A Sad Tale's Best for Winter by oshun, Dawn Felagund

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Foothills of the Andram Highlands, Eastern Beleriand, First Age 539

Beta: The extraordinarily patient Ignoblebard must have read this five or six times. Thank you. (I cannot thank Pandemonium, Nelyo Russandol, Drummerwench, and Scarlet enough for reading and offering corrections and suggestions). Any remaining mistakes or poor judgment calls are my own.

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o0o0o0o

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago. –“In the Bleak Midwinter,” Christina Rossetti (1872)¹

 

o0o0o0o

That afternoon, one of those clear, crisp days that often follow a heavy snow, Elros and I hovered outside of the front door of the house. We horsed around on the packed, hard-frozen snow near the woodpile, yearning to run around farther afield. But our thin, low boots were no match for the expanse of snow that stretched untouched across the clearing before the woods.

We had promised Maglor that we would stay close to the door and not get too wet. When we spotted Erestor working his way toward the house, we watched him enthralled. His huffed breath was visible in the frigid air, his cheeks a bright rosy pink. Stopping to rest for a moment, he spotted us, smiling broadly and waving. Elros and I waved back with great energy. Sinking almost to his thighs with every labored step, his progress was slow; he dragged a fir tree behind him. Only Maedhros was missing from our little family circle. He had refused Maglor’s invitation to come outside and ‘get some air’ with us.

“Why is Nelyo so sad today?” Elros asked, as though he sensed I was thinking of Maedhros again. As the winter had dragged on, Maedhros seemed to get quieter and quieter. Or maybe I only noticed because we were indoors so much. If for no other reason, his gloominess made me long for spring. It was hard for the rest of us to share our little house with that sad-faced winter Maedhros.

I was a precocious child and had heard the tales of the awfulness of Maedhros Fëanarion. In light of what I observed, it was easy for me to assume that the majority of the stories I heard had been exaggerated or worse, perhaps wholly invented. Yet, I had seen him armor-clad with a bloody sword the day our mother left us to them. For that matter, the first time I saw Maglor, our diligent tutor and fair-tempered musician had looked equally wild and fierce. I assumed Maedhros’ brooding silence came from fear of the consequences of his possibly terrible deeds, or perhaps, I hoped, was a sign of his regret.

It might interest some who know me now that in those days Elros was the noisy, carefree child. I was the pensive, hypersensitive one. At that point, I had chosen Maedhros to study.

Looking to Maglor for approval, I asked, “Was it because he was worried we might run out of firewood?” The only sound Maedhros had made all day had been to grumble that Erestor had put too many logs on the fire.

Maglor shook his head no. “He isn’t feeling well today. And, I have a feeling that Eressetor’s tree is not going to help any. Possibly quite the contrary.” “Nice tree,” I said, still hopeful. “It reminds me of a Yule tree. The kind you decorate with red ribbons and pine cones painted gold and silver.”

Calligraphy and illumination by Dawn Felagund

“I suspect that is exactly what Eressetor intends.” Maglor gave me a wry smile and ruffled my hair. “Without the red ribbons and gilded pine cones.”

Elros shrieked, “Hurrah! Hurrah!” Right into my ear. “I remember those.” My brother was beyond unruly in those days. Despite his yelps never meeting with the irritation I still half expected, I cringed whenever he howled like that.

Erestor let the tree drop causing a cloud of fine dry snow to rise up and settle again. He laughed aloud and rested for a short moment, bending forward with his hands on his knees and breathing heavily, before he yelled, “Macalaurë, you lazy sod! Don’t stand there gawping. Get down here and help me carry it up to the house.”

Maglor ploughed out to meet him. With a lot of swearing from Erestor and laughing on Maglor’s part, fighting the knee-deep snow, they finally wrestled the tree up the shallow incline to the house. It wasn’t as big up-close as it had looked at a distance, only reaching as high as Maglor’s eyebrows.

“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” said Maglor.

“Of course it is!” insisted Erestor with that tone his voice takes on when he is ready for an argument. “What do you think, boys?”

“It’s amazing!” shouted Elros, jumping in place. “We’ll decorate the tree and Maglor will play music and we will all dance and eat lots of spice cake.” My discomfort at my twin’s behavior had reached a crescendo of mortification.

“Well,” drawled Maglor, “we certainly can have music. Not sure how one makes spice cakes without a proper oven.”

“How about you, Elrond? What do you think of the tree?” asked Erestor, shooting a curious look over my head in the direction of the door. I turned to see what had caught his attention.

Maedhros’ tall, lean form filled the doorway, stern and handsome as a warrior-prince in a picture book or etched on a silver goblet, all sharp cheekbones and jaw lines, with a hero’s firm mouth and straight nose. Yes, I thought, that’s exactly what he looks like, despite his shabby clothes and the dark circles under his eyes. Sighing, he looked at me, almost as though he might smile, before he lowered his eyebrows in puzzlement. It felt like he had noticed me for the first time. In that moment, I decided that he could not be so wicked, but perhaps terribly sad and as lost and out-of-place as I sometimes felt.

“It’s a very pretty tree,” I said to Erestor, thinking the answer painfully inadequate, all the while holding eye contact with Maedhros.

“It is a nice-looking tree, Eressetor. Thank you very much for finding it,” Maedhros said, his voice softer than usual, but still kingly. “The rest of you set up the tree. Elrond and I will look for something to use to decorate it and perhaps make a start on some spice cakes.” He reached out and ruffled my hair. “Do you like to cook, Elrond?”

“I don’t know how,” I said. “Maglor says we’re too young to mess about in the kitchen.”

“Never too young,” Maedhros said. “But if he feels that way, we won’t make it in the kitchen. We’ll construct our own oven in the forge. We can make a better one later. But all we need for now is a few bricks.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, feeling the tightness in my chest dissolving. “I’d like that very much.”

I found out later that morning that Maedhros was more competent at practical matters with only one good hand than Maglor was with two. As we stacked bricks into an oven-like formation on the right side of the main fire in the forge, I asked him what we needed to make spice cakes, more to keep him from lapsing into silence again than because I was fascinated with the details.

“It seems we’re woefully short on spices,“ said Maedhros. “There is still cinnamon though and a little nutmeg. We can use the maple sugar that Eressetor and Lohtë made last spring and add chopped hazel nuts. Other than that, we’ll only need flour, eggs, butter, and a little milk. If you like we can toss in some dried currants.”

“You really do know how to bake don’t you?” I asked surprised. I was accustomed to Erestor’s experiments with food preparation, sometimes with excellent results and others which turned out so shockingly bad that the account had to be preserved in song.

“I do. And, after today, you will too.” The grin he gave came close to boyish.

o0o0o0o

If I had known them better then, I would have realized that something might have been off about Maedhros. But children are self-absorbed. A daily routine provides comfort and security, and we finally had one there. One might think that I would recall those years with them as ones of homesickness and austerity. But actually I did not, far from it. Our rough little house was dry and never drafty. We had warm clothes, plenty of bedding, and never went to sleep hungry.

Most importantly, we had more company day-by-day and hour-by-hour, than we had ever had as the revered little princes of the Havens of Sirion. No one was ever cross with us, although Maglor did insist upon good manners. Most importantly, there was always something happening. And we were not sequestered somewhere in a nursery, but always right in the middle of everything. People came and went throughout the day needing to talk to Maedhros. Maglor worried about our welfare and looked after us, singing or humming under his breath most of the time when he was not instructing us. Erestor reported on events from outside of our house. We were delighted to discover that his sharp commentary and sarcastic criticism provoked either laughter or outrage in otherwise much too serious adults.

After a few months, at Maedhros’ insistence, they found a pretty young woman to look after us several hours every day. Lohtë, like Erestor, talked and laughed a lot. She smelled nice also, with a yeasty womanish smell and just a hint of springtime in the mountains, as though she were a different species entirely from Maedhros, Maglor, or Erestor.

Whenever we would hold still long enough, she hugged both of us and kissed us, telling us how clever and handsome we were. Maglor continued our lessons: reading, writing, Quenya, arithmetic, history of the Eldar and, of course, music. (Much later we would find that Maedhros was appalled when he discovered the paucity of the natural and practical sciences in Maglor’s curriculum. He remedied that and then some to make up for time lost.)

Erestor wrestled with us and teased us, making us scream and squeal, which annoyed Maglor to no end, not at us, but at Erestor. He scolded Erestor daily for, ‘getting them all riled up.’ When the weather was nice, Erestor drilled us with wooden swords, although Maglor was the far better swordsman. In those first couple of years, Lohtë talked a lot about teaching us archery, but never got around to it. We had plenty of time she said.

Maedhros largely ignored us, unless we got really noisy. Then he would look up at us from a book or from talking quietly with one of his followers and watch us for a few minutes with a bland, distracted tolerance. Lohtë would sometimes ask, “Are they bothering you? Should I take them for a walk?” He would look surprised, shrug and shake his head, saying, “I hadn’t really noticed. I’m used to kids and a noisy house.”

But best of all, the close conditions under which we lived meant that one was never alone. Children do not like to be left alone. In more spacious accommodations, a young child will leave behind a nursery filled with expensive clever toys, to play with a wooden horse at the feet of his caretakers. Despite our tender years, Elros and I had been left alone or with indifferent adults far too much in the past.

So, against all expectations, those of Maglor, and even our own, Elros and I had adapted quickly to the Feanorians and our life in the crude cabin on the edge of the woods. In years to come the hut would morph into a much larger and more comfortable cottage, but at that time, it was functional and clean. The most impressive thing about it for me was the large fireplace and chimney.

“Designed for a larger building,” complained Erestor, whose father had been an architect in Tirion. “We certainly will not freeze this winter.”

Even when it had been one of those grim, quiet days for Maedhros, he would crack a smile at that and answer. “Actually, it was not designed at all. I just grew tired of waiting for one of you to suggest we do something about constructing a permanent shelter and I built that chimney alone. Nice job, actually. The stones are beautiful, if I have to say so myself.”

Maglor would grin at him, brightening simply because Maedhros had spoken, and say, “Draws beautifully too. You’re a man of many accomplishments, whereas I am good at only one thing.”

“I’d rather be brilliant at one thing,” Erestor said, “than fair to middling at a lot of things, like me.”

That sometimes drew a grunt from Maedhros. I was never sure if he agreed or disapproved.

o0o0o0o

After a day of preparations, in my case spent mostly with Maedhros—an unprecedented experience—the evening finally came. The house, hot and crowded with people, smelled of pine sap, cinnamon, browned sugar, and baked apples. Erestor’s tree was the greatest success; that and our spice cakes.

Maedhros had dug out a tattered red battle flag from the bottom of the trunk at the foot of his bed. He and I tore it into ribbons and gave those to Erestor and Elros to use for garlands and bows on the tree. We had our cakes to attend to.

When visitors began to arrive, they brought candles and lamps as well as elderberry wine, chestnuts for roasting, and little meat pies. Someone dragged in an additional wooden bench. People ate and drank for well over an hour, maybe two, before Maglor started to play.

Two brothers from the cluster of dwellings near Bear’s Creek brought a flute and a rebec. I recall their names--Bala and Alag. It made Elros giggle that people always said those two names as one. He did not seem to notice that outside of our home people did that with our names as well.

Neither Bala nor Alag talked much. But Bala created magic with his flute and no one was as swift and subtle with a bow and a rebec as Alag, not even Maglor. Late that night, in that little cottage of wattle and daub, the three of them together made music that would have enchanted any gathering from Taniquetil to the remotest eastern forest.

We laughed and ate spice cake until I felt slightly sick, but I soon danced that off. I forgot myself to the point where I suppose that I screeched and laughed almost as loudly as Elros. Erestor finally took a break to sit down, after wearing out all of his lady dance partners and flirting with all of the men. No sooner had he done so, than Elros crawled up onto his lap and fell asleep.

As Maglor chose slower and more melancholy tunes, the number of our guests thinned. My legs grew tired and my eyes sandy. I looked about for Lohtë, thinking I would not object if she ordered me into the tiny bedroom I shared with Elros and followed to tuck the covers about my neck and shoulders, but she was nowhere to be seen. Then I spotted Maedhros in a chair almost hidden in the shadow of our Yule tree. The light from the remaining candles and fire betrayed him, finding a reflected heat in his flaming hair.

Calligraphy and illumination by Dawn Felagund

His face shone as white as a winter moon in a midnight sky. He placed his tankard on the floor with the studied care of a man half-drunk from unwatered wine and quirked a finger at me.

Relieved, I stumbled over to his corner. Lifting me onto his lap, he tucked my head between his neck and shoulder. His body felt unexpectedly yielding. He had more flesh on his bones than I had expected. His fresh male scent, undercut with the sharp smell of alcohol and a trace of ozone, enveloped me, at once exotic and comforting. He held me like one well accustomed to lulling little boys to sleep. I released a tiny whimper of a sigh and snuggled closer, too drowsy to be self-conscious.

“You’re exhausted, little man. Rest. I’ll tuck you in when you fall asleep. I predict the next song will be a quiet one that Maglor wrote for our last Yule feast at Himring a few years back. He always saves it for the end.”

Obsessed with stories and history, I jolted myself back into alertness. “Was your celebration like this one?” I asked. Feeling the rumble of his low laugh in his chest, I smiled to myself and waited. In those days I had already learned that one could coax a story from a stone simply by a readiness to listen.

“Nothing like. Except perhaps in the scent of pine and spice cakes, and Maglor’s harp. That one was a grand and royal fete. There must have been several hundreds, clad in their most splendid finery, crowded into Himring’s great hall. The room held a king’s ransom that night in gold and mithril jewelry, coronets and collars, not to mention maroon, purple, and sapphire-colored robes of velvet trimmed in fur and braid. The clothes were worth nearly as much as the jewels. I had wanted to pay fitting homage to our guest the High King of the Noldor and to impress upon my own people where our allegiance must lie.”

“Fingon the Valiant?” I asked, mesmerized.

“None other.”

“What was he like?”

“That night he was merry as a lark.” His words had begun to slur a little, but his grip on me remained secure. There was no danger he would drop me.

“I’ve heard stories of his bravery. And that you were the best of friends. Tell me what he was really like.”

He chuckled at that. “He was exactly what everyone says he was. There was none braver, bolder, or more honorable.” He gave another softer, sadder laugh. “Obviously, he was intelligent and gifted in many ways--a worthy scion of Finwë. A magnificent warrior, a better than fair musician, and there was no more faithful friend in all of Arda.”

I leaned back further against his upper arm to watch his face, as he gazed unseeing across the darkening room. I’d seen that look on the faces of others before. It was a look of being ‘in love.’ Usually in the stories, being in love involved finding someone very beautiful and good and never wanting to ever be away from them again. I wondered if our father had truly been in love with our mother. Nana was beautiful, in her own agitated way, all light, bright eyes and high cheekbones like Elros, but with a huge mop of fine, unruly black hair like mine. But our father did devote more time to sailing far away from her, and from the two of us, than he ever spent at home.

“Was King Fingon beautiful?” I asked.

“Indeed he was, but that was only a small part of what made me love him.” He frowned and swallowed the way I did when I was trying not to cry. “I would have gladly traded my life for his. But the Valar are cruel and insatiable, much like their dark brother. They threw my unworthy life back in my face and allowed him to take Findekáno’s.”

Across the room, Maglor played one chord, almost inaudible, and followed with a second somewhat louder one. Then he began to sing,

“In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone . . .”

I do not remember falling asleep, but do remember that my last conscious thought was that the worst had passed.

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Chapter End Notes

"Bleak Midwinter" was written by Christina Rossetti before 1872; first published in her Poetic Works in 1904, appeared as a Christmas carol in The English Hymnal in 1906.