A Thousand Winds that Blow by StarSpray  

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Ten

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As he fell asleep, a few tears escaped in spite of Lossenol’s efforts. Daeron wiped them away, and then went back out to where Medlinel waited in the front room. “I always knew you were strange, Daeron,” she said, turning from the window to frown at him as he shut the bedroom door, “but this particular choice of lover is beyond—”

“He isn’t my lover,” Daeron sighed. “What were you trying to do that hurt him so?”

“There is something in him—surely you’ve seen it? It brings to mind the Girdle. I wanted to see what it was.”

“Yes, I’ve seen it. I do not know what it is either, and it is beyond my skills find out. That’s why I wanted you to look. Do you think that is what keeps his memory locked away?”

“Yes. His injuries were bad, but there is nothing else there I could find that would explain such a complete erasure. You say you are no great healer, but you did your work well, especially considering the circumstances.” Medlinel paused. “It was done on purpose, I think—though it is clumsily done and I’m not sure the real intention was to seal away his memory. Without a closer look I can’t guess what the intention was, and I doubt he’ll let me in again.”

“He won’t.”

“As far as I can tell it poses no other danger, to him or to anyone else. There is something else, though—something I did not try to touch. Something dark. A heavy doom lies over him—”

“We’ve all heard of the Doom of Mandos,” said Daeron. “I’ve known all along he is a Noldo.”

“A kinslayer, Daeron? That is who you’ve taken to your bed, who you have allowed near Lúthien’s grandchildren—”

“I told you how we were all brought together,” Daeron snapped. “It’s not a matter of allowing—what was I supposed to do? Leave him to bleed out in the snow and make myself a kinslayer in turn? What would you have done?”

“I would not have been alone,” Medlinel snapped back. “I would have at least kept him away from the children until he could be sent back to his own people on his own two feet!”

“I tried to tell him, but—”

“And you could not just slip away, take the children and disappear into the twilight? You, Daeron, with all your skill in shadows and in hiding? For all you know, you have one of the Sons of Fëanor in your bed, not just one of their followers!”

“It’s not like that—”

“Why do you defend him?”

Daeron balled his hands into fists, fingernails digging into his palms. He let the sharp pain of it ground him. “I am not defending him—not what he may or may not have done—do not interrupt!” he said sharply when Medlinel opened her mouth. He hadn’t meant to make it a command, but her mouth snapped shut, and he couldn’t regret it when he saw the way her eyes widened a little. Let her be reminded that he was not powerless. “I do not know who he was, before, but he has neither said nor done anything since he woke in Ossiriand to threaten either me or the children. He saved my life, Medlinel—at great risk to his own, and he didn’t have to. He is also not entirely ignorant—I told him of Alqualondë, and what I must guess happened in Doriath. His horror at it was not feigned. Whatever he was, it is not what he is now.”

“And when that veil is lifted from him?” Medlinel asked, not gently but more quietly. “What do you think he’ll do then?”

“I think he will remember what I have done.” Daeron would never admit to Medlinel that he thought she was right, though he knew she hadn’t really been serious—that it was one of Fëanor’s own sons in the next room. If Lossenol did wake up in the morning answering to the name of Celegorm—well. Surely that would not erase what had happened over the winter or that spring. Surely it would not erase all the affection he had for Eluréd and Elurín. 

There was, however, still the Oath. Daeron feared its awakening more than anything else, because he did not know what it would drive Celegorm to do whether he really wanted to do it or not. It wasn’t something he could plan for either, because he didn’t know enough about it—he didn’t know enough about anything. 

Medlinel looked at him with a strange expression on her face—a mixture of pity and resignation and something Daeron wanted to call disgust. He hated it. They had never been friends, he and Medlinel. She had come to Eglador to learn whatever Melian could teach her, and while he had also learned much of Melian he was much younger, and Medlinel had very obviously thought him foolish and frivolous. In turn he had thought her too grim, and so they had mostly ignored one another. Now he suspected she thought him rather pathetic, and he had just enough of his old pride left to despise her a little for it. 

Finally, Medlinel asked, sounding a little incredulous, “Daeron, are you in love with him?”

“What?”

“It’s one thing to take him to bed, but to fall in love—he’s a kinslayer!”

“I am not—oh, believe what you will. I don’t care.” No one had ever believed him when he had tried to say he wasn’t in love with Lúthien, either. As though it was impossible to love someone without wanting to take them to bed—or that you could share a bed with someone and do nothing more than sleep, just because it was a comfort to have another body beside you, someone else’s breathing to break the silence of the night’s darkest and loneliest hours. 

If Daeron loved anyone these days, he loved Eluréd and Elurín. He liked Lossenol, though, and he was grateful beyond words for both his company and for his skills, even if that wasn’t quite enough yet to banish the fear—and he couldn’t bear the thought of losing him. 

He left the house, and Medlinel followed. They couldn’t continue whatever that conversation had turned into in front of Eluréd and Elurín, and Daeron was very glad to sit in the grass and let them tumble over his lap. “Where’s Lossenol?” Eluréd asked.

“Resting. His head aches.”

Eluréd immediately turned to glare at Medlinel, who glanced at them only briefly before going to talk to her companions. “What did she do?”

“Nothing, Eluréd—she’s a healer, and she would never harm someone like that on purpose. It’s only that sometimes healing hurts, however careful we are. You know that Medlinel was once a student of your grandmother Melian? She could teach you much—”

“Not as much as you,” said Elurín.

“She can teach you different things than I can,” Daeron said. 

“Lossenol said you’d try to convince us to go away with her, but we won’t,” said Eluréd. “And if you try to leave we’ll just follow you—we know how! Lossenol’s been teaching us!”

Lossenol had been teaching them the rudiments of tracking, but they were a long way from being able to follow Daeron. He believed that they would try, though, and he sighed. “I’m not going to leave, songbirds,” he said softly. “And I’m not going to try to make you leave either. But while they are here, do not spurn Medlinel’s teaching, or her friendship. She was friends with your grandmother Lúthien, too, you know.”

“I don’t care,” Eluréd muttered, and pressed his face into Daeron’s shoulder. “She doesn’t like you.”

“That doesn’t make her a bad person,” Daeron said, though of course it did in the eyes of a six-year-old child, and nothing he said would convince either Eluréd or Elurín otherwise. “Please be polite, though—for me?”

“Fine,” they both sighed, as dramatic as Lúthien had been at their age when someone had needed to cajole her into doing something she didn’t want to do. 

Daeron couldn’t help but smile, in spite of the ache the memory brought with it. “Thank you,” he said.

Lossenol did not wake the rest of the day. Medlinel and her companions—Bronwel and Ifreth, neither of whom Daeron had met before—retreated to another one of the houses to sleep that night. They chose one of the bigger ones, which Daeron thought must have been Medlinel’s before they had left. He put Eluréd and Elurín to bed, singing them to sleep in hopes that they would have a quiet night, free of nightmares. 

He was tired but not yet willing to go to bed himself, and after making sure Lossenol was still asleep he slipped outside and climbed a nearby tree. It was very tall, and when he reached the highest branches he could see the open sky above, brilliant with stars. He leaned against the trunk and stared up at them. Once again, he did not know what to do. Medlinel would have him take Eluréd and Elurín and go with her into the east, leaving Lossenol behind. His own inclination had been, at least in the beginning, to make sure Lossenol and the twins were somewhere safe—Lossenol on his way to his own people and the twins with those who could care for them better than Daeron could—and to slip away, returning to his own lonely wanderings. Now all that had long gone by the wayside, and he didn’t know what he should do instead. By day it was easy, mostly, to ignore the grief that gnawed at his heart, but there alone under the stars he felt so very small and so very alone. Someday that grief would rise up and overwhelm him as it almost had in Ossiriand, and all Daeron could think of as he sat and watched the stars all blur together as he failed to hold back tears was his own father. 

All of Daeron’s life, Caladorn had been a bright and merry presence. So had Daeron’s mother, Togamel, though she was fiercer than her husband, much quicker to take up arms than he. She had also had friends and kin among the Falathrim, and had happened to be visiting there when Morgoth had returned to Middle-earth—both of them had been there when the orcs had laid siege to the havens. Daeron had remained at home, and his first taste of real terror had been in those long weeks and months of waiting for news—for any word of them at all, good or bad, as word came back from Amon Ereb of Denethor’s fall, and from elsewhere of orcs overrunning Beleriand; it had felt like the whole world was ending, until they learned of the coming of the Noldor and their swift and decisive victory against the armies of Angband. He did not know exactly how his mother had died, but he was sure that she had gone down fighting. His father had never recovered from the horrors of that siege, or the grief. He had returned wounded and deeply changed to Doriath, and lingered there for some years, clinging to life for Daeron’s sake, but in the end it had all just been too much to bear. 

It had been Daeron who found him one morning, in autumn, not long after the sun had first risen to give them mornings—his body limp and cold in his bed, his spirit unable to continue on in a world where Togamel was not. Daeron still did not know how he had not followed his father in those weeks and months afterward, when the new-risen sun had seemed to turn black and all the newly revealed colors had seemed to leach out of the world. He hardly remembered those days, or even much of the years that followed. 

Well. He remembered Menelas, his soft-spoken friend who had rarely left his side, who had wept with him and sang quiet songs and refused to let his world fall entirely silent and dark. He remembered Lúthien’s presence too, bright and blazing and impossible ignore, and Mablung—another dear friend—all of them determined that he would not follow his father. And he hadn’t, somehow. Maybe Melian had done something too; he had never asked. By the time the Mereth Aderthad had come around he had been recovered enough to put on a smile and to even really enjoy himself once he and Mablung reached Ivrin.

They were all lost to him now. Somehow Daeron had outlived both Lúthien and Mablung. And Menelas was…well, he might also be dead, but if not he was worse than dead. 

He wasn’t alone anymore—but Caladorn had not been alone either. It had not been enough, in the end. Someday it might not be enough for Daeron, either, and all he could think as he watched the stars and let the tears fall, was that he did not want either Eluréd or Elurín to find him when despair claimed him at last. 

When he returned to the ground he found Lossenol just coming outside, rubbing his good eye, hair still sleep-tousled. “How’s your head?” Daeron asked, trying to wipe his own face clean before Lossenol noticed.

“All right now.” Lossenol frowned at him. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing—”

“But—d-did something happen?”

“No.” Daeron shook his head, and went to slip past Lossenol. “You should eat. I’m going to bed.”

“Daeron—”

“I’m fine. Please eat something.”

Daeron went to bed, but couldn’t sleep. He lay and stared at the dark ceiling, the grief still knotted inside his chest so that it was almost a physical ache underneath his ribs. Lossenol returned after a short while, and that made it a little easier to breathe—having a living person, a friend, right there—and Daeron closed his eyes, hoped he seemed asleep. If Lossenol could tell that he wasn’t, he didn’t say anything. He just settled back into bed. Daeron wasn't sure when either of them fell asleep for real. 

The next morning Ifreth departed, heading west to try to find what news she could. In the meantime, Medlinel seemed to decide that Daeron should know what had happened in between his departure from Doriath and Húrin’s bringing the Nauglamír to Thingol, which had happened just before she and her people had bid Lúthien and Beren farewell and departed from Ossiriand for the east. There were no songs for any of it, but Medlinel was a skilled speaker and storyteller—and she was kind enough to tell it all to him alone, out of the hearing of Eluréd and Elurín. Thus he heard the details of Lúthien’s quest that had escaped him before—all that went on in Nargothrond, and Finrod’s fall, and Celegorm and Curufin’s machinations—and then the disaster of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, and then Túrin’s coming to Doriath, and later his going to Nargothrond, and its fall to Glaurung…

It was terrible. He listened and concentrated on just breathing and hated himself a little more with each word—for having left, for not having been there, even though there was still nothing he could have done. The tides of fate were inexorable and inescapable, and Doriath had been caught in the Doom of the Noldor, and even at the height of his power there were no songs he could have sung that would have stopped it.

Hardest of all was hearing of Celegorm and Curufin, of the way they had so deftly turned all of Nargothrond against Finrod—Finrod Felagund, shining and golden and open-hearted, who had taught Daeron Quenya with infinite patience in those years before Thingol instituted the Ban, who had been so determined to befriend anyone and everyone, who Daeron had liked, best of all Thingol’s strange and bright-eyed kinsmen—and the way they had ensnared Lúthien—Lúthien!—all just to gain what power they could. He supposed it might have served the Oath well, to unite the Noldor and the Sindar in that way, but it would not have worked. Lúthien would have never agreed, nor Thingol, and it would have only brought about more and worse kinslayings until there were none left to try for the Silmarils at all. 

When she finished, Medlinel looked at him. “You still wish to keep company with one who served the Sons of Fëanor?” she asked.

“That is none of your concern,” Daeron said, able to keep his voice even only because of many long years of practice. 

“It is my concern if he poses a danger to my people—or to the children.”

Outside, Daeron could hear Lossenol laughing with Eluréd and Elurín. It seemed impossible to imagine him having raised his voice in Nargothrond’s grand hall, or to have tricked Lúthien into captivity, or—

The thought came to him that it had once been impossible to imagine Elu Thingol ordering Lúthien’s imprisonment, too. 

Daeron had not been in Nargothrond, and the only one who could tell him what had really happened did not remember it. “Unless you are hiding the Silmaril,” he said aloud, “I do not think any of Fëanor’s sons, or their followers, pose a danger to you. Clearly, we do not have it. Therefore they should not be a threat.”

“And to Eluréd and Elurín? You think they might not be vengeful?”

“I do not think Lossenol is.”

“Perhaps only because he does not remember how to want such things.”

He isn’t, I know he isn’t, he would never hurt them no matter what— “A good thing, then, that he neither remembers nor wants to remember.”

Medlinel’s expression was very grave as she met Daeron’s gaze. “He will someday, Daeron. How or when or why, I cannot say. But he will, and you must beware. He is dangerous.”

“So am I.”

“Are you so insistent on remaining with him because I am the one advising against it?” Medlinel demanded. “We have never been friends, you and I, but I am trying to help you!”

“I know that,” said Daeron, “but—I was called back west of the Ered Luin for a reason. Finglas and Fladrif brought both Lossenol and Eluréd and Elurín to the precise place I had chosen to winter in Ossiriand—of all the places they could have crossed the Gelion, it was there. Do you think that is mere chance? The twins don’t think so, and—”

“They aren’t even seven years old yet!”

“They are Melian’s children,” Daeron said. “I have tried to tell them it would be better if they went with you, but they won’t hear it, and—they’ve lost everyone else already. The more I think on it—I cannot take Lossenol from them too. They were the ones to give him his name.”

“And when Ifreth returns to tell us all she could learn of Doriath’s final sacking?”

“I don’t need all of the details to know it was terrible. I’ve known all along, Medlinel.”

“You are playing with fire, Daeron.”

“I know that, too—and I will make sure that I am the only one who is burned if it all goes wrong.”

Medlinel left the house. As soon as the door shut Daeron fled to the bedroom, where he could close that door too and slide to the floor and let go of his self control for a little while. His tears the night before had been quiet, just the grief making itself known; now the horror of it all seemed to take his entire body in an icy grip and it wouldn’t let go, and he shook and sobbed until he couldn’t breathe—for Thingol, for Finrod, and Mablung, and Lúthien, and Orodreth, and Beleg—for Doriath. Even for Celegorm, who had lost everything including himself, even before his memories had been locked away—surely the way Lossenol first reached for kindness was proof that he had not always been what he became, that he had not always been someone who would betray his kin and commit kidnapping and murder just to get a little closer to jewels no one could ever attain.

He might not even be Celegorm, Daeron thought, but he knew he was only fooling himself. 

Once he could compose himself, Daeron slipped out of the house and went to the river to wash his face, trying to erase all traces of tears. As he dried off with the hem of his shirt, Lossenol appeared and sat beside him. “Where are the twins?” Daeron asked.

“Bronwel’s showing them how to weave baskets out of grass. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing—”

“Please don’t lie to me. You aren’t very good at it.”

“I used to be,” Daeron muttered. He rested his arms on his knees and stared at the water. Lossenol sat quietly and waited. He couldn’t stop thinking of Lúthien locked up in Nargothrond—brought there by fair words and false promises, entirely believable right until the lock clicked shut behind her. 

Lossenol was also full of fair words and promises. But Daeron had been on his guard from the start—he was not as foolish as Medlinel thought him. He would be able to catch a lie, surely. It wasn’t as though Lossenol had staged all of his injuries, or his panic when he realized he could not remember his own name. None of that had been feigned—no one was that good an actor, nor that devious a schemer. The shadows hovering behind his eyes were real. 

He had saved Daeron’s life, when it would have been both safer and smarter not to even try. Lossenol had done that—Daeron did not think Celegorm would have.

And there was danger in that, too—in thinking of them as separate people when they weren’t.

Finally, he said, “I just—there was much I did not know. And now I do.”

“About what?”

“What happened after I left. I…I knew that everyone I had known was gone, but I did not know how it had all happened. I still don’t know how Thingol died, but…I know the things that led to it.”

“I’m sorry,” Lossenol said quietly. “Both that it happened and…for whatever part I played.”

“Thank you.”

“I know it doesn’t mean very much.”

Daeron wondered what Lúthien would say if she could see them now. He wondered what his parents would think. Aloud he said, “It means a lot—at least to me. You know Medlinel thinks we’re lovers.”

“Is that why she keeps glaring at me?”

“Part of it, probably.”

“I assume you told her we aren’t.”

“Yes, but she didn’t believe me.”

He saw Lossenol shrug out of the corner of his eye. “Does it matter what she thinks? She’s not staying—and I don’t think any of us are going with her when she leaves.”

Daeron sighed. “No, we aren’t. And it doesn’t matter. It’s just…frustrating. No one ever believes me about that sort of thing.”

“That’s stupid,” said Lossenol. “Who would know your heart better than you?”

“Well—it’s not that no one ever believed me, just most people,” Daeron said. “Menelas—” He choked on the name, and had to press the heels of his palms into his eyes to stop the tears from escaping anew. 

Lossenol leaned over just so his shoulder bumped against Daeron’s. “I’m sorry,” he said, very softly. Without thinking, Daeron leaned back, letting his hands fall back onto his knees, and his head drop onto Lossenol’s shoulder. He couldn’t bring himself to care anymore what Lúthien would think—or Thingol, or his parents, or anyone else. They weren’t there; he was, and he was so tired of doubting everything he chose to do, even if it did someday come crashing down around him.