Clear Pebbles of the Rain by StarSpray

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Seventeen

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Elladan and Elrohir and Estel departed early in the morning on their hunting trip. Gilraen was fretful, though everyone from Elrond to Glorfindel to the twins had assured her that the lands where they would be hunting were quite safe. In another life, Maglor would have composed increasingly silly songs to make her laugh until her fears were, if not forgotten, at least banished for a time. But it was not another life, and so he slipped away quietly back to his room.

The harp still stood near the window, gleaming dark wood inlaid with gold. Maglor approached it warily, knowing that he looked foolish. It wasn’t going to bite him. It still felt daring to reach out to touch it, running his hand along the smooth wood, feeling the cool metal under his palm. It was beautiful, and he wondered whose it was, and who had made it. There were no obvious markings. His fingers hovered over the strings, not quite touching them.

No. He couldn’t do it. Maglor left the room, digging his fingernails into his palms to stop his hands from shaking. It was still early, but he went out to the workshops, which stood mostly empty. The valley’s residents were all preparing for the Midsummer celebrations to come, and most craft projects had been set aside for the time being. Maglor would not complain; he did not wish to meet anyone as he tried to decide what to do. He wanted to be doing something, he’d realized. Something to keep his hands and his mind busy. Something to chase away the ghosts and shadows that dogged his every footstep.

Tári followed along behind him as he peered into forges and workshops, into the building that housed several large kilns, into storehouses and tool sheds. He settled on wood, since he knew it best, and left with a carving knife and a few pieces of wood that felt nice in his hands. “I wonder what it will turn into,” he said to Tári as he made his way back through the winding paths toward the house. “My mother once told me that sometimes she would find a piece of stone that knew what it wanted to be when she did not, and she only found out through the process of carving.” It had been part of a longer conversation about making art, and Maglor had in turn told her how sometimes he started a song with nothing more than a single phrase or a handful of notes, and it was only through the writing that he learned what the song would be. It had been sometime after Caranthir was born, and by then it was growing rare to catch either of his parents alone, let alone have any kind of real conversation without someone else coming in to interrupt or to join in. He did not remember ever minding those interruptions, but it still felt like something very special to have had a few hours of Nerdanel all to himself in an afternoon.

He missed her, suddenly and intensely. Maglor stopped underneath a tall beech tree and leaned against its trunk to catch his breath. Of everyone that he would never see again—missing his mother hurt the worst. He still could not bring to mind the reality of her face instead of the mockery that Sauron had tried to use, and that was the worst part of all.

He did not go back to the house, in the end. Instead he found a patch of grassy bank beside one of the many streams, and settled down, leaning against a boulder, to start chipping away at the wood. Tári sniffed around and then left him to go about her business. The water flowed along cheerfully; the birds were singing, and somewhere not far away Elves were singing too. Maglor tried not to think about anything but the feel of the knife in his hand and the give of the wood beneath the blade, but after a while he had to stop before he cut himself, unable to see what he was doing through the haze of tears.

First Nerdanel, now Finwë. Another he would never see again. Maglor tossed the wood and the knife onto the grass beside him and rested his forehead on his arms atop his knees. When he closed his eyes he could see blood on the stones of Formenos, black in the gloom of Unlight, his grandfather’s ruined body, the broken sword still clutched in his fist. He and Maedhros had wrapped his body in linens and had tried to wash away the blood, but it had left a stain that he imagined was still there, though it was now thousands of years of the sun later. They had not let their father see the body. Fëanor had come to Formenos in a rage of grief, half mad with it, and it had taken both of them and Celegorm to restrain him. Maglor remembered how he had finally gone limp in their arms, his rage turning so suddenly to tears. It had been dark and cold and they had all been weeping. Maglor remembered meeting Maedhros’ gaze over their father’s head, and seeing his own helpless fear reflected back at him.

He lifted his head to look at the water, trying to think of something else. Anything else. But his mind was full of shadowy fears and he didn’t know how to chase them away anymore. There was nothing that he could do that was not bound up somehow in blood and death. He watched without really seeing as a squirrel made its way down a tree, only to dart back up again with an angry stream of chatter, only narrowly avoiding having its tail caught by Tári as she stalked through the grass.

Elrond found him there. He sat down on the grass beside him, and leaned his head on Maglor’s shoulder. Maglor rested his head against Elrond’s in turn. “What were you making?” Elrond asked after a while, lifting up the partly-carved piece of wood.

“I don’t know. Nothing, now.”

“You were always carving things, I remember,” Elrond said as he turned the wood over in his hands. “I still have the combs you made for me.”

Maglor laughed a little, in spite of himself. “I was forever making combs for you—you were always losing them.”

“That was Elros,” Elrond said; Maglor heard the smile in his voice. It was an old and silly argument. Something would be lost or broken and both boys would blame the other, each of them trying and failing to appear wide-eyed and innocent. Really it was no one’s fault—they had been on the move more often than not, and it was so easy for small things to get lost in the rush to abandon a camp unexpectedly or fording a river. He had never minded making new ones.

“It was both of you,” Maglor said. “And Maedhros was worst of—” His voice broke, and he closed his eyes. Maedhros had cared so little for any of his possessions by the end, even the most necessary. Maglor had teased him for it when they had the twins with them—when Maedhros’ followers were still there. After they had all been sent away to Gil-galad there had been no audience and no more reason for pretense, and so there had been no more teasing, no more singing. Precious little talking. There was only survival—and then only the Oath.

He hadn’t meant to say his name out loud.

Elrond set the wood down and took Maglor’s hand. He was steady where Maglor was trembling, and warm where Maglor was cold. “You can speak of him,” he said.

“No,” Maglor whispered. “I cannot.” He pulled away, and Elrond sat up, and did not release his hand. The stone at their backs was cool, almost too cold, and Maglor shivered, mind full suddenly of other colder stones, slick with his blood. He could feel the scars on his back rubbing against the fabric of his shirt.

Maedhros had had scars like that too.

“How do you bear it?” Maglor asked, the words spilling out of his mouth unbidden. “Losing—when Elros chose—knowing you will never see him again?”

Elrond looked at him. “I bear it because I must,” he said, as though it could possibly be that simple. “And I do what I can for his children when they come to me. But Elros is gone beyond the reach of any save Ilúvatar. Your brothers have not. They reside in Mandos, and—”

“Do they?” Maglor hated the way his voice sounded, wretched and broken. “Or do they wander the world still, houseless and—”

“I do not believe that,” Elrond said.

“Not even the echo of our lamentation—” Maglor began.

“That was proved false long ago,” Elrond interrupted, “by my own father and mother. And someday I, too, will take ship into the west, and either you will go with me or I will bring far more than an echo. I will sit in the Ring of Doom with my own lamentations until they listen. As for the dead—all are called to Mandos. I do not believe your brothers would be excepted, unless they chose to turn away from it. Whether Mandos will release them is another matter, and I may have words for that, too, when I go west.”

“Elrond,” Maglor said, but didn’t know how to go on. Elrond did not even like Maedhros—he and Elros had never quite gotten over their fear of him, and Maedhros himself had done very little to allay it except to avoid them wherever he could. And how did he explain that though he missed Maedhros so much that it ached, he did not want to see him? If Maedhros were to somehow be dropped back into Middle-earth as Glorfindel had been, if he appeared at that moment in Imladris, Maglor would forget all his promises and flee.

“I do not think that will be necessary, Master Elrond,” said a cheerful voice from the path, and a moment later the old man with his strange hat and grey cloak came through the trees. He had Tári in his arms, scratching her behind the ears. “We shall see what happens, of course, but I think that by the time you set sail the Ban will be lifted entirely, and all who wish for it will be able to return home.”

“Gandalf,” Elrond said, smiling as he got to his feet. Maglor rose with him. “I hoped you would return before Midsummer.”

“Of course! I had thought of spending it in the Shire, but poor Bilbo got home to find his hole and all his belongings being auctioned off, and he’s having a right time of it getting everything back in order. I fear his silver spoons maybe a lost cause. Next year, perhaps!” He turned then to Maglor with a smile. Beneath his bushy eyebrows his eyes were warm. “Well met, Maglor son of Fëanor! I am very glad to meet you properly at last.”

“Thank you,” Maglor said. He was not at all sure what to make of this strange person, shorter in person than he’d seemed before, who snuck into places like Dol Guldur, and arranged dangerous quests for halflings and dwarves, and yet laughed about silver spoons and spoke with strange knowledge and wisdom of the doings of the Valar. Tári liked him, but Maglor thought she liked anyone who pet her and gave her proper scratches when she wanted them. She jumped down from Gandalf’s arms and pawed at his leg until he knelt to scoop her up.

Somehow he found himself being shepherded back to the house as Gandalf chatted about the conditions of the roads to the west, and how things were in Mithlond with Círdan, and the gossip he’d had from Gildor Inglorion and his folk. Elrond said little until they came to the garden and met Glorfindel and Erestor, and then Elrond excused both himself and Maglor, leaving the three of them behind to talk about fireworks and feasting.

“So that is Gandalf,” Maglor murmured as they slipped behind a hedge.

“Yes, that is Gandalf.” Elrond smiled. “He is a dear friend.” They walked in silence for a little while. Then Elrond spoke again. “I don’t believe that I’ll never see Elros again.” Maglor looked at him in surprise. Elrond kept his gaze on the path ahead of them. “I do not believe that Ilúvatar would put the First and Secondborn into the world together, would allow us such great love and friendship, only to sunder us all forever. Someday the world will be remade and the Music resung, and I believe that when it is I will be singing with Elros at my side.” He looked at Maglor then, and his smile was a little wry and a little sad in equal measure. “But that is so far into the future that it may as well be never, isn’t it? Still, it gives me hope.”

Tári leaped down to vanished into the daisies. “Finrod would have liked you,” Maglor said, not knowing what else to say. “He liked to have long and meandering debates about that sort of thing.”

“I don’t,” Elrond laughed. “I’ve outgrown those sorts of debates, and at least here I am accounted old and wise enough that no one tries any longer to drag me into them.”

“I am glad that you have hope,” Maglor said softly. It was estel they spoke of, rather than amdir. The latter was hard enough. The former Maglor found impossible to hold onto. That was not a result of the darkness in Dol Guldur. That had left him with the Silmaril when he had cast it into the Sea.

“It is something I choose every day,” Elrond said. “It has never been an easy thing. But it has always been the right thing.” He stopped to turn and face Maglor, looking into his eyes. “And until you can hope again, I will do it for both of us.”

“Hope for what?” Maglor asked quietly.

“Everything.”