God, I Pity the Violins by StarSpray

But the most special are the most lonely
God, I pity the violins
In glass coffins they keep coughing
They've forgotten, forgotten how to sing
- Regina Spektor, "All the Rowboats"

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Maglor thought at first the dark mass just washed up with the waves was seaweed. But as he drew closer he realized that it was hair—and that hair was attached to a body. He halted, ankle deep in foam, too surprised for a second to do anything but stare. But the moment passed, and he hurried forward to kneel beside the body. It—she, in fact—was emaciated, practically skeletal, naked, and, when he put his fingers to her throat to seek a pulse, cool to the touch. Her eyes were open and staring, but empty. There was no heartbeat. He sighed—but before he could draw his hand away the heart began to beat again beneath his fingertips, and the woman's body jerked, convulsed, and then she started retching up copious amounts of seawater, expelling it from her lungs and also her stomach. Maglor jerked his hand back, lost his balance, and sat down hard in the wet sand. As the woman emptied herself of water he glanced out toward the sea. He had not really expected to see anything, but where the water would have been waist-deep for him he saw the figure of a woman, with sea foam falling around her like pale hair. He scrambled to his feet as the woman advanced, growing out of the water so that she was tall enough to look him in the eye, her own eyes like bright points of light in the flowing water of her body.

"What is the meaning of this, lady?" Maglor asked, gesturing at the woman, who lay still on the beach, but for the strangely steady rise and fall of her chest.

"I do not know," said Lady Uinen. Her expression was difficult to see amid the water, but her voice was clear, and it was troubled. "I do not know the deeps of Middle-earth's waters as well as I did long ago. So much has changed. She has been trapped in an iron casket at the bottom of the sea, drowning and waking, drowning and waking—I do not know what to make of it."

"But—that is impossible, even for one of the Eldar," said Maglor. "And this is a mortal woman—or she should be." For a moment he thought of Sauron, who might have had such a power—but he had fallen so long ago, never to rise again, or so said the Wise. But the Wise had been wrong before…

"That is not my domain, son of Fëanor," said Lady Uinen. "Yet I do not sense any evil sorcery at work. Perhaps Manwë or Mandos know more, but this is a verse in the Music beyond my understanding."

"So you've brought her to me?" Maglor asked.

It seemed to him that Uinen smiled. "Yes." And with that she stepped back and melted into the waves, washing out into the ocean with the tide. As she did Maglor heard her voice echoing up out of the water, singing an ancient song in a language older than time, almost indistinguishable from the music of the sea itself.

Maglor turned back to the woman, who had started to shiver, though she remained unconscious. He sighed, and knelt to pick her up. She weighed no more than a child. His cottage wasn't far, just up a steep hill that overlooked a lonely stretch of beach on the east, and down the other side to a small hamlet on the other, a cluster of quaint houses and little shops, and a post office. It was the sort of place you'd expect to find Miss Marple, although as long as Maglor had lived there, there had been no real crime, and certainly no murders. He was known in the village as a bit of an eccentric recluse, so he was left alone, but treated kindly whenever he had to go into town. He was not quite certain, however, what this small English village would make of a strange woman washed up nearly dead on the shore. Hopefully no one would have to find out.

Safely inside, Maglor took the woman first to the bathroom, where he rinsed the sand and salt off of both of them. Her hair was long and dark and unfortunately tangled into an impossible clump—and falling out anyway, by the handful—so he found a pair of scissors and cut it away. The woman had begun to stir as soon he placed her in the tub, so Maglor hummed lullabies as he washed her, putting power into his voice that he had not used in a very, very long time. The last thing she wanted, probably, was to wake up in the water again. At least this water was warm.

Sufficiently cleaned, Maglor found one of his softest nightshirts for the woman, and bundled her into his bed. She did not stir again, and he left her to get some proper rest while he tried to decide what to next. It was still early in the morning; outside of his kitchen window a robin alighted on a bush that badly needed trimming and sang a few cheerful notes. Maglor whistled back at it, and for a while they were both entertained. When the robin flew away, Maglor turned from the window to take stock of his cupboards and refrigerator. He found that he had the basics needed for chicken soup, by pure chance—he'd gotten a small chicken at the village shop the day before with a vague idea of roasting it. Instead he brought out a pot and set it to boil with some herbs and vegetables, while he tidied up the rest of the small house. He was not usually a messy person, but he did not often have guests and as a result clutter and dust tended to build up without him realizing.

As he gathered up notebooks and scraps of paper off of the floor in the parlor, his thoughts kept circling back to what Uinen had said of the strange woman. Not that she seemed unable to die—but that she had been trapped at the bottom of the sea in an iron casket. It sounded familiar, though he couldn't think of where he had heard of such a thing before. Who would do something like that, and why? Maglor sat back on his heels and sighed, looking up and out of the window. A few stray tendrils of ivy were starting to creep over the glass. His garden needed tidying even more badly than his house.

That thought reminded him that he had a patch of athelas growing somewhere out there, no doubt going as wild as the ivy and the honeysuckle. He set the pile of notebooks on the sofa by the window, caught the other papers that tried to slide off as a result, and then made his way back to the kitchen to put a kettle on. On his way outside he stopped to peer in at the woman. She hadn't moved; somehow her color had improved, and she looked a little less like she would perish at any moment. But he did not even have to try that hard to sense that her mind was deeply troubled and her spirit wounded.

The athelas was indeed thriving, its long leaves waving gently in the breeze coming off of the sea. A few rabbits scampered out of Maglor's way, vanishing beneath it, as he approached. He picked a few leaves and paused a moment to crush one in his hand to inhale the scent. He closed his eyes and breathed deep, smelling sweet grass and fresh wind off of snowy mountains—the smell of the wide plains of Lothlann and Ard-galen, in those glorious days of long ago when the Siege of Angband had held.

Maglor opened his eyes, feeling steadier, and looked out over the ocean. Clouds were gathering; the sky and the sea were both slate-grey, the latter flecked with the white tips of choppy waves. He saw a few fishing boats out in the distance, and did not envy the fishermen such a day. It was likely to rain before long, and the breeze kept changing, unsure of which direction it wanted to blow. He picked a few more leaves and retreated inside. The house smelled like chicken and rosemary, itself a comforting scent. The kettle was also boiling, so Maglor took a bowl of the water to the bedroom, where the woman still lay deeply asleep, caught in a torrent of dreams. He set the bowl down beside the bed, bruised a few athelas leaves, and dropped them into the steaming water. The scent that arose was not unlike what he had smelled out in the garden—open plains and clean air.

Sitting down beside the bed, Maglor regarded the woman. Her breathing had evened out a little more, and the pinched expression was gone from her face. He reached out his thought to touch hers, hoping to learn at the very least what her name was, and what language she spoke. He was not prepared for the flood of memory that spilled over—hundreds and hundreds of years' worth, of battles and death and life and joy and sorrow and rage. Her name was Quynh, and she had been born in what was now Vietnam. As for language—what languages she did not speak would be a shorter list, although no dialect was newer than what had been spoken in the sixteenth century. Her strange inability to die had begun far away from the Atlantic Ocean, and had spanned far more years than Maglor had been prepared to guess. And through it all there were three others, immortal as she was, who appeared again and again. Two men, always together—and another woman, with pale skin and dark hair and a wicked grin. Her name more than any other thought passed through Quynh's mind, and thus through Maglor's. Andromache.

And all of the pain and fear of six hundred years of drowning over and over and over again had been distilled into anguished rage that colored everything else. Maglor withdrew from Quynh's mind feeling as though he were drowning himself. And all this was while she was under the calming and healing influence of athelas.

He left her to sleep and went to check the soup. As he chopped carrots and celery he caught himself wondering what sorts of weapons he had in the house, and whether he should hide his kitchen knives. But that was ridiculous. A warrior like Quynh could turn anything into a weapon—she herself was a weapon, if it came to it.

She woke with a start when he brought a mug of broth into her sometime later. It was the middle of the afternoon by then, and the rain had arrived, pattering on the windows and pooling on the garden paths. Her hand shot out and gripped Maglor's arm with surprising strength, enough to leave bruises before he could move back. Her voice was barely audible, a painful rasp from a throat that had done nothing but gargle seawater for centuries, but she croaked questions and curses as she struggled to rise out of the blankets.

"It's all right," Maglor said, as he caught her and pressed her back onto the pillows. "It's all right, Quynh. You're safe. I won't hurt you." She collapsed back when her strength ran out, panting, and he crushed another athelas leaf into the still-warm bowl of water. As the scent filled the room he began to sing, and after fighting it for several minutes, Quynh's eyes drifted closed, and she sank back into deep sleep. Only then did he leave to fetch an instrument, grabbing the first one he found in his music room. It took a bit of fiddling to match the songs he wanted to play to the strings of a guitar, but he managed it, seating himself on the floor as he strummed. The songs were for rest, and for healing of both body and mind; he had learned them long ago in his Tree-lit youth in the Gardens of Lórien, and when he closed his eyes he could see the red poppies swaying in the breeze, and the golden light of Laurelin glittering on the streams and ponds, and making the golden flowers of the malinornë trees glow. Whether the power in the songs was enough to help Quynh, he could not say. Time would tell.

By the time darkness fell Maglor was exhausted; it had been years beyond count since he had put forth that much power into his music; it was like flexing a muscle that had been left to atrophy. He left Quynh to sleep—hopefully a deep, restful sleep that would last at least through the night—and retreated to the kitchen. He ate some soup and put the rest away, and then made himself some tea and went to his study. Out of idle curiosity, because the name was faintly familiar, he opened up the Internet and searched for Andromache, and then the names Andromache and Quynh together. He found no useful results. Then he abandoned their names and searched for the story of a witch tossed into the sea in an iron coffin, and he did find that, though it was a small part of a larger article about the witch trials and the burning of heretics in England, and was noted as apocryphal: many attempts had been made to kill a pair of witches who simply would not die; in an attempt to lessen their combined power one had been locked in an iron maiden and cast into the sea. The fate of the other was unknown. The author of the paper seemed to believe the story was not true, and there were no official records surviving that so much as hinted at it. Well, of course there wouldn't be. Maglor himself had often quietly erased small bits of recorded history in which he played a part that might draw undue attention.

Curiosity satisfied, he turned on the radio and flopped onto the sofa by the window. The quiet strains of Mozart mingled with the steady patter of raindrops on the glass, combining into a soothing lullaby that had him drifting off to sleep.

He woke in the morning to bright sunshine, the rain having passed on during the night. The robin was back, perched in a tree just visible through the window from where Maglor lay on the sofa. He yawned, stretched, and rolled over, half-tempted to go right back to sleep.

The sight of Quynh across the room watching him the way a cat watched potential prey eliminated any desire or ability to return to sleep. Maglor jerked and fell off the sofa, hitting the floor with a thud and a curse. He picked himself up, only to find himself frozen in place with the blade of one of his kitchen knives at his throat. Perhaps he should have hidden them after all. "I have some questions for you," Quynh said into his ear, "and you are going to answer them all truthfully."

"You don't need to threaten me just to ask questions," said Maglor, carefully.

Quynh ignored this. At least her hand holding the knife was steady. "What is this place?" she asked. "Who are you, and why did you bring me here?"

"This place is my house," Maglor said. "I brought you here because I did not want to leave you lying alone out on the beach in the rain."

"Why?" she repeated, pressing the knife harder against his neck. He felt it break the skin, just slightly.

"Because I wanted to help you," Maglor said, and then he moved, bringing his arm up quicker than Quynh could have anticipated and knocking the knife away. It clattered onto the wood floor as he turned. Quynh was reacting by this time and for a brief moment they struggled against one another—but even if Quynh were at her full strength, Maglor was stronger yet, and faster. He pinned Quynh's arms to her sides and held on as she struggled. Only when she stopped, panting, did he let her go. She lunged for the knife, but he was still faster, and snatched it up. "I don't want to hurt you," he said, as she stood in the middle of the room, out of breath and with her hastily-cut hair sticking up at odd angles. "My name is Max," he went on after a moment. It was the name he had been using for most of the twentieth century, mixing and matching various surnames, depending on where he was and how long he intended to stay there. He had been Max Smithson for the last forty, living in this little out-of-the-way cottage outside a little out-of-the-way village. After another short pause he remembered himself and asked, "What is your name?"

She glared at him, hands opening and closing into fists. It was a little absurd, Maglor thought, as he stood poised to move or block whatever she might try to do. From the outside, he thought, it was an absurd situation. In a fight Maglor was stronger and faster, but Quynh had more recent experience (which was remarkable in itself given how long she had been at the bottom of the ocean), and she could fight like she had nothing to fear—because she would always be able to get back up, while he may not.

It almost seemed like she wanted a fight. "Please," Maglor said, holding up his free hand, palm out, "I am no jailer. If you want to leave you can. The door is just down the hall. Though someone will likely call the authorities if you go out dressed as you are." This seemed to startle Quynh out of whatever rage she was in, and she looked down at herself, barefoot and clad in a too-big nightshirt. "I made soup yesterday. Did you find the bowl I left for you?" Quynh looked up again, her expression wary but her stance relaxing a little, and she nodded. "There's more in the kitchen. Or I can fix up something else. I meant to bake some more bread today, but if you stab me while I'm kneading the dough I'm afraid it will ruin the taste." This startled her into laughter—a short bark of it, but enough to break the remaining tension. Maglor released a small sigh of relief.

"Quynh," she said, at last. "My name is Quynh."

"A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Quynh," said Maglor. "I'm going to make some breakfast."

As it turned out, Maglor had forgotten to pick up eggs when last at the shop, so he dug out some oatmeal, and put on the kettle for tea. While he cut bread for toast he pretended not to notice Quynh examining everything in his kitchen, even as he watched her out of the corner of his eye. She did not stop moving around the room until he placed a bowl of oatmeal on the table for her, alongside the cartons of blueberries and raspberries, and the cream. "Where is this place?" she asked, as he set his own bowl down.

"Southern England. A bit south and west of Dover," Maglor said. "Just far enough to be too out-of-the-way for tourists to stop in very often."

Quynh ate as though—well, as though she hadn't had a proper meal in five hundred years. Maglor got her seconds, and while he was fixing another pot of tea he quietly poured the extra boiling water over another few athelas leaves, so their fresh clear fragrance filled the kitchen. At the very least they settled his own nerves.

"You haven't asked me where I came from," Quynh said, as she watched him return to the table. She reminded him again of a cat, though at the moment she was not hunting.

"Would you answer me if I did?" he replied. She frowned at him, and did not answer. "Is there somewhere you wish to go? Or someone I can help you find?" She hesitated, but shook her head. "Well, if there is you only need to ask."

She fell silent, and remained so as she watched him clean up the breakfast dishes, and then as she followed him back to the bedroom, where he dug through a chest of clothes looking for something that might even come close to fitting her. He didn't find anything, of course; Quynh was barely half his size. Just some old clothes he thought that, with enough time, he could take apart and fashion into a couple of dresses or skirts. But that would take time, particularly since he'd lost his old sewing machine at some point in the last decade and had not bothered to replace it.

Finally, Maglor sat back on his heels and looked at Quynh, who was perched on the bed. "I'm afraid I don't have any proper clothing for you," he said. "I can take a guess at your size and pick up a few things from the shop in town, and after that you can go try things on yourself."

Quynh tilted her head. "Are there not tailors and seamstresses?"

"Most clothes are mass-produced, and most people just make do with the best fit they can find," Maglor said.

"What do you do?" Quynh asked.

"I make my own clothes, mostly," said Maglor. It was almost entirely out of millennia of habit, but also, "I'm so tall, it's very difficult to find anything off the rack." He closed the chest and got to his feet. "Will you be all right alone while I walk down to the shop?"

"Of course," she said sharply. No doubt she would search the whole house thoroughly. Maglor tried to think if he had anything he didn't want her to discover, but nothing sprang to mind. It was absurd, the two of them standing there trying to keep nearly the same secret from the other, and he trying not to let on that he already knew Quynh's. But he couldn't laugh about it until he was out of the house, walking down the lane toward the village.

As he stepped out of the gate the sound of excited barking erupted in the bushes just across the way. A moment later a small splotchy brown and white dog leaped out of the grass to jump up to plant muddy paws on Maglor's knees. "Good morning, Norindo," he said, crouching to scratch the dog behind the ears. "I hope you weren't out in the rain all night." Norindo was a stray who, while very friendly and seemingly fond of Maglor, refused to come inside. His fur was damp and becoming matted, and one of these days Maglor was going to have to make a real concerted effort to get Norindo properly groomed—and to the vet, while he was at it.

But that would have to wait. Maglor rose again, and Norindo raced around his feet as he walked the rest of the way to the village. It was still fairly early, and it was quiet in the little second-hand clothing shop. "Good morning," said the young woman at the till. "Let me know if you need help finding anything."

"Thanks," said Maglor, as he scanned the signs hanging over the different sections. The woman's section was the largest, to his relief, and he picked out a variety of styles, since he had absolutely know idea what Quynh might like, and probably Quynh didn't either, since her ideas of fashion were at least five hundred years out of date. He felt only a little awkward approaching the till, but the young woman didn't comment on anything but the weather.

He ran a few other errands, while he was there, since when he had last gotten groceries he had been getting them for only one person. Norindo romped about his feet between shops, and made friends with a lab outside of the post office. Once they returned home, though, he disappeared into the garden in spite of Maglor attempting to coax him inside with treats. The dog knew that way led to a bath, Maglor was sure of it. He sighed and gave up for the time being.

His house looked almost exactly the same as it had when he'd left, except that it had the feeling of things being just slightly off. Quynh had been very careful in her rummaging, it seemed. He found her in the music room, perched on the piano bench and frowning at the music on the stand. "Here are some clothes," he said, holding out the bag. She took it and peered inside, both wary and skeptical. "Do you play?" he asked, nodding to the piano. Mostly it was just for something to say.

Quynh shook her head. "Do you…play all of these?" she asked, glancing around at the various instruments around the room.

"Yes. I'm a musician by trade."

Quynh disappeared into the bedroom to try on the clothes, and Maglor made a quick circuit around his house to make sure that nothing important, or sharp, had gone missing. Nothing had, so he went outside into the garden, where Norindo had stopped his running about and was flopped onto a patch of grass in the bright sunshine. He lifted his head and thumped his tail when he saw Maglor, but did not get up. Maglor put his hands on his hips and surveyed the garden. He wasn't really sure why Quynh's arrival made him want to put it in order, but he wasn't going to fight the urge while it lasted. The only problem was knowing where to start.

By the time Quynh reemerged from the house, clad in a skirt and blouse and a pair of sandals, Maglor was well into clearing out the herb beds of weeds. Norindo jumped up and went to sniff at her feet and then to lick her hand, which seemed to startle her out of whatever thoughts had been circling in her mind. She sat down on the grass and scratched him behind the ears.

The next few days passed in relative peace. Quynh was finding her feet, gradually, and while she learned how to use things like the television and refrigerator (and, memorably, the toaster), Maglor cleared out the garden, section by section. Nights were more difficult. Quynh would not have slept at all if Maglor had not gotten out his harp every evening to play the lullabies out of Lórien, and more often than not she woke screaming or cursing in the middle of the night. Or Maglor would peer into the room to check on her and find her curled up on the side of the bed by the window, staring out at the ocean.

Four days into the arrangement, Maglor drove them both into Dover to find a proper department store so Quynh could have a say in her own wardrobe. She spent the drive clutching the door handle with white knuckles and gritted teeth, and the rest of it trying to pretend that she wasn't completely out of her depth—so it wasn't as pleasant an outing as Maglor might have hoped, but at least they got clothing that she liked and that fit, and no one ended up punched or stabbed or flung out of the car. And he was able to introduce her to ice cream, which seemed to more or less make up for all the stressful parts.

Norindo wandered in and out of the garden all the while, napping in the sunshine while Maglor tackled a new patch of weeds, or sniffing about the fence posts while he reorganized the herbs or plotted out how to arrange a bed of snapdragons and gardenias. They seemed to be settling into a more or less peaceful routine, and so Maglor made the mistake of letting his guard down—and so he didn't turn around when he heard Quynh come outside, and then go back in, only to come back out again a moment later. He did feel a prickle on the back of his neck, however, and when he turned it was to see Quynh with a knife in her hand. Maglor moved just in time to avoid a blade in his neck or chest—it was the same knife she'd used before, even—and instead received only a gash across his upper arm, the pain like a line of fire over his skin. Quynh seemed to pause as the blood welled up, but Maglor was not about to let her try anything else, so he lunged—and she reacted, moving more quickly than she had the first night he'd had to wrestle a blade from her, and certainly more quickly than he had expected.

"What are you doing?" Maglor demanded once he had her on the ground, holding her wrists over her head with one hand while she squirmed beneath him, trying in vain to pry her fingers off the knife handle. Her knee collided with his groin and he folded, rolling off of her. She sat up, and instead of attacking him with the knife again she grabbed his sleeve and hanked it up to reveal the wound there, which still bled freely.

"I don't understand," she said, frowning.

"When you cut someone," Maglor gasped, once he could breath again, "they tend to bleed."

"It isn't closed." She prodded at it, and Maglor slapped her hand away.

"Of course not!" He sat up, twisting his arm and craning his neck to get a look at it. "It's going to need stitches."

Quynh sat back on her heels, still frowning. She did not react when Maglor snatched up the knife, getting stiffly to his feet; he left her there in the garden and headed inside to the bathroom.

Under closer inspection the wound was not as bad as he had first thought. It hurt, and hurt worse when he washed it out, but in the end he decided the hassle of stitches wasn't worth it. He taped it shut instead and slapped a large band-aid over it. Emerging from the bathroom he found Quynh in the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel—having washed his blood off of them, presumably. "I don't suppose you'd care to explain what that was all about," he said, when she looked up at him. Her gaze was clear and she seemed lucid enough. "I thought we were past the attempted-murder stage of our acquaintance."

"I wasn't trying to murder you," she said.

"What do you call it, then, coming up behind someone to stab them?"

"I thought you would heal," she said.

Maglor stared at her, and then tried to think of how and when she had realized he was older than he claimed. It was almost a relief, to have their mutual secrets start to unravel. "You mean, like you?" he asked. Her gaze grew sharp and she took a step back, settling into a familiar stance. "You were dead on the beach when I found you," Maglor told her. He went to the cupboard for a glass. "And if I were going to do something about it I would have done it by now. But there must be a better way to discover if someone is like you than by stabbing them."

"I didn't stab you," Quynh muttered, slinking away like a disgruntled cat as Maglor made his way to the sink.

"Only because I moved. And before you decide to repeat the experiment I will tell you now that if killed I will not pop back up again like a jack-in-the-box." He filled the glass with water and drank, wishing he had something stronger in the house.

"Then how can you speak languages that died with their people when the Teutonic Knights turned their attention north of the Holy Land?" Quynh asked, in one such dialect. It was somewhat different than the version Maglor knew, because he had been long gone from the Baltic regions of Europe by the time would-be crusaders had begun to seriously encroach upon it. He hadn't even thought of those people, or the language, in centuries…but there were so many songs and tongues jostling around in his head that perhaps he had been singing one of their songs outside in the garden without realizing. Maglor refilled his glass in order to delay replying—although his reluctance to react was probably confirmation in itself.

Finally, in the same tongue, he said, "Speaking a dead tongue is still no reason to stab someone. You could have just asked." He turned around, sipping his water, and leaned against the counter top. They regarded each other with new wariness. Outside in the distance a dog barked—perhaps Norindo, chasing seagulls on the beach. Finally, Maglor returned to English and said, with a sigh, "I am very old, Quynh. Older than you would believe if I told you."

"You are immortal, then."

"You might say so," Maglor said. "But not as you are."

She regarded him for a moment, and then said, "Why did we never dream of you? Did you dream of us?"

"Why would I dream of you?" Maglor asked. "Or you of me?"

"We all dream of each other, before we meet. Nicolò always said it was destiny."

"As I said, I am not like you," Maglor said after a moment. "You are a mortal who refuses to die, for reasons I cannot begin to understand. I did not become the way I am. It is merely my nature, in the same way it is Norindo's nature to run about on four legs. As for destiny—your friend Nicolò may have been on to something. It is no coincidence that it was my beach that you washed up on, I think." He finished his water and set the glass down. "Since both of us now know the other's secrets, more or less, how about you promise not to try to kill me again, and I will help you start properly learning how to live in the twenty-first century?"

Quynh's grin was sudden and bright. "Deal."

It was clear that Quynh had expected to find it easy to adapt to whatever changes the world had undergone in her absence—it was what she had been doing for centuries. But it was one thing to accept and adapt to the changes as they came, and quite another to wake up in a world utterly changed from the one you knew. So Maglor's lessons kept getting cut short when she lost her temper and stormed out of the room. Reading in particular was a large stumbling block. Quynh was not entirely illiterate, but she was not prepared for just how heavily the world now relied upon the written word. By contrast, things like plumbing and practical use of electric appliances came easily, and often with a great deal of delight. And alarmingly but not altogether surprisingly, she was very interested in the advancement of weapons technology. Maglor was distinctly lacking in that area of knowledge, and he had no real interest in fixing it.

"And what happens if you need to defend yourself, or your village?" Quynh demanded when he told her this.

"Defend the village from what?" Maglor asked. "There are hardly bands of marauders going around pillaging, these days." He paused. "Well, not in England, anyway."

"And yourself?" Quynh demanded.

"I defended myself against you rather well, and weaponless. But I am not a soldier or a warrior, I am a musician. I tossed my sword into the sea eons ago."

Quynh didn't flinch, but her eyes darkened. "That was a stupid thing to do." Maglor just shrugged, and distracted her from the subject by pulling up a world map, so she could be outraged at the geopolitical state of the world instead of at his lack of a fully-stocked armory.

The next day it rained, dark clouds rolling in off of the choppy sea. Maglor squinted out of the window and wondered if it was his imagination, or if some of the larger waves out at sea had arms and shoulders, and if the thunder sounded just a little like laughter. He hoped Norindo had found adequate shelter; the little dog had not come around that morning. Quynh kept away from the windows and huddled on the sofa beneath several afghans, with a mug of hot chocolate—at the moment her most favorite thing about the modern era—close at hand. Maglor went to boil water for athelas. "You keep boiling those leaves," Quynh remarked when he returned with a bowl into the parlor. "What are they?"

"Kingsfoil," Maglor said. "It is useful for calming the mind and spirit." As he spoke he set the bowl down near the mug of hot chocolate, so that its clear, clean scent could permeate the room. "Music helps also, I have found. Do you mind if I play?" Quynh might have nodded; it was hard to tell beneath the blankets.

He brought his driftwood harp into the parlor and set up by the window, where the rain lashed against the glass. It was an uneven and wild rhythm but Maglor had mastered it long ago. He picked out the notes to a song out of Númenor, that he had heard in Gondor soon after its founding, when he had wandered into its ports, wondering at the storms that had wracked the coast and brought a small fleet of ragged ships hurtling out of the West. It was a song to Uinen, a plea for her protection and mercy against the whims and violent delights of her husband. Maglor had no thought that Uinen might hear him, let alone answer—she was likely gone away back into the depths that were her own delights, or perhaps back upon the Straight Road to the Shadowy Seas or the shining Bay of Eldamar. But it was a good song, and he was in the mood for old things, out of a world long lost and forgotten.

Once that song was ended, his fingers kept playing of their own accord, other songs that he had neither thought of nor played for years beyond counting, forgotten until his fingers found the notes on the harp strings, and the words fell from his tongue almost unbidden. They were songs from the Elder Days, when the world was quieter and greener and, somehow, both bigger and smaller at once. He had not been young, even then, but now he began to truly feel his age, older than the hill upon which his little cottage stood, and weary, and aching with homesickness.

A result of speaking with Uinen, no doubt. Delayed a bit as he had focused all of his thought and attention on Quynh, but now rising up with a vengeance. He wanted to go home—but the mere thought reawakened other memories, and his left hand hurt as it had not hurt in many an Age. He flinched and his fingers fumbled on the harp strings, ending the music in a sudden discordant jumble of sound as he drew his hand back to his chest. He was vaguely aware of Quynh sitting up on the sofa and asking him something, but the roaring of the sea was suddenly in his ears, and the howling of the wind and the smell of smoke and sulfur and—

The warmth of steam on his face, and the smell of wind over the wide grasses of Lothlann cut through the memory. He inhaled deeply and blinked his eyes open, finding Quynh there with the bowl of water and athelas leaves held out in front of her. "What happened?" she asked, as Maglor took another breath. "Your hand…"

He looked down. The scars from the Silmaril had never really faded, in spite of his hand otherwise healing fully. Mostly they were just unsightly—but even then it was little effort to weave an enchantment of concealment about it, in addition to the other ways Maglor slipped through the world unnoticed. Now he shook his head as he rubbed at his palm with his other thumb. "It is an old injury," he said. The words came out shorter and sharper than he'd meant, but Quynh took no offense—but when she met his gaze her own dark eyes widened as she took several quick steps back. It seemed all of his usual cloaks had fallen away. Maglor looked away, catching sight of his own reflection, a ghostly image of the Eldar of ancient days, in the window panes, eyes burning with ancient Light. He closed his eyes and turned away.

Outside the rain lashed against him, and the wind whipped his clothes and his hair around him, almost howling in his ears. There was definitely laughter in it, a wild and joyful sound. Maglor walked to the top of the path leading down to the beach and stopped. The hill was not quite a cliff, but it was close. He stared down at the churning waters for a while, his mind whirling; he stood half in memory and half in the present, the smell of rain mixing with the smell of smoke, and the salt on this lips coming from both the sea and from blood. His fingernails dug into his palms, small pinpricks of pain that did little to ground him. He closed his eyes as the rain increased in intensity. Once upon a time he might have vented his frustration in trying to sing the storm away—but that way lay only exhaustion and madness, even if the storm was not directly conjured by Ossë.

Eventually the wind changed, and the rain began to lessen. The storm was moving away, down the coast and toward the open seas to the south. The tide was rolling out as well, leaving behind the beach below him strewn with flotsam and jetsam. He could see quite a bit of garbage, but also a fair amount of driftwood, which he collected out of long habit and the vague idea that he might make things out of it. Occasionally he did—one such sculpture had been a particular success, and bought him the cottage. Maglor wiped rain from his face and inhaled deeply the scents of wet soil and sand and salt. That did more to bring him back fully to the present than anything else, and he took a few more breaths before turning back to the house. He would go down to the beach after the rain ceased entirely.

Quynh was in the kitchen examining some of the cans he had in his pantry, and she gave him a rather unimpressed look when he came in, dripping all over the linoleum. "You're going to get sick," she said, "and I won't nurse you."

"I don't get sick," he said, as he started to make his way to the bathroom.

Quynh made a disbelieving noise. "You don't get sick and you don't grow old. Can you be killed at all?" she wanted to know, as she put the cans away.

"Slain ye may be, and slain ye shall be: by weapon and by torment and by grief; and your houseless spirits shall come then to Mandos. And so we were—most of us." And with that he escaped into the bathroom, where Quynh could not question him further, and turned the shower on to near-scalding temperatures. His palm throbbed once again as though the old hurt was awakened by the mere mention of the Doom, though it had long ago been put to rest.

The rain subsided by late afternoon, and as the tide went out Maglor grabbed a few trash bags and made his way down to the beach. Norindo appeared from somewhere, muddy and cheerful, to romp around his feet as he walked. Quynh followed behind, although she stayed far away from the water, back on the dunes. Maglor was surprised she even came down the hill, but the grim look on her face suggested that she did not like being afraid of anything, even something so worthy of it as the sea.

As storms usually did, this one had brought a great deal of flotsam and jetsam up onto the beach out of the deeps. Most was trash—bottles and cans and bags, and Maglor gathered as much of it as he could find, stuffing it into one of the trash bags to be dealt with later. The glass he did not put in the trash but instead moved to a miniature cove near to the path that led up to his cottage, where tide pools formed and where he could leave the jagged broken bottles to be washed by the waves and rubbed smooth by each other and the rocks to become round and smooth bits of sea glass. It took years, but he already had a lovely collection in a series of jars that he kept on the windowsill in the music room to catch the light. He had vague ideas of using them in a sculpture or something. Mostly he just liked the way they looked. Then he went back over the beach to find interesting shells and pieces of driftwood.

"You have a whole small building full of that already," Quynh said as she got to her feet to follow him back up the hill.

"Yes, I know." Maglor stacked the new pieces of driftwood outside in the new sunshine to dry. "None of them have spoken to me yet." Quynh squinted at him, evidently unsure whether he meant it literally or not. Maglor offered her a smile, and turned away to try to coax Norindo inside. It almost worked, until something in the garden caught his attention and he darted off, barking excitedly.

The rest of the afternoon and the evening passed uneventfully. Maglor continued to try to get Quynh interested in reading for its own sake, with limited success, although she seemed happy enough to listen to him read aloud. "Are all of these made-up stories?" she asked as she perused one of his shelves, picking books off of it based on the cover, more than the title.

"Over there, yes," said Maglor. "I have non-fiction on the other bookshelf, though I don't suppose you'll be terribly interested in biographies of Mozart, or books on art history. Some of them are a bit dense."

"Yusuf would," Quynh murmured. She pulled a book down, seemingly at random and frowned at the cover. "Shakespeare? But he didn't write books, he wrote plays."

"And a fair amount of poetry," Maglor said. "You're holding a collection of his sonnets. Though mostly people nowadays know him as one of the most famous English playwrights of all time. I just recently saw a production of As You Like It in London." He paused. "Did you…know William Shakespeare?"

Quynh snorted. "No. We went to a few performances by the Lord Chamberlain's Men—the funny ones." She glanced up at Maglor, eyebrow arched. "Did you?"

He grinned. "We met once when I passed through Stratford-upon-Avon, and had a lovely chat about poetry. That was still early in his career. I did see many of his troupe's performances at the Globe, before I departed for the Americas."

"We may have been there at the same time," Quynh said.

"The world is, at times, very small," said Maglor. He watched Quynh replace the book of sonnets and peruse the rest of the shelf. "Have you dreamed of your old companions?" he asked after a few moments. The idea that they all dreamed of one another when apart was more than a little intriguing to him.

"We only dream of each other until we meet the first time," Quynh said. "But…there are two new ones. One is a man and the other a young girl—very young, very new. The man, Booker, is in Paris. The girl is Nile…she is with Andromache. But I cannot tell where."

"Do you suppose they are also dreaming of you?" Maglor asked. Quynh nodded. "So either you go to them or wait for them to come here. This Booker does not sound terribly hard to find—what's he doing in Paris?"

Quynh pulled down a book as she wrinkled her nose. "Drinking, mostly." She put the book back and took down another. "I don't know this word. Hobbit?"

"That's an enjoyable tale," said Maglor.

"But what is a hobbit?" Quynh asked as she brought the book over to him.

"Listen and find out," he said as he opened the book, thinking of the much older copy tucked away safe in a chest, wrapped up carefully in cloth and in spells of preservation, written in letters and language now forgotten by all but a handful of the Quendi who still walked in the world.

Quynh was, in spite of herself, delighted by the story. They were up most of the night because she insisted that Maglor finish reading it. And then the next morning she was humming the tra la la lally song. Maglor knew many more verses to it, of course, and he taught them to her as they sat in the sunshine in the garden with their breakfast. Afterward, Maglor said, "I need to go down into the village today to pick up a few things. Would you like to come?"

It was a bright day, cloudless after yesterday's storm, which seemed to have washed the world clean and left it fresh and fragrant, all the colors just a little brighter than before. The villagers were all out and about, many of them preparing for the upcoming Midsummer celebrations. Coming out of the little shop with their arms full of groceries, Maglor and Quynh were intercepted by the librarian, Mrs. Adams, who greeted them with a beaming smile and eagerly introduced herself to Quynh, before turning to Maglor to tell him about an auction that was going to be held to raise money for some local youth programs, the details of which escaped Maglor. "…and I know you dabble a bit in sculpture, isn't that right? So I thought I'd give you a pamphlet—here, I'll just tuck it in this back, shall I? And if you have any bits or bobs lying around that you'd be willing to donate to the cause, do let me know. You can bring anything down to the library. And of course I hope you'll come down to the fete! There's going to be a pie contest and live music—young Ted Livingston is really very talented on the saxophone—and games and—oh, and a raffle!"

"Thank you, Mrs. Adams," Maglor said, seizing a moment when she paused for breath. "I'll certainly see if I have anything suitable for the auction."

Mrs. Adams beamed at him and thanked him profusely, and then as Maglor managed to extricate himself and Quynh from the conversation she added, "Oh! An acquaintance of yours is in town, at the Livingstons' bed and breakfast. Dora said he was asking about you and the cottage at breakfast this morning."

"Oh," Maglor said. "Thank you for letting me know, Mrs. Adams." He wasn't quite sure how to ask for more details about this supposed acquaintance—especially since Mrs. Adams clearly had the information second hand—so he could only watch her bustle off down the lane to find more people to recruit into helping with some aspect of the fete.

"Were you expecting someone?" Quynh asked, peering up at his face.

"No."

"Do you have many…acquaintances?" she asked as they set off up the hill back to Maglor's cottage.

"Yes, of course. But if you mean do I have any that would drop in unexpectedly—well, I can think of only one. And he would not bother to stay a night at the local bed and breakfast to fish for gossip about me before hand."

Quynh's eyes narrowed a bit. "Is he another like you?" she asked.

"Mm. Yes."

"How many of you are there?"

"Very few, and growing fewer by the century. Ours were the Elder Days, and they ended long ago."

"Are you going to tell me what you are?" Quynh asked.

Maglor laughed. "I told you last night, and this morning! Don't you remember? The book spoke of the Light-elves and the Deep-elves and the Sea-elves that crossed the Sea to Faerie in the West, before some came back into the Wide World? Those were the Deep-elves, who came back to fight a war that we might even have won, if we were not so foolish and prideful. How do you think I was able to teach you all those other verses of tra la la lally? It was always a silly and ridiculous song, but there was great power in such things, once upon a time. Its purpose was not only to make fun of visiting dwarves."

"But that was only a story!" Quynh protested.

"Yes," said Maglor, "it was a story—and it just so happened also to be a bit of history, so long forgotten that nowadays people read The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings and believe it only made-up."

"So…you are an elf," said Quynh.

"Yes." By this time they had made it into the kitchen, and Maglor was busy putting things into the fridge.

"One of the Deep-elves. What does that mean?"

"One could say it refers to the depths of our knowledge—we were always eager to learn all there was to learn. It could also be that we were always fond of digging into the earth to find gems and ores, for we were craftspeople, for the most part." He shut the fridge and frowned at the magnets on its doors. "We still are, I should say. I am the last of the Noldor remaining in the Wide World, as The Hobbit puts it, but the rest dwell safely back across the Sea in Faerie, going on making and learning and no doubt squabbling among themselves."

Quynh raked her fingers through her short hair, leaving it standing on end in unruly tufts. "I did not understand half of what you just said. Are you going to explain more plainly?"

"I don't know how," Maglor admitted, laughing, feeling a little helpless. "I've never had to explain it before to someone who didn't already at least partially understand."

"Well, why are you the only Deep-elf left?" Quynh asked. "Why didn't you go back to Faerie with all the others?"

Maglor shook his head and turned away from the silly cartoon dog magnet he had been staring at without really seeing. His hand twinged. "Some Exiles are not permitted ever to return home," he said. "If you want to read about it, I have a copy of the Quenta Silmarillion somewhere." Quynh made a frustrated noise. "It doesn't really matter." This made her snort, clearly disbelieving. "I was thinking of lasagna for—" Maglor cut off at the sound of a knock on his front door. Quynh went very still.

It was probably only Daeron, Maglor told himself as he made his way to answer the door. Only if it was just Daeron why did he feel so nervous? There was a knot in the pit of his stomach and the hair on the back of his neck was standing on end, his instincts all screaming that it was not Daeron come bearing a bottle of wine and a notebook full of musical notations he wanted another opinion on. But he could not imagine why.

It was not Daeron at the door. Instead it was a mortal man, with dark skin and close-cropped dark hair, dressed in neat slacks and a button down shirt and sensible shoes. His smile was probably meant to be disarming. "Can I help you?" Maglor asked. He heard Quynh moving about behind him, and could only hope that she hadn't armed herself.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Smithson," said the man. He held out a hand. "My name's Copley. I think we need to talk."

Maglor did not accept the offered hand. "I'm not interested in making any purchases at this time, and I am quite content with my religion, thanks very much," he said, and began to close the door.

"I'm not here to sell you anything, Mr. Smithson," said Mr. Copley, dropping his hand, and placing both inside the pockets of his jacket.

"Then why are you here?" Maglor asked him.

"To talk about immortality."

Movement behind Maglor told him that Quynh was nearby and listening in, and a glance over his shoulder showed him that she was standing poised on the balls of her feet, ready for fight or flight—most likely fight, he thought. He shot her a warning look before turning back to Copley. "I'm not interested in that, either," he said.

"I mean yours," Copley said. "You have very distinctive features, Mr. Smithson." From one of his pockets, he pulled a small handful of photographs, which he held out. Maglor took them automatically. The first was a photo of a bust, Roman—it was his own face, of course, though the nose had a chip in the bridge and the rest of the statue was missing. It had once stood in the courtyard of a villa in Pompeii. Maglor had thought it destroyed with the rest of the city. He looked at the other photographs. One was an old black and white photo of a symphony orchestra in which his figure had been circled, though little of his face was visible in the back row. The next was an image of a painting, which he had never seen before but which did, indeed, show his face, although it was not attached to any sort of figure that he would have willingly posed for, or that even really resembled his own body. He could not remember ever meeting Raphael properly, but he'd seen him at a distance—and it seemed that Raphael had seen him, too. The last photograph was a still from a security camera, and he recognized both himself and Quynh leaving the ice cream shop in Dover.

The old images were one thing—he could explain them away if he had to, for historical doppelgängers were not uncommon. But the most recent image was more disturbing. "How long have you been following me?" he asked Copley, looking up at him with a frown.

"I've been aware of you for some time," Copley said, not at all apologetic. "But I am not the only one who's good at finding patterns—which is why I am here. May I come in?"

"What do you mean, you aren't the only one?" Maglor demanded, making no move to open the door wider. He shoved the photos back at Copley, who fumbled with them before returning them to their pocket.

"There is a private security company, Turralba, based in America that has similar interests to Merrick Pharmaceutical Industries." Copley paused, as though expecting Maglor to know what those interests were, or even to recognize the name of Merrick. When he did not reply Copley went on, "There is a team on its way as we speak to abduct you and take you back to their headquarters in America. They landed in Heathrow this morning." There were many curses in the tongues of Men and Elves that ran through Maglor's head as he stared at Copley. There was little use in denying the accusations of immortality now; whether or not Copley believed him meant nothing, if there were people coming to try to take him.

"And where do you come into it?" he asked at last.

"I'm…associated…with a small group of people like you. Immortals. They're soldiers—they do good work—"

"Are you here to recruit me?"

"I'm here to offer you protection. There is a safe house—"

"I don't need your safe houses." Maglor shifted his weight and looked Copley in the eyes. He was not as skilled at perceiving the minds of others as had been his cousin Galadriel, but he was good enough to be able to sift through Copley's unsuspecting thoughts. The man had not always been so keen on protecting immortals from those who would exploit them. Maglor wondered if his pivot from trying to capture to trying to protect the immortals he had mentioned—who must be Quynh's old companions—was the action of a man seeing the wind changing and adjusting his actions accordingly, or if it was borne of genuine regret. He had at least some regret, though it was buried deep in the way such things were by those skilled at compartmentalization. Maglor himself, once upon a time, had been very good at it.

The important thing, though, was that Copley wasn't lying—not about his current intentions, or about the others coming from America to snatch Maglor up.

As Maglor withdrew from his mind Copley blinked a few times, having felt the intrusion, but unable to recognize it for what it was. "What about your own friends?" Maglor asked him. "Where are they?"

"They are also on their way to England," Copley said, "but on a different mission. They're flying in from São Paulo."

"Nile has been dreaming, too," Quynh said in a low voice, behind Maglor.

Maglor left the doorway, leaving the door open for Copley to come or go as he wished. "I think perhaps we are not going to have lasagna tonight," he told Quynh.

"We are leaving?" she asked.

"It seems so. But not yet." Maglor went to the bedroom and pulled out a few bags. One was empty, and he handed it to Quynh, who had trailed after him. Another empty one he tossed onto the bed; the third was something Copley might recognize, or anyone who had seen a film about spies. It was filled with cash in multiple currencies, and various identities, mostly old or expired, that Maglor hadn't gotten around to disposing of yet. But best not leave it for this Turralba to find. He threw clothes into the other bag, and carefully packed his driftwood harp away into its case—it was the only instrument he could not easily replace, and he would hate to lose it or see it damaged. Carefully also he drew his ancient copy of the Red Book from its chest, and murmured a few extra words of protection over it as he tucked it in among his socks and t-shirts. The bags and the harp went into his car.

It took less time than he had expected. Now it was time to wait, and to consider that perhaps there was time for dinner after all. Copley was incredulous. "You did hear me say they'd be here tonight, didn't you?" he asked.

"I did," said Maglor, as he rummaged in a cabinet. He needed something stronger than tea. "But I have questions you cannot answer, Mr. Copley. You're welcome to stay, of course, but when night falls you must do as I say." He glanced up at Quynh. "You as well."

"Are you going to fight them?" she asked, eyes glittering.

"No." Maglor straightened with a bottle of brandy. "There will be no blood shed in this house." He met her gaze as he said it, and after a moment she nodded, though clearly reluctant.

"These men are ex-Special Forces," Copley pointed out. He leaned on the door frame, arms crossed, frowning. "Navy SEALs, Green Berets—you understand what that means?"

"I would expect no less," Maglor replied. He poured three small glasses of brandy, leaving two for Quynh and Copley to take if they wished—Quynh took hers and sniffed at it curiously—and put the bottle away. "Do you doubt that I, also, am highly trained?"

"Honestly?" Copley's eyebrow rose. "There's nothing in your file to suggest that you are."

Maglor laughed. "Child, your files could never stretch back far enough to see the whole of me." He knocked back the last of his brandy and went to the music room, where he drowned out any other questions or protestations from either guest with the loudest piano concerto he could recall at a moment's notice. It was tempting to curse the morning that washed Quynh onto the shore in his path—but that was not fair. The Americans seeking immortality or magic or whatever it was they thought to find in him would have come whether Quynh had been there or not. But her old friends were coming, too, and Maglor did not know if he would find in them allies or obstacles. He supposed it depended on what they expected of him.

When the concerto was ended, silence fell over the small house. Quynh was staring out of a window, chewing her thumbnail absently. Copley was browsing Maglor's bookshelves, a picture of casual curiosity that hid whatever analysis of Maglor was going on in his head. Maglor ignored them both, staring at the piano keys and feeling oddly out of breath, as though he had just run a long distance.

A scratching at the door had Copley reaching for a gun and Quynh tensing for a fight, but Maglor recognized the sound. "Ai, I nearly forgot Norindo." He rose and went to the door. The little dog sat on the porch, tail thumping the boards as he grinned up at Maglor, tongue lolling. "Hello, little friend," Maglor said, crouching to give him a good scratch behind the ears. "Are you at last going to come inside, hm?"

The answer, alas, was no. Norindo tugged at the hem of Maglor's jeans and then darted off down the footpath, stopping at the gate and looking back expectantly. "Ah, I see," Maglor said. He looked at the sky. The sun was still high. Hours stretched before him, before his would-be kidnappers came. He sighed, and left Quynh and Copley to their own thoughts and walked with Norindo to the top of the path that led down to the beach. There was a figure lolling in the waves, practically one of the waves himself—and to anyone else that is how he would have appeared. "Ah," Maglor said again, with a sigh, looking down at Norindo, who was again tugging at his jeans. "Even you are more than you seem, aren't you?"

First Uinen, now Ossë. Maglor wondered what message the storm-lord had for him. But better find out now. He glanced over his shoulder once more at the cottage, and then followed Norindo down the path. Norindo ran ahead, barking joyfully and kicking up sand as he went, heedless of the waves and Ossë now that his errand was accomplished. Maglor went more slowly, pausing to pick up a shell here and there, and skirting the waves and wet, until he drew even with Ossë, who rose up to a man's height. He took a more solidly human-seeming shape than his lady wife, though his hair remained flowing and white with foam. "Hail, Macalaurë Canafinwë!" he said, his grin wide and pearly.

"Ossë," Maglor replied, putting his hands into his pockets. "I spoke with your lady wife only recently. To what do I owe the honor of two Maiar coming to me like this?"

"Uinen's errands are her own," Ossë said, waving a hand. A wave leaped up out of the water, splashing Maglor up to the knee. He sighed. "But she brought back to Eldamar word of you, and caused something of a stir among your kindred. So it was that Master Elrond sought me out where I was sojourning along the southern coasts of Valinor, where the waves crash against the jagged rocks with delightful music, and he asked me to bear a message to you, for I am one of very few who still cross the Straight Road to and from the West."

Maglor felt like someone had punched him square in the chest, driving all the air out of his lungs. He gaped, and then, when he found his tongue again, he said, faintly, "Elrond sent you?"

"Are you surprised, son of Fëanáro?"

He was. Of course he was. "What is the message?" he asked.

"A plea. Come home, says Elrond. And says Nerdanel, and Fëanáro and Maitimo and all of your other brothers, and—"

"Says Fëanáro?" Maglor's voice broke on the name. "But I thought—"

"You have been away a very long time," said Ossë, and his voice was surprisingly gentle, like the smallest wash of a wave up soft sand, to cool one's toes. "Much has changed, in these hither lands, and in the West also. Fëanáro walks with his brothers under the sun, and with his wife and his sons—all but one. Master Elrond has charged me to remind you that the Ban on the Exiles was lifted long ago, after the War of the Ring, and that you have been free to return ever since."

Maglor supposed he had known this—that some part of him had known it, at least—but it felt as though he were learning it for the first time. He could find a small boat and sail away right then, heading west, and instead of the Americas he would find instead the Straight Road beyond the stars… He closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. "Thank you," he said finally, opening his eyes. Ossë was watching him, his eyes, like Uinen's, keen as stars. "Please, tell Elrond…when you next see him…I will come. But not yet. I have business here that needs finishing."

Ossë's smile was sudden and bright. "I will tell him!" he said. "And when you choose to set forth, Macalaurë son of Fëanáro, you will find steady winds and fair seas!" He tossed something to Maglor, who caught it reflexively, and then melted back into the surf much as Uinen had on that morning that seemed somehow so long ago and yet just yesterday. Maglor looked down at his palm, and found a white gem set in silver, with a small loop for a chain. It gleamed like a star in his hand, emitting its own light. The work was painfully familiar—it was the work of his father, down to the way the light had been caught in the gem, and the delicate, tiny lettering along the silver setting that spelled out his name. There was virtue in the gem; it felt warm in his hand, a comforting warmth like a hearth side on a cold day, or a mug of tea on a rainy morning. He had not held an Elven-work in his hands that was not his own in more years than he could count, least of all a work of his father, and the mere sight of it made him want to weep with some unnamed emotion that was not joy or sadness, and was yet both and more. He pressed a kiss to the gem and turned to walk back up the hill. Norindo followed, and this time he trotted into the house after Maglor.

Quynh and Copley both looked at him in some confusion as he passed by, though neither remarked on the state of his jeans or the look on his face. Norindo trotted over to give Copley a good sniff before greeting Quynh with a lick to her hand and a roll onto his belly for scratches. Maglor left them to change into dry pants, and to find a chain for the gem. He slipped it over his head and tucked it beneath his shirt, against his skin, where it remained a warm and comforting presence.

In the end he did make the lasagna for dinner—they had the time, and it would be a shame to waste the ingredients he'd bought for the purpose. And it kept his mind and hands busy, at least until it was in the oven and he had nothing but the washing up to do afterward, which required no thought, and so his mind strayed to the West, conjuring images of a childhood so far in the past he'd nearly forgotten, in a white city shining on a hill filled with the sound of laughter and singing. To think that he might see it again…

Night fell. Clouds gathered, obscuring the stars. Maglor stood on his porch and listened to the waves on the shore, and to the wind in the grass. He then went to the garden and dug up a small athelas plant that had taken root near the larger one. He did not know when he would be able to return to this cottage, and the thought was melancholy. But even if he ever could, it would not be for long—only to tidy up in preparation for his final departure. And where he would go in the meantime, and for how long…that remained to be seen. It depended a great deal on what he might learn that night.

Once he had the small plant in a small pot nestled in the cup holder of his car, he returned to the house where Copley and Quynh were waiting, both of them growing impatient, though Copley was better at hiding it than Quynh. Norindo, on the other hand, was stretched out on the floor, fast asleep and twitching occasionally as he chased rabbits and squirrels through his dreams.

"What exactly are you planning to do tonight?" Copley asked.

"And what are we going to do?" Quynh added.

"The two of you will wait in the attic," Maglor said.

"You don't have an attic," Quynh said, narrowing her eyes at him.

He smiled. "Yes, I do. Come." He led them down the hall; the cottage was only one floor, except for a small attic that would only barely be big enough for two people to sit comfortably. It was accessed by a trap door that pulled down into a short ladder. Around the edges of it Maglor had placed very small runes, so that even someone like Quynh making a thorough search of the place would miss it, unless shown; he'd thought to keep valuables up there, once upon a time, but in the end there was little he had that he needed to hide. "Here. They will search the house but if you could not find this door, Quynh, then they will not either."

"How did you hide it?" she demanded.

He ignored the question. "The two of you—and Norindo, I will lift him up to you—must stay up there, and as silent as you can. Do not come down until I come for you." He met each of their gazes. Both of them were confused, of course, but it would take too long to explain—and he doubted Copley, at least, would accept the explanation. "Do I have your word?"

After a short hesitation, Quynh huffed a sigh. "Fine. But where will you be hiding?"

"Anywhere there is a shadow deep enough," Maglor replied. "Mr. Copley. Do I have your word that you will remain up there and silent until I come for you?"

Copley sighed, and held up his hands. "All right. I'm of the least use in a fight, I know."

The two retreated to the attic without anymore argument, and Norindo was lifted up with them. Maglor carried him up the ladder, and the little dog licked his face before curling up against Quynh's leg and, to all appearances, going straight back to sleep. "Stay quiet," Maglor said.

"What if you need help?" Quynh asked.

"I won't."

Maglor made something of a show in going about an evening routine, making tea and taking a few sips before leaving it to cool on the table. He washed the counters and swept the floors and tidied up some of the clutter. Then he turned on some music, soft piano music, and extinguished all the lights, leaving the house in darkness as though he had gone to bed as usual. He did not go to the bedroom, instead slipping into a dark corner, a driftwood-carved flute in his hands, and waited.

It was another few hours before, beneath the quiet music, he heard the crunch of boots on gravel outside, followed by boots treading carefully on his wooden porch, and then the quiet opening of the front door—and then the back door a moment later. Six men entered the house, guns drawn, wearing night-vision goggles. Even with that advantage they did not see Maglor, where he had wrapped the shadows around him. As they searched he brought the flute to his lips and began to play, and as he played he moved, slipping from corner to corner, shadow to shadow. Some spotted him out of the corner of their eye but when they turned he was gone, and the longer he played, the heavier their footsteps became, and the clumsier they grew. They fought the enchantment, of course, and one or two could very nearly throw it off entirely—and wasn't that interesting—but in the end all but one succumbed entirely, crumpling quietly into soft heaps on the floor. The last man stood in the hallway with his hands pressed over his ears and his jaw clenched against a yawn, fighting it harder than Maglor had ever seen anyone resist such a spell.

He stopped playing and stepped out of the shadows. The man dropped his hands and pulled out his gun. "Don't make another sound," he barked. "Don't move."

"Or you'll shoot me?" Maglor asked lightly. "And what happens when you miss? Or if you kill me? I'm sure your masters wouldn't like that."

"Get on your knees and put your hands in the air," the man ordered. His voice was rough, but hard as steel.

"No. I do not take orders from house-breakers and kidnappers."

"You're one yourself, aren't you?" the man asked, and this made Maglor pause. What did they know about him? "You did worse things than kidnap, too, if all the stories in those old books are true."

Maglor met his gaze and for the second time that day he delved into the mind of another. But this man had been prepared for it, and it was much harder to see what he knew or thought than it had been with Copley. That alone was alarming. Even more alarming was the single image of true importance that Maglor managed to glean—so unexpected that it nearly sent him reeling. He retreated from the man's mind, a headache building behind his eyes, taking a step backward as he did so. The man pressed his advantage and took aim with his pistol. The shot went side, but just barely. Maglor ducked, and the man lunged, sending them both crashing to the ground. The breath was driven momentarily from Maglor's lungs, but this moment was all the man needed to get in a blow to his face. He felt something crack in the bridge of his nose, and the taste of blood flooded his mouth and poured down the back of his throat.

But even out of practice, Maglor was faster and stronger. He twisted and used his legs as leverage and flipped the two of them so the man was the one on the floor, Maglor's blood dripping onto his face. Maglor spoke a word and the man's grip on his arm went slack—but just for a moment. He spoke another word, and then a third, and the enchantments that lay over all the house rose up to claim this last man, though he took another swing at the last, knocking Maglor back with a blow to the jaw, before his muscles went slack and his eyes rolled up and shut.

It was very quiet. Maglor sat up, and dabbed at the blood running down his chin, wincing. He retreated to the kitchen to wash up and find something to staunch the bleeding before returning to search the men's pockets. None carried a cell phone, and the leader had only a small notebook filled with chicken-scratch notes that revealed little except an apparently long-running game of hangman in the margins. He tossed it aside and set about binding the man with the flex-cuffs they had brought on their own belts, before dragging them outside. He took them to a field away from both his cottage and the village, all but the leader. That man he left where he lay in the doorway between the parlor and the kitchen. On one he found a set of keys, and that led him to their van parked well out of the way on the other side of the village. It was simple work to find the spare key beneath the mat and to let the air out of all the tires, before dumping the keys, along with all of their weapons, into the dumpster behind the pub, which was scheduled to be emptied come sunup. He was the only one moving about in the village. His song of sleep had not reached beyond his own house, but his neighbors did not need it. They remained safe and sound asleep in their beds, none the wiser as he slipped through the little streets on silent feet.

Back home, Maglor stood over the last intruder, propped up against the wall but still unconscious, his head lolling forward, and considered whether to rouse Quynh and Copley. In the end he decided against it. If this man's masters did not yet know of Quynh and the others, then he would not be the one to tell them.

He crouched in front of the man and spoke a word. After a moment he stirred, blinking slowly and lifting his head as though with considerable effort. Sleep still clung to him like cobwebs, falling away only slowly. He blinked at Maglor in the darkness, and then tried to lunge at him, only to find his ankles and wrists bound, so all that happened was that he fell over on his side. Maglor sat back on his heels. "It was a fool's errand your masters sent you on, this night," he said, and saw the man's eyes widen, white around the edges in the gloom, for now he could see Maglor as he truly was, with the light of Telperion and Laurelin blazing in his eyes. "You say you knew the tales of what I did, in the early morning of the world." Maglor leaned forward, and the man tried to back away, but he was up against the wall and could not move. "I say you know nothing of the power of the Elves."

The man swallowed hard, and rallied—Maglor had to give him credit for that. "We've got one of you already, and he didn't put up any fight at all," he said, though his voice trembled.

"Doubtless you caught him unawares," Maglor said. "Or else he would not have been so kind as I have been." He grabbed the edge of the man's vest and drew him close; he could smell the sour sweat of him, and feel him tremble beneath his hand. "Now tell me truly and tell me quickly, lest I forget to be merciful—where are you holding Daeron?"

Once all of the intruders were asleep and tied up, and he had all the answers he was going to get, Maglor went to wake Copley and Quynh. Things would go faster if there were three of them dragging unconscious bodies through the weeds, instead of just one. It took a few tries—the enchantment had caught them up and held them fast, for they had not been forewarned. Copley woke slowly; Quynh woke with a start and a gasp, like she was desperate for air. She scrambled down the ladder after Maglor, and he suspected she might have run all the way outside to the nearest field, but she stopped short when he flipped the hall light on. "What happened to no blood?" she demanded.

"Things did not go quite as planned," Maglor replied. He sounded as though he had a bad cold, he thought as Copley descended more slowly, and Norindo appeared at the opening to whine until Copley carefully scooped him up under an arm. It was something of a miracle that he'd managed to appear as threatening to the intruder as he had. "I'll be fine. I just need help moving them before we leave."

Copley looked around sharply. "Did you kill them all?" he asked, incredulous.

"Of course not! I sang them to sleep—and you as well, I'm afraid. I'm sorry." This he added to Quynh, who was trembling and pale. "You dreamed of the sea, didn't you?"

"How did you know?" Copley asked, even more incredulous if that were possible. Quynh only nodded.

"I've spent so many years beside the sea that its music has wound itself into my own in ways I can no longer quite control," Maglor said, ignoring Copley. "I didn't mean to distress you."

She hesitated, and then nodded. "Where are the bodies?" she asked.

"They're alive," Maglor said, "and they're in the living room." At his direction, the three of them dragged the men out, none-too-gently, into a field not far from his house but a decent distance from the village, and where there were no popular walking paths, so no one would stumble on the men by accident come morning. Maglor gave Copley the keys he'd taken off the leader, and Copley disappeared into the sleeping village, returning some twenty minutes later to report that the van they'd come in had been disabled and the keys disposed of. They would have quite a task before them just to leave the area, let alone follow Maglor.

"Now what?" Copley asked Maglor, once they were back inside. "Do you need a doctor…?"

"No." Maglor had washed his face more thoroughly and taken stock of the damage. It looked—and felt—worse than it was. It would heal before very long. "Are you going to insist on coming along, or will we part ways now?" he asked, though he didn't wait for an answer before going to find his own car keys.

"I don't know," Copley said, trailing along behind. "You know they're probably going to try again…?"

"Not if they can't find me," said Maglor.

"Where are you going to go?"

Maglor found his keys were he usually kept them, and eyed Norindo, wondering if he would be willing to get into the car. Norindo looked back at him, and then scratched himself behind an ear. Well, if he ran off when the door opened, there wasn't really anything to be done about it except hope that he would find someone else willing to put out food. To Copley he said, "I'm not sure I can describe it to you—not how to get there. It cannot be found unless you already know where it is, or are particularly keen-eyed—and few nowadays are." Copley frowned and opened his mouth to protest, but Maglor was already headed out the door. "You need to decide now, Mr. Copley, if you are coming or if we are parting."

"If I don't come I feel like I'm going to lose track of you entirely," Copley said. "And even if you don't think that's a bad thing—"

The next few seconds passed both very quickly and very slowly. Maglor opened the front door, and Norindo darted outside between his legs, and for the first time since Maglor had known him was growling. He opened his mouth to call Norindo back, but at that moment a sharp pinprick of pain blossomed just where his neck met his shoulder. Copley appeared at his side with his gun raised, as Maglor lifted his hand to find a dart sticking out of his skin. As he plucked it out he could feel the drug speeding its way through his veins, as his vision started to darken at the edges. Only vaguely was he aware of a figure darting away into the darkness, and of Quynh shouting something—and then there was nothing.

.

He woke with a start on an unfamiliar sofa in an unfamiliar room, to golden afternoon sunlight slanting in through the gaps in the blinds. Norindo lay sprawled across his chest, a comforting weight. His mouth tasted like blood and also of the disgusting dry-mouth aftertaste he usually associated with hangovers. Only he hadn't had a hangover in decades, not since he'd made the mistake of spending a year in New York in 1925 with Daeron, who knew all the best speakeasies, where they paid for their drinks with music.

Daeron. Maglor had closed his eyes again, but now he opened them and tried to sit up. Norindo squirmed around and whined, but jumped to the floor. Maglor took quick stock of the room. It was comfortable and nicely decorated, but not at all homey—it had the slightly stale air of a place only rarely lived in. There was a thin film of dust over the art frames on the walls, though fresh tracks on the carpet suggested that Maglor had slept through a vacuuming. Just as he had the thought he spotted a little robot cleaner trundle along the hallway just beyond the door. Norindo watched it with his head cocked slightly to the side.

This must be Copley's safe house. Maglor gritted his teeth and got to his feet, staggering a little as he crossed the room. It was not hard to find the kitchen, which was empty but for a half-full coffee pot, still slightly warm. Maglor opened the cupboards and the fridge, not really expecting to find much and finding exactly that—only a handful of non-perishables in the cupboards, and nothing at all in the fridge. Someone had placed his small athelas plant on the window. He found a proper kettle and put it on the stove; there was no tea but he could feel the muscles in his neck and shoulders, like harp strings wound too tightly.

"You're awake." Quynh had appeared behind him soundlessly, and Maglor started. "Sorry."

"How long was I asleep?" he asked, and grimaced as his voice sounded both raspy and stuffed up. His whole face hurt.

"Nearly all day," she replied. "Copley went out to get food."

"Where are we?"

"Canterbury." Quynh glanced out of the window at the small back garden, neatly fenced in, sparse but well-tended. Nearly the opposite of Maglor's own cottage garden. "It's very different from what I remember."

"Mm." Maglor filled a glass with cold water and drank it down. His hands trembled only very slightly. "Did you catch whoever it was that shot the dart?"

"No. Copley wasn't sure who it was. It didn't make much sense to be a member of the same group, or something. I thought they'd poisoned you."

Maglor hummed again. Then he asked, "Is my harp still in the car?"

"No. It's near the front door. Copley didn't want to drive around with it. I think he thinks bringing it at all was stupid."

"I don't particularly care what Copley thinks," said Maglor. "We can't all be spies. I made that harp with my own hands. Where I go it goes." He refilled the glass, but only sipped it. The kettle was nearly ready to sing. He plucked a leaf from the athelas plant and bruised it in his palm as he searched for a bowl. In moments the fresh smell of wind on grass filled the small kitchen, managing to filter through even Maglor's broken and stuffed-up nose. He leaned against the table and sighed, closing his eyes for a moment.

He opened them at the sound of the front door opening. Copley appeared a moment later with his arms full of grocery bags. "Oh, good," he said, "you're awake. I was starting to worry we'd have to find a doctor."

"I suppose this is the safe house you wanted to bring me to in the first place," Maglor said.

"It is."

"Well, thank you."

"Don't thank me yet. I haven't had time to discover who else figured out who—or what—you are."

"You don't think that last person was from—what did you call it, Turralba?"

"None of the others had darts or drugs on them," said Copley as he set the bags on the table. He looked at the bowl. "What's that?"

"Kingsfoil. But surely it can't be coincidence that another party arrived on the same evening."

"No. That's why I need to do some digging. And speaking of finding you, I took the battery out of your phone."

That was probably for the best. "Does this house have a land line?" he asked.

"You need to make some calls?" Copley's eyebrow arched.

"As a matter of fact, I do. I am not the only Elf still dwelling on these shores—and one other has already been caught. I need to warn the others that I know, so they can spread the word among our people. Oh, don't look at me like that," he added. "It was what your people would call elvish magic that you experienced last night—that kept those men deep in slumber as we dragged them through the dirt and grass of the fields, that put you to sleep in the attic, unless you believe you would have dozed off otherwise. If immortality that brings a mortal man or woman back from death in a few moments, and heals wounds in even less time is not so hard to believe in, why not Elves?"

Copley opened his mouth to reply, perhaps to argue, but was interrupted by his own cell phone ringing. "Excuse me," he said, setting down a small bag of tomatoes as he fished it out of his pocket. "Hello, Nile," he said, and broke off as rapid speech came through on the other end, tinny and too faint for the words to be made out. Maglor thought the voice sounded distressed. "I—yes, there's a woman with me named Quynh," Copley said after a moment, "but I don't—no?—no, she's not—I'm fine, of course—"

Quynh looked up from her inspection of a package of microwave popcorn. Her mouth quirked wryly. "They're afraid of me," she murmured, for Maglor's ears only.

He frowned at her. "Should they be?"

"Maybe." She set the package down. "I am still angry with Andromache."

"For what? It was not her fault, what happened to you." Quynh looked away. "I cannot believe that they did not find you for lack of trying."

"Such things are easy for you to say," she said. "And you don't need to worry about the carpets. They aren't yours to clean up."

Copley finished his conversation after giving Nile an address, presumably theirs. He looked at Quynh thoughtfully for a moment, before he said, "You should know before they arrive that Andy—Andromache—isn't immortal anymore."

"What?" Quynh looked up. "But—"

"She lost it about six months ago."

Quynh's shock turned into a scowl, and she turned and left the room without another word. Maglor watched her go, and then looked at Copley. "When will they be here?" he asked.

"About two hours. They just landed in London, and evidently no one thought to reserve a rental car." Copley sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He looked suddenly very weary. "This is not how I thought any of this was going to go. Did you know who Quynh was?"

"Yes. I found her washed up on the beach a few days ago—she was dead, and then suddenly she wasn't. It was rather a shock."

"And you—you aren't actually one of them. You're something else."

"I am what you would call an Elf," Maglor said. "My people do not grow old and die as Men do, and in some ways we are hardier. But I can be slain—and I won't get back up again afterward. But don't worry about Quynh. I don't think she bears any real ill will toward Andromache or the others—but how can she not be troubled, after so many centuries of suffering at the bottom of the sea?"

"Troubled is one word for it," Copley said. "Nile thinks she's completely insane."

"I would not say so. The kingsfoil helps to sooth distress minds and spirits." Maglor rubbed at one of the leaves on the plant as it sat on the windowsill. "Did you say whether this house has a phone?"

"Yeah, it does." Copley retrieved a cordless phone from a charging port. "I'll be in the garden with my laptop if you need me—oh, and I took your things up to the first bedroom on the left at the top of the stairs."

"Thank you."

Maglor retrieved his harp from the front hall and took it back to the little living room where he'd woken up. Norindo had returned to the sofa and was curled up fast asleep. Before he set it up, however, he sat down and dialed a number on the phone. It rang for so long that he feared it would not even go to voice mail, but then a woman answered with a pleasant, musical voice, in French. "Yes, hello?" In the background Maglor could hear voices and traffic, and someone playing a guitar very badly.

"Linnoriel?" Maglor asked.

She switched immediately to Sindarin. "Who is this?"

"Maglor." He waited for the call to drop, but though the silence between them stretched uncomfortably, she did not hang up.

"I didn't realize you had this number," she said finally. The background noises changed, growing fainter.

"Your mother gave it to me when I last saw her," Maglor said. "I am glad it still works."

"What do you need?" Linnoriel asked, brisk now that she was over her surprise. "You sound strange."

"A group of men came to my home last night," Maglor told her, "and tried to abduct me. I was warned beforehand, and was ready for them—but they knew who I am." Again the silence stretched between them. He went on after giving the information a moment to sink in. "Word needs to be spread that we are being hunted. Daeron has already been taken."

At this Linnoriel hissed a curse. "My father will want to hear all of this, and more," she said. "Where are you? Can you come to France?"

"I had intended to go to America. That is where they are holding Daeron."

"You are—no. We should not speak of this over the phone. Come to France. My father's court has not moved since you last visited us. We may all take counsel there."

Maglor bit his lip. He hated to delay. But there was little choice—and it wasn't as though he had any definite plans already in place. "All right," he said. "I will come as soon as I can. You can reach me at this number the rest of today."

"Very good," Linnoriel said. "We will await your arrival."

Maglor hung up and stared at the phone for a while, trying to think through logistics, and how to juggle this summons from the last remaining Elven Princess in the world with whatever was going on with Quynh and the others. But soon he gave up and took out his harp. If he couldn't think, he could play, and perhaps the plans would come later. Once he had the blinds raised and the window cracked, so he could feel the sun and the breeze, he sat at his harp and closed his eyes as he put his fingers to the strings. The music that came to him was Daeron's, that famous music for the breaking of the heart that he had piped and sang and strummed in the glades of Neldoreth when the world was young and Doom had not yet pierced the Girdle. He could see it in his mind's eye, the bright young sunshine shining green through the canopy of beech leaves far overhead that rustled gently in the breeze, and the sparkling Esgalduin that gleamed with starlight even at high noon, and echoed the voice of Melian and her nightingales, and the white niphredil flowers like snowdrifts everywhere.

At some point he heard the sound of a car, and then the slamming of car doors, four of them. He opened his eyes to find that several hours had passed. He did not stop his playing, but changed the tune to one of peace and calm that was often played in Lórien—or at least, that had often been played there when he was very young and just learning what music could do. As he did he watched the foursome as they gathered on the sidewalk. They moved in tandem, three of them with the ease and familiarity of long centuries, though also as though something or someone was missing. He wondered if that were Quynh or Booker, who was presumably still getting drunk in Paris. He watched them as they paused; the two men looked up and down the street as though they half-expected some enemy to leap out from behind the neighbor's hydrangea bushes, before they all looked toward the window where he sat. He inclined his head slightly, never faltering in his playing.

He heard Quynh on the stairs as they walked up the short path to the door; Copley came in from the back garden to open it, and Norindo jumped down from the sofa to go sniff at Quynh's foot and jump up to ask fo

r a good scratch behind the ears. Quynh had come into the living room but stood rigid near the coffee table, eyes on the doorway. Her eyes were red, but for the moment dry.

Three of the four crowded into the living room, sparing Maglor not a single glance, and after a few seconds of awkward staring Quynh burst into tears, and then so did one of the men, and then all four of them were jumbled together in a tangle of limbs, with Norindo barking and prancing around their feet. The younger woman, who must be Nile, peered into the room and then retreated toward the kitchen after Copley, who left the house a few minutes later.

At last, emotions began to ebb, and Nile was drawn into the room to be introduced to Quynh. And then Quynh pulled Maglor away from the harp to be introduced in turn. He was a little surprised to be embraced as though he were already one of their own. Nile was pulled into the room a moment later, and for some time the talk was all a jumble of names and introductions. It was a joyful scene, and in seeing them all together, Maglor at last understood at least one small part of why they were the way they were. It was in their eyes, a light that he had not noticed before in Quynh but shone brighter now that she was reunited with her old companions.

The Wise had said long ago that the line of Lúthien would never fail. And here before him was proof, five of her children brought together by some strange fate, in all of them most strongly flowing the blood of Melian. And now that he was seeing her in person, Maglor thought that he had seen Andromache before—at a distance, a very very long time ago in her own youth. He doubted she had seen him, or that she would remember if she had. He'd been curious and a little worried about tales of a young woman who did not die, who was worshiped as a goddess because of it. As far as he could tell at the time, she had only been a very skilled warrior with more than her share of luck.

Copley returned with take out, and they all crowded into the kitchen to eat dinner. Even Norindo had a special meal of his own. Maglor remained quiet throughout the meal, satisfied that now that the initial meeting was over the awkwardness was minimal, as Joe and Nicky took turns telling Quynh some of the more interesting things that she had missed—including Nile's joining them, which had taken place surprisingly recently. It also made some of Copley's remarks about Merrick Pharmaceuticals more clear, and impressed Quynh, and embarrassed Nile herself.

As the meal came to an end, everyone was startled by the house phone ringing. Everyone but Maglor looked at one another in alarm, and before he could rise Joe got up and answered. "Hello?" He listened for a moment, brow furrowing, and then said to the room at large, "Someone wants to talk to…Maglor?"

"That's me," said Maglor as he rose.

"I thought you went by Max these days," Copley remarked.

"Yes, I do." Maglor accepted the phone from Joe, and slipped into Sindarin, since Quynh and Copley knew what he was and it didn't seem worth hiding from the others—it wasn't like they would understand the language anyway. "Linnoriel?"

"No, it's Lumorn." It was Linnoriel's brother, and he sounded breathless and half-panicked. "Yours was the first number when I opened my phone—I cannot speak long. Daeron's home in New York is being watched and now I am being followed, and I fear I do not know the city well enough to lose them. You must tell my father, if I am unable to escape and speak with him myself."

Maglor's blood ran cold. "Try to leave the city," he said, "or to make your way to Central Park. It is not any great wood but there are places enough to hide until you can form a better plan or someone can make their way to you. I will leave for your father's house now—best not call here again."

"Central Park. Yes. I can do that—thank you." Lumorn ended the call. For a moment Maglor stared at the wall, mind racing. If only there were not a whole ocean in the way!

"Max?" Quynh said after a moment.

"I must go." Maglor set the phone down carefully, for his hands were shaking.

"What, now?" Nile said, as Joe asked, "What happened?"

"Hopefully nothing." Maglor took the stairs two at a time and grabbed his bag off the bed, his mind racing. Norindo must be corralled into the car, and his harp packed away—if he was to leave it anywhere it would be with Thranduil's folk, not this unfamiliar house in Canterbury. When he turned he found Quynh in the doorway, scowling at him. "Quynh."

"You can't just go off by yourself," she said. "There are people hunting you."

"Not only me, and that is why I must go. I intended to rest here tonight and leave in the morning, but there is no time now to waste." Maglor hoisted his bag over his shoulder. "And you are again with your own family. I cannot ask you to come with me."

"I'm coming anyway. And they can help. We will all come with you. They're already preparing to leave."

Maglor hesitated. "I go to France," he said. "And the quickest way will be by the channel tunnel. That goes beneath the sea." Quynh's face went ashen, but she did not waver. "And I do not know that you will all be welcome. I go to the court of the last Elvenking remaining in Middle-earth."

"Then you will have to convince him we can help," Quynh said, as though it were that simple.

"I have never been able to convince Thranduil of anything," Maglor said wryly. "I myself am only barely tolerated in his court. But very well; it's not like I can very well stop you." He paused, and then smiled at Quynh, placing a hand on her shoulder; he was pleased in spite of himself that he was not going to be traveling alone. "Thank you. For your stubbornness I name you elf-friend." She grinned.

In the end only Copley stayed behind, and they did not take the tunnel, arriving in Dover in time to catch a ferry. Maglor retreated to the deck once they were underway, letting Quynh explain something of what was going on to the others, and eager to feel the sea wind and spray on his face, though it galled him, a little, for more reasons than one, to be going east instead of west. He stared down over the railing at the water as he fiddled with the chain around his neck. The warmth of the gem against his heart was a comfort, but also a source of homesickness that kept welling up like blood out of a newly-opened wound.

"Are you okay?" Maglor didn't jump at the sound of Nile's voice, but it was a near thing. Careless of him to get so lost in thought, even on a ship out in the middle of the English Channel.

"As much as can be expected." He offered her a smile, which she returned. "Though I'm afraid I am not very good company."

"You're worried about your friend. Friends?"

"Daeron is a friend. I know Lumorn less well."

Nile leaned on the railing, peering over into the water. "So," she said, "Quynh was talking about The Hobbit like it's a history book. Nicky's trying very gently to explain the concept of modern fantasy fiction, but I can't tell if she's really not getting it or if she's messing with him."

"The history is so ancient it may as well be fantasy, nowadays," Maglor said. "The world has changed a great deal. If there are still Dwarves in the world they have retreated deep into their mountain halls, and if there are hobbits they have grown small and silent indeed." Nile frowned at him. "Are you so surprised? You cannot die, and have been traveling these past months with two soldiers of the Crusades and a woman of ancient Scythia."

"You have to draw the line somewhere," Nile said. "I feel like if Elves and Dwarves were real Andy at least would've met one, you know? I already asked about vampires."
"Fortunately for us all, Thuringwethil and her ilk no longer wander the earth."

"Now you're just fucking with me."

"Child, I am too tired to fuck with anyone." Maglor straightened and rolled his neck, sighing as tense muscles loosened. He turned his face to the sky; it was not long past sunset now, and a single bright star shone on the eastern horizon. "Aiya Eärendil, elenion ancalima," he murmured.

Nile looked at him, and then at the star. "That's Venus," she said.

"It is the Star of High Hope," he said. "And I for one am greatly in need of it."

Nile retreated back inside, leaving Maglor alone with his thoughts, and with the clouds that soon came to cover the stars and rising moon. It was just weather, but it was also difficult not to take it as an omen as he watched Gil-Estel disappear behind them. After a while the lights of Calais came into view, and he realized that he had not called Linnoriel—neither to tell her about Lumorn, or to say that he was on his way and bringing unexpected guests. Copley had given him a new phone, on the reasoning that Turralba could probably track his old one, but he'd put all of Maglor's information onto it, and had promised to send him anything useful that he found in his own research. When Maglor turned the phone on he found that Copley had already made good on that promise.

Linnoriel answered after several rings. "Lumorn?"

"Maglor, I'm afraid. Have you heard from him, then?"

"Once, very briefly, but I believe his phone was nearly dead. Where are you?"

"On the ferry just coming into sight of Calais," Maglor said. "So it should only be another couple of hours before we arrive."

"Oh, good…you said we? Who is with you?"

"Five others."

"Elves or Men?" Linnoriel's voice was sharp. Someone in the background asked something but she did not reply to them.

"Men," said Maglor. "But I believe they can be trusted, if for no other reason than they have secrets of their own to keep. And they want to help. More than that I do not wish to say, not until we meet in person."

Linnoriel sighed. "Very well."

"I think they can help," Maglor added. "They are soldiers, of a kind, trying to do good in the world in such ways that they can. And they have some experience with rescuing those who have been taken by such entities as Turralba for similar purpose."

"If they can be trusted, and if they can help us recover Daeron and my brother, then I will welcome them with open arms," Linnoriel said. "Very well. You say you are coming into Calais?"

"Yes."

"Good."

As Maglor slipped his phone back into his pocket, movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention, as well as the sound of heavy boots on the stairs. None of his companions were wearing boots. He spun just in time to duck beneath a fist. It was hard to tell if these were the same men who had come to his cottage, but it didn't really matter—they were from the same place, under the same orders. All of a sudden he did not feel weary anymore. He rammed a knee into someone's groin and managed to rip a knife out of a sheath and shove it straight through another's Kevlar vest before kicking him over the railing. But where he disabled or killed one another two seemed poised to take his place. One tackled him to the deck, wrenching a shoulder from its socket. Another slapped a piece of duct tape over his mouth—they had learned from their previous mistakes—which muffled the bellow of pain he let forth. He twisted beneath them, wrapping his legs around one's neck and flipping them around so that he could get to his feet, or at least to a crouch, grabbing another knife as he did so and taking advantage of his low position to slice into their legs before he took off at a run toward the back of the boat. They followed, of course—away from the ferry workers and the small handful of other passengers who might wander up onto the deck.

When he turned around he spotted Nile and Joe at the same time the Americans did. One pulled a gun and fired, the sound muted by a silencer, and Joe went down with a bullet between his eyes. Nile took another to her shoulder but only cursed as she kept coming; Maglor did not see Joe get back up because he had to fend off two men, each wielding a syringe. He smashed the first and shoved the second into the neck of the man holding it, before stealing his gun and shooting two of the other attackers. They went down, sliding in the blood that was beginning to pool on the deck.

There was a pause, just for a moment, as Joe straightened an arm that should have been broken, and Nile flexed a few fingers that had been nearly shot off. For a second Maglor thought the men on the deck around them were all dead—but then more appeared around a corner, and one lurched up, gun drawn. The bullet hit Maglor in his already-injured shoulder before he could react, and his vision went black and then white and then black again as he tried and failed not to howl with the pain. When his vision returned he saw Joe and Nile still reeling, but recovering from ruptured eardrums, blood trickling down the sides of their faces; the others were not so lucky; most had their hands over their ears, some were stumbling back and away from the fight. But one recovered himself enough to lunge at Maglor like a tackle in American football. Maglor slammed back against the railing, bending back over it, and in a split second he knew he had to chose between a broken spine and going over. So he grasped the edge of his assailant's body armor and kicked off of the deck, sending both of them hurtling down toward the dark waters of the English Channel.

He regretted that decision the moment his feet left the solid deck of the ferry. Seconds later—or an Age of the world—they hit the water, still tangled up together, and sank like a heavy stone. But Maglor had the advantage in lighter clothing and agility, even with his wounded shoulder, so he managed to kick away from his flailing assailant, diving in a direction more or less at random and gliding until the burning in his lungs drove him to follow his air bubbles up to the surface. His shoulder felt as though it were on fire, and so did his nose. Maglor ripped the duct tape from his face and gasped for air, gulping seawater in the process and sinking as he choked on it. When he surfaced again, he saw the distant shape of the ferry—far too distant to even think of trying to catch up—and the even more distant lights of Calais, bobbing in and out of sight as the waves buffeted Maglor to and fro. There was no sign of the man he'd dragged over the railing.

Grimly, with gritted teeth, he started to swim. It was a clumsy, lurching affair, since he had only one working arm, a myriad of bruises, a bleeding bullet wound, and could not breathe through his nose. But it was swim or drown, and the thought of appearing before Mandos because he drowned in the English Channel within sight of shore was unbearable. The irony of leaping to his death in the sea was not lost on him and if he could not imagine what Námo would say, he could imagine his brothers.

He swam, stopping occasionally to try to catch his breath, for what felt like hours. As his shoulder continued to bleed he started to wonder if sharks ever wandered into the Channel, and he tried to swim faster, which didn't really work. And then he started to think about tides, and what the chances were that the tide was going out of Calais as he tried to swim into it. Considering his luck that evening, he thought the chances were good.

Eventually he could not muster the willpower to keep kicking. Everything hurt. He managed to turn onto his back, which made it easier to float, at least. That gave him a glimpse of the sky, which was growing brighter with coming day, but still heavy with clouds. It was impossible to tell if the sound of thunder in the distance was his imagination, but he hoped it was.

It wasn't. He heard it again, louder, and accompanied by a distant flash of lightning, and then the heavens opened. He got a face full of rainwater that had him struggling to catch his breath again, and he jerked, and a wave washed over him again. As he sank beneath the surface the pendant around his neck somehow got dislodged from his shirt, and its light was sudden and brilliant, like a star had burst into being before his eyes. He grabbed it and felt warmth flood through him, starting at his palm and spreading through his veins. With it came strength, and a sudden memory from his long-ago childhood, when he had fallen into a stream near his grandparents' home and was small enough that even that current had been too much for him. Fëanor had been there, of course, and had lifted him out easily, his hands big and warm and gentle as they wiped away both water and tears. Maglor clung to that memory and that warmth and kicked, once, twice, and then broke the surface. It was still raining, but he was closer to the shore than he had been, and he could feel the tide working—not against him, but dragging him forward, inexorably, toward the French coastline.

He had just enough strength, by the time he was spit out onto the shore, to crawl a few feet up the weedy, rocky, trash-strewn spit of beach and collapse just beyond the high tide mark. The rain still poured down, the drops all like cold stones hitting his exposed skin, but at least he would not be dragged back out to sea. Maglor lay on his side and tried to catch his breath, tried to think, but while he managed the former—more or less—his thoughts drifted beyond his control. He wondered what his father was doing at that moment, and his mother, and his brothers. Old memories of cold and rainy nights spent trying to shelter Elrond and Elros from the elements intruded upon him, and colder memories of those last days with Maedhros as he retreated farther and farther into himself, beyond Maglor's reach, as the Oath gnawed at them both. Old wounds throbbed alongside fresh ones.

At some point he drifted off entirely. He dreamed of Quynh shouting in an old dialect that he did not know, in a hotel room with horrendous wallpaper, while Andromache tried to calm her down. Then the dream shivered into a small room with strange walls—the sort in recording studios to deaden sound. On a bed in the corner sat Daeron, his hair unkempt and dark circles under his eyes. He was hunched forward, elbows on his knees, staring into the middle distance. Either he was deep in thought or not thinking at all.

The dream shivered and changed again, blending fancy with memory. Maglor walked through snowy woods with shadows that moved in strange ways, with the trees whispering angrily and reaching for him, and he climbed mountain peaks against driving snow, and raced across wide fields beneath heavy storm clouds—all the time searching for something, or someone, that he could not remember except that finding it, or them, was very important. All the time he was alone—until, abruptly, he wasn't, and all of his brothers were there jostling him and talking over one another, each one in a different language. "What are you saying?" Maglor kept trying to ask them, but his tongue did not seem to work. "Nelyo—Curvo, why do you call me Max?" Curufin's smile was sweet as it had been when he was a small child, but his fingers gripped Maglor's wounded shoulder, digging into the gunshot like he was trying to trace the full path of the bullet. Maglor screamed.

With the fire of pain came consciousness, and a dim awareness that he was moving, though he still lay on his back. And there were people, someone leaning over him and grumbling in antiquated Greek while something dug around in his shoulder. When Maglor tried to jerk away, fear rising like bile in his throat, someone else clamped hands down on his other shoulder, and other hands grasped his legs. "What the fuck are you doing to him back there?" Andromache's voice floated over them like a wisp of smoke, barely audible over a rattling noise and the grumbling and a rumble of tires on asphalt. It held no concern, just idle curiosity. Somehow the sound of it was comforting.

"We should have taken him back to the motel," said the one digging in his shoulder. Nicky, he thought? He could not quite focus his eyes. "There." He pulled something out of Maglor's shoulder, rounded and slick with his blood.

"We stayed in Calais too long as it is."

Nicky pressed a bandage tight against Maglor's shoulder, and peered at his face. "Can you hear me, Max?" he asked.

"Here." Joe was on his other side, and lifted up his head just enough so he could sip at a water bottle, the water tasting vaguely of plastic and more of it splashing down his chin and neck than going into his mouth. But it was cool and there was no salt. Maglor let his head fall back afterwords and closed his eyes. Everything still hurt horrendously, but he was neither strapped down and being hauled back to America, nor still bleeding out on a godforsaken spit of littered shoreline, and if Joe and Nicky and Andromache were there, then Quynh must also be, and so the fear ebbed away, leaving bone-deep weariness in its wake.

"That was an exceptionally stupid thing to do," Joe remarked after a few seconds, something like amusement and something like admiration in his voice.

Maglor forced his eyes open. "People swim the Channel all the time," he rasped. Joe threw his head back with laughter. On Maglor's other side Nicky huffed a quieter laugh. He heard voices ahead of them, and Joe repeated what he had said, and then Quynh squawked, "They do what?" And everyone around him was laughing. It was comforting, and Maglor did not try to resist the pull of sleep when it reared up to drag him down again.

The next time he woke it was to a hand on his good shoulder, and Joe's face hovering above him. "Can you get up?" he asked, as Maglor blinked at him stupidly. "You're gonna have to get into the hotel on your own feet; you're too tall to carry."

Maglor managed to sit up and also to not fall over again, though the van spun around him. Quynh was there, ready to steady him on the other side as they made their way carefully out of the back of the van. "This isn't your car," he said, words slurring together and his voice almost nonexistent.

"We got all your stuff before we ditched yours," said Nile, there suddenly as he was being lowered out of the van. She had a jacket in her hands, which was only just big enough to drape over Maglor's shoulders to hide the worst of the blood, as they shuffled their way out of the parking lot and to a room on the ground floor of a small bed and breakfast, past a front desk with no one at it, which he thought distantly was a little strange.

The room was small with two beds, each just wide enough for two people if they did not mind squeezing a bit. There was a lamp casting a soft warm glow over the room, and a door stood open that reveals a bathroom tiled in a hideous shade of pink that made Maglor think of blood on sea foam, which then made his stomach lurch in a way it hadn't since he last saw blood on sea foam, and he only just made it, with Joe's help, to the sink to be sick. It was all clear bile and seawater that came up, burning his throat as it went. He did not make it to a bed before passing out again.

Maglor dreamed of his mother. He sat in her studio—the huge wide building with vaulted ceilings and more windows than walls that was attached to their home outside of Tirion by a walkway hung with light and billowing curtains, so that going to or leaving the studio felt like walking through clouds. But inside there was nothing billowing, nothing that might get in the way of an artist at work—except perhaps Maglor himself, which was why he was perched atop one of the many workbenches with a small knife and a piece of scrap wood, whittling at it idly while he watched Nerdanel up to her elbows in white clay, carefully molding a sculpture that might have been one of the Valar or might have been something entirely nameless. It was the most peaceful he had felt in a very long time.

Then a shadow passed over the sun, throwing the whole studio into shade. Maglor looked out of the window, and instead of the apple orchard on one side of the hill and the pear trees on the other, he saw the plains of Lothlann and Ard-galen stretching out before him. But they seemed strange, and he could see clearer and farther than he should have, though he stood atop the hill of Himring. Thangorodrim was belching forth foul smoke and rivers of fire. He blinked and Ard-galen was suddenly no longer green, the whole of the Dagor Bragollach happening in a moment, and all was blackened and burning. The smell of acrid smoke was stronger and when he turned from the window he saw that the studio itself was burning. "Mother!" He lurched forward, stumbling over a statue that had been knocked over, its head broken off in the process. It was a statue of his father. "Mother! We have to—" Maglor turned and found himself no longer in Nerdanel's studio but on the field, a sword in his hand; he had lost his horse somehow. An orc rose up out of the smoke and flames and pointed a gun at his head. Maglor dove out of the way as it went off, and he ran—and ran, and ran, seeking for his brothers, for his cousins, for anyone else who might have survived the battle. Was it the Bragollach or the Nirnaeth? He could not remember any longer.

He woke with a start, on one of the two beds. Norindo curled up in the crook of his neck. Pale light came through the window in the far wall, and rain drummed on the glass and on the roof. Quynh sat on the other bed, watching him. "That was very stupid," she informed him once she saw his eyes open. For a moment, still caught up in the dream, Maglor had no idea what she was talking about. Surely it was not stupid to run from orcs? He blinked at her, and then sank back onto the pillow with a groan, closing his eyes. "Are you in any pain?"

"Everything hurts," he said. "Where are we?"

Quynh didn't answer immediately. He heard the faucet in the bathroom, and opened his eyes to find her holding out a cup of water. She helped him drink without spilling any. "Near Ypres," she said. "The landlady owes Andromache a favor. She's very sweet."

It was unclear if Quynh meant the landlady or Andromache. Maglor pushed himself up to lean against the headboard, and when his hand shook too much he accepted Quynh's help in sipping the water. It was cool and tasted nothing of salt. "Belgium?" he said, once Quynh had determined that he'd had enough to drink.

"We killed rather a lot of people in Calais," Quynh said. "On the ferry, I mean," she added quickly, when Maglor frowned. "And then we lingered to search for you. Andromache was not happy about it."

Maglor was half-afraid to imagine what that argument had looked like. "Oh," he said. "Thank you."

Quynh set the cup down and looked Maglor up and down. "Do you think you can get up?" she asked. "We should wash all that blood off." Maglor looked down at himself. Someone had removed his shirt, but he was still covered with salt and blood and whatever other muck he'd been lying in for hours. He reached up to feel his hair and grimaced; it was stiff with dirt. Quynh held out her hand, and Maglor allowed her to pull him up and keep him on his feet until they reached the bathroom. It was something of a production, managing to bathe without getting his shoulder or the bandages wet, but Quynh was brisk and surprisingly gentle even as she continued to berate Maglor for his choices on the ferry. She scrubbed his hair and scalp and then braided it back out of his face with quick, practiced fingers.

As she finished fumbling with the elastic band to tie off the braid, a quiet knock sounded on the door before Nile poked her head in. "Oh, good," she said. "You're awake. God, you look like hell."

"Thank you," said Maglor.

"Breakfast is downstairs, and then Andy wants to get moving. Where are we supposed to be going?"

Maglor sighed. "Fumay is the nearest town. I can find the place from there. Nile, what's happened to my phone?"

"It wasn't on you when you washed up. My guess is it's at the bottom of the Channel, or washed up somewhere else—but either way it's done for. Do you need to call the Elvenking or whoever?"

"Or whoever, yes."

"There's a phone downstairs you can use." Nile disappeared, and Quynh helped Maglor out of bed again, and to get dressed properly. The clothes he had been wearing were fit only to burn, but fortunately his other things had survived, though getting into a new shirt took some doing, with his shoulder bandaged up and still painful.

Downstairs the landlady turned out to be an elderly woman who fussed at Maglor in Dutch and refused to let him make a phone call until he had drunk at least one cup of tea into which she stirred so much sugar that Maglor was surprised to find it still liquid when he sipped at it. She also tried to convince him to see a doctor, but Andy appeared and politely shut that idea down much more quickly than Maglor would have managed. This soft and polite side of Andromache was new—for the first time Maglor saw how one could think of here as merely Andy, instead of fierce Andromache the Scythian. But eventually he drank enough tea to satisfy the landlady, whose name was strangely elusive, and was permitted to use the phone at the front desk. He dialed Linnoriel's number, and it rang so long that he thought it would go to voice mail before she answered with a brusque and wary tone, in French.

"It's me, Linnoriel," he said in Sindarin.

"Where are you?" she demanded. "We have been waiting—it's been two days!"

Had it really? "I'm sorry. There was trouble on the ferry."

"You sound strange. What happened? What sort of trouble?"

"It has been dealt with. I am in Belgium at the moment—I think I should not say more than that. And I should make no promises regarding our arrival at your father's court, since that seems to do nothing but invite trouble."

"Well, see that you get here soon. The longer we tarry the more danger Lumorn is in."

"Have you heard from him?"

"He's managed to flee the city, into the mountains somewhere. But it is the mountains where this Turralba has their headquarters. We'll explain more when you arrive."

"Of course." Maglor hung up and rubbed at his face before remembering that his nose was still broken—and aggravated by his swim. He cursed and lowered his hand. Hopefully someone at Thranduil's court would take pity on him and tend to his wounds. He was in no state to sing his own songs of healing.

They had a new car, a minivan this time, with Maglor's harp tucked in neatly among the other various bags and pieces of weaponry. Andromache, of course, drove, and Maglor was placed in the front passenger seat so that he could give directions once they were needed. Quynh and Nile took the middle row, and Joe and Nicky seemed very content to have the back to themselves. Maglor leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes as they pulled out of Ypres and onto the freeway. The car radio was on quietly, and behind him Nile made awkward conversation with Quynh, who was either enjoying Nile's discomfort or was distracted by her own thoughts. It was impossible to tell. Behind them Maglor could hear any speech, but he had a feeling that Joe and Nicky didn't need to speak to have full conversations.

He felt Andromache's gaze on him from time to time, keen and calculating, but he said nothing. She was used to being the oldest and wisest and perhaps the most weary person in the room—or the minivan—and he could bring all of that crashing down for good with a few choice words, but the middle of a three hour drive was not the best time or place for it. Maglor also suspected she was just as happy as Quynh to stab her problems away, and he had enough injuries to be getting on with for the moment. So he did not open his eyes, and after a while he really did fall asleep again, lulled by the soft classical music on the radio and by Nile's quiet voice behind him.

When he woke again it was to a hand on his arm and Andromache saying, "Hey. We're coming up on Fumay. Where am I going?"

Maglor blinked heavy eyelids open and yawned. "Um," he said, looking around. They had passed out of the rain and the sky was bright and blue overhead, with only the occasional fluffy white cloud drifting along on the high winds.

"You do know where we're going, right?" Andromache said.

"I do, I just haven't come from this direction before. Have you a map?"

"Here." Nile's hand appeared holding a phone with a map on it, their location a helpful little dot traveling along a road. Maglor studied it for a moment. "Take the next right," he said finally.

Thus they went, with Maglor growing more exasperated every time they missed a turn because Andromache seemed unable to drive as though she were not being pursued. But eventually they left the major roads and found themselves on a narrow but well-tended road heading into a forest of thick, dark trees growing close together. It was not a forest that began gradually with bushes and trees that only slowly grew thicker—it was a wall that loomed up ahead of them with a lush green canopy and pillar-like trunks. Two particularly large trees with gnarled roots and branches outstretched toward one another like reaching hands stood on either side of the road. Andromache did not need to be told to slow down, and in fact she came to a stop a hundred yards or so from the trees.

"Well, that definitely looks like a fairy tale forest," Nile remarked.

"It isn't dangerous, so long as you stay on the path," said Maglor.

"Yeah, that sounds about right."

"Good advice in any wood, really," Maglor added. "But particularly in this one."

"Are there giant spiders?" Quynh asked. Andromache rolled her eyes.

"There may be," said Maglor. "This wood is very old, and old and dangerous things still lurk in the shadowy places of the world. They are drawn to such places for similar reasons to the Elves. Or perhaps the Elves come here to keep them in check—I have never asked." He looked at Andromache expectantly, and saw her jaw clench as she eased the car forward. The road was more than wide enough to allow them through without branches scraping distressingly along the sides, or crowding too close together ahead of them and obscuring the way, and for the most part it was straight. They passed over a swiftly running stream, and out of his window Maglor caught a glimpse of a hart stopping by to take a drink. It raised an antlered head to regard them, before turning and bounding away into the trees. There was little underbrush, except for the occasional blackberry bramble or cluster of honeysuckle around a ferny glade just visible in a green-tinted slant of sunshine from the road.

Finally they came to a smaller road turning off from the main one, and after a glance at Maglor, Andromache turned to follow it. "This place is spooky," Nicky said in the back.

"You should have seen Mirkwood," Maglor murmured, too softly for anyone to hear. The new path led them up to a high stone wall grown over with ivy, but for wrought-iron gates depicting the elaborately twisted branches of two Trees, one with fruits of sunbursts and the other with moonbeam flowers, their branches entwining where the gates met, not unlike the trees at the beginning of the wood. Andromache came to a stop before them.

"So is there a way to call in, or…" she began, only for a wicket gate to open just off to the side, revealing five figures, four of whom ranged around the minivan with bows at the ready. "Bows, really?"

"You'll be dead before you can so much as reach for a gun," Maglor said. He rolled down his window as the fifth figure came up to it. "Well met, Galion."

"Maglor," Galion said. "What in the world happened to you?"

"I fell off of the ferry," said Maglor.

Galion's eyebrow arched, but he didn't press for details, instead casting his gaze around the others in the van. "These are the friends you spoke of to Princess Linnoriel?"

"They are. I will vouch for them."

"Very good." Galion stepped back and waved at the gate, which swung open on silent hinges. The bowmen retreated, and Andromache rolled through the gates and up a winding drive to a large chateau. On the steps in front of the doors stood Thranduil himself, with his wife Aeramath by his side, her dark hair a stark contrast to the bright gold of his.
Quynh leaned forward. "Is this the Elvenking from the book?"

"His name is Thranduil," said Maglor. "Yes, he is the same."

"Goodness," said Aeramath when Maglor emerged from the car; Norindo jumped down and raced off into the gardens. "You look terrible. What happened?"

"I fell off the ferry," Maglor repeated.

"He also got shot," Joe supplied from where he was still in the minivan helping Quynh untangle herself from her seatbelt.

"I did also get shot," Maglor agreed. "It's been a rather interesting few days."

"So I see." Aeramath descended from the steps and greeted everyone properly. Maglor made introductions, and they were led inside where lunch was waiting. But Maglor was accosted by Princess Hathellas before he could reach the dining room, and she dragged him off to a large and open, airy room that smelled of herbs and fresh air, with windows open on the lush, blooming gardens, filled with birdsong and the lazy hum of bees going about their honey-making. There were a few beds, and more chairs, and a combination of modern medical and laboratory equipment mingled with more old fashioned jars and dried herbs.

"Sit," Hathellas ordered, pointing to a stool. Maglor sat. She helped him remove his shirt, and set about unwinding the bandages on his shoulder with brisk but gentle fingers. "Is the bullet out?" she asked as she peeled back the bloody gauze to survey the damage.

"I think so," said Maglor. "I was not fully conscious at the time, but I believe Nicky dug it out."

"Mm." Hathellas gently poked and prodded, at his shoulder and at his ribs, and carefully examined his nose. "This happened before you fell off the ferry."

"That happened at my house," Maglor said.

"You are not having a very good week, are you?"

"I've had better." He had also had worse, of course. "Has anyone heard anything more from Lumorn?"

"He's found a very quaint little cabin to rent for a while, though it happens to be close to the Turralba headquarters, which is—well, it's a military compound, isn't it? I don't know if my brother meant to stay so close, but Linnoriel is ready to throttle him when he finally comes home. Now, I can fix you up in time to leave with the rest, but you'll be sleeping the rest of the day and tonight. You should eat something light, first. When was the last time you had a proper meal?"

"Before we left Canterbury. I had some sugar this morning with a bit of tea." This made Hathellas laugh a little, before she left, coming back a few minutes later with a bowl of soup.

"It's just chicken soup. Drink that and lie down in a bed—any one you like—and we'll get started."

Maglor accepted the bowl and sipped at the broth. It was very good. "If I am asleep the rest of the day…"

"You'll miss most of the planning, I'm sure," Hathellas said cheerfully, "but don't worry, my father won't send you off entirely unprepared."

"I need to speak with him—"

"After you rest. Here." Hathellas gave him another, bitter-tasting concoction once he was finished with the soup. She had a sweet voice, like summer birds, and Maglor drifted off to sleep mere minutes after she began to sing her songs of healing, of wholeness and health and strength.

When he woke it was morning again, and Norindo had made his way back and was curled up at his side. No one else was in the room, and the morning light was still dim and pale, the stars only just fading with the coming dawn. Maglor yawned, and reached up to gently prod at his nose. It felt a little tender, but the swelling had gone down and it felt as though it was more or less the same shape it had been before. He sat up and moved his other arm experimentally. It was also stiff and sore, but the sort of stiff soreness that came at the end of a recovery, rather than the sharp pain of new wounds. The bullet wound was a livid scar and there were still yellow bruises around it.

Norindo jumped up against him and shoved his nose in Maglor's ear. Maglor laughed and scratched him all around his ears and neck. "Good morning to you, too, little one. Shall we go outside?" There was a door leading directly out into the garden, and someone had kindly left a clean set of clothes on another bed. No socks or shoes, but he could figure that out later.

The morning was cool but not cold, and dew shimmered in gossamer strung between rose blooms and on the thick green grass that bordered the paths. The garden was half-cultivated, half-wild. The trees whispered to one another, waking slowly as the birds all at once burst into their morning chorus. There was a cold spring bubbling up with sweet, clear water, which flowed over the natural stone rim into a small rivulet that wound its way, guided by careful elven hands and thought, through the garden and eventually out into the wood to find a larger creek or river to join.

As he rounded a bend, ducking under a willow tree's trailing fronts that reached out over the path with the breeze, he came upon Thranduil sitting on a bench near a fountain, which was in the shape of a woman dancing, her up stretched hands making it seem as though she were flinging the sprays of water into the morning air.

"Good morning," said Thranduil. He seemed to be out merely to enjoy the morning, his legs stretched out before him and crossed at the ankles as he leaned back on the bench. "You look more like yourself."

"Thanks to Princess Hathellas," said Maglor. Norindo trotted forward to sniff at Thranduil's foot, and then to jump up onto the bench for further investigation. "I hope you don't mind that I brought a dog."

"The dog is the least troublesome thing you have brought me in the last few days," said Thranduil. He waved a hand upon seeing the look on Maglor's. "I mean the news of Daeron and Lumorn. Your other guests have been very polite. And we have heard of Andromache the Scythian—though not since she disappeared from Scythia. She seemed rather surprised to learn this."

"She's half-convinced still that we don't really exist, and this is some elaborate joke," said Maglor. "Who is the statue of?" He gestured at the fountain. "She seems familiar."

"Lúthien," said Thranduil, shortly.

"Ah, of course." That was it. She looked like Arwen. Like Elrond. Maglor put his hands into his pockets and stared at her face for a minute. The features were not quite like Arwen's. They were beginning to wear away, under the constant flow of water, and the weather. There were no more elven rings to keep time at bay—but even when there had been, Thranduil had wanted no part in them.

"You'll be flying out tomorrow," said Thranduil after a few moments of silence. "Hathellas and Radoriel are going with you. Hathellas just in case, and Radoriel because she thinks being a getaway driver will be exciting." Thranduil shrugged when Maglor looked back at him in surprise. "She's been driving cars faster than she should since the beginning."

"Do you know anything more about Turralba?"

"Very little. The…I'm not sure what you'd call him in this context. CEO? Owner? The one in charge, his name is Dennis Newman. He was a Navy SEAL in his youth, and that is the most interesting thing about him, as far as I can tell. There's a file that your other friend, Copley, sent."

"I have a favor to ask of you," Maglor said, after a moment in which they were both silent and still, listening to the water and the birds around them.

"What is it?"

"I cannot take Norindo. May he stay here?"

"Oh, is that all? Certainly. He's already a favorite." Thranduil scratched him behind the ears, setting his tail thumping on the bench.

"I've also brought my harp, and I would be obliged if you could keep it for me until my return. I made it myself and it is dear to me."

"These are very small favors," Thranduil remarked.

"And one more thing—not a favor, so much as a gift," Maglor said. "Do you have a copy of the Red Book?"

Thranduil looked up at him. "The Red Book? I did not think there were any copies left."

"I have one, and it needs a better home than I can give it. I would put that also into your keeping. I will be going into the West once we have recovered Daeron; the harp and perhaps Norindo I will take with me, but the book should stay here. I am sure they have copies enough in Valinor and Eressëa."

Thranduil sat up straight, staring at Maglor as though he'd grown another head. "You are going into the West?" he repeated. "You?"

"Yes," Maglor said.

Thranduil got to his feet, and Norindo jumped down to return to Maglor's side. "I would have expected you to sail long ago, if you were allowed. You never seemed to be staying in Middle-earth for any other reason."

"I had other reasons," said Maglor. "And I also was surprised by Ossë's summons. But it seems I am wanted in Valinor and my kin are growing tired of waiting. But in the meantime, Daeron also is waiting. Why do we tarry until tomorrow?"

"I want to see what your mortal friends are capable of."

"They are not fully mortal. Have they told you?"

"Yes; it is a very strange tale. I still want to see what they can do—don't worry, I don't plan to test that part of it. They are to be shown our training grounds after breakfast. Shall we?"

A nightingale alighted on the statue's shoulder as they turned back toward the chateau and trilled a cheerful morning song to follow them back along the garden paths.

On the way inside Maglor caught sight of Andromache down another path. Their eyes met briefly, before she vanished around a bit of shrubbery. Maglor excused himself from Thranduil and followed her. Norindo followed Thranduil, doubtless enticed by the thought of breakfast. This path wound through wild tangles of roses climbing up over cleverly shaped trellises, where they mingled with ivy, deep reds and greens interspersed with pale pinks and whites and occasionally a splash of yellow. The air was heavy with their sweet perfume.

He found Andromache inspecting another statue, this one slightly more weather-worn but still recognizable—it was Yavanna, her arms up and outstretched and half-carved as tree branches, and her gown twisting together toward the base of the statue into the shape of tree roots. Fittingly there was a small bird's nest between her shoulder and head, which was tilted up, her eyes closed and a small smile on her face as though she were a flower drinking in the sun. Andromache was a small and slender figure before her, head tilted, dark hair falling into her eyes as she frowned at an inscription carefully chiseled into the line of one of the gown's long and draping sleeves. "It is asking Kementári to bless this garden with health and abundance," Maglor said.

"Who's Kementári?" Andromache replied as she squinted at the runes. "I used to be able to read runes."

"These are not quite the runes you would know," said Maglor. "They are the forerunners. And I would not expect you to read the Sindarin anyway. Kementári is the Earth Queen, who is also called Yavanna, the Giver of Fruits. She is one of the Valier, and the wife of Aulë the Maker."

"Oh, so an old goddess." Andromache turned away from the statue.

"Do not dismiss what you do not understand," Maglor said, the words coming out sharp and clipped. "Even you, Andromache of Scythia, do not know all there is to know of the world." He spoke in the old tongue of Scythia, which made her spin around to stare at him, either enraged or astonished or both. "You walk among the Elder Children of Ilúvatar today, and in this house you would be accounted among the very youngest. I was born a prince of the House of Finwë in the Uttermost West beneath the Light of the Trees and was full grown and battle tested long before the sun first rose in the west to wake the fathers of Men. I walked with Yavanna in her fields and pastures and worked in the forges of Aulë, of whose students my own father was the greatest, and rode with Oromë the Hunter and danced with Nessa and Vána in the flowered glades of Valinor. I have sung in the courts of Manwë King of Arda and Varda Elentári his Queen upon Taniquetil, and I have seen the horrors wrought by Morgoth Bauglir and Sauron after him—you have known war but you have not known that. I witnessed the sinking of Beleriand into the Great Sea, and later the destruction of Númenor and the bending of the world. The world has changed again and again since that time. The time of the Elves ended long ago, and the time of Men arose, and those of us who remain dwindle with each passing decade. We keep to our forests and our little seaside cottages, but do not mistake us for diminutive fairies or mere figures of fantasy."

Andromache looked like she didn't even know where to start. "Half of that didn't even make sense," she snapped, her voice shaking ever so slightly with the language of her youth on her tongue.

"Of course the true names of things you know only as myth and legend would be unknown to you," said Maglor more softly, and he had pity on her and abandoned Scythian in favor of English, simple and modern and so much younger than the things they were speaking of. "Oromë's rides and hunts in the twilight of the world where he sought the dark creatures of Morgoth is remembered now as the Wild Hunt of the Fairy King. Taniquetil the Holy Mountain where dwell the Powers is glimpsed again in the tales of Mount Olympus—the true history is so old that it has been forgotten, but never wholly. Sometimes names linger, or parts of them. Atalantë. Avallónë."

They stood for several moments in silence, the only sound the wind in the roses. Finally, Andromache said, "I thought you people didn't die."

"We don't. Unless we are killed."

"Then how are you dwindling?"

"Oh. We are sailing away, over the Sea."

Andromache arched an eyebrow. "So America's full of Elves?"

Maglor smiled. "No. The seas were bent when Númenor sank, and Valinor was removed beyond the world, out of reach of Men—but there is a Straight Road that Elven ships can still find, if they wish. Though by this time I think nearly all the Elves who still remain in the world have no desire or plan to take ship." He looked back at the statue of Yavanna. A robin alighted on one of her outstretched and branching hands, regarding them with bright sharp eyes. "Shall we go in?" he said, looking back at Andromache. "Breakfast will be served soon, and then Thranduil wishes to have you show off for him."

"We aren't dancing bears here to put on a show."

"But you are here offering your services in the rescue of the greatest minstrel of the Eldar," said Maglor as they fell into step beside one another. "I believe this is more for Thranduil's peace of mind than to really prove anything—no one doubts your abilities."

"What about you?" asked Andromache. "Quynh says you don't like weapons."

"I don't. I'll borrow some from Thranduil's folk, I suppose, but my strength lies mostly in my voice these days."

Andromache stepped ahead of Maglor and turned to face him, halting them before they entered the chateau. "What did you do in all those old stories?" she asked. "Nile downloaded a copy of The Lord of the Rings but she couldn't find your name in a search."

"I took no part at all in the War of the Ring," said Maglor. "I was only vaguely aware that it was happening at all."

"Nile also downloaded a copy of The Silmarillion," Andromache said.

"She won't find anything if she searches for Max," Maglor said, amused.

"It's Maglor, right? Your real name?"

Maglor opened his mouth, but then closed it again. "Yes," he said. The nature of Noldorin naming traditions and the rendering of Quenya names into Sindarin after the Exile wasn't particularly worth getting into. "But it was my brother who did deeds of surpassing valor, and my cousins who were heroes. I only followed Maedhros into darkness, and survived to write a song about it." His palm twinged, and he flexed his fingers without thinking. Andromache, of course, noticed. But by then someone had noticed them standing outside, and they were called in to breakfast.

Breakfast was an informal affair, though it took place in the large dining hall. There were many smaller tables scattered about the room, and Maglor found himself at the one claimed by Quynh and Joe and Nicky. Nile was sitting with Hathellas and some of the archers from the evening before, and it seemed to Maglor that they were all great friends already. "Wow," Joe said as Maglor sat down beside Quynh, "you look better."

"Lady Hathellas is very skilled," said Maglor. The table was piled with fruits and sweet white breads and jugs of juices and a carafe of tea and another of coffee, and many other things besides. Maglor picked up one of the jugs and poured himself a glass of orange juice.

"Sure, but it's like, magic or something." Joe reached over Quynh to poke at the bridge of Maglor's nose. Maglor leaned back, so Joe nearly overbalanced and put his elbow in th abutter.

"They're Elves," Nicky said. "Of course it's magic. Like this food." He gestured with a strawberry speared on the end of his fork, drizzled with cream.

"What did I miss yesterday?" Maglor asked before the group could start bickering over whether or not a particularly good strawberry was the result of magic or merely excellent gardening (he did not know why it couldn't be both, which would not be a satisfying answer to either side).

"It was mostly just going over all the intel that's been gathered so far," said Nicky. Joe produced a tablet from somewhere and handed it to Maglor. He turned it on to find satellite images of the compound in the Catskills, and blueprints of the corporate office space located in New York City, alongside dossiers on the most high ranking employees, including an extensive one on the owner and CEO, Dennis Newman. Thranduil had been right—aside from his career as a SEAL and the fact that he ran a small private army there was little to distinguish him from any other rich white American businessman, albeit one with delusions of grandeur that included claims of descent from a surprising number of the American Founding Fathers. Including one extremely bold statement from the '90s that he was descended from George Washington. Apparently, in spite of his illustrious claims, the man had never actually paid attention in his history classes.

What was most interesting was what was missing from the dossiers. Nowhere was there a mention of any interest in immortality or longevity, though it did appear that Turralba, and Newman himself, had invested some funds in Merrick Pharmaceutical several years ago, and other companies undergoing similar research endeavors. But whether or not Newman had a closer relationship with the late Steven Merrick, or knew more of what he was planning and doing, was unknown.

Andromache was peering over Maglor's shoulder, evidently refreshing herself on the information. She looked up at Joe and Nicky. "Where do you think Merrick's bodyguards went after?" she asked.

"Hell," Joe said.

"I thought we killed them all," Nicky added after a moment's thought.

"But maybe we didn't." Andromache pulled out her phone and typed something into it. A second later it pinged. "Oh, we did. But one of the scientists just signed a contract with Turralba last month. That can't be a coincidence."

"I cannot believe that Turralba identified both Daeron and me and arranged to have us kidnapped in under a month," said Maglor. "Newman has had an interest and a belief in Elves for a long time—he must, to have been so certain of who he was going after."

"Did he know who?" Quynh asked. "Or only what?"

"The men who came to my home knew who I was," said Maglor. "The one who broke my nose tried to use the knowledge to taunt me." Quynh tilted her head, looking at him curiously. "So they must also have known who Daeron was," he went on, looking away from her in favor of slathering a thick slice of bread with raspberry jam. "One does not begin believing in Elves—or searching for them—immediately upon reading a widely acclaimed fantasy book." He wondered how Newman had gotten started on this path. Perhaps he had discovered an old copy of the Red Book. But then how would he have known what it was? Or…

His thoughts were interrupted by Linnoriel's approach. She was like her sister in face and stature, but was more grim. It was not always so—Maglor remembered her dancing and laughing as merrily as any Wood Elf in summertime—but the recent strain showed around her eyes and the set of her mouth. Maglor rose to greet her properly. "Lady Linnoriel, good morning."

"I am glad that you could join us this morning," she replied. "I hope you are well enough to join us on the training grounds."

He was, just barely. Thranduil's idea of testing the mortals' skills had really been a disguise for the Woodelves' desire to pit themselves against new opponents in what they called games but which resulted in nearly everyone retreating back to the chateau in the afternoon bruised and weary, some more satisfied than others. Maglor's shoulder had stiffened, and he had discovered that he was rustier with a blade than he'd thought. But not so rusty that he would slow anyone down—and in any case he had no plans to be at the forefront of whatever assault was being planned.

He could drop opponents into a deep sleep with a single word—a crude cudgel compared to the song he had employed at his cottage, but just as effective—and once the games were through he had many a Woodelf come up to him and laughingly accuse him of cheating. "Just like a Noldo! Now come sing us something prettier."

"I shall sing whatever you like," said Maglor, laughing as he rubbed his sore shoulder. "What would you hear first?"

Drinking songs and dancing songs were demanded, and so of course he was happy to oblige then and there, as they entered the chateau and food and drink were brought out for them. It was not long before he was joined by a chorus of merry voices, and by supper time a party was in full swing. No one had forgotten the danger posed to the Quendi by Turralba, or the fact that Daeron of Doriath was being held captive, but for that evening there was nothing to do but celebrate new friends and the hope that the threat would be taken care of.

After supper Maglor found Quynh sitting off to the side watching Nicky and Joe, both of whom had made the mistake of accepting glasses of very strong elven wine, stumble through a wild and ancient dance. "Someone should haul them off to bed soon," he remarked. "They'll have terrible hangovers tomorrow."

"It won't be the first time," said Quynh. "And they can sleep it off on the plane, I suppose. If one can sleep on a plane."

"That depends on how one feels about flying," said Maglor. It wasn't his favorite way to travel, but it was much faster than sailing.

As the night drew on and the stars shone in through the open windows, the fervor for dancing faded a bit and someone called to Maglor for another song, a proper performance since he was going to be sailing away and leaving them soon. "Give us the Lay of Leithian!" someone said.

"Oh, no," Maglor replied, laughing, "I shall leave that for Daeron. He knows it better. I shall sing for you the Lay of Frodo of the Nine Fingers instead!" This was met with equal cheer, for their beloved Prince Legolas played a small but important role in the tale, and many of them had borne witness to the defeat of Sauron and the end of the Third Age. Maglor had met Legolas once, when his wanderings had taken him into Ithilien after the War of the Ring, and he had liked him a great deal. Whether Legolas would have liked him so well if he'd known who his bedraggled and musical visitor was, was hard to say.

His harp was brought and a hush fell over the hall as Maglor put his fingers to the strings. The evening was already too far gone and the lay too long for him to sing it in full, but he sang of the Three Hunters racing across Rohan in pursuit of the Uruk-hai of Isengard, and then of Frodo and Sam's last desperate trek across Gorgoroth and up the slopes of Mount Doom. There were few dry eyes in the hall by the time Maglor finished, with the coming of the Eagles to the battle before the Black Gate and then on to the mountain to rescue the halflings. As the last notes faded from Maglor's song, someone else took up a hymn to Elbereth and the bright stars, a song so old that it was thought to have first been sung at Cuiviénen, in an ancient dialect from a time before even Melkor had been aware of the Quendi dwelling by the waters.

Beside Maglor Quynh had dozed off, and on her other size Andromache leaned back in her seat, eyes hooded, though she was still awake. Maglor saw Joe and Nicky slip out of the hall, and Nile also dozing off across the room. He plucked at the strings of his harp in quiet harmony with the singer, whose voice was sweet as springtime, and thought of all that lay before them—crossing the Atlantic, finding the compound, finding a way into the compound…and then finding a way out once they had Daeron.

And there was also the mysterious other party—whoever it was that had drugged Maglor when he'd let his guard down after the first assault on his home. He wondered if Copley had learned anything more, or if he was in for another nasty surprise. He sighed, and stilled his harp strings. Quynh barely woke when he nudged her, though Andromache roused more quickly. She disappeared into the crowd to gather up Nile while Maglor levered Quynh to her feet. "Time to find a real bed," he said.

"Mm," Quynh said, swaying gently, bumping her shoulder into his. She said something in some garbled ancient dialect that Maglor did not know, and yawned widely. But she allowed him to lead her back out of the hall and to the stairs, where Andromache and a yawning Nile caught up with them. Norindo appeared from somewhere to jump up briefly on Maglor's leg, before trotting up the stairs.

"That's a real cute dog," Nile said as they followed. "Where'd you get him?"

"He was a stray," Maglor said.

"He's very smart."

"Yes, I think he's spent a great deal of time by the Sea." This earned him a strange look from Nile, and an eye roll from Andromache—though it lacked any real feeling. "Ossë and Uinen have both come to the shore by my home in recent days."

"Should we know those names?" Nile asked.

"You should, if you have read the Valaquenta."

"The Vala-what?"

"It is a chapter in The Silmarillion. Andromache says you've gotten a copy."

"Oh. Yeah. I haven't really looked at it yet, though."

"I know Uinen," Quynh said suddenly. She still looked half-asleep, and her speech was slightly slurred, but she spoke with certainty. "She came into the deep waters, and found the iron casket. Her eyes were like stars that had fallen into the sea, and her voice was like…" She trailed off, frowning.

"Yes," Maglor said. "She is the Lady of the Deeps and of calm waters. And here is your room. Good night."

"Good night," the three of them chorused, slightly out of sync. Maglor left them to find their beds, and followed Norindo down the hall to another guest room, where his bags were on the bed and a little dog bed had been set underneath the window for Norindo. This was ignored, of course, as Norindo whined until Maglor scooped him up onto the large bed, softer and more luxurious than any bed he'd gotten for himself in a very long time. He undressed and slid beneath the blankets with a sigh. Norindo curled up in the crook of his neck.

"It's going to be a long day tomorrow," Maglor said to him, as he huffed a sigh and stuck his cold wet nose against Maglor's shoulder. "Not for you, though. You get to stay here in safety, with more small creatures to chase than your little heart could desire." He scratched behind Norindo's ears, and sighed. At least they would be traveling courtesy of King Thranduil, and there was no danger of being attacked by strangers on a private jet.

It took longer than he'd hoped to fall asleep, and when he did his dreams were troubled, jumbles of memories and fears of which he recalled little when a knock on the door roused him just before dawn. It was one of the servants come to tell him that breakfast was being served in a parlor just next door to his room, and they would be departing in an hour. Maglor thanked them and rolled over to press his face into the pillow as the door closed. He allowed himself just a minute more before pushing himself up to stumble to the bathroom. His shoulder was still sore and stiff, though it loosened as he flexed his arm beneath the hot spray of the shower. The water helped to wake him, though he still felt unrested as he scooped Norindo out of the bed to take him to breakfast.

"You did say you're going to leave the dog here, right?" said Joe as Maglor entered the room.

"Yes, of course." Maglor dropped Norindo lightly to the floor. Only Joe and Nicky were present thus far. "But we aren't leaving just yet." He picked up a roll still warm from oven, and bit into it. It was sweet and light, and oh, how he had missed good Elvish fare without even realizing it. "Does your strange healing render you immune to hangovers?" he asked. "I saw you indulging heavily last night."

"I didn't drink," said Joe.

"I didn't drink much," said Nicky, and now that Maglor looked closer he did look slightly worse for the wear than Joe did.

"That is relative, especially when we are speaking of Thranduil's cellars," said Maglor.

Nicky suddenly frowned at the sausages on his plate. "Should we be eating?" he asked. "Fairy tales always say not to eat fairy food."

Maglor laughed. "It isn't the food that unwary travelers in fairy realms need to worry about. Don't worry, no one is laying an enchantment on you through your breakfast sausages." He poured himself a generous cup of coffee and sat down. Andromache and Quynh appeared after a few minutes, both of them looking well-rested and alert. Nile looked less awake when she stumbled in after them, but perked up more quickly once she had a cup of coffee and a cinnamon roll in hand.

"Okay, so," Andromache said as she sat down, "we need to start thinking about what we're actually going to do when we get to New York." She eyed Maglor. "What's your plan?"

"I would avoid fighting, for myself," he said. "I can and will if I must, but I want to focus my efforts on searching the place—top to bottom."

"You should have someone covering you," said Nile.

"I leave all tactical decisions to you," he said. "You know better than I how to raid a fortress like this. The last time I did any raiding—well. No one had guns, then, let alone cameras."

"We also need to figure out how big of a mess we want to make," Andromache said. She poured herself a second, large cup of coffee. "Do we burn the place to the ground or do we get in get Daeron and get out?"

"I can destroy the buildings," said Maglor.

"What, you can pitch your voice just so?" Nicky asked. Joe snorted. "Like breaking glass, only it's concrete and steel?"

"It isn't the pitch," Maglor said, "it is the words. And it has been done before. Notably, my own cousin laid bare the pits of Dol Guldur at the end of the War of the Ring."

Andromache narrowed her eyes at him. "Have you done it before?"

"Destroyed one of Sauron's strongholds? No. But this compound is no Dol Guldur and certainly no Tol Sirion; unless they are keeping some strange secrets indeed it will be as easy as toppling a sandcastle."

"God, it's too early for you to be dropping names like we're supposed to know what you're talking about," Nile grumbled as she pulled a tablet out of her bag. "I know Dol Guldur, I think."

"It was Sauron's stronghold in Mirkwood, when he was known as the Necromancer. And later the Nazgûl held it for a time. You can ask Thranduil about its downfall, if you like. He was there."

"Okay, we can get fantasy history lessons after we get back," Andromache said. "We're gonna be tipping our hand once we hit this place—if they don't know about us already they will once we get in and out."

"We just have to make sure they can't do anything about it," said Nicky. He sipped his coffee, looking quietly dangerous. "But what can we expect from Daeron?"

"He'll know me," said Maglor. "And I suppose he might sing the place to rubble of his own accord, if he is angry enough. He is accounted the mightiest singer among the Eldar."

"Where do you rank?" Quynh asked.

Maglor flashed her a smile. "Second."

"I call bullshit," Nile said.

"So the songs say," Maglor said, and he chanted, softly:

And when the stars began to shine
unseen but near a piping woke,
and in the branches of an oak,
or seated on the beech-leaves brown,
Daeron the dark with ferny crown
Played with bewildering wizard's art
music for the breaking of the heart.
Such players have there only been
thrice in all Elfinesse, I ween:
Tinfang Gelion who still the moon
enchants on summer nights of June
and kindles the pale firstling star;
And he who harps upon the far
forgotten beaches and dark shores
where western foam for ever roars,
Maglor whose voice is like the sea;
and Daeron, mightiest of the three.

"So says the Lay of Leithian. And so Daeron was playing and Lúthien dancing in the beech woods of Doriath when Beren came down through the Girdle with fate heavy upon him."

"I thought you didn't know that one," said Nile.

"Of course I know it. I am the second-greatest minstrel of the Eldar: I know all of the great songs of the Elder Days—but it is not mine to sing, especially not here at Thranduil's court." He peered over Nile's shoulder at the clock on her tablet. "And speaking of Thranduil, it is time for us to take leave of our hosts."

Their leave-taking was not exactly merry, but there were many smiles and wishes for good fortune on their quest. Thranduil was grave as he bid Maglor to try to stay alive. Aeramath was more cheerful as she performed the customary gift-giving. Maglor did not see what she gave each of the others; for himself she pressed a small wooden flute into his hands, carved with delicate, swirling runes that very nearly looked like vines and flowers, unless you knew what to look for.

Linnoriel handed him two knives, leaf-shaped and deadly sharp. "One is for Daeron," she said. "Do make sure he doesn't cut his own fingers off if he tries to use it."

"If all goes well, there won't be anyone for him to use it on by the time we're making our way out," Maglor said, as he dropped both the knives into his rucksack, alongside the flute.

As he turned toward the cars, Maglor paused. The gates at the far end of the drive were swinging open on silent hinges, but they should not have been—not yet. "What in the world…?" Thranduil stepped forward. "Galion!" As he spoke, Galion and the other gate keepers knelt on either side of the open gates, and a group of almost two dozen elves strode in. They were clad in hunting gear, except it was not truly for hunting, since the leathers and furs glittered with gems and clicked with beads and was adorned with intricate lacing and embroidery. They all carried spears with elaborately carved shafts. Nearly all were dark-haired and grey-eyed, but for the one at their head whose hair gleamed like burnished copper in the sun, with emeralds woven into the elaborate braids. A hush fell over the courtyard; even the birds seemed to cease their singing, and the breeze stopped rustling the leaves.

They approached the party by the chateau doors, and parted to reveal a pair of elves in the center. The escort formed two lines and thumped the butts of their spear shafts on the gravel, and as one Thranduil and his queen and their court knelt. Maglor dropped to his knee with them.

The pair of Elves in the center were clad similarly to their guards. The man was tall and scarred, with missing fingers on his left hand, and a patch over where his right eye had once been. A livid scar ran down from his scalp to his chin, passing beneath the patch. His remaining eye was dark as deep water, and in it was reflected the light of ancient stars. So too were the eyes of his companion, a woman who was not tall at all, but whose presence made her seem to have a much greater stature. Her hair was silver, and flowed loosely down her back and was held out of her face with a copper circlet set with garnets and sapphires.

Maglor had never before met one of the Unbegotten. He had known many, his own grandfather among them, who had been born at Cuiviénen, but even they were not so old as these two, with the weight of countless years behind their eyes, the first to open of all the Children of Ilúvatar on the earth; the first ears to hear the sound of flowing water and the wind in the grass; the first tongues to speak with words; the first hands to make things; the first hearts to love and yearn and dream.

"We have heard that Canafinwë Macalaurë is leading a party to rescue Daeron of Doriath from a group of Men who have taken him captive," said the woman. "Is this true?"
Maglor raised his head. "It is, Lady," he said. Behind him he thought he heard Andromache make a quiet, indignant noise, but this was not the time to argue details—which Andromache seemed to understand, since she subsided and did not say anything.

The lady gestured to him to rise and approach her, and so he did. He stood almost as tall as her companion, which meant he towered over her. Meeting her gaze was like having his mind cut into with the sharp precision of a scalpel. Even Galadriel could have taken lessons from this lady. She seemed to be searching for something in him, though whether she found it or not was impossible to say, and he dared not ask. She said, "Daeron is not alone in his captivity. One of our own was taken in Calais not two days ago. Eldur tried to stop it, but was unsuccessful, and returned to us only with this." She held out her hand, and on her palm was a patch from a jacket, with a stylized tower in white thread, that looked almost more like a rocket (or a missile) than a tower, with a T worked into the negative space near its base. The logo of Turralba. "Her name is Calwë. Bring her back, if you can."

Maglor nodded. "I will," he said.

Unexpectedly, she smiled. "I expect nothing less, Macalaurë of the Tatyar. And when you return, we will speak more. I have long wished for this meeting, but it was not in the stars." She gripped his shoulder so he leaned forward, and she pressed a kiss to his forehead. "May the stars light your path, my child. Destroy this Turralba that seeks to ruin our peace."

And with that she stepped back, looked past him as though taking the measure of those who were to accompany him, and then as one the Avari turned and departed, leaving the courtyard silent with surprise and awe. Into the silence Nile's voice, though she spoke half in a whisper, seemed loud and jarring when she asked, "Who was that?"

"Tatië, and Tata," said Thranduil after a moment, as everyone who was still kneeling got to their feet. "A great lord and lady of the Avari, and of the Unbegotten."

Maglor turned back to Thranduil. "Did you know that they were in France?"

"No. They keep to the mountains farther east, usually—but though they have settled realms of their own, many of the Avari wander far and wide and often. They have come to visit us before, usually at high summer for the feasting, but it has been many lives of Men since we last saw them." Thranduil's face was troubled. "What did Tatië say to you?"

"That one of their own was taken at Calais," said Maglor.

"By Turralba?" Joe asked. Maglor nodded.

"Then we need to get going," said Hathellas. She stepped forward and embraced her father, then her mother, and then Linnoriel. Radoriel was a step behind her. "Farewell! We will return soon and there will be much feasting and celebration, and perhaps even Tata and Tatië will dance with us!"

Norindo scurried over to Maglor as the party went to the cars. He scooped up the little dog and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. "Not this time, my friend," he said. "You must stay here and chase all the rabbits you wish." Norindo whined and licked his face. "Stay with Lady Linnoriel."

Linnoriel accepted Norindo into her arms. "Do try not to get yourself killed, Fëanorion," she said.

"I'll do my best."

He climbed into the minivan, this time sitting in the middle beside Nile, while Quynh took the front seat with Andromache. Radoriel and Hathellas had their own car, and were to lead the way to the airport outside of Paris where their private jet awaited them. Maglor leaned back in his seat and sighed, watching the trees pass by as they made their way down the forest road toward the outside world. Once he thought he saw at least one of the Avarin hunters, but when he looked back there was nothing.

"So what's Unbegotten mean?" Nile asked after a while.

"You know what beget means, right?" Joe asked.

"Uh—"

"When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much—"

"Oh. Okay." There were snickers, and then a pause. Then Nile asked, "So how the hell can someone be Unbegotten?"

"Maybe that's just how Elves are," said Joe. "They pop up out of flowers or whatever."

"That is not where Elven babies come from," Maglor said.

"Have a bunch of Elven babies of your own, do you?"

"I have five younger brothers. I think my mother would have much preferred finding them beneath her topiaries."

Andromache glanced at them all in the mirror. "If no Elvish babies were actually begotten, that wouldn't make the unbegotten ones special."

"They were the first," Maglor said, turning his gaze back to the window.

"The first what?"

"The first Elves."

There was more talk after that, debate and speculation and banter, but Maglor stared out of the window and ignored most of it. His thoughts turned away from the woods and toward their destination.

It took a couple of hours to reach the airport. As they began to see signs for Paris appearing by the roadside, Quynh asked abruptly, "What about Booker?"

The silence that fell over the car was sudden and deafening. Maglor glanced at Nile, who had her lips pressed tightly together, and at Joe and Nicky, who were looking at one another in silent conversation. Andromache's grip on the steering wheel tightened just slightly. "What about him?" she asked finally.

"Why is he not here with us?" Quynh asked. "I have been dreaming of him almost nightly, and all he's doing in Paris is getting miserably drunk every night." Nile winced. "Did he leave you?"

"No," Andromache said shortly.

This was not a conversation Maglor should have been present for, and he wished that Quynh had waited—or had asked earlier, when he wasn't around. As it was he turned his gaze resolutely out the window and pretended to be entirely absorbed in the French countryside. But no one offered a detailed explanation of Booker's transgressions, only that he had betrayed them and been exiled for it. Quynh was not satisfied with this, but no one would speak more on it. Nile did not speak at all.

They arrived at the small, private airport at last, and Maglor was very happy to leave the minivan and stretch his legs, and to escape the tension that had lingered even after Joe had forcefully changed the subject from Booker, whose absence seemed to suddenly yawn like a chasm between them all. Quynh followed Maglor as he strode away from the van, while the others went around gathering their things, while Radoriel and Hathellas disappeared into the relatively small building to do whatever it was they needed to do before they took flight.

"I don't understand," Quynh said as she and Maglor stood at the edge of the parking lot in the sunshine. On the verge at their feet grew more dandelions than grass, and bees were busy among them. "Why would he do it? Give them over to someone such as Merrick was? Why would he give himself over?" She wrapped her arms around herself, and scowled into the distance at the hazy outline of Paris.

"Only he can answer those questions," said Maglor.

"I'm growing sick of the dreams," she said. "He is miserable, and lonely. A hundred years by himself at the bottom of a whiskey bottle will drive him as mad as I ever was at the bottom of the sea."

"Remember, he has also been dreaming of you," Maglor said quietly. Quynh shuddered. "Do you dream of one another every night?"

"No. But often enough." Quynh rubbed her arms as though she were cold, though the sun was warm. Someone had fixed the clumsy haircut that Maglor had given her, and now it was very short, and she kept running her fingers through it. "There is no time now, but when we return, will you—will you go with me to find him?"

"Of course." Maglor grinned at her. "You are going with me on a far more dangerous errand."

"It is more dangerous for you than for me," she pointed out.

"More dangerous for both of us than going to find one drunk man in Paris," Maglor replied. "There is Radoriel. It seems we are ready to take off."

Thranduil's private jet was luxurious, in an understated fashion. Maglor settled himself into one of the very comfortable seats beside a window, and by the time they began to taxi down the runway the party had split into three. He was by himself, the immortal mortals were clustered together, and Radoriel and Hathellas were seated near the front by the open door to the cockpit, where they could speak with the pilot and crew. As they sped up he saw Quynh grip Andromache's hand with white knuckles even as she leaned against the window, watching with wide eyes as they left the ground and the airport, and Paris, and all of France shrank beneath them.

Maglor turned back to his own window, and sighed, leaning back in his seat. "Maglor." He looked up to find Radoriel holding out a tablet and a set of ear buds. "In case you wanted to watch something, or listen to music," she said.

"Oh. Thank you."

"That's a lovely stone," she added, as he reached out to take the tablet. Maglor's hand went immediately to his father's gem. "I've never seen you wear it before."

"It was a recent gift."

He settled back and turned on the tablet as Radoriel returned to her sister. A peal of laughter could be heard from the cockpit. Outside they were passing through clouds and blue skies, and across the plane Nile had separated herself from the rest of the group and was reading something intently, while her older companions conversed in an old dialect in a tone that suggested they were reminiscing about something. Maglor put in the ear buds.

After some thought, he searched for Dennis Newman, and found a few talks he'd given at conferences of some description. The talks themselves were full of cliches and jargon, saying nothing through a great deal of words. Maglor muted the videos and focused on the man. He did not look particularly extraordinary. He was of average height, Maglor guessed, with sandy hair just starting to go grey. His eyes were brown, his skin slightly pockmarked, his face beginning to sag—although when he switched to another video that had gone away, and also his nose had changed slightly. Dennis Newman, as far as Maglor could tell just from looking at him, was a healthy, rich white American businessman who did not want to admit that he was no longer in the first bloom of youth. Though of course it went farther than that. If he was kidnapping elves on whom to experiment, Maglor was willing to wager that Newman not only did not want to admit that he was aging, he wanted to stop it.

"Like Númenor all over again," Maglor muttered. Newman also kept wearing t-shirts with a red and white and blue logo that looked familiar, but which Maglor couldn't place. It wasn't an official United States symbol—but upon searching the Internet he realized it was supposed to be the shield of Captain America—a comic book super soldier, for whom Dennis Newman seemed to have a fondness. Maybe there was more to his plans than mere immortality. Maglor shook his head and abandoned the videos in favor of putting the whole music app on shuffle and closing his eyes.

The flight was a long one. Maglor spent much of it dozing or staring out of the window at the ocean far below, with music in his ears and his thoughts far away from Europe or America or the task soon to be at hand. He was considering whether to make his own ship or just buy one when Nile came to sit in the seat just across from him, her expression pensive. He took his ear buds out. "So," she said after a moment, "back when I first met everyone," she gestured back toward the other immortal mortals, as Joe threw back his head with laughter at something Nicky had said, and Quynh and Andromache leaned into one another, both giggling and looking surprisingly young. "Back when I first met them," Nile went on, "I asked whether they were the good guys or the bad guys."

"And what did they say?"

"Booker said it depended on the century. Nicky said they've always tried to do what they thought was right. But what would you say if I asked you that question?"

Sweet Elbereth, but she was young. It was almost easy to forget, because she was as unkillable as the others, but she had acquired that particular power only recently. Maglor sighed. "I would say that your friend Booker has the right idea, and that very few of us, of any race, purposely set out to be the—as you say—bad guys."

"So you'd say that you always tried to do what you thought was right?" Nile asked, her dark eyes narrowing ever so slightly.

"We did in the beginning. By the end—well, you read what I said to Maedhros. Less evil would we have done in the breaking of our Oath, though we be doomed to darkness everlasting."

"But you didn't."

"We tried. After Doriath, Maedhros forswore it, and we stayed away from Sirion. But our father did not make things that were easy to break. The Oath was…it was more than a mere promise. More than mere words. It would not be forgotten and it would not be tossed aside, and in the end Maedhros was not strong enough to withstand it, and I was not strong enough to gainsay him." His gaze had strayed to the window, to the clouds passing grey and white beneath them, and he rubbed at the gem around his neck. It was warm beneath his fingers—but a comforting warmth, rather than the searing pain of the Silmaril when he'd at last grasped it. He looked back at Nile. "I am not making excuses. By the end my brothers and I were not what you would call good guys." He gave her a crooked smile. "But if it makes you feel better, I have slain no kin since the end of the First Age, and I have largely done nothing either particularly good or particularly bad since."

"I don't know if it does," Nile said. "What about your oath? I mean, does it still…bother you?"

"No. We fulfilled it as far as it could be fulfilled, Maedhros and I. I threw mine into the Sea, and there it has stayed. Even if the Oath were still active, it would still be moot since no one here has a Silmaril."

Nile pursed her lips. She didn't seem satisfied with his answers. "Do you regret it, though?" she asked. "I mean, you're talking about—about attacking a refugee camp, like it's nothing."

Maglor leaned forward. "Of course it wasn't nothing, and of course I regret it. I am rather famous for my pain and regret, in fact. But if even now, after countless centuries, I continued to wallow in it, I would go mad. Ask your friend Booker."

"How do you know what Booker's problem is?"

"Am I wrong?"

Her lips pursed again. "I don't know. He misses his family. But we're not talking about Booker, we're talking about you."

"I am not a villain, Nile. Perhaps you don't like to take the word of a kinslayer, but I give it to you anyway. I have no plans to betray anyone. Only to rescue Daeron, and Calwë, and perhaps to find out how and why this Dennis Newman and his private army have decided to begin hunting down Elves."

Nile snorted. "If your story proves anything it's that you can keep a promise." She got up and returned to the others. Maglor put his ear buds back in as they all leaned in for a conference, doubtless about him. He hoped they would not back out once they landed, but if they did…well, he would think of something. He was still sorely out of practice, but if it came down to it he thought he could sing Turralba's headquarters into submission. It would put him in bed for at least a week afterward and Daeron would not let him hear the end of it, but he could do it…

At long last, they began to circle the airport. They were not flying into New York, but into Boston, and they would drive the rest of the way. Yet another chunk of time sitting in a vehicle. Maglor's legs felt cramped at the very thought. As they all piled into a large van, with Hathellas and Radoriel in the front, Andromache pulled out the tablet with the satellite images of the Turralba headquarters to consider further how they were going to infiltrate it. There were going to be perimeter guards, and a high fence that might or might not be electric.

"Can you magic the fence or something?" Nile asked Maglor, poking him in the shoulder from behind. "You can magic people."

"I could probably come up with a song to plunge the whole place into darkness," said Maglor. "If I could find the right turn of phrase—what's a good rhyme for wire?"

"That would be as good as calling ahead to tell them we're coming," Joe protested.

"Not necessarily," said Andromache. "What's the weather going to be like?"

"Thunderstorms are forecast tomorrow evening and the day after," Hathellas said from the front.

"Okay, so a power outage would work," said Andromache.

"I can more easily wrap us all in shadow as we enter the grounds," said Maglor. "No one will see us coming until we are on top of them—and perhaps not even then."

"Does that work on cameras?" Nicky asked.

"It should."

In total, they traveled for a full day before reaching the cabin that Lumorn had rented in the Catskills. The cabin was still an hour away from the Turralba headquarters, a comfortable enough distance since they were fairly sure that no one else knew they were there. Lumorn looked as tired as Maglor felt when he opened the door for them. Radoriel immediately enveloped him in an embrace. "Thank all of the Powers, you've arrived," Lumorn said. "I don't think I've slept in a week."

"Well, we aren't here to simply whisk you away, you know," Hathellas said.

"Yes, you're here to rescue Daeron." Lumorn reached around his sisters to grasp Maglor's hand in greeting. "Hullo, Maglor. And hullo, everyone. Please come in. I've set up beds and sofas, and I've stocked the fridge if you're hungry."

There was the usual shuffle and confusion of activity that accompanied arrival in a new place, this one complicated by several large weapons and a surprising amount of plastic explosives that Nicky had packed without remembering to tell anyone. By the time Maglor slumped onto the couch that was to be his bed, he was weary enough that he fell asleep almost immediately. He dreamed of walking down a long stretch of lonely beach beneath a storm-dark sky, as the waves crashed against the stones in a steady and familiar rhythm.

"Stop fiddling with it, you're going to lose it," Nile said as Maglor poked at the radio piece in his ear for the umpteenth time during their hike through tangled honeysuckle toward Turralba's headquarters.

"It feels too big," Maglor replied, but he lowered his hands in favor of bracing himself against a large mossy rock as the mountainside suddenly acquired a very steep incline. Nile scrambled down with the nimbleness of a mountain goat—and the confidence of someone who would recover instantly from a broken neck. Maglor watched her path and followed it, more or less, at a more sensible pace.

"It's not that big," Nile said once they were at the bottom, and the land evened out a little bit. "You were wearing ear buds on the plane with no problem."

"Those were attached to a cord," Maglor said.

"Are you two in position yet?" crackled Joe's voice through the ear piece on question. Maglor grimaced.

"Not yet," said Nile. "Almost." She and Maglor clambered up another slope, from which they had a decent view of the back of the compound, which was fenced in, with a clear stretch of land between the fence and the forest. Inside the fence was an extensive obstacle course, and smaller buildings to simulate urban battlefields, and other buildings and contraptions that Maglor could not identify. Nile settled in on her stomach and pulled out a pair of binoculars. "Damn," she remarked, "that's a helluva setup."

"Feeling nostalgic for boot camp?" Maglor asked as he lay down beside her. Nile made a face. "There doesn't seem to be many people down there."

"No," Nile agreed as she pressed the binoculars to her eyes. "They've got guard stations around the fence line, but it looks like just two guys to a spot." She paused. "Ah, with high powered rifles."

Maglor let her survey the perimeter while he trained his gaze on the main building itself. It was somewhat taller than he had expected, made of concrete and glass, all hard angles and straight lines. "Who decided that this design was attractive in a building?" he muttered as he squinted against the sun glare on the windows. "Nile, someone is arriving." A trio of SUVs was pulling into the drive.

"Nicky, do you see them?" Nile asked.

"I see them. I think it's the party that tried to take Maglor at his house. They don't seem too happy." There was a pause as Maglor watched a small figure with a hood over their head stumble out of the back of the middle SUV.

"Calwë," he said, as they were led in through a small side door, away from the main entrance.

"Took them a while to get her back here, if it is," Nile said.

"Took them a while to get themselves back here," Maglor replied. He looked at the sky. It was clear blue and cloudless, in spite of the forecast for later that afternoon and evening. The day was warm, and the woods were heavy with the scent of pine and honeysuckle. Somewhere not far away behind them he could hear the trickle of water. He looked back at the compound. Daeron was in there, somewhere. "How deep do you suppose their basements go?"

"Are we calling them basements or dungeons?" Nile replied.

"Depends on what they're keeping in them," Andromache said. "We found the power generators. Are we sneaking in to dismantle them or has Maglor found a good rhyme for wire?"

"Anaië, cair, sedair, fire, expire, quagmire, shire, lyre, spire—"

"Jesus H. Christ, okay, we get it."

"Though speaking of fire…" Andromache trailed off, sounding thoughtful. Nile huffed a sigh.

A noise behind them made Maglor turn, and he found himself staring into the face of an extraordinarily large black bear, who looked just as surprised as he was to find people up on the hillside where they should not have been. "Nile," Maglor said, very calmly.

"Yeah?"

"If we were to start making a great deal of noise, would we be heard from down there?"

"Depends on the noise, why?" Before Maglor could answer the bear snorted, and Nile turned, and froze. "Oh. Shit."

For several long seconds they stared at the bear, and the bear stared at them. Nile said out of the corner of her mouth, "Can't you ask it to go away?"

"You mistake me for my brother," Maglor hissed.

Nile glanced over her shoulder toward the compound, and then grabbed a stick and threw it at the bear, who turned and fled. Maglor rolled onto his stomach to peer down at the building, but if anyone had seen the movement, they were not alarmed by it. "Make a note, guys, there's bears," Nile said.

"Just black bears," said Andromache, and Maglor could imagine her waving a hand in dismissal.

Easy to dismiss the thought of a bear when you weren't staring one in the face. Although it could have been worse—at least there were no grizzly bears in New York. Maglor peered down the slope, and then said to Nile, "I am going to get a closer look."

"Wait—" She scrambled after him, and together they made their way down to the edge of the trees. Maglor crouched down in the shadows of a large and old pine, and squinted at the closest watch station. One of the men left it to walk along their portion of the fenced perimeter. At this distance he couldn't tell whether the fence was electric or not, though the curls of barbed wire at the top were discouraging enough. Were they to keep people out, or in, Maglor wondered.

As he and Nile headed back up the mountain to meet the others, Maglor asked her, "Do you think it's possible they have others held captive?"

"You mean like other elves?" Nile asked.

"No. Well—yes, I suppose. But not necessarily. I assume they are doing some sort of experimentation…"

"Yeah, same."

"But are they using their own people, or…?"

Nile grimaced. "God, I hope they're not just snatching people off the street."

"I suppose it depends on what kind of experiments they're doing."

They reached the place where the car was hidden; Radoriel dropped out of a tree as they approached, and after a few minutes Quynh and Andromache also joined them. Joe and Nicky were going to remain in place for a few more hours, observing patterns, and watching who was coming and going. Nile asked Andromache what she felt about the possibility that there were others besides Calwë and Daeron in need of rescue.

"If Quynh weren't dreaming about him getting drunk in Paris," Andromache replied, "I'd be worried that they've got Booker in there." Nile shuddered. "What we really need to worry about is whether everyone we're rescuing can get out on their own two feet."

They retreated to the rented cabin to study blueprints and satellite photographs again. Nile looked into missing persons cases in the area, but statistically there was nothing out of the ordinary (although the ordinary numbers were alarming enough, in Maglor's opinion). And if other Elves had been taken there would be no reports anyway. Maglor spent most of the afternoon outside with his flute. Hathellas joined him with a guitar after lunch, and they played until it was time to return to the compound. Clouds gathered as Andromache tossed a bag of weapons into the back and the rest of them piled in; Lumorn remained behind, with a radio in one hand and his laptop and cell phone on the table; he would be their link to the rest of the world, in case some news or new information was discovered while they were inside the compound. It was quiet as they drove back to the place where they had parked before. Joe and Nicky were waiting for them, lounging beneath a tree, Joe resting his head on Nicky's shoulder. When Maglor got out of the van he tilted his head back and inhaled deeply. It smelled like rain, and the air was charged. A storm was coming—and as he had the thought, thunder rumbled.

"Perfect," said Andromache.

"I will wait here," said Radoriel from inside the van. She waved the radio at them. "Keep me updated, so I know when and where to meet you when you're done!"

"Don't worry, I'm not going in with you," said Hathellas when Andromache frowned at her. She hoisted a rucksack onto her shoulders. "I will wait outside. But you may need me if someone is hurt."

"Speaking of hurt," said Nile, "where's your vest, Andy?" Andromache rolled her eyes, and reached back into the van, pulling out a compact Kevlar vest. Then she pulled out another, slightly larger one and tossed at Maglor. He caught it and pulled it on, keeping his expression impassive, though he was relieved that he wasn't going to have to deal with any gunshot wounds—at least to his torso. He stretched his arms, and his wounded shoulder twinged a bit, but it wasn't too bad. Meanwhile, the others loaded themselves up with weapons. Maglor saw several grenades of various kinds, a ridiculous number of guns, and both Nicky and Joe carried swords, while Andromache had her ax. Quynh carried an absurd number of knives as well as a sword and several pistols.

"May the stars guide your steps," said Radoriel, and with that they headed off into the darkening woods. Maglor saw better than the others in the dark and so he took the lead, until they drew closer to the compound. Then Andromache and Quynh moved ahead, and everyone who had a gun drew it. They crept around the tree line to the place where the power generators were, and settled in to wait for the storm to begin in earnest.

"You do actually have a magic song to cut the power, right?" Joe asked, bumping his shoulder against Maglor's.

"Yes," Maglor said.

"Are you sure it's going to work? Because we don't have a stealthy Plan B."

"What is Plan B?" Maglor asked. In reply, Joe held up a brick of plastic explosives. "Ah."

"Shh!" Andromache pointed to a guard walking the perimeter of the fence. They all shrank lower to the ground, though they were shrouded in tree-shadows, and it was swiftly growing dark with both night and cloud.

"There's the rain," Hathellas said softly as raindrops began to patter on the leaves above them. It began with just a few drops, and then a sudden downpour that drenched them all in seconds. Lightning flashed across the sky and a loud crack of thunder rattled the very air.

"Better start singing," Andromache said.

"Don't interrupt me," Maglor warned, and crept forward a step or two, without leaving the trees, closed his eyes, and began to sing, softly at first but with firm purpose, turning all of his thought and the power of his voice to the generators. He could feel them humming with electricity, as though he were standing in their midst. The hair on his arms stood up. Lightning and thunder split the sky above him and he wove them into his song, and the rushing rhythm of the driving rain and the howling of the wind as it picked up, tossing the tree branches and slanting the rainfall almost sideways. Maglor reached out and clenched his fist as his song reached its crescendo, and he opened his eyes to see the lights in the windows go out. A few flickered back on, dimly, but the vast majority of the building remained silent.

As he had been singing Joe and Nicky had darted forward with wire cutters, and Maglor hurried behind Quynh and Nile and Andromache to slip through the opening. As they passed the generators toward the nearest entrance he murmured a few words, and the night-shadows drew in and wrapped around them like a cloak. Inside they hurried down a narrow, dark corridor, their boots squeaking slightly on the tiled floors. It would not matter before long that they were leaving a trail of water behind them, but Maglor spared a brief moment to hope that no one would find it before things started to blow up.

"Okay," Andromache said as they came to a stairwell. "Joe, Nicky, we go up. Nile, Quynh, Maglor, you go down."

"I'll take point," said Nile, and headed for the stairs. Maglor followed, and Quynh brought up the rear. They met no one on the stairs, which only went down one floor, to Maglor's surprise, but there were several white-coated figures in the hallway outside the door. Nile prepared to go in shooting, but Maglor held out a hand.

"We aren't the ones meant to make a fuss," he said. "Let me." He pushed open the door and spoke two words as the figures turned at the sound. They dropped soundlessly.
"Are we going to just leave them?" Quynh asked as they cautiously left the stairwell.

"Drag them in here," said Nile, opening a closet. She broke off the handle when they had, and they moved on, pausing at each door they encountered to peer inside. Most looked like laboratories of various kinds, with vent hoods and Bunsen burners, and microscopes and other machines and tools that he did not recognize. Maglor stopped at one room and stared at what lay on a work table. Like a handful of stars, gemstones gleamed in the darkened room.

"Hey, what—" Nile began when he pushed opened the door. "What are those?"

"Fëanorian lamps," Maglor said, as he picked one up. "The art was lost long ago. Where can they have found these?" There were four of them, one cracked down the middle and considerably dimmer than the others. Quynh picked one up and turned it over in her fingers, making the light flicker over her face and in her eyes as it brightened at her touch.

"Are they dangerous?" Nile asked, standing at the door with one eye on the hallway.

"No." Even so, he did not like the thought of them here-these people did not deserve them. Maglor scooped them all into a pocket, and then he and Quynh made a thorough search of the room in case there were other ancient things in there. Quynh pulled out a drawer and then a box from that drawer. Inside was a pile of jewelry.

"Take that," Nile said, catching a glimpse of it. "Jewelry is always dangerous."

"Only rings, really," Maglor said mildly as Quynh slipped the box into a bag. "And their power died with the One."

"Yeah, well, doesn't mean no one's made any weird rings since then," said Nile. Somewhere far over their heads was the sound of a muffled explosion. "Come on."

They began to search each room as they came to it, just in case. They found nothing more until they reached a room with a great big machine like a large white tube inside, and a smaller chamber just off of it, with two people scowling and poking at buttons and clicking at screens. Maglor peered at the large machine and spotted a pair of legs sticking out, strapped to the bench.

"What is that?" Quynh breathed, eyes wide with horror.

"It's an MRI machine," said Nile. "It doesn't hurt, but it really sucks if you're claustrophobic." Quynh shuddered, and Nile winced.

"What does it do?"

"It takes images of your organs and stuff." Quynh looked even more horrified.

"I think that must be Daeron," said Maglor.

"Don't kill the scientists," Nile said to Quynh. "I have some questions." Quynh nodded, unsheathing a knife. Then she and Nile burst into the room and into the control room before anyone could react. Maglor glanced up and down the hallway to ensure it was empty before following, going instead to the MRI machine itself. It was off, thanks to the power going out. The restraints were not the sort that needed a key, so Maglor ripped them off Daeron's legs and then his wrists as he pulled him out. There was a piece of duct tape over his mouth, his thick dark hair was all in a tangle, and his eyes glassy.

"Daeron," Maglor said, as Daeron blinked up at him. "It's me. Can you walk?" He pulled the tape off, hearing a muffled and cut short protest from someone behind him.

"Maglor?" Daeron blinked again. "What…how are you here…?" His words slurred slightly, and his voice was little more than a rasp.

"What did they drug you with?" Maglor asked as he hauled Daeron into a sitting position. Daeron swayed dangerously once he was upright. Quynh appeared at Maglor's side with a water bottle, which Daeron took a drink from gratefully. "Can you stand?" Maglor asked.

"Probably," said Daeron, sounding a little better. "What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you," said Maglor. "And someone else was taken, as well. Come on." He hauled Daeron up, pulling his arm over his shoulders to support him.

Nile was waiting for them in the hall. "There's another level below this one," she said. "Stairs are this way."

"I knew there had to be more basements," Maglor muttered.

"That's where they've been keeping me," said Daeron, as he squinted at Nile and then at Quynh. Nile darted ahead as Maglor murmured a few words to cover Daeron in his cloak of shadows. "Sloppy," Daeron said.

"I would like to see you do better," said Maglor as they turned a corner. Up ahead were two people in white coats and another person in fatigues. Nile was on them before they knew it, and then they were past, reaching a stairwell and hurrying down—or Nile and Quynh hurried, at least. Maglor and Daeron remained at the top. There was no guarantee there would be another way up, and Maglor shuddered at the thought of being trapped down there. At the top of the stair, hidden behind the door, Daeron slid to the floor and closed his eyes. Maglor crouched beside him. "Can I do anything for you?"

"It's wearing off," Daeron said without opening his eyes. "How did you know to come looking for me?"

"Turralba tried to take me, too. Only I had a warning."

"Who are your companions?"

"Quynh and Nile. Upstairs somewhere are Joe and Nicky and Andromache. Waiting outside are two of Thranduil's daughters."

"Oh." Daeron opened one eye. "Who warned you?"

"His name is Copley. He works with Andromache and the others. It's rather complicated." Maglor rose to peer out of the door, but the hallway remained clear. "Do you know that Turralba wants with us?"

"Something about immortality, something about better soldiers. I stopped listening long ago. It sounded like Númenor all over again."

"Yes, that is what I thought."

"They know the old histories. One would think they would have learned from them."

"I suppose there will always be someone who believes they are better, or different enough. I only hope we can raze this place low enough that they will be unable to come after us again—or after Quynh and the others." Because they had what Newman and his people wanted.

"What's taking you so long?" Andromache barked in Maglor's ear. He grimaced.

Nile answered, "It's a fucking maze down here. We've got Calwë and are coming back up."

"Come to the fourth floor," said Nicky.

"What's on the fourth floor?" both Andy and Nile asked.

"Weird shit," Joe replied, before he was drowned out by a hail of gunfire.

"What kind of weird shit?" Quynh wanted to know.

"I don't know, weird."

"Do you know what kind of weird shit they might be keeping here?" Maglor asked Daeron.

"No."

Nile and Quynh reappeared a minute later, bringing a tall elven woman with them. Her dark eyes swept over Maglor and Daeron with wary curiosity; her inky black hair was bound up in tight braids woven with river pearls, and in her hand was one of Quynh's knives. "Calwë?" Maglor asked.

"You are Maglor," she replied, and it was not a question.

"I am." Maglor hauled Daeron to his feet and they hurried down the hall, Nile giving an update to Andromache as they went. These lower floors remained mostly empty; whatever the others were doing, it was serving its purpose: no one realized that this was a rescue.

"What are you planning to do with the one in charge?" Calwë asked as they took the stairs.

"If we happen to meet him," Maglor said, "I have several questions."

"Then we can always defenestrate him," Nile added cheerfully. "That's what we did to the last asshole." Quynh glanced at Maglor, who shrugged.

They made it to the fourth floor with surprisingly little trouble. The hallway outside of the stairs looked like a war zone. "Joe, where are you?" Nile asked as she crouched to grab an extra clip off of a body.

"Down here." Joe's voice echoed oddly as it came through the radio and through the air, as he poked his head out of a doorway down the hall. Maglor grabbed Daeron's arm to steady him as they picked their way over.

The room inside was a strange cross between a museum and a bank vault. Turralba took pride, it seemed, in the old things it had manged to find. There was a copy of the Red Book beneath a box of glass—nearly as old as the one Maglor had had in his keeping. There were more Fëanorian lamps and a few rings under glass that Maglor supposed Newman thought must be rings of power, though they looked like ordinary rings to him, not even of elven make.

"That's not the weird shit," said Nicky from down the room. He stood by another case, in which an orb of dark glass or stone was set. Maglor's breath caught in his throat as he approached. The orb did not reflect the light of Nicky's flashlight, but seemed to absorb it, but for an occasional flicker of light or color deep within it. "What is it?" Nicky asked. Behind them Maglor heard the door open, and Andromache's voice barking at everyone to get moving, but he ignored her.

"It is a palantír," he said. "But—they were lost, all of them, long ago. How can it be here?"

"Same way your friends can," Nicky said. He lifted his gun and smashed the glass with the butt of it. A red light illuminated over their heads and an alarm began to blare. Somehow they had missed the backup power. Maglor ignored it and seized the palantír; he had forgotten how heavy they could be. He dumped it into his bag and turned to see Quynh taking the other Fëanorian crystal lamps, and Daeron and Calwë seizing the copy of the Red Book. He also saw Joe and Nile breaking glass, but did not see what they were taking.

"Looting was not part of the plan," Andromache barked from the door. "Come on!"

"Trust me," Maglor said as he joined her at the door, "you do not want some of these things in Turralba's hands."

Quynh appeared at Andromache's shoulder. "Where is the one in charge?" she asked. "Newman?"

"Probably upstairs," Andromache replied. "Assholes like him always have a penthouse."

"He could also have fled," Maglor replied.

"Hathellas is watching the road. She would've warned us."

"I have not seen him," Hathellas confirmed over the radio. "Is everything all right?"

A dozen soldiers rounded the corner down the hall. Maglor dropped to a knee as Andromache and Quynh opened fire. "Fine," he said. "All going according to plan."

"I hope that was a joke," Daeron said behind him.

"Clear," Andromache said. She wiped blood away from a slim cut on her cheek, leaving behind a smear of bright red. "Come on, let's go. If Newman's in the building he'll come down with it."

As they left the room of artifacts, Maglor handed Daeron the flute that Aeramath had given to him. Daeron blew a few experimental notes, and then grinned. "I shall need your help when we bring this place down," Maglor said, as they moved to the stairs. As he stepped over a body the lights came on. Someone had found another power source.

"Elevators are working again," Joe remarked. "We still taking the stairs?" As he spoke they passed an elevator and its doors dinged open. Everyone with a gun raised it, but no one was inside. Quynh backed up several steps anyway, jaw going tight. Maglor caught her arm and squeezed it briefly.

"We take the stairs," Andromache said firmly.

"We could be trapped in them," Calwë protested.

"We could be trapped in an elevator, too," Andromache replied. "Follow me."

When they came to the door leading to the stairway, Maglor caught Andromache's arm. "Wait," he said. "Let me go in first."

"So you can get shot?" Quynh demanded.

"So I can clear the way. Stay out here, unless you fancy a nap." Maglor opened the door carefully. He could hear voices above and below, echoing through the strange acoustics of such passages. He turned and found Daeron with him, flute in hand. He lifted it to his lips and began to play. It was an ancient, lilting tune that had once flowed through the nightingale-haunted glades of Neldoreth. Maglor waited a few bars and then began to sing, his voice joining the power of the waves on ancient shores to the nightingale-sweetness of the flute, as he sang of deep darkness and stillness. His voice echoed off of the walls and through the stairs, and the flute's notes wound around the words like a dancer. Shouts rang up from below them, but by the time Maglor had sung two verses of the lullaby, there was no other sound. He fell silent, and Daeron lowered his flute.

When the last echoes of their song died away, Maglor opened the door. "Hurry," he said.

Calwë peered down over the railing, and nodded, looking satisfied. The others immediately started down the stairs, jumping the last few to the landings. Maglor followed last, glancing up often. Anyone in the stairwell would be asleep, but it would take more time than they had to lock all of the doors. No one followed them until they passed the second floor; just as Maglor turned to go down the final set of stairs the door burst open and half a dozen men piled through. One saw Maglor and immediately fired his gun. Maglor ducked and almost thought he could feel the bullet pass by his hair. "Go, go!" he said, when Joe paused to look back. Joe did not go, but waited until Maglor passed him so that he was the last one. He fired several rounds into the knot of pursuers before turning to catch up again.

They took the emergency exit at the bottom of the stairs and found themselves in a side parking lot. It was still raining hard, and the wind drove it towards the building, splashing into Maglor's eyes. As the door shut behind Joe Maglor turned to it and spoke three words. They dropped from his lips like heavy stones, and a moment later the soldiers crashed into the door from the other side. It did not budge. "Nice," Joe said.

"Don't ask me to do it again," Maglor said, staggering a little as he turned away.

"This way!" Nile had taken the lead, racing around the corner of the building towards the generators. Joe grabbed Maglor's arm to help him along when he staggered.

"Can you still sing the place down?" Joe asked as they ran.

"Yes." But after that he would be spent, and he did not like to think of how he'd get back to the car afterward.

They reached the place in the fence that had been cut earlier, and slipped through, one by one. When they reached the safety of the trees Maglor stopped and turned, stepping back out into the open. He closed his eyes and let the rain wash over him for a moment as he caught his breath. At his side he felt Daeron. "Ready?" Daeron asked.

"When you are."

"What is your purpose?"

"To destroy the entire thing, from roof to foundation." Maglor opened his eyes and saw Daeron's eyes glittering in the dark and rain. Lightning flashed and lit his face, white beneath dark hair. Maglor grinned back and then turned all of his thought and attention to the building before them, with its labs and its weapons and the thieves and kidnappers and killers that had made it. He began to sing. After the first few words Daeron joined him, and together they wove their songs together, of breaking glass and cracking stone, of crumbling walls and foundations turned to sand.

This was not like the lullaby they had used to clear the stairs of enemies. Maglor had not heard Daeron pour such power into his song for many centuries; the air crackled with it. Lightning flashed and once it even struck the building as they began to hear, even over the rain, the scream of over-burdened steal as it twisted and failed, and the ground beneath their feet shook not only with the boom of thunder. As their song swelled, Maglor heard someone cry out behind them, as the building crumpled, like a soda can crushed in a fist, before it fell, collapsing in on itself.

When the song was over, Maglor stumbled. Quynh caught him, and he had to lean heavily on her as they made their way back to the trees. Daeron was in only slightly better shape—he had been weaker to start with, but had not expended so much of his strength before that song. Hathellas was waiting in the tree-shadows with a flask in her hand. "Drink," she ordered, handing it first to Maglor, and then to Daeron. The drink was sweet and light as the finest elven wine, and clear and fresh as spring water. Not miruvor, but something very like it. Maglor felt immediately refreshed. "Everyone, take a sip," Hathellas said once Daeron had had his share. "Is anyone hurt?"

"No," said Calwë. "Where do we go from here?"

"Back to my sister at the van," said Hathellas. "This way. Follow me!"

"But it's pitch dark," Nile protested as Hathellas began to go deeper into the woods.

"Here." Maglor pulled one of the crystal lamps from his pocket. It was the cracked one, and so not as bright as the rest, but this close to the compound that seemed the wiser choice. He held it out, and Nile took it, her eyes going wide, shining in its clear and bright light.

"Hurry!" Hathellas said. "There may still be soldiers who escaped the collapse!"

Quynh kept a hold of Maglor's arm as they plunged back into the wood, and after a few minutes she wrestled his bag away from him; he had not even noticed how heavy the palantír was until its weight was gone. "Hathellas, do you remember the way back?" he asked.

"Of course I do!" she said over her shoulder. "Hurry up! Watch out for bears!"

The rain continued to fall heavily as they scrambled up muddy slopes and stumbled over stones and roots, though after a while the lightning and thunder passed on, and the wind lessened. They met no bears, because no self-respecting animal would have been out in that weather if they could be holed up in a warm and dry den instead. It seemed to Maglor that the hike back to Radoriel took far longer than the hike from her to the compound, but perhaps that was only weariness and discomfort, and not Hathellas losing her way. A Woodelf in the wood did not get lost, even on the darkest of stormy nights.

At last they came to the gravel road and the clearing where the van sat, its lights on and the engine running. Radoriel dropped out of a tree as Hathellas emerged from behind it. "You made it!" The sisters embraced. "Is everyone here?" Radoriel scanned their faces, and her smile was bright and wide. "And what's this?" she exclaimed, reaching for the shining gem in Nile's hand.

"They were stealing treasures as well as people, it seems," said Hathellas. "But we can speak more later."

"Yes, of course. Everyone in!"

They piled into the van. There were fewer seats than people, so Maglor ended up on the floor bracing himself against a seat and the wall as Radoriel drove rather more recklessly than he would have liked. "It's raining and we are on a mountain!" he protested as she took a sharp turn so quickly that he almost thought the van lifted onto two wheels for a moment.

"I know!" Radoriel replied. "Isn't it delightful?"

"I hope you didn't rescue me only to kill me when this thing goes over a cliff," Daeron said sourly. Radoriel laughed. It was not reassuring.

But at last they made it down the mountainside and she slowed to a more reasonable pace. The rain began to let up as well, so that it was only a light shower when they pulled up in front of the cabin where Lumorn waited. He had towels and fresh clothes laid out, and both coffee and tea in the kitchen. Both Radoriel and Hathellas did not wait to change from their dripping clothes to embrace him, in spite of his protests. Before long they were all only slightly damp rather than soaking wet, and gathered around the dining room table with mugs in hand, and the things they had rescued from Turralba spread out before them. The Fëanorian lamps shimmered in a small pile at one end of the table, beside the rings and bits of gem or gold. Maglor reached out and picked up a brooch of silver, in the shape of an eagle and set with a gemstone green as spring grass. He could feel the power within it. "Elessar," he said, marveling at it. "Where did they find this, I wonder?"

"Perhaps the same place they found the palantír," said Radoriel.

"What is it?" Nile asked, reaching out for the orb. She had it in her hands and was peering into its depths before Maglor could say a word of warning. Everyone watched as her gaze was drawn deeper and deeper. Then she gasped and dropped it. It hit the floor with a heavy thud before rolling away. Nile's face had gone grey.

"What did you see?" Calwë asked as Hathellas picked up Nile's mug to press it into her hands.

"Fire. And—and hands? Like someone else was holding it? But they were burning too."

Maglor sighed. Daeron said, "It is the Anor-stone, then. Not the Orthanc-stone, or Elostirion."

"The Elostirion-stone was taken west by the Ringbearers," said Maglor.

"Was it? I did not know that."

"Can someone please explain what any of that means?" Andromache asked.

Maglor left it to the others to explain the Seeing Stones, as he picked up the bits of jewelry and gemstones to examine. They were merely gold and stone, as far as he could tell, though a few of the rings had strange markings. Someone had been trying to create things of power, but they had not been successful. As he turned one of the rings over in his fingers Lumorn asked him, "It was said that Fëanor made the Seeing Stones. Is it true, Maglor?"

"Hm? Oh, yes." Maglor looked up. The palantír was back on the table, Nile eying it warily, and Andromache looking like she wanted to try her hand at it. If anyone could wrench the palantír to her will, Maglor suspected it would be Andromache. Though even she would have a fight, he thought. "He made dozens of them, trying to get them to a convenient size—we traveled all about Aman, when we were young, and he and our mother wanted to be able to speak with us at need."

"So how did this one end up here?" Nicky asked, pointing at the palantír almost accusingly.

"Tall ships and tall kings," said Radoriel.

Three times three,
What brought they from the foundered land
Over the flowing sea?
Seven stars and seven stones,
And one White Tree.

"That is the least helpful answer you could have given," said Joe, his tone bone-dry.

"The answers are all in The Lord of the Rings, which is available to you at any bookstore," Radoriel retorted. "Do none of you read?"

"Nile's read it."

"I skimmed parts of it," said Nile. "I did see the movies, but there was only one of these palantír things."

"They came to Middle-earth by way of Númenor," said Lumorn. "Seven of them, anyway. I never heard how many were given to Númenor, or who on Eressëa did the giving."

"Well, it must have been my mother Nerdanel," said Maglor. "They would have been in her possession, then. How the Anor-stone came to be here, though, who can say? It was thought to be lost long ago, with all the others. And with this." He held up the Elessar. "Of all of this I am most glad that we recovered the Elessar."

"Why?" Quynh asked.

Maglor did not answer. He tossed the ring to the table and turned the Elessar over in his hands. There on the back, still clear even after so many long, long years, was a C glyph. He rubbed his finger over it. The raw edges of his grief over Celebrimbor and Eregion had long ago been worn to smooth melancholy, but he felt a pang of it again, standing there in the light of lamps that may also have been made by Celebrimbor himself, holding one of his nephew's greatest works. Not as great, perhaps, as the Three, but in the end a better idea and use of his skills. He sighed and lowered the brooch to the table. "It's very late," he said. "I am going to bed."

"Someone should go back in the morning to make sure it's really all rubble," Andromache said.

"But not at dawn, surely," said Hathellas. "Maglor is right—it is very late and we all should rest."

"Someone put that thing away," Nile said, pointing at the palantír. Maglor scooped it back into his bag. "Thank you. Feels like it's watching us."

It wasn't worth explaining that that was not exactly how the palantíri worked. Maglor left the bag beneath the table and retreated to the room he was to share with Joe and Nicky. There were only two beds, but it was clear from how they fell onto the first one already tangled up together that Joe and Nicky did not mind sharing, and that they had also shared far more cramped spaces together. Maglor lay back and closed his eyes, breathing out a long sigh as muscles he hadn't even realized were tensed finally began to relax. But not wholly. It felt as though there was something they had forgotten, though as he lay and thought through everything, he could not think of what it was. They had destroyed the building and hopefully most of the worst parts of Turralba with it. They had rescued Daeron and Calwë, and more things they had not even thought to look for. Yet it felt unfinished.

Maglor rolled over and pressed his face into the pillow. The rain drummed steadily on the windowpane. He turned his attention to the sound, and was, slowly, lulled into an uneasy rest.

Maglor did not wake until long after the sun had risen cheerfully into a clear blue sky. He stepped outside to a puddled world still sparkling with the remnants of last night's rain. In spite of the bright sun the air was still heavy and damp, and even in the air-conditioned cabin he could feel his hair curling with it. Inside Lumorn and Radoriel clattered around the kitchen, bickering over what to make for breakfast with all the enthusiasm of those who almost never had to cook for themselves. Maglor had refused to be drawn into it, claiming a glass of orange juice and making his escape to the deck.

There was a hummingbird feeder at the far end, and a pair of hummingbirds, throats winking ruby-red in the bright morning, were chasing each other in circles around it, while at the larger feeder a few feet away a cardinal and a handful of house finches perched, calmly picking at the sunflower seeds. Beyond the deck was a small, neat yard, which led directly into the forest. In one of the trees near the edge Maglor saw movement, and recognized Calwë high in the branches, though he couldn't quite tell what she was doing. The woods were dense and the edge, at least, was thick with honeysuckle and blackberry brambles still in flower, lending a sweet fragrance to the air that otherwise smelled only of clean wet leaves and damp earth. As he leaned against the railing he heard flute music from just below him, and looked down to see Daeron lounging on the grass, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle, heedless of the wet, with his eyes closed as he trilled a short ditty.

"Good morning," said Maglor when Daeron paused to take a breath. "How are you feeling?"

"Much better," said Daeron, opening his eyes. "It is a relief to sit outside on the grass and see the sun and sky again. And to know that there will be no more strange experiments done in that place." Maglor hummed in agreement. "Have they stopped arguing in the kitchen? I would like breakfast, but it is too early for lengthy debate over the merits of waffles over pancakes."

"Waffles are clearly superior," Maglor said. "Alas, they were still deep in discussion when I passed by. Would you like me to get you a banana or something in the meantime?"

Before Daeron could answer, the door to the kitchen slid open, and the smell of waffles wafted out onto the deck. As Daeron got to his feet and tried to brush wet grass off of his jeans, Maglor turned to see Quynh stepping outside, barefoot and with her hair sticking up in tufts. She yawned a somewhat garbled "Good morning" before sitting down at the little round table near the bird feeders—only to leap up again with a yelp, having sat squarely in a puddle.

"Careful," Maglor said a beat too late. Quynh glared at him. Joe, who had come out just behind her, earned a glare of his own by laughing.

Radoriel poked her head outside. "There are waffles!" she announced. "Shall I bring a platter outside?"

"Someone should bring towels," said Maglor. "The seats are rather wet."

Nile was the one to emerge with the towels, and a bemused look on her face. Radoriel came out with a staggering tower of waffles, and Lumorn and Linnoriel followed with plates and other necessities. There was no formality to the meal; folk came and went as they woke. Calwë appeared, retrieved a plate and drowned her waffles in maple syrup, and vanished back up the tree. Daeron perched on the deck railing and between bites held an apparently engrossing conversation with a red-winged blackbird that came to perch atop the bird feeder. Nile watched this for a while before turning to Maglor, who had chosen to sit at the table. "Is that normal?"

"No," said Maglor. Before Nile could reply he added, "Normally he seeks out the nightingales, but they are not native to these lands." Nile gave him a baleful look, which Maglor only smiled at before returning his attention to breakfast.

Once everyone had eaten Maglor went to the dining room, where the palantír still sat beneath the table. He drew it out of its bag and regarded the dark surface. It was suddenly so tempting to try to use it to look across the seas, perhaps back into the deeps of time to his gold- and silver-tinged youth. "What are you doing?" Quynh asked from the doorway. "Andromache wants to know when we're going back to check on things," she added.

"It has occurred to me that we may not have to go back," Maglor replied.

"I thought that was dangerous," Quynh said.

"Palantíri can be tricky," Maglor said. "But the only real danger is if someone were to throw it at your head." Quynh snorted. Maglor took a seat at the table, took a breath, and drew the palantír to him, keeping his hands on either side, and focused his gaze on the depths of the stone, and his mind upon the ruins of Turralba's headquarters. As he stared, points of light like tiny stars began to appear in the depths of the palantír, and they wheeled and spun around each other until the light came together to be almost blinding, only to dissolve into a scene of ruin. As though from an eagle's eyes Maglor could see the crumbled concrete and torn and wrenched steel of the building, and the scatter of broken glass glinting in the grass and on the asphalt of the parking lot. In places smoke could be seen curling up from the wreckage.

There was also a handful of people milling around. There were no police cars with flashing lights, or ambulances, or fire trucks, which was a good sign when it came to their risk of getting arrested, but also a sign that whatever Turralba was doing there even the wholesale destruction of the property was not enough to make them willing to let the authorities start looking around. As Maglor continued to watch the vision lowered so that he could make out the people standing in a clear portion of the parking lot. There were half a dozen or so, and all of them were dusty and bruised, and several had dried blood on their faces or in their hair. Most of them were large men, and they all carried themselves like soldiers. A large SUV with tinted windows stood with the doors open. One man, slightly shorter than the rest, with sandy hair just a touch too vibrant to be entirely natural, leaned against the front of it. He held himself stiffly, with a bottle of distressingly yellow Gatorade in one hand, and the look on his face was one of carefully controlled rage as he scanned the scene before him. Dennis Newman, it seemed, had survived the night almost unscathed.

Maglor watched Newman bark orders at his men, and then they all piled into the SUV. He watched them drive through the winding mountain roads as though he were a bird coasting on the breeze above them. The image drew back and widened so that he could see where the roads the SUV was taking were leading, and—

He sat back from the palantír, blinking the image away rapidly. Quynh sat across the table, watching him the way a cat might watch birds outside the window. "What did you see?" she asked. In the doorway stood Andromache and Nicky and Nile, who eyed the palantír like it might sprout teeth and bite.

"Dennis Newman is on his way here," said Maglor, as he got up from the table. He heaved the palantír back into its bag and left it on the table. After a moment's hesitation he took the Elessar and slipped it into his pocket. It was of little use at the moment, but it was as comforting in its way as his father's gem around his neck. On his way out of the door he grabbed the knife he'd been given in France.

"Mothfuckerer," Andromache hissed as he passed her.

"I knew we should've thrown him out a window," Nile muttered.

"Where are you going?" Quynh wanted to know.

"Does anyone want to explain bullet holes in the walls to the people Lumorn rented this place from?" Maglor asked.

"We'll be gone by then," said Andromache.

"They probably have insurance," Nicky said at the same time.

"They'll also call the cops," Nile said, rolling her eyes.

"And we'll be gone," Andromache repeated.

"Wait," said Nile suddenly, "how could they know where we are, anyway?" She turned back to the pile of loot and started to dig through it, examining each artifact as though she were seeking some specific mark. Maglor paused to watch. At last she picked up one of the rings and turned it over, the gem glinting in her fingers. "There's a chip stuck to this," she said. "Like, a micro chip sorta thing." She picked up another. "And on this one. But why these and not some of the other stuff…?"

"What does that mean?" Quynh asked. "What is a micro chip?"

"It means they were able to track us," said Andromache, and cursed again, fluently and eloquently, in several languages.

"Someone warn the others," said Maglor as he turned back toward the front door. He hurried down the long, winding driveway, hoping he would be quick enough to intercept the car on the road—and that the other vacation homes nearby were empty. Quynh and Andromache were right behind him, and when he looked over his shoulder he saw Nicky and Joe take up a position behind some trees that offered good cover. When they reached the end of the driveway Maglor could hear a car engine in the distance, and turned toward it. A minute later the dark SUV rounded a bend.

"Is that them?" Quynh asked.

"Yes." Maglor stopped in the middle of the road, on the double line. He held his knife loosely in his hand as he watched the car approach, wondering if it would stop or if Newman would try to run them down. If he did he would be in for a nasty surprise, as Maglor had on the tip of his tongue some words that would make the very earth buckle beneath the tires. But in the end he did not need to use them. The car did not slow down, but a shot rang out and one of the tires burst, and the car went swerving past Maglor and Andromache and Quynh, over the embankment and down a steep slope, stopping only when it was caught between two trees sturdy enough to withstand the collision.

"Where…?" Quynh spun around, scanning the road.

"Nicky," Andromache said, already moving to the top of the bank. Maglor followed her. "Looks totaled," she remarked, as someone struggled to open one of the passenger doors.

"A good lesson in following the speed limit," Maglor said. Andromache snorted. The door came open and one of Newman's bodyguards staggered out. He was holding his nose as blood poured down his chin. "And in wearing one's seatbelt," Maglor added.

"Newman's probably fine," Andromache sighed, as the bodyguard turned around and reached into the car. "Is that him?"

"Yes." Newman did look more or less fine. He moved stiffly, but he'd moved stiffly before. He looked up the slope and for a moment locked eyes with Maglor. His face went sickly white, and he turned and spoke to his companions. One of them leaned out of the car, which was listing dangerously to the side and down the slope, and took several shots—at Maglor or Andromache or Quynh, it was impossible to tell. Andromache pushed Maglor down and Quynh leaped in front of Andromache, taking all three bullets to her chest. Both Maglor and Andromache shouted her name as she fell, lifeless, to tumble and slide down the slope until a bush caught her, leaving a smear of bright red blood on the leaves. Andromache landed hard on top of Maglor, who landed hard on the pavement, driving all the breath from his lungs. As he gasped for breath Andromache rolled to her feet and fired her own gun down the slope. By the time he sat up, Quynh was stirring and Newman and his men were gone, except for one man—the one who had shot Quynh, Maglor thought—hanging lifeless halfway out of the SUV.

Boots on pavement and gravel heralded Nicky and Joe and Nile's approach, but Maglor did not wait for them. The bank was steep enough that he slid more than climbed down to where Quynh was rolling over. As she sat up she grinned at him, and at Andromache, with blood on her teeth. "Can you keep going?" Maglor asked her, knowing the moment the words left his mouth that of course she could.

"Race you," she replied, and launched herself down the hill, laughing as she ran. Andromache laughed too and went after her, leaving Maglor to catch up as best he could. He leaped down the slope, and in the distance caught a glimpse of a black suit moving through the trees.

It was almost invigorating, this chase through the mountain forest. It remained hot and heavy, but the air smelled of earth and life—the tang of pine, the mouldering leaves of years past, the occasional sweet fragrance of honeysuckle as Maglor ran through a thicket—and each breath brought new vigor to his limbs as he ran. He caught up to Andromache and Quynh at the bottom of the slope, passed them, and then held out his arm to slow them down. They halted, and above the sound of their breathing he heard crashing in the brush, ahead of them and to the right, heading back toward the road. Maglor followed the noise.

"Do you have a plan?" Andromache asked, panting behind him.

"No," said Maglor.

"Awesome."

Maglor did not have a plan, but Dennis Newman, it turned out, did. He slid down a steep bit of slope and rounded a large tree trunk and found several guns pointed directly at him; his shout was enough to stop Andromache and Quynh in their tracks, but two of the four bullets fired in quick succession struck him, and he lost his footing and fell down another even steeper portion of the mountain, smacking into sharp rocks and finally landing in a tangle of brambles at the bottom.

Everything went black for a moment, and when Maglor forced his eyes open again everything hurt. It was worse than falling into the English Channel. He cursed, and somehow managed to wrench himself out of the brambles, tearing his clothes and his skin in the process. One branch raked across his face. When he was able to look back up, hearing more gunshots and someone shouting, he found Newman standing over him. This time the gun was pointed at his head. "It didn't have to end like this," Newman said, though he did not sound as grieved as he looked. Blood trickled down from a cut on his temple, sliding darkly over the pale stubble on his cheeks. "We asked nicely and we could have worked together, could have bridged the gap between the Undying Lands and the earth, you all could have given us back our birthright, but you refused—"

"What you want of us," Maglor rasped, "we cannot give you."

The gun pressed against his forehead, the barrel still warm from previous shots. "We nearly had it once," he said, and Maglor was almost certain he spoke of Ar-Pharazôn and his fleet that sailed against Valinor—as though there had ever been any hope for its success. "As descendants of Elros Tar—"

Maglor's body moved before his mind caught up with it. The gun went off but not quickly enough; he felt the wind from the bullet passing by his head. He hit Newman in the stomach with his shoulder, putting all of his weight into it. The gun went flying and they went down, a tangle of flailing limbs and fists, both of them smeared with Maglor's blood. Everything hurt but fury drowned it. His fist connected solidly with Newman's jaw, which stunned him long enough for Maglor to roll them so that he was on top of him, a hand around his throat, blood dripping out of Maglor's hair onto his face. "You dare," he snarled, choking the words out of lungs that struggled to hold air, "you dare speak his name? You dare claim him for your own? There is not a drop of Númenor in your miserable veins, you—" Newman heaved Maglor off of him and slammed a fist into one of Maglor's bullet wounds. Maglor screamed as his vision went white and then black.

When he came back to himself Nile was kneeling over him, pressing a hand over one of the bullet wounds. There was blood on her temples, as though her ears had bled. "I don't know what note you hit there," she said, "but damn."

"Where's—" Maglor tried to say, but his throat was raw, as though he'd been screaming for hours instead of for only a second. He sat up instead, and nearly fainted again.

"Hey!" Nile yelped as he swayed. "Will you just let me—you were shot—"

"Where is he?" Maglor managed to scrape out. A shout from some nearby bushes answered before Nile could, and he somehow heaved himself to his feet to follow the sound.
Nile scrambled after him. "Max! Maglor! Hey! God, you're worse than Andy. You're still bleeding!"

Once upon a time such wounds would not have stopped him. Maglor had been sorely wounded—by a poisoned blade no less—at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, and his fury had drowned the pain so that he hadn't even realized he'd been hurt until Amrod and Amras tried to haul him off of the field once Uldor was dead. Now he could barely get to his feet. Perhaps he just wasn't angry enough.

Maglor stumbled and caught himself on a tree. Just ahead he spotted Newman at the moment Joe and Quynh caught up with him. But before their fight could begin in earnest, and before Maglor could do more than take a breath, a voice rang through the trees: "Stop!" Everyone and everything froze; a sudden and heavy silence fell over the forest. Maglor's knees gave way, and he slid to the ground as Daeron emerged from the trees. Unlike the rest of them he was not spattered with blood or dirt. His hair was dark around his face and his eyes shimmered with ancient starlight. The bright sun seemed to dim, as though Daeron carried around him an echo of the ancient days when the world had lain in perpetual twilight. He stopped where they could all see him. "Enough," he said. "I will see no more blood shed this day. Let him go." Quynh, who had Newman by the collar, released him, looking surprised at herself as she did so. Daeron's voice thrummed with power; Maglor felt it deep in his bones, the way he felt the Music pound through the waves on the shore when he lay in the surf on a starry, moonless night.

Now that power was focused upon Dennis Newman, whose face was ashen grey now. He seemed only then to realize just what sort of powers with which he had tried to meddle. Daeron said, "You will leave this mountain alive and unhindered, but hear me: you caught us off our guard and unaware, and it shall never happen again. You will never find what you seek, and what you run from shall catch you sooner than you think."

"What—what does that mean?" Newman demanded, voice weak now and wavering, high-pitched.

Daeron did not answer. "Go. Now." Newman fled.

After a moment the shadows retreated, and Daeron was his usual self again, a slender elf in borrowed jeans and a slightly tattered t-shirt. His dark hair fell across his eyes as he turned to Maglor. "Sweet Elbereth, Maglor, what did you do?"

"He got himself shot," Nile said.

"I fail to see how that's my fault," said Maglor wearily as he leaned against the tree. The bark was rough against his cheeks. Nile ripped his shirt off and pressed something against one of the bullet wounds.

"It's slightly less your fault than falling into the Channel," Joe said as he joined Nile.

"You fell into the English Channel?" Daeron said in disbelief. "Whatever for?" Maglor opened his mouth to reply but Joe pressed down particularly hard, and for the third time that morning, Maglor fainted.

.

He woke up in bed, swathed in bandages. The sun coming through the slits in the window blinds was the heavy golden color of late afternoon, and elsewhere in the house he heard someone singing. Everything still hurt, but less so than before. Maglor closed his eyes again and let himself drift. He was only vaguely aware of the door opening and someone coming in to check the bandages and press a hand to his forehead before departing.

When he fell into a proper sleep he dreamed. It was the Nirnaeth and he was hunting for Uldor, but when he found him he did not look like himself but like Dennis Newman—but he fought as fiercely as Maglor recalled, as the battle raged about them. In the distance the flaming roar of balrogs rolled like thunder across the plains. Overhead the skies roiled with dark clouds spewed forth from the crevices and crags of Angband. The air was heavy with the smell of sulfur and of blood; Maglor's sword grew heavier in his hands with each passing second.

Someone called his name, and Maglor woke just moments before he finally killed Uldor. Or Newman. Whichever. He started awake, finding that it was now evening. Hathellas switched on the lamp beside his bed. "Do you think you can sit up a bit?" she asked. "I have some broth for you, and then I'll sing over your wounds. You really do need to stop getting shot so often."

"Countless years I have wandered this Middle-earth," Maglor said, casting his eyes plaintively toward the ceiling, "and sustained not a single wound, from gun nor arrow nor sword. And now in less than a week I've been shot thrice and thrown off of a ship into the sea, and my reputation is in tatters." Hathellas laughed. "And I couldn't even kill the fool responsible."

"You did serious damage to his eardrums, at least," Hathellas said, patting his knee as he adjusted himself on the pillows. She handed him a mug of pungent smelling tea. He inhaled the steam and felt something inside him ease. There was athelas in it. "I'm sorry to say, though, that we can't stay here until you recover. We must leave in the morning. By some miracle all of the cabins on this bit of the mountain are empty vacation homes, but someone elsewhere may have heard all of the gunfire, and someone will certainly notice the abandoned SUV at some point. You'll have to suffer further humiliation in allowing us to carry you to and from the car."

"My only worry about being carried," Maglor said, "is that someone will drop me."

"Oh, I'm sure we'll manage," said Hathellas breezily.

She sang over his wounds and departed, leaving Maglor feeling sleepy but unwilling to return to sleep. Nile poked her head in after a little while to, as she said, make sure he wasn't trying to get out of bed and rip out his stitches. "If I promise not to move, will you fetch me the palantír?" he asked her.

"That thing is a menace," Nile said, and disappeared. She did not return with the palantír. Maglor sighed and eyed the window blinds, which were just out of his reach without getting up—and whatever Nile thought of him, he had no desire to tear any stitches or reopen wounds. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

Then the door opened again, and Quynh came in with the bag that held the palantír. "Nile said you were asking for this," she said, holding it up.

"I was."

"Are you going to look for Newman again?" Quynh set the bag down beside Maglor and sat down on the edge of the bed. Maglor carefully lifted the palantír, wincing as his wounds pulled, and set it on his lap.

"Yes," he said. "Daeron sent him away with his tail between his legs, but I do not trust him not to have something nasty waiting for us when we try to leave tomorrow."

"Yusuf and Nicolò have already gone out with the other elves to make sure he doesn't," said Quynh. "Andromache is grumbling because she sprained her ankle and Hathellas won't let her stand on it, so she couldn't go with them."

"Poor Andromache," Maglor murmured as he took a breath and began to focus his mind and his gaze upon the palantír. He heard Quynh laugh, but as though at a great distance, as he fell into the dark depths of the stone. It recalled him and bent more easily to his will this time—he barely glimpsed the fires and the pale hands of Denethor of Minas Tirith before the images turn to whirling stars and then, after just a few seconds, to Dennis Newman. He sat in the back of another large car; whether the men around him were the same that had been on the mountain, Maglor could not tell. But they were not speaking and the car, when the image drew back to show it on the road, was speeding down an Interstate, the mountains already shrinking into the distance behind it.

He looked up and grinned at Quynh. "He's far away now," he said. "I don't think we need to worry."

"He could have left something or someone behind," Quynh said.

"I don't think he did. What resources he has are no longer in these mountains." Maglor set the stone aside.

"So what happens now?" Quynh asked.

"We return Thranduil's children to him," said Maglor. And he was meant to seek out Tatië, a prospect which both thrilled him and made him nervous. He could not imagine what she wished to say to him.

"After that," said Quynh, "I want to go to Paris."

"Of course."

"Once you're recovered," Quynh added, clearly an afterthought. "And if you aren't injured again."

"Every single one of my injuries this past week," Maglor protested, "has not been my fault!"

"Falling into the sea was definitely your fault," said Quynh.

"That is debatable." Quynh reached over and picked up the palantír to return it to the bag. "You should rest. No more spying on your enemies for tonight."

"I had not planned on it." But he did not try to stop her taking the palantír away. It was tempting still to try to look into the past, into his own youth, or into the Valinor of the present to see what his father and mother and brothers were doing. A pointless temptation, he knew, since he would see them soon enough, but…

"What made you so angry out on the mountain?" Quynh asked suddenly.

"Hm?"

"I saw you, when Newman had his gun pointed at your head. He said something and you—it was almost frightening how angry you got."

"Oh." Maglor looked away. With the distance of a few hours it seemed almost ridiculous. "He tried to claim descent from Elros, and use it as justification for everything he had done."

"…Who is Elros?"

"Elros Tar-Minyatar was the first King of Númenor, of Westernesse," Maglor said. "He was the son of Eärendil, who carries the Evening Star through the skies, and of Elwing, Princess of Doriath."

"Very impressive," said Quynh. "But that does not explain why you were so angry."

"I knew Elros," said Maglor. "I—fostered him, for a while, he and his brother Elrond. His great-grandfather was my cousin."

"I see. I suppose Elros would not have approved of Newman's actions or intentions."

"Of course not!" Maglor had heard the lightness in her tone but turned to frown at her anyway. "He was—he was Half-elven, and given a choice of which kindred he would be counted among. He chose mortal Men. His later descendants had different ideas, but Elros went to his death with grace and at peace."

Quynh patted his hand. "I'm sorry," she said. For the loss of his erstwhile foster-son or for making light of it, Maglor couldn't tell.

"He is long gone beyond the Circles of the World," said Maglor.

"So are all of my family," said Quynh. "My mother and father and my brothers, and all of their children. But I remember them still, and I miss them." She patted Maglor's hand again and stood. "You're about to fall asleep. Better stop fighting it. We have a very long journey back to France."

Maglor did not get dropped on the way to the car the next morning, but it was a near thing and Maglor couldn't quite tell if Daeron had stumbled on purpose or not. There was much cursing on Maglor's part and much laughter on the part of everyone else. The winds had picked up the night before and the heavy humidity had been blown away, leaving the air almost crisp, and making the ride down the mountain with the windows open enjoyable. Everyone was in high spirits: they had done what they had come there to do, and come away with more than they had expected to find.

Even so, Maglor half-expected them to run into trouble at the airport, but he need not have worried. Radoriel imperiously bustled them all through the airport and they reached their plane without unnecessary delay. Maglor even managed to walk most of the way, leaning heavily on Daeron and earning only a few strange looks in the process. It was a relief to finally sit down in the plane, however. "How're you feeling?" Nile asked as Maglor reclined his seat as far back as it would go. He grunted. "Very eloquent. I thought you were the greatest elf singer or whatever. Can I get a limerick or something on where you're at on the pain scale?"

"I'm not the greatest," Maglor said. "He is." He did not open his eyes when he pointed to where he thought Daeron was sitting.

"That's Nicky," said Nile. "And he's not an elf or a great singer."

"Hey!"

"It's true," Andromache said from somewhere in the same direction. "Ow, you can't punch me, I bruise now!"

"I meant Daeron," Maglor said.

"Does that mean I don't get a limerick?" Nile asked.

"You absolutely do not get a limerick."

He was left alone after that. He felt when they took off, and fell asleep soon after. So went the rest of the journey: Maglor was roused when they had to leave the plane, and left to doze on the drive back to Thranduil's halls, where he was taken to the same bedroom as before and left again to sleep. He drifted in and out of deep sleep and was faintly aware of healers singing and of the sweet clear scent of athelas.

When he finally woke properly again it was sunny, and the windows were open to let in the song of a nightingale and the sweet scents of lilacs and roses. His entire body still ached, but it was duller now and not the sort of ache that prevented him from moving. What did prevent him from getting up in that moment was soft and warm and curled up against his arm. Maglor turned his head and smiled into Norindo's fur. At this Norindo stirred, lifting his head to lick Maglor's nose. "Hullo there," said Maglor. He scratched Norindo behind the ears and received a great deal more licking for his troubles. "Yes, yes, I missed you too."

"Oh, good, you're awake." Maglor looked up to see Daeron leaning on the doorway. He was dressed in fine robes embroidered in old patterns out of Doriath in delicate shades of green and gold. "When did you get a dog?"

"Either this week or last year," said Maglor. Daeron rolled his eyes. "How long have we been here?"

"We arrived the day before yesterday," said Daeron. "You haven't missed much, except for the limerick competition that seemingly sprung out of nowhere last evening."

"Who won?" Maglor asked, curious in spite of himself.

"I did, of course."

"Of course."

"I did," Daeron added, with mock humility, "have a bit of a head start on the flight here. Speaking of which, did you know Thranduil had a private jet? I've been flying business class for decades when I could have been borrowing it."

"Oh, please, as though you don't have more than enough squirreled away for a jet of your own."

"I don't, actually," Daeron said.

Maglor sat up, dislodging Norindo as he carefully stretched sore muscles. "What do you spend it all on, then?" Daeron was still a very active performer (probably how Turralba had found him in the first place), and Maglor did not believe for a second that he did it for free.

"Scholarship funds, mostly," said Daeron. "You should see the spreadsheet. What do you spend your money on? Or rather—what will you do with it all, since you're leaving?"

"I hadn't thought about it much," said Maglor. "It's been rather a busy week." He heaved himself out of bed and reached for the dressing gown someone had left draped over a chair. It was silk, which felt remarkably luxurious at the same time it highlighted how desperately he needed a bath.

Daeron snorted. "Are you saying that you decided to sail to Valinor this week?"

"Well, I didn't know I could until this week," Maglor said.

"I think you are going to have to tell me this tale in full from the beginning," said Daeron. "But that can wait. There is to be feasting tonight, to celebrate our return and your recovery; there will be fires in the wood and dancing and singing. Calwë's folk will join us. I have heard that even Tata and Tatië will attend."

"It was Tatië that told us that Calwë had also been taken," said Maglor, as Norindo began jumping up to paw at Daeron's knees. "Norindo, down."

"It's all right." Daeron scooped Norindo up into his arms. "I'll take him outside while you bathe."

Maglor spent more time soaking and drowsing in the hot water than he did scrubbing himself, and emerged feeling clean and refreshed and less sore. While he had been in the bathroom someone had come and laid out clothes for him, and also Norindo had returned to curl up on his pillows. Maglor dressed and then lay back down to scratch Norindo's belly for a while, enjoying the doggy kisses he received in return, until his thoughts turned back to Daeron, and to his vague plans for the future.

"I have a great deal to set in order before I leave," he sighed as Norindo rolled around on the quilt. He'd never been particularly interested in acquiring wealth beyond what it took to live comfortably and relatively obscurely, but the numbers had still added up. And his lack of interest in finances meant he did not have any neat spreadsheets to refer to as Daeron apparently did. Then there were his actual possessions, his instruments and the pieces of sculpture he had tucked away in his cottage. He could finish them, Maglor supposed, but then do what with them? Sell them? Just leave them somewhere for someone to find? That had its appeal, he supposed. "I also have to decide what to do with you," he said to Norindo, who licked his face in response. "Can I trust you not to just leap into the water if I put you on a sailboat?" Norindo, of course, did not answer.

Downstairs Maglor found the chateau bustling with activity as preparations were made for the feasting that night. Outside he heard the clatter of wooden weapons as the immortal mortals both learned from and taught the elves on the sparring grounds. He also heard Daeron somewhere in the gardens singing some sweet French folk song.

After greeting Thranduil more properly than he had been able to before, Maglor wandered with Norindo out of the chateau and out of the gardens into the woods. There was a great clearing not too far from the chateau, edged with ferns and with several large spaces cleared out for bonfires. He skirted around it and went deeper into the trees. Norindo trotted along at his heels, pausing now and then to sniff at roots or piles of old leaves and pine needles. The wood was fragrant with pine and fern and the sweet flowers that peeped out from among the tree-shadows. Birds sang in the boughs overhead, and squirrels scurried out of Norindo's way. Once Maglor glimpsed a hart, just briefly, before it too bounded away into the wood.

Eventually he came to a stream that flowed cheerfully along its rocky bed, clear and cold. Norindo jumped in immediately to splash around; Maglor found a few large flat stones in a patch of sunshine to stretch out on. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, until Norindo's splashing suddenly ceased. When Maglor looked up he found Norindo on the other side of the stream sniffing at Tatië's fingers. She was not clad in her ceremonial hunter's garb, but in jeans with tattered hems and ripped knees, and a flannel shirt hanging open over a simple white tank top. She had wooden beads woven into her braids, and they clicked softly together as she raised her head to fix her eyes on Maglor. He rose to his feet to bow, but she waved a hand. "There is no need for that," she said. "May I join you?"

"Of course, Lady."

She smiled as she jumped lightly across the water to sit on the sun warmed stone beside him, silver hair gleaming in the light. "Thank you," she said, "for bringing Calwë home to us. And for destroying Turralba."

"You must thank Daeron more than me for that," Maglor said.

"But it was you who went after them," Tatië said. She fell silent then, and gazed for so long at Maglor, as though studying each and every one of his features, that he felt the urge to fidget like a child. Whatever Tatië found, she seemed satisfied. "You have her eyes," she said finally.

Maglor blinked. "Whose?"

"Rilya. She was my daughter," Tatië said, "lost to us between Finwë's first leaving and when he returned to convince the Tatyar to journey west. Her daughter was Silindë, who did not wish to go but left for the sake of her own daughter Míriel." Maglor gaped at her. "You did not know?"

"No, I—I never knew my grandmother."

Tatië's lips pursed. "I would have thought Finwë would speak of her now and then," she said. "But never mind," she went on, saving Maglor from having to defend the choices his grandfather had made long before his own birth. "Now you do know."

He wished he had known before. The knowledge that he had kin—that he was kin to Tata and Tatië themselves—would have made some of the long years he had spent in Middle-earth less lonely. Or maybe not. Most of his solitary exile had been self-imposed. But it still seemed unfair to learn all of this just as he was ready to leave.

Tatië rose from the stone and extended her hand. "Come," she said. "We are camped not far from here."

The camp of the Avari was large and sprawling, with little in the way of order. Children ran between the tents and swung up and down the trees were quick-built talans had been erected. There was much singing to be heard, and laughter, and the smell of food roasting over open flames. Maglor was introduced to more people than he could remember, in a whirl of faces and names, and was drawn into the children's games and into the storytelling circles. It seemed as though he merely blinked, and evening was falling. Away in the feasting glade, as purple twilight settled over the wood, the voices of Thranduil's folk lifted in merry song.

"There you are," said Aeramath when Maglor joined her and Thranduil by one of the fires, which was leaping high already into the evening air. "You look better," she said. "Do you feel better?"

"Much, thank you," said Maglor.

"Good!" Aeramath handed him a goblet of jewel-red wine. "We've brought out your harp, though I doubt anyone will want harp music until very late."

Wine in hand, Maglor went in search of Quynh and the others, finding them seated on cushions near one of the smaller fires. Nile was looking doubtfully into her own wine goblet, while Andromache was already refilling hers. "It isn't poison," Maglor said, seating himself between Nile and Quynh, who snorted into her cup. "But Thranduil does favor strong drink," he added, snatching the bottle from Andromache's fingers. "Pace yourself."

"Where were you all day?" Quynh asked. Food was brought about—meats to roast on great spits over the coals, and cheeses and cloud-soft breads and fruits that burst with flavor upon the tongue.

"In bed," Maglor said, "and then in the wood. Lady Tatië wished to speak with me."

"About what?" asked Joe from Andromache's other side.

"Elvish things," said Maglor, earning eye rolls from all sides. "I heard you lot in the practice courts."

"It was fun," said Quynh. "Yusuf only broke his arm once."

"And both his legs," Nicky added. He and Joe lay somehow both in each other's lap at once, already drowsing by the fire. "But no one died, so it was a very tame afternoon."

"Those are my favorite kind," said Maglor.

It did not take long for the merriment to commence in earnest. Maglor was hauled away from the food and wine to join the other musicians, tossed an instrument more or less at random. He found himself at various times playing a guitar, a violin, a flute, and even a ukulele, much to Daeron's delight. Elsewhere there was dancing and singing, and as the moon rose round and white the forest echoed with music. It was the most fun Maglor had had in years—certainly the most enjoyable performance, singing many songs of ancient days with Daeron as the moon sank and the wild air of the party wound down into something quieter. Daeron sang the Lay of Leithian to Maglor's accompaniment on his driftwood harp, and once Tatië rose to sing even older songs that the Quendi had made beside the starry waters of Cuiviénen.

By the time dawn blushed rosy across the eastern sky the woods were quiet again. The birds struck up their morning chorus to fill the silence left by the elves. Some were asleep, others content now to sit quietly and speak to one another, or to simply enjoy the cool morning. The mortals were sprawled out in a pile on the grass; someone had thoughtfully draped blankets over them.

There was more merriment to be had that day and the following night. The morning after that, Maglor took Norindo outside to do his business and found Andromache, Nile, Joe, and Nicky huddled around an iPad on the patio. "Is something wrong?" he asked.

"We've got another job," said Andromache. "There's a hostage situation in Colombia. Copley's got a flight booked for us in Paris." She raised an eyebrow. "Want to tag along?"

Maglor blinked, startled. "To Colombia?"

She snorted. "Nah. To Paris. You and Quynh wanted to go track down Booker anyway, didn't you?"

"Yes. If Quynh wants to go now, then of course I'll go with her. Norindo, leave the cat alone." Norindo had been making a friendly advance to a cat that Maglor could tell was just waiting for him to get within striking range. Norindo did not listen to him and received a swat on the nose for his troubles. The cat trotted off into the foliage as Norindo ran back to Maglor. "I told you," Maglor said.

"Can you be ready in an hour?" Nile asked as the others gathered up the tablet and vanished inside.

"Certainly."

"Great." She smiled at him and hurried off to gather her own things.

Maglor went to find one of their hosts. He found Thranduil and Aeramath in the garden with Daeron. The cat that Norindo had tried to befriend had also found them, and was curled up on Thranduil's lap, purring as he stroked it's pale fur. "Good morning," said Daeron.

"Good morning," Maglor said. "I come to take my leave of you. I promised Quynh I would go with her to Paris."

"So soon?" Aeramath rose to take Maglor's hands. "Please come back before you depart for the West, Maglor."

"If only so that we know for sure when you are gone at last," said Thranduil, before moving his legs quickly out of the way of his wife's kick.

"Yes, of course I will come," said Maglor to Aeramath. "It will take me some time to put things in order before I leave."

An hour later Maglor was in the back of the van, Norindo on his lap peering curiously out of the window, as Andromache drove them out of the wood and into the bright and sunny French countryside. It was nearly three hours to Paris; he passed it mostly in silence, listening to his companions exchange stories and reminisces of the many adventures they had had over the centuries.

At last they arrived at the sprawling airport, north of Paris proper. Andromache, Joe, Nicky, and Nile piled out of the van as Andromache tossed Maglor the keys. They embraced Quynh and promised to keep in touch, and with one last cheerful wave from Nile they disappeared into the sprawling building. The air was loud with the sounds of planes landing and taking off, and smelled of hot tarmac and jet fuel. Quynh watched a plane pass over their heads, low and large, and shook her head.

"How do they do it?" she asked as she and Maglor climbed back into the van.

"You'll have to find someone else to explain aerodynamics and the physics of flight to you, I'm afraid," said Maglor, as he maneuvered his way out of the labyrinthine parking lots and onto the equally labyrinthine streets. "Or find an explanation on the Internet, perhaps. Do you know where we are going to find this Booker?"

"No," said Quynh. "Or—I would recognize the street when I saw it. Nico gave me a few addresses to try." She held up a scrap of paper with several neat lines of handwriting.

"Oh, good."

"Where are we going now, though?" Quynh asked.

"I have a flat in the city," said Maglor. "There is a cafe next door and there is a lovely view of the Eiffel Tower."

"Of the what?"

Maglor laughed. "You'll see it." He remembered its unveiling at the Exposition Universelle in the spring of 1889, and being among the first to climb to the top. It had been the first time he'd ventured back to France in quite some time, and the first pleasant trip in even longer. The eighteenth century had been…chaotic.

His flat was tidy and clean, though devoid of groceries. "There is the Eiffel Tower," Maglor said, taking Quynh to the window after they dropped their bags by the door. Norindo trotted off to investigate this new place. Quynh regarded the tower with her head tilted and her lips pursed, before she asked what the point of it was. "To have something impressive at the Exposition Universelle, I think," said Maglor, who had never bothered to think about it too much. "And now of course it is the most iconic symbol of Paris there is, and a lively tourist attraction. There are stairs and lifts to take people to the top."

"Perhaps after we find Booker," said Quynh.

"Certainly after lunch," Maglor said. He went to his bag and pulled out a collar and a leash. "Norindo," he called. The dog appeared at the bedroom door, took one look at the leash, and fled. Quynh laughed as Maglor sighed. "If you don't submit to this small indignity," he called, "we shall leave you here in the flat!" But of course there was no reasoning with a small mongrel dog, and it took an hour for the two of them to wrestle him out from beneath the bed and into the collar. Once he was attached to the leash he calmed, but gazed up at Maglor with a sulky expression.

"I don't think I have ever seen such a clever dog," Quynh remarked as they made their way downstairs and out to the cafe, where tables were set up outside in the bright sunshine.

"So long as he's clever enough not to run into traffic," Maglor muttered. He ordered for both of them when Quynh looked in helpless bemusement at the menu, and the waitress brought Norindo a special snack of his own, greatly improving his mood. Once their food came, Quynh handed him the paper with the addresses of Booker's safe houses. There were four, scattered throughout the city. One was within easy walking distance of Maglor's own flat. One of the others he recognized as in a neighborhood that had, when he last heard of it, been rather seedy. The others were on streets he did not recognize.

The first address that they visited after lunch was empty. Maglor peered through a dirty window to see a heavy layer of dust over everything. "No one has been here in some time," he said.

By that time the afternoon was beginning to wane, so they walked over to see the Eiffel Tower up close so Quynh could gape at it, and on a whim Maglor took Norindo home and then took Quynh up to one of the restaurants inside it for an early dinner and then up to the top to see the view of Paris as the sinking sun shone golden over it. "It is very strange," Quynh said after a long while of gazing out over the sprawling urban landscape in silence. "So different."

"The whole world is a very different place from the one you knew," said Maglor.

"Yes. I knew that from the start, but it is different somehow to see it like this." She grinned at him. "I think I like it."

The next morning Quynh was startled over breakfast by the ringing of her new cell phone, hurriedly pressed into her hands by Joe before his departure, and evidently without a single instruction on how to answer it. Maglor answered for her, and heard Andromache on the other end. "Just put it to your ear like this," he said, holding it up to her face. "And talk into it—Andromache will hear you."

"But what am I talking into?" Quynh asked, bewildered. "Oh! Andromache?"

Maglor couldn't help but chuckle as he started to clear away the dishes. Poor Quynh was tossed into the deep end of twenty-first century technology, and she did not even have the advantage of familiarity with its previous incarnations. Quynh lapsed into a very old dialect indeed, one that he did not know. He caught a few modern words sprinkled here and there, including the country Colombia, but the rest was incomprehensible. But finally she lowered the phone from her ear, looking at the screen in confusion before, presumably, Andromache ended the call and the screen reverted to its usual state. "I take back what I said," she said.

"Take back what?" Maglor asked.

"I'm not sure I like this new world," she said. "How can I talk to Andromache though this—thing?"

"I think," said Maglor, "that when we come back tonight I am going to pull up YouTube and let you watch someone more informed explain the history of aviation and of the telephone."

"How are you not informed?" Quynh wanted to know, as Maglor wrestled Norindo back onto his leash. "You have been alive through it all, have you not?"

"Oh, and are you personally and thoroughly acquainted with all major technological advancements from your time?" Maglor laughed. "I did not see the Wright brothers first take flight, nor was the first phone call made to me. I know how to use them but I don't particularly care about the details." In the back of his mind Maglor could almost hear his father making incredulous noises. He would be fascinated by all of the things Men had made and accomplished. If someone put a smart phone into Fëanor's hands he would have it in pieces in moments, determined to find out exactly how it all worked when it went together.

"Where are we going to look today?" Quynh asked.

"Where do you want to look?"

"I don't know where any of them are," she said, gesturing at the paper of addresses. One was crossed out. "Or how to get there."

"Nor do I. But that is what maps are for."

The first address was not far from a metro station. Quynh balked at taking the metro and grumbled the entire time, and after they emerged from the station. "It's the quickest and easiest way to get around," said Maglor.

"We have the car," Quynh said.

"I hate to drive in cities."

"We could walk."

"Quynh, nearly every major city in the world has a metro system, and thousands of people ride them without incident every day."

The bickering continued until they came to the address on the note. It was not empty, but home instead to a young couple, who seemed very happy together and neither of whom could possibly be Booker, since they were clearly young professionals and both women who liked bright colors, had a tiny but thriving garden in a cluster of pots on their kitchen windowsill, and evidently enjoyed daytime soap operas, judging by the dramatic and tinny voices drifting out of their open windows.

The third address (after another grumbling ride on the metro) was much the same as the first, which left one more place to look. "If he isn't there," said Maglor as they crossed a narrow street and turned down another lined with narrow houses tucked up and leaning against each other like old drunken friends, "If he isn't there, I suppose we'll just wander around until you find a place that seems familiar."

But Quynh shook her head. "This does look familiar," she said. "I have seen that place before." She pointed at a liquor store.

"Oh. Good."

The house was at the end of the street, as unassuming as the rest. The door was locked, but not particularly securely, and it was easy enough to jostle open. Maglor paused a moment, half-expecting an alarm to begin blaring, or perhaps Booker himself to emerge with some sort of weapon. He was like Quynh and the others—that meant he was a fighter. But nothing happened. The house was empty.

"I suppose he is out buying…liquor," Quynh said as she stood in the kitchen, regarding the state of it with a wrinkled nose. "Ugh."

Maglor picked up an empty bottle from the floor; there were half a dozen others strewn about the counters and the small table by the dirty window. "Probably at the shop down the street," he agreed, eying the trash can, which was overflowing with take-out containers. The sink had only one dish in it, but he did not think that was because Booker was in the habit of washing up regularly.

Quynh got herself a glass of water while they waited, and Maglor tidied up most of the liquor bottles, and emptied the kitchen trash. "Did they ever tell you what exactly Booker did to get himself exiled?" he asked after a while.

"Andromache did. The thing with Merrick—Booker helped Copley trap the others. He shot Andromache, because she hadn't told them that her immortality was gone, because she is an idiot." Maglor snorted. "That is one reason I want to see him—aside from making the dreams stop. I want to ask him why."

"Well, you'll get your chance now," said Maglor, hearing footsteps outside approaching the door. He bent to scoop up Norindo, who had been nosing around the trash can. There was a pause as Booker presumably noticed how the lock had been forced, and then in the blink of an eye he was in the kitchen doorway with his gun out. He pointed it at Quynh first; she took a calm sip of water as Maglor took a large step away from her. Booker then trained the gun on him, only to switch it back to Quynh almost immediately. His eyes darted between them, lingering once or twice on Norindo, as though he'd never seen a dog before.

"Hello, Booker," said Quynh. "It's good to finally meet you."

"It would be better if there were no guns," Maglor added.

Booker looked terrible; his eyes were sunken and bloodshot, his skin sallow and pale, as though he spent as little time outside as possible, which Maglor suspected was true. But aside from his physical state, the look in his eyes was like looking in a mirror and back in time. Maglor knew that look.

"What do you want?" Booker croaked finally, his words only slurring a little bit.

"I was tired of dreaming about your hangovers," said Quynh. Booker had the grace to blush at this. "Also, Andromache says hello." At this Booker averted his gaze. But he did holster his gun, allowing Maglor to breathe a little easier. "I also want to hear your version of the story," Quynh went on.

Booker opened his mouth, closed it, and then retreated to the hallway to get the bag he'd dropped. At first Maglor thought it might actually contain groceries, but it was only from the liquor store down the street. He sighed. "You two catch up," he said. "I'll be back soon."

"Where are you going?" Quynh asked.

"I'm hungry, and even the thought of watching someone drink on an empty stomach makes me feel ill." This earned him a glower from Booker, which he cheerfully ignored.

It was a relief to escape onto the street, where the tension dissipated in the breeze that had sprung up. It had also brought clouds, so Maglor quickened his stride as he went in search of groceries; he felt a prickling on the back of his neck as he turned a corner, but when he looked over his shoulder there was no one there. Norindo trotted along beside him cheerfully, having adjusted remarkably well to the leash, and apparently sensing no danger, so Maglor put it from his mind. As they returned to Booker's house with two bags of groceries the clouds thickened and darkened. Norindo kept stopping to sniff at things, and they made it inside Booker's doorway mere seconds before the skies opened with a downpour. "Norindo, don't you dare," Maglor warned as Norindo turned to look back out, halfway through the threshold. He slunk inside, tangling the leash around Maglor's legs, as he juggled with the door and the bags.

"Maglor, is that you?"

"Yes. Please come unhook Norindo before I fall and break something else."

Quynh came and unhooked the leash, laughing all the time, and Norindo dashed into the kitchen. This was followed by a surprised yelp and a loud crash. Maglor stepped into the room to find Booker having fallen out of a kitchen chair and submitting, bemusedly, to a thorough face-licking from Norindo. "Well, you can't be all that bad, if Norindo likes you," Maglor remarked.

"Who are you?" Booker asked.

"I told you, this is Maglor," said Quynh, coming in on Maglor's heels.

"But he's not—one of us."

"The main difference between us," Maglor said, "is that I was born into immortality, and that if you shoot me in the head I will, in fact, die." He smiled at Booker. "I am also much older than any of you."

"That's bullshit," said Booker. "You're not older than Andy."

"I think you're either not drunk enough or too drunk to completely grasp who and how old I am," said Maglor. "Anyway it isn't important. Norindo, leave the poor man alone." Maglor moved to the counter to start unpacking the things he'd brought for dinner—it would be a simple enough pasta meal, but probably better by far than whatever Booker had been living off of.

"I don't think I'm drunk enough for any of this," Booker muttered. When Maglor looked back at him, though, he was scratching Norindo behind the years, his tumbler sitting untouched above his head on the table.

Maglor looked at Quynh, who had come to lean against the counter and watch him cook, apparently. "Did you say what you wanted to say?" he asked softly.

She nodded. "He has been very unhappy with his lot for many years. He had a family, before. A wife and children." Maglor winced. "I don't think one hundred years of exile will make things better."

"No," Maglor agreed.

"But I don't know what would be better. He did do a terrible thing."

It was too bad, Maglor thought as he set a pot of water on the stove to boil, that there was no place left like Rivendell, where there was welcome and good food and cheer and healing for any who needed or wanted it. But perhaps…Maglor opened his mouth but closed it again, squinting out of the window set above the sink. It overlooked a small courtyard, and another street beyond, and though it was difficult to tell through the driving rain, it seemed to him that there was a figure out there, standing very still, and watching him. He had to turn away to unpack some tomatoes, and when he turned back the figure was gone. But the prickling feeling at the back of his neck remained.

Quynh had gone back to sit with Booker, soon drawing him into reminisces about his time with the others, about missions they had gone on both successful and decidedly not. It seemed to cheer him up a little, and the food worked even better. But Maglor ate distractedly, still thinking of the figure in the rain. It was not one of Newman's men, surely—even if they were up to the task, they could not have tracked him back to Paris. As he ate his mind kept going back to the attack on his seaside cottage—and of that last attempt with the poisoned dart. In no other instance had Turralba attempted anything like that.

"Excuse me," he said, "I need to make a phone call."

"What's wrong?" Quynh asked.

"Nothing. I just remembered something." Maglor escaped to the bathroom before Quynh could press him farther, and dialed Copley.

"What can I do for you, Max?" Copley asked. If he was surprised to hear from Maglor, his voice did not betray it.

"You recall when my cottage was attacked," Maglor began.

"Vividly," Copley said.

"And as we were leaving there was one more person there—they shot me with a dart or something."

"Yes, I also remember that."

"That wasn't someone from Turralba, was it?"

"No, it wasn't. Turralba has not, historically, used drugged darts. I've been trying to track down the actual party; I didn't want to worry you unnecessarily while you were dealing with Turralba, since they were the larger threat."

"I think there is someone following me here in Paris," said Maglor. "I would appreciate some necessary worry."

"I believe it was a government agent," Copley said, "but I'm not yet one hundred percent sure, and I can't say whether it was actually sanctioned or not—or whether they came after you based on their own intelligence or whether they were shadowing Turralba's people. Turralba, by the way, just filed for bankruptcy this morning, and is under federal investigation concerning stolen artifacts from Iraq and Syria. Actually, it looks like they've been under investigation for some time, it's just now that public filings are being made."

"That is excellent news," said Maglor, "but does not really help me in the moment."

"No, I'm sorry. I do think that shadowing is all they're going to do for now. And if it's a foreign government they won't want to make a scene, especially in the French capital."

That was somewhat comforting, but what happened when he left France? "If you learn anything more, please let me know," he said. "I don't like being hunted."

"Of course."

"How's the job in Colombia, by the way?"

"It's crossed over into Venezuela somehow. Cell reception is scarce, but I think it's going well."

"Good."

"Is everything all right?" Quynh asked when Maglor returned to the kitchen.

"Yes, of course." He glanced out of the window; the downpour had ceased, and only a hazy mist remained. "It's getting late," he said. "I'm going to head back to my flat. It was nice to meet you, Booker."

"It was, uh. My pleasure," said Booker, though he sounded unsure about it. He'd spent most of their visit looking a bit dazed, as though whatever he had expected of Quynh, she was not living up to it, and Maglor's presence wasn't helping. But he also did not seem unhappy, so Maglor thought that overall it had been a successful visit. Quynh remained behind, promising that she remembered how to use the metro, so Maglor departed into the mists with Norindo.

The streets were quiet, what with the rain, and as he walked down the street he strained his ears, listening for footsteps that started and stopped with his own. He heard nothing, but he could feel eyes on him. Whoever it was, was good at their job—but they had to follow him onto the metro. If the car Maglor chose hadn't been otherwise empty, he supposed they would have gotten away with it, but they—a man who, sadly, looked like a government spy, trench coat and all—made the mistake of joining him there, looking far too casual and too deliberately not looking in Maglor's direction. Maglor waited a few minutes as the train began to move, and then he got up and sat directly beside his follower. "I am curious," he said, as the man looked up from his phone, eyes going wide, "who do you work for?"

"I—beg your pardon?" the man stammered in badly accented French.

"You've been following me," Maglor said, and he put just a touch of Power into his voice when he continued, "Please, preserve both our dignities and don't try to deny it. Who are you and why are you so interested in me?"

The man opened his mouth, shut it, met Maglor's gaze, quickly averted his own, and huffed a sigh. "I've been trying to find out what your connection to Turralba is," he said, falling into his native English.

"You work for the CIA, then?"

"...I work for the federal government."

"And what is your name?"

There was a slight pause. "John Smith."

Maglor had to smile. "Fair enough. Since you're curious: I have no connection to Turralba, aside from possessing something Dennis Newman wanted to get his hands on. He failed, and it remains out of his reach—it doesn't matter what it is. It belongs to me, and your government has no claim upon it." He leaned forward. "And I shall have no qualms about doing to your agency what I did to Turralba, should anyone so much as think of abducting me or anyone of my acquaintance."

John Smith went very white. "What did you do to Turralba?" he asked, the question coming out more as a squeak than anything.

"I'm sure you've been appraised of what happened to its headquarters in New York. It would be such a shame if the same happened at, say, Langley."

"You can't—"

"Make terroristic threats? It's not a threat. I would very much like never to set foot in America again. But if I am pursued any further I will defend myself, and I'm afraid I've never been very good at small gestures."

John Smith stared at him. "Who—who are you?"

Maglor smiled at him, all teeth. "Maximilian Smith, naught but a humble musician." The train came to a stop, and he got to his feet. "Goodbye, Mr. Smith. I wish you a pleasant journey back to your own country." On the platform he paused, glancing back into the car, and seeing John Smith on his phone already, talking almost frantically. Satisfied that at least for that evening he would be left in peace, Maglor scooped up Norindo and made his way home.

Maglor rose early the next morning. It was still raining, so he left Norindo slumbering in bed, and slipped out of the flat while Quynh was still sleeping. He kept his eyes open on his way to Booker's, but the CIA agent and his trench coat were nowhere to be seen. It was a quick trip back to Booker's flat. This time Maglor knocked, and after a minute or so the door opened.

Booker looked—well, he still looked terrible, but less so than the day before. "What happened?" he asked, immediately on guard upon seeing Maglor.

"Nothing," said Maglor. He held up two coffees that he'd gotten from the last nice cafe he'd passed. "May I come in?" The coffee did the trick, and Booker let him in, accepting the coffee with a grunt of thanks. Maglor stepped inside out of the rain, and followed Booker back into the kitchen.

"Who are you, anyway?" Booker asked after a few sips of coffee. "Neither you nor Quynh ever really answered."

"My name is Maglor. But Max Smithson is what I usually go by, these days."

Booker nearly spit out his next sip of coffee. "The sculptor?!"

Maglor laughed. "Yes," he said, "though that has not, historically, been what I am known for!"

"Why the hell not? You're good!"

"Thank you. I'm not nearly my mother's equal, but sometimes one wants something to do with one's hands. Are you also an artist?"

Booker shrugged. "Nah. Forger. I know good shit when I see it. Your mum have anything in galleries?"

"Not here. But I was trying to answer your first question: my name is Maglor, and I am what your people would call an elf." He smiled at Booker's scoff. "Yes, I know you don't believe me. It doesn't really matter. What does is that I know something of what troubles you."

"I doubt that," said Booker flatly.

"I had a family once, too," Maglor said quietly. "And I lost them all, one by one. We are not made for death, we Eldar. And we did terrible things, my brothers and I. Betrayed our kin and those who should have been our allies." Booker looked away. "And afterward I wandered alone—singing in pain and regret beside the sea for ever after, so the songs once said. It nearly drove me mad."

"What's your point?"

"You have been exiled from your companions—"

"I deserve it."

Maglor lifted a shoulder in a shrug. "It is not my place to say. I was not there. But this?" He gestured around at the small, still dirty kitchen. "This is needless suffering." Booker just stared at him, expression flat. "At least I had my music when I was wandering. You must find something of your own that is not at the bottom of a bottle. And in the meantime…" He pulled a slip of paper from his pocket. On it he had written coordinates, and a short description of what to look for once Booker head reached them. "There is one older than even the eldest of Elves, who is yet merry and unweary and filled with the joy of living. His home has been a shelter for many through the long years, including myself. Go to this place, and follow these directions, and you may find it."

Booker took the paper and frowned at it. "Can't just give me an address?"

"There is no address. It is not a place that one just stumbles upon, unless by strange chance. And if you do follow those directions, be wary of the trees. They are very old and not all of them hold much love for those that go on two legs. And perhaps one of these days you might try your hand at art—your own art, not merely a copy."

"Yeah," said Booker, taking the paper and staring at it. "Maybe. Thanks."

"Farewell," said Maglor, and he let himself out.

.

"Where we you?" Quynh asked when Maglor returned home.

"I had an errand to run," he said, and held up more coffee and a bag of croissants from another cafe he'd stopped at on his way home. As Quynh dug a croissant out of the bag he asked, "How much longer did you want to stay in Paris?"

She shrugged. "I did what I came to do. But I have nowhere else to go until Andromache and the others return."

"How about you come back to England with me, then?" Maglor asked. "I would like to go home."

This was agreeable, and so Maglor quickly tidied up the flat and they set off on the drive from Paris to Calais. There was no hurry, much as Maglor was eager to return to his quiet cottage and cease this constant movement, at least for a time, and so they took a circuitous route to enjoy the French countryside, stopping in quiet villages and tasting wines and cheeses. It was a pleasant few days, and by the time they rolled onto the ferry at Calais, Maglor was feeling quite relaxed. Quynh too was in a fine mood, even out on the water, though she did not go with Maglor up to the deck.

They were crossing in the middle of the afternoon, this time, and there were plenty of others milling about. Maglor went to the prow and leaned on the railing, closing his eyes and breathing deeply the wet salty smell of the sea. When he opened his eyes he looked down and, in the waves curling against the ship, he briefly glimpsed a smiling face. It winked and vanished.

From Dover it was an easy drive back to Maglor's cottage, and he found it in much the same state as when he'd left it—including the bullet hole in the wall, and a few blood stains on the carpet. As soon as they got out of the car Norindo sped off, either into the village or down to the beach. "You know, I really didn't expect to be able to return here," said Maglor as he hauled his harp out of the trunk. "Let alone so soon."

Quynh looked out over the water. "Will you miss it when you leave for good?" she asked.

"I think so," said Maglor. "But it isn't—I'm not sure I can explain. Middle-earth is not my home, and all of the parts that felt the most like home have long since vanished—sunk under the sea, or just changed with the passing of the years."

"Wherever you're going will be different, too," Quynh pointed out.

"Yes, of course." It had changed before he had even left—irrevocably. Maglor had never seen the Bay of Eldamar under anything but darkness or starlight, nor Tirion under anything but Treelight. But it wasn't really Valinor that he meant when he said he was going home. In his mind he imagined his family's house in Tirion, or their estate in the countryside surrounded by fruit orchards, with that small river running nearby where his mother got clay for her sculptures—and if he were honest with himself it was the home of his youth, before everything had started to go wrong. There was no returning to that any more than there was to Cuiviénen.

"Maglor?" Quynh was looking at him with a furrow between her brows. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, of course." He flashed her a smile, and dragged his harp over the threshold. "Just thinking of where to start putting my affairs in order. I shudder to think of the number of storage units or safety deposit boxes that I've forgotten about over the years."

First things first was to get the blood out of the carpet, and to patch the plaster over the bullet hole. And then to clean out the fridge because he'd forgotten that part of preparing to flee, before, and merely opening it was enough to set him gagging. "Ugh," Quynh said from across the room. "What is that?"

"Previously undiscovered life forms, I think," said Maglor as he grabbed a trash bag. "I hope you don't mind take-out tonight because this is going to take all afternoon to scrub out."

"I will never mind take-out," said Quynh. "What are we going to have?"

"I was thinking fish and chips." Maglor dropped a packet of lunch meat that had gone positively furry as well as slimy into the trash bag. Honestly, he hadn't been gone that long, why did it seem as though the fridge had been left for months instead of just a couple of weeks? "There's a wonderful shop in the village. Been perfecting the art for at least three generations. I wrote an entire ballad about their food, once." Quynh laughed. "It was very popular. Almost as popular as the real thing." Maglor finished digging out all of the bad food—there wasn't a lot, but there was enough—and tied the bag shut. He'd deal with that mess later.

An hour later he was head and shoulders into the fridge, muttering to himself and scrubbing the back corners with bleach—long overdue anyway, even without the food gone bad—when Quynh called into the kitchen to say that someone had driven up the lane. "If it's more would-be kidnappers," Maglor said over his shoulder, "please just shoot them."

"I don't think—oh, that's Nico!" A second later Maglor heard the front door open and then swing shut.

A couple of minutes later he heard them all troop in. "What are you doing?" Nile asked, appearing at his side and peering over his shoulder.

Maglor withdrew from the fridge and tossed the rag into the bucket. "Cleaning."

"With bleach?" Nile's eyebrow rose. "No magic? No like, tra la la lally a clean fridge would be jolly, sort of songs?"

"I have better things to do with my music than get mold out of the back of my fridge," Maglor said.

"Like write ballads about fish and chips," Quynh said from somewhere behind him. Someone else snorted; it sounded like Joe. Nile, when he glanced up, looked delighted.

The ballad had also had charms of prosperity and good fortune bound up in it which had worked even better than he'd expected, but Maglor wasn't about to tell anyone about that. He gave the fridge a last once-over and shut the door. "How was Colombia?" he asked.

"Messy," said Nile and Nicky at the same time. When Maglor turned around he found that Andromache had her arm in a sling. She shrugged her good shoulder when he raised an eyebrow.

"I'll order extra chips when I get dinner, then," Maglor said, and promptly had blessings bestowed upon him and his family in three different languages.

Nile accompanied him down to the village when he went out. "How was Paris?" she asked.

"Paris was lovely," said Maglor.

"How was Booker?"

Maglor made a face. "Decidedly not lovely. But Norindo made friends rather quickly, so there is hope for him yet I think." As though summoned by the sound of his name Norindo appeared out of some bushes beside the path, letting out a quick sharp bark at the sight of Nile before jumping up on her legs. "Dogs are a very good judge of character," Maglor said.

"Hey, buddy." Nile crouched to give Norindo a quick scratch behind the ears. She looked up at Maglor. "Do you think Booker's gonna be okay?"

"That's entirely up to him," said Maglor. "I did tell him of a place he could go—he would not be alone, and I think it would be good for him—but only he can choose whether to accept his fate gracefully, or to continue to age like wine into vinegar."

They stopped at the shop before going to get dinner, because an empty fridge for just himself was one thing, but an empty fridge with a houseful of guests was another. At Maggie's Chip Shop the cashier—Maggie's son Jason, who had inherited the shop when she and her wife retired—greeted Maglor with happy surprise. "We were all wondering where you'd gone off to," he said. "Glad to see you back! You want your usual, then?"

"No, actually. I have some house guests; they're all quite eager to taste the best fish and chips on the southern coast." Maglor placed the large order, introduced Nile, and they chatted amiably about the village gossip that Maglor had missed in the last week, until the food was done. It was the most normal conversation Maglor had had since Quynh had shown up in his life, and it was rather nice. It was also a relief to learn that no one in the village had noticed anything amiss aside from Maglor's absence. Jason offered to send one of his busboys to help carry the bags, but Maglor waved him off; between himself and Nile they could juggle everything.

"Oh my God, this smells amazing," Nile said as they walked up the path out of the village proper. "No wonder you wrote a song about it."

Everyone else agreed, and they all made Maglor sing the ballad he'd written. He did so with token protests, and then they turned on a historical drama so those who had lived through the period and place could make fun of the inaccuracies (Andy was particularly scathing). After that film ended Nile picked one, a fun animated story with no historical anything to nitpick, and halfway through that nearly everyone was asleep in a tangle on the sofa or the floor.

Maglor turned the volume down and then slipped outside, Norindo at his heels and the flute Linnoriel had given him in his pocket. It was a quiet night. Crickets cheeped in the grass and the stars shone brightly in the cloudless sky overhead as Maglor made his way to the path leading down to the beach. Norindo trotted ahead, pausing to sniff every so often, and most of the time to lift his leg. Maglor marveled a little at the bladder capacity of small dogs, but then he reached the end of the path and his bare feet sank into cool soft sand, and he sighed. He found a good spot above the tide line and took out his flute.

He played with no particular purpose, wandering through the musical centuries and across the world, until he found himself piping a song written long ago in Valinor when the Elves had first come there. He had heard it—and performed it—many times at festivals in Valmar. It was best played to harmonize with the ringing of the city's many bells. If he closed his eyes he could see them swinging in their towers—those marvelous towers of strange and beautiful shapes and colors and heights, and the streets thronging with golden-hair Vanyar and sparkling Ainur beneath, and the birds singing in the flowering trees. When the song was done he lowered the flute to his lap, stretching the stiffness from his fingers, and sighed.

Maglor had the pleasure of five house guests for the rest of the week, before another call came from Copley to send them to another strange corner of the world. This time Quynh went with them, after extracting a promise from Maglor that he wouldn't sail away into the West without at least calling them first. It was an easy promise to make, since Maglor hadn't been planning on doing otherwise. And then they were gone, and Maglor was left entirely alone in his cottage for the first time in just a few weeks but which felt like much longer.

He did not immediately start setting his things in order. There was no hurry, not really, and with no one hunting him and no guests to be considered, Maglor wanted nothing more than to sleep for a full month. So he did, more or less, getting up only to change the location of his dozing—from his bed to his garden to the beach. When he wasn't napping he played music, idly at his harp or on a flute or one of the other instruments scattered around his home.

But after he passed two months in that manner his dreams began to turn westward again, and he dreamed again and again of the sea, of standing at the prow of a ship watching mountains rise up from the horizon, their snowy peaks blushing pale pink with the dawn, and of fair voices carried on a breeze that smelled of flowers that he had not seen since the days before the Darkening.

"All right, all right!" he called out of his window towards the sea after waking from one such dream with a longing so strong that it almost physically hurt. "I'm coming!" Below his house, on the beach, he fancied that he heard laughter.

The problem with having lived so long among Men, however, was that most of his worldly possessions needed to be gotten rid of. He could, Maglor supposed, have just bought a boat and sailed off into the sunset, but that would leave other people with unforeseen headaches. So he made dozens of lists (Daeron had his spreadsheets, but Maglor preferred the shorthand that he'd used long ago while guarding the Gap, and that did not translate well to a computer), and he called up law firms that had forgotten he was even one of their clients. His flat in Paris was very easy to sell, and most of his money and the more significant objects he owned were also easy to donate to various organizations and museums. News stories popped up in a few places about mysterious and anonymous benefactors. Nile sent them to him along with a string of emojis that Maglor did not even try to decipher. Less easy to get rid of was all of the other stuff that had somehow accumulated in his house and in a few storage lockers scattered around the globe.

.

Eight months into that endeavor, Maglor arrived home from a longer-than-anticipated trip to Canada to find Daeron playing fetch with Norindo in his garden. "Please tell me nothing else has gone wrong," Maglor said.

"No, nothing is wrong," Daeron said, laughing. "I did break into your house, though."

"Did you break anything?" Maglor asked. Daeron only arched an eyebrow. "Of course not. What brings you here, then?"

"I heard the fish and chips was delightful," said Daeron, following Maglor inside.

"How…?"

"Nile somehow got Hathellas' phone number, and then through her got mine—and probably a dozen others as well. She's a delightful correspondent."

Maglor looked at his own cell phone, which had ten unread messages from Nile, and one from Quynh, who had been introduced to photography and was very excited about it. "She's certainly prolific," Maglor said. He dropped his bag to the floor and then dropped himself onto the sofa. Norindo jumped up onto his lap. "Yes, hello, Norindo."

Daeron also sat, his expression growing more serious. "The fish and chips are, indeed, wonderful," he said, "but that is not the primary reason I came. I did think I would find you at home."

"It turns out selling property in western Canada when you don't use the same name that you did when you purchased it almost a hundred years ago is something of a headache," Maglor said. Daeron laughed. "So if not the food, was it merely my company you sought? Or Norindo's, perhaps?"

"Actually," Daeron said, "I wanted to know if you would like my company." Maglor blinked. "When you depart. I would like to go with you."

"Oh. Really?"

"Yes. I think it's time."

"How could I say no? You would be most welcome, provided you don't intend to bring an entire orchestra's worth of instruments. I've worked out a budget and it won't allow for a boat that big."

Daeron laughed. "No, I shall be much more economic in my packing. Your harp will be the biggest instrument on board, I think."

"Oh good. I had visions of you arriving at the dock with a grand piano, or perhaps an organ…"

Daeron departed after a week, in which they went together to purchase a sailboat suitable for their purposes—big enough for them and a handful of instruments each, none larger than Maglor's driftwood harp, and with room also for Norindo. They were given the option of having the name painted for them along the side, but Maglor declined and did it himself in elegant, looping Fëanorian script, and on a sunny afternoon he and Daeron took the Earcale on her maiden voyage just out of the harbor and back.

.

Six months after the purchase of the boat Maglor looked at his lists and realized that he had crossed off nearly everything he'd set out to do before leaving. All that was left was to hand his seaside cottage over to someone—he had been putting it off for obvious reasons, but also he did not want to just put it on the market for anyone to snatch up. So he emailed Copley, who surprised him by coming out in person. It was the matter of a few minutes to hand over all of the relevant deeds and paperwork for Copley to take care of. "I also thought you might like to know," Copley said, as he tucked the paperwork into a briefcase, and as Maglor got up to pour them both some lemonade, "that Dennis Newman is dead."

Maglor paused with his hand still outstretched into the fridge. "How?" he asked.

"Heart attack, I believe."

"Mm." Maglor breathed a sigh. "Well, Daeron did say he would not find what he sought."

"I'm still not entirely clear what exactly that was," said Copley.

"The same thing that Merrick wanted. Only Newman fancied it his birthright."

Daeron appeared a few days after Copley arrived, and on his heels were Quynh and her friends, and—to Maglor's complete surprise—Princess Hathellas and Prince Lumorn. "Well of course we must see off Daeron," said Hathellas primly, even as she leaned in to kiss Maglor's cheek. "And my mother was delighted by the excuse to make lembas—it's been ever so long—so she made far more than I hope you will ever have need of."

"Please give her my deepest thanks," said Maglor, accepting the basket of leaf-wrapped bread.

"When do you leave?" Nile asked over Quynh's head when Quynh hugged him.

"Sometime this week, I think," said Maglor. "I didn't know when Daeron would arrive."

"I would have been here sooner," said Daeron cheerfully, "only I had second thoughts about the grand piano—" He ducked under Maglor's swing, laughing as he easily stepped out of reach.

It was a cheerful, lively group. Maglor and Daeron played music together while Hathellas and Lumorn competed to make the silliest rhymes in the songs they made up on the spot. Norindo jumped from lap to lap, demanding and receiving all the scratches and belly rubs that a little dog could wish for. Storms rolled in and it rained for almost a week; but at last the skies cleared, and dawn came clear and bright. Maglor was alone outside when the skies began to lighten, and he greeted Arien with a song that he had written long ago after the first sunrise—or, less poetically but more accurately, after the fourteenth sunrise when they were truly assured that the light was truly there to stay. They had been used to the moon already, but Tilion was ever a wanderer and wayward, and that caused many, Maglor included, to doubt whether the moon would remain—or the sun, when Arien leaped up to join Tilion in the skies.

But it sounded better to say it was written after the very first sunrise, and he had had that particular sight in mind while composing. That had been a horrific and dark time for the Noldor, with Maedhros captured and no one sure whether he still lived. That first sunrise had been, literally and figuratively, a bright moment that had rekindled more than just the life that had lain for so long under Yavanna's Sleep. It had been red and gold and orange, the clouds on the horizon seeming to have caught fire from within, and then the sky had turned from inky black to purple and then to blue, pale and then bright and vivid as the petals of the forget-me-nots that grew along the roads in Valinor. And flowers had burst into blossom all around them in the emerald-green grass, and the trees had stirred to life and put forth leaves and flowers of their own, so the whole world was a riot of color to rival those in the sky. As the moon was but an echo of Telperion, so was the sun but a memory of Laurelin's glory—but even the memory was glorious indeed.

As he finished the song, the sun was fully free of the horizon, and his last day in Middle-earth had begun. Quynh came out of the house and sat down beside him. Nearby grew the athelas plant; it was well on its way to dominating that entire corner of the garden, and in the morning breeze it released a fresh, sweet smell. "Are you leaving today?" Quynh asked after a few minutes of companionable silence.

"Yes. This evening, I think. When the stars are out."

"I don't think I ever thanked you," Quynh said abruptly. She did not look at Maglor, instead reaching out to scratch Norindo behind the ears. "For helping me, when I washed up on your beach. I would have been—very lost, I think, otherwise."

"You are welcome," said Maglor.

"Weird that of all the beaches I could've washed up on," Quynh said after a little while, "I ended up on yours."

"It isn't weird if it was on purpose," said Maglor, remembering Lady Uinen rising up out of the waves to speak to him—a startling event even without dead-bodies-that-weren't lying in the sand at his feet. "But I am glad that I could help." They sat a little while longer in silence; inside Maglor could hear stirrings in the kitchen, the clinking of dishes and quiet voices.

Maglor had been giving a great deal of thought to some of the artifacts that they had recovered from Turralba. The copy of the Red Book had been left in Thranduil's care, alongside Maglor's own. The palantír he was taking into the West—there was little use for seeing stones now, with satellites and cell phones and the Internet, but even so it was not a thing to be left lying around—but there remained the Elessar stone. It was not like the rings of power that Celebrimbor had made—the Elven rings had been meant to prevent decay, to keep the world preserved and unchanging, which in the end even the most Wise had had to admit was not the great good that had been intended. But the Elessar was for healing and renewal, and as far as Maglor could tell it did not take the same toll on its user that Vilya and Nenya had. He pulled it out of his pocket; it shone gently in the morning light, nestled in his palm. The silver eagle brooch had been dark and tarnished when they found it, but Maglor had polished it back to gleaming, so every small, intricate feather shone.

"Your mission is to make the world better," he said to Quynh. "But though you are all warriors, you do not always have to use violence. This may help you." He held out the brooch. Quynh took it with a quizzical look. "My nephew made this, long ago. Its power has not waned, and I think he would like to know that it remains in the world, doing what he intended for it."

"You never mentioned a nephew before," said Quynh. She turned the Elessar over in her hands. "What's this, here?" She had found the maker's mark, small and unobtrusive on the back.

"A C glyph, for Celebrimbor."

"Thank you," Quynh said, as she tucked the brooch away into a pocket. "And thank your nephew, when you see him." She paused. "I assume he is alive?"

Maglor laughed. "If my father has been released from Mandos, then I think Celebrimbor certainly has."

They remained in the garden until Nicky poked his head out of the window to call them in to breakfast. And after passing the day quietly and uneventfully, their party made their way down to the little harbor. Twilight was settling over the world like a soft blanket as the sun finally sank fully beneath the western horizon. The stars winked into view one by one. Gil-Estel gleamed like a beacon in the west, as though Eärendil himself were waiting to guide the Earcale to the Straight Road. The fishermen had already come in, and the harbor was otherwise deserted. Even so, Hathellas and Lumorn sung a quiet melody that shrouded them from any curious eyes.

Daeron jumped on board without hesitation, followed by Hathellas and Lumorn, already making laughing judgments of the boat, but Maglor stopped on the dock. Norindo sat down by his feet and scratched his ear before looking up expectantly. This was it. Until this very moment it hadn't seemed entirely real—he had been able to talk of it and think of it, but it was always before him, in the future, there was always one more thing left to do before it really happened. Only now the only thing left to do was to take one more step, and then he would leave Middle-earth for ever. Against his collarbone his father's pendant felt very warm.

"You okay?" Andy asked, bumping her shoulder against his arm.

Maglor smiled down at her. "Yes," he said. "I'm going home." And if his voice wavered just a little on the word home, no one mentioned it.

They all moved in at once, and if Maglor weren't more than a head taller than all of them he would have been buried beneath the collective hug. He laughed, and once they released him he found it easier to scoop up Norindo. Quynh darted in for one last tight embrace, and then Maglor stepped off of the dock for the last time. Lumorn and Hathellas jumped off of the boat, and Daeron reemerged from the cabin. There was a flurry of activity as sails were raised and ropes both secured and released, and at last the Earcale began to drift away from the dock.

"Farewell!" called Hathellas as Daeron and Maglor returned to the stern. "May Elbereth light your way!"

"Good bye," chorused all the rest in varying languages.

"Namárië!" called Maglor, to them and to Middle-earth. Over their heads the stars blazed in the clear sky; it was fully night now, and the waters were smooth enough that the sky was reflected in them so that it almost felt as though they were truly sailing into the skies rather than toward the Atlantic.

"Don't fall off the boat this time!" Quynh shouted just before they slipped out of earshot. That was followed by a burst of laughter echoing across the waves, before distance swallowed them up.

Daeron took out his flute and as he played the wind picked up, and sped them along westward. Gil-Estel was already sinking toward the horizon. Maglor glanced over the side of the boat and saw, briefly, Uinen rise out of the waves to raise her hands to them in greeting, before sinking back down and vanishing like sea foam on the surface of the water.

.

Maglor did not count the days of the voyage. He and Daeron passed the time singing and managing the sails and playing careful games of fetch on the deck with Norindo. They talked of ancient days and of their wanderings throughout the wide world. Maglor spoke of Valinor as he recalled it, and they both speculated what it might be like now.

They both felt when the boat found the Straight Road. There was no visible change, no sudden difference in the sky—for it was the middle of the day and there were no stars to judge by—nor in the water, but something shifted in the air, a difference not to be put into words. As the afternoon came on clouds gathered and a soft rain fell, light and cool and refreshing rather than dreary. It continued for some days. Neither Maglor nor Daeron spoke much; Maglor could feel his heart pounding like a drum beneath his ribs as he strained his eyes to see through the rain-haze into the distance.

And then, as the sun rose behind them the rainclouds parted like a curtain rolling back, and mountains could be seen rising from the faraway sea, cloud-wreathed and snow-capped, blushing in the dawn. They rose, and rose, and rose, until at last beneath them came rolling hills glowing emerald green in the morning light. Maglor's breath caught as across the waves bells could be heard—and then the sound of many fair voices singing a welcome to the new morning. Beside him Daeron exclaimed in wordless delight.

Dolphins leaped out of the water as the wind picked up, bearing them eagerly towards land. Norindo jumped around the deck, barking with the same excitement that had both Maglor and Daeron laughing. Soon the white towers of Avallónë could be seen, and the clear turquoise waters of the Bay of Eldamar where the ships of the Teleri darted or drifted about, their sails as bright as butterfly wings. As they drew closer Maglor saw the colorful city of Alqualondë with its rainbow beaches, and beyond the Calacirya, and a glimpse of white, bright shining marble that was Tirion upon Túna.

Then they came into the harbor of Avallónë with its bells all ringing, and an escort of Telerin sailors all about them crying greetings, their long hair flying in the wind that filled their sails. Maglor busied himself with their own sails and steering into the dock that someone waved them toward. He did not allow himself to search the gathering crowd for faces, until others jumped onto the deck and ushered him away from the sails. "Go, go!" they laughed. "We'll take care of this. Go! You are awaited!"

Maglor nearly tripped over Norindo on his way to the gangplank. The little dog was running in circles in his excitement at arriving in a new place, and vanished into the crowd the moment his feet touched solid ground; Daeron had already disappeared, embraced by old friends from Doriath perhaps. But Maglor wasn't worried about finding him again—and as he stepped off of the gangplank himself he ceased to think of Norindo at all, because the crowd surged forward, proving itself to be made of all familiar faces. All of his brothers were there, and Celebrimbor and Nerdanel and he even caught a glimpse of Elrond—but at the forefront was Fëanor, and he caught Maglor up in a hug so tight it made his bones creak.

"My son, welcome home!"

The coordinates that Quynh's strange friend had given him led to a forest, reached by an overgrown footpath that branched off of of an English country lane. Booker had looked it up before coming—he was many things, but stupid was not one of them—and now that he was there he wasn't even sure why he'd bothered. The sun was hot in the cloudless sky; a fallow field stood between him on the side of the road and the forest, which he knew to be surprisingly large, with no roads cutting through it, only a small river winding lazy and brown through the thick trees.

Booker sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. His head ached dully; he needed a drink. Somewhere not too far away a sheep bleated, and farther off a dog barked. Other than that it was quiet. But curiosity won out, and before he could talk himself out of it, Booker was at the edge of the woods, and then inside them, following a twisting, winding path beneath ancient trees, thick-trunked and hoary. Their tangled branches blocked out most of the bright sunlight, so he walked in a sort of green-tinted twilight. The air was close, heavy with earthy smells of moldering vegetation and growing things. And it was very, very quiet. Once in a while a bird called, or something rustled just out of sight in the underbrush, but after a time even those sounds ceased.

This had been a bad idea. After what felt like hours upon hours Booker turned around—but the path wasn't there. Panic spiked before he looked again and found it, just not quite where he had thought it was. He looked at his watch. It had been thirty minutes. He gave in and fished out his flask.

Then he heard the sound of flowing water. The river was nearby. Figuring he might as well go at least that far, Booker went on. After a few minutes, he heard something else: voices, laughing and singing, either nonsense or a language he'd never heard before. His feet carried him forward until he emerged, blinking, into bright sunshine on the grassy river bank. In front of him was a pool formed at the side of the river, outside of the stronger currents; its surface was almost entirely covered with water lilies, and on the bank sat a man and a woman, bathing their feet and laughing together. The woman was clad in a light green dress with a silver belt, and wore a garland of lilies on her head like a crown. The man had brown curly hair and a thick beard and a ruddy face made for smiling, and he too had flowers in his hair. It should have looked ridiculous, but it didn't. They were the ones laughing and singing.

Booker had never seen anyone so uncomplicatedly happy.

The man spotted Booker almost immediately and jumped to his feet, skipping over a pair of discarded yellow boots, almost dancing down the path to take Booker's hand. "Hey, merry dol! Welcome, stranger!" he cried. "Come and sit and stay a while with us!"