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NIGHTFALL AND THE KING
1 NIGHTFALL IN THE THOUSAND CAVES
Beren could have saved us. It is MELIAN who speaks. I knew it when he came blundering through My mazes, the glamour no more to him than the dancing shadows of leaves under the Sun. When I saw him before our throne, ragged and worn and mortal, hand in hand with our daughter (My daughter), and mighty as all his kind, the Guests, the Strangers, the Free. I knew hope then, that the Song might be changed, that the doom before us might be averted by his power, the power of all the Secondborn to walk unmoved by the Song, unbound by fate.
But your doom proved stronger, Elu My love, for whom I bound Myself to flesh so long ago, and until the End. Most beloved, what impulse of the Dark was it that touched you in that moment? I can guess but I cannot know; your inmost heart is closed to Me, single and unknowable as all the spirits of the Children. You might have conquered fear and welcomed him as our daughter (My daughter) did, seeing the splendour of his spirit. We might have had him to cherish as our son, for the little time that he would have graced our land.
Instead you bargained, as if with Dwarves, and less honestly, with evil in your mind. As if our daughter (My daughter) was your chattel, a thing of craft to be bought and sold, stolen and hoarded. Something to be given away in exchange for a bauble, a shiny toy, a lure to death. Oh, you may regret in time to come that I was true to the law that forbids Me to command or compel! When I might have fallen indeed and forced you to heed Me, for your own good and Doriath’s! He was right to mock you then, was Beren.
And now his oath and his quest are fulfilled, against all hope, at cost unimagined. The miracle has been granted, that should never have been. Our daughter (My daughter) is returned from the dead, and lost to us (to Me) forever. Nargothrond has betrayed itself; its end approaches swiftly. The Sons of Fëanor have fallen yet further, who might have escaped, given other choices. Finrod the beloved is dead, the heart and linchpin of all the realms of Beleriand, doomed Beleriand.
Do not curse Me without heed, beloved, when you come to Námo’s house beyond the Sea. Do not forget that I am not of the Eldar, and that other laws rule Me. Shall your people hide behind My walls until Melkor comes against them in His might? Our daughter (My daughter) will not be there to stand against him, or to rule your people in your stead. Beren has come and gone, and there will come no other Man able to turn fate away from us, or from Doriath.
My lord Irmo speaks to Me, and the memory of the Song dins in My ears, clamorous with Melkor’s deadly discord. The Silmaril is too potent for the Children of the marred world; they will cling to its light until it destroys them. It shines now in the deeps of Menegroth, and the shadows grow darker for its presence. It must go back to the West, to the Ones who made its light, who alone can hold it safe (My daughter and My son will hold it harmless, pure in their love; but only for the moments left to them). I cannot command or compel, nor may I take what is not given. And so the Song becomes inescapable, be accursed forever, Melkor who Marred it! The Silmaril must go to the Sea.
. . . . .
KING OF SHADOWS
King of Shadows” they named me in my life, friends and enemies both. “Greycloak, Hidden King, Elu Thingol”. Now I dwell in shadows indeed, and I no longer need a name. The fëa knows itself, and is known, and that is enough, here in the Houses of the Dead.
She asks, my love, my betrayer, why I did what I did; why I made the demand that doomed us all, daughter, people, realm. She did not know what I felt, in that moment when I looked upon the Man, and upon our daughter, and upon them together. She could not have known, being what she is: ancient world-maker whose heart and thought must be forever beyond my understanding, though not beyond my love.
Among the Undying, only Melkor and his creatures ever knew fear.
But when the Great Jewel was mine, bloodstained and stainless, ah! The memory of the Elves is long and sometimes we forget, and think it perfect. Yet when I looked upon that Light, I knew that my remembrance through all those Ages under Stars and Sun had been only a shadow of Its true glory. Even Her face, my love, most beloved, most beautiful, even Her light faded, before that Light. How could I have turned again from the living fire to its mere mirror? How could I have returned to shadows, even shadows so fair as the Sun and the Moon and She?
And yet. We the Dead sit in shadows of thought and memory. We speak seldom, even to those whom we most loved and hated in our lives. We think, we remember.
And I wonder, was it only my weakness that broke us? What Song would have been sung, if I had not asked for a Silmaril? If having It I had given It to those who made their claim bloody-handed? Fëanor’s sons wait out their doom in silence, but to Maedhros I spoke, king to king uncrowned, and kingly he answered. They too would have held the Jewel fast, the Light that their father saved, until the black tide from the North drowned us all. Late or soon Morgoth would have had us, whether the Silmaril shone in his crown, or in the deeps of Menegroth or upon Himring’s cold height.
And no armies would have come out of the West without the Silmaril, no help for doomed Beleriand. Only for the Silmaril did the Valar let my descendant and her spouse pass the walls of Their will. Only for the Silmaril did They remit Their doom upon those who went living into the West. Only for the Silmaril did They stir themselves against their fallen brother. Doriath died and our child was lost forever (ah Lúthien! tears unnumbered I have shed for thee!) only for the Silmaril. Only so that the Light that was stolen could return to the West. And so I too will ask: by Whose prompting was it, truly, that I desired the Silmaril of Beren? Was Beleriand and all who dwelt there always so little in the eyes of the gods, compared to the Silmaril?
Melian my Queen and beloved, I love you now and always, until the Great End of all loves. But the ways of the gods are not our ways, and Their care is for all the world and not only for we small Children dwelling within it. The Song is Marred beyond mending, but yet binds us all, Ainu and Elda alike. And so betrayal is woven into the foundations of the world. I do not hate you, my love, my goddess, and I do not forgive.
. . . . . .