Chapter 426: The Choice of Fate
Hearing his wife say that, Kael looked at her gently. "My dear Arwen, if you're reluctant to leave, we can stay a while longer."
Arwen shook her head. "No, Kael. We've stayed long enough."
She smiled, a teasing note in her voice. "If we linger any longer, Lord Círdan might come for us himself. We've kept him waiting so long that he cannot finish his task and sail to Valinor either."
Kael thought of the long-bearded Elf and couldn't help smiling.
Círdan's task was to ferry all those who wished to sail west from Middle-earth to Valinor. Only when the last of them had departed could he take the final ship and remain in Valinor himself. By now, nearly every Elf in Middle-earth who had both the right and the desire to make the crossing had already gone. Only a small number remained, those who had chosen to stay permanently.
Kael and Arwen—who held their passage and simply hadn't used it—were like travellers with tickets who kept refusing to board while the captain waited on the dock with steadily dwindling patience.
And the difficulty was that Círdan couldn't simply leave without them.
His retirement, in other words, had been delayed because of them. The quiet resentment accumulating in that long-suffering Elf at the Grey Havens was not difficult to imagine.
With the decision made, Kael and Arwen stopped putting it off.
Except that one matter remained—and, as it always did, it came back to their children.
Kael sat across from Elthir and Elríen in the sitting room and looked at them with the particular seriousness of a parent who had something important to say.
"Your mother and I have decided to leave Middle-earth before long and sail for Valinor. You're both grown now. It's time for you to make your choice." He paused. "Will you accept the fate of the Elves and come with us to Valinor? Or will you choose the fate of mortals and remain in Middle-earth?"
"Whatever you decide, your mother and I will respect it."
Arwen said nothing. She watched her children with quiet, loving eyes. She wanted nothing more than to keep them close, but this was not her choice to make.
Elthir and Elríen both grew serious. They had considered this question long before it was put to them directly, and neither of them hesitated for long.
"Ada," Elthir said, "I choose the fate of the Elves. I'll come with you to Valinor."
Elthir's path through life had been shaped by a gentleness of spirit that reminded those who knew him of Elrond. His gifts had been most fully expressed in the healing arts, and the body of work he had built over his long life was extraordinary by any measure.
He had served as Headmaster of Hogwarts — the third after Kael and Edward — for a hundred years, and had been the most beloved Headmaster in the school's history. After stepping down, he had moved into medicine, becoming a Healer and eventually director of the Wizarding Hospital, where he had treated countless patients. He had contained an outbreak of cholera that might have swept across all of Eriador, developing both the potion and the spell that cured it, and had been honoured with the title of Saint Elthir — one of the greatest names in the history of magical medicine.
After another hundred years as Hospital Director, he had resigned that post as well and entered the Ministry of Magic. He had worked his way from an ordinary position in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement all the way to Minister for Magic, and in that role had been the principal architect of the formal separation between the Wizarding World and the ordinary world — overseeing the concealment of wizarding society, drafting the laws that governed it, and building the framework that allowed the Ministry to function stably through the centuries that followed.
When other peoples found their living space shrinking under the pressure of human expansion — Hobbits, Dwarves, skin-changers, Elves — it was Elthir who had welcomed them warmly into the Wizarding World and made room for them within it.
The Hobbits had put their natural gift for growing things to use, becoming suppliers of agricultural produce and medicinal herbs to the wizarding community. The Dwarves traded in ore, gemstones, and magical metals including mithril, and had been recruited by Gringotts for their exceptional ability to appraise and locate treasure. Skin-changers — descendants of Beorn — found their ability to take bear form and communicate with animals made them highly sought-after in the fields of Transfiguration and magical creature care, and were eagerly recruited by Diagon Alley's creature shops, the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, and the dragon reserves alike. The Elves mostly kept to Lothlórien, but maintained trade ties with the wizarding community and occasionally appeared in Hogsmeade to purchase potions and magical equipment, and Elven children of school age were enrolled at Hogwarts — though given how few Elves remained, generations might pass between one Elven student and the next.
Elthir had served thirty years as Minister for Magic before resigning — the shortest of his major appointments, and yet many considered it his most consequential. The wizarding community had tried hard to keep him. He had declined, quietly and without making much of it, and had retreated to Rivendell, where the vast Elven library was waiting for him.
With all of that behind him, he had no particular attachment to what remained in Middle-earth, and no desire to choose a mortal fate. When Kael and Arwen announced they were sailing for Valinor, his answer required no deliberation.
Elthir's choice made, Kael and Arwen both turned to look at Elríen.
She did not hesitate either. Her expression was clear and steady.
"I choose the fate of the Elves," she said.
Before Arwen could feel too relieved, she continued.
"But I'm staying in Middle-earth. I won't be going to Valinor."
Kael had not been entirely surprised. He had seen it coming, in the quiet way one comes to understand a person by watching them over many years — by watching Elríen pour herself into the work of Lothlórien, year after year, and into the care of its Silvan Elves. Still, hearing it said directly, he felt the loss of it.
"Elríen," he said, "will you tell me why?"
"Of course, Ada." She looked at her parents and her brother without wavering. "I grew up here. Everything I know is here. I love Lothlórien, Rivendell, and Hogwarts. This land is part of me, and I don't want to leave it."
She paused, then added, "And there's something else that matters even more. The Wood-elves who live here pledged their loyalty to me. If I leave, what becomes of them? I won't abandon them."
While Elthir had made his mark in the wider world of wizardry and governance, Elríen had devoted herself to Lothlórien. She had managed it in Arwen's place, made it more beautiful with every passing decade, and drawn Elves back from the remote corners of Middle-earth—scattered, hidden, dwindling—and given them a home in the forest. The Silvan Elves loved her for it and had come to see in her something of Galadriel.
When Arwen had stepped down as Queen of the Evenstar and passed the title to Elríen, it had been because she truly wanted no throne of her own. She had been content to retire quietly to Rivendell with Kael. She had not foreseen that the responsibility would take such deep root in their daughter.
Arwen felt proud of her, and sad, at the same time.
Kael had half expected it. But expecting it did not make the reality any easier to accept.
He reached out and gently cupped his daughter's face in his hand.
"Elríen, my treasure—whatever you choose, I will honour it."