Work Text:
The North wind doth blow, and we shall have snow…
“And what shall poor Robin do then, poor thing?”
Chin on hands, Maglor answers eagerly, “He’ll sit in a barn, an’ to keep his head warm, will hide his head under his wing, poor thing.”
“Very good,” Mamaí says. She smiles, and she reaches down to stroke back his curls. “My, my, your hair is as red as Maitimo’s!”
“No, it isn’t!” Maglor’s hair will grow to be as dark as Athair’s one day; Athair promised. There were days on which he wanted Maitimo’s hair, before he grew up. Now that he is five and quite a little man, says Grandfather Finwe, he is content.
He was content, until Mamaí went and told a falsehood.
Maglor leaves Mamaí and her burning book, and runs to the mirror, crying very hard. He rubs his eyes and looks.
Maitimo’s face stares back at him.
Maglor screams.
*
He is hunting in Formenos—not in the land beyond, but in the house itself. The hallways coil like the endless belly of a snake whose bones he should know better. He cannot map his path; he curses and coughs dust, and the footsteps of his prey skitter: closer, closer.
Who—
Celegorm takes the bullet squarely to the face. Feels it shatter his browbone, feels the blood run down into his eyes and burn them, feels life and light flicker out.
In this one, he always dies.
*
“Do you remember, the day Athair told me that I had to go to the city? I hated myself so much, Macalaure. I was so sure that if I had only been a little—brighter, perhaps, and quicker to learn, then I might not have needed to go away at all. I would not have been beyond Mamaí’s ability to help—to teach. But now I don’t know. I don’t. And if I hadn’t gone—and you hadn’t come with me—I wouldn’t have known Fingon as I do. Oh, damn. I swore I wouldn’t speak of him.”
Maglor says nothing. He is face-down in the water.
Maedhros, upon realizing this, sinks too.
*
Amrod is alive, in Amras’s nightmare. He is grateful for that.
*
The red river, the green meadow, and you, I, we are flat on your, my, our riverbank
(This is not the same as the meadow).
Athair, how long must I go on?
Until you have made what I did, little one.
I am no longer little, Athair. No longer young.
Cast the stones, in anger or a desire to make the red water dance.
*
They are all happy again, all coming down the winding road. There is the house beyond the crabapples and maples. There are the barns. See, here are candles in the kitchen windows. Caranthir would know the yellow flame-glow anywhere, and his heart breaks in two, he is so happy.
He gathers up the pieces of his heart, and runs.
*
They sleep.
*
And long ago, she wakes. Witch-woman, bird-boned in her husband’s arms. Even in the days of powdered wigs and white-washed faces, her hair marked her separate. Silver-blonde or early grey—it did not matter, it was not ordinary, matched to her mercury eyes.
She struggles and stares, into the darkness, her elbows pointed against his ribs.
He shifts, slow in half-sleep. He says, bewildered,
“What is it, my love?”
She does not answer. In her belly, the child moves.
(Restless, as she is. Somehow stronger.)
“What is it?” Finwe asks again, more clearly.
Miriel answers—she has never been one to lie—“In my dream, you cut off my hand.”