Sirion by Grundy

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Once Upon A Hill

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One of the best things about life at Amon Ereb was the stories. Elrond and Elros were in complete agreement about that.

As long as they had behaved themselves and not been sent to bed early for misbehaving (which was rare), Makalaurë would tell them a bedtime story. And his stories were better than even the best ones Aunt Lalwen had told. Better still, sometimes he would sing them, and then they wouldn’t just hear his words, they’d see the story.

Those nights were very special, because after the song, they would invariably have wonderful dreams. The forest of Oromë was Elros’ favorite – a forest one could walk or ride in without worrying about orcs or wargs or anything dark, and if it was not a hunt, the animals might talk to you. Elrond liked that one, but he liked the one with the beach better, a beach that didn’t have plain old sand like Sirion had, but sparkling sand like millions of tiny jewels in every color, and paths marked out by pearls. He would have liked to try building a city using that sand!

Some of the tales Makalaurë told them were surely made up, but some of them were real, and Elrond liked those ones the best, like the tale of the prince who fell in love with the blacksmith’s daughter. Maedhros – who was the authority on such matters, because the twins had already learned that when he was in a poetic mood, Makalaurë didn’t necessarily speak literally – said that one was real, as was the one about the prince who climbed a mountain to bring his lady love flowers that grew only there to prove his devotion.

The two princes were brothers, and Makalaurë said there was also a story about their younger brother winning the heart of the swan princess who lived in a beautiful kingdom by the sea, but they would need Aunt Galadriel to tell that story, for she knew it better than he did. Elrond had been somewhat disappointed, because who knew when Aunt Galadriel would visit. (If there was a pattern to her comings and goings, Elrond had yet to find it. But he filed the thought away for whenever she appeared in Amon Ereb.)

Makalaurë wasn’t the only one who told stories. Every elf in the fortress had stories to tell, and the twins made an excellent audience, willing to listen raptly to all of them. They had never been to Tirion, yet after only half a year at Amon Ereb, they could give a reasonably accurate description of the city. Elrond was beginning to feel that if set down in the middle of it, he and his brother would probably have found themselves quite at home as much as they’d heard about it, from the King’s House to the smith’s quarter to the outlying lands stewarded by those Noldor who had learned from Yavanna.

There were stories in the schoolroom, too. Those ones were called history, and they were all real. Some of it was terribly dull – did it really matter how many measures of what were needed to feed how many elves and who had first worked that out, much less when? But much of it had to do with their kin, from how the elves had wakened by Cuivienen, and the Noldor had left Beleriand on the Journey only to return after the death of the Two Trees and murder of King Finwë, and everything that had happened in Beleriand since the rising of the sun.

Some of it was terribly remote. Finwë Noldaran must have been very brave, Elrond and his brother had agreed, to not only go with Oromë to the West, but also to stand up to Morgoth. But his being their grandmother’s great-grandfather made him seem very long ago and far away, even before the part where he had been killed. Elu Thingol, their mother’s great-grandfather seemed scarcely more real, not when he had died before their mother had come to Menegroth as a baby.

Kings, it seemed, died quite often. Finwë, Nolofinwë, Turukano, Thingol, Dior – and those were just the ones directly related to them, grandfathers and great-grandfathers and so on. Turukano’s older brother Findekano had also been king for a while, until he had died fighting balrogs in the horrible Battle of Unnumbered Tears. Aunt Galadriel’s older brother Findarato was another dead king, killed by werewolves and Sauron. His nephew Artaresto had been king after him, and he had died too, in Nargothrond.

And, of course, there were also Laiquendi kings unrelated to them like Denethor, who had died right here at Amon Ereb, but that had been before the fortress was built on the hilltop. (Makalaurë had told them that the whispers they had heard that Denethor’s fëa still defended the hill were ‘superstition’ and that it was better for Denethor himself if he was not here anymore.)

“Maedhros,” Elros said hesitantly one evening at dinner, after yet another day’s history lesson involving a dead king, “are there any kings who didn’t die?”

Elrond was relieved it was Elros who asked the obvious question, but they’d both been wondering. Tonight being a family dinner meant they could ask such questions without worry about what others would think. Makalaurë and Maedhros always answered any question put to them, even if it was just to say they didn’t know. But that didn’t mean others in the Great Hall might not laugh or look reproving, depending on the question. Elrond still squirmed whenever he thought of the reaction to his confusion about how a tree could give light when he knew from his lessons with Varilon that trees needed light to live.

Maedhros looked somewhat surprised.

“Of course there are,” he replied. “King Olwë of the Teleri did not die.”

“That you know of,” Elrond pointed out quietly. “He stayed in Aman, along with King Ingwë of the Vanyar. They were alive when you left, but anything might have happened after that.”

“I very much doubt that they have died,” Maedhros said patiently. “Aman is also known as the Undying Lands for a reason.”

Elrond tried not to chew at his lip. There was an obvious flaw in Maedhros’ logic, but he wasn’t sure he should point it out. Besides, he was hard pressed to justify thinking anything could possibly have happened to Ingwë– aside from Queen Indis, who didn’t strictly count since she had been married Finwë Noldaran, nothing interesting ever happened to the Vanyar.

“But you said both your grandparents died there,” Elros protested. “Queen Míriel Þerindë went to Lorien and never returned, and King Finwë was killed by Morgoth in Formenos!”

That was not nice, Elrond warned his brother silently. We don’t like thinking of our grandparents because they’re all dead, and we never met any of them. It will be worse for Maedhros and Makalaurë, because they actually knew theirs.

They never knew Queen Míriel, she died when Prince Fëanaro was littler than us! Elros retorted unrepentantly. And anyway, Maedhros and Makalaurë are different than us - they still have two living grandparents. But that’s probably because Mahtan isn’t a king.

Good. You should ask them about Mahtan and – and his wife. We don’t even know her name. Then they can talk about grandparents who aren’t dead. It would be nice to hear about kin that didn’t have bad things happen to them.

“Aloud, please, boys,” Maedhros reminded them.

Elrond blinked. Maedhros didn’t generally catch him, even if he still usually knew when Elros was using what the Noldor called osanwë.

“It is no great leap to guess that you are speaking silently when I can see plainly that Elros is,” Maedhros told him with a sigh. “Your brother does not generally hold conversations with himself.”

Elrond blushed. He would have to get Elros to practice more diligently so he wouldn’t be caught as easily.

“You are correct, Elros, that my father’s parents both died in Aman,” Maedhros continued. “But those were very unusual events. That is part of what made them so shocking to the Amanyar. Elrond, you are right to be skeptical that I am speaking of absolute knowledge that Olwë and Ingwë yet live, but from what I know of Aman, I would be immensely surprised to hear that they did not.”

Elrond frowned.

“I am afraid that is the best I can say on the subject,” Maedhros added. “I cannot return to verify their continued survival. But you are wise to bear in mind the limits of my information. I hope you will remember to do so with others as well.”

Elrond was pleased by that, for Maedhros’ words made it sound like he had done something good in noticing that Maedhros couldn’t know whether or not the kings of the Teleri and Vanyar still lived.

After hearing about so many deceased kings in their lessons, Nana going away didn’t seem quite so remarkable anymore. Except…

“Maedhros, are you sure Nana is not dead? She was queen, and that’s just the feminine word for king. Makalaurë wasn’t being poetical when he said she was gone, was he?”

He’d managed to truly startle Maedhros with that one, he saw. Oddly enough, that was reassuring.

“I was there when your mother leapt into the sea, young one,” Maedhros said, his voice gone somewhat gruff. “It looked to me very much like Ulmo saved her, and I don’t suppose he took a hand in the matter only to let her die later. If he was content to let her die, she would not have come back up from the water.”

“Oh,” Elrond said, immensely relieved. “That’s all right, then.”

“Poetical?” Maedhros prompted, raising an eyebrow at his younger brother.

Elrond squirmed a bit. It sounded rather as if he might have gotten Makalaurë in trouble.

“Sometimes when he is making up songs or being inspired, Makalaurë doesn’t speak plainly,” Elros said blithely. “Usually we can tell, but we had only just met you when he said Nana had ‘gone away’ so we might not have realized if he was using… silime?”

Elros scrunched up his face, trying to remember how the word was meant to go.

“Simile,” Elrond offered quickly, before either of their cousins could correct him. “But isn’t that the one that uses like or as? Euphonie is the one where you say something that sounds nice instead of the plain thing that isn’t so nice.”

They had lessons with Makalaurë that covered everything one could possibly want to know about proper speech and writing- at least from the Noldorin point of view.  Makalaurë had been fretting about the need to engage a Sindarin tutor if one could be found, so that the twins would learn their mother’s tongue as proficiently as their father’s. (The only other fluent speaker of Sindarin in the fortress was Glinwen, who being only an adolescent herself, had yet to master the finer points of the language.)

“Very close, Elrond,” Makalaurë smiled. “But you’ll find euphony is a pleasing sound. Euphemism is the one you meant.”

The Noldor have a word for everything!  was Elros’ exasperated commentary. And that’s another one we’ll have to remember, because if it isn’t necessary for speaking or writing, it’s sure to be important for music.

You like music, Elrond reminded him, so it should be an easy one to remember. Eu-pho-ny. It sounds musical.

“I wasn’t using euphemism,” Makalaurë continued. “But you were both already quite upset as it was, so trying to explain what exactly had happened with your mother did not seem like the best plan. Especially not when we needed to bring you somewhere safe as quickly as possible.”

“Oh,” Elros said simply, satisfied by the explanation. “Do you suppose she’ll ever come back?”

Both twins looked back to Maedhros, who frowned.

“It seems unlikely,” he said.

Elros scowled.

“I still don’t want to be king,” he said in a dire tone. “It is not a good idea.”

“Maedhros,” Elrond said, casting about for a distraction, “was your father king after Finwë? We’ve learned about Finwë and Nolofinwë, but we never learned about what happened between Formenos and Beleriand.”

Elrond could tell at once by the startled look on Makalaurë’s face that this hadn’t been as good a topic as he had hoped. Maedhros looked almost nervous – except that couldn’t be possible, because it was Maedhros and Maedhros was never nervous, so clearly Elrond had misinterpreted.

“You are right, Elrond, we haven’t. I suppose we had better rectify that. I will take your history lesson tomorrow, and you will learn about the short reigns of King Fëanaro and King Nelyafinwë.”