Father-Names by Finch

In the hour before dawn the four remaining sons of Fëanor descended on the Havens of Sirion to take the Silmaril.

The letter that Maedhros son of Fëanor sent to the people dwelling at the Havens, was as courteous as its demands unyielding. He and his brothers bore the folk of the Havens no ill will and would offer them aid if asked for, but the Silmaril was rightfully theirs and must be returned to them. Or they would take what was denied them, as they had sworn to do, calling everlasting darkness upon them if they should fail.

It was Elwing who received their message, for she it was who wore the Silmaril after her father Dior and her grandmother Lúthien the Fair. She rejected the stern demand. Never would she betray those that had suffered and died to win and keep the jewel in which the fate of Arda was contained.

The folk of the Havens, many of whom had witnessed the slaughter of their loved ones at the hands of Maedhros and his brothers, concurred. They prepared as well as they might for the attack that was bound to come. Long and bloody was the fighting, for Elwing's people had courage, and much to defend. Not even women and children were spared. Many that before had escaped the Balrogs and orcs of Morgoth, now fell to the swords of Elves who were little better than orcs and Balrogs.

The fighting lasted for most of the day. Confusion reigned; some among the attackers turned to defenders in an attempt to mend their evil ways. Some stood aside, caught between loyalty and loathing. But the people of the Havens were outnumbered, and for all their valour could not withstand the wrath the oath had kindled.

Many warriors were slain that day, the youngest of Fëanor's sons among them, in the fury that raged around the base of Elwing's white tower on the edge of the Bay of Balar. The door of the tower was battered relentlessly, and when at last it broke, the defenders' cries of dismay mingled with far more numerous shouts of victory. Maedhros and Maglor and several of their warriors stormed in to run up the stairs. But suddenly those who remained outside beheld a white blaze at the top of the tower. Many had to shield their eyes as against the glare of the sun itself, but the hardiest eyes could discern the pale shape of a woman in the arch of the highest window: Elwing of Doriath. The light shone on her breast, and the wind caught in her long dark tresses as she straightened and opened her arms.

A heavy silence descended. The woman flung herself forward, and a sigh resembling the breath of the ocean escaped all that beheld this sight. She plummeted towards the sea, her garments fluttering behind her like frenzied wings, past the base of her tower and the face of the cliff from which it rose. Ever faster she fell, but before she broke the surface the sea rose to meet her. A huge wave lifted her slender form upward like a hand, up, and up, until it crested and fell away from underneath her, and the fluttering garments were truly wings and Elwing was a woman no more.

A white seagull with a Silmaril on its breast shot into the gathering gloom like a star.

He was the last to climb down the long, winding stairs, a long and weary descent. All other doors in the tower were open. He cast a glance inside the first three, and when he beheld the empty children's beds in the third room, he ignored the other rooms. Someone had been there before him, his brother, or one of their warriors.

Perhaps he ought to make haste, but he was tired. The Silmaril was out of reach once more. They had merely added new crimes to their names, ever more blood to the sea through which they were wading. No wonder we are bogged down.

Outside, he saw the battle was over, the cries and the clamour replaced by the quiet of death. They had won the day, but at great cost. Not far from the tower he found his brother. Maedhros stood watching the bloody corpses of their fallen brothers, their father's youngest sons. He had closed their eyes, yet even in death their faces remained twisted with rage. The same faces, for they were twins. The same rage.

'May they find peace in the halls of Mandos,' Maedhros said without looking up.

'They must atone first – and long will it be before they find mercy,' Maglor said. As it will be with us. The Curse of Mandos will take us all in the end.

His brother laughed mirthlessly. 'Your encouraging words lift up my heart.' His gaze turned west towards the empty seas and added angrily: 'A gull. The Lord of the Waters turned Elwing into a seagull. What will the Powers devise next to thwart us?'

Maglor refrained from pointing out that it was Elwing, the grandchild of a mortal Man, who had thwarted them in the first place. 'Where are her sons?' he asked. Below the tower, the waves crashed against the shore, telling stories of a shining jewel carried out of reach.

'Not here,' Maedhros answered, the fire in his eyes dulled. 'I do not know who took the half-elven brats. Nor do I care anymore.'

Maglor remembered. More than two dozen years of the sun ago. The kingdom of Doriath was no more. Dior lay death, with his wife; and tough his daughter had escaped with the Silmaril his two sons had been seized and left in the wintry woods. Neither he nor Maedhros knew of this, or they might have prevented it.

'Do we wage war on children?' his brother shouted when they told him the boys had been abandoned to starvation.

'I have seen the bodies of dead children in these halls,' one of the perpetrators had the evil courage to say. 'Did you have no hand at all in their deaths, my lord?'

Maedhros had remained silent, jaws clenched. He had punished nor rebuked the guilty.

'How much deeper can we fall?' Maglor recalled saying later that day, when they left the carnage behind to return to their homes without the shining jewel they had come to claim.

'Is there a ground to evil, or is it a bottomless pit?' Maedhros asked.

'I cannot tell.'

'Neither can I.'

That same night, Maedhros had quietly left their camp and ventured alone in the forest to seek Dior's sons. To no avail. Once, he came upon a pair of footprints, but the boys he could not find, though he searched for them until the snows began to melt.

Afterwards, he told Maglor about the wolves he had killed, and they both thought the same.

'Indeed,' said Maglor, sick at heart. 'We wage war on children. I had forgotten.'

'What difference do two more boys make?' Maedhros said wearily. 'I failed to find Elwing's brothers. Why do you believe it will be easier to find her sons? Is not death all we have to deal? And would it not be for the best if they should perish, instead of growing up to take revenge?'

Did he mean those words, or did he fear to fail for a second time? Perhaps my turn has come to seek in vain… Maglor thought. Then they would both know that the descent into darkness knew no end, and despair together.

'To that, I do not have the answer,' he replied, leaving his brothers, the dead and the living, behind in the gathering gloom.

It was night before he found whom he sought: Himluin and Andrúth, who had served his brother Celegorm before he was slain by Dior of Doriath. He recognized them both. They were covered in blood, as he knew himself to be. 'I am told you know what fate befell the sons of Elwing,' he said.

They gazed at him, one with cold blue eyes, the other with a smoldering ire in a face both fair and cruel. 'You were told the truth,' said Himluin, his tone close to insolence. 'We left them in the woods.'

'As we did with Elwing's brothers, whose father killed our lord,' said Andrúth.

Maglor felt a rising ire. 'What way did you go? Where did you take them?'

'I do not recall,' replied Himluin.

Elven remembrance is long and keen. 'So you have the memories of aging mortals?' Maglor said with deceptive calm.

Himluin shrugged. 'Perhaps we paid no attention.'

They defied him, but once they had been of Fëanor's following, and he was Fëanor's son. He would suffer it no more. Maglor drew his blade and thrust. Himluin crumpled without a sound, his blood soiling the earth, his cold eyes turning into frosted glass. Andrúth cowered.

'Orcs, I kill. To prove you are no creature of the Enemy,' said Maglor savagely, 'you will lead me onto the right path at dawn.' After this killing, which was nothing less than an execution, Andrúth would not lead him astray now.

But then, no one needs to lead the sons of Fëanor astray. We already are.

This time, it was summer, not winter. The boys would have a better chance to survive, Maglor mused, but his chances of finding them were smaller without any snow to preserve footprints.

The rising sun set the forest afire when a sullen-faced Andrúth led him inside. Soon, it became clear to him why they had to go on foot. Instead of chosing one of the paths, his guide climbed the steep hill that the paths avoided, between rocky outcrops and thorny bushes. Once they reached the crest they descended again, bounding, sliding down along yesteryear's dead leaves and slippery patches of moss. The hill would be a formidable obstacle for two young children.

How old were these boys? It occurred to Maglor that he did not even know that much about them. All he ever heard was that they existed. He was loath to ask his guide about it, but he guessed they could walk, or Himluin and Andrúth would not have taken the trouble to put this hill between them and their way home, or what was left of it.

Beyond the hill, the forest ground grew marshy in places – these woods bordered on the fenlands of Sirion - and here and there Maglor saw tiny pools glimmer between the trees. Some time after the red of dawn had changed into the white light of morning, his ears caught the melody of running water, faint and far away. There had been days when he, Maglor the Singer, would turn such music into golden song. Those days were long gone.

'How far?' he growled at his guide.

'We left them beside the brook murmuring in the distance,' was the answer.

Maglor searched the other's smouldering eyes and knew that Andrúth spoke the truth.

'I shall go on alone,' he said. 'Leave me.'

When Andrúth was gone, he let the music of the water guide him. It was much further away than he thought, and when he found it the sound was very loud. Following the stream in the direction of its source, he discovered why when it turned sharply to the west .

Chapter End Notes

The Lord of the Waters: Ulmo

The waterfall was not very high, yet it tumbled down with force. Where the sparkling curtain of drops ceased to fall and hit the rocks, making the water churn and whipping up flakes of foam that swiftly dissolved, he saw a few twigs whirl in the eddies before the current carried them downstream. Some bore leaves.

Maglor stopped in his tracks.

The dark-haired boy was crouching on a rock in the water, close to the eddies. Now and then he cast a twig into the stream, watching it twist and turn until it vanished from his sight. So engrossed was he in this game that he did not observe the tall stranger who stood observing him.

For a while, Maglor did not stir. Once more, he heard his brother's words: Would it not be for the best if they should perish, instead of growing up to take revenge? Now that his search proved far too easy compared to Maedhros' laborious and vain attempt, he knew in his heart that he had hoped it would be unsuccessful. 'To evil ends shall al things turn that they begin well,' their curse had prophesied. Was meaning this boy and his brother well not the surest way to let them come to harm? What if others sought them? Some at least must have escaped from the Havens. He turned away to leave. And turned back.

The child was leaning forward in a dangerous way to scoop up a handful of foam barely within his reach. Maglor watched him curiously. The boy kept his balance and captured his foam flake with his right hand. When he lifted it carefully to his face it glittered like starlight, until he blew it from his palm and the stars scattered.

Maglor opened his mouth and cried. 'Young one!'

At first, the child appeared to hear nothing. When Maglor repeated his call, he jumped up, startled, and poised to flee.

Nine or ten years old, Maglor thought, until he remembered the boy was half mortal, and that mortals grew faster than Elf-children. Four rounds of the sun since this one was born? Cautiously, he advanced along the bank, pushing aside some branches. How did one speak to a child? He had no children of his own, nor had he ever paid much attention to the young.

He decided on: 'Do not run,' and: 'Are you alone?'

The boy did not move or reply.

Maglor attempted a different approach. 'What is your name? How old are you?'

After a long silence the boy offered: 'I am six years old. And my name is Elurín, after my mother's brother. But he died, and I do not want his name.'

Had Elwing been mad, or fey, to name her son after one of her dead brothers? Would the other boy be called Elured? The thought of using such mother-names repelled Maglor. Wonderering at the strange turn this conversation took he asked: 'So you would rather have a different name?'

'Yes.'

Maglor thought of the glittering but short-lived foam dissolving on the surface of the stream. 'Then I shall call you Elros*.' For like the foam on these waters, your time under the Sun will be brief, compared to the life of the Elves. A cold thought, and one he could never repeat to the child. What foresight of doom had come upon him, that he should think such a thing about someone he had met but a few moments ago?

'Elros.' the boy repeated, as if savouring a new taste. Shivering, he stepped into the cold water and waded to the bank, where his shoes lay. 'Now tell me your name.'

He decided to speak the truth. 'Maglor, son of Fëanor.'

The child's grey eyes hardened and darted towards the weapon on Maglor's hip. 'Murderer! Have you come to kill us?' he cried. He did not run away, though.

Us. So the other boy had to be around, too. Maglor drew his sword from its scabbard and saw that he had not cleaned it properly, for it bore traces of blood. A hissing sound escaped the boy.

Appalled at his own lack of subtlety, Maglor threw the weapon out of reach.

An older child, knowing what the hands of a strong adult can do, would not have been satisfied. Elros seemed to relax, be it only a little. 'What happened to my mother?' he asked. 'They said she jumped out of the tower window.'

'She is alive, but she has gone. More, I cannot tell.' That much was true, Maglor thought. He could not tell a six-year-old that his mother had flown away in the shape of a gull. Not here, not now. 'But maybe you can tell me where your brother is?'

Elros tried to outstare him. He did not lack in courage, that much was clear. At last he declared: 'Not far away.'

Clever enough. But he was young, and inexperienced at feigning. Maglor followed his glance, in the certainty that it would tell him the tale. It swerved towards the waterfall.

At first he was taken aback. Then he understood.

There was a narrow space between the rock and the glistening, ever flowing curtain of water. The boy might have slipped through without being touched by more than a few droplets of the spray, but Maglor could not. His left side was quite wet when he stepped inside the shadowy cave. But at least it was not sticky, as it had been yesterday, when the moisture had been blood seeping through his coat of mail.

Elwing's other son was seated on the rocky floor, his arms around his knees, his black hair glimmering in the light that passed through the veil of singing water. He was looking up. The roof of the cavern, moistened by the spray, sparkled like the starry dome of heaven and seemed further away than it was. Yet the child was not so absorbed by the sight that he did not hear Maglor enter. When he saw it was not his brother, he, too scrambled to his feet. His eyes went wide.

So did Maglor's. The boy was the mirror image of the one outside.

They are twins! his mind shouted, full of amazement, full of grief.

The features of his own twin brothers came back to him, those furious, dead masks that once had been the eager, joyful faces of his father's youngest sons, countless years hence in the Blessed Realm, before the Shadow fell. This was an agony he had never expected to suffer. His aching heart seemed to expand until his chest was barely able to contain it. And in that moment he knew beyond all doubt that he would defend Elwing's sons with his own life.

How long they gazed at one another, their silence filled by the sound of the waterfall, he did not know. It was the boy who spoke first, his clear young voice rising above the noise. 'Are you a son of Fëanor?'

Maglor was surprised. So they are different after all. This one sees. He nodded. 'I am Maglor.'

'Then you have done much evil,' the boy said sternly - his mother's words, most likely. 'Are you here to you harm us?' His gaze did not waver.

Maglor was forced to look away. 'Yes, I have. And no, I am not.'

'Why not?'

'You and your brother remind me of my own twin brothers, when they were young.'

While the boy considered that, a scraping sound could be heard at the entrance of the cave. The other twin came in, dragging the discarded sword along. He looked as defiant as ever.

'Would you kill me if you could lift my sword, Elros?' Maglor asked.

The boy merely scowled, loath to admit the weapon was too heavy for him.

'He would, if he were but a little taller. But his name is not Elros,' remarked his brother.

'His old name did not please him. So I gave him a new one.' Behind Maglor, the sword clattered to the floor, as if Elros was no longer able to lift it.

'If if you were to give me a new name, what would it be?' Elros' twin demanded to know. His eyes, too, held a challenge, but of a different kind.

Name me well.

Briefly, Maglor wondered what name their father would have bestowed on them, the man who had sired them and then left them, exchanging his home for the deck of a ship. None at all, he deemed, or Elros would have mentioned it. He looked from the glistening vault overhead to the waiting boy. 'You are Elrond**,' he said. For you may live to see the stars tread their age-long dance through the dome of heaven. This time, he did not wonder what, or who, put this thought into his mind, though again he knew he must conceal it. In Arda Marred both dooms would bring sorrow soon enough.

'Elrond,' the boy repeated. Just that - nothing to suggest he either accepted or rejected the name.

Maglor bit his lip. 'Come,' he said. 'Let me take you back.'

'Home?' they asked simultaneously. Their voices were almost indistinguishable, but not quite. To one with a singer's ears it would not be difficult to keep them apart.

'To whatever home I can give you,' Maglor answered.

They were silent for a while. 'Do you think it will do?' Elrond said to his brother.

'If we want to grow up to wield swords,' Elros replied ominously.

Elrond turned back to Maglor. 'We have no choice, have we?'

He did not deserve better. Yet, while he led the twins through the woods towards the Havens of Sirion, Maglor the Singer found himself softly humming a new tune for the first time in many years, a marching song to accompany their small steps. He was not at all sure if he could win their trust. He still could not tell if there was a ground to evil. But he knew that, for the time being, the task he had set himself would keep him from falling any further.

Chapter End Notes

Elros = Star foam; Elrond = Star dome

For naming customs among the Elves: see The Shibboleth of Fëanor, in: The Peoples of Middle-earth, Volume 12 in the History of Middle-earth. If this story deviates from the usual procedure, it's intentional.