This time when Eldarion turned the page, Aragorn went still, and he said, softly, “Oh.”

            “Ooh!” Melian said, smiling.  “This one copied my favorite books!”

            “I know,” her father answered, his voice particularly gentle.  “Sam sent most of those from the Shire when you were born.  Many were given him as he was growing up, and there were other copies of the same books in Bag End he and his children can read.”

            A sheet of a different paper had been carefully trimmed and glued to the proper page for the book.  On it in a neat yet particularly lovely hand was written:

O

“Open!” 

“Edro!”   

“Annon edhellen, edro hi ammen!  Fennas nogothrim, lasto beth lammen!”

But the doors failed to open at Gandalf’s command.  He tried every spell of opening he could think of, in Elvish, in ancient Quenya, in Dwarvish, and in every other tongue of Men, Elves, and Dwarves that he could think of.  One must have been in the tongue of the Onodrim, for it went on and on and on, but still the Doors of Dúrin failed to open!

He made mystic signs.  He spoke faster, or slower.  He varied wording.  The doors would not open.

“Open!  Open!  Edro!  Edro!”   And he repeated these simple words in every other language on Middle Earth and perhaps a few from Aman and other places.  The doors still did not open.

He threw his staff on the ground in disgust, and sat down on a log, pondering on the ornate inscription we had all seen.  Then Gandalf, Olórin, laughed.  “I have it!” he cried.  “Of course!  Of course!  Absurdly simple, like most riddles when you see the answer.  The opening word was inscribed upon the archway the whole time.  Merry was right when he asked what Speak, friend, and enter might mean!  The operant word should not be translated as speak, but rather as say!”

How wonderful it is to think that those doors, created jointly by the greatest craftsmen of Elves and Dwarves, operated not on command or as a result of power expended, but instead on the properties of friendship and openness.  When we named ourselves friends, then and only then did the doors open.

            Beneath the sheet was written in Sam’s writing, “I found this amongst Mr. Frodo’s writings, after he was gone.  We all decided as it should be included.  He’d love to of helped in the making of this book—of that we’re all certain.”