Burning Bright by Agelast

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Chapter 1

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You weren't hurting anyone, you were hurting only things! And since things really couldn't be hurt, since things felt nothing, and things don't scream or whimper, as this woman might begin to scream and cry out, there was nothing to tease your conscience later. You were simply cleaning up. Janitorial work, essentially. Everything to its proper place. Quick with the kerosene! Who's got a match!

- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451.

 

We were born moments of each other, the first set of twins on this shore. Family legend told how my brother's tiny fingers gripped my left leg so tightly that when the midwife pulled me from my mother, my brother came trailing after me, hand still in place.

It was ever thus: I would lead, and he would always follow, and never to let go.

 

* * *

 

Contrary to everyone's expectations, we were not best of friends. We fought more often than we embraced, to be truthful, our upbringing encouraged tough-mindedness, which I embraced and he rejected. But still, I could not stand to see him mistreated by anyone.

No, we were not best of friends.

We were always more than that.

 

* * *

Everyone believed that he was my mother’s favorite, her last-born child. Our mother, weary from her labors, chose not to contradict them. Instead, she handed my brother a pen, a brush, a chisel, and told him that he could choose what to make.

Hurt, I sought my father’s company.

The soot from the forge blackened my face and hands and made my odd reddish hair black, like his. He, distracted, ruffled my hair, turned his attention elsewhere. I was not particularly skilled in smith-craft, and after some stupid mistake or other, I was banished from his forge for the day.

“Go play, Carnistir,” said my father. I did not bother to correct him.

Instead, I fled into the cool evening, to look for my brother. I looked for him in all our usual places, and I finally found him by the river-bed. His hair and clothes were covered with marble dust, whitened and stiff.

Laughing, we washed off the difference between us.

 

* * *

The mariner refused to die.

I had stabbed him in the stomach, and he had collapsed on the deck, like a blind animal, his hands sought his lost boat-hook. I had kicked that aside, and I was upright and I had my sword, and I could do nothing but watch him.

He still crawled towards me, determined to --

I thought, wildly, I should let him kill me, it is only fair.

There was a crash of someone jumping on deck, and a low cry, and the mariner stopped moving.

My brother rose unsteadily, and I rushed to him, and caught him before he fell.

* * *

“You can’t leave me,” I said. “We can’t be without each other.” I touched his cheek, and willed him to look at me. He shook his head, and kept asked, “But what have we sworn to do?”

And. “What have we done?”

“Only what we must,” I said, and he looked at me with disbelief.

I hissed at him, “You only want to go home to mother.”

“Why,” he said, exasperatedly, “is that a bad thing?”

I turned away from him, and put a blanket over my head. After all, if he had to ask, he surely didn’t know.

He said, softly, “Will you betray me?”

He waited for my answer, and I truly wanted to say, yes, I’ll call them and have them hold you until the ships sail (for daring to leave me.)

But I had to remember that I was the eldest one here. I was...

I said, “Not ‘til the morning,” and went to sleep.

But of course, they were no mornings now.

* * *

I woke up with the smell of smoke in the air, and stumbled out of our tent and into the milling crowd that lead to the water. I pushed to the front, when someone, Curufinwë, I think, shoved a torch in my hand. “Throw it,” he said, or rather, shouted.

I threw it without thinking.

They are only things, things cannot really be hurt. They cannot scream, or cry out. Things cannot die.

Surely, my brother had already set sail. Surely he was not there, in those burning ships.

Surely.

The sails of the swanships were woven so fine as to be thin as paper, and they caught flame easily. Behind me, the crowd whooped and shouted, and I thought I heard my brother Makalaurë singing...

 

But none of the ships were missing. They were all accounted for.

They all burned.

The smoke hung low in the dark air, like an accusation.

From a long ways away, I could hear my father speaking. “I knew it was so,” he said, his voice shaking. “I burned it first.”

Eventually, Maitimo (whose hands, I saw, were clean of soot) dragged me away.

 

* * *

Maitimo and Makalaurë clucked over me, wiped the soot and tears and blood from my face (there was a long scratch on my cheek, I did not know where it came from) and made me rest.

But I could not rest, I could not sleep. My brothers patted my head and saying, “Have heart, Pityo,” but they didn’t -- they couldn’t understand.

They couldn’t see him. No one could, except Father, I think, but he had enough ghosts dogging his footsteps to bother with mine. He did not speak of it. No one spoke of poor Ambarussa, the grief of his loss was still too near.

You could see, couldn’t you, how I could have problems? Ambarussa was dead, but he was still alive. Ambarussa did his duties well enough, albeit dully and without joy, but he looked over his shoulder, half-seeking a ghost that may-or-may-not be real.

Troubled boy, my brothers started to call me, even the kinder ones.

Mad boy, said the ones who were less so.

It was my punishment. I had failed. If we had been better friends, I could have convinced him to stay. If I had been a better brother, I would not have made him come here. If I had not killed my other half...

I stared at the night sky, and wished that my head hadn’t become so cluttered up. We were marching again soon, and my whole body ached. But then he sat next to me and I reached out into the dark. My brother’s hand caught mine.

His hand was insubstantial -- a fragile thing -- but still.

“We’ll be all right, won’t we?” I asked him, seeking reassurance, as I always had. I had been so wrong about so many things.

He nodded.