[This letter, delivered first to Maddoct with the intent he carry it on to Dimheim, consists of several sheets densely packed with small writing. It opens with no greeting but launches immediately into extensive, though topically scattered, notes on various subjects having to do with healing: the uses of a flower called here "purple celebrant" for reinvigorating weakened patients, the medically useful plants common to Hollin and substitutions for herbs more common in Dimrill Dale and the Gladden Fields, and two recipes for poultices, one meant to be applied hot and the other cold.
Then follows:]
This is a story that was told to me when I was young and, I have verified, is found in multiple sources, though some disagree on the exact historical figure upon which it was based. While in Thorin's Hall I cross-referenced several versions and most seem to identify the Queen with the wife of the king who reigned in Khazad-dûm 61 centuries ago.
Regardless of whose wife it is, the Queen, if given a name, most typically bears the one of "Prýdi". When I asked the historians if this was like to be the true outer-name of this queen, as the names of the queens are not given in our most reliable genealogies, a brawl nearly broke out amongst the scholars in library, so in truth I cannot really claim this account to be historically accurate. But it is a very old tale with basis in known fact, which I will explain in my afterword.
The common story, stripped of narrative flourishes and colorful asides, proceeds something like this:
There once was a maiden who matured into exceeding beauty and was praised by all. She became the wife of the King and wanted for nothing, for the wealth of the Longbeards was nearing its peak in those days. Nevertheless the Queen was frequently discontent, for her husband left their mansions frequently to negotiate matters of trade and alliance. Perhaps it was this anxiety that fed her great vice: jealous vanity, to make herself the finest treasure in all the Misty Mountains, in hopes that her husband might be persuaded by such riches never to leave her side again.
So obsessive became the Queen to make herself the greatest of all treasures that she at first confiscated all her ladies' jewels, then all their gold and silver. And then — because she desired to deprive the other ladies of it for ever, or perhaps because of some notion of literally turning herself into a treasure — she had the royal smiths grind all that silver down to powder and sprinkled it all over her food and into her drink. So she supped for close to a year during one of her husband's long voyages, dreaming of how she would glitter and shine when he returned.
But o! what a sight he returned to! What greeted him garbed in his wife's furs and necklaces was no silver maiden shining like the moon, but a shock: the Queen had turned a horrible blue, and less like a sapphire than a dirty, bluish pewter, for all the silver she had eaten had crept into her skin and eyes. And once it was done and the Queen realized her error, there was nothing the King or all his healers could do for it, for this was well past a rouge, now as permanent as a tattoo. And forever after, whenever she stepped from the royal halls, little beardlings would point and stare and exclaim, "Ah, there goes the Queen Who Turned Blue!"
As this tale is told to children, oft some moral or another is appended, depending on the version. A warning against vanity it may be, or a lesson about not taking gold and silver as adequate sustenance for the body or soul. Many versions read like a jape about the foolishness of ladies and have to me a distasteful undertone of derision towards that whole sex; the version I liked best came with a final twist, that of the king's inflamed admiration for his poor blue spouse.
The stories are often fanciful and the historicity of a true Queen Who Turned Blue difficult to confirm, but I discovered in my research that the phenomena is actually well-documented. Rarely is it consumed in such quantities as to turn a Dwarf entirely blue, but those who handle it frequently, such as silversmiths, jewelers, and sometimes gilders working in shops with silver powder, may show blue patches or blue on the eye-whites. Apparently the master who trained my eldest brother Blovurr in silversmithing shows it, something I had to be told by Seimurr as I was so young then I did not remember him; they say it is more common in male smiths than female ones.
Some I spoke with also attested that silver from an embedded earring can leach permanently into the skin, knowledge which shall now give me nightmares about my earrings becoming embedded.
Most of these cases sound essentially identical to tattooing and so are not so remarkable, but that silver can be ingested by mouth and then show up in the skin, and then permanently, is very interesting. It is a visible proof of a phenomenon usually invisible: the digestion of metal and its permanent accumulation in certain parts of the body. And if it is possible of silver to accumulate in the skin, what else could travel where and then there live forever, perhaps not so harmlessly?
Our folk were made to be enduring and strong, and it is said we suffer not from disease; in comparison to Men that is true, but I am not sure it is true in the strictest, most absolute sense. Obviously we suffer lesions and poisoning, and I suspect that at times lesion, poisoning, and illness cannot be easily distinguished. And you yourself have seen a Dwarf who became ill, at the only time a Dwarf is like to do so: the end of his long life.
And at the end of a Dwarf’s life, the illness that takes him can sometimes be predicted with folk-wisdom about his craft. Those who work fiber-stone know their end when they begin to cough blood; miners of cinnabar develop a tremor; the digestion of the bronze-smelter goes first. Neither I nor the healers and lore-masters I consulted can say if these associations are real — rather than unprovable 'common sense' — or have anything to do with the minerals the Dwarf handles, as historically our healers have like not much cared; divining the exact cause may not have been judged important, for at the age a Dwarf declines, he declines rapidly, sometimes too rapidly even for treatment — as in Master Yurri's sad case — and the healer's sole duty is to administer palliation.
But if these minerals do somehow precipitate such end-of-life disease, could even be considered poisonous in a way, then perhaps that is another reason that Dwarves were made to be resilient, for we were made to work earth and metal; and just as it is like that the reason our skin is tough to burn is because we have worked forges from our beginnings, perhaps it was necessary for us to be able to tolerate such substances in great quantity, as miners and stone-dwellers. And perhaps a Dwarf's resilience allows him to work hard at his craft till, at two-hundred-forty, the scales tip, and he must pay for whatever hoard he's unknowingly secreted in his bones, gut, and lungs over his lifetime.
It would be illuminating, I think, to compare the end-of-life diseases of Dwarves to Mannish smiths and miners, about whose ailments I know very little (perhaps Master Maddoct is better informed). The next puzzle would be to discover some means by which largely invisible metals hidden inside the body could be made visible, like the silver that is so easy to see in the skin and eyes. Mining, smelting, and such work has never been my craft; I handle only beaten threads and cut gems ready to be made dress jewels, so I am not the Dwarf to unravel for you such mysteries. But I hope what I have written is evidence solid and well-attested enough to inform your future investigations.
I am honored to remain,
Yours deeply,
Bíld, Bóurr’s son.
