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There is a beautiful rug in Grandfather Finwe’s parlor, the sort that would be absolutely delicious under bare feet. It is a richer color than the lilac and silver-papered walls; it has dark green and dark red and blue as fierce as a night sky, all swirled together. Indis says it does not match. Grandfather Finwe laughs his booming laugh and says that he does not mind.
Maitimo thinks that it looks quite like a map.
(Athair has shown him France, Portugal, Prussia, and the Far East. Maedhros swallowed his breath when Athair let him trace the lines drawn in gilt, and said,
“Can we go there?”
“Where, little one?”
“The other side of the ocean.”
“Here we are,” Athair said, pointing. “And we have a very large country all our own.”
“Yes.”
“If you wish to travel someday, best go to Ireland. That is where Grandfather used to live.”
Maedhros laughed. “But Grandfather’s country is smaller than ours!”)
Macalaure has been told many times to stop sucking his thumb—in the autumn, he will be three years old.
“You shall be a big, brave laddie then,” Maitimo likes to say to him, because that is how Grandfather Mahtan talks. Maitimo’s voice is still very small, but that cannot be helped.
Macalaure has been very good about his thumb, for days and days. He does not suck it at church at all, and at home, he only puts it back in his mouth when he is near to falling asleep.
This evening, though, he has it buried deep between the O of his lips. They are standing side-by-side in the parlor, Athair’s two sons, and Maitimo feels as if he is as short as one of the gnomes from the fairy-story book.
“Want Mamaí,” Macalaure says, from around his thumb.
“Athair and Mamaí are with Grandfather and Indis,” Maitimo explains softly. He pats Macalaure’s shoulder. “Come, don’t chew your thumb.”
Macalaure’s dark brows pinch together. He takes his thumb out and wipes it vengefully on Maitimo’s skirt.
“Biscuits. Maitimo, I want biscuits. Chocolate biscuits.”
“There you are, young masters!” cries Lydia. She is Grandfather Finwe’s maid. A maid is someone who keeps the house clean and watches children who are left behind at dinner. “Come now, we ought to play somewhere else.”
Maitimo cannot even spare a regretful glance for the map—which does not look like Portugal or Prussia, but like a sea of countries all its own. He must take Macalaure’s hand, for Macalaure does not like Lydia.
(“You look very beautiful, mamaí,” Maitimo said, swinging his legs from the end of the bed. He was careful not to strike his heels too hard against the neat spread. It was Indis’s spread.
“Thank you, Maitimo. I am grown so fat, with the baby, I shall look quite ill-matched with your father.”
“Nonsense,” Athair declared, coming in to join them. He had been—sad, Maitimo thought. He had been very sad all day, which looked quite dark and gloomy coming from Athair, who was not meant to be sad.
Athair was always like this when they stayed in Grandfather Finwe’s house. Perhaps he found no joy in the carpet map.)
“I want chocolate biscuits,” Maglor says, staring hard at the braided rug on the floor of the sewing room, to which they have been whisked. “Mamaí would let me have chocolate biscuits.”
Maitimo does not really think that this is true.
Somewhere, a bell rings. Lydia turns her head, and Macalaure is sneaking his thumb back into his mouth, and then—
It sounds like Athair’s voice, in the hall, except not quite. The not quite is because Maitimo is Athair’s son, and will always know the sound of his voice better than any other.
Uncle Fingolfin then, has come to visit. Why should he come here, Maitimo wonders—and then he remembers: it is not Athair’s house. It is Grandfather Finwe’s house, and Uncle Fingolfin may come here as he pleases.
Maitimo squirms, a little.
“Oh,” Uncle Fingolfin says, scuffing his feet against the mat. Little baby Fingon, his dress all crumpled, is propped on his father’s hip. “I did not realize my father was engaged tonight.”
Uncle Fingolfin does not go away. Somehow, for some purpose, they all go to the parlor again, but Maitimo feels he ought not stretch out on his belly and examine the map. Instead, he sits as primly as he can on the sofa’s edge, with Macalaure tucked against him—out of comfort, Macalaure always finds comfort in being close—
“Perhaps we should go home,” Aunt Anaire says, hushed. She is watching Fingon, but speaking to Uncle Fingolfin. Fingon is just walking, but he prefers not to. He rolls about on the rug-map and grunts.
“Like a pig,” Macalaure says, in Maitimo’s ear. Not quietly enough.
“It seems—I do not know if we should leave them,” Uncle Fingolfin says, his hands and eyebrows tightening almost at the same time. “The maids—”
“True,” Aunt Anaire says, with a glance at the clock. She folds her hands together, as Mamaí almost never does, and says, “How do you do, Maedhros?”
She is not like Mamaí at all, really. Her voice is bent differently—Athair calls it an accent—and her hair is smooth and dark instead of very warm and soft and red.
How lonely she must be. Maitimo feels quite badly. He decides to forget what Mamaí calls dignity, and slides off the sofa onto his knees, near where Fingon is nuzzling.
Maitimo stretches out his hand. “This is a very fine little boy,” he says, and he pats Fingon’s stiff dark hair.
Fingon blinks up at him with wide dark eyes.
“Thank you,” Uncle Fingolfin says, in a voice as stretched thin as one of Mamaí’s cheese-cloths.
“Hello, Fingon,” Maitimo murmurs solemnly, keeping his hand on top of the almost-baby’s round head. “Hello.” And then, because Aunt Anaire asked him a moment ago—“How do you do?”
“He is not talking yet,” Aunt Anaire explains.
Macalaure talked very early, and Maitimo believes he did too. This is the sort of difference it isn’t kind to speak of. “That is no trouble,” he says, as Athair might. “You are just a little cano, cousin. You are learning to be strong.”
A cano is the child of a wolf. Maitimo directs a careful glance at his aunt and uncle, but neither are frowning. They look a little stiff, instead. They look like paper dolls, with careful paper faces.
He crouches on all fours beside Fingon, who regards him shrewdly.
“You are the cano,” Maitimo tells him, slowly. Perhaps Fingon can understand more than he says. “And I am the grown wolf.”
Fingon may not be able to say his words as well as Macalaure said his, when he was little older, but he does love to gallop over the floor. He also, quite naturally, makes the growls and barks that are proper to a wolf. Macalaure watches, sour-faced, and then slips down, too.
“I am a cano too,” he says. “I talk.”
Of course, the cano who talks insists on being of greater importance than the one who cannot. Even so, it is a pleasant game, and Maitimo nearly forgets that Uncle Fingolfin is watching as he teaches Macalaure how to yip convincingly.
“We shouldn’t howl, though,” Maitimo warns. “Too loud.”
Athair is not angry, when he returns, not even though he finds his sons crawling about the parlor with their young cousin. Even though Uncle Fingolfin is sitting stiffly beside them with Aunt Anaire fidgeting beside him.
“Come, come, my darlings,” Mamaí says. “We ought to have you tucked up in your beds.”
Athair is pale and grave. He looks like one of the cold marble statues behind the altar at Grandfather Finwe’s church.
Maitimo has always wondered if the statues are meant to be happy. He is still hot and happy himself, from playing at wolves, but the warmth fades the longer he looks upon Athair’s face.
“Feanor,” Fingolfin is saying, gathering Fingon up. Fingon punches his shoulder, but Uncle Fingolfin does not flinch. “I hope you are well. Is Father with you?”
“He is speaking to the groom,” Athair answers. His words come through a haze.
“Your mother is in the drawing room.” Mamaí fills the open spaces. “And how dear and bright little Fingon looks! You must be very proud—Fingolfin, Anaire.”
Maitimo can bear it no longer. He runs to throw his arms around Athair’s knees. And when he does so, Athair’s hand seals around the back of his neck like a vice, crushing him painfully close.
(Athair is the oldest of all wolves, who needs no games and no comforts, but who takes great joy in them all the same. What has happened to Athair?)
Maedhros climbs into Macalaure’s high-walled crib. It is difficult. He mustn’t cry. He mustn’t wake Macalaure, for then it will be unfair.
Macalaure blinks up at him. “I’m awake,” he says, in his still-squeaky whisper. “I’m awake.”
Maedhros lies down beside him. His hand is hot and heavy on the bedspread. The fingers are swollen stiff.
“Shhh,” Macalaure murmurs, and he tucks his little pointed chin against Maedhros’s shoulder.
Maedhros shuts his eyes.
“Tell me ‘story.”
“What?”
“Tell me a story,” Macalaure insists.
Maedhros bites his lip. He keeps wanting to poke at the fat fingers with his other hand, but he knows it won’t be good for them. “A story?”
“Tell me about the canos.”
The thought of round, wee Fingon, steady-gazing and trusting—Maedhros’s eyes well up. “Very good,” he says into the shell of Macalaure’s ear. “Once there were three wolf-cubs, three canos.”
“N-no, you weren’t one.”
“I was!”
“You was…you were the owner. The owner of the wolves.”
Maedhros had not thought of it like that. He is not sure that is quite right. “Perhaps I tamed you. Like we tamed the cats in the barn.”
“Mm.”
“Once there were two wolf-cubs. And a wolf-tamer. They all lived in a cave near Baile Lochlannach, on the other side of the sea…”
There is a map, all of colors dark and bright. It lives in his mind for Macalaure and Fingon, even though Maedhros is too old, now, to want such things.