Chapter Seventy-Eight: Flight and Fright
Vingilot rocked gently in the shadowy sea as Eärendil and his kinsfolk walked aboard the great ship one at a time. Elrond I smiled in fond remembrance of an Age long gone, when he had helped to build this very craft, just a few days after he had been born. The absolute incongruity of the notion made him grin. Eärendil seemed to notice, and chuckled quietly as he strode about the main deck, making doubly certain that everything was 'shipshape'. "It's odd how some things work out, isn't it?"
"Indeed it is," the elder half-elf nodded. "I've done some pretty odd things in this second lifetime of mine."
"Go on then, try me," his father urged.
"Where do I start?" Elrond I sighed. "Rearing myself from infancy, for one thing; making friends with a Kinslayer (who is now entirely redeemed, I might add); being regarded as family by the Valar, and doing the same in return; battling Morgoth and his minions with the Valar's help, sixteen times in more than six thousand years; surviving a life I thought I knew, but didn't… shall I carry on?"
"Why not just give the whole story?" Eärendil suggested, his eyes twinkling as he hoisted up a long rope that held the ship's anchor in place. "I've only seen so much of it from the skies, and occasionally in visions. We've got all night ahead of us, after all."
Elrond I nodded, smiling as Elrond II came to his side. He opened his mouth to speak, but at that moment a great burst of wind surged toward them from the east, filling Vingilot's silvery sails to their fullest extent. The elf clung to the starboard railing to steady himself as the ship seemed to charge forward, borne swiftly to the west over the vast, dark ocean. In a matter of instants the Gates of Night loomed up before them, every bit as formidable as they had been in Elrond's sight before. But things were different now. He was safe, tucked tenderly under the strong arm of his father, and bathed in the light of the Silmaril. No evil could reach him here.
Eärendil left his son's side quite reluctantly and moved up to the tiller, gripping the wheel in his capable hands. The mariner was truly in his element now, but it was not the sea he was sailing. In fact, they had left that far behind them, and were ascending gradually into the heavens, with the night's first stars around them – huge, pulsing orbs of what looked to be viscous light, just barely close enough for him to touch.
Elrond II carefully reached out and poked a star, and was rewarded by a pleasantly tingly feeling in the tip of his finger. The star felt somewhat like a ball of tepid jelly, and a little of it came off on his finger; he couldn't help but giggle childishly. Varda smiled benignly when she saw this. "What did you expect the dew of Telperion to feel like?"
Elrond II smiled down at the thick glowing stuff on his finger. "Why does everyone think the stars are dusty? 'Stardust' is an incredibly common word, but it isn't really true at all. Stars are… wet and sticky." He sniggered. "I have stargoo on my finger."
"Hold on tight," Eärendil called to them. "I'm turning sharply!"
Varda calmly held both Elrond I and II steady as they overbalanced and threatened to fall over regardless of their father's warning. The Star-Queen was perfectly stable, despite the ship's vehement lurch as it swerved abruptly eastward, wheeling through the rose-colored twilight sky far above the Gates of Night.
Elrond I glanced over his shoulder to where Arien still guided the Sun westward, and was now about to follow them through the Gates of Night. He couldn't be sure, but for a brief second he thought he saw the figure of a woman, wreathed completely in bright gold fire, raising her hand to wave to him as she flew. The elf waved back just in case, feeling quite giddy now with exhilaration; it showed plainly in the huge grin on his face.
"Look down," Varda suggested, pointing over the railing of the ship, to all that lay below Vingilot's keel. Eagerly Elrond obeyed her, and both halves of the elf let out gasps of rapt awe. All of Valinor lay spread out beneath them, like a gigantic three-dimensional map in full color.
There were the Gates of Night, black and fearful; the Outer Sea, endlessly rippling in the darkness; the halls of Nienna, side-by-side with those of her eldest brother, Mandos; the great ridge of the Pelori, and the mansion of Ilmarin upon the towering, snowy mount of Taniquetil; the hall of Tulkas, its many stories and towers gleaming bronze and copper in the sunset; Formenos, the abandoned citadel of the Fëanorians in the North; the halls and gardens of Lórien, shady labyrinths of trees, winding on for miles around the mountains; the mansion of Aulë, with workshops and smithies, and an immense courtyard containing every kind of tree imaginable, and a deep pool of blue water between them; the glittering city of Tirion, with walls like pearl, silvery towers and stairs of crystal; west of the city, a dark lake called Shadowmere; the white haven of Alqualondë on the eastern shores of the Undying Lands; and Elwing's ivory tower, ever-sentient, overlooking the Great Sea. And from the highest window of that tower, a cloud-white shape soaring up to them on silver-tipped wings…
"Elwing!" Eärendil cried jubilantly. "Right on time! How are you, love?"
"I'm bone-tired, dearest!" Elwing shouted up in answer, her swan-like beak clicking with each word she spoke. Spotting Varda as she rose on a current of warm air, she bobbed her noble, feathered head in respect for a brief moment, and dipped a little lower in the sky as she did so.
Pumping her wide, strong wings heartily up and down, Elwing flapped over to Vingilot's starboard railing, where Elrond and Varda helped her readily aboard. Once she was safely at rest upon the deck's solid timbers, she effortlessly resumed her elven form and brushed her deep brown hair out of her eyes as she stood up and caught her breath.
"Good evening, everyone," she panted, smiling rather breathlessly as she neatened herself up. Her three companions smiled back and nodded, and her husband and son hurried forth to hug her. Elrond I, remembering the two boxes in his arms, set those down carefully on the floor before he folded his mother in a fond embrace.
Elwing frowned down at the containers as she pulled away from her son a bit. "What are those?"
"This," he replied, picking up the larger box and pulling off the lid to reveal its contents, "is the circlet that was made for me by Curumo, a Maia of Lord Aulë. As you see, it still needs a little something to fill that hole there. And this…" He smiled, opening the smaller box and holding it out so the others could see inside. "This is what will fill that hole."
Eärendil gasped as Elrond's Silmaril was revealed, pouring out its radiance perhaps more brilliantly than that of its counterpart, which resided high on Vingilot's mainmast to serve as her dazzling lantern. The mariner's eyes were wide in shock, but he grinned as he took the jewel and the unfinished circlet into his hands, and carefully pushed the Silmaril into the deliberately-crafted hole. It was a perfect fit.
"Now let's see you put it on," Elwing smiled to her son.
"I couldn't." Elrond I declined the suggestion modestly. "Really, I don't think I'd look at all right in it."
"Curumo thought that you would," Varda put in evenly. "Why not give it one endeavor?"
Elrond I knew better than to disobey; he stood still and acquiescent as his father brought the circlet down to rest upon his brow. The object's weightiness surprised him at first, but he stood tall, yet still a little humble. A blush of humility suffused his face.
"Like father, like son," Elwing smiled fondly, observing the two side-by-side. Eärendil's arm was draped around his son's shoulders, holding him tenderly close, and Elrond I was doing the same. Elrond II stood to hand, next to Varda, not knowing just what to do with himself. But they all glanced up in diversion as a strange, stuttering voice called out from somewhere beside the ship.
"H-hail Varda, High Q-queen of the Light! Hail Eärendil, most b-beloved of the Children of Earth, b-bearer of light before the S-sun and M-moon, splendor of the dawn and th-the dusk! H-hail Elwing, d-daughter of the s-seas and the s-s-skies! H-hail Elrond, b-brother of the Valar, d-defeater of M-M-Morgoth!"
A glimmering figure, clothed in silver from head to foot, wearing a horned circlet on his brow and clutching what appeared to be a large, blazing lamp in his right hand, came into sight some distance away from the ship's port side. His white hair flowed out behind him like a banner of mist, and his bright blue eyes gleamed like twin sapphires. He zigzagged most hesitantly through the heavens, speeding up and slowing down by turns. Sometimes he halted completely for a few moments, muttered anxiously to himself as he hovered in midair, and hurried to take flight again.
Varda laughed brightly, and called out in answer. "Hail and well met, Tilion, guardian of the light of Telperion!"
Eärendil's eyebrows came practically up to his hairline as he looked to Elrond I and II for answers. "'Defeater of Morgoth?' Now I really need to hear the whole story."
"I highly doubt that I can remember it all, even blessed as I am with two brains," Elrond I replied, glancing at his younger counterpart. "The only person I know who could possibly recall everything in detail is Lord Mandos." He laughed. "Should I call him?"
"There will be no need for that," the Doomsman smiled, whirling sinuously into vision in front of the three elves and the Valië, and smiling kindly as Elrond and his parents bowed low to him. "Where would you—"
He was cut off by Tilion's voice calling from a distance: "H-hail Námo, D-Doomsman of the V-Valar, Master of S-S-Spirits!"
"Yes, that will do, Tilion," Mandos replied serenely, before finishing his earlier sentence. "Where would you like me to begin?"
"Just after the sack of Sirion will be fine, thank you, sire," Elwing told him politely.
"Very well," the Vala nodded. "After so ruthlessly ransacking your haven, the eldest two sons of Fëanor rode to the house of Maedhros with your young sons and their godfather, both of them under the impression that they had captured Eärendil, rather than Elrond the First, along with the young twins…"
Elrond I shuddered and squeezed his eyes shut as wave after wave of memory broke over him. His entire life, except for the first four years of it, flashed with frightening intensity across the backs of his eyelids, setting all of his senses on edge. Faces of friends and foes, words of hope and anguish, sensations, scents and tastes of things that once had been, but now were long gone.
Tears of mourning, fury, happiness and homesickness seared his eyes and cheeks as they slipped one by one from between the prison bars that were his eyelashes. The elf blinked them away and looked up again, just as his father yelped, "His soul was unraveling? How on earth was it stopped?"
"I am getting to that," Mandos replied serenely. "Yes, your son's soul was indeed coming apart, and yes, the reaction was halted, but not for many thousands of years. It was by the actions of Vairë that Elrond was saved, as she wove him back into the fabric of Time."
Eärendil nodded in understanding. "Yes, of course… Please continue."
This time, both Elrond I and II succumbed to the throbbing pulse of the relentless tide of reminiscence, as Mandos' mellifluous voice led them gradually on through time. None of the elves could help but be happy at the recitation of Varda's banishment of Sauron from Mithlond; they cried together as the demise of Celebrimbor was recounted, then wept and rejoiced in turns as the details of the War of the Last Alliance unfolded.
Mandos recalled bitterly the nearly fatal assault of Halanor upon Celebrían, speaking just over Eärendil's enraged guttural noises and Elrond II's subdued tears; he smiled to share the joy that came with the births of Elrond's children. He detailed everything pertinent to the half-elf, marching steadily forward through the count of Ages: the wedding of Arwen and Voronwë; the joyful birth of Caranel II, and the nearly concurrent, terrible fourteenth attack of Morgoth; Elrond I and Voronwë's all-but-fatal confrontation at the bottom of the river Bruinen; and last, but certainly not least, the Chesswar, the horrific conclusion to Morgoth's attempt to destroy Elrond – and the rest of the world – forever.
"The Dark Lord kissed you?" Eärendil yelped, cutting the Doomsman's voice short as the cry of revolted shock burst from his tongue. "On the lips?"
"Yes," replied a mortified Elrond II, his ears burning at the memory. "Although it wasn't really a kiss, as it were; he was trying to possess me. And then I skewered him."
"Skewered?"
"Like a kebab," the Vala nodded proudly, laying a hand on Elrond II's shoulder. "Albeit, an outsized, living, black, foul and entirely evil kebab," he added, a smile flickering upon his lips, "spitted through his belly on an icicle seven feet long. He will not easily forget or forgive you for that, you can be certain."
"Neither will I," Elrond II answered icily. Then, bizarrely, his face softened. "Then again, I suppose this is all his fault, isn't it? If he hadn't been so hell-bent on annihilating me—" he glanced at Elrond I "—I would never have been forced to go back and live my life all over again, so nothing would have been changed… well, actually, everything would have been changed, wouldn't it? The world as I knew it would have been destroyed, right?"
"Yes," Mandos concurred. "And the last memories you would have had then, would have been memories of nothing but emptiness and utter hopelessness."
"So," Elrond I spoke up, "I suppose, in some sick, twisted and completely unnatural way, I should be indebted to Morgoth. If it weren't for him, my daughter would now be in your Halls, I would nearly have lost my wife to a poisoned sword, I wouldn't have been able to spend those two wonderful, blessed years with Ada…" (Eärendil's eyes brimmed with tears) "…I would never have found such great friendship and love among the Valar, and the world would have been reduced to total darkness and chaos, dominated by Morgoth." He shivered, as though he could foretaste the horror he had detailed.
"That describes it quite thoroughly," the Doomsman nodded.
They soared on through the inky sky, as the hours ticked slowly by. Elrond I and II gazed frequently down at the marvelous vista below; the land of Middle-earth, spanning west to east from the Great Sea to the Empty Lands. The half-elf noticed randomly that dark grey clouds had gathered over Imladris; it must have been storming heavily.
"What was it like, the day you went back in time?" Eärendil asked Elrond I conversationally.
"Well," he replied reminiscently, "it was a night very much like Rivendell is having now – dark, cold and rainy, in early autumn: September the fifth, as I seem to remember. I had been terribly depressed for months, even though I was getting ready to sail to Valinor in a few weeks' time. My sons tried to raise my spirits by recounting the things I had done in my lifetime – that lifetime, at least – that were of significance or benefit to the world.
"But I was still utterly dejected, and eventually I fell asleep at my desk, where I dreamt of Lords Mandos and Lorien, who told me of the frighteningly high potential for my fading from the world's design. They brought me back in time and space, to the gates of Sirion, where you found me and took me into your home. The rest is history," Elrond I chuckled.
"September the fifth, eh?" Eärendil mused. "How very ironic – that's tonight. And unless I'm getting my years and dates wrong, the year you arrived in Valinor was two thousand, seven hundred and thirty-eight of the Third Age. That was about two hundred and eighty-three years ago. Add that together and you get three thousand and twenty-one – isn't that the year you went back in time?"
Elrond I nodded, absentmindedly wiping his face with a handkerchief. "Does anyone else find it exceptionally warm here?"
"W-warm?" his godson repeated in disbelief through unusually chattering teeth, sounding somewhat like Tilion. "How in Arda c-can you be sweaty? I'm f-freezing! I c-can't even feel my f-f-feet!"
"I have no idea at all," Elrond I replied faintly, looking up a little as his mother hurried to his side and felt his forehead anxiously.
"You do feel awfully febrile," she said uneasily. "And, oh, Elrond—" (she had just taken Elrond II's hand into her own) "—you feel like ice! What in Arda is going on?" she cried, growing more and more frantic by the second.
"Please remain calm, all of you," Mandos told the others evenly. With one hand upon the back of each half of Elrond, he gently nudged them closer together. Elrond I immediately held his godson close to his sweltering body, hoping to use Elrond II's chill to soothe his livid warmth, while Elrond II embraced his godfather for the purpose of obtaining much-needed body heat. From there, the eeriness only spiraled…