AN: A couple of Elvish terms it would be useful to know before you read this chapter:
fëa (plural fëar): spirit; as in, the spirit of a person, which allows them to have conscious thought and free will.
hrondo (plural hrondor): body; the part of a person that is matter rather than spirit.
hron: matter.
It was very strange for Katie that evening at dinner; every time she looked over at Elrond, she kept thinking, His brother was the flipping founder of Atlantis! It certainly shed a light on how very far back in time they had gone. Erestor had shared their discoveries with the elf lord that afternoon.
"Does this mean that it wasn't Ilúvatar that sent us?" Katie had asked him. "I mean, you said before the he was the only one with the authority to move people from one world to another. Since it's time travel…"
Elrond had shook his head. "No, it must still be Ilúvatar. Even the Valar experience time in the same way we do, only seeing the present and remembering the past. They are sometimes given visions of the future, but they do not inhabit past, present and future in the way that Ilúvatar does. It must still be His work."
Somehow, that had comforted Katie. It was good to know that she hadn't been operating on false pretences all this time.
000
Elrohir joined Katie and Vivian in Erestor's study the next day.
"You seem to be making some interesting discoveries in here. I would hate to miss it all!" he said by way of explanation. Katie knew that this was only half of his reasoning. He was still rather self-conscious about his hair (or lack thereof), and so was occupying himself inside the house rather than outside of it. But she certainly didn't mind. She enjoyed spending time with Elrohir.
"You said yesterday," Vivian began, addressing Erestor, "that the spirits of Elves are confined to Arda, but that the spirits of Men are not. What do you mean by that?"
"Well, the fëar of both Elves and Men come from beyond Arda, from Ilúvatar. He is the only one able to make us free choosers. The creations of the Valar, which come from within Arda, are not capable of that—mountains and trees and even animals. But beings are free.
"You can see it in the story of the creation of the Dwarves. You see, Aulë the Smith, one of the Valar, was impatient to see the Eruhin, the Children of Ilúvatar. Ilúvatar had promised to make them and set them in Arda, but had not yet done so. So Aulë made his own—the Dwarves. And Ilúvatar came to him and rebuked him. The making of beings was beyond Aulë's authority. Ilúvatar had given Aulë his own will only, and the Dwarves could only live by Aulë's will: moving when he moved them, and if Aulë was occupied elsewhere, the Dwarves would stand idle.
"Aulë regretted that he had made the Dwarves without Ilúvatar's permission, and explained that he had only wanted more beings to teach things to and to share his joys with. But he understood that he had done wrong, and so he took up his great hammer to destroy the Dwarves, even while he wept. But the Dwarves flinched in fear and cried for mercy. They were only able to do this because Ilúvatar, in his love for Aulë, had allowed them to become children of his adoption, making them free choosers. So Ilúvatar told Aulë to spare the Dwarves."
Katie and Vivian listened enraptured to this story. Elrohir had heard it told before, and delighted instead in watching their changing expressions.
"So you see, our fëar come from beyond Arda, from Ilúvatar," Erestor summed up. "But different things happen to them when we die.
"When Men die, their spirits go to the Mandos, to the Halls of Waiting, for a short time."
Vivian looked confused. "Where is Mandos?"
"It is a great fortress standing on the western coast of Aman."
Katie, who had learned about Mandos in her Valar lessons added, "Think Hades. And the Vala who is in charge of it gets called by the name of his realm, just like Hades, the Greek god, did. It's kind of a holding-place for the dead."
Erestor continued. "But the spirits of Men leave Mandos—they leave the world. And no one knows where they go to. It is somewhere outside of Arda, but none knows where it is or what it is.
"But the Elves, we are confined within Arda. If we are slain, we are summoned to the Halls of Waiting and dwell there for a time, being corrected by Mandos. And then, if we wish it, some of us are allowed to be reborn."
Katie whistled. She hadn't heard this before. "You get reincarnated?"
Erestor nodded. "Yes, exactly. Let me explain from the beginning.
"Each living being is a combination of spirit and body: fëa and hrondo. The fëa, as we have seen, comes from beyond Arda. But the hrondo comes from the hron, the matter, of Arda. Now these two things, at least in the case of the Elves, were meant never to be separated. But of course, we are sometimes slain, and then the two are severed. But though the hrondo may be destroyed, the fëa may not. And so it is summoned to Mandos. Some refuse the summons, but many do go.
"Now once the fëa of the elf has been corrected in Mandos, it is often given the option of being united with a new hrondo, a new body. If the elf agrees, it is reborn in Aman. That is, the fëa is united with a new hrondo of the same sex and is born to Elven parents in Aman."
"But how can you know that's true?" Vivian objected. "Some humans believe in reincarnation in our worl—our time, but they say they can't remember their former lives. So they have no proof."
"Ah, but the reborn elves do remember their former life," Erestor said, smiling. "They do not remember it at first, when they are still children, but by the time they are full-grown, they remember all of their former life, and see the two lives as one. So being reborn is a great blessing. Because the elf first had an innocent and carefree childhood in which to discover all the beauty and joy of life, then an adult life, then a death. But to redress the wrongs done to the elf in death, they are reborn and have a second innocent and carefree childhood and discover beauty and joy all over again, and then a second and even wiser adulthood, because they have all the centuries of their former experience to guide them in wisdom. So the reborn are twice blessed."
Katie and Vivian mulled over this for awhile. "I wish I could talk to an elf that had been reborn!" Vivian finally said. "That would be fascinating."
"But they're only reborn into Aman," Katie reminded her. "So there aren't any here."
Erestor and Elrohir exchanged a sly look. "Well, that is true," Elrohir said slowly, "but who says that those in Arda can never come to Middle-earth?"
Vivian's eyes lit up. "Are there any elves in Middle-earth that got reborn?"
"One," Elrohir answered her, smiling mischievously. "You have already met him."
"Who? The suspense is killing me!" Katie exclaimed.
"Glorfindel," Elrohir answered with a laugh.
"You're kidding."
"Glorfindel of Gondolin, who slew the balrog, allowing Tuor and Idril to escape with their son Eärendil," Elrohir elaborated.
Katie managed to connect the other things she knew. "And now the reborn Glorfindel is seneschal to Eärendil's son," she said slowly. "Freaky."
Vivian laughed.
000
In the end, they didn't ask Glorfindel what it was like to be reborn. Katie felt a little shy about it, and it slipped Vivian's mind. Vivian had had a sneaking suspicion anyway that Glorfindel wouldn't be able to explain the experience of death in any way that they could understand anyway.
For the next week or so, Elrohir joined the two of them to take part in Erestor's lessons. Some days they met in Erestor's study, or sat in one of the gardens, or even simply walked about the grounds as they talked.
One day, they stopped in the stable. Vivian had taken to coming here and giving Serondrych a good petting and an apple.
"Where's Sadron?" Katie asked, looking around. Sadron often came out and worked nearby when Vivian entered the stables, occasionally answering a question or bringing her apples or carrots to feed the horses.
"He is probably in the tack room," Elrohir said, and went to look. He returned in a minute. "Sadron is not there," he explained. "He must be at work someplace else."
A few minutes later, his theory was proven when Sadron entered the stable and greeted them in his usual quiet way. "I was turning out some of the horses," he explained.
After they left the stable, Erestor led them on to a place Vivian and Katie had never seen before: the cemetery. Vivian had been telling him how she and her siblings used to go to cemeteries to find their ancestors' gravestones.
Of course, very few elves had died and were buried here in the cemetery at Rivendell, but a few men of Estel's people were, including his mother, Gilraen. On her stone was an inscription, but Katie couldn't read it because it was in Elvish script. Elrohir translated.
"Ónen i-Estel Edain," he read. "I gave Hope to the Dúnedain." He did not add the rest of Gilraen's saying, which had not been carved on the stone: "I gave Hope to the Dúnedain, I have kept no hope for myself."
Near Gilraen were the graves of Orain, Gúrvel, and Dorlarth, reminders of the trial Rivendell had undergone just a short while before.
"What's that?" Katie asked, pointing to something on Orain's grave that shone in the sun.
Elrohir stooped and picked the object up. There was a collective gasp as they realized what he was holding.
A knife, the steel glinting in the sunlight. Someone had stuck a knife in Orain's grave.
TBC
AN: Creepy, no? lol
The story about the creation of the dwarves comes from "Of Aulë and Yavanna" in The Silmarillion. Information about elves being reborn comes from Laws and Customs Among the Eldar. And I know Glorfindel's rebirth is a contested subject, but I thought I'd put it in anyway.
AU warning: the truth is, Gilraen died in Eriador not long before the War of the Ring, so she would still have been living in Rivendell at the time this is set, and would eventually have been buried in Eriador (so the movie's wrong on that count). The thing is, I must not have realized this when I first started writing this fanfiction, or I just left her out because she wasn't convenient. So this is very slightly AU, and if I could, I would go back and fix it. But it's too late now. But the ultimate fate of Gilraen is not important to my plots or themes, so it's not a huge deal.
AlabrithGaiamoon: lol I didn't realize Vivian was so popular! She has her own plushie!
IwishChan: Yeah, I didn't want to let Estel go, but I had tweaked the story to make him almost an extra year already, and I didn't want to tweak it any more than I had to.
Laer4572: Interesting idea! But the millennia in between Arwen and Vivian would be so huge, I doubt very much that any trace of Elvish heritage would still be found in Vivian. Besides, why then would Vivian be human and yet not human, but Katie wouldn't? And besides, they say that Vivian is different even than Aragorn. Keep guessing! And I'm not commenting on the twin thing, although that's very funny. :)
Redone: I know! When I realized Estel was Atlantean… Yeah, that was a funny feeling.
theycallmemary: I am freaking serious! Isn't that awesome? Tolkein did it on purpose. Check it out in the Encyclopedia of Arda, that's what I used to check my facts. And as far as I'm concerned, Ilúvatar does exist. :) Meep! Vivian and Saruman? I would hope her taste is better than that! And yes, it is cute. :)
werewolflemming: BUT follow only if ye be men of valorrr! Forrr the entrrrance to the cave is guarded by a beast so hideous, so crrrruel, that no man yet has fought with it and lived! —ahem— Sorry 'bout that…
Princess Siara: Sorry, not telling. :) You'll have to wait and find out.
Please review! You all rock! (I know, I know, flattery will get me nowhere…)