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If the game is no longer a game, what is the name for the way the water seems to find a point of calm around your reflection?
Amras.
Did your voices used to be so near to each other, or is that just a figment of your imagination?
“I wasn’t very old.” Mollie tucks her hair behind her ears. Her hands are dark, clever. She swears the missing finger doesn’t hurt her. She will not tell you how and when it was taken from her. You know what she used to do, as much as you know anything, but you don’t understand…why.
You poke at the ground with a stick. Nobody is going to kill you, here. “How old are you now?”
Her brow furrows. “Nearly eighteen, I think.”
She thinks. Celegorm was eighteen when you set out; Celegorm is nearly twenty, now. This is how time passes—cruelly, through your hands.
“What is like, not knowing exactly?”
Mollie hunches her shoulders. “Strange. A lot of things are strange.”
Why are you always alone? Have you talked to Maglor lately?
Maglor doesn’t want to hear from me, you tell the water. He is lost. He does not play or sing, he does nothing but watch the sky and argue with our brothers.
Oh. You are lost.
I am not lost, you say. I am the only one who remembers everything that happened. Doesn’t that matter?
“I still want to get away,” Mollie tells you. “I still want to leave here, I shan’t go in the night without telling you, Amras, you’ve been so kind to me, but—”
“But no one is hurting you here, anymore.” This is true, you have seen to it. You have helped her hide in the stables and when no one is watching, you teach her what you know about using a knife.
You are biting your lips. She is not meeting your eyes.
You know she is hiding something, yet you want, badly, to believe her. You want, after everything, to have someone to believe.
If the game is no longer a game, then why does Amrod look so real in the water?
(You tell yourself he doesn’t look the same as you.)
Amras, Maedhros wouldn’t want any of you to fall. He would want you to be strong.
Aren’t you in the same place? Why can’t I see him?
You know why.
Maedhros is dead six weeks and you don’t think you can hear him anymore, hear the sound of his voice, softer and yet stronger than even Athair’s was. Certainly, you can’t see him, except maybe from the corners of your eyes, by some lights.
Amrod, you see in the shine of the water. Maglor and Celegorm and Curufin are only shadows, but the men of Mithrim are the glow of animal gazes, watching in the dark.
Caranthir tries his best, but you don’t need him.
You don’t need anyone who is here.
“Mollie, if you want to leave, I’ll help you.”