Hands of Fate by UnnamedElement

Hands of Fates

Read Hands of Fates

“May I see your hand?”

Maglor looked up to find his brother squinting at him, his hair darkened to black, framed as he was by the forest far behind him; but he did not answer.

The camp was quiet in the dawning gloam—quiet, in part, because their folk mostly slept. Quiet, in part, because they were greatly diminished, between those who had died at the Havens and those who had deserted when forced to set upon women and children. It was naturally quieter than it once might have been, for there were less men to turn at rest, less cloaks to shift in the night, to fumble with waterskins or rise to relieve themselves—just less.

Not that they had much reason for rest that night with their new acquisitions causing a stir, for the second night in a row. They were not even two days out from Sirion, and already those most injured were tiring. Not that Maglor expected anyone to be following them. They had hardly left any of—

“Kano.”

Maglor shifted and held out his hand. It throbbed.

Maedhros crossed the few feet between them and folded long legs as he settled. He took Maglor up at the wrist and turned the hand gently to see the palm, where the child’s teeth had sunk in most deeply.

He shook his head as Maedhros moved to balance his hand on his arm and probe the swollen wound with light fingers.

“I cannot believe he bit me.”

Maedhros spoke but did not address his statement: “Does it pain you when I touch it, like this?”

He pressed, then, against the deepest gouge—from the child’s canine—at the fleshy base of his thumb and watched his face. Maglor shrugged and looked away.

“It burns, brother, but I hardly think that is a concern.”

“Usually I would agree,” Maedhros countered. He turned Maglor’s hand over and felt the tendons that ran the length of it to see how close the teeth had come to them. “Still,” he continued, “I expect you recall when Pityo bit Atya on their first excursion with Turco, and how ill that went for him upon his return.”

“I have not the body of a child, Russo; and this is hardly an injury that requires special consideration.”

“Perhaps not, but your heart is weary, and so we must particularly attend it, until you are whole.”

Maglor said nothing and only watched Maedhros’ capable work. But after a moment of following his brother’s bright hand in the low light, the dark crescents of their crimes caught his eye and he was forced to look away: there was blood beneath their nails that they could not get out.

His gaze drifted, instead, to the children.

Just a few paces distant, the boys huddled close together, one lump beneath a shared blanket. One of them—he could not tell which—still cried, even in sleep. (Maglor did not yet know which child was which, especially after the one who had bitten him had—reluctantly, and only upon firm request—washed Maglor’s blood from his chin.)

“And, Kano,” Maedhros said, interrupting his rumination. “It is the means of the injury that concerns me.”

Maglor glanced at him briefly, and then—again—away.

“Our Ambarussa were taken from us and, in their place, we took—or were, perhaps, given—these peredhil instead.”

The child who did not cry stirred in his sleep. He turned into his weeping brother and cast a thin arm across his back; he pulled him close and readjusted until the blanket was high and tight about their necks.

“And, then," Maedhros concluded simply, "they bite you.”

Maglor’s eyes stung as his brother tied off the last stitch on the top of his hand. He blinked hard as both boys heaved perfectly timed sighs, falling peacefully—and more deeply—into that particular slumber of exhausted children.

“It is naught to me."

Maedhros ripped a strip of bandage with his teeth and the sound was loud in the heavy but unravelling quiet of the fleeing twilight. Maglor turned his eyes toward the fading stars and took as deep a breath he could without alerting his brother: there was fresh salt on the wind, and he ached in more than his hand.

But Maedhros unexpectedly chuckled as he tucked the bandage in between thumb and forefinger. Maglor dropped his gaze and waited.

“It seems,” Maedhros explained with a half-smile, and he straightened the bandage before dropping the hand back into Maglor’s lap, “that their father taught them to bite when threatened.”

“How came you to this conclusion?”

“That one told me. For all their royal blood, they fight like animals.”

“That one likes you.”

“And that one does not.”

“That one does not like either of us. He says our eyes burn; he says that you burn too bright.”

“It is the curse of the oldest son of Fëanor, to burn,” Maedhros said, and he looked away and shrugged.

Maglor hmmed noncommittally. “I still do not know why he bit me.”

                                                                            .o.                     

Linen scratching against skinned knees. Linen rubbing raw cheeks when heads drop low—fingers pull at one another’s hands in silent commiseration, and the sky is high and bright above them. Buttoning up sweaters for one another, provided from the pack the One Who Burned had found before shooing them along to lead them to their house, empty empty now.

They had picked their way between bodies in the square; Elros clutched Elrond’s arm so tightly he could not feel his fingers, could not feel the slivers of wood in them from where they had wearily scratched at the collapsed door, could not feel the nail he had torn—

The house was empty of mothers or friends, but the one with the eyes that glowed like a dark-shrouded star filled the pack with clothes, regardless; the one who burned shoved them along and told them to choose what they wanted: they silently gathered their things as the men who followed them turned the house inside out.

Outside again, it was evening, and it stank of brackish blood. The birds came down from their circling to land.

Elrond’s hand throbbed and Elros began to cry.

“Wait,” one of Them said (and they had not planned to, they had planned to run, to run with their things in their arms, perhaps, and then—)

A rope tied tight about their feet, linking them together.

Linking them together.

“You will not survive on your own, and Ulmo is occupied,” he said and turned away.

They sat on the steps of the square as the One with the Brightest Eyes and the One Who Burned swept their settlement for any who yet breathed. Elrond tried to pull splinters from Elros’ hand, but he could not grasp him for his own and—

Linen scratching against skin. Wool tickling chin. Two boys clutch as the Eyes come forward: Elros throws a hand out to stop him but the Eyes reach out until Elrond pulls his brother back.

“Let me help you,” says the One with the Brightest Eyes.

No.

“Where are you taking us?” Elrond asks.

A step closer, knees on soil, children’s teeth bared white in the darkness.

And then, insistently: “Let me help you.”

A hand takes a hand on its own, turns it palm up so the Eyes are on the tiny hands.

“Where are you taking us?” Elros this time.

But the man does not answer and moves closer instead. He lifts the hand higher and bends close to see.

Beside him, Elros stiffens and Elrond feels something burn and break until—

The blood is hot on his tongue and it tastes like home, that vision of the Square tucked deep inside him.

There is a cry, so Elrond bites harder and he does not let go. The sky is high and dark above them.

.o.

“He wanted to know where we were going,” Maedhros answered simply, and he glanced back at Maglor over his shoulder. “You did not tell him.”

Maglor huffed and ran his uninjured hand down his face, dug slightly at an eye. “Neither did you, brother.”

Another unexpected chuckle, and then: “Ah, but—”

The air was heavy with grief and regret: for lives lost, and oaths yet unfulfilled.

Maedhros continued, “That one does not particularly mislike me.”

Maglor did not answer but he moved to sit beside his brother, and they both looked upon the children, for a moment, without speech.

“I tried to unbind them as quickly as was safe.”

A beat, and then Maedhros:

“And, yet, we imprison them nonetheless.”

One of their men stood from the edge of camp and walked some distance away. The soft patter of urine on dusty, hard-packed soil filled the space between.

“It is not exactly a prison.”

“It is not exactly free will.”

Across the camp, the elf returned, laid back down, and slipped into dreams.

Maglor turned toward Maedhros and reasoned firmly, “Their parents are gone. Their people, too. Where would they go, if not with us?”

Maedhros shrugged and his eyes returned to the children. “Balar. Círdan will have come.”

“But you would not leave more twins of this line alone in the wild—”

“Easy, brother.”

“—to wait,” Maglor finished lamely.

“I would not take freedom away from another, if I could help it.”

He rubbed at a scratch on his cheek with the part of his limb that remained.

“And yet we did,” Maglor said.

“Still, I expect they will all be reborn.”

The sky had lightened to a shade of blue familiar to them both, that blue that had been etched into the white of their mother’s plates, stacked in the wide kitchen they shared before they left her for their father, and Formenos.

Maglor glanced at him. “We both know that is not the point.”

Maedhros leaned back on his elbows to watch the building dawn.

“Do you remember the morning the Ambarussa were born?”

Maedhros did not move but said: “More clearly, even, than I do the night of yours.”

The children under the blanket stirred, and the one who had bit him ducked his head beneath the covers, tucked himself under his brother’s chin.

The heaviness of the air lightened with the grey, twilit sky; and the first sound of morning announced itself—the high flute-tune of a morning thrush came on wind from the distant woods.

“Has this been worth it?” Maglor asked.

Maedhros looked away and pulled a blade from his left pocket.

“Let me help you,” he said, and he gestured slightly with the knife until Maglor readjusted.

 With his back to the boys, he let Maedhros lift his hand again as if he were a child, and he set to carefully—nail by bloodied nail—scraping the sins from their hands.

Another hour passed before the boys blinked themselves awake. Maglor watched them from afar as they pretended to sleep and did not move.

But, eventually, the one who had not bitten him started to cry, and there was the barely-there whisper of young voices muffled by a retreat beneath the blanket, and the strength of the tears.

The one who had bitten him emerged into the fully bright morning, moving slowly from beneath the blankets. He walked forward cautiously and slowly, eyes on Maglor and Maedhros as if he ignored all his baser instincts in approaching such predators.

He stopped in front of Maglor and his hair fell into his face.

“My brother needs help,” he said clearly. “His hand is hot and red.”

Maglor watched the child’s face as it flickered with tension. He felt Maedhros watching them both and, for a moment, he did not answer.

“He says he will not bite you,” the boy said stiffly.

Maedhros stood to speak with their folk and left Maglor behind with the children. The boy’s eyes flickered to follow him and then returned to Maglor with intensity.

Maglor looked away, and then called:

“Come, child. Let me see your hand.”

The boy scrambled from the blanket and approached with a cautious quickness that made him look scared that he was even touching the ground. He clutched his arm at the wrist before him.

Maglor took it up gently to look it over.                                         

“It is infected,” he said simply. “But I can help you. Sit.”

They sat in silence while Maglor worked, and the boys held each other’s hands.

Eventually, Maglor looked up and caught the nervous eyes of the one who had bitten him. “You wanted to know where we journey. We are going to a fort, for a time. We are halfway there.”

“And then, next?”

Maglor watched the boy carefully—his hands paused in their ministration—but then he looked down and started again. “And then I do not know.”

“It burns,” the child under his hands finally hissed.

Maglor stopped himself from raising a hand to cup his cheek encouragingly, but he whispered, nonetheless: “It will be over soon.”

Behind them, the woods were dark, but the birds crescendoed in a chorus on the plains.