflowers. Sea aster and soapwort and stonecrop all laughed at the wild salt air and lifted their heads, pink, white, and yellow, to the Sun. The tide was low and the causeway exposed. Rockpools along its edges were adorned with red sea-anemones, their colour dark and rich as rubies.

When the rider on the white horse came over the hills with his dark hair blowing in the wind, Elwing recognised Elrond a long way off. She would have flown out to greet him, but she was repotting geraniums. A horse! He did not usually come horsed. Had she feed for it? No, all last year's hay had been given to the nesting seabirds. But it could be turned loose to graze.

Elwing waved to her son. But he did not wave back. He rode at a canter. What could possibly have him in such a fearful hurry?

The white horse's hooves left marks like upturned dishes in the wet sand of the causeway. He was a handsome creature, and Elrond looked handsome riding him. It had been sixty years of joy, but Elwing's heart never grew any less full when she saw her son—look at my son!—who in face and bearing was so like Dior Eluchíl. "Elrond!" she said when he leapt off the horse in front of her. "Whatever is the matter?"

Elrond looked at her. He seemed to reach for words and find none. Elwing put her hands out to him. He looked badly in need of an embrace. "What has happened?"

Elrond's horse put his nose interestedly into a pot of geraniums.

"Maglor," Elrond said.

The brisk northern morning was suddenly chill and dark. The hairs on Elwing's arms all stood on end. She could have let them become feathers. She could have taken wing, and not let him say another word.

"Maglor has come West," Elrond said. He took a deep breath. "And I am bidden to summon you to Máhanaxar, the Ring of Doom, where he shall stand before the Valar and answer for his wrongdoing. They ask if you will bear witness. Eonwë the Herald spoke to me very plainly. Tell the Lady Elwing, he said, that it is only a request. She does not have to come."

Elwing flew south in the shape of a black-headed goose. Down below, Elrond rode on his white horse. The goose-body wanted to cry out to its comrades. It wanted to drop back in the formation and have some friend take the first blast of the headwind for a little while. Elwing flew on, alone.

At nightfall she threw herself furiously at a still green pond, and left a long divot through the duckweed. She rose out of the water in woman-shape, wringing out her silver hair like a person wringing a chicken's neck. She splashed to shore. Elrond had turned his horse loose to graze. He had a little campfire going, and it shone with a merry glow. Elwing dug in her bag for a towel.

When she had wrapped herself up and scrubbed the last fronds of duckweed out of her hair, Elrond wordlessly offered her a hunk of lembas and a piece of crumbling goat cheese. Elwing resisted the urge to snatch them from his fingers and hiss at him. He was her son. She was not actually a goose.

She ate the bread and cheese. She drank the cordial Elrond passed her, as well. Eventually, she said, "I should keep goats. I have been meaning to get around to it."

"Do you want to talk about it?" said Elrond.

"About goats?"

It turned out that even a person of infinite grace and gentleness had limits. Elrond gave Elwing a look under his brows that said, quite plainly, you may be my mother but you are being childish.

Elwing sighed. "I don't want to talk about it."

"That is not surprising."

"It is not a son's place to give wisdom or comfort to his mother."

"I am sorry to hear it," Elrond said. "I cannot promise wisdom, but I would have liked to give you comfort."

Elwing laughed weakly. "I think it was very rude of you to grow so tall and clever and kind, without asking my permission at all."

"Should I have stayed six?"

"Yes," Elwing said. "Yes, you should. You should both have stayed six. And I would have come right back home, and your father too, and nothing bad would ever have happened, and we would all have been happy forever."

"I understand," Elrond said. "Arwen should also have stayed six."

He was looking into the merry campfire. His expression was not altogether sad, but there was sorrow in it. It was a mother's place to give wisdom and comfort to her son. Elwing had no wisdom. She went to Elrond's side.

They sat together and watched the firelight dance for a while. There were frogs in the pond, and stars in the sky, and somewhere a nightingale was singing.

"Well," said Elwing at last. "I don't think I can talk about it. But I can see it must be talked about." Somehow it was worse bringing up old sorrows now than it would have been sixty years ago. Elwing had begun to be truly happy again. She had built her joy on strong foundations. Now a monster out of her childhood nightmares had come West, and it turned out that the foundations still had a crack in them. It was that same crack through her heart which had been there since she was three years old.

Sixty years and they had never once talked about it. Elwing sat beside her son and looked into the fire.

"So," she said. "Tell me about Maglor."

A long evening quiet, full of the creaking calls of frogs.

"We were six," said Elrond. "We were six, and we were scared, and he was kind."

Elwing closed her eyes.

"He was kind to us," Elrond said. "He took care of us. I don't believe he had ever tried to do anything like it before. He had only the vaguest idea of what children needed. Food? Clothes? Music lessons? He had us get the Ainulindalë by heart, that first year, and it was only afterwards that it occurred to him we could barely read or write. He taught us to hunt for our own supper and butcher what we killed. Personally, I would not hand a seven-year-old a hunting knife of their very own and never think about it again, but neither of us ever actually lost a finger! He kept being surprised by how fast we grew. I was taller than he was by the time I was fourteen. It shocked him."

"In short," said Elwing, with her eyes still closed, "he was an ideal foster-father, and he sang you lullabies, and nothing bad ever happened, and everyone was very happy."

"He was a monster," Elrond said.

Elwing opened her eyes. The campfire was burning low. Its light cast red streaks on the green ferns all about the pond.

"He was kind to us. He was always kind to us. Even when we hated him—and as we grew older, as we understood better who he was and what he had done, we did hate him. You have not heard rage until you have heard Elros at fifteen: You think you can tell me what to do? Are you my father? Are you my mother? Tell me, where is my mother!"

Elwing snorted. "Did he answer that?"

"No," said Elrond. "But we saw it in his face. He was a monster and he knew it. He was sick of himself, weary beyond all bearing, but weariness changed nothing. On the day we met him he was already a kinslayer three times over. When we were six, we did not understand. By the time we were sixteen, we certainly did. Sometimes it was almost as if there were two Maglors: one of them a funny old Elf who could never stop whistling, and the other a shadow-thing that stalked him. We grew up in the care of a murderer. But he was kind! He was quite desperately kind. We were the last good thing he ever did, and he was so afraid he would somehow ruin us too. Once I saw that, I pitied him. And once I began to pity him, I never stopped. That is love, you know, of a sort."

"And he was kind to you," Elwing said in a low voice. "Which is also love, of a sort. What about the other one?"

"There were two Maglors," Elrond said. "One a monster and one our friend. But there was only ever one Maedhros. We were terrified of him."

"Was he unkind?"

"Not unkind," Elrond said. "Only indifferent. Intentionally, I think. Once I heard him say: Have you forgotten they are hostages? Why are you doing this to yourself?"

"Because, of course," Elwing said, "hostages are not much use, if you are not prepared to hurt them."

"Maedhros was the one who would have hurt us," Elrond said, "if he thought he had to. He would have done it to spare Maglor, and accounted himself noble for the sacrifice. All of us knew. It was one more shadow between them—and there were already plenty of those! It is a sorry thing, watching brothers despise each other. Each of them looked at the other one and saw himself turned inside out—his own cruelty, brutality, hypocrisy. They could not stand it. They would go weeks barely speaking; then they would be friends again suddenly, for two days, three; then fall to quarrelling just as fast, always in Quenya so we could not follow. And back to silence." He sighed. "Elros and I were not much use to them anyway. I'm not sure who they thought we might compel. You were gone. Perhaps they feared our father coming home hot for vengeance. Or Gil-galad his ally, or Círdan his friend. But by then I doubt they really knew themselves what the point of any of it was. They were walking in the dark. They could not stop, and it was much too late to turn back."

"You are so much kinder to them than I could ever be," Elwing said. "Did they teach you that?"

"You could say that," said Elrond. "Certainly one thing the sons of Fëanor were always very clear about was how terribly sad and difficult it was to be the sons of Fëanor."

"Oh, in that case," Elwing said. "Goodness, I wonder why I never thought of that? Perhaps I should apologise to my family's murderers for my shameful lack of sympathy."

Elrond did not seem to hear the words, or the tone. "We lived a wild life," he said, "a wandering life, with no settled home. They feared I know not what, and would not stay where they could be found. And they were very sorry for themselves. They were very bitter, and angry, and sad. They were both more than half mad. Maedhros called us by our uncles' names sometimes— Eluréd, Elurín!—and never seemed to notice. Maglor had wild moods and strange ones; sometimes he laughed, sometimes he wept, sometimes he disappeared for a week and then came back and would not speak to anyone till he had the next canto of the Noldolantë all in order. It was very easy to hurt him. You only had to tell the truth, and it would tear at him like a scourge. Yes, I learned pity in those days! But not because they taught it to me."

Elwing took wing at dawn in the shape of a swan. The weedy pond was just big enough to let her run herself aloft. Swans were too ungainly to get airborne from a standing start.

Pity, she thought.

Pity.

Which was a kind of love.

But how dare you, Elwing thought, not quite knowing which you she meant. How dare you ask me to pity Maglor.

Valmar was a city of bright towers and shining domes, the city of the gods. The heights of Yavanna's hall were ancient trees reaching to heaven, and the roof of Ossë's wide palace was all silver sea-foam. The figures that walked the broad streets wore the shapes of Elves, for the most part, when they wore shapes at all; but there were others too, Ainur in hound-shape and stag-shape about the groves of Oromë, long-winged dragonflies the size of horses that danced above the golden gates of Vana's gardens. Elwing was of their kindred, however distantly, and so even unbodied the Maiar thronging the hallowed streets were not hidden from her: wind-spirits and stone-spirits and river-spirits, whose life had become the life of Arda, who loved the world and lived in the world and were the world.

Outside the city gate lay a grassy ring surrounded by fourteen thrones. Beyond that, a low hill, where stood a white fane with dark doorway. Before that doorway two grey Maiar of Nienna knelt weeping in perpetual memorial.

Inside the white tomb on the hill of Ezellohar stood two blackened and withered stumps. They would never again stretch new growth of silver and gold towards the glorious sky. But they would never be forgotten, the Two Trees of Valinor. Anyone was welcome to go there, and mourn a little while for what was good and lovely and lost. Elwing had never made that pilgrimage.

She landed on the hill, throwing off the swan and becoming herself, clad in only a white slip and her silver hair. The mourning grey figures ignored her. Down below, the Ring of Doom was thronged all around with people. Vast crowds of Elves had come to hear this great matter. The Valar sat tall and stately on their thrones, and the crowd did not dare push past them. Only a few figures stood in the Máhanaxar itself.

Elwing looked from above, from afar, with sea-hawk eyes.

One figure half-melted under sunlight, as if he might soon become nothing but the outline of dust motes caught in a sunbeam. Elwing had seen this before. Everyone had. It was what happened, if an Elf waited too long to come West.

How many times, in all the history of the World, had there been a criminal trial in the Ring of Doom? Judgement of the dead belonged to Mandos. Judgement of the living was a duty the Valar had all but abdicated. It was Eärendil who had last stood before the fourteen thrones expecting punishment for wrongdoing. Before that, it was Melkor.

In Middle-earth there were laws and courts and criminals aplenty, but in Valinor no one wronged their neighbours. When Elves disagreed among themselves, as even the best-intentioned and kindest neighbours occasionally will, the Valar held aloof. Questions about where exactly anyone should plant their new hedge were left to the patient mediation of the Elvenkings.

But which king of Elves should judge Maglor? Finarfin, his uncle?

Olwë of the Teleri?

Perhaps it would be better if no one judged him at all. Just let it be. Just forget him! So he came West—well, he can wander forgotten on one beach as well as another, and there are plenty of beaches in Avathar. Let that be his punishment. Or let him not be punished, fine, let him go home and be happy, why not? It has been two full ages of the world and I never want to think about it again. I never want to care again! Why should I care? Why should I have to face him?

Tell the Lady Elwing it is only a request. She does not have to come.

It was no small thing for the Valar to involve themselves. Theirs was the only judgement that all Elves would accept. The intention seemed plain enough to Elwing. After all, it had not changed since Eärendil first set foot on the shores of Eldamar. The Lords of the West always sought to grant pardon, if they could manage it. Restoration, if they could wrangle it. Help, even for the undeserving, if they could possibly justify it.

There was no place in the Undying Lands for blood vengeance that fed on itself. And a person could not be pardoned, restored, or helped, if all his own people cried out in horror to have him in their midst. So Maglor the monster must have a trial. He must be judged. And the judgement must be fair.

Therefore they had summoned Elwing. Who better than Elwing to bear witness against a son of Fëanor?

"Mother," Elrond said.

Elwing did not know when he had come there. She did not know what he had done with his horse. She did not know how long she had been standing on the hill of the dead Trees, watching her enemy before the thrones.

"Mother," Elrond said, "you do not have to face him."

"I am not afraid of him!"

"That is not why."

"I am not afraid," Elwing said. "He cannot hurt me now. Look at him—look!" Even from here, Maglor was a pathetic figure. A nothing. Had she spent two ages of the world hating and fearing the very thought of a nothing-person, a hollow dream of misery?

"Mother," Elrond said, with very great gentleness, "you are weeping."

Oh, so she was. Elwing had to laugh at herself. She was weeping, and she was wrapped in a silver robe that Elrond must have put over her shoulders without her noticing, and Elrond was offering her a handkerchief.

She wiped her eyes.

"You do not have to face him," Elrond said. "No one has the right to make you face him. You have borne enough. I will go down to the Ring of Doom. Tell me what you would say, and I will say it for you. I will speak no other word unless it be yours."

"You love Maglor," Elwing said. "I know you do. So do not offer to speak my words. They cannot be words of love."

"I loved him and pitied him when I was a child," Elrond said. "I love him and pity him now. I was not glad to think of him fading forever on that distant shore. But you are my mother! For the wrong he did, and above all for the wrong he did you, I will speak as you bid me."

Elwing shivered with cold temptation. How awful it was, to look down into the crack through your own soul and find a seed of cruelty planted there. Elrond had loved Maglor. Maglor, so the tale-tellers said, had loved Elrond too. Let that be the soil of her vengeance. Elwing could dictate the judgement that she wanted to give. She could put her words in her son's mouth. Maglor would hear himself condemned and cast out by the child he had loved, by the last good thing he had ever done.

It was very easy to hurt him. You only had to tell him the truth.

"I will face him," she said.

She belted the silver robe. She shook out her silver hair. Elrond pulled from a fold of his own cloak something that shone: a silver band, with a white stone on it. The stone was engraved with the sign of the Star of Eärendil. Elwing looked at him gratefully. "I would not have thought of that."

She put it on, as a person might put on armour. The white stone shone on her brow.

Elwing went down the hill.

The gathered throng of Elves and Maiar drew back to make a path for her. She walked proud and straight among them. Elrond went beside her. At the boundary of the Máhanaxar, he offered his arm. Elwing took it, but did not lean on him. She did not need to cling to anyone. She was not alone. She was not afraid.

There were other people in the Ring of Doom. Elwing did not look at any of them. Least of all did she look at the tall woman with rust-red hair, or the son whose arm she clung to. He was another red-haired Elf, clad in grey, sorrowful. He was a stranger Elwing had never met. She did not care to meet him now.

The person presently speaking before the Valar was less than half Elwing's height. He had snowy white hair and a rosy pink face, and he spoke Sindarin with a lively intonation and an extremely peculiar accent. He seemed to have a lot to say. "Thank you, Master Samwise," said Eonwë the Herald at last. "We appreciate your views."

"I don't say he was a good pilot, mind," said the old Hobbit, "though I'm no judge of mariners! But we made it here in the end, and all's well that ends well, as they say."

"Thank you, Master Samwise," said Eonwë. "We call now upon the Lady Elwing to speak."

Maglor had not seen her come. He had been watching the Hobbit Samwise, with a rather helpless smile. Now he looked up.

He stopped smiling.

Elwing let go of Elrond's arm. She went forward barefoot, clad in white and silver, alone. There was a low rise in the very heart of the grassy ring. Elwing ascended. She made a general curtsey, for she stood before the greatest Powers in all the world—and there was no Elf, perhaps, who had a better feeling than Elwing for just how great those powers were. She could feel the pressure of them on the air. They wore the shapes of shining figures, but Elwing knew something about wearing shapes. To her, Manwë was a towering thunderhead, and Varda a distant bright sky-forge.

Elwing curtsied again to them, Sky-lord and Star-lady, to whom she owed particular courtesy. She sought out the others in the circle of thrones who might expect personal acknowledgement and bowed her head to them. Ulmo, Lord of the Waters, her saviour of old. Mandos, Lord of Doom, who had a particular care for Lúthien's line.

The Valar spoke to her. Not in words. Their shining faces all turned her way. Elwing heard welcome and courtesy, care and concern. You need not stay. You need not speak. You do not have to face him.

Was there anyone in all the West who thought Elwing actually could face Maglor?

"Thank you," she said. "I am glad to be here."

She turned to face her enemy.

Maglor's eyes were hollow and dark and very, very old. They were the eyes of a person who had seen too much suffering. Elwing knew that look! But she could not pity him.

"You and I only met once," she said. "But for all that, I feel we have had much to do with each other, Maglor Fëanorion."

Maglor looked at her silently out of those ancient, hollow eyes. He was half a shade. Sunlight filtered through the edges of him. He had no weapon. Who would have suffered him to carry a weapon here?

"There were seven sons of Fëanor," Elwing said. "And they did not all commit the same crimes. But you? You committed very nearly every crime." She held the murderer's gaze. "I used to think it strange, that the songs Elves sing in these latter days treat you so kindly. But it is not so strange, is it? After all, you wrote the songs."

Maglor did not answer. His voice had been his great power once. Now it would avail him nothing. Elwing could not stop looking at him. He was a ragged wanderer with patched garb and tangled hair. There was a stained bandage wrapped around and around his crooked right hand, the hand that had once held and cast away a Silmaril. He was a ghost already. He was nothing. He was nothing!

Yet he was also, unmistakably, that same Elf who had stood shoulder to shoulder with his brother on the cliffs above the havens of Sirion. He had been all solidity, all power, the light of the West still gleaming in his dark eyes, gold-washed armour painted ruby red with blood. Maglor, honey-tongued and soaked in gore: Come now, Elwing. Don't be a fool. You have nowhere left to run. We have your children. Let us make a trade.

"Nowhere left to run," Elwing murmured, and there was some shameful pleasure in watching him flinch.

No. She was angry but she did not have to be cruel. She was Elrond's mother. Let her be worthy of being Elrond's mother. She would speak justly, but she would not be a scourge.

"I have come to tell the truth," she said—not to Maglor, but to the fourteen Great Ones who looked down from their thrones so solemn and bright. "And I must speak first as a princess of Doriath."

Do you know, she asked them, the Valar, and the listening crowd, and her son, and her enemy: do you know what Doriath meant?

In the heart of Beleriand, just one hundred and fifty leagues from the gates of Angband, stood a vision of the bliss and beauty of Elder Days as they might have come in Middle-earth. In the forest, under the hill, by the running river, there was a kingdom founded on love—as great a love as was ever known in Arda. Where the trees of Doriath cast their shade, there was a place unmarred by Morgoth's cruelty. The Sindar were a wandering folk, a folk who loved the wilds—but we had a home! We had a place to return to: a place of love and whispering leaves, a place of beauty under the stars, and that place was the kingdom of Thingol and Melian. That was Doriath.

But Doriath failed. Doriath fell. Grief touched the Grey-elves, and fear too, when Thingol the king lay dead and Melian the queen was gone. Where was our home now? Where might we turn, with the Enemy pressing on the North, and no haven to hope for?

In those days my father Dior was a young man—young even by the reckoning of Men—but his heart was stout and his spirit great, and he was as fierce a foe of Morgoth as his father Beren had ever been. With a sore heart he thought of the loss of that bulwark, the seat of the rightful King of Beleriand, the home of his mother's long youth. So up he came from Tol Galen, and married with a lady of the Sindar, and said to all the people: Elu Thingol the King is dead, but am I not Eluchíl, Elu's heir? Of a surety I promise you: this good country of ours, the land of Lúthien's birth, shall not fail forever!

Do you know what it was the sons of Fëanor destroyed, when they ruined Doriath?

"And now I speak for myself," Elwing said, "and not for Doriath."

I had a father. Do you know what it is like to lose a father? You do.

I had brothers. Do you know what it is like to lose your brothers? You do.

I had a mother, too. You only lost your mother by leaving her. But mine was murdered, murdered, in her own home—as I hear your grandfather was murdered in his own home!

Say you were not the leader. Say it was not your idea. Say you had no choice, for you had sworn an oath—and whose fault was it, that you had sworn an oath? Who should have borne the consequences, if you were fool enough to swear an oath? Was it my father? My brothers, my mother?

Was it me?

I was three years old.

Do you know what you did, in Doriath?

"I know," Maglor blurted. That famous voice was faint and failing, as faded as the rest of him.

Eonwë the Herald frowned and gestured him silent again.

"Call us fools," Elwing said. "Perhaps we were fools. Doriath fell. Doriath was lost twice over. And then we tried again anyway."

At the mouth of great Sirion, on the shores of the Sea, we tried again. We were nothing but two ragged bands of refugees—yes, two, because we joined with the survivors of Gondolin. Some of them were kin to us. No, I say all of them were kin to us, though a good part of them were Noldor, Queen Idril's people. What greater bond is there than the kinship of losing everything?

We tried again. We built a home where the air was salt and free. We were not a warlike folk. The bold among us went to the banner of Gil-galad if they would, or else they went to Sea. But I married my husband Eärendil at the Havens of Sirion. My sons were born at the Havens of Sirion.

When nothing else is left—when all other hope is dwindled—there is still this: you try again. You build. You love. You make a family.

Do you know—

But she could not finish. This time Maglor did not try to speak. His eyes! Elwing had been a scourge after all. She had not even been trying.

"I find I cannot say the rest," Elwing said. "Nor do I need to. Everyone knows the story. Well. I have borne witness. Let justice be done."

The shining faces of the Valar all turned towards her. It was impossible not to tremble under the weight of their combined attention. When the words came, Elwing did not hear them with her ears. The great voice of Manwë plucked at the strings of the world like fingers plucking at a harp. The whole throng of listening Elves fell utterly silent.

We find that there is a right of redress belonging to the royal house of Doriath, said Manwë. We ask therefore, Lady Elwing: what is your desire in this matter?

Elwing held very still.

To her? They were giving this to her?

The final judgement belonged to Manwë. But Elwing understood that her answer mattered. If she said, we were promised there would be no evil here—if she said, why should he ever receive any mercy, when he showed me none—if she said, I am so tired of being unhappy, I just want it to be over, I never want to think about him again—

Elwing hated him. Did she not have the right to hate him?

All of Valinor, from its mighty King down to the frowning rosy-cheeked Hobbit, stood waiting for her answer. Elrond was waiting. Maglor was waiting. The whole listening crowd was waiting. Out of the corner of her eye, Elwing could see those two grim rust-red figures, mother and son. They were all that was left of Maglor's kin, the only people who would stand by him on this day of doom. They were waiting too. They were probably the only people here who cared what became of Maglor for his own sake.

She knew as she had the thought that it was not true. Elrond also cared.

What was her desire?

"I desire my father, given back to me again," she said. "And my mother, and my brothers too. And my people, and my home, and all the years of my children's lives. Can the Lords of the West grant me this?"

No one answered. Everyone knew the answer.

"Equally I might desire that my enemy be punished. Let him go to the Halls of Mandos, whence none escape. Let me know that he is prisoned, so that I may gladly walk free."

Is this your desire?

"No," said Elwing. "I already told you my desire. Let justice be done. There is no vengeance that will satisfy me; there is no redress that can restore to me my father, my mother, my brothers, my home, and my children. There is nothing I want that he or you can give to me."

Look at him, that nothing-person, that hollow shell, that shade out of the past! Look at him, broken with time, scourged with truth: that murderer on trial, that stalking shadow, that funny old Elf who whistled all the time! Elwing tried to make herself pity him. She looked at him long and hard and she tried. Had he not already suffered? Did she not know something about misery? Could it not count for something, that he had been kind to her children?

Was it not the absolute minimum, was it not the very barest shred of ordinary decency, to feed and clothe the frightened six-year-olds you had kidnapped, and attempt to give them music lessons?

Don't be a fool, Elwing. You have nowhere left to run.

Elwing could not do it. She knew she ought to. She knew it would be better for her and better for him and better for all the world if she could say to the Valar: I, Elwing, am grown very wise and merciful and full of ruth, and not for his deserving but for the long labour of the world's restoration I say that vengeance must end somewhere and it should end here; therefore I ask mercy for Maglor, even I who leapt into the Sea to escape him.

But she could not do it.

She took a deep breath.

"I call all of you to witness," she said. "Whatever rights of vengeance or redress belong to the royal house of Doriath, I resign to the last heir of Doriath. To my son Elrond."

There was a stirring among the Valar, and a sudden rush of whispering from the Elves. Maglor's hollow eyes were wide. But Elwing only looked at her son. Had she done it right? Was she a worthy mother? If she was not yet as good as she would like to be; if she could not bring herself to pity Maglor—could she not at least pity those who loved him?

"Let my son entreat for whatever justice or mercy he thinks best," she said. "The matter has nothing further to do with me."

Elrond's eyes were wet. Thank you, he mouthed.

Elwing turned to Maglor. His lips moved, but he could not seem to make words. He looked more solid than he had been a moment ago, as if the airs of Valinor were gathering around his unravelling form and stitching him back together. Perhaps they were. Only in the Undying Lands could Elves escape the fading that was otherwise their eternal doom.

"I never want to see you again," Elwing said to the second son of Fëanor. "But that shouldn't be difficult. I don't go out very much."

She did not stay for the rest of the trial. Hadn't she said it was nothing to do with her? She took flight on white wings, and the silver robe and silver crown that Elrond had given her fell from her changed form and lay in the grass of the Máhanaxar.

She flew without rest. She was not fleeing. She was not afraid. She only wanted to stand on the roof of her tower, and look up, and see Eärendil's bright ship turning for home. She wanted it more than anything in the world.

And it did help.

And she still needed to repot the rest of the geraniums.

It was four days later that Elrond arrived. He had taken the northward journey at a slower pace than Elwing, probably to spare his horse. "Don't let him at my flowerpots this time," Elwing said. "There is a whole field to graze in."

"Mother," Elrond said, and jumped down from horseback and seized her in his arms and clung to her.

"Oh," said Elwing helplessly. "Oh, my darling." She held him tight. She stroked his long dark hair. He was so solid and warm. That height he had from her side, but the strength, the broad shoulders, that was all Eärendil. "I am sorry," she said. "Were they stern with him, then?"

"No," Elrond said into her hair. "No, he is pardoned."

Ah.

Elwing held her son and tried to sort through what she was feeling. Maglor was pardoned. He might go where he pleased. To Tol Eressëa, perhaps, to be a guest in Elrond and Celebrían's kindly house. Or perhaps he would go back to his mother. Elwing did not even know where Nerdanel lived.

He would walk freely in Valinor, that sad-eyed old murderer. His people would accept him back again—oh, perhaps not all of them, and perhaps not at once, but he would not be alone forever. He would get his mother back, and at least one brother, and his long-lost home.

Was Elwing angry?

No.

No, she could not be angry. She had given her answer to the Valar and they had heard it. Let justice be done. Elwing had been a queen once, and she knew something of the business of judgement. Justice was not justice if it aimed only at punishment. Justice was not justice if it could not restore. You could not spend two ages of the world bound to the star that was love and hope and then say: but not for him.

"Well, there's no need to cry, then, is there?" she said, patting Elrond on the back. "What a fuss! Come in, come in. We'll have tea and something to eat, and you can tell me all about it."

"I doubt you want to hear any more about him," Elrond said, but he let her go. The smile was in his eyes, rather than on his lips. That was like Eärendil too.

"I don't," said Elwing frankly. "But I love you."

Elrond stayed a sennight. On the sixth day, Elwing found herself whistling as she swept the kitchen and went out to feed the chickens. It was a lilting, laughing song, a dancing-song, and her feet skipped lightly over the doorstep. It was an ancient song of Doriath, one that Daeron the Minstrel had made for Lúthien to dance to. They had still played it in the Havens of Sirion.

Elwing left off whistling suddenly in front of the chicken coop. She pressed her lips tightly together and folded her arms. The handsome red cockerel who ruled Elwing's flock hopped up to the post of the garden fence and gave a general yell of warning.

"I am not one of your hens, my good fellow," Elwing said. "You do not need to defend me."

The music of the Sindar still floated on the wind, piped sweet and high and wild. It was a long time since Elwing had heard it, and despite her irritation she was moved by its loveliness. That also annoyed her. Elrond came out of the front door of the tower and picked his way across the vegetable garden. The red cockerel aggressively fluffed up all its feathers at him. Elwing gave him a speechless glare.

Elrond's expression suggested he was remembering Elwing's hissing goose-shape. "It is a lovely tune. And beautifully played."

"I told him I never wanted to see him again!"

"Technically," said Elrond, "you are not seeing him."

Elwing made an exasperated sound. "This sort of thing is why everyone hates the Noldor."

"Is it?"

"It is in the West," Elwing said. "Go and tell him to stop."

"I'm sure he means well. But I will tell him."

Elwing looked at Elrond—at the twitch of amusement at his mouth and the ancient feeling in his eyes. The tenderness was for her. The age-old love and mercy belonged to someone else. She sighed. "You needn't hurry back. I imagine you have plenty to say to each other. Just make it clear that he is not to bother me."

The parcel was on Elwing's doorstep a month or so later.

Elrond had gone home to his wife. There had been no more haunting music piped over the hills of the North. And there were apples to pick, and chickens to feed, and supplies to lay in for Eärendil's next sailing; and Elwing had acquired three handsome young goats. One of her goats was trying to eat the silver cloth that the parcel was wrapped in. Elwing had to engage in a lively tug-of-war to get it back.

The cloak of silver that she had abandoned in the Ring of Doom was rather ragged by the time she was done. Goats respected nothing, not even a kinswoman of the Maiar and a granddaughter of Lúthien. "Shoo!" Elwing said.

The knot of the cloth around the gift had come undone.

"Oh—"

This sculpture was metal. Elwing knew little of metals, but though it shone brightly she thought it was not silver. There was a cunningly affixed chain to suspend it by. It was not meant to stand. It was meant to fly.

It was a gleaming silvery seagull. Elwing saw the sharp arch of its wings in flight, the fishhook of its beak, and thought: she does look at birds.

"Now what am I supposed to do with this?" she said.

She had the robin perched on a windowsill in her parlour. It was one thing to keep a little woodcarving of a robin, that might have meant anything and come from anyone. But the gull was for Maglor. She would not be able to pretend otherwise. And then she would also have to notice, every time, that the robin was for Amrod.

It was much too lovely a piece to throw away. Though it was heavy in her hands, it looked as light as air—as if the gull might at any moment give his mewing cry and dive down to skim the water.

Elwing barely used the parlour anyway.

She went inside to hang it up by the window.

Chapter Text

"I am noble and wise and kind. I am filled to the brim with love and hope and mercy," Elwing said. "I am a very good person, and I have done a very good thing. I want to be clear, though, that I'm furious about it."

"Understandably," said Eärendil.

Vingilot's sky-anchor held her drifting far above Elwing's tower. It was daytime in Middle-earth, and therefore night-time in Valinor. The two of them leaned together against the ship's rail and looked out on the shadowy hills below. The star of the Silmaril shone on Eärendil's brow. It could be seen by all Aman from here.

"You didn't tell me about Amrod," Eärendil said.

"I wanted to pretend it didn't really matter," said Elwing. "Just one of them—the least wicked one—it hardly counts as forgiving them at all. And his mother, Eärendil! If you had seen his mother's face!"

"I didn't see it. I have seen yours. I think you are noble and wise and kind."

"I don't feel any of those. I was just so sorry for her. Anyway, my own husband can hardly call me base and foolish and cruel."

"No one could," Eärendil said. "No one who knew anything about you."

"Am I not the woman who leapt into the Sea and abandoned her children to be raised by a murderer?"

"Sweetheart," said Eärendil.

Elwing sighed. "We have had that conversation often enough, I know. Well, the murderer is back, and he is pardoned, and his mother sent me a seagull sculpture."

"Do you want me to drop it in the void beyond the world for you?"

"No," said Elwing bitterly, "it's too good."

"Oh no."

Elwing deserved to be laughed at. Anyway, she liked the seagull. "She looks at birds properly. Not enough people do."

"The offer remains open. Is Elrond happy, at least?"

"He is," Elwing said. "He loves Maglor. It would have hurt him, if I had demanded a stern punishment and the Valar had listened to me. But I could not forgive. So I just… let everything go. I dropped the whole burden of grief there in the Ring of Doom and flew off. And it turns out that's all forgiveness is."

"I'm proud of you," Eärendil said. "I know it was hard."

"You would have been able to say it yourself," Elwing said. "Mercy for Maglor!"

"Actually, I think I would have punched him," said Eärendil. "You know, for destroying my home, kidnapping my children, and threatening my wife."

Elwing laughed. "Now why didn't I think of that?"

They were quiet together for a little while. Eärendil had his arm around Elwing's waist. He was always so warm and solid. They had met as children, two lonely eight-year-olds, and in those days Eärendil had looked like an Elfling, small and fair and full of grace. As he grew to adulthood, his Mannish heritage had pushed itself forward. Elwing was a quarter Man, but Eärendil a full half, and it had come out in the breadth of his shoulders, the strength of his arms, the fuzzy yellow beard and moustache that had started sprouting on his fifteen-year-old face. He's the image of me, isn't he? his father Tuor had said. Let's hope he ends up a little taller!

Eärendil had ended up shorter than Tuor, but with the same broad frame. By swimming and sailing and all the arts of the Sea he had piled on muscle—in fact, he couldn't seem to stop getting broader. Elwing remembered being eighteen, sitting at Idril's table, catching her future mother-in-law's eye while Eärendil heaped a fourth helping of fish stew onto his plate. Idril had smiled and said, "I have been asking around all the mothers of Men here at the Havens, and apparently this is normal."

Eärendil, with his mouth full, hadn't been listening. At that point Elwing hadn't yet realised that there was more to her fascination than simply how can he possibly eat this much? But looking back, Idril's smile had been a little knowing. For the two of them, the Half-elven, the refugee prince and princess of the Havens, there had never really been anyone else.

"What are you thinking about, sweetheart?" Eärendil said.

"You," said Elwing. "Us. Home." He squeezed her waist. She leaned into him. "And the sons of Fëanor."

"You don't need to think about them any more," said Eärendil. "Never again."

"Perhaps I'm just regretting not punching Maglor when I had the chance."

"I have good news," Eärendil said. "If you really want another chance… he's going to be around."

Elwing laughed. "If only I had a right hook like yours!"

"Try eagle-shape," said Eärendil. "Get some talons in there. Or I could teach you again."

"The problem is not my technique," Elwing said. "The problem is that you weigh as much as two of me. Maybe two and a half."

"It's all the waybread and pickled herring," Eärendil said. "I've finally run out of strawberry jam, though. Did you make more?"

"More jam, more waybread, more pickled vegetables, more herring—are you sure you don't want something that's not herring? I can ask my birds to pick up some mackerel—even tuna—"

"I'm a sailor," Eärendil said. "We like a consistent diet."

"Well then, good news. I have another couple of barrels of herring. And I'm starting to feel pleased with my goat cheeses."

"Cheese! O most excellent wife!"

"You'll be well supplied for your next sailing," Elwing said. "And for every sailing. Always."

"And I'll come home demanding more jam," Eärendil said. "Always."

They glanced at each other to share a smile. I love you was one of the things they both preferred to say sideways.

"All right," said Eärendil, "now tell me what's bothering you."

"It's still the sons of Fëanor," Elwing said. "I can't stop thinking about them. The thing is… the thing is that now it's not fair."

"You've been more than fair."

"No, I haven't!" said Elwing. "Because Maglor is pardoned and has gone home to his mother… and Maglor, you know, was very nearly the worst. He was certainly the most deadly. The sheer number of the slain who must be laid to his account! Maedhros did his best, of course, but you simply cannot murder people quite so efficiently when you only have one hand."

Eärendil chuckled. Elwing appreciated him so much.

"I think Maglor was worse than his younger brothers," she said. "He killed more people. He destroyed more that was good and lovely in the world. You can say, well, Celegorm and Curufin were kidnappers—but Maglor and Maedhros were also kidnappers, and personally I think it was more wicked to kidnap our small children than it was to kidnap Lúthien Tinúviel."

"They probably didn't realise at the time," Eärendil said, "that it was actually brave to the point of insanity to try kidnapping Lúthien Tinúviel."

"She didn't know herself yet, I think. She had not faced Sauron or Morgoth when they met her."

"What are you thinking of, love?" Eärendil asked. "Their fates are not your affair. Mandos has them. And you have been more than kind enough to the whole House of Fëanor."

"I don't know," Elwing said. "I don't know. But Caranthir was only at Alqualondë and Doriath—listen to me! Only! Still, it is true, he was. Maglor was much, much worse, and I let him be pardoned. As for Celegorm and Curufin, they are no worse than Caranthir when it comes to kinslayings. Yes, they wronged my grandparents badly and thoroughly embarrassed themselves in the process—but Beren and Lúthien have left the world. They are past caring. All the rest of the crimes those two committed are only a matter of Noldorin politics, which is nothing to me."

"And Amras?" said Eärendil. "And Maedhros?"

"Both of them were at the Havens," Elwing said. "I have limits." She sighed. "I keep thinking about her, though. Nerdanel."

"The lady who looks at birds?"

"I think about her and I am jealous," said Elwing. "She has two of her children back. We can only ever have one. I picture Nerdanel with her two sons and some part of me says: well, get me another son too, and then we can talk about mercy! As if that's how it works. As if loving your children is something you can count."

"I doubt she expects anything else from you," Eärendil said. "I doubt she even expected this much."

"I know," Elwing said. "Perhaps I expect something from myself. Where should grief end? Where should bitterness end? Why should I have to carry forever the burden of hatred and misery that the sons of Fëanor gave me?"

Eärendil put both arms around her and drew her close. She rubbed her cheek against the scratch of his stubble. He understood her so well. He always had. He had known loss as a child, and he had been old enough when Gondolin fell to understand what he was losing.

But at least his parents had survived.

"Tell me," he said.

"My father, my brothers," said Elwing. "My mother."

Eärendil's hand was strong and warm on her back. "I know."

"I don't think I can send a raven," Elwing said. "I think I must go myself. I think I must go to Mandos."

On the north-western edge of Aman, on the shores of the Outer Sea, a low hill stood in a dark wood. Sombre mists filled the air. Elwing went as a pigeon, tracking the hidden magnetic pull of the world's deep currents rather than trusting to sight. No better navigator over a dim country than a pigeon.

She landed on the hillside. The air was cool and sweet. It had not actually been a long journey. Her tower was not so far from here; closer to this hall, certainly, than to any other house of Elf or Vala. White niphredil grew in drifts on the hillside. Elves had brought it from Middle-earth, the flower of Doriath, and planted it above the Halls of Mandos in memorial of Lúthien.

Elwing shivered a little in the chilly air. Transforming her body was easy enough, but she could not transform her clothes. Until she had stolen a trick from her grandmother's book and woven herself a slip out of her own silvery hair, she had always returned to woman-shape quite naked. Perhaps she needed to cut her hair off again and weave a shawl.

Something to think about later.

She stayed on the hillside a while, picking flowers. She gathered an armful of small white blooms and divided them into two bunches. Then she carefully made her way down the side of the barrow.

It was a barrow, though no body had ever been buried beneath it. Mandos was the Lord of the Dead, and his house had the semblance of a grave. The door was a hole in the side of the hill, marked by a simple dolmen arch, two stone uprights and an uneven black slab across the top. It was utterly dark within. There was no gate.

It was not hard to go into the Halls of Mandos. The difficulty was getting out again.

Elwing had been here before.

She went into the dark.

Down the black tunnel, listening to the silence, putting out her fingertips to trace the fine threads of the tapestries that covered the walls. Elwing's eyes kept trying to see, taking on hawk-sight, owl-sight, until she forced herself to close them. There was no light here. No one would ever look on the glories of Vairë's weaving, the adornments that had hung here for uncounted ages. It would have been a blasphemy beyond blasphemy to attempt this descent with a lantern.

It was a long way down. Eventually Elwing began to hear the soft sigh of the Sea. The Halls of Mandos extended out under the inlets of the Outer Ocean, and there were dark waters over her head now.

At last, the tunnel stopped sloping downwards and the footing became flat. One wall fell away as the space opened out. Elwing kept tracing her fingers along the soft, heavy weaving hanging on the other. In the distance, she saw a tiny speck of light.

She went towards it. It took a long time. She was walking across a great pillared hall of black stone. To her eyes, it seemed utterly empty. But she knew that it was not. The Ainur that waited on Mandos were of the strangest and darkest character to be found in all the West, and even Elwing, kinswoman though she was, was not welcome to look upon them.

What had they seen, those silent watchers, the courtiers of death? What stories could they tell, if any of them ever spoke? Lúthien Tinúviel had once sung aloud as she danced through this hall. Unbodied, heartbroken, she had come yet again before a terrible dark figure in the north of the world. The light of love had shone in her face as her ghostly feet leapt and twirled. But Mandos was not Morgoth. Though he was dark, though he was terrible, he knew both love and pity. He had wept that day for the griefs of the world.

At the end of the great hall there was a wide stone basin set at the base of a black throne. In that basin there was a single droplet of silver light, one ancient gleaning from dead Telperion. It shone in the darkness of the Halls like a star.

Elwing went to Mandos's throne with her arms full of white niphredil. She curtsied as best she could, and then she held up one of the two bouquets she had picked. A tribute.

Welcome, Elwing, said Death.

He sat in the form of a great statue, carved in black stone, almost a part of his mighty throne. He was gowned in a dark robe and hooded. Nothing could be seen of the dreadful face under that hood. He was alone. Vairë the Weaver needed light for her work, and she and her handmaidens did not live here. Nothing kept Mandos company on his cold seat save for the raven perched on his shoulder.

The shrouded head nodded to the basin. Elwing laid her bouquet on its lip. The light of Telperion seemed to find a silver reflection in the small petals of the niphredil.

I thank you for the gift, said Mandos. He was by nature the most harsh of all his kindred. The thanks was graciously spoken and sounded like a death-knell. What do you seek in my Halls?

"The same boon I have asked before," said Elwing, "if you will permit it."

For Lúthien's sake, I will.

One great stony hand lifted from the arm of the throne and pointed. The raven fluttered down from Mandos's shoulder and perched on his wrist.

I warn you again, said Mandos, as I have warned you every time. Follow the guide I give to you, and do not seek to stray in my Halls. There are mazes beneath the Earth that none may escape; for the Dead are here, and here I must keep them, until they pass beyond the world, or until that day of their coming forth again into the light. Become lost among them and you shall be of their number, O child of Lúthien's line. Therefore beware.

Elwing curtsied understanding and gratitude. Mandos was showing her a generosity beyond what any other Elf could ever hope to receive. No one but Elwing ever walked in the Halls alive.

She did not do it often. She had understood, after the first time, that Mandos's sternness in keeping the dead from their living kin was actually mercy, for both. It gave the unhappy dead no relief to know themselves mourned, and it was an awful thing to see the people you loved reduced to grieving ghosts.

But here she was.

It was a long time since Elwing had visited her mother.

Along narrow, winding corridors, hung with bright tapestries. The raven fluttered ahead from empty sconce to empty sconce, and every time it landed on one, a little grey light flared up briefly, revealing the greens and scarlets and golds of Vairë's weaving. It was rare to see a scene you knew. Every moment of Time's unfolding, from its beginning to its uttermost end, was the subject of Vairë's art. There was no person or incident so small that it went unrecorded. Elwing had come this way before, more than once, and the glimpses of the woven world seemed to change every time. Today, the raven led her through a corridor hung with what seemed to be a detailed record of a Halfling birthday-party. Small figures with curly tufts of hair on their feet went back and forth among heavily laden tables, or danced together under the Sun.

The raven croaked a warning. Elwing kept moving.

There were other corridors branching off from this one. Sometimes she felt or half-saw movement in the dark, ahead or behind or down at the far end of one of those winding passageways. Sometimes she heard again overhead the soft sighing of the Outer Ocean, the very last of all the seas.

They turned a corner. Now they were come to a hall of ghosts. The tapestries hung between hollows in the walls. Slip through one of those dark gaps, and you would find yourself in a dim and quiet chamber where no one ever came. There were no locks, no bars. Though Mandos was the Imprisoner, this part of his kingdom was not a prison. If someone wanted to leave, all they had to do was step out of the shadows and call for a guide.

This was a place of rest beyond rest. It was a place for those who could not be healed by Estë or comforted by Lórien, who found no relief in the tears of Nienna. It was a place of eternal quiet.

It was very peaceful, down here in the dark.

Who was here? Fewer of the Doriathrim than there had been once. In two ages of the world, there were some who had found it in themselves to seek the light again. Elwing had met Mablung the Heavy Hand, who had come north to her tower and eaten several slices of toast with jam and, absurdly, asked her forgiveness. She had met Beleg Cúthalion, who had told her how much she looked like her great-grandfather Thingol.

There were newcomers to replace them. In two ages of the world, many people had been lost to grief and slaughter. New corridors forever unwound themselves under the Earth, new tapestries adorned them, and fresh ghosts of Elves who had never been anywhere near Beleriand still came West by the Death-road, yielding themselves to the grim mercy of an ending.

The raven led her on through the dim places of that house. It perched at last on an empty sconce outside a hollow no different from any of the others. The tapestries here were always the same. On the left, a wedding: a tall figure with long dark hair, and his lady all silvery, both of them crowned with wreaths of scarlet leaves, niphredil blooming all around. On the right, a vivid profusion of flowers, blue and white and purple, so lovely that you almost missed that they were rooted through the pale cages of two small skeletons lying unburied in a dark wood.

The marriage of Nimloth, and the fate of her sons.

"Thank you," said Elwing to the raven, and went in.

"Hello, Mama," Elwing said to the ghost. "I brought you some flowers."

The ghost was hard to see. It was not really there at all in any physical sense. It was a shimmer under the surface of the world, like looking at circular ripples in a still pond and knowing that someone at some point had thrown a stone into the water.

Elwing laid down her bunch of niphredil at the ghost's feet. The flowers she had brought last time and the time before were still here, unwithered, a pale drift. Her mother was a silent wraith, a blur of pale half-light, an unbodied spirit that did not move or speak.

Elwing had only been three years old when Nimloth died. Her memories were the hazy memories of Men. She remembered a mother who was a warm breast and long shining hair, a violet-scented embrace and a shrieking game of I'm coming—I'm coming—I'm going to catch you! That was how she remembered her older brothers, too, though they were even vaguer: Eluréd and Elurín, mirth and movement all through the Thousand Caves, two little boys with strong, chubby legs who ran in and out of the pillars shouting with laughter. Had they even been dark-haired? Or was it Elwing's memory of her own twin sons that had made them so?

"I miss you," she said, as she always did. "I wanted to tell you what's been happening."

She was not sure the ghost could even hear her. Could you hear without ears, could you see without eyes? What was left of a person, when warmth and laughter and sense and motion and even the scent of their hair was stripped away?

"Elrond came home!" she said. "I thought you'd want to know. He is so tall now—he looks just like Father, I think."

The ghost hovered, silent, unmoved.

"I'll tell you about that first," Elwing said.

She told Nimloth about her grandson. She took her time. She had many years of joy to share.

After that, she spoke about Nimloth's great-grandchildren: Elladan, Elrohir, Arwen. About Arwen's choice, her mortal love, her mortal life. About Celebrían on the shore, asking for her sons. Do you think they will come?

About Elrond's answer.

"So it seems we shall not meet them," Elwing said. "More twins—so many twins in our family! I wish we could have met them."

Before her eyes rose the image on the tapestry. Those two small skeletons, all entwined with flowers.

Then Elwing bowed her head and wept.

Her mother offered no comfort. She gave no loving embrace. She could not. She was a ghost. She might have stopped being a ghost, if she wished to. She might have left the shadows and left her rest and gone out to the hallway to call for a guide. I am ready, I am done with silence, let me be alive again! Let me breathe the good air, let me see the Sun, let me embrace my daughter!

But if Nimloth came forth from the Halls of Mandos, she would come alone. She had married Dior Eluchíl, the mortal son of a mortal father. Her twin sons had died alone in the woods; her sons, who had also been the mortal sons of a mortal father. The fate of Men belonged to all the children of Men—all except Elwing and her descendants. They had been given Lúthien's choice, for Lúthien's sake, after Elwing came to Valinor.

Eluréd and Elurín had never had that choice. Dior had never had that choice. Nimloth's family had gone where Men went, wherever that was. They were beyond the world, beyond the reach of all the Eldar, like Beren and Lúthien.

Like Elros.

Like Arwen.

If Elwing's small sons had died such a death, and lain unburied among the flowers, she too would have chosen eternal peace and silence in the dreamless dark. She would have accounted it a mercy.

She tried not to cry for too long.

"I am trying so hard to be good," she said, once she'd blown her nose and wiped her eyes. "I am trying so hard to be wise and kind and fair. What is the use of anything otherwise? I did not choose the life of the Eldar so I could stay in the world pursuing vengeance until the end of Time. I had better reasons. One of them was you."

Elwing's mother, the second and final Queen of Doriath. A lady of the Sindar, murdered in her own home by the sons of Fëanor, along with her husband and her sons, who were now gone forever.

"Did you know what you were getting into," Elwing asked, "when you married into the line of Lúthien?"

No answer. Of course.

"I love you, Mama," Elwing said. "If you are ever ready, I have made a room in my tower for you."

Not the guest room where Elrond and Celebrían had stayed. Several floors higher there was a quiet white chamber where Elwing grew niphredil and sweet violets in pots on the windowsill.

"I will come again. I promise."

The raven took her back to the pillared hall where Mandos sat on his throne.

Well? said Death.

Elwing took a deep breath. "Caranthir, Curufin and—"

She hesitated over the last name. But he had been dead already when her brothers were driven out. He had not done it, nor even given the command. He had killed her father. But Dior had already avenged himself. He had killed Celegorm too.

She made herself say, "—and Celegorm."

Mandos looked down at her, an impassive hooded shadow.

"Obviously not just like that," she said. "Not if they're going to cause trouble. Repentance and atonement and—oh, why am I telling you your job, you know."

I do, said Mandos, but it is amusing to be advised.

Many people were not aware that the Lord of the Dead had a sense of humour. It was as harsh as the rest of him, and ill-suited to the manners of Valinor. But Elwing, who joked about murderers with her husband the star, quite liked it.

"I just think it's not fair," she said. "Maglor was worse than any of them. It will nag at me, the unfairness. So, for my part… I have no objections. Anyway, I feel sorry for their mother."

Elwing went home to her tower, her doves and chickens, her flowers and her orchard and her vegetable patch and her goats. Summer was coming. The apple trees were so heavy with green fruit that they clustered like bunches of grapes. That would never do. Elwing tied up her silver hair, took a ladder and a trug, and went out to thin the crop so the apples that did grow to ripeness would be bigger and sweeter. The goats could not believe their luck when she let them at the trug afterwards.

She cut all her hair off and wove herself a shawl to go with the slip. "Short again!" said Eärendil when he saw her. "Perfect—I love the nape of your neck. Now I can kiss it without your hair going up my nose."

Elwing was flying over the hills of the North in the shape of a soaring kite. She skated from thermal to thermal, and finally turned on the lazy flick of a wing for home. The kite-body spotted a mouse in the undergrowth down below and made a strong suggestion. No thank you, Elwing told it. I don't eat meat, and if I did, it wouldn't be mice.

There was someone down there. Elwing saw him from afar with her sharp hunter's eyes. He was on foot. She would reach the tower before he did. She assumed he was making for her tower; there was no other dwelling for miles. The guest room wasn't made up, but it wouldn't take her long. What did she have in the pantry? Eggs, of course, she always had too many eggs. She needed to use them up faster. Perhaps if she made custard?

She did not hurry. The summer air spiralled hot and hazy, perfect for a raptor. Besides, the tide was in, and the traveller would have to wait for it to go out again and reveal the causeway, unless he was prepared to wade across.

She landed at last on her white tower roof. This year a gang of rooks and jackdaws had made it their preferred perch; they were the most sociable corvids, and often flocked together. None of them was hugely pleased to see a bird of prey descending. Elwing would have been mobbed and chased away if they had not recognised her in time. "I am sorry!" she said as she transformed. "Next time I shall be a crow."

The flock cawed laughter. Much better to be a crow, they all agreed. Who was as clever, as handsome, or as interesting as the House of Corvidae?

Elwing had to laugh. "You're smugger than seagulls, and I didn't think it was possible," she said, and went downstairs to get changed.

She came out of the tower a little later carrying a tray with a teapot and some sandwiches. It was mid-afternoon. The tide was finally going out, and the traveller was picking his way cautiously along the newly revealed causeway. Crabs scuttled away from his well-shined boots. Elwing set her tray down on the picnic table that she dragged out to this spot every summer. "Hello!" she called. "Watch for the dip in the middle, the waves will still catch you there!"

She poured herself a mug of peppermint tea. The traveller got wet. Elwing did not laugh at him. He looked so embarrassed. He was an Elf of medium height with a ruddy complexion and intricately styled black hair. He was plainly dressed, as for travel, but there was gold embroidery on his cuffs. "Welcome!" she said when he made it across. "You were too impatient, you know. You should let the tide finish going out before you try to cross. But if you take your boots off now, they should be dry by sunset. Would you like some tea?"

"Are you the Lady Elwing?" he said.

"Just Elwing, please. And yes, of course. There aren't many white towers where the birds come along this coast."

"I saw a bird earlier, flying this way," he said. "A buzzard—"

"A kite, I think you'll find," Elwing said. "That was me. Here."

She passed him a mug of peppermint tea. He clutched it awkwardly and said nothing.

"Well, if you were looking for me, you've found me," she said. "I can usually put a traveller up for a night or two, though I live a quiet life here and I am not much for conversation. Have some tea, have a sandwich, have a seat. Tell me, stranger, what brings you to my tower?"

Nothing.

"At least tell me your name," said Elwing.

"Caranthir," he said.

Elwing set down her tea.

"Of the—"

"You don't need to tell me what house," said Elwing. "There can be no confusion. Believe me, no one ever named their children after you."

Caranthir cleared his throat. "Lady Elwing—"

"I always heard," said Elwing, "that you had the worst manners of any of your brothers. I see that later historians understated the problem."

"I haven't said anything yet!"

"How dare you," said Elwing. "How dare you show your face here."

Caranthir's ruddy complexion went a darker scarlet with embarrassment or anger. "I only—"

Elwing stood up. "Finish your tea, Caranthir of the House of Fëanor," she said. "Have a sandwich. The egg mayonnaise is quite good. Then leave. And don't come back."

"Wait!" Caranthir called behind her.

Elwing took a very deep breath. She was not going to shriek. She was not going to fly at him with eagle-talons either, though she would have liked to.

She turned around.

Caranthir had set a small golden chest on the picnic table. It was as out of place there as the Nauglamír would have been, a treasure of antique loveliness, the work of the Noldor in the days of the Trees. Those golden clusters of swaying fruit, gorgeously engraved: that was Laurelin, and done from life. Caranthir opened it.

It was full of jewels.

Elwing looked at the gift, and looked at the giver, and said nothing for a long time. Caranthir turned redder under her scrutiny.

"Are you trying to give me wergild?" she said.

Caranthir was so scarlet that if she had liked him at all she would have been worried about him. He could not seem to think of anything to say.

"Do you know," said Elwing at length, "I come of the race of Men. My grandfather was Beren of the House of Bëor—have you heard of him?"

Of course Caranthir had heard of Beren, who had done what the sons of Fëanor could not, and claimed a Silmaril from Morgoth's crown. Elwing smiled at his expression, but it was not a kind smile.

"Now Beren," she said, "once found himself standing in the court of King Thingol, in Menegroth—I don't need to describe it to you, of course, you've been to Menegroth."

He had dealt slaughter there. He did not meet her eyes.

"Beren wanted to marry Thingol's daughter, you see," Elwing said.

"Everyone knows this story," said Caranthir to the picnic table.

"Apparently you don't. Beren asked for Lúthien's hand, and Thingol asked for a Silmaril. And Beren laughed at him. For little price, he said, do Elven-kings sell their daughters! He just couldn't believe it, you see. He could not believe that anyone would be stupid enough to trade his daughter for a rock."

Caranthir looked up at that. "The Silmarils were not just—"

"Of course," Elwing said over him, "Beren was not the only mortal ever to find Thingol's logic baffling. It was Haleth of the Haladin, I believe, who said once: Where is my father? Where is my brother? The thoughts of the Eldar are strange to Men!"

That really upset him. He drew himself up stiff and proud. "Don't talk about Haleth—you know nothing about Haleth—"

"She too was a kinswoman of mine, at some remove," said Elwing, "for the House of Bëor wed often with the Haladin. Why should I not speak of a woman who was kin to me and a liegewoman of Doriath?"

"She would have cursed at you," said Caranthir, "for calling her anyone's liegewoman. All the fair lands of the East she might have had for her own—"

"—and you offered them to her, but she was too proud to be bought."

Caranthir stopped talking.

Elwing went and picked up the golden chest of jewels. It should have been heavy, for the weight of treasure inside. There must have been some craft or spell worked into the gold to make it sit so lightly in her hands. "Well," she said. "Where is my father? Where are my brothers? Perhaps in the House of Fëanor you think it reasonable to trade your family for rocks. I am too much a daughter of Men. You cannot pay me for your blood-guilt, Caranthir! Or have you forgotten? I already had a Silmaril."

That hit home. Caranthir had his share of grief. Elwing could see it in his face. For his father, perhaps. Or for Haleth of the Haladin. And then this proud person had made himself famously a criminal and a fool, and achieved nothing by it, and now he would have to live with that humiliation forever. She felt a twinge of something that was not quite pity, but not a thousand miles away either.

"You are right," she said. "It was more than a rock. But it didn't make me feel better. It wouldn't have made you feel better either. I promise you."

She was still holding the gorgeous golden chest. When she threw it away, jewels scattered like a spray of stars. Some fell into the Sea.

Elwing shrugged.

"It is shallow here," she said. "Pick them up and take them away if you want them. Or leave them for the birds. I have no use for shiny stones."

The sculpture, when it came, was intricately woven golden wire. The tail was a folded drift of gold-wire feathers, all ablaze with opals.

"Gaudy," said Elwing. "But peacocks are, I suppose."

She put it in the parlour with the others.

The rooks and jackdaws collected up some of Caranthir's jewels and hid them in their nests. The rest were swallowed up by the tides. Caranthir had at least taken the bespelled golden chest away with him. Elwing wouldn't have known what to do with it, but it would have been in the way if he'd left it lying there on the shore.

Chapter Text

The summer went by. And another summer, and another. Elrond came to visit every year, sometimes with Celebrían and sometimes alone. Most summers Elwing travelled back with him to Tol Eressëa, to the sprawling house on an eastern hillside where her son and his wife kept good company. Old friends and new friends came to see Elrond there. Elwing had no idea how she and Eärendil had somehow produced a sociable son, but before long he seemed to know everyone on the island.

Elwing met Gil-galad and Círdan again in Elrond's house. She was cornered by Felagund one evening, and gave in, and let him tell her fondly and earnestly about Beren and Barahir and Bëor. She was introduced to an extremely courteous Dwarf, whom she found she liked: he was sensible and charming and not over-inclined to silly chatter. She sat in a quiet corner and listened with a smile to the singing of the folk of Imladris: tra-la-la-lally, indeed!

"They can keep improvising verses forever, and if they're drunk enough they will. This isn't even the most ridiculous song!" said Celebrían. She was sitting on the arm of Elwing's chair with her feet swinging. "Imladris and Lothlorien were the last two realms of the High-elves in Middle-earth, and Mother always said it was a very serious charge, being the final guardians of the lore and loveliness of Elder Days. Elrond would never have actually tried to tease her about it, but you always felt it, in Imladris—as if he was leaning over your shoulder and smiling. Serious, yes, but not that serious. Nothing is serious enough that you should forget to laugh!"

"Oh tril-lil-lil-lilly," said Elwing, "the valley is silly."

"Very silly!" said Celebrían. "Oh, I am so glad to have him home."

Once, only, an awkward moment. Someone came to the door, and the doorkeeper came uncertainly to Elrond, and Elrond looked troubled and stood to deal with it himself.

Ah, thought Elwing, it is Maglor.

She knew he came here sometimes. Never when Elwing was visiting. But she had stayed a little longer than usual this year. Well, soon it would be time for the apple harvest, and she would have to be home by then.

Elrond went out, and was gone a little while, and came back. Elwing breathed out when she saw he was alone. What would she have done, if he had brought Maglor inside? Could she have made herself keep sitting in Elrond's hall with her old enemy? Could she have forced a smile? But no: Elrond had gone outside and said to a guest, my mother is here, so you must be gone; and Maglor had gone away.

What a thing it was for Elrond to turn away a guest!

Her son came to her side. "Don't look like that," he said.

"Do you not want him for your merrymaking?" Elwing said. "He will certainly add more to the singing than I can."

"He sings seldom," Elrond said, "and never merrily."

"For goodness' sake," said Elwing, inexplicably annoyed. "Bad enough to hang around on the shores of Middle-earth feeling sorry for himself. I think it positively rude of him to ruin the mood on Tol Eressëa. Tell him to cheer up and think of something sensible to do with his time."

"My mother Elwing advises you to stop moping and get a hobby," said Elrond. "What hobby should I suggest?"

"If all else fails," said Elwing, "keep chickens!"

How many summers had gone by? Elwing no longer counted them.

She went flying up the coast one morning as a grey heron. On her way back a crow spotted her. He noticed at once that she was not what she seemed to be, just as Elves often glanced a second or third time at someone in Elf-shape whom their hearts told them was no Elf. Elwing was not surprised when he followed her back to the tower and watched with interest as she returned to her proper shape. Crows feared little and liked to learn. "Yes, you were quite right," said Elwing. "I am not a heron at all."

The crow was hungry.

"I am sure I have something you will like."

He hopped onto her shoulder. Elwing chatted to him as she descended the spiral stair. He'd had a good season. He'd seen the Huntsman lately, west of here. A scavenger could do well keeping half an eye on the Hunt of Oromë. "Oh really?" said Elwing. "They don't chase you off?"

Of course not. Offal thrown to slavering dogs, bones picked over by hungry crows—that was a proper part of the whole business! Didn't Elwing know anything?

Hunting was a source of great joy to the Elves, and so the Hunt of Oromë was one of the few ways that death—any death—ever came to the Undying Lands. Long ago, Oromë had taken his riders to Middle-earth to satisfy his own nature and theirs. Now he hunted in Avathar and Araman, or more rarely in the woods of Valinor proper. There was a peculiar compact in place about the whole thing. Very few of the beasts they hunted were really beasts at all. Sometimes it was Oromë himself who took the part of the quarry. He ran before his hunters as a great white stag, and was cornered by their hounds and felled by their darts, before rising again renewed.

Oromë was one of the most peculiar Valar. Elwing, who ate no meat, felt very little connection to him.

"I am glad to hear you have done so well out of it," she said to the crow. "I cannot offer you any bone-marrow, but perhaps you would like some barley, or—what!"

The what was a shriek. There was someone in Elwing's kitchen.

Elwing stood on the stairs with her heart hammering. The crow, displeased by the noise, leapt off her shoulder and went to perch suspiciously in the rafters.

The Elf in Elwing's kitchen turned around at her cry. He had dark, piercing eyes, almost the same colour as his black hair. He'd been examining the pump at her kitchen sink.

"Who are you? What are you doing in my tower?" said Elwing.

"The door was open," he said.

Elwing always left the doors and windows open for the birds. No one else ever came this far north. "Do you often make yourself at home in other people's houses?"

"It's quite rustic, isn't it?" he said. "I heard it was Aulë who raised this tower. I think he could have done a better job on the plumbing. You don't even have hot water."

"I beg your pardon?"

"We could get you hot water."

Then Elwing knew who he was. She took a deep breath and counted to five in her head. The crow decided that she looked calm again and fluttered down to her shoulder. He gave Elwing to understand that she had better give him plenty of barley, if she was going to squawk like that.

The strange Elf was frowning. "Our scouts all knew to shoot any crow they saw. We even paid a bounty for them. They were the Enemy's spies. Ill-favoured black creatures! I am surprised to find you keeping one as a pet."

"He is not a pet," said Elwing. "I only met him this morning. And I think it remarkably rich of any Noldo to object to the race of corvids on the grounds that they are dark, and clever, and have an unfortunate tendency to become corrupted to the service of evil."

He scowled.

Elwing finished descending the stairs. "Move."

"What?"

He was in the way of the pantry door. She glared at him. He moved.

Elwing went to the barley-store. She was running low. She did not grow grains herself. They were brought north for her from the wide plains where Yavanna's people cultivated all good things. It would not be long before a smiling Maia in a straw hat arrived with another cartload of foodstuffs Elwing could not cultivate herself in this climate: sacks of grain and fresh-milled flour, barrels of sweet wine, bricks of powdered tea, peppers and tomatoes stored in jars, and carefully dried spices.

"Or a glasshouse," said her visitor behind her, as she scattered handfuls of barley for the crow. "You grow things here. We could build you a glasshouse."

The crow gobbled his meal. Elwing picked up a broom. She would sweep up the last of the barley when he was done, and the floor needed sweeping anyway. That was what happened when you left your house open for the birds all day.

She clutched the broom like the sword it was not, and turned to face him.

"Curufin the Crafty, I presume," she said. "May I ask you a question?"

Curufin looked suspicious. "Go on."

"Where are you living?"

It was not what he had expected her to say. He answered, even more suspiciously, "With my mother."

"And do your brothers dwell there too? Caranthir, Maglor, Amrod?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"I am only wondering," said Elwing, "if any of you ever actually talk to each other. I suspect not. Because this is the third time I have had to tell a son of Fëanor to go away and leave me alone."

"You must realise we cannot do that."

Elwing stared at him. "I am starting to wonder if healing and forgiveness was somehow the wrong choice!"

"What do you want?" said Curufin.

"I just told you—"

"We were warned there was no hope," Curufin said over her. "We were told there was no way back. Though all we had slain should entreat for us! That you should then entreat—that Elwing of Doriath should speak for the sons of Fëanor—"

"It was barely an entreaty. I only mentioned your names. And none of you ever quite managed to slay me, though not for lack of trying."

"What are you doing?" demanded Curufin. "What do you want from us? Would you have me endure eternal debt, eternal shame?"

"I am astounded," said Elwing. "You seem to think I care about your feelings."

Curufin's scowl darkened. "We talk to each other," he said. "You told Maglor not to pipe for you. You bade Caranthir keep his jewels. Is it funny for you to see the balance of justice tipped so badly, and all one way? Why would you pity us? Why would you help us? Tell me what you want."

"Do you need me to release you from indebtedness?" Elwing asked. "Very well, you are released. Forget all about it. Go away."

"No!" Curufin snarled. "And stop giving me things!"

The crow finished snapping up the barley and turned a beady black eye up towards him, unimpressed. Elwing said nothing.

"Better plumbing," said Curufin. "A glasshouse. Gifts that suit your temper and not ours."

"Well, you're certainly cleverer than the others," said Elwing. "Very well. Answer another question, then."

"What?"

"When did you know?"

She saw him understand. She saw him decide to stop understanding. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes, you do," said Elwing. "When did you know that your Oath was vain?"

Silence.

The crow finished the barley. Is there anything else interesting to do here, he asked. Not now, Elwing told him.

"Does it matter?" said Curufin at last. "Yes, the Oath was vain. Hollow, empty, and pointless in the end. We all failed, we all died—or close enough—and we saved nothing from the dark, not a glimmer. And now the Silmarils are gone forever, so why does it matter?"

"The Oath of Fëanor robbed me of my home and my family," said Elwing. "Twice. Call it morbid curiosity. Tell me. Was it after long contemplation in the Halls of Mandos? Did it occur to you in Doriath before you died?"

Curufin had eyes like a crow, startling for their blackness and their brilliancy. He looked at her as if she were a pump or a glasshouse, a puzzle to be solved. Elwing had heard once that of all the sons of Fëanor, he was the most like his famous father. Maybe she ought to scatter him some barley. She bit her lip on a smirk at the thought.

Curufin still watched her with piercing eyes. Whatever he was looking for, he could not seem to find it.

Finally he folded his arms.

"My cousin Finrod swore an unbreakable oath," he said. "He was ever a prince of great art and mighty voice. To Barahir and his descendants he promised himself in life-debt, and he set a token against it. A ring."

Elwing raised her eyebrows.

"Finrod Felagund was the mightiest king in Beleriand. For the number of his people, the wealth of his treasury, the wide lands of his kingdom—I say there was no realm of the Eldar greater than Nargothrond. Gondolin was a charming prison, Hithlum a foggy fortified marsh. Thargelion would have been nothing without the Dwarf-cities in the mountains." Curufin made a face. "Doriath was the only one that came close. But Thingol was always too inward-looking, too short-sighted. The Siege on the North was broken, but we were not beaten! We were still alive, we could still have won it—I thought we might still win it—there was wealth enough and strength enough, and half of it in Nargothrond! And then one day a bedraggled mortal shows up at the gate, looking like nothing so much as a half-dead hedgehog, barely able to make himself understood—has Finrod told you that, that Beren could hardly speak Sindarin? His speech was halting, his accent vile, but he had Barahir's ring. So off went Finrod, the mightiest king in Beleriand, on a hopeless quest at a mortal's hest, straight into the arms of Sauron. And what did he achieve? Nothing. Nothing. Beren succeeded in the end, but he owed no thanks to Finrod for it."

"I fail to see your point," said Elwing.

"Finrod swore an oath, and it came calling for him, and he went straight to his obvious, pointless death," said Curufin. "That is what unbreakable means."

"Ah," said Elwing. "So that's when you knew, was it?"

"No," said Curufin. "That was when Celegorm started to know. He came to me after Finrod was gone and said: have you ever thought—shouldn't we have already…?"

He laughed. There was no mirth in it.

The crow flew to Elwing's shoulder and said: odd fellow, isn't he?

"Does a great and binding oath loosen its grip if fulfilling it would be almost impossible?" said Curufin. "But not quite impossible, since Beren did it. When did I know? I could not tell you. My wife drowned in Ossë's storms after the Kinslaying at Alqualondë. My own son despised me. Do you think we were stupid? Do you think we were blind? I have not asked him, but I imagine Amrod saw it at Losgar. Why else would he have tried to get back on those ships? We had centuries of peace. A long, long peace, when there seemed to be hope, when we thought we might win somehow. I had plenty of time to think. The Silmarils were hallowed. Everyone said it was such an honour for my father, that Varda herself should bless the works of his hands! And we were killers. Before we ever came to Middle-earth, we were already killers."

"You knew," Elwing said.

"I am," said Curufin, "the clever one."

"You knew you would never be able to touch them."

"It was obvious."

"You knew your Oath was a snake eating its own tail."

"The Ring of Barahir had the form of two serpents," said Curufin. "One upholding a golden crown, and one devouring it. I wondered later if Finrod also knew what he had done to himself."

"What was your plan, then?" Elwing asked scornfully. "Were you going to forge your very own iron crown? The Dark Lord's would not have fitted you."

"Do not mock at me," Curufin said. "I was a foeman of Morgoth until the end."

"Yet you let him keep you on a leash—yes, a leash, that is all your great Oath came to. The Enemy set the Sons of Fëanor loose on Beleriand, and laughed on his dark throne while you did his wicked work for him. So you were the clever one! You worked it out! Could you not have mentioned the problem to your brothers? What did you tell Celegorm, when he started to suspect his whole life was a lie?"

"I told him not to be a fool," said Curufin. "I told him not to worry about it."

"Why?"

"Because we had to do it anyway!"

The cry rang through the rafters of Elwing's pleasant and airy kitchen. Curufin breathed out hard.

"We had to," he said. "We had to do it anyway."

"I think Mandos may have let you out too soon," said Elwing.

He gestured sharply, as if her words were a blow he meant to parry. "I am not a fool. I never was. Of course we didn't have to. I am brought low, I am humbled, freely I admit my crimes. There is none who can release me from shame! Yes, we had a choice. But we also had no choice. You do not know what the Silmarils meant."

"I have been one of the guardians of the star Gil-Estel," said Elwing, "for nearly seven thousand years."

"You are only a Grey-elf," said Curufin. "You never saw the Trees. You never knew my father."

Elwing said, "Get out of my house."

"You asked me—"

"Get. Out."

"You have not said what you want us to—"

"Out!"

Elwing felt something come loose in her breast, as it did every time she threw off her own body and took wing in bird-shape. This time she was not transformed. A wind began to rise. Barley-grains blew wild across the kitchen floor. Open shutters rattled wildly at the windows. Elwing's silver hair blew around her face.

Curufin stared at her. His mouth opened on a half-formed syllable: Lu—

Elwing was still holding the broom. She slammed it hard against the unswept kitchen floor.

The crow was first and fastest. He took wing with a scornful cry and dived at Curufin's face. In almost the same moment, a flock of seabirds came pouring into the kitchen. They swooped through every open window: gulls and terns, choughs and oystercatchers, shags and cormorants and stormy petrels, and a furious pair of ospreys, golden-eyed sea-eagles with hooked beaks and angled wings.

Curufin was not a fool. He ran.

The birds pursued him, massive herring gulls calling out mockingly as they mobbed him, the crow yelling his disdain, the ospreys stooping with wild cries. A great cloud of rock-pigeons and collared doves took off from the dovecote and circled above. The chickens came flapping to see what all the fuss was about. The hens only clucked alarm and frantic disapproval, but Elwing's red cockerel was not so faint-hearted. Long-legged was he under his handsome scarlet plumage, broad-winged and bold and crowned with a fine comb, and he let out his war-cry and went screaming to Elwing's defence.

Curufin was too worried by the gulls, who were swooping to intimidate but had no intention of touching him. He made the very serious mistake of underestimating the angry chicken. The red cockerel ran after Curufin, launched himself into the air, and turned his scaled feet to slash at his enemy's face. He was a big fellow and Elwing never presumed to trim his spurs. They were a full inch long and came to wickedly sharp points.

She heard Curufin yell.

She stood in the doorway with her broom and watched. Finally, Curufin called out to her. She could not make out the words among the clamour of the birds, but the plea was obvious: call them off!

Elwing pointed out towards the causeway. The tide was in. The water was knee-high.

The cockerel could not keep up the chase over water. He stood on the picnic table by the causeway and crowed his triumph as Curufin waded across. Most of the seabirds left off the pursuit. Only the herring gulls, merciless bullies with a five-foot wingspan, kept swooping and yelling their scorn until Curufin was well away from the island.

The hens stopped clucking and went back to hen business. The doves, relieved, settled on the tower roof. The crow came back to Elwing.

That was fun, he said. But I did not like the ospreys. I will come here again. You can give me more barley.

He flew off.

Elwing went into her tower. She shut the door. She put the broom away. Then she sat down at the kitchen table and put her head in her arms and laughed till she cried.

Elrond arrived in a hurry two days later, though it was not the season for his annual visit. "Mother," he said as soon as greetings were done, "I thought you should be told—"

"Fëanor's son Curufin has come forth from the Halls of Mandos?" Elwing said.

"How did you know?"

"He turned up here."

Elrond's jaw tightened. "Maglor suspected—he told me, and said I should go to you, in case either of them troubled you. He said he would try to prevent it—"

"And Maglor, of course, is famously so good at preventing his brothers from doing things," said Elwing. "Either of them? So Celegorm is out too."

"He has not—"

"Not a sniff of him," said Elwing. "Perhaps my father's actual killer has some shame. Or perhaps Curufin gave him a warning."

Elrond paused. "What did you do to Curufin?"

"I didn't do anything," Elwing said. "He may have been savaged by an angry chicken. Personally, I think he had it coming."

Elrond started to laugh. "To think I was worried about you!"

"Mandos would not have released them if they were likely to hurt anyone," Elwing said. "I realise now that I did not appreciate Maglor enough. The hauntingly beautiful music was annoying, but at least he didn't break into my house to criticise the plumbing."

They shared a pot of tea while Elwing made an egg custard tart. She didn't have much of a sweet tooth herself, but Elrond seemed to have inherited Eärendil's. "Do you think you could take some eggs away with you when you go?" she said. "Would Celebrían like some homemade mayonnaise?"

"Are you sure you're all right?" said Elrond.

Elwing did him the courtesy of stopping to consider it. She had come into her own tower, her home, her small and precious kingdom, and found a son of Fëanor there. She had stood alone against him clutching a broom while he raked her with his piercing dark eyes. Was she all right?

"I am a little shaken," she said. "They are not the most tactful family, are they? I don't think it even occurred to Curufin that I might not want to find him unexpectedly in my kitchen. He was too busy trying to solve a difficult puzzle—why would Elwing help me? What should I do for Elwing? So we had a little conversation about it—did you know, by the way, that it was very sad and difficult to be the Sons of Fëanor?"

"Really?" said Elrond. "I had no idea."

"I think I felt a little sorry for him," Elwing said. "Not sorry enough to put up with any more of his nonsense. If he wants to make amends for his wickedness, I applaud him for it, but that doesn't make him my concern. And if I needed better plumbing, or a glasshouse, or any other device of craft, I could ask Aulë for it. I suppose Curufin's intentions in coming here were good. As were Caranthir's, when he turned up with a box of jewels! They know they were wrong. It is a start, to know you were wrong. So far none of them has thought of actually apologising." She started pouring custard into the pastry shell. "My hopes are not high for Celegorm."

"I think Maglor would apologise," Elrond said, "if you wanted him to."

"Did he get a hobby yet?" Elwing said. "That would be a better use of his time."

"I have to say," said Elrond, "if you did ask Aulë for a hot water tank, Celebrían and I would be very grateful."

That was a no on hobbies for Maglor. Elwing had to laugh. "It wouldn't be a tank! An Elf might start by building a boiler or laying pipework, but Aulë would just bring up the deep fires of the earth to give me a set of hot springs." She thought about it. "Which would not be a bad thing. I have guests more often than I used to. You poor spoilt children, afraid of a little cold water at bathtime! But perhaps I will ask."

"You talk about Aulë and the rest as familiar friends," Elrond said. He seemed to understand that Elwing had no wish to discuss the sons of Fëanor any more. "When I first came West, that did not surprise me. Now it does."

"When I was a girl, I imagined that in the West people walked side by side with the gods, and chatted to them about their work as you might chat to a smith or a gardener," Elwing said. "Idril—your grandmother Idril—she made it sound that way. Of course, she was only a child when she left! But I think it was that way, once. Long ago in the Years of the Trees, perhaps they were our friends in the personal sense, and not just in the sense of general benevolence. But there are few Elves in Valmar now. Though all the Elvenfolk of Middle-earth may come West if they wish to, it is only the Vanyar who dwell in Valinor proper, and not all of them choose to stay. You know why, of course? Why the Valar keep aloof, why they are familiar only with those who knew them well already, why they never come as far into Eldamar as Tol Eressëa—seldom, indeed, even as far as Tirion?"

"Presumably," said Elrond, "because the Noldor had a point."

"One point. One good point. In the midst of a whole host of bad ones," said Elwing. "But lies grow better with a seed of truth in them, and Morgoth seeded some truth in the lies he told long ago. You would not want to live in my house, though I love you dearly, and you love me. And I am actually your mother! We Elves have the right to manage our own affairs: to build our own homes, and keep them as we please. The Lonely Isle is the compromise. Not entirely a good compromise. There is no good compromise. We need the Undying Lands, need them terribly, for the wide world will destroy us sooner or later. But the Valar hold themselves apart, and try to be far-off friends and not overbearing busybodies. They hope it is enough. It has worked so far."

"You do not think it will work forever?"

"We are still of Arda, you and I," said Elwing. "The Music has an ending. Nothing is forever."

"You are familiar with them, though," said Elrond. "More so than any other Elf I have met or heard of. There are some who take willing service even now. You might hear, she is of the train of Oromë, or he dances to gladden Nessa. But you—"

"I visit with Mandos and answer back to Manwë," said Elwing. "I mention household improvement projects to Aulë, and my pantry is restocked by Yavanna. I am not any other Elf, you know. I am not entirely an Elf at all. My great-grandmother was the concept of nightingales." She laughed. "Do you know, nightingales are the one bird-shape I can never seem to do? I just cannot get a feel for them."

Elrond decided to stay for a few weeks. He did not say that it was in case any more sons of Fëanor turned up. He did not need to. Elwing appreciated his concern, anyway. It was pickling season, so she put him to work: side by side in the kitchen, hair tied back and sleeves rolled up, chopping vegetables and storing them in vast jars of brine. Elrond taught her the nonsense-songs of Imladris to sing as they worked, and told stories about his children.

It was the night of the new Moon, when Tilion rested from his wanderings. The sky was a dark curtain, spangled with blue and white and silver stars, and Eärendil's light blazed princely among them. Elwing woke sometime after midnight and went to the window. It looked out over the Sea. She leaned on the sill and listened to the ocean's music. There was another sound mingled with it somewhere in the distance: the long, low horn-call of the Valaróma. The Hunt of Oromë was abroad tonight. Elwing remembered her friend the crow. Perhaps he would do well out of this night's work.

The horn-call again, a little closer. Elwing thought nothing of it. She stayed where she was, watching the star of Eärendil that shone in the East far above the dark and sighing Sea.

"Mother," said Elrond, "have you seen?"

Elwing went out to look. Little waves lapped around her feet as she crossed the causeway to the mainland.

The Hunters of Oromë could go lightly as a breeze. If they had left any sign of their passage, it was intentional. Elwing stood on the strand and looked at the trampled grass on the hillside. Though her woodcraft was not so great as one of the rangers of Doriath, she was still a daughter of the Sindar. It was not hard to read the passage of horses and hounds, runners and riders. They had paused here, hard by her tower, on the low wild hills that ran down to the sandy shore of the Sea. Most of those horsed had dismounted. Some had worn boots, and some had been barefoot; some of them had feet with heel and arch and five toes, and some, though they were two-legged, walked on mincing hooves. There were Elves and Maiar both in the Hunt, though more Maiar than Elves.

Here, in the sand, the hoofprints of an unshod horse four times the size of any steed of Elves or Men. Nahar, the steed of Oromë, had stood here still as a statue. Oromë had not dismounted. Elwing thought of the sound of the Valaróma. It would have been much louder if he'd been this close. They must have been coming this way when she heard them last night. By the time they reached the tower, Elwing had already gone back to bed.

Here, at the ocean's very edge, the footprints of one barefoot Elf. Already the hungry tide was washing them away.

He had walked to the causeway alone. He had stood there for a long time, watched by Oromë and all the Hunt behind him. He had not tried to cross.

"Well," said Elwing, looking at Celegorm's tracks in the sand. "At least he didn't break in. Small blessings."

"Mother?"

"A crow mentioned to me recently that the Hunt had been roaming west of here," Elwing said. "Of course, the Halls of Mandos are also west of here."

Elrond came and stood beside her and looked at those silent, telling footprints. "So Oromë has taken him back," he said. "How strange!"

"Not really," said Elwing. "I imagine it was a condition of his release."

There was a time when Elwing had sought to learn more about the Sons of Fëanor.

You should not ask, the Noldorin survivors of Gondolin had said. You should not dwell on this. Anything we can tell you is centuries out of date. We did not know them well. We did not love them, either. Though it is not the greatest of their crimes, we have our own grudge against Fëanor and his sons, a grudge that began with the ship-burning at Losgar.

No, tell me, Elwing had said. It had seemed to her, then thirteen years old, that if she just knew enough then they would lose all power over her. If she knew all their names, and their histories and their habits, she could make a spell out of them to ward away evil.

Tell me everything.

She learned their names in Quenya and in Sindarin, and the order of them, eldest to youngest. She learned a great deal about the ship-burning at Losgar—the Noldor always had plenty to say about that—and a little about the kinslaying at Alqualondë, though her sources were fewer, and they left strange gaps and refused to explain. She learned Maedhros is their leader, he is the diplomat and the strategist; she learned Maglor the Minstrel, Celegorm the Fair, Caranthir the Dark, Curufin the Crafty. She learned the twins, ah, that is a sad story—and she had been thirteen, and tender-hearted despite everything, so she had wept when the story did indeed turn out to be sad.

Three of them had died in the ruin of Doriath. She had gone to her own people to try to learn more about that. But the Sindar would not speak of it. They had given her only the barest outlines. So she had had to go back to the Noldor of Gondolin again and beg them fill in the rest by guesswork. Maedhros must have lost all credit with his brothers after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad—that was his battle, and his failure. It would have been Celegorm who was their leader after that. No, not Maglor, Maglor never takes responsibility for anything if he can help it! Why did Celegorm lead them against Doriath? Well, they had their Oath… and Celegorm had other reasons to bear grudges against Beren, and Beren's line…

But, little one, we are only guessing, and it cannot be doing you any good to dwell on this. He is dead, dead. He will never come for you.

"A conditional release makes sense," Elwing said. "He was the most erratic of them. I cannot imagine Mandos would let him loose unsupervised."

"Indeed, his own brothers never left him unsupervised if they could help it," Elrond said. "He had the force of will to lead, and was beloved by his people, but his mood was ever wild. He was capable of anything. The cruellest and deadliest of the liegemen of the Sons of Fëanor were his followers. I know."

It was Celegorm's followers who had driven out Elwing's brothers to die. They had killed two children in Celegorm's memory. What kind of person could inspire such monstrous love?

Elrond had obviously done the same thing as Elwing. He had asked the same questions. Perhaps as a boy of thirteen, perhaps even younger, he too had decided to know who they actually were, the people who had broken his family. And, of course, he had had a better source. "Was Maglor honest?"

"Mostly," Elrond said. "He told no lies. He left things out—generally about himself—but I think he left them out in his own thoughts too."

Elwing was awake the next night, when the Hunt of Oromë came to the margins of the Sea. She stood at the window listening to the snorts of horses, the jingle of harness. Then she climbed up on the sill and leapt out. Her arms lengthened, her feet tucked in, the ground fell away: she was an owl, and all the sounds of the night came doubled and trebled to her feathered ears. She glided high and silent over the hills.

There they were.

The crowd of hunters waiting on the hillside. The lean grey bodies of the hounds at rest. Oromë the Huntsman, mounted, statue-still. And one pale figure on the shore, looking across the causeway.

Oromë was right behind him. If Celegorm took one step closer to Elwing's tower, the Hunter could seize him by the scruff of the neck and swing him up over Nahar's massive withers. Elwing circled overhead once more. She was silent as a ghost. Owls had raptor bodies, sleek and powerful and made for the hunt, but they were hidden underneath a soft mass of muffling feathers. The only noise she ever made was the faint puff of air under the first slow dip of her gliding wings. But a few of the hunters looked up anyway. Oromë, of course, looked up.

A third loop. Then Elwing went back to the tower roof, and perched in the shadows there. The owl-body could see Celegorm perfectly by starlight. He was lean and muscular with a hard, fair face. That is a predator, said the owl-shape without fear: one hunter noticing another.

That is a person who is feeling very strange, thought Elwing, who knew more than owls did about how to read someone's face.

She and Elrond took the day off pickling vegetables, and went for a long ramble along the beach together. Elwing told him stories of her childhood, living where the sea-air blew salt over the wide estuary of the Sirion.

That evening Elwing took owl-shape as soon as the light began to change. If the pattern held, the Hunt would not come to keep vigil by her tower until the night was more than half gone. She did not fancy sitting up and waiting for them.

She flew west over the wild hills and wooded valleys of Araman. This had been an empty country before the rising of the Sun. It was lonely even now, but it was a green loneliness. Yavanna's great love was growth, and at the kiss of the first dawn the once-dark hills had drawn a deep breath and rejoiced. Let there be grasses and heathers! Let there be brambles and gorse-banks! O, finally, let there be trees! Then north from the mountains of Valinor the beasts had come: things that crept, things that flew, things that went upon the earth. Poor Yavanna, Elwing sometimes thought. She must be almost as frustrated as Oromë, penned in the Undying Lands, with so little scope for her great art.

Elwing landed in the fork of a young silver birch. A birch wood was a palace of slender white pillars, evening sunlight piercing through the green canopy, ferny undergrowth making a rich living carpet. There was a running brook here, and she could hear in its laughter a voice that was more than just the water's voice. The Maia of Ulmo had probably been here since Elder Days. The river had certainly been here long before the Sun woke the woodland.

The hunters were resting in a scatter of clearings on the brook's far side. Elwing watched them with the silent patience of the owl. They had obviously not had a good run yet tonight. They were fierce and eager, full of keen expectation, but full of good cheer too. They talked and laughed together as friends. Right on the brook's edge a pair of merry Elves was wrestling and roughhousing in the ferny undergrowth with a half-dozen half-grown wolfhounds, pups new come to their purpose.

Celegorm was on the edge of things. Once, perhaps, he would have been in the middle. But he was not an outcast. The other hunters glanced over at him. They called out to him. They would have let him into their talk and their laughter. Oromë had taken him back, and they would not gainsay their lord. What good could there ever be in saying to a criminal: now you are paroled, now you may come out of the dark and breathe the free air, but you will be under a shadow forever, and no one will look at you, and no one will speak to you, and no one will ever forgive you?

What quicker way could there be to drive someone back into the dark?

One of the young wolfhounds went frisking over to Celegorm on its absurdly long and fluffy legs. He spoke to it in its own language, which barely speech at all, only gesture and thought: not I, young one, go back to your game!

Well, I don't have to forgive him, thought Elwing. But I suppose it's just as well someone has.

Just then Celegorm looked up and saw her. Elwing's round golden owl-eyes met his pale grey gaze. He stood up. He waded a little way into the brook, and then seemed to think better of trying to get close. Instead he called out to her in the tongue of the birds.

Elwing was quite absurdly put out. How dare you talk to birds! Don't you know that's what I do?

He obviously knew she was not really an owl. Some people could always tell.

Elwing took wing. She left Celegorm and the rest of the Hunt of Oromë there on the riverbank. She went north, upstream, seeking their lord.

The evening deepened. Stars shone out one by one. The Hunt would ride out soon, but the Valaróma had not sounded yet.

Elwing found a mossy green clearing where the brook ran wide and shallow over a bed of smooth stones. The moss was soft and damp between her toes when she took her own shape and landed. She unwrapped her silver shawl from around her shoulders and spread it out as a blanket, then sat down to wait.

A little time went by.

Something was moving among the silver columns of the birch trees, as stately as any great king. Elwing looked up.

He was huge and glimmering-pale. He stepped among the ferns on long, delicate legs. He wore a mighty crown, a full thirty-two points. Elwing inclined her head politely to Oromë. He did not return the acknowledgement. He only turned his noble head to watch her. He had taken the shape of a gigantic stag, white as the Moon, with dizzyingly deep black eyes.

They were not well acquainted. But Elwing had some things to say.

"I once raised a fox cub by hand," she remarked.

The white stag stood proud and silent on the other side of the water.

"This was in Beleriand. I must have been twelve or thirteen. A white vixen of the snows had come south, fleeing the deserts that Morgoth was making. But she was too far from home, and her white fur stood out like a star against the greens and browns of the woods. She could not hunt in that country. She died, and Eärendil and I found her with her kits in a hollow beneath a fallen stump. Only one of them was left alive. He was the prettiest little creature I had ever seen. I loved him at once. I took him home with me."

The stag could certainly have spoken to her. But he did not.

"I am sure you know what happened next," Elwing said. "My people were deep in woodcraft, and they warned me. But he was the sweetest beast in the world. He was white as snow, with bright blue eyes, and fluffy ears. How I loved him! His sharp little teeth and his waving white tail!"

The stag bent its crowned head to lap at the water. Oromë was deep in the shape. Elwing still thought he was listening.

"Well, he grew," she said. "A fox is not a dog and should not be treated like one. He was tame enough to me—he thought I was his mother. But those sharp little teeth were not so little in the end! He grew and grew, and before long instead of a sweet pet I had a handsome white monster. He was over-bold and aggressive; he had never learned fear, he had never needed to. He would snap his teeth at anything. He would not go back to the wild. He hung around expecting me to give him things, as I always had before. He took no mate, he made no den, he did not know what species he was. He had not the faintest idea how to be a fox. How, after all, could I have taught him? I didn't know either." She laughed a little, remembering. "And he smelled terrible."

The stag's liquid dark eye, so strange and black, watched her thoughtfully.

"So it fell out just as I had been warned," Elwing said. "I loved a wild thing and tried to make him my own, and he was ruined. He was always my responsibility after that. He lived near ten years. I wept and wept when he died. How could I not? He was mine and I loved him. I should never have done it, and my love did him few favours. But I loved him anyway.

"Now Celegorm, I once heard, was not yet full-grown when he left his family and went to ride with the Hunt of Oromë. These days, an Elf who wishes to join Oromë's train must wait until he is grown to a great age—is that not correct?—and then ask humbly, and most often the answer will be no. And of course, few ask. By the time a person is grown to a great age, he usually has more sense. No adult fox suffers himself to be tamed."

She stood up. She picked up her moss-stained shawl, and curtsied politely to the Huntsman. He still wore white stag-shape, and yet to Elwing he felt nothing like a stag.

"I blame him more than you," she said. "A person can reason, while a fox cub cannot. He was old enough to know better by the time he went to Middle-earth. Still, he is your responsibility now. Do keep an eye on him. He obviously never learned how to be an Elf."

She flew home and went to bed. When the Valaróma sounded in the night, she stirred, cracked her eyes open, and then decided to just ignore it.

"They came again," Elrond said in the morning.

"For the last time, I think," Elwing said. "Hoofprints all over the hills again?"

She went out to look.

There were, indeed, hoofprints all over the hills. And there was something lying in the sand at the far end of the causeway.

"Oh, for goodness' sake," said Elwing. The tide was not quite out. She hiked up her skirt and waded across in an irritated flurry of splashing.

It was just as she had thought. Two plump young rabbits, their necks neatly and swiftly broken. They had fine fluffy coats that would make a good lining for a pair of mittens, if Elwing had happened to want a pair of fur-lined mittens. She put her hands on her hips and stared at them in profound disapproval. Then she looked up.

"I am vegetarian!" she shouted at the empty hillside. "All the line of Beren are vegetarian!"

There was a ringing, embarrassed silence.

"They won't be wasted. I know enough hawks," she said, gathering her calm as best she could. "But no more! No rabbits, no jewels, no music, and absolutely no glasshouses. Just leave me alone! Thank you!"

She picked up the brace of dead rabbits and stomped back to her island. Elrond was waiting by the picnic bench. "I'm not vegetarian."

"You were very badly brought up," Elwing said. "And you can tell Maglor I said so!"

Elwing and Elrond were about to set out for Tol Eressëa when the parcel arrived. "What's this?" Elrond said.

"If I had to guess? A crow, and some kind of bird of prey. From Lady Nerdanel."

"From Nerdanel?"

"They are not," said Elwing, "the most tactful family."

She'd guessed right. The crow was black steel. The moon-faced snowy owl was pale fragments of carved bone, strung on silver wires. They were both much more abstract than the sculptures that had come before. Nerdanel seemed to be trying to sculpt the idea of a bird, not the bird itself—to capture cleverness and shamelessness in the twist of a cocked steel head, and pin down silence and beauty and terror with hundreds of carefully strung white bone spurs.

"Hmm," Elwing said. "I don't know if I like them. But they're certainly very good."

Chapter Text

Avallonë was the city that the Havens of Sirion might have been, one day, if it had lasted long enough.

The houses were built in local white stone, with slanted roofs against the rains that came off the Sea. The Elves hung colourful curtains in the windows, blue and green and gold, and strung bright awnings over the streets to keep the rain off the open shopfronts. Every time you turned a corner, you got a fresh view of the bay. The song of the ocean was always in the air. The scent of it, salt and sweet, made your heart leap. There were seagulls everywhere.

The gulls thought Avallonë's markets particularly delightful. Elves were easy marks, they told Elwing. Practically everyone would throw you some food if you waited long enough. Try it!

"What are they saying?" asked Celebrían.

"They're recommending the local scrounging scene," Elwing said. "Why buy a cake when you could just hang around outside the patisserie looking villainous until someone gives you one?"

Celebrían laughed as they went into the shop. Elwing tried not to cling to her arm too obviously. She was seven thousand years out of practice with cities. They were going to buy Elrond a cake.

The patissier was an artist in cream and pastry and fruit and chocolate and sugar. Elwing could see him at the counter, chatting and laughing with the crowd. It would obviously be quite a wait. She stopped to peer at an absurd confection of life-sized sugar swans. What a ridiculous thing to make! And how pretty! Celebrían kindly let her study it for a while, and then steered her to the next one—a sugar garden, adorned with candied flower petals. Without having to be asked, she put herself between Elwing and the rest of the cheerful, chattering crowd of sugar enthusiasts.

It's such a nice city, thought Elwing, as she admired a towering chocolate lighthouse. Such a beautiful, welcoming place, full of kind and friendly people. There are white ships in the harbour like swans at rest. When night falls, there is a lamp in every window. Lighthouses all along the coast are lit like stars by every art the Eldar know, so that the mariners coming from afar will see them the sooner: look! Here it is! You found us, you're welcome, you're home!

Avallonë, on the Lonely Isle—Avallonë, in Eldamar! This was the sort of city the Elves had always wanted to build. Nor would it ever fall. Poor Tirion had been depeopled for an Age, and ghostly memories of sorrow dwelt still in its shining streets. Worse memories stalked the harbours of Alqualondë. And the Elves of Avallonë remembered other cities too. Fair Gondolin had toppled from its tallest tower, and Nargothrond had become the lurking-place of a cruel dragon. O for the memory of Ost-in-Edhil! O for all that might have been! And O for the Havens, the Havens of Sirion, where Elwing's children were born, and the gulls cried over the water!

"Try a cream puff," said Celebrían. "I promise it's not too sweet."

Elwing tried one. It was good.

They packed a little bag with cream puffs, along with the lemon cake for Elrond, and joined the throng at the counter. "One moment!" called the patissier. Lots of people greeted Celebrían. She and Elrond were generous hosts, friends to all, and the island knew them and loved them. Elwing nodded and smiled. People often seemed to recognise her. It was rarer for her to recognise them. But she caught sight of someone half-familiar in the crowd: a slight person in a grey cloak, wearing his rust-red hair in a long simple braid, clutching a box of little cakes.

"Oh dear," Celebrían whispered, while Elwing was still trying to place him. "We can always come back—"

It was too late. Amrod had not seen them fast enough. The motion of the busy, cheerful crowd in the small shop had pushed them together.

Celebrían's expression went fixed. A sudden quiet fell over the crowd as everyone seemed to realise at once what had happened. The patissier looked appalled.

It was a perfectly awful position for Celebrían. Amrod was a relation of hers—a fairly close relation, a first cousin once removed, which was only just short of immediate family by High-elven standards. If she gave him a blank look and a cold silence here in the marketplace, in front of everyone, it would be gossiped about. Besides, blank looks and cold silences were not natural to Celebrían. The only reason to do it would be for Elwing's sake.

Amrod looked horrified.

Elwing resigned herself. She had probably done nobler things in her life than make small talk with a son of Fëanor to spare her daughter-in-law some awkwardness, but she could not think of any just now. "Good morning," she said. "I see you are buying some cakes."

Amrod's expression was haunted. "For my mother," he managed to say. He had a very soft voice. He looked prepared to fling himself out the nearest window if the opportunity arose.

"We are just picking up a cake as well," Elwing said. "And some cream puffs. They are very good. I do recommend them."

"I—thank you," Amrod said. "I should—" He glanced about for an escape.

"If you're in a hurry," said Celebrían, "perhaps you'd like to go ahead of us in the queue?"

"Thank you."

He paid for his box of little cakes and fled. Elwing and Celebrían exchanged a look. Elwing was very proud of her straight face. Celebrían's lips were twitching. They bought the lemon cake and the cream puffs and went on their way.

"Oh," breathed Celebrían the moment they were out of the market. Her voice was shaking with awed, horrified laughter. "That was so awkward!"

"Hello, Lady Elwing," said Elwing, "I was just buying a cake, you may remember me from that time my brothers murdered everyone you knew, or that other time my brothers murdered everyone you knew, funny that it happened twice! There was also the time we all got together to murder a bunch of your distant relatives—I was there for that one—"

"Oh no, oh no, oh no," Celebrían said, "his face—oh no—"

"The way the whole shop went quiet—"

"Tol Eressëa is a good, pleasant, peaceful country," said Celebrían, "a country where evil never comes, and so everyone is horribly starved for gossip all the time. They were hoping for a huge scene. Something to tell their friends about later."

"Should I have thrown the cream puffs at him?"

"You would have been the most popular woman in Avallonë for it—or at least the most talked-about!"

"Poor boy," Elwing said.

It slipped out unmeaning. Boy was absurd. Amrod was a full-grown Elf, older than she was. But she had felt sorry for him all the same, creeping through that friendly marketplace like hostile country, frozen when he caught her gaze. Poor, silly boy—how very silly, to be frightened of Elwing! He'd only wanted to buy some cakes for his mother.

Celebrían was finally calming down from her hysterical laughter. "Yes, I know what you mean," she said. "Poor boy, indeed. Funny! It has been a long time since I thought of feeling sorry for the House of Fëanor."

"Did you ever?"

"Oh, everyone does," Celebrían said. "It is the most normal thing in the world. You learn a little history and you immediately go through a phase: why, how sad! The poor things! What a terrible story!"

Elwing snorted.

"Oh, I probably shouldn't say it to you—"

"No, no, I understand," Elwing said. "I did it too. I was a very soft-hearted girl once! It was the story of the twins that got to me. One dead by fire, one alone ever after—such an awful thing to happen, such a terrible accident, burned alive by your own family—oh, I cried and cried." They were walking back up the hill to the House of Elrond and Celebrían. Poor boy, thought Elwing again, suddenly drawing a connection between the awkward Elf in the cake shop and the youth who had burned at Losgar long ago. She had always thought it was a sad story. Oh, the poor boy.

"I wouldn't have expected that."

"I was very young," Elwing said. "I wanted them to be people, not monsters. I wanted it to make sense, what they did to my family, what they did to me. And most of all, of course, I wanted to persuade myself that I was safe. There were only three of them left alive after the ruin of Doriath. It was those three I worked hardest to like. Poor Amras, who lost his twin in the fire! Poor Maglor, such a talented musician! Poor Maedhros, tormented by Morgoth! If they were people—people with loves, and hopes, and griefs, people I could sympathise with—then perhaps they could also sympathise with me." Celebrían was looking worried. Elwing gave her a wry smile. "This is a very ancient bit of foolishness—do not think it troubles me now! It seemed to work at the time, you know. I talked myself into feeling sorry for the Sons of Fëanor, and for thirty-two years they left me alone. Now I am aware that thirty-two years of the Sun, for an Elf-lord of Aman, is the blink of an eye. But at the time it was almost my whole life. I really believed they deserved my kindness and my pity. That they were not altogether evil, and would never come back to torment me again."

Celebrían's worried look became pure sympathy. "I am so sorry."

Elwing only smiled. "What about you? What prompted your Fëanorian phase?"

"Mostly," said Celebrían, "I was trying to find something that would really annoy my mother."

Elwing started laughing. "Oh no! Did it work?"

"She was infuriated," Celebrían said. "You could tell because she went even more noble and majestic and full of the wisdom of Elder Days than usual. O my child, remember that you are a daughter of the Sindar and of the Teleri! Well, Mama, I would say, but are you not of the House of Finwë? And then she would try to persuade me to give my sympathy to some less dreadful Finwions. Uncle Felagund would be astonished if he heard the eulogy he got from her! In the end she cracked and said it like a normal person: Celebrían, darling, I know my cousins sound very tragic and interesting in the songs, but believe me, they were awful. Really just some of the worst Elves you could ever hope to meet. Nobody forced them to swear an oath to keep murdering people forever, you know. That was their own idea."

"I have to say," said Elwing, "I find it difficult to imagine your mother talking like a normal person." She had met Galadriel a few times at Elrond's table. It was hard to believe she was merely an Elf. She had the suppressed-thunderhead feeling of an Ainu embodied.

Celebrían giggled. "You don't like her."

"Well—"

"Don't worry!" Celebrían said. "That's normal. Mother is a very strong flavour. An acquired taste. People who only meet her once are impressed. Then you meet her a few more times and you realise it's not just for special occasions, she's like that all the time. I think she is finding retirement a little tricky, especially since Father has not yet come West to distract her. I am expecting any day to hear that she has moved to Tirion to start running the place for Grandpa Finarfin."

"The Noldor just cannot relax, can they?" said Elwing.

"Mother makes a huge fuss about being half-Teler and married to a prince of the Sindar," Celebrían said, "as if she isn't the most Noldo of them all!"

"She reminds me a little of Idril—which makes sense, I suppose, they are kinswomen! Idril was more or less my foster-mother long before she was my mother-in-law. She was very kind, very loving, and absolutely terrifying. What was it like growing up with Galadriel?"

"I think it says enough," said Celebrían, "that at the very first opportunity, I found the kindest Elf in Middle-earth and flung myself into his arms. Quick! Save me! I need my own house!" They laughed together. "The funniest part is," Celebrían said, "Elrond gets on beautifully with her. She was all ready to disapprove of him. She said no one brought up by Maglor Fëanorion could possibly be the least bit reliable, let alone husband material. But he won her over at once, and now they are each other's dear old friends. You should hear how they gossip! I think she comes to our house to see him, and not me."

There were swallows nesting in the eaves of the House of Elrond and Celebrían. We really ought to name it, Celebrían had said, and Elwing had suggested Bar-i-Thuilinn, Swallowhome.

They brought Elrond his lemon cake, and they all had a slice, even Elwing, before she retired to the chamber they kept for her, a room with high windows under the eaves. The swallows twittered to each other just outside. Elwing sat down on the floor by the window cross-legged. She closed her eyes and listened for a while. The swallows were pleased by the springtime. They were pleased by their nests. No nestlings yet, but it was sure to be a good season.

With swallow-song in her ears and the thought of swallow-flight in her heart—oh, there were few birds so acrobatic, so careless and free on the wing, as the common country swallow—it was not hard to let her mind drift back to the cake shop. So this was where it ended, seven thousand years of rage and grief and suffering: a white city full of gulls, a display of spun-sugar swans, and ninety seconds of moderately awkward polite conversation with a son of Fëanor.

Poor boy! Poor silly boy! Once Elwing would have been full of awful turmoil at the thought of ever seeing him again. She would have found a flimsy excuse—oh, my goats, my chickens, my orchard!—and taken wing the same day. She would have fled to her tower, alone in the north, where she knew how to manage ancient grief.

No. He was just a stranger. A sad stranger, whose story she knew. An Elf who had once made a very terrible mistake, and afterwards burned for it.

So there was some of the tender-hearted girl left in Elwing after all. I was not wrong, she thought, for the first time since the fall of the Havens of Sirion. I was not wrong to try to understand them, to attempt to pity them, to persuade myself to kindness. It was not the awful betrayal of myself and all my kin that it seemed afterwards. Oh, it is not wrong to be a young person with a gentle heart, the kind of person who adopts stray fox cubs and stray boy-princes of Gondolin! They were people, after all. Wicked people, perhaps. Cruel people. People who made a very terrible mistake, and kept making it long after they should have learned better. And then they paid the price. Oh, how they paid!

I was not wrong to pity them, though they did terrible wrong to me.

Why had Elwing even begun to think about the sons of Fëanor again? Two ages of the world their dark ghosts had lingered in her memory, dreadful figures she never dared look at directly. Then Elrond had come home, and Elwing had seen their mother Nerdanel on the beach. She had not even spoken to her. And yet somehow everything had spiralled from there. At last you could turn around and look right at those dreadful shapes and find they were only people. Suddenly they lost all power over you. You did not hate them any more.

Slender, soft-spoken Amrod, with his long rust-red braid. He looked like his mother. I wonder, thought Elwing, if Amras too—

No.

No, no.

Amrod was the least wicked of the sons of Fëanor. His twin was another story. Amras was one of the three who had survived the assault on Doriath. He had come to the Havens of Sirion. He had helped command that attack, long ago, on the worst day of Elwing's life. Pity was one thing. Kindness was one thing. Nerdanel had five sons now—five! That was plenty for anyone!—and Elwing had been more than generous enough with her forgiveness.

I have limits!

The swallows darted in and out of their nests behind her. They twittered to one another as they flew in joyous switchbacks, wild dives, and fantastic spiralling loops.

Being pregnant with twins had been the most draining experience of Elwing's life. By the last month she was barely able to drag herself from lying uncomfortably in bed to lying uncomfortably on a couch. She lost her temper with Eärendil and shrieked at him: if you put to sea now—now—if you so much as step into a fishing boat, after you did this to me!

Eärendil had looked alarmed. It hadn't even made sense—he had not breathed a whisper about sailing anywhere since Elwing said she might be pregnant. Elwing at that point had forgotten what a good night's sleep felt like. She was exhausted, miserable, too hot all the time, and constantly being kicked in the ribs. Eärendil was amazed and delighted every time he felt a small fist or foot push against her belly from the inside. He didn't have to experience it every hour of the night.

Elwing's pregnancy had in the end been much more of a committee event than she was expecting. She had thought of it as something that she and Eärendil were doing together. The Elves of the Havens, Sindar and Noldor alike, disagreed. The last princess of Doriath—the last prince of Gondolin—their child an heir for both kingdoms! Elwing was constantly beset with loving support, wise advice, lucky charms to wear, soothing herbal concoctions. Then everyone realised it was twins and the commotion got worse. Finally, Elwing gave in and declared that she would take one advisor from each people and no more thank you, please go away.

It had taken her a long time to realise why both midwives were so worried about her. If only Lady Nimloth were here, one would say, and the other would answer, if only Queen Idril had not gone away to Sea. Elwing had one Mannish grandparent, two Elven ones, and one who was half-Maia turned mortal woman. Eärendil was exactly half and half of each kindred. No one was completely sure how a twin pregnancy with such complicated ancestry was supposed to go. Neither of the women who had done anything like it before was there to advise. It seems to be most like the pregnancies of mortal women, the midwives agreed in the end, because it is going so quickly.

Quickly? Elwing said, and then she had stared at them in flat horror while they explained that pregnancy, for a woman of the Eldar, usually lasted nine years. Nine years of this! She had thought herself lucky, until they told her the other half: for mortal women, they had heard, children came into the world only with great pain and labour.

Great pain it had been indeed, and near three days of labour, when Elwing's sons were born.

"It is a good thing we had two at once," Elwing said afterwards to her husband, "because I am never doing that again."

She had her head in Eärendil's lap as they sprawled together on their bed. Her breasts ached. One twin was tucked into the crook of her arm with a fold of the quilt around him, sound asleep. Eärendil had the other clutched to his chest, his big hand cupped carefully around his son's small head.

"What about a daughter?" Eärendil said, and then at her upside-down expression, "A joke—it was a joke—I promise!"

"No, it wasn't," Elwing said. "I know you. Well! Give me some time to think about it, at least. It might not be one daughter. Twins apparently run in the family—"

Completely unexpectedly, she burst into tears.

"Sweetheart," Eärendil said. "Oh, sweetheart."

"Sorry!" Elwing managed, still crying. "I don't know—I don't know why—I feel everything just now, every single thing—"

She did not say, I miss my brothers. I want my mother. It isn't fair. Eärendil stroked her hair with his free hand. Elwing tried to sob quietly so she wouldn't wake their sleeping children. They still hadn't settled on names. Nothing they'd thought of while she was pregnant seemed quite right. It had been a week of Baby One and Baby Two.

"El is a mark of the royal house of Doriath," Eärendil said at last. "Like Elwë Singollo—"

Elwing laughed wetly. "Elu Thingol, you horrible Noldo."

"I'm a Man," said Eärendil. "I'm just a Man who speaks some Quenya. But I always thought Elwing was the prettiest name I'd ever heard."

"Eluréd, Elurín," Elwing said, "and my father Eluchíl. El and what else? Perhaps a little less of heirs and memories."

"One for the sea," Eärendil said. "Elros."

"Then one for the sky," said Elwing. "Elrond."

Early on—years ago now, centuries ago—they had talked about it. Elrond had held both of Elwing's hands as he spoke. I am charged to bring you all my brother's love.

He had at least been ready with the handkerchief afterwards. Elwing had done so much sobbing to begin with. She had thought she had cried all her tears thousands of years before, but no, they had been waiting, and the dam had come down at last and whoops.

Poor Elrond—such a watering-pot mother! At least it did not last. Elwing cried her long-delayed tears, and they were finally gone, and she could smile. He had sent her his love. Her dreamy boy—her little sailor! Elros Tar-Minyatur, King of Númenor, was a man she would never meet. He had made his choice. He was gone. Was he not the son of Eärendil, the grandson of Tuor, a sprig of the House of Hador? Who was Elwing, to deny him half his heritage for her own selfish sake?

Nine months they lived inside you. Nine months they were a part of your very flesh, and you carried them, you breathed for them. Then for another year they nursed at your breast, and you alone sustained them.

And then, little by little, they went away.

One day instead of twin babies you had twin toddlers, who babbled to each other and gripped the edge of an old rowing-bench to lever themselves upright. Time went fast and slow at once. Every instant was eternal, a precious jewel that shone in memory, and yet every month disappeared like water pouring through your fingers. One day instead of twin toddlers you had two little boys, and though strangers exclaimed at how alike they were all you could see was how different they had become. Dreamy Elros, with his quiet moods, who said the strangest things sometimes! Cheerful, chatty Elrond, who befriended anyone and everyone!

Little by little they grew. Less and less they were a part of you. They thought of things that had never occurred to you. They made friends with people you had never spoken to. They talked nineteen to the dozen. They said we: we went, we saw, we played with. They said I: I think. I want. I'm going to—

One night you put them to bed. You kissed them and called them your darlings. They were not yet grown. They were not ready. Neither were you.

You never saw those little boys again.

For once there was no party going on in Swallowhome. There were guests in the house—Elrond and Celebrían were constitutionally incapable of not having guests—but it was a suit-yourself evening. Elwing heaped cheese and pickles on a slice of fresh bread in the kitchens. She took another cream puff from the little bowl of them on the side. She went to find her son.

Elrond was reading on the south terrace. There was a plate at his elbow with the last of the lemon cake on it. He looked up with a smile when he saw her. "Mother! Come and join me."

"I don't want to disturb you."

"You never could." Elrond looked at her face. "Ah, but you have a serious conversation in mind. Would you like to go somewhere else?"

There was another swallow's nest tucked into the carvings above the double door behind her. A garden lay below the terrace, and a pair of bossy bluetits were darting in and out of the foliage of a cherry tree. "I like it here," Elwing said. "If we won't be interrupted."

Elrond went to the house doors and closed them. "There. Come and sit with me."

Elwing sat beside him, and they watched the bluetits flit from branch to branch for a while.

"I wanted to ask you about your brother," said Elwing. "About Elros."

Elrond looked serious, but not grieved. He said, "Of course."

Except Elwing could not seem to put the question into words. She did not know what she was asking. Finally she said, "Do you miss him?"

Elrond smiled. "There was a time when I would have answered, every day. When I missed him as I might miss my own right hand, if it happened to go wandering. Once we were both everything the other one had. We seemed to think as one person, not two. There was nothing in his mind that I did not know, and nothing in mine that was hidden from him."

"But not now."

"Even now—sometimes, not every day—I find myself thinking of him," said Elrond. "I look across my garden, or I hear the gulls crying at sunset, and I think, my brother would have liked this. That is when I miss him. Not for my own sake, but for his."

"And for yourself?"

"His memory is joy. Not grief."

Elwing had to smile. "You are so wise."

"You sound surprised."

"I am allowed to be surprised," Elwing said. "I remember when you climbed into an empty pickle barrel for a game and could not work out how to get out again."

Elrond started to laugh.

"You were three years old. Elros came to fetch me and I did not understand what he was saying. He kept informing me that you'd been pickled!"

"I had not thought of that in a long time!" Elrond said. "He was more worried than I was. I was sure a solution to the barrel problem would present itself eventually."

"You always looked after each other. It seemed so strange to me when I learned that the two of you had chosen fates apart."

"This is the serious part of the conversation, I think," said Elrond.

"Yes," Elwing said. "If you don't mind."

"Mother," said Elrond, "there is no one I would rather talk to about the Choice of Lúthien than you."

Lúthien's choice belonged to their family: to Elwing, and to all her descendants. But only she and Elrond had chosen the life of the Eldar. Here they were in the world, not lingering but belonging, a part of its story until the end. Here they would stay till the Music was over. All the rest had gone on, gone away, taking the dark ship that sailed Beyond never to return. Elros was gone. Arwen was gone. Who knew what had become of Elladan and Elrohir? The centuries were passing, and no whisper of them had come West. Elwing knew what her son believed.

"When did you both decide?" Elwing said.

"Early," said Elrond. "Very early. Eonwë came to us before the host of the Valar departed Middle-earth for good. It is quite a shock when the Herald of the Valar appears outside your tent, in a refugee camp in what is left of Ossiriand, and announces he wants to have an important, personal conversation! He explained that we had a choice, and he wanted us to make it then and there. I think he was under the impression that we would be coming West right away, if we chose to live as Elves."

"Then and there?" Elwing said. "Your father and I at least got a moment to think—"

"He gave us two days," Elrond said.

"Two days!"

"The first thing we did, of course, was ask him about you and Father. Is our mother all right? Is she even alive? What did our parents choose?" Elrond looked wry. "And he refused to say anything about it. In case it prejudiced our answers."

Elwing found herself unable to put her opinion of that into words. She ate a cream puff. Elrond looked at her face and said, "Yes, that was what we thought too."

"What then? Did the two of you argue?"

"Not at all," Elrond said. "We both knew at once. We knew each other so well! I looked at Elros, and he looked at me, and we both knew without saying it that neither of us had the slightest intention of disappearing back to Valinor with the Host of the Valar. And at the same time, we both knew that we were on different roads from that hour—and I knew that his road would be a Sea-road in the end, and a dark one. Then we made some guesses about Father—everyone knew by then that while the Elves of Middle-earth called the new star Gil-Estel, the Amanyar of the Valinorean host said Eärendil. But you! We were truly very annoyed. We wanted to know about you, and the Valar had decreed that no one should tell us."

"That sounds like them," Elwing said.

Elrond looked at her and said no word.

"Oh, I've shocked you," she said. "I don't mean to say I dislike the Valar, or resent them, or doubt them. I'm sure they truly thought they were being helpful, fair, and kind. They try very hard. You have to feel sorry for them. There's so much they don't understand."

"You pity the Lords of the West?" said Elrond.

"Of course. Just look around you," said Elwing, and she gestured to the lovely sweep of the garden below the terrace, adorned with blossoming trees. "Aman—Valinor—the Undying Lands! The loveliest place in all of Arda, isn't it?"

"I have found no fault with it," Elrond said.

"Oh, neither have I, and I am good at finding fault. But that is why I am sorry for them. The world they wanted to build was like this. And there is nothing left of all their hopes but this…" Elwing hunted for a word, "this lifeboat."

Elrond looked solemn. But he no longer looked surprised.

"Not even a boat. A shard of wreckage, floating over the abyss. Something for the survivors to cling to. This is not the world! This is not the world they meant to give us. That is why I feel sorry for them. Because they really are trying their best. They always were, and it was not enough. They don't understand the Children of Eru. They know they have made mistakes. They regret them bitterly. Now their best hope seems to be not to do anything, for fear of making everything worse. The most they dare is to offer a straight road West to our people, who otherwise sooner or later will all be faded past recognition and destroyed by grief. And they cannot force anyone to take it, though it is the only chance of any happiness for any of us while this world endures. The Enemy won in the end! They cast him out of Time forever and he still won."

Elwing looked at her son for a little while. A swallow darted past her and into its nest over her head.

"But you know all that," she said at last, "don't you."

"Elros lived a life of Men, a long one," Elrond said. "Five hundred years, before he grew weary and put aside the world. He might have had longer, if he had chosen to cling and struggle against the Gift as lesser men do in these later days. But he went boldly into the abyss. Five hundred years." He looked grim. "And I knew before he died. All the Elves of Middle-earth know it sooner or later. The marring of the world cannot be undone by any power that is in us. I knew, and I stayed. Mother, I fought the Long Defeat for six thousand years. We lost and we lost and we lost. Sometimes we won, for a little while, but even then we lost. In the midst of our greatest victories, we were losing already. At last Sauron was undone—a great victory indeed! But undone too were the Three Rings, which were all that was sustaining us. And…"

"Don't think you surrendered," Elwing said. "It is not surrender, to run for the boats rather than go down with the sinking ship." She had to touch him, her son, her child. She put her hand to his face, and then she dropped it and pressed his arm hard. "It is the memory of the Eldar that does it. It is never being able to forget anything. The race of Men can forget. Oblivion is a gift. We are bound to our sorrows forever."

"Perhaps I can ask," Elrond said. "I always wanted to ask. The tale-tellers who sailed to Númenor from Avallonë always agreed, Eärendil was weary of the world; but Elwing chose the life of the Eldar, because of Lúthien. And no one could ever explain it, and I never quite understood. Because, you know, Lúthien did not choose the life of the Eldar." A small smile. "Famously."

"She alone of all Eldalië has died indeed," quoted Elwing. "Yes, I know. I have been asked before, you know. Why. And 'because of Lúthien' is the answer I gave, and no one ever said any more about it."

"May I ask?"

"I was so angry with her," Elwing said.

She had shocked him again, she saw. She was not the mother he had expected—or imagined, perhaps, or hoped for. He was the first person in millennia whom she cared to have understand. She kept talking, hoping he might.

"She could have stayed," she said. "She could have fought. The House of Fëanor did not dare touch my family while Lúthien Tinúviel lived. The Enemy himself feared her. I think she could have tried. Perhaps nothing would have worked—oh, almost certainly, nothing would have worked. But that is not the point. Yes, she would have lost her Beren! She would have grieved forever! Lots of us are grieving forever. There is still a difference between running for the lifeboats and hurling yourself into the sea." She sighed. "And I had a reason to be thinking about that difference, at the time of my choice. Because, you see, I had recently hurled myself into the sea."

This was something they had never talked about. Elrond said, "Mother—"

Elwing held up her hand to stay him. She could not bear to be given wisdom and tenderness. Not for this.

"I despaired once," she said harshly. "I gave up hope. I had already chosen the Doom of Men—I was mortal in Sirion, as my brothers were mortal when they died in ruined Doriath. I jumped off that cliff and I meant to die! And yet I lived. Much good came about because I lived, none of which I foresaw, none of which could have happened if I had died. So I chose the life of the Eldar, because of Lúthien. Because she took her love and her happiness and went her way. Good luck to her! But I love this world. This one. If there was anything that I could still do—well, I had to stay and do it. I despaired once and it was the worst hour of my life. Never again. You have a stubborn mother, Elrond. I am very, very stubborn."

"Six thousand years and more I fought the Long Defeat," Elrond said. "I knew I had lost almost as soon as I began. But I did not leave the fight until I had no choice." He smiled at her. It was a smile of true and shared understanding. "I am also very stubborn. I am glad to know where it comes from."

"What's that?" Eärendil said.

The little wooden robin sculpture was light enough that Elwing could carry it easily in albatross-shape. She had gone into the parlour and plucked it off the windowsill. Then she had stopped, looking at the others—gull, peacock, crow, and owl—searching in herself for resentment or bitterness. She had found nothing worse than a lingering irritation about the jewels and the rabbits. The gifts in her parlour were just a rather good collection of sculptures, sent to her by a peculiar woman who looked at birds; and since Elwing was also a peculiar woman who looked at birds, it was hard to be angry with Nerdanel for it.

Eärendil admired the robin. "Swaggering little fellow!" he said. "I like him. One of a pair, is he?"

Elwing had not let herself see it when she first unwrapped the robin from its grey silk cover all those years ago. But it was obvious, from the tilt of the sculpted songbird's head, from the unbalanced lines of its body. There should have been two of them. "Stop pretending you don't know," she said.

"I know you," said Eärendil. "You are kind as summer. For their mother's sake again?"

"No," Elwing said. "And not at all, if you speak against it now. It was your home as well that Amras helped to destroy."

"My home," said Eärendil, "is where you are."

Elwing took the robin back. "It's not for their mother's sake," she said. "It's because I bumped into his twin in a cake shop and I felt sorry for him."

"That seems a very slight reason to forgive a killer."

"It is, isn't it?" Elwing said. "I don't have to have good reasons. I'm not really doing it for them. Perhaps this is for the tender-hearted girl I used to be! I always felt sorry for the twins."

She looked down at the robin. He surprised her, now that she had seen Amrod. The rest of Nerdanel's sculptures seemed to fit the people they represented. But robins were bold and merry and very, very loud. Amrod had crept through Avallonë's marketplace as if he were still half a ghost.

"It doesn't actually change anything," she said. "Mandos will release him if he is ready; or not, if he is not. How much does my goodwill even matter?"

"Quite a lot, I suspect."

"Hush."

"What will you do when he turns up on your doorstep bearing gifts?"

"I will write an exasperated letter to his mother," said Elwing, "begging her to keep her idiot sons on a leash."

Eärendil put his arm around her shoulders. They looked out together into the night. The Sea sang quietly far below.

"Two people can be very alike, and yet very different," Elwing said softly at last. She rested her silver head against her husband's strong shoulder. "And two people can be very different, and still love each other."

"I know," said Eärendil.

"You didn't have to stay, you know. You didn't have to choose the world just because I did. I know you were weary. I would have grieved for a time, but I would have found a way without you. I can sail the ship myself."

"Don't be silly," Eärendil said. "Didn't I just tell you? My home is where you are."

Elwing sent a raven to Mandos with the message. It was not a long message. What was there to say about the Sons of Fëanor? They had made a terrible mistake and paid for it. They had committed terrible crimes and been punished for them. When you first heard the story, you pitied them.

Then you grew a little wiser, and hated them.

Then you grew a little wiser than that, and pitied them again, but differently.

Elwing was expecting it, actually, when the sixth son of Fëanor turned up outside her tower.

She went out one morning to feed the chickens and caught sight of him. He was on the other side of the causeway. He was kneeling in the sand, not far from the spot where Celegorm had once stood and stared with the whole Hunt of Oromë behind him. She recognised him at once. He was his twin's double. And that hair!

Well. Elwing had more important things to think about.

She went and fed the chickens.

The tide was out. Amras could have stood up and crossed. He did not. He knelt just beyond the border of Elwing's small kingdom, and there he stayed. Elwing got a few more glimpses of him during the morning. She milked the goats, turned her cheeses, and dug over an exhausted bed in her vegetable garden. When she went to put the spade away, she glanced into her shed and decided it was past time for a clean-out. She spent the rest of the morning taking everything out, scrubbing the shed top to bottom, and pulling spiders out of her hair. Then she put all her tools and old flowerpots and spare cuts of timber back into the shed again, in better order. She was rather worn out after that. She drew a bucket of cold water from the pump and had a quick wash. Then she had an egg mayonnaise sandwich for lunch.

In the morning, the white tower's shadow fell westward towards the mainland, and Amras was half-shaded by it. By midday he was kneeling in bright sunlight. The tide was in again. Elwing's red cockerel mostly passed his days in supervising his hens' foraging, but today he spent more time than usual perched on the picnic table: a scarlet sentinel.

Elwing usually went flying in the afternoon. She sighed to herself and went back into her tower instead. She did, actually, own some books. Mostly because Elrond kept pointedly leaving them behind after his visits, but perhaps today was a good day for some light reading.

It turned out that Hobbit poetry was quite funny.

The chickens wandered in and out of the kitchen. Seagulls were crying. The tide was out again by late afternoon. Elwing put the open book face-down on the table, stood up, and went out to look.

Yes, he was still there. Still kneeling in the sand. His head was bowed. He had barely moved all day.

"I suppose it's better to get it over with," Elwing remarked to the red cockerel.

The cockerel thought that actually it was better to fight anyone and everyone who looked at you sideways, or who looked like they might look at you sideways, or who got too close to your flock, or who was in any other way suspicious, annoying, or distressingly colourful.

"That is why I am in charge of this household," Elwing said, "and you are not."

She crossed the causeway. Her bare feet left prints in the wet sand.

Amras was still kneeling. His hands were pressed flat to his thighs. He stared at her feet, and not her face, as she stood over him with her arms folded. He did not seem to have brought a gift.

"Well?" Elwing said.

Amras tried to draw a deep breath. It sounded like it hurt. He looked up. His eyes were grey.

He said, "I—"

He never got any further than that. He started to cry.

Elwing stood silently over him. There was not really anything to say. Amras knelt at her feet wracked by sobs. He had certainly prepared something to say to her, but every time he got more than two words into it his voice cracked again, and the weeping got worse. He clenched his hands into fists. His shoulders shook. Elwing wondered vaguely if she should pass him her handkerchief.

She knew him.

That sense of familiarity she had felt in the cake shop: where have I seen you before? It was not Amrod she had recognised. It was his face.

It looked at her out of dark memory.

The night waking. The sounds of battle. The settlement already in flames. Elwing's terror—no—no—the panic closing her throat. The Sons of Fëanor had come. They had come to finish their wicked work. Dior—Nimloth—Eluréd—Elurín—all the line of Beren and Lúthien, everyone who might have any right by inheritance to the precious jewel they claimed for their own—Elwing—Elrond—Elros—

The nursery!

Elwing ran.

She ran straight into the advance party.

There were four of them. None was dressed any better than the others. None of them looked like a prince of the Noldor. One dark-haired, two fair, a redhead: all of them cloaked, their hoods pushed back. They wore dun and grey, the scouting garb of the Nandor. They had come by stealth, they had come by night, and while out in the streets the people of Sirion were desperately trying to mount a defence against certain massacre, they were already in Elwing's house.

The only sign of who they were was the eight-pointed star stitched grey-on-grey into each Elf's right sleeve. Elwing stopped short. For a moment she could not understand it. They were in her house. What were they doing in her house?

"That's her," said one of them.

The redhead only nodded. He drew his sword. "The duty is mine," he said. He sounded impossibly tired. Elwing stared at him. She was about to be murdered in her nightgown by a person who just felt tired about it.

The red-haired stranger took one step towards her. Elwing stood there, frozen, still staring. He was already lifting the sword.

Then he dropped it.

He dropped it because he had been stabbed through the stomach from behind.

Elwing's murderer folded up around the blade and crumpled to the floor at her feet. His eyes were going dim. It was the dark-haired one who had stabbed him. His expression was terrible. By the murder of his own lord, he had forsworn all troth and trust. He was a traitor and an oathbreaker. His companions were turning on him in rage and disbelief.

He killed them too.

Elwing looked from him, surrounded by the comrades he had killed, to the body at her feet. "Who was he?" she whispered.

"Amras."

"Who are—"

"Run," he said. "You need to run."

"My children—"

"—are lost. We hit the nursery first. Run." He cursed at Elwing's stupefaction. "Go! Will you waste what I just did for you? It's Maedhros in command out there. He spares no one."

"Why did you—"

"I couldn't do it," the oathbreaker said. "He was my friend. I couldn't do it anymore. The doors are all watched. Go up over the roof. Someone will come looking soon. I'll hold the stairs behind you."

Elwing stared. The dark-haired Elf stared back at her. He wore the Star of Fëanor on his sleeve. His blade was still wet with the blood of his oath-sworn lord. His own allies were coming and they would kill him. She would never learn his name.

She ran.

Amras sobbed at Elwing's feet. He was curled over as if shame was a stab through his belly. Last time he had been at her feet, he had died there.

Silly boy. Stupid boy.

It was obvious what he was trying to say. Elwing sighed and took pity on him.

"Were you wrong?" she said.

Amras gasped for breath. "Yes."

"Are you sorry?"

"Yes."

"Would you do it again?"

"No!"

That look of agony. Well, one of them had finally thought of apologising. Elwing supposed he deserved some credit for it.

"Wait there," she said.

She went back to her tower. She took her time. She found one of the baskets she had woven herself, years ago now. She packed it carefully. She draped a striped tea towel over the top. She carried it back across the causeway. The Sea was gentle today, and the tide was advancing in little ripples. Elwing walked alone through the double margin of salt water with her burden.

Amras still knelt on the strand. He seemed to have collected himself a little. He was a mess, but he was no longer sobbing violently. He looked up at Elwing in silent grief. Elwing set the basket gently down in front of him.

He looked confused. Elwing said nothing. Amras lifted a corner of the tea towel. The basket was full of eggs. Elwing had tucked a jar of apple chutney into it as well. Why not?

Whatever Amras had expected from her, it was not a basket of eggs. She could see it on his face. Perhaps he wanted to be scolded. Elwing did not see what good it would do anyone. He was already sorry.

"I don't understand," he said.

"For your mother," said Elwing. "To thank her for the sculptures."

She took out her handkerchief and dropped it in the sand in front of him. Amras picked it up as if it were something rare and delicate, and not just a clean square of ordinary cotton.

"Blow your nose," Elwing said. "Wash your face. Keep the handkerchief, I have others. Off you go."

"But," he said.

Elwing gave him a look.

"Yes," he said. "All right." He swallowed. He unfolded himself from the kneeling position and got to his feet. He picked up the basket of eggs two-handed. "Is there—is there anything else you want from me?"

"No, that's enough," Elwing said. She thought of something. "Your liegeman, though. The dark one. I should like to know who he was."

"He was called Denethor," Amras said. His voice was still ragged with weeping. "Half the Green-elves of Ossiriand were called Denethor, in memory of their dead king. He came to me early on. If you're taking the fight to Morgoth, he said, I'll take service with you. He was—he was my friend."

"He did you a kindness, you know," Elwing said.

"I know," said Amras bleakly.

"And he saved my life. Perhaps more than my life. If I had not survived that night, Eärendil would never have come to Valinor."

Amras looked down and said nothing. He was clutching the handle of the egg basket tightly with both hands.

"If you ever see him," Elwing said, "tell him to seek the House of Elrond and Celebrían on Tol Eressëa. I would like to meet him there."

"I will," said Amras to the eggs.

"You may find it an awkward conversation," Elwing said, "but there are worse things than awkwardness."

The basket was back on Elwing's doorstep a week later, empty except for the bundled tea towel wrapped around a second carved robin. "That was quick," said Elwing to the sculpture. "Let's put you with your brother, then."

The two wooden robins looked nice on the parlour windowsill together. The gold-and-opal peacock was still ridiculously gaudy. The steel crow and the bone-spur owl had grown on Elwing with time; she could never be fond of their originals, but they were very beautifully wrought. The silvery gull, hanging, caught the sparkle of light off the Sea that was reflected up the white walls of Elwing's tower.

Six birds.

Elwing looked at them for a moment longer. A sense of comical inevitability was tugging at her like two small boys tugging at their mother's skirt.

"I don't have to," she said. "I don't need to."

The bird sculptures made no comment.

Elwing said, "I can't believe I'm going to."

Chapter Text

"I love you," Eärendil said—unusually direct, for him. "I support you. I believe that whatever you choose to do will be the right thing."

"But what do you think?"

"Personally?" said Eärendil. "Honestly? After what he did to you? Let him sit in the dark and rot. He earned it."

"I used to think," said Celebrían, "that he was the most tragic and interesting one."

"During your Fëanorian phase?" Elwing said.

"Yes. I used to think—oh, I don't know—he seemed like the one who tried hardest, and fell furthest. And there's the story of Thangorodrim, as well. How can you not feel sorry for someone who has been so cruelly tormented? I used to think—"

She stopped. She looked distant.

"I was young," she said. "I didn't know yet. It doesn't make you special, being a victim. You're just the same. You're the same person, but you're sad all the time. You're angry all the time. You're frightened all the time. You're the same person, but worse. It doesn't seem fair, that they can make you worse. But they can."

Elwing went to her and held her hands.

Celebrían smiled up at her. "I'm better now," she said. "Don't cry."

"I am so glad," Elwing said, "I am so glad that you married my son."

"So am I," said Celebrían. "Definitely one of my best decisions. I'm getting so much homemade mayonnaise out of it." She grinned. "Also, you know, I love him very much and he's very kind and tall and handsome. But why are you asking me first? Why not him?"

"I don't want to trouble Elrond with this," said Elwing, "if I decide against it in the end."

Celebrían looked thoughtful. "Perhaps you should talk to the people who actually knew Maedhros, then," she said. "Perhaps my mother."

"I cannot advise you," said Galadriel. "Not in the way you seek. He was the eldest of the cousins, and I almost the youngest. I did not know him well. What I knew of him, I did not love."

"He was wicked, then," Elwing said.

"Yes, certainly, in the end," said Galadriel. "But long before that, he was the heir of Fëanor, whom I also did not love. I did not dislike him for his wickedness alone. I also disliked him because he was his father's son. And because he was the eldest, and very proud, and always seemed to think he could tell all the rest of us what to do." She smiled very faintly. "And I was very young, and equally proud, and not very wise. The squabbles of the House of Finwë are ancient, sad and foolish. Perhaps you should speak to my brother Finrod. He was the only one of us who ever managed to stay friends with everybody at once."

Felagund looked unreasonably delighted when Elwing sought him out in Elrond's feasting-hall and sat down beside him. "Hello!" he said. "I am so glad to see you again! How are you?"

Elwing had braced herself for some more House of Bëor reminiscences. But it struck her, looking at Felagund's delight and his cautiously outstretched hand, that there was more to his interest in Elwing than her famous grandfather. She was of the House of Bëor. He wanted to be her friend too.

She took his hand politely and let him squeeze her fingers in greeting. "I am well," she said. "I was hoping to ask you some questions."

"Of course—anything!"

"You really must not go around promising people anything on no provocation," said Elwing.

"I have never regretted it yet," said Felagund. "What can I do for you?"

"Well—"

She started with what she actually wanted: I need to know about Maedhros, because... But Felagund exclaimed and then asked her to go back to the beginning. Elwing had not realised that he would not know the whole story. But why would he know?

"I wondered," he said. "When they began to come back to the world. I thought how strange it was. Mandos is not known for changing his mind! So it was you."

He was looking at her with grave respect. "Nonsense," said Elwing sharply. "I barely did anything. I don't even like them."

"How could you?"

"I am surprised you did not know already. Have you not spoken with them?"

"Of course I have," Felagund said. "I made a particular point of it. I went to Nerdanel's halls and called on Curufin and forgave him."

"You forgave him," Elwing repeated.

"I did! I embraced him as a brother, and told him I hold no grudges, and that if I had a dozen kingdoms he would be welcome to usurp them all. I told him that I was beyond glad to have him back, and that I was proud of him for making so much progress, and that if he needed any help I would always be there for him." Felagund's eyes were dancing. "I forgave him so hard I imagine it is still ringing in his ears."

Elwing was laughing. "Brutal!"

"I meant every word," said Felagund with satisfaction. "I have not had a chance to forgive Celegorm yet. If he sees me coming, he jumps on his horse and rides away."

"I had all of them turn up at my tower and try to make amends," Elwing said. "All except Amrod, who has thus managed to make himself my favourite son of Fëanor."

"They came to your house?"

"I came down the stairs," said Elwing, "and found Curufin in my kitchen."

"No," said Felagund, with appreciative horror, and Elwing told him the whole story, including the storm of birds and the angry chicken, and they laughed about that. "Please, I beg you," Felagund said at last, "do not judge all the Noldor by the House of Fëanor. Some of us are actually quite clever!"

"Are you."

"Well," Felagund said, "for a given value of clever."

They returned at last to Elwing's first question; to Maedhros. When the laughter fell away from Felagund's expression, he seemed quite a different person. Elwing had never really taken him seriously. He was so expansive, so friendly, so frightfully keen to chat about distant relations she had never met. But without the mask of merry cordiality he suddenly became what the stories made of him: an ancient Elf-lord, fair and fey, a once-fallen prince of great art and mighty voice. It was not often that Elwing felt the shiver of sitting next to a legend. She was a legend. But Felagund had died saving her grandfather Beren's life. He had gone down under the teeth of the wolf. He had raised his voice against the monstrous power of Sauron, line for line in fearless song.

The evening had lengthened while they talked. Moonlight through the high windows of Bar-i-Thuilinn made a marble statue of him as he sat a long time in solemn thought.

"I can never speak against forgiveness," he said finally. "I, who was the first of the Exiles forgiven. But though I do believe that forgiveness must come, if there is to be any hope or healing in this world, it does not follow that it must always come now. I will not speak to you of your rights or your own griefs. You know them better than I do. You ask me for something of my cousin as he was, I think. Something worth restoring."

"I do," Elwing said.

"But I can give you very little," said Felagund. "In ancient years, in days of bliss, we were all young and fierce and proud and fair. Shall I say, restore Maedhros, for he was once a great prince among princes, and the light of the Trees was in his eyes? But the loveliness we all shared did not make us worthy then. Evil came to Valinor, and the Noldor played their part in it. We made our choices freely, and Maedhros more freely than most. Alone of his brothers, he had the will to quarrel openly with Fëanor. He seldom did—he always chose his fights carefully—but he could. If Maedhros had the strength to stand against his father's madness at Losgar—could he not have stood against it at Alqualondë? Could he not have refused the Oath the others swore? I cannot justly say to you: have pity on Maedhros, he was innocent once. We were all innocent once."

"I believe you were friends," Elwing said.

"I got on better with Maglor," Felagund said. "But yes, we were friends. I travelled East to hunt with them, long ago, in a country that is drowned. I met your grandfather's forebears there. Shall I say: have pity on Maedhros, for he treated Men well, and earned their loyalty by it? Have pity on Maedhros, he cracked a good joke occasionally? Have pity on Maedhros—he really did try very hard?"

"Not hard enough," Elwing said.

"Exactly," said Felagund. "I learned the lesson from a harsh teacher, but it was a true lesson. It is not enough, sometimes, just to try very hard." He sighed. "Lady Elwing—"

"Elwing."

"Forgive me. Elwing, I am not the right person to ask. Maedhros was hard to know well. He was close by nature, and kept his inmost counsels locked in his heart, long before war made a strategist out of him. After Thangorodrim he laughed easily and told the truth to almost no one. I tried to stay friends with him. He disliked it enormously. He was intensely proud, he hated to feel pitied, and he constantly saw pity where only kindness was meant. I would say that there were just two people in Beleriand who really knew him. One was my cousin Fingon, who has yet to come forth from the Halls of Mandos. The other was his brother Maglor."

Elwing said nothing.

"I think," said Felagund, "that if you truly want to know about Maedhros… you need to talk to Maglor."

Elwing did not want to talk to Maglor. She had spent centuries going out of her way to avoid talking to Maglor. He was a regular guest in Elrond's halls, but never when Elwing was there. She would have liked to forget he existed.

But she had chosen the life of the Eldar, and so she could never forget anything.

Nerdanel, said Felagund, lived in a lonely cove on the eastern side of Tol Eressëa. Elwing told herself she was only flying that way for exercise. She always went flying in the afternoons.

She perched on a cliffside in the form of a falcon. The house was low and sprawling. It had an untidy string of extensions, outbuildings, expansions, additional wings; the effect was disorderly, but not displeasing. It looked like a home, a busy, thriving, much-loved home. There was a glasshouse round the back. The Noldor could never seem to stop building things. Elwing could still make out the original cottage in the midst of the sprawl. Of course, when Nerdanel first came to live here, she had not had six adult sons.

No one seemed to be about. Elwing refused to go any nearer.

Around dusk, a single dark-haired figure emerged from a back door and set off into the fields alone. Elwing's falcon-eyes marked him. She took wing and followed. Maglor did not notice her, not even when she perched in the hedgerow of a back field and settled in to watch. The falcon body watched small movements in the long grass and said ooh, ooh please, just one!

Maglor, it seemed, had got a hobby. The dusk deepened. The stars began to come out. He'd left it a bit late. Personally, Elwing would not have advised a beginner at birdkeeping to start with quail. Unlike chickens, they had very little roosting instinct. If you wanted them to come in safely at night so you could find the eggs in the morning, then you needed to run round the fields catching them.

Eventually Elwing got so annoyed at Maglor's quail-chasing incompetence that she gave up being a falcon and stood up in her own shape. Maglor turned around, saw her, froze, and dropped the small round bird he was clutching. It raced into the long grass at once to hide.

"You really are hopeless," said Elwing. She crouched, held her hands open, and called out softly in the tongue of the birds.

It took the quail a moment to decide. Chickens understood friends. Quail did not. At last it crept slowly out of the shelter of the grasses and settled in Elwing's cupped hands. She picked it up gently, whispering to it, and set it in the covered run in the corner of the field. The run, at least, was well-made, with a nice little scrubby patch of earth for dust baths. The quail was happy enough. "How many are there?"

"A dozen," Maglor said.

They caught the rest together. It did not take long with Elwing there. "I said keep chickens. Why on earth did you start with quail?"

"I don't know," Maglor said. "I just like them." He swallowed. "Lady—"

"Elwing."

"Elwing," he repeated. "What did I—did I do something? Or—is Elrond—"

Elwing frowned. She did not much like being cringed at. "Nothing is wrong. Stop wincing. I just wanted to talk to you."

This did not make Maglor look less nervous. Elwing could not understand what she'd done to make all the sons of Fëanor so frightened of her. Surely it ought to be the other way round.

Well. She had an errand. The sooner it was done, the sooner she could leave.

She explained. She asked her question.

She had not thought Maglor could actually look any worse.

Don't ask me, he said.

Elwing thought about it afterwards, winging her way back to Bar-i-Thuilinn, in owl-shape now as the night wore on and the Moon climbed high.

Don't—don't ask me this. Ask Mother, she still loves him, she loves all of us, somehow she can still—

Of course, said Elwing, don't you know anything about mothers?

So you don't love him.

Maglor sat down abruptly in the long grass beside the quail run. No, he said. No, no, I don't, I can't. No, you don't know—

He was my older brother. He was my best friend. He was, everyone always said, the best of us. He was the one I trusted. He was our leader. And at the end, he was the one who—he still wouldn't—he made me—

Elwing looked at him scornfully. I see, she said. So it was all his fault.

Maglor hid his face.

In conclusion, said Elwing, your brother had no redeeming qualities, and deserves no mercy. Is that all you have to say?

I hated him like I hated myself, Maglor said, muffled. I hated him more than I could bear to hate myself. I hated him the way I deserved. He hated me back. Worthless—liar—hypocrite—I know what I was, I know! We had no one else left. We couldn't stand each other. He was a murderer, a monster. So was I.

And at the end—

Why did you go with him, Elwing asked, if you knew it was wrong?

I couldn't let him go alone, Maglor whispered. He would have died if he'd gone alone.

Elrond was waiting for her on the south terrace. Elwing landed, owl-feathers falling away, and tugged the silver shawl tight around her shoulders.

"How was he?" Elrond asked.

Elwing should really not have tried to keep anything from him in the first place. "Sad," she said. "Very sad. And not very helpful."

"That is a fairly good description of Maglor generally."

"Did you know he's keeping quail?"

"Yes," Elrond said. "He talks about it a lot. He is actually much less sad than he was. He did need a hobby."

"I may have set him back a little," Elwing said. "Perhaps I should not have gone. But I needed to ask someone."

"If you need to talk about Maedhros, to someone who knew the person he became," Elrond said, "to someone who knows the worst… then perhaps you can talk to me."

"Are you sure?" said Elwing.

"I was terrified of him when I was six," Elrond said. "I am not six anymore."

"Well," said Elwing. She sighed. "So far I have learned that he was proud—which is just another way of saying he was one of the princes of the Noldor, for all of them were proud as could be. I have learned that he was probably sad and angry and frightened all the time. I have learned, reading between the lines, that he was less fun at parties than Maglor, and that he may once have prevented an infant Galadriel from eating a handful of tadpoles—or something along those lines!—an act of cousinly bullying for which she never forgave him. I have learned he had exactly two friends; and one of them was his brother, who now hates him, but has never stopped loving him."

"What is it," Elrond said, "that you really need to know?"

Elwing leaned on the terrace's beautifully carved railing beside him and looked out into the garden under the light of the Moon. It was a beautiful, silvery, nearly-silent night. It had been a much darker night than this, a cloudy night, the last time Elwing fell asleep in the Havens of Sirion.

"I had nowhere to run," she said.

Elrond waited, listening gravely.

"It was a well-planned assault," she said. "After the disaster that was Doriath, I suppose it had to be. And, after all, Celegorm was the one in command when the Sons of Fëanor came to Doriath! So I know another thing about Maedhros. He thought things through. He tried to learn from his mistakes. He did not mean, again, to lose his brothers and gain no Silmaril.

"They secured the harbour—the gates—they had watchers on every path. They must have been planning it for months; probably even before he sent me those awful letters. I cannot believe that he really thought the letters would achieve anything. He spoke of friendship and alliance; he promised that the House of Fëanor would spread their mantle over us, there in the Havens, but really that was a threat: you are not a warlike folk, and we are. They had Green-elves and Grey-elves sworn to their service too. We never guarded our gates. We let outsiders come and go freely. We thought we had learned the lessons of Doriath and Gondolin. We thought it was better to be generous, open, kind. But some of the strangers who came to the Havens in those days must have been the spies of the Sons of Fëanor.

"On the night of the attack, there was an advance party. They came by stealth—they were already in the house—"

Elwing had to stop talking. Elrond put his hand on her arm.

"One of them saved my life," she said at last. "He betrayed his own lord to do it. And he told me—we hit the nursery first. I knew why. Of course I knew why. When they failed at Doriath, it was because they did not know where Dior's children were. Eluréd and Elurín lost in the woods—everyone had heard that Maedhros regretted that crime. And Elwing vanished with the Silmaril! They must have regretted my escape just as much, or more. So Maedhros planned carefully. He made sure neither of those things would happen again. He only had two brothers left and he gave one of them the vital charge. Go and get those children."

"I don't remember it," Elrond said. "Not at all. Not that night. We did not wake until late the next day. Later, we decided they must have used some charm or drug on us—so that we would not cry out."

Elwing found her hands were clenched into fists. She unfurled them slowly. She thought of eagle-talons. She had handed Amras a basket of eggs. She had already known, of course, that they must have done something to her children, to keep them from calling for help in the night. She had already known.

She took a deep breath.

"A stranger told me my children were lost. He saved my life and begged me not to waste it," she said. "I took the Silmaril. I ran. I went up over the roof. There was fighting in the streets. Screaming, crying. There were houses on fire. We were not a warlike people. I looked down from above and I knew my own weakness. Idril Celebrindal, at the fall of Gondolin, saved the remnant of her city and brought them to safety. We had no lord, we had no leader, there was no one but me. The last princess of Doriath. The closest thing the Havens of Sirion had to a queen." She swallowed. "Alone on the rooftops in my nightgown with a useless jewel. It was me they were coming to kill. No matter what I did. I knew the terms of their Oath—everyone did! Hideth or hoardeth or in hand taketh, finding keepeth or afar casteth—whether I kept the Silmaril or cast it away, they had still promised me death. There was nothing that would defend me from Fëanor's kin. My people were dying. They needed me. But I knew the doom that was hunting me, and I forgot everything I owed them. I ran away."

"Yet they had watchers on all the gates," said Elrond quietly. "And they had already taken the harbour."

"Maedhros," said Elwing, "was the strategist. The whole city was a stoppered bottle. A trap. And they came by night—on a cloudy night, at the dark of the Moon—so the light of the Silmaril would betray me."

She stopped talking for a while.

"I should have thrown it away," she said at last. "I should have thrown it into the gutters, the jewel that Beren and Lúthien won. I should have. But I could not.

"I tried for the water. I was cut off at every turn. I was hunted like a fox. A boat, any boat—a fishing boat, I thought. But they chased me up the hill. There were cliffs above the water. The waves lashed them. You could not see the rocks. I knew they were there. I knew the depth of that water, and the currents that began below those cliffs. I knew—I knew I was standing between two different deaths. And I had nowhere left to run."

It was Elrond who was weeping. Elwing was sorry for it. Now she had begun to speak she could not seem to stop. She had kept this story locked in her heart for thousands of years. She had never told it all the way through, not to anyone. She had never even told it to Eärendil.

"I stood there between two deaths," she said, "high on the cliff, surrounded. And then the hunters fell back. All their fell warriors, their liegemen who had followed them even there."

"They had no liegemen after that day," Elrond said, and though he wept his voice was steady. "Whether their people deserted them, or whether they deserted their people, I could not tell you. But Elros and I never saw anyone but those two brothers."

"The last two sons of Fëanor," said Elwing. "They came forward to speak to me. They bade their followers make way. They—they left an open path behind them. Maedhros the Tall, and Maglor of the mighty voice. Maedhros sheathed his sword. Maglor did the talking."

"What did he say?" Elrond said.

"He offered me mercy," said Elwing. "He offered a trade. My children—my two little boys—in exchange for the Silmaril. More than fair, wouldn't you say?" She laughed, awfully. "Thingol accepted that price for Lúthien. Perhaps the exchange rate had got worse—he got one Silmaril for one daughter, I was offered two sons for it—but then, the trade in children and shiny stones has never been very consistent. Fëanor, you know, was willing to trade seven for three!"

"Mother," said Elrond. "Mama—"

"They were lying," Elwing said. "That is what I thought. I looked at Maedhros with his hand on the hilt of his sword. He had a shield strapped to his off-arm still. He never said a word. Maglor was so persuasive. So reasonable. So charming. He said they would give me my children back. He said there was no need for things to get any worse. There was a path down the hill behind them.

"But everyone knew the terms of their Oath. Maedhros was a worse liar than his brother, I think. I could see his face.

"They never said they would let me go."

Elwing looked at Elrond then. He was still weeping silently. She had wanted to spare him this. But she had to know.

"I need to know. Would they have spared me?" she said. "I never knew them. They had killed my whole family once already. I was so afraid. But you came to know them. Would they have kept their word?" For long ages of the world the question had haunted her. "If I had given up, if I had given the Silmaril to them—would they have given you and your brother back to me? Would they have let us go?"

There was a long quiet.

"You had a true right to the Silmaril," Elrond said at last. "As the grandchild of Beren and Lúthien, who won it from Morgoth, it belonged to you. And you had another right, which was the right of injury. The Sons of Fëanor murdered your father, your mother, and your brothers. The Silmaril was surely yours in wergild for the crimes they had already committed against our house. It was yours by inheritance and injury. And Maedhros and Maglor knew very well that you and all your heirs would hold both those rights forever."

"Would they have spared me?" Elwing said again.

"Maedhros would have pretended he had no choice," said Elrond. "And Maglor would have cried, and made a song about it afterwards. A sad one. Both of them would have said: alas, the Oath we swore is a terrible burden." His look was very distant. "No. They would not have spared you."

Elwing breathed out. It was what she had always thought. But it was no comfort to hear it.

Elrond was not finished. "They would have killed you," he said. "To make an end of it—as they thought. To set themselves free. And Maglor loved us later, but he did not love us then. Elros and I were also Lúthien's heirs." He sighed. "Mother, I do believe they would have killed you. And then I think they would have killed us too. Not on the spot, perhaps. Even then, I doubt either of them could have steeled himself to cut a child's throat. But they both knew very well that there are other ways to get rid of the heirs of an enemy house."

Eluréd and Elurín, whose small skeletons had lain unburied in the wood. Elwing bowed her head.

"They would have said afterwards that they had no choice, and that it was really very sad," said Elrond. "And they would probably even have believed it."

"Alas," said Elwing, "look what you made us do." She swallowed her tears. "I thought you loved Maglor."

"I do love him," Elrond said. "I know how much he has learned, how much he regrets, and how much he has changed. I truly believe that the Maglor who came to Sirion was the worst self he ever became. I do not think he will grow so wicked again. But."

Elwing watched him, but Elrond did not seem to see her. His grey eyes, full of grief, were looking into the past: into a childhood with that loving monster, that miserable murderer, who hated his brother because he could not face himself. Maglor, the liar, the worthless hypocrite, all those years ago: trying hopelessly to do one good thing, as the foundations of his world went to dust beneath his feet.

Nightingales were singing somewhere far off. Elrond said eventually, "You cannot love a person without also knowing him."

The white ship Vingilot hovered high above the world. Sometimes Elwing wanted to say: shall I come with you? The unexplored horizon had never called to her as hard it called to Eärendil, but she could still feel it—the relief, the lightness, that might come from casting off and setting sail. Imagine: sailing above the sky, skimming over the uttermost abyss, free from all the world's bonds!

"Have you decided?" Eärendil said.

"I was hoping," said Elwing, "that someone would tell me something I didn't already know. But no one did."

"As if there was anything that anyone could say that would lead to oh, never mind, that's all right then!"

"All I learned," Elwing said, "is that it was very sad and difficult to be the sons of Fëanor, and that it was even sadder and more difficult to be everyone else, stuck in Middle-earth with the sons of Fëanor. And both those things were obvious. Perhaps I should wait for your great-uncle Fingon to come forth from Mandos and see if he can shed any further light on the matter."

"Did he not lead one of the Noldorin hosts to the Kinslaying at Alqualondë?" said Eärendil. "You may be waiting some time."

"I have all the time in the world," Elwing said. "But not all the patience."

Eärendil gave her a sidelong glance. "Well?"

"Maedhros doesn't deserve my forgiveness because he was tormented by Morgoth," Elwing said. "He doesn't deserve it because he tried very hard. He doesn't deserve it because he didn't actively want to murder any children." She was ticking them off on her fingers. "He doesn't deserve it because his mother still loves him, or because his brother is still heartbroken about him. He doesn't deserve it for treating Men well. He doesn't deserve it for cracking a good joke occasionally. He gets half a point for really irritating Galadriel, but I admit that this is actually a character flaw on my part."

"She can't be that bad," Eärendil said.

Elwing laughed. "You haven't met her. She's a very good person, which makes it worse."

"In conclusion, he doesn't deserve your forgiveness at all," said Eärendil.

"No," said Elwing. "But none of them did."

Eärendil laughed. His laughter carried, echoing, through the heavens. "I knew it."

"You know me too well," said Elwing. "Yes, I'm going to forgive him. I'm going to forgive him so hard his ears ring." She smiled out at the world, the beautiful world, lit by the light of the Silmaril on her husband's brow. "And then I'm never going to think about him again."

Next time she saw a raven, wheeling above the sea-cliffs north of her tower, she called out to him to ask for the favour. Just a quick message to Mandos. No rush, she said. It's not very important.

She did not think about it again.

A week into Elrond and Celebrían's annual visit. The Sun was shining. Little waves were breaking on the shore. A seagull flew into Elwing's bedroom and dropped a beautifully smooth and shiny pebble on her pillow. "Thank you!" Elwing said, and went downstairs to put it with her collection of sea-treasures in the parlour.

She set it with the rest, in a wide glass bowl that was heaped with pretty pebbles, polished sea-glass, lustrous pearls, and brightly coloured shells. Then she stopped and frowned at the windowsill, and the collection of bird sculptures posed around it.

Six birds.

"I don't expect anything," she said aloud. "But it's a bit odd."

"Are you talking to yourself again?" Celebrían called up the stairs.

"I'm very peculiar and you should be used to it by now!"

She brought it up over breakfast. Elrond and Celebrían looked at each other.

Elwing frowned. "You mean he didn't come forth from Mandos's Halls?" she said.

Neither of them said anything.

"All that fuss, and he didn't?"

Of course, no one had to come forth from Mandos. There was nothing to stop a person being a sad ghost in the dark forever, if they wanted to be a sad ghost in the dark forever. Didn't Elwing know? Didn't Elwing go, again and again, down into the eternal gloom, to bring armfuls of niphredil to her mother?

It was completely unreasonable to be annoyed.

Elwing was very annoyed.

"I'm not sure you should be taking this personally," said Elrond.

"I'm not taking it personally!" snapped Elwing.

She dropped everything else she'd planned to do that day and made a vast batch of lembas. Elven waybread was the gift of Elven queens. Elwing's recipe was the one she'd learned from Idril long ago, with some refinements. She kneaded finely spiced dough till her arms and shoulders ached. Elrond and Celebrían wisely went for a walk and left her to it.

Elwing slept on it. She woke up the next morning still annoyed. In fact, she was more annoyed.

"I am going to be out today," she told her family after she came in from feeding the chickens. "Help yourselves to anything in the pantry."

Elrond and Celebrían exchanged glances. They both had more sense than to comment.

Elwing stomped across the misty green barrow picking flowers with extreme prejudice. No beautiful snow-white niphredil bouquet had ever been put together with such profound displeasure. She stormed through the dolmen arch and down the pitch-black tunnel into the subterranean kingdom of the dead. Lúthien had once danced light-footed through Mandos's mighty hall. Elwing was not quite stamping her feet, but it was close.

Mandos sat stony and terrible on his dark throne. His voice was as harsh as ever. Welcome, Elwing, he said.

Elwing flung the niphredil bouquet down onto the basin where Telperion's lone dewdrop gleamed. "Good morning! Sorry to trouble you! I need to have a word with someone."

Mandos said nothing.

"It won't take long," Elwing said. "I can't believe I have to do this."

You don't, said Mandos.

Elwing thought he was trying not to laugh. "Oh, what do you know about it?" she snapped. "You're only a Vala."

You do remind me of your grandmother, Mandos said.

"Er," Elwing said, belatedly realising that taking out her irritation on the Lord of Doom was both unfair and quite silly. "I apologise for—that is—thank you?"

It was not necessarily a compliment.

Mandos stretched out one mighty grey arm. The raven on his shoulder fluttered down to his wrist and fixed its intelligent dark gaze on Elwing.

I warn you, as ever, said Mandos. Stay close to your guide. Do not stray in my Halls.

It was impossible to sustain the pure flame of irritation through the silence and shadows of the Halls of Mandos. Elwing, unwillingly, calmed down. The raven flew from sconce to sconce, and greyish light flickered into existence every time it landed. The tapestries that hung on the walls were as varied as ever. Elwing saw cities of Men there: painted temples, and warships, and laughing riders on a wide grassy plain, and a great king who sat in a towering hall accepting tribute from an endless train of subjects who struggled up a broad staircase. Somewhere, at the other end of a straight road that people only travelled one way, the history of the world went on.

She looked away. She spoke to her guide. "Do you have a name?"

"Enyalië," the raven croaked.

That was Memory. Elwing supposed that made sense.

Down, and down, and down, into the dark. Elwing had not heard the sound of the Outer Ocean sighing above these buried tunnels in a long time, when at last they turned from the winding corridors into a hall of ghosts. If she had thought much about it, she would have expected this hall to be different, somehow, from the one where Nimloth's shadowy chamber lay. But it was not. Tapestries hung thick and still, half-curtaining dark gaps along the walls. There were no locks, no bars. This was not a prison.

The raven perched halfway along the row. Elwing stopped and looked at the tapestries either side of the entrance. On the left, eight figures together with swords uplifted. On the right, one figure alone: a dark silhouette before a gout of flame that blazed not quite as brightly as the gemstone in his shadowed hand.

Elwing frowned.

"I can see it's all very mythological," she said, "but I don't see what good it does anyone, if the first thing you see when you try to leave is a detailed record of the worst moment of your life. What's wrong with a nice seascape?"

The raven watched her thoughtfully.

"In fact," said Elwing, "now I am thinking about it—I don't care about him, but I really think you ought to change the tapestries outside my mother's room. Why should she have to sit there next to a picture of my brothers' bones forever? She is already dwelling on it. Have a word with your master. It's not kind, and it's not helpful."

She stood up straighter. She tossed her hair back. She adjusted the fringe on her silver shawl.

She slipped between the tapestries and into the dark.

Oof. Elwing nearly said it aloud. The ghost she knew best was Nimloth's, that soft ripple beneath the surface of the world. There was nothing soft or rippling about this one. She stood in the arched entrance to its eternal tomb and felt the spirit's presence like the lingering blast of heat when you slammed a furnace door shut. Its shapeless pale wraith-form hung motionless in the dark. "Well, you were a strong personality, weren't you?" Elwing said.

The ghost, of course, did not react.

Elwing sighed.

"I was going to shout at you," she said. "But it occurs to me that I am taking this a little too personally. It's not about you. I'm really just… quite upset with my mother."

Silence. Darkness.

"Of course, she has every right to keep being a sad ghost forever if she wants," Elwing said. She sat down cross-legged on the floor. After the first surprise, the furnace-blast of the unbodied spirit was not really so bad. "No one can stop her. And it's very unfair of me, isn't it, to think she's being selfish. Her grief is her own to bear. I can't justly say: but what about me? What about my grief? Why should I have to mourn you for the rest of time?"

Nothing.

"Everyone is a person, that is the problem," Elwing said. "Everyone has someone who loves them. Of course you can do what you like. If you think you're too wicked, too broken, too sad, to bear the burden of being alive… well. It's peaceful down here."

There. Wasn't that fair of Elwing? Wasn't that wise? Wasn't that reasonable, and gentle, and kind?

She grimaced.

"No," she said. "No, I don't care, and I still think you're wrong."

She stood up. She folded her arms. Seven thousand years ago, Maedhros had planned a massacre. He had sent one of his brothers to capture Elwing's children. He had let the other one do the talking. He had stood silent and grim on the cliff with his hand on the hilt of his sword. Years before that, he had sworn a terrible oath: not just to claim the Silmarils, but to slaughter anyone else who ever so much as touched them. Elwing looked at the ghost for a long time. Once, everyone said, he had been the best of them. By the end, he had been the worst.

"You and I have something in common, you know," she said at last. "We are the only two Elves ever to commit suicide."

As she said it, she lived it again.

The despair—the despair!

Elwing's childhood had been a childhood of Men, but then she had been given a choice. She had chosen the life and memory of the Eldar. Now the despair never truly left her. She could not forget it. Time would not wrap a gentle fog around it and sweep it away across a dark ocean. There was some part of her that stood forever on the cliff, trapped between surrender to evil and her own destruction; clutching the greatest light in all the world, and knowing it would not be enough to save anything that mattered.

The ghost did not answer her. It could not. A ghost could not speak, or act. It could not walk on green hillsides and breathe the sweet air. It could not hear the birds. It could not look up to see the stars. Elves talked of hröa and fëa, body and soul, as if they only sat side by side. But Elwing had slipped the bonds of her woman-shape again and again, ever since that first hour when Ulmo's power had tapped her on the shoulder and whispered are you not of our kindred? She knew something about wearing shapes. To be a Child of Eru, one of the Incarnate, did not mean you had a body. It meant you were a body. Against that endless hour of despair, Elwing held seven thousand years of hope and determination; feeding the chickens, pruning the apple trees, making pickles and chutney and jam, and living—living—living. Against that double death she soared with white wings spread on the lifting air. Against evil and destruction she stood firm forever, and the defiance in her heart was made of green hillsides, of sunlight and starlight, of the song of the Sea, and the calling of birds.

Nothing ever changed in the Halls of Mandos. It was a relief, a mercy. If nothing changed, nothing got any worse.

Nothing got any better, either.

"I saw your face," Elwing said to the ghost. "I think you saw mine. You know I meant to kill myself. I wanted to die. But I lived. Someone pitied me, and not because I deserved it. I was not a helpless innocent, even if they love to tell it that way now. I was a queen who failed her people, and a mother who failed her children. I leapt for despair first of all. But I also leapt for anger, for hatred. I leapt to spite you."

The crack through Elwing's soul had been there all her life. She remembered well that last awful flicker of satisfaction. Take this. She had seen their faces, the sons of Fëanor, as she stepped backwards off the cliff and they understood that it was vengeance. Everything they had done to Elwing and her family, the treachery and cruelty of it, the murder of innocents, the murder of children, making themselves monsters for their Oath, even the deaths of their brothers—with that one step into oblivion, she had made it all for nothing. They had lost their precious Silmaril after all.

Could the ghost even hear her?

She did not know.

"I never thought you deserved any pity," she said. "Certainly not from me. At least Maglor was kind to my children! But here I am. Here I am anyway. I must have something to say to you. I am just trying to think what it was."

Nothing.

"I'm sure it was very sad and difficult being the sons of Fëanor," Elwing said. "And it was also very stupid and humiliating being the sons of Fëanor. But if you were sorry—if you were really sorry—then you would do something about it. There were people who loved you. There are people who still do. It's been seven thousand years and you haven't even tried! Which means you're not actually sorry, are you? You're just embarrassed. You're sorry for yourself."

Still the silence and darkness of the Halls, and a spirit that could not answer her, because it was missing half itself, and could not do anything at all.

"Nothing gets better like this!" Elwing said. "And I do believe this world can get better. This one. I still believe it. It's not a burden, being alive. It's a gift. It's the only gift that matters. It's hope."

She gave the ghost one final judgemental look. It hovered, ghostily.

"Your poor mother!” Elwing said, and left.

Elwing bade a polite farewell to Mandos, who still seemed amused. She flew home. She did not discuss her trip with Elrond and Celebrían, and they did not ask.

The summer went on.

Days of happiness, days of joy. Days of sunlight and starlight and the song of the Sea. Elwing fed the chickens every morning. She embraced her son and her daughter-in-law tightly before they set out for home. She watched her husband's ship on the horizon. She lived. Every day, she got up, and she kept living, and she was not afraid.

Elwing was up a ladder, thinning out the heavy load of fruit weighing down her apple trees and watched greedily by all three goats, when she spotted the traveller coming over the hills.

She finished what she was doing, since she had time, and gave the trug of half-ripe apples to the gleeful goats. Then she went inside, brushed her hair, and made a pot of tea. She had some nice goat cheese turnovers from her pastry experiments yesterday left, those could go on the tray. And some scones with jam, and some hard-boiled eggs, why not? Elwing always had too many eggs.

She went out to the picnic table. She waved. She had a cup of tea and a cheese turnover while she waited. The experiment had turned out rather well, she thought. The pastries wouldn't do to supply Vingilot—too tricky to store—but she would make a batch next time Eärendil was home, so he could try some.

Alone, proud, walking tall and steady, the traveller crossed the sandy causeway to Elwing's green island, where the white tower shone under the glorious Sun. Sunlight brought out fiery traces in long rust-coloured hair.

"Good morning!" Elwing said. "I wondered when you would come."

"Good morning," answered Nerdanel, in her deep, soft voice.

"Would you like some tea?"

Nerdanel plainly understood the silent pact of hospitality: take some tea, take my welcome, and please, give us both something to do with our hands! She sat down at the picnic table. She still wore a grey gown, though with no veil. The colour suited her. Her red hair blazed against it. She had a large, ungainly satchel, which she set on the ground at her feet. It looked heavy. Elwing did not ask about it yet.

"Did he come?" she said.

"Yes," said Nerdanel. "He is home."

"Good."

"He is not very well."

"He wouldn't be," Elwing said. "I was not well, at first. It takes time."

Nerdanel nodded. She drank some tea. Elwing nudged the tray in her direction until she took a scone too. Then there was a silence while Nerdanel ate her scone and Elwing peeled a hard-boiled egg.

"Has he sent me a gift?" Elwing asked eventually.

"No," said Nerdanel.

"Good."

"He always had the most sense of any of my children," said Nerdanel. "Which I realise is not saying much."

"The bar is low," Elwing agreed.

"If there is anything you want from him, you can tell me."

"In about three thousand years, I will be ready to hear an apology."

"I will pass that on, if you are sure," said Nerdanel. "And three thousand years from now, to the day, you will receive a very carefully worded letter."

Elwing snorted. "If he sends me a letter, I will give it to my husband to drop into the void beyond the world. I might ask him to set it on fire first. Your eldest can face me himself or else not bother."

"I will tell him that too. Why three thousand years?"

"Well, that brings it to a full ten thousand since the First Age ended," Elwing said. "I think ten thousand years is about how long it takes to really forgive someone for destroying your family, stealing your children, and ruining your life."

Nerdanel laughed a sudden, dry little laugh. "Interesting," she said. "Then perhaps that is when I will pay my own visit to Mandos."

They ate more scones and turnovers and hard-boiled eggs, and finished the pot of tea. A bold pair of seagulls noticed that lunch was afoot and came to scrounge for scraps. Elwing laughed at them and threw them bits of the last scone. Nerdanel watched. She had a small, thoughtful smile. It came and went like the flicker of light on a misty morning.

Eventually, Elwing nodded at the satchel. "So… is that for me?"

Nerdanel hesitated.

"Please," Elwing said. "I have been trying to guess what the last bird will be. It will annoy me forever if I do not learn the answer."

The bronze gleamed in the sunlight when Nerdanel lifted it out of the satchel and set aside its wrappings. She placed it on the table. It was obviously quite heavy. Elwing put her hand over her mouth. She was trying not to laugh.

The sculpted cockerel stood with long legs planted, feathers all fluffed, wings spread, head down, comb high and spurs gleaming. Elwing loved him immediately. Nerdanel did look at birds. She had clearly been looking at chickens. Perhaps Maglor had finally got himself a flock, to keep along with his quail.

This chicken was ready for a fight. They were not, actually, stupid creatures. An eight-pound bird launching itself spurs-first at a two-hundred-pound Elf knew perfectly well it had picked a losing battle. But a cockerel knew his duty. He would warn you first. He would lower his head and spread his wings. He would give you a long threatening stare. Then, if you failed to appreciate how serious he was, he would get around behind you for a ruthless sneak attack. Suddenly the world would be full of screeching and slashing and pecking and flapping. If a cockerel was furious enough, or frightened enough, he would fight to the death.

And yet, Elwing thought, even knowing all that… there was always something fundamentally funny about an angry chicken.

The small smile that glimmered on Nerdanel's face said she thought so too.

"Shall we put him with the others?" Elwing said.

They took the bronze cockerel upstairs to the parlour. He obviously belonged in the middle of the group, between the two robins. Elwing set him on the windowsill there. Nerdanel stood amidst the treasures of her parlour, looking around thoughtfully with her unnerving luminescent eyes. Elwing watched her gaze fall on the bowls of pearls and pebbles, the dried seaweeds and corals, the heap of books that Elrond had left behind, the framed sketch of Beren on the wall—everywhere but the seven birds.

"Do say if there's anything you would like to have," she said. "Anything except the portrait of my grandfather—it was a gift, and I like it. But if you want materials, the birds bring me pretty things constantly, and I never really know what to do with them."

"Thank you," Nerdanel said. Her gaze was lingering on the corals. Then, abruptly, as if by force, she turned it to the display of bird sculptures.

"Do I have them right?" said Elwing.

"The owl can hang—"

Oh, Elwing hadn't seen that. But yes, there was a golden chain hidden among the wired-together bone spurs. Once it was aloft—its white bone wings showing their breadth and secret softness—she realised it had always been meant to balance the soaring gull. Now the whole picture came together.

Elwing and Nerdanel looked at it for a while. Seven birds. Gull and peacock, owl and crow, the twin robins, and the cockerel in the midst of his mismatched flock with his wings spread. They were beautifully made.

"I have to ask," Elwing said at last. "What exactly was I supposed to do with the sculptural group representing my family's murderers?"

Nerdanel was so pale that when she blushed she turned strawberry-scarlet. "I only thought of that halfway," she said. "And then I thought that perhaps it would be stranger to stop."

"It was probably stranger to keep going," Elwing said.

"I can take them away—"

"I always heard it was rude to take back a gift," said Elwing. "You know, this sort of thing is why everyone hates the Noldor. Stop making significant artwork about everything! Just talk about your feelings like a normal person."

"Like you?"

"Oh, I'm not normal," Elwing said. "I make jam about my feelings. Also chutney, pickles, various cordials, lots of mayonnaise, and I'm getting very good at cheeses. In extreme cases I bake all day. Obviously, I am a hypocrite."

Nerdanel's smile glimmered again. "The scones were good."

"Did you like them? I'm so glad," said Elwing. "Would you like to take some away with you? And how about some eggs?"

"We don't need any eggs," Nerdanel said. "The house is overflowing with quail eggs. I have taken to blowing them and painting the shells. I cannot think what else to do."

"Maglor hasn't been hatching more, has he?"

"The little ones are very sweet," Nerdanel said. "And he whistles now, sometimes, and doesn't seem to notice. So…"

A houseful of quail eggs was a small price to pay for your child's happiness. "I understand," Elwing said. "Well, you have a satchel to fill. I may inflict some cheeses on you when you go. You'll stay a few days, won't you?"

She saw Nerdanel hesitate.

"Please. I could use the company of a friend," she said. "Truly. Because, you see, my husband is away, and my son and his wife have gone home together. So I am alone." She held out her hands to the tall woman standing uncertain in her parlour. "And the house feels so empty without them."

In the dark, in the silence, in the Halls of Waiting where the dead lingered, half-visible figures changed one tapestry for another. Before the eternal resting-chamber of the ghost of fair Nimloth hung a record of a wedding, Elven-maid to mortal Man, crowned with scarlet leaves under the wooded eaves of Doriath. Beside it, under the careful supervision of a bright-eyed Raven of Mandos, the handmaidens of Vairë were hanging a new weaving.

On a green spur of land on the shores of the Sea, far in the north of the world, a white tower stretched to heaven, while a white ship soared above. A garden was there, and an orchard, a dovecote and a henhouse and a useful little shed. There was a picnic table, and a flock of chickens scratching in the dirt, and three mannerless goats. There was a strange rocky hillock where a bubbling hot spring, new-made, rose out of the depths of the Earth. High in the tower, pots of niphredil and sweet violets rested on an upper windowsill. And there was family there, and friendship, and all about the seashore the joyous motion of wild birds in flight.

The tapestries hung silent, side by side in the dark: the marriage of Nimloth, and the fate of her daughter. Overhead, the Outer Ocean sighed. It seemed to be there in the weaving too. Blue and green and silver and gold, it stretched forever and forever beyond that last shore. It was the abyss that was also a promise of hope: the endlessly singing Sea.