Epilogue. All That Is Gold Does Not Glitter.

Imladris, mid Spring 3003.  

“Tra-la-la-lally; the valley is jolly,

Tra-la-la-lally; jolly is the valley.  

Wielding elven blade, boldest of the Shire,

Master Bilbo Baggins went killing spiders…

The deep tenor preceded the soft steps through the open door.

“There were lots of other people there, Tuluniben,” Bilbo called out without looking up from his parchment.  

“Give us time, Master Bilbo, there are more verses coming,”  

“I feared that…Lindir will have a fit. I am certain that you will win again this year, young one. That rhyming is promisingly awful, a good match for the original one!”  

“I am glad you like it! Oh, look! You finished it?”  

Bilbo coughed modestly and blew over the drying ink. “An Account Of The Strangest Creatures Found In The Greenwood, by Bilbo Baggins,” he read aloud. “It is not a definite treatise, of course. But I intend to send it as a present to King Thranduil in return for his hospitality, when Grerin comes back from the Blue Mountains…What do you think?”  

“Look at that! I did not know that they had blood-suckers in Mirkwood,” the young butler nodded towards one of the artistically illustrated parchments laid out to dry. With great care he placed a plate with pastries on the cluttered desk.“Cook sends these to you with his best regards…”  

Bilbo cast a suspicious glance at the only too merry face. “And surely he sent something to soak them in as well?”  

“You cannot be deceived, Master Perian,” the elf laughed, revealing a goblet he had kept hidden behind his back and setting it beside the plate. “Lord Elrond’s most prized Dorwinion for his most appreciated guest.”  

“You sure you are not getting in trouble, lad?”  

“Why would I? It reached the lord’s ears that even Thranduil’s patrols have access to the king’s wine, so why shouldn’t Imladris’ honoured guests? What is that?”  

“A two-mouthed ogre.” Bilbo accepted the change of subject willingly, wondering, as he had been doing for months, whether his somehow tactless remark about Elrond’s….thriftiness, regarding his cellars had somehow reached the lord of the house. He straightened the parchment Tuluniben was studying and shook his head. “The Southron had heard they hid in Mirkwood.”  

“They look frightening…and that spider is gruesome!”  

“Lord Glorfindel did me the kindness of drawing it. He claims it is the spawn of Ungoliant, who once killed the Two Trees of Valinor!” He had been most impressed by that tale, and had spent many weeks searching the library for accounts of those times long past. The Elder Days had turned out a great source of delight for him, which he had decided to keep mostly untapped until he finished his present engagement, and then of course his book, and after he completed his research on wizards, which would prove most interesting if only he managed to trace some parchments Erestor had hinted about. The tale of the Blue Wizard had of course stirred his curiosity…  

“But surely those ogres do not exist? I have never seen them –or heard of them.”  

“Have you travelled far, Tuluniben?”  

“Why would I?”  

Bilbo smiled. Why, indeed. Many of those who lived in the Last Homely House and the surrounding settlements had never left the secluded valley. Others, in turn, had even roamed the drowned lands of Beleriand, of which Bilbo himself had never heard before he came to Imladris and spent time in the Hall of Fire. He was suddenly reminded of his own neighbours, who would only believe, or pay any attention to, matters that were there before their eyes and everybody knew about. Reassuring truths. What was beyond their experience simply did not exist and was not worth wasting their time. “But surely you know about Ungoliant, or Thuringwethil, or Carcaroth…and Elwing sailing the skies as a seabird?”  

“Shape-shifters, like the Guardian of the Towers, yes. But two-faced ogres? Who has ever heard of that?”  

“Well… who knows what hides deep in Mirkwood?” he retorted. “Those woods are twisted and dark enough…”

“So they say,” the young butler nodded seriously. “Why, they say the Dark Lord was hiding down there himself, and was cast away by Mithrandir and Lord Elrond the year the dragon fell!” he added in a conspiratorial whisper. “Perhaps some twisted creatures still dwell there,” he concluded with a last doubtful glance at the menacing picture. “I must go now. Cook will have your midday meal sent here. The lord and his councilors are closeted since early in the morning with Estel, and they will not stop for lunch, I am told… but perhaps we will hear interesting tales tonight. By your leave, Master Bilbo!”  

                                                                                     ~*~ ~*~ ~*~

 Midday meal flew by without noticing –roasted capon in its point of crispness with greens and loaves of cook’s best bread washed down with another goblet of Elrond’s wine, followed by honey cakes and a cup of tea. Sighing contentedly, Bilbo sat back against his comfortable armchair, brought out his pipe and puffed up solemnly until he fell asleep.  

He awoke with renewed appetite, ready for a late tea, and braved the stairs to the kitchens. He spent some time there exchanging gossip with Cook’s assistants, and this way he learned that the lord’s youngest son looked careworn and tired, and that he would not remain for long. And Mithrandir even less, they said.  

“Gandalf?” 

“Himself. He came down from the Ettenmoors in the early morning. Scruffy and grumpy as it is his wont and with the appetite of a starved hamlet after a long winter. He said he would be leaving at dawn again!” one of the assistants told him.  

That left Bilbo wondering once he returned to his chambers.  

From wondering he drifted into another well-earned nap.  

Until a warm voice shook him from his meditation.  

“Awake, Bilbo, I’m glad to see you so settled down!”  

“Awake, indeed!” he retorted, squinting at the newcomer. “I was pondering some details for my book, if you must know! But I am glad to see you, Gandalf! Do you come from the Greenwood? Any news of Sámid? And of Halbarad?” he asked eagerly.  

Chuckling, the wizard took seat across him and extended his long legs with a deep sigh of relief. “As eager as always for a good tale, I see!” he smiled fondly. “Let’s see. Your friend Halbarad must by all accounts be healed by now, although I have not seen him. Thranduil was most amused by your adventures in his forest and sent fond regards to you. And one of Legolas’ scouts followed the tracks of your Southron friend deep into the forest, close to the Mountains. There the scout gave up. We guess your friend was trying to catch another bride-price…The watch has been doubled on the forest borders. The trail of the bloodsucker was lost earlier. That was while I was there informing Thranduil. I heard nothing about them as on my way back now,” he added thoughtfully. Where had he been in the meantime he would not say, Bilbo noticed, and suspected he would not tell either if asked directly. “What about you, my friend?” the wizard interrupted his musings while he brought his pipe out and lit it with apparent pleasure.  

“Oh, I’ve been busy, you know how it is here, reading and writing and thinking and listening and eating and sleeping…time does not seem to go by here and still I manage to get almost nothing finished!” he smiled, puffing at his own pipe.  

“Time just is, in Rivendell,” the wizard said cryptically, and it seemed to Bilbo that he cast a quick glance at his own hand and smiled briefly. “Good. You will be safe here, and you will lack nothing. And it will do good to Elrond to have you around to remind him of the daily troubles and cares of Middle-earth,” he chuckled.  

“Safe? From what?”  

“Why, my dear Hobbit! From that uncanny ability of yours to step into unexpected trouble! I have reasons to believe that there are evil creatures out there looking for you, Bilbo. I cannot tell you more for now, but please promise me that you will remain here in Rivendell. I will be coming to visit as much as I can and I will bring you news as well. I fear that Gollum’s ring was more than a magic ring, and that is all I can say for now!”  

“My ring?” Bilbo froze. “But I left it with Frodo!”  

“And he will be all right, Bilbo. The ring is beyond you now. You gave it away, remember? The rangers are watching the Shire, and no evil will reach Frodo there. Trust me, my old friend, as you have done all these years…”  

“But..”  

“Trust me, Bilbo,” Gandalf insisted. “I must leave in the morning and I need to be sure that you will remain here…”  

“Where are you going?”  

“East. I will search for Gollum. I must hear the tale of that ring from him, to begin with…”  

Again Bilbo remembered the wild face he had glimpsed in that clearing, and wondered whether to tell the wizard about it. It still sounded as a delusion to his own ears!  

“Will you remain here?” There was genuine worry in Gandalf’s careworn face. Moved by the concern that showed on the wizard’s face, Bilbo forgot his other worries.  

“Of course. Where would I go, after all? I have had adventures to last me two more lifetimes, and I have still to settle them down in proper accounts,” he joked. “But promise me that you will bring back tales and news form distant lands!”  

“Agreed, my friend. You will not lack tales. And now by your leave, I will search my bed. I fear I must be leaving with dawn…”  

“So soon? I hoped to see Estel…”  

“Oh, you will, I am sure, when he is finished with his present engagement. Anyway, he will remain for some days still. I know he is looking forward to exchanging news and tales with you.”  

“So I am. He was a charming child when I met him…”  

“Indeed,” the wizard chuckled. “You’ll be surprised to see him now, I have no doubt. Pity I will not be around to see your face…”  

“Fare well, Gandalf, and take care of yourself!”  

“The same to you, my good friend. I’ll be back with the end of the year.”  

                                                        ~*~ ~*~ ~*~

 Night was well in and Bilbo still sat at his desk, his back to the window, pouring again over his notes after a quick dinner with Cook.  

When the first apple hit his desk, it almost knocked down the ink bottle and then rolled into the wooden floor. He looked at it with mild surprise, suspecting a well-intentioned teasing on the part of Tuluniben or the other merry youngsters who loved to sing and tell tales under the stars. A second apple, too ripen for such antics, splashed at his feet just as he was getting up to pick up the first one.  

“Bainloth will not take it kindly, you are staining her polished floor!” he warned in a merry voice, walking to the open window. He had to duck now, as something larger flew past him and landed on the soft bed with a thud.

“What…?” he wondered, picking up a leather bag that showed the unmistakable Hornblower marks on it. “Longbottom Leaf!” he wondered aloud even before opening it, as the distinctive smell of the best smoking weed in all the Shire wafted to him. His curiosity aroused, he looked out of the window, searched the darkness and then went out into the terrace that ran before his chambers and walked down to the garden. There he followed the tenuous sweet scent of a lit pipe among the trees, until he saw a dark large shape reclined against a mighty trunk.  

“All that is gold does not glitter, Master Bilbo,” an amused, familiar voice greeted him as the shadow unfolded into a tall man who bowed before him. Under the silver light of the moon that now speared the garden Bilbo saw the sparkling eyes and the honest, open smile of the child he had known long ago. And someone else, too.  

“Estel…Aragorn?”  

The man bowed again. “The same, at your service and your family’s, Master Baggins,” he offered in perfect Hobbit style. But Bilbo was too stunned to return the courtesy properly.  

“But… but…” He studied the clean, rested face and recognized the stern features of the dour ranger he had met in the forest and had teased him on their way to the Ford. “How can it be?"

 “It is my turn now for travellers’ tales, Master Bilbo,” the man said, and as he spoke he made an inviting gesture towards the tree. “I have brought food and wine and pipe weed, and the moon is still young…”  

Accepting the invitation, Bilbo sat down and listened eagerly -while he had a second dinner- as the man began a long tale that unveiled before Bilbo’s thrilled eyes a whole new world of forgotten songs and legends and deeds of valour and a lost people descended from noble kings of old. The man was as good a storyteller as he had been an audience as a child, and Bilbo enjoyed greatly the long account, to the point that at times he forgot to eat or drink.  

“If you are Isildur’s heir, then the ring is surely yours?” he gasped, once he managed to tie the different threads together. The man shrugged.  

“It belongs to the Dark Lord, and it should have been consigned to the fire long ago, before it was lost,” he sighed, and there was a heaviness in his voice that betrayed his light manner. “It was Isildur’s failure, and now perhaps we may find a way to redress that mistake,” he added. “But for now it is safe in Frodo’s hands, and the Dúnedain of the North keep a strict watch over the Shire.”  

“The Dúnedain?” 

“My kin, what is left of the Númenoreans of Arnor, the old kingdom of the north. At times I am also known as the Dúnadan here in Imladris, you will find out…”  

“The man of the many names,” Bilbo chuckled. “And to think that I took you for an elven child!”  

“It was bad enough that I was caught wandering the corridors,” the man recalled with a soft smile on his face. “But I would have been in serious trouble if you had guessed my true identity then. Yet I apologize for so misleading you!” he added most seriously. Bilbo raised a dismissive hand.  

“Forget it. You said nothing. I just assumed that you were an elf.”  

“And I was so proud that I pestered Elrohir for days with that!” the man chuckled. “I so wanted to be an elf when I was a child!”  

“Instead you are a Man of Westernesse and the last heir of a lost kingdom!” Bilbo mused thoughtfully. “All that is gold does not glitter indeed. This absolutely deserves a song, to go with the name and the legend and the great deeds that are yet to come…”  

“It should begin with that verse,” Aragorn suggested. “All that is gold does not glitter. I have treasured those words in my heart since then…”  

“It sounds fitting,” Bilbo admitted unabashedly. “Let me think… All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost…The old that is strong does not wither,”  he added with a smile. “I came up with that for Gandalf after our battle in the clearing, but it surely fits you as well. You are old in mortal years, are you not?”  

“Seventy-two. Still young in Numenorean years! But you could add something like…  Deep roots… Let me see… Deep roots are not reached by the frost?”  

“Excellent!” Bilbo nodded enthusiastically. “It subtly points to that tree in your House’s emblem that you told me about…the White Tree waiting for a new blossom! Now I need something about fires and the mythical blade and the restored kingdom…Ah, my friend! This is going to be the tale of the age! Let me see…From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring;”  

“Provided it is not dwarven fireworks…”  

Bilbo chuckled. “Be silent. You are chasing my inspiration away. Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king. How is that? I must polish it, of course, but I think it gets the basics…I cannot believe that you didn’t have your own verses, you are a character of legend! And I hope to live long enough to write about your crowning, Estel Aragorn Dúnadan!”  

“I hope so too, Bilbo. I am humbled by your talent…”  

“You need not, lad. You are not half-bad at rhyming! What do you say? Should we add or change anything?”  

They sang it softly a couple of times, to weigh the rhythm and the wording, and found no fault.  

“I think it is fine…” Aragorn finally said. “Except if only you could add something about a green stone?”  

“A green stone? Why?”  

The man fell silent again and looked around with a private smile. “That is a tale for another day. I think I have already robbed you of too much time. There will be time in the upcoming days, for I am remaining for some time still… Now by your leave…” Casting quick glances towards the orchard, Aragorn scrambled to his feet, bowed hastily and walked away. Surprised by the abrupt departure, Bilbo stood up to follow the man’s hurried steps, and caught a glimpse of billowing silvery skirts and a dark mass of blue-black hair that surely belonged to Elrond’s daughter.  

“I see,” he told himself and smiled knowingly, sitting down again and lighting his pipe thoroughly. “All that is gold does not glitter,” he mused. “It is going to cause a stir in midsummer’s festival, I bet,” he told himself with a pleased smile. He had barely reclined against the trunk, ready to enjoy that peaceful spring night when he heard soft steps behind him.  

“Master Bilbo…”  

“What is it, lad?” 

“The eagle cloak pin. Halbarad said he saw it in your hands…I must have lost it in the clearing. It earned me my name in Rohan and Gondor and went with me even to the docks of Umbar in the deep south…And I have kept it in fond memory of our meeting…”  

Bilbo laughed and shook his head in agreement. “I have it in my chambers! I’ll give it back only after you tell me about your adventures in the South and what else you know about the Blue Wizard! And now go away. I am trying to fix your green stone in that song!”  

The man walked away chuckling quietly and Bilbo relaxed against the trunk, puffing contentedly and looking up at the night sky, turning the verses in his mind and thinking of all the things he had learnt that night, and the many layers of history that stretched under his feet. And then a sweet voice reached him, singing words in elven tongue that he did not understand but that spoke straight to his heart. Carried in the wings of that silvery voice he drifted off to a peaceful land where the sun shone brighter and darkness had disappeared.  

The End.