In the Garden

He watched.   He had always been prepared to wait.  Throughout long centuries, as he had watched his naneth fade into the fog of loss that surrounded her, he had endured –  unobserved, unwanted, untended, like a garden left to grow wild with brambles and horsetails.  His loneliness, his abandonment, the complete absence of any love in his rearing had twined into his very soul, rooted deep within him.  His bitterness had grown like a weed, tough, resistant, cut down only to grow again.  

They kept him here: a prisoner, held captive by white shores rather than solid doors and metal locks.  They were elves, after all, and they would not chain him in the endless dark, away from the sun and the wind, out of the hearing of the song of life.

There would be a way out.

One day they would forget to guard him so warily.  In time, they would no longer recall why he was held so carefully.  His passive acceptance of his fate would disarm them and they would look away from him.

He warded his anger carefully, blowing on it gently as on tinder, to keep the coals glowing within him, so that his own fire would not go out.

***

‘The island was chosen with the utmost care, my lord,’ the captain said earnestly.  ‘It is small enough that there is nowhere for him to hide.  There are trees, but only half a dozen and they are small – blown by the salt wind – and a few bushes.  There are no caves to offer him a hiding place, but there is a small freshwater spring.  The cottage we have built him is sturdy and the furnishings adequate.  We have given him sheltered garden frames and what he needs to grow some foods for himself.’

‘Could he swim to shore?’ Finarfin asked, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair.

‘No, my lord. The shore appears quite close, but there are currents which make the channel impossible to swim.  The boats have to take a longer and safer route.  We have told him of this.’   The young captain hesitated.  ‘There are small islets nearby from which the guards observe him during their spells of duty.  And food and fuel are delivered to him weekly.  The guards who take it to the island are accompanied by a senior officer, who offers the prisoner the chance to spend an afternoon in conversation.  He never wishes to avail himself of the possibility.’

Finarfin considered the information before nodding dismissal to the younger elf, who saluted and turned to leave.

‘We cannot leave him like this,’ Elrond said softly.  ‘Better to carry out a sentence of death than allow him to die by inches.  Elves are not meant to live alone.  His isolation brought him to this pass; it will not now cure him.’

‘It is not safe to hold him where he might escape – or where he might be able to influence those vulnerable enough to listen,’ Finarfin replied.

‘Have the Valar responded to your request?’ his granddaughter’s husband insisted.

‘They are considering the matter,’ the High King told him wearily.

Elrond remained silent and thoughtful for some moments.  ‘Will it take them long?’

Finarfin smiled wryly.  ‘Somewhere between now and the end of time, I suspect,’ he said.  ‘It rather depends whether any of them decide to take an interest in him.  I have tried to put it as a challenge beyond the powers of us poor elves.’ 

‘I feel I am to blame,’ Elrond admitted.  ‘I saw that the situation in which he found himself was wrong – no child should be penalised for his adar’s death: no child should be abandoned as he was.  Because he received food and clothing and there were no bruises to suggest ill-treatment, I did nothing – and left it for others to intervene.’

‘You cannot take responsibility for every evil happening in the world, Elrond,’ Finarfin told him sympathetically.  ‘He had grandparents as well as his naneth; neighbours; elflings who shared lessons with him – all of them much closer to him for a far longer time than you were.  None of them chose to offer help to him.  And upbringing is not all – you had a difficult start in life, but it has not led you to cause deliberate harm to those who have done none to you.  There is something in him that makes him – unsafe.’

Elrond sighed.  ‘He is beyond my skills,’ he said.  ‘Only the Lady Este can help him heal and only the Lord Namo can offer him eventual redemption.  All we are doing is pinning him like a butterfly on a card.  We are considering the deserts of others, and by so doing we are not dealing with his needs.’

The High King raised his glass, admiring the ruby gleam.  ‘What does my son-in-law think?  And Thranduil?’

‘Thranduil is of the opinion that it is a shame that he did not try to escape – he says a well-aimed arrow would have solved the problem in an instant, and placed the repercussions in the hands of Namo.  Celeborn feels that if there must be casualties, then Minastan is the least objectionable victim.’

‘Pragmatists, both of them,’ Finarfin acknowledged.  ‘We can do nothing but wait, Elrond.  In their own good time, the Valar will – or will not – offer their aid.  Until then, we continue to do the best we can to protect our peoples, whether or not that involves an element of cruelty to Minastan.   He put himself in the position of meriting punishment, after all.’

‘I suppose you are right,’ Elrond said reluctantly.

His wife’s grandfather smiled.  ‘I am the High King, Elrond,’ he said.  ‘I am always right.  It comes with the title.’

‘Not always.’  Elrond sipped his own wine.  ‘Rulers retain an entitlement to be wrong, or short-sighted, or impatient – and generally at the most inconvenient moments.’

‘But theirs is the responsibility,’ Finarfin said seriously.  ‘It is my decision, my grandson.  Leave it in my hands.’  

***

The winter made Minastan’s blood burn.  The scream of the wind and the lashing waves gave expression to the anger inside him only too clearly and the rain fell horizontally, drenching the rocky outcrop like Nienna’s tears. 

The guards brought extra boxes of non-perishable foods and firewood and, stacking them in a dry corner, apologised because they would not be able to guarantee a regular delivery.

He smiled inside, but kept his face impassive.  He did not want them here.  The longer they stayed away, the more accustomed they would become to ignoring him.  And boxes of supplies would only be to his advantage.  They would have to leave him a knife and tools to support himself, in case the wild storms kept them off the island for weeks.  He bowed his head and refused to meet the eyes of the gruffly kind guards.  They should think him beaten.   In apparent weakness he would retain his strength.

The tempests swirled round the small island, and the salt water crashed against the rocks, hiding the watchers trapped in their towers and cutting him off from everything but the gusting wind and the angry water.  During the brief interludes he would scour the beaches for driftwood and gaze out at the rain-misted water as it tossed threateningly in the channels around his small home.

He had not expected to miss his guards, but without their regular visits he found himself straining to hear voices in the wind and pick out faces in the spray.  In the early morning mists of pearlescent grey he could see his naneth’s frail body as she wafted ever closer to her own destruction and in the shadows that drifted across the night sky he sensed the mournful echo that was Nessariel.  The fury of the bitter weather struck at him and the pain that was at the heart of his existence echoed with its accusations.  Worthless: unwanted: cruel: outsider: murderer: monster.  In the absence of any authority against which he could strive, he was driven into himself and his resistance was gradually leached from him.  

Finally, one wild night, when the howls drove him inside, the sudden stillness opened doors in his mind.

‘They owed me what I wanted from them,’ he whispered to the flickering firelight.

The dancing flames dazzled him, demanding the truth, and he closed his eyes to try to hide from their brightness. 

‘It was not my fault,’ he said. 

The storm battered at the small hut, but the walls held firm.  Minastan bowed his head, like an elfling defying his master, determined to resist. 

A stick crackled in the flames, spitting out bright sparks to fade in the air before him.

Minastan flinched at the expression of disbelief.  ‘It was not all my fault,’ he amended.  ‘I cannot be blamed for what happened before my birth,’ he said, ‘although, from what my naneth said, I know she blamed me.  She did not want a child.  She wanted my adar – and when he did not return from battle, she would have given up her life, had it not been for me.’

The soft lipping of the flames at the driftwood encouraged him to continue.

‘It was not my fault that my grandparents held me responsible for her unhappiness.  I tried,’ he protested, ‘I tried – but everything I did was wrong.  If I stayed beside her, I was too clinging; if I stayed away, it showed I did not care.’  He sat back and leaned his head against the wooden side of his bed.  ‘I was always rejected – by my naneth, my grandparents.  No-one was concerned.  No-one stretched out a hand to help me.’  He gazed into the red heart of the fire.  ‘All I wanted was to love and be loved.’

The warmth of the fire comforted him until he had to lean forward and add some more sea-bleached wood to the flames.  He gazed at the blue-green flickers in the orange glow.  ‘But if I wanted to be loved, then why could I not accept love when it was offered me?’ he asked.  ‘Why did I come to believe that it was better to be feared?’

He smiled wryly.  ‘You ask hard questions,’ he commented, his eyes fixed on the twisted branch.  ‘In fear I did not risk rejection,’ he offered.  ‘To be feared made me formidable: I who had been helpless.  I learned that from Minyariel’s eyes as she saw me watching her.  She would not choose me, but I ensured that she got no joy of her marriage to another.’  He hunched his shoulders.  ‘I admit to cruelty,’ he said in a low voice, ‘a cruel attack carried on over many years, one that may have damaged other ellyn as I was damaged.’ 

The flames flared up briefly, lighting the dark room.  ‘What more do you want me to say?’ he asked.  ‘Oropher caused my adar’s death.  Why should his son and grandson be granted happiness?  What have they done to deserve joy in the Blessed Realm?’  He glared at the hungry flames as they licked at the log.  ‘Why should Thranduil’s son win the love of Elerrina Taryaturiel?  She did not even see me when I stood in front of her – yet he dazzled her from the moment he walked into the room.  Why should I not hurt him?  I did not kill him – I would not do that.’  He fell silent and watched as the log burned.  ‘I admit to attacking him and wilfully causing him harm,’ he sighed, ‘and to ensuring that Minyariel’s son was blamed for my crime.’

He watched as flakes of burnt wood peeled away from the branch and dropped, glowing, to the hearth.  ‘I would not have harmed the elflings,’ he said, ‘but I would have taken them to make their parents suffer and they would have been afraid.  I am guilty of that, too.’  He sighed.  ‘But that is not the worst of it, is it?’ he asked.  ‘I have done many things that I should not have done – many things that are worthy of punishment – but it is in my treatment of Nessariel that I have put myself beyond all forgiveness.’

One of the slender arms of the glowing log broke away from the body and settled in a shower of glowing sparks.  ‘I did not mean to hurt her – not at first,’ he stated.  A roll of blue flame twisted round the end of the wood.  He smiled reminiscently.  ‘She asked for so little,’ he said.  ‘I used her shamelessly, but I looked forward to our meetings.  She was so – trusting.  When I saw myself in her eyes, I would feel ashamed of what I was doing – and that made me hurt her. And when I saw she, too, had learned to fear me, I only wanted to hurt her more.  She haunts me.’  He raised his chin and stared into the flames.  ‘I could say that I did not kill her,’ he insisted.  ‘I was not there – I raised no weapon against her.’ A spear of flame shot out from a knot, hissing.  ‘I could say it,’ he repeated softly, ‘but it would not be true.  I killed her just as surely as if I knifed her in the heart – and for that I deserve to die.’  He looked at his hands steadily as the fire burned down.  ‘But they did not choose to end my life,’ he whispered and crystal tears spilled down his cheeks.  ‘I wish they had.’ 

He paid no attention as a final shower of sparks crumbled the driftwood and left the fading embers glowing on the hearth, remaining seated on the floor with his head bent as the room grew dark and the cold fingers of the wind crept through any gaps and the silence cocooned him.

***

Light surrounded her, a cool shimmering silver that echoed the mithril of her eyes and faded into the soft grey of her gown, and she observed him coolly.

He scrambled to his knees, the sight of her too unexpected for any other response. ‘My lady,’ he said, his tongue stumbling over the syllables.  Too much time had passed since last he had spoken to anyone and he felt himself shaking.

‘Are you ready to accept responsibility for your actions, Minastan Terendulion?’ she asked.  ‘You are too fond of making excuses for the inexcusable.’

She reached forward, placing her hand beneath his chin and raising his head until his eyes met hers.  Her touch was as gentle as that of a snowflake drifting from a winter sky, but it held him more firmly than iron and burnt like ice.  ‘You still need to learn humility,’ she told him. ‘You must forgive before you can be forgiven.’  The molten metal of her eyes considered him, reflecting on every thought he had ever had, turning over sins committed and uncommitted, seeing every slight, every injury, every hurt.

It was cathartic, he thought, even as she stripped him of every delusion he had cherished.  There was no possibility of hiding from her, and consequently he might as well let her know the worst.

As she released him and stepped back, he drew a shuddering breath and allowed his head to drop to his chest.  ‘You know me, Lady Este,’ he said.  ‘I cannot pretend to you.  For what I have done, I am sorry.’

She shook her head.  ‘Words, Terendulion,’ she told him.  ‘You regret where your actions have brought you, but you are still full of self-justification.  You are not yet ready for the next stage.  You must remain here a while longer and hearken to the winds.’

His exhalation was a shuddering sob, but he answered steadily. ‘It shall be as you command, Lady,’ he said.

***

When dawn came it was accompanied by a dense pewter light that enclosed the small island.   The watchers in the tower on the neighbouring islet gazed warily at the gleaming fog that hid all activity.

‘I do not know what to make of it,’ the young captain said.  ‘We must send word to the High King.  This is outside the boundaries of my command.’

‘As soon as you let me know how to get a message to the mainland,’ his lieutenant told him wryly, ‘I will ensure that word is sent.’

The gusting wind whipped their hair into their faces and tugged at their tunics, as the salt spray chilled their fingers, so that they fumbled at the sturdy door that led them back to the fire-warmed tower room.  ‘I want the guard doubled,’ the captain decided. ‘Nothing must happen that we do not monitor and note.  One of us must be on duty at all times.’

The lieutenant grimaced.  ‘I will get my cloak,’ he said.

‘You will not require it.’  His captain grinned.  ‘You will watch from here – with a pen in your hand.  Every half hour you will describe what you see, whether it has changed or not.  We may not be able to do anything, but at least we can observe.’

***

Minastan levered himself from the draughty floor, his muscles stiffened by his long vigil.  He had found himself unable to move once the Lady had left him, as his mind replayed the memories she had opened and a wealth of sensation and emotion rushed through him.   Even now that a pale dawn was creeping into the hut he could still feel her fingers against his face and flinched from the relentlessness of her eyes.

He stepped towards the solid table where he kept his water and, as he reached for a drink, he was surprised to see that his hands were shaking.  He pressed them down on the wood and leaned forward, closing his eyes and concentrating on breathing.  It had been a dream – it could be nothing more.  He had allowed himself to brood too long on the past and had fallen into dreams while watching the fire. 

Even as he addressed himself, he knew there was no truth in what he said.  It seemed that the Lady had opened his eyes to equivocation.  Lifting his hands slowly, he saw that they had steadied.  ‘She said I was to listen to the winds,’ he said. ‘That there could be no escape from total honesty; that  I must accept responsibility.’  He drank the flat-tasting water thirstily.  ‘At least, I think that it what she meant.  Her presence was, in reality, a little too overwhelming to be sure.’  He straightened and moved towards the door.  ‘Or is that a lie, too?’

The winds blew strongly: stinging his face with sand dragged up from the beach, but the penetrating rain had stopped and the waves were white-capped dancers rather than surging attackers.  He perched on a rock and looked eastward across the wide waters as the sea-mist shifted around him and the wind cut through him.  It was cold, he thought, but not unbearably so, and there was a cleanness to the air that pleased him. 

Minastan realised suddenly that the first thought in his mind was no longer escape, and that, he thought was just as well, for he was sure that the Lady would not permit him to evade this task that she had set him.  He gazed blankly before him.  He did not know whether it would take moments or eons, he sighed, or what needed to happen before he could fulfil her demands – he only knew that he had no choice but to try.

‘Words,’ she had said.  She wanted more.  His repentance, if that was what it was, had to be part of him, built from the heart out.

‘I cannot do this alone,’ he told the wind. 

The breeze softened, feeling briefly like her fingers on his cheek and a spark of warmth touched him.  ‘You have never been alone.’   Her voice echoed deep within him, wordless, like the singing of a wire.  ‘But only you can learn to hear.’

He groaned, dropping his head into his hands.  ‘Where do I begin?’

Dark clouds drifted across the sky, tinting the silver mists with the purple of old bruises, changing shape in the contrary winds high above the small island.  As they built and thinned and shifted, it occurred to him that there needed to be no sequence to his thoughts.  He could begin where he wanted, and move forwards and back as he wished.  There were no rules – other than truth.

He stood.  It could not be forced, he decided – memory, grief, guilt, confession – they would come when they were ready.  For now, he needed to bathe and fetch fresh water, light his fire and eat.  Later, as he walked the beach in search of driftwood, he would let his mind free and see what became of it.

***

Elrond stood at the top of the tower in the brisk sea breeze that made his hair stream behind him like a banner.  The sun was warm and the rippling waves hyacinth blue, but the island upon which Minastan was confined remained, as it had for months, surrounded by a glimmering silver haze that excised it neatly from the world around it.

‘Do you think he will starve, my lord?’ the lieutenant asked.  ‘We have tried to approach the island with food and other supplies, but the water turns us back – quite gently and politely, but something makes it clear that we are not welcomed there.’

‘I would not think so,’ Elrond said slowly.  ‘It would seem that someone has chosen to take an interest in your prisoner after all.  I am not even certain that he is there – in the sense that we would understand it.  But I am sure that he will not be permitted to leave unless very stringent conditions are met.’  He smiled.  ‘I think this duty posting has become unnecessary,’ he said.  ‘I will pass on my observations to join your reports, but I suspect you will be leaving here shortly.’

The lieutenant returned his smile.  ‘I will not mind,’ he owned. ‘It is a little desolate here much of the time.’  He turned his eyes back to the hidden island. ‘I hope he will be all right,’ he said.  ‘I know he deserved to be imprisoned there, but I could not help but feel sorry for him.’

‘Which says more for you than it does for him,’ Elrond commented. 

***

He realised, after a while, that, think as he might during the day, it was at night, as the fire burned, that deep truths were spoken.  He came to see that finding a silvered log of bleached driftwood on the white sand was an indication that the night’s introspection would be painful, as the flames licking at the pale wood drew words from him.  He learned to let his mind drift so that utterance came more easily.

Time passed and he knew not whether it had been weeks or centuries that he spent sifting through shadows in his soul.

He remembered the day he recognised that he no longer blamed his naneth.  She was not just born to be a part of his song – their music had harmonised but briefly – and her own melody had made her incapable of caring for him.  As her son, he had been conceived in love – and she had been able to offer him nothing more than that.  By the time he was born, her body lived, but her mind walked already in the Halls of the Dead.  She deserved his pity and his love, but not his condemnation. 

Even as he accepted the thought, he felt the release of a tie that bound him to his grievance.   Was that what it took, he thought in some surprise?  Not self-flagellation, not the endless vocal self-abasement of a perceived penitent, but forgiveness asked and offered?  It was a shame, he admitted dryly, that it could not be forced.  The Lady’s eye was too clear to accept a superficial sheen of pardon and understanding.

He lay back, watching the clouds scudding across the sky and listening to the rhythmic sound of the waves.  He found it echoed his heartbeat and he felt himself in tune with the world around him.  The breeze was gentler than usual and teased his hair, pushing him to extend his new understanding.

Minastan found himself, for the first time in centuries, considering the elf who had sired him.  What did he know of Terendul, the warrior who had left his gravid wife to follow his king into battle against the forces of the Shadow?

Not, he thought, a great deal.  His naneth’s adoration had led him as an elfling to consider that his adar possessed all the virtues, but, as he grew older, his grandparents’ bitterness had eroded his admiration and he had learned to despise his adar as a fool and a victim of his king’s impetuous stupidity.  He had ignored the merits or shortcomings of the cause for which he had given his life and focused purely on the results.  He was moved to wonder what it would have been like to grow up with an adar to provide love and discipline.

How old had he been, he pondered, when he had first gone out of his way to hurt someone – that solemn-faced little elfling, who had clearly been adored and protected by loving parents?  Too young, he thought, for him to have received the blame he deserved, for even the little one’s naneth had assumed that the injury was an accident.  As Minastan recalled, she had put her arms around him and kissed him, telling him not to worry because she knew he had not meant it.  His grandfather had not been fooled, though.  He had always been clear-sighted in his understanding of his grandson’s behaviour.  Clear-sighted, but condemnatory, never offering approval even when it was merited, so that, in the end, it was hardly any surprise that he had twisted to live up to the picture that was held up for him to see.

He was like his grandfather, Minastan realised.  He had grown to display exaggerated copies of all the worst characteristics of the older elf. 

The sun warmed him as he watched the gulls wheel against the blue of the sky, their cries wild and free.  He should eat, he supposed, but it seemed too much effort to leave the rabbit-nibbled turf for the dark of the cottage and the dried beans and meal.  Odd, he reflected, how rabbits got everywhere.  Perhaps, one day, when the supplies ran low, he would be forced to lay snares to catch them, or create rude spears to try to take fish from the ocean.  The thought did not inspire him to action – he felt no need to harm them: he would rather go without.  The sound of the waves soothed him and, scarcely realising it, he drifted into a light sleep.

***

She greeted him there, where day met night.  There was no reproach in her eyes and her hair fell on his bare arm like a silken caress.  She smiled anxiously, a tentative request for his approval that made him burn with shame.

‘You have no longer any need to fear me,’ he said, bowing his head before her.  ‘If there is one thing I have learned it is that I abused your gentleness indefensibly and manipulated you unpardonably to force you into doing my will.  It is I who dread your response to the cruelties I inflicted on you.  I caused your death – I have no right even to consider asking your forgiveness.’

‘And yet you have it,’ she said, her voice no more than the breath of the wind in the grass and her hand cool against his face. 

It was strange.  The eyes of his body were aware of the blue sky and the pale sunshine, the green of the grass and the sandy soil, but his mind’s eye was with Nessariel in a land leached of colour where the pale sky hung above them and the chill air stirred with a reluctant sluggishness.  She gleamed with a lazy silver light that trailed her as if it was too difficult to keep up with her movements.

She stepped closer to him and her lips touched his softly.  ‘The time is not yet, my love, but I will wait for you,’ she sighed as she faded and thinned, her essence dissipating on the wind, so that when he opened his eyes he was alone in the radiance of a golden sunset.

He sat up and stared at the fire on the water and was aware for the first time of a tiny ember deep within him; a coal that warmed with love rather than burned with rage.  He cupped the sensation gently and held it awkwardly, unsure how to nurture it, but reluctant to let it fade.

Yet how could she love him, knowing what he had done, knowing what he had inflicted on her?  Or was love, perhaps, something that something that could not be weighed and measured, doled out in small quantities designed to keep the recipient hungry? 

He remained unmoving long into the evening as the sky darkened and the stars turned in their stately dance, pondering the vagaries of the heart and wondering why it had taken him so long to understand the simple value of a touch.

When finally he entered the cottage and struck a flint to coax life into his fire, he knew that he would face interrogation on what he had learned, but felt that, for once, he had more questions than answers.

***

‘He worries me,’ Thranduil said frankly as they sat beneath the stars.  ‘He has no moral sense – we could never trust him, no matter what we are told.  And he has not been confined for nearly long enough to ease the anger of those he has hurt.  I would not have Macar moved to violence against him – we would be forced to take action, then, against someone who, I feel, has a right to want revenge.’

Elrond clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back.  ‘I do not believe the Valar will say that his sins have been cleansed and that he should be freed,’ he said easily.  ‘The process of purification is long and painful – and I do not think he will be anywhere near the end of it.  I suppose I am speaking hypothetically – if the Lady Este says that he is healed, and Lord Manwe wishes to free him, how then would we respond?’

Thranduil smiled slowly.  ‘Finarfin said that his was the responsibility?’ He asked, waiting for Elrond’s nod. ‘I say we should hold him to it.’  He shrugged.  ‘This is a problem with which I do not feel qualified to deal.  It would have been easier on Arda – I could have placed him in some miserable duty post where the minions of Sauron would have been only to willing to remove the difficulty for me.’

‘You would have done no such thing,’ his friend told him with amusement.  ‘However much you enjoy letting others see you as a violent and irrational rustic lost in the sophistication of Valinor, we both know you would never have endangered your troops by placing Minastan amongst them.  More – neither would you have condemned any elf in your custody to such a death, whatever he might have done.’

A grin of acknowledgement lightened Thranduil’s face.  ‘I doubt he would have become the elf he is had he remained on Arda,’ he said.  ‘There were too many others in similar situations for him to have felt so isolated – and far more adults around who were skilled in dealing with wounded elflings.’  He allowed the music of the mellow night to sing in his bones for a while before continuing.  ‘They are too smug here,’ he added.  ‘Too convinced that everything is right and good and blessed – and that they do not need to work to keep it so.’   

‘I am still surprised at the triviality of some of the events that appear to cause boundless concern here,’ Elrond admitted.  ‘It seems to me the result of having time and comfort – and no common enemy.’

‘I am glad that our grandchildren will be brought up in realms where life will be closer to the song of the trees and the power of the land,’ Thranduil admitted.  ‘They will not lack for purpose.’

‘Nor in the love and discipline necessary to enable them to be the best they can,’ Elrond added softly.  ‘They have good parents.’

***

Minastan could not breathe.  If the presence of the Lady had been awe-inspiring, this produced in him an overwhelming feeling of insignificance.  He was pinned, he thought with a thread of humour, by a flame curling round a branch, but a branch that carried with it the dominant power of a Lord of the Valar. 

He watched.  He had always been prepared to wait, and this time as no other it seemed to him an act of folly to volunteer.  He watched, but he did not attempt to conceal either his sins or his successes. 

Timeless patience filled the darkness around him and seeped into him.  He did not need to speak.  Every thought was known; every patch of shadow in his soul was seen and weighed; every deed was measured and judged. 

‘I no longer seek a way out,’ he admitted finally, and his voice contained a serene acceptance of whatever might happen. 

The fire burned, teasing gently at the silver wood, flicking curiously at the twists and knot holes. 

‘Take my life,’ he requested.  ‘What I have done – what I am – cannot be atoned for on this plane of existence,’ he said.  ‘I have learned, I think, what can be taught here. I need more.  You have come to me as fire,’ he reasoned, ‘because the fire is what I need.  To burn away what I am and start again.’

The flame brightened, an incandescent white, filling the cottage, blazing with a brilliance and a heat that made him flinch briefly before he leaned forward into the pain. This was as it should be.  He closed his eyes and let it take him.  In this would be his redemption.  Only in this would he be able to live again.  As swiftly as it had surged up, the searing flame died away and the small hut was left: dark, cold, abandoned, unnecessary.

***

‘You are sure?’ Macar said gruffly.

‘I am sure,’ Finarfin replied.  The golden light of the late afternoon gleamed in the ordered garden.  The High King walked with Nessariel’s adar, taking occasional blooms in his hand to enjoy their fragrance and appearing to disregard the uncomfortable elf summoned to his presence.

He stopped under an arch of white roses and turned to face the younger elf.  ‘He has passed to Mandos – through his own choice, I am told, although I believe Lady Este has been attending to him for some time.’

‘Will he be reborn?’

‘I could not say,’ Finarfin told him.  ‘Only the Lord Namo can make judgments such as that.  You are welcome to petition him,’ he added dryly, ‘but I am not certain how much effect that will have.’  He resumed his slow pacing. ‘Requesting Lord Namo to release elves from his care seems unproductive, and I suspect that pleading for him to keep them will be equally pointless.’

Macar drew a deep breath, as if for the first time in some while he felt a release from an imposing weight.  ‘I am glad he is gone,’ he said.

Finarfin smiled enigmatically.  It was not for him to suggest that Macar’s daughter and the elf who had caused her death were now both confined to Mandos’s Halls – and that, in several ages, it was not impossible that Macar might have to grow accustomed to a most unwelcome son-in-law.  There were some parts of the future that it was far better not to know.

***

Time passed.  At least, he supposed it did.  It was hard to tell where there was neither night nor day, where nothing grew or aged, where the air was still and silent and beings seemed comprised of thought touched with a lazy glimmering of light.

He thought for a while that he preferred his island, where at least he could watch the gulls fly and listen to the surf while he awaited the revelations of the dark night in the heart of the flame, but in the end he realised that the presence of the world had been a distraction.  He needed this.  He needed it and he would let himself free, unmoulded and amorphous, to be reshaped as the Valar saw fit.

Gradually he became aware of others in the sunless halls, noting that some seemed closer to wholeness than others.  He turned his glance to himself, and noted with some distress that his essence seemed to be coalescing into a form more like his body.  He moved a hand and watched it stir the air, leaving behind it a trace of itself in the slow light.  He was different.  He could feel it.  The spark of warmth within him was growing, like a seed that had survived a bitter winter to put out a rootlet at the sign of spring. 

‘You are ready,’ a soft voice told him.

‘No!’ he protested in the deep silence within him.  He was not ready, not ready for life, not ready for the demands of others, not ready to be returned: he would never be ready.

‘Not for that; not yet,’ the voice said, sounding amused.

He paused to taste amusement and wondered at it. 

‘That is better,’ the voice approved.  ‘It is a beginning.’

He considered. 

‘Come,’ he was told.  ‘It is time for you to make the acquaintance of some of those here who have your concerns at heart.’ 

Movement, he thought.  He remembered movement.  He remembered it, but he did not think he could achieve it.  He turned his head as slowly as a flower shifting towards the light.

There were two others near him.  One was clear, his being confined within something that, whilst it was not, gave the appearance of a body.  The other drifted still, half present, trailing strands of confusion.  The male held her, clearly patient, waiting for her to recover herself.

Minastan looked first at the male, but his attention was drawn to the female, from whom came tentative wafts of emotion: guilt, love, sorrow, helplessness, and an empty aching sense of loss.  ‘Naneth?’ he said, although he spoke not.

She inclined her head, moving closer and touching her hand to him, her trails of languid light tangling with his. 

The male stayed in contact with her, keeping a gentle hold on her hand even as he gazed intently at Minastan.  ‘My son,’ he said, and he was close enough to completion for the sound to echo from his mouth.  ‘Forgive me, my son,’ he said again, and the words hung between them, strong enough to taste.

‘Adar?’ Minastan said incredulously, and his adar, seemingly unconcerned by his lack of solidity, took him in his arms and held him firmly, so that the rootlet put out a shoot that crept towards the light.

‘It is nearly time to begin again, my son,’ he said.  ‘You will have a new life ahead of you, one that will be undamaged by Shadow – where you will become the elf Iluvatar meant you to be.  Embrace it, my son.’

And in the shelter of his parents’ arms, the seed of love growing within him unfurled its first leaves and turned towards the sun.