Pieces of the Stars by Nibeneth

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Chapter 11

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“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.