On Tides of Light by potorov  

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ANTIË

For those beyond our sight: let the light bear what we do not know.

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Olwë found work for their hands. He could not send a word backward across the Sea, nor place his love at last within his brother's keeping. But Elwing had crossed with names that no one in the West had yet received.

He asked Elwing for the names of those lost in Beleriand.

She gave them from evening until the middle of the night, standing, without a book, because there was no book. She named her father, her mother, and her brothers. She named the lords of Doriath and the captains of Gondolin; and then she stopped naming lords, for there had not been many lords, but of other folk there had been thousands. She named sail-weavers, smiths and healers, herb-wives, boys who carried water, and the woman who had taught her the names of shore-birds. Tathren. Nedhil. Baraneth. Círeth. Maenil. Lothril, who had been fifty years old and had a laugh that could be heard across the estuary. She named them for six hours, and the city stood and received them one at a time. No one sat down, not even the oldest.

Three loremasters wrote as she spoke. One set down each name, another repeated it until Elwing assented, and the third carried the filled sheets to the end of the table. Above the first page the eldest had written *The Dead of Beleriand*. No one yet disputed the words.

At last she came to the end of what she had.

"I do not know the rest," she said. "There are more than I ever knew the names of. I was a child when Doriath fell. At Sirion I had children of my own, and still I was running."

"Do not close the roll," said Olwë.

Then he asked who among them would keep one name after Elwing was no longer there to speak it. Astoron came first. He laid a finger beside Círeth and said that she might come to his house. Yárawë chose Lothril, being fond of a laugh. Vencáno took one of Elwing's brothers and would not say why. Thereafter the households came to the table one by one. They did not call the lost their own. They received the names so that each might be spoken at table and hearth when the year returned.

Astoron sent his daughter to the storehouse for the white shell lamps used when the Sea did not return a body. The name of the dead was cut into the shell, and the light was given to the ebb. That night the old observance was offered to those who had died beyond the reach of their kin. Oil came down from the houses. Sail-weavers twisted thread for wicks, and styluses passed from hand to hand along the sea-wall. Each household carried its chosen name to one lamp.

She had not spoken two names among the others.

Elwing had not chosen the swords at Sirion, nor the cliff, nor the Sea that took her. But when the Sea returned her to Eärendil's ship, she had chosen the westward road. Behind her were Elrond and Elros, perhaps living; before her lay the only help she knew for them and for every other child beneath the Shadow. Therefore she had gone on. No greatness of the need made the going feel less like departure. Every league west had been a league she had consented to put between herself and her sons.

When Elwing came down to the sea-wall, the Falmari were filling the shell lamps with oil and scoring names from the roll into their white sides. Two empty shells stood before her. To leave them dark seemed another abandonment. To kindle them among the dead seemed to bury her children with her own hands.

Elwing took up a stylus. Its point touched the first shell and stopped. A woman came near with oil, and Elwing drew both shells beneath the fold of her cloak as though she had only made room upon the wall. Eärwen saw the tremor before it was hidden. Beneath her father's table she too had held one wrist with the other hand.

She came to stand beside Elwing. She did not ask what names Elwing had been unable to write. She had heard Finrod, Angrod, and Aegnor named among the fallen, and Orodreth, Angrod's son, after them. Galadriel alone had no ending in Elwing's tale and no road home that her mother could see. Eärwen asked for a third shell and a stylus. Upon the shell she wrote one name.

*Galadriel.*

"No word has come from her," said Elwing.

"None."

"She may yet live."

Eärwen looked down at the name. "She may."

Then she lit the lamp.

Before she set it upon the water, Eärwen kindled a taper at its wick and held the taper out. Her free hand closed about the wrist that bore it, but the flame still trembled. She did not hide it.

Elwing wrote *Elrond* upon one shell and *Elros* upon the other. When she took the taper, its flame passed above the first wick and would not catch it. Eärwen laid her hand beneath Elwing's, bearing its weight without taking it from her. Elwing lit the first lamp. From that flame she lit the second.

The two mothers set the three lamps upon the ebb. The water drew them apart before it carried them through the harbour mouth, and none could tell which flame would last longest.

The roll still bore the heading *The Dead of Beleriand*. Yet Galadriel, Elrond, and Elros went out among the other names, and no hand drew them back.

So it was done that night, and has been done in Alqualondë each year since upon the same night. When the year returned, every household spoke at table and hearth the name it had received. Twilight and tide bore witness to Eldar grief along those eternal shores: monuments built of mercy and flame, borne upon the ebbing tide. Quietly and without herald, grace found her way through the endless darkness.

When all the named had been taken, ten thousand households still stood upon the sea-wall with empty hands. Those households took lamps with nothing written upon them and set them upon the water for someone whose name had gone wholly out of knowledge. Year after year the nameless lamps were more than the others.

That night the tide carried out more light than the harbour had ever put upon the water at one time. Singers began in the same week to make the music that came to be called the Requiem of the Lost. The Falmari had spent an Age singing their own loss. The old lament did not cease; other grief entered the music beside it.

On the seventh morning a messenger came from Valimar. Eärendil's plea had been heard, and the Powers were gathering the Host of the West. Of Eärendil himself the messenger would say only that he remained before Manwë.

On the seventh day, before Elwing could ask what they already understood she would ask, the shipwrights and sea-lords met, and they said no.

They said it without heat, which was worse. They said: We swore no oath and will swear none. We are not a people made for war. The one time war came to us we did not know how to answer it, and our children died upon the sand. Our ships were taken from us with blood in this very harbour, taken north and burned at Losgar for kindling in sight of those whom the Noldor abandoned.

Astoron, who had wept for Eglarest, laid one hand upon the table. Ships were not goods, he said. They were the work of the heart, and their like would not be made again.

Vencáno, who had been quiet for two days, said: "Where were the Powers when the swords came here? Let the West carry itself over upon its own feet."

The shipwrights had wept for six days; now they sat with their hands flat upon the table and said no. They had given the labour of those nights and begun the work of remembrance. They would not give the ships. By then the lamps had passed beyond the harbour mouth. Some would have gone out; of the others no one knew.

Elwing let them finish. Then she stood.

"A host is gathering in Valimar," she said. "Without your ships it has no road across the Sea. Those who remain in Beleriand will be left beneath the Shadow. I do not ask you to be soldiers. I would oppose the placing of a sword in any Telerin hand before the Valar themselves. But I ask for passage."

"They took our ships," said Vencáno.

Elwing looked at Astoron's hand upon the table. The nails were split, and old pitch lay black in the creases though the harbour had been idle for a week. She looked beyond him at the scrubbed stones of the doorway.

Her hand moved beneath her cloak and came to rest over the place where the Silmaril had lain.

She heard her own words again: *Without your ships.* It did not sound like a request.

She had come through every night believing that, if only they understood the need, the ships must follow.

What right had she to assume that they must?

"They did," she said. "Nothing will make that untrue. Nothing will give the dead back their morning, or put the ships again beneath the hands that made them. I spoke as though the greatness of the need had already judged your answer. It has not. The ships are yours."

No one moved.

"I can tell you only what lies beyond the Sea. Círdan is there. The grey people of the woods are there, my father's people and your brother's people, and thousands beside them. They are alive tonight, and they have no word that anyone in the West remembers that they exist. My sons may be among them, or they may be dead. I do not know. If you refuse, the need remains. I will not therefore call your refusal faithless."

Vencáno stared at her. "You would bear that answer back?"

"If it is your answer."

She sat down.

Still they did not answer her before the Sun had gone. Astoron's hands stayed flat upon the table until the hall was empty.

At sunset Eönwë came to the harbour, and Eärendil walked beside him. He and Elwing spoke alone beneath the arch whose lamp had never gone out.

Manwë had granted to Eärendil and Elwing, and to their sons after them, the choice of which Kindred should claim them. Eärendil asked Elwing to choose first. She answered for herself alone: for the sake of Lúthien, she would be counted among the Firstborn. Eärendil then chose likewise, for her sake.

Eönwë told them that Vingilot would be hallowed and borne to paths no mariner had sailed. He did not tell them what return those paths allowed. Then Eärendil departed from her once more.