The Ways of Paradox by Narya

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The Paradox

Credit to Spiced Wine here - there is a conversation between Rosie and Claire in this chapter that is very like the one they have in Summerland. I didn't realise how alike the two scenes are until I re-read this chapter ahead of posting, it must have been a subconscious thing; I hope you don't mind!! :)

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He spent the night on the z-bed in the box room. Unsurprisingly, he protested, but the others had arrived back looking like they'd been for a dip in the North Sea; we were all adamant that the weather was too grim for him to walk home.

“We'll have to move the suitcases into the hall for the night, but it's fine.” Theo shook out his tousled hair like a gundog. “You're not our first emergency guest.”

That night my dreams were strange and muddled. I was back in the courtroom but it was all wrong; I was defending a criminal case, and I kept trying to protest that I was a commercial barrister and I wasn't qualified for this, but in the way of dreams my voice died away whenever I tried to object. The jury weren't right either; they were dressed in strange billowing shirts and leather jerkins, and they pointed at the defendant and cried, “Murderer! Thief!” I turned to the judge for help, and my bones turned to ice as I saw that there was nothing under his wig and robes – and I looked back at the defendant, huddling in the dock, clutching at the filthy rags he was clad in – and though long matted hair hid his face, I knew him. His right hand was horribly burned, the flesh raw and weeping, and the crowd's atonal clamour swelled around him like a sea-storm, its song a raging fury of betrayal and death...

“Mark!”

I woke with his name a half-strangled scream on my lips, and covered my mouth, glad that my room was a good way from the others'. My throat felt like I'd swallowed sand; my face burned, and the covers were damp with sweat.

Christ, I hope he didn't hear me. 

I shoved back the duvet and took a deep breath. Unlike some of my nightmares, this one didn't take much unpicking. My sleeping brain had tangled my past with Mark's confession, and twisted the two things into something uncanny and frightening – probably thanks to the whisky, I told myself, lying back down as morning crept through the threadbare curtains.

“Thief,” though – that makes no sense, he's not a thief.

The rain had slowed to a gentle pitter. Outside on South Street, I heard the sweep and splash of a car trundling along the wet cobblestones. There was no movement upstairs. I'd wondered whether Mark might let himself out early; the old Yale lock didn't need a key from the inside, and after last night's revelations, I couldn't imagine him wanting to sit down with us all and chatter away over breakfast. My room was nearest the front door, though, and I was used to the other three waking me up as they dashed off to early lectures or came clattering in after a late night. I hadn't heard anything. 

It was too late to try and go back to sleep. I pulled on a hoodie and a pair of loose jeans, then padded to the kitchen to put the kettle on, shivering at the grey chill clinging to the air. The linoleum was cold and almost damp under my feet, as though the morning condensation had seeped in through the windowpanes. A quick check of the radiator told me the heating hadn't come on.

Typical.

While the tea brewed I coaxed the boiler back to life, then, armed with an extra jumper and a pair of thick hiking socks, drafted an email to our landlord asking if someone could come and take a look.

Apparently the others had all slept through the clunking and thudding from the boiler room; there was still no sign of life anywhere else in the house. Cradling my mug, my mind drifted back over my dream, and Mark's strange story. 

“I've watched people die...some of those I watched die, I killed...”

Was I mad to trust him, I wondered? The scant details and his warnings about the need for secrecy suggested some kind of deep cover operation. Maybe he was ex-Secret Intelligence, and not a war veteran at all. It would explain a lot – the mysterious past, the injuries, the difficult memories, the relocation to a quiet seaside town, the accent that wasn't quite English.

“My family are gone...what I suspect is terrible...I will not see them again...”

That might fit too. I sipped my tea, sifting through my hazy knowledge of British security and counter-intelligence. We'd been taught a little about the various departments and their machinery on my Diploma course, but only the barest minimum to provide context for the cases we were studying, and the ethics governing them. I didn't know whether they'd recruit someone with such an obvious personal and emotional stake as a lost family, however well that might work as a motive in a novel or a TV series.

But it made no sense of the stranger things I'd noticed about him, the breath of the ancient and forgotten on the clifftop wind, my utter conviction – however short-lived it had been – that he wasn't human.

Because he has pointed ears. The cool, rational side of me rolled its eyes, and I pictured Henry Tilney's gently incredulous smile as Catherine related her suspicions about his father. It's probably a birth defect, loads of people have them.

I set my tea down on one of the side tables and ran a Google search for “born with pointed ears.” There were a couple of cases, but nothing like the perfect, leaf-shaped tip I'd briefly glimpsed out at the castle. I considered doubtfully whether he might have had plastic surgery to make them look like that – but then I remembered he hadn't wanted Rosie touching his head when she was dressing him for Pirates, and he never wore his hair back. If he didn't want anyone to see them, it made no sense to have them altered.

He could have had the surgery and regretted it, I argued – but that made no sense either. I knew he had money. If he hated his ears so much he could easily have them altered – or altered back. They had to be part of whatever he was hiding, which led my brain right back to where it didn't want to go. In fact, if I followed my train of thought all the way to its logical conclusion, I knew very well which creatures of myth and legend were traditionally depicted as immortal and beautiful with pointed ears...

I opened Google again, hesitating, knowing I was being silly.

Oh, why the hell not. There was no-one here to see. I typed “Do Elves live among us?” into the search engine and hit return.

Yahoo Answers and Reddit were full of the usual deeply thoughtful responses - “LOL no you fucking moron”, “Are you high?”, “Hahahahaha go back to playing Dungeons and Dragons you mouthbreather”, and so on. Unsurprisingly, there were plenty of links to Tolkien fan sites and journals – and further down, several posts from or about people who claimed to have encountered the inexplicable, often in woodland or by the sea. Laughing voices, figures glimpsed through trees, the whisper of a song on the wind. Most of it was vague, and I suspected a good chunk of the stories were made up – but some accounts rang truer. An eighteenth century shipwreck off the Cornish coast, from which half the crew were rescued by an extraordinary individual who swam to and fro between the ship and the shore until all were safe, then refused any aid or care for himself and disappeared across the clifftops, never to be seen again. A walking party in the Lake District in the sixties, led to safety by a beautiful, dark-haired guide who vanished when they approached civilisation. A German soldier in World War One, lying wounded in No Man's Land, cradled and sung to sleep by a mysterious man who glowed with a light as old as the stars...

Upstairs a door creaked open. The box room. I closed the laptop lid and shoved it under the sofa.

“Morning,” I called, noting with relief that my voice sounded normal, despite the feeling that a veil was fluttering over my view of the world, offering glimpses of something I wasn't sure I wanted to see.

“Hi.” 

“Did you sleep OK?” I hauled myself off the sofa and headed back to the kitchen. “The heating went off, it was freezing when I got up...”

“I didn't notice.” Mark leaned against the door frame, clothes a little creased, hair bed-tousled. “I was just glad I didn't have to brave the rain.”

“Well, you're welcome to crash here any time.”

He shook his head, smiling slightly, as though still not quite believing. “Thank you.”

“Tea?” I flicked the switch on the kettle.

“No, I should get back – but thank you. Again.”

I knew – or suspected – that there was nothing at his house that urgently needed his attention, but I understood. The weight of the previous night sat between us like a sleeping behemoth. Lounging about in the living room drinking tea with the others, or gossiping over breakfast, would feel distinctly weird. “Well, text me if...” I paused, remembering that I didn't have his number, had never needed it. “Wait, do you even have a mobile?”

A slightly rueful smile. “I'm afraid not.”

“Landline?”

He shook his head.

“I'm guessing no internet either, then.”

“Correct.”

I was no longer surprised, and added it to my long tally of items on the Not Normal list. “How do you do your research?”

He lifted one elegant eyebrow. “In the library.”

“Yes, but...” I broke off as the bubbling roar from the kettle clicked off and settled into a warm chatter. “Never mind.” 

More doors opened upstairs; there was the sound of yawning and running taps, and Mark and I both winced as something large and heavy clattered to the floor.

“Back to the day job,” I grinned, pouring hot water into the teapot.

He laughed. “Claire, would you let me cook dinner for you?”

I looked up, surprised and pleased. “I could be persuaded.” 

His answering smile – dazzling, brilliant – was for the first time since Christmas the same one that had so thoroughly and consistently disarmed me last semester. “When?”

“Whenever suits you.”

“Tonight – say seven o'clock?” He glanced upwards at the thud of footsteps across the landing. “Let them fend for themselves for once. I imagine you need a break.”

“Too true.” I knew what the others would say, and I knew that wasn't what he was asking, but even so a flower of warmth unfolded inside me. I hadn't realised until he'd made the offer, but I'd been afraid that after last night he might pull away again, retreat into memories and secrets like he had before Christmas. “Alright. Thank you.”

Upstairs, the cheerful guitar chords of Bryan Adams were added to the morning cacophony. 

“Seven it is, then.” Mark reached for his jacket, still hanging on the back of the door from the previous night. 

“Should I bring anything?”

“No need.” He paused. “Claire...”

I looked up from stirring the tea. “Don't. It's OK.” 

***

Rosie came trotting downstairs a few minutes after Mark left, still in pyjamas and a dressing gown but looking utterly immaculate. “Was that the door I heard?”

“It was only Mark heading off. He had things to do.” I passed her a mug of tea. 

“Thanks.” She blew over the top of it, and gave me a cheeky smile. “Oh my God, last night. That has to be the cutest thing I've ever seen.”

Here we go. I hid my wry grin as we headed back to the living room and curled up on the sofas. “I wouldn't read anything into it.”

She snorted. “Rubbish.”

“It's not what you think. He's...” I paused. Could I call him a friend? It didn't seem the right word for the strange relationship we shared. On one level it felt like I didn't know him well enough to use it; on another it felt wholly inadequate. “He just needed a listening ear last night. That's all.”

She nodded, her pretty face serious. “Is he OK? Theo's right, he did look rough – for him, I mean – not that he was right to come out and say it...”

“Well. Subtlety isn't Theo's strong suit.”

“Definitely not.” Cat-like, she curled herself into the cushions. “So?”

“I'm not sure there is a 'so.'” I knew I couldn't repeat half of even the vague story he'd given, and nothing at all about my own wild ideas. “I think Christmas was tough for him.”

“I get that. It can be a lonely time of year.”

Outside the rain was clearing, and sun was breaking through the cloud bank. Theo was singing in the shower. “It's weird.” I pulled the blanket up around my legs; the morning air was still cool. “I think he needs to be around people, but at the same he needs distance too.”

“Just not from you.”

I shrugged. “I was there when he needed to talk. That's all.”

“That is definitely not all. You haven't seen the way he looks at you; if you were in trouble, he'd walk through fire and blood to get you out of it.” 

“That's a bit melodramatic.” 

“Well, it's true.” Her blue eyes glinted. “Anyway, I have a new theory about him.”

“I didn't know there was an old one.” 

She didn't react to my sarcasm. “I think he might be royalty.”

“What?” My eyebrows flew up towards my hairline. “Don't be daft, how could he be?”

Her cheeks turned the same coral pink they always did when she was embarrassed and annoyed. “I don't mean British royalty, we know what they all look like.”

“Even European royalty is stretching it, though. He'd have bodyguards tailing him everywhere.”

“Not if he comes from a deposed regime. It'd explain him having old scars, and not liking stories about revolution and uprisings – and don't you think there's something in the way he carries himself?”

“I think that's called confidence.” Harrison strolled into the living room and settled himself at the table with a cup of tea. “Morning, Claire.”

“Morning.” I glanced over at him. “So you've heard this theory too?”

“We were talking about it in the pub last night.”

I shook my head. “You're all as bad as each other.” And you're worse, a guilty voice nagged. I leaned down and picked up my laptop again, scrolling back through the story of the German soldier. 

“Don't you think it's romantic, though?” Rosie sighed and fluttered her lashes, looking for all the world like a lovelorn Disney heroine. “The exiled minstrel prince...”

Something slipped and blurred in my mind, like suddenly I was seeing the world in two halves, each one from a different angle. 

“Murderer...thief...”

The song, the sea, the fire...sorrow deeper than the earth...

...old thick yellow pages...indigo leather embossed with eight-pointed stars...a familiar figure glimpsed through fog...petrichor and lightning...a fist grasping a fierce white light...

Breath crept down my throat and over my galloping heart. It made sense, it made so much sense - absurdly simple, like most riddles when you see the answer - and yet it was mad, impossible, even more than my crazed idea that Mark might be an Elf, or whatever creature it was that had given rise to our stories of them. 

I shoved back the blanket and crossed to the bookshelf on legs full of frozen air. Giddy sickness rose from my stomach to my throat. How could I be so stupid? I hadn't read them in years, but they'd been sitting there all the time, old friends who'd held my hand through my awkward, self-conscious teenage years and the wild London rollercoaster of my undergraduate degree. Once I started working I'd had far less time for reading, but they'd moved with me from student halls to my poky little flat near chambers, and now all the way up to Scotland – five volumes in a sleek boxed set, all in black paperback, a different symbol on the spine of each one. A dragon, an eye, a pair of towers, a crown – and, last of all, an eight pointed star. Again I heard the chiding tones of Henry Tilney in my mind - “Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable” - but I thought of the things I saw when he played, beautiful faces gathered around a flickering fire, their hair catching in the light of the flames, copper-red and silver and gold and deepest black. Triumph swelled in me as I dared to name them, and then plunged as I remembered their terrible fates – and the burn on Mark's hand. I'd seen what was seared into the ruined skin, that weird and beautiful geometric arrangement, like the facets of a jewel...

Exile. Minstrel. Prince.

“Claire?”

You knew already. I stilled my breath for a moment as a mad, cackling laugh threatened to escape. You've known for months. Part of me had realised the first time I heard him sing. I thought of the dream I'd had, the light beneath the waves, my aching need to be by the sea the next day. 

“Claire?”

“Sorry. I – I've got reading to do. I thought I'd left one of my books in the pub.”

Harrison and Rosie shared a glance. 

“It's fine. It's there. It's right there.” I sank back onto the sofa, calves shaking, and pulled my computer into my lap as they went back to their conversation. They'd moved on from discussing Mark, and were currently debating whether Harrison should ask out the cute guy from his Geography tutorial. They were safely distracted. I took a slow, steadying breath, and entered one word into the search bar on my browser.

Maglor.

In fairness, I mused, it wasn't an obvious leap to make. I'd laughed at Rosie's theory, calling it a stretch, but this...this bordered on insanity. Even now, as the wild rush of realisation ebbed away, I was beginning to doubt. He was a character from a book, for heaven's sake. How could he be real?

A most ingenious paradox, is it not?

I sent a flick of anger after the mocking voice in my head.

The search returned thousands of images. None of them looked like him – but then, why would they? I already knew from searching for Mark that he clearly avoided having his picture taken. I returned to the web links, and clicked on the first result.

Other names: Kanafinwë, Makalaurë.

Makalaurë. Mark Lowry. I snorted softly.

“You're not always careful...”

“...apparently not...”

I shook my head. Not careful...good grief, between his name and his hand he might as well wear a sign around his neck explaining the whole story...but no. I wasn't sure I'd ever met another person who'd read The Silmarillion - Harrison, I knew, had never got past The Lord of the Rings - and it was only yesterday that I'd seriously begun to consider that he might not be human. If I hadn't seen the tip of his ear out at the castle, if the wind had been blowing in a different direction, I might have accepted his sketched explanation, assumed he was an ex-spy hiding from his past in an out-of-the-way corner of eastern Scotland.

“I've watched people die...some of those I watched die, I killed...”

Ice and sick heat shot through me. He hadn't meant deaths in the line of duty, necessary for the defence of the realm. 

I cannot tell you any more than that...

…“Murderer!”

I closed my laptop lid, slowly. Rosie and Harrison – and Theo now, I realised – were still discussing Harrison's potential date. A dull grey ache bloomed in my chest. What would I tell them?

Nothing. Tell them nothing.

After all, what was there to say? That their new friend was a fictional killer Elf, and wouldn't be coming over for dinner any more? 

Dinner. Shit.

I rubbed my temples. I had no idea how to contact him and cancel – I didn't even know his university email address, he must at least have one of those – and then I gave a silent, bitter laugh as I realised I was panicking about the etiquette of avoiding dinner with...

With what? With whom? The kind stranger who had saved our show last semester, who had bought me cake when he knew I'd had bad news, who had calmed my nerves and pinned up my hair. The insightful man who had understood Rosie so easily, who had coached Theo into the performance of his life, who had recognised Harrison's jealousy and kept his distance until it abated. The brilliant, charismatic performer who had brought Venue One to its feet, cheering and whistling and screaming for more. The gentle musician who had teased me with guessing games in the practice room – almost, I realised, as though he was willing me to work it out. The lonely, haunted soul who had stared out across the sea, lost in a grief I couldn't hope to understand. The patient listener who had sat through the halting, emotional explanation of my aborted legal career, who had looked at me with nothing but compassion when I told him the truth that still frightened me, that I had kept even from my parents and my cousin. 

Satisfied that my legs weren't about to give way, I took myself off for a long shower. I stood under the stream of hot water, hair dripping down my back, turning the facts over again as coolly and carefully as I could, the same way I'd have put together a court case – not that I'd ever had anything like this come across my desk. Evidence for the defence: student shenanigans and a weird emotional connection. Evidence for the prosecution: a work of fiction, albeit perhaps one with a basis in fact.

Maybe that was it. I hadn't heard Mark's – Maglor's – side of events. Maybe Tolkien hadn't got it right, or maybe there was evidence I hadn't heard. Extenuating circumstances. Hell, maybe I was really losing it, and there was a perfectly rational explanation for all of this, and Mark wasn't Maglor at all – although even as I thought it I knew he was, knew it with the same deep certainty that I knew the colour of the sky and the path of the sun. And suddenly I knew, too, that he wouldn't attempt to defend what he'd done. I wondered if he even regretted it. He hadn't said so last night, I realised, cold fingers creeping down my spine – but then I thought of the catch in his voice when he spoke of his cousin, his taut refusal to sing of revolution and bloodshed, the wary look in his eyes after he'd told me the barest bones of his story, like a hunted animal waiting to be shot. Tears clotted in my nose and throat. So much sorrow, so much grief – older than memory, and yet I'd felt it, in his song and in my dreams...

I turned off the water and pushed my hair back from my face, decision made. I had to talk to Mark – to Maglor? - no, Mark, easier to think of him that way. And I wasn't waiting for dinner, unless for some reason I couldn't find him. He wouldn't hurt me, that much I did know; I'd dismissed Rosie's words earlier, but if I hadn't believed before Christmas that he cared about me, trusted me, yesterday had shown it beyond doubt. 

He didn't trust you enough to tell you the truth.

But the truth – if it was the truth – was so far beyond the bounds of sense and reason that I knew I'd have instinctively rejected it, if I hadn't got there on my own. 

I dried my hair and threw on some clean clothes. Making sure the others were occupied with revision, I pulled The Silmarillion down from the bookshelf and tucked it into my coat pocket, where it weighed like a talisman against my side.