Celebrian is fourteen summers old when her mother starts to die.
It happens like this: The Lady of Lothlorien had gone north (too north) in search of a treasure so dark (too dark) and met some unspeakable terrible fate, no doubt wrought by the latent machinations of Sauron himself. Galadriel had returned to her kingdom–though barely–trembling and pale on horseback, with grievous injuries that the healers could not seem to mend no matter what potions they brewed or salves they could concoct. The noble elf lay weary and silent in her bed, hair unbound and covered in sweat, tended to by her dutiful husband and loyal servants while her body withered further into decay with each passing day. Nenya lay strangely dull and cold on her finger.
“Galadriel is strong,” Elrond assures her one night when Celebrian is told, again, there has been no progress with her Mother’s condition. His face is pinched with worry; an affliction which seems more permanent with the hour. “You need to stay strong for her, and when this passes–”
“I am too old for fairytales,” Celebrian snaps, stepping to the side of the hallway to allow yet another healer to pass, carrying a new tray of useless remedies in glass vials into Galadriel’s quarters. “I know she is dying. And wishing her better will not make it so—neither will lying to me.”
Chastened, Elrond is silent, turning to the darkened wood beyond the alcove; he seems to contemplate the treetops rustling beneath the moon; each branch and leaf whispering about the warrior-witch who was surely fading from this world to the next.
He seems to contemplate the shifting shadows themselves.
“Celebrian,” Elrond says slowly, hushed to keep his voice low from the prying ears down the hall. “Your mother’s injuries–they are unusual. Not of body, but spirit. It is her fea that is dying; poisoned by a darkness she does not seem to have the strength to name. Whatever it was she stumbled upon during her travels–it has infected her beyond measure, in ways we cannot understand. The healers are trying but…it is not something they have the power to cure, you understand?”
The woods blur; molton shapes of black and ash and green and silver swimming in her vision. Celebrian wipes the hot tears from her eyes and leans into Elrond’s familiar side, tucking her head against his shoulder.
When the words come: “Then what does?”
He presses an absent, apologetic kiss to the crown of her head. “I do not know, Celebrian. Perhaps only the song of Arda itself.”
Celebrian cannot bring herself to sleep–she nestles alone in the library, pulling every book from the healer’s section and flipping through dusty pages; unfurling cracked scrolls and translating old missives. There are poems of removing warts and sonnets about dressing battle wounds and finely tuned essays on making babies, ugh–
But there is little about the fea. Or at least–the healing of one. Only descriptions of death, only grief, only the comfort that once broken, the soul would not usually linger long and leave its physical counterpart to suffer. A few weeks, at most. A month, maybe. A blink of an eye for an elf.
She slams the book shut and scowls.
Perhaps only the song of Arda itself.
Celebrian pushes the ladder into a different section; she brings along a candle to light her way. Older books on higher shelves with faded covers and molded wet pages; parchment bound centuries ago and authors with voices long-dead.
It takes four tries to find the one she wants, and a quick, albeit nasty battle with a cobweb. In her hands: a thick leather tome, the title still gleaming with ancient golden ink. The Creation.
In the beginning, it tells her, there was only harmony in the great chorus of life.
Celebrian has never intentionally snuck out before, but her mother has also never been dying before. It is almost too easy with the entire kingdom’s watch turned towards Lady Galadriel’s bedside for Celebrian to slip unseen into the kitchens to collect rations and a skin of water; easier still to lead her horse out of the empty stable and along the southern wall where a few stones have crumbled outward–just enough space for someone clever to slip through. A carrot and an apple coax the animal through the narrow split, and soon they are standing in the cold embrace of the wild treeline, looking back at the flickering lamps of Lothlorien, so small at this distance they appeared to the eyes like fireflies would.
Celebrian wraps her arms around the animal’s warm neck, brushing its wiry brown coat with her fingers. A stomped, anxious foot is all she gets in return: the horse has only ever stayed safely within the bounds of the outer city, grazed in trimmed, neat pastures.
“It’s alright,” she says, “I know the way.” And somehow, she does.
Due South till morning, Celebrian allows her horse to take its time finding footing among the gnarled forest floor; it is only by the grace of the moon and a single lantern they can illuminate more than a few yards ahead. Celebrian tries not to grow anxious herself, lest the animal scent her worry–and she doesn't–until they draw close to the boundary drawn by Nenya’s power.
The spell is powerful enough to have–quite literally–drawn a line through the two territories: a small gap in the dirt, as if the leaves of Lothlorien didn’t dare fall upon the soil of Mordor; likewise the gnarled bushes of Sauron’s kingdom shied away from those of Galadriel’s, careful not to tangle even at the root. Polite, almost.
It was difficult to see the protection itself; a thin veil of silvery blue power that flickered in the wind, hidden and secret as if always in the corner of her eye but never really there. Celebrian could certainly feel it: a soft hum, a vibration at her fingertips, the ghost of her mother’s voice calling her name. Calling her home.
Celebrian slips from the horse’s back, boots sinking into the soft ground. She reaches out, takes a breath, and slips her fingers into the spell. She tugs–
(Once, she had done this before. Not this specifically, but something else, some spell that came to her like breathing, a magic that lived under her skin and knew her call better than a heart knew to beat. Galadriel had been angry with her at first, she remembers. But then she had cracked and knelt and wept, curled small like a little girl again, and Celebrian had wept too, distraught, confused, and patted her face and promised she wouldn't do it again, I’m sorry mama, promise, please don't cry–
You can never tell, Galadriel had said finally, holding her tight. It has to be a secret, do you understand?)
Easy–with Nenya weakened, with her mother ill. It is easy to step through to Mordor.
Celebrian sings softly to her horse and asks it to wait for her; plenty of grass and stonefruit and blackberries to keep him fed while she continues alone on foot. She pulls the rations and her bow from the saddlebag; packs a dagger at her hip and laces her boots up tight: the morning sun is just barely spilling through the trees, but it will do her little good once she’s in the deep of Sauron’s territory, where the color is always leeched from the sky and the clouds hang low and miserable like eternal night.
She creeps forward across the dusty landscape, bow drawn tight, listening for the grunt and snarl of orc scouts that never come. The trees here are thin and unhealthy, bone-dry from the cruel soil, and the dust grits her eyes until they water. Eventually the clearings give way to more rocks and parched streams that flow outward, even water fleeing the Dark Lord’s reign.
In the shadow of the mountain, he waits for her, perched back on a rock, eyes closed and hands clasped across his middle as if only resting—he cracks one golden eye as her bow draws tight, the string quivering between her pinched fingers.
“You,” he says wryly, “are very much like your mother.”
(I don’t like keeping secrets, Celebrian whispers to the man everyone politely agrees is her father.
Celeborn smiles, and puts his hand atop her head. Neither do I, he says with a little laugh. Which I promise is why you will always be my daughter.)
“My Lady mother is ill,” she says, keeping the tension in her arm. “You are going to show me how to heal her.”
His mouth parts, tongue hesitating on teeth. She’s surprised him—shocked, even. He seems to weigh the truth to her words.
“I am afraid someone has lied to you,” he says finally, spinning the ring on his finger, agitated. By the news of his adversary’s imminent demise? Or her insane request, surely? “I’m no healer, little one. Run along.”
“No,” she steadies herself, knees loose to keep ready for battle. “No—you. You are one of the maia. Or were. You used to sing things into creation; weaving them into the harmony of life. You know how to heal her spirit with the same song. Heal her fea. So. Show me how to sing too,” She wiggles the bow in warning. “Or else.”
His head co*cks, looking down the metal tip of her arrow. “Tell me, does your mother know you’re here?”
“Yes.” The falsity is as sour on her tongue as when she’d said the same to Elrond, hours prior. Celebrian presses luck, squeezes it tight: “She…she sent me, actually. To look for you.”
He laughs, nearly doubling over, although it is more of a rusty, brittle choking sound. “Is—is that right?”
“Well—yes,” she insists as his laughter continues. “She agreed to my idea, granted me safe passage and said if I could find you, talk to you, you might, uh, find it within yourself—“
He waves a hand to stop the sprawl of her storytelling, wipes some wet from his eyes. “Ah—good. That’s good. She must be pleased you are a terrible liar.”
I do not know why I thought that would work. It stings a bit, drawing her face tight with embarrassment. “And you are so much better, I suppose?”
“Do you not wonder why they call me the Deceiver? I have been telling lies since before the Glanduin was a single raindrop.”
Celebrian takes a step forward; surprised to find he takes a step back.
He seems surprised too.
“All the same,” emboldened, she takes another step, emboldened. He’s up against his rock now, nowhere to run. “I am very proof you are capable of truth, am I not?”
He scoffs, cool, arms crossed. “What truth?”
It bursts from her in one breath, the secret she has tired of keeping for them both. Her very existence was predicated on a brief moment that must’ve existed, no matter what anyone insisted otherwise:“You-claim-to-hate-my-mother-and-yet—“
“Enough,” he barks, turning sharply, scowling deep. “You have gone plenty far from Lothlorien as it is. Hurry home.”
Her heels brace in the mud, the arrow in her bow quivering for release. “No.”
“Fine,” he says, exasperated, pointing a finger to her face. “You will have three days, no more. I will teach you what I know, with no guarantees. Then you go home, Celebrian, to your mother. And do not return.”
It is the first time he says her name, upswept and clear and lyrical, an echo of a song—she wonders who told him what it was.
The walk through his territory is grim and arduous and nearly a day’s long; he leads the way, through no observable path, the mountain belching smoke in the distance. Occasionally there is a screech or a wail in the air of things dying or merely wishing to, a dull waft of blood or iron. She feels curious eyes on her, eyes that skitter away in awed fear when they see who she’s accompanied by.
They have been walking in silence for some time. He is four paces ahead of her when she reaches to unbuckle her pouch. The Deceiver turns at the hitch of metal, one eyebrow raised—no doubt expecting a weapon lodged in his back.
“It’s a sugar-date,” she holds up the wrinkled fruit to his gaze, its skin glazed with honey. She has seven total, one for each day left of her journey. “Would you like one?”
“Would I like,” he repeats, slowly, “a sugar date.”
“More for me,” she shrugs, packing the fruit into her cheek, licking her finger, speaking next with her mouth full. She considers lhis human shell. “Do ‘youh ‘ead?”
He ignores this, continuing to walk at a pace that forces her to jog to keep up. She is taller than her mother now, to everyone’s delight but Galadriel’s, but still Celebrian barely reaches his shoulder. She swallows a smile—how silly they must’ve looked in battle.
“I can eat,” he says, answering her date-muddled question. “I have before, but it is not necessary for me to live. I can do many things a mortal man can, though I don’t need to.”
She has taken to stepping into the flattened prints left behind by his boots, his cloak flapping in her face. “Oh. Like sleep?”
“Like sleep.”
Like love, she wonders, staring at the set of his broad shoulders against the molten landscape. Like die?
By the time they reach his tower, he is already mired with doubt, mumbling to himself.
“There is nothing I can teach you that will not also corrupt.”
“You would rather let my mother die?”
He flinches just slightly, clearly unguarded at the idea. “There are worse fates. Galadriel is already a hero of an age—she’ll be welcomed to the Halls of Mandos with open arms. You will see her again, in the next life.”
“Unless you teach me to heal her, and I get the rest of this life.”
His patience thins, holding out a palm for one of the candied dates she’s holding, speech about not needing such petty substances forgotten. He chews and swallows, pacing. “Using the Unseen is to taunt the Valar’s creation, to bear their judgment. It will bar you from the shores of Valinor at worst. It is not something to be tasted and discarded. It will take root in you, as it did me—and since you are of me, Celebrian; you will not be able to resist it. And—“ he stops.
“And?”
His mouth lifts. “Your mother will kill me.”
“She wants to do that anyway.”
“And soiling the soul of her only daughter might strengthen her resolve. I’m rather fond of his form, you see. Keeping all the limbs intact.” He pats his middle.
“I am of my mother too,” she says quietly. “And the Valar will see I used it only with good intention. And perhaps I do not want to sail to Valinor.”
“Why not?”
“There is nothing for me there. My family is here.”
He braces his hands together. “Not for eternity. Eventually the elves will seek to return to the old world, and fade from this one. If not forgiven by the Valar, you’d be left behind.” His eyes flick up to hers, old, older than time. “It’s a difficult burden to bear.”
I will bear it with you if I must, she thinks.
When her father sings, the castle comes alive.
The cadence of his voice is measured and sure, the song vibrant and pulsing with power. The air between them lightens and thrums along with it, as if he had strum some invisible instrument, plucked some unseen string. It echoes for what feels like hours after he’s done, a chord that wove everything together.
“Now you try.”
She wearies the fraying edge of her sleeve. Celebrian had always thought herself an unusually talented singer, but not like that.
“What’s—um…the first note?”
“Not about notes,” he reassures her. “Not individually. It is the whole that matters. It is only about you—and your mother. And mending.”
The song in her swells up, but it does not burst, it does not bloom. Not on the second try, or the third. Or the seventh. Or fifteenth.
He winces as her voice peters once again, off-key. “You’re holding back.”
“I’m not trying to,” she grits her teeth, head aching between her sorry ears.
“You cannot go into the Unseen and seek to hide something from it. The more you push, the more it will resist,” he pauses with his arm in the air, just short of a hand on her shoulder that might’ve squeezed. “Go rest. We will try again tomorrow.”
Her bedroll is sufficient upon the stone floor near the fire, mostly because she is exhausted, her ribs nearly bruised and her throat rasped. She falls asleep to the sound of him humming, as if she has a hundred times before.
She dreams that night about the wolf in the wood who was not a wolf at all—carrying her home, safe in his arms—and wakes up in a bed.
He has only bread and tea for her to break her fast, which she mixes into a soggy paste and eats quickly and in large bites with a spoon, the entire process of which he seems to find amusing.
“I figured you would have a feast,” Celebrian admits, letting the silverware clatter to her empty plate. “Gluttony every morning, noon and night.”
“Oh?”
“And a court of torture,” she says, licking her fingers. “Filled with unimaginable, ugly beasties in chains. Vast swaths of land soaked in rivers of blood, piles of filthy riches. A harem of naked—“
“Alright,” he says quickly, drumming his fingers on the wooden tabletop. “Sorry to disappoint, my love.”
“I’m not disappointed.” She looks around the spartan chamber, ignoring the fissure of warm surprise at the unearned endearment. There’s a finely carved throne, certainly, but a desk too. It reminds her of her mother’s desk—piled with papers and maps and inkwells and wax stamps. A separate table for meals, a fire for warmth. A pitcher for water and two goblets to drink it from.
“I think mother was afraid you’d lure me here.”
“Maybe I did.”
She grimaces. “You’re not doing much luring. No cake, no jewels. You haven’t even got fine clothes to tempt me to stay.”
He looks down at his tunic, brushing a hand over the embroidery at the collar. “What’s wrong with my clothes?”
“Nothing,” she shrugs. “They’re a bit old-fashioned.”
“Old-fashioned—“
“Is it an illusion, maybe?” She asks, looking around. “Are we really sitting in some grand hall, plated with gold and silver, and instead you’re playing humble sorcerer?”
“No. I save the good wing for the less aggravating prisoners.”
Her eyes widen through a shock of fear. “You said I could go freely.“
“Oh, yes, and quickly I hope. The prisoner in question is me, remember? Am I not a mere meek hostage kept alive only by the grace of your mercy?”
She relaxes back into her chair, eyeing her bow and arrow abandoned ten paces across the room. “Yes. Of course.”
Her singing vastly improves from yesterday. He paces the hall slowly, listening in thoughtful silence, offering guidance when she needs it. He molds the tone of her song—more open, more powerful. More breath, more life.
Eventually he stops her. “Well done. But not enough. Wide, but not deep enough.”
She sags. Her chest hurts from the constant swell of her lungs. “I don’t have anything left to give.”
“The Unseen is an invisible mirror of our world,” he says again, as he had yesterday while explaining the sorcery of harmony. “It doesn’t answer unless you show it everything. Even imperfections.”
“Imperfection is why my mother is dying,” Celebrian says. “I thought I was supposed to be making her better, not serenading her flaws.”
“You,” he says. “Will not admit you’re angry with her. I can hear it when you sing your bargain with her fea.”
She glares at him. “I love her. I came to Mordor for her!”
He rolls his eyes. “Oh yes, Mordor, how terrible. She lied to you. Makes you lie to others. You resent her for this.”
“No,” Celebrian shakes her head. “You cannot make me hate her. I want to save her, and I will. If you won’t help, I’ll find someone—“
“Celebrian,” he says, and this time he does touch her, cupping her face in his big, warm hands, stroking her cheek. “Despite it. That’s how you sing for her. Your mother can be made whole again, but you sing for all of her—laments and sorrows too.”
The next day, her father gives her a flower.
It is a sad little thing, as brown and melancholy as a flower could be; petals crumpled and dry, its center lacking a healthy ooze of golden wet pollen. She can tell it was once as flush and blue as the sky. It sat now in her hands a shade of ugly rotten brown.
“Sing to it,” he says.
It takes the better part of an hour; coaxing the flower back from the beckoning edge of the afterlife, mending its little aches and pains. Slowly, it turns hopefully towards her voice, sipping each sound from her mouth as if it were water and soil upon the roots.
When she finishes, Celebrian gently touches the petals. They are delicate still, but no longer parched.
Alive. Whole.
“Good,” her father says, dumping a bouquet’s worth of death’s garden onto the table. “Again.”
She falls asleep surrounded by the day’s work, a hand heavy on her head, the ring it wore warm against the skin of her scalp as he quietly stroked her braid. She dreams in impossibility: that the hair beneath his fingers is the color of cherry-chestnut instead of golden flax, that her eyes were borne from the womb green instead of icy blue.
Like someone had merely slipped the illusion of color free just for a private, wistful moment, and it was really her beneath all along.
The work of singing exhausts her more than she realizes. Her heart sinks though her belly to the floor as they leave the tower, his territory stretching to the horizon. She wails. “It’s already mid-day. By the time I make it back to the wood—“
“Half-that. We’ll go on horseback.”
She turns, registering the words. “Horse…back.”
“Oh, yes. I have fast horses. You’ll see.”
“Then why,” Celebrian hisses, “did we walk here, if you had horses the whole time?”
He slips her down from the black saddle of her horse, her cheeks wind-blown pink, her pack stuffed full of bread and water and the flowers she’d brought back from the dead. Her head swivels, locating the horse she’d left behind three days ago a bit further beyond the cover of the trees, still grazing lazily in a beam of sun. It’s ears flick when it spots Sauron’s pair of horses, knickering anxiously to ward them off.
“I have to go,” she throws her arms about the Dark Lord, face buried in his tunic. When she inhales, he smells like the wolf, all those years ago. Her voice is muffled: “Thank you.”
He stiffens, back straight and tight. He lifts an arm awkwardly and pats the crown of her head. “Go on, little one. Don’t look back.”
It’s three words, but it feels like a different set of three words. If she really listens.
“No arrow, tonight?”
“No.”
“No axe hidden in that dress.”
“Unfortunately not.”
“Not even a dagger?”
Galadriel hums thoughtfully. “Come closer and you’ll find out.”
“I suspect you’re to kill me with your bare hands,” he curves behind her out of the darkness, dropping his head to loll on her shoulder, his mouth near her neck. “Very intimate.”
“You did commit a treacherous offense. We had an agreement about Celebrian.”
“Your daughter came to me. An absent mother, they say. She was armed. I was helpless, frightened—“
“Mhmm.”
“I begged her for mercy to no avail. The orcs cowered at her feet. She’s very willful. Ruthless, even.”
“I wonder where she gets it from.”
“Oh I see,” he says, fingers finding the laces of her gown. “Always your daughter when she’s well behaved, mine when she’s a despot, how convenient—“
Her hand reaches back, trying to bat his away—not quickly enough, the silver bodice slipping from her shoulder. He finds her wrist and holds it still, finishing his work.
He traces his free hand over the new, hot pink scar across her back, lightning trapped under her skin.
“Does it still hurt?” He lingers near the center, the worst of it spider-webbed through the flesh between her shoulder blades.
“No,” the little elf-witch says, a slight hitch in her breath.
“Mhm,” he hums. “Liar.”
“Not much, anyway. It will fade.”
“If you had asked nicely I would’ve shown you how to open that tomb myself. I don’t know what you thought you were doing up there alone, poking where you shouldn’t.” He kisses the nape of her neck, then lower.
“The flowers were nice,” she says suddenly, and he stops his descent. Her voice turns hard. “They have yet to die.”
“Your daughter seems to be a talented healer.”
She turns then, a swift slice of iron through the air—and there’s the knife at his throat. He allows her wrist close enough to let the blade pierce his skin, nothing more. Her pale face glows prettily in the dark, anger blotting her features.
“It was her idea,” he scowls down at her.
“There are consequences to that sort of magic she can’t comprehend—it wasn’t some pithy flesh wound she fixed!”
He twists her arm down between them so he can scowl closer. “Galadriel. You had the only half-maiar capable of song in your very own kingdom. Nobody else would have healed you. The alternative was to let you die.”
“And you doomed her instead!” Her fist flies through the air.
He catches it. “I will plead her case myself to the Valar if I have to—she is the only damned good thing I have made in an age. They will see a pure heart and welcome her when the time comes.”
The elf tilts her head up, peering at him carefully. She still blisters beneath the surface of her blue eyes, but seems subdued by his claim. “Do you swear it?”
“Yes, little witch,” he replies, irritated. “Now give me a kiss for all the trouble.”
“—you miss so much, with things the way they are. Looking through the palantir isn’t enough sometimes.”
“You have a pesky barbed fence, if you haven’t noticed,” he mumbles, still braiding her hair back into a mentionable state. “I prefer myself unbarbed, personally.”
“Her first horse-ride—the fencing lessons. She’s a good scribe, too, a painter—oh, her wedding—“
He chokes. “Her what?”
Galadriel slaps his bare chest to help clear the phlegm. “In the future, of course, relax yourself. You should see how she gets around Elrond.” Her voice goes higher pitched to imitate. “Mother, isn’t he kind? Isn’t he brave? Generous to a fault, mother, such a leader—oh hello Lord Elrond—“
He rubs at his temple as though afflicted with a sudden headache. “The halfling. Surely there are more qualified suitors. Spare princes of Valinorian lineage? I could even settle for a Sindarin one.”
“Half an elf,” Galadriel smiled, apparently delighted this development vexed him. “Yet twice the man you are. I would have no other in all middle earth for her.”
“The girl comes from legacy. She needs—“
“A gentleness, that neither of us possess; especially now that you have threaded the Unseen into her soul,” she interrupts. “They are well suited. Elrond is the most honorable elf I’ve ever known. He will make a good husband, when the time comes.”
He grumbles—something about the time being when she’s fifty, at least—
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