This prologue was written as a "trailer" for the Fairy Tale series.

~~~

Fade In:

A brown leather book fills the frame.  The plain black lettering reads "Fairy Tales of Middle-Earth".

We hear the ratcheting sound of someone winding a music box as a work-worn brown hand opens the book's cover.

In a square, utilitarian hand, the title page reads:

"Fairy Tales of Middle-Earth
Being a Compendium
of
Folk-Tales
of
Diverse Peoples and Places
Suitable for the
Instruction and Amusement
of
Persons of All Ages
As Compiled by
Samwise Gamgee
the Gardener"

A soft click sounds, a tinkling music-box melody begins.

Slow zoom out:

Sam and Rosie sit before the fire in a large parlor at Bag End, surrounded by their children and their friends.  Elanor, a hobbit-lass in her mid-teens, steps back from replacing the music-box (real Dale-work!) on the mantel.

Sam:  "What story shall I read tonight?  Elanor-love?"

Elanor:  "I like "The Swans", Da, but you know I've heard them many times.  Let one of the little ones pick."

Sam:  "Frodo-lad?"

Frodo-lad:  "Huh, I'm not so little!"  He makes a face at Elanor.  "I want to hear "Birds and Feathers".  It makes me feel like I'm swooping throught the air."

Rosie-lass:  "I want to hear "Spiderwebs", with all the colors.  It makes me think of the Queen and her pretty ladies."

Merry-lad:  "How 'bout "Cloak-Ties", and I can kill the orcs.  Grrrr-aagghh!"

He mimes stabbing Pip.  They tussle on the rug.

Goldilocks:  "Is the story of "Lady in the Water" wrote down yet?

Sam:  "Now you know as Mrs. Maggot's a busy lady.  She'll send it along when she gets the time."

Homm (a neighbor child, friend of Pip) tugs on Sam's sleeve.

Homm:  "Mistuh Gard'nuh, Mistuh Gard'nuh!"

Sam:  "Yes, Hommie?"

Homm:  "When we was workin' in the flowerbeds, you said as I could pick sometime."

Sam:  "Why, so I did.  And so you shall, lad.  Where shall I start?"

Homm:  "At the beginnin', please, sir."

Sam:  "What better place to start than the beginning?"

Zoom in to Sam turning to:

"The Sorceress"

Sam (reads):  " The King of the Mark had three sons.  The eldest, his father’s heir, was wise and just, and loved by all.  The second son, who would be his brother’s war-leader, was a doughty fighter and a great leader of men.  But the youngest son was fair and brave and gay and adventuresome... "

Fade out.

A Mannish Tale from Rohan

~~~

The King of the Mark had three sons.  The eldest, his father’s heir, was wise and just, and loved by all.  The second son, who would be his brother’s war-leader, was a doughty fighter and a great leader of men.  But the youngest son was fair and brave and gay and adventuresome.  He it was who set the women’s hearts fluttering with his deeds in war and tourney.

Often he would venture out alone on some perilous quest, and return no worse, but with strange tales of far lands.

One time, he set off alone.  He rode over field and plain, and came to the forest edge.  Here he camped at nightfall beneath a great oak tree.  He hobbled his horse, and lay down to sleep.  During the night, he dreamed the oak tree stirred, and bent down and spoke to him.

"Beware, child of Man.  Beware the Forest of Gold.  If thou comest near it, thou shalt surely be ensnared."

When he awoke in the morning, he remembered his dream, and laughed to think a tree could talk.  He continued to ride between forest and plain, meeting no enemies.  The second night, he camped again by the woods.  He lay beneath a graceful rowan tree.  While he slept, he dreamed the rowan tree swayed over him and whispered to him.

"Beware, oh Man, beware.  If you encounter the Sorceress of the Wood, you shall return with weeping."

On the second morning, he woke, and laughed again at his dream, then mounted and went on his way along the fringe of the forest.  The third night, he slept under a tall, dark fir.  Again, the tree loomed above him and spoke into his dreams

"Beware the Water of Vision, child.  It will bring but regret."

The young man thought, "This forest brings nothing but gloomy thoughts," and on the third morning, he left it behind to ride across the plain.

That evening, the fourth evening since leaving his father’s halls, as the sun was westering over the mountains, he saw another woods before him.  It was not a dark and close forest, but light and open between the tall trees.  The trees were like none ever seen before, with bark of silver and leaves of gold.  No name had he for them.

He rode delighted under the boughs.  When he came to a stream, he dismounted and led his horse across, thinking to camp in a glade on the far side.

As he set foot on the bank, many forms of men slipped silently out from the trees.  One of them slid the halter from the horse, another slapped it sharply on the rump, saying something to it in an unknown tongue.  The horse turned away, and galloped out from the wood.

When the young man would have followed, the Elder People, for that is who they were, restrained him, saying, "Now thou hast entered our realm.  Thou’lt not depart again without our leave."

The young man was troubled to see his horse depart so, but could hardly fight so many as his captors seemed to be.  He thought, "Always I have sought adventure.  It seems now to have found me."

The Elder People seemed not ill-disposed toward him.  They brought him through the forest to their houses in the tree-tops, and fed him on sweet fruits and fine white cakes and clear wine.

They said to him, "Somehow thou hast slipped through our Lady’s guardianship.  We may not permit thee to return, bearing tales of our life in the woods."

The King’s son thought, "Perhaps I will seize the adventure, and remain in the wood with the Elder Folk for a time.  What a tale that will make when I do return."  Also, he now saw that many of his captors were women of the Elder People, and he found them exceeding fair.  Therefore, he smiled at them, and fell to talking with the folk about him.

Thus he stayed some nights in their camps among the trees.  The days were spent in hunting and other sport, and he was nothing loth to join, for he was strong and well-knit.

With the turn of the season, they returned to their City of the Trees, and perforce so also did the young man.  He accompanied them without complaint, for he thought, "Who other has had such adventure!"

There in the City of the Trees, was much feasting and music and dancing.  The young man would eat and sing and dance with his new friends, then sleep sound in the tree-houses.  Sometimes one would say to him, "Yonder, there goes our Lady of the Wood," and he would turn and look, and see far off a tall figure with shining gold tresses.  Often beside her strode the wise silver-haired Lord of the Wood. He never sought to meet her, for, he thought, "She is the guardian of the Wood.  She is as far above me as I am above the lowest cotman.  Besides, I entered her realm without leave."

When the seasons changed, his companions would go again to the outer Forest.  If they camped near the mountains, the hunters turned more serious, and would foray into them in search of orcs.  The King’s son accompanied them eagerly, and slew the orcs as heartily as they, for he, like all Men and Elders, had nothing but enmity for them.  He quickly learned to use their swords and great bows, and they came to welcome him as a hunting and fighting partner.

Thus he spent his days, and the nights he spent in pleasant dalliance with the fair ladies of the Folk.  Always they returned to the City of the Trees for festivals, then traveled about the forest, now here, now there.  The King’s son came to know the Wood as well as he had known the plain of his father’s realm, and grew to love it exceedingly.

One season, he and his companions came to the City.  He felt tired, but thought little of it, for they had been hunting orcs in difficult terrain for many days.

While in the City, he saw the Lady from afar often, as before.  Now, however, he bethought him that he should go to her, and beg leave to visit his former land.  He would promise, he said to himself, that he would say no word of the Hidden Land to any, and would return without delay.

So he set to wandering the City of the Trees, hoping to encounter the Lady.  Sometimes he would see her in the distance, but she would vanish as he moved toward her.  Finally one day, as he walked along a meadow by a stream, he came suddenly upon her, taller even than he had thought, and more fair and golden.

He fell to his knees before her, saying, "Hear my plea, Lady.  Let me return but a few days to the lands of my father and brothers.  I will come back without a word to any of you and yours."

The Lady stooped and raised him to his feet.  Even then, she stood over him by half a head.  She looked at him without speaking for some minutes.  "No Man who leaves the Golden Wood may re-enter.  If you leave us, you will not be permitted to come back."

The King’s son was grieved, for he wished to live in the wood with his friends.  "Must I never again see my father and brothers?" he asked.

"Indeed, you may look upon your kin," she said, "but that will bring you only sorrow."

"Oh, Lady, I would see my father and brothers, my horse who was driven hence, and my former land again.  I will bear the sorrow, whate’er it be," he replied.

The Lady then led him to a small copse by the stream.  There she took a plain earthen jar, and filled it with water.  She poured the water into a large, shallow basin set upon a pedestal, breathed on it, and then gazed upon its surface.  She looked into the water a while.  Then she stepped back, and beckoned him to come forward.

The King’s son stood over the bowl, and looked into it.  "Do not touch the water," she warned.  "I wonder what happened to my horse," he thought, "that was sent galloping from the Wood."  The water turned black, and he leaned toward it.

He saw a green field filled with grassy howes, and recognized the graveyard of the horses of the Mark.  "Dead, my horse is dead," he whispered.

Then it seemed he saw the courts small in the distance, but near at hand was the row of mounds over the dead Kings of the Mark.  However, one was newly raised, it seemed, the grass and simbelmyne just beginning to cover it.

"Ah," he thought, "the new mound is my father’s.  He has died while I have disported me here in the Wood."

Again the vision changed, and it seemed he looked into the great hall of the courts.  There on the dais sat a man of late middle years, and beside him stood another, whose shield fore-arm was gone.  "Where are my brothers?" he wondered.  "Who has taken their place?"  He looked closer, and saw that the two men were indeed his brothers, now many years older than when last he saw them.

He sprang weeping away from the basin.  "What witchery is this," he cried.  "I must leave.  I must return to my homeland."

"If you leave," said the golden Lady, "you may not return."

The King’s son paid her no heed, but ran to collect supplies to depart immediately.

He crossed the plain and passed by the forest on foot.  It took him many days to leave the Wood far behind for he felt stiff and sore every morning.   At last he saw the golden roof of the courts before him, and hastened as well as he could.  He climbed with difficulty the steps up which he had been used to spring with ease.

At the top, armed men crossed their spears before him.  "Halt," they said.  "Who comes to the hall of the King of the Mark."  He looked searchingly at their faces, but knew them not, though he had formerly known all the guards and warriors of the Mark.

"I am the brother of the King," he said, "returned after many adventures."

"The King has but one brother," replied a guard, "and thou art not he.  Moreover, thou hast both arms, where he has but one."

"Stay," said the other guard, "the King had another brother.  I recall the tale.  He went out seeking adventure, and never came back.  ‘Tis said his horse returned alone, but that was before I was born."

"I am that brother," replied the King’s son.  "Now, I beg you, let me by, that I may be reunited with my brothers."

So he passed into the hall, and dark and chill he found it, after the tree-houses of the Folk of the Wood.  He came up to the dais, where his brothers sat.

At first, they did not recognize him, but then they rose and embraced him with tears.  "What, brother, hast thou returned to us after so long?  We have mourned thee these thirty years."

"Thirty years," he cried.  "Have I been ensorceled in the Golden Wood so long?  Alas, I return to find my father has died, my horse is long dead, and my brothers grown old."

"Thou, too, art no longer young," replied the King.  "Behold, there is more gray in thy hair than not.  And hast thou whiled away thy youth in the company of the Elder Folk?  But come, now thou art returned to us.  Let us make merry, and welcome back our brother."

So they feasted their brother, and were exceeding glad in his company.  But the man, now no longer young, mourned his father, and his horse, and his youth.  All the maidens he remembered from former days were grown old, and married or dead.

After some months, though he took delight in the company of his brothers, he began to long for the Golden Wood, and his companions there, and the music and feasting.  One morning, therefore, he took his leave quietly, and set out across the plain toward the forest, but taking no horse.

Once again, he traveled between the woods and the grasslands, but now, no dreams disturbed his rest.  Sadly, he remembered the warnings of the trees, but thought, "I would rather have seen the Lady and the Golden Wood though the sorrow be twice as great."

When he came near to the place where he thought to encounter the Wood, all seemed unaccountably changed.  He wandered mazed through the trees, but saw none of the silver bark and golden leaves of the Wood.  At times, he thought he heard far-off the music of the Folk, but came never nearer.

He roamed about until the snows of winter drove him back to the courts.  With spring, he returned, but saw and heard no more than before.  He built him a small hut of deadfall at the fringe of the forest, and lived there in solitude and sorrow for his remaining years.

When he could no longer care for himself, his brother’s son, the young King of the Mark, brought him to live at the courts.  He told tales ever more fantastic, bewailing his lost Lady and Wood, until he died.

~~~

From FOTR, The Great River.

[Sam says] "And up pops a New Moon as thin as a nail-paring, as if we had never stayed no time in the Elvish country.  Anyone would think that time did not count in there."

From TT, The Riders of Rohan.

[Ëomer is speaking]  "Then there is a Lady in The Golden Wood, as the old tales tell!" he said.  "Few escape her net, they say."

An Elvish tale from Mirkwood

~~~

Long ago, in Greenwood the Great, was a realm of Wood-elves.  It was ruled over by the King of the Elves.  He had many subjects, and large and fair halls in endless caverns in the hills of the forest.  His subjects roamed the woods, hunting game and gathering food.

They traded the bounty of the forest for many things, wheat and wine, gems and gold.

The Woodland Elves made many beautiful things, perhaps none more fair than silken cloth from the webs of giant spiders of the Forest.  They did not herd the spiders as cattle, but tended them carefully, defending them from harm, then carefully unwinding their webs and spinning the silken thread.

An elf-child who lived in the forest saw the webs as very beautiful, and wished to use them without destroying their beauty.  As she grew, she tried many ways to capture the fair work of the spider without harm.  She taught herself to harvest the spiderwebs, but she did not unwind and spin them.  Rather, she rose before dawn every morning, and searched for the perfect, dew-sparkled webs in the first gray light.

She learned to take the perfect web, and work it subtly into a marvelous ornament, studded with gems and silver.  One time, she would make a headpiece exceeding fair, another time, it would be a torque, or a belt.

She gave a spiderweb shoulder wrap to another elf-maid, to wear to a feast.  When the other elves saw her, wearing the lovely thing, all noted her beauty.  Indeed, one youth who had before scarcely noticed her, now looked into her face, and saw there his soul-mate, as she saw hers.

It came to pass, then, that all wished for a creation of the web smith, for they found that those who wore her ornaments were more likely to find their true loves, perhaps even in the face of one grown familiar.

One day, the King of the Elves gave a great celebration, with music and dancing and feasting for days.  Until this time, the web smith had but given her handiwork to others, but now, for the first time, she wore them herself.  On the first evening, she wore a pair of armlets, decorated with fiery rubies and garnets.

The King saw her, and wished immediately to dance with her.  She looked into his face, and saw nothing there she disliked, so she danced with him a few dances.

On the second evening, she wore a neckpiece with emerald and topaz, glowing like sun on new leaves.  The King soon found his way to her side, and danced more with her than with any other maiden.  She saw that he was kind and generous and wise, and was happy that he had sought her out.

The third evening, she wore a headdress spangled with diamond and pearl and silver, as if the very stars had descended from the sky to rest on her sable hair.  This time, the King stayed by her side every moment, and before the evening ended, he drew her aside privately.

"You know I have no Queen," he said,  "and I have lived alone for so very long.  At last, I have found the one.  You are my soul mate."

Then the maiden looked into his face again, and into her own heart at last.  She saw there only a great liking, and reverence for her liege, and knew that she had been bewitched by a dream of captivating the King.  She was not his soul mate, nor he hers.

She tore off the headdress and the glamour it held.  "My liege," she said, "forgive me.  I am not she whom you seek."  Then she rushed from the dance, and into the forest, where she flung herself on the ground and wept for her youth and folly.

The King raged, and swore to avoid all maidens, and returned to his halls in shame.

The maiden began to live more and more alone, and in the forest.  She no longer went to the feasts and dances, though she continued to make wonderful ornaments of the spider webs, and folk still sought them out.  But the ruby armlets, the emerald necklet and the diamond headpiece she put away.

Many years passed by, and over those years, the world grew darker, and rumours of war and evil abounded.  Elves came fleeing from the growing shadows in other realms.  Most passed through to other lands, but some stayed, and made their homes in the forest.  Some that stayed were kin to the Woodland Elves, and like enough to them in custom, but others were naught similar, seeming to the Forest Elves haughty and cold.  Therefore, they shunned them, and left them to their own devices.

The haughty-seeming elves were indeed but quiet and shy, so they kept to themselves in the Forest mansions, and made their way as best they could.  One of the lately come elf-maidens loved the woods, though she had lived all her life in stone houses on open hills.  She took easily to woodcraft, and soon surpassed many in her knowledge of herbs and remedies.  She wandered farther into the forest, and one day encountered there the web smith.  The two maidens found they were of like mind and spirit; they became fast friends.

The Woodland Elves again planned a great celebration, as they often had done, with days and nights of feasting and dancing.  They bid the newcomers to the feast, but without warmth or hope that many would come.  The herb maid said to her friend, "I would join in the celebration as well.  Will you go, too?"

The web smith thought of that long-ago, disastrous feast, then she set aside the memory.  "Yes, I will accompany you.  But let me give you ornaments," for though she had given the herb maid trifles of her work, rings and earpieces and such, there had never been need for grand jewels.

So, on the first night, the two friends set out for the feast.  The web smith dressed plainly, wearing none of her jewelry.  The herb maid, however, wore a spider-silk gown of red and gold, and about her arms were clasped the ruby bracelets.  The King did not recognize the jewels, indeed, he did not remember them at all, but their glamour drew him to the herb maid, and he forgot his vow to eschew all maidens.  They danced together that evening, and the herb maid gazed into his eyes, and what she saw there she liked very well.

The next night, the maidens went again to the celebration.  This time, the herb maid wore the emerald necklet with a gown of palest green.  The King turned to her again, and it seemed to each that they could see the others heart in their eyes.  The web smith smiled as she looked on her friend and the King, who seemed to see no others.

Again, on the third evening, the web smith and the herb maid returned to the feasting.  The herb maid wore white woven with tiny crystals that sparkled as she moved, and on her head rested the diamond crown.  Neither she nor the King had eyes for any other, and at the end of the night, he asked if he could speak alone with her the following day.

In the morning, they met in the forest, he without his retainers, she without her friend the web smith.  Being warned by the smith, she dressed in a simple gown, and wore no jewels.  "I have no doubt," said the smith, "that you need no glamour, neither you nor he.  I see that you are truly soul mates; nevertheless, you will see each other hearts more clearly without my trinkets."

Indeed, it was so.  When the maid and the King met in the woods, they had no doubts, but knew their souls were as one.

Upon their return to the King’s halls, he summoned his court, and introduced her to his subjects as their future Queen, and the Queen of his heart.  No one seeing them could think otherwise, than that they had found their true life partners.  All rejoiced with them, that even in these times of dangers and war, there still could be found great joy.

The web smith rejoiced as well, happy that the jewels so ill-fated for herself had brought such gladness to her friend and to King Thranduil of Mirkwood.

A Mannish tale from the Druadan Forest

~~~

Deep in the Druadan Forest, at the edge of a clearing, lived a husband and wife.  Ghuran was the name of the woman, and the man was called Banur.

Being but recently joined, they had as yet no children.  They spent their days at work in the forest, gathering and hunting and fishing, and in the clearing, tending their garden.  Sometimes they traveled a little way to visit friends or kin, and they received again guests in return.

Banur had to visit a metalworker who lived some days’ walk distant, while Ghuran must needs remain behind.  He filled his pack with supplies and dressed in sturdy leather garb.  He carried also Ghuran’s wedding gift to him, a cloak of squirrel and rabbit skins, with cloak-ties carved from the very watch-stone that now stood beside their door.

He kissed Ghuran and held her tightly, then set off walking across through the forest.  In three days, he reached the home of the smith his friend.  There the smith saw to the mending of his tools, while Banur helped the smith’s wife and children with chores and hunting.  He stayed a few nights, then set out one morning for home.

On the evening of the first day, as the air turned cool, he threw the skin cloak about his shoulders.  Just as he began to look for a place to spend the night, a starving wolf barred his way, snarling and desperate.  He tried to beat back the wolf with his stout walking stick.  The blows of the wood staff did not drive away the wolf.  Banur tore the bottom-most tie from his cloak.  He whispered, "As the whole, so the part," and flung it into the wolf’s open mouth.

The wolf choked and fell to the ground, far more undone than would be possible with a simple stone toggle from a cloak-tie.  Banur hastened away.  He walked more hours than he had intended, wanting to leave behind the wolf’s lands.  He spent the night in a tree, dozing warily.

The next day, he continued on.  After the sun had set, he again cast about for a resting place.  Once more, he climbed a tree, and slept in the crotch of the branches.

Some time before dawn, he awoke to the sounds of some creatures scrabbling about beneath the tree.  Three orcs had found their way into the forest from the wild lands across the River.  They knew he was in the tree, and began to climb it in search of him.  Hastily, he seized his staff and dropped to the ground.  He set his back against a tree trunk, and swung the heavy wood against the first to attack.  This time, the staff struck true, and the orc fell stunned to the earth.

When the second orc attacked, it too was felled by a blow from the staff to its head.  However, the wood cracked and splintered on its skull, leaving Banur with a short, broken limb.  The third orc ignored its stunned fellows, and came in to attack.  Banur ripped the next cloak-tie from its place and threw it at the orc, whispering, "As the whole, so the part".

The third orc fell as if struck by a stone mace.  Banur took his knife and dispatched all three, and left their bodies as warning to any others that might be following.  He hurried away.

Banur knew that orcs would be unlikely to follow him in the bright daylight of the new day.  Nevertheless, he detoured away from his usual path, not wishing to lead orcs to his home.  Thus, he came closer to the edge of the forest than was his wont.  There, in the afternoon, he encountered one of the Horse People.

The tall, golden-haired man on his tall horse immediately gave chase.  Banur was already weary from little sleep and battle with wolf and orc.  He knew he could not reach the safety of the thick forest before being overtaken by the man.

He had but one cloak-tie left.  He stopped and turned to face the Horse-Man.  The man rode up, leaped from his horse and drew his sword.  Banur drew the last tie from his cloak.  He threw it at the man, crying again, "As the whole, so the part."

The small stone flew through the air.  The man fell like a stone, like the orc, like the wolf.  He did not arise.

Banur breathed heavily for some time.  The man’s horse, well trained, had not run off.  He seized the reins and tied it loosely to a tree.  Then, with great effort, he hoisted the man across the saddle and secured him there.  Banur shortened the reins so the horse would not trip, and struck it on the rump.

The horse, with the limp weight of its master on its back, and the scent of wolf, orc and Wood-Wose in its nostrils, plunged away from the forest, back to the plains and its herd.

Banur turned from the open country.  He traveled the rest of the day, and into the night, moving by devious paths.  When it grew cool, he thrust a sharp thorn through the cloak to hold it closed.  Finally, as morning was breaking, he came to his own home and clearing.  There was Ghuran looking for him with longing.  She came gladly to him, and they embraced long.

As they came to the door of the house, Banur stopped and put his hands on the watch-stone.  It looked a little more battered than before, and seemed to have crusted blood in places.

"The watch-stone has saved my life thrice in as many days," he said.  Ghuran shuddered, and she, too, pressed her hands to the stone, giving thanks for Banur’s safe return.

They went into the house.  Banur set down his pack and told his tale in full, showing the cloak, rent and with only a thorn for a pin.

Ghuran then recounted how, two nights gone, she heard a sharp crack from the watchstone.  She ran through the dusk, and saw red blood on the stone.  She grew cold with fear for her husband, but knew she could do no more than she had already done.

Then, yestermorn, she woke early from broken sleep at the sound of rumbling from the watchstone.  She rose and went out to find black blood dripping from it, and small chips of stone around it.  Thus, she knew Banur had survived the trouble of the previous evening, only to find worse this morning.  She stumbled through her chores, sick with worry for him.

All day Ghuran had stayed within sight and sound of the watchstone.  When she heard it again groaning, and saw red blood seep from it, she felt both relief and dread.  She knew then he had escaped death from black-blooded orcs, but had used his last cloak-tie in defense against some new threat.  She could not work or even eat for fear, for she knew all three cloak-ties were gone.

When she saw him approaching with the dawn, she felt limp and light-headed from relief.

"I will travel with you next time you go anywhere," she said, "and, I shall have to make new cloak-ties for you."

"Make some for yourself, as well, my dear," said Banur.

~~~

This is a shameless pastiche of "The Faithful Stone" from Unfinished Tales.

An Elvish Tale from Rivendell

~~~

Some years ago, in the Cloven Valley, there lived an elven youth.  He loved the all animals of forest and field.  Especially, he loved the birds of the air.  He spent days, months, even years wandering through the hills and valleys near his home following the birds.  He had befriended the Brown Wizard, and importuned him for instruction in the language of the air.

The young man spent all his time talking with the birds, birds of all sorts, from the smallest Wren to the lordly Eagle.  The birds, for their part, came to love the youth, not just because he would help them unasked, but because he loved them and took pleasure in all parts of their lives.

One day, while walking rather farther from the Vale than was his wont, he strayed into the steep mountains, home to orcs.  There, indeed, he was captured by orcs, and dragged into their caverns.   They kept him there for weeks, far from the fields and open sky, for what purpose, he could not tell.

There in the close tunnels, without air and sun and his bird friends, he began to droop and wither.  The orcs, though they cared not at all for him, were dismayed.  It seemed he was destined for some great spectacle, and if he appeared weak and sick, he would provide poor sport for the entertainment.

The orcs consulted together, and hit upon a plan.  One of the tunnels sloped upwards.  It opened at last as a small cave-mouth high in the mountains.  Below it and above it were naught but sheer unclimbable cliffs.

"We shall leave this sickly elf there," said the orcs.  "He will not be able to climb away, and the cave mouth is too small for the Eagles to land and snatch him from us.  We will bring him food at night when the Withering Light has set.  He will grow fat and strong for the Games."

It was just as they had said.  There was a small opening in the mountainside, large enough for the youth to put his head and shoulders into the air and sunlight.  Over it reared a great projection of rock, such that no bird as large as an Eagle could come near.  All day, he lay there in the open, and at night he was dragged back into the cave by the orcs, who teased and bullied him ‘til dawn.

Soon enough, one of his bird friends, a Falcon, found him.  She comforted him as best she could, but as she was small enough to come near him, she was also by far too small to carry him to freedom.  The Falcon carried the tale of his capture to the other birds, even those normally counted as enemies.  They came from far to visit their friend, and tried to think of a way to release him.

Thus it went for some weeks.  The birds would gather at dawn to keep him company, and leave at dusk when the orcs pulled him down the tunnel.

The youth knew from the orcs’ chatter that their Games were approaching.  He thought he would take a great risk.  "Better to die quickly on the stones than from slow torment by the orcs," he thought.

He begged a feather from each bird who visited, and hid them in his clothing.  He was almost ready to dare the winds when one of the orcs noticed a blue jay feather peeping through his tunic.  "What is this?" cried the orc, "favors from your daylight cronies?  I’ll take those!"  And the orcs stripped all the feathers from him and squabbled over them.  The winners thrust the feathers here and there on their armor as ornaments.

The young man saw his hope dwindle.  Nevertheless, the next day, he once again besought feathers from all his friends.  "But do not give them to me now," he said.  He asked his friend the Falcon to assemble as many birds as possible on the next day.

When the day broke, a steady stream of birds flew in to his little cave mouth.  Each left a feather there for him.  The Falcon even brought two huge Eagle feathers.  "The Eagles, too, are dreadfully worried for you," she said "for the Eagles have an implacable hatred of orcs, and are loth to give you up to them without a struggle."

The sun drew near the western horizon.  The youth knew that he must take his chance before it set.  He wriggled back into his cave with all the feathers, and began to set them into the fibers of his clothing.  He affixed them as best he could, securing the Eagle feathers on his shoulders, and the Falcon’s feathers (for she had given him two of her own, as well) on his breast.

With great care he inched up the tunnel, not wishing to dislodge even the smallest Sparrow feather.  When he reached the cave-mouth, he pushed himself farther out than he had ever done, until he balanced on the very edge of the rock.  He spread his arms and leaped into the air.

Of course, he fell.  Faster and faster, and then.  Then, there glided in the last rays of the setting sun the ugliest bird ever seen.  Its feathers showed a patchwork of colors from every kind of bird for leagues about.  The awkward flaps of its first flight matched the strange, shabby plumage.  As twilight deepened, the youth-turned-bird made its way over the mountain slopes with great effort.

His bird friends accompanied him, though when dark fell, the daytime birds dropped to roost among the trees.  The Owls and Nightingales stayed by him.  They guided him at last, drooping with weariness, to a tall treetop on a ridge.  They brought him rabbits and field mice for dinner, which the bird-self ate with eagerness, though the man-self shuddered and would have turned away.

He slept but little, for he had not much trust in the bird body.  Would it vanish, and leave him easy prey for the orcs?  He could hear their shouts far behind him in the high mountain canyons, where they had discovered that he was missing.

In the morning, he looked from the tree atop the ridge into a deep, narrow valley.  It looked almost as far as the cliffs down which he had plummeted yesterday.  He trembled there on the topmost branch for a while.  At last, he shut his eyes, opened his wings and leaned forward into the air.

His muscles hurt.  He opened his eyes.  The valley rushed away behind him.  Spread out before him were the mountains and foothills of the Misty Range.  From the air, he could not tell where he was, but soon he was surrounded by his friends.  They swooped under and over and around him, leading him southward towards home.  He had to stop and rest often, for he not only was wholly unused to flying, but was still weak from captivity and torture.

Within a few days, they reached the lands he knew well.  In the late afternoon, he settled slowly to a meadow, followed by his friends.  They had rejoiced to see him free, and had delighted in teaching him to fly.  "Can you not remain thus?" begged the Falcon, and she spoke for all.  "You are our dear friend, and we would love to fly always with you."

"Alas, my friends," said the youth, "I am of the Eldar.  Though I love you dearly, and give you all honor and gratitude for my rescue, the man-shape is my true form.  I must return to that shape, or abandon my true self.  I am now and always your true friend."

With regret he spread out his wings for the last time, for he had loved soaring over the woods and hills.  He dwindled to the figure of a frail young man.  A cloud of feathers drifted to the ground.  He searched out each one, even the smallest, and stowed them carefully in his tunic.  Then, with his friends circling round him, he turned to walk the last few miles to his home.

A Mannish tale from the Vales of the Anduin

~~~

In the vales of the great river, under the eaves of the forest, lived a widow with her daughter and son.  They tended their small farm, gathered nuts and berries in the forest, and sometimes caught fish in the river.

One day, as the girl was tending the kitchen garden and the boy was milking the cow, the widow heard a knock on the door.  She got up from her spinning and opened it.  There on the doorstep stood a bear carrying a great fish in its mouth.  The bear bowed to the woman, and gently set the fish on the threshold.

The woman saw that the bear meant her no harm, so she curtsied and said, "Thank you, friend Bear, for the kind gift."

The bear bowed again, and said, "You are most welcome, neighbor.  Eat it in good health."  Then she turned and walked away.

When the woman served the fish for dinner, her children asked where it came from, for they knew she had not gone fishing that day.  "Our new neighbor brought this as a friendship gift," she said, thinking that having a friendly bear as neighbor might be no bad thing.

The next week, the bear returned, bringing a large honeycomb, clumsily wrapped in leaves.  This time, she stayed for a short while, talking with the woman.  The woman called her children to meet the bear, whom they greeted politely.  Then the bear again departed.

The following week, the bear came back again.  This time, she dragged a large tree that had been felled by beavers.  The widow saw that it would be useful for both firewood and building.  Again, she thanked the bear gratefully.

Then she said, "Kind Bear, you have been most generous.  How can we repay you?"

The bear said, "Please, sit down, and I will tell you my story.

"As you know, I am a Talking Bear.  I was not always so.  When I was young, I was dumb and unknowing as most beasts.  In those days, while I was still a cub, my parents were lost to me, and I was abandoned in the forest.  There I encountered one of the Elves.  They always wished to talk to everything, the old Elves did.

"This elf cared for me, and taught me to talk, and to live in the forest.  When I became older, she sent me back to my own people to find a mate, and have cubs of my own.

"The gift of speech was not all she gave me, although her other gift was all unwitting.  The Elves have the long sight, and can often sense the paths of the future.  When she taught me to talk, I gained also some of the long sight of the Elves.

"Now, the orcs are multiplying in the mountains, the wargs are growing in number, and always there are more trolls and giants about than before.  I see that this will do naught but grow worse.  Thus, I come to you, that we may combine our forces.  You, with your clever hands and tools of metal, and we, I and my cubs, with our strength and size, will be more able to combat the evil creatures of the world together than either alone."

Now this seemed more than reasonable to the widow, for she had had dealings with the Elves herself, and had gained in some measure the same foresight.  Therefore, after discussing it with her children, she assented.

The Bear and her cubs came to live with the widow and her children.  With the help of the Bears, they were able to build a strong stockade, and plenish it well with food from forest, field and river.

Thus they lived for some years, and it came to pass that when the orcs and wargs, the trolls and giants came that way, the widow’s family and the Bear’s family worked and fought side by side.  Though they were hard pressed at times, always they were safe at last, due to the doughtiness of the Bears and the humans.

The Bear and the widow began to grow old.  They took thought for the future, and said to each other, "If only our children could marry.  Then their children would have the best of both."

But when they spoke of this to the children, the widow’s son said, "The Bears are my friends, but the bear maid is so large!"  And the Bear’s son said, "The maiden is so small and weak, I fear to break her!".

The maiden said, "The Bear-youth is my companion, but his odor is so strong!"  And the Bear-maiden likewise said, "The youth is no taller than my shoulder!"

So the widow and the Bear saw that not easily would this excellent alliance of Men and Bears be maintained.  They went then one morning into the forest, and there they remained for three days and three nights, and on the morning of the fourth day, they returned exceedingly weary.

They called their children to them, and before any could speak, they cast over them a glamour, that to each the others would appear as one of their own.  Thus, when the youth looked at the Bear-maid, he saw a lass, tall and strong, but comely.  Likewise did the Bear-youth and the maidens see well-favoured Bears or Man.

So, in due time, the children of the widow and the Bear were married.  Soon, they had cubs and children, to set upon their grandmothers’ knees.  As they grew, the tallest, strongest and cleverest became a great leader of Men and Bears and other wild folk there by the river, and was known by all as Beorn.

A Hobbit-tale from Buckland

~~~

Between the Withywindle and the Brandywine was a small village.  In those days, it had another name, but now we call it Haysend.

Gladden and Kalimac lived in holes dug in the same hillside.  As little ones they played together, though as they grew up Kali began to spend more time with the other boys.  Gladdy missed him and waited for him, but he would greet her carelessly, and rush on to fish or play games without asking her to come.

Sometimes he remembered her, and they would talk in the evening after chores, and she would stay as late as her mother let her.

One day, he said, "Gladdy, I've had the most peculiar dream.  I dreamed a tall lady with yellow hair walked along the river, and beckoned to me."

"That's not so odd," said Gladden.  "People walk along the river all the time."

"No, no.  She walked on the river, right on top of the water."

A few days later, he mentioned the same dream again.  He began to dream of the lady and the river often.  He told Gladden of it, but no one else.  "The boys would just laugh at me, and mother would say I was being silly," he said.

It seemed to Gladden that he spent more and time thinking about the lady, believing she wanted him to come find her.  He grew thinner and paler.

One day, Kali's mother came to Gladden's hole, wringing her hands and weeping.  "He's been gone for two days," she told Gladdy's mother.  "I don't know where he can be.  He's been moping about the house for days, I thought it was just a girl, but now he's gone."

Gladden overheard this, and thought, "He's gone to find the lady of his dreams."  She felt a sharp pang in her heart, and tears fell down her cheeks.  She wiped her eyes, and said to herself, "If he loves the lady and she loves him, then I will wish them happy.  If she gives him pain, then I'll give her pain," and she started right off to pack a little bag with food and extra clothes.

Somehow, she knew that he had gone up along the Withywindle, so she set out toward it with certainty, but a troubled heart.  She had walked some hours, and the afternoon was fading, when she heard a thrashing in the bushes and soft whining.

She stepped carefully around them, and found a vixen caught in an old rabbit snare.  She took her little knife, and said, "Be calm, my friend.  I will cut you free."  The vixen quieted her whimpering, and kept still while Gladden cut the twine away from her leg.

While the vixen rested, Gladden brought her water from the river, then fed her bits of bread and cheese, until she felt stronger.

"Thank you, my dear," said the vixen.  "You have a kind heart.  If I can repay you in any way, just call on me."  She gave Gladden a white tuft from her tail-tip, and said, "Keep this in your bosom.  If you need my help, strike it against a tree-trunk and call for me," and with that she sprang away through the woods.

Gladden followed the faint trail along the river until dark.  She found a hollow beneath an oak tree, ate a little and then wrapped her cloak about her and curled up.  She slept, but her dreams were full of Kali, looking past her at something she could not see.

In the morning, she breakfasted, drank from the river and set off again.  Before long, she came upon a clearing by the riverbank, where she saw a family of otters.  The mother and her kits were playing in the early sun.  They turned toward her as she approached, and the mother otter said, "Greetings, young lady.  Good morning to you."

Gladden returned the greeting, and knelt to make friends with the kits.  She played with them a little, while their mother rested and looked on.

Soon the mother said, "I must go fishing for the children's dinner.  Will you watch them while I am gone?"

Gladden agreed with good cheer, for the kits were active and comical.  She played with them until the mother returned with a couple of fish in her mouth.  "Will you have some?" she offered.

"I thank you, but no," said Gladden.  "I have already broken my fast, and these little ones are quite hungry."

The otter mother divided the fish among her kits.  While she and Gladden watched them eat, she said, "Thank you for your kindness in watching my children."  She clawed one long, bristly whisker from her snout, and said, "Take this.  If you need me, just trail it in the water, and I will come to help."

Gladden thanked her again and again, then took her leave and continued her journey up the river.  She stopped to make a little sachet from her handkerchief.  She put into it the tuft of fur and the whisker, and hung it about her neck on a cord.

She walked through the day.  The sun began to sink to the west when she saw a large muddy flat in a bend of the river.  There caught in the mud was a hawk, its claws held fast by the sticky muck.  It flapped its wings, trying to get free, but only sank deeper, getting mud on its feathers, as well.

"Stop, stop," cried Gladden.  "You'll do yourself more harm that way.  Let me help you."  She set down her bag, tied up her skirts, and walked out through the mud.  She sank to her knees in it before she reached the bird, but she was able to lift it away from the mud and carry it back to dry land.  She tore a strip from her underskirt, and washed the mud from the hawk's claws and wingtips.

When he had preened every feather back into place, he pecked out one, and gave it to Gladden, saying, "You are a good-hearted young person.  I owe you my life.  If you have need of me, wave this feather through the air, and I will come to you."  Then he leaped onto the air and was gone.

The sun dropped below the trees by the time Gladden and the hawk parted, so she found a place to spend the night, ate a little and went to sleep.  Again, she dreamed of Kali.  He looked thinner and paler than ever.

In the morning, she again continued up-river, but was soon stopped by a steep, rocky slope, over which the river tumbled with great force.  She looked about for a trail, for she was certain, she knew not why, that Kali was still ahead of her.

She saw nothing.  "If only I could fly over this cliff," she said to herself.  Then she thought, "My hawk-friend!  I cannot fly, but he surely could go ahead, and see if my dear friend is there."

She pulled the feather from her tunic and waved it through the air.  Almost before her hand ceased moving, the hawk was plummeting toward her.  She held up her arm, and he landed there.  She told him her tale, of Kali's dream of the Lady, and her certainty that he had followed the river to find her.

"No sooner asked than answered," said the hawk.  "I have seen your playmate.  He is indeed by the river.  Over this cliff, the land slopes gently up toward another, taller waterfall.  Below that fall is a deep pool.  Beside the pool waits a young person, drooping and sad.  I see nothing of any Lady, but I know the river can be tricky and treacherous."

"How may I come there?" asked Gladden, but on this, the hawk was unable to advise her, for all his pathways were through the air.

"If you are acquainted with any creatures of the ground, perhaps one could guide you," he said.

Gladden bethought her of the fox, and, bidding the hawk farewell, she pulled the bit of fur from its sachet.  She struck it against the trunk of a tree.  Hardly had she struck it thrice before the vixen came trotting though the woods.

"Good morning, my friend," she said.  "I am ready to help you."

Gladden again told the story of Kali and the river, and how the hawk said that he was beyond the cliff.

The vixen said, "I can guide you 'round this pile of rock, and bring you up to the pool.  The hawk is correct, though.  The river is not always friendly."

So Gladden followed her around through the trees and up past the cliff.  After some time, they came to the pool, surrounded by the yellow flags of her name-flower.

There, indeed, was Kalimac.  He sat on the sand at the edge of the water, his eyes fixed on its surface.  He seemed not to see nor hear her.  Gladden wept and shouted, but he gave no reply.  However, when she stepped between him and the pond, he moved aside so he could still gaze into it.

Gladden went closer, and looked into the water.  Deep in the pool, she could discern the outline of a woman.  Her long, yellow hair and green gown rippled in the water.

"My Lady," whispered Kali.  "I cannot free you from the bonds of the river.  I have tried and failed."

Gladden thought the lady could not be alive at the bottom of the pool, but then she saw her move and twist, as though trying to break free from unseen bonds.

"I have tried night and morn to release you," said Kali.  "Now I shall die here beside you."  Tears fell from his eyes to the sand.

Gladden thought, "If it will keep my dear friend from dying, I must try to free the lady, though she take him from me forever."  She laid down her cloak and took off her skirts, looking aside at Kali.  He paid her no more mind than before, but continued heaving sighs and watching the lady.

Clad only in her shift, Gladden walked into the water.  It made her shiver, but she took deep breaths and dived down to the bottom.  She saw then that little tendrils of mossy waterweed wrapped around the woman's arms and legs, holding her fast.

Gladden tried to pull it away, but as fast as she pulled, the weeds twisted back faster.  She rose back to the surface and breathed deeply.  She climbed dripping out of the water to get her little knife from her bag.

Once more, she dived into the water, but no sooner had she reached the lady, than she felt someone beside her, and saw the sleek dark fur of the mother otter and her kits.  She had left the sachet with the whisker in it around her neck, and as soon as it touched the water, it had drawn the otter to her aid.

The otters pulled away the weeds, and Gladden cut them with her knife.  She had to return to the surface for air more than a few times.  As soon as one arm was loosened, the lady's eyes opened, and she began to tug at the weeds, as well.

Soon, the last green curl gave way, and the lady rose to the surface.  Gladden came shivering out of the pool.  The water mixed with her tears as she saw Kali watching the Lady.

The Lady was very tall.  She hardly glanced at Kali, but looked around.  Her eyes fell on Gladden, and she said, "Do I owe my rescue to you?  You have my deepest thanks.

"My poor child, you are nearly frozen!  Come, let us get you dry," and without a word to Kali, she led Gladden to her pile of clothes, helped her strip off the wet shift and put on dry clothes.  The Lady wrapped her in her cloak, and drew her into the sun.

The Lady herself seemed not at all inconvenienced by a prolonged wetting.  Her green gown still rippled and glittered as dew on young grass, and her yellow hair drifted in the air as if in water.

"How did you come to find me?" she asked.  "I sent dreams to my true love, hoping he would set me free, but he has not heard them, I see."

"Those dreams found their mark," said Gladden bitterly.  "Behold, there he is," and she gestured to Kali, who still stood watching with open mouth.

"Ah, I see," said the Lady.  "My dreams were sent astray, and have ensnared your friend."  She laughed softly and sadly.  "No, here is not my true love.  My true love walks far under sun and star.  He is older, he is wiser, still the river tricked him.  The river held me, sent my dreams adrift.

"Now you have freed me, but I must free your friend."  The Lady went to Kali and laid both her hands on his head.  "I am but a dream to you.  One day you will find the one who is not a dream."

She turned back to Gladden.  "You have courage and a generous heart.  Though you thwarted the river, my father, he will not harm you.  Indeed, he will be kind to you and your friends, in this much I can guide him."

She knelt and embraced Gladden warmly and kissed her.  "I and my love will be friends to you and your children and theirs.  May you fare well all your days.   If you would speak with me again, go to the river, to the Withywindle, and say, 'Send me your daughter', and I will come to you."  The Lady dived once more into the pool.  Gladden thought she saw something green and yellow flashing up the waterfall.  She whispered, "Fare you well, also, Riverdaughter."

Gladdy turned to Kali.  He shook himself and looked around. "What are we doing here?" he asked, "and is there anything to eat?"

A Dwarvish tale of Moria

~~~

Dwarves keep their language secret and their lives hidden from outsiders.  Sometimes, even among themselves, there comes one yet more guarded.

In the great City of the Dwarrowdelf lived a Dwarf of a more than usually suspicious nature.  His soul shrank under the gaze of others and withered even more when they looked away.

He began to avoid the other Dwarves.  He worked when they slept and dug his tunnels as far away from others as possible.  Each day, his soul grew smaller and harder.

He found a new vein of mithril, and wishing to keep it secret and safe for himself, he took devious routes to and from his digging.  He hid the ore and rubble in abandoned mine-shafts, "Just to keep them from prying," he thought.

Sometimes the other Dwarves asked him to join them in mining or in feasting.  "No," he said each time, thinking, "They just want to find my vein of true-silver."

When they left without pressing him, he thought, "If they really cared, they would ask me again," and his soul shriveled a little more.

They ceased asking, at the last.  "I see they truly don't care for me; they don't ask me to accompany them," he said to himself.  His soul dwindled yet again.

He spent all his waking hours in his secret tunnel.  He followed the vein as it twisted ever downward.  Dreams of smoke and flame running toward him along the mithril accompanied his sleep.  He imagined the others, the ones who had rejected him, engulfed in flame.  "They would be well served," he thought.

One day, the sound of his pick on the rock changed.  He knew he approached a large cavity.  Though it meant, perhaps, the end of his vein of true-silver, his heart beat faster at the thought of opening up a new cavern, or even series of caverns.  "Then I would get my due," he thought.  His mind filled with visions of the other Dwarves envious of his fortune in expanding their City yet again.  Somehow, though, heat and smoke wreathed through the vision.

At last the tip of his pick slipped into a tiny hole.  He enlarged it with care, and peered through.  Instead of utter blackness, he saw a dull glow and heard a slow rhythmic thud.  He pulled away more shards of rock, and in his haste and lack of care, one large piece tumbled inward, clattering ever louder down the side of the chamber.

The glow brightened and turned toward him.  It rose up.  Its cloak of shadow filled the cavern.  He thought to retreat, but his limbs shook with fear and failed him.  He fell to the ground as the thing beyond reached up and broke away the edges of the hole.  It came closer and he pressed himself to the ground and hid his eyes for very terror.  It said, or perhaps he only thought it said, "Thou! Thou puny thing! Hast thou released me, then, after ages in this prison?"

The Dwarf's tiny soul shrank to nothing and winked out.  The Spirit of Shadow and Fire strode out over his body, through the tunnel and away up into the City of the Dwarves.

A tale of Men and Elves from Dol Amroth

~~~

           ...

           Amroth beheld the fading shore
            Now low beyond the swell,
           And cursed the faithless ship that bore
            Him far from Nimrodel.

           Of old he was an Elven-king,
            A lord of tree and glen,
           When golden were the boughs in spring
            In fair Lothlorien.

           From helm to sea they saw him leap,
            As arrow from the string,
           And dive into the water deep,
            As mew upon the wing.

           The wind was in his flowing hair,
            The foam about him shone;
           Afar they saw him strong and fair
            Go riding like a swan.

           But from the West has come no word,
            And on the Hither Shore
           No tidings Elven-folk have heard
            Of Amroth evermore.

Part of Legolas's song of Amroth and Nimrodel, "Lothlorien", FOTR

~~~

Long ago, there lived a Lord of the Elves.  He loved an Elven maiden, and she returned his love full well.

In those days, the lands were racked with war, and the maiden said to her love, "I cannot marry you here, in the midst of war.  Let us fare to Elven-Home; there, in the land of peace, may we wed."

Now the Elven-Lord was a warrior, and ruled over many folk, and loth was he to leave his people to the chances of war while he departed for the Undying Lands.  However, after many years of pleading and waiting, at last he relented.  He took ship down the River to the Sea, while the maiden and her ladies journeyed by land through the woods.

The Lord waited in his ship upon the Sea for many weeks, unknowing that she and her ladies had become lost and mazed among the trees.  A storm came up; a strong wind blew; the ship ran out to Sea.  The Elven-Lord saw the land receding as the ship bore him toward the Straight Road.

He sprang into the water, that he not be parted from his love by the impassable ocean.  The waves and water overwhelmed him, and he was like to drown, but the Lord of the Sea took pity on him, and transformed him into a swan.  Thus he returned to Middle-Earth.  There he found his betrothed with but one maiden left to her, wandering upon the shore.

The Lord of the Waters, being persuaded by the great love of the Lady for her Lord, transformed her, also, into a swan.  The Elf-Lady's handmaiden begged him to turn her to a swan, as well.

"For the devotion you show to your Lady," he said, "you may join her every day, but at night you must put off the swan and return to your native form."

Joyfully she agreed, and for some years the three lived thus, the Lord and his Lady as swans.  By night they slept near the water, the handmaiden as woman beside her mistress the swan.

~~~

One day, a Prince of the land was out hunting.  He became separated from his fellows, and lost his way.  Evening drew nigh, and he wandered deeper into the woods, where he came upon a lake.  He resolved to camp there for the night.

As he lay watching the stars over the water, he saw three swans flying low.  They landed on the shore.  Unseen, he watched them preening before sleep.  One of the swans stretched up her wings and flung them back as a cloak, and lo!, it was a cloak.  A lovely maiden stood there, pushing back a covering of swan plumage.  She was clad in naught but a white shift of feathers.

The Prince stared unashamed, entranced by the maidens beauty.  They spoke together, the maiden and the swans, then the maiden and one of the swans settled down to sleep, while the other swan kept watch.  The Prince intended to stay awake all night, but fell asleep, and woke to the whir of swan-wings as the three rose up into the dawn sky.

All thought of returning to his home fled his mind.  Instead, he hunted for food, and rested against the coming night.

Night after night, he watched the swans and the elf-maiden.  One day, the weather turned hot.  Even the night was sultry.    While the maiden slept, she threw off the feather cloak she used as a coverlet.  As the watchful swan drifted on the lake, the Prince crept up to the maiden and stole away her swan-cloak.

In the morning, the maiden bewailed her missing cloak.  "Someone must have taken it," she cried.  She searched among the trees and bushes, but durst not go far alone, as the swans could not follow into the wood.

The Prince retreated into the forest, but his conscience smote him, for bringing distress to such a fair creature.  He took counsel with himself, and determined to return her the cloak with nightfall.

The two swans took it in turn to remain with her, for they feared to leave her alone with robbers about.  Both swans returned at dusk, and kept the maiden company.  The Prince stood up and walked to the shore.  The swans raised their wings and stayed between him and the elf-maiden.

He bowed low before the swans, and held forth the cloak.

"Hast thou stolen my cloak from me?" said the maiden, in the tongue of the Elves.  "Know this, if I am woman all day, once I regain the cloak, I must pay back the time, and remain swan all night for each day as woman."

"Has some evil enchanter laid a spell on thee?" asked the Prince in the same tongue, for he was well-tutored.  "How may I help thee to break it?"

"Nay, sir," she said, "'tis by my own choice that I am by turns maiden and bird."  Nevertheless, as she looked on the goodly young man, she felt her heart leap.

"Then may I keep thee company and have speech with thee when thou art woman?" said the Prince.

Now the Elf-maiden, dearly though she loved her Lady and Lord, longed at times for the companionship of others.  Though she saw the Prince was but of the Second-born, she assented.

She took back her cloak, and it leaped from her fingers to wrap around her shoulders.  Her body dwindled, the cloak-wings stretched up into swan-wings, and there before him were the three swans.

They settled for the night, the Man and the swans.  In the morning, the swans again took flight, while the Prince remained on the shore.  He wondered if he would see again the lovely maiden, or if she would forget her promise of friendship.  All day he waited.  As the sun was setting, he looked anxiously to the sky.  At last, he saw them drift down from the clouds.  They landed, and the maiden at once threw back the swan-cloak.

They rested before sleep, and each began to learn of the other.  Even in woman-form the maid could speak with the swans, so the Prince heard also the tale of the Elven-Lord and Lady.  The Prince took his turn at the watch in the night, and at dawn the swans left once more.

After some days, the Prince remembered his lands.  With regret, he told the maiden and the swans that he must needs return to his duties as Lord of his House.  "It would please me if you would visit me in my castle by the sea," he said.  "Have no fear, for it shall be made the law of my land that no one may harm a swan, nay, not even the smallest swan's feather."

With a heavy heart, he searched his way back to his lands and to his castle and his duty.  He feared that never again would he see the Elf-maiden.

When he was again in his own council chambers, he made good his promise to the swans, and his heralds proclaimed throughout the land that no person might harm any swan, no, not the least feather of the smallest swan.

He took up the rule of his lands, and resolved to put out of his mind the swan-maiden.

The seasons changed, and turned toward the time of storms and cold.  One day of bitter wind and rain, as the Prince sat before his council table, one of the guards that walked his castle walls came in, saying that in the storm three swans had landed on the parapet walk.

The Prince laid aside his work in haste, and hurried up to the wall top.  There, indeed, were the three swans.  As he greeted them, the short winter day drew to a close, and before the astonished eyes of his guards, the swan-maiden became all maiden.

She shivered there on the stone walk in her bare feet and short feather shift, with the swan-cloak wrapped about her.  The Prince threw his own velvet cloak over hers, and led all three inside.

"Lord Prince," she said, "we have come to beg shelter of thee.  Our lake is frozen, and my Lord and Lady wish not to leave their home to follow the Sun South."

The Prince agreed eagerly.  He allotted to them a fine suite of rooms with large windows facing the sea, that the swans might come and go as they pleased. 

The swans wintered there, and the maiden was most pleased to sleep once again in a bed instead of on the earth.

The Prince took to calling his council meetings after dusk, for he found not only that the maiden was wise and well-spoken, but that the counsel of the Swan Lord was of true value.  With the Swan Lord to advise him and the maiden to interpret, he became known as a Lord of justice and wisdom throughout his land.

When spring came, the three swans took their leave, though the maiden seemed quite sad.  When winter returned, so did the swans.  Again, the Prince and the maiden spent what time they could together.

With the return of spring, Prince and maiden declared their love for each other.

"Though I am of the Eldar, and thou art of the Second-Born," she said, "I had rather be thy wife for thy time in Arda than the wife of any other for all time."  The Swan Lord and Swan Lady were grieved that her heart had been given to a mortal, but delighted in the love of the twain even as in their own.  Thus they gave their consent to the wedding.  And so she did off her swan-cloak, and put it away in a locked chest, and she and the Prince were married.

For many years, the Prince and Princess lived happily.  They had children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  The Swan Lord and Lady overwintered with them every year, and were greatly beloved of the Prince's family.

Now though the Prince was of the House of the King of the Western Land, and thus gifted with age far beyond the span of lesser men, still he began to feel the weight of the years.  His Princess, the erstwhile swan, looked on in sadness, for she, being of the First-Born, had not been granted a share in the Gift of Men.

One autumn evening, the Prince and Princess sat in their garden, with all their family about them.  The Princess felt cool, and wished for a wrap against the night air.

The son of the son of the Prince's heir leaped up and said, "Let me fetch one for you, Great-Grandmother!" and he ran up to her rooms.  He saw, in a corner, the chest that had always been locked.  It was now open, and a luxurious white feather cloak spilled out.  He snatched it up, and carried it down to the garden.

He came softly up behind the Princess and draped it about her shoulders.  With a cry, she sprang up, but it was too late.  Her form melted into the swan's shape.  She turned to her husband.  He embraced the swan and wept.  The great-grandson looked on in horror.

When the Prince heard the tale of the unlocked chest, he knew then that the Lord of the Ocean had determined that his servant's time was almost done.  He knew  that his time was short as well.

The Prince lived but one more winter.  The swan was his constant companion.  She would sleep beside him on his bed, and fly out but briefly before returning.  The Swan Lady and Lord also spent the winter by his side.  As spring approached, the Prince breathed his last.  The swans mourned his passing, then flew about the castle in farewell.  The new Prince buried his father, and the swans returned to their lake in the woods.

The Prince's House kept the story of their great-grandmother, and from that day to this, no one may harm a swan, not even its smallest feather.

~~~

Now, when the children of the Prince's House in Dol Amroth see swans flying overhead, they wave and blow kisses and call, "Great-great!  Here we are - look at us!"

And that's why the sign of the House of Dol Amroth is the Swan.

A tale of Men and Elves from Long Lake. 

~~~

In Esgaroth long ago, or rather nearer the Forest than the town, there lived a husband and wife.  They were toymakers.  The husband foraged in the Forest for wood, though he never laid axe to any living tree, but rather sought downed wood.  He knew that the Elves mightily prized their trees.

He brought the wood home, and together they would carve and paint and dress dolls and other toys of all sorts.  From time to time, they took them to Dale to sell in the toy market.

They had no children, though dearly they wished for them, even one.  "At least," said the wife, "we can give joy to children through our toys.  But Oh!, how I would love a little boy!"  And the husband said, "Ah, me!  How it would lighten our days if we had a little girl beside the fire with us!"

Nonetheless, they were a cheerful couple, as kind to each other as to all they met.  Sometimes in the evening, the Elves peeped in to see them whittling and sewing in their workroom, singing and talking and laughing together.  The Elves did not grudge the use of the the Forest's wood thus a whit.

One day, the husband brought from the Forest a large oaken branch.  He carved and sanded and smoothed it, his wife painted and sewed, and soon they had a new, life-sized boy-doll.

"How sweet-faced he is," said the woman.  "I can hardly bear to let him go."

"Let us put him here by the hearth," said the man.  "He will be our companion for a while."

So of all their toys and dolls, they kept this one wooden boy, sitting in a little chair by the fire.  As they worked, they included the boy in their conversation, though he never answered.  Sometimes, perhaps by a trick of the firelight, it seemed his expression changed as the tone of talk changed from joyous to sad and back again.

~~~

Away on the other side of the lake, there lived a family, a family loud and without peace.  The mother and father shouted at each other and at their children without cease.

"These children eat more than I can provide," cried he.

"You spend more time and money with your friends at the tavern than your own flesh and blood," cried she.

"That one is no flesh and blood of mine," he said, pointing at the thin, small ragged boy in the corner.

"He is my sister's child, and we must do our duty.  Besides, he doesn't eat much," said she, and they began shouting again about the orphaned boy, about their own poor children, about their small mean house, about anything that came to mind.

The orphaned boy huddled in the corner.  His father had died so long ago he scarce remembered him.  His mother had died but recently, and he mourned her silently, here amid the loud, rude, unhappy family of his aunt.

When the Elves peered into this house (which they seldom did, on account of the noise and discord), they saw the little boy sitting silent and still.  They felt sorry for him.  They said to each other, "We can play tricks on the mortals and help this little boy at the same time!"

One evening the Elves gathered at the house of noise.  While the shouting went on unabated, the Elves began to sing, softly, so softly.  Soon, all within the house were asleep.  They tiptoed into the house, and went to the corner where the orphan lay.  They roused him, and as he rubbed his eyes, they offered him water from a little silver flask.

Now inside this flask were a few drops of water from the Enchanted River, deep within the gloomy Forest.  This water would put to sleep for days any who drank of it.  The Elves had also laid on it an enchantment of forgetfulness.

When he had drunk from it and fallen back to sleep, they picked him up and carried him out, down the street, away from the town, back toward the Forest.

They came to the house of the toymakers.  There, the husband and wife had already gone to bed.  Again, the Elves sang softly.  Even if the mortals had been awake, they might not have heard it.

The Elves slipped into the house, still singing.  They set the sleeping boy beside the wooden boy.  They changed clothes between the two boys.  As they did so, Lo!, the boys exchanged form as well.  The human boy took on the seeming of the wooden boy, while the wooden boy looked for all the world like the orphan.

They laid the sleeping boy on the floor beside the little chair, and carried off the doll.  Back they traveled to the house of discord.  Well before dawn, they set the wooden boy in the orphan's corner and hastened again to the Forest edge.

When all in the house began to stir, the mother went to rouse the orphan.  She shook his shoulder and found him cold and lifeless.  "Alas, my nephew, my sister's only child is dead," she cried.

"All the fewer mouths to feed," said her husband.  "Quick, get him out of my sight and bury him."

So the orphan's aunt wrapped the wooden boy in a cloth and buried him.  She shed some tears over him, for she had been a little fond of her nephew.  She returned to the house and shouted at her children and husband, and they returned the favor.

In the house by the Forest, as the sun rose, the Elves sang low.  It was a song of concealment, that they might watch without being seen.

The toymakers awoke and began to prepare for the day.  They found that somehow during the night, the wooden boy had fallen out of his chair.  He now lay curled up on the bit of rug before the hearth.

The wife picked him up and found him to be much heavier than she remembered.  As she did so, he moaned a little and wiggled in her arms.  She almost dropped him in her startlement.

"Look, my love," she cried to her husband.  "Our dear wooden boy has become a real boy!"

Together they carried him to the bed and set him on it.  With the glamour laid on him by the Elves, his face looked just like the one they had carved and painted, but warm and living.

"Perhaps some magic has come out of the Forest, and brought our boy to life," said the man.  They both turned and waved and bowed toward the Forest and the unseen Elves, their hearts full of gratitude.

After some days, the boy stirred and woke.  The enchantment of forgetfulness was still upon him.  He remembered but dimly his real mother, and his aunt and cousins not at all.  He soon came to call the toymakers "Mother" and "Father".

The glamours of the Elves faded, of course, but so slowly that no one noticed.  The woman and man, now Mother and Father, rejoiced in their son and were happier than ever.  And, as so often happens, they soon had a little girl, who came about in the more usual way.

Even their toys were better than before, for now they were tested, each and every one, by the toymakers' children.  Sometimes, the Elves would creep into the house and lay a little enchantment on one or another toy.  Thus, they became known far and wide for their wonderful, magical toys.

A tale for Dwarves, set in Erebor.

~~~

Long, long ago, when dragons still roamed the North, the Dwarves founded the Kingdom Under the Mountain.  Gamil, he who would become the greatest jeweler of Erebor, traveled to the new realm with Gil, his sister.

Gamil served the King Under the Mountain.  At times he would dig in the mines in search of gems.  These he then cut and shaped and set in fair metal work of silver or gold.

On the eve of the Feast Day of Mahal, while seeking gems deep below the Mountain's peak, the light of his lantern winked off something in the tunnel wall.  He saw there the surface of a water-clear crystal.  For many weeks he worked tap by tap--a small chip of rock and no more, perhaps, in a whole anxious day.  Finally he freed from the rock a stone of adamant of such size he could scarce wrap his hand 'round it.

He carried it to the chambers he shared with Gil, to show her the wonderful stone, yet unshaped.

Together, they knew, they could make a thing of wondrous beauty, which would charm all who beheld it.  They spoke long together ere ever they began to work.

First, Gamil studied the stone.  He looked at it in bright light and dim.  He examined it by light of lamp and candle.  He even left the halls of rock to gaze at it by Star and Moon and Sun.

At last, with trembling heart but steady hands, he took the first small flake from the stone.

Gil left their chambers to study with the Wise Women, who dwelt apart.  She learned to walk wakeful the pathways of sleep, and of runes inscribed and spells chanted.  While her brother took pains to carve the stone, she grew in mastery of the magic of the Dwarves.

Gamil did not neglect his other work.  He took an apprentice; he made ornaments great and small, for the King and his Council.

He knew the stone demanded naught but the best from him.  Thus he touched it but rarely, only when his strength was full, his hand sure and his mind clear.  And so, over the months and years, the stone took shape.

When at last he had fashioned the final facet, he rested, and called on his sister to bring her wisdom to the stone.  Gil, too, studied the stone, sitting before it for hours, contemplating it with eyes and with mind and with heart.

Under her counsel, he devised a cunning array of mirrors and prisms.  Together, they positioned them to catch and bend the light from the well in the side of the Mountain above their chambers.

Now, indeed, he must turn his other work over to his apprentice, Balon, for this endeavor would require all his thought.  Balon was nothing loth to act the part of master, though he wondered ever what work Gamil wrought, for Gamil had kept secret all knowledge of the stone of adamant.

Gamil took a disk of pure silver.  He hammered it and rolled it out smooth and fine as paper.  Then Gil brought out a quill of copper.  She wrote spells upon the silver, till it was covered with runes.

At midnight, on the night of the full Moon, they set the stone in the device of prisms.  Around it they wrapped the silver paper.  Gil chanted softly.  The light of the Moon came down the well, past the mirrors and through the prisms.  It fell full upon the silver.  While she spoke, the moonlit silver sank into the stone, as a raindrop sinks into the river.  The Moon passed away from the shaft and all went dark, save for the faint, new glow from the stone.

Gil dropped weary to the floor.  Gamil took the stone from its cradle, and locked it away.

Again, Gamil took a disk of pure gold, and hammered it thin as tissue.  Again, Gil wrote upon it, now with a quill of silver.  They waited until Midsummer, then, at the height of the year, at midday, they again set the gold-wrapped stone in the device.  The full force of the Sun poured down the light-shaft, multiplied by the mirrors and prisms.  The golden tissue, full of the light of the Sun, melted into the stone.

When the Sun had passed from the shaft, and the dazzle left their eyes, they saw the stone glowed with golden light.

Now they waited until the dark of the year.  Gamil took a nugget of pure mithril.  He hammered the mithril until it was wafer-thin, tissue-thin, thin enough to see through.  Gil used a quill of gold to write her spells on it.  She worked with care, for the metal was as delicate as cobweb.

On the night of Midwinter, a night of no Moon, they placed the stone again under the prisms, cloaked in the enchanted mithril.  All the longest night, Gil paced and chanted, as the stars wheeled above spilling their light down the shaft into the stone.  As dawn broke, Gil swooned and could not be woken.

Gamil, distraught over his sister, ordered Balon to summon the healer.  Though Balon had but a glimpse through the door of pale gold light from the network of mirror, lust for the shining thing filled his heart.  The healer took Gil to their chambers, with Gamil following anxiously.

Balon tried the door, but Gamil had locked it behind the healer.  For many days, Gil lay in a trance.  Gamil feared to remove the stone until Gil awoke, though he returned daily to gaze upon it.  Balon spied on his master, watching as he went from the workroom to Gil's side.  Each time he saw the light glowing from within, he coveted it yet more.

At last, one day the healer called to Gamil that Gil had awakened.  He sped to her, neglecting, in his joy, to lock the door behind him.  Balon, peering at him in secret, saw at last his chance.  He crept into the chamber and stole away the stone from its cradle.

When Gamil returned and found the stone gone, his heart near broke.  He knew his apprentice had taken it while Gil recovered and he attended her.

He went at once to the King, to accuse his apprentice before the Council.  The King sent for Balon, and within his chambers the guards found the stone.  They brought both to the King.

"Oh, King," said Balon, "my master lies.  I found this stone, and fashioned it thus.  He saw my work, and being jealous that I have surpassed him in craft mastery, he wishes to take it for his own."

The King questioned many Dwarves, but found none who could say which of them, master or apprentice, spoke the truth.  Indeed, Gamil and Gil had kept their secret well.

The King took thought on how to discover who had the right of it.  He spoke with his advisors and read in the scrolls of Mahal.  He pondered the dispute all night, and in the morning, he summoned his Council and Gamil and Balon.

"I have made my decision," he said.  "As none can tell who rightly demands this artifact, let it be divided between the two claimants.  The jewelers shall break it, and shall give half to Gamil and half to Balon.

"I will grant you," said the King, "one night and one day to consider this.  Then you must return, and if both agree, my decision will stand."

"That is fair," said Balon.  "You may break it in half, half for him and half for me."

"No," cried Gamil.  "I need no thought for this.  Rather let him have it whole than destroy the years-long work of my heart!"

The King smiled.  "Then you shall have the whole.  For what true craftmaster could bear to see his creation so blithely despoiled?  I see that you are the true maker of this marvel."

Then Gamil threw himself before the King in thanks.  He took back the wonderful adamant stone, and went immediately to find Gil.  When he brought it to her, it was as though the light of Sun, Moon and Stars filled the room.  She gazed long upon it, the end of many years of work that had so nearly been destroyed.

"What shall we do with it?" Gamil asked his sister.  "I would not keep such light in a strongbox, yet all now know of it, and it will not be safe here without guard."

"It seems we have made it for all the Kingdom Under the Mountain," she said.  "Let us give it to the King, and it will be the greatest treasure of all."

So they gave it to the King, and it became the most precious part of his regalia; he would call no Council and greet no ambassador without it at his right hand.  The King found that by its light, he could read hearts and minds more clearly, and all praised his wisdom and knowledge.  But he knew the truth of it, and gave honor and the King's favor to Gamil and Gil.

A tale of Hobbits and Elves.

~~~

Day-Bright and Night-Dark
or
The Tale of the Fairy Wife

Long ago, before ever the Hobbits moved West across the Brandywine, a widow of the Took family lived with her little son Isumbar at the very edge of Hobbit country, right up against the Forest.  They lived in the smallest, meanest, poorest hole.

One winter evening, they heard a knock on the door.

"Who can that be?" asked Mistress Took.  She peeped through the spy-hole and saw there a woman of the Big People, drooping and leaning on the door frame.

Though she was astonished to see such a person, she opened the door to let her in.

"This is not a night to leave any person to face the winter snows," she said.

The woman staggered in.  She was small for one of the Big Folk; still her head nigh touched the ceiling.  She fell before the fire in a swoon.

Mistress Took bent over her unexpected guest.  "Hasten, Isumbar.  Go to the healer and bring her here," she said.

So Isumbar bundled himself in his warmest cloak and hurried off to the healer's hole.  The healer was not best pleased to be dragged from her Fore-Yule preparations, but she assembled her healer's kit and returned with Isumbar.

When they arrived at the small hole, they found Mistress Took had made the poor woman as comfortable as possible before the hearth, for the Hobbit-bed was by far too small.  His mother and the healer put him to work bringing in firewood but then banished him to his pallet.  He curled up and tried to sleep.  The cries of the strange woman troubled his dreams until morning.

He awoke to a different kind of crying.  The woman lay in shallow sleep on the floor; the healer had taken his mother's bed, while Mistress Took dozed in her chair by the fire.  On either side of the woman, tucked under her arms were two tiny babes.

Isumbar tiptoed closer.  His mother roused and signaled him to silence.  He gazed down at the new little ones.  One had golden down upon her head, as yellow as her mother's.  She opened bright blue eyes at him.  Her sister's hair was black, and her eyes were gray as cloud.

The mother stirred, and Mistress Took went immediately to her side.

Later that day, another knock came at the door.  Outside stood an elf-man, dark-haired and gray-eyed.

"My wife," he said.  "Have you seen her?"

He stooped a little to enter the hole, but fell to his knees beside the woman.  He gathered her and the little ones in his arms.

"I am in your debt.  The storm parted us, and I have searched for her with little hope until now."

"I have done but what was needed," replied Mistress Took.

The woman rested with Isumbar and his mother.  The elf-man visited daily until she was stronger.

When she was ready to leave, she looked at little Isumbar.  "When he is grown, he will be worthy of the daughter of the Lord of the Elves."

The elf-man and his wife and babes disappeared into the Forest.  A few days later, Mistress Took found a little woven fern basket on her doorstep.  Within it lay two elf-beryls, one as blue as the sky, as blue as the eyes of the golden-haired babe, the other silver-gray as rain.

She put aside the blue gem, and with the pale gem set about restoring her prosperity.

Mistress Took and her son worked hard, but soon their fortunes had improved.  They moved to a larger, more comfortable hole.  Mistress Took increased her properties, and became a person of substance and influence.

Her son grew to be an industrious, clever lad.  When he had leisure, though, Isumbar wandered in the fringes of the Forest and practiced music on his pipes.

While playing songs in a glade of the wood one day, he met two little girls.  The taller one had hair dark as shadow; the other's glowed like sunshine.  They told him their elvish names, but said, "You may call us Night-Dark and Day-Bright," for he did not speak their elvish tongue.

When his mother could spare him from work, he went straight to the Forest to meet his playmates.  They rambled together among the trees; Isumbar would play upon his pipes while Day-Bright sang and Night-Dark whirled about and danced. He met again the elf-man and the woman of the Big People, and learned somewhat of their language.

As the years passed, Isumbar grew taller; in fact he grew to be the tallest hobbit for miles around, and must needs duck his head at the front door.  His elf-maid friends grew as well, though more slowly.  Still, both soon o'er-topped him, Day-Bright by a little and Night-Dark by a great deal.

Mistress Took saw how her son had grown to be a promising young Hobbit.  The families with daughters of an age for marriage showed Isumbar special attention.  However, Mistress Took remembered the words of the wife of the Elf-man, and the blue elf-beryl.  She looked over the Hobbit-girls from far and near, and found none to be good enough for her son.

As for Isumbar, he had no thoughts yet of marriage.  He preferred to visit his elf-friends in the forest rather than go to parties with his mother.   He could spare less time than he wished, for his work kept him from the woods, but he went there straight-away when his chores were done.

One day, as they rambled in the woods, a great grey wolf came creeping through the trees.  Isumbar stood between the young women and the beast, but his bravery was for naught.  The wolf crawled forward on his belly, and showed them his throat.  Night-Dark dashed from behind Isumbar and dropped to her knees beside the wolf.

"Look, here is an ornament attached to his neck!" she cried.  She petted the wolf without fear, and he butted his head against her.  Sure enough, there was a tiny lock embedded in the skin of his throat.

By this, they knew that some mystery or even magic was attached to the beast, so they took to calling him the Enchanted Prince.  He became their playmate, but took care to disappear when others came near.  Night-Dark became his especial friend, and learned to communicate with him somewhat.

She found that he was indeed an ensorcelled elven-youth.  He had fallen afoul of the King of the Goblins, who, instead of killing him, had flung the wolf-skin over him and locked it shut at his throat.  "You shall remain a wolf until you die, for the key is always by my hand," said the Goblin King, and laughing he drove the wolf out to be hunted and feared by all.

The three friends consulted together on how to reverse the spell on their dear wolf.  They decided that the best way was the most direct way, so they set out for the Goblin King's caverns.  When they drew near the mountains where the goblins lived, they sent the wolf to wait in the forest nearby.

"If the goblins see you, they will surely kill you," said Night-Dark.  "Stay out of sight until we return."

Isumbar, Day-Bright and Night-Dark stepped boldly up to the front door of the caverns.  The goblin soldiers laughed and jeered as they approached.

"We are wandering minstrels," said Isumbar.  "We seek only to earn our way through the world with music and dance."

The goblin soldiers brought them before the king.  "Let them entertain us.  Sing and dance for us, puny elves," he said.

And so they sang and danced.  At first they played happy dance tunes, while all the goblins crowded into the hall.  When the hall was filled, the music changed.

Isumbar piped a tune of sleep.  Day-Bright sang a song of sleep.  Night-Dark danced a dance of sleep.  Her dusky hair floated about her, the sleepy shadows reaching all around.

The Goblin King stood up.  As he stepped toward her, he crumpled to the floor.  All his soldiers and retainers fell to the ground, fast asleep as well.

While Isumbar continued piping and Day-Bright singing, ever softer, Night-Dark took the great iron ring of keys from his belt.  The three friends moved quietly out of the hall of the Goblin King.  They ran down the tunnel and out of the mountain into the night.

The wolf waited there for them.  Already, they heard the goblin soldiers stirring behind them, and the Goblin King shouting after them,  "Sieze them!  Bring them back and throw them in the deepest caverns!"

They ran into the forest, not stopping to try the keys they'd stolen.  Now one, now another rode on the back of the wolf.  Finally, as day was breaking, the cries and clatter of the goblin soldiers fell behind.  They hurried on until they could go no farther.  As soon as they stopped, Night-Dark hunted through the keys on the iron ring, until she found the tiniest one.  With shaking hands, she turned it in the lock at the throat of the wolf.

The lock opened and the wolf-skin fell away.  A tall elf-youth stood before them.  He embraced each one, and kissed Night-Dark on the mouth.  Then they all turned toward their home, bringing the former wolf with them.

When they had met the Enchanted Prince, Day-Bright and Night-Dark's parents rejoiced that Night-Dark had found her true love.  They saw also that Isumbar and Day-Bright had eyes only for each other.

"But first," they said, "you must gain the consent of Mistress Took."

So Isumbar and Day-Bright made their way to the Hobbit Holes.  Mistress Took looked with favor on her son's choice, but she said, "How can I be sure she is a real elf?  The woman foretold my son would marry the daughter of the Lord of the Elves.  If she is a real elf, she can run upon the snow."

When winter snows fell, Day-Bright sprang out upon it and ran to and fro.  Mistress Took clapped her hands for delight and immediately gave her approval.  The shining elf-stone she hung about Day-Bright's neck.

So Day-Bright married Isumbar and her sister Night-Dark married the Enchanted Prince.  Isumbar and Day-Bright had many children, and grew old together, for Day-Bright had chosen the fate of her mother's kindred when she gave her heart to Isumbar.  As for Night-Dark, she chose the path of her father and the Elves, though she mourned her sister when she received the Gift of Men.

Even now, they say, she and her daughters watch over her sister's children from the eaves of the woods.

A tale for Men.

~~~

In the City of the Fortress of Stars, there lived a King's Daughter.  Of course, she was beautiful, with dark eyes and black hair flowing to her feet.

As King, her father was Master of the Seeing Stones.  Every day, he looked in the large dark crystal to survey the other stones both within his Land of Stone and in the northern Royal Country.  As she grew from childhood, the King's Daughter often accompanied him into the Chamber of the Stars, and gazed into the Seeing Stone there.

"You were born to rule," said the King.  "Though your brother will be King after me, I shall marry you to a King, as well.  Watch all that I do and learn."

One time, while the King conferred with ministers and generals from afar, she spied the face of a young man in the Seeing Stone.  As she watched him, it seemed he returned her gaze.  She did not know where or who he was, only that her heart was given in that moment, and so, she thought, was his.  Whenever she returned with her father to the Stone, she sought his face.  As soon as he spied her, his eyes never left hers.

Daily she would watch him in the Stone, but then came the day when he did not appear.  She looked for him again in vain.

By now, the King's Daughter had grown to womanhood, and the time came for her to seek a husband. The King announced that he had contracted a betrothal for her with the prince of a distant land.  She thought of her love, seen only in the Stone.  "How can I marry any but him?" she wondered.  She told her maidservant all her hopes and fears.

"The Elder People have come to the City," said the maid.  "If you visit them, perhaps they can help you."   She accompanied her mistress into the streets, and guided her to the place where they stayed.

The King's Daughter came to a large house.  On either side of the entry stood a man of the Elder People, still as door-trees, with pale faces, black hair and gray eyes.  She passed between them into the house.

When she reached the inner chamber, she found there three women of the Elder People, all, by seeming, as young as herself.  They stood behind a table; one had black hair and gray eyes, as like to the door-wardens as a sister; one had silver hair and eyes pale as cloud; the third's hair rippled like sunlight down her back, and her eyes were as blue as summer sky.

Before them on the table lay a wide silver basin.

"Oh, Queens of the Elder People," said the King's Daughter, "how may I find my love, he whom I have seen in my father's Seeing Stone, but no longer?"

The dark-haired woman said, "As we are kin from afar, we will help you."

The woman with moon-pale hair poured water from a silver pitcher into the basin.

The golden-haired woman beckoned her forward.  "Do not touch the water," she warned as all four women gathered about the basin and stared into it.

As she gazed into the water, the King's Daughter saw first a night sky.  It paled as if the sun rose, and against the sky she saw a succession of towers.  The first she knew as those of her island home, the City of Stars, but soon there came towers she knew not.  The last tower stood over a mighty city beside a vast lake.  Then she saw the face of her love, but his eyes were closed.  He opened them and gazed into her own, but knew her not, it seemed.  Finally her own face appeared, but somehow not her own.  Then the night sky returned and faded into clear water again.

"You have far to travel," said she of the golden hair, " and obstacles to overcome."

And so they gave her gifts.  The dark one gave her a silver mirror.  The maiden of the pale hair gave her a golden comb, and the golden-haired one dipped a little crystal flask in the basin of the Water of Vision.  She filled it, stoppered it and sealed it.

"With our gifts you may succeed, but you must start today," she said.

The King's Daughter thanked the women many times for their help.  When she returned to the palace with her maid, the King summoned her immediately.

"Let me travel first to visit my Aunt and Uncle," she begged.  "Then I will bow to your wishes."

Her father sent a troop of guardsmen and several ladies-in-waiting with her.  She went first to the City of the Tower of the Moon, where her uncle was Lord.  He led her to the topmost tower, which overlooked the Black Land, but the Seeing Stone there showed no sign of her love.

She visited next her aunt, the Lady of the City of the Tower of the Sun.  Again, she climbed to the high tower of the Stone, but saw nothing of him.

Then in secret, she stole away with but her maid and one guardsman.  She traveled many days across the plains and beneath the mountains until she reached the Tower of Clever Thought, in its valley bowl. The Warden of the Tower shouted to her from the window high above the door and refused to admit her.

"None but myself has been within this tower for many years.  King's Daughter or no, you shall not enter either," he cried.

She turned away from the Tower of Clever Thought.  With her companions, she traveled by secret paths through the mountains to the Sea.  They came to the City of the Sea-ward Tower, ruled over by her uncle, the Prince of that land.  With his help, she gained passage on a ship of the Elder People, and sailed with them to their Haven far away.

There she met the Guardian of the Haven, an ancient man of the Elder People.  With him, she climbed the Watchtower of the Stars and saw its cunning star-gazing device.  In the tower she found the Seeing Stone of the Elder People, which shows only the far-off home of the gods, but found not her love.

"There are but two more Stones," said the Guardian, "and both are still far from here.  I will teach you the way to the nearest."

So she traveled for yet many more days until she came to the Tower of the Wind.

"Though there are many young men under my command," said the Captain of the Tower, "none may look into the Stone but I."  Nevertheless, she reviewed the troops stationed at The tower and went to the Chamber of the Stone at its top, but once again in vain.

Now the Tower of the Wind stood within the Royal Country, and its Captain was in the army of that country.

"Our king is ill and near death," he said.  "His second wife is ruling in his name.  She is a witch, and has ensorcelled the King's Son.  She hopes to marry him to her daughter from her first marriage, and thus control the kingdom."

At these words, the King's Daughter felt her heart beat faster.  Surely this was her love!

"I must rescue him from his wicked step-mother," she said.  "Will you help me?"

"I will," said the Captain, and he taught her the way to City of the Tower of the West, capital of the Royal Country, where the last Stone lay, and taught her also somewhat of the City and the wicked Regent.  Her constant companions the guardsman and handmaid traveled with her to the City.

When they arrived, they found the City decked for a festival.  "In three days time, our King's Son will marry the daughter of the Regent," proclaimed the heralds.  "Let all the people rejoice."

"I am still in time," said the King's Daughter, and she went straightaway to the palace with the Tower of the Stone.  "I am the Daughter of the King of the Land of Stone," she announced to the doorwarden, "come to gaze into the Seeing Stone of the King."

The doorwarden sent word to the Regent of the visitor, who laughed and said, "No one as shabby and ill-attended as that could be a King's Daughter!  Send her out."

The King's Daughter went sadly out of the palace.  Then she bethought her of the gifts of the three women.  She sat beside the wall of the palace, and drawing out the golden comb, began to comb her hair.

At that time, the daughter of the Regent was walking along the top of the wall.  She looked out and saw the King's Daughter playing with the golden comb.  "I must have that comb," she said, and called down to the King's Daughter.

"Give me your comb," she said.

The King's Daughter looked up in astonishment, for the face of the Regent's daughter looked like her own.  Now the Regent had ensorcelled the King's Son to believe that her daughter was his love, and had likewise enchanted her daughter to look like the woman he loved.

"It's neither for sale nor for giving," replied the King's Daughter, "but I will trade it for one look at the Seeing Stone."

The Regent's daughter led her to the Tower of the Stone, and she entered, but found no-one.  She gave the golden comb to the Regent's daughter, and returned downcast to her lodgings with the guardsman and the maid.

Meanwhile, the witch's daughter took the comb and went to sit with the King's Son.  She began to comb her hair while he watched.

When she drew the comb through her hair, the spell on it weakened, and the glossy black turned to light brown.  She hastened away to her mother before the King's Son could notice.

The next day, there were but two days until the wedding.  The King's Daughter sat by the palace and played with the silver mirror, turning it to and fro, and looking at her reflection in the shiny metal.

The daughter of the Regent walked again upon the wall, and saw the mirror.

"Give me the mirror," she said.

"It's neither for sale nor for giving," said the King's Daughter, "but I will trade it for one look at the King's Son."

"Follow me, but mind you stop at the door!" replied the Regent's daughter.

So she followed the Regent's daughter to the chamber where the King's Son sat.  It was he!  There was her love, but he looked only at the other woman, who shut the door firmly upon the King's Daughter.  Away she went again, with both more hope and more fear.

The Regent's daughter showed the mirror to the King's Son.  He looked into it, and beheld his own face, but when he turned it to look at his betrothed, he saw the face not the face of his love, but that of the daughter of the Regent.

"What witchery is this?" he cried, but the Regent's daughter dashed the mirror from his hand.

It broke upon the floor as she said, "Mind it not, my love.  It is but foreign sorcery."

Nevertheless, the King's Son thought upon what he had seen, and could not put from his mind the vision of the mirror.

On the third morning, there was only one more day before the wedding was to take place.  The King's Daughter again went to the palace wall.  She took out the crystal flask and played with it, tossing it sparkling into the air or looking through it at the City.

"Give me the crystal flask," said the Regent's daughter.

"It's neither for sale nor for giving," replied the King's Daughter, "but I will trade it for one moment with the King's Son."

"What harm can one moment do?" thought the Regent's daughter, and she guided the King's Daughter to the chamber of the King's Son.  At last, the King's Daughter stood near her love, and he beheld two women who looked alike.  He could not tell one from the other.

"Now give me the flask," said the daughter of the witch.  The King's Daughter drew forth the flask, but gave it instead to the King's Son.

"Let the King's Son give you the Water of Vision in the way he thinks best," she said.

The King's Son broke the seal on the flask and pulled out the stopper.  He bathed his eyes in the Water of Vision, then dashed the rest of it on the King's Daughter and the daughter of the Regent.

With his vision now free of the spells of the Regent, he saw the true form of each woman.  The Water of Vision drove also the enchantments from the head and heart of the King's Son.  He called upon his father's ministers and generals.  They arrested his stepmother the wicked Regent and her daughter, and threw them into the dungeon.  He went to his father and found him so improved, with the removal of the Regent's spells, that he was able once again to take up ruling.

And after all, there was a wedding the next day, for the King's Son of the North Kingdom and the King's Daughter of the South Kingdom were joined finally in marriage.

~O~

Key:

The City of the Fortress of Stars: Osgiliath

The Tower of the Moon: Minas Ithil (Minal Morgul)

The Tower of the Sun: Minas Anor (Minas Tirith)

The Tower of Clever Thought: Orthanc

The Watchtower of the Stars: Elostirion

The Tower of the Wind: Amon Sûl

The Tower of the West: Annúminas

The City of the Sea-ward Tower: Tirith Aear in Belfalas (to be Dol Amroth in the future)

The Guardian of the Haven: Cirdan

The Land of Stone, the South Kingdom: Gondor

The Royal Country, the North Kingdom: Arnor

A tale for Orcs.

~~~

Under the great stone bridge was a troll.  He did not live there, mind you.  He would come to work every evening after sunset and head back to his troll-cave every dawn.

Being intolerant of the sun could be a bit of a drawback, especially in winter, when people were even less likely to travel after dark.

However, it was a living.  He would wait until a traveler had reached the middle of the bridge, then jump out and demand payment.  The traveler was usually only too happy to give the troll whatever valuable he or she might have.

In this way, the troll acquired rather a hoard of trinkets, swords, cloaks and baubles.  Quite often, a traveler would give up a nice, fresh pig.  Then, Snik! Snak!, the pig would be inside the troll.

If the traveler had nothing with which to pay the troll, why, Snik! Snak!, the troll dined on him, or, as the case might be, her.

Trip, trap, down from the mountains came an orc.  Who knows why she came--on some wicked errand for the Goblin King, or just mischief-making of her own.  She came to the troll bridge, after dark, of course, orcs disliking the sun almost as much as do trolls.

The troll jumped out and the orc squeaked and cowered.

"Give me all your treasure," cried the troll, "or I'll dine on you tonight."

"Oh, please, Sir Troll," said the orc.  "Only let me return tomorrow, and I'll bring you fine jewels as fee to cross the bridge."

"Mind you do," replied the troll.  "All must pay my fee."

So the orc escaped the troll that evening.  Of course, she had no fine jewels, nor, indeed, anything at all of value.  She knew, though, that trolls hoarded all the treasures they took from travelers, and she dreamed of how she would trick the troll out of his loot.  How she would lord it over the other orcs in the mountain upon her return!

She turned back toward the bridge secretly, and waited until near dawn when the troll made his way homeward.  Then she crept after him all the way to his cave.  He took the key out of his pocket, opened the door, and slammed it shut behind him just as the sun rose.

With the bright sunlight in the sky, the orc could barely make her way into the deep forest.  She found a shallow cave in which to hide for the day, and went to sleep.

That night, she returned to the bridge, to make sure the troll was there.  She went up the hill to the cavern door.  She tried the door, just in case, but it was locked up tight.

In the thicket by the path, she found some thorn bushes. The orc pulled off one fine long thorn. She turned to one side of the door, and ran the thorn into her hand. As her blood dripped on the ground, she whispered the words of a speaking spell, then did the same on the other side. After that, she hid in the thornbrake to wait.

When the sky began to grow light, the troll came stumping up the path. A voice came from the drops of blood beside the door, "Here he comes. You hit him high, I'll hit him low."

The troll turned back down the path, fearing robbery and murder.  The sky grew lighter.  Again, he went toward his door.

From the other side of the door, a voice said, "It's troll meat today and troll treasure for us tonight."

The troll hastened away again.  Still, the glow of the sky increased.  For fear of the sun, he started up the path.

The orc stepped into the path in front of him.

"Dawn take you," she murmured, "and be stone to you," as the sun rose.  And, indeed, the troll turned to stone there before her eyes.  But, alas, the key to his cavern door was still in his pocket, and both pocket and key had turned as stony as their owner.  The orc kicked the rocky shin of the troll in chagrin and went to find shelter from the sun before making her way back to the Goblin Caverns, as penniless as when she'd left.

Travelers now find the Troll Bridge free of its lumpish and greedy guardian, though they know not they've an orc to thank for that.  The troll's treasure still waits behind the cavern door, locked up tight.

~O~

Tree and Star

Before the Sun, before the Moon, during the Time of the Stars and the Light of the Two Trees, the People of the Stars first awoke beside the Waters of Awakening.

There they awoke beneath the bright stars.  They had no language, at first, but were swift to invent both speech and song.  Some then wished for speech with all living things they met: with the shy deer, with the swift eagle, and the other creatures of the mountain and forest.

That was during the time when Oromë came to them upon his white horse, and they sang beside the running waters of their first home.  One of the women bent her thought not on the animals, but on the trees, for she loved them all; therefore was she named Elentaulë.

Elentaulë walked under the forest canopy and in the meadows, singing and talking to the mighty oak, the little crab, the rosy briar.  Aye, she spoke and sang, but never did they answer.  She wept with sorrow, for the trees heeded her not, though her fellows had speech with Fox and Bear and Raven.  Even she planted seedlings and reared them to tall trees, but got no reply.

She dwelt hard by a rushing stream that fed into the Helcar, and when she lay down, the music of the water filled her sleep.  One time, the noise of the water grew louder in her dreams, and came to sound like speech, saying, "Get up, Daughter of the Stars".  She arose, and went to the water's edge.  There she saw something she had seen but once--the face of a stranger.  Before her, whether dream or flesh she knew not, stood a woman like her own people but mightier.

Her nut-brown hair streamed down her back, and the garment she wore rippled like young leaves in the wind.  Her eyes were brown, shot with a green light.

"Follow me," said the woman.  Elentaulë followed without question.  Across the stream and up the hill they went.  There under the bright stars, even brighter now, stood two trees.  Side by side grew Oak and Apple.  A golden sheen of tiny flowers covered the Oak; the Apple bore clouds of pale blossom.

Beneath the trees Elentaulë and the woman danced.  They twined about the tree trunks and caressed the branches.  They sang to the trees together.  Together they spoke to the trees with love and yearning.  It seemed the trees swayed in time to the music; Elentaulë heard words without understanding in the wind soughing through the leaves.  At last she fell down in sleep between the trees.  Over her the branches of Oak and Apple mingled in gold and silver flower.  "Tarry here until I come again," came the memory of the last thing the green-clad woman had said.

When she awoke, the woman was gone, the trees moved in the breeze, the whisper of speech without words she knew drifted down from the leaves.  She stirred, and great drifts of golden flowers of Oak and silvery flowers of Apple fell away from where they had covered her while she slept.

And so there she tarried, singing and talking to the Oak and Apple.  Many times climbed Menelmacar up the sky, and just as many he strode down again, while she waited there on the hillside.

The sky had wheeled over her many twelves of twelves when Elentaulë again lay beside the stream and again came the vision of the woman.  She was now clad in deep fir-green, but her eyes were the same, sparkling like stars shimmering on the outer leaves of a vast tree, or on the ripples of a very deep lake.

"Come," she said, "let us dance and sing."  There by the water they danced and sang together, now tripping through the stream, now swaying on the bank.  Elentaulë lay back on the grass and watched the woman running her hands through the water.  It seemed silvery fishes flowed from her hands, but when she turned to Elentaulë, naught but water fell from her cupped hands onto her companion.

Elentaulë fell swiftly into sleep without dream or vision, and awoke again alone on the stream bank.  On her breast, where the woman had spilled the shining water, she found an acorn and an apple seed.

She made haste to plant them on the hillside hard by the Oak and the Apple trees.  Ever she brought to them water from the stream in the palms of her hands, unless the sweet rain fell from the star-silvered clouds.

Again she waited while the stars passed above.  It seemed they spread a special radiance over the hill where she toiled.

The seeds sprouted.  The saplings grew.  The stars paced on their rounds across the sky, now brighter, now paler.  Ever Elentaulë sang and spoke to the young trees, dancing round them and stroking their leaves as they grew.

A third time came the waking vision of the woman, the stranger, no stranger now.  She wore a garment the reddish gold of ripe grain.  She took Elentaulë's hand and led her again in the dance, slower and slower till they hardly moved.

The woman stepped up the hillside and turned back toward Elentaulë and the two trees.  Taller now than any woman of the People, taller than the young trees, taller than the Oak and the Apple she stood over Elentaulë.  She reached down her mighty hands toward the Young Oak and the Young Apple.  Up stretched the branches.  The new trees laid their hands in the hands of the woman.  They flexed their roots and took their first steps.

They opened their eyes.  They turned their green-shot brown eyes not upward to the woman but out, down toward Elentaulë.  Their slow, deep voices sang together in thanks to the woman and to Elentaulë.  Elentaulë reached her hands up to theirs.

It seemed in Elentaulë's vision the woman grew larger but fainter.  She released the trees, spread wide her arms, and as she did so, vanished from sight, leaving Elentaulë fully wakened, handfast with the firstborn of the Onyalië.

~~~

In TT, Treebeard, Treebeard says, "Elves began it, of course, waking trees up and teaching them to speak and learning their tree-talk. They always wished to talk to everything, the old Elves did."

Embedded quotes also from TT, Treebeard

Elentaulë:  elen taulë:  StarTree

Onyalië:  speculative Quenya equivalent of Sindarin Onodrim (Ents)

A Son of Eärendil

Hear now the tale of Garandir, surely a son of Eärendil, born when the bright star shone in the West at even.  Its beam glanced through the window to fall upon the infant, to the dismay of his mother, who foresaw he would hear the call of the sea ringing in his ears his life long.  Who knows, perhaps he was even of Eärendil's line in truth, with a drop of that mariner's blood in his veins?

As a child, Garandir played upon the strand and about the boats, listening to the tales sailors told.  As soon as he could tie a knot, he went out on the sea, at first with the fishermen, and then with the travelers and traders.  By the time he reached manhood, he had spent far more time on the waves than land, yet never did his passion for the sea diminish.

One year, when hardly old enough to be called a man, he was forced to spend the better part of a year ashore due to an unlucky fall in which his leg was broken.  He lodged in a fishing village for that time, and spent his days gazing out to sea.

A young maiden of the village often accompanied him to the strand.  Garandir knew himself in love with her as she with him; in her, he believed, he found the woman to rival the sea for his passion.

And so, before he was yet healed from his injury, they were married.  Many months they spent in newly-wedded bliss, but soon enough, Garandir felt the call of the ocean.

"I shall not be gone long," he told his wife, "but will soon return to you."

She wept and clung to him, but was powerless to keep him by her side, and he embarked on a ship bound for farther shores than the fishing boats.  He kept his word and returned after not many weeks; again, though, he must needs sail away after only a few months on shore.

Thus he lived for some years, his time at sea becoming ever longer and that with his wife dwindling to mere visits before he once again left her weeping behind him.

One day, while in a country far from his land, he was taken suddenly with a passion to see again his home and small village.  No ship was found to travel that way, since the omens all forecast strange dooms for those who would set out at that time.  Nevertheless he bought a small boat and embarked alone upon the breast of the wave.

He had traveled on his journey many leagues from land when the wind strengthened, the dark clouds loomed up and the waves mounted ever higher.  Lightning and thunder rolled across the sky.  The little boat rode up and down the sloping water.

The storm drove him farther than he had ever sailed.  The wild wind tore at his sail and the sea tossed the boat about without mercy.  In the dark of night at last the waves thrust his boat aground far up on a sandy shore.  When morning came he found himself marooned on an island in the wide ocean, for his sail had been torn away altogether.

"Alas," he cried, "how shall I ever return to the seas I know?"  He wandered along the sand and soon came to a fresh stream flowing out of the woods which crowned the island.  Following it upward he encountered a path alongside the water, and hastened on, saying, "Surely there are folk here.  Perhaps I may yet mend my boat."

As it wended up, the path grew wider and the woods more tame until finally as a broad paved road it swept up to the porch of a large and gracious stone house.  Seeing no-one about, he trod up the steps and between the columns.  The tall stone doors were much carved with the images of fishes and seabirds; he set his hand to them and they swung open before him.

He found himself in the entry of a wealthy household.  Passing through this, he entered a lofty and well-furnished hall.  The tapestries on the walls and the rugs upon the floor, however, were but the gem-setting for the jewels of lovely women now looking up as he entered.

In the midst of the maidens, upon a stone chair carved all over with seashells sat a tall and beautiful woman; pale skin had she, and hair the color of seafoam, with greenish glints.

"Well met, traveler," said she.  "Come, refresh yourself, rest a little, and then dine with me this even."

He was nothing loth, and allowed one of the maidens to escort him to a fine bathing chamber where he washed himself of the salt, rested and dressed in the fine clothing he found there.  He returned to the hall to find the lady awaiting him.  They sat together at a goodly table, and the maidens served them all manner of fine dishes and kept the wine flowing from the flagons.

After eating, they reclined on cushions while the maidens danced and sang for their amusement.  Garandir, though muzzy with wine, told the lady of his troubles, how he had been shipwrecked and his boat had utterly lost its sail.

"Is it possible to purchase or trade for cloth to make my sail anew?" he asked.

"Naught could be easier," replied she.  "You shall serve me for a time, and I shall spin and weave for you the cloth you require."

"But what shall such a sailor as I do for you, oh great lady?" asked Garandir.

"Come with me now, and let us see how well you may serve," she said, and led the way to her chambers, where it seemed he served quite well, for the lady found herself well-satisfied both that night and the following nights.

During the days, she would spin fine silken thread.  "None but I shall spin this thread," she said.  Her maidens brought skeins of fibers, gold and sable, for her work.  "The hair of mermaids," said the lady.  "Your sail will last forever."  He fingered the threads, which somehow showed strands of silver-green twined with the black and gold.

After many days, she had enough thread to warp her loom and begin the cloth.  Each day she would weave upon her great loom.  At first the progress of the cloth was swift, with the shuttles clacking back and forth, but every morning it seemed the fabric had not advanced so far as he had thought the previous eve.

One night following an evening of pleasant dalliance, Garandir awoke and found his lady had left his side.  After some sleepless hours alone, he arose to look for her, and came upon her in the weaving room, carefully unpicking the day's weaving.

"What do you here?" he cried.  "When may I refit my boat and return to the waves?"

 "Ah, chide me not," replied she, "for when you leave, I shall once again be alone.  I sought only to delay but a little that day of parting."

So he allowed himself to be soothed, but from then on kept a sharp eye upon the progress of the sail-cloth, which now advanced apace.

One day at last, the last length of cloth came away from the loom.  The sail took shape from the lengths, and finally Garandir carried it down to the boat.

"Keep close the secret of this sail," the lady instructed him, "for I foresee strange dooms if any know whence it came."

He had well-provisioned his boat with the help of the lady and her maidens; now he spent one last night with her and made ready to be off in the morning.  He raised his new sail of mermaids' hair to the breeze, and guided his ship away from the shore.

He looked back toward the lady.  She raised her arms and called, "Hear now my blessing.  May the winds fill thy sail, and bring thee to thy heart's desire."  He gazed back at her and waved until the rising waves hid all sight of the shore, then turned eagerly toward the open sea.

Though he missed the lady, his heart swelled to be once again on the wide water.  The wind and sun, waves and salt brought him content.  They also brought, in due course, rain and cold and storms.  Another such storm as had sent him to the Lady Isle pitched him to and fro; though the sail of mermaids' hair withstood all, yet he fretted for the rest of his mortal boat.

And rightly so, for again was he cast upon the shore of a lonely speck of land in the midst of the waves.  He found himself on a sandy beach against a rocky, bare cliff.  He lowered the undamaged sail of mermaids' hair and covered it well, but dragged the boat up the sand, for it needed much repair.  Worst of all, most of the rudder had been torn away.

After resting a while, Garandir wandered the isle in search of wood and shelter.  He found an old man seated on the rocks beside a stream running across the sand to the sea.

"Good day to you, father," he said, and told the man of the storm and his sadly damaged boat.  He neglected altogether any mention of the lady and the sail she had made for him.

"I will make for you a new rudder if you serve me for a year and a day," said the old man.

Garandir asked, "How may I serve you?"

"I am under a curse," replied he.  "I may not set foot on earth that feels not the touch of the wave nor sees the light of the sun, and thus am confined to the strip of sand between high tide and the sunlit shallows.  You must know that I am a spirit of the sea, and was used to dwell in the ocean depths, until I angered my master, who has prisoned me here.

"You shall carry me on your back whither I wish to go upon the island, that I touch not the earth.  For a year and a day, you will do so; during this time, I will carve your rudder from the wood of the tree lebethron."

So the mariner acquiesced and carried the old man about the island, which was found to be well-supplied with fruiting trees and small game.  The ocean spirit directed Garandir to fell a particular tree from which he would make the new rudder.  While the old man worked by the shore, Garandir gathered and hunted food for them both, before again bearing the spirit across the land at his whim.

From time to time, the spirit would get drunk on fermented juice, and sing sad songs, lamenting his separation from his wife, another spirit in service to the lord of the ocean.  "She is tall and fair, her hair is silver-green like the spray of the sea, she waits for me on a far island until my time here is done," he said.  Garandir thought uneasily of the lady of the mermaid isle and resolved to say nothing of his marvelous sail, now carefully rolled up under cover.

So the year and a day passed, and the rudder of lebethron was finished.  Garandir and the old man affixed it to the mended boat.  They dragged the boat down to the water.  Garandir said farewell to the ocean spirit and uncovered the sail of mermaids' hair.  As he raised it, the old man saw it for the first time.

"Where got you that sail," he cried. "None but my wife can spin and weave that thread, and she would not do so for any but a lover."  He gnashed his teeth in rage and jealousy at the sight of silver-green threads among the black and gold.

"Thou cur!  Thou cuckolder!" he shouted.  The waves mounted and the breeze blew stronger, but Garandir turned the sail of mermaids' hair to the rising wind and the new rudder of lebethron to the current, and his little boat leaped out toward the open sea, far away from wronged ocean spirit.  As the island dwindled behind him, the wind brought a cry of, "My curse goes with thee!  Never will thy rudder steer thee where thou wishest most to come."

Garandir laughed as he sailed away from the island of the spirit, but soon found that though he dearly wished to come back to his home, and the mermaid sail caught every favorable breeze, somehow he traveled farther yet from the lands he knew.  He came one day to a fair land, a large island with rivers running down to safe harbors, and lofty hills inland.  There he landed, and found the folk of the towns courteous and hospitable.

His recent battles with the fierce ocean storms gave him a great desire to wander upon the roads and hills of this new land.  He traveled from town to town, seeking shelter in some homely house or quiet inn each night.  As even drew near one day, he approached a large town in the midmost of the island.  Along a broad, tree-lined boulevard he approached the eastern gates, and heard the bells ring above the roofs and towers, and saw the pale sky darkening and the star of evening shine out.

There on a quiet street the lamplight streaming from the cozy windows of a small house drew him toward its humble door.  He knocked upon it, and on its opening begged lodging for the night.

"For this night and as many thereafter you may wish," replied he who answered the door.  "This is a house of tales and songs and play.  Here you may rest and tell us your tales unheard, and hear others in return."

Then Garandir felt the desire for wandering leave, and wished only to enter and rest amid the songs and stories.

"Then enter, pray, and join us at table and before fire," was the doorwarden's invitation, "though you will find the house much larger within than without."

So Garandir entered and found himself in a large entry, indeed larger than the cottage seen from outside.  He passed through into a spacious dining hall where folk of all sorts were making ready for the evening meal.  The Lord and Lady of this folk stood together at the head of the long table, and beckoned him to approach.  He bowed before them.  They made him very welcome, and made him sit by them for the meal, and assured that his plate was ever full.

They also kept his cup well filled with wine, and Garandir thought he had never tasted any so fine, but he saw that all that company drank rather of a clear liquid like water, but with a fragrance of new flowers and old trees and wide starlit skies.

"I may not serve to you this drink without the leave of our Queen, for all here are of the Elder People, while you are of the Younger," said the Lord of the hall.  Garandir held his peace for that time, and went with all the folk into the firelit Hall of Tales.  There he heard tales and songs both new to him and familiar, but seeming fresh and wonderful.

Garandir stayed many days there in the house of song and story; oft in the evenings did he take his turn in the singing and the telling, for on his travels he had heard tales of many lands and far.  Ever, though, the drink of the Elder People passed him by.

He thought those who drank of the drink wiser and stronger, more youthful and carefree; thus he longed for a swallow of it.  "Mortals who taste this are subject to strange dooms," warned the Lady of the hall, "and once 'tis drunk, that cannot be undone."

When he had been there so long the seasons had turned round again, he besought the Lord of the hall to direct him to the Queen of the land.  He found her in the gardens near the hilltop where she dwelt.  There he begged her to give him the wonderful drink; though she did not say him "aye", neither did she say "nay".

He went back to the cottage of song and play, and continued in the hearing and telling of tales.  Often, now, he would wander about the island, along the wide roads and through the villages, returning ever with new stories for the Hall of Tales.  And ever and anon, between his travels, he asked of the Queen leave to drink of the clear, fragrant drink of the Elder People.

At last, whether through weariness at his importuning or through foresight or through direction of the gods, she assented to his request and gave him leave to drink of it.  Joyfully he returned to the Hall, and that very day was his cup filled and drained.  The singers and talespinners of the evening took his breath away with the vivid images; he was spellbound as never before.  He found the days brighter, the nights deeper, the stars more mysterious, and within himself unlooked-for the gift of story-telling greatly increased.

Thus he lived in a timeless round of seasons, telling and hearing and singing, until one day came a great storm, like unto those of the wide ocean.  It tore through the trees and town.  The skies lowered.  The rain lashed down.  Lightning and thunder wracked the clouds.

When the sky cleared, there came flying from the shore gulls crying on the wind.  Upon hearing that sound, longing for the sea once more kindled in Garandir's breast.  He tried to lose himself again in tales and song, but soon went to the Lord with his woe.

The Lord's face was grave as he said, "If you leave us now, after tasting of the drink, you risk the coming of the dooms foretold."

At this, Garandir was downcast.  He resisted the call of the sea for some while longer, but though he had drunk of the drink of the Elder People, yet he was of the Younger, and had not the strength to resist forever.  He left the Hall and the town, and journeyed down the long road to the harbor where lay his boat with the sail of mermaids' hair and rudder of lebethron.  With joy and sorrow he embarked, and turned once more to the wide sea.

The ocean waves soothed his soul, for he was, in truth, a son of Eärendil.  He sailed, as he thought, toward the land of his birth, but though the fair winds filled his sail as a blessing, yet the contrary currents cursed his rudder.  He found provision at strange shores, and glimpsed his homeland only from afar.  When he attempted a return to the Lonely Isle, there also he never made landfall.

Wandering thus he drifted on the ocean, until one day he came upon a single peak alone amidst the waves.  He landed in a tiny cove and drank from the stream falling sweetly into it.  While climbing up the slope, he passed ruins of fair stone-builded homes between the trees.  The trees and ruins gave way to the bare, grassy summit, crowned with a ring of open columns about smooth paving stones.

He sat there in peace beneath the sun for some time.  Then, though no cloud showed in the sky, the light dimmed, and the ground quaked as of the beating of a mighty heart or the steps of weighty feet.  Over the shoulder of the hill came the giant form of a man clothed in mail like to the scales of fishes, with shoes of heavy stone and a kirtle that bewildered the eye as the ever-changing waves.  His silver hair and beard fell to the ground, or would have, but that they drifted wayward on the breeze.

Garandir threw himself to the ground.  He covered his eyes.  All the misdeeds and falsities of his life rose before him as a cloud.

"Why cowerest thou before me?" came the mighty voice of the Lord of the Ocean.  "Stand, and give me account of thyself."

So Garandir stood before the giant, and found himself telling all his own tale, and naught but that, sparing nothing, not even the betrayal of his wife and of the sea spirit.  He told of the blessing of the Lady of the Mermaids and the curse of her husband.  He told of his long sojourn on the Lonely Island and his draft of the drink of the Elder People and his wandering of the ocean since.

"Thou art a true son of Eärendil, I see," boomed the Lord.  "And by thine own actions hast thou brought thy fate upon thee.  Hear then thy doom.  Though I have great power, yet I may lift neither blessing nor curse; thy blessed sail and thy cursed rudder shall ever be at odds, and as thou hast drunk the liquid given thee by the Queen of the Lonely Isle, that shall be a very long time.  So long that even I know not the end."

Then Garandir quaked there on peak of the islet.  "Is there then no mercy for me?" he cried.

"Thou shalt come to thy homeland one day every ten years," replied the awful voice.  "Also, thou mayest return to the Lonely Isle as often, though there mayest thou sojourn some while longer as thou wishest.  Here, however, to the peak of the drowned Land of the Star, shalt thou come at thy will, to rest upon the grass under the sun and drink the sweet water of the spring.  Never shall the sea-longing leave thee; as Eärendil is thy sire from afar, thou art also the child of the Lord of the Ocean, and under my care."  The giant footsteps shook the land as he trod down the slope and into the waves and under them.  The Lord of the Ocean was gone.

Garandir hastened down to his boat, raising the mermaid sail to the wind and bending the lebethron rudder to the current.  Eastward he sailed until he saw the hills of his homeland rise before him.

Grief waited there for him, for his wife had died waiting for him, and his unknown son, a young man, gazed at him with hot angry eyes.  Weeping, after his day ashore, he ventured again to the bosom of the sea.

There on the ocean he fares to this day, coming ashore to these hither lands but once every ten years, watching over the grandchildren of his grandchildren, for the drink of the Queen still runs in his veins.  Then must he leave, sailing whither the wind goes, driven by the sail of mermaids' hair and guided by the rudder of lebethron and ever under the protection of the Lord of the Ocean.

End

Iaurel and his wife had been of those who found themselves under the stars by the Water of Awakening before ever the Valar knew, though he lost her long ago, soon after the last of their three children was born. 

When many of the Quendi undertook the Great Journey, he and his children, afire to see the land of which their leaders told them, traveled with their people across the ancient land beneath the wheeling stars.  As they passed through Middle-earth, their love for the land kindled and grew.  Though they followed the kings toward the lands near the Sea, their reluctance to cross it grew as well.

The wars came, the Wars of the Jewels, but that did not quench their love of the lands they knew; when after long starlit years the Sun first rose in glory, they wished only to remain.

After the War of Wrath, Iaurel knew himself fortunate to have survived with all his children, though they had lost everything else; even the lands they had lived upon now lay beneath the waves.  With the exile of the Dark Lord, all the remaining lands seemed brighter, more open and joyful.

For a time they wandered across hill and valley, over river and mountain.  At length, they settled with other survivors of the War in a village beside a wide river.  There, in the time of peace, after long-years of being unwed, all three of his children found mates.

Iaurel at first welcomed the years of peace and plenty; he welcomed, too, the children of his daughter and sons.  Time passed, and he grew restless, wishing to visit again the lands he had known and loved.  He set out with blessings from his children and traveled the wild lands and the settled, though the village where they dwelt remained the home of his heart.

Eventually he felt the tug of home and family, and turned his steps toward the little village by the river.

As he traveled over the mountains toward his home, a great storm blew up.  He staggered through the snow, fearing for his life every moment.  After some hours of creeping in the cold along the mountain slope, he encountered a narrow crack in the hillside.  Gratefully he slipped into it.  To his surprise, instead of a shallow cut into rock, it widened and deepened as he walked forward.

Though the pale daylight receded quickly with but a turn or two of the tunnel, a dim flicker ahead drew him forward.  The cave grew warmer; he tiptoed on.

A larger cavern opened before him.  On a hearth in one wall a fire burned; furs lay on the floor.  On a low flat stone near the fireplace stood a flagon and cup and plate with food and drink.

He gazed about the cave.  It presented at once an air of luxury and austerity, for the furnishings consisted of few rough stone tables, or benches heaped with furs.  Glinting crystals suspended in metal fittings threw light upon smooth bare walls and colored pebbles strewn or heaped here and there.  In one corner, a small stream ran in, pooled briefly, and ran out again.

A dark archway stood opposite the entrance.  He crossed the room and peered into it, but the darkness was impenetrable.  In any case, he found himself far more interested in the food and warmth.

Although he was famished and thirsty, he hallooed and clapped his hands before setting to, that he might not be found devouring his unwitting host's own dinner, but neither person nor answer came in reply.  He sat before the fire, drinking the pale mead and eating the nutcakes and sheep's cheese; then washed hands and face before wrapping himself in furs and falling asleep in the comfortable warmth.  As he drifted off to sleep, it seemed the crystals above dimmed and went out.

When he awoke, the fire had died to warm coals.  On the table-stone now stood a mug of mint tea and a steaming bowl of nut porridge.  Someone had tiptoed in without waking him and brought more food.  After breaking his fast, he washed again, taking care to wash the cup and bowl and spoon.

He straightened the room, set the utensils tidily on the little table, then bowed deeply, more or less in the direction of the dark archway at the back of the cave.

"Many thanks, my host," he said.  "You have saved my life with your hospitality.  I wish I could thank you in person."  He waited, but again no reply came.

He bowed again, turned, and walked down the rock hall.  The storm had blown over altogether, and the morning sun streamed into the little entrance chamber.  It sparkled on the floor, glinting on the many colored pebbles lying there.  They shone in red, blue, green, yellow.

Thinking, I will take one stone for each of my children as a memento of my strange adventure, he picked a red one for the older son, a lilac one for his daughter, and a clear crystal for the youngest.

A loud growl filled the chamber and his ears.  With a harsh grating sound, a stone door slid shut and cut off the sun at the entry.  He rubbed his dazzled eyes, for he could barely see the outline of an orc standing before him.

"How dare you steal my things," cried the orc.  "I have fed and housed you, and this is how you repay me!"

The orc stood taller than most orcs, nigh as tall as Iaurel himself.  He held a gleaming sword in one hand and a sharp dagger in the other.

"I but thought to take a token of my visit here to my children, that they might believe my strange tale," replied Iaurel.  Fear of the orc and astonishment at his benefactor's identity filled him with confusion.  The stones fell to the ground.

"Ah, you have children!" said the orc.  "Instead of killing you here and now, I will give you leave to go to them and take leave of them forever.  Unless one of them agrees to take your place, you must return to dwell here with me.  Do not think you can escape me, for now that I have your scent in my nostrils, I, Gathnur, will hunt you down anywhere you may go.

"Hold out your hand."  The orc sheathed his blades, picked up the fallen stones and dropped them into the man's hand.  "I will give you one month.  Now go!"  He pressed the wall in a complex pattern and the door slid aside again.  He let no sliver of sunlight fall upon his form.

Iaurel bowed and hurried out into the bright day, grieved and puzzled and fearful, bewildered by the orc's strangely gracious home and his peculiar mercy.

In the aftermath of the storm, he made his way easily down the mountain path, and within a very few days was once again in the village where his family lived.  They all rejoiced to see him well, and if they noticed that he was quieter than was his wont, none remarked upon it.

Iaurel spent the first few days of his return enjoying the company of his daughter, sons, their spouses, and particularly his grandchildren.  One evening he gathered them all together and told them his tale.  He did not mention at all the orc's proposal that one of them take his place.

As he had expected, his children were ready to take arms and go fight the orc.  "No, no, my dears, you must not do so.  I believe I will come to no harm.  Indeed, I was at his mercy until I took the stones from him unbidden.  In any case, you cannot leave your children."

So he prepared to leave the village a few days before the month's end.  He bade farewell to all and set out on his way.

When he came to the mountain path where the cave opening had stood, he found but a blank wall of stone.  The rock door had been shut, and could not be seen from the outside.  He waited there until the sun had fallen into the West.  Then, when the first stars began to show in the sky, the door opened, and there stood the orc, Gathnur, his host and now jailor.

"Welcome," he said.  "Please come in and be comfortable."

Iaurel entered, and the door shut behind him.

He had a fine suite of cave rooms near the sitting room in which he had first stayed.  Where Gathnur slept, he knew not, for after dinner each evening, the orc would sit without speaking for a while and then vanish swiftly down an unlit corridor.

During the day, and surprisingly he knew when it was day, for a few of the rooms had great light shafts cut through the rock to the south side of the mountain, they would talk, or practice arms together.  Iaurel learned rapidly that he could never best the orc at swordplay; the orc was quick and far more well-versed.

Iaurel had been there some weeks when one morning Gathnur said, "Let me show you more of the caverns."  He picked up one of the light crystals and led the way along a twisty, branching path.  Iaurel soon lost track of the turnings, but followed along behind the orc.

At length they came to a large cavern, or series of caverns, each more fantastic than the one before.  A stream ran through them all, and water dripped ever from above, and trickled down the walls and marvelous stone pillars that rose from the floor or, improbably, hung from the ceiling.  Waves and buttresses of stone in incredible shapes met his eye wherever he turned.

Together they wandered through the grottoes, pointing out to each other the unlikely shapes, here a face, there a tree or a bear.

"Thank you," said Iaurel when they turned back.  "That is a wonderful sight.  I am so glad to have seen it."

On another day, Gathnur led him upward to a small, dry cavern.  Here the orc kept such books or scrolls as had come his way--mostly ledgers of bookkeeping, but some were books of science or history, even of poetry.  Iaurel was permitted to bring one or two at a time down to the sitting room, though Gathnur warned that they must be returned to the library, "for", he said, "the air here does them no good."

Though they conversed of many things, Iaurel had refrained from asking Gathnur of himself, and how he came to be here, seemingly alone, so different from other orcs.  At last, he gathered his courage and did so.

Gathnur was long silent, so that Iaurel feared having offended him.  "I may tell you only some of my tale.  You know that orcs are considered to be both wicked and cruel.  That is true.  I have both performed and received great cruelty and wickedness.  Indeed, my earliest memories are of pain and evil."

"Have you no kinder memories of childhood?" asked Iaurel.

"I have no recollection of childhood; only pain that had no beginning, but even then I was as fully grown as I am now."

"Then it is true, that orcs have neither father nor mother, but were created by the Enemy?"

"That part is untrue, for as it is said, he cannot truly create, but can only bend and mar.  So we bear children as other creatures do; indeed, I have borne them myself."

Then Iaurel's sight twisted, for he had thought until now that Gathnur was male, and she became at once both less and more terrible, for what he took to be misshapenness was a travesty of a woman's shape, not a man's.

"You are a woman?"  he said.  "You have borne children?" and he fell silent in astonishment.

"If you give me that name in courtesy, if you call me Woman, who am Orc, then yes, I am a woman," replied Gathnur.  "As for my children, some are dead, some have gone I know not whither, a very few serve me here.  You have not seen them for they are even less couth than I.

"As for how I came to be here, I may tell very little.  At the fall of my Master, the Enemy, many of us died.  I was spared, but given a, a, task, of which I may say no more."

They each retired in silence after this, Gathnur down her dark hallway, and Iaurel to his own suite where he lay long without sleeping, thinking of his host, or rather hostess and her children, and then of his own children.

After that, Gathnur began to allow her Orc-children to join them, only one at a time, for short periods in the evenings.  Iaurel counted three of them; "There are no others," said Gathnur, when asked.

The children were shy and well-behaved, for the most part, though occasionally given to sudden outbursts of temper.  He was surprised to find they were not, in fact, children, but ranged in age from a few to several long-years.

"They have known nothing the length of their lives but pain and evil.  I brought them here, hoping to find what good there is in them.  I hope I have; I believe I have."  She paused.  "Surely there was good in me before the pain?  Good I can no longer remember?"

"There is good in you now," replied Iaurel, thinking of her patience with the children and unfailing courtesy toward himself.   Surely a fëa dwelt in that hróa, unlovely as it was.   He attempted to touch her mind with his own, reflecting that even the Aftercomers were hróa-wrapped fëar.  He felt no response; she did not even raise her head.  From time to time, he tried again, each attempt met with failure and followed increasingly with sorrow, that they could not speak so as friends.

As the months turned to years, his longing for his family grew ever stronger.  His mood turned gloomy and sullen.

Gathnur bore his surliness without comment, but one morning she asked, "What troubles you?"

"I miss my children," said Iaurel.  "Won't you let me visit them?  I will return, just as I did the first time."

"I can deny you nothing," said Gathnur, "though I foresee..."  She went silent.

Iaurel, in his excitement over seeing again his children and grandchildren, paid no heed to her words of foresight and her gloomy mien, but instead began thinking of how he would travel, and all he would say when he met them again.

Gathnur turned away, saying, "In three days time you leave.  We will prepare travel rations and gear for you."

A little pang went through Iaurel at that.  He hastened after her.  "I will come back; how could I not?  Though we speak not mind to mind, I ... , that is, you have become dear to me."

"If you do not, it will be the death of me."  She strode away down her dark corridor.  He did not follow.

Three days later, they stood together in the entry.  The orcs had prepared food and bedroll, travel cloak and pack for him.  Gathnur opened the door.  She bent to the floor and picked up three colored gems.  With her dagger-point she pierced her fingertip and let one drop of blood fall upon each.

"Carry these also with you.  If one becomes cloudy, you will know I am failing.  If two grow dim, it shows I am near death.  If all three have faded, you need not return, for I will be gone."

He looked at her in dismay; she merely put the stones in his hand and folded his fingers around them.  In silence he shouldered his pack and walked into the sunshine.  Once again, the door closed behind him.

His children and grandchildren were filled with joy to see him again; his joy reflected theirs.  He settled into his old chamber in the house he'd shared with his daughter.  The three gems he put into a little crystal dish on a shelf by his bed, and told no one of them.

At first, he basked in the love of his family, with scarcely a thought of Gathnur.  After some days, he felt something wrong.  He examined the stones.  They seemed a little dull, but not cloudy or faded; surely all was well back inside the mountain!

One morning, Iaurel looked at the stones as usual.  Two had turned dim and cloudy; the third barely retained color.  Cold clutched his heart.  He rushed to collect his pack, and only just remembered to seize waybread and a waterskin.  When his children pressed him to stay, he brushed past them, leaving them bewildered.

He wanted to run along the path, run up the mountain, beat down the stone door of the cavern.  He forced himself to keep a steady pace that would not leave him exhausted.  Every evening, he walked until he could scarcely stand, then rose with false dawn, picking his way under the stars.

The colored stones he could hardly bear to look at, and could not bear to hide away, for worrying that the last had faded utterly.

Such was the pace he kept, that by midday of the third day he found himself on the long, bare path toward the door, toiling upward in the heat of the sun.  Something gave him pause, he knew not what.  He halted.

A faint moan came from the steep slope below the trail.  Fear smote him.  He hastened down, sliding on pebbles and clutching stones.  Gathnur lay on a narrow ledge, fully in the sun, her leg twisted under her, blood caking her head and clothing.

"Oh, my dear, what has happened?" he whispered.  She did not answer.  He unfastened the waterskin and dripped water into her mouth.  Some dribbled out, but she swallowed.  Heartened, he set down his pack and continued giving her water drop by drop.

He moistened a corner of his cloak to bathe her face.  When his hand brushed her cheek, he found it burning and dry.  "If only I could get you out of this hot sun," he murmured, but he feared to do her even more damage by carrying her back to the path.

His cloak served as a makeshift sunshade; though the heat was hardly lessened, he knew well the sun was torture for orcs.  He continued to bathe her face and give her water, hoping he would be able to find a spring or stream to replenish the waterskin.

As the sun fell toward the shoulder of the mountain, Iaurel rose and scrambled up to the path.  He quite ruined his knife, but managed to cut a branch which he carried back to bind against her broken leg, though she seemed not to notice.  Just as the sun passed below the ridge, he set out again.

He walked back the way he had come, listening and hoping for the sound or smell of water.  It was farther than he wished, but finally he came upon a trickle running down a rocky cliff-face.  He filled the waterskin and hastened back up the slope; twilight was deepening rapidly by the time he returned to her side.

Again he poured a little water at a time into her mouth; she seemed worse, and appeared to swallow none of it.  Soon she began tossing and moaning.  He lay beside her, fearful that she would further injure her broken leg with her thrashing.  His heart thudded when her body stiffened in seizure; now he was terrified another seizure would carry her over the edge of the cliff to the rocks below.

He wrapped his body around hers.  He pressed his face against her burning cheek.  His tears fell on her face.  "Don't leave me," he whispered.

Once again, he opened his mind to hers, more in desperation than in hope.  To his surprise, a glimmer of awareness flickered up.  Her fëa felt like the fëar of his own people, starlit and wild.

His arms tightened around her in astonishment as her body relaxed against his.  Their two fëar touched shyly, slowly.  His astonishment turned to wonder.

Here was his wife, pale, body still tortured and misshapen, and yet herself; and in her eyes there was peace now. Here was the dear wife of the sweet days by the Water of Awakening.

"Well, this is the end, Iaurel," she said, tears running down, mingling with his own.

"No," he said, low. "No," more loudly.  "No, I have lost you once, I will not lose you again," and he poured his strength into her fëa, giving and giving and hoping and despairing.

At first both fëa and hróa wavered.  Their connection faltered.  He held her grimly, never ceasing to drain his strength for her.  Through the night, as the stars circled over them, they both battled together for her damaged hróa and her newly-awakened fëa.

When the stars began to fade and the dawn to lighten the sky, Iaurel realized that the seizures had dissipated, and the fever was gone.  Gathnur lay quiet and sleeping against his breast.  He smoothed the hair away from her still-bloody face and kissed her forehead.

"Awake, my dear," he said.  "We must get you away before the sun arises."  She stirred and woke and smiled at him.  Though to outward view she still appeared as Orc, to the eye of love, the eye of his mind, she was without peer.

He rose to his feet, and carefully, gently, picked her up.  His strength, too, was almost gone, but before the sun's rays touched the side of the mountain, he stood before the door of the cavern.

"You must open the door, love," he said.  "I do not have the secret."

From his arms, she reached to the rock and pressed it here and there.  Iaurel watched the door slide open with relief.  He carried her straight to his own chamber and laid her on his bed.

Side by side they slept there.  Iaurel, being unharmed, woke long before she, and went to find food and drink.  When she awoke, he helped her to eat and drink and bathe.

Only then did he ask, "How did you come to be in such a state, near death at the cliff edge?  More, how did you come to be as you are?  I remember, so long ago, searching through the dark forest for you, and feeling your fëa wink out, and knowing you were dead.  And yet, here you are."

"When you went away a month ago," said Gathnur, "I despaired of your returning.  I set out at night to follow you, but as I left the caverns at dusk, I was waylaid, by orcs I assume, though I saw them not.  I fought them, but they beat me and flung me for dead from the cliff.  I lived only because I landed on the ledge where you found me."

She paused and sighed.

"Much of the memory that was taken from me in those distant years may never return.  Until our minds touched, I had no recall at all of the time before, when we were together by the water under the stars.  Even now, I know only dimly that under the pain and torture of the Enemy, I closed my mind not just to him, but to all, even to you.  Even, it appears, to myself.

"After the Great War, when the Dark Master was led away, and all around was in ruin, and my companions lay dead about me, I stood before the Herald of the Valar."  She shivered.  "His silver eyes looked through me like daggers.  He said, 'Though you have done much ill, you have received ill in equal measure.'  I looked at my life and deeds, and renounced all the evil and hurt I had perpetrated.

"I spoke none of this aloud, but he smiled and said, 'Very good; I may be merciful.  You shall be under my command.  You may not speak of me, or of my words, until one shall love you despite your deeds and appearance.  When he does, then you shall be free of my compulsion; moreover, what you have lost, though you know it not, shall be returned to you.'

"And now, thanks to you, I am free not only of the cruel Dark Lord, and the compulsion of the Herald, but of the theft of my self and memory."

So there, in the orcish cavern, Iaurel and Gathnur wept and laughed together in joy at their reunion, unlooked for and beyond hope.

Embedded quote from "Mount Doom", RoTK.

Morgoth's downfall                        dragon flees,

Escapes the aftermath                   of Angband's wreckage.

In strength came Valar,                 victors in arms.

Spears shaking,                            smiting all foes.

Enemies evading,                          arrowing sunward

Then south she flies                       to steep mountains.

In riven valley                               is refuge found.

Cavern close-guarded                    creatures abandon

When dragon arrives.                    Dread goes before.

Soon black and sere                      is burnt valley;

Empty and bleak                           is bare cavern.

Longing for treasure                      left and scattered,

Hoard to rebuild                            she hunts and searches.

The scent of gold,                          the sound of gems

She follows ever                            to find them hidden.

Little by little                                 her lair fills.

Years to yeni                                 yeni to ages,

Now slumbers she                         on shining bed

Where gold gleams,                       where glitter gems,

And jewels shimmer.                      She sleeps soundly

Till old master rouses.                    His minions abroad

She senses in dreams,                   stirs in her cave.

Though Morgoth is gone                 yet Gorthaur remains,

His will compelling                         winds around hers.

Waking she knows                         he wants her might

And flight and fire                          fighting for him.

No rest will he grant                      Gorthaur the cruel.

But now is she older,                     needs she no master.

Bolder and wiser,                          built she one hoard

Long ago and                                long abandoned.

Another treasure                           now she deserts,

Fleeing the dark                            dread of Mordor.

Fear behind her,                            flying northward

Clutching a pittance                       of precious trove.

Gold to breed gold                         she'll gather once more.

In icy mountains                            ever snow-bound

Is valley narrow,                            nearly hidden.

A cavern deep-                              delved and remote.

More ages passed                          ever more swift.

New hoard and better                    brought she for slumber.

On heaps of gems                         and jewels she drowsed.

Perhaps she still                            sleeps there today.

A tale of Men, from the Rohirrim.

~~~

The people of the Éothéod along the Great River tell of their forebears, tending their herds and fields on the eaves of the forest.  There often came Béma the Hunter, on his steed Nahar, riding with his hounds, meeting ever and anon with the leaders of the people.

Now the stallion Nahar was in all ways superior to their horses, being wiser and larger and more fleet.  Therefore did the chiefs press Béma to allow Nahar to stand stud to their mares, which he ever refused.

Once, when they were thus speaking, a raven happened to be in the tree under which they sat.  The raven laughed to think of tricking the god to the benefit of the people.

The raven sought out the leaders and said, "Tomorrow, bring your best mare, but don't let Béma see her.  Instead, picket her just over the hill, upwind of Béma's camp, and say nothing to him."

The chieftains considered this, discussing it into the night, for they did not know how much to trust the raven.  In the end, they did as the raven had said, bringing the best mare in season, a tall and clever gray, around the camp and beyond a hill.

Béma had become in the habit of picketing Nahar when he visited the horse-people, knowing that Nahar had no objection to their mares, and would forget his duty in dalliance.  As Béma made camp for the evening, building the fire and settling the hounds, a great cloud of ravens swooped down, spreading confusion and scattering the hounds.  One raven bit the picket-line, and Nahar, having caught the scent of the mare, lost no time in following it over the hill to her.  Béma did not notice his absence for some time, as the ravens continued whirling about the camp, calling and squabbling and stirring up leaves and dust.

Nahar galloped straight to the mare, and together they ran far into the night, away from Béma and the gray mare's handler.  The stallion returned with the coming of day, looking pleased with himself, but the mare returned to the herds unseen.

During the following spring, the gray mare foaled, producing an uncommonly large and quick filly, to the delight of the horse-herders.

Some years later, Béma traveled that way again during spring, and again the raven instructed the people to bring a mare around upwind of his camp.  They sent with the handler a round and spirited black mare to the vale behind the hill.

Béma, concerned that Nahar might again escape and wander off, took the extra precaution of blindfolding him, before sitting down for the evening to tend his weapons.  Soon, a flock of ravens flew down, teasing the hounds and calling them rude names, playing with their tails and pulling their ears.  Béma tried shooing them away, but they just laughed and flew back again.

In the confusion, one of them quietly pulled the blindfold from Nahar's eyes, telling him to step softly away from the camp, and over the hill to the mare.  This the stallion did immediately, drawing the mare away across the grassland with him.
Just as before, Nahar returned with the day, and the mare produced a fine, sturdy colt the next spring.

Many years passed before Béma next returned, for time and the gods are but passing acquaintances.  The new leaders had never met him or seen Nahar, though they knew the tale of the ravens and the mares.  Indeed, one day soon, again came the raven, instructing them as before.  Immediately, the people chose a strong and wise chestnut mare for the handler to bring close to the camp.

That evening, Béma and Nahar and the hounds camped hard by the forest edge.  Béma had lit the fire, and was settling for the night when the sounds of boars nearby came from under the trees.  The hounds wasted no time in giving chase, with Béma following close behind, but leaving Nahar behind.  One raven circled back from those leading the hounds on a wild run through the trees, leaving the others to lure them farther away, for the boar-voices were naught but clever ravens.  Once again Nahar was quickly freed to hasten the other way, toward the waiting mare.

Béma and the hounds returned by morning after a fruitless chase through the woods after unseen, uncaught prey, to find the placid stallion grazing by the cold campfire.  Béma met with the leaders of the people, pleased they no longer pressed him to let Nahar stand as stud.  He stayed a while, and moved on through the fields and forests of Middle-earth.

The chestnut mare produced a fine filly some months later.  The people of the horse, through the years, bred ever stronger, faster, and wiser beasts from those sired by Nahar, producing the breed now known as Mearas.

The raven laughed for many years after, full of satisfaction at tricking the god.

End