Cabbages and the Embarrassment of Being Maedhros by Himring

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Chapter 1

Using mostly Quenya names.
Here's the list of Maedhros' names again: Maitimo (mother name, referring to his good looks), Nelyafinwe (father name, referring to him as eldest grandson of Finwe), Russandol (epesse given by his grandfather, referring to his red hair), Maedhros, surnamed  the Tall (Sindarin, the name he acquired in Beleriand), Nelyo (nickname current in Feanor's household), Feanorion (patronymic, simply referring to him as son of Feanor).
Fingon=Findekano, Maglor=Macalaure,  Fingolfin=Nolofinwe, Turgon=Turukano, Tyelkormo=Celegorm, Carnistir=Caranthir.

 

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I couldn’t have done it without either of them, not without Findekano’s steely determination, nor without Macalaure’s profound compassion. I shouted and railed at Findekano and I wept all over Macalaure, when I couldn’t help doing those things; I tried to be rational and polite with everyone else.

‘Pick it up and try again,’ Findekano would say, reliably.

‘I understand’, said Macalaure.

That was when I was in control, more or less. I didn’t always manage to remember who I was dealing with, though. Sometimes, I’d find myself almost doubled over Findekano’s arm, heaving with dry sobs. Sometimes I’d find myself whispering bitter and hurtful things to Macalaure. They coped with that, too. I was always very much ashamed of myself, though.

Until, eventually, I realized that Findekano was so afraid for me sometimes that he could barely think, and that Macalaure’s devotion to me was more stubborn than a mule.

Perhaps that was my first step toward recovery.

Mithrim, the day before departure

Findekano is late. He was late yesterday, too. Not so long ago, I would lie in wait and bark at him: ‘Where have you been?’, whether he was late or not. Now I am careful to look up in mild surprise from the page of my book, as he enters—by now I know the first stanza of the poem by heart, but have developed such an aversion to the poet that I know I’ll never read another line of his—then put it quickly and politely aside.

As he walks in through the door, I see the same ‘Oh, Valar, what now?’ expression on his face that I’ve been seeing—since when? Was it the first time I shouted at him: ‘Why couldn’t you just do what you were being asked to do and shoot me?’ Or was it the couple of days or so when I had half convinced myself that Morgoth had succeeded in turning me into an orc and my apparent rescue was a ruse? Macalaure was much less fazed by that one than Findekano. But then I think that, since Losgar, Macalaure has seriously considered the possibility that we are, in fact, all of us orcs, just rather slow to realize our condition...

There are purple shadows under Findekano’s eyes. I was hardly in a position to be very observant at the time, but I don’t think they were there when he brought me from Angband, so it must have been I who put them there. He doesn’t seem to realize that I’ve been treating him like a raw egg for weeks—as much as you can treat anyone like a raw egg who seems to feel most reassured when you try to beat the stuffing out of him with a blunt practice sword.

Although even that hasn’t been working too well lately... Nevertheless I grab my sword from its place in the corner of the hut and, with hardly a word exchanged, we make our way to the level area out back which we’ve been using for our sparring practice. It’s a familiar routine—as long as I don’t stop to consider that it’s about to end, for today we are doing these things for the last time.

Aim to win. You’re practicing for war, remember, and now you know that war is for real and you will need all the skill and luck you can manage in every skirmish, in every battle—you don’t have the time or any reason to consider far-fetched metaphors, blades kissing or sliding alongside each other, as if it were a caress... Weapons don’t do that; they maim and kill. You need to pretend that he’s the enemy to be effective; there is no call at all to remember that the arm that wields the opposing blade so recently held you when you wept your heart out, performed intimate services for you when you were too ill and weak to take care of yourself... He might be a Balrog. All you are trying to read in his face is where he’ll strike next.

Suddenly he stumbles. The blades meet with a jarring clash, at an unplanned angle. His sword twists out of his grip and goes flying. I manage to turn my blow, but it is still too close to his head... He ducks it successfully, but loses his balance completely in doing so and hits the ground, hard. There is a moment of stunned silence; then I can hear my harsh breathing and his. He rolls and scrambles to his knees.

‘Are you hurt?’ Without thinking, I offer him my right arm to help him up, because I am still holding the sword in my left; then I realize my mistake, as I see his eyes fix on the stump where my right hand used to be before he cut it off to save me. I quickly sheathe the sword and prepare to extend my left instead, but he sets his teeth, grabs my right underarm and pulls himself to his feet. We stand like that for a moment; he doesn’t release me, but stares at me defiantly, his fingers digging into my arm.

See, I am not afraid, he seems to be saying.

Yes, my dear, you are.

So much else has been lost that the loss of the hand that worries him so much would be relatively unimportant, inconvenient nuisance though it is, were it not that it had somehow come to stand for all these other losses, in my own mind as much as everyone’s. His grip on my arm eases; it’s time to extricate myself as gently as possible before I can start thinking irrelevant nonsense about his eyelashes.

‘That was quite a fall you took. Do you want to stop?’

‘No’, he snaps and goes to retrieve his sword.

We continue for a while, but neither of us can disguise how half-hearted we are about it, although my own preoccupations are now more legitimate; I’m worrying about his bruised feelings and his bruised shoulder, which clearly pains and slows him. At first we are each waiting for the other to call it quits; then we just gradually slow to a stop by shared consent. But as soon as the sound of metal striking metal stops, the lack of words to bridge the gap becomes palpable. It weighs on us.

Slowly he sheathes his sword and picks up his cloak, which he had slung across the fence for the duration. Slowly we walk back round to the entrance of the hut. There is no obvious reason why he should go back inside, so he doesn’t.

‘I will see you tomorrow’, he says, ‘before you leave.’

‘Yes.’

‘I will see you then.’

‘Yes.’

He turns and walks away. I lean against the wall of the hut and count, my breaths and his steps. One, two, three... When I’ve reached ten, I close my eyes.

Cousin, who did you come seeking on Thangorodrim and why? You must have thought that if you were only brave and steadfast and your heart sufficiently pure, I would turn back into your cousin Nelyo for you and somehow make things be all right again. You must have been truly desperate to hope for that, for hadn’t I shown clearly enough that I was neither as wise nor as strong as you needed me to be? If I hadn’t already failed in all I tried to do, we would not even be here, in Middle-Earth! Deeds of high valour, prayers answered on the spot, giant eagles—if you were going to perform miracles, couldn’t you pick a miracle more worth performing? Whatever part of me resembled the cousin you seem to remember lies scattered like dust in the streets of Tirion and crunches underfoot. We dragged you into this, and now what can I do? All I can think of is to kiss to make you feel better—and you neither want nor need that.

‘Russandol?’

I should have been listening for those footsteps. I never heard him come back.

‘Russandol, what is the matter?’

‘It’s nothing. There’s a ghost pain in my right hand.’

There is and it’s rather a nasty one—not that it matters. For it’s also the most tactless thing to say, bar one, that I could have come up with if I’d been trying to. He swallows visibly.

‘Russandol, you know I would do anything to help you...’

Incredibly enough, that’s probably true. Indeed, that’s exactly what terrifies me, the inexplicable extent of his commitment to this flawed undertaking of his. If I asked, he might just do it, for the wrong reasons. To take advantage of that would not even be the worst nor the most unscrupulous thing I’ve ever done—but I would have done it in full knowledge of what I was doing and I would have done it to you.

‘Thank you very much. I don’t really need anything.’

Nelyafinwe, you idiot! He’s not offering to pass you the condiments at a banquet. He saved you from Angband. Can’t you do better than that?

It appears that I can’t. Findekano—have I mentioned that he’s too brave for his own good on occasion?—reaches out and clasps my upper arm. And this time my body betrays me. It’s only quite a small flinch, but he feels it. There is a hideous moment when I seem to feel him seeing right into me. The look of loathing and disgust that I imagine on his face tells me much more about my own state of mind than I want to know. For it is, of course, an illusion. What he actually perceives is simply another rejection of his efforts to revive our former friendship, a rejection which he interprets as final because it is instinctive. His shoulders slump as he turns away again.

Don’t leave me, I want to say. But that would not only be childish, but patently absurd. After all, it is I who am leaving tomorrow.

This time he does not come back.

Mithrim, some weeks earlier

‘Findekano has asked me whether I think we should somehow try to set you up with a girl,’ Macalaure remarks casually.

One of the minor disadvantages of being a cursed Feanorian is that you’re terribly short of swearwords. It’s all too personal. You don’t really want to draw the attention of august personages to any of the more awkward situations you happen to encounter as you stagger towards your doom.

Macalaure glances up from where he sits at the rickety table that is functioning as his desk. It seems my face is eloquent enough. He shrugs.

‘Given your past record, it’s not such an unreasonable idea. And I think our Findekano isn’t really in a position to make comparisons.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what happens whenever I manage to throw him out of here?’

‘What?’

‘He rushes back round the lake to prove that he’s still a loyal son and brother. Between the three of you, I don’t think Findekano knows whether he’s coming or going these days.’

‘I know Turukano currently prefer orcs to Feanorians because at least with them he knows where he’s at, but I thought that Nolofinwe had forgiven me for surviving.’

‘So he has. In fact, for what it’s worth, I think you may have ousted me in his eyes from the position of least objectionable Feanorian. He no longer thinks of me as the harmless guy with the harp, you know. It still doesn’t mean that he’s letting Findekano get away with the disappearing act he pulled—vanishing from the camp for months on end without telling anyone where he was going, let alone asking for permission for an expedition into enemy territory.’

‘He does have a point there, you know.’

‘Since there was no way he would have got the permission for that particular expedition—and given what it was he was trying to do—you’ll have to excuse me if my sympathy with Nolofinwe is rather limited in this matter.’

I put my arm around his shoulder and give him a bit of a squeeze. Briefly, he presses his temple against my cheek. It’s all very well for me to try to consider things dispassionately, but I left Macalaure stuck with a hideous mess when one of my less intelligent plans unravelled and I got myself imprisoned. So far, despite my return, things haven’t improved all that much. He crosses out an item on the list before him, very deliberately, but there’s a little too much force behind it and the ink splutters.

‘I was afraid that Findekano had noticed something,’ I say after a while. ‘But I’d hoped he’d just put it down to my general derangement and insanity. After all, that probably is what is behind it, you know.’

Macalaure gives a snort and shakes his head.

‘You disagree?’

‘You and your insanity... I’m not saying you’ve always been in your right mind these past months, because clearly occasionally you weren’t... But at least half the time what you call your derangement, as I see it, is simply being more embarrassingly miserable than you think a prince of the Noldor has any right to be.’

‘So you think my love for Findekano is a symptom of terminal embarrassment, do you?’ The moment I’ve said it, I wish I hadn’t used the word ‘love’. I wince. Macalaure pretends not to notice.

‘Maybe’, he says thoughtfully. ‘If so, there’s something odd about it, though.’

‘How so?’

‘It’s actually fairly obvious. If you can’t see yourself what it is, I don’t know that I should tell you—yet.’

‘You think it will be educational for me to wait?’

‘I think maybe you really don’t want to know, just now.’

‘I guess I don’t’, I admit.

He nods. Thoughtfully, he ticks another item on his list.

‘Talking of people not knowing whether they are coming or going...’, I say. ‘You’ve been letting me hide behind your back again. You’re not going alone to talk to Tyelkormo this afternoon. It’s not you he’s angry with.’

‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’

‘I had better be. He’s my brother, for goodness’ sake. They’re all my brothers.’

‘I’m not sure I follow your logic. After all, our family specializes in a particularly deadly kind of relative.’

‘Oh, shut up, you.’ I say, with a mock frown. ‘Look who’s talking.’

He laughs, but there is an edge of pain to it. I give him another squeeze: we’re all deadly relatives together. He sighs.

‘Okay, then, husband your strength. We’re going as soon as I’ve finished sorting out this stuff.’

‘What is it about anyway? Can I help?’

‘A request for horse tackle.’

About half an hour later, we make our way across the camp. It’s a slow business, because we need to stop every now and then to talk to some of our people and demonstrate to them how well and capable I am again. I press hands more than strictly necessary, because I’ve noticed they seem to find the strength of the grip of my left hand reassuring. Also, even after so many weeks, I’m still catching up on their news, what happened to them while I was away, their current needs. Game is getting scarce here in Mithrim, with so many of us competing for it, they tell me.

We meet the rest of my brothers in a kind of glorified barn near the paddocks. They’re all there, clustering around Tyelkormo, who’s radiating furious energy. Before we’ve exchanged more than a couple of sentences, he’s raised his voice and soon, predictably, we’re all practically shouting at each other. It hurts my ears. Somehow, even the way Tyelkormo’s fair curls vigorously bunch about his face seems to make me tired. As I try to counter his latest verbal attack, I know already that I won’t remember afterwards what I said to him or what he said to me. It doesn’t matter, in a sense, because it’s obviously the same old argument we’ve been having for weeks now, ever since I handed over the crown to Nolofinwe, but I really should be paying more attention or I won’t notice if anything changes...

Tyelkormo needs wide open spaces, he needs to get out of crowded Mithrim and to feel that he’s doing what Atar would have wanted us to do. What do the others need? I am not sure, except maybe to get farther away from Tyelkormo so that I can hear better what they are saying. As for Carnistir, it may be me he needs to get away from. It can’t be good for him to be this close to his deranged brother’s mind. It seems he’s caught that thought, for abruptly he falls silent, glaring at me, while the others go on shouting. Eventually, I succeed in having the last word, as I always do. It doesn’t mean that I’ve won, of course.

Macalaure and I leave together, as we came together. We walk back a slightly different way, just as slowly as before, and I talk to more people and smile. I feel all right until we get back to the hut. As soon as we’re inside, without warning, I begin to retch. Macalaure and I have been through this before. He holds the basin for me—it’s more difficult to do with only one hand I’ve noticed—while I throw up everything I’ve eaten today. Then, when I’m all emptied out but my stomach won’t stop heaving, he makes me lie down, piles a couple of blankets on top of me, and plays something soothing on his harp, not a quite a tune, more like a couple of phrases from a lullaby repeating themselves over and over. Eventually, the heaves stop.

‘Embarrassingly miserable sounds about right’, I say grumpily.

He smiles. I am very grateful to him for not pointing out that it might have been less trouble to him to handle Tyelkormo on his own.

‘I need to stop leaning so heavily on you, too, though—soon’, I say.

It may take someone like Macalaure to make harp strings produce a sound like a distant roll of thunder. ‘Try and send me away and see what you get’, he says.

‘Not as far away as Findekano’, I promise him. ‘This time I’ll take care to stay within shouting distance, so you can come running when I need help.’

Mithrim, the day of departure

The princes and nobles of the Noldor are clustered on the lake shore. Whatever they may think of us, they have put on all their best remaining finery to give us a royal send-off and, although a little worse for wear, their clothes are bright and colourful in the sunlight. We, my brothers and I, approach and dismount. But it is only I who go forward, giving the reins of my horse to Macalaure; only I, as the representative of the sons of Feanor, cross the remaining space between the two groups.

Findekano isn’t standing behind his father, but a bit to one side so that as I proceed towards Nolofinwe I am going to pass in front of him. Given the stately pace I am required to adopt, I get a good eyeful of him. I start by checking discreetly for any hint of lingering pain in his shoulder, but find myself dwelling on the set of his jaw, the straightness of his back. Because after today we’re not going to see each other again for such a long time and because I made such a complete mess of what ought to have been our farewells yesterday, my imagination suddenly takes off in uncontrolled flight and I see myself grabbing Findekano by the waist and tossing him into the saddle, then getting on behind him and galloping off straight south and east, never stopping until we are such a long way away that I can find a safe place to hide my beloved cousin where Morgoth will never find him... maybe a warm place so that he won’t need to remember the icy waste he had to cross to get here... maybe a really warm place so that he won’t need to wear a lot of clothes...

As a plan, of course, it’s a complete non-starter. With a single hand, I’d have a deal of difficulty even tossing a half-grown boy into the saddle, let alone my adult cousin. And Findekano, I know, has just added the hurt and humiliation he has suffered on my behalf to the long list of wrongs he wants to avenge on Morgoth; the last thing he would consider is to consent to hide. Anyway, bloodthirsty, treacherous Feanorians don’t wish for such things, so clearly I don’t.

The daydream completely distracts me from what I’m supposed to be doing, however. I stop in front of Findekano and find myself saying, quite spontaneously: ‘You look tired, cousin. When we meet again, I hope to see you better rested. Do not try to do too much all at once in Dor-lomin, I beg you.’

He looks startled; then he gives me a smile of astonishing brightness and gratitude. I find myself humbled once again. How can he be so grateful just because I finally managed to say something moderately decent to him? I turn back towards Nolofinwe and the others and find they are all staring at me. Surely they haven’t all turned into powerful mind readers and somehow detected my wistful thoughts about secluded southern beaches?

No, I realize, they are staring because I have just disrupted Nolofinwe’s carefully orchestrated leave-taking ceremony and because I’m the last person they’d have expected to do so. When I handed over the crown to Nolofinwe—and whatever Tyelkormo thinks, under the circumstances it was simply the obvious thing to do, so of course I did it—we had both planned the whole procedure down to the smallest detail—except, of course, for the unnecessary bit of melodrama when I nearly passed out in the middle of it. A penchant for the strategic arrangement of public performance is one of the things we have in common, Nolofinwe and I, although it has never served to unite us.

I look at Nolofinwe where he stands surrounded by my other cousins and his supporters and suddenly I seem to see him very clearly in my mind’s eye and am deeply touched. High King of the Noldor, he stands bewildered, homesick and outraged, here, in this forsaken corner of a foreign country, in his slightly bedraggled formal robe. A little ridiculous, of course, as we all are—Fight Morgoth? Us? But we’re all set to die trying, aren’t we? How could he have seemed so difficult to love, back then in Tirion? I have always known that Atar’s treatment of him was atrocious and, in the end, unforgiveable, but have never felt it as I do now.

My wonderful family...! Between the lot of us, not enough wits to flee a burning house or get out of the way of a stampeding horse...except for Uncle Arafinwe, of course, the only one of us to show a modicum of common sense, which is why he’s back in Aman. In spite of what we’ve already been through, we none of us have a clue what horrors await us, not even me—all I know is that I can’t even begin to guess. It shows a serious distortion of values that I should at this moment feel such fierce, aching love for them exactly because of this, their stubborn foolhardiness, when I suppose individually they have so many finer, more admirable qualities...

Well, I’ve already wrecked the ceremony, haven’t I? I stride toward Nolofinwe and give him a bone-crushing hug. ‘Sorry, Uncle, we shall just have to pretend I didn’t do this’, I say. My cheeks are wet.

‘You didn’t’, he agrees. His eyes have softened. Oh no, Uncle, it’s probably the wrong moment to stop distrusting me. Whether I failed anyone has never had to do anything with whether I loved them.

I catch Turukano’s eye, as he surreptitiously slides his half-drawn sword back into his sheath. He flushes deeply. I take great care not to smile. I think he would misunderstand.

We revert to the original ceremony, more or less, and I finally return to my brothers. Carnistir’s eyes are red and he looks ready to bite me. I smile at him apologetically. We get on our horses and ride away east, collecting the rest of our people along the way.

Two days out from Mithrim

I find myself walking beside Macalaure out of earshot of the others, as we’ve both decided to give our horses and our backsides a break, so I take the opportunity to ask him: ‘So what was odd?’

He seems to know at once what I’m talking about. ‘Well, excuse me for mentioning it, Nelyo,’ he says rather reluctantly, ‘but you used to be the most incorrigible flirt in Tirion. Don’t let’s even talk about girls—you couldn’t resist trying to charm anyone, down from the stateliest and stiffest lords in their offices to the urchins in the street and the new-born babies in their cradles—and you were also pretty good at it.‘
‘I didn’t use to think of it as flirting—although for all the good it did, it might as well have been.’

‘You’ve begun to distrust it now, haven’t you? Sometimes it looks as if you’re intentionally restraining yourself. But you haven’t lost it. When you’re trying to persuade people of things, it seeps right back. But Findekano...in those first weeks after he brought you back, your treatment of him was appalling, sometimes, but you don’t need me to tell you that.’

‘No.’

‘You seemed to be in a state of almost constant rage about not being whole enough or sane enough or generally inadequate...’ He gives me a twisted smile. ‘That time you tried to set out and smash the gates of Angband—with your bare fist, I suppose—but were too weak to disentangle yourself from the bed sheets and ended up falling out of bed and rolling across the floor,...it was the most livid I’ve ever seen you, almost like Atar’s famous tantrums, although you were chalk-white and looked more dead than alive.’

‘So I make a very irritable corpse. This is relevant to your analysis?’

‘Well, you took it out on Findekano. In a way that would support the terminal embarrassment theory, of course...’

‘Go on.’

‘Except, with him, you never seemed to try to cover it up the way you did with the others. Not even when you regained control. Not even when you were calm, for a change.’

‘By then I’d hardly have been convincing, would I?’

‘Would that consideration really have stopped you? Nelyo, some of those conversations you had with Nolofinwe would have been hilarious, if I hadn’t been trying so very hard not to cry... You’re both of you such past masters at ignoring the obvious, you’re capable of conducting a courtly conversation across a chamber pot. But Findekano... One day you took a good long look at him and abruptly stopped venting your frustration when he was around. But you never turned on the charm. Instead, you just went completely silent on him—quiet and self-contained. Of course, what he’d been most afraid of all along was that you’d stage a messy suicide when our backs were turned, so that silence scared the living daylights out of him...’

We walk along in silence ourselves for a while.

‘Macalaure, did you tell Findekano I wasn’t going to stage a messy suicide behind your backs?’

More silence. He doesn’t look at me.

‘Macalaure, have you been afraid yourself that I was going to commit suicide?’

‘Well, it did strike me that you were angry more in the way of someone who sees himself as stuck with living than like someone who’s contemplating making an end of it, but I wasn’t sure... You‘ve just promised Findekano you will meet again, you know.’

‘I did, didn’t I?’

So that was the reason he smiled.

‘It’s not really surprising you worship the very ground he treads upon, considering...’

‘I’ll have time to get over it now.’

I guess he knows that particular subject is closed. We go on walking. We’re still in Hithlum. It’s going to be a long way to the other side of—what do the Sindar call it—Ard-Galen. When Macalaure speaks again, I see he‘s still thinking about Findekano.

‘Those practice matches of yours were pretty scary, too, by the way. Turukano tried to persuade Findekano to stop, because he was afraid one day you’d go completely berserk and kill him.’

Another route to instant popularity: let yourself be observed pretending your cousin is a Balrog.

‘They may help Findekano to survive what is coming as much as me.’

‘Ah. Then maybe you should start practicing with me.’

‘Yes. Yes, I think I should.’

We continue on. Dust rises up beneath our feet. Horse tails swish. Bridles jingle.

‘Nelyo...?’

‘Yes?’

‘It didn’t really worry me that much, the time you screamed your head off because you couldn’t find the exit from the hut, although the door was in plain sight. I just took your arm, opened the door and pulled you through. In a way it was even gratifying, that you would trust me enough to follow me through what you thought was a solid wall. What makes me afraid sometimes is when I seem to see the same expression on your face, when there are no visible walls or doors at all. What’s going to happen when you can’t see the exit and I can’t see the door to pull you through either?’

I want to catch his hand but he’s walking on the wrong side of me. He perceives my aborted gesture, raises his eyebrows and tucks my right arm firmly around his elbow. We walk off into the sunset... No, sunrise... Whatever.

Himring, several years after the Dagor Bragollach

This morning, like every morning, having done my rounds and talked to the guards, I stand on the walls and look towards Angband. Just as every morning, I reach out with my mind to those who rot in the prisons under Thangorodrim. It is, of course, an exercise in futility. I am not talented in mindspeech, certainly not enough to reach across that distance even if Morgoth’s power did not bar the way. I do not know those who I’m reaching out for, for those who I briefly encountered during my own imprisonment are now dead or altered so much that they will not be returned to their true selves until the world’s end. And if by some fluke I did reach them, what would I say? ‘Bear up for a little while and I’ll come and get you out’? I and whose army? ‘I am with you in spirit’? What use would that be to them? Prayer, even from a Feanorian, might be more effective. Except, I find, Feanorians do not pray. Ever since I took the Oath, raising my voice even to Eru seems to have become impossible...

There may be one imprisoned in Angband who I do know, in a prison of his own making. I was not in Atar’s confidence when he made the Silmarils; I do not know what they are. I’ve asked Curufinwe whether they truly contain a part of Atar’s soul, as it seems he claimed, or whether they are merely the greatest works of his hands and it was our grandfather’s death in defence of them that sent Atar over the edge. He would not answer the question; I suppose he thought it was disloyal, but also he may not know or the question may not make sense to him. If there is a part of Atar in them, it is strange and sickening to think of them so tamely ornamenting our enemy’s brow—although I suppose any other light than theirs would have been quenched by his darkness. I tried to see but I did not know what to look for and they were yanking out handfuls of my hair by the roots at the time...

I give up, as I give up every morning, turn away from the North and look down into the courtyard. Findekano is coming down the steps from the main hall. I reflect that I never stopped worshipping the ground he treads on, for Himring is a different place to me since he set foot in it. There are lines of grief around his eyes and mouth that can’t be kissed away. Since that morning at Mithrim, we’ve lost Nolofinwe, and Angarato, and Aikanaro, and Irisse. My fault, my fault... Hush, you failed to prevent it, but, once they were here, in Beleriand, could you really have done so? Our enemy has broken the Siege of Angband like cobwebs set before the feet of a giant. Tyelkormo has fled to Nargothrond. However gloriously transformed by Findarato, a set of caves doesn’t seem to be the right kind of place for Tyelkormo to be. I’ve suggested to him to return east, but he doesn’t answer my letters. So far I’ve assumed that Findarato or Curufinwe would tell me if something was seriously wrong, but I’m beginning to worry.

The Doom of Mandos is a terrible temptation to self-indulgence and wallowing in guilt; it makes it so difficult to distinguish what I failed to prevent from what I helped to bring about and what I actually did with my own hands. This is dangerous, I suspect. Because, for all my anxious thought and planning, I failed utterly to begin with—I did not interpose myself when I should have, I let myself be overwhelmed by grief and horror and swept along by events, I set the worst of examples and found myself followed into destruction—each disaster that I cannot prevent now descends on me with crushing force, so much so that I’m afraid I might eventually forget to watch carefully enough what it is I do. It is insidious, that combination of responsibility and despair.

I suppose, as a way out, I could retreat to a lonely mountain valley and restrict myself to planting cabbages; that would at least stop me doing any further damage to anyone. It would mean the complete failure of Maedhros, of course, and a betrayal of all our people, but it would at least simplify my mistakes. But would simplicity be worth achieving at such a cost? I will continue to spread my spider webs before the feet of our enemy, in the hope that by some miracle one of them will unexpectedly turn out to be made of steel and make the giant stumble. It may be that this is the way Feanorians pray. If so, perhaps someone is listening?

Findekano looks up and spots me gazing down at him. Briefly, his face lights up with joy, then he goes all royal again. He’s getting better at this, I notice. I approve, as I approve of anything that makes him safer, but I treasure his joy. I lean over the deep embrasure and give him my best Prince Maedhros greets his favourite cousin smile. Prince Maedhros doesn’t love his cousin more than is socially acceptable. I study Prince Maedhros in the mirror a lot, more than I ever did when it was still possible to be vain of my personal appearance. Maedhros must not be allowed to alarm his people with any of the expressions that worry Macalaure. As I head towards the stairs that lead down to the courtyard in order to join Findekano, I recall my earlier thoughts and imagine how Tyelkormo would react to the idea of his brother as a cabbage-raising hermit. My laughter carries me lightly down the stairs.

Himring, evening of the same day

Almost before I’ve shut the door behind us, he reaches out and shoots the bolt, takes me by the shoulders and pushes me up against the wooden panel. I feel his lips pressing against mine, his tongue probing and seeking entry, his knee sliding between my legs. It’s not his actions themselves so much that surprise me, although all this is still new to us, but their speed; instinctively, I go rigid, before my brain catches up and I yield to him, opening my mouth. Almost at the same time I perceive the tension in his shoulders; clearly he’s much more worried than I’d observed before we came in, even upset. His tongue gently touches mine, tentative now rather than demanding. He withdraws, buries his face against my neck and mutters a muffled apology.

‘Something seems to have unsettled you. Was it something I did?’

‘No. Yes. No. From the window, I watched you this morning looking out towards Angband. I’d made myself forget what it was like to fear to lose you all the time.’

‘Do you regret yesterday’s decision then?’

‘Oh, sure—I pounce on you the first time I have a chance to get my hands on you today—and therefore I regret having made love to you last night? Come off it, Russandol.’

I put my hand between his shoulder blades and try to think of something reassuring to say, a promise I can safely make. If I find myself betraying you again, I will fall apart so completely that Macalaure won’t need a broom to sweep up the pieces; he’ll need a mop and a pail. And what a nasty word that ‘if’ is for something that should be completely inconceivable...

‘Russandol...! Whatever that thought was, un-think it. It’s made you go the colour of mouldy cheese. It doesn’t go well with your hair...’

I try to smile at him and fail miserably. My pulse is hammering and I’m having trouble breathing. I can’t tell whether it is mere panic or whether I’ve just had a genuine presentiment.

‘You know, I spent the whole afternoon listening to you thinking rings around everyone and everything—and those were only the thoughts you spoke aloud. It made me feel dizzy. I’m beginning to think it made you dizzy, too.’ Findekano’s face takes on that familiar determined look. He pulls me farther into the room. ‘Stop thinking so frantically, won’t you? We are alone together and I haven’t asked you to rearrange the past and the future for me tonight.’ He rocks me sideways just a little a couple of times, back and forth like a pendulum of a clock. ‘Stop, Maitimo,’ he says softly, ‘stop it, stop...’

To assume simply that I love Findekano because he rescued me from Angband, as Macalaure hinted, would be to suppose that my heart is entirely aware that we are no longer in Angband, which doesn’t always seem to be the case... But sometimes I feel that when I first glimpsed his face on Thangorodrim and realized he wasn’t just another hallucination, a part of me that had been dying must have heaved a great sigh of relief and taken refuge in his eyes, before I even questioned how he came to be there. Since then, however long and far we were apart, he has remained solidly, tangibly real to me—so that there could never have been anyone else.

I hadn’t expected him ever to lay claim to me. Ripped and mangled inside and out, I seemed to be for no one, my ineradicable need no more than a flaw in the respect I owed my cousin and my king—for if anybody knew how damaged I was, then surely he did. To hear him speak unflinchingly of his love for me was as if a wolf starving in the snow suddenly found himself curled up in a basket next to the hearth and was made to understand that, in another life, he had been someone’s favourite pet and could be again...

His voice wraps around me like a warm blanket. How could I resist his entreaty? I close my eyes—and all the dead and all the living tiptoe out of the room and quietly shut the door behind them. I open my eyes again and discover that we are indeed... alone...together.

‘Oh, much better.’ He looks surprised and delighted. ‘Brilliant.’

 

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Chapter End Notes

The portrait of the House of Finwe is heavily influenced by Dawn Felagund's version of these characters but I guess they are not quite the same people.

 

(ETA: This is an early story of mine. The time frame was not quite canonical. I've already tweaked it a little, but there's only so much tweaking it will stand without breaking...)