Chapter 4 Family

Winter had arrived in the lands beyond the forest when Gallica brought her companions to ask permission to enter the Greenwood. There were seven of them now, though their ability and maturity varied a little each had woken in the same way and each seemed to be searching for answers to the same questions. Each of them had also learned to take physical shape and often chose to do so, though the elf lords had never asked it of them. Thranduil was not alone in noticing that they all chose the same type of shape, nor was he surprised when on this midwinter day Gallica had asked that he assume physical form and allow the snow to fall within the Greenwood. She, they, had wanted to play; there was no other word for it. He had indulged her with a little uncertainty for he could feel the weight of something he could not name bearing down upon him.

For a time he strolled with them through the snow, showing them how to track animals and spy out the birds hiding in the bushes. Then he left them to their games and returned to his Halls knowing that no harm could befall them. For some reason he could not have explained he retained the physical form that she had asked him to adopt and went to sit upon the Woodland throne, something he had not done for an age at least. He did not need the torches to see but he commanded them lit anyway and sat in silence remembering other times and the people he had known, the elves long departed for the west, the men passed beyond the realm of Arda. As for the dwarves, he had never been sure what had happened to them knowing only that their Halls had slowly emptied and yet fewer of them were seen. Maybe they had forgotten their heritage and made their place amongst men.

"Do you have children?"
Gallica's voice came from beside his knee and he turned his head to look at her, somehow not surprised by her presence.
"Yes, "he replied softly, "but none here."
"Where are they then?"
"Across the sea, they sailed to the west, long ago by the years of men."
"Why didn't you go with them?"
"Because my people, and the forest, needed me to remain here. I swore an oath to remain with them for as long as they needed me and such things are not lightly set aside, not by elves."
"But most of the others have gone too haven't they?
"Yes, most have now left, but I can no longer take a ship. Nor can any of the other elves you see here."
"That doesn't seem fair."
"There is no rule that says life must be fair."
Will you be able to join them one day?"
"Perhaps, I no longer know."
There was silence as she seemed to think about that and Thranduil let his mind drift back to the past again, wondering, not for the first time, why they had not been called home when they faded.

His thoughts were disrupted by the feeling of a weight settling upon his knee and he looked down to see Gallica curling up in his lap. What surprised him most was that it seemed so natural and expected, and as she settled herself more comfortably he had the impression that the world had turned in some way.

She looked up at him with a child's eyes, wide and trusting, and caught at his hand.
"Your children are far away and we have no parents. Will you have us as your children King Thranduil? Please?"
He looked down into her face for a moment, uncertain of what to say. Then he felt his hand reach out and touch the soft hair that framed the childish face.
"Yes," he heard himself say, "I think I will."

xxx

In the far west the mountains moved as the risen seas began to fall back. In the restless dance between land and water the walls of the place of Gallica's awaking were breached, air rushed in and the great engines stalled and failed. The lights that had burned for centuries dimmed and the bodies of the long dead and their guarded treasures resumed their transition into dust. As the walls buckled so the mountain side was rent and through the gap in stone and metals the sun shone in for a time illuminating at its end the last grand gesture, and arrogance, of the children of men. Then, with another great heave, the mountain closed its wound leaving the ruined halls to darkness and silence.

There was no one there to see or regret its ending. Only Gallica might have remembered its power and the meaning of its loss but she was already forgetting.

In a forest far from the mountain of her waking Gallica ran beneath the trees as spring returned, laughing in joy with the others of her kind. The knowledge that had been the gift of her waking was fading, locked away in some deep place within her as she ran and played as a child, eager to learn the answers she had yearned for. Though she no longer remembered the questions.

In the forest behind her unseen guardians watched over them, never interfering in their play but keeping harm at bay.

As the walls of the last great palace of men fell the king of the forest heard the crash and felt the door close upon another age. He moved through the trees, feeling the surge of life renewed, the dawning of another cycle of life. He lingered for a while high in the branches of a great beech looking down to where the children sat beside the forest river. As the echo of the death throes of the last age of men faded he smiled to himself.
"So dawns the seventh age. So it begins again."