Unknown beings!?

[Lalwendë]

See, this is precisely why I love Tom and Ungoliant so much. They can't be pinned down and assigned a 'place' like most other Tolkien characters, and I also think this is why he left them as he did. He does it 'cause it teases us....

I can also find something new each time I read about them.

If we take it that Eru is omnipotent then he must have created Tom and Ungoliant as much as he created the Valar, or at the very least have created the Valar who created them, if you are of the belief that they are like Dwarves or Ents, a subcreation. One thing I always find interesting about Eru is that alongside making all the beautiful and 'good' things, he also creates Melkor and Ungoliant, and being omnipotent and all-knowing, he knows what they are about. Both Tom and Ungoliant seem to have entered Arda before the Valar did, Tom as he states that he is oldest, and Ungoliant because of this:

The Eldar knew not whence she came; but some have said that in ages long before she descended from the darkness that lies about Arda, when Melkor first looked down in envy upon the Kingdom of Manwe, and that in the beginning she was one of those that he corrupted to his service.

No clue as to whether she is 'lesser' than Melkor, but he is able to make her his servant, and she is able to refuse to be his servant. She isn't even a spider - as she "took shape of a spider".

Incidentally, the following quote may explain some of the more unusual beings in Middle-earth:

the shapes wherein the Great Ones array themselves are not at all times like to the shapes of the kings and queens of the Children of Iluvatar; for at times they may clothe themselves in their own thought, made visible in forms of majesty and dread.