Starkindling

Lothlorien, circa 2961 of the Third Age.

Senses sundered from her manual task, Queen Galadriel wove silken strands.  Adamant resistance to the long defeat weighed upon her, put she persevered.

Melian’s protégé had turned her thought to the borders of her demesne, bolstering its defenses against Shadow as the Maia had taught her two ages earlier in Doriath.  Her mind made a stochastic walk around the girdle of Lothlorien, to minimize the chance that any lazy pattern in her attention would ever assist the Enemy to perceive her work.

As usual during her efforts, Nenya blazed.

After a time, Galadriel noticed that another, different light was in the room:  her grand-daughter.

“Arwen?”

She kneeled and bowed her head before Galadriel, then lifted only her eyes, saying formally, “Grandma, I would beg a favor.”

Galadriel rose from the loom, raised Arwen to her feet, and hugged her.

“The one other time you have said that to me was 2700 years ago, and you were trying to avoid the consequences of watching an eagle rise into the sky instead of listening to your father’s history lesson on …”

“Tar-Calmacil.  Or as he and his woefully straying Numenorean adherents reportedly preferred, Ar-Belzagar.   I got a spanking:  one swat for every letter in both his names, including the hyphens.”

“Of course one must never forget the hyphens,” Galadriel said wickedly.

 “I shall remember them always,” Arwen concluded, with great solemnity.

Dignity abandoned, both giggled for a full minute.  They shared unspoken love of Elrond, respect for his knowledge of the lore of Arda, and also amusement at his occasional pedanticism. 

If Arwen had additional recollections, she did not say so. 

For her part, Galadriel certainly remembered a good deal more about the incident.  The young Arwen had hidden behind her skirts in the hope that grand-matronly authority would quell her father’s displeasure.  Arwen had kept watching the eagle rise as Elrond approached across the field towards them.  Suddenly, in a voice at once her own, but yet not so, Arwen whispered aloud:  “They shall mount up with wings as eagles…”.  Turning to her, Galadriel had been arrested by the words, the tone of their delivery, and especially by Arwen’s eyes.  As usual, they were penetrating – Galadriel laughed inwardly at the commonplace, as “penetrating” was everyone’s predictable description of Undomiel’s eyes.  But at the instant of her whisper, the focus of her glance seemed far beyond the great bird rising in the sky.  Galadriel had been so struck by the momentary strangeness that she failed to forestall her son-in-law as Arwen desired.   Leaving Galadriel deep in thought, Elrond had quickly escorted his beloved but inattentive young scholar elsewhere for private correction.

Galadriel now felt those same steady, penetrating eyes upon her.

“Well, who is unhappy with you today, beloved?”

“No one yet.  But I must soon return to Rivendell.  Before I set out here, Father asked me to meditate upon Ar-Pharazon and the motivations of his followers’ encroachment upon Aman.”  Sighing, Arwen continued, “It seems Father is re-studying the lore concerning the rebellion of the Numenoreans and its cause.”

“I am aware that the subject is much upon his mind at present.”

“Yes -- of course you are, Grandma.  For myself, I have found it hard to turn my mind to the fate of the Second Born.  Yet by your leave, ere I return home I would look in your Mirror while making that very effort.  I may gain an insight that would be useful.”

“At the least. making the attempt will help keep you from having to eat dinner off the mantle of the Great Hall of Imladris in front of a hundred noble elves – all would-be suitors,” Galadriel teased mercilessly. 

Under Galadriel’s watchful eye, Arwen approached her latest encounter with the Mirror with humility.  It was not her first look therein, but it was the first use she had purposed for herself, rather than being a lesson offered to her by the Mirror’s keeper.  Her lithe form bespoke grace as she bent over the water Galadriel had poured.

Although her Mirror was unpredictable, Galadriel could tell that much of the subsequent session followed what she herself had long ago learned was one typical pattern.  Fortunately, it was a pattern consistent with Arwen’s purpose. 

Arwen saw Numenor rise, became corrupted, rebel, and then be swallowed by the sea.  Ever an apt student of her grandmother’s teachings, Arwen attended fully, without personally willing anything.  She withstood the water’s downward pull unaided, and successfully extracted her attention from the Mirror.  She arose and sat down on a nearby bench; the session was over.  Galadriel watched all with secret approval.

Suddenly, Undomiel gasped.  Galadriel moved towards her, and was startled to see the same rapt yet distant focus in her granddaughter’s eyes that she had recalled seeing half an age past during their conversation of the previous evening.  Now, however, no plain words were to be heard from Arwen, but instead a song – praising and asking blessing upon a tree.

With self-control now unsurpassed in Middle Earth, Galadriel had no difficulty in containing herself as Undomiel’s vision continued for a minute … two … three.  It was more difficult at the first, as Arwen’s face initially displayed great sadness bordering on despair:  bordering, but resolutely not there.  Her features cleared as the minutes passed, and then she looked up, almost confrontationally.

“Grandmama!”

“What did you see, dearest?”, Galdriel inquired.

Arwen relaxed a bit.

“You know what I saw in the Mirror ….”

“Very probably, I do.  But I believe you saw something else afterwards on the bench, exterior to what the Mirror showed you.  Of that I know nothing, beloved, but I would learn.”

Arwen’s face was clouded as she began, “It was Mordor, Grandma; Mordor victorious but devoid of all life in its victory.  I wandered alone amidst its desolation, its brutal engines of war and endless hard, sharp edges, its rust and decay.  There was nothing beautiful, nothing green, nothing of song or singing.  I wanted to see a tree – one – with all my heart.  And then…”

“You saw the need filled,” Galadriel thought to herself.  But to Arwen, she said:  “You sang a song of praise about a tree, and asked blessing upon it.”

“Yes!” Arwen said, beaming.  And I found myself no longer in Mordor but with a beautiful tree, and quickly thereafter with a host of trees, trees I had mourned when fallen or cut or burned, trees I could not recognize but I knew I loved unmet.  It seemed that I was with each and every tree that ever was or ever would be.  All stood healthy, whole, and at peace, whether sunlit or in darkest shade.  All were suffused in love …. What does it mean, Grandma?”

“Elrond wished you to meditate, and I commend his counsel to you, dear.”

Galadriel was curious what conclusions Arwen would eventually reach.  As for herself, the puissant queen astonished her court by beginning the late night songfest under the stars personally, taking the role assumed by the humblest neophyte among elven vocalists. 

She sang “A Elbereth Gilthoniel...”.

* * * * *

The reader is invited to view the first 3 minutes and 27 seconds of the YouTube operatic video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_m6mnMIofc .  It prompted this story.

A translation of the words in the video’s aria  – a poor substitute for Arwen’s song, but perhaps of interest nevertheless -- may be found at: http://www.allthelyrics.com/lyrics/yulia/ombra_mai_fu-lyrics-1129684.html .

Another school day began at the Bree Academy for Young Gentlehobbits, under the watchful eye of Petunia Proudfoot, its sole teacher.  (She much preferred the title “Headmistress”.)

“Attention!  Attention students!”

Twelve hobbit lasses sat primly to attention.  Twelve hobbit lads variously flopped, squirmed, slouched, or bounced up and down on their benches in a noisy display of putative order.

Headmistress Proudfoot drew herself up to her full three feet and began breathily, “I have something important, something exciting to tell you.  Something unique to the Bree Academy for Young Gentlehobbits and befitting its status as the foremost place of learning in all Hobbitdom, whether here in Bree -- the acknowledged center of the world and home to Folk both Little and Big– or in the neighboring -- and lamentably somewhat parochial, but still Hobbitish nonetheless – land of the Shire.  Indeed, the something I have to tell you is, dare I say it, truly AN ANNOUNCEMENT.”

A boarding scholarship student from the aforementioned parochial but nonetheless Hobbitish land of the Shire, young Master Erkenbrand Brandybuck, shifted his gaze away from a neighboring lad’s entertaining efforts to guide one of Laurel Bolger’s pigtails into an inkwell.

“Are we getting a new textbook, Ma’am?”

“No, of course not.  The rest of the class is nowhere near finished with our current text, the incomparably excellent second edition of Tales of the Mythological Great and Good in the Late Third Age by Mistress Aspidistra Boffin.”

Moving among the students while she spoke, the teacher deftly confiscated a large prickleburr from a nearby lad, lest it somehow find its way into the hair of another.  Apparently unwilling to relinquish the drama of the moment, she forbore from rebuke and invested her next words with all the schoolmistress sententiousness she could muster.

“As all Hobbits know, one stone should suffice to kill two birds.  In that spirit, today we are going to PRACTICE being OBSERVED, while helping the less fortunate Big Folk to help themselves by emulating Hobbits!  Yes -- we are going to be OBSERVED in class!  By Big Folk!!  From the South!!!  Big Folk who quite naturally wish to learn of the excellence of Hobbit educational methods, as epitomized by no less than the Bree Academy for Young Gentlehobbits!!!!  And this PRACTICE will PREPARE us to be OBSERVED next week FOR REAL by . . . . our very own BOARD OF TRUSTEES!!!!!”

The rest of the morning class session was an anticlimax. 

The students were set the task of reading a chapter from their text in preparation for their afternoon demonstration of erudition to the expected visitors.  To serve that purpose, Petunia Proudfoot selected the chapter entitled “’Starkindling’, as Personally Transcribed from Irrefragable Sources and Supplemented with Questions by Aspidistra Boffin, with Improving Commentary on an Inattentive and Distractible Elf Princess Added in the Second Edition by Petunia Proudfoot”. 

As the young hobbits and their parents near and far, not to mention the school's Board of Trustees, all had had occasion to hear once or twice (or more), Petunia was the late Aspidistra’s (self-appointed) literary executor and posthumous collaborator.  Besides writing the Improving Commentaries, Petunia had added "Mythological" to the title of the textbook, to help distinguish her "Hobbit-sensible" second edition from the "adventure-sodden" first.

Two guest observers in leather riding gear duly presented themselves precisely at the ringing of Petunia Proudfoot’s handbell.  (It signaled the end of lunch recess.)  

One guest was a robust, middle-aged human male wearing a well-worn cloak.  The other was a female of younger appearance.  She wore a simple gray hooded cape that framed her countenance.  Although her ears were covered, they nevertheless functioned very well indeed.  While the guests were still at a distance approaching the school, Erkenbrand Brandybuck remarked to a frolicking friend that he “…intended to observe the Big Folk just as much as they observed him…”.  He found himself blushing furiously when she turned penetrating eyes directly upon him.   

From her own exalted perspective as Headmistress, Petunia Proudfoot found the visitors not at all prepossessing.  She informed them magnanimously that she purposed “…to impart the educational wisdom of the Hobbits” to them.  First, however, propriety demanded introductions all around.  Intending to preserve her self-descriptive options, she offered to let them begin.

The man began.

“I am Tom Bombadil of Ring-a-Ding Dillo, and this is my associate, Ioreth Fangorn.”

Erkenbrand burst out laughing, and was severely “Shushed!” by his teacher, who then spent some time admonishing him that it was no real fault of Big Folk that they did not have the refined sensibilities of Hobbits in selecting their names. 

Ioreth Fangorn stifled giggles.  The man placed a finger to his lips and looked calmly at the youth from above and behind the teacher’s head.

When Petunia’s admonitions abated, the man continued, “We have a certain responsibility for education in our own land, and we are travelling widely to observe best practices.  We hope to encourage their wider adoption.”

Petunia Proudfoot acknowledged the wisdom of that plan with a lengthy commendation of things Hobbitish in general, of Hobbit educational practices in particular, and of the Bree Academy for Young Gentlehobbits in superparticularity.  Then, dispensing with the introductions she previously had prescribed, she moved the class into a discussion of the prepared chapter. 

To assist the guests in appreciating what they were about to observe, they were handed copies of Tales of the Mythological Great and Good in the Late Third Age.  Petunia Proudfoot began by staging a set-piece interrogation of an unimaginative, but academically reliable Hobbit lass.  The well-prepared colloquy centered on the meaning of “Mythological” and the minimal credence to be placed in the existence of the characters described in the Tales.  Meanwhile, the guests read the assigned chapter and its accompanying essay of allegedly Improving Commentary with steadily widening eyes.

When she prepared the “incomparably excellent second edition” of Tales of the Mythological Great and Good in the Late Third Age, Petunia Proudfoot had retained the supplemental questions posed by Aspidistra Boffin in the first regarding the primary source tales.  Long experience with her class had taught Petunia to ask young Master Brandybuck to answer the supplemental questions quickly, so that the rest of the class could instead discuss her own Improving Commentary at length.  She now did so, and he obliged as follows:

“In question #1, Aspidistra Boffin remarks that tale authors should show or demonstrate the attributes of their characters and not just state them.  She notes that Galadriel is explicitly described as ‘puissant’ and asks what evidence of this, if any, is presented in Starkindling.   As readers, we see Galadriel’s powers as she maintains the girdle of Lothlorien, as she wields Nenya – a ring of power, in her knowing Elrond’s mind at a distance, and in her possession of the uncanny Mirror.”

True to his stated observational intent, Erkenbrand watched the visitors as he recited, while keeping peripheral, weather eyes on Headmistress Proudfoot and an erstwhile detractor in the second row.  The latter was rather unnecessarily hefting an apple core. 

Several things happened in rapid succession.  The visitors both looked up at Erkenbrand’s recitation; the male smiled at him warmly while the female gave him another penetrating glance that left him wondering for a moment whether he had remembered to dress that morning.  Several hobbit lads snickered disconcertingly when he said the word “girdle”.  Headmistress Proudfoot turned her back to the class, in order to inform him that two supporting examples were sufficient in an answer and four might be considered Showing Off in a Manner Unbecoming a Gentlehobbit.  In the midst of her critique, his second row tormentor threw the apple core at this head, and he ducked in time to avoid it.

In the hope that the visitors hadn’t noticed the juvenile missile, Petunia Proudfoot instructed Master Brandybuck, “Now try again with #2, please.”

Erkenbrand resumed:  “In her second question, Aspidistra Boffin asks us to speculate upon the meaning or symbolism of the title of the tale:  ‘Starkindling’.   I don’t believe that I totally understand this, but we know several things from the author’s footnotes.   Queen Galadriel’s nickname was the Morning Star, and Princess Arwen’s nickname was the Evening Star.  I don’t understand the eagles, even though the footnotes say they are beloved of an Elder King.  I have never seen anyone ‘mount up with wings as eagles’, as Arwen mutters, although I would like to see that or similar feats." 

"'Running and not getting tired' comes to mind", whispered Ioreth Fangorn to herself.

“Anyway," Erkenbrand continued, "the footnotes also say Ar-Belzagar and Ar-Pharazon were the first and last of a set of far-away rulers over the sea who fell into error through a fear of death.  I feel that Princess Arwen’s contemplation over the years of those rulers and of their error is significant somehow, but I can’t put my finger on it.  Instead, I want to call attention to the song Galadriel sings at the end of the tale -- after Arwen shares her vision of one Tree overcoming the deadness and desolation of Mordor and bringing the restoration in love of all the dead trees that ever were.  According to the footnote, the song that Queen Galadriel humbled herself among her subjects to sing was a hymn to Elbereth.  Aspidistra Boffin’s footnote says Elbereth is a Regnant Power, also known as Varda Starkindler.  In light of the two star nicknames, that has to be significant.  Maybe Elbereth was helping kindle something in Arwen and Galadriel.”

By this point, the female visitor had pulled the hood of her cloak forward to hide her bowed head.  The male visitor sat stock-still, looking at something invisible and far away, like a carven figure of an ancient king.

The academic duty to address Aspidistra Boffin’s often impenetrable questions now having been discharged, Petunia Proudfoot advanced her own lesson plan on more certain grounds, ablating absolutely any incidental theological questions or fateful portents.

“Hmmm.  Well then.  Snapdragon Smallburrow, I call on you now.  Please  summarize the points in the Improving Commentary that support the true moral of Starkindling:  namely, that inadequate attentiveness to one’s lessons cannot be condoned.”

The two distracted visitors survived the ensuing discussion of “true morals” to tales, and rallied their diplomacy to thank Headmistress Proudfoot for the opportunity to observe her class. 

Outside the school, the afternoon sunshine was inviting.  They took their leave and headed back to rooms at The Prancing Pony via a private and initially circuitous route.

Once beyond – indeed, well beyond – the earshot of the teacher and students, the man broke the silence.

“Well, my dear Ioreth Fangorn, I certainly learned some new things about the “Mythological” – not to mention “Inattentive and Distractible” -- Queen of Elves and Men.  I suppose that there is no need to mention that Aspidistra was a careful scholar, and if she said Irrefragable Sources – and I call attention to the plural – that is what she meant.”

A grimly worded reply was belied by a rueful, very feminine smile:  “Although the details and analysis can only be Galadriel’s originally, you would be correct to assume that the twins are now as-good-as-dead half-elves.  And should Elessar Telcontar somehow learn of Arwen Undomiel’s childhood embarrassment, he might make the mistake of being detectably amused and hence join them in departing Middle Earth precipitously.”

“Hmmm.  I believe the King learns everything….as, not coincidentally, do I.  For example, there is another very promising young Brandybuck.  He might usefully further his studies in the White Tower.  Second, we should not be surprised if Galadriel's foresighted strategies to remind, assist, and strengthen come to fruition unexpectedly, decades after her departure. With respect to the hazards of learning of Arwen Undomiel’s childhood embarrassment, ‘We’ will take our chances”, he replied benignly.

“I agree about both Erkenbrand and Galadriel, of course.  As for you, your ability to learn everything will shortly be useful to you.  You saddled me with the name 'Ioreth Fangorn’", she responded.

“Ah.  I now fear you know Mithrandir’s opinion of the long-winded Ioreth of Imloth Melui.”

“Indeed.  In retribution for the name 'Ioreth Fangorn', I intend to use a tried and true half-elvish educational method to teach you to spell it.”

“Oh!  Promise, beloved?” he said, grinning.

“Let me be clearer:  I intend to teach you to spell ‘Fangorn’ – fully, in Entish.”

He groaned histrionically, miming horror.  They returned to the Inn in bliss, holding hands.

On the first of March, in the 1541^st year of the Shire Reckoning, and of the Fourth Age (Gondor) the 120^th, King Elessar passed away, to the unfeigned regret of his People and the immense and consuming grief of his true love and Lady Queen, Arwen Undomiel.  At the time, I was among a host that wept. 

Although details are astonishingly scant, shortly thereafter the Queen of Elves and Men privily departed our city, and I wept again.  It is generally accepted that the light of the Evenstar left the circles of our world in the early winter of the following year, “…when the mallorn leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come”.

In the few months since that unhappy time, a host of minstrels and loremasters have striven to perfect The Tale and Aragorn and Arwen.  I must assume any reader of this manuscript will be well acquainted with at least excerpts of it.  In them, we are informed of the great glory and bliss of Aragorn and Arwen’s joint reign, some of which I had the privilege to witness.  We also learn the last words of the King and Queen to each other.  Of the Queen, it comments that “it was not her lot to die until all that she had gained was lost”.  Of the reliable nature of the minstrels’ and loremasters’ work product, which I hold to be canonical so far as it goes, there should be no doubt.  To the serious scholar, of course, “so far as it goes” is a phrase redolent of the Horn-call of my native Buckland in the Shire:  “Awake!  Fear!  Fire!  Foes!  Awake!”   In the matter of Aragorn and Arwen, I would submit that calls to scholarly wakefulness are indeed appropriate, but that they may properly be deemed to bookend joy, and light, and love -- news that is good rather than dire.  At the end of my memorandum, the reader may judge.

So now come I, Erkenbrand Brandybuck -- an aged Hobbit of 123 years, born of the Shire, initially educated in Bree, and inexplicably called in my youth to become a lifelong servant (and eventually a deputy curator) of the Royal Library of Gondor.  I come now to offer -- with doubtless insufficient humility, deference, and respect -- a few supplementary recollections and observations, which are likely to be the capstone of my rapidly waning life’s meager writings.

I have been trained to detest the introduction by historiographers of autobiographical details motivated directly or indirectly by solipsism.  At times, however, personal experiences must be related:  for example, when they bear upon the provenance of information significant to the historical narrative.  I beg the reader’s tolerance.

Upon my youthful summons in S.R. 1436 to assume a scholarship at the Library in Gondor, as already adverted to above, it was necessary to undertake the still rather arduous journey hither.  For embarrassing reasons – reasons which have provided conversational entertainment for mealtime companions over many later years -- in the course of that trip the party in which I travelled was providentially befriended by a Great Eagle.  He was none other than Meneldor, the famously “young and swift”:  a confrere of both Gwaihir the Wind Lord and Landroval in the storied rescue of the questing Pheriannath from Mount Doom.  Meneldor was huge -- and hugely intimidating to a youthful hobbit.  To my stupefaction and great pleasure, he deigned to speak to me by name through an interpreter in the party, characterizing himself only as “a friend of friends”.  His attention motivated me to begin my study of the language of eagles then and there, under the initial tutelage of the same interpreter.

At the time, I formed the dubious hypothesis that the “friends” Meneldor referred to were The Took and the Master of Buckland .  As I was only a school-age hobbit, they were at that point the most exalted individuals of my knowing acquaintance, although whether and how Meneldor might have befriended them, I did not know.  I still don’t, and I sometimes suspect he had some other meaning. 

In any event, Meneldor remained safely ensconced in my after-dinner repartee, until Mid-Summer’s Eve of SR 1542.  I had recently studied certain laboriously hand-copied sections of the Red Book of Westmarch that had been forwarded to the Library by my distant kin in the Shire.  One passage in particular resonated with my memory of the King and Queen, mitigating the sense of loss I still felt, though I was the least of their subjects.  It read:

“And Frodo when he saw her come glimmering in the evening, with stars on her brow and a sweet fragrance about her, was moved with great wonder, and he said to Gandalf:  ‘At last I understand why we have waited!  This is the ending.  Now not day only shall be beloved, but night too shall be beautiful and blessed and all its fear pass away!’”

On that Mid-Summer’s Eve anniversary date, I contrived the conceit of finding the spot where Frodo Baggins saw the arrival of Evenstar, the evening before her wedding to Elessar.  Sentimental?  Perhaps.  But I am also a searcher for truth, and the full meaning of Frodo’s beatific prophecy seemed to me to be incompletely understood.

It was a long hobble for an old hobbit.  I will not claim that I found truth, but I did find Meneldor the not-quite-so-young but still very swift – or more likely, he found me.  He had a lot to say about certain events in April of SR 1541, which I recast below as a self-contained narrative in my own voice, for the reader’s contemplation.

Arwen did not wish to be seen leaving Minas Tirith, and she wasn’t.  The Elf-Lord Glorfindel had instructed her in evasion and escape during her youth in Rivendell.  Seemingly without conscious effort, she now executed those skills like the descendant of Luthien she truly was. 

At the same time, instructions came to Meneldor to reconnoiter, find her, fly over-watch briefly, and then hold specified discourse with her, all as soon as possible.

Actually, the word “instructions” was an understatement.  The Great Eagles are among the Free Peoples of Middle Earth, but they are perhaps unsurpassed in the depth of their belief that true freedom is reflected in willing obedience to lawful authority.  Every Great Eagle of Middle Earth is honored to receive instructions transmitted “on the wing” by a flight leader, and even more so if they originate from his or her Eerie.  Meneldor’s instructions were characterized instead as coming from “High Eerie”, a term he did not explain (and I cannot).  He did say he had only heard of such instructions thrice before, and that until he finally spotted her, he had reason to wish the Evenstar’s stealth skills were a bit less advanced.

Her skills he had anticipated; what surprised him more was her running.  She ran and ran, and then ran some more.  She seemed to run tirelessly, across uninhabited valleys and through thick woods, avoiding all contact with those of whom she was in fact the beloved Dowager Queen.

Eventually, Meneldor chose to land and confront her as she emerged from bathing in a secluded trout stream, fish in hand for her supper.  She bowed expressionlessly -- even dully, if such a word could be applied to one whose once keen eyes were reputed to penetrate Dwarven-forged mithril plate.  She presented him with her fish without a word, and re-entered the water to find more.

After their repast, Meneldor began the next phase of his mission, addressing Arwen’s bowed and listless form.

“Milady, I am grateful for the fish.  I am charged to beg a boon, though of my own preference I would either not do so, or else urge you to deny my request and return instead to the White City.”

“What would thou have of me?  Ask.  I have lost him whom I loved, and I find all else I have a burden to be shed.”

“I ask a specific memory, all unknown to me, to be freely shared with forgotten others in dire need, to whom I have leave to take you.  Yet stay your assent and hear me in full, for I fear I ask to bear you to …  to your death.”

“Soon … soon.  But not where any others are, I deem.”  Her words were laden with sorrow.

Meneldor needlessly busied himself in grooming a small feather, to avert his eyes.  The eagles relied on their unceasing over-watch to ensure that none born of the eerie ever died alone:  the mere thought was terrible.  After some minutes, he composed himself and pressed the discussion.

 “May we take wing at first light, milady?”

Meneldor expected questions, and contingencies, and analysis, and emotions:  the common currency of conciliar deliberation among the two-legged, whether in Imladris or Gondor.  Whither would they fly? Who were the others? Why were they forgotten?  What was their need?  What was the threat to her life?  How would she know which memory to share?  Was there a need for haste?

What he received was the single, uninflected word:  “Aye.”

Now in the passing of the Third Age and the opening of the Fourth, many peoples who were in need or who had been forgotten received forgiveness, succor, or relief.  Aragorn discharged the Oathbreakers of the Dead of their heavy burden, and later gave to oft-oppressed Ghan-buri-Ghan and his folk dominion over their own land.  Southern Mirkwood was cleansed of evil when Lord Celeborn led forth the host of Lorien and Queen Galadriel put forth her power and cast down Dol Guldur.  Not least, the four questing hobbits of undiminished renown led the scouring of the Shire.  But the servants of Good were fewer now, and the Blessed Realm’s reputed gain in returnees was Middle Earth’s loss.  Mithrandir had taught that not all tears were an evil, for tears there were aplenty at the departures.  Yet not all that needed doing in Middle Earth had been done. 

At dawn, Arwen Undomiel mounted up on the wings of the eagle Meneldor the swift, and was borne by him into grave peril, though neither the novel joy of flight nor the threat of their destination animated her cold, gray countenance. 

Meneldor delivered her deep within the heart of Fangorn Forest.  There dwelt the Huorns:  wild and dangerous, in the words of Meriadoc the Magnificent.  There too, under the mountains, were trees “sound as a bell, and bad right through” in the hobbit-attested words of Treebeard.  The Ent had attributed the problem in deepest Fangorn Forest to some lingering shadow of the Great Darkness, and we are taught that compared to the latter, all the evil works of Sauron were but a feeble imitation.

When Arwen and Meneldor arrived, the trees and the dark-hearted Huorns who abided with them pressed hard upon their uninvited visitors.  Their radiating anger towards all the two-legged smote the pair, for the shadowed patches of the Forest remembered every depredation and every agony inflicted upon the trees.  With the dawn of the Fourth Age they saw no prospect but the rise of Men and more of the same, forever.

Now Meneldor was afraid, but steeled himself to stand by the unhappy, unmoving Arwen, and not take wing away from the enveloping hostility.  When he felt that he could stand but little more, he appealed to her.

“Sing, Milady.  Please sing.  Sing anything.  Sing as your ancestor Luthien sang.  Sing now.”

The Great Eagle’s plea reached through and past Evenstar’s conscious sorrow and gloom, and elicited the fairest sounds heard in that forlorn valley of Fangorn Forest in long ages of the world:

“A Elbereth Gilthoniel


o menel palan-díriel,


le nallon sí dinguruthos!


A tíro nin, Fanuilos!”

Then Arwen Undomiel knew what she must do, and she gave the final lengthy speech of her life, telling a story she had first told to her maternal grandmother.  She recounted a vision that followed hard upon her first solo trial of the Mirror of Galadriel, but yet came not of the Mirror.  

And so Meneldor the swift heard the last Queen of Elves and Men tell the trees and the Huorns neither of elves nor of men, but rather of themselves and their fate, and they abated their wrath for they had never heard the like.  Not as queen but as herald she spoke, and the fully kindled light of the Evenstar blazed forth one last time, diminished but pure.  For though in mortal decline, the very likeness of Luthien yet sufficed to dispel one lingering taint of Luthien’s fell foe, as she foretold with true sight the Forest’s own ultimate healing and restoration in Love, even unto the last tree in Arda.

When she had done, Arwen willed Meneldor to take her unto Lorien, grieving again her loss.  As the eagle rose, he heard her whisper twice aloud her beloved’s boyhood name, whether to herself or to the Forest, in farewell.

The gentle reader may feel that the greatest virtue reflected in the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen is love, and with that assessment this aged hobbit will surely agree. 

Aragorn’s dying declaration of faith – “Behold!  We are not bound forever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory” – is also singularly arresting.  

Yet there is a third element present, and it is too easily missed or obscured in the studied pathos of the minstrels.  Reader, look beyond Queen Arwen’s evident pain in her last words to King Aragorn as he died, and perceive – together with the startled trees and Huorns of deepest Fangorn -- her deeper message:  “Estel, Estel!”.

Hope, Hope!

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