Tengwa malta by Sky

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Chapter 2

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 “May I ask you a question?”

We’re sitting in the darkened kitchen drinking tea. There’s a plate on the table, full of green grape, transparent in the lamplight, and wrinkled brown dates; now and then the Feanoring neatly snaps a date with his slender fingers from under the grape-bunch and  sends it to his mouth.

“Yes?”

Another date prevents him from saying the word clearly.

“Tell me, why are you so calm?”

The Noldo raises one brow and looks at me skeptically, but without anger.

“And you presumed I’d smash the crockery and crash the furniture?”

“No, - I’m feeling awkward. – But… I didn’t suspect you could be so… domestic”.

Maitimo lowers his eyelids and keeps silent for a long time. So long that I have time to get scared of him rising up and leaving, offended by my question.

“You probably know that everything described in the books happened long ago, - he looks intently into my eyes, into the very pupils. – Very long ago”.

I nod.

“I’ve spent a long time in the Halls”.

I keep silent.

“But you are wrong to think I’ve forgotten what had happened to us”.

The even tone of his voice doesn’t change, but I become tremendously ashamed of myself.

“Did you ask because you wanted to see?”

I quickly look up at him, but his face in the frame of thick dark-bronze tresses is totally serene. There isn’t a new crease anywhere.

“You don’t need to remember. Forgive me. I’m a senseless chunk of wood”.

There must a very guilty look on my face because the Feanoring puts down his cup with quenilas and lays his hand on my knee. He doesn’t say anything, just watches. And suddenly in the very depths of my thoughts about him and my awkwardness,  new thoughts appears, words and feelings, which didn't originate in my own mind.

It feels like a thick grey curtain has been drawn away.

Maitimo’s lips are closed, but I hear his voice clearly – rather deep for an elf, with purring soft R’s.

“You’d better tell me if you’re really sure you want to be concerned with it?”

I nod, dumbfounded. It must be very funny to watch.

“Answer just like you saying a phrase in your thoughts”, - he advices.

“Cool, it’s osanwë!!” – I think in response.

Maitimo no longer keeps back a grin.

“No, not this one”.

“All right, - I think and try to concentrate, but instead that first evening comes up in my memory, when I woke up in the underground and saw before me the black scabbard and the surcoat with the star.

“The first time of gosanna – is like the first time in bed”, - a very silly thought flashes after it.

“I hear you”, – Maitimo says it with his usual voice, and I’m ashamed again.

“Forgive me”.

His left hand is still lying on my knee, but suddenly he stops smiling.

“Concentrate on the word you want to say. Think intently”.

“I’m thinking. Do you hear me?”

“I hear”, - it sounds in my head at once. I look right into his eyes. Into the amber, intent eyes with dark streaks and tiny spots in the iris. The air around us feels clear and charged for a second. And then I'm crushed with warmth that is almost pushing me from the seat and out of myself – it's like falling through the wide-opened door into the cold yard.

Thin lines appear, trembling and tightening in the space between our faces. They resemble telegraph wires.

I close my eyes.

 

***

 

He is kicking the leaves fiercely – as though there is anything that can still be done.

He is raking them with his sopping boots, the color of which can no longer be recognized under all the stains – the leaves are yellow, soaked, icy to his touch.

 “Where are you looking for me? I’m – here. I’m – here”.

He is singing it in a husky voice, looking straight ahead with wide-open eyes. Long tresses of red hair are tangled and wet from the fine water spray hanging in the air. He is brushing tree trunks as he walks and the right palm of his hand – the iron one – is catching sodden bark, gathering it under the plates of the joints.

Maitimo stops and leans his forehead against a wet coal-black trunk, staining his face. Lowers his eyelids.

“Where. Are you. Looking. For me. I’m here…”

He and Findekáno used to sing it while playing.

He opens his eyes. On the black bark there are deep slick furrows.

What was the game about?

He can’t remember.

Five days ago, after the battle, in blood and mud, that wasn’t quite Finyo. The soul and the flesh can be divided, right? Finyo is. He still is. And down there, on the ground, it wasn’t properly him.

“I’m here… I’m here…”

The unbroken yellow carpet under his feet gives off a painfully spicy scent – a scent of pungent autumn, wet leaves, their red stalks. The sky is grey, the lake is grey, grey is the mist which is covering the ridges of wooded hills on the right and on the left. With grey puffs it is sliding into the valley, fills the lungs, giving comfort, settling down on the hair and clothes with tiny beads, cooling his burning head, shoulders and back.

Finyo was fond of color grey.

Maitimo withdraws his hand from the trunk and slowly trudges up the hill, slipping on the clay ground. The iron hand is swaying with his steps, weighting down the arm. The iron hand can strike brutally, but there’s hardly any other use of it.

Five days ago he tore a tent with it. He was punching at the sheet wall and the central pole until the plates of the hand bent and couldn’t move properly. Deep jagged furrows were left in the pole, revealing the whiteness of the wood, the tissue was coming apart with heart-rendering sound, gaping like a wide-open mouths. He thinks, he may have screamed. Yes, he surely was screaming.

He can’t remember.

Maitimo stops halfway up the hill and presses the hand to his face.

Finyo was fighting for a very long time, one could have tried getting to him for help. Even considering the presence of the dragon, one might have managed. Why didn’t he call?

 “Why didn’t you call me?” – Maitimo grinds the words out. – Why didn’t you call, why?!”

With a cry, he turns around and slams the iron hand into a tree trunk. Again. Again!

There is no Curufinwë here who will grip his shoulders and hiss into the back of his neck: “Stop raging!”

Why!?

There is no one here who will give him a meaningful and compassionate look, dropping in as if for a whetstone.

Why!?

One of the plates is sticking in the wood. Maitimo is pulling and jerking, but he can't free the artificial limb.

“He was afraid I could be slain or captured – that’s why.”

He leans his forehead against the wet furrowed trunk again. For some time he is standing like this, chained to the trunk by his stuck iron palm. He is doing nothing, just breathing, for a while.  Then, without raising his head, he starts unfastening thin belts that hold the artificial hand in its place. He pulls the stump from the leather handcuff, turns around and starts walking up the hill again. The iron glove, clenched to a fist, absurdly sticks out of the trunk at the right angle as though somebody has thrown it like a big ugly javelin.

Maitimo doesn’t see the leaves before him now. He is touching his right arm with the fingers of his left hand, closely examining the skin - light, almost without marks, and the bump of the bones underneath it.

 “Finyo was afraid I could be put under torture again”.

Maitimo is smiling. At least, there was one fair punishment. For those stains of blood on the gangways and the inaction during the great fire. A hand of one arm isn’t a great price – but it is.

He covers his short wrist with palm of the other hand. It is also – Findekáno. After all, his father always said that scars were the best way to remember.

“Where are you looking for me? I’m here…”

It was their password for hide-and-seek.

Yes, indeed, they called each other this way when were playing hide-and-seek. It was meant not to reveal where one was hiding, but to confuse. Once grown-up clever Maitimo had been looking for Finyo under a cliff and fallen disgracefully into the duckweed-covered pool, in his tunic and boots and all. The boy was misleading him by thinking about snowy peaks, and Maitimo had decided to seek for him where it was deep and muddy. And Finyo had been sitting behind the willow-branches on the shore.

Finyo is jumping on a log, across the river. Finyo is gripping his sword-hilt and watching agitatedly from the darkness, full of flashing torches. Finyo is bending over him, softly brushing his naked chest with the tips of his braids. Embracing him and trying so hard not to hurt him. Saying something in his affectionate voice.

He hasn’t gone anywhere. He is with him now and will be forever.

“Where are you looking for me?” – Maitimo is whispering it totally differently now, not in his own voice, and carefully holds his right wrist with his left hand. “– I am – here. I am – here”.