Clear Pebbles of the Rain by StarSpray

Five

When Maglor descended from the hilltop with Elladan, Arwen thought that he seemed somehow resigned, though still unhappy. He had a habit of ducking his head, as though attempting to hide behind a curtain of hair, forgetting that it was now too short. It was only long enough to curl gently about his ears, and there were threads of white at his temples—another mark of his long suffering that he would bear the rest of his days, alongside the scars. 

They remained at Cerin Amroth until night fell, and the stars came out. Maglor gazed up at them as though seeing them for the first time, or as though he had forgotten what they looked like. He had a look of longing on his face that grieved Arwen, though she did not know what it was he longed for—only that it seemed to be something he thought out of his reach. Elladan picked up his flute again, and Elrohir sang a hymn to Elbereth that was often sung in Imladris. 

Night brought a chill, which Maglor felt more than they did. When Arwen saw him shiver she decided it was time to return home. As Elrohir and Elladan picked up the blanket and the hamper, and argued cheerfully over the last bit of pastry left, Arwen slipped her arm through Maglor’s, and smiled at him when he looked down at her. He was very tall, though it was sometimes a surprise to realize she had to look up to speak to him—he held himself as though he wished to go unnoticed, wished to shrink, with his shoulders hunched and his eyes often downcast. 

He also, Arwen noticed as they began the walk back to Caras Galadhon, seemed to see things that others could not. Not always, but she watched him glanced toward the deeper shadows under the trees and then quickly away, badly-disguised pain passing over his face. He had been left alone in the dark for so long, Arwen thought as the night deepened around them. Was it any wonder that the shadows held phantoms and fear? She hoped at least that he knew them for what they were, even if he could not so easily dismiss them.

By the time they returned home Maglor was showing signs of fatigue. Arwen parted with him and her brothers near his room, kissing his cheek and not missing the look of surprise on his face at it before she turned away. Always there was surprise whenever anyone showed the slightest kindness—let alone affection. He never seemed as though he believed it to be genuine. 

Arwen went to Galadriel, finding her sitting outside with Celeborn, who sat on the floor with his head resting against Galadriel’s knee. “How was it?” Galadriel asked, smiling up at Arwen as she approached. 

“Cerin Amroth was lovely, and the day was very fine,” Arwen said. “But I do not know what else to do for Maglor. He is growing stronger in body, but not in spirit.”

“Has he been given a harp?” Celeborn asked as Arwen sat down beside Galadriel. “Or some other instrument? He cannot sing, but surely he can play.”

“Yes,” Arwen said, “but he has not touched it. Eleryn tells me that he moved it behind a chest in his room, out of sight.”

Galadriel frowned. “I would not have expected that,” she said. “Music has always been such a large part of who he is. My first memory of him is his singing.” She shook her head, strands of hair escaping her braids to brush over her cheeks. “I do not know what fell enchantments Sauron used to steal his voice, but I cannot think of a worse injury that he could have inflicted.” Celeborn reached up to take her hand. 

“Is there truly nothing you can do for him?” Arwen asked. 

“I do not think so. He does not trust me.” Galadriel smiled briefly, rueful and sad. “The past weighs heavily on him—and even before the Darkening, and the Oath, and our long Exile, we were not close. I disliked Fëanor and was not shy in saying so, and so could not be friends with any of his sons.”

“You were not wrong,” Celeborn said, “in your judgment of Fëanor.”

“Perhaps not. But had I been less prideful and more circumspect, perhaps I might have been better friends with my cousins, and perhaps Maglor would not be so shocked now to find forgiveness rather than condemnation.”

“He seems doubtful of finding any welcome in Imladris,” Arwen said. He had listened to their stories of the valley all the afternoon with a longing and a sadness that did not suggest a hope at any joy in his reunion with Elrond. “Did he and my father part badly?” Elrond very rarely spoke of his past—of his childhood in Sirion or his years with Maglor—and though he never refused to answer a question, Arwen had learned early to see the grief that such questions awoke in him, and that was not worth any idle curiosity, so she had ceased to ask. 

“If they did, Elrond has never spoken of it,” Celeborn said. “At least not to us. He and Elros both spent many months searching for him until Elros could no longer be spared from the Edain, or Elrond from the building efforts in Lindon.”

“After the Edain departed for Númenor, and Lindon was stable, Elrond went searching again, as often as he thought that he could be spared,” Galadriel said. “Celebrimbor, too, went looking—but he was already planning for Eregion, and it was his hope that Maglor would hear of it and come to him. Of course, he never did.” 

“I wonder, though, how it is that the Enemy came to have him,” Celeborn murmured. “Did he come up the Anduin on his own, or did the Necromancer’s reach stretch that far?”

“He was taken near the Gladden Fields,” Galadriel said. “I looked into his mind as he slept, after Elladan and Elrohir brought him here. I do not think it was more than a whim that brought him north—a desire to follow the river and see where it led.” A look pasted between Celeborn and Galadriel, with a meaning Arwen could not parse. She knew, of course, what had befallen Isildur at the Gladden Fields, though she did not know why the Necromancer would take an interest so long afterward. In the end, though, the whys and hows didn’t matter. He was gone, and Maglor was freed, even if he did not believe himself to be so. 

“There is still the rest of winter before the mountains open,” Arwen said. “What are we to do for him in the meantime?”

“What we have been doing,” Galadriel said. “I do not think he will accept more.”

Arwen left her grandparents soon after. It was her habit in the evenings to visit the other rescued prisoners from Dol Guldur. There were very few of them, but the Woodmen in particular were glad of her company, for she knew more of the ways of Men than did the Galadhrim, and they could speak to her more easily. She sang for them, and when she went among them she wore the elessar stone that her mother had given her, so that it might lend extra potency to the teas she brewed of athelas, and to the steam that curled through the rooms when she cast the leaves into wide-mouthed bowls of boiling water. Their bodies were easy to tend and to mend, but their spirits had been oppressed by the Black Breath, and even in Lórien under Galadriel’s power and care they were slow to recover. Arwen often wished that she knew less than she did of the Nazgûl and their evil ways, but at least it allowed her to bring them a measure of comfort, and to speed their healing. 

As she returned to her own rooms, she turned the elessar over in her fingers, watching the starlight sparkle on it. It was Celebrimbor’s work, and so she had been hesitant to show it to Maglor, knowing how deep his grief ran. But perhaps it would be a comfort to him to see it—and perhaps its power would help him, if he would allow such a thing.

She found him the next morning after breakfast. He sat curled up like a cat in a patch of sunshine on the balcony, leaning over the arm of his seat to watch the goings on below. Overhead the sky was blue, but with clouds moving in from the north—the rain that had dogged Elladan and Elrohir on their return journey would soon pass over Lórien, though it would be a gentler thing there. “Good morning,” she said, sitting by him as he looked up at her. “Did you sleep well?” There were dark circles under his eyes, and his shrug in reply to her question suggested that he had not. “I have something I would like to show you.” He sat up, and Arwen thought that his curiosity was a good sign: the way he kept reaching out into the world rather than turning from it. 

“Celebrimbor made this,” she said, taking out the elessar. It shone in the sunlight, deep emerald green set in gleaming silver. “He made it for my grandmother, and when my mother married, it passed to her. She gave it to me before she set sail into the West. Its power is for healing.” 

Maglor took it, turning it over in his hands much as Arwen had done the night before. His fingers were long and slender—a harper’s fingers, though he had lost the callouses, and bore other small and faint scars from ancient blades. He paused at the back of the brooch, finding the small maker’s mark etched into the silver, almost invisible among the detail of the eagle’s feathers—a very tiny star, the symbol of Fëanor’s House. Arwen could not read the look on his face, and his mind remained shuttered. “Many things that Celebrimbor made were for such a purpose,” she said. “All minds were turned to rebuilding and healing, after the War of Wrath.” And for a time it had seemed that they would be permitted to do so unchallenged—until Sauron had reemerged. And again after the Last Alliance, all had seemed bright and fair—until Angmar, Minas Morgul, and at last Necromancer. Now the minds of those who only wished to live in peace had to be turned to war, and defense, and defiance against the growing Shadow, for there could be no doubt that Sauron had fled only to regroup, and would return soon and stronger. The foundations of Barad-Dûr had been laid bare, but never destroyed. Still, though—spring came after winter, and snow after fire, and dawn after darkest night. Hope remained, even amidst the grief. 

“I thought perhaps,” she said, “it might be of help to you.”

But Maglor shook his head. He handed it back to her and turned to gaze out into the treetops. Arwen did not know if he did not think it could help, or if he just did not want to try. Perhaps knowing it was Celebrimbor’s made it too painful to consider. 

“Very well,” she said quietly, and slipped the elessar back into her pocket. Then she reached out again to take Maglor’s hand, purposely grasping the one with the Silmaril’s scars. “I never met Celebrimbor,” she said, “but I think that he would be grieved to see you suffer so, and he would want you to find healing.”

Maglor offered a small, sad smile—there and gone in the blink of an eye—before he kissed her fingers and released her hand, and left the balcony. Arwen watched him go, thinking of her mother’s last days in Imladris, and sighed.