Swan Song by Ithilwen

A Kind of Homecoming

Chapter 4 – A Kind of Homecoming

The journey home took a long time. They rode; Maglor had not been on a horse in a very long time, and he enjoyed the sensations of riding: the gentle swaying of the horse's body under his and the feel of its muscles moving, the strong clean scent of its sweat, the coarse mane slipping through his fingers, the creak of leather and the sharp ringing sound of shod hooves striking rock. They rode down roads Maglor did not know, and through fields and woods he did not recognize, and sometimes spent the night camped under the open sky and sometimes rented rooms in small villages filled with strangers who watched him with wary eyes but said nothing. Maglor cheerfully ignored them in turn; he was far too interested in conversing with his mother and brother to bother much with strangers (including the willow-woman, who, annoyingly, was accompanying them on their journey).

The willow-woman was becoming a problem. She kept trying to draw close to him; Maglor in turn found her clinginess increasingly irritating but tolerated her as best he could for the sake of his mother and brother, who were clearly fond of the woman. The first night they slept at an inn Maglor quite unexpectedly found himself sharing a room with her. He quite gallantly offered her the bed and spent the night wrapped up in a blanket sleeping on the floor while she wept. To Maglor's relief, the next time they stopped for the night in a town he shared a room with his brother instead, while the willow-woman stayed with his mother; he felt that was a far more satisfactory arrangement altogether.

"Be patient," he overheard his mother whisper to the willow-woman one evening when they stopped to set up camp. "Remember what Estë said, and do not give up hope! I am sure we will find a way around this problem. You have waited so many long years already; what are a few more days or weeks compared to that?" Maglor did not like what he had overheard, his mother conspiring with the willow-woman against him, and afterwards took even more care to avoid her.

Later, another conversation overheard: his mother, "I do not understand this. How can he not remember? He was utterly besotted with her!", followed by his brother, "Perhaps that is the problem? It was rather a whirlwind courtship, and they were not together long before our Exile tore them apart. Perhaps it is simply a problem of not enough memories of her in his mind for him to recall?" Maglor ignored that conversation as meaningless. He had the memories he had, and they did not include the willow-woman; therefore she was of no importance in his life, and he could not understand why his mother and brother thought it ought to be different.

And then, at last, they arrived home, and Maglor to his dismay discovered that, like so many other things in his life, it too had changed over the long course of years. When he thought of home, the few memories that came to him were of a large, rambling house on the outskirts of a shining white city. The small, dusty village that lay before them now bore no resemblance to the images of home he carried in his head, but his mother, his brother, and the willow-woman all assured him that home was where he was, and so he was forced to accept it.

"Mother and Grandfather came here after my return," Maedhros told him as they rode through the quiet, narrow streets, "and most of the people living here were loyal to us during our years in Beleriand, and still feel kindly to us now. It's not the home you may remember, filit, but it is a good place – a better place for us than Tirion, certainly. Few of us Exiles returned there; we've mostly made new settlements of our own, both here and on Tol Eressëa. I'm afraid, little brother, you're going to find out that forgiving is not exactly the same thing as forgetting. While we are free to travel any place we like and none will openly hinder us, there are many places where our family is understandably not welcome."

Maglor considered his brother's words in silence as they stopped their horses in the courtyard of a sizable but plain stone house. A large, stocky man with hair the color of Maedhros's and clothes stained with sweat and soot was standing there to greet them. Maglor did not know him, and sat on his horse while the others dismounted. He watched his mother and then his brother hug the man (his mother pausing in the stranger's arms long enough to whisper something in the man's ear), followed by the willow-woman. And then they were all looking at him, and he knew he couldn't put the moment off any longer. He reluctantly dismounted and walked over to greet the man. First the willow-woman, and now this; apparently part of coming home involved being repeatedly mauled by total strangers. But once he was off the horse's back and on the ground the stranger looked somehow different, and as Maglor stepped forward he caught the scent of smoke from the man's hair. Suddenly he saw a vision of the russet-haired man working side-by-side at a forge next to his father Fëanor, while he sucked on his thumb and his brave elder brother held his other hand tight to keep him safely back – "See, filit, that's going to be us some day!" And Maglor knew then that he was looking at his grandfather Mahtan, and happily relaxed into his embrace.

*******

Maglor found himself happily installed in a guest room ("But I thought he would be staying with-" "Later, Father."), and over the next few weeks his mother, his brother Maedhros, and his grandfather acquainted him with the house and its routines, and took him on visits to the village where he was introduced to a bewildering mixture of strangers-who-were-actually-strangers and strangers-who-were-supposedly-friends, none of whom he later remembered. A handsome blond man whom Maglor did not know came for a visit and introduced himself as his cousin Finrod; a handsome dark-haired man also came by for a visit and when Maglor saw him he said, "Hello, Fingon."

Maglor helped chop vegetables in the kitchen, gathered eggs, milked the cow, looked after the horses, helped his grandfather clean up his forge, and worked in the garden. It was confusing, exhausting, and wonderful.

Best of all, the willow-woman mostly left him alone.

Now that she wasn't pressing so closely on him, Maglor was willing to allow that she was in fact quite pretty. In fact, if she hadn't spoiled things earlier by coming on to him so aggressively, and if he had been interested in courting a woman (which, he told himself, he most decidedly was not, not yet), he might even have been attracted to her. She seemed to devote a lot of her time to assisting his mother in her studio, and Maglor wondered whether she might be his mother's apprentice. That would certainly be a good explanation for the otherwise puzzling fact that she was living in their house. She also seemed quite close to Maedhros, and for a brief while Maglor wondered whether she might in fact be courting his brother. Then Fingon stopped by for another visit and by chance Maglor got a glimpse of his brother and his cousin together in the back garden where they thought no one would be watching them, and as he observed the two of them together he realized that while Fingon might be his cousin, he was rather more than that to his older brother, and that it was unlikely in the extreme that Maedhros would ever be courting any woman.

But if Maedhros wasn't courting the willow-woman, what was he doing with her? It was all rather mysterious, not to mention confusing. "I think it might work, sister," he caught his brother saying to her one afternoon. "It's worth a try, anyway. I'll meet you there once I know he's – Oh, hello, filit. Come in and join us!" He backed away quickly, not wanting to intrude, but wondering what exactly it was his older brother saw in his mother's apprentice if he was not courting her, and what exactly the two of them were planning.

The next day was hot, and to Maglor's dismay his brother insisted they go out riding together. After an hour spent riding about the countryside under a brutally hot sun, Maglor realized he'd made a serious mistake, but there was little he could do about it; he couldn't head back for the house on his own, because he didn't know the way. They finally stopped to water the horses at a river and, to Maglor's surprise, after the animals had had their drink Maedhros hopped off, tied his mount to a shady tree, and removed its saddle. "Let's go for a swim, little brother!" he called out as he started stripping off his own clothes.

That seemed like a fine idea to Maglor, hot and sweaty as he was. He quickly joined his brother, and the two of them spent a long time frolicking together like children in the delightfully chilly water before finally coming out to sprawl out on the soft grass to dry off in the sun. Maedhros had packed some food in their saddlebags, as well as a full skin of wine, which the two of them made short work of. Afterwards Maglor lay back on the riverbank, his head pleasantly spinning from the wine, and picked out shapes in the clouds with his brother for a while before deciding to close his eyes for a bit…

…and an enjoyable dream slowly gave way to an even more enjoyable reality as he felt a growing pleasant ache in his groin. He opened his eyes and raised his head, and saw he was erect – and the willow-woman was stroking him with her hand. She saw his head move and before he could object she was straddling him and guiding his erection into place and he felt himself penetrating her…

…and it was as though a veil was torn loose inside of him, and he saw…

…her beautiful white dress hitched up around her hips as, the last of his lacings freed, she reached down and drew his member out. The wedding feast had gone on seemingly forever, but the two of them were finally alone, and now they could finally seal the bond that would unite them for the life of Arda, no time to waste removing clothes, they had already been waiting far too long for this moment. He grasped her hips and pulled her toward him as she guided him into place, and he moaned in pleasure as he pushed himself into her, body and spirit, and she in turn gasped as she received him, and as his hips started to move he watched her face become flushed and contorted by passion and to his eyes she had never looked more beautiful, his Aurel, his beautiful Aurel, now and forever his wife…

…and he moaned, "Oh, Aurel, please forgive me," and then lost himself in lovemaking.

Afterwards, as the two of them lay tangled together on the grass, Maglor gently stroked his wife's hair and said to her, "I am so sorry, Aurel. These last weeks must have been terrible for you."

"They were," she admitted, "although I knew you could not help it." She leaned over and kissed him. "Losing you to all those years of exile was hard enough; to lose you again after you'd seemingly returned to me… I honestly do not know how much longer I would have been able to bear it. Thank Ilúvatar for your brother and his devious mind!"

"My brother is a very wicked person," Maglor replied with a chuckle.

"True," his wife laughed. "He also loves you very much – almost as much as I do."

A dark thought suddenly passed through Maglor's mind. "Aurel – what if I should forget you again? I'm going to try to hold onto this memory as tightly as I can, but there are no guarantees… Ilúvatar be merciful, I managed to forget our wedding night, of all things –"

She put her finger to his lips. "Hush, Káno," she told him softly, "I do not think it will happen again. Our wedding was long before… before your time in the gardens of Lórien. We have to hope that whatever healing Irmo and Estë managed there will make a difference. What else can we do?" But her face looked troubled, too.

When they finally returned to the house, Maglor went straight to his room and began to pile his few possessions onto the bed. His brother spotted him and stuck his head through the doorway to ask, "What are you doing, filit?"

And Maglor smiled at him and answered, "Grandfather can keep his guest bedroom; I am moving in with my wife."

*******

The next morning when Maglor woke, he was confused to see the strange willow-woman lying naked and asleep next to him. But before he could do anything about it she awoke, and this time when she reached out to him and Maglor felt the touch of her fëa, his own responded before his mind could lock her out as it had done so many times before in the prior weeks. And suddenly the willow-woman was transformed before his eyes into his beloved Aurel, and Maglor realized as he sank back into her arms that in some matters it was better to trust the wisdom of his heart over the truth of his memories.

And so Maglor son of Fëanor came home at last.

Chapter End Notes

Filit – "Small bird." A childhood nickname my Maedhros gave to his brother Maglor.

Káno – A shortened form of Maglor's Quenya father-name Kanafinwë.

Fëa – "Soul"