Namesake by Gwanath Dagnir

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Chapter 1

 

circa F.A. 538

“Enough of your spying. Keep that shut.” Maedhros did not interrupt his writing to give the order.

The leather flap bent wider than the times before, letting in a flurry of snowflakes riding brisk air before sealing the tent shut as it fell with a dull thud. Maedhros kept his hand curled around the candle flame until the air settled. In his peripheral vision, a tiny figure now cast its gangly shadow against the hide.

“Who is supposed to be minding you?”

The figure shifted foot to foot, an insecure little dance. “I don’t know.”

Maedhros reminded himself that one so young might not – or might lie, heedless of consequence. He refreshed the tip of his quill with ink. “Be warned, child. Maglor has my consent to set you in chains, if you evade your watchers and wander this encampment unpermitted.”

“Maglor would not dare put chains on me.” As if he had not seen the depths of depravity to which a corrupted heart could sink, the little figure bounced one-footed to reach the far edge of the desk and stood on tip-toes, until his eyes peered above the board like a peeking turtle. “What are you doing?”

“Writing a letter, plain to see. Which one are you?”

“Guess!”

“No. I am not your playmate, and I am busy. Why come you to this place?”

His shining eyes sunk beneath the wooden horizon. He took a step away, looking whence he came. Too-small he seemed, and frailer than an Elf of the same age. His childness left him to say darkly, “It’s cold outside.”

“So it is.” Not for the first time, Maedhros mused if somewhere collecting dust in the abandoned archives of Menegroth were instructions on the care and feeding of Luthian’s thrice-mixed offspring. “Well. If you do not interrupt my task, you may sit here beside me closest to the fire.”

Immediately young again, he skipped to the space Maedhros made on the bench for him. Climbing up, he sat there for a moment quietly, then shifted to his knees for a better view of the parchment. Captivated at first, he watched the feathered tool carving coal-dark calligraphy, a torchlight procession in reverse. Soon he sank back and folded his arms around himself, as though the fire had gone cold.

“Have you yet learned the runes?” said Maedhros, expecting the wellspring of youthful curiosity to return at once.

Somehow, he shrank into a smaller shape. “Mother had begun to teach us. I was reminded just now.”

Maedhros lifted the blackened tip belatedly, an ugly blemish of ink left by his distraction. He slid a blank sheet on the table before the boy and tilted his quill to offer. “Can you write your name?”

In response he clenched his arms tighter, holding himself how his mother never again would.

“I am not playing your guessing game, so you might as well show me.”

“I don’t care about that. Games are for children.” It would be comical coming out of a child’s mouth, if not for the gravity of his words – a pinched boyish voice intoning a funeral rite for his own innocence that lay slain upon the sandy bosom of his birthplace.

Maedhros sheathed the quill, absently wiping his palm of the hot blood that haunted his senses. “Two of my brothers were twins, you know. So alike in appearance and manner were they that many mistook one for the other, even into their adulthood.”

“Even you could not tell them apart,” he groused, letting anger overtake his gloom.

“Of course I could. Since the day they were born.”

He burrowed his tone lower, a kitten preparing to pounce. “I don’t believe you.”

Maedhros shrugged. “Believe it or not.”

The attack launched, “Then you lie! Either way, you lie! If you can tell twin babies apart, you must know who I am.” He scurried to his feet, the bench elevating him eye to eye with Maedhros as he sat. “Say my name!”

“Why, have you forgotten it?”

“No, and- and neither shall you! Say it!”

Maedhros let the moment breathe, knowing that without fuel the spark of irrationality burns itself out. As the eldest of Fëanor’s seven sons -and by majority opinion, the most judicious- he had perfected a dozen techniques to deescalate the ire of perturbed youth under duress. Yet this strange creature was not his brother, and a wasteland of vile deeds separated Fëanor’s firstborn from any high repute of old. “I changed my mind. Let’s play.”

Over his tightened lips, the boy huffed through flared nostrils the way a newborn bull shaking to hold up its own weight would intimidate no one.

Having his attention, Maedhros adopted a fairy-telling lilt, “One of Eärendil’s sons would sooner plunge a dagger into his own heart than risk that another should come to injury by its blade. One of Eärendil’s sons buries his pain so deeply that an Age shall pass before its rot emerges to spoil the fruit. Now the game is for you to guess, which is which.”

He fell suddenly and eerily still, staring into Maedhros’ eyes with the same consuming intensity that full-blooded Elves gaze upon the stars. Then calmly, he reached for the quill, steadying one hand with the other to dip it carefully in ink before huddling over the parchment Maedhros set out for him. His body blocked the view of his writing, though the feather plume bobbed behind his ear. “I too changed my mind,” he said, stilted by concentration. “I shall be proud to keep my name for myself, and you may never take it from me.”

Maedhros watched as he flung the quill upon the desk, a silent challenge to correct his manners, then leapt from the bench and strode defiantly to the exit.

“Aught that has been given to you in this world can be taken away, Half-elven.”

He raised his chin, come to a prepubescent point under a cherubic face. With the cool dignity of a king and the blithe callousness of a babe, he said, “Then you best set me in chains after all.”

As the flap enveloped his departure and the tent filled once more with chill air, chiller than before, Maedhros replaced the quill to its sheath. In the shadow of the candle blown out read only one word: Kinslayer.

~fin~

Chapter End Notes

The Silmarillion states that love grew between Maglor and his adopted/kidnapped wards/hostages. Still, I imagine the relationship between Earendil's sons and the Feanorians to be.... other than idyllic. Particularly in the early days.

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