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In long and sorrowful labour, Aulë and His people devised the vessels and the containment for what would be the Sun and the Moon. Varda came, and Vana, to ensure that their light would endure and be ever renewed. Manwë and Ulmo set their courses, and their pilots were appointed. They rose into the sky and Light (lesser, contingent light) returned to Aman and Middle-earth, and Aulë rested, grieving.
Oromë came to Him, weary and empty-handed, having hunted the Spider over the length and breadth of Middle-earth and failed to find her. Vairë came to Him, with Vana, and said, “It is time to speak to Her.”
On a dawn of the Sun, They sought the Earthqueen where She had been since the catastrophe, crouched on Ezellohar between the blackened trunks of Her murdered Children. The Mound was no longer green, for the grass also had withered beneath poison and Darkness; but it sprang up living once more in the footsteps of Vana the Ever-Young, as She climbed the slope to Her sister. The Valar came to the corpses of the Trees, and were dismayed. For the Earthqueen waited for Them in an aspect most ancient and terrible, forgotten since the wild aeons before the Spring of Arda, when She had battled the creatures of Melkor in the form of a Queen of thunder-lizards, most dreadful of warriors. She rose before them, seven ells high and twice as long, with claws longer than swords, armoured in scales that no spear could pierce. And from her huge jaws the hungry slaver dripped.
“Sister,” Vana said, Lady of Life Renewed. “Soon.”
When?, said Yavanna, and the thunder of Her voice shook the earth beneath Their feet. They are risen, the Fruit and the Flower, and now is My time.
“We have not found her yet,” Oromë said. “I am ashamed, My sister. Her shadows defeated Me.”
Yavanna said, All that lives flees from her if it can, for she devours life. By the path of unlife that she leaves I will find her.
Vairë said, “My Loom looks back only to the birth of Ëa, but My memory is older than that, and I have remembered the Spider. She was one of those who chose the Abyss, preferring the peace of its silence to the Song. How or why she entered Ëa, and Arda, I do not know. But it seems that she has chosen to become an Unmaker, rather than merely to wait in patience for the ending of the Song, as do the others of her mind among Our kin.”
Yavanna said, I will unmake her!
Cool Vairë said, “That You may not do, no more than any of Us, even the mightiest. What Is, Is, and may be changed but not destroyed, until the Song ends.”
The Earthqueen raised Her fanged and dreadful head, and roared in rage and sorrow. In silent Valmar the Vanyar wept at the sound, covering their faces, and in mourning Tirion the remnant of the Noldor shivered, understanding Her pain.
Vana said, cold and sure, all laughter fled, “Her nature is not of Ëa, even as Ours, and her flesh is of her own will, even as Ours. But she has done a deed of Ëa, my Sister. She has killed Your Children, creatures of Ëa, born of its substance. And now her flesh is less of her will than it was, and she is within Your jurisdiction, O Elder Sister, Lady of Life and Death.”
Vairë said, “I also am a weaver. And I have made You a weapon, My sister. In Your hands it will serve even against the Spider.”
She drew forth a net, woven so fine that it might elude even the sight of the Valar, a tissue of shadows that dripped from Her fingers as soft as water. She reached up, and the Earthqueen’s fearsome claws took it, as gently as the fall of tears. And as She touched it, it flushed as red as the blood of birth and death.
“Go now, Sister,” Vana said. “Nessa and I will tend to Avathar. Life and Death will return below Hyarmentir, and there will be no more refuge for Silence there.”
For the first time Aulë spoke, inexorable as the rise and fall of mountains. “Beloved. I will hunt with You.”
She said, Who will tend the Fruit and the Flower if You are gone?
Aulë replied, “Manwë and Varda and Ulmo guard their course, and Arien and Tilion are strong to guide and defend them. I will not abandon You to fight this battle alone, Most Beloved.”
“Nahar and I will come with You also,” Oromë said. “For have We not hunted the servants of Melkor together across the aeons? Lead Us, and We will follow, and aid You as We may.”
The Earthqueen said, I will be glad of Your company, both. My husband, until the time comes, do You hold Vairë’s gift for Me.
Aulë took the net from Her, and kept it away among His own tools, that He carried with Him always.
The Earthqueen bowed Her great head. Be it so, then. My sisters…I thank You.
She went away down Ezellohar in great strides, and Aulë and Oromë followed.
They cast off Their forms at the shore, and crossed the Sea, swift as thought, like a rushing storm in the upper airs.
In Beleriand They paused, for in the dreadful cleft of Nan Gorgoroth Ungoliant had left her spoor. The monsters she had spawned there were less than they later became, influenced by the clash of powers in that place, but still foul enough. The most of them did not approach, fearing the Valar, and those few imprudent who ventured to attack them Yavanna slew in the Moon’s cold light, with blows of Her mighty tail and the rending of Her claws and the crushing strength of Her jaws. She said, These are of her get. I taste her in their blood. She has engendered life as well as death. Now are you wholly within My dominion, Ungoliant.
She looked to the South, where the Girdle of Melian rose in Their sight, a quiet modulation of the Song, yet strong enough that Melkor’s power could not yet pass of its own will.
Dwell yet in peace, little cousin, She said. My blessing be upon you and yours, for so long as you choose to remain among them.
Oromë said, “Where do We go now?”
South, said Yavanna. She flees South, for Melkor holds the North, and he has betrayed her.
It was a long, long hunt across Middle-earth, for Ungoliant was cunning and afraid, and grew more subtle in her passage, hiding from Sun and Moon in shifting shadows and lightless caverns. But always her bottomless hunger for light and life drove her forth and slowly, by the trail of death that she left, the Valar tracked her. She could not hide in water, where Ulmo was, and in the air Oromë upon Nahar kept ceaseless watch. Though she fled to the furthest deeps of the living rock Aulë found her and harried her onwards, and always came the relentless tread of Yavanna following the trail, heavy upon the earth as time itself.
They trapped her finally in a barren valley deep in the South, far from the living lands; a place of ice and stone and silence where even the Sun did not come for half the year. She fled there, hoping to hide in the months-long winter darkness. But from afar she heard the hoofs of Nahar riding down the wind, and in her last fear turned at bay, spinning great webs of darkness and despair to swallow the light that pursued her.
But Oromë came and the spear of Oromë and the lightning from the hooves of Nahar cut through her webs. Aulë was there, and the earth moved and broke at His will, trapping her with cliffs and chasms. And Yavanna came, shining with dreadful wrath, and in her claws she held the weapon that Vairë had given Her.
You desired Light, Yavanna said. Have it. And She cast the blood-red net, Vairë’s weaving, with all of the Song contained in small as Vairë remembered it, Who knows all that Was and sees all that Is. It fell about the Spider and bound her, and Ungoliant screamed, for the Song was greater by far than her power to drink it down, and Its force, focused and directed in the delicate strands, crushed her as the light of the Sun focused through glass burns an ant. In desperation she spun herself a shelter, a cocoon of darkness and silence, shrinking down and down to escape the unescapable weight of Ëa.
Then Aulë brought forth His tools, and in that deathly place he fashioned around the cocoon of Ungoliant a prison without door or bar, a great jewel that would allow nothing of the world to pass through, not light nor air nor song nor any substance or force of Ëa. “Let her be held harmless within,” He said, “Until the end of all things.”
They returned to Valinor in silence, bearing with them the jewel that was the prison of Ungoliant. It was bright, for it reflected all light that fell upon its surface, that none might pass through to sustain the one within. Yavanna let go the form of the thunder-lizard, and in Her own accustomed shape took the jewel to the doors of Mandos, that none pass save by the will of their Lord and Lady, and there Námo and Vairë met Her.
“Guard this,” Yavanna said. “Until Arda ends, never let her escape.”
Vairë said, “That is more mercy than I expected, My sister.”
Námo said, “It is not mercy.” And indeed the Lady Nienna was not there.
Yavanna said, “No light nor substance will enter this jewel and nothing will ever leave. She will starve within as the Ages pass, until in her uttermost hunger even her own self and memory she will devour. Do you deny Me this judgement?”
Námo said, “I do not.”
And He and Vairë took the jewel within, into the shadows of the Halls of Waiting, that even Melkor in his might could not escape.
And there it remains. This tale the Children do not know.