On the first of March, in the 1541st year of the Shire Reckoning, and of the Fourth Age (Gondor) the 120th, 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!