kaydeefalls | sleep is for sissies.

The Jewels of the Sea, part 5/6
a Fourth Age hobbit fic
by kaydee falls
part 1 . 2 . 3 . 4

They lit no fire, but set up camp by moonlight. The stars glittered in the deep indigo sky. Ayer had stowed substantial amounts of dried fruits and meat onboard weeks before they had set out; while Tom had hoped that land would mean fresh meat or herbs, the food from the ship was well enough. But Ayer had been silent since their return to the ship, brooding, and Tom was not sure how to pull him out of his dark mood.

Tom unrolled his blankets and lay down upon them, but could not sleep. Crickets chirped in the night, and he wondered how they had gotten to the island. Had they always been there, or had they come across the Sea somehow? Why would a cricket undertake such a journey?

Why would a hobbit?

He missed the Shire, although they had been gone for less than a week. The Sea was lovely, but he rather liked the view of it from the Towers. And journeying by boat gave him an odd sense of distance; with the Sea stretching out in all directions as far as the eye could see, it was easy to lose track of the passage of time. It could have been weeks since they left home. Months, even. Traveling within the Shire, he had ever gotten homesick – not even the time he spent four full months in Tuckborough with some distant relations. Because there he'd been surrounded by other hobbits, family, and aside from certain discrepancies in living arrangements, life in one part of the Shire was much like life in any other part. It all felt like home.

"Ayer?" Tom said softly. "Are you still awake?"

"Yes," Ayer replied, sitting up. "What is it?"

"I'm sorry that we didn't find the Lonely Isle."

Ayer shrugged it off. "We will, just not yet. I should have known better than to expect to find it so quickly."

"Do you think this is really part of Beleriand?" Tom asked.

"I don't know," Ayer sighed. "It doesn't make sense. I thought the entire realm was destroyed after the Great Battle with Morgoth, but I just don't know. Hobbits certainly kept no records of such early times, if our race even existed then, and the history that has filtered down through the Ages to our books is vague at best. I only recognized the name Nargothrond because I saw a map of Beleriand once; I know nothing more about it."

A breeze came up off the Sea, and Tom curled up in his makeshift bed. The grass was thick here, and made for an unexpectedly soft padding beneath the rough woolen blankets. Ayer's voice sounded much calmer now than it had been at the mound, and oddly comforting. There's a bit of home here with me still, Tom thought.

"Perhaps not all of Beleriand was destroyed," Tom suggested. The quiet lapping of the waves was mesmerizing. He started feeling sleepy. "Or maybe this is not Nargothrond at all, and that elf-lord was buried here after the ruin of Beleriand."

"Maybe," Ayer said. "Or perhaps the Sea is granting her conquests release at last. Perhaps she is relinquishing the lost realms, piece by piece, to float back up to the surface."

It was like camping out with Ayer when they were tweens. Tom came up with the best adventure stories, but at the end of the day, Ayer was the one who recounted the lost tales, telling Tom the old myths and legends as they drifted off to sleep under the stars. There were even more stars here than in the Shire, thousands more, all reflected in the swelling tides of the Sea.

"Perhaps one day she shall even release her Silmaril," Ayer went on, in his most soothing storytelling voice, "that burned Maglor such that he could not endure it and cast it off into the waves. The Sea claimed it for her own; it gleams still in the ocean depths, and sparkles in every drop of seawater. But if the ruined lands of Beleriand are now drifting back up to light and air, perhaps someday the Silmaril shall follow. Perhaps we shall find it floating along on the waves like this island – the greatest and most beautiful of all the jewels of the Sea."

Tom slept.

*

He dreamed of a man clad all in shimmering silver. The man was beautiful, shining with an inner light the glory of which Tom had never before seen. His body was strong and his face youthful, but in his eyes were depths of age and wisdom beyond reckoning. There was grief in his eyes, too; a deep, ancient sorrow like that of the stones of the burial mound.

The man spoke, and his voice was low and musical. "Where are you going, young Perian? The great seas of Arda were not meant for the Little People."

"I would follow my cousin," Tom said. He clutched his hands tightly together to keep them from trembling.

"Your race is not meant to live across the Sea," the man said gently. "Return to your home, son of Samwise Gamgee; your place is in the Shire. Return there and watch over our Towers; that is your task in life, and no quest could be nobler."

"I beg your pardon, sir," Tom said nervously, "but I am not the son of Samwise. I am Tolman Fairbairn, son of Halfred."

The man smiled. "You are of the line of Samwise – a most noble lineage among your people. He passed over Sea, an honor granted to only elves and Ringbearers. He passed over Sea, but you cannot. Go back, Tolman son of Samwise. Go home."

A haze came up about them, and the man began fading into the mist. "Who are you?" Tom cried out to him.

"I am but a dream," the man replied. "I am all that remains of your memory of the elves."

He was gone.

*

When Tom awoke, Ayer had already taken apart their little camp. "Come," he said. "Let's keep going."

"I think I dreamt of an elf last night," Tom said, after splashing seawater on his face to dispel his drowsiness.

"So did I," Ayer told him. "Hurry up."

Tom paused, supporting himself against the side of the ship. "You did?"

Ayer, already onboard, crossed his arms and looked down at him, exasperated. "Yes, I did. Are you coming, or shall I leave you here?"

"What's the rush?' Tom asked, hastily pulling himself up onto the deck.

"I don't know," Ayer snapped, and Tom took a step back at the queer expression in his eyes. "I'm just feeling a bit restless."

"You had the same dream as I had, didn't you," Tom said. "The elf told you to give up and go home."

Ayer turned and walked away without saying a word.

"You did, didn't you?" Tom said again, and wondered at the accusatory tone in his voice.

Ayer would not reply.

*

They spoke little for the rest of the day. Whenever Tom tried to bring up the dream, Ayer just set his jaw and refused to acknowledge him. If he'd had Tom's dream, it had not discouraged him in the slightest; if anything, it increased his determination.

Eventually, Tom dropped the subject for good, but there remained a strange tension between them that had never been there before. Even in recent years, when their interests had diverged and they had seen each other less and less frequently, they had always been close. Whenever Tom saw Ayer again, whether days or months had gone by since their last meeting, their friendship just picked up again right where they'd left off. Ayer had put up with Tom's wildest adventures, and Tom with Ayer's strangest passing obsessions. They had never had a rift of any real significance.

But now, Ayer seemed like a stranger to Tom. When they spoke, it was only about the elves; and Ayer would go off on long, rambling tangents about this or that aspect of elven life and history. Everything good came from the elves, he assured Tom, and added that the legendary King Elessar had been raised by elves, which he seemed to think proved his point beyond a doubt. And when he was not speaking to Tom, he was muttering to himself – Tom tried to make out the words once, but it just seemed to be a jumble of random trivia about elves, as though he were sorting through a vast library of information to find some specific detail.

Tom soon lost track of time; days flowed into each other at an unknown rate, while Ayer rambled and Tom wondered if either or both of them were going mad. So he had no idea how many days had passed when Ayer spotted land.

"There's something out there," Ayer said, calling Tom over to the prow of the ship. "You see? Something green."

Tom squinted into the distance, and sure enough, on the horizon, he could make out a small stretch of green. "Another island?" he guessed.

"See how it glitters," Ayer said in a hushed tone. "Like an emerald. An emerald floating along the waters." He burst out laughing. "The Sea has relinquished another one of her jewels to us, Tom!"

Tom grinned, glad for a reprieve from their tension. "What do you suppose it is this time?"

"Why, Valinor, of course!" Ayer said gaily. "See how it shines! What else could it be?"

Valinor or not, it was land, and that was all Tom cared about. Maybe feeling grass under his feet and tasting fresh herbs – or even meat of some sort! – with dinner would bring Ayer back to his senses.

In the meantime, may as well go along with Ayer's high spirits.

"Earendil returns!" Tom laughed. "The Valar could never resist you."

"It's too bad we haven't found the Sea's Silmaril yet," Ayer said, grinning. "I should like to bind it to my brow and greet the elves in style!"

But as the day progressed, the sky darkened with clouds. By mid-afternoon, the rain began to fall, and Ayer's emerald vanished into the haze. A sharp wind blew in from the west.

"Ayer!" Tom called, as the rain pounded on the deck. "I don't think we'll be able to find your island in this weather. Is there anything I should do with the ship?" The phrase 'batten down the hatches' came to mind, but Tom hadn't the faintest idea what a hatch was or how to go about battening it down.

Ayer stood at the prow as if frozen, staring out into the distance. "We must get to Valinor."

Tom hesitated, unsure of how to approach him. "Ayer," he said carefully. "I think this could turn into quite a storm. I have never experienced a storm at sea, and I don't know what to do. Can you help me?"

"We must keep sailing west," Ayer said without turning.

The rain was falling in sheets now. Tom could hardly see more than a few feet in front of him. "Ayer, I can't even tell which direction west is in anymore! If we can just last through the storm, we'll look for Valinor when the rain stops. But we have to make it through the storm first." He eyed the Sea nervously, and wondered if the waves were getting higher. It certainly felt like a storm; the boat was bobbing up and down nauseatingly, and not all the water splashing the deck was rain.

"Keep to your course."

"I can't, Ayer," Tom said through gritted teeth. He stepped forward and grabbed Ayer's arm, pulling his cousin around to face him.

Ayer yanked himself free. "Just keep going west!" he snapped.

The wind howled. Tom thought he saw a flash of lightning. What would happen to the ship if lightning struck it?

He did what he had to do. He panicked.

"It's useless!" Tom yelled. "I don't care if that's Valinor or not! We can't fight this!"

"We have to!" Ayer insisted. Through sheets of rain and sea spray, Tom could see his face lit up as if from within, with a strange, desperate fire. "I have to get there!"

"But why?"

For several long heartbeats, Ayer did not respond. The rain lashed the deck with frightening violence, and Tom wondered if his question had been lost to the screaming wind.

The ship bucked and rolled with sudden violence, sending Tom sprawling to the deck.

Ayer clutched the ship's railing like a lifeline, as if the fate of Middle-earth depended on it. Tom could hardly make out his words over the storm. "I need to bring them back."

He didn't know how he managed it, but somehow Tom pulled himself across the deck to his cousin's side. "No," he said, as gently as he could manage. "No, Ayer, you don't."

"I need them!" Ayer cried. "Middle-earth needs them. Everything good or beautiful in the world came from the elves, and now it's all fading away. What joy will remain on our shores once it's gone?"

Tom was at a loss. The boat seemed in danger of being swamped by the waves at any moment, and Ayer's eyes were wild with an obsession Tom couldn't possibly understand. But he had to, because he could hardly manage the boat on a good day, and this was anything but. "You're wrong," he tried. "We've come this far without them. We're still making joy and beauty of our own. Smaller beauty, maybe, and less grand, but we'll do all right."

"It isn't the same," Ayer whispered, almost inaudibly. "The old stories—"

"We're still a part of them," Tom said, his mind racing. Was it his imagination, or was the storm getting worse? "Look around you, Ayer. You've built an elven ship, just like the one that carried Frodo of the Ring away to peace. And there are hobbits in the Towers, always repairing and maintaining them, and the spire of Ithilien shines just as brightly as it ever did. The elves started the old stories, but we're still living in them and adding on to them, and please, Ayer—" his voice cracked in desperation "—if you don't help me now, our part in the story will end here, and no one will be able to tell it."

He reached out his hand.

Ayer stared at it for a long moment, uncomprehendingly. Then, as though a wave had washed over him, he blinked and shook his head rapidly. His eyes cleared, and he clasped Tom's hand.

"Then let's go tell it," he said, and together, they struggled to their feet.

Tom did not know how long the storm raged, if it were for hours or days, but the wind out of the west must have been strong. When the skies finally cleared, the battered ship drifted up onto a sandy beach. Tom and Ayer staggered off the near-wreckage of their vessel, and found themselves on a familiar inlet, at the mouth of the Brandywine River.

to be concluded in part 6