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I ride north with a gun on my hip and two laden saddlebags. Traveling alone makes me feel reckless and bold, and I hope that the blood rushing in my veins portends a daring future—for surely the West will have need of guns! I imagine hunting deer and bison, wolves even. I imagine fending off highway robbers.
My father would have had a word or two to say about highway robbers if he knew that I set forth on this particular mission by myself, instead of by a guarded coach. Yet, in these days, I am sure of my own strength and cunning. I volunteered to accompany my father’s share of payment to my uncle, who will transport all with him to Ulmo’s Bridge.
You are a fool, the wind whisper in my ears, but it is late May—and the wind is not my master. No harm befalls me. I think this a good omen.
I arrive at Formenos in less than two days, having ridden hard. It looks different from my last visit—the sheds are boarded shut, and my uncle’s forge is silent and cold.
On the lawn, my cousins—Maitimo and Celegorm—stand shooting at fist-sized targets, a hundred paces away.
“Have care!” I call out, as I canter up. I half-expect Celegorm to aim at me, but Maitimo stays his hand and slings his own long rifle against his shoulder.
“Fingon!”
He is always happier in the north. I know this, and know it a little bitterly, for most of our time has been spent together in the city. We met last in the city, too. I sat beside him a week before, when my father and his brothers gathered for what Uncle Feanor called a council.
At this council, we learned that Uncle Finarfin would not accompany us west.
I dismount, and at once am slammed against both my cousins by Maitimo’s strong arms. He forces us into an embrace I would otherwise decline—as, I am sure, would Celegorm.
“Lay off,” grumbles Celegorm, wriggling free. His blue eyes are stormy. “What do you want, Fingon?”
Celegorm is two years my junior—a mere lad of eighteen. I must bite back such observations, in the face of Maitimo’s mischievous gaze, because they belie an immaturity I have sought to forestall under Doctor Olorin’s serious leadership. “I have an errand with your father.”
Maitimo’s eyes dart to the saddlebags. “You brought it yourself? No accompaniment? Cano…” he mock-frowns, calling me by the name he gave to both me and Maglor when we were small. Our favorite game involved Maglor and I as wolf-cubs, while Maitimo was the wolf-tamer. No matter how cultured Maglor has become, no matter how tall I grow, Maitimo still teases us with the epithet.
We let him.
“What did you bring?” Celegorm asks, eyes narrowing.
“It concerns your father,” I insist stubbornly, and Maitimo gives us each a light shove towards the house. “Come and eat,” he says. “I’ll see to your horse.”
Inside, Aunt Nerdanel holds me close for a long moment, exclaiming over how tall I have grown. The last few weeks have not been easy ones, for all my excitement. I know my own mother’s worries; I know, too, that Aunt Nerdanel did not even know of my uncle’s plan until my father rode north to express his allegiance.
Still, she smiles, reminding me of Maitimo—which makes me wonder, as I often have, how much his smiles hide.
The house is stripped of most of its furniture and my aunt and uncle’s crafts. Caranthir, of all people, catches my curious gaze and explains that they have filled the attic with their particular belongings.
“Oh,” I say. “Yes, we are leaving our things with Grandmother Indis and Uncle Finarfin, or selling them.”
“Does your father need the money?” Curufin sniffs, and Maitimo interrupts smoothly before I can put him in his place.
We dine on slices of cold chicken and fresh salads from my aunt’s garden. I recall weeding it as a boy, my hands not calloused from city life, and how my fingers stung and blistered. I cried easily, then, but hateful Celegorm never knew of it. Maitimo used to take me aside and rub herbal salve into the wounds, binding them with little strips of linen. “When I was your age,” he said—I think I was thirteen—“My hands bled terribly from chopping wood. It’s a nasty feeling.”
Pricked by memory, I asked, “Was that when Uncle Feanor was away?” and immediately regretted my question, for I thought I saw something ache behind his eyes. But he did not snap at me, as even Maglor sometimes did when I spoke thoughtlessly of their family affairs. He told me that it was, and then we went back to the garden.
Today, too, my uncle is not at home. There is no reason given for this, and certainly no reason why his absence should awake in me some dreamed-of doubt. I say nothing of it, and when I stay into the afternoon—I shall leave before supper, and break my journey at an inn along the river—I struggle to keep the words I might say inside.
It is no good; I lack resolve. At my goodbyes to my cousins—who have begun to practice their shooting again, as though their lives depend on it—I let slip my thoughts to Maitimo.
“It shall be more than two months until I see you again,” he says, fortunately refraining from shoving Celegorm into my arms this time. “Then only think—we shall discover new stars each night. Finrod assures me that they burn fiercer in heaven than they do here. There are no cities in the mountains, after all.”
I bite my tongue, and then I say, “I have the strangest fear.”
“A fear?” He turns the gun in his hands—it is a cruel and beautiful thing, a Colt Walker. I know that much—they are military issue, and I wonder how Maitimo (or more aptly, my uncle) acquired one. Grimly listening, armed as he is, here is another shadow—of fear or future, I know not.
“It is nothing,” I mumble. “Just a child’s worries—that letting all of you out of my sight means I won’t be able to find you. That we’ll come to Ulmo’s Bridge a day too late. The second of August instead of the first—and you’ll be gone, and how shall we track you on the plains?”
His lips part as if he would answer me quickly, but he says nothing. In the months that follow, I will turn that gaze over in my mind, and find no trace of guile.
“Fingon,” he says, after a moment passes. “We go together. We will hunt, and track too, and ford many rivers. We’ll climb mountains—we’ll drag Macalaure with us, so that you both may sing songs to amuse me. Do you honestly think that I could stay alive, sharing a wagon with all that rabble, if I didn’t have you for company?”
I always hope that it is so. I smile, and he does too—which shows his mother’s dimples—and I put the fear away. Then I mount my horse, intending to ride for the sunset.
Behind me, Maitimo shouts my name once more.
“On the other side, cano!” he calls, and he fires a single shot skyward, startling my horse into a racing gallop. I hear his laugh follow me. Gripping the reins tightly, I am laughing too.
Had I only known. As I saw him then—the sun gilding his hair and the smile on his face, whole and hearty and far too kind to lie—I never shall again.