Go On Aching Still by StarSpray

One

I wonder if when Years have piled —
Some Thousands — on the Harm —
That hurt them early — such a lapse
Could give them any Balm — 

Or would they go on aching still
Through Centuries of Nerve —
Enlightened to a larger Pain —
In Contrast with the Love — 

- “I measure every grief I meet” by Emily Dickinson

- - 

The house that Fëanor had built in Tirion had stood empty since the Noldor’s departure, long long ago now. The garden walls were slowly falling, covered with mosses and lichens. The garden was overgrown and wild, a tangle of roses and wisteria and a small forest of crab apple trees. Cracks ran through the flagstones of the courtyards, out of which grass and small purple flowers grew. The house itself was also slowly falling victim to the passage of time. Glass windows had swelled and broken; doors had warped and stuck now when one attempted to open them. Animals came and went as they would, and birds nested in the eaves. 

Nerdanel came there seldom. It held too many memories, all gold and silver and joyful—until they weren’t. She had left it before Fëanor had been exiled to Formenos, and still she dwelt near her parents outside of the city, where it was quiet. She spent much of her time in Tirion anyway, visiting friends and kin, or working on commissions, but she usually avoided this part of the city—and especially this house.

Now she came to the house in the evening, as the stars were coming out. When last she had come for palantíri she had been accompanied by Finrod and his mother, and by Anairë, who helped her carry the palantíri down to Alqualondë and the ships waiting there, and thence to Númenor, where the folk of Andúnië needed them more than she did. Seven had survived the downfall, and now were scattered across Middle-earth. Her purpose now was similar: to fetch the remaining palantíri, though not to give them away. The greatest of them, the largest, she had long ago taken to Avallónë, so that those who wished might use it to look back on the lands they had loved, and the ones they missed who still dwelt upon the hither shores. But the first palantíri that Fëanor had made, long ago when their sons had been young and no one in Valinor had known care or fear, remained locked away in their house. He had made them with each of his sons in mind, and so they were mostly useless these days, almost impossible to be turned to other uses. She had not dared to use them after her sons had gone away, fearing what she would see, and afterward, when she’d heard the tales, she had known herself to right to fear. 

Later, she had come back to pick up a palantír to search for Maglor, her last living child, her golden-tongued boy, but all that the stones had ever shown her was mist upon the shore, or else only a fleeting glimpse of a lonely figure wandering beside the waves, his back to her, dark hair blowing in the wind along with his cloak tattered and torn. Soon she had stopped coming back, stopped looking. Maglor did not want to be found, it seemed, even by her. 

Lately, though, she had been waking from troubled dreams, of darkness and cold, and fear for him filled her heart though she did not know why it should. So she made her way quickly across the quiet courtyard and into the house, and down a flight of dusty steps to a storeroom, filled haphazardly with boxes and chests. By lucky chance the chest containing the palantíri she sought was right by the door. Nerdanel opened it to see nine of them peering back at her out of their bed of pale blue velvet, before she shut it again and hauled it up the stairs. The thunk and thud of the chest on each step was loud in the quiet, and the dust clouds that puffed up around it made her stop to sneeze twice. She dragged it to the gate and hefted it into the cart she had brought for the purpose. When she looked into the palantír she did not want to be in that house. The memories hanging over it with the dust and the overgrown vines were too heavy. 

Hours later, in the comfort of her own home, Nerdanel sat cross-legged on the floor and opened the chest again. Fëanor had once intended to have one stone specifically for each son, and one for himself and one for her. In practice they had all been tossed into the chest and no one had cared who took which one—when they were remembered to be taken at all. Fëanor liked to be able to speak to his sons whenever he wished, but more often than not it was he or Nerdanel using the stones just to see where they had gone. Most often it was Maglor they looked for; he had inherited both his parents’ restless feet, and was always striking off by himself. Nerdanel had despaired of him as a model more than once, which had only made him laugh and kiss her on the cheek before flitting away like a butterfly to whatever had distracted him. Yet when he worked at his own crafts, at writing music or at carving wood or at playing one of his many instruments, he would be absorbed for hours, sitting unmoving except for his hands. 

And he had never once taken one of the palantíri, no matter how often his father reminded him or scolded him for forgetting. Even then he had known how to shroud himself in enchantments that even his father couldn’t pierce, if he did not want to be found. 

Nerdanel sighed, and picked up an orb from the middle. It was heavy in her hands, though not large. Its surface was mostly smooth, but with time-softened ridges from the molds that Fëanor had used. Nerdanel ran her fingers along one, and turned her thoughts to her son, hoping for a glimpse of more than a misty shore, or of the ragged hem of his cloak. She wished to see his face, wished to see that he was somewhere safe and warm and perhaps not still alone after so long. But even a glimpse of him lonely but whole upon the shore would be a relief, and enough to banish the dreams that had troubled her, knowing them for just dreams and nothing more. 

The palantír pulled her gaze down into its depths, colors and lights swirling for a moment as stars in the sky of a deep and moonless night, before the scene formed, slowly at first and then more swiftly, clarifying so that it was almost as though she looked through a window and could reach through it to touch what was before her. 

He was underground, and the rough stone walls and floor, lit by flickering torches, were stained with blood old and new. It pooled on the ground beneath the seat he was chained to, dripping from his fingertips and down his arms and his chest. His head hung back, his chest heaved; in the center of it a livid and new burn stared out, a brand of a red and lidless eye. As Nerdanel watched in horror a dark-robed figure stepped forward to reach for him, raising his head, ghostly fingers tangling in his matted hair. Maglor’s eyes were glazed and unfocused, and she saw his bitten and chapped lips form the word ammë. 

Then his gaze sharpened and he yanked himself from his tormentor’s grasp. Nerdanel saw fury and hopeless defiance in his face when he lifted it again, mouth opening to sing or to scream—or both—and the image shook before her—until the hand clamped around Maglor’s throat, choking him into silence. All the fight left him in one choked gasp as he slumped in the chair, his dark and matted hair falling forward to cover his eyes, but not before Nerdanel saw the despairing resignation in them. 

Nerdanel dropped the palantír with a cry. As it rolled away across the room she stumbled to her feet and fled the house, falling to her knees outside under the stars. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see through the tears that burned her eyes as they fell into the grass. As she wept she did not hear any approaching footsteps, but then arms wrapped around her, and other tears fell like rain on her hair. Nerdanel leaned into Nienna’s embrace, shuddering and shaking until she had cried all of the tears that were within her. 

“Who is it?” she whispered when she could speak again. “Tell me, who is it that has him? What is happening to him?”

“He has many names,” said Nienna in a voice like the sigh of soft rain falling on spring leaves. “Of late he is called the Necromancer. Those who know him for who he truly is name him Sauron.” Nerdanel shuddered. She knew that name all too well. She knew what Finrod had endured at his hand, and what had become of him in the end. It had been said that Sauron had been defeated—long ago, now. He had been cut down in battle by Gil-galad and the Númenórean King Elendil. Those who had brought the tale had brought hope that he was defeated forever.

But it was not so.

“Do not despair,” Nienna said. “There are those who yet stand against him.”

“He has my son,” Nerdanel whispered, and covered her face with her hands. Her eyes burned, but she had no more tears. “He has my son.”

“Macalaurë is strong,” Nienna said, her hand on Nerdanel’s hair, stroking the way that Nerdanel had once stroked her children’s, when they had been small and in need of comfort. “He is stronger than even he knows, for he is your son. Have hope, Nerdanel.” She raised Nerdanel’s face and kissed her forehead, a comfort and a benediction, before she withdrew into the night, leaving Nerdanel alone as fireflies winked at her from the flowerbeds, and an owl hooted in a nearby tree to be answered by one some miles away. 

The night was warm, but Nerdanel felt cold. She got to her feet, ignoring the bruises on her knees, and returned to her house. Once the kettle was on she sat at the table, scattered with sketches and half-finished notes, and stared unseeing into the flames. Her heart ached, and she did not know if she regretted looking into the palantír. Maglor was not the first of her sons to face torment, but Nerdanel had not known of Maedhros until after, until Finrod had come to tell her the truth of all that had happened as he knew it, unvarnished by song or rumor. It had been hard to hear, in plain speech, but it was worse to see, and to know that Maglor was facing such horrors in that very moment, while she sat helpless in her kitchen, unable to do anything but wait for water to boil for her own paltry comfort. 

After a time she got up to wash her face, and to find the palantír that had rolled away to return it to its chest. She locked it and pushed it into a corner where she would not have to look at it, and by that time the kettle was singing. As she poured it into the teapot her hands shook, and she spilled a little over the table. It soaked into a few papers before she could snatch them away, and it was as she mopped up the mess, cursing to herself, that the kitchen door opened. 

Nerdanel looked up and dropped the papers, scattering them across the floor. Maedhros stood in the doorway, barefoot and hair unbound, gleaming like copper in the firelight. His robes were the undyed garments of the Returned—and the right sleeve fell past where his hand should have been. “Ammë,” he said, uncertain and hesitant as he had never been before. 

It was the second time that day one of her sons had called her name, but at least this one she could answer. “Maitimo,” she breathed. Her papers scattered even more as she crossed the room to pull him inside and wrap her arms around him. His head dropped to her shoulder and his arms came around her to hold on tightly. “Oh, my son, you’re home.”