A Hundred Miles Through the Desert by StarSpray  

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Twenty

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“Did you tell me you were coming to Tirion this soon?” Curufin asked as Amrod and Amras stepped through the door. He looked like he’d just come from his forge, with soot smeared over the bridge of his nose and his clothes all rumpled, smelling of coals and metal.

“No,” Amras said cheerfully as he threw an arm around Curufin’s shoulders. “It’s more fun to surprise you! How are things?”

“The same as they ever are. How is everyone else?”

“All very well. Nelyo’s back home with Ammë,” said Amrod, “and Tyelko and Cáno are still in Imloth Ningloron. They’ll still be coming to Tirion sometime later this year, but Cáno’s refusing to be any more definite than that.”

“Well, he’s better than the two of you,” Curufin said, but he smiled as he spoke. That changed, though, when he asked, “Are you here to see—?” 

Calissë and Náriel came barreling down the hallway then, interrupting any serious conversation. There was no chance to speak further until later that night, after the girls and Rundamírë had gone to bed, and Curufin led the way up to the rooftop garden. The nights were still cool, so Celebrimbor lit the brazier, and the four of them settled onto the soft cushions and chairs set around it. Overhead the stars shone, and the moon was riding high in the sky, pale and half-full. Amrod watched it for a while, until Curufin said, “Did you come to visit us, or to see Atya?”

“Can’t it be both?” Amras asked. “But yes, we do want to talk to Atya. What’s he been looking for in the palantír, Curvo?”

“All the terrible things, I think,” Curufin said. Amrod looked over at him, finding his face troubled. Shadows danced over Rundamírë’s plants behind him, still slender with new growth. Somewhere on the street below someone burst into bright laughter; elsewhere Amrod could hear the faint sounds of a hammer on the anvil. Tirion was so very different from the mountains where he and Amras made their home, so much louder. “I think he has also looked for all of you more recently, just to reassure himself that it really is all over.”

“Have you told him about Cáno’s song?” Amras asked.

“What song?” Celebrimbor asked.

“No,” Curufin said. To Celebrimbor he added, “Míriel and Indis have asked Maglor to write a song for Finwë. It’s long overdue, they said, and he’s the best one to do it. He’s going to be talking to everyone about it—he said it can’t just be his own song.”

“It is overdue,” Celebrimbor said. “That’s why he’s planning to come to Tirion this year?”

“Yes,” said Amrod. “He’s going to Thingol, too, and I think he hasn’t decided yet whether to go there or come here first.”

“Why haven’t you told Atya about it?” Amras asked Curufin. 

“I should,” Curufin said, “I just…he carries that grief so near, still, and with everything he’s been seeing in the palantír I haven’t wanted to add anything to it. I will tell him before Maglor comes. He deserves at least to be forewarned.” Celebrimbor had tossed a pillow to the rooftop to sit beside Curufin’s chair rather than in one of his own, and he leaned his head against Curufin’s knee. Curufin rested a hand on his hair. “Ambarussa, when you speak to him, please try not to get angry. I don’t think he could withstand another confrontation like the one he had with Maglor.”

“We aren’t angry, Curvo,” said Amrod. It wasn’t that they never got angry, but he honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually lost his temper. There wasn’t anything left worth getting so angry over. “We’re more worried about him getting angry.”

“He won’t,” Curufin said. “He’s just…he reminds me lately sometimes of Maedhros before he went to Lórien. Not quite as bad, but—that awful grief and guilt that’s eating him up inside.”

“It’s been there all along,” Celebrimbor said. “It’s just gotten worse since he started looking into the palantír. He was unhappy like this when he first came from Mandos, too. Quiet. Then I think he was worried about all of you being off away in the wild—and he wasn’t wrong, all things considered—and then after he came back to Tirion he got better, especially after you came back too, Atya.”

“I hope it wasn’t a mistake, the palantír.”

“I don’t think understanding can ever be a mistake,” said Amrod. “It’s the same grief we all felt, isn’t it? Just all at once, and fresh, while we’ve had years and years to get used to it.”

“It’s different when you can only watch,” Curufin said, “when you aren’t there to do anything about it.” Celebrimbor reached up to take his hand. 

“Yes,” Amrod said, “but he also can’t do anything because it’s already over—and we’re all here now.”

The next morning, Curufin told them that they’d most likely find their father at the old house. “He took a break for the winter, but he’s back to clearing out all the old storerooms and ripping up the garden. Which reminds me, I have some boxes of your old things here if you want to look through them later.”

“Do you have the prisms you made us?” Amras asked.

“I might. And if not, I can make you new ones.”

The house where they had grown up was not far from the palace, though it was a bit of a walk from where Curufin now lived. They had debated for a long time whether they wanted to go together or one at a time, before deciding it would be better together. If it didn’t go well, better not to face it alone. Amrod wasn’t really worried that it wouldn’t go well—they had exchanged greetings and brief pleasantries a few times over the last few decades, and if it was awkward it wasn’t painful—but better safe than sorry. As they approached the house, partly hidden behind still-solid and sturdy walls, Amras reached out to take Amrod’s hand.

They paused at the gate, which was really just an opening in the wall, for the gate was long gone, either taken away for the wrought-iron to be purposed, or just rusted away into dust with the passage of time; it was impossible to say, now. Amrod peered through it, and found the courtyard not quite as overgrown as he had expected, though that was surely due to Fëanor’s efforts; he saw patches of churned up earth and remnants of stems and roots where plants and weeds had been dug up. “He’s done quite a lot, hasn’t he?” Amras remarked in a low voice. 

“Digging up all the gardens would be the easy part, wouldn’t it?” Amrod replied. “Curvo said he’s sorting through all the storerooms inside now.” And then, presumably, he would start tearing the building down. Amrod looked up at it, slowly crumbling, moss-covered and with climbing ivy and roses slowly overtaking the roof. This was where they had grown up, he and Amras, and all their brothers. When they had left it for Formenos, none of them had ever expected not to come back—not to return to find it precisely as they had left it, if a little dusty. He wondered why their father wanted to tear it all down. “I suppose we should go look inside?”

They stepped through the gate, and passed through the courtyard. If he half closed his eyes Amrod could picture it as it had once been, picture everyone coming and going, their brothers and cousins all young and bright and their parents laughing. “Come on.” Amras pulled him forward, and they stepped up to the entrance. Unlike the gate, the doors were intact, even the panes of stained glass set into them, though they were faded and uneven now, the walls on the other side appearing strange and warped, and someone had used fist-sized stones to prop them open. The tiles of the entryway were tracked with dirt, their once-bright colors also almost entirely faded away into dusty browns. 

As they stood for a moment, looking around at the familiar walls that also looked so different, breaking and cracking and devoid of the art and paint that had once adorned them, they heard a thump from somewhere below, and a string of very creative curses. “Oh that’s definitely him,” said Amras. A few seconds later they heard his footsteps on the stairs, and then he appeared, smeared with dust and shaking out one of his hands, his hair bound back in a braid that was already starting to unravel, strands of hair sticking to his temples. Then he looked up and saw them—and immediately tripped on the last step. They darted forward to catch him, each grabbing an arm before he could pitch forward onto his face. “Good morning, Atya,” said Amras. 

“Ambarussa? What—what are you doing here?” Fëanor regained his footing and straightened. They were of a height, Amrod realized suddenly. Somehow he hadn’t ever noticed that before. Fëanor loomed so large in his memory, almost taller than Maedhros. 

“Looking for you,” Amrod said. “Curvo said you’re cleaning out all the storerooms. Would you like some help?” It was easier, maybe, to start by doing something, rather than standing and staring at each other while they tried to think of what to say first. 

“I…” Fëanor looked at them, eyes wide, and then he seemed to come to the same conclusion. “Yes. There are several chests I can’t bring up by myself.”

“A good thing we’re here, then!” said Amras brightly, and led the way back down the stairs. Fëanor had brought many lamps to illuminate the cellars, which were filled with haphazard piles of boxes and crates, chests and rolled up rugs, bits of furniture, pieces of artwork long forgotten. “What are you doing with it all?” Amras asked. 

“Throwing or giving it away, mostly,” Fëanor said as he followed them. “Your brother has most of the things he thinks you will want to keep.”

“Yes, he told us,” said Amrod. “Are you not keeping any of it?”

“I suspect I will be given much of it back later,” Fëanor said, sounding a little rueful, “but I have nowhere really to keep it now.”

“I’m sure our uncle can spare you a storeroom or two in the palace,” said Amrod. Fëanor only shrugged. He no longer stared at them, but now he would not meet their gazes at all—the same way Maedhros hadn’t for years after they’d returned, and the same way Maglor hadn’t, at times, on their journey back from Ekkaia. Amrod was not accustomed to seeing guilt written across his father’s face, and he found he didn’t like it, even as it reassured him that there was again more to Fëanor than just empty burning fury. Fëanor bent to pick up one end of a large chest, and Amrod took the other. Amras picked up a few much smaller boxes, and followed them back up the stairs to the entryway, where they left the boxes to go back downstairs—and this they repeated until the largest crates and chests closest to the stairs had been brought up. All the while Amrod and Amras filled the silence, talking of the past summer, and Maglor’s hedgehogs, and other cheerful things.

“Thank you,” Fëanor said at last, when he and Amras set down the last heavy chest. 

It was nearing lunchtime by then. Amrod glanced at Amras, who nodded and slipped away. They’d agreed before coming to Tirion that they each wanted to speak alone to Fëanor, if things went well, and one of them going to the nearest market for lunch was as good an excuse as any. Amrod stretched his arms over his head, easing the slight ache in his shoulders, which weren’t accustomed to lifting such heavy things. “Thank you for the letters,” he said, deciding there was no more point in avoiding what was in all their minds. “I know that’s overdue.”

Fëanor shook his head. “It isn’t—”

“What I really mean is, thank you for writing two letters.”

This earned him a blank look. “I only wrote one,” he said.

Amrod wanted, absurdly, to laugh. “No, I mean—a letter for me and a letter for Amras, instead of just one to Ambarussa.”

For a moment Fëanor didn’t answer. He frowned, and looked away, casting his gaze over the cluster of boxes and chests strewn through the entryway. “Do others write to you thus?”

“Well, yes—but to be fair, it’s never letters like the one you wrote, usually just short notes to tell us a bit of news or to extend an invitation; it’s not like either of us keep any sort of running correspondence with anyone. It would be silly to waste paper for those things. Just—we didn’t expect it.” Amrod watched Fëanor’s face as he spoke, but whatever his father was thinking, he kept it hidden. Somehow that was discouraging, and Amrod ran out of words. “So…thank you.”

“You shouldn’t—” Fëanor faltered, which was also horribly unlike him. “You shouldn’t have to thank me just for that. I wasn’t—I know I was not—I know I have failed you in so many ways, Pit—Amrod, but surely I was not so terrible a father that it surprises you that I can tell you apart.”

“There was quite a long stretch of time where we tried to make it hard for everyone to tell us apart, when we were younger. We thought it was funny. Ammë was the only one who was never fooled. And you can call me Pityo if you like,” said Amrod.

“But you do not prefer it.”

Amrod shrugged. “Not usually, but…well, it’s what you’ve always called me.” He had been ambivalent about his father-name for a long time, and Amras had been troubled for a little while after they got Fëanor’s letters upon their return from Ekkaia—Small and Last, they were called, and on paper it looked very much like names just jotted down just to round out a list. They had finally asked Nerdanel about it just before they came to Tirion, and she’d told them that they had been born early, and were alarmingly small, and that was all their father could think of through his fears for them. Last Finwë, she had added, with a small smile, had been meant as something a promise to her. No more children—for theirs had been her most difficult pregnancy, and Fëanor had been even more frightened by that. Then she had kissed them both and laughed about how quickly they had grown, and how wild they had been once they could crawl and walk, and how only Telufinwë had turned out to be at all accurate, but it was too late by then to change either name.

Fëanor was silent for a few moments, looking at Amrod like he was some kind of unsolvable puzzle. “Why are you here?” he asked finally, and it was almost like he was bracing himself for the answer, like he couldn’t actually believe any of them would want to come just to see him, just to help him with this strange project of his, clearing out their old home. And that was fair, Amrod supposed. He and Amras had been thinking and talking of coming to see him for years, now, but it wasn’t as though Fëanor could have known that. 

“I miss you, Atya,” Amrod said, and felt his throat tighten with the words.

Something in his father’s expression crumpled, and Amrod closed the distance between them. Fëanor held onto him as though he was afraid Amrod would disappear if he let go. Maglor hugged like that too, even still. Fëanor made a noise somewhere between laughter and a sob. “When did you grow so tall?” 

“That’s how you can best tell us apart,” Amrod told him. “I’m taller than Amras.”

“You are not!” Amras protested as he reappeared in the doorway with a basket in his hand. “He’s a dirty liar, Atya. I’m the taller one.” He set the basket down as Amrod stepped back so he could embrace Fëanor. “Don’t cry! We’re actually both shorter now than we were in Beleriand. Estë didn’t give us back bodies that had had any Ent draughts.”

“Any Ent—what?”

“Come sit down, and we’ll tell you all about it,” said Amras. “I found pies! They’re just like the ones they make at Imloth Ningloron, which I’m almost certain use recipe one of the halflings brought—I hope you like potatoes!”

They sat on the floor among the boxes and chests, and took turns talking about the Ents they had known and how shocked their brothers had been when they turned up at Himring afterward several inches taller than they’d been before. Caranthir and Celegorm had made many jokes about how Curufin should seek out the Ents and stay among them until he was at least as tall as Maglor. That had been during the Long Peace, when everything was still happy and hopeful. Afterward Fëanor asked them, a little tentatively, about what they had been doing since their return from Mandos, and so they told him about their little cottage in the mountains, about the lake where they swam in summer and skated in the winter. 

“We hung the prisms you made in the window,” Amras told him as they finished their lunch. 

“You could come visit us, if you wanted,” Amrod said. They’d talked about that, too, before coming to find Fëanor. “But I don’t know if you’d be very happy there. It’s very quiet, and we don’t…do much.”

“I don’t do very much either, these days,” Fëanor said. “Hence…” He gestured around them. 

“It is very quiet there,” said Amras. “But we go among the Laiquendi fairly often, and they’re very merry. Maybe you should come to visit us. From what Curvo has said, you could use some merriment.”

“But maybe not too soon,” Amrod said, glancing at Amras. “Cáno’s coming to Tirion later this year.”

Fëanor looked up. “What brings him here?” he asked.

“Curvo said he would tell you, but we might as well,” said Amras. “Míriel and Indis have asked Cáno to write a song for Finwë. A proper one to honor his memory. No one else has been able to do it, and it’s long overdue. So he’s going to be speaking to everyone he can find, because he says it can’t just be his words alone. That means he’s going to want to talk to you too.”

“Especially you,” Amrod said. 

Fëanor’s expression had shuttered, and it looked for a moment terribly forbidding, like he’d looked immediately after he’d come back to Formenos, after Maedhros and Maglor and Celegorm had dragged him back away, refusing to let him see Finwë’s body. Amrod glanced at Amras again, who had leaned back a little bit. Then Fëanor looked away, and the moment passed, and he only looked sad. “What sort of song is it to be?” he asked. 

“A lament of some kind, but what form it will take, we don’t know,” said Amras. “He’s going to ask what you would like to hear in a song for him—it can be anything, really. He says everything new he learns helps him shape the song, even if he doesn’t end up including it all in so many words. He’s spoken to Míriel and Indis, of course, and also to all of us, though I don’t think Curvo or Moryo have given him an answer yet.” 

“He also says he might not even be able to finish it,” Amrod said. 

“Why would he not finish it?” Fëanor asked. He looked back at them, having mastered himself. “I’ve never…I never knew him to leave a song unfinished before.”

“He said once he was never able to find words for any of us no matter how hard he tried,” said Amras. “But I think he will finish this one. He isn’t as weighed down by everything anymore, and it isn’t only his own words he’s got. In spite of what he says, he seems very determined to finish.” He gathered up the wrappings of their pies and went to dispose of them. 

After a moment, Amrod said, “Cáno isn’t angry anymore either, you know.” Fëanor didn’t answer, or look up at him. “I think he’s afraid.”

“I know that,” Fëanor said quietly. “You’re all afraid, aren’t you?”

“We have been,” said Amrod. “But Cáno is different…he was afraid of everything for a long time, and even after going to Lórien I think some of it lingers. He was afraid of us, before we met again, and even for a while afterward. He thought we would be angry with him.”

“For what?”

“He wasn’t able to save us. And he threw the Silmaril away.” Fëanor flinched as Amrod spoke. “We weren’t angry, of course—we never were, not with him, about any of it. I think he’s afraid you will be though.”

“I’m not,” Fëanor said. “I told him that I was glad he’d thrown it away.”

“Do you understand, though, why he might not believe that?” Even hearing it now, and seeing Fëanor’s face as he spoke, seeing that he spoke the truth, Amrod found it difficult to believe. The Silmarils had been everything to Fëanor, once. Worth storming back into Middle-earth and burning everything in their wake. Worth dying for. Worth killing for.

“I do.”

This quiet and withdrawn Fëanor was so strange, Amrod thought as Amras returned to them. He became a little more animated as they started to sort through the contents of the chests, mostly just by opening them to see what was inside, and then deciding which boxes could be thrown out and which should be kept. Some were filled with old clothes, long gone out of fashion and moth-eaten. Others were a jumble of knickknacks and toys, mostly already broken. Much of it brought back memories of much happier days, and after some coaxing Fëanor shared many stories—nothing important, mostly from the childhoods of their older brothers, before Amrod and Amras had been born, all of them silly, something all three of them could laugh at.

One smaller box was filled with wooden horses, all carved with such detail that Amrod would not have been surprised to see them move. “Your grandfather made those,” said Fëanor, his smile fading away as he knelt beside Amras, looking into the box. “He made them for Canafinwë.”

“You should definitely keep them, then,” said Amrod. Fëanor just nodded. 

They spent the rest of the afternoon further emptying the storage room, and then carting away all the contents to the palace, where Fëanor would throw out what wasn’t worth keeping, and send some to Curufin’s house, and give away most of the rest. Before they parted he embraced them both, holding on tightly. “I love you,” he said into their ears. “I love you both so much, Pityafinwë and Telufinwë.”

“We love you too, Atya—but don’t act as though we’re leaving forever! We didn’t come to Tirion just to spend one day with you and then disappear. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

They left Fëanor looking rather stunned at that, and made their way back to Curufin’s house. It was empty, but they found Curufin and Caranthir out in Curufin’s forge, bickering amicably over their differences in technique. They abandoned that as soon as Amrod and Amras came through the door. “How did it go?” Curufin asked.

“We helped him clear out most of one of the cellars, and learned all kinds of embarrassing things you all did when you were children,” Amras said. 

“It went much better than we expected, really,” Amrod added, “and we didn’t actually expect it to go badly.”

Curufin breathed a sigh, shoulders sagging a little. “Good.” 

“We also told him about the song Maglor’s writing, so you don’t have to worry about it,” Amras said.

Caranthir set down his hammer. “How did he take that?”

“I don’t really know. It’s very hard to tell what he’s thinking most of the time,” said Amrod. “He’s very quiet.”

“He’s not usually,” Curufin said. “He’s been very much his old self when he’s at court or when he visits here, until I came back last autumn and gave him the palantír.”

“How much of that has been an act all along, do you think?” Amrod asked. Curufin grimaced and did not answer.