The Love of Small Things by janeways

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Chapter 5

In which Erestor is a little less fussy librarian, a little more Indiana Jones; or

Restore, verb. 1) To bring back, reinstate; 2) to return; 3) to repair.

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The first thing that Erestor noticed was the shadow across his page. “You are blocking my light,” he said, not bothering to raise his eyes from the work in front of him. Then, it occurred to him that the rest of the room was nearly as dark as the shadow. Looking up, he saw one of his assistants standing before him, wringing the hem of her sleeves between her fingers.

“Um,” she started.

“No, it’s quite alright,” Erestor interjected, anticipating her request. “I’ve been quite negligent in keeping track of the time. Please, everyone, enjoy your evenings, and I’ll see you all in the morning.” He gave a small smile, hoping he had spared the shy assistant from some of the anxiety of asking. Erestor may have had a reputation for being exacting, and he himself was known to burn the candles low, but he did not think himself inconsiderate. He saw the wave of relief that swept across the room, visible on his assistants’ faces even in the dying light. Calling out their farewells, they slowly filed down the stairs, out into the night, and Erestor was left alone.

*

If, by chance, a passerby on the street below would have happened to glance up at the highest floor, they would have seen a vast room with many windows, lit by a single, flickering candle, the only star in that dark expanse.

*

The candle sputtered, flaring up in one last valiant attempt at brilliance as it burned its last inch. Sighing, Erestor considered letting it burn out completely, but decided against it. If he stopped now, he would still have time to record the day’s progress in his research log. Stretching, Erestor thought wryly that he wasn’t the young man he had been a few millennia ago. He walked to the window, gazing out over the streets and plazas below. Beneath a cloudless sky, the city was quiet, and the scent of spice wafted through the open window on a warm breeze. The moon seemed high and very, very far away.

The research log—at this point too ponderous to be easily lifted and carried about—occupied a place of prominence on a lectern below a large window. There, it could by lit by the moon and the stars, on clear nights, should Erestor have burned through his last candle of the night. The last several pages had been filled in the course of the past week: ruin-divers had returned with several cartloads of artefacts from their latest venture at Tol Himring, and he and his assistants had been busy organizing, cataloguing, and cross-referencing. Soon, they would be ready to decide what pieces would be installed in one of Lindon’s several museums, which would be reserved for continuing study, and which would be archived. Any personal or family effects would be returned to next of kin, if possible.

Erestor reviewed yesterday’s log in preparation for today’s entry. Below the date, a few short lines, barely qualified to be called sentences:

Assisted in deciphering faded engraving on item #187356 (plate—fragment). Appears to have been either commemorative plate or celery dish.

Cross-referenced items #187893 – 187945. Catalogued items #188372 – 189125.

Made significant progress in restoring item #187432 (vase). Displays similarities to vase Elrond and Elros broke as children. Same studio/potter? Part of set? (I don’t remember a set?) Further inquiry required.

But as he moved to pick up his pen, a burst of wind swept through the window and over the room, whipping the pages of his log book back. Across the room, loose papers fluttered to the floor, rustling as they settled, and Erestor let out a tightly-controlled sigh. He felt tired, more tired than he remembered having felt in a long time, and he made no move to begin cleaning up the mess, or to find his lost place. A date on the page caught his eye, and almost without meaning to, he began to read.

—truly believe we are making significant progress at restoring what was lost, if only in part. Great was my grief at the sack of Nargothrond, and greater still at the fall of Gondolin for my friend and rival Pengolodh, but no longer does my task seem insurmountable, or the knowledge we bore out of the West lost beyond all memory. Every day my hope increases.

Erestor paused, his fingers slowly tracing the words he had written millennia ago, at the dawn of the Second Age, when this world seemed born again, new and full of potential. Slowly, he turned the page, skimming his account of that first expedition to Himring—Tol Himring, as it has become. There had been little need for a librarian during the construction of a city, and so, after arranging the design of libraries and museums with the city planners and architects, Erestor undertook his first official act as the freshly-appointed Chief Loremaster of Lindon: he gathered up recruits and set off for the coast. As it turned out, they were wildly successful, and their burgeoning realization that there would be enough artefacts to sustain several ventures—not to mention the lure of lost treasure untold—bolstered their spirits even further. It represented a reclamation that only a few months before had seemed impossible.

—pleasure at our success has led to the immediate discussion of subsequent ventures, not only to Tol Himring but reconnaissance missions to determine the potential accessibility of other underwater sites, as well as land expeditions to sites rumored or assumed to contain weapons, jewels—

As the expeditions continued, Erestor began to garner something of a curious and unexpected reputation. His strong sense of propriety, immaculate personal grooming, and devotion to organization had always lent him an air of primness. And accordingly, many at first assumed Erestor would take a managerial approach to leadership, leaving the dirty work—literally—of excavation to his assistants.

But Erestor had, for many years, almost until the end, been a loyal member of Maedhros’s household, which made him not only a veteran but a survivor; he had endured much hardship with little complaint, and—as had all the Fëanorians and their followers—he had learned by experience that nothing of value is without its price. (He had learned also that when one’s heart is set, no price is too dear.)

So what was a little mud to help clean up the mess of history? Stains did not matter on clothes worn expressly for outdoor work; hands accustomed to hard labor could still be softened with proper daily care; living and working in a tent was not mutually exclusive to running one’s household and community with order and hygiene. He was not to inflexible as to break at pressure.

In fact, the tenacity and dedication (and indeed, particular-ness) that made him so formidable in the library translated well to the field: he worked the hardest for the longest, rising early and staying up late. He volunteered for the most treacherous missions with no mind for glory. He was generous in his guidance and fearless in his leadership, and he approached the task at hand with a single-mindedness that inspired awe and concern in almost equal measure. Quite accidentally, Erestor’s example had encouraged a whole generation of would-be adventurer-scholars.

No artefact seems now too small, or too insignificant. For those who are young, and did not live through that age of glitter and gore, these shards and fragments make real what was once little more than a fairy tale, and offer a supplement to the memories of those who were there—immeasurably valuable but always partial and incomplete. And for those of us who were there, they offer the small comfort that our lives mattered—not only the lives and deeds of great lords and kings, but the lives of ordinary people, people we knew and loved, many of whom live no longer, except in us.

Turning the pages, he continued to skim, skipping over the centuries like a stone on the waves. Over time, the entries grew shorter, their sense of wonder and depth of feeling slowly replaced by a sense of mundane routine, and where each recovery had once seemed a miracle, they came to be seen as pleasantly inevitable. More and more, he remained in Lindon, leaving the quests to be headed by others.

As the centuries rolled on, it was taken for granted that new discoveries would turn up, or that backlogged archives would yield fresh insights. That the past was another life, a separate life, to be dutifully catalogued and meticulously analyzed—gloves on, please! not too much light there, now!—but never to be felt, experienced, enjoyed. Artefacts sat in museums above little placards with dates and explanations, but no real connection to the people who made and used them. Their lives, too, had been dutifully catalogued—dictated and taken down, organized, analyzed, archived, and left to gather dust, these fragments, the bones of their memories.

Dawn was breaking over the city, the sky blushing into day. Erestor blinked the soreness out of his eyes. He had slept not a wink, but he felt more awake than he ever had after a good night’s rest.

A few hours later, as the last of his assistants filtered in and took their seats at their desks, he cleared his throat, and standing, called out in a loud, clear voice, “I have an announcement to make.”

*

“Well, I think it’s just splendid,” remarked Gil-galad as he adjusted his crown. It was one of his nice ones—nice, but not too nice. I-want-to-make-an-effort-without-being-showy-because-tonight-is-not-about-me kind of nice. “Do you think this looks alright?” he asked Elrond.

“It looks fine,” replied Elrond, without looking.

“You didn’t look!”

“You always look nice,” called Maglor from the hallway. His voice carried a firmness wrapped in mirth. “Come now, or we shall be late, and Erestor is like to scold us in front of everyone.”

“He would scold his own lord, High King of all his people in Middle Earth?” Gil-galad asked, a laugh pulling at the corners of his mouth.

“It’s never stopped him before.”

*

En route to the city’s main theater, Elrond picked up the threads of their earlier conversation. “It’s truly a novel idea, I’ll give him that.”

“Yes,” said Maglor, “I was quite intrigued when he approached me as a consultant. By now, you know, there are so few of us who remember what it was like—I mean not just the history, but the intimate details, how people lived their lives.” He let out a short laugh. “It’s odd, the things you remember.”

“Was…were your relatives able to provide any assistance?” Gil-galad inquired cautiously. Inwardly, he cursed himself for hedging. He had still not quite worked up the courage to speak to Maglor about the “Maedhros situation,” as he had taken to thinking of it. After his first attempt had failed—not in the sense of Maglor finding out, because of course he had, but failing in the sense of actually having a real conversation about it—Gil had just never been able to find quite the right moment, and as the weeks slipped past, it seemed more and more uncomfortable to raise the subject. By now, he had resigned himself to wait hopelessly for Maglor to spare him the agony and simply bring it up himself.

“Oh yes,” Maglor replied airily, seeming to catch on, “Maedhros was especially helpful. He has such an excellent memory. In fact,” Maglor continued, “he took the opportunity to inform me of many new and interesting details of the First Age, of which I was previously unaware.” Gil-galad’s heart skipped a beat; his meaning could not be misunderstood. “But perhaps in not telling me,” Maglor added softly, “he meant only to let others tell their own stories in their own time.” He turned his head to look at Elrond and Gil-galad, and gave a knowing smile.

“You mean, he trusted you would have absolutely no respect for privacy and read his letter to me, like everyone else in this family,” said Elrond.

There was a startled pause from all of them—even Elrond himself, who looked like he could hardly believe what he’d just blurted out—and then Maglor laughed; they all of them laughed at the sheer absurdity of it all, and then they laughed for joy.

*

On the stage, Erestor cleared his throat, and the murmurs of the audience quelled to a respectful hush. “Thank you so very much for joining us,” he began. “As Chief Loremaster, it has long been my duty, and my privilege, to preserve and restore manuscripts, artefacts, and indeed first-hand accounts of our world’s history.

“But what does it mean to truly restore, and how does one restore a memory? A manuscript may have its faded letters re-inked, or an artefact may be cleaned and polished, but repairing is not the same as reclaiming. Nor indeed can the frayed edges of stories be repaired without being rewoven.

“It is in this spirit that I present our latest endeavor: a recreation, as it were—an attempt to bring our collection to life. Each vignette at this performance centers on an object, a person, an event, or a location, using both artefacts and personal accounts—often multiple ones, intertwined with one another—to re-construct a narrative. In other words, to make history real.

“All of the stories you will hear, and all of the objects you will see, belonged to real people. Some of them were my friends. Some of them may have been your friends. All of them were loved by someone. Today, we honor them, and we honor the stories yet to be told.”

*

Afterwards, Erestor joined Gil-galad, Elrond, and Maglor in the king’s apartments. Stirring his drink, he said casually, “You know, it’s been rather a long time, but I’m considering leading the next archeological mission myself.”