Lonely Isle of Himling by StarSpray

Chapter 1

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It wasn’t often that Eluréd and Elurín had to plan their journeys—usually they just picked up their things and started walking. But sailing up the coast of Lindon and out to the islands that were all that was left of Beleriand after the War of Wrath was not the sort of thing one just did on a whim, even if it started out that way.

First, they needed a boat—not a large ship, just a small vessel the two of them could sail themselves, once they learned how. Since neither of them knew the first thing about boats, except for the canoes and rafts used but the Woodelves east of the Misty Mountains, they went to Elrond for advice. Elrond in turn took them to Lindon, where they were introduced to Círdan, who ended up having to sit down for a while with a large cup of miruvor to from the revelation that Dior’s sons were not only alive and well, but well-traveled and in fact far more interested in exploring than in their inheritance.

But he agreed to teach them both sailing and shipbuilding, and they stayed in Mithlond for several years for his lessons. Elrond came and went as he tried to find a balance between his newfound lordship of Imladris and his duties in Lindon, though busy as he was, he found plenty of time to go out on the water with Eluréd and Elurín, and to laugh at their fumbling attempts at boat-building.

“What will you call her?” he asked one afternoon, sitting on the dock and swinging his feet above the water while Eluréd and Elurín scrubbed their newly completed vessel clean of the detritus of construction.

“We’ve been calling it the boat,” Elurín replied.

“Every boat needs a name,” Elrond said.

“I don’t see why.” Elurín tossed his dirty rags onto the dock before jumping up after them. “It isn’t as though it’s an important boat.”

Elrond shrugged. “It’s said to be bad luck not to name a vessel,” he said.

Elurín sighed, and then brightened. “I have an idea,” he said. “Eluréd, where did you put that bucket of paint?” Once he had it in hand, he went to the prow of the boat, using a rope to swing around into a position in which he could paint. Waiting until the boat was in the water was not, Eluréd thought, the smartest thing they could have done, but until Elrond said something, he didn’t think either of them had given even half a thought to naming it.

It didn’t take Elurín long to paint a string of runes along the side. When he was done, Eluréd read it, and reread it, feeling a grin widening on his face. “Really?” Elrond said, and Eluréd burst into laughter. Elurín swung himself back onto the dock, looking very pleased with himself. “Cairí Yocairthîr? Really?” Elrond shook his head. “That isn’t at all what I meant.”

“Well now it has a name, and we can continue just calling it the boat,” Elurín said. “Thus is bad luck averted!”

“Is there anything you take seriously?” Elrond asked. Then he held up his hand and shook his head. “No, I’ve changed my mind, I don’t think I want to hear the answer.”

“We take plenty of things seriously,” Elurín said, adopting his most offended expression. “For instance: meal times. It’s almost time for supper, isn’t it?” He looped his arm through Elrond’s as they left the water, heading back to Círdan’s house. Behind them, the sun sank toward the horizon, edging the clouds with gold, as the sky in the east darkened to purple twilight. Lamps were lit throughout Mithlond, and Eluréd heard more than one song in praise of the stars as they walked along. Another song was about Eärendil; Eluréd glanced up to see the Silmaril gleaming brightly almost directly over their heads.

 

 

They departed from Mithlond just before Midsummer. Círdan gave messages to Eluréd and Elurín for the leaders of small towns and fishing villages they would pass on their way north. “The seas are rougher outside of the Gulf of Lhûn,” he told them. “Be careful, and do not stray too far from the shore! Ossë is not always gentle with lone vessels.”

It was dawn when they set sail, Gil-Estel gleaming bright on the western horizon. “How much do you think Eärendil can really see from Vingilot?” Eluréd asked Elurín as they turned their course northward. “Do you think Elwing ever accompanies him?”

“Not according to the tales,” Elurín replied. “They’re likely true; she was never very adventurous, that I remember.”

“No, she wasn’t.” Of course, she’d only been a baby, but Eluréd and Elurín had been eager to explore from the time they could crawl, while Elwing had always been content to sit on someone’s lap, eyes wide and watchful. He and Elurín had always made sure to bring her back some sort of treasure when they went exploring—mostly flowers, sometimes feathers or, when she was old enough not to eat them, shiny pebbles from the Esgalduin.

It was some days before they reached Himling; they stopped often to visit the towns along the coast, to learn what they could of the land and the waters around, and to deliver Círdan’s messages. The villages were mostly mannish, populated by the descendants of those few of the Edain who had chosen not to sail west to Númenor.

The closer to Himling they got, the more tales they heard of ghosts that haunted the shore—grandmothers and grandfathers recalled seeing what they thought was the houseless spirit of some ancient, long-dead elf, singing old laments as he wandered the shores, often vanishing into the tides. “Well,” Elurín said to Eluréd, as they returned to Cairí Yocairthîr after hearing yet another almost-first-hand account, “that sounds like something interesting.”

“I’d rather not investigate houseless spirits, if it’s all the same to you,” Eluréd replied.

“Why not? What can the dead possibly do to us?”

Nothing, as it turned out. The only spirits they encountered were sea sprites, lesser Maiar in the services of Uinen and Ossë, who shared Ossë’s love of the waves, but lacked his power, so that they were never in danger of capsizing, only of a good soaking. Of Ossë himself they saw no sign, for the weather was fair and clear. Sometimes at night, when the stars were brightest, Eluréd thought he could hear singing out over the waves. He suspected the voice belonged to Uinen, but as there was no other sign of her, he could not be sure.

At last, the small, lonely isle of Himling rose out of the early morning mists. Even from a distance they could see the remnants of towers and walls. They had been built by the Noldor at their strongest, when the sun had been young, long before Eluréd and Elurín had been born, and the fortress of Maedhros had weathered even the War of Wrath, crumbling now only slowly, bowing as everything did to time and sea winds. “Good place for ghosts,” Elurín remarked.

They landed in a small, pebbly inlet, shielded from the wind by rocks and tough, gnarled trees and bushes. There was little sign of life except birds; the harsh cries of gulls followed them as they picked their way over old trails, once paved with smooth stone now cracked and half-overgrown, up toward the fortress. There, they started to find things—signs that people had once not just fought there, but lived there: bits of old pottery, arrowheads, a sword hilt, a crystal ink pot, even half of a harp’s wooden frame, with rune signs for preservation and sweet sounds still readable on the pitted surface.

“Eluréd,” Elurín said suddenly. Eluréd started; it was so quiet that Elurín’s voice sounded almost like a shout, though he had in fact kept his voice low. “Eluréd, look.” He nudged the charred remains of a fire—a recent fire—with his foot. “Someone else is here.”

“Not one of the houseless,” Eluréd said, keeping his voice light. “Spirits do not need fires.”

“But who would want to come to a place like this?” Elurín asked. “I saw no other boats on or near the beach, did you?”

“No, but surely there are other places to land a boat on this island.”

There were a few other signs that someone had been roaming the ruins in recent days, but no hint as to who they might be, so they abandoned the search in favor of climbing to the highest point on the island they could find. This point was a half-crumbled tower on the highest peak of the island hill. From there they could see the shores of Tol Fuin in the west, dark against the red sunset, and the shores of Middle-earth in the east. Once, Eluréd thought, Maedhros Fëanorion may have stood where they did now, looking out over wide plains of Ard-galen, north toward Angband, that now lay far beneath the waves. Eluréd squinted into the north, trying to imagine what the lands had looked like; there was only so much that could be gleaned from maps and songs and tales.

When they left the tower, they parted, Elurín to explore the ruins further, and Eluréd to walk the island’s perimeter. He found another boat, a tiny dinghy with, he noted, no name, that had been dragged up from the water and tucked into a cluster of dense shrubs and covered with a tarp. He tucked the tarp back around the boat, and left it where he found it.

Though it was summer, the breeze off the water was cool, and as he walked Eluréd wrapped his cloak around himself. There was no sound except the waves washing against the rocky shore, and the crunch of pebbles beneath his feet as he walked; even the gulls were silent, or had taken themselves away to another part of the island. It was a lonely place; Eluréd suspected it had been lonely even before the drowning of Beleriand. He held no love for the Sons of Fëanor, but it could not be denied that, at least in the beginning, they had been brave and even noble, taking the most vulnerable parts of Beleriand’s northern marches for themselves to defend.

Eluréd was deep in thought as he rounded a tumble of boulders and came face to face with the island’s mysterious inhabitant. He was tall, clad in dark, tattered clothes, with his long hair falling down his back in thick, wild tangles. He stood at the water’s edge singing so softly the sound was almost drowned out by the water. Eluréd halted, and the singer turned. In his eyes there was a flicker of ancient fire, faded now to embers, but a sign that he had once known Valinor before the Darkening.

The singer stared at Eluréd blankly for a moment, before saying, hoarsely, “Elrond…?”

Eluréd blinked, and then caught a glimpse of the shiny scar tissue on the stranger’s hand. When they had been younger, he and Elurín had discussed what they might do if they encountered this last son of Fëanor, but had never come to any kind of conclusion. Eventually they had decided that the stories of him wandering the shores of Middle-earth in lonely lament were likely only stories, and that he’d drowned with Beleriand and the last Silmaril. But it seemed those rumors were true—and the source of those fireside ghost stories told by the fishermen. Maglor Fëanorion was indeed alive, a living ghost dwelling in the ruin of his brother’s fortress.

It was easy to decide what to do, now that he had Maglor standing in front of him. Eluréd took a step forward and punched him. Maglor reeled backward, losing his balance and falling on his backside in the waves, which washed up over his legs so that he was thoroughly drenched, at least from the waist down.

Eluréd stepped back, rubbing his knuckles. “I’m not Elrond,” he said, although by now that was probably obvious—it was unlikely that Elrond would have greeted Maglor with his fist. “I am Eluréd, son of Dior son of Lúthien of Doriath,” Eluréd continued.

Maglor had started to pick himself up, but he sat back down in an incoming wave to stare at Eluréd, his face stricken. “Dior’s son—” he began.

“Eluréd?” Elurín’s voice floated down from up the hill, and then he appeared himself out of the brush, holding an intricately painted vase that had somehow survived the years intact. “Look at this! Isn’t it—” He stopped as suddenly as Eluréd had, staring at Maglor, and then at Eluréd, and then at Maglor again. “Is that…?”

“Yes,” Eluréd said.

“Oh. What’s he doing sitting in the water?”

“Well, I punched him.”

“Oh. Well, good.” Elurín set the vase down carefully. “Now I don’t have to.” He stepped forward and held out his hand to Maglor, who stared at it, and then warily up at Elurín before accepting the help to his feet. “Do you have any dry clothes?”

“I saw some in his boat, I think.” Eluréd trotted back down the beach to the dinghy’s hiding place, where he pulled out a few bags and a package that was clearly better taken care of than anything else Maglor owned—including Maglor himself. Eluréd unwrapped it to find a harp, beautifully carved of smooth red-brown wood and inlaid with gold. Eluréd carefully wrapped it up again, and took it back with him to a small hollow where Maglor had been making his latest camp.

Elurín already had a small fire going, and was adding wood to it when Eluréd found them. “…no point in holding a grudge, after all this time,” he was saying. “He only punched you because—well, you must admit you rather deserved it.”

“I think I deserve rather more than a single fist,” Maglor said.

“Probably,” Eluréd said as he set Maglor’s things beside him. “But that isn’t for us to judge.”

“Which is good for everyone, because I don’t particularly want to,” Elurín added. “Bad enough Eluréd will be complaining of bruised knuckles for the next week.”

As Maglor got to his feet and peeled off his wet things, Eluréd sat by the fire and picked up the vase. It was very old, and very delicate, but the colors of the glazing were still as vibrant as though they’d been applied the day before. “Is this of Noldor make?” he asked. “Ah, no—it’s Dwarven.” There were runes on the bottom denoting the potter and the painter.

“It was a gift from Azaghâl when he joined my brother’s Union,” Maglor said, surprising them both. “One of many gifts. The rest were mostly arms and armor.” He sat down near the fire, but a cautious distance from Eluréd and Elurín. “Do you punch Dwarves when you meet them?”

“All the Dwarves who sacked Menegroth are dead,” Elurín pointed out. “Eluréd, here, wrap it in this.” He pulled out a soft cloth from his things, and Eluréd carefully wrapped the vase in it. He doubted Maglor had any use for the thing, but Elrond would be very interested in it.

“We looked for you, after,” Maglor said suddenly. “In Doriath—Maedhros was furious when he found what Celegorm’s people did.”

“Not all of Doriath’s people welled inside Menegroth,” Elurín said, and they left it at that. No word at all was said of Sirion.

Instead, Eluréd pushed Maglor’s harp into his hands. “Sing us a song, minstrel,” he said. “Not one of your laments, something out of Valinor that we haven’t heard before.”

Maglor took the harp, unwrapping it as carefully as though it were made of the same fragile porcelain as the vase. He played a few scales, and then for a long while he played wandering, aimless tunes that didn’t belong to any song at all, before striking a chord that sent a chill down Eluréd’s spine. He played a song that conjured images of bright light, gold and silver, of billowing clouds and mountains that stretched so high their peaks seemed to brush the stars, of wide green plains and deep forests filled with wild things. It was not only a song out of Valinor, it was a song of Valinor, and it was almost enough to make Eluréd want to make that final voyage across the Sea to seek the source of the joy inherent in every word.

“That song was written by Elemmírë of the Vanyar,” Maglor said quietly, after the final notes faded, while above them the stars blazed, pinpricks of white fire as though they, too, were responding to his music. “I had to search far back in my memory to recall it. She wrote many such songs; few have been heard east of the Sea.”

They passed the night and the next day like that, trading songs and stories and ignoring the tension that lingered between them. Maglor was not bad company, in the moments when he could be pulled out of his centuries-long sulk, but he was still a Kinslayer, and even if Eluréd and Elurín were not inclined to do more than punch him, they were not willing to commit to more than a truce.

The second day after they discovered Maglor on the beach, Elurín and Eluréd decided they’d had enough of Himling; it had a gloomy, eerie atmosphere that, while suitable for Maglor and his lamentation, weighed on them. They stowed what small treasures they had collected, including the vase, in the small hold of Cairí Yocairthîr; Maglor had come back to the beach with them, though if he reacted at all to the boat’s nonsensical name he showed no sign. Perhaps the sea had washed away his sense of humor, Eluréd thought. “If you ever want to end your exile,” Elurín said suddenly, turning back to Maglor, “you should go east, to the foothills of the Misty Mountains. Elrond dwells there in the valley called Imladris.”

“He would probably even greet you without his fists,” Eluréd added.

Maglor didn’t smile, but his lips twitched, just slightly. “Perhaps,” he said, and bowed. “Farewell.”

“Good bye!” Elurín and Eluréd chorused, as they shoved the boat into the surf and leaped onto its deck.

“Now for Tol Fuin!” Elurín said, as the wind filled their sails. “Who knows? Perhaps we’ll find Daeron wandering around there!”

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Chapter End Notes

The boat's name Cairí Yocairthîr is (approximately) Sindarin for Boaty McBoatFace, which came about because I was half-jokingly complaining about naming it on Tumblr, and Amy Fortuna came to my rescue (thank you!). Her linguistic explanation is:

It is made up of Cair = ship, an ‘í’ just for kicks, Yo = Mc (meaning ‘son of’ – 'son’ is 'ion’ in Sindarin, or 'yonya’ in Quenya so I figured 'Yo’ would be a good substitute), then ship again, then thîr = face!