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Maedhros is young, more solemn than he has ever been in his entire life, and his red hair hangs shaggy around his ears and his robe will be too long, for he is seven years old and hasn’t even made his First Communion yet. The priest thinks he should wait another year for both these things, to prevent him from tripping down the aisle and to gain more maturity, but Maedhros curls his small fists in Mother’s hair and weeps silently, and Athair, seeing the tears, rests a hand gently on his son’s neck and whispers clouded words of comfort, and the next week he speaks with Father Llewellyn.
Soon after, wide-eyed little Maedhros is stumbling up the aisle to the smooth communion rail, shaking with something between happiness and terror because God is right there, and what if he can’t swallow the host, what if it is too big and flat and what if it tastes bad, would it be a sin if he chokes on it, and he will never ever be an altar boy and God will hate him and—just when he kneels at the rail, just before he doubles over, clawing at caged breath, he whispers, “Help me. Please.”
And suddenly he feels his Mother’s hand on his shoulder, even though she is a few yards behind, where he can’t see the pride in the turn of her lips and the light of her eyes, but a presence surrounds him, like—like the most kindest, most loving hug he has ever felt—and Maedhros knows everything will be well.
The priest lays the Host on Maedhros’s tongue, and while Mother has told him it will taste like bread, all he can taste is honey, a sweet, soothing honey that glides down his throat without any trouble.
Maedhros does cry then, and also the very next Sunday, when he is allowed to serve at the foot of the altar wearing white robes held off the floor by no less than twenty sharp pins.
He has practiced his Latin every night before bed, and he does not mispronounce a single word.
“See, little Maitimo,” Nerdanel says to Maedhros after the Mass is over. “It is as it is written: you have only to ask, and you shall receive.”
Maedhros thinks God definitely had a part in the whole thing, and but he also knows who spoke for him and argued for him, and so he snuggles up to Athair that evening as he sits in his large rocking chair. Athair is surprised at first, as he is always surprised when Maedhros initiates hugs, but Mother is singing to baby Caranthir, and Maglor and Celegorm are fast asleep on the floor, curled up back to back, black and gold, and after a moment Athair begins to stroke Maedhros’s hair.
“I love you,” Maedhros whispers into Athair’s broad chest.
Maedhros is small when he stands guardian before the tabernacle, and the candlestick is heavy, but in his many years of service, he only singes his hair three times.
-
Maglor watches his brother from the pew, and Maedhros is so far away he might as well be dead and in heaven already. Maglor tries to catch his eye when he floats down the aisle, escorting the priest and other altar boys, all older and taller than him. Maedhros does not look at him, not then and not when he sits motionless on a cushion-less stool for hours while Father Llewellyn talks about sons who run away with their father’s money.
Maglor sulks for two days and steals Maedhros’s strawberries from his dinner plate and swears he will never be an altar boy.
“You’ll change your mind,” Maedhros says, his face lighting up like Mother just said Christmas was coming six months early, “and I can teach you everything.”
Torn between lingering indignation and creeping interest, Maglor caves when Maedhros promises to give him all his strawberries for the rest of the summer.
All is well, until Maedhros grabs Maglor’s hand and they run to Athair’s forge.
“I am sorry,” Athair says, wiping sweat from his brow, smearing smoky soot deeper into the creases of his frown. He does not set his tools down, but motions Maglor out of his way as he steps toward flame and hot golden liquid.
“You are too young,” Athair says, “and you must wait a few years. It was hard enough for me to convince Father Llewellyn to let Maedhros make his First Communion before he is ten.”
It is so unfair. Maglor, though young, has a keen sense of injustice. He can do everything his older brother can, except this one thing. Surely Mother has pins enough for him.
He begins to argue, purposefully blind to Maedhros’s wide eyes and sharp headshake, and he doesn’t stop until Athair gives him such a glare as to promise imminent punishment, and even then he does not completely close his mouth until Maedhros grabs his wrist and forcibly drags him back to the house and Mother’s soothing hands.
Maglor never admits to it, but he cries into his pillow that night.
Maedhros never says he hears, but the next day he promises to fulfill his end of the bargain, for Maglor tried and that is what matters.
(Maglor eats the strawberries for a week, before pretending he has developed a strong, short-lasting dislike of them.)
Two years later, Maglor struggles into white robes. He has done his studying and can speak his Latin and he knows every step he must take, because Maedhros cleared the dining room, pushing tables and chairs aside as much as his slight strength enabled him to, and he marked up the wood with chalk and made Maglor go through the Mass ten times before Nerdanel found them and forced them to clean and then polish the dining room floor and the hallway floor.
Maglor knows every step he must take, before the Mass starts, and but once the music begins—the music is particularly beautiful this Sunday, what with the new organ Grandfather Finwe donated—Maglor forgets everything he has learned. Maedhros has to hiss at him and poke him and give him imploring looks. Maglor is so lost by the time of the Consecration that he completely forgets to ring the bells.
“I’m sorry, Maitimo,” he says to Maedhros, after Mass is over and they are snuffing out the candles. The smoke rises to the ceiling, and Maglor follows with his eyes, watching it all the way to the brilliant stain-glassed windows above the altar and crucifix. He wonders how the colors are so rich, if maybe angels like to paint.
Maedhros can paint.
Well, he tries. He isn’t very good.
“Kano.”
Maglor starts, because Maedhros is tugging his sleeve, and he doesn’t look mad. His eyebrows aren’t pinched and he isn’t pressing his lips together.
“Don’t worry, Kano,” Maedhros says, wrapping his arm around Maglor’s neck. Maglor tries to twist away, but his brother is too big and strong, and Maglor really doesn’t mind that much. “I saved the chalk from Mamaí. We can clear a space in the barn, and we’ll make you the best altar boy in the world.”
Maglor smiles.
He never stops being distracted by the music, but it doesn’t matter in the end. Maedhros is always there to guide him.
Celegorm doesn’t choose to be an altar boy, but he can’t sit still through Mass anyway, and so if he wants to get up and go to and fro, he best be useful while he is at it. So Mother says as they rattle on home from Mass the day of the twins’ baptism.
She slips her hand out of the layers of quilts bunched around her and whichever twin she holds, and she reaches across the carriage, snagging Celegorm’s collar and brushing his water-darkened, gold-dust hair out of his eyes.
“Did you have to put your entire head in the basin?” she says to Celegorm, voice cracked with cold or amusement or both. Or with frustration.
Celegorm makes a face, because it won’t do to tell her he was only fulfilling a dare Turgon had given him.
A deep voice murmurs, almost coos, and Celegorm turns to Athair in surprise. He is seated next to Celegorm, his elbow at Celegorm’s nose, and resting in that elbow is a tiny wrinkled ugly baby.
It is either Amrod or Amras.
Celegorm is unimpressed with the twins, apart from each one’s shock of red hair, which makes him think of the fox that raids their chicken run from time to time.
(Celegorm doesn’t actively damage Athair’s traps, but he has sat cross-legged on his bed and stared at his medal of St. Francis, bargaining with his patron for the survival of the beautiful creature. Father would not approve, and Celegorm knows the animal must die, but...not yet.)
“Athair,” Celegorm begins, tugging on his father’s thick coat.
Athair can barely tear his eyes away from the baby in his arms. “What is it, Celegorm?”
Maglor, sitting next to Mother and holding Curufin steady on his lap, starts humming “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.”
Christmas is weeks past, and Celegorm thinks it fair when Curufin reaches up with a tiny hand and covers Maglor’s mouth. Maglor nibbles on his fingers, and Curufin starts to wail.
“Maglor, please,” Mother says, but Athair waits patiently for Celegorm’s answer.
“I don’t want to be an altar boy,” Celegorm says, marveling only for a moment over how calm Athair has been ever since the twins were born.
Amrod (or is it Amras?) has wrapped his bird-like talons around Athair’s finger, and Athair is almost smiling.
Celegorm has hope for three seconds, until Athair shakes his head.
“It is tradition at this point,” he says, shifting his weight so he isn’t squishing Celegorm against the side of the carriage with quite as much force as he inadvertently had been.
A pained sigh comes from the other side of Athair. Maedhros.
Maedhros, who holds a sleeping Caranthir in his lap, just suffered for Celegorm’s comfort, and so Celegorm is surprised when Maedhros puts in a good word for him.
“Isn’t he too young, Athair?”
Celegorm can just see Maedhros’s nose around Athair’s broad chest.
“Celegorm is ready,” Athair murmurs, rubbing his fingers gently over Amras’s (Amrod’s) lips so that he gurgles and smiles. “Seven is a good age to begin.”
Celegorm’s mouth drops open, and he straightens his shoulders in indignation. “I’m five.”
Athair has never forgotten anyone’s age.
“Oh my God,” Mother exclaims, before covering her mouth and crossing herself. “We’ve lost track at last, my love.”
And to Celegorm’s surprise, she and Athair laugh and laugh. He would be upset, but he understands that he has gotten out of girly robes for another two years at least, so he snuggles up against Athair and finds it in himself to pat Am—the baby’s head.
It is very soft, almost like rabbit fur, only less thick. And, of course, it looks more like a fox’s hue.
Or maybe the color of Mother’s favorite chicken.
When Celegorm turns seven, he has changed his mind about the whole thing. Maedhros is the lead altar boy, because Father Llewellyn trusts him to take proper care of the sanctuary, and to train other servers well, even those older than him, and besides, Maedhros looks so intense when he kneels at the foot of the altar, hair flaming like—like that bush that talked to Moses.
Well, the bush was God, wasn’t it? Or an angel. Celegorm thinks it is silly for a bush to talk. It would be much better if God appeared in the shape of a lion, or maybe a fox. If he had, maybe he would have blessed foxes for the rest of time, and kept them safe from Athair’s traps.
(Celegorm is only slightly bitter, because Athair gave the fox’s skin to Mother, and though it was too small for her to use, she turned it into a pretty little shawl for Cousin Aredhel, and Aredhel was so thrilled that Celegorm thought hunting might be a worthwhile pursuit after all.)
Celegorm doesn’t get as distracted as Maglor does, which makes Father Llewellyn happy, but he also brings a chipmunk into the sacristy with him, which does not make Father happy. Luckily, the priest is more kindly than his severe nose would suggest, and he doesn’t tell Athair or Mother. Celegorm doesn’t know which would be worse, and is very grateful he does not have to find out.
(Maedhros’s calm, clear logic is the reason Celegorm isn’t banished to the pew for the rest of his childhood, but he doesn’t know this until Maedhros quits serving.)
(The calm, clear logic is that Celegorm must be given a chance to reform, or he will be wild for the rest of his days. Also, Celegorm is not given to daydreaming as Maglor is, and in the event that Maedhros is not present, for illness or injury, Celegorm will not forget to ring the bells—he loves to startle lazy parishioners from their dozing.)
Celegorm stays, and Celegorm serves.
-
Maedhros is thirteen and a boy no longer. Athair has been gone for months and may never return, and as the grey days grow colder and threaten snow, Maedhros understands he has more to sacrifice.
He realizes this in the middle of Mass on the feast of All Saints, when he stands at Father’s side, holding a golden paten under the chins of the churchgoers receiving Communion, and glances up to sees tiny Amrod striking Curufin on the shoulder. Caranthir is sneezing uncontrollably, as he always does when incense clouds the church, and Mother—Mother clutches at Amrod’s weak little hand while shushing a wailing Amras.
The lace-coated lady just behind Maedhros’s family wrinkles her nose, and her bewhiskered husband shakes his head and whispers in her ear.
If Maedhros were another of his brothers, he might weep bitterly or curse their names the second he is out of church, or he might throw the paten at the rude couple and take what consequences came. However, Maedhros is Maedhros and so he clenches his jaw as if he would break it, and blames himself for everything.
After the Mass concludes, he tells Father Llewellyn that he will no longer be able to serve.
Celegorm overhears, and he flies to Maedhros in a fury.
“You can’t stop,” he says, shaking his head, flinging hot tears from his face. He is gripping the sleeves of Maedhros’s robe, staining the white cloth with his grubby hands.
(He must have forgotten to wash them after feeding the horses in the early morn, before Mother hitched up the carriage.)
“Maitimo, you love being an altar boy more than anything. Make Maglor quit instead. He is old enough to help Mother.”
Maedhros removes Celegorm’s hands and his own robes and neatly folds them before answering. He wilts in his resolve and in his soul. Maglor wouldn’t mind—he wouldn’t. The temptation is so great, to say, “Yes, Celegorm, you are right. What a wise little brother you are. Maglor shall be an excellent help to Mamaí.”
He can’t quite speak the words through his teeth, much less breathe them up his throat.
He should have quit the Sunday after Athair left, so that Mother would always have a man at her side, to guard and protect her, and make her burdens light.
Maedhros glances around the sacristy one last time, ensuring robes and missals and candlesticks are in their places. Chestnut cupboards closed and locked. Keys returned to Father. The incense that torments Caranthir and Ath—the incense is put away as well.
Celegorm must guess his answer, because he storms out the door and gives Maglor a shove as he hurries in with an armful of scarves donated for the poor.
They don’t need such scarves—not yet. They may next winter, or the winter after that.
“What’s got Celegorm in a twist?” Maglor asks, aggrieved. He dumps the scarves on a much-scarred table in the center of the sacristy.
Maedhros automatically begins to fold and sort.
(How is it possible to shiver in one’s skin, to burn in one’s throat, and to feel completely empty in one’s mind?)
Maedhros sways, and Maglor catches his arm, steadies him.
“You look ill,” Maglor says, placing a cold hand to his brother’s forehead.
“I am the eldest,” Maedhros whispers.
Next week, he sits with Mother in the pew and does not let her see the tears welling in his eyes.
His younger brothers behave better with him nearby, but when he falls asleep on Mother’s shoulder during Father Llewellyn’s rambling homily, she does not wake him.
-
Athair is back.
Maglor doesn’t daydream during Mass anymore. Hasn’t for a while. Hasn’t needed the priest to loudly whisper his name, for all the church to hear. He stepped up when Maedhros stepped down.
Celegorm still carries candlestick and cross, but not every weekend. One day he feigns nausea so that he might stay home from church, and Caranthir knows this because he himself is genuinely ill, lying in his bed in his tiny little room, throwing up every hour.
It is all a big mess, with Mother and Athair fighting over who should stay behind to watch over the invalids, with Athair arguing Mother needs to step out into the fresh air, and Mother proclaiming Athair’s soul needs a good Mass, considering all the ones he missed while he was...gone.
Mother wins, of course, as she does most fights these days. Caranthir is glad, smiles into his sheets despite his head, which feels like someone stuck a pitchfork in it, and despite his stomach, which feels like someone stuck a pitchfork in it and is turning it over and over like hay.
Mother is gentler than Athair, stroking Caranthir’s short dark hair and whispering to him and kissing his blunt forehead and even taking him in her arms and holding his feverish body against her. She sings to him, and he whimpers, eyes closed.
She must leave him, however, to make broth for him and Celegorm, and that is when Celegorm sneaks into Caranthir’s room, belying his wretchedly-cried claims that he is going to vomit last night’s rosemary chicken all over Curufin if he is forced to ride in the carriage.
“Psst, Caranthir.” Celegorm creaks Caranthir’s bedroom door open and crawls the two feet to his brother’s bed.
Caranthir closes his eyes and pulls his purple quilt over his face. His headache just increased tenfold.
“Go away,” he rasps, and regrets speaking immediately. Does not regret it enough to refrain from adding, “Don’t throw up in my bucket.”
Mother just gave him a new one.
To Caranthir’s surprise, Celegorm mumbles, “Don’t worry about your precious bucket. I’m not actually sick.”
Caranthir is much too dazed by everything to cry out all of his thoughts. They are mixed and muddled, but boil down to what do you mean, you are missing Mass, you should be helping Maglor, you lied to Mother and Athair, can we trade places I mean you can spend all day sick as a dog and I’ll go to church in your place, I can’t even complete a Hail Mary everything hurts so much, I wish I could punch you in the face.
He sums up the gooey tears in his eyes with three words. “I hate you.”
(“Words have value,” Mother says to him sometimes, “just as numbers do. That is why it is important you think about them before you say them.”
Often, Caranthir thinks too much, and then never speaks at all. That is safest.)
Celegorm is silent, and Caranthir peeks out from under his covers. His brother sits curled in a ball, arms resting on his knees. One sparkling tear runs down his sun-browned cheek, and Caranthir suddenly feels like the worst person in the world.
“I just wanted to spend time alone with Athair,” Celegorm says. He buries his face in an elbow, golden hair drooping limply over his freckled skin, and Caranthir considers turning over and screaming into his pillow.
Athair, Athair, Athair. Why did he go, and why can’t Caranthir really truly hate him as he wants to?
(Because Athair can be kind, and his arms strong and his touch gentle and sometimes he has held Caranthir in his arms and once he lifted him onto his shoulders and proclaimed Caranthir a king of the fae, one to treat with and to respect, one to serve and to protect, and Maedhros led Maglor and Celegorm in bowing and proclaiming their undying love and loyalty.)
(Curufin was four at the time, but Caranthir remembers his glittering eyes watching over Mother’s shoulder.)
Caranthir knows nothing that will comfort his older brother. Maybe he should reach out and pat his head, and then Celegorm will get sick for real, and then Caranthir will ask Mother to let Athair stay behind with him.
Suddenly, Celegorm leaps up, and his sadness has vanished somewhere Caranthir cannot see it, and he’s asking Caranthir something that has nothing to do with any of this.
“You’re about old enough now. Are you going to be an altar boy too? You’ll like lighting the candles, and even if you have to kneel too much it’s still more fun than just sitting in a pew for hours.”
It’s not even an hour and a half, Caranthir does not say, nor does he say that fun is not the main reason for being an altar boy.
“Is Maitimo going to serve again?”
Celegorm shrugs, but Caranthir already knows the answer, and wishes he didn’t.
“I’m afraid,” Caranthir says. “I’m afraid I will mess up, and Maitimo won’t be there to tell me how to fix things.” It must be the sickness, because Caranthir never tells Celegorm when he is afraid. He only lets him know when he is angry, often with a wild punch.
Celegorm doesn’t seem to notice anything weird though. He lights up, as though he were not just crying over Athair.
“I’ll teach you everything,” he promises, “just like Maedhros taught me. You’ll be fine.”
Somewhere inside, despite hurting stomach and hoarse breath, Caranthir’s heart thrills. Here is a gift unexpected—to be one of a pair, as Maitimo and Maglor are.
It is an exciting prospect, an idea that Caranthir holds in his hands and considers when he is hiding up in the dusty hayloft to get some peace and needs a break from studying the mysteries of numbers. It is an idea sweet like brown sugar on yams, and so it cannot last.
Three weeks before Caranthir is set to kneel at the communion rail for the first time, flanked by his brothers, Celegorm brings his current project, Finn, a sickly baby squirrel, into the sacristy and hides him in his robes. Finn escapes in the middle of Mass, and Celegorm consequently gets banned from altar serving for a year.
Caranthir does scream into his pillow that night.
In the end, he learns on his own. He has watched his brothers for years, Maitimo, Maglor, and the rest. He knows the motions, the actions, when to kneel and when to stand, when to murmur responses and when to pray in quiet adoration.
The problem is not any of these things. The problem is Caranthir cannot grasp Latin no matter how hard he tries. There are too many tenses and forms and sounds and he is so frustrated because it should just be like fitting numbers into math problems.
Instead he is utterly hopeless. Father Llewellyn always tells him to speak up, that Caranthir’s mumble is worse than nothing at all, except Caranthir knows that can’t be right either, because if he doesn’t say anything he may as well go sit with Celegorm the Failure, and then he gets so worried about being a Failure himself that he starts chewing the collar of his robe, and then Father yells at him for that.
Caranthir always saves his tears for the few minutes he has after Mass ends, when Maglor tells him to run along and rejoin the family, because Maglor can close up the sacristy by himself.
Caranthir leaves Maglor and sneaks across the church to where a side altar sits back in an arched alcove. The altar is white, a precious pure marble, and on it stands a beautiful statue, a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman painted so soft that Caranthir is sure her skin would be warm if he but touched her hand. He can’t do that of course, he is nowhere near tall enough, and would never climb on the altar, but he can touch the foot that crushes a writhing green snake.
Each Sunday, he kisses the tips of his fingers and gently brushes that foot. He has seen Mother do this, on occasion.
It is not the first time he has imitated Mother in her devotions. She loves her beads, and counts them as she works, or prays them even when she cannot hold them, and Caranthir thinks his second earliest memory is of her rocking him back and forth, whispering “Holy Mary, Mother of God.”
It is his favorite prayer, and now, several weeks into serving Mary’s Son, Caranthir clasps his small hands together and makes the Lady a promise: that he will say one special Hail Mary every day for the rest of his life, if only she can help him with his Latin.
Maitimo finds him there, white-faced and tear-stained, and takes him up in his ever-lengthening arms.
“Caranthir, oh Caranthir.” Maitimo rubs his back soothingly, and presses his lips to Caranthir’s scarlet cheek.
Caranthir wants to die of shame—he is old enough to be an altar boy, and to have had his First Communion, and here he is crying into Maitimo’s copper hair like a baby. He wants to keep his problems to himself, but Maitimo wrings them out of him with a few soft words.
“Little brother,” Maitimo says, and Caranthir does not wrinkle his nose as he would if Maglor were to address him in such a way. “Maybe you’re going about this all wrong. You don’t need to learn Latin, you just need to learn Latin words.”
That doesn’t make any sense, and Caranthir tells him so.
Maitimo just laughs and explains further. “You’re thinking too much, Caranthir. All you need to do is memorize the responses. Like an addition table. The priest says this, and therefore you say that.”
Caranthir pushes down his brother’s high collar and squishes his face against his brother’s warm neck.
“Will you help me?” he asks.
“Of course,” Maitimo says immediately.
Caranthir knows he is smiling.
Caranthir smiles too, spending time with Maitimo, and though they will never be Maitimo and Maglor, perhaps it is good just to be Maitimo and Caranthir.
A few months later, Maitimo leaves to go study in the city, and Caranthir sleeps in Maitimo’s bed with the twins for three weeks straight. He cries in secret and gets in fights with Celegorm and slaps Curufin for asking him a mean question, but at the end of every day, he still prays his Hail Mary.
He is the only altar boy of the family left, because Maglor has gone away too, and he never stumbles over his Latin again.
Not unless he is thinking about his brother.
-
Curufin asks Athair to let him become an altar boy when he is six years old. It isn’t that he especially wants to, not for the sake of serving itself, but rather because Caranthir has just received his First Communion at seven, as have all Curufin’s older brothers, and Curufin wants to beat them at something.
Besides, or rather more importantly, he is a son of Feanor, and Athair would never let something like a few silly rules stop him from getting something he desires.
(Mother is not amused when he gives these reasons, but Athair laughs before setting Curufin on his knee and explaining why he must wait another year.)
(Athair is rarely upset with Curufin.)
Curufin’s First Communion is a blur, and he bubbles with some emotion he cannot understand, scrutinize it though he does. He lowers himself very slowly onto his kneeler, head barely even with Athair’s elbow, and stares up at the green and gold glass window of his patron saint.
Athair catches his eye and smiles, and Curufin realizes that the fizzy feeling is pride, his own, at having made Athair proud.
That must be it, right?
Mother kisses his cheek after Mass, and Curufin flushes happily, but then he is pulling away and straightening his shoulders, because he has taken the first step to becoming a man.
He wishes Maedhros were here to see.
He does not wonder why he wants his oldest brother here and not miles and miles away in a city Curufin does not care for, since it steals Athair away from time to time.
Maedhros at fifteen is not much to admire, and yet—
A massive horse gallops down the road that winds out of the hills, a horse Curufin knows well.
Maedhros crosses over the town border and whisks into the churchyard, leaping off Alexander and leaping up the stone slabs that function as the church’s steps. He sweats profusely, and the fringe that cuts across his face is plastered to his forehead.
“Maedhros,” Mother exclaims in alarm, but the church bell rings loud and clear above, and Maedhros’s face falls.
“I missed it,” he says, as if to convince himself of the fact. He wears no riding gloves, and he wrings his hands as if he would remove his own fingers.
He does not seem to hear Mother’s delight and worry, nor does he answer Athair, who asks if Grandfather Finwe is coming behind.
Curufin blinks in confusion, and something zings down his arms, a cool shock, and then Maedhros kneels in front of him, and apologizes for arriving too late to witness one of the most important events in Curufin’s life.
For the first time in Curufin’s memory, he is speechless.
For one of the last times in Curufin’s life, he does not resist when Maedhros pulls him into a smothering hug.
Serving at Mass is not nearly so interesting as Curufin imagined. He must look too much at the altar and the priest, and not steal glances to the side, cataloguing the members of the congregation, their appearance and their apparent devotion, or lack thereof. He can’t measure himself standing next to Athair, nor can he amuse himself by poking the twins.
The only thing he enjoys is attending the priest when he walks up and down the aisle between the pews, singing and sprinkling people with holy water. Curufin watches where the water lands, because everyone knows that if the water doesn’t touch you, you don’t get blessed.
Athair, who always stands at the end of the pew, never misses out. Mother is not so lucky.
Maedhros is like her, in that way.
Curufin intends to be like Athair, who makes his own fortune.
(Curufin forgets, if he has once known it, that fortune may be found in the depths of a soul and the beating, bloody, ever-loving heart of a human being.)
Curufin serves at Mass until he is ten, and then he asks Mother if he may step down as an altar boy.
(He could not ask Athair, who will be disappointed in him, but the sadness in Mother’s eyes almost makes him wish he had.)
Curufin sets his shoulders and vows never to let his parents down again.
He is only halfway successful in this.
-
The twins are terrors, the twins are angels.
The entire church sighs in mundane adoration at the sight of Amrod and Amras shuffling side by side up to the communion rail, clasping their hands together in youthful piety. The twins kneel, breathless, and if Mother cries because her babies are growing up, they do not hear her, so intent are they on the approaching Lord—their closest friend and brother, Maitimo says.
(The twins love Maitimo, but apparently even he can be wrong. Who can give better hugs than him? Who else allows Amrod and Amras to snuggle into his arms and sleep there for hours?)
Maitimo is here with Maglor, for neither of them wish to miss this day. The twins clung to Maitimo for two hours straight when he tumbled wearily into the house at Formenos the night before.
After their First Communion, they beg him not to go back.
“You have to stay and teach us how to be altar boys,” Amrod says, hanging from Maitimo’s arm as he tries to saddle Alexander. Maglor is in the house, trying to convince Mother that he doesn’t have room in his saddlebag for her canned fruit.
Amras is almost in tears. “Yes,” he continues for Amrod, “Please stay. Caranthir gets cross with us when we run into each other while training, and Curufin asks us if we would rather drop a candle or the crucifix on our feet, and then says both will probably happen, and Celegorm just wants to go off and train Achilles.”
Maitimo lets both arms fall to his sides, and he leans his face into the side of his saddle for a moment, as though he were trying to breathe in its leathery smell, and for a moment Amrod is afraid Maitimo will cry, and Amras thinks he will fall asleep like that, but then Maitimo turns and smiles at them and ruffles their hair.
“Sorry, Ambarussa,” he says. “I can’t stay. But you can write to me, and tell me how it all goes, and if Caranthir or anyone else upsets you, I will send them a scathing reprimand. I promise.”
Maitimo has always been their guardian angel—an angel for angels. That is what Mother says, when she tells how she and Athair chose St. Raphael and St. Gabriel as the patrons for the twins.
Amrod and Amras make a valiant effort and manage to rein in the tears that so nearly burst like water from a broken pitcher. They wrap their slender arms around Maitimo, and he brushes his lips against their hair.
Amrod giggles, feeling a tickle, and then Maitimo whispers, “I’ve begun again myself. Cousin Fingon’s idea, and Maglor also thinks it wise. I shall be trying to remember how to serve at the Lord’s table at the same time you put on your robes for the first time.”
Amras bites his lip and looks up at Maitimo. “Perhaps you should stay for that reason then. Maybe we can teach you things.”
The twins flinch at the same time when Maitimo makes a gasping noise, but then he is laughing, so loud and clear, and he is squeezing his eyes shut tight he is so amused, and they smile.
Maitimo rides away, and Maglor too, and Ambarussa find that the absence of both is too great a weight to bear. They cry for ages, wrapped around each other’s arms, and then they begin to plot.
Serving at Mass, the twins are angels, at least as far as the congregation can tell. Father Llewellyn has a different word for them.
Terrors.
They hide keys and forget responses and purposefully turn the pages in the Mass missal to the wrong sections and they always collide right before the altar and collapse in a heap of too-large robes. And he can never tell which one is which. He doesn’t even know if Amrod is the trouble-maker or Amras is, or both of them together.
The plan, unfortunately, does not work. Maitimo is not called back to give them lessons on how to serve at Mass, but the twins are pulled from duty for two weeks, and Celegorm is forced to take up his old robes again.
(That is something of a disaster in itself, and so after sufficient apology is made, Amrod and Amras serve once more, with greater skill and fervor. They do tell Maitimo all about it in a letter, and he tells them he has not laughed so long in weeks, but also that they must behave, as their task is very special.)
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Maedhros indeed serves at Mass again, in hopes that an old love will make his stay so far from his loved ones more palatable.
It works, for a time, until the loneliness becomes too much.
(When Maedhros falls, he condemns himself. When Maedhros falls, he removes his unworthy self from before the altar of God, though God were reaching after him with loving hands.)