In her childhood she had viewed her stern aunt with mingled fear and awe. She was spellbound by the woman’s stories, could almost see glimpses of the past in her songs, but the woman herself had seemed as keen and fell as the ancient tales she told.
But she still gladly apprenticed to the Lore-Keeper. They had walked many miles side by side, by crumbling walls even her mentor knew little of, and white towers of the new age, through wilds and cities, dusty libraries and small settlements where children gathered in the town square to hear the Storyteller.
Sigethril had learned most of these tales from her teacher, or from painstakingly copying manuscripts, (though Gwetheril insisted that the most important tales must be preserved in her own heart and mind, that parchment could never replace her memory.)
Sigethril had seen the stern brow of the older woman melt into a rare smile of pride. She’d learned to hear the tremor in her songs. Her aunt had been there by her side when her heart first broke, and that night, as the fire danced on their faces, Gwetheril had chanted poems that Sidethril had never heard before, and would never ask to be repeated, but locked away in her heart’s-chest.
Somehow this stern memorial of ancient Elves and Sea-kings, this Wise-woman out of the past, had become her friend and mentor.
Now Sidethril dwelt at Annuminus. She followed her mentor in teaching, and felt little joy greater than passing on her knowledge to children. But though Gwetheril wandered as her people had in her youth, sometimes dwelling in Annuminus, sometimes in the wild forests, Sidethril felt each year her roots burrowing deeper into the Evendim watered soil. Her students, her family, and soon, a husband—of such things her life was now woven, though she treasured her aunt’s visits to Annuminus.
But still sometimes her feet itched for the road. In her youth she had accompanied her mentor to the shores of the Western Sea. Once Gwetheril had dwelt there, and though Sigethril felt oppressed by the loneliness of the place where Elves had lived, Gwetheril seemed to have a stern and fierce gladness about her. Almost fae she seemed, and when they turned their faces back to Annuminus she foretold, “I shall return only once more, and must either seek the lost mountain or die looking upon the sea.”
So when Gwetheril came to Anuminus and asked Sigethril to accompany her to Lindon she trembled. Perhaps she would have refused, but she could not let her aunt make the journey alone, for though Gwetheril’s step was still firm, her strength flagged, and her eyes, never sharp, were now nearly blind.
“Do you remember what you said the last time you left Lindon?” She asked at the campfire the first night of their journey, knowing the answer but still needing the confirmation.
“Yes.” Gwetheril glanced towards Sigethril, though as usual did not meet her eyes.
“Surely you do not intend to take a boat now?”
“Would you dissuade me?”
Sigethril hesitated, “I do not know. If you chose to go, I might as well beg at the feet of Elves for them to remain and not forsake this Middle Earth. I could swear to accompany you, to perish or somehow found out of myth ancient hope. I do not know if I could let you go alone.”
Gwetheril gave a rare smile, and Sigethril continued, “Is it still there, do you think?” Her heart rose at the thought, though conflicting desires warred within her.
Gwetheril poked the fire, “In my youth I dreamed I fell from the summit of Meneltarma. Time and again, I stood at the pinnacle, and strained my eyes for the coasts of Elvenhome. A step too far, and I stumbled, and plummeted to the hungry sea.”
“It was, I believe a warning. There was a time I could have become an Ar-Pharazon. Even now, did I find it, would I be satisfied with only sight of Elvenhome? Or of the mount itself should my failing eyes not even glimpse it? Or would I sink in despair, drowning in the rounded seas as I tried vainly to reach it.”
There were so many things Sigethril wanted to ask. Things that lived in rumours surrounding the old wise-woman, things alluded to in sorrowing poems under the stars, yet never by her spoken of directly.
“But you love the Elves. There is none of Ar-Pharazon’s hate in you.”
“The end of envy is hate. But twisted love can twine around envy’s poisonous root. Death is bitter. I have learned a little better courage, and hope to face mine with some estel. But when my husband was torn from me, I turned envy on my faithful friend, for she was immortal and above these mortal sorrows.
“Then I lived among Elves. I loved the sea as a daughter of Númenor. Yet it called them somewhere I cannot follow. They were my dearest friends. My heart grew glad again, and sorrow grew with it. Can there be unmixed joy in this world? Had I been granted Luthien’s choice to choose my fate I do not know what I would have chosen. I would have died in bitterness had I chosen mortality, and yet grown hopeless in unending grief had I chosen the Elder Children. It is a mercy that we are not given the choice.”
“The world is marred. Like Nienna I weep for it. What the end will be I do not know. The gulf between our kindreds, the separation of our fates, it is a heavy sorrow. Were the world whole I do not think this evil would be.”
“Shall you then take the sea and seek Meneltarma?”
“Nay. At the end the temptation would overcome me. I would die resisting my fate, in seeking after the Elder children I would become less than a Man. I shall remain a woman, old and blind, listening for the Song, and remembering.”
The rocky coasts of Lindon stretched to a dark sea.
She could taste the salt as she licked her lips, she could hear the roar of mighty waves against the cliffs. Her hair, ever indecisive between the straight hair of her father and the curls of her mother’s kin now coiled as it never did in Annuminus. Gwetheril seemed younger, her stride longer, grey hair unbound and curlier than Sigethril’s wild in the wind.
Elf towers rose in the distance, and the air was sweet. Very few remained in the havens of Lindon, (did any yet tarry?) But the air was still heavy with the sweetness of enchantment.
“Lend me your eyes, Sidethril, look out to the sea.”
She looked and saw nothing, nothing but waves upon waves, fading from dark water to silver sky.
But Gwetheril stood patiently, waiting. A few minutes later she bid her niece to look again, then again.”
A speck came into focus, a small boat on choppy waters, tossed too and fro, but lightly. In it, balancing lightly, (as the boat came nearer Sigethril wondered that the figure did not seem to be holding on) stood a lithe figure playing a flute. Snatches of melody reached them, achingly beautiful, but forceful as a storm.
A young Elf leapt from the boat, but the smile and joy in his face turned to something akin to horror as he saw Gwetheril. For a moment Sidethril thought he might flee, but instead he approached, and pressed her hand.
“I thought you might have already taken the sea,” There was a tightness in Gwetheril’s face, recoiling from the Elf’s clear pity. Here in bespelled Elvish lands, to Sigethril’s eyes her aunt’s lined face seemed but the hard-earned marks of wisdom, her hair silver as the waves beneath the clouded sky. But what must Elvish eyes see in the aged form of her aunt.
“I promised I should not do so without bidding you farewell my friend.”
But slowly the Elf and woman fell into the laughter and rhythms of old friends. The three of them sat, and wove songs through their talk, of memories when Gwetheril sailed upon the sea with Elves, and of her travels with Sigethril.
The tension passed, and slowly, but then all at once Elf and woman fell into the laughter and rhythms of old friends. Together the three of them sat. They spoke of memories, of days when Gwetheril sailed upon the sea with the Elvish crew. They spoke of Sidethril’s upcoming wedding. Through their talk wove songs, lifted up beside the great sea.
Night fell, and the clouds for a moment broke, and the light of the stars streamed through. They turned their faces upward to look, and when they turned back to each other, Gwetheril had gone, taking that mysterious doom of mortal men.
The Elf trembled, and cried out, “Oh that I had left before today, had taken that road before sorrow caught me here.”
Sigethril felt little grief. It would come, she knew, on the lonely journey back, when she felt the emptiness where once her aunt walked beside her. But now she felt only a settled sort of peace.
But no words she had to comfort the Elf. Nor had he words for her. Together they dug a grave on the cliff-top, overlooking the Sundering sea.
Then the Elf began to sing.
Oh wither goes the westering sun,
the West of West that fills my dreams?
The silver towers, soaring gulls,
and songs from havens beckon me
to speed along the singing sea.
Shimmer the wings of starlit ship,
on jewelled mantle of the waves,
whose folds hide realms and realms beneath,
of denizens in dark enclaves.
From speeding stern the darkened east
slips away, slips away,
but far too far! She is gone!
Too vast the sea that stretches grey.
The watchful moon on shadowed sea,
his paths of light he lays,
But to the shores I once forsook
he cannot lead that way.
Oh for the ship of morning’s star,
to follow swift and seek the skies,
and search the welkin’s starry rings,
and meet her when the evening flies.
Oh past-seeker where have sunk the nights
in memory linger on the shores
between the sun and jewel-lit stars,
a moment meet, a moment more.
But sailing, sailing, sailing on,
The cold wind laughs “Ye seek in vain,
From highest heaven, deepest seas,
Seek and seek and seek again,
And find her not, for she is gone.”
Still sail, sail, sail on.
Then he took his small boat and sailed away from the sunrise. And Sigethril returned to Annuminus.
