A Handful of Seawater and a Cheekful of Salt by Isilme_among_the_stars  

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An elven ship goes sailing home

Maglor sets out toward Rivendell seeking one he loved and finds an altogether different elf on the road.

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The sea shouts and groans.

Maglor stands on a pebbled beach, barefoot, as elven ships go sailing by. The water is cold but he doesn’t feel it. His feet have not been his own for some time. The ships skip and dance over slate-grey waves with their silver sails full. Maglor watches. He watches and he watches and he watches. Gradually the ships grow small against the backdrop of the sea. Fenced thoroughly by the Gulf, they skate toward a distant glimmer of freedom. The doorway to the open ocean is small, but so are the ships. The sun chases and races across the sky, too fast, until it has won, and still the ships sail, heedless, into the blood-red night.

There are more away in the Grey Havens, rocking against their piers, waiting.

Maglor turns his back to the sea and begins to walk.

He walks through the cold night and does not feel its chill. He walks over the stony earth and does not feel its bite. He walks for weeks and weeks. Eastwards, always eastwards. He knows not why, just as he does not understand why he stood on that beach. Most decisions do not feel like his own. He simply follows his feet, and his feet have not been his own for some time.

The land is green and flush with rain and sometimes the hills roll endlessly on, and sometimes plains are choked with twisted, dark woods, and sometimes mists pool about dreary lowlands refusing to dissipate, and sometimes the mists and vapours cover insect-filled marshlands replete with mud that sucks at his feet. All pass by in their turn without note or remark. East, he goes — east, toward the mountains — until the country is windswept and the road passes to the south of hills raked clean by its cruel reach. Nothing grows tall and proud upon them, only gnarled, hunched things. Maglor trudges down the middle of the road as driving rain blinds his eyes.

“Where are you going?” a tall, elven Lord asks, stopping as their paths meet. The road turns to churning mud beneath the hooves of his steed. Behind, a sea of cloaked figures bend over the necks of pale horses, cringing from the downpour.

“Eastwards,” Maglor says, and the word scratches roughly from his throat.

“That is plain. The last of our people are bound for the West. Why do you strike against the grain?”

An answer comes from his lips as a surprise. “One who I loved abides in Rivendell, beneath the mountains.” Perhaps his feet always knew their destination, but they are poor conversationalists.

“I come from Rivendell. It is emptied. How long has it been since you walked among the Eldar?”

The years have worn on uncounted. How long has it been since he stood beside the sea with an unwanted prize that burned like hellfire? How long since he threw it away? Maglor does not know.

The Lord dismounts and comes close. Silver hair gleams under his hood. His eyes roam from Maglor’s torn clothing to his scarred hand to his tangled, dripping hair and come to rest on his face. “One should not remain alone and weather-worn. Come with us. You shall be warm and fed.” What abstract things, satiety and comfort. When was the last time he longed for their like?

“Where is it you go?” Maglor asks.

“West,” the silver-haired Lord says with a small, amused smile as his graceful hand points in the direction from which Maglor has come.

That night, beside a crackling fire under the shelter of those stark, windswept hills, the tall elf bathes and binds Maglor’s bleeding feet. He feeds him and bids him sleep. When the sun rises he changes the dressings and bids him eat again. He is not cruel, but he is cold.

“Have I caused offence?” Maglor asks.

“You have done nothing impolite,” the elf says. He looks away. He turns over the earth and buries the fire’s ashes. “I am Celeborn,” he says. “What may I call you?”

“Randir,” answers Maglor, for he has been a wanderer for long ages. He knows not what else to be.

“That is not your name,” Celeborn says, like he knows something yet unsaid.

“No.”

What right has Maglor to the names he once held?

The road stretches before them. In silence they journey on.

✦

Maglor roams the corridors of a great house in the Grey Havens under the light of the gibbous moon. Miles and miles of tapestries peer down from their high mounts. Stars and devices and family crests leap and dance on seas of sable and royal blue. They mock and they jeer.

“What are you looking for?” Celeborn asks. Maglor is looking for a dark-haired youth with intelligent, grey eyes, or rather, the Lord that youth became. It has been long since he saw him.

“He is not here,” Maglor whispers and falls to his knees.

“Who is not here?”

Maglor remembers how the children slept. Pale light reflected in curved flourishes upon their dark, unruly hair. They were still, in sleep. Maglor whispered promises of safety into ears with broad, soft points. The children did not stir.

One twin sailed, and one remained. Both are lost. “Oh, starlight,” Maglor weeps. “The ships are sailing and I cannot see you safely home.”

“Perhaps he has already gone.” Celeborn kneels before him. “Many have.” Celeborn’s face is not cold in the pale light, but neither is it warm.

Maglor turns away. Eärendil’s star is picked out in silver drawn to a fine thread and twined with silk. It shimmers. His fingers brush the threads of its lowest point. “That boy’s heart ached for even the lowliest of creatures. He would not leave while his people remained, however few.” Maglor’s voice is too flat. It crumbles and breaks.

“Unless, perhaps, he knew they would follow, and trusted beyond doubt that his people would be well cared for.” Celeborn speaks to him in the way people touch something both delicate and dangerous. He speaks to him as if Maglor were a spider he coaxed from the corner of its web. 

“In whom would he place such trust?”

“In me.” Celeborn’s words are made of steel. He looks Maglor in the eye. His chin is firm and his brow set. Maglor was a leader once. He recognises marks of authority.

Celeborn surveys Eärendil’s silken star. His mouth curls into a grimace. He straightens his lips. He holds his hand, palm up, to Maglor like an offering. “Come with me when I go, Maglor. Rumour has it you almost made that choice, once.”

“That was a long time ago.” And it was another elf who decided so, one who had a right to that name. The elf that exists now only wears his skin.

✦

The sea hisses and it spits.

The hull of the ship sways and pulls tight the ropes that hold it to the pier.

Quietly, a grey-bearded, barefooted elf comes and leans casually against the bollard by which Maglor stands. He folds his arms over his chest. “So you have come at last.”

The sea foams and breaks against the cut stone below. It makes shapes as beautiful as they are violent.

“I watched you,” the elf says. “All those long years. You did not look as if you wished to be found. I wondered when Maglor, the prince of old, would remember himself and return to us.” The elf’s face is known to Maglor. He was neither bearded nor grey when they first caught each other’s eye over a song and a goblet of wine in the first age. Maglor is much changed, too.

“I am not he.”

“No,” Círdan agrees. He looks at Maglor slant-ways with sharp, piercing eyes. “You could be yet.”

Maglor stares at the grey, fretful sea.

Círdan sighs. He pushes himself upright without unfolding his arms. “Elrond took ship at the very beginning of this age. He, and your cousin. That was over a century ago now. They are not missing, as perhaps you feared.”

Starlight over the seas. Maglor remembers how it looked. He remembers how Elrond stood on the brink of the world where old lands sunk, birthing the new, watching starlight pulse and shrink and fly back home to the sky. He remembers how Elrond scooped a handful of dirty sea and watched it sparkle over his fingers.

“Well then, are you getting on my boat?” Círdan asks.

The timbers moan and they groan.

Maglor sits astride the bowsprit as the elven ship goes sailing. The wailing wind is cold. He does not feel it. His skin has not felt like his own for some time. The ship skips and it dances over the slate-grey waves with its sails full. Over his shoulder the Havens shrink, growing impossibly small as he watches. Maglor watches and he watches and he watches. Before him is the open sea. It does not seem like freedom. The ship skates forward and yet the vast body of water draws no nearer. It seems like an endless oblivion. The sun chases and races across the sky, too fast, until it has won and still the ship sails on, inevitably, into the carmine night.