Work Text:
i. Finrod
The wheels of my uncle’s carriage have scarcely echoed down the drive before Aunt Nerdanel reappears from her quest to the attic, her arms heavy with quilts.
“There should be enough here,” she says, running her hand down the folds as if counting them. “If Fingolfin does not mind taking the chaise—”
Uncle Feanor stirs himself from his post by the door, where he has been watching out the shadowed windows. If I were not my father’s son, and given to diplomacy, I might have asked him whom he looked for, if not the brother he has lately sent away.
(I was not present to overhear the exact wording, but I assume something of the like happened between the end of our riotous dancing and my second uncle bundling his children out the door.)
“Fingolfin does not break his journey here,” Uncle Feanor says dismissively, though I observe the glinting glance he sends my aunt from the corner of his eye. “He desired to rest nearer home.”
Aunt Nerdanel’s mouth opens and shuts. I see a flush rising in her cheeks, as I have seen in Maedhros’s on the rare occasions when he is angry. I wonder where my father is, or Grandfather Finwe, and wish it was not only I and Maglor and Caranthir standing about to weather this coming storm.
Aunt Nerdanel looks at me, and her face softens, and though she tightens her hold on the quilts, she does not quarrel. “Very well,” she says, her voice pleasant and light once more. “But I passed Fingon on the stairs, and so I assume he is spending the night.”
“Your eldest insisted.”
It is not a diplomatic thought, and it is not for lack of love—I do love my uncle, as I love all my family—but I am reminded again how glad I am that he is not my father.
“Come with me, Finrod,” Maglor says, gripping my elbow, and though his eyes were worried as they flitted between his parents, there is now an expectant smile on his lips. “You shall share with me, if you care to—since Maedhros has already promised half his bed to Fingon.”
“Not so fast!” Aunt Nerdanel has a cat’s ears. “Maglor, my love, you smell like a stable. I have already sent as many of your brothers as I can find outside to wash—go along, then.”
I pause, and surreptitiously, run my hand along the under-seam of my coat sleeve. It is drenched.
Parisian cologne cannot quite mask the scent.
“I shall as well,” I say, even as Maglor groans,
“Mamaí! It is freezing!”
“The bath is reserved for the old folk,” Aunt Nerdanel says, and we leave her with a protesting Uncle Feanor, who, having forgotten his ire at his departing brother, protests that he is not at all old.
The farm girls with whom I lately danced are loitering at the kitchen window, and they squeak and scatter as we pass by. I realize, even in the dark, what they were trying to see.
In the small yard behind the kitchen, cornered by my uncle’s forge and lit by a lantern hooked to the forge’s outer wall, there is a hand pump. Celegorm is currently plying it, while Maedhros captures the squirming Ambarussa and scrubs behind their ears.
Maedhros is wearing his breeches and naught else. I glance back at the window, glowing with candles in the velvet black before dawn, and I laugh despite myself.
All things are the same, in this world. Men and women and love and fools.
“What ho, Maglor!” Maedhros calls, and he throws a sponge that misses Maglor’s nose only because he ducks.
“Damn you!” Maglor cries, and Celegorm says,
“Watch your tongue, Macalaure,” in a snide tone that makes me sure he feigns an imitation.
Fingon stands to the side, his shirt draped loosely over him as he passes a wet cloth over his face and arms. It is like Fingon, to be modest and restrained. I do not tell him of the watchers at the window; he would be distressed.
I strip down to my smallclothes, unembarrassed by the demands of nature and more worried over the trying business of wet silk. I gasp when the icy water blasts against my shoulders.
“I told you,” Maglor says, unbuttoning his shirt with care, as if it is not to be relegated to the laundry hereafter. “Celegorm, let me pump. I do not trust you not to splash our cousin.”
Celegorm glares at us both and stumps away. He has already washed, though it makes him look no more orderly, with his hair in weeds around his ears. I know how close Celegorm is to Aredhel—the only one of our cousins whose company he enjoys—and I suppose it is hard for him, to have Fingon alone stay behind.
We should all have been together, this night.
Maedhros finishes with the Ambarussa and then waits his turn at the pump behind me. He dips his head beneath it, lathering and rinsing his hair—which is much darker when wet—and then shaking it like a dog, flinging droplets of water everywhere.
The Ambarussa—was it Turgon who named them so? I never remember—laugh.
When we are all soap-clean and shivering, Fingon helps Maglor to gather up the discarded clothes, and we wrap ourselves in the blankets Maedhros must have brought with him.
“Where did you leave the pretty maids?” Maedhros asks me, low, with a devilish grin, and I snort.
“You knew?”
He shrugs.
“Maids?” Fingon has overheard, and looks positively stricken, wrapping his blanket more tightly around his neck “Are they—”
“All gone home, cano,” Maedhros assures him sweetly, patting his shoulder. “Seven hells, it’s cold. Amrod, Amras, my loves, run and have your carrots before you go to bed.”
“Carrots?” Fingon asks. His curiosity is boundless, as is my own, but Fingon’s tend to more practical measures.
“Aye, Athair has them eat carrots to clean their teeth before they brush them. We all did the same.” Maedhros waves a hand. “We call it growing out of your carrots when a boy’s—”
Whatever he was about to say—and I can guess—is cut off by the appearance of Aunt Nerdanel. “I shall send up hot cider for the lot of you,” she says. “Maitimo, you’ll soak your quilt. Here.”
My aunt is always handing someone something; now she gives Maedhros a snow-white towel, which he wraps around his dripping hair like an elaborate headdress.
“Where is mine?” Maglor demands, and Maedhros quips,
“The benefit, brother mine, of keeping your hair a little too long.”
We mount the stairs together, giddy with shivering and the promise of hot cider. Grandfather and Grandmother have already gone to bed, and my mother, still in her dancing dress, is bidding Angrod and Aegnor good night.
Beside me, Fingon sighs a little. I turn, and Maedhros turns, for Maedhros is always quickest to notice our moods.
“Are you alright?” Maedhros asks.
Fingon grins, not completely convincing. I know he is thinking of his family, as I would be thinking of mine, had they left so abruptly.
“I—” Fingon stutters.
“They shall be more comfortable in the boarding house, mark my words,” Maedhros says easily, his eyes and smile imploring and reassuring at once. “I have stayed in it myself, when Maglor and I broke a carriage wheel once. Well”—a flourish of his fingers, that manages, somehow, to capture and throw aside the incident—“We were not at fault, of course. But the beds there are soft, and a sight better than the chaise longue for your poor father’s back.”
“His back does ache, sometimes,” Fingon admits, cheered.
“Of course. He has a stiff spine, same as the rest of us.” Maedhros’s dimples show, and Fingon laughs at that, and we turn the corner of the hall to find my eldest cousins’ door.
It has been a while since I stayed in Formenos. Ordinarily, Fingon and I join Maedhros and Maglor for schemes and parties at their city home, when Uncle Feanor is away (as he often is) and their studies are not too pressing (Maglor’s sometimes; Maedhros’s never). Still, I am glad to see these two in their natural habitat, just as I would wish to see any person. Maedhros, particularly, is glowing with good spirits.
He shuts the door behind him with his foot, and we sprawl on their two wide beds—Fingon and Maedhros on one, Maglor and myself on the other.
“Fingon,” Maedhros says, with a sidelong smirk, “What did you do with the rest of that bottle of wine?”
“I put it in the cupboard,” Fingon says. “Sorry.”
Maedhros chuckles. “I should have guessed. Well, no matter.” He hurls himself backwards, lying belly-up over his bed, and reaches over his head for something beneath the mattress.
“Is that really more comfortable?” Maglor snipes.
“Yes,” Maedhros says, even as the towel slips off his hair. “There, got it.” He sits up with a bottle of whiskey. “Grandfather’s gift to me, last birthday.”
Grandfather and Maedhros have a warm friendship, and I think it is because they are so alike. They both delight in a little mischief, and in the closeness of their loved ones.
The first is sometimes easier than the second to achieve.
Maedhros tugs at the cork, but it won’t budge. “Fuck,” he says, speculatively, and then pulls it out with his teeth, so violently that whiskey splashes the edge of his quilt.
“Careful,” Maglor scolds, but Fingon and I are laughing and Maedhros tips the bottle back for a hearty swallow before passing it to his brother in a peace offering.
In fifteen minutes, we are all pleasantly blurred with the fire of it, and Maglor begins to hum a reel he played hours ago.
“It’s like you have a bird trapped in your throat,” Fingon says dreamily. “Perfectly in tune.” He hiccoughs softly, and giggles, and Maedhros takes the bottle out of his hand.
“Slow down, cano,” he orders, looking just worried enough that I catch his eye and smile. For all of his scampish antics, Maedhros is a mother hen at heart.
There comes a knock on the door, and we hasten to sit up—flushed, and trying to look sober—as Maedhros hides the bottle beneath his pillow and calls, “Come in.”
“Artanis snores,” Amrod whines, trailing in with a stuffed bear under his arm and a blanket dragged behind him. He surveys us, eyes sharp and less guileless, which makes me quite certain that his baby act is just that: an act. “Why are you wearing blankets instead of shirts?”
We all look down, almost in surprise, except Maedhros, who let his quilt slip around his waist when he reached for the whiskey bottle and has not replaced it since.
“We forgot,” Maedhros says, and he and Maglor leap up to rifle through their drawers, collecting enough flannel nightshirts for the four of us. It is autumn, after all.
“Thank you, Amrod,” Maglor says crisply. “You may go back to bed now.”
Amrod’s lip begins to wobble and Maglor swears under his breath, but Maedhros falls for the trick as I knew he would (and as I would too, were it one of my siblings).
“Come here,” he says, and Amrod, triumphant, wedges himself into Maedhros’s arms like a wriggling puppy, somehow managing to shove Fingon almost off the bed in the process.
“Aren’t you tired?” Maedhros asks, stroking Amrod’s hair. “We have Mass tomorrow. You need to sleep.”
“Don’t you?”
“Maedhros never sleeps,” Maglor mutters, and Maedhros looks at him a little sharply, communicating something in the space of a second that the rest of us are not privy to. Such is the way of their family, I know.
“We are talking of dull, grown-up things,” Maedhros says, in the same soft tone. “You will not like it.”
“S’better than snoring,” Amrod says, snuggling comfortably in his lap.
The door opens again, and this time, it is Aunt Nerdanel. She is in her nightgown and a patchwork robe, and her hair hangs braided over her shoulder. “Hot cider,” she says, setting down a tray. Then she catches sight of her youngest. “Amrod! Back to bed!”
“But Maitimo—”
“—is wrapped around your smallest finger, bairn. To bed. At once.”
Maglor and Fingon and I bid her goodnight before she hurries after Amrod, but Maedhros springs off the bed to hug her. He turns his face away from her kiss, however, pressing his lips to her hair instead. I wonder why he thinks she would mind a little drink on his breath; we all took freely of the wine downstairs, my aunt not excepted.
“No more interruptions?” Maglor says hopefully, when the door is shut.
Fingon sips his hot cider. “It’s grand, that your brothers love you so.”
“Does Turgon not love you? Or Argon?” Maedhros elbows him gently. “They are just in awe of your greatness.”
Fingon snorts. “Turgon? In awe? Hardly.”
Turgon is in awe not of his brother, but of Maedhros, as we all are—and he has to put up with the fact that his elder brother’s best friend and confidant is a cousin, usurping his place. This I know, but I do not say.
“My dear Fingon,” I protest, “Your siblings are a little grim, as children of that age sometimes are, but never doubt that they love you.”
Fingon is blushing, not just from the whiskey. “I should not have begged for praise,” he says, picking at Maedhros’s blankets. “It makes me seem grasping.”
“Save that adjective for Macalaure and his cláirseach,” Maedhros teases. “Come, let us play a game.”
“A drinking game?” Maglor lifts an eyebrow.
“Perhaps. No. Fingon must have no more whiskey, or we shall be trundling him back to the city in a barrow.”
“Let us play questions and commands,” I say, for I delight in parlor games, and never more than when they are whispered about among my friends. “Do you know it?”
Everyone nods but Fingon, so I explain.
“One of us is the commander, who poses the questions. If a question goes unanswered, you must pay a forfeit.”
“What are the forfeits?”
“Something dreadful,” Maedhros says, eyes twinkling. “Like sitting between Celegorm and Curufin at Mass. I’d be quite truthful, if I were you.”
Fingon presses his lips together, then smiles. “Alright. I’m in.”
I am commander first, and I ask questions intended to make us laugh. We learn that Maedhros once sat in a blueberry pie, left on a chair to cool, and Maglor ate a whole grasshopper because Uncle Feanor told him to shut his eyes and trust. Fingon chews on his tongue before admitting that he once ran outside in his smallclothes, trying to escape a bath.
“I was very young,” he adds hastily. “No more than five.”
“Hmm.” Maedhros taps his chin. “Celegorm does that still.”
Then it is Maglor’s turn, and his questions are much more brutal. What is our greatest regret? Whom among the ancient philosophers would we wish to visit? How many children do we desire to have?
“Seven at least,” Maedhros says, laughing, and he slides a side-long glance at Fingon, who grins back. They have been very close all evening, and I wonder if Maedhros was more taken with the young lady he met in my circle, little more than a month ago, then he lets on.
Of course, he may never tell me.
“What,” Maglor asks, his grey eyes bright and flamed with what I call the poet-light, “Is your greatest fear?”
ii. Fingon
I open my eyes, and it is not yet dawn.
That means that I have slept less than two hours, for though it is September and the days are rising later, we did not go to sleep until nearly five o’clock. I turn over on my side, and there is Maedhros, sleeping on his stomach with his fingers knotted in his pillowcase. His hair covers his eyes like a mask.
I slip out of the bed, and the floor is chilly beneath my feet as I pace to the window. I cannot see the moon, but the rim of the sky is not devoid of light.
God willing, my father has found some rest tonight.
How that moment pained me! After his show of brilliant dancing, and the laughter and songs, after good food and some of the most joyful confidences Maedhros has ever shared with me—to watch my father chivied out of warmth and welcome to find his own lodgings for the night stung me sharply.
Did I betray him, to stay behind?
But no—my cousin asked it of me, and when have I ever been able to say no to Maedhros? He could ask me to walk round the globe, deep into the ocean and through fire. Those sound like Maglor’s words (and Maglor would say them too), but they are also mine.
He told me, tonight, that he is in love.
She is a perfect angel, Fingon, he said breathlessly, his smile burning so bright I thought there was some logic to the pagans of old, and their gods of the sun. I would die for her. I would walk over hot coals for her.
I doubt that such a thing will be asked, I said, but I was smiling too. One beams, after all, at the sun—as best as one can.
I know, I know, he assured me, busy with pouring us a little more wine. But—all men must go mad when their hearts are lit to light like this!
I threw an arm around him and both of his circled me, and he laughed into my shoulder.
I have never seen him so happy.
What is your greatest fear? Maglor asked, pale and strangely eager, and Finrod answered,
I am afraid of being a fop forever, and never amounting to anything, and I said, I fear I shall never be able to help someone who needs it most, and then I waited for Maedhros to jest that we were such tombstones, serious and sad.
Instead he said nothing at all.
Maedhros? Maglor asked, and Maedhros recovered himself, answering something silly and airy—spiders, I think—and the game resumed.
It does not seem to me that one like him should be afraid of anything.
Still, I stand by the window to offer another prayer. Then I climb back into bed, reaching over to lift the hair from his face.
In the rising dawn, I make a promise against the question I posed of my own fear. I promise before God that I shall watch over him, as I know heaven’s angels watch over me.