#do i *want* to write my “gimli becomes king under the mountain and smokes a blunt with bard and the elvenqueen” au? fuck yeah

[unendingwanderlust]

writing problem #35234534543: so many ideas, so much writer's block

[warrioreowynofrohan]

March 15th - A Day of Miracles

This sis something that occurred to me when I was writing today’s instalment of “Today in Tolkien”, but I didn’t have space to discuss it there, so I’m making a separate post. The day of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields is characterized by muraculous events and sudden turns of good fortune, in a way that didn’t become fully clear to me until I looked at the day as a whole. In the style of The Lord of the Rings, many of these are not obviously supernatural, but are understood as miraculous by those who experience them.

Wind

One of the most prominent of the miracles of the day is the change in the wind at precisely the right time, driving back the darkness of Mordor, giving hope to the Rohirrim and to Frodo and Sam, and carrying Aragorn’s fleet up the river. Readers of The Silmarillion will inow that wind is most of all associated with Manwë, the king of the Valar.

The first mentions of the change in the wind are from Ghân-buri-Ghân and the Rohirrim:

But suddenly [Ghân-buri-Ghân] stood looking up like so e startled woodland animal snuffling a strange air. A light came into his eyes. “Wind is changing!” he cried, and with that, in a twinkling as it seemed, he and his fellows had vanished into the glooms, never to be seen by any Rider of Rohan again.

And later, as the Rohirrim draw near to the Pelennor Fields:

“Do you remember the Wild Man’s words, lord?” said another. “I live upon the open Wold in days of peace; Wídfara is my name, and to me also the air brings messages. Already the wind is turning. There comes a breath out of the South; there is a sea-tang in it, faint though it be. The morning will bring new things. Above the reek it will be dawn when you pass the wall.”

As the Rohirrim arrive at the battlefield:

Then suddenly Merry felt it at last, beyond doubt: a change. Wind was in his face! Light was glimmering. Far, far away, in the South the clouds could be dimly seen as remote grey shapes, rolling up, drifting; morning lay beyond them.

And in the charge of the Rohirrim:

For morning came, morning and a wind from the sea; and darkness was removed, and the hosts or Mordor wailed, and terrror took them...

The wind and the change it bring is also anticipated by Legolas aboard the ships of the Corsairs, as Gimli later tells:

“Heavy would my heart have been, for all our victory at the havens, if Legolas had not laughed suddenly. ‘Up with your beard, Durin’s son!’ he said. ‘For thus it is spoken: Oft hope is born, when all is forlorn.’ But what hope he saw from afar he would not tell...At midnight hope was indeed born anew, Sea-crafty men of the Ethir gazing southward spoke of a change coming with a fresh wind from the Sea. Long ere day the masted ships hoisted sail, and our speed grew, until dawn whitened the foam at our prows.

Frodo and Sam, too, see the change:

Light was growing behind them. Slowly it crept towards the North. There was battle far anove in the high spaces of the air. The billowing clouds of Mordor were being driven back, their edges tattering as a wind out of the living world came up and swept the fumes and smokes towards the dark land of their home. Under the lifting skirts of the dreary canopy dim light leaked into Mordor like pale morning through the grimed window of a prison. “Look at it, Mr Frodo!” said Sam. “Look at it! The wind’s changed. Something’s happening. He’s not having it all his own way. His darkness is breaking up in the world there.”

Victory

Eowyn and Merry’s defeat of the Witch-king, though accomplished by thmselves and a great feat, is also percieved as miraculous by many who hear its effects. These two things are not contradictory - the presence of two such unlikely people on the battlefield, in the right time and right place, with the right weapons, in answer to prophecy, does have the air if the miraculous, a miracle accomplished through the intersections of providence with the actions of ordinary people (even as with the later destruction of the Ring; or, earlier, Bilbo’s finding of the Ring, which would not have been posdible if he had not go e with the dwarves in the first place).

Then tottering, struggling up, with her last strength [Éowyn] drove her sword between criwn and mantle, as the great shoulder bowed before her. The sword broke sparkling into many shards. The crown rolled away with a clang. Éowyn fell forward upon her fallen foe.

But lo! the mantle and hauberk were empty. Shapeless they lay now on the ground, torn and tumbled; and a cry went up into the shuddering air, and faded to a shrill wailing, passing with the wind, a voice bodiless and thin that died, and was swallowed up, and was never heard again in that age of the world.

The death of the Nazgûl-lord is heard also in Minas Tirith, and brings hope:

But even as Gandalf and his companions came carrying the bier to the main door of the Houses [of Healing], they heard a great cry that went up from the field before the Gate and rusing shrill and piercing into the sky passed, and died away on the wind. So terrible was the cry that for a moment all stood still, and yet when it had passed, suddenly their hearts were lifted up in such a hope as they had not known since the darkness came out of the East; and it seemed to them that the light grew clear and the sun broke through the clouds.

And it is heard by Frodo and Sam as well, and gives heart and hope to Sam:

As Frodo and Sam stood and gazed, the rim of light spread all along the line of the Ephel Dúath, and then they saw a shape, moving at great speed out of the West, at first only a black speck against the glimmering strip above the mountain-tops, but growing, until it plunged like a bolt into the dark canopy and passed high above them. As it went it sent out a long shrill cry, the voice of a Nazgûl; but this cry no longer held any terror for them: it was a cry of woe and dismay, ill tidings for the Dark Tower. The Lord of the Ringwraiths had met his doom.

Light and Water

For Frodo and Sam, the breaking of the darkness is part of another miraculous sequence of events. In the early hours, when they have escaped from the Tower of Cirith Ungol but are entirely out of water, Sam says:

“If only the Lady could see or hear us, I’d say to her: ‘Your Ladyship, all we want is light and water: just clean water and plain daylight, better than any jewels, begging your pardon.’ But it’s a long way to Lórien.”

Not long after that the darkness breaks, as quoted above, and light comes into the sky, and they hear the death-cry of the Nazgûl-lord. And only an little later:

They had trudged for more than an hour when they heard a sound that grought them to a halt. Unbelievable, but unmistakeable. Water trickling. Out of a gully on the left, so sharp and narrow that it looked as if the black cliff had been cloven by some huge axe, water came dripping down: the last remains, maybe, of some sweet rain gathered from sunlit seas...Here it came out of the rock in a little falling streamlet, and flowed across the path...

Sam sprang towards it. “If I ever see the Lady again, I will tell her!” he cried. “Light and now water!”

I don’t think either of these things are within Galadriel’s abilities, but that is not the point. The hobbits think of her as the closest encounter they have had with great and high beings, and think of her in place of greater things that they are less aware of or less sensible of being able to seek help from; and someone is watching out for them.

Healing

The last miracle of the day comes with Aragorn’s first entry into Minas Tirith, as healer rather than ruler; and the final description of it is highly evocative of many of Jesus’ miracles of healing in the New Testament:

At the doors of the Houses [of Healing] many were already gathered to see Aragorn, and they followed after him; and when at last he had supped, men came and prayed that he would heal their kinsmen or their friends whose lives were in peril through hurt or wound, or who lay under the Black Shadow. And Aragorn arose and went out, and he sent for the sons of Elrond, and together they laboured far into the night. And word went through the city: ‘The King is come again indeed.’ ...And when he could labour no more, he cast his cloak about him, and slipped out of the City, and went to his tent just ere dawn and slept for a little.