One in the Deep Waters by Isilme_among_the_stars  

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An Island Home

Maglor journeys to Númenor and finds himself leaning into the companionship that he has long forgone. Elros's family grows.

Hísimë = November
Súlimë = March

Amlach was a man of the house of Marach allied to Maedhros in the first age. His cousin, Magor, was the grandfather of Hador.

Sighing against the side of the ship, rushing waves made beautiful music: a symphony amid the salty breeze. At least they would have, had their accompaniment not been the chunky, wet sounds of Elrond heaving over the side of the boat.

“It is a good thing you are not the twin founding an island nation,” Maglor remarked as he held Elrond’s hair out of his face.

In reply, Elrond could only convulse pitifully once more, launching another thin stream of bile portside. Sensing the worst passed for the time being, Maglor passed him a skin of water. “How did you stand it?” Elrond asked, taking the skin gratefully and screwing up his face as he rinsed away the bitter taste, “ all the way from Aman…”

"I do not suffer from seasickness fortunately," Maglor confessed, "nor did Maedhros. Caranthir, however, was green the entire journey. Mostly, we had him horizontal as often as possible and kept the mocking to a minimum."

Elrond grimaced. “I think I would like to be horizontal for a while.”

"Uinen's weedy hair, Elrond, the sea is not even rough today!" Círdan chuckled. "One would think you'd never been on a boat before."

Elrond, who had spent a goodly part of his childhood on and around boats, gave the shipwright a sound glare. "There is rather a difference between a nice flat-bottomed punt and this cursed thing bucking like a frisky horse over every wave."

Círdan clapped him on the shoulder empathetically. "Eärendil was just as sick as you at first, would you believe? There is no shame in it."

Mumbling unpleasantries under his breath that sent Círdan into further bouts of mirth, Elrond stumbled below deck. Breathing deeply of the clean, salty air, Maglor traversed the rolling deck and found a useful occupation for his hands. So they made their way across the wide sea, until one morning, as the rising sun cleared shadow from the morning sky, land drew within sight.

“It took you long enough!” Elros teased, pulling his brother from the gangplank into an embrace that Elrond did not quite look ready for, still suffering as he did with the last vestiges of queasiness from their journey.

“I have found myself rather occupied these past few decades,” Elrond returned in kind, though he clutched at the shoulder of Elros’s doublet desperately, and his eyes shone bright with unshed tears.

“So have I.” Elros’s words were, in turn, almost lost as he buried his face in Elrond’s hair.

So he had. Rómenna had grown in size and splendour since last Maglor had walked its piers. It bustled with activity. The Númenorians had no great ships capable of traversing open seas, but many vessels that happily skated along the coast hauling supplies or chasing a catch. Where landings and buildings had originally been knocked together with wood, solid and permanent stone structures began to take their place.

“Much has changed,” Maglor remarked, impressed.

Catching the sweep of his gaze, Elros replied, “wait until you see Armenolos; the citadel has grown, and been made most fair in preparation. Stars, it is good to see you both!”

Elrond laughed. “It beggars belief to think you have waited this long,” he said, referring to the upcoming wedding of Elros and Astoreth that had been in the planning for the last several years.

“Well,” said Elros, releasing Elrond that he might drag Maglor into an equally crushing embrace, “there was much to resolve. Are you aware of how many wedding customs there are among Men?” His exasperation was exaggerated, but not entirely feigned.

“Many, I do not doubt, but they cannot entirely take the blame, surely! How long did you tarry in asking for her hand? You were rather reticent about that detail in our correspondence.”

“After eight years,” Elros confessed, “Astoreth tired of waiting. She told me that the Valar may well have blessed us with long life, but she was still more than capable of perishing from old age before we pressed more than lips together if I insisted on following an elven time-line. ‘Frankly,’ she said, ‘I would rather spend those years pursuing our desires together under the moon than mooning after you.’”

“Bold!” Elrond nodded in approval. “I very much looking forward to meeting her.”

“Neither can she wait to meet my mysterious twin from across the sundering sea.” Elros count not resist one more barb as they turned their feet inland. “Eighteen years, Elrond!”

“Eighteen years, two months and five days,” Elrond replied, cleaving to Elros as they walked. “I know, brother. Far too long.”

Elros and Astoreth’s wedding was an elaborate, public affair. They were married on a warm day in late spring, in a ceremony Elros decried as ‘a great farce combining and compromising between the dozens of traditions of the houses of Men’. Later, in the quiet hours between official ceremony and reception, Astoreth’s father had bound their hands with an ancient silk scarf in the way of her people, and Elros had called on Maglor to assist with an exchange of rings in the elven way. Maglor tucked the moment away deep in his heart and accounted it more precious than the gold of the bands adorning the new couple’s fingers. He did likewise over the following months with many small moments shared with his sons and daughter in law carved from days consumed by duty. They had taken to riding out together, when the time could be spared, and Maglor marvelled at the kind of peace Númenor possessed, that even a king could do so without a guard to speak of and with little to fear.

“Stay,” Astoreth bid Maglor on one such occasion after report came of an elven carrack approaching the haven of Rómenna. She was a sight to behold on horseback with the wind whipping her honey-blonde hair: as tall and proud as Amlach had been, striding beside Maedhros on the battlements of Himring long ago. “Gil-Galad no doubt wishes for Elrond’s return, and I understand we have been gifted a generous helping of his time, but it is hard for Elros, to be parted from his kin.”

“Elros has abundant kin here,” Maglor replied, “and many more on the lonely isle.” From where they sat astride fine mounts, high upon the hill on which Armenolos had been built, Maglor could see countless edain going about their business. Along the chief road came a small fleet of carriages hauling stone into the ever-expanding city. The foremost was driven by a man, tall and proud, with dark locks that matched his foster sons’ for shade. He could perhaps have been Elros, in a different light.

Astoreth followed his gaze. “Distant kin. This you know, Maglor. None understand my husband quite so well as you and Elrond do.”

“I cannot stay. It is not my place.” Númenor grew into a great nation: a country fair and good; and it did so without him. Maglor did not wish to be drawn into influencing its shaping, as he feared may happen if he stayed. Before him unfolded Elros’s vision made real, and he had no wish to jeopardise it.

“And a secluded beach is? I have been told how you spend your days on the hither shore. Grace us, rather than the gulls, with your presence.”

The allure of companionship called to him as it had not done for long years, and a desire to ingrain himself in the heart of Elros’s growing family, as Astoreth asked, tugged at his heart. “I cannot,” Maglor repeated firmly. “Do not fear that you have seen the last of me, however. One day, perhaps before many years have passed, there shall be children added to you, and I do not intend to forgo doting upon them, nor their mother, when the time comes.”

“How presumptive,” Astoreth laughed. “Yet, I thank you. I will hold you to that pledge.”

Scribblings from Elros had become circumscribed over the years, but none were as markedly so as the letter that arrived for Maglor in Hísime of the year sixty of the second age.

Atya it read:

Astoreth and I are expecting a child and if you do not make arrangements to sail as soon as this is received, by Eru, I shall damn you to the void myself; it has been far too long since last I beheld you.

I jest, of course, but please make haste. As far as we can predict, the baby is due in early spring.

And please drag Elrond along with you (by his hair if you must). Though no doubt my brother has made himself indispensable to Gil-Galad’s court, I am sure that, for this, he may be spared.

Yours,

Elros

Vardamir made his entrance into the world amid the bluster of a sudden storm halfway through the month of Súlimë, a mere five weeks after Círdan had declared the winter’s wild weather sufficiently cleared to risk the journey, and little over a week after Maglor and Elrond were deposited on the shores of Rómenna. The child, not unlike the skies under which he was born, squalled and squalled. Late one evening, Maglor stood in the doorway watching as Astoreth and Elros, looking like to burst into tears along with their son, attempted to soothe his upset.

“Varda’s stars,” huffed Elros as he stood, swaying the infant back and forth. “What could be wrong now?”

The child had been bathed and fed and held, and yet his soul roiled dark as a storm-cloud, gripped as he was with a great need for release.

“Oh,” Maglor put in, “I might know.”

“Then for pity’s sake,” Astoreth bid him, “stop standing there like a damned spectator.”

“I did not wish to intrude,” Maglor explained as he crossed the room to take the infant in his arms. “How long has it been since he soiled a napkin?”

“Days,” Astoreth supplied.

“Close on a sennight,” Elros clarified.

“Therein lies the problem,” Maglor assessed, bringing Vardamir’s knees up and working them in gentle circles over his round belly until the cries began to quiet. “He saves it up and now it pains him.”

“Thank you,” Astoreth breathed into the tentative quiet as a tiny, shocked face stared up at Maglor with muddy, newborn eyes.

“Rest. I can mind him for a few hours.”

There were many who would relish the opportunity to do just that for their young king and queen, but Elros did not wish his child raised largely by nursemaids, and Astoreth was of a like mind. Family, to one robbed of so much of it, was a precious thing. They kept Vardamir close; yet help, especially that of family, was not unwelcome. Astoreth rose, yawning with a new mother’s weariness, and repaired to her bedchamber gratefully. Choosing instead to stay, Elros made sporadic conversation until, as the dark deepened, he fell into a drowse laying draped over an armchair with chin tucked to chest, and Maglor, thinking of the stiffness that would cause by morn, roused and sent him too to bed.

The night was a mild one, for Númenor was not nearly so far north as Lindon. Maglor spent it peacefully, reclining in a comfortable chair that rocked on great arched runners, with a contented babe (Vardamir having divested himself of his uncomfortable burden) warming his chest. This was how Elrond found him and Vardamir the next morning, as the rising sun chased grey from the world and painted it golden.

“You are going to stay this time, aren’t you?” Elrond asked, relieving Maglor of the child with delicate hands exquisitely carefully, so as not to wake him. How fond he looked, gazing upon his nephew with soft eyes as he stroked Vardamir’s peachskin-soft crown. Elrond, too, would make a fine father one day.

“Elrond…”

“No. I do not wish to hear excuses. Stay on my behalf if you cannot bring yourself to otherwise. I cannot be here for nearly as long as I wish, but you can.”

“I do not wish to damage what Elros has built here.”

“Then keep away from the politics. Be here for him as a father, not a prince of the Noldor.”

“I do not wish to harm the child either.”

“Did you ruin us?” Elrond demanded, his starlit eyes unyielding even as the softness with which he held the babe remained unfaltering.

“Clearly not,” Maglor said, surveying his son, who it struck him anew in that moment, had grown into something both wise and strong, refusing to be hardened by the cruelties of this marred world, but neither allowing them to drown him. Something pained still throbbed within him, however. “Though I did harm you. Do not pretend otherwise.”

“I will not. Neither will I dismiss the tenderness with which you raised us. Atya, Elros is fatherless here without you in every meaningful sense, and Vardamir is almost as elvish as I, rooted in a world of Men. Does he not deserve to grow with all of his rich heritage? You can give him that!”

“So can Elros.”

“Do not make him do it alone.”

“When did you grow so wise, Elinkë?” Maglor wondered aloud. “I will stay,” he promised, “but only until the day when the harm I cause begins to outweigh the good.”

“A day which I am confident shall never come,” Elrond declared, kissing Maglor on the brow before turning his attention back to the infant in his arms.

In a few short years Vardamir was joined by Tindómiel, dusky and beguiling as the evening sky, with eyes as bright as sparks. Vardamir took this shift in the fabric of his family as graciously as a toddler might, and Maglor, who had not known his foster sons at that tender age, found himself wondering how alike to them the boy was. He dared not ask Elwing. On the occasions of her visits Maglor invariably and diplomatically found somewhere else to be. This strategy circumvented countless unpleasant encounters, and it was not until Manwendil was born, red, round and robust with life, that Elwing at last confronted him. Her voice was as hard as it was quiet in the dim, curtained room. “Maglor Fëanorian.”

Maglor, who had not heard her enter, looked up from where Manwendil, recently woken, fussing, from a morning nap, burrowed into his chest. “Lady Elwing,” he apologised, rising to his feet and shifting the fretful babe in readiness to pass him to her. “I knew not that you were coming.”

Elwing’s arms remained crossed firmly over her chest. “Sit,” she bid him, and Maglor did so, wiping a salty tear from the infant’s flushed cheek. “You taught my sons of the Sindar,” she accused.

“Yes,” he answered simply. Elrond had been as voracious in his quest for knowledge as Vardamir was now: the boy had, just that morning, peppered Maglor with questions about the Eastern Marches in the days of the Long Peace. Elros was only a little less so, though it surfaced differently.

“I did not think…”

“They deserved to know,” Maglor said quietly, “and much more still that I could not teach. I gave them what I could.” Maglor cautiously met Elwing’s eye and hoped that something of the sincerity with which he spoke might pass between them.

Elwing bristled. “And had you not taken—” She stopped herself, checking her rising voice, as he opened his mouth to make another apology. Shaking her head, Elwing went on, “Elros knows every tree that once stood in the forest of my birth by their Doriathrin names, which slip from his tongue more naturally than those Men and Noldor have made for them, both. He dances the blessings of spring’s first awakening just as Lúthien did: just as a survivor of Menegroth’s ruin with burn scars on her forearms and apologies on her lips once taught me. It should have been my mother who did so. I should have been the one to teach my sons. You took those things from me. You orphaned me and became mother and father to my children. Now you care for my grandchildren as if they were your own.”

Maglor would be the last to deny Elwing her right to anger for the atrocities visited upon her, but to hear what he had meant as kindness formed as accusation, laid down for those boys like a sacrifice after so much brutality, rankled. “I stay,” he informed her with each word clipped, “for love of your sons, and because they wish it.”

“I know. I know, and I am grateful for how well they are loved,” she said with admirable restraint, and it affected him strangely, for this woman he had wronged to come so close to thanks. “But I cannot forgive you for taking my place.”

Rising, Maglor once more offered her the now wide-eyed Manwendil, and this time Elwing took the child into her arms. “Stay,” he bid her. “I will leave, if you ask it of me. Stay and watch them grow.” History could not be corrected, but the future was yet unwritten.

It was not, as it turned out, a gift he could bestow. “Already it is a trespass that I set foot on these shores, even briefly,” she told him, with voice stony. “One to which a blind eye has so far been turned. I do not know how much farther Ulmo’s grace will extend.”

“You pay a heavy toll. I did not know.”

“I came, strange as it seems, and bitter though the words are on my tongue, to ask that you do once more what I am not permitted. Love them well, Maglor. My sons and my grandchildren.”

“I will,” he said, and the words were as solemn as any oath.

And he did. Maglor stood high in the King’s tower with Elros at the end of long days, watching the windows in the citadel below glow yellow, and the stars above shine silver, as they talked and laughed about all manner of things. He taught Vardamir to sing, Tindómiel to dance, and watched as Manwendil ran with arms outstretched, pretending to soar like the eagles that wheeled overhead. Astoreth, too, he doted upon, as much as the doughty woman would allow; often they shared fond anecdotes of the children’s recent antics over mugs of tea. When Atanalcar was born, and for the first time in over a century Elrond and Elwing met, having by chance aligned their visits, Maglor watched tears stream down their cheeks as they held the child between them, and Elros, tired and happy, leaned against his shoulder.

Seasons turned ceaselessly, the children grew, and creases appeared in the corners of Astoreth’s eyes, pressed into her skin by countless joys, though Elros, for all his mirth and care, never acquired their like. Númenor, under Elros’s prudent stewardship, flourished, and Maglor remained, content to see it do so from a domestic remove, having found within it a home. Elrond’s arrival, in the autumn of the year eighty one of the second age, was an unlooked for pleasure, but one that came with a bitter sting.

“What troubles you?” Maglor asked, pulling him aside as Elros traded knowledge of current affairs in their respective lands with Círdan.

Elrond, on what should be a happy occasion, appeared stony-faced, and seemed barely contained, like an over-brewed bottle of mead threatening to uncork. “The emigration is to end,” he confessed in rough whisper. “Ulmo has bid Círdan stop the ships now that the children of those who fought in the War of Wrath reach the end of their natural lifespans…”

“And will soon be gone from Beleriand one way or another. Their gift passes with them.”

“Yes.”

Maglor rapidly began to calculate the implications. “Númenor has no ships that can cross the open seas.”

“No,” agreed Elrond. He had, as was his way, already thought through the problems this presented. “And we, of Beleriand, are not to aid them any more than has already been done. The second born are to find their own path.”

“Then…” They must be parted. Indefinitely. Maglor revived a choice Taliskan curse that Elros had once favoured, in the days before kingship. How was he to keep his word to Elwing, with one son on either side of the sundering seas?

“Stay,” Elrond bid him. “It is the logical choice. You will come to that conclusion too, given enough time to think on it. Stay with Elros, because eventually his people will make ships strong enough to traverse Belegaer. They are curious, and clever. I know this. I know this…” Elrond swallowed, and looked Maglor in the eye with a desperation that was painful to behold. “…but I do not know when that will be, nor how long my brother will live.”

There was little to do but hold each other. What other comfort was there to give?

“How long have we?”

“A year, perhaps.”

“Then stay, Elinkë, until the last ship departs,” Maglor pleaded. “I will do whatever is needed so that you may.”

“As will I,” Elros declared, who had, having moments ago been given the same information, hurried over and placed a hand on each of their shoulders.

“It is already settled,” Elrond murmured, glancing meaningfully at Círdan. “The king, I found, had already thoroughly prepared for the eventuality before word even reached my ears.”

A year soon came and went, and the day of leave taking drew quickly near. Maglor found himself tasked with stoking a handful of embers into a blaze as a collection of Elros’s family and Círdan’s sailors lounged in the sand around him. Elros had coaxed them from their lodging, near to the port in Rómenna, down to an old landing that still serviced the house. There they could drink and laugh together long into the night. “I will not spend my last hours with Elrond weeping,” he had said. “There will be enough tears at the docks.”

Elros passed Círdan a tankard filled near to brimming. He had not learned, as Maglor had, to forgo Elros’s brews. Ale-making was a pastime in which he had found great enjoyment but little mastery.

“Ai, Elros, what did you put in this?” Círdan asked as his face contorted.

“Here, wash it down with some of Tindë’s,” Vardamir chuckled, passing his own tankard over. “Hers is much better.”

When Elros feigned a hurt look, Manwendil added, “our sister takes care with measurements, ratios and brewing times.”

“I am far too busy for the exactitude she expends,” Elros scoffed.

“And that is why yours tastes like horse piss,” Tindómiel concluded.

“Oh and you’ve compared the two, have you?” Atanalcar asked her, causing Elros to laugh until tears leaked from his eyes.

Maglor, working hard to remain straight-faced himself accused, “I thought you declared there were to be no tears tonight.”

This only caused Elros to laugh harder. “The ale, I admit, is not among my finest accomplishments.”

“Do not judge yourself too harshly. It has its uses,” reassured Astoreth, who Maglor knew passed off the worst batches to the kitchens where they were put to work cleaning cast iron skillets and copper pans.

As the dark deepened and the light of Eärendil faded from the sky Círdan and his folk sought rest: their last on solid ground before a long journey. Eventually, so too did Astoreth and her children drag weary bodies toward their beds, until only Elrond, Elros and Maglor remained.

The night was quiet, underscored by the lapping of dark waters and the murmur of ships creaking against their tethers at distant wharves. Elrond, who had long ago discarded boots, sat on the side of the landing’s ramp, swirling his sandy toes in cool waves. “Tell me what you will make of all this,” he said, gazing toward the sleeping havens. “What grand things will come to be?”

Elros leaned back on his hands. “I would see this island become as fair as Gondolin once was, and as enduring as hope itself. We shall build cities, the like that none have yet seen, and tend to the land as if it were a lover, worshipped as much as it is adored. Men will become ever more learned and wise, and though we forget sword craft, never shall we lay aside courage.”

“I will return in an age then, shall I? For you will need as much,” Elrond teased gently. Elros never set his sights low. “But what of tomorrow? What of the next year, or the next fifty?”

Elros could have woven for them visions until the sun rose again. He had done so atop the King’s tower, sometimes, under the quiet stars when Armenolos slept, leaning comfortably against the balustrade by Maglor’s side. The images he spun this night, however, were sweet and brief, for Elrond was not the only one whose loved one’s lives would pass them by. Elros, by many measures, would miss more. “And what of you, Elrond? Tell me of the children you will have, of the life you will build.”

Elrond had never been so sure as his twin when it came to the future, though of the two of them, it was he who was endowed with the greater foresight. “I shall have twins, of course, just to outdo you,” he declared with a wry smile. Knowing the jest masked insecurity, Maglor shuffled closer, and Elros too leaned in, until Elrond was framed by warm bodies and dark hair. “And I, too, shall build a realm of my own, in a fair green place where the waters sing.”

He did not realise, Maglor thought, that the words rang true. But Elros, with a wistful smile playing at the corner of his mouth, knew he had been afforded a glimpse into the future. “No matter what you make of your life,” he said, “I know it will be meaningful, and will not lack for wonder, be there peace or turmoil, be it long or short. It could not fail to be so, Elrond. You could not live any other way.”

“Neither could you. I am glad to have borne witness to the first fruits.”

Silence stretched on long between them, for there were no words that could say quite so well what the gentle weight of a warm hand on a shoulder could, or the ease of one dark head resting against another. When the sun rose it found the three men stretching long a moment that would never come again. There were less tears on the docks than in Mithlond many years ago, when the parting had been fresh and sharp, but less permanent. Heart steeped in sorrow as he watched Elrond’s ship become a mere dot on the horizon, Maglor wondered if and when they would meet again.

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