High in the Clean Blue Air by StarSpray

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Seven

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Maglor had not expected to sleep well his first night on Eressëa, and he didn’t. He tried, but soon gave up and unpacked his harp instead. It was one he had made himself, of driftwood like the smaller one Daeron had admired. He had other pieces of driftwood tucked into the bottom of one of his trunks; he had no real plans for them, he just wanted to have them, little bits of Middle-earth’s shores that he could bring with him. It seemed less absurd than a jar of sand, although he did also have a small box of shells and sea glass. And the bits of broken Rivendell stone.

Pídhres, as expected, made her way into the room eventually, after her own thorough investigation of the whole house and, doubtless, the garden as well. “There you are,” he said as she climbed up his arm to drape herself over his shoulders. “I wondered where you had gone.” He set his fingers to the harp strings and began a quiet melody, making it up as he went along, keeping time with the steady wash of waves he could just hear outside of the window. The house was quiet; not everyone was asleep, but the excitement of the day had passed.

A soft knock heralded Celebrimbor, slipping in and coming to sit at Maglor’s feet the way he’d done when he’d been a child. “Where did the cat come from?” he asked, looking up at Pídhres in surprise.

“Imladris,” Maglor said. 

“You did not have it at the docks.”

“She was in my bag.”

Celebrimbor huffed a quiet laugh and leaned against Maglor’s side. Maglor dropped a hand briefly to his hair. “I like this,” he said, reaching out to run a hand over the harp’s frame. “You always made such lovely things from wood. I could never make it work for me.”

“What do you work with now?”

“Glass, lately. I am working on a series of stained glass window panes for the palace in Tirion.”

“Which windows?” Maglor asked. 

“The council room. They do not depict anything in particular—I have been experimenting with the patterns, but Fingolfin seems pleased. He rules the Noldor, now,” Celebrimbor added, a little unnecessarily. “He did not take up the crown immediately upon returning, but my mother tells me it was sooner than everyone expected.”

“I’m surprised Finarfin held off more than a few days,” Maglor murmured, changing the melody to an older one that he’d played often when he visited Himlad during the Long Peace. Unless a great deal had changed in his absence, Finarfin must have been very unhappy as High King. 

“Only because Fingolfin did not go immediately to Tirion, I think,” Celebrimbor said. “But things are—there is peace again, and though there are still factions they all different from before, and they all get along more often than not. It helps I think that many of the Noldor do not live in Tirion anymore. Turgon has his city in the west, and there are some settlements on the coast, south of here—a little like Vinyamar—and of course there are those that dwell with Elrond. Even my father and my uncles’ returning did not cause more than a brief stir.”

“Good,” Maglor said. “I’m glad. Do they dwell in Tirion again?”

“My father does now. He and my mother are…” Celebrimbor waved a hand. “I’m not sure what they are, but it’s better than it was before. Celegorm and Ambarussa rejoined Oromë’s hunt some years ago, and are away in the wilds more often than not. Caranthir comes rarely to the city; he and Maedhros live with Grandmother Nerdanel.”

“So you said before.”

“You really will not see them? Not even…?”

“Not yet, Tyelpë.”

“Is it because of—of Dol Guldur…?”

Maglor stopped playing and let the notes fade away into the quiet of the evening. “No,” he said. “Or—not entirely. I don’t…” He looked down at Celebrimbor, who looked back up at him somberly. Maglor had never been one to trip over his words before, he knew, but how could he explain to his nephew the complicated and ugly tangle of feelings lodged in his chest that throbbed whenever he thought of seeing his brothers again? All they had been through together, all they had done—they had all gotten to escape it in Mandos, to find rest and healing and maybe even peace. His own peace was still such a fragile thing—more fragile than he’d realized before stepping off the ship—paid for with blood and tears unnumbered. “Do they even want to see me?”

“Of course they do. Were it not that Fëanor…were it not for that, it would have been Maedhros here to meet you instead of me.”

“I am glad it was you,” Maglor said before he could stop his tongue. “I knew what had happened to you, Tyelpë, and I am so, so glad to see you alive again and whole.”

Celebrimbor looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers. “For a very long time I did not think I could be,” he admitted. “It wasn’t until—until I saw the tapestries of his final defeat, of the One going into the fire—that hope returned to me. It was still some years after it all that I came back. I am glad I was in time to meet the Ringbearers, and to know them a little.”

“I am glad, too,” Maglor said. It would have been good for both Celebrimbor and Frodo, he thought, to speak to one another. He had been Sauron’s prisoner, but he had never known him, not in the way that the two of them did, in their different ways. “I too am grateful to have known them.” 

With a sigh, Celebrimbor leaned his head against Maglor’s thigh. Maglor rested his hand on his nephew’s broad shoulder. “Sometimes I find myself thinking that I miss Tirion, even when I am there,” Celebrimbor said softly. “It is the same but it isn’t. The districts are all rearranged, and parts of it are empty still. Grandfather Fëanor’s house stands empty. I think Grandmother Nerdanel has gone back a few times, but never to stay. It’s falling down now, and the gardens are all overgrown. And I can’t…I cannot quite remember what it looked like before.”

Maglor could, all too well. “Time passes, even here,” he said softly. “There is no turning it backward.”

“Or stopping it,” Celebrimbor said. 

“Do not regret your rings, Tyelpë. I would not be here were it not for them.”

His nephew sighed, a sound so mournful that Maglor’s heart nearly broke. “Most days I do not regret them,” he said, “but they would not have been without Annatar, and I cannot…he was my friend. Or at least I thought that he was. I believed in him. I thought he must have some secrets in his past, some shadows, but did not we all? And he made such lovely things—we made lovely things, working together, and we laughed and we sang and—I still cannot make sense of it. That he was lying all that time. I cannot believe it. Or maybe it is only that I do not want to think myself so easily deceived.”

“I cannot say,” Maglor said. “But you were not the only one to be deceived. No one knew the truth of him until it was too late.”

“But others suspected.”

“That he was Sauron? I doubt it. Galadriel sees much, but if she had seen through to the full truth she would not have stayed silent. Do not forget what Sauron was. And do not forget that all of us, even the Valar, were deceived by Morgoth once. He walked among us in Tirion in fair guise, with fair words, and it was not until far too late that we realized that the unrest and discord had its roots in him.” Maglor could not speak to Sauron’s intentions in going to Eregion in the first place. Maybe he had wanted to change. Maybe it had been a lie all along. It was impossible now to tell, and in the end it didn’t matter. All he could think of was his journey through that land with Elladan and Elrohir, going from Lothlórien to Imladris. They had crossed the Redhorn pass down into Eregion and there had been nothing. No ruins. No sign that anyone had ever lived there. Sauron had erased Ost-in-Edhil and its surrounding farmlands and outlying towns and villages from the face of the earth so that only the stones afterward remembered, quietly lamenting the Elves who had once lived there. Nothing in Middle-earth now remained of the beautiful works of his nephew’s hands. Not even the doors of Moria remained. “You could not have known, Tyelpë. Not if even Galadriel did not.”

“I’m sorry. We already spoke of all this earlier.”

“I’m no stranger to circling thoughts,” Maglor said.

“Will you play me something?” Celebrimbor asked after a moment, sounding very young.

“Anything you want,” Maglor said, and put his hands to the strings again. 

He played most of the night, sometimes singing, sometimes not. Celebrimbor listened, and by the time the sun peeked over the waves in the east he was more cheerful. Maglor glanced out of the window as the sky brightened. Already there were many boats flitting about on the bay, and the bells in Avallónë were ringing to welcome the new morning. As he watched, Uinen rose up suddenly out of the waves, laughing with the mariners, her hair all pale streaming foam. It startled him into missing a string, and the song he was playing ended on an abrupt and discordant note. 

“What’s wrong?” Celebrimbor asked. As Pídhres jumped to the floor and vanished under the bed. 

“Nothing. I just forgot how the Ainur are, that’s all.”

Seeing Uinen out of the window, Celebrimbor smiled crookedly. “It takes getting used to,” he agreed. 

They went down to breakfast, where Celebrían greeted them both warmly, kissing Celebrimbor and clasping Maglor’s hand. “I am very glad to meet you at last,” she told him as Celebrimbor went to pour himself tea. Up close and in the morning sunshine Maglor could see the resemblance she bore to Celeborn, not only in her silver hair but in her light green eyes. It was she from whom Elladan and Elrohir had inherited their freckles, too. “I also wanted to thank you,” she said, smile fading into a look more grave and somber, “for staying with our children. With Arwen.” 

Maglor squeezed her hand. “I was glad to do it,” he said. Celebrían kissed his cheek and turned away. There would be time later to speak of Arwen, and of her family, but the grief was still too near for all of them.

Elladan and Elrohir came down next, followed by Elrond. Breakfast was a casual affair, with the household members coming and going, chatting and laughing, some only staying long enough to grab an apple, others lingering over full plates and cups of tea. There were many foods and fruits that did not grow in Middle-earth—things he’d eaten in his youth and some that he had, once, dramatically lamented the lack of in Beleriand. He had been only half serious about it, putting on a show to make his brothers laugh more than anything. But he really had missed the spiced teas that had been popular in Tirion before the Darkening—and were still popular, or popular again, on Tol Eressëa now, to his delight. He was perfectly content to sit near the window and watch everyone come and go and listen to the talk flow around him as he sipped his tea and relished the familiar-and-not warmth on his tongue. 

After breakfast Maglor heard visitors arriving, and upon hearing Olwë’s voice he prepared to make himself scarce. He went to his room for his smaller harp and then retreated into the garden, where there was a tree he could climb and find a good place to sit and play to himself and to the birds. Pídhres followed after him, meowing plaintively until he scooped her up to perch on his shoulder. She purred and rubbed her head against his ear. “Hold on, then,” he told her as he came to the tree. She made a small disgruntled noise when he jumped up to grasp the lowest branch, digging her claws into his shirt and the strap of his harp case. “You can climb yourself if you don’t like it, silly cat,” he said, and swung himself up onto the branch. As he hooked his leg over and hauled himself up he caught a glimpse of a small boat pulled up onto the beach, and saw the couple who had brought it there making their way into the garden from it; in his surprise he over extended himself and instead of swinging onto the branch he tipped over the other side, and lost his grip. Pídhres jumped from his shoulder at the last minute to land safely on the branch, while he hit the ground hard enough to leave bruises, though he at least managed to avoid landing on top of his harp case. “Oh stop it,” he said when Pídhres meowed at him, as though asking what he was doing lying in the dirt when he could be up in the tree with her. She meowed again, sounding positively judgmental, as though she would not be crying to him within ten minutes because she could not get out of the tree by herself.

Then an amused face framed by golden hair appeared above him, along with an extended hand. “Are you all right?” Eärendil asked. 

“Yes, thank you,” Maglor said. He accepted the hand up; it was not how he had expected this meeting to go, and he wasn’t sure if it was better or worse. Eärendil obviously knew who he was, and Elwing too; she stood a little distance away regarding him as though she did not quite know how to reconcile what he was now with what he had been. The resemblance of Elrond to his mother was obvious and striking, both of them dark haired and starry-eyed in the manner of Lúthien’s children. What Maglor had not realized before was that Elrond’s smile was Eärendil’s—perhaps it was Tuor’s, or Rían’s, or some other forebear among the Edain. Perhaps it was all their own; it did not look like Turgon. 

He still did not know what to say. He did not want their enmity, especially for Elrond’s sake, but there was nothing he could say now to make better what he had done so long ago. 

Eärendil stepped back, still looking amused, though that was fading. “I confess,” he said, “this is not how I expected to meet you.”

“Nor I,” Maglor said, glad they could at least agree on that. “I beg your pardon.” He bowed, though he wasn’t sure it was at all graceful. “You are wanting to see Elladan and Elrohir. They are inside, I think with King Olwë and Elu Thingol.”

“Thank you,” Eärendil said. Elwing, though, did not move.

“Why did you do it?” she asked suddenly. He had heard her voice before—shrill and harsh with fear and fury, just before she had cast herself into the Sea. He did not know if she had seen him; he had hung back to keep others from following up the cliff face after Maedhros. It had been an awful night, and it was worse now in memory, filled with sick shame and grief all tangled up together. Ambarussa had died that night, and they hadn’t even been able to take their bodies for burial. And Elwing had fallen into the sea and Maglor had not seen, then, that she had been saved. 

“The Oath,” he began.

“No,” Elwing said, shaking her head. She stepped forward so they came face to face. She was not as tall as he had expected her to be, a daughter of Thingol’s line. He looked down into her eyes, which Elrond and then Arwen had inherited, grey and shining with the light of stars. “I know why you did that. Why did you take my children?”

Oh. That, at least, had an easier answer. “I did not know whether other help would come for them before orcs did,” he said. “I did not mean to keep them—but there was no way back to Balar after.” 

Elwing searched his face; he watched her gaze linger on the scars there. She did not ask about them. “Is it true what is said of your brother?” she asked then. “That he looked for my brothers—to save them, not to slay them?”

“Yes. That’s true.”

“Did you look for them?”

“I did—but he looked longer, and was nearly lost himself.” Doriath had been a dangerous place, even in Melian’s absence. Her Girdle had been broken but not fully dissolved, and Maglor and the twins had dragged Maedhros out of it before any of them could be ensnared forever in the lingering enchantments. “I am sorry, Lady Elwing,” Maglor said. He met her gaze. She had the same starlit eyes as her sons. “I wish there were better words to say how sorry I am, but if there are I do not know them.”

She did not smile, but her expression softened. “You love my children,” she said, “and for their sake I can forgive much. I am glad that you are here, for Elrond’s sake.”

“I too forgive you, for their sakes,” Eärendil said. He reached out to take Maglor’s hand again; his grip was firm, his hands covered in sailor’s callouses. His smile was warm. “And we are, after all, kinsmen. I watched you wander for a very long time. I am glad you found your way to Imladris in the end.”

Maglor had not expected this, to have been noticed by the Mariner in his voyaging, and he did not know what to say. Pídhres chose that moment to woefully remind them of her presence and the fact that she was now stuck in the tree with no way to get down. Eärendil looked up and laughed. “Is that your cat?” he asked.

“I am hers, rather,” Maglor said, glad of the excuse to step back. “And I had better rescue her.”

“Goodbye for now, then,” Eärendil said as he and Elwing left the tree to head up to the house. “I am sure we will be seeing each other often.”

Once they were away, Maglor swung himself up into the tree—successfully this time—and picked up Pídhres. “You absurd little animal,” he said as she curled around his neck. “Did I not name you climber?” He hoisted himself up a little higher until he found a comfortable spot where the trunk split, with a space just big enough for him to sit with his harp on his lap. Comfortable again, Pídhres purred as he took it out and set his fingers to the strings. Heartened by his encounter with Elrond’s parents, he chose a more cheerful tune than he had been thinking of earlier. 

“Maglor, is that you?” a bright voice called out, and Maglor fumbled the next notes. As they died away he leaned forward to see none other than Finrod looking back up at him from beneath the tree, hair gleaming gold in the bright sunlight, bound up with ribbons and strands of emerald beads. “I thought it must be,” he said, and sprang up the tree with much more grace than Maglor had managed. “Well met, Cousin! You certainly took your time, didn’t you?” 

“Finrod,” Maglor said, and didn’t know what else to say, how to meet this cheerfulness. “What are you…?”

“I came to see you, of course! And Elrond’s sons,” he added. “I do not say I have come to see Celeborn, for I expected that he and Galadriel would be shut up somewhere, and I was right. Move over, then, let me join you!” He wedged himself into the tree fork alongside Maglor. “And who is this sweet creature?”

“Pídhres, though she is not living up to her name today,” Maglor said as she accepted the scratches that were her due. “It is good to see you,” he added, and was rewarded by one of Finrod’s bright sunbeam smiles. 

It faded quickly, though, as Finrod reached out to touch Maglor’s face. His thumb traced over the scar on Maglor’s cheek, and his gaze passed over the smaller scars about his lips. He did not look surprised at the sight of them. “Maedhros saw you after this happened,” he said, his thumb tracing down over one of the more obvious scars by Maglor’s lip. “In one of your mother’s palantíri.” Maglor looked away. “I feared for a time it would send him back to Mandos, especially when the stones clouded over again and no one could find you.” 

“I’m all right now,” Maglor said.

“Are you?” Finrod asked, disbelieving but kind. 

“I am certainly better than I was,” Maglor said, thinking of those first months after he had been freed, of the fear and the pain and the resurgence of all the things he’d buried within himself in the centuries prior. Of being too afraid to even try to play the harp, lest he somehow draw the Enemy’s attention back to him so he might be snatched up again, and this time too broken to resist. He had taught himself again slowly how to hear the Music of the world in everything from the Sea to the quiet patter of the rain. His voice did not hold the power that it once had, but he’d long ago stopped caring. And the fear was gone—it had died with Sauron, crumbled with the stones of Barad-dûr.

He looked back at Finrod, who searched his face solemnly. He was no less keen-eyed than Galadriel, but he was also more open. Maglor could see in his eyes the memory of his own captivity long ago, in the dark of Tol-in-Gaurhoth. “I thought of you when I first came to Dol Guldur,” Maglor admitted quietly. “When I first saw the place I thought of your fair Minas Tirith and what it became afterward.” 

“It makes it worse, doesn’t it—that he took our towers and made them into places of horror?” Finrod sighed. “But they are gone, and he is gone, and we are here.”

“Yes. I said that to Tyelpë last night.”

“Will you say it to Maedhros, too? Your other brothers do not know what happened, but he and Aunt Nerdanel have suffered greatly from the uncertainty.”

“I wrote to my mother,” Maglor said. “Galadriel was to see it delivered.”

“I am sure she did—but you know that isn’t the same. But Aunt Nerdanel is not who I worry for.”

Maglor didn’t answer. Was he to have this conversation with everyone? Frustration bubbled up in his chest and made his fingers clumsy on the harp strings. Pídhres butted her head against his ear, and he reached up to pet her. A burst of laughter drifted down the garden from the house. From the other direction came the gentle sound of the waves on the sand, and the rhythmic sound of them lapping against the wooden hull of Eärendil and Elwing’s boat. Somewhere above a few birds sang to one another—a familiar sound in the way that so much in Valinor was familiar, something stepped out of his long-ago youth that felt like it belonged to someone else. 

“Maglor?”

“I do not want to speak of Maedhros. Please do not ask me again.”

“Will you at least tell me why?”

Maglor sighed, and let his hands fall to his lap. Finrod’s shoulder pressed against his; the emerald beads in his hair clicked together as he tilted his head forward to peer into Maglor’s face. Maglor tried to think of how to say it that would not just sound awful, but could only shake his head. There was no good way to say all the things that were true at the same time: I miss him too much, and it hurts, and I love him, and most of all: it was easier not to hate him when I thought I would never see him again. 

“I just—can’t.”