Graveyard Shift by Himring

Chapter 1

In Himring 'verse, Maglor's wife is a Telerin musician and remained behind in Aman.

She rounded the point and spotted another one, after all. At that distance it could have been a beached seal, but she was sure that it wasn’t. She gripped her shovel tighter.

By now she knew only too well what a drowned Noldo looked like. This one—she did not know him by name—was clutching the spar of a stolen swan ship that had failed to keep him afloat and could not be parted from his loot even in death. She would have to bury them both together. She wondered whether Olwe might regret his call for help to Osse slightly, finding that Uinen’s wrath was wrecking the ships along with the Noldor. But the storm had abated now, although the Noldor would still find the sea rough sailing, and those ships that had not been smashed were now beyond her ken.

It was not just the slaughter on the quays and along the harbourfront, it was the memory of all the faces of the drowned Noldor that she had buried, later on, that would make her refuse to set foot in Tirion for so many centuries. When she encountered them elsewhere, she would look at living Noldor and their image would waver before her eyes as if she saw them drowned.

The corpses had been strewn all the way north along the coastline, heaped up in the dark like black seaweed, like clusters of ominous notes on a single stave. She was not sure how or why it had become her job to bury them, although they could hardly be left to rot, fouling the beaches.

Because she was the wife of a son of Feanaro, one of the ringleaders, she supposed, even if they were estranged and despite the fact that she had stayed on teaching at the conservatory when he went to Formenos. Perhaps also because she had lost no close relative in the battle and had no slain Teleri to bury in her immediate family? Because she was visible, a known face, having performed on her flute so much in public?

Because she had not been near the harbour when the battle broke out? Because she had not even tried to exchange a word with Makalaure at any point either before or during the battle? It had seemed more urgent to calm down a classful of distressed and terrified music students at the time, when nobody quite knew what was going on.

She rather doubted she could have stopped Makalaure, whatever she said to him, when Feanaro had not been stopped by Olwe, who he should have respected as a friend of his father’s.  Makalaure would have had more cogent reasons to ignore what she said, after that last painful quarrel when they had parted.

She set to work once more and buried the unknown Noldo who had wanted to conquer lands in Middle-earth and defeat the Black Foe himself and yet had not made it farther away from Tirion than a lonely grave north of the bay of Eldamar.

And when she was done, this time, she straightened, leaning on her shovel, looked north towards Araman and said: This is how far I follow you, Makalaure.

It had not occurred to her, until she spoke, that she had been following him, tidying up after him, as if it were still a matter of keeping the household accounts out of the sheet music, back in the days when anything that could be written on had a way of being covered in notes and disappearing into Makalaure’s drafts. She had not minded then, even if she had to shout at him occasionally. But this, now, was something else and entirely beyond her.

She turned her back on Araman and her lost husband and went slowly back down the coast. She tried to let herself know, in advance, that there would be no light, still no light, emerging from the Calacirya, but when she came in sight of the city and the pass and all still lay in pitch-black shadow, her stomach clenched painfully regardless.

She passed like a ghost through the dim streets of her mourning city, but when she came to the conservatory, they were waiting for her, her colleagues and her students. The first thing she was offered was a drink of water and, even before she could nod her acceptance, a small pastry and warmed water to wash.

She propped her shovel against the wall. Her eldest student pulled out a chair for her, but she slipped to the floor, onto her knees, and cried. She had been afraid they would not want her back and that there could be no more music, but there was.

Chapter End Notes

Maglor's wife has previously featured in The Tale of the Telerin Flute-Player, and also briefly in A Minor Act of Reparation.

I decided at one point that her name was Solosimpe, but I don't think I've used that name in story text anywhere yet.

In case the question occurs, I envision her setting out northward some time after Fingolfin and Finarfin. I am assuming it takes some time for the drowned to wash ashore (if they do).

Also, I assume elves do normally need burying (Fingolfin and Glorfindel canonically have graves), although I know some people in fandom have assumed that because of their elvish nature they don't.

Quenya names used: Makalaure - Maglor, Feanaro - Feanor.