Author’s Note

This is written, with much love, for my husband. He has been wanting me to write this story for quite a while, but the elements hadn’t come together until a few months ago.

One of Marigold’s Challenges consisted of getting to select our elements from four groups of four elements each; we were to use one element from each group for our story. Just looking at those four lists of four items boggled my brain, so I printed them up, cut them apart, folded each wee piece up and had a #1 pile of four slips, a #2 pile of four slips, etc. I drew one slip from each pile until I had four sets of four elements. Suddenly I had a story to go with each group of four elements. One I used for the challenge, which was the story “The Singer”. The others I will write up as I have time. This will be the second story from those starters.

My elements were: A sibling, A journey, A place of healing, A writer.

The title is the name of a band for which, long ago, my older brother was lead singer.

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Mourning Missed

Elanor stood facing the east. Behind her the setting sun painted with fire on the clouds, before her the tree tops blazed with light that inched towards their crowns before vanishing in the gloaming. West lay the glorious sunset. East lay the growing night. East lay the Shire, and that was where Elanor’s heart was this evening.

She had rarely regretted her decision to move to the Far Downs, she loved Fastred and moving to the home of his ancestors was simply the way things were done. Excepting some of the Tooks and Brandybucks who would often move to the home of the wife if that home was Brandy Hall or the Great Smials, a new hobbit bride would always go to her new husband’s home. No, she hadn’t even minded moving further west, out to Undertowers. It was an adventure, and Elanor the Fair liked adventures.

But there were times it was difficult, this living so far from the Shire proper, this living so far from Hobbiton, so far from what had once been home. There were things she missed, or nearly missed. The births of nieces and nephews. The deaths of loved ones. Whether it was those to the east waiting for sign of her coming or her waiting for sign of theirs, the waiting was not easy.

Today she could not draw her eyes away from the east. Her kitchen window looked south, yet Elanor had found herself staring at the windowless wall on the eastern side of the room. Out setting plants for the planting of her vegetable garden, she had glanced eastward with each slight pause in her movements. Now she looked at the gradually brightening stars, reluctant to go inside and settle to her knitting for a while before she sought her bed.

She packed her bags without word to anyone. Three days passed. She waited for the Quick Post rider she knew would be coming to arrive.

The message was from Goldielocks Took, her sister and wife of Faramir Took.

“Aunt Diamond is not long for this life. Please come as soon as you are able.”

Elanor left in the company of the Quick Post messenger, the easier to switch ponies at the Quick Post’s stops. They rode fast, they rode hard, they rode without truly stopping. They ate as they rode or during the short moments it took to have fresh ponies saddled for them. They both knew the urgency of the matter.

She was dirty and weary when Great Smials was finally reached, but she went directly to the Thain’s quarters. A tableau opened before her as she approached the door into her aunt and uncle’s bedchamber. So like a painting it looked, that for a moment she felt it was not real. In the gentle glow of light from a small porcelain oil lamp and the modest fire on the hearth, Pippin and Diamond’s family was gathered on either side of the bed with it’s small blanketed occupant. To his wife’s right sat Elanor’s Uncle Pippin. His head rested upon the pillow, his lips moving as he spoke private words into his dearest one’s ear. He held her hand in his left hand, his right hand was clasped between both of his eldest son’s hands. Meriadoc Brandybuck stood beside Faramir Took, his arm around his “nephew’s” shoulders. Estella Brandybuck stood with her arms around Pippin and Diamond’s eldest daughter, Beryl, who sat nearest the death bed on the far side. There was no sound but the murmur of the fire in the fireplace.

Elanor began to move toward the left side of the bed, but Goldielocks motioned her to the right, moving aside and gently pushing her older sister into place directly behind Pippin. Elanor placed her hands upon his shoulders.

Time passed.

A gasp and a moan of the name “Diamond” escaped the lips of Peregrin Took as his wife sighed her last breath from her lungs.

Diamond Took passed.

They let the Thain remain at her side awhile. His shoulders gently shook beneath Elanor’s hands, his breaths were ragged and often held for long moments as he wept. Finally, he lifted his head, looked ‘round at his weeping children, released his wife’s hand and allowed his eldest to lead him from the room.

She was buried the next day between elevenses and luncheon.

That was a problem Elanor had faced many times. Burials followed close on the Death’s heels, and she usually was not there for her loved one’s interments.

But this time had been different. There had been enough time for the message to arrive. There had been enough time to ride like the winter wind. That and she had known.

Uncle Pippin had sat straight and tall, wearing his uniform as a Knight of Gondor, through the memorial, through the many many good byes and tenderly told memories that the Great Smials historian wrote down for posterity. Uncle Pippin had walked straight and tall, a soldier of the King, behind the pallbearers as they carried the coffin from the smial. He stood straight and tall, one of the revered Travellers, as they lowered the coffin into the hallowed burial ground of the Tooks of Great Smials, in the area reserved for the Took and Thains and their wives.

Straight and tall . . .

. . . and tearless.

And his children worried over this. The Tooks of Great Smials worried over this. Elanor worried over this. It wasn’t the same as with others they had known who so obviously were putting on a brave front. Yet it was she who counseled the others not to speak of the matter to her uncle, but to bide their time.

A week passed and Elanor sent word to her own family that she was well though she was delayed. She could not say when she would be home. She loved them and missed them but she was needed where she was, and asked her family to bide their time.

A week passed. Thain Peregrin went on about his duties. He seemed quite his usual self, occasionally jesting with family members or singing short bits of songs as he walked the tunnels and corridors of Great Smials. Merry had remained to comfort the family and help them through their grief. He was shocked at his dear cousin’s behavior. This wasn’t like Pippin, this wasn’t like his cousin who wore his heart on his sleeve, who wept more easily than he liked to. Something was wrong, something needed to be said or done. Elanor felt the tension growing in her Uncle Merry, and bid him to bide his time.

“For what, Elanor? For what purpose should I hold back?” Merry demanded. “There’s something oddly amiss here. It doesn’t seem to show nor can I put a finger on it. I simply know it. I know Pippin.” He tipped his head a bit, a gesture reminiscent of his first cousin. His eyes narrowed. “You know it as well, Elanor. Why should we hold back?” If it had been anyone else asking him to do such a thing, he would not even consider holding back.

She sighed and embraced her uncle tightly. “I’ll know when it comes, Uncle Merry, but it hasn’t yet arrived.”

Somehow her answer, though vague, soothed him.

Elanor watched her Uncle Pippin. She knew he often went to the huge library, shutting the massive oak doors behind himself. She knew, as did his close family members, that it had long been a place he went to hide away.

Elanor watched her Uncle Pippin. He talked with friends and family, he sang as he always did as he went about his business in the huge smial, he played noisily with his grandchildren.

She watched him and on occasion their eyes would meet. In those fleeting moments she would see beyond what others saw. There was a trapped, haunted look in the depths of her uncle’s eyes. A look of yearning for help would brush across his features, then, barely to be seen, he would shake his head and the visions - the insights - would be gone. He would look at her and smile.

A month passed.

She woke up in the grey of a fog bound morning. The time had arrived. She hastily dressed and went out a small side door that was one of the Thain’s private doors into, and out of, Great Smials. She followed a solitary set of foot prints in the fog bedewed grass.

Pippin sat on a bench at the edge of a small wood. The morning mist shrouded the landscape. Shrouded him. He had heard the voice, that familiar voice, in his head, calling him “Falcon” as his dream showed him the bench and the wood and the fog. Now he sat and waited for he knew not what.

A figure emerged from the mists. And she came to stand before him and she held out her hand. Her skin soft and smooth, her chestnut hair curling from the moistness of the air

“May I have this dance, Peregrin of Great Smials?” Diamond asked in her most formal manner.

He stared blankly at her.

“I hear music,” she said, “don’t you?” And she started to hum a familiar ballad.

A slow song. An old song. One played at hobbit dances so those in love could dance slowly together. One he had once hummed to her in a garden by a grape arbor.

Gradually a glow came to his face, lighting his eyes and his smile. He took her hand and she drew him to his feet and into her arms. Humming the ballad softly, they danced around the small bit of lawn before the bench.

And Peregrin wept.

Tears of anguish, love, sorrow, and joy poured from him.

“It is a beautiful place, Peregrin,” she whispered into his ear. “It is as you saw as you lay beneath the troll, though your time had not yet come and is not yet come.”

“You are there?”

Her head nodded against his. “I await you there, where there is no waiting. I long for you there, where there is no longing. I love you there, where all is loving.”

“I had feared . . .” He caught his breath amongst his weeping. “I had feared that it wasn’t really so. That I had lost you . . . that we would never be together again. It has been so hard, Diamond. I’ve been dying inside . . . but inside it all stayed. Part of me, the part that knows you would scold if I mourned over much, that part has carried on. But I’ve been drowning inside myself, gasping for the breath of life you have been to me for so long. What shall I do?”

She eased him down to sit upon the bench though she did not sit beside him. She smiled her young-old smile. “My dear mad Took,” she chided him. “Gather our chicks and their chicks to your side. Tell them with tears of joy all you will of our life and love. Tears of anguish for the times we faced troubles.” She paused to let her fingers comb his golden brown locks back from his eyes, “Tears of sorrow for the partings we have faced, those in our life and in my death. Tears of love for love is over all.” She laughed and her hair turned white, age returned to her hands and face. “Then live, my dear one, live, for your time is still not yet. Love our chicks and their chicks. Love our families. Love your dearest cousin. Live, my dearest Peregrin, and know I am here when you come.”

He saw two figures at the far edge of the glade. He knew them both. One tall and slender, white and golden. The other small, with leaves of autumn entwined within her golden-red hair. Diamond, her chestnut curls steaming out behind her, ran to join them and was gone.

He stared into the fog as someone sat down beside him.

“The White Lady told me to be ready for word from you, word that Aunt Diamond was leaving us. She drew me here this morning.”

“Culas . . . a . . . a dear friend drew me here.”

Elanor and Pippin looked into each others eyes. His eyes were clear and bright into their depths; no longer haunted. Elanor knew of her uncle’s heritage, though she had kept her knowing a secret. The knowledge had come to her on her twentieth birthday, long years ago. In this moment, this meeting of their eyes, he knew that she understood.

“Dear Uncle Pippin,” she gently said as she kissed his grey haired head.

“My dearest Elanor,” he sighed as they embraced.

“Daddy always said that I was a gift from the Lady Galadriel to the four of you. My birth, he told me, brought to Uncle Frodo knowledge that all would be well, easing his heart about having to leave. And I have been able to bring comfort to my father, Uncle Merry and you as the years have passed.”

Pippin gave Elanor a squeeze before moving out of their hug to smile at her. “I’ve been given orders to go weep with my chicks, and their chicks and all the other chicks.”

Tears glistened in his eyes and on his cheeks. He was grinning and they caught in the corners of the grin to glisten upon his lips.

“Come.” He stood and offered her his hand. “Come, Sam’s little chick, and weep with us. Then you can laugh with us, eat with us and sing with us because I’ve also been given orders to live.”

Elanor stood. They began to walk arm in arm back to Great Smials. “And live you will, my dear Uncle Pippin. Live you will.”