I Will Not Say The Day Is Done by bunn  

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A walking holiday, with hobbits

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The winter passed, a warm wet winter full of wild winds blowing in from the sea that carried the dead leaves away from the orchard and whirled them out into the ocean, and soon the blossom lay white again upon the apple-trees of Tol Eressëa.  

Finrod and Amárië  had come to the Lonely Isle again, to visit relatives and friends old and new.  Together with Frodo, they had come up with a plan. 

“Are you sure you feel well enough to walk so far, Sam?” Elrond asked, when Finrod, invited by his niece Celebrían to dinner, mentioned the idea of walking with the hobbits through Valinor. 

“Of course I do,” Sam said stoutly. “I’m the youngest of the three of us.  If Mr Bilbo can manage it, at his age, then I can’t see me having any difficulty. I’m only a hundred and two, Master Elrond!” 

 “Frodo and Bilbo have lived here for a good long while,” Elrond pointed out.  “Their bodies have had a chance to remember how it was when they were young, to recover from weariness and injury. But you only got here recently.”  

It had been, at least for hobbits, a very long time since Sam Gamgee, arriving for the first time in Rivendell, had begged to serve his master at Elrond’s table, and had to be told firmly that he must sit with Merry Brandybuck and Pippin Took and be a guest of honour.  

Since then, Sam had endured Mordor, opposed the will of Sauron, become a Counsellor of the North-kingdom, and had been chosen to be Mayor of the Shire seven times by his own people.  And at last he had chosen to leave his beloved Shire and all his family to sail into the West with Elves.  

There was no diffidence to Sam now.  He was quite at home.  He sat cheerfully at dinner beside Finrod, who had been King in Nargothrond long ago, and now shared his father the High King’s rule in Tirion, and said firmly, “I’ve been here all of half a year, Master Elrond!  That may not be much of a time for you, but it’s a good long time for me.  I’d welcome the chance to do some exploring.”

“I promise we won’t go too far or fast, Elrond!” Finrod said. “And it’s not as though we were travelling in Middle-earth and needed to carry arms and supplies, you know. We’re only going to wander a little in Eldamar. You and Celebrían would be very welcome to come too, if you like.”

Elrohir looked at his father’s face, and laughed. 

“Thank you, Finrod, but I think I’ll leave that to you and the hobbits.” Elrond said politely.

“Elrond doesn’t enjoy wandering,” Celebrían explained to her uncle.  “He prefers things to be comfortable.  Comfortable, well-supplied and very well defended!  I think Tol Eressëa suits him.  Well, both of us, really.” 

“Very sensible of him, too,” Maglor said.  “Several thousand years of sleeping outdoors has left me with a great appreciation of roofs and beds.”

Finrod grinned at him. “I know better than to ask you!” he said; a tactful way for Finrod to acknowledge that Maglor, of the senior, dispossessed House, should not go into Valinor, without making it sound like a command. 

“Well, I want to come,” Amárië said. “I never had any adventures in Middle-earth, and though Eldamar may be rather tame by comparison, I’m looking forward to it.”

“There’s much to be said for comfort,” Bilbo said. “But still, I’ll happily take the hidden paths that run, west of the Moon, and east of the Sun!  For a couple of weeks, at least; there’s nothing like a change of air.  Anyway, travelling with Elves is almost as comfortable as most hobbit-holes are.  At least, as long as it doesn’t rain. 

“Well, I hope you’ll take it gently, Sam,” Elrond said, giving in. 

. . . . .

Finrod’s people were waiting for them on the shore when the ferry from Tol Eressëa came in to the long quays of Alqualondë, where the white ships of the Teleri fleet waited in long lines.  

“Gildor!” Frodo said, delighted, recognising an old friend. He laughed.  “I’m sure you told me once that you found the company of hobbits so dull!” 

Gildor bowed and laughed too. “And so it is, but alas!  My lord Finrod has taken a liking to the company of hobbits,  and so I must endure it!  There’s no accounting for the whims of princes.” 

Finrod shook his golden braids at him in amused disapproval. “And that would be why you besieged me with demands to come along as soon as you heard I was planning this journey with the hobbits, Gildor? You must love dullness very dearly!”

“I must indeed, my lord,” Gildor said, his grey eyes narrowing in amusement. “For it was I who named Frodo Elf-friend long ago, before any of his great deeds. Bilbo and I are very old friends, of course.  But I am most delighted to see Sam again!  I see you meant it when you said you would follow Frodo to the moon if need be, Sam.   Or at least from Middle-earth to Aman outside the circle of the world.”

“This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind at the time,” Sam admitted. “Not that I’m too sure exactly what I had in mind back then. That was a very long time ago!”

“A very long time for you, but little time for us, and rightly so, for you have done a good deal more with your time than we have,” Gildor said smiling. 

“Well, that is how the paths of Men and Hobbits run,” Finrod said a little sadly. “But we have called you away from your swift straight road to wander in the woods with us for a while, going nowhere in particular. Frodo, Sam and Bilbo, this is my dear friend Edrahil.” 

Edrahil was shorter than most of the Noldor were, with brown hair and skin and brown eyes too, with flecks of gold in them.  He seemed at first rather solemn and quiet, but when he smiled his face lit up with joy.  He bowed politely to the hobbits and introduced his friends and their horses too by name. They were not planning to ride, but Finrod had decided to bring horses to carry food and bedding.  They had a couple of hounds with them too, tall white dogs with long pointed red ears that were taller than the hobbits. 

The horses and hounds  were clearly considered important members of the party, and followed the walkers willingly, without any need for bridle or leash to lead them, as they made their way slowly up from the quays through the wide green meadows on the outskirts of the city of Alqualondë. 

“I thought we’d travel for a little while up the coast outside the mountains, first,” Finrod said, “Then turn back to Alqualondë, and perhaps go up through the Pass of Calacirya after that.”

“The Cala-cirya.  That’s the pass that is the only way through the mountains?” Sam asked, careful with his pronunciation on the unfamiliar word. 

“It is,” Finrod said.  “We have on a number of occasions had a very lively debate about making a second route in a tunnel through the mountains further north, for the convenience of Alqualondë and the towns along the coast north of the city, but unfortunately the Valar were against it.  Well, all apart from Aulë.  I think he thought it an interesting challenge, as indeed I did myself. But the Valar have always been rather over-wary about the defences of the Pelori.  They get terribly nervous about them.”

“But you thought  an underground road through the mountains would be a good idea?” Frodo asked politely.  He had spent enough time in the company of both dwarves and Noldor to know that was the right thing to ask. 

“We were thinking of something rather like the dwarvish realm of Moria.  I have heard great things about it! “ Finrod said with some enthusiasm. “I’m sad to say I never had the chance to visit it myself. It sounds fascinating from what my sister says  about it.  I believe it spanned an entire mountain range: both a road and a city at once.  And it certainly seems to have held for a very long time against enemies, too.”

“Yes, I believe it did.  It was vast and very confusing, when we were there” Frodo said, remembering the dark tunnels of Moria with a shudder. “And very very dark.”

“Well, you’d expect that from the name,” Edrahil said looking doubtful.  “The black pit?  It doesn’t sound very inviting.”

“I asked Celebrimbor about that,” Finrod said.  “It sounds absolutely magnificent, the way he tells it. Much bigger than Nargothrond, Edrahil, and very well-lit. Apparently the Sindarin name is a joke.  Dwarvish humour.”     

Bilbo laughed. “Yes, that sounds like them,” he said.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Frodo said “Moria fitted it all too well as a name when Sam and I were there. Though anywhere that has a Balrog living in it and far too many orcs, is not at its best...  And it was on fire, too.  But Gimli said it was wonderful in the songs of his people, when it was full of dwarves and lamps and windows.” 

“Which Balrog, do you know?” Edrahil asked curiously.  “I’ve always wondered about that part of the tale, which of them it was that got away and hid itself away beneath a mountain.” 

Frodo looked up at him in surprise. “I don’t know,” he said.  “How do you tell the difference between them?”

“They look different,” Edhrahil explained. “As people do.  Well, they are people of a sort.  A very unpleasant sort!  They started off being able to put on any form, but that didn’t last. They were all quite recognisable after a while. In Dorthonion, they used to keep a great illustrated chart that recorded sightings of each one.”

For some time, walking slowly up into the green hills above Alqualondë  across open pastureland grazed by great white cattle with long curving horns,  Frodo and Sam attempted to describe the Balrog they had seen in Moria to Edrahil, Finrod and Gildor, all of whom remembered a number of Balrogs either seen or described from battles of the Ancient Days, and to Amárië, who had never seen a Balrog, but had, it turned out, compiled a great number of eye-witness reports into a book about them, with line-illustrations.  Their attempts to identify the Moria Balrog were rather hampered by Frodo and Sam’s inability to agree on exactly what they had seen. 

“You’ll have to ask Gandalf,” Sam said in the end, giving the struggle up for a bad job and shaking his head. “He was the one who fought it, after all.  He’d know much better than us.” 

“Hmm,” Edrahil said.  “I’m not sure my academic curiosity is strong enough to warrant risking meddling in the affairs of wizards.  I’ll leave that to my lady Amárië and her kin.”

“But isn’t this country all the home of the wizards?” Sam asked. “You all live here with them!”

“The Maiar and the Valar live in the city of Valimar, and upon the mountain of Taniquetil, and in the forests of Oromë and the gardens of Lórien,” Amárië told him, pointing in the direction of each place as she named it. “At the Halls of Mandos and the Halls of Nienna, upon the western coasts of the world, too.  The Ainur don’t  usually live here outside the mountains of the Pelori, or even in the Calacirya near Tirion, as a general rule. Well, apart from Ulmo and his people, of course.  Ulmo is the exception to most rules!   Many of the Noldor, like Edrahil here, are still rather wary of the Ainur.”

“Gandalf — Mithrandir —  is a good friend of ours,” Frodo said.  “He’s a friend of Elrond and Galadriel too.  I know he can be grumpy, but he has a good heart.” 

“Gandalf did great deeds in Middle-earth,” Gildor said.  “We owe him much. But even when they are only subtle and quick to anger, surely you’d agree that the Maiar can be perilous, Frodo?  Saruman was a good deal more than only quick to anger. ” 

“I suppose he was!” Frodo admitted. “But surely that is very unusual?”

“He was far from being the only one,” Gildor said, glancing at his lord, and then at Edrahil.

“I think Frodo knows that at least as well as I or Edrahil, Gildor,” Finrod said wryly.

“I suppose I should,” Frodo said, thoughtfully. “But Sam and I never did meet Sauron personally, you know.  Thank goodness!  But it makes it hard to think of him as a person, like Gandalf, rather than just a...”  he ran out of words and looked away, down across the green hills to the blue shores of the sea below them. 

They had come up onto a wide green pathway that ran along the hillside.  Below them, a low forest of wind-blown thorn trees blanketed the hillside, a miniature woodland that might be passable for Hobbits, but for the Elves and their tall horses was almost impassable scrub.  They turned to follow the path, skirting the small trees. 

“I saw a great number of Maiar when I visited Valimar,” Bilbo said. “They seemed to be very much part of the family there, so to speak.”

“In Valimar, they are,” Amárië agreed. “The Maiar and many of the lesser spirits of the land live with the Elves as one people. But that is Valimar.  My people, the Vanyar, have never quarrelled with the Ainur.  Whereas the Noldor...”

“They banished our lady Galadriel,” Gildor said quietly.  “They let us fight their war for them, and then they said our king’s daughter must not return.  They said that she was proud and rebellious, and then they counselled all us Exiles sternly to go home to Valinor!  We had already failed our House and our lord once, those of us from Nargothrond.  We were not going to do it again!   It makes you wonder if the Valar understand loyalty at all... A good number of us chose to wait for her.” 

Finrod’s face had become very serious, almost grim. “The feelings of the Noldor about the Ainur are still somewhat mixed, Frodo,” he said. “There are a number of grievances that still rankle. The Ban was terribly hard on poor Celebrían. After the horror that happened to her, to have to seek healing in an unknown land and leave her mother behind, knowing she was prohibited from following... “ He shook his golden head.  “That was hard. I went to Celebrían when she first came to Avallónë. She wept for her mother, and I... I didn’t know how to comfort her. It was hard on my mother and father, too. My father was no kinslayer.  He turned back and sued humbly for pardon.  Then he led the host of our people to Beleriand against Morgoth, when they commanded it.  It is truly hard to know what more he could have done to seek their forgiveness. Yet he too received little pity.”

“I see,” Frodo said.  “I knew about the grievance of our friend Maglor, of course.  I had not thought of how Galadriel’s family must feel.  Lothlórien was so beautiful, and so dearly beloved, and Gandalf is a dear friend of Galadriel’s.  And of course, Galadriel is so wise and powerful, as seen by hobbits!  It seems odd to think that Lothlórien was a place of exile too.”

Finrod shrugged. “It has left all of us a little cautious of meddling in the affairs of the Ainur without a very good reason.  Particularly if there is a chance they might become angry.  That is, after all, essentially what a Balrog is.  A Maia who has made some regrettable decisions and let go of his temper to a quite unforgiveable degree...  But this has turned into a terribly dark conversation, hasn’t it?”

“It has, a bit,” Amárië said, pausing to admire a creeping plant with flowers like blue stars that wove through the branches of the trees beside the path.  She picked a flower and tucked it into one of Finrod’s braids with a smile.  “Have a flower to cheer yourself up.” 

Bilbo said thoughtfully, “The Eldar and the Maiar do seem quite a bit the same in some ways: so very old and so very wise. Very different to us, or Dwarves or Men.”  He gave Edrahil a grin. “Gandalf has a beard, of course, but then so does Círdan. You can’t go judging by beards.”

“What!” Edrahil exclaimed, breaking through his usual reserve in incredulity.  “Surely the Elves are different to the Maiar in every possible way!”

Finrod laughed, less carefree than usual.  “It might not seem like that to Men and Hobbits, Edrahil.” He stopped walking and looked out down towards the sea. “We’ve done quite well climbing up into the hills this morning, but my conscience is troubled by Elrond’s voice telling Sam to take things gently.  Perhaps it’s time to stop for lunch.”    

“This looks like a nice spot,” Sam said, indicating a green knoll set a little above the path. They spent most of the afternoon there in the end, looking out over the distant sea towards the Lonely Isle, listening to the Elves sing and take turns playing on the harp.  They were in no hurry, after all, and going nowhere in particular. 

As the sun went behind the mountains of the Pelori behind them and the shadows began to stretch out into the sea, they heard a rustling from far down the slope.  As they watched curiously, the low twisted trees that clad the hillside lifted up their short branches one by one making a way for a long line of cattle to make their way up the slope.  Before them, a tall elf dressed in green and brown led the way.  These were not the great white cattle that they had seen in the meadows by the shore, but a smaller breed, even smaller than the cattle that were kept in the Shire, with fine golden-brown coats, dark noses, and huge dark liquid eyes. 

They made their way up through the new path that the trees had made for them, turned onto the main path and went away, the cow-herd striding before them with a long staff in his hand, as proudly as a king leading his subjects holding a golden sceptre.   As he passed the Noldor and the hobbits reclining on the grass, Finrod called a greeting, and the cow-herd inclined his head gravely, as one prince greeting another, and went on, his little cows following at heel. 

“Behaving if they were so many dogs!” said Sam, with considerable respect. 

They went on a little way further that evening, singing softly as they walked. The sky darkened to a clear blue and the stars began to come out. They came to a small wood of rowan trees, tall and fair with pale grey bark, crowned with pale blossom, that was set around a small dark pool that reflected the stars.  Above it, a single pale stone was set, carved with shapes of birds. 

There they stopped to eat and rest, and when the hobbits awoke in the morning, it was to see the morning sun rising far across the distant sea to the East, making a long golden path across the water. 

“I wonder what they’re doing over there,” Sam said to Frodo, gesturing vaguely at the rising sun towards their home, a land that was not precisely in the same world anymore.  “And I wonder how it works, for the Sun to rise here and there both together, when we’re outside it all, and the real world is round.” 

“You think this world isn’t real?” Frodo said curiously.

“It doesn’t seem entirely real,” Sam said. “It’s very pleasant and all that, but here we are with an Elvish king out of distant legend, wandering the woods of the forgotten West like something in a song.  Usually if I slept on the ground in a wood, I’d expect to wake stiff and grumpy, with a root sticking into my neck!  But if anything my aches and pains are less than yesterday.  It’s not natural.”

“Almost exactly what I said myself!” Bilbo said. “Though at my age, I’m not complaining too loudly, young Sam, and I advise you not to either: there’s no reason to call on bad luck; wait till it comes calling on you!” 

“Young Sam!” Sam said and laughed.  “My hair’s a good deal whiter than yours is now, Mr Bilbo, and I thought my days of sleeping in the woods long gone.”

“I suppose it isn’t natural, for us,” Frodo said.  He looked around at the Elves who were preparing breakfast.  “I think it might be, for them though.  They’re part of it.  They fit into this land as if it were made for them.  The roots wouldn’t stick into them, they’d fit around them.”

“Not quite,” Finrod said, joining them. “I would say more that we fit ourselves around the world, most of the time.  It helps that we can speak with the world, so we all know better where we all stand, and eventually hope to reach an accommodation.  That is why we were the Quendi, the People Who Speak, in the beginning.  But this is a hospitable woodland.  It wouldn’t wish to cause you discomfort.”

“See, now how can that be?” Sam said. “I’ve been a gardener all my life, more or less, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s that weeds don’t pay any account to my preferences.  They turn up whether I want them or not.  If your garden’s all over ash saplings and dandelions, all you can do is pull ‘em up.  They don’t listen if you tell them not to!  Or they don’t at home, anyway.  Maybe they do here.”

“They might not choose to listen,” Finrod said, “But it might also be that they have something to say on their own account that might be worth listening to!  But this land is not very different to your own, Sam.  Or it wasn’t, to begin with.”

“But it’s outside the world, isn’t it?” Sam asked.  “The ship went up out of the sea, and left the world behind it.  If you sailed out that way in a boat,” he waved at the sunrise, “you wouldn’t come to Middle-earth.  Not unless you could do what the lord Círdan does.  You’d go round and round, or maybe fall off the edge.”

“Aman is outside the world now,” Finrod agreed “But in the beginning, it was not. It was taken away to protect it. There are plenty of people who will tell you that we elves should be grateful for that, for it means we have our peaceful haven here, safely away from all the woes and turmoils of Middle-earth, where time can run slow and memory is strong. But to my mind we have lost something important too.  We lost the other Speaking Peoples, when we were called to Aman, whether in body or in spirit, and we left them behind. Now we can’t go back, we can only remember them.”

“We might not all remember them altogether kindly,” Gildor said, bringing over a wooden platter of bread and fruit and dried meat, and presenting it to Finrod and the hobbits. “Númenor at its worst was terrible. They did not speak with the forests or work with them. They felled them and burned them.”

“They can be very good, or very bad,” Frodo said, taking some bread and thanking him. “I don’t think Hobbits could ever manage to be either so great and good, or so wicked as Men.”

“Hobbits tread lightly enough,” Gildor said smiling. “Perhaps not as lightly as Elves, but it’s harder for you to speak with the world and listen to it than it is for us.” 

“Still, pulling them up and burning them is what you have to do with the dratted ash saplings that spring up everywhere,” Sam said, piling ham into a bread roll.  “In a lifetime of gardening, I’ve yet to find another way of doing it.  If it’s not that the trees are different, and there’s a secret beyond regular hoeing, I wish someone would tell me!” 

Finrod smiled at him. “I am fairly confident that Middle-earth and Aman are not in essence different.  Trees in Aman are much like trees elsewhere; it’s the people that are different.  Not that I am much of an expert on gardens, or on trees, myself.  The Noldor aren’t, as a general rule. My sister Galadriel is an exception, and horribly overtalented, if I may abuse the privilege of being a brother enough to say so! I think she gets it from my father, he’s a gardener too. I must introduce you to him, Sam.”

. . . . . 

They wandered along East of the Mountains, through the woods and pastures of the Teleri, which were rich and well-tended.  There were not many people living or travelling in the narrow country north and west of Alqualondë between the mountains and the sea, but those who lived there were pleased to see visitors and welcomed them, offering gifts of food and drink.   Finrod had brought gifts of his own with him to give to their hosts; instruments and gems and finely-woven cloth from Tirion, rare spices from the lands beyond Valimar, appreciated all the more because the Teleri of these distant quiet valleys rarely travelled into the heart of Eldamar. 

But at last, Amárië decided that she was tired of seeing only sunrises and never the sunset, lost behind the massive mountains that hid half the sky. They turned south again, and made their way slowly upon the shore, over wide salt-pastures grazed by tiny, elegant animals that looked a little like goats, but more finely-made and delicate.  

They turned inland a little, and joined the road to Alqualondë. Overhead, white gulls cried, and strange birds probed with long red beaks in the places where streams falling from the mountains wandered out across the shining mud. 

In Alqualondë, they stayed in the house of King Olwë of Alqualondë, who was delighted to welcome his grandson Finrod, his wife and particularly his guests, the three Ringbearers.

There the hobbits heard many songs, and were given gifts; new clothes, a hobbit-sized walking staff for each of them, bound with silver and carved with seabirds, a basket of mushrooms. They politely but firmly refused the many other gifts they were offered there. 

“For after all,” Bilbo said. “We are only three old hobbits, with not much further to go, and few needs now to meet.  I think we’d all prefer songs to other treasures: they’re less wearying to carry!”

“They certainly are,” Frodo said. “And I think they shine brighter, too.” 

“That’s wisdom,” Gildor said to him smiling.  “Almost all the treasures of lost Beleriand are gone and sunken in the sea.  The shining swords of Hithlum and the wealth of Nargothrond are gone, the Isle of Balar whelmed into the sea,  the towers of Eregion are fallen, the beloved walls of Mithlond left behind forever. Yet I still recall the songs, and they shine in the mind as bright as any Silmaril.”

. . . . . 

But none of them were weary yet of travelling, and so after a few days they set out again. 

Now they were climbing again, up into the pass of Calacirya, with the sea behind them and the mountains rearing up vast and dark ahead,  with precipices hard as glass, topped far above with crowns of white ice. 

But down below the mountains in the wide gap of the Calacirya, the land was green and fair, and far ahead of them shone the white walls of the city of Tirion.  Finrod led them away from the main road up towards the city, onto smaller winding paths along the borders of the northern mountains. 

“I’ve had rather too much of Tirion for a while,” he said.  “I hope you’ll visit the city on another occasion, Sam, but just now I am taking a holiday, and so I thought we’d take the quieter paths through the hills instead. Orodreth will do perfectly well on his own if I leave him to it, but if he knows I’m in the city, he’s bound to come and ask my opinion.”

“Well in that case,” Sam Gamgee advised, with all the authority of a seven times Mayor of Michel Delving, Postmaster and First Shirriff, “you should just tell the lad he’ll do very well and make him get on with it.” 

Finrod looked down at him doubtfully, then laughed.  “And you found that worked, did you?” 

Sam smiled up at him. “Well, in all honesty, no, I can’t say it did, not very well! I had a good many reasons of all sorts to come to Aman, but one of them was that nobody is likely to come tapping on my door here, asking if I can remember this, find that or organise the other thing!  I do like to keep busy mind you, but at the age of a hundred and two, it was time for a break.” 

“And that is why we are going to take this route!” Finrod said, taking a turning up a narrow path that wound up between two tall trees just bursting into full green leaf. 

After a while they came to what had clearly once been a broad paved road running under the feet of the mountains.  The paving and the finely carved stone drainage channels were undamaged, but the trees beside it had shed many years of leaves onto the road, which had crumbled to a fine dark soil.  The paving could only be seen in a few places.   

“Is that a tower?” Frodo asked, peering up through the leaves.  “It is! It looks abandoned though.” 

“It is a tower,” Edrahil agreed. “One of the old defences of the Calacirya.  There should be a wall, too.  Oh yes, here is the start of it, there in the bushes.” 

“It’s been a long while since I have passed this way,” Finrod said.  He went forward under the trees, and put his hand lightly on the finely-carved pale stone beside an open doorway for a moment, as if in greeting.  “The trees have grown up, more than I had realised.  I didn’t think we had come so far.” 

“in the Calacirya they set strong towers and many sentinels, and at its issue upon the plains of Valmar a host was encamped, so that neither bird nor beast nor elf nor man, nor any creature beside that dwelt in Middle-earth, could pass that leaguer.” Bilbo quoted rather smugly. 

“That’s right,” Amárië said to him. “The defenses that were set up after the fall of the Trees.  I served in that host, for a little while.  Then Finrod’s father asked me to help out with things in Tirion.  Terribly sweet of him.  He saw me sadly doing guard duty at the camp looking quite bereft, and decided that I needed a reminder that Finrod might not be gone forever.  The host was mostly made up of the Vanyar and Maiar then. There were not so many of the Noldor left here.” 

Finrod turned from the tower to say, “And the Teleri, very reasonably, I can’t help feeling, said that they weren’t sending people to guard the Calacirya when all their settlements are outside the walls of the Pelori anyway.  But these towers were made by the Noldor. Maglor’s mother Nerdanel worked on some of them: my father, too. Towers and fortresses are rather more our sort of thing than the Teleri or the Vanyar, and the Ainur are on the whole better with the large scale.  Mountains, and so on.”

Frodo walked forward, looking up at the height of the towers.  The nearest one still had shards of glass visible around the windows, and the remains of hinges visible, although the door itself had vanished.  “They look on quite a large scale to me!”

“All things are relative,” Finrod said following him. “They were manned for a long time.  They had to be large enough to be reasonably comfortable.”

Edrahil said to Frodo, “My lord and I spent some time here with the garrison, after we returned from death. The fortresses were rather shorthanded in those days.”

“Rather pointless, too!” Finrod said.  “Morgoth was quite busy enough in Middle-earth, he was hardly likely to attack Valinor a second time, not least because what was left of the Noldor were there still facing him, though hopelessly outnumbered...  Still, we couldn’t go back and help with that, so we came and did guard duty for a while instead, and very useless we felt doing it, too.” 

“But they are all empty now?” Frodo asked. 

“Yes.” Finrod confirmed. “It took us some time to persuade the Valar that we should stop manning the towers and walls, after the fall of Númenor.  Not that they let us defend the pass when the might of Númenor came ashore anyway.  We were all ordered back to Valimar, leaving Alqualondë and Tirion empty. It didn’t please my uncle Olwë too much, that!  The Teleri were left without defences.  Most of them ignored the order, they took their ships and ran up the coast into the North.  They were never going to leave their ships behind...  But anyway, once Aman was removed from the world there didn’t seem much point to all of this.  The trees have come here instead.” 

He stepped back and looked appraisingly up at the tall grey towers that loomed above the treetops.  “They are in rather a state.” 

“Finrod!  You are supposed to be on a holiday!” Amárië protested. “And didn’t you just say they were pointless now?”

“Well yes,” Finrod admitted.  “But they do look so sad. And it comes to me that my father’s apologies to the Valar for daring to even consider leaving should be remembered.  It wouldn’t take very long just to make them look a little less neglected.” 

Sam looked along the long silent line of empty towers that ran away into the trees along the half-hidden road and then back at Finrod, very doubtfully.  “It looks like a lifetime’s work to me!” he said. 

“Oh well, perhaps if you did it all by hand!” Finrod said.  “This is one of the things where the work is different depending on who is doing it — though I wouldn’t wish to move the trees.  They are beautiful, and the towers can still look out above them and see Tirion and the strands of Eldamar. See Amárië!  I must just show Sam how to call things back out of memory.”

Amárië looked to the sky and shook her head.  “Noldor!” she said. 

“You don’t have to help,” Finrod told her. “Edrahil?” 

“Of course,” Edrahil said inclining his brown head.  He took a harp from the bag slung on one of the horses, and brought it to Finrod, who sat down with it on stone beside the half-hidden road, played a few notes and made an adjustment.

“Ready?” he asked the other elves, who had come to stand with him. They nodded.  Amárië sighed.  “You’d better stand in the middle of the road,” Finrod told the hobbits. “Just in case anything comes loose.” 

“Loose?” Frodo said, looking in alarm at the height of the towers through the leaves, but Finrod was already playing, quiet quicksilver notes that grew in complexity as they listened.

He began to sing, a complex pattern of words in a language that Frodo recognised as an older form of Quenya, though he could not entirely make out all of it, even after so many years of practice with the language.  

The other elves lifted their heads and began to join the song, and after a moment, Amárië, sighing,  joined them. 

Around them, a mist rose, filled with light as the mist that comes up from a river at dawn shines with the first sun.  It lifted as the song did, and wove in long diffuse strands around the walls and windows, the missing doors and broken rooftops. 

And the long line of towers that began to change, shimmering as if there was a heat-haze before them, though the day was shading into evening and the sun was not hot. 

The towers shivered.  Windows and doors faded into place, roofs were lifting into straight lines as the music pulled at them.  Stains and watermarks blurred away.  Frodo would have sworn that some of the trees stepped backwards away from the walls, lifting their long branches in surprise, though recalling it later, he thought that perhaps it had been that the walls stepped away from the trees. 

The music of the harp faded, the voices ended their song, and the towers and walls of the Calacirya shone in the evening light, every window and door perfect as if it had been made yesterday by an enormous army of craftsmen, each one a master of their art. 

“Well!” Sam said, impressed.  “If we had been able to do that after the last ends of the War in the Shire, the clearing up of all the mess would have been done a deal sooner!” 

“That looks much better!” Finrod said.  He handed the harp to Gildor and stepped forward to inspect his work.  Then he swayed, blinking, and Edrahil hurriedly stepped forward to put an arm around him to support him.

“We’d better stop here,” Amárië said, in a tone that was amused and disapproving. “You didn’t have to do it all at once!” 

“It was only calling it back out of memory!” Finrod said. “Galadriel did it for years, in Lothlórien.”  He took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment. “And we do it in Tirion regularly, you know. I’m all right, really, Edrahil!” he said, and attempted to shrug Edrahil off, unsuccessfully.  

“I bet Lothlórien wasn’t in such a state when she started,” Amárië said. “Oh, do sit down, Finrod!”

“Well, perhaps not,” Finrod admitted. 

Edrahil helped Finrod to a bench that was now whole and clear of debris, standing outside the tower door, and lowered him onto it.

“Galadriel had that Fëanorian device of Celebrimbor’s to help her, too” Amárië pointed out, sitting down next to him, pouring out a thin white drink from a flask.  “She didn’t just wander up to a ruin with a harp and a handful of friends and decide that it would be a good idea to do a spot of renovation!  And as for Tirion, when did you ever call anything in Tirion out of so many long years of memory?”

“You can be a terribly stern person sometimes, Amárië,” Finrod said, with a rueful grin, taking the cup. 

“It seems this Elf magic can be a great deal of hard work, even if it does make for a nice quick job.” Sam observed. Finrod sat on the bench without answering, looking tired.  Not one of the worried-looking Elves around them demanded to know yet again what the word ‘magic’ was really supposed to mean. 

“Perhaps,” Frodo suggested to Sam and Bilbo, “this should be a day when we show the Elves some proper hobbit cooking, and make the fire and supper.” 

“Ah!” Sam said, rubbing his hands together in some delight.  “Proper hobbit cooking.  A very welcome change that will be!  But Mr Bilbo is more of a baker than a cook, and if I may say so, Mr Frodo, your cooking never was a patch on mine.  If you two get the fire going, then I shall borrow some a pot or two, and see what I can do with those odd beasts that the hounds caught this morning.  They look like they will stew up very nicely to me.  And perhaps there should be some dumplings to go with them.” 

 “Excellent!” Frodo said. “Your stew would perk up anybody, Sam! I’ll get some firewood.”