Threnody for the Dispossessed by Kenaz

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Polyphony

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I returned the next day, looking sheepish. By a mutual and silent accord, we both behaved as if nothing had happened.

We made desultory small-talk over a light meal, and then Maglor brought out a bottle of green liquor from a cupboard. I wondered how he had procured it-- theft? trade? perhaps he had a still hidden deeper in the woods-- but thought it best not to inquire. He poured us both a small measure and set the bottle on the table. The sun flooding across the table created a pale green nimbus around it. I took a swallow and coughed, wishing I had been more judicious.

"Potent," I sputtered.

He smiled. "Tonic, as well. But yes, it is best sipped slowly."

"Might have mentioned that," I grumbled, but the taste of hyssop and anise was sweet on my tongue now that I had become accustomed to its bracing sting. "I know what you are doing, by the by." I looked at him askance, his body partially obscured by the bottle. "You are hoping to loosen my tongue."

I meant it half in jest, but he nodded solemnly, looking down at his ruined hand. "Will you tell me, Daeron? Have they..." he paused and cleared his throat, hesitating before he began again, and his faltering put me in mind of my student, the silly young girl with the threshing song. Such discomposure was unnatural in a son of a line in whom self-assurance had been bred into the bone. "Have they returned? Those who--"

Those who died? Those whom I slew in fruitless pursuit of my father's jewels? What words would he have selected to craft his lyrics now, had he the wherewithal to speak them? "I was not provided with a roster."

My flippancy had stung him, that much was clear on his face. I am not inherently cruel, nor do I regularly gain satisfaction in another's pain, but again I had shown myself a small man, and I disliked how easily he drew that out of me. "I have told you what I know. I live among Thingol's folk in the forests of Oromë, and news comes to us slowly. Unless someone of some great renown emerges, we rarely hear of it. Though many, I think, have come: I am told that the harbors in Alquolondë are nigh filled to capacity-- that suggests the Teleri thrive, yes?"

I had wondered, in the case of blameless victims-- or the mainly blameless victims, for every man had some burden to bear on his soul-- why Mandos had even held them at all. Perhaps it was a test of the living rather than the dead, to see what enmity would foment in the hearts and minds of those left behind, to judge the weight of their loss. It seemed a cruel and needless trial, but I would not have put it past the Valar, who seemed so dispassionately curious about the ways of our hearts and distantly fascinated by meddling with them. "If so many of the great warriors of old walk again beneath the stars in the West, then I can only imagine that those folk who--" I chose my words carefull; a poet knows there are a thousand ways to say the wrong thing, but very few ways to say the right-- "those who had less blood charged to their accounts would have completed their time of respite long ago. But I cannot say this with certainty."

"Well reasoned," he nodded, not meeting my eyes. The sudden warmth of his hand covering mine surprised me, and he did not immediately pull away, even when my fingers twitched beneath his. "Thank you," he said.

I could not remember when last I had held another's hand, my mind had been so long turned away against matters of the heart. Once, I had been made a fool by loving wildly and unwisely, and I had come perilously close to repeating my folly a second time. I had grown to prefer solitude intermittently interrupted by cordial encounters to pursuing a third disastrous courtship. Disturbed by the lingering touch, I turned the conversation toward a subject conspicuous to me for a lack of curiosity on his part. I thought it best to nip the flower of sympathy I felt for him in the bud.

"You have not asked about your wife."

My words broke the spell. His hand withdrew, and my own was left colder for its absence. I took another sip from my cup so that I could peer into its depths rather than into his face.

"Aurenyellë. Yes...of course... how does she fare?"

"Since she is so clearly in the forefront of your thoughts, it will give you great ease to know that the Valar saw fit to annul your espousal long ago. I am told she sued for disunion soon after you burned the ships at Losgar, and it was a great kindness they did her in granting it; I cannot fathom the life she would have had as the wife of a kinslayer, forsaken by all who remained."

The turn of his mouth was more rictus than smile. "That is well for her, then."

"I did not know you were married." The thought that had once weighed heavily on me sounded painfully simplistic now that I had an opportunity to give it voice. "You might have told me and spared my pride."

Turning his grey, weary gaze on me, he said, "She was not in my heart, nor in my mind, but I suppose that is paltry consolation." He pushed the bottle aside, out of the patch of sunlight and leaned forward across the table. "I did not intentionally deceive you, Daeron. She and I were very young when we wed, and we had little time together. When I met you, she and I had been married for twenty-eight years, and I had not seen her for twenty-five of them. I cannot imagine coming home to her now as a husband. Even if she did not despise me, we would be strangers to one another." He took a breath, as if to say something else, then stopped.

"Your pangs of conscience warm my heart. Truly."

Maglor's eyes narrowed, and I braced myself for another lash from his sharp tongue-- likely well deserved-- but in the end, he only took a breath and shook his head. "My father married young, and encouraged us to follow his example. I believe he had it in mind to raise himself an army out of the sons of his sons. It availed him little in the end. Nelyo had eyes for no-one but Findekáno, much to father's eternal chagrin. Curvo and Carnistir happily complied-- Curvo surpassed us all, of course. He usually did. Tyelkormo..." He looked at me almost apologetically. "Suffice it to say, he did not have a gentle hand for wooing women. Pitya and Telvo were too young-- " his face crumpled, and for the first time, I thought I would see his tears, but he restrained himself, saying again, emphatically, "They were too young."

"And you?" I asked.

"Men, women... I found them all beautiful. That's what it is to be young and idealistic, isn't it? You see beauty all around you: in every face, in every voice; round hips and broad shoulders both have their appeal. I think my father feared I would take after Nelyo in my tastes, and I wanted desperately to please him, then. Aurenyellë was a pretty, tractable thing; she thought it would be quite romantic to marry a bard. I think she hoped I would write epic odes to her beauty."

"Trust me," I grumbled, "they aren't as effective as one might hope."

He laughed then, for the first time, a musical sound-- of course, why would it be anything less?-- and he smiled broadly, the same dazzling smile that had first drawn my notice at Eithel Ivrin. I had gone there expecting to meet my greatest rival, and hoping to best him. I had left with the taste of his kisses still in my mouth and a sheaf of half-written songs I had written either about him or for him-- for us-- to play. Later, I had burned them all.

"That you bore no passionate love for her must have made your situation much more tenable. After all, what's a little infidelity after so many other transgressions?" I regretted my words as soon as I had spoken them, but still too late to recall them. The sustained note of ugliness, like the twang of a broken harp string, did not quickly dissipate, and Maglor's smile, as glorious as it had been brief, retreated behind a stony mask.

"You damn me for keeping an oath in one breath, and damn me for breaking one in the next."

I muttered an apology, more sincere in my heart than it sounded.

Maglor made a dismissive gesture with his hand like a shrug. "It mattered not in any case; for many years, my mind was too consumed with other thoughts to entertain such simple longings. After, my soul was too heavy with grief. I doubt I could have roused myself even had I the inclination to do so, or the opportunity.

"But what of you?" He turned the tables swiftly, giving little time for me to dwell on the notion that, by circumstance, he had lived far more chastely than I, or on the truth that I had been complicit in the very infidelity for which I had rebuked him. "You have had your own travails. I tried to find you, after--" He looked away and swallowed, shame coloring his face at last, though I no longer wished to see it painted there. Besides, I had my own shame to share.

"You had the right of it when you accused me of 'wandering about the wilds, flaying my back with remorse.' Well, not literally, of course, but it amounted to rather the same thing. I'm afraid I had grown rather too enamored with unrequited love as an enduring theme."

This time his smile was guarded, quite nearly suspicious. I could hardly blame him for his circumspection, as I had hardly been kind. I told him about my time in the wilds, the years wasted, and how I had finally gone on to the West and settled in Oromë's woods, so alike to Doriath in its finest hour. "Sometimes, I would come across a particular glade and see a flash of light and shadows, and I would believe for a moment that she was there, laughing and dancing, tormenting me, but inevitably it would turn out to be birds, or the angle of sun through the trees."

"We see what we desire to see," he said, nodding sagely, and I wondered what tricks his eyes had played on him.

"Once I saw the trees again for their own beauty, the ache receded. I emerged from my self-imposed seclusion and accepted engagements to perform my works, and later, I made the dubious decision to teach. I have come to accept that what I had loved most about Lúthien was the idea of her, and her beauty. That facile sort of love and admiration does not sustain the spirit. She was wiser than I in this."

"You are of a more generous disposition than I if you could keep from feeling resentment."

I made no effort to restrain a snort. "Rest assured, I resented her for quite a long time. She played me with a virtuosity to which few could aspire." I looked at him pointedly.

"Yet there is no one now?" he asked. His tone was neither too curious nor too casual.

"Perhaps I put too much of Lúthien in my music. Perhaps others stayed away because they thought they could not compete. I had thought, perhaps, that I had found--" No. Some thoughts were best left unvoiced. "I have had companions in my time, some more enduring than others. It is difficult, I think, to understand an artist if one is not an artist themselves. Composing can be isolating. Perhaps we are better off alone."

"Do not say that."

"What should I say, then?"

He leaned on his elbows, his fists drawn up to his mouth. I watched him blink once, twice. "Tell me how Elrond fares."

I recalled, dimly, what Manwë allowed me to keep from the visions he had given, scenes of events long passed and safely consigned to history: the smiling boy, and Maglor's song. Maglor guiding tiny hands over harp strings. "I believe Elrond had much to do with swaying the Valar. Fate has placed many burdens on his house, and yet all who have come of it have done great things, and made noble sacrifices."

The glow of paternal pride was unmistakable. It lent a particular depth and radiance to his face, revealing dimensions of him that I had not yet seen: his capacity for gentleness, the softness of his heart. "He above all other things was the great success of my life, greater than any song I could ever have dreamed.

"Three times he sought me after I had abandoned him for my quest. Such is the capacity of his heart, that even after I had left him, even after I had become a fugitive, he sought me. After Elros passed into death. He must have known I would not see him, though I longed to, so he stood in the woods and wept to the trees, knowing that I would hear, and mourn with him. He came again after his lady-wife had been brutalized, and he had sent her to the West to heal. He wanted only for me to reassure him that he had done right, but I did not reveal myself to him, because I was anathema." He pressed his fists hard against his lips, his nostrils flaring as he exhaled. His eyes were fixed on the base of the bottle, but they had lost their focus, and the gaze had turned inward to memory and regret.

"Once the line of Elendil had been restored and the Kings of Men returned to their greatness, he came to me one last time. He came to say goodbye. And to bid me keep good watch over his children, his restless sons who had not yet quenched the flame of errantry, and his daughter, who had chosen Elros' path. My heart broke in my chest to hold myself aloof from him then. I was never more a coward than when I failed to give him some farewell, some benediction, and hid behind the paltry excuse of my exile to do it, knowing I would never see him again."

He drew away from the table and let his hands fall into his lap. His sprawl-legged slouch, spine bowed against the back of the chair, would have appeared casual to the point of insouciance had his face not looked so grim. He turned his face to the window. Beyond, the sun hovered low in the trees. He was beautiful. "I sang for Arwen in the Golden Wood so that she would not be alone in her final journey. I sang for Elladan and Elrohir when I saw them traveling west, toward the Havens. Toward home. I do not know if they heard me. More than my brothers, I wish to see Elrond. To beg his forgiveness. To tell him no son of blood ever was held more dear to any man's heart than he was to mine."

"You will have that chance."

"I still have nothing. Apologies are facile. Had the Valar simply wished for my remorse, they could have had it at any time. I am uncertain what they are asking of me. And what do I say of my brothers? I cannot speak to what was in their hearts. Well, Nelyo's, perhaps, but all the rest--" He looked at me beseechingly, grey eyes reflecting and refracting sunlight, lips parted, brow furrowed. I dreaded his next words.

"Help me."

"I don't know that I can," I told him, and I knew what he would say before he said it, because it had been in my mind, as well.

"Perhaps that is why you were sent."

He got up and went to a cupboard on the other end of the room, retrieving an object wrapped in rough burlap and setting it on the the table. Its shape brought to mind a beaten man, hunched and cowering: his harp. The strings were gone-- rotted out or cast away and not replaced, and the frame looked slightly warped. It was much smaller than the one he had brought to the Mereth Aderthad, and very nearly austere in its decorative elements, something I would not have expected from him. But then, so many of my expectations of him had been ill-founded.

"I can no longer play it. I don't know why I keep it," he said, but the reverent caress of his scarred hand over its neck belied his casual dismissal. "The wood is dry and brittle. It is beyond saving."

"I could say something sentimental about how nothing is beyond saving," I remarked, uncomfortable with the sense of yearning radiating from him... yearning for his harp, for his voice, for his music... for his life.

He chuckled darkly. "Please don't."

I should have brought mine, of course, but I was too abashed to admit that I left it behind purely out of pique, and as he did not ask about it, I did not offer.

"You don't need the harp," I told him. "Your voice will be enough." His desire to believe this twisted my gut, and I hoped that I was not speaking a lie. It was foolish not to simply admit it: I wanted him to succeed in this.

I had stayed too long in the little cottage and the tide had begun to roll in by the time I returned to the ship. I did not see the jolly-boat, but the hemp ladder dangled tauntingly from the gunwales. Cursing under my breath, I toed off my boots and slogged through the knee-high water.

I heard the clicking and clacking of porpoises playing off shore, and the basso profundo of the whales in the deeps below, a watery chorus with voices raised. The aquatic symphony lulled me, and I swayed to its tune. The voice of the eternal waters rose, speaking within and without. and I closed my eyes to listen. The words carried to me on the rising crest of the tide, crescendo and decrescendo, repeating until I could hear nothing else, pulling through me with the strength of an undertow: the song has been sung, and each note was written at the beginning of the world.

When I opened my eyes, I was in my cabin on the boat. My harp was waiting for me beneath Ulmo's cloak.