Clear Pebbles of the Rain by StarSpray

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Nineteen

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As summer unfolded in the valley, Maglor left the water to itself and tried to lose himself in other things. He gritted his teeth and set to work with the carving knife, making clumsy simple things out of bits of leftover wood—spoons and bowls and rough-shaped figures of birds and beasts. He did not try to make them lovely. That would come later, when his hands remembered better how to do it. The feel of the wood in his hands and the smell of the shavings never failed to bring forth memories he would rather not dwell on, but very little of the old satisfaction.

He did not quite abandon it, but after a while he went to the other workshops and asked the elves there to teach him. He’d had an excellent education in all crafts in his youth, but the Sindar and Avari did not do things the same way that Fëanor once had—and neither did the Noldor who dwelt in Middle-earth in these days—and it had been so long since he’d touched metal or glass or cloth that it was easier to just start all over from the beginning. The craftsfolk of Imladris were more than happy to indulge him, and kind enough not to tease him when he fumbled or made foolish mistakes, and they were understanding when he found the heat of the forges to be too much, and had to abandon them in favor of the kinder airs of other workshops. Those who had once been followers of his brothers insisted upon calling him my lord , and he could not make them stop, but they were indeed as kind and as welcoming as Eleryn had promised him.

Among them was a blacksmith from Himring, Dringil, who approached him after he had to flee the heat of her forge. She was a familiar face; he had spent much time in her company when she visited the Gap with Maedhros; someone had to make all of the horseshoes his people needed, and Dringil had been one of the best—quick and efficient and always cheerful. “I am glad to see you here, my lord,” she told him. He managed a smile for her. “May I ask what it is you are trying to do?”

“I am looking for something to do with my hands—I want to make things.” She would remember that he had once been a woodcarver, though she was kind enough not to ask why he did not occupy himself with that now. Instead she smiled at him in a knowing sort of way and wished him luck. Not once did she mention his brother’s name, or the past—and he was so grateful that he had to blink back tears after she left. The others who had followed his brothers, or were the children of those who had, also came to him one by one to welcome him to the valley, and to share a little of what they had been doing and making. None spoke of the past except to tell him who they were. They all carried the weight of it. Most of them had gifts for him, rings or bracelets or hair clips, and the box in his room meant for such things filled more quickly than he had ever thought it would, though he wore them seldom.

In the end he found himself taking up clay again, feeling more at home with it in his hands than with wood; perhaps it was because the first thing he had made after his rescue had been a clay bowl, or perhaps because there were no painful memories to be dredged up by bowls and plates and cups. The potters of Lothlórien had known what they were about, he thought as he was taught to use the wheel for shaping clay. Just raising it up and allowing it to shrink back down under his hands as it spun was strangely soothing, even before he grew confident enough to try to make any useful thing out of it.

There were still memories, of course. But his mother’s family had never been as fraught as his father’s, and it did not make him weep to think of Mahtan, who still lived and laughed and made beautiful things on his sprawling estate outside of Tirion. Maglor could miss it and miss him without the sharper pains of death and blood and doom that colored all of his other losses.

After an afternoon of trying to shape a vase that would not hold up under its own weight, Maglor left to wash the clay off of his hands in the river, but encountered Dringil carrying what looked like the remains of a large bowl. “My lord Maglor!” she said brightly upon seeing him. “I hoped I would find you here.”

“What is all that?” he asked, nodding to her burden.

“One of the cats that haunt the kitchen knocked it to the floor,” said Dringil, “and I am bringing it to Ifreth to repair.”

“How can it be repaired?” Maglor supposed it could be glued back together, but it would always show the cracks and chips where pieces remained missing—it would never be as lovely as it had been before.

“Come with me and she will show you!”

Ifreth was a tiny figure, slender and dark with sharp eyes and a quick smile. Maglor had seen her before, though not to speak to. She worked in the pottery workshop, but not with the raw clay; mostly he had seen her glazing finished pieces. “Will you show him how you fix things?” Dringil asked her after making introductions. “He has not seen it before.”

“Of course! Put that down there. I will begin work on it this afternoon.” As Dringil set down her broken bowl, Ifreth took a smaller one down from a shelf and handed it to Maglor. “This is how my people repaired our clay pieces in the east,” she said.

“In the east?” he repeated as he turned it over in his hands. The breaks were obvious, but only because they were highlighted by gold, gleaming in his hands, turning what might otherwise have been ugly cracks into something rather lovely.

“My people did not follow yours on the Journey,” Ifreth told him. “But we are kin from afar, you and I. My people were Tatyar by Cuiviénen. Later those who stayed drifted apart, clans splintered, and we built cities and realms of our own.”

“What brought you west, then?” Maglor asked.

“We fought in the Last Alliance, joining with Gil-galad’s people from the east,” Ifreth said. “I was the only one to survive my clan, and when Elrond invited me to come west with him, I did not refuse.”

“I am sorry,” Maglor said. Ifreth shrugged. “It is beautiful, what you do.”

“It’s part of the story of the thing,” Ifreth said. “You can’t go back and unbreak it, but you can turn it into something better. It’s a long process, though,” she added, turning away again to get out jars and mixing implements. “Setting the glues and the lacquers and letting it dry—this bowl will take more than a month for me to repair—but I have not yet found a piece that I could not fix.”

“There’s no hurry for it,” said Dringil. “Though the cooks have all come together to ban the cats from the kitchen. That will last perhaps two days before they sneak back in.” She excused herself with a smile after promising to find more gold dust for Ifreth, and Maglor prepared to do the same.

Before he could, though, Ifreth fixed him with her bright gaze. “Come back sometime, and I’ll teach you how to do it,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said, and surprised himself by adding, “I would like that very much.”

At last, he went down to the river to wash the clay from his hands. He watched the cloud of it drift away in the clear water, and settled down on a sun warmed stone to try to pick the rest from underneath his fingernails. As he did so he heard the rustle of grass behind him. “I won’t bite, Estel,” he said when it became clear that Estel was not going to come out of hiding on his own.

He emerged from the grass, bits of leaf and flower petals sticking in his tousled curls. “I wasn’t spying!” he said, all surly defensiveness.

“Of course not,” Maglor agreed. “But you are curious about something.”

“Well. Yes.” Estel moved to sit beside Maglor, dangling his bare feet into the water. “Lots of things, really.”

Maglor found himself smiling. “I cannot promise answers to all your questions,” he said, “but you may ask them.”

“I promised Ada I wouldn’t bother you.”

“Then I will tell you if you start to,” Maglor said. He leaned forward to dip his hands into the water, digging his thumbnail under another nail to scrape the last bits of clay from it.

“Well,” Estel said after a moment, “I was reading one of the histories earlier. And every time it mentions you it says you’re one of the greatest singers of the Eldar, named only after Daeron of Doriath. Is that true, or is that just the writers, um, being biased?”

“It’s true,” Maglor said. “Daeron was ever a greater singer than I.”

“Oh.” Estel sounded surprised. “And that doesn’t…”

“Bother me?” Maglor looked up at him. “No! I have never cared about being the best at anything. I would have kept up my music even if I was not particularly good at it, because I loved it. I just would have kept it more private. I had that much pride.”

Estel looked at him, his soft grey eyes keener than Maglor thought an eleven-year-old boy’s should be. “Why do you talk about it as though it is all in the past?”

Maglor thought of the beautifully wrought harp sitting in his room, untouched. Someone was keeping it clean, for it had not gathered any dust since he had come there. He thought of the silence under Dol Guldur into which his voice had fallen dull and flat before he had given up on even trying to hum. “I have not…I have not made music in a very long time,” he said.

“You could, though. Couldn’t you?”

For a moment Maglor didn’t answer. He examined his hands for traces of clay and found none. The scar on his palm ached a little, as it sometimes did in the cold—and the river was quite cold, even in the height of summer. “I’m not sure that I can,” he finally said quietly, admitting it for the first time out loud. “I fear it is lost to me.”

They sat in silence for several minutes, Maglor contemplating the pattern of scars on his palm, and Estel watching the leave sway in the breeze over their heads. Finally, he kicked one of his feet, splashing water up in an arc out into the river, droplets falling like glittering diamonds in the sunshine. “Your voice was lost to you,” he said, “and Ada helped you get it back. You can’t know if your music is lost too until you try. I don’t think it is.”

Maglor looked up. “What makes you say that, O wise child of the Dúnedain?” he asked.

Estel grinned at him for a moment, his smile so like Elros’ that Maglor looked away. “Elves sing as easy as breathing,” he said, “and you were the second-greatest of them all—and you’re still breathing, aren’t you?”

Someone called for Estel then, and he got up and darted off, away into the grass and summer flowers, leaving Maglor shaking his head as he rubbed his thumb over his scarred palm. It couldn’t be that easy. He lifted his gaze to the water, and listened for it, for the Music that he knew was there. He thought for a moment he caught a trace of it, a soft melody that had once been as familiar as his own voice, but it was there and gone again in the space of a sigh, and as it faded he shook his head and retreated, taking the long way back to the house, through meandering paths beneath the trees.

“He’s right, you know,” Glorfindel said, appearing suddenly to fall into step beside him.

“Do you often spy on me?” Maglor asked.

“No, but I wanted to make sure Estel was being courteous.”

Maglor couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “I helped raise five younger brothers, and none of them were ever as courteous as Estel.”

“And you were not quite so fragile,” Glorfindel replied. To that, Maglor had no answer. “But as I said, I think he is right. You cannot know if you are still as great a musician as you once were until you attempt to play.”

“If I can do it at all I know I am not as great as I was,” Maglor said. “I was—I am sorely out of practice.”

“There is only one cure for that,” said Glorfindel.

Maglor stopped walking, and Glorfindel stopped to, turning to look at him. He wore his golden hair in a simple plait down his back, fastened with bells at the end that chimed sweetly with every step he took. “You know what I did at Sirion,” he said. “Why—?”

“I do know,” Glorfindel said. “And I know what you did afterward.” Maglor looked away. “My own hands are not clean, either. I was at Alqualondë with Fingon’s host.”

“Alqualondë was nothing like Sirion,” Maglor said, staring resolutely at a knot in the trunk of a nearby tree. If he squinted just right it seemed to form a small wizened face winking impishly out at him.

“Elrond has forgiven you,” Glorfindel said. “When I came back to these shores I pledged myself to him and his service, and so I follow where he leads—and thus far he has never led anyone astray. Even so, I was there also at Dol Guldur, and nothing you have done has earned you the torment of the Enemy.”

“…I remember you, I think,” Maglor said. The rescue was hazy in his memory, mostly full of horror and fear at the ghosts of Elrond and Elros, but he recalled glimpsing one who blazed so brightly it was as though Arien herself had come down into the dark. He didn’t know how he felt about Glorfindel seeing him like that, his mouth stitched shut and his chest branded with the Eye of Sauron. The brand was still there, and it still ached if he made the mistake of thinking about it, as in that moment. Maglor did not reach up to touch it, but it took effort.

“I’m surprised you remember anything. We were not sure that you would survive the rescue.”

“It seems I am doomed to survive everything that befalls me,” Maglor said.

“Not so bad a doom, if it has led you here,” Glorfindel said. Maglor did not reply. “Anyone with eyes can see that you miss music desperately. Why are you so afraid of trying to play again?”

Maglor opened his mouth, but closed it again. He didn’t have an answer.

“You are not afraid of doing poorly at other things,” Glorfindel went on. “I’ve seen the things you have been making—you are not bothered by the mistakes you make in carving wood or in shaping clay. And I remember you when we were young in Valinor, when you were beginning to learn. You laughed when your fingers slipped or your voice hit the wrong notes. Why should it be different now? If you have forgotten, you can learn again. Start at the beginning, as you have done with other things.” With that he walked on without waiting for Maglor to answer or to join him. His braid swung and the bells chimed, and after a few steps he began to sing a silly song full of nonsense words in time with it.

Maglor remained where he was for some minutes. Glorfindel was right. He could relearn what he had forgotten, as he was relearning so many other things. He could relearn how to hear the Music in the water, for he had not known that when he had begun writing his own songs long ago. There was no shame in clumsy fingers on harp strings or in forgetting the words to a song. It wasn ’t the frustration of having to start all over again at the one thing he had once been so good at, that he had been known for, that held him back. Or at least, Maglor did not think it was. There was grief in it but not fear . And it was fear that kept him from going anywhere near the harp that Elrond had put into his room. Fear that made it feel like it was lost to him in the same way that his voice had been.

He turned and walked in the other direction. He needed to think—or not to think—and the idea of going back among other people felt suddenly suffocating. He left the paths and wandered through the woods, through glades of flowers and thickets heavy with slowly-ripening berries. Birdsong surrounded him. The trees whispered quietly to one another and to themselves, paying him no heed at all. The squirrels were busy racing each other through the branches, and deer darted away as he passed by, or else paused in their grazing to watch him.

Eventually he found a particularly tall tree with its lowest branch just within reach if he jumped high enough. It took three tries to catch hold of it, and another two to actually pull himself up. Once upon a time, Maglor thought with gritted teeth as he hauled himself up to the next branch, arms trembling with effort, once upon a time it would have been as easy to get himself up onto this tree as to climb a ladder.

Of course, a year ago—even a few months ago—he could not have done it at all.

He climbed until he could see over the tops of the other trees. His walk had taken him up the far side of the valley, and now he sat with the mountains at his back and the rest of it laid out before him, the house as always a cozy centerpiece. He watched figures passing through the gardens, and heard the distant sound of voices. Smoke rose from the forges. He raised one leg onto the branch, resting his arm on his knee and idly swinging his other foot. Whenever he tried to turn his thoughts to music, or to the reasons behind his fear, his mind clouded and the sun seemed to darken over his head, and all he could think of was the feeling of needles through his lips and of the hot-metal grip of Sauron’s hand around his throat.

As he struggled with his own thoughts, the afternoon wore on, and as the westering sun turned the clouds on the horizon pink and orange limned with gold, he was startled by a voice below him. “Maglor?” It was Elrohir, and when Maglor looked down he swung himself up into the tree, moving quickly and easily. “What is the matter?” he asked.

Maglor shook his head, looking away. “The past is heavy today,” he said.

Elrohir sat on a branch level with Maglor’s, swinging both of his legs. “Would it help to speak of it?” he asked.

“I couldn't—”

“None of us here are strangers to the horrors of the Enemy,” Elrohir said. “It would not be a burden to us to listen.”

Maglor let his head fall back against the trunk, gazing up at the sky through the scant few branches above his head. The stars were starting to appear, winking into the evening sky one by one. “Thank you,” he said, “but—but I do not think I can speak of it.”

“Will you come back to the house with me, then? It will soon be time for dinner, and you still do not eat enough.”

“Not all of us can eat like Estel,” Maglor said, just so Elrohir would laugh. But he went back with him to the house, where dinner was a merry affair, and everyone was kind enough to pretend not to notice his silence and downcast eyes.

Elrond caught his eye afterward, but Maglor just shook his head and slipped away, back to his room. He closed the door and leaned against it, staring at the harp across from him. The dark wood and golden inlays gleamed in the lamplight. He wondered who had made it, and why it had been chosen for him. Taking a breath, he crossed the room to it, and knelt to give it a more thorough examination than he had before. There was something familiar in the workmanship, but it was not until his fingers trailed down to the bottom of the harp where the makers’ marks were that he realized why. He leaned down to look at them, and found two familiar shapes staring back at him. One was a combined C and F atop a small stylized hammer, and the other a more simple and stark M and F, with no accompanying symbols.

Maglor almost fell over in his haste to distance himself from the harp. Of all the makers he had considered for it, he had never expected to find it the work of his brothers. It was like another ghost come out of the shadows to taunt him. He did not know when they had made this harp, or for what purpose, for he had never seen it and neither of them had ever mentioned it. None of his brothers had played. And how had it survived the downfall of Beleriand?

He went to sit by the hearth, though there was no fire in the grate. Tári appeared from somewhere to jump up on his lap. He scratched her behind the ears and listened to her purr. Tears pricked his eyes, and he squeezed the bridge of his nose to try to keep them in. “Do you think they conspired together to haunt me like this, or is it only chance?” he asked Tári. She only stretched her legs, claws catching on his thigh in tiny brief pricks, before she jumped down and sauntered over to the bed. He sighed, and slouched in the chair. The harp kept catching his eye. It was a beautiful work. He’d seen dwarven harps of similar form, though dwarves did not tend to use wood. Under his hands once it might have made beautiful music, sweet notes to warm dark winter evenings in Himring, or to charm the fireflies out of hiding in early summer.

He ached to play it. But his fingers curled in on themselves at the thought, and the breeze through the window turned chilled.