Author's Note: This is the second version of Chapter 2 The Prophecy.
Chapter 2 The Prophecy
She lay in a feather bed, surrounded by the softest of sheets. In the distance a harp sang softly. Warm light streamed into the room. From the open window drifted the scent of flowers: lavenders, roses, elanor, and niphredil. This must be paradise, thought Elena. I am home at last! Her eyes still closed, she stretched leisurely.
A breath of sweet wind caressed her face. Wake up. It whispered. Open your eyes. Look around you.
Obeying that sweet breath, Elena opened her brown eyes. As soon as she had done so, she wished that she hadn't.
She was not in a feather bed, surrounded by soft sheets, but a coffin, surrounded by dirt. No warm light was there for her, nor the sweet scent of flowers. Instead, dead faces stared at her, some jeering and some pitying. They reached for her with rotting arms, grabbing, dragging, strangling.
'No!' She shouted at them. 'No! This is a dream.' Elena tore her arms, still gushing blood, from their grasp. To test the reality, she bit her hand and screamed at the pain.
The corpses laughed at her. 'That hurt, did it not?'
Elena's eyes filled with tears. Desperately, she covered her head with her arms, but the blood flowing from her wrists and hand had not stopped, covering her hair and face with the sticky red liquid. 'Go away!'
'Go away?' They asked mockingly. 'You tell one of your own kind to go away? You're one of us now; we won't go away!'
Elena shook her head. 'No! I'm not! I'm not one of you!'
'But that's what you wanted, wasn't it? To be a part of this world? Well, my dear, you are a part of this world…the world of the dead!'
Stumbling, Elena tried to run. She tried to run from the hideous monsters that clutched her and claimed her for their own. No. How could it have happened? She was dead, yes, but only in her world. The real world. She was not supposed to be dead in Middle-Earth as well. Was she even in Middle-Earth? Or was she in hell? After all, the bible condemned anyone who committed suicide…
As if reading her mind, they sneered, 'hell? You know nothing of hell. Yet.'
But Elena would not hear them. She would not give up on her vision of paradise. In a last desperate act, she cried out for the only God she ever knew: 'A Elbereth! Elbereth! Save me!'
She had a last fleeting glimpse of the corpses reaching their gnarled hands towards her, and then they were gone. Elena found herself sprawled on the marble floors of a magnificent hall. Walking towards her was the most beautiful woman that she had ever seen. Her eyes were pools of wisdom, her skin as pale as the moon. She was tall and yet weighted down, as if upon her shoulders sat the weight of the world. Her face was joyless as she surveyed the girl bowing before her.
'Elbereth.' She whispered, her eyes on the hem of her gown.
The woman said quietly, 'I am not She, who rules in Valinor and Middle-Earth, whose throne is upon mighty Taniquetil. I am merely a Maia, and the elves have named me Morniedil, Darkness-loving.'
'Where am I?' Elena asked. She looked around the beautiful hall.
'You are in Valinor, the Blessed Realm, though your coming brings desecration.'
'What---but I…'
'Yet still I must treat you kindly, on the orders of the Queen.' Morniedil looked as if this was not to her liking at all. 'Come with me, Elena Child of Men, you must rest before the Queen will see you.'
Morniedil led her through many outside walkways. The sky was clear and blue, and the air calm. They passed numerous gardens and rolling hills with views of the sea. Nevertheless, Elena felt uneasy. It was not until Morniedil had left her to rest in a bedchamber that she realized why: in all the gardens and luxurious grounds, there was no sound of laughter, nor song, nor any trace of joy. Before she could dwell on this strangeness for long, weariness overcame her, and she fell gladly into the clutches of sleep.
But her sleep was not sweet and dreamless.
She walked through the empty halls of the great mansion of Elbereth and Manwë, searching for something. She turned a corner and came face to face with a beautiful woman, who looked like a lass at first sight, but wiser and sadder than any lass that Elena had known. The girl-woman opened her mouth to speak, but no sounds came out.
'Excuse me? I didn't hear you.' Elena's dream-self said.
Staring straight into her eyes, the girl-woman continued speaking, but still no sound came out. As she went on, she got more urgent.
'I can't hear you! What are you saying?' Elena asked, shaking the figure before her.
Suddenly, more people surrounded her, and they were all angry. Though she could not hear them, their expressions seemed to be saying: 'Why have you come here?' 'You are not welcome.'
Then, the girl in front of her turned into herself, an older, more beautiful version. She too, began talking, but finally Elena could hear her. 'You have made a mistake, Elena.'
Elena gasped. 'Who are you?'
'The question is, who are you?'
Elena sat up in bed. The room was dark; night had fallen on Valinor. But Morniedil stood beside her, holding a candle. 'Come. Lady Elbereth Elentarí shall see you now.' Morniedil led her through more halls until they reached a tall pair of double doors, wrought of silver. 'I leave you now.'
Elena watched Morniedil's retreating back until she was replaced by the dark, silent night. Then, taking a deep breath, Elena pushed open the silver doors.
Elbereth's hall was more magnificent than anything that Elena could have dreamed of. The room was not large, but it was grander than any long hall of mortal kings, for the beauty of Elbereth graced it. The light of stars lit the chamber, but the light was as bright as the sun. The walls, floor, and ceiling were made of a dazzling white jewel that caught the starlight. At the opposite end of the hall was the throne of the Queen, under a pure white canopy; it was as silver and graceful as the woman who sat upon it.
But Elena could not see the Lady, fairest of all the beings in the world, for Elbereth Queen of Valinor appeared as a light brighter than all the others in the room, and to look at Her was to burn the eyes.
'Elena,' spoke the Queen. 'Thou hast come to the Hall of Varda the Kindler, where few of even the Great have entered.' The voice of Elbereth was soothing and gentle, yet Elena felt shivers go up and down her spine.
When Elena said nothing, Elbereth continued: 'Hast thou naught to say, child? Hast thou no questions of the world that thou left behind? Hast thou no explanations for why thou art here?'
Elena looked up suddenly, guilt flooding through her. She had not once thought of her family, her friends, or her old life. It seemed a million light years away. 'I…'
'In thy haste to come to Valinor, thou hast forgotten who thou art.' To this Elena had nothing to say. 'Thou couldst not take the world that thou wert assigned, so now thou dost wish to be assigned another life? Another chance? It is not as simple as that. Only the Firstborn were given the chance to return to Middle-Earth, if they would.'
'But I never was in Middle-Earth to begin with, my lady.'
'Thou wert. Thy world was Middle-Earth, in the 21st age of men.'
Elena's brain reeled. 'What?'
Elbereth laughed quietly. 'What thinkst thou now, child? Thou hast left thy own world in search of the world that was already thine.'
'But how could it be? How is it that no one knows our history?' Elena thought of the Ancient Greeks, the Ancient Romans, and the Native Americans. Nothing spoke of them in The Silmarillion or The Lord of the Rings.
'I myself have asked this question many times. But I know not. Perhaps Men have forgotten their past?'
There was silence in that crystal hall as Elena was lost in thought. At last said the Vala, 'But the past is not all lost to thy people yet. For doth not The Silmarillion, The Lord of the Rings, and The Hobbit preserve thy history?'
Elena said nothing. She was in complete shock. Part of her did not believe the Star-Queen's words. She felt as if everything had fallen apart around her. How could it be that Middle-Earth, the world that she had dreamed of for so long, was the place that she had just escaped?
'Now that thou art here, what would thee?'
Elena looked up from her thoughts. 'What do you mean?'
'Why did thou come? Thou hast come from the World of Darkness and brought shadow into the Deathless Land.'
'I…How…I don't understand…' Elena said.
'Didst thou not wonder why all was silent when thou arrivedst?'
Elena thought back to the eerie silence that surrounded the mansion. 'I did. I wondered about that.'
'And didst thou not see the corpses following thee into Valinor?'
Again, Elena recalled the fleeting glimpse of the corpse reaching for her. She nodded. 'I did.'
'They were the shades of the men of thy age. They remember and care not for the laws of Ilúvatar, and they would enter Valinor, and with their dead souls, defile this holy land.' Elbereth paused. 'As thou hast done.'
Elena looked up at Elbereth, then quickly away, for the light was too bright. 'I'm sorry. Did I… Is Valinor destroyed?'
'No. Melkor did not destroy the power that lies in this realm, and thou---a mere mortal, shall do it no lasting harm. But the sorrow and pain that lieth in Middle Earth and the worlds beyond was brought here, and for that thou must be punished. Thy loyalty to me saved thee from the shades, but to bring sorrow to the Blessed Realm is a horrible crime.'
Elena stood up from her kneeling position before the Queen. Instinctively, she backed away. 'What?' She shook her head. 'No…please my lady…' She looked around, as if expecting guards to seize her on the spot.
'I pity thee and I pity thy kindred, but my pity shall not dull the laws of this land. And so thou shalt be punished, though thy wish shall be granted. Thou shalt know Middle-Earth as thou hast dreamt of it, but no joy shalt be thine. Thou shalt bring sorrow to all and to be loved by thee shall be a curse. But first thou shalt watch the unfolding of history and suffer as the Valar have suffered, but when thou joinst the world again thy memory shall have been lost. And when thou art reborn, thou shalt have no freedom from death, but be reborn again, so that thine is a cursed life. Go now, and come not again to pollute the Blessed Realm.'