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Celebrían’s mother came with the dawn, kissed Arwen’s forehead, and embraced the twins before coming to Elrond’s bedside. Her mind brushed Celebrían’s, strong and bright as her armour.
You’ve done well, binding him here.
That was mostly Elladan.
Celebrían’s eldest always worked his craft within the realm of the fëar, a powerful and unpredictable gift, but one far more suited to this task than Celebrían’s own, that fine craft honed as much at Celebrimbor’s side as at her mother’s. He had been more able to help than her in these past weeks, when the only battle worth fighting took place in the realm of the mind.
Galadriel sang, wove her magic with her harp in that ancient fashion of elves, voice slipping between tongues as she called to any Vala, Maia, wandering spirit that would hear her. No one came save for Eärendil, rising portentous but impotent in the sky. When at last her hands fell limply from the strings, Celebrían knew already what the verdict would be.
He’ll live, but he will fade. You must persuade him to go.
They’d never intended to leave, unless the children asked it of them. Neither of their fathers would sail, and an interdiction prevented Celebrían’s mother from doing so. On that far shore there was potential joy, but with it came risk and pain that neither of them had wanted to lose their home for.
“Rivendell…”
She inclined her head. “You will have to take the ring.”
Elrond barely argued with her, when he woke. He sat cold and silent, resigned to his fate, twitched away as their children embraced him.
“I won’t see them all again,” he said to her, at the docks. “I don’t know if it’s because they’ll leave, or because I will.”
Celebrían did not cry, as he took off her wedding ring and replaced it with the heavy weight of Vilya. She had not wept since Elrohir passed Elrond into her arms, all those weeks ago.
--
“In those days of our tale, there were still some people who had both elves and heroes of the North for ancestors. Elladan and Elrohir were their leaders in name alone. Though ancient, they were young in heart and wild as horses. They, and all their kin, bowed to Celebrían, lady of the house. She was the daughter of a witch, as lovely as the memory of ancient days, as warm as sunrise, and as strong as the mountains, when it was needed of her.”
There and Back Again: A Hobbit’s Tale, by Bilbo Baggins
--
Celebrían raised a dozen children, and tried in vain to keep her heart cold. They all had a shard of Elrond in them, but that was not why she came to love each of them. How could she not love them? They were all perfect. Though strange and transient, their hearts were equal in capacity to her own.
“Estel,” she said, picking up the boy she had named her hope, “what are you doing out of bed so late?”
“‘Rohir told me his grandpa was coming to visit tonight.”
That boy would be the death of her. “He is, Pityo. Just as he does every night. Would you like to see him?”
She took him up to the tower she had transformed into her office when she became Lady of Imladris in her own name, and pointed Gil-Estel out to him.
“That’s not a grandpa! That’s a star.”
Celebrían told him a very censored version of the story, and Estel nodded as if he was very old and wise. “Did my papa become a star too?”
He thought it was a metaphor. Well, Celebrían could hardly blame him for that. Elrond himself hadn’t believed it for years.
“No. Your father was a man, just like you. He’s gone now to Eru, who is father to all of us. So he is much farther than a star, and yet closer all the same. He is with you and loves you even now.”
Estel was quiet a moment, and then asked, “did ‘Rohir’s papa become a star?”
“No, Pityo. But he has gone to where the star-ship docks. Perhaps he sees his father now.”
“Okay,” Estel said, but he sounded doubtful.
--
“Mithrandir,” Celebrían said, quite at her wit’s end, “I will not send four unblooded civilians against the forces of darkness that shattered my husband. The two are bad enough. Sending Estel with them is bad enough. Let me send Glorfindel. Or if it must be nine, send seven now and let two of my mother’s guard join them in Lóthlorien.”
“More warriors will not protect them from the darkness. Even Glorfindel, fine with a sword though he is, cannot protect them. It is not only strength required to fend it off. In these days of darkness, friendship is as valuable a tool against the darkness as a hundred swords of Gondolin.”
“Careful. It would not do well to tell me that I failed to love my husband enough.”
Mithrandir was gentle. He always was. “Not that. Sometimes, no love – not that of a child or a spouse, a parent or a friend – is enough to ward off pain. But it does help. Kindness has always been a fiercer weapon against the enemy than a sword. Elrond knew that as well, I think. So do you, for you could not have maintained this house without it.”
“And what good is warding off the enemy if we cannot save those we love? I will not fight out of a burning revenge, much as that might satisfy my baser instincts.”
“I do not know. Perhaps you can tell me, for already you have stood more fiercely against him and for longer than many.”
Even after all these years as Lady of Rivendell, she still didn’t know.
“Send your Hobbits. But I swear, if this ends with me having to tell Bilbo they died for nothing, neither elven ring nor mairin spell, neither blessing of Manwë nor Nienna, will save you from my wrath.”
“Nor league of swords?”
“Not that either.”
--
Arwen had inherited from Celebrían, as she in turn had from her mother, an ability to seethe quietly with righteous fury.
“Of course,” she said coldly, “I must stay here, sheltered and safe, while the enemy rages at our doors. As if by dint of my sex I have not had precisely the same training as my brothers, and a great deal more than most of the Fellowship you sent on that best and most dangerous mission.”
“What fool do you imagine the daughter of Galadriel would have to be to think that? Ar-nín, the war is coming here too, and I needed one of you at my side. I cannot carry it alone.”
“And why me? Because of Aragorn, is it not? Because you would still see me parted from him, to make a different choice.”
Celebrían said nothing. This argument they had already had. Celebrían could not, and had never understood why their children felt the pull to both. In truth, she had not understood why they had the choice at all, for Elros’s line clearly had not, or else had chosen with such consistency that eventually any choice had vanished. If it were her, she thought, she would have chosen the second Elrond had sailed.
But it was not her. This reality was as unknowable to her as flight to a fish. Elrond had tried to give her counsel on how to parent through this, and now his advice was all she had left.
“They can’t choose for us, or not only for us. They can only choose for them, for their lives and their future.”
Celebrían was trying to be a parent he would be proud of.
“Neither of you have ever been able to focus while the other is present, and I would not like to test the ability on a battlefield. I know I can’t make the choice for you – I do know, Undómiel – but I can endeavour to see that both of you make it there to do so.”
Arwen grew very still, quiet even for her, and when she spoke it was like a sword in Celebrían’s heart. “I chose. Before he left, I chose. It felt wrong, to know that I could go into this war with two futures laid out for me. That I might choose to leave him for the crime of dying, of falling before the enemy, like so many do.”
“And if he does fall?” Celebrían asked, trusting her own mask to keep her from weeping in front of Arwen.
“Then I will be a woman,” Arwen said, “like so many other women, and I will live a good life and, I pray, a happy one, and I will go from this world at the moment of my choice, as Elros and his line once did. The choice is not only for him; it is for me.”
And of course it was, for Celebrían had not raised her daughter to believe that love was a simple thing. It was out of love for Elrond that Celebrían remained parted from him now, to bear the weight of that which he no longer could.
“I am more proud of you than you know,” she told Arwen, and pulled her close.
--
“Upon the very Eve of Midsummer, when the sky was blue as sapphire and white stars opened in the East, but the West was still golden, and the air was cool and fragrant, the riders came down the North-way to the gates of Minas Tirith. First rode Elrohir and Elladan, rarely-worn crowns upon their brows, and then came Glorfindel and Erestor and all the household of Rivendell, and after them came the Lady Galadriel and Celeborn, Lord of Lothlórien, riding upon white steeds and with them many fair folk of their land, grey-cloaked with white gems in their hair; and last came Lady Celebrían, their daughter, as clever and as fair as the two of them together, bearing the sceptre of Annúminas, and beside her upon a grey palfrey rode Arwen her daughter, Evenstar of her people.”
The Lord of the Rings, by Frodo Baggins
--
Artanis’s eyes were robbed of their treelight, and although she stood before Maglor, this was naught but a ghost. The light would never have left her, living. It had yet to leave Maglor, in spite of all his crimes. He was now the last of his cousins, it seemed, and his heart shattered to know it. They had called the doom down upon friend and foe alike, and only Maglor – least deserving of the lot, with the most blood on his hands – had survived.
“I’m so sorry, Artanis.”
She frowned and knelt at his side, briefly touching his forehead to check for a fever. The hallucinations, it seemed, had progressed from visual to the full tactile experience. She was shorter as a ghost, with a slightly broader build.
“I do not look that much like my mother,” Artanis said.
That was true enough, for all of Arafinwë’s line had taken more after Indis than anyone, but a strange thing for her to mention at a time like this.
“Was it Sauron? I felt a rush of his magic, some time past.”
She sat back on her heels, contemplating him. Then she raised her voice, and uttered, in a voice laced with magic, a command woven directly into the Song itself.
“See Me.”
And she was not Artanis, just a Sinda with the right face-shape, shorter and more muscular, with hair closer to silver than gold. Her eyes were unlit because she had never set foot in Valinor, of course, and would never see the light of the Trees as anything other than a single star.
“Artanissiel?”
“Celebrían. I think I owe you an apology, for many years of cruel things said outside your hearing. How long have the hallucinations persisted?”
He considered the question. “Maedhros visited me, after he died.”
She nodded seriously, and pried open his right hand, examining the wounded skin, still cracked and oozing after all these years. Her face wrinkled, but she did not flinch away. Instead, she took an ill-fitting ring from her finger and placed it on his own. It held a ghost of Celebrimbor’s magic, but nothing that burned, nor anything that healed.
Celebrían smiled, as if a great weight had been lifted from her, and said in ancient Quenya, carefully articulating her þorn with the air of someone who did not often use it, “Kanafinwë Makalaurë, bearer of Vilya. I confer upon thee the right granted to all ringbearers remaining on these shores: to sail for Valinor. In so doing, I charge thee with the carrying of a message. Thou shalt go to Elerondo Kanafinwion, and say unto him: his most loving wife will remain in this Middle Earth, to give their children as much of herself as she can bear, and shall pass into the west with the Last Bearer of the One Ring. This has she seen and this she knows.
“Say ‘aye’, Kanafinwë, and the deal shall be done.”
He had felt Elrond’s vanishing, he recalled. After Elros’s, but no less sharp in the pain. They had both joined together in what he was certain – well, mostly certain – were hallucinations, informing him of his greatest failure.
“What happened to Elrond?”
There was such pain on her face, and though she was young still – everyone was now, compared to Maglor – she looked at that moment as ancient as the cliffs worn away by the sea.
“Orcs. They couldn’t believe their luck, catching the Master of Imladris unawares. They caught us unawares too. It was a month, but it might as well have been a lifetime. His fëa had always been fragile, after so much loss.”
“I’m sorry,” Maglor said, to the loving wife of the child he had destroyed.
“Not to me,” she snapped viciously. “Unless you mean to apologise for the fact that he lost you too, although I am swiftly gathering that was as much a matter of illness as intent.”
He lost you too.
“We tortured those children. We turned them against their parents. We ruined them.”
“I don’t believe that. Neither does he. If you do, say ‘aye’ and let him decide what to do with you, perhaps it will be healing for him. If you do not, say ‘aye’, because then you might believe, as you ought, that your son misses you.”
He still did not understand entirely what Celebrían had done, nor why she was so utterly certain that she had won him the right to sail, but Artanis’s determination on her face sealed his confidence in her. “Aye.”
--
Naneth,
Forgive me! I had to try. Please don’t drown him on the way over.
When Mithrandir told me we were to sail, I wanted more than anything to be happy, but I felt so completely frozen, playing his words over and over in my head. I do love Elrond – I love him so much, Nana – but I just kept thinking about the boys.
Elrond knew when he left that he wouldn’t see the children again. I pray so very much that he only meant Arwen. But I can’t guarantee that, and I can’t leave them with this hanging over them. I’m not the guidance they need to make this choice. I don’t understand it the way he does. But I have to try.
Elrond was such a good father to all of them. Is such a good father to them. I won’t let the Enemy change the tense of his love. He’s so much better at people than I am, seeing right to the heart of them in a way I never have. If he was here, he would know what to say, how to make this accursed choice hurt them as little as possible. He and Arwen wouldn’t have fought like she and I did. He’d know what to say now, to Elladan and Elrohir. I still don’t. I’ve been thinking about it for centuries and I don’t know. So I have to take these extra years, bartered and weadled from time itself.
But that requires I abandon Elrond again. And so I have to try to give him something back. If Elladan and Elrohir choose the other course, if I have failed him utterly, I have to see he gets something back beyond myself. I love him – of course I love him – but the love of one person isn’t enough. If it was, I never would have lost him.
I beg your love and pardon,
Your daughter,
Celebrían
--
There was the beginnings of grey in her daughter’s hair, when they parted at last, and Celebrían crushed her close, one last time, feeling a shaky breath.
“I’ll make them go,” Arwen whispered, with all the determined recklessness she’d had at thirty. “They don’t want mortality, not really. They’re just being indecisive about it.”
“You can’t make your brothers do anything, love.”
“You can’t, maybe,” Arwen said, with all the confidence of a little sister who always got what she wanted, in the end.
Celebrían remembered her last conversation with her sons. In ways small and subtle, they had begun to change, growing lighter on their feet as they walked with her father. They were making their choice, perhaps, a fraction every day.
She had told them that they would have her love wherever they walked. In the end, it was all she could give them.
“Far be it for me to doubt the powers of Arwen Evenstar,” said Celebrían, and kissed her brow.
--
Dear Elanor,
I’ll be past sailed, my little flower, by the time you read this. I feared I’d have plenty of trouble, when I saw the elf-city was empty, but I’d had no more than a minute to scratch my head about the problem before Lady Celebrían herself was there, showing me the boat she’d half-finished.
“Círdan’s gone wandering,” she said, naming the lord of the place as familiarly as you would I, “but I’m from a seafaring line myself, in ages past.”
I remembered her mother, as fair as the moon, giving us those river-boats a lifetime ago.
She finished up the boat, quick as you like, and would hardly let me lift a finger to help with anything except carving up a figurehead. She thought a swan, right off, but I’m not much one for finicky details like feathers, so in the end I told her I thought I could do a simple dragon, with just teeth and ears, like I used to for you when you were small, and she laughed and said we’d give all the stuffy elves in the west a proper fright, sailing in with a dragon on the ship. I don’t figure all those high and mighty folk will be more frightened than you when you were six, but I suppose we’ll see soon enough. It’ll give Mister Frodo a proper laugh if they are.
All my love,
Da
--
Celebrían had often dreamed of who would be the first to greet her, when she finally traversed the Straight Road. As an undamned child of the Second Age, she had known from childhood that this journey was her birthright. Once she had imagined only a hazy picture of relatives she had never met, her grandfather and uncles. Later, she had imagined Celebrimbor, and then Gil-galad.
Now, for centuries, Elrond had hung suspended in her mind like a leaf caught in the moment of falling. If he wasn’t there, if she’d sent him away to die alone, Celebrían would not forgive herself before the remaking of the world.
But that was him, surely, standing at the dock. There were so many there. She spotted elves from Rivendell, including Lindir, who had sailed with Elrond to keep him company so many years before. There beside her mother were Frodo and Bilbo, whose presence she hurriedly relayed to Sam. Then there was a horde of elves, who could only have been her family. Who else but her grandfather would be there, crowned with golden circlet and golden hair alike? And that must have been her grandmother at his side, and at least one of her uncles with them. A knot of people near Elrond must have been his family in turn. Was Maglor amongst them? Had her message arrived? She rushed forward to find out.
Elrond had not been able to bear touch, last they parted, and she froze, but half a step from him, remembering the fact.
He was smiling at her, beautiful as he had always been in a delicately embroidered grey over-robe, with red trim. The angry scars she remembered had faded to silver against his skin.
“I’m sorry,” she said, though the words were so woefully inadequate for how long she had abandoned him. Celebrían could see, scanning the crowd, that Maglor was not among them, though the elf at Elrond’s left shoulder was, oddly enough, Gil-galad’s father Fingon. To his right must have been Elwing and Eärendil, and that man there was Tuor, but no others were immediately obvious to her eyes. Neither Gil-galad nor Celebrimbor. She had sent Elrond, it seemed, to a land where he was without familiar faces, and even her one attempt to remedy that had not succeeded. She fought against the welling of tears in her eyes.
He tracked her gaze a moment, and came forward to take her hands in his. “No, my love. It’s alright.”
Vilya was on his finger, where it had belonged for so many centuries, and she broke half of their contact to cover her mouth as she gasped.
“Did he-”
“Banned from Alqualondë,” Elrond said, “but here. Thank you, for him and for staying with our children as long as you could. I know you never wanted to bear the possibility of losing them alone.”
He understood.
“I missed you so much.”
“And I you,” he said, and he kissed her.
In the years afterwards, there was much bickering about whether it was Fingon or Finrod who started the round of applause. Lindir, sensibly, kept his mouth shut.