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THE 247TH YEAR OF THE SECOND AGE
Alqualondë
Finarfin watched the gull move along the shore. It hopped back and forth between the waterline and the larger crags, collecting a hoard of mussels in the shade and pecking lightly at each, a meticulous rite as though determining which might hold the choicest meat. At length, one of the smaller specimens was selected and borne aloft, soaring for a heady moment through the air before finding itself set loose to plummet and split on the rocks below. The gull dived, waddled to the shell, plucked out its prize.
Then it was in the air once more, gliding back to the little pile and beginning the ritual again.
A tray rested upon the table beside him and its presence weighed with increasing accusation against Finarfin’s mind. His own morning ritual was long since done and he knew well enough that savoring these last cold dregs of tea was naught more than an excuse for delay. It was a simple enough task: lift the salver and bear it past the first four doors, slice the figs, knock and leave the whole upon the sideboard in the passage. Eärwen’s instructions, as ever, had been simple and direct. And in truth, he had managed it well enough the previous evening after she departed, each step followed with painstaking care and, to his surprise, rewarded by a murmur of thanks through the door.
It was that murmur, he realized as he watched the gull drop a second shell and dive in its wake, the quiet brush of thank you, atta, handed through the carved cypress that stayed him now. His heart had shattered anew at the sound—how many years of longing to hear that voice again!—and he had wept bitterly as soon as he reached his own chambers.
Thank you, atta.
Finarfin took the chair wheels in hand and turned back toward the table. He poured a puddle of cream into the bottom of a saucer, then spooned a mound of jammed falapië1 over top. He had never yet found these anywhere but the coasts of Alqualondë—a thornless variety of blackberry, unusually small, tart even when cooked—and he had ensured a pot of them was present upon the breakfasting board each morning since his son’s return. Ingoldo had ever been partial to them. When he was a babe in arms, he would perch on his parents’ laps and gum the fruit with a toothless smile, or inadvertently crush it in his eagerness and only salvage the juice by stuffing the entirety of a chubby fist into his mouth. Once he had grown into childhood, he would eat them as Finarfin taught him instead: piled over cream with a drizzle of honey and cinnamon.
They had avoided this house in the years since the Darkening. In Tirion, the business of state and bustle of courtiers kept one’s mind occupied, but here the silence was too loud, the ghosts of their children too insistent.
He tried not to think of that bright boy while he sprinkled the ground spice over the saucer, or as he plucked a pansy blossom from the cluster on the table and arranged it alongside the scoop of berries, just as he had done every morning when his son was a boy.
It was odd, but the sundering had been more easily managed when there was no hope of reunion. He could go about the hours in his own quiet anguish and draw comfort from the days’ rhythm, from the steady monotony as the wounds of loss bound together, then the wounds of war, the wounds of betrayal. And now Findaráto had returned beyond hope—nay perhaps not Findaráto, did he use the name now? Or was he still what Beleriand had made of him? Eärwen had not mentioned it. She called her son Ingoldo as ever, and amid the upheaval Finarfin had not thought to ask.
But by any name, he had come home; and with him came that breathless weight of loss, pressing in with all its former strength upon his father’s soul.
Finarfin shook his head. The delay was becoming unkind, he reflected with a rueful glance toward the window, for the sun had passed above the harbor long since and still his son had not broken his fast. He squared his shoulders, as though this too was a morning faced on the sinking shores, filled his lungs with a quick breath. Then he lifted the salver, shifted it to his lap and made his way at last into the passage.
It had surprised him at first how much he enjoyed the challenge of these simple processes. In Beleriand, even the thought of them had seemed insurmountable and he would retreat into anger whenever the healers asked after his progress, or when Almion encouraged him to try a new task unaided. He had been an unexpected balm, Findis’ son, pious and staid though he was—a calm presence undaunted by his uncle’s melancholy or bursts of irritation. It had been Almion’s persistence that drew him out at last, and Finarfin’s lips twitched to recall the uncharacteristic grin when he first retrieved his own plate from the sideboard and carried it, filled, to the open space beside his nephew. Almion had been all solemnity again in an instant, passing the flagon of diluted wine and observing gravely that the apple selection that morning was particularly fine.
Finarfin turned the corner and twitched his left leg to steady the tray. It was a dance, he had found, filled with its own precision and beauty of motion, and what remained of his legs had become as nimble and dexterous as a second pair of arms.
He drew up just shy of the fourth door and felt the urge to delay loom again as he faced the carved cypress. But he pressed it down quickly this time, his will forcing his arms into motion and transferring the salver to the low sideboard. He lifted the knife, sliced the three figs, poured a glass of lemon water. The pansy had toppled down while he glided along the passage and he reached out to wipe the jam from the lower petal, repositioning it carefully before licking the berry traces from his thumb. He straightened the knife, shifted the small spoon to rest beside it. It was an ornate thing, silver and in the likeness of a swan, its wings spread to form the shallow bowl and neck craning upwards into a handle, where the head would drape across the back of the hand. This too was chosen in sentiment, he realized with quick chagrin. It was one of three that remained of the old set, a favorite among each of his children. Ingoldo had taken the other five during the mad scramble in the dark, carrying them into exile, that they—the four children and their father—might sit together in the far lands and eat, and remember the Light, and draw close for a brief hour to all that was lost.
But he had turned from his children in the dark and they were gone, spoons and lands sought after, swallowed by the waters with the bodies of his sons. Nostalgia would not heal that rift.
He shuddered, then filled his lungs and rolled his chair to rest before the door, knocked.
There was only silence at first, not even the rustle of bedclothes or the soft pad of foot upon board, and Finarfin’s heart fell as he lingered with breath held and palm pressed against the wood. It had been a lapse, then, the previous night’s acknowledgment. He remained unforgiven, the chasm yawned between them still.
“Findaráto?” A thump, a soft hiss, a shuffling sound in the quiet. Then the old certainty rose through his spirit and he knew that his son was there, hovering less than an arm’s width beyond the door. Almost, he imagined, almost he could feel the warmth of him reaching his palm, and his heart pounded in his throat.“I am late in my duty, I know…“ His voice failed and he leaned in to rest his head against the carved wood. “Onya…”2 he breathed, a cracked plea slipping through the barrier. He felt his son’s thought reach out in reflex against his own and Finarfin pressed all his love into that touch. It was faint and fragile, tense as a wary doe who stood poised for flight. “I will leave it here if it is thy wish. I will leave it and return to the hall as thy mother directed. But oh, my son, to have thee returned and find us sundered anew…I think it more than I can bear.”
Again there was silence, then the cracked voice reached through the cypress once more. “I do not mean to cause thee pain.”
“Nor I thee, my dear one.” He fought to hold himself in composure as each syllable was gathered in, savored close against his heart. Then slowly he drew back from the door till only his palm lingered against the smooth wood. “Forgive me,” he said after a long moment, forcing his words to be light and controlled, “it is cruel of me to press thee. I will go.”
To this was no response and he turned the chair away, cursing himself for having allowed an impulsive hope to cloud his equilibrium, and swung the wheels into motion.
Then he heard the quiet rasp of key against latch, a handle turning.
“Come or go,” his son’s voice drifted after him, expressionless and weary, “I know there is no cruelty meant.”
He turned swiftly at the sound and found the door hovering a hand’s width ajar. His son’s footsteps were silent as a cat’s, but he felt the other’s thought draw back into the dim chamber and knew he had left the way open. But with the invitation at last before him, Finarfin found himself hesitating. He will send for thee when he is ready. Eärwen had told him naught beyond it and each hour of this past fortnight he had delved and prodded at the reason for the distance. Why Eärwen and not himself? Surely theirs had been the more bitter break, disowned upon the harbor stair only a stone’s throw from here. Had his own desertion, then, been the worse for its delay?
But he had paid in blood. Surely, surely he must have paid enough in blood that they might speak now of forgiveness.
He drew the tray back onto his lap and pushed forward before his nerve failed. The chamber was lined on two walls with windows opening out onto the shore, but the curtains remained drawn across each of these, muffling the light and leaving the room shrouded and dim. It was tidy, each item still as Finarfin recalled. They had spent the last eight hundred years and more just as Ingo had left them, lifted only so they might be dusted, then returned precisely to their former homes. It was the same in each child’s room, here where they had been born, where they had grown. Their chambers in Tirion, of course, had been repurposed centuries past, but here beside the Sea they remained enshrined. That was Eärwen’s doing and Finarfin had wept when he learned of it, for her rage had been as Ossë’s at their parting, her grief as bitter as Uinen’s. But here her children lived on in memory’s stasis: Aikanáro’s butterflies preserved upon the wall, Nerwen’s abaci and equations scrawled across the plaster, Angaráto’s clever mechanized creatures. And here within this chamber, Findaráto’s scattered collections—rocks, shells, nameless things that washed ashore in the twilit years, three-legged toys and various broken items, each carefully labeled and set in its own place of honor.
And there, Finarfin’s heart caught in his throat, there Findaráto stood beside the corner window where one curtain was pulled aside, the beloved silhouette dark against the morning sun. A choked sob escaped him at the sight—achingly familiar and yet a stranger’s form too, so long had his eyes known instead the shape of its absence. “Ingoldo…”
The silhouette gave a brief shudder and reached out to unlatch the window. It swung open at his touch, the cries of seabirds and sighing surf drifting in to ease the silence.
“Atta.”
Again the affectionate name brushed like a caress against Finarfin’s senses.
“Atta, it is good to hear thy voice.”
“And to see thee here again.” He tasted salt and found that his cheeks were drenched in tears. Quickly, he shifted the tray to the low table at his side and moved the chair two turns closer. He felt more than saw the other tense at his approach and drew up at once, gripping the push rails tight against his palms. “I’ll come no nearer, I see it disquiets thee. But ai! how empty was the spirit of this place with thine gone from it!” His voice broke again and he held himself in strict silence lest the strength of his feeling weigh too heavily upon the other. They had learned it quickly in the early days when the dead began to be released—returning was a weaving dance, soul and body learning their bond anew, and every sensation of each magnified a hundredfold by the sudden change. Overwhelm was easy in those first months or years, and more than one newly embodied fëa had fled a second time from the strain.
“It was never fully gone.” The warmth of a smile eased Finrod’s voice, winding like a vine about its weariness. “My spirit, I mean to say. I lived ever with some clinging grasp flung back through memory, that I might still find my rest within these walls.” He was quiet for a long moment, then added in a low murmur, “My dreams were ever of the Sea.”
Silence returned then, and the only sounds were seabirds’ calls upon the wind, the waves sighing their melody upon the rocks. Finarfin recalled the Sindar’s tales amid the great war of how the water’s call could catch a soul in yearning, twine its tendrils through every thought, till the sea-longing was a constant song in the heart’s ear, a drive deep as life. His eyes rested on the sharp line of his son’s shoulders and he wondered whether the inverse could hold a soul as well, whether the longing for Endorë ran still in the veins of those who had sought her, whether it drew him still.
“And mine of the Dark.” Finarfin heard the shudder run through his own voice. The darkness in Araman had been tangible, grasping with clammy fingers at every inch of flesh it could find. “It was my punishment, I believed; my penance for having left thee, for having left you all there in the bitter night.” There had been frost in his son’s eyelashes when they hurled their parting fury through the wasteland, trails of ice woven in his braids. But Finrod’s hair was loose now, gathered like a shroud about his face and shoulders, and soft with the morning’s warmth. The wind ruffled the nearer edge and Finarfin’s heart ached with longing to reach out in such a caress, to brush his fingers like the sea-breeze along his son’s forehead and tuck the wayward strand behind his ear as though he was still a child. He closed his eyes and took a breath, gripping the push rails again and drawing strength from their familiarity. “I do not presume to hope for forgiveness, Ingoldo.”
“Forgiveness?” Surprise rang through the other’s voice. “For what offense, atta?
“For Araman.” Finarfin’s mouth was suddenly dry, his mind fumbling among the reasons he had built. “For the words we left between us, for the cowardice thou didst believe held reign of me.”
“I do not hold my choice against thee.”
“But what of my own?”
“Twas I chose the road of sundering. Whatever anger I bore with me onto the Ice has long since been laid to rest.”
“Has it, in truth?”
His son was quiet for a long moment, fingers tracing the pattern of the loose robe he held drawn about him. “It is I who owes thee a suit for pardon if thou hast believed it otherwise.”
“I have, I confess it.” Finarfin shook his head, bewildered. “Thy mother told me naught but that thy desire was solitude—and I have sought to honor it, for truly I believed thou didst hold me yet in dereliction of loyalty.” His voice caught. “Bitterly, bitterly have I rued the fury of our parting. I do not regret turning back, but I regret every word I said to thee.”
“And I to thee.”
“But if that is not what lurks between us, wherefore then…” He trailed off, unable to form the words.
Finrod’s arms wrapped tighter about his own waist and he gripped the robe in handfuls. “I have hurt thee unwittingly,” he said at last, and his voice was strained, hoarse about the edges as it had not been thus far, “and all through a fool’s wish to spare thee yet awhile. Amil was right, of course.” He shrugged loose the guarded edge of his mind, letting it tumble down in resignation, and his thought stretched out to meet his father’s touch.
There was the brief, familiar brightness; then bewilderment, weariness, cloying tendrils of despair. Pain. Finarfin’s breath drew in with a hiss as the barriers fell and he felt the grief and confusion lean in against him, and he gathered him near in spirit as he might have lifted him in infancy and cradled him close against his heart. “Ingo…onya…”
Sunlight flowed further into the room as Finrod reached out and moved a second curtain aside. “I could not escape,” he murmured, undoing the clasps at his throat, “not even through death, it seems.” For a moment longer he wavered, then drew the robe down past his shoulders, shrugging the cloth aside as he had the barrier of his thought and letting it slip nearly to his waist.
Finarfin swore before he could catch himself. Deep gouges ran down the length of the other’s back, gaping ruts where the skin had healed within the wounds’ valleys rather than knitting their edges together. They wrapped around his shoulder like a whip’s wheal until they merged in an outfall on the opposite side. The damage here was complete, a wide canyon over his lower back as though the skin had been torn whole cloth from his side. It had healed as it might, pocked and mottled and startlingly livid against the surrounding skin, but the trail of damage was eloquent, and Finarfin’s bile rose at the tale it told. “Holy Varda,” he breathed as Finrod turned at last to meet his eye.
“Canst thou understand now what—Atta?” He broke off with a choked exclamation, suddenly heedless of his own reticence as his eyes took in first the chair, then the filigree cuffs that ornamented the ends of his father’s legs, then the empty air where knees and shins had once extended.
“Thy mother has kept more confidences than thine, I see.” Finarfin waved his hand dismissively as Finrod’s lips parted in query. “War leaves few unchanged in its wake—well hast thou known it—and grim were those years of the Moringotto’s fall.”
“How?”
“Folly.” A mirthless chuckle slipped out despite himself. “I thought to seek out those halls of thy delving. We were near it, they told me—those Sindar among our ranks who had been of thy folk—so near I could feel the echo of thee yet within the rocks and trees. But it was an evening of winter and the dark came on with a swiftness I did not expect, and the orqui3 knew the hills better than I.”
“Atta, it was a ruin. There would have been nothing left.”
“Yes. But I had seen Tumhalad already. I knew I would soon take the Pass of Sirion, that I would look on the desolation of the highlands. I thought…well, it was a fool’s wish in the end, but I thought to mark something my children had wrought in life, and not solely where they, where their children, their children’s children met their ends.”
It was Finrod now whose bitter laugh rasped through the air. “And here I stand before thee, an image permanent of my own defeat.”
“Ingoldo!” Finarfin stretched out his hands, grief wetting his cheeks once more as he turned the conversation back to the other’s grief. “Hast thou held thyself a stranger on this account? Was my love thought so fickle?”
“No.” Finrod shook his head, his voice barely a whisper. “I never doubted it.”
“Was it my pride, then, that stayed thee?” A spasm crossed his face. “Damn all pride to the Void if it was so. Thou art more beloved to me than any self-regard.”
“It was not.”
Finarfin shifted his chair forward in reflex, then drew up at once as he saw the other stiffen. “Thine anger is gone, my love not doubted, my pride unsuspected.” He passed a hand over his face, willing himself to hold his voice in check. “What new grief have I caused thee to have so broken what trust remained between us?”
“None, atta. None.”
“Then why—“
“Look at me!” Finrod’s voice broke out in a cracked plea and Finarfin realized with a sinking epiphany why he had spoken in a murmur till then. The damage had reached his throat as well, it seemed, and the melody of his son’s voice was unrecognizable in this strained rasping. “Look at me. This is what my spirit hath wrought. Thou knowest well enough the Converse of Manwë and Eru; what is it that the One declared?”
“Let the houseless be rehoused,” he whispered, evading.
“And through what means?”
Finarfin was silent, then reluctantly he took a breath and quoted, “Each spirit of My Children retaineth in itself the full imprint and memory of its former house…”
“And in its nakedness,” Finrod continued when his father trailed off, “it is open to you, so that ye may clearly perceive all that is in it.”
“I see the bent of thy thought and I caution thee against its bitter fruit.”
“They looked upon my naked spirit and this is the sum of what they saw.”
“And I look upon thee and see my son returned beyond hope—“
“Reborn into the image of Death.”
“Findaráto—“
“He said it would be so. He laughed in the dark. He would break me, he said, mind, body, and soul.”
“Ingoldo.”
“And he has.”
“Ingoldo.”
“It is good to see me, thou sayest. Mára ná! Mára ná!4 Where is the márë5 in this? I see with half my sight, I move with half my strength.” He gripped his right arm within his left and his body trembled with the growing desperation. “Where is it? The whole spirit, the unblemished spirit of Aman? I was healed, they told me. As ready as a soul could be." Bitterness laced through Finrod's words and he drew the robe close about him once more. "In what way is this readiness? Is there no longer healing in Námo’s halls?"
“Dost thou call it healing to cast off the marks of pain?” Finarfin did not meet his eye, but watched the waves move against the shoreline, striking with time carried in from the east. “I have not found it to be so. It is a slow road, certainly, but the One has granted it and laid it with surety—estel6 its paving stones.”
For a time, Finrod fell quiet, and when he spoke again, his voice had returned to the half-whisper of their early converse. “Thy body bears but the marks of its sojourn. And thy spirit therefore embraces it indeed—from a warmth of unsevered pity. My spirit rebuilt its house to live ever in its own destruction.”
“Such reasoning would have me wish for death, then, that I might order myself anew and prove my soundness.”
“Nay, atta, I said not so.”
“Didst thou not? Bend thine ear to more than despair’s counsel and hear thy words with discernment. My spirit, thou sayest, embraces its dwelling not from a union of mutual love, but because it was given no choice but this—and therefore finds within itself a pity of necessity and holds its host dear on that count alone. What is that but contempt in another guise?”
“Had I healed to this in life, I should have borne it gladly—those fruits of a promise willingly given.”
“They are no different now.”
“They are utterly different.” Finrod’s voice was laced with venom. “This is the work of a soul broken, marred till it can create naught but the mirror of its own severing.”
“Nay, my son.” Finarfin hesitated for a moment, then pushed his chair nearer and his voice softened as he drew up beside the other, “the wounds of body and soul cannot be so easily held asunder. Many now are the years I have watched our people pass from Námo’s gates, and no little number are they who come with memory writ upon their flesh. Indeed, these I bear would return with me should I now be sundered from them. Or so I deem.” He paused again, then reached out hesitantly to rest his hand upon the other’s arm. “It is the soul’s wound as well, that which we receive in the body; and the soul’s healing cannot scorn the House which first bore its hurt.”
A sob tore from Finrod’s lips at the touch, and with it fell the last of his bitter stoicism and he crumpled at his father’s feet. “Then why,” he wept as Finarfin drew him in and held him cradled against his chest, “why tell me that I was healed if my spirit bore this still?”
“We live in Arda Marred, my son, all life is not as we would have it.” Finarfin’s voice too was choked with tears and he smoothed the hair back from Finrod’s face, letting his fingers brush over the jagged scars, and eased the other’s head down to rest upon his lap. “But thou, Felagund Edennil, thou knowest already that joy is not contingent upon ease, nor goodness upon perfection. We have sung and danced and held this world beloved, and through our joy have bound hope into its pain.”
“Then is there to be no hope beyond this?”
“Nay, for the hope is in this. Was thy body so mended when thy spirit fled?”
“Question me not as a child.” Finrod’s voice was tight, but he did not pull away. “That tale thou knowest well enough without forcing it from my lips.”
“I do.” Finarfin fell quiet as he drew his fingers through the other’s hair. How many hours had they spent even so when Ingoldo was a boy? There upon the far window seat he would sit with his back against the mullion and his son curled along the cushion, the little head propped against Finarfin’s leg, and he would run his fingers down the boy’s scalp as he sang—forehead to nape, forehead to nape, over and again in time with the waves sighing upon the shore. And then, as now, he was lulled by their harmony: the ceaseless pulse of Belegaer, the silken hair running like water between his fingers. “They sang it throughout the War,” he murmured after a time, his hand never breaking its pattern, “from the day we landed at Balar till we fled the rising flood from the harbors of Andram, and I could not bear it. I would close my ears when I heard the melody begin, or leave the camp, or take refuge in the clamor of the forges. I once ordered a minstrel from my presence in a moment of particularly foul rage. It is a bitter trial, hearing your son’s indignity sung at dinner, his pain chanted as encouragement amid the scant celebrations of war.”
A faint shudder ran through the other’s frame at this last, and Finarfin moved one hand to rest between the thin shoulder blades, his own heart quavering to feel the jagged scar-lines through the fabric.
“But still it rose above me every night,” he continued, reaching out at last to tuck the wayward strand behind his son’s ear, “Gil-Estel shining from the heavens, a remembrance whether I would have it or no. And with it I found thee there beside me—in song, yes, and in memory, but more besides. Thou wert in nigh every allegiance we found, thine hand guiding our welcome through years gone. The Sindar who joined us knew thee, and not few were those who trusted us and accepted our aid from love of thee. The Atani most of all. Nóm they still called thee, and thy banner was raised by the remnant of Bëor’s people, borne side by side with their own as we marched onto Anfauglith. And as I saw it dance, defiant in that foul wind, I saw thee too: thy determination holding the fractured Houses together, thy refusal to treat with despair, thine hope greeting every new encounter and weaving friendship between the Eruhíni in place of suspicion. I saw what goodness was borne of thy sacrifice, and never have I been more proud to name thee my son.”
“I forsook my own people. I failed at the first trial and gave them over to die in the dark.”
“And so Erchamion escaped and so the Eruhíni were bound in one blood. And Vingilot passed the Enchanted Isles. And the Valar’s hearts were softened, the morning star rises.” He bent down after a pause and set his lips to Finrod’s scalp, then took his son’s face within his hands and turned it upward to meet his eyes, tracing a thumb along one of the gaping ruts. “The task of the Eldar is memory, Ingo—and what are our scars, our lingering pain, but remembrance embodied? Thy flesh bears the tapestry of this tale, Beleriand’s loss and salvation writ upon thee as by the Weaver’s hand. These are thy marks—marred as Arda is marred, beautiful as Arda is beautiful, beloved as Arda is beloved.”
“Atta…” Finrod’s tears pooled against Finarfin’s hands. They spilled over, caught in the nearest valley, ran along its path to the corner of his mouth. “I cannot be what he made of me.”
“Wert thou such, thou wouldst be a hollowed shade in the deserted lands, or a houseless spirit, wandering still.” He wiped the other’s tears and his heart lurched as his son turned into the touch, hiding his face within Finarfin’s palm. “Thou hast not returned to life with wounds open and streaming, my dear one. Thy soul hath done its work. It remembers thee not in thine ending, as is thy fear, but knit together anew—both healed and broken, as it too is healed and broken.”
Finrod remained quiet then, resting against his father’s hand as the long minutes passed, and gradually his trembling began to still. “Atta,” he murmured at last, no longer attempting to mask his stripped voice, and it was quiet, hesitant as a child’s. “Atta, I am so weary.”
“I know, my son.” Finarfin drew the other’s head to rest once more upon his lap and gently passed an arm around his shoulders. He felt transient still, his presence thin and fragile, and Finarfin’s hold tightened about him in dread. But Finrod returned the gesture with quick affection, his hand lifting in reflex to press against his father’s arm. It was the thumb and forefinger that gripped, Finarfin noted; the others remained motionless and caught tight against the palm. “I know.”
Finrod lingered a few moments longer, then climbed slowly to his feet and crossed again to the line of windows. His movements were stiff, his jaw set and face drained white with the pain of rising, and Finarfin’s heart was wrung by the sight. Well did he know it, that agony of new-learned motion, and his legs throbbed at the recollection—phantom knees burning at their severing, phantom shins itching with every movement. His breath grew short as he felt the old horror press against his lungs and he set his mind firmly on the cry of the gulls, the Sea’s steady heartbeat against the shore. Its sighs were deep now, the tide was coming in. Here beyond the western world, his mind recited without thought, on shores that once were pearl, now ground into a fine, luminescent sand.
“Do you know what they call it, that melody I could not bear? Leithian,” he added when Finrod shook his head. “Release. The setting free.”
An inarticulate snort escaped the other, half-sob, half bitter laughter.
“Thou wert the victor, Arto—nay it scorn not! Thy song was of chains broken, and so thou didst.”
“So others didst.”
“Twas Lúthien’s hand set the prison opening, yes, I grant it. But thine it was that snapped the chain.” He glided forward in the other’s wake and again drew up at his side, taking his son’s hand and pressing it gently to his lips. “Do not bind them back again.”