Chapter 2: The Will of the Valar
c/w: trauma response; loss of child; descriptions of violence in human history
(~***~)
Legolas and Lossrilleth's families removed them from the beach quickly. The elves of Valinor watched them leave, heartbroken and in awe. (To their credit, by the time Elrond approached Cirdan the Shipwright about the need for a boat to return to Middle Earth, he had already been alerted and early efforts were underway.) Within the day Gandalf had received a summons to bring the grieving parents and those they called kin to something most rare: an audience with the court of the Valar.
In the great hall presided over by Manwё and Varda, the elves were subdued. Lossrilleth was practically in a trance. A film of tears covered her eyes but never fell, as she did not blink. Legolas held her tightly, but he was no better off. Fighting hard to keep bitterness from his heart, he buried his face in her hair, wishing he could dissolve into her completely. They took what comfort in each other as they could, but the silence in their souls where their daughter's music should be burned. Their families surrounded them in all the warmth they had in both body and spirit, for all the good it did.
The Valar did not even bother to discuss the matter with their audience. They listened to the music of the world, seeking a tune that would meet Eru's mandate without disrupting the great symphony. The opportunities were few. It was a time in Middle Earth when mankind needed to find its own path without the interference of other peoples. The presence of elves in those lands now could easily cause a great rift in the song of Ëa, to the ruin of all.
(In distant lands, a boy ran through the streets to the house of a scholar, carrying a message. Manwё considered creating a diversion, but then stopped. The scholar was risky, but this path could bear fruit.)
Finally, Varda, queen of the stars and wife of Manwё, spoke. Her eyes were still remote, as she looked out over all the vast possibilities of the future.
"Three must go," she said softly in ancient Quenya. Gandalf started to step forward, but she stopped him with a raised hand. "The Istari cannot return to Middle Earth now. The third must be the child's kin by blood."
Lossrilleth had no blood kin in Valinor, as she had been adopted, so Legolas's family began discussing between themselves. It could be Oropher or his wife, but it had been so long since they had been in Middle Earth that their knowledge of it may be fatally flawed. One of Legolas's three young brothers were likely candidates, but they had all been born in Valinor. It was not ideal for only one of the company to have ever been to their destination, for it was perilous.
Legolas's sister, a mere forty-eight years old, watched them all discuss the terrible situation. In her mind's eye she could clearly see her sweet niece and her father, Thranduil, smothering each other with adoration. Her father had lived in Middle Earth for a long time and had been one of the last to leave. He had known peoples of all races and their languages. He was an intelligent elf and fierce warrior. He was perfect for this task.
She ached as she listened. Not one person suggested or mentioned that he should go, and she knew why. She was at the verge of adulthood and had not yet released her spirit from her parents'. None would ever ask such a thing of her: it was always solely the choice of the child when they were ready. She tested the depths of her soul. She believed that she could stand alone now if she chose to. Without this, she might have waited another two years, or five. But she could bear it now if she put her heart's will to the task.
She looked at her eldest brother and his wife. They had always been good to her. Now they suffered so terribly – all the more because she knew he had been sundered from their mother too young himself. She reached out her spirit to join the others in surrounding them with love and felt her brother's wrenching pain. Decided, she stepped forward into the fray of her family urgently discussing what should be done. She quietly took each of her parent's hands.
She looked up at them and said, "Thank you. I love you." With no fanfare, she released her grip on the joined souls of her parents.
The queen Varda smiled her distant smile. This was the path she had seen. The sister's act of generosity and compassion would blow this quest forward like friendly winds into a sail. The act of selflessness would bring many gifts, for the elf maid would now become a great healer among her people. There was no disturbance of soul that she would be unable to soothe.
At first only her own parents noticed what had happened. Thranduil watched his brave daughter, eyes too bright.
"Ada," she said, "It should be you."
The family turned to their own, soon realizing what had happened. Lossrilleth and Legolas, raw from their own separation, wept outright. Legolas's mother felt both sorrow and admiration for her youngest child, who now stepped willingly into the shoes of an adult: stretching her own limitations on behalf of another.
Thranduil felt it was imperative to honor his daughter's sacrifice. His eldest suffered and his grandchild needed assistance from someone not so personally wounded as both her parents were. Whatever hesitation he might have had at separating from his beloved wife to travel to that cursed land again paled in front of his reasons to go.
"So be it," he said with finality.
The company decided, the Valar gave them their instructions. Manwё himself spoke to the three elves, cautioning them,
"It is now a crucial time in mankind's development, and they must make their choices for themselves. Do not bring attention to yourselves. Join no fight except to defend your own life or the life of your kin. When you find the child, return immediately."
Turning to Lossrilleth, Manwё spoke seriously, "Child of humanity, you are not so far removed that you will not be tempted. You will see things you know and fear them. You will want to protect them from themselves. You may not intervene. If you do, we shall remove your spirit from your body and your kin shall have to carry on without you as you face judgment in the Halls of Mandos."
Her jaw was clenched, but Lossrilleth nodded in agreement. She would not abandon her child by disobeying. Fear crept into her heart, though. She dreaded to know what humanity was up to. They were ingenious, but their innovations frequently outpaced the speed of their wisdom. They had burned it all down once; she knew they could do it again.
"And Lossrilleth," the lord of the Valar said seriously, "You have knowledge that is not for the elves. You have kept your silence well – although you almost tipped your hand once to your husband, do not think we did not notice. Do not falter now."
She looked at the floor as all those she cared about stared at her curiously. She could do nothing but nod again and bite her tongue. (Legolas tried to think what they were speaking about, but he didn't know what it could be.)
The Valar sent them out to prepare for the challenge that lay ahead. They would give no guidance as to where the elves should travel when they arrived. Although all the elves gave their best efforts to speed the work along, it was maddeningly slow for the poor parents. No ships remained that would serve this purpose, so a new one was commissioned. As time passed, their initial frenzied reactions dulled down to a never-ending ache that plagued their every day and night. They avoided all feasts and parties. Legolas spent long hours alone in the forest, feeling numb. He and his wife would not see each other for days at a time. Lossrilleth prepared for their journey with relentless determination. She insisted on learning how to defend herself in armed conflict, practicing for hours on end with anyone who would assist her. It kept her moving, and she thought she might need it.
Thranduil and Legolas planned to bring with them only what they could carry, dressing for the deep forests. They wanted to stay largely unseen there, hunting and foraging for what they needed. Beyond all hope they prayed that once the three crossed the Straight Road, Legolas and Lossrilleth would be able to feel their daughter again and follow that thread to her location without delay. They reviewed their knowledge of the tongue of Western men (now centuries too old), but more than that they sharpened weapons long unused and warmed them up in the training grounds.
Lossrilleth wanted to scream at how naïve they were being. Centuries had passed since any elf had been to Middle Earth and yet they assumed that it was still the age of the sword, for they had known nothing else. Lossrilleth took the Valar's hints about humanity's activities as clues, trying to predict what they might find when they arrived. Elrond finally called Gandalf, Legolas, and Thranduil to his home, where Lossrilleth had been staying for days as she tore through his library.
"She has been asking me everything she can find about the ways of man when the elves left Middle Earth," Elrond told his guests. "Their customs, clothing, food, weaponry, architecture…"
Where tapestries had once hung, she had cleared the walls to create something strange. Along a long thread, she had strung out reams of notes and sketches, stuck to the walls with pins. Everything she wrote was in the language she shared with Eru, which the elves could not read.
"What is this?" Thranduil asked, taking in the unfamiliar scene. Legolas was more concerned about her. He could tell she felt incredibly odd in a bad way. How long had it been since they'd touched? He realized that in their grief they had been neglecting each other – a dangerous practice for beings permanently connected by their souls.
"It's a timeline," she answered. "It was the history of mankind in my old world – as much as I can remember. I couldn't write in Sindarin because I don't know what I'm allowed to tell you… but they didn't say I can't usethis knowledge. I just can't share it before it reveals itself. The history of this world is very different in most ways, but there are some analogs. I think I've figured out about where the final destruction of Sauron might have fit in. The elves of the Greenwood left the latest – I should pick your brain," she said absentmindedly to Thranduil. (Whatever that meant – she used strange idioms sometimes, but they were all used to it by now.)
"How long has it been since you said you left? Six or seven hundred years?" She turned to see the wizard and three elves looking at her curiously.
"Look," she said. "This is a century." She held her arms over a span of about three feet. "I think the beginning of the Fourth Age in Middle Earth should be about… here… in the 10th or 11th century of my old world. Now if humanity has progressed much the same, that would put us about – here."
She stood before the history of the 1500s and 1600s (mostly of Europe: her schooling had been uneven everywhere else). The Renaissance. The beginning of Europe's brutal colonization in the Americas. Slave trade. The printing press and the democratization of information. Bloody rebellions. Another century and the quickly building avalanche of industrialization would be well underway. Muskets! The Spanish had muskets by the mid-16th century. Was her baby out alone in the world full of brutal humanity – with guns?
Gandalf tried to move her attention, watching her feverish distress building as she looked over the notes before her. "And where were you on this 'time line'?" he tried.
She frowned lightly at him, then started counting in three-foot-long segments. She'd only got so far as the 17th century, so she measured against the wall with her hands. She got to the end of a wall and had to move to the next one – factories, electricity, vaccines, antibiotics, trains, planes, cars, the space age, bigger guns, world wars, the atomic bombs hitting Hiroshima and Nagasaki, climate disaster. She pointed at the empty space centuries ahead of where she claimed they had last met humanity.
"Here I was born." She moved her finger no more than a foot. "Here humanity's greed and stupidity grew so great that the planet itself rose up and fought them down, razing the earth to ruins."
She turned to her audience, thinking their looks of fear were for her daughter or the world. "You don't know what they're capable of. You think you know, but you don't."
Legolas was the first to speak. "What is it that you are feeling right now? I don't understand it."
She took stock of herself. Her mouth was dry. Nausea rolled through her. Her face was hot. Her palms, covered in sweat.
"Sick," she said. "I feel sick. She's out there, alone, with them."
"Enough of this," he answered. He strode over to her with renewed purpose. He could do nothing for their daughter any faster than it was being done already, but he could take care of his wife now. She resisted him at first, but it was hard to keep it up with someone who shared her soul.
"Come home, meleth nin," he said, holding her tight.
"It's too empty," she sobbed.
"Bring her to our healing rooms," Elrond offered, but Legolas rejected the idea.
"It's too close to that monstrosity on the wall – she'll be sneaking in here in the night to obsess over it. It's eating at her. She needs to get away from it."
"Go wait in the garden, then," Elrond replied. "I will go and speak with Galadriel and Celeborn. They have rooms for guests."
Legolas needed no more prompting. He picked her up against weak protests and brought her out into the kitchen gardens where she had once learned to bake lembas with her foster mothers.
Thranduil waited for them to leave, then leaned down to inspect his daughter-in-law's efforts. He had forgotten to account for how quickly humanity could change.
"She must fight back the despair, or she will go mad," he commented to the wizard, who was looking along. "But she isn't wrong, is she? And this knowledge she has… if she can keep her heart steady, it could be useful." Gandalf agreed, looking grim.
Within an hour Legolas was moving Lossrilleth into Galadriel and Celeborn's domain. As with the other elven communities, many who had once lived in Lothlorien chose to live close together in Valinor. The neighborhood was filled with yellow mallorn trees that could be admired easily from the many open-air rooms. High in one such place, on a clean bed in the bright air, he tended to her and to himself. He realized they could not help their daughter if they were not well.
"I remember you," he said, resting his forehead against hers and looking into her eyes. "I remember when we promised each other our lives under the great tree, out in the wilds. I remember those happy months that followed, when we had only each other to please and half of Aman to explore." His wife smiled weakly back at him, reaching for the lifeline he offered her.
He continued, "I remember how happy I was when you came back out of the mists of Eru. I thought maybe you had gone forever. You looked like a cloud," he stroked her white hair, "floating in the breeze. But you were so much stronger than a whisp of cloud. You were willing to risk everything you had, down to your own life, just so I could be free. Just so we could hope to love without chains. In blessings or in sorrows, … those were your words."
He was invoking strong memories, bringing their emotions to the surface. They flowed to her through him. She began to see how unwell she'd become. She was as weak as a newborn.
She called forth her own memories of him. How he had followed her to the end of the earth just for the chance to court her. How willing he had been to accept her and her strange past. How he had faced painful temptation and overcome it, holding no blame for her part in his trials. How he looked whenever he moved, invoking warm liquid feelings in her body. Her limbs felt heavy, but she lifted her hand towards his face anyway.
"I remember you," she replied. For the first time in months, they slept in each other's arms.
Galadriel came by often in the weeks that followed, soothing the rabid thoughts that sometimes plagued her patient. Some of the images she saw were truly horrifying. Galadriel let them roll by – they were not her concern. Day by day, she began to coax stories out of both Lossrilleth and Legolas about their memories of people being good and stories of humanity's greatness, until they could again imagine their daughter being helped and cared for by the many kind-hearted people that could be found in the wider world.
They prayed together for Angharad's safety. They prayed that the hearts of mankind would be touched by compassion for her. Lossrilleth prayed to Eru in their native English, appealing to him to protect and love Angharad as their own child. The couple's hearts grew strong again as they cultivated hope and faith, and as they relied on the love they shared for each other. Their daughter had sprung from that love. With it, they would find her.
