Pieces of the Stars by Nibeneth

It would take Elrond many years to piece together the significance of the events directly following the sack of Sirion. At the time he only understood two things: playing the same mancala game with Elros and Osgardir the healer for hours on end, and the sound of Amras crying for his mother in the next room.

The clatter of glass mancala beads against the wooden game board made a steady rhythm over the shifting voices and footsteps outside. Strong aromas of mastic and poppy could not mask the odors of metal, sweat, and blood that clung to the invaders’ makeshift infirmary. Osgardir was relentlessly pleasant and engaging, reminding the boys whose turn it was and exclaiming at well-played moves. His attempts at distraction only added to the confusion of noise and smells, but in the endless round of game after game Elrond found stability in counting and dropping the beads— four, three, two, one, scoop, three, two, one, store —and anticipating his next move when Elros, like clockwork, took his turn at dropping and scooping the beads. No matter how a new game began, the rhythm stayed the same, and Elrond depended on it.

It was well past noon according to the sun, but everything since his confused, predawn awakening blurred together in his head.

It began with flurries of frantic activity, shouting and the creak of bowstrings. They are here! came the cries. They have come for the Jewel! My lady! There is no more time!

Mother was shaking and her hands were cold as she held Elrond and Elros close for as long as she could. She kissed their foreheads, leaving them wet with tears, and then hurried them into the arms of her handmaiden. “Run as far and as fast as you can, just keep them safe, please—”

They ran. But instead of taking them beyond the palisade, she stowed them in a linen closet off a little-used corridor. “Stay quiet! I will return when I can,” she whispered, and left them in the dark. She did not return.

The names of the sons of Fëanor had been curses in Mother’s mouth for as long as the twins could remember, and their minds offered up shadowy answers for the questions they had not had time to ask. Shapes passed across the crack of light under the door and they stayed as silent as fawns in the grass. It was a long time before the sounds of running and shouting began to subside, and longer still before they heard anyone approach their sanctuary. They tensed. Elrond felt Elros’ fingers wrap tightly around his own. Sharp, unfamiliar footsteps paused in front of the closet door.

“You’re a healer, how do you not have enough bandages?” A man, a stranger, aggravated.

A second, higher voice answered him. “He bled through my entire stock already!”

The knob turned, and Elrond and Elros winced in the blinding light that washed over them. Tense, they waited to be stolen away. But long seconds stretched out before them, and the figure in the doorway only stood still. Black-haired and wild-eyed, he towered over the boys in a crimson surcoat stained even deeper with fresh blood. The shadow of Mother’s past had become flesh. Maglor froze with one hand slightly extended toward the linens, but his wide, dark eyes were fixed upon Elrond and Elros.

“The sons of Elwing,” he whispered.

Elrond’s heart hammered in his chest. Elros squeezed his hand so tightly that he couldn’t feel his fingers. Maglor just stared, his momentum extinguished by the unexpected discovery.

“Linens, Maglor!” barked the short elf at his side. Maglor blinked, reached past Elrond and Elros, and gathered an armful of folded sheets.

“Come with me, young masters,” Maglor said in a carefully level voice. “I will not harm you. We’ll get this sorted out.”

What could they do but obey him? Silently and still holding tightly to the other’s hand, Elrond and Elros followed Maglor out of the closet, his follower bringing up the rear with another load of linens. They quickly lost track of time and distance in the disorder of the main hall—strange warriors in crimson and jingling mail, loud debate in Quenya-heavy jargon, the odor of dust and horses. They stood and waited and then were jostled along for a bit, only to stand and wait some more. Elrond did not dare let go of Elros’ hand for fear of sinking into a bottomless sea of crimson and steel and harsh voices. Eventually Maglor, accumulating a small crowd around him as he went, collected the boys and headed outside.

The smells of blood and smoke stained the sea air. Horses snorted and pawed at the ground. Weapons rattled. Maglor walked quickly, his eyes not on the path in front of him but on the pale gray sky. A pair of his followers hurried ahead of him with a heavily-bandaged man on a stretcher. When Maglor marched into the old barracks, he immediately parked Elrond and Elros on a bench just inside the door.

“Wait here. Don’t go anywhere.”

“What’s going on?” Elros asked, the first words either of them had spoken since the closet door clicked shut on them.

“There is too much! Just wait!” Maglor and his retinue were already halfway down the hall, leaving Elrond and Elros alone once again.

Elrond picked his nose. Elros chewed on the ends of his braids. Terse conversations filtered through the walls while they waited, counting bricks and swinging their feet. Only a few snatches made sense.

— sign of Ulmo’s favor! She must have—

— should have left already—

— cannot believe—

— damn fools, all of us—

— hate this. Everything—

— only option after Doriath—

— the Jewel—

Someone was crying elsewhere in the building. The awful, desperate sound made Elrond’s scalp crawl, and he bit the inside of his cheek and squeezed his eyes shut and tried to listen to the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears.

— damn bloody lunatics—

— fought like a bear. A wild animal. I don’t know if—

— be here soon—

— two little boys? They had no part in this, I hope—

— might as well face up to it—

“That is all I can do for now. He should sleep,” came the healer’s voice from very close. “If not right away, then after a few doses. Let me see to your other brother for a moment and then I’ll keep them occupied while you sort this out.”

Elrond and Elros kept waiting. The bench was hard and their feet dangled above the ground, and they fidgeted. The panels of golden light on the floor lengthened. The agonized weeping relented a little. When it faded into heavy, labored breathing, the healer emerged in search of the boys.

His name was Osgardir. He had a gentle voice and a small game board, and after everything that had happened, that was more than enough to make Elrond and Elros like him immediately even though he too wore the eight-pointed star. He led them into his infirmary and boosted them up at the end of the table where his medicines and tools were laid out. The game board had nine men’s morris on one side and mancala on the other. They chose mancala, and they played over and over, barely pausing between games. A commotion was building outside the infirmary—Maglor was arguing one position, and other voices contradicted him, but Elrond couldn’t make out what they were saying.

Another man lay passed-out on a cot behind a folding screen. He was so tall that his feet dangled off the cot, and he wore many bandages. His tangled red hair brushed the floor at the far end.

“That is Maglor’s elder brother, Lord Maedhros,” Osgardir said when he noticed the boys stealing furtive glances at him. “You need not fear him. I gave him medicine to make him sleep, otherwise he might run off and get more banged-up than he already is.”

Maglor and Maedhros—that was two, but Mother had said three of the sons of Fëanor remained, all of them pursuing the Jewel with a single-minded obsession. “Who is the third brother?” Elrond asked, and Osgardir looked surprised at the question.

“That is Amras,” he said. “The youngest. He is badly hurt, so I put him to bed next door where he’ll be more comfortable. But you need not worry about him either. Shall we start another game?”

They kept playing. Elrond had long since lost count of how many games they had played or what the tally was. He was counting and dropping glass beads almost by rote, and he didn’t care whether Elros bested him. More games started and finished, and after a time he began to hear Amras start to groan in pain once more.

Maglor came into the infirmary only infrequently and usually without purpose. He would stand in the doorway, stare at Maedhros or the boys for a moment, and then leave again without saying anything. The arguments outside continued until the sounds of Amras’ suffering climbed to a constant scrape that set every hair on end, and Maglor returned to the infirmary, this time with purpose.

“Your drugs are doing nothing for him!” he nearly shouted at Osgardir.

The healer frowned. “How much have you given him?”

“All of it!”

Osgardir stood with a rattle of his mail coat and pulled Maglor behind the folding screen. “How long since the last dose?”

“About an hour!”

“He should be asleep! I can do nothing but make it easier before—” a sharp brown eye peered out of the gap between the screen panels. “Little pitchers have big ears,” he muttered, and then their voices dropped to a register that Elrond couldn’t make out, no matter how hard he strained.

After a short discussion, the two men emerged. Wordlessly, Osgardir went to his medicine case and began mixing several different things together in a mug while Maglor stood by, tapping his fingers in a constant rhythm on his crossed arms. He waited and stared at the boys, then the healer, then his brother, and then Elrond and Elros for a moment longer.

“Thank you,” he said when Osgardir handed him the mug.

Osgardir did not look at him. “The faster he drinks it, the quicker it will be.”

Maglor hesitated, nodded once, and then departed.

Amras stopped crying a short time later.

Osgardir showed Elrond and Elros how to play nine men’s morris when their tolerance for mancala grew thin and the outside conversation once again had Elros chewing on his braids. Osgardir’s hand paused over the board, ready to place a red mancala bead to capture one of the blue ones, but even he could not block out what had almost devolved into a shouting match. Maglor had set up his headquarters in the abandoned barracks because the westernmost windows had an unobstructed view of the sea and sky, but so far he had only spent a lot of time staring at the horizon, finding nothing. His advisers had tolerated his inaction at first, but now they were losing patience.

“My lord, we cannot wait any longer, they will be upon us by dawn—”

“She has to come back! She’s up there, she knows where we are!”

“If she does not come back before nightfall, we will all be lost! We need to leave now!”

More voices joined in, and their words became indistinct as they moved down the hall. At the other end of the room, Maedhros stirred upon his cot, and Elrond went still.

“He’s no danger to little lambs,” Osgardir said gently. “Come along, Elrond, it’s your turn.”

They kept playing. The argument upstairs continued, and occasionally Maedhros moved a little. The light slanted downward through the windows, painting the room in gold and illuminating the red mancala beads like drops of fresh blood on the worn tabletop. It was a dream, not a nightmare exactly, but still Elrond hoped it would all go away, and that this red-and-gold unreality would dissipate like fog on the sea and he would wake up in his own bed, only a little disoriented. It remained, even when he bit the inside of his cheek in one last half-hearted attempt to wake himself up.

The infirmary door opened with a bang. Elrond, Elros, Osgardir, and even Maedhros all jumped. Maglor, grim-faced, stood in the doorway.

“We’re leaving, Osgardir,” he said. “Can my brother ride?”

“Does it look like it?” The healer stood and approached Maedhros’ bedside. “Between the blood loss and the drugs, he’s down. We can rig a sling if necessary.”

“That will have to do. Boys, come with me.”

Elros looked skeptical. “Where?”

“Somewhere safe.”

There was a heavy thump. Maedhros had rolled off his cot. He pushed himself up on his left hand, trembling and shaking his head like he was trying to clear something out of his ears. Osgardir moved immediately to help him back to bed.

“You said he was drugged!” said Maglor.

“My lord, hold still, you don’t want to have me stitch you up again.” Osgardir gripped his upper arm, and held firm even when he tried to pull away. “Let’s get back on the cot now and sleep it off.”

“No.”

“Stop. Fighting will only make it worse.”

“No!” He jerked free and lifted his shaggy head, facing Maglor with a surprisingly sharp look in his bleary eyes. “You will not take them anywhere!”

“I promise you, no harm will come to them,” Maglor said in a deliberately patient tone. “The High King’s host is nearly upon us. Since their mother has thus far not returned, the king will take them into his charge. We, however, need to leave now if we do not want to become ornaments on the king’s battlements.”

Maedhros let out a cracked laugh. “That is exactly what I want.”

“And the rest of our people? Even Osgardir?”

“Leave me out of whatever this is,” Osgardir said.

“You will not take them anywhere,” Maedhros repeated. He was shaking more violently now as he lurched to his feet and nearly fell, but he steadied himself on the table at his bedside. “I will not let you.”

“I don’t need your permission to leave them in the care of a suitable guardian!”

“Such altruism! Such generosity!” Faster than any of them could have predicted, he had crossed the room and seized a fistful of Maglor’s surcoat. Even wounded and medicated, he towered over his brother, and Osgardir clearly knew better than to try and get between them. “Disgusting! Abandoning them to whichever army finds them first, now that the Jewel is out of your reach!”

“The king is half a day ahead at his current pace—”

“I will not let you make that wager! You took them, now take responsibility for them!”

A wrinkle of skepticism appeared in Maglor’s forehead. “What would you have me do? Raise them as my own? For Eru’s sake, they don’t deserve that.”

“Figure something out,” Maedhros snapped. “I am your lord.”

Maglor said nothing.

Against the advice of Osgardir, Maglor, and his own squire Alagostor, Maedhros tied himself to his saddle and rode, hunched and gray-faced, at the head of the column that thundered forth from the ruined gates. The golden afternoon faded into a moist gray evening as they left the abandoned city behind, and Elrond looked back one final time from beneath Captain Hestedis’ cloak. Smoke still rose from the fire-smudged timbers and sooty stones jutted where shops and houses used to stand before all the walls had burned away. It was a place that Elrond knew but did not recognize.

He turned back around. Elros was looking at him from under Maglor’s cloak, pale and round-eyed.

“We must take the southern way!” Hestedis called to Maglor. “The western road will be impassable before we have time to clear it!”

“That adds too many days to the journey!” he called back. “And we must leave a route to send an envoy to the king!”

“You left it too late! We have no choice!”

Maglor stifled a curse. He raised one gloved fist and the host began a long, slow turn south as the light continued to fade and thick, heavy clouds obscured the rising moon. A fat raindrop hit Elrond in the eye and he retreated under Hestedis’ cloak once again. Before long, he was lost in the rhythm of hooves and jingling mail and his own heartbeat pounding in his ears.

Sandy marshland gave way to grass, and clumps of trees grew thicker and thicker until forest enveloped the road on either side. The rode for hours, making only one brief stop to shed their crimson surcoats and replace them with hoods and draped tunics that melted into the colors and textures of the woods.

They camped for the night but lit no fires. The moon was full but quickly retreated behind thick clouds, and it was so dark that Elrond had to walk with his hands outstretched in front of him.

“Get some sleep,” came Maglor’s voice. “Here. There’s a blanket on this soft grass. No, this way. There you are. There’s no telling how much longer we’ll need to travel before we can get you home, and you need to be well-rested.”

Elros started to sniffle, and then cry.

“What is it?”

“I need to pee!”

Maglor let out an exasperated huff. “No crying! Go behind this tree!”

Elros went behind the tree and his tears subsided to a soft hiccup. Elrond went after him, and then they both settled onto the blanket. Maglor tossed them another blanket. “Sleep. You’ll need it tomorrow.”

Elrond and Elros nestled under the blanket, but they did not sleep. The elven host moved through the trees with only the slightest whisper of their boots on the grass, and soon Elrond could make out their dark silhouettes against the pale birch bark behind them.

“I need a volunteer,” Maglor said quietly to the assembly. “Doubtless the High King will be searching for us and the princes. You will carry the message to him that the princes are safe in my custody, and that I will gladly deliver them to a location of his choosing. I ask no ransom.”

“Surely their return is worth clemency for our host!” someone said.

“Or the Jewel, if that remains you objective and not common banditry!” someone else said more bitterly, which elicited a murmur of controversy.

“I’ve given her ample time to make that trade, and the opportunity has passed,” Maglor snapped. “I will return them to their kin, and that will be the end of it!”

“I should have turned coat with Eliadis,” muttered the second speaker. Foliage rustled as they excused themselves from the circle.

“Just one volunteer,” Maglor reiterated. “I want the children’s safe return and nothing more. Who will carry this message?”

“I will.”

“Good. Leave by moonlight if the clouds clear up, otherwise by dawn.”

“Understood.”

Elrond and Elros lay still but awake through the night. Crickets sang, and when the moon shone through a break in the clouds, hoofbeats drummed on the loam as Maglor’s envoy departed. Maglor himself sat near the boys, motionless and watchful. The whites of his eyes were pale against the night, and Elrond looked away.

He could feel Elros’ heartbeat against his arm and feel the faint brush of his shallow breath. His eyes scanned the deep black sky as if searching for something they both suspected they would never see again.

Morning brought mist and the sound of distant, muffled thunder.

Elrond was to ride with Hestedis again. He didn’t like her. He wanted to ride with Osgardir instead, and suddenly it all bubbled up deep in his belly and came out in the form of a tantrum. He seemed to be watching from somewhere just above his body as he threw himself down, wailing and beating his fists against the ground and kicking and biting and screaming when anyone tried to touch him. A choking black cloud expanded behind his eyes and filled his head, and he did not know how long it was before he could take in a breath and not have it escape him in sobs. He lay, wheezing, and when he opened his eyes, it was to the sight of a pair of muddy black boots.

Maglor scooped him up under the armpits and lifted him to eye level in a single fluid movement. He was very tall: Elrond fell absolutely silent with his feet dangling in empty air.

“Enough,” Maglor said in a voice that was soft but stern. “Scream all you want under Gil-galad’s wing—you deserve it. But not here .” He gave Elrond a gentle shake. “Do you understand me? Do you ?”

Mute, Elrond nodded.

Maglor set him back on his feet. As planned, Elrond soon found himself back on the front of Hestedis’ saddle, and once more the column of riders set off into the wild.

Elrond would later learn that Osgardir had been occupied with Maedhros: replacing burst stitches, changing bandages that he’d bled through, arguing about the pace he was setting, forcing him to take food and water, and confiscating his hip flask every time he managed to steal it back. Despite the healer’s tenacity, Maedhros only continued to lead the host onward through rainfall and deepening shadows. They finally stopped along a riverbank to water the horses. The rain came down in sheets so heavy that it obscured the tops of the trees in gray. Maglor tried to herd the boys under some thick foliage, but it was too late: like the rest of the company, they were already soaked to the skin.

Maedhros was clearly unwell, no matter how much he tried to act otherwise. He hung grimly onto his pommel to stay upright, and when Maglor noticed, he called an extended halt. Sentries disappeared into the mist at his command.

They waited. The rain did not let up. Elrond, with water in his eyes, curled up into a motionless ball on the damp ground.

“Is there any word?” Maglor asked Hestedis.

“No sign of Hadlath yet. He should have made contact with the king by now.”

“There is no way to be sure.”

“No, unfortunately not.”

Maglor paused. He shifted his weight to the other foot. “Is there any talk of a great white bird…”

“Not since it happened.”

“Hmm.”

Elros wasn’t looking at them, but he had one ear turned toward their conversation as he sat with his knees drawn up to his chin. His normally chatty mouth was set in a grim line, and tendrils of wet hair clung to his face. Elros had always been Elrond’s mirror, but in this moment he looked much braver than Elrond felt.

Night fell again. The messenger still had not returned.

The rain let up, however, and Maglor located an acceptably dry patch of ground for the boys and their blankets. Everything was clammy.

“I’m cold,” Elrond said.

“We can’t light a fire here,” Maglor said simply, tossing his cloak over a branch to make a tent for Elrond and Elros. “Stay wrapped in those blankets. Wool will keep you warm even if your clothes are wet.”

Elrond wanted to throw off the blanket and continue to be cold out of some deep-seated petulance, but a seeping weariness soon overtook the urge. What would it accomplish? Would it send him back home? Would it erase what had already happened? Would it summon a white ship rolling in with the fog, accompanied by the light of his mother’s Jewel?

The chill and loneliness and darkness, however, were real and extremely present, so much that Elrond had trouble holding the fantasy in his mind. His world was shadows and doubt, wet blankets and a sore backside from endless hours on a horse.

Elros’ nose was running. He kept sniffing and wiping mucus on his sleeve. It was annoying, but at least he was there, the sole comfort and familiarity in this nightmare.

Nearby, what he had mistaken for a shaggy bush moved its head and revealed itself instead to be Maedhros’ hunched figure. Maglor crouched next to him.

“Tell me,” Maedhros muttered.

“It was quick,” Maglor said. “He took the cup from me, and slept, and then…”

“Only we remain.”

“Yes.”

Maedhros did not respond. Maglor, also silent, remained with him.

Elrond didn’t realize he had fallen asleep until he felt Maglor shaking him awake.

“We need to keep moving. Hustle up, now.”

It was still dark, and a light drizzle had started up again. Groggy, Elrond didn’t protest when he was boosted onto Hestedis’ saddle again, and he bobbed like a toy boat on top of the horse’s canter.

Something had gone terribly wrong, but neither Elrond nor Elros had words for their fears. Through the rain, the host continued deeper into the forest without waiting for the messenger any longer.

“I’m not hungry,” Elrond said, picking crumbs off the edge of the flatbread he’d been given.

“Irrelevant. I won’t have you wasting away before I deliver you to the king. Eat. You didn’t eat yesterday either.”

Elrond took an unenthusiastic bite under Maglor’s supervision. It tasted like sawdust. Elros hand dutifully eaten his portion already and had moved on to listlessly picking at blades of grass. With some difficulty, Elrond chewed and swallowed the bite, and at Maglor’s urging, he took another.

His body seemed to have stopped delivering normal sensations. The rain continued, but he felt neither wet nor cold. Voices were meaningless. The bread was nothing more than ash. All around him the forest was a painting in shades of gray. This overwhelming detachment somehow seemed safe, as if he were a toy placed on its shelf until after his lessons were over.

“Eat,” came Maglor’s voice, a shard in the thick softness that enveloped Elrond’s head.

“He’s picky,” Elros said.

“I don’t have anything else. Get some food in your belly or you’ll be grumpy later.”

“He’s already grumpy,” Elros pointed out.

Maglor sighed and rubbed his forehead. A burst of birdsong rang out through the treetops, and a tense silence fell over the company.

“Scatter!” Maglor hissed.

In the blink of an eye, his followers and their horses vanished into the trees. Maglor scooped up Elrond and Elros and whisked them along into the dense wood beyond the road. He stepped on rocks and fallen branches instead of soil where he could, darting between shadows until they came to the river. The water flowed swift and rough and the near bank was a steep drop. Maglor paused. He adjusted his grip on the boys and followed a path of chunky pebbles down to the edge of the river. Elrond instinctively grabbed Maglor’s shoulder when his right foot splashed at the shore, but Maglor simply ducked into a small, dry hollow that the springtime swells had carved out of the riverbank. He sat, furled his earth-colored cloak around the three of them, and clamped his arms tightly around Elrond and Elros on either side.

Elros’ brow crinkled. “Why are we—”

“Hush!”

Elros fell silent. He looked over at Elrond with renewed fear in his wide eyes.

They waited silently, but Elrond couldn’t guess what they waited for. It was the breath before a leap. Possibilities raced through his mind, but none seemed likely to make Maglor son of Fëanor afraid. And he was afraid. Elrond could feel it in the almost-painful grip on his shoulder.

The woods remained still. Raindrops pocked the surface of the river, which rushed on as always. A frog hopped near Elrond’s foot. Still nothing happened, but the quiet was like a fine glass that would drop at the slightest whisper.

It seemed to last a lifetime. The rain picked up, and Elrond could feel rivulets of water and soil rolling down his back from his sodden hair—his whole body tensed to keep from shivering. He glanced around, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever they were hiding from, but he saw nothing. No, not quite nothing: he blinked and stared closer at a patch of greenery across the river. An elf crouched there, shrouded in a cloak and hood. His eyes followed a tall tree up to a sturdy branch where Hestedis roosted like a hawk. She had her bow in hand with an arrow already set to the string.

The forest shivered with approaching footsteps, numerous and heavy on the ground. Harsh words in rough voices cut through the mist. They became louder, closer, and soon a ripe stew of odors prickled Elrond’s nose: wet fur, unwashed bodies, matted hair, foul breath.

Orcs. All of Maglor’s haste and secrecy had not been enough.

An axe sank into a tree trunk with a spiteful thud. “Gah! These woods are thick with elf-stink!”

“Stragglers from Sirion.”

“Near enough for hunting,” a third orc said with relish, prompting hungry smacks from the other two, punctuated with weapon hafts thumping against the damp earth.

Elrond didn’t realize he was whimpering until Maglor’s hand clamped firmly over his mouth. He glanced at Elros. Maglor was covering his mouth as well, and the whites of his eyes shone all the way around in the gloom.

“No hunting!” bellowed a deep voice. “Not until the elf-king calls off his dogs!”

“Spoil-sports,” muttered the first orc.

“They want ‘em all to themselves, more like. Elf-scum hunt their own kind now.”

Bad-spirited laughter crackled among the trees and the rain. “And they think they’re better than us! That’s perfect!”

He didn’t know how many there were, only that the band of orcs was hungry for a fight, and that Maglor was afraid.

The creatures started hacking at trees and branches for firewood, and when they had enough they lit fires that smelled of burning grease. They were making themselves at home. One of them exclaimed loudly—there was a thunk of a weapon sinking into the ground, a squeal of a small animal, and then something that sounded like wet, open-mouthed chewing. Elrond gagged, swallowed, and then squeezed his eyes shut. If he strained hard enough, he could hear only the sound of his teeth grinding together in the back of his mouth. More branches fell to the orcish axes. It seemed like they were doing it for fun.

Their speech fluctuated between the common jargon and their own barking tongue. They spoke of being expelled from Sirion and what they planned to loot when they went back, and what they planned on doing to any elf that got in their way. Images of rusty knives at his throat and Elros struggling against gnarled, clawed hands forced their way back into Elrond’s mind.

“The elf-king thinks he can keep us out forever,” one of them chuckled.

“We’ll take what’s ours!”

“All of it!”

A great howling, shrieking whoop rose from the orcs. Bones and weapons and armor plates rattled and Maglor’s hand over his mouth was all that kept Elrond from screaming. His head felt about to burst from the packed-in terror and helplessness, so much that he shook with the effort of containing it.

Go away go away go away go away go away go away…

He could not help but keep up the desperate mantra in his mind. If he only listened to the river and rain, he could block out the animalistic growling coming from the slope above them, and he could almost pretend that he was safe at home and that none of this had ever happened, but the shouts cut through the water and flooded his ears and he had to push them out or he would scream and they would catch him and rend him and eat his flesh—

Go away go away go away go away go away go away go away go away go away go away go away go away—

“Elrond!”

He flinched and lashed out with both hands. Strong fingers tightened around his wrist.

Someone batted briskly at his cheek. “Elrond!”

He opened his eyes. Nothing made sense for one wild moment until he saw Elros’ face a few inches from his own and began to get his bearings again.

They were still in the hollow by the river, but it had stopped raining. Maglor was still holding his wrist. Elros had planted himself between Maglor and Elrond, and when Elrond didn’t speak he gave him another pat that was almost a slap. “Elrond! It’s all right! They’re gone!”

Elrond blinked. “What?”

“The orcs are gone!” Elros repeated, wide-eyed. “They packed up and left!”

A vague uneasiness settled into Elrond’s belly and he tugged his wrist free of Maglor’s hand. “How… long ago?”

“Long enough,” Maglor said. He stood and indicated the way back up the riverbank. “We need to get moving. These woods are still not safe.”

Elrond and Elros climbed up the rocky slope. The orcs’ camp was still there, complete with hacked wood and oily fires that still glowed with coals. They had left deep, misshapen footsteps in the mud and churned the grass into mulch. The uneasiness remained in Elrond like a missed stair as he looked around at the mess and how close they had been to it—how had they not been found?

Elros hovered almost protectively at his side with a look of stout determination on his face, and Maglor kept glancing back at him. Elrond turned to his brother. “What… happened?” he asked.

“You were shaking. You looked really ill,” Elros said. “You wouldn’t answer when I said your name.”

Elrond said nothing. He felt fine, if a little disoriented. One by one, elves in earth-colored cloaks appeared out of the bushes and dropped out of trees while others led horses out of the deep woods, whispering to them and stroking their noses. All of them walked quietly as if one wrong step would bring the orcs down on them once more.

Hestedis strode up to Maglor with her bow still in hand. “I said you left it too long. That was much too close.”

“Either way, it is done,” Maglor said.

“We need to leave.” Hestedis beckoned sharply at Elrond. “Come with me, boy.”

“His name is Elrond ,” Elros said, rolling his eyes. Hestedis frowned and opened her mouth to snap at him, but Maglor raised his hand.

“One moment, Hestedis. I’ll have a word with the princes while you round everyone up.”

Hestedis closed her mouth and gave him a grudging nod. She departed, and Maglor looked back at Elrond and Elros. He dropped to one knee to speak to them on their level.

“Listen to me,” he said. “With whatever free will I have left, I will get you home safely. The king will take you into his care and this wretched episode will be behind us at last. I am sorry that this is the best I can give you.” Without waiting for a response, he stood. His squire had come up with his horse, and he took the reins with a nod. “Now, we must go. There is still a long ride ahead.”

The days on the road blended into a haze of gray light and deep shadows. The rain sputtered in and out. Elrond and Elros ate and slept when they were told. They did not cross paths with the orcs again, but Maglor’s host still kept up a swift, silent pace and lit no fires.

At last a structure appeared through the woods: an old stone wall camouflaged by creeping vines. Elrond peered around the riders in front of them to try and get a better look, but they turned a corner and the wall disappeared behind the trees. He began to wonder if he had seen it at all until they turned another corner and it rose up in front of the path once more. He saw a watchtower and a gate of iron-banded wood—both had seen better days.

The riders paused on the road just before the wall. Maglor’s squire Rythredion drew his sword and rapped three times upon his shield. “Open the gate!” he called. “Our lords return home!”

There was an almost hesitant pause. The heavy gate swung open with a groan. A handful of dark-hooded guards stood waiting, along with a small crowd of other elves who had been going about their work: they carried their tools and baskets as if they had not even stopped to drop their loads when they heard the horses.

Maglor trotted his horse through the gates with Elros on his saddle. Just behind him, Maedhros sagged over his pommel, swaying against the rope he’d tied around his waist as he followed. Hestedis went after him, and as the host filed through the gates and into the compound, more elves silently gathered to view the spectacle. They said nothing. Some faces were open in shock, and others were shuttered and turned away when the horses passed. Still others displayed no emotion at all, only the same dull resignation that Elrond recognized in the host that bore them away from Sirion.

The horses followed dirt paths around smoky shops and wood-and-stone houses. There were muddy chicken coops and goat pens, vegetable gardens and strings of grayish laundry trying to dry in the moist air. Everything seemed shabby and sad and slowly losing what little dignity it had left. The great house in the center of the compound was no different, for all it was older and bigger and built entirely in stone. A corner of it was crumbling and the roof was mostly moss. No banners flew from the two small towers on either side of the double doors, which did not match. Some of the windows were boarded up. It looked like a tired, bruised face.

It was in front of the great house that Maglor called the riders to a halt. They had assembled a small crowd already, and more were still coming. He dismounted first and lifted Elros out of the saddle after him, and the others followed. Elrond gave Hestedis the same suspicious glare he’d trained on her constantly since Sirion but allowed her to get him down from the horse without a fuss.

Maedhros, grimacing, reached for his right wrist. He spent a few clumsy moments fumbling with something under his sleeve, and then his black-gloved right hand dropped to the ground with a clunk. Elrond’s eyes popped. Maedhros glanced at him from under his disheveled curtain of hair—he’d been caught staring.

“It’s a prosthesis,” he said bluntly, and wandered off toward the great house, leaving a trail of gear behind him. His squire rolled his eyes and followed, picking up the debris as he went.

The crowd pressed in closer. One woman stepped forward. “Why have so few returned?” she asked. “Where is Amras?”

Maglor’s face was like stone. “My brother is dead.”

“And the others? Are they all dead as well?”

“No. Not all of them.”

More people rushed in with more questions, and Elrond’s head spun in the confusion. Maglor raised his hands and his voice to quell the noise for now. “I will answer you all! Dior’s daughter did possess my father’s Silmaril, but no, we did not reclaim it, even after needless bloodshed!”

A brittle hush fell over the crowd like a collective intake of breath.

A man elbowed his way through the crowd. His face was flushed in obvious anger. “Sirion was… was not Menegroth!” he shouted. “The Sindar were at least capable of a fair fight!”

“She knew of my Oath and ignored my offer of peaceful reconciliation. Tell me, what other choice did I have?” A bitter edge came into Maglor’s voice at that, and he passed his reins to Rythredion before heading into the house, nudging Elrond and Elros along with him. Most of the crowd followed, still demanding answers, but when Elrond glanced back he saw others going their own way, shaking their heads and looking disgusted.

Maglor ushered the boys through a small, dark antechamber. The voices around them melted from the common jargon into rapid, rolling Quenya that they couldn’t follow as the inner doors opened into a large hall filled with red-gold light and deep shadows cast off from the long hearth in the middle of the floor. Someone placed a bowl of soup in Elrond’s hands. He hadn’t realized how cold he was until the warmth started seeping into this fingers, or how hungry he was until he smelled broth and onions.

He and Elros sat at one of the long trestle tables beside the hearth, shoulders touching, and inhaled the soup while Maglor gathered his people. The strange elves shifted around them, peering at them almost as if they were afraid. Elrond and Elros watched them warily but continued eating.

“And the children? Are we now a prison for infant hostages?” one elf demanded, his voice cutting through the debate.

“Due to a series of misunderstandings at Sirion, the princes have become my responsibility,” he said. “I need someone to act as my herald and arrange a meeting with the High King or his representative in order to reunite them with their people.”

Hestedis huffed. “A series of misunderstandings ,” she mocked under her breath.

Maglor ignored her. “I had intended to make contact with him sooner, but the road was dangerous. It will be safer for them to remain here while we agree on a plan. The sooner I can send someone, the better.”

Dozens of curious eyes turned on the boys. Elros swallowed a spoonful of soup and stared back. Elrond just looked down at his empty bowl. He didn’t say anything, but someone immediately swooped in to refill it as if she had heard his thoughts.

“I only wish to return them,” Maglor reiterated. “What happened at Sirion is already done. At least I can try to prevent more harm.”

There was a long pause filled only with crackling embers and the boys slurping their soup. Maglor remained in the midst of his followers, arms crossed, looking at each of them in turn.

“I will go,” another elf said at last.

“Good,” Maglor said, satisfied. “I will compose a letter. Until you return with word from the king, the princes are my honored guests, and I will see to their needs.”

Maglor proved serious about his promise. At length he extracted himself from more prolonged discussion and took the boys beyond the main hall, where a bedchamber was already prepared for their use. His authoritative demeanor before his people crumbled into self-conscious scrupulosity as he enlisted Rythredion in helping to make the boys comfortable. They unearthed some old chests elsewhere in the great house and brought them back to sort through. There were children’s clothes, but despite the sachets of herbs left between the layers, many of the articles had been ruined by pests.

“There hasn’t been any need for children’s things in this house for centuries,” Maglor said, embarrassed, as he tried to see what could be salvaged. “One of my brothers maintained a trading outpost here, but those days are long gone.” Mouse droppings and insect bites perforated several shirts and trousers, and the toys and games in the other chest fared no better. In the end they found four shirts, two tunics, three pairs of trousers, one winter coat, exactly three socks, and a left sandal in good condition. “That’s a decent start, I suppose. Rythredion, please take all this down to the laundry and see if you can find anything we can take in. They’ll need socks and underwear as well, and nightshirts. The rest of this can go to the tailors’ for quilts if nothing else.”

The toys were also old and beaten, chewed by rodents and missing patches of once-bright paint. There was a wooden cat with wheels instead of legs, boy and girl dolls with faded smocks, interlocking wooden blocks in different shapes, and a small collection of sewn leather balls.

“We can clean them up a bit,” Maglor said hastily when Elros inspected one of the dolls. “There’s a ball-and-cup that just needs a new string, and some soft animals that are missing their stuffing… what do you like to play with?” Elrond shrugged. He looked at Elros, who was already hard at work untangling the boy doll’s curly yarn hair. Maglor wrung his hands. “I forgot completely—your hair! Baths! Rythredion!”

A commotion elsewhere in the house drew Maglor away, leaving Rythredion to oversee the boys’ bath once he returned. They took turns scrubbing off in a low wooden tub with water that was barely lukewarm, shivering in the cool air and trying to get done as soon as possible. Still, it was better with Maglor’s agitation out of the room, and Rythredion was friendly company. When they were clean they put on too-large shirts and sat still while he combed the tangles out of their hair.

“I used to do this for my little brother,” he said. “It’s been some time. Do you want two braids?”

They both nodded. Rythredion braided Elrond’s hair first, smoothing his curls with sweet-smelling oil before making a clean part down the middle and braiding close to his scalp. The squire tied off the braids with pieces of cord and started on Elros’ hair while Elrond went back to examine the toys again.

Elsewhere in the house, the shouting escalated. Something clattered. Elrond and Elros looked up at the door.

“There is no need for you two to worry,” Rythredion said. He rose to his feet. “I’ll be back later! Why don’t you see which toys you like best?”

Elrond and Elros were not confined to their room, but over the next days they spent long hours there anyway. Two dolls, a basket of blocks, a wheeled cat, and a few leather balls became whole worlds, from dark forests to cliffs by the sea to the underground fortresses where dwarves were said to live. High drama played out over whole centuries on the faded rug in front of the fireplace, complete with dragons and fairies and lost love and betrayal and murder and wraiths and storms that took the shape of Elrond pelting Elros’ block castle with balls until Elros tackled him and they resorted to wrestling until one of them bent a finger back and started crying.

More often than not, their games culminated in the girl doll leaping off the top of a block castle or the wheeled cat capturing both dolls and rolling away into the dark gap under the bed.

Eleven people left the compound overnight. Within a week, the population had dropped by a third.

Most packed up their horses and left without saying anything. Others took nothing but what they could carry, leaving their crafts and tools behind. The others only realized the baker had gone when no smoke rose from her ovens one morning. The herbalist and one of the healers had at least warned Osgardir before they left him to care for the compound’s health alone, a fact he bitterly reported to Maglor the morning after their departure. A goatherd distributed his flock among the others before he left, and a carpenter took only her garden, which she had carefully uprooted and replanted in boxes in the back of her wagon. Each left their sword at the front door of the great house.

From the snatches of conversation that Elrond and Elros overheard, no one who left had hesitated to make their decision once they had heard about Sirion. Those who remained did not try to stop them.

Maglor let them play as much as they liked—if they were playing, they weren’t distracting him from keeping social order from collapsing as more and more of his people took their leave. Occasionally they grew bored of their toys and left their room to wander and eavesdrop, but these expeditions often left them with more questions than answers. They loitered in the shadows when Maglor dictated a letter for his herald to carry to the king. Its content was much the same as it had been on the road: I have taken the twin princes into my household for safekeeping, and I wish to return them to their people. I ask nothing but your cooperation…

“Maybe you should mention how you were going to leave them in the ruins until your mad brother caught wind of it,” Hestedis sniped from the doorway where she leaned with crossed arms.

A wrinkle of distaste appeared at the corner of Maglor’s mouth. “Why did you even stay?”

She departed without saying anything.

The next morning, the messenger rode into the forest, bound for the house of the king.

Daily life in Maglor’s custody felt like nothing more than filling time until the next sundown, and then doing the same thing when morning broke the next day. Until the messenger returned with the king’s response, there was nothing terribly important to do.

The elves who followed the dispossessed brothers seemed to follow the same mundane pattern of work and rest, sustaining themselves by rote with nothing obvious to look forward to. They acted as if they were part of a story that had ended a long time ago: leftover characters forgotten once the fire was out and the storyteller had gone to bed. The Noldor majority among them spoke loudly and with many gestures, and they argued constantly, mostly about how labor and resources would be divided now, but also apparently about everything else they could think of. Elrond and Elros heard their names often, and the names of their parents. It died down a little during mealtimes, when the household gathered around a table near the hearth and generally restricted their conversation to shop talk.

Elrond and Elros sat at table with the rest of the household. They ate plain, repetitive meals: cooked grain, meatballs, mushrooms, steamed greens, flatbread, goat cheese. Elrond had a growing list of foods he didn’t like and passed spoonfuls to the dogs when he could get away with it. Elros tried to help himself to more honey than porridge, but was usually caught red-handed and sticky-mouthed.

The household always set an extra place at the head of the table, but it always stood empty.

“Who’s going to sit there?” Elrond asked after he realized no one ever sat there.

“Maedhros, if he chooses to join us,” Maglor said.

“He probably won’t,” added Hestedis.

“Still, he is the lord of our house, and leaving him a space at the head of the table is an appropriate courtesy,” Maglor continued, apparently ignoring the touch of scorn in his captain’s voice.

Maedhros may have been the lord of their house, but their followers looked to Maglor for leadership. Maedhros himself rarely emerged from his chambers. He drank almost constantly. In the small hours of the morning he could sometimes be heard yelling and flipping his furniture over, and Maglor would have dark circles under his eyes when the sun came up and the boys emerged from their room. The rest of the time, Maedhros slept during the day or wandered the halls by himself, saying nothing. The others regarded him with a mixture of pity and frustration, and Elrond and Elros didn’t usually see him.

The messenger returned alone and empty-handed.

“The orcs have camps all across southern Beleriand,” he reported grimly in the main hall. “All through the forest and beyond the rivers. I don’t know why—it would be some of their tribal war games, but either way, all roads are impassable. I do not think it wise to attempt contact again until they have moved on.”

Maglor sighed, frustrated, and tugged at his hair. “They never would have dared come this far south in our day. Did you at least hear anything of the king’s people? Any rumors?”

“None.”

“They could be preparing an attack on Balar,” Maedhros mumbled over his cup. “The Enemy will win by sheer numbers.”

Maglor cut him off with a sweep of his hand. “No! Orcs do not muster themselves for anything more than scavenging, and the Enemy does not muster them unless rising to our challenge. The king should know better than to challenge him.”

“It’s all speculation.” Maedhros drank deeply. “All we know is that we will have to wait. Sent scouts if you must know what they are up to, but it won’t make a difference.”

Elrond and Elros looked at one another but said nothing. They would have to stay here, then, still waiting, still playing with their toys, just passing the time.

Elrond had not realized he could miss the sea until he had been swept away into the deep forest. Between dinners spent slipping his food to the dogs, he found himself craving luminous sea-grapes on a blue-and-white plate, but there was no sea here, only an unending wood and mist-shrouded hills in the distance. His ears rang in the deafening absence of waves upon the cliffs. It kept him up at night, and he often rolled over in bed to find Elros also awake and picking at threadbare patches on their quilt.

“What do you think the king will be like?” Elrond asked him.

Elros shrugged. “I don’t know.”

They were silent for a moment. Elrond had an image in his mind of a figure on a white horse, but he was distant like a statue on a hill. Would he be like Maglor—distracted and anxiously attentive? Would he be warm and bright and easy to love like Father, as little as Elrond remembered him between his voyages? The king’s name demanded respect. Would he truly be as cold as a marble statue?

It would still be temporary, wouldn’t it? Mother would surely return before long, and Father’s ship would come to port amid the sound of their people’s cheers.

That was a comforting thought, and Elrond let its promise carry him to sleep.

Winter came. Morning frost on the windows became sheets of ice where rain had fallen and frozen overnight, and each day the weak pink sunrise that filtered through the trees did less to warm the earth. Snow would have made the world softer, but winter here brought only ice and a deep, damp chill that made every sensation shatter.

Elrond could not remember ever being so cold before. He and Elros huddled close in their bed every night with the blankets pulled up to their ears. Even with a fire on the hearth their noses stung every time they breathed in. As the days grew darker and colder, most of the house moved pallets into the main hall and gathered them around the long hearth where it was warmer and they could save fuel, and nestled between strangers, the boys slept more comfortably than they had since the first frost. During the day they built a tent out of chairs and blankets and took their toys inside to play where it was warm. The adults still went about their work: goats needed to be milked, wood needed to be chopped, and nails needed to be forged. Life, such as it was, continued.

Maglor, Rythredion, and the tailors all brought mountains of sewing to the main hall to work on. Elros had tied a string around the wheeled cat and was running in circles around the hearth with the cat bumping along behind him. Elrond lay in wait under one of the tables. He waited for Elros to approach—when he ran alongside Elrond’s hiding place, Elrond pounced, wrapped his arms around Elros’ legs, and tackled him to the floor in a tangle of patched shoes and oversized coats.

“Elrond! Elros! BOYS!” Maglor barked when they started throwing punches. They stopped. He was still sewing, but with a withering glare in their direction. “Don’t hit each other. Come and sit on the bench.”

Shamefaced, they came around the hearth and scooted onto Maglor’s bench. For a long time they sat silently, swinging their feet and fidgeting, until Maglor spoke again.

“Do you know your numbers?” he asked.

Elros sat up straight. “I can count to a hundred,” he said.

“Really? That’s impressive. Do you know your tengwar?”

“I always forget the ones in the middle,” Elros confessed, wrinkling his nose. “Elrond is better.”

“Do you know the tengwar song?”

“I do,” Elrond said.

“Let’s sing the tengwar song. Elros, just sing as much as you remember.”

The three of them sang the tengwar song. Elros did his best with the ones in the middle, and afterward Maglor had them sing it more slowly to give him more time to remember. His voice was strong and easy to follow, and soon Elros was singing all the tengwar in the right order, and the boys swung their feet in time with the melody as they sang it faster and faster.

It became part of their winter routine. Maglor had them sing the tengwar song, the number song, the Valar song, the song of the Music, and more they didn’t already know. There were songs for history and mathematics and the patterns of nature. When Maglor decided they knew them well enough, he brought out slates and chalk and had them practice their letters and numbers. The lesson-songs stuck in Elrond’s head as the repeated figures and made words on his slate. He could bring the music out into the lines and curves of his name as if making a visual representation of the tunes themselves. Elros did his numbers faster, and when he was done, he drew grotesque monsters slithering out of the edges of the slate to eat them.

Maglor sent another messenger when spring softened the ground and the rivers swelled with meltwater.

Baby goats and fowl appeared, which drew Elrond and Elros’ attention. The greensward behind the great house held a goat pen and a fenced chicken coop beside the kitchen garden, and the two of them spent long hours peering through the slats at hens parading their tiny brown chicks behind them in neat lines and spotted kids bouncing after each other on the grass.

“What kind of egg did we come from?” Elros asked, brow furrowed in concentration as he studied the chicks. “The eggs only have one baby in them, but we were born at the same time. Did we have two eggs stuck together? Or did we share a big one?”

Maglor emerged from the henhouse with a handful of eggs for the kitchen. “The children of Iluvatar don’t hatch from eggs.”

Elros looked up at him with one skeptical eyebrow raised. “Why not?”

“Well, we are more similar to goats than we are to chickens. We have hair instead of feathers, and our mothers feed us upon milk like mother goats feed their babies.” He pointed out two black-and-white kids suckling and wagging their stubby tails while their mother grazed, unconcerned. “The babies are born from their mothers’ bodies. It is the same for elves and men.”

“I think you’re making that up,” Elros retorted. He turned back to watch the hens and their babies scratch at the dirt for insects.

As the boys spent more time paying attention to the animals and the gardens, they noticed more about how the small society within the compound functioned. Each resident was entitled to an equal ration of grain, after which any surplus was put up against lean years to come. They supplemented this grain with their gardens, animals, and forage, a percentage of which they were obliged to send to the granaries for distribution among the compound. They traded any excess and their crafts amongst themselves. Those who did not produce food made their contribution in other ways—textiles, woodwork, tanning, smithing, hours of labor. All who were able spent a portion of their time standing in defense of the compound, for which they received an additional measure of goods.

Maglor, highly educated as he was, was the primary overseer of the ledgers, along with a number of others who counted bookkeeping among their skills. Elros often abandoned his slate and sidled up to them while they reviewed figures, sitting quietly at the end of the bench so he wouldn’t be told to return to his studies.

“Have you finished your tengwar already?” Maglor would say, turning a withering tutor’s eye on him, and he would slide back to his work.

“I don’t understand most of what they talk about, but it’s interesting anyway,” Elros explained one night when Elrond asked him why he liked listening to them so much.

Elrond frowned up at the bed canopy. “What’s interesting about it?”

“I don’t know. They think of everything, and no one goes without.” He snuggled under the quilt and promptly put his icy feet on Elrond, who yelped and pummeled him, which led to a brief scuffle that left them both overheated and wound-up.

The year grew full and fat with ripening grain and buzzing bees. Elrond and Elros played outside, building castles of sticks and rocks in the courtyard until Maglor found them and brought them back to their lessons.

“I will not send you back to your people ignorant and illiterate,” he said, and watched over them as they grudgingly put their chalk to their slates.

He sent another herald after midsummer. She returned alone, and sooner than anyone expected.

“The settlement at Balar is empty,” she said. “They’re gone. All of them. They just… packed up and left.”

Maglor went pale at the news. “Did they leave any indication where they went?”

“Of course not!”

“Was there any sign of a fight? Any sign of pillage by orcs?”

“No, it is as I said! Everything is just empty!” The messenger spread her hands wide. “It was like they moved out and only left the buildings! I met a band of vagabonds who told me as much, but I paid a small fortune for a ferry out to the island to see for myself. There was no one there.”

“There has to be some way to find out where they went!” Maglor was shouting now, and Elrond and Elros had given up all pretense of working on their lessons.

“I am only a messenger!” She tossed Maglor’s missive, still neatly folded and sealed, onto the table near him. “I’ll take the letter, but I cannot track them when they clearly do not want to be found!” With that she only turned and left the great house.

Maglor started keeping strange hours. His appearance, which had been immaculately neat since their arrival from Sirion, began to degrade into rumpled clothes and uncombed hair. But compared to Maedhros, who looked and smelled like hopeless neglect, Maglor was like a spire struck by lightning, taking all the energy around him and struggling to contain it.

Elrond and Elros often crept out to eavesdrop in the night. Maglor was pacing by the long hearth, and they could see his shadow on the far wall.

“Why did she not come for them? Even now, why does she not search for them? They are her own flesh and blood!”

Maedhros’ shadow, hunched and craggy, lifted his cup to his lips. “You know damn well not to blame her for this.”

Maglor’s desperation spilled over into every aspect of life in his household. Elrond and Elros felt the rush, but for his part Elrond couldn’t say what he was rushing toward. He sang his lessons louder, wrote his letters faster, and played with more exuberance. During a wrestling match with Elros, he hit his chin on the edge of the bedstead. After a whirl of blood and confusion and crying, he found himself getting stitches under his jaw while Elros hovered behind Osgardir, insisting through tears that it was an accident.

“Of course it was, my boy,” the healer said. “Accidents happen. Just be more careful next time.” He tied off the last stitch, washed his hands, offered Elrond a sweet for his bravery, and all was well.

Osgardir usually kept to himself, but he spent a lot of time around the great house that fall. Through eavesdropping, Elrond and Elros gleaned that Maedhros was doing poorly, but they didn’t know what that meant, and no one would tell them.

“I cannot spend this much time watching him when I have the rest of the compound to attend to,” Osgardir finally told Maglor in a tone that brooked no argument. “Not unless you want me to lock him in the infirmary.”

“That will only make him worse, like it always does,” Maglor said. “We are all stretched to our limit. Alagostor is doing the most, but he cannot go without sleep.”

“Set up shifts if you must. Call for me if there is an emergency. Maglor, you know I have no easy cure for him—you’ve know that for a hundred years.” Osgardir hefted his bag over his shoulder. “Elanor extracts, exercise, regular sleep and meals, moderation in drinking… but nothing will help if he is not willing.”

Maglor tried to keep up the boys’ usual schedule as if nothing was wrong. He held them to their lessons and allowed them time to play, but most of his attention was on Maedhros. He never let him out of his sight and tried to keep him within arm’s reach. To Elrond’s eyes, Maedhros didn’t seem like he needed much minding. He only sat, wrapped in a blanket and doing little more than staring at the ceiling, looking just as detached and miserable as he usually did. He had bandages up his right arm and fading bruises all around his neck, but Elrond wasn’t brave enough to ask him what had happened.

Winter came and went. With time, Maedhros returned to his usual routine of solitary drinking and sleeping, and Elrond and Elros moved on to more challenging lessons. They could understand both Sindarin and Quenya but spoke a utilitarian mixture of the two, as was the common practice. They learned to speak properly in both languages and began working on reading and writing with equal precision. Their coats did not hang quite so loosely, and their shoes began to pinch in the toes. Maglor cut the uppers into strips, folded and stitched a small loop into each strip, and threaded long pieces of cord through the loops in a criss-cross pattern.

“There, you can tie them more loosely as your feet grow,” he said. “Of course, you’ll be home by then.”

He did not send another herald as soon as spring came as he had done the previous year. Instead he sent scouts to search for signs of the king’s people—footprints, rumors, graves, wheel-ruts, anything. Some went to the coast. Some went north as far as they could before passing into the Enemy’s lands, and some went beyond the rivers in the east. Maglor instructed them to speak to anyone who would listen. A host of elves leaving their settlement with all their goods and animals was not something that would pass unnoticed, but one by one the scouts returned with nothing more than conflicting hearsay. People were cautious and scarce in these days and none too willing to speak to strangers even if they did know anything.

“What’s going to happen if you can’t find the king?” Elrond asked at the end of a dinner spent listening to the adults trying to decide what to do next.

Maglor closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. “Irrelevant. I will find a way.”

“But what if you can’t ?”

“Young master, I don’t think that will be our fate.” To Elrond’s surprise, Maglor gave him a tired smile. “It has already taken longer than I had planned. It may still take much longer than I hope, but I will give everything I can. One way or another, even if it isn’t as soon or as easy as we thought, I will get you home.”

Over the summer, Maglor struggled with his plans. There was little to work with: a few leads in the north and east, from sources no one quite trusted. But it was all they had, and he would not sit idle. Just as the leaves began to turn, he asked for volunteers once more. The longer they waited, the colder the trail would become, and if there was a chance that the boys could be returned home soon, they had to take it now. One of his finest hunters rose to the challenge. He would have to track the king’s people in every blade of grass and follow them to the very edges of Beleriand if that was where they had gone, but people did not simply vanish. They had to be out there somewhere.

He did not return when winter’s chill sank into the earth once again.

Green shoots peeked out at the warming sun, and still he did not ride up to the gates, with or without news.

The harvest came in. Elrond and Elros loosened their shoes again. By now they had learned to mend their own socks. The messenger still did not return.

Each day brought the same work, the same lessons, the same uncertainty and the same endless waiting. Elrond and Elros played outside until the days grew too short and cold, and once again they dragged pallets out into the main hall to sleep away as much of winter as they could. Every morning they listened for the messenger’s hoofbeats on the frozen ground outside, and every evening they went to bed wondering when they would do more than wait.

Spring came again. The boys could not mistake the fear and regret in Maglor’s eyes even as he kept his head up, taught them a new lesson-song, and waited along with them.

“All right, you two. We need to have a talk.”

A long shadow fell over Elrond and Elros’ rock fort in the courtyard. Maglor stood over them with his hands on his hips.

Elrond peered out from under his birch-bark hat—the symbol of his status as Captain of the Fort. “What’s the password?”

“I’m not playing a game,” Maglor said, unamused.

“You still need the password to get into the fort.”

“I don’t need to be in the fort to talk to you.”

“We can’t hear you from all the way inside the fort, sorry,” Elros said with a shrug. “You can send an envoy who knows the password!”

Maglor put on a pleasant smile. “The password is ‘I can always take down your fort to build an outhouse.’ How does that sound?”

Elrond and Elros exchanged looks and raised eyebrows. “That’s not the password, but we can make an exception,” Elrond said.

“I am glad to hear it. Listen, I can hear you singing rude songs from my window, and it needs to stop.”

Elros looked up with wide, innocent eyes. “I don’t remember singing any rude songs.”

“We don’t even know any rude songs,” Elrond added.

“Really?” Maglor crossed his arms. “Are you saying I heard a different pair of twins singing the ‘Thingol Has No Balls’ song just a moment ago in this very courtyard?”

“Um…”

Maedhros, drink in hand, approached the scene while Elrond attempted to come up with a viable explanation. “Thingol was your great-great grandfather and a respectable ruler,” Maglor said, earning an amused huff from his brother.

“It’s a good thing you can substitute anyone else’s name for his, as long as it has two syllables,” Maedhros said helpfully. He paused a moment and then glanced upward, looking thoughtful. “Besides, there is nothing wrong with not having balls, and it’s cheap to imply that there is. I’ll bet you can come up with something much funnier than five-hundred-year-old soldiers’ taunts.” With that, he flashed a gold-toothed grin and wandered off, having left Elrond and Elros with newfound inspiration and Maglor with a new fire to put out.

Maglor pinched the bridge of his nose. “If you must sing rude songs, at least make them up yourself. And not at dinner. Come along and get washed up.”

Elrond vaulted over the fort, still wearing his hat. “Can we eat outside?”

“Maybe. Are you going to bury your dinner again?”

“No.”

“Good answer. Yes, you may eat outside if you want to.”

Elrond and Elros went inside and washed their hands and faces with only a small scuffle over who would be Captain of the Fort once the meal was finished. Dinner was grated carrot fritters, salad, and a slice of melon—the gardens overflowed with produce at this time of year, and Elrond didn’t even consider burying his food. He took his plate out to the trestle table in the courtyard and tucked in without waiting for anyone to join him.

“Milk, Elrond.” Maglor’s long arm appeared in front of him with a small clay cup. “Both of you drink up. It will make you grow tall and strong.”

Elros sat next to Elrond on the bench and wrinkled his nose at his own cup. He guzzled the milk down, shuddered, and started on his dinner to smother the taste. “You can make me drink it but you can’t make me like it,” he muttered. Maglor only raised an eyebrow and took his own meal to the bench on the other side of the courtyard, where he often like to view the rising moon.

The rest of the household trickled outside as the warm evening deepened. The sky was clear but for a few scattered clouds stained gold in the gathering dusk, and already the brightest stars twinkled in the heavens. Rythredion sat at the table with the boys. Hestedis only loitered on the steps for a few minutes, eating while standing up before going back inside. The others sat and talked where they wished. Alagostor did not come out until most of them were almost finished, but when he did, he carried two plates. He sat next to Rythredion with his own and placed Maedhros’ on the opposite side of the table. Elrond figured it would just get cold, but Maedhros actually came outside a moment later to join the meal. Instead of sitting at the table, he took his plate to the patch of grass in the center of the courtyard and lay flat on his back.

They had seen more of Maedhros that summer than they usually did. He maintained a level of drunkenness that made him quiet but not unconscious, and he occasionally wore clean clothes even if his hair was still uncombed. It made Maglor happy to see him up and about during daylight hours. Sometimes he would delegate a small task to him, but Elrond couldn’t tell if Maedhros appreciated or resented the gesture.

Elros finished his fritters and salad and busily nibbled every bit of melon away from the rind. He kept looking over at the rock fort and bouncing his leg, which Maglor noticed.

“Not tonight,” he said. “It will still be there tomorrow.”

Elros grumbled something about their ancestors not having to go inside when it was dark, because it was always dark. The reds and golds of evening were fading into deep purples and blues. All around them crickets sang in the foliage. Elrond spotted bats diving for insects in the corners of his eyes. Evenings like this, when they all shared a meal without arguing about crop yields, seemed easy and uncomplicated. Isolation was freedom and the forest was a shield. And Elrond enjoyed the others’ companionship. Maybe it was temporary, but it was not unpleasant, and he wondered if there would still be evenings like this in the king’s house.

A bright flash illuminated the sky. Elrond blinked against the spots it left on his vision—all around him, Maglor’s household exclaimed and jumped to their feet.

“Do you see that?”

“What is it?”

“It looks like—”

Elrond rubbed his eyes. When he opened them, the brightness remained in one piercing white star in the rosy western sky.

He knew that light. He remembered it in black hair and white linen, the foam upon the shore and the cries of birds, a beauty inextricable from his mother’s sorrow—

“Macalaurë!” Maedhros stood, eyes wide and single hand slightly extended toward the light. He spoke in old-fashioned Quenya, an echo of a world that Elrond would never know. “Surely that is our father’s Silmaril?”

Maglor did not respond for a long moment. The two of them could not tear their eyes away from the light, and Elrond had to look away when he realized that tears streamed freely down both brothers’ cheeks. “If it truly is, after we saw it cast into the sea, then it rises now by the power of the Valar,” Maglor said at last in the same language. “Let us be glad that its glory is seen by many, and is yet secure from all evil.”

Maedhros sank to his knees, still gazing at the star. Its light cast the terrible scars on his face into harsh crags and valleys and his tears into streams of silver until at last he folded in upon himself as if shielding his face from a blow.

The star remained, unwavering. Elros took Elrond’s hand and squeezed it tight. The star blazed in the west as the sky faded into velvet-black, and both sets of brothers remained under its light long after the others had gone inside.

Weeks passed, and still Elrond sought the star’s light every time he went outside. It faded in sunlight but it was the first star to appear in the west every evening, and sometimes he would wake early to see it shining in the east, the last to disappear with the dawn.

Neither Elrond nor Elros could concentrate on their lessons, and Maglor could not concentrate on tutoring them. The angles of the world seemed to have changed under the new star: shadows seemed sharper, sounds seemed louder, and every sensation was like a slap. Elrond, bound to the earth as he was, could not say whether it was the star or only their perception of it, but he knew that its appearance was the moment when everything changed.

They had known that Maedhros’ well-being was fragile as a snail’s shell, but the whole compound still flinched when it cracked. He withdrew once more. He raged and wept and cursed the star and his father and Maglor and the Valar and himself, breaking anything he could get his hand on and turning on his own flesh when there was nothing else to destroy. Maglor and Alagostor stayed with him day and night, wrestling away knives and pieces of broken pottery and splintery shards of wood and trying to keep him contained in his chambers where they had already tried confiscate anything he could use to harm himself. Maglor had previously made efforts to hide the reality of Maedhros’ condition from the boys, but now he lacked the extra resources to do so.

“Sing! Practice your lines! Just—just keep up with your lessons like usual,” he said distractedly to Elrond and Elros, who loitered in the halls. They were too anxious to play. Notwithstanding the unfolding crisis in the great house, the star seemed to set a prickling fire under their skin like nothing else ever had.

Dutifully, they turned to their studies. Days passed, and Maedhros got worse. Osgardir once again took up residence in the great house. More of the household joined the fight to keep him alive. It did not take long for Hestedis’ patience to wane. Elrond heard her approaching footsteps on the stone floor but he still jumped and snapped his chalk on his slate when she shouted.

“Maglor!” Her voice startled a roosting sparrow out of the rafters of the main hall. “This is intolerable!”

Maglor looked up from the extracts of valerian and skullcap he was straining. A lock of hair had escaped from its hasty tie and fallen over his face, which was shadowed with fatigue. The crease between his brows deepened. “What are you talking about?”

“Maedhros!” Hestedis bared her teeth. “This insanity has gone on long enough!”

He threw down his oil-spotted rag. “I can do nothing!”

“You can free the rest of us from it!”

“What do you expect me to do? Turn him out into the woods?” Hestedis opened her mouth, but Maglor interrupted her before she could speak. “How long do you think he would last? Maybe a week?”

“At least he would only be a burden on himself!” Hestedis snapped.

“My brother, your lord, is not a burden.”

“Is he not?” She seized a handful of blood-splattered sheets from a basket by the doorway and threw them at Maglor’s head. He stepped aside, eyes thunderously dark.

“Do we cast out those who suffer? Who are ill? When did that become who we are?”

Hestedis cackled. “We only claim principles when it suits us, else we never would have drawn blades at Sirion!” She picked up a clay jug and Maglor tensed, but she only brandished it in front of him. “He drinks all night! He sleeps all day! He uses our food and medicine and labor without so much as running the still for an afternoon! And then he decides he wants to cut himself open and bring all our work to a halt while we drop everything to patch him up!”

“Watch your tongue, Hestedis!” Maglor glanced sharply at the boys. The captain noticed.

“How noble of you to spare a thought for their innocence!” She lifted the jug above her head and smashed it down against the stone floor. Liquor and pottery fragments went everywhere—the boys flinched, but Maglor did not.

“I cannot force my brother to become well again,” he said in a voice that had gone flat and cold. “I can encourage him and provide for his needs, that is all. But I will not abandon him in his madness.”

“Of course you won’t.” Hestedis’ lip curled. “You won’t suffer your own consequences if you have him to suffer them for you, like he always does.”

Elrond blinked and Maglor suddenly loomed over Hestedis. His left hand was at her throat, the tips of his long fingers making visible depressions in her brown skin.

She looked coolly up at him. “You’ll never make me afraid of you,” she said.

“You only have the capacity for spite.” Maglor narrowed his eyes, tightened his grip, and then released her. They faced each other for a moment, eyes locked, and then both turned away to attend their previous tasks.

The main hall was quiet but for the crackling fire and infused oil bubbling through the straining-cloth when Maglor squeezed it. None of them said anything for a long while. Elros, restless, flicked the stub-end of his chalk off the edge of the table. “Can we play outside?”

Maglor ran a hand over his hair, smoothing back the stray lock only to have it fall once more. “Stars, yes, go play outside. Play outside as long as you want.”

Time marched on, and at last Maedhros regained a tenuous stability. The household seemed to hold its breath as if the slightest relaxation would cause another total collapse.

Elrond and Elros returned to their usual lessons and games, making up rude songs and fighting over who would be the Captain of the Fort until Maglor again threatened to dismantle the fort to build an outhouse. He did not expel Maedhros from the compound, and Hestedis did not bring it up again. The boys always asked to eat dinner outside as long as the warm weather held, and they usually received permission, but neither Maglor nor Maedhros joined them.

Strange, urgent winds blew through the forest. Lights appeared in the sky, sometimes shifting ribbons of turquoise and violet and sometimes twisted chains of copper and gold. Most days proceeded like any other. Elrond and Elros woke up, washed their faces, and ate flatbread and honey with milk for their breakfast before turning to their lessons. Maglor taught them to play small recorders and regretted it when they began generating rude songs with two-part harmony. When he reached the end of his patience with their tootling throughout the halls, he moved them on to a pair of lap harps that had seen better days, and when they had absorbed the basics they began putting their rude songs to recorder-and-harp accompaniment. After that, Maglor relented and let them apply their skills as they wished.

The wind changed directions. Out of nowhere the chickens started screaming at the sky and trampling their own chicks into the dust. Mules bawled at nothing, lashing out against their handlers, and the dogs whimpered and curled up into balls in the darkest corners they could find. As soon as it had come, the spell ended, and the elves were left to pick up the pieces of their animals’ confusion.

Beans withered on the vine while the barley generated three times as many stalks overnight. Birds rose shrieking from the trees without provocation. The light of the full moon took on a strange, heavy cast as if shadowed by clouds, but the sky was clear. Goats labored to give birth to kids with too many legs and not enough eyes and skin too delicate to contain their insides, and then died alongside them. Just before the autumn equinox, the sun did not rise until what should have been midday, and then returned to its usual cycle as if nothing had happened.

One of the mousers in the great house chose the dark gap under the boys’ bed to bring her six kittens into the world. They were so loud for such tiny creatures! Elrond and Elros ran to Maglor when they found them, and he brought a dish of kitchen scraps for the exhausted mother. She let the three of them handle the kittens for a short time before taking them back into the nest with her. Elros, with his hands full of blind, squirming kittens, burst into tears because they were so beautiful and so small , and when they were strong enough to venture out from under the bed he spent long hours teasing them with feathers and pieces of string.

Winter came, and with it came a long string of days so warm that the elves went about their business in short sleeves and sandals. The trees were bare and the days were short, but Elrond and Elros slept without blankets and with the window open until suddenly the compound was blanketed in three feet of snow.

Over the sheets of ice the new star still shone like a cold, distant fire. Frost refracted it into sparkling rainbows, and when the snow melted and the sun returned in springtime, its pure white light collected in drops of dew on the grass. It remained the single constant in a world whose patterns could no longer be predicted.

“Elros.”

“Mmm.”

“Elros!” Elrond poked his brother in the ribs, earning an uncoordinated swat from the lump under the blankets.

“What do you want?” Elros’ tousled head emerged. His face was screwed-up and grumpy in the darkness.

“I…” Elrond frowned. “I’m not sure.”

“Then why did you wake me up?” Elros yanked the blankets over his head and said nothing else.

Elrond blinked. It was fully dark and he couldn’t tell what hour it was. The air felt thick, like it had built up in his ears and nostrils, vibrating in time with his heartbeat. He listened hard for a few moments—why was he awake? Had there been a noise that jolted him out of peaceful sleep? A sudden draft?

But there was nothing, only darkness and the sound of Elros’ deep, even breath. He’d gone back to sleep. If he strained, Elrond could hear owls hooting in the woods, and the rustling of needles in the breeze. It seemed important that he was awake, but he couldn’t begin to figure out why—

“Elros!” he cried, and then the earth bucked under him like a wave in a storm.

Sparks exploded behind his eyes when his head hit the floor. He tasted blood. The whole room shook, rattling him like a bean in a cup. He couldn’t stand. The roar of crumbling rock and splintering timber filled his ears and head and body as he scrabbled for a grip on something, anything—

Fingers, a wrist, and then Elros’ hand closed around his arm, yanking him forward and under the bed while chunks of stone and plaster rained down where he had been. The shakes came in waves, he couldn’t see, he couldn’t think, he couldn’t hear himself screaming even though his throat was raw. There was a mighty crack—the bed frame pressed against his shoulders, he couldn’t lift his head, the earth tilted and rocked and he didn’t know how long it lasted, seconds or minutes or days as he covered his head and screamed and screamed until dust filled his throat and eyes and he choked and wept and waited to be crushed. He didn’t know which way was up, what was real, where he was or what was happening—the creak and crash of destruction rang through his bones and he didn’t realize it was all over until he heard his name.

“Elrond!” Elros’ voice was faint and cramped in the darkness. All was still. “Elrond!”

“I’m here!” He struggled, but he was stuck: the bed frame across his back, along with debris all around him, kept him where he was.

“Are you hurt?”

Elrond’s head pounded where he had hit the floor. He felt like he was rolling even though he couldn’t move. “I hit my head. I don’t think it’s bad. Are you all right?”

“My leg hurts and I’m stuck.”

“Me too.”

Neither said anything for a moment. Only the sound of their breath punctuated the ringing silence. Elrond struggled again, but the rubble all around him did not budge. He was truly stuck, and the more he tried to get out, the more he wanted to scream.

“What happened?” came Elros’ voice again. His presence and their shared predicament dampened the fire in Elrond’s throat a little.

“I think it was an earthquake,” he said.

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know! They just happen!” Elrond blinked hard against the dust in his eyes. “Someone will come and dig us out!”

Elros paused. “What if they don’t? What if we get squished before they do?” His voice wobbled. “What if we suffocate? What if we get eaten by rats?”

“Shut up! Don’t say that!”

“We’re going to die down here!” Elros was crying, and Elrond’s own eyes started to well up at the sound. “We’re going to get eaten by rats!”

“Elros!”

Once the tears started falling, Elrond couldn’t stop. Between gulps of air, Elros kept up a half-intelligible stream of terror, rats, suffocation, death. The images stuck in Elrond’s mind: gnawing teeth, crushing pressure, a lonely end beneath a broken bed frame and tons of crumbling stone. His head was pounding, his chest was tight, and he couldn’t stop crying.

He struggled again. A bit of rubble around his left hand stirred, and he struggled harded. The stone scraped at his skin but at last he felt Elros’ dusty fingers against his own, and he gripped them tightly. Elros squeezed back, and the two of them wept together in the dark ruin that had once been their own bedchamber.

Indistinct voices, the rumble of wood and stone being excavated, and then light and fresh air spilled over Elrond’s face. He blinked—he’d fallen asleep. There was no telling how long it had been.

“Elrond? Elros?”

Elrond tried to respond, but dust caught in his throat and he coughed.

“Are you down there? Can you hear me?” Shovels rang out on the rubble. The light grew brighter.

“We’re here!” Elros called. A chorus of voices burst out in response: We’re coming! Are you hurt? Hold on! We’re almost there! Slabs of stone fell away with grunts from the rescuers, wooden beams sent down small rockslides when they were removed, and in a shower of gravel, a pair of dusty hands finally appeared under the edge of the bed frame that sheltered Elrond and Elros from the destruction.

“There’s a pocket down here!” said Alagostor’s voice from very close. “Boys! Are you there?”

“We’re under the bed!” Elrond said. Alagostor withdrew his hands and started shoveling faster.

“Good! Try not to move too much! We’ll get you out of there safe and sound!”

“Are you hurt?” That was Osgardir. “Are you having any trouble moving or breathing?”

“We’re stuck, but we can breathe,” Elros said.

“Good! Excellent! Maglor, we found them!”

Elrond struggled against the wood and stone still trapping him from the shoulders down. A shovel struck the earth above, and a river of debris slid into the space they had previously cleared.

“Hold! It’s unstable underneath!”

“Is there any other angle?”

“No, it’s all too deep—just go carefully.”

“Here’s a beam. Could be useful.”

“Yes, good, let’s just open the hole a little wider. Alagostor should fit—he’s the skinniest.”

“Ready and willing.”

Elrond grabbed Elros’ hand again. He was too weary to struggle any longer, but his brother’s warm, living fingers gave him strength. They were alive. Rescuers had found them. Soon they would be free, soon the nightmare would be over and they would be safe again. No darkness, no rats, and no crushing blanket of stone would swallow them up.

Another pair of boots crunched on the broken rocks above. “Elrond? Elros?” It was Maglor, his voice shot through with anxiety. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes!” Elros squeezed Elrond’s hand tighter. “We’re both here!”

“Thank the One. We’re almost there!”

They worked tirelessly, lifting out rocks and timbers and bracing unsteady pieces of masonry to get closer to the boys without another rockslide. Even so, it took a long time to clear out gravel inch by careful inch. Light and fresh air once again filled the space beyond their bed frame, and then Alagostor wriggled into the gap.

“There you are!” His dirt-streaked face split into a relieved smile. He chipped carefully away at the debris with a hand shovel until Elros could move his other arm. “It won’t be much longer. Elros, I’m going to get you out first, all right?”

“All right.”

It was slow, dirty work to dig Elros out without triggering a cave-in. Elrond was thirsty and cramped and needed a privy, but watching Elros finally crawl out from under the bed fortified him. Alagostor took hold of Elros and called to the others to help pull him free. “I’ll be back in a moment, just hold on a little longer,” he said to Elrond. “Almost there. You both are so brave.”

Alagostor wriggled back out of the hole and returned for Elrond a moment later. Again he excavated the debris packed in around him, being careful not to disturb anything that could fall and crush them, and when Elrond could finally move his legs and slide out from under the bed he nearly cried in relief. Alagostor pulled him up and out of the earth and the tears finally came when Elrond felt the sun on his face and gulped in cool, fresh air. Maglor, holding Elros close in one arm, scooped Elrond up in the other—Elrond clung to his dusty tunic and buried his face in his hair and both boys cried for a long time, unashamed and unaware of everything else around them.

“I am so glad you two are safe,” Maglor said.

“Right, it would be hard to tell the king that they got squashed in your care!” someone joked nearby.

“That is not the only reason.” He squeezed Elrond and Elros close. “Far from it.”

Elrond and Elros’ side of the great house had collapsed into a pile of rubble, and the elves who counted engineering among their skills ruled the rest of the house unsafe in the long term. In the rest of the compound some buildings had fared better than others, but animals lay dead in barns reduced to kindling and all of the wells had been contaminated with soil and sewage from outhouses whose pits had been disturbed in the quake. What remained of the walls had all come down, leaving everything unsettlingly exposed to the wilds beyond them. They had no choice but to rebuild, but they were Noldor and they would make it happen.

Two had perished in the earthquake. Berenas the tanner suffocated when the roof of her house collapsed upon the bed where she slept, and Rythredion died when a falling chunk of stone struck him on the head.

Berenas’ friends prepared her body for burial. Maglor and Alagostor did the same for Rythredion. Elrond and Elros did not see them until they were dressed and laid out for the last time, still and solemn, surrounded by garlands of leaves and the tools of their trades. All their blemishes were hidden from view—with his polished helm covering his terrible wound, Rythredion could have been sleeping, but his hand was cold when Elrond touched it.

Death followed the house of Fëanor. They all spoke of those who had gone before in lonely accidents and great battles, sometimes suddenly and sometimes after long struggles with wounds and infections, all unexpected endings to lives that should have been everlasting. Each death was a heavy weight on those who remained. They either learned to live with it or they cracked under the strain, like Maedhros had.

Rythredion and Berenas came to rest in a green grove not far beyond what remained of the walls. Their friends dug their graves in the soft earth, arranged nests of greenery, and placed them gently on their sides with their knees bent and hands drawn in close as if they were in their own beds. Maglor crouched by Rythredion’s side for a long time, speaking softly and holding his hand. At last, white shrouds were drawn over them both, and all worked to cover them in earth and stack stones into a small mound over each grave. Elrond and Elros, thinking of how Rythredion braided their hair that first evening, worked hard alongside the others.

It was dark by the time the work was finished. Elrond and Elros walked back with Maglor, saying nothing. Elrond looked back over his shoulder one more time to see the two mounds illuminated in the moonlight.

“Námo takes all of the dead into his care,” Maglor said at length. “That is a constant. Funerals are for those who are left behind. We do not always have the privilege of saying a proper goodbye.”

Luckily for the community, the granary and a few of the most critical shops—carpenters, smiths, the infirmary—were still standing. For the rest, the elves raised a makeshift longhouse to serve as a temporary base for their rebuilding operations, and those without homes unearthed army tents and pitched them around the longhouse like a bevy of swans guarding their island.

Work began immediately. They needed clean water and sound outhouses, places to live and shelter for their animals. They needed walls. Underneath everything else they needed to be vigilant, and they needed to be ready for whatever might happen. Through rain and shine they worked: sketching, digging, excavating, sawing, hammering, chopping down trees and repurposing blocks of stone from the ruined buildings. Even Maedhros, unstable and one-handed as he was, helped distribute food and water to the workers. A palisade of sharpened logs went up in place of a stone wall. The remnants of the great house came down, and a new longhouse went up in its place with a main hall in the center, lofts above it, and sleeping chambers along the sides. They salvaged what they could from the wreckage, including most of Elrond and Elros’ clothes and some of their toys, but the bed that had sheltered them was a total loss. One of the carpenters instead built them a smaller bed each.

There wasn’t much room to play. No matter where they went, they were under the feet of someone trying to carry wood or herd animals into a new barn.

Maglor noticed and intervened before anyone tripped or got stepped on. “I don’t have a new lesson for you right now,” he said, “but I also don’t intend to let you just play until we get everything rebuilt. It is a dark world where children must learn, but I think it time you start training with the sword.”

Elrond and Elros both perked up at that. They often saw the elves sparring with one another or training alone—they moved so gracefully, centuries of practice showing in the way they dueled without fatigue or any wasted effort. It was captivating to watch, and now they would learn!

“Are you going to teach us that, too?” Elrond asked.

Maglor’s lips twitched. “No one would—or should—call me a master,” he said. “That distinction belongs to my brother.” He looked to the far table where Maedhros had taken to lurking since the longhouse went up. Maedhros lifted his shaggy head, and candle flames flickered in his pale eyes. The four of them said nothing for a moment.

“I’m in your way,” Maedhros muttered.

“You are not.”

Another pause. “I am not exactly a ‘fun’ tutor,” Maedhros said at last, lifting his ever-present drink to his lips.

“You do not need to be fun. There is no better swordsman among our people.”

Maedhros looked to the boys. “I am willing. Is this something you want?”

They glanced at each other. Maedhros remained rather frightening with his scars and his unpredictable moods and his gold teeth, but they only knew him from a distance.

“I’ll give it a try,” Elros said with a shrug.

“Me too,” Elrond added.

Maglor smiled. “Good. I think this will work out for everyone.”

As soon as it was light the next morning, Maedhros roused them from their beds and took them to a flat patch of dirt away from the worksites. He was allegedly teaching them to fight with swords, but there were no swords in sight, and he made no indication that he was going to get any swords from elsewhere.

Elros looked around. “What are we going to fight w—”

“You are not ready to fight yet,” Maedhros cut him off. “Before you can fight you will learn how to move, and before you can move you will learn how to stand.” He gently nudged Elros’ forehead with the heel of his hand, and Elros stumbled back and landed on his bottom, mute with surprise. “Did you feel how easy that was? I applied no force at all.”

Elros, looking annoyed, scrambled to his feet. Maedhros continued. “Now, I want you to take a stance as if you were going to fight me. If I am this close—” he suddenly loomed over Elros, hand raised to push him again. Elros instinctively stepped back into a half-crouch with his right foot and raised his small fists in front of his face. His chin jutted out in defiance. Maedhros nodded once and backed off. “Stay like that. The body knows how to steady itself. You’ve spread your feet out to give yourself a wider base, and you’ve made yourself lower to the ground to make it harder for me to tip you over. You are also a smaller target that way. And look.” He nudged Elros’ forehead as he had done before. “You don’t budge. Now, I will teach you how to master this instinct instead of letting it master you.”

“Can I move now?”

“No. Stand like that so you can remember how it feels.” Maedhros turned to Elrond. “Elrond, it’s your turn. Take a stance as if you were going to fight me.”

Elrond had seen it happen earlier, but when Maedhros came in close it was still instinct that made him take a defensive stance with one foot back, his knees slightly bent, and his hands protecting his face. Maedhros stepped back, nodding. “See, your body knows what to do.” He pushed Elrond’s forehead gently. “And you don’t move. This principle is the basis of everything else I will teach you.”

Training was brutal from the start. Before Maedhros even mentioned swords, he had them learning to move while in their fighting stances, pivoting and side-stepping and never exposing their weak spots to their adversary. Elrond’s muscles ached in the middle of the night and he hated being roused early every morning to run a lap around the compound, but he was determined to do it all without complaining. Elros had no such inhibitions, and grumbled until he was too out-of-breath to say anything.

In his more spiteful moments, Elrond didn’t think Maedhros could be all that great of a swordsman. Maybe a long time ago, but now he was out of shape and soft around the middle.

“Today we will start with swords,” Maedhros said one morning while the boys panted on the ground after their lap. That revived them, and they pestered him with questions about what to name their swords and how many jewels were in the hilts all the way to the barracks, but they fell into another disappointed silence when he only got out wooden batons carved to look like swords.

“What? That’s not a sword!” Elros protested.

“Right now this is already more of a sword than you know what to do with,” Maedhros chuckled. “Come along! You will need helms and gambesons to practice in.”

Elrond thought he hated running, but he hated the borrowed gambeson more. “It smells like a hundred farts!” he cried, standing stiffly under the baggy, heavy garment.

“No, that’s the smell of practice. You’ll be grateful for the padding once you start hitting one another.”

If Elros hated running, he hated what came next even more, and he was not afraid to say it. Maedhros showed them how to attack with their swords and block incoming blows, and when they demonstrated the proper form, he had them begin sparring against each other. It was slow and awkward, and they both came away with bruises even with their helmets and smelly gambesons. Days turned into weeks. They kept at it. Elrond thought he was starting to understand it, but Elros grew more and more frustrated with each bout.

Elros threw down his sword after losing another bout to Elrond. “This is stupid! I’ll never be good at it!”

“You will,” Maedhros said gruffly. “You’re a little boy. No one is a good swordsman at your age.”

“Elrond is!”

“He isn’t good either, he just has three favorite moves. If you figure out what they are, you can best him.”

Elrond, suddenly self-conscious, ran through the last few bouts in his head, trying to think of what he was doing. He just did what seemed to work and didn’t think too hard otherwise. “I just do what feels right,” he said, trying to be helpful.

“No, you’re not experienced enough to be able to do that. What you’re doing is instinctively snapping at everything that comes close. Grass snakes can do that much. Keep your head on straight, think two seconds ahead of your opponent, and never let your mind wander.” Maedhros bent to pick up Elros’ sword and gave it back to him. “Square up. Use your brains, I want to see real techniques and not primeval flailing.”

For a moment, Elros looked like he was going to give up and storm off, but he simply grit his teeth and picked his sword back up with a determined gleam in his eye. “I’m ready.”

“Good. Elrond, are you ready?”

“Yes.” Elrond took his fighting stance, faced his brother, and prepared to attack once more.

“Stand your guard,” Maedhros commanded. Elrond stepped easily into his fighting stance and raised his sword. Across the ring, Elros mirrored him with one hand behind his back and cool determination behind his grille. “Gentlemen, are you prepared?”

Elrond nodded once. Elros raised his sword in acknowledgment.

“Fight!”

Elrond sprang forward without hesitation, and Elros met him in a clash of blunted steel.

Don’t let him get an edge in, Elrond thought through his well-practiced maneuvers. He had to keep pushing forward and not let Elros rest for one moment. He kept him at close range, backing him around the perimeter of the ring, always on the defensive as Elrond struck at his arms, legs, anything that came open. Still, Elros was tireless in repelling him, a veritable stone wall against Elrond’s onslaught.

He was not weary yet. He breathed deeply and remembered to put his body behind his blows, not just his arm and shoulder. It was a game of endurance, and Elrond was determined to hold fast. He could see his chances opening up wider with every blocked strike and missed counter-strike, but he never knew if Elros had something sneaky planned—there! An opportunity!

Strike at the arm, strike at the leg, block, sweep, lunge, Elros’ sword went too wide and then the point of Elrond’s blade came to press against Elros’ breast. Elros went still, arms slightly outstretched.

“Do you yield?” Elrond said between heavy breaths.

Elros’ mouth drooped. “I yield.”

Scattered cheers drew Elrond’s attention away from their duel. He blinked—they’d attracted a small crowd of spectators. Osgardir applauded politely while Alagostor, looking a little crestfallen, unloaded coins into Hestedis’ open purse. Maedhros, as always, stood with his arms folded and his face expressionless, but he nodded once when Elrond met his eyes.

He’s proud! Elrond realized, and a spring entered his step as he walked back to the longhouse with his helmet under his arm.

Maedhros’ review, however, betrayed no such affection. “It could have gone either way,” he said while Elros trudged glumly along the path beside Elrond, who was a step away from dancing. “As usual, you both fail to look beyond your own favorite strategies. Elrond, you simply pound away at his defense until he gets tired enough to make mistakes, but you can’t counter him when he strikes back. Elros, you don’t win unless you get the upper hand in the first move. Otherwise, you just block him until he gets his killing strike in.”

“My way seems to work,” Elrond said. Maybe he was gloating, but he’d earned it.

“Only half the time,” Maedhros reminded him. “Either one of you could get ahead if you learn to think like the other first.”

Maglor was in a cheerful mood back at the longhouse.

“Nelyo! We’ll soon see dwarves again!”

Maedhros frowned. “What?”

“The southern watchtower sighted a small caravan making its way north along the Gelion.” Maglor showed him a carved wooden token in the shape of a sinuous dragon. “Fuiron hailed them. Our peoples are known to one another, so their leader sent this ahead of his party. They will not be long in this area but they do have goods to trade.”

Elrond and Elros leaned in to get a closer look when Maedhros took the token. “They are of Azaghâl’s house,” he said after examining it.

“Really? I thought they had all holed up in Belegost.”

“No. Some scattered to smaller caves in the west, but if they are traveling north along the Gelion, they must be bound for the Dwarf-road and thence to Ered Luin and their kin.” His mouth made an unhappy twist. “They have not fallen near as far as we have.”

“No matter. At least there is one house left in Beleriand still willing to treat with us. And better still, they might have news of the king’s people.” At that, Maglor gave the boys a small smile. “I can’t imagine they’ve heard less than we have in the last eight years.”

Elrond could not think of anything to say to that, and from his silence, it seemed Elros couldn’t either.

It had taken a long time to rebuild after the earthquake. All hands were required for repair and construction, and a lean year followed as the flocks and herds struggled to replace their numbers and the broken fields produced less grain. A year and a half had passed before Maglor could send another scout, and he returned with nothing more than confirmation that the trail was as cold as ever. Maglor sent scouts every year for three years, and then once two years after that, and then he said he would need to come up with a new plan before proceeding. One rider on horseback only covered so much territory, and every expedition turned up more reports of abandoned villages and empty, overgrown roads. Worse, they brought back rumors of orc bands on the move and strange fires burning in the north.

“Whatever is taking place will come to happier ends if we stay out of it,” Maedhros had said bitterly, and Maglor had agreed with him.

“Our task now is to keep you two safe until we can make contact with the king,” he had told the boys.

Still, they were no closer to that than they had been before. The rhythms of daily life pushed it into the back of their minds, and Elrond only felt trepidation when it came up now.

“What will the dwarves have to trade?” he asked instead of staying on the subject of the king. Besides, he was curious.

“Traditionally they deal in stone and metal,” Maedhros said. “Otherwise, I couldn’t say.”

Elrond’s excitement—and rampant speculation around the compound—blossomed as word spread among the elves returning from their labors. “I hope they have real wine,” someone said wistfully, and from there everyone joined in an ever-growing list of hopes, from white sugar to dwarf-made tools to fresh breeding stock for the animals. Most of all it seemed they wanted a change of pace and news of the outside world that didn’t revolve around tracking a vanished elven settlement. Elrond certainly couldn’t blame them for that.

Their restlessness proved infectious. Long after darkness fell and everyone went to bed, Elrond lay awake, flipping his uniformly-warm pillow over every few minutes and trying to fold his limbs into a comfortable position. Across the room, Elros slept as easily as a cat in the sun. He even had a little puddle of drool on his pillow. Annoyed, Elrond turned away from him and stared at the wall instead.

He drifted off sometime in the dark morning hours. He dreamed of a long banquet table laden with everything he liked to eat: bacon, sourdough bread with honey, cut fruit glistening with juice, crispy fried chicken legs, ham, every kind of berry, pies filled with nuts and syrup, and seafood dishes he only remembered from when he was very small. He started at one end of the table and piled as much food as he could onto his plate and then shoved a chicken leg into his mouth when he ran out of room. Someone called his name and pushed a mug of small beer into his free hand. Still determined to eat everything at the table, he carefully balanced his plate on top of his mug and started gathering what he could carry in one hand, but someone called him from the other direction and thrust a slice of cake at him, and he didn’t have any extra hands but maybe if he held it in the crook of his elbow—

“Elrond!”

“Hungh?” Elrond jerked awake, immediately grumpy and disoriented. He rubbed his eyes. It was still very early, but Elros was already up and getting dressed.

“Are you ever going to get up?” he demanded, taking his hair out of its thick single braid and starting a well-practiced part down the center of his head.

Groggily, Elrond dressed and washed and braided his hair. He felt much more alive over breakfast, when he got caught up in the whirl of people carrying goods and loading carts to trade with the dwarves. They had set up camp not far from the compound for the day but would continue along their route on the morrow, so everyone was keen to trade as much as possible. Money wasn’t typically used around the compound, where the economy instead functioned around a system of gifts and favors, but the elves still had coins from ruined realms stashed away for occasions such as these. Maglor distributed heavy purses to the boys, only admonishing them to spend it prudently.

It was a good day for Maedhros if he managed to wear clean clothes or comb his hair, and a regular bath was even rarer, but today he appeared clean, combed, and compressed into a fine tunic that looked like it used to fit him properly.

Maglor opened his mouth to compliment his efforts. “You look very—”

“Don’t.” Maedhros shot him an annoyed grimace and departed.

The boys quickly finished their porridge, ready to get going. Several members of the household planned to travel as a group and many of them were already heading to the stables. Elrond and Elros walked on either side of Maglor on the way out of the longhouse, but as soon as Elrond took in the morning air, he stopped in his tracks.

A strange smell tickled Elrond’s nose.

It seemed familiar. He sniffed—was it salt? Like sea air? No, it was quicker, like something living and growing—pine? Free-flowing sap? It seemed to tug at him, and the more he sniffed at it, the more he wanted to know what it was.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” he said hastily, and was off before Elros could ask where he was going.

The scent was subtle but somehow it came to the forefront of everything else around him. It enveloped him and led his footsteps, but where? And what was it? There was a faint musk, like sweat or maybe leather, but he paused in his tracks and sniffed again. That wasn’t right, it was more like warm honey, and every breath Elrond took in seemed to light up his mind and body with a curiosity so thick and so pleasant that he yearned to satisfy it, though he could not think of what he was curious about.

Parchment? Hemp? He sniffed again. Where was it coming from? If he could just find the source, he’d be able to scratch that itch he was so close to reaching.

It led him behind a barn, all the way around a house, through a garden and back onto the road. Maybe it was like the air escaping from risen bread dough. Or was it something fresher, like fruit? Crushed berries? Cooked apples? Was it older and heavier, like mead? He could almost taste it in the back of his throat, tickling and teasing, daring him to track it to its origin. He wanted, no, needed to find it and immerse himself in whatever made that amazing aroma, at once sweet and bitter and powerful and gentle and indescribable but so delicious that it seemed to consume him a little more with every intake of breath.

Elrond closed his eyes, consciously emptied his lungs, and took a deep breath in from the bottom of his belly all the way up to the top of his head. The scent flooded him to the tips of his fingers and toes, burning and soothing and reigniting with suggestions of cut wood and cold iron and crushed roses and wool and walnuts and poppies.

A flash of silver in the corner of his eye—he turned to look, but it was gone, and in his sharp inhalation the scent suddenly cleared.

He stood for a moment, blinking. He breathed in deeply again, trying to catch a whiff of… whatever it was, but he only took in the familiar scents of smoke, horses, and earth. Nothing unusual. The sudden loss left him empty, and he tried to grasp at the memory of that amazing smell, but it was already slipping away like a wave retreating from the shore.

What was it? It was so real, and then it was just gone.

Elrond flexed and unflexed his hands. For a moment, nothing seemed quite real. He shuddered all over. Sensation came back, then thought, then reason. He was all the way across the compound. The others were surely ready to leave by now.

“Must have been daydreaming,” he said to himself. Resolute, he headed back to the stables and his riding mule, Rochael.

In the spring of Elrond and Elros’ thirteenth year, Hadlath the hunter’s beloved mare and Medlinor the stablemaster’s prized breeding jack produced beautiful twin fillies under the light of the evening star. Considering it an auspicious sign, Hadlath delivered the young mules as gifts to Elrond and Elros, who had already taken to horsemanship as if they’d been born in the saddle. Under Maglor’s tutelage they trained Rochael and Peguiel up into graceful, sturdy-boned mounts who carried them over rocks and through streams as they explored the woods surrounding the compound.

Rochael raised her ears and stretched out to snuffle at Elrond’s tunic when he approached her stall. He stroked her velvet nose and her brown-and-white spotted coat and took her out to ride with the others down to the dwarves’ encampment.

Elros was already there, fondly running his fingers through Peguiel’s mane. “Where did you go?”

“Nowhere,” Elrond mumbled. He lifted himself into the saddle and waited for the party to head out.

It was a bit of a ride along narrow trails and through overgrown brush to the dwarves’ encampment. Elrond craned his neck to catch a glimpse of these secretive people once they were close enough to spot the tight circle of their ponies and wagons, but a low-hanging branch caught him in the face. Rochael dutifully carried him ahead while he brushed leaves out of his hair, and then came to a halt behind Elros and Peguiel. Maedhros and Maglor had come to a halt at the head of the party and now dismounted to greet the dwarf who came forward to greet them.

“Lord Maedhros.” The dwarf bowed slightly. He was brown-skinned and chestnut-haired with a glorious, ringleted beard and a blue turban. “I am Sudri. We have not met, but I was raised on tales of the elves who fought beside my grandmother. I would that our houses may share a hearth in better times. As it is, we appreciate the refuge of your lands.”

“My lands are not what they once were,” Maedhros remarked. He too inclined his head like a tall hollyhock before the dwarf’s sturdy shrub. “But it is well to host a friend.”

The household quickly dispersed to look at the traders’ goods, but Sudri invited Maglor and Maedhros to drink coffee and smoke beneath his shade-tent, and Maglor nudged the boys along with them just as they were about to join the others. Elrond found the dark, bitter potion revolting even though both Maglor and Maedhros spent a frankly excessive amount of time praising the “aromas” and “notes.” The hookah looked interesting, but Maedhros extended a long arm to pluck the mouthpiece out of Elrond’s hand as soon as Sudri passed it to him.

“Children,” Sudri said with an air of almost wistful fondness. “A rare gift in dark days. Are they your sons?”

Maedhros said nothing for a moment, and then his eyebrows shot up when he realized Sudri was talking to him. “No! No, they are not.”

“They are my wards,” said Maglor. “This is Elros, and Elrond is on your other side.” Thinking for a moment, he ran his thumb over the rim of his coffee cup. “I seek High King Gil-galad and his people, but there has been no sign of him for… stars, ten years now.” He rubbed his temple. “The boys rightfully belong to his house and I wish to return them safely. If you have any information, I would be in your debt.”

Sudri stroked his beard. “I’m not familiar with all of the different houses of elves, and much is changing. I have seen dwarves, elves, and men all making for the country east of the mountains. War is escalating in the north. Many fear it will spread beyond the Enemy’s holdings.”

Maedhros and Maglor looked at one another, saying nothing for a long, heavy moment. “We have seen troubling signs in nature,” Maglor said. “Can you be sure of this war? What sort of war would evacuate all of Beleriand?”

Sudri sighed deeply. “Nothing that’s within my mortal power to resist. I intend to wait it out in Belegost with my kin and hope that something is left once it is all over.”

They sat in silence, smoking and pondering this information.

“I had my suspicions,” Maedhros muttered at last. “As soon as my father’s Jewel appeared in the western sky. She must have brought it to appeal to the Valar.”

“You know—many dwarves despise your kind for your part in starting this conflict,” Sudri said.

Maedhros huffed. “I would too.”

“My house remembers better times. Perhaps they will come again.” Sudri exhaled a cloud of smoke. “To bring us back to your question, no, I do not know anything of this high king of the elves. If he remains in this world, I would guess he has gone beyond the mountains with the others. But that is a dangerous road. Even if he has taken his people east, they may not have reached their destination.”

“Perhaps there is a chance they’ve joined the fighting in the north,” Maglor suggested.

“Not if the king has an ounce of sense,” Maedhros said. “I know he learned better in Fingon’s fosterage.”

“I wish I had more answers for you,” said Sudri. “Maybe we’ll come across them in the east, but we don’t plan to return this way with any news.”

Maglor’s smile was strained. “No, I appreciate what you’ve told us. May you prosper in Belegost.”

“And may you find your king.”

Out of the corner of Elrond’s eye, Elros was scooting away, peering out at the dwarven merchants and their wares while the adults began talking about progressively more boring topics. Elrond scooted after him—Maglor watched them go with a small smile, saying nothing.

As soon as he had heard that the dwarves were coming, Elrond could not wait to see them. He had never seen anyone like them before: The tallest came only as high as his shoulder, but all of them were stocky and broad as old tree trunks. They wore thick braids and full beards decorated with all manner of ornaments, and their clothes sparkled with embroidery and many rich colors and weaves. They spoke in booming voices. Somehow they seemed like they were of the earth in ways that the elves did not. They were all so beautiful that Elrond could not choose which dwarf to look at!

“Ever try looking at something that’s for sale, lad?” one of them laughed. They cuffed his arm and departed, leaving Elrond with his mouth hanging open, robbed of words.

Maglor had told him stories of the grand markets of the Noldor in the days of the Long Peace, where all people traded precious goods from all corners of Beleriand and beyond. There were spices and silks and the finest treasures money could buy, from gold and silver to rare dyes and strange beasts. Elrond knew that this single caravan was not anything like that, but it was still more than he had ever seen before. Tools and hides, metal and glass, seeds and animals, all of it delightful and new and captivating to his curious eyes. Maglor had given him quite a bit of money, but he couldn’t begin to think of what to spend it on. What did he even want?

He wandered a bit, saying little and looking at everything. Eventually he found Elros peering at a display of gold and silver rings and chatting with the slate-haired dwarf who was selling them.

“Sure, I’m interested,” he said. “Can I see an example of your work?”

“Of course,” she replied, and beckoned her apprentice over. “Dávi! Come and show the young master your nose.”

Dávi seemed to be a walking advertisement for her work, as Elrond soon discovered. He wore a collection of jewelry in his ears, nose, and lips, and when he spoke, and additional jewel glimmered on his tongue. He even wore rings in his hair and on each finger. He leaned closer to Elros’ face so he could examine the rings in his nose.

“Fascinating,” Elros said. “Does it hurt much?”

“Only a pinch,” Dávi said. “You just need to keep it clean with boiled salt water for a few weeks until it heals, and then it shouldn’t give you any trouble. Yrsa has performed piercings on nearly every dwarf in our caravan—ask anyone!”

“Hmm. Should I go with the nostril or septum?”

“That’s up to you, my friend.”

Intrigued, Elrond came closer, and Yrsa grinned when she caught sight of him. “Mahal’s hammer, there’s two of you!”

Elros slung his arm across Elrond’s shoulders. “My twin brother Elrond.”

“Twins are good luck,” Yrsa said approvingly. “What do you say, Elrond? Your brother is looking at a new bauble for his nose.”

Elros turned and held up a small ring with a segment removed. He hooked it to the side of one nostril for Elrond to see. “Nostril?” he removed the ring and fitted it between his nostrils instead. “Or septum? I can’t decide.”

“Septum. The symmetry looks better.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Elros said. “There we are. I would like to pierce my septum.”

“Excellent, let me prepare my tools while you pick out a ring you like. Dávi, watch the display.” Elrond and Elros watched as she got out a leather case with several gleaming implements, a canister of needles, and a bottle of clear spirits. “Elrond! Do you have any body parts that need embellishing?”

“Uh…”

“You can always take it out if you don’t like it,” Dávi advised.

A sudden spontaneity gripped Elrond and he shrugged. “Why not. I’ll get my septum pierced as well.”

“Tell you what, I’ll make you boys a deal for two noses. How does that sound?” Yrsa indicated a stool for Elros to sit on once her tools were clean and he had picked out a small gold ring.

“I do like deals,” he said while she swabbed the inside of his nose with the clear spirits. She then spent a moment lining up a needle on one side of Elros’ septum with a pad of bandage to receive it on the other. The actual piercing was over in an instant: she had him inhale deeply, and on the exhale, she pushed the needle through. Elros barely flinched. “Oh. Was that it?”

“That was it. Let’s just get the jewelry in place.” Her shoulder blocked Elrond’s view, but when she drew back, the ring glimmered under Elros’ nose. There was only a little blood for her to dab away. “There you go! Very fetching! Check yourself in the mirror and tell me what you think.”

Elros looked in the mirror and immediately began to preen himself like a young crow. “It looks very good!” He turned back toward Elrond with a grin. “It’s your turn!”

Elrond began to doubt his snap decision once he was in the chair, warily watching Yrsa clean and prepare her tools once more, but Elros hovered excitedly behind her and Elrond could not deny that the nose ring looked good on him. The dwarf approached him again with a fresh swab. “How are we feeling? Still good?”

“Yes,” Elrond said firmly. Yrsa nodded.

Noticing his nervousness, she talked him through the process. First she felt around the inside of his nose for the appropriate spot to pierce. Afterward, she swabbed the inside of his nostrils with clear spirits and lined up the needle and a fresh bandage pad. “All right, here we go,” she said. “Whenever you feel ready, take a deep breath in.” Elrond breathed in deeply. “And out.” He exhaled slowly, and then suppressed a wince when the needle poked sharply through the thin membrane. It lasted only a moment. “That’s all there is to it! Time for your jewelry. This part will pinch a bit.” She was right—the gold ring following the needle through the hole burned for a moment, and he almost winced again, but then it was over and he wondered what he had ever been nervous about.

After she dabbed away the blood from the fresh piercing, Yrsa offered Elrond the mirror. He loved it immediately. His eyes and skin tended toward cool gray and soft tan beneath his black hair, but the gold ring stood out like a glowing ember in the center of his face. “I like it!” he said. “Thank you!”

Elrond and Elros shied away from showing anyone else their new adornments until late in the evening, when they could make a grand entrance. They strolled out into the main hall, trying to look casually confident, as if they’d always had pierced noses. Looking too excited about it seemed unfashionable somehow.

Maglor, of course, noticed right away from his seat by the hearth. “Well, look at you two!” he said, clearly suppressing a smile. “Nelyo, it seems I’m bringing up a pair of magpies!”

Maedhros glanced up from his drink. He gave a small huff of a laugh. “I remember when that was last popular with the Noldor. It must have been… seven hundred years of the sun? At least?”

“At least. Celegorm had one for a time.”

“So did Fingon,” Maedhros said. For a moment, a fond smile deepened the corner of his mouth, but it faded and Elrond wondered if it had only been a trick of the firelight. He rarely spoke of the late king, whom he loved. It seemed also that he preferred the others not to speak of him either, which Elrond didn’t get. Surely if you loved someone, you would want to be reminded of them.

“Fingon never met a piece of jewelry he didn’t like,” Maglor teased gently.

“That is true.” Maedhros raised his eyebrows and took a sip from his cup. “He had them all along his ears, sometimes his nose and lips, one in his tongue, one straight through the tip of his p—”

“Yes, the Noldor like their pierced jewelry,” Maglor interrupted. The tips of his ears were pink for some reason. Maedhros, unconcerned, kept drinking. “They look nice, but they can cause more problems than they’re worth in a fight. It’s why most of us stopped wearing them.”

Elrond consciously crossed his fingers to keep from touching his fresh piercing. “What do you mean?”

Maedhros set his cup down and tucked his hair behind his ears. “I used to wear earrings of my own,” he said, turning his head so they could see, but there were no earrings: only rough, bumpy scars along the edges of his ears. “Morgoth’s orcs took them as trophies when they brought me to Angband, but they didn’t bother taking them out of my ears first.” Elros went green. Elrond, morbidly curious, leaned in for a better look. “Doing silly things for fashion is practically a rite of passage, however. Enjoy it.”

“And it does not look bad by any means,” Maglor added. “Just make sure to take care of it. And try not to snag it on anything!”

Elrond woke to a quiet, gray morning and an inexplicable sense of loneliness. Elros was still asleep across from him, and someone was stoking the fire in the main hall, but Elrond still couldn’t help but feel as if something, or someone had suddenly left him.

“Morning, Elrond,” Alagostor said when Elrond came out in search of food. “Porridge? It’s fresh. I was about to see if Maedhros would eat a bit before he goes to sleep.” Over his shoulder, Maedhros was slumped against the table as if he was already asleep with a liquor jug in his hand.

“All right.”

Alagostor dished up an additional bowl. Elrond took it, stirring in a spoonful of honey as he went, and sat at a table along the wall. He kept stirring. It didn’t seem appetizing at all, but it was breakfast, and he should eat it.

He was still stirring his now-cold porridge when Elros came out, yawning and stretching his long arms over his head. “Oh, that looks nasty,” he said, peering into Elrond’s bowl.

“Hm? Uh, I guess it does.” Elrond lifted his spoon. A glob of congealed porridge dropped back into the bowl with a plop.

“Maglor is making some flatbread if you want some instead.”

“Maybe.”

Eventually, Elrond scraped his porridge into the chicken feed and went without breakfast. He followed his usual activities on habit alone, but the sense of loneliness and loss did not leave him, shadowing everything else in a thick, oppressive mist.

He had never felt like this before. He had never been truly lonely; he always had Elros, and it was hard to feel disconnected from the rest of the community when they all relied on each other. Maybe it was because the dwarves had gone? They were a taste of the outside world, and everything did seem smaller without them.

No, that wasn’t it, this loss felt more intimate in a way that Elrond did not understand. Even his earliest memories, wreathed in the confusion and fear surrounding Sirion, did not make him feel anything like this.

The strange feeling did not dissipate overnight as he thought—and hoped—it would. If anything it seemed stronger and sharper, like a wall of broken glass separating him from the rest of the world. No one else seemed to notice. Even if they did, what would he tell them? How could he explain something he didn’t understand? Even exerting himself during sword training couldn’t shake it. He looked up at Maedhros for instructions after losing a sparring match, and for some reason he wanted to ask him about Fingon.

That would be stupid. No one asked him about Fingon unless they wanted to ruin his day at best. He’d been reasonably stable for longer than usual, according to Maglor, and Elrond certainly didn’t want to foul that up. Still, he was curious. If there was anyone who could understand loneliness it was Maedhros, violently separated from his immortal love and left to drift on an uncertain sea.

Good sense won, and Elrond said nothing.

The beautiful, incomprehensible scent visited again in a dream. Elrond clung to it, trying to grasp and taste and pull it into the very depths of his being, but dawn chased the dream away and he woke, unable to remember why he had felt so happy. Instead, the loneliness returned.

If he had been curious about Fingon yesterday, today it was a fixation. Fingon’s deeds were a matter of song, and Maglor had taught the boys all of the songs in the course of their education, but his courage and valor as king did not stand out to Elrond now as did the scant details they had learned of Fingon as a person. He had a strong singing voice. He wore his dark hair in braids ornamented with gold. He was an artist and a bit of a dandy. He loved Maedhros as fiercely as Maedhros loved him, to the point of setting out alone on an impossible mission to save him from the claws of Angband and returning against all odds, triumphant. It was a good story with a sad ending. Fingon was dead and Maedhros wished he was dead.

“You’re doing it again,” Elros said, drawing Elrond out of his thoughts.

“What?”

“Daydreaming. Must be interesting.”

“I guess so.”

It was dinner already. When did that happen? The last thing Elrond remembered was…

He couldn’t remember. How had he gotten here? He remembered waking up that morning, but everything else seemed to have fallen behind a thick curtain.

It was then that coals of anxiety began sparking in Elrond’s stomach, and he could not put them out.

He turned in early that night, telling himself and the others that he was just tired and needed more sleep, but sleep did not come. Instead he lay in the dark, watching the shadows that stretched across the floor and wondering when his bed had become so cold. It wasn’t even properly autumn yet. He was still awake when he began to feel almost like he was being rocked. No, carried? Carried in the arms of someone walking quickly. Every jostle seemed to ache. Every step made him more aware of pain radiating all over his body from points he couldn’t isolate. He was so tired, so weak that he couldn’t lift his head. He distinctly felt a dry, cracked kiss on his cheekbone and then a whisper in his ear.

Stay with me, Nelyo, we’re going home…

Elrond sat bolt upright, heart hammering and breath catching in his throat. He heard the voice, felt the kiss and the pain—it was all real , but he looked around the darkened room and saw only Elros sleeping across from his bed.

Had he imagined it? No, it was real, not a dream, not anything else, he would swear to it even though the impression now faded into the familiar sights and smells of his own bedroom. He recognized the voice though he had never heard it before. He recognized the sensations, the sounds, everything as clear and crisp as his own perception, but… it was not his.

Something was wrong.

Elrond sat motionless on his bed for a long while, paralyzed by the cold realization sinking into his neck and shoulders that something was very, very wrong. He needed to tell someone about this. Maglor, he needed to tell Maglor, and maybe he could… what, make it stop? Make sense of it? What would Elrond even say to him? I am obsessed with Fingon for some reason, and for a moment I felt as if he was rescuing me, and I was Maedhros? Was there any way to say that without sounding like a lunatic?

Maybe he was a lunatic.

The thought sent a shudder over the top of his head and down his back. Maybe if he ignored it, it wouldn’t happen again. It was simply happenstance, just his tired mind conjuring up strange visions. That was all. He was not a lunatic.

Despite this comforting assertion, Elrond tossed and turned for the rest of the night. When morning came again, he was suddenly too weary to get up and join Elros at sword training.

“Maedhros is going to make you run an extra lap,” Elros advised him as he dressed and Elrond stayed burrowed under the covers.

“I don’t care.”

Elros paused. “Are you… feeling all right? You’ve been weird.”

“I’m fine,” Elrond said from underneath his pillow—perhaps a little too forcefully, because Elrond huffed and left the room without saying anything else.

His brother’s concern did not lift the weight of the loneliness that still pressed down on Elrond’s heart. If anything, it was a little better when he was gone and Elrond could stew in his funk in peace. If he had no witnesses to his lunacy, then he was not a lunatic. That was right, wasn’t it?

He soon realized that he should have known better than to expect to be left alone when there was a knock at his door.

“Elrond? May I come in?” It was Maglor.

“Yes,” Elrond muttered.

Maglor entered and closed the door softly behind him. “Elros said you’ve been acting strangely. Are you ill?”

“No.” Elrond had never been ill, but his body felt no different than it usually did.

“Is something the matter? Are you… upset with someone? Or is it about the high king?” He paused, waiting for a response, but Elrond said nothing. “Listen… I can only speculate unless you let me know what’s bothering you. Or you can let anyone else know, it does not have to be me.” Another long pause. A floorboard creaked as Maglor shifted his weight to the other foot. “Remember that you can always speak to Osgardir and he will keep it in confidence. Even if you’re not ill.”

That seemed like a statement to leave him with, but Maglor stayed where he was. Elrond knew that Maglor would leave if he asked him to, but…

He needed to tell someone. Something was not right, and he needed to get it out.

Elrond rolled over and propped himself up on one elbow to face Maglor. “It sounds ridiculous,” he muttered, and then stopped. Maglor nodded anxiously. “I have been… thinking about… Fingon a lot lately, for some reason.”

Maglor’s forehead crinkled in confusion. Elrond knew he was mad for bringing it up. “Fingon?”

“Maedhros loved him, didn’t he?”

“Yes. We all did, in different ways. He was easy to love.” His voice was warm and fond. “What about him?”

“I don’t know.” Elrond ran a fingernail over the thick weave of his blanket. “Ever since Maedhros mentioned him, I can’t stop thinking about… losing him, I guess.” It was ridiculous, he was ridiculous, this whole fixation made absolutely no sense and he hadn’t even mentioned the vision or hallucination or whatever it was. He shouldn’t have brought it up, but now he had said it and he could not take the words back. Worse still, he kept talking and couldn’t stop. “I keep feeling lonely, like Maedhros must. I don’t know why I’m doing this. It makes no sense. Is it… normal to feel like this when someone else is sad about someone dying? Someone you didn’t even know?”

Maglor was silent for a few moments, during which Elrond grew progressively more wretched.

“Empathy,” Maglor said slowly, “is completely normal. It is not normal for it to incapacitate you.”

There it is, Elrond thought. I am a lunatic.

“It is a fairly common problem for elves,” Maglor continued. “We can become so attached to the feelings of others that it can kill us or drive us to madness. That is uncommon. It is more common to make minor bad decisions when we have a partner in crime or to become temporarily depressed when we get too close to another’s sadness. That could be what you are experiencing now.”

Elrond held his breath. “Even if I’m only half-elven?”

“I couldn’t say. But I can say that I have seen such things in elves before.” To Elrond’s surprise, Maglor smiled. “Fingon was well-loved. We mourn him still. You need not feel shame for carrying some of that sorrow, but you also need not let it burden you.”

“How?”

“It isn’t necessary to feel the same way that someone else feels in order to help them. Feelings of compassion or charity can lead you to ease another’s suffering in more sustainable ways. Or sometimes you simply need a break. It takes practice.” Maglor opened the door again with a long creak. “Staying in bed all day, however, helps nothing. There are plenty of things that need doing around the longhouse that might help redirect you. I’ll make an excuse for you at sword training if you wish.”

Elrond blinked. He was silent for a moment while he mulled over what Maglor had said, and then he breathed out slowly. Perhaps he wasn’t mad, just possessed of too much empathy. “All right,” he said at last. “I’ll give it a try.”

Maglor’s smile widened. “Good. Freshen up, have something to eat, and then there’s some mending with your name on it.”

Sewing proved to be therapeutic. Elrond never exactly enjoyed doing it, but once he started working on the pile, he did not want to stop. Holes were easy to patch and buttons were even easier to replace, and as the hours rolled by, all the fear and grief melted out through his hands and into the needle and thread as he fixed the fray edges with tiny, even stitches. Maedhros and Elros eventually came inside. Elros sat next to Elrond on the bench and chatted away at him in a determinedly cheerful voice, but Maedhros just wandered off toward his own bedroom, as he usually did. Whatever excuse Maglor had given clearly wasn’t anything close to the truth.

Elrond kept working on the mending. Dinner came and went, and he had a plate and shared a handful of words with the others, but he went back to his work and kept at it until the last shirt had been repaired. Night had fallen. Coals burned low on the hearth. He stretched and squeezed his eyes shut, feeling tense spots in his back and shoulders loosen up. He stashed the mending supplies and went to bed, and sleep came easily when he settled underneath the covers.

In the midst of a beautiful, soft light, he dandled a pair of happy toddlers on his knees. They giggled and reached for him when he bounced them higher with a whoo ! Smoky black curls tumbled across their faces and they peered lovingly up at him with large, pale gray eyes—him and Elros? As babies? They looked similar, but…

He reached in to tickle their bellies. They shrieked with laughter and tumbled away, tripping over each other in search of a new diversion.

He turned. A third baby reached for him in the soft light. He gathered her into his arms and nodded along as she related a long, babbling story. She had handfuls of flowers and shed feathers and pretty leaves, which she stuck into his braids and behind his ears, and a circlet of tiny white blossoms rested on her own dark head. She wound her arms around his neck and pressed her little face against his shoulder, and he rocked her gently and stroked her hair.

A flash of silver in the corner of his eye—he looked up sharply, and then it was all gone.

Elrond woke to find his cheeks and the pillowcase wet with tears. He remembered nothing, and he did not know why he was crying. Still sleepy, he wiped his eyes and rolled over.

He had nearly dropped off to sleep again when a woman’s terrified, piercing scream split the air.

He sat bolt upright, heart hammering in his chest and looking around in the darkness with the echoes of the scream still lingering within the walls. “Elros!” he leaped out of bed and began shaking Elros awake. “Elros, wake up! She’s in trouble!”

“What?” Elros stirred slowly. His hand closed around Elrond’s wrist. “Elrond, what are you doing?”

“The scream! We have to help her!”

Elros paused. “I didn’t hear anything. You’re just dreaming.”

“No, I wasn’t!” He ran out of the bedroom and didn’t wait for Elros to follow him. She was close, she was in trouble, he knew it hadn’t been a dream. Someone had screamed and he needed to find where she was. The main hall was dim with the last embers dying on the hearth. At first he saw no one, but then his eyes fell on the shaggy, hunched shape of Maedhros at one of the tables with his usual drink in front of him. “Maedhros! We have to hurry!”

“Go back to bed,” Maedhros said in a slightly slurred voice.

“What? No! You heard her scream, I know it! We have to help!”

“No one screamed. It was a dream.”

“No!” Now Elrond was the one screaming. “I heard it! It was real! She screamed! ”

Maedhros only shook his head. “I know what a nightmare is, boy. Go to bed. It’ll look better in the morning.”

For a moment, Elrond could say nothing, as if all the air had been sucked out of his lungs. “No,” he said once more. “It was real.”

But no one else woke. No one else heard it. And no matter how much Elrond tried to explain it, no one else knew what he was talking about.

Never had the forest been as silent as it was under this cold sunrise. Golden leaves on white boughs turned brown and fell, crisp and fragile, to the green grass sparkling with early frost. It was spring, but the trees seemed to sag with great age and weariness. Their bark withered and their branches drooped under their own weight. Instead of blooming to meet the sun, they knelt in defeat, an inevitable surrender, for their age had caught up with their great strength at last.

Among the falling leaves, a rustle. Not a bird or an animal—they had all moved on. Nothing had truly lived here for some time. A footstep. Not coming here to live, no. Coming here to die, just like the trees bowing and shedding their last foliage, untended and forgotten.

Fingers dug into Elrond’s shoulder. Unaccountable rage swelled within him and he rounded on the interloper with morning frost burning in his throat.

“What ?” His voice echoed back through the longhouse rafters, harsh and jagged. A long silence followed it, and Elros’ eyes darkened with resentment.

“Why would you scream at me?” he asked bluntly.

Elrond opened his mouth. No words formed on his tongue. His hands were balled into fists. The early springtime chill still prickled at his ears, though coals smoldered on the hearth and the air inside the main hall was warm. It was autumn. He had come inside to escape the spitting rain that had started the previous evening.

“I…” he swallowed. “I don’t know.”

“You are being weird,” Elros said. His frown shifted into a concerned wrinkle. “Still. And weirder. Something is wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Elrond muttered. He rubbed the back of his neck. A frosty tingle remained, but his skin was warm.

“What were you doing just now?”

Elrond’s mouth tightened. This was beginning to feel like an interrogation. He looked down at the wolf’s winter pelt, white and gold and brown, which lay beside the hearth with an indentation in the middle where he had lain. “Napping,” he said at last.

“You didn’t respond when I said your name.”

“I was tired!”

“Of course you were tired! You don’t sleep at night either, you just rustle around!” Elros grabbed him by the shoulders. Elrond tried to fight him off, but Elros’ hands were like steel. “Something isn’t right! You’re ill, or, or something, and you need to tell me what it is!”

“It’s nothing!” Elrond finally struggled free. “ Thank you for waking me up!” He stormed off, ignoring Elros calling after him. He could still hear raindrops pitter-pattering outside, but he left the longhouse anyway and paid no heed to the puddles on the ground that soaked his shoes when he sloshed through them.

He had not been sleeping. He had not been dreaming. It was happening more often.

Thunder, muffled by the clouds, rumbled in the distance. Elrond watched his feet instead of the path in front of him. He could see his reflection in the puddles before he stepped in them and disturbed the image with ripples. Every time his face stared back at him, he splashed it away. Reflections lied.

His list of safe places was growing thin. With streams of rainwater running down his face, he let himself into the stables, where at least the earthy smells of hay and manure matched his surroundings.

“Elrond, is that you?” Elhadron, one of the hostlers. “Rochal has been out in the pasture already this morning. Keep that in mind if she’s grumpy when you take her out.”

“I’m not,” Elrond said absently. “I’m just… saying hello… I suppose.”

“All right. Shout if you need me.”

Elrond found Rochael rubbing noses with Peguiel over their partition. Rochael, as usual, came over to inspect Elrond for treats, and snorted when she found him empty-handed. Still, she let him stroke her mane a bit before going back to gossip some more with Peguiel. Elrond watched them a while and wondered if they ever kept secrets from one another. What would mules even keep secrets about? Carrots?

He went to the ladder and pulled himself up into the hayloft.

Warm, heavy wind flowed across his face and through his hair, carrying with it the scent of bruised grass and a clear sky free of smoke. White clouds in a brilliant blue sky crowned a green valley that rippled like water, ringed all around with trees and cut through with a shimmering serpent of a river. It was a rich land, a living land, young and wild and strange, full of a boundless energy and a thousand stories unfurling without words.

He breathed in deep. Vitality coursed through his body, water and light in his veins making him as free as the wind itself.

A change in the air, a sudden sharpness to the light, and then the summer warmth turned to a blistering heat. Choking smoke, withering grass, trees burning where they stood and sap flowing like tears where black axes pierced their bark. Fruit turned to ash before it even had a chance to be planted. The river boiled. All poisoned, all murdered, driven from the peaceful valley into the waiting trap of iron and pitch and lifeless machines fueled by the old and the young and the unborn.

Skin and bark and hair and leaves and cones and muscles and nerves and roots all burning, hacked to pieces, no blood or sap or pleading or screaming could stop the torture of their saws—

The last nuts, the last hope trampled under iron feet while saplings were torn apart like they were nothing —

“Elrond, for the stars’ sake, what is the matter?”

He was breathing. He was in one piece. His skin was intact and without blisters, but when he looked down at his hands, he saw crescent-shaped pits where his nails had pressed into his palms. Agitated hooves trampled the dirt floor under the hayloft and Rochael made a rusty whimper in her throat. Booted feet were coming closer. Elrond scrambled against the hay-strewn planks beneath him, trying to get his bearings.

“I’m—uh—” he looked around and spotted a large cobweb in a corner. “There was a spider on me!”

Elhadron laughed. “Nessa’s tits, boy, you don’t need to howl like you’re being murdered!”

The stables were no longer safe. Elrond waited for Elhadron to leave, and then he fled.

Food was a chore. He feared sleep. A flood of darkness spread over the world around him until it lapped at his toes, but no one else seemed to notice it. They wouldn’t believe him if he told them. He was alone.

He had never felt the need to keep secrets before.

Elros, of course, did not take long to realize something was wrong, and when Elrond did not tell him, he became even more suspicious. Elrond resented the attention, and he resented the guilt that nibbled at him because of it, but all of that faded into the background of days spent anticipating the next break into worlds beyond his reach. He never knew when it would be. He rarely realized he was having an episode until something snapped him out of it. Perhaps he was going mad—that was the only explanation, and knowing that it was happening more and more frequently only made him fear the time when he wouldn’t come back to the surface, trapped forever within an experience that only he could see.

Maglor had been watching him. Elrond knew he wouldn’t be able to keep the secret from him forever, but still he tried, until Maglor pulled him aside to talk.

“Elrond. I think it’s time you spoke to Osgardir about this,” he said. He did not need to explain “this,” but they both knew what he meant, even if Maglor did not know what he was describing.

Elrond twitched. “I’m fine. There is nothing I need to talk to Osgardir about.”

“Pretending only makes everything worse,” Maglor said, crossing his arms. “Your moods have been unstable. You are losing a lot of weight. Elros says you hardly sleep. I say this not because I want to spy on you or control you, but because I know what melancholy illnesses look like, and I know what suffering accompanies them.” He smiled, but it was half-hearted.

Yes, melancholy illnesses, of course. Elrond also knew what they looked like—half the compound had one at any given time, whether it was the kind that made them weep and waste away or withdraw and eat or drink themselves sick or anything in between. He knew of none that transported a person into… places, and times, and feelings completely separate from his own, leaving him fearful of what the next episode would show him. Glawar the carpenter sometimes heard the voices of the dead accusing him of murdering or abandoning them. Idhren the engineer went through periods of believing she was already dead, and no one could convince her otherwise. But this… whatever it was? Elrond was certainly not as educated as many others, but he did not think his affliction was anything like that.

“I’m not suffering,” he lied.

Maglor gave him a long, serious look. He clearly knew that Elrond was lying, but after a moment, he nodded once. “I respect your experience,” he said carefully. If you ever do feel like you are feeling down or unwell, please do visit Osgardir. I promise he won’t stick you with any needles.”

Maglor couldn’t promise that. He didn’t even know what was wrong. But Elrond only nodded in turn, agreed to keep that option open, and did not mean a word of it.

It was dinnertime. Elrond knew he should eat, but he couldn’t seem to remember what was on his plate from one moment to the next. He looked down, picked up his fork, and then a sound somewhere behind him made him forget. Someone was hammering something. The bitter tang of hot metal scratched his nose—a forge.

He bit the inside of his cheek. It was impossible to smell the forge all the way from the longhouse, and when they could hear the hammers, the noise was faint. This was just… another illusion. Not real. Right now it was dinnertime, and that was what he needed to focus on.

“Elrond, I know you’re not fond of kale, but it’s in season,” Maglor said from across the table. “It will be much worse if you let it get cold.”

Kale, right, they were having kale. Elrond picked up his fork, but there was no kale on his plate, just a sort of flat waybread and a thick, featureless stew. He poked at it. Was that meat? What kind?

“At least there’s bacon in the kale this time,” Elros said next to him as if persuading him to take a bite, but where was the kale? Elrond looked up at the rest of the dishes on the table. Had he forgotten to dish up a helping altogether? No, he remembered, or thought he remembered. There was no kale on the table either, only dinner kits that looked like they were meant for traveling, and in the center lay a large map dotted with different-colored flags.

He didn’t recognize the land depicted on the map. It was circled about with jagged mountains, and there were a handful of black flags clustered around a drawing of a tower in the northwest corner. What was it? It seemed so familiar, but Elrond could not remember ever seeing it before.

“Stop staring at the chicken, you already have some,” Hestedis said bluntly.

Chicken? Where? He just had this weird stew, which clung to his fork when he tried to shake it off.

“Come now, don’t play with it,” Maglor said. “You are not a child any longer!”

This was wrong. This was all wrong.

“Need to use the outhouse,” Elrond muttered. He pushed the food away and stumbled back from the table.

“Don’t think that you’ll just have cake later,” Maglor advised him, but Elrond was already wandering outside. The hot metal smell grew stronger and thicker as if ash and soot coated the inside of his throat. All around him the dense, unmoving air pressed down and suffocated him a little more with each breath in as the hammering grew louder, sharper, heavier.

The soil was dead, nothing more than a gray powder over sharp rocks. Why was he here? What was the point? It was all just a lifeless crater…

This is a vision! A corner of his mind cried out in desperation. Elrond blinked hard, trying to clear it out, trying to hold onto that last splinter of truth.

Canvas peaks and valleys, once white, now stained with ash. Sweat, filth. Animals. Cookpots. Old blood and rusted iron. Not a breath of fresh air to clean it all out, only layers upon layers of dirt and hopelessness. Not a tree, not a stream, not even the evening star shining through the haze. Only death, only negation, only a nightmare that repeated the same images night after night. It might have been the end of days.

Why was he here? What was the point? The sky, the earth, his bones—it was all ash. Whether there was a place the dead earth ended and his body began, it made no difference, all would crumble and fade and become indistinguishable from the remnants of all the others. Just coal, iron, air, soil, water, all mixed and polluted and left to decay in this prison of universal mortality. No judge, no Creator, only the detritus of ages gone by, no escape but death.

White-hot, tearing, clamping pain—blood welled up between his teeth, trickling down his throat and over his chin. He gagged, drooled, gagged again, and then forced his jaw open. Blood dripped onto the plank floor beneath Elrond’s knees. Warm trickles coursed down his forearm.

Wool, sweet herbs, food and smoke. The longhouse. Pain. Reality. Fuck, there was so much blood.

In the dim light, Elrond could not make out the full extent of the damage. His arm throbbed without relief. A rough, ring-shaped wound glistened darkly against his skin. A small whimper escaped him as he pressed the bite against his chest and looked around for something to use as a bandage. Warm blood quickly soaked through to his skin. He hadn’t… hadn’t even tried to bite himself it just happened, and the vision had ended but now it hurt .

Baskets, sacks, hanging herbs. He was in the larder. The sounds of dinner conversation and utensils on plates continued just outside. He could not bring himself to ask for help. Just the idea filled him with a sense of shame so acute that even his lacerated skin did not seem as bad in comparison.

I have to clean it, he realized, remembering an old lesson on what to do if a cat or dog bit him. Their mouths could make him very sick, he knew, and he didn’t want to risk it and end up having to explain everything else. He could rinse the wound with spirits; Osgardir had done that when Elrond split his chin open as a child. Maglor did not allow any spirits to be stored in the larder, however. Maedhros would just make a mess of the whole room while trying to find a full jug.

Spirits and bandages. Elrond clenched his jaw and pressed his bleeding arm closer to his chest. His heart hammered in his throat and the wound as he slipped out of the back door to the larder, which led to the kitchen garden and chicken coop. He slunk along the wall and around the rear of the house to the back door of the scullery—yes! Lines of shirts and drawers hung to dry, just as he had hoped. He snatched up one of his own shirts and let himself inside the scullery. Almost there, I just need spirits… He did not wait long enough to talk himself out of it. Holding his breath, he crept out into the hall and padded as quickly and quietly through the shadows as he could before pausing at Maedhros’ bedroom door. Jugs of liquor went in and rarely came out. Surely he wouldn’t miss one. The door was slightly ajar. Elrond pushed it open just enough to squeeze through, silently begging the hinges not to squeak. Once inside, he was relieved to discover an abundance of liquor jugs scattered all over the place, but with a creeping horror he realized a crucial obstacle: Maedhros himself.

At first glance, Maedhros was indistinguishable from any of the other piles of rumpled clothing and linens that littered the room, but then Elrond noticed a tangle of long red hair hanging over the opposite side of the bed and the shape of his body curled underneath a blanket and some unwashed clothes. He was asleep. Elrond seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. He lifted the nearest jug, sniffed it to be sure of its contents, and fled the room without looking back.

There. He had everything. Instead of risking discovery by going back to the larder or his own bedroom, Elrond went back out through the scullery and retreated behind the woodshed. With the adrenaline wearing off, pain was returning with a vengeance to his arm, and he did not especially want to look at it in the clear twilight.

He sat on the ground, steeled himself, and peeled his arm away from his tunic. It was starting to go sticky, but fresh blood welled up when separated from the cloth. It was even more revolting in the light. A ring of bruising had formed all around the open bite marks. They were ragged and inflamed and dark with clotted blood. The salty iron taste of blood lingered in Elrond’s mouth—he gagged again.

You can do this. Take care of it, or they will find out.

He took off his tunic and shirt and tore the sleeves off the clean shirt with his teeth to use as bandages. After taking in another deep breath and squeezing his eyes shut, he splashed some liquor on the bite. It burned like he’d sunk his teeth into his own flesh again and he could barely keep from crying out loud as he mopped up the blood and spirits with a clean patch of his bloody shirt. It looked a little better afterward: not as gory, at least. He folded one clean sleeve into a bandage and tied the other around his arm to hold it in place.

That was it. Out of sight.

The bloodied shirt was a total loss. Elrond stashed it away until he could burn it without being noticed. His tunic would be harder to explain, so he strategically left it where one of the cats—a very pregnant female—would find it. Sure enough, she soon presented the longhouse with a beautiful litter of three on Elrond’s donated tunic, and as he had planned, the fluids from their delivery masked the blood from his wound.

No one suspected anything. They still watched him and fussed over him and asked him what was wrong, but no more than normal.

He went four days without an episode. It was the longest interval in many weeks. He nearly wept in frustration and helplessness when the images returned. A bite mark on his other arm, not enough to break the skin but enough to sting, was the first thing he saw when he returned to the physical world.

If he bit himself as soon as he sensed that something was off, the pain would occupy him enough to keep him where he should be. Sometimes it was enough to press his teeth against his skin just hard enough to leave a temporary dent. Sometimes it wasn’t. He began carrying bandages and a flask of spirits on his person, just in case.

Part of him knew that he could not keep this up forever and hoped that someone would notice. The greater part could not bear the idea. He had no other way to hold off the visions. He could not keep living like that.

The circular wounds bled, scabbed over, and diminished into tender pink scars. He hid his arms under long sleeves. He tried to eat and smile and do everything that normal people did, but underneath it all the visions threatened to break through, and when they did, Elrond broke them with his own skin between his teeth.

Fearing the nightmares, he did not sleep well. When his bedroom seemed to close in on him, he took to wandering the longhouse until the sun came up.

Dim firelight cast the main hall into deep shadows one night when Elrond slipped out to walk his usual path. Two voices in low conversation lingered near the hearth, along with the clinging scent of the cannabis that Maglor often smoked after the boys were in bed. Elrond crouched low and quiet under one of the tables where they would not see him. He listened hard to make out their near-whispers and understand the old-fashioned Quenya that they spoke to each other.

“…was foolish to think that this would never happen.” That was Maglor. Already Elrond could hear regret weighing down his voice.

“Did you think that it would never happen, or merely that it would happen later, and that it would be someone else’s problem to solve?” Maedhros, half-drunk. “Either way, yes, you were foolish.”

“I hoped,” Maglor said, “that I had done enough to spare them.”

“Even more foolish. The perpetrator of suffering cannot heal it.”

Elrond smelled sea air. He squeezed his eyes shut and bit the inside of his lip. There was no sea here, and he had to keep the sensation from sticking and pulling him down into another episode. He focused on the smell of wood, and Maglor’s pipe, and the sharpness of his teeth digging into his skin. That was real, the sea was not.

“What else could I do but try?” Annoyance sharpened Maglor’s words. “Who here is not a perpetrator? Shall I give up and regale them with tales of all our deeds against their family? Shall I remind them every day that all of their life here was an accident and the sooner they are out of my house, the better for all of us?”

A chill ran down Elrond’s spine when he realized that Maglor was talking about him and Elros. This was not meant for his ears… but he kept listening. He could not help it.

“If it would make it easier for them—and for you—when the time comes,” Maedhros said. “You’re as attached as they are.”

“You were the first to take pity on them.”

“You know why.”

They both fell silent at that. It was both an accusation and a raw bitterness turned inward, but neither Maedhros nor Maglor said anything else about it.

Elrond remembered Sirion, sort of. He remembered confusion, desperation, and fear. He remembered his mother’s tears wet on his face when she kissed him goodbye. The linen closet. The hours of waiting. Mancala, which he never wanted to play again. He knew the facts: the Silmarils, the Oath, five hundred years of war, and the tragedies at Alqualonde, Menegroth, and Sirion. He knew that Maedhros and Maglor and all their dead brothers had killed other elves in pursuit of their father’s Jewel. He knew that rather than surrender the Silmaril, his mother had cast herself into the sea, where Ulmo gave her the form of a white seabird. Five hundred years of loss and regret. Maglor did not need to explain that; Elrond could see it in him and all who followed him. For his part, Elrond kept it all in a box in the back of his mind until he was ready to look at it without flinching. Maybe someday, but not now, when he had more than enough to think about.

Cold water splashed his face. A wave dragged him under the surface. He clawed upward toward the light, seawater filling his eyes and ears and throat, but the undertow sucked him into the depths and he flailed, helpless—

A deep, desperate breath, and he was back in the longhouse, hands clutching at at his own throat as he tried to remember how to breathe.

Maglor and Maedhros both heard him and jumped to their feet. When Elrond finally got his lungs back to their usual rhythm, he looked up to see the two brothers staring down at him over the edge of the table. Maglor was gray-faced and wide-eyed, and Maedhros just looked like he was in pain.

“Elrond,” Maglor said, but nothing else followed even though his mouth stayed open as if he had expected to keep talking.

“You were not meant to hear this conversation,” Maedhros said flatly.

“I know.” Elrond’s voice felt like it was trapped in his head.

Another pause. Maglor still said nothing. Maedhros beckoned to Elrond with a jerk of his hand. “Come on out.” He sounded gruff but not unkind. Elrond slid out from under the table. His legs trembled when he stood. He still felt as if he was desperately treading water in a cruel sea, but he stayed upright. The three of them looked at one another for a long moment, each unsure of what to say.

Finally, Maedhros gripped Elrond’s shoulder in a rare physical display of awkward affection. “Listen to me,” he said. His fingers were firm on Elrond’s shoulder almost to the point of discomfort. “If you believe me on only one thing I ever tell you, let it be this: none of this was your fault. None of it. You were born into a world that was already broken, and you and your brother are innocent.” He squeezed Elrond’s shoulder even tighter for just a moment. “Do you understand?”

He nodded. Maedhros released him.

“You should be in bed,” Maglor said at last. “Never mind this. Maedhros is right.”

Elrond went, but what he had heard stayed with him like a stone in his shoe.

Winter was on the horizon, but Elros seemed to have made it his mission to drag Elrond out to explore the forest with him as long as the autumn warmth and light lasted. Elrond went reluctantly at first, but soon the smells and sounds of crispy leaves and damp earth welcomed him, and for a while he almost felt like his old self. Elrond and Elros balanced on fallen logs and poked at weird fungi with sticks and overturned rocks to see pale grubs writhing underneath, traversing the gentle hills and twisting game tracks that surrounded the compound in search of new things to discover. In those moments, the outside world seemed unimportant. Their forest was full of whole worlds large and small, from the trees themselves to the tiny creatures suspended in drops of rainwater, and there was no lack of things to see and touch and ponder.

They went out every day, wrapped in cloaks and scarves when the sun rose over a world of sparkling frost. The ice brought a new, alien dimension to familiar things, one that was as ancient as it was fleeting and as delicate as it was sharp. The harvest was in and all the elves of the compound were making their final preparations before settling in for winter. On a pale morning, Elrond and Elros climbed a tall hill on the edge of the barley fields to look down at the valley below.

“Oh, look! They’re bringing the pigs in!” Elros pointed down. Elrond looked up from studying an ice-laced cobweb in a bush and joined him at the crest of the hill. Down below, the swineherds whistled and prodded a line of pigs out of the woods where they had spent the last months fattening on acorns. Some of the sows had babies with them, and Elrond’s mouth watered at the thought of having suckling pig in celebration of the harvest, as they often did in good years.

“I wonder how many they’ll slaughter this year,” he said. “They look very fat!”

“Come on, let’s go watch,” Elros said. He followed a winding track down through the trees, jumping over rocks and swatting low-hanging branches along the way.

“Hello there!” one of the swineherds called when Elrond and Elros approached the pig barns and the yard where they would be slaughtered. “Come to help out?”

“Hello, Caedor!” Elros waved. “We’d be glad to help!”

“You can fetch and carry,” Serecthel the bear hunter said once they had offered their assistance, dampening their excitement somewhat. “I’ll not answer to Maglor if you cut off a finger!”

She and her apron-clad associates stood ready with pans to collect blood, chains and hooks to hang carcasses, a steaming tub of water, and an impressive collection of knives. The pigs to be slaughtered were separated into a pen while the rest went into the barn. Serecthel gave her knife a few more strokes against the whetstone. Elrond and Elros stashed their baskets and inched closer.

“You can catch the blood if you are wearing clothes you don’t mind staining,” Serecthel said. They both leaped at the opportunity to help and took up posts next to her and Gwedhon, who would perform the slaughter. Amrúnith and Lenthir stood ready to scald and scrape the bristles from the carcasses, Orelion and Damben would remove the insides, and the swineherds would control the pigs and lend an extra hand where they were needed.

“Shall we start with the little ones first?” Caedor suggested.

“Aye. The sooner we get started, the sooner we’ll have pork.”

The first piglet squealed when Caedor picked it out of the pen. Elrond didn’t love this part, but he knew it only hurt for a moment, and it was the price they paid for having pork. Caedor whispered a few words in the piglet’s ear as he carried it to Serecthel. It stopped squirming and only snorted a little, calmed, when he held it still before her.

“All right, little piggie, let’s get it over with,” Serecthel said a little ruefully, and then she plunged her knife deep into the piglet’s neck.

Elrond knew it was coming, but he still flinched when it squealed one last time.

Gwedhon snapped his fingers. “Catch the blood, Elrond!” Elrond shook himself and maneuvered his pan under the piglet’s open throat. It was already over and he’d missed most of it.

“Let’s not waste any,” Serecthel reminded him while Amrúnith took the carcass to the scalding tub. “You don’t need to do it if you can’t watch them die. There’s no shame in it.”

“I’m all right,” Elrond said defensively.

“If you’re sure.”

It was a good year indeed. There were a dozen piglets to slaughter for the autumn feasting at the compound. Serecthel and Gwedhon took a piglet each to make the process faster before they would need to work together on the big ones. Calmed by the swineherds’ arts, the piglets went quietly until the swift strike of steel and the spurt of blood. Elrond didn’t flinch after the first one.

“Bring up the one on the end,” Serecthel said once all the piglets were dead and they were ready to start on the grown pigs. Elrond looked up at the pen to see which one she meant, but as soon as he took his eyes off her he felt her strong, cold fingers clamp around the back of his neck.

“What are you doing!” he scrabbled behind him, trying to get free, but Gwedhon hoisted him up by his legs and they both stretched him over the block. He shouted and struggled and then Caedor thrust a chain between his teeth, pulling his head back—Serecthel’s knee in his lower back as she put the blade to his throat—Elros waiting in front of him, obediently holding the pan to catch his blood as Serecthel plunged the blade all the way from his left earlobe to his right.

He screamed, thrashing, even though he could feel the life flowing out of him with his blood. The chain kept his head back, Gwedhon held his hands out of the way, Serecthel just waited and Elros didn’t even flinch—

“Elrond! Elrond!”

He couldn’t stop screaming. The world was falling away under him, but terror and betrayal clung like the taste of rust on his tongue.

“Elrond!” Rough hands on his face. He flinched and lashed out. Cold fingers trapped his wrist.

“We’re here, Elrond! It’s Serecthel!”

He heard the words, but understanding eluded him. He was chained and bled, dying on the block, watching through dimming eyes as the murderers surrounded him with sharp knives, waiting to carve him up and devour him. No more strength to fight, but he fought anyway, though his arms were like lead and he couldn’t breathe and his heart was going fast and erratic and he couldn’t see or hear or feel anything, just fear and shame and betrayal and fruitless, wasted anger—he had trusted them—

Elrond kicked and screamed and bit, visions and feelings and wordless fear and anger coming in flashes and fading out to frustration as he tried to break free. He needed to get out, he needed to escape...

“Elrond!” A rough pat on his cheek that was almost a slap. “Can you hear me?”

They killed the babies. They killed mothers upon mothers upon mothers. Murderers. Flesh-eaters.

He was being half-marched, half-dragged away. He kept struggling, but Serecthel's grip on his upper arm would not be broken. Elros clung to his other arm with both hands. He was pale and wide-eyed, but his mouth was a determined line.

Murderers, flesh-eaters...

He shook his head. Alien terrors still stuck between his ears like a language he could not understand except when it screamed in universal horror.

The further Elros and Serecthel carried him, the fainter it became. Familiar trees and rocks lined the road. His body felt like a heavy, ill-fitting set of clothes. He looked around, blinking. When had the light become so bright ?

Boots on dirt and gravel. The squeak of a hinge and the creak of planks. Mingled voices. Elrond squeezed his eyes shut for a moment before trying to look around again—he had somehow lost the link between seeing and hearing and understanding. He heard his name as if through water. They caught him. They knew. He couldn't stop it or hide it that time. They saw him lose control, they saw him lash out... why? What had gotten into him? They would tell Maglor everything, and... what would Maglor do? All roads were dark, and Elrond was without a light.

Snapping fingers. Cool hands on his face. “Elrond?”

Suddenly his environment was so sharp and clear that it was almost painful to look at. Was this normal?

“There you are.” The familiar figure before him became Osgardir when Elrond blinked again. One hand held Elrond's chin still and the other hand help up a brightly shining stone the size of a grain of barley. Serecthel and Elros hovered behind the healer on either side. “It isn't a concussion,” Osgardir said after a moment, but there was more doubt in his voice than the statement seemed to warrant. “You boys didn't eat anything you found in the woods, did you? Did you pick any flowers or mushrooms?”

“No, we were just walking and exploring,” Elros said. He looked like he was trying not to cry.

“Did you burn any plants? Eat anything without washing your hands?”

“No,” Elros said again.

“Do you know if Elrond tried anything without you?”

“No,” Elros said a third time, but Elrond, Serecthel, and Osgardir all heard the hesitation that followed, and they looked at him expectantly. Elros looked at Elrond. His lips made a shape almost like he was about to apologize. “He's been... acting strangely,” he confessed instead, turning back to Osgardir. “We normally tell each other everything, but he's been secretive. He sometimes sits and stares at nothing for hours. Sometimes he asks me if I saw something that wasn't there. I'm worried.” His voice cracked. “I keep asking him to tell me what's wrong, but he won't.”

Osgardir was silent for a moment. “Elrond, are you with us?” he asked quietly, placing the shining stone into a small pouch.

Elrond nodded though the twinge of betrayal at Elros' explanation. “I am.”

“Thank you both for bringing him in,” Osgardir continued. “Elros, will you find Maglor for us? Thank you. Serecthel, I appreciate what you were able to tell me. I don't want to keep you from your work.”

Serecthel folded her muscular arms. “If you do not need anything else from me.”

“I'll send word if I do.”

Serecthel smiled uneasily at Elrond as she took her leave. Elros lingered a moment, but Osgardir gave him a friendly wave that nevertheless told him to go . With that, Elrond was alone with the healer, and he knew that he could hide no longer. Elros and Serecthel had brought him inside the infirmary, where he now sat on the edge of a cot behind a dark curtain printed with star shapes. Osgardir pulled up a stool and sat so that he and Elrond were eye-to-eye.

“Elrond,” he said. “Let's have a conversation.”

Deep down, Elrond had known it would all end up here. He would have to be stupid to think otherwise. Even so, he was not any happier to tell Osgardir anything than he had been to tell Elros or Maglor when they started noticing things. He said nothing.

“How long has this been going on?”

Elrond could not think of an answer to that. When had it started? The scent? Had he just not noticed anything that might have come before? Had it always been a backdrop to his thoughts? Had he ever been without these visions and sensations? He struggled to remember what it had been like to be free of this, this curse . How could he explain it to a healer when he did not even have the words to describe it to himself?

“A long time,” he said at last. “At least... months. Years? I don't know. I can't remember.”

“Can you tell me what happened today?”

“I'll try.”

He started with that morning. Elros had whisked him into the forest. They explored as they always did. He had not had any visions until they approached the pig slaughter.

“I was all right at first,” he explained. It got easier with every word. “They killed the suckling piglets for the autumn feasting. And then... I felt like Serecthel and Gwedhon were bringing me up to the block to kill me instead of one of the grown pigs. Gwedhon held me down and Serecthel cut my throat like she would on a pig.” He unconsciously placed a hand over his neck. “It was so real. I felt like they were... murderers. I was being killed. I felt the knife, I felt Caedor put a chain in my mouth like they do to the pigs when they kill them. I saw Elros catching my blood in a pan. I... wasn't... myself.”

Osgardir frowned slightly. “Have Serecthel or Gwedhon or any of the others been cruel or violent to you before?”

“No! There's no sense to it, I just...” Elrond ran his hands over his braids. “I felt like I was a pig. I don't know why.”

“Is that a usual experience for you?”

“No, not really. I usually find myself outside my own surroundings. It's difficult to explain.” The words now tumbled out without prompting. “Places I have never been before. Things I recognize, but don't remember seeing. One time I heard a scream that no one else could. It makes no sense. I feel as if I am going mad. Am I? Is this madness?”

“Shh, we'll figure it out. When do these episodes end?”

“I--” The words stuck in Elrond's throat. “Sometimes I snap out of it when people call my name or touch me. Not always. Sometimes I...” he trailed off. Osgardir leaned forward a little when Elrond fumbled with his right sleeve. His fingers were tied in knots. This was it, an exposure more complete than stripping completely naked. Bracing himself against whatever reaction he would get, he pushed his sleeve above his elbow.

“Allfather,” Osgardir said softly. His fingers closed around Elrond's hand and he examined the bites, some of them healed and some still scabby and bruised. “You do this to yourself?”

Elrond nodded, miserable.

He heard the front door swing open and hurried to pull his sleeve back down before anyone saw. Osgardir looked up when Elros’ and Maglor’s voices reached their ears. “They’re here,” he said, and turned back to Elrond. “Do you want me to tell them what’s been happening, or do you want to do it? I will not tell if you don’t want me to, but the time has come to bring it into the light.”

“You can tell them. I don’t want to do it again.”

“Very well. I will bring them back. And you can correct me if I misrepresent anything.”

If Elrond could voluntarily remove himself from reality, he would have done it while Osgardir explained his condition to Elros and Maglor. They heard all of it: the hallucinations, the pigs, the biting. They listened in horrified silence while Elrond’s shoulders sunk lower and lower.

“Just tell me what can be done,” he burst out when he could stand to hear no more.

“Well,” Osgardir said slowly. “I'm afraid I don't know what to do for you.”

“But you're a healer,” Elrond protested.

“I am, but there is only one of me, and my knowledge is limited.” Osgardir's lips twitched. “Bring me a difficult labor and I'll show you happy parents and a healthy baby, but without access to my colleagues, there is much I cannot name or treat.”

“So I'm doomed to madness?” Elrond could not help but shout. In his gut he was ashamed, but all the fear and helplessness bubbled out of him in the form of anger. “What am I supposed to do? Just live like this? Keep tearing my arms open to make it stop? Do I just accept the nightmares and visions? What kind of life is this?”

Osgardir held up a placating hand. “No. First, you are not 'mad.' There is no disease of the mind or body called 'madness.' Second, we will do what we have always done when facing a problem without a known solution: we will solve it ourselves. If you are willing to work with me and let your brother and Maglor support you, it will be easier.”

Of course it was easy for Osgardir to be this logical when he was not the one with the affliction. In another season, Elrond might have been curious and interested in finding the answer, but now he was exhausted. It was hopeless. He was bound to this madness, and it was madness, this constant intrusion of sensations and thoughts that were neither his own nor anything he recognized. He said nothing. His eyes burned and a painful stone caught in his throat. When the tears came, there was nothing in his power to stop them.

Maglor broke his silence at last. “How confident are you that you will be able to relieve his suffering?” he asked.

“I cannot say. In any case, hope does not require certainty.” Osgardir offered Elrond a clean handkerchief. Elros took it when Elrond made no move. “I want you to stay in the infirmary tonight for observation. The more information I have, the more likely it is that I will be able to help you.”

“All right.”

“I'll bring your nightshirt so you don't have to wear a smock,” Elros added.

Elrond just nodded, but he could not find it in him to feel much of anything besides shame. He was an experiment, a specimen, an inconvenience, a liability, anything but the individual person he used to be.

A distant sound of someone sobbing kept him up all night, but when Elrond crept through the darkened infirmary, he found no one but Osgardir reading a book of worn, mismatched parchments. He wore his dark hair shorn so close that Elrond could make out his pale scalp shining in the lamplight beneath it.

“Is something the matter?” the healer asked kindly. Elrond shrugged.

“Can you hear someone crying?”

“I'm afraid not.”

At that, Elrond went back to bed and lay silently awake, unable to block out the sound even though it wasn't truly there. With dawn came another vision: shapes and sounds too strange to explain, and he resurfaced to the sensation of a folded towel in his mouth instead of his arm. “Bite that if you must bite something,” Osgardir advised him.

The healer suggested another day and night of supervision when Maglor came to the infirmary to check on Elrond. Outside, the compound carried on with their autumn feasting as planned. Elrond did not want to join them, and at the same time he did not like missing out. Elros brought him a plate of food, including a large portion of roast suckling pig. Nauseated, Elrond pushed the plate away without taking a single bite.

Still without answers, Osgardir released Elrond back to the longhouse the next day. Elros was aggressively cheerful and Maglor was even more attentive than usual. Elrond smiled and laughed when he was supposed to, but inside he felt more and more that he was slipping away from himself and the others and from reality altogether.

If pressed, Elrond would describe it as the darkest winter of his life, but at the time he did not have words for it.

The episodes sometimes lasted for days on end. He went weeks without remembering his own name. He occasionally went missing, only for someone to discover him curled up with the dogs or crouched in the chicken coop, unable to speak when spoken to. He split his nights between the longhouse and the infirmary, where Osgardir sometimes had him try different medicinal extracts, but nothing seemed to change. As much as everyone tried to intervene, new bites appeared on his arms. He barely felt them anymore.

As the days lengthened and the forest woke with new life, Maglor started making preparations for a journey. Elrond asked him what he was doing, but in his heart he already knew.

“You need care I cannot provide,” Maglor said. His voice was stiff. “I've been able to keep you safe until now, but you need a community with greater knowledge. I will personally find the High King's people and ensure that you arrive to him safely.”

“You are throwing me away in my madness,” Elrond spat.

“No!” Maglor, wide-eyed, turned and grasped Elrond's shoulders. “I would never throw you away, and you are not mad!”

“That's what you are doing!” Elrond no longer cared enough to keep himself from shouting. “I am too sick to be helped! You are just passing me off to someone else so you don't have to put up with me!”

“Elrond, that is not true!”

“Isn't it? Isn't that what you told Maedhros that night when you found me listening?” Angry tears coursed down Elrond's face. He did not wipe them away. “That it'll be better when we're gone? That you were just waiting for a good reason to get rid of us?”

“No! That is not what I--” Maglor tried to give Elrond's shoulders a friendly squeeze, but Elrond broke away. He left without looking back even though Maglor called after him with explanations and excuses, but Elrond only blocked him out and kept walking until he could no longer hear his voice.

The snow had turned to rain by the time Maglor and his hand-picked party left, but the mornings were still sharp with overnight frost. Elrond stood by while they made their final preparations, checking the horses' tack and wrapping scarves around their noses and mouths against the chill.

“Elrond, I promise that this is for your sake,” Maglor said to him. “There are surely healers and wise folk among the king's people who can help you. I wish— dearly— that I had the resources you need, but I do not.”

Elrond said nothing.

“Listen, I...” Maglor raised his gloved hand as if to touch Elrond's cheek, but he only paused and let his hand drop to his side. “I will return as soon as I can,” he said simply. “I want you to take care of yourself until then. Listen to Osgardir and make sure you eat something every day. Will you do that?”

His doting rankled in the face of what he was doing. Elrond refused to respond. He turned and went back inside the longhouse without saying a word.

“Maglor's party just left,” Elros reported a short time later. Elrond was not sure how long he had been staring at the fire, but his eyes blurred and he had to blink several times to clear them.

“Did he say anything?” he asked.

“Just to watch out for you,” Elros said. He glanced away. “I'm still here. I'll always be here, no matter what happens.”

Elrond would have found comfort in those words after Sirion or the earthquake or any other situation but this. He was being abandoned. That was the only explanation for Maglor's decision. They could all lie to him, but he knew. I will not abandon him in his madness, Maglor had said of Maedhros, but the same did not apply to Elrond, else he would still be here.

Meals, work, sleep, and conversation slipped out of Elrond's consciousness after that. Food happened. Sometimes he lay next to the fire, and sometimes he stood outside. People asked him questions, and he felt himself supplying answers. It must have been a few days.

“I'm going to the infirmary,” he told Elros one evening. “I'm not feeling well.”

“Oh. Do you want me to go with you?”

“No, I know where it is.” He pulled his cloak on an departed the longhouse. He did go to the infirmary, but just briefly.

“Oh, hello Elrond,” Osgardir said, looking up from his work when Elrond opened the door. “Are you staying here tonight?”

“No, I'm feeling a little better today,” Elrond replied. “I'm staying up at the longhouse.”

“Thank you for checking in. Sleep well!”

Elrond did not go back to the longhouse. The elves on duty at the gates did not stop him when he left. “It will be dark soon,” the elf in the lookout tower called down to him. “Don't stay out too late!”

“I won't!”

The guard would be changing soon. Maybe she would tell her replacement to watch for him, maybe she wouldn't. Either way, it would be too late for them to track him down by the time they realized he was gone.

Once he was free of the palisade, Elrond turned off the road and into the forest. The moon shone bright overhead, but soon the trees became so thick that they blocked out its silver light and enveloped Elrond in shadows. He continued walking and did not slow down.

They were throwing him away. They wanted him to disappear, so he would.

“The forest is full of creatures that want to eat you,” Maedhros had said one day when the boys were small. Elrond did not remember what had prompted this lesson. “Most of them will not bother trying until you are already dead or weak enough that they can pick you off without a fight.” He was drunk, as usual, but instead of numb detachment he spoke with a raw, bitter sharpness. “The cold will kill you in hours. If you manage to find shelter, thirst will kill you before hunger does. The longer you are without food, the weaker you will become, and the less you will be able to hold off the scavengers waiting for you to die. Wolves will close in first, and bears will fight them for your body. They will begin to tear your flesh before you are dead. When you have finally succumbed to the shock and blood-loss, ravens will land among them and pluck out your eyes.” He stabbed his fingers forward for emphasis. “When the wolves and bears have had their fill, flies will land upon what's left and lay their eggs. The maggots will crawl over every last scrap of flesh until bleached bones are all that remain of you. That is what happens to little boys who stray too far from home and hearth.”

“Charming stories for children's ears!” Maglor had rebuked lightly, but Maedhros scoffed at him.

“Yes, we wouldn't want to live in a world where horrible things happen to children, would we?” he had said. At that he glanced at Elrond and Elros out of the corner of his eye before taking his drink out of the room.

Elrond was not alone in the woods.

First, a scent—warm and musky. He lifted his head and sniffed again. Close. A stranger's territory. He must be on his guard. Flecks of scent in the tufts of hair on grass and tree bark. He regarded them, suspicious, and continued on his path.

Maedhros' warnings brightened in his mind like a popping spark before blinking out in the darkness.

The wolf before him was patchy with the remnants of his pale winter coat. He was young and gangly, and he stared back at Elrond with a clear amber gaze. Elrond lowered his head and peered up through his eyelashes. The wolf's ears were up, his black nose twitching with Elrond's scent. If he wanted to attack, Elrond would not be able to escape it.

The wolf's muzzle wrinkled in a cautious snarl. “Skin-thief,” he growled. “You trespass here.”

“I mean no harm,” Elrond said.

The wolf's snarl deepened. “Do you bring food? Females? Anything besides your soft paws and blunt teeth? No! Begone!”

Elrond shuffled backward, stealing only the briefest looks at the wolf. “I am only lost,” he protested.

“Be lost somewhere else!” The wolf barked from deep in his chest. Elrond, heart pounding, scurried away with his feet slipping on damp leaves.

Perhaps he would end here, sinking into the cool embrace of past generations, his eyes becoming food for crows and his guts opened by wolves and his bones scattered for the teeming masses of life under the surface, silent but deafening. Food for the earth, that was best, elves and men may cast him out but the hungry earth would welcome his flesh and grow lush upon his clotted blood.

He could feel it all, every leaf and bud unfurling in the cool, damp air and every root stretching into the deep earth. It was an explosion of life, silent to ordinary ears, but he had mushrooms bubbling up along his spine and moss curling through his hair and seeds splitting and germinating under his skin, erupting up toward the light in a rush to receive the sun's warmth before any of the others. Worms and beetles wriggled between his toes and ferns sent up curling fronds that wound around his ankles like crisp green ropes.

Swift streams rolling down from distant mountains rushed through his veins. His very marrow pulsed with the beams of light piercing the forest canopy and calling up the things that slept through the winter, plants and animals and formless fungus alike. He was all of it, and the coat of flesh that he wore would not contain him forever.

The forest vibrated with the great awakening in the soil and shook more violently with the creatures that came to feed.

Did they only exist to die, to be eaten or to decay into the earth they crawled out of? Did they know how small they were? And the birds and snakes and insects that came to the feast—did they know that they too would fall to the foxes and owls and eventually sink below the tree roots with everything else?

The first chicks had emerged from their eggs, spindly and naked with closed, bulging eyelids. They screamed to be fed. That was all they could do, just scream and scream and wait for either their bellies to be filled or to starve. Their parents lived and died to the sound of their screaming. The birds competed for worms like the chicks competed to be fed, gulping down grubs for themselves between flights back to the nest. Only the fastest and most tenacious would survive. There was no room for hesitation.

Elrond dug into the dirt with his hands. The chicks were starving. They would scream themselves to death.

There! A worm! It tried to wriggle away, but Elrond grabbed it and pulled it from its burrow. He pulled himself up into the branches of a nearby tree and dropped the worm into the nearest screaming nest before scrambling back down. He had to keep going, the chicks were starving, and he could not rest until they were large enough to fend for themselves.

He searched on his hands and knees for another worm. The chicks were starving, but so was he, and no one would be there to feed them if he starved first. There, under the ferns! He snatched another worm before it could creep underground, and he swallowed it whole before another bird could take it from him. It wriggled in his throat and he had to swallow again and again to subdue it, feeling it fighting its fate the whole way down.

The chicks demanded more, more, more. They fought their nestmates, and their parents fought other parents, all of them locked in a race to stave off starvation for another day.

In his lucid moments, Elrond wondered if anyone had noticed his absence. Moreover, he wondered if anyone cared, or if his disappearance had come as a relief.

No more screaming! No more disruption! No more worrying about a mad boy they didn't want in the first place! Good riddance!

Insects kept darting at his scabby arms. He slapped them away. Already the creatures of the forest were picking at him, anticipating his inevitable expiration.

He did not know how long it had been, or how much longer it would be.

For hours on end he lay motionless on the ground, staring up at the sky. The hungry green things all around him stretched up before the eternal blue. It shifted into reds and purples, and the world shifted with it. Plants sank back to wait for the sun's return, and the pale, slinking things of the darkness began to wake. Round eyes searching for food. Amorous songs and calls to fight. Shrieks of terror silenced by talons that swooped in on noiseless wings as the fire of sunset blackened into night.

What had it been like before Elrond took every ripple of nature into his blood?

Where was the boundary between moonlight and his fingers?

He twitched. A variation in the rhythm. Something was out there.

A child's voice. “Is anyone there?”

He sat up and looked around. The forest, bleached of color by the darkness, betrayed nothing.

No. There it was—a child! Children!

There were two of them, silver-haired and silver-eyed and clad in tunics the color of stars. Elrond had thought that he and Elros were identical, but the children were nothing less than perfect copies of one another. They peered at him for a moment, but when they realized he had noticed them, they jumped up and ran deeper into the thick woods.

“Wait!” Elrond scrambled to his feet. “You shouldn't be out here!”

He ran after them, stumbling over protruding roots and prickly bushes. They were gone. He paused to get his bearings, and the flicker of a silver braid deeper in the thicket sent him charging after it.

In the darkness creatures pursued him, spreading their filth through the earth to infect the tree roots and silence them one by one. The corruption would not wait, it would not stop, it would only bring death and decay with it until the whole forest was exactly like its master. And what could he do? Fight it? No, he must only escape and hope to live another day in the light, not their half-world of wraiths and slavery.

He kept running. The children were still out here, somewhere, and he had to find them.

Footsteps disturbed the borders of his mind, harsh and heavy. Voices, lights—they were gone when he turned to face them.

He had to keep going.

A seed of blue-white light in the deep woods grew brighter and brighter, casting a glow that blurred the small branches and lit up the fog that had settled in around the underbrush. The large trees threw stark shadows as the light bobbed larger—no, closer.

They were coming. Elrond took off running in the opposite direction, deeper into the dark trees. The children, he had to find the children.

After-images glowed behind his eyelids when he blinked. He could not see where he was going—damn the light! He rubbed his eyes and kept walking. They had gone this way, surely he had to be close. They were only children, and who knew how long they had been out here. He had to find them soon.

Had he even seen them? Was it only a trick? He was so tired...

No. It was real. They were real, and he had to find them.

His eyes were adjusting to the darkness again, but while he strained to see, his stomach lurched as his foot sank into an unexpected hole—his ankle wrenched painfully and his leg buckled under him.

“Ow!” Elrond grabbed at a scrubby plant to pull himself up. His ankle throbbed, and it wobbled when he tried to put his weight on it, but it didn't seem broken. He had to keep going. The children were still out here.

He limped through bushes and over hills. His breath was coming harder and harder, but he could not see the bright light any longer, just the light of the moon and stars. By that light he would surely see the little twins' silver hair or silken garments.

Darkness swirled all around him as he hobbled further and further. The voices and footsteps were coming nearer. Elrond hobbled faster, trying not to lose sight of the children—he couldn’t see their silver hair in the gloom, but he thought he could hear their faint voices even as the louder calls drowned them out. The world pitched and spun around him but he stayed upright.

“This way!”

“Slow down!” he called. “I can’t find you unless you stay put!” He picked up his feet and ran into the darkness. Twigs scratched at his arms and face and mosses tangled in his hair, fingers of the earth reaching to snatch him up and drag him into the soft, wet darkness of decomposition. He could smell the maggots and molds and the worm-eaten bones in layers beneath his feet, shot through with the tang of salt and anxious sweat and old blood.

The forest closed in around him. The voices fell behind. The rustle of children’s feet upon the loam turned, and paused, and then faded. Elrond braced his hands on his knees, catching his breath.

“Come back! Who are you? Where are your parents?”

There was no answer but the hoot of an owl.

Elrond gulped several times. He couldn’t empty his lungs—each breath in seemed to fill his head with empty space. Stars flickered in the deep shadows all around him. The spidery hands of branches and vines wrapped around his ankles and brought him to his knees when he tried to continue into the woods. It was so utterly dark, a void of sight and reason but filled to bursting with sound and scent and terror—

There, a flash of silver in the underbrush. A braid, a pale face, eyes round and dark with fear. Another child peered out next to the first, nearly an exact mirror, and then they turned and ran.

“Stop! Wait!” Elrond lurched forward. His legs did not, and he crumpled. This time, he could not get up.

He lay, sound and darkness closing in upon him, and the children disappeared.

“Stop running,” he said weakly. His breath disturbed a tuft of grass before his lips as the dark trees and bright stars spun in a dizzying whirl around his head. No amount of struggling and clawing for purchase could bring him to his feet again, and finally he relented, panting.

The blue-white glow and shifting darkness came brighter and starker through the trees. Elrond could not look away. There were voices and foliage rustling underfoot, not the formless void he had expected to come and swallow him up. The calls came as if through water, muffled and distorted, growing sharper until they stabbed at the tenderest membranes inside his ears, too loud to understand.

“—you close? Can you hear us? Elrond!”

A quick, darting shadow fell over Elrond's face. Something soft on his hands, then his cheek. The light flooded over him a moment later, a star-bright blaze that blinded him to what little he could see in the dark. When his eyes cleared, he saw dark braids and gray eyes bent low over him, lips forming the shapes of his name and a gold ring twinkling in a familiar nose.

Elros.

“He's breathing! He's looking at me!” Elros looked over his shoulder. “His skin is cold!”

The light shifted again. It illuminated deep scars on a drawn face surrounded by a fiery halo. Maedhros. He held up what appeared to be a stone that glowed like blue-white fire. His breath was a pale mist when he sank to one knee next to Elros, but Elrond did not feel cold.

“It's about damn time,” he growled, but it did not quite mask the panic that seemed to flow off him like sweat. “Can you hear me, boy? Can you understand me?”

“Yes,” Elrond heard himself say. It came out as a dry rasp.

“Hold this,” Maedhros said to Elros, pushing the white fire into his hands. He fumbled with the thick cloak around his own neck and shoulders. “Can you walk?”

Could he? Would he be able to instruct his arms to pick him up from the forest floor, and his legs to carry him? Could he control anything? Could he ever? Could he even form the words to say yes, I can?

He didn't manage to say anything, but Maedhros was already picking him up and wrapping him in the cloak. Elrond struggled uselessly against his grip when Maedhros hefted him over his good shoulder like a sack of grain. “The children!” Elrond finally burst out. “I have to find them!”

Neither Elros nor Maedhros seemed to understand him. “Cup the lamp from behind so it lights the path in front of you,” Maedhros said to Elros. “Do you remember the way we came? That's all right, I do. No, I can see over your head. Yes. Go! Move!”

“They're still out here!” Elrond pleaded, but again, they did not seem to understand. He thrashed and kicked, but Maedhros' hold on him might as well have been made of iron. When he finally exhausted the last of his reserves, he relented, sagging bonelessly over Maedhros' shoulder, and let himself be carried. He could do nothing else. He could do nothing for the children.

The smells and sounds of the forest were now dampened by a faceful of Maedhros' wool tunic. He smelled like anxious sweat and still water. Elrond bounced gently to the rhythm of his heavy footsteps, and above them, he could hear Elros' lighter feet pattering more quickly ahead. They rustled through ferns and crunched over loose rocks. A stream burbled in the distance. A sudden scrambling and tiny whispers in the bushes—Elrond wrenched his head up and spat out a mouthful of Maedhros' hair just in time to see another flash of silver in the darkness.

“There they are!” he cried. “Maedhros! Elros!”

“All right, you little bastard,” Maedhros said, giving him a jostle. “You're lucky to be alive as it is. Do not bring everything that prowls the woods at night down on us.”

At that, Elrond could only let out a wordless scream of frustration.

“Shush! ”

Elrond fought him all the way through the forest, alternately slumping down with exhaustion and inciting a fresh struggle when he found another wind in him. Children's voices and flashes of silver whirled all around him, and no matter how much he protested, Maedhros and Elros did not seem to understand or sometimes even hear him. Time and distance lost meaning in the midst of his distress, and soon he found he could not distinguish between the children's voices and those of Maedhros and Elros as they navigated back along their path into the forest. Maedhros' cloak trapped his arms and seemed to constrict him more tightly every time he moved. Wool, hair, and foliage against his face scratched and burned and made him angrier and angrier—the children were still out there, they were going to die, and his captors were ignoring him!

Other lights and sounds materialized around him. More voices. Torches and lamps, though none as bright as Maedhros' blue-white stone. The trees thinned, familiar smells of animals and woodsmoke filled the air, and soon the children's voices were lost in the chorus of other noises. Elrond surrendered at last, and he wept, but no tears welled up in his burning eyes.

“He's alive?”

“You found him!”

“Give him space,” Maedhros ordered. “Call in the search. I'll tell you more later.”

“No, send them to search for the children,” Elrond said one last time, but a door creaked shut, muffling the crowd's voices and any hope of them hearing him. He was being lifted again and then placed down on something soft, but the ground still seemed to move with the rhythm of Maedhros' long strides. A cool, damp cloth touched his cheek and the scents of mint and lavender filled his nose. He flinched once, but a firm hand settled on his shoulder and he didn’t flinch when the cloth pressed against his forehead.

“Calm down, Elrond. Calm. It’s us. You’re safe.”

He recognized Osgardir. He was in his nightshirt with a robe tied hastily over the top. Behind him, Maedhros tucked the stone into a pouch and the blue-white light faded away. After-images lingered for a moment in Elrond’s vision. In them he saw fleeting silver reflections like stars winking out before dawn.

“The children are still out there,” Elrond said one more time, desperate. They could not fade into the darkness.

“Deep breaths. Speak more slowly—it’s all coming out in a jumble.”

What? He was saying it, why weren’t they understanding him? Still, Elrond took a deep breath in, held it, and then let it out through his nose. “The children,” he said, enunciating his words. “We have to go back for them.”

Maedhros frowned. “What children?”

“In the woods. All in silver. Little twins.” Elrond gulped and pulled away from Osgardir’s hand. “Someone has to go and find them before it’s too late.”

Maedhros stared at him, brow furrowed and mouth slightly open as if he were about to speak, but nothing came out.

“Do you have any idea how long we were searching for you?” Elros barked before Maedhros could say anything. “If there were any children out there, we would have seen them! Why would you ever wander off like that? What were you thinking?”

Osgardir’s eyes flashed. “Elros!”

“Who told you about the children?” Maedhros blurted out suddenly, his voice cracking.

“What?” Elrond rubbed his temples. He ached all over. “I saw them out in the woods!”

“Would you have been able to tell if they were one of your illusions?” Osgardir asked.

“I swear they were real!”

Maedhros was nearly smoke-white. “They couldn’t have been! It was… it was so many years ago!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

Osgardir, amazingly, was still trying to get rational answers. “Did you first run into the woods to look for them?”

“No, I just…” Elrond clenched his jaw. He wanted to scream—he couldn’t explain it, they wouldn’t understand it anyway, he hadn’t wanted to be found and the fact remained that Maglor wanted to get rid of him. There were children in the woods, and even though he had seen and heard them he now could not even convince himself that they were real. Was this not madness?

“Elrond, did you perhaps—”

“I just want it to stop!”

A ringing silence followed his shout, and a sense of clarity as clean and sharp as winter air in his nose and throat. Elrond opened his eyes and had to blink a few times before they cleared, and when they did, he saw Osgardir and Maedhros with their eyes squeezed shut and their hands over their ears, shoulders hunched as if flinching away from a blow. Neither of them said anything for one endless moment, and then Elros rushed forward, amazement written all over him. “Elrond! What was that?”

Elrond frowned. “What?”

Osgardir cautiously uncovered his ears and looked up. His eyes were watering. “Did you... do anything different?”

“I don't know what you mean,” Elrond said. He felt like he was begging, but he could not say for what.

“A push?” Osgardir gestured as if to illustrate a concept without words. “A... force? A reach?”

“I felt it,” Maedhros said. His poor scarred ears stayed flat against his head when he uncovered them, as if anticipating another sharp noise. “Your thoughts extending beyond your body. It's... words alone can't describe the feeling.”

Elrond stared at them both. “You... felt my thoughts?”

“It would seem so,” Osgardir said.

Elrond looked at Elros. “Did you feel it?”

Elros only shrugged, helpless.

“This is the way elves communicated before we learned to speak,” Maedhros said. A canny spark had entered his eyes. “In our day it takes conscious effort and years of practice. It does not happen by accident.”

“I didn't do it on purpose.”

“No... this is something else.”

Another silence. When Elrond looked around, he felt as if he had not noticed his surroundings until now: the infirmary, and the same cot he’d become very familiar with over the past months. Only one lamp was lit, and the remnants of an earlier fire smoldered on the hearth at the end of the long room, but otherwise it was dark. Dark and ordinary, with shadows that slept, unlike those in the deep woods. The familiarity now seemed strange, but the silence was so beautiful. He wanted to swallow it and breathe it all in until everything inside him was as dark and quiet as this room.

“We can puzzle it out later. You are dehydrated, I can tell just by looking at you,” Osgardir said after a moment, and it was only then that Elrond realized how thirsty he was. His physical body and its demands had seemed so distant. The healer went briefly behind his compounding table and emerged with a large mug, which he placed in Elrond’s hands. “This is just fresh water with some honey and a bit of salt. Drink it slowly—slowly, I said—and then we’ll try to get some food in you.” While Elrond drank, Osgardir departed to poke the fire.

“The mob wants answers,” Maedhros muttered while Elrond sipped the solution. It tasted like tears. “Elros, keep an eye on him.”

“I’ll keep both eyes on him.”

“Good.”

At last, a pause, and Elrond could think. Elros watched him intently while he drank from his mug. Instead of staring back, Elrond turned his eyes toward a polished metal tub on the opposite side of the room.

The figure that stared back at him was almost unrecognizable. He was like a skeleton. He had dark circles around his eyes and unmistakable circular wounds up and down his arms, and he shuddered when he touched one. His hair was a knotted, twig-tangled mane that had almost entirely escaped from its two braids. Only the gold ring in his nose separated him from a beast. Somehow it was like looking at a stranger, or like he had forgotten what he looked like until now.

He had stopped looking when the mirror betrayed him months ago. The reflection was not always his own, and sometimes he was not alone in the polished surface. He hid the mirror. Soon he began seeing things in puddles and cups of water. He flinched away from anything polished enough to reflect his face—or anything else—back at him.

The twins had spent a lot of time staring at themselves in the mirror once people began remarking at how tall and handsome they were becoming. Elros in particular spent a lot of time smoothing down the little hairs at his temples, rearranging his eyebrows, picking between his teeth, straightening his nose ring, experimenting with his clothes, and rebraiding his hair until he was satisfied. They shared one small mirror, so Elrond sometimes had to tackle him and take it after more diplomatic attempts failed, but he had more priorities than just his physical beauty.

He examined his face and ran his fingers over his cheeks and chin to see if he was growing any whiskers, but found none. Likewise, when he held a lantern behind the mirror to see if he could detect a faint iridescence reflecting back from his eyes, he saw nothing. His ears were slightly pointed and could have gone either way.

Whether the dreams and visions or the physical changes had come first, Elrond couldn’t say. He and Elros both sprouted like stalks of hemp under the sun. They started growing patches of hair where there hadn’t been hair before, and their voices boomed at lower octaves than ever. Elrond had been singing the first time his throat produced something closer to Rochael’s voice than his own. Maglor immediately heaped solicitous praise on his singing voice, assuring him that it was still lovely and that his voice was only becoming deeper as he grew older and don’t worry, it’s perfectly normal, every boy goes through this same process around your age! It was much worse than Maedhros’ approach to the situation: “You are becoming a young man,” he had said, unceremoniously tossing him a bar of soap. “You need to wash your armpits.”

Clearly they were changing as they matured, but Elrond had never heard anything about people normally seeing visions or hearing disembodied voices or smelling and feeling unseen sensations when they approached adulthood.

Elros finally took a comb from the bedside table when he had grown weary of silence. “You have leaves in your hair. Let me fix it.”

“I can do it myself,” Elrond said defensively, but Elros only brandished the comb.

“You need to drink your water,” he retorted. Normally Elrond would have argued his point, but now he just shrugged and rolled his eyes as Elros set about combing snarls out of his loose curls. Elros, of course, knew how to do it without tugging: he started from the ends and worked his way up, picking out plant matter and gently unraveling knots, and when it was all combed out into a soft, voluminous mass, he began braiding. It was the most reassuring thing in the midst of Elrond’s confusion.

“Maedhros went a bit mad when we realized you were missing,” Elros said once he had tied off the two braids. Both twins wore them long enough to sit on. “He went like this for a while,” he put his hands on his head and crumpled into a primal hunch, “and kept saying not again, not again. Then he got this... fire in his eyes and went around bellowing at people until he could make enough search teams to look for you. I couldn't tell you whether he's actually blinked in the last two days.”

Elrond frowned a little. “What did he mean, 'not again'?”

“I don't know. He tried to make me stay behind, but I said I'd look for you myself if he wouldn't give me a partner, so after that he took me with him so he could keep an eye on me.” Elros grinned at that, clearly satisfied with himself.

Osgardir returned with another large mug of thin porridge and a shapeless smock. “Here, Elrond, you can change and then drink this up as well. You, go check yourself for ticks,” he told Elros, who made a show of taking off his boots and peering between his toes, but otherwise stayed nearby.

While Elrond drank his porridge, Osgardir examined him all over and declared him much too thin, but otherwise healthy. His ankle was swollen and sore but not broken, so Osgardir just wrapped it tightly and told him to stay off it as much as possible. Afterward he made Elrond drink more water and porridge over the course of a few hours until he was able to urinate and the healer was satisfied with the color of it.

Elros, still wearing his cloak, had curled up on the floor and drifted off by the time Elrond came back out from behind the curtain, and Osgardir just chuckled and gently rolled him onto a pallet.

Elrond slept more deeply than he had in a long time, and only realized it when he opened his eyes to daylight and the scent of fresh spring air wafting in through open shutters. He pushed himself up on his cot and stretched, questions materializing on his tongue as he took stock of his surroundings. Elros was still asleep on his pallet, but Maedhros had gone. Instead, Maglor occupied a chair at the foot of Elrond’s bed, still in dusty traveling clothes and dozing over his folded arms.

There he was. Elrond ran through any number of things he would say, trying to think up responses that would come close to explaining what he was thinking and why he had done it but all the questions and answers buzzed into incoherence inside his skull.

Maglor’s head bobbed up at a small noise. His eyes were red and shadowed, but a renewed light came into his face when he saw Elrond.

“You’re awake!”

“Um, I guess I am.”

Maglor paused, open-mouthed, and Elrond braced for the inevitable demand to explain himself, but it did not come. “Osgardir wanted you to drink this when you woke up,” Maglor said instead, holding out another large mug of porridge. Elrond took it and dutifully took a gulp, even though it was room-temperature and he had to gag it down.

“I wasn’t in my right mind,” he said, anticipating an interrogation and trying to avoid drinking more cold porridge. “It was stupid, I know. I just... you were already going to send me away when you returned...” It sounded amazingly stupid when he said it out loud, and he looked down at his mug instead of at Maglor’s face. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” Maglor said, pain showing clearly in the lines around his mouth. “I do. I apologize for making you feel as if that was what I wanted. Nothing could be further from the truth. I was... trying to do the right thing at the wrong time.”

Elrond frowned. “What did you mean when what did you mean when you said it would be better for everyone when we are out of your house?”

“You were never supposed to be here. I know it was a long time ago for you, but in my memory it was nearly yesterday.” Maglor looked away. “I cannot look at the two of you without remembering my crimes. You deserve much better to be raised by those who...” he trailed off, unable to put it into words.

“We aren’t unhappy,” Elrond said. “You have kept us safe and taught us many things. I don’t know, but I’d say you’ve done all right.”

“It was never supposed to be me. It was supposed to be your parents and all the rest of their kin.”

“They aren't here. You are.”

“I am the poorest of substitutes.”

“I don't care.”

“I cannot... this cannot be permanent. You know this already. You must inevitably leave my house before you fall any further under the shadow of my Oath.” Maglor cleared his throat and looked back up at Elrond. “Wants are the enemies of needs.”

Elrond frowned. “Can we wait to talk about this until my mind is no longer trying to tear itself apart? I need you here now. I look to you for both my needs and my wants. Will you punish me for that?”

“No... of course not.” A long pause. Maglor smoothed the blanket on Elrond’s cot. “Maedhros was right. None of this was ever your fault. I would say that I will try to do the right thing, but that usually goes badly, so I will say this: I will try to do right by you, according to your needs at the moment. And if you need my support, then you will have it.”

A lump had formed in Elrond’s throat, and he could only nod.

Maglor fidgeted a little. “You seem better than you have been recently,” he said, changing the subject. “I turned back as soon as Maedhros sent someone to fetch me, but I still didn’t make it back until dawn. My brother and Osgardir explained what transpired last night.”

“Which parts?”

“All of it.”

“Even the part where they felt my thoughts, or whatever it was?”

“Yes.”

Elrond paused, considering his chances, and then asked the question that remained on his mind. “I saw two children in the woods, twin boys with silver hair. Maedhros asked who told me about them, but no one did, I just saw them. Did they tell you that part?”

Maglor nodded. “Osgardir did.”

“Were they real? I didn’t dream them up, did I?”

“You didn’t. They were real, though that wretched story transpired before you were born, and far from here. It would have been impossible for you to have seen them in the flesh.”

“Who were they?”

Maglor looked uncomfortable, and he hesitated before he spoke. “Children of Doriath. They were lost in the forest, despite Maedhros’ efforts to save them. It weighs heavily on him.”

That explained much, but Elrond had other priorities just now. “If I am seeing and feeling things that really happened, but that I didn’t even know about…” he frowned, examining his hands. When had they become so thin? “And if I can reach into others’ minds… maybe these illusions are other people’s thoughts. Maybe I’m experiencing them without even trying.”

“Do you think all of your visions can be explained in this way?”

“I’m not sure.” At that, a long-dormant memory sprang into his mind. “Wait—no! They can’t! At least I don’t think so. Just before the earthquake, I woke up feeling… anxious, like I was waiting for something important. I could… I don’t know if it was really… I woke Elros up, and then it hit.” He shrugged. “I just remembered it again. I don’t know if it was anything like the visions, but it happened.”

“Some of our kind have the gift of foresight. Our mother has it,” Maglor said. “It would not be out of the question for you to have foreseen the earthquake. But this is still a mysterious gift even to the very wise among us, and I wouldn’t know whether it is tied to the other things you have seen.”

It did not feel like a gift. “This will never go away, will it. This is just… how I am now.”

Maglor took a cautious breath in. “I couldn’t say.”

“I am so tired of no one knowing anything!” Elrond burst out, surprising himself and making Maglor jump a little. “I just want to know! It seems like a simple question! What is wrong with me? And why am I like this?” He immediately regretted it when Elros, still sleeping on the floor, jolted awake.

“Huh?” He rubbed his scrunched face. “Why are we yelling?”

“Sorry,” Elrond muttered.

“I’m not sure there is anything wrong with you,” Maglor said earnestly, leaning forward. “It may be that this is just something that needs to be understood, and we already know more than we did yesterday. We know you have seen the past. The present as well, when you experienced the pig slaughter as if you were one of the pigs. And the future, well, aside from the earthquake, there isn’t anything to confirm yet. Unless you remember something else.”

“Not yet. I’ll have to think about it.”

Maglor soon took his leave, promising to bring Elrond a clean set of clothes later. Elros stayed, and Elrond filled him in on what he had discovered through his conversation with Maglor, this time with a renewed resolve to gain control.

“It all stopped when I... jumped into your thoughts last night,” Elrond said. It was frustrating to not have the vocabulary to explain what had happened, but he was going to try anyway. “Everything made sense afterward. Well, I still didn’t know what was happening to me, but I could tell that everything was real and I wasn’t having any visions. If other people’s thoughts give me visions, maybe I can stop having visions if I push them back out.”

Elros shrugged. “That sounds logical, I guess. If logic even applies here.”

“I think it does,” Elrond replied, hoping that if he believed it strongly enough, it would be true. “The problem is that I don’t know how to do it on purpose.”

“Well, don’t ask me,” Elros said with a crooked smile.

“I probably just have to practice. It’s like sword training.” Elrond opened his hands. “See if you can send a thought at me. Or just think something really hard, and I should see it. Then I’ll try to push it back to you. Maybe imagine that there’s something in this room that isn’t normally here.”

“All right.” Elros met Elrond’s eyes and set his mouth in a firm line. “I’m thinking of something. Can you see it?”

Elrond looked around. There was nothing out-of-place around the curtained cubicle where he had slept, whether in plain sight or hidden anywhere he could think to look. He stood, wincing a little when he put his weight on his ankle—he’d forgotten about it—and hobbled out into the ward. Cots, curtains, tables, clay jugs, folded linens, nothing he wouldn’t expect to see in the infirmary. “Am I looking in the right place?” He peered under another cot and found it also empty. “Can I have a hint?”

“If you were seeing it, you would know,” Elros said.

“It isn’t working, then.” Elrond straightened up. “Maybe if I try a different—oh, perfect,” he said when Osgardir came in through the back door, carrying a basket of clippings from the herb garden. “Osgardir! Think something at me!”

“What?”

“I’ll explain later. Can you just... imagine there’s something unusual in this room? I’m performing an experiment.”

“All right, I’m thinking of something.” Osgardir smiled slightly and stood by the door while Elrond tried to get himself in the right state to let the vision manifest in his mind. Maybe he had to focus harder? No, what if he could only do it without thinking? Maybe it only worked on real memories and emotions, not fancies?

“I don’t think I can see it,” Elrond said, looking around the ward a second time. Nothing seemed to have changed. “I’ll need to try something else.”

“Well, keep at it. I have work to do.” Osgardir went to the compounding table. He paused for a moment, and then brought Elrond a wax tablet and a stylus. “Remember, the only difference between experimenting and fooling around is whether you write it down.”

Evening fell, and Elrond still had not managed to recreate a vision or test out his theory.

“There has to be a way. I won’t just accept that I’m at the mercy of the visions whenever they decide to show up.” He twirled the stylus between his fingers. “If I was able to stop the madness in its tracks last night, I can do it again.”

“I’m hungry,” Elros said from his prone position on the floor. “And I’m out of ideas. Can we work on it tomorrow?”

“That’s easy for you to say!”

Osgardir looked up from his desk at the back of the ward, from which he had left the twins to their experiments throughout the afternoon. “Elrond, if you are feeling better today, you should go to the longhouse for dinner,” he said. “Otherwise I’ll assume you’re still ill and you will have gruel.”

Elrond wrinkled his nose at that prospect. He could not remember the last time he had felt truly hungry, but now he did notice a petulant rumble in his belly, and he did feel better. If he knew anything about his condition, he knew that he should make the most of a good episode while it lasted.

He looked over the tablet one more time to see if there was anything obvious he had missed for now.

    Elros remembering something last week - no

    Elros remembering something three years ago - no

    Trying to see Elros’ thoughts while he isn’t paying attention - no

    Trying to see Osgardir’s thoughts while he isn’t paying attention - no

    Elros thinking something at me while I nap - no

    Trying to see Elros’ thoughts while he naps - no

    Trying to remember a past episode - no

    Lying on the ground and pretending I’m back in the woods - no

    Making a noise to irritate Osgardir until he tells me to stop - no

    Trying to scare Elros awake - no

Maybe I’ll think of some more while we eat,” he conceded, and left the tablet on his cot.

Dinner at the longhouse turned out to be distracting and uncomfortable, however, so he didn’t think about his experiment as much as he would have liked. The smell of grilled chicken put him on edge before they even came through the doors. Maglor sliced him up a breast with crispy skin, along with a large helping of cooked barley and new greens, but Elrond lost much of his appetite when he looked at the open muscle fibers in his meat.

The rest of the table was jovial, clearly happy that Elrond was safe and looking well. Still, they danced over what to say to him or about his condition, and he could tell that they were trying very hard to have a normal dynamic, but half of them stared too intently and the other half avoided looking directly at him, and between bites of barley he was also trying to think of a way to discreetly dispose of the chicken.

One of the dogs was wagging its tail and sniffing Elrond’s left hand under the table. There! He picked up a slice of meat, waited until all the attention was on Alagostor and a joke he was telling, and then slipped the morsel to the dog.

Its tail beat harder against his shin, and a wet nose and eager tongue on his fingers begged for another.

Elrond did not manage to escape from company until it was fully dark and time for bed. Everyone asked expectantly whether he was going to sleep in his own bed—rejoin the household, they meant. He was supposed to be well again. Fixed.

“It’s quieter in the infirmary,” he said, weary. “I’m not quite back to my old self.”

“Do you want me to stay with you?” Elros offered.

“I’ll be all right.”

Still, Elros walked with him to the infirmary, and didn’t turn back to the longhouse until Osgardir acknowledged Elrond’s presence.

A rocky cliff face stretched up before him, and at the top, stone walls were stark black against a smoky red sky. It all smelled of dirty fires and death, like the high plains and rolling hills around it. They should not have come.

“There! On the wall! It's... oh, Allfather...”

He looked up, focusing on the bright spot above the gates. Features materialized: silver mail, long pale hair like a tattered banner, the remnants of a silver-white surcoat streaked with soot and dried blood. Skin darkened and cracked with decomposition. Cruel spikes of iron driven through the body, pinning it to the wall at the shoulders, chest, stomach.

Numbness spread through his body and down his limbs. Light and sound dropped out of the world. He could not look away from the body on the wall. The numbness transformed slowly, like a flame gathering strength, into a sweeping rage that blocked out everyone and everything but the agony in his heart and spilled out into a scream that burned his throat—

Elrond woke with a jolt, disoriented. It took him a moment to remember where he was: in a bed in the infirmary, and to his disgust, his tangled nightshirt and sheets were both moist with cold sweat. Dawn light seeped through the crack in the shutters, but the ward was still dark. He shuddered and flung his bedding aside. There would be no more sleep after such a dream, even though his eyes still prickled with fatigue. No, not fatigue: when he rubbed his face, he found it wet with hot, angry tears.

He reached for the pitcher of water on the side table, but it wasn’t there. Beyond the foot of his bed, clay shards stood like islands in a large puddle that glistened darkly on the floor.

Cursing under his breath, he pulled the sheets off his cot and began sopping up the water and broken pitcher before Osgardir could see the damage. He’d have to explain what happened, but that was better than anyone seeing it for themselves and drawing their own conclusions about his madness.

The door to the front room creaked open. “Elrond? I heard a crash, is everything all right?”

“I’m fine, I just...” Elrond gritted his teeth and tossed a fallen braid back over his shoulder. “Ugh, I just woke up. I must have thrown the water jug in my sleep. Sorry. I’m cleaning it up now.”

Osgardir opened the door wider, pale light lifting the shadows around him. “It’s only a jug. No harm done.” He crossed the room to prop the shutters open, and then came back to help Elrond with the mess.

They worked in silence for a few minutes, tracking down and disposing of all the splinters of clay and mopping up the last of the water. The dream still stuck in Elrond’s mind, sharp and angry and enduring like a memory. Had he seen it before? No, he hadn’t seen anything like it, and he suspected that it truly belonged to someone else. “I was having a nightmare. I think it might have been another vision.”

“Oh? How are you able to tell?”

“It felt like I had seen it before, but I haven’t.” Elrond twisted a corner of the sheet around his finger. “I haven’t ever seen anything so... depraved.”

Osgardir paused. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. I saw high stone walls. A fortress, like the kind people say we used to live in. The sky was so smoky that it looked red. And there was... an elf. Pinned to the wall with spikes.”

Another pause, and Elrond began to wonder if he had done something wrong by bringing it up. Osgardir gathered up the bundle of wet sheets and stood to take them to the hamper. “You assumed correctly,” he said. “That took place long before you were born. You couldn’t have known the details without knowing the context.”

“What happened?”

“You shouldn’t concern yourself with it.”

“It concerns me if I have to see it, even if I wasn't there when it happened,” Elrond said shortly. He was too tired and unsettled to be polite.

Osgardir turned back and fixed him with a level stare. “You saw a white-haired elf hanging from the wall of a fortress, correct? Against a red sky?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “You saw Himring after it fell. Maedhros hoped to retake it from the enemy. The elf you saw was Raemben, my spouse, who was kin to Maedhros and the regent of Himring in his absence.”

“Oh.” Words caught in Elrond’s throat. Questions, sympathies—none of them seemed right, but he couldn’t just leave it at that. “I’m sorry.”

“I survived it then, and I’ll survive the reminder of it now.” Osgardir gave him a crooked smile.

Elrond considered his next question carefully. “Were you thinking about her?”

“Them,” Osgardir corrected gently, and Elrond nodded his understanding. “Not a day goes by that I do not. But I was concentrating on something else just now, if that answers your question.”

Elrond just kept nodding. It did answer his question, but left him with others: he remembered the sluggish misery and the illusion of High King Fingon’s presence which, in retrospect, had been one of the first noticeable intrusions of his curse. Would he have to relive the grief of every single widower in the compound? Why him?

Once they finished cleaning up the mess, Osgardir returned to his work in the front room where he usually consulted with visitors while Elrond washed his face and dressed for the day. He felt fine, or at least not any worse than usual. Now that he had some idea of what was happening to him, he figured it was time to return to normal life.

“I think I’ll try to return to the longhouse today,” Elrond said once he had gathered his things and went out into the front room. “I’ll have to figure this out as I go. Even if I don’t know where to start.”

“Come back to the infirmary if it becomes too difficult,” Osgardir said. “I can give you some valerian. That helped you before.”

“It made me groggy.” Elrond shrugged. “It was better than nothing, I guess.”

“Take care of yourself. This will not happen overnight.”

Elrond nodded, shrugged again, and turned to leave. He still had the image of Raemben in his mind, and it made words difficult, even if Osgardir did not outwardly react to Elrond intruding upon his grief. That was what it felt like, even if he had not meant to do it. He reached for the door handle, but instead the door burst open from the outside and knocked him off his feet.

“Careful!” Osgardir admonished the newcomer, but she was already talking.

It was Serecthel. She carried her wife Midhien in her arms. “She needs help—it was out by the mill, no one saw it coming—”

“More slowly now,” Osgardir said, coming forward to help Midhien onto a chair. “What happened?”

“She dropped a hammer and had to go into the long grass to get it,” Serecthel said, hovering as Osgardir gently examined her swollen leg. “I heard her scream, but by the time I got there the adder had already bitten her. It slithered away before I could kill it!”

“It was only defending itself. I should have stepped more carefully,” Midhien said, but her voice was tight with panic.

A hiss, and Elrond’s breath caught in his threat when his eyes landed on sinuous coils near his foot, scales glistening in the light from the window, a tongue flickering in and out—

Not now! He squeezed his eyes shut. She was bitten by the mill. The snake is not here. Stay in this room. Stay.

Cautiously, he opened his eyes a crack. It was all wrong: he was too low to the ground, looking up at the two punctures in Midhien’s leg and the swelling around them. He could smell blood, he could smell heat, he was frightened and angry and he would do it again, it was all he had—

No! No! Stay here! You are Elrond, you know what you are!

He had a thread, and he held to it. It was all that tethered him to the surface, but he had it, and as long as he did, he had a way back. A screaming rush of noise and feeling filled his ears and nose and pulled at his lips and eyelids. Something was drawing it all in and he couldn’t stop it from collecting in every gap and taking over everything he knew to be real, but still he held to the single gossamer strand that separated meaning from madness.

Breathe. Feel it in your bones. There, see your hands on the floor, hear your heart beating. I am alive, I am substance, I am Elrond. I am choosing to be Elrond. Breathe. Calm. I am here.

“Midhien, I need you to calm down,” came Osgardir’s voice, as cool as spring. “You are not going to die. Breathe slowly. We don’t want the venom to spread any further.”

Elrond held tight. He would not go under. The world jittered and warped around him, images catching behind his eyelids when he blinked. Long grass and smooth scales under his fingers. No, it was wood. It kept fighting him, but the thread had become a rope, and he braced himself against the thrashing as he reeled it in. You are not my master.

His teeth slid over the pitted skin of his forearm and he faltered just for a moment, enough to slip, but he pulled his head back and closed his lips. Not again. I don’t need it anymore.

“No, no, you aren’t dying, you’re only panicking. The swelling hasn’t spread far, do you see?”

“Midhien, love, it’s all right!”

I am in control. Elrond closed his eyes again. His heart pounded in his ears and everything else faded to a dull buzz, irrelevant, only a background to the rush of blood in his body around tense muscles and trembling nerves. He went deeper, to his bones, and anchored himself there. My mind is mine. My body is mine. I am Elrond of three kindreds. I am not anyone else . He breathed in. Energy filled his belly and flowed out along the lines of his body, bones and nerves and muscles and veins, and it was his . He breathed. He lived.

I am in control. I am. Me.

When he looked again, the room was as real as he was, from the plank floor to the light coming in the open window. Another breath. Slow and strong, like looping the rope around his wrist. It would not be tugged away from him now. I move. I breathe. I live. This is reality. I am real.

Breathe. Control. I am real.

A tremble in time. Elrond gritted his teeth as he pushed himself up onto his knees. No. Stay here. I am not going to let you take over again. Not this time.

One last shiver. Everything slipped into place and was still.

“Good, Midhien. Just keep breathing. Would you like a heavy blanket? Serecthel, could you get—yes, in that cupboard, thank you. How long ago did the bite happen?”

Elrond got to his feet. He took stock of his body as Osgardir continued to interview Midhien and assess the extent of the swelling. He hadn’t lost control at any point. He hadn’t bitten himself or destroyed anything. He felt weightless, but not unpleasantly so: after struggling to keep himself anchored to what he knew to be real, the strange absence of the cruel force ripping it away left him floating with the currents of time as it happened. He was free.

With Midhien calming down, Osgardir looked over at Elrond at last. “Are you all right? That door looked like it hurt.”

“I’m fine,” Elrond muttered. “I just had... an episode. It’s over. I’ll go now.”

Serecthel was holding Midhien and stroking her back as Elrond reached for the door handle again. “What happened just now was so strange,” Midhien said softly. “It was like I wasn’t struggling alone. Like someone had taken over for me. I’ve never felt anything like it before.”

The words tingled in Elrond’s ears and he stopped in his tracks. He looked over his shoulder to see Osgardir looking back at him, brow furrowed in concentration and one hand raised slightly as if asking him to stop. “How could you tell?” he asked Midhien.

“There was a... sense of control. Like I was coming back into my body and centering myself from the bones up. It almost felt like someone was talking me through it. It wasn’t my own voice.”

A startled pause. Osgardir opened his mouth, but no words came out.

“I’m so sorry,” Elrond blurted out. “I didn’t mean to—I would never try to… manipulate your mind without your permission. I didn’t realize that I was doing it at all. I promise, I—”

“You helped me stop panicking?” Midhien looked up at him, smiling but confused. “How is that possible?”

Elrond nervously ran his hands over his braids. “It’s, um, hard to explain. I’ve been ill, and it turns out that I’m somehow perceiving the minds of people around me.”

“That makes sense, after what I saw at the pig slaughter,” Serecthel said. She kept one arm curled protectively around her wife’s shoulders.

“Yes! That’s what happened, even though I didn’t know it at the time,” Elrond said, relieved. “I was perceiving the pigs’ minds. Just now I was trying to shake off a, another vision, and I suppose it must have… affected you too, if you felt it. I didn’t know I was doing it,” he said again.

“No harm done. Not like this snakebite,” Midhien said, grimacing. “Even if you didn’t mean to do it, I appreciate it, Elrond.”

Elrond tried to respond, but he only managed to produce a semi-coherent babble before fleeing the infirmary.

Word spread quickly of Elrond’s intervention in Midhien’s panic. Praise and encouragement poured in from all sides, especially from those who had only witnessed his breakdown from the periphery, but Elrond hated it.

Why him? Why not Elros, or both of them? Why could no one help him?

“It was a lucky accident, and I don’t intend to do it again,” he said every time someone brought it up.

He knew what it felt like to lose control of his own mind, and he would not inflict that on others, even if it was to their benefit, and even if doing so would help him. He just wanted it to stop. He wanted it to go back to the way it was before, when he didn’t have to worry about other minds spilling into his and his mind spilling into others’.

You have been given a great gift, he heard more than once.

How would they know? Was it really a gift when it had spent the better part of a year trying to kill him or drive him insane? Did only its potential benefit to others make it a gift? Did they care what it took from him in exchange?

“Ohhh, Elrooond!” The bedroom door swinging open made a harmony under Elros’ singsong call. “The sun is shining! Let’s go for a ride!”

Elrond had taken to lying in bed instead of going out where people could offer their opinions about his affliction. He rolled over to see Elros standing in the doorway, already dressed for riding. How long had it been since they last went for a ride? Months? A long time, and he regretted it, but for so long he had been too beset with visions to imagine going with Elros to the stables.

The thought of stroking Rochael’s velvet nose and giving her a carrot eventually roused him. Poor Rochael knew even less about this whole mess than he did.

Under the mules’ steady footsteps and leather creaking as the boys adjusted their seats, Elrond listened to the birds singing and a nearby creek babbling in the distance. The forest seemed quieter than he remembered. Subdued, almost. A small animal rustled through the bushes, but Elrond did not feel its urgency to find food or its fear of pursuit, and he realized that the forest wasn’t quiet at all. He simply did not have every creature’s instincts crowding in on him, from birds feeding their babies to wolves roaming their territory. He was, for once, seeing the world through his own eyes.

A grumble, a flicker of annoyance, a sudden craving—that wasn’t usual. Elrond blinked hard several times. The impression cleared with Rochael shaking out her mane. She wanted another carrot!

“Not until we get back,” Elrond said. He clucked at her and she trotted to catch up to Elros and Peguiel ahead of them on the trail.

Maybe he needed to learn to understand the visions, not try to be rid of them. So far, trying to force them under his control had not worked. Maybe they were stronger than he was, and he had to learn to bend with them like a willow in the wind instead of breaking under the strain.

He was flesh and spirit. They would not be parted from each other. As sure as his flesh was made of fluids and fibers, his spirit had the visions interwoven with it, and as long as he lived, the spirit and all its mysteries were as much a part of him as his viscera.

Like an untested muscle, he had to learn to use it.

He ruminated on that for some time after returning to the compound and giving Rochael her carrot. He had tried to control the visions already to no avail, but deep down he knew that he would need more practice than trying to break into Elros’ mind over a single day. He needed guidance, he needed discipline... there was no one in the compound who could help him, or he would have known about it by now. Still, there had to be a way.

The idea came to him almost immediately. That evening, Elrond returned to the infirmary and asked his question.

“Will you take me as an apprentice?”

A pause. Osgardir looked him in the eye. “I will not,” he said simply.

“Why?”

“Why do you want to be a healer?”

Elrond wished he had practiced a better speech than the one he had in mind. “When Midhien was bitten by the adder and I used my… gift to help her,” he said, stumbling slightly over the word gift . “It was clumsy, and I didn’t have much control over what I was doing, but… I could learn. To use it more. For different people, as long as they agree to it.”

“I can’t teach you anything about it,” Osgardir said with a shrug.

“Maybe not, but you can teach me to be a healer.” Elrond knew he would have to learn the rest on his own.

“You do not know the first thing about being a healer.”

“That’s why I want you to teach me!”

“It isn’t that. Being a healer is more than just a set of skills that one can teach to another.” Elrond opened his mouth to ask how he was supposed to know the craft without being taught, but Osgardir raised his hand to stop him. “A healer sees people at their worst and does not turn away,” he continued. “You see people crying, bleeding, shitting, covered in burns, spilling their guts into your hands, begging you to help them even when you know you cannot. Can you honestly tell me that you are prepared to face that?”

Elrond could not respond to that. I’m prepared to try seemed like the right answer, but even that would not be the whole truth. In the end he only managed to leave his mouth open for a heartbeat too long, and Osgardir sighed.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Almost eighteen,” Elrond said, standing up as tall as he could, but Osgardir had the light of centuries in his eyes and was not impressed.

“That’s much too young. I wouldn’t take any elven boy as an apprentice until he was thirty, at the very least.” He paused, thoughtful. “But then… you aren’t an elven boy, are you.”

Elrond frowned. “Am I more or less than an elven boy?”

“Neither. You’re merely different.” Osgardir crossed his arms and gave Elrond a long look. Elrond wanted to fidget under the scrutiny, but he held firm. “I’ll offer you a period of instruction as a student before you commit yourself to a formal apprenticeship,” Osgardir said at last. “That way we can both be assured that you understand what you are taking on.”

“How long will this probation last?”

“As long as necessary. You’ll report for instruction Elenya through Menelya, and you’ll do as you wish on Valanya. You will live at the longhouse as usual. Is that acceptable to you?”

Elrond set his jaw. If this was his path, then he would take it. “It is.”

“Then you will ask Maglor’s permission before you begin. I’ll not go against his wishes.”

Elrond had planned to ask Maglor when he returned to the longhouse for dinner, but instead he found himself trying to find a way to avoid eating what had once been a favorite meal.

“You need to eat,” Maglor said, a note of desperation in his voice. “You love lamb with garlic! And you are so thin!”

He was always anxious when it came to Elrond’s appetite, and Elrond was used to it, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to wave the scrutiny away forever. “I…” Elrond bit his lip and looked down at his dinner. Out of the corner of his eye, Elros was looking right at him and chewing enthusiastically. It was true, at another time he would have eaten as much as he could get, but now he couldn’t bring himself to take a bite. “I can’t.”

Maglor’s brow wrinkled. “What’s wrong?”

“Meat,” Elrond said, and he found that admitting it seemed to take a heavy pack off his shoulders. He took a deep breath. “Ever since the pig slaughter. I can’t eat meat. Even just the smell makes me feel ill.”

“What? I thought you had been clearing your plate!”

“I fed it to the dogs,” Elrond confessed, miserable with guilt, thinking of all the times he had tried not to notice Maglor giving him the largest portions and the choicest cuts. He sank down in his chair.

“You shouldn’t feed them table scraps,” Alagostor spoke up, frowning.

Elrond knew he deserved to be scolded for that, and he sank even lower. “I know. I’m sorry. I just didn’t want... to...” He couldn’t continue. What hadn’t he wanted? For anyone to worry? It was much too late for that, and it seemed like a flimsy explanation anyway.

Maglor reached forward slightly. “I would have understood,” he said.

A pause. Elrond had nothing else to say, but Maglor looked like he was trying to find the right words to continue. Elros peered over at Elrond’s plate. “Can I have yours if you don’t want it?”

“Yes! Please, take it.” Elrond pushed his plate over and only took it back once Elros had taken all the meat and sopped up the juices with his bread.

More silence. Elrond stuffed his mouth with salad and bread and chewed vigorously to fill his ears with something else. Dinner continued as usual, though he could see Maglor watching him out of the corner of his eye.

Now that he had brought his meat aversion into the light, it seemed as good a time as any to bring up the other matter. “There’s something else,” Elrond said once he had swallowed his bite. “I asked Osgardir to take me as an apprentice.”

“What? You’re much too young. He would never agree,” Maglor said. He put down the bite of food that had been halfway to his mouth.

“That’s what Osgardir said,” Elrond muttered. “I think I’m old enough. I’m not a child.”

“Barely!”

“Anyway, he said he wouldn’t take me as an apprentice yet , but he could take me as a student for a while if you agreed to it,” Elrond said a little louder, trying to talk over any coddling before it happened. “It would be a probation to see if I was ready for an apprenticeship.”

“It is mere days since you ran off into the forest to die!”

That stark description made Elrond’s skin crawl, but he found he did not have words to challenge it. “I know! I know! ” Elrond threw up his hands in frustration. “I need to learn to control it--I have no choice! I was able to help Midhien by accident, but that isn’t good enough, and I refuse to win my sanity by, by siphoning it off other people! I know I can help people, and I know that I can help myself, but I’m going to do it purposefully and with the consent of everyone whose minds I touch! This is the only right way!”

A startled silence followed his speech. Maglor leaned forward in his chair. “Elrond, I think—”

“I have a thread of understanding,” Elrond interrupted him, pressing his thumb and forefinger together for emphasis. “That’s enough to tell me that there is more I can learn, but it isn’t enough for me to be satisfied. You can’t tell me I’m too young to learn what I can about whatever it is that I’ve been given.”

Maglor smiled, but it was weary. “No, I cannot.” He steepled his fingers on the tabletop. “What if you decide you aren’t cut out for the healer’s craft?”

“I’ll figure it out another way,” Elrond said. “No matter how long it takes.”

“The boy certainly thinks like a Noldo,” Hestedis remarked.

Maglor sighed. He was quiet for a moment, staring at a spot just past Elrond’s ear, and then he met his eyes again. “I’ll agree to Osgardir’s probation. I only ask that you make no hard promises about it to yourself or anyone else. Please allow yourself to be wrong , if it comes to it.”

I won’t need to, Elrond opened his mouth to say, but he closed it when he realized what was behind Maglor’s request. “Yes. I’ll try.”

“Then you have my blessing.”

“Thank you,” Elrond said. He felt himself smiling, and for once it took no conscious effort.

Elrond was nearly asleep when Elros’ voice, still wide-awake, broke the silence in their dark bedroom.

“Are you still going to come to sword practice?”

Elrond opened one eye a crack. Across the room, Elros lay on top of his covers with his hands behind his head.

“I haven’t gone in a while,” Elrond mumbled. “I haven’t been well enough.”

“Right. Once you’re well, though.”

“I guess it depends.” Right now the thought of going back to sword training seemed exhausting. He hadn’t practiced in so long, and he’d lost so much of his physical condition. It would be a long road back to where he had left off. “You would just tan my hide after having Maedhros to yourself for this long.”

“You’re not wrong,” Elros said, sounding smug. “I can best Amrúnith and Idhren about half the time now.” He paused, and his voice was softer when he spoke again. “I guess it’ll probably never be as simple as it was before.”

“Probably not.”

They both fell silent. Elros sighed and rolled onto his side just as Elrond was about to drift off again. “Sleep well.”

“You too.”

Elrond woke with the sun the next morning after a night spent sleeping lightly and waking often to see if it was time to get up yet. He washed, dressed, made his expected greetings to the household, and was about to run outside when Maglor stopped him and made him take some lunch wrapped in a napkin.

“There isn’t any meat in it,” he said, and then paused. “Good luck.”

“Thank you.”

“It won’t be easy, but I do hope you find what you’re looking for.”

“So do I.”

Filled with purpose, he left the longhouse and started down the path that took him to the infirmary. Approaching it as a student instead of an invalid gave him a new perspective, and he noticed all of its component parts instead of the whole, determined to learn as much as he could about its inner workings. It was a long building, though not quite as large as the longhouse, with double doors at the front and a thatched roof instead of the shingles that marked the structures built after the earthquake. There was a fenced herb garden along one side and clotheslines along the other, and a small porch at the front with a bristly doormat.

Elrond had no sooner set foot on the porch when the doors clattered open from the inside. Osgardir stood in the doorway, hands on his hips. “Do you have Maglor’s permission?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. Well, let’s not waste any daylight. Come upstairs and we’ll get you outfitted.”

Elrond followed Osgardir inside and up the stairs. He had spent significant time in the comfortable front room and the overnight ward that each occupied half the ground floor, but he had not yet seen the loft. It was full of mismatched crates and baskets, some of which looked quite old, but everything was well-organized and free of dust.

“I’ve spent the last hundred years scavenging up a decent infirmary,” Osgardir said, indicating the hoard with a wave of his hand. “I squirrel it all away here, just in case.”

Elrond spotted a cot near the opposite end of the loft, complete with bedding and a pair of slippers on the floor next to it. “Do you live up here?”

“Of course not, I have a house.”

“Oh.” For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to Elrond that Osgardir might have a life outside the infirmary.

“I rest here if I’m staying up with a patient. Here’s a basket for you,” he said, pulling one out of a stack. “You can keep your things in it during the day so you don’t get them dirty. There will be much more cleaning than you probably anticipated. The foundation of healing is cleanliness.” Osgardir passed Elrond a stack of short-sleeved linen tunics from another stash. He wore a similar one, though his was made to fit him and had a silk moth block-printed on each sleeve. “You’ll change your tunic when you arrive and you’ll leave your outdoor shoes in your basket until you leave.” He placed a pair of undyed hemp slippers on top of the tunics. “When we see patients, we don’t wear anything that can’t be washed in hot water and soap. You’ll also need to do something about your hair.”

Elrond grabbed one of his braids protectively. “What’s wrong with my hair?”

“Nothing, but it’ll be in the way. Don’t look at me like that, I won’t make you cut it. Just make sure it’s tied securely back or bundled up under a cap.” Osgardir added a few caps and cloth masks to the pile. “Do you know where infections come from?”

Elrond scratched his ear. “Um… sadness?”

“That’s a fair assumption, but no. Our world is full of creatures too small to see. Each has its natural purpose, but some can make us sick.”

“How can you know they exist if you can’t see them?”

Osgardir grinned. “I have seen them. In Aman, we had devices to magnify things that would otherwise be too small to study. I saw them through this device, like tiny seeds or worms that thrive on a plane we can hardly imagine. I would show you if I could, but in Beleriand we’ve lost the technology.”

A connection lit up in Elrond’s mind. “Is that why you have to wash the wound if an animal bites you?”

“Yes. Elves are not vulnerable to these creatures under normal circumstances. However, if we sustain a wound or become malnourished or otherwise weakened, we can become vulnerable to infection. Mortals by their nature are vulnerable to it even when healthy. In order to reduce the risk of my patients becoming ill, my infirmary must be clean.” He stood up straight and put his hands on his hips. “All right, we have work to do. Change your clothes and then meet me downstairs.”

Osgardir had not been joking about how much cleaning there was. Maglor expected the boys to keep their room tidy and help wash dishes sometimes, but that did not come anywhere near Osgardir’s expectations.

Elrond swept the floor and was instructed to do it again when Osgardir noticed dust around the corners, and afterward he scrubbed it with a hard brush. He washed linens, wincing when he touched the hot water. Beside him Osgardir plunged both arms into the same steaming washtub without hesitation. “You’ll toughen up eventually,” he said. Elrond couldn’t tell if it was an encouragement or a threat.

The only things he wasn’t allowed to clean were Osgardir’s instruments. The healer made this very clear from the start, calling Elrond’s attention to a squat steel cylinder near the hearth: “This the steam-kettle, which cleans all my instruments,” he said. “You won’t touch it until I train you. It’s practically worth more than you are.” Elrond made sure to give it a wide berth.

As the weeks wore on, he began to wonder if Osgardir intended for the work to make him give up and abandon his foolishness, but not before he got enough work out of him. He swept, he scrubbed, he washed linens, and he dusted away cobwebs day after day. If Osgardir really kept up this backbreaking labor on his own, why wouldn’t he take in a volunteer as long as he was willing to stay?

No. It couldn’t be. Osgardir worked alongside him, teaching him things and readily answering his questions while they obliterated every suggestion of dirt in the infirmary. He began with the systems of the body, gradually breaking them down to smaller and smaller components until he explained the cells that coalesced to form every living tissue.

“Part of me still thinks you’re making this up,” Elrond said helplessly, unable to wrap his mind around the idea that he was actually just a vast network of particles no bigger than the tiny creatures that caused infection, which in itself was another concept that left him deeply skeptical.

“I believe that you’ll see it for yourself in better times,” Osgardir replied. “Right now you’ll need to take my word for it.”

Osgardir didn’t have patients every day. Occasionally someone would come in with a finger broken while building a cabinet or a hand sliced open while breaking down a game animal and he would patch it up while Elrond continued cleaning whatever was on the schedule for that day. Osgardir was still firm on his refusal to teach him anything practical about the healer’s craft, and Elrond still bristled against his restrictions, but he did what he was told. If this was his path, then he would take it.

Glawar’s friends brought him in after an accident felling trees. The infirmary was full of loud, frightened people and high emotions as Osgardir examined him for broken bones and signs of concussion or internal injury, and Elrond sensed the deepening shadow of the visions before they were upon him.

Voices flooded into his mind, angry, scared, tense, ashamed, all talking at once until they blended into incoherence, and Elrond nearly buckled under their weight.

Not now, he thought. The thread held fast. I see you. I hear you. Not now, please .

The tree snapped and creaked and loomed over him, already falling, sunshine flaring through the canopy as the last birds and squirrels vacated the branches before it was too late. It tilted, slow before the point of collapse, and then rushed down toward him with decades of crushing mass behind it.

You can’t trick me , Elrond thought. It was as the clear blow of an axe ringing out on a winter morning. He looked up to face the tree, holding tight to the strong rope that was his way back to the surface. This is not reality. Not here, not now .

Fear and pain. A leg trapped—not fast enough.

I see you. Elrond took a deep breath in, held it, and released the tension in his shoulders when he let it out. I understand you.

The tree faded from his sight with a shiver and a lingering echo like the fluttering of its leaves.

Glawar would be fine. He’d broken his arm in two places, and it would be a long and frustrating recovery, but Osgardir declared him free of any other injury besides some bumps and bruises. Elrond, flush with his freedom from the vision, fetched and carried while Osgardir tended to Glawar. He’d banished most of the crowd, keeping only the strongest around to help him while he reduced the fractures and applied splints.

Later, when the sun went down and Glawar rested under the haze of poppy-spirits, Osgardir pulled Elrond aside.

“I noticed you struggling earlier,” he said. “Was it a vision?”

“Yes.” Elrond squared his shoulders. “I was able to get control. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that every time.”

“But you’re getting better at it.”

“Usually.” The dreams were still a problem he didn’t know how to solve, but hard work during the day seemed to sweeten his sleep.

“Do you know what changed?”

“I don’t know. I think I’m just getting used to the way it happens.”

Osgardir nodded, thoughtful. “Good work, in any case. It’s starting to get late. You should run home.”

Elrond returned the next morning as usual and began the day’s chores while Osgardir checked on Glawar.

“Could you cook some porridge while I finish up here?” he called to Elrond, who was peering over at the proceedings and trying to look busy cataloguing the medicine storage behind the compounding table.

“Uh, all right.” Elrond put his tablet down and went to the hearth, confident that he could cook porridge despite never having done so before. It was just like any of the other things he’d learned so far, wasn’t it? He added a few more sticks to the fire and poured a scoop of cracked grain into a clean pot. Or did the water go in first? Now that he was doing it, he couldn’t remember ever noticing the way any of the adults in his life made porridge.

His task quickly went from confusing to ghastly. He kept adding water, but as the porridge heated it only absorbed all the liquid into a glutinous mass, and soon it started belching wisps of smoke every time it bubbled. Elrond stirred harder.

Osgardir, now finished checking on Glawar, came to check on Elrond. He sniffed the air and waved a hand in front of his face. “What on earth have you got there?”

Elrond lifted the spoon. Bits of porridge clung to it. “Um...”

“You don’t know how to cook. Oh, that ridiculous minstrel,” Osgardir said, rolling his eyes. “Of course he would get it in his head that teaching you to cook and clean would make your Sindarin family think he’d pressed you into servitude.”

“He taught us how to tidy up and mend clothes,” Elrond said, defensive. It had taken a lot of practice to get his stitches as small and even as they were. So what if they hadn’t gotten around to cooking yet?

“Never mind the porridge, everyone burns their first pot. Just take it outside and scrub it clean.”

Elrond was busy enough to forget the incident until Maglor called Elrond and Elros into the main hall just before lunchtime on Elrond’s free day.

“I’ve neglected some important parts of your education,” Maglor said, obviously embarrassed. “I apologize.”

The boys looked at each other and back at him, and then they both shrugged. “Osgardir says I have a good grasp of languages and history,” Elrond said. “You can’t have neglected those.”

“No, it’s not that. In fact, it was Osgardir who brought it to my attention.” He gestured at the griddle on the hearth and the assortment of cooking utensils on the table. “He was correct that I didn’t want to give your Sindarin family the impression that I exploited your labor, or that I wanted to mold you into old-fashioned Noldor like my brother and myself. But… it’s a shame for a Noldorin man to be unable to cook, and I regret that I never taught you. The shame is therefore mine.”

“Well, it looks like you’re about to teach us,” Elros said.

“Yes, that is true. If you want to learn.”

“Yes!”

“Good.” The wrinkle in Maglor’s brow softened a little. He beckoned them closer. “This isn’t something I can teach you all at once, but we’ll start with pancakes. They’re easy, you can eat them for any meal, and they encompass a few important skills. Now, find a bowl and a fork so you can beat eggs.”

Elrond and Elros each selected their tools and looked to Maglor for further instructions. Elrond’s hands were clumsy and he couldn’t manage to incorporate a large mass of egg white into the rest until Maglor adjusted his grip on the fork and urged him to keep going. “That’s it, you have the right idea. It takes a bit of practice.”

Between the three of them, the eggs eventually got beaten and blended with milk, a drizzle of oil, and a pinch of salt. Maglor tipped a small handful of flour into each bowl and instructed them to stir it all together. “Knowing how much of anything to use also takes practice,” he said. “Sometimes you have to adjust. If the batter is too thick, you add a little more milk. Too thin, and you add a little more flour. Hold up your fork, Elros. Yes, see how the batter makes ribbons? This is perfect. Elrond, yours has some flour lumps. Just mix it a little longer and they should disappear.”

Elrond stirred his batter more vigorously until he had a cramp in his hand and Maglor judged the mixture free of lumps. “Are we going to cook them now?”

“Yes. First we set up the griddle,” Maglor said. He raked out some glowing coals and placed the short-legged griddle over them. “It needs a few minutes to reach the right temperature. While we’re waiting, we can get the toppings ready.”

He had them cut up fruit and cured ham, shred cheese, crack nuts, and chop herbs, correcting their knifework occasionally: “Tuck your fingers in, Elros—don’t cut yourself! Elrond, don’t rush. Good. It doesn’t have to look perfect.” He took a step back and held one hand flat over the griddle. “This is hot enough. When you can feel the heat radiating off the griddle, it’s ready to cook your pancakes. Come and see.” He dribbled some oil on the griddle, and when it started to shimmer, he instructed Elros to ladle one pancake’s worth of batter onto the hot surface.

“Oh, whoops,” Elros said when the sizzling batter expanded to the edge of the griddle and dripped over the side. The coals hissed, and a wisp of burned-pancake smoke curled upward.

“That’s all right. Just use a little less batter next time.” Maglor indicated the empty spot to the right of Elros’ pancake. “Your turn, Elrond.”

Elrond poured a ladle of batter onto the oiled griddle. It spread neatly to the edges, and he watched it intently while Maglor showed Elros how to flip his pancake over with a spatula. Soon both pancakes sat steaming and golden on plates and Elrond and Elros took a moment to admire their work.

“There you go, your first pancakes,” Maglor said, obviously pleased.

Elros tore off the edge of his and popped it into his mouth. “That wasn’t too difficult.”

“Certainly not! Let’s have you fry up the rest of them.”

Elrond and Elros set about frying another pancake each under Maglor’s supervision. “Among the elves of the Blessed Realm, it is the task and pleasure of men to cook for their families,” Maglor said while Elrond and Elros watched the griddle. “My brothers and I learned from our father, as he learned from his, from the time we were tall enough to see over the kitchen table.”

“Some of us were better at it than others,” came Maedhros’ voice from the doorway. He ambled into the kitchen, drink in hand, and peered over the top of Elros’ head at the proceedings. “Amras just skinned and spitted whatever he killed and ate it plain.”

“Between that and Curufin’s eight-tiered, hand-sculpted marzipan palace, you actually have something sensible,” Maglor laughed. “These pancakes look done. Let’s get another two on. Curufin was trying to impress a woman, of course. Women like it when you cook for them.”

Elros perked up slightly. “Really?”

“Yes. They like to see what you might be able to do every day if you were their husband. If you ask a girl what she likes to eat, she knows you’re interested in seeing her again.”

Maedhros sat on the bench and stretched his legs out in front of him. “At least that’s how it was done when we were young, and that was long ago.” He took a sip of his drink. “You probably shouldn’t take our advice. I wouldn’t know what to do with a woman if I somehow managed to attract one by accident, and Maglor is no good at keeping them around once he’s attracted them.”

Elrond winced and stifled a laugh at the same time. Maglor just shrugged. “I’ll own that. Swear no foolish oaths, and perhaps your wife won’t leave you.”

“You’re married?” Elrond blurted out.

“Of course I’m married.”

“She left him,” Maedhros said unnecessarily.

A crack finally showed in Maglor’s demeanor. “They’re clever lads, I think they figured that out.”

Elros spun his spatula between his fingers and raised one analytical eyebrow. “Perhaps I want to keep my options open. If girls like it when you cook for them, what do boys like?”

“I never knew a man who didn’t like food as much as women do. Anyway, the trick to it is that there are no tricks.” Maedhros leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, as if letting Elros in on a conspiracy. Elros pursed his lips, listening intently. “Superficial gestures, no matter how grand, will not work for long,” Maedhros continued. “Man, woman or otherwise: if you want them to return your affection, you must learn what appeals to them as an individual. Cooking. Hunting. Talking late into the night. And discovering the best ways to show your love is a process of discovery that never ends as long as love lasts.”

“Music, songs, poetry...” Maglor mused, though Elrond felt he’d ruined the mood without even realizing there had been a mood.

Maedhros huffed at that. “Right, she might realize you love her if you write one poem for her, but if you write her a hundred poems, all she’ll realize is that you love poetry.”

“I only wrote seven! One for each of the Constellations, and the last enshrining her beauty among them!”

“Nessa’s tits, Káno,” Maedhros muttered, rolling his eyes as he tipped back the last of his drink. “It’s something that everyone learns as they grow up,” he said to the boys. “Romance requires practice like any other skill, but unlike other skills there is no canon of techniques to master. You will see what I mean eventually.”

Elrond tucked that away and turned back to the griddle.

The days took on a difficult but satisfying rhythm, and Elrond took on each task like a bird to song. Every taste of new information only fueled his appetite for more. He wanted everything, even if there was so much that he could barely absorb all of it. Every piece of new knowledge left him with a dozen more questions: how do we know this? Why is this important? What happens when this stops working? Osgardir was happy to answer him, but every answer only made him aware of another hole in his understanding.

“Osgardir?”

“Hmm?”

“Am I a mortal or an elf?”

Osgardir looked up from the bubbling alembic on his compounding table, eyebrows raised. “I’m not sure it’s up to me to decide that.”

“You don’t have to decide. When you look at me, what do you think I am?”

Osgardir surveyed his face. His dark eyes flicked to his ears, his hands, and then the healer blinked and smiled a little. “If you told me you were a Man, I would see a Man. Likewise I would see an elf if that was how you introduced yourself to me.”

“Is it normally easy to tell elves and Men apart just by looking at them?”

“Most of the time.”

“Why not all of the time?”

“The differences are subtle. The elven jaw is a bit narrower and the cranium is a little taller, but not as wide as that of Men--I actually have some skulls, would you like to see?”

“Yes!”

Elrond leaned on the table while Osgardir crouched and rummaged in the back of a cabinet. He resurfaced with a skull in each hand. “All right, one of these belonged to an elf, the other to a Man. Can you guess which is which?”

Fascinated, Elrond peered at both skulls, examining every detail and thinking back to the differences Osgardir had mentioned. “Is the one in your right hand the elven skull?”

“It is. Good eye.”

Elrond smiled. “What other differences are there?”

“The the fingers and toes are a little longer. We build muscle differently. Our ears are pointed and our eyes are larger, but some elven ears are just a little more rounded and some Men have very large eyes, and all things considered, Men and elves have more in common than not. We’re similar enough to reproduce, after all.”

“But you can usually tell the difference.”

“Usually.”

There was a pause. Elrond aimlessly rearranged some jars. He caught his reflection in the side of the alembic: light, freckled skin, almond-shaped gray eyes, black hair in two braids and ears that came to delicate points. “Do elves and Men find each other beautiful?”

“My boy, you are living proof that they do.” Osgardir rested his elbows on the tabletop. “Their lives are fleeting, and they burn brighter for it. They are curious and diverse and open to change. It isn’t so effortless for us. And they are interesting to look at. Their stories are written into their faces and bodies as they age, and there is such a fascinating difference between their males and females.”

“How so?”

“Sexual dimorphism—there’s your word of the day. That is when the males and females of the species exhibit different characteristics. Among the children of Iluvatar, females have wider hips to aid in carrying babies and breasts to nurse them when they are born, and males tend to be taller and stronger in order to protect their mates and children. These were traits the One gave to our ancestors before we learned to speak.”

Elrond held to that thread like he did when keeping himself tied to reality in the face of falling into a vision. “If all children of Iluvatar have these differences, how are Men different from elves?”

“The differences are more pronounced. Most elves have smooth faces, but the males of the Secondborn have beards. The females tend to be shorter and have curvier bodies.” Osgardir shrugged. “There are always exceptions. Even ‘male’ and ‘female’ are not as sharply divided as I’m making it sound. The One created men like myself who can carry babies and people like my spouse who stand outside the categories of male and female altogether. He delights in our infinite variation, otherwise we would not be as we are.” He paused again. “That is my answer to you. You are a child of Iluvatar.”

Elrond tore his eyes away from the alembic. His reflection only annoyed him, like his own skin was an itchy, ill-fitting coat. “That doesn’t answer how long I’ll live, or what will happen to me if I die, or how I relate to every other person in the world.”

“I’d think that last one is up to you, whether you’re an elf or a Man or a tuft of grass.”

“But what about the rest?” Elrond gestured at nothing, frustrated. “Where do I fit?”

“Elrond.” Osgardir sounded a little exasperated, but his voice was kind. “I can set a broken bone, but I don’t claim to know anything about the nature of anyone’s existence.”

Elrond understood his reluctance, but it was still frustrating to have no answers from people who had seen and studied the world for hundreds or thousands of years before he was born. He was a living creature like any of them, so how could he be too unusual to even know his own nature?

The visions were always with him. It got easier, though progress came so slowly that Elrond barely noticed it.

Flashes of emotion, alien memories, unexplained sorrows. I see you, he said to them all, and released them with his breath. Whether they were impressions of his own future or the echoes of the past age, he held them for a moment, breathed, and pulled himself away. I understand, he said, even when he didn’t.

Sometimes he woke trembling and cold with sweat. Sometimes he fled before the visions, vainly trying to hide before he managed to get his footing again and break the surface. As long as he held to the thread, he had a way back.

Over the summer and into autumn, Osgardir took Elrond out to the garden where the two of them spent long hours pulling weeds. It almost seemed as if they did nothing else, and Elrond’s skin became very brown and freckled as the long, bright days went by.

“I could definitely use the skills of an experienced herbalist,” Osgardir said as he took clippings of herbs for extracts and Elrond contended with dandelions that were sprouting up in the wrong places. “Many plants can ease the symptoms of melancholy illnesses, but I am only comfortable making a few formulations. Many of our people suffer needlessly as a result.”

“I remember Maedhros taking valerian and skullcap oils the last time he was very ill,” Elrond said.

“Oh, he’s still very ill, but he is not currently in crisis.” Osgardir moved to the cage of wire netting that covered his poppy patch. He guarded the flowers jealously, and grumbled when he noticed an insect on one of the leaves. “But yes, valerian and skullcap are useful for panic and agitation. Depending on the symptoms, we can also use elanor, saffron, cannabis, and a few others. I don’t have anything close to the variety I need. Of course, some cases don’t seem to respond to any of the usual treatments.”

“What can you do then?”

“Listen to them and support them. Talking soothes many aches.” He picked another insect off a poppy plant. “But not all. That is what the poppies are for, and it’s the best thing we have after the dream-vapor ran out.”

It was nearly winter before Osgardir showed Elrond how to use the steam-kettle.

“Like I said, this thing is practically worth more than you are,” Osgardir said, affectionately stroking its steel lid. “None of the smiths here would be able to make me a new one, and my patients’ health depends on its ability to clean my instruments. Are we clear?”

Elrond nodded nervously. He came closer when Osgardir beckoned him over, and the healer explained how to fill the bottom of the steam-kettle with water, arrange the instruments on a steel rack above the water’s surface, and seal the lid on with four clamps around its edges.

“Do not put it directly in the fire,” he said as he lugged the steam-kettle over to the hearth. “Put it on top of the grate and make sure you maintain a good, steady heat. Not too hot, but hot enough to boil the water. Once steam starts coming out of the valve, place the weight over the valve to increase the pressure inside the chamber. Do not touch anything else. After about a quarter of an hour, shovel the coals out from under the grate, and wait for the steam-kettle to cool. Do not try to open it until it is. That’s how you get a hot steel lid embedded in your skull.”

Elrond grimaced. “I’ll keep that image in mind.”

“Good, I hoped you might.”

Under Osgardir’s close supervision, he began practicing. He placed blades, clamps, and needles into the rack, filled the bottom of the steam-kettle with water, and began heating it as instructed. He watched it the entire time, counting minutes while escaping steam rattled the weight on top of the valve, until it was time to shovel the coals out from underneath the steam-kettle. Once it was cool, he still held his breath as he released the lid. He’d done it.

“Good,” Osgardir said, peering down at the instruments in the rack. “Do it again.”

In time, cleaning instruments became just another item on the schedule. Elrond learned to do it without fear or error, and Osgardir soon stopped checking his work.

“I have an errand for you,” the healer said to him when he arrived one morning, handing him a wax tablet with a list of items on it. “We’re running low on some supplies. Take the wagon from out back and visit these workshops to get more. They should have some set aside for me, so you can take my sigil to let them know I sent you.” He tucked a linen swatch, embroidered with the image of a silk moth, into the back of Elrond’s belt. “Step lively, now.”

Elrond had retrieved the wagon and made it halfway down the street before he realized that he was on an official errand, wearing Osgardir’s sigil so that everyone would know the healer trusted him to handle everything safely, and he was as particular about his supplies as he was about everything else. An extra spring entered his step at that, followed by an irrational fear that he would end up dumping the wagon into a ditch.

He needed to go to the brewers’ for vinegar, next door to the distillery for clear spirits, down to the mill for flaxseed and hemp oils, to Caedor’s house for soap, and to the weavers’ for linen, hemp cloth, twine, and an assortment of thread. Sparks and flutters of outside minds prickled behind his ears as he pulled the wagon along his route. He picked each out from the rest, acknowledging them and then letting them go, one by one.

I see you. I hear you.

“Are you here for Osgardir’s vinegar?” Treneril said before Elrond could even open his mouth at the brewers’.

“Uh, yes. He gave me his sigil if you want to see...”

“Never mind that, he talked you up the last time he was here.” She grinned and took the empty jugs from his wagon to exchange them for full ones.

The sensation of pride blossoming in Elrond’s chest was an unusual one, and he ruminated over it for several minutes before he realized it was his own and not, for once, an impression of someone else’s thoughts.

With the vinegar taken care of, he went down the rest of the list. No one questioned his errands.

The wagon was very heavy by the time it was full, and he realized he wouldn’t have been able to pull it very far at the start of his studies. After months of scrubbing and laundry, he was as strong as he had been before he became ill. He had not noticed until that moment.

“Good work,” Osgardir said when Elrond returned with the full wagon. “Did you have trouble gathering anything?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think you would. Everyone probably expected you.”

Everything since his visit to Treneril had collected in Elrond’s mind, and that statement sent it flowing over onto his tongue, reawakening a question he had not asked in a long time.

“Will you take me as your apprentice?”

Osgardir looked up at Elrond, and the corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled. “I will.”

“You’ll need to perform dissections.” Alagostor fixed Elrond with a concerned frown over the plate of cake in his hand. “You realize that, right?”

Elrond grimaced and started to mumble through the current situation—I know, I’m working on it, it will be awhile before we get around to that anyway—but Osgardir interrupted him with a hearty clap on the shoulder.

“I’ll do the mentoring, and right now my instructions for him are to enjoy his party,” he said, raising his eyebrows at Alagostor.

“Right. Sorry. Congratulations, I know you will be an excellent healer.” Alagostor grinned and toasted Elrond with his plate.

As soon as Elrond broke the news that Osgardir had accepted him as an apprentice, Maglor decided to throw a small party. The appointed day had come and Elrond enjoyed the attention, but there was a little dark cloud lurking in some corner of his mind, and he couldn’t seem to shake it out. Being reminded about the eventual dissections hadn’t helped, but that wasn’t it, and the apprehension dissipated somewhat when Osgardir steered him back toward the food table.

The men of the household, plus a few others who had been attracted by the excitement, had descended upon the hearth to put together an all-vegetarian feast. Hestedis had opened a small barrel of aged mead, one of very few that had survived the earthquake, and Maedhros had taken the initiative to ask Alagostor to keep him from drinking any. Elros tied garlands of leaves and flowers over the food table before the party and now kept the mood light by feigning a series of outlandish injuries and asking Elrond to fix them. Elrond gladly helped himself to carrot fritters and fried onions and pie filled with spinach and cheese and played along when people joked around with him, but the dark cloud still lingered.

He wasn’t nervous. He’d wanted this for nearly a year, and whenever he thought about his future as Osgardir’s apprentice he only looked forward to it, dissections notwithstanding. Whatever was scratching at the back of his mind like a shoe against a blister, he would not let it ruin this moment.

Elrond packed up his things and moved to Osgardir’s house a few days later. It was then that he finally began to feel like this was real: he was no longer a child, but a member of the community. Learning his chosen craft from a seasoned veteran was his right, and it came with the responsibility to study and work as diligently as he could. His elders had been telling him this since he started as Osgardir’s student, but he had not quite grasped it until he was carrying a basket of his clothes down the street with Elros and another basket in tow.

Osgardir lived next door to the infirmary in a small stone cottage with a shingled roof. The earthquake had reduced his old house to kindling, and everyone tried to never even mention what would have happened to the community if he’d been at home at the time. A sign next to the door commanded wipe your feet! in precise Tengwar. Elrond self-consciously scuffed his feet on the braided rope mat before Osgardir let him in.

“I don’t spend much time at home,” the healer said as he showed them inside. “The infirmary is open to the public from dawn until midday, during which time they can come by when it suits them. After these hours, we are only open for emergencies or arranged appointments. After sundown, the infirmary is closed, but we’ll get knocks on the door for emergencies. That is not too common. The loft will be reserved for your use, but you won’t spend much time there either.”

The house, with its spare furnishings, confirmed his words. There was a hearth and dining table in the front room, an equally plain bedroom at the back, and a ladder leading up to the loft, which was empty except for a well-stuffed pallet. There was little food in the house, just a few sacks of grain, a basket of eggs next to the hearth, and some bundles of dried herbs. A mail coat on a rack in the bedroom—the only point of interest in the house—caught Elrond’s eye as he started up the ladder.

“I’m going to spread all my things across your side of the room as soon as I get back to the longhouse,” Elros announced. The two of them had been locked in an intense border dispute over their respective territories for years. It had cooled down somewhat recently, but the reminder made Elrond smile a little.

“At least now you can’t touch my things,” he retorted, which just made Elros bury his hands and face in the basket of clothes and make an impudent show of touching everything.

“I’m getting them all gross. Make me stop.”

Normally Elrond would have tackled him, but there wasn’t enough room--the idea was to rough him up, not violently launch him out of the loft. Instead he grabbed a handful of Elros’ tunic and wiped his nose on it. “I can always be grosser than you,” he said, but Elros did not escalate the taunt further.

“Of course you can,” he said, affecting fastidiousness as he smoothed his tunic out where Elrond’s fingers had wrinkled it. “You’re naturally grosser than me.”

“Hey!”

With Elrond’s things stored in the loft, the two of them descended the ladder once more. “I’m ready!” Elrond said brightly, planting his hands on his hips. “What am I going to learn first?”

Osgardir chuckled. “There will be plenty of time. Why don’t we start this afternoon? Get one last bit of sloth in while you still can.”

Elrond turned to Elros, but he had already wandered away without saying a word.

Elrond had wondered what would happen if he and Osgardir found each other intolerably annoying outside of the infirmary, but sharing a house did not prove difficult. Osgardir seemed to fade a little once the infirmary was closed in the evening, and he usually went straight to bed until it was time to open it up again in the morning, giving Elrond some free time if the day’s work hadn’t left him too tired. They were otherwise each conscious of the other’s privacy and shared cooking and cleaning duties without issue.

The first few months passed much as the previous ones had, with Elrond working alongside Osgardir to maintain the infirmary and learning new procedures once he could perform the simpler ones without error. At last, he began learning how to treat small wounds and administer simple medications, and he realized that even after the past year of study, he barely knew anything.

In addition to his free time in the evenings, Osgardir let Elrond set aside time during the day to explore his gift.

His control mostly extended to keeping the intrusive visions at bay, and even then, it still sometimes took all of his strength. He felt energy and life all around him, just out of reach, but close enough to tickle his nose and make his eyes water. He could strain his mind as far as it would go, but then he snapped back into his own shaking, exhausted body without anything to show for it.

He was so close, and yet…

His mind was clearer in the woods, but the absence of other minds clustering around his made the gulf seem even wider. Inside the compound, the teeming mass of thoughts and feelings and dreams and memories clamored even louder when he reached out. His control wavered. On the other side, the visions threatened to break through and drag him back down, far away from the light he had fought so hard to regain. If he could only pierce that barrier, single out one thread in the tapestry, and pluck it like a harp string.

“It’s time to talk about your dissections again,” Osgardir announced one morning, and Elrond immediately made an effort to look busy cleaning.

“It’s so dirty over here,” he said gravely as he scrubbed. “Hygiene. Important for cleanliness. And health. I have to finish this.”

Osgardir just crossed his arms and said nothing, but his silence brooked no argument. Elrond paused, procrastinating, and then shuffled to his feet. “It’s normal to be uncomfortable at first,” Osgardir said once Elrond was paying attention. “You’ll have to get over it in order to be an effective healer, and you’ll have to become very familiar with internal anatomy.”

“I don’t think something should have to die just so I can cut it open and look at its insides.” Elrond spread his arms earnestly. “At least when people eat meat, they use everything. The carcass won’t be of any use to anyone once I’m done picking at it.”

“Knowledge is a valid use,” Osgardir said firmly. “One purposeful death will help you prevent many senseless ones. You will perform animal dissections according to our discipline. I’m sorry, but I won’t change my mind about this.”

“Isn’t there any other way I can learn it?”

Osgardir paused for a moment. “In Aman, Estë in her power provided bodies of flesh without spirits for dissections. Once we came to Beleriand… well, there was no shortage of natural specimens. Men, elves, orcs—at least the slaughter provided us with some new knowledge.” His smile was shallow and did not reach his eyes. “How do you feel about dissecting an animal that died of other causes? An accident or illness, or a mercy-killing following the same?”

Elrond grimaced and shrugged. “That sits a little better.”

“I understand your discomfort. I truly do. In this case, it isn’t a bad thing to become a little desensitized. You’ll need to be able to look at your patients’ bodies without flinching while still showing compassion for their suffering. You have the second, but you need the first.”

Elrond often hated how deeply sensitive he was, even without the visions making it worse, and the reminder did not make him feel any better about it. “Don’t worry, it isn’t as bad as you’re thinking,” Osgardir continued when his silence thickened between them. “I’ll be a bit let down if this is all that proves too difficult for you after the last year.”

Maglor had never actually forbidden Elrond from borrowing his pipe and pinching samples from the various jars of cannabis in his room, or so Elrond rationalized as he trotted out of the longhouse with the contraband burning a hole in his pocket. Osgardir disapproved of using it as anything but medicine, of course, but Elrond also rationalized that away by deciding that it could be a medicine for the barrier in his mind that he had yet to breach.

Beyond the palisade and tucked into the wooded hills, Elrond found an ancient stone ruin covered in moss. It was only a small circle of crumbling walls and what remained of a stone floor: an old watchtower, he decided, though he had no way to know for sure. A great crack split the floor from north to south, and the fresh, jagged edges told him that this damage was a remnant of the earthquake. The rest, all the erosion and decay since the watchtower was abandoned, came from long before.

It became a common pilgrimage. Maybe the broken stone held remnants of ancient memories within itself, and maybe the surrounding forest still had secrets for Elrond to uncover. It was quiet but buzzing with life, enveloping him in the harmony of nature reclaiming what industrious hands had once built to last forever. It was his sanctuary, and it was where his questions seemed closest to pulling answers out of the cloth of reality.

He lay back on the moss-cushioned stone with one hand behind his head. The air was still cool and damp this time of year and the sunlight was still pale. It occurred to him that it had been a whole year since he had run away in his misery. He had made leaps of progress since then, but it was not enough. Exercises and lucky accidents were only boats bobbing atop the waves of an ocean of potential.

He inhaled smoke, held it for a moment, and then let it out like he was releasing the grip of a vision. Smoking alone in the woods was an indulgence he enjoyed even without meditating on his gift, but it did help him think. He knew it was possible to turn his gift toward healing, but he did not know how.

He had learned to release the visions on his own, acknowledging and redirecting them instead of trying in vain to force them out. Was his intervention with Midhien simply another redirection, or was it a channel he had yet to explore? Were there really separate channels? He knew that panic involved both the mind and the body. Were the mind and body truly separate, or had people forgotten that they were the same? Or were they truly the same, and had people forgotten that they were different? And where did Elrond fit into it? Was his gift an expansion or a flattening of normal perception?

Why him?

The web of mysteries was woven so thick as to be a net he couldn’t escape. Each question ran into the next, but he kept asking.

The pipe was spent. Lazily, Elrond tipped the ashes into a pile on the stone beside him. Like dew, he felt as if he was sinking into the moss under his body, becoming one, giving back. What was buried would come forth like mushrooms carrying their essence out of the rich, damp earth. It was springtime, and Elrond perched on the edge of blooming like flower buds reaching toward the sun.

The forest grew warm and lush as the spring days lengthened. Elrond hiked to the old watchtower whenever he was able, but a breakthrough remained just out of reach.

A rustle in the bushes drew his attention just as he was about to smoke. He looked up, suddenly gripped with the notion that it was Maglor coming to scold him for taking the pipe or Osgardir coming to scold him for smoking recreationally, but it was neither. It took a moment for Elrond to recognize the figure as Elros emerging from the trees. Elros frowned when he noticed him. “What are you doing here?” he asked, sounding much too loud and sharp for Elrond’s smoke-softened mind just now.

“Smoking.” He put the pipe-stem to his lips and took a puff.

“I thought I was the only one who knew about this place.” It sounded like an accusation.

“Look at it, it’s old.” Elrond shrugged. “I’m sure everyone back at the compound knows it’s here. Or used to be here.”

“Can’t a man have anything of his own?” Elros groused, but he came and sat next to Elrond on the moss. Elrond stared at his open hand for a moment, uncomprehending, until he realized Elros wanted the pipe. He passed it and lay back with his fingers laced behind his head, watching the fluttering treetops while Elros smoked in silence.

“Why are you out here, anyway?” he asked.

“Because I felt like it. Why are you out here? I thought you were busy being a healer.”

“I’m trying to learn how to handle my gift. Osgardir gives me time for it.”

Elros only huffed a little. Elrond didn’t know why he was in such a bad mood, but at the moment he didn’t care to ask. “I’m so close to being able to jump from my own mind...” he extended a hand into the air above him. “...into someone else’s. Once I can do that, the possibilities are endless.”

“You seem to have everything figured out.”

“Hardly. I’ve only just figured out what I’m looking for.”

“At least you have a path.”

“You could have one too,” Elrond said earnestly. “You just haven’t found it yet.”

“Yes, that is a comforting thought, isn’t it?” Elros’ voice held a salty tang underneath his usual agreeable demeanor.

Elrond, wondering if he had said something wrong, did not respond right away. “What’s upsetting you?” he asked at length, propping himself up on one elbow.

“Nothing.” Elros took one more puff of the pipe before giving it back to Elrond. Without saying anything else, he got up and walked back into the woods, leaving Elrond with more questions than ever and something like a cold, dark hole in the pit of his stomach.

“Elrond, I have something for you!” Osgardir called from the front room. “Come and see!”

Elrond paused, a sense of foreboding prickling at the back of his neck. He set down the linen hamper he had been about to take outside and went to the front room. There he found Osgardir holding a large crock and grinning, and at his side stood Caedor.

Elrond shuddered slightly as an image flashed into his mind—darkness, voices, sinking deeper and deeper from the light—

Not now , he thought as he released the vision with his breath. It lingered for a moment, hot and sticky, but trickled away as he came closer to Osgardir and the crock. “What is it?” he asked, already dreading the answer.

“Your first practical anatomy lesson.” Osgardir set the crock on the table. A briny odor rose from the opening when he removed the lid and inspected its contents.

“It’s a baby pig,” Caedor said, sounding apologetic. “He was born just a little too small and didn’t live long, but he didn’t suffer. It happens sometimes.”

“Oh.” Elrond swallowed a gag. “All right.”

There was no escaping it now.

Osgardir let Elrond wait and bolster himself for the dissection until the morrow, but he almost wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. He was grumpy and jittery for the rest of the day, and what little sleep he got was tinged with unsettling dreams.

It wasn’t just the disgust or even the idea of coldly cutting into a piglet that had never even had a chance. What if memories of the ill-fated pig slaughter—now almost two full years gone—came back to cripple him with renewed visions? What if it brought him back below the surface of sanity? What if he lost all that he had fought so hard to control?

“Poor little fellow,” Osgardir said the next morning as they prepared for the lesson. “That’s why pigs have so many babies in a litter, though--only the strongest ones will survive. It’s how nature manages itself.”

Elrond said nothing and only continued setting up his workstation: a tray to hold the specimen, string to hold it in place, tweezers and scalpels to cut it open and examine its insides. He was ready. He knew he had to do it, even if the thought had fueled his cold-sweat awakenings of late.

Osgardir grasped his shoulder and gave it a tight squeeze. “Now, are you ready?”

Elrond sat. He nodded once. His mentor lifted the tiny, pale piglet from its crock, drained it of brine for a moment, and then laid it on the tray. There it was. Part of his training, and he had to keep reminding himself that it was nothing more.

“Tell me about its external features.” Osgardir took a seat across the table from him. “How do we know if this pig is a male or female, and how do the structures compare to those of an elf?”

As soon as Elrond began to describe the piglet, it became easier. It was a lesson, no different than examining Osgardir’s bone collection and inspecting them for differences. He hadn’t seen them as anything sinister, only as objects, for all they had once belonged to living people and animals. Finished with the lessons and quizzes on the outside of the pig, Elrond took both the scalpel and a deep breath.

“Make a single cut along its belly,” Osgardir instructed. “Not too deep, just through the skin and fascia. We don’t want to puncture any organs.”

At first, it felt as if Elrond was watching himself dissect the pig over his own shoulder. Osgardir’s voice kept up a calm presence in the back of his mind, telling him what to look at and which structures to identify, and Elrond talked through his actions until everything once again felt all right. It was only skin and bones and organs, no longer a sentient creature.

“The nerves connect the brain to the rest of the body,” he said, pointing to where they radiated out from the spine.

Osgardir nodded. “What does that mean for us?”

“Everything is connected.” Elrond looked up from the pig. “Right?”

“Well, yes. What implications might this have for treating pain or a prolonged depression?”

“The mind and body aren’t really separate, are they? The health of one affects the health of the other.” He suddenly remembered how thin and ill he had become when the visions were at their worst. Of course it made sense. “So it isn’t really helpful to only pay attention to treating just one side of it.”

Osgardir nodded again, obviously pleased. “Exactly. Now let us open the skull and examine the structures of the brain.”

By the time he finished the dissection, Elrond no longer feared slipping under and drowning in visions outside of his control. He still didn’t enjoy the idea that his knowledge came from another creature’s death, but at least he had been able to learn from seeing and touching what had been only theoretical until now.

“There, now you can tell Elros you dissected a pig and it went just fine,” Osgardir said once he had called an end to their lesson.

Elrond just shrugged and continued cleaning up his things. Osgardir raised an eyebrow—Elrond had not really expected him not to notice. “Would he not be interested?” he asked, leaning back and clasping his fingers over his stomach.

“He’s been weird toward me,” Elrond said.

“What kind of weird?”

Elrond shrugged again. “I don’t know. Cold. Insincere. He hasn’t said anything that would make me feel like I’ve offended him, but… it still feels like I did something, and I don’t know what.”

“Hmm.” Osgardir’s other eyebrow joined the first. “Interesting.”

Elrond dropped each instrument back into the tray with a clatter. Neither of them said anything, but he could feel Osgardir watching him, and soon the silence started to press in on his head to the point where he could no longer stand it. “We tell each other everything!” he burst out. “We share everything—even our clothes! If we have a disagreement, it’s never important and it never lasts! I don’t know how to fix it!”

Osgardir rubbed his chin. “You’ll need to find out what’s wrong before you can fix it.”

“But I don’t know what I did!”

“What if you asked him?” Osgardir smiled. “Don’t overthink it. You two love each other.”

“But… it’s never been like this before,” Elrond said helplessly.

Osgardir reached across the table and took the tray of dissected baby pig. “I have no siblings,” he said. “But I am very old. And I can tell you the same thing that I once told my children.” Elrond looked up, surprised. He had not known that Osgardir had any children. “You are growing up,” his mentor continued. “You are learning and changing, and so your relationships are changing as well. We don’t always relate to each other in the same ways that we did when we were children, but if your relationships are important, you will learn how to maintain them into eternity. Now, we may not know whether you two are mortal or immortal, but the same principle applies. As you grow up, you will discover who and what is most important to you, and you will discover how to keep them close.”

Elrond couldn’t think of anyone or anything more important to him than Elros, but the thought of negotiating these inevitable changes filled him with dread. He already had too many questions without answers. Too many paths branching into darkness before his feet.

“And, if I may, something I did not tell them enough,” Osgardir continued. “Tell him you love him now, not later, and make sure he knows that you will love him no matter how your lives may diverge in the future.”

Elrond nodded and said nothing. He did not need to ask what had happened to Osgardir’s children: Himring was enough of an explanation, and it was only one out of many Noldorin strongholds that had become tombs without graves.

Everything is connected. It remained in the back of Elrond’s mind as he continued his exploration, and it soon became clear that as long as he restricted it to the old watchtower in the forest, he would never make the leap.

“I think I need to try some practical experiments,” he said to Osgardir when his mentor asked after his progress.

“What sort?”

It was often difficult for Elrond to narrow it down into words, but it was easier when he reminded himself to keep his ambitions simple for now. “I’m still stuck inside my own mind,” he said. “The only times I’ve been able to reach out to another person’s mind were accidents. If I try to reach out to different people, I might eventually figure it out. Maybe I could ask people to participate when they visit the infirmary?”

“That sounds reasonable.”

Encouraged, Elrond spent the next few days thinking up a plan. He even memorized a little speech to give when explaining his research to a patient and asking them if they wanted to participate. He scribbled scraps of ideas on a wax tablet until Osgardir placed a blue linen-bound book in front of him, followed by a pen carved from antler. “Research is a well-established part of the healer’s craft,” Osgardir said. “Writing it down helps to direct your experimentation and others to learn from your discoveries.”

The pages were blank on the inside. Elrond ran a careful finger down the smooth hemp paper and looked up with his heart beating in his throat. “What if I mess it up? I’ve only ever written on slates and wax.”

His mentor shrugged. “Doodle it out on wax first, if that would help, but don’t let perfection keep you from working on it. All research is a work in progress. Write, draw diagrams, ask questions, explain your methods, whatever comes to you.”

“Thank you.”

“Your research will be thanks enough.” Osgardir smiled. “Oh, do you know how to write with a nib pen?”

“Um…”

“Never mind, I’ll teach you that as well.”

Elrond’s first opportunity presented itself when Faervel the weaver came to the infirmary to pick up some elanor pills.

“Now, I believe my apprentice is conducting some research, if you don’t mind hearing him out,” Osgardir said once their conversation was finished.

“Not at all.”

Elrond stepped forward, consciously refraining from fidgeting. He knew he could do it, he just needed to replicate and record his results. “As you probably know, I possess the ability to perceive other people’s spirits,” he recited. Faervel smiled and nodded encouragingly. “I am trying to refine this ability in order to use it in conjunction with conventional healing techniques. May I practice with you for a moment?”

It sounded silly and awkward to his own ears, but she didn’t laugh. “You may. What are you practicing?”

“Right now I’m only trying to transfer the influence of my thoughts to another person in a controlled and consistent manner,” Elrond said. “If you will hold out your hand for a moment?”

She did. “What can I expect?”

“It should just be a light touch. When… um, if you feel something, I want you to tell me what it felt like and where it was. It won’t hurt.” Hopefully. He still worried that his gift would pull away from his control again and snap a patient’s tendons, or something. Once he had more experience under his belt, he would feel better.

“I am ready.”

Elrond looked down at Faervel’s hand. He let his eyes slip out of focus and reached, as he had practiced, beyond his own skin. Her pulse beat just below the surface of her wrist. He held that in his mind until the rhythm became clearer and sharper and he could sense what lay beyond it: the delicate branches of the veins and arteries nestled among muscles, tendons, ligaments. The nerves buzzed under it all, and when Elrond looked deeper, he found the solid foundation of the bones. They radiated outward—he drew back a little, perceiving the complete picture of her palm.

He focused, just gently, on the muscle within the ball of her thumb.

“Oh! I felt that,” Faervel said.

Elrond blinked and released the connection. He looked back up, shivering a little at the taste of success. “Where did you feel it?”

“Just here.” Faervel touched the heel of her hand, rubbing slightly as if the shadow of it still lingered.

“What did it feel like?”

“I don’t know. It was like a gentle touch, but at the same time, it felt as if it was coming from my own body. An outside action, but without an outside stimulus. Does that make sense?” Her brow wrinkled. Elrond nodded eagerly: it matched the spirit of Midhien’s account.

“Thank you. That’s fantastic. I appreciate your time,” Elrond said. His fingers itched to write it down.

“What was it supposed to feel like?”

“Exactly that!”

“That is fantastic!” she grinned. “I’m glad I was able to help!”

I am now able to consciously affect physical sensations in others. I have only had one successful experiment, so more research is necessary before I can know more about the limits and applications of this. I also need to practice reproducing the same experiment in several subjects in order to determine whether the results are subjective or whether I am influencing their expectations in some way. As usual, I have more questions than there is daylight to answer.

Osgardir’s voice broke through Elrond’s concentration. “Elrond, I need you to clean the instruments for my appointment this afternoon. Indir is finally having me look at his toenail.”

Elrond lifted his pen from the paper and wrinkled his nose. Indir’s ingrown toenail looked horrible, but he was understandably reluctant to let Osgardir cut into it. “Finally. Do you think he’ll want to be a part of my research?” he asked as he stood and walked toward the steam-kettle.

“You can ask him. Whether you do it before or after the procedure may affect the outcome, since the circumstances are different. You’ll want to record everything.”

“Of course.”

“And once the instruments are in, I have a pig skin for you to practice your sutures.”

Elrond set the lid of the steam-kettle aside with an unhappy thud. “Why is it always pigs?” Since the piglet, he had dissected a squirrel that had run afoul of the dogs, a cat that had chewed on the wrong plant in someone’s garden, and a dead frog he’d found behind an outhouse, but pig parts kept coming back to him for various lessons, and he was always uncomfortable.

“Their physiology isn’t so different from ours. And there’s always an easy supply of them.”

As it happened, Indir did not want to have one more healer than necessary poking and prodding at him, and declined to participate. Elrond swallowed his disappointment and committed himself to Osgardir’s instructions for the rest of the day, but he could not keep his mind from wandering toward his research. He had finally breached the barrier, and possibilities towered over him like a cresting wave.

Elrond continued asking every visitor to the infirmary, but his research flourished once he put out a call for volunteers.

He could pick out individual muscle fibers from the larger system. He could sense fluids rushing to fill bumps and blisters. The energy that filled the nerves and prompted every movement, both voluntary and involuntary, hummed through his consciousness and left him wondering what exactly it was.

It didn’t work every time. Sometimes the image was softer and wobbly around the edges and Elrond couldn’t pick out one detail over any of the others. He would squint and strain until everything was a blur and the effort left him with a piercing, throbbing headache that made him slink into the darkened storage loft to recover, and he couldn’t even tell why it hadn’t worked. Was he doing something wrong? Was the subject resisting him on an unconscious level? Or was he just mistakenly trying to force it where he should be working on flowing along with it? He knew that it would not be forced, and attempting to direct it only worked so well.

Perhaps he had to learn to listen to the music that was already in motion and identify the individual notes as they struck his ears. Maybe his gift was meant to add his own counterpoint. He had to know the rules, and he had to understand the harmonies that already swirled around him, so perfect as to go unnoticed until he learned to pay attention.

It all had to have an explanation, and the more he understood, the more he would be able to treat. He had not yet been able to recreate the calming influence he had passed to Midhien, but he knew it was there. He only had to unlock it.

“I’m starting to realize just how many things I could do as a healer,” Elrond said. He had come to dinner at the longhouse, but his plate lay cold and mostly untouched as he talked about his research. “I could stop bleeding. I could dull pain. I could locate internal injuries. I’m making progress in sensing all the different structures inside the body, but it won’t be of any use without more research.”

He paused for a breath, but the table remained quiet for a moment. Maglor was watching him with a curious wrinkle in his brow, unconsciously stroking his temple.

“That is remarkable,” he said. He lifted his chin and looked over at Maedhros, who cast a shadow at the head of the table. A spark of understanding passed between them, but neither brother spoke for a long heartbeat.

“The Noldor have always been fascinated by the mysteries of creation,” Maedhros said at last. “All our crafts are attempts to extend the boundaries of our knowledge. No one embodied this like our father did.”

“Curufinwë Fëanáro, the most skilled of all the Eldar,” Maglor murmured. “In the end, the same spirit that fueled his craft burned him from the inside out. All his ambitions, his passions, even his family are now only embers. Soon they will be nothing more than ash. Never let your love of your craft rule you, Elrond.”

Whatever response Elrond had been planning, it was only breath when he opened his mouth. How would he know if he was letting his craft rule him? Was he already heading down that path? Would they have thought to say anything otherwise? “I’m not trying to,” he said. “There are just so many things I could know. As it is, I know barely anything.”

Maedhros raised his head. “Why are you seeking knowledge? Is it for its own sake, or to help others?”

“Can’t it be both?” Elrond asked with a shrug.

“You may decide that what was important to you at the present is not the same a century from now. What happens when one is not enough?” Maedhros fixed him with a pale, piercing stare, and Elrond looked down at his plate. “You must keep asking yourself that question. It is not in me to be a healer, but I have seen enough to know that single-minded obsession destroys everything in its path.”

Elrond feared the worst when Maedhros appeared at the infirmary one day. He hated being under a healer’s scrutiny and therefore usually needed to be forced to sit for treatment after deliberately harming himself. It had been some years since the last time, but he seemed to exist in a constant state of passively wanting to die. It could flicker into a crisis in an instant.

Old pain, however, was what brought him in this time. Elrond’s relief almost immediately melted into shame at being relieved; it must have been excruciating to drive him here in the first place.

“For once, it’s well for all of us that this is all I’m here for,” Maedhros muttered while sat and let Osgardir prod at his right arm and shoulder. “No knife, no poison, no noose…”

“And may we never have to see you like that again,” Osgardir said firmly. “Well, I can give you medicine for it, but you already know more healing exercises than I do. Ah, my friend, if only you had a healer besides a conscripted midwife to turn to.”

“Do I not?” Maedhros lifted his chin and looked up at Elrond.

At first, Elrond did not realize Maedhros was talking to him. “Me? I’m just a green apprentice,” he said after a heartbeat of confusion. He looked back at Osgardir. “I don’t even know anything.”

A smile tugged at Osgardir’s lips. “Maybe you can find out where the pain is coming from,” he prompted.

“And I am already used to sitting as an experimental mouse,” Maedhros said. “Go on! See what you can find.”

“All right. Um, if I can just see your arm, please.”

Elrond had expected the patchwork of new injuries upon old that rose to meet him when he blurred the barriers of Maedhros’ arm and shoulder, but he had not been prepared for just how deep they went. The bones had been broken more than once and had healed badly. Every body had its own music, but the rhythm tripped over crooked seams and uncomfortable angles in the collarbone, shoulder blade, and upper arm. It was all shot through with scar tissue. The joint ground where it should have rotated smoothly—another disturbance.

“There are many points that could be causing it,” Elrond said, drawing back slightly.

“I live with pain.”

Elrond refocused. Pain lived in the nerves, and he could sense it snapping and twisting more ferociously in some areas than in others. He wanted to linger and explore the extent of the damage and the layers of knowledge it could provide, but he remembered Maedhros’ personal request and moved on, slightly chastened. Relieving suffering was his task as a healer, and all his research should serve that end. His curiosity should not come first.

Pain was like the shimmer of heat around the mouth of a forge. Elrond kept following it, trying to soothe it as he went. Smothering the sparks would not calm the fire. He had to find its heart.

The heat centered on a cluster of tension deep in the muscle where his shoulder met his neck. He encountered some resistance in the tissues: scars, tension, stress. It didn’t flow like it should. An obstacle somewhere in the pathway. Too many fluids, angry swelling, nerves trapped where lumpy bones and muscles clashed. It was a tangle, and not one that Elrond could set right, but the root of this pain lay in that compression. He thought he might be able to release some of the pressure, at least, but it resisted even more when he tested it. Don’t fight, he thought gently, and applied a little more focus, diving down between fibers and pressing outward. Smooth it out, pull everything back into its place, lower the alarm. An old ache, not a new injury that needed urgent attention.

The knot slipped. All at once, Elrond felt the rigidity drain out of Maedhros’ body all the way from his neck down his arm and back.

“That’s it!” Maedhros suddenly exclaimed in a voice so unusual that Elrond almost did not recognize it: relief brought out warmth and hope, and when Elrond looked back at his face, he was astonished to see that all the wrinkles of pain had melted away. “I don’t know what you did, but you did it!”

“Does it hurt less?”

“It almost doesn’t hurt at all!” Maedhros rubbed his shoulder. “That bitch has been bothering me for weeks!”

Osgardir clapped Elrond on the back. “Well done. I know how long you’ve been working on that.”

Elrond could not deny enjoying the glow of pride that filled him at their praise, or the way it spread all the way to the tips of his fingers and toes when Maedhros—surly, reclusive Maedhros—began relating the story to anyone who would listen. Maybe Elrond couldn’t erase all the old injuries that troubled him this many centuries afterward, but after so much time spent meditating and exploring and testing the limits of his gift, he had finally been able to relieve some of the pain. That alone was its own reward, and everything else was like honey on warm cake.

The only person not impressed, however, was perhaps the one whose opinion mattered most to Elrond.

“Sure, that’s impressive, but I still remember watching him try to put his pants on both legs at once,” Elros sniped, and he shuffled off with his arms crossed and a dark cloud lurking around him.

Elrond planned on sitting down with Elros and having a good conversation. Maybe they would smoke at the watchtower, or maybe they would ride their mules down to the lake and go for a swim. He pictured them having the kind of uncomplicated fun they had always had while they talked it out like adults. It would be easy once he started it, he told himself, but his own tongue betrayed him as soon as he opened his mouth.

“What is your problem?”

“I don’t have a problem,” Elros said. His dark eyebrows arched in clear displeasure. “What’s your problem?”

“Nothing! I just want to know why you’re acting so…” Elrond gestured at nothing. “Weird!”

Elros tucked his thumbs into his belt. “I’m acting the same as I always do.”

“You aren’t.”

“How so?” The way Elros lifted his chin seemed almost defiant.

“Everyone is talking about how I figured out how to help Maedhros,” Elrond said, immediately hating how it sounded, but his mouth just kept going and it kept getting worse. “You’re just… acting like nothing happened! You haven’t said anything!”

There was a nasty wrinkle at the corner of Elros’ nose. “Should I? Does your special power only work when people talk about it?”

A heartbeat of silence. Something slipped into place in Elrond’s mind. “Are you… jealous?”

Elros paused just long enough for the spark to kindle into a flame. Unthinking, Elrond advanced on him a few steps. “Are you actually jealous?” he said again, this time with prickling heat in the back of his throat. “That is such… you’re such a stupid idiot!” The fire was consuming his reason and his words, one by one. “You’re an idiot child!”

That brought an angry flush to Elros’ cheeks. “Am I?” He jabbed a finger into Elrond’s chest. “If I’m a child, then so are you! We’re exactly the same age!”

Elrond jabbed him back. “I’m twenty minutes older!” That wasn’t the root of his frustration, but it was the first thing that jumped out of his mouth. Elros just laughed nastily.

“Of course you are! You’re the first! You’re the best! You’re the smartest and most talented! You’re the one everyone talks about and fawns over and asks after because you’re just! So! Special!” he jabbed Elrond even harder for emphasis. “You have a calling! You have a gift! You have your entire life figured out because you’re a fucking prodigy!”

“I never had a choice!” Almost of their own free will, Elrond’s hands flew up and shoved Elros back a few feet.

Elros shoved him back. “Of course you didn’t! It was just handed to you!”

He never meant to do it, but it happened anyway. Elrond’s hand curled into a fist and flew straight forward into Elros’ eye—he could feel his knuckles grinding into the curve of Elros’ cheekbone, and then all the wind escaped him when Elros’ knee rammed into his stomach. He fought through his muscles spasming as he tried to draw breath and yanked Elros to the ground by his braids, and then the two of them scrabbled in the dirt, throwing punches and digging their knees and elbows into soft spots and yelling incoherent insults as they bloodied noses and pulled hair and tried to bite each other’s ears.

“Take it back!” Elrond pulled hard at a hank of Elros’ hair that had come loose. “Take it back!”

Elros snarled with pain and ground his fingernails between the bones of Elrond’s wrist—Elrond yowled and pulled free but Elros only went for Elrond’s ribs instead. “Make me! Fight me for it!”

Only a wordless scream of rage escaped Elrond’s throat as he fought harder, grabbing and rolling and trying to get the upper hand, but they were as evenly matched as they had ever been. Elros’ consistent sword training had conditioned him, but Elrond had strength that came from hauling laundry baskets and water buckets all day, and he would never let Elros forget it. He grabbed him by the hair and smashed his face into the ground, and Elros’ yell of pain brought their brawl to a halt.

The sight of the bloody laceration across Elros’ cheekbone extinguished all the fight in Elrond’s heart, though his arms and legs still burned with exhilaration. “I’m sorry,” he blurted out. “I never meant to!”

“You threw the first punch! What else could you have been trying to do?” Elros gritted his teeth and gingerly pressed his sleeve to the wound as he pushed Elrond off and staggered to his feet.

“I never wanted to start a fight.” Elrond reached for Elros’ face, but Elros shooed him back out of arm’s length.

“It sure seemed like it.”

There was no way around it: Elrond knew that he had been the churl in this situation. He’d had a plan and ignored it. He’d said all the wrong things. He’d thrown the first punch, and now he had turned Elros’ face into a gory mess. “I wanted to just talk to you, but I acted like a barbarian,” Elrond said miserably.

“Great. That’s better. Instead of fighting because you weren’t getting enough attention, you wanted to ask me to give you more attention,” Elros snapped. He winced. “Damn it all, that hurts!”

“It’s not about attention!” From there, it all came out in a flood of words. “You’ve been acting weird ever since I started as Osgardir’s apprentice, and I just wondered if I did something to upset you. And then I asked you about it at the watchtower, but you wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. I don’t want you to be upset with me, and if I did do something, I just want to know how to fix it.” Elrond took a deep breath. “I don’t like not knowing things. And I don’t like to think that I could be hurting you without trying.”

Elros sighed and leaned against the wall, sliding down until his knees were under his chin. “Why do you always have to be such a hero?” he said after a moment, but the anger had gone out of his voice.

“I’m not trying to be a hero. And anyway you rescued me in the woods, so you’re probably the hero out of the two of us.” Elrond sat down next to him. The two of them sat in silence for a long moment, Elros with his sleeve pressed to his cheek and Elrond staring dejectedly at the dirt in front of him. Well, they were talking, but it had come too late, and it was his fault.

“Truthfully, I am jealous,” Elros admitted at last.

Elrond looked up and frowned. “Of what? My terrifying hallucinations?” Maybe he was being a barbarian again, but that was a sore point. Elros, out of anyone in the compound, should know that what his gift had done to him was not something to envy.

“No! Stars, no.” Elros scratched his tangled hair. “Never mind where your gift comes from. You found a purpose in it after going through everything you did—that’s amazing. Of course it inspires everyone around you. I would never ask to be in your position, but at the same time, I want to have a calling of my own. I want people to admire me for my own gifts as much as they admire you for yours. That doesn’t make me a bad person, does it?”

“No.” Elrond gripped his shoulder tightly. “You are the very opposite of a bad person. I might not be here without you.”

Elros fixed him with a long, sharp look, like he was trying to read something in the veins of Elrond’s eyes. “Is that my purpose? Shit, I just…” he glanced away. “You are my brother and I would do anything for you. I hope you know that.”

“I do.”

“After all that, who am I as a person? Is it only my purpose as the second twin to hold you up and keep you safe and healthy without a thought for what I want to do? Am I a bad person for wanting something of my own?”

“No!” His words stung Elrond’s heart, but he thought he finally understood. He slung his arm around Elros’ shoulder and gave him a companionable shake. No words seemed sufficient, but he tried anyway. “You are not a bad person. And it’s not a race. There has to be something out there for you.”

“I just feel like you’re leaving me behind,” Elros muttered.

Words abandoned Elrond entirely at that. He just sat, arm clamped firmly around Elros’ shoulders.

Maedhros and Maglor, as brothers, did not seem to provide a useful example here. They were not twins, they had different but equally well-established skills, and the days of their fame lay in long-dead centuries. Elrond and Elros had not yet come into manhood as far as the elves were concerned, and who could tell what the Secondborn would even make of them. No wonder Elros was frustrated: they walked a path that was neither lit nor mapped, and Elrond did not know how to help him. But, at this moment, he did have some way to patch up some of the damage he had caused in their mutual confusion.

“That cheek looks pretty bad,” he said when Elros peeled his sleeve away from the wound. It was still bleeding. “We should take it to the infirmary.”

“We got in a fight. It was my fault,” Elrond said, one arm still wrapped around Elros’ shoulder.

If Osgardir had intended to lecture the twins, Elrond’s blunt confession took the wind out of it. “Come on in,” he said with a long-suffering sigh. “Let’s take a look at it.”

He only had to examine the cut for a moment before ordering a few stitches to help it heal cleanly. Elrond fetched the necessary tools: towels, clamps, a curved needle, silk thread, scissors, a syringe, salt water, numbing salve. Once everything was ready, Osgardir instructed him to carry out the procedure himself as both penance and practice.

“I’ll talk you through it. Don’t be nervous now—it’s only your brother’s handsomeness on the line.” He flashed an unhelpful grin and took up a post at Elrond’s side. “You know what to do first.”

When Elrond looked back at Elros sitting on the table with the cloth pressed to his cheek, he felt like everything he had learned in the past months had been sucked back out through his ears. “Um… should I just…”

“Salve and then wash the cut.”

“Right.” With the reminder, he scooped out a bit of numbing salve on a spatula and peeled back the cloth from Elros’ face. He had practiced this, and Osgardir wouldn’t have him do it if he wasn’t ready. “This will sting at first,” he said, and then began smearing the salve in and around the cut as gently as he could.

Elros’ face twitched. “Ow.”

“Give it a moment.” Elrond put the spatula back on the tray. He vaguely realized that he was sweating as he took up the syringe in one hand and the clamps in the other and began squirting salt water into the wound and sponging it away. Osgardir nodded approvingly when the syringe was empty and Elrond went for fresh clamps and the needle, but Elrond still felt as if he was running headlong into a huge mistake. “Does it hurt?” he asked.

“A little.”

“That’s about as numb as it will get,” Osgardir said. “It will still pinch a bit, but you paid a dwarf to put a needle through your nose, so it shouldn’t be too much for you. Try not to move.”

Elros took a deep breath. “All right. I’m ready.”

Elrond knew what he had to do next: start putting stitches in Elros’ cheek. He knew how to do it. He’d practiced. He could see the technique in his mind, but he stood frozen with his tools in his hands, barely daring to breathe. “How many sutures would you say he needs?” Osgardir prompted.

“Three?”

“Is that a question?”

“Three. One in the middle, and then one on either side.”

“Good. You are doing just fine.”

Elrond steeled himself and pushed the needle through one edge of the cut. Elros suppressed a wince, and Elrond knew he needed to get this over with as quickly as possible. He brought the needle up through the other side, tied off the thread the way he’d been taught, and clipped the ends short. “There! I did it! Did I do it right?” He looked at Osgardir, anxious for feedback.

“I would have stopped you otherwise. Let’s start on the second one.”

Bolstered, Elrond placed the second stitch, and then the third. At last, he clipped the ends of the thread one last time, sponged off the closed wound, and placed his tools back on the tray. “It’s done,” he said, and all the tension drained out of his shoulders when he said it aloud.

“Good work. That should heal up very nicely indeed.”

“And if it doesn’t, I’ll just be hideously mangled for life and it’ll be your fault twice over,” Elros added. “Ow. It hurts to smile.”

“Don’t smile, then,” Elrond retorted. “Remember, you busted my chin open. We’re finally even.”

“I did, didn’t I? Do you have any sweets? I was brave.” Elros winced again.

Osgardir chuckled slightly and went to his desk, where he pulled a wrapped taffy out of the jar next to the candlestick. “You were. And many people find scars attractive—you can tell them you got it saving a baby from a bear. Works like a charm.” He gave his own scarred eyebrow a knowing tap.

“Maybe I’ll make up something even more heroic every time someone asks.” Elros tucked the taffy into his unhurt cheek. “Hey, can I have more? One for every stitch?”

“Oh, why not.”

“You don’t need to make up anything heroic,” Elrond said quietly. “You already are.”

As he stared at the insides of the first mortal Man he had ever met, all Elrond could think was that this was like any of the other midnight emergencies he had attended over the first six years of his apprenticeship.

It had started sometime in the night, when he lay cradled in a dream of a warm summer sunset and ocean waves beneath him. A violent pounding shook him out of sleep and into the chill of early spring.

“Elrond!” Osgardir called, voice thick with sleep as he padded toward the door, but Elrond was already rolling out of bed and grumpily reaching for a clean infirmary tunic. When it couldn’t wait until morning, it usually meant that someone had gotten hurt doing something stupid, like drinking too much and falling down the stairs or breaking multiple ribs in the middle of some weird, boredom-induced sex act. Or it meant that Maedhros was in trouble again, and Elrond would gladly take a parade of weird sex injuries over that.

The gate guard was at the door, and Osgardir did not sound happy at whatever news he brought. “What do you mean, they don’t speak our language?”

“Just that. No Quenya, and only enough Sindarin to say they can’t speak Sindarin and that he needs a healer.”

“Did you find them under a rock?” Osgardir asked, audibly baffled.

“We’re working on it. My men are waking everyone who knows a Mannish tongue.”

“Good. I’ll see to them in a moment.” The door creaked shut. Elrond pulled on his pants and scudded down the ladder as Osgardir went back into his room to change. “We have visitors, both literally and metaphorically,” the healer said. Elrond turned aside to splash some cold water on his face while Osgardir wriggled into the fitted undergarment he wore to flatten his chest. “Two mortals approached the gates not long ago. The night watch intercepted them and I suppose they need a healer, but they don’t speak Sindarin or Quenya, so we will see how this goes.”

Elrond toweled off his face and moved to tie his braids up under a cap, as usual. “How did they find us?”

“I know nothing.”

Washed and dressed, they left the cottage and walked quickly through the darkened streets to the gatehouse, where a small crowd had gathered. Some of them had probably been summoned to assist, but others were clearly just curious. Osgardir unceremoniously nudged them aside. “Unless you are here to interpret, make way!” he barked.

Midhien was on duty at the wall and stepped up when Osgardir and Elrond approached the gatehouse. “They have no Sindarin or Quenya, and no one knows their Mannish tongue, but they do have some sort of Avarin speech,” she said quickly.

“We can work with that,” Osgardir said. “Go wake up Amrúnith.” Amrúnith’s mother was a green-elf, and of the handful of elves in the compound who shared their blood, she was the most skilled in their lore. While they waited, Elrond followed Osgardir into the guardhouse to see to the visitors.

Elrond wasn’t sure what he expected, but the two mortals in the guardhouse seemed both strange and familiar. There was a bearded man, whose lined face was tight with pain and beaded with sweat. Next to him sat a woman with wide, frightened eyes. Their clothes were patched and travel-worn over once-bright patterns, and they both looked as if they could use a few good meals. Their only animal, a laden donkey, had been hitched outside the guardhouse.

“We are healers,” Osgardir said slowly. He pointed to himself, and then to Elrond. “Osgardir. Elrond. Healers,” he said again, and at that, understanding lit up the woman’s eyes and she nodded. He reached out to the man to feel his forehead. He declared it to be a dangerous fever and spent a few moments trying to get more information from the woman, but she truly did not have any Sindarin. Instead of pressing the issue, Osgardir beckoned to her, using his authority as chief healer to allow them access to the compound and the infirmary, where Amrúnith would hopefully be able to interpret for them. Elrond lent an arm to the sick man as they walked.

Midhien reappeared as they approached the darkened building, with Amrúnith in tow. She appeared bleary-eyed and wrapped in a blanket but willing to help. Osgardir ushered her inside while Elrond lit lamps and Amrúnith began offering greetings in a few Avarin dialects.

“They have some Kindi,” she said after several tense minutes. “I speak a little, mostly Cuind and Hwenti, so we should be able to get by, even if we have to get creative.”

“Elrond, bring the large slate over here. I might need to draw pictures if language fails us,” Osgardir said. “Where in the world do they speak Kindi but not a whisper of Sindarin?

Amrúnith spoke simply and haltingly with the mortals for another moment while Elrond rolled the slate over. She had to try different forms of a few words, and occasionally she shook her head when the woman said something unfamiliar, but they understood one another at last. The woman covered her face briefly with her hands, shoulders shaking, but she lifted her head and dashed away her tears without hesitation. Elrond did not need to understand her words to understand the look of relief on her face.

“He is Videric, and she is Liuva, his daughter,” Amrúnith said. “She says they are from ‘the old place.’ I’m not sure if that is the name of their realm, but their people were only recently displaced by the war in the north.”

Osgardir frowned slightly, but nodded. “How did they find us here?”

Amrúnith and Liuva spoke together again. “She had heard rumors of ‘teachers’—that must be what their people called the Kindi—living in these woods. When her father fell ill, she followed the forest road to find us. She knew that we have powerful medicine.”

“She found us on a rumor?” Osgardir asked, aghast. “Do her people not have healers?”

“They are alone.”

Osgardir nodded. “I do not have very great knowledge of Mannish ailments, but I will help as far as I am able.”

With Amrúnith interpreting, he began examining Videric and asking questions about his symptoms. He listened to his breathing and heartbeat—they were rapid with pain. His forehead burned with fever. Liuva said that he became feverish and sick to his stomach several days earlier, but appeared to become well again before the illness returned even worse than it was before. Through Amrúnith he described the stabbing pain in his belly, and then something that made her and Elrond look at Osgardir in confusion.

“He says he fears that his liver is exploding?” Amrúnith said. “I’m not sure of the vocabulary. It is ‘liver’ in Hwenti, but it could mean a number of other organs in Kindi.”

Osgardir’s eyebrows shot upward. “Not his liver. Ask him where the pain is located.” He poked and prodded around Videric’s abdomen, asking more questions and speaking quickly enough that Amrúnith stumbled even worse over the translation. “Not the liver!” he said again. “It is the appendix—the short bit at the end of the bowel. It is inflamed. That happens sometimes in Men, and he is right to be afraid of it. If it were to burst, the infection would spread and kill him.” He reached for the slate. “Amrúnith, I’m going to draw a diagram while I explain the procedure. Just do your best. Elrond, start preparing for surgery. If he’s been sick this long already, we will need to operate as soon as possible.”

Elrond could not deny his nerves as he washed his hands and began assembling all the necessary tools, but his fingers were steady. It wasn’t the first surgery he had attended as Osgardir’s apprentice. All the others had turned out well, and this should be no different, even if it concerned a mortal. Still, he listened to the explanation and glanced at the slate while he worked, fascinated by something he had never considered could go wrong. Osgardir had drawn a man-shaped outline with a squiggly tube inside the abdomen to represent the bowel, at the end of which was a small nub that he had circled. There was also a simple face with a downturned mouth and a picture of a scalpel, and between Osgardir sketching as he spoke and Amrúnith improvising with the translation, Videric agreed to the operation.

“He says he dreads the pain, but will accept it if there is no other option,” Amrúnith said.

At this, Osgardir looked over at Elrond. “There will be no pain,” he said firmly. “You will have poppy-spirits, and then my apprentice will put you into a deep sleep. When you wake, all will be well.” Elrond set his jaw and nodded. He only hoped a mortal mind would receive his gift as usual.

“I translated that as ‘spirit magic,’” Amrúnith said with a grimace. “Sorry. That’s the best I could think of.”

“Whatever makes sense to them,” Elrond said with a dry chuckle.

Videric, in the end, agreed to Elrond’s gift. If he had reservations, he did not express them. What other choice did he have? Blood-sickness was a terrible way to go out, or so Elrond had gathered from Osgardir’s stories of the wars in Beleriand. With that in mind he tied a mask over his nose and mouth and distributed masks and aprons to the women while Osgardir helped Videric remove his tunic and lie down on the operating table. All the necessary tools lay, gleaming and organized, on a draped stand nearby. Bright-mirrored lamps illuminated the room. With their own masks and aprons in place, Osgardir and Elrond scrubbed their hands in silence.

Elrond moved to Videric’s side and released the last of his apprehension with a breath. He sank into the now-familiar rhythms of life around him, feeling for anything different that the mortals might have brought with them. It was strange and subtle, but he recognized it, and he reached out to Videric’s presence.

It was like standing at the end of a road and staring into formless darkness beyond. Elrond trembled—it had never been like this before. What if he wasn’t able…

He caught a glimpse of Osgardir’s sharp brown eyes watching from the gap between his cap and mask. An old lesson came to Elrond’s mind as clearly as if his mentor had spoken: a ll things considered, Men and elves have more in common than not. We’re similar enough to reproduce, after all.

Right . Elrond took another deep breath. Sleep , he coaxed, and closed his eyes. He thought about what it felt like to drift off into a deep, dreamless slumber, leaving all his cares until morning. Let the poppy take hold, relax, let every fiber settle down. No pain, no fear. Just deep, deep sleep.

Gently, he drew back and opened his eyes. Videric, far from resisting, was asleep. Elrond could sense the subdued pulses of his heart, lungs, glands, and viscera, but he did not twitch when Elrond pinched his fingertip with a pair of tweezers.

“Is he ready?” Osgardir asked while swabbing Videric’s belly with alcohol.

“Yes.” He would have to stay close to his spirit throughout the procedure to make sure he was still peacefully and painlessly unconscious. The dark mystery beyond the surface of his mind made that even more crucial.

“Good.” Osgardir passed the swab back. “Blade, please.”

And so Elrond watched and assisted while his mentor cut cleanly through skin and fat with a practiced hand as if this was a patient more ordinary than the first mortal Man that Elrond, child of three kindreds, could remember meeting. Stranger still was that Elrond himself did not find the whole thing unusual either. He was just another patient.

“I thought he’d be different,” Elrond remarked as he introduced retractors to hold muscle fibers out of the way when Osgardir divided them on his way to the bowel.

“Oh? How so?”

“I’m not sure. He’s just so… normal.”

“Yes, I thought the same thing when I first met a mortal. They have their own quirks that become more apparent the longer you’re in their company, though, like this nonsensical exploding appendix. Ah, here it is!” Osgardir eased the swollen, discolored appendix out through the incision. “Estë smiles, it hasn’t burst. Have a suture ready. There’s an artery I’ll need to tie off.”

“When did you even hear about this?” Elrond asked Osgardir as he clamped the artery.

“No matter their crimes, the Easterlings have a vast understanding of medicine.” Osgardir severed the artery above the clamp and knotted a length of catgut around the cut end with deft fingers. “The princes of the house of Bór often visited Himring in the years before it fell, and we shared our knowledge with each other. One of their retainers fell ill during such a visit, and naturally we all gathered around to see what a mortal healer would do for mortal ailments. Their surgeon showed us how the pain in his belly localized to the lower right and became even worse when palpated—classic presentation of an infected appendix.” As he had done with the artery, he clamped the appendix and accepted another suture to tie it off where it connected to the bowel. One decisive cut with the scalpel, and it came free. “As many of us would fit in the room came to watch him put the man under our own dream-vapor, cut out the appendix, and show us all the different steps of the process. We were such eager pupils, even though we had each been practicing healers before his earliest mothers learned how to boil willow for their monthly pains!” He gave a short laugh. “Fascinating creatures, mortals.”

Elrond provided needles with catgut for the membranes below the skin, and finally a length of silk thread for the skin itself. Osgardir closed the wound with fast, neat stitches, and when Elrond had clipped the last one off, he accepted a fresh swab to sponge the area clean. All the tools went into a basin, and finally Osgardir secured a bandage over Videric’s stitches with a bit of resin. It was over.

“He should recover quickly,” Osgardir said to Liuva, with Amrúnith translating as he and Elrond washed their hands again. “He’ll need to rest until he is well again, but he will be just fine.”

Again Liuva wept with relief and exhaustion. Amrúnith wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders and said nothing further.

Using the table drape as a stretcher, Elrond and Osgardir transferred Videric to an empty bed. Elrond listened for any change in the rhythm that would indicate he was about to wake, but he still slept. Elrond left himself drift along the main blood vessels, sensing the different secretions that managed sleep and wakefulness, pain, responses to his illness. Just a tug—glands slowed their activity. A slight upswing in blood pressure. A withdrawal from the deepest sleep that had protected him during the operation.

“He will sleep a little longer,” he said, returning to himself.

Osgardir nodded. “Good. He’ll have more poppy-spirits once he wakes, and until he is better, they will be our guests.”

Afterward, linens went to be cleaned and tools went to the steam-kettle, and Elrond yawned as he stoked the fire on the hearth.

“I’ll take the first watch. You’re still a growing lad,” Osgardir said. “Go and get some rest.”

Elrond went up to the cot in the storage loft. He was asleep as soon as his head hit his pillow, and he dreamed of strange, bright figures surrounding him and speaking in a musical but unintelligible language. He was on his back. A shard of light appeared in the nearest figure’s hand, and it plunged it into Elrond’s belly where it burned like a white-hot knife.

He woke suddenly, drenched in cold sweat. It was still not quite dawn, he could hear the elves beginning to start the day’s work outside as the darkness began to lift. Even after all these years the nightmares had not gone away, and he was grumpy as he washed up and started going about his own duties outside.

“Why didn’t you tell me there were mortals in the infirmary?” came Elros’ voice from around the corner while Elrond shaved soap curls into the laundry cauldron. Elros himself came into view with curiosity shining in his eyes.

“Because they deserve their privacy,” Elrond said. “And they don’t speak Sindarin.”

“Even so! They could be our distant relatives. Did anyone think to ask them?”

“It didn’t come up,” Elrond said with a sigh.

“What are they like?”

Elrond shrugged. “Not too different from elves. The man had to have his appendix removed, so that was different.”

“His what?”

“Appendix. It’s a short bit attached to the bowel.” The water was steaming. Elrond dumped the dirty linens into the cauldron and pushed them under with the laundry paddle.

“There have to be more differences than that,” Elros coaxed. “How old are they?”

“Um…” Elrond scratched his head under his cap. “I’m not sure. The man has a beard and gray hair. The daughter is grown but her hair is still black.” He had noticed that there was an almost exaggerated difference between the male and female body shapes, but it didn’t seem polite to mention that. “They’re both sort of thin and ragged-looking. The war drove them from their home.”

Elros’ brow furrowed. “Is it getting closer to us?”

Elrond shrugged. The past years had followed the same pattern of seclusion and self-sufficiency that the compound had kept since before the boys’ arrival. They had all been content to lie low and stay safe for now, when interference would surely end in ruin, and Maglor had not sent any more scouts for the king’s people. There was no need.

Elros was only one of a large group that took to orbiting the infirmary, trying to coax information on the mortals out of Elrond and Osgardir as they went about their work. Amrúnith stayed close to interpret, and every time she left the building, her friends flocked around her with questions.

For the most part, Osgardir maintained a strict barrier between the infirmary and everyone else, but with the mortals’ permission he allowed Maglor access to greet them as regent of the House of Fëanor and ask after Videric’s recovery. Maglor turned out his most hospitable charms, inviting the two of them to stay at the longhouse while Videric recuperated, but they declined. There were always a lot of people coming and going, and when no one spoke their language, it would be overwhelming. Osgardir was happy to have them stay in the infirmary, but he did request someone to bring them nutritious meals to fortify them for their journey. Elros jumped at the opportunity. Twice a day, he brought a basket of fresh food from the longhouse and stayed to talk as long as he was allowed.

Despite all the stories of mortals being frail creatures who could die for the silliest reasons, Videric recovered quickly from the operation. He was talking and laughing not long after he woke, and he ate heartily, much to Osgardir’s delight. Elrond watched him, constantly wondering if the visitor’s wrinkled face reflected his own future. Maybe one day he too would fall ill and Osgardir would have to cut out his appendix--would he be able to use his gift of sleep on himself? Or would he have to face it awake?

They stayed for a few weeks. At last, Elrond clipped Videric’s outer stitches, and Osgardir declared him fit to travel. The elves packed their donkey with food and supplies and sent them along with well-wishes. Almost as quickly as they had arrived, Videric and Liuva disappeared into the forest, and the pattern of elvish life resumed its normal course.

Everything Elros tried came easily to him, and he had flitted from craft to craft in the course of searching for his calling. He always lost interest after a few months and moved on. It wasn’t unusual to try many things before pursuing a formal apprenticeship, and the craftspeople never turned away his willing labor, but they seemed to find it perplexing. He barely had time to get his hands dirty before he decided to try something else.

To Elrond’s eyes, it looked as if Elros approached different shops because he wanted to learn how to do something in particular, not because he wanted to understand the entire scope of the craft. He wanted new sandals, and they would only be just right if he made them for himself. He worked with the hostlers for a season, learned how to teach Peguiel to jump over fences, and then moved on. Hunting was less about returning with wild game, and more about the opportunity to learn how to understand the language of the forest and mask the signs of his own presence. No one knew why any of it appealed to him. Elros, when asked, would just shrug and say that it seemed interesting.

His latest foray into pottery had yielded an ingenious tray-shaped grill with handles on either end and notches down the sides that would hold metal skewers over the coals below. The twins had spent much of their recent free time spearing and grilling anything that would stay on a skewer, now that it was summer and they could spend long, warm evenings smoking and talking as the coals died out. Elros already had the grill set up when Elrond pushed aside the trailing willow branches that obscured the crumbling watchtower.

“Did you find anything good?” he asked when Elrond tossed his satchel onto the ground next to him.

“Lots of squirrels’ bread, a chicken-of-the-woods, and two oysters. I thought I saw a morel, but it’s the wrong season, so I left it.” He sighed and sat down next to the grill. “I knew if I picked it, Osgardir would pop out from behind a tree and make me repeat ‘every mushroom is edible once’ all the way back to the compound.”

“I would have liked to have a morel.”

“You’d have to fight me for it.”

Elros grinned and poked the fire to break up the coals. “I’m a lover, not a fighter, and I’m too beautiful to risk my face again.”

Elrond snorted. “A lover of whom ?”

“Someone, eventually.” The two of them worked together to brush the mushrooms clean and cut the large ones into uniform pieces, which they threaded onto skewers and set over the coals. “You know what I’ve never been able to figure out? Whether you like boys or girls, or both.”

Heat flared in Elrond’s cheeks. “There isn’t anyone to ‘like’ here,” he said.

“Right. But in theory, if there were any eligible candidates within a day’s ride, who would you prefer?”

Elrond poked at the coals for a moment, stalling, while Elros wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. “I don’t know,” he said at last, exasperated.

“I know you’ve heard pillow-poetry before. Do you think about maidens with eyes like moonless night, slender youths like saplings in spring…”

“That might sound good in a song, but it sounds stupid in real life.” He did enjoy hearing it on occasion, but idealized verse wasn’t what Elrond desired. Something real, someone he could know in both flesh and spirit, a harbor and a partner, that was what he wanted, and from there everything else seemed superfluous. “I have seen the world through the eyes of men and women,” he said at length. “It’s sometimes hard to tell if any given thought or feeling comes from myself or another person. So I think I would have to know, without any doubt, that the attraction was truly mine before I could say who I’m interested in.”

“I guess that makes sense, even if I don’t understand it.” Elros reached into his own bag. “Did you see my new pipe?”

“No!”

“Tebedir made it for me when I helped with the kiln last month.” He pulled out a short-stemmed ceramic pipe with a bowl in the shape of a curled-up sleeping fox. “He saw what I’d been using and called it a disgrace.”

“It’s great!”

Elros went for his pouch of cannabis to pack the bowl. He offered the fresh pipe and a burning twig to Elrond. “I haven’t broken it in yet. The honor is all yours.”

“Thank you.” Elrond admired the stylized fox for a moment before lighting up. He took his time, listening to the evening sounds of bats and insects as relaxation settled into his shoulders. He sat for a moment, thinking, and then passed the pipe back to Elros. “Do you think we are elves or Men?” he asked. The question had been in the back of his mind for a long time before Videric and Liuva appeared at the gates, but since their arrival and departure, it had returned to the forefront and did not seem likely to subside.

Elros paused, glanced upward, and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it?”

“What? You haven’t?” Elrond gave a short laugh. “I think about it all the time!”

“I don’t. The way I see it, we’ll find out eventually, and until then I intend to live my life as it happens.” He smiled and passed the pipe back.

“But it determines everything about us!”

Elros only shrugged. Elrond, frustrated, relit the pipe and took a long draw. They sat in silence for a moment, smoking and watching the mushrooms on the grill, before Elrond spoke again. “We are twenty-five years old. If we were Men, we would be nearing middle age. We might even have gray hair and wrinkles. But we’ve only reached our current height in the last few years, and the others still see us as youths.”

“It could be because they’ve lived so long already.”

“But they still recognize adulthood in mortals.” Elrond frowned. “Do you feel like an adult?”

“What’s that supposed to feel like?”

“I don’t know. Do you think of yourself as a man or a boy?”

“Hmm, neither. Something in between. I like my independence, but I’d be lost if I was expected to support a family tomorrow. I appreciate my elders’ guidance, and I’m aware that I do stupid things sometimes, but I don’t like being treated like a child.”

“I feel the same way,” Elrond said, relieved to have found an agreement.

“Our heritage is mixed, so I think it stands to reason that we wouldn’t have the same experience as any of our progenitors.” Elros tested one of the skewers and, satisfied, plucked it off the grill. “These are ready. It seems like…” he scrunched his nose. “The smoke is going to my head. I can’t think of the right words. Do you grow hairs on your chin?”

“I’ve had exactly two, but I plucked them out and they never grew back,” Elrond said, selecting a skewer. “And anyway, that doesn’t prove anything. Maedhros’ and Maglor’s grandfather has a full beard, and Maedhros starts growing one when he’s feeling too poorly to shave it.”

Elros, chewing on a mushroom tilted his head. “What about my ears? Do they look more pointed or more rounded?”

“They look pointed to me, but not as pointed as Osgardir’s. His ears are pretty long, though.” He knew, as he had been told, that the difference was not merely physical. Even Maedhros, who knew the Secondborn better than anyone else in the compound, struggled to explain how they were different, only that they were. Perhaps it was because he lived for centuries in the West, but then Amrúnith had no more insight for her centuries in Beleriand, encountering bands of mortals in the infancy of their existence. “What do you feel more like? An elf or a Man?”

“I don’t know! How would I even know?” Elros let out an exasperated laugh and lay back on the ground with his skewer.

Elrond did not respond to that. He could not deny that he sometimes found himself standing apart from the others for reasons he couldn’t explain—was it his age? His heritage? His gift, or merely his personality? Was he so different that he would never know what it was to be a part of either kindred?

“Are you going to smoke or stare at it until it burns out?” Elros asked at length, startling Elrond out of his thoughts. He extended his hand and wiggled his fingers expectantly.

“Oh. Here.” Elrond passed the pipe he’d forgotten he was holding. “Father was half-elven. Mother was closer to three-quarters. Wouldn’t she age more slowly than him?”

“Why are you asking me?”

Elrond blinked. “I’m thinking out loud, I suppose.”

“We’ll never know for sure unless we get to ask them someday. And even they might not have all the answers you want.”

“Don’t you want to know?”

“Yes. But I won’t mind if they can’t tell me.”

“I can’t stand not having all the answers. At least Maedhros and Maglor know that their friends have gone to the Halls of Waiting. What if we die and just… stop existing? What if we were an accident? What if the One never intended for us to exist in the first place?”

Saying it out loud opened a black pit of horror in Elrond’s stomach, but Elros just closed his eyes and giggled. “Here we are, whether he intended it or not.”

That was not reassuring. Rather than fall further down that pit, Elrond reached for a second mushroom skewer.

The greater disruption came after midsummer, when the warm air was still and heavy with moisture and everyone tried to do as little work as possible.

Elrond had taken advantage of a lull in his schedule to nap under a tree and dream of swimming in cool water. Thunder rolled in the distance. The summer squall gathered strength, bringing with it rain and hail as it loomed overhead, but Elrond opened his eyes and instead recognized the sound of hoofbeats.

“Elrond, come and see!” Elros was running up the street toward him, still wearing a dye-spotted apron for his most recent craft.

“What is it?” Elrond, still groggy, picked a blade of grass out of his hair.

“Riders! Elven riders!”

The two of them maneuvered through the gathering crowd to the gate, where they scaled the palisade to get a better look.

There were a dozen elves on sturdy-legged horses approaching the compound, all armed with swords and bows. Their mail and helmets were finished in a dark patina, and they wore the same shifting, earth-colored cloaks favored by scouts and hunters. Despite their camouflage, they unfurled a blue banner emblazoned with many-rayed stars on their approach.

Maglor’s vow to them came back to Elrond in that moment, veiled in murky memories of wet blankets and endless games of mancala: with whatever free will I have left, I will get you home safely. The king will take you into his care and this wretched episode will be behind us at last. I am sorry that this is the best I can give you.

This was always the plan. It was always going to end this way, though the earthquake and then Elrond’s illness put it on hold for a season. Still, it hadn’t seemed real, and even now it felt like he was watching the riders and their banner through a window of ice.

“It’s the king’s people,” he said quietly.

Elros looked sharply at him. “Are you sure?”

Elrond only nodded. He didn’t know what he had foreseen besides an endless forest, more lessons, more healing, more time spent exploring his gift—but twenty years to his elders meant practically nothing, even if this was nearly his entire life. What else could he have pictured?

The twins climbed down and joined the crowd as the strangers stopped at the gates.

“I come on the errand of Ereinion Gil-galad, High King of the Noldor in Beleriand,” the lead rider demanded of the guard on duty. “Where is the lord of this house?”

“You may treat with me.” Maglor parted the crowd on his way from the longhouse, flanked by Hestedis and Alagostor. “Come now, let us speak man-to-man. I won’t be scolded within these walls.”

The lead rider sat up higher in his saddle, perhaps contemplating whether refusal would be worth it, but after a moment he walked his horse into the compound. The others followed, and the host dismounted at the leader’s signal.

When he removed his helmet, he was handsome but stern and tall enough to look Maglor in the eye, which he did with unflinching intensity. Elrond realized with a jolt that they were kinsmen: the stranger shared Maglor’s smooth dark hair and something in the shape of his mouth, but otherwise he had a golden cast to his skin and a softer brow not unlike Elrond’s own, suggesting some Sindarin blood.

“It has been many dark days since our last meeting, Tyelpe,” Maglor said at last.

“I do not use that name,” the stranger said stiffly. “I am Celebrimbor, son of Ríel.”

“No matter what name you use, I still call you ‘nephew.’” Maglor opened his arms slightly, perhaps inviting a hug. Celebrimbor turned pointedly aside.

“Young lords,” he said with a deep bow. Elrond and Elros shifted awkwardly at the attention, but managed to stifle it once he raised his head. “It is for your sake that the king sent me, and on his behalf that I speak now. He mourned your loss dearly. He never forgot about you, and he bitterly regrets the mistakes that kept us from recovering you. I am close in his council, and please believe that he dedicated every resource he could spare toward bringing you home. Even so, he understands— all of us understand—that our futile efforts cannot erase the trauma that you have endured, and for that, he offers his sincerest apologies.”

Elrond and Elros looked at one another, and then back at Celebrimbor. “We accept his apologies, but I’m not sure we need them,” Elrond said with a shrug.

“Maglor kept us safe and happy,” Elros agreed. “Did the king think that he was keeping us in a cellar with the turnips?”

That seemed to ruffle Celebrimbor’s plumage a bit. “He had every reason to fear for your well-being, young master,” he said.

“Right. Well, my name is Elros—I’m the handsome one. My brother Elrond is the talented one, as well as the firstborn between us. No one has ever called either of us ‘young master.’”

“My apologies.” Celebrimbor’s voice softened, but his brow did not. “I’ll admit that none of us knew what you would be like after this long without contact.”

That set Maglor off. “I sent messengers! Scouts! Many times, over several years! I never meant to keep the boys from their people, no matter how it may look, but it was as if the king and all his subjects had vanished!” He stepped closer to the twins with the air of a wolf seeing to his pups. “Just when we thought we had the barest hint of a lead, the earthquake hit. It took us another whole year to rebuild. Why, if the king was so concerned about them, did he not make himself easier to find?”

Celebrimbor reddened slightly at the hint of a slur against the king, but he held his composure. “His first concern was for the well-being of the refugees of Sirion, whom you displaced,” he said. “They feared another strike if you believed Elwing had returned with the Jewel, and his host was already spread thin trying to push back the orcs who had come to scavenge. Do not suggest that any of this was his fault.”

“He knows well that it wasn’t.” All heads turned toward the gravel of Maedhros’ voice. He stood before the longhouse, unsmiling and ungroomed as usual but claiming authority with his head held high. “Celebrimbor,” he continued. “Your journey must have been long.”

Again Celebrimbor stiffened as if it pained him to acknowledge his uncles. “It was indeed.”

“There is much to discuss. Make use of my hospitality, and we will continue this when you are rested.” Maedhros turned back to the longhouse without waiting for a response, leaving Maglor to smooth the order into a request.

Celebrimbor’s men settled into the quarters made available to them as evening began to fall, and Elrond stopped back at the cottage to put on a long-sleeved shirt before joining the others for dinner. He tugged the cuffs down over the scars on his arms—circles and crescents, now healed pale gray-pink against the light brown of his skin—making sure they were out of sight. He did not usually worry about them, but the thought of outside eyes taking an interest made the back of his neck prickle with discomfort.

The feeling of unease did not dissipate. Elrond fought against it for some time before he recognized the unfamiliar angles as impressions of others’ minds, and he had to consciously untangle each thread like he had in the very beginning, like learning the notes of a new song.

He concluded that no one actually wanted to be there. Maedhros was physically present but otherwise absent from the proceedings to the point where even Alagostor didn’t try to make him eat. Maglor attempted to ask Celebrimbor about friends or relatives whose names Elrond didn’t recognize, but Celebrimbor only answered in short, frosty words that killed any conversation in infancy. Hestedis was drinking as much as Maedhros did. Maglor had summoned the retainers who had been at Sirion--Osgardir, Serecthel, Midhien, Amrúnith, Elhadron, and Gwedhon among them--to provide their accounts of the event if necessary, but all of them seemed ready to pounce on the first excuse to leave that they could find. Celebrimbor’s men were no happier to be there than the rest.

“There has to be some reason why neither of our parties could make contact with the other in the last twenty years,” Maglor said at last, visibly impatient. “From the beginning: what happened?”

Celebrimbor hesitated. He took another sip of mead before speaking. “The king received the messenger you sent just after leaving Sirion,” he said. “Rather, he received his message while our healers made his final hours comfortable. The orcs.”

“I suspected as much,” Maglor said with naked regret in his voice. “I did not know that he made it to you, however.”

Celebrimbor nodded. “It is well for all of you that the king at least knew you wanted to return the princes, even if the Taur-im-Duniath swallowed any trail we could have followed.”

“We have names,” Elros muttered. Elrond gave a huff of agreement.

“Again, my apologies,” Celebrimbor said. “I meant it respectfully.”

Maglor made an anxious gesture. “Please continue.”

“Balar was the sole elvish settlement of any strength after Sirion, and he realized he would not be able to defend it indefinitely,” Celebrimbor said. With a little mead in him, he finally relaxed enough to lean back in his chair and cross his legs. “He gave the order to abandon the island and take refuge in the far east. He tried to wait as long as he could in order to recover the p--Elrond and Elros, but he needed to act for the community. He knew he made the right decision once we saw the Jewel rise as the evening star. The host of the Valar landed shortly afterward, and their attack on Morgoth would only ruin us if we got in the way. We are lending what aid we can, but it isn’t much.”

Silence followed his words. So it was true, and it had come to this. The twins had heard many stories of Nargothrond and Dor-Lomin and Himring and all the other Noldorin realms in their days of glory, and if they had seemed far away before, now they seemed like little more than tales.

“A caravan of dwarves came through the forest some years ago and told us of this war,” Maglor said once the silence had become unbearable. “Did your people encounter them?”

“Usually from afar. They have no love for elves, as you know.”

“But you did see them.”

“We saw them disappearing into the mountains with their families. I wouldn’t know whether they were the same dwarves—the eastern roads are paved with refugee footprints.”

Maglor, impatient, tapped his fingers against the arm of his chair. “If you didn’t hear it from the dwarves, how did you know where to find us?”

“The king heard a recent story of Men who had encountered elvish healers in their hour of need,” Celebrimbor said. “The details matched: well-armed, well-hidden elves bearing the eight-pointed star, and the presence of twin youths. We tracked it to its source in one of the Mannish refugee towns.”

Videric and Liuva had made it after all. Elrond and Osgardir shared a smile when they met eyes across the room.

“So they did survive,” Maglor mused. “I wouldn’t have put money on it. Are there very many people settling in the east?”

“Everyone who is able to travel that far.” At this, Celebrimbor stood and addressed the assembled elves without asking Maglor’s permission. “After Sirion, the king extended his mercy to the kinslayers who joined him in the name of the greater good,” he said. “He renews the offer again. Any who will renounce the Oath’s governance and join him in building a new kingdom in the east may receive a full pardon for their past crimes. A new age is dawning, one without ancient grudges or ruinous death-pacts. This is also the will of the people, who only wish to have their lost brothers and sisters with them again. It will be an age of forgiveness on all sides.”

“It applies to Maedhros and Maglor too, right?” Elrond spoke up. He ignored Maglor’s placating gesture. “The Oath is unbreakable, but they could be the king’s allies again, right?”

Celebrimbor’s eyes narrowed slightly. “I cannot say, only that there can be no mercy without justice.”

“The king does not have the authority to pardon me,” Maedhros said in a low growl. “There is only One who does.”

An uneasy lull followed his words, and then Celebrimbor tilted his head. “I mean no offense, Elrond, but you lack context. There is no way you would defend them if you understood the full extent of their violence against your family.”

“ You lack context for what they have done for us,” Elrond shot back without thinking. Elros planted a firm hand on his shoulder, but Celebrimbor’s expression did not change.

“Kind deeds to a few do not define their impact on the rest,” he said calmly. “This is not my opinion, but a fact. It isn’t a personal flaw that you lack the perspective to see it.”

Elrond, in the depths of his child-brain, decided that he did not like Celebrimbor or his cold objectivity. He also did not like the crawling sense that he was being treated like a child, or the realization that he was indeed acting like one. He fell silent and looked into the fire, grinding his teeth until he could feel his heart beating in his ears, and then Maglor’s voice broke through.

“Does the king mean to rally the Noldor in the east and retake Beleriand once the Enemy is defeated?”

“You misunderstand,” Celebrimbor said, and finally his sternness began to fray around the edges. “There will be nothing left to reclaim by the time this war is over. Hithlum, Nevrast, the Falas—they’re already gone. Beleriand is crumbling into the sea.”

 Silence settled around the main hall at Celebrimbor’s words.

“What do you mean, gone?” Maglor said at last, frowning.

“Exactly what I said,” Celebrimbor replied. “Manwë in his power sent Eönwë at the head of a great host to strike back at Morgoth. The earth trembles before them. There are mountains where there used to be valleys and lakes where there used to be hills. It began far from here, but every battle erodes the land a little more. We know that they have been locked in a bitter struggle over the river Sirion.”

“How far has the damage spread?”

“I cannot say for sure. The newest reports are that everything west of the Narog lies underwater, and that the mountains bordering Hithlum now form an island chain around a deepening salt marsh. It’s said that the seawater has turned Talath Dirnen into a wasteland where nothing can grow. Every place I have called home is now home to none.” Deep, weary lines became apparent on Celebrimbor’s face. Elrond had to look at his plate instead. “I do not know how far it will go, but as long as the rest of Beleriand remains under Morgoth’s dominion, I do not see an end to the ruin.”

“Perhaps they intend to cleanse the world and begin anew,” Maedhros muttered. “I would not blame them.”

Another silence. “Whatever the end will be, we will face it,” Maglor added quietly. “The boys will go with you, as promised.”

Don’t I have a say in this? Elrond’s mind demanded, because it was his life, his future, and he was old enough now to understand, but it fizzled out before he drew breath to speak. Celebrimbor had silenced his protests once already, and to speak up again would not change anything. The smothering weight of powerlessness made him want to scream. Now that the day had finally come, he knew that he did not want to go.

Celebrimbor’s news of the war brought the mood in the great hall even lower than it had been before, and aside from a few more brief exchanges of news, everyone ate and drank in silence until it was just late enough to retire without being openly rude.

“I hope they’re not all like Celebrimbor in the east,” Elrond groused as he and Osgardir walked back to the house. He didn’t bother bringing up his reluctance to leave; that was a settled matter, as much as it rankled. “Why is he so...” he gestured aimlessly, grasping for words.

“Celebrimbor is a fine man with a great deal of integrity,” Osgardir said gently. “As for his manner, remember that grief has many faces.”

Elrond nodded, chastened. He knew that, but he still didn’t like Celebrimbor, and now he only felt worse for not liking him.

“In any case, I remember him as a tolerant and curious young elf,” Osgardir continued when Elrond did not respond. “Perhaps you will see a different side of him without his uncles in the mix.”

His use of you made Elrond shiver a little. “Are you not coming east with us?”

Osgardir’s pause was like a painful, expanding emptiness between Elrond’s ears. “I will come if you wish,” he said at last. “Were it not for you, I would stay.”

“Why?”

“There is nothing left for me with the Noldor, or else I would have gone back long ago.” He smiled a little. “There will be many other healers, though. You could have your pick.”

Elrond set his chin. “You are my pick.”

“Then I’ll come east.”

Elrond tossed and turned all night, too restless to sleep much.

His early chores, at least, were the same as ever. It was his turn to make porridge and tea at the house, and once they opened the infirmary, he began sweeping dust and cobwebs out of the corners with the doors and windows open to let in the morning air and sunshine. For a while, it was as if nothing had changed, but then someone rapped on the door frame.

It was Celebrimbor. Upon seeing him, Elrond gripped his broom-handle and mirrored the interloper’s straight, formal posture.

“I was told I might find you here,” Celebrimbor said.

“I am Osgardir’s apprentice,” Elrond replied, consciously keeping himself from rolling his eyes.

“Yes, your… keeper… was pleased to mention it.” He seemed to go out of his way to avoid using Maglor’s name. “You’re very young. Were you present when the sick mortal sought treatment here?”

“I helped with the surgery.” He adjusted his grip on the broom. “Why?”

“I’m very curious about all that has happened to you over these past years.”

Celebrimbor’s tone was friendly, but Elrond still felt as if he was being examined through a lens. The scars under his sleeves itched. “I grew taller,” he said, equally friendly.

“Taller than I expected, certainly. I didn’t think you were old enough to be six years into an apprenticeship.”

“Neither did I, but we settled the matter among ourselves,” Osgardir said, coming up beside Elrond. “Do you need a medication, or is there something else we can help you with?”

“No, I am quite well. Alwendion—or Osgardir, if that is the name you use now,” Celebrimbor said, frowning slightly at the grim appellation. “I hope you will consider coming east. You are sorely missed, and not only for your skill as a healer.”

Osgardir’s mouth twitched. “I wouldn’t have thought so. Do I have an overly-nostalgic old colleague? Is it Handir?”

“Well, no. Handir died at Nargothrond, but there are others.”

“I’m not especially concerned about them. I am coming east, but it is for Elrond’s sake,” Osgardir said. “His training is not yet finished.”

Celebrimbor drew a sealed letter out of his sleeve. “Some of the king’s people sent letters, hoping to find their friends and family alive and willing to return. This one is for you.”

He extended it, and Osgardir only hesitated a moment before taking it. Elrond peered over his shoulder at the letter, which betrayed nothing in its simple address: to Alwendion, called Osgardir.

He broke the seal and snapped the letter open with a flick of his wrist. Elrond shuffled the broom back and forth in one spot--not even a credible veneer of minding his own business as Osgardir read the letter. It looked short from a distance, but his silence grew thicker with each passing moment he spent staring at it.

“It was mis-addressed,” he said at last. “There is no possible way that...”

“I assure you, she addressed it herself,” Celebrimbor said.

“When?” Osgardir shook the letter in front of Celebrimbor’s face. “When was it written? How long have your people been saving it? Who found it? Tell me, Curufinwë, was it your cunning plan to lure me back on the promise of... of more lifeless artifacts...”

Celebrimbor’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “For what purpose?”

“Where did you get this?” Osgardir demanded. The paper trembled in his hands.

“She wrote it for you. Ranuiel, your daughter. She lives, and your son as well.”

Elrond’s mouth dropped open. He held the broom still, having forgotten what he was doing, and looked back at Osgardir. The healer was motionless. He pressed his hand over his mouth, eyes fixed on the letter.

The wave of emotion hit Elrond before he could prepare himself. It began as a warm glow in his chest, and then spikes of fear and shame and regret shot through to the very center. He couldn’t contain it--it was shredding him from the inside out, and the warmth spilled through the gashes like wine poured into a broken cup.

He partially resurfaced when he felt tears on his cheeks and a burning coal in his throat. Struggling for control was like tossing a hot rock between his hands, but finally he let it go with a forceful breath out, and he was present once again. He brushed at his eyes with the back of his sleeve.

Osgardir still did not speak. Tears coursed from his closed eyes, and his fingers were white against his lips.

“Like I said, you are sorely missed,” Celebrimbor said. The compassion in his voice didn’t quite overcome the stiff discomfort beneath it. “Everything is forgiven.”

In the end, most of the elves accepted the promise of the king’s pardon, and only a small, rough band remained with Maedhros and Maglor in their exile.

Serecthel and Midhien gladly accepted the opportunity to travel east and start over. Alagostor tried to stay as Maedhros’ squire, but Maedhros ordered him to go east and find a peaceful life. Amrúnith chose to stay in Beleriand with her mother’s people and share whatever fate they would meet. Hestedis likewise refused the invitation. “My sister promised to see me at the end of a spear if I showed my face again,” she said when pressed. “I have no reason to doubt her.”

They gathered their animals, tools, seeds, and goods. There were carts that needed repairs and projects to put on hold. Packing and sorting took up every minute of daylight they had, and Celebrimbor grew more restless with each day it took: it was clear that he wanted to leave as soon as possible, but leaving the compound to join the king was not as simple as Elrond had imagined. Life and work would continue, whether in the forest or in the distant east, and he hadn’t considered how much stuff it took to support a community since the earthquake, and then he had been too young to really understand it.

Elrond and Osgardir carefully dug up the herb garden. They transplanted the plants into pots that would travel well in the back of a wagon, paying extra attention to the valuable poppies as they packed all but one for the journey east. Those who remained would have the remaining plant, along with all the infirmary supplies that wouldn’t fit in the wagon.

“I built this place from nothing,” Osgardir said with a sigh. He stroked the steam-kettle’s battered lid. “It isn’t easy to leave any of it.”

“I’m sure there will be plenty of steam-kettles where you are going,” Hestedis said. She had come to help prioritize the stash.

“That is true.”

“Imagine how many other things you can carry instead.”

Osgardir sighed again. “That is also true. Alas, I’ve grown attached to it, but it will stay here.”

In the end, Osgardir and Elrond took most of the tools, medicines, and clothing, leaving only a basic supply behind them. Hestedis did not request much beyond what could be carried between a few people: just enough for survival. Elrond shuddered at this glimpse of the future of the House of Fëanor.

Later, when the wagons were all packed and the leaving elves saw to their final preparations, Maglor summoned the twins to his room, where open crates and baskets sat around him like attentive students. He picked out and sorted their contents into chests for Elrond and Elros to take with them, and he seemed to be leaving very little behind.

“Are we really going to need all of this?” Elrond asked.

“You’ll be glad for it. I haven’t the faintest idea what the fashion will be once you get there, but at least you can take them apart for the fabric if you want to.” Maglor layered fine tunics between sheets of paper in a chest. Elrond had never seen them before. They weren’t practical for this life like they would have been when Maglor ruled the Gap.

“I call the purple one,” Elros said. “And the green one. And also the one with the diamond pattern.”

Any other time, Elrond would have told Elros to fight him for it, but now he couldn’t find it within himself to care. Maglor kept packing things for them to bring, but they all seemed like things he should keep for himself: jewelry, books, instruments in cases. “Neither of you are putting one foot outside this palisade without a mail coat,” he continued as he dug a jingling silver-white hauberk out of another crate. “Here’s one. There should be another.”

“Don’t you need it?” Elrond said. The funny, growing emptiness inside him shivered.

“No, we have others. These ones are special, so you should take them east.” Maglor found the other coat in one of the other chests. “It’s a mithril alloy, so it will never rust and will not weigh you down. Come here, Elrond, let’s see if this one will fit you.” Elrond raised his arms over his head and bent forward so Maglor could ease the mail on without tangling his braids. Once his arms were through the sleeves, he stood straight and let the hauberk fall to his knees. It wasn’t as heavy as the steel mail he’d tried on before, but it was still uncomfortable. He could see the bright metal reflected in Maglor’s dark eyes. “You’re a little thin for it, otherwise it fits well enough,” Maglor declared, putting his hands on his hips. “Once you reach your destination, ask Celebrimbor to adjust it for you. He won’t refuse, and he’s the only one I’d trust to work with the metal. Here, Elros, come and try on the other one.”

Elros looked as awkward in his mail as Elrond felt in his, standing stiffly with his shoulders hunched and arms slightly extended like he’d felt a trickle of cold water down his back. In that moment, the idea that they were really leaving the safety of the compound had grown a little more real.

“Very handsome,” said Maglor. “Princely, even. It will be good for you to look the part when you arrive.” Elrond pulled a face at that.

“If you have a moment,” came Maedhros’ deep rumble from the doorway. The three of them looked up, surprised to see him for the first time since the evening meal some days earlier. Maglor beckoned him inside. “I have only a few things worth passing on,” Maedhros continued, and he indicated a small cloth pouch and a worn leather booklet in his left hand. “It’s more of a burden, really, like everything else I’ve given you.”

“Not everything,” Elros protested with a laugh, but Maedhros only gave him a small, tired smile.

“Let us hope. Elros, this one is for you.” He leveraged the pouch between his prosthetic fingers and tipped a milky-clear stone the size of an egg out into his left hand. At first it did not seem like anything more than that, but when Elrond looked closer he noticed a flickering spark at its center, and he recognized the blue-white light that had come through the forest to cut through the darkest depths of his visions. In daylight it shone with a softer, pearly glow as Maedhros pressed it into Elros’ cupped hands.

“This is the last lamp made by my father that survives in Beleriand,” he said. “I have a feeling that you will walk where no one has walked before. A light may be helpful.”

“Thank you,” Elros said quietly.

“The light will never fade, but it will go out if the stone is broken. I would appreciate it if you continued to keep it safe.”

Elros only nodded. A visible dimple of effort appeared in his chin.

“Here, Elrond.”

Elrond looked up. Maedhros, his expression blank, held out the booklet, which was thick with yellowed leaves of parchment and closed with crossed cords. Elrond took it and turned it over in his hands. “What is it?”

“Letters from Fingon. You don’t have to read them. Some of them are… pretty lurid.” He pursed his lips and glanced to one side. “Still, they’re all I have left of him, and I would appreciate it if you continued to take care of them.”

Elrond nodded. “I will.”

“If nothing else, every time I’ve carried them into battle, I’ve come out unharmed. May whatever protection they hold pass on to you.”

No, you need it, these are yours, Elrond suddenly wanted to say, but at his twitch of movement to give them back, Maedhros shook his head once and folded Elrond’s fingers around the booklet. “I am going where he would not,” he said in a strange, gentle tone that Elrond could not remember ever hearing. “His memory deserves peace.”

“I’ll make sure he gets it,” Elrond said.

“Thank you.”

Bare rooms and empty buildings echoed strangely, reverberating through Elrond’s belly as he tried to take in the sights and sounds and smells of the compound over rapidly dwindling days, but there was almost nothing familiar left. Without furniture, light and shadows fell in all the wrong places. Without rugs and banners, the hearths seemed cold even in the stillest part of the summer. The longhouse might have been an abandoned barn. It was all wrong.

At last, the morning of their departure arrived. Before dawn, Osgardir roused Elrond from a light, fitful sleep filled with odd dreams and left him to wash and dress while tea brewed for the last time in the little stone cottage. Instead of his usual infirmary tunic and trousers, Elrond put on the uncustomary uniform he had set out the night before: sturdy canvas trousers, linen shirt, gambeson, wool socks and riding boots. He was already sweating by the time he ducked into the silvery mail hauberk, and it was even worse with an earth-colored surcoat belted over everything else. Too warm for tea, he gulped down the bitter, yeasty dregs of the small beer in the cold cellar, knowing he needed sustenance for the days ahead.

The door opened. For a moment, Elrond smelled linen and sweet herbs and heard the sound of boots thundering under the creak of drawn bowstrings, but it was only Osgardir standing there when he blinked.

“Are you ready?” the healer asked. He was in his mail and crimson surcoat. Instead of the jingle of steel rings, Elrond thought he heard glass mancala beads clattering into a wooden cup and someone crying in the next room.

He blinked again, and the impression left him. “Almost.”

“Lord Celebrimbor is trying to leave, so finish up as quickly as possible,” Osgardir instructed. He let the door swing shut as he left.

Somehow Elrond found himself outside in the midst of all the carts and animals and people preparing to leave. Elros stayed close, and the two of them looked out at the crowd as if through an enclosed bubble of glass. There was anxiety in the host, but hope softened it around the edges. Still, the relief did not quite extend as far as Elrond and Elros, the only two who did not remember much of their life before the forest.

Hoofbeats and footfalls approached. The twins looked up to see Maglor and Maedhros leading Rochael and Peguiel toward them with their tails freshly braided and manes freshly clipped.

“Here we are,” Maglor said. He handed Rochael’s reins off to Elrond. “They’re ready to see the world.”

“We need to make use of the light,” Celebrimbor said from his saddle a short distance away. “Elrond and Elros, are you ready? It is time.”

“Will you not give them a moment?” one of his retainers spoke up, and Celebrimbor shifted a little.

“Very well.”

Elrond reached for Maglor, but Maglor pulled him into a tight hug first. Time seemed to be rushing through his fingers like steam. He stood at the top of a long, steep slope, and once he stepped off the edge, there would be no return. Wasn’t it safer to stay at the top, where he knew his footing? It was certainly easier.

“Keep up your cooking and music practice,” Maglor said into his hair. “Don’t just get so absorbed in your work that you neglect everything else. Understand?”

Elrond nodded. He didn’t want his voice to wobble—not now. He tried instead to memorize the strength of the embrace and the warmth of Maglor’s voice to carry with him into the unknown east.

“I don’t want to go,” Elrond confessed.

“I know. I would rather you stay as well. But… the time has come, and now there is no alternative.”

“You could still come with us.”

Maglor’s mouth twitched at the corner. “That would not be in anyone’s best interest.”

Elrond pulled back a little. “I could make the king see,” he reasoned. “I could convince him that you… that you’re not…”

“Elrond.” Maglor rested his hands on Elrond’s shoulders. A hundred arguments boiled up in Elrond’s mind: it’s all a misunderstanding, the Silmaril is far away now, it’s a new world, it wasn’t always bad, you could make amends, what does he think he knows anyway? There had to be some way to make it work, and he was willing to find it. He was nothing if not stubborn in the pursuit of answers, but Maglor saw the justifications burning on Elrond’s tongue and shook his head. “Not this time,” he said. “This new world is not for me. But you will do great things, and they will come to happier ends than the house of Fëanor could have ever imagined.”

“But what will you do? Beleriand is dying!”

“Oh, I don’t know. But you should not worry.”

Why did people always think that he would stop worrying when they said that? And when had anyone ever done only what they should? The reminder left Elrond feeling more helpless than ever, just a neurotic little boy worrying about things he would never be able to control. “That doesn’t help,” he muttered.

His joy was in the ancient, endless woods and the company of all the others in the compound. Maglor taught him and Elros to sing and play the harp, to read and write elegantly, to ride a horse and comport themselves like gentlemen. Despite all his efforts to be a sober tutor, he was also warm and indulgent and full of encouragement, and at some point, caring for the twins had ceased to be a duty. Elrond felt it in the way he leaned forward when one of them approached him with a question, no matter the subject.

He still had so many more questions—more than was possible to fit into the time they had left.

On his other side, Elros was weeping openly against Maedhros’ shoulder. “Don’t cry. This is a good thing for you,” Maedhros said gruffly. Even so, he had one arm wrapped around Elros and didn’t move to push him away. Instead he extended his other arm toward Elrond. “Come here,” he said, pulling him in close. “You will be just fine. There is a whole world out there for you to discover, understand? I’ve seen it. There is so much more than this. No crying.”

Elrond couldn’t help it. He sniffed and wiped his eyes but the tears kept coming. “Thank you for everything,” he said at last. “Teaching us. Finding me in the forest.” He lifted one shoulder and let it drop. “I’m glad we had you when we needed you.”

Maedhros pursed his lips. For a moment he looked like he was about to remind Elrond again that it shouldn’t have been him, but he only nodded once.

When Elros finally detached from Maedhros, Maglor pulled him into a hug as well. Time continued to slip by, faster and faster like the boys used to ride shields down snowy hills in the winter, and at last they could delay no longer. “The longer we delay, the harder this will be,” Maglor said finally with his hand still resting on the back of Elros’ head.

Elrond scrubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. He did not want to go. Every particle of him screamed to stay here, but he knew that was not an option. This was always the plan. Even though this was the only life he knew, it had always been temporary. He understood this.

It took more effort than usual to put his foot through the stirrup and lift himself into the saddle, as if he had doubled his weight overnight. Every ordinary moment had crystallized into his mind since Celebrimbor’s arrival: last breakfast. Last game. Last song. Last answer to one last question. They became heavier and more frequent as time ran out, a rushing river of last moments encased forever in cut glass behind his eyes. Last laugh. Last smile. Last teardrop.

He set his jaw and looked back at Maglor and Maedhros where they stood to see the twins off to their new home. “This won’t be the last time we’ll see you,” he said. I swear it, he almost added, but stopped himself before the words leaped off his tongue.

“You need to look ahead,” Maglor said. It was only with visible effort that he managed to speak firmly. “I know this is not easy. I know. But you will get stronger.”

Elrond nodded. He turned and met Elros’ wet eyes. “Are you ready?”

“As ready as I will be. Are you?”

“I guess,” Elrond replied with a shrug. This was the end, whether he was ready or not. The two of them looked up to Celebrimbor at the head of the company and nodded once. At his signal, the horses and wagons pulled forward onto the long, lonely road east.

Much later, Elrond would find that he remembered very little of the first few days of their journey.

Horses, voices, wheels, and wind rustling through the trees all faded behind the bubble of helplessness that seemed to shrink around him more with every passing mile. His throat burned with the roar he wanted to release, lashing out with both fists against the barrier until it shattered and he could breathe freely again, untethered, not protected and herded along like a steer.

He stayed quiet. His neck and shoulders ached with the effort of cooperating. He ate and slept when he was told. He stayed within the circle of wagons at night. He did not venture too far into the woods or disturb any twig or pool more than necessary. Surely today will be easier, he thought upon waking every morning, but it never was. It was only hours of walking and riding and trying not to scream when thoughts of Maglor and Maedhros and their band of remnants grew too sharp to block out any longer.

After they set up camp one evening, Elrond left the meal in progress and went to where Rochael was picketed with Peguiel by the infirmary wagon. He had already rubbed her down earlier, but he needed an excuse to avoid the crowd, so he unearthed a comb and began running it through her already-smooth mane.

It would be so easy to just... go back. He had Rochael, and they were less than a week’s ride out from the compound without the wagons to slow them down. Neither Maglor nor Celebrimbor could tell him where to go. Not when he made up his mind. Not now that he was capable of choosing his own path.

The impulse left him as suddenly as it had come. Instead, an equally intense feeling of helplessness swelled into the void, and his hand dropped to his side. Rochael twitched her ears and snuffled at his shirt--she hadn’t yet given him permission to stop stroking.

“She is a beautiful animal,” came Celebrimbor’s voice from behind Elrond, making him jump. He turned back and gave Celebrimbor a smile that felt like a grimace.

“Thank you.”

He came closer. “I’m told that your mule and your brother’s are twins? I don’t believe I have seen such a thing in the past five centuries, let alone with such markings.”

Celebrimbor’s manner was more sociable now that they were away from the compound, but Elrond still felt like he was being studied, and he did not like it. “Everyone called it an auspicious sign when they were born,” he said.

“That is understandable, though you’ll have to forgive me—I’m a bit of a skeptic.” Celebrimbor gave him a wry smile.

“You and Osgardir both. He said that there’s nothing unusual about getting spotted foals from a spotted mare, and mule twins are more likely to survive until birth than horse twins.”

“And what do you think?”

Elrond raised a suspicious eyebrow at the question. “It could be both. Why?”

“I was just wondering. Oh, hello there.” Rochael had begun inspecting Celebrimbor’s tunic.

“She thinks you might be hiding a carrot,” Elrond said.

“Alas, I’m all out.” Celebrimbor stroked her nose instead. He paused. Elrond sensed something building within it and braced himself. “I understand that this is difficult,” Celebrimbor continued. He was clearly trying to make an effort to sound compassionate even if it was awkward. “It was still painful for me to leave my father’s house when his loyalty turned to selfishness, but I knew it was the right thing to do. So I am not entirely ignorant of what you struggle with now.”

This was the first time he had claimed any of the sons of Fëanor as his family. Elrond grudgingly looked up at him; the least he could do was acknowledge this laborious crack in Celebrimbor’s carefully-maintained demeanor. “You still chose to do it,” he said. “I did not choose this.”

“You did not choose to live in their household in the first place,” Celebrimbor replied. His voice was soft enough that Elrond could not find enough condescension to make him angry. “You are being restored to your rightful home and family, or as close an approximation as possible. Everything you do from there will at last be your own choice.”

At last? Had living in Maglor’s house rendered every one of his other choices void? Even becoming an apprentice healer, though everyone had resisted his choice until he proved his dedication? Who was Celebrimbor to decide which of his choices counted as such?

“I did not come to lecture you,” Celebrimbor said in the face of Elrond’s stony silence. “I only came to offer a word of support. I know this is difficult, and I do not expect you to pretend that it is easy.”

“Thank you,” Elrond said, because that was the polite thing to say. Maglor had not raised him with the pigs, after all.

Elrond began to return to himself after that, but he remained suspicious. He watched Celebrimbor carefully over the unfolding days, looking for any mannerisms or turns of phrase that might link him to Maedhros and Maglor and bring a shred of familiarity to his stern presence, but there was none. He spoke flawless Sindarin with no accent, unlike Maedhros’ refusal to use the Sindarin pronunciation for vala. Unlike Maglor, Celebrimbor did not laugh or groan when Elrond tested him with a pun; instead, he lifted a confused eyebrow and changed the subject, leaving Elrond feeling a little foolish.

He had an easier time socializing with the retinue. Both twins were curious about the new settlements in the east, both those of the elves and those of Men, and the strangers were happy to answer their questions. Still, their stories could not lighten the cloud of uncertainty that hung over Elrond, but he tried anyway. “What do you call the new realm?” he asked one night around the retainers’ fire.

“For now, we call it the Havens, for it is a refuge from all the turmoil of the last Age,” said Thránion, a friendly fellow who had come from a village near the border with Doriath. “The local elves call it Lindana, and they have been very welcoming hosts.”

“What are they like?

“Much like the Sindar, who are their kinsmen.”

“Do Men live there as well?” Elros asked.

“Yes, though they generally prefer to live among their own kind.” Thránion drew a simple map in the dirt with a stick. “The king’s house is north of the river, and many Noldor and Sindar have set up their own households around it. The rest have established smaller villages across the countryside with their own markets and customs and so forth. You can travel between villages of mostly Noldor and others that have mostly Sindar and others that have a mix of customs—even though Gil-galad is High King of the Noldor in name, he doesn’t find it useful to govern everyone as if they were Noldor. And he has mixed heritage, like many of us do.”

“Is there very much conflict?”

“A little. Just people getting used to one another. It’s all sort of an experiment, but everyone tends to figure things out between themselves.”

As the days wore on, the deep woods thinned out into sweeping meadows graced with green groves of trees. Faraway rivers sparkled like dew on a blade when Elrond looked out from the tops of hills. Birds and bats called through the treetops as night and day faded into one another, and under daylight the sounds of deer running over soft earth rippled in the distance.

Sometimes there was a road. It had once been paved in stone, but most of it had been overtaken by grass and earth. They passed derelict farms and ruined watchtowers along the road, signs that this silent countryside had once supported civilization, but they did not see a single Man or elf outside their own party. Their solitude in the forest had not felt like this. The dense trees and the palisade sheltered the community as they went about their work, and nameless fears did not lurk in the shadows like they did out here in the open.

Everyone felt it. Celebrimbor’s retainers were quick and hardy, outfitted for stealth. The rest of the company was weighed down with supplies and animals, and it made everyone nervous. If any bandits spotted them, the company would be hard-pressed to push them back.

Osgardir seemed to be the only one not preoccupied with the forbidding emptiness all around them, and Elrond had never seen him like this before. He was as much a taskmaster for himself as he was for Elrond, but normally he did it with an air of mechanized acceptance, like the work itself was his reason for existence rather than any end goal.

He now applied that single-minded dedication toward the journey and the promise of seeing his children at the end of it. He paced and whistled when the company was delayed, and at extended stops, he grew so impatient that he barked at everyone around him. When the wind was at their back, however, he laughed and chatted like Elrond had never known him to.

Elrond usually rode Rochael beside the infirmary wagon while Osgardir drove it. Osgardir talked of nothing but his family. It made a weird, shameful sense of jealousy settle like grit in Elrond’s stomach: he’d already lost Maglor and Maedhros, would he have to fight to keep Osgardir now? It was stupid, and he felt stupid, but his mentor’s good spirits were infectious. Elrond decided to be happy with him and ignore the jealousy for now.

“Are you nervous to see them?” he asked, partially out of curiosity and also because he needed some perspective. He thought he might be nervous to meet the remnants of his kin who would be waiting for him, but it was hard to separate that from his general anxiety and resentment at being relocated against his wishes.

“Perhaps. I hardly know what to expect.” Osgardir gave him a rueful smile. “Sídhon was one of the last babies to be born at Himring before the Dagor Bragollach, and he was only a child when I went to the front with the Union of Maedhros. He’ll be grown now. All that time I believed him dead.”

“And Ranuiel? Was she very young?”

“No. She was among the earlier children born at Himring--one of many born one year after the Long Blizzard, just as I predicted,” Osgardir said, sounding a tad smug. He paused and was sober when he spoke again. “As a child she begged Raemben to teach her to fight and shoot, as much as we wanted her to know a peaceful life. I suppose she would have been among the garrison.”

“Did you ever hope you would find their bodies?” Elrond asked cautiously.

“No. Orcs fast before battle and consume the dead,” Osgardir said with a matter-of-fact detachment that made Elrond’s skin crawl. “I did not need proof. Seeing Raemben was enough.”

No response seemed adequate, so Elrond said nothing, focusing instead on the creak of wagon wheels and the irregular pattern of overlapping hoofbeats. The silence between him and his mentor only lasted for a moment, but it felt like the over-long rawness between skinning a knee and applying a bandage.

“They always felt that they had to protect me,” Osgardir continued. He laughed softly. “If I wanted to be protected, I would have stayed in Estë’s gardens. I went to the front with the Union, and Raemben stayed behind as Steward of Himring. We all thought it was the anvil on which the Enemy’s hammer would shatter.”

Elrond knew the rest. Himring had shattered instead, and its lord with it. Without that last foothold, the Noldor in Beleriand were truly defeated, scattered into the wilds of Ossiriand like primordial elves who had once hunted and wailed like animals in the endless, starless dark. “No one knew it would go so badly,” Elrond said, but he was only repeating what he had heard from his elders.

“We should have. Every day and night, I thought about what I could have done: whole narratives where I stayed and got them out, or hid them, or died in their place, or where my presence was enough to turn the tide of the battle somehow.” A muscle twitched in Osgardir’s jaw. “I tried to lie down and give my guilty, grieving spirit to Mandos, but he wouldn’t take it. I remained here, doomed to follow the house of Fëanor to Doriath and Sirion and beyond. In my mind, that was my punishment for leaving my spouse and children to die. Now I tell myself that I couldn’t have known, I tried to do the best thing, what other choice did I have, every excuse under the sun, but…” He sighed. “I apologize for burdening you with this. I would be ashamed to ask you, of all people, for absolution.”

Elrond frowned slightly, trying to untangle his emphasis. “What do you mean?”

“Ah, never mind. You are my apprentice, not my mind-healer.” Osgardir smiled a little. “Are you nervous to meet the king, now that you will be his ward?”

“Not really. I don’t know him, and he doesn’t know me. We only have to tolerate each other.”

“How pragmatic of you. It shouldn’t be difficult to improve upon mere tolerance.”

Elrond grimaced. “Let’s hope so.”

The hills grew steeper and rougher, crowned with ferns and deep green pines and fallen trees blanketed in lichen. The wagons struggled where there was no tended road, and the company’s pace fell to a frustrating crawl as they carefully towed wagons up sloped and scouted out the easiest paths before moving onward. Wheels broke and had to be repaired. Horses sometimes had to be led single-file through treacherous rocks, with their wagons unloaded and distributed among the company until the ground could support them again. They were only as agile as their slowest companions.

“We are approaching the foothills of Ered Luin,” Celebrimbor said when complaints began to reach his ears. “It will not be much longer, though the way is not easy. If it was, the Havens would not be safe.”

A pony broke its leg and had to be put down. The company dined on horseflesh that night, and Elrond rattled out a list of excuses to sit by himself in the woods instead. Fear and pain lingered in his mind, carried on the wind with the meat-scented smoke that permeated their camp. It had been difficult enough to keep it contained while the poor animal struggled between stepping wrong and bleeding out, and it stayed with him in dark dream fragments and shards of panic until they moved far enough from the scene the next day.

“Are you not going to tell Celebrimbor anything?” Elros muttered to him out of the company’s earshot.

“No. Not until I know I can trust him,” Elrond muttered back. Everyone from the compound knew about his gift, but strangers added uncertainty to the once-easy trust they had for one another, and Elrond did not like it.

Rochael sensed his discomfort, and it made her moody, which only put Elrond more precariously on-edge. A mule thinks for herself, Maglor had told the boys in the very beginning, when they spent their days getting the two little foals accustomed to their presence. They always hesitated, casting a wary eye over Elrond and Elros for a moment before complying with simple commands, and in the end they only obeyed because they wanted to. See, now, you could ride a horse over the side of a cliff, Maglor reminded them when Rochael and Peguiel were large enough to begin riding lessons. A mule considers her own safety first. She’s happy to bear you where a horse could not, but she will not be ordered to her death. If you are not confident in your handling, neither is she.

Young Elrond did not always find it easy to be patient with Rochael. Why couldn’t she just do what he wanted her to do? He loved her from the moment she first toddled toward him on long, gangly legs—he would never do anything to put her in danger!

She knows you, Maglor said gently when Elrond’s frustration brought him almost to the brink of quitting. He placed Elrond’s hand back on Rochael’s spotted neck. See how she raises her head when you approach. Look at how far you have come already.

Elrond sighed, staring up at the sea of stars above his bedroll. The music of a summer night was familiar here: insects, frogs, running streams, and the sound of Elros breathing slowly in deep sleep next to him. I need to get some rest, he thought to himself. His body was heavy after the day’s labors, but his mind wandered in the shadows on the eastern horizon. The world he knew was behind him, and soon he would walk where every step was a game of chance.

“We are approaching the Havens. If all goes according to plan, we should arrive at the house of the king before sundown,” Celebrimbor said in the early morning. He stood fully equipped before Elrond and Elros, who blinked blearily up at him over mugs of porridge. “Once we reach the Rathlóriel, I expect marchwardens to intercept and escort us there before noon.”

“And then what?” Elrond asked.

“And then the king will decide what happens, and with any luck, I’ll go back to my workshop where I belong,” Celebrimbor said.

The company continued along its largely unmarked path. The day became still and hot as the sun climbed higher in the sky, and for the first time, Elrond began to look forward to what awaited him—specifically a real bath and clean clothes. He’d have it before nightfall, if Celebrimbor was correct, and then he could start navigating everything else.

Something itched at the edges of his perception. He frowned and investigated it a little, but it retreated, and he put it out of his mind until the unfamiliar buzz returned. It was like being in the vicinity of a wasps’ nest, far enough to be out of danger but near enough to be wary. The wasps noticed him—the buzz grew louder, Elrond’s hair stood on end, and Rochael twitched and snorted as if to shake off flies, but there were none.

“Lord Celebrimbor! Is it really true?”

Elrond pushed past the excited buzzing and back into the physical world. All around the company, figures cloaked in green had materialized between the trees and rocks, moving so quietly that they might have always been right there, silently watching.

Celebrimbor pulled his horse and the company to a halt. He looked up into the trees. “Many things are true, and some are not,” he said in his calculating way. “But yes, our hopes have been rewarded, and the princes return at last to our people.”

From there, everything rolled like a stone shaken from the top of a hill. The wardens escorted the company from the forest to a well-maintained dirt road, and progress was swift and easy for the first time in days, but the wardens jogging alongside the wagons and others leaping from tree to tree beyond the road made Elrond feel as if he was being hurried along faster than he was ready. They began to pass cottages and tree houses tucked into the woods, joined soon by small wayhouses and workshops and more and more strange elves. They looked up from work and play alike when the company approached, leaving their tools to follow them along the road, shouting in joyful voices as the wardens called out Hark! Make way! The princes have returned! The princes have returned at last!

Elrond set his teeth. He could feel them all approaching before they came into view, and as the buildings came together into neighborhoods and villages, it was like embers catching dry tinder.

Come! Come and see! The princes are home! The hope of our people lives after all!

They came at last to a stone bridge over the mighty Rathlóriel, and thence to the city of the king, tucked away beyond dense walls of trees and a narrow, winding path with many branches that seemed to lead nowhere but forest so deep that light could not touch it, but the wardens knew the way, and soon the trees gave way to the city itself.

The buildings were young and lively with their arched roofs and bright paint, which stood in stark contrast to the blocky, utilitarian buildings back at the compound. They favored shades of green, yellow, and white, and the roofs were made of orange clay tiles that matched the riverbank. Elrond spotted geometric Noldorin decorations alongside floral Sindarin motifs, all of them intertwined with carved and painted trees and animals and stars. He had never seen anything like it, but at the same time, it seemed to welcome him with the familiarity of an old friend, and he could not stop himself from staring with his mouth hanging open in unmasked surprise.

They stopped again in the center square before the king’s house, where citizens were gathering from all around. Their faces were bright and open, but both parties paused, momentarily unsure of how to proceed.

A woman pushed her way to the front of the crowd. She was very tall and beautiful, with silver-white hair and piercing blue eyes like a visitor from another world, but she was dressed in hunter’s drab and her face was flushed from running.

“Atya!” she cried, and then she darted forward with a second silvery elf in tow. Osgardir had already flung aside the reins and leapt from his wagon. He closed the gap in the blink of an eye, reaching for Ranuiel and Sídhon just as they embraced him in a flurry of tears and laughter and earth-colored cloth.

The impasse cleared like a cobweb from an open window. Friends and family beckoned and rushed to meet one another, years and miles of anger and sorrow thrown to the wind at last as the final wound of separation closed in a few short steps. Everything bled together in Elrond’s perception. There was too much: too loud, too joyful, too sad, too fast, and he couldn’t untangle it all before another wave crashed over him.

“Elrond!” Elros dismounted and slapped Elrond’s leg, which brought him back to the surface. Elros’ eyes were bright and a smile flashed in his brown face. “Come on, we’re finally here!”

Elrond loosened his left foot in the stirrup and jumped lightly to the ground. A mob of unfamiliar faces and voices and minds surrounded them both, beginning with a few curious onlookers, but each new person seemed to attract three others, all peering and smiling and asking questions as they flocked together around the twins. Elrond once again sank beneath the violent surf of emotion, this time tinged with a mixture of reverence and curiosity that made him feel naked.

“You’ve grown so tall!”

“Do you like it here?”

“—her spitting image!”

“At last!”

“—so worried—”

There were too many hands and eyes. Elrond flinched away from one side only to find new strangers on another, and the excited press of all their thoughts and emotions prodded at him like a hundred fingers investigating a fish pulled onto a riverbank. He craned his neck to look behind him, but he could not pick Osgardir out of the crowd. He could only see Ranuiel and Sídhon’s graceful silver heads shining above the field of black and brown around them. Something like the disappointment of noticing a rip in a favorite garment settled on Elrond’s shoulders, ill-fitting and prickly.

“Sire, they are here!”

The weight of the crowd’s attention shifted. The king had arrived. Elrond perceived him as a prism of relationships like cords of light: fealty and friendship and trust and rivalry extending beyond his physical frame, beyond Ereinion Gil-galad as a man and into everyone and everything that legitimized his claim, angles upon angles all combining into a bright, dense center. Elrond struggled to distinguish his matter from his mantle, but the hand that settled on his shoulder seemed solid enough.

“My dear young kinsmen,” said the king. “At last, welcome. It has been some time since I have been able to breathe easily. This way! There are so many people who want to meet you at last! Ah, I still cannot believe it. After so many years, you are safe! You are… well, not home exactly, but you are with your family!”

The king herded them toward the house, and the crowd followed. “Don’t touch me,” Elrond snapped in a random direction, but he wasn’t sure if anyone was actually touching him besides the king, whose arm remained firmly around his shoulders. A shadow passed over his face. He flinched again, but it was only wide eaves blocking the sun as they finally passed into the shade and quiet of the king’s house.

“There, we can finally get acquainted now that everyone isn’t trying to do it at once,” said Gil-galad. “Come! Come! Let’s have a cold drink. Do you like cucumber juice?”

A cacophony of voices still chattered around Elrond’s head, though he could not make out any words. They came from all sides and only seemed to build upon each other like a towering wave. “This is a lot to take in at once,” came Elros’ voice through the clamor. His face, always a constant, took shape in Elrond’s overwhelmed sight. “Can we settle in and talk later?”

“Of course—my apologies.”

Elrond had not struggled so dearly to maintain control since his gift first emerged. He was aware of a house, strangers, walking. The angles were all wrong as his perspective shifted from his own body to others’, unmoored upon a strange ocean where islands floated free and waves crashed without pattern or direction.

Doors slammed above him, below him, all around him, and then a strong hand at his chin shifted his focus to one spot right in front.

“Elrond. Hey, are you in there?” Elros tugged Elrond’s collar open and fanned his throat. “I think I shook him off for now.”

Elrond squeezed his eyes shut. He had to hold fast to the quiet room around them, sending the foreign impressions out one by one until they no longer fluttered and buzzed like insects inside his skull. Of course they had all come in a flood. They were new, all curious and eager to know him, not the steady background of people he found familiar. Still, the idea that he might be facing a relapse surrounded by strangers in a new land sent a shudder down his spine. He couldn’t lose control again. Not after all the work he had done to survive.

Don’t force it. Let them in, and then let them go. He breathed slowly, calling upon the sense of awareness and connection that had become second nature back at the compound. It was all the same. He just needed to expand it.

“I’m fine,” he said at length. “There was just… a lot. All at once.”

Elros was nodding. “Are you going to tell him about it? The king, I mean. About your gift.”

“Not yet.” Or ever, if he could help it. It rankled to think that he was required to report every detail of his private life to the king. “It might come up eventually, but I’d rather do it when I have a better footing here.”

Elros nodded. “That’s smart.”

They sat in silence for a moment. All around them, the trunks full of things they had brought with them made it feel as if they were still at home in the forest, but everything else belonged to strangers, from the light-colored wooden floor to the low furniture to the peaked ceiling. There were many windows, all of them propped open to let in the breeze and sunshine.

“Um... where are we?” Elrond asked, scratching his head.

“Our apartments in the king’s house,” Elros said. He shrugged. “I guess we’re part of his household now.”

“I guess so.”

With his mind and body firmly reunited, Elrond stood to get a better look around. The apartments were mercifully quiet and private even with the windows and doors open. Gardens surrounded their house on three sides, with cultivated plants weaving around native forest trees. There was even a pond with great orange-and-white fish that bobbed curiously to the surface when he peered at them.

“Oh, they’re Doriathrin carp!” Elros said, coming up behind him. “Mother had a pond. Do you remember feeding them breadcrumbs?”

“I think so.” Elrond crouched at the edge of the pond and let the bubbles of little fish minds float up and pop within his perception: Snack? Snack? Snack? Big snack? Tasty snack? He retrieved a leftover bit of waybread from his belt pouch and crumbled it in his hand. When he scattered the crumbs into the pond, the bubbles boiled into an excited froth of Snack! SNACK! SNACK SNACK! as the fish happily gobbled them up.

“There were some clothes and things set out for us here. Oh, hmm, I don’t think they’ll fit,” Elros said from back inside. Elrond turned to see him holding up a tunic that was too narrow in the shoulders and much too short. Elros raised an eyebrow and dove back into the open chest at his feet. There were Noldorin-style trousers and shirts and Sindarin-style robes, but all of them were too small, and at last he unearthed a pair of boy-sized shoes from the bottom of the chest and laughed a little.

“Celebrimbor said we were taller than he expected,” Elrond said. “I bet they expected us to still be children. Elf-boys would be.”

“Well, they know better now. This fabric is nice.” Elros inspected a patterned blue robe. “Glorious wax-resist technique. It’s too short to be a robe, but I think I can make it work. I am thinking of… a summer tunic with no sleeves. Let out the shoulder seams, take some fabric from the bottom to make it wider under the armpits… where’s my sewing kit?” He strode into the other room with the garment in hand, rustling through his baggage while Elrond poked around some of the other things Gil-galad had provided. There were plenty of puzzles and models that might have interested him ten years earlier, but he now found them simple.

Purposeful ripping and cutting sounds began to come from the other room. “Maybe I’ll make some slippers with the rest of the fabric,” Elros said.

Elrond meant to unpack, but after washing up and changing his clothes he found a pair of dice and instead challenged Elros to a casual game of hazard while he worked on his tunic. Long shadows began to stretch across the floor as the sun sank low in the sky. Elros was a fine tailor who worked quickly, and he was just tying off the last stitches when there was a knock at the door to the rest of the house, followed by the door creaking open a little.

“Hello, Elrond and Elros?” It was the king. “If you’ve settled in, I’d like to chat for a moment. There is juice.”

Elrond grimaced, but he knew it wasn’t a request, like when Maglor used to ask if he “wanted” to help wash dishes after dinner. “All right,” he said.

“Excellent, it’s in my garden.” The door creaked shut again.

Elros quickly scrubbed his hands and face and donned the new summer tunic, and the two of them managed to find their way with the help of a friendly servant. There was a platter of fruits and cheeses as well as the promised cucumber juice when Elrond and Elros arrived at the garden, where the king was waiting for them on a shaded porch.

“Hello! Let’s not stand on ceremony!” He waved to them from the cushion he was lounging on. The twins sat cross-legged on their own cushions across the table from him, awkwardly ignoring the food even though Elrond could hear Elros’ stomach growling even louder than his own. “Come now, you must be hungry,” the king prompted, scooting the platter closer to them. Elrond and Elros each took an apple slice and nibbled politely.

Ereinion Gil-galad would not have looked out of place among any of the craftsmen Elrond knew. He was wiry and bronze-skinned, and although he was shorter than the twins, he carried an air of confident authority. He had glossy black hair and bright, curious eyes to match, which followed Elrond and Elros as they stared back at him.

“Where to begin,” he said at last. “Much has happened to my people, and I’m sure much has happened to you as well. To think we had no word of each other for twenty years, and now here you are.”

“We weren’t unhappy,” Elrond said quickly, trying to head off another display of unnecessary apologies. “I’m sorry that you worried for so long.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he started ruminating on all the ways he could have sounded rude or ungrateful by accident, but Gil-galad did not seem to take it that way. “Let me get a good look at you,” he said, rising to his knees and clapping his hands on the twins’ shoulders. “Completely identical!” he said, and then he leaned in with a conspiratorial grin. “And yet you couldn’t be more different. Am I correct?”

Elrond and Elros glanced at each other and shared a smile. “You aren’t wrong,” Elros said. It was only a first impression, but Gil-galad seemed warm where Celebrimbor was cold. Perhaps it would not be all bad.

“You won’t remember it, but we’ve met before. I visited Sirion when you were born. ‘The hope of all Noldor, Sindar, and the great houses of Men,’ it was said—a weighty expectation for little beans!” He chuckled fondly, and then paused, sitting back on his heels. “For twenty years we have nurtured the hope that one day you would return safely. Truly, having you here at last is like seeing the evening star light up the sky for the first time.”

“We saw it in the forest as well,” Elrond said. He was glad to jump at the topic to avoid talking about himself. “Everything started changing after that. Did you notice it?”

“Yes, and I still thank our stars that we left Balar before the earthquake hit. From what we heard, the whole settlement just slid off into the sea,” Gil-galad said, miming a landslide with both hands for emphasis. “You felt it too, didn’t you?”

“Our people had to rebuild almost the entire compound afterward,” Elros confirmed. “We were asleep. We probably wouldn’t be here if Elrond hadn’t... woken up to get a drink... and pulled us both under the bed right away. They had to dig us out.”

The king’s eyebrows shot up. “Incredible. It’s little wonder you became so attached to the kinslayers in such circumstances. Tell me more about your life! Did you have any playmates?”

“Just each other,” Elrond said. Gil-galad’s comment had made him a little defensive. “We didn’t have playmates at Sirion either. Are there any children here?”

“A girl was born last year. What a blessing in these times.” His smile became almost reverent. “It seems like the perfect season to put the past behind us, don’t you think? I’ll be calling the Fëanorian retainers into my court tomorrow for a formal pardon,” he continued before Elrond or Elros could answer. “I’d like you two to stand among my council at that time. Maedhros’ people must be reminded that they need your pardon as well as mine, even if close quarters have made you familiar to them.”

“Wait,” Elrond said. He laid his hand flat on the table. “I don’t feel the need to pardon them for anything. They’ve been our community for the last twenty years, and we wept for the ones who stayed behind. Celebrimbor had the same misconception that we were being kept in a cellar or something, and it is absolutely false.”

“I believe you,” Gil-galad said. “Strange circumstances make strange bedfellows, especially when children are raised by those who murdered their family. That should never have been your path.”

Elros frowned a little. “But it was. And here we are, safe and sound.”

“Of course, but in time you will understand the injury the sons of Fëanor have dealt you.” The king was no longer smiling. “You have endured more at your tender age than many have endured over centuries. At least now we can try to set it all to rights, as far as that is possible.”

“We’re not accustomed to being ‘princes,’ even if that’s how your people remember us,” Elros said over tea and soup on the morning of the promised pardon. Ever since their meeting with the king the previous day, the twins had not stopped contradicting him.

“That is your birthright many times over.” Celebrimbor raised an eyebrow. “Did Maglor keep you ignorant of your heritage?”

“No! It just served no purpose to play the part when everyone managed their own affairs,” Elrond interjected. “All the people who came with us are guardians and mentors. I’d feel silly trying to be a ‘prince’ in front of them.”

“If they are wise, they will recognize you as such now that everything has been put to rights,” said Gil-galad. He had still not budged on his decision to have the twins sit at his side for the audience, no matter how much they argued against it. “It is not about how you feel playing the part. It would be awfully convenient for the House of Fëanor if their ancient rivals’ heirs became so accustomed to pastoral seclusion that they’d willingly renounce everything that Maedhros and Maglor tried to take by force.”

Elrond’s upper lip curled under the heat of the retort forming on his tongue. Elros grabbed his arm and squeezed tightly. “They can think what they like,” he muttered. “We know what’s right.” Something curious passed between Celebrimbor’s glare and Gil-galad’s practiced smile. The twins stared back. “I guess I don’t agree with bringing everyone up in front of everyone and humiliating them by dragging them back through their crimes,” Elros continued. “None of them are proud of what they did. They just want to move forward, and they’re more than happy to make amends. Why not talk through it privately, if you must? You already said you would pardon them, so why make a show of it in public?”

“Their crimes were committed in public, so they must be absolved in public. More than that, there can be no mercy without justice,” said the king. Celebrimbor nodded in agreement. “They must submit to my justice to receive my mercy.”

“I don’t think this ‘justice’ is necessary either,” Elrond added. He had not slept well the night before, and he was less interested in making a logical argument than Elros was. “Surely we aren’t the only ones. Public opinion couldn’t be as unanimous as you make it sound: tell me, how many disagreed with you? Or did you even ask?”

Gil-galad and Celebrimbor glanced at each other with their eyebrows raised. “Oropher,” Celebrimbor said. “And Amdír. And those who went with them.”

“Yes. Two lords of the Sindar. Of Doriath, specifically,” the king said to the twins. His explanatory tone made Elrond grit his teeth. “At one time, they sat on my council. Not as vassals: as neighbors, brothers in purpose. But they disagreed. Not with my justice, but with my mercy. They would have me treat the host of Fëanor like the worst among us. Like Maeglin and his wicked father. They would have me cover blood with blood.” He paused. “They went further east with a small number of their followers. The rest, those weary of bloodshed, remained here and look to me as their lord.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” Elrond snapped.

“I know.” Gil-galad met his eye. “We might have been stronger with them, but Amdír and Oropher were within their rights to leave. Were it not for Fëanor’s cursed oath, many of their friends and family would still live. Oropher’s young son would still have a mother.” His words dropped like stones, and the answering silence felt like hot breath on the back of Elrond’s neck. “Your friend Midhien cut her down when she tried to turn her away from the room where her child slept, thinking it was a trick to conceal the Jewel,” the king continued. “But there was no Jewel. Only Oropher, who had come with his wife to collect their son. So Midhien fled, and now she returns and asks for clemency and a peaceful home with her wife: something Oropher can never have with his on these shores again. I’m afraid you might be too close to the killers to understand what my people have chosen to forgive. I cannot criticize any who are not ready or willing to do so.”

Elrond bit his tongue and stared hard at a spilled drop of tea on the table. Speech had abandoned him, and the longer he said nothing, the louder his own silence seemed to scream. He looked at Elros, but he was focusing on the depths of his soup. This time, it seemed silence had won.

At midday, the king held court under a roof of blue skies and the dappled shadows of leaves falling upon a large, open clearing. His council sat with him before the crowd, and as promised, he installed Elrond and Elros at his right hand before they could slink away to find more familiar company. They stared at their feet, out-of-place among the great Lords and Ladies of the elves: Círdan, Galadriel, Celeborn, all names that they knew attached to faces they did not. Celebrimbor was there as well, looking stern as usual.

It had been like this in different days: Elrond recalled Maglor and Maedhros’ tale of the Mereth Aderthad, when joy and healing had given the Noldor strength which, for a time, made them feel young and free before the breaking of the leaguer. Song and feasting through clear nights and gentle days beneath the silver-green pines, mead and wine and golden ale flowing like the Eithel Ivrin. No, it was different now. There was no feast, and what optimism there was in the air was for a quiet future, not the victory longed for in centuries past. Still the king knew his history, and so he held court outside.

Serecthel was the first to be called forward. She knelt at a gesture from the herald, but did not avert her eyes from the king’s.

“Túeth Serecthel,” Gil-galad said. “You stand accused of participating in the Kinslayings at Doriath and Sirion, and holding to the Fëanorian creed when many of your former comrades turned aside. You raised your sword against Sindar and Noldor alike. You spilled immortal blood in the service of vengeance. You wounded our people when we needed unity against our true Enemy. Do you contest this?”

“I do not,” she replied.

“You were one of Maedhros’ most dreaded warriors, it was said. No bear, boar, or elk would stand before you, let alone a weary Sinda or Noldo. Do you deny this?”

“I do not,” Serecthel said again. Her voice was tight.

“You kneel before me now, asking for pardon. Peace that you have not only not earned, but actively destroyed under the banner of the dispossessed. Answer me this, Serecthel: why now? And why you?”

Muted, the crowd listened through tense heartbeats as Serecthel drew deliberate breath to speak. “My debts may never be repaid,” she said. “I cannot erase the blood I have shed. But my exile or death in the wilds will repair nothing. As long as I have breath and strength, I may work. And perhaps someday I will finally know peace, though I cannot say when. By your leave I would find it here.”

“Do you believe that your crimes are written in a ledger? Is there an exchange rate between neighborly kindness and acts of violence?” The king’s questions sounded light and thoughtful to Elrond’s ears. He was not interrogating her, he realized: her responses were not only for him, but for everyone else listening.

“With all due respect,” Serecthel said, bowing slightly, “if there was one, you would not dictate it. My debt is not repaid as long as elves suffer because of my deeds.”

There was a long pause. The forest all around them was quiet, as if also listening for the king’s response. “You have much work to do,” he said at last.

“I am a Noldo. We thrive on work.”

“Then I offer you my full pardon,” said Gil-galad. “Walk among my people, and find peace in your work.” He stood and extended his hand to Serecthel. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet, clasping her hand tightly for a moment before letting her go.

One by one, he called up the Fëanorian retainers. They each knelt, silent and penitent, while the king recited their crimes and Elrond and Elros struggled to associate such absurd wantonness with people they knew and loved. Past and present ground against one another. Elrond encountered knots in the narrative, many threads coming together and splitting and joining others in tangled layers he could not pick apart. It only became thicker with each person pardoned until the last name pulled Elrond up through the net and back into open space.

“Alwendion Osgardir,” the king said to Osgardir, who knelt before him with his head bowed. “You stand accused of aiding and abetting the Kinslayings at Menegroth and Sirion. Do you accept these charges?”

“I do,” Osgardir said.

“You followed the House of Fëanor after all the other healers left them. You used your healing arts to support murder. There are many who would call this a perversion of a sacred gift.” The king let that sink in for a moment. “Tell me, Osgardir, what do you think?”

“I went where I felt I was needed,” Osgardir said.

“Would you not be needed among those who turned aside at Sirion?”

“A healer knows that he cannot meet all needs at the same time. I went with those I felt needed me the most, and whom I needed the most in turn. I had nothing else without my family.” He allowed himself a glance back at Ranuiel and Sídhon, who waited at the front of the crowd. “I had purpose among the Fëanorians. For many years they were the last of my kin.”

“Do you regret it?”

“I will never regret saving a life.”

“What about enabling others to take a life?”

“The seeds of that regret were not sown on this shore.”

There was a long pause. “Your children fought fiercely for your pardon,” said the king. “It is not in me to drive families further asunder who have already been parted. Will you renounce your fealty to the House of Fëanor and join your son and daughter in this age of peace?”

“I will.”

“Then I offer you my full pardon,” Gil-galad said, pleased. “Let no one remember your crimes, for I have already forgiven them.” One last time, he stood and extended his hand to Osgardir. Osgardir took it and stood to meet him, and for a moment there seemed to be an ancient light upon his face, filling cracks that Elrond had never noticed before.

The twins practically bolted out of their chairs as soon as they were dismissed. With the end of the audience came a feeling of satisfaction rippling over the assembled elves as they moved to leave. It was done. All was forgiven, and now they could move forward. Elrond breathed the feeling in, trying to collect its lightness in the spots where suspicion still knotted his shoulders.

Something tugged against the flow like a fish swimming upstream. Elrond frowned a little and looked up. Elros leaned in close. “What is it?”

Before Elrond could say that he didn’t know, a woman pushed through the last of the diminishing crowd. Her black hair streamed, long and uncombed, over her plain gray robe, and her face was lined with sorrow. She rushed toward Elrond and Elros and fell to her knees at their feet.

“My princes,” she said before they could react, bowing her forehead to the ground. Her voice shook and her fingers were white against the dark earth. “I am not worthy to ask for your forgiveness. I deserve nothing. I can only attempt to apologize—I was a coward. I betrayed you, and I betrayed my dear lady—”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Elrond said through the thick haze of shame she brought with her. He and Elros at once swooped down to her, but she flinched back. Slowly, she lifted her head. Tears stuck strands of hair to her cheeks. Elrond stared for a moment, teetering on the edge of recognition.

Elros gasped. “I remember! You are--”

“I have been named Pen-estel these last twenty years, my prince,” she said. “I cannot be separated from my foolishness.” Her chin dimpled with the effort to contain a sob, and at last her face brought confused fragments together out of Elrond’s deep memory, the parts he had boxed up and stored away when they were too sharp for his young mind to handle. Back before the earthquake, before the forest, before the long ride through the rain, before the blaze of light cutting through cramped darkness, there was a frantic rush through hallways with strong fingers around his wrist. A push, a door creaking shut. Stay quiet! I will return when I can…

“My lady,” Elros said. He took her hands in his. “There’s no harm done.”

“You were only children--I, I should have stayed...”

“Shh. We are both here now, whole and hale.” He kissed her once on both cheeks and then stood, gently pulling her to her feet. “It’s a new day! You should rise to see it.”

The handmaiden nodded once, wiping her hair out of her face with her sleeve. “If it will make you happy, my prince,” she said at length. Her voice still shook.

“It will! And if that does not help, I will tell you all the funny stories from my childhood until you can only cry from laughter.” Elros smiled. “Go now, and leave Pen-Estel behind.”

Elrond and Elros were both quiet as they walked back to the king’s house. The audience had taken up the entire afternoon, and now fireflies winked through the darkening trees as they took their time over less-traveled trails through the bushes. The sounds of twilight were different here: there were more singing insects and bats but fewer mosquitoes buzzing around their ears, and Elrond spotted little reflective eyes in the shadows that rustled out of sight as soon as they got close.

Avoiding other company, they made their way to their rooms. Frogs burbled at the edges of the fish pond while Elros went to wash his face and Elrond prepared a pipe. He spun it between his fingers, intending to wait for Elros to be done, but he rolled his eyes and lit it for himself when he heard the sounds of Elros brewing willow bark for his skin.

“She shouldn’t have left us in that closet,” Elros said once he emerged.

“Irresponsible,” Elrond agreed. He paused. “Do you remember what you thought about it when it happened?”

“A little. I was mostly just scared and confused, you know?”

Elrond leaned against the windowsill to exhale smoke into the warm night. “Yes. Exactly.” He fell silent again, thinking. “I don’t think she meant to abandon us there and save herself, though. Maybe she was going to get help, or maybe she thought we’d be safer there until later, but she never made it back.”

“Oh, absolutely. And either way, we’re still alive and still together, so…” Elros shrugged. “She’s punished herself too long already.”

“I wonder what the king would say.” Elrond passed the pipe to Elros.

“Doesn’t matter. We resolved it among ourselves.”

Elrond ruminated over that for a moment. “Other people… Maedhros and Maglor made the choices that put her in that position.” He frowned at nothing. “Even though I know that this all happened because of them, I can’t bring myself to see them as villains, like the others do. Am I wrong to miss them? Am I wrong to have ever loved them?”

“No, I don’t think we’re wrong to miss them, and anyone who thinks we’re wrong to have loved them is talking from the ass.” Elros grinned and tipped the spent ashes out the window. “And that certainly includes the king, if he pushes it.”

“Of course it will take some time for us to adjust to one another,” Gil-galad kept saying in his merry way, but as the twins settled in, it seemed more that he expected them to adjust to him. He’d clearly planned out their days long before they arrived: master scholars, warriors, and artisans kept up a battery of daily lessons between meals and the king’s audiences, which Elrond and Elros were expected to observe.

“We haven’t sat down for regular lessons for several years now,” Elros told him after politely going along with it for a few weeks.

“Yes, I can’t imagine Maglor would have had access to the kind of lessons that would have most benefited you,” the king responded. His voice remained cheery. “I’m glad to get you back in the habit before you go completely feral. The wisest rulers are perpetual students, after all! Few things are as perilous to our people than a king who thinks he has nothing to learn.”

Days felt longer than months. Were it not for the shifting angles of sunlight and cooler days under the trees, Elrond would not have perceived time passing any faster than watching the ink dry as he tried to write down new observations in his notebook. There was nothing to write. He had no patients, and even if he did, he could not say whether he was ready to introduce his gift to a new population. It itched to be used, exercised beyond sensing the presence of garden plants and Doriathrin carp and the king’s dogs and Rochael in her stall. He itched, trapped between boredom and resentment and a growing void that expanded in his mind where there used to be exploration, companionship, community, love.

“Is something the matter?” the king asked him at dinner. They often took meals with members of the council, but today it was just Gil-galad and the twins. “It’s a glorious season for venison, but you have barely touched it!”

“I don’t eat meat.”

“Oh, really? Why not?”

“It gives me a sour belly,” Elrond said. Elros met his eyes discreetly and nodded once as if confirming the explanation.

“That won’t be anything we can’t accommodate,” the king said. He didn’t seem to have noticed anything, but Elrond’s scalp still prickled with apprehension. “One of my scribes also follows a vegetarian diet. She does eat insects, though. Do you eat insects?”

Elrond wrinkled his nose. “Not if I can help it. You don’t have to worry about it--I usually cook my own meals at the infirmary.”

“That’s a manly skill to have,” Gil-galad said approvingly, “but my table welcomes all tastes. The cooks will see to it that you aren’t stuck with bread and salad every day.”

Elrond tried to force a smile. “I appreciate the consideration. My usual dinner at the infirmary can be repetitive. I’m already apprenticed to Osgardir,” he insisted. “Not that the rest of this isn’t interesting, but I just want to get back to my work.”

The king seemed confused by that, as he always did when Elrond tried to bring it up. “Work? You’re young, enjoy it!”

“He does enjoy it,” Elros said. “Maglor didn’t make us work, if that is what you’re worried about.”

“Not at all,” Gil-galad said. Elrond did not believe him. “Just that youth is so fleeting. It’s a tragedy to commit to a craft before you’re ready for it.”

Elrond drummed his fingers impatiently on the table. “We already worked out that part, too. He took me on for a trial year to make sure I was ready before accepting me as a formal apprentice. It’s been six years. Trust me, I know what the work is like.”

Gil-galad paused thoughtfully. “I suppose it would not make sense to interrupt that,” he said. “I’ll see which of the healer-masters has room in their lectures for another student! I’m sure they would all be honored to have you. Now, Elros, do you have a favored craft?” he continued before Elrond could clarify that he didn’t want to sit in lectures with just any teacher.

“I’m more a jack of all trades,” Elros said, sounding a bit reluctant. “I’m used to choosing how to spend my time.” The emphasis was slight, but Elrond picked it up. The two of them glanced sidelong at one another.

“The knowledge of the elves is gathered in the Havens, so you need only ask if there is something you would like to study,” the king said brightly, but Elros said nothing in return.

The next morning, Elrond found himself alone in their apartments. When he looked around, he discovered Elros’ footprints heading out through the frosty garden and a wax tablet on the table in the main room.

I’ve gone to the Mannish village, Elros’ handwriting read. Join me if you like, otherwise say nothing. I’ll be back eventually.

Elrond was mildly interested, but he suspected that the king would investigate and perhaps try to restrict their movement if they both disappeared. On the other hand, if he occasionally wore Elros’ clothes and affected his mannerisms and made himself scarce when they would normally be seen together, he did not think Gil-galad knew them well enough to tell the difference. Elros could return the favor another time.

While Elros was gone, Elrond attended the lectures the king arranged for him, as was expected. He didn’t dislike the lectures or the healer-masters who delivered them, but going to the healing-houses to sit among other apprentices and hear about the healer’s craft without actually practicing it left him frustrated and depressed, and any information he might have learned flowed right back out of his ears when he left the hall. He could not linger among healers and their patients and the webs of discovery that had drawn him in from the very beginning, knowing that his life would never be the same as it was before. The king wanted to raise him up as a prince among elves. Maglor and Maedhros would probably agree, as much as he hated the thought.

It was four days—spanning fruitless lectures in mind-healing, anatomy, pain relief, and wound care—before Elros came back to the king’s house. Upon returning to their apartments in the evening, Elrond found him still dressed in layers of mud-spattered wool and eagerly devouring a plate of meat stew and cooked grain.

“Oh, you’re back,” Elrond said, relieved.

Elros wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. “Yes! I was having a great time, but I figured people would start looking for me if I stayed any longer.”

“That good, huh?”

“Fantastic. Refreshing.” Elros speared another chunk of meat on his knife. “If I’m being honest, I had been feeling a little cooped-up in the compound,” he said. “At first I wanted to find my calling, so I began trying everything, but nothing seemed quite right. There was always work, but it was still so… limited. And then I started to feel the same thing here.” He chewed furiously and swallowed his mouthful before continuing. “I never told anyone this, but I had started thinking about leaving Maglor on my own terms. Didn’t know where I would go, but I didn’t know when I’d get a better opportunity, with the war and no one knowing what was going on outside our little patch of forest.”

Elrond tried not to feel stung by his words. Of course it was his right to set out on his own if he wished, but Elrond had not found himself restricted by the forest in any way. On the contrary, he saw more and more layers every time he looked, moving beyond the surface and deeper into the highways of veins within leaves and the stories of decay that made up the soil. He could have spent a century digging until he was satisfied with his own understanding. Why was that world—his world—not enough for Elros? “Would you not have told me?” he asked.

“Of course I would have! I would have told you first. I just didn’t have any solid plans yet. But now that we’re here, I can make it up as I go.” With his plate clean, Elros leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head. “Ahh, that was just the thing to eat after a day on the road. So, has anything interesting happened here? Did you fight the king yet?”

“No. I went to the lectures, like he said. There wasn’t anything else to do.”

“How did that go?”

“Fine.”

Something on Elrond’s face must have said otherwise, and Elros gave him a skeptical smile. “You hated them.”

“Yes! Of course I hated them!” Elrond ran his hands over his head. “I wouldn’t hate them if it wasn’t just sitting in a class full of other people who actually get to practice. It almost makes it worse to get so close. I said I wanted to be a healer, not go to lectures and do nothing else.”

“Why don’t you just leave and go back to Osgardir’s house? The king wouldn’t force you to stay. He knows he has to get us to like him.”

Elrond sighed. “I don’t know.”

“You’re like a hound without hares to chase,” Elros said with a laugh. “Just digging up the garden and picking fights because your master decided you should be a house-pup instead. He might as well be asking you to pee on his shoes.”

“Maybe he knows that hares don’t actually want to be chased, so he’s keeping me inside for their benefit,” Elrond said, suddenly grumpy. “Because they don’t. It terrifies them.”

“Bad analogy? Maybe you are like a fish trying to—”

“Osgardir would probably agree with the king!” Elrond threw up his hands. “He always thought that I was too young and that he was a poor mentor compared to everyone else I might have, and he’s probably relieved to hand me off now!”

Elros raised his eyebrows. “So he put up with you for seven years just to drop you at the first opportunity?”

“Elves are patient. Seven years to him is… is like…” Every word spent trying to explain his fears made Elrond feel more like a fool. “Never mind. You wouldn’t know. I was his apprentice.”

“Still are.” Elros scratched his chin. “You’re like a sheepdog without any sheep. You’re sad because you’re bored and you think you’re being punished, but in reality the shepherd is standing around in the valley, wondering where you are.”

“Stuff it with the analogies! I’m a… person,” Elrond trailed off, feeling more foolish than ever.

“Damn right you are! You were born to choose your fate, not to chase hares or herd sheep!” Elros raised his fist as if mustering an army before battle. “Nor were you born to sit here and make yourself miserable! You can leave whenever you like. I can even tell you where Ranuiel’s house is.”

“I don’t know if she would want me there,” Elrond muttered. “Or Sídhon. Or Osgardir himself.”

“Oh.” Elros lowered his fist. His face grew solemn. “I see. Do you think Osgardir saw you as a surrogate son?”

“I don’t know.” He did not want to admit that he feared being sent away regardless, but Elros seemed to follow his mind into that dark place without prompting.

“He has room in his heart for you,” he said with a smile. “He did from the very beginning.”

Elros began to spend more and more time out of the king’s house, returning for a few days and then leaving again. He didn’t feel the need to ask before he left, and Elrond wondered why he, on the other hand, felt the need to stay. Was it duty? Or merely inertia? Or was it because he might as well stay here as anywhere else while the world moved on without him?

He went to the lectures he’d been invited to attend. He ate dinner at the king’s table, as expected, and shrugged when asked where Elros had gone. In the long hours he had to himself, he stewed.

Who is Elros to leave and do what he wishes in the Mannish village while I stay behind?

The king is such a self-righteous prick, rearranging people’s lives as he sees fit. “Oh yes, Elrond will soon appreciate my genius, he will surely thank me for ordering him away from the only hearth and family he remembers!”

Hating Gil-galad was at least entertaining for a few hours at a time, but thinking of Celebrimbor only made Elrond feel like screaming. Why can’t you understand? Why? Don’t you miss them at all? Even a little bit? It was worse when Celebrimbor came to dinner, which he did often. He and the king were friends, and they expressed it by debating over some pointless aspect of craft or government while they ate. Elrond was tired of hearing their opinions, but if he blurred his vision and ground his teeth so hard that he could hear his own muscles, he could imagine the light and shadows of dinner in the longhouse and the sounds of the household talking shop at the table. The dark figure at the head of the table could have been Hestedis, and the proud profile to its right could have been Maglor...

But he could not retreat into this comforting lie forever. It always came back to the king arranging berries on his plate to prove some idea or other, and Celebrimbor pointedly eating with two sticks in the Sindarin fashion even though the king had provided cutlery. The lie was so inviting that he kept slipping into the half-awake dream that nothing had changed, but every time he woke, reality was even more painful than it had been before.

He slept little. Sleep only sped him from one day to the next: a new, miserable waking and a day spent wondering what he was doing here.

I’ve gone to the Mannish village. Join me if you like.

In the gray hours of another sleepless morning, Elrond resolved to see what was so irresistible about it.

He half-expected a minder to appear out of nowhere as he packed a bag and left the house for the stables, but no one stopped him even when he saddled Rochael and walked her out to the public road. He felt the king’s clerks and stewards peering at him as he passed. They would probably report his absence, and if not, it would be noticed before long. No matter. What would the king do? Take him captive? Put him in a little box for safekeeping? Throw him out?

Once settled in the saddle, he nudged Rochael onward and prepared to ride for most of the morning. There was a lesser-used road out of the city to the northeast of the main gate, which he took at Elros’ direction. The Mannish village would be down a smaller track that branched off the elf-road to follow the river upstream.

The forest, too quiet and alien to be perceived over the everyday clamor of the city, began to reach out in curious sprouts and twigs and buds as civilization fell away behind him. It settled into the tiny wrinkles on the skin of his knuckles and the hiding-places between strands of hair, filling voids like moss after a heavy rain.

It was different than the forest he knew well, but still familiar. It was drier and colder, but spiny and evergreen and rich from the minerals in the soil, spicy with the smells of sage and cedar and iron. The trees at the edge of the Taur-im-Duinath lost their leaves in the winter. The summers were miserably humid, and vines and mosses and mushrooms and sticky plants thrived in the moist, dark earth where sunshine trickled through broad, leafy canopies. Either way, masses of life and consciousness teemed in the plants and animals and the spaces between them. Elrond followed the paths of ants on a fallen tree: there was a beehive that had been abandoned when it fell, and all the honey and brood and crushed comb that the bees could not recover became a prize for other creatures. Birds came for the insects, foxes and wild cats came for the birds, and the heavy stink of a bear lingered in the wood where great claws had torn it open.

Above it all he could still feel the river’s haste. It brought scraps of its source in the mountains and every inch of land it touched on the way down, changing and being changed, carrying and sustaining. It was easy to let himself sink into the rhythms of nature. He acknowledged every living thing as he nudged Rochael further along the path, and the stasis that had dragged at him in the king’s house slipped into a shadowy border of his consciousness. It was good to have other things to think about.

The trees thinned into fields of plump grain that sang in many-voiced unison. From Rochael’s back Elrond could see Men in broad hats laboring with scythes, and others followed them to bundle and stack sheaves of cut wheat. The grain sang softer as he rode from the edges of the fields where the stalks stood whole, past the workers and into fields of stubble and neat shooks, where more teams of Men with horse-drawn carts came to carry away the harvest.

The village center was buzzing with industry as Elrond approached. Hammers rang out, babies cried, hooves pounded the dirt. People bartered loudly and slammed doors as they moved between stone cottages and wooden barns and open-air workshops.

The noise swirled all around him as he pulled Rochael to a stop in the middle of the square, and yet it was utterly silent.

Something was wrong.

He plugged his ears shut and the world went fuzzy and mute, only to become as clear as ever when he opened them. No, his hearing was fine.

Still, it was silent.

He dismounted. The Men talked and laughed among themselves no quieter than the elves did, exchanging gossip and conducting business in a way that was as familiar as ever, but…

No minds reaching out to meet him, no bubbles and sparks of emotion to brush aside, no voices and visions inside his head. It was like the mortals existed beyond a sheet of flawless glass, like he could only observe and never interact. He had grown so used to acknowledging and then redirecting the constant press of outside thoughts and feelings that when he realized he now felt their absence, his breath froze in his throat.

It wasn’t silence, he realized, but distance. He was one fragile, trembling spark adrift in a vast expanse of nothing, sent floating on a lonely current without any other scraps of consciousness to cling to. He reached out in all directions, scrabbling for an anchor, anything solid that he could grasp in the middle of this anonymous void, but there was nothing. Just the aged and pocked faces of Men and voices roughened by time and mortality. They were fleeting, impermanent, already fading away. Unknowable.

Were they even real? Or was it him who floated untethered beyond the bounds of reality?

His teeth scraped along the ridge of his knuckle. He jerked his hand away from his mouth when he realized what he was about to do.

Not again.

Like solid earth at the end of a fall, a hand clapped him on the back. Elrond caught his breath, momentarily disoriented by the return of the physical world around him. “Elrond! You made it!” Elros slung his arm around Elrond’s shoulders. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come!”

Ground, sky, water, flesh. Real things bobbing up again. Things he could hold. “Here I am,” he said.

“Did anyone give you any trouble about leaving?”

“No, but I also didn’t ask.”

“I’d be worried if you did! Let’s go, I have so many things to show you.” Elros steered him down the path with an air of confident stewardship. “I’m just off from helping to thatch a roof and I’m hungry for lunch. Are you hungry? The inn won’t let you down, it all really sticks to your ribs. They’ll see to Rochael as well.” He rolled it out without waiting for Elrond to respond, but Elrond let him forge ahead, privately grateful to let him take the lead here.

Elros greeted people on the street as they walked, asking after their families and farms, and Elrond introduced himself politely every time Elros stopped to talk to someone else. The Men all seemed happy to meet him, but without the press of their spirits behind it, Elrond could barely perceive them as different from one another.

Still, in the corners of his vision he began to sense a shimmer, like the air above a forge or the surface of a calm lake under the sun, but it was gone when he tried to look closer. Fleeting though it was, it was something real. Something as close to him as his own marrow, but still out of reach.

“Wait,” he said, and Elros stopped.

“What is it?”

Elrond closed his eyes, trying to reach out to whatever it was. “I’m not sure.”

“A vision?”

“Shush! I can’t quite hold onto it...” Elrond gritted his teeth and looked back out at the silent world of his unknowable kin. “Let’s keep going. It might come back to me.”

They continued walking. Elrond drank everything in, saying nothing as he searched for a trace of whatever he had sensed.

He couldn’t help but notice that there were children everywhere, playing and doing chores and running around in little groups. He hadn’t seen so many children in one place since they met the dwarven caravan years earlier, and even the dwarves only had a handful of stout, downy-chinned youngsters with them. 

“I would have liked to have real playmates as a child,” Elros said, following Elrond’s gaze. A note of earnest wistfulness entered his voice at that.

Elrond huffed. “Was I not a real playmate?”

“Of course you were. But look!” Elros pointed at a group of children playing a sort of skipping game around an outline they had drawn in the dirt. “Imagine the madness we could have dreamed up with five or six extra friends to play with.”

This generation of elf-children would have that. After two hundred years of birth rates plummeting toward zero as fewer and fewer safe elvish havens remained, there would be friends and neighbors and cousins and little brothers and sisters once again, and in that moment, Elrond caught a glimpse of what Elros meant.

“Look out!” A ball sailed overhead. Elrond ducked, but it bounced to a stop at Elros’ feet. A second herd of children came running after it. “Sorry! That’s our ball!”

Elros grinned and kicked it back to them. He kept watching as they ran back in the direction they had come from and let out a sigh. “Maybe I’ll have lots of children someday. That sounds very merry.”

There it was again: the shimmer. Elrond followed it, searching, and paused only slightly when it led him toward the void. It must be the essence of Men, and if embracing the unknown was the only way to follow it, then...

Like pinpricks in fabric, there they were.

The deeper he looked, Elrond found he could not extract the children from the material they pierced: they were both spirit and decay, growing and withering, existing and not-existing and changing the shape of each other and the world itself. A swift-flowing river piercing every particle of everything he knew to be real.

He sank into the water and let it carry him. 

The world of Men was a many-faceted jewel, each mind pressing in on it, distorting and flexing and changing its shape. It became like an ever-expanding honeycomb bending above and around and below and beyond, thousands upon thousands deep, all connected past the boundaries of perceptible reality. The facets burned, leaving after-images like fingerprints and slipping back into the unknowable, where they re-formed and built upon one another to burn bright once more, changing and being changed again.

Did a star know its place in the firmament? Did a drop of water know its place in the sea? Did a Man know his position in the ever-unfurling scroll of time, or did time itself move by the rhythm of Men living and dying and leaving their burning fingerprints on it as it passed?

There they were. They were here, and Elrond was with them, unable to know the full expanse of the jewel around him.

At the inn, a boy took Rochael to the stables and Elros took Elrond inside the large two-story building. Everyone there also seemed to know him, and the barmaid showed them both to the near end of one of the long tables in the main room.

“This is my brother, Elrond!” Elros said for what must have been the thousandth time.

“Ahh, the vegetarian, am I remembering correctly?” she winked, and Elrond nodded. “Not to worry, love, we’ll get you fed right.”

Elrond soon found himself facing a spread of roasted roots, warm brown bread and hard, nutty cheese, and bean stew with greens. To drink, the girl brought a pitcher of cool water flavored with mint, honey, and vinegar. Elros pilfered bites of Elrond’s cheese while they ate and talked.

“Once a week the farmers all get together at the inn to talk about recent goings-on and decide what to do about problems they’re having,” Elros said. “I like to be there for it. Sometimes it gets wild, but it’s always interesting. Say if one farmer has a dispute with another over access to the river, they’ll bring it up at the meeting and everyone puts forth solutions. Sometimes both parties agree after some discussion, and if they don’t, everyone else votes on it and they have to do whatever passes the vote or pay a restitution if they don’t do it quick enough. Or sometimes families will announce a marriage, a new baby, a death, anything that is happening in their lives, and then everyone has cakes and beer. And something is always happening.”

Elrond had gotten the impression of constant motion in both his perception and the actions of the townspeople, even if the elves were just as busy at their work in the city of the king. It was a wheel of change and restoration whose motion could not be stopped: new babies, expected deaths, illness, marriage, coming of age, retirement, events that the elves either did not experience or treated with joyful reverence in their rarity. To Men, a baby was something that happened all the time between men and women, merely a function of flesh like any other, even if babies brought both joy and suffering and contributed to the ever-spiraling fractal of Mannish existence. For all their frailty in age and sickness, it was… a normal thing, to have a baby.

“How do they keep up with it all?” Elrond asked, awed.

“Someone writes it all down. If they don’t, people will forget everything after a few generations. More people and shorter lifespans: it’s exactly the opposite of the elves.”

“Do they have healers? It seems they should, since they can get sick and die.”

“There’s a wise-woman who lives a little further up the road at the edge of the woods. People bring their sick to her if they can’t treat them at home. It’s... not ideal,” Elros confessed. “It isn’t that Men are ignorant, it’s that so many have been displaced, so they have to take care of themselves instead of sending their brightest children away to study. I wish there was a way to change that.”

“We have healers. I’m sure there are some who would gladly come and work among Men.” At this point, Elrond would have happily taken the opportunity, but he still had too much to learn, and the reminder frustrated him.

“I know, but Men can be proud, and not all of them trust elvish arts--not where something as intimate as healing is concerned.”

“Are there some who could convince the others? If there’s a need, I don’t see why those who are suspicious should keep it from the rest.”

Elros shrugged. “Maybe, but I don’t think it’s up to me to show up here one day and immediately set that in motion. I have mostly been coming here to learn from them, not to make them learn from me. They are our kin, after all, and we hardly know them.”

“That’s true, I suppose.” Elrond cut a piece of beetroot with the edge of his spoon. “What do you usually do when you come here?”

“Whatever I feel like doing,” Elros said with a chuckle. “Some days I explore, some days I work at odd jobs. I have a bed here as long as I help around the inn and garden. Besides that, I do what I want.” Elrond recognized the same pride he had once felt for his pallet in Osgardir’s loft. I have a job to do and a space of my own. I earned it and no one can take it from me. “I spend a lot of time talking to people and hearing their stories. Everyone has something different and interesting to say.”

“Like what?”

Elros laughed again. “Only a full rainbow of thoughts and experiences! I couldn’t give you just one example.”

“They’re different than the elves, though. They must be, since they are mortal.” Elrond wondered if he should try to explain what he had seen, or if trying to put it into words would only flatten the infinite jewel that he had, for an endless moment, been permitted to perceive. Elros surely couldn’t see it, just as he couldn’t feel the spirits of the elves reaching out to him like Elrond could. No, there was no way to describe it to someone who could not truly understand.

“There are many similarities, but the differences come out where I least expect them,” Elros said. He helped himself to more of Elrond’s cheese. “Do you notice how the elves all recognize us and know us before we are even introduced to them? They knew us as babies, or they knew someone who knew us as babies, or their mother knew someone who knew us as babies, and they treat that like knowing us as we are now.”

“I guess you’re right. It bothered me, but I wasn’t sure why.”

“I thought it would be the same when I first came here, but no one knew who I was unless I told them. It was strange at first, but then I realized that I alone could decide how others would know me. I could just be Elros of Sirion, a young newcomer, and not have everyone immediately see the grandson of Tuor or the great-grandson of Beren.” Elros gestured grandly at their names. “People know Earendil and Elwing, of course. They are not so far-removed from this generation. But I can be known as myself and not only as... as a legacy. Everything I do here is new.”

Is it? Elrond wondered. Changing shapes, shifting angles… was anything created within the jewel, or did it only grow out of the reflected light of facets that had been there before? But then each new facet shaped the others, small rotations building into glittering waves as the light passed through more and more ever-changing lenses. A larger facet, a brighter light, maybe a beam that pierced the whole jewel beyond what he could see right here and right now... maybe that could be something new.

Maybe Elrond had been given glimpses of the future, or many futures. But within the jewel he could only speculate.

“You could do the same,” Elros continued, gently coaxing. “Go around talking to people, helping them at their work, listening to what they have to say. Getting to know them. Life here is certainly different than it is in the king’s house. It might just be the change of pace that you’re looking for.”

“Eventually, maybe.” Elrond shrugged. “I’ll be happier once I can get back to work with Osgardir.”

“Then do it.”

Elrond only sighed in response. Do it. It seemed like such a small thing, but for some reason it loomed before him like a black cliff.

The next morning, Elrond and Elros returned to the city of the king. Gil-galad appeared almost as soon as they brought Rochael and Peguiel around to the stables, catching them as if with their hands in a jar of candy.

“Oh, there you are,” he said, casting a long shadow from where he stood in the doorway. “Where did you run off to?”

“Nowhere,” Elrond said mulishly, but Elros just returned the king’s pleasant smile as he stripped off his riding gloves.

“We went to the Mannish village,” he said. Under it was something like a challenge. Try to tell me I’m not allowed to go to the Mannish village. Go on.

No challenge came. “That’s good,” said the king. “Knowledge of your kinsmen will certainly serve you well in the future. Still, I wish you would have notified me. I could have organized a traveling party for you– not to mention you tutors were left waiting for you.”

“With respect, that is exactly why I didn’t tell you,” Elros said, still perfectly pleasant. “I’m used to doing what I want without notifying anyone, and I’m certainly old enough to not have lessons organized for me. And so is Elrond. He is the elder of us, after all.”

Gil-galad frowned. “Even Maglor would not have let you run completely wild, I’m sure.”

“We’re not children any longer,” Elrond said. “Like he said, we’re used to doing what we want.”

The king didn’t press the issue, but as autumn faded into winter over the next weeks he seemed to be much more present than he had been before, always “checking in” or “saying hello” or turning up to “show you something interesting” between their supervised obligations. It was transparently obvious, and it was intolerable.

Seemingly overnight, the river grew flush with salmon.

Snow lay deep on the ground, and the riverbanks were choked with ice. It was the wrong season for salmon to be running this far upriver, let alone in such numbers, but excitement quickly overtook concern as the elves of the Havens gathered their nets and poles and baskets and cascaded down to the river’s edge to harvest its bounty.

Elrond felt the run before it happened: masses of individual minds driven by one single purpose, struggling and exulting in their struggle, a river within the river. When the voices grew loud and the water filled with gleaming silver salmon, he followed all the fishermen down to meet them with his mind.

Why have you come? It’s the wrong season, and there are so many of you!

The salmon responded only with instinct, not reason. It’s time! It’s time! It’s time!

But why now?

It’s time! It’s time! It’s time!

Elrond drew back, slightly disappointed. He wasn’t sure what he hoped they would tell him, but there had to be a reason. It wasn’t time for this.

The king’s table boasted beautiful, gently glowing vermilion salmon roe like drops of sunset gathered as dew between winter salad greens and soft cheeses.

“It’s an absolute treasure. So delicate.” Gil-galad rolled a few eggs gently into a leaf. “I haven’t had it in years. Normally the roe isn’t ready to harvest when the salmon reach this bend of the river, and it doesn’t travel well. I don’t know what it means for the salmon population, but that will not stop me now,” he added with a brief, guilty smile. “Come, come! Try a little! Who knows how long it’ll be before you get another opportunity.”

Elros readily smeared a triangle of flatbread with soft cheese and dotted it with roe, but he hesitated when Elrond came in closer to inspect the dishes. “They have to kill the fish to get at her eggs,” he said. It made Elrond unaccountably grumpy all of a sudden.

“Really? Were you going to tell me that they also have to kill the deer to get at its skin for my winter shoes?” he sniped, earning a disgruntled sniff in response, but he did not wait for Elros to shoot back. Instead he spooned a few luminous red salmon eggs into a shallow bowl to get a closer look.

They were so beautiful, and awfully inviting. The salmon harvest brought a froth of little fish minds bobbing to the surface and popping like bubbles at the end of hooks: a river of curiosity, surprise, and then senselessness which made a thin fuzz of noise behind everything else in Elrond’s perception. The females’ ripe eggs were a happy find, not the reason for the harvest on their own, and as he inspected them he found himself no more bothered than he was by a fresh chicken egg.

Why here? And why now?

The eggs were plump and pleasing on his tongue. When they burst, he tasted a hint of the sea, with the harsh tang of raw salt and minerals smoothed into a soft, delicate savor. It was so familiar, but he couldn’t remember ever trying it before. Maybe he had it as a child in Sirion?

“Some of our people consider the salmon run a gift from Ulmo, or a sign of his favor,” Celebrimbor said, dipping a paper-thin slice of raw salmon into a dish of sauce. “I suppose of all the things it could mean, that is the most benign. The weather-watchers say the air is warmer and wetter than it should be at this time of year, and it has been consistently so for some time.”

Gil-galad tilted his head. “Perhaps it is Ulmo’s apology for flooding Beleriand. With the land we have lost, I’m not surprised that the weather is changing as well.”

A lull fell over the table. Elrond ate the salmon eggs one by one, rolling them between his teeth and enjoying the way they popped, while Elros helped himself to berries and sugared nuts. Celebrimbor took another slice of the raw salmon. “Some of the elves from Sirion have started leaving plates of fish out when the evening star appears in the sky,” he said. “They still hope that their Lady will return, and maybe the salmon will tempt her.”

“Whatever keeps their spirits up, I suppose,” Gil-galad said. He leaned back in his chair with his hands braced on the tabletop. “If Elwing should answer their invitation, however, I will ask her to leave.”

Celebrimbor frowned. “What exactly do you mean?”

“I’ve sweated and bled to save these people, and I won’t let anything or anyone destabilize what we’ve built.” The king looked at the twins for a moment and then back at Celebrimbor. He wore a veil of disappointment that seemed to take the brightness from his eyes, and Elrond felt it chafe at the edges of his perception. It wasn’t as easily redirected as some impressions he experienced. “With all respect toward the horrors she has faced, Elwing should not have been entrusted with Sirion. And Earendil, spending his time on adventures while the Jewel brought death upon his trusting people, was no better.”

Elrond had been annoyed with Elros only moments ago, but at this they looked sharply at one another, grievances forgotten. Elros, eyes narrowed, silently mouthed what?

Don’t talk about her! Don’t even say her name, Elrond wanted to protest, but the words would not come.

Celebrimbor frowned. “Earendil and Elwing were the hope of all the children of Iluvatar!”

Gil-galad laughed bitterly. “And who gave them that title? Not I. They traded an entire population for a—a shiny rock!”

Celebrimbor visibly flinched at Gil-galad’s description of the Silmaril, but he did not hesitate to respond. “A victim is never responsible for the offenses against them,” he said flatly. “You, as king, should know better.”

“If this had been an ordinary theft or assault, then you would be correct,” Gil-galad said. “A ruler is responsible for preventing offenses against their people wherever possible. It was possible for her to prevent the Third Kinslaying, and she did not. Since these children saw fit to play at being king and queen, I will judge Elwing as I would judge any other ruler who refused to do the one thing that would save her people.”

Stop! Stop! We’re right here, we don’t want to hear this! Elrond wanted to say, but he was paralyzed. Elros, too, only frowned and violently mashed something on his plate.

“Would you have her overrule the will of her people like some barbarian warlord? Like some... Fëanorian? It was never just about the Jewel, and her people—now your people—are not at fault for refusing to indulge the demands of kinslayers. They are heroes. Some became martyrs.”

“They had another choice, and they are as foolish as she is for not taking it,” Gil-galad snapped.

“Stop,” Elrond finally said, salmon eggs forgotten, but Gil-galad held up a hand and continued.

“There is nothing noble about any of it, and these ‘icons’ leave nothing but ruin behind their so-called acts of valor,” he said. “Let the kinslayers have their Jewel if they are willing to kill for it! Let their shame drive them further into the darkness than its light will ever touch, and let the innocent live another day!”

The strength of Gil-galad’s criticism and Celebrimbor’s praise both made Elrond feel small and ugly and ashamed, though he could not explain why any more than he could find a way to fight back. What would he even be fighting for? Don’t you dare say that Elwing was… a fool? A hero? Anything? Don’t you dare say anything about Elwing? Just considering making that demand made Elrond feel more ashamed than ever, even childish, like he was jealous. Jealous of what?

Stop talking about her. Stop defining her. Stop knowing what to say about her.

“Why...” Elros made a frustrated gesture. “What are you doing? Why would you... argue about our mother like this?” There was a tremor in his fingers, and his spine was taut like a bowstring.

“Doubtless you have an idealized memory of your mother, and it’s best that you learn the truth now to avoid replicating her mistakes,” said the king. “Either short-sighted and selfish or too naive to understand how unsuited she was to make any sort of decision about her people’s fate—”

“As if the sons of Fëanor had not already poisoned their memories of her, for shame!” Celebrimbor cut in.

“They did no such thing,” Elrond said before Gil-galad could respond.

“They were always kind to us. They only wanted to return us to your people, and they never said anything against our family,” Elros added. “Not once! When we were young, sometimes we would repeat something derogatory that we had heard about Thingol or Dior from a retainer, and Maglor would always tell us that they were noble elves who deserved our respect–”

“Were. Were, because Maglor and his brothers all but stamped out their line,” Celebrimbor said. Elrond could not help but notice how he referred to his uncles, and it made him feel even more trapped and hot in his own skin. “There can be no love here, not really. That you feel any affection for them is its own tragedy.”

“What are you trying to do?” Elrond said. “First you tell us that our mother is a fool, and now you are trying to tell us that the sons of Fëanor have twisted us and that our love for them cannot be genuine? Why would we take that any better?”

“I only disagree with the king on the first count,” Celebrimbor said. “Your mother is a hero. You would be right to take offense at anyone who suggests otherwise.”

“Do I have your permission to have my own opinion of my own mother? Or do you have some sort of problem with that?”

“I predicted that you would need some time to adjust to the correct information, given you spent your most formative years among murderers,” said the king.

“When we have freed prisoners over the course of the war, sometimes we realized they had been convinced that their captors loved them or that the absence of cruelty constituted acts of mercy,” Celebrimbor added. “Imagine a poor dark elf begging not to be delivered from thralldom because he had become attached to a slave-driver who preferred to motivate him with food over the whip. I have seen this with my own eyes. He could not remember true companionship. Now imagine a child taken from his family and raised by an enemy who occasionally pats his head like a dog—”

“That’s grotesque. And it isn’t what happened,” Elros spat. He rose to his feet, ignoring the king gesturing for him to sit back down. “Should they have mistreated us? Would it make you happier if we had been scared little thralls for you to fix?”

“Do not put those words into my mouth,” Gil-galad said coldly. “You only harbor the delusion that Maglor’s care for you was somehow a redemption, and it was not.”

“I only know that no one, not Maglor or Maedhros or anyone else, was a slave-driver with a whip! Ask any of their retainers!”

“They were complicit,” said Celebrimbor.

“That does not make them incapable of telling the truth.”

Gil-galad leaned forward. “It makes their ‘truth’ unreliable.”

“Oh, so your truth is the only one I should believe? Do you expect me to renounce my love for them? Do you want me to lie in the service of your truth?”

“Their kindness was its own kind of dishonesty.” Celebrimbor began counting off their offenses on his fingers, stabbing the table with each one for emphasis. “They murdered. They rebelled. They destroyed beautiful things. They were little more than common bandits when they took you. Their kindness, in the grand picture of their crimes, does not matter.”

“It mattered to us!” Elros’ eyes flashed. “They tried to do what they thought was best. That’s all anyone can do. Were there ever any right choices, or did they only have what was left after they missed their chance?”

His voice, like a lightning strike, left a pause in its wake, as if Gil-galad and Celebrimbor were both listening for thunder. In that moment, Elrond saw him standing taller than ever: a king before his equals, not a boy still to unfurl into his full potential.

The moment passed. He was Elros, shoulders trembling, hands braced on the table where his fingertips were white with the pressure behind them. He said nothing. Gil-galad and Celebrimbor both started, and then Elros whirled around. He was out the door before the other three could say a word.

Another pause. The space between thunder and the rain. Elrond, at last, found his tongue. He looked between Gil-galad and Celebrimbor, taking in all their annoyance and animosity and misplaced authority. Yes, it was misplaced. They were among the highest lords of the elves, but they could not command his own mind or his own heart, and Elrond could no longer simply tolerate them trying.

“I’m leaving too,” Elrond said. “I am still an apprentice healer, and I wish to continue my training.”

“I’d like to keep having conversations with you,” Gil-galad began, but Elrond was already out of his chair.

“I wasn’t asking permission,” he said, prompting a disapproving huff from Celebrimbor. He shook his head once and continued before either of them could interrupt him. “Regardless of what you think of my mother, or what you think of the men who raised me, I am an heir of the Noldor, the Sindar, and the great houses of Men. I’m not your pupil. I’m not your project. I’m not a little lost urchin in need of someone to show me where to go. Now, I am going to find my mentor. If you need to find me, I will be around the healing houses.”

He turned and left without waiting for a response.