Truth Against the World by Lipstick

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Chapter 1

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You can forget how small this part of the world is, until the sun comes out. You can forget how low the hills are until the sky is blue and they loll, grassy and timid, beneath it. They’re younger than us, too. The glaciers cut this valley in the last ice age, and that was only 10,000 yeas ago.

I don’t know where the sun came from. I pulled back the curtains one morning and it was there. Macalaurë scowled as I unintentionally hit him full in the face with a violent ray of sunlight. It woke him and he is never good when he has been awakened unnaturally.

“Sorry brother.”

He humphfed and I put extra sugar in his tea. His face gets puffy when he sleeps. I think it’s the medication.

The trailer was warming up fast. Even putting the stove on to boil the kettle was making it unbearably stuffy. So I opened the trailer door.

“Ooh,” said Maglor and hid his face a bit.

I had forgotten just how colourful everything is in the sun.

~*~

It’s been hot for a week now, and Maglor has to wear plastic sunglasses every time he goes out in daylight. The brand new green against the deep blue sky is too intense for him. Then there are flowers; every garden is filled with yellow honeysuckle and pink rockroses. The rhododendron is out on the hillsides, blossom too exotic for a slate town, so thick and fleshy it could be carnivorous.

It’s not the season for an elf that likes small, quiet things. He spends more time by the sea these days, hidden in the shelter of the cliffs, watching the tide go inwards and outwards, away from the newly arrived families in brightly coloured beachwear.

He’s sleeping less due to the heat. We walk together in the cool of the twilight, along the strandline, watching the new moon grow fat. It’s not that he doesn’t like flowers. In the moonlight, he would run his finger along the old stone wall of the harbour to show me the tiny starflowers growing in the cracks.

“They brought them back from Numenor,” he said, “and they grow wherever rocks are sprayed by the sea.”

It could be true, I suppose. The little white five-pointed star that the ocean leaves behind in memory of what it once took away.

I don’t like to ask if there are eight petal flowers.

~*~

One day, we are summonsed to the little town further down the coast. It’s something to do with what those that are paid to worry intend to do with Maglor for the next six months. He didn’t read the letter.

We take the train down the coast. The town is white under its green cliffs and looks like an iced cake. You can walk along the wooden promenade and see the waves crash in under your feet. We had a good ten minutes of fun doing that. Then, with all the sea air and marchpane stucco making me hungry, I suggested we had something to eat.

The shop styled itself as very old fashioned. It knew it had a past, but did not seem quite sure when. I sympathise, it happens to anything that survives long enough. People incessantly tack things on. “The past is another continent,” someone said, and it certainly has its fair share of racial clichés.

Maglor slips some sugar sachets into his coat pockets. I order some tea. The waitress asks Maglor what he would like. He runs out.

He isn’t crazy. He’s very smart. When you are locked up and others have power over you, you learn that what you want is what can be used against you. You learn to lock your own wishes away, so deep you cannot remember them yourself. You train yourself to become faceless and Zen.

After I was freed, Maglor and I would sit in bed together compiling lists of what I liked. Just so I remembered, just so I wasn’t afraid when asked.

We sit on a bench on the sea front and eat sticky buns out of paper bags.

~*~

Six trains a day rattle through our little station, three in each direction. So if we go anywhere, we get used to having time to spare. We must have lived like this before, we who count years in centuries. That allows a lot of time for stopping to stare. Maglor likes to stare at everything. The silver stars in the gift shops, the reflections in old curved windows, and the little patterns on the concrete paving slabs. He stores them all up in that remarkable head of his, and you’ll never know when they’ll come out again, refined and purified in a devastating description in a line of verse.

There’s only me left who understands his poetry now, but one elf is more audience than he’s had in centuries and he does like to show off. He does some light verse in English too, mainly for the amusement of our doctor who is also a bard. He’s got a photograph of himself in a white robe to prove it.

Truth against the world. That’s the bardic motto they all swear to uphold. Maglor laughs and says a laudanum addict invented it all in the 18th century. Not that he thinks that matters at all.

The doctor spends more time discussing his verse with Maglor than he does concerning himself with Maglor’s health. He usually asks me if my brother is healthy or not. “Ar Oes Heddwch?” He asks, grandly. Is there peace? That is bard-speak too.

There is peace, more or less. There was a little outbreak of paper-cuts on Cano’s fingers; not a good sign, healthy elf skin is much harder to pierce than mortals, some bad nights, and the recurring fear of standing water. There is the confusion of a Quendi who has lost confidence in his ability to interpret the signals the world sends out to him that manifests as physical pain; deep under the skin, pain that cannot bear the touch of sunlight or a brother who loves him.

The world talks very loudly to Maglor, and it was a very different place when he last cared to hear what it had to say to him. But he is piecing this new song together, slowly, note by note. That is why he spends so much time staring at the sea.

~*~

“Oh look, I think they have you here.”

We were staring into one of the gaudier gift shops, one of the ones that specialises in cut-price souvenirs from the edge of reality. Maglor couldn’t resist the sparkle of the crystal, for all its shoddy workmanship, or the bright tubes of Perspex whirling above the door. True enough, lined in ranks are little winged replica Quendi, whimsy from the lost world, along side tinfoil aliens and red, synthetic fur dragons. One of the warrior figurines is most definitely a red head.

“I’m not wearing very much, am I?” My angry little replica appears to be going to war in a small pair of leather shorts. I’d say that was a slight tactical error.

“It’s not how you’d want to be dressed for a Himring winter.”

“I wonder where they got the wings from?”

“I think its mortals trying to represent our spirits. You know how they say they sometimes see something glowing around us?”

“Perhaps.” I say, wondering idly at a glow-in-the-dark alien set. It’s labelled “The People of the Stars.” Their funny, elongated faces and high cheekbones look like caricature Quendi. I suppose to the stars is where we went when the world shrunk, and the blank spaces on the maps were filled in, and the wildwood was not frightening anymore.

Maglor picks up a grinning Uruloki; it fits neatly into his hand, staring up at him with adoring button eyes. Its tail curls winningly around his forearm.

Dragons are very plentiful here. There’s a firedrake rampant on the flag above the town hall, and a cheery cartoon Glaurung guides us through the train’s safety instruction card. It’s a nod in the direction of history, a wry acceptance of a past so noble it can no longer be taken seriously.

“Do you want to buy that?” Asks the blue haired sales clerk.

Maglor puts it down with a smile. We are not ready to buy that.

“Oh cool.” She remarks, taking us in fully. “Where did you get your ears from?”

“My parents.” Cano replies.

~*~

We wait an hour in the hospital, despite arriving on time. Blood stinks in any century, and the heat does nothing to improve things. Mortal blood smells very similar to the elven stuff; iron, fishiness and diffuse living matter. We are a more finely refined version of the same base elements. The mortals flick through the tattered magazines, my brother stares at the floor tiles, I think about blood. An hour passes.

Finally, we are called through. The assessors are gathered in a circle on squashy vinyl armchairs, the sheep bothering consultant at the head of the ring. Cano’s social worker is there too; giving a thin smile of encouragement that may just be relief that we turned up.

“Mahanaxar.” I mutter to my brother.

He smiles as we take the empty seats to the consultant’s right. He adjusts his notes.

It does feel like a judgement, although everyone is almost deferentially polite. They are still deciding whether my brother is abiding by the laws of reality sufficiently to be allowed to continue at liberty, after all.

Fortunately, Maglor has a lot of progress to show them. He’s fleshed out nicely, and there are more than a few envious glances from the women present at the condition of his hair. At least, I think its envy. They might be struggling with disbelief. He sits on his armchair answering in neat clipped sentences, all variants on “very well, thank you,” with far too much poise to look like he should really be there. He has too much poise to look like he should be anywhere in fact.

We run through his anxiety, his repetitive behaviour, his incessant staring at the floor.

“Floors are important,” Maglor says. “They’re where all actions begin.”

The social worker nods along happily when I butt in about his shopping trips. She’s contented enough to have her own obsessions catered to. Maglor refuses to answer questions about his sex life. Good for him.

“Do you still have hallucinations?” Asks the consultant.

“I don’t think so.”

“Do you still see things that aren’t there?”

“Yes.”

“Does that bother you?”

“It depends what I see.”

“Do you know they aren’t there?”

“Of course, or else I wouldn’t be able to say to you I see things that aren’t there.”

“What do you do if what you see bothers you?”

“I think about something else. Or I look at it really hard and try to make it into a poem.”

“Does that work?”

“Often enough.”

“Can you see anything that isn’t here now?”

“Yes.”

“What can you see?”

Maglor looked a little ashamed.

“A fluffy red dragon.”

The consultant tried to hide a smile.

“And does that bother you?”

“A little, because it is so different from how dragons used to be.”

“How did dragons use to be?”

“Well, like on the flags. Very large with scales and claws.”

“You know that?”

“Yes, I fought one.”

Oh Macalaure.

“You fought a large dragon with scales and claws?”

“Yes,” said Maglor, flashing a little Noldorin pride. “It was attacking my city, I made it turn away.”

Just as I was getting comfortable in my retirement, it looks like we shall be forced into exile again. If one person in this room lays hands on my brother, I shall make myself a wanted elf, mark my words.

“Macalaure,” said the Psychiatrist, in a voice of oily gentleness, as if he were breaking to a child the non-existence of Santa Claus, “I do not believe you fought a dragon.”

He snorted.

“Of course I did. It burnt me here, look.”

He lifted up the hair on his neck to show the silvery scar beneath.

“I know you have a dragon on your flag now, so they are very important creatures to you, but one attacked my people and I could not stand for that. I did not mean to hurt any creature you hold sacred.”

The consultant looks baffled.

“That isn’t quite the issue,” he said. “Dragons do not exist.”

“I don’t lie.”

“Macalaure I think,” he paused for effect, “I believe you are having a delusion about the dragon because you are ill. How much olanzapine are you taking?”

“It isn’t a delusion. Ask my brother.”

Suddenly everyone looks at me. I know what I am supposed to say as a responsible carer, and I know that is a betrayal of Macalaure.

“Maglor.” I say.

“Please tell this silly man that I have seen a dragon.” He says flatly.

“It isn’t important.” I say.

“It’s very important to me.”

“Do not tell your elder brother what to do, Macalaure.” I am getting angry with him now.

“Do not let him call me a liar.” His voice carries its own warning in return.

“Please be quiet or you will regret it.”

“You cannot command me to lie, brother. You who are always telling me to be proud of my past.”

“There is a time and a place for everything.”

“Yes, I always lacked your gift for pragmatics.” He spat.

“Not now, please. You are making a spectacle.”

We are both making an excellent spectacle. Our family had a rather shameful reputation for airing our differences in public. Our soldiers compared notes as to who had witnessed the most entertaining disputes.

“You are asking me to lie.”

“Right now, it would do considerably less harm than telling the truth.”

Maglor laughed.

“You never let me get away with that line.”

A Feanorian argument is like a whirlwind, it swirls around us and we wouldn’t stop were we standing before the Valar themselves. Our confused observers sit stunned, shocked by the heat and energy, the sudden rush of air into the stuffy room.

“Bastard.” We’re standing up now, at the centre of the circle, wheeling all Arda around our clashing words.

“I know my own father.” Maglor’s eyes glinted.

“Then for the sake of his memory do not let one of his sons become a drooling fool in a strait-jacket.”

“I fought a dragon.” Shouted Maglor, all control gone.

“NO YOU DID NOT!” The storm shatters around us. Maglor stands stunned for a moment in complete disbelief. Then he turns and walks out.

“I fought a dragon,” he says quietly, “to get to you.”

Then he is gone.

For a moment I consider depositing my brother’s vacant chair on the consultant’s head as he grinds back into motion with his rehearsed condolences for how difficult it must be for me. I imagine how he would look with his throat sliced through, staggering backwards as his muscles lost contact with his brain. There’s a good reason I find it impractical to carry arms these days.

Finally the social worker says:

“So, where do we go from here?”

“I don’t think we need to go locking anyone up for a little dragon delusion…” begins the consultant, trying to regain some of his nonchalant composure. I leave him to it.

~*~

Maglor is extremely good at hiding. His colouration is more suited to it than mine. He has a gift for knowing the right shadow to melt into, and a remarkable ability for stillness even by elven standards. It is why I gave him the plains to defend. He has a knack for invisibility, and his followers were those who copied his trick. His armies could advance under the eyes of the shadow appearing little more than a ripple of the grass in the wind. I search the white streets hoping to sense his spirit berating me, or mourning its betrayal. The sun went in while we were fighting, and the grey clouds dapple the whitewashed stones and grey pavements, hanging curtains over corners and courtyards, creating perfect conditions for a monochrome Noldo to hide.

I run along the high street, up the side streets sloping steeply into the hills. I check under the promenade now the tide is out, in the amusement arcade, I even jump into the moored boats in the harbour. There’s no sign of him.

I feel indescribably heavy. I think this could be what others know as guilt.

I wasn’t there the night Maglor stood before the gates of his citadel, still in his tunic; there had been no time to put on armour, holding the sword of his father against Glaurung King of the Fire Drakes. Woken from slumber to flame and panic and a winter’s night turned red, he alone had walked through the gates and brought the fear of the House of Feanor to the Worm of Morgoth.

“Get back.”

And the dragon knew he couldn’t daunt him. He had confidence then.

The dragon snorted and shied, because all creatures of Morgoth first and foremost know how to fear.

“Get back.”

Blue flames ran down the sword forged by the light of Telperion. The command of a Calaquendi stung the creature raised in darkness. He sensed a light, and a fire greater than his own.

“Get back.”

He hated it, because it reminded him of all the power in Arda that would never be his.

Glaurung turned away before the gates.

But Maglor saw the armies behind him, the dull glow of the Balrogs on the horizon, and knew the lowlands couldn’t stand. He rushed back to the city.

“To Himring!”

He was the only one of my brothers to give that order. It might have been more sensible to retreat southwards, to follow Curufin’s lead and head for Nargathrond. Maglor and his people thought alike. If the world was to die under flames, they wanted company to watch it burn.

Or maybe it was just because my brother loved me.

A lick of flame seared in from the plain behind him, Glaurung’s parting shot. His hair went up like tinder-wood.

He stood there, still yelling orders until a stable-hand threw a bucket of water over him. Someone laughed hysterically. Elves milled about saddling horses, pulling children behind them. Someone thrust a mail shirt at my brother who forced it over the sopping tunic that was charred against him. Then, he was running too, giving orders for evacuation.

The Elves of the Gap paid dearly for their need for companionship. The route west led directly into the left flank of Morgoth’s army. Maglor rode at their most northerly, keeping Glaurung at bay, although the orcs would spill through behind him. His captains did their best, but the line was impossible to hold, and not all those the yurch killed were warriors.

They fought on for ten days when they got to Himring. I do not know how it would have gone without them.

~*~

“Do you wonder when we came to be on the same side?”

“Cano?”

“Elves and dragons. Do you wonder when we came to be on the same side?”

“About the same time they got hides of fluffy polyester.”

I found him asleep in a little square several streets above the town centre. When I saw it, I knew it was the only place I should have looked. At the centre of the square there was a large interpretive sculpture made of scrap iron, the sort they often commission to make legends seem less silly to modern observers. Tail in the air and nose sniffing down over the town, wings resplendent, crouched the very cutting edge of Uruloki art. She seemed a very female Uruloki, the way her head snaked down protectively over the huddled up Quendi curled between the barbs on her forelegs. I shook his shoulder and he blinked and stirred.

“Oh Maglor.”

“What are you crying for?”

“She is protecting you when I did not. And I’m not crying, this street catches the wind straight off the sea.”

“It’s a sculpture Maedhros.” He moved his head out from under the beast, so he sat propped against the curve of her neck. “I hope you have mastered your temper.”

“I have. I am sorry. I was only trying to make things easier.”

“They must have thought you’d lost your mind.”

“Quite possibly.” I sit down beside him. He moves away a little, so I can tell he is still hurt.

“I am so very sorry.”

“I still see the ones that died as we fled sometimes.”

“I know.”

“How could you ask me to lie?”

“Because I didn’t want to see you locked up again.”

He looks awkward. He wants someone to take the pain of the betrayal away, but I am the only one there.

“It is like it is all destroyed again, but this time even the memories must go.”

“Not destroyed,” I say. “Hidden wisely, so it is still there for those who care to look.”

“The poets still know.”

“They do.”

“Truth against the World. I know why they pledge that now.”

“But they write in ancient languages, in code from another world, just so the truth is still there when people can dare to face it.”

“Do you think modernity is worse than Morgoth?”

“I think it gives him a close race sometimes.”

I move to hold him, and he doesn’t move away.

“They both left me you.” I say.

It was me who dressed his wounds after the battle. I put cold cloth over the burns and tidied the remains of his hair. “The Princes are in Council,” the captains said, but that was not true, for there was nothing that could be said. We held onto each other and knew that the end of everything had begun.

“The poets used to decide who won the battles, Dr Griffyths told me.” Said Maglor. “When the mortals would fight, the bards from each side would meet together to decide who won.”

“Who won from the Elves and the Dragons?” I say.

“We did, because we are still here.”

The sun breaks through the clouds just before it sinks into the ocean. We watch it slip beneath the horizon, a little blaze of glory at the end of bruising day.

And there is peace.