Other Worlds Than These

[Varnafindë]

"There is one thing I have been wondering about the world of the Four Royal Siblings," Nightshade said. "Are there really no other intelligent beings here? Only Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve?"

[Midge]

Aerin was confused. Who were Adam and his sons, and Eve and her daughters?

"Intelligent beings? I know of no Adam or Eve. But we have many different intelligent beings. There are Elves, Men, Dwarves, Ents, Hobbits, Valar, Maiar, Orcs, Trolls, Dragons... And I know of one being who has the shape of a man, but calls himself the Oldest, saying he was here before the forests were, and that he saw them made." She paused a moment, to consider this. She'd never realized how many different races were in Middle-Earth. For the first time, she wondered at it.

"Each race is distinguishable from the others. I am an Elf. Men fall ill and die. Dwarves are shorter than Elves and Men, and they mine the earth for metal and gems. Ents look like trees, and they are the shepherds of the forests. Hobbits, when they are grown, have the shape of children, and they are a simple and hardy folk.

"The Valar and the Maiar are higher beings. The Valar are in Valinor and they are very powerful. The Maiar are also powerful, though lesser than the Valar. Orcs, Trolls and Dragons are evil beings. One of the Valar was evil, and he introduced evil to Middle-Earth. There are both good and bad Maiar."

She took a breath. "Who are the Sons of Adam and the Daughters of Eve?"

[Varnafindë]

"I'll try," Barufiniel said. She walked over to the group.

"We meet again, Anahera," she said, bowing her head in greeting. "I am sorry that we couldn't help you to get home when we met you earlier today - but I'm glad to see that you have met with more people here. Perhaps we can do something together."

She nodded to the two others in turn.

"I am Barufiniel, daughter of Rameldir," she said. "I come from Rivendell, and Rivailen here - " she pointed over to the woman standing a little way off "- directed me to this inn, to stay here for a little while before I go on to Minas Tirith. Are you people of Gondor?"

[Aikanáro]

Minas Tirith. That was where Elspeth had said her king lived. Ashkaio wondered if this woman was part of his household. She was, he could not help but notice, exquisitely beautiful. She had to be a noble lady of some kind, he felt that he could see it in her, that she would not be out of place in whatever court her people held.

Ashkaio stood to greet her. He did not bow, as that was not the custom when at table, but he smiled at her. 'I am Ashkaio Mirat dan-Kazhrun,' he told her, 'and I am not from Gondor. I am from a place called Tathera. It is far from here, sera. I do not think that you will know of it.'

Except that she knew of Anahera who was just as much an outsider here as he was, didn't she? He could not let the potential opportunity pass without saying more. 'You said that you will go to Minas Tirith. Are you intending to see the king?'

[Varnafindë]

Tathera. Barufiniel did indeed not know of it. Or, wait, wasn't there a city in Calormen by that name? - no, she remembered now, the name was only slightly similar. You're silly, she chided herself, he couldn't come from Calormen, Calormen doesn't belong to this world.

And then she realized that with this afternoon's events, that needn't be a hindrance ...

He certainly was a young nobleman, wherever he was from. He was well-dressed, and his bearing - well, he would not be out of place in whatever court he turned up at. He knew about Minas Tirith - perhaps he wanted to visit the court there?

"Seeing the King is indeed my intention," she said. "The Queen - Queen Arwen - is my kinswoman. Her father was the Lord of Rivendell, where I live. I even knew King Elessar when he was fostered there as a child. I visited them at Minas Tirith some years ago, soon after he had ascended to the throne, after the War of the Ring. Now I would like to see them again."

[Aikanáro]

He had been right, then, to think her connected to the royal household in some way. Even if she had remained somewhat vague as to the actual details, and some of what she had said - had their king really married his foster-sister, that he had known since childhood? Such a thing would have been heavily frowned upon in Tathera, as such bonds counted as only slightly less than blood kinship.

Ashkaio had only met his own intended bride, Aycharindel, when she had already grown to womanhood. At that point, she had come to live at Kazhrun-court so that they might get to know each other. If she had been fostered there as a child, it would indeed be as if she were his own sister! Ashkaio was not certain he was going to approve of the customs of this King Elessar's court.

He knew better than to express any hint of his surprise to this lady, Barufiniel. Remarking upon the customs of others was inappropriate for a person who needed to remain diplomatically sensitive. All the same, he thought it better that he repeat back her words, to be sure he had understood the relationships correctly.

'Let me see if I have it,' he said softly, smiling again. 'You are of the household of Rivendell-' that sounded like a place- rather than a house-name, but it was the only one she had given him, 'and blood-kin to your lord. You grew up with his daughter, who became Queen and married the king who was her foster-brother, and now you are to visit them in Minas Tirith?' He paused a moment, and then explained: 'I am here as a diplomatic emissary from Tathera, to meet with one of your lords, and I wonder if Minas Tirith might not be the place to find, if not him, at the very least information about his household of residence.'

[Midge]

The next part of the celebration was the most anticipated part. Only Tor and Tinidril had seen and met Ransom, who vanquished the evil one and rescued both Tinidril from his temptings and Perelandra from an evil fate.

After the evil one was gone, Tor, Tinidril and Ransom (and many beasts also) had been summoned to the peak where Lur and Lantura now sat. There, along with the eldila - the spirits who place themselves in the worlds as people place themselves in water - they spent an entire year glorifying Maleldil and his plans. Tor now stood and recounted the kinds of things that were said during that year. Every festival, Maleldil recalled to his mind different sayings which were said. A whole year's worth of praise cannot be recounted in an hour.

Lur was listening to his father very intently when he heard the voice of Maleldil in his head: Beloved. Lur, my son. You shall go to the floating island. You will be made older there. You shall never be oldest in this world, but you shall be older in this matter than your father is. Go. You shall leave this hour. He glanced at Lantura. They were neither older than the other. All things they learned, they learned together. Maleldil always gave this gift to them. Lur saw that now was no different. Lantura usually listened to her father's speech with eyes half-closed, making sure to remember the words said of Maleldil, for they were precious. Yet now her eyes were wide open and not focused on anything in front of her, but were aimed slightly upwards, as if Maleldil was fixed behind the sky roof. Lur found himself asking Maleldil,

Which floating island? There are many on the seas of Perelandra.

I will put into the mind of the fish who carry you which island. You shall not need to direct the fish. Their joy shall be in carrying you as yours is in riding on their backs. You shall live there for a time as your parents did before the world was reborn. Then Lur heard the voice become quiet in his mind.

[Varnafindë]

Barufiniel stared at Ashkaio. He thought she was lying to him - and lying in order to mock him?

"I'm so sorry - I meant no offense!" she said. "That 'mere boy' - I was only referring to him at that time, I didn't mean to imply the same about you! You are a diplomatic emissary from your people, you're a mature man, I usually look for maturity rather than years in mortals. Years don't affect my people - it's not a lie! - so I tend not to think much about them, until they move my mortal friends close to death."

She stopped, and shook her head a little - how could she convey the right message to him?

"To live forever in this world is indeed not the nature of things," she said. "Even the world itself will not last forever. It will end. And my people, who are bound to the world, will end with it. The mortals, on the other hand, are free from it when they die, and they go somewhere else, which we don't know about. This is their gift from the Creator."

Then something struck her.

"You say this thing is unchanging across the worlds - you know about other worlds, then?" she asked. "Anahera here came through a portal from a different world earlier today, and she wants to go home - as she has probably told you. And my parents went through a portal to a different world before I was born, and I was born in that world and grew up there. I came here through the same portal they had gone through, to the same day they had left from. After that I went to Rivendell."

Could he even be ... on a day like this ...

"Tathera - would that possibly be a different world?"

[feawen]

Elspeth listened to the conversation unfold. Anahera had lost the meaning of the words, no one lived that long and so she had stopped listening.
However when Ashkaio become upset at the prospect of Barufiniel mocking him Elspeth spoke up, "She is telling the true. Elves live a very long time! Didnt i tell you about elves and drawfs when we first met?"

Anahera stopped staring out of the window only when she heard her name. She still didnt much like these women and as of yet she was undecided about the posh man and his helper lady. "Blue light in sky, not natural!" She muttered. "Shiny unuseful things and smelly noisy villagething. All not natural" She reverted back into her own tongue muttering something.

[Aikanáro]

Ashkaio looked from Elspeth back to Barufiniel. He could see now, at least, that she believed what she had said and was not intending to deceive him. Perhaps it was even true. He bowed his head slightly. 'I accept the apology, sera, and I thank you for making your words clearer to me.'

She, unlike Elspeth, knew also about the doorways that opened to other worlds, and so no preliminary explanations were needed there. 'Tathera is not the name of the world,' he explained, 'but of a great city within it. The city of Tathera is the home of my family, House Kazhrun, and my mother's brother is our ensi, that is the word we have in the old speech for the ruling lord of a city-state. I have come through the doorway between worlds to search for a man named Yagluk. He is a great lord, or at the very least the commander of a mighty army.' Despite his best attempts at neutrality, it was clear from the flatness in his tone that Ashkaio was no admirer of this Yagluk.

He paused, cleared his throat. 'Will you not sit at table with us?' he asked suddenly, aware of the fact that they both were still standing. 'I would like to learn more of what you have said. I will tell you of the tradition of our people, of impermanence as the nature of things. Before the beginning was Ansuki, she who created all of existence. She birthed her creation not of her body but out of a word. That is the Sacred Word of our people, and Ansuki is to us Ninsha-Tavehi, that is the Mother of the World. That word she spoke is unknowable to us, up until the point of our own deaths, when we shall hear it from her lips and become wise. I would ask you, if it does not offend, whether the Creator you spoke of is our own Lady Ansuki, by another name. Might she have decreed that your people will not pass on in wisdom until the world's ending?'

If that were true, Ashkaio did not know what to think of it. Tradition said that the world was given for their delight, and they ought to enjoy it while their lives lasted, and certainly no-one would seek to hasten the end, but to live forever? It was, as he had said, simply not the nature of things. Perhaps Barufiniel spoke truly to say that Ansuki had given his people a gift.

[Varnafindë]

"May I extend your invitation to sit with you at table to my friend Rivailen as well?" Barufiniel asked, indicating the other woman. "What you tell about your Creator is very interesting - I should need to think about it a little.

"Meanwhile, about your errand - this lord or commander Yagluk, I've never heard of anyone by that name in the service of King Elessar. If he commands a mighty army, I guess it must be in a different part of Middle-earth, further to the south or east, not in the united kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor. Unless you've ended up in the wrong world altogether?"

[Midge]

Aerin smiled. "Yes. Elves do not die. We can be killed by sword or arrow, but we do not age the way men do. We do not suffer from old age. I myself am more than 400 years old, but not so many years ago there was an Elf who was more than 8,000 years old. She had lived through all three ages of the world and was very wise. She has departed for the West now, and walks here no longer.

"Now, you say you have Men in your world, but they do not belong there? That is strange indeed. How did they get there if they do not belong there? And clearly you revere these Men - why are they so beloved if they are aliens?"

[Varnafindë]

That made a little more sense, Nightshade thought. These ... Elves ... were not invincible people, they could be killed by weapons - and perhaps by accidents? And there were beings in Narnia as well who lived for centuries - dryads from oak-trees would live as long as their trees, perhaps for a thousand years - and people like the river-god - there was no saying how old he might be. Perhaps he would not die either.

But Men's connection to Narnia? She smiled a happy smile.

"It's all Aslan's doing," she said. "He made Narnia a place to be inhabited by Talking Beasts - and by Fauns, Dwarfs, Centaurs, Unicorns, Dryads and even other beings - but to be ruled by Men. And he brought the Men in from their own world - I thought it would be this world, but now I'm not sure any more - through a portal between the two worlds.

"On the day when he sang Narnia into being, Aslan brought a Man there ready to be our first King. There were other humans there as well, who left on the next day. But the King stayed, after Aslan had called for his wife, who became his Queen, and he ruled for many years. Their children married nymphs and wood-gods and river-gods, and their descendants ruled for hundreds of years.

"Then an evil witch conquered the land and submitted it to her rule. She was called the White Witch, and she cast a spell upon the land to have only Winter. Just think about it - for a hundred years there was only Winter, never Spring or Summer! It was terrible!

"But there was a prophecy that when two Sons of Adam and two Daughters of Eve would sit on the four thrones of Cair Paravel - that's our Royal Palace - that would be the end both of the Witch's reign and of her life.

"And finally Aslan opened a portal to call the Four Royal Siblings out of their world and into Narnia, and then Aslan came back to Narnia as well, and he killed the Witch and everything was all right. And the children were crowned at Cair Paravel, and they ruled for many years, and their reign was the Golden Age of Narnia. They got rid of the remnants of the Witch's army, and everything was good and everyone was happy.

"Now we have a bad king, one who hates Talking Beasts, and his brother is even worse than the King. So we wish that the Four would come back - they didn't die, you see, they were just taken through the portal back to their own world, or so Aslan told the Narnians at the time - and that they would put things right.

"That's why I hope that your King might know where they reign now, so that I could ask them for help. I'm sure that they would help if they could get to Narnia again. But Aslan would have to bring them. Now that a portal has opened, perhaps he will."

[Midge]

Aerin smiled to herself. Winter for a hundred years? That sounds like a fairy tale. I would hate to see what this creature would do if the likes of Sauron showed up in her world..., she thought. Then she was sorry. If one of the worst things Nightshade had ever heard of was a witch who made it winter for a hundred years, then she could not even imagine what such horrors as Sauron and his evil servants created would do to this innocent badger or her people.

"I am sorry to hear you have an unpleasant sovereign who does not love you. Subjects and kings should have a mutual love for each other. However, these Kings and Queens of old of yours sound like they would be very well-known in their world and I have never heard of them, so I doubt they live here. However, we will find out more when we reach the village."

[Aikanáro]

'I thank you for your offer of assistance,' said Ashkaio. 'I shall travel with you to the city on the morrow, and perhaps with your recommendation your king will indeed speak with me.' Ashkaio was accustomed to visiting the courts of other cities, and what was a king to him but a sort of ensi, even down to the fact that he held a city of his own. It sounded a fine sort of idea to him, that Barufiniel would make their introductions.

Ashkaio looked around to the others at table. 'And will you not come with me?' he asked of them all, the sort of grand gesture that would have been almost expected in Kazhrun-court. He did not know whether or not the other women would be pleased now to go about their own way without further thought of him. He had Barufiniel to guide him now, after all.

Rivailen tilted her head and gazed back at him, intrigued. 'You wish us to?'

'I am hardly opposed to it.' replied Ashkaio. 'I am a stranger here, and any companionship I would hold to be of value.'

Rivailen watched him for a long moment. There was something going on here, something worth investigating, and if not? There were sure to be loremasters in Minas Tirith who might share with her some knowledge of healing that she did not already know, that she might bring back north and tell to the others. It would not be a wasted trip. 'As it happens, I too have business in the White City,' she declared.

Ashkaio smiled. 'That is good to hear, sera,' he said.

[feawen]

Anahera shrugged, "I no place better to be then with you, i dislike being in one place."
Elspeth remained silent at the table for a while, there was no real need for a now Ashkaio had other people to show him the way to the king. Anyway it was all getting a bit odd for her now and she really should go back home. It was all well and good talking about changing her life but in all likelyhood she would go home and things would carry on as normal. But she remain silent for now she could think about it in her bed tonight. Raising from her sit, "I must see to my sheep." She turned towards the door.

[Aikanáro]

Ashkaio got quickly to his feet and moved to Elspeth's side. 'You will not journey on with us?' There was a hint of disappointment in his voice, but he accepted the fact that she had a life that she did not wish to leave, despite its hardships.

'Very well,' he continued, 'although I should have been glad of your company. This, then, is for your kindness towards me.' Taking Elspeth's hand, he pressed into it a number of the silver coins he had held earlier. 'You shall be accounted a friend of House Kazhrun,' he told her, even if he knew that it meant little in this world, where his house was but a name.

He turned back to the others. 'If there are no objections, we shall depart in the morning, after those of us in need of it have had a solid night's rest.'

[feawen]

Elspeth gave Ashkaio a puzzled look as he pressed the money into her hand. Was he in that much of a rush to get rid of her now he had his new, well dressed friends. She had only been thinking about not carrying on with them. She watched as he turned to the others, tending to plans for tomorrow departure. She gave his back an odd look then turned and left for her sheep. She saw her dog stand and welcome her as she neared them. "What should i do?" She ruffled the dogs soft fur and set about tending to her sheep.

[Midge]

Though it had never been done before, Lur arose in the middle of his father's speech and walked silently, reverently toward his father and mother where they stood before the gathering of their children. His father ceased speaking and looked concerned, but even waiting a moment after the command of Maleldil was given was not to be thought of. Lur stood up straight before them.

"Father, Mother. Maleldil has commanded my sister Lantura and I to depart from here and travel to a floating island and live as you once did before the birthing of the world, that we might be made older in Him." Lantura had not risen, knowing that her brother would speak on her behalf. Though the twins did not hear each other as clearly as they did Maleldil without words, they did understand each other remarkably well.

Tor and Tinidril exchanged joyful glances. Tinidril stepped forward. "If Maleldil has commanded you to go hence, then go you must and without delay. If you are to live like we once did, you shall take nothing with you, for we were free and cared for naught but the command of Maleldil in those days. We leaned on Him, for we did not know what the next wave would bring to us in a day."

[Earniel]

Beryn followed what trail she could find of the little dragon. Luckily it chose to walk a lot more than it did flying. When evening came, the trail had led her to a more wooded area, which suited her even better. After making absolutely sure no one else was around, she changed into bear-skin. Tracking was easier this way as some of her bear-senses were more accurate. And she did not want the dragon to know it was being chased. An ambling bear would not attract its attention.

The little dragon was looking for shelter as she had expected. It did not seem hungry yet, but these parts looked less-populated, so the dragonlet posed less danger to people and lifestock here. And Beryn herself ran less risk of being hunted by humans herself. Some people just found bear-steak tasty. She shivered unvoluntarily.

When darkness fell, she was certain she had located the dragon's new lair: an old badger's den beneath a great beech. She made her own den not too far away, near the tiny brook. Not wanting to risk a fire so close, she ate her trouts raw. Her bear-stomach could handle it.

Beryn considered her options. She could have vanquished the little beast in its slumber, but she had given her word to see if it was dangerous before dispatching it. It was a bit inconvenient, but Beryn had never given her word lightly. Besides, she had to admit to herself, she was rather curious how an actual dragon behaved. She had only heard of them in stories, now she could observe one in the flesh.