A Hundred Miles Through the Desert by StarSpray  

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Thirty

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It was a relief to leave Tirion behind. The visit had been pleasant enough that Maedhros hadn’t even noticed the tension slowly coiling in him until it was released, almost as soon as they left the outskirts of the city behind and he could suddenly breathe more easily. “All right, Nelyo?” Celegorm asked. His mockingbird perched on his shoulder, looking around with its bright and curious eyes.

“Just glad to be going home,” Maedhros said. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Glad to be out of the city.”

“Have you named your bird yet?”

Celegorm rolled his eyes, but smiled. “Nallámo,” he said. 

They reached home late in the afternoon, and found Nerdanel just emerging from her workshop. “There you are!” she said, embracing each of them. “I missed you somehow when I passed through Tirion, Maitimo. Where are all your brothers?”

“Still in Tirion, but Maglor’s going to Alqualondë tomorrow,” Celegorm said, “and the twins are going off to the woods and taking Atar with them.”

“Are they really?” Nerdanel’s eyebrows rose. “He failed to mention that plan to me when we spoke the other day.”

“He probably had no idea when they intended to leave,” said Maedhros. “You know how Ambarussa are.”

Huan appeared the day after Maedhros and Celegorm arrived. Maedhros nearly tripped over him when he stepped outside, and found Aechen tucked between Huan’s paws, both of them sound asleep. Nerdanel was just behind him, and laughed quietly as Maedhros caught his balance. “Join me in my workshop, Maitimo? I need a model—just for the pose.”

“Of course, Ammë.”

“How was Tirion?” Nerdanel asked once she had Maedhros in the position she wanted, and had taken up her pencil.

“Busy,” Maedhros said, “but not bad. It was nice to visit Súriellë and Míraen.”

“How is Macalaurë’s song coming along?”

“I think it’s going well. He hasn’t spoken much about it. You know he’s going to stop and visit here after he and Daeron return from Alqualondë, so you can ask him then.”

“I know. I also know he spoke to your father—do you know how it went?”

“He says it went well, but I don’t know more than that, and he’s been preoccupied with his songwriting.” Maedhros felt his nose start to itch as he held still. “Do you know…?”

“The real purpose for it? Yes, I was present when Míriel told him.” Nerdanel frowned at her paper as she sketched out the general shape of the Maedhros’ body. “It was not an easy conversation for your father, at least, but he would not say anything more. Not that he says much to me in general.” 

“That doesn’t sound like him,” Maedhros said after a moment. The itch in his nose was growing, and he risked a glare from Nerdanel to scratch it. 

She didn’t glare, but she did say, without raising her head, “Your hand a little to the left, love. There, thank you. Did you see him when you were in Tirion?”

Maedhros thought about lying, or dodging the question. He swallowed a sigh and said, “Once.”

“It sounds as though it did not go well.”

“I don’t think it went well or badly. It was too brief for either. What are you going to turn this pose into?”

“I haven’t decided yet—I just want to get it on paper in case I do have an idea later.” Nerdanel fell silent, then. Outside Maedhros heard Celegorm talking to Huan and laughing a little, and the mockingbird singing a merry song. Inside the workshop the only sound was the scratch of Nerdanel’s pencil over the paper. Finally, she straightened, looking over the drawing and then at Maedhros. “That’ll do. Thank you, my love.” She came over to kiss Maedhros’ cheek as he relaxed his limbs. “I also heard about your aunt’s attempts at interference, though to be fair to her she really did stop here just to see you, since your brother put her rather soundly in her place. You know I won’t try to scold you into anything, if you wanted to speak to me of your father?”

“I know.” Maedhros rested his head on her shoulder for a moment as she put her arms around him, taking a few seconds to let himself pretend the whole world could be as simple and uncomplicated as this moment with his mother. “I just don’t have anything to say, except that I wish things were different.” There were also things he couldn’t tell Nerdanel, that he did not want to tell her—things that would just grieve her, and wouldn’t help anyone to be spoken aloud anyway.

“So do I.” Nerdanel kissed his forehead. “Do not let anyone push you into acting before you feel ready.”

“No fear of that.” Maedhros lifted his head and smiled at her. “I’m all right, Ammë. Really.”

Released from modeling, Maedhros went to his own studio, thinking about finally trying to turn one of the portraits in his sketchbook into a proper painting. As he flipped through the pages from the past year, Celegorm came to lean through the window. “What made you start drawing?” he asked. “When you came back from Mandos, I mean.”

“Ammë shoved a pencil and paper at me and then stood over me until I started doing something with them,” Maedhros said without looking up. “And then I just never stopped. Why?”

“Cáno thinks I should try making things.”

“It can’t hurt,” Maedhros said. He glanced up then. “Grandfather’s workshops are always open, you know. Or you can have one of my sketchbooks and some pencils, if it’s drawing you want to do.”

“I don’t know what I want to do, is the problem,” Celegorm said. 

“So pick one thing, and if you don’t like it pick something else,” Maedhros said. “Or do one thing in the morning and another in the afternoon. Don’t turn it into something bigger than it has to be.”

“It’s just that—I had one thing that was who I was, and now I’m not that anymore, and it feels…wrong,” Celegorm said. “And don’t tell me I can just go back to the hunt, because I don’t want to.”

“I wasn’t going to. What you do doesn’t have to define who you are. Come and sit down in here instead of looming through my window.”

“What are you doing?” Celegorm asked once he’d come inside to sit across the table from Maedhros.

“I’m going to paint a very terrible portrait. Should it be of Curvo or Moryo?”

“Curvo,” Celegorm said immediately. “And send it to Rundamírë so she can frame it and put it somewhere everyone can see it.”

Maedhros snorted. “I’m definitely not going to do that. It’s practice. I’m just being nice by not ruining your face for the first try.” He got up to choose a canvas and pick out the base colors he would need, while Celegorm paged through the sketchbook. As he rummaged around the shelves, Maedhros discovered a pair of jars shoved into the very back corner, silver and gently shimmering. He stared at them for a moment; he’d almost forgotten about them—ithildin, or something very like it. Fëanor had sent it as a gift, years ago, along with a letter full of pretty words and apologies that Maedhros still didn’t know whether he really believed. Maedhros moved a few other things back in front of them, and turned away. 

“These are good, Nelyo,” Celegorm said, as he flipped through several pages. “Why do you think the painting will be bad?”

“Because I’m still not very good at painting in general, and I’ve never painted a portrait before,” said Maedhros. “Why don’t you want to go back to Oromë?”

Celegorm made a face, and didn’t answer immediately. Maedhros just waited, busying himself with his palette and brushes. The sound of something falling and breaking reached them from Nerdanel’s workshop, followed by a string of passionate and creative curses. Celegorm snorted, and he and Maedhros shared a grin. The door to Maedhros’ studio, left ajar, nudged farther open, and both Aechen and Huan wandered in. “Keep away from my paints, Huan,” Maedhros warned. “I don’t need to be picking dog hair off my canvas.” Huan woofed and flopped down under the table, crowding his head against Celegorm’s feet. Aechen settled in between his big paws, purring softly. 

Maedhros rescued his sketchbook long enough to tear out the page he wanted: a sketch of Curufin he’d done from memory, after spending an afternoon with him and Celebrimbor in their workshop. Maedhros had managed to capture just the look he’d wanted—Curufin smiling a faintly, half his attention on something Celebrimbor had been saying and half on his work. It was so different from what Maedhros usually pictured when he thought of Curufin in his forge or workshop—those memories all from Beleriand—that he’d wanted to get it down on paper. 

“You know how the sight of blood makes Tyelpë sick?” Celegorm said after a little while, as he watched Maedhros copy the sketch out onto the canvas. 

“No,” said Maedhros. “Did something happen when we were in Tirion?”

“No. But you asked why I don’t want to go back to the hunt. I…can’t handle blood as well as I used to, either.”

Maedhros glanced at him. “You seemed fine when I was hurt.” He’d been torn up by a hill cat and then caught in a flash flood alongside Maglor, and had been a bloody mess afterward, on the way home from Ekkaia, in the episode referred to among themselves as the River Incident. It had been Curufin that stitched him up, but Celegorm had been right there the whole time. “Wasn’t it Cáno that was nearly sick?” He had a vague memory of Maglor doubled over in the grass, but most of that afternoon and evening remained hazy. He most clearly remembered Maglor panicking on the riverbank and then getting lost in some dark memory, and Maedhros hadn’t known how to bring him out of it. 

“I don’t know. I was sick, though—afterward.” Celegorm didn’t look up from the sketchbook, which was open to a sketch of Curufin’s daughters, sprawled on the carpet playing some sort of game. “You were asleep, and I left the camp for it, so I don’t think anyone else noticed.”

“Curvo would’ve noticed,” Maedhros said. 

“He never said anything. I just—I can’t do it anymore. I mean, I can do it if I have to, but—”

“I understand.” Maedhros lowered his pencil and examined the sketch on the canvas, comparing it to the paper, deliberately not looking back at Celegorm. He didn’t ask why Celegorm had remained so long with Oromë after his return. None of them spoke much about what they were all doing in between coming back from Mandos and their journey to Ekkaia. They’d all been trying to find themselves again, and missing everyone else without quite having the courage to do anything about it. “So I shouldn’t suggest healing as an alternative to hunting?”

“Probably not.”

“Why not just go over to Grandfather’s and ask him to teach you whatever he’s doing at the moment?” Maedhros said as he turned back to his paints. “He’d been thrilled to do it, and you won’t have to pick whatever it is.”

“I was never any good at making anything,” Celegorm said. 

“Only because you never wanted to practice. You can’t be good at something without being bad at it first.” Maedhros gestured to one of his earlier attempts at painting a tree, where it leaned against the wall. It was lopsided and the colors and shading were all wrong, but he knew the next time he attempted that tree or another one, it would be better, even if it wasn’t by very much. 

“Or maybe I’m just better at destroying things than creating them.”

“Huan, do you think he’ll stop sulking if you bite him?”

“Oh stop.” Celegorm lifted his feet off the floor to sit cross-legged in the chair, even though Huan didn’t so much as twitch an ear. “Did you like drawing from the beginning, or did that come later?”

“I didn’t like much of anything for a long time,” Maedhros said. “But it was easier to ignore everything else when I was drawing. It was also something I could see myself getting better at as time went on, and there was a certain satisfaction in that—and all of that is still true, on top of just enjoying it for itself now. Why don’t you try knitting or something? Grandmother Ennalótë spends all winter knitting when she can’t work in her garden. She says it’s calming. If you mess it up you can just unravel it and start over without having wasted any of the yarn, and you can carry it around like I can carry a sketchbook.”

“Maybe.” Celegorm flipped a page. “…Actually, that does sound like something I could do. I saw all that yarn piled up in Moryo’s workshop; does he have needles there too?”

“I have no idea, but if you can’t find any you can just ask Grandmother. Do you know how to knit?”

“Yes. I think so. Someone taught me once, I’m sure. I’ll figure it out.”

“Maybe ask Grandmother to show you the basics, at least,” Maedhros said, “so we don’t have to listen to you curse the yarn into oblivion whenever you drop a stitch.”

“Do you know how to knit?”

“In theory, but trying to find a way to do it one-handed is far more trouble than I care for.”

Celegorm got up and wrapped his arms around Maedhros for a moment, resting his head on his shoulder. “Thanks, Nelyo,” he said softly.

Maedhros straightened and hugged his free arm around Celegorm, kissing the top of his head. “There can be joy in the searching, too, you know. Just do what makes you happy, Tyelko. Don’t chase perfection or mastery—not if that isn’t what you want.”

“I know.”

Celegorm left, but Huan remained behind, apparently sound asleep under the table. Maedhros turned his attention to his paints. In spite of his own words about not worrying about being good at something—and he had meant them—it felt different and daunting to take his brush to a proper portrait, even one he neither expected nor particularly wanted to turn out well. He shook his head at himself and picked up a brush.

A few hours later Nerdanel came to the window to call him to lunch. “Carnistir and Lisgalen are here,” she added. “Is that Atarinkë? It’s very nice, Maitimo.”

Maedhros wrinkled his nose at it. “No it isn’t.”

“You are your own worst critic, of course. If this is your first venture into painting portraiture, it’s very good indeed. Come on; leave it for now, and go wash the paint out of your hair.”

“I have paint in my…?” Maedhros glanced down and sighed. That’s what he got for not pulling it back, he supposed. “Wonderful.”

Nerdanel laughed. “I’ll wash it for you, love.” 

“Hello, Maedhros!” Lisgalen said brightly when he stepped into the kitchen. “Hello, Aechen!” They knelt to pick up Aechen as he trotted past Maedhros to their outstretched hands. “Yes, I’m very happy to see you, too!”

“Celegorm!” Caranthir yelled from upstairs.

“What?” Celegorm yelled back, also from upstairs.

“Come get your stupid bird out of my room!”

“He’s not stupid—”

“He will be when I hit him with a pillow!”

“I missed this noise,” Nerdanel murmured, as though speaking to herself, “I did.” Lisgalen laughed, and Maedhros shook his head, following Nerdanel to the bathing chamber, where she filled a basin with hot water and sat him down in front of it so she could wash the paint out of his hair. He’d dripped more into it than he’d realized. “There are a couple of letters for you from Tirion,” Nerdanel said as she rubbed soap into the paint. “I took them to your room.”

“I don’t know what anyone can be writing about; I only just left.”

“The writing on them looks like Calissë and Náriel’s. I think Rundamírë has finally found a way to get them to practice their handwriting.”

“I hope they like stories about hedgehogs,” Maedhros said. “I don’t have much else to write back about.”

“I think they’ll love stories about hedgehogs, especially with illustrations,” Nerdanel said. She finished rinsing his hair and picked up a comb. “You would make a very good father yourself, you know, Maitimo.”

Maedhros’ first thought was that that was grossly untrue—but that was just old shadows out of Beleriand talking. “I’d have to find someone to have children with for that, and you know my heart has never turned that way.”

“Yes, I know.” She kissed his temple as she braided his hair down his back. “There, paint-free.”

“Thank you. I like being an uncle better, anyway. I get to have all the fun and leave Curvo to deal with the aftermath.”

Nerdanel laughed. “There is that. We’d better go make sure nothing has happened to poor Nallámo.”

Nallámo was perfectly fine, perched atop a a cabinet in the kitchen. Huan had returned to the house, and Celegorm and Caranthir were laughing instead of arguing. 

After lunch Maedhros retreated to his room to read the letters from his nieces. They were written very carefully, talking about what they had had for breakfast and how much they missed all the excitement of the holiday. He wrote them back each a note with a different silly story about what Aechen was getting up to with Huan; he wasn’t as good a storyteller as Maglor or Celegorm, but hopefully the little illustrations he included would make up for it. Caranthir and Celegorm both came into the room as he was in the middle of the second one. “If you’re going to scold me about brooding, I’ll toss you out the window,” he said without looking up, aware that his expression probably looked far more unhappy than he really was. “I’m drawing hedgehogs and butterflies for Náriel—even Tyelko can’t turn that into something worrisome.”

“Told you,” Caranthir said to Celegorm. 

“Those tapestries are new,” Celegorm said ignoring them both. “Where did they come from?”

“Míriel, I think. They were waiting for me when I got home.”

“That’s what it looks like now?” Celegorm asked, looking at the image of Himling Isle. “More of it’s standing than I would’ve thought.” He sat on Maedhros’ bed, crossing his legs. “How come you got letters from the girls and I didn’t?”

“Because Nelyo was the only one Rundamírë could definitely promise would write back,” Caranthir said. Celegorm made a face; Caranthir stuck out his tongue. Then he asked, “What was that project Daeron roped you into helping with?”

“He wanted help choosing colors for a gift he’s making Cáno,” said Celegorm. 

“And he asked you?”

Celegorm threw a pillow at him. “I know colors.”

“What’s the gift?” Maedhros asked, looking up from his drawings. 

“Some sort of instrument. Not a harp—a violin, maybe, or the bigger one.”

“A cello?” Caranthir asked. “I used to like hearing Cáno play that even more than the harp. I can’t remember when he last played anything else, though.”

“Maybe,” Celegorm said. “One of the ones you play with a bow, anyway—or maybe he’s making both. Daeron said it’s almost finished, he just need to add some sort of decoration. It’s also supposed to be a surprise.”

“Cáno won’t hear about it from us,” said Maedhros. 

“Having him talk at me about making instruments was better than the puns, anyway,” Celegorm said. “He gets very fidgety when Maglor isn’t there.”

“No he doesn’t,” said Caranthir. 

“I mean when Maglor’s gone for more than a few hours,” Celegorm said. “Like when he went to Formenos.”

“Maybe he’s just worried about his parents in Alqualondë,” said Caranthir. “He missed Maglor when he was away in Lórien but he wasn’t fidgety or restless with it, he was just sad.”

“What’s this about his parents?” Maedhros asked.

“Didn’t he or Cáno tell you?”

“No. I thought his parents were lost long ago.” Daeron hadn’t told Maedhros the full story—had only said, with a faint and crooked smile, that he couldn’t love or miss someone he’d never known. They’d been talking of Fëanor then, on the way back from Ekkaia when Maedhros and Maglor had both been a mess in more ways than one. Daeron had wanted to understand, and for whatever reason Maedhros had been easier for him to ask than Maglor. I had no shortage of guardians, he’d said, offering up a truth of his own as though in exchange for the truths Maedhros told him, but no parents. It had not seemed to truly bother him, but Maedhros wasn’t sure he would’ve been able to tell either way. He still didn’t know Daeron as well as the rest of his brothers, just because there hadn’t been enough time yet.

“They were lost,” said Celegorm, “and now they’re back—or they’ve been back, living in Alqualondë since the Years of the Trees. I bet there are some loremasters in Tirion itching to study how names changed along with language and how that makes finding family members out of Mandos difficult. Apparently they didn’t know that the most famous singer out of Doriath was their son until someone tracked them down and told them.”

“Is Daeron all right?” Maedhros asked. 

“He says he is,” Caranthir said, “but you know how that goes. He’s just as much a performer as Maglor used to be. I know he was troubled by the news last summer. It’s probably a good thing he didn’t learn about it until after you two came back from Lórien.”

“…You say his parents have been in Alqualondë since the Years of the Trees?” Maedhros said after a moment.

“Yes,” said Caranthir. “And—yes, I had the same thought, but I wasn’t going to bring it up if Daeron wasn’t.”

“I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to know with whom he’s been spending all his time,” Celegorm drawled, flopping back onto Maedhros’ pillows. “And delighted to see Maglor with him when they finally meet.”

“Most of the Teleri have put it behind them,” Caranthir said, though his tone was full of doubt. 

“I know how long it took Daeron to put everything behind him,” said Celegorm without lifting his head. “He told me it was the hardest thing he’d ever done. Stands to reason his family would be similar, but with less reason to put in the effort.”

“His feelings were a little more personal, though,” said Caranthir. 

“How do you know about it?” Maedhros asked Celegorm. 

“I asked him.”

“And he just told you? Because the first time you tried to ask him something personal—”

“It was well after we were all back from Ekkaia,” Celegorm said. “You were gone to Lórien, and I went afterward to Nienna.”

“It was the same year Daeron first came to Tirion and met Atya,” said Caranthir. “But also the year the rest of us started getting to know him better—so a good year overall, even as desperately as he was missing Maglor. He hid it pretty well, except from us.”

“Why did he go to Tirion?” Maedhros asked.

“Thingol came to visit for Midwinter,” Caranthir said, “and Daeron hadn’t yet seen the city—and he wanted to see us, whoever was around. Curvo says that’s what disturbed Atya about him. That someone like him from Doriath would be so willing to be our friend.”

“As much as I hate to agree with Atya about anything, he has a point,” said Celegorm. “I imagine there are plenty of Sindar who looked at him askance too.”

“He didn’t know the whole story,” Maedhros said, “unless someone had told him about Daeron and Maglor.”

“No one did, but it’s not as though Mandos dulled Atya’s wits—he could see just enough to come to the wrong conclusions, I suppose. I don’t know what passed between them, exactly. Daeron only ever said that they had words, and he was more worried about Curvo and Tyelpë having to deal with Atya afterward.”

“Daeron can handle himself against just about anyone,” Celegorm said, “but it’s always trickier when it’s your own family. I mean, look at us.”

“He’s got Maglor with him,” said Maedhros.

“That doesn’t mean we don’t get to worry about him too,” said Caranthir. 

Maedhros set aside his letters to his nieces and went to sit on the bed by Celegorm. Caranthir joined them, sprawling across both their laps. Maedhros leaned against the wall by the window, and glanced out of it to watch the river in the distance, gleaming under the sun. The plum orchard was all green, the growing fruits invisible from a distance. It would be weeks yet before that harvest began, and in the meantime they had baskets of peaches from Imloth Ningloron in the kitchen, waiting to be turned into preserves or eaten or baked into things.

He thought about telling his brothers about his meeting with Fëanor, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He didn’t want to talk about Fëanor, and didn’t even want to think about Losgar; he kept flinching back from the memories of it, which were oddly clear and yet disjointed at the same time, more like his memories of Angband than of anything that had come before. In some ways they were worse, though, so that wasn’t so surprising. “Did you find any knitting needles, Tyelko?”

“Yes, Grandmother gave me some, and taught me how to do it.”

“Don’t take any undyed yarn from my workshop,” Caranthir said. “Or the nice yarn. You can use some of that ugly yellow stuff.”

“The stuff that looks like Huan threw up on it?”

“Yes, that. I still need to figure out what went wrong, and how I want to fix it. It’ll be perfect for you to tangle up in knots in the meantime, though.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Celegorm said. “How’s the painting of Curvo, Nelyo?”

“Well, it’s recognizable,” said Maedhros. “The shading’s all wrong, though.” 

Caranthir left after a while, and Celegorm went too but came back with his knitting needles and a ball of horrifically yellow yarn just as Maedhros was returning to his desk. “Caranthir wasn’t joking when it called it ugly,” Maedhros said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that shade of yellow before.”

“Hopefully you never will again,” said Celegorm as he sat back down on Maedhros’ bed. “At least whatever I do won’t make it look worse.”

They spent the rest of the afternoon in quiet company, Maedhros sketching and Celegorm figuring out the most basic steps of knitting. Maedhros managed to surreptitiously draw him at it, brow furrowed in concentration as he looped the yarn around the needles. He cut it out of his sketchbook and slipped it into the envelope with his letters to Náriel and Calissë, knowing Curufin would find it funny. When they were called down to dinner and Celegorm stabbed his needles into the skein, Maedhros asked, “Do you like it, knitting?”

“I don’t know yet. But it’s harder than I expected, and I do like a challenge.”