Scorched Earth by Isilme_among_the_stars  

Dawn brings with it a muted red sky and another wave of suffocating humidity. Maedhros sits at the kitchen table, dishevelled and worn as if he had risen hours before the sun lifted its sorry head above the horizon. He passes a hand over bleary eyes and takes a long yawning breath before awareness of my presence jolts him out of dazed reverie. Rising, he looks upon me fondly with shadow-darkened eyes and plants a gentle kiss on my forehead.

“Good morning,” he says, pressing a warm mug of tea into my hands before slipping out to the forge. The words drop from his tongue casually, but I doubt my son has found any day truly good since he was returned to me from Mandos a few months ago. I turn the mug in my hands as his words echo in my mind. It is of beautiful form, glazed a deep cobalt blue with a convex shape that rests comfortably within cupped palms. One of Fëanor’s favourites of old. Considering how often I found this very mug perched precariously on cluttered workshop surfaces I often wonder at its survival. Ghosts of the mirror-silver eyes that once met mine over its lip play through my mind, bringing with them a slurry of longing and dull anger as I sip the comforting brew. How ironic that Maedhros, whose footsteps I can hear crunching along the path through the open window, seems just as lost to me as his father. Hours later, I return my son the favour. Toting a pitcher of chilled sencha laced with lemon to the forge, I find him hammering out nails.

Maedhros may not be the most inspired of smiths but he is capable, if not as formidable with a hammer as he once was (“I am out of practice,” he jokes ruefully, “have you ever seen a one-handed smith?” and I say nothing of seeing him revert to one-handed work, his right hovering forgotten near his navel as he turns out perfectly decent pieces). With precise blows, he beats a steady, repetitive rhythm, paying barely any mind to the metal as a taper takes shape. Once more his eyes are clouded with stale ruminations that tarry in some far off place.

I often find my son lost in forge work. The most basic and repetitive crafts are chosen when his mind takes itself on morbid journeys, stuck on tracks that wind in endless, distressing loops. Buckets full of nails appear, horseshoes are stored up far ahead of need, and reels of wire drawn for no immediate purpose. All are useful things, in the end, but almost meaningless at the time of making. Their true value lies in soothing, infinitely repeatable patterns. So today, when I see he makes nails, I suspect his dreams have not been kind.

My son dreams of flames. They are not loud. He does not jolt awake screaming or gasping for breath as Finrod still does, hounded by snarling teeth and the creeping chill of looming death. No, my eldest son was never one to advertise his private pain. A trait, it seems, that holds true even in the insensibility of sleep.

I found him as a child once, all of five years old, tender and tiny, washing his own bleeding knees after scraping them raw on a gravel path. Face pinched from the sting and eyes glassy with pain-pricked tears, he made not a sound nor asked for help. Maedhros schools his features well now, tucking all the loose ends of distress behind a cleverly chiselled mask, but there are still tells. I had always been able to decipher them before, given patience and a little time. Even returned and changed his distress does not easily pass me by, but it is harder to soothe him now that the emotion goes unacknowledged. Long gone is that sweet five year old who gratefully burrowed his face into my shoulder as I took to dabbing his grazed knees.

It is a strange thing, when one becomes a mother, to find yourself finely tuned to another being as never before. Yet stranger still it is to find the next child and the next, down to the seventh, so substantially different to the last that mothering must be learned anew. What a complex instrument the heart is, tuned simultaneously to so many keys! I knew all their little quirks. But now, I find my son plays from a scale my heart struggles to learn, stumbling over all of the sharps.

“Maedhros,” I say, gentle enough not to startle yet firm enough to garner attention, “you must be thirsty by now.”

A brief haze of confusion gives way to gratitude like northerly frost melting in the early morn as Maedhros reels back the black ruminations that have overtaken him this day. Taking pitcher and cups from my hand, he pours two helpings of tea and offers one to me.

"Take care not to over-exert yourself in this weather," I remind, sipping mine.

"I'll take that under advisement," he says and takes a long drink a little too performatively.

~oOo~

Stumbling in from the forge, Maedhros pulls his sweat soaked shirt over his head, mussing his russet hair as he divests himself of the fetid clinging thing.

“Here, catch,” I say, throwing him a wet cloth to wipe the forge-grime and cloying stickiness away. He fumbles slightly, but does not drop it, sighing unconsciously as the cool fabric leaves clean tracks on his skin.

“The first year at Himring I longed for the warmth of this place, so bitter was winter’s peak. Now I crave nothing so much as its chill.”

“Oh, the Ever-Cold’s summers were not so intolerable as fair Aman’s humidity, I presume?” I tease, hoping to coax amusement from irony, but Maedhros does not match my tone.

“They were non-existent. A facsimile of the mildest winters in truth. It is well our people had not forgotten how to build for the cold, or I should have frozen. Though perhaps then I would have returned to you sooner,” he says. The lopsided half-smile on his lips does not reach his eyes.

How little of Maitimo, the son that I named and loved, there is in this man before me. My own heart falls. There is a denuding, a collapse of the cultivated positivity I have erected as scaffolding around our interactions. A desolate feeling that has been growing within me peeks quietly through.

“It sounds a bleak place.”

As if we were a set of balances, a scintilla of lightness comes into Maedhros’s expression, his eyes bright and clear with fondness.

“On the contrary, it was just the opposite.”

Maedhros tells me of the stark beauty of a fortress home cresting a high, blunted hill. He weaves for me a song, its strains building until I am standing on a mountaintop watching fog rise, misty and pale from a dozen distant valleys. The world is bathed in warm greys, slate, sage and periwinkle. Fresh, clean air scours the world of ugliness, in the distance eagles call, and breath catches painfully in my throat.

"Beautiful, wasn't it?" he whispers.

"Yes," I agree, reverently.

If I close my eyes I could capture this treasure, etching every detail indelibly into memory. When I open them, breath halfway from my lungs and admiration gilding the tip of my tongue, Maedhros has slipped quietly away.

~oOo~

The oppressive humidity does not abate come sundown. Though I have thrown all of the windows open there is no reprieve, and stifling heat wakes me at some godless hour. I find myself wandering down the corridor to Maedhros's room, knowing his dreams grow worse in this weather. It is as if his skin feels its own heat trapped close and remembers that it had once burned. I hear fire crackling in small hitches of breath, see pain in restless scraping of knees against the sheets, and know that the flames have come to visit him once more.

I do not wake my son. To be jolted from dark dreams is often worse than allowing them to play their morbid pantomime through to its conclusion, at least for Maedhros. I learned this early on, thinking to quell suffering only for his eyes to open as dark and vacant as abandoned mine shafts. But there are other comforts I can provide. Soaking a swathe of muslin in the basin, I wring out disquiet along with the water trapped in its folds, but worry is stubborn and it races through my thoughts still.

In my dreams my sons wander at length, lost in pathless woods, ancient, sunless and foreboding. In the waking world, Maedhros breathes and moves before me, but is rarely truly there. I see the dream-wraith Maedhros superimposed over my living son, and am sure he never found a path out of that desolate place. The whispers in my dreams insist he never will. But these visions are no foresight, merely my fears manifest. In defiance I set my mind to laying down trails out of the dim reaches of despair. I prune errant patches of dense foliage until the sun shines in. Sometimes my tools are the comfort of a steaming mug in the hand, sometimes a cooling muslin in the deep of a stifling night.

Maedhros stirs as I spread the gauze, his eyes flickering open with full clarity. Gone is the cast of time-displaced memory that has been present much of the day.

“You looked uncomfortable,” I say by way of explanation, which is no reason for my intrusion really.

“I was,” he says, and I cannot tell if he is talking about heat or dreams.

Aware that I have crossed a threshold not mine to breach I take a step back, intending to exit quietly, but Maedhros speaks before I can turn.

“On nights like this," he says, "Maglor and I took the twins outside to sleep in hammocks, hoping to catch a breeze between the trees. When it was safe enough to do so.

“Elrond and I would end up more often than not at the foot of an old maple. He suffocated in that hammock when night terrors came, but not when he was grounded in my arms. It is a strange thing to long for, but I miss those nights.”

I think I understand. Long nights with a fretful infant stretched on toward the mingling as fatigue and sleep-longing pooled at my ankles, tenderness blooming in my heart. There was a stillness in the night untouchable by day, somewhere between the cricket’s chorus and the fireflies’ luculent display. To look into your child’s eyes when all is still around you and the world falls away? There is nothing like it within Arda’s circles, or beyond. On the weariest of nights, their father would join me, tucking stray strands of hair behind my ear as we shared wonder at the nascent soul in my arms. Fëanor was a completion before he became a rending, an intimate triangulation of endearment joining in the twilight. Had his care and the twins’ trust come, as ours once did, without the child suffering so, my son would not be this torn. We both rue the loss of a time when care was simpler: an offering, an acceptance and the succour that followed, not the maze littered with pitfalls and traps it has now become.

“It is not so strange,” I say. “Our hearts are drawn to those we love.”

My weary son hums in agreement and reaches to touch my hand. We are two ragged ends of an old bond, broken and snapping storm-blown, harried by the unkind winds of fate. Before I can grasp it the offering is drawn away. I feel like a fisher-woman watching the glint of scales rippling beneath the water’s surface, seeing the snap of the line gone taut, only when the rod is taken to hand there is no weight, no pull at all. The fish has darted away, and my son is a closed book.

Maedhros’s eyes are sad, his address too formal. “My thanks, Amil.”

“Goodnight, Maitimo.”

Closing the door softly behind me feels like an admission of defeat. 

~oOo~

Maedhros is stormy-eyed and tight-lipped over his tea this morning.

“I set out for Alqualondë tomorrow,” I remind him.

“Ah, the commission for uncle Finarfin. I had forgotten.”

“Mm, I wish to make a start on that project now that Celebrían’s water feature is almost finished. You know how well idle periods and I get along.”

Maedhros hides an amused smile.

“Finrod has been eager to take you out on his new boat I am told. Something about the chance to show you up on his own turf?”

A snort escapes him, which is not quite a laugh but at least his eyes are brighter.

“There’s a story behind that, I’m sure.”

“The last time Maglor and I took Finrod out for a hunt on Fëanorian land,” he recounts, “our cousin discovered a new sentient species. Thought I doubt he is likely to repeat that feat in the Bay of Eldamar.”

We are both breathless with mirth at that.

“You won’t come?”

His polite refusal is exactly what I expected, though I had hoped Maedhros would reconsider. The open road would do him good. With wild forests at our backs and valleys stretching out ahead of us my family was ever most at ease. Oh, the stories I would hear my sons tell under the stars! We were never like this before; an entire network of the unknowable hidden between us in the dark, like karst caves eroded from the Pelóri where its fingers reach for the coast. I, no caver equipped to map the murky depths, creep with care to peer over the edge of sink holes for the little their sunken grottos may reveal. Maedhros, long habituated to the dark, will not dare more than a fleeting dart into the light. How am I to know him this way?

My son has told me little of what passed in Beleriand. Still, stories gather like dust trapped in hidden nooks, finding their way to me through hushed whispers and hurled accusations. I collect them like a good anthropologist, twisting the evidence into endless configurations as I try to understand. Too often my stomach turns with dread and fury, but there is also good. Not every word I hear is unsympathetic. Yet even the kindest, most balanced testimonies are laced with judgement; manifold interpretations imposed upon my son in which he is voiceless. I know almost nothing of Maedhros’s experience in Beleriand. Nothing but pale scraps.

~oOo~

“Do you know much about the twins?” I ask Eärwen, who cradles a tiny golden-haired infant in her arms. The child’s brow creases as she dreams.

“Your boys? Or Elwing’s?” she clarifies with a voice pitched carefully so as not to wake the child. Finrod’s daughter sleeps as lightly as he. Amarië, when she has the chance, sleeps heavily in the comfortable ocean-facing room two doors down from the one in which we sit.

“Elwing’s.”

“A little,” she admits, which promises to be more than I know.

“I think Maitimo truly cared for the boys. He speaks of them with the same soft look his father had when he beheld our children as babes.”

Eärwen purses her lips. Even after ages have passed my husband is a sore subject. She swallows down the bitterness, as we have become so good at doing, answering me with more gentleness than I expect. I wonder, how long will we sup on lemons and feign sweetness on our tongues?

“That is the impression I had, yes.”

I cock my head slightly, wishing to know more yet hesitant to ask. Tidbits of hope too often come with large servings of something more painful, as many left behind mothers know. Even Eärwen with her golden children, largely beyond reproach as mine can in no way claim to be, is not immune. She became a tempest the day Finrod returned bearing the news that Aegnor never would, too brokenhearted over unrequited love departed beyond the circles of this world. Howls rattled her windows. I sped my feet, but not my heart, away from her door that day, too bitter to offer the comfort she deserved. Eärwen turns to me sometimes with a knowing look in her eye as her fingers alight upon a statuette gracing her mantle. I know where this came from, that look says, as she caresses the flame-haired elf standing tall amid lissuin flowers, though I have never told her I carved it. Some things are too painful for bald words. Eärwen weaves stories into skilful shapes, drawing silhouettes around my need with careful words that will not unduly wound.

“They cried the night Finarfin first met them, you know? Or at least one of them did. Sounds carried through canvas in the war camps, but no-one went in to check. The air around Maglor hung heavy with conflicted grief when he rode away. Maedhros had not come at all, which vexed Finarfin, since he had been expecting to discuss strategy. But I think, perhaps Maitimo could not bear to be there. They were of age, as far as one can tell with half-elves, but still so very young. No one could escape the fighting in Beleriand you understand. It was usual for the young to join the ranks of the soldiery as soon as they came of age. And the twins wanted to fight.

“Gil-Galad knew them both passingly well, not from early childhood, but from taking counsel with your eldest boys. As the war dragged on all elves found themselves allies, you see. Past grievances were swept aside for a time, for Orodreth and Thingol’s refusals had not been forgotten. None were keen to tempt fate for a repeat of the Nírnaeth. Gil-Galad and Maedhros, both in the South, found themselves thrust together into an alliance less grudging than either had first expected.”

“Fingon’s boy? Was he much like his father?”

Eärwen laughed, “Finarfin says he was, yes.”

“I expect that helped.”

“It cannot have hurt. Well, Gil-Galad appointed the elder twin as his herald then sent him straight back to Maedhros with a summons, a polite expression of thanks and mild confusion at the appearance of the new recruits. When he did come he would not meet Finarfin or Gil-Galad’s eyes.”

“Why?”

“This was as they pressed Morgoth further north and were on the brink of re-forming a leaguer. It seems your son had figured out exactly how to retake the necessary ground, but at well nigh unacceptable risk. Maedhros did not intend to thrust that risk upon any other than he and his troops. He did it too. Captured back that stretch of land through sheer grit, determination and setting a fire in the belly of his men.”

So he had counted the risk to the twins unacceptable and sent them away.

“That sounds like my son,” I admit darkly.

“It seems the younger twin, though a highly capable warrior, had a habit of taking on more risk than Gil-Galad liked-”

“I wonder where he learned that from,” I mutter.

“After one too many close calls, Gil-Galad made him a captain, attached him to an Edain regiment and placed them directly under Maedhros and Maglor’s purview. Maedhros was furious when he heard why. Finarfin could hear him correcting the young man from several tents over. I am told, it was much like hearing himself chastise Galadriel when she was young, ungovernable and had scared us half to death.”

I sigh deeply. “He is so changed, Eärwen. I could not imagine the creature I currently call my son doing such things, commanding in such a way.”

“Give him time, Nerdanel. Finrod was unrecognisable at first, but he came back to himself in time.”

“That’s just the thing. I do not yet know if Maitimo will.”

Eärwen sighs, and there is a shift. Something small and hurting, but honest that comes into her demeanour. Her eyes are far away as she speaks, as if they stared directly into the past.

“Our home was so quiet when Finrod returned. Finarfin was gone, the streets of Tirion emptied out anew for the war that had stolen him from me. The world was strangely vacant for a second time, and there was no darkness to hide its extent. The sun shone brightly on our lack. Do you remember?”

“I do.”

I remember it clear as yesterday. Flowers spread before the feet of our departing troops browned and withered, blown ceaselessly about the streets for no one had the heart to remove them. Buildings with boarded windows were rife, entire streets abandoned in the outer city. We were adrift again.

“Then word came to me that Finrod was to be returned, and I felt truly glad for the first time in months. Ah, I thought, there shall be music again, but I was mistaken. Not only did he fail to lift his voice in song for months, but his presence seemed almost to leech the sound from any place he entered. Can you imagine a world in which, for Finrod, the birds will not sing?”

Eärwen’s eldest is her nightingale as Maglor is mine, bounding through the world with a song filling their chest and an endless, unfinished melody floating from their lips. A silent Finrod is as haunting a thought as a reticent, deferential Maedhros.

“I learned to live with the silence, until one afternoon, almost a year back among us, there he was, humming absently as he ambled toward me in the hall. Only later did I realise I’d been hearing snatches of song for the last week.” Eärwen looks me in the eye. “He will not be the same. Valar know mine is not. But enough of his essential spirit remains, and it will bloom again in time.”

Let it not be said that all my sons’ hubris came from their father. I too can be a proud creature. Yet my shoulders, stiff as I try to hold them, betray the suggestion of trembling. Eärwen does me the courtesy of remaining silent on the matter, turning her gaze away, the look a little too pained in her eyes. She too long ago learned to swallow her sorrows, to stand firm as a mighty cliff before the swelling tide. But we are not immune to erosion, us strong, proud women who have fashioned ourselves of stone.

The child in Eärwen’s arms begins to rouse, her frown deepening as a small fist comes to her lips to be mouthed. That is my cue to leave. As we part Eärwen leans in for a comforting embrace.

“Ask Finrod if you wish to know more. He met with Elros in Númenor a number of times before his death.”

Finrod cannot help me I fear, and so I do not seek him out, but take the hope she gives with both hands. One day, perhaps, Maedhros will speak more freely. 

 ~oOo~

When I return home Maedhros is in an unexpectedly lighthearted mood. Small snatches of a hummed tune buzz on his lips as he bends to appraise the fish I have frying on the stove.

“That smells good,” he says with an appreciative sniff, picking up a spatula and inserting himself into the cooking process as naturally as breathing. I slap his hand away.

“What? Aren’t menfolk meant to do the cooking?”

Is that a joke I detect? That is something to lay hope on.

“Don’t you dare! I still haven’t quite gotten over the novelty of having a son to cook for again.”

“As you wish,” he acquiesces, “I shall have to see to the needs of the cook instead.”

Amused, Maedhros pours two glasses of white wine and hands one to me. Plates appear on the bench before me, anticipating the timing for their requirement perfectly. As the first bite fairly melts on my tongue I almost sigh with pleasure. My son actually does.

“Was the fare you enjoyed in Beleriand this good?” I ask with an attempt at casualness that does not come off so well as I had hoped. His look tells me he knows perfectly well what I am doing and wishes I would not ruin a perfectly amiable evening by doing so.

“You need not talk of it if you do not wish.”

A small, almost apologetic smile twitches at the side of Maedhros’s mouth as he takes another bite. It is the kind that hints at unfairly negative self-appraisal beneath the surface that I do not wish to go unchallenged.

“Eärwen tells me it is not easy for Finrod or Finarfin to speak of Beleriand either, even the mundane things,” I reassure him.

Maedhros places his knife and fork down with deliberate care.

“Eärwen. Of course.”

“Is it a crime to speak to your aunt now?”

“Not that I am aware of.”

“But you object.”

Maedhros's face is slowly turning redder than his hair, but his voice remains even. “I do if you are talking about me.”

“You are still my son and I worry about you. Speaking to Eärwen sets those fears in their rightful place. That is all.”

“Do not try to tell me you have not gone fishing for information.”

Oh, I am burning now too. I cannot stop my voice from beginning to rise. “And if I wish for the ugly rumours about you to be set straight, if I wish to hear that your life was not all oath and blood and doom, what of it?”

Maedhros rises to his feet. He does not shout, not like his father would have, but that does not mean he is not incandescent with rage. “Has it occurred to you that there are things you will not care to hear? That I do not wish for you to know?”

“Like what, Maitimo? Tell me, what can be worse than that vile hearsay?”

“That the hearsay does not even cover half of it, Amil! That I am a monster. Not figuratively, truly!”

The chair grates against the floor as Maedhros shoves it and nearly tips as he stalks off. I let him go unchallenged. He comes to me as I rest on the chaise later, all apology.

“I do not know why I spoke that way,” he offers, contrite, carrying a chair over so he may sit close.

This appearance alone marks a change. He would not have been the one to approach a bare week ago, instead waiting me out until the argument was forgotten. He would not have spoken with enough passion for our conversation to be considered an argument then.

“Perhaps I press too much,” I concede.

Maedhros shakes his head, lips held thin against one another. “You only asked. You did not press.”

I cannot stand the minimisation beneath those words, the way his head falls forward so that hair falls over his eyes.

“Not everyone thinks poorly of you, you know. When I speak about you with our more temperate kin, it is for the kind words they share. Many knew you as more than a monster, Maitimo. When those hateful bile-filled stories are making the rounds I need to be reminded of that.”

He takes my hand in his own and begins kneading away tension I did not even realise was there. “Perhaps that is worse. Knowing I was not wholly given over to darkness and still chose it.”

Those words are so plaintive! Like a kitten mewling in the night from a pitfall of their own making. It irks me, this glimmer of self-pity.

“The past cannot be changed,” I say, striving for kindness despite the exasperation I feel, “you do not choose it now.”

“I do not choose anything of significance these days, frankly,” he says ruefully.

“This is very nice. Small kindnesses should not be so quickly swept aside.”

There it is, a half-smile and a true one at that.

“Káno used to do this for me,” he explains, digging strong fingers into the meaty flesh beneath my thumb. Ah, how good this feels.

“Mm?”

“My hand would cramp terribly, especially at the beginning. I was not patient at all. Nor would I stop until I could no longer grasp a pen or sword. Or, on one memorable occasion, could not let go of it.”

I chuckle and wince at that, imagining the pain of such a spasm.

“Káno would sit with the kind of patience I did not possess and massage every muscle until they were supple and functional again, chiding me all the while.”

“How very like Makalaurë.” And how very like Maedhros, rare amongst my sons in his patience for others, to run short on it for himself.

“I missed him when I removed to Himring and he to the Gap,” Maedhros confesses.

This does not surprise me. “The two of you were always close.”

Maedhros sighs, and there is a deep well of sadness to the sound.

“Come with me to Celebrían’s next week,” I coax, “I could use your strong arms.”

It was not a mistake to ask. There is longing mingled with the uncertainty passing across his face.

“She’ll take it as a kindness, Maitimo, not an assault.”

And he agrees, though I am not sure he is entirely happy about it.

~oOo~

“Ah, you are a miracle worker!” Celebrían’s eyes are closed and her head tilted to the side as she listens.

“I would not say that,” I argue, but her mind is too fixed on the new cascade to heed my words.

“Oh, I have missed that sound.”

The carvings laid into the stone are designed in such a way as to harry the water passing over, so that the sound of its plummet is magnified, mimicking a much larger falls. Imladris, the place she unthinkingly still names as home, rang with the sound of the Loudwater tumbling into the hidden valley. In whispers, under the protective arbour of these very trees, Celebrían confessed it was that sound, the sound of coming home, not the strong arms of her son carrying her away from the cruelty of Redhorn pass, that convinced her she would survive. The image that telling lodged in my mind is hard to reconcile with the vibrant woman who stands before me today.

“It is not quite the same, of course,” Celebrían goes on, “but similar enough to put my heart at ease.” Deep lungfuls of afternoon air swell her chest, and there is such a look of relief on her face that I believe her words true.

“I am glad to hear it.”

Sincere eyes flash open and fix on Maedhros, who sits beside the fountain oddly serene, sweat still glistening on his brow and dirt beneath his fingernails from digging it into its new home.

“Thank you, Maedhros. For your help.”

He brushes her off. “It is nothing.”

Celebrían’s expression is strangely conflicted as she takes him in, caught somewhere between drawing near and leaping back. It has been there all day if one cared to look. Maedhros has not missed it either. It is surprising sometimes, how thoroughly a seven foot tall, flame-haired elf can shrink into the landscape.

“I do not count it nothing,” she says, resolving, quite deliberately I think, to step closer, but not without trepidation. Shy reciprocation is her reward.

“I expect Elrond shall be glad of it too when he comes. Most of his homes were bounded by water. Though I do not know which sound he found more comforting, the river or the sea.”

“The river,” Celebrían answers without hesitation.

 ~oOo~

Our work complete, I send my son ahead to ready our horse. Trudging the path toward the stable after a few last inspections, I find that Maedhros has stumbled into a roadblock of his own. The air trembles with an angry, raised voice, pulling me up short.

“They were my sons! And you… you did not even hesitate. Why? How could you…” The elf, whoever he is, sounds on the brink of breathless, incoherent rage.

“I am sorry,” Maedhros’s voice follows, almost diffident.

“No. No! How dare you show your face here? You have no right,” the elf spits.

“If you will let me pass, I was preparing to leave,” Maedhros answers with forced calm.

The elf, too heated to mind the logic of that request, lets loose a string of vitriol that makes my eyes water. Maedhros makes no answer until the sharp words have transmuted to a staccato of panting breaths.

“I am sorry,” he says. “Those words fall far short of adequate, and yet, there is little else I can say.”

Bright-eyed and red-cheeked, a tall Sinda stalks past me a moment later, too wrapped up in his own emotion to mind my presence. Maedhros, by contrast, is a picture of studied calm when I join him in the stable. There is little to suggest he has been dressed down so soundly as he settles the harness over our draught-horse’s shoulders, beside a faint tremble in his fingers. 

 ~oOo~

As the early morning heat begins to abate the next day I find my feet turning toward the forge, thinking to join Maedhros in the sanctuary I am certain he will have sought. Sure enough, there he is, hammer gripped securely in his left hand, right once more forgotten as he holds a metal rod between powerful legs

“Would you teach me how to do that?” I ask.

The metal clangs as he starts, his grip hastily adjusted so the rod is held in his right. There is more than mere embarrassment in the turning away of his face. How I wish I could scrape the vellum of his soul clean of such petty, clinging shames.

“Why?”

“Call it morbid curiosity,” I say, fetching my own tools. No is not an answer in my vocabulary this morning.

Hefting the hammer in my left hand, I watch the etching on its head briefly catch the light. Fëanor added a small star above the maker’s mark belonging to my father’s kin after we married; a symbol of belonging, our families joined. My heart constricts a little as it always does when I behold his handiwork. How bare the space between my ribs suddenly feels.

“How did you adapt so many tasks for one hand? I have often wondered.”

The anvil stands between Maedhros and I, a bulwark and a challenge both. I am met with silence and a measured stare.

“You are not expected to turn back the years completely, to be what you were in the days of the Trees once more. You cannot simply un-become all that you were in Beleriand, recovered hand or not.”

Maedhros snarls. “Is that not what everyone wishes?”

Such an expression would intimidate most, but I have faced down his fire before. I am undaunted. “You are not the only one whose soul now wears a different shape. We have all changed. Humour me.”

Exasperation is perhaps too mild a word for it. Maedhros’s jaw is tighter than a coiled snake, but he does teach me. And tension slowly evaporates from the room, dissipated by grudging laughter and fond barbs as I forge the most crooked piece you have ever seen.

“Not my best work,” I judge it thoughtfully.

“Mine was atrocious at first,” Maedhros remarks mildly, running a finger along one imperfect edge.

“Don’t you tire of the performance?”

He looks askance at me.

“Who is this mild-mannered man and what has he done with my son?”

Bitterness crowds into the room, nestling among the tang of iron and sweat.

“Even you want me to be something I am not.”

There is truth in that, or at least there once was. It is easy to want for what we have lost, to run into the dark after a lost cause, too blinded in our grief to understand there was never any hope of getting it back. That is not my path. It never has been, harder and more demanding though the terrain of acceptance may be.

“No, but I do wish to learn who you have become, for he too is someone I can love. Truly.” This last word given for the shaky look my son wears.

Maedhros’s hand comes to rest over my own.

“Why did you let that elf’s wrathful words go unanswered yesterday?” I ask.

“Was he wrong?”

“I do not think he was wholly right.”

“Some acts are indefensible, Amil.”

“Does that make you into a pell, to endure whatever abuse is meted out by the wronged in their pain?”

“Had you been there, had you seen, you might not begrudge them their hundred lashes each.”

“Do you really think retribution serves them any better than it did you?”

Silence agglutinates like calcite, stony and rough between us. It is not a void to be filled in time, as Eärwen’s reassurances seemed to suggest, but a thing that grows harder with each misstep or harsh truth spoken. Though it can be carved still, the danger remains it will become as impenetrable as marble.

“You aren’t doing anyone favours letting them whip you to pieces, Maedhros.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” he says. 

 ~oOo~

Bruised clouds roll in late in the evening, pregnant with the promise of meteorological violence on the horizon. Sleep is swathed in a prelude to the storm this night, damp and uncomfortable. I grumble when the lightning begins to strike and the air to quake around it, irritated with premature awakening. The sky rumbles, peevish and ineffectual, a giant tamed, as I lay waiting for the rain. Soon, another voice rises in counterpoint, answering the thunder in a tongue thick with muddied sibilants and throaty plosives. And though there are only two souls in this house it takes an embarrassingly long time to recognise the voice as my son’s: Maedhros in converse with the storm, speaking a language I have never heard before, harsh to my ears.

Thunder deepens and his voice rises, spitting consonants as if they soured his tongue. When I stand on the threshold, driven by a twining of mother’s attentiveness and morbid curiosity, I see his face twists with each pronouncement, the expression writ there uglier than words. And this is the first thing since his return that truly frightens me. Who is this creature? If this is the face hapless elves saw behind his blade, a shadow of the monster Maedhros claims to have been, are they justified in railing against him now?

I may as well be marble, standing useless in the doorway, feet as rooted as the foundations of a mountain. There I stay until the storm rolls away, thunder grumbles its last grievances and Maedhros’s voice softens around words I recognise once more. With stillness thick and suffocating around me, I turn and flee before my son can wake. 

 ~oOo~

When the rains come they wash the earth clean and drain humidity from the sky. In the relief that follows I let silence grow, let it stretch on for days and weeks until Maedhros drags me out under the stars one quiet night. Nestled against the base of a wizened plumeria tree, our legs and words unspool before us.

Night has ever been a powerful truth serum. As any parent knows, the deepest conversations are had after the lamp is snuffed. This was ever when Caranthir's storm-cloud outbursts broke into a monsoon of sobbing tears, when Maglor slid the performer's mask beneath his pillow, confessing insecurity after insecurity, and when Maedhros bared his heart.

My oldest child looks upon me with eyes as curiously intense as the night he was born, though they hold none of that innocence. “Something is wrong. Don’t deny it. You’ve been as tight lipped as a clam. It’s not like you.”

Perhaps it is the sweet fragrance drifting down from the branches above that emboldens me, or the warmth of his hand resting affectionately on my shoulder. I risk a misstep in the hopes of chipping away at the distance between us. “How many languages are you fluent in these days?”

Maedhros smirks mischievously. “Are we counting dialects, or distinct languages only?”

“Don’t start. I thought I’d seen the back of that particular debate when your father left.”

“You’ll have to elaborate, ammë, I don’t quite follow.”

The sounds are not terribly accurate, formed by my unfamiliar tongue, but close enough for Maedhros to understand which language I am enquiring about.

“Ah,” he says, tracing the constellations with his eyes as he gathers himself, “that is orkish.”

Between us the silence has become expectant as a trickle of water eroding limestone. It does not grow, only waits.

“More accurately,” he goes on after a time, “it is one of many languages used by orcs and slaves in Angband named as such. This one I believe descended from an ancient elvish tongue. The sounds are very changed, but if you listen carefully you can hear in it echoes of our own.”

Speaking a few sentences, he demonstrates until I can identify familiar patterns in the language. While unpalatable to my ears still, it does not sound quite so harsh spoken by Maedhros in a soft voice with a face that is wistful rather than frightening.

“Maglor started to record it, but never finished. I did not have a complete vocabulary to share with him.”

“You do not find it unpleasant?”

“No more than the tongue of the dwarves. Curufin spoke that fluently and liked it well enough, though many found it unlovely. Father could have spent centuries studying all the languages of the peoples we lived among.”

Our thoughts turn to Fëanor, whose fascination for languages is one of the kinder aspects of his legacy. Fëanor, who would have found great satisfaction knowing two of his sons at least continued on his passion for linguistics. What a rich playground he would have found Middle Earth, had he much time to explore it before his death! We talk long into the evening, Maedhros sharing stories of his father’s time in Beleriand, which while brief and fraught, was not wholly unmarked by joy.

Perhaps we tempted fate, speaking as we did, for though the night is pleasant enough, it is not long after we retire that I wake to Maedhros calling out from sleep plagued with troubling dreams.

“Don’t… don’t do it…” he says, his voice breaking.

Eyes green-tinged grey as a storm tossed lake blink open, raw and pained as I step lightly across the room, coming to kneel at his bedside.

“It burned my fingers,” Maedhros whispers, still sleep-blurred and aching.

One of the silmarils, I guess. I know he held one as he died.

“I know, but it would do so no longer,” I soothe, running fingers through sweat-dampened hair, lifting it carefully from the back of his flushed neck.

Maedhros frowns. “No, not the jewel. Father’s armour.”

“What?”

“We held him as he died, ammë. He was not alone, at the end. Never forsaken. Never less than unreservedly loved.”

He tells me then of the flash point of Fëanor’s passing, so swift and hot that the burning reek assailing my sons’ senses in its wake was not from their father, but Curufin’s hair. My whip smart fifth son, with wilful disbelief at the evidence before his own eyes, still bent over his father as he lit up, making desperate attempts to save the unsavable. Maedhros’s hands had been on Fëanor’s shoulders, trying vainly to hold his father steady with measured reassurance as pain arced through his failing body. He tells me how Curufin’s eyes turned hard and cold after that, and how plunging their scalds into snowmelt to lessen the sting felt like a betrayal to Fëanor’s memory so soon after his passing.

Long overdue tears slide down his cheeks. “After everything, we still loved him enough to damn ourselves anew, swearing that accursed oath again at his urging. But even now, after all that has passed, I cannot stop loving him. You can’t either, can you?”

I am not sure when my hand came to press against my mouth, having travelled there of its own accord. But I do know with surety that this is the first we have wept together, truly wept, for all that has been lost. My words shake. “He burned us all, Maitimo. I did not follow him into the flames then, and I would not now. Even so, I love him still.”

“I burned more than he before the end, ammë.”

“And yet you are here, and he is not. There is something in that.”

“Do not start on the virtues of repentance, please. I have had a gutful of that. What good has a downcast, penitent gaze achieved? They still spit venom at me, and why shouldn’t they when they still bitterly remember my sword rending their flesh? Many would be happier if I had been sent to the void.”

Annoyance flares within me at the bitterness he spews and my words come out harsher than they ought. “Yes, yes. There is scorched earth behind you. Spare me. You have two good feet, sturdy ground beneath them and choice in the path you travel. Námo clearly thought you would choose a fair one since he saw fit to release you. He does not do so blindly.”

Chastened, Maedhros asks me, “Is it blasphemy, to think him a fool?”

“To think it? No. Though I would not say it to his face.”

~oOo~

Maedhros rises late the next morning. I am yawning over an empty mug, recently drained of tea when he comes to kiss me on the forehead.

“Would you like another?”

“If you do not mind.”

He gives a small chuckle before crossing the room to refill the kettle and set it back on the stove.

“What are you thinking of?” I am curious, but careful not to press.

“That tone you used? It is exactly how Fingon used to ask me for something he wished when he visited Himring. He was Crown Prince, ammë! He could have ordered me about as imperiously as he liked, but no. Instead he would always tack on that deferential little ‘if you would not mind’ because he did not like to put me out.”

He speaks with such fondness.

“I am glad you found each other again. It was a good friendship the two of you had.”

“I don’t think it did Fingon much good in the end.”

Ah, the guilt rears its ugly head again. All of the stories carried back across the sea shocked and saddened us. But when I first learned of Fingon’s death I wept, horrified to discover that charming boy who used to smile up at me so disarmingly had met an end that eclipsed the violence of even Finwë’s. It is probably natural that Maedhros feels responsible, or at least it is highly congruous with his nature. But I do not think that Fingon would agree.

“Does he blame you?” I ask pointedly.

“No more than I blamed him for this,” he says, holding up his right hand.

“Ah, so you’ve seen each other then? I was wondering when you would.”

“A few times,” Maedhros admits in such a sheepish way that I realise it has likely been more than a few.

“Here? While I was in Alqualondë?” I guess.

That earns me flushed cheeks.

“You do not mind, do you?” He asks, and I struggle to understand why there seems so much shame wrapped up in that statement.

“Of course not. He can come as much as he likes if it makes the both of you happy.”

The floor is really not so interesting as my son suddenly makes it seem.

“You are allowed to be happy, Maitimo.”

When he nods, it is at the tiles, not me, and the movement is small and uncertain.

The two of them got into such mischief when they were small. Fingon’s laughter bubbled down the halls to the beat of hurrying feet as Maedhros tried to hush him. I’d catch them in hidden corners, crumbs on their faces, having pilfered something sweet from the larder. When did such simple pleasures grow so complex?

“I assume that Fingon has made his peace with what became of you after his death? He at least was not under the illusion that you were a paragon of virtue.”

“He was angry,” Maedhros admits, “Very angry. I think he still is, but he is willing to give me a chance.”

“Good, you deserve that.”

He considers this. “I don’t know if the chance is deserved, but I certainly do not intend to waste it.”

~oOo~

When I next travel to Alqualondë with a portfolio of sketches for Finarfin to peruse, Maedhros comes and brings Fingon with him. Practically bounding up while we are still sweaty and dust-covered from the road, Finrod coaxes us first to the shore to cool off among the waves. His daughter, with whom I have happily been entrusted, is a sweet and familiar weight in my arms as we watch the three men frolic in the waves like young boys. Lithe and fast, my golden-haired nephew manages to dunk both his cousins in short order. His babe waves her arms, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, cooing at her father’s antics.

“What fools they make! Don’t they, sweetheart?” I croon to her and she babbles very seriously, as if in agreement.

A wise woman of the Edain once remarked upon the child-like nature of our people to the eyes of Men, never losing wonder in the world no matter how many years pass. Standing ankle deep in the surf, with the honey glow of Arien’s descent at my back as I watch grown men play, I think there is something to her words. Even the weary-hearted and broken among us find such contentment again in time.

As Finrod emerges, streaming water like a great leviathan, the child stretches out her arms. She flinches with the most adorable iteration of shock I have seen when his wet hair brushes against her face. It does not last long. Peals of delighted laughter soon tumble from her lips, punctuated by chubby hands that grab at my nephew’s sodden locks. Finrod leans over to kiss my forehead as he takes his daughter in his arms.

“Thank you, Nerdanel,” he says, warm and kind as he shoots an amused glance toward Maedhros and Fingon who now float lazily in the shallows. “Don’t trouble about missing dinner. I’ll make sure ammë has a few plates kept aside.”

“Are you coming in atanésa?” Fingon calls, drawing my attention away from Finrod who has eyes only for his daughter, bouncing her to the rhythm of a silly song he sings as they retreat along the shore. I do not need to be asked twice.

“Don’t you dare splash me.”

Maedhros grins. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Fingon, on the other hand…”

“I would not!” he protests.

“This does feel wonderful,” I say, slipping gradually into the water and coming to float on my back as waves lap gently around me.

“It is much better than lake Mithrim,” Fingon claims, pretending to shiver, “too chill even in summer.”

“The chill never bothered me,” Maedhros scoffs.

“You” -Fingon splashes him- “never had to dive into the frozen seas crossing the Helcaraxë.”

“True,” Maedhros admits sombrely.

Fingon gives the moment the gravity it deserves, but does not let it linger over long. “You did look a picture though, crossing Mithrim when it froze over in winter.”

“The shortest path between the Northern and Southern camps,” Maedhros explains, “was straight across once the ice was thick enough. Sindar living near the lake taught us to strap blades to the undersides of our boots and glide across. Fingon always looked very graceful doing it. I was… less so.”

“You told me,” Fingon recounts, “that it was my fault you were unbalanced, since I had ruined your symmetry.”

“That was underhanded of you,” I comment drily, causing us all to laugh hard enough that we’re soon scrambling to find the bottom with our feet.

Twilight deepens as we drift languidly with the tide, and soon we are looking up at the nighttime sky, stars bright above. On nights spent camped by the sea long ago, Fëanor would urge our boys on as they begged to be allowed this very thing. I would put on a serious expression, pretending to weigh the downsides of their staying up past their bedtime. At length I would let them think they had worn me down until I caved. As the eldest grew older and wiser, the younger ones had a cheer squad winking  and grinning at me over their heads even as they argued, enthusiastically perpetuating the game. I would watch my sons floating on the waves  year after year, a growing flotilla around their father, enraptured by the stars that reflected in their eyes and wonder how I had ever gotten so lucky. It would not last.

“There are too many of us missing still,” I lament as we extricate ourselves from the edge of Ulmo’s domain and trudge up the beach.

Fingon’s sigh is resigned and heavy. Even with both brothers and father returned, the list of dear ones in Mandos is still longer for him than those living and breathing. That includes his son.

“There are. But if Beleriand taught us anything it was to keep moving despite their absence.”

“We learned that lesson well in Aman too.”

“I can imagine,” he says sympathetically.

Maedhros finds my hand. Two ragged ends of an old bond come together once more, still storm-blown, but stronger.

“We will keep hoping,” he says, and I can believe that he means it sincerely.

Somewhere between the tide line and place where white sands give way to green earth Fingon has taken my free hand in his. They are so very warm and alive beside me, my nephew and son. And my heart is warm too, framed by a family that is abbreviated, but not diminished. We carry our ghosts with us with fury, longing and pain still, but until the last days of Arda, there will always be hope.

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