High in the Clean Blue Air by StarSpray  

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Fifty One

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Fëanor’s gift to Maglor had been left on his desk, alongside a letter, folded over but unsealed, with Maglor’s name written across it in Fëanor’s bold, elegant hand. Maglor had taken both and shoved them into the back of his wardrobe, out of sight behind robes he never wore. He’d meant what he had said to Maedhros, and he intended to follow his own advice, in spite of Elrond’s words. 

For a while he did manage to mostly forget about them. He found that the bowl he’d made the day he’d left had been fired, and he glazed it and fired it again, and sent it to his grandparents as a gift. He made other things, too, and taught Daeron the basics of throwing clay. Daeron humored him, but disliked the feeling of all that clay on his hands and arms, and afterward only joined Maglor in the workshop to watch and to talk, and to sometimes help with glazing. They made music together often, and picked apples with Elladan and Elrohir and dozens of others under Celebrían’s supervision, and as the days grew shorter and the autumn rains moved in they finished the song they had begun together in praise of Ekkaia. Maglor received notes from his mother and his brothers, cheerful scrawls from Ambarussa and somewhat longer letters from Caranthir, usually with an addendum from Celegorm or Curufin at the end, as they had all lingered at her house after Maglor had left. Maedhros had written a few short notes, and sent a few sketches—making an effort to do as Maglor had asked. Maglor had written back, but he didn’t know what to say any more than Maedhros did. Caranthir’s letters were somewhat reassuring—Maedhros still wasn’t sleeping much, but he was eating better and he had not started burning his drawings again. Galadriel wrote from Tirion, and Finrod too, their letters full of silly stories or bits of city or family gossip. Neither wrote of Fëanor, but he still seemed to loom large behind their words, a presence that was difficult to ignore.

But the knowledge that a letter to him from his father sat unread in the back of his wardrobe began to feel like an itch that he couldn’t scratch. Maglor kept opening the wardrobe to look at it before turning away. He didn’t want to know what his father’s excuses or explanations were. He didn’t want to be cajoled or begged or worse. He told himself he didn’t care what it said, but even in his own mind the lie was not convincing.

“Just read it,” Daeron said, watching Maglor shut the wardrobe again. It was late, and they’d both had a little too much wine that evening, playing a drinking game of Lindir’s devising. Lindir and many others were still going at it, judging by the occasional burst of laughter that drifted up from the gardens. The nights were getting longer and though they were cool they did not get cold. Celebrían had chosen her home well; even winter would not bring more than the occasional frost. “If it’s terrible you can throw it into the fire.”

“I just—” Maglor opened the door again. “I don’t understand why.”

“The letter,” Daeron pointed out, “will probably answer that question. Perhaps even in the very first line!”

He was right. Of course he was. Maglor was being ridiculous and childish. He pulled out the letter and the gift—it felt like a series of sticks tucked into a roll of soft leather, embroidered with his name—his Sindarin name, rather than either of his Quenya names. He had heard that Míriel had come to Imloth Ningloron at the end of the summer, and he thought that the stitching might be hers. He ran his fingers over it as he sat on the bed. Daeron rolled over to wrap an arm around his waist. With a sigh, Maglor set the bundle aside. “I’ve been happy,” he said as he turned the folded paper over in his hands. “This will just make me unhappy.”

“I’ll cheer you up after, then. I’ll kiss you senseless and then have my way with you. Just see what it says and have done, or you’ll drive both of us mad.”

“All right, all right.” Maglor unfolded the letter. 

 

Maglor,

In Mandos, as you know, there are tapestries. Vairë and her handmaidens weave all of the workings of the world and they are hung in the wide, vast halls. There is no roof there. It is open to the stars, though they are not the same stars we see here in the living world, even standing by the walls. My memory of Mandos is fading now, as though it were a dream, but for a handful of moments that remain very clear in my mind. I am told this is how it is for everyone. One of those moments, the clearest, is the last tapestry that I saw there. It was not in the main halls; there are many corridors and out of the way corners, and it is not only the great and important histories that are woven. I found in one such corridor a weaving of you. You stood aboard the last ship to leave the Havens, and it seemed to me that you wished you were not. 

There are things that can be conveyed through those threads that are not visible in the living world. I had seen you before, recently, with threads missing, gaps in the weave, as though you were in danger of unraveling entirely. I feared to see you thus again, but the gaps had all been filled, the missing threads replaced with gold. I didn’t understand what it meant, except that you were coming home at last. 

That is why I went to Námo. Nienna spoke for me, and I was released. I never asked before because I could not bear to walk in the world not knowing what had become of you. Your brothers, I knew, were safe and returned to Nerdanel, but you were alone for so long and, I feared, forgotten by all but me and the tapestry weavers.

You said that you did not want to hear of Mandos, I know. I’m sorry. You said also you want nothing at all from me anymore, and I understand. There are some things that cannot be forgiven, and a father’s betrayal of his children is one. You will not hear from me again; if you ever do change your mind, I will not be hard to find. I will be here, as my own father cannot be, but the choice is yours.

There are neither excuses nor explanations for my actions before and after the Darkening. When I look back I do not recognize myself, and I can hardly believe myself capable of any of it. I’m sorry. There are no words in any tongue for how sorry I am. I can only say that with this second life I have been given I will strive to do better, to not repeat the mistakes of the past, and to seek peace before anything else. Too little too late, perhaps, but I do not know what else to do.

Elrond has been astonishingly patient and kind all this summer, in spite of his brutal honesty when we first met—which I needed to hear, I think. I certainly deserved it. He has answered all my questions of you without hesitation, and I hope you will not be angry with him for it. He told me what befell you in the east, and he—and his sons—have told many tales of you afterward, joyous ones full of light and laughter and love. You are so loved here. You tried to deny your own strength to me, but you are wrong in this, Maglor. To have survived all that you did, and to find joy again afterward, takes astonishing strength. I know that I could not have done it. Please do not delay much longer going to your mother. She has been waiting for so long for you to come home, and there is nothing you have done or could do that would change how much she loves you.

I have also seen some of the things you have made, of wood and of clay. They are beautiful. I have heard your songs sung throughout this valley over the summer, and they are more beautiful still, though I would rather have heard them in your own voice. As I have been slowly returning to and re-learning my own crafts, I’ve made you a set of tools for you. There are no expectations, Maglor. You can use them or give them away or destroy them as you wish. It is only that I don’t know any other way to show you that I love you, since I cannot embrace you or tell you with spoken words. But I do. I love you so much. I forgot, once. You were right—in my grief and my anger after my own father’s death I forgot that I too was a father. Either I forgot what any of it meant, or I stopped caring—I don’t know anymore. Maybe it doesn’t matter. The oath was the worst mistake I ever made, because I pulled you all into it with me—and then left you to walk that dark road by yourselves. I am so sorry. 

I’m glad you threw it away in the end. Let the Silmarils lie in the earth and under the waves, and let the one remaining shine in the sky for all to see. It has been a sign of hope to many, I am told, though I look at it and feel only regret. 

Again, because I cannot say it enough: I love you. I love you, and I want nothing for you but joy and peace, even if you don’t believe me.

 

It was signed with a small eight-pointed star at the bottom. Maglor read the letter through twice before handing it to Daeron and rising from the bed. He walked to the window, but couldn’t bear the sound of laughter coming from outside, so he walked over to the hearth instead, where a small but cheerful fire crackled. He leaned on the mantelpiece and stared at the flames, and thought of Míriel, who had spoken to him before, briefly, of the tapestries and of Fëanor. 

“Your father followed your wanderings through the tapestries of Mandos. It grieved him deeply to see you walk alone for so long.”

He still didn’t know what to think of it. It seemed impossible to believe that his fate should have concerned Fëanor at all, rather than that of the Silmarils. It was still too easy to hear the words Sauron had thrown at him in Fëanor’s voice instead—the last and the least of the sons of Fëanor. 

Daeron made a thoughtful noise behind him. “It seems terribly unfair that the living are not able to see the tapestries of Vairë,” he said.

“You can see some if you go to Manwë and Varda’s halls upon Taniquetil,” Maglor said without turning from the fire. “The important ones—the planting of the Trees, the Great Journey, that sort of thing.”

“It sounds as though the unimportant ones are the most interesting. I wonder if I was also in the tapestry your father saw, but I suppose he wouldn’t have noticed. Come back to bed, love.”

Maglor left the hearth, as Daeron put the gift and the letter to the nightstand on his side of the bed, out of Maglor’s reach. Maglor fell onto the bed and into his arms. He didn’t, oddly, feel like crying. He did not feel anything at all. Daeron’s arms were warm and tight around him, fingers tangling in his hair. “Do you feel better for having read it?” he asked after a little while.

“I don’t know.”

“Maedhros told me once that it was the fact that your father seemed entirely restored to who he had been that caused the most pain. Is that so?”

“I don’t know.” Maglor turned his head to rest instead on Daeron’s chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart. He felt the scar there under his cheek. “It feels—it feels unfair, that I am…that I am what I am, and he is again what he was. That he is here when others I have missed so much more are not and won’t ever be.”

“I have heard a great deal of him over these last weeks,” Daeron said softly, rubbing one hand up and down Maglor’s arm as he spoke, “tales of him both as he was—as he was before the unrest and during, and after the Darkening—and as he is now. It seems to me that he is changed. Even this letter, does it sound like something he would have written before?”

“No,” Maglor admitted. “But I still can’t…I don’t know anymore whether I love him or I hate him.” He remembered clearly that instant of yearning, out on the other side of the valley, when he’d wanted so badly to run to his father rather than away, wishing for the comfort only Fëanor had ever been able to give him, the warmth of him, a hearth fire rather than the inferno it had so suddenly become before the end. Maglor shivered, and Daeron’s arms tightened around him. “At the end he was—he was always as Míriel named him, a spirit of fire, but at the end it was terrible. Like the ships at Losgar. He was not so unlike Sauron at the end, all heat and wrath and…”

“Not anymore,” Daeron murmured.

“But I cannot forget it.”

“Nor should you. I do not say you must forgive him, Maglor, but it is easier to know what to do when you can understand your own heart.”

He was right. “Maybe…maybe we can speak of it later,” Maglor said after a few minutes. “When I can read it again, and…think on it.”

“Whatever you need.” Daeron ran his fingers through Maglor’s hair. “Do you want me to kiss you senseless now?”

“Please.” Maglor raised his head to kiss Daeron, and found himself flipped around onto his back a second later, so suddenly that he was startled into laughter. Daeron, as promised, made him forget all about the letter—about everything, for he was serious in his quest to drive all thoughts of anything but delight out of Maglor’s head. 

Forgetting for the night did not make the letter any less real, though. He read it again and again over the next few days, taking it often to the memorial garden so he could pace around the mallorn tree, turning golden with the autumn, in solitude, but didn’t know what to do with it. He looked at the tools—a set for shaping clay and another for wood—cleverly and delicately made, with wooden handles polished to a warm shine and stamped with an M, but not with any other mark, not even the tiniest star. They fit perfectly in his hands.

He did not take them out to the workshops, but he kept the letter in his pocket without really knowing why. Elladan joined him as he began the process of repairing the cup Maedhros had dropped. They chatted about nothing in particular as Maglor carefully filed down the sharpest edges of the broken pieces. It was cool outside but warm in the workshop, one of those days where it was easy to forget for a few minutes or an hour at a time that he was in Imloth Ningloron and not Rivendell.

A shadow from the doorway fell over the piece of ceramic in Maglor’s hands, interrupting his thoughts; he and Elladan looked up in surprise, and found Celegorm there. “Tyelko,” said Maglor, rising to his feet. “What are you—what’s wrong?” His expression was stormy, and he had a more severe look than Maglor had yet seen in him since they’d met again, with his hair pulled back in tight hunter’s braids, unadorned and plain, secured with leather ties rather than with beads or ribbons. 

“Did you tell Curvo to talk to him?” Celegorm demanded. 

Elladan, always fearless, immediately stepped forward between Maglor and Celegorm. Celegorm looked at him and away swiftly, patches of red appearing high in his cheeks. Maglor put a hand on Elladan’s shoulder. “It’s all right,” he murmured.

“Are you sure?” Elladan asked, not taking his eyes off of Celegorm.

“Yes, of course.” Maglor tugged on one of his braids. “Tell your mother we’ll have an extra guest for supper, won’t you?” Elladan looked at him doubtfully, but acquiesced, giving Celegorm a warning look as he passed by. Maglor followed, and pulled Celegorm out of the workshop with him, and away into the gardens where they could have it out in private. “So much for a quiet winter,” he said.

“I’m not here to make jokes, Maglor—”

“I know.” They left the formal bounds of the gardens, and stood in between a few small streams that flowed through the slowly-fading wildflowers and grass. Far overhead an eagle circled lazily, a small dark shape against the sky, pale with clouds. “Why are you here, then?”

“Curufin’s gone back to Tirion,” Celegorm said. He stood with his hands balled into fists, white-knuckled. The angry flush hadn’t left his face. “To—to see Atar. On purpose. He said that you told him to go, but I don’t—”

“I did,” Maglor said. 

“Why? After all that he did—can we not be united in this one thing? He sent us all letters and—and gifts, as though he can bribe us back into—”

“I don’t think that’s what he’s doing.”

“You haven’t seen Nelyo! He hasn’t—it’s as though this summer never even happened. He promised Curvo he would start painting but he hasn’t. He promised me he wasn’t trying to go back to Mandos but he’s—he’s not sleeping and I don’t think he’s eating, and it—”

“He was withdrawing even before the letters came,” Maglor said quietly.

“But it got worse.” 

“If his going to see Atar was what was hurting Maedhros, Curufin wouldn’t do it. You know that.”

“I’m not so sure I do,” Celegorm snapped. “We all agreed this spring that our loyalty is to Nelyo, not to him.”

“And Curufin is not betraying anyone, not if Maedhros himself told him he should go. This isn’t Beleriand, Celegorm. Maedhros is our brother, not our king.”

“Are you planning to go crawling back to him, then?” Celegorm demanded. 

“No,” Maglor said. The letter was a sudden heavy weight in his pocket. He still didn’t know what he wanted to do about it, if anything, but he did know that. “I’ve seen him already. I don’t want to again. But is this how you want to lose Curvo again?”

“We’re already all losing each other! You’re here, Ambarussa are gone, off away somewhere—they still won’t tell anyone where—and Curufin’s back in Tirion. Caranthir is at Ammë’s house with Maedhros, but Maedhros might as well not be there at all. What was the point of—of any of it, if I can’t—if we can’t—”

“Tyelko, stop.” Maglor reached out, but Celegorm jerked away. “Do you really want to understand, or do you just want to be angry?”

“I just—I want—I hate him and I don’t understand why no one else does!”

“If you think Curvo should hate him,” Maglor said, “do you think Tyelpë should hate Curvo in his turn? Was it a mistake for them to reconcile?”

“That’s different.”

“Is it? Tyelpë had to watch his father do terrible things, and then lose him entirely. Just like us.”

“Curvo never made him swear any—”

“No one made us swear, either. Tyelko, please listen—” Maglor reached out again, and didn’t let Celegorm pull away that time. “I’m still angry at him, just as you are. But it’s—our lives before, even before the Oath, they were defined by him. We were always his sons before we were anything else. Then the Oath united us, as you want us still to be united, in a way that was unbreakable, except that it broke everything else until it was all that was left of any of us—his words, his vengeance, his wrath. We don’t have to live like that now. We are still his sons but that isn’t all that we are anymore. All of us holding rigidly to some promise of never speaking to him again feels too much like another Oath. It is still us defining ourselves by him, only in opposition rather than obedience. I don’t believe that’s what you want, but it’s what you’re asking for. Curvo finding a way forward, whatever that looks like for him, whether that’s rebuilding something like the relationship they had before or just being able to live peacefully in the same city, doesn’t mean he loves you any less. It does not mean we are not united, as brothers, in all of the ways that really matter. We have to let one another decide who we are on our own, not just as the seven Sons of Fëanor.”

Celegorm’s eyes were too bright, but he stood frozen, hard and unmoving, as though he was made of stone. Finally, he said in a low voice, “We aren’t united, though. You and Nelyo—you still—”

“What you are watching in him now is what I watched for years, in Beleriand. I just don’t have the strength to do it again, Tyelko.”

“There has to be something I can do,” Celegorm said. He sounded desperate suddenly, frightened now, rather than angry. It was like something was cracking in whatever facade he had been hiding behind, that Maglor hadn’t realized was there until that moment. He seemed so suddenly, terribly afraid, and like he was trying to grasp at something that was slipping through his fingers, the way that the ghosts of Maglor’s nightmares dissolved into smoke at his own touch. The flush had faded from his face, leaving him pale as the clouds over their heads. “If I can’t fix—then—then why did they send me back? Why was I let out if there’s no point to it, if it would’ve just been better for everyone if I never—”

The breeze picked up, and it felt suddenly cold. Maglor gripped Celegorm’s arm tighter. “What does that mean?” he asked. “What are you talking about?”

Celegorm closed his eyes for a moment, shoulders sagging. “Nothing. It doesn’t—it doesn't matter.”

“Of course it matters. Didn’t you want to come back?”

“I didn’t think wanting had anything to do with it,” Celegorm said. “It’s never meant anything, has it, what we wanted? Not since the Darkening. The only time I really got what I wanted was in Doriath and—”

Maglor released him as he stopped talking, and stepped back. “None of us got what we wanted in Doriath,” Maglor said, but he heard his voice turn it into a question. “Celegorm, please tell me you did not want what happened in Doriath.”

“That’s not what I—” Celegorm pressed his hands to his face. “Doriath was a disaster.”

“Then what did you want there? All you got was—” Death. Death was what Celegorm had found there, he and Caranthir and Curufin. It was suddenly very hard to breathe. Celegorm’s silence atop the dune weeks ago when Maglor had asked Curufin if he had chosen death on purpose, though it had only lasted a few seconds, suddenly seemed far weightier than Maglor had thought at the time.

“It was just—it was better that way, wasn’t it? All I’d done was make everything worse. We all hated one another by then. The Silmaril was gone, we would never get the other two, and it was just—”

“I never hated you!” Maglor cried. “I was angry, but I never—”

“I hated me,” Celegorm said, very quietly. “I hate what I was and how much like him I became, and I hate that I can’t—I can’t outrun it, no matter where I go or what I do, I still get so angry, just like him, and if I can’t—if I can’t do better now, what’s the point? Why does he get to come back and—and just get everything he wants, be who he was before, while we’re all just—”

“You are doing better—” Maglor reached out again, but Celegorm stepped away. “Tyelko—”

“I shouldn’t have come here. I’m sorry, I didn’t—I won’t disturb your peace again, Cáno.”

“You aren’t—Tyelkormo wait—” 

Celegorm was already walking away, not back toward the house or the road beyond it, but on toward the woods and hills. He would disappear into them and Maglor would never be able to track him. Maglor stood frozen, sudden fear choking him, fear that should have been baseless except for how it wasn’t. He saw Celegorm walking away across the meadow, but he saw him also stalking ahead through the smoky halls of Menegroth, saw him on his knees at the far end of the great hall, before the dais where Dior had fallen. Dior had been dead by the time Maglor reached them, cut down quickly and decisively, but Celegorm had taken long minutes to bleed out, glassy-eyed and gasping, in Maglor’s arms. Maglor didn’t know if Celegorm had been aware of his frantic efforts to stop the bleeding, of the apologies and pleas and tears that had spilled out of him. He’d been too late, because that had always been his fate—to witness but never to save. And to know now that Celegorm had not just been unlucky, that he had been courting death even if he hadn’t been as deliberate as Maedhros—to learn now that he too had never wanted to come back from Mandos—

By the time Huan butted his head into Maglor’s chest, Celegorm had disappeared into the forest. Maglor buried his hands in Huan’s fur, and then wrapped his arms around his neck to press his face in it instead. “Stay close to him, Huan,” he said. “Don’t leave him alone.” Huan woofed softly. “Take him to Ambarussa, please. You know where they are, don’t you? You can find them?” 

Huan licked the tears from Maglor’s cheeks and woofed again before turning to lope away across the valley, chasing after Celegorm. Maglor sank to his knees in the grass, feeling small and cold and suddenly very, very alone. 

“Maglor?” It was Elrond that found him, either minutes or an hour later; Maglor wasn’t sure. He knelt before him, brow creased with worry. “What happened?”

“Why would Mandos send someone back who did not want to come?”

“Are you speaking of Maedhros?”

“No.”

Elrond sighed. “I don’t know. I know very little of Mandos or its workings. If there are those who know more, they keep their secrets close. I don’t know why Mandos would wait for someone to ask, but make the choice for another without consultation.”

“What if it was a mistake? What if—”

“Those questions will only lead to grief, Maglor. What is done is done. If it was a mistake…only life can cure it, I suppose, but we cannot live another’s life for them.” Elrond rose to his feet again and held out his hands. Maglor took them. “What did Celegorm want?”

“To pick a fight about Atar. Curufin’s decided to go to see him in Tirion.”

“So he came to fight with you about it?”

“He already fought with Curufin, and fighting with Caranthir is often like fighting with a brick wall, and I think they’re all trying very hard not to fight with Maedhros.”

“And the twins?”

“Gone already.” Maglor looked back toward the wooded hills. It seemed like a lifetime ago that he’d followed Finrod out there to get foolishly drunk on a summer afternoon. It felt like only yesterday that he’d fled into those trees to escape his father and his own wrath. “I asked Huan to take Celegorm to them. Out of all of us, they’re…they seem the most at peace. If anyone can help him, it must be them.”

“Huan will make sure he goes where he needs to,” Elrond said. “And you need to return to the house. You look cold.”

He felt as though he was always cold, that he would always be cold. “I think I need to go to Lórien,” he whispered. “I think—I don’t—I was better. I was. But now it’s like…”

“You are,” Elrond said, “but it takes time, Maglor. You pushed all the grief of the First Age down and away for too long, and now it won’t be ignored. If you feel you need to go to Lórien, of course you must go. But can you stay through the winter, at least? I don’t think you should go traveling again so soon, and especially not alone and upset again. There are ways we can help you, too, as we did before.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.” Maglor closed his eyes and took a breath, inhaling the scents of the streams and the grass and the lingering flowers. The irises were fading with the autumn, but niphredil still bloomed everywhere, sweet-smelling, always reminding him of Elrond and of Elros. “I don’t—I don’t want to leave here. But I saw Nienna, and it was not as bad as I had feared. Surely Estë can be no worse? If she can—if there’s anything—I don’t want to live like this anymore.”

“Estë can help,” Elrond said. “This is her purpose, hers and Nienna’s, and Lórien himself, to help those of us who need it to find rest so that our spirits can heal.”

“Did you ever go there?”

“No. I was weary, but I needed Celebrían more than I needed the Valar. Galadriel went, though; she told me that it helped.”

Back at the house Maglor retreated to his room, refusing Elrond’s offer of athelas and company, wanting suddenly to be left alone. He took his father’s letter and his gift and locked them in one of the drawers under his writing desk, in one of the bottom drawers that he would never otherwise use. Then he went to his harp to play until his fingers ached and the music chased away the phantom smell of smoke and the memory of his brother’s blood on his palms. 

Two weeks later a jay alighted on his windowsill as he sat at his desk struggling to write. It held a folded bit of paper in its beak, and flew away as soon as Maglor took it, to the disappointment of Pídhres as she jumped up onto the sill. “What’s that?” Daeron asked from where he sat on the floor by the hearth with Leicheg on his lap, also composing music—though he was having more luck than Maglor.

Maglor unfolded it. “A note from Ambarussa,” he said. 

“Is all well?”

 

Tyelko is here with us. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of him. —A

 

Maglor breathed a sigh, and something fell into place in his mind for the song he had been laboring over all morning. “Yes,” he said. “Or at least, I think it will be.”