'Remember also your creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come, and the years draw nigh, when you will say, "I have no pleasure in them"; before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain; in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look through the windows are dimmed, and the doors on the street are shut; when the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the voice of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low; they are afraid also of what is high, and terrors are in the way; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along and desire fails; because man goes to his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets; before the silver cord is snapped, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity.'

Ecclesiastes 12:1-9

Seven years after the final catastrophe, the king's daughter woke up into the nagging knowledge that something horrific - what? - was bearing down upon her.

Of course, it was almost the Eruhantalë.

Damn!

Tindómiel sat up in bed, glaring rather defiantly at the over-familiar shapes of her bedchamber: the same room in which she had slept as a child almost three hundred years before. It is a regrettable fact that Tindómiel Elros' daughter did not have a due reverence for the Eruhantalë, that great festival at which the people of Númenor pay homage to Eru Ilúvatar and offer thanksgiving to him for the agricultural prosperity of the previous year.

On the contrary, she privately thought of it as 'that bloody time of year'. This was not because she did not love Eru, although, in truth, she rarely thought of him. It was because the month of the Eruhantalë was traditionally the time when the king's extended family gathered about him for that most fearful of occasions, a family reunion. Tindómiel loathed family reunions with the intensity of the unmarried daughter who has to organise the cursed things and keep undying feuds from breaking out among her relatives, or at least prevent actual bloodshed.

She got on badly with most of her closest relations. Of her three brothers, she felt a positive dislike for Manwendil and Atanalcar, the younger two. With Vardamir it was different; he was closest to her own age and had shared her childhood in a way that the others had not. Vardamir was a part of her. But Vardamir no longer attended family reunions.

There was a knock at the door. It was Tindómiel's maid, Ethuil. She kept a maid because her rank would not permit her to dispense with one, but she made few demands on Ethuil, whose main task was to wake her mistress up in time for breakfast (which was served at the eleventh hour of the morning); Tindómiel had inherited from her father both his habit of oversleeping and his intrinsic mistrust of dependants. She was perfectly capable of dressing herself. Ethuil was occasionally called upon to assist her in her task of running the royal household, but she had a lot of free time, which she spent flirting with Elros' valet (who was even more idle than herself).

Now Tindómiel turned her attention to bathing and otherwise readying herself for the day. Before going downstairs, she spent a moment peering into the large mirror that hung above her bed, as if to see what changes time had wrought in her since the last Eruhantalë.

She found that a few new lines had appeared on her forehead, while the grey streak in her brown hair had widened noticeably. On the whole, however, she wore her years lightly, this wiry slip of a woman in whose veins ran the blood of Idril and Lúthien as well as Tuor and Beren.

These affiliations were not reflected in her face. So far as looks went, she might have been her mother's child only. Her features were a sharper and less blooming version of the young Queen Halmiel's. She had rather pointed little white teeth, like those of some quick-moving rodent, and a belligerent chin. Her eyes were a nondescript, muddy grey-brown.

She turned away from the mirror with a sigh; not a sad sigh; a sigh of sheer frustration with the melting years and with herself.

.~.~.~.~.

The scene of this drama is the small royal villa that stands some one and a half miles away from the city of Armenelos. It was built by Elros, who used to retreat to it a few times a year, on such occasions as the Eruhantalë, to pretend to be an ordinary person. There was in Elros, beneath the obvious glitter and clash of his personality, a hidden strain of domestic sentimentality. Part of him was always seeking to recover the happiest years of his childhood, those spent on the Isle of Balar and later on Amon Ereb in the care of Maedhros. This was the explanation for his need to escape from time to time from his official palace in the city, where he received official visitors and addressed the Council of the Sceptre and did all the business of a king.

The villa, which is surrounded by extensive gardens, has eleven bedrooms. When the number of guests exceeded this, it was Tindómiel's duty to arrange who should share a room with whom. There are various other rooms, of which the breakfast-room, the dining-room, the parlour and the large library were most used by the family of Elros. The servants' quarters and kitchen, while most comfortable and well-equipped, are tucked away unobtrusively at the rear of the building.

Elros realised, of course, that a king must have servants, but he did not like to see them more often than necessary. The maids were always careful to have finished cleaning the house (with the obvious exception of the bedrooms) before he woke in the morning. When in Armenelos, he consented to be waited on at table, but at the villa, the servants had orders to bring in the dishes and then leave the family to serve themselves.

It was the breakfast-room that Tindómiel entered now. The others were already seated. The others: Elros; Manwendil, his wife Hiril and their eight-year-old daughter Íriel; and Erilon and Erelos. To outsiders, the most mystifying aspect of Elros' family life was the participation in it of Cousin Erilon. His distant kinship to the king - his mother had been descended in the sixth generation from Bregolas' daughter Beleth - did not seem to merit that he should have a place at the annual reunion; nevertheless, there he was every year.

Perhaps the explanation was to be found in the fact that [there was a long-standing connection between his family and Elros' Sindarin great-grandfather Galathil, dating back to the aftermath of the Third Kinslaying, when Galathil had brought up Erilon's great-grandmother after the death of her parents. This orphan girl had been the last representative of an ancient Bëorian family who claimed to have some Avarin blood. No-one could consider Erilon and doubt this claim. For one thing, though only sixty-two years younger than Elros, he was not seen to age as did other mortals, even in Númenor. There was only one streak of grey in the waves of his raven hair; his fine-boned face was utterly unlined. Neither he nor his son Erelos had ever grown a beard.

More to the point, Erilon was stunningly beautiful, beautiful in the way that a woman is beautiful, beautiful as few women are. No, the perfection of his features was beyond gender. No-one had ever looked into his great dark liquid eyes and accused him of effeminacy in their heart.

Erelos, twenty-four years older than Vardamir, was an amateur historian and philologist, with a special interest in the language and culture of the Sindar, and had for some years been Vardamir and Tindómiel's tutor when Manwendil was small. In no way did he resemble his ebony-and-ivory sire in appearance. Like his late mother, Aiwerin of the People of Hador, he was blond and blue-eyed.

Manwendil was a dull person. In a way, he had been marked out as a nonentity at birth, for there had always been in the family a vague unarticulated sense that Vardamir and Tindómiel were the 'real children'; the younger two were afterthoughts. Atanalcar had reacted to this by becoming somebody that no-one could ever forget, even if they wanted to. Manwendil had never had the energy.

If he had ever had an overriding urge, it was not to be like his father. Thus, he lived a life of rigid conventionality and respectability in his mansion on the outskirts of Armenelos. His appearance was not unpleasing, but so unexceptional that few cared to remember it in detail. His most notable feature was his straight light brown hair.

Elros - but there is no need to describe Elros. His image is to be seen in every house in Númenor.

"Is it today that Atanalcar's coming?" Erelos asked the latecomer as she pulled out a chair. (He wanted to be distracted from the pathetically hungry expression with which Hiril was regarding him across the table.)

"Yes. This afternoon, probably. And then our happy family circle will be complete!" Tindómiel added with sarcasm.

No-one felt much inclined to talk during the meal, apart from Elros and Íriel, who kept up a stream of playful prattle. He loved her, this rapid, incorrigible compound of bouncing dark curls and eager eyes, as he loved none of the children of his own body. He said it was like calling to like.

Tindómiel had just finished eating when the steward, Gilbor, an old accomplice of hers, came in and stood by her chair.

"My lady," he said quietly, "I have some news of moment."

"Yes?"

Tindómiel imagined that he wanted her advice on some housekeeping matter.

"Prince Vardamir has come. He is waiting to be shown in."

"Oh!"

The words were like a blow to her stomach. She glanced instinctively at Elros, but he, laughing with his granddaughter, had obviously not heard.

"What are your orders?" Gilbor murmured.

"Show him in, of course! What else? And you can stop whispering. They'll all have to be told."

The steward, who was familiar with her temperament, departed silently. She looked into the ring of startled eyes whose attention had been attracted by the sharpness of her tone and told them. Their reactions were varied. Íriel, who could not remember Vardamir, was excited and curious; Hiril was indifferent; Manwendil annoyed; Erilon flinched and looked frantically around the table. Erelos took his hand and held it. But Elros seemed completely unmoved.

Before anyone could say anything, Vardamir himself was upon them. The room became suddenly very still and quiet: even little Íriel's eyes were fixed on the newcomer. Her first impression was that he was very like her grandfather, only not so handsome and charming. He also looked many years older than Elros. There was a dusting of white hair at his temples that she would not have seen seven years earlier.

And all the silence in the room was centred between his eyes and Elros'.

Tindómiel leapt to her feet.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded.

Vardamir turned his attention to her, and the dreadful tension was broken.

"You did invite me," he pointed out mildly.

"Yes, but you know I didn't expect you to come! And now, I suppose you expect to be fed!"

"We are weary from the journey, it's true."

Tindómiel had noticed, of course, that her brother was not alone, but the power of his presence had hitherto prevented her from looking at his companions, who huddled in the doorway in an embarrassed way. Two were familiar faces: Vardamir's elder children, Amandil and Vardilmë. The other was a woman whom she had never seen before, but whose identity she readily guessed.

"Where are Aulendil and Nolondil?"

"They did not choose to come."

This was intelligible. Vardamir's younger sons were both married and lived away from home, unlike the eldest, although Tindómiel knew that he too had married shortly before the dissolution of the ties between his father and grandfather. Presumably the strange woman was his bride. This supposition was confirmed when Amandil stepped forward, leading her with him, and said to the gathering in general,

"I would like to introduce my wife, Ivanneth!"

She was young, flaxen-haired, radiantly happy in a green dress embroidered with golden bouquets. Its folds draped admirably the pregnant hump of her stomach.

"Well, hello, brother," Manwendil said to Vardamir while everyone welcomed and congratulated her.

Vardamir returned the greeting, frowning slightly, as if seeking to recall who this man was.

Íriel bounced up.

"How do you do, Uncle Vardamir?"

"This is Íriel, our daughter," Hiril murmured.

Vardamir nodded briefly to them, then turned to Elros.

"Where is my mother?"

"Didn't you know? She lives at the palace all the time now. Don't worry, I have not killed her yet!"

Tindómiel had ordered Gilbor to have some food sent in for the newcomers. As he left the room, she felt a hand on her arm. It was Vardilmë.

Vardilmë was not a beautiful woman, especially not now in her middle-age. Her waist was not slender and had thickened perceptibly in the last seven years. Her best feature was her deep even grey eyes, inherited from Elros and Vardamir. She owed her light yellow hair to her Hadorian maternal grandmother.

In character, she was distinguished by a naïve affection for her entire extended family and a dog-like devotion to Tindómiel in particular that had made the isolation imposed by her beloved father almost unbearably painful. No-one was more glad than Vardilmë of this reunion, if that was what it was.

.~.~.~.~.

When Vardamir went into his bedroom before the evening meal, he found Erelos sitting on the bed, wearing a desperate look of assumed determination: the look of a naturally indeterminate man who has settled on a course of action and will follow it through in spite of himself.

They looked at each other.

"Now, don't say anything," Erelos said in a rush. "I won't keep you long."

"No," his cousin agreed. "Will you leave now, please?"

"In a minute. I just want to give you something. This," he added, holding out a slim book bound in green leather.

"It is yours?"

"Yes. My latest. I didn't think you would have read it-"

"I have not."

"Yes. Well. Here it is! Won't you take it?"

Vardamir showed no sign of doing so.

"So! I'll leave it here, then. Goodbye."

When he had gone, Vardamir picked up the book - an extended essay on the theme of cultural transmission between Doriath and the Havens of Círdan during the Siege of Angband - and looked at it. As he did not believe in burning books, he decided that the best thing would be to put it in the library downstairs, but unfortunately there was not time to do so before the meal. He had to leave it on the window-sill, where Erelos had deposited it, until he should have a better opportunity.

When he entered the dining-room, Erilon, who was leaning gracefully against the end of the mantelpiece, watching the tumults of the fire, came over to meet him.

"I'm glad to see you again," he began, looking at his younger cousin with anxious eyes. "How are you?"

At the sound of his voice, Vardamir stiffened with affront, then, without acknowledging the other's presence in any way, sat down at the table and struck up a conversation about trivialities with Hiril.

.~.~.~.~.

The friendship between Erelos and Vardamir was one of long standing. Vardamir, with his natural intelligence and love of study, had been Erelos' favourite pupil during the years when he had been tutor to him and Tindómiel. Later he had spent long, happy summer months at Erilon's estate in the Andustar, which he had come to love because life there proceeded at a different pace and in a different key to life in Armenelos. It was when staying there that he met his future wife, Ernis. This story deserves to be told in full.

At seventeen serious and studious, he was annoyed when Erelos' sister Nimfileg decided to give a house party, viewing it as nothing but a noisy interruption from which he must escape in the pages of his books. This plan was working beautifully when the hostess herself sought him out in his room on the first evening. He must join the festivities. She would hear no excuses. There was someone whom he had to meet!

The entire ground floor of the house was brilliantly illuminated by hundreds of candles. Erilon was not there, but Aiwerin, who was sometimes just a little nostalgic for the glory days of her youth, was wandering happily among her daughter's friends. She was still the most beautiful woman present, although beginning to run to fat.

Nimfileg led Vardamir to a large table in a room full of women. There was a great deal of noisy talk and laughter going on - everything that Vardamir hated, in fact -, and at the beating heart of it all was a woman - a woman -

He would maintain till the end of his days that she was beautiful; but he was wrong. It was not beauty that shone and flashed around her face like sheet lightning. It was two things: great intelligence and vivid sensuality. Both qualities stirred and mingled in the depths of her eyes, which were the uneasy grey of the sea in winter. Vardamir fell into them and was drowned.

The eyes were set in a long and mobile face, and that was framed by a heavy mass of very dark brown hair. Her olive complexion was the great bane of her life, to which, perhaps, many of the misfortunes that she later suffered and caused may be attributed.

She had been born in Armenelos, two years before Vardamir, to simple, humble parents. Her Bëorian father was deeply proud of his sweet, fair-skinned, golden-haired Hadorian wife. Alas, her ancestry in the doomed land of Dor-lómin held an unsavoury secret that was revealed to the world in her one child, who got her colouring from the unknown Easterling who must have coupled - under what circumstances of brutality or collaboration? - with one of her female forebears.

It is hardly surprising if Ernis' parents' genuine love for her was sometimes mingled with an unconscious resentment. The situation was made worse by the fact that they were completely unable to cope with her precocious intelligence; but perhaps all this is beside the point. Perhaps the reasons for her miserable career were so deeply embedded in her character that not even the most loving upbringing could have saved her.

There are people who are so self-confident that only the actions of others can make them unhappy. Elros was one of these, or nearly so. There are people who ruin their own happiness by making mistakes. Hiril was one such. And there are people who seem unable to achieve anything but unhappiness, born to suffer and to bring bad luck, ill-fated from the cradle to the grave. Ernis belonged to this category.

She was incapable of enjoying a happy married life; a self-professed anarchist who loved and loved only the King's Heir of Númenor; a lover who married the wrong man out of spite towards her beloved; a mother who despised her children.

But at Nimfileg's party, when all of this was hidden in the future, that brilliant sorrowless being pushed Vardamir towards her with these words:

"Here he is, my dear; our heir to the throne. Vardamir, Ernis was just telling us how she thinks the monarchy ought to be abolished!"

Ernis, completely unabashed, laughed: a great free merry laugh.

"I was making a political point," she told him later. "It doesn't mean I have anything against you personally."

What long conversations they had that summer, on that subject and many others! What walks, what rides! Ernis extended her stay to two months, so that she could help with the harvest on Erilon's smallholding, but in Vardamir's memory the summer seemed to stretch out into years of brilliant sunshine and love. If he had not fallen in love at first sight, he was certainly in that state by the time she returned to Armenelos, whither he followed a few days later.

Now he had the great pleasure of introducing Ernis to Halmiel and the tribulation of enduring Elros' crude remarks on the occasion. Fortunately, they all loved each other. He should probably have proposed now, and would have done, if he had not been so cripplingly shy. He could hold his own against her in an argument on almost any impersonal subject, but he could not compliment her on her appearance, let alone confess his admiration for her. His tongue would freeze in his mouth whenever he tried.

Time went on. After a year, Vardamir and Ernis were inseparable friends, but not yet more. He had made up his mind not to force his attentions upon her. She should have the freedom to choose for herself whether or not she wanted them to court.

At the end of the second year, she began to be a little short-tempered with him. He was distressed. Both Elros and Tindómiel explained to him in no uncertain terms what the matter was, but he could not believe that his Ernis would express such straightforward emotions in such an oblique manner. Why would she, who believed so passionately in the rights of women, wait for him to make the first move?

After four years of knowing Vardamir, Ernis went to stay with Nimfileg again. When she came back, three months later, she was engaged to another man. Vardamir, although indescribably wounded and broken, decided not to upset her by attempting to persuade her to change her mind before the wedding.

During the years of anguish that followed, he derived much comfort from his friendship with Erelos. Not that they ever discussed affairs of the heart; if Vardamir ever needed to confide in someone, there was always Tindómiel; his conversations with Erelos never strayed far away from the world of scholarship. This did not mean that their mutual understanding was not true and deep and strong.

He tried to shut his ears to the rumours of Ernis' unhappy, childless marriage; it seemed to him that the only way to survive was to think of her as little as possible. He had not bargained with the weak heart that removed her husband after a century of marriage. He went to her immediately. The season for shyness and regard for propriety was gone: now was the time to snatch at the chance of happiness with both hands.

They were married within three months of her husband's death.

.~.~.~.~.

Atanalcar arrived shortly after the evening meal, when the company were gathered together in the parlour. In the interests of keeping the peace, they had quietly divided into two bodies, one - incorporating Tindómiel, Erilon, Erelos and Íriel - centred on Elros, the other - consisting of Amandil, Ivanneth, Vardilmë, Manwendil and Hiril - revolving around Vardamir. When Gilbor showed Atanalcar in, the two groups had made camp one on either side of the fire and were conversing on neutral subjects among themselves.

Atanalcar lived in the Hyarnustar, where he owned a large villa and extensive vineyards. He also possessed a muscular physique - far more so than Elros and Vardamir, to whose physical type he belonged in other respects - and a rather terrifying reputation as an amateur boxer. His father and sister made no secret of the fact that they had never liked him, and even Halmiel seemed to find him a somewhat puzzling object at times.

He never walked anywhere; he was a natural strider. Now he strode into the library, and at his heels crept something like a small, timid extension of his shadow.

"Who on earth is this child?" Tindómiel said, rising to her feet. Even as she spoke, a premonition chilled her heart.

"Ah, dear sister, how I love your charming habit of omitting the formality of greeting!"

"Please answer my question."

She had no intention of allowing him to annoy her.

"This, for my sins," Atanalcar declared, "is my son, Aglarin."

Vardilmë let out a little cry of shock.

"And what, pray," Tindómiel said, "is Aglarin doing here?"

"Why, hoping to be received into the bosom of the family!"

Tindómiel darted a plaintive look at her father, who seemed to be trying to conceal a smile.

"I think we are all waiting to hear you explain yourself," he suggested, trying not to look at poor Vardilmë, whose expression he found inordinately amusing.

"Oh well," Atanalcar smiled, "since you ask, Adar - not that you should object... This boy's mother died many years ago. Until this summer, he was brought up by his maternal grandmother, who is unfortunately, as of this summer, also no more. Since he has no other relatives on that side of the family, I felt obliged to take him into my household."

"And why did you not inform us of this before?" Tindómiel complained.

"Ah, you know my love of making an entrance!"

At this point the child Aglarin, shyly, obviously fearing that he was making an imposition, stepped forward and held out his hands to the fire. The family saw his face for the first time. It was small and round, with prominent cheekbones. His black glossy hair clung closely to the contours of his head. Vardilmë thought he looked sweet.

.~.~.~.~.

Author's Notes:

My readers, if I have any, will probably be surprised that my Elros was fostered by Maedhros rather than Maglor. In fact, there is good evidence for this version of events. The 'Sketch of the Mythology' that Tolkien wrote in 1926 casts the elder brother as the hero of this episode, as did the 1930 work the 'Quenta' as first written. Maglor took over the role in a change to the second version of this part of the 'Quenta', and Christopher Tolkien used the revised text when compiling the published 'Silmarillion'. However, Tolkien appears to have changed his mind again, as he reverted to the original story in a work named 'The Tale of Years' that was composed in 1951 or 1952.

According to 'The History of Middle-earth', after the Third Kinslaying the sons of Fëanor spent two years living in hiding 'about Amon Ereb' before 'Morgoth sent against them' and they had to flee to the Isle of Balar. We do not know whether they stayed there throughout the War of Wrath, but it is assumed for the purposes of this story that they returned to Amon Ereb.

The three great festivals of Númenor, the Erukyermë, Erulaitalë and Eruhantalë (celebrated respectively at the beginning of spring, midsummer and the end of autumn), are described in 'Unfinished Tales', which also contains much information on the geography of Númenor. It was apparently shaped like a starfish, the Andustar being the western arm and the Hyarnustar the south-western one.

Galathil, Nimloth's father, is mentioned in 'Unfinished Tales' as well.

Adar=Father (Sindarin)