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During the war, she waited.

Not quite the truth—she also walked, sometimes with furious intent and sometimes aimless, along the shore and up the cliff paths and sometimes a little ways inland, but she hesitated to go into the elvish cities where Eärendil had gone. The elves in Alqualondë were getting used to her; she could not be sure about the rest. The shores shone white and sparkling along the shingle, and she tried to imagine them soaked in blood as Sirion had been, and then tried to stop herself imagining it.

Alqualondë was quiet, a city with bated breath. Some of its mariners had gone to aid the war when Elwing begged them, and sometimes, left alone here in their place, she wondered at her fervency. It had seemed so critical, this war. But now it raged—didn’t it?—far away where she could not see it, though her pulse had never quite forgotten its roar. Somewhere the host of the Valar must be striving to make war on Morgoth, to end finally the enslavement and ruin of Beleriand and the world beyond. But when she pictured the war, all she saw was white ships landed at Sirion, and the brilliant gleaming host rushing ashore, in time to push back the ragtag Fëanorian forces, in time to snatch back her sons.

Sometimes the sky darkened in the east, even all the way across the sea, and the heavy clouds spilled toward the west before they dissipated. Even from the tallest cliffs of the Pelóri Elwing would not be able to see that far shore, but she listened for the crack of thunder and even more so for any uproar or cheer that would signal the war’s end.

And then there came the worst storm of all, a warping of the sky into dark and twisting wind and cloud, and then the very night seemed to open its maw. Amid the tempest there was a glint like metal, like chains, and then the firmament was sealed and the night began to clear.

Whatever it meant, it was the end of something.

And then the ships began to return. Not all of them—some had been lost, many of their passengers had perished, and a few had stayed behind while the elves of Middle-earth who wished to sail arranged their affairs. The elves of Alqualondë seemed to take this in stride, at least after it was determined that those Noldor who wished to return must first stay a while on Tol Eressëa, and Elwing wondered at their nonchalance. Valinor the forbidden land, closed for all these centuries: suddenly an open hand, beckoning homeward? But only for the elves, only ever for the elves.

And still she waited for Eärendil.

“He fought a dragon, I heard,” said one of her acquaintances among the Teleri—friends? She was not sure. “A winged dragon burst from the enemy’s fortress itself, and he defeated it from the sky.”

“And he flies still?” she asked, and asked again. “He will come back?”

He didn’t, and he didn’t, and then he did.

Not so long after the first ships came finally to harbor, there was a blinding light in the sky, and the silvery prow of the sky-ship.

Elwing had almost never run so fast. Pebbles flew from her heels all the way down the narrow cliff path and through the streets of Alqualondë. But the sky-ship did not come down to the water, and it did not sail into the docks of Alqualondë, and Eärendil vanished over her head toward the city of the Valar.

She stood with a stitch in her side, gasping for breath. The light of the Silmaril ceased to beam from the sky and was swallowed somewhere by the earth.

He came to her later, in Alqualondë. A cheer went up, and the populace raised boughs for him and rang bells and blew their horns and flutes in his honor. He smiled to them all, bowed his head, waved, but Elwing alone he had eyes for, and she could read the weariness in his every gesture.

When he had almost reached her she ran to him, dodging the last of the crowd. She threw herself into his arms and he caught her, and for a moment the world slipped away, and there was only Eärendil and the circle of his arms, the warmth and living solidity of him. “Elwing, Elwing, Elwing,” he was saying, and she pressed closer to him and shut her eyes, breathed in, tried to gasp back new tears.

“You came back,” she said. She felt him flinch.

“Let’s go somewhere,” he whispered, and she realized that the crowd was still all around them.

They went to the piers, out to the end, and sat with their feet kicking in the water. Even the air was more beautiful when he was here, sparkling off every rise and roll of the waves, sweet-scented and salty. The ships bobbed proudly in the harbor, and Elwing felt a rush of affection for them all, and for the mariners who manned them and even the dark and smooth walls of the Pelóri that rose in the distance. This land was beautiful, and free, and safe. She had no understanding of forever, the forever to which she had bound herself, but this moment was crystalline and perfect, and her heart was buoyed by happiness.

The small thorn in it was Eärendil’s weariness, the thin line of his mouth, the way he half-sighed as if he didn’t want her to hear. And he hadn’t spoken for almost all their walk to the piers, and now he sat beside her, holding her hands like it was the last time he ever would.

Slowly misgiving crept through her joy, cloying as the smell of blood.

“What happened in Beleriand?” she said.

“We won the war.” Still that dull exhaustion in his voice.

“I heard about the dragon.”

“Ancalagon. Yes.”

What was he not saying? She took a stab: “Did you hear anything of Elrond and Elros? What’s happened to them?” Her heart leapt to her throat in the long moment before his reply, almost choking her.

“They live.” He stole a glance at her. “They partook in some of the battles of the war, but they lived.”

“Did you see them?”

“Yes.” Each word seemed to tire him more. “Just briefly, before I departed.”

“They—do not hate me?” She could not quite form the question, could not imagine how Eärendil could have asked it. “They have our Choice?”

“They have it.”

“And?”

“Elrond has chosen like us.”

“And Elros has not,” she spoke what he left unsaid. Her heart thudded like a skipping rock. “Well. That’s one of them.”

Eärendil laughed, a little humorless wrinkle of air. “Not that we can see either.”

She flinched. “I know.” Her hands clenched in his. “So we are separated from them for a second time.”

“Elrond could sail, someday,” said Eärendil. Flatly, as though the attempt at comfort was recited by rote. “Elros has been made a King among Men, and he will rule an island kingdom that has been given to the Edain in thanks for their valiance in the war.”

“A mortal kingdom. Lands that we may not visit.”

“No.”

She leaned into him, closed her eyes. He dropped a kiss on the top of her head. But he was still stiff with some unvoiced tension.

“What else are you not telling me?” she said against his chest. “Why did you go first to the Valar?”

He almost pulled away, and then instead turned toward her, wrapped her in his arms almost crushingly tight, and buried his face in her hair. “Oh, Elwing.”

“It’s all right,” she said, frightened suddenly. “You don’t have to speak of it yet. We have time. It’s a strange place here, but we can find somewhere to live, and we’ll get used to it, after a while—”

He choked on a sob. “We don’t have time. You don’t understand.”

“Then tell me.” She leaned back to see his face, jaw clenched and eyes welling.

“I am not here to stay. In Valinor—in Arda.”

“What?”

“The Valar said—before I flew back, the herald came to me, and said I must go to the Valar to conclude my mission. And then…” He shook his head. “Morgoth has been shut beyond the world, in the Void. And someone must keep watch on that gate and over the emptiness of the Void itself, and besides that, the Silmaril must remain as a star of hope. And that someone must be me. So they say.”

“What? Why you?” In her heart a small voice was wailing: why had she let her guard down, why had she fallen for the baited lure? Peace and repose, a cruel and hollow joke.

“It is my doom,” he said. “When they appointed me to carry the Silmaril, it was not just to bring hope while Morgoth still reigned, or to aid in the war. The other two Silmarils have been lost to the sea and the earth, and the Valar mean to keep the remaining one as a token of light that may be shared with all. And I am the one who will bear it forever.”

“Forever.”

He nodded wretchedly. “I did not want this, but—I think some part of me knew.”

“Me, too,” said Elwing through teeth that were beginning to chatter. “I wondered if you would come back at all. It’s never wise to believe anything too good could be true.” But you did, cried her heart. You did, you did, you dared to hope, and now more the fool you!

“I begged for time to tell you,” he said. “If I have done all this for them, surely they owe me a small favor! And I will sail every night over Middle-earth, and every dawn return to the west, and there you may see me again.”

“But you cannot rest. You cannot stay with me.”

“No.”

“I will be alone.”

“Don’t say that,” he said, his voice breaking. “Don’t say that, Elwing, oh Elwing—”

She wanted to scream, as so many times in her life she had wanted to scream, against the wave of horror that rose and rose and buoyed her along. It was the substance and current of her life, it was the inexorable tide. But it did not drown her, it would never do that for her. So she swallowed down the scream and clung to Eärendil as he wept. She stared out over the cold and bitter water, and felt the scratch of memory: so many years spent staring out from Siron’s shore, conscious of all the darkness that gathered at her back. Here she was bounded by light and beauty, and she felt cold and dark as the Void.

The Teleri were good to her. They gave her shelter and food and sometimes company if she wished it, and she learned the shape of their language. It took longer to learn the shape of their affection toward her, or perhaps their indulgence.

She had thought they might see her as a long-lost daughter, a descendant of Elwë from across the sea, and they might. But they also saw in her the long echo of their own sorrows and grief, her own tragedy a mirror and a match to theirs, her bloodstained Havens an homage to theirs.

And beyond that, as the ships came home to port, some with torn sails or patched siding, and fewer crew than they had taken when they left, with them came also some of the Sindar and even the Noldor out of the wrack of war. They halted at Tol Eressëa, and Elwing watched from the piers, wondering if anyone she knew had followed her here. “We have forgiven our long grudge,” her friend Málanel had said carefully, with the diction that told her not all of the Teleri had found forgiveness so forthcoming. “So they may come home at last, if they will.”

Málanel, a cousin to Olwë, had taken in Elwing like a lost baby bird; this thought crossed her mind sometimes with fondness and sometimes forbearance. It was Málanel who told her that indeed among the newcome Sindar were some who had survived Sirion or lived at Balar, and remembered her, and were glad to know she lived. And they wanted to see her.

“I am not their child-princess any longer,” Elwing said, “nor their Lady. I command nothing.”

“Well, they need not serve you, but they remember you. It means something to them, that you live.”

“What do they want from me?”

Málanel smiled gently, gestured uncertainty. “Perhaps nothing but comfort. It is hard to be something to everyone, but also a gift.”

How many gifts in her life, Elwing wondered, was she going to receive unbidden and unwanted? How nice to think that others found her comforting. If only she could find whatever they saw.

Catching the tightness in her expression, Málanel added, “But it has also been decided that you deserve a place of your own by now, and the rule of your own life. You can make yourself a sanctuary, and take or deny visitors as you please.”

“Wait,” said Elwing. “You mean…” She took a shallow breath of salty air. “I am meant to leave Alqualondë?”

“Perhaps that is the way to move on,” said Málanel. “A tower will be built for you, I have heard. I am only the messenger, don’t look at me like that. I don’t know where yet, but please know, Elwing, you will always be welcome in Alqualondë. I will always welcome you.”

Elwing looked out to sea, away from her friend, her head suddenly light. If the sea had been west and not east it would have been just like Sirion, turning her eyes toward that flat watery horizon as though that way lay resolution, or at least reprieve. But Tol Eressëa interrupted her line of sight, and she frowned. The Teleri had forgiven whomever now wished to seek this shore, they had laid down their grief. Was Elwing a part of that? Did their forgiveness make her an unwelcome reminder, hold open the wound they were trying to close? Or perhaps it was nothing like that, only that she was a sort of creature made to be a little out of step, a little too strange. Even as an elf she did not belong in this place.

The cliffs where they built her tower were chalk-white, and tall seagrass carpeted the top of the bluffs, buffeted by the endless wind. The tower itself was of fine solid stone, its windows lit with lanterns, furnished with simple but elegant taste. It all felt very theatrical, like the setting for some play that Elwing had found herself performing without knowing the role, without knowing she was auditioning. Sometimes when she looked down at the sea and the distant, relentless waves, she got a twinge of remembered vertigo, the drop in her stomach of falling.

How supreme the irony, if the play that her life now performed had her live again on the edge of the earth and this time to be content there, and show that she would not try a second leap to her watery death. No elf or Ainu here could have such a dark sense of humor, but still sometimes the fall was all she thought of. She stayed in the tower until she felt the narrow walls’ encirclement tightening like a pulled knot, and she would go out to watch the sunrise, sunset, or the water break on the rocks, and wait for night.

Every day was like this, almost indistinguishable in her solitude.

Perhaps time passed differently for her now, as an elf. Or perhaps the days passed differently in Valinor, for anyone. Or perhaps she was come unmoored in time because she was lonely, she was surrounded for the first time in her life with pure safety—so they said—and there was something smothering about it, stultifying as the summer heat of Sirion. What should she do with her days, these endless days? She had not imagined answering that question alone.

Time had also been strange in Sirion when Eärendil was away at sea, not then because there was nothing to do—there was, unceasingly, something to do and then more things after—but because some part of her mind was tuned to the sea, waiting, and unable to do anything but wait. Eärendil could never know or even guess how long his voyages might last, and so Elwing had no days to number, no return to anticipate. The people of Sirion had refused to give up the Silmaril while their lord was away at sea—and he might have been away forever. It had not been a good stalling tactic. The sons of Fëanor had as little respect for Eärendil’s title as they did patience.

In Sirion she had counted the days, even as each bled away unremarkably into the next. Here she did not count the days, for there would be no end and no point, but she did mark them: the fading light, the sinking sun, the rising moon. Elwing thought of them as heralds of her herald, the star-bearer. Here in Valinor people sometimes referred to the sun as Arien, the moon Tilion, and Elwing came to realize that these lights too were borne by people—of the Maia sort, that was—who had also once dwelt here and been known to those on the ground. She might have pitied them too, for the doom they bore, but she did not know them. Their rise and fall each day was to her only the accompaniment for the true light.

Eärendil’s path was not as regular as the sun; Elwing tried not to measure each hour or worry if he did not appear by the time she expected him. She hated the way her mind would latch onto any detail and twist it to the breaking point like a frayed piece of string. What kind of life was it to sit here in paradise resentful, and feel half-alive only at the moments when Eärendil’s star appeared in the sky? And even then the leap of her spirit—he’s still there, he’s all right—was followed by a plunge into bitterness: he is so far, and I cannot reach him. Perhaps he was not all right; how would she know? He had an elf’s endless years now, but even elves faded. Lúthien had! This doom could ruin him, and for what? If Maiar bore the sun and moon, why must the Silmaril be Eärendil’s?

“It could have been mine, you know,” she said into the dark night, before Eärendil arose. She put her hand to her collarbones, bare against the breeze. “It was mine, and it was I who nearly died for it, and I who wished for this elvish life! If one of us must be so punished, why not me?”

And she felt a rush of misgiving, familiar now, thinking of the moment after she had spoken her Choice, when Eärendil beside her had hesitated. She had felt him steel himself before he answered, and she knew that he would have rather had mortality. But for her sake, he chose the life of the Eldar. For her, and yet here was she, on the ground, and he forever in the sky!

She waved furiously when his light appeared, but the ship did not slow or signal back, and she felt ever more the fool, a lone fool on a lone rock at the edge of this edge of the earth, gesturing wildly at the unmoved sky.

Málanel had not been wrong that everyone would want something from her, but most of the petitioners were polite enough to send missives in advance asking for an audience, or her presence at some event commemorating Doriath, or simply somewhat invasive questions about the Choice of the peredhil and about Eärendil. Elwing rejected these inquiries one and all.

Her great-grandmother Melian the Maia was not such one courteous and patient petitioner; she came herself to Elwing’s tower and sent a fleet of starlings and nightingales to chorus madly until Elwing came down from her balcony and opened the door.

She knew Melian by description—and because truly, who else would it be?—but Elwing had not seen her since she was too young to remember, some trip from Ossiriand into Doriath so that Dior could show off his youngest child to the king and queen. If Elwing remembered her it was the same way that she remembered Lúthien: an alluring presence taking up more space than seemed allotted it, and glittering in the corner of her childish vision.

“Elwing Dioriel,” said Melian, and it was the way her smile glittered that confirmed Elwing’s impression that they had met before. “May I come in?”

Elwing glanced behind her, where what few possessions she had were strewn across whatever surfaces were not precisely the floor, and felt a kind of claustrophobia seize her. “Better to walk,” she offered. “I’d like to see how you call the birds.”

Melian smiled again, a more ancient version of the sad smiles that Elwing had received all her life. She lifted her arms, draped in green and silver gauze that rippled like sun on water or on leaves, and the birds fluttered down to perch all along her shoulders and arms. Elwing thought of the scarecrows adorning the gardens in Sirion, valiantly shielding the rich and silty soil with their ragged outstretched arms, and almost laughed.

They made for the cliff path. Elwing could feel Melian watching her from the side. Perhaps all the birds' eyes watched with her, too, or she through them. Occasionally a few birds would lift off and soar away, or a new one would spot Melian from on high, and cry out a greeting.

“You look so like Lúthien,” said Melian presently.

“I have heard it,” said Elwing. She wondered if Melian had said the same thing when Elwing was an infant. Perhaps the consolation for losing her child was seeing their likeness reappear down the line. Was that how it was meant to work? Elwing wouldn’t know. If Elros had children, that would be lovely, for it would mean he’d lived long enough for it. But no child no matter the resemblance would bring back the years she’d lost with him, or salve the knowledge that she would never in any world see him again.

“How are you finding it here? It is very different, of course.”

“Well,” said Elwing. She floundered, trying to keep her words politic. “Well, it is very beautiful. And peaceful. I have never lived so far from war.”

“It was made as a refuge,” Melian said, “first for the Ainur and then the Eldar too. And I find myself grateful for it now, though time was when I sought for lands beyond. As you know, of course.”

“I am not permitted to seek any lands beyond,” said Elwing. Out of habit she looked to the sea, the brilliant tapestry of blue and white, the dazzle of the sun as it rose in flame, the carefree bobbing of small boats in the bay. “It was part of my Choice, the conditions I did not know I agreed to when I made it.”

“I can sense you are bitter,” said Melian.

“I am lonely. I—I know it was not your decision, I do not speak out of anger with you, but—why could I not go with him? Or instead of him?”

Melian regarded her sadly. “The upper airs where he sails are too cold and too cruel. You would not endure.”

“How does he, then? We are the same.” And I have your blood, too, she wanted to add, but she might not say it without an edge.

“He is shielded—”

“By the Silmaril? But I wore it too. I wore it first. If he can endure the bitter skies, so could I.”

“But it is not your doom to do so.” Melian reached for her, to smooth back her hair like a child’s, and Elwing shied away.

“Why not?” she said, mulishly. “They say we received a Choice, but we also received bonds that were not of our choosing.”

“So has said every creature that yet lives,” replied Melian. “The limits of choice are not unique to the peredhil.”

“But Valinor is more uneasy with the peredhil,” she said. “It was not made as a refuge for us. We could not be here as we were, only after our choice—and only if we chose the Eldar. And even having so chosen, I am here at the edge of the earth, and Eärendil is in the sky.”

“Do you feel yourself unwanted here?” said Melian, with what seemed to be genuine dismay. “I have heard only delight at your having chosen to stay.”

“Unwanted may be too strong. But uninvited is also hard. Unknown. Misunderstood. And I would have more delight if Eärendil could stay too. He did not choose knowing he would have to leave.”

“Eärendil was appointed a special doom,” said Melian. “This was not unknown to the Valar, and to Idril too.”

“Yes,” said Elwing, “that I believe, but not that the doom would be this. He knew Ulmo had chosen Tuor, he knew he had a better chance than any to reach Valinor and beg for aid. He didn’t know he’d be turned into a star for his trouble.”

“The recipients of great doom are rarely its architects,” said Melian. “None of us freely chooses our fate.”

“Lúthien did,” said Elwing.

Melian turned a strange look on her, almost faint surprise. The birds in her hair twittered. “Lúthien…” She trailed off. “Lúthien’s fate was to bend fate. I cannot say how much came down to choice, in the end.”

Elwing crossed her arms, and by instinct uncrossed them again. Anger should not be betrayed. “I thought the point was that Lúthien demanded a choice where none was meant to be possible, and she chose the unlikeliest thing.”

“But to bring her to that juncture,” said Melian, “what other fates were in motion? She did not break every string of fate by force; they parted for her. It is said that mortals are less tightly bound by the strictures of fate, but she was not mortal then. And mortals’ freer will does not mean a greater will, or of more consequence in the world. Was Lúthien’s choice only her will, then, or was it harmonized with some greater theme in motion?”

“Does it matter?”

“It might, very much,” Melian said, “or it might not. I have pondered the question a long time, and fruitlessly.”

“It matters to me that she chose what she wanted. I thought I was doing the same, but…” She shrugged, forced a note of lightness into her voice. “I suppose neither Lúthien nor I could know exactly how our choices would turn out. I suppose that’s the whole point of it.”

Melian smiled her ancient, sad smile, and a bird detached itself from her hair and settled light as a leaf on Elwing’s shoulder.

It is said that mortals are less tightly bound by the strictures of fate. Was that something Lúthien knew, and wanted? She had been an elf a long time. Perhaps death was the greater freedom, or perhaps there was greater freedom in mortal life, even if it led to death. For through death she had truly left the world. For freedom to exist only beyond death and beyond the world seemed a cruel comfort, for it promised nothing. Elves knew their lot: to live and live and live, and should they be slain, to pass through the Halls and live again. Somewhere in that shadowed prison Nimloth must be preparing her second life. Elwing could not imagine her mother’s return as a real event that was to happen, but failing any intervention it should come to pass, someday, and they would face each other as mothers whom war had dictated were not to be mothers very long.

If I had let Eärendil choose first, she thought, if he had chosen the fate of Men, would that have released him from his doom? Did I partake in the doom by choosing first?

Perhaps Eärendil and Lúthien had understood the same thing. If he had chosen mortality, she could have chosen like Lúthien, too, and stayed with him. The end would be sooner, though, and she had wanted time, she wanted peace, she wanted to think she could determine her own life and live it. But a soon end together might have been kinder than this long separation.

Even if she could fly with him, it would be better. Melian’s equivocations were no balm. If Eärendil could endure his doom, so could she, and perhaps it should have been hers. If Eärendil could not come down to earth, what if she could join him?

She stared at the sky as she did every night, but now she narrowed her eyes, calculating. The distance was very great, but the cold and bitter airs of the Void were elsewhere, after Eärendil’s flight carried him beyond the world. While he passed over Valinor he might be reachable. If only she could fly—if only she could still fly.

If only she could fly again…

The difficult thing was that Elwing had no clear memory of becoming a bird, and certainly no volition. She remembered terror and a bitter little fiber of defiance, and she remembered the Silmaril warm at her throat like a second beating heart as she fell. She remembered the shock of water and cold, and blood roaring in her ears, and then—

Nothing. She could, if she tried, piece together some sense-memories of wingbeats, sailing the air currents that revealed themselves like forest paths to her avian form. She thought she could remember the pounding sense of purpose, of destination, and falling again, toward that tiny white ship. But she did not remember becoming the bird, nor unbecoming. Eärendil had said she’d fallen on the deck as a bird and woken in her own form. Perhaps Ulmo had only ever made her a bird for that very narrow time and purpose, and it was foreclosed to her now. Elves did not fly, after all.

But Lúthien had played with her shape and form, and Melian was a Maia who could take any form she wished. It was said that bearing a child had bound her to her flesh, but even so: Elwing was more than elven and mortal. A part of her had come from something that could be anything.

She had, all the same, no idea where to start. She didn’t feel like a bird—she didn’t feel like an elf, either, she only felt like herself, insofar as that meant anything when she was here in a strange land among strange people and trying to break herself of the habit of anticipating death. But something in that self had known how to be a bird, or at least found it agreeable. Still, she could not search within herself and find anything conspicuously bird-shaped, just as she could not find anything distinctly elf-shaped. It was, perhaps, not just a matter of will.

Tuor and Eärendil had been close to Ulmo, invoking his name with easy reverence. Idril had been more circumspect, and now Elwing wondered how much she had known: plenty, certainly, regarding the gravity of a Vala choosing a vessel for their designs. Elwing had never been close to Ulmo before he saved her life, and was not naïve enough to doubt that her salvation was done less for her as a person in dire trouble than as a means of salvation for a whole continent of people in dire trouble. Ulmo had no need for her now as a tool. Why should he hear her supplication?

Still, she tried.

At the foot of the cliffs a ways north from Alqualondë, south of her tower, she stood in the rocky shallows where the breakers crashed over her shins and shattered into foam. The sea’s roar swallowed her voice even when she shouted, but if Ulmo meant to hear her, he would.

“Lord Ulmo!” She braced herself against a particularly forceful wave. “I come to you to ask…” No, perhaps the wrong way to begin. “I expect nothing, but I wanted…” No. “I never had the chance to thank you for saving my life.” Possibly? The sea made no reply. Seabirds wheeled over the breakwater and dived, and her chest thudded with longing. “I know you acted in service of greater needs than mine, but all the same: I thank you for my life, and for the gift of flight.”

She swallowed. “If I may ask, I have need of that gift again. If it was something that could only happen once, I—I understand. But Eärendil, whom you have guided all his life, still needs me. He is alone in his doom. If this is what you required of him, then let it be, but let his heart be eased in his journey, just a little. I do not ask to take on his doom, I know you cannot change that, but only—let me join him, sometimes. Let me succor him. Help me fly again.”

She waited, but her words fell like eiderdown into the wind, which whisked them away as they left her lips. The waves rolled on and on, and the salt crusted on her skin, but no answer from the sea emerged. When finally night fell and Eärendil passed and she remained standing in the shallows, waiting, watching, she understood that her plea would not be heard. Her body ached from the battering waves, each step heavier than ever as she waded back to shore.

The gardens of Lórien lay a long way from Elwing’s tower, and by the time she approached she was regretting not taking a horse. But she had wanted the steady plodding effort of her own feet, and the uninterrupted time to think. Or she had thought it would be uninterrupted, but all along the way she had been accosted by strangers and a few old acquaintances, who seemed to need to touch her to prove the tale of her new life. They wanted to see her in the flesh, they wanted to hear her say she was truly an elf, now. They wanted her to play some role she couldn’t quite divine: war orphan, lost princess, peredhel caught between worlds, sacrifice, redemption? Each and all, perhaps. For those who had never met a mortal, she might be the next best thing, even now resolved to the elven side.

“Elwing,” said Melian, stepping out from behind a trellis that groaned with the weight of vines and berries. She evinced surprise, though she could not have felt it; Elwing had announced herself when she reached Lórien, and besides far too many people had marked her passage here. She was already tired of being looked at, and Melian’s gaze was more piercing than most.

“I wished to see you again. I have questions to ask.”

“Of course.” Melian’s brow furrowed a little, and birds chirped on her shoulders. “Welcome to the gardens of Lórien. It is a good place for resolving doubts.”

“I want to be a bird again,” Elwing said without preamble. Her hands clenched at her sides. All around her the air was soft and warm as day faded to dusk, the boughs bending in the gentle wind, garlands of flowers painting an unimaginable rainbow over the arbors. She was a small stiff thing in this beautiful place, an unhappy blot against the halcyon canvas. “Do you think it is possible?”

“Why do you seek it?”

She did not want her desperation to show. “I want to fly to meet Eärendil when he passes by. And I would like the freedom of it. I do not quite belong here as it is.”

“You may not return to mortal lands, still. I doubt they would make an exception for a bird.”

“I know that. That’s not what I’m after.” She hadn’t even thought that far; her heart skipped a little faster at the idea.

Melian regarded her carefully for several long moments, her eyes like deep pools. Perhaps now her surprise was real, and guarded. “You were transformed once at a time of great need. I do not think Ulmo would have leave to grant such a thing twice.”

“But was it only Ulmo’s doing? Or was I able to be a bird because I am your descendant, and you are so tied to them?”

“That may be,” said Melian, “but Ulmo’s intervention was still required, I think. The blood you have from me is very little, and it attenuates greatly with each generation. Besides which there is the mortal portion. Even I cannot transform as I once did, as other Maiar can, for I bound myself to the flesh when I gave birth to Lúthien. And you were born bound to flesh, more so than she or I, and now you have chosen to live as an elf.”

“You said I am very like Lúthien.”

“You look like her.” Melian shut her eyes. Her voice was pained. “But Lúthien also could not transform her shape, though she could somewhat change or hide it.”

“Is there no way to know for sure, whether I could do it?”

Melian lifted her hands to Elwing’s shoulders, and her birds leapt lightly to rest on Elwing, tangling their feet in her loose hair. Elwing felt a great scrutiny press down on her, Melian probing and pulling at her mind and spirit as if carding wool. “It is difficult to say,” she said finally. “You might attempt deep reflection, and trance, and learn to master whatever ability you do have. I know not which route Ulmo took to alter your form, but you might achieve some illusion at the least.”

Elwing nodded. She took a step back, and Melian’s hands dropped away. Her throat was very tight, and she willed herself not to cry, not to speak before she was ready.

“You seem distressed,” said Melian. “If you wish to abide in Lórien awhile, it could be arranged.” Her birds were different here, not just nightingales but dozens of kinds, shimmering with iridescent colors that dazzled the eye. Elwing had to look hard to see that the darting colors were in fact birds and not jewels tossed through the trees.

“I am restless,” said Elwing. “I don’t want to rest here. I want to fly. All this—” She steadied her voice with great will. “All this space and beauty, and yet it feels there’s nowhere for me to go. And I keep receiving messages and visitors, and I don’t know what to make of them. I didn’t choose this life for their sake, but all the same they thank me.”

“You were very nearly lost to them,” said Melian.

“To them. What am I to them?” She scowled, and felt the quiet disapproval of the enchanted grove. The breeze caressed her soothingly, and Elwing clenched her teeth. “Do they take my life as something owed to them?”

Melian sighed, and a trio of birds rising from the bushes echoed her in sorrowful calls. “I do not say this merely as a mother who thinks the world of her child, and by her love is blinded. But the loss of Lúthien was more than a mother’s grief, or a kingdom’s loss of its princess. Lúthien was beloved, and when she died, it was as though the marring of the world was etched a little deeper. She left a wound.”

“To everyone?” Elwing wrapped her arms around her ribs. “Are you saying I would have left a wound too?” Her muscles were going shivery with that unpleasant swirl of nerves and pique. “Or that because everyone loved her, so her life belonged to them? She wronged them by choosing a mortal end?”

“No,” said Melian with anguish. “Fate had appointed her a great doom. By her choice the world has been changed, and the blood of the Edain mingled with mine and that of the Eldar. I do not say that she could or should have done otherwise.”

“But you believe,” she said, incredulous, “that Lúthien made the wrong choice. Or you would have wished it different.”

“Wishing makes no difference to fate,” Melian said. “That is one of the cruelties of foresight: I could know all things were seeking an end, and do nothing about it. Lúthien’s was a choice among sorrows, it was always going to be. Had she chosen to remain in Valinor, and forget Beren, that would also have hurt her heart. Perhaps in time she would have been healed, here, but it is not certain. It has failed before.”

“I chose that.” The words tasted like tar. “To remain in Valinor, in peace, in safety, and to lose Eärendil in the doing. But I did not know I would lose him. Lúthien’s choice at least was not a deception.”

“You chose life,” said Melian. “Can you regret it?”

“I didn’t do it for the reasons you think,” Elwing snapped. "I did not think of the loss of Lúthien, or the glory of Valinor, or the high grace of the Eldar. I thought of rest, and peace, and I thought of the terror of return. If we had chosen mortality, Eärendil and I would have been sent back to Sirion, and what then? To give the sons of Fëanor another chance to kill us?”

“You chose life,” Melian repeated, “and Eärendil lives. Beren and Lúthien won their brief second life, but they are lost now to the world for ever. You and Eärendil belong to it for ever, no matter where you are.”

“So,” said Elwing, and for a moment she almost lost her breath, as her chest seized. Her skin where the Nauglamír had been was always a little warmer than it should be, but the rest of her flushed too, incandescent. “So what I am is—I am recompense. For the tragedy of Lúthien, for the folly of Lúthien. I made the choice that you all wished she would, and I have redeemed her transgression. I see.” Her voice went sharp and brittle. She stared very hard at the trees ahead. The birds cried plaintively, and Melian hushed them with a gesture.

Melian inhaled carefully. She did not need to breathe, but she had learnt the gestures that others expected; she performed them now for Elwing, and it incensed her instead of conciliating.

“Elwing. I am sorry. Let me say, if you may trust these words: I loved my daughter, I miss my daughter more painfully than you could imagine. But I know you are not she. And I love you too, and I am gladdened that you live. May I not be glad?”

“You left before she was even dead,” said Elwing with a bitterness she could not contain. “You were not there to see all the times I almost did not live. Were you so afraid of Lúthien’s death that you could not even watch? Was it so terrible to see her become a weak and mortal thing? Were you repulsed by it?”

“You know what it is to be mad from love, you know what a mother’s fear is like. You left your sons behind too, while they still lived!”

Elwing laughed with an edge of wildness to hear the words spoken. How many people must wish to say that to her, and how few would dare! “I thought we would all be slaughtered like my brothers! I thought there was nothing left at all!”

“Elwing—”

“I wanted to die! Not run away to the safety of a cage, I did not want to come here! I did not want to lose everything I had left and be thanked for it!” She was screaming, her skin aflame. Why did anger always make her frail? Why must her bones feel like they would fall to dust? Why when she needed her own strength the most did it betray her?

But this was not the ordinary rush of trembling that came with anger to steal her strength. Something was happening to her bones, and her skin, first stretching and then shrinking, pressing her smaller inside it, and the world was blurred and shifting. New color erupted over her vision, and then the white haze of pain—it hurt, it hurt. She wanted to cry out, or grit her teeth, but she could not find them. When she flailed out against the collapse of her body, two outstretched wings responded.

Melian stood shocked before her, her hands out in supplication or defense. The anger and agony melted into a dizzying euphoria. Elwing beat her wings against the sky, and they lifted her above Melian, above the groves of Lórien, above the shining green of Elvenhome. Her flight was clumsy and erratic, but she did not fall. She needed no one this time to save her.

And as the dusk thickened, and the distant ship-shaped shadow came into sight, Elwing set her course for its little burning star.

This time when she crashed onto the deck, her delirium was slightly less, but it still took time for her senses to all come back, to realize that the ship was smooth as glass and icy cold around her, except where she was wrapped in Eärendil’s arms. The Silmaril cast his whole face in shadow, but the wonder and shock in his overbright eyes were the first sight she saw.

Elwing tested her limbs and found them shaky but all present, no longer feathered. That she still had no firm grasp on how to begin or end these transformations at will was a certain dilemma, but it could wait. The anguish knotted all through her body had loosened enough to smile a fierce little smile, reach up for Eärendil. “I came back,” she said.