The golden-haired elf woke when the ship pitched and flung him out of his bunk and into the aisle.
Eru have mercy on us, he thought, as the next violent wave tossed the vessel like a toy and hurled him back against his bunk. The world exploded in pain and he saw stars.
He could hear the crew of the small vessel shouting to each other as he made his way over to the ladder and up the hatch with excruciating slowness as the ship pitched and rolled. As he pulled himself on deck, a large wave washed over the ship, drenched him, and almost swept him overboard.
"Lord Ossë!" yelled the blond into the howling tempest, clinging on to a mast. "For the love of Uinen—please stop!" Sputtering salt water and coughing as another wave swamped him, he bellowed, "By Eru's holy name, Ossë! Have mercy!"
In the blink of an eye, the waves calmed, the grey clouds cleared, and the wind and rain dwindled.
A shaft of morning sunlight slanted through the easternmost clouds in the grey sky, and lit up the elf's golden hair, so that even wet, it shone with the glory of a sudden sunrise.
He slowly rose and stood in the middle of the deck in his bare feet, and his wet tunic clinging to his lithe torso. He winced as he felt his aching shoulder.
The six Egladhrin mariners, who had lashed themselves to their ship with ropes, stared at him in awe.
The elf pushed his wet, tousled, unbraided hair back from his face, looked at them, and cleared his throat. "That was Gaerys in a foul mood," he said in Sindarin, since he could not speak their variant of the Falathrin dialect well. "But he can be appealed to…much of the time," he added hastily, remembered the seven ships that had been wrecked bearing Turgon's message to the West. The time of the Doom is over, he reminded himself. From his experience with Ossë over the past few millennia, the capricious maia had turned aside from his wrath whenever cried out to.
As the ship resumed its course, and flew over the now becalmed sea, the captain of the vessel approached his passenger rather warily as he stood at the prow with his hair streaming in the wind.
The golden-haired elf was dressed simply in plain linen and leather—a doublet over a long-sleeved tunic, and breeches tucked into boots—but one could see that the materials and cut were very fine. His only adornment was his flowing hair, which was of a hue so bright and rich as it caught the sunlight that one could be mesmerized while gazing at it. He had yesterday brought on board a magnificent sword in a leather scabbard, but it was now left below deck. What kindred he belonged to was a puzzle. His luminous golden hair proclaimed him to be one of the legendary Minyar they had heard of, the ones who had returned only a short season to the shores of Ennor during the War of Wrath, then disappeared back into the West. Yet he spoke Sindarin, and his fair, flawless features and complexion were Telerin. He knew his way around a ship like a mariner and handled tackle as one born to it. But he was an Inlander. Asked yesterday which race he hailed from, he had chuckled and replied, "Probably a mongrel of them all."
The captain and crew had been intrigued by him since he first approached them for passage to the Island of Golden Flowers. That height. That golden hair. The way he shone like a sunrise. But the way he had joked and chatted with them on the journey thus far had put them at ease.
They were now seriously doubting if their tall passenger was in fact an elf at all. Wonder and conjecture were rampant now in their silent thought exchanges, as they watched him.
The golden one turned his head to look at the nervous captain, and his azure blue eyes sparkled with amusement. "Friend, why do you eye me as though I am a ghost? Just yesterday did we not talk and laugh the hours away together?"
The awe was still in the young Egol's face and his glittering sea-grey eyes as he looked up at the much taller man. "My lord, tell me please—are—are you of the Ainur?"
The passenger looked shocked for a moment, then burst out laughing. "Nay, friend! I am edhel—like yourself."
"You calmed the sea. You spoke to Lord Gaerys—and he…he listened to you. We can tell you are a lord of great power."
The blue eyes were saddened. "Ah, young one… but why do you speak to him no longer? Are you not of the Teleri, who are the beloved of Gaerys?"
The Egol shook his head sadly. "Lord Gaerys has not revealed himself to us since ancient days."
The traveller looked at the other ciryn who all looked busy at work on board, but were listening in to the conversation, he knew. Brown-haired and sea-eyed, they nimbly climbed the masts and ropes. All so young. "Were all of you born after the world was bent and Elenna sunk beneath the sea?"
"Aye," said the captain, a mere child of three hundred and six years, compared to the four-thousand-year-old elf next to him. "But we do still keep the old ways. We pour libations on the waters to Lord Gaerys and Great Lord Gulma ere we sail, and when we fish, we offer the best of each catch back to them. But still, we lose ships and men each year to the storms and the sea… I feel… I feel they are deaf to us. They have turned their backs on us." The last words were a whisper, as though he feared that he spoke blasphemies.
The golden-haired elf gazed kindly upon the Egol. He wondered at what stage these people had begun to name themselves Forsaken, and to live as though they were so. These sea elves on the scattered isles far north from Lindon scarce acknowledged Círdan's lordship, preferring to have no lords and live free. But, in some ways, they had also… diminished over the years.
The elf remembered his childhood on the shores of Nevrast. It troubled his fëa to meet elven mariners who seemed less in harmony with the sea than at its mercy. They wove little magics: spellsongs to keep their nets from breaking, and to safeguard their vessels from leaks. With voices fair as all those of the Teleri were, they sang with all the mesmerizing beauty of the sea's many voices in their songs. Yet they did not sing with power to call the winds, nor speak to the sky and the waves, nor summon the fish as they cast their nets. They did not fellowship with Ulmo or Uinen or Ossë though they revered them. Their hearts no longer beat with the beat of the sea, though they loved it, for fear is the enemy of love.
They had dwindled even in stature, thought the Beleriand-born warrior, who was used to being the tallest elf wherever he went in Ennor. There were edhil taller than himself, but they had long since gone to Mandos, or sailed west. Yet even for those of Telerin stock, these ciryn were rather short. He towered over the tallest by a head and a half.
It reminded him too much of mortals.
A time of fading and dwindling for the elves. Perhaps these were more of the signs.
"Libations and sacrifice are all very well," the traveller said gently. "But why not try speaking to Gaerys, as to another edhel? He loves your people and it is friendship he has always desired with you. He kept your forbears on these shores that he might be close to them. Methinks he rages at your silence."
The young Egol looked doubtful. "He would hear such as me?"
"I believe he would." The traveller gave an encouraging, incandescent smile. "How could it hurt to try?"
The young Egol was hanging onto every word as though the traveller were an oracle. He smiled shyly. "I shall try, lord. Thank you for your wisdom."
The elf lord almost rolled his eyes as he looked back over the open ocean with a small sigh. "How much further, captain?"
"Half a day if the weather holds fair." The captain hesitated, then asked, his eyes curious and wondering, "You are the first Inlander to come to these parts in my lifetime. Why…why do you wish to make pilgrimage to the grave of the Aer Maethor?"
The golden-haired elf cringed. Pilgrimage. Holy warrior.
He wondered whether to tell the captain, then decided it were better not to.
"I was sent here on an errand."
"We wondered if—if there was any special reason for you to be going there." He licked his lips and eyed the radiant tresses of golden hair streaming in the sea breezes nervously. "There is nothing on the island but sheep, and the grave. The only ones who ever go to Tol Mellys are islanders who go there to make petition at the grave."
The blond looked alarmed. "Petition? Mountain of Manwë! But why?—the maethor is only an edhel like ourselves, after all."
The captain looked a little indignant. "My mother hails from Tol Mellys, and told me of it since I could walk. The Aer Maethor has blessed the island with fair weather and sweet streams for thousands of years. The mallos blossoms flourish there, and the pastures are green even in winter, though the nearest islands are barren and harsh of clime. In the lambing season each year, the ewes all bear twins and triplets."
The blond was looking stupefied. "There must be other explanations," he protested. "There were always good winter grasses in that region. And the happy coincidence of good soil and mineral-rich rocks leaching into the aquifers. Anyone—anyone who knew him would tell you—he was just an ordinary person."
"He was not. He was a mighty and valiant callon who gave his life for the people. He slew the great demon of fire and darkness. He was a most powerful lord."
"If you knew his friends and fellow lords, you would know they were warriors as mighty and brave as he. And his best friend killed more fire demons than he did. He killed just one."
"But it was the greatest of fire demons—the strongest of them all."
"It was larger than the others. That is true. A new prototype of Morgoth's. Faster, stronger, but also far heavier. Those wings were huge, but useless for actual flight—for which we could all be thankful."
The captain's face was a study in awe, bafflement, and mild offence. And the familiarity with which the traveller spoke of the warrior compounded the awe. "So… you were there? You…you…knew him?" There was a hidden question he dared not ask. The Egol's tone was reverent, and excited. By now, the other ciryn were openly listening intently with the same expression of awed fascination.
The traveller gave an enigmatic smile, and his blue eyes sparkled. "You could say that," he said.
There was awed speculation in the faces of the Egladhrim now. The traveller could almost see the thought flashing with lightning speed between their minds as they spoke silently to each other.
"You must tell us everything—the story of what happened."
The traveller hesitated. "Forgive me if I tell the tale later, my good captain. I have told it many times before, and it wearies me a little."
"When we arrive at Tol Mellys, captain," called out one cirion from the top of the central high mast. "Then the others can hear it too."
"Tell us more about the Aer Callon, the holy hero. What was he like?" asked the cirion steering the ship. A testing question.
"A hero? He was a maethor doing what he had trained all his life to do. And honestly, he was a dreadful prankster as a child."
There were murmurs and chuckles and grins. "I cannot believe it!" said one.
"We are all of us cellyn, waiting for that one day and one hour that Eru has ordained for us to rise up. And then we do so by His grace and power, not our own. The maethor buried on that hillside was an ordinary person, whose great misfortune was that his foe had a long reach—and that he wore his hair that day a tad too long."
He smiled at them wryly as he spoke the last words, and swept them a courtly bow that signalled that the talk was over for now. They returned the bow, looked at each other, and returned to their stations.
Then propping his chin on his hand and leaning on the ship's prow, he gazed at the still empty vastness of the horizon.
And wondered forlornly for the hundredth time why he was here, sailing over the northern waters that covered what had once been Beleriand, in search of a hunk of rock on which a grave sat, instead of exploring the Forodwaith.
Glossary
Gaerys (S) – one of Ossë's names
Egladhrim (S) – 'the Forsaken'. One of the names for those of the Teleri who remained behind on the shores of Ennor when Ossë/Gaerys took the rest of their brethren across the great sea.
Egol (S) – one of the Egladhrim
Gulma (S) – one of Ulmo's names
Aer (S) – holy
Maethor (S) – warrior
Callon/ cellyn (S) – hero/heroes
Cirion/ciryn (S) – mariner/mariners
Notes:
An early Third Age spin-off from my fanfic The Golden and the Black. I always liked the idea of sending Glorfindel to visit his own grave. And now that I need a break from my re-write of The Golden and the Black (yeargh!) this seemed like a light, whimsical thing to do…
Elven height – The Teleri are on the whole less tall than the Noldor. And my headcanon for Glorfindel is that he is really quite tall—not as tall as Argon but as tall as Turgon. [Thingol is of course the tallest edhel ever. I wonder if anyone can tell me if Tolkien ever says anywhere if he was born so? Because I was thinking it could have happened while he was bespelled by Melian.]