As Little Might Be Thought by Marta

Chapter 1

Maglor strummed his hand idly across the lyre-strings, the notes clanging with each other in lazy discord. He played not for beauty but to forget, to fill the silence of a late afternoon. It had been long years since music dwelt in his fingers. "Ada can teach you a song," a voice had seemed to squeak, and Maglor had looked around. Was Elrond there? But he found no one; that was a memory, not a present sound. "He can help you keep your rhythm better," the remembered voice continued, "if you like."

He had not been eavesdropping, at least not for curiosity's sake. Nay, 'twas for his safety. When last he'd entered his fosterling's rooms uninvited, Elros had thanked him by stomping so hard on his foot that the elf still limped days later. But Maglor had found a scroll he thought the boys might like, and he'd wanted to share it. He'd waited outside their door, to see whether he would be welcome.

A thwack had sounded, wood against stone wall, and then: "He is not our ada." That voice had been deeper: the older twin, even then striving after the Doom of Men and growing faster than any elf-born child ought to. "And I have nothing to learn from him." A broom-handle swung in a wide arc, Maglor could see that much through the doorway, and he guessed that Elros must be going through his sword exercises his true father had taught him.

This had all been hours ago, but still the words hung in Maglor's ears. Their father had sailed away and left his sons to death, or worse; Maglor had fed and clothed them, and not laid a harsh hand to them in the many weeks since the attack. A kinslayer did not cry, yet Maglor still felt his throat tighten against the building tears.

He should not be mad at the boys, he knew that. They had not chosen their birth and were still children. And Elros was older in temperament than an elf of similar years would be, Maglor must allow that he understood something of war. Perhaps he even understood what this war had been about. Did he guess that Maglor and his brothers had driven Elwing to dive off the cliff? Perhaps. Or did he just fear Maglor's kin for their strange names, that hated emblem on their cloaks, the history he had undoubtedly heard in the story-halls? Any one of those reasons was enough to hate these foreign invaders, those Sons of Fëanor who burned his home and slaughtered his world.

Still, Maglor's fëa had burned hot when he'd heard Elros's words. His fists had clenched so that he'd crumpled the scroll he'd brought. He had remembered, then, another pair of twins, red hair matted with red blood. And he had wondered whether Elros had neighbors, or friends, or even kin who had slipped sharp blades past the Brothers' armor. How many of Sirion's lords had sworn an oath to their lord, to stand against the Brothers and hold back the Jewel? Did that make them kinslayers? Was it an accident of birth, that made Fëanor's sons the worst sort of rogue, dead or damned, and their opponents noble heroes all? Or was there some sin that Maglor had forgotten, some justification from the curse that robbed him of all those he loved?

He understood Elros' hate, aye, for he felt something similar himself. He knew he should not hate these boys, they had at most been born to the wrong house. He must try to love them, as penance if nothing else. Yet he could hardly help it. They had an enemy to rage against, to fight against, to accept or push off, and whatever they did, 'twould be their choice. Maglor envied their choice, longed for it at his very core. He sat alone in the parlor watching the sun sink over the cliffs into the sea, and wondered when he had last known that freedom. If he ever had.

The lamps from the corridor behind him were lit, and Maglor wondered how long he'd sat there lost in thought. Looking down at his lap, he saw his fingers still playing with the strings, but now they picked out something more than chaos. He heard a strain of a song out of Valinor, a lilting tune his mother had sung to the swing of her hammers. Maglor remembered tramping around Formenos to it, chasing after his brothers even then. A song welled in his throat, his tongue curled around around the first sounds, and so he opened his mouth.

We still remember, we who dwell in this far land beneath the trees, the starlight of the western seas.

Those were not the words she'd sung, of course. They'd sprung in his head full-formed, and he wondered where he'd learned them. If he learned them. Dreams could be born West by the wind, the Sindar claimed; why not poetry? Whatever the case, something in them felt true, and Maglor found himself daring once more to hope: if not for clemency, then for hope's birth once more.

'Twas a start, at least.

Chapter End Notes

The line Maglor remembers is from "O Elbereth Gilthoniel." To my knowledge we don't know precisely who wrote the song, and it seems reasonable to me that Maglor's foster-son might carry it to Rivendell.