A Long Time Falling by Himring

‘He says they want us to give ourselves up and let ourselves be taken to Valinor to stand on trial—and, when we get to Valinor, they will decide whether they are going to give us the Silmarils or no?’

‘Yes.’

‘You realize that once we set foot in Valinor—no, once we set foot in his camp and hand over our weapons—, if they decide not to give them to us, there won’t be a thing we can do about it?’

‘Of course.’

‘That is a risk you want to take?’

‘I suppose if they decide to declare the oath invalid, as Eonwe hinted they might, it would be—after all, you could say they are the world experts on oaths.’

‘Well, technically we swore by Eru—a slight disadvantage to Atar’s insistence on always going straight to the top. He’s not exactly around to grant dispensations, is he?’

I shrug.

He frowns.

‘I suppose... ‘, he looks up at the sky in the approximate direction where the evening star will appear tonight, although it’s day and nothing is to be seen at the moment,  ‘...having gone to all that trouble to put one Silmaril up there, they are unlikely to set about destroying the other two, as originally planned? Although obviously they aren’t offering us any guarantees whatever that they won’t... What do you think it would do to Atar, if they did? They say he claimed he would die, but—he’s dead already...’

He falls silent. I shrug again. When Maitimo continues to say nothing, I get up and turn away to go.

‘Macalaure?’

I turn around again. ‘Yes?’

‘You see hope in this, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then we do it your way.’

I raise my eyebrows.  He smiles a small tired smile.  This time it is he who shrugs.

I

He never had time to die—or, once the battle with Morgoth’s forces was fully joined, even time to think very much about the situation as a whole, I guess. He was commander-in-chief of all the forces from the East, military decisions were constantly being demanded of him, and he was also in the thick of things, frantically trying to keep track of what was going on, when most of the time it wasn’t clear at all, to anyone.  Again and again he also was occupied fighting for the life of those who immediately surrounded him. 

Once we had managed to survive the treacherous attack of Uldor at our backs—and fighting on two fronts at once didn’t just cause staggering losses to our loyal human allies, but also severe casualties among ourselves—we found ourselves being forced backwards step by painful step, first over the blood-soaked ground we had gained in the day’s fighting, then, deafened by the screams of our dying comrades and friends, further and further east along the way we had previously advanced with such burning anxiety at the unexpected delays. That brief glimpse of Findekano’s forces, which we had greeted with so much relief, in spite of their unexpected and alarmingly exposed position, was lost and could not be regained. The communication we had only just established with Turukano on the southern flank broke off. We took heavier and heavier losses. Eventually it became clear that we had no hope whatever of aiding our kin; we were fighting too hard to stay alive.

As we were forced east and further east, the extent of our defeat emerged. Morgoth’s troops poured after us. We tried to maintain order and communications among our troops as best we could but, despite Maitimo’s heroic efforts, it became more and more difficult to keep our ignominious retreat from turning into a complete rout. We fled over the plain, fighting one rearguard action after the other, and by the time we got to Himring, there was no rearguard anymore; too many of us had died. We were no longer strong enough to hold the castle or any of the fortresses on the eastern marches. We evacuated Himring, and the flight went on.

A couple of days beyond Himring, Maitimo turned to me in the middle of giving instructions about setting up camp and sending messengers to Carnistir and said apologetically: ‘I think I’ll have to take a short rest. I feel a little dizzy.’  I grabbed him just in time before he collapsed and lowered him to the ground; then I took off my cloak, folded it and put it under his head. ‘I’m not sure he has rested at all since the battle’, I said calmly to the alarmed faces around me. ‘It had to catch up with him some time. Leave him in peace as much as you can; just erect a shelter over him, will you? I’ll see about the messengers.’

When I returned a couple of hours later, they had put up a small tent around him. I entered the tent and sat down beside him. He was still oblivious, somewhere between sleep and unconsciousness. There was nobody else in the tent. I drew my dagger and considered cutting his throat before he woke up again, to the death of all his hopes.

II

‘This tomfoolery has cost us another cousin’, he says.  Before Maitimo on the table is the last letter he received from Findarato. It isn’t an especially recent or especially significant letter. Findarato didn’t write to either of us before he set out on his suicidal mission with Beren. I suppose, considering what has since transpired about our younger brothers’ goings-on in Nargothrond before Findarato left, that isn’t surprising.

The letter is smudged with tears. The smudges are dry. He lifts the letter up, holds it in his hand for a moment, and repositions it very precisely on the table.

‘Still, one can hardly blame Beren for Findarato’s death, when Tyelkormo...’ He stops. ‘And Curufinwe. Orodreth sent back another of my letters, unopened.’

‘He’ll think better of it in time.’

‘Maybe he’ll open my letters again eventually, but I doubt I’ll ever get a civil answer from him.’

His hand clenches suddenly, then slowly, deliberately unclenches again.

‘Tomfoolery, I said.  A bride price from Angband—the idea of it! But they got a Silmaril. They managed to get right into Angband and out again. And Morgoth has lost a Silmaril. I wouldn’t have thought it possible.’

‘Thingol, from what I’ve heard, certainly didn’t think it possible. But I suppose it was mainly Luthien, and Luthien is the daughter of a Maia.’

‘She’s also half Elda. And Beren, son of Barahir, is very much a hero, if the rumours out of Dorthonion are true, but has no special powers at all... Do you think that, maybe, after all Morgoth isn’t as invincible as our fears make him?’

He would very much like to think so. Of all of us, I think he was the one who least allowed himself to forget the doom that has been hanging over us ever since we arrived here in Beleriand. But after centuries of being doomed, he has tired of it, as one does.  He wants to lose no more cousins—or anyone else, for that matter. And there is one whose safety he would like to ensure above all.

III

We weren’t alone together all that often once we had left Mithrim, the three of us, Maitimo, Findekano and I. Almost the last time they met before the Nirnaeth, we sat together in Maitimo’s apartments in Himring and I played the harp for them. After they’d listened for a while, Findekano got up with an apologetic glance at me, fetched a brush and comb from the dressing table nearby, went and stood behind Maitimo’s chair, and began to brush his hair. I observed him, but did not interrupt my playing. I finished the exposition of the musical theme and segued into the first variation, which I turned into a hair-brushing tune, keeping time with the strokes of the brush. Findekano gave me another quick sideways glance, hesitated a split second, but continued brushing, his face calm and intent on the task, the strokes carefully rhythmical. Between us, Maitimo sat very upright and very still, his eyes following my fingers on the harp strings. A tiny smile curled in the corner of his mouth. Eventually Findekano was done. He put down the brush and dipped his hand into the smooth heavy sheet of Maitimo’s hair as one might into a waterfall. It pooled for a moment in his palm, before gravity caused it to flow down through his fingers. I finished my tune on a liquid swirl of notes. Maitimo turned slightly, leaned back a little, and looked up at Findekano. Their eyes met; then they both looked at me. We laughed, and I went on to play something livelier and more complicated.

Just a domestic scene. Except for that momentary look of proud ownership as Findekano scooped up Maitimo’s hair, the tenderness of Maitimo’s quick upward glance, even if somebody had walked in on us just then, they might not have noticed anything very much out of the ordinary.

They ended up having so little time together.

 IV

Generous cousin, I never thanked you as much as you deserved. And now I’m not mourning you as I should, because I’m so afraid of what is to come.

Findekano had to be dead. We hadn’t had accurate information yet; amid the chaos it was impossible to come by. But every rumour that reached us by means of stray fugitives affirmed that on the other side of the battlefield defeat had been even more disastrous and complete than on ours. And most of them talked about the death of the High King, although he was said to have died in a variety of ways.

Maitimo standing at the western edge of the encampment each time we stopped, leaning forward as if about to take off running into the night towards Hithlum. The way I’d seen him standing on the beach at Losgar, the night the ships burned, his boots lapped by the surf of the western sea, as if he was considering trying to swim back to Araman.

‘It’s happening again, Macalaure. It’s happening all over again.’

‘Maitimo. Even you can’t fight your way through all of Morgoth’s forces on your own. And Findekano needs the support of the whole army we are bringing, not just one or two of or even half a dozen of us. It won’t help him if we allow our troops to be decimated on the way before we get to him.’

‘I know.’

I had sat too long, alone in the tent beside my exhausted brother, dagger in hand. It might be more merciful if he died at this point, but if I was going to deliver the coup de grace, I would have had to do it quickly, without thinking too much about it. I would never raise that dagger now.  But I continued to sit unmoving, without sheathing it.

Maitimo woke up. His eyes focussed on the roof of the tent, puzzled. Gradually awareness and memory seeped back into his face. It was as cruel as I had thought it would be. His eyes widened in horror, his mouth opened, as if to shout or scream; then he caught hold of himself. His eyes half closed, his lips folded themselves rigorously into silence.

He sat up and saw me and it became obvious that at once he perceived the dagger in my hand and understood what I had thought of doing. He reached out, gently covered my right hand with his and put his head on my shoulder, silent thanks and a promise. Feeling the pressure of his cheek bone against my upper arm, I knew I had achieved exactly the opposite of my intention, although, at the same time, I was enormously relieved. He would not leave me.

Only afterwards did it occur to me that I would have had absolutely no explanation to offer to my other brothers or indeed the rest of our people, those of us who had survived, why I had killed Maedhros just when they expected him to deal with the consequences of the Nirnaeth for them. I had been thinking only in terms of my own compassion, my own sacrifice. I was as exhausted as he was, really.

V

The rumour was already out there, although perhaps not quite firmly entrenched, before I cottoned onto it. It hit me suddenly one afternoon, while I was sitting outside the tent sharpening my sword, passing the whetstone repeatedly along its worn edge. One man’s obscure remark, another’s disapproving look, another’s knowing grin came together in my mind and I realized what they’d meant, what people out there were thinking. It was almost funny, considering the lengths Maitimo had gone to conceal his relationship with Findekano, that rumours should arise about him now, when devastation at his loss had made him as chaste as the driven snow. However, I was not amused and certainly not at the direction the rumours had taken.

Vaguely, I recalled a brief period in my adolescence, when I had been beset both by vehement curiosity and fierce jealousy, as Maitimo first showed an interest in girls. It hadn’t lasted very long, for it had soon been followed by two discoveries, first, that no girl Maitimo got involved with ever came close to seriously encroaching on the relationship he had with his brothers and, second, that, despite superficial appearances, I was considerably less clueless about girls than Maitimo—at least in the one case where it really mattered, as far as I was concerned. But anyway, that had been Maitimo, when he was young— light-hearted, popular, attractive.

This was Maitimo, as he was now; this was Maedhros. I was even more familiar with his body now than I had been during our youth in Valinor, for, after Thangorodrim, I had bandaged just about every single inch of it, salved every bruise and scar. He had trusted me absolutely then; he depended on me now to steer him through the shoals of the night. Even if I had had the faintest wish to do so, I would have no more risked infringing that trust than I would have thought of molesting a child.

So how to deal with this rumour? Would not acknowledging it even to counter it tend to give it substance? And also, what should I say?

Maitimo and I shared a bed most nights. I had become the lightest of sleepers, attuned to every change in his breath. When the nightmares came, I would wake up with a jolt, turn round and grab him before the screams could emerge from his throat. When the tears started flowing, I would wait to see whether they stopped again of their own accord; if not I would take him in my arms and try to rock him to sleep.  It was almost as if we were in Mithrim again, except this time there were hardly any physical wounds; the collection of nicks and gashes he had acquired during the battle had healed quickly, as had the slash in my left arm that Uldor had given me before I killed him. Charmed lives, both of us—or cursed ones.  I wished Maitimo would talk more. Often he lay unmoving for hours in silent savage thought.

In the morning, he sat up, ran his fingers through his hair, rubbed his tired eyes and, in leaving the tent, transformed himself into a different person. Striding through the camp, he was every inch the intrepid commander suffering a temporary setback, ready with a plan for every contingency. Making use of Ambarussa’s contacts with the Laiquendi, he began to make arrangements for a guerrilla campaign in the woods of East Beleriand. If we could no longer oppose the Enemy directly, at least we would still harass his troops as much as we could.

He was lying to us, of course, not so much with words, as with every fibre of his body. None of his earlier contingency plans had envisaged a disaster on quite this scale; at best his plans were brilliant improvisations. Our people knew this really, but they lapped it up anyway. Even I, who didn’t need to be told that, as far as Maitimo was concerned, it was all over with us, was nevertheless surprised to find how good he managed to make me feel occasionally about killing a couple of orcs here or there—although of course we were inflicting only negligible damage on the Enemy. It helped that Morgoth seemed content that he had rendered us incapable of opposing any larger-scale troop movements through East Beleriand or giving real assistance to anyone in the West. He made no serious effort to chase us down. ‘We’ve got nothing left that he wants just now’, said Maitimo bitterly to me, in private.

In the end, I decided to do nothing about the rumour. Findekano was dead and I would never see my wife again—maybe Maitimo’s and my sexual reputations didn’t really matter. Weren’t we two sons of Feanor and so in any case capable of any crime? Wasn’t it more important that we, and particularly Maitimo, should still appear formidable? Why defend a virtue that people didn’t expect of us?

This, it soon emerged, was good tactics, but bad strategy. Much later, it occurred to me that I had also missed a warning sign. False as the rumour was, people had believed it because it pinpointed something about us that we ourselves weren’t quite aware of. Around Maitimo and me, the world was closing in, beginning to shut others out.

I

After another two hours of being shouted at, Maitimo’s temper is clearly fraying badly.

‘Tyelkormo, I don’t quite know what you two thought you were doing in Nargothrond, but already the family record with regard to this particular Silmaril is hardly admirable and attacking Doriath now will not improve it. The first time for ages anyone made a serious attempt to wrest a Silmaril away from Moringotto—and all you seem to have  thought of was how to stop them in their tracks! And, as a result, we ended up with one dead cousin.’

‘We were probably going to end up with one dead cousin anyway. You call that a serious attempt?’

‘So it was a silly, half-assed attempt, but the same might be said of other ventures.  And this one happens to have worked...in the end. ‘

‘Has it? We don’t have the Silmaril. They do.’

‘Moringotto has one the less. He’s the one who stole them in the first place, he killed Grandfather in the process and he’s still got two of them. And you keep telling me that Atar would want to go us after the one Dior has?! Even as simple maths, it doesn’t make sense. Are you sure this hasn’t got anything to do with your old resentment of Thingol— or any grudges you are still harbouring against Luthien? It is Moringotto who is our enemy, I tell you! He is the one we need to concentrate on. Stop distracting us by raising side issues.’

‘You’ve concentrated on Moringotto—and what have you got to show for it? A mile-high pile of corpses, with Findekano somewhere in the middle of it.’

There have been hints before, but now the unforgivable has actually been said. Suddenly in the deserted farm house we are using as temporary headquarters, you could hear the proverbial pin drop. Maitimo goes rigid in his chair, his face dead white. When he resumes speaking, he does so in a low, level voice, itself shocking after all the yelling that has gone on for the last couple of hours.

‘All right. A palpable hit. It was I who planned the Nirnaeth.  I tried to save our people and ended up slaughtering them like cattle. It is true; I’ve already killed so many, it hardly matters now whether I kill a few more of them intentionally.  If you insist on going to Doriath, I will follow you.’

Such undisguised self-loathing. Our brothers have never seen him like this before; I haven’t seen him like this since just after Thangorodrim.  He quietly gets up, walks across to the door, opens it and goes out. The door crashes shut behind him, shuddering on its hinges. The wood cracks right across in three places.

I look at Tyelkormo, who stands frozen by the head of the table, open-mouthed. He does not know quite how cruel his jibe was, but even given what he knows, it was cruel enough. Still, he did not expect this kind of reaction from Maitimo. And I’m beginning to suspect that his shock goes even deeper. He’s been belabouring Maitimo to invade Doriath for months, dredging up any means of persuasion fair and foul, ever since the messenger came back from Doriath with Dior’s refusal to give up the Silmaril to us. And yet it seems to me now that he did not expect to win this debate; he did not expect Maitimo to yield.

When your beloved father imposes impossible obligations on you and then inconsiderately dies without providing any further guidance how you are to make them square with the requirements of common morality, ordinary life or even your own physical survival, who do you turn to? Why, your older brother who has always tried to sort things out for you when you were in trouble—and anyway why did he permit you to get into this particular trouble in the first place? I suppose it came naturally to Tyelkormo, given Maitimo’s near-exhaustible patience with his younger brothers when they were kids, howling, kicking little savages. We have all done it, to a greater or lesser degree. But Tyelkormo, more than any of us, I guess, has been trying to have his cake and eat it, being the obedient son and at the same time relying on Maitimo to stop him from doing anything too drastic in his attempts to carry out the oath.  And Maitimo has been colluding with him in a way, his need to maintain a brave front at all times encouraging Tyelkormo in his delusion that Maitimo was up to taking just about any amount of verbal assault and battery.  Now Maitimo has snapped, Tyelkormo finds himself at a loss.

Perhaps the same is true of Curufinwe, although I find him harder to read; I always did. I cast a quick look around the table. Carnistir is pale and breathing hard. There is no help to be expected from him. Carnistir cordially dislikes people; they keep messing with his head. He forgives those of us he needs to love, maybe loves us the more fiercely because love comes at such a cost for him, but it leaves him with scant sympathy for others. If Dior’s refusal to give up the Silmaril has caused this emotional ruckus between Maitimo and Tyelkormo, then Carnistir is going to place the blame squarely on Dior. And Ambarussa simply look frightened and as if they wish they were somewhere else.

‘Tyelkormo,’ I say, ‘go after him. Go now, before it is too late, and tell Maitimo you don’t insist on invading Doriath.’

For a moment he wavers. But he’s too afraid of losing face. His gaze hardens, and he casts about for the nearest stick he can find to beat me with.

‘Oh, we all know why you agree with everything he says!’

Ah, that rumour—I should have known it would turn around and bite me. There are two ways of countering this—either pretend not to know what he’s talking about or burst out laughing that he should so much as consider believing it. And he doesn’t really, of course. But suddenly, I, too, have had as much of Tyelkormo as I can possibly take.

‘Wash out your mouth, brother’, I say coldly and make for the door. It falls apart as I open it and I leave it dangling on one hinge.

II

I find Maitimo sitting at the foot of a favourite tree, leaning against the bole, staring into the middle distance. He glances up in acknowledgement, as I sit down beside him, not too close.

‘Lost it. Lost them.’, he says succinctly.

‘Maybe not.’

‘You think anything you or I can say will stop them now? Even if I choose not to regard what I said back there as a promise—and I know Tyelkormo will try to hold me to it—I’ve lost my hold, my edge... And I’ve already used up all my arguments.  So what do you suggest? We try to tie up five brothers, with only three hands between us? We appeal to our people, split them into factions, and end up with violence and death amongst ourselves? I am sorry; you were trying so very hard to calm us all down.’

I nod. I can think of nothing to say.

After a while, he says: ‘Tyelkormo is underrating the people of Doriath. He thinks, because they did not take part in the wars, they are no match for experienced warriors. But you’ve met Mablung, you met Beleg, and you can imagine what anybody they trained will be like. And it’s their home territory. They know it so much better than us. And then there is the Girdle of Melian, whatever remains of it...

The only chance to get that Silmaril without huge losses on both sides will be to go in there and get out again as fast as possible, with as much force as possible, a quick strike...’  He looks at me and sighs. ‘No, don’t tell me. Atar imagined he could get the ships out of Alqualonde without killing a single Teler...’

‘Maybe you did your job too well, trying to keep everybody’s courage up’, I say. ‘Tyelkormo thinks we are stronger than we are.’

‘No, he knows how weak we are. It’s what makes him want to lash out. It upsets his sense of equilibrium, to see those weak who he thinks of rights should be strong and those strong who he thinks of rights should be weak...’

More silence.

‘I know no real harm of Dior’, he says. ‘I haven’t even met him. By the messenger’s reports, he’s not polite to Feanorians, but, since he’s the son of Beren and Luthien and the great-nephew of Olwe of Alqualonde, he can hardly be expected to be.

He also relies too much on the reputation of his parents and grandparents for his protection and forgets that the sons of Feanor are no longer helping to guard his eastern borders in strength. I think, if we do not attack Doriath, Moringotto soon will. But I’m not pretending that’s an excuse; if Dior can’t defend the Silmaril against Moringotto, how will we defend it once we get hold of it? In a saner world, we’d be petitioning for admission into Doriath to help him strengthen his defences, now the Girdle is weakening... Dior is an arrogant fool. Maybe arrogant foolishness is punishable by death in Beleriand nowadays, but it is certainly not we who should be doing the punishing.

I know plenty of harm of Tyelkormo, too much of it because I share in it myself. But he is our younger brother. I remember what he was like as a baby, what he was like as a boy,  how he was given Huan, the time he had his first crush on a girl...  If it is a choice between Dior and Tyelkormo, I would prefer Dior to be the one to die.’ He looks me steadily in the eyes.  ‘It is morally reprehensible.’

He gets up, hesitates and looks down at me, as he asks: ‘Macalaure, do you think Tyelkormo is right that Atar would want us to invade Doriath? And, if so, which Feanaro?’

III

Maitimo reaches out and gently closes Carnistir’s eyes.

‘Does it strike you, Macalaure,’ he says in a strained brittle voice, ‘that maybe we are simply not cut out for a life of crime? I mean, in Alqualonde, we got the ships, but we left our dead as well as theirs strewn all over the harbour front and then killed ourselves trying to sail the ships. And now...  Even Turin Turambar, to begin with, was better at robbery than this!’

A despairing gesture summarizes what “this” is: three brothers dead, Dior and Nimloth dead, Menegroth’s famed grottoes a bloody shambles, no Silmaril. And then Celegorm’s servants come and tell him what they’ve done with Dior’s sons.

IV

He turns up at our camp outside Doriath’s borders more than two months later, just as I’m wondering whether to risk sending out Ambarussa with another search party into the outskirts of the forest or to move away from this increasingly dangerous location altogether, trusting him to catch up with us somehow... For some reason, he’s sopping wet and the expression on his face makes me think of concussion. He patiently allows me to check his skull.

When I’ve got him cleaned up and into dry clothing and also persuaded him to eat a bowl of hot soup, I dare to ask him: ‘So you didn’t find them?’ He doesn’t answer; the expression on his face is blank. ‘You didn’t find Dior’s sons, Elured and Elurin?’

‘No, I didn’t find them‘, he answers after a while. ‘Instead, I think I lost myself out there, somewhere in the remains of the Girdle of Melian.’

‘I shouldn’t have let you go alone. I should have been with you...’

‘No, I needed you to organize our retreat. In fact,’ his voice gains in strength, ‘you shouldn’t have waited for me in such an exposed position. We must leave straight away.’

***

‘Macalaure...? I’m hearing voices now.’

I put down the arrow I’m trying to fletch—Ambarussa have been teaching me—very carefully. My mouth has gone dry with fear.

‘Voices?’

‘Voices...of the dead. Except I guess they cannot really be the dead...’

‘Cannot?’

‘I don’t think Atar and Tyelkormo would say such things to me...’

‘Such things?’

He doesn’t look at me. Unfortunately both of us can think of plenty of devastating things Atar and Tyelkormo have said to Maitimo and they’re not alive to take them back.

‘Findarato’, Maitimo’s voice grows firmer, ‘Findarato would not come all the way from Namo’s Halls just to berate me about the kinslaying at Alqualonde and the fall of Nargothrond. It is not something he would do.’

But a trace of doubt remains in his eyes.

I

‘She thinks what?!’

‘She thinks the Silmaril is lucky.’

‘The thing has cost her great-grandfather, her father and her mother their lives and probably shortened the life of her grandmother as well—and Elwing thinks it’s lucky?!’

‘Apparently she does. She thinks it has helped the Havens of Sirion to flourish.’

‘Silmarils aren’t lucky. There are no flourishing places in Beleriand.  Shall we go and prove it to Elwing?’

‘Is that really what you want to do, Maitimo?’

‘I don’t know... There’s such a din in my head; sometimes I feel could murder for a bit of peace and quiet. Most days I’ve got Melkor shouting in my left ear and Atar in my right. I can’t always tell them apart, and that hurts worst of all. And all the rest of them—Tyelkormo, Carnistir... When Ambarussa stand in front of me and say that Atar and Tyelkormo and Curufinwe and Carnistir would have wished it, I almost find myself nodding. It seems they would have...’

‘They want our brothers not to have died in vain, but...’

‘But they will have died in vain, even if we go to Sirion and get the Silmaril. I don’t know; it’s all so very pointless that chasing around the countryside after a bit of sparkle on an accursed chain whose chief property seems to be to shout Attack me in all the languages of Arda—is beginning to make a weird kind of sense. It’s almost enough to make one wish that Moringotto would finally deign to make his move and put us out of our misery... Except I’m sure he’s having too much fun. Macalaure, remind me why I do not wish to attack Sirion. Keep reminding me.’

‘We’ve only sent a single messenger so far, you know. We could send another one...’

‘You think we can badger Elwing into giving up the Silmaril? Brilliant! It won’t work, of course—those things have a consistent history of bloody-minded stubbornness associated with them; otherwise we wouldn’t be here... But it’s a great idea anyway. Let’s pester Elwing. At least, it will get Ambarussa off my back for a while.’

Maitimo sits down at his desk and begins to draft another letter to Elwing. After a while, he frowns and looks up at me.  ‘Macalaure? Atar’s flair for the dramatic... Has it ever struck you that, after all this, the Outer Darkness might be quite a nice place to find oneself? Silent, tranquil...’

He goes on scribbling. Then he looks up again. ‘Do you remember our conversation about orcs, in Mithrim? Sometimes when I look at my hand now, I think I can see the claws within.’

‘Maitimo, you are hurting so much...’

‘Who ever said turning into an orc wasn’t painful?’

II

‘This kin-slaying business is getting easier, don’t you find? A little bit of practice always helps.’

‘Easier...  Maitimo, you’ve hardly eaten for weeks. You’re eyes are so dilated that I’m surprised you can see me. Your skin is grey, and your lips are turning blue.’

‘I’m sorry, Macalaure.’

‘Never mind, Maitimo. But do me a favour? Stop smiling. It scares people. Including myself.’

III

Our own people turned against us at Sirion. They say it was because of the moral disgust they felt at our attacking the refugees of the three fallen cities, and I’m sure it’s true. Of course, a lot of the people at Sirion were Noldor, people they’d once known in Hithlum before the establishment of Gondolin and Nargothrond, not Sindar of Doriath, that reclusive people hardly anyone of them had ever seen.

But there was also the fact that Maitimo during the time between the attack on Doriath and the attack on Sirion gradually gave up the pretence that he was completely in control of things. Before Doriath, however desperate, he had always contrived to give the impression in public that he knew perfectly what he was doing. Afterwards, having put such an extraordinary amount of effort into maintaining that impression, he hardly seemed to notice or care that it was fading, but wore it like an increasingly tattered mantle, until it dropped and slipped away, unmourned. He put very little effort into convincing our people that in invading Sirion we were doing the right thing or even that we would win.

Those who followed us after the sacking of Sirion—so few and yet still more than I would have expected—were, I guess, the ones who had always been the less deceived and did not believe there were any successes waiting for us around the corner. They knew they were following someone battered and broken—and followed us anyway: the two last sons of Feanor.

I

If we are going to give ourselves up to Eonwe, I need to make arrangements. If we arrive with a group of adherents in tow, it will be almost a challenge to put them on trial together with us and I do not want to lead them into that hazard. It would be a poor reward for their loyalty to us. I take Elrond and Elros aside.

‘I know it is a lot to ask from you, no, outrageous, really— but these are, after all, people you grew up with. If you are willing to take this on, they will be your people. If you handle it right, maybe you can convince Ereinion to see it like that and accept them among his own. If not, I will have to get them to disperse and see whether they can be accepted by others individually, if not as a group, but, that way, I fear for their safety.’

‘We will take them’, says Elros promptly. They are good lads, those two. I wish we could have had longer together, but already some of the assumptions I made when I decided to foster them have proved wrong. At the time, I really didn’t see any reason to expect Balar to remain safe from attack for long. Ereinion stuck out like a sore thumb on the island, with the title of High King and nothing much to defend it except a prayer to Ulmo, chancy at best. Morgoth had sacked Brithombar and Eglarest, clear proof that mariners were not proof against his forces. It was not that we were any safer, of course, there was no future for anybody in Beleriand except orcs, but it was precisely because of this, that, having picked up Elrond and Elros more or less by accident and taken them along for their own safety, I hesitated to send them to Ereinion. They might find only strangers there, too, I thought, and I had already begun to love them...  And did it, in the end, matter?

But that is all changed now. Ereinion has a future, we do not. And these lads certainly deserve one, if they can get it. I would have sent them away earlier, if I could have brought myself to do it.

‘We will take your people to Ereinion’, agrees Elrond, always the slower, more deliberate of the two. ‘But, Maglor...’

I cannot bear to look him in the eyes. I don’t know why I can’t bring myself to discuss our plans with them. Why don’t I quite believe that we are going to give ourselves up? Do I expect Maitimo to go back on his word? Aren’t we famous for keeping our word even when we shouldn’t?

II

They’ve all left now, and the two of us are alone together.  And so we begin our last journey across Beleriand—although I guess Eonwe will somehow arrange for us to be carted off to the sea at some later point to be put on a ship to Valinor. Maitimo hoists up his pack and I notice how thin he has grown, how hollow his cheeks are, despite all my efforts. He’s not as strong or as fast as he was either, but still well capable of killing. We picked off another few orcs during the War of Wrath, but of course not large enough a number to be significant. I’m sure nobody noticed—except presumably the orcs.

 For a long time, as we walk, we hardly talk at all. Long-time fugitives in these woods, we listen to the sound of the land. It is deeply disturbed. Every now and then, tremors run through the earth under our feet. Trees come crashing down. Now and then we see animals, deer, a boar, a wolf, all moving east. We do not delay them on their flight to safety. I think sadly of the homebound ones, the ones who will die in their burrows.

‘So they want to put us on trial’, says Maitimo finally, thoughtfully. ‘That seems odd somehow. I had rather assumed that we were sentenced already.  But I guess being doomed is not quite the same thing. And presumably the survivors of Doriath and Sirion would very much agree...  I find it difficult quite to imagine the trial, though. Do you think we will need to explain very much?’

He is talking in a strange, rather dreamy kind of voice, as if it did not truly concern him, and it strikes me, as I listen, that Maitimo does not really believe in Valinor anymore, not as a place that still exists, as a destination that one can return to. Do I, myself? I’ve been pretending that I do, but we’ve got out of the habit of it. For so long, it was a place right off the map, only relevant as it pertained to our past and with no place at all in our future. And when Valinor finally affected us again, in the form of a huge army that unexpectedly tramped right across Beleriand, shaking it to its roots, and set about destroying the enemy who had been about to finish us off, we had got so engrossed in our own destruction that, almost, we felt the temptation to cry out: ‘Be quiet, don’t interrupt, we’re busy dying here.’

The Valinoreans are here, but we still do not really believe in Valinor. In the Valinorean army, there are kin of ours, come to save us—well, no, not to save the sons of Feanor, of course, and especially not after they had a little talk with the survivors of Sirion, but to save any Noldor surviving in Beleriand, anyway. And we still do not believe in Valinor.

***

It is night and we’re getting closer to the Valinoreans’ camp. The moon is shining; it throws a fitful light across the path we are walking along in single file. The earth is still trembling beneath our feet.

‘It is strange’, says Maitimo behind me. ‘Do you know that I hated and feared this land when I first set foot in it? And now that Beleriand has become exactly what I feared, the graveyard of my people, I realize I’ve grown to love it and that I mourn its imminent destruction. It grieves me to feel the land in the grip of its pain.’ He pauses. ‘But I forget, our people are not here, they are in the Halls of Mandos.’

I do not know what to reply. I, too, have grown to love Beleriand. It has woven itself into my music and so have our dead.  We continue along the path.

‘There will be Uncle Arafinwe,’ says Maitimo suddenly. I turn around and see that he has stopped. Between us, a black shadow falls across the moonlit path, cast by a tall tree trunk. ‘They said that Uncle Arafinwe was there, didn’t they, Macalaure?’

‘They did.’

‘What shall I say to him, Macalaure? What shall I say to him when he asks me what I have done with Angarato, with Aikanaro, with Findarato?’

‘He will already know what happened to them. Artanis will have told him.’

But Maitimo isn’t listening. ‘What shall I say when he asks about Orodreth, about Finduilas, about Edrahil, about Gwindor, about Gelmir?’

‘Maitimo, you sound as if you think you personally caused the fall of Nargothrond!’

But he isn’t listening. ‘Elenwe,’ he says desperately, ‘Aranwe, Ninde, Ardil, Guilin, Viresse, Melimo...’

‘Maitimo, you abdicated the crown,’ I think, ‘you abdicated it long ago.’ But I don’t say it, for his voice goes on—and clearly he has completely forgotten about Uncle Arafinwe by now, because he’s mixing in names of Sindar and Laiquendi,  and even of Atani and Easterlings and Dwarves,  people Arafinwe has never heard of and has no reason to care about, all out of sequence, as his tortured brain spews them out almost at random: the names of the dead, those who died in Alqualonde and on the ships, those who died crossing the Helcaraxe, those who died fighting Morgoth under the stars and under the sun, those who died in Doriath, those who died fighting for us in Sirion and those who fought against us and those who never had the chance to lift a weapon...  So many names. I didn’t realize he knew so many of their names.

His voice dies into a hoarse whisper and falls silent, but I know that in his head, in the silence of the night, the endless list continues—and maybe finally, after a long, long time, reaches the names of those whose loss hurt the most and perhaps, last of all, the name he hasn’t spoken since the Nirnaeth Arnoediad... The moon moves along its path through the heavens. The shadow of the tree on the path between us thickens.

Maitimo stirs. ‘Macalaure,’ he says in a small voice.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m afraid of that shadow across the path. I think if I step forward into it, the earth will open up and swallow me.’

He looks across at me. In the moonlight I can see the panic in his eyes, the whites showing.

‘Help me, Macalaure. I don’t think I can make this on my own.’

Help me, he says.  Come back here, he means, take my hand, lead me across the shadow on the path and then along the path all the way to the Valinorean camp and hand me over to Eonwe.

He is in no way breaking his word or refusing to surrender to Eonwe. He’s had this kind of attack before. In Mithrim, once, he could not see the exit from the house, although it was right in front of his nose. I know I can take his hand and he will follow me, trustingly as a lamb, across that malevolent, threatening shadow...and right into the camp of the Valinoreans, who are waiting for the terrible Kinslayer, the blood-red Feanorion, and who will see only that in him.  And it is true, Maitimo is that, too. But I was right beside him, all the time, and as I look at my dying brother and think of his long struggle for sanity and hope—have any of us been entirely sane since Grandfather died at the gates of Formenos?—my heart revolts and I know why I never quite believed that we were going to surrender...

I go to him and take his hand and lead him away. He follows me mutely, obediently. Then, as we reach a clearing in the forest that we have crossed before, he stops and says, startled: ‘We are going the wrong way.’

‘We are not,’ I say. ‘I’m not giving you up to them.’

‘To them? Have we decided they are the enemy now? When did we decide that?’

‘I don’t care!’, I shout. ‘I’m not handing you over!’

‘Hush,’ he says, ‘hush!’ He takes me in his arms, and I realize I’m shaking.  He waits for me to calm down a bit; then he says: ‘Macalaure, this is wrong. You should go, even if I can’t. Leave me behind if you must, but go. You hope for things from Valinor...’

‘I’m not going to Valinor without you, don’t even think it.’

‘Not with me, not without me?’

‘Not with you, not without you.’

‘I have lived too long’, he says. ‘I stayed for you as much as for anything else, because I believed you still needed me, but now I’ve become a burden upon you. I tie you down when you need to be free to go.’

‘Nelyafinwe Maitimo! You are the burden that supports me. You think that I’m stronger than you, because I do not hear voices and don’t see threats in shadows on the path. But I’m only as strong as you lean on me. Without you, I’m nothing now.’

He is silent for a moment. ‘Elrond,’ he whispers then, ‘Elros.’

‘You suggest I should apply for a position as royal tutor at Ereinion’s court?’

‘It is true that you would have to edit your CV rather heavily.’ He tries again. ‘Your music?’

‘Who will I sing for, if you’re not there anymore to listen?’

He sighs and puts his head on my shoulder. After a while, I feel tears seeping into my sleeve. I put my arms around him and hold him tight and we stand there, babes in the wood, children lost in the wilderness of the world—murderous, blood-stained children, of course, but if you believe in the innocence of children, you did not grow up in the house of Feanor.

***

And if that clearing had been a safer place to stand, we might have just stayed there. Long years of wandering in the forest had turned us some way into Laiquendi already. We could have become part of the grove. The flame of Maedhros would have faded into the autumn leaves; the voice of Maglor would have faded into bird song.  That would not have been so bad an ending.

But the earth beneath our feet continued rumbling, and eventually there was movement along the path behind us.  We had not survived so long as fugitives by stopping and thinking when persons unknown approached. We roused ourselves with a start and dived into the bushes without hesitation. It turned out to be a small patrol of Valinorean elves, Noldorin youngsters we were not acquainted with.  They were less well trained in the woods than they might have been, for they completely missed our trail. It had hardly been our part of our intention to be picked up as loitering vagrants, but it was not to be denied that, if we had decided to give ourselves up after all, we had just missed a golden opportunity.

I felt Maitimo trembling in the darkness of the thicket beside me. It worried me, but when we emerged into the clearing again after the patrol had passed, I found he was laughing, silently but hard, sides heaving with merriment.

‘What?’, I whispered, already beginning to laugh myself.

He seemed unable to speak.

‘What,’ I whispered again and then: ‘What do we do now?’

He dashed tears of laughter away from his cheeks with his palm.

‘What do we do now? What do sons of Feanor do when they don’t have a clue what they are doing? They go for the Silmarils—what else?’

It was a joke—a weak joke, a terrible joke, but a joke.  Did I not recognize that at the time?  Why did I take it up as if it were a genuine suggestion and why did he consent? Was it some kind of deplorable inherited trait, some kind of perverse Feanorian penchant for dramatic consistency?  Were we trying to write THE END in capital letters in true Feanorian style? For of course, we did not expect really to get any Silmarils. The mere idea was absurd.

I still don’t know how we managed to stumble across the right tent. If there hadn’t been those unlucky guards we killed, I’d have suspected a trap. Our long-honed warrior reflexes—always enough to kill, never enough to defend those who we loved—kicked in, as soon as they started waving their swords at us.

Were we surprised when the Silmarils burned us? Of course not—hadn’t they done so all along? We would have saved ourselves and everyone else a lot of grief and pain, if we’d simply gone and stabbed ourselves on that pitch-black morning in Tirion long ago, all seven of us. And yet...

III

I sit up in the night at a rickety table in a makeshift hut in Mithrim and I’m literally tearing my hair. I miss my wife, but I will never see her again and I’m so glad she’s not here. I miss my father, but he’s dead. I miss my eldest brother, but he is imprisoned and I will not see him again either. 

My world has collapsed utterly within such a short while. I’ve discovered things about myself and the universe I never wanted to know. I’m a murderer and accursed and doomed. I want to curl up in a corner on the floor and cry myself to sleep and wake up and cry again and, maybe, when I’ve wept and cried enough, write a song, if there are any songs to be written still in this hateful new version of Arda.

Instead of which, I’m stuck with responsibilities and power I can’t deal with and can’t delegate. Even the obvious things to do seem to slip away from my grasp, as soon as I envision myself actually doing them. I need to force myself to give even the simplest commands.  I would be happy to pass on all that to any of my younger brothers, except that I seem to see very clearly that they would not do the obvious things either, because they are not obvious to them...

So I sit in the night at my rickety table and try to force plans for the coming days to emerge in my head and on the piece of paper in front of me. The plans keep getting away from me; the paper is full of incoherent scribbles. Composing polyphonic music was never this hard.

Morning comes and, there is a commotion outside the door. A messenger— he’s saying Maitimo’s name and I haven’t even properly understood what he’s saying, before I’m already dashing for my horse. I gallop around the lake, fling myself through a group of my uncle’s courtiers who seem to be surrounding someone in the middle who is lying on the ground and—yes— it’s Maitimo, his head in Findekano’s lap. Maitimo looks like nothing on earth and I should be horrified and I am. But at the same time I’m filled with an enormous relief, because I know what to do next and can see myself doing it.

***

At first it was very much part of the solution, not of the problem. When Maitimo regained consciousness, he was very clear about what needed doing: fight Morgoth, unite the Noldor, keep the family together. He just lacked the strength to do it. I lent him mine and found that tasks that had seemed entirely impossible before I was surprisingly capable of dealing with, just as long as I thought of myself as Maitimo’s second-in-command, his lieutenant. It was he, at first, who worried about leaning too hard on me. He insisted that I should have my own province in East Beleriand like any of my brothers, and so there was Maglor’s Gap, which I ruled, but, in my heart and mind, I did it for him. There was Maitimo and there was my music. There was very little else.

However, in the end, it turned out that even our combined strength was not enough.  When Maitimo began falling apart after the Nirnaeth, I gradually realized that what I had done once I could not do again. I had taken the fragments of my shattered life and reassembled them with Maitimo at its core. But shared pain had welded us together, as if hardening scar tissue had turned us into Siamese twins.  Even then, it didn’t seem to matter so very much, as we were, in any case, doomed.  But I suppose that was why I clung to Elrond and Elros for a little while. It was lonely in the end, being the inseparable other half of Maitimo; there was so very little I could still do for him.

My music never deserted me. Even now, although my right hand is too crippled for my instrument, although my voice is cracked and hoarse, music fills my mind, almost crowding out speech.  That seems appropriate somehow, for where else do the sons of Feanor live now except in song?

But Maitimo... Judging by outcomes, we must have been deeply flawed from the beginning, both of us. But my perception is blurred. I confess I cannot see it...

My brother is in the earth. No, my brother is in Namo’s Halls. Maybe my brother has found his way home.

IV

‘Nelyo!’

Upstairs, downstairs in my father’s house.

‘Nelyo!’

Not in his room, not in the library.

‘Nelyo!’

When I barge into the kitchen, he’s coming to meet me. He’s been preparing string-beans for dinner; there is a pile of them on the table and a half-filled bowl. He’s half-way to the door, hands behind his back to untie his apron strings. He smiles at me, happily, expectantly, the smile of somebody who is proud of me, somebody who is always willing to share and rejoice in my good news.

‘I’ve written another song, Nelyo, and this one’s for you!’

Chapter End Notes

It is said in the Silmarillion that Maedhros and Maglor entered the camp of Eonwe in disguise. It is difficult to imagine a disguise for an unusually tall one-armed elf with strikingly coloured hair that would be efficient enough to fool Eldar who were actually expecting him. I suspect that, in fact, nobody quite remembered what Maedhros and Maglor really looked like, after all the wild stories they'd heard about them, and they simply walked into the camp wrapped in their cloaks.

Both the scene in which Maedhros returns to Maglor after searching for Elured and Elurin and the scene in which Maedhros and Maglor find the Silmarils in Eonwe's camp owe something to stories I had read some time previously I believe. However, I have not been able to find those stories again (which encourages me to believe that they cannot have been as similar to my own versions of those scenes as all that!) and, in each case, the context and function of the scene was quite different, anyway. If anybody can point me to the authors and titles of the stories in question, I will be happy to cite them here, however.