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Walk with me.
You are shaking, head to foot. You don’t like it—and you’ve seen a dead body before, but not in the moment of dying. Master Bauglir spattered no blood on himself. You find your eyes drawn to his massive hands, fingering his pockets, and you remember how you used to hold them, sometimes, on your visits as a boy.
“Walk with me,” he says, here and now, to you. This is not a memory.
The ant-men swarm in the background. Likely, they are taking the body away. Black spots dance before your eyes, but you do not clear them with the swipe of a palm. Your hands are sooty and stinging.
“I can do it,” you say. You shouldn’t be desperate—desperation was not your lesson—but you are a little nervous, in your breath.
(Only in your breath.)
“I know you can, Maeglin.” He turns his gaze to you, but not his face, so one of his eyes meets both of yours, at the corner. “I have great faith in you. You have a rare talent, my lad, and you have overcome a great deal already.”
The black spots swarm up and threaten to swallow you whole. You jut your chin forward. A great deal means only one thing, one name, to you.
“Yes, Uncle.”
He likes when you call him uncle. He has said that it makes him feel young.
Not so long ago, I was as bright and eager as you, little one!
He has said that, too.
“You must have questions, though.”
There is always a right thing and a wrong thing to do. The right thing is what gives you power. The wrong thing is what gives you disappointment, or death.
You can’t wiggle out of death—no one can.
You do not ask the wrong question, which is, why did you kill him?
“What should I watch him for?” You mean someone different. Not the body in the dirt, but the thin, raw fox with grey eyes.
“Him…oh, I suppose you mean Maitimo. He had to be taught a lesson today. He has had to be taught many lessons, I am afraid. He is like one of those dogs that shall prance and nip unless it is beaten.”
You have never had a dog. “Is he dangerous?”
“Very. But not to you. He has a soft spot in his heart for young lads such as yourself.” Master Bauglir turns all of his face, this time, and smiles. He has a smile that you might make with a chisel through clay. “You will be able to keep close to him, Maeglin. Very close.”
“And at the first sign of trouble, I shall send word to you.”
Master Bauglir claps a hand on your shoulder. You are well away from the clearing, now, under the eaves of the forest.
You have had a year here, all alone, but you have not gone much into the forest. You like to keep to yourself—as a baby, you liked tools better than toys.
You even learned embroidery, when you had to.
“Not at the first sign,” Master Bauglir tells you. His eyes shine a different sort of darkness. “Not the first. Wait for a very good one, my boy, and then I shall be proud.”
Up, up, here and now, you are not dying, you cannot be the one who dies.
(Maeglin runs and runs and coughs and weeps ash into his scraped hands.)
(Maeglin has a message.)