Chapter Text
Sam woke from the splashing of the water against the hull. The galley of the ship was lonely, dark and dank, and the provisions crouched in the corners like sleeping beasts. Sam huffed, and tried bury his head in the hood of his cloak. But sleep would not come, so he tossed aside the covers and padded to the staircase leading to the deck.
Outside, the night was inky-blue, and Nisilë sat on the prow. She watched the far-away horizon, which was one of her chief tasks. “What do your elf eyes see, Legolas?” Aragorn had asked, time and again during their journey. And Nisilë had eyes every bit as keen as Legolas. She watched the horizon from the prow, and also from the crow’s nest when it was necessary. Though fragile like her name – fragrance – she helped wherever she could: pulling rope and arranging it into coils, and holding the helm when it did not need steering. Among the Elves, there was little difference between men and women, and they took this circumstance in stride, for every set of hands was sorely needed.
When they departed the Grey Havens, it was a challenge to raise a crew of even half a dozen, for most elves who remained had no intention of returning to Valinor. Even Legolas and Gimli had already left, and six was the eventual number of elves who had assembled. Sam, the hobbit, made it a party of seven. It was not enough to sail the ship, so they all worked double time: all, including Sam despite his age, who would have much preferred to sit in the wooden hull, which was round and snug and reminded him of a hobbit hole.
But he would not be seeing any more hobbit holes, not for a good long while. Only the cold, hard waves for the foreseeable future, and those waves stirred a fear that was so primal, no amount of keeping busy could drown it out.
He approached the elf on quiet feet, but she turned before he was a pace away.
“Couldn’t sleep, Master Gamgee?”
Her eyes were dark in the inky half-light, and impish in the way of wood elves.
Sam puffed out his cheeks.
“No, my lady.”
She beckoned him to sit by her side, on the makeshift bench of barrels just behind the prow. With some effort, Sam heaved himself up to sit beside her.
She peered into the horizon and nodded slowly – as Elves did everything slowly, except when they were in mortal danger.
“It’s not too long now,” she said. “Lendaer said it should be an hour or two before the dawn.”
Lendaer was their navigator, and by extension the captain. Sam had seen him and Nisilë poring over maps in the hold for many an hour.
“And what are we to see, exactly?”
Asking questions kept his mind off the waves crashing against the ship – the ship “talking” as it was called. He shivered, pulling his cloak around him tighter.
Nisilë shrugged, blinking slowly like a cat.
“I do not know, for I have never seen it,” she said. “Perhaps as the legends tell it, there will be a great wall of clouds that suddenly appears. But it may be a storm that emerges from the air, with cruel, swirling winds. Or simply a thick, impenetrable mist. There are many ways they describe it in songs and tales.”
Nisilë’s voice was quiet and serious. Deep and heavy with feeling it was, as if whenever she spoke, she seemed to say three things at once.
Sam watched her profile in the darkness, the shadows moving in the light from the lantern by the stern. Fear stirred within him, but it was like a sleeping serpent, its only movement the twitching of an eye. The elf woman’s presence beside him was a balm, as if her velvet cloak lay wrapped around him.
They might have sat like that for a minute or an hour, with the wind whipping through their cloaks. The harsh, heady smell of the sea rose time and again with the waves, and the rocking made him dizzy, even after many days.
“What are you thinking of, my lady?” he asked at length.
She was, after all, leaving much behind just as he was. And in the letters they exchanged in Middle-earth, he saw not a lofty elf but a woman, one who one who loved and lost and drank her fill at the cup of life.
Nisilë turned her eyes from the horizon, and the apples of her cheeks grew turgid.
“Thinking, Master Samwise?” She softened her chuckle with a hum.
She was more inclined to laugh than other elves, which reminded him of Legolas.
“I am sure you have heard that Elves can see all the way to the end,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “But what is said and what is true are often quite different. I cannot see the Straight Road, not yet, but I have seen another ending. I am a woman who had a husband whom she loved. But he has passed on, and my sisters by marriage are old women whose days are filled with joy and sleep. My child is living a happy life, and day by day, he needs me less and less. He has grown quite strong, and good. It has happened so fast, faster than I ever could imagine.”
She paused, and drew her long white hands over each other.
“I am not made for the world of Men, Master Samwise,” she said. “And I am going to a home I have never known. There are no words in any language of Men, or Elves, or any other race that could give shape to my thoughts.”
She drew a slow-paced breath, smiling still.
Sam extended a hand, placing it on her long, cool arm.
A long time ago, Frodo explained that being centuries old made every feeling deeper. Whatever an elf thought or felt, it was like a mountain where he was an ant. But even now, Sam could not help his nature. Though they were different beings, he felt her pain as if it were her own.
“I realize I cannot understand it fully,” he said, braving a squeeze of her arm. “But I must say, I left many things behind as well, and I certainly know what it’s like.”
He sighed, chewing on his lips.
“Though we are also goin’ toward our loved ones, are we not?” he added quickly. “And you will surely find your friends before the end. The other sylvan elves, and Lord Elrond.”
His lips spread wide, even in the cold. He glanced at his knees, suddenly sheepish.
Surely, she would not laugh at him for his endlessly hopeful ways. And she did not.
“Yes, Lord Elrond,” she mused.
She glanced at him, the sweetest smile playing on her lips. Sweet, and a little sad. Like Midsummer touched by rain.
“But you miss him too, do you not?”
There was a light reflected in her eyes – from the lamp on the mast, but also from far away.
She did not need to specify who “he” was.
A wistful smile flickered on her lips.
Sam felt a yen beneath his ribs, and did not speak.
For to speak his name would have been to disturb something profound. Like touching a butterfly’s wing and spoiling the fine powder.
He nodded, pressing his hands over his ribs.
Who knew if he was chasing a ghost? No one could tell how long a mortal could live in Valinor. And yet, he needed to try. To think that Frodo was gone for good was unimaginable.
He blinked into the darkness, grateful for its veil.
How many years had it been, of hoping that Frodo might find happiness and heal? According to Nisilë, Elrond believed there was a chance, though nothing was guaranteed. And yet in the Shire, Frodo not have lived another year.
Parting was like a knife to the back, but Sam understood the reasons. If it was anyone else, Sam would have never forgiven them, especially when Frodo told him at the last moment, the two of them standing at the docks. But by then, Sam was so in love he would have forgiven anything.
Love was a feeling that came softly but unmistakably, and it took entirely too long to comprehend it. After all, men were not supposed to love other men, and he was promised to Rosie. But even if there was no Rosie, and if one of them was a man and the other a woman, there was no life for them in Middle-earth. Frodo could not have stayed long, and Sam had the rest of his life to fill: with children, a wife, and the affairs of the Shire, which were always myriad.
And so he tried to fill it. But even then, his love for Frodo persisted. It was like a slow-maturing seed, a book in a far corner of the library. Through many years, it waited, and once Rosie breathed her last, Sam began to think of finding Frodo in earnest.
Frodo, after all, had never known how he felt. And Frodo had always wanted him to do and be all he could, which Sam had done. Sam had begged Frodo not to go where he could not follow, but could he follow him to Valinor?
A gust of wind interrupted his thoughts. Sam shivered harder than before, and Nisilë placed a hand on his arm.
“Not too much longer, now, I think,” she said. “In fact, look, you will likely see it now.”
Sam looked up, having tucked his head away from the wind. He squinted into the gloom.
The inky darkness was growing paler. There was scarcely a star in the sky, and the rosy fingered dawn was still far off. But to the west, a cloud paler than the horizon was fast approaching. It grew bigger by the second – moving faster than the speed of the ship.
Nisilë rose from where she sat and strode toward the stern.
“The time is near,” she called to the elf behind the helm. “Due west. Do not change course.”
“Aye, aye, my lady, do not change course!”
Sam peered at Nisilë from his spot atop the barrel. She caught his gaze, and strode back toward him.
“You stay by my side, Master Samwise,” she said sternly. “You may serve your purpose yet, before the end.”
Sam hopped off the barrel and hastened to her.
The elf woman’s movements were taut and efficient. Not a gesture wasted, her back ramrod straight. Her eagle eyes were trained on the horizon, and out of the corner of his eye, Sam saw the other elves emerging from below deck.
It reminded him of Galadriel with the One Ring, except a good deal less frightening. Nisilë was calm incarnate, in spite of it all.
Ahead of them, the cloud was racing toward the ship. It moved far faster than anyone could have predicted, and the sky grew lighter by the moment. At last, a mist enveloped them and made the air and sea look the same. Someone could have turned the ship on its head, and they never would have known.
The wind went slack, and the sail deflated and fell with a crack. But there was still a howling all around them.
Unwillingly, Sam reached out a hand. But by then, Nisilë had ceased to see him.
Indeed, her large blue eyes turned a glassy black, and she lowered her head. She raised both arms, tracing a wide circle in the air.
She kept this posture for a long, long moment, and then she bowed, descending on one knee. She supported herself on either side with her fingers touching the deck. She seemed to listen, and then she spoke.
She spoke long words that ran one into the next, like torrents of a river. Sam had learned a bit of Sindarin and Quenya, but he could not understand a thing. All he knew was that her speech had a long, rumbling quality, akin to a lament. The waves and howling amplified her voice, and she seemed to draw strength through the wood beneath her fingers.
He could not tell how long they remained like this, the lament mingling with the waves. After a time, his ears felt ready to freeze off, and Lendaer came his side, placing a hand on his shoulder. But even then, Sam kept his eyes on Nisilë, willing his heart to be steadfast.
What if it did not work? What if he, the interloper, had ruined it for everyone? He could not think of what would happen then.
But Nisilë gave no indication that it failed. She simply continued her long, laborious communication. The minutes passed, and she began to shake. Sam took a step toward her, but Lendaer grasped him firmly.
It was Nisilë’s work now, and none other could help her. Sam expected that she was wrong – he had no role to play.
The moments passed, and then, the fog began to lift. He saw the prow: a faint etching of lines, like a drawing in a sketchbook.
Nisilë was still crouching on the deck, her voice growing fainter. A spasm buckled her arms and legs, and Sam broke free of Lendaer’s grasp and hastened to her side. She looked like she might keel over, and he made ready to catch her.
But instead of falling, Nisilë relaxed, settling back on her haunches. Her arms collapsed at her sides, her fingertips no longer grazing the deck. She looked ahead of her, dazed, but before Sam could speak, she turned and smiled thinly.
“It is done.”
Sam looked uncertainly about him. It did not look done. The clouds were looming heavy as ever. The mist had grown thin, but it encircled them on every side.
Nisilë nodded in the direction of the prow, however.
“Look.”
Sam squinted, but for a long time he saw nothing.
But then, slowly – very slowly – a pale spot of light formed within the mist. Waves appeared some distance beyond the prow, and the wall of clouds did not tower quite so high.
The wind picked up, gentler than before, and the sky ceased to frown. It was gilded with the tender light of dawn.
“Thank you,” Nisilë breathed, collapsing to one side.
Sam caught her by the shoulders.
“But I didn’t – I didn’t do anythin’.”
“No, but you were here. They were able to see your quality. You did right not to hide in the hull.”
She rested her head on his shoulder, and Lendaer stepped toward them, depositing a second cloak over Nisilë’s shoulders. He then stepped away and issued commands.
Footsteps echoed behind them, and there was a creaking of ropes, along with several voices. But Sam did not look back. He looked in the same direction as Nisilë: to the West, where the light was growing brighter.
Brighter and bolder it grew, until at last, the mist fell away completely. The clouds parted, and beyond them, the sky was an iridescent, morning blue.
The water, which had been gray, was a heady aquamarine.
And the Sun! She hid her face, but her light came from everywhere at once. Bright without cutting the eye, golden without show, gentle and kind as summer.
The clouds and mist disappeared, and before them lay the Straight Road, a narrow path of water with the sea falling off on either side. The path was barely ten ships across.
The wind picked up, followed by the crack of sails filling with air. Then they were off again, headed for Valinor.