About Time by SWE

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Chapter 1

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About Time

 

-

 

This land, like the Halls, was overwhelmingly grey. The street that stretched out in front of them seemed long-abandoned, run-down and dilapidated, and, to his eyes, everything from the lifeless windows to the dead trees appeared to have been wiped down with a dirty cloth.

 

It had been quite a while, he thought, accustoming himself to the unfamiliar heat of the place. Curufin rubbed his bare, new feet in the dust, getting a feel for its texture, before turning back to Mandos.

 

“…this is it?”

 

“This is what?” Here, outside his domain, the voice of the Doomsman of the Valar was unsettlingly ordinary. His voice did not echo in the heavy, still air.

 

Curufin gestured to their surroundings. “Aman. I don’t remember it being like this. I have undergone healing and penance in your Halls; all my wicked deeds are forgiven, and now… I am to live the rest of my life in Paradise.”

 

He was sharply aware of his heartbeat and breath, absent for so long, and now he longed for sensation and beauty and richness, as mindlessly enjoyed by the living every day. He wanted to devour life. Aloud, he added: “I would quite like to eat some grapes.”

 

Mandos seemed amused, and from his amusement, a small bunch of grapes sprung into Curufin’s hand. He ate the grapes as they walked together through the town, popping them one by one into his mouth as Mandos spoke.

 

“This is not Aman. I marvel that you forget your Oath and self-imposed exile so soon. You have cast the Silmarils beyond reach-”

 

Curufin had to correct him: “I didn’t. I was dead by then.”

 

“The Silmarils have been cast away, then, into air and fire and water – but your Oath remains incomplete. In my Halls you underwent healing, but you can never be forgiven, rebel and blasphemer and architect of the histories that you are. There is no true rebirth for you, because of what you are and what you did, and the echoes of your deeds still ring down the ages. To Aman there is no return, although you crave it and yearn for it, and your fate is to be part of this world until its end, when all is broken and remade, and Maedhros will unlock the light of the Silmarils at the end of all Ages.”

 

There was not much that could be said to that. Curufin finished his grapes and dropped the withered stem to be picked up by the wind. “Oh.”

 

Mandos had said his piece and fallen silent, so Curufin ventured a question.

 

“My brothers – are they back, being ‘part of this world’? How long has it been?” In truth, he had little idea. Time in Mandos’ Halls was shapeless and uncertain, but he suspected it had been a while on the outside.

 

“Six Ages,” Mandos told him flatly. It was less of a blow than he had expected, perhaps because it was hard to contemplate the immensity what must have passed since he fell in Doriath. Mandos understood Curufin’s silence as deep shock, and offered some explanation:

 

“There was much evil in your heart, and much to heal. You are not the last. Maedhros requires further healing, after his traumatic death and in preparation for the mighty deed to come – but the others are there, and your fates will always intertwine: you will be reunited before the end.”

 

Curufin opened his mouth to ask a question, but Mandos gave him such a look that he reconsidered. He was not the last, and neither was Maedhros, but the other, even after six Ages, still burned too brightly for this world. Feanor would wait in the Halls until the end of time.

 

A battered leather suitcase appeared in his hand: a distraction, again sprung from Mandos’ thought. Obediently, Curufin lifted it, looking it over.

 

“Your brother Maglor has the same one, so it will help you recognise him, though his body and mood be changed, perhaps beyond recognition. He lost his harp long years ago, but he is still to be found on the shores of the sea.”

 

It was a suggestion. Mandos was trying to be helpful, and clearly found it awkward. Curufin felt truly alive again.

 

“Still? Poor Maglor. I’ll go to him first,” he said, hefting up his suitcase. “How many coasts can there be in this world?”

 

There came no answer. Mandos was no longer there. Curufin sat on his suitcase and thought for some time, and breathed, trying to isolate the scents on the air. After a while, the sun began to sink, and lights came on in the buildings around. Windows swung open. The hottest part of the day had passed, and people came out again to work and talk and live. After observing for a little while longer, the travelling man with his battered suitcase rose, picked up an abandoned newspaper, and blended into the crowd.

 

-

 

It was not until twenty years had passed, and Curufin had long given up his half-hearted search for Maglor, that he finally found him.

 

The world was changing at a breakneck pace, and searching the shores and tidelands grew tiresome. Inland, the countryside shook off its centuries of torpor and began to be busy with a new feverish efficiency. Curufin followed the queues of migrants from the countryside, saw the black smoke and heard the rhythm of the machines, and delighted in it. Anyone could be anything now, and everything was changed. He breathed in deep of the coal-fume spirit of the age, and before long, his innovative nature, charm and insight got him where he wanted to be: making things, astonishing people with his inventiveness – and, best of all, no-one here knew his father.

 

Curufin was now going by the adopted moniker of Mr. Fitzroy Smith, and speaking in a cultivated American accent: after all, he was an exciting new arrival from across the Western sea. He found himself the holder of a bank account, a mortal concept he found ridiculous and fascinating, which seemed to conveniently fill up whenever he took his eye off it. The current fashions sat well on him, and he developed a taste for brandy. The doors of society opened wide for him, and going on in seemed like the right thing to do. There were endless distractions, vulgar and colourful and intriguing, and sometimes, he forgot who he was for days at a time.

 

Then, out of the blue, one ‘Captain Ludd’ started whispering orders in men’s ears and inciting revolt against his tidy, productive way of doing things.

 

The desire to pull metal devices apart and let green chaos reign was not a tendency native to mortal men. Curufin knew this; he had encountered it before. In another time, towards the end of the Dagor Bragollach, the sons of Feanor had shot down a mechanical dragon. It had been of iron and yet airborne, of fiendish design, and they eagerly picked over it to see how it worked. Curufin had been particularly fascinated, keen to borrow the technology and throw it back at the enemy, with more fire than before. Maglor, grim-faced and burning in fury (he had lost his wife in that battle, or one around that time, he remembered suddenly) had melted down the whole thing until it was a heap of slag and glowing, shapeless metal: useful for nothing and stinking of the enemy. Curufin hadn’t argued at the time, but now, when daily tales of alarming attacks reached his ears, he recognised the hand behind it. He had men posted, a night-watch set, then went to seek out Captain Ludd in person.

 

He had set aside a year for his beach-combing expedition, but found his lost brother sooner than he thought. Maglor had taken refuge in a place of devastation: the sky leaden, the beach sick and dying under a torrent of industrial effluvium. Such was his desire to avoid the company of the mortals – and those who posed as mortals – who had made the world this way. These coasts, broken and shattered though they were, had once been the east-marches of drowned Beleriand, and with home utterly lost and winter drawing near, it made sense that the last survivor of the House of Feanor would cling to what he knew.

 

Curufin saw him and called down the wind: “Makalaure!”

 

He found his voice weaker than he might have liked, as he struggled to get a grip on the taps and trills of the old language again.

 

Maglor sat huddled on a rock, back to the wind. He had about him a dirty rain-cape that looked like one salvaged from the sea. His hair, unkempt and matted, had withered from proud black to a sickly grey, and his weathered face showed evidence of every one of the thousands of winters he had endured in the open.

 

The most arresting thing about his appearance, which gave Curufin pause, were his eyes: unfocused, pale and milky-blind. Perhaps he had endured some cruel torment in the black years long ago, or blinded himself in grief and madness. Curufin didn’t like to speculate. Perhaps he had seen and done more than any body could bear – and it was the same body. When he moved, hearing Curufin’s approach, his ragged rolled-up trousers bunched over a familiar Nirnaeth scar.

 

Curufin regarded Maglor for a moment, disconcerted, then said: “Kanafinwe Makalaure, is it you? Is it really you?”

 

Maglor nodded slightly, reaching for a knotty, oiled stick, of the wood of another continent. “I heard you the first time. Curufinwe?”

 

Curufin nodded, then said, in a louder voice: “Yes, Curufinwe.”

 

Maglor creaked to his feet, his stick dancing across the stones until it found Curufin’s feet, then he reached out to clasp his shoulders with a strong, sinewy hand. “Well, you took your time.”

 

Curufin stared at him for a long time. Maglor, master of understatement. For the first time in some years, he felt at a loss. “You threw away our Silmaril,” he said, eventually. “Threw it. In the sea.”

 

Maglor’s filmy eyes blinked, as if dredging deep into his memories. “So I did,” he said, mildly. Then a smile as something surfaced, a name barely used since childhood. “Curvo. You’re back. I wasn’t sure – ” Another squeeze of Curufin’s shoulders, through his silk suit - “this is new. Isn’t it?”

 

“…Yes. The body and the clothes,” Curufin nodded, wondering how much of Maglor was left. Silmarils, he remembered, used to be quite important to them. Apparently less so for Maglor.

 

As if hearing his thought, Maglor flinched, his mouth twisting sharply from some imagined pain. “I threw it because it hurt. Burned my hand right through. Holy light.” His hands clenched around Curufin’s shoulders, his placid face suddenly alive with remembered agony and anguish. Curufin’s hands shot up to grasp his wrists, trying to prise his fingers free.

 

“For God’s sake, come with me. Makalaure, let me help-”

 

“For God’s sake?” Maglor’s torment left him, and once again, he was as calm as the sea on a still day. Now his tone was light, softly mocking: “For God’s sake, Curvo, you’ve been spending too much time with those mortals.” He sniffed and frowned. “You smell of smoke.” He then proceeded to see Curufin with his hands. Gnarled fingers ran under his brother’s lapels, felt his tie, brocade waistcoat, and the little gold cufflinks bearing the initials F. S.. Satisfied, he tilted his head slightly. “I’ve managed all right without your help. Or God’s.”

 

Curufin stared. Twenty miles away, there was a small town where he was known, with an inn and warm beds. He could telephone and have a car come and pick them up, and they could be in London by tomorrow afternoon, or anywhere else he had friends. Yet here he was, facing a figure from the ancient world: one of barely a handful whose memory still stretched back to the Elder Days, one who had thrown a star into the heart of the deep, then wandered the world for such a long time, a number of years that the brief, brilliant mortals could count but not picture.

 

Maglor gave Curufin’s shoulders a little squeeze, before releasing him, patting about for his stick, which returned to his hand with practised ease. He gestured vaguely at the ramshackle cliffs above them, directing Curufin to look up to where a half-collapsed cottage lay tucked in a hollow.

 

“I sometimes live in abandoned houses. You’re stealing all my people with your towns and your noisy machines. They leave good places behind and make thralls of themselves,” Maglor told him, with the same mildly disapproving tone as when he noticed the cigar smell about Curufin. From behind the rock, he retrieved a familiar suitcase, as destroyed and salt-lashed as Maglor himself. He was moving on.

 

Curufin caught his arm.

 

“If you need me-”

 

Maglor cut him off: “If you need me - if you need help of any kind, come and find me. I think I’ll stay here a while yet. I sang at these seas enough times, perhaps one day they’ll see fit to sing back, and my voice will return to me.”

 

He smiled, and without another word, turned and ambled off down the beach, his stick tapping on the stones, his suitcase swinging from his hand.

 

-

 

Fitzroy Smith’s unusual long life and unchanged youthful appearance might have been cause for comment if he ever stayed in one place long enough, but he was always careful to move on before he was noticed. During his years of wandering, of a different sort from Maglor’s, but wandering nevertheless, he became adept at pretending to be mortal. He affected mortal sicknesses, attended mortal funerals, slept with mortal women. The only thing he refrained from was death.

 

One day, in a particularly nostalgic mood, he booked passage on a steamer and sailed West. A few weeks later, he opened the New York Times and read about a terrible disaster at sea, involving the ship he might have taken, had he been a little more patient and less impulsive. Women and children first or otherwise, he would have probably survived, at some inconvenience to himself, and that would have been more attention he did not need.

 

The world was bigger now, even if Aman had been taken away. He never met any of his brothers. Once, he saw Ambarussa in the paper, still together, still eager for great deeds, now fighting some hopeless revolutionary war in a far-off land. There were times he thought he might like to see what Celegorm and Caranthir were doing, or at least know that they were alive, and share their thoughts on this strange new world - but they never found him, and looking for them was something he planned to do, perhaps when he’d realised a few more of his ambitions: in particular, he was interested in flying in one of the new aeroplanes. Something always came up and put his plans on hold.

 

Then came a black year, and Curufin’s bank account (which had progressed to a sizeable stocks and shares portfolio) was suddenly empty. He was ruined. Worse, everyone else was ruined too, and his friends, usually so free with favours to one so charming and beautiful, shut their doors to all comers and left him to fend for himself.

 

Ingenuity and cunning and craft were of less use in these times. He was built to endure, so had time to consider his options before resorting to deeds that might make Mandos frown. The world felt terrifyingly old, suddenly, after so many glittering years, and he wondered if, soon, his eyes would be as blind as Maglor’s, the things he had bought with his money tattered to ribbons. Was this what it was to be part of the world forever?

 

He hadn’t thought of Maglor in years, and a reckless mood was on him. Why not seek him out again? It hadn’t been difficult before, and now, he could say honestly that he needed help. He ran up his apartment block steps, swore at the landlady in Quenya, and threw a few needful items in the old suitcase Mandos had pressed in his hand – he still had it, which surprised him, as he tended to throw out the items he accumulated at every new address.

 

He auctioned off his last few things to pay for passage back across the sea, and in the roaring winds and spray as they approached the old coasts, he heard the Noldolante, clear as day, cold as winter. The sea was singing back, and it had Maglor’s voice. He closed his eyes and let it wash over him.

 

-

 

A winter of wandering the thankless coasts left him as wrecked and wraithlike in appearance as Maglor. He hadn’t known that the eyelashes get thick with salt, so it stings to blink, and that the skin first reddens, then flakes off, then becomes tough and accustomed to the harsh air and light. He felt worn to the bone, as if his body would slowly slough away and become part of the hard sand and pitiless sea. To Aman there is no return, and your fate is to be part of this world until its end.

 

Another year passed. There were no bright warm inns or cars or friends to call. He walked barefoot and became thin. He shivered in the cold and sweated in the heat. He rummaged through derelict houses in desolate places. He felt lonely at times.

 

Then, one day, as winter returned to give the coast one last sleety lashing, Curufin stumbled to the door of a tumbledown shack, giving in to the ache in his bones. He dropped to his knees and knocked, slowly and painfully. He didn’t usually bother, but perhaps there had been a candle flickering behind one of the grimy windows, and perhaps there was someone there.

 

Someone was there. Strong, wiry hands lifted him up. Maglor was taller than he remembered, but still calm, still blind, still mad. Still his brother. When he spoke, Curufin noticed he had his voice back. He and the sea must have reached some understanding.

 

“Curvo. About time.”

 

-

 

End