Part I: Dolphins

I had been leaning over the ship’s rail all morning, but not because I was seasick. We had been at sea for four weeks, and I could walk around pretty well now without lurching or falling, even when it became mildly stormy. Our captain, Orobar, even let me steer a bit, although I could barely see over the wheel.

I could see a huge variety of fishes, the like of which I’d never known existed, some grotesque, others very beautiful, in flaming gem-like colors. The first time I saw a whale, I nearly fell overboard from excitement. It rose all shiny black and silver, as big as the ship, spurted a huge stream of water, leaped a few feet above the waves, then fell with a splash that sent water flying over us in a salty shower, creating a wave like a small hill that lifted our ship far into the air then cascading downwards like a leaf in a sluice. It knocked me right over on my backside, poor old Bilbo falling right into my lap.

Much later, some other creatures appeared, like the whale but much, much smaller, of a silvery white overall with a blue-green tinge around the fins and tail. I took them for sharks at first, but as they surfaced, they looked too friendly for sharks, slender and shimmering and graceful, dozens upon dozens,all around us, almost as if they had decided to provide us with an escort over the sea.

I looked around at Bilbo and at Gandalf and Lady Galadriel and the others. They all looked as delighted as I felt.

Lord Elrond was not on deck, however. I was worried about him. Just yesterday evening I had gone down to his cabin to see about him, and found him sitting looking at a scrap of blue silk he held. He smiled vaguely as I appeared in the doorway after knocking, and motioned me to come in. I offered him the pendant Lady Arwen had given me, although it tore out a large piece of my heart to part with it, and I had a feeling it would not really console him. But I resolved to try.

He held it and looked at it for a good long time. I could see the lustrous white stone reflected in his brilliant dark eyes…so like hers. After a moment I looked down, thinking I should not be looking directly at his face when so much emotion was going on in it. I wanted to tell him it had gone very hard with me to leave her also and I knew it must be that much harder for him, but it seemed unnecessary to say so. He was the sort who could read your thoughts without you speaking them, unless you didn’t want them read.

Then I felt the familiar, soothing coolness of the silver chain on the back of my neck.

“You keep this, Frodo,” he said softly. “It’s connected with you somehow, and will bring something wonderful to you someday.”

“You think so?” I touched the jewel, and had to admit it was a vast relief to have it back. “What will it bring me, sir?”

“I cannot say just now,” he said with a kindly twinkle in his eye, laying a hand on top of my head. “But I have a feeling it would be well for you to keep it.”

I thought of him now as I watched the beautiful sea-creatures, and wondered if I should run down and get him. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder, and there he stood.

“What are they?” I asked him, and he replied, “Dolphins. It has been thousands of years since I’ve seen them.”

“Are they friendly? They look it. Do they eat…people? Like sharks?” I asked. I heard Gandalf chuckle.

“No,” Lord Elrond smiled down at me. “They are friendly, just as they look.”

“Please, Lord Elrond,” Gandalf laughed, “don’t go putting ideas into his head! I think he’s dropped about thirty years since we set sail.” He looked down at me dotingly. Little did he realize I already had an idea in my head.

Suddenly I broke away and dashed over to Orobar, yelling, “Please, Captain, stop! Stop the ship!”

“What ho, Frodo?” He looked down at me squinting against the sunlight. “What is it, my lad?” He was very tall and laughing, his silver-gold hair blowing straight back in the warm wind, along with his grey cloak. The weather was really warm and equitable for late autumn.

I explained my desire to swim with the dolphins, pointing out the creatures as though they were not in plain sight. I was a little afraid he would laugh at me, but I have come to find that Elves are not like that.

“I have never seen so many of them at once,” he said thoughtfully. “'Tis a strange occurrence. Seemingly they know this to be the last ship out of Middle-earth. I wonder if they will accompany us the entire way to the Blessed Realm.”

I looked up at him much the way I used to look at my mother when I was a little lad and wanted something—or so I was told later. I was even guilty of clutching at his cloak.

“May we stop?” I pleaded. “Just for a bit? For half an hour perhaps?”

Perhaps I really had dropped thirty years. I wondered if that were part of the cure.

Then I started as Lord Elrond’s voice spoke up from behind me: “Yes, Orobar. Let it be done.” I looked up at him gratefully, and saw his face shining in the sun.

I immediately began stripping down to my underdrawers. The pendant I carefully took off first and lovingly tucked into a shirt pocket. Then I stood at the rail as the ship began to draw to a stop, quailing for a moment. That water was cold, I knew from when the whale splashed us. And the breeze was not as warm on my bare skin as it had been when I was clothed. And I knew the sea was frightfully deep, even though I was a good swimmer.

But I couldn’t change my mind now. Even if the Elves were not the sort who would have laughed at me if I did. It was not a matter of pride however; I simply felt an irresistible compulsion to do this thing.

I am sure Bilbo hadn’t realized what I was up to until then. He came tottering along the deck, calling my name, as I climbed up onto the rail. I looked down, shut my eyes, and took a wild dive.

I was showing off, it was true. Perhaps I was not so tall and graceful and beautiful and wise and skillful at many things as Elves were, but I could do something, at least. I could dive.

I paid the price for my brazenness when I hit the water. It was even colder than I thought. The shock made me dizzy, so that I inhaled a mouthful of the frigid, salty water. I began to flail about helplessly, kicking, gagging…was I going to drown before we even got there? Why had I been such a fool??

Then I felt something knock against me. My arms grabbed around it tightly, so as to choke the life out of it, but it rose quickly up, up, up, until my head was above the water and I was blissfully aware of the sunlight once more. Whatever had effected my rescue slipped out of my arms as they loosened their hold and was gone, as far as I could tell. I coughed and sputtered, shaking the wet hair out of my face, retching up a lungful of water. I could hear anxious voices calling my name, and so I decided to pretend what I’d done was deliberate, both to allay their fears and to keep myself from looking a complete fool. My eyes were still too full of water and stinging to see anything but bright light, so I smiled and waved in what I thought was the direction of the ship…only to realize that the ship was behind me. I rubbed my eyes until I could see again, then turned and waved once more. I could see Bilbo waving his arms at me and blustering at me to get back on deck this minute.

But the dolphins were still leaping and diving all around me, and I stayed where I was, treading water. It was well that I was a good floater.

“Whichever of you saved my life, I thank you kindly,” I said with a choking laugh. Then I dove under the surface and began swimming with them, coming up from time to time both for air and to assure those on deck that I was all right. I was thankful for the way my senses had been so acutely heightened, so that I could see so far below the water, things even more incredible than I had seen on board ship. Fishes as big as I was, and bigger, of a deep bronze-gold color with markings on their backs similar to those I’d seen on some butterflies. Small fishes of a brilliant ruby red, others of a vivid blue like cobalt, still others a dazzling pale green like jade or spring leaves. Some black with spots of flashing color here and there like the feathers of a raven. I could seen their eyes, like dream-jewels, black and gold and crimson, looking straight at me as though trying to figure what I was, this strange being the like of which had never even seen the sea water from afar, let alone plunged beneath its waves….

And I could see something white drifting far below. It was no fish, but exactly what it was, I could not discern.

I wished I might catch one of the dolphins so that I might ride upon its back, but they were having none of that! I might swim among them, fine. They could perform their tricks for me; that they did, seemingly with gladness. One even leapt right over my head! One of them brushed against me, a very young one, and I can swear it did so deliberately! I reached out to try and catch it, but its mother came between us, and I’ve a feeling she was not going to allow any such nonsense! I did not try further. However gentle these creatures might be, a mother is ever protective of her young, and one does well not to incur her disfavor.

But how white and luminous their skin was in the sunlight! Like new snow laid over with a thin crust of sparkling ice, changing colors as they moved this way and that. I was reminded of how Gandalf described the robe of Saruman changing colors as he moved, but the way he told it, it had not sounded attractive at all, but rather shameful, a disgrace and a blotch on the Order. However, on these animals it was breathtaking: sometimes a silvery blue, sometimes a pale rose, then a foamy green, then it would all melt together and turn a dazzling white once more. It was akin to what I had seen in some jewels…like the one I wore myself.

I felt as though I were inside of that gem now. As though it had expanded itself into a vast bubble and swallowed me up, owning me, surrounding me with music and rainbows and fountains and laughter. I found myself singing. I was not sure what I was singing; a prayer of some sort, I think. Probably of thanks and a wish for blessings on all those I had left behind….

But they were calling for me; my half hour was over. I swam back to where Gandalf was lowering a rope over the side of the ship. It was then I noticed that Lady Galadriel and the other Elf-women were looking the other way. Puzzled, I looked down and saw I was lacking my drawers!

That, no doubt, was the white thing I had seen. They must have been torn from me by the impact of the water when I hit.

Well, as Sam would have said, there was nothing for it; I had to climb the rope ladder naked as I was born, my face burning. Gandalf hauled me precipitously up and Bilbo wrapped my cloak around me, toweling me vigorously with it and scolding all the while: “Of all the tomfoolery…did anybody ever see such…going to catch your death…look at you shivering…wait until I get you below, young whipper-snapper….” He padded along behind us as Gandalf picked me bodily up and carried me downstairs to the cabin we three shared. They tried to get a nightshirt on me but I protested I didn’t need a nightshirt in the middle of the day. They insisted—naturally! on my getting a hot bath. I was soon plopped into one; they must have been heating the water all the while I was swimming in preparation. Bilbo brought my lunch to me, right there in the tub, still telling me what he thought of my exploit, but I could see his eyes twinkling all the while, until I had all I could do not to burst out laughing with my mouth full.

He and Gandalf wanted me to go to bed at once, but I would have none of that. You would have thought I was a mere sixteen, at most. When I finally emerged on deck again, dried off and dressed, everyone cheered me heartily. I was the hero of the day, or so it seemed.

But the dolphins were gone.

**********

A/N: Thanks to Shirebound for the idea of the dolphins!

Part II:  Bryseluthea

Bilbo never learned to love the sea as I did, yet he was not averse to living close to the shore. He would sit in a big soft chair and watch me putter along the snowy beach, like a doting grandfather enjoying the last days he has been allotted, in peace and joy and wonder.

Our house was beside a beautiful cove, overlooked by a high white cliff from which a wide waterfall descended, filling the round cove with an endless cold and ecstatic bath. Hardly anyone ever came there, except when invited, and I think the Elves had agreed that it was mine. It faced westward, so that when the sun set the waterfall took on shades of scarlet and gold and purple and flame, and the cliffs turned to a blistering pink. They were seemingly carved with strange and wonderful shapes, like sculptured snow, or floating clouds, and full of holes and tunnels that I gloried in exploring. I called it my castle. It did seem to contain many towers and turrets and spires and battlements and balconies and walkways, and one could get lost inside if not careful. There were caverns the like of which I’d only guessed at before, deep within, abounding in wondrous formations. Odd shrubs and wild flowers and ferns sprang up from outside of it here and there, some of them huge and strange, and down the face of it descended a flowering vine, the large blossoms a deep indigo in the center and lavender blue on the edges, crimson and yellow in the middle, very popular with butterflies. Around the bottom of the cliff sprang dark evergreen trees with white flowers that opened only at night and spilled forth their perfume like shy maids in love with the stars.

I had built a hobbit-sized boat, with the help of a friend who knew the craft, and would often go rowing on the cove, but after Bilbo had passed, about two and a half years after our arrival, I didn’t have so much heart for that any more. However, one morning I found myself in the mood to do so. I decided to take a direction I had not taken in a long time, toward the mouth of the cove, which was a considerable distance, but I took it nonetheless, not really knowing why I wanted to go there. It was almost as if I were being pulled there by some unseeable force; I scarcely needed to use the oars.

I could hear the usual sounds: the calling of many different birds, some high and twittering, others deep and almost bell-like, some with a fluty richness, notes dipping upward and downward, echoing hauntingly off the cliffs. And the crying of the seagulls, the peeping of sandpipers, the quacking of ducks and laughter of loons at the edge of the cove.

And of course, the endless surge and murmur of the tide.

But along with all this accustomed sound, which was always musical to my ears, I could hear what sounded like a human voice singing. I took it to be an Elf-maiden, although the sound was smaller than that of an Elf-voice, and it seemed to be coming from the sea itself, rather than the beach.

I rowed toward the voice, which was actually coming from the huge chalky rocks that formed a strange fortress below the cliff that jutted up over the waves. There I saw a girl sitting on a large flat rock that pointed out seaward, leaning back on her hands and dangling her tiny bare feet over the water, which was just close enough to bathe her toes when it rose a bit. She was very small, not even my height, and she wore a scanty gown of some filmy pale green. Her hair was honey-colored and long and wavy. Her ears I could see were sharply pointed, and I took her to be an Elf-child, but the closer I drew, I could see her face and form were not those of a child, but of a maiden just blooming into womanhood. I hesitated to approach her at first, yet she looked my way and smiled with friendly gaiety, and I had little choice but to row my boat to the foot of her rock.

She sat up straight, pushed back a stray lock, and waved at me, saying, “Hullo, Frodo!” I briefly wondered how she knew my name, then told myself, Well, silly, you’re the only hobbit here now, of course she would know your name! I felt I had seen her before, perhaps in a dream. There was a pale shimmer about her as I drew nearer, and she tucked her pretty little bare feet under her and raised herself to her knees. I thought she was coming down to meet me, so I rowed my boat to the beach and pushed a large rock down onto the rope, then climbed up her rock to where she sat waiting with a smile.

Clearly she was expecting me.

She had very large violet eyes that tilted just a bit at the outer corners, shaded by long dark gold lashes, and a mischievous sparkle lurked in their depths. Her nose was straight and tilted at the end, her lips just full enough and of a deep coral red. Her skin was a rosy golden white, stretched over lovely high cheekbones and a delicately pointed chin. Her hands and feet were perfect, shapely and quick motioned.

It had been a while since I had seen anything lovelier. But who was she, where had she come from, and what was she? A tiny Elf it would seem, but I had never seen any such that were not children. And I had a feeling she was no Elf, after all. A good way to find out would be to ask her, I supposed, but I felt not ready for that yet…not before I even knew her name, at least.

“So, Frodo,” she said, in a voice that sounded the way she looked, “we meet at last. Or do you prefer me to call you Iorhael, as the Elves do?”

“Whichever you like,” I said, taken aback at her seeming boldness. “I answer to both. What do you like to be called?”

“My name is Bryseluthea,” she said with dancing eyes. “It translates as ‘perilous flower’, or what some landish folk name the ‘sea-anemone’.  But that is a dangerous creature, to small beings at least, so you may call me Anemone if you like. That is a harmless flower in a quiet land.”

“Why would anyone name their child after a dangerous creature?” I told myself I should have thought before speaking this out loud. But she just laughed. The next question was, logically to ask what she was, but I feared I had said too much already.

“For her protection, I suppose,” she said by way of answer, with a soft laugh. “Anyway, it has been so long since they named me, I do not remember the reason. You and I have met before, you know. Did you not swim with dolphins once?”

“Yes, I did. But that was…” …my head was fairly swimming by now… “…about three years ago, maybe more. Time passes so quickly here, I am scarcely aware of it.”

“Do you remember when you first plunged in? And you breathed in a quantity of water and nearly drowned?”

“Yes, I remember it well.” My stomach felt fluttery. Yes, I had dreamt of her. “How could you have known that? Where you stowed away on the ship?”

“No, silly,” she laughed, waving her hand at me. “You grabbed something that swam up against you and it pulled you above the waves, remember?”

“How could I forget? And that was...”

“Yes. I suppose you didn’t see me at all?”

“Not in the form you are in now,” I felt as though I might fall off the rock. “So you are…a sea-faery who can change her form?”

“Perhaps,” she looked down at her hands in mock shyness. “Then again, perhaps not. Wondering can lead down dangerous paths.”

“So why did you not introduce yourself then?” I asked her. Perhaps her talking in riddles should have annoyed me, but I found it oddly charming. “What took you so long to meet me?”

“I had a lover then,” she replied demurely. She stared right into the sun; obviously she could do that without it hurting her eyes at all, so I had all the proof I needed that she was no mortal. “But he began to grow bad-tempered and possessive, and finally I left him. There is an end to that.”

“He was a sea-being too?” I had to ask.

“Yes,” she sighed, “but he is long gone.  And there was your old one, as well.  You had him to look after.” 

“I thought as much,” I said looking down at the water…until I realized that mine was the only reflection I could see, although she was right there beside me. It was unnerving. “You are an immortal being?”

“I am.  But if I were to marry a mortal, I would become as mortal as you.”

“So I could not marry you then. I would not want to kill you, after all. You have children?” She looked far too young to have children of any great age.

“Yes, many,” she said simply, “but they are scattered, and I do not see them often. You have none, then?”

I shook my head mutely.

“Did you want them?” she persisted.

“Well…yes…I think so,” I murmured. “But something came up….”

“The Ring,” she said. I nodded, glad I did not have to explain it all to her.

“It destroyed my ability to father children,” I said. “It neutered me…like a horse.”

“Ah, that is sad for you,” she said with genuine sympathy. “But I suppose that’s how it must be.”

“Do you know this island well?” I hoped my attempt to change the subject was not too obvious, although of course it was. Subtlety was not my strong point.

“Not so well,” she said smiling. Perhaps she was as willing to drop the subject of children as I. “I do not spend much time on dry land.”

“Oh, of course,” I smiled too. Then I saw her glance at my pendant. Her eyes looked strangely luminous. There was a pale, greenish light in them.

I truly hoped she didn’t know everything about me.

“Would you like to go for a pull in my boat?” I asked her after a long moment. She scrambled to her feet eagerly.

“I thought you would never ask,” she said.

We rowed all around the cove. She insisted on taking an oar. Of course I didn’t want to let her, but she would do it, and I told myself she was stronger than I. I had long since regained my youthful vigor, and then some; yet I was still no match for an immortal sea-faery, surely. She said she had never rowed a boat before, and thought them silly useless contraptions, but she still wanted to try. Finally I let her have both oars, foolishly hoping no one would come along and see us. She pulled along with easy tireless grace, sitting in front of me so I could admire the way her cascading tawny hair caught the sunlight and took on shades of gold and bronze.

“My kindred would laugh at me now,” she said over her shoulder to me, “but I care not. Is that your home up there?” She pointed to a small house that nestled against the hillside, in the shade of a huge mallorn tree.

“Yes. Do you like it?”

“I do not know. Houses seem more useless to me even than boats. But if it is yours, I may come to like it. It looks sweet and lofty, like you.”

I laughed: “You think me lofty?”

“In a good way,” she laughed also. “This entire cove looks like you. There is more to it than meets the eye, yet it all sings and flows together in gentle harmony.”

“So you don’t know everything about me, then.” I felt relieved.

“Of course not,” she replied. “I know only as much as you want me to know, Mister Swim-with-the-Dolphins. Nothing more.”

“Have you been watching me all this time?” I asked her, this thought just having occurred to me. How many secrets could I have from her? I had ridden naked on her back once, after all, if only for a few seconds.

“No, not really. That is, only since I left him, and I’ve only seen you come out on the beach a few times. It was not until I heard you singing that I decided it was time to let you see me.”

“Heard me singing?”

“Yes,” she turned around the boat to face me, letting the oars rest, folding her delicate hands on her knees. Her face was radiant. “You were sitting on the sand one night with your feet in the water, watching the surf rise and fall as though it were breathing in innocent sleep. Then you looked up at the stars as though you knew them for friends. They hung as embedded gems in the blue cavern of the sky, throbbing like the very pulse of midnight, and a soft music was issuing from them, with a dark bass voice below, and high faery chimes and harp notes from above spilling like a trickle of water in a gentle spring, and a warm flute tone in between. And you sang with it, touching the pendant that hangs at your throat. I did not hear the other music until you joined in. I think you did not really know what you were singing. But it seemed you were a part of the sea and the stars and the wind and the flowers and the waterfall and the true hidden magic of being. You glowed all over like the stars themselves; you seemed one of them. I knew then that the time was right.”

I found that I had taken her hands in mine. “But I am mortal,” I said the next moment, dropping them.

“I know that, silly,” she said with a little sad smile. “This sort of thing has happened before, has it not?”

“Yes, but it always ends sadly,” I pointed out.

“Everything ends,” she said. “My life will end, someday. Yours will not. Your spirit will go on to another realm even after your body is no more. But mine? It will return to the Sea. I know not what form, if any, it will take. It is not given to me to know what comes at the end of all things. You are the true immortal.”

I took her hands once more and kissed them lingeringly. “I think eternity has arrived already,” I said without knowing at all what I meant.

~*~*~

“She is a dangerous creature, Frodo,” Gandalf said as I entered the house early next morning.

I started. So much for trying to slip past him.

“I know,” I said very softly, smiling with secret delight.

*****TBC*****

Part III: Dangerous Creatures 

Dangerous, indeed.  Those who stir the waters are ever dangerous.

Dangerous, as I sat on the shore of our cove, watching her dance on a large flat rock spattered with many colors, on which I often lay sunning myself after a swim.  Dancing in the moonlight, as I played a crude little drum I had fashioned, moving slowly at first, with arms and hands that traced stories of long ages past, of innocent drifting and quiet worship, with a body that moved as a curl of smoke from a still smoldering fire, feet that barely touched surface as they trod ageless paths on one small stone, rising to the toes, whirling about as the drumming grew more and more urgent, with a shimmering audacity, shaking her small hips at me, waving her filmy garment seductively, eyes full of merry mischief, hair fanning all about her like a scarf of bright mystery, the flowers in it flying all around.  If she thought me silly for loving to see her with flowers in her hair, she did not say, only smiled with good-natured mockery as I twined them into her locks.  I was scarcely aware of my own drumming, did not know if the music I heard came from within me or from without, I only knew that I heard it, and kept time with the rhythms of my own soul.

Dangerous, as we climbed the walkways of my “castle,” and it seemed as though I had never seen it before as we explored the chambers and nooks and tunnels and the vast caverns beneath.  Dangerous, as we climbed to heights that even I had never ventured, and stood at the very top, where we discovered an eagle’s nest, and were able to see nearly the entire island, glittering and undulating and rustling below, city towers in the far-off hazy distance, green and silver mountain peaks over which the great birds soared, bodies of water that mimicked the blueness of the infinite dome above.  And when we found the top of the highest waterfall, and she climbed to the rock arch over it and stood, a hundred or so feet above the cove, and made a most spectacular dive into the water, just before telling me playfully, shouting above the roar of the waters, “Don’t you try this!”—as if I had no better sense.  Then disappearing into the impossibly blue pool below, probably to tease me into thinking she had disappeared entirely…then creeping up suddenly behind me and laughing at my consternation.

And standing beside the vine as I first tucked one of the great blue flowers into her hair, then catching a butterfly for her observation.  There were a great many butterflies about the cove, some of them the size of small birds, of colors and patterns that could still make me gasp.  And they were easy to capture; you didn't even have to try, just stand there and will one to come to you, and it would perch on your finger as though basking in your admiration for a few moments before you let it go.

“Would you like to ride the back of a dolphin?” she asked me one day as we sat on the cliffside watching a few of the creatures frolicking in the sunny distance.  “I think you actually tried to do so that day?”

“You can call one here?” After all I had seen of her, it was not hard to believe.  Just days before we had come upon a whale that had been beached and could not get back into the waters.  It lay wheezing on the white sand, a wet and shiny black mound large enough for Anemone and me to make a home inside.  I was puzzled as to how it had gotten upon the beach, and why it did not go back, that anything so huge could be so helpless, and she said it would die if it did not get back into the sea.  I was filled with pity and sadness, knowing I could do nothing for it, and I could only stroke its mammoth flank.  She stood looking at me with a bemused expression.  Why should I feel this for a sea-creature, she must have been thinking. 

“Perhaps,” I suggested, “I could run into the village and fetch some Elves.  If enough of them came, we could all push it together.”

“It will be dead before you get back,” she pointed out.  “The village is at least four miles away.” 

“Can you not push it yourself?” I asked.  “You are an immortal, after all, and strong.”

“Not that strong,” she said with a hint of a smile.  “We should just go and leave it be.  There are plenty of whales out there, after all.”

“But…” I was puzzled at her simple pragmatism, and at a loss to explain to her how forlorn the huge creature looked.  I could see the difference, more fully between her kind and the Elves, who were more human than humans, I often thought.  But Anemone’s folk were a far different sort.  Pity and love and grief were not part of their being, at least, inasmuch as it was for ours.  I was tempted to think they were the link between people and animals; their emotions were of the simplest sort, and dreams and memory scarcely entered into it.  That would not have explained their magical properties, however.  I had heard very few tales of faery-folk when I was growing up, and she was the first such I had ever encountered.

She looked at the whale, then walked over to its tail and stepped up carefully onto it, until she was standing atop of it.  Then she knelt and laid her hands on it and began speaking very softly to it.  I could understand none of the language she used, but soon I realized she was singing to it.  Hope rose in me; perhaps it would listen to her and somehow find the strength to return to the water.  On an impulse I touched my pendant and held it, breathing a silent prayer to the Lord of the Waters as I felt the strange small power that the gem so often emanated when I held it, then heard my voice join in the soft singing.  If nothing else, we could sing it to rest, and it would die among friends. 

Then, after what seemed like an hour or more, I suddenly felt the sand beginning to shift beneath my feet.  I moved quickly away, for it was indeed moving, the whale with it.  I said things like “Go, do not die,” and other bits of foolishness, to further urge it into the water.  Anemone slid off its back and hopped down beside me, and we both pushed with all our strength, still urging it on, until a vast wave rose and I had to run to avoid being swept into the sea along with the whale.  I felt small hands holding me firmly as the cold water washed over me, pushing me into a tree that I could grab onto with both arms. 

Dangerous, indeed.

So, when she asked me if I wanted to ride on the back of a dolphin, what could I say but yes, of course?  She told me to get behind her and wrap my arms about her waist, then as I held on, she bent her knees, told me to take a deep, deep breath, and plunged in. 

And I found myself straddling a dolphin’s back.  We moved at a speed that took my breath away, riding each mounting wave that came our way, then sluicing downward as I yelled with mingled fright and exhilaration.  Seemingly I had no weight to her; she leaped above the water as though there were nothing more than a limpet clinging to her back.  I heard her ask me if I wanted to go under the waves and I said yes, taking another deep breath.  I don’t know how far down we went, but I could see miracles in the cold and silent chamber.  Things waving spiny arms at me, corals and polyps and sea-urchins, sponges and nudibranchs and enormous clams, and yes, sea-anemones, dozens of them, red and green and yellow, like a dream-field of eerie and perilous flowers, in their mute and fatal snaky dance. 

And if we encountered anything dangerous to us, she was able to emit a kind of power that frightened it off.   Such she did when we came upon a strange thing near the surface, large and flat and black with a long, long tapering tail.  I felt her hot vibration beneath me until the thing swam away and let us be.  I had long ago been advised by Gandalf and others not to venture too far out into the sea, to keep to the beach or the safety of my cove. 

But then we came upon something that made me suck in my breath in terror, something huge with black flailing suckered arms, and I frantically indicated to her that I wished to go back as quickly as possible.  She emitted that warm power again but I think my fear deflected it and the creature did not move away, so she finally turned and streaked through the water until we were above, and did not stop until we were on land and she had assumed human form once more.

I felt embarrassed as I huddled on the beach trembling and gasping.  When I recovered my bearings somewhat, I explained to her about the water-monster I had encountered long ago, although it was much bigger and had many more arms and it had grabbed me in a horrible, icy, sucking grip.  It was a while before I could calm myself enough to even speak.  She listened in silence, then shook her head.

“Had you so little faith in my power to keep you from harm?” she said, with a sad and gentle reproachfulness.  I noted that her hair did not even look wet. "For all you have seen it more than once?"

“Fear drives out faith,” I explained to her.  “You know nothing of fear, I suppose, so you do not understand.”

“There are many things I have yet to understand,” she said, kneeling beside me and pushing my sopping hair from my face.  “So, now you do not wish to go back into the sea anymore?”

“Well, yes, I do, but…not now.  Maybe later.”  I ducked my head.  How foolish and pathetic I must have sounded and looked.

“Do all mortals fear death so?” she asked me as she helped me out of my wet things and picked up the blanket we had brought with us to sit on.  “You say you believe in a life after, and yet you are in terror of the end.”

“I think it is the pain of it we fear,” I said with a faint smile.  “That is another thing you do not know about, I suppose—pain.”

“True enough.  At least, not bodily pain.  Why is it given to humans to suffer?”

“Because one cannot feel pity if one cannot feel pain.”  I had been told this, but had figured it for myself even before that.  “Although that is scant consolation when one is in the throes of suffering.  I know all about that.”

“But if there were no pain, there would be no need of pity,” she pointed out. 

“Perhaps so.  And yet there is something profoundly beautiful about the emotion of compassion that I could not explain to you.  Any more than I could explain color to a blind person.”  Perhaps that was not a tactful way to put it, but it seemed accurate.

“I don’t know about that,” she said thoughtfully, not looking put-out at all.  “When you stood beside the beached whale, there was something so beautiful about you that I could not have explained to myself.  I wanted to know about it, but I suppose I could not…unless I were to become mortal.”

“You would know about many things,” I said.  “Pain, illness, dreams, illusions, hope, despair…some very wonderful and some terrible beyond imagining.  It is staggering to me to think I could give you all that, myself, if you would consent to it.  I feel I should not even offer it.”

“Do you want me to have a human soul?” she asked me suddenly. 

“Do you want one?” I should have answered her question first, I knew; it was not my way to answer questions with questions.  “If you had one, the powers you possess would leave you.  You would become a weak mortal like myself, subject to illness and fear and dark memory, and to suffering you never could have imagined.  But you would know joy and beauty and wonder and compassion and courage also.  For where the lights are brightest, the shadows are deepest.  And…” I smiled a little—“you would have a reflection.”

She laughed.  “Then I would know what I look like.  That would be a wonder indeed.  Although I should know already from your description of me.” 

“Perhaps you would become intolerably vain,” I laughed also. 

"That hasn't happened to you," she pointed out, "and you are very beautiful, I think.  Perhaps more so than I am."

"I think not," I laughed, then sobered.  “There are untold risks. But you would know the greatest thing of all…love.”

“I know it not now?” she said, probably meaning to tease, but with a note of sadness. 

I leaned forward and kissed her lips, twining my fingers in her hair.  “I’m never quite sure,” I admitted.  “I think you feel it to some extent, and yet not…” 

“As you do,” she said.  “There, you need not try to spare my feelings.  I have seen how beloved you are by all, and have been filled with wonder.  I know it is your deeds that have made you so, but I think your smallness and fragility only make them love you the greater.  They seem enamored of your mortality, and determined to hold onto you as long as they can, knowing your time is brief, and they seem wounded by that.  One does not see that with creatures.  The small and weak among them are eliminated, and that seems right somehow.  But love is perilous, as well?  Surely.”

“It is,” I said.  “It is like walking on a rope.  On one side of you lies complete bliss, on the other, unimaginable grief.  You walk the rope and take the chance of falling one way or the other, and there is no surety that you will not tumble into the fire at any moment, for seemingly no reason, through no fault of your own even.  And if you fall into the other side, you know untold happiness and it makes you mighty even in your helplessness.  But there is no surety that anyone will ever find that.” 

“And you could give me all that,” she said looking at me in a strange and childlike wonderment.  “And you call me dangerous.  Seems you are the dangerous one, after all, my friend, for all the Elves call you a savior.  Because of you, their powers diminished and they had to leave their land.” 

“No, this is their true home, and they are happy here.  It is hard to explain.  Still….”

“You would make me human like yourself.  But you fear to make me suffer,” she said.

“Exactly,” I said. 

 “Because of your fabled compassion,” she said. 

“And you could no longer be a dolphin,” I said, “nor frighten off dangerous creatures, nor leap from waterfalls, nor invoke waves to carry beached whales back into the sea, and your people would regard you with scorn and disbelief, perhaps.  Your beauty would diminish and disappear with age, and…”

“And you would love me no longer?”  She raised her eyebrows. 

“Of course I would love you,” I said touching her cheek with my fingertips.  “In the eyes of love, you are eternally beautiful, no matter how you appear to the eyes of others.  And I will not always look like this, either.”

She took my hand, the maimed one, in both hers, and studied it a long moment.  I felt a profound ache inside, such as I had not felt since I arrived here.  Then she pressed it against her cheek.

“I want to be as you,” she said finally, in the softest voice I had ever heard.

****TBC****

Part IV:  Family Matters 

Before we could be wed, Anemone said she must go out and say goodbye to her kin.  It was the custom with her people, and would probably take months, she said.  They were scattered far and wide.

“Are you the first of your kind to marry a mortal?” I asked her as we walked through my garden one evening shortly before she was to leave. 

“I think not,” she said, reaching down to pluck a scarlet flower from a hibiscus bush nearby.  “Our folk couple with mortals frequently, but marrying?  I think that happens very rarely, if at all.”

“It has been said,” I recalled, “that one of my uncle Bilbo’s Took ancestors took a faery-wife, and that accounts for the odd strain in that branch of my family.  I am beginning to believe it might be true.”

“You hobbits place a great deal of importance upon family matters, yes?” she said as she tucked the flower into her hair.  “You can name your ancestors back for many generations.  That is amazing.  I do not know who any of my ancestors are, and do not care.  I do not even know who my father is.”

“Don’t you?” I found that shocking.  In the Shire it would have been considered positively disgraceful. 

“No.  Why should I?”

“And it truly does not bother you that I cannot give you children?”

“I have children already.  What need I with more?”

That was another thing that disturbed me about her.  I had never met any of her children, and she almost never spoke of them, although I had wanted to bring up the matter more than once.  I wondered at her seeming lack of feeling for them.  It occurred to me that when they were born to her, they needed little care, and could shift for themselves at a very early age, without need of protection or teaching.  So perhaps maternal tenderness was a foreign concept to her.

It was a hard thing for me to grasp.

“What makes you so sure you cannot father children?” she said, looking up suddenly at me in the ruddy late afternoon light.

“Well…” I ducked my head.  Strange that I could still feel embarrassment with her after all this time.

“Will I do that when I am mortal?” she said looking shrewdly at me.

“What?”

“Blush.”

I laughed.  “On you a blush would look lovely, I think.  I probably only look ridiculous.”

“Not a bit of it.”  She laughed too, then flung her arms around my neck and we shared a long kiss.

“I think I am beginning to understand what fear is,” she said later as we sat beneath blooming jasmine bushes in the twilight.  I had brought a basket of fruit out on the terrace. 

There were so many varieties of fruits and vegetables on the Island, many of which I had never even heard before.  There were some fruits I found, to my eternal delight, that had a thick gold-colored outer rind which was inedible, but the inside, which could be easily broken into sections, was very juicy and incredibly delicious.  I could sit and eat these all day, and I had several of the trees growing in my garden.  Lord Elrond's wife, Lady Celebrían, had taught me to make something like a preserve of them, and I had jars upon jars of it in my fruit-cellar. 

There were other strange fruits as well, including one that was long and thin and yellow outside and white inside, and the rind also had to be peeled away.  And a round crimson fruit that had to be cut and inside were what looked like rubies.  And a very large, spiny one, that needed a sharp knife to cut open, but the inside was yellow and soft and very tasty indeed, especially when cold.  And much, much more.  I had a vineyard, a small berry-patch, and of course, pipe-weed, of which I had brought a large sack of seeds with me. And I had a beehive as well.  Sam would have been proud of me, surely.  He would know I was not spending my days in reeking idleness. 

“If you should change your mind,” I said in reply to what Anemone had just said, “will you at least come back now and then?”

“I would come back to stay,” she said, “but I shan’t change my mind.”

I picked an orange out of the basket and peeled it, then broke it and gave half to her.  “I suppose it is just as well we cannot have children,” I said.  “They could not leave, and whom would they marry?  Each other?  I think not.”

“And yet you’ve told me that where you come from, cousins marry each other,” she pointed out.  “That it is a usual thing, and in the Shire, nearly everyone is related to each other if only distantly.”

“Yes.  But brothers and sisters could not marry.  It is not done among either mortals nor Elves.  Yet faery-folk can couple with their siblings and think nothing of it?”

“Of course,” she shrugged.  “Does that truly bother you?”

I shook my head.  “I cannot grasp it yet.  So…you feel fear now, you say?”

She nodded.  “Perhaps not, and yet…the idea that I am to change utterly from what I am produces a strange emotion.  To think I shall have no powers at all, will grow old and die, and subject to dangers…and grief and loss.  And there will be no going back.  I am just beginning to take it all in.  Perhaps change is the one thing that my people could find frightening.  But do not worry, my love,” she smiled at me, “I am not changing my mind.  But you…you will not go and change on me, will you?  You will not try to dominate me?”

Once more I was shocked.  “Such a thing never even crossed my mind,” I assured her. 

We rose and went walking on the beach.  The evening star hung over the sea where the sun had set before, a stain of coral red still lingering on the horizon.  Its steady brilliance reflected on the breathing waves in shivering silver-blue flickers. 

“You love that star,” she said after a long moment. 

“It is not really a star, but a planet,” I said with a smile.  “There is a legend that it is the ship of Lord Elrond's father, with a mighty jewel attached ot it, but that is only a legend.  Lord Elrond has much equipment to aid him with viewing the stars, and he lets me look as much as I like in his observatory.  He has a wondrous piece of glass through which one can see planets greatly enlarged.  This one looks all blue and misty through it.”

I found myself touching the pendant at my throat with the hand that was not holding hers, then saw her looking at it.  I took the chain and lifted it over my head, then laid it over hers.  I heard her gasp.

“You wish to give me this?” she said as I lifted her hair over the chain and arranged the gem on her bosom.

“Well, it looks much better on you,” I said only half jokingly.  “Have you never worn a jewel before?”

“No, nor wanted to,” she said.  “But this feels very warm.  And…it sings, somehow.  It is full of your being.  It is alive--I had never known that a stone could have life.  I shall wear it as a pledge that I shall return to you.”

As we started back toward my cottage, she touched the pendant several times, and seemed filled with a sweet light. 

“I love the sun as you love the stars,” she said softly.  “I will not be able to look into it any more, will I?  But I do not mind so much.  I had far rather look at you.”

 ****TBC****

Part V:  Sand-castle 

I dreaded her leaving, the thought of facing all that time without her, and yes, of course, the fear that she would indeed change her mind.  Perhaps she had more feeling for her children than she let on, and they would talk her out of what she was about to do.  Perhaps she would meet her former lover and…

I wondered if Gandalf and the Elves thought she had deserted me, after the third month of her absence.  I tried not to go among them more than I must, not wishing to see looks of pity on their faces.  But I could not avoid them altogether. 

I even thought of asking Lord Elrond if she would come back.  He might be able to tell me.  But I lacked the nerve.  If the answer were no, I did not think I could endure it.

Nothing for it: I had a garden to tend to, no time to sit around moping and wondering and watching the Sea for her return.  There was the grape harvest coming up.  Many Elves came to help, as they always did.  It was the way of the land for those who did not farm to come and help those who did.  In fact, some of them told me to relax and let them do all the work, but I was having none of that.  I liked the feeling of picking the bunches tenderly from the vines and holding them in my hand for a few moments before laying them in the basket, feeling their soft weight in my palm and knowing they were the literal fruit of my labors.  After the harvest we’d have a big wine-making and then a huge celebration, after which I would somehow end up in bed with purple feet and a throbbing head. 

I decided to fix up the house in preparation for my bride.  Its simplicity suited me fine, but I wanted something more for her.  For starters, I wanted a larger bed.   I gave my instructions to an Elf who had carpentry and wood-carving skills, and he turned out a bed of wonders, of a beautiful dark polished wood carved in a manner reminiscent of sea-life, the posts high and curling, the middle of the headboard carved in the image of a sea-maiden holding a large shell. It was then I got ideas to decorate with the sea-shells I had.  I had a huge number of them, mostly gifts from Elf-children.  I’d learned that they had seen me gathering clam-shells to make fertilizer and supposed I was a shell-fancier, so they spent many hours and went long distances picking up pretty shells for me and bringing them in bags and baskets.  An Elf-lad had brought me a kind of shell which could be blown like a horn, and had instructed me how to do so—it was harder than it looked, but I acquired the knack with a little practice.  I had rows upon rows of the shells on shelves, using Bilbo’s room to accommodate them after he passed, and lining the guest-room with them as well, and I’m sure some of the adult Elves must have laughed about my “collection.”  I would throw none out, but I really had not room for all.  So perhaps I could put them to practical use now. 

So I put in flower-beds and lined them with shells, and paved the garden-paths with some of the smoother ones.  I had a gazebo made and inlaid with bits of pearly nacre in patterns I contrived myself, surprising myself with my artistry.  Elflings brought me beautiful polished and curious stones that I used for paving.  My house soon blossomed into a thing of wonders, indeed.

And another young Elf brought a small bag of pearls to be fashioned into a necklace for her.  He had dived for them himself.

Lady Celebrían embroidered a magnificent coverlet for the marriage-bed, blue and silver and gold and many shades in-between.

I truly learned the meaning of danger then. 

Nights I often spent in my old way sitting on the beach until sleep began to overtake me, after which I would plod back to the cottage and fall into bed.  I kept the star-glass Lady Galadriel had given me long ago, sitting in the window at night to provide a soft light.  When Anemone asked me about it the first time, I joked that I needed it to see my way to the privy in case nature called during the night.  But in truth, I did not like the darkness without a light at all.  Horrid things no longer haunted me, but I still needed that bit of soft brightness in the dark reaches of the night. 

When four months had gone by and she still had not returned, I began to wonder if I really had been deserted.  I lay in my bed one night—the new one not having been brought in yet—looking at my star-glass in the darkness and wondering just what I would do if she did not come back.  Well, I did not wonder long; I had a good idea of what I would do.  I knew what that would do to Gandalf and some of the others, but there it was…I could not face the rest of my days, even in paradise, without her.  I only hoped for complete oblivion rather than an afterlife bereft of her company.

I could not sleep, so I rose and pulled on my breeches and shirt; then, on an impulse I took the phial from the window and carried it out with me down the path to my usual place on the beach.  The stars were so thick they fairly overlapped each other, as I lay on my back on the soft white sand looking up at them.   The glass I held balanced on my stomach, absently tapping on it with a finger.  I remembered one day when an Elf-lad  built a castle for me here on this spot, quite a magnificent one, down to the smallest detail.  I told him he had built it awfully close to the tide, which would level it in one lap, and he said he knew that.  I wished hard that there was a way to preserve it, but I could not hope to move it without it all falling in, and no wall I could possibly form around it would protect it.

I don’t know why I happened to think of that sand-castle just then.

I felt like the only person awake in the entire world.

Finally I sat up, absently brushing sand away from the back of my head, and looked down at the glass, murmuring the words to make it light.  If this truly was a light for me when all other lights went out, perhaps…it could tell me something.  Or show me.

I gazed, through tears, at the soft glimmer that started at the heart of the crystal phial, then grew into a star of strength, faintly blue at the center and raying out silvery and then purest white.  Without speaking aloud, I willed it to give me a sign, tell me something, anything.  Show me what lay before me, tell me what I should do. 

I would come back to stay.  But I shan’t change my mind.

I have children already.  What need I with more?

I shall wear it as a pledge that I shall return to you….

Please come back soon, I whispered pitifully against the soft roar of the tide.  I tried to make our house beautiful for you.  I tried to make the path easy for your feet.  Do not become mortal if you do not wish it, just come back, for a day, an hour, a week.  Just don’t leave me here all alone….

And then I became aware of a very soft music, just above the murmur of the waves.  It seemed to be coming from the glass itself.  I held it to my ear.  A faint thrumming, in low tones, then warm middle notes, uncertain at first, but growing into a discernable thread of sound, and finally, high twinkling chimes, shyly sounding one by one, then coming brisk and confident like rising fireflies on a late spring hill. 

It sings somehow.  It is filled with your being....

I am beginning to understand what fear is.

I want to be as you.

The light rose until it surrounded me in its embrace, and the music rose as a fountain washing me in rainbows and pearls and lucent dust.  And I felt, rather than heard, a footstep behind me, and a voice that spoke as the very breath of the moon.

“Well Frodo, are you just going to sit there playing with a perfume-bottle all night, or are you going to stand up and kiss your betrothed?” 

****TBC****

 Part VI:  Wedding Preparations

If the Island had a Queen, it was Lady Galadriel.  I saw less of her than I would have liked, for she spent a great deal of time in the City attending to affairs there.  Yet she still found time to make a bridal gown for Anemone, and to make it fine indeed.

Meanwhile, Gandalf had met a lady also.  Ríannor was her name.

She had night-black hair flowing down to her hips, white skin, scarlet lips and diamond-bright eyes.  She was a dark-elf, who had once been a queen, and a prisoner of Sauron, and her husband, who was now dead, had been a descendent of Lady Galadriel's brother. 

“So you are finally going to marry her?” I asked him when we were alone together for a smoke on my terrace, leaving our betrotheds indoors to become better acquainted. 

“Yes,” he said.  He now looked like a much younger version of his former self, with shining black hair brushed back neatly and smooth skin, and was called Olórin by the Elves now.  Yet to me he would always be Gandalf.  “I was not going to marry her until you had gone, not wishing to leave you all alone.  But now that you have Anemone, I can feel better in my mind about it.”

“Leave me alone?  But my dear Gandalf, you could have married her at any time!  In case you had forgotten, I am fifty-five years old, although I suppose that is no great age to you.  But in hobbit-years I am considered quite in my prime, and well able to look after myself.”  I actually felt a bit put-out.

“I know that, dear boy…but to me, even if you live to be two hundred you will always be the child I did not have, I am sure.”  He looked away off into the distance for a moment.  “I thought you would say that, however, and that is why I did not tell you about her before.”

After I had cooled off somewhat I said, “Perhaps we could hold our weddings together, if it is all right with Anemone?  A double ceremony then?”

“No no no no no no, I would not dream of it.  That day belongs to you and her, and I would never ask you to share it with us.  Thank you just the same.”

“But I would be more than happy to share it, Gandalf!”

“Nothing doing!  Everyone will be making a huge fuss over the two of you, and that’s exactly how I wish it.  And I want to be able to hang all over you like a doting parent and join in the fuss.  Could not very well do that if I were being married on the same day, now could I?”

“I wonder if it is possible to die of happiness,” I said, almost as if to myself.

“Strange, I have been wondering exactly the same thing,” Gandalf said with a huge smile.  "And my joy is doubled at seeing yours.  You've no idea what it does for me to see you in bliss.  I only wish Bilbo could have lived to see it, but maybe he does, for all we know." 

If I had any anxieties now, it was about whether Anemone might lose her wild charm with mortality and turn into a proper little hobbitess.  I did not express this fear to her, but it was in the back of my mind, nevertheless. 

She asked me if she could continue to wear her dresses short.  She truly did not think she could manage a long gown all the time, although she knew only children wore short dresses on the Island.  I took up the matter with Lady Galadriel, who looked vaguely amused in that way she sometimes had, and said that Anemone might continue in the fashion that suited her, just as I continued to wear the short breeches to which I was accustomed.  She ordered her seamstresses to make Anemone’s frocks knee-length and to keep them simple and sturdy, with only one long gown for special occasions in whatever color she chose.  I hoped she would want violet-blue, to match her eyes, but she decided on flame-red like the sunset.  I was afraid the Lady would be shocked, but she merely laughed and said so be it.

The gifts began pouring in.  One such was a gorgeously fashioned white alabaster flask of perfume, gemmed and overlaid in gold filigree and fantastically shaped, with a stopper of ruby-colored glass.  The Elf-lady who presented to Anemone told her it would make me “her slave.”  The fragrance fairly had me swooning in my tracks.  Talk about dangerous!

Lord Elrond presented us with a full supply of ointments and medicines, along with a book he had carefully copied out telling what to do for various injuries.  The book had been beautifully decorated, illustrated and bound by his wife.  There were magnificently embroidered cushions and tapestries and rugs, comforters, and some splendidly carved furniture and knick-knacks to set around which I privately thought were a bit fine for our house, but I kept my opinion to myself, hoping I would not knock things over after a night of hard celebration. 

“They will make a true princess of me,” Anemone said as she touched a new pair of porcelain swans that flanked the terrace steps where she sat, then a small golden harp.  She picked up another beautifully bound book lying in her lap.  “But you are a prince, so I suppose it's only right.  What is this?  I cannot read, you know.”

I took it and opened it.  “The Arts of Conjugal Love,” I read the title-page, and she went into a long peal of laughter.

“As if you need that!” she gasped.  I laughed also, sitting down beside her.

“Well,” I admitted, “I have never been married before, after all.  Surely I still have things to learn.  This stodgy, bookish hobbit may end up greatly surprising you.”

“Our reading-lessons should be grow very interesting indeed,” she said, snuggling close to me and thumbing through the gold-edged pages, looking at the drawings that illustrated the volume.  “Ohhhhh…look at this!”  She paused at a page and turned it for me to see.  I felt my face grow scarlet, and I looked away quickly, my hand foolishly clapped over my mouth.  Her laughter spilled out like a fountain, and my own soon joined in. 

Artists came and drew many portraits of us, some separately and some together, and a sculptor was commissioned to come and make clay models of us.  Anemone was much bemused. 

“Why do they wish to make statues of us?” she asked me.

“It is a way of commemorating us,” I explained.  “To help people remember how we looked after we are gone, and those of their children who will never see us in life.  Their way of immortalizing us, I suppose.”

“I have much to figure out about mortality, I can see that,” she said shaking her head in perplexity.  “I can hardly see the point of ‘immortalizing’ anyone in cold hard stone.”

“Well that we are not in Middle-Earth,” I said.  “You would be as a child just starting school, and many of your lessons would be very unpleasant, I am afraid.  Here, at least, the folk are understanding and happy to help.”

“Perhaps,” she said dreamily, “someday we could pose for an illustration in the conjugal arts book?”

I started, then looked at her, then roared with laughter.  Something told me I could lay any anxiety about her turning overly proper to rest!

~*~*~

It was hard to choose between Gandalf and Lord Elrond when it came to having someone to perform the wedding, but I finally decided on Gandalf, especially since Anemone seemed to favor him too.  I think she was still a little in awe of the Elf-lord, and felt that he did not quite approve of her, although she need not have worried on that score.

Elrond would perform the wedding of Gandalf and Ríannor, later on.

I would have liked our wedding to take place on the shore of the cove, near the waterfall, but on the beach there was more room for everyone, so that was where it would be.  I believe the entire Island turned out for it.  At least, I think so.  Anemone looked so ravishing in her beaded snowy gown, I could hardly take my eyes off her long enough to inspect the crowd.  Her amber hair had been intricately braided and beaded, with a wreath of small white lilies crowning her temples, and the strand of pearls gracing her throat.  I wore Elvish silver-grey, richly embroidered in blue and crimson, and they placed a crown of lilies on my head also.  I suffered them to do it since that was the custom here, privately wondering when I should be able to cast it off without anyone noticing.  

I couldn’t help but notice that Anemone had put on a bit too much of the perfume.  I hadn’t thought to tell her she should save it for the wedding-night, and use it sparingly.  I don’t know what the crowd thought as the scent wafted toward them, but I suppose it didn’t matter.

Gandalf was in his gleaming white robes, of course, although he had retired them except for special occasions…such as this.  There was much singing and some praying, a mercifully short speech and blessings pronounced on both of us, and finally Gandalf stepped forward to perform the ceremony that would seal Anemone’s fate and mine as well.

Then…as he pronounced us husband and wife, she suddenly gave a shriek as if she had been struck by lightning and crumpled onto the sand at my feet!

****TBC****

Part VII:  Fireworks 

Gandalf was holding me.  As my vision cleared I could see Lord Elrond bending over my bride, and I tried with all my strength to break away from Gandalf, but he held me firmly, then suddenly I bit his hand.  With a small yelp he let me go and I scrambled over to where Anemone was lying.  They had carried her over into the shade.  I could not see whether she were conscious or not.  It was Ríannor who caught and restrained me.

“Do not interfere,” she whispered. 

“But what…” My wreath had fallen over one eye.  I snatched at it and flung it aside.

“Shhh,” she said.  Gandalf came to my other side. 

I heard a gasp come from Anemone, then a little moan.

I heard her speak my name. 

Lord Elrond turned and looked at me a long moment, then motioned me to come closer.  I approached, terrified of what I would see, but I saw that her color was starting to creep back into her cheeks.  I bent over her, speaking her name just barely above a whisper.

She smiled faintly at me.  “Hullo…husband.”

I cradled her in my arms and held her as others came hesitantly forward and Lord Elrond motioned them back.  

“I think she is all right now,” he said.  “Her immortality left her quite precipitously, and rather dramatically, I should say.  But now I may venture to say she officially possesses a human soul.”

I think his voice broke a little over those words.

“I felt…pain,” Anemone said putting a hand to her forehead.  “It was terrible…but it was only for a second or two.  I feel a little…weak, but I think I can stand now.”

I helped her up very gently.  She was a little unsteady, but able to stand. 

“I’m sorry to cause such a scare,” she said mainly to me, but looking around at the anxious faces surrounding us.  “I didn’t mean to ruin the festivities.  Shall we continue where we left off?”

I was fairly weeping from relief.  “You are not up to it.  Let me carry you back to the house.”

“Silly, not yet,” she chided me.  “Look at all these people.  Would you do them out of a special occasion?”

“To spare you, absolutely,” I said.  I tried to lift her, but she playfully swatted my hands away.  Her color looked quite normal now as she waved gaily to the crowd.

“I don’t know about anyone else…but I could do with a bit of wine,” she said.  "I want to see what it is to be drunk."

Relieved laughter broke out, and the musicians struck up festive music.  Wine was brought to us in one goblet, and we each drank from it.  Then we kissed and the people cheered riotously all around us. 

There was dancing, people forming two huge rings around us while we danced in the middle. 

Your morning has begun
You stand a new creation
Where once there was one
Two there are now. 

Your cup is filling
Where once it stood empty
May it hold the finest vintage
And never run dry.

May blessings fall upon you
As thick as the snowflakes
As the stars above you
As the sand below you

 
As the flowers of the field
As the grapes of the harvest
As the fishes of the sea
And the flowing of the falls.

May the sun gild your fields
and the rain drench your garden
May the night bring only joy
As you lie within its tent. 

May the path kiss your feet
And the breeze caress your faces
And all the years bring beauty
That will build your truest home.

As the dusk approached after the wedding-feast (which did include fish and clams), there were fireworks, the first one taking the form of a splendid ship; the next one, of a whale rising from red waves.  Then there came a row of starfish, and then a fine white conch-shell.  And a school of fishes, of a vivid blue, then another one, gold this time, and one more, of red, all swimming and wriggling for a moment or two.  Then, of course, a dolphin, just one at first, then another, and another, streaking along and then doing a graceful leap against the sunset colors just before disappearing into sparkling ripples.  And then a waterfall, with a great eagle soaring above.  And finally, a little bride, decked out in pure white, and a groom standing silvery by her side, and over them a garland of red roses and green leaves….

…and the people cheered the loudest over this one as the figures turned to each other and shared a kiss.

The festivities went on until daybreak, but we did not participate; we were able to slip away as the wine flowed unchecked.  I don’t think anyone noticed, and if they did, they pretended not to.

~*~*~

We found breakfast laid out for us on the terrace next morning.  Gandalf, Ríannor, Elrond, Celebrían, and Lady Galadriel drifted over as we were finishing up the last of it.  We waved cheerily to them.

“How is the bride?” Elrond asked.  “We were a little worried about you.”

The bride beamed up at him over a bowl of orange sections and mushrooms and strawberries and raisins doused in cream.  “You need not have worried, my lord,” she said, artlessly sucking cream off a finger.  “The consummation of the marriage made up for everything.  Really, it is sooo much better for a mortal—what I have been missing all my life!” 

I had to restrain myself with an effort to keep from sliding under the table.

Everyone else just laughed.  I got my bearings then and hastily offered food to the guests.  As they ate and drank and chattered I contemplated how I would instruct Anemone in the fine art of discretion, then forgot about it a few minutes later as I propped my chin on my hand and watched her in her blue velvet morning-gown with strawberry stains on her lips and sunlight in her eyes and hair, a large white butterfly hovering close over her as the very wings of bliss. 

If Sam could only see us now….

****TBC****

Part VIII: Lessons in Mortality

“I see you are having a hard time tearing yourself away from that mirror,” I remarked one morning with a smile.

She stood gazing into the bedroom glass in guileless wonderment, marveling at the way the image that looked back at her repeated her every movement and expression. She lifted a finger to touch a long lock of hair, at first slowly, then she lowered her hand and repeated the gesture more quickly, then very rapidly as if to see if she could “beat” her reflection to it, for all the world like a child “playing mirror” with a friend. I was nearly as fascinated as she, as though I were rediscovering for myself the experience of seeing my reflection for the first time.

After a quick lunch we went for a swim in the cove. It was a hot day and the sun seemed to fill the entire sky. I had to restrain Anemone from diving in, for I knew I would have to teach her to swim with the breathing techniques of a mortal rather than a water-sprite who could breathe submerged. She discovered quickly how cold the water really was, withdrawing her foot with a squeal as soon as she dipped it in. Teaching her was easier than I anticipated, however, for she had a quick mind, and took to the water naturally and grew accustomed to the temperature in no time.

“Why am I so rough all of a sudden?” she asked holding up an arm for my inspection, showing goose-bumps on the fair skin. “Will it stay so?” She told me I looked even better wet, and asked if I thought she did too. I looked at her all drenched in crystal, her long eyelashes beaded with diamond drops shining with rainbow colors in the sunlight, her skin golden above the water and silver underneath, her eyes taking on flecks of blue and green and silver from the water and the trees around…and I solemnly told her I wasn’t sure, I would have to think about it. She laughed and dipped under and spurted a mouthful of water right in my face!

And later we practiced a few of the arts of conjugal love on the silky sand beneath the willows that drooped curtains of green-gold lace all around us and tickled our backs.

“Do you suppose Gandalf and Ríannor will carry on like we do when they are wed?” she asked me in lazy wonder as we lay side by side like mating fish on the multi-colored rock, watching the reflections that shifted like a dream-tapestry in variegated greens in the water below us, dragon-flies skittering over the surface, small fishes flickering beneath.

I laughed: “I don’t even want to try to imagine. It’s like picturing what my parents might have been doing behind closed doors. I’d rather not think of it.” Dreamily I traced the point of her ear with a fingertip. It seemed to send a thrill of delight over her.

“It makes such a difference when you can feel physical pleasure, yes?” she said. “Our folk regarded mating as something to be performed for procreation only, and the pleasuring, such as it was, was only incidental. I had never supposed it could exist for its own sake. Of course I always enjoyed being with you, but that was because of your company, and I liked the thought of pleasuring you. But this way is so much better, there’s simply no comparison.”

“Yes, it’s much better when you can feel it too,” I said. “I am afraid it would have grown frustrating for me, being the only one who could feel it. It would be like having you bring me delicious food without being able to taste it yourself.”

“Females in the Shire don’t talk the way I do, do they?” she said. I chuckled.

“Not to my knowledge. I was never around them so much except when I was a boy, and they talked mainly of children or household affairs. If they ever talked of…conjugal matters, I did not hear it.”

“How do you think they would take me in the Shire?” she asked yawning a little.

“The males would fall in love with you and the...females would die of envy, I’m sure,” I said quickly…but I knew I couldn’t really fool her with half-joking assurances. I looked at her and said, “They didn’t think so highly of me either, really. I was considered rather--odd.”

“But those who loved you, loved you with a vengeance,” she pointed out.

“Yes…and I never felt as though I deserved it,” I said.

“Truly? Why not? If you don’t deserve it, who does?”

“Well…I never felt I was all they thought I was. That they were giving me credit I had not earned.”

“You have flaws.” She looked at me with mock reproach, shaking her head. “How silly those folks are. All you did was save the world, after all. But we must face the sad, sad truth of the matter: you have flaws. And they never knew it. Shameful! You could have told them you had flaws, at least!” She picked up a handful of sand and dribbled it into my hair.

I had to laugh. She rolled over on her back, arching her bosom, dusted with the white sand, then she took my hand and placed beneath her left breast.

“My chest is jumping,” she said. “I’ve a heartbeat now, yes?”

“Yes,” I said kissing the base of her throat where a pulse throbbed. “It’s beating there too….” I kissed her temple where a vein leapt ever so slightly…. “And there…” I kissed her wrist. “And there….”

“I have heartbeats in many places,” she said.

“Yes…” Her body seemed full of drums, drums in the deep….

But I am afraid we lingered far too long, and hours later, she had a most painful sunburn. I felt horrible, for I should have warned her, and I had not even given the matter a thought. The burn was quite severe, and she could not put on any clothes. When her eyes filled with tears, so did my own.

“I know you think I’m horrid,” she said sniffling as she tried to sit on the bed, her skin a deep red, “but it hurts so badly. Almost like when I became mortal, but that was only for a few seconds. That’s what it felt like, as though I had been set on fire. This feels like afterwards….”

“I am the horrid one. I am just so sorry,” I said sniffling also, then suddenly went to the cupboard where our medicinal supplies were kept. Rummaging around, I found a large jar of ointment that Lord Elrond had concocted for burns and brought it to her. “Let me put this on you. It works really well.”

“I loved the sun, and it betrayed me,” she murmured. “I suppose it is angry with me. Because I’ve a new idol.”

My heart reproached me cruelly as she winced and cried out at my touch. I dabbed it on her as lightly as I could, as though I were brushing it onto the wings of a butterfly. She stood still and allowed it, wiping tears away with her fingers, but soon I could feel her relax.

“That is much better,” she said. “This is what is meant by medicine?”

“Yes. And the best kind—Elvish.”

“It works fast. And it smells wonderful. What is in it?”

“I’m not sure. A plant called athelas, for one. And one called aloe. And probably others as well. But there is something more, that mortals cannot grow or concoct, something only Elves can do to give it its true virtue.”

She sat down on the edge of the bed, after pushing back the coverlet. “I feel much better now,” she said, “in fact, it feels better than when I am not burnt. Perhaps I could use it when I’m not hurting?”

“I doubt it would have any effect then.” I could tell she really did feel better. But my heart was still smiting me. I should have been looking after her better, and I had been totally remiss.

She looked across at her reflection. “So I am blushing all over now,” she said smiling mischievously. “Is it lovely on me?”

“Do not even try to make me laugh,” I said with a little snort. “I feel just terrible. I truly should have known better, because I sunburn so easily myself.”

“Perhaps I can make you feel better after a while,” she grinned. “Look, you are burnt also. Let me put some of that stuff on you.”

“Only a little." It did hurt, but I would bear it as punishment, and we needed to save the ointment for her, who needed it much more. "I was not even aware until you spoke of it. We should save it for when the effect wears off.”

Later I put more balm on her, then soaked a soft linen sheet in cold water and laid it over her as she rested face down on the bed. Her head hurt, she said, and her stomach felt funny, as though her lunch did not want to stay in it. I made her a special tea that she said worked wonders, although it tasted awful.

“So this is what pain is like,” she mused as she handed me the empty cup. “And mortals go through such as a matter of course?”

“Yes. Such is being fully human. And there is no surety you won’t suffer it again, and even worse things, whether through your own doing or no. You…would not go back now? Now that you know how it is?”

She looked down at the cup, glanced about the room, at her reflection, and finally at me, a long, long moment, then touched my cheek.

“Absolutely not,” she said.

By nightfall her pain was gone, although it was two days until her skin turned to normal color. Eventually it turned a beautiful bronze tan, and her hair acquired streaks of bright gold. It seemed she and the sun had forgiven each other.

~*~*~

One afternoon I woke from a late nap to find her side of the bed empty. I called her name, supposing her to be in the kitchen preparing supper, but she did not answer. I pulled on some clothes and went outdoors, calling for her, then, supposing perhaps she’d gone out to visit with Ríannor, I started back inside to get supper started, then a speck of gold caught my eye. And I saw her sitting on the beach alone.

I hesitated, then started down the path. Something told me all was not right with her.

I suppose I still had the fear in the back of my mind that she missed her old life sometimes.

She didn’t turn when I approached. When I crossed in front of her I saw she was weeping silently.

“It’s my children,” she said when I entreated her to tell me what was wrong. “I have feelings for them now and they are gone, gone. If only I could just see them now and then. That would be enough.” She wiped her eyes and nose with the hem of her short gown.

I sank down in total dismay and put my arm around her. Now what had I done? I had made her mortal and so had given her a heartache no balm could heal. Here was something I could do nothing about.

Or could I?

She laid her head on my shoulder and I stroked her hair, then took her hand and guided it to the pendant that hung at her bosom. I kept my hand over hers and her tears fell on it and were warm. The sun was sinking into the waves and I could see the Evenstar peeping through the streaks of color on the horizon. After a few minutes I felt a faint vibration of the jewel’s power through the flesh and bones of her hand. And heard the beginnings of music.

I could see that she heard it too.

As darkness spread over the skies I stood up, then reached my hand down to her. “Come,” I said, “I want to try something. Go to the cove and untie the boat, and I will meet you there.”

I sprinted back to the cottage and returned to the cove with the star-glass in my hand. Anemone had untied the boat from the tree to which it was tethered.

“What have you there?” She looked at me askance as I revealed the phial.

“You will see.” I smiled as I assisted her into the boat. She allowed me to do the rowing. I rowed out to the mouth of the cove and down the shore, to the big flat rock where I had first seen her…it seemed not so long ago. Then I got out and pushed the boat up on the shore, and helped her out and we climbed up onto the rock. I stood at the very edge, looking out at the Evenstar which was very bright indeed now, and I began to sing softly as I waved my hand over the star-glass to make it glow. Then, after I had finished the hymn I slowly began to remove the crystal stopper.

“What are you doing?” I heard Anemone ask. I held a finger to my lips. The glass felt very warm in my hand. Then I tipped it over the waves and dribbled the luminous water into the sea.

The waves began to glitter as if star-dust had been sprinkled onto them, and soft music hummed at my feet. The light spread and spread until it seemed as though the sea were burning with silver-blue flames. I watched entranced until I felt Anemone’s hand take mine. Then I said, “Let’s go back now.” We rowed back and returned to the cottage, ate supper, spent the evening in our usual fashion, and went to bed.

The next morning we took breakfast on the terrace as we always did, and we were halfway through when I heard the sound of what was unmistakably a giggle. I looked all about but could see no one. I thought at first perhaps it was an Elf-child slipping about, playing a prank, but children were not allowed to come here uninvited, so I thought that unlikely. Then I looked at Anemone and saw her face all aglow. She was looking out on the garden and then I heard a tinkling music as she sprang up and dashed out to where a tiny maiden with silvery hair stood behind a jasmine-bush. In a moment she had caught the little faery-like creature by the hands and was dancing all around the lawn with her, and I saw two more peeping out shyly behind a rose-tree—these were twins as I could see. I smiled and waved to them but I think they did not see me. A blue-green light shone in their silvery hair as the sun found them out and Anemone ran to them and embraced them, and two more which were evidently male appeared, then another female with hair like hers, until it seemed that all the stars from the western sky had come down to dance on our lawn together in the morning light.

****TBC****

Part IX: Dancing in the Dusk

“I know I’ve said it already, Mr.—erm, Frodo…but it just does my heart such a world of good to see you so happy. It’s so wonderful to know you got your reward, as I had mine.”

“And I am so glad to have you here with me, Samwise Gamgee. More than I could ever tell you. Although I so regret the tremendous loss that brought you.”

“It’s all right, M—Frodo. I had her as long as I did, and all the little ’uns, and the grandchildern and all. She weren’t sick for long and went out easy in her sleep, and I was with her. I’m just overjoyed to have the chance to see you once more before I follow her to where she is now. And my time won’t be long neither, I’m told.”

“I think neither will mine,” I said softly, then bent down and kissed the top of his head.

Then I led him to the cushioned chair on the terrace as Anemone cleared away the dishes. I made as if to help her but she gave me a “don’t you even think about it” look and grinned as she piled the remains of our dinner into a small tub and bore it into the house. She was plumper than when I had first met her, with a few silver streaks showing among the gold in her hair, which was bound into a long braid, and there were crinkles that showed around her eyes when she smiled…which was often, very often indeed. I had plenty of crinkles of my own, and my hair was all silver now.

So was Sam’s. He was quite stout and used a cane, for he had an arthritic leg. I carefully eased it up onto a pillowed stool, then brought him a brew Lord Elrond had concocted, which helped the pain immensely.

"My old Gaffer had the gout pretty bad up towards the end," he said thoughtfully as he sipped at the tea. "This stuff would have eased his passing plenty, I'm sure."

I sat myself down beside him, feeling grateful to the others. They were planning a huge celebration for us tomorrow, I knew. But they had kindly let us spend the first day of our reunion alone at our cove. Even Anemone's youngest son, Northlight, who lived on the other side of the cove from us, had gone home, along with his wife, an elleth we had adopted as our daughter shortly after our wedding.

Dusk was falling. Soon giggles could be heard from the bushes.

“What’s that?” Sam asked glancing about.

“Her other children--and grandchildren. They pop in from time to time.”

“Why don’t they come up here?”

“They will eventually. I imagine they wanted to give us our time alone for today.”

Sam smiled, then shook his grey head in wonder. I hoped he was not missing his own children too much. I still couldn't quite take it in that he had left them just to see me once more.

I did not deserve that, surely.

“Look,” I said as a glimmer caught my eye, “there’s another one climbing up over the waterfall. Watch!”

Sam squinted his eyes to where I pointed. Sure enough, one of the little creatures stood above the arch of the highest waterfall with her arms outstretched as if to take flight. Sam gasped.

“She’s goin’ to jump,” he said. “But it’s so high up!”

“Just watch,” I said smiling. "I don't know if that's Nightingale or Gloryfall. It's still hard to tell the twins apart, at least from a distance."

The little lady bent her legs, blew us a kiss with an exaggerated gesture, then dove with incredible grace off the arch, falling in a shining arc into the red-stained ripples below. She barely made a splash.

Sam just sat watching with open mouth. Not to be outdone, her twin climbed up to the arch and dove also. Soon shrieky giggles ensued from the water, with much splashing. Sam tightened his lips.

“If ever one of mine ’d tried such a trick, she’d catch it hot!” he declared, and I laughed heartily. “Come to think of it, I could almost see my Elanor doin’ somethin’ like it when she was a young ’un. Full of odd notions, she was. Sometimes if I didn’t know better I’d ’a thought she was more your daughter than mine. Not that I ever once supposed it,” he added hastily.

I smiled a little sadly. “I wish I could see her now. Does your leg feel better, Sam? Enough to make it down the path to the beach?”

“Yes, much better. But if it’s all the same to you, M—Frodo, I’m quite comfy here.”

“I know, but Anemone wants to show us something. Just this once?”

“All right then. I’ll do anything to please her. She’s a most wonderful lady, she is.”

The sunset looked silvery on the waves. Sam didn’t take his cane and walked without limping, but I held his arm linked in mine, clutching our pipes and pouches in my free hand, and Anemone carried three fat pillows and a bottle of wine. Two elderly hobbits and one ageless little lady, all together in the twilight.

There was a full moon coming up and already the white sand was luminous. She laid the cushions down and we sat on them, me in the middle. I wrapped my arms firmly around the two people I loved best in the world and waited as the soft notes of a harp, a flute, and a small drum began to play from an unseen source--one of which was Northlight.

Then four faery-like girls appeared, all in silver-white short filmy gowns and wreaths of small lilies on their heads, and began to dance at the edge of the sea-strand. They started out dancing with exactly the same movements, so that it looked as though it were just one girl reflected in three mirrors, rising to the very tips of their toes, arms reaching as if to touch the stars, tracing curves in exquisite slowness that left faint traces of silvery light in the air that gradually vanished like mist, whirling suddenly about with one accord, then moving more quickly as the music increased tempo, until they were flitting about with breathtaking speed and grace, leaping over each other in unbelievably high arcs, yet barely making an impression on the sand. Then they were dancing on the water, their feet skimming the surface, without making ripples, as if they were treading on glass. More joined them until it seemed as if the stars had all taken human form and come down to frolic on the glistening waves.

And as the stars came out one by one in the sky and the moon rose as a frosty bubble, the music grew gradually fainter, and the dancers receded into the distance until they disappeared into the sea below, and then the water itself seemed to dance as white dolphins leaped suddenly above the waves in a joyous and sparkling unison with the moonlight kissing their fins.

~*~Finis~*~