To the beeches of Neldoreth I came in the Spring

by bunn

Summary:

Galadriel, new-come to Doriath and feeling a little out of place there, explores the forest of Neldoreth and meets a number of people she did not expect. Celeborn, meanwhile, is in trouble...

A story written for Tolkien Reverse Fandom Bang, for art prompt #73 by Espurrlady / UnicornsInSpace who has been a wonderful collaborator! You can see the photocollage embedded in this story.

Notes:

• For UnicornsInSpace.

Chapter 1: Into the Woods

Galadriel explores a magical forest by Greyjedijaneite

The City

In the West-cavern of Menegroth, great golden lamps hung from the long roots that made up the great cavern-roof, casting a dappled light over Lúthien’s pale skirts.

“Cousin, I am seeking Celeborn. Have you seen him?” Artanis asked, raising her voice a little over the sound of the fountain playing.

Lúthien turned, unsmiling, her shadowy eyes dark and secretive, her pale face hard to read. She must, Artanis thought once again, have some of the power of her mother Melian, but so far, she had showed very little of it — at least where Artanis could see. Lúthien was more often with her father than her mother. She looked like him too.

“He is not here,” Lúthien told her. That was obvious and was exactly the reason that Artanis had asked. Artanis had wandered through a good many of the Thousand Caves in search of her friend, and had already looked around the great cavern-hall before approaching Luthien.

It was sometimes difficult not to be annoyed with Lúthien. With time, she would feel like a proper cousin. Artanis would feel at home in Doriath, if she kept trying. These were Mother’s relatives, and there was no reason to feel awkwardly Noldor among them.

Melian had been more than welcoming: had praised her skills, and helped her find new ones.

The heroes of Doriath had accepted her among them, and had raised no objections to her joining in with the competitions and feats, just as she had done among the princes of the Noldor.

Even Great-uncle Elwë — well, he had come around to her staying here, even if he had been annoyed that Artanis and her brothers had not told him everything from the beginning.

It was a good start.

A dark-haired woman who was probably yet another cousin said, “I think he went down to the river, Artanis. I saw him near the river-stairs.”

“Did he not say where he was going?” Artanis asked her.

The probable cousin shrugged. “North into Neldoreth, as usual, I expect.” She turned back to her spindle: grey thread fine as spider-web in her hand catching the light softly.

Lúthien shook her head and held out a long pale hand for a nightingale to land on her forefinger. It began to sing, a liquid wordless warbling that wove with the sound of falling fountain-water.

Artanis could not understand any of the song, but it was clear everyone else here could.

She turned on her heel and left. At some point she would find the key to Lúthien, but that could wait.

*******

The dark water of the river flowed under huge grey branches and was edged with moss-covered boulders. Myriad leaves shaded moss and water, but here and there, small openings pierced the canopy and sunlight glittered in patches on the water surface, changing the blue shadows to translucent gold.

Children were playing at the water’s edge, splashing one another in the golden shallows, squealing and laughing in the pools.

Artanis stopped on the moss-grown bridge for a moment to watch them. She could feel the care of the River Esgalduin running through the water, as if the river had reached out to Melian, and taken her hand to guard the children at play.

It was not quite like the massive warmth and consideration of the Valar that had once run like bright thread all through the woods and shimmering streams of Eldamar, lit by the distant trees of light and the stars above.

Melian’s power was smaller and closer than any of the Valar, and quite different to most of Vala that Artanis had known well.

The powers of the Valar had been warm as the power of the new mid-summer sun. Even at home in Alqualondë you could feel it around you, by light of golden tree, or in the star-shine of the mountain shadow. In Valimar, where the fountains had danced bright in the light of Laurelin, the power of the Valar had felt so huge that it was hard to imagine anything outside of it.

But Melian’s power flickered through the tree-shadows, as near as the leaves, veined with silver. Once again, Artanis caught at it with her mind trying to fully understand it, but something in it eluded her.

It was a different kind of silver to that of Varda, a darker shade. Was it like stars seen at a great distance, or was it more like star-shadow? If she could only understand it fully, perhaps she would find the heart of this new land at last.

A child slid sideways into a pool, sending up a shriek and a white spray of water. Artanis startled for a moment, ready to run down to the riverside... until the dark-haired child bobbed up to the surface again, laughing through the ripples.

The power of the river, though gentled to watch children here in the heart of Doriath, was wilder than anything Artanis could remember in the West.

What had Beleg said? To taste her waters brought inspiration in poetry, and that those who slept beside the waters often had strange dreams.

The waters might help her know this land, to understand it better. Artanis must try it soon: perhaps once she had found Celeborn.

She went on over the bridge, and the great beech-wood of Neldoreth enfolded her. Tall grey trunks were the wide-spaced pillars of Neldoreth, and the floor was covered in the golden-brown of fallen beech-leaves, but the roof high above her was a deep green.

It was quiet in the wood, with no sign of Celeborn or anyone else, for that matter, though she was quite sure that he had passed this way, and not long ago.

Some way off, she could hear the sharp rat-tat-tat of a woodpecker, and a little later as she followed the barely-visible trail northward, she heard the sound of movement in the distance, and turned in time to see three deer moving through the green depths of the wood, their long legs moving gracefully, great dark eyes observing her without fear.

*******

She walked for a while. Night fell, and stars glittered, here and there among the leaves. Just before the dawn a bright, refreshing rain fell, and at midmorning, she came to a spring, and quenched her thirst.

The light from high above the green beech-leaves now slanted and was more golden than before, and was beginning to doubt her first instinct that told her Celeborn had gone this way. The trees opened up ahead of her to form an open glade, where the path she was following led past a row of great rough-hewn boulders.

In the middle of the clearing, one tall strong oak tree with deep-patterned bark stood knee-deep among the long grass and the white foam of scattered flowers.

Bees were humming, and as she stepped forward into the warm afternoon sunlight, she caught the sound of a shrill song, and saw a cloud of tiny golden-crested birds, scarcely larger than the bees, swooping and playing up into the branches of the oak.

Artanis looked up to follow their twittering flight through the branches. Then she blinked, startled. The oak tree had opened strange deepset eyes, and was regarding her with interest.

“I have heard of the Tree-folk of Yavanna,” Artanis said, filled with delight. “But never have I met one until this moment. May the Giver of Fruits smile upon our meeting.”

The tree did not reply. The gold-crests fluttered around it and settled in the leafy hair like so many jewels, while the Ent lifted long arms to the sunlight.

“I’m seeking an elf called Celeborn,” Artanis said. “He’s tall, and silver-haired, a kinsman of the King. Have you seen him? I was told that he went this way.”

The birds sang, and the sun shone on the leaves, and listening, Artanis became aware that the ent was replying, but not in the language she expected.

Of course, she thought. Why would a person who was almost a tree speak in any language of the Elves, here at home in the woods?

A deep rumbling song almost beyond the limits of hearing hummed through the glade, filled with thoughts full of roots and water seeping, light on leaves and the rhythmic sway of branches.

She concentrated all her thought upon it, opening her ears and mind, and after a moment, sliding off her shoes as Melian had taught her, to stand barefoot in the grass, taking in the ent-song through the soles of her feet.

As she listened, she began to pick out themes, as if the ent were weaving a tapestry of sound through voice and the rustle of leaves. The long slow moments full of water and bark were layered over with a dapple of sunny and shady days.

She was just beginning to understand, and to find a way to reply in the same way, when a clear joyful call came from among the trees, and a second ent came striding into the glade, as unlike the first as an apple tree is from an oak.

The new arrival was not so tall as the first, and was wrapped in a smooth green rind in place of the thick bark. Leafy hair was decked with pink and white blossoms.

The oak-ent turned and reached out a long arm, and for a moment both ents stood and regarded Artanis with their strange, deep eyes flecked with gold like sun through moving leaves. They were so beautiful, standing together like that, that she could not but laugh with joy, feeling herself childlike before their age and beauty.

She stood, and turned ideas and language in her mind delightedly. Their language, she could tell, was slow as the passing of winter, and swift as the unfurling of a leaf in spring.

She bowed to them both, and turned the movement into a kind of dance, conveying, she hoped, her delight at meeting them both.

She learned a little of their thought, in that first meeting, too little to be entirely sure if either of them had seen Celeborn: their lives were not concerned with elves. And yet there was a delight to them that answered her own, and a sense of fellowship that came from nothing more than being and breathing in the same great forest.

At last, as the sun was setting, they turned, and hand in long-fingered twiggy hand, they strode away into the hall-like shadow of the trees.

Artanis watched them go in wonder. Celeborn was still ahead of her, somewhere. She could feel it, in the same way that she could feel the voices of the trees around her. Her mind was busy with the song that still echoed through the ground and the silvery-grey trunks and long roots of the beech trees. As she walked, she began to understand the song more clearly, and then, understanding, she began to join in their soft, rustling song.

As she walked on, singing a wordless song of beech-trees through the purple dusk of the woods, the stars began to come out one by one into the evening sky, high above the leafy roof.

Chapter 2: On the Margins

Some distance north of her, within sight of the forest-eves, Celeborn was looking up at those same stars pricking one by one into light, and knew that his danger was growing.

Melian’s power encircled all the lands of Doriath, holding them safe from the things that roamed the land beyond. But he had come near to the limits of the authority of the Lady of Doriath.

Now, he stood on an upthrust swell of grey stone near the edge of the trees, and looked north where the great trees failed.

A grey bare land ran down into shadow. Beside him, through the shadows at the bottom of a deep rocky gorge a dark water ran: the young Esgalduin river, not yet gentled or tamed by Melian’s power and the soothing song of a thousand thousand trees.

Here in the north, the thin cold waters that spilled over the black rocks of Ered Gorgoroth that ran through the terrible vale of Nan Dungortheb were filled with sharp-edged, bitter shadows. Esgalduin’s waters ran through the bare black rocks with a sound like cackling, and wisps of mist were beginning to rise from the water far below.

Celeborn recalled travelling this way by starlight, under trees that drowsed in the sleep of Yavanna, when the dark hid nothing worse than tree-roots and the song of nightingales. Esgalduin had been young and joyful then, laughing with the elves in the starlight.

The memory was painfully strong, overpowering. It was hard to tell it from the present.

Something that could have been the dark smoke from a fire was reaching skyward out of the valley. But it was not smoke. Another reached towards the stars, closer. The stream chuckled obscenely. Almost hidden in the shadows, he could see a pale figure.

Or could he? Could the stream ever run clear again from the spring, on some cloudless distant night under Elbereth’s stars?

A voice was calling, faintly. Was it a voice, or a bird?

It would be most unwise to answer, and yet... Caught in the memory of the starlit past, Celeborn stepped forward, down from the rock, following the edge of the gorge down towards the open land ahead, and the mountain-shadow rearing beyond. Around him, the Girdle curled in drifts and swirls, filled with scattered images of past and future: trees golden with the light of autumn: trees bare and black against the snow. Fanged shadows, blood, and behind it all, the faintest salt smell of the Sea.

It was unwise to walk here, and Melian had said as much.

But here in the torn margins of the Girdle, where the bitter power of the river was untrammeled, you could glimpse not only the past, but hints of the maybe-futures of Doriath.

The potential of it drew Celeborn back here,again and again, despite the danger.

Chapter 3: The Bumpus

Artanis had come to a place where the trees drew back to show the full glory of the stars of Varda, framed by dark leaves. There was a small pool in the clearing, still as clear glass and filled to overflowing with star-reflections. She stepped forward to admire them, and realised that there was a large furry bundle curled up in the middle of an area of flattened grass beside the pool.

The soft tips of its dark fur caught the starlight, and the one large paw that she could see was tipped with savage claws. She paused, one hand on the sword on her belt, and prepared to withdraw silently.

But at that moment the bear blinked awake. The light had disturbed it, the light that shimmered around her, a keepsake from the lost Trees of Light at home.

It folded its large paws over its long muzzle and its eyes, and then yawned widely.

“Who are you, Shiny?” it said, in a deep grumbling voice. “I was having a nap, you know.”
Its voice gave a strong, rather old-fashioned accent to the Sindarin words. In fact, Artanis thought, fascinated, it sounded rather like Beleg.

She introduced herself, and mentioned Celeborn.

The bear uncurled itself, revealing a round furry stomach, and sat down on its backside, resting its large paws on its haunches. As bears went, she thought, it seemed a fairly small one.

“Ah,” it said. “Him. He comes through my lands from time to time. Sometimes he has apples.” The bear extended an inquisitive snout towards her. “Do you have apples?”

“Alas,” she told it, amused, “I have no apples. I am used to travelling with little food. I walked across the icy wastes of Helcaraxë where even the ice bears fear to roam, from Aman in the west all the long hungry way to the Lammoth, where cold sea-winds blow across the empty sands under the mountain-shadow.”

The bear widened its brown eyes and put its ears forward in surprise. “Sweet Summertide!” it exclaimed. “A terrible place that must be, and a terrible journey! May I never go to such a place! Why-ever did you do that?”

“I was hunting the Enemy,” she told the bear. “We crossed the Ice to avenge my grandfather, whom the Enemy had slain. We came to the aid of my kin here, who the Enemy threatened with his armies.”

That was what she usually said when that question came up. Only one Enemy, always, when anyone spoke of Finwë’s death, and yet... always, when she spoke of her grandfather, or of the fall of the Trees, everyone knew what was meant by the Enemy.

And yet, when she said it, the image of Fëanor came flicking through her mind. Fëanor, furious in the red torchlight in Tirion, daubed with blood that was nearly black in the darkness after the fighting in Alqualondë, leading the Noldor out to an unwinnable war. Dangerous, greedy and bitter. Clever, but not as clever as he thought he was. All his sons were the same.

“If someone had killed my grandfather,” the bear told her very firmly, “I’d keep well clear. No point getting killed yourself. Specially there was a long hungry walk in it too. Don’t look for trouble! Good advice, that is.”

“I’ll bear it in mind,” Artanis said lightly. Not one of her kinsfolk of Doriath had been so forward in voicing their opinions, and yet she recognised the sentiment as one she had seen in more than one face. The Noldor need space to quarrel in, people said. Rash beyond measure, she’d heard. She had even caught the thought in passing: warmonger.

Not from Great-uncle Elwë who had been kind enough, if a little stiff after the news had come out about Alqualondë. At least, until she had been able to sit down and talk to him properly about which side she’d fought on.

Certainly not from Melian, who had been so delighted to gain a talented new student and was full of praise for Artanis’ skills.

Not from Beleg, or Mablung, or Celeborn either: all three of them knew who their Enemy was: they had fought his armies on the slopes of Amon Ereb before even Fëanor had set foot in Middle-earth.

But in safe, engirdled Doriath, it was galling to find herself counted in a group with half-uncle Fëanor.

One could not take offence at a bear, however. It had given her the best advice that a kindly bear of the woods could conceive of, and she would accept it in the spirit with which it was given.

“I’ll take you to see a friend of mine,” the bear said. “The Bumpus. He’ll give us both a fine meal. A fine baker, the Bumpus is.”

“Is your friend... also a bear?” Artanis tried to imagine what a bear who was a baker might look like.

The bear shook its head. “No no no! He’s a Bumpus. But there’s only one of him, and so he’s The Bumpus, you see.”

Artanis turned her head north for a moment, considering. But she was intrigued, and her errand to Celeborn was not urgent. It would make a tale to tell when she returned to Menegroth, and perhaps even Lúthien might be interested to hear it.

“Very well,” she decide. “I will come with you, bear, and meet The Bumpus.”

The bear set off at once, following a narrow trickle of a stream that ran from the clear pool down between the tree-roots and along a narrow way floored softly with many years of beech-leaves. It was darker here, but the bear moved with confidence, and soon the stream widened to a long mere, glittering with moonlight from the rising moon,and fringed with dark alder trees.

At the far end of the mere, nearly in the water, a roughly-shaped tall-roofed hut stood in the moonlight. It had no windows, being entirely built from unshaped sticks - but you could see that there was a fire within from the firelight peeping through chinks in the walls and roof.

A smell was wafting over the water, and although it was entirely true that Artanis could easily walk for days without any need of food and win a hard-fought battle at the end of it, the smell was still tantalisingly delicious.

It reminded her of the bread of Alqualondë, the smell of it when you woke up safe at home at a rare and windless hour, when the sea spread out like glass in the starlight, and the white shapes of the moored swanships made strange and marvellous reflections on the water.

******
The Bumpus, when he emerged from his house, proved to be most unusual. Artanis had never seen anything quite like him, and would probably have been tempted to draw her sword at the sight of him, if the bear had not greeted him with such obvious enthusiasm.

He looked rather like a lizard, if a lizard had been nearly as tall as Artanis, with a long tail, clumsily flapping rear feet, long pointed ears and moustaches. His chin descended to a long, wobbling point, shaped rather like a scaly beard.

He was wearing a rather incongruous apron that tied behind him, under the row of spikes along his back.

Once the bear had embraced him enthusiastically, the Bumpus insisted on holding out its slightly damp hand for Artanis to shake, smiling hopefully around its long yellow teeth.

The smile was engaging. Artanis found herself smiling back.

“We don’t get too many visitors up here,” the Bumpus told her shyly. “A bit out of the way for most people. I like it that way. I rather like my privacy, you see.”

“I am sorry to have disturbed you, Bumpus,” Artanis said. “It delights me to know you live here, baking in your house by the lake in the moonlight. I shall be on my way now, and trouble you no more.”

The Bumpus flapped his tail loudly in agitation, clasping his long-fingered hands. “O no!” he cried. “Please stay! It’s only that I like my visitors to come in ones and twos, not in bustling crowds. ‘Tis rare indeed to meet one so fierce and fair and fey as you, my lady.”

He rushed into his house and came out again at once with a tray. “Please do have a bannock! They are light and brown and just this minute warm from my oven.”

“I would like a bannock,” the bear said very urgently, extending his nose towards the tray and sniffing extravagantly. “Or two bannocks. Perhaps more..”

The Bumpus smiled, and offered the tray.

And so those three strangely assorted companions sat together beside the quiet moonlit lake, enjoying the taste of warm bannocks spread with sweet berry-jam, which the Bumpus called Gloo.

“I feel almost as if I were sitting by the sea near my home in the elven-city of Alqualondë with some of my little cousins, with the light of Telperion spilling silver through the pass of the Calacirya behind me,” she said to the Bumpus.

“It is strange to me that nearly all the time I lived in Alqualondë, I was eager to be gone. I longed to travel, to learn new things, and meet new people. Yet here I am in Doriath, deep in the woods and far from the shores of the sea, and I find that now, it is as if I were looking back over my shoulder to Alqualondë, where I may never stand again... It looks brighter now in memory than ever it did when I lived there.”

“A lovely-sounding name. Aal-qua-londë,” the Bumpus said, stretching out the unfamiliar name. “I wish I could see it.”

“I wish I could too!” said the bear, looking up from his fifth bannock and somewhat daubed with Goo.

“I will show you,” Artanis said, and got to her feet. From Melian she had learned to call on the many powers that ran through the land, to strengthen and defend it. But she did not need such elemental skills for this. Every child in Alqualondë could call up at least a wavering image of their home, and Artanis was a master of the art.

She raised a hand and spoke a single word, and the moonlit mere spread out before them into a great ocean, while around them buildings rose from the ground: the warm brown stone porticoes of the quayside giving way to the open ground where nine wooden longhouses still stood in in a circle, the heart of the city, where first the Teleri had come ashore and built their first homes in Eldamar, looking back into the east where their kinsfolk still walked under the trees.

A little way up the hill behind her as Artanis turned, the slender Noldor-built towers of the upper city glittered in the moonlight, surrounded by the swaying white leaves of the poplar trees with their pale trunks that were planted along all the main routes through the city.

In the water, seals lifted their heads and sang their strange sad songs, while elves walked along the quay, and children danced. A pair of swans led a line of fluffy grey cygnets into the water and paddled past the stern of a pale ship whose prow rose to a gilded figurehead, mirroring the curve of the swan’s proud neck.

 

“Oh!” the Bumpus said softly to himself, and turned right around to look at it all, with his large tail flapping behind him.

“Very fine,” said a voice with a distinctive accent, from somewhere among the wooden longhouses. “A treat to see it all laid out like this by one who knows the lands of the uttermost West so well... though I’m not sure that I’d exchange the holly-woods of Region, or the beech-forests of Neldoreth, even for such a fine view of the sea.”

“A star shines on the hour of our meeting, Beleg Strongbow,” Artanis said, recognising the voice.

“And may the trees grow tall along the path we walk together,” Beleg replied. It was a greeting that her grandfather Olwë had occasionally used, when he was in reminiscent mode. “What led you to return to Alqualondë in the forest of Neldoreth, Artanis?”

Artanis let the illusion drop away, and Beleg strolled over to join them. He was dressed as usual in dark greys and muted greens and he had his great bow on his back - though surely, Artanis thought, he was not going hunting in such fine red boots.

“No great reason,” Artanis told him. “I came this way, seeking Celeborn, and meeting the Bumpus along the way, my mind turned to the land of my childhood.When I mentioned it, the Bumpus and the Bear wished to see it for themselves.”

The Bumpus was looking rapidly from Beleg to Artanis and the bear, and his throat bobbed as he swallowed.

“I must be seeing to my baking and brewing,” he said, shuffling his feet and flapping his tail nervously. “Good evening, and thankyou! Thankyou! Goodbye!”

And with that he vanished inside his house, and very firmly drew the door closed behind him.
Artanis could still hear him shuffling about and muttering to himself in there, of course, since his house was not very far away and mostly made of sticks.

“He doesn’t like to have too many people visit at once,” the bear said and shrugged, as it began to eat the last bannock. “It makes him nervous.”

“The Bumpus and I are old friends,” Beleg said, smiling. “I am used to his quirks. I see you have eaten up all his baking, young bear. I shall have to wait for Thursday next, or perhaps next year, to eat my fill.”

“Alas that you have come too late,” Artanis said, amused. “Did you come here to sample the Bumpus’s baking?”

Beleg shook his head, smiling. “No. I think, indeed, we may have come here upon the same errand, for I too am seeking Celeborn. I heard that he had come this way, and I am concerned for him. Sometimes, I think, he looks too far back, or perhaps it is that he tries to look too far ahead.”

Artanis frowned. “Speak more clearly. Melian’s power protects the forest of Neldoreth, as it does the whole of Doriath. No orcs nor spider-thing from the shadows prowl these woods, and even the wolves are half-tame. What harm do you fear that Celeborn might come to here?”

“I’ll tell you as we walk, “ Beleg said.

Notes:

You can see Tolkien's picture of the Bumpus here

Chapter 4: The Silver Stag

They left the moonlit mere behind, and the bear happily curled up next to it, sucking his paws. As they walked, clouds crept across the night sky, hiding the moon. Above them, shadowed leaves were rustling in a growing wind.

“Speak then,” Artanis commanded, when Beleg walked on in silence.

“Why were you seeking Celeborn?” Beleg asked, without answering her. This was the kind of conduct that she found difficult to deal with from Lúthien. Why could nobody answer a straightforward question?

Well, she could do so and perhaps he would return the courtesy.

“At the Feast of the New Leaves in the Hall of Pines — were you there? No? No matter. It came to the time of the calling of the challenges. After the King and Queen had spoken, Celeborn called for a hero to ride out and take the razor, scissors, and comb that were set long ago between the ears of the great Boar Trwyd by Oromë, Lord of the Hunt. So I did that.”

Beleg stopped in mid-stride and stared at her, half-moonlit through the leaf-dapple. “You did what?”

“I rode out to take the prize.” Artanis could not quite restrain her smile, but she was trying as hard as she could to make it not a smug one. “Here.”

She pulled the pouch from her belt, and pulled out a fine linen cloth. Unwrapping it, she held out the three tools: the comb, the razor, and the scissors.

They were quite plain, though well-made, and still had a few coarse boar-hairs threaded through them, but there was a glint to them, even after so long in Middle-earth, that said that these three things, long ago, had seen the light of the great Lamps, the unsullied light that had poured across the world before even the Trees of Light had been thought of.

“You killed the Boar Trwyd?” Beleg looked genuinely shaken.

Artanis laughed. “No. I could see he was a creature of Oromë. I am not one of his followers: in Valinor I studied with Aulë, and with Yavanna, but never with Oromë. Though, I think I have proved my hunting skills are not entirely lacking. I tracked him for nine days, and when I came up with him at last, I set a sleep upon him, and took the things while he snored. I don’t think he will miss them.”

“Well!” Beleg said, and set off again, walking more quickly, his crimson boots looking near black among the pale trunks. “The Boar Trwyd has carried those between his ears for as long as I can remember, and nobody has come up close enough to him to take them from him since long before the first moon-rise.”

 

“So,” Artanis said. “I have answered your questions, now, answer mine. What peril do you see that lies ahead of Celeborn? For he is my friend, and I would not see him hurt.”

“The peril lies within him,” Beleg said. “For Celeborn is not content within the Girdle of Doriath. He is always looking out and beyond, over the mountains, into the future, into the past. The Girdle will not hold a lord of Doriath who chooses to pass though it.”

“Why should it? Celeborn is very able.”

“I’ll not dispute that,” Beleg said, and frowned. “But where the authority of the Queen meets with other, darker powers...You know, Artanis, that I am captain of the March-wardens. I have seen many strange things upon the borders of Doriath, and heard reports of wilder things that I have not yet seen. If it were me, and I had passed the margins of Neldoreth and entered the mazes of Melian’s Girdle, then I would wish to have my friends come to help me.”

“So you do not know what you fear?”

“No. But when I got word that Celeborn had crossed Neldoreth, I came with all haste.” Beleg’s smile flashed in the shadowy gloom. “Of course, I didn’t know that one of the great princes of the Noldor had had the same idea, or perhaps I would not have troubled.”

From someone else, the gentle teasing might have raised her hackles, but from someone with Beleg’s depth of age and experience, Artanis was inclined to take it as a compliment.

“I don’t know this land, not yet,” she admitted. “I do not know how to judge what is rash, and what is not here.”

“What is rash to the Sindar may not seem rash to the Noldor,” Beleg said, and showed one tooth in another teasing smile. “Celeborn is able indeed, but I wish he would not go alone.” Beleg paused and turned his head, as if listening. “I can feel in the roots of the trees and the wind on my cheek that the borders of Doriath are rising in the north. Can you not feel it, Artanis?”

Artanis could feel it too: the branches above creaking as they moved in the growing gale. Clouds were scudding swift across the sky, and the moonlight danced with the swaying trees across the forest floor as the racing clouds and moving leaves cast wild shadows.

A fierce rain began, silver drops driving suddenly through the gaps in the trees and beating on their shoulders in the dark.

Artanis reached out., using all the arts that Melian had taught her. There was something there, like a gathering of threads, a knot in the distance, pulled taut.

They were moving fast now, Beleg leading the way, and to her surprise, Artanis found that even she must put every ounce of effort and concentration into keeping pace with him, while the silver droplets whirled past both of them, and the song of the forest was loud in their ears as they ran.

*****
The wind dropped, suddenly, and before them in the grey and misty dawn a tall stone loomed.

Beyond it the trees failed, and a dim grey mist filled the land, while above some way off, almost lost in the mist, Artanis could feel the jagged darkness of a mountain-slope.

On the slopes below the stone, almost lost in the roiling mist, the pale figure of a silver stag lay sprawled, as if it had fallen from the peak of the rock.

“Celeborn,” Beleg said, in a heavy voice. “Artanis, I...”

Artanis leapt swiftly down from the trees into the mist. She held back the mingled powers of the Girdle and nan Dungortheb, almost without thought as she ran, and flung her arms around the great stag.

It was Celeborn, and... it was not. The thick coat smelled musky, and was wet with dew. The eyes were almost closed, and looked glazed, and the horns... this was not an illusion. This was a true transformation, and she did not think it had happened willingly.

Beleg came forging through the coiled mists, head down and shoulders braced as if he were walking against the current of a deep river.

Together, they gathered up the stag and began to carry him. Every step was hard, as if the darkness in the valley was reluctant to let them go; as if the Girdle was reluctant to admit them. Though the sky was lightening to the East and above them on the northern border of Doriath, a stubborn darkness lay over the vale behind them, a darkness that had a hunger to it.

The stag was heavy. Perhaps it was only the trailing limbs and awkwardness of the horns that made it seem hard to move him. The grass underfoot was wet, and draped with fine cobwebs. Artanis swept them away with a foot.

Beleg shook his head. “Not her,” he said, in a low voice. Artanis’s thoughts fled at once to the terrible night that fell upon Valinor. She remembered the tales that Ungoliant had fled to Nan Dungortheb, and felt a sense of sudden creeping dread. She would have drawn sword, if she had a hand to spare.

“Not her, but her kinsfolk wander here, sometimes, and their lesser kin keep watch for them.” Beleg glanced north, to the darkness in the vale.

“The Sun is in the sky,” Artanis pointed out.

“We’d best not be still here when it sets,” Beleg agreed with a grim twist to his mouth.

At last, they struggled up past the tall stone, until they were past the first of the trees,and could hear birdsong again. They laid Celeborn’s still figure in a patch of morning sun. His eyelids fluttered, but his stag-form lay still.

“Has this ever happened before?” Artanis asked.

“You’d need to ask the Lady Melian,” Beleg replied, with a half-shrug. “They say she’s been teaching you her arts. You’ve heard nothing of such transformations, I take it? It will be a long walk back to Menegroth if we must needs carry him all the way.”

Artanis considered, going to her knees beside the silver stag. She touched its neck, its sharp silver cloven feet, and shook her head. “This is not Melian’s craft. I would rather have said that it was... Beleg, did Oromë ride the vale of Dungortheb in the far past?”

“Oromë’s hunters rode across all these lands, once,” Beleg answered, a smile beginning to tug at the corner of his mouth. “You met his boar not so far from here, didn’t you?”

From her belt pouch, Artanis pulled out the comb, the razor and the scissors, that for long years had been lodged between the ears of the Boar Trwyd.

With the razor, she cut the hair of the deer’s chin, and with the scissors, she trimmed the shaggy hair between its long ears, and then she took up the silver-glinting comb and ran it through the hair on the stag’s neck, and back, and legs.

As she combed, she sang the song the ents had taught her, and held in her mind bright images: Celeborn coming forward to greet her, when first she had come to Menegroth. Celeborn asking them eager questions about Aman, and about their journey across the Helcaraxë. Celeborn, crying out a challenge in the Hall of Pines, and meeting her eyes, as if daring her to take up the challenge and prove her worth before all of Doriath.

The stag’s eyes fluttered as she combed and sang, and then its face shifted, and the silver horns moved a little and became a shining cascade of hair about his shoulders and tangled in his fingers.

His eyes opened, and met hers. “Galadriel,” he said. “Galadriel! I slept, and looked back and I saw the Hunter riding. And I looked ahead, and I saw you, Galadriel.”
“There are other ways to look back, and forward and far afield,” she said, and took his reaching hand. “Less perilous ways, that do not lead to paths that even the Noldor would deem rash.”

Celeborn smiled.

“I met your challenge,” she said to him. “See! These are the things that Oromë left between the ears of the Boar Trwyd.”

Celeborn glanced at them, and back to her. “I knew you were the only one who would or could.”

Beleg interrupted them, pulling a soft grey cloak from his pack. “I think that perhaps, Celeborn, you should put this on. Artanis may not be troubled by the sight of your naked form, but if you plan to return to Menegroth, your current state is sure to cause gossip.”

Chapter 5: Come with me and be my love

Summary:

Before the fall of mighty kings in Nargothrond and Gondolin, we crossed the mountains...

... Some years later...

The tall stone gates of Menegroth, crafted by the Dwarves with all their skill, stood open to the purple evening. The tall trees whose roots held firm the rocky hill above the river were decked with many lights that twinkled gold and green against the fiercer elemental fire of the stars of Elbereth.

Melian stood there on the steps, golden-green and gracious, with Thingol silver-haired and greycloaked beside her, smiling. Lúthien was dancing on the space before the bridge, and Daeron, perched perilously on the bridge parapet wall, was playing his flute.

Most of the elves around the gates, talking, singing softly, and watching Lúthien dance were dark or silver-haired cousins of Doriath, but among them were distinctive golden heads: the princes of the House of Finarfin, and a handful of short broad bearded folk.

“Off on the road with Dwarves!” Finrod said to his sister. “What fun! I am looking forward to hearing all of your adventures. Where are you going first?”

“The Dwarf-road,” she said, smiling. “All the way across eastern Beleriand, Thargelion, and through the Ered Luin into the Laiquendi lands.”

“I have cousins there,among the Laiquendi” Celeborn put in. “It has been a few years since we have heard from them, and I have never seen the great forests and lakes beyond the Mountains. After that... Well. Your sister wants to try to find the fabled Dwarf-kingdom of the Hithaeglir. And beyond the Hithaeglir, who knows?”

Galadriel smiled, and put an arm around Finrod. “We’ll tell you all about it, when we get back. Beleg says that long ago, there were vast forests beyond even the Hithaeglir, where we may find Elves left behind on the Great Journey. Imagine their languages, the ways they will differ from our own customs! Perhaps we will even find our way all the way back to Cuivienen.”

“I hope you know what you’ve taken on, kinsman,” Aegnor said to Celeborn. “This new wife of yours will drag you half across Middle-earth and into a dragon’s den, just to find out what goes on in there, you do know that?”

Celeborn laughed. “Of course I do. I’m looking forward to it, in fact. Life with my beautiful Galadriel will, above all, never be dull.”

Galadriel picked up her pack. “Let us say our farewells to the King and Queen,” she said to Celeborn. “It’s a fine night for walking in the woods.”

Notes:

The idea of the random challenges, the Boar Trwyd (alt spelling!) and his unusual headpiece are taken from the medieval Welsh Arthurian story, Culhwch and Olwen. The Bumpus is stolen from an early version of the Tolkien poem 'Perry-the-Winkle' in which the kindly yet scary baker is the Bumpus rather than a troll, as in the later version.