Day's End by Elisif

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Chapter 1

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The sun is high in the sky, its forceful midday glare burnishing the surface of the sea to the bright white of half-forged steel. Even the metal that inches through the holes in the frayed covering of the arm rest on which I have rested one tired hand and the cane I hold tightly in the other as I gaze out upon the sea are hot to the touch, each and every inch of my surroundings urging me to yield give in to the comfort offered by the sun, to peacefully lay aside the troubles of the world for gentle unending sleep, but I will not surrender to my tiredness. Not yet.

I rest my palms atop my cane, look once more out upon the land that skirts the sea here. Green shrubs dotted with bundles of pink blossom overgrow the sun-bleached ruins of some ancient and now forgotten temple, the pillars lying where they fell in a tumbled succession along the golden sands of the bay and wide, glittering sea. I had far rather this to look upon than some orderly palace garden of box-hedge and flower-bed, though the ruins, which I once saw in their now-forgotten glory, add a sense of loss to that of coming possibility that drifts in on the summer wind. In truth, I do not particularly mind; loss is a part of life, and life is, after all, what I am here to remember.

The sun is dazzling in truth; its white-hot reflection on molten silver sea stings my tired eyes, leaves me on the verge of letting them sink shut when they are once more jerked open by the sound ofa muffled voice at the door.

“My Lord? There is a visitor here to see you...”

I edge forwards in my chair and my own aged face joins the mottled reflection of the sea in the silvered top of my cane. I draw a deep breath.

“Let them in,” I say sombrely, running my stiff fingers through my disarrayed whitened hair in anticipation of whatever foreign dignitary or once-hallowed King has long journeyed here for a last farewell.

Listening to the muffled exchange of voices at the door, the sliding open and creaking shut of the door, I sit and I wait for the sounds of a routine I have known for three long centuries.

 I wait, but the distinctive shuffling of brocaded robes and trailing damask sleeves sinking to the floor does not come; this time, there are nolists of hallowed titles, no dulled chimes of jewelled rings striking unsheathed sword pommels, no whispered oaths of loyalty, no reverent cries of “My Lord King in Númenorë!”

This time, there is only the unending lilt of the distant crashing sea that resonates in the sudden silence and a voice that joins its song to gently whisper:

“Elros.”

I turn my head.

The stranger’s skin is weatherbeaten, aged and browned by the never-ceasing spray of the sea and unrelenting rays of the faithless sun; his clothes, the hood he draws back with the trembling fingers of his left hand, have worn and faded to the dull blue of a winter sky; the storm-grey eyes he shields from the white hot light of the sun with a right hand concealed in a folded fistful of his battered cloak are lined with the weight of still more loss than they bore when I first knew them.

“Father.”

 “Elros,” he softly repeats. “I —“

He stops short, watches me as I slowly, painfully rise to my feet, impeded by the overly soft cushions in which I have sunk, pace forwards and stand before him.

Silence. My fingers tremble; my grip on my cane is so tight I can feel my pulse throbbing in my wrist as we meet each other’s eyes.

“You look old,” I finally stammer and break the silence. He half-closes his eyes, then he slowly raises his left hand to the side of my head, tentatively runs his fingertips through my whitened hair as he raises my chin with his thumb and forefinger and, with the faintest of smiles, whispers:

“So do you, my boy.”

I reach forwards to embrace him; he stiffly rests his head on my shoulder as I slip my arm around him. Our embrace continues but when I push against his right arm as I reach to swap my cane to my other hand behind his back he flinches, visibly.

“You did not tell me you were injured—“

 I reach out to gently lay my hand on his arm; he yanks away, steps back in shock. He pauses with his fingertips clutching the frayed end of his sleeve, then, staring at it in revulsion, begins frantically tugging it still further over his already concealed right hand.

My arm falls to my side.

“Father, if you need a salve-“

Looking up at me, he simply shakes his head, then walks away, still cradling his concealed arm as he moves about the chamber, uneasily, with the air of one who has forgotten the rich trappings of a settled life, his right hand coming to touch the silvered ornaments and brocaded curtains and other trappings of the room as though desperate for distraction.Finally, he rests his elbow on the windowsill, stares longingly out at the sea and, visibly fighting to straighten his back, he turns to me and says:

“It is an admirable thing, Elros, to rule so well and to be loved for it. Your Kingdom...”

The need to start over is all too apparent in his voice; I feel my fingers pressing hard into the warm silver ridges of the engraved map my beloved Númenórë that adorns the top of my cane.

“It is no longer mine,” I say, stepping slowly forwards. “I abdicated the throne… not long ago.”

“I know,” he says, turning slowly back. “It is why I came.”

Silence.

I should be flattered, but after all I have just witnessed, I feel rather a deep concern and the need to express it.

“It was folly for you to come here,” I say. “It cannot possibly be worth the risks you must have taken…”

I continue onwards, scold him like a parent chiding a disobedient child, though our positions are now reversed; I am the old man now and he is, for all my initial impressions, still youthful, in body if not in face. But this is far from new; our relationship has been inherently backwards since my earliest memories of it, contrary to every expectation to the degree that I have often likened it to that tale someone whispered to me in my far-off childhood- was it Maedhros? His stories always tended towards the philosophical- of the Other World, the one where earth is sky, sky is earth, up is down, and dark night is blessed day.

His eyes have again hardened; with a cold, detached tone that permits no counter-argument, he simply says:

“I know of the risks, but I took them all the same.”

With that, he turns his back on me, leans further upon the window-ledge and looks out to stare at the wide and glittering sea.

“But then-“ I reach for my cane and follow him towards the window, “I thought you swore-“

He turns sharply towards me, grimaces.

“Swore, Elros? Never again. Nay, I promised to never come back among the people of the elves, but I said no such thing of the realms of men.”

My grip tightens.

“For my sake?” I finally say, hesitantly.

“Not entirely. Though I daresay that there are practical advantages to that particular loophole,” he says as he looks at me with an expression I cannot quite read.

I draw a deep breath.

“Then— you have not spoken—to my brother?”

He sombrely shakes his head.

“I only send songs to him in his dreams sometimes. It would not be,” he draws the cloak tighter over his hidden right arm as a gust of wind threatens to reveal it, “prurient of me to return to him. If you so wished though, I could send word to him—”

“No,” I say, but a sudden sharp pain in my ribs overtakes me; I gasp for breath as my vision blurs into black splotches and I double over clutching my sides.

The expression of horror on Maglor’s face is instantaneous; he rushes over, wraps his arms around my chest, lifts me softly upwards as my head sinks against his shoulder, murmurs soft childish words of comfort as he half-carries me back into my chair.

I must have blacked out momentarily; when I open my eyes, my head has sunk against my shoulder and Maglor is reaching to pour me a glass of wine from the flask on the table. He sets it down to lay his hand on my palm, then looks at me with eyes wide with frantic, pained concern. Wheezing slightly on the dust that has burst free of the aged crushed velvet cushions I question which saddens me the greater: the tenderness of his reaction or the simple fact that it was necessary. I know that I have reached the end of my days, but to see the realisation of it mirrored in another’s eyes is still painful. Reaching for the wine with the trembling fingers of my left hand, motioning for him to sit down with my right, I continue onwards, breathing heavily.

“No. We said our farewells long ago. I have written to him, but I have no desire to cause him even further pain. I would hate to think…”

Maglor is not meeting my eyes; they are fixated on the shifting reflection of the bay in the wine flask, the mirrored sea turned a dark blood-red as it quivers against the glass, warm and filled with life. I lean back still further in my chair.

“I am not afraid,” I tell him, softly, staring down at my hands. “I have the memory of those who came before me, I have the thought of those who will, and most importantly, I have the life that I have lived. I only wish that I could make things easier for Elrond… and for you.”

He lays a hand on the back of my palm.

“Do not pity me Elros,” he says. “So, so few I have known have ever passed peacefully to the far shore when they reached day’s end. It is a rare gift indeed to see such an honour bestowedupon one that I have loved.”

I laugh.

“Ever the poet, Father. I have been told that all the bards inNúmenórë are swarming at the gates below waiting to temper glorious verse of my reign and of my passing, but not one of them could ever craft verse to equal that which you compose without so much as trying.”

Again, he smiles.

“Old habits die hard,” he says, the grip of his fingers against my own tightening. Then with heavy eyes—I have the sense that it is not just his right hand that he is hiding from me—he adds:

 “Some more than others.”

A gust of wind blows in from the open window, and with it, another pain in my ribs overtakes me. I wait for it to pass, as they always do, but the pain does not subside but instead takes the form of a soft weight seeping through my chest and into my bones. I fight to open my eyes, but all of a sudden I am so very tired, tired, tired, tired, my chest heavy as if it has been soaked through with wet sand, my head fighting to lift, the light blurring before my eyes, though for all the haze I recognise that Maglor has risen and dropped to his knees before me.

So it is to be kneeling after all! Never mind, I lack the energy to dismiss it anyway. How Kingly and decorous I am being, how they all would disapprove... I laugh, but that only tires me further and I close my eyes.

When I open them, he is no longer kneeling but stands before me, his hands laid gently on my shoulders, speaking words I cannot hear.

“Ada?” I whisper, looking upwards at his blurred face. Ada. The word is a ghost at last set free, a joyous dismissal of feigned childhood allegiances and cautiously crafted lies of four centuries that here at day’s end have ceased to matter. Ada, Ada, Ada...

He speaks onwards, but still I do not understand. The light hurts my eyes.

Suddenly, I can hear again; at last I understand the question he has been repeating, an achingly familiar phrase from my childhood, but now, uttered as he lifts my limp hand in his with a reverence so slow and pained it might be a prayer.

“Elros. Which song would you like me to sing for you?”

“Do you remember... the first one...“ 

Too many words. I am tired, so tired, my eyes...

I feel the slight pressure of his dry lips against the back of my palm.

“Little one, I remember it well.”

My father sings.

 

 

Practical applications of that particular loophole! I told him. The Black Foe would have described my vow to sing him to sleep—settled on as a final gift in the now slow eternity ago when I first heard of their choices- how stubborn you always were, Elros, always will— in such terms had he been capable of love.

My voice has so long been echoed only by the harsh depths of the songless sea; I am unaccustomed to its sudden warmth, amplified by the silken folds of the gauzy chamber and the gentle sun. Golden light, I realise— once more, then, mock me as you will, oh world. The King whose hand I hold is worthy, nay, deserving, of all of it- the soft warmth, the light, the song on my lips. The truth.

The truth there was in what he said of my making no promise to forsake men being, at least in part, for his sake. This vow- not the only one I have made but by Arda, I swear it will be my last—was made before the other, that vow which I will not speak, for it is storied in my scars, and scars need no accompaniment in song or verse. No, this vow I bound myself to out of love, not youthful folly and damnable pride. This oath alone I have upheld.

“Once the battle is won, together

We will gather our sails of gold

The woes of ages past untether…”

Once. The very word conveys an impossibility, a story-tellers lay of lands that never were and endings that never will be. Only a fool would ask for more than peace here at day’s end, as I have risked all to assure for my son in all but blood, my beautiful boy.

“Gather our sails of gold,

Return to our hallowed home of old…”

I sing onwards, of golden sails and far shores, of battles at long last triumphant, of lovers remembered and treasures recovered; of all I never saw, and all that I pray that they will one day see. Just as I always have, and just as I always will, I sing.

I reach the final verse; with the departure of the last ship to the far horizon, I feel his stiff fingers loosen and slip from my palm. I kneel down and, with dry lips that taste of salt, I kiss his forehead.

“Quel kaima,” I whisper to him. “Sleep well.”