A Man of Constant Sorrow by NelyafinweFeanorion

Chapter 1

Notes:

• For Narya (Narya_Flame).

part of the Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang! I was paired with the lovely Narya_Flame and her riveting photo board of Maglor in New York! Art is at the end of the fic! 
and here

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Read Chapter 1

 

 A Man of Constant Sorrow 

 

“ For in this world I'm bound to ramble 

I have no friends to help me now”

 

---

 

Maglor

You can’t stay in one place for too long. It’s unnatural to have time pass you by, to see the subtle changes in those around you but never see them when you look in your own mirror. 

That’s when it’s time to move on. 

New name, new place, new job, new story. 

Same face. 

The pull to stay has overwhelmed me at times–the people so dear, the life fulfilling and rich, the existence far too comfortable. 

The persona becoming too real.  

That’s when I have to push away the familiar ties, the stability and warmth of it all. Force myself to unravel the threads of my life one more time. Mimicking Penelope’s nightly task over the course of decades instead.  

When your features have figured in Greek sculpture, your profile has graced sketches lining the walls of Renaissance studios, your brooding presence highlighted in period photography stretching into the last century, it’s hard to avoid people noting how familiar you look. 

I’ve changed my hair so many times by all rights I should have forgotten its original hue. If my memory would allow that. 

If the images of my father had faded from my mind.  

I wonder what Tyelko would have thought of my bleached mane from the 80s, the color echoing his own shade more than that of any other. I looked more like my tempestuous brother than myself in those years.  

He would have outright laughed at the riot of permed curls I sported in the 70s. The mop top of the 60s. The severe and serviceable flattop of the years before. Would my brothers still know me in any of those iterations? 

What would Maedhros think staring into these fabricated brown eyes instead of the familiar grey?  

This is too maudlin of a train of thought for a Tuesday afternoon. It does me no good to brood on the past. I’ve spent enough of my life looking backward.

I’m fine where I am right now. There’s no rush to move on.  

Not yet. 

I’ve been at 8-Track for almost three years now. I’d put off coming back to New York, not convinced I was ready to see the city again. 

All the changes. 

All the memories. 

But I was tired of Los Angeles. Not tired of the session gigs I played or the array of aspiring artists who graced our studios. 

I was just tired.

LA is a hard city. The pace is frenetic but the powers that be, the ones that really run the industries I work in–music, theatre, the arts–they don’t change so much. The acts they support, the artists they showcase: those change with a rapidity that leaves me bewildered, even after all this time. 

I’m still not used to it. 

Athens 5th century. Blink. Rome under Hadrian. Blink. Plantagenet England. Blink. Florence under the Medicis. Blink.   

A plague, a war, a natural disaster. Blink, blink, blink .  

In Valinor the Light of the Two Trees marked time that moved so imperceptibly.  

It marches forward with a speed I may never get used to here, despite the ages I have spent away from the Undying Lands.  

I am weary of reinventing myself.  

I want a place where I can stay.  

That’s an idle dream and I am wasting my time contemplating it. I don’t know why I can’t stay focused today. 

I do know why, but I’m not going to think about that right now. 

I’ve got work to do.  

The bar may not open until 4, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t tasks clamoring for my attention.  

Particularly the Sunday night music lineup. 

When I started here three years ago I took a job as a bartender. It’s one I can do in my sleep. It’s always a good start in a new city. A way to settle in with something familiar.  

I started as a bartender but what 8-Track is known for is the music. Up and coming artists, local regulars, the surprise acts thrown in on Sunday nights upstairs at The Vault. 

That’s what I do now. Book the acts. Find the musicians no one’s heard of yet and bring them here, to get a jump start. Call in favors with the tried and true acts I know the clientele adores. 

Throw together a last-minute motley crew of musicians when the bookings are slim and bring the house down with my own music.  

I still bartend. But not on Sunday nights. Sunday nights are for the music. 

This weekend’s lineup is looking undeniably slim. 

Brian had to back out, thanks to an unfortunate incident with a box cutter at work that resulted in surgery on a tendon in his thumb. Meredith has laryngitis–too many weeks on the road with her band and she’s on vocal cord rest. Phil’s mom fell and broke her hip, so he’s in Iowa with her. 

Tough times for all of them. 

The list of names I’ve scribbled on this napkin is short. The first three are crossed out already. I might be able to get Colin on short notice. 

Maybe. 

The text exchange with Colin nets me one musician for the lineup and a lead on another. With me closing it out we should manage to get through another Sunday night at The Vault. 

I can adjust my selections based on the crowd. Gauge if it’s a night for sticking to covers or letting some of my newer compositions filter through. 

The covers are easy. I have years of playing them at coffee houses, wedding receptions, bars whose doors have closed since I last stood on their stage. 

My own music isn’t quite as simple. I still write. I’ve never stopped. 

I can’t stop.  

It’s all I have left. 

I play some of my current compositions from time to time–at get-togethers with fellow musicians, sometimes to the crowd at The Vault–to see an audience respond to them. The centuries haven’t dimmed the desire to share my compositions with others or mitigated my need for validation. 

That need would come as no surprise to my brothers. 

The idea is to never quite hit the big time with my music. Always stay in the background. Write songs for others to sing. Keep whatever name I have at the time from any notoriety. 

And remember to treat my more notable renditions as covers. 

I used to be able to play it all: the melodies from my youth, the music I wrote for my family, the pieces created for performances at my grandfather’s court, my intricately composed entries for festivals and competitions. 

Not the music I wrote for my wife. The ache of that is still too raw, even after all this time. It plays in my head but my fingers can’t bear to find the notes. 

An age can’t make that fade away. 

There was a time I could play the music that formed me–the songs the bards played when I was a child. The songs my mother sang when she put me to bed. 

Even my own. 

I could explain it away. Claim it was a dead foreign language, a near extinct dialect, songs I had picked up in my long travels. 

All of it true, to an extent. 

I made it through centuries with no one the wiser. 

I can’t do it now. There’s always one in the crowd it seems. A girl who’s read the books, seen the movies, gone to unforeseeable lengths to “learn” a supposedly fictional language. 

Or some guy sporting a tattoo in that language, the one I learned when I first arrived on these shores, listening to my father categorizing the syntactic differences, the vowel shifts, the linguistic conundrum of the altered plurals. Nothing fictional about it. 

I’ve never had the heart to tell any of them about the errors in their tattoos. 

I don’t dare perform songs in Quenya or Sindarin anymore. Not at festivals. Not at street fairs. Not during the glorious summers I spent as a wandering troubadour at that Renaissance Faire near Chicago. 

It’s not that I worry about any of them having a sudden revelation as to who I am. That’s too fantastic a conclusion for anyone to contemplate. 

It’s more that I don’t want to get into a discussion about the books or the films, or even worse–the fandom. It’s simply too odd and unsettling.

Being lectured to by a modern-day, ardent Fëanorian apologist is perhaps one of the most surreal experiences of my life. 

It’s happened more than once. 

It was a mistake to ever tell him the stories. It was foolish of me to think he would forget. 

He was delirious that first night, in the throes of trench fever, hallucinating that he was back at the front. Calling out names that were surely lost comrades. 

I knew how that felt. 

I put the cool compress on his forehead and took his hand. I was a medic that time, my long healed scars and conscientious objector status somehow having convinced the review board to abstain from forcibly shipping me to the front or jailing me for my fervent views. 

I had vowed never to lift a weapon against another ages ago, on a shoreline that has long been swallowed by the sea, under a star that was once cradled in my father’s hands. 

“It’s all right. You’re in hospital now.” 

His eyes are open but I know it’s not me he sees. His hand reaches up to bat away some invisible projectile. The metal wrist tag twists in my direction as he does. I catch his hand, heated with fever, and clasp it between my own. I don’t know his first name. It’s always initials and last names on the tags.  

I keep my hold on his hand, watch his eyes wandering over the ward, seeing a different landscape, a battlefront he’s not left behind.  

I start to sing. Low and close, so as not to wake the sleeping soldiers nearby. It’s a lullaby I wrote for the twins. I sing it over and over until he settles, his eyes finally landing on mine with some sort of recognition.  

“It’s all right,” I say again. “You’re in hospital.” 

He blinks a few times and then pulls his hand from mine to scrub at his face, as if he’s wiping away the visions plaguing him.  

When he meets my eyes this time there’s clarity there. “Thank you . . .” There is a question in that pause.  

“I’m Marcus,” I say. “Marcus Laurent. I’m one of the medics here.” 

“I’m Ronald.”  

I point to his tag. “There’s more to that if I’m not mistaken.” 

His eyes close and he shakes his head. “Ronald will do.” 

It went on like that, night after night, his fever ratcheting up as the hour grew late. I always volunteered for the night shift. It was a time I could be alone; with only the sleeping soldiers and my own despairing thoughts of yet another war that I would live through to keep me company. 

So his care most often fell to me. 

When his fevered visions grew too violent, too disturbing, I would sing my songs to try to lull him back to sleep. I’d wipe his brow, clasp his hand in mine, and spin tales from my childhood years in an attempt to settle his spirit. Stories of my rambunctious younger brothers: the maelstrom that was Tyelko, the red-faced tantrums of Moryo, Curvo’s alarming precociousness, and the never-ending exploits of the Ambarussa. 

The sure, steady calm of my older brother. 

Stories of my mother and father. 

Timeless remembrances that could have come from any family, in any timeframe. 

But sometimes, in the grim hours before dawn, alone save for my delirious charge, my mind would trace its way to the years that came after. The memories I had kept locked inside me for so long. 

“Don’t go.” The grip on my hand is firm, his eyes clear and lucid for a change. “Will you talk to me until I sleep?” His thick eyebrows draw together as his forehead creases. “I find . . . my mind goes places I would rather it did not, when I am alone.” 

“Let me take a quick turn about the ward and then I will be back.” I pat his hand as I adjust the blankets that twisted around him when the fever had him in its grip not long before. He nods, his eyes on me as I move to the cots further away.  

The ward is quiet tonight, the few convalescents shipped home earlier in the week leaving us with some empty beds. I have no doubt the field hospitals will have us full again within a day or two. The casualties from the front do not cease.  

I am at his bedside a few moments later. He has worried a thread loose on the edging of the thin blanket that covers him and his fingers pick at it ceaselessly. I still his hands and pull the bandage scissors from my pocket to snip it away.  

“I can’t have you unraveling the whole thing, Ronald. There’s none to spare these days.” 

His fingers are still moving, roaming over the edge of the fraying blanket, folding and unfolding the seam. It’s not unusual, this restlessness. The ones who survive their time at the front have their different ways of showing it.  

“Shall I sing for a bit?” I settle into the chair at his bedside. 

He shakes his head. “Tell me that story again–the one about the lovers’ quest.” 

He would remember that one. The old stories always circle back to the Silmarils in some way. All of mine do. 

His versions did too.

I met Ronald once more, years later, at the Bodleian of all places. I’d found a position at the library again, after many years absence. It was a homecoming of sorts, to be back among texts I’d catalogued and preserved centuries before. 

It comforts me at times, to be surrounded by other ancient relics. Museums, libraries, archives: I need their dusty, orderly confines to soothe the nameless longing that pulls at me. 

Just as I need the pulsing excitement of the unknown and undiscovered at others. Places where I haven’t lived a hundred lives, worn countless countenances, where the language is unfamiliar, and new stories can unfold. 

I had let myself believe Tolkien would not remember me, let alone the stories and songs I had shared with him during his convalescence. I had perhaps hoped the memories of his restless days and fevered nights in the wards would dim and fade as he returned to his civilian life. 

I was wrong. 

From that chance meeting at the Bodleian a friendship grew. A shared love of old things. An appreciation for the heroic epics from the past. 

A reluctant admission on my part that the mythology I had shared with him was real.

It fascinated him. Took hold of him with a fervor I had not seen in ages. A single-minded intensity that I knew well–having lived with its many iterations, in my own family, and in the Oath that drove each of us to our end. 

But there was such a sweet relief in telling the tales. In letting the smoldering despair and longing find a voice again. In speaking the words of my youth, the language that had lain dormant in my soul for so long. 

Tolkien absorbed it all. The Quenya. The Sindarin. The half-remembered dialects I had once known. The phonetic irregularities. The dialectical shifts. The rhythm and cadence of languages older than the land itself. 

He thrived on it. Notebooks of Tengwar. Piles of scribbled notes on etymology. Faithful transcriptions of the stories I had told him years before, now edited and annotated for accuracy, for clarity, for thematic flow. 

It was a compendium that awed me with its devotion. 

And filled me with gnawing dread. 

He asked me for permission before he published the first book. He’d worked the narrative by then, keeping the framework I had given him, but bringing in new characters and themes, weaving his own world view and life experiences into the tapestry of my own history. 

I couldn’t find it in myself to say no. The bard in me had ached to tell the stories of my people. Had fed parts of the narrative to so many during my travels. Inserted bits of my brothers into Homer’s words. The travails of Túrin into epics from the north. My family, friends, rivals, into the plays that Shakespeare wrote. 

There was a time I could declaim the Noldolante and none would be the wiser. A time I did it for myself, to remember and to regret. 

I gave him my assent. It was a children’s book about a dragon, a reluctant hero, and the inner strength we all have deep within us. What harm could there be in sharing that?  

I left Oxford before Tolkien published The Hobbit. I wanted to remove myself from any hint of collaboration or influence. I told him I didn’t expect we’d meet again. 

We didn’t. 

I spent years in South America after I left. It is how I kept myself away from that war. 

I suppose I had thought the publication of the book would be a whim, a one-off, a story that never gained a following by nature of it being far too whimsical. 

I was wrong about that too. The Lord of The Rings followed a few years later to an unexpected popularity that astounded me. 

I thought it would fade away after he died. That the interest in that type of fantasy would be a short lived anomaly. 

Nothing prepared me for the onslaught of books published after his death. I was in Edinburgh, poking around in a lovely little bookstore on Candlemaker Row, for the first one. I hadn’t known it was coming, hadn’t expected to see another book by him. 

Let alone one with a title that pierced my heart. 

There are passages in that book that echo the lyrics I wrote. Moments that were such an integral part of both the mourning aspect of the Noldolante and the fierce pride. 

It’s all part of why I’m so unsettled of late. 

I’ve had to walk past the banners and posters for that damn exhibition every day for weeks now. 

I live near the Morgan Library. It’s one of several apartments I have in the area. If immortality has one advantage it’s the ability to acquire prime real estate and hold on to it. 

I have holdings across the globe. Almost all of them are tied up in arcane trusts and layers of legal subterfuge that not only keep me solvent but also conceal my identity. 

I suppose another benefit of immortality is having the resources and wherewithal to make yourself repeatedly disappear and then be “reborn”, with all the appropriate paperwork, identifying material and backstory necessary. 

If immortality wasn’t the pernicious problem that got me into that kind of situation in the first place. 

I walk to the train every day, past the banners, the queue of fans waiting to enter the library. Sometimes there’s a Gandalf, or half a dozen hobbits, occasionally an Elven warrior or grizzled Ranger in the crowd on the sidewalk. 

I could change my route, I suppose, take an Uber instead of public transport. I can easily afford it. But I’m stubborn. That’s not lessened in the last millennium. I like the routine of the train, the mindlessness of the activity, the serenity of being surrounded by people who are as familiar as they are unknown. 

My life changes often enough; it helps to keep the smaller elements grounded in habit. 

So I walk past it every day, grumbling on how I brought this on myself, when I let my empathy lapse into sharing something that should have stayed unspoken all those years ago. 

It’s usually out of my system by the time I get to the bar. At least the grumbling is. But the idea of the exhibit itself is pervasive. It catches me in unguarded moments. 

It drags my thoughts to the past–not only my own history, but Tolkien’s as well. 

I’ve thought about going in, making my way through the rooms, if for no other reason than to be done with it. To put a tick in the box and never have to wonder about it again. 

Which is probably why I stopped at the front desk there on my way to work today and bought a ticket for this coming Sunday. 

I don’t have to go. I can pitch the ticket in a trashcan and simply walk away. Or I can indulge my curiosity and see what items have been tucked away at the Bodleian and are now finally seeing the light of day. 

The remaining days of the week move swiftly, the bar crowded and strangely busy on these cold winter nights. Sunday’s show at The Vault looks to be a spirited collection of performers: Colin and his acoustic guitar, his friend Tom–who I don’t know at all, Lily with her electric violin, and me. 

Even though I’m technically the host, and regularly step in to perform as a solo act when the roster is incomplete, I also function as back up for the performers. Filling in on drums for one set, keyboards for another, my bass as needed. 

We’ve got a drum kit and keyboard on hand at the bar. I keep a few instruments of my own in storage there as well–a bass, a bare-bones selection of acoustic and electric guitars, a ukulele, and a bodhrán. 

I can spare them. I have an extensive collection of instruments at each of my properties. It’s what gets me through. 

Only a few are precious. One above all.

The small harp that travels with me. 

It’s not the one I brought from home, ferried over on the bloodstained ships we commandeered at Alqualondë. That one warped and splintered long ages ago. I’ve built countless replicas since, with as much care as went into the first one. Perhaps more. My fingers are more familiar with the lines of it–the effort that goes into shaping the body, the alignment of the strings, the sanding and sealing of the wood–than I was the first time. 

I’ve every intention of sleeping in on Sunday morning but I wake before the sun, the undercurrent of agitation that has troubled me all week pulling me from my bed. I drink my tea, pace the confines of my kitchen, wander restlessly from room to room. 

I have hours before I need to leave for work. 

The ticket is still stashed in my wallet. 

I shower, I eat, I drink another cup of tea. I watch the sunrise through my windows. 

There’s a melody playing on repeat in my head. I try it out on the piano but it’s not quite right. It sounds different than what I’ve been hearing. I transpose it to a different key but it still sounds off. I don’t think it’s a song of mine; it’s more like an echo of something I’ve heard before. 

It sounds better on the harp but still not how I think it should be. 

My frustration with the tune is what finally gets me out the door. It’s one of those dazzling, radiant New York mornings–the sky a freshly-scrubbed blue, the bite of the wind tempered by the brilliance of the winter sun scintillating from every metal surface. 

The city skyline looks crisp and clear; an elaborate cut-out set against a cerulean sky. You could slice your finger on those edges. 

It’s not time for my train yet but my feet steer me on the familiar path. I can feel the weight of that ticket in my pocket as I near the Morgan. There’s a line, as usual. None of the visitors are dressed as people I may actually have known in my past, which is a blessed relief. 

I check my watch. I’m not due at the bar for a few hours yet.

I suppose I’m doing this. 

I pull the ticket out and take my place in line. It moves quickly, so it’s not long before I’m ushered in the doors. I walk past the coat check, past the people lingering near the gift shop, and up the stairs to the exhibit hall. I’ve been here before. The library itself is lovely and the featured exhibitions are usually intriguing. There have been a few that have cut close but I don’t think any have been quite this personal. 

I typically view art from a distance. I’m tall enough that I can see over the heads of others, when I’m in museums and galleries, and being further back lets me keep my reactions more to myself. 

I prefer that. 

That isn’t going to be possible here. The spaces are limited, the exhibits closely positioned, only enough room to move in single file, double at most. 

It’s more crowded than I expected. I’m in the process of shuffling in when my attention is caught by a shock of arresting, silver-blond hair a few yards ahead–that man must be almost as tall as me–an aquiline profile is all I manage to glimpse before he disappears behind a display wall. 

Something tugs at me at the sight of him. 

It must be the hair–I’ve been dwelling on Tyelko lately and the shade reminds me of his, nothing more. 

I veer to the left when I get into the main exhibit room and start with the photographs and letters. 

Images of Edith. Tolkien’s letters home from the war. The portrait of him in his uniform. 

The ache of loss never goes away. It comes when I see the cover of a book, a sketch in a museum, a poster on a wall, or hear music on the radio. 

I knew that person.  

I put my hands in my pockets, shoulders hunched, keeping myself from the press of people around me. It is hard enough encountering the private musings, representations, and familiar writing of a friend, in this manner of public venue–it’s not the first time and I’m certain it won’t be the last–but I am about to come face to face with more than memories of a man I once knew. 

It is my family that lives in these pages. In these maps and paintings and manuscripts. 

I make it through the letters to Father Christmas. The countless family photographs. The early artwork, the start of his journey to my world. 

My pulse ratchets up when I reach the map of Erebor. The artwork created for The Hobbit–the river, the trolls, the glorious cover for the book.  

The rendition of Rivendell. 

I have been there.  

The next turn brings me face to face with art of Beleg and Túrin. Manwë’s shining mountains. Idril’s sigil. 

I knew them.  

My breath catches. My eyes begin to burn. I blink. I am not going to do this, not here, not with strangers at every turn. 

There are more people here now, crowding behind me, pressing close, the scent of perfume and sweat and cigarettes swirling around me.

I try to find an opening I can slip through, to find some space for myself. 

I catch a glimpse of a face, towering above the press of people ahead. It’s the same man I noticed before. Our eyes meet for just an instant and a shiver runs through me. I’m jostled from behind and when I look again he’s gone. 

I know that face. 

I keep moving forward, trying to worm my way out of this amorphous queue, to try to catch another sight of him.

I step into a small alcove to the right but he’s not there. It’s a narrow space, with exhibition material on both the right and left. Whatever is in here has created a logjam of visitors. The queue is barely moving at all. 

I’m closer to the left side so I turn my attention there. 

And stop. 

It’s another map. It’s not to scale or with the correct topography. The names aren’t all quite right and the distances are far from accurate. 

But it makes my chest ache just the same to see Himring written in that tiny script. The Old Dwarf Road. Thargelion. The Ered Luin range. 

I lived there.  

There was a map, in the first edition of the book. A pull-out one tucked in the back. I’d looked, of course, when I’d first found it in that bookstore. Unfolded it with shaking fingers, struck by the sight of the word Beleriand written across the page. 

I’d put it back on the shelf, too shaken to do much more than that. 

I’d gone back and bought it, hours later. 

I’d read it that night. Had felt the hairs rise up on the back of my neck at the Darkening. Rising nausea at the burning of the ships. The unforgettable, still shattering reality of my father’s death. The memory of my brother’s torment. My tears stained the pristine pages at death after death after death. 

It’s not as if I don’t know my history. I am cursed with perfect recall of the people, the places, the very sounds and sights of every instance. 

It is one thing to remember. It’s another to read it, see the words themselves, have them conjure up the images, hear the dialogue in my head spoken by the voices of those I loved. 

The book is stored somewhere, tucked away in one of the many boxes shoved in the back of a closet at the London flat. 

This map is an earlier version of the one in the book. That doesn’t make it hurt any less. The stinging of my eyes makes me blink again. I turn away, face the other panel across from me. There’s a glass case, papers showcased in the spotlight. 

It’s a title page, in Tolkien’s hand. 

The Silmarillion.  

I don’t realize I’m weeping until I feel a hand on my forearm. I turn to see a middle-aged woman, eyes shining with tears of her own behind her tortoise-shell glasses. She’s handing me a tissue. I take it from her, my hand moving of its own volition, crumpling it up in my fist. She pats my arm and blinks up at me as she squeezes my forearm gently. “It’s something, isn’t it? To see it there in front of you?”

She’s not wrong. I nod my head and blink in turn, too proud to dab at my eyes. “That it is,” I say, my voice thick with all that I’m holding in. 

I manage to extricate myself from her, from that place, muttering a half a dozen excuse me’s as I push past the clumps of faithful Middle-earth devotees. 

I’m at the top of the stairs, about to head down, when I see him again. He’s in the elevator, leaning against the back wall, towering over the scatter of people near him. 

Our eyes meet again and the chill in his gaze is almost palpable.   

I know him.  

Which is ludicrous, because there is no possibility that it could be him. Thranduil left these shores ages ago, following his son along the Straight Road. He never would have stayed once Legolas took sail.

It’s an uncanny likeness, I’ll say that. He resembles that actor from the Hobbit films. Stopped me in my tracks when I first saw his face plastered on the side of a bus in Midtown. 

That’s what this is. He looks so much like that actor, who happens to resemble the Thranduil I remember, and the emotions raised by this damn exhibition are causing me to read too much into it. 

Or maybe it is that actor. I don’t know and at this point I don’t care. 

I need to get out of here. 

I’m still unsettled when I arrive at 8-Track, but it takes hardly any time to be immersed in the minor drama of the current workplace squabbles and the comforting routine of getting The Vault ready for a show. 

It’s a good show. Colin’s friend Tom is a find. I’ll have to remember to invite him back again. He’s folksy in a garrulous way–telling stories between songs, cracking the kind of jokes that make the crowd give a collective groan, surprising even me with the arcane hammered dulcimer and zither he brought for this performance. He pulls out an autoharp for his finale and I can’t help but laugh. 

We all come together on-stage for a lively end of the night jam–Colin on guitar, Lily with her violin, Davy from behind the bar to pound on the bodhran. It’s as if Tom’s read my mind, when he passes me the zither, before taking his place at the dulcimer again. 

There’s an energy to our performance, a tinge of something untamed and elemental as we spur each other on. The melody that troubled me this morning makes its way to my fingers now and somehow it’s right this time, the notes finding their place with these antiquated instruments that accompany me. 

And that’s when I remember where I’ve heard this music before. Long ago, at a feast in one of those rare times of peace, at a celebration honoring my uncle. A night when all came together in harmony, to make music under the stars. 

It was the Green Elves, from Ossiriand, who’d ended that night of revelry with music of their own. 

I’ve no idea why that song came to me today, of all days, but there’s a certain symmetry to it closing out the night once more. 

It’s as we spiral to a crescendo, the final notes still echoing around us, that I see him. 

The man from the museum. He’s leaning against the back wall, solitary in a way that communicates it’s by his choice. He’s looking right at me, over the heads of those between us, but this time when our eyes meet there’s a whisper of words in my head. "Iston i nif gin."

"I know your face."  

I’m distracted as I settle up the accounts with the performers, stammering out my thanks in a jumble of words. I leave the spotlights on and the instruments propped up on the stage. Cleaning up can wait.

The room’s clear of people now except for one solitary straggler. 

I don’t know the how or why of his presence but I know it’s him now. It must be Thranduil, inconceivable as that may be. 

It has been so long since I have seen one of us. Or felt the brush of another’s thought against my own. 

I used to shield myself, out of habit, until I realized there was no point in shielding against people who had ceased to exist anymore. 

I thought I was the only one left. 

Seems I was mistaken. 

He strolls up to the stage, grey eyes fixed on me, shoulders thrown back, every inch the king he was in the long years under the shadow. His hair may be shorter now, his clothing fashionable leather and skinny jeans, but up close there is no question of his identity. 

“Well met,” I say. Even though we are alone up here now it seems unwise to speak his name. 

“Well met.” He inclines his head a fraction, then tilts his head to the side as his eyes roam the stage, the bar, the scuffed floor, before settling on me again. 

“I thought all had left these shores.” No point in small talk. He’s here with some purpose, if he’s followed me to the exhibit, then tracked me to my work. We may as well get to it. My days of studied diplomacy are far behind me. “How are you still here? I thought you left ages ago, after your son?”

“Not all my people chose to leave. I would not abandon them here, without a leader.”

To say I am surprised would be an understatement. How had I not known this? In all my years, in all my travels, I had never come face to face with one of us. Not after the last ship sailed. “Do you still rule then?”

“My people have scattered. Most have faded to woodland sprites and mere echoes in the forests.” He pauses, lowering his voice when he continues. “Others have found the path to the Undying Lands.” 

“That path has closed long ago.” Of this I am certain. The world has changed. The Straight Road is no more. 

“It still exists, for those who choose to look.” 

Mysterious and vague as always, these Sindar. I shake my head at him. “Cirdan left the Havens long ago. The way is long gone. He said as much before he sailed.”

“He left and those behind made different choices.” 

“Different choices? What do you mean by different choices?” I’ve put the thought of this out of my mind for far too long. I don’t like the subtle stirring of hope that’s flaring in me. 

Hope doesn’t work for people like me. Hope is a path to desolation and despair. It’s for other people who don’t bear the burden I do. 

I have shed tears unnumbered, even on this very day, at the memories of my past life. I have been shut out of the land of my birth. If my lamentations ever met the ears of the Valar I do not know of it. I’ve grown weary of this existence, of that there is no question, but I am still not bowed nor am I humbled. There is a constant sorrow in my heart, but I will not wane and fade, not while the fire of my family still lives in me. 

“To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well.” Those words are branded on my heart. 

Hope is a fallacy for me. I smother the faint blossoming of it before it can take root. 

“The choice to stay and now the choice to find another way.” He’s standing there, imperious and remote, sounding for all the world like Namo himself. 

This is trying my patience now, the veiled words and nebulous phrasing. “Could you stop making these vague pronouncements?” I can hear the sharpness in my voice. “There is no other way. If there is still a path then it means the Straight Road yet exists.” I narrow my eyes at him. “And if it can still be found, then you could go.”

“There is no passage over the sea.”

“Your son built his own ship. Surely you are as resourceful?”

That brings a spark of fire to his eyes as he glares at me. “I don’t think you should be one to speak of ships, Fëanorion.”

That’s fair. I can’t argue with that.

I cross my arms over my chest and arch a brow. “Then speak simply, Thranduil. Enough with the riddles. You’ve stalked me for some purpose. We’d get to the point quicker if you just tell me why.”

He frowns back, hands fisted in the pockets of his leather coat. His tone changes. “We’re all that’s left. You and me. The rest are reclusive woodland fae, hidden dryads of the trees, spirits of the rivers, nameless shadows who haunt the woods and forests that were once their homes.”  

“And?”

He closes his eyes and lowers his head. “I’m weary of being alone. I want to see my family again.” His eyes open, the silver shine of them piercing me with the memories of those I have lost. “I thought you might feel the same.”

“There is no place for me and you know it.” I swallow. “You know why.”

“I think you’re wrong. You’ve put in your time.” He narrows his eyes at me. “They were willing to have you back once.”

My words come out harsh and bitter. Because perhaps, even after all this time, I still am. “Yes, under terms that would have been unacceptably harsh for my brother. With unknown consequences to those of my family who still dwelt in Namo’s Halls. With uncertain terms for us as well. Their words were far more ambiguous than even your own.” 

“It’s been a long time since then. You don’t know how things might have changed. There may be no one left in the Halls at all, with the ages that have passed.” His brows draw together. “You’ll never know, if you don’t try.”

“Why does it matter to you?” This is really the part that puzzles me. If he knows the way, why seek me out? Why bother? I ask him just that. “Why are you even bothering with me?”

The expression that briefly crosses his face is neither imperious nor remote. It’s uncertain and strangely vulnerable. It doesn’t last long, as he schools his features quickly, but the mask of moments before is cracked. 

“As much as I have missed my kin, these many ages, you have been estranged from yours for longer still.” He gives me that head tilt again and I’m getting the idea it’s a subtle sign of uneasiness. “It’s taken me a long while to track you down.”

That gives me pause. “How long?”

“Decades.” Thranduil gives the tiniest shrug. That’s an admission too. “You don’t make it easy.”

“I can’t make it easy. You, of all people, should know that. It’s how we’re both still here–not sequestered in some top-secret lab that’s trying to extract the secrets of immortality or hounded by rogue fandom elements that have ‘connected the dots’– you know what you have to do, to make it work, to stay safe.”   

“It was you, wasn’t it? That told him?” The subject shift is dizzying but not entirely unexpected. 

I can afford to be honest. “Yes. Trust me when I say I didn’t mean to. I never thought it would . . . that it would end up being like this.”

He grimaces. “No one could have expected it to be like this.” His shoulders hunch. “It’s been terrible since the films.” 

“Is that why you finally decided to call it quits here then? Hounded by film fans and fanfic shippers?”

I get an eye roll and a shake of his head. “No, granted it has been infinitely harder to go about my personal business since they hit the theatres.” He shrugs again. “It’s time. It’s been half a century since the last of my people could carry a corporeal conversation with me. I drifted for a few years, tried to find a place for myself that made sense while I searched for the path.”

“And you’ve found it, you think?”

“I did. It’s there.”

“So why haven’t you gone?”

He’s of a height with me, but somehow when he’s staring he seems to loom larger. The intensity of his gaze is unsettling. It’s the stormy grey of the North Sea in winter. The silver glint of moonlight on still waters. The flat grey of rain-washed pavement. 

“I couldn’t leave knowing you didn’t know the way.” 

That admission takes my breath away. I don’t know how to process this; that he could have left me none the wiser, never knowing there was still a path to tread that might take me to my home. The knowledge that he stayed to find me–when he had no obligation to, when he would have been justified in turning away and never looking back–just so I would have one more chance, leaves me shaking. 

“I suppose I can’t expect you to decide right now.” Thranduil takes another look around echoing emptiness of The Vault. “But now you know. And I know where you are. I’ll leave my number for you, the details on how to find me, if you choose to.” His hands come out of his pockets, crossing his chest so that his fingers grip his elbows. His knuckles are white. It’s another instant of vulnerability that I don’t expect. “It’s your choice. I can tell you where it is, but I can’t guarantee you’ll find it on your own.” He inhales, presses his lips to a thin line before speaking again. “Or I can wait. For a time. And take you there myself, if that’s what you want.”

It’s impossible to drown out hope every time. It springs up through cracks you didn’t know existed. You root it out and seal the seams, yet it somehow finds a way to break the surface once again. 

There is little I am afraid of anymore. I’ve seen too much. 

I’m frightened now. Terrified, to be honest. But in a way that makes my heart pound and my pulse thunder in my ears with expectation, not dread this time. 

My hands are fists at my side. “Show me the way, you mean?”

“If that’s what you’d like. I’ve no intention of waiting long on you though, Fëanorion. I am ready to quit these lands. Have been ready for many years now. You’re all that’s held me back and I’m not about to squander more time than necessary for you to make a decision.” He reaches into the pocket of his jeans and pulls out a small, light green card. “You can find me here. I’ll give you until the turning of the leaves. I’ll not spend one more winter here, if I can help it.” 

I take the card with a shaky hand, the smoothness of the heavy cardstock and the bumps of the printed text sliding under the pads of my fingers as I slip it in my own pocket.  

Thranduil nods and starts to turn. I’m grabbing his arm before he takes a step and he turns a startled face to me. 

“I’ve got nothing keeping me here. We can leave anytime.” My heart is racing. “That’s not to say I’m going back.” My fingers clench the leather of his sleeve. “I don’t have to decide that now.”

He looks much less remote when he smiles. 

“You don’t have to decide now.” He echoes my words. “But I know I’ll be glad to have some company.” His smile widens to a grin. “Even if it happens to be an ancient Noldorin reprobate.” 

The tendrils are winding their way through the cracks, the fragile green shoots clearing the surface, as the roots of hope take hold in my heart. 

 

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“ Maybe your friends think I'm just a stranger 

My face, you'll never see no more”

 

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Chapter End Notes

Title and song lyrics at beginning and end of fic from the song A Man of Constant Sorrow by the Soggy Bottom Boys from the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" film soundtrack.