High in the Clean Blue Air by StarSpray  

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Forty Five

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The arrival of Mahtan and Linquendil at least delayed Maglor’s being cornered by Nerdanel. It did, however, mean he had to endure the lingering looks and then their attempts not to stare at him, and the way they pointedly did not ask him any questions about what he had been doing or what had befallen him in Middle-earth. 

They meant well. He knew they did. But the way he knew they were watching him regardless of where they were looking or who they were speaking to made him itch and struggle not to fidget like a child. He retreated to the far side of the room when they all piled inside again, letting Celegorm talk of the journey out and then back from Ekkaia; he was a good storyteller, even with Ambarussa’s interruptions and Caranthir’s interjections, and neatly danced around the uncomfortable and frightening parts—and made it sound as though their chance meeting by the shore had been a merry one. But even he couldn’t hide how Maedhros kept to the opposite side of the room from Maglor, and how neither of them joined in the telling as they once would have. Maglor was painfully aware of the growing frown on his grandfather’s face as he looked between them. 

Leicheg’s appearance was a welcome distraction. She scurried into the room, getting underfoot of everyone until she found Maglor and Daeron in the far corner. Maglor knelt to pick her up, while Daeron laughed and answered Linquendil’s inevitable questions, putting all the blame for Leicheg’s presence on Huan. The question, though, had been meant for Maglor, and he wished that he was able to put on a smile to answer it as easily as Daeron could. When he rose Daeron slipped his arm around him, so they were pressed together where they leaned against the windowsill. Outside a bird was singing merrily in the hawthorn tree; it was a bright, sunny day with no clouds to be seen. Across the room Mahtan whispered something to Maedhros, who shook his head.

Maglor wished he was happier to see them, but when his uncle suggested they all go to Mahtan and Ennalótë’s house for supper that evening, so the rest of the family could see Maglor now that he was home, his first impulse was to flee out into the wilds again, to hide until he could return to Elrond’s house, where no one would stare at him or ask painful questions, or do anything more than tease him about his pets. Elrond would be concerned, but it was somehow so much easier to bear than anyone else’s. Maybe it was just that Elrond already knew all the darkest parts of the past, the way no one in his mother’s family ever could. 

But of course there was no refusing the invitation. Nerdanel answered for all of them, and when he was looked at Maglor made himself smile and nod and say something about wanting to see his grandmother. It wasn’t even a lie—he did want to see her, and to see his aunts. He did want to meet the cousins who had been born after he’d left these shores. It was only that he did not want them to see him, even if it would be better to see them all at once and get the initial shock out of the way. It would still hurt, and he was so tired of that particular pain.

Linquendil departed to tell Ennalótë of the new plans, and once Maglor saw that Caranthir had engaged both Nerdanel and Mahtan in conversation, he slipped out of the house to find Pídhres. Daeron followed. “Are you all right?” he asked, slipping his hand into Maglor’s as they walked through the flower beds and vegetable patches and statues of Nerdanel’s garden. 

“Yes,” Maglor said. “Only everyone is noticing that Maedhros and I aren’t speaking, and…I don’t know how to explain it to them.”

“You don’t have to,” Daeron said. “It isn’t any of their business.”

“They’re our family, Daeron.”

“And they were not there,” Daeron said.

“They’re here now.” Maglor sighed. “I don’t begrudge them their concern, because it’s…I would be surprised too. Maedhros and I not speaking is as strange to them as it would be if Ambarussa were at odds, as strange as it is for me to know there was a time very recently that Celegorm and Curufin were not speaking.”

“I noticed your uncle talking as though he expects you to dwell here with your mother,” Daeron said after a moment. Pídhres was not anywhere in the garden, so they turned toward the orchard, where Maglor suspected one of them would have to climb up after her. He set Leicheg down; she more or less kept pace with them as they walked. “Will they be upset when they learn you intend to dwell instead with Elrond?”

“I think they will be surprised,” Maglor said, “but if they are upset, they’ll get over it quickly. It isn’t as though I’m going back across the Sea. Imloth Ningloron is no more than a week’s ride from here, and I did write to my mother in the spring to tell her I intended to make my home with Elrond. There she is. Of course she’s gotten herself stuck.” They stopped and looked up into the plum tree, where Pídhres perched on a high branch. She meowed plaintively. 

“At least this one is climbable,” said Daeron.

“There is that.” Maglor grasped the nearest branch and hauled himself up. “I haven’t asked what your plans are, Daeron. Aren’t you wanted back at Thingol’s court?”

“Probably,” said Daeron, “but I found it harder than I expected to return to a life at court after spending so long living so very differently. The fine clothes and comfortable beds are lovely, and of course there is nothing like a good feast with songs and dancing afterward, but I now find the rest of it oddly stifling. I don’t think anyone will be surprised when I don’t turn up for some time. Unless you’re sick of my company, I will stay with you.”

Maglor smiled down at him. “Sick of you? No, never.”

Daeron laughed. “Don’t say never! I’m sure we’ll both grow tired of each other eventually, and we’ll go our separate ways for a time, even if we aren’t both called away by other duties and commitments. It doesn’t matter for how long; we have the rest of forever.”

“That’s true,” Maglor murmured, though he still could not make himself believe it; too much had happened, too many things had ended, for him to really believe that anything could last forever. He reached Pídhres, who immediately jumped out of reach again. “Do you want down or not?” he exclaimed as Daeron laughed at him from the ground. “Come here—” He snatched her before she could jump again, and nearly lost his grip on his own branch and sent them tumbling to the ground before he caught himself. Pídhres meowed and then purred once he settled her on his shoulders so he could use both hands to climb back down. 

Once safely on the ground again Pídhres jumped down and disappeared, chasing after Leicheg away through the orchard. Daeron stepped forward, catching Maglor’s face in his hands to kiss him soundly, pressing him back against the tree trunk, the bark scraping over his back through his shirt. Maglor pulled him in even closer. He couldn’t imagine ever tiring of this, and said so when they parted to catch their breath. Daeron just smiled and kissed him gain. For a while all else ceased to matter, and by the time Celegorm came out of the house to call for them, Maglor had almost entirely forgotten about all of his fears. So far almost nothing he had been afraid of had come to pass. He could surely survive a meal with his mother’s family—he might even enjoy it. 

“What were you doing out there?” Celegorm asked them when they emerged from the orchard. “Oh, never mind,” he said almost immediately. “Fix your hair, Cáno, before Ammë sees you.”

“What’s the matter with my hair?” Maglor asked, raising his hands to it. He hadn’t bothered braiding it that morning, so nothing could be askew.

“There are leaves in it,” Daeron said, reaching up to pick one out. “Oh, and a few bits of bark.”

“That’s from climbing after my cat,” Maglor informed Celegorm. The bark was probably not from climbing after Pídhres, but he certainly wasn’t going to give Celegorm the satisfaction of saying so. “She got stuck in a tree again.” As though summoned by his words, Pídhres trotted up to twine about his ankles, Leicheg following close behind. 

“Of course,” Celegorm said, with a grin that said he didn’t believe Maglor at all. “And you weren’t doing anything else out there all this time, I’m sure.”

“Not what you’re thinking of,” Maglor said. He ran his fingers through his hair, picking out another leaf, while Daeron tugged a few bits of bark out of some tangles. “I can’t believe I missed having younger brothers.” Celegorm only grinned at him. “Why did you call for us, anyway?”

“A wagon’s coming down the road, full of stone for Ammë,” said Celegorm, “and she’s delighted that all seven of us are finally here to help unload it. Well, six of us,” he amended, “because no one’s letting Nelyo lift anything, and Daeron is a guest.”

“I don’t mind helping,” Daeron said.

“Is Maedhros’ arm hurting him?” Maglor asked. 

“No, but that doesn’t mean he has to exert himself. Daeron’s songs have worked wonders, but he still almost bled out a few weeks ago. If he tries helping Huan is going to sit on him. Are you feeling all right? You almost drowned a few weeks ago too.”

“I’m fine,” Maglor said. “I was only bruised. What sort of stone is it?”

“Alabaster and marble; I don’t think there are any enormous slabs.”

They walked around the house as the wagon rolled into the courtyard between the house and the workshop. On the seat were the driver, a broad-shouldered figure with red-gold hair cropped even shorter than Curufin’s, and a child with similar coloring, who leaped down into Celegorm’s arms with a delighted cry. Celegorm laughed as he spun the child around before setting him onto the ground. The driver looked at Maglor in surprise. “Well met, Cousin!” he said. “You took your time in returning, didn’t you?”

Maglor stared at him. “I…”

“Don’t you know me?” The driver jumped lightly to the ground. His smile was warm enough, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I suppose that isn’t so surprising; I was only a child when you left.”

Oh. Oh. “Elessúrë?” Maglor said. “I’m—I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

He didn’t know what he meant to say, and in any case he didn’t get a chance to say it, as everyone else poured out of the house to begin unloading the stones, and to greet Elessúrë and the child—his son, Vindimórë. Only Maedhros did not make an appearance. Maglor helped Caranthir carry blocks of alabaster into the workshop, and to stack them in the precise way that Nerdanel instructed them, and as soon as the cart was empty he escaped into his mother’s house and up the stairs to the room he and Daeron were sharing. He sank onto the bed and listened to the voices outside, laughing and talking, as his stomach tied itself in knots. 

When they’d come back one last time to Mahtan’s house, to retrieve a few last essentials for the road and to say farewell, Elessúrë had been a small child, terrified of the dark and far too young to understand what was happening. He had understood, though, that they were all leaving, and that they might never come back. Maglor pressed his hands to his eyes, remembering how his little baby cousin had clung to his legs and wept. He’d tried to be reassuring, had hugged him tightly and kissed him all over his round tear-stained face, tried to speak brightly, but he’d known better than to make promises. Even then he’d known that the Oath he’d sworn must override everything else—and even if he hadn’t known, or hadn’t sworn at all, they were all going into further darkness and greater danger, into war. There was nothing that could make that better, especially not for a child. 

Someone knocked quietly on the door. “Come in,” Maglor sighed. He expected his mother, but instead it was his cousin who came in, shut the door, and leaned back against it. For a moment he just stared at Maglor, who fought the urge to look away, to turn or duck his head and try to hide. Elessúrë deserved better than his cowardice. 

Finally, he said, “I was very angry at you for a very long time, you know.” Maglor didn’t answer; he didn’t know what it was Elessúrë wanted to hear—if he wanted to hear anything at all. “I almost went with the host of the Valar—not to fight, but to try to find you, in spite of the tales Lady Elwing brought of what you did. I didn’t want to believe them.”

The thought of Elessúrë in the midst of a battle made Maglor feel ill. “Elessúrë—”

“I just—I don’t understand how the figure in those tales, how that Maglor can be the same person as my bright and kind cousin Macalaurë. Because you were, Macalaurë. You were always kind. That is the clearest thing about you that I remember. You were so much older than me, but you never made me feel like a burden, or like you were too busy—”

“You never were,” Maglor said.

“But then you went and—”

“I know.”

“Three times over! Four times, all for a couple of gems! And then, worst of all, you disappeared. Aunt Nerdanel used to go to Eressëa every time a ship came in, to ask everyone for news of you. She looked for you in the great palantír in Avallónë, and in the smaller ones she kept at home, and no one ever had anything more than a rumor of ghosts somewhere on the seashore, and Aunt Nerdanel never could find you in any of the stones. That was worse for her than even learning all the rest were dead, because at least we know where the dead are.”

She had found him once, Maglor thought, at the worst possible moment. Elessúrë paused to take a breath, and Maglor knew he should say something, but what was there to say? He couldn’t say anything to defend himself any more than Maedhros could. He did not expect forgiveness, and he could not ask for it. 

“This would be much more satisfying if you would argue back at me,” Elessúrë said finally. “I always imagined this as a fight, instead of you just—just sitting there and apparently agreeing with me that you’re a terrible person who has done terrible things.”

“I deserve far worse than what you’ve said, Elessúrë,” Maglor said. “I did do terrible things. I tried not to, but that didn’t matter in the end.”

“What happened to your face?” It was asked bluntly, a question designed to sting. Maglor flinched. “And your wrists? I saw the scars there earlier.”

“The scars on my wrists are from…chains. They rubbed away the skin.” Maglor realized he was digging his thumbnail into the scars on his hand again, but he didn’t make himself stop. “The ones on my face—one is from a stray whip. The others—the others are from—from—” He couldn’t make the words come. In the back of his mind he thought he could hear Sauron’s laughter, distant and terrible. Elessúrë’s brow furrowed. 

He didn’t want to say it—not only because it was hard for him, but he did not want such an image put into his baby cousin’s head. Because Elessúrë was still a baby in his mind, a small fair-haired child with an infectious laugh and a passionate love for strawberries. He had spoken aloud of it to Curufin, but Curufin had seen war, had seen the horrors that Angband wrought. Elessúrë had never left Valinor, knew of such dark things only as distant stories. Maglor would not make them real for him. “I’m glad you did not go to war, Elessúrë,” he said instead. “I’m glad you didn’t have to—have to see it. War, I mean. It’s horrible.”

“I only stayed because my parents begged me to. And Lossenyellë.”

“Lossenyellë?”

“My wife.”

Of course. He had a son, he must have a wife. Maglor was reminded of his first meeting with Elrond’s children, and how he hadn’t known then, either, that Elrond had ever gotten married.

“You promised me once, right before you left for Formenos, that you would teach me to play the harp. As soon as you returned, you said, you would make one for me and teach me to play.”

Maglor looked away, toward the window. It was early afternoon by then; the sun was high in the cloudless sky, and birds were singing in the garden, because Daeron had called them down to provide a chorus for his music. “Did you ever learn?” he asked. He’d taught other children to play instead, long afterward, on grassy hillsides in what patches of peaceful sunshine they could find, those moments too few and far between, and he had tried not to remember his kin and the broken hearts and promises he’d left on the other side of the Sea.

“No.”

“I am sorry, Elessúrë. For leaving. For—for everything else. It’s not enough, I know. But I am.”

“Did you ever even remember me, when you were fighting? When you were wandering?”

“Yes. Of course. But I—I always tried not to.” It had hurt, like poking a bruise on his heart that refused to heal. He’d gotten very good at not thinking about the things that hurt, pretending even to himself that he didn’t miss his family across the Sea as desperately as he did. “You were here, and you were safe, and that was…that was enough.” It had had to be. 

Elessúrë was still watching him. His expression was grim; he’d long ago lost the baby roundness of his face, and he looked a great deal like their grandmother Ennalótë, with the freckles that ran in their family, the strong nose, prominent cheekbones. He wore little in the way of jewelery, but a tattoo of some intricate, interlocking pattern wound around one of his arms, disappearing under the short sleeve of his tunic. He’d grown as broad as Mahtan, and as tall as Maglor. “Did you do anything worth remembering, there?” he asked finally. “Or was it all betrayal and murder and theft?”

“Not all,” Maglor said softly, thinking for a moment of the wide plains of the Gap and of the wild, reckless music he and his people had made there, to the beat of their horses’ hooves, as they rode down bands of orcs in what they thought were victorious skirmishes, the holding of the leaguer, before they understood that those were just tests, that the real might of the Enemy was something far, far beyond their strength. “But nothing that can make up for all the rest.”

Elessúrë said nothing more. He just sighed, and after a moment he left the room, closing the door with a soft click behind him. Maglor remained where he was, listening to Daeron’s music and watching the river in the distance out of the window. After a while someone else knocked, and opened the door even when he didn’t answer. “Macalaurë?”

“Ammë,” he sighed.

“What are you doing up here alone?” She came to sit on the bed next to him, and he leaned against her when she put an arm around his shoulders. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” It was only the consequences of his own actions. Elessúrë’s welcome was the sort he’d been expecting from everyone—the sort he deserved. It was not surprising, and there were sure to be other reunions like it in the future, but it still hurt to see his cousin still so upset, and to know there was nothing he could say to make any of it better.

“Is it to do with Maitimo?”

Maglor sat up. “Ammë, I don’t—”

“Did you think no one would notice that you aren’t speaking to one another? You’ve hardly even looked at each other since you arrived. I spoke to Maitimo about it this morning, and he seems to think there is no hope of reconciliation at all.”

“Ammë, I can’t—”

“He is your brother, Macalaurë. You don’t seem to have the same trouble with the rest of them, so why—”

“Ammë, please.” Maglor lurched to his feet, but there was nowhere to go. His grandfather and uncle and cousin were downstairs with all the rest of his brothers, between him and the door. Even if he did manage to slip away someone would chase after him. He covered his face with his hands, wishing suddenly, again, that he’d never come west at all, that he’d stayed behind to haunt the shores of Middle-earth the way he had once thought himself doomed to forever. He knew how to be alone, how to be lonely. He did not know how to be someone’s son, someone’s brother anymore.

He wanted so badly for Nienna to be right, but he still could not see how. 

“Macalaurë.” Nerdanel stepped in front of him, catching his wrists, fingers sliding over the scar tissue there, and tugging his hands from his face. “Your brother was not thinking—”

“I know,” he said. “I know—we have spoken of it. More than once. I understand, Ammë. But I can’t—if he were—he hasn’t changed, Ammë. He isn’t like any of the others.” It was hard to see them healed and renewed while he was so tired and scarred and sick at heart, but it was so much worse to watch Maedhros exist as though he were only going through the motions. Caranthir had been right—he had seemed more like his old self for a while only after he’d almost died, and what that meant frightened Maglor more than the hill cat had, more than even watching Maedhros’ blood soak through the makeshift bandages, staining the rocks under them on the riverbank. “I watched him fall farther and farther from me without understanding that’s what was happening. I can recognize it now. I can’t—I can’t watch him do it again. Please don’t ask me to.”

“He is not fading, Macalaurë.”

“Are you so sure?” Maglor asked. “I know what it looks like. I was there. I was there until the very end, and I saw him—I watched him—I can’t do it. I can’t look at him and know that there was nothing I could have done then, and there is nothing I can do now. How can I forgive him for leaving me behind when it’s so clear to me now that he would do the same again if he could?”

There were tears in his mother’s eyes, and Maglor had put them there. “Macalaurë,” she said, and stopped. He’d never known her to be at a loss for words. He was the cause of that, too. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“What will you do, then, if you cannot bear to be near him?”

“I’m not—I’m not staying here, Ammë. I’m going back to Elrond’s house, as soon as—as soon as his other visitors leave.”

“Your father, you mean,” she sighed. Maglor remained silent. He couldn’t apologize for that—for wanting to return to Elrond’s house, or for avoiding his father. He wouldn’t. If he saw Fëanor again so soon he was sure that something would break inside of him, and not even Estë and Nienna together could fix it. “Very well. I suppose I expected you to leave again all along.”

“I’m not going back across the Sea. Imloth Ningloron isn’t so far. I did tell you when I wrote that I intended to make my home with Elrond. That hasn’t changed.”

“I know,” she said with a small, sad smile. “Maybe someday I’ll have all seven of you back under my roof, and all glad to be here with one another. We have time, I suppose.” She sighed. Then she said, “You don’t have to come to dinner tonight if you don’t want to.”

Everyone would worry if he didn’t, and it would only be delaying the discomfort. “I want to,” he said. “I want to see Grandmother, and my aunts.”

“They will wonder at you and Maitimo.”

“I can’t help that. I can’t—I lost my taste for performance a long time ago. I can’t pretend anymore that nothing is wrong.” He’d done that for nearly five hundred years, and all it had done was make the end of it all that much worse.

“No one wants you to pretend. We want you to be well.”

“I know. I’m not, right now, but I have been, and I will be.” He looked at his mother and saw the doubt there, that she tried to hide away but couldn’t quite manage to. “I don’t hate him, Ammë. I love him—that’s why I can’t stay.”

“I understand, Macalaurë. I do. I just wish it were otherwise.”

“I do, too.”