Author’s note: I know canon has the Silmaril worn
on Eärendil’s brow; however I can’t feel that would be practicable, and so the
story pictures it attached to the masthead.
Say if you like the reports that got back to Middle-earth were a bit
garbled.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some days he barely
remembers his name.
He does not regret: this
was the price he chose to pay. The cloud
seas are wonderful and ever changing, the winds give him the illusion of
pitting his sailor’s skills against them although he knows in his soul this
craft cannot be wrecked. Always there is
the Light, as it must have been in Valinor of old. He misses the Night at times, but although
Night is all around it is banished from his craft, a pool of the Tree Light
surrounding him alone.
Not the bearer of the
Silmaril, but the guard, although what use a single Man could be (a Man still
in his heart, forever,) he does not know.
Perhaps mere pretext, their way of giving him a task to fill his endless
wandering. This was his choice.
They had told him that he
could not go back. There was too much of
the Mortal in him, even once the choice had been made. Set foot on the mortal shores again and he
would die. They had not understood his
protest (how should they, the Powers that dwelt in the West), had not
understood why he felt he must go back.
He could not leave them, his kin, Elves and Men, could not remain in
ease upon the further shore whilst the battle against Morgoth the destroyer was
fought. He had to aid them.
The Powers had taken his
craft and worked their enchantments on it. The ship which had borne him so long
was now to carry the Jewel, the Silmaril, cause of so much suffering. There was grieving then, that the gem would
not be held in Valinor, more grief, it seemed to him, for its loss than for the
suffering of his kin. For the Stone was
bound with a fate not to be broken, never to rest or be owned until Arda ended.
The words had run through
the light rain which fell as he stood before the Valar. Ulmo had taken no form.
Yours was the locking
of the words A voice of earth and metal. Aulë.
Earth, Sea and Air
The endless night of Mandos. So
it shall be This for the Air
So it was.
That had been after they
had set his sentence. After the voice of
Manwë had pronounced that Doom should fall not on him, nor yet on Elwing, and
the words meant as mercy had set fast his despair. For how could they call it merciful to lift
the Doom from her, who had no taint of Noldor blood? How could they call it justice to punish the
victims for the crimes of their slayers? (…the broken bodies of Cirdan’s
mariners cast upon the shores of Balar…)
Yet so they named it, seated in grace and brightness in their unstained
land, and so they believed, not seeing their Doom as cruelty.
And so he despaired, even
as his prayer was granted. Just as
desperation came upon him, when he learned the Elves of Tirion had come to
festival, making merry whilst their kindred perished, for how could he love a land
where the griefs of his home were as nothing?
No regret. No regret for his plea, better abase himself
than see the last legacy of Beleriand perish.
No regrets for his errand or its price.
Yet this pitiless mercy was no answer to Morgoth. And so in weariness of life he had despaired.
And then his wife had
chosen immortality.
He must go back, he told
them. No matter if he set no foot on land.
No matter if it was his death. He
must go back. They had told him there
were fates not even Manwë could set aside, but still he had persisted. He must go back. Then at last they had told him, he could go,
if he must, if he set no foot on land.
But he could never return, never tread the shores of Valinor, he would
have no choice but to wander the skies the touch of land, mortal or undying,
would be his destruction. His body would
wither, his soul not be released from Mandos within the history of Arda.
He had accepted the price.
Not a high price in truth,
what would a sailor do in Valinor?
Better to voyage eternally, however lonely. At times still he could pause in his faring,
those still ashore had seen to that (for her most likely, which of them
understood him?) The tower was tall, to
rise through the clouds, the platform at its top wide, so his ship could ride
beside it as though at anchor by a quay.
He could not set foot on land, but in the Tower’s high apartments he
could join his wife.
He could remember that he
loved her, yet so often she seemed strange now, more a child of the Maia than
of the mortals with whom his heart lay.
Only a child of the Maia could have assumed a bird’s shape. Fair and strange, a creature to be treated
with wonder rather than a partner of the soul.
Yet how strange was he himself grown, a man who could scarce remember
his name?
(She had chosen
immortality, for Lúthien’s sake she said.
Yet Lúthien had chosen to be mortal.
He would never understand).
More star and bird now
than man and wife. So few come to the
Tower now. Some had, in the early days,
but he no longer knows how to hold conversation. She tells him the Light is beloved. It seems to him cold.
He has no regrets.