Morgoth's Ring (58 page)

'The first difficulty I perceive,' said Andreth, 'and to it our Wise have their own answer. The second, as you guess, I do not perceive.'

'Do you not?' said Finrod. 'Then you do not see yourselves clearly. But it may often happen that friends and kinsmen see some things plainly that are hidden from their friend himself.

'Now we Eldar are your kinsmen, and your friends also (if you will believe it), and we have observed you already through three lives of Men with love and concern and much thought. Of this then we are certain without debate, or else all our wisdom is vain: the fear of Men, though close akin indeed to the fear of the Quendi, are yet not the same. For strange as we deem it, we see clearly that the fear of Men are not, as are ours, confined to Arda, nor is Arda their home.

'Can you deny it? Now we Eldar do not deny that ye love Arda and all that is therein (in so far as ye are free from the Shadow) maybe even as greatly as do we. Yet otherwise. Each of our kindreds perceives Arda differently, and appraises its beauties in different mode and degree. How shall I say it? To me the difference seems like that between one who visits a strange country, and abides there a while (but need not), and one who has lived in that land always (and must). To the former all things that he sees are new and strange, and in that degree lovable. To the other all things are familiar, the only things that are, his own, and in that degree precious.'

'If you mean that Men are the guests,' said Andreth.

'You have said the word,' said Finrod: 'that name we have given to you.'

'Lordly as ever,' said Andreth. 'But even if we be but guests in a land where all is your own, my lords, as you say, tell me what other land or things do we know?'

'Nay, tell me!' said Finrod. 'For if you do not know, how can we? But do you know that the Eldar say of Men that they look at no thing for itself; that if they study it, it is to discover something else; that if they love it, it is only (so it seems) because it reminds them of some other dearer thing? Yet with what is this comparison? Where are these other things?

'We are both, Elves and Men, in Arda and of Arda; and such knowledge as Men have is derived from Arda (or so it would appear). Whence then comes this memory that ye have with you, even before ye begin to learn?

'It is not of other regions in Arda from which ye have journeyed. We also have journeyed from afar. But were you and I to go together to your ancient homes east away I should recognize the things there as part of my home, but I should see in your eyes the same wonder and comparison as I see in the eyes of Men in Beleriand who were born here.'

'You speak strange words, Finrod,' said Andreth, 'which I have not heard before. Yet my heart is stirred as if by some truth that it recognizes even if it does not understand it. But fleeting is that memory, and goes ere it can be grasped; and then we grow blind. And those among us who have known the Eldar, and maybe have loved them, say on our side: "There is no weariness in the eyes of the Elves". And we find that they do not understand the saying that goes among Men: too often seen is seen no longer. And they wonder much that in the tongues of Men the same word may mean both "long-known" and

"stale".

'We have thought that this was so only because the Elves have lasting life and undiminished vigour. "Grown-up children" we, the guests, sometimes call you, my lord. And yet - and yet, if nothing in Arda for us holds its savour long, and all fair things grow dim, what then? Does it not come from [the] Shadow upon our hearts? Or do you say that it is not so, but this was ever our nature, even before the wound?'

'I say so, indeed,' answered Finrod. 'The Shadow may have darkened your unrest, bringing swifter weariness and soon turning it to disdain, but the unrest was ever there, I believe.

And if this is so, then can you not now perceive the disharmony that I spoke of? If indeed your Wisdom had lore like to ours, teaching that the Mirroaowi are made of a union of body and mind, of hroa and fea, or as we say in picture the House and the Indweller.

'For what is the "death" that you mourn but the severing of these two? And what is the "deathlessness" that you have lost but that the two should remain united for ever?

'But what then shall we think of the union in Man: of an Indweller, who is but a guest here in Arda and not here at home, with a House that is built of the matter of Arda and must therefore (one would suppose) here remain?

'At least one would not hope for this House a life longer than Arda of which it is part. Yet you claim that the House too was immortal, do you not? I would rather believe that such a fea of its own nature would at some time of its own will have abandoned the house of its sojourn here, even though the sojourn might have been longer than is now permitted. Then

"death" would (as I said) have sounded otherwise to you: as a release, or return, nay! as going home! But this you do not believe, it seems?'

'Nay, I do not believe this,' said Andreth. 'For that would be contempt of the body, and is a thought of the Darkness unnatural in any of the Incarnate whose life uncorrupted is a union of mutual love. But the body is not an inn to keep a traveller warm for a night, ere he goes on his way, and then to receive another. It is a house made for one dweller only, indeed not only house but raiment also; and it is not clear to me that we should in this case speak only of the raiment being fitted to the wearer rather than of the wearer being fitted to the raiment.

'I hold then that it is not to be thought that the severance of these two could be according to the true nature of Men. For were it "natural" for the body to be abandoned and die, but

"natural" for the fea to live on, then there would indeed be a disharmony in Man, and his parts would not be united by love.

His body would be a hindrance at best, or a chain. An im-position indeed, not a gift. But there is one who imposes, and who devises chains, and if such were our nature in the beginning, then we should derive it from him - but that you say should not be spoken.

'Alas! Out in the darkness men do say this nonetheless, but not the Atani as thou knowest, not now. I hold that in this we are as ye are, truly Incarnates, and that we do not live in our right being and its fullness save in a union of love and peace between the House and the Dweller. Wherefore death, which divides them, is a disaster to both.'

'Ever more you amaze my thought, Andreth,' said Finrod.

'For if your claim is true, then lo! a fea which is here but a traveller is wedded indissolubly to a hroa of Arda; to divide them is a grievous hurt, and yet each must fulfil its right nature without tyranny of the other. Then this must surely follow: the fea when it departs must take with it the hroa. And what can this mean unless it be that the fea shall have the power to uplift the hroa, as its eternal spouse and companion, into an endurance everlasting beyond Ea, and beyond Time? Thus would Arda, or part thereof, be healed not only of the taint of Melkor, but released even from the limits that were set for it in the

"Vision of Eru" of which the Valar speak.

'Therefore I say that if this can be believed, then mighty indeed under Eru were Men made in their beginning; and dreadful beyond all other calamities was the change in their state.

'Is it, then, a vision of what was designed to be when Arda was complete - of living things and even of the very lands and seas of Arda made eternal and indestructible, for ever beautiful and new - with which the fear of Men compare what they see here? Or is there somewhere else a world of which all things which we see, all things that either Elves or Men know, are only tokens or reminders?'

'If so it resides in the mind of Eru, I deem,' said Andreth. 'To such questions how can we find the answers, here in the mists of Arda Marred? Otherwise it might have been, had we not been changed; but being as we are, even the Wise among us have given too little thought to Arda itself, or to other things that dwell here. We have thought most of ourselves: of how our hroar and fear should have dwelt together for ever in joy, and of the darkness impenetrable that now awaits us.'

'Then not only the High Eldar are forgetful of their kin!' said Finrod. 'But this is strange to me, and even as did your heart when I spoke of your unrest, so now mine leaps up as at the hearing of good news.

'This then, I propound, was the errand of Men, not the followers, but the heirs and fulfillers of all: to heal the Marring of Arda, already foreshadowed before their devising; and to do more, as agents of the magnificence of Eru: to enlarge the Music and surpass the Vision of the World!(11)

'For that Arda Healed shall not be Arda Unmarred, but a third thing and a greater, and yet the same.(12) I have conversed with the Valar who were present at the making of the Music ere the being of the World began. And now I wonder: Did they hear the end of the Music? Was there not something in or beyond the final chords of Eru which, being overwhelmed thereby, they did got perceive?(13)

'Or again, since Eru is for ever free, maybe he made no Music and showed no Vision beyond a certain point. Beyond that point we cannot see or know, until by our own roads we come there, Valar or Eldar or Men.

'As may a master in the telling of tales keep hidden the greatest moment until it comes in due course. It may be guessed at indeed, in some measure, by those of us who have listened with full heart and mind; but so the teller would wish. In no wise is the surprise and wonder of his art thus diminished, for thus we share, as it were, in his authorship. But not so, if all were told us in a preface before we entered in!'

'What then would you say is the supreme moment that Eru has reserved?' Andreth asked.

'Ah, wise lady!' said Finrod. 'I am an Elda, and again I was thinking of my own people. But nay, of all the Children of Eru. I was thinking that by the Second Children we might have been delivered from death. For ever as we spoke of death being a division of the united, I thought in my heart of a death that is not so: but the ending together of both. For that is what lies before us, so far as our reason could see: the completion of Arda and its end, and therefore also of us children of Arda; the end when all the long lives of the Elves shall be wholly in the past.(14)

'And then suddenly I beheld as a vision Arda Remade; and there the Eldar completed but not ended could abide in the present for ever,(15) and there walk, maybe, with the Children of Men, their deliverers, and sing to them such songs as, even in the Bliss beyond bliss, should make the green valleys ring and the everlasting mountain-tops to throb like harps.'

Then Andreth looked under her brows at Finrod: 'And what, when ye were not singing, would ye say to us?' she asked.

Finrod laughed. 'I can only guess,' he said. 'Why, wise lady, I think that we should tell you tales of the Past and of Arda that was Before, of the perils and great deeds and the making of the Silmarils! We were the lordly ones then! But ye, ye would then be at home, looking at all things intently, as your own. Ye would be the lordly ones. "The eyes of Elves are always thinking of something else," ye would say. But ye would know then of what we were reminded: of the days when we first met, and our hands touched in the dark. Beyond the End of the World we shall not change; for in memory is our great talent, as shall be seen ever more clearly as the ages of this Arda pass: a heavy burden to be, I fear; but in the Days of which we now speak a great wealth.' And then he paused, for he saw that Andreth was weeping silently.

'Alas, lord!' she said. 'What then is to be done now? For we speak as if these things are, or as if they will assuredly be. But Men have been diminished and their power is taken away. We look for no Arda Remade: darkness lies before us, into which we stare in vain. If by our aid your everlasting mansions were to be prepared, they will not be builded now.'

'Have ye then no hope?' said Finrod.

'What is hope?' she said. 'An expectation of good, which though uncertain has some foundation in what is known? Then we have none.'

'That is one thing that Men call "hope",' said Finrod. 'Amdir we call it, "looking up". But there is another which is founded deeper. Estel we call it, that is "trust". It is not defeated by the ways of the world, for it does not come from experience, but from our nature and first being. If we are indeed the Eruhin, the Children of the One, then He will not suffer Himself to be deprived of His own, not by any Enemy, not even by ourselves.

This is the last foundation of Estel, which we keep even when we contemplate the End: of all His designs the issue must be for His Children's joy. Amdir you have not, you say. Does no Estel at all abide?'

'Maybe,' she said. 'But no! Do you not perceive that it is part of our wound that Estel should falter and its foundations be shaken? Are we the Children of the One? Are we not cast off finally? Or were we ever so? Is not the Nameless the Lord of the World?'