True Hope Cometh From the Sea

Author: Kenaz ([email protected])
Beta: Minuial Nuwing
Pairing: Tuor/Voronw�
Rating: Mild R
Request: I'd like to read about a love affair during the search for Gondolin, culminating with Tuor's eventual marriage to Idril. Writer's choice as to Idril's acceptance of their liaison - but I would prefer it end 'well', meaning angst is resolved with either a bittersweet or happy ending. Please, no sap or excessive fluff.
Written for: Fimbrethiel

Summary: None given.

It is not easy to leave this place, to bid farewell to this land of silver-green willows and flaglily fields, where Narog twines with Sirion. My heart has found comfort here of late, as it did long ago when first I found my way to these quiet meads, and not lightly do I forego that comfort, for it was hard-won. Besides, the last time I set sail, I lost my ship, my friends, and nearly my life. Yet leave Nan-tathren I must, and tomorrow I will return south to the mouth of the Sirion where my friends await me, and, from thence, I shall sail to the West.

There, I am told, lay meads with which even Nan-tathren and its willows cannot compare, where no withering nor any end of Spring will blight them, and where now even I, who sought those fabled shores long ago and was denied, may come thither and be at peace. For now there is hope, for me not least of all.

But it was not always so. Before hope, there was much grief.

The storm came without warning.

The sky blackened, and swiftly, as if a heavy mantle had been thrown across the firmament to blot out the moon and stars. The eye of the wind was everywhere and nowhere, blowing us this way and that; both Túrë and I together at the tiller could not bear the ship away. Slashing rains came down while the wake churned angrily below and climbed from the sea-bed in frothy fists to pummel my craft as if the very presence of her hull in the brine was an egregious offense to the waters, a foul morsel to be spat out upon the shoals.

When the fist wave surged, rising astern as high and unyielding as a mountain, I was ripped from the helm to the sound of snapping ropes and groaning wood and thrown forward against the main-mast, pinioned there as if by a giant's hands. An echoing swell rose afore, threatening to break the ship in half between two walls of water, and though I clung to the mast with all my strength I was torn away and I plummeted as the bow was thrust up toward the sky. I grabbed for the tiller as I fell, no longer caring which way it swung, and held tight. A yelp barely heard above the roaring winds and abruptly silenced was all that marked the end of Túrë, who was carried past me on the deluge that rushed over the gunwales. I grabbed for him and came away with only a handful of cloth torn from his sleeve. When the boom began to crack, I though for an instant that the sound was my own ribs shattering in my chest as the devouring sea beat me against the deck, chastising me for my attempt to save Túrë, whom Ossë had claimed for his own, and I wondered then if Ossë had gone in league with Morgoth once again, for this night even the gentling hand of Uinen could not have tempered his wildness nor his wrath.

The mainsail gave way at last, flying free of the yard and tumbling like a winding-cloth across the corpse of the ship. I hoisted myself on the tattered shroud and reached again for the mast. The screams of the others resounded in my ears, a counterpoint to the bellowing of the storm as the ship broke apart beneath us, but with the sea filling my mouth I could not draw breath to scream with them. My pathetic throat could never emulate the sound of agony my heart made as I watched my friends being sucked into the lightless depths. Nóm vanished without a sound, his hands breaking the water thrice, frantic in his drowning throes, reaching for anything and finding nothing but churning brine. Súrekáno grasped at the deck as it splintered, struggling for a handhold, and he called out to Ulmo the Mighty to have mercy on him. But Ulmo was not with him, and was deaf to his cries.

Why Ulmo was with me, I could not fathom, not when better men than I�the bold Súrekáno, the powerful Túrë, and Nóm and all the rest�were dragged below and choked by the waters. I could see their blue-lipped faces and sea-foam eyes; I could see their broken bodies floating just beneath the surface in their brackish grave, and I held silently to the mast, too numb to scream, to hopeless to pray, to helpless to curse.

The tumult roared up around me, and within it I heard the sound of darkness made manifest, the sound of my death, and I let go of the mast and let the waves take me, for what use was it to struggle? The sea I loved despised me, and my life would end where it began, within sight of the stone halls of Vinyamar.

I had tried to reach Aman, and I had failed; the price of my failure was no less than my life.

I both pity and envy those who have never dwelt by the sea, those who have not heard the gulls. Their song as they wheel above the water is a mournful cry that pulls at the heart, and none are pulled so deeply as the Falathrim, my kin. For I have my mother's heart, and the call of the white birds is to me both gift and gall. It beckoned me home, yet my true home in the West was forever closed to me�or so I then believed. After all, I had tried to reach it in the last and greatest of Círdan's ships, ships they said no sea could drown, and had no more to show for it than a belly full of brine and grief, and the memory of wind and terror and the failing screams of my companions.

It was to the song of gulls I woke, sodden and sore, on the shores of Nevrast, the waters mocking me cruelly with their placidly. The sea-wrack that had yestereve been my ship bobbed benignly on the doldrums, the skeletal arm of the mast where I had found refuge rising from the water and pointing in silent opprobrium, and though it was a black thing to be grateful that the bodies of my fellows had been pulled below, I was grateful indeed; though in my mind's eye I could still see them�would ever see them�suspended in the dark waters with open mouths and unseeing eyes.

My own eyes were dry, for I was too drained of life to weep, too bereft to speak, and though in my despair I had considered walking back into the wake until it swallowed me, I found I was too exhausted to do aught but sit and stare out over the wreckage of my ship, which was also the wreckage of my life.

A great shock it was to hear my own name called out from above, for none had dwelt in these parts since Turgon brought his folk to Gondolin, and the great halls of Vinyamar were long desolate and overgrown with lichen and sea-grasses. Had they returned hence in the time I had been away? I turned, looking up, and spied a commanding figure atop the high wall, radiantly backlit by the rising sun, his towering form arrayed in gleaming elven-mail and a cloak of shadow draped over his broad shoulders. His body was tall and powerful, and his golden hair shone like a crown upon his head. A crown, I say, because he was nothing short of kingly in his mien, and in the instant I found his eyes, blazing blue and bright with infinite possibility, my sorrows dispersed and I was full of wonder and trepidation. Had I not seen the mortality in his face, that trace of earthiness that betrays the soul of one possessing the Gift of the Valar, I might have thought him of the Valar himself.

He named himself Tuor, and an escaped thrall, but still I knelt before him and humbled myself as a subject kneels to his king: be he lord or thrall, I would follow him. Though as fate would have it, it was not my lot to follow, but to lead.

Long at sea, I had told myself that, were I ever to set foot on land again, I would dwell far from the Shadow in the North; that I would live in the Havens with my mother's kin, or perhaps seek a place for myself alone in the quiet fields of Nan-tathren.

But Tuor bade me take him to Gondolin to deliver Ulmo's message, and though the laws of the Hidden City forbade it and my heart was heavy with foreboding, I agreed; the wise do not gainsay the demands of the Valar. Ulmo had delivered me from death for this purpose, and I would not fail in it as I had failed in my last task. If I could do this thing, perhaps my friends would not have perished in vain.

The day was still young, and I could bear no more to look upon the sea. "Let us leave in haste," I counseled, and wrung the brackish water from the hem of my cloak.

Tuor looked to me uncertainly. "But whither will you lead me, and how far? Shall we not first take thought how we may fare in the wild, or if the way be long, how pass the harborless winter?"

His voice, heretofore strong and sure, wavered slightly, and his brow furrowed, and I saw that despite the glowing armor and the mantle of Ulmo, despite his sacred charge, my companion was young and friendless and afraid. As well he should be, I thought, for our long road promised great peril, and our destination more. I told him as much, but he would not abandon his quest.

We gathered our few provisions and turned our backs toward the sea.

We traveled in the dark, hiding ourselves from Morgoth's night-eyed creatures, and by day we sought rest and refuge where we could: in the foothills, in the trees, in the deep caves scoring the mountainside. We traveled in silence, our ears straining for the sound of our foes, and leagues passed under our feet with nothing to mark the turning of the hours but the eerie calls of the nightbirds.

When we did have safety, Tuor desired often to speak, as if the heaviness of our walking silence were a burden he could not wait to be free of. At first, he asked after Turgon and the Hidden City, but when he found my tongue chary, he sighed and turned his sweet face to me and said "Then tell me a tale, friend." In those moments, his face alight with earnestness, I remembered that he had spent many years alone, and was as starved for conversation as he was for other nourishment.

So I spoke of Nan-tathren and how I lingered there, enchanted, ere I came to Círdan in the Havens. I watched his blue eyes glimmer bright when I described the silver willows and the song of the wind in dancing boughs. I told him that my heart had been light and free there, and I hoped some day that I might show him its wonders myself. Many times I told and retold that tale, indulging myself in the recollection of flowers like jewels and meads of perfect green less because the memory heartened me�though it always did, and ever will�but because his eyes glowed so when I spoke of it, and when he watched me speak, I could pretend that he had affixed that captivated gaze not to my words, but to me.

I loved him. Even then, though I had known him but briefly, my heart yearned for him. I knew that should we succeed in our path that I would lose him, perhaps even more surely than if we failed, but the heart is a disobedient thing, and childlike in its hopes; it beats the tattoo of its own desires though the mind knows them to be fruitless. I told him of the fields of Nan-tathren, and I imagined him mine.

"And what then, Voronwë," he asked when at last he grew tired of the tale. "How came you to sail West, and how came you thence to the shores of Nevrast alone?"

I told him of my time in the Havens, learning sea-craft, the knowledge of which seemed to lay hidden in my heart, passed to me in my mother's blood, and was quick to be unlocked. I told him of Súrekáno and Túrë and Nóm; I told him of all the brave and worthy sailors lost now to Ossë's wrath. I found I could not bear his sympathy and I turned my face away and looked in the direction of the sun, which was setting now in striations of orange and purple and gold, and stilled my tongue, not wanting to darken his heart with my own sorrows. Yet though I ceased to speak, the story unraveled itself in my thoughts, and I could see again all that I had tried to force from my mind, and unbidden came the sole image of hope I could seize from the flotsam of memory: my single glimpse of the Elvenhome beyond the parting clouds, unattainable yet glorious beneath a dark sky pierced with adamant.

"Very bright were the stars upon the margin of the world."

I had not realized that I had spoken aloud, save that Tuor leaned in and took my face into his hands, and I could feel every scar and callus as they rested there, warm and unmoving, on my cheeks. "Mourn not," he enjoined. "My heart says to you that far from the shadow your long road shall lead you, and your hope shall return to the sea."

What else could I do? Naught but follow the doomed path of my heart and kiss him.

He flinched, but then his lips received mine and he returned the kiss and more, hungry for it, perhaps even more than I, for if it had been years since I had last tasted intimacy, Tuor had only ever imagined it, for in the first bloom of his youth he had been enslaved, and once escaped he had lived an outlaw's lonely life. His body turned feverish in the kindling fire of that kiss, and his fingertips trembled against my temples. I thought my heart might burst for joy.

He pulled away flustered, a perfect blush climbing his neck, and he spoke with great uncertainty. "I have never�" he said, "I had thought that part of me dead."

"Nay," I told him, smoothing his lovely golden head. "Not dead. Only sleeping."

And his eyes sank to half-mast, his lips softly parted, and he leaned in close and whispered the sweetest words I had ever heard:

"Awaken me, Voronwë."

And so I did, with my hands and my mouth, and he choked back the sounds of his renascence lest we give ourselves away, but even muted, I thought his song exquisite as the music of the winds in the willows. We clung to each other like vessels tempest-tossed, and at last he cried out, and the thrill of his body stirring to my touch, thriving in my grasp, and surrendering to me the first fruits of its renewal infused me with such irrepressible joy that I, too, gasped and found my end.

I kissed his eyelids as he caught his breath, and he smiled and drew me down beside him for a moment's reprieve.

"I do not believe I shall slumber again," he said. Then we fell silent; for night had come, and the stars shone white and cold.

I learned to read his mood by the carriage of his shoulders and what subtle shifting of his features my eyes could discern in the dark. Sometimes he was resolved; often, at the end of a weary march when the sky overhead began to lighten, he was hopeful. But as winter settled in over us and we saw the rape of the land by Morgoth's servants, he grew fierce and grim.

I nearly wept when we halted in the grey of dawn where the pool of Ivrin birthed the river Narog. It was no gleaming spring now, but a marshy waste. The stones of its basin had been defiled, trees slaughtered and burned. Even the air seemed suffused with lingering fear, and when I saw the trail of the Great Worm of Angband scarring the icy soil, I, too, felt my terror mount. But not Tuor. In him, there was not fear, but righteous anger, long-banked and burning hot within his soul.

Would that the heat of his wrath could have warmed us like a true flame! For when that day ended, night brought snow and ice that did not abate for months. Nine days we hunkered there, trapped by the storm, and when we dared press on we made slow progress. Never have I known such cold, such hunger. And if I suffered, Tuor suffered doubly so for his Mortal blood. His eyes, once bright as a summer day, grew dull and grey as the winter sky above us, and his handsome face was shadowed and gaunt. We trudged forward almost without ceasing, no longer marking day or night, for we feared that should we stop the snows would blanket us and we would die. When we dared take some little rest, even Ulmo's cloak that hid us from our foes did not hide us from the cutting winds, and I held Tuor tight in my arms, feeling him struggle to quell the shivers that wracked him. It was bittersweet to enfold him thus, feeling him close and burrowing into my clutch, yet knowing I could not warm him. My fear grew greater still: I had thought us invincible, this son of Men who had been remade a vessel of the Valar, and I who had been plucked from the mouth of the sea, but now it seemed that all our struggles would be for naught; that we had triumphed over violence only to succumb meekly to the snow-sleep here in the pathless wilds, almost home.

And as the Fell Winter eroded both his strength and his patience, Tuor turned on me and growled like a cur.

"At last, Voronwë, forego your secrecy with me! Do you lead me straight, and whither?"

I was stung deeply by his mistrust, and I knew he read it in my face for he looked away and did not meet my eyes for a time. "I have led you straight as I safely might," I answered, and he nodded.

"Then let us go as far as we may before hope fails."

I wondered if hope had not failed already, for him if not for me; there was no other choice but to press on, or sleep forever in the cold, white snow.

At dusk we reached the old highway, and found there a company of Orcs warming themselves around a fire. Tuor looked covetously upon the flames and drew his sword, announcing that he would slay our foemen for meat and steal their fire. I gripped his arm with all the strength I yet possessed.

"Rouse them and I will leave you," I told him, and though the gravity of my tone took him aback, he was not convinced of ending his folly. "They are not alone," I hissed. "Do your mannish eyes not spy other fires yonder? Would you have them bring their full number upon us? Even if we vanquished this company, more would be snapping at our heels, and I will not approach the hidden gates with the enemy at my hind, not for Ulmo's bidding, not for death." Still his sword was primed. "Not even for you, Tuor" I said darkly, and at the last his arm dropped and he sheathed his blade. I could feel the muscles in his arm still tense with fury, as much toward me as toward the Orcs and their fire that he so desperately craved.

We crept cautiously downwind, following the old road. On the other side lay Turgon's land, but danger moved before us. I was wary of crossing with the Orcs still so near, but Tuor looked at me, haggard and thin, and I saw that the last of his rage was spent. He was near to death from hunger and from cold, and there was nothing I could do to spare him that fate.

"I must go on now, or I will perish," he whispered, and I saw in his eyes that he spoke true.

"Let us go together, then," I told him, for I was with him for good or ill. If he fell now, I would go to Gondolin alone and deliver Ulmo's message in his stead. Then I would ask leave of Turgon to depart his land for good, and I would return here to the ancient road, and lay myself down beside his frozen body to die.

But if Tuor's rage was spent, his resolve burned still, and I drew my own strength from those embers. He draped us both in Ulmo's cloak and he clutched me hard 'round the waist and shepherded me forward, saying "Now I will lead."

We had barely crossed the road and reached the treeline when the cry went up; we had been scented or heard, but we were not yet seen. We fled as quickly as we could, though we sacrificed much speed for stealth, and pressed up the slope amidst the rowan and the birch until Tuor pulled me down in the shadow of a boulder and we lay pressed together with eyes wide and sides heaving, struggling to hear whither our pursuers had gone.

Night passed, and we stayed close in our little lair. Tuor's blood was riled by the chase; his hands found me and I was glad of it, for my own veins thrummed as well, but never along our long and arduous road had I troubled him with my desires, ever letting him come to me when he had need of release, or wished simply to pass a transient moment succored in another's care. His eyes were closed as we moved together in our rhythm, his face beatific as he spent, steam rising from the seed that dappled our tunics and the frozen earth between us, and then he sank deep into sleep.

But there would be no rest for me that night, weary though I was. I watched him slumber beneath Ulmo's cloak and knew, with poignant and painful clarity, that my time at his side neared its end, and that this would be the last time I touched him thus, though my body and soul rebelled at the thought of such privation. But if Ulmo had chosen Tuor over all others to carry his message and risk all to deliver Gondolin from the Doom of the Valar, far greater rewards awaited him than the simple love of a young mariner, and though I loved him, I knew his love for me flowed from a different source: in all our trysts, he had looked upon me with much fondness, but never as I looked upon him, with hopeless and unrequited desire.

Yet far darker things there were to concern myself with than the pangs of my heart. Many leagues lay still between us and our destination, and the welcome we received at the gates of Gondolin could still prove cold as an arrow through the heart or a sword to the throat. I stood guard as he slept, and saw the dark clouds part, offering a glimpse of mountains silhouetted against the dawn. "Home," I whispered to the empty lands, "home."

When first I heard Elemmakil's voice echoing in the darkness, I believed for certain that we would die. We were held there in the blinding glare of his lantern like hares before a wolf, barely daring breath, and though Tuor stood just behind me and at my shoulder, I could feel fear radiating from him like a fever, and I wondered if we had escaped all our enemies only to be struck down by our allies.

Yet it was I who had been tasked to lead dear Tuor hither, and I would bring him to Gondolin in the manner of a king, not suing for mercy from one I had long ago considered a friend. And if he were a king in this moment, I was his herald, the bearer of his standard, and no less than another king would declare our fates. When Elemmakil demanded Tuor show his face, I saw the awe and wonder in the warrior's expression, and knew that he had seen the greatness in my companion that I saw. He let us pass.

At last, despite all hardship and peril, Tuor stood before Turgon, and spoke his piece. I heard the voice of Ulmo, deep and dark as the Sundering Sea, echoing from Tuor's mouth, and my heart near to burst seeing in him the full greatness to which he had been born. His eyes, bold now, and with no hint of fear or weariness, scanned the gathered throng as if daring Turgon himself to gainsay his message, and each man to the last looked upon him with amazement. Yet something in the King's courtyard had caught his attention and held it, and I followed his gaze to see what enchanted him so, that his eyes glowed with longing the way they had when I had told him of the beauty of Nan-tathren.

I saw upon whom that reverent gaze fell, and my heart broke in twain.

I wanted to hate her, but I could not find the wherewithal.

What had she done, truly, other than be the fulfillment of a destiny that was not mine, no matter how I wished it? Better I should shake my futile little fists at Ossë for dashing my ship upon the shoals than narrow my eyes at her for loving him just as I did.

No, what affronted me was what I perceived as a lack of generosity in her spirit, for she knew what had transpired between us�Tuor withheld nothing from her, ever�and knew that I loved him still, and she was wary of me though upon her finger a gold band shined, and in her womb quickened the fruit of his adoration. I thought my yearning should not signify to her, for it was not returned save in the manner of loyal friends who have suffered much together, and I never once overstepped my bounds.

Her lovely face was hard and cold as marble as she cudgeled me with kind words spoken in a gentle tone. "You are well named," she said softly when I came upon her once, and the blow was bitter because it was true: I am nothing if not steadfast, even as my own heart is sundered.

Perhaps my resentment would have abated had I known then what I later learned: that Idril was accustomed to lovesick and covetous eyes, and she feared them greatly; for she had felt the weight of them herself, though the gaze that lingered on her was poison and treachery and murder, whereas my gaze was merely wistful. But I did not know. I did not see that Maeglin, too, was well named. Not until it was too late.

But in the time that followed their marriage, Tuor had other cares and I kept my distance, for it was never my purpose to initiate strife, and what use was I to him now, a mariner on the dry plains of the Tumladen? I built little boats for Eärendil to sail in the King's fountain, and told him the story of his father's journey, and tales of the sea. Later, much later, in Nan-Tathren, where the silver willows brought respite from the sorrows of my heart, I taught him to sail.

And so it was for seven years, the same length of time I had been at sea. And then one morning, the sky dawned the color of blood and fire, and my sea-heart seized, for every mariner dreads the morning that rises red. I will say no more of that day, nor of the days that followed; I do not think my soul can bear it. It is enough to say we lived, and live still. Too few can say even that.

Tuor's golden hair is shot with silver now; care and loss have etched deep lines in his face, and yet to me it seems age has only emboldened his features, burnished them. This is why we depart now, for while time has slowly leached him in ways that we Firstborn cannot fathom, the Valar have granted him this grace: that he alone among his kind might dwell ageless in Valinor, and Idril will need never be parted from him.

My heart is barren still, for no other has taken up residence in its chambers. But though I despise my loneliness, I look up and see the star that guides me, a child greatly beloved to me as Tuor's son, and I remember, bathed in Eärendil's radiance, that my loneliness is nothing beside the will of the Valar, my own desires meaningless beside fates greater than my own.

I stand at Eärrámë's prow and fix my eyes to the fathomless beyond, and know at last just how far I have come in my time. The sun sets in brilliant vermillion over the water, promising a halcyon dawn. A wind moves steady at our backs, bearing us ever farther into the foam, away from the life we knew and ever closer to the life that awaits: a life free from death, and from war, and from pain: a life of hope.

I keep my eyes on the horizon, and on the waves that roll ever on, and I hold dear to the promise that even I, a storm-tossed mariner, will find my own joy in this new land. I will have faith, for I am nothing if not steadfast, and still the words Tuor spoke long ago ring clear in my mind: far from the shadow your long road shall lead you, and your hope shall return to the sea.

~ Finis ~

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The title comes from The Silmarillion, 'Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin':

Nearly all of the dialogue herein was either taken directly or paraphrased from this same chapter, or from Unfinished Tales, 'Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin.'

There is some dispute over Tuor's ultimate fate, and in true Tolkien fashion, there is no singularly definitive answer. Because I am an optimist at heart, I went with Tolkien's statement in HoME IV, Vol. 4: