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Blankets were not in short supply—Mother and Athair would never allow them to be cold—but Maitimo had a particular, worshipful love for the jewel-box quilts that Mother made of every scrap she laid her hands on.
Flat on his stomach on their vast bed, he could gather up great handfuls of ruby and deep blue. He could press his face against the smooth cotton—and oh, here was a swatch of velvet, the greatest prize of all!
Mother was searching in her cedar chest, but then she looked around and cried, “Now, now. Where is Caranthir?”
“He is under the bed, mamaí.” With a child’s careless freedom, Maitimo pushed himself forward, so that he bent at the waist over the edge and dangled his hands. “Hello, little prickle-burr! Are you hiding like a porky-pine?”
Mother laughed. She was happy, on his birthday, and that was as much of a gift as the set of black and white chess-pieces Athair had made.
Those had been presented at breakfast with great ceremony. Mother’s laugh was only for her, and Maitimo, and baby Caranthir, who was gnawing at his fists and growling.
“I think he likes to hide,” Maitimo said. His hair hung down over his face—Mother cut it long enough that it kept his forehead pale and secret from the sun—and he could feel the blood rushing up to his head. But he didn’t mind, for Caranthir was often turning red. He was all tomatoey when he screamed.
“He is a strange one, that baby,” Mother said. “But all my babies were strange and wonderful.”
Maitimo hooked his index fingers in the corners of his mouth and pulled it very wide, a terrible grimace to make Caranthir laugh.
The surprised little burble warmed him right down to his toes.
“Was I strange?”
“Sit up, love, you’ll faint like that,” Mother scolded, but with her sweet-scolding voice. “You were the strangest, Maitimo, for you were my first. I was only a girl when I had you.”
“Only a girl?”
“Older than you, of course. A great deal older. But I felt very young. I do still, sometimes.”
“Did I cry?”
“Not a great deal. You were a rosebud darling boy.”
“Oh.” He was sitting up now, to be good, but he blushed at that. “Am—am I still?”
“Yes.” She smiled. “Eight years old! You’ll be a father yourself, soon enough. Give you twelve years…or better make it twenty, for I can’t lose you a moment too soon.”
Maitimo thought of Caranthir, and his little laugh, and his cozy hiding spots. “I’d like to be a father,” he said. He realized, belatedly, that his first thought of fathers should have been Athair. He bit his lip, thinking that.
“And when you are a father,” Mother said, finding what she’d been looking for at last—a bolt of emerald green—“You must let your wife squeeze your hand very tightly when she needs to. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” (He didn’t.)
“I am going to make you a summer coat with this,” Mother said, pleased. “You’ll look more Irish than your father.”
Maedhros touched the green cloth she showed him with his fingertips. It was nearly as good as velvet, nearly as soft.
“You are too kind, mamaí,” he said, which was something he had read in a book.
And that made Mother flush!