And the wind as sweet as honey in the mouth by bunn

Chapter 1

Read Chapter 1

The wind blew the sand in small flurries, a west wind with the scent of salt and seaweed to it, that came cold through the fractured twisted rocks and blew the yellowing dune-grass into curving waves. The Sea gleamed pale, small waves hissing softly, endlessly onto the sand under a shifting grey clouded sky. On the western horizon, a distant island made a low dark hump against the sky. Somewhere ahead, gulls were crying.

Elrond had been riding for a long time. He and his horse were tired. It was time to go inland a little, to look for fresh water, grazing, and to find if there would be any shelter for the night. Nobody lived here any more, so far North and West of everything that there was almost no land left at all.

He dismounted, and led the horse up onto the soft sand of the the long dunes, along narrow ways through the furze, over rabbit-nibbled turf where the scent of thyme and gorse-flowers and the sound of birdsong almost hid the voice and smell of the Open Sea. He found a small bright dew-pond, and the horse waded into it gratefully to drink, grabbing at the longer grass that grew along the edges of the pool, here in the shelter of the hills of sand. He took the pack from it, and told it to find grazing, and not stray too far away. It climbed out, dripping, and began to roll delightedly on the grass. Elrond turned and climbed a little up the dune.

And then he heard a sound that was not the liquid warble of a skylark, not the sharp trill of a blackbird, but a slow cascade of distant notes, almost unconnected, but not quite.

He shouldered the pack and hurried towards the sound, climbing a long sandy slope to the North, and then looping around a great grass-grown outcropping. But the paths through the dunes were confusing, the sand slipped beneath his feet, and the sound seemed to shift as he moved. He lost it for a few minutes, taking a route that seemed direct but led only to brambles, and then lost it again when he climbed up again to get his bearings, only to find that the wind filled his ears with the sound of sea and gulls and he could hear nothing else.

But at last he came down again into a narrow, twisting valley between dunes, where the wind was still at last, and the clouds above thinned to a pale blue. The short grass was starred with the tiny shining blooms of eyebright flowers, and the air was filled with the sound of harpsong. High overhead, a lark was singing, and the harpsong wove around its music and into it, and made a lament that was a song of joy, and of ending.

He said nothing to the harper. He simply walked up to where he could be seen, put down his pack, and sat down on the sand to watch and listen until the song was finished.

“Hello Maglor,” he said at last. “You are hard to find.”

“Am I? But I am here, where I have been for so long. Here, to the east of my brother’s hill of Himring. I have not moved very far. It’s all the rest of Middle Earth that has done that.”

“Elros is dead,” he told his foster-father.

“Oh.”

“They made us choose; one path or the other.  He chose the fate of Men.  He’s gone out beyond the limits of the world. I wonder what he’ll find there.”

“They say nobody knows. Is it true?” Maglor asked him. “Even Men do not know?”

“If they do, then no-one has ever told me.” Elrond said, looking away out along the valley to where the path twisted out of sight. The evening shadows were beginning to creep along the valley sides, and a slight mist hid the distance in blue. “He always was the fearless one. And now he’s gone on where I can never follow him.”

Maglor put down the harp, stepped down from the bank, and sat on the sand instead, where he could put his arm around Elrond’s shoulder. It felt thin and light. He smelled of woodsmoke, and the sea.

“It’s good to see you again at last,” Elrond said, leaning his head on Maglor’s shoulder. “I wish you could come back with me to Mithlond.”

“You know I can’t.”

“Yes. I know.”

Lindon was full of people who remembered Maglor and his brothers all too well, as a nightmare of screaming terror, burning homes and bloody death. The Sons of Fëanor were remembered in song by the Elves. The songs were laments for the fallen.

“Do you regret it?” Maglor asked him. “The choice to stay with the Eldar, I mean.”

Elrond thought about it. “No. Arda can be fierce and terrible, but it is also fair beyond all words. The Elves are my people. I never wanted anything else.” A different thought struck him. “Do you ever wish you had been born to the Aftercomers, and not to the Firstborn?”

“Oh, regularly,” Maglor said, and laughed. “Memories that slip away, lost in the past. A new start far beyond the borders of this world. It sounds wonderful.” He squeezed Elrond’s shoulder. “But since I was not, I’m glad you chose to stay with us. I’m only sorry that you have lost your brother.”

“You’re cold,” Elrond said, noticing that there was no warmth in his hand, or in the thin ragged body that sat next to his. “Here. Have my cloak.”

“That’s kind.” Maglor said, not moving. “But I think I’m probably supposed to be making amends for... everything.”

“Well, I am not.” Elrond said, firmly, taking his long grey cloak off and wrapping it around Maglor’s shoulders. “And it would make me happy if you would wear it.” He regretted that he had not brought more blankets with him. He had not thought about Maglor, alone on this northern shore, being cold, only of finding him at all.

“I’ll make a fire,” he said, getting up. “You stay there and warm up.”

Maglor looked incredulous. “Elrond. I do not need you to look after me!”

“Really? Of the two of us, who was it who grew up a prince in a palace, and who grew up in a damp wood where orcs might attack three times in a single night? I am so much better than you are at making a fire, there is no comparison.”

“I am fairly sure that it was only ever that one time that we had three orc attacks in one night,” Maglor said, with a smile. He held up his hands in defeat. “But all right. You make the fire! But if I may advise the expert, you will find some dry firewood up there, stacked under the gorsebushes on the left.”

-----

The heavy grey clouds had filled the sky again, and the light was fading swiftly into full night. The small fire glowed bright against the darkness, with blue flames here and there where Elrond had added driftwood from the beach. He had restocked the wood-pile, too, and caught a couple of rabbits to go with the food in his pack. The dunes were full of rabbits.

“That was quick work,” Maglor said, nodding at the rabbits, as Elrond stripped the skins from them. He was playing the harp again, idly, stopping from time to time to try a different phrase; short, bright strings of notes that fell away into the night.

“I have had plenty of practice, all along this coast, every day that I could spare, looking for you.”

Maglor said “I didn’t think that anyone would come looking. Not after...” he let the sentence trail off and ran his finger along a harp-string instead.

“Where is your brother Maedhros?” Elrond asked him. “I thought he would be with you.”

“He threw himself into a fissure in the ground, down into the fire in the heart of the earth, and the Silmaril with him.”

“What?” Elrond said, startled. “He took his own life... like that?”

“Yes. The Silmarils burned us, you see. Holy jewels, blessed by Varda. They endure no evil. They knew what we had done, they understood better than we did, what we had become. So Maedhros said that he deserved to burn, and he made an ending.”

There was a brief, horrified silence. “I threw mine into the Sea,” Maglor went on. “ If the Lord of Waters wants it, then he can have it. At least there will be no more killing for it.”

“And I came to you to tell you of my lost brother. I’m sorry, Maglor. ” Elrond put the neatly-jointed rabbit into a pan, with a sprig of the small-leafed thyme that grew across the rocks and a handful of barley from his pack, and set it on a flat rock in the fire.

“Maedhros is gone to the Halls of Awaiting,” Maglor said, resigned. “I hope he’ll find healing there, and one day I shall know if he did. But I found I could not do the same.”

“I should hope not!” Elrond said, appalled.

“So here I still am, fading into a shadow of regret, as the Doom of the Valar put it. I have been worse things than a shadow.”

“Don’t,” Elrond said. “I don’t think of you as a shadow. I think of you as a great musician. And as my foster-father, and my dear friend.”

“And the rest,” Maglor said, staring down at the harp, silent now and barely to be seen in the darkness. “Kin-slayer. Child-stealer. Accursed. Fool who should have begged for pardon...”

“Maglor, I know the Eldar do not count the running years,” Elrond said, exasperated. “But I am half-Elven, after all. If I spend four hundred years and more searching for someone, it is because I want to find him. ”

“Four hundred years? Has it been so long? I’m not doing so well at fading as I thought.”

“You look more than faded enough to me. You need some stew,” Elrond told him, stirring it.

“All right! I will eat some stew. It would be hard not to: it smells delicious. I had not realised that cooking was one of your many accomplishments. Let’s not dwell on sorrow. Tell me about Mithlond, and how the world goes on without the shadow of Morgoth over it.”

They spoke of Mithlond for a while, Gil-galad’s new and shining city, built either side of the Gulf of Lune, while they ate the stew, with bread and wine from Elrond’s pack.

Then Elrond told of how Gil-galad’s towns in Lindon were growing: Forlond, the great harbour North of the Gulf of Lune where Celebrimbor had devised a great sea-gate for Cirdan, to prevent the town flooding at spring tides, and the Harlond to the south, where what was still left in Middle Earth of the people of Gondolin and Nargothrond had built tall towers, each marked gaily with the badge of their house, and in the spring they hung long strings of banners, blue, green and gold between the towers in the sunlight, and out to the masts of the ships in the harbour, and in the evening-time held a festival of lights upon the harbour side.

“It sounds truly joyful,” Maglor said. “A time of light coming back into the world, now that Morgoth is gone at last.”

“The towns of Lindon are a delight to see. And yet, I wish I could stay with you.”

“You can’t do that. Gil-galad would have half of Lindon out searching for you if you vanished.”

“I suppose so. And it’s true, I have so many things I must do in Mithlond. But still, the thought of you here alone burns my heart.”

“You are the one who can bring them together: the Noldor, the Sindar, the Grey-Elves, the Green-Elves. All the scattered, quarrelsome peoples. Gil-galad needs you far more than I do. I’ve done enough to them already, without stealing you away all over again.”

He poked the fire with a stick. “Anyway, I am perfectly all right here. This is a pleasant place, now that the plants and trees and birds have come creeping back to heal it. And there’s nobody here to hurt. There does come a point when that is a great relief.”

“I’ll send you supplies,” Elrond said. “No, I can’t. There’s nobody I can send, who can know that you are here. Except, perhaps, Celebrimbor... No matter. I’ll bring them myself, as soon as I can get away again.”

“There’s no need, Elrond. I’ve lasted long enough without your help.”

“Not as well as I would like,” Elrond said. “Promise me that when I come back, you’ll still be here. I do not have so much family left in Middle Earth that I can lose anyone else. I need you, not your shadow, or your ghost.”

“I hope you aren’t going to insist I swear to it,” Maglor said with a wry smile. “But yes, I will be here. I will try to stay in one piece.”

“Write me a song,” Elrond said to him, abruptly.

“What?” Maglor looked taken aback.

“Write me a song of the tale of the Noldor. I told you about the library I am building in Mithlond. I have been brought a thousand songs and tales already about Lúthien, or so my librarians tell me, and about the stars of Elbereth seen from the beechwoods of Doriath, or from the elm-woods of Ossiriand. Hundreds about Valinor, about the glories of Gondolin and Nargothrond, about the crossing of the Grinding Ice. I don’t have a single song about the Oath of Fëanor."

Maglor winced. “Perhaps that is because nobody wishes to recall it.”

“But that means that the point of all the rest is lost!” Elrond said. “All that pain and grief, the great cities and the hosts in armour with their banners, the shadow and the flames and the shining blades raised against them. Nothing but bright meaningless images without the reason why. I don’t even have any songs about the Silmarils. Well, except for those about the Star in the West. There are a few of those, although I think people are a little wary about presenting them to me, for some reason. I don’t even know what your Oath said, exactly. I asked Galadriel once, but she refuses to speak of it. ”

“Not surprising,” Maglor said. “I am reluctant to speak of it, too. I’ll write it down for you though, if you want -- if you can spare me some paper and ink. But you must take it away with you when you go. Lock it in a box, or something. I don’t want it hanging around me any more than it does already.

“But a song? Yes. I would like to do that. I will make you a song, that tells the whole thing, as close as I can make it.  I shall call it the Noldolantë.  And I will be here to sing it to you, whenever it is that you next come this way. ”