Clear Pebbles of the Rain by StarSpray

Fourteen

Maglor sat for some time staring unseeing across the room, wondering if he’d imagined it or if Elrond had truly succeeded in lifting whatever curse had been laid on him. Elrond had not seemed to think so. And Maglor hadn’t made any sound at the time. His throat still hurt—hurt like he had been screaming, like he had been strangled—and he feared to try again. He didn't even know what kind of sound to try to make. 

There was a knock on the door, and Elrond entered bearing a tea tray. The cat, having forgiven Maglor for startling her, jumped back onto the bed. Elrond looked at Maglor and frowned. “I did not expect bruises,” he said as he set the tray down, crossing the room to look at them. His fingers were gentle as he pressed on them. “Does it hurt?” 

Maglor nodded before realizing that he should try to answer more fully—with words. His tongue felt too big in his mouth all of a sudden, clumsy and strange as he tried to form words for the first time in he did not know how long. Elrond had turned away before he managed to even get his mouth open. “Elrond,” he said, voice a hoarse and wrecked shadow of what it had once been, and watched Elrond freeze for a moment before turning, eyes wide with shock. Under other circumstances it might have been comical. Maglor swallowed and tried again. “Elrond.” It was easier the second time. 

“Maglor,” Elrond breathed. “It worked?” He came back to the bed as Maglor moved to sit on the edge of it, and embraced him. Maglor dropped his face into Elrond’s shoulder. “I’ve missed hearing your voice,” Elrond said. Maglor could hear tears in it. Then, ever the healer, he asked again, “Does it hurt?”

“A little.” It could have been worse. It had been worse, once. He felt suddenly exhausted, as though just speaking four words had taken all of the energy he had. 

“Then don’t speak too much,” Elrond said. He drew back again, and bundled Maglor out of bed and into a soft warm robe and then onto the window seat, where the sun had already warmed the pillows. Before Maglor could so much as think of what he wanted to say, a steaming mug of tea was pressed into his hands, sweetened with honey. The heat of it soothed his throat, and he sighed after the first swallow, leaning back against the paneling as Elrond sat down with him. 

“Thank you,” Maglor whispered. Elrond smiled at him. “For—” For too much to put into words, even now that he could use them. He blinked back a sudden stinging behind his eyes, and looked away, out over the flowers. 

They sat for a while in silence, comfortable now that it could be broken by either one of them. The cat jumped back up to curl up on Maglor’s lap, purring when he stroked her silky fur. “You’ve been adopted, I think,” Elrond said. 

“So it seems.” Maglor found he did not mind. He’d slept better after the cat had come to him than he had in a very long time. 

“There is much we need to speak of,” Elrond went on after a moment. “But not today. It can wait—unless you intend to disappear again.” It was spoken lightly, but Maglor could hear the real concern behind it—almost it sounded like fear.

Elrond rose to take away the empty mugs. Maglor caught his hand and looked up at him, meeting his gaze. “I won’t,” he said. “I won’t disappear, Elrond.” It would have been impossible, with Elladan and Elrohir there to chase after him, even if he did want to leave. But he didn’t. 

Something in Elrond’s face softened, and he leaned down to press a kiss to Maglor’s forehead before turning away, busying himself with the tea set. Maglor sighed and looked back out of the window. The cat on his lap shoved her head into his hand until he started petting her again. He buried his fingers in her silky fur, scratching until her back arched, and she stretched her legs, kneading into his leg before curling up again, tail swishing contentedly. Elrond returned with another cup of tea. 

“This place is beautiful,” Maglor said after a little while.

“It is,” Elrond agreed. 

“How did you find it?”

“We stumbled upon it by chance when fleeing Eregion,” Elrond said. “I led the first armies out of Lindon to try to break the siege, but we were too late. Celeborn led all who could escape out, and we fled north into the mountains, with the Enemy on our heels. There was no path down into this valley then, of course, but we managed somehow with all the wounded, and the children. It was not so pretty that winter, with the fields all churned up mud and lined with tents.

“After aid came from Númenor, Gil-galad decided we needed an outpost near the mountains. There were plenty of volunteers to stay, and I was already in love with this place.” Elrond gazed out of the window at the river. “We started work on the house and the workshops during the siege, but once the war was over we could turn more attention to comfort and beauty instead of just a roof over our heads.”

“I was told that there are many of my brothers’ followers here,” Maglor said. “Or at least, many of those who have survived this long.”

“Yes,” Elrond said. “Between the War of Wrath and the fall of Eregion, there are no more than two dozen all told. Most are from Thargelion or in Himring.”

“I have not seen them.” It was getting easier to speak with every word, the clumsiness leaving Maglor’s tongue, though his voice was a hoarse and scratchy thing, unlovely and weak. But he thought that would change as the soreness faded and he got used to speaking again. He had screamed or sung himself voiceless before, and it had felt like this—though there had been no power involved but his own.

“I have asked them not to impose on you,” Elrond said. “You needed peace and rest, not a parade of visitors. You still need peace and rest.” 

“I am weary,” Maglor admitted. It was more than just the ache in his body and the shock of suddenly being able to speak again. It was the long years of memory and loneliness and grief that hung on his shoulders like an old and tattered cloak. He’d been able to carry the weight of it, once. Once he had not even thought himself lonely. He had been—not happy, but content in his solitary exile, he’d thought. Maybe he’d only been fooling himself, ignoring it the way that he’d been ignoring the ghosts of his brothers that had followed him from Doriath and Sirion and the edge of the broken world. He thought he could sleep for a hundred years and feel no more rested than he did in that moment. He looked back at Elrond and saw the flash of worry in his eyes before it was hidden away behind that mask of calm. “I won’t die of this, Elrond. You needn’t worry.”

“You seem very sure of it,” Elrond said. Maglor shrugged. He knew what it felt like, to start to slip away, to feel the desire to leave one’s body and flee the living world. He’d felt it in Dol Guldur, and he had clung to life because in the clutches of the Necromancer the alternative was so much worse. He did not need to fear that here, but he also remained certain that there would be no call for him from Mandos. Not even the echoes of his lamentations would reach beyond the mountains in the West. Becoming a Houseless spirit caught in the world and unable to leave was not as bad as being caught by Sauron’s fell enchantments, maybe, but it was not much better either. 

It was no strength of will that kept him alive. It was only fear. But he would never say as much to Elrond—or to anyone. That would only worry them further, and he’d caused enough of that without knowing it. 

Elrond leaned forward to look into his face. Maglor met his gaze. It was easier than allowing Galadriel to see into him. Whatever Elrond saw seemed to allay his worries at least a little. “I’ve treated many who were unable to find healing on these shores,” he said. “I feared you would be one of them, but I think you will not need to sail after all.” His smile was a small and complicated thing. There were others who should have been able to stay, Maglor knew—Lady Celebrían not least among them. 

“There is no ship that would bear me anyway,” Maglor said. 

“No. Not yet.”

It wasn’t much longer before Maglor retreated to bed again, needing little coaxing from Elrond. The cat disappeared out of the window, off on whatever business she had in the valley. Maglor pulled the blankets up over his head and closed his eyes. Tired as he was, he did not do more than doze, drifting in and out of strange and disjointed dreams. He did not wake fully again that day or that night, though the dreams grew darker after the sun set. 

In the dark hour just before dawn he woke, and in that fuzzy moment in between waking and sleeping he glimpsed his brother just beyond the foot of the bed. “What do you want?” he whispered. Of course there was no answer, and when he blinked the dream-phantom was gone. He sat up, and found the cat curled up beside him, grumbling at being disturbed. “I beg your pardon, mistress,” he said, just because he could, as he left the bed. He dressed and left the room, slipping quietly through the silent and sleepy house. He made his way to the library, wanting to be distracted from his own thoughts. 

Crystal lamps lit as he entered the room, casting a soft golden glow over the rows of shelves, filled with books and scrolls. There were cozy arrangements of seats and tables scattered throughout the large room—the largest in the house, aside from the banquet hall, and there were wide windows to let in the sunshine during the day. Maglor wandered through the shelves, trailing his fingers over the book spines as he read the titles pressed into them. There were histories and bestiaries, and books of herbs and of gardening and of cooking; there were preserved journals of travelers, and collections of letters, and many collections of songs and poems, from Men and Elves and one small and slim volume of Dwarvish tales. Maglor pulled it from the shelf, but put it back after reading the note in the beginning, which claimed its contents to be tales from Moria as told by Narvi to Celebrimbor. He wanted distraction, not more reminders. 

He settled on a book of tales for children that had come from Arnor before its fall, and curled up in one of the chairs by a window. Outside the sky was starting to grow pale with the coming dawn, and the stars would soon fade. Gil-Estel still shone brightly down onto the valley; Maglor looked at it for a while, wondering what Eärendil thought of all that he could see going on below, and what sort of tales he took back to Valinor at the end of each voyage. He sighed, and turned his attention to the book in his hands. The stories were many and varied; some were familiar, with roots tracing as far back as the tales he and his brothers had been told on silver evenings when they were children. Others were entirely new to him. He found himself smiling a little as he read, the shadows and troubles of his past—both distant and recent—receding as golden sunshine replaced the lamplight, and his mind was filled with images of rabbits and mice doing heroic deeds in their small forest realms, or of children outsmarting wicked sorcerers in the wilds so that they might escape and return home. 

Others came and went from the library, paying him as little heed as he paid them. He finished the book—it was not terribly long—but did not get up, instead gazing out of the window. The view was of the forests farther up the valley, dark fur against the brighter greens of beech and maple. Beyond them Maglor glimpsed the shimmer of a waterfall, one of many that tumbled down the mountainsides to join together into the river at the bottom. It was to be another bright and sunny day. He could see an apple orchard from this window, as well, all pink and white. He had the sudden desire to go out and walk through it, to smell the apple blossoms and listen to the birds. 

So he did.