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Why is light given to one in misery,
and life to the bitter in soul?
Job 3:20
Truly the thing that I fear comes upon me,
and what I dread befalls me.
I am not at ease, nor am I quiet;
I have no rest; but trouble comes.
Job 3:25-26
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Elwing did not look up when she heard Galadriel enter the room. “Elwing, what—oh.” Galadriel stopped short with a small, pained gasp. Only then did Elwing raise her eyes from the Nauglamír.
The Silmaril filled the room with brilliant light, a perfect mingling of silver and gold that highlighted the mixture of both in Galadriel’s hair, so that she shone nearly as brightly, every inch the maiden crowned with radiance that her husband had named her.
“What are you doing?” she asked after a moment, voice tight. Her reaction to the Silmaril was one Elwing had come to expect from those of the Noldor who had been born in the West; the Silmaril’s light was the last remnant of the Light of the Trees that had been reason the Quendi had followed the Valar in the first place. Her question was a fair one: Elwing rarely brought out the Silmaril when she did not intend to wear it.
But this was different. “I’ve been thinking,” Elwing said. “I want to give it to them.”
“You want to what?” Galadriel took another step forward. “But—”
“I will not make my father’s mistake. But I do not want to give them the Nauglamír. That, they have no claim on—and I will not have them destroy it in ripping the jewel from its setting in their eagerness.”
“Then why have you sent for me?”
“You are a Noldo, are you not? Help me remove the jewel!” Elwing stepped back to allow Galadriel to take a closer look. In truth, she knew there were other craftsmen far more skilled in such work than Galadriel, whose interests lay in discerning hearts and minds rather than metals, but she did not trust any of them to listen to her, let alone go along with her wishes. No one wanted to give away the Silmaril.
Maedhros’ first message had come on Midsummer, one of the high holidays when Elwing wore the Nauglamír openly. Most of the year she kept it locked away, for fear that displaying it too openly too often would draw the wrong sort of attention—from the Enemy in the north, or the enemy in the east. That first letter had been her nightmares come to fruition. His words had been friendly, and the hand that had written them had been fair, but beneath the words lay an unmistakable threat: if Sirion did not acquiesce, there would be blood. He had spoken of deep regrets, and all-but pleaded with Elwing not to drive them to yet another Kinslaying.
As though it were her fault that they so easily resorted to murder!
Even so, Elwing would have happily done away with the Silmaril—but it was not her sole decision to make. She was Lady of Sirion, that was true, but she had her counselors, and none of them—even Galadriel and Celeborn, and Oropher and Lindir and others who remembered Menegroth—none of them voted in Maedhros’ favor.
Galadriel frowned her disapproval, but did not argue further as she joined Elwing in examining the necklace. “This is Dwarvish work, Elwing, made to endure. I do not have the skill to remove the Silmaril without damaging the rest—I do not think anyone in Sirion does, or anyone who would be willing to try. And are you certain…?”
“You know that I am.” Elwing glanced at the Silmaril. Its light cast everything in the room into harsh relief, turning all the shadow-edges razor-sharp. She remembered, faintly, the glory that was Lúthien with it upon her breast. But Lúthien was gone, and Maedhros Fëanorion did not have the same respect (or fear) of her descendants.
Elwing had written back herself, asking Maedhros to wait until her lord husband should return from his journeys. Perhaps then we will revisit the question of our peoples’ friendship, she had written, before pointing out the fact that two other Silmarils rested still in the Iron Crown in Angband. And wasn’t Maedhros Fëanorion more familiar than any with the ways of that place? A low blow, perhaps, but so had been his references to her brothers.
They were still awaiting the Fëanorians’ reply. Their hunters and scouts had brought back no news of their movements, and Elwing was growing nervous.
“It would only bring them pain,” Galadriel said after a moment. “After all they have done, they could not touch it without burning.”
“In my view, that is yet another reason to let them have it,” Elwing said. “Let them burn, for what they did to my parents, to my brothers.”
Horns sounding alarm startled them both, sending Elwing’s heart leaping to her throat. She swept the Nauglamír into its satchel as Galadriel strode to the window and thrust open the shutters. The sun was sinking westward, and her red light replaced the Silmaril’s brilliance in the room, casting an eerie glow on the walls. Galadriel’s shadow stretched behind her, dark and distorted.
The smell of fire reached them, and the sounds of fighting nearly drowned out the waves—the metallic clang of swords, hoarse battle cries in both Sindarin and Quenya, the screams of children, and the dying. Elwing froze, trembling, remembering the same noises echoing through the halls of Menegroth, repeated through echo after echo. Galadriel stared across the Havens, stricken. “The Star of Fëanor,” she whispered.
“What? No!” Elwing rushed to the windows, and sure enough, there it was—the many-pointed star rising glittering above the smoke, followed by the personal banners of Maedhros, Maglor, and the twins Amrod and Amras. They had taken her reluctance as flat refusal—like wolves, they were too eager for the kill!
Galadriel grabbed Elwing’s arm and pulled her from the window, into the smaller antechamber off the council room. “Elwing, where are the boys? Where are Elrond and Elros?”
Her boys! “The shore—they wanted to go to the beach, so I sent them with Luinnel…” She had hugged and kissed them only absently, distracted by thoughts of the Silmaril. Elrond had promised to bring her back the prettiest seashell on the beach. “Oh no…” There was fighting on the beach—a slaughter just like Menegroth, worse than Alqualondë. Her sons were there! Before she could think about it, her feet started to carry her toward the door.
But Galadriel grasped her shoulders and shook her roughly. “Elwing, you must stay calm! You must keep your head! Stay here—hide—do not let them take the Silmaril! I will find Elrond and Elros and bring them to you. Just don’t do anything foolish!” The implication was clear—Galadriel would not let Elros and Elrond suffer the same fate as Eluréd and Elurín, and Elwing must not fall prey to the same mistake her mother had made, getting caught unarmed and unaware by battle-crazed Kinslayers.
And then she was gone. Elwing went to the window and nudged the shutters open just a bit. She could hear more screams from the rest of the town. The fires were spreading. She could not see the beach, but it was all too easy to imagine the blood-red foam and dark-stained sand, the bodies floating in the waves. All too easy to imagine the tiny bodies of her sons lying crusted with blood and sand, their eyes wide open and staring unseeing at the sky, a soft white seashell clutched in Elrond’s little fingers…
Shouting filled the courtyard, and Elwing shrunk back into a corner, clutching the satchel to her chest with trembling fingers, locking her knees in an effort to remain standing. Galadriel had ordered her not to let the Fëanorians have the Silmaril, but if it would stop the killing? If it would save her sons’ lives?
But as something crashed in the hallway outside, Elwing knew—just knew, somehow, irrationally perhaps, or perhaps with the intuition of her foremother Melian—that hope for Elrond and Elros was gone. They had been caught in the battle and she knew the sons of Fëanor did not care whether they hurt innocent children in there quest for the Silmaril. They mirth even go out of their way to hurt them because they were her sons, just like they had dragged her brothers out into the snow and left them to freeze!
The door flew open, breaking against the wall, and Elwing screamed. The soldier who ran in bore the Star of Fëanor upon his breastplate, splattered with blood both fresh and starting to dry. It was caught in his hair, too, marring hate deep russet color. But he had both his hands: not Maedhros. One of the twins, then.
As soon as his eyes (bright and wild and desperate) fell on Elwing, she fled, racing back to the council room and barring the door behind her with heavy chairs. With a shout he followed, and as he flung himself against the door she grabbed the nearest, heaviest object. A candelabra, Noldorin-made and almost absurdly ornate. She hefted it, and when the door finally broke open she swung—
And he dropped as though dead, and for a moment Elwing stood staring, horrified, terrified that she had killed him. But he wasn’t dead; his eyelids fluttered, and he groaned softly. Elwing nearly sobbed in relief—she was not a warrior, and had no wish at all to become a kinslayer, even now…
There was more shouting outside, coming down the hall. Someone calling for Ambarussa. Elwing ran to the window, tearing her skirts as she scrambled over the sill. “Stop!” someone yelled behind her. “Stop!”
The sun had almost completely vanished beyond the horizon, turning the western sky deep purple, fading into indigo and then the black-blue of night, where the first stars were winking into view. It was as lovely a twilight as Elwing had ever seen. It had been on an evening much like this that Eärendil had asked her to marry him.
Things had seemed so hopeful then. Sirion had been thriving, the tension between the Sindar and Noldor easing into friendship. Now Eärendil would return to find the Havens sacked and his family gone. Elwing stumbled on the path leading to the highest cliff overlooking the sea and the harbor, where flames leaped toward the sky.
Two of the Fëanorians chased her up the path. Elwing stumbled backward until she reached the very edge of the cliff. “Stay back!” she cried as they slowed. “Stay away from me!”
“Elwing,” said the taller of the two, sheathing his sword and holding out his hand in an attempt at a placating gesture. “Elwing, come away from the edge, please.”
“I will not!” His hair glinted red in the distant light of the fire, and his right arm hung at his side, handless. Elwing pulled the Nauglamír from the satchel and held it out with trembling hands for Maedhros and his dark companion to see. It lit their faces with all the brightness of the sun, but there was no beauty to be illuminated there. They were haggard and bloody and worn—and hungry. She could see it in their eyes, the way they stared at it. “This is what you have come for, is it not?” She gestured toward the burning harbor. “For which you burn our ships and homes and slaughter our children? All for a piece of jewelry!”
“Give—give us the Jewel,” Elwing,” Maedhros said. “Please. All we want—”
“What about what I want?” she shouted. “I want my parents back! My mother did not even carry a sword when your men cut her down in the halls of Menegroth as she tried to protect us! I want my brothers back, who you left to freeze and starve in the forest!” Maedhros actually flinched; the other—Maglor, surely—looked away. “Can you give me what I want, Kin slayer? Can you give them back to me?”
“Elwing—”
The wail of a child rose above the sounds of battle far below, a wail that sounded entirely too much like Elros in the throes of the nightmares he sometimes suffered.
“I want my sons!” she cried, and slipped the Nauglamír around her neck. It weighed heavily on her, made for the broad shoulders of Finrod Felagund, not her much smaller, weaker frame. Behind and beneath her, waves crashed against the cliff face, the rhythm of her despair. Wind off the sea whipped at her skirts and her hair, so she could barely see the desperate expression on Maedhros’ face as his eyes flickered between her face and the Silmaril on her breast. All of her earlier conviction was gone: she wanted to hurt Maedhros and his brothers as they had hurt her, and if all they wanted was the Silmaril, for the sake of her father and her mother and her brothers and sons, for the sake of all Lúthien and Beren had braved, she would not let them have it.
But neither could she flee, find refuge elsewhere, as she had after Doriath. It was too late for that, and even if she could run, they would only follow, bringing bloodshed and death with him.
No one else would die because of her and the cursed Jewel.
“Elwing, wait—no!” Maedhros lunged, but he was too late. Elwing turned and flung herself off the cliff. For one absurd moment she felt as though she were flying, and would not hit the water at all but would soar across the waves and somehow, perhaps, find Vingilot and Eärendil…
But fall she did, and hit the water hard. Cold pierced her very bones; her nose and lungs burned with the salty water as they longed for air, and she tumbled down into the Sea’s depths, black but for the blinding light of the Silmaril, that cursed Jewel for which she had lost everything.
Just when she thought she would not survive another moment, that her spirit would flee her drowning body for Mandos in the West, something changed. Strange power encased her like great hands lifting her up, up through the waves and into the air.
And then she did spread her wings and soar, water falling from her feathers like shimmering diamonds. Elwing rose into the sky, turning from burning Sirion, looking westward where, somewhere, Vingilot sailed and her husband sought passage into the West. She did not look back.
Flying was exhilarating, like a dream. She glided over the waves, skimming the water's surface with her wings before rising again into the sky. Overhead the stars wheeled, the Sickle burning like points of white fire. She soared beneath their light until her wings ached, and then kept on, urgency lending her strength and speed. The sun rose behind her, pink and pale orange with the dawn, sending streaks of gold across the clouds, and then it passed across the sky and sank again, in glories of indigo and deep purple.
Flight had lost its magic and wonder, and the Silmaril, the Nauglamír still around her neck, weighed her down, until she thought she could fly no further, and would fall again into the sea and drown for real.
Then she heard singing, and forced her wings to raise her up again, flapping hard. Vingilot cut through the waves ahead of her, sails gleaming pale in the moonlight. She knew those voices – the sailors who traveled with her husband, Falathar, Erellont, and Aerandir – mingling in cheerful harmony in a hymn to Elbereth Star-kindler.
The singing stopped abruptly, and a cry arose. "Look! A star is falling into the sea!"
"No, it is a bird!"
"Lord Eärendil! Eärendil, come look!"
And there he was! Eärendil ascended to the desk, looking careworn and tired, his hair tied back with a salt-stained rag. His eyes widened as Elwing descended, and she wondered if he knew her – but was too tired to truly care. She had found him, beyond all hope, now as she came to the end of her strength. His arms caught her where she would have crashed to the deck.
"That is the Nauglamír on its chest," someone said, whispering with something like awe. "And the Silmaril…"
"Something has befallen Sirion, but how did such a bird…?"
"Peace," Eärendil's voice rumbled in his chest, and Elwing whimpered with relief, though the sound that came from her throat was strange – a bird's exhausted, injured mewling. "Stay our course. The sooner we reach the Havens the sooner our questions will be answered." His arms were warm around her, and his hands gentle as he carried her beneath the deck, to his cabin. She was asleep before they got there.
When she woke, Eärendil was gone. She heard his voice on deck, giving orders to the sailors. His footsteps thumped down the stairs as she crawled out of the bed. He had taken the Nauglamír from her; it sat atop a chest across the cabin. Her gown was nowhere to be seen, and Elwing pulled on a tunic just before the door opened.
"You're awake." He sounded relieved. "You've been asleep for two days."
"Have I?" Elwing stared at him, and then looked to the Silmaril. That made three days since Sirion fell. She looked back at Eärendil; his eyes and hair shone blue and gold in the Silmaril's light; he looked like a Maia from the blessed realm, almost, like the salty grime of sea travel had melted away, and the lines of care had been smoothed from his face.
He crossed the cabin in two strides and pulled her into his arms. "Elwing, what happened? What about the boys? Are Elrond and Elros – "
She should have been able to cry – she certainly wanted to. But all Elwing felt at the mention of Elrond and Elros was a raw, aching emptiness in her chest. That should have made it easier to describe what had happened, but it didn't. Eärendil listened in silence, horror and grief passing across his face alongside a dozen other emotions, most of which Elwing couldn't name.
When she was done, he closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. "Sirion…"
"Is fallen. Perhaps a remnant survived. They did in Doriath, and Gondolin."
"Help didn't come from Balar? Círdan and Gil-galad…?"
"They came on us without warning. We thought for sure Maedhros would send another messenger, for all we had asked for really was time, to wait for you, but he didn't…"
Eärendil put his arms around her and they sat for a while, in silence. Elwing did not know what he was thinking about. Her thoughts turned again to their sons, how they had been so disappointed that they had to go to the beach with Luinnel instead of Elwing. Luinnel wouldn't help them build their sandcastle watchtowers, and let them use a real spyglass to scan the horizon for a glimpse of Círdan's people's fishing boats, or of Vingilot returning at last. Elros had clung to her skirts with sticky hands (he was always sticky in a way Elrond wasn't; Elwing could not figure out why) and big eyes. Elrond had tugged on her hand, trying to drag her out of the door with them.
A choice now lay before them: to sail back to Sirion and try to salvage what was left of their people, or to turn westward again, now with the Silmaril, to seek aide from the Valar. It was Eärendil who gave voice to this, sounding uncertain.
"Let us go west," Elwing said. She rose and picked up the Nauglamír. It had been rent and twisted, somehow, in her fall to the sea and then her strange transformation and mad flight. "The Silmarils were hallowed by Elbereth, were they not?" How bitterly ironic that such holy objects had caused so much pain and death. "Perhaps this will pierce the enchantments blocking our way."
Eärendil stood and took the necklace gently from Elwing's hands. "A shame that it was so damaged," he murmured. "It was a beautiful necklace." Most of the gems inlaid in the silver and gold had been lost to the bottom of the Sea. The ones that remained shimmered with colored fire in the Silmaril's light. He looked at Elwing. "We have supplies and lembas enough for one more foray into the West. If we cannot find our way this time, I do not think we will ever reach Valinor."
Elwing, dressed in an over-large tunic and wrapped in Eärendil's cloak, followed him to the deck on shaking knees. She had never been overly fond of the sea, and had never spent more than a few minutes on board a ship. The pitching did not make her sick, but it made walking difficult and uncomfortable. The air smelled fresh, if salty. As Eärendil went to speak with the others, Elwing stepped carefully to the railing, and peered down to the water.
She jumped back with a yelp as a great grey creature leapt chattering out of the water, followed by another, and then another. Falathar laughed, and joined her. "Dolphins," he said, gesturing to the playful fish. "They often follow our ships, and are great friends to many sailors who learn their tongue." Elwing looked at him; he seemed cheerful enough, but his smile did not reach his eyes, under which were dark circles. He had a wife in Sirion; Elwing did not know if she had survived or not.
They changed course, and Vingilot's bow once again strove against the waves to the West. The dolphins chattered and whistled as they played in her wake, and Eärendil took the helm, the Silmaril fastened to his helm, for the Nauglamír was now useless as a necklace. Elwing stared at him, and remembered her father standing resplendent before Thingol's throne in Menegroth, the most beautiful blending of Maia, Man, and Elf. Eärendil did not have the blood of the Maiar in his veins, as Elwing herself did, but she thought he looked more like one than she ever could. The Silmaril was out of her hands, now, and she knew she would not miss it.
Eärendil thought hope lay in the West. Elwing wasn't sure there was hope to be found anywhere, anymore, but she would go with him to the ends of the earth if it meant she would not be left alone.