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When he was nine years old, Celegorm carved a pike from a black birch sapling that Athair stripped of bark, and with it, he caught a fish. He stabbed it in its pale belly, and as it wriggled, leaking clouds of flushed poppy-red into the water, he stabbed it again.
Then he brought it to Athair.
“In your haste,” Athair said, setting it aside with a frown, “You have ruined it.”
His younger brothers ought to have been sleeping when he spoke to Athair of the dead man, but Curufin never misses anything. Celegorm can feel those eyes—the most like Athair’s—following his every move in the next dreadful day.
They break camp much like they always do, covering the stamped-out ashes and checking the wagons over—but change floats like a breeze in the air. Athair consults privately with his maps and more openly with Maedhros and Homer and Galway.
To Maedhros, Athair presumably speaks of their particular dangers. To the others, he says, “I believe we should seek a more northerly road.”
Celegorm, for all his cousins used to jibe him, is not a fool. He knows that even the overseer, the one who wounded mother and drove Maedhros and the rest of them to swear in words (and later in blood), came from the south.
“If I may,” Homer says—already a bold assumption with Athair—“You'll be hard-pressed finding men without such errors as happened last night, if you send your sons to compete with them at drinking-holes.” He looks at Celegorm when he says errors. Celegorm, cold all over, hates him.
Athair looks stormy. “And what would you suggest?”
Homer tips his broad-brimmed hat, signaling his continued respect. “I’d say we’ll move quickly with fewer, as we have now, so long as we keep out of the way of hostile tribes. You make it up to South Pass, there’s a fine town at the edge of the plains—folks call it Beleriand. Anybody who’s on the way through breaks there, whether they’re bound for Oregon or California. It’s a tidy joint for what-have-you. Supplies. Repairs.”
Athair is silent, but Celegorm can tell he’s listening. It must count for something, that Homer and the rest of them stayed. That they were willing to hold with danger, unasked-for.
“You’ll find people with a shared goal and miles behind them,” Homer adds. “If you’re looking for wagons to fill, fill ‘em then—there’s always a few who are looking to break away.”
“You’ve been to Beleriand?” Athair asks.
“I have. Was headed back east because I thought I’d had enough of prospects. You changed my mind.”
Athair acknowledges this—not as flattery but as reasonable truth.
“I’ll think on it tonight,” he says, and just like that, Celegorm is lost again in a swirl of thoughts that have nothing to do with their road, because—
Night, Celegorm realizes. He has to get through a night, and the one after that, and so on and on and on—this time he won’t be waist-deep in water, riding over mountain trails with Maedhros.
He’ll be lying on the same bedroll he was the night before he killed a man, with the same ground under his back.
Sleep changes, when you kill. That’s the kind of thing he believes because he’s seen it.
Maedhros takes extra watches, since the bridge. At first he barely slept at all, and when he did, he cried out with nightmares as if something tormented his flesh. Celegorm knows this only from hearing Maglor fuss over him.
Maglor sleeps, and if he has dreams, they are unknown to Celegorm.
Celegorm does not know how killing changed Athair.
“You look nervous,” Curufin murmurs, spreading out his bedroll, while Celegorm scratches Huan’s belly and pretends he is not tired at all. He has the last watch tonight—which means that he should be able to sleep through the hours otherwise.
Should.
“Do you think that his spirit will speak to you in your dreams?” Curufin asks gently. “I mean, the man you killed?”
Celegorm moves quickly, as he does when hunting. He flips Curufin—all spindly arms and bony legs, three years younger—on his back and sets forearm against throat.
“Shut up,” Celegorm whispers hotly. “Or I will knock every one of your pointy teeth out.”
Curufin wheezes beneath him until Celegorm gives in despite himself, and lets him breathe. Curufin smiles, then, though his eyes are shiny and wet.
“Mine speaks to me,” he says.
Celegorm thinks at first that he did not hear him right. “What?”
“Athair had his back turned,” Curufin says, almost sing-songing with dangling control—the cracking rise and fall of a voice not yet matured. Celegorm remembers well. “I—I stopped the man who would have killed him.”
Celegorm has, he understands suddenly, known all along.
He tries to think of what Maedhros said to him. Of what Athair said. We do what we must. “You saved Athair’s life.”
“Yes,” Curufin says. “Yes, I saved Athair’s life.”
Celegorm rolls off him, reaching to help him up. But Curufin surprises him, hugging him tightly instead of taking his offered hand.
Celegorm lets him. This, he thinks, he will not be allowed to forget: the feeling of Curufin's still-thin arms around his neck, a noose and a brother in one.
“Now,” Curufin whispers, voice giddy with triumph, “We are both good sons.”