Scourge by sallysavestheday

Scourge

Maglor waits until he is in the privacy of his own tent before he opens the casket.

It is beautiful: all smooth wood and copper embellishments, singing softly with an echo of the Music he remembers from his grandfather Mahtan’s forge. The Aulendili all have similar undertones; whose work might this be? It is not quite in tune; a soft discordance weaves through it and burns against his palms.

The touch of it makes him shiver. The fine wood is so well-polished that it is slippery, and the slide of it against his fingers is almost viscous. Like the first sheen of slime on something rotting, he thinks, and grimaces. And it is heavy, more so than he would expect from its size. What can be inside it, to so weigh on him as he holds it, to so press him down toward the ground?

The lid swings open on a copper shimmer, all light and color and fine, soft silk. Maedhros’ hair, all the long weight of it, shorn and coiled snakelike in the casket, poised to strike.

Maglor nearly drops the box; he struggles to hold on to it in his horror and despair. The fumbled filaments slip over the edges and tangle in his fingers, writhing, binding. He remembers Caranthir, once, as an infant, with a strand of hair caught around his tiny toe, weeping and wailing from the pain of the pinch and pull. That same desire to scream – for help, for relief – overwhelms him, but there is no one he can permit to hear.

He is the eldest now. This is his burden to bear.

He has already sent back the refusal to bargain that Maedhros compelled him to promise, in the smoky dark as the riders assembled for the parley. He was insistent: no rescues, no trades, no capitulation or surrender, no matter the price. Maglor had clutched at him, weeping, pleading not to be left behind, all raw fear and anguish: Nelyo, no. Nelyo. His lips shape the name again, but he cannot muster any sound.

It rains, that night: black water falling out of blacker skies, the color of pitch and pain. In the hissing dark, Maglor combs the long locks of his brother’s hair, clasps them with an iron band, and braids them: nine fine plaits glimmering, burnished in the firelight, twisting softly with each over-under-over as they slide through his mourning hands. At the end of each braid he weaves in a small triangle of glass -- green to complement the red of Maedhros’ hair -- salvaged from the wreck of the ships at Losgar, sharp-edged and fine. He binds the braids off, kisses them tenderly, whispers his brother’s name.

Maglor strips off his shirt and kneels before the fire.

The cat flies, clawing. He shudders under the bitter, braided lash.

Nelyo, no. Nelyo.