Interview with a Kinslayer by Lipstick

Chapter 1

Interview with a Kinslayer
Red: Not such a good day.

A free being in an unfree society will always be a monster.

First published: May 3, 2004

Read Chapter 1

 

There is very little about me that is remarkable. True, my inhumanity may make casual observers more at ease with commenting on aspects of my existence that, out of fear or politeness, they would avert their eyes from in one of their own. But I came from the great music, and there is nothing within me that is not alive in myriad other beings created from the song of Arda. To look at me and see only the difference is a very comforting form of deception. And if there was one thing that the Feanorians despised above all else, it was a people comforting themselves into a prison.

To put it bluntly, we all look into the fiery chasm. Whether we walk away or not is a choice of the individual at the brink, but it happens to us all. I think what saved me in the end was that it came as no surprise. I knew the Valar would not rest without a final attempt to screw me over. Other people have more faith in their gods.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This morning had been bright. A curious aspect of our current situation is that we live between weather systems. The coast will often be in sunshine while the mountains are hidden in grey storm clouds. Sometimes it rains on half our trailer. Mountains obey their own laws of weather, which is why I used to live in them.

This morning, the whole costal swathe was under pale blue skies with the occasional cotton cloud hurrying past in the March winds. It was springtime weather, cold and clear although spring itself comes late here. The sunlight through the window woke my brother; he was still curled around a cup of tea when the knock on the door came.

They stood at the door, armed and in uniform. I still look for weaponry on visitors; it’s the first thing I do. In more civilized ages, one could request guests removed such hostile equipment before they entered one’s front door. I worried how Macalaurë would react to it. It must have been quite some time since he had had to deal with armed envoys. At least they weren’t carrying guns. Then again, would Maglor recognise a gun?

“Can I help you officers?” I asked. I was thinking about Josie’s Amex card.

“Are you Mr Canifinwee?”

“No, that would be my brother, officer. Why?”

“We need to ask him some questions about a serious incident.”

“He is still in bed. He will need to get dressed. I shall go and get him.” And with that, I shut the door in the officers’ faces.

Maglor was huddled in his duffel coat when I let them back in, looking sleepy and fretful. There was something about the tremulous quendë that made them nervous at once. He looked too much like a sick animal to register with them as human. His distress seemed a trick of sentiment, like the injuries of stuffed toys. They remained standing, close to the door.

I could take you, I thought calmly. Lay one hand on my brother and I will take you, assault batons and all.

“Mr Canifinwee?”

“Tinks,” said Maglor in a flat voice.

“Where were you the morning of March 14th 2004?”

“Here.”

“Was anybody else with you?”

“I was.” I replied.

“Did anybody else see you that day?”

“No.”

The other officer was scribbling in a notepad. I noticed from their livery they were not local. They were Met Police, from London.

“Were you a patient of St Saviour’s hospital, Waterloo from 22/9/1992 to 2nd February this year?”

“Yes.”

That was what we would do with dead orcs. Check the devices on their armour.

“And have you returned to the hospital or had contact with any of the staff since your discharge?”

“No. Yes, Dr Stephenson sent me my wedding ring back.”

“When was that?”

“About a month ago.”

“And did you respond to that?”

“No.”

Surely, I thought, these constables have not come all the way from London to berate Maglor for bad manners.

“Did you have any other contact?”

“No.”

“Did you at any time during your stay at St Saviours have a conversation with Dr Stephenson in which you indicated your belief that you were immortal?”

Maglor changed then. He sat upright and his eyes brightened to a pale flame.

“Yes I did. Many times.” He said, holding the officer’s gaze. “What of it?”

The constable looked away.

“And did he believe you?”

Maglor swept his hand across the back of his neck to free the hair trapped in his coat’s collar.

“No.”

There was a flash of dead white skin on his neck. His hair caught alight once, while marshalling his people’s escape from a dragon.

“Did you agree with your treatment at St Saviours?”

“No, I was held against my will.”

The inky black curtain fell down over his shoulders. Elven hair is considerably heavier than mortals’. It caused a noticeable draught.

“Does the phrase: “I believed I could use reason to free humanity from ignorance and fear. I did not know what to do when reason failed,” mean anything to you?

“No.”

“Did you ever use it in conversation with Dr Stephenson?”

“Why are you asking me this?”

His voice was soft, with the lilting accent of Sindarin, even though he spoke in English. But beneath it was the glitter of command, all pervading, as if disobedience would resonate pain through the listeners’ soul. He did it simply, without thinking; it was the ease with which he assumed control that un-nerved the officers. They had to learn their scripts of power in schools.

“Because Dr Stephenson has been found dead.”

“And you believe I murdered him?” Maglor asked in the matter of fact tone of one overly familiar with such accusations.

The officers looked taken aback. He frightened them. There was something about him that eluded comprehension, as quietly irritating as grit in the eye.

“This is not a murder inquiry as yet.”

Maglor sighed a little and looked up into the policeman’s eyes.

“If it was not murder, how did he die?”

“He was found hanged,” he replied, unable to take his eyes from the silver lights in Macalaurë’s.

“So why are you troubling me about this?”

“Because your file was found on his desk. He had made several amendments and annotations after your discharge. Twenty pages worth.”

“Have you read them?”

The Noldo continued his gentle interrogation.

“No, I have not. But my super informed me that the final pages were not of a medical nature. They were speculative.”

Maglor nods his head.

“Continue.”

“I was sent here to establish the nature of your relationship with Dr Stephenson.”

“I was his patient. What he knew of me came from watching me in a cage. There was nothing more.”

“Did he give any indication to you that he came to believe your story?”

“He believed it?”

“Yes, in the final records. He came to the belief that you were…not human.”

Maglor let the policeman’s gaze drop. He slouched back into the shape of his overcoat, a tired old quendë once more.

“No,” he replied in the hushed voice he had used in the hospital. “No, I did not know that.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Maglor sits between my knees looking distant and dishevelled. From time to time, I stroke his hair. There is nothing else we can do.

“I should have written to say thank you,” says Maglor. Then he gets up and leaves. Off to lament by the waters, the silly soft fool. I am left alone, preferring to contemplate than to mourn.

“I believed I could use reason to free humanity from ignorance and fear. I did not know what to do when reason failed.”

These rather ponderous words were found on a take out coffee napkin in the house of one Dr Stephenson, the same time his hröa was found suspended by the neck from a brass curtain rail. It is believed his fëa departed sometime earlier that day. It may be a quote. Mortals often defer to higher authorities during events of great importance; they lack confidence in the validity of their own experience and wish for a greater wisdom to explain it away. Having paid his last respects to reason, he made his way beyond the circles of this world.

He had not managed to convince himself we were unusually talented Siberians, then. He lacked the gift for holding two conflicting ideas simultaneously that is the bedrock of mortal sanity. He had dedicated himself to seeking truth, and that is always a risky fetish. Truth comes in all sorts of unpalatable shapes and sizes.

It is a dangerous thing to get too close to the Quendi, because we exist outside the rules and rationale of mortal belief systems. They pass over us without touching. You desire us for our freedom, for that is the source of our power, yet all we are truly free from is humanity itself. To wish to know such freedom is deadly; it means turning your back on the hidden pathways that hold your life together. That is why so many people have lost their minds in a hectic search for us. We are beautiful because we are free, but to look on such freedom will only make your own chains the more unbearable.