[piosenniel]

‘I’m going to stay here,’ Rôg said, leaning against the doorjamb. It had taken several washings, but he was now clean of all the smearings from the Corsair vessel’s garbage hold. Dressed in breeches and tunic lined with fur, he looked almost like one of the Lossoth with his dark eyes peeking out from the thick furred hood that surrounded his face. ‘Bear and I had not finished our explorations when the Southrons so rudely interrupted.' He cracked a wide grin at Luindal as he pushed back the hood. ‘Of course, I think I’ve seen enough of the bay itself, beneath and around and above it, to fill pages of my notebook.’ A few words of farewell, kept light as they could, passed between them; then the captain saw him to the deck, watching as he clambered down to the small boat held steady by Rôg’s companion. Both waved at Luindal, then Bear handed Rôg one of the paddles and they pushed off toward the shore.

‘Now wasn’t that something,’ Bear said, breaking the companionable silence of their rowing. ‘Sad it was, with all those bloody deaths, but still, we won out in the end didn’t we?’ He shook his head. ‘That was something. There’ll be tales told, you know,’ he confided with a chuckle. ‘And of course, the importance of my people’s part in it will gain in the telling.’ He turned round and eyed Rôg. ‘Best you get it wrote down right in your little books. Though,’ he grinned, ‘if you want to write how I single-handedly took down a fiercesome Corsair nearly three times my size with my bare hands and cunning, I’ll be glad to recall the details for you . . . seeing as how you weren’t there when it all happened.’ Both burst out in laughter, causing the little boat to rock wildly on the cold water.

‘Sad, though, all those Elves that died,’ Bear went on, turning back to the task of paddling. ‘Should’na happened, to my way of thinking. Some kinda beauty leaves with them when they go.’ He was quiet for a while. ‘I’ll think of them when the Great Lights bridge across the dark sky.’ He stopped his rowing. ‘Now pay attention,’ he said, in the voice Rôg had come to think of as his storytelling one. ‘Should be seeing them soon. I’ll tell you a little about the lights . . .

The ends of the land and sea are bounded by a great dark pit, over which a narrow, dangerous pathway leads to the spirit regions. The sky is a great dome of hard black ice arched over the earth. There is a hole in it through which the spirits pass to the true place beyond. Only the Raven and the spirits of those who have died a natural death or have been killed by the hand of another have been over this pathway. The spirits who live there light torches to guide the feet of new arrivals. This is the light of the Great Lights. It is said if you look closely enough at them you can be see the spirits feasting and playing kickball with a walrus skull.

The whistling, crackling noise you sometimes hear when they lights play is the voices of these spirits trying to talk with those people still left behind. They should always be answered in a whispering voice. When we are young we often dance beneath the lights, and drink a cup of juniper berry spirit in honor of those who dance above. The heavenly spirits are called selamiut, “sky-dwellers,” those who live in the sky.

‘Yes,’ he said, thumping his paddle against the rim of the boat for emphasis. ‘I’ll think of those Elves when I see the Great Lights dancing.’ He turned round once more to Rôg, who sat madly scribbling notes to be fleshed into story. ‘You getting this down there in your little book?’ Rôg nodded, scratching a few last sentences on the paper. Once done, he looked up, knowing he was expected to tell a story in return.

‘I heard this,’ he began, resting his paddle across his knees, ‘from one of the Fair Folk I met in the King’s city . . .’

I know a window in a western tower
that opens on celestial seas,
and there from wells of dark behind the stars
blows ever cold a keen unearthly breeze.
It is a white tower builded on the Twilit Isles,
and springing from their everlasting shade
it glimmers like a house of lonely pearl,
where lights forlorn take harbour ere they fade.

Its feet are washed by waves that never rest.
There silent boats go by into the West
all piled and twinkling in the dark
with orient fire in many a hoarded spark
that divers won
in waters of the rumoured Sun.
There sometimes throbs below a silver harp,
touching the heart with sudden music sharp;
or far beneath the mountains high and sheer
the voices of grey sailors echo clear
afloat among the shadows of the world
in oarless ships and with their canvas furled,
chanting a farewell and a solemn song:
for wide the sea is, and the journey long.

O happy mariners upon a journey far,
beyond the grey islands and past Gondobar,
to those great portals on the final shores
where far away constellate fountains leap,
and dashed against Night’s dragon-headed doors
in foam of stars fall sparkling in the deep!
While I, alone, look out behind the moon
from in my white and windy tower,
ye bide no moment and await no hour,
but go with solemn song and harper’s tune
through the dark shadows and the shadowy seas
to the last land of the Two Trees,
whose fruit and flower are moon and sun,
where light of earth is ended and begun.

Ye follow Eärendel without rest,
the shining mariner, beyond the West,
who passed the mouth of night and launched his bark
upon the outer seas of everlasting dark.
Here only comes at whiles a wind to blow
returning darkly down the way ye go,
with perfume laden of unearthly trees.
Here only long enough afar through window-pane
I glimpse the flicker of the golden rain
that falls for ever on the outer seas.

Bear was nodding his head in approval as the poem ended. ‘Good words,’ he said, running the phrase ‘Night’s dragon-headed doors’ round several times. ‘Good pictures of they way things are. And don’t it beat all, but those Elves have some right understanding of how it’s all put together . . . the darkness, and the light, and the water all . . .’

There followed a discussion between the two companions about certain references in their separate tales; with Rôg wanting to know more about this Raven fellow, and Bear wondering about the trees and what had they to do with the sun and moon. Soon, the place along the shoreline they had been heading toward was reached. The two lone figures tied ropes to their little hide covered vessel and pulled it along the ice and snow after them like a sledge. They would make camp later, as darkness settled in - huddling beneath their snow covered tent, sipping hot tea and trading further stories until sleep took them and the new day beckoned beyond.


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poem: The Happy Mariners; The Book of Lost Tales 2; J.R.R. Tolkien