F.O. 02
Elanor Gamgee does not have a very good memory of her time before the journey, and the sand, and the east and the great big golden walls of her new home. She's vaguely aware, as most infants are that something happened before the time that is now. Before her family lived here in this beautiful; glittering house. But again, like many small children Elanor Gamgee had decided long ago – or at least as long ago as she could remember – that was a time that did not truly concern her.
What mattered was now, what mattered was the present, and presently she was sitting on a pretty hobbit's knee hearing her favourite story. The one about the stupid smith and his unlucky eighth son.
'And the first seven sons were great and talented, and much pride did they give their father.' Said the glittering hobbit, her voice raising in volume as in another room that Elanor was not allowed to go to right now, there was a scream. It was her mummy's scream; she knew that and she couldn't help but fidget on the nice hobbit's lap. On the one hand she really wanted to go to her mummy, and see the new babies in her stomach on the other this story was really good.
'But the eighth was small, and crooked and the smith found no joy in this child. He did not even find joy when his tree wife finally gave birth to the squealing infant. He looked at him then and thought, my what a terrible thing we two have made together.'
It was a very good story, even if this next part always made Elanor a little sad.
'And so, disgusted that any creation of his could be so small and wretched, he swept the baby up before his mother could even hold him and threw him. He threw him out the window of their mountain top home, birthing blanket and all.'
The toddler on the fine hobbit's knee wondered if the new little baby would have a birthing blanket and she hoped that the wife of the smith wasn't in as much pain as Mummy was.
'The eighth child fell, and as he fell, he hit every rock on his way down – he had been ugly before, weak and frail looking but now, now he was beaten and now he was lame. But eventually all pain and suffering must end so it was true for the falling child for that child did not fall on the hard rocks at the base of the mountain as his father had planned. No, for the wind had seen the tragic scene, as it saw everything, and feeling a great swell of pity for the child it caught him just before the sharpest rock of the mountain could pierce the child's skull and kill him dead.'
'Princess,' came a low voice of one of the golden, shiny hobbits holding long sticks. 'Do you really think this story is suitable for such a small child.'
The princess snorted and laughed, she had a pretty laugh concluded Elanor as in the background her own mother screamed again, this time the loudest of all.
'Oh hush, Ballbreaker, she's enjoying it – or would you have us all just sit in silence while her mother is sawn open in two?'
The shiny hobbit had nothing to say to that, and so the princess continued the story. She continued to tell the story for the next, three hours or so… it was hard for Elanor to tell she dropped off to sleep after the first two. Because no matter how brilliant the story, hobbit toddlers needed a lot of sleep. And even in the best tellings Elanor had never been able to make it to the end of the story of the Eighth son without dropping off. It made the whole experience very confusing and the story very hard to follow.
When Elanor woke this time from story induced nap, the princess and the shiny hobbit were gone – and Elanor was being held by her Da. Carried really, along the glittering hallway of this strange house for turtles. He was murmuring soft things to her, but Elanor was still too sleepy to make out what most of them were; still when they came to the end of the hallway and stepped into a room that smelled of scraped knees and copper pots, she understood what he was saying to her then.
'Come on, let's go meet your brother and sister.'
Her Mummy was lying in the middle of the strange smelling bed, looking very, very tired and in her arms, wrapped in flowery looking blankets were two babies. Maybe if this were a story like the one the Princess had been telling her she would be able to instantly tell which of the babies would be her brother, and which would be her new little sister; but this was reality and babies wrapped in blankets all really looked the same.
Her Da plops her gently on Mummy's bed, and Mummy lets him take one of the red-faced bundles from her arms.
'Elanor,' said Da all prideful and matter of factly. 'This is your little brother, Frodo.' The red bundle in his arms gurgles, but makes no other sign that he even recognises his name yet.
'And this,' says the very tired sounding voice of Mummy. 'Is your little sister, Marigold.'
And the red-faced bundle in Mummy's arms starts to wail and makes such a noise that it hurts Elanor's ears, which only starts the bundle in Da's arm screaming too. And she decides then and there – watching – watching Mummy and Da trying to quietthem, that she doesn't think she's going to enjoy being a big sister.
F.O. 06
Elanor is almost seven by the time she sees the princess again – her father takes her on one of his frequent trips to the palace. It's the first time she's managed to convince him to take her along, and she suspects that the only reason he did this time was that mother was too…well, broken wasn't the right word, broken things moved from their beds. Or at least they always did in the stories Aunt Ji would tell her.
Anyway, before now Mother had always been adamant that Elanor didn't need anything in the grandeur of the palace, and Da, only really arguing the opposite because his daughter had begged to come with him, had always given in. Your mother knows best, Elanor; when you're a wee bit older, Elanor. Not, this time, Elanor. Elanor didn't know if he asked Mother this time and she just hadn't answered, or if he'd seen her, that strange lump in the blankets in bed and just decided to bypass the inevitable silence and take his daughter anyway. Maybe he thought it would be good for Elanor to get out and see life beyond uncle Hamson's homestead. Maybe he thought one less child in the house would get Mother out from under those covers. It didn't really matter to the six-year-old, just so long as she got to come along. Although she didn't really understand why he had insisted on bringing Aunt Ji with them as well; but she supposed that was adults for you, randomly making decisions and never explaining why.
The important point is that she is here, in the palace and, yeah, it's still the most beautiful thing she's ever seen. They're hustled down a long winding corridor, it's golden and silver, and memories, memories that had long seemed to fade under the fog of time start coming up again. Or at least the impression of them. She had been here, been in this corridor before, with her Da. She remembers the sound of his voice, telling her they were going to meet someone but she could not remember who. She hoped it wasn't just Frodo and Marigold because that would have been too boring for words.
They turn off from the path they had walked all those years ago and then, they're at a door and it's taller than the very tallest roof of the Gamgee/Xiang homestead. Or at least so it seems to Elanor, but then again she's only six.
The doors are opening and her father is being greeted by a hobbit dressed in a long cloak of feathers. He's smiling, the wide brim of the smile splitting his face in two and leaving little cracks around his eyes.
'Samwise, how good of you to come. How is your wife after…'?
He trails a way and Elanor thinks that kings really aren't that different from every other hobbit. No one really wants to talk about Wee Hamson anymore, not even Mother and Da. It was the same for everyone, they always lapsed into silence. Da says something to the king, indicating Aunt Ji with his hand, but Elanor isn't listening anymore – because this place is too pretty to think about all the awful things that have happened lately. It's too pretty to think about Wee Hamson anymore.
It's so pretty in fact that it takes Elanor more than a minute, and her father tapping her on the head for her to realise that the king, that most fabled monarch of technically all hobbit kind, had been speaking to her. About what she had no idea, but he was smiling politely in that way all adults did when they were waiting for the child they had just addressed to answer them, in some way. She hopes, in that ideal way most distracted children do, that it had not been a question – difficult or otherwise – directed at her.
'You've a very pretty home.'
Compliments the child had found always seemed to be what parents, or uncles and aunts wanted to hear. Well not necessarily her parents, they were more interested in why she was covered in mud, or what had happened to that fence or where she had tried to bury Frodo-lad this time. The king's smile grew as he thanked her for the compliment, proving that he wasn't much like Da or Mother at all; not even much like Aunt Ji who liked to have nice things said to her, but would usually see through the ruse if they were too abruptly stated.
'Why thank you young Gamgee, I'm afraid I have not the time to show it to you in its full glory myself, right now. As your father and I have many different important things to discuss – however if you would be amenable, my daughters would like to show you and your aunt the gardens.'
Daughters? The Princesses, she was going to meet real live princesses. Of course, she was aware – or as much as a six-year-old can be aware of anything – that she had probably met at least one of them before, but that had faded into the deep fog of all early childhood memories. She didn't even remember if they had finished the story of the Eighth Son.
But to meet them now, when her mind was probably fully formed – she wouldn't be forgetting this day not in a thousand, no a hundred, not twenty-two years would she ever forget the first time she had met the princesses, and could possibly be asked to recall the event.
The king leads her by the hand, with Aunt Ji walking behind to the middle of the throne room, where a beautiful hobbit dressed in a long blue, flappy dress stands. Her long black curls are all tied up with jewels and at least one tiara – or at least Elanor assumes it is a tiara, I mean what else could it have conceivably been?
'Hello Elanor, I'm princess Naunet; would you like to come see the gardens with me and my younger sisters?'
Of course, as so happens as we age, Elanor would indeed forget this occasion almost entirely. Flashes of the wonderful flagrant flowers of course, and the giggling of the princesses – but most of all what Elanor remembered in that first proper visit was Princess Naunet's smiling face as she finally finished her telling of the eighth son. Of course, being Elanor, she only really remembered one part of the telling; if anything, she was just lucky that it was the next part on from the one she heard last time.
Still, at least it was a good story that stuck in her memory.
'For more than a mortal day the wind carried the babe on its back and away from the danger of his home. For more than a mortal day, the damaged child watched the world fly by. He watched farmers at their fields, and bakers at their ovens, he watched trees grow and die all in the time it took for him to stop crying. He watched the whole of the first mortal day – which back then was a very long time indeed – come and go until finally even the wind grew tired and in the heart of the first and greatest of all forests the child was set down. Set down in the moss, set down in a cradle made from the forest floor and most importantly of all, set down at the feet of a sleeping giant.
'Now this giant wasn't like most flesh and blood giants that we know so well in our new age of the physical. No, this giant was made of the bark of trees, his beard was thorns and his eyes shone out golden and clear from the branches of the top most tree. And his feet, well his feet were the roots of all the great trees that drank from the ground. So perhaps it was a very great thing indeed, that when the wind placed the crying infant in front of this giants' particular feet, he just so happened to be already awake.
'WHO ARE YOU?
'Said the giant in that peculiar slow way that all tree giants talk – and the infant sat up and found that he was not an infant anymore. For while the wind had been carrying him the child had, unbeknownst to himself been growing. For you see in the time of first beginning, days were longer than they are now. A day then could last what we might call years now, and the infant while he had been watching the world age, had changed from babe to tot to tween without so much as noticing the subject.
'So now he could sit at the feet of that giant, he could look up into his tree like face and he could answer quite politely. "Why, no one sir – for my father never gave me a name." And at this the giant laughed, as if the very idea of a nameless child was absorbed. "THEN SURELY YOU MUST CHOOSE YOUR OWN NAME." And the boy, who had never really thought much of anything before, mused on this notion. Mused on it and then discarded it, for names were for the children that were loved and cherished by their creators. And what was he but the failed eighth creation of a crooked smith. He was no one, he was nothing, nothing but a failed son.
'Of course, while the boy had been having the new experience of an existential crisis, the giant had of course still been talking as it takes your tree giant a very long time to say anything at all – even in the tongues of mortals. And this particular giant was older than the very world itself, so he didn't even try to rush his words. "YOU MUST BE SOMEBODY, FOR EVERYONE IS SOMEBODY, OR AT LEAST SO I HAVE ALWAYS FOUND. AND AT THE VERY LEAST IF WE'RE GOING TO BE SHARING THE SAME FOREST, THEN I MUST HAVE SOMETHING TO CALL YOU."
'So, the boy smiled at him and said "Then call me the Eighth son sir, for that is what I am.".'
There is more to the story after that Elanor is certain, but over the years that telling has faded from her mind almost completely, all she can really remember from that point on is sitting in that beautiful garden, with beautiful yet strange and exotic flowers, listening to her aunt Ji bicker with the princesses. The Eighth son story was getting too violent possibly at this part and no longer suitable for a child of six to hear. Huh, maybe that was why she couldn't remember the end of the telling, maybe it just never happened.
Still the garden was beautiful and it had been nice to be away from the house right then.
F.O. 08
Baby Pippin is not a very cute baby, he's small and red faced, as most babies are but the thing that really stands out in the not cute department for baby Pippin, is the fact that he seems it have a permitted look of annoyance splashed across his ugly little face. Particularly when there should be nothing wrong with him.
Take now for instance, he's just been changed, he's been fed, he's been bathed – what else could he possibly want? Gold, wealth, blood? Spoilt little brat, why won't he just stop crying?
Elanor looks at him, swathed in his cradle and tries not to scowl herself. What was wrong with him? Was he lonely? Could be, right now he was the only baby in the house, until Aunt Ji gave birth again that is which considering how big she was growing should be any day now. No, maybe it wasn't that then; maybe he was just, yes, she bet that was it. He was bored, she remembered what little she could remember of that vague and lost time, in her life being often very bored while lying in her cradle. Maybe, she could do something about that, yes, she would tell him a story.
And there was really only one story Elanor cared enough to tell anyone let alone a wriggling, angry little boy who apparently did not like to be held by his big sister at all. How rude, how so terribly rude of him. But then, that was the Gamgee lot all over. Still even rude babies didn't deserve to be bored.
'Once upon a time, in the land where our ancestors were born there lived a smith, and this smith had a wife who was a tree.'
And so, she tells him the story that she, by this point in her life, has been told a hundred times before. She tells him how the father threw his son away and how the baby fell. How the wind heard his cries and saved him before he could hit the rocks below, how it carried him for the first mortal day of his life. How mortal days were so much longer back then, that the mortal eighth son of the crooked smith grew to tweenhood as he was carried by the wind. How the wind, tired now that it carried not a babe anymore set him down at last in front of the oldest of the Tree giants of old.
And then she tells him the next part, and this is her favourite part because it's always different depending on who tells the story.
When Da tells the story, it goes like this:
'And the Tree Giant laughed at that, and offered the cheeky scamp a sip of the water that grew near the oldest of the Giant's tree's roots. The boy drank, because not only was he very thirsty, having never had to drink at all in his short life, but it would have been a grave insult to his new host if he'd refused. For even back then the sacred rules of hospitality were known to all who yet breathed under the stars, and that included the first of our ancestors. So, drink he did, and for the first time the boy knew the happiness of a quenched throat.
'So happy was he to have this feeling that for the first few seconds he did not notice that he was growing. And grow he did my wee lass, he grew taller than he'd ever been before, he grew taller than his future sons and daughters. He grew taller than their children and their children's children, and all their furry footed descendants. Almost as tall as a man or an elf he was now, and when he took the bowl full of the sweet water from his lips, he realised it. And he laughed, for it felt good – and although he would always be lame, and ugly to his parents, he was tall now and as strong as his father could ever hope to be.'
After this Da would go to tell his wee daughter and all the other children who had crowded round them in search of a new retelling of their favourite story – all that the eighth son went on to do with his new found strength and height. How he mastered the art of the smith, how he sought and won the heart of the daughter of the great river. All the princes and their knights who he saved from the terrible cousins of the encroachers; and of course, throughout it all how he stayed humble and loyal to his duty to the forest. For his host was a shepherd of that most ancient and respected of woods, a duty that had been passed onto him by the very makers of the world, and the eighth son grew to love it as if this sacred duty were his own. This is why we respect the trees, and their shepherd most of all – for if it were not for their kindness, for their willingness to shelter a scared child alone in the wilderness, then we would not be sitting here now.
Elanor did quite enjoy this version, although it was one of the only versions, she'd heard over her eight long years of life that referred to the Tree Giant as a Tree shepherd, or included a lecture at the end. She remembered her uncle in particular becoming annoyed by this particular oddity of Da's storytelling.
'Come on Samwise,' said Uncle Hamson, pulled from his forge by the sound of the children's clapping. 'That's not how the story goes.'
'Well,' said Da with a stubborn edge to his voice. 'That's how I'm telling, you want a different version, you tell it.'
And so, he did. Although his telling was fairly similar in execution – knights, winning the hearts of the daughters (yes daughters, plural in this version) of the great river, riding in the hunt of lord Mobius1 and all that fun. But this time it was not his height that grew when he drank the water from around the tree's roots, but rather the hair on his face. A beard, as such as the oldest and finest of dwarves could only ever dream of. And from that beard he is given strength beyond imagination, and the wisdom of all his fathers that came before him. Which considering this is like the beginning of the world is just like two people – one of whom threw him out a window when he was born – but still as the hobbit saying goes, wisdom is wisdom even from a fool's mouth.
This was a much funnier telling of the tale, although as a hobbit herself – particularly one born in the fourth age of middle earth – Elanor could not quite understand why having a beard was something so very exciting. After all most hobbits couldn't grow beards, and that had never harmed them. Or why it was so much better than growing taller? Of course the way Aunt Ji told the story, neither of those things actually happened when the eighth son drank the water from the roots.
When the eighth son drank that water, he found himself changed, or maybe this is how he'd always been and it only took the awakening strength of the water, to make him see the truth. For when he took the bowl away from his lips, he found that he was not a son but a daughter. Of course, as anyone might the eighth child of the smith screamed out of shock if nothing else. And the Tree giant, being an old soul in this young world and therefore not much surprised by anything anymore, laughed.
'OH, CALM DOWN CHILD.'
Said the great tree giant to the quickly hyperventilating eighth child of the crooked smith.
'ALL THINGS MUST CHANGE, ALL THE WATER HAS DONE IS GIVE YOU THE POWER TO DO SO. IF THIS FORM DISPLEASES YOU NOW OR WHENEVER YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND, ALL YOU MUST DO IS THINK IT AND THE FORM WILL CHANGE, THE CHOICE IS YOURS AND NO ONE ELSES.'
'And the choice that I make, is it permanent, what if I change my mind? Am I stuck in one form forever?'
'THAT IS YOUR CHOICE, NOT MINE, CHILD OF THE TREE MOTHER.'
And so, the eighth child closed their eyes and thought, and then with a twist of their stomach they were a son again. And then just to see if they could they closed their eyes and changed their form back to a daughter, and so thus so they willed it and thus so it was. A daughter stood in front of that tree, and then a son, and then a daughter, and then a little of both. All forms were open to the eighth child of the crooked smith.
After that the story went pretty much the same way, winning the heart of fair maidens, rescuing noble princesses, slaying dragons, all the stuff a good hero should do. The only difference in this tale was that sometimes the hero was a heroine too. There was a lot of switching genders and shape changing in Aunt Ji's stories; and Elanor decided she did rather like that spin of the tale, maybe she'd include a bit of it in her own telling.
And yet it was the Princess Naunet and her sisters telling of the eighth son's trials that would always feel the most special to Elanor. Even though it was very much like the others. The baby was dropped by his crooked smith father, he was caught and raised by the wind, he was dropped at the feet of the oldest tree giant in the world, now a tween because days lasted much longer at the beginning of the world. And he drank the water but he did not grow in the princesses' version, neither in height or beard length, and he did not develop the ability to change genders. Because that didn't generally happen in stories that came from the people of the House of the Turtle-fish. What did happen was if anything much stranger than that.
As he drank the water, that wonderful magic revealing water, the eighth son realised that he was glowing. Not just on the outside where one might expect to glow a little after you drank magic water, no this glow came from the inside. This glow, this wonderful warm feeling glow had always been in him. Because this was the glow of ages past, this was the glow that gave the gods their power and the earth her life. This was a power beyond magic, beyond the skill of the Ganyman, beyond the strength of the sons of the Blarney2. This was the power of the gods, this was the power that had come before the gods, before the world, before the darkness – this was the power of the world trees, and the great lamps, and seeds that would become the sun, and the moon. This was the power of the great jewels.
The eighth son was no mortal anymore – and yes, maybe he had never been for his father was the maker and his mother the oldest tree. This is the truth hidden behind the lie and the fog of time. The light starts with all of us, but most of all my dear child the light starts with you.
Then, if memory served in that version, he went on to do some more god like things: being prayed to by the local man population, protecting them from their enemies and then possibly going on some kind of quest with his also god like older brothers. The seven sons that had not in fact been thrown out a window on the moment of their birth. That was a real good part of the tale, but it was also kind of the longest and not really the most entertaining for small children. It was all about looking deep within yourself and the power of the journey over the destination. If her small memory of her early childhood was anything to judge by, her baby brother was too small to appreciate the subtle nuances of that version of the story.
But there was no need to disgard all these elements of the princess's tale, or her father's, or her uncle's or even her aunt Ji's. They had all had part in her upbringing, why shouldn't they take part in her tale. So, in the story she told Pippin, the tale she would go on to repeat to the other children as they sheltered from the fire. The tale she would tell her own children on those long, restless nights in the new world ; yes, in that story the eighth son grew in hight, he grew a beard that gave him the strength of the giants, he gained the ability to give power over his own form and switch his gender when he willed it. And most of all, he realised what that golden light, pulsing inside of him really was. It was him, her, them, it was all of them. Every creature that had ever or would ever walk across the face of this land, and the next land. It was life, and life can defeat death. A bit morbid perhaps, but in the end, all the best fairy tales were just a little morbid.
The Deserts of the lost, somewhere to the side of the proper kingdom of Rhûn: F.O.13
Elanor no longer remembera exactly how long they had been walking, years were a little harder to record on the road. Especially when all your professionally trained scribes were behind you, left in ashes with the rest of well…it wasn't worth thinking of.
Really the point is that they had been walking for years now, Elanor knew that for a fact. Because when they had begun her little brother Pippin had barely been a year old, hardly even begun to think about walking. Now he was a boy, tall for his age – whatever that may have been – with a particular fascination with sword play. Or maybe just hitting other children with sticks, it is impossible to tell at this point in his development. And not far behind him is Goldilocks, wooden sword at her side, and a scream of possibly outrage on her tongue. Her little sister had been born on the road, born walking these very aptly named deserts; and Elanor was not even sure what age she was. Mother would know, or the Princess Ife, they both were really good at keeping track of things. Really, she should go and ask, that was the sensible thing. She should go and ask and then she would know, or at least she would learn.
That is what she should do.
It's just everything is feeling a lot lately, like even just walking on the road, on the sand, putting one foot in front of the other is too much. She wants to stop, she wants to sit down and not feel like the world is prickling her with the tiny needles of a porcupine. Huh, well that's a weird thought. Maybe, maybe she had over done it today – maybe she should just sit down in the middle of the road and go to sleep. Surely the others wouldn't mind. They could just walk around her, that was what they were doing anyway. Her walking had slowed too much and now, now she would fall behind. No matter how fast she walked now, she would still take to the rear of the caravan. So much walking, what was the point if she would always end up at the back anyway?
From over her shoulder, the baby starts to cry. She really shouldn't have offered to carry her. But Daisy, the current youngest of her many, many siblings had been fussy today and Mother was always so tired it seemed like the right thing to do. Although maybe if she remembered how heavy the toddler was, she might have thought better of offering this kind of help. Surely a day of cooking duty was better than the weight on her back? She could have ridden in one of the carts, instead of down on the ground with the other walkers.
The sun is so hot today, and Daisy is crying and over their heads the birds are screaming and everything feels…feels…woozy.
She knows she's stopped walking, but clearly not how long that state of being had been going on. Someone is screaming, someone is screaming her name. It is Merry, no Pippin, no Goldilocks. They're all screaming her name, and no…they're all screaming about her.
'Elanor,' screams one child. 'Elanor's bleeding!' screams another.
And the hobbit girl looks down at her feet, and her legs, which…which are covered in blood. Huh…funny.
'Fãö has blessed you, child.'3
These are the words, said to Elanor by every adult even just passively in her acquaintance. These are the words that she clings to as her whole body starts to ache and her stomach feels like it is splitting open. Being cut and hacked from inside her by a man with a mighty sword. Fãö has blessed her – just like she blesses all hobbits who walked under the newly blazing sun. It sounds less insipid and creepy when the elders of the different exiled hobbit tribes that made up their wandering caravan, said it.
She is blessed, she is blessed; and yet she cannot help but to doubt it because if it were true, and this is a wonderful thing that is happening to her; then why is everything so terrible now? Not that it wasn't hard before her cycle had begun, all that walking with only the vaguest of hopes that they might ever reach their destination before each and every one of the walkers collapsed and died from the eternal curse of old age. But now everything seemed so hard and bright and loud. The adults, the other adults she supposed now, were arguing in the other tent. She wasn't sure which ones although personally she doubted her mother was awake enough in the world to put much thought for her eldest daughter, no matter what was currently happening to her body. It had been a combined, and awkward duo of her father and her aunt Ji that had explained the processes to her – although thankfully a couple of years before it actually happened.
And now, now everyone had stopped the whole blasted caravan – just for Elanor. Just because of her courses, or her period, or whatever you called it. Just because today out of all the days or the years, or the centuries she could have done it, Fãö had chosen to bless the heir of Samwise Gamgee today. And now, instead of walking, instead of carrying her baby sister on her back, instead of doing anything, anything at all – she was sitting here in this red died tent. Useless, what other word could you say to describe her now, useless. And how long would this last, Aunt Ji said it was only a week for her family, but her father had said the Gamgees were more unpredictable than that. So, what was she to expect, was this her life now? To remain on this sleeping pad, surrounded by the pillows of the royal house of ™he turtles house, forever in too much pain to so much as lift her head to greet who ever had just walked through the opening in the tent. Oh, there was someone else in the tent, she should probably sit up. And she would, the second her head was released from the grip of her phantom vice.
'Elanor.'
That voice, that voice sounded so familiar, but who…and then it clicked and the daughter of Sam and Rose Gamgee felt rather foolish.
'Princess Ife.'
It was one of the princesses, here, come to comfort her. Her the lowly daughter of a former gardener; the world was mad sometimes.
She should sit up; she should sit up and face the princess at the very least. There was no Blarney way that she would have the energy to curtsy or bow or whatever you were actually supposed to do in the presence of royalty. But she should at least look at the princess as she spoke to her. Elanor did not sit up.
'I know you're in a lot of pain, and you're probably very scared, but all this is very natural and very wonderful. But then I suppose that won't help with the pain, I remember my first bleeding, I just wanted it to stop. It's like that way for most hobbits really, even Fãö.
That is hard to believe.
'Oh yes,' said the princess as if she's suddenly developed the ability to read minds. 'I assume your mother has already told you of the hymn of Fãö.'
Well technically it had been her aunt Ji, but she supposed that was a sort of mother, a mother figure at least, so it couldn't hurt just to nod and let the princess come to her own conclusions at that.
'Good – so you know already how the sky that had once shone only with starlight, was suddenly ablaze with the light of the sun. How it blinded all in the village save for Fãö who had gone out Wolfberry picking, tripped and got her head stuck in the prickly plants when the sun rose for the very first time.'
Of course, everyone knew that – although when her father had told her the story it had been a bramble patch Fãö had fallen into, not Wolfberries. But he was a hobbit from the west, so she supposed he was bound to get a few things wrong.
'How now that Fãö was the only one in the village who could see – the chores of the town were left mostly up to her. The water carrying, the harvesting of the grain, the repair of the huts – for in their new state the others were helpless. The only one who was not – besides Fãö herself of course – was the seer of the village, Wǖlf who had been blind his whole life and thus was used to this state of affairs. He helped where he could, but he was an old hobbit and crooked of leg and spine. But the seer told Fãö not to fear, for by the time the earth grew cold again all would be well.
'And yet time passed, more than the months it should have taken for the winter seasons to arrive, and the earth never grew cold – for you see in those days the sun did not know how to set. And so, the land baked under its heat, and many places that had once been lush forests were now dried and dead, left to nothing but desert. Under this heat the crops could no longer grow, and the rivers evaporated entirely, and soon Fãö's people began to starve, and die of thirst. And for Fãö all seemed lost, until the day that Wǖlf came to her with a vision he had had while he slept.
'And he told her to go to the highest point of the mountain over their village, and to sit on the flat rock that would greet her when she arrived. To sit there and to pray to the ancestors to deliver them the gift of night and day.'
Elanor knew most of this of course, it was the one part of the discussion on the monthly bleeding that had not felt horribly, horribly embarrassing. Still, listening to it was at least a distraction from the stabbing pain in both her wombs.
'And climb the mountain she did, and when she arrived at the flat-topped rock at the very tip of the mountain, though it used no words her body ached to such an extent that just the thought of sitting down, was like a greeting from an old friend. And so Fãö sat on that rock and she beseeched on all those that had walked this middle earth before to grant her people a rest from this terrible new light in the sky. And she stayed on that rock for such a time that the sun bleached her hair white, and burnt her skin all over – and yet still Fãö would not leave, for she would not abandon her people, and all that now walked upon the middle-earth to their inevitable death. And the sun as proud and mighty as it was back then, did not like this and it hit Fãö with such a ray of light that some say she died right then sitting on her rock praying to her ancestors for release from this terrible heat.
'And do you know what happens then, Daughter of Gamgee?'
Elanor, the horrible pain in her belly lessening somewhat as the heat of the day began to cool sat up so she could look the princess right in the eye to reply.
'She travelled through the land of the dead, which was dark and cool and held no sun in the sky because the sun is an unnatural part of our world. She got off the stone, for it was not her stone anymore and she walked down the mountain. And she meets a lot of people, who died a long time ago; and I think…yeah, she reaches the bottom of the mountain she meets someone important someone really important. The Faceless one4, I think she meets him.'
The princess nodded, as if Elanor had said something truly interesting rather than just reciting the bare facts of take everybody know. Probably even those strange Took fellows back home knew it, and according to Da they barely knew any tales at all.
'Ah perhaps that is true for the hobbits of the West like your father, but here in the land of the house of the turtle fish we tell of a different ending 5. Yes, it is true that she goes down the mountain just the same as your tale, and as she goes, she walks through the domains of the ancestors, whose help she had beseeched when she had still been in the living world. The ancestors of water, the ancestors of food and the power of the farm; even the ancestors of mercy and courage. And yet, throughout each domain she enters she realises that she must leave it for the ancestors there can no longer help her save her people. Until at last she reaches the bottom of the mountain, where she sees not the faceless one, not a creature of death holding the jug of her salvation but a person who we have long forgotten.
'The first of us, before even Hobbick roamed the earth – the Eighth child of the crooked smith. And the son was tall with a beard as large as any dwarf could only dream of; and the daughter in them was strong as any many could imagine being. They were the first of us, and by all definitions they were best of us. And Fãö came to a stop in front of the eighth child, and she knew that her journey had come to an end at last. They spoke not a word to her for what was there to say once you had passed through the veil of the other world, the veil of death. Instead, all they did was hand over the jug they held to her. And jug was full of not water, but blood – the blood of Fãö sacrifice for her people. The blood that all of us spill, so that the sun may set and night may come to relieve us again. This is why we bleed Elanor, it is not a gift she gave to us, but a burden she asks us to continue for her. For our children, and their children, and on, and on, until the very air fills with smoke and the sun is wiped from the sky. Can you do that for her? Are you strong enough to bear the burden of it?'
Part of her would like to say no to that, but then that part of her wasn't the one being asked the question. So Elanor Gamgee sits up, and actually smiles at the Princess even though the pain is almost too much. And the princess smiles back and holds out her hand for the daughter of the Ringbearer.
'Come on let's go help your father with making the Fãö cakes 6 – I think he's gotten himself quite turned around.'
And so, the heiress of the ringbearer took the hand and let the princess lead her out of the red tent, and into the sun again.
1 - A fact that would have, and does seem slightly ridiculous to anyone even mildly familiar with hobbit legends of yore. The Hunt of Mobius is similar at least in aesthetic to the human concept of the wild hunt, composed as it is of the dead and manic souls of the bravest of Ganymen, and hobbits who lacked the sense not to die on a battlefield.
Its general purpose seems to involve hunting down hobbit souls who had the misfortune to die far away from home, and without a Ganyman by their side. However, what makes its inclusion in a tale of the very first of the Ancestors – those long dead folks who lived before even Hobbick (first of the hobbits) breathed – is that it's leader (the aforementioned Mobius) is absolutely a hobbit. In fact, in most tellings of his own tale, its generally accepted that he was born not long before the Princess Doe summoned her people to escape on the Turtle-fish's back; and in fact, was one of the first hobbit infants to come aboard the beast. Meaning the leader (and founder) of the hunt would have been born long after the mysterious eighth son was dead and buried. This is particularly strange, as the hunt is only ever found in Shire variations of the legend, in which the eighth son achieves neither immortality nor a godhood of his own.
2 - Another misnomer; as while at the beginning of the fourth age of middle earth, the sons of the Blarney were a firmly established, and fairly prosperous tribe of the followers of the Blarney sons magics; the Blarney son himself was not born until shortly after the destruction of the man island of Numenor, in the second age of middle earth. Once again, making it very unlikely that the eighth son would use the power of the Blarney son or his followers as any kind of frame of reference. proving once again that while hobbits may not approve of allegory, apparently, they're much more flexible about simply lying
3 - Considered the current head of the fertility Ancestors. She represents the power of the menstrual cycle – the ancient hobbit tradition of the Fãönotti, in where a young hobbit (and their family) sprinkles her first menstrual blood on the crops (or garden, or potted plants depending on where you lived) is done to honour her.
Her worship became particularly popular within hobbit communities popularizing the American colonies. Which is why so often appears in myths dating around that time, and from that part of the world. Also, why, she is a major player in the American hobbit/halfling pantheon. However outside of there, in more modern times her worship has fallen away until just the Fãönotti remains. And even there, many hobbits don't know the ancient tale, or why they even honour it.
4 - The Faceless One – sometimes called the Faceless Prince, is one of the most powerful and by extension the most feared of the Ancestors associated with the work of the Ganyman. Usually only prayed to or beseeched by Ganymen themselves and even then, only when there at their most desperate. So, it's interesting to note that in almost all versions of the tale, it is him that bequeaths the jar of her menstrual blood to Fãö. Perhaps indicating the strong association with the theme of the symbolic death and rebirth cycle, that many ancient hobbit cultures attributed to reproduction and the menstrual cycle in particular. In a sense to truly become the adult, the child you were must be laid to rest.
5 - This is a lie. There is no evidence, even in the deepest of Ganymen records that Fãö meets a different hobbit at the bottom of the mountain. Thus, we can only conclude that this tale was especially changed for the daughter of the ringbearer alone.
6 - Fãö cakes may be a slightly misleading name for the small sweat pastries made in preparation for the Fãönotti. As they are much closer to pasties, with sugar and fruit stuffed inside. What kind of fruit relies entirely on where you are in the world and what version of the tale of Fãö you grew up with? Considering the tale we just heard, it's most likely that Elanor Gamgee's Fãö cakes will have Wolfberries in them. Not generally a common fruit chosen in the tales from the land of the golden turtle fish, but when you're on the road you use what you can get.