God, I Pity the Violins by StarSpray

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Chapter 15

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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.

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"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.