Clear Pebbles of the Rain by StarSpray

Twenty One

You need time, Maglor. That’s all. 

So Elrond said, and so it would prove, Maglor supposed he had to trust. He did not trust his own strength and he could not find it in himself to hope for anything more than a brief respite before the Shadow arose again, but he did trust Elrond. He stopped trying to either avoid or seek out music, from others or from the river. It was quieter in the winter anyway, with ice clinging to the banks and drifting down the stream in pale chunks. Snow blanketed the valley, and Estel built statues out of it, lumpy and strange caricatures of people with sticks for arms and stones for eyes and noses. He made them in the strangest places, so Maglor was forever startled by a new one whenever he turned a corner. 

Not that he went outside much. The cold soon proved too much, even bundled up in layers of all the warmest clothes that Elrond gave him. Tári agreed, and they spent their days curled up by the hearth in Maglor’s room, or the one in the Hall of Fire, which always burned bright and warm and cheerful. To occupy his hands he took up woodcarving again; the pottery workshop was also warm, but one had to go through the cold to get there. As he sat in the Hall of Fire, empty but for himself and Tári where she curled up around his shoulders, Maglor looked down and found that he was carving a small wooden flute, of the same style he’d once carved when first learning the craft under Finwë’s guidance. As he smoothed the surface with the edge of his knife, Maglor discovered that the thought of his grandfather had not brought the same knife-sharp sting of grief. Oh, the grief was there still, but it did not feel so close to the surface. Scabbed over, rather than scarred, but still—healing. 

Estel came wandering in and flopped onto the cushions beside Maglor. “It’s raining,” he announced, in the same sort of tone one might announce at terrible calamity. 

“I did not think it was that warm,” Maglor said. 

“It turns to ice when it hits the ground. I slipped three times just going out into the courtyard.” He lifted his arm to show a bruise forming near his elbow. “I hit my knees, too.”

“Ah. Well, it will be pretty when the sun comes out tomorrow at least.” He recalled days like that at Himring, when the world seemed turned to glass, glistening under the cold winter sun. It was beautiful but treacherous, like so much else in the world. “Here.” He held out the flute. “Play a song to cheer us both up.”

“Do you need cheering?” Estel sat up to take the flute. He blew into it experimentally, and then set his fingers to the holes and played a short and quick little tune. It sounded just as it should have, to Maglor’s simultaneous gratification and relief. It had been so long since he’d made one that he’d feared that he’d forgotten just enough to ruin the sound of it. “That sounds wonderful!” exclaimed Estel when he was done. He played another few notes, going up and down the scale. Then he tried to hand it back, but Maglor shook his head.

“Keep it!” he said. 

“Thank you!” Estel settled back on his cushions and played another song, this one still cheerful but not as quick. The music floated up and echoed back from the rafters. Maglor threw another log onto the fire, and Tári stretched and yawned before nuzzling her head against his chin. Outside the rain continued to fall and freeze, but in the Hall it was very warm. He drowsed, letting Estel’s music weave in through his hazy thoughts. He did not really need cheering, he realized in that distant, half-asleep sort of way where things not fully felt or understood in waking came together to make sense. Even before Estel had come in with his childish gloom about the rain he had been—perhaps not happy, but certainly content. Content in the way he had once thought himself content, when he had been wandering alone and aimless. It had been a pleasant day, and the night before had been peaceful, without any ghosts or dark memories to come trouble him. 

When he roused himself again Elrond and Gilraen had joined them, Gilraen sitting by Estel and Elrond settling by Maglor. Tári purred when Elrond reached up to scratch her behind the ears. “Is all well?” he asked quietly. 

“Yes,” Maglor said, and was rewarded with a warm and bright smile from Elrond. 

It didn’t last, of course. That night dark dreams plagued him, and he spent most of the next day trying to outrun them and not quite succeeding. Somehow it was both easier and harder to bear, knowing that bright and pleasant days were possible. He avoided the Hall of Fire, which was full of people that day, and retreated to the library instead. Tári trotted in at his heels, and when he picked a book at random she curled up on his lap, purring contentedly. 

The book was a collection of letters copied from those rescued from Himring sometime after the start of the Second Age. He was confronted with his own words, reports of the status of the Gap and little bits of gossip or something interesting he had seen or heard added at the end. He’d always tried to add such things to his letters to Maedhros, knowing there was little at Himring to make anyone smile—though Maedhros had in his turn offered up domestic tidbits of his own. Those letters were not in this collection; they had burned in the Bragollach. Among Maglor’s letters were those from Himlad and Thargelion, and a very occasional one from farther south when Amrod or Amras could be bothered. More frequent were letters from Mithrim, and the Falas, and Nargothrond…

Maglor closed the book, but he could not take it back to the shelf with Tári still sitting on his lap. Instead he just set it on the windowsill and stared out through the iced-over glass at the glistening and distorted image of the valley before him. His own words had sounded like those of a stranger. And his brothers—he could not bear to see how cheerful those letters were, at the start of everything. Even after Alqualondë and Losgar, after their father’s death and after the Doom had been laid over them, still they had persisted in believing themselves able to rise to the challenge. Or at least, Maglor thought sourly, they had chosen not to think about it. That had been what he had done. He had turned his thoughts instead to the delight of the lands given into his keeping, into the wide open skies and the lush fields of Ard Galen, and the way his voice echoed over the hills when he sang, so they seemed to sing back to him. 

How foolish they had been. How hopeful. Maglor passed a hand over his face and tried to reconcile the writers of those letters with what they had later become. Celegorm a half-feral, wild thing with dark eyes and bared teeth, after word reached them of Huan’s death. Curufin as brittle as poorly worked iron in his forge, tongue sharper than the knives he made. Caranthir all glowering temper with none of the exuberant cheerfulness that had once balanced it. Ambarussa, slipping as silently among the rest of them as they did in the woods of Ossiriand. Maedhros, hardening a little more every day until there was nothing but survival and the Oath. And himself—clinging more and more desperately to his music, the one bright spot he’d had in a swiftly-darkening world. 

It was written in some of the books in Elrond’s library that Maglor had long ago faded away, reduced to nothing more than a mournful voice on the sea breeze. He was contemplating whether that might have been better than what came after when Gilraen came into the library. She paused upon seeing him, and then came over, smiling as she leaned down to pet Tári. He tried to summon a smile for her in return, but fell short. Her own smile, he saw, was shaky, and her eyes were slightly reddened as though she had been weeping. “It is not a good day for either of us, it seems,” she said. 

“Are you well, Lady Gilraen?” he asked. 

“My husband died on this day,” she said. “It is always hard.”

“I am sorry. Can you tell me of him?” It did not help him to speak of his brothers, or his father, but he knew that it helped others. 

Gilraen sat in the chair facing him, hands clasped in her lap. “His name was Arathorn,” she said at last, speaking quietly. “He was—he was much older than I, and I was very young when we wed.” Her gaze strayed out of the window, where the sun passed in and out of the clouds, making the ice on the window gleam and glitter. “But we were very happy for those few years. Both of my parents foresaw that he would not be long-lived, but I did not expect it to happen so soon. He was slain by orcs—there were more of them than reported, and moving faster, and the weather was warmer than usual and foggy. No one escaped the rout unscathed, even the Sons of Elrond. Elrohir still bears a scar above his eye from it.”

Unbidden, the memory of orcs rising out of the river mist and reeds by the Anduin came into Maglor’s mind, and he had to suppress a shudder. “Tell me of the happy years,” he said instead. “And of your people. I know so little of the Dúnedain.” Gilraen smiled at him, and obliged, and by the time Estel came seeking Gilraen at teatime they were both in a more cheerful mood. 

When Gilraen rose to leave the library she leaned down to press a kiss to Maglor’s cheek, whispering, “Thank you.”

Maglor had no appetite for either food or more company, so he remained where he was, gazing out of the window, thinking of Elros, and of grief, and joy, and of the passage of time. When Tári finally decided she had had enough of napping and departed to roam the halls, Maglor retreated to his own room, where for the first time he picked up a pen and found words ready in his mind—a short and rough draft, but with something in it that he could tease out, slowly, here and there. It had rhythm and it had rhyme and it might even have had the first inklings of a melody, hovering in the back of his mind just out of reach. It was such a strange feeling, this first step towards writing a new song, both strange and as familiar as breathing, that it felt almost heady, like he might get drunk on it if he wasn’t careful. 

That night he dreamed again of the Eye, of its roving, searching gaze, hunting for the enemies that yet eluded it. In the dream he was frozen in place, shivering in the dark, hard stone beneath him and at his back, cold as ice, an awful counterpoint to the blistering heat of the Eye’s gaze when it finally settled on him, pupil dilating. A voice like the roar of distant flame spoke in the terrible Black Speech that Maglor did not understand. 

He woke with a start, heart in his throat. It was dark in the room save the soft glow of embers on the hearth. Nothing lurked in the shadows. Tári curled up on the pillow by him, all soft warmth and quiet breathing. Rain beat a soft rhythm on the windows. Maglor slipped out of bed, pulling on a thick robe as he crossed the room to open a window. The air that streamed in was frigid, but he held out his hands anyway to feel the rain on his palms. The desire lasted only a few seconds, but when he went to close the window he paused. On the breeze there was something…the sound of the rain on the river. And a strain of Music. He closed his eyes and breathed in, smelling the cold and the rain, and hearing again that melody that he’d been missing like a limb. It was faint, but it was there, and this time it did not fade away after only a few tantalizing moments.

Finally, he closed the windows, and went to throw wood on the fire. It hissed a little, the wood damp where he’d touched it, and he knelt by the hearth to look at the raindrops on his skin, clinging like tiny pebbles or bits of glass shining in the firelight. As he slowly warmed, the rain passed away outside and the clouds parted; moonlight silvered the world, and the stars blazed like bright points of white flame. Maglor looked out of the wide window at the sky, and then looked at the harp that still sat there, silent and patient. 

He went to it, running his fingers over the smooth wood of the frame, and then he sat down at it and put his fingers to the strings, moving them carefully in the motions of the musical scale without actually playing a note. Then, hands shaking a little, he plucked a single string. The note was sweet and clear, and faded away into the silence of the room only slowly. Then he went over the scales again, slowly, playing them properly this time. He did it twice to get his hands used to the movements again, to the feeling of harp strings under his fingertips, and the frame resting against his shoulder. It was not as strange as he had thought it would be. And in the quiet of his own room with no audience but the stars and a sleepy cat, there was no fear in it. His fingers slipped a little and the notes jangled, but it didn’t matter. 

Then he took a deep breath, and began to play a song often performed in the Hall of Fire, or sung under the clear summer skies in the deepest hours of the night. It was not one he had ever sung before; he had never dared to call upon any of the Valar during his years of solitude. Now, though…perhaps she would not mind. 

O Elbereth! Gilthoniel!
We still remember, we who dwell
In this far land beneath the trees,
Thy starlight on the Western Seas.