Chapter Text
The days are brutally long and the stars at night are blue-white. Caranthir shuts his eyes and finds that they linger under his eyelids in prick-points of painful brightness.
Kansas territory ends like this: with mosquito swarms in the air so thick and black that the sky seems to crawl with them. Mosquitoes in their hair. Mosquitoes in the stew at supper. The mosquitoes seem to prefer Caranthir more than anyone else.
Huan kills a rattlesnake. Its fangs drip venom and the twins turn a little green, wondering whether it would burn through the leather of their boots. They were the ones who found the creature; Caranthir is (momentarily) envious.
His envy is quenched because Athair is furious. Athair treads the diamond-patterned length of the rattler’s body into the dust, until the bones crunch beneath his boots, as if Huan had not done enough by snapping it in two. “If it had bitten you,” Athair tells the twins, his finger jabbing through the air, “You could have died.”
The twins cry, but only when Athair stalks off to tell Maedhros and Maglor that they will have to move camp.
Rattlesnakes appear in more than the desert—according to Celegorm, and obviously, because they found one here. They are going to reach desert sooner or later, though. Caranthir doesn’t want to think of bleached bones and air even dryer than the dusty air of Kansas territory, but he knows that that is what lies ahead.
In the face of such a future, he collects a few blades of grass. He braids them like Maglor used to braid Mother’s hair, and tucks the plaited strands with the rest of his growing collection of treasures. First he filched Mother’s paints from her abandoned pack. The twins would try to claim them if they knew he had them, so they don’t know that he has them. Then the small riverstones, the rattlesnake’s tail. A seeded sunflower, the petals withered to dark gold. He has, too, the arrowhead that Maedhros dug out of the side of one of the wagons, from their close call with a tribe of native men who were only shadows behind rocks with long, cruel bows in their hands.
“Indians,” said Curufin.
Athair shook his head. “They’re not Indians,” he said. It is rare for Athair to reprimand Curufin. “That is only a word used by men who failed. They are Comanche.”
They had fled from those arrows, whipping up the horses, not being so careful of jostling rocks along the trail as they usually were.
“Why did we run?” Curufin asked, undeterred.
“Because that land is theirs,” Athair says. “And they have the right to defend it.”
Caranthir looks at Curufin, whose eyes are fixed on Athair like a moth to flame. Caranthir looks at Maedhros, who is looking at the ground.
Maedhros, at least, is thinking of the bridge.
They have the right to defend it.
Caranthir does not sleep that night.
There are mountains now, so high they block the stars. Are these the same that Finrod saw? Caranthir gnaws his lip.
“We’re running out of potatoes,” Maglor says, tapping his pencil against his knee. Caranthir thought he was writing poetry or songs, since that is what Maglor usually does with his journals, but now Caranthir catches a glimpse of the page and sees little lines of marching numbers.
Why hasn’t Maglor asked him for help? Caranthir is very good at arithmetic. He always helped Mother—
No one else says anything. Maedhros is probably the one Maglor wanted an answer from, but Maedhros has stepped away from the fire with Athair. Caranthir scoffs privately. Maglor has his moments, but he’s mostly a sodding awful older brother. He can’t do anything without asking Maedhros for his opinion.
Caranthir leans back, too far, and rests his elbow on Huan’s tail.
Huan yelps.
“Watch it, you ass,” Celegorm snaps. To Maglor, he adds, “Who gives a rat’s tit if we have potatoes? Our ancestors are rolling in their graves seeing how you cook them, anyway. Slimy as mud.”
“Do rats have—” Amras starts up, and Maglor interrupts him, looking stormy and pinched all at once.
“Potatoes,” he answers, “Prevent scurvy. Among other things. And watch your mouth, Celegorm. I have a bar of soap in my pack and I’m not afraid to use it.”
Celegorm subsides, briefly, only to mutter to Curufin—“As if he’d waste any of his precious girly soap on my mouth.”
Caranthir is nearer to Celegorm than Curufin is, both in age, and in where they’re sitting. These things never matter. He hears Curufin say, “Scurvy? Who does he think he is, Fingon?”
Maedhros moves very quietly when he wants to. He is behind them, certainly close enough to hear what was said. The back of Caranthir’s neck prickles.
“Go help Athair,” Maedhros orders, and Celegorm and Curufin do as they’re told, for once.
Maedhros stalks towards the fire, leaning to poke at the contents of the Dutch oven.
“We’re running out of potatoes,” Maglor says again, plaintively.
“Mm.”
"Should I start digging up dandelions?" Maglor demands.
Poetic hysteria, Caranthir thinks, and sighs.
Maedhros shrugs. “Have you found any?” He sounds tired. Maedhros always sounds tired these days.
“No.”
The twins appear from wherever they’ve been playing—they are children, still, and so Caranthir will call it playing in the disdainful solitude of his mind—and curl up against Maedhros, one on either side. He puts his arms around them.
“Would you rather be scalped or tarred and feathered?” Amrod asks.
“I would you rather you not trouble your heads with such mad notions,” Maedhros says, in his older brother voice. “You have not been straying out of sight of the wagons, have you?”
“No!” They’re indignant. Caranthir scowls.
“We need to talk to Athair about supplies.” Maglor has circled back to nagging again.
“I have,” Maedhros snaps. It’s so rare that his tone is sharp with Maglor that Caranthir feels his cheeks flushing in sympathy. Sympathy for Maglor!
There is a moment's pause.
Maedhros disentangles his hand from Amrod’s grip and rubs his forehead. “Athair has decided to return to the main road. It will take us two days to rejoin it, by his reckoning. And then there will be a town a short while after that.”
Maglor is still a little sulky, but he stirs supper again, putting his journal aside. “So Athair does have a map.”
“Of course.”
“He has not shown it to us.”
“Do you question his methods?” Maedhros’s voice is very mild now.
“Maitimo...”
Maedhros sighs. “Forgive my mood. What do we live on tonight? No potatoes, I imagine.”
“No, they’re here.”
“They’re slimy,” Amrod says.
What a baby, Caranthir thinks, just like Celegorm.
He decides to slink away and lie on the cool grass, with a blanket over his face in case the mosquitoes are hungry, but Maglor takes notice of him at last.
“We should do some washing. Caranthir?”
He’s always felt that he was born under an unlucky star. Maybe one of these blue-white ones. “We haven’t done washing for weeks.” They haven’t. They’ve hung worn shirts over the wagon hatches to air and then put them on again. “Why do I always…”
“The twins and I will help you,” Maedhros says, rising and displacing the twins. “We’re lucky to be near a river.
The sun is setting. They leave Maglor by the fire with a frown on his face. Celegorm and Curufin are lugging supplies from all of the wagons but one, haphazardly sorting.
Athair has returned from scouting and is cleaning the horses’ hooves. Caranthir wonders why Athair always leaves camp alone, but it is not his place to ask.
“Why are they putting everything in Athair’s wagon?” Caranthir asks.
Maedhros could very well say, If you had helped them, you would know, but he doesn’t. “We’ll be in closer quarters from now on,” he says. “Athair hopes to find others to join us. He’ll lend the wagons to them.”
Caranthir likes this not at all. Others? He tries to imagine strangers traveling and eating with them—but they all seem to wear his cousins’ faces. Artanis and he have always gotten on well, even though she’s a girl. Aredhel and Celegorm raise hell together. And Maedhros and Fingon are more like brothers than Caranthir is, sometimes, with any of his own.
“Who?” Amrod asks what Caranthir can’t.
Maedhros shrugs. This time there’s a tightness to it. Maedhros doesn’t like the plan either, which doesn’t surprise Caranthir. If he had to guess, Maedhros likes almost none of this—but Maedhros is very good at keeping people guessing.
Caranthir fills his arms with bundles of grimy shirts and trousers, and tries to hold his breath.
“The potatoes are good tonight,” Amras says virtuously, at supper.
Maglor thanks him, a little strained, while Celegorm snorts into his bowl.
Athair doesn’t say, Celegorm, manners!, like he used to at home.
The stars behind their heads leave so much space, and only Mother could fill it.
“No doubt,” Athair says, finishing his coffee—Athair can drink hot coffee even on sweltering days—“You have all heard of our plan to change course.” He has set aside his bowl; Caranthir sees a few potatoes still floating in it. “It is not a decision made lightly. We will need allies where we are going.”
“Afraid of more Comanches?” Curufin asks. Curufin has been as sharp as a blade lately, but Caranthir still wonders where he gets the nerve.
Athair smiles fondly at his favorite, and ah, there it is. The only explanation one needs. “No, son,” Athair answers. “But we travel in haste to arrive first, not to find peace.” He taps his long fingers against his dust-filmed knee. “Our lives are contests, like or not.”
Caranthir looks at each of his brother’s faces in turn. He does not like what he sees there. Likely, it is for the better that he cannot see his own.
He wishes he knew how to paint.
Mother’s colors are rich and vibrant, all behind walls of glass. He rolls the tiny jars between his fingers. He remembers sitting beside her in her workroom, chewing on the ends of paintbrushes, watching for beads to splatter to the floor. Those he pressed beneath his fingers, and when he rubbed the many colors together—ruby red and lemon yellow, darkest blue and inky black—they smudged to the color of mud.
There are no rattlesnakes on the main road.
“This is the last time all of us will drive wagon,” Celegorm grumbles, glaring in Caranthir’s direction as if to say, it shall be you who yields first, not me.
Caranthir longs to land a fist on Celegorm’s (finally) healed nose, but not out of any particular ire. He turns away.
The town starts as a mud-smudge, then sharpens into focus as they draw near. Athair orders them to turn away from the trail once more, making camp as they always do—sheltered from sight. Hiding isn’t hard because the land around is hilly, the shoulders of the ground bending down to the river’s edge.
The town, like the river, nestles in the cleft of the mountains.
Athair announces that only Maedhros and Maglor will go to town; the rest of them will dine as usual. “Caranthir,” Athair orders, speaking his name for the first time in a week, “You’ll do the cooking.”
This is hardly fair. Celegorm complains the most; the twins aren’t such children that they can’t—but Caranthir says nothing.
It is the easiest way.
“I don’t like this,” Maglor mutters, as he slips his coat over his shoulders and holsters his gun at his hip. “Making alliances at a saloon?”
“You’d do well to sing rather than talk,” Maedhros says. He takes a long knife in his boot as well as a gun, and Caranthir sees him tip back a flask that glints silver in the shadows. “What?” Maedhros asks, in answer to what must be Maglor’s skeptical glance. “Might as well get started early.”
A twig snaps under Caranthir’s boot, and he slips away before he is spotted. Still, he watches them when they ride off, through the dust of the main road. They are like Celegorm and Curufin, like the twins—matched as he will never be.
Caranthir is alone. He doesn’t think he chose it.