A Homecoming at the End of Time by Himring

Chapter 1

Read Chapter 1

Sometime in the far distant future a man checks into a hostel. (We can be fairly certain there will still be need for some type of cheap accommodation; there always is.) The man, whose ears are slightly more leaf-shaped than those of the average human being, pays for one night in advance and, in return, receives his key (or key card or other futuristic unlocking device). He locates his room. It is small, but clean, and contains a single bed. The television set works but does not show more than two channels; the bulb in the bedside lamp needs replacing. (Substitute whatever features will characterize slightly substandard hostel rooms in the far distant future here).

It is late. The man prepares himself for the night, switches off the light and lies down, flat on his back on the bed, his eyes wide open. After a while, in the dark, a darker shadow enters through the closed door and hovers beside his bed. The shadow is entirely featureless, even to the man’s penetrating gaze, and yet not for a moment is he in doubt who this visitor is.

‘You!’, he whispers, sharply.

The shadow drifts closer; perhaps it is lowering itself onto the edge of the bed.

‘You left me!’ the man says and—after all this time—still hears his voice break in a sob, childish as a sulky toddler’s.

The shadow does not answer. Perhaps it cannot. Perhaps it is not even really there, but in his sight it remains, black on black, at his bedside.

And as he goes on gazing at it, it is as if that single sob had shaken something loose in his head. The twisted, snarled skein of music that he has been carrying around in his head—growing, growing, but unmanageable, unceasingly swirling and skirling, but in no discernible order—comes undone, as if it had only needed that infinitesimal tug, and begins to unwind. As he lies unmoving in his bed, his eyes fixed on the shadow to his left, in his mind’s eye his pen begins to move across the page, recording note after note, stave after stave, at dizzying speed, and then it is on to the next page and the next, gathering speed.

It is the music. It is the great music of which the Noldolante only ever was a part. It is the music of which the Noldolante was an essential part but which continued, gathering force, when the Noldolante came to a crashing halt.

In Maglor’s mind’s eye, it unfolds, bit by bit. He hears it, finally, as it should be, in the right order. It resounds, silently, as it records itself before him, all night, all night.

In the grey dawn light, the shadow by the bedside fades. In Maglor’s mind, the speeding pen slows, slows even more, and finally writes its final stave. Maglor arises, his head full of music.

He checks out of the hostel. He walks around the corner to Tesco’s and buys six packets of oatcakes and two six-packs of Highland Spring. (Substitute convenient futuristic retail outlet and packaged non-perishable food items here.)

Then he makes his way to the harbour. (Harbours will probably not look so very different from now, except for the oil leaks on the surface of the water.) It is early still. There are very few people about. Maglor steps onto an empty jetty, facing the breakwater, and whistles softly.

For a while, nothing happens. He is beginning to wonder, wryly, whether those in the West have changed their minds just when he has finally changed his own. But then there is a stealthy movement, far out to sea, and the small grey boat that has been dogging his footsteps along the coast for the past couple of thousand years or so dodges round the harbour bar and moves swiftly towards him.

***

By the time Maglor is approaching Tol Eressea, he has drunk all the bottled water and eaten all the oatcakes, but he hasn’t sung a single note.

Valinor is aware of Maglor’s coming. The surface of the sea has become flat and clear as glass. Uinen takes Osse’s hand and dives with him down to the sea bottom. The Teleri feel a strong rise in pressure at the approach of Maglor and the music in his head as if before a great storm. None would dare hinder his coming, even if they wished to.

‘He could have sung for those ships!’ says Olwe gruffly in his throne room, to nobody in particular.

He could have, if he had thought of it, if he had known how. If it had not been for the memory of the First Kinslaying, his cousin Finrod would have defeated Sauron the Maia by the power of his song. Finrod was wiser, but the lesser singer by far.

Maglor disembarks, unopposed, unmet, and passes westward through Alqualonde in the direction of Tirion. He reaches the road to the Calacirya and begins to ascend. His boots scuff in the pale shining crystalline dust of the road.

Maglor Feanorion is walking up the Calacirya. In his head are songs that could level Alqualonde and reduce Taniquetil to rubble but he is not thinking of that.

By the side of the road grow mallos and alfirin, elanor and niphredil, and other flowers whose names are not remembered in Middle-earth. To the left and the right of the road, they bend before the power of his music.

Maglor Feanorion is walking up the Calacirya. In his head are songs that could sing a silmaril down from the sky, a silmaril out of the depths of the sea, a silmaril out of the bowels of the earth, and maybe he will sing them, if he is asked to do so. But he is not thinking of that.

Maedhros, who was watching for him from the top of the Mindon and saw his brother come to land, feels as if he is facing into a strong wind as he walks down the Calacirya to meet him. But in fact, the air is still. The Lord of the Breath of Arda is holding his breath, for Maglor Feanorion is walking up the Calacirya. Maedhros goes on walking towards him, steadily, on light feet.

Half-way up the Calacirya, half-way down, they meet and halt, a couple of steps apart. Carefully, slowly, Maedhros extends his hands towards his brother—in question rather than in confident expectation.

You! You left me! But Maglor is not thinking of that now. That is not what he is thinking.

It has been so very long. All down the ages, he has seen so many places, so many things, so many people, as history ran its course—and all the while, Maedhros was nowhere, seeing no one and nothing. What can they still have to say to each other?

In that moment, halfway up the Calacirya, Maglor is assailed by doubt. In Middle-earth, the First Age is so long ago that it is no longer true. What is he doing here, in a land that only exists in the fanciful writings of a professor who died so long ago that nobody even speaks the language they were written in anymore? Is he anything more than an exceptionally long-lived madman with slightly odd-shaped ears?

In that moment, the doubt in Maglor’s mind is powerful enough to rend Valinor apart and plunge him into the boiling Atlantic a thousand feet below. A slight tremor runs through the earth under his feet, followed by a longer, stronger one. Fingon, awaiting Maedhros’s return at the bottom of the Mindon, feels them. His finger nails dig painfully into his palms.

‘Makalaure’, says Maedhros quietly, without reproach, without fear, and begins to withdraw his hands.

Maglor looks up at the sound of his name and sees that Maedhros’s right hand is moving slower than his left, more hesitant, almost clumsy. He looks up and recognizes his brother, inside the all-too-perfect shape that Namo has grafted him back into.

‘No’, he says sharply, and Maedhros’s movement stills, his hands hovering in mid-air.

And Maglor walks into his brother’s arms.

But not yet, my dear, not for a long time yet, not even in Valinor.

---

Chapter End Notes

One of the prompts for B2MeM 2011 was: 

You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right.
--Maya Angelou

Although I didn't write this story for that prompt...