The Piano by Elisif

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The Piano

The presence of Pianos in Valinor and First-Age Middle Earth is obviously not canon, but I found the social connotations thereof irresistable. 

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Whatever he had expected to find when his brother had instructed him to search the abandoned house for orcs or enemies, blade in hand, it was not this.

On the other side of the attic chamber, visible in the yellowing lamplight, was a piano.

He had not seen a piano since- well, not since the Blessed Realm. Harps were always his forte, and he had never bothered to commission any other instrument in Beleriand.

A piano.

He let his knife dropped harmlessly to the ground.

Eyes wide with almost childish curiosity, almost as if encountering a ghost from his past, he stepped forward, extended a hand and brushed his palm across the dust that thickly coated the worn surface of the instrument- he hated to think of who or what had led its owners to abandon it, but was quietly thankful all the same. Stepping still further forward, he half-laughed; that he had come in expectation of blood only to find himself inexplicably drawn back to music. A pity that so much of his life had been the precise reverse.

Eyes half-closed, he drew back the lid and breathed in the gracious scent of crushed velvet, aged wood, soap and wax; the scent of music, and that of his youth. He opened his eyes, looked down at the browned and ageing keys- the instrument appeared to still be in a decent condition. Sighing, he sunk into the overly soft cushioning of the piano stool, laid his fingers reverently over the keys, then hesitated.

Could memory for music outlast an age? Then again, he still lived, and a memory for melody, harmony, song, and chord was all he truly believed himself to be composed of at heart. He drew a deep breath and, eyes half-closed, he began to play.

No melody, not to start with; just a gentle, reverberating succession of notes, breathless and feather-light under his fingers, but never-the-less weighted in their lingering echoes when he applied the pedals, made heavy by the aged wooden body of the instrument. He then shifted from the scale to a simple, repetitive melody of ancient memory, but like all music from fair Tirion it was too cheerful for the Ellon he had become- he toyed uneasily with the melody for some moments as touch-memory came back to him, then improvised until the melody darkened to fit his present mood.

He paused, opened his eyes, glanced around the room. He was alone; a smile crossed his lips.

He began experimenting with a new melody, trying and testing the notes until the discordant became clarion and unfettered, revelling in the ease with which the notes came to him. He paused, even after so many years instinctively reaching for a drink and for manuscript paper; in the past, he would have sworn and cursed to find anything lacking in his composing-space- at the best of times, a chamber in the eastern tower of the Tirion palace in which he had locked himself for days on end, emerging only for more wine or more ink- but for now it was enough to simply be alone.

It had been in the aftermath of one such composing spree, dishevelled, hungover, and triumphantly clutching a tattered bundle of scribbled manuscript paper that he had inadvertently stumbled into a formal gathering of his paternal kin and heard his Father offhandedly mention that in his utter, unquenchable need to be alone to create, his singular dedication to finishing what he had started at all costs he resembled him more than any of his other sons. He had known few moments of pride to equal that one.

That pride, like all else he remembered from that day, had turned to dust and ash on the wind, lingered now only thoughts for a song he knew he would never have the will to write. He resumed playing, closed his eyes.

Crash.

The door swung open with remarkable ferocity and the twins stomped into the chamber, tripped and stumbled over the thick carpet, yelling as they ran up manically up behind him. His fingers stiffened.

Arda, why now?

A tiny hand slammed down hard on the keys to his left; on his right, he felt another hand tug eagerly at his tunic before its owner clambered atop the piano stool, leant against his shoulder, leapt to stand on his knee, only just catching himself from slipping on wobbling bare feet.

“What is it, Ada?” asked the twin on the left, tugging at his sleeve.

Ada. He knew he should have been moved by their use of the term, but in truth it saddened him.

“It’s a piano,” he said, sternly. “The notes-“

They ignored him; the one on the left eagerly reached to play the lowest note of the instrument, while the one on the right made an immediate beeline for the highest.

They alternated the notes, Elros- Elros?- eagerly plinking the dull, highest note of the keyboard and Elrond loudly striking the lowest and listening to it reverberate.

Children never changed, he thought to himself, shaking his head. It was always the lowest and the highest notes that they reached for.

He turned to his right; Elros- he was certain it was Elros- had an oddly hurt expression on his face.

“Those notes linger on longer than all the others, but these ones just stop,” he said, hitting the top note again and again. “Why?”

 “I do not know,” he said, pausing. “I guess it is just how they were made.”

“Then who decided which ones just end, Ada?”

Ada. Damn them. He pitied these children, he truly did, but he didn’t want to be their Father, he wanted to play, he wanted to breathlessly express with each soaring note that which he never could in words, pulse and breathe in an unfettered passion for creation which of late he had only felt for destruction. He wanted to compose.

Elrond struck the bottom two notes again, discordantly hitting both with a balled fist.

 “I want to learn how to play!” he said.

Teeth gritted, Maglor laid his hand over the child’s and gently unfurled his fingers.

“Roll your hand, one finger at a time, you do not play with your fists,” he said- at least the boy’s hands were clean. The child nodded, then looked up at him, eager for further instruction.

He sighed. He had once had plenty of tricks up his sleeves to escape teaching, what had they been again? Teaching the twins the rudest song he could think of and then sending them off the eagerly show their mother what Maglor had been kind enough to teach them was obviously not an option, as it had been with Moryo once upon a time; they were only four, perhaps they would grow bored easily? There certainly wasn’t a dearth of songs he considered dull...

He selected one, intended for absolute beginner’s lessons, began the steady succession of chords, easily leaping form hand to the other, the melody so achingly, childishly simple it almost played itself, even after he added in the three-fingered melody at the top. He halted his left hand, slowly repeated the melody for the twins to watch.

 “Can you repeat this?” he asked them.

Elros pouted.

“I want to play with two hands. Like you do,” he said. Maglor laid a cautious hand over his small palm.

“You’ve been learning for all of 30 seconds, you’ll have to wait. Besides you only need one hand, that’s how I wrote the piece. Here, both of you try it at the same time, maybe you’ll remember it better that way.”

They smiled; they seemed to accomplish everything easier if synchronised, just as Am- just as his own twin brothers once had, long ago. They rehearsed the melody a few times, picked up the childish rhythm with remarkable speed, glanced upward for approval.

Maglor’s heart opened a crack; he smiled at them, cautiously began the chord progression, playing painfully slowly so as to accommodate the twins’ hesitant attempts at the melody, waiting as they paused before too-loudly striking each note before he slowly added in the chord below. They reached the end of the piece; again, the twins looked up at him.

“Faster?” they said, in unison.

“Faster,” he agreed.

Over and over they repeated the piece, the twins’ melody growing smoother and more musical with each round of the canon. Well, excepting Elros’ insistence on occasionally reaching up to play the top note of the keyboard purposely out of time – Maglor rolled his eyes, but then patted his shoulder and guided his tiny hand to incorporate the top note into a functional, rhythmic variation on the piece. To his surprise, he found himself well and truly enjoying the simple melody; the twin’s visible excitement every time he improvised and altered it was proving to be an unanticipated reward.

He told the twins to just continue the melody and began to combine the chord progression with a separate, older composition of his; a bold move, but it worked, and the twins had now grasped the melody enough to carry onwards unassisted. But then, to his surprise, they both abruptly stopped. He felt a tug on his sleeve, turned around.

His brother was leaning in the open doorway of the chamber, watching them, a stern and not entirely readable expression on his face. Maglor bowed his head, swallowed hard.

“I’m sorry about the noise Maedhros. We were-“

How should he continue? He looked back; Elros had buried his head against his shoulder, Elrond had leapt down from the edge of the chair, leant back against the instrument. Were they really so frightened? Maedhros had never been exactly unkind to them- he had snapped at them on one occasion when they’d gotten a glimpse of his back and had the bravado to ask him about his scars, but otherwise the only notable thing he had been was distant. The twins, however young, were quick-witted for their age; he suspected they had picked up on his own tentative caution in word and deed in the presence of his brother and followed suit.

Sighing, he reached up to close the lid of the instrument, but before he could, Elrond squirmed free of his hold on his arm, ran to the doorway, grabbed hold of Maedhros’ trailing right sleeve, and tugged him back to the piano, ignoring his quiet words of protest.

“You should play too,” he said, firmly, reaching up to lay his foster-father’s tightly held hand on the keys.

Maedhros smiled slightly, but then shook his head.

“My brother is the musician, not me,” he said, his voice unexpectedly kind, but still stern. “I can’t play anyway, you know that I-“

Elros climbed and squirmed over Maglor’s knees, reached out and laid his hand over Maedhros’ comparatively huge palm.

“You only need one hand,” he said. Then, beaming, he continued:

“Ada wrote the song that way.”

Silence.

Maedhros turned to stare at him; Maglor turned away, looked bashfully down at his fingers on the keys, was silent until Elros again tugged on Maedhros’ sleeve and continued.

“Do you want me to teach you?” he said.

Slowly, Maedhros smiled.

“Teach me,” he said.

Elros jumped down from Maglor’s knee, stepped over, took hold of Maedhros’ fingers and began guiding his hand through the simple melody, awkwardly at first, though he picked it up almost immediately. Maglor motioned for Elrond, pushed momentarily aside to climb back into his lap; he did so eagerly, leant briefly back against his shoulder before leaning forward with both hands on the keys, ready to continue.

Maglor turned to face his brother.

“Are you ready?” he said.

Maedhros cautiously freed his hand from Elros’ grip, guided the tiny hand into position before raising his own over the keys directly alongside it. He smiled.

“Ready,” he said.

“One, two, three-“

And so, all four of them began playing, slowly synchronising, the discordant notes and the faltering giving way to a rippling of gentle sounds and delicate melodies, music and laughter echoing far into the long and sleepless night, until at last the twins fell asleep.

In the darkness, Maglor smiled and he knew that Maedhros did the same. 

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Chapter End Notes

For the record, the piece that I imagined them playing together while writing this was "Heart and Soul"; the piece I imagined Maglor playing at the beginning (and possibly the ending) was "Gesichter der Liebe" from the official soundtrack of Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others in English).