A Damnable Spot by Rocky41_7

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A Damnable Spot

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The ships sailed towards Losgar, but the wrath of Ulmo, Uinen, and Ossë was on them. Waves like heavy blades bashed against the hulls of the swan ships, dumping water over the sides as if to fill the ships and weight them down under the surface. Maglor could not tell if the howling he heard in the distance was still the uncomprehending wail of the Teleri, on bloody knees amid the carnage on the docks, or the aggrieved ululations of Lord Manwë on the wind at the slaughter of Eru Ilúvatar’s Children.

“Father!” Maglor cried. There was something Fëanor wished him to do—in those hours and the subsequent days, there had always been something to do—but Maglor could not find him. He could not find any of his brothers either, crying out first for Caranthir, and then for Celegorm, his nearest in age, then Maedhros, and the twins.

The swollen, slick wood of the ship groaned underfoot as if Ossë had a grip on the hull and meant to drag them under the water. Abruptly, the voices of the first-time sailors rose in a calamitous clamor, just before the creaking of the ship became a deafening series of cracks.

Unbound from emotions like pride or dignity, which belonged to a world apart from the black sea on which they were now tossed about, Maglor screamed. Even his mighty bellow of terror was engulfed by the snapping of sturdy wood planks as the waves overstressed the swan ship and the hull rent in two.

The ground fell away from his feet; he was thrown about with the carelessness of a child swinging around a rag doll, and in the tumble, he lost track of which shade of terrible gray was the sky, and which was the sea.

The water so far north hit with such cold that it knocked the breath out of him; Maglor sucked for air, but his seizing chest muscles would not obey, would not draw breath. The ship continued to shriek as Ossë in his grief ripped plank from plank; a foremast fell and clipped Maglor’s shoulder as it went down; his vision went white with the pain as his arm was bludgeoned from its socket. This time when he opened his mouth to scream, the vile swirl of saltwater poured down his throat, squirted up his nose. It should have been cold, as cold as the water already numbing his extremities, but it wasn’t—the water that filled up his lungs was warm as a fresh spill of blood, and Maglor would have sobbed, if he had had breath for it.

But he did not. Instead, his body surrendered the fight against the lack of air, and drifting, directionless, he was blown by ocean currents away from the splintering, sinking wreck of Alqualondë’s ship. It was impossible to tell, lost in the utter blackness of the water, which direction was up, and which was down—if he had been able to swim, he might very well have been bearing himself deeper into Ulmo’s realm.

Black spots danced at the edges of his vision; he closed his eyes, feeling his body enter the final death throes and the terrible loss of physical control. It was a terror that never failed to overwhelm him: the realization that his body was giving up. This far under the water—the close to death—sensations winked out one by one. Absence enveloped him: of sound, of sight, of temperature.

A vacuum.

When he awoke in bed, the first pale pink fingers of dawn brushing over the sky outside his grimy window, he tried to remember how many times this month he had dreamed of drowning.

Usually it was as it had been, on the flight from Alqualondë, but not always. Other times, he went out to fish on a lake and capsized; or found himself for some reason or another in the seas around Balar; or was simply at sail for no reason and on no waters he could discern. Other things were constant—the bloody water, the confusion, that moment of petrifying realization. It was a uniquely frightful experience, Maglor found, perhaps one of the worst things he’d felt, that moment of comprehending there would be no rescue—that one’s death was imminent, that his body was letting go of him.

He found he could not recall precisely how many nights he had dreamed of drowning. Four or five? Surely not more than seven! Or was this the first this month?

Water drooled down the window. He was quite sure that was an additional streak of bird shit on the dingy glass. Someone really needed to get to cleaning those.

It took a few minutes for his heart rate to return to normal.

After several other aborted trains of thought and considerable coaxing, Maglor got himself out of bed, mainly because it was time to wake the twins. Once dressed, with his unruly hair brushed back into order, he flung open the door and rang the bell he had installed just inside.

“Up and up!” he announced. “Time for little things to prepare for breakfast!”

The boys were sprawled in the manner of young children across the bed they shared, with Elrond’s head inexplicably towards the foot of the bed, his feet in his brother’s face. Jolted awake by the clanging, they both sat upright and looked not at Maglor, but at each other, with length that gave Maglor pause. They had told him they did not possess the Elven ability of ósanwe. But sometimes they showed behaviors that reminded Maglor eerily of Amrod and Amras, and he wondered if anything could be a peculiarity of twins across species, or if they had lied (or, he supposed with reflection, they were growing into something they had before lacked).

They both turned to look at him at the same moment.

“Did you see Nana last night?” they asked together.

Maglor’s pause lengthened.

“Now what a silly question that is,” he said with forced placidity. “Dreams are dreams, little ones. Up you go. If you’re late to breakfast, I shall give you extra times tables.”

***

            “Someone really needs to clean the windows,” said Maglor as he dropped down into an empty seat at the table. Maedhros gave his “good mood” morning grunt, nibbling at the end of a sausage speared onto a fork with his natural hand, while his attention remained on the parchment unrolled beside his plate. “They’ve gotten truly repulsive.”

            “Feel free,” Maedhros said, ripping off another hunk of sausage.

            “That is disgusting,” Maglor said. They had had the conversation about Maedhros eating like a civilized person too many times for Maglor to bother to rehash it now, but not so many he wasn’t still willing to share his opinion.

            Maedhros, predictably, did not respond.

            The twins shuffled into the room and quietly filed into seats next to each other. No matter how Maglor arranged the table, they would always sit so, even if it meant squeezing into the same chair together because there were no two available chairs adjacent. He had given up (for now) on trying to separate them for meals.

            “Wouldn’t it be nice to have clean windows?” he said.

            The boys blinked owlishly at him, seemingly unclear if they were meant to be a part of this conversation or not. The subject matter suggested not, but Maglor was using the chirpy tone he only ever directed at them.

            “Of course it would!” he answered, when they said nothing, and cast a far less generous look at Maedhros, who lifted his eyes without raising his head.

            “Do you need me to remind you where the buckets are?” he asked. “Or are you going to make them do it?”

            “Well I certainly won’t rely on you,” Maglor snapped.

            “That would be first,” Maedhros replied. Maglor’s lips thinned and he pressed dangerously hard on a spoon that was not sturdy enough for his full wrath.

            “You would think so, wouldn’t you?” he said at length. Maedhros rolled his eyes, as he did when he wanted to suggest Maglor was delusional or hysterical, and went back to his reading. Maglor wished he’d leave the table in a temper, but he almost never would—staying was part of his revenge on Maglor.

            The rest of the meal passed in miserable, awkward silence, except where Maglor expounded on the twins’ lesson plan for the day. Even the boys’ minor squabble towards the end was silent, as they usually were whenever they took place within view of either lord of Amon Ereb. Maedhros did not like it when they were too noisy, or bickered over small things.

            Maglor helped himself to the pitcher of watered-down wine, only to regret it the instant he’d taken a sip. It was warm, and salty—without thinking, he spat it immediately back into the cup, which got the attention of everyone else at the table. Nervously, he arranged the goblet beside his plate and went back to eating as if nothing had happened. It must be the dream, he thought to himself. It was still too close; that was why the wine tasted wrong.

            He just needed to wake up a bit more, and he’d be fine.

***

A light rain spit irregularly down over Amon Ereb. Maglor stood under the eaves of the armory, holding an umbrella over one shoulder, watching the twins run laps around the courtyard. Their feet slapped through the muddy ground as they wheezed towards him, doubling over when they made it back to him.

“Another!” he said cheerfully.

“We’re tired!” Elros cried, looking up, while Elrond fixed him with a pitiful expression. Their cheeks were ruddy with exertion.

“Young things need to get proper exercise!” Maglor sang.

“We’re not Elves!” Elrond burst out, a flash of anger on his small face. “We can’t run as far as you!”

Maglor considered. It was true the twins had physical limitations that he himself was  unfamiliar with. But he was also inclined to believe they were children looking to shirk their lessons.

“It will do you no good to be sitting around the entire day,” said Maglor, something he had engaged in quite frequently at the same age. “Take another lap around the armory.” The twins glared at the dirt, but exchanged a silent look, and trudged off at a pace that could only with the utmost generosity be called a “run.”

“Both feet off the ground!” Maglor called after them as they rounded the building out of his view.

The sound of their shoes on the slick earth faded. Maglor stared blankly across the courtyard; he remembered, for some reason, an occasion when Mother had sent Caranthir out to play, insisting he had spent too much time inside lately. He had skinned his knee falling on the paving stones, and come home in wrathful tears that it was all Mother’s fault for forcing him out. He had come into Maglor’s room with his bandaged knee, bemoaning this situation; Maglor could not remember what brief and placating words he had shelled out. He was sure he had not given Caranthir the attention he was looking for; he barely remembered what most of the family had been up to then, when he had been so busy working on creating the next Great Noldorin Masterpiece (an effort that had begun around age twelve).

He jerked himself out of his solipsism as the twins came around the other side of the armory. At first, he thought they were still annoyed about being made to run. They slowed down several yards from him, and shuffled nearer, not meeting his eyes.

“There’s…over there…” Elros said, gesturing back towards the armory while Elrond looked faintly queasy.

“Hm? What is it, my lovelies?”

“Something happened,” Elrond whispered, his lower lip quivering. Maglor sobered, a faint frown turning down the corners of his mouth. Both boys gestured wordlessly back where they had come from, so Maglor circled around the armory, looking for what could have upset them so much. As he went by them, Elros gripped Elrond’s hand and they watched him go with those sober gray eyes.

Nothing seemed out of place to Maglor’s eye until he reached the rear of the armory, at which point he clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle a shriek.

Crumpled in the rocky mud, the pasty, waterlogged corpse of Elwing Dioriel stared sightlessly back at him, seaweed tangled in her hair, limbs bent at unnatural angles, one hand stretched out as if to grasp at something. Maglor’s body reacted with only one thought: away. He stumbled into the wall of the armory with a choked whimper, and the vision shattered.

It wasn’t Elwing—of course it wasn’t Elwing. It couldn’t be Elwing. It was…it was…well, her name wasn’t important. He’d forgotten it, if he’d ever known it. At once, he was filled with terrible wrath for this dead Elf who had been so thoughtless.

He growled some unkind words under his breath as he arranged the body more neatly; she hadn’t bothered with a cloak before going out, apparently, or he could’ve used it to cover her.

He apologized to the twins for having seen something like that.

“We’ve seen bodies before,” Elros said dully, still holding his brother’s hand. This gave Maglor pause, as remarks about the Havens at Sirion usually did, while his brain scrambled for a response.

“Well. Nevertheless. We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again. Now, what will distract you from these nasty thoughts, hm? How about a spelling lesson!”

Later that day, still fuming, he tracked Maedhros down in his study. What exactly he studied in there anymore was a mystery, but Maglor had learned not to ask. He launched into his complaints without troubling himself to check that Maedhros was listening.

“Honestly! As if they aren’t aware the twins pass by that area! It was so thoughtless. How could she be so selfish? You must do something about it. I cannot have the twins exercised properly if they fear stumbling across corpses lying in the yard! Do you know how difficult it has been trying to engage them today? And what if it reminded them of—It must be dealt with, Maedhros.”

“Right you are,” Maedhros said in that tone of voice he used to indicate this was the stupidest conversation of which he had heretofore been a part. To say it grated was something of an understatement; that tone made Maglor want to hit him in the face with something heavy. Maybe then Maedhros would consider his conversation worth his time. “I’ll be sure in the next bulletin to let the troops know that they should be committing suicide somewhere more out of the way, so the hostages aren’t upset.”

Maglor’s lips were as thin as a knife edge.

“Could you consider just for a moment, the impact on their still-developing psyches—”

“You didn’t seem terribly concerned with child psyches when you told Curufin that if he didn’t talk for a week he’d spontaneously develop a better singing voice.”

“Do not change the subject,” Maglor snapped. There was a shift in Maedhros’ expression as he entered more fully into the conversation.

“Do you really want to have a discussion about the harm being done to their psyches?” he asked. Maedhros was good at arguing—too good. If Maglor tried, he knew he would only end up with Maedhros more convinced of his own correctness, and with Maglor doubting himself. Nevertheless, he wanted to argue, and it showed on his face and the way his mouth contorted. “Do you want to talk about the impact on their psyches of being now in the guardianship of the one who—”

“I didn’t kill her!”

The room went silent after Maglor’s outburst. Maedhros just looked at him and Maglor looked anywhere else, fussing at his robes with twitchy fingers.

“It was. Complicated. The twins would…”

“Would what?” Maedhros asked, leaning back in his seat as if daring Maglor to fill in something appropriate on the end of that sentence. Maglor ground his teeth; he couldn’t tell if Maedhros enjoyed digging his fingers into that wound, or if there was some other purpose behind it.

“Deal with the men,” was all he said, then showed himself out of Maedhros’ study without another word.

***

            Maglor would’ve rather dreamed about Daeron. He had, about six months back. Dreamed of Daeron as he had been at the Mereth Aderthad, all bright eyes and dark skin gleaming soft and smooth under the lamplight, with that mischievous twist to his smile and that sly, slanting gaze that said he’d found fodder for another insulting rhyme.

            He found himself coming back to that feast more frequently in thought of late, and he couldn’t say why. Perhaps it had been one of those moments it felt like they truly had a grip on the situation in Beleriand and everyone, regardless of their goals, felt hopeful about the future. Perhaps because he would’ve liked to hear the sound of Daeron’s panpipes once more—but it was a useless wish now. Daeron was gone; the Iathrim were gone.

            Maglor had never bothered learning the panpipes, and he went on dreaming of drowning in warm, thick water to wake with tears on his cheeks and Elwing’s final words ringing in his ears: All this you have done for nothing.

***

Normally, the twins’ horseback riding lessons was one of the things Maglor enjoyed doing—if only for how it made the world feel so simple for a time, so long as he was choosy about what memories of the Gap he allowed to surface. Other times, though—well, childcare turned out to be rather a full-time job, and he was tired.

It did not help that going to bed every night felt like prepping for battle rather than laying down for rest.

            So once in a while he handed the lessons off to someone else, and took a few minutes for himself instead.

            On this day, he went back up to his bedroom, shut the door, and exhaled into the quiet. Not silence—he could hear the movement of people below on the first floor, and out in the yard—but quiet in no one clamoring for his attention and no problems making themselves known and no bickering with Maedhros. He could perhaps close his eyes for a few minutes…

            He shed his coat and cast himself down on the bed, thinking back to his dream about Daeron, and the sweet melancholy of his song. He had not wanted to believe it then, that Daeron could match him—even exceed him—but now it seemed silly to deny it. Daeron had been a unique talent. Maglor had wept to hear him play.

            How dreary Amon Ereb was when it was Maglor alone who still sang! He couldn’t remember the last time Maedhros had, and any song he heard amongst the men was soft, almost embarrassed, and quickly stifled if they noticed anyone else within earshot.

            How dreary everything was.

            With a quiet sigh, Maglor spread his robes aside and loosened the ties of his undershorts, sliding his hand down the front to rub hopefully at his cock. Most often he lacked not only the time, but the mood for this anymore, even when the release would have been most welcome.

            That day, though, he had some luck, and his member stirred to the memory of the vibrancy and warmth of the Mereth Aderthad, and his mind’s many fantasies about what could have been, if he had only been less focused on their goals. Relieved, he settled back against the pillows with a more pleasured sigh, drawing his rising sex from his shorts to stroke with more vigor.

            In his mind’s eye, his flesh’s imagination, the other Elf was warm and solid against him, supple and eager and welcoming; their voice was soft and inviting; their hands knew just how to guide him without too much force.

            It was just as he was losing himself into that fantasy of mutual pleasure and connection that he heard the ragged nails on the window, scraping down the shit-stained glass, rattling the panes; the witch had come for him!

            The screeching sound, jarring and deliberate, send Maglor flailing of bed with a half-stifled shriek, slamming into the dresser as he flung himself away from the grasping hands at the window.

            “Will you give me no peace!” he shouted hoarsely, goosebumps pebbling his flesh head to toe, ready to flee the room when he managed to focus his gaze on the sill and see the large black bird there, pecking at the casement and scraping at the glass with one clawed foot. “You wretched beast,” Maglor nearly sobbed, grabbing a shoe to hurl at the window. With a startled caw, the crow removed itself at once. “I hope something eats you! If you come back I shall pluck out your eyes and use them for jam!”

            Nearly in tears—of frustration, of fright—Maglor threw himself back down on the bed, tugging desperately at his limp cock, but the moment was gone, and his body was no longer willing to play that tune. He let out a wordless wail and jerked his clothes back into order.

            There was perhaps time to take over the latter half of the twins’ riding lesson, but he found himself unwilling. They were in good hands—perhaps more time to himself would be…(As if Maglor had ever enjoyed time to himself, outside composing, and it was a joke to even consider how long it had been since he’d done that in earnest.)

            Nevertheless, he stayed away from Elrond and Elros until dinner that night.

***

            After they tracked the twins down two miles out from Amon Ereb’s walls, they were given a perfunctory dinner and sent to bed early, with admonitions of Maglor’s disappointment. This meant Maedhros and Maglor dined alone, an experience which proved grimmer than even Maglor’s imagining. He contemplated impaling himself on a fork.

            The situation was not measurably improved by the wet woman in the corner.

            It was only context that really got the point home—Maglor felt relatively certain he did not recall Elwing’s face clearly enough for it to be there so vividly, looking at him in such bitter fury. Yet there she was. Her sleek dark hair hung lank and dripping around her shoulders, soggy ropes of it clinging to her face and neck; her robes were nearly translucent with seawater; her armor beginning to rust around the décor that had been beaten into it. The room felt like ice.

            Maedhros said nothing about it.

            Maglor cut his stringy duck into smaller and smaller pieces, but tapped his fork nervously against the edge of the plate rather than take a bite, as if Elwing might take that moment to seize him around the throat.

            “Maedhros,” he began. Maedhros grunted to show he was listening (presumably), but Maglor’s words stuck in his throat. Maedhros lifted his head.

            “What is it?” he said impatiently.

            “I…wonder if it’s time to give the twins their own horse,” he suggested. “Perhaps…something of their own to care for…” It was something he hadn’t really thought about until right then, but with Dioriel’s gaze boring into him, it felt impossible to acknowledge her existence. It felt like there were pins being jabbed into his spine.

            Maedhros exhaled his sigh of lacking the energy to argue with Maglor; it was rare.

            “Fine. Claim the next foal for them then,” he said. “But you will see to it that you know where that horse is every night. They manage to get quite far enough on foot without you giving them a mount. And I will be displeased if you make me kill it because you could not control them.”

            Oh, right. Perhaps it was not a good time to gift them a horse, then. Well, he’d said it now. Maedhros would want to know why he backed out, if he did. Perhaps it would be a while before any of the mares foaled again.

            Cold sweat was prickling the back of Maglor’s neck and at the hollow of his throat.

            He went on massacring his duck and scraping unhappily at the mushy grain on the side. (He’d heard some of their troops muttering that the land around Amon Ereb was blighted, and that was why their crops were always so sickly and tasteless.)

            “Maedhros,” he said.

            “What?” Maedhros demanded, glaring as he looked up. His eyes were remarkably like Father’s, Maglor thought. He wondered if Maedhros ever thought that. (He remembered how Maedhros had terrified and delighted them with impressions of Fëanor when they were children; now, he thought he’d take Father if he had the choice. At least Fëanor could at times be placated.)

            Maglor’s eyes drifted to the corner, and the plinking of water dripping off Elwing’s armor into the puddle on the floor.

            Maedhros did not follow his gaze.

            “Have the twins seemed agitated to you, lately?” he asked at last.

            “No more than usual,” Maedhros said. “Why, have you done something to them?”

            “Done something!” Maglor exclaimed in affront. Realizing he had raised his voice, he flinched and immediately flicked his gaze back to the corner. Elwing lifted the corner of her mouth in a rictus leer, but otherwise remained where she was. (As if she couldn’t cross the distance any time she chose! And what would his blade even do against such a phantom?) Maglor’s fingers drummed on the tabletop. “No. Just. Perhaps bad dreams. Or perhaps the onset of adolescence.”

            “It’s a little early for that, isn’t it?”

            “I don’t know,” Maglor said, unable to keep the thread of annoyance out of his voice. “I’ve never raised a a Peredhel.”

            “They seem normal to me,” Maedhros said with finality. “Did Elrond bite you again?”

            “No,” said Maglor stiffly. “They’ve just…been odd.”

            “They are odd,” Maedhros said. “I would not linger on it.”

            “Maedhros,” Maglor pleaded.

            “What!” Maedhros slammed down his fork. “What do you want, Maglor?” Maglor gestured broadly at the west end of the room.

            “Do you see nothing?” he cried. “There is nothing out of place here?”

            Maedhros passed a slow, deliberate look over that side of the room, his gaze passing right over Elwing’s corner, and then fixed his gaze once more on Maglor.

            “I see nothing,” he said, and Maglor knew that if he pushed further, there would be a fight.

            Maglor felt at times he had lost some ability to read Maedhros. Once, he would have proudly counted himself as the one who was best at doing it, but now it felt he was wrong as often as right, or that Maedhros deliberately obfuscated Maglor’s efforts to understand him. But he could not always succeed—Maglor knew him too well, and he knew without a doubt in that moment, with a chill that pierced his heart and spread out through his chest, that Maedhros was lying.  

***

            It took Maglor several weeks to comprehend that the gut-churning anxiety that had begun to overtake him when dinner neared its approach and bedtime closed in was directly related to his nighttime horrors. Some nights, he swore he lay awake the entire time, flat on his back and tense as a board, unwilling to cede to unconsciousness that the wrath of Thingol’s heir could torment his mind. Sometimes he wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t just dreaming of being awake all night.

            The nights he stayed awake were little better than the ones he slept, and at times he felt a stupid child again, lying there in tremors with his eyes squeezed shut, desperate to believe he was alone in the room, but fighting against the rising hysteria that it was not the case.

            When the paranoia waned, it was as if she had left some imprint on his mind—which invariably turned to moments he would rather forget: that sickening resistance of his blade first cutting through another, though Maglor could no longer say if that was truly a memory, or only a feeling his mind had attached to the horror of the moment; that cold, dark march past the line of the Girdle where once the protection of Melian might have stopped them; the screaming of the Doriathrim in Menegroth.

            Oh, the screaming!

            How they had wailed to realize what was being done to them!

            Even the memory of the fight in the Thousand Caves made Maglor’s chest seize up with sudden claustrophobia. Driving through those winding, seemingly endless tunnels, with enemies liable to leap out of every corner! He knew several of their troops had slain one another out of sheer nerves, caught by surprise and not realizing until too late they looked upon a friendly face. Maglor himself had been a hair’s breadth away from demanding they burn the whole place down and damn the Silmarils when one of his scouts had reported finding the bodies of the king and queen—and Maglor’s brothers.

            Celegorm, Caranthir, Curufin—half of Fëanor’s brood slain in one fight, but when Maglor thought on the scene now, what he remembered was Dior’s horrible, wet breathing and how he gasped, a dying animal which seeks with all force to preserve itself in vain. He remembered that the fingers of Nimloth’s right hand were broken, no longer able to hold a blade, and her ribs on one side crushed, and the savage bruising on her right ankle; Dior’s immortal queen had not gone quietly, of that they were sure.

            Maglor would have rather thought of Caranthir, and how he used to trail after Maglor as a little boy, and how proud he had been when Maglor paid any attention to his childish achievements (how pleased he had been to welcome Maglor to Thargelion on the few occasions of his visits).

            But Elwing allowed him to think only of Dior and Nimloth, and the two little boys shivering alone in the woods, and the bodies he had stepped over to report to Maedhros and Amras that the royal family was dead, but the Silmaril had not been found with either king or queen, or the princes.

            (None of them had thought of Elwing then, except for Maedhros, who pointed out they were one Peredhel short.)

            Sometimes, these thoughts gave way to black sleep, but those instances seemed to come fewer and further between, as night after night Maglor relived the visceral experience of drowning in the warm, salty water, again and again and again and again: the shock of first terror, the dread of realization, the vain fight, the gradual failure of his body, the snapping of his spirit away from his flesh.

            On one of the last of the black nights, he woke to a tickling in the back of his brain, and pins and needles going up and down his back. There was a voice in his head, some thought trying to dredge itself out of his mind, some thing that was not his own. Maglor sat upright and pressed his hands over his ears, trying to drown out that alien whisper.

            But it built and built, until Maglor opened his mouth to gasp out: “Eärendil!” His heart hammered against his ribs.

            The presence was in the room with him. The needles were driving into Maglor’s spine. The blood was rushing in his ears; his tongue was too thick to command her away. It felt like his throat was starting to swell up.

            “No,” he managed to whisper at last, forcing the word past his constricting throat muscles. Then, as a chill began to descend over him, louder: “No!” He twisted in the sheets, but the cold came anyway, winding its arms around him, pressing against his face. Maglor screamed and flailed out with arms and legs. “No! Get out of my head!”

            He was choking; he was drowning again, without a drop of water in the room. During his thrashing with the shadow, he unbalanced and went over the edge of the bed with a shocked intake of breath, but when he hit the ground and stilled, he could no longer feel the apparition there. For several moments, he lay quiet, nearly holding his breath, waiting, but nothing came. Gradually, he relaxed.

His nose and throat hurt from how quickly he had sucked in air. He felt as chill as if he had spent the entire night out-of-doors. How much longer could he go on like this? A useless question to ask—he would go on as long as he had to, as long as there was still a goal to fulfill. As long as there existed still Silmarils in the world which might be obtained by Fëanor’s kin.

            It said nothing good about Amon Ereb, he thought, that no one investigated or even commented on his screaming.

***

            Maedhros advised Maglor cease the twins’ lessons for several days as punishment for the knife Maglor had recovered from one of their pillows, but Maglor could never manage more than a day, during which he assigned them chore after chore until they collapsed in bed, too tired for running. The next morning, they sat at their lesson table and stared sullenly at him with those gray eyes so eerily like the empty stare of Dior the Fair (Maglor had never seen him truly living, only surrounded by the bodies of Maglor’s brothers, breath rattling as the final death throes overtook him. Amrod had estimated afterwards it had taken him over an hour to succumb to the injury, slowly suffocating as his lungs filled with blood and failed.)

Maglor always regretted having to punish the twins. How much easier it would be if they simply behaved, and saved him the trouble! It wasn’t as if he liked making them do chores all day! 

            Now, they were in bed already, but perhaps still awake…As he warmed a pan of goat milk over the fire and poured it into mugs, he heard Maedhros’ voice snorting and accusing him of trying to buy their favor back with a bit of warm milk. Brushing off his brother’s imaginary sneer, Maglor nevertheless stirred a bit of sugar into the milk and took the cups on a tray up to the twins’ room.

            He paused outside the door and listened, but he couldn’t hear them. Perhaps he was too late, and they were asleep already. Nevertheless, he unlatched the door and pushed it open.

            “Elrond? Elros?” Maglor’s keen Elf eyes had a good view of the room even in the dark, but it still took him a moment to adjust to the empty bed. With a wordless shout, the tray slid out of his hands. Gone again! He rushed to the windows, just slightly ajar, and propped open with a scrap of wood. They were on the roof! Maglor flung the window open. “Elrond! Elros!” he cried, trying to pitch his voice to carry to the twins, but not loud enough to catch Maedhros’ attention elsewhere in the building.

            What if they had fallen and broken their necks already? They were so fragile! They were mortal, blessed Elbereth! Maglor gathered his robes and climbed out the window himself, realizing as he did so just how narrow a strip of roof they must have edged across to get wherever they were going.

            “Peredhil!” he hissed into the wind. “Where are you?” There was only one viable direction to go, so he scooted to the right, over towards a broader stretch of roof. At one point, a shingle slipped sickeningly under his feet and he prayed the twins’ lighter weight had given them less trouble. How could they do this to him, so soon after he had talked Maedhros down from harsher punishment for their last misdeeds? “Peredhil!”

            A cold night breeze cut against him and Maglor swore to himself. He squinted across the roof. He couldn’t tell if the cold was natural or not.

“Not now,” he whispered, squeezing his eyes shut. “Not now, not now! I’m trying to help them!” At the sound of creaking behind him, he whipped his head around and nearly pitched over a gutter.

            “Elrond!” he wailed, no longer caring if Maedhros heard and knew they had been out at night. “Elros!”

            Something swooped overhead and snagged in his hair and Maglor’s strained nerves screamed.

“Leave me alone!” he howled. He flailed violently, fully intent on cold-clocking a ghost, and shrieked when his hand struck something solid; then he unbalanced and went over the edge of the roof.

***

            Maglor came to quickly lying on a crushed bush, with two sets of curious gray eyes staring at him through the darkness. Twigs were attempting acupuncture on his back, which he was amazed to realize seemed to still be in one piece, if very badly bruised.

            “See? I told you he was still alive,” said one boy. “More’s the pity.”

            “Do you think he can hear us? It looks like his eyes are opening.”

            “We should get someone,” said the first voice.

            “Who? Maedhros? Are you insane? We should go back inside.”

            “I’m fine,” Maglor croaked, twitching his hand in a failed effort to wave it and indicate how fine he was. The twins jumped back and hung warily away from him, clutching hands. Maglor pushed himself upright, his back and head protesting vociferously. He was groaning like an oak tree being felled. “You should be in bed,” he said to them, which sounded feeble even to himself.

            “We weren’t tired,” said one of them. “We wanted—”

            “—to see the stars,” the other finished.

            Maglor sighed and held his head in his hands for a moment. What was he doing? What were they doing? Was there any goal anymore, or were they just flopping around like the death throes of a fish on the hook?

            “Let’s go,” he said wearily after a few moments, heaving himself to his feet. His head throbbed. The twins didn’t move.

            “Nana is angry with you,” said one—he thought it was Elrond.

            Maglor froze.

            “What did you say?” he asked, turning back to them.

            “Nana is angry with you,” the twins repeated together. Maglor’s sympathy disappeared beneath the explosion of his nerves.

            “She wants to see us again,” said the other—actually, maybe that one was Elrond.

            “That’s enough!” Maglor shouted, and this time he wasn’t sorry for making the twins clap their hands over their ears. “You are making up stories. You know what happens to little ones who make up stories?”

            “We aren’t!” they cried. “We aren’t!”

            “You are!” Maglor snapped back at them. “You are making up terrible stories and you have been out at night when you were not meant to be and you were on the roof, which is dangerous! Tomorrow you will muck the stables clean by yourselves, and memorize one long-form poem—”

            “No!” they wailed.

            “Apiece,” Maglor raised his voice easily over theirs. Blackly, he wanted to consign them to another full day of labor, to make them scour the floors of all Amon Ereb for striking such fear in his heart, but he bit his tongue back for the time being. “And you will do nothing else until you can recite it in whole! Next time you wish to tell tall tales, think of that! Now get inside to bed, before I tell Maedhros where you’ve been!”

            In mutinous dejection, the twins shuffled back inside.

            Maglor took a moment to gather himself. He supposed there was no need to bar the window that very night, and it seemed the twins hadn’t actually left the estate this time. He was angry with himself for believing he didn’t need to worry about the windows, or that being on the second floor would be enough to stop them. It was as if they wanted him to shut them up in the cellar!

            They were long gone up to their room by the time Maglor came in. He didn’t bother lighting a candle to make his own way up to his room, and perhaps that was how the chill was able to creep up on him. Needles darted up and down his spine; his hands began to shake. He felt woozy. Leave me alone! he wanted to scream, but his voice, his best and mightiest talent, would not obey him. Fingers of ice laced around his neck and he saw in his mind’s eye, as clearly as if someone had dropped the image into his head, a forest in the thrall of winter: bare of foliage, of food, of shelter. The chill sapped the warmth from his fingers and toes, creeping up towards his knees and elbows, and soon it would claim his heart and lungs.

All this you have done for nothing, she whispered. Children’s graves in your name, and what have you to show for it?

He dropped to the floor in a swoon, where he woke early the next morning.

***

             Maedhros did not ask what the commotion had been that night. Maglor was too frazzled to say if this was because he had truly remained ignorant of any goings-on, or because he simply did not care enough to ask.

            Maglor could not remember the last peaceful sleep he had had. At the twins’ lessons that day he was dazed and unfocused; several times they prompted him after he had been staring into space unspeaking for minutes at a time; eventually, he set them at a phenomenally long series of multiplication and division problems, and left them to finish.

            He needed fresh air—or better yet, a drink.

            But when he reached the private store of alcohol which he and Maedhros kept—which he had had the far better part in depleting—it was empty. He tracked Maedhros down in the armory, honing his weapons.

            “What happened to the baijiu?” he said.

            “It’s in the cellar,” Maedhros replied.

            “Not that,” Maglor said with faint disdain. “Ours.” Maedhros’ hand paused just a heartbeat at his work with the whetstone.

            “It’s gone,” he said when he had resumed.

            “Gone where?” Maglor asked sweetly, as often precipitated a tantrum from him.

            “Gone.”

            Maglor wanted to throttle him. He imagined Maedhros was purposefully as irritating to him as possible, as if to punish him for not dying in the Havens at Sirion like Amrod and Amras, for staying in Amon Ereb rather than wandering off into the gloom as a number of their men had done since they had resettled there, for reminding him about the Peredhil. For a moment, he envisaged putting his hands around Maedhros’ neck, but there was no way that didn’t end with his gut swallowing the sword in Maedhros’ hand.

            “Did you drink it?” Maglor asked, as if he were speaking to a particular idiot. Maedhros’ eyes flashed up.

            “No,” he said, and Maglor was irritatingly aware he was telling the truth.

            “Then forgive me, brother dear, but I don’t see what else might have happened to it.”

            “If you want to drown what little function is left to your mind, take the baijiu from the cellar,” Maedhros said unsympathetically. That was where the booze for the rest of the estate was kept; that which the men were more or less free to take and replenish as they pleased.

            “I don’t want the baijiu from the cellar,” Maglor said, and regretted it as soon as he’d said it, for he sounded as petulant as the Peredhil being served another boiled vegetable.

            “Shall I add that to the list of critical tasks in estate maintenance?” said Maedhros, his tone saturated in contempt. “‘Maglor is unhappy with the quality of booze available.’ Would it suit his highness to have beer? Some huangjiu? Perhaps instead of rice for dinner for the Peredhil, we’ll make you wine; would that satisfy you? Or perhaps I can oblige you by striking you very hard on the head, which may achieve the same goal you were looking for with the baijiu.”

            Maglor was walking away before Maedhros had finished speaking, fists clenched with a private fury that Maedhros had to turn so many of their conversations into battles.

            The weather was unseasonably warm, the air still sticky from the last rain. Back inside, in the library, Maglor threw open the windows and laid down on one of the benches, thinking he might at least take a few minutes’ rest, if not sleep. His mind tried to return to familiar, well-trod paths regarding the burning of the Havens at Sirion, but he was too tired even for this rumination; before he knew it, his eyes had grown heavy. He closed them, but made himself focus on the sounds beyond the window—primarily someone hammering at an anvil in the yard—to keep himself from falling asleep.

            It was the sound of rustling paper that made him open his eyes.

            Somehow, it did not shock him at all to see that she was there. Armored, dripping wet, stone-faced. She stood by one of the bookshelves, a decay-mottled hand on the hilt of the short blade at her hip, watching him. A cut on the side of her neck dribbled blood thickly from one end.

            Maglor lay half-upright, frozen on the bench, and then, to his unspeakable relief, rage bubbled up in chest: molten, searing, Feanorian rage.

            “You cannot do this to me!” he bellowed, his deep voice ringing through the library. “Your fight is over; you lost!” Seizing the knife at his belt, Maglor catapulted himself off the sofa and charged at her, fully expecting Elwing to meet him with her blade. Instead, she darted away in a flash of light and Maglor swung the knife into empty air.

            “Coward!” he screamed as Elwing danced towards the door. “Stand and face me!” But she quitted into the hallway. Maglor ran after her.

            He burst into the hall; there was no sign of Elwing but a flash of something white around the corner at the end of the hallway. Maglor took off in pursuit.

            “Stop running! Fight me!”

            The branch down which she had disappeared ended in a a spiral staircase and into the servants’ quarters; Maglor sprang down it, skidding around a hallway corner and plunging through an open door into a dark little bedroom. As his eyes rapidly adjusted to the low light, he saw the figure in the bed and leaped upon it, wielding the knife.

            “I will have no more of you!” he screeched, seizing the throat presented to him, raising the knife up to strike down.

            “My lord!” the figure shrieked. “My lord Maglor, let us speak!” It was enough to make Maglor pause, and the figure threw him to the floor, grasping at its neck.

            Maglor lay discarded on the bedroom floor and looked up at the wide-eyed Elf in the bed, who was certainly not Elwing Dioriel.

            “Whatever I have done,” she gasped, trembling, “surely we may discuss it! If it is my lord’s wish that I go, I shall go!”

            Maglor blinked stupidly at her.

            “No, there’s no need for that,” he said calmly, hearing his voice as if it were someone else speaking. “As you were.” He rose only slightly unsteadily to his feet and sheathed the knife. “Thank you,” he said absurdly on his way out the door, gesturing incoherently with one hand.

***

            Maglor went for a ride.

            Sometimes, he went out so far he could no longer see Amon Ereb on the horizon, and closed his eyes, and imagined he stood in one of the wide, undulating plains of the Gap, the wind dry and cool on his face, the grass whispering around the legs of his horse, the birds of prey wheeling overhead.

            Maglor had never wanted to rule the Gap, or anything really, but it had prided him to be useful, and he liked to think he had done a decent job, before the Bragollach. His men had liked him well enough then, hadn’t they? They’d sung many songs together, and slain many orcs.

            Most of them were gone now. A few remaining had been killed in the Havens, but not by the Sirionites. One of his captains from those days on the plains, even, had turned her blade on Maglor there. Maglor had left her in a gutter already running red.

            Maglor went for a ride, because he had to get out of Amon Ereb, away from Maedhros with his cold cynicism, away from the Peredhil with their accusing eyes, away from the men with their sullen mouths. There was a fey part of him that wanted to spur his horse and just keep going—going, going, going, until something stopped him. Middle-earth had seemed so massive, so unconquerable when first they had arrived. Now he felt suffocated in it.

            When he put the horse to a gallop, the wind seemed to whistle away his thoughts. It chilled his nose and cheeks until he thought of little else, and it was as near as he would ever come to flying (a thought which had once put an ear-splitting grin on his face), but the moment he brought the mare to a slow and then a halt, everything came rushing back.

            He stood alone in the field, looking at the trees’ edge in the distance, and further beyond still, the pinpricks of mountains, but the ball and chain around his ankle which weighed him down in Amon Ereb was there still, and there could be no running from it; it would drag behind him forever, and someday, he thought, it would take him down into that void from which Melkor had emerged.

            What would they destroy next? There would be no more assaults on Angband, on that they were agreed—Maedhros would not go near it since the Niraneth and Maglor…he would never have done it, truthfully, unless Maedhros asked it of him. Was it possible they had already lost their only chance to obtain even a single one of Father’s jewels? Or would there be another Lúthien, to pry one loose and put it within the their grasp?

            Maglor hadn’t realized he had closed his eyes until he opened them again. The light was gray over the dull lands of Amon Ereb, a thin mist in the air, a limp breeze nudging the grass. His back prickled painfully along the spine.

            On a hill not far from his position, there was another rider. It was none of the men of Amon Ereb that Maglor could tell, though when he first noticed them, a breath of wind blew a cloud of fog between them, obscuring the figure momentarily. When it cleared, Maglor saw from the size of the mounted figure that it was a child, and he started towards it, thinking it must be Elrond or Elros. But before he could spur his horse to greater speed to overtake them, he realized the they were too small to be Elrond or Elros. They were not trying to move away from him; they were staring at him.

            It was not one of the twins.

            And they were not alone.

            Maglor was no good at guessing the age of mortals, but the child on the horse could not have been long out of infancy. Behind her sat an adult, but even so near, even with the mist clearing, Maglor could not make out any details about this shadowy figure. The child, though, was cleanly visible. Maglor was uncomfortably aware of his own heartbeat in his ears.

            She had sleek black hair all in a tangle from her ride, and the cool brown eyes of Nimloth of Doriath, and even in her face plump with baby fat, there was contempt when she looked on him. Around her small neck was a necklace almost comically large on her, with a gleaming, glowing jewel set in the center.

            Maglor was frozen, staring. The scorn in her eyes was like a flail; his chest felt tight with the knowledge that this child possessed something which could wound him, that she was a threat.

            The obscure adult swept their cloak over the child, but her eyes continued to glare out at him from over their arm. The adult spoke, but Maglor could not discern the words, and turned the horse away from him, towards the woods.

            There was snow flecked onto the horse’s hooves, although it rarely snowed in Amon Ereb, and there was none now on the ground.

            Maglor opened his mouth to call out, but he knew not what to say, and the thought of that mount and its riders turning towards him made his blood freeze. Initially he had wished for their identity; now he dreaded it.

            Don’t look at me, was all he could think, a silent prayer or plea for some invisibility which did not exist. In the throes of his dread, he became wholly convinced that if the child looked directly at him, some terrible, unnamable thing would happen. Not death—that was too prosaic. Some thing his mind had yet to fully fathom. He could not remember such a fear since he ran through the house screaming for Mother after a childhood nightmare, certain some primordial creature of darkness nipped at his heels, ready to subject him to eternal and everlasting torment. Don’t look at me, don’t look at me. Don’t see me.

But the strange horse and the adult astride it seemed to take no more notice of him; rather, something else which Maglor could not discern grabbed their attention, and abruptly the horse was urged to a gallop. The figures fled from him as if there were a fire at their heels—or a killer.

            The wind blew over the field once more, stirring up the mist, and this time, when it cleared, the figures were gone, and Maglor felt as if something had slipped between his fingers.

            It took a great while before he was willing to turn his back on the place where he had seen them and try to ride back to Amon Ereb. It seemed to take much longer to make his way back than to come out, and it caught him by surprise when he finally crested the last small hill that would reveal the entirety of Amon Ereb in the distance. Normally, before reaching the peak of this hill, one could already see the roofline of the estate. But when Maglor came over the hill, there was only a dark spot there, and no roofline had he seen before.

            He came to a dead halt on the hill. Even at this distance, he could see that Amon Ereb was gone. A lifeless ruin lay where the estate had been, and he saw no movement there.

            “No!” The shout burst from Maglor’s mouth without thought and he jerked his horse into a run, but she went only a few hundred yards before coming to a sudden halt, nearly throwing him over her head, and despite all of Maglor’s coaxing, she would go no further.

            Casting himself down, Maglor continued on foot, but he knew how long it would take him to make it all the way there without his horse. He stopped and straightened and looked again at Amon Ereb, straining his eyes to discover some explanation of what had happened; there was none.

            He felt unsteady on his feet, as if he were trapped between the memory of the figure behind him, and the promise of the ruin in front of him.

            “It’s not real,” he whispered, reaching a hand out towards the crumbling stone. That was it, wasn’t it? That kind of damage could not have been done in the short time that Maglor had been out. He was looking at buildings which had not been touched in decades, maybe more. “It isn’t real…”

            He stared.

            Maglor had never been gifted with foresight; none of those in his father’s house had been, but he felt with arresting certainty in that moment that he looked upon the end of the House of Fëanor in Middle-earth—perhaps the end of the Noldor there entirely. They were not of Beleriand, not truly, if they had once been, and someday, they would be gone from here. But was it truth? Or a vision from the queen of the Iathrim meant to torment him with the futility of his task?

            “It cannot be,” he whispered, closing his eyes and shaking his head. He sank down to his knees, squeezing his eyes shut tighter. “We will succeed. We must…we must.” They had come too far to give up now…they had done too much! Surely! The thought of failure now galled him beyond words; it was anguish. It was an empty hole where his heart ought to be. “You will not turn me away from this!” he cried. “You cannot…”

            No one could.

            Maglor sank down until his hands were pressed into the dirt, his forehead resting against them, and for a long time he lay that way, thinking of the gleam of the Silmaril in the sky, and wishing with an acid taste in his throat that Eärendil had had the grace to take the other two with him also.

            When he finally raised himself up, evening was on the rise, and Amon Ereb stood just as it always had, with no more imprint of Maglor’s madness than any other instance of it. Maglor returned on foot.

***

            “What are you doing?” Maglor have believed the rest of the house was asleep, outside the night watch, so he was startled to hear Maedhros’ voice and turned at once towards the doorway. What he had been “doing” was staring bleakly into the fireplace, fighting the urge to lie down and close his eyes, but he wasn’t sure Maedhros would find this any kind of satisfactory answer.

            “Nothing,” he answered at last.

            “Then why are you using up firewood?”

            Maglor shifted on the sofa—which could have used a great deal more padding—and looked up at Maedhros.

            “I can’t sleep,” he said softly.

            Maedhros loomed in the doorway.

            “I keep…” Maglor trailed off and shook his head, resting his chin unhappily on the back of the couch. “Let me be here,” he muttered. “I won’t go to bed.”

            To his surprise, Maedhros entered the room, and not to douse the fire and command him to bed anyway. He took a seat on one of the creaky wooden armchairs around the hearth. Maglor straightened up a little and regarded his brother. It was easy to let one’s eyes glaze over familiar things: to see them without really noticing them, but now he focused his attention, and he thought that above all, Maedhros looked tired. With the flame of his eyes quieted, his posture relaxed, he seemed to possess far less of the manic energy that had driven him since they made the decision to assault Doriath.

            But Maedhros would not rest, Maglor knew that. The human part of his brother which had once enjoyed laying out in the grass in the sunshine, and spending whole days reading or reciting in the parlor, and sleeping late after staying up too long the night before working on projects was gone. Sometimes Maglor thought that part of himself was gone as well, and that he merely amused himself with a pale imitation because he could not bear to let himself be entirely as Maedhros was. When had they lost these things, he wondered? Had it happened all at once, was there a moment when it had slipped from their grasp, or had it crumbled away a little bit at a time, slowly leaving behind a mere husk, a pitiable mockery of an Elf, something more akin to the work of Morgoth than Ilúvatar?

            “Are you dreaming?” Maedhros asked at length, and the words seemed to slide through a stiff jaw.

            “Yes,” Maglor whispered, curling more in on himself. His throat constricted. It was the first acknowledgement Maedhros had given of any awareness that his brother was completely falling apart. Maedhros said nothing else, but into the silence, Maglor was willing to speak: “I keep…drowning.”

            Maedhros’ eyes flicked over to him, away from the fire, into which he had been staring with the hypnotic look he got whenever he was around a fireplace these days.

            “Drowning?”

            “Yes. Over and over and over again…It’s unbearable. But then, when I wake…” Maglor shook his head, his throat tightening. “It never ends,” he whispered. He lifted his eyes to Maedhros’. “Have you seen her?” he pleaded. Tell me the truth, Maitimo, he begged silently.

            “Seen who?” Maglor’s heart sank, either because Maedhros was lying now, or because he had misunderstood before, and Maedhros had been telling the truth both times. But he had been so sure that Maedhros was untruthful before, in the dining hall!

            “Elwing!” Maglor burst out, his voice filling the room. “I see her, and I think you do as well!” He jumped to his feet to pace around in front of the fire. Hadn’t there been a rug there, once? “She will not leave me alone!” he cried, wheeling to face Maedhros. “She torments me! I think she is the one drowning me every night! I have no peace, Maedhros! She will not let me rest! I slew her, and now she will kill me too!”

            The room was silent, but for the snap and pop of the fire.

            Maedhros observed him.

            “I thought you didn’t kill her,” he said flatly.

            “I…”

            “You have been very emphatic on this point,” said Maedhros. Whose side was he on, exactly? And why did all the world wish to torment Maglor?

            Maglor sank to the floor, allowing tears to well up in his eyes, and blinked up at his pitiless brother.

            “She wants me to die,” he blubbered. “She wants me dead! Do you care not at all?”

            “She is not real,” said Maedhros. “She is dead.”

            “She is tormenting me!”

            “Perhaps you torment yourself.”

            Maglor gaped at Maedhros, shocked out of his relatively performative tears.

            “You think I am mad!” he accused. Maedhros shrugged.

            “Of course you are. Aren’t we all? Isn’t that why we are here? Control it.” Maglor’s misery warred with his anger as Maedhros rose to his feet.

            “And you!” he cried, gesturing. “Do you control it as well? Do you torment yourself as well?” Maedhros paused halfway to the door and did not look back.

            “Of course not,” he said. “We did what needed to be done. She gave us no choice.” Something about that phrase stuck in Maglor’s mind, but he couldn’t say why. “It does not do to dwell in the past.”

            And he left Maglor there on the floor, trying to fleece truth from lies and reality from insanity.

***

            The long and wearisome days since Maglor had last slept had granted him no particular insight into the mind of Elwing Dioriel. He found himself staring at the twins, as if she might use one of them to impart a message on him, but they seemed, for all intents and purposes, to be just children (However, just in case, he interrupted them whenever they looked at each other too long without speaking, in case they were able to use ósanwe as they had told him they could not). He stayed up late at night staring into the fire as Maedhros did, but if the flames gave some clarity to Maedhros, they held it back from Maglor. He demanded to know if any of the men had seen anything unusual around the estate—nothing they reported jived with what Maglor had seen, and at least two of their stories simply suggested the place was infested with rodents (and in one instance, investigation revealed a small bat colony in the roof of a disused tower).

            Nothing that revealed to Maglor for what purpose Elwing haunted him.

            “What do you want from me?” Maglor murmured aloud.

            “What?” said Elrond.

            Maglor dragged his attention with effort back to the twins at their study table.

            “I want you to copy down that list of prepositional phrases,” Maglor said, pointing to where he had scripted out the phrases they were studying for that hour.

            “We did that already,” Elros complained. Maglor narrowed his eyes, and Elros held up his sheet of paper, which did indeed have the phrases on it, in clumsy, childish hand.

            “Well, copy it over again!” Maglor took the paper from him and flipped it over. “Or…” He trailed off, staring at the wall, his mind wandering off from whatever new task he’d meant to appoint them. When he refocused, the twins were staring at each other. “That’s enough of that!” Maglor exclaimed, waving a hand between them. “Perhaps you will work better in separate rooms.”

            “No!” they chorused. “No, no!”

            “This is not a collaborative exercise, it should not make any difference if you can talk or not,” said Maglor, rising to his feet.

            “No!” the twins wailed, grabbing at each other. “No, no!”

            “Elros, come over here,” said Maglor. “I’m putting you in the library.”

            “No!” They remained where they were, their fingers knotted up in each other’s clothes, and Elros did not move an inch.

            “Elros.”

            “No!”

            Maglor did not want to physically separate them; it was never pleasant for anyone. He went over and put a hand on Elros’ shoulder, which made the twins jerk back away from him, stumbling out of their overlarge chairs to cling to each other at the far end of the table, and as usually happened whenever anyone tried to separate them, they looked on the verge of tears. There was little that drove them to immediate hysteria more easily than an adult trying to move them apart, but it was a reality they would have to accept sometime, in Maglor’s view.

            “Leave us alone!” Elrond cried, gripping his brother’s tunic until his knuckles went white.     “Don’t—”

            “—touch us!” Elros finished.

            “You are overreacting to this,” Maglor tried to rationalize them, taking no more steps towards them. “It will only be for an hour or two. What do you think, I mean to spirit one of you away forever?” He laughed, and then, on reflection, realized that was probably a less-than-ideal joke to make to this specific audience. The twins trembled, so near together now their cheeks almost touched. “It’s just until you finish your literature lessons,” he coaxed gently. The twins regarded each other again, seemed to come to some agreement, and then hand-in-hand sprinted past Maglor out the door and down the hallway before he could blink.

            Shit.

            Maglor touched his forehead between his eyebrows. He knew from experience how difficult it was to track them down in Amon Ereb when they were hiding, even when they had no intent to leave the estate. They fit into so many small places! The thought of doing it now was so wearisome he nearly collapsed into one of the now-available chairs.

            “You’re doing to this to me,” he mumbled. “You’re making them uncooperative…” He shuffled into the hall, swaying against the doorframe. Even as he stood there, his head tipped to the side, to rest against the wood, and his eyes attempted to close. He snapped them back open at once and moved on into the hallway. “You’re making them hate me.”

            That’s not true though, is it? said a voice in his head. You have done that yourself. Every day that you keep them here, you do it.

            “That isn’t so,” Maglor said aloud as he passed a pair of men in the hallway. “I take good care of them. I…” I do my best! Didn’t that count for something? He laughed derisively. “Of course it doesn’t! Why on earth should that matter?”

            He found himself in the lower part of the building, staggering into the pantry with little memory of how he’d gotten there. He couldn’t tell if there were needles pressing into his spine or if he was just imagining the feeling.

            “Is it real?” he murmured, holding his hands out in front of him. “Is it real?” He grabbed a radish off the table and then set it down again.

            His legs seemed to buckle out from under him; he sank in a heap to the floor, gripping the edge of the table. The air pressed down on him with a terrible weight, as if he were again sinking under the thrall of the waves, with the crushing weight of the ocean on top of him.

            “What do you want from me?” he cried. “What is it? What do you want from me?” He raised his voice in supplication, throwing his shaking hands up. In the flickering candlelight of that plain room they appeared almost stained. “Is it my apologies? Is it my regret? Think you I have no regrets?” Maglor clawed at his robes. “Is it the foreswearing of my oath? That you know cannot be! What’s done is done. Blasted shade! What will it take to satiate you?” He raised himself up on his knees. “What can I do to put you at rest, to banish you from me!”

            The candles wobbled; shadows danced across the walls, the floor, the ceiling. The rest of Amon Ereb seemed very far away.

            “Tell me what penance you demand!”

            A flickering on the wall drew Maglor’s attention and he saw there the shadow of a loop, drawn up near the ceiling.

            “No,” he gasped, clawing at the floorboards. “No, no…This I will not give you! You cannot ask it of me! Nothing will this solve! Blood for blood? This is what you seek? Never ‘til then will you leave me?” Maglor’s eyes burned as if from smoke, and he fell forward on his face, quivering on the floor. “I cannot, I cannot!”

            “My lord?” Maglor whipped his head towards the door, wild-eyed and trembling. “Is…is everything well…?” One of their men was in the doorway with a saltbox, staring at him.

            “She asks too much of me!” Maglor cried. “Do you see!” He waved a panicked hand at the wall and the shadow. “She asks too much! She will take no repentance but death!” Slowly he sank back down onto the floor. “Too much,” he whispered. “Too much, too much…I am stained now; never will I be clean again! Our road leads only into deeper darkness!”

            He did not see the man back away from the pantry door, or the way his steps hurried down the hall, away from Maglor and his phantoms. He did not see—all he saw was the woman on the edge of the cliff, her eyes fixed on the two children he held with armored hand and blade to his sides, and the shape of her mouth as she spat her final curse at him:

            All this you have done for nothing.

---

Chapter End Notes

Was Elwing's ghost haunting Maglor? Or was he beset only by his own guilty conscience? I leave that up to you, the reader.

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