22
A Rebirth and a Departure
The Silmarillion: P. xviii: From a Letter by J.R.R. Tolkien: "But the Elves are there to demonstrate the difference -- Their magic is Art -- And its object is Art, not Power, sub-creation not domination and tyrannous re-forming of Creation."
P. xix: From a Letter by J.R.R. Tolkien: "In the Cosmogony there is a fall: a fall of Angels we should say."
After the night of the dream that Irmo had induced, Lindaril awoke the next day feeling groggy and weak. Frodo stayed by her side and would not leave her. She did not feel much like going out as they usually did to play a sport or game, so they decided to spend the rest of the day talking and reading, and meandering about in Estë's vast house. Lindaril turned to Frodo and smiled. "I would prefer, more than anything else, to cuddle with you all day long indoors today, if you would know the truth."
Frodo blushed, and put his arms around her, hugging her to him.
Lindaril thought, 'He is the sweetest, most sensitive person. He has such consideration for others. That is the quality I love most about him.' She drew back and looked at him closely.
"Are you happy to be here on Valinor?" she asked. "How did you feel when you first arrived?"
To tell you the truth, I would rather have died," he admitted.
Lindaril looked as if she were shocked by his answer.
"Oh, no, do not misunderstand me. I don't feel that way now," he explained. "At the time, the leaving of my friends and my home in the Shire was like tearing my heart from my body. The journey I took with the Ring, that had seized my happy life and held it for ransom, was a necessary thing, but I was not glad to come here despite that. Not at first. At least my uncle came with me, and Gandalf, whom I looked up to as if he were my father. It helped to have them with me, but the forsaking of the home that I loved was almost too much to bear. Thankfully, Estë and the island, the lake and the gardens have been a blessing to me. I look up to her as I would a mother. I did not know my parents, who drowned when I was an infant."
"Are you happy now?" Lindaril asked.
"As happy as I will ever be, I think," he replied, and smiled at her.
Lindaril promised Frodo that the next day, after she had had a good night's sleep, they would go for a hike through the Gardens of Lorien. They planned to walk from morning to early afternoon, do some exploring, and then they would then stop for a picnic lunch. Afterward they would turn around and walk back to the house. Frodo slept soundly that night, and was awakened early the next morning by Lindaril, who appeared in his window and sang him a cheery song. He awoke thinking that he was hearing a bluebird's voice, and turned toward the window with a smile when he realized it was Lindaril's.
"Come on, sleepyhead, get out of bed!" she sang, laughing.
He laughed, too, and jumped up, throwing a pillow through the window at her.
"Leave me alone to get dressed! I shall be with you in a moment!" he cried.
They walked about the Gardens together, enjoying the spectacular vistas and each other's company, in this enchantingly beautiful isle. They were very happy to be together. Frodo felt that he was lucky indeed to have found Lindaril. She was unconventional; sometimes wild and abandoned, and he found her to be unusually intelligent, with a razor-sharp wit. He felt that she was the opposite of him, yet the two of them got along extremely well. He did not feel at all inadequate next to her. In the past, he would never have thought that he could be an Elf's equal. Now, he felt that he and Lindaril were perfectly suited to each other because their personalities were so different that they complemented each other. Physically, he felt equal to her because of his new height and strength.
They came to a large glade of elm and Yavannamire trees and decided to explore it. Frodo was reminded of the woods back home in the Shire when he gazed upon the trees here. This was not a true wood in the Gardens of Lorien, because this wood was small, and much light shone through the well-spaced trees, but it gave off the same aura of protective comfort that the Shire had possessed. As they made their way among the trees, Frodo thought he saw a shadowy, wraith-like figure glide past them, weaving its way through the trees parallel to them. A little shiver of apprehension ran down his spine.
"Did you see that?" he asked Lindaril. He was somewhat alarmed. This shrouded being reminded him of the Ringwraiths that had pursued him during the dark days before the war.
"See what, Frodo?" she asked. She had been looking elsewhere and did not notice the apparition.
"I thought I saw - or sensed, more like - someone pass, but the figure was shadowy and in a shroud – sort of translucent."
"Oh, what you saw may have been one of the Elves in the process of fading," replied Lindaril.
"Really?" asked Frodo. "How sad."
Yes. It may have been an old Elf recently come from Middle-earth, whom Estë has just begun to heal," Lindaril replied. "It could be one of the rare Elves who waited almost too long to make the trip here, and who almost faded away entirely while still on Middle-earth. If so, then Estë will have much work ahead of her to restore that Elf to his or her former self. Its spirit, or fëa, may need to be taken to the Halls of Mandos, to await its possible resurrection at the hands of Manwë."
Frodo shuddered at the thought of that possibility. "I was beginning to see something like that happening to Lady Galadriel when we first arrived here," he said.
"Then perhaps it was she whom you sensed," said Lindaril.
"Galadriel? Oh, I hope not," said Frodo. "I cannot believe that someone as grand and strong as Lady Galadriel could simply fade away."
"Well," said Lindaril, "it has happened before, to another strong female of ages ago, none other than Melian the Maia, the mother of Lúthien Tinúviel. She came here long ago, and they say that she wanders here still, in her grief that never ends."
Frodo's thoughts traveled back to the past, when he was a Ring-bearer on Middle-earth, and he and his companions had taken refuge in Lothlorien after being pursued by the Ring-wraiths and other evil creatures. The time spent there had been very special. Frodo had offered the One Ring to Galadriel, but she had refused it, although she had been tempted to take it. After that she decided that she wished, finally, to leave Middle-earth, although she waited to see Sauron defeated first, and then, many years later, she left Middle-earth along with Frodo and Gandalf.
Galadriel had then been over ten thousand years old. She had started to fade, as many of the oldest of the Eldar did. While aboard the Grey Ship, Frodo had noticed how translucent she appeared. He wondered if the vision in the glade was indeed, Galadriel, despite Lindaril's words, and if she had come there to see him. He suddenly stopped walking. "Lindaril, wait!" he called out. She had walked on ahead, and was bending down to examine a bed of unusually fragrant flowering plants.
"I have just had an idea!" he cried.
She turned to look at him curiously. Even though she had been told to keep it a secret, she had told Frodo about the dream Irmo had induced in her, in which she related to him the formula for making the Silmarils. She told Frodo that to make these jewels involved the gathering together of many precious gems, and also that it needed the addition of the nectar from the two ancient trees of the Valar; Laurelin, the golden tree, and Telperion, the tree of silver light. However, she said that these trees had been destroyed long ago, and therefore, no new nectar was available. She had said that Irmo refused to be daunted, and he thought that there was still a way that new jewels could be made. Irmo had gone to seek the audience of Manwë and Varda, and ask them for advice, but Lindaril herself did not have much hope that it was possible to make any new Silmarils. She said as much to Frodo.
"Lindaril," Frodo repeated. "Did you not tell me that Morgoth demanded seventy thousand of these Silmarils?"
She nodded. She was very much interested in what he had to say, and walked toward him, dropping the flowers she had been collecting. They fell to the ground, scattering like petals.
"Would they need to be new jewels?" he asked.
Lindaril stared at Frodo. "What do you mean by 'new jewels'?"
He looked back at her. "New. Freshly made. Would they have to be freshly made?"
"I do not know if Morgoth said so, one way or the other," she replied. "But of course that was what he meant. He knows that there were only three of the originals. Why? What is your idea?"
Frodo gripped Lindaril by the arms. There was excitement in his eyes.
"Why could the remaining Silmaril not be broken into seventy thousand pieces?" he asked. "Is it not a large stone? Each of the pieces could then be given to Morgoth!"
"Morgoth would never accept them!" Lindaril cried. "He has had the Silmarils in his possession before this. He knows what they look like, and that they are huge stones, not tiny little fragments!"
Frodo persisted. "It would be in keeping with the bargain," he said, "as long as Morgoth had not stated that the Silmarils should be new!"
"I do not know what the agreement was," admitted Lindaril. "I suppose your idea is worth a try. Come, then, we should go and speak to Estë and Irmo about it."
"I thought that it was a good idea," Frodo said, rather crestfallen. "I thought of it just now when we were speaking of Galadriel. I remembered the lembas bread that she had given to our Fellowship when we set out from Lothlorien. One of the Elves, either Legolas or another, had told us that the lembas could be broken into tiny pieces, and that just one of these tiny pieces was enough to feed us for an entire day. That gave me the idea for breaking up the Silmaril."
When Frodo spoke the name, "Legolas," Lindaril gave a violent start.
"Legolas?" she asked abruptly. "Did you just say that you have an Elvish friend named Legolas?"
"Why, yes." He was surprised by her reaction. "Why do you ask?"
"I used to know an Elf named Legolas," she replied. "What did your friend look like?"
"Oh, you would remember him," said Frodo. He then described Legolas to Lindaril. "No female that I have known could forget his beauty," he said.
Lindaril looked quite serious. "I do not think that your friend was the same that I knew," she lied. "The one I knew was quite horrible, and not at all fair." She shook her head abruptly, as if to banish the memory of the flaxen-haired Elf from her mind. "Come, Frodo, let us go and find Estë, and tell her of your idea. It could be of great interest to her."
They quickly made their way back to Estë's house. Frodo was quite excited by his idea, although he did not know whether it would prove to be useful or not.
During this time, in the Halls of Mandos, Fëanor's spirit had been banished once again to wait in the depths of the Halls for another interminable length of time. Despite seeming to soften at their earlier meeting, he had not wholly repented, and Mandos felt that he was not ready to be resurrected because he had not reflected enough upon his past, and it did not seem as if he really wanted to change his ways. Mandos was aware of restlessness from Fëanor's spirit. There was a sense of seething anger about it, as if it were about to swell into a maelstrom of bitterness and protest. He decided to speak to Fëanor once more to determine if he could stem the tide of malevolence issuing from the fëa.
"What is troubling you, Fëanor?" he enquired. "I sense your restless spirit, and it is disturbing to me."
The spirit oozed a dark energy, which swept over Mandos in its intensity. "Ever since you spoke to me of Morgoth, I have felt a disquiet that I cannot bear," it seethed.
"Why are you still troubled?" asked Mandos. "You declared that you were not interested in helping us, and I am not convinced that you will ever do so."
"I have said that I would. It disturbs me that the Evil One continues to exist, and that he pursues my Silmarils with never-ending relentlessness! Will his malice never be gone from the world?"
Mandos responded with anger. "He does not merely pursue your Silmarils," he thundered. "He wishes to destroy our world and all who dwell here. Any possibility that he could obtain more Silmarils will perish with the destruction of Valinor. Do you not see that our only hope to continue lies in finding a way to vanquish Morgoth forever? We must work together to do this, Fëanor."
"How is it possible that he could now destroy the world when he could not do so in the past, while his power was much stronger?" Fëanor asked with the sound of scorn in his voice.
Mandos replied: "The Lord Manwë has let Morgoth enter his thoughts. He is not sure of the extent of the Dark One's power. He understands the workings of evil better than he did in ages past, and still grapples with the agony of knowing that Morgoth is his twin brother. He still cannot fathom that his brother is capable of terrible misdeeds, and the enormity of those evil deeds." Mandos appealed to him again. "I do hope that you will see your way to helping us, Fëanor. It would go far to improve your standing here."
Fëanor was silent for a while. Then he spoke.
"How do I know that you speak the truth to me?" he asked.
"You should know that we Valar do not lie," replied Mandos, his voice a mere whisper.
"Then, I will tell you this. If you can find a way to bring him here, I will see it done," said Fëanor. "I will make the Silmarils, but I have one demand. That I should be the one to give them to Morgoth face to face."
Mandos was pleased that Fëanor had asked for this task. It would not be as difficult as the outright betrayal of this Elf, which Manwë had reluctantly agreed to do when he struck his distasteful bargain with Morgoth. Manwë had been very loath to sacrifice Fëanor to Morgoth, even though the Noldorin prince had turned to evil ways himself in the long ago past. It was not known whether or not his time spent in the Halls had cured Fëanor of his pride, his dark lust for riches and for power.
"You said previously that you did not remember the formula for making the Silmarils. How is it that you now believe you can make the jewels?" Mandos enquired of him.
"Do the Valar not have the ability to retrieve that information from my memory?" asked Fëanor.
"Yes, but only from one who is willing," stated Mandos.
"I have said now that I will help you," replied Fëanor. "I am willing."
"I appreciate what you are saying," said Mandos, "but we have already received the formula from your great-granddaughter who had learned it long ago from her ancestors, your descendants, one to another. She had forgotten it also, but Irmo retrieved it from her memory when you said that you would not help us."
Fëanor ruminated over Mandos' words in silence before he spoke. When he did he was no longer angry. "I would like to meet my great-granddaughter," he said.
Mandos was pleased. He now felt sure of Fëanor's cooperation. Mandos could not get a sense that the Elf would soften enough to feel a kinship with Lindaril or with anyone, but he was willing to accept the promise of cooperation from him and to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Frodo and Lindaril had returned to Estë's house, and after searching about for awhile, found her in the library. Bilbo was with her, and they had been discussing the efficacy of using his maps as helpful devices for newcomers to the Undying Lands, to show them where the various places of interest were. When Frodo and Lindaril entered the room they were greeted warmly by both Bilbo and Estë, whom they joined, eagerly waiting for a chance to tell Estë their news.
"Let me ask you something, Frodo," Bilbo said, before Frodo had a chance to speak. "If we had been given a map when we first arrived, do you think it would have made it easier for us to decide where to live?"
"Well, I don't know, Bilbo," said Frodo. "I would have had to stay here anyway, since Estë was curing me with her powers of healing, and that process took us quite a long time. Then I met Lindaril, and she, too, needed to stay here for a while in order to become fully healed. Then we both liked it here so much that we stayed. I really do not think that maps would have made a difference to us."
Bilbo was fidgeting impatiently during Frodo's explanation.
Frodo saw this, and felt that he had hurt Bilbo's feelings. "Not that the maps you have made aren't wonderful," he said. "I am sure that they would be very helpful to new, healthy arrivals in this land."
"But there aren't any HEALTHY arrivals in this isle of Estë's!" he complained.
Everyone laughed at this, and Bilbo became thoughtful for a moment.
"You know," he said finally. "I do believe you have hit on something, Frodo. I should not be living here. It is not a useful place in which to give away my maps. I should be on Tol Eressëa, where the new arrivals disembark from the ships. Perhaps it is time I moved on. Tol Eressëa would perhaps suit me better. I have always enjoyed the cooler climates."
Frodo began to protest. "The climate on Valinor is the same everywhere!" he said.
"What I meant was that the air seems cooler on the island, because of the proximity of the sea," said Bilbo. "In any case, I think that I will move there. I shall go now to pack up and get ready. You must not in any way feel sorry that I have gone, Frodo. We shall visit each other often. I think, also, that you and Lindaril need to be left alone to get to know each other better. You do not need an old man to get in your way."
"Old man!" exclaimed Frodo. "You look as young as I do!"
Bilbo chuckled. "Estë and Irmo have been wonderful to me, but there is no need for me to remain here forever. I shall give up my room to someone new who shall arrive and perhaps need it more than I do. Thank you all for helping me to see that this is something that I really want. I will come and say goodbye to every one of you before I leave."
He turned and hurried out of the room.
Estë smiled at Frodo, who looked stricken. "Do not be sad. I do believe this is the best choice for Bilbo," she said.
"I shall miss him terribly," said Frodo.
Lindaril, who was impatient for their conversation to finish so that she could tell Estë of their idea, then spoke. "Frodo and I have come to tell you something of great importance. He has had an idea. He asks if it would be possible to take the existing Silmaril and break it, or cut it into much smaller fragments, seventy thousand in fact, to give to Morgoth." She stopped to take a breath.
Estë began to admonish Lindaril for telling the secret, but she was very interested in Frodo's idea. However, she doubted that it would be possible to make such a large number of new gems from the old one.
"They would be of such small size that I am not even sure that it would be physically possible to cut the Silmaril into that many pieces. Then there is the question of whether or not Morgoth would accept them as new jewels, or simply see them as a reworking of the old one and then refuse our offer."
"We wondered if Morgoth had asked for actual new jewels. If he did not specify that they should be new, then breaking the existing one may yet be in keeping with the bargain that he struck with Manwë."
Estë sighed. "I do not know the answer to this. Let us wait until Irmo returns from his visit on Taniquetil. He may be able to give us more information that would clarify things for us. I am rather impatiently awaiting his return in any case. I have been talking with someone else who has promised to help us speak with Fëanor. We were planning to go to the Halls of Mandos tomorrow, and she is to accompany us. You know of whom I speak, Frodo."
"I do?" Frodo was startled.
Estë then crossed the hall and went into an adjoining room. When Frodo turned his head to look, he saw a tall, slender woman, clothed in a white cloak with a voluminous hood. He saw another figure with her. It was someone cloaked in pale gray, who disappeared when the tall woman began to walk toward him. The tall woman reached up and lowered her hood, exposing a wealth of gold and silver hair. Frodo had recognized her by her gait, even before she showed her face.
"Lady Galadriel!" he exclaimed.
Galadriel looked like herself again; rather, she looked as she did when Frodo had first met her in Lothlorien, rather than she did when he had last seen her on Tol Eressëa. The faded look was gone. She appeared robust and well, and the light of the Elves shone in her face.
Lindaril stared at Galadriel, her eyes wide with wonder.
"It is wonderful to see you again, too, Frodo," smiled Galadriel. She turned and looked at Lindaril with much interest.
"Allow me to introduce Lindaril, who has recently arrived from Middle-earth," said Estë. "Lindaril is the great-granddaughter of Fëanor, whom we have been discussing these last few days. "Lindaril," and she turned to the younger Elf, "please welcome Galadriel, a cousin of your great-grandfather."
The two female Elves of the Noldor nodded to each other, and if she had looked closely, Lindaril would have seen tears in Galadriel's eyes.
"It is an honor to meet you," said Lindaril, bowing her head.
"Please, everyone, make yourselves comfortable," said Estë, and invited them all to sit down. "Galadriel knew Fëanor long ago when they were young. Fëanor is her half-uncle. She is going to come with us to the Halls to speak with him, and perhaps help to convince him of our need for his help."
"What can she do?" Lindaril blurted out. "If anyone should be going to the Halls of Mandos to speak with Fëanor, it should be me!"
"Do not upset yourself, Lindaril. The matter is a complicated one," said Estë. "Mandos has said that Fëanor has been uncooperative and unpredictable. Galadriel thinks that if she can talk to Fëanor, she can convince him to help us."
Galadriel added, "I knew Fëanor well, a very long time ago. At that time, he was eager to please me and he sought my friendship. However, I refused it to him, and our relationship grew bitter. Now I am willing to make amends with him, if it would be of help in our mission to save Valinor. Fëanor always possessed an intensely fierce spirit, but he ever sought my approval, and was upset when I spurned him. My feeling is that if his spirit were softened by my friendship that I would now willingly give to him, then he may, perhaps, relent, and join us in fighting Morgoth."
"What you are saying makes sense," said Lindaril, "but I wish to go with you. I mean no disrespect to you, My Lady, but I think that two of us, together, would perhaps achieve what one could not achieve alone."
"Then let us agree to wait until Irmo returns. We shall tell him of the ideas that we have come up with before we leave for the Halls," said Estë. "For now, let us make ourselves ready. I think I will go to find Bilbo before he departs for the Lonely Isle, in order that I can give him my farewell in case we must leave soon."
Frodo accompanied Estë to Bilbo's room. There they found him packing his belongings and his maps.
"Well, my dears, I am almost ready! I have summoned a wagon and I am just waiting for the Elves to come and load it up with my things. Do not despair, Frodo," he said, noticing his nephew's sad face. "You and I will not be parted for ever!" He jumped up and hugged Frodo.
A few tears were shed. Frodo then released Bilbo from his grasp and wiped his face. "Could I ask you for one thing, Bilbo?" he asked.
"Anything, my boy," Bilbo replied.
"Would you mind giving me one of your maps? I should like to have it as a keepsake," said the younger hobbit.
"By all means, my dear. You may have the one that shows all of the lands," said Bilbo, "It is a fine map, except that we did not do a particularly good job depicting the area around the Halls of Mandos."
"Thank you," said Frodo, "but that will be fine. I may be able to finish it properly, myself. I shall miss you, you old rascal."
"Until our next meeting," said Bilbo, hugging Frodo tightly.
Later, Frodo and Lindaril went to his room to pack some of his belongings to take to the Halls. While they were packing he regaled her with some stories from his past in the Shire, about Bilbo and their friends. She was much amused at hearing some of their exploits.
"Your life was so much different from my own," she said. She opened all of his dresser drawers to see if he had left behind anything that he might need, and pulled out a cloak made of an unusual grey cloth.
"What is this?" she asked.
"My goodness!" exclaimed Frodo. "That looks like my old cloak from Lothlorien! It was a gift from the Lady Galadriel, and it possesses some magical qualities that helped protect my friends and I from being detected by the Orcs."
Lindaril examined it thoroughly. "Does it?" she asked. "Let us take it with us. You never know! It may be needed again." She tucked it into Frodo's carryall bag.
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