Beating the Bounds by Kenaz

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North

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An enormous painting hung in Fingolfin’s solar, a magnificent representation in oils of Finwë’s halls in Tirion, of Finwë mounting the great stone steps. Valacirca glittered in the sky above the tallest turret, while the majestic peaks of the Pelóri rose in the background, dramatically lit by a stream of gold and silver light. Erestor regarded it often as he worked, his mouth curling with a hint of self-satisfaction: a glorious depiction, of course, but a false one. The seven stars were not visible from that vantage point; the artist had eliminated some of the lesser peaks in the mountain range and moved the icy stream to the north of the Calacirya, giving it unnatural prominence. Masterful though it was, it captured neither distance nor scale, a purely symbolic piece. This was why Erestor preferred cartography: maps captured the truth of a place, not the poetic ideal.

Hours had passed since he and his father had met with Fingolfin to review their latest surveys. He had requested a greater degree of detail in some areas and they had divided the work between them. His father had afterward departed, but Erestor remained. He preferred the light in Fingolfin’s halls, he argued, and Fingolfin had offered them a space to work because he enjoyed watching their maps take shape, frequently offering insights as he came and went. He did not mention the wine and cured meats and sweets that appeared with regularity as he labored, for the Fingolfin was not chary with his hospitality. His father had eyed him skeptically. “If I stay, I can begin the corrections straight away,” Erestor contended. “By the time we’re home, I will have forgotten half of what he’s asked for!”

“If you’ll forget so much between here and home,” his father had chided, “I ought to rethink your apprenticeship.”

But he wouldn’t, truly. In the end, he would leave Erestor to work, as he always did, on the trestle table in Fingolfin’s solar, with one eye on the painting, Laurelin’s light refracting through the leaded windows, and the occasional breeze rustling his papers. He had arrayed his rules and calipers and pens around him, each in its particular place so he could find it without looking up.

He filled in fingers of water, checking and rechecking his notes and his father’s measurements, until he had rendered every lazily-flowing bend, every winding branch. He had settled into the shading of the foreground hills when the swift descent of darkness brought up his head.

“Still working?” the source of sudden shadow inquired.

Laurelin’s rays framed Fingon in a brilliant aureole, only the glint of eyes and teeth standing out from the umbra. “What did my father have for you this time?” He leaned across the table, returning the radiance to the room, his hair spilling across the paper like ink, smudging the still-wet edges of Erestor’s most recent pen strokes. None but Fingon would he forgive for blemishing his work with such casual carelessness. Fingon he would forgive anything: this was the true reason he lingered here, bending his back at a long, flat table rather than working in comfort at a drafting board made to his specifications in his own perfectly serviceable studio.

“A minor river in Oromë’s forest and it’s lesser tributaries.” Fingon nodded with mock seriousness. “Very important.”

“It is important,” Erestor argued, edging the paper away from Fingon’s hair. “This river runs into the Outer Sea. It’s an estuary.”

“Hmmmm.” Fingon crossed his arms and cocked his head, still regarding the map upside-down. “I suppose that’s why you’ve drawn a smiling fish leaping out of the water. And a very happy egret.” He circled around the table and grasped Erestor’s shoulders from behind, giving him an experimental shake. “Your back is stiff. A ride would loosen you right up. Laurelin’s light will fade soon, and you’ve already explained to me at length that Telperion’s light is no good for drafting.”

Erestor’s heart tripped in his chest. “But your father —”

“ —doesn’t expect these now .”

Well, Erestor considered, that was true enough. “Let me tidy up, then.” He rose to gather his things from the table. “I could — Ah! —” He knocked his knee on the stretcher beam — “meet you —”

“ —Leave it, Restor!” Fingon’s words were laced with laughter Erestor knew were only mildly aimed at his expense. He laughed in the easy way of a first-born son of a great house whose way lay spread before him without a single obstacle to bar his happy passage. Nothing hampered Fingon in pursuit of his desires; nothing dared. And so Erestor left it, against his better judgment. He did take his compass; it had proven useful more than once in the course of following Fingon’s unscheduled adventures.

“How’s your knee?” Fingon asked with a chuckle, his arm draped around Erestor’s neck as they crossed the courtyard. “You gave it quite a thump.”

Erestor rolled his eyes at his own gracelessness. “Bruised, I imagine.” The heat of Fingon’s arm filtered through the sleeve of his shirt to warm his neck. “Your concern is noted.”

“I’m glad you’re coming.” Fingon’s voice was mellow now, and no longer teasing. “I enjoy your company. Especially when you’re not so busy looking at the ground and jotting notes, or squinting through your compass sights. I enjoy seeing you look up.”

Erestor’s cheeks flushed. “A cartographer must be observant of details to succeed in his work.”

“Spend so much time on the details and you’ll miss the greater picture,” Fingon purred in warning, flexing his arm and drawing Erestor even closer, his breath tickling Erestor’s ear. “We have much to see in this world, Restor.”

Erestor had only a fleeting moment to enjoy the relaxed familiarity.

“Going out, Findekáno?”

Erestor felt Fingon flinch, heard him utter an imprecation under his breath. They stopped and turned in tandem, Fingon’s grip slackening until his arm slipped from Erestor’s shoulder, taking the warmth with it. Fingolfin, apparently returning to the family wing when he spotted them, crossed the courtyard with purposeful strides. Erestor noticed how similar Fingon’s gait was to his father’s, long-legged and cavalier, yet with his body angled forward, as if every footfall was prelude to a charge. His own father’s movements were measured, quite literally; his steps were made for the marking off of yards and ells and feet. After all, a precise map was a good map.

“Yes, Atar. Unless you require me?” Fingon offered a disarming smile, but his body, still close to Erestor’s gave off a hum of irritation.

“And you’re dragging off Eressetor with you.”

Erestor stepped forward, thinking how formal his father-name sounded in Fingolfin’s voice, and offered a respectful nod. “I’ve almost finished with the details you’ve asked for, my lord,” he offered, wishing he hadn’t been so quick to leave his work behind in disarray. Fingon did that to him, made him careless, though Fingon himself could never be described as careless. His father would have a fit if he knew. “And you’re welcome to see for yourself: I’m afraid I’ve left a bit of a mess.”

“Your father’s work has always stood me in good stead,” Fingolfin tipped his head in acknowledgement. “He has trained you up well. And as you’ve left it out, I do think I will have a look, thank you.” Erestor made a bow, but Fingolfin had already turned toward his son. “How long will you be gone?”

Fingon smiled easily. “You needn’t hold dinner for me, if that’s your concern. I can forage in the kitchens on my own, if need be.”

His father did not look quite so easy. Erestor feigned ignorance of the fraught interplay between them, looking casually away. “Do you have a destination in mind?”

Fingon shrugged. “Oh, wherever we have a mind,” he offered casually, but his voice sounded smaller in his throat than it had a moment before. “Angaráto and Aikanáro may be about, somewhere.”

“Angaráto and Aikanáro, is it?”

The silence lasted a beat too long before Fingon recovered. “Perhaps we can set a race from the southern foothills up to the high ridge.” He deflected toward Erestor with a grin. “Since Erestor has drawn up all the paths, I have the advantage.”

Fingolfin’s eyes narrowed slightly, as if searching for something in his son’s face, but then his expression regained its neutrality. “Don’t defraud your cousins on an unfair wager. It isn’t sporting, and you’ll run out of friends.” With a final, mild shake of his head, he returned to his original course.

“I only make a small bets!” Fingon called in the direction of Fingolfin’s retreating back, grinning when Fingolfin dismissed him with an irritable wave.

As they tacked up the horses, Erestor’s curiosity got the best of him. “Your father had more than a passing interest in our ride. I felt like a child caught with my hand in the sweets. What does he imagine we’ll get up to?”

A cloud passed over Fingon’s face for a brief instant before it resolved back into perfection. “He would prefer I spend less time with my Fëanorian cousins.”

“Then he ought to worry about Irissë and her wild rides with Tyelkormo and Curufinwë.”

“ Everything about Irissë worries my father,” Fingolfin chuckled out of the side of his mouth. “The list neither begins nor ends with Turko and Curvo.” In spite of his jesting tone, he appeared too invested in the tightening of his billet straps and in snapping his stirrup leathers when he pulled down his irons. “Yet he is, shall we say, even less sanguine about my friendship with Maitimo.”

Maitimo , not Russo, or even Nelyo.

He had heard the rumors, of course, but being smitten, he had pushed them aside. Gossip always surrounded the Finwëans; that was the cost of royal blood, was it not? The perpetual speculations of others seemed a small price to pay for wealth, prestige, power, and the favor of the Valar. Perhaps the envious chose to willfully misinterpret a friendship out of spite. Given the disharmony between Fingolfin and Fëanor, one naturally assumed Fingolfin might look askance at a close friendship between his brother’s son and his own. Erestor’s hope had powered this conviction, and Fingon had belied it in a word.

 

* * *

 

When they left Tirion, Fingon led them not south toward the foothills, but north toward the fields and forests frequented by Fëanor’s sons.

“I decided we could use a swift gallop more than a steep climb.” Fingon answered the question Erestor had not asked, and kept his eyes forward on his path.

“Did you make plans to meet him without your father knowing?”

Fingon pulled up his horse and swiveled in the saddle. The furrow of his brows and the downward tug at the corners of his mouth gave his face a youthful and uncertain aspect, and Erestor was ashamed for having asked. And yet the specter of suspicion lingered.

“Am I your foil, Findekáno?”

“No!” He looked away for a moment. When he looked back, his anger had been schooled into something more intimate: reproachfulness. “We have hatched many schemes together, you and I, and always you have been party to their planning. Have I even once played you false?”

It occurred to Erestor that Fingon was unaccustomed to doubt in any form, but particularly the doubt of others turned on him. “No, you have never played me false. So tell me, then: what is it with you and Nelyafinwë?

Fingon looked at him, but did not answer.

“You count me among your close companions —”

“ —my closest save my kin, and  —”

“Stop.” Erestor forestalled him with an upraised hand. “If I am closer to you than any but your kin, why does so much of you remain a mystery to me? Tell me. Is it true what the gossips say? That you and Nelyafinwë are lovers?”

Their horses, impatient with waiting, had pulled their heads down to graze. Their low snuffles and rumination gave the only indication that time continued to pass during the long silence.

“Not… not as such, no.” The labored phrasing gave the impression of an admission. He exhaled heavily, the burden of his statement pressing the breath from his lungs, and Erestor could see his cheeks reddening just as he could feel the color receding from his own. “Maitimo and I are close blood,” he answered, his desultory shrug even less credible than his voice. “The Eldar do not take close blood to their beds.” It sounded like a recitation, something practiced.

When Erestor was young, his father had shown him their family’s heirloom: a primitive map of Cuiviénen and the inland sea scratched out on deer hide in ink made from soot and oak galls, the work of his father’s father. To the east of the Orocarni was written in the ancient cirth, Here be Monsters ; a warning that what lay beyond was unknown, and best left unexamined. His ancestor had not heeded his own warning: he tried to cross the Orocarni to see what lay beyond. Monsters, apparently; he had never returned.

Erestor knew, as his grandsire had known, that some things were best left unexplored. Yet like his grandsire, he pressed on in spite of this knowledge.

“And if blood did not constrain you?”

Fingon shot him a look as stony and forbidding as the Orocarni. “Leave it, Restor.” This time, there was no laughter in his words.

 

* * *

 

Fingon had been absolutely correct on one count: Erestor needed a swift gallop. They both did. Their mounts required little encouragement to stretch out their legs and fly over the old trails and meadows. They let the horses run themselves out, all four of them left hot and winded.

Buy the time they reached the shallow river issuing from the mountains, both their moods had much improved, and an unexpected greeting furthered the day’s new direction. Erestor recognized Galadriel’s voice before he saw her wading with her skirts tucked into her belt. He considered if he were the least bit inclined toward women, it would be Galadriel with whom he might be fruitlessly taken. The reach of his heart perpetually exceeded its grasp. Aegnor reclined on the bank beside her with his trousers rolled up, his feet dangling in the water. He lifted himself up onto his elbows and gave them a wave.

“The bream are running,” Galadriel remarked cheerfully.

“If it’s fish you’re after, Restor can show you a nice little stream in the south where they’re not only running, but smiling.”

Erestor punched him in the arm. Fingon laughed and took it.

Leaving the horses to graze, Erestor took a seat on the bank next to Aegnor while Fingon toed off his boots, rolled up his trousers and shirtsleeves, and joined Galadriel in the water. Flicking water at his cousin and grasping at fish, one might have been forgiven for thinking Fingon looked more like an errant schoolboy than a prince of the Noldor. Erestor made no attempt to hide the smile crossing his face, didn’t care if he appeared a besotted fool. This was how he loved Fingon best: tameless and without care. Even Aegnor’s inquisitive gaze couldn’t touch his contentment. Let him wonder . He tugged off his own boots, wanting the water on his own legs, as if he might thereby experience vicariously what it meant to be Fingon.

He watched the cousins with a sense of grateful fascination, and let his mind follow the stream in its broken path west and south. The day had reached the magical fulcrum at which both Laurelin and Telperion shed their beams over the land. Erestor loved this fleeting, limnal hour, and the accompanying sense of possibility. Anything might happen in this time out of time, anything at all.

 

* * *

 

“Well, look who it is. Finno and his map-maker.”

Idylls had a way of ending swiftly and unceremoniously. Such as, in a clatter of hoof beats, and with the sudden and unlooked for appearance of Celegorm, who had an uncanny way of making even the most innocuous sentence sound like an insult.

The man halted his horse a few yards away, but his wolfhound trotted toward them, stopping to sniff avidly at Erestor. The hound was a scant few hands shorter than Erestor’s mount and seemed to be sizing the two of them up, deciding which would make the better meal. Erestor held his breath. He was never entirely convinced Celegorm would call it off in a timely fashion if it took it into its mind to sink its teeth into someone’s thigh. When the hound moved on to investigate Aegnor, Erestor exhaled.

“Well met, cousins. Hello, Restor.” Maglor offered a warmer welcome, drawing up to the bank and dismounting to extend a hand first to Aegnor, then to Erestor. To Fingon and Galadriel he offered a good-natured salute. “Care to join our hunting party? Turko spotted a glorious stag. We’ve been tracking it for hours.”

Galadriel and Aegnor offered enthusiastic assent. Erestor sighed; he would have preferred to linger near the water and take his chances with the bream. He fished well enough, but was a passable hunter at best, and didn’t enjoy the task; as Celegorm had once loudly and succinctly put it, “Restor can draw every last tree in the forest, but he can’t hit a single one with a rock.” Aside from Fingon, only Maglor hadn’t laughed, and years later, Erestor was still grateful for it. Of all the Finwëans, he found Maglor most similar to Fingon in his bearing and temperament, though he he escaped into solitary contemplation more often than Fingon, and was not as swift to laugh.

“Are we all in, then?” Galadriel’s voice was merry. “Shall we be off?”

Celegorm shook his head. “Not yet. We’ve one more in our party. He stopped to take a —”

Galadriel tilted her head and arched her brow emphatically.

“ —to make water .” Celegorm concluded with mock gentility.

But over their laughter, Erestor heard the crackling of branches and the rustle of leaves, the brief snort of an approaching horse. Momentarily, the head of a great chestnut gelding broke through the brush, it’s tall rider ducking a branch as he entered the clearing. His hair was as brazen as his mount’s. By way of greeting, he said just one word.

“Káno.”

When Fingon turned, Erestor’s immediate thought was of the needle on his compass when it swung to find true north.

“You’ve three other cousins to greet, Russo,” Maglor remarked, “and Restor. Though I suppose we are all well accustomed to your lack of manners.”

Maedhros rolled his eyes at Maglor’s japing, but gave his horse a long rein. The horse, knowing what was expected of him, made a beeline for Fingon’s gelding. “Aiko, well met.” he said as he passed. “Artanis. I trust your fishing is successful?”

Maedhros’ horse, without any prompting that Erestor could see, nosed between his own horse and Fingon’s, separating them. The chestnut’s tail gave a disdainful twitch, and Erestor’s horse took another step to the side.

“Eressetor.”

Only elders and strangers called Erestor by his father-name. Elders, strangers, and Maedhros. It seemed less of a greeting than a challenge, especially when delivered by a mounted man in fine riding leathers to a man on a riverbank with his boots off and his trousers hiked up to his knees.

“Nelyafinwë,” he returned, for lack of any more potent retort.

Maedhros swung down off his horse with an athletic grace Erestor envied. He walked to the edge of the bank and stood with his arms crossing his chest, looking down at Fingon and Galadriel. No, not at Galadriel, at Fingon alone. Yet for such a commanding stance, Erestor was surprised to see genuine pleasure in his expression. He imagined Maedhros as being perpetually stern — though with Celegorm and Curufin running amok, Caranthir in a perennial sulk, and the twins underfoot, any man might possess a limited store of humor — and was taken aback to see how finely his features composed themselves when he smiled.

He watched Maedhros extend his hand to Fingon, watched Fingon take it. As Maedhros pulled Fingon from the water, he saw the way their eyes met, unblinking, and the way Maedhros’ thumb skimmed Fingon’s knuckles. Saw how their hands remained clasped for a moment once Fingon stood beside him on the shore. All the while, the river flowed onward, west and south, toward Lórien’s gardens and away. Whatever possibility he had imagined in the shifting light had waned with Telperion’s waxing.

“I don’t think I’ve much taste for venison tonight, Turko,” Maedhros announced, not looking at his brother.

“Let’s away, lads,” Celegorm huffed an irritated sigh. “Hunt’s over; Russo’s found his quarry.” The clear insinuation in his voice was met with uncomfortable laughter.

Fingon turned to Erestor, his expression somewhere between guilt and hope. “I’m going to talk with Maitimo for a bit.” He smiled with half his mouth, the other half angled in apology. “I don’t need to ask if you can find your way home. I expect you know every inch of the way.”

“I know the way,” Erestor replied, trying not to sound foolishly disappointed. “I looked up.”

Fingon winced. This made Erestor feel better about the situation. Not because he wished to cause Fingon pain, but because he didn’t want to think of Fingon as guileful. The slight contraction of his features convinced Erestor this meeting had indeed been a coincidence — a happy one for Fingon; less so for himself.

“I’ll need to pick up my drawings and tools. Should’ve done before we left.” This folly was ill- considered , he thought. I should have finished my work and gone home. Better yet, I should have gone home and done my work there like any right-thinking creature. “My father will be angry if I leave a mess behind. I don’t imagine your father would be pleased, either.”

Fingon’s eyes moved from Erestor to Maedhros and back again, a consideration of his actions, but not an alteration of his decision. “I won’t ask you to lie to my father —”

Erestor cut him off with the shake of his head. “You haven’t asked. But I will if I must. Just this once.”

To say this cost him much, and Fingon’s look of gratitude nearly gutted him. If that hadn’t done it, Aegnor’s look of pity or Celegorm’s look of amusement would have finished him off. Had he been in a less choleric frame of mind, he might have noticed Maedhros’ expression held a touch of surprised respect that hadn’t been there before.

“Come, Resto,” Galadriel prompted. “We’ll ride with you as far as we can.”

They set out in three different directions, two to the north, three to the south, and two alone together to forge their way in what direction Erestor did not know.

They rode most of the way in silence with Artanis cantering ahead in short bursts, Aegnor and Erestor following behind. As they neared the outskirts of Tirion, Aegnor reached over and settled his hand on Erestor’s shoulder.

“Best look another way, friend. What they have defies all explanation. You’ll find nothing but heartache there.”

Erestor’s fingers tightened on his reins and he moved his horse away. Such counsel elicited frustration, which fomented into anger Erestor directed at the wrong target: what would Aegnor ever know of loving someone he could not have?

 

* * *

 

His papers and instruments were as he had left them, in ordered chaos on the table. He rolled up the maps and slid them into their leather tube, wrapped up his pens and calipers, and checked the cork was tight in his ink.

“Findekáno did not return with you, Eressetor?”

Erestor dropped his tools, his hand flying to his throat. His heart continued to beat itself like a trapped bird against a window pane. He hadn’t seen Fingolfin when he entered, but the man had clearly been laying in wait. He would never know how he mustered the fortitude to look into Fingolfin’s face and speak anything other than the truth. “His horse pulled up foot-sore. He’s walking back, but my father is expecting me soon, so I came ahead alone.”

Fingolfin did not immediately release him from his appraising gaze. “An apprentice shouldn’t keep his master waiting,” he agreed solemnly, “even if his master is only his father. Especially if,” he amended. A wry smile played on his lips, but it hinted at annoyance beneath. Like his walk, his voice was similar to his son’s, but of a deeper timbre. He spoke with a more deliberate cadence than Fingon, as if judging the weight of each word in his mouth before allowing it to take shape. Fingon’s words flew more like arrows from his mouth, with unerring speed and accuracy backed by the confidence of youth.

“I examined your maps,” Fingolfin said as Erestor, thinking himself dismissed, reached the door. The words were benign enough, but Erestor’s neck burned with every second he endured Fingolfin’s scrutiny. Only the hearth lit the room, but it threw more than enough light for Fingolfin’s keen eyes to track the progression of color up Erestor’s neck. “You do good work. Precise work.”

“Thank you,” Erestor muttered, sketching an inadequate bow while a single bead of sweat escaped from his armpit.

 “But you’ve a terrible face for lying, boy,” Fingolfin added laconically as Erestor crossed the threshold.

 Erestor did not dare meet Fingolfin’s eyes; what courage he had in this matter had already expended itself. He employed every ounce of restraint he possessed to keep himself from bolting.