Sediments by polutropos

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Sediments

The mouths of the Gwathló have swallowed most of the ancient harbour of Lond Daer. But Númenor will not be forgotten: here and there pieces of fortifications jut from the river plains like giant sun-bleached, sea-smoothed shells.

Face to the breeze, Elrond says aloud: “Why have you brought me here?”

To whom does he speak? Child of Eärendil he may be, but he does not believe the Lord of Waters spares much thought for him in this late age, if he ever did. Is it to Celebrían across the sea? Is it to distant kinsmen whose memories still inhabit this place? Whose call is strong enough to pull him from his people, his children, his thriving refuge in the hills, to a ruined haven?

No answer comes.

There were times, before the mantle of protector rested so heavily upon him, when Elrond would indulge the fantasy of a healed past and set out after rumours of a wind-beaten warrior whose songs swelled the heart with sorrow. Mariners who plied the northern waters heard him amid the groaning ice floes of Forochel; traders from the far south spoke of an immortal storyteller who travelled from port to port, gathering tales; once, one fitting his description came at night to the citadel of Dol Amroth and begged to be adjudged by the highest lord in the realm. But by the time Elrond reached the city, the stranger had evaded his guards and slipped away into the rolling mists.

Maglor, Elrond at last concluded, did not wish to be found.

And Elrond fought, loved, nurtured, preserved, and lost, and lost, and lost. Two ages on, those early losses — of father, mother, brother; of kin more distant, of fellow fighters, captains and teachers and carriers of memory; and of Maglor, who was pieces of all those yet never wholly any one of them — have fossilised beneath the sediment of other partings.

Yet Eärendil nightly makes his presence known, and winged Elwing is preserved in coloured glass, frescoes, tapestries, carved stone; Elrond’s mother adorns every place the Sindar call home, including Elrond’s own. Elros can never be forgotten, either: many dozens of generations on, the lordly image of a King before the Fall yet watches over the halls of Men. Elrond fosters the successors of his brother’s brittle but unbroken line, and the relief does not lessen when each one reaches manhood, nor the joy when he weds and sires the next, nor the grief when war or old age take him.

There are no memorials to Maglor. Yes, there is history — and history has been kind to him. But history is a thing one must seek out. One approaches, or returns, to history like a familiar dish, prepared for both the sweet and the bitter. History is a safe pursuit, for one always knows how it ends. So when history ended Maglor’s life in the sea, as Maedhros’ had ended in fire, Elrond took that tale and folded it neatly into his heart where it might rest.

That is why he is entirely unprepared for the lone figure who appears among the ruins. The earth opens beneath him; he is weightless and helpless as a gull caught in a sudden gust.

On instinct he clasps the finger of his opposite hand, seeking the comfort and clarity of Vilya. But he has left his ring in a pillowed box in Imladris: it has been his habit since the ring came to him, who never wished for it, to leave it behind when he wanders abroad, lest in his absence the time should come for it to pass to yet another bearer. He has only the strength of his spirit to guide him in this moment, and he does not feel strong.

He endeavours to reason: there are many beggarly wanderers in these times, many who yearly find their way to Imladris out of the wilds. Why should not this be another of that kind?

Elrond approaches the figure. He is seated upon a stone, bent, bare to the knees with his feet in the murky shoal. Mats of dark hair obscure his face. Elrond greets him in the Sindarin of Gondor, being closest to that realm, then in Westron; then, on impulse, in ancient Quenya.

A face turns on him. Sun-browned, wind-beaten; the tips of the ears and lips bright red, skin cracked and flaking. The elf squints, though the day is grey and dim, and his long black lashes all but hide the slivers of his grey eyes.

The eyes relax, his lips part, and he answers in the same ancient tongue Elrond used to greet him: “You came.”

How faint, how frail his voice; yet it takes no more than this for Elrond to believe his eyes do not deceive him. The stranger is indeed Maglor son of Fëanor, sifted up from the bottom of the sea like living bones. Ghosts of the past have ever frequented Elrond’s dreams, but never has he met one so solid; never one who breathed.

He finds only enough breath to say, “Yes," and, “I came.”

His feet find stones lodged in the bank to carry him closer. With each step, a thousand years of experience and sorrow roll off him like so much rainwater. When he comes to stand over Maglor, his knees bend on their own will; he folds to make himself as small as he feels.

Maglor flinches. His unknowable expression twists, fearful, and a jolt of resentment stiffens Elrond’s body: how dare you, he thinks, how dare you fear me? But he softens easily, recalling the immense span of time Maglor has endured since last he saw him — a blank space as long, nearly, as Elrond’s life.

A dozen questions beg to be answered, but Elrond stalls in choosing a name with which to address him. To name a thing is to define it, and Elrond has ever struggled to define Maglor, even before he rose like a spectre from the scrolls of history; before he added to the names of soldier, singer, captor, father the names of invalid and supplicant, also, sending his song up the river and asking, after all this time, for help.

Using no name, Elrond asks, “Why did you call me?”

Maglor stares for so long that Elrond wonders if he has heard him at all. “I called for help,” he says at last, “but I did not know who would come. You came.” He pauses, blinks. “Do you know me?”

“What do you mean?” Elrond leans closer, stopping short of placing a hand on his arm. “Yes, yes: I know you. Maglor. Cáno. Macalaurë.” He lets these names fall from his tongue, desperate for some sign of recognition, but there is only fearful blankness. “It is Elrond. Do you not know me? Do you not remember me?”

The longer Maglor searches for an answer, the more vacant his gaze. At last he shakes his head.

“No. I do not remember you. I remember nothing.”

“Welcome,” Maglor says, with an ironic sweep of his wrist. “I fear my home has little to offer a weary traveller.”

What Maglor calls home is no more than a cloak draped upon the ground in the join of two white walls: a guard against the worst of the westerly winds. But there is no roof to protect him from the sudden deluges of these southern lands.

“No matter,” Elrond says, setting down his pack. But on the horizon dark clouds gather, so Elrond strings his own canvas over them. Maglor watches with unguarded interest.

“You must think me foolish,” Maglor says, almost as soon as they are settled, “for forgetting my own name. I have been alone a long time, with no need of a name. But it’s come back to me now. Maglor.” He speaks his name with pride, as if remembering it is some great achievement. “I do not remember you, Elrond, but I wish to. Tell me of yourself. Tell me what you know of me. Will you not at least tell me how we know one another? You say your home is far off, in the foothills of the mountains. Why would you come all this way for me?”

Elrond considers him with pity. He does not have the heart to tell him he did not know it was Maglor’s call he answered; that had he known he might not have come at all. He cannot begin to know how to cast the tale of Maglor’s life into a form that will not shatter this fragile wanderer, and he is far from ready to look into the mire of feeling that Maglor’s presence has stirred in him.

“You should eat first,” Elrond says, and rises to search for some wild greens to add to the broth cooking over a fire.

It is no mere deflection: Elrond has not seen an elf so wasted in both form and spirit since Celebrían was brought back from the Redhorn, cradled like a child in her own son’s arms. It pains Elrond to look on him.

It was almost three years ago that Elrond first heard a pleading music in the Bruinen, and was first troubled by dreams of someone who needed him — Maglor must have been here at the mouth of the river at least as long. Yet there is no sign that he has lit any fire of his own; there are no tools with which a person might forage, hunt, and eat. Maglor appears to own nothing but the clothes he wears, and those hang upon his thin frame like rags.

But Maglor’s face animates when the soup is offered to him, cracked lips curling, gratitude colouring his hollow cheeks. The transformation is so startling that Elrond must suppress a chuckle. His amusement goes unnoticed. Maglor drinks the soup down all at once, still steaming, seemingly unbothered by the heat.

Elrond refills the bowl and returns it to him. A sheepish smile tugs at Maglor’s mouth, and Elrond recognises something of the person he remembers. It always floated just beneath the surface of Maglor’s sorrow and power: an awareness, a recognition of himself as pitiable, even laughable. It was how Maglor kept himself from drowning in his weariness, Elrond had once observed, in a moment of frustration at finding himself the subject of Maglor’s amused detachment. That he still possesses the ability to make light of darkness explains, perhaps, how he has endured so long.

As Maglor sips, savouring his second helping, Elrond glimpses the blackened palms cupping the bowl. He did not notice them at first, for only the tips of Maglor’s fingers had peeked from his frayed sleeves. But when he rolled his sleeves up to eat, Elrond had swallowed his horror down, where it coiled foul and thick in his gut.

Elrond cannot bear the sight of those hands. Neither can he keep his eyes from roving back to look upon them: black ropes of lightning trapped beneath the flesh, like no wound he has ever seen, which sends his mind tumbling again and again towards the same terrible conclusion.

In the tumult of Beleriand’s last days, it was easy to shut his ears to the rumours of pained cries on the shoreline. Later, it had been easy to consign to myth the reports of sailors whose ships passed over waves that glittered from beneath, untouched by moonlight. It had been necessary: for if the tales were right and the Silmaril had burned Maglor, even as they had burned Morgoth, then Elrond was searching for a monster.

It is only a guess, he tells himself. Maglor alone would know whether the Silmaril burned him, and Elrond doubts Maglor remembers that there were Silmarils at all.

Is this the punishment the Valar thought fit to mete out to the last living son of Fëanor? Is this the Everlasting Dark whose nature the philosophers still debate, and of which Elrond so often heard his captors quarrel?

Silently, Maglor rises and rinses his bowl in the nearest stream. The threatened rain has not come, and Elrond ventures out from under their shelter to watch him. Returning, he stands beside Elrond and looks out towards the sea.

“I have always loved that star,” he says. Elrond blinks: on the horizon Gil-estel sails into a gap between clouds. Have you some guidance for me? Elrond thinks to the imagined presence of Eärendil watching over him. But the Star only blazes steadily on its nightly course.

“It is called High Hope,” says Elrond, “and is beloved of all the Free Peoples.”

Maglor sighs. “A fitting name. What more can you tell me, Elrond? I have eaten, and I thank you for that. You are very kind. It gladdens me to know that one so kind once knew me. I must not have been so terrible, to have been worthy of your consideration.” His voice turns pleading. “Tell me something, before we rest. Anything. I am desperate to remember.”

This is the most disarming thing about his transformation: unmasked by forgetfulness, freed of the push-pull of guilt and pride, a son of Fëanor believing himself worthy of healing.

“I beg your patience,” Elrond says. “I must know more of your condition before I attempt to heal you of it.” Elrond does not know why he says it. He has not come near deciding that he wants to heal Maglor, but there is such sadness in Maglor's voice he feels compelled to offer some comfort.

“You are a healer?” Maglor asks.

“That is the path fate chose for me, yes. Though I must confess I have never attempted to heal an affliction like yours.”

“Did you not say only now you do not know what my condition is?” Maglor half-smiles, then sighs. “As you please. I have no choice but to trust your judgement on the matter, do I? Tell me at least how you know me.” Before Elrond can deny him, he jumps to the next question: “Are we kin?”

A laugh leaps from Elrond’s throat. “Yes, we are kin.”

“Near kin?”

But Elrond is not ready to answer that question, and keeps his lips pressed shut.

Maglor accepts his silence. “I am glad to see you, then, kinsman. Thank you. Your company comforts me, I think. I am used to feeling afraid, not knowing. I do not feel afraid with you here. You know me, and you do not flee from me. Perhaps that is enough.”

No, Elrond thinks: much as I considered it, much as my conscience told me I ought to, I never fled from you.

There was a dusty storeroom in Amon Ereb where I often retreated. I discovered it when I was ten, while climbing on the roof (because Maglor forbade it). The door from the corridor was bolted shut; you could only access it from the paneless window, blown open in some battle or storm. It was too large to have been intended as a storeroom, but it served at that time to hide away all the reminders of events and people Maglor and Maedhros did not wish to recall.

There was certainly much of interest and intrigue among the clutter, if I had cared to look. But I had made a point of maintaining disinterest in the lives and history of our captors. I knew the softness of my heart: I knew if I allowed a crack it would open a valley, it would welcome them — as later proved true.

Elros and I had quarrelled over nothing at all, as siblings do at that age: a bedsheet askew, an unfairly apportioned serving at supper, a snidely spoken greeting, and suddenly that guilty voice within that kept us awake in the empty night, the little cruelties we turned against ourselves, we marshalled against each other.

I remember the night well, for it was the night a Silmaril appeared in the dusky sky. Unquestionably a Silmaril.

“Elros!” I cried on impulse, though I did not know where he had gone. But he called back: just below, he had been arrested in his wandering by the same sight as I. Made bold by his surge of emotion, he clambered up the walls and fell into my embrace, weeping.

He understood at once, as no one else could. As no one else ever would. Our shame that we felt no joy at the sight. How selfish, we thought, our emptiness. Our mother had survived — should that not be a joy to us?

It was not. No, then, at thirteen, the thought that rolled over all others like a destroying wave was that she had survived and she had not come back for us.

“We do not know that,” Maglor said, when he wrested the truth of our discontent from us. He was frightfully good at wheedling the truth from people. “It may be the Silmaril found its way West by some other means.”

What strange comfort, reassuring us that our mother was dead.

“Perhaps she was found by your father,” he suggested, and I imagined my mother’s body like a bloated seal washed ashore, and my father wailing her name as he cradled her corpse. Then lying her down in the sand and peeling the Nauglamír from her limp shoulders. Strands of her black hair tangled in its filigree. He left her there, and then he left us.

I stared at my glass of watered wine, offered only on special occasions, and wished I had Elros’ impulsivity and could muster the fervour to hurl my feelings at the wall.

Maglor had that careful knot between his brows, the one he wore when he wanted to tell us something but could not think how to say it.

“Do you wish you had found her body, instead?” Elros asked.

Maglor’s knot unfurled in surprise. “What?”

“If you had stayed and searched, you might have found her. You might have had the Silmaril for yourself.”

“I do not want it,” said Maglor.

His swift and absolute response disarmed us both. He smiled mildly and flicked his hand; the way he used to smooth wrinkles or pluck hairs from our tunics, when we were too young to resent such casual parental gestures.

“You do not believe me and I cannot blame you,” he said. “But since I saw that star, I have felt myself unfettered. The Silmaril is beyond Morgoth’s reach, and yet there for all to see. There could be no more fitting fate for it, I think.” He looked at us, seated side-by-side across from him at the overly long table. “The darkness is lifting, do you feel it?”

For a long while, I pondered what he meant to make us feel about our parents. Did he want us to celebrate whatever choice they had made, that had brought about the unforeseen but, so he claimed, happy fate of the Silmaril? Did he want us to let them go? Only much later did I understand that he was not thinking of them or of us at all. He was thinking of himself and his own hope.

Later, though I am sure he had tended the thought like a rare and delicate seedling for years before he finally gave it voice, he asked us: “Would you let me be your father?”

It was still with a sense of hollowness that we agreed. He never managed to fill the emptiness. But slowly, over time, he glazed the vessels of our hearts with affection; sealed off the holes through which the love of others might otherwise have escaped.

Over the coming days, Elrond does as he promised. He studies Maglor, observes his doings, the vagaries of his mind. He learns his rituals: waking before the sun and following the same path through tall grass and scattered ruins to the seaside; returning at noon to rest in his shelter, staring up at the sky as if he might find some answer there; rising at dusk, wading in the stream; then returning at nightfall to Elrond.

At these times, they speak of idle things; mostly, it is Maglor who speaks, in his meandering way.

“The birds are singing more than usual this evening,” Maglor says over a supper of boiled oats. “The tide ought to be at its lowest at dawn, and then perhaps we shall gather some snails. What do you think of that? They sold buckets of snails at the docks. And oysters, even though they were strewn all over the beaches at low tide, where anyone could take freely of nature’s bounty, if he were willing to take the time. And yet they exchanged coin for them in the marketplace. Men are strange that way — perhaps it is because their lives are so brief.”

Who are they, and where? Are these the prattlings of a madman, or memories tumbling at random from a lonely wanderer’s trove of stories? If such disjointed thoughts can be called stories — how sad it is, the great bard of the Noldor unable even to connect one thought to the next.

Elrond battles against such melancholy thoughts. Maglor seems happy to prattle, and it pleases Elrond to see him happy.

“Only since you have come to stay with me,” Maglor says, when Elrond makes note of his mood. “I go to the river at evening out of habit now, but before you came it was to sing to the waters, to call to you. And you came at last.”

Far from relieved, Elrond feels crushed by the burden of Maglor’s happiness, even as he weathers the onslaught of his own awakened memories.

It is not mere forgetfulness Maglor suffers. Like a mortal in old age, his memories drift ashore in unrecognisable pieces. Maglor knows his mind is not right, and Elrond has watched him strive to assemble the pieces into narrative. At such times, he appears excited, hopeful, even as he once did when putting a tale to music — but always his fragments are dragged back out by the tide, and he sinks into blank despair.

It is these times that the calls to help, to relieve, to cure, which Elrond has ever followed, cry most loudly for his attention. Elrond fears to try. He fears to fail, yes, as he has feared failure all his life — and all the more keenly since Celebrían sailed. But he fears to succeed, also.

Will Maglor’s spirit break, overwhelmed by the immensity of his deeds? Will he pass away, shunning the call of the West in loathing of himself? Or will the monster awake? Will he reveal himself as corrupted as his black-veined palms proclaims him to be? Will his Oath claim him? Will he rage over the loss of his blissful ignorance? Or will he feel himself indebted, trailing after Elrond like a pitiful dog; and will Elrond, unable to bear the burden of such a guilty love, be forced to cast him aside?

Maglor brims with gratitude. After every meal, every moment shared, he asks Elrond how he might repay him for his kindness.

“It is no matter,” Elrond tells him each time, but recognises in the downward tilt of Maglor’s mouth the pain of helplessness when your greatest fulfilment is in helping.

So, one morning, it strikes Elrond to invite him to collect glasswort stalks in the estuary to flavour their evening meal. There, stopping suddenly to observe the onrush of the tide, Maglor alights on a memory. “I used to spear fish,” he says. “I remember suddenly how it was done. Have you a spear? I shall roast fish over the fire for us.”

Elrond seldom eats the flesh of living things in these later years, so he has brought no hunting kit. But because it pleases Maglor, and because one must eat what he can in the wilds, he whittles a branch to a point and gives it to him. It takes several days of wading thigh-deep in the estuary for Maglor to make his first catch, but he beams with pride when he does.

The steps to prepare his catch seem to fall naturally into place, and Elrond need not intervene as he scrapes and guts the fish and grills it over the fire. It is fresh and flavourful, its light oils brightened by the heat, and it breaks apart in tender flakes: Elrond feels nurtured, protected, embraced by the sort of warmth that comes of a shared meal.

A swooping gull snags a morsel right from Maglor’s hand and he laughs. “Scoundrel!” he cries. “You need only have asked for a portion!”

Elrond laughs with him. How ordinary their companionship is without the burden of the past! Elrond dreams of bringing him back to Imladris, putting him up in a cottage down the valley, with a garden that Elrond might tend when he visits. Secret him away for himself, where no one else could know him and Elrond need not reckon with his deeds. Why must there be forgiveness? Why must there be blame? Can there not simply be two kinsmen sharing a meal, laughing at a seabird’s boldness?

Maglor delights in his new pastime, providing for them on the evenings that follow. So when Elrond finds a fragment of obsidian on the shore, he fashions it into a more durable and precise weapon, at which Maglor marvels.

Night falls on another day, and Elrond watches Maglor, already at rest, curled upon the ground with Elrond’s cloak bunched around his waist. He cannot stay here with him forever. Yet he has come no closer to knowing what he ought to do. Then a pleasant fog descends upon his thoughts. Tomorrow, he will consider such matters. Lifting the edge of the coverlet, he lies down beside Maglor and drifts into a quiet, untroubled sleep.

The morning is balmy and the sun beams down from a cloudless sky. The day will be hot. Maglor has risen early, as is his habit — he will have gone down to the shore to watch the birds feasting upon the bounty exposed by the tide.

Then Elrond notes his spear is missing, and an unexplained jolt of fear runs through him — hard upon it, or perhaps at the same moment, a sudden scream. A flock of sandpipers rises and scatters with a loud beating of wings, the noise like stone missiles striking wooden towers. Maglor stands waist-deep in the outflowing tide, swaying, with his spear clutched in one hand; if he stumbles, he will be swept up in the current.

Rushing towards him, Elrond calls his name.

Maglor throws back a cry raw with anger and fear. Then he whirls on him, brandishing the spear. Elrond halts abruptly at the water’s edge. Blood pours from Maglor’s free hand.

“Stay back!” he yells. “Stay back. You lie! Why pretend? Why keep my wrongs from me?” He holds up his bloody palm. “I cannot cut it out. I am unclean. My soul is black. Why do you say nothing of my corruption?”

Elrond holds his ground; he tames the drumming of his heart. “Maglor,” he says softly. “Lower your spear. Come out of the water.”

But Maglor is past soothing. He forges through the river towards him with powerful strides, his eyes wild. “Get you gone! I will hurt you, if you come near me!”

He stumbles and falls into the mud, clawing with his fingers for purchase, blood mingling with murk. When he pulls himself to his knees, he looks up with an expression Elrond has not yet seen: stark recognition.

“I do not have it!” Maglor wails. “I do not have it, Father! I cast it away, I cast the vile thing away. It burned me, it burned me even as I knew it would, even as I said—”

Abruptly, his voice unravels into a shout. In attempting to stand, he has slipped again on the muddy bottom. Elrond swoops and catches him under his arms. He heaves Maglor halfway to standing and can make him rise no higher. Maglor hangs on his shoulders; his bare feet drag in the mud. He clings to Elrond’s neck, his shoulders; he wails and wails, like a mourner marching after a funeral bier.

Elrond marshals the solidity of his bones. You are strong, son of Eärendil; so very strong. He has been shaped by such words, all his life, formed into a pillar to support sagging ceilings. So he stands, supporting the limp body of the elf who raised him. A gust lifts his hair from his back and whips it around his face. Elrond is grateful for its concealment — not that Maglor can see the tight uncertainty of his features, not with own head curled into the soft place between Elrond’s chest and shoulder.

“Child,” Maglor says. “My child. I am sorry, I am sorry.”

After a silence, Maglor’s grip loosens. He stands to his full height, taller than Elrond, for he has lost the usual slump of his shoulders. He does not look himself, not even himself as he once was, and Elrond shrinks from the shadowy pits of his eyes, the fire within. His mind is a hillside stripped by sudden shifting of the earth: rocks and roots churned, old rich soil exposed to too much air. Or not enough. Elrond feels inconsequential, unseen, audience only to some greater act in which he has no part to play.

He retreats with backward steps. From a safe distance, he says, “I am not your child,” then turns to walk away.

In the Star’s wake came the armies. Elros and I were men before confirmation of their wars reached us: a host out of the West was sweeping across Beleriand, destroying Morgoth’s servants in its advance. In a few short years, they had driven the dragons, lesser brood of Glaurung, from Nargothrond and Menegroth. The Sirion flowed freely once more. They had captured Himring, for it was from there that a letter came from High King Arafinwë to the last sons of Fëanor.

“Yes, he is angry,” we heard Maglor say through the closed chamber door, “but can you blame him?” Maedhros muttered something indistinct, at which Maglor paused before carrying on. “He offers us a mercy beyond what I could have hoped. Let us join with them. Let us prove our worth.”

“And then?” Maedhros asked. “If they are victorious?”

“Then we rejoice that Morgoth is defeated!” Maglor answered, rising in volume. “And we face their judgement. What does it matter if our Enemy is overcome?”

“No,” said Maedhros, dark and slow. “You know that is not all. There are two Silmarils in Angband.”

There was a crash, something hitting the opposite side of the wall. I flinched and stepped back. I hated when they fought. I hated when they spoke of the Silmarils. Elros dragged me back to hear more.

“Do not speak to me of them!” Maglor cried. It was he who had thrown whatever broke against the wall. It was always him. He warned us not to provoke Maedhros, and yet the Maedhros we saw was ever solid and restrained; if he ever harmed us, it was with indifference. No, it was Maglor whose mood ran this way and that, mercurial and perilous, prone to fits of violence. That his anger was without direction made it no less unsettling.

“I do not care!” Maglor shouted. “I do not care for that accursed oath. Let the Everlasting Dark take us. I am weary.” He began to sob. “I am so weary. Please. Let us do one last act of good. We can be there in triumph when Morgoth is brought down.”

“What worth do you think we have? Are you so enamoured of hope that you have forgotten all we do will turn to Morgoth’s aid, in the end? Arafinwë is a fool. I will not make him appear more foolish by accepting his mercy.”

They did not join the war. (Neither, we later learned, did they tell the messenger that Eärendil’s sons yet lived and had grown to manhood under Maglor’s care.) Maglor sank into one of his bouts of despair. We knew it was time for us to leave; he knew it was time to let us go. Yet none of us was prepared to cut that cord. It was strange, knowing we were free, knowing we had kin in the north who would make princes and warriors of us, and yet being uncertain of leaving. Save for shadowy memories we had stitched together with conflicting rumours, Maglor was the only parent we remembered, and our life on Amon Ereb the only one we knew.

For all he had wronged us and harmed our people, I felt a debt to Maglor. Or perhaps it is better to say I felt a debt to stay by him because of the others who might suffer, if all the change that had come over him in the years he spent raising us was undone.

In the end our decision to depart came as a wave of long-banked anger and resentment. Our parting was sudden and in haste. To prolong it would have been to admit it was a grief to us; that, for whatever hurts might be between us, we were leaving behind one whom we loved. Perhaps it could not have been otherwise.

I wish it had been otherwise.

I did speak to him once more before we left. Not to tell him I loved him, nor to hear him say it. I could not bear to hear him say it. I wanted a promise from him. Elros warned me that the promise I sought would be meaningless if the opportunity came to break it. He did not come with me.

I asked Maglor, “What will you do if the Silmarils are not surrendered to you?” (Maglor’s own obliqueness frustrated us both into becoming unflinchingly direct.)

“What? I have told you I do not want them.”

“You said that of the one in the heavens,” I corrected. It was yet too strange to think of that star as my father. “What of the two in Morgoth’s crown?”

“I do not want them.”

“I do not believe you.” Everyone who had ever seen a Silmaril wanted one. “They are yours by right. Are they not?”

My provocation had its intended effect. He sat silent for a while, considering. “Yes,” he whispered at last.

“And if they fall into other hands, will you not expect them to be returned to you?”

“I do not know, Elrond! I still marvel that there is hope of Morgoth’s overthrow at all. I do not cast my thoughts beyond that hope.”

How easily he lied.

“Do you hope for victory?” I pressed. “Would it not be simpler for you if they failed?”

“Of course I hope for victory! And I hope my father’s jewels are returned to us, yes! But only so that we might count our oath fulfilled and surrender them back. I would see them all safely bestowed among the stars.”

My tears spilled over; I choked and crossed the floor to him. “Please do not lie to me,” I begged.

“I am not,” Maglor assured me.

I exchanged a promise for a promise then. I vowed that if the Silmarils were reclaimed I would speak for him and for his brother. What an absurd promise! But for all we had been raised in seclusion from our heritage, Maglor had never let us forget that we were princes and heirs to all the kingdoms of Eldar and Edain. I recked little of the far greater authority of the sons of Ingwë and Finwë, of the herald of the Elder King himself. I thought my voice alone could sway them, and so I promised Maglor that I would see the Silmarils returned to him and Maedhros.

In return, I made him vow to be patient. I made him swear he would commit no violence in pursuit of them. He looked into my tearful eyes and told me he would not.

How easily he lied.

Is it a lie if the speaker believes it to be true? With the benefit of distance and age, Elrond understands that Maglor believed every promise, every tale — even as he believes the story he tells Elrond the morning after Elrond pulled him bleeding and mad from the river, returning at sun-up with a smile an armful of driftwood, about how he injured his hand on the barnacles.

What good would it do for Elrond to correct him? He salves the wound and wraps it.

“Could you spare some of your ointment for the other hand?” Maglor asks. “It soothes the burning.”

Elrond’s eyes jump to his face. “Why have you said nothing of this burning before?”

Maglor shrugs. “I am accustomed to it.”

“I see,” says Elrond. “Of course, I can spare as much as you need,” and he massages more of the salve into Maglor’s opposite palm. Healing has always brought him closer to a patient; he has heard it is the same for artists when they copy the image of another in clay or paint, coming to know the subject better through the act of re-creation. Healing, too, is re-creation — of what was before.

“Do you ever wonder,” Maglor asks, “how many ailments, how much pain we carry that we no longer even notice?”

“It is often the way with persistent pains.”

Maglor huffs and Elrond feels like a young pupil who has failed to provide his master with the expected answer. “You are a skilled healer.”

“It requires little skill to apply ointments and wrap a bandage.”

“A skill I do not have,” Maglor says bluntly. “But I do not mean that. Your presence is soothing. I feel as if I am being pieced back together when I am with you.”

Elrond squeezes his eyes shut against the pressure building behind them. He presses up the length of each of Maglor’s fingers. His hand is warm, pliant; he makes no effort at all to resist the bend of his joints under Elrond’s thumbs.

“I sense you are powerful, too,” Maglor continues. “Your appearance alone suggests you are an elf like me. But I do not think you are like me.” He pauses and studies Elrond’s face. “What is your story, Elrond? Tell me who you are.”

“It is as I have said. I am the keeper of a refuge far north of here, up the river. I offer a safe haven to those who cannot protect themselves.”

“Yes, but what brought you to that place? You are an elf, are you not? For you remember me from long ago… you must be very old.”

“Not as old as you,” says Elrond, disguising his unease with a gentle laugh. “I was born two ages ago. But I am only part elf — my mother and father were born of the unions of elf and man. I am, as they were, half-elven.”

“I see now why you have puzzled me so,” says Maglor. “There are not many like you, are there? Yet yours is the fate of elves. Is it always so with your kind?” He trains his eyes on Elrond with an unmasked curiosity that makes Elrond want to look away.

“No. It is not always so. I was granted a choice.”

“And your parents? Have you any family?”

Maglor is watching him with a frown and folded brows. Not curiosity, but concern.

Elrond answers only, “They are gone beyond my reach.”

“I am sorry,” says Maglor, then takes a breath as if to say more. Elrond cannot but smile at the childlike picture Maglor’s face makes, regret and hesitation warring with unanswered questions.

“It is all right, if you wish to know more. I am not altogether alone.” Elrond is aware of the watery tremble of his own voice and inhales slowly to stay his tears. “I have three beautiful children.”

Maglor’s lips part in delight. “You are a father! Tell me of your children. Tell me of their mother — she must be a woman of great wisdom and kindness to have earned the love of one such as you.”

At that, Elrond’s tears rebel against him: a drop falls from the corner of one eye, and then the other. Maglor reaches for him, fingertips stopping just short of his arm.

“I have pressed too much,” he says. “I am sorry.”

Tears spill from Elrond’s eyes; he cannot stop them, and he feels a fool. Why now, why in the company of one who cannot possibly comprehend his grief? He covers his face with a hand, willing the tears to cease. But the more he tries to restrain them, the more freely they flow.

“Elrond,” Maglor says, and Elrond buries his face behind his hand, expecting more questions, or empty words of comfort that will only embitter his grief. “I do not know what has happened to you,” he says. “I do not know why you hurt. But I would comfort you. Would you let me comfort you, as you have comforted me?”

Alone and far away from the counsel of any but himself, Elrond nods. He searches, briefly, for reasons he should not, but can find none. Yes; yes, he nods, I will be held by you. He falls into Maglor’s arms, and they are stronger around his back than they ought to be, stronger than they felt the day before.

“I am sorry,” Maglor repeats.

Against his ancient captor’s shoulder, Elrond gasps and whispers, “How can you be?”

“I wish to help you,” Elrond says, pulling away from Maglor’s embrace.

Maglor looks at him, eagerly hopeful. It breaks Elrond’s heart how small are his chances of fulfilling that hope.

“At least, I will try.”

Among Men, there are maladies that whittle away at the mind. Memories darken, flicker awake, spark and fizzle and darken again. Eventually, one forgets how to wash, how to eat. Eventually, the last thought dies and so, too, does the Man.

Elrond has heard of no such ailment among the Elves, blessed and cursed by immaculate memory. He has treated elves trapped in the halls of memory but never one sealed out of them, as Maglor seems to be.

On the frontlines of the last war against Morgoth, Elrond saw Aman-born healers harness the power of music to draw freed thralls from the prisons of minds still bound to Angband. Even guided by these healers trained in Lórien, the journey to the present was often violent and painful. It was terrible to witness.

Song is powerful, but Song is dangerous. Elrond has seldom resorted to it, and never without the guidance and support of others. Alone, against the condemnation of the Valar proclaimed by Maglor’s burnt hands, the risk of breaking both Maglor and himself is too high.

But sleep, not music, is the primary cure for all Ilúvatar’s Children. Elrond knows well, for it was thus he healed himself, that the untidy threads of memory are oft untangled while wandering the paths of dreams.

As they wade through the tall grasses one morning, Elrond asks Maglor if he dreams. He considers, then shakes his head. “I do not think so.”

“So I thought,” says Elrond. “I cannot speak with confidence, but it may explain your forgetfulness.”

Maglor halts suddenly and clasps Elrond’s wrist. “You have devised a cure!”

“I did not say that,” Elrond says, surprised by the sharpness of his voice. Hope gives way to concern on Maglor’s face, and Elrond cannot bear that either. He removes Maglor’s hand and holds it between his own a moment before releasing it. “There are certain common plants,” he says, “when combined and brought to a gentle boil, that induce deep sleep.”

“And dreams?”

“That is the aim, though often the patient must be subjected to certain sensations while he is sleeping to incite the dreaming — scents, textures, pricks to the skin. I would do this, if you trust me to—”

“Of course. How soon can it be done?”

“I will not attempt it unless I am certain you understand what it is you agree to undergo. You may not wake for days, perhaps longer. Though I will not hurt you, your experience may be painful. Your dreams may be unpleasant and you may not be able to escape them. It may not work at all.”

“I do not care,” says Maglor. “I will submit to any treatment you can offer me.”

Under the power of Elrond’s medicine, Maglor lies unmoving. He breathes so softly and slowly as to be barely perceptible. Elrond exposes him to fresh water, both hot and cold; the smoke of various woods and plants; blood, shallow cuts to the skin. On the fourth day, despairing at his unresponsive state, Elrond draws a small flute from his bag. He puts no magic into the music, and he does not take the instrument from his lips to sing with words, fearing still their power. The melody is one of Maglor’s own, brought out of the bliss of Valinor. It has become a common tune, to which many and divers verses have been set, and few remember its composer.

By the stillness of his eyes beneath closed lids, neither does Maglor. Elrond sets the flute aside and sits, blankly watching the colour of the land seep away in the gathering dusk.

Maglor wakes in the night. Seeing Elrond, he blinks, and blinks again. His return to consciousness is slow, and this waiting is the worst Elrond has endured so far. His ministrations have failed, he has spent the night accepting this, but now that Maglor is awake he cannot keep from wondering.

“All is dark,” Maglor says at last.

“I know,” Elrond says, defeated. How petulant he sounds to his own ears. “Wherever your memories have gone, they will not be retrieved by something so simple as sleep.”

“My memories?” Maglor asks. “It is dark,” he says again.

“Maglor?” Elrond asks in alarm. “Do you know me?”

Maglor stares and says nothing.

Quiet contemplation on the shores where the river joins the sea seems to reorient Maglor to the present. The briny water, they also discover, eases the pain of his burns.

But it takes time, precious time whose passage Elrond observes with increasing disquiet. For his mind turns often to his abandoned duties and the thought of returning home. Elladan, who had so loudly protested Elrond’s departure, will have been restrained from setting out in search of him by Elrohir’s firmer will — not that the less impetuous of Elrond’s sons approved his going, either. His missive to Arwen will have reached her some time ago. He hopes foreboding does not trouble her dreams in Lothlórien. In his own dreams, Elrond is ever watchful for such omens, but his mind strays only homewards — and to the past.

“You may leave,” Maglor tells him, “if you wish. You have done much for me already, more than I deserve.”

But the present Maglor is incapable of disguise. It is altogether transparent when he speaks other than he feels.

“You do not mean that.” Elrond does not leave off sponging Maglor’s hands with firm, circular strokes.

“No. But surely you find this slow progress tedious. And if my hands heal, what then? I may be a half-wit, but I know my memories are not housed in my palms. Perhaps you have done as much for me as can be done.”

Elrond smiles. “Has your estimation of my skill fallen so low? No, do not apologise — you are right. It is time to try another course of treatment. This burning of your hands is not natural. It is more than a physical wound, and yet it has shown itself responsive to treatment. It gives me hope that your soul might be healed, too. But you will need to have faith.”

“I do have faith,” says Maglor. “I have faith in you.”

Elrond lowers his eyes and sighs. “Then will you have faith in the Powers to whom I pray?”

“I will try.”

Elrond can hope for no more than that. Even his own faith in the Valar, outwardly steadfast, exists in a continual state of renewal.

Elrond ties ribbons of seagrass around Maglor’s wrists, the best substitute he has for the silk customarily used in this rite. He wraps them around his ankles, too; braids them into his hair and ties off the ends with white shells. Their nacre underbellies gleam in the sunrise.

“You said the intent is to make me beautiful?” Maglor asks sceptically. “I would think I rather look like a wretched mariner thrown ashore in a storm.”

Elrond knots another silvery snail shell into Maglor’s hair. He has so much of it, much more than Elrond ever remembers him having, and washed and combed it falls down his back like a shining black cloak.

He chuckles at Maglor’s observation. “Turn around,” he urges. “Let me see you and decide for myself.”

Maglor turns. He is beautiful, thus adorned in the gifts of the ocean and set against a sky of spreading gold. Elrond sees him not as one trammelled and worn by his troubles but, like the shells and stones he wears, smoothed and polished by the relentless grinding of sand and waves; as one made more lovely by his long enduring.

The sea agrees with him. It will be a shame to take him from it, Elrond thinks passingly, if his prayer is answered and Maglor is healed. But no, of course not. Even if he succeeds — and that hope is distant — Elrond cannot bring him home, no more than he can remain with him. There is no place for the long dark shadow of Maglor’s past in a haven built on the promise of light and safety; and Imladris will not long remain a haven without Elrond. If he succeeds, Elrond will see Maglor safely bestowed in some village of mortals, or a woodland clan of wandering Elves, and he will return to his lordship and his children.

“You are a sight fit for Queen Elbereth, indeed,” says Elrond. He is proud of what he has accomplished with so little, and being inexperienced in rites of purification.

A narrow smile creeps up Maglor’s cheek. “Am I? Do you think I will please your goddess?”

Elrond lets out a full laugh. “Not if you invoke her with such irreverence! She is your goddess, too. And be careful what you say: for it is with the eyes of the Elder King, her lord, that Elbereth sees.”

“You did not tell me she was wedded! What is all this finery for if not to please the Queen’s eye?”

“Enough!” Elrond laughs. “These outward adornments are but signs to show the King and Queen of Arda that your soul is worthy of their aid.”

Maglor huffs; his mouth twists in a faint sneer. “Yet still you will tell me nothing of what makes me unworthy. If your gods speak to me, do you not think it would be better if I am able to tell them what it is I regret?”

“No,” Elrond answers swiftly, before Maglor can see him waver. He must remain strong in his conviction: there can be no remorse without remembrance. “It is not enough to repent of the deed. You must understand, in both mind and heart, why it was done, and why it will not be repeated. If our plea is heard, they will know your heart.”

Maglor sighs and closes his eyes. “Very well, Elrond. I will question you no more. I am grateful for your aid.”

Elrond guides him to where the white fringes of the sea lap at the shoreline. Pebbles sink and spread under each deliberate footstep. Elrond turns his mind to them: cool, damp, tiny rounds rolling against his soles. In all the time he has practised the arts of healing, Elrond has called upon the direct intervention of the Valar only once before. If their answer then had been to summon blameless, pious Celebrían across the Sea, why should any heed his prayer for Maglor son of Fëanor, whom Varda’s hallowing had burned, whom Mandos’ Doom had banished forever?

He inhales deeply of the humid, salty air and invites the incantations of his foremothers into his heart. Lúthien, who made Mandos weep with her song; Melian, who girdled a kingdom with hers. Again, he wishes for the aid of Vilya. How clearly he hears, and understands, the thrum of Arda’s Music with that ring upon his finger!

No matter. Elrond has only himself and the strain of the divine within him. He chants. Now in the ancient Sindarin of Lúthien; now in the tongue of Cuiviénen that Melian spoke to Thingol; now in rough snatches of Valarin, like ice breaking on his tongue. Maglor cries out. For a moment, Elrond imagines ecstasy, relief in his scream; but it is agony. He folds. He plunges his hands into the surf. He screams. A mist of steam rises from the water. When the wave retreats, Elrond sees his hands newly blackened as with soot that no water can wash clean.

Elrond has stopped chanting. He recoils, struck with horror.

“You have called their wrath upon me!” Maglor sneers. “Monstrous! That is what your gods think of me — there can be no doubt. Please. The pain. The pain is too great. Tell me, Elbereth, tell me what I have done! I will repent of it, only release me of this pain.”

It is wrong, it is terrible, this distorted enactment of prayer, and Elrond cannot bear to watch it longer. “Stop!” he cries, and again cries, “Speak not to her!”

An unfamiliar and unwelcome feeling burns at the edges of Elrond’s mind: hatred. Hatred of the pitiless Valar, hatred of Maglor who cannot know pity. The wind has picked up; the waves rise a little higher and run a little faster up the beach. Elrond feels himself snap taut like a sail catching the breeze. He lays a course, the last that remains to him.

“Speak to me,” he says, gentling his voice. “Speak to me. I will tell you.”

Maglor’s inhalation rattles noisily in his chest. “You will?”

“Yes,” Elrond says, and offers a hand to help him rise.

Returned to their camp, Maglor is divested of his finery and wrapped again in his threadbare garments. A bowl of shellfish broth flecked with seaweed simmers over the fire, but Elrond’s stomach turns at the sight and the scorched smell of Maglor’s blackened palms. Neither of them has any appetite for food.

As the sky purples and turns to indigo, Elrond lays out the broad strokes of Maglor’s life. At each juncture, he pauses, watching Maglor for signs of disturbance. But there is nothing. He comes to the ruin of Doriath and his voice cracks, his mother’s suffering kindled awake within him, and still Maglor stares dumbly ahead, unaffected. The slumbering sea laps indifferently in the distance. The stars do not even blink.

Elrond stops the tale, but that does not stop the rest of it spooling out in his memory. Images splash across the pages of history. Elros’ tiny legs racing down the sand, the shriek of his laughter as the faceless figure of Eärendil stoops to capture him and lift him skywards. The grey of Elwing’s lips telling them they have to dress, to bring a coat; they are fleeing; they may choose one toy each, a small one. How small he is clutched by a warrior’s gauntleted arm, bouncing and swaying on the back of his horse; her chestnut coat glistening, the only bright thing in the world. The sour taste in his mouth when they near the heap of burning corpses, the stringy lines of his own spit falling into his lap.

Maglor’s hand, every nick and scar in its place, on the hilt of a sword — a training sword, wooden and blunt, turned over; a voice quick but patient explaining how best to hold it.

A soothing song from the other room, certainly not sung for a boy with a broken heart who is far too old for lullabies.

The funeral shrouds of six blameless guards. The tracks of two jewel thieves; for they walked away without pursuit days before Elrond learned they had been there.

Elrond weeps, utterly alone. He cannot tell this tale, for it would sink them both: Elrond in sorrow, Maglor in the emptiness of his mind.

When at last Maglor speaks, it is hollow: “You have not reached the end. You have not come to the part of the tale that you are in — but I will not ask you to. I hurt you, in the end, no doubt, as I hurt all others.”

Elrond purses his lips and dips his chin in answer. Yet you loved us, also, a voice, his own voice, protests. He does not say it aloud.

“I remember none of it,” Maglor says. “I hate the man you have described. I hate his father, his brothers, all those who followed him. Who would not? No,” he says at a breath of protest from Elrond, “you told the story fairly. Too fairly. You are kind, Elrond, you are far too kind. You should leave. Forget me, please.”

“And if you call for help again?” Elrond asks, not willing to confess that Maglor is right.

“Close your ears to it.”

“I cannot,” Elrond says impulsively. Fire heats his veins. He will not fail. “You must remember. I will not leave until you remember.”

Impervious to Elrond’s mood, Maglor bares his seared palms and meets him eye-to-eye. “You want me to regret what I have done. You were right. How can I when I do not remember why I did it? I cannot give you what you want. I cannot repent for that man, for I recognise nothing of myself in him.”

Knowing not what else to say, Elrond accepts his exhortation to leave. Not far; only a short walk upriver, to gather his thoughts among the ruins where he first came upon Maglor. He wonders if something of Elros lives in these stone walls erected by his successors. But he does not need to ask the stones what Tar-Minyatur would counsel. Elros would leave. Elros has left. They have all left.

Can Elrond leave, return to the valley, knowing how Maglor suffers? Hundreds of years passed before the ache of Maglor’s unknown fate subsided; perhaps in many hundreds more, Elrond will forget him again. Perhaps not so long: he has Elladan, Elrohir, and Arwen. He has a home full of mirth and friendship to fill his heart to brimming.

But Elrond does not want to forget Maglor.

Birds, squirrels, and other small creatures passed freely in and out of the permeable foundations and paneless windows of Amon Ereb’s walls. It was a delight for us as children. I thought if the animals chose to come inside, perhaps it was not such a bad place to be. We encouraged them, of course, stealing oats from the cellar (they were stale anyway) and leaving trails of them along the sills of our bedroom windows. Then on our bedside tables. By the time a young fox lay curled at the foot of Elros’ bed and the laundress complained to her master, it was too late for Maglor to do anything about it.

Though I suspect he knew about it long before. As long as there was no obvious danger involved, he was terribly permissive. And despite how swiftly we grew and how easily we bruised, he never wholly admitted or understood that we were half-mortal and what would be harmless to an elf-child (who could sing a startled fox into submission) might not be so for a child of Men. Fortunately for us, for we were allowed to keep the fox, and her litter of cubs when they came.

This was how we learned to process our grief. Animals, of course, die — often suddenly, often tragically. Once, an unlucky thrush, seeing me through one of the few intact panes of glass in the fortress and knowing me as a provider of food, dove to greet me. Her tiny body thudded against the glass and disappeared. I screamed for Elros.

“What was that!” he cried.

“A bird! Help me, help me open the window.”

The iron latch was fused shut from disuse. Maglor found us struggling to open it, and me in tears.

“We’ll go around and look,” he said. “She may have flown off.”

He held my hand, leading me down the corridor as I babbled by turns about how it was all my fault for feeding them, and then how it was his fault for not warning us what might happen. He said nothing either comforting or cruel. So focused was he on our mission that I soon fell quiet and adopted his determined attitude.

We found her stunned on the path below the window. My tears bubbled up anew, rough cobblestones prodding at my bony knees as I bent over her. I stroked her downy chest, still warm, and stared at the pinpricks of light reflected in her black eyes. Maglor knelt beside me.

“Can you feel her heart?” he asked.

It hadn’t occurred to me that she might still be alive. Yes! A heartbeat still fluttered in her stiff body.

“Can you save her?” I said. Elros and I both fixed him with hopeful eyes.

“I can try,” he said. “Here,” he took both our hands and laid them over the bird’s chest, “help me.”

In the end, even he could not sing motion back into her broken body, and after a few minutes her heart stilled.

We chose a burial place down by the river, and Maglor gave us each a pipe and taught us the notes of a funeral dirge. He said he had composed it for a beloved crow who used to visit his lost dwelling in the north. It did not occur to me to question this story of a grown elf-warrior grieving the death of a crow. I have no doubt it was true.

Some parents, thinking themselves wise, contrive to place their children in such situations, so that they might learn valuable lessons on life. Maglor was often accused, not least by my brother and me, of orchestrating affairs to suit himself. But in nurturing, he had no need for contrivances. Caring came as easily to him as music.

Elrond does not want to forget Maglor. Not though he will never hear him repent. Not though the Valar reject him. There is good in him; there was always good in him, and Elrond is the last living who remembers it. He cannot leave him.

But when he returns to the shore at sunrise, Maglor is gone. So, too, is an old rowboat that had been tucked into the greenery bordering the beach. Elrond looks out over the ocean, still and grey, for the sun lingers behind the trees. He scans the horizon, north and south, and catches the movement of oars striking the water at least a mile northward.

From a well of compassion, Song spills from Elrond’s lungs. Softly at first, so soft it cannot possibly carry to where Maglor floats far off. But it builds, power layered upon grief and longing. Elrond does not sing forgiveness; he sings acceptance. There are few words in his song, only the repetition of compassion.

The boat turns. Elrond does not cease singing. It is long before Maglor comes near enough to the shore for Elrond to perceive his form, the rapid rotation of his arms, oars churning against the outflow of the river.

At last the underside of the boat scrapes against the rocks; at last Maglor leaps into the surf. His eyes are rimmed red and swollen. He chokes on a sob, and then another, and only when he stumbles to his knees does Elrond’s Song stop.

“Tell me how it ends,” Maglor says. “I felt… I felt everything. Sickness, loathing, loss, so much loss. Love — there was love, a gentle love, and love beyond reason. Love beyond sense. Anger — ai! What anger, what necessity, like a knot crusted with salt, impossible to unbind. But it was possible, in the end — what happened in the end?”

“I do not know,” says Elrond. Clasping Maglor’s elbows in both hands, he helps Maglor to his feet. “But I think,” he sucks back his own tears, “I think you let it go.”

“Let what go?” Maglor’s eyes rove wildly, searching, still searching in his emptiness. He has not remembered — at least, he has not remembered the deeds and details that make up his life. But there is more to life than deeds. There are feelings, and he has found those. “The jewel?” What he has heard told slots together with what he has felt. “The jewel, ai! The Silmaril, is that not it? I held it, it burned me.”

Maglor winces and whimpers with repressed pain.

Elrond cannot answer. Instead he pulls Maglor to his chest, embraces him fiercely. Eventually, he will tell him all he knows. In time. For now, he holds him.

“I am sorry, Elrond,” Maglor says against his shoulder, “for the hurt I caused you. I did not see it. Still I do not know how, but I know that I did. I felt trapped. I felt numb, even as I have these last,” he laughs raggedly, and pulls back to look into Elrond’s eyes, “who can say how long? I cannot ask your forgiveness.”

“No, you cannot,” Elrond says. His tears have stopped and the unevenness of his breath has steadied. “Yet you have it.”

It is a half-truth, but that is enough. Forgiveness has ever been slow to take root in Elrond’s heart — but he is confident it will. He is confident, too, when he takes Maglor’s blackened hand and says, “You have wandered too long alone. I am bringing you home.”

On the journey upriver, Maglor tells him he meant to row out over drowned Beleriand and cast himself into the sea.

“To finish the deed,” he says. “After what you told me of my life, I could not justify keeping myself alive. Surely, it was cowardice that kept me from it all these years.”

“I do not think so,” says Elrond. “It takes courage to endure.”

“I understand that now.” Then with a long breath, as if the thought has been weighing on him, he asks: “I fear what I will face when we come to your home. What reason do your people have to judge me as kindly as you have?” He pauses. “What reason have you to judge me kindly?”

“You will come to know, I think,” says Elrond. “When the time is right.”

Spring has come to Imladris. On the road into the valley, they must wade through a gauntlet of flowering stalks leaning over the path. Maglor runs his palms over bursts of white and yellow and purple. They do not wither. It is the final reassurance Elrond needs. The Valar may rule Arda, but Elrond built Imladris; and, like its lord, Imladris accepts the unlikely and unusual repentance of Maglor son of Fëanor.

Elrond has a cottage built for him. At first, only Elrond visits, and teaches him to tend the plants around the house. They flourish under his hand, and Erestor consents to allow Maglor to contribute to the upkeep of the public gardens also. Of his children, Arwen visits first, and embroiders one of his plain tunics with images of Laurelin and Telperion. Elladan and Elrohir instruct him in cooking, and in woodcraft. He fashions himself a harp. Lindir instructs him on how to play it, which the young minstrel, who remembers nothing of the Elder Days, finds immensely entertaining. It is no serious wound to Lindir’s pride that Maglor swiftly outstrips him in skill.

Maglor’s hands no longer burn. His skin regains its natural hue.

Elrond amends Pengolodh’s manuscripts in the library, though he leaves the eventual fate of Maglor unknown. For Maglor’s memories, at least, still wander the shores somewhere, carried on wave or wind.

One morning, they watch the valley below: there is a gentle fall ending in a pool, and Elrond’s sons have taken the most recent child of the Dúnedain for a swim. Their mirthful shouts carry up the ravine as they take ever more daring leaps into the water.

Suddenly, Maglor draws a sharp breath and turns to Elrond with the wonderment of sudden comprehension. He reaches for Elrond’s hand, grasping his fingers too tightly.

He says, “I knew you. I protected you. I wanted to, I wanted desperately to protect you, because you were a child. You were so vulnerable and alone.” He closes his eyes a moment, then opens them with a new thought shining behind them. “Not alone. You had a brother. But I hurt you. I loved you, but I hurt you.”

“Yes,” says Elrond, eyes stinging with tears.

But Maglor’s brows gather in confusion. “My heart remembers you as a child. Not my child, but I wished you were.” He grimaces, and Elrond recognises it as the pain of rediscovered feeling rising within him. “I am ashamed of it. I should not have loved you so.”

“No,” says Elrond. “You should not have.” He shifts his palm to loosen Maglor’s grip, turning it to clasp the hand more gently. “And yet I called you father, and I do not regret it.”

In the balmy summer morning, not to the sounds of indifferent winds and unforgiving waves, but to the songs of birds and the laughter of his sons — three of them, by birth and by fosterage — Elrond at last unspools the remaining threads of Maglor’s life for him.

“You see,” he says when he is finished, “I knew you had a nurturing soul, and the capacity to heal.” He scans the blooms around the house. “And you have shown that one may indeed repent without knowing what he has done.” He rises from his seat and comes to stand before Maglor, who stands also. His hands tremble at his sides, waiting. Elrond embraces him.

“Welcome home,” he says.

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