From That Rubble by StarSpray  

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Sixteen

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Everybody wants to be understood
Well, I can hear you
Everybody wants to be loved
Don’t give up
Because you are loved (you are loved)
You are loved (you are loved)
- “You Are Loved (Don’t Give Up)” - Josh Groban 

 

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After wandering out past the peach orchard and back, Fëanor decided he wanted to be making something, and so he went to the wood shop. It was often quieter than the forges and other workrooms, and he had started making a box the day before just for something to do—and because he had been missing Finwë. Wood had never been a great love of Fëanor’s in his first life, but he had loved the hours spent with Finwë in his own workshop when he had been a child, where he had first learned to love making things with his hands, to love the process of taking raw material and turning it into something both useful and lovely. 

Then he had gone to Mahtan, and fallen in love with gems and metal and things that needed fire to be formed, and had only sometimes returned to his father’s workshop and rarely to actually make anything. But he had still liked to watch Finwë at work, and just to talk to him and spend time together—time that grew rare and more precious as time went on and their family grew alongside Tirion itself, and then as tensions started to simmer and Fëanor’s own temper frayed more and more. He would give just about anything, he thought as he made his way down the path, to return to Tirion to find Finwë’s workshop full of light and wood and sawdust again, with Finwë himself there getting ready to make a new toy or a piece of furniture.

When he arrived, he found Maglor sorting through stacks of planks at the back of the workshop. He seemed to be looking for something specific, and before he could think better of it Fëanor said, “There is some malinornë in the far corner, if that is what you’re looking for.” Maglor jumped, the wood in his hands falling to the floor with a clatter. Fëanor winced. “I’m sorry,” he said when Maglor turned toward him. “I don’t mean to always be startling you in workshops.” This was the second time it had happened—both wood shops, at that, though Finwë’s was horribly empty and nothing like the large and bright one there in Imloth Ningloron, with many benches and rows and rows of tools and supplies for anyone to use. 

“It’s all right,” said Maglor, offering him a small smile before he turned back to pick up what he had dropped. “How did you know that was what I was looking for?”

He hadn’t, really, but, “Someone told me you are particularly fond of those trees—” It might have been Elrond, or it might have just been because “—and I know you have worked with it before.”

Maglor finished straightening the stack of wood and went to look at the mallorn. Without looking at Fëanor he said, “I know all about how you and Daeron met.” 

That wasn’t particularly what Fëanor had wanted to talk about—he hadn’t really wanted to speak to anyone—but that Maglor was willing to talk to him about anything was not something to take for granted. He went to the workbench where he had left his box, while Maglor pulled two planks of silvery mallorn wood out of the stack, seeming pleased. When he turned back Fëanor said, “I misunderstood…many things.” Too many things, really—and the real problem was that he hadn't bothered to try. 

Maglor, though, only shrugged. “Daeron is not in the habit of making himself easy to understand these days.” There was an undeniable fondness behind the words. He set the boards down and picked up a pencil. “He told me also that he spoke to you in Tirion last summer.”

Oh, good. Curufin hadn’t known of it, and Fëanor had worried a little that somehow Daeron would not have told Maglor either, since it seemed they both had a great many other things on their minds. “He did.” He picked up his own tools to start carving out the diamonds he’d drawn on the box lid the day before. It was a design he remembered watching his father carve out, once, when he had still been very small—small enough to sit on the workbench beside him, little feet dangling, and to not be allowed to touch anything sharp.

For several minutes they worked in silence, Maglor marking his planks and Fëanor carving his box. Finally, as he set the pencil aside, Maglor said, “I think you would like him, if you both gave it a chance.”

Fëanor did not look up from his work. That Maglor seemed to want them both to give it a chance meant a lot—it meant that Fëanor’s missteps lately had not ruined whatever fragile beginnings of reconciliation were hovering between them. “I do like him,” he said, because it was true. “He is clever and talented, if infuriatingly difficult to read—and more than that, he loves you, and he makes you happy.” He did glance up then, in time to see Maglor duck his head in that way he did when he wanted to hide behind the fall of his hair. However, he had bound it sensibly back, so there was nothing to obscure the slightly embarrassed but quietly pleased expression that flickered across his face. 

Others came into the workshop then, greeting Maglor brightly, and there was no other opportunity for private conversation. Fëanor didn’t really mind. As he worked on his carving he listened to someone ask Maglor about his songwriting, and to Maglor reply with a self-deprecating joke about some difficulty he was having. 

Right. That’s what Maglor had been doing these last few days—working on his song for Finwë, rather than taking care of himself. Fëanor glanced at him, and thought he seemed tired, though he spoke to the others cheerfully enough, and his hands were steady as he cut the wood. 

Then Calissë came wandering in, and ran to join Fëanor. “What are you making?” she asked as he lifted her up onto the workbench. 

“A box,” he said, and picked up the lid to show her. “What do you think?”

“It’s pretty! What are you going to do with it when it’s done?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Give it away, most likely. Who do you think would like it?”

“Náriel doesn’t have a jewelry box of her own yet,” Calissë said, “and she’s got that necklace that Atya made her and those bracelets that you did. Ammë keeps them in her jewelry box, but Náriel would like to have them in her own room.”

“You think she’ll like the diamonds?”

“Oh, yes!”

“Then this will be Náriel’s. But don’t tell her,” Fëanor said, grinning when Calissë giggled. “Let it be a surprise.”

As the others left the workshop, and Maglor finished putting his shelves together, Calissë finally noticed him. “Hello, Uncle Cáno! What are you making?”

“Shelves,” he said, smiling at her over his shoulder as he sorted through the bottles of finishing oil. 

“What for?”

“For those wooden horses Grandfather Finwë made. I’m going to put them above my writing desk.” He returned to his bench with a cloth and a bottle, and added, “Thank you for sending them to me, Atya.”

“You’re welcome.”

Calissë swung her feet and watched Fëanor carve out another diamond on the box lid before asking, “Did Grandfather Finwë teach you woodcarving too?”

Fëanor had to pause for a moment, wishing desperately that Finwë were there to teach Calissë. “Yes, he did,” he said. “The first thing I ever made was of wood, with his hands guiding mine. It was a box—much plainer than this one. I don’t know what happened to it afterward.” He was sure his father would have kept it, but he did not know where he would have put it. Most of Finwë’s belongings had been preserved very carefully—as carefully as Míriel’s—and put away. If Fëanor’s little box was among those things, it would remain lost. He barely had the heart to sort through his own old house—he couldn’t go looking through those other storerooms too. 

“That was the first thing he taught me to make too,” Maglor said after a moment’s silence. “I gave it to Maedhros; he kept his rings in it.” He looked up at Calissë with a smile. “Why don’t you tell your grandfather about the first thing you made of wood, sweetheart?”

Fëanor hadn’t known Calissë had been taught any woodworking at all—but Maglor, it seemed, had picked up where Finwë had left off. Calissë told Fëanor all about Mahtan’s workshops and the things Maglor had taught her, and about the wooden duck that they’d made together in the same way that Finwë had helped Fëanor and then Maglor make their boxes long ago. 

“Can you let me down, please? I have the duck back in my room, and I can bring it to show you!”

“Of course.” Fëanor lifted her down and she ran off, disappearing down the path. 

Once she had gone, Fëanor looked back at Maglor, who was studying his work as though looking for something he’d missed. “Why a duck?”

“I asked her what she wanted to make, and that was what she decided. I’d been telling her about the animals and toys Grandfather used to make, and she had seen the horse I’d made when we were all last here at Imloth Ningloron.”

Silence fell again; they seemed doomed to only speak in fits and starts. Fëanor finished the next diamond in the pattern, and set his tools down to give his hand a break. He wasn’t used to working wood—and certainly not in doing this kind of detailed carving—and his fingers kept wanting to cramp. As he’d been working his thoughts had circled back around to Maglor’s other work. “Cáno, can I ask—” 

Maglor didn’t look up, but answered calmly enough. “You can, but depending on what it is, I don’t promise an answer. Is it something you’ve seen in the palantír?”

Fëanor both wanted desperately to ask about what he’d seen in the palantír, and to never think about it again. “No,” he said aloud, “though I have questions about that too. Why did you give yourself the deadline of Ingwë’s feast to finish the song?”

Maglor froze, just for a second. He still hadn’t looked up, and it was hard to tell what exactly his face was doing. 

There was still something he was missing, Fëanor thought. It made him uneasy, in the same way that not knowing what had bothered Maedhros about Losgar had made him uneasy. Whatever this was couldn’t be nearly as bad as that, but he still didn’t like it.

Finally Maglor said, without resuming his work, voice gone distant and with an odd tension underlying the words, “I don’t know. It just…feels important to have it done in time. It is not a song I will perform often—I don’t think I will perform it at all after the feast, and I can think of no better time or place for it.”

“Do my mother and Indis know of this plan?”

“To sing at the feast?” Maglor shrugged, and seemed to come back to himself. He picked up the cloth again, now speaking very lightly—in a way that rang false. “I haven’t told them, no, but it isn’t a secret. It was something I decided—oh, I don’t know when the thought came to me. I suppose it was after Elemmírë outlined her plans for a great cycle of songs of all our history, from Cuiviénen to today, and I realized how well this song would fit into it.”

That made sense, but it hadn’t answered the questions Fëanor didn’t even know how to ask. “Why only once?” he ventured.

“Once or twice is all I have in me, I think.” Maglor wiped away some excess oil and started to tidy up. The shelves he had made were very simple and plain, but they suited him, and would suit the horses meant to go on them. “Others can take it up who wish,” he added, “but after the feast I will not sing it again—at least not in full.”

Maglor finished his shelves and left the workshop a few minutes later, smiling briefly at Fëanor before he disappeared out of the door. Fëanor remained where he was, because Calissë would be coming back soon, but he set about cleaning up his own work, sweeping up the shavings and putting the tools in order. He didn’t like not knowing things, but whatever lay behind Maglor’s rush to finish his song was something he seemed to want to keep a secret. 

It was probably no more than what Daeron had said—that it was important to Maglor, himself, and not only because Míriel and Indis had asked it of him—and also what Amras had said, that if he set it aside he would not feel able to pick it up again. There would be anxiety around the performance too, Fëanor knew. It felt like there was something else, but he wondered if he was letting his own worries get in the way—if, having discovered one disastrous secret, he was now expecting to see others where there were none.

Calissë returned a few minutes after Maglor left, with her wooden duck. “That’s lovely,” Fëanor said as he joined her outside. “Do you like woodcarving?”

“Um, yes!” Calissë handed him the duck and then took his hand. “But mostly I liked visiting Grandfather Mahtan, and learning from Uncle Cáno. He doesn’t teach things like Atya does—he’s also teaching me to play the harp! And also it cheered him up, because he was sad about Grandfather Finwë, because he can’t come back from Mandos like everyone else.”

Fëanor picked Calissë up and kissed her cheeks. “Is he often sad, writing this song?”

“Yes, and Atya says he’s not as good at pretending not to be as he thinks he is. I heard him telling Ammë about it.”

“He was very close to Finwë,” Fëanor said. “Finishing this song will make him feel better, I think.”

As they drew near the house, Fëanor looked up and spotted Celegorm on the roof. He leaned against a chimney, watching something on the other side of the house, where the road led up and away out of the valley.

It occurred to Fëanor that his missteps with Celegorm lay in creating distance where he hadn’t meant to—where there should not have been any at all. Continuing to keep his distance felt suddenly like the very opposite of what he needed to do. He let Calissë down so she could go join Náriel in playing with Huan on the lawn, and then made his way around the side of the house. If he didn’t try to talk to Celegorm now, it was unlikely he’d find another chance. He found a trellis near the vegetable garden, and made his way up onto the low roof there, which made it easier then to climb up onto the other roofs. Almost they seemed designed for climbing, which when he thought about it did seem like something Celebrían would do. 

And of course Celegorm had climbed to the very highest point. There was no real chance of falling—the tiles were not that slippery, and the slope was very gentle, but Fëanor did have to take a minute to steel himself before he actually climbed up the last level. He hated heights, and wondered—not for the first time—how it was that at least two of his sons had ended up liking them so much. 

Celegorm jumped when Fëanor sat down beside him, and didn’t lift his gaze from his knees when he said stiffly, “I thought you were leaving us all alone.”

“Is that still what you need from me, Tyelko?” He was sure that it wasn’t, but if Celegorm disagreed he’d leave, and try to find another way to reach out. 

“I don’t know,” Celegorm said. After a slight pause he added, “I also thought you didn’t like heights.”

“I don’t.” Fëanor looked toward the roof’s edge before he could stop himself. It wasn’t as bad as he’d thought it would be now that he was actually up there—especially sitting down. The sun was warm and the view was lovely, in all directions. He waited, but Celegorm said nothing else. So Fëanor said the first thing that came to mind: “Do you still want to hit me?”

Celegorm finally looked at him, a slight frown on his face. “Why?”

Fëanor tried to speak lightly. “I keep offering, and no one’s taken me up on it—except Findis, though she didn’t wait for the offer.”

“I heard.”

“I’m sure you did. Lindir was singing about it just yesterday.”

Celegorm didn’t laugh—didn’t even smile. He looked away. He had his arms resting on his knees, and Fëanor saw his hands ball into fists. “I don’t want to hit you. I was—I misunderstood.”

He had understood enough. “You wanted to defend your brother.”

“It was too late for that,” Celegorm said. His voice shook, but Fëanor couldn’t tell if it was anger or something else. “The damage was done—and he didn’t deserve it. Any of it. From you or from—”

“No, he didn’t,” Fëanor said. “None of you did.”

“I deserved everything I got in the end,” Celegorm snapped—and there was the anger. Only it wasn’t directed at Fëanor. 

He swallowed a sigh. He didn’t want to speak of Beleriand—what Celegorm had or had not done, what he might or might not have deserved. Fëanor hadn’t been there; he could only feel the horror of watching his son turn into someone unrecognizable at a distance. All he could do was try—again—to apologize for the role he had played in it all. “You did not deserve to be forced away from the life you were making for yourself here just because I disapproved,” he said, thinking of all those fights whenever Celegorm had returned home from riding in Oromë’s train—how the bright light of happiness and satisfaction in his face after a hunt had dimmed as soon as he stepped through the door. “Or,” Fëanor went on, “to go into exile—either to Formenos or to Middle-earth—solely because I demanded it. You did not deserve any of the fury I threw at you in those days, Tyelko. I’m sorry.” It still wasn’t enough. He wished he knew what would be. 

“It’s not like it was a surprise,” Celegorm muttered. “I already knew you didn’t—”

“Knew I didn’t, what?” Fëanor turned to look at him, and found him twisting a strand of silver hair around his fingers, the way he’d done even as a child—twisting until it hurt. He hadn’t done it often—Celegorm had not been a child prone to nervous habits—but it had always been a sign that something troubled him. Somehow Fëanor just hadn’t made the connection until that moment to his hair itself. 

There had been times, mostly in Celegorm’s early childhood, that Fëanor hadn’t been able to look at him without seeing Míriel instead, and sometimes that had been wonderful—a connection to the mother he’d lost and still missed desperately—and other times it had been just another twist of grief’s knife in his heart. He had thought, then, that not letting his son see his distress was better—and so he’d tried to hide it. It had been the wrong choice, as Curufin had suggested more than once, but Fëanor hadn’t realized just how deep that particular hurt ran even now. 

And he should have. 

“Tyelko?”

Celegorm kept blinking, but in spite of his efforts a few tears escaped. “I look too much like her and I am too much like you but not in any of the right ways so of course you never liked—”

Oh. Oh no. “Turcafinwë.” Fëanor turned so he could kneel in front of him, and reach up to wipe the tears from his cheeks. “I’m so sorry. It’s not true, Tyelko. I love you so much—if I did not show it as I should, that is no fault of yours. My grief was my own to manage; I failed to keep it from spilling over onto you, and I am so sorry.” 

For a moment Celegorm just looked at him, like Fëanor was a puzzle he couldn’t solve, like he hadn’t expected such a speech and didn’t know how to respond. Fëanor dropped his hands from his face to his shoulders, wishing he had something more to say, wishing there was a way to step back in time and change—oh, so many things. 

Finally, Celegorm asked, voice very quiet and a little hoarse, “Why the Oath?”

It wasn’t a question he had been expecting just then—but he’d known it would come up at one time or another. He remembered swearing it, but did not really remember his thoughts leading up to that moment. There was just the anger and the feeling that something had been ripped out of him and the only way to stop the bleeding was to get it back at whatever cost. “I don’t know how best to answer that,” he said finally. It was impossible to really describe what it was to lose yourself entirely, and if he said so he was more than half afraid that Celegorm would reply that he didn’t need to, because he also knew how it felt. So he just tried to think back, and to cobble together the bits and pieces of clear thought that he did remember into something that he might put into words now. “I suppose I thought I wanted to send a message—I saw enemies in nearly everyone in those days—and…” This was the hardest thing to admit aloud, and to his child who was still so hurt by the things he had said and done. “In my mind the Silmarils were the most important things I had made, or would ever make. I would have been glad to let Morgoth have them if I could have had my father back, but since I couldn’t have him I would have them.” He hadn’t known then that his father would choose to remain in Mandos forever—still, what he had known, in his heart of hearts where a young child still lived who did not understand why his mother would never wake up, was that when a parent died they did not come back. “I did not expect to meet my death in the way that I did. I don’t think I thought at all about the likelihood of any of you even being hurt. In my pride and—perhaps it was madness, I don’t know—” He was used now to thinking of it as madness, but in speaking to Celegorm that felt too much like making excuses, “—I felt invincible, and thought surely my sons must be as well.

“I was not invincible. I was arrogant and I was a fool. I regret that Oath more than words can say.”

His brightest memories of Celegorm’s youth were of how fearless he had been, of how wild he was, how eager to learn and explore. That light was dimmed, now, and Fëanor didn’t know if it was because if his own presence, or if it was because of Celegorm’s worry for his brother, or if it had just never come back after his stay in Mandos. Whatever the reason, it grieved him to see. “You were always so wild, Tyelko,” he said, and leaned in to kiss his forehead—just in case he didn’t get another chance. “You didn’t get that from anyone—that’s all your own. Don’t smother it now.” 

He let go of Celegorm’s shoulders, waited a beat, and when Celegorm didn’t say anything more he left the roof. Standing up reminded him again of just how high up he was, and it was a great relief to drop down onto each successive lower roof until he came to a small balcony that led inside, opening into an alcove behind a statue—something halfway secret put there on purpose, just for the fun of it. 

When he made it back outside, Calissë and Náriel immediately called for him to join in a game. He put on a smile and followed them, but couldn’t help but glance back toward the roof, where Celegorm hadn’t moved. A bird perched on his knee, preening a wing.

After a little while Rundamírë called the girls inside. Fëanor, still sitting in the grass, eyed Huan, who eyed him back before licking up the side of his face and trotting off, leaving Fëanor spluttering and trying to wipe his face on his sleeve. “Menace,” he muttered, and heard a cheerful woof from down the garden path.

“Well, well! You are still here!” 

Wonderful. “Mithrandir,” Fëanor sighed, and got to his feet. “Were you looking for me?”

“Not particularly, but I did hear that you were visiting the valley. Lovely spring we’re having, isn’t it?” Gandalf leaned on his staff, regarding Fëanor with his usual inscrutable cheerfulness. 

“Yes,” Fëanor said. 

“And next summer is shaping up to be even lovelier,” Gandalf went on. “I’m quite looking forward to this gathering. All the Eldalië in one place for the first time! Even the Avari! It is a wonderful chance for renewing old friendships, and forging new ones, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Fëanor repeated, feeling rather like he was in danger of wandering into a trap. He always did, talking to Gandalf. “It’s going to be very impressive.”

“You do not sound very excited.”

“As you said, it’s not until next summer—and there is yet a great deal of work to do.” 

Something in Gandalf’s expression softened a little. “And not only in terms of tents and lights and decorations,” he said. “But maybe it will not be as difficult as it now seems.” Before Fëanor could think of how to reply he straightened. “So do cheer up, Fëanor. And don’t worry about fireworks—I shall be very busy myself in the coming months, preparing a show that might even rival dear Bilbo’s eleventy-first birthday!”