A Powerful Illusion by Himring

Chapter 3: Hazelnuts

An earlier version of this chapter was first written as birthday fic for Oshun.

‘You’ve got a new page’, remarked Fingon casually.

They were sitting in a pavilion in the centre of the formal garden.  All around the airy wooden structure, rain was streaming down on knee-high hedges and white gravel. Fingon was cracking hazelnuts.

Only a quarter of an hour ago, they had been walking sedately together along a long corridor. Maedhros was already mentally bracing himself to meet the gathering of family and acquaintances that awaited them at the other end, when Fingon, without warning, thrust open a discreet side door and dashed off into the rain, calling over his shoulder: ‘Follow me!’

Maedhros had obeyed instantly, leaving the door to bang shut behind them.

It was, Maedhros considered, a tactical masterpiece, his latest rescue by Fingon, cleverly planned and expertly executed. Where they were sitting, they were highly visible from the large windows and galleries on all sides of the courtyard, so there was no way Maedhros could be said to be hiding from public view in shame and embarrassment. However, anyone who wished to express their strong disapproval and extreme dissatisfaction with Maedhros Feanorion’s latest decision would have to walk fifty yards through bucketing rain to do so. If that did not deter them completely, it might at least cool their tempers before they got here. So far nobody had ventured forth.

It was the more generous of Fingon to plot such a rescue, he felt, as his cousin himself clearly did not entirely understand why Maedhros had voted against his father’s proposed campaign against Morgoth in council. But apparently Fingon had decided Maedhros had suffered enough on that account. It was true, that besides his harrowing private conversation with Fingolfin, he had had to endure Aegnor’s flaming anger and Angrod’s iron contempt and a multitude of pinpricks by those who were not in a position to criticize him in quite such forthright terms but still did not hesitate to let him feel their disapprobation. Even many of those who had not been in favour of attacking seemed to be of the opinion that if Maedhros Feanorion, known as an inveterate warmonger, also opposed the attack, he must be doing so for the wrong reasons. 

More difficult to bear than any of these had been Maglor’s silence. Clearly, in the present surroundings, away from their home ground, his brother’s loyalty would not allow him to voice his disagreement even in private. But his silence was eloquent enough. Maedhros was not used to disagreeing with Maglor so comprehensively. And he was only too much aware of what the reaction of the rest of his brothers was likely to be when he returned to East Beleriand.

He owed Fingon a frank discussion of the matter, of course. But his painstaking attempt to speak honestly to Fingon’s father had merely entangled him further in unintended and unanticipated ambiguities. So for now he was very grateful for the chance simply to sit still, listening to the whoosh and drip of the rain, and watch Fingon crack the hazelnuts he had brought along for their entertainment with the hilt of his knife. He did so with great precision, applying just enough force to crack the shell without damaging the kernel. Each nut he cracked he offered to Maedhros, who only accepted every third or so, so that Fingon ended up eating most of them himself. The small pile of shells on the table before them was steadily growing.

‘You’ve got a new page’, Fingon had remarked, casually. He could have no idea that, for Maedhros, that subject was quite closely linked to the one Fingon was so carefully avoiding.

‘Yes,’ Maedhros answered. ‘I owed his parents a favour, and they seemed to think that this was it.’

‘Why shouldn’t it be a favour?,’ Fingon asked. ‘You haven’t suddenly begun mistreating your pages, have you?’ He stopped to consider. ‘I guess he is rather younger than the age you would take them on, usually.’

‘He is the same age you were when you were first sent to Father for schooling.’

‘Is he?’, asked Fingon surprised. ‘Yes, I suppose he is. There isn’t much resemblance otherwise, is there?’

‘More than you’d think’, murmured Maedhros vaguely, evasively.

‘Really?’, Fingon asked him curiously.

Maedhros encountered his cousin’s bright, unoffended, oblivious gaze and, once again, surrendered unconditionally.

‘No, none whatever’, he confessed, smiling. ‘None at all.’

***

‘He’s smiling’, thought Fingon, relieved. ‘So he did want to be rescued. I wasn’t quite sure… He can be so very stoical, sometimes.’

He looked down at his store of hazelnuts and did a quick estimate how many there were left. He had been going through them too fast, he discovered.  He had given in to the urge to reach out and offer, over and over again, craving that small but distinct feeling of achievement every time he dropped a kernel in Maedhros’s outstretched palm—he would see his cousin fed, if nothing else!

But now the rest of those nuts would have to be spaced out very carefully, for he suspected that all too soon after the last nut was cracked Maedhros would feel obliged to heed the call of duty and face the rest of the family—precisely because he did not want to.

‘That page of yours’, thought Fingon, ‘I hope he appreciates what he’s got. He may be too young to have left home so early—but at least he doesn’t have to measure out his time in your company in hazelnuts.’