By the end of the month, the last of the spring rains had abated and the Shire was green and in flower as summer approached. On one lovely, clear and still evening, as the sun sank low over the westward hills, Frodo sat out under the tree atop the house with a book and his pipe. Sam and Rosie had gone to have dinner at the Cottons, leaving him alone at Bag End. Sam had expressed some concern before going, but Frodo insisted that he would be fine. He was as well now as he ever would be, and after being constantly watched since March, it was a relief to be by himself for awhile, and not fussed over and told to rest.
He had been reading the poem about the settling of Lothlorien--not for the first time since Merry had discovered the book in the study--and had come to the final stanza:
"Hopes arise as the silver boughs reach skyward/Sing songs of gladness! Look on to the morrow/For in this forest city find we shelter at last/Leave behind sadness! Think not of old sorrow/Lest our hearts be tormented by what is long past."
The poetry was undoubtedly better in Quenya--Bilbo had strained to make the lines rhyme--but Frodo was struck by the tone of the sentiment. Where these stories from Lothlorien were for the most part impersonal, written as if the author had taken no part in the events he witnessed, this ending had a personal note. The poet was recalling his own losses and sorrows and the places he had left behind, and was trying his best to forget them.
Frodo lay the book down on his lap and drifted into thoughts of Gondolin and Lothlorien, of the long path from one Elven city to the other, and of what he knew of the rulers of each. He believed now that he understood what had happened in those long-ago days, but doubted he would ever confirm it.
The sun had set and the last light was fading from the sky. Frodo was about to go into the house, when there was a knock on the front door. He went to the edge of the slope and peered down. The figure standing in the long shadows on the doorstep beneath him was hard to see, but Frodo was certain it was no hobbit.
The visitor must have sensed his presence, for a pale face suddenly turned upwards and eyes that glinted like stars with a light of their own found him. A strange, lilting voice spoke, "Are you Frodo Baggins?"
It was an Elf in a greenish-gray cloak like the ones the members of the Fellowship had been given at Lothlorien. Was this the long-awaited messenger from Gandalf?
"Yes," Frodo answered, "I am. Did Mithrandir send you?"
"It is on his behalf and My Lady Galadriel's that I come, but I bring no written message. My Lady bid me speak to you, as you have taken an interest in the death of her kinswoman, Aredhel Ar-Feiniel." He leapt up the slope with startling swiftness and grace, and in an instant stood beside Frodo. "She said I might aid you."
"Can you?" Frodo asked eagerly. "You know something of it?"
"I know all that may be spoken," the Elf replied rather cryptically. "I am the last who remembers Gondolin. I was there to see. I was at the Lady Aredhel's side, when she fell."
"You're-" An odd tingle ran up Frodo's spine. He could hardly believe it. "Your name wouldn't be Elennapril?"
"It is." The Elf sounded surprised. "You know of me?"
"I've been reading your stories- well, translations of them." He lifted the book he held in one hand to indicate the poem he'd been reading. "You did write them, didn't you--The Golden Seeds? The Song of the Sea? The Tragedy of the White Lady?" He was beginning to babble in his excitement. How wonderful of Galadriel, not only to have the very person most likely to help him, but to send him here! "I'd like very much to talk to you. Please, won't you sit down?" His visitor would be more comfortable here on the hilltop than in the parlor with its hobbit-sized furniture.
They sat on the grass beneath the tree. Frodo's pipe had gone out; as he struck a match to relight it, he could see his visitor clearly for a few seconds: Elennapril had that ageless look of the oldest Elves, face smooth and unlined as a boy's, but the dark, shining eyes were ancient and sad beyond reckoning.
"I must say I'm surprised to see you're still here," said Frodo. "I thought that you would have gone to the Grey Havens ages ago. Have you been in Lothlorien all this time?"
"I have remained in the service of my Lady and Lord since the days when Caras Galadon first arose, as chronicler of the court and keeper of the library. I have found a measure of peace there, and had little desire to leave the woods where I have made my home." But there was a note of sorrow in his voice that revealed that his peace was not absolute. "We must all depart these shores soon, and the fair city of Caras Galadon will fall, as did Gondolin, and Doriath, and the great kingdoms of Men. Nothing stands in this world forever. So I must go to the sea and my fate, or remain in Middle-earth, alone of my kind."
"Why haven't you gone?" Frodo asked him.
"I did not wish to go, not yet. Even if I grew weary with the long years, I believe I would find no rest in the Undying Lands, for she is not there."
"She? You mean Aredhel?" He ventured, "I was told that you loved her."
"Alas, I did, too dearly. Do you know such a love, Frodo?"
"I am in love," Frodo confessed; in the twilight, he could feel those Elven eyes upon him.
"And it is requited, I see," said Elennapril. "You are fortunate! Aredhel was not for me. She was my King's sister, and made for a greater mate. She would not think to look to me, but all I wished was to see her and be near her. I rode with her out of the city--my King bid me accompany her on her travels, but I would have asked to go. The day she was lost, I despaired. You cannot guess at my joy when she returned to Gondolin... but it lasted only for a day."
Frodo asked softly, "It wasn't you who killed her, was it?"
"No!" Elennapril cried in astonishment. "I would have given my life to spare hers. Did you truly believe it was so?"
"I wondered about it," Frodo admitted, "until I realized that you'd gone to Lothlorien with the Lady Galadriel and Lord Celeborn. They kept your stories, and their daughter Celebrian brought them with her to Rivendell when she married."
"I was tutor to the Lady Celebrian when she was a maiden, and made her a gift of my books when she left Lothlorien."
"They must think quite highly of you. They've trusted you in their service for thousands of years. I can't believe they'd do that if they thought you'd done anything so terrible as commit a murder, and of their kinswoman. Lady Galadriel would certainly see it if there was anything, well, wrong about you."
"Yes, she would." The Elf laughed. "What an odd little creature you are, Frodo Baggins! My Lady said that I might find a way to my rest, once I had seen you. You were my hope."
"Me?" Frodo said in surprise. "How?"
"I do not understand her words myself," said Elennapril. "I know that you are favored by the Lady, and much in her thoughts. You bore the Enemy's Ring and destroyed it at great price to yourself. But I do not know how you might aid me."
Frodo drew in on his pipe and thought about this. "Perhaps it's that I write also. I've been- well- chronicling my own adventures, about my quest to destroy the Ring. I wanted to see the tale told properly, in my own words. After all, what's written down is the only thing that people have to remember us by, after we've gone."
"Yes, that is so," his visitor agreed.
"I've read your tale of Aredhel. I might add to it, and see that the truth is told at last, once I know what it is myself. Will you tell me?"
In the darkness, he could see the shadow-shape before him move slightly as Elennapril bowed his head in consent.
"Was it King Turgon?" asked Frodo. "Did he poison his sister?" It was the only conclusion that made any sense.
"You will hear what I know," Elennapril replied. "I know that my king did not speak the truth. I have heard the tale as others have told it, as it was spoken in the court of Gondolin before I departed, and I know that it was not so. In after times, King Turgon would have it that his sister was Eol's ravished prisoner, but I believe that she truly loved he whom she wed. She would have returned with him to Nan Elmoth if it had been permitted--and though I loved her, I would rather a thousand time that that be so than the ending which had come to pass! I was there on that evil day, when the Eol was brought before the King. I saw him cast his spear. I know he meant to slay him."
"He meant to slay King Turgon then, not Maeglin?"
"Eol meant to kill the king. I saw the looks that passed between them, heard their words. Such an act, no king may forgive. He was unharmed, but the Lady Aredhel received the wound instead." The Elf's head remained bowed, and he was silent for a long while Frodo waited patiently for him to continue. At last, Elennapril said, "She was struck down, and I knelt beside her. I heard her plea for Eol's life, even as she lay wounded, but Turgon would not hear it. Before my Lady was dead, he would condemn her husband. Eol had struck a blow at him, and must die for it. She was borne away and I did not see her living again. King Turgon alone nursed her that night and, at daybreak, my beloved Lady was dead. He proclaimed that she had been poisoned by her wound and Eol had slain her, but in my heart I doubted."
"Why do you think he did it?" Frodo asked. "Was it because she led Eol to the city? Or was it over Maeglin?"
"It was a breach of Turgon's highest law to reveal the hidden ways into the city," Elennapril answered, "but Aredhel might have found forgiveness for that had she stayed in Gondolin thereafter. It was Maeglin who turned the king's heart against his sister."
"Did Maeglin have a part in it?"
"I don't believe so. While he would work great evil in a time to come, Maeglin was yet a child. He would stay in Gondolin against his father's will, but he was beloved of his mother, and she of him. He wept bitterly at her death, and blamed his father for it. He believed that his father had meant to kill him, for that was what the king had told him."
"He stood with his back to his parents," Frodo mused, remembering the illustrations.
"Maeglin did not act against his mother, nor even his father," said Elennapril, "but he was surely the cause of their deaths. Above all, King Turgon desired that his kingdom should stand in this Middle-earth after he had returned to the Blessed Realm, or if the Doom of Mandos proved true. He meant a king of his lineage to rule after him. Once Aredhel and Eol were dead, King Turgon named Maeglin as his own son and his heir, and there were none to contest him. It was what Maeglin wished as well, and all he desired save Idril. It was not until many years after, when Tuor came to the city and won Idril's love and Turgon's favor, that Maeglin's heart darkened--or so I have been told by those who were there and escaped to tell of it. I departed Gondolin long before its fall.
"When I heard how King Turgon spoke of Eol in after days to Maeglin and to others, my doubt of him only grew greater, but I could not speak aloud such terrible suspicions against my liege and lord. I wrote my own tale of Aredhel's death, as subtly as I could tell it, but even so little was against the tale as it was told and the king's eye turned unfavorably upon me. At last, I saw that I could no longer call Turgon my liege. I left Gondolin and stole away to Doriath. There, I carried my tale of what I had seen, but you are not the first to guess at the truth unwritten. The ruin of Gondolin was my doing."
Frodo sat upright, startled by this remarkable confession. "Your doing? What do you mean?"
"My story of how Lady Aredhel had died was heard by her kinsman Dior, as well as Queen Melian and Lord Celeborn, and others of the Council of Doriath," Elennapril explained.
"And the Lady Galadriel?" Frodo began to understand.
"Yes, though she was not of the Council. They understood what I did not tell of Aredhel's and Eol's fate, and they sat in judgment upon Turgon as he had judged so many in his own court. In time, the Enemy was known to be on the move, and the Council of Doriath knew he would strike at Gondolin when the time was ripe... and yet they did nothing. They allowed events to unfold with no warning, nor aid. They said that there had long been a curse laid upon Turgon for his pride in building his hopes in Middle-earth when the Valar had proclaimed that all hope lay in the West. It was therefore fitting that Gondolin fall because of King Turgon's love of it: the heir he had fought to claim for his kingdom, even to the sacrifice of his sister, had brought about its ruin. With the city's destruction, they deemed that Turgon had met his fate, as foretold, but this fate would not have come about, if not for me."
"You did what you thought best," said Frodo, though it must sound like feeble comfort to this Elf who still grieved over tragedies that lay thousands of years in the past. "You sought justice for a great wrong."
"So I did," Elennapril answered, "but I might better have remained in Gondolin and died with the others. I would then be in the Halls of Mandos, near my beloved... but that is not to be my fate." He gazed westward, where a dull orangish glow still lingered along the horizon. "You have now heard all I have to tell. Will you write it for others to read--all of it?"
"Yes, I will," Frodo promised.
"Then my Lady can rest at last, and perhaps I may find rest as well. I will not return to Lothlorien." They went together down the slope of the house and into the garden near the front door. "Fare thee well, Frodo Baggins. May you also find the peace you seek, and may your heart be healed." Then Elennapril turned and went down the hill toward the lane and leapt over the hedge.
Sam and Rosie were coming up the lane, returning from the Cotton farm. They had just seen Frodo's visitor leaving, and stared after him until he had disappeared into the night. Rosie was especially wide-eyed, for she had never seen an Elf before.
"Who was that?" Sam asked as they came in at the gate.
"The Elf who wrote those stories I've been reading," answered Frodo. "The Lady Galadriel sent him to answer my questions."
"And did he?"
"Yes, he did." They went into the house. While Rosie went into the kitchen to put the kettle on, Frodo told Sam what Elennapril had told him about Aredhel's death and the fall of Gondolin.
"So you were right all the time," said Sam. "There was something odd about it. And to think--they let the whole kingdom be destroyed to punish the King's wrongdoings!" He shook his head in perplexity. "I'll never understand Elves. But you're done with this now, Frodo?"
"My investigation is finished, yes, but there's one last thing I want to do." As Sam went to join his wife in the kitchen, Frodo went to his study and lit the candles on the corners of his desk. He took out a fresh notebook, sat down, and dipped his quill into the inkpot. His book would be set aside for a little while; there was another tale he needed to write.
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