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Fic: The Forgotten Tree: Chapter 2
Title: The Forgotten Tree
Part: 2/?
Author: twopoint
Rated: PG for now, later R
Genre: Silmarillion to LoTR: generally encompassing the entirety of Tolkien’s canon, from Gondolin to Rivendell.
Warnings: Oh, there will be angst. And slash. And wars. And other things.
Pairing: Glorfindel/Erestor
Beta: The incredible
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levadegratchetsSummary: Erestor's story as hitherto edited by Pengologh of Gondolin
Disclaimer: Own nothing, made nothing.
Notes: Brewing for five years in notebooks, this story will turn to vinegar if it sits any longer.
The Forgotten Tree
Chapter 2: Ondolindë
For fifty-two years Turgon, son of Fingolfin, and his lords constructed a city on a rise within the vale of Tumladen. Few cities in the long history of the world compared to its beauty. The rocks were quarried and placed brick by brick, steadily upward, by the hands of ancient craftsmen. The city was held within the heart of the mountains. The mountains protected Gondolin and shielded it from all eyes, save from the eagles who loved it. Many descriptions have been given of the streets and fountains and pools within the high walls of Gondolin. By that and other names was Turgon’s city called.
Every morning for weeks Erestor counted the steps leading down from the city, four hundred thirty-two in all, and spent some hours completing mundane and unnecessary tasks in the Fountain stables. The main Houses built their stables, fine as their city dwellings, at the base of Gondolin near the stairway leading up to the Main gate.
Never had the stables seemed so empty. Only the very young and the very old horses remained, their numbers taking up only the front stalls in the vast length of the stables.
Erestor’s own mount, since the time Ecthelion first lifted him onto the back of a horse, was a patient and aged hunter named Itimo. The horse’s acquisition was the source of numerous myths and legends. The most authentic of which, in Erestor’s opinion, being that Itimo joined the small herd of Turgon’s scouts as they secretly brought the inhabitants of Gondolin from their old home in Nevrast. The horse became Ecthelion’s the morning the lord awoke to find the thing rooting around in his tent. Erestor believed the tent story wholeheartedly. Itimo was mischievous in the best of times, and it was highly likely that the horse had simply been dumped in Ecthelion’s service by another lord exasperated by the horse’s thieving.
“What did Itimo steal in the night?” Erestor asked as he entered the stable.
“Good morning, Erestor.” The head horse keeper leaned in a patch of sunlight against the stable’s high stone wall, “Itimo spent the night in the fields and came for his breakfast this morning with an empty mouth. I have not searched his stall.”
“I’ll start there unless you have something else for me.” Erestor knew as well as the horse keeper that there was little for him to do in the well-ran stables when they were full. Reduced to a fraction of their numbers, the tasks meted out to Erestor served no other purpose than to keep his hands busy.
Itimo switched his tail as Erestor neared his stall. The horse had been fully black at one time, but grey hairs collected in patches at the points of his face, giving the impression that Itimo was considering his next feat with narrowed eyes and pinched nostrils. His unadorned forelock, thick and gleaming, fell in tangled waves across his face. The old stallion seemed to carry the secret shadows of night with him, even when his taxed joints creaked. He shifted to the side of the stall and lowered his nose to watch Erestor move the straw bedding around with his boot.
Erestor spoke as he worked, “If you spent the night out, you must have arrived home with some prize. Where is it?”
The horse busied himself by licking the wall.
“Here we are,” Erestor pulled a piece of fabric from the straw. “What is this?”
The scarf was finely made, stitched in golden thread, and last seen on the head of Turgon’s daughter, Idril. Erestor presented his evidence to Itimo’s nostril. The horse nipped a loose corner thread in response.
“I’ve read every case brought before Turgon since the city was founded: misunderstandings, property disputes, foreshadowed marriages. You, horse,” Erestor leaned against his shoulder, “are the only conclusive example we have of a thief. I’ve heard it’s a way of life in some parts of the world, but not here. You mock the sincerity of our House.”
Itamo stretched his neck to look back at Erestor, effectually trapping the young elf in an embrace which was the equestrian equivalent of guilelessness.
Erestor sighed and ducked away from the warm curve of Itimo’s great neck, “You can no longer climb stairs, so I’ll return your loot. And tomorrow we’ll ride together and scout the vale for new sources of mischief.” Erestor tied the scarf around his own loose hair that fell down his back in tangled black waves, like Itimo’s forelock. He pressed his palm to the warm, flat space between Itimo’s eyes in farewell.
Erestor counted the stairs, four hundred thirty-two, up and up into the city.
He traced Idril to her usual late morning haunt along the eastern walls behind the Great Market. Again, Erestor climbed up toward the tall city watches by the angled slopes of the inner stairway. Idril stood with her back to Erestor, her arms crossed in front of her chest. She looked out across the bright summer grass and the tall mountain peaks, but it seemed that she gazed upon the landscape of a different place.
“I found this,” Erestor said, working the knotted scarf from his hair. Once free, the wind blew his hair across his face.
Idril laughed, “You seem to need it more than me.” She looked closely at the fabric in his outstretched hand, “I lost this scarf last summer.”
“Good, I’m relieved. I feared my horse took it from your head when you passed him in the fields.”
“Not this time. Let me see it,” Idril held the scarf up and the wind unfurled it like a banner. The golden threads gleamed in the late morning sunlight. Idril turned the scarf this way and that, letting the breeze carry it, until, purposefully, she let the fabric drop from her hands.
They watched the scarf descend, slowly downward past the wall until it caught on the sharp edge of a guard house roof at the base of the city.
“Strange,” Idril said.
“I didn’t return it for you to lose it again so quickly.”
Idril shook her head, “Someone’s hand has been on it.”
“What do you mean?” Erestor sat on the closest bench and motioned for Idril to do the same beside him.
“The city seems lighter with everyone gone.”
“The city seems desolate,” Erestor amended. “Whose hand touched the scarf?”
“I have a suspicion, nothing more. You know how word flies through this city. We’ve nothing else to do than tell stories. . .” she sat beside Erestor, but still kept watch on the mountains, her voice trailed off, “ . . .until now.”
“You can trust me with your secrets.”
“Of course I can,” Idril turned her attention to him and pulled him close, gathered back his thick hair. “as you can trust me with yours. What secrets do you have for me today, Erestor? I’ve not forgotten the significance of tomorrow. What do you wish for the day?”
Tomorrow – Midsummer – was the day that marked Erestor’s majority. A title seemed insignificant when more than half of Gondolin’s numbers faced many evils in Thangorodrim. Erestor thought very hard about what he wanted. It went without saying that he wished for the Noldor armies to achieve quick victory. He wished for everyone that he loved, and some that he did not, to return to Gondolin safely and quickly. Erestor believed that Idril could do many things, but even she had a limit.
“I wish for you to tell me a story, so that I might write it down and keep it. I want a story, anything, however trivial, about my father and Glorfindel before they arrived here in Gondolin. Before the city was built.”
“Shouldn’t they tell you their own stories when they arrive safely home?”
“They should, but stories sound better from another’s mouth,” Erestor considered his reasons and continued, “and they rarely talk about the past, my father especially, in fear that I will want to leave the city in search of my own adventures. Glorfindel abides by Ada’s wishes, most of the time.”
Idril searched his face and smiled. “Your request is fair. Visit me tomorrow night – I’ll meet you in the small, palace garden. Thank you for finding my scarf.”
“For you to quickly lose it again.”
“Some things like to remain unfound.” Idril tugged a strand of Erestor’s hair as she stood.
Erestor watched her bare feet move against the warm stone walkway until she disappeared down the stair.
When Thorondor or one of his eagles flew down from the high places and circled the city, they brushed the walls of Gondolin with their long feathers as they passed and often came to rest at the top of one of the high, richly carved arches that spanned the Main and Northern gates into the city. The sound of the wind rushing against the eagle’s wings was like the thick roar of a quick summer storm, and one of Erestor’s earliest memories.
He heard feathers brush the wall as he made his way into his mother’s garden. The Fountain properties were positioned in the southern section of the city, along the Way of Running Waters. Ecthelion’s house was built against the southern wall, its courtyard, in the height of midsummer growth, like a forest.
It was the eve of Tarnin Austa, but there would be no celebration this year. The city planned to observe the usual silence from sundown to dawn, but with Turgon’s army traveling toward an uncertain battle the ritual was a greater echo of the silence that already filled the city.
Erestor’s mother, known to all as Alda, the city’s Alda, their deeply-rooted seer and healer, gathered wild rosehips in a bright corner of the garden. Erestor sat beneath a small tree and waited for her notice. A heavy breeze swooped down from the high wall, catching the varied leaves in gusts. Another eagle passed, touching the city wall just below the house.
Alda was dressed that day in traveling clothes, the rougher fabrics, pants and tunic, she wore to ride across the vale in search of herbs and roots not found within the city. Erestor watched the familiar curve of her back as she bent to whisper and cut, selecting each rosehip by touch and intuition. Alda’s black hair fell forward over her shoulder and tangled in the twining branches of the plants.
“The eagles are very busy today,” she said without pausing in her work.
“What are they saying?” Erestor stood and peered upward, trying to see the shadow of Thorondor on top of the distant Main gate.
“Nothing yet, but they feel that something will happen soon.”
“Where will you be tonight?” Erestor asked.
“I thought to stay in the house. Will you keep me company?” She sliced one last rosehip, wrapped it up with the others and came to stand near Erestor beneath the tree.
They stared at each other, identical expressions of thoughtful consideration on their faces. Erestor was taller than his mother, but not by much, and he could not abandon the feeling that Alda’s wisdom gave her height, that she stared down at him in the rare instances when something remained unspoken between them.
“You’re anxious,” Erestor said.
The stillness passed and the wind seemed to move the trees again. They no longer seemed like carvings from the same dark rock; Erestor became Erestor, and Alda became Alda.
“I am,” she said and passed him the package of rosehips. “Someone should be with them that knows how to stop the flow of blood. In their haste to fight a battle, the lords forget their healers until they’re in need of one.”
“They forgot to pack you? Is that what troubles you?” Erestor smiled.
Alda frowned. “What use am I in the city?” She moved toward the interior of the house. Erestor followed. Alda’s great hound lifted herself from the shadows beneath a bench and lumbered after them.
“I need you to be here,” Erestor said.
Alda glanced back at him “I haven’t seen you in many days.”
“Glorfindel’s harvest,” he reminded her.
“They’ll be back before the harvest. They will be back before the next full moon.”
“How do you know some things and not all things?” Erestor felt the hound’s hot breath against his calf. The dog was his mother’s sentry.
She removed the tie from her hair and picked the twigs out of the strands. Erestor waited for her response. Nothing came. The dark, stony shadows of the interior were a cool reprieve from the bright midday sun.
“Shall I rephrase my question?” He tried again. “Will Ada and Glorfindel survive and return with the others?”
His mother already wandered toward her rooms, but her voice carried, lowly, down the hallway, “They will live – but things will never be the same.”
Erestor and the hound glanced at each other before watching Alda’s retreating form vanish into the dark shadows. Erestor’s long fingers trailed against the hound’s coat as she passed him to follow her mistress.
With too much time to waste until sundown Erestor was too restless and decided to cross the city to see how the hours moved for the remaining inhabitants of the Golden Flower.
Erestor was accomplished at a great many things, patience not amongst them. Waiting in the empty city was a new form of anguish for him. He announced himself at Glorfindel’s house, which made the guard look at him curiously. Erestor usually just entered and went about his business. He waited in the entrance hall for Galor, Glorfindel’s advisor, to find him.
“Erestor,” Galor said as he entered, “I haven’t seen you since morning. Did you come with word from your mother?”
“She did say something – I’m not certain what she meant. Will you give me a task?”
There was a kindness to Galor, a genuineness that set him apart from all the others of his rank in Gondolin. He moved with fluid ease, like Glorfindel, as if his duties never touched him. After the oppressive weight of Alda’s presence, Galor’s smile made Erestor feel as if nothing in the city had changed, save its silence.
Galor’s hair was brown, like oak bark, and his eyes a curious, crystalline blue, the color that characterized so many in the Golden Flower. “Come with me,” he said, “I found a partial scroll in the library.”
Glorfindel’s library was cluttered and well loved. The original inhabitants of Gondolin brought with them what little they could carry over the treacherous mountains. Since then, Gondolin had seen a renewal of the arts that saw no comparison since the exiles traveled from Valinor. Memory created art, but sometimes, something unique would surface – like the scroll Galor placed on the desk before Erestor, the smell of strange lands clinging to the fading ink.
“What is this?” Erestor asked.
“I have no idea. I was told it came from the east. Let the language occupy you. For all I know, it’s a list of the stores found in some distant lord’s pantry.” Galor offered a seat for Erestor at the desk and left the young elf alone with the shelves and dust.
The shape of eastern runes fascinated Erestor, but his concentration drifted as he picked through their meaning that day.
“Ever in memory have our people been enslaved, our lands taken . . .”
Erestor knew the shape of the mountains, familiar as his mother’s hand. He knew the seasons as the Echoriath brought them: frigid winters, temperate summers. He’d seen no visual proof of the sea – no artist dared portray it. He’d read of the sea, heard the waves in a story’s meter, seen the color in Glorfindel’s eyes. The sea and the plains and the deserts to the east waited beyond the city; Erestor thought of the seven gates guarding The Way. He imagined what the gates must sound like as they opened.
“. . .he is a beautiful and fair god. He promises justice and. . .”
Erestor’s arms knew the balanced weight of a sword; his ears knew the quiet harp-thrum of a bow; his fingers knew the quick slice of a knife, but he could not defend himself with the skill that marked the other sons of Gondolin’s great lords. Ecthelion taught Erestor just enough, and no more. The lessons ended so often in Ecthelion’s silence, a distant look on his lovely face, that Erestor began to practice in private, or seek out other masters.
Erestor never spoke of Ecthelion’s recalcitrance, as Erestor had come to see it. The result was that Erestor knew a little skill with many weapons, but not enough skill to be identified with one, as others his age were. Erestor excelled in language, song and story, but he knew that, however often he had watched Turgon bring down an opponent with words alone, words could only aid Erestor so much in the strange lands beyond the seven gates.
“. . . I chose to follow him, and beg you to do the same.”
Erestor pushed the scroll aside and settled into the high backed chair. He drew his knees up to his chin and pondered a list of things that he might need were he ever free to leave Gondolin.
Maps. He must find maps, memorize them. His eyes roamed the library. Where, he wondered, did Glorfindel store his maps? Ecthelion kept few in their house, but Glorfindel kept everything.
Erestor spent the remainder of the afternoon searching through stacks and bound volumes. He found fragments and sketches of distant lands, pieces to store away in his memory. As he searched, Erestor began to devise a wayward sense of the forbidden world. The scraps were not nearly enough, but Erestor was heartened by his new mission.
What he did find, in abundance, was Glorfindel’s script, singular and familiar like pieces of the Golden Flower’s lord were left scattered about the house in his absence. Notes and thoughts and lists were left in the least likely places, filling Erestor’s sight so completely that when he finally left the library that day he felt that Glorfindel’s handwriting was its own sort of map; a true map. Possibly, the clue that led to the one map that Erestor searched for.
Erestor dined alone with his mother. He’d hoped that Idril would join them, but her duties kept her tied to the palace. They ate cold summer soups flavored with Alda’s favorite herbs. The meal began in the Fountain dining hall, a room that often seemed small when it was filled with visitors and friends. That night, it seemed huge.
Alone, Erestor and Alda stared at each other across the empty table. A vast mural of Telperion and Laurelin covered the main wall beside them; the jeweled mosaic glinted in the candlelight. Lanterns swayed from branches in the garden, doors thrown open to the summer night. The lantern shadows moved across the wide floor of the dining hall, brushed against Erestor and Alda’s feet. Soon it would be sundown and all conversation would cease until morning, but neither wished to speak while they still could, not when their voices echoed toward the high ceiling.
“This is madness,” Alda said and gathered her plate and goblet. “Let us eat beside the pool.”
Erestor collected his things and followed her out into the garden. Even the fountains seemed quiet in those empty weeks. The pool was the largest of several and placed centrally in the overgrown courtyard. They removed their shoes and sat cross-legged on a cool slab of stone located at a corner of the pool. Situated there, the water moved beside them and beneath them.
“Try this.” Alda place a piece of fruit on Erestor’s plate, and then another and another until she had nothing left. She dipped her plate into the pool, watched the water drip from the ornate rim and finally put the plate aside.
“You should eat,” Erestor said.
“The wine is better than food,” she said as she held up her goblet, “it tastes like longing.”
Erestor watched her take a sip. When she opened her eyes, she smiled as if she knew a secret. Alda’s humor was as infectious as a rumor. Erestor, reluctantly, laughed. Smiling at each other in the last hour before the sun disappeared behind the mountains; an idea seemed to occur to them simultaneously.
“I want to tell you. . .” Alda said.
“I’d like for you to tell me . . .” Erestor said at the same time.
“. . . a story.” Alda finished.
Erestor laughed and moved to closer to her, dangling his feet into the water. “I want you to tell me a story I’ve never heard before. This story will be true” – he regarded her pointedly – “and it will involve Ada and Glorfindel. You may also be included in the story.”
“My child, you’re like an old advisor, the rules that you impose – and with such authority. Can you not, for once, let the story create itself?”
“If I did, you’d soon be telling me what an oak tree told you when you rode past it in the winter. I want to hear a story that I should write down and keep.”
“You have no interest in oaks?” Alda dipped her feet into the water.
“Of course I Iike oaks, but you’re my oak tree and the little I know of this family comes from the history of other Houses. Why do we keep such few records?”
Alda sighed. “Memory is the truest record.”
“Then I ask you to broaden my memory.” Erestor glanced at her from the corner of his eye and waited.
The lantern light reflected in Alda’s fathomless eyes, bright like the pool beneath them, identical to his own. She considered his request.
“You want to hear something from the forbidden time?” she asked.
“Absolutely.”
“Let us start with this. I left Valinor at your father’s bidding. Tirion lay in dark ruins and I had only enough time to gather what my hands could carry before I found myself swept away by the swift tide of bodies and torches following Fëanor’s speech: ‘Let the cowards keep this city’ he said. And I ever will be a coward if bravery is what I witnessed. I lost track of Ecthelion almost immediately, so I hurried to find Idril because she was familiar like a sister, and her father spoke good sense. No one else from my family agreed to leave their home. My father, my mother, my grandparents all remain with Finarfin in the Blessed Realm. This you know.
“Glorfindel, sworn to Turgon’s wishes, traveled ever close to me and Idril. But he would have watched over us, no matter his fealty, because he is ever good and I had not known a day without Glorfindel’s presence; cousins are we, and also Idril, but this you know as well.”
Alda paused and watched the lantern light across the water as if she stored her memory in torchlight.
“The Doom was spoken. Finarfin turned back, and I longed to follow him, but still I could not find Ecthelion. So I traveled onward toward the ice, following the gold of Idril and Glorfindel’s hair as if the color held some memory of the trees. And I began to panic, not because I traveled, but I became transfixed by the thought that Ecthelion changed his mind after begging me to go with him.
“Glorfindel must have seen the fearful look upon my face because he left us to go in search of Ecthelion, wherever he could find him in the lost and scattered host. The night was endless and cold, so dark that one could hardly identify their neighbor. My marker in the darkness was golden hair, like the light of Mindon.
“He was gone for hours, maybe days, it was impossible to tell the difference with no light to chart the time. When Glorfindel returned, like an apparition in the mist, Ecthelion rode beside him on a horse I’d never seen before. The horse was grey and there was blood in its mane, and on the hands that held the reins. We watched the ships burn in silence.
“And in silence did Ecthelion travel on with us. Not a word did he speak.
“And when I asked, ‘Whose blood is this?’
“Glorfindel answered for him, said it was the blood of Ecthelion’s father, killed not long after we’d left Tirion. Ever beside him did Glorfindel stay as we traveled onward, and always did Glorfindel answer for him, as if he knew Ecthelion’s thoughts. Across the ice, Glorfindel spoke and spoke and Ecthelion rode quietly saying nothing.
“Before Glorfindel rode out to search for Ecthelion, they had been acquaintances, nothing more. Traveling together like night and day, two opposites in everything with Glorfindel’s incessant chatter drawing Ecthelion away from sadness; the two became the greatest friends. Dark and light, dour and bright – the figures that led Turgon’s exiles began to grow together in our hearts to fill the absence of the blessed trees.
“And it was Glorfindel that made Ecthelion, at last, laugh over some inane joke he told as we stumbled through the bitter cold. Glorfindel brought him back to us; I doubt another could have done it. And they have never parted since.”
A bell rang out across Gondolin, signaling the start of the night vigil.
“Thank you,” Erestor whispered, and kissed Alda’s sharp cheek.
They lingered silently beside the pool for hours into the night. In time, Alda’s hound waded into the water and snapped at the jewel like fish that swam within it. Erestor stifled his laugh and slipped into the water to drag the hound out by her scruff. Wet and bedraggled, Erestor dripped farewell to his mother and left to wander the city.
As dawn approached, Erestor climbed the inner stair that took him to the top section of the city wall. He found Idril and Alda standing near each other. Together they greeted Midsummer as the sun appeared above the mountains. A song rose up from the city, the sound of it haunting like captured mist and twilight. Erestor watched the sun ascend, the light tracing a map of the ragged horizon. The song of Tarnin Austa flowed through Erestor like longing. The song made him ache for something he could not name, something that he had not found yet.
So uncomfortable did it make him that Erestor was pleased when the song ended and he was free to go seek out the cool, dark rooms of his house. He was tired from the silent night of doing nothing and went straight to his bed.
The half-opened shutters revealed a package placed across his pillows; the shape of the brightly wrapped gift unmistakable. Erestor climbed onto the bed and opened the attached note. The script, so present in Erestor’s mind, flowed in golden ink across blue paper.
This sword belongs to you. If you’re impatient to learn its story, ask Idril. Or you may wait until I return home. I carry the sword from the hands of Mandos. You’ll find my gift in the library.
For wisdom follows sight,
Glorfindel
Erestor unknotted the cords binding the sword in strange fabric. The hilt was plain, save for a single black stone, so black it seemed blue in the half-light filtering through the shutters. The hilt fit perfectly in Erestor’s hand, balanced like a familiar pen. The weight gave Erestor the impression that he could write a history with the sword’s tip; that he could fill the spaces that had not yet been given words.
Erestor held the sword out before him and wondered if he could force his father to teach him the sword’s mysteries. If not, he would beg Glorfindel to secretly instruct him.
He deciphered the old characters inscribed along the blade: “The Spring that Feeds the Fountain.” He stared at the blade, turned it this way and that. The metal seemed fluid, like water. The hilt did not warm to Erestor’s touch.
He wrapped the sword back up and placed it beneath his bed. As he left the room and followed the long hallway leading to the library, he felt as if he emerged from a cold, dark pool.
All chill fled, however, when Erestor discovered a small book left for him on a window casing in the orderly Fountain library. He flipped to the first page and read: “The Journey from Aman.” The handwriting was messy and familiar.
A scrap of blue paper fell into Erestor’s lap: “At least half of this story is true. –G.”
Erestor settled into the window seat and warmed himself in sunlight while his mind traveled beyond the safe walls of Gondolin.
And far beyond the window and the city and the Encircling Mountains, the Fifth Battle started
On to Chapter 3
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I have no idea why this sentence sticks with me, but it does. I found myself chuckling and envisioning a truly mischievous creature.
Very well done and I look forward to more. :) E/G are my OTP... so of course I await with bated breath for more *silly grin*.
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And horses are just delightfully wicked. I think we'll be seeing more of Itamo and others.
Thank you so much for reading and for your thoughtful comments.
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Talk about run-on sentences. Sheeesh. ;D
I can't wait to see more!!
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Emptiness of the city is heartbreaking, especially since we know the outcome of the Battle of Unnumbered Tears already. The foreshadowing by Alda is exquisitely painful since we also how, after they return not only will nothing ever be the same in Gondolin, but nowhere else in Middle-earth either.
And what a way to end a chapter.
“The Journey from Aman.” The handwriting was messy and familiar.
A scrap of blue paper fell into Erestor’s lap: “At least half of this story is true. –G.”
Glorfindel knows him even better than Erestor thought he did. Just beautiful.
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If you don't mind, I'm friending you because I admire your opinion more than I can say and I want to keep up with all that you are doing.
Thank you so much for giving this story such a careful read.
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