A Hundred Miles Through the Desert by StarSpray  

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Eighteen

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Spring came with bright sunshine and an explosion of flowers throughout the valley. The gardens were carpeted with crocuses and daffodils, and the house was soon filled with the latter by the vase-full, bright yellow and sweet-smelling. It also brought talk from Nerdanel of returning home, and Maedhros found himself increasingly eager to be back there too. Even with the expansions built onto it since he had left for Lórien, it was much smaller than the sprawling house of Elrond and Celebrían, and as comfortable as Imloth Ningloron was, Maedhros found himself missing his own small cozy bedroom, and the kitchen that was always halfway to chaos in spite of Caranthir’s efforts, and the plum orchard that would be blooming soon, and the little river beyond where he’d found quiet solitude under the willow trees—for such a long time the only place he’d felt anything close to peace. 

Ambarussa announced their intention to go home with Maedhros and Nerdanel, and thence to Tirion to “bother Curvo and Moryo.” So they said in front of Nerdanel, but later Amrod confessed to Maedhros that they intended to go to Fëanor. “You can tell Ammë,” Maedhros said. 

“We don’t want to get her hopes up, in case it goes horribly,” said Amrod. “Have you heard anything from Curvo lately?”

“Not about Atar. Do you really think it will go badly?”

They sat together in the gazebo out on the water; it was late, and the moon was up, turning the water to liquid silver. The night was cool but not cold. A few bats flitted about, dark shapes against the starry sky. Amrod shifted in his seat, and crossed his legs. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think so—we have spoken to him before, even if it was just polite greetings and empty chatter because we were surrounded by other people. It’s always awkward but I don’t feel badly about it afterward or anything. I don’t know what to feel about him still. It’s just—well, I don’t know. I just…I want to have a father again. It feels as though we—Ambarussa and I—that we haven’t really had one since we were so very small. I miss him.”

Maedhros held out his arms, and Amrod all but fell into them. Maedhros rested his hand on the back of his head. “You never seemed unhappy when you were young.”

“We weren’t. It’s only looking back now that we can see what we did not have. And he did apologize for it, in those letters he wrote us. He told Amras that if he could go back he would forget about the Silmarils if it meant he could spend that time with us instead. It’s impossible, of course, but it’s…nice that he would want to.”

“It is,” Maedhros said.

“You don’t believe it, though.”

“I don’t know what I believe anymore, Ambarussa. I want to believe there’s something to salvage. Maybe there is for you, even if not for me.”

“We never really thought about our father-names before we got those letters,” Amrod said. He rested his head on Maedhros’ chest and sighed. “Small and Last—that’s me and Amras.”

“Did he tell you why?”

“No, but it isn’t that hard to figure out, is it? I don’t know. It never bothered me before, and I don’t know if it does now. He was the only one that ever called us Pityafinwë and Telufinwë, anyway. It’s just, you know. Another little thing on top of all the other things.”

He did know. It seemed like such a small thing in the face of all the bigger things that had happened later, but names were important. They meant something—and Ambarussa had been born before the work on the Silmarils began, before the whispers had started, before Fëanor began to withdraw, distracted and increasingly agitated and angry. “Will you ask him, do you think?”

“No. I don’t really want to know what he’ll say. I would rather look forward than back. I think it bothers Amras more than me, though—maybe we’ll ask Ammë about it instead.”

“It may be that you can’t move forward without looking back,” Maedhros said. He had done a lot of looking back, though until he had gone to Lórien it hadn’t done him any good. Getting caught in circling thoughts of bitter regrets and what-ifs wasn’t healing, but looking at what had happened and why, and acknowledging which parts of it were your fault and which were out of your control—it had been a long and painful process, but he’d come out of it able to see everything more clearly. 

Well, almost everything.

Amrod hummed softly. “Maybe.”

“Whatever happens, will you come tell me about it?”

Amrod sat up to look at Maedhros. “You really want to hear about Atar?” he asked.

“I want to hear about you,” he said, “and to know that you’re all right—however it goes.”

“You don’t have to wor—”

“I’m still your elder brother, and you’re still my youngest baby brothers.” Maedhros tugged on one of Amrod’s braids. “I’m always going to worry about you. The least you can do is indulge me in this.”

“All right, of course we’ll come see you afterward. But we aren’t babies.”

“Tell that to someone whose hair you didn’t spit up in.”

A few days later, as Maedhros finished packing his things, Maglor came into his room, dropping onto his back from behind to wrap his arms around him. “I’ll miss you, Nelyo,” he said into Maedhros’ hair.

“I’ll see you in a few months, at most,” said Maedhros, “won’t I?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

Maedhros ducked forward and flipped Maglor over his shoulders. He went with a yelp, landing with a thump on the rug. Maedhros leaned down to kiss his forehead. “I’ll miss you too, Cáno. I really am looking forward to being at home, though.”

“Oh, I know.” Maglor smiled up at him, looking for a moment as young and bright as he had been long ago when the Trees still shone. “You know Tyelko’s worried you’ll slip back into old habits.”

“I am thoroughly sick of the word brooding,” Maedhros said. “I haven’t brooded since Lórien.”

Maglor laughed. “I know that. You might want to reacquaint Tyelko with the definition of the word.”

“I’ll do it while I dunk him in the river.”

Maglor sat up, and Maedhros returned to making sure he had everything in his saddle bags. “I thought you were going to burn that sketchbook,” he said, seeing it poking out of one of the bags.

“I am. I want to do it at home.” He could have destroyed it at any time over the winter, he supposed, but he wasn’t the one who cleaned the grates here and he didn’t want anyone to stumble upon anything that didn’t quite burn up. At home no one touched his small bedroom hearth except himself. 

“Just be sure Ammë doesn’t see it.”

“Be sure Ammë doesn’t see what?” Nerdanel asked, appearing in the open doorway. 

“Just old drawings,” Maedhros said as Maglor made an apologetic face at him. “They’re awful; you don’t want to see them.”

“Awful in what way, Maitimo?”

“Awful in the way you’re probably imagining.” He shoved the book down to the bottom of the bag and pulled the drawstring shut. He got to his feet and went to embrace Nerdanel. “I have plenty of other drawings I want to show you.”

“All right,” she said, sounding doubtful. “Should I be worried?”

“No, Ammë. I drew them in Lórien—it did help. The drawings helped all along.” It had been at Nerdanel’s insistence that he’d even picked up a pencil to begin with, that he had something to do that wasn’t—well, that wasn’t brooding. “I needed to get the terrible things out of my head and onto the paper, and destroying them will be part of it—but now it’s mostly because I don’t want to keep them.” 

“It’s like lancing an infected wound,” said Maglor behind him. “Though maybe that’s not a good comparison if you’ve never seen such a wound.” 

“I haven’t and have no wish to, but I do understand making something just to destroy it,” said Nerdanel, her frown fading away. “As long as it really helped, Maitimo.”

“It did.”

“And, Macalaurë, do you still plan to come to Tirion this summer?”

“Sometime this summer, maybe the fall,” said Maglor. “Depends on how long Elemmírë stays here, and then whether Daeron and I go to Taur-en-Gellam first. Definitely after Midsummer—we’re staying here for that.”

“You are vague with your plans, aren’t you?” Nerdanel asked, amusement taking over the concern. “I hope you weren’t like this in Beleriand.”

“He was worse,” Maedhros said, just so Maglor would look affronted. He wasn’t disappointed.

“I beg your pardon, my Lord of Himring!”

“Oh come off it,” said Maedhros. “More than half the time I never knew when I might expect to see you next.”

“During the Long Peace, maybe. I was busy. But I always came when you were expecting me,” Maglor said. He got to his feet. “Anyway, it’s not as though any great plans will fall apart if I don’t come to Tirion before autumn. I haven’t been given any imminent deadline for this song, and it’s too important to rush through it.”

“I thought Daeron just wanted to time his return to Taur-en-Gellam so someone could win a bet,” Maedhros said.

“Well, there’s that too.” Maglor joined them in the doorway to kiss Nerdanel. “I’ll write before I come to Tirion, Ammë, don’t worry.”

“Good. Your grandparents will want to see you—and your cousins.”

“I want to see them, too. It will be a much merrier meeting this time, I promise.” Maglor smiled and left them. 

Maedhros went back to his packing, and Nerdanel wandered through the room, pausing by the sketchbook he’d left open on the desk. “These are lovely,” she said. “You have a gift for portraiture, Maitimo.”

“I must get it from you,” he said as he finished securing everything.

“Will you return to painting at home?”

“Yes. I’m looking forward to it.” Maedhros looked up and smiled when she glanced back at him. “Really, Ammë.”

“I believe you. You do still seem terribly grim at times, Maitimo, when you think no one’s looking.”

“I can’t help what my face looks like when I’m not paying attention,” he said. “I can’t ever be what I was before—”

“I know that.”

“—but I’m not unhappy. I feel—I feel much like I did during the Long Peace, I think. I wasn’t unhappy then, either. I was very happy for much of it.” He had been dreaming lately of Himring, of its building and of just—seeing it, living there. He missed it, the way that Maglor missed the seashores, and the way that Caranthir would probably never admit that he missed Thargelion. He couldn’t decide if knowing that its walls still stood was a comfort or if it just made missing it worse. He could not think of a place where he had ever felt safer, even in Aman. It was also the one thing he couldn’t get right in any of his drawings, no matter what he did.

“Are you happy now?” Nerdanel asked, because there was a difference between not being unhappy and actually being happy, and of course she would know it.

“I am. I’ve been happier since leaving Lórien than I have since—since I can’t remember when.” The difference between now and the Long Peace, of course, was that there was no Shadow looming over them, no Enemy to watch, no reason to carry weapons wherever they went just in case—nothing to fear.

They left Imloth Ningloron the next day with Ambarussa—and with Aechen, who made the journey in a little basket that Celebrían had found for him to hang off of Maedhros’ saddle. Celegorm remained behind with Maglor, but promised that he would come back to Nerdanel’s house soon—either with Maglor, or whenever Maglor left for Taur-en-Gellam. Both he and Maglor held on very tightly when they embraced Maedhros. Fingon cheerfully promised to come drag Maedhros to Tirion for Midsummer, whether he wanted to go or not. Elrond said farewell with a warm smile. The journey was sunny and warm and not long. It felt odd not to be traveling with Maglor, but though Maedhros missed him immediately it wasn’t painful. They would never go long without seeing one another again, and there would be letters and messages flying back and forth in between.

Nerdanel’s house was the same as it had been when Maedhros had left it, except of course that there was a new wing attached, stretching back through where the garden had been before, finished long enough ago that it no longer looked quite new. The garden had moved accordingly, and expanded and changed. Roses climbed the walls alongside ivy, and the plum orchard that lay between and behind Nerdanel and her parents’ house was all in bloom, pale pink and sweet-smelling. “Is it just new bedrooms?” he asked as they approached.

“Yes, mostly. There is a workroom downstairs for Carnistir.”

“I spin the threads,” Amrod said with a smile, “and he dyes them, and then…I’m not sure what happens to them after that. He must take them to Tirion or something, because he’s not doing any weaving or anything here.”

“Some,” Nerdanel said. “The rest goes to Imloth Ningloron.”

They left their horses in Mahtan’s stable; Mahtan and Ennalótë were away, and so the four of them returned alone to Nerdanel’s house. Maedhros set Aechen down in the garden and watched him disappear around the hawthorn tree and into a patch of fennel, and then followed Ambarussa inside. His room was, as Caranthir had promised, untouched. It was much smaller than his room in Imloth Ningloron, with white-washed walls and a plain wooden floor laid over with a couple of braided rugs. The bed was tucked against the wall by the window that looked out past the orchard toward the river, which glittered in the sunshine, the banks full of reeds and bulrushes, the fields on either side full of dandelions. Come summer there would be daisies and buttercups and queen’s lace all in bloom too. Across from the bed was a wardrobe and a desk, and a small bookshelf that was mostly empty. Maedhros went to drop his bags onto the bed, but found two rolled up bundles there already. He took them for rugs first, before realizing they must be tapestries. 

“Where did these come from?” he asked Amras when he caught sight of him passing by the door.

“Where did what come from?” Amras peered into the room. “I don’t know. What are they?”

“I have no idea. Help me unroll them?” They untied the first and shook it out, Maedhros holding one corner and Amras the other. Maedhros’ breath caught at the scene woven into it, all green-gold and blue, cut through with dark grey—it was Himring, as seen from a distance riding east across Ard Galen under a wide summer sky. It was a scene he had been trying to render in pencil for years, wishing to have something to look at outside of his own memories. 

“This is Grandmother Míriel’s work,” said Amras as they laid it gently over the bed. “It almost looks as though you could step into it, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” Maedhros said faintly. He ran his fingers over the grey threads of Himring’s walls. It was exactly what he had wanted, but this tapestry must have been woven well before she ever came to Imloth Ningloron, before they had met. Even then, he had not spoken to her of Himring. She could not have known.

They unrolled the second tapestry, laying it on the bed overlapping the first. It was Himring again, but as it was now: an island rising out of the blue-grey sea, birds flying about the ramparts, rounded and worn with the passage of time and the wind and rain and waves. Beyond could be glimpsed the shores of Middle-earth, pale and distant. Trees grew around Himring’s walls, dark and hardy firs bent and twisted by the sea winds. The sky behind was streaked with pale clouds, rather than the clear blue of the first scene. Maedhros pressed his hand over his mouth, tears stinging his eyes. 

“Nelyo?” Amras put a hand on his arm. “You don’t have to keep them, you know, you can—”

“No,” Maedhros said, lowering his hand. “No, I—I do want to keep them. Both of them. They’re—I’ve wished I could see Himring again. I never thought I would.” He could have gone to Avallónë, he supposed, where there was the largest palantír ever made, put there for anyone to use who missed the eastern lands. But it would not be the same—not something he could look at whenever he wanted, whenever he felt homesick. 

“You really miss it so much?” Amras asked. 

“Don’t you? Miss Ossiriand, I mean, or any of it?”

“No. Not really. Most of our friends from then are here now, and the woods of Valinor are—well, of course they’re different, but woods are woods even still.” He stepped forward and Maedhros wrapped an arm around him, kissing the top of his head. “I’m sorry, Nelyo. I didn’t know you felt thus.”

“How could you? I never speak of it.”

“I wonder how Míriel knew.”

“Míriel weaves for Vairë. I suppose she knows a great deal without being told.” Maedhros glanced around the room. There was just enough space on the walls, if he moved the wardrobe a few inches to the left. “Help me hang them?”

Amrod and Nerdanel came to investigate when they heard the shuffling and the groan of the wardrobe as Maedhros and Amras shoved it aside. “What in the world are you doing?” Nerdanel asked. 

“Grandmother Míriel sent a gift to Nelyo, so we’re going to hang them,” Amras said. “It’s long overdue, Nelyo. This room is terribly plain.”

“Don’t you dare start sneaking more things in,” Maedhros said, seeing that glint in Amras’ eye. “I mean it, Ambarussa.”

“Well if you just painted the walls,” Amrod began. 

“If you paint my walls I’ll—”

“Boys,” Nerdanel said, though her attempt at sternness failed as she struggled not to laugh. “You have your own room to decorate as you please. You need hooks, Maitimo; I have some downstairs.”

“Really, though,” Amrod said when Nerdanel left, “you could paint the walls something more interesting. Blue, maybe—or green.” He gestured toward the tapestries. 

“I’ll think about it,” Maedhros said. 

“Or maybe murals or something,” said Amras.

“I just got back. And I’m still terrible with paints.” He’d only picked up a brush almost right before leaving for Lórien—and painting was a skill he had not needed in Beleriand, and so had never learned to do with his left hand. It would be a long time before he painted anything he wanted to hang up somewhere, let alone paint directly onto his walls.

“Well, I’m glad you want to hang these instead of putting them away somewhere,” said Amrod, going to the bed to look over the tapestries. “They’re beautiful.”

Nerdanel returned with the tools needed to hang the tapestries, and between the four of them it only took a few minutes. Ambarussa left, but Nerdanel lingered, looking at the scene of Himring as an island. “It seems a lonely place,” she said. 

“It is now, I suppose,” Maedhros said, “but it wasn’t always. And Elrond has all kinds of papers and records that were recovered from it after the War of Wrath.”

“I know, I’ve seen them.” Nerdanel took his hand and squeezed it. “Little enough is written in your own words, but I could still tell how you loved that place.”

“I did,” Maedhros said. As much as Maglor had loved his Gap, and Caranthir had loved Thargelion. Their other brothers had not been quite so attached to their own lands, Maedhros thought. But they had all loved Beleriand—Middle-earth—the mountains, the plains, the forests and the rivers. It was sometimes hard to remember, but there had been so much joy there, before doom caught up to them. 

“You could build something for yourself here, you know.”

“I know, but I like where I am. Unless you want me to—”

“You know perfectly well I like having you here. I just want to be sure it’s what you want.”

“It is.” 

Ambarussa stayed two weeks before departing for Tirion. Just after they left, Mahtan and Ennalótë arrived home. They had Maedhros’ uncle Linquendil with them, as well as his son Elessúrë. Elessúrë had been a small child when they had all departed for the east after the Darkening; Maedhros had spoken to him very little since his own return from Mandos. Maglor had been Elessúrë’s favorite cousin, but Maglor had told Maedhros that their reunion had not been a very joyful one, speaking of it early in Lórien with downcast eyes and slumped shoulders.

Elessúrë greeted Maedhros now with a little less warmth than their grandparents did, but still with a smile—and that was to be expected from a cousin who did not know him well. He had let his hair grow; it brushed his shoulders, a lighter shade of red than Maedhros’ own. He had more tattoos wound round his arms, too, intricate geometric patterns in dark ink. “You look brighter,” he said. “I’m glad. Where is Macalaurë?”

“He remains at Imloth Ningloron,” Maedhros said.

“Did Lórien help him, too?”

“It did. He’ll be glad to see you when he comes to Tirion to visit.”

“When will that be, do you think?”

“Sometime later this year.”

Elessúrë nodded. “I was not very kind to him before,” he said. “I didn’t—I didn’t know just how badly he was hurting.”

Maedhros shook his head. “He did not want you to know,” he said. “He wasn’t upset—or he was, but he didn’t blame you. That was the sort of welcome he expected to receive from everyone.” At this Elessúrë looked both horrified and abashed. “I’m sorry, Elessúrë.” He had been Maedhros’ baby cousin, too, terrified and so very small, and none of them had been able to do anything to offer comfort in the darkness—and then they had left. 

“I am too,” Elessúrë said. “I hope I can know you better now, Cousin.”

“I think I’m someone worth knowing, now,” Maedhros said. “I wasn’t before. Not really.”

Elessúrë frowned at him. “That’s a cruel thing to say about yourself.”

“It’s only true,” said Maedhros. “I was…I was caught up still in the past and everything I had done wrong, and all the fear and the horror of it. I’m not, anymore.”

“I’m glad of it,” said Elessúrë, “but should you not have left all that behind in Mandos?”

“Yes,” said Maedhros, “but I couldn’t. I don’t want to tell you any more than that, Elessúrë. You don’t need to know about it. Whatever tales you’ve heard are more than enough.”

“I’m not a child, Russandol.”

“What’s that got to do with it? I was not a child when I went to Middle-earth, and I wish that there had been someone to protect me from it. I heard once that you wanted to go with Arafinwë’s host to the War of Wrath. I’m so glad you didn’t.”

“Macalaurë said that, too. I only wanted to go to search for you.”

“In that case,” Maedhros said, “I’m even gladder that you didn’t go.”

After things settled down again, Maedhros was at last able to retreat to the little painting studio that his brothers had asked Nerdanel to make for him. It had been a storage shed, tucked into a corner of the garden behind Nerdanel’s much larger workshop. Now it was a small but bright space, with shelves along one wall filled with jars of paints and pigments, and sets of brushes, and all manner of other things he might need. There were canvases too, leaning against the wall beside the shelves, and several easels to choose from as well as a table by the window. Maedhros didn’t have any particular plans, except maybe to try to turn one of his sketches into a painting, something simple to practice colors and shading and just holding the brush correctly. Before, when he had looked at the shelves full of color, he had felt daunted. Now he felt excited as he reached for a jar of bright green pigment.