Chapter 6: The Shouldering of Burdens
The white jewel had changed hands a number of times as the Third Age retreated into the mists of time and gave rise to the Fourth, though its original keeper kept it long in her possession. It had once lay quiescent on the breast of the Lady Arwen as she waited with bated breath for the hour that her long-exiled King would wrest his crown from the hands of the Dark Lord and accept his birthright or else fall in the attempt. It was clutched urgently by the hands of Frodo in the throes of unliftable darkness as wraiths rounded upon him in dreams that savoured of reality. Now, it hung from the neck of Celebrían, wife of Elrond Half-Elven and mother to the Evenstar.
Many was the night that she took her vigil before the fanning flames of the hearth, grasping upon the coruscating gem so firmly that its outline was embossed upon her dove-white skin when she finally unhanded it. Its coolness would help to offset the rising heat of grief that still smouldered in the far chambers of her heart in fits and starts, its rounded sides and circular cut pledged renewal and eternal continuation when end-thoughts laid siege to her mind, its impervious beauty reminded her that some things need not be submitted to the rigours and the vagaries of time.
So she stood this night with her face toward the fire, an Elven woman in chiaroscuro, her expression unreadable, her eyes faintly twinkling. It was not surprising that she did not hear Elrond steal up behind her in this state of transfixion, but she gave no start as his hands descended gently on her shoulders and he marshaled her into a loose embrace.
"Does the night find you uneasy, my love?" he asked against the curvature of her ear.
She turned her head toward the direction of his voice, not quite meeting his eye, and released her hold on the stone, exchanging it for the strength that pulsed its steady metre in his fingers.
"No more than I can bear, El-nîn," she answered as their fingers twined reflexively. "For bear it I must."
"But you need not bear it alone," Elrond said, punctuating his point with a kiss on the top of her hand. "What troubles your mind, my lady?"
"It is more a question of a leaden heart than a troubled mind, my lord," she sighed. "Some nights, I feel as though a stone has settled on my chest that has such a weight behind it I wonder if I shall ever find strength enough to lift it."
"Then shift some of the weight to me, híril nîn, for the combined strength of we two together is greater than either one of us singly."
"But surely there is weight enough bearing down on your own heart without adding my own heaviness to yours," Celebrían vacillated.
"Not so, for we carry one and the same load and would do better to divide it between ourselves," Elrond suavely responded. Celebrían's head dropped a fraction, as though in implied concordance with Elrond's rejoinder, and she spun on her heels to look him in the eyes.
"I believe that I have reached a point where I can truthfully say that I am at peace with the decision our daughter has made. I have resigned myself to what may not be altered and found solace in the knowledge that Arwen has discovered her heart's match in Lord Aragorn, though such a love carries a heavy price. But the uncertainty, Elrond, not knowing the hour when the final stroke shall fall, or if indeed it has already fallen; that, my love, is a terrible burden on my heart. A parent should know," she said with faltering voice. She bit back on this rise of emotion, however, and redoubled the fortifications that she had built around her in case of such a precipitous attack. She continued in as even a voice as she could manage. "I wonder sometimes when my eyes burn with unprovoked tears if it is not some portent of her doom, or if the sudden seizing of my heart is not a mother's intuition informing me that my daughter is ailing. How long is it now that you sailed for these shores, my lord? Though Aragorn is gifted with long life far surpassing that of other men, surely the last sands are falling down the hourglass and his remaining days are swiftly fading. Has not your foresight informed you of his fate, or must you depend only upon hunches and unsubstantiated feelings as I do?"
"The hour has not been made plain to me, as I think you know," Elrond said heavily. "Often have I trained my mind on Middle-earth in the privacy of seclusion, casting my line blindly in the hopes of sinking my hooks into something I could grasp upon, but my long estrangement from that land has blurred what sight I once possessed, and its goings-on lay mostly hidden to me now."
"That is as I guessed," said Celebrían, crestfallen. "And Elladan and Elrohir? I suppose that, by the same reasoning, you could know nothing of their activity in the East?"
"Not with any exactitude, I'm afraid. But perhaps their absence here in Valinor may be taken as a sign that Arwen yet lives, for I doubt that they would leave her side as long as she continues to endure."
"Or perhaps they do not wish to come here at all if coming means that they must be heralds of their sister's death," said Celebrían morosely. Elrond dropped his eyes, for the notion had suggested itself to him as well.
"As I say, it is beyond our purview now. We cannot know for certain. But there have been far-flying messages from abroad that a ship is being mustered even as we speak, and it is setting sail for Elvenhome. It may not be very long now before our doubts are silenced and our questions answered. I shall be there to greet the new arrivals the moment that they touch upon these shores. Will you not come with me?"
From a look, it was clear that Celebrían was embroiled in a turbulent mental struggle, one that she had been engaged in long before Elrond had extended this invitation. The weighing of options, the counterbalancing of ramifications, the computing of likelihoods, all was whipping through her mind as furiously as a driving rain. She bit her lip and wrung her hands unconsciously, and finally blurted out:
"I cannot! No, Elrond," she said, curbing her excitement, her voice lowering to a more temperate volume. "I have not the strength for such a meeting. My heart should fracture afresh if our sons are not aboard that ship – and yet, if they were to come, the news that they would bring with them would likely pull the world from under my feet and force me to my knees. No, if you are to go, then you must go for the both of us. I am sorry."
Elrond caressed the side of her face and tilted her chin upward. Here was no shrinking flower languishing in dark places, folding her petals timorously before the very light that gave her sustenance. Here was a lady as proud as she was fair, and he would not see her hang her head as one defeated.
"You need make no apology to me, my love," he said. "You have already demonstrated your strength in the face of sorrows you should have never known, and I would not see your mettle subjected to another test." His eyes automatically skimmed over the area below her neck where an orcish blade had left its indelible mark, a nacreous scar like a fault-line on an otherwise unblemished field of white.
"Strength? Mettle? What strength have I that surrendered to my hurts when the love of my family should have been as a balm to soothe my maladies? What mettle did I show when I fled across the Sea like a cowering animal seeking some refuge to lick its wounds? What courage is there in resignation, I ask you?" she snapped, her voice rising with increasing vexation. Elrond lowered his brow, regarding his wife with stern countenance.
"This talk of surrender and cowering does not suit you, Celebrían, and I pray that you remedy your speech," he said, taking her firmly by the shoulders. She averted her face as her last bulwarks of self-possession collapsed. She wiped the tears from her face brusquely, wishing that her husband had not borne witness to this unseemly display, but his demeanor softened at once, and he dried her tears with a far gentler touch than she had used. She buried herself into the haven of his arms as he stroked her flaxen hair, speaking calming words to her in their Elvish tongue. When she had sufficiently collected herself, Elrond reopened their conversation.
"There are few who could have stood unshaken having been submitted to the tortures of the orcs, they who have honed their wicked craft with a view to inflict the utmost pain and torment. It is no failing of yours that their poison spread too deeply for even my arts to touch, and it is no reflection of the love you reserve for your family that you could not return to happier days when all was done. It must never be said that my lady tendered her resignation the day that she left the eastern continent; rather, she did what self-preservation demanded and looked to the day when those she loved would follow in her footsteps. You could not have known then that Arwen's destiny would lie elsewhere, but that has only proven your strength all over again – as though any more proofs were needed. For you well know that strength reveals itself in more ways than one; it appears in many guises and takes on myriad definitions. There is no fixed standard by which strength may be defined, but if there were, then you surely would be the example against which all other strengths would be measured, for who could be stronger than a mother who has commended her child to the keeping of a fate whose outcome she may not control and a life in which she may not intervene?"
"I know of one," she said, taking Elrond by the hands, drawing deeply from the fount of wisdom hidden behind his eyes as though it were well-water. Projected across his lenses, she saw the last embers of the sputtering fire give off their waning glow, but knew intuitively that a brighter light would yet replace the one that was now extinguishing.
"What strength I have, you have given me. You are my strength, Cel-nîn," he professed. She closed her eyes as grateful tears spilled down her cheeks in transparent runnels. She laid the side of her face against Elrond's chest as they drew in for another embrace, standing in the darkened room like celestial bodies adding their intrinsic brightness to a night of black. Cradled in his arms, she felt an indescribable cooling as of a fever in remission, a merciful crystallisation of unspilt tears, a binding of wounds that she could not have tended on her own. He was her partner in time, the one whose arm she would lean upon as they took to the never-ending road of life, an extension of herself who fleshed out all her lacks and complemented all of her virtues, and she knew she had chosen wisely the day that she took him to wed.
Elrond kissed the crown of Celebrían's head, and when she raised her eyes again it seemed that the room has discernibly lightened. Was it only the newfound buoyancy of her heart which had produced the effect? Was it the unshuttering of a window in her soul that accounted for this banishment of darkness? Or had they stood there in one another's arms until the rising of the dawn, heedless of the minutes or the hours that had ticked soundlessly by?
"Perhaps all of them", she thought as the Sun reared its fiery head away in the East.
The couple separated at last, her golden head rising from his sable one, and Celebrían spoke.
"When shall you depart for the harbour at Tol Eressëa to welcome these unheralded newcomers?" she asked, pacing toward the high window and crossing her arms lightly across her chest. The city of Tirion greeted her eye, its white towers flushed pink with the incipient Sun.
"These next three days when the moon is new; that is when I shall set sail with Mithrandir," Elrond answered, moving in beside her and directing his eyes on the same vista that had captured her eye. Out of his peripheral vision, he saw her give a single nod as her lash-wings closed so low that they brushed against the soft rise of her cheek.
"That is well," she said finally. "It will be better to know sooner than late."
"You are certain that you will not come?" he asked.
"I am certain," she said.
"Then I shall speak no more of it," Elrond answered, moving as if to go.
"Is it true that the periannath will be accompanying you to the harbour?" she asked suddenly, stopping Elrond in his tracks.
"It appears that Gandalf supposed them to be up to the journey, provided that they be of willing mind. Doubtless he has some design of his own that he chooses to keep to himself, as is his wont."
"But you have guessed at his meaning, have you not?" Celebrían countered.
"His mind is not so subtle that I may not read it if I wish," Elrond said with a shadow of a smile.
"You have certainly been in his counsel long enough to know his mind better than most," she said. "Well, you must give Frodo and Sam my warmest regards when you meet them. I shall be sorry to have missed the opportunity to speak with them."
"I am sure that they will be sorry as well. But perhaps it is for the best; for it occurs to me that it will be trying enough for Samwise to find his tongue in the presence of your mother – imagine his discomfiture if the two of you were both present," he said with a lighthearted smirk. Celebrían graced him with a humouring smile, then looked down at her hands, her expression changing to one of growing seriousness.
"You know who you will find when the ship has come in," she said. It was not a question.
"Certain of them, yes," he said hesitatingly. "The name of one in particular has spread fast across the island, as you know. But their total number remains unknown to me."
"But your heart, what does it tell you?" Celebrían enquired, looking keenly into his eyes. He sighed, a sound that gave voice to a litany of tribulations whose roots went deeper even than those of the trees of Fangorn Forest.
"It tells me that whatever the end result, I shall find the endurance to bear it with you at my side. I shall suffer the consequences with the same courage that you have lent me."
"That is perhaps the fairest and most nobly-spoken evasion that I have ever heard from your lips," she responded, her lips curling into a slow smile.
"And yet, I will abstain from making any predictions, for my heart yearns for the same thing that yours does, but I am afraid it can be a terribly impartial instrument. I would not deign to raise your spirits with groundless hopes and imprecise forecasts."
"I know it," she said softly. The Sun had now filled every corner of the room, no longer the weak ruddiness of dawn in its nascency, but the brilliant white of a morning come fully to fruition. There was an entire day stretching ahead of her and all that that entailed: the little domestic chores, the ingrained routines, the breaking of bread and the singing of songs, all the outwardly perfunctory tasks that are so often taken for granted but now meant more to her than she could say. They were not important merely for the sake of distraction, though they did serve that function, but they were also vital to her survival. How perilous it would be to find oneself entrapped in a moment, static, inert, shackled by self-fashioned restraints for fear of moving forward. The small demands of the day nudged her forward when she might have preferred to stand still, and so she was being prompted forward now. But before she took her first of many successive steps, she had for her husband one last request before their discussion was shelved and reassigned to the treasury of yesterday.
"Elrond, if you should find that Elladan and Elrohir are come, send them all my love and ask that they fly hither with all haste."
"Of course," Elrond assented.
"And please," she appended before he went on his way and left her to her own devices, "do not be long."
Elvish translations:
El-nîn – "my El," a term of endearment for Elrond
híril nîn – my lady
Cel-nîn – a term of endearment for Celebrían
periannath - Elvish word for 'hobbits'
*Credit goes to oocities dot org/waseom_peredhel/translations dot html for the first three translations.
Author's Notes: The white jewel mentioned in the opening lines of this chapter is referred to in "The Return of the King" (the chapter entitled Many Partings). It was given to Frodo by Arwen and was meant to provide aid when "the memory of the fear and the darkness" troubled him. Frodo giving Celebrían the gem was my invention, as detailed in "Into the Arms of Forever." It also bears mentioning for those that do not know that Celebrían's mother is Galadriel, since Elrond briefly comments on her accompanying him to Tol Eressëa.
I am hoping that my next update will come more quickly than the last, but unfortunately I can't make any promises since I'm still experiencing some, shall we say, technical difficulties...ugh. I can, however, promise that Frodo and Sam will be back in full swing for the next chapter. Thanks for indulging me with this little interlude - I hope that any readers who might have been waiting for an update are not disappointed.