A Long Time Falling by Himring

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A Long Time Falling

 

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.

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