A Hundred Miles Through the Desert by StarSpray  

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Eleven

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The arrival of Legolas and Gimli was as unexpected as it was delightful. Maglor saw Gimli bowing deeply to Maedhros, and speaking of the ancient friendship between Himring and Belegost that the dwarves of Middle-earth still remembered. Maedhros’ look of shock swiftly transformed into a smile as he returned the bow. 

Gimli was very old, even by the measure of the dwarves, with snow-white hair and golden beads and emeralds braided intricately into his thick beard, but he was hale and strong still, and further revived by his coming into the west. Legolas was as he had always been, cheerful and full of stories of the places they had visited and the things they had seen since coming west.

The afternoon passed brightly and cheerfully, and the evening was full of music. Many songs were sung of the Fellowship, and of Aglarond and the fair gardens of Ithilien. Gimli made quick friends also with both Curufin and Caranthir, who had had many friends among the dwarves of the Ered Luin long ago, and with Daeron, who had also known many dwarves, and who Gimli had greeted with as deep a bow as he had given to Elrond when Maglor had the pleasure of introducing them. Legolas fell in with Ambarussa just as quickly.

“I told you it would work,” Legolas said to Maglor, not a little smug, when they had a moment to speak after the flurry of introductions died down. “You were convinced we would wreck before we lost sight of the coast of Belfalas!”

“It was still a mad idea,” Maglor said, laughing, “but I am very glad you were successful. How are you finding it here?”

“It’s delightful to have a whole new world to explore—not to mention all the people to meet, and meet again! I have been trying to convince Gimli to go as far west as we can. Is it true what I have heard, that you went all the way to the westernmost shores yourself?”

“I did. It’s well worth the journey, but I don’t see why there is any hurry. Ekkaia isn’t going anywhere.”

“You went nearly as soon as you landed, or so I have heard—what was your hurry?”

Maglor smiled. “Have you heard of my family? So many cousins and brothers and uncles coming to see me at once—I needed to escape to Ekkaia just to breathe!” Legolas laughed, and turned his questions rather to the routes taken and what sort of country lay between Tirion and the westernmost shores. 

“It is very nice sometimes to be recognized for my runes before anything else,” Daeron remarked to Maglor as they retreated to their room late that night. “Gimli must be very remarkable, to have been granted leave to come to the Undying Lands.”

“He is,” Maglor said. “All of the Fellowship were remarkable.”

“Was that tale of the Three Hunters really true? My legs hurt just thinking about making a chase that far on foot—and in only a few days!”

“Yes, it’s true. There is very little that needs embellishing, when it comes to tales of the Fellowship.” They came to their room, finding Pídhres on the bed and the hedgehogs all curled up in their basket near the hearth. It was a warm night, and the breeze through the open window smelled of flowers, and carried the sound of flowing water. Maglor felt tired, but not unpleasantly so. His thoughts had been less weighty that day; he’d hardly thought of his father at all, or even of Finwë, though before Legolas and Gimli’s arrival he had intended to start jotting down notes for the song he was to write. 

Sleep came quickly and calmly, and he sank into dreams of the Sea, of the music of the waves and the wild beauty of the rocky shores of Middle-earth under wide and pale skies. Such dreams always felt a little like coming home, though that was a feeling he would never speak aloud in waking life. 

In the dark hours before dawn, though, he woke with a start. For a few seconds Maglor didn’t understand why, until he heard a soft sound beside him and turned to see Daeron caught up in a dream of his own, tangled up in the blankets and clutching at his chest, where there was an old scar from an arrow that had almost killed him once, long ago in Rhûn. “Daeron,” Maglor said, reaching for him. “Wake up, love. You're dreaming.” Daeron tried to pull away, muttering something in a language Maglor did not know. “Daeron, it’s me, it’s Maglor. Wake up.”

At last, Daeron’s eyes opened, though for a moment they remained unfocused, still caught up in the dream. Maglor smoothed his hair away from his face, and Daeron blinked, taking a sharp, shuddering breath. “It’s all right,” Maglor whispered. “It’s all right, Daeron, it was only a dream.”

“Maglor,” Daeron breathed.

“Yes, it’s me. I’m here. You’re safe.”

Daeron rolled over to bury his face in Maglor’s chest, shaking all over. Maglor wrapped one arm around him as he used his other hand to tug the blankets back into some semblance of order. Pídhres, disturbed by all the movement, jumped down from the bed and vanished out of the open window. Maglor settled back against the pillows, gently maneuvering Daeron so that he lay on top of him, resting against his chest, as he stroked Daeron’s hair and hummed a quiet and soothing song until the tremors stopped, though Daeron did not lift his head or ease his almost desperate grip on Maglor, hands fisted in his nightshirt. After a little while he said something, but his voice was muffled and the language was still that of Rhûn. Then he sighed, and turned his head a little. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Don’t be.” Maglor kept stroking his hair. “What was the dream?”

“An ambush. In Rhûn. Going wrong in—in all the—” Daeron faltered, words failing him as they never had before. Something damp soaked into Maglor’s nightshirt. “Going wrong as it didn’t in—in life.”

“A memory with teeth,” Maglor murmured. “It’s all right; I’ll sing the dreams away.” Daeron exhaled shakily, pressing his face back into Maglor’s chest; his breath hitched, and he started to shiver again, just a little. Maglor started to sing very softly, songs of rest and and starlight and moonlight, of sunbeams through the trees and wildflowers blooming in spring. He kept singing as Daeron slowly relaxed and his breathing evened out and deepened as he fell asleep again. Outside it began to rain, and Pídhres returned, sitting on the rug to groom herself a while before jumping back up onto the bed to curl up by Daeron’s hand where it had slipped onto the blankets, purring as she rubbed her head against it. Daeron sighed in his sleep.

Morning came slowly, pale and grey. The rain did not stop, and Maglor suspected it would continue all day. When he ran out of songs he let himself doze, listening to the rain and to the sounds of the household slowly waking outside of their room. The hedgehogs stirred after a time, and Maglor very carefully extracted himself from the bed to open the door for them, so they could escape downstairs and outside for their foraging and whatever small adventures they might find in Celebrían’s flower gardens. He also asked someone he saw in the hallway for a tea tray to be sent up from the kitchen. 

Daeron stirred as Maglor slipped back under the blankets with him. “Maglor…?” He reached across the bed, already frowning even before he opened his eyes.

“I’m here.” Maglor caught his hand and kissed his fingers.

“Oh.” Daeron opened his eyes, and the relief in them was so clear that Maglor’s throat went tight for a moment. “Is it morning?” Daeron raised his head to look toward the window.

“It is. Come here.” Maglor pulled him back down onto the pillows. His own nightmares, when they had been very bad, had always left him cold afterward. It might not be so for Daeron, but Maglor pulled the blankets back up over them anyway. 

Daeron sighed as he relaxed against Maglor again. “I don’t think I’ve ever fallen asleep again after such a dream,” he whispered. “Thank you.” 

“You said once such dreams trouble you only rarely,” Maglor said. He pressed kisses to Daeron’s eyelids and to his cheeks. 

“Very rarely. Maybe they feel all the worse for it.” Daeron pressed his face into the crook of Maglor’s neck. “It helped. Your singing. But I’m afraid I won’t be good for anything today.”

“You don’t have to be. What do you need?”

“Just—just you.”

“You have me. Always.”

A knock on the door a little while later heralded the tea tray’s arrival. Maglor fetched it and coaxed Daeron out of bed and to the window seat, where they could sit and watch the rain as they sipped their tea. Daeron curled up against Maglor, quiet and weary. “What do you usually do after such nights?” Maglor asked after a while. 

“Wallow,” Daeron said, sounding just a little too tired to be truly wry. He sighed. “I should get up and seek out some sort of distraction, I suppose. It helped…not last time, but the time before.”

“Or,” Maglor said, “we can spend the entire day here, being extremely lazy and pretending nothing outside of this room exists.”

“That sounds nice.” Daeron sat up to set his empty cup aside, and then turned to kiss Maglor. “I would very much like to forget—” Someone knocked on the door, and they both sighed.

Maglor expected it to be one of his brothers, but instead it was Elladan. “A letter’s just come from Alqualondë for Daeron,” he said. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes, of course.” Maglor took the letter and offered Elladan a smile. “We’re just going to take advantage of the rain and spend the day being very lazy and indulgent.”

Elladan looked skeptical. “All right, then. You might want to lock your door unless you want your nieces barging in to demand stories or games.”

“I’ll make a note of it, thank you.”

“Do you need anything?” Elladan asked before Maglor could close the door. “Is there anything Ada should know?”

Maglor shook his head. “It was a difficult night, but not for me,” he said quietly. “Don’t worry too much. We might join you for dinner, and we might not.”

“I’ll let Ada know.”

“Thank you, Elladan.”

Back at the window seat, Daeron took the letter with a surprised frown, pushing tangled and disheveled strands of hair out of his face. “From Alqualondë, he said? Oh, but this is Mablung’s hand. What’s he doing there, I wonder?” 

“You don’t have to open it now, you know,” Maglor said as he sat down. 

“It’s as likely as anything else to cheer me,” Daeron said as he peeled up the seal, “and I am curious now.” He unfolded the letter, which was not long and looked hastily written. As he read his faint smile turned to a look of dismay. “Oh, you were right. I should have left this for tomorrow. Or perhaps never.” 

“What is it? Has something happened?”

“My aunt has managed to find my parents.” Daeron folded the letter again, very carefully, though he looked as though he would rather ball it up and throw it across the room. “Her meeting with my father did not go as well as hoped.”

“Your parents live in Alqualondë, then?”

“Yes—they have been there since the Years of the Trees. It seems they are very displeased that my aunt and uncle did not bring me across the Sea with Olwë, rather than staying to seek for Thingol. As though I wasn’t old enough by then to make my own choices.”

“In their memory you are still only an infant,” Maglor said. “Did Mablung write to ask you to go to Alqualondë?”

“He says I should know that we have found them—Escelírë and Aldalëo, their names are, in the language of this land. I knew their names would not be in the same tongue as mine by now, as our languages changed and diverged, but it sounds strange, feels strange on my tongue. Did you spend much time in Alqualondë in your youth?”

“Some,” Maglor said, “but I do not recognize those names. I do not think I ever met them. You might ask Galadriel or Finrod; they spent far more of their youth in Alqualondë than in Tirion.”

“Maybe I will.” Daeron looked back down at the letter, turning it over in his fingers. “I do not want to think of this today. Or at all. If they take it into their heads to come find me—”

“Well, we can always flee into the wilds again. It worked when my own father came here unexpectedly.” 

Daeron’s smile was a brief flicker, mirthless and unhappy. “I am in too poor a mood for this. Tomorrow, maybe, I can laugh at how foolish I am being now.”

“It isn’t foolish, Daeron. It’s easy to speak calmly of finding them when you don’t expect to, and don’t plan to start soon. It’s another thing entirely to have such news thrust on you unexpectedly.”

“Yet they are my parents. I shouldn’t—”

“Give me that.” Maglor took the letter before Daeron could damage it as his grip on the paper tightened and twisted. “You were right when you said you should not think more on it today.” He caught Daeron’s face in his hands and kissed him. “When you see them, I will be with you, as you were with me when I saw my brothers, and my own mother.”

“You have your own task to complete. The song for Finwë—”

“Don’t you start. I can take pen and paper with me to Alqualondë, you know—and I’ll probably have to go there anyway, since my uncle Finarfin comes so seldom anymore to Tirion. Whatever it is you decide to do, you do not have to do anything today. Just be here, with me, and set aside the shadows of the past and of the future.”

“You’re right. I know you are.” Daeron closed his eyes as their foreheads rested together, and sighed. “Play me something?”

“Anything you want.” 

Maglor moved to his harp and began to play, mostly songs that he had learned or written since coming west, songs of bright and peaceful things, of sunshine and wildflowers, of flowing water and wind in the treetops. Daeron curled up on the cushions of the window seat with another cup of tea and watched the rain outside, and absently stroked Pídhres when she curled up on his lap. When he fell asleep Maglor stopped playing only long enough to fetch a blanket to cover him, for the day had turned cool with the rain.

By the evening the shadows were gone from Daeron’s eyes, but he was still weary and worried, thanks to Mablung’s ill-timed letter. The next morning, though, he was himself again, waking Maglor with kisses and going down to breakfast as though the previous day hadn’t happened at all—except that after they finished eating he whispered to Maglor that he wished for solitude, and then slipped away. Maglor watched him go, and saw Pídhres trot off in the same direction. Worrying about Daeron was not a thing he was accustomed to, but it niggled at the back of his mind even though he knew it wasn’t necessary. Daeron knew himself well enough to judge his own moods, and to know how to handle his own past—and his future. He wouldn’t thank Maglor if he tried to hover, or to go after him when he wanted to be alone.

Celegorm sat down in the spot Daeron had just vacated. “Is he all right?”

“Yes.” Maglor rolled his eyes when Celegorm frowned at him. “No, I’m not going to tell you more; you can ask him when he comes back, if you’re really worried—which you need not be. I do want to talk to you, though—all of you. Where is everyone?”

“Maedhros is in the library, I think, and I don’t know where anyone else has gone.”

“Then let’s find them and meet back in the library.”

“Has something happened, Cáno?”

“I have a song to write, and I’ll need all your help—and in the interest of not repeating myself six times, that’s all I’ll say for now.”

Maglor found Curufin and Caranthir, and Celegorm rounded up Ambarussa, and they all got to the library at the same time, and found Maedhros at the far end of it, sitting at a table looking over some maps. He lifted his head and raised his eyebrows at the sight of them all. “What happened?” he asked. 

“Nothing,” said Maglor, sitting down across from him. He waited until the rest of their brothers had dragged over chairs or perched themselves on the nearby windowsill to go on, “Míriel and Indis have asked me to write a song for Finwë.”

“You meant to try your hand at it anyway,” Maedhros said.

“This is different. The one I would have written would have been just for me, and for the six of you and maybe a scant handful of others to hear. This one will be for a much wider audience, and if I am to do it properly I am going to have to speak to many people for it.” Maglor had known Finwë as well as a grandson could know his grandfather, he thought, but there were many things he did not know, and many thoughts and perspectives that would differ from his. To write a song fit for someone such as Finwë Noldóran he would need far more than just a single grandson’s grief and love. 

“What do you want from us, then?” Celegorm asked. “I don’t think we know anything of him that you don’t.”

“It isn’t that I think you might know something different, it’s…” Maglor paused, tracing his finger up the line of the Misty Mountains on the parchment before him. “You don’t have to tell me right now—please don’t, please take time to think on it—but there is really only one question I would ask you: what is it you would wish to hear put into a song about him?”

Silence fell between them, all their thoughts turning to Finwë. Outside the window a lark burst into bright song; the sun was out in a cloudless sky, and the scent of roses drifted into the library to mingle with the parchment and ink and old paper. Finally, Celegorm said, “What if what we wish we could hear isn’t something you can put into a song?”

“Let me worry about putting it all into verse. Just—tell me what you want others to remember, what you think is important enough to be sung. I do not yet know what shape this song will take, and whatever you have to tell me will help.”

“Will you be asking Findekáno, and Felagund, and others, too?” Maedhros asked.

“Yes, I expect I will be speaking with everyone in our family, and then some, at sometime or another. There’s no particular hurry; I’m not planning to leave Imloth Ningloron for at least a full year, anyway.” He saw several of his brothers exchange glances, though no one said anything. No one asked if everyone would include their father—though of course it must. Maglor could not write anything such as Míriel and Indis had asked of him without speaking to Fëanor.

Maglor thought again of Fëanor’s coming to Formenos after the Darkening, after Maglor and Maedhros had done their best to clean up at least some of the blood, to sweep away the fragments of stone and wood and iron from the shattered doors, of the way Fëanor had collapsed in their arms, weeping as though he might never stop, might just dissolve all into tears to be washed away by the rain called forth by the Valar, after a struggle that had taken Celegorm as well as Maglor and Maedhros to hold him back from the linen-wrapped body. 

Those were the last tears Maglor knew his father to have shed. After they dried up, well after they had all managed to drag him away from Formenos, back toward Tirion, it was like he’d hardened, calcified, like he had taken his grief as though it were raw iron and passed it through a forge so that it was transformed into rage instead. It would be a lie now to say that he was not hesitant to approach Fëanor, even to speak of Finwë. He did not know whether to expect the tears or the rage—but it would be a disservice to himself and to Finwë and even to Fëanor to shy away from it just because he was afraid. This was too important.

“Is there anything else serious we must talk about?” Amrod asked after a moment. “Or can we ask Maitimo why he’s looking at old maps?”

“I like maps,” Maedhros said mildly, “and Maglor promised to show me some of the places he has visited.”

“So I did,” Maglor said, and leaned forward. The map was quite different from others he had seen before, depicting nearly all of the western lands of Middle-earth, from Lindon in the west to Mordor and the Sea of Rhûn in the east, from the Ered Mithrim in the north down to the northernmost part of Harad. No maps in Rivendell or in Gondor had ever encompassed so much, and when he looked at a note jotted down in the corner he saw that this map was one drawn by Eärendil, and copied and labeled by Elrond. 

“Here is the River Anduin, that I followed all the way from its mouths to its headwaters.” He traced the line on the map all the way from the far south at the Bay of Belfalas to the farthest north, where the Grey Mountains met the Misty Mountains. “There is a lake there, deep and blue and cold, fed by rains and snow melt, that flows out into the little streams that are the start of the river.” That had been what he’d thought to seek when he had first struck north long ago—when he had been waylaid by orcs near the Gladden Fields instead. Being able to complete that journey at last had felt like a victory, though not one that he could put into words or make a song out of. “Afterward I visited Erebor and Dale, and then went back down south with a party of dwarves—after the portage roads were repaired and Amon Hen and Amon Lhaw reestablished, trade opened up between Wilderland and the south. The river was very busy in those days, as it had not been for years and years before.”

Celegorm leaned over Maglor’s shoulder, frowning at the map. “Is this where…?” He traced his own finger up the Anduin’s course, and then pointed at the small tower symbol in the southern part of Mirkwood. 

“Yes,” Maglor said. “And there, just across the river, is Lothlórien.”

“So close,” Celegorm said quietly.

Maglor did not want to think about Dol Guldur. “Here, on the other side of the Misty Mountains, here is Imladris.” He pointed to the little dot nestled just beside the mountains before moving his finger even farther west along the Road, past the Blue Mountains and the coasts of Lindon. “And here, Maedhros—here is Himring still.” 

“Did you ever go back there, Cáno?” Caranthir asked.

“No. I saw it from the shore, but I never went out to the island. It’s crumbling now, wearing away little by little—but still tall and sturdy. Many birds nest there.” Maglor looked up at Maedhros, but Maedhros kept his gaze lowered to the map. He looked back down at it himself, running his finger down over the coastline, past the Gulf of Lhûn and Mithlond, from which he had set sail at last, down along the shores that he knew so well that he did not even have to close his eyes to picture them, wild and remote. A faint pang of homesickness struck him. In spite of everything, he missed those shores, missed the waves and the Sea and the birds, and the cold winds. He would not go back now, even if given the chance, but a little bit of that longing remained. 

As they parted, scattering back to whatever everyone had been doing before gathering in the library, Celegorm fell into step with Maglor. He had a strand of his hair twisted around his finger, a habit Maglor had thought he’d left behind in childhood. “What’s the matter, Tyelko?” he asked. 

“Why did Míriel and Indis ask you to write a song for Finwë? I mean, I know why they’ve asked you, but why now?”

“I suppose they feel it’s long overdue,” Maglor said, “and they are not wrong. And I was not here to ask, before.”

“Will you write of his death?”

“I must.”

“Does that mean you will go back to Formenos?”

Maglor hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Are you going to speak to Atar, too?”

“Yes.” Maglor glanced at him again. “Are you going to get angry about it?”

“No.” Celegorm kept his gaze on his feet. “Do you want to speak to him?”

“Not particularly, but I cannot write this song without him.”

“Can’t you just—just write to him instead?”

Maglor reached up and caught Celegorm’s hand before he started pulling his hair out. “I do not intend to write to anyone else,” he said. “This is…it’s such a heavy thing, this grief, and this song I am to try to write. I cannot treat it as anything less, whatever my own feelings about who I speak to. Whatever we might say about him as our father, he loved his own. I would not have been equal to it before I went to Lórien, but I am now.” Celegorm gave him a look full of doubt. “I’m not riding out to Tirion tomorrow, Tyelko.”

“Just—tell me when you do go? I want to go with you.”

“I don’t want to speak to him in front of an audience.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t be nearby for when it goes wrong.”

How awful that Maglor couldn’t even argue—that it was when it went wrong, and not if. How awful that they still felt it necessary to protect one another from their own father. “You and Daeron can join forces then, and drive me mad with your worrying.” He tried to speak lightly, but Celegorm did not smile. “I’ll tell you. I promise.”

“Thank you.”