Quietus by UnnamedElement

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Chapter 2

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He did not know how long he had wandered the dark circuitous paths of the wood, paths as complicated as the veins he knew lay beneath his very own skin; paths as deep and complex as the twisted tunnels he had learned to run, the lapping, returning and crisscrossing paths of his father’s heart and mind: always one step ahead, a sharp turn to the left, a scramble up the tree to survey from above.

But he was older than he should be, he realized, and his mind moved faster than a child’s; and, suddenly, he was running .

His heart burned and drove him like fire though he did not know why.

He was running faster than he had ever run before, yet he breathed as easily as if he lounged with his feet in the creek, head tilted back to watch the sky through a sliver of trees, breeze catching the heavy air of the woods and beating it into a zephyr—

But, no ...

It was dark here, and he ran.

The sky was black and the trees were tall and looming, and he was Maeglin— Maeglin? —and he was young and small (but older, taller than he should be); and the night was never-ending: he could not see the sky. He looked down at his feet as they beat the paths that bloomed dark and endless before him, and the world seemed to spin beneath his feet—he ran harder and faster to catch it. 

The woods streaked black and dark like his father’s hair and his own eyes, and vines whipped occasionally from the sides to grab at him; there was a cacophony of birds overhead. He ran and ran and ran until he could finally hear his own breath in his ears, his own heart beating like a drum, a drum, a drum of war , like the kind in which he would one day fight, somewhere far away from here, far away—

One, two, three—

His feet beat the ground and kicked up duff around him—

Nine, ten, eleven, twelve—

(A burst of loam after the longest winter.)

So fast, so fast, his feet did not even touch the ground; it smelled like moss crushed under foot—

Forty-one, forty-two, forty-th—

His ankles were cut with thorn and pine and they burned, they burned, they burned —

Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine—

His chest was flooded with a cold that took his breath away, a cold of deepest seas and tallest mountains and ice and ice and ice and—

The longest crossing, a chorus of birds building like a mountain into a cacophony of sound and then:

Fire, tall as the trees, tall as the darkness, deep as his—

One hundred.

His feet stopped of their own accord.

He was rooted to the ground and swaying as the world caught up to him and tried to drag him along faster than his body, but he steadied himself and pretended his feet were the roots of trees (roots so deep they wrapped themselves round the core of the world) , and they were tall and dark.

He was still and the world was, for a moment, utterly silent, so silent he could feel the pressure of it pushing against his ears, like an odd inverse bloom…

And then the noise exploded.

And came rushing back in, crackling , a low roar. He was suddenly standing at the edge of a wide, wide clearing, with a fire twisted tall and spiraled, nearly at its center. Red and orange, red like sun like blood—like the stone his father had dropped before him, sent plummeting to the carpet with obsidian and pyrite…

It smelled smoky and hot and organic, like the forges his father would take him to— would take him to?— and it curled about him like acrid vines, spiraling down his throat and up his nose until his face was painted with tears that burned his skin when they evaporated in the heat.

He was alone and could not move.

(Alone?)

Then, as if from far away, he saw his father drag his mother from the dark nothingness, and they were two lithe figures between the trees that edged the clearing like painted matchsticks. He shoved her forward onto her hands and knees, and Lómion could not move:

His feet were anchors, his voice so silent it was as if he had never learned to speak...

There was a glint of a more intense dark at his father’s side as a hand reached toward his belt, but the fire roared then—incandescent—and there was not even time to blink before it exploded and expanded, consuming his mother and himself, the world…

The last thing he saw was his father’s eyes—dark as night, sharp as obsidian, just like his own—burning away in the enveloping night.

.o.

Lómion woke to a room kissed with cool and lit a morning grey. Outside the high windows of his room it was twilight, and the house was cloaked in silence. None of his father’s folk stirred. He could not hear his mother in the sitting room or the kitchen. His father did not shuffle papers or hum to himself as he started his day.

It was as quiet as that moment before the fire in his dream (he hoped it was a dream) , but still—even awake—he burned...

He scrambled to his feet where he had fallen asleep on the floor and limped to his bed, for his foot was hot and tender and his body was lit from head to toe as if he were encased in ice. He shivered and quaked and crawled under his duvet, where he waited for his mother to come.

.o.

The next few days were summer-hot dreams. 

The bit of glass he had stepped on, his father told him—between blindingly painful baths in tubs of winter-melt from the stream—had been the one that had exploded in the fire; and the one that had exploded in the fire had been from his workshop, he said, and was, thus, probably contaminated with refuse, which had made him sick. 

But Lómion did not care about the why: he had never felt like this before, and he did not want to feel it again.

His parents’ faces flitted in and out of his vision intermittently until—after a time—it was just his mother repeatedly returning. He would wake, and she was there; he would turn into his pillow and cry, and her hand would fall reassuringly heavy but light as a breeze on his back, tracing the ridges of his spine and whispering soothing words to him in that language he was not allowed to know. 

Days passed.

Finally, one morning, he opened his eyes to find his room no longer shrouded in endless grey. His mind was in his body fully instead of wandering paths weaved beneath trees and edging unnamed mountains. He did not hurt, and his mother sat beside him, working on white-threaded embroidery. He watched the needle repeatedly pierce the green linen, watched her hands shift to pull it through with delicate intention, in contrast to the ferocity with which the needle dove and surfaced and dove again

After a moment she looked at him, and he pushed himself up and watched her without moving.

“Your father has gone to see the dwarves,” she said quietly.

Lómion nodded but did not speak, and she abandoned her work on the bed and handed him a glass of water. He watched her through it—her face was distorted and strange. She took the water from him when he was done, and her eyes lit a subtle sparkling in the dark room, the color of the fog-edged woods on a frozen winter day. Lómion stared and asked directly:

“Was it an accident, the glass from the workshop?” 

His mother blinked, and pulled her embroidery back into her lap. “What do you think, child?”

“I do not know.”

“And neither do I,” she said, and her hands were busy again as the thread betrayed her thoughts. “I think he makes things in that workshop that would make the Valar weep, but I do not think he intended it to hurt you . You are his seed, yes?”

Lómion’s chest was cold and he did not know why. His mother’s hands sped across the linen and pricked like a bobbing heron at water’s edge, precise and fast, but controlled…

“I have been having dreams, Mother.”

She looked up at him and he felt himself melt, and he moved to her as she said simply:

“I know.”

The field of green on her lap had transformed into a white tower that pierced the sky. He could not look away.

“Does father know?”

His mother shook her head and soothed him. “And it behooves us to keep it that way, my dawning child.”

He was quiet as his mother readjusted and tugged him against her so they sat against the wall, and he turned his face up to watch hers intently, to memorize it. 

“Shall I tell you a story to pass the time?” she asked.

He nodded and then took the embroidery hoop in his hands and looked down at it. He ran fingers along the floss and followed the stitches all the way from the towers to the gates, and then his mother began.

.o.

Two days later, Lómion found a ledger containing sketches of knives and bows and other such things beneath his pillow. A day after that, a copy of his father’s notes (in his mother’s hand) peeked from beneath his pallaise, detailing the various questionable uses of a few plants and minerals Eöl had discovered that Aredhel thought Lómion should know. Next, there was a simple story in simple words—also penned by her—tucked in a stack of clean tunics: 

A great, cold journey;

It said.

a never-ending siege;

It explained.

a hidden city replete with glorious homes, dug deep with fountains:

It detailed.

A place well-loved, well-stocked and so fair—so bright! —it nearly shone past its defenses into the encroaching night…

They did not discuss these gifts, but Lómion devoured them nonetheless.

When his father returned a week later, Eöl did not acknowledge the child’s mysterious illness or recovery but, after breakfast the following day, he invited him out as a companion—for the very first time!—on his lonesome wandering about the woods. 

Lómion’s mother stood at the edge of the clearing, then, where they had used to play, as father and son began their journey. She waved and smiled and bid her son farewell. 

Lómion looked back for half a moment (maybe more), but he did not raise a hand in return… He caught her eye instead, glanced downward and away, and then turned—resolute—to follow his father.

And, just like that, his childhood was over. 

His chest burned with shame as he disappeared into the dark. 

_____________________________________________________________________________________

 

They left early and returned late, if even they returned at all before nightfall. 

Over time, Lómion saw his mother less and less (though his heart still yearned for her). The dreams had not stopped, and always were they dark and wrathful and tiresome, but Lómion followed his father where'er he went, for he did as he was bade. His father had become wary of he and his mother’s time alone— still slinking in the darkness, he said of them—so days turned to months turned to years until Lómion was twelve and his mother had spent the better part of eight seasons alone, or under the watchful eye of her husband...

One day, father and son returned just as the sun dipped behind the trees, and his mother met them in the clearing. It was late spring and Lómion had grown so tall he was only two heads shorter than his parents, and his arms were bare and lanky but building fast. His father looked him over appraisingly.

“Maeglin,” said Eöl then, and his eyes as he looked upon him were piercing and—in their darkness— bright . “I shall call you Maeglin , and that shall be your name.”

Lómion directed every ounce of will to avoid glancing toward his mother, then, for he could feel her—from the heightening energy that swirled around them—tensing behind him.

He did not watch her and yet he knew : 

As his father dropped a hand onto his shoulder and blessed him, his mother turned away, pressed a hand to her mouth, and cried. 

“ Maeglin ,” his father repeated. “Sharp of sight, sharp of mind: guesser of intent and reader of the heart beyond mists of words.”

Lómion held his father’s gaze without quavering or looking away, but Eöl glanced harshly to the place his mother had retreated and sighed.

“You are lucky to have more than just she to guide you in your skills. Though I have none so like yours, there are ways to persuade a person, that one such as you might nurture as you grow... With the gifts of my family—and hers—you have the potential to capture the moon.”

Lómion tensed under his father’s hand and said nothing at first. He watched the lines at the corners of Eöl’s eyes and lips, watched the slight tilt of the head as he looked down upon him before speaking.

“Father,” he finally said, “I am grateful.”

And then his father was steering him toward the cottage—through the woods, away from that place he had come bursting into life twelve autumns before—and his mother’s anger swelled like a cresting wave as she followed.

.o.

Later that night, Aredhel came upon him at the basin out of doors where he was crouched, cleaning his hunting knife. He turned swiftly as she neared, eyes wide and sorrowful in a way she had never seen before. He dropped the knife and raised his hands in supplication and whispered, pleading:

“Mother, I am so sorry.”

She bent low to pick up the knife and leant in close as she returned it. “We all do what we must.”

He nodded and took the knife, and his small hands shook as she continued. “He knows , Lómion.”

“What?” he hissed.

“Maeglin , child. The name he has given you. Maeglin. ”

She stared at him hard, and he breathed in so suddenly the air quivered around them.

“He knows what you...” But she trailed off, waved a hand vaguely at the space between their heads.

The night deepened as Lómion stood—frozen—and Aredhel clutched her heart and went inside to fetch crocks and pots to rinse, an excuse to work with her son. The night deepened further as they worked at the basin, until the trees stretched tall and blindingly dark about them, until Eöl brought them a lamp before disappearing back into the house, leaving them entirely alone for the first time in many moons. The night rose and the chorus of crickets and tree-frogs sang, and it was cacophonous and loud but they worked together in silence even as Lómion’s anxiety built to match the peaking swells... 

What do we do?

In the last light before the oil burned out completely, he piled the cleaned kitchenware into his arms and met his mother’s eye. 

We wait until you are older.

She tucked his knife into his belt.

Stronger.

Lómion opened the door for her and crossed to the cupboard where his father kept the dwarvish liquor he favored. He poured his father a glass, and then himself, but he did not drink it. Brushing past his mother, he placed both to the right of his father’s hand. Hunched over his designs, Eöl did not glance up, and Lómion hurried away.

Less afraid.

Outside with his mother, Lómion ran far enough from the cottage to allow himself a moment to breathe. 

We will both—

They did not speak. 

Do whatever we must— 

He palmed the handle of his knife.

To survive.

 

They stood shoulder to shoulder and squinted through the trees toward the stars.