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I have made myself at home in many an unsavory place, but few of my hosts have pretended to be as grand as Melkor Bauglir. I smile, therefore, as I pick my way through the rubble that litters the uneven path.
A tortuous path, miles high, and yet I am happy to climb it. Few of my benefactors have granted me such ripe opportunities as has Melkor Bauglir, and I do not forget what lines my purse, any more than I forget who has best suited my bed.
I am grateful, too, that Melkor Bauglir is too strange to desire the touch of a woman like me. I would give it, if he asked, but I would not enjoy it. As I grow older, I prefer enjoyment above anything else.
Of course—and now my feet are aching in my boots as the stones roll beneath them—sometimes there is as much pleasure in denying an eager man as there is in accepting him. I am thinking, now, not of Melkor, but of Annatar.
It is early April. All my way here, I had to be cautious—but only as ordinary women are cautious. The Feanorians achieved their destination, and perhaps they call it victory. Perhaps they call their mad gunfights, their helter-skelter infernos, victories.
I wonder what my lovely Maedhros believes.
I wonder if he lives. I have had no outright confirmation. He lives in my memory, of course. Very sweetly, he lives there.
Perhaps I shall ask Annatar about him, knowing how much it would vex him. His devotion to me is as hot as the fires eternally stoked in his forge.
Perhaps I shall save all my curiosity in the hope that this rough, crumbling land will reveal all truths in time.
Oh—I jest, in thought.
Bauglir will know, and he will tell me.
Bauglir has blown out the heart of the mountain, a cavern large enough to build a small palace, if he is so inclined—or has the skill. I wonder at it. And then I put it from my mind, for I must visit him in the canvas tent where he is currently residing, sheltered rather poorly from the wind.
“Greetings, Master,” I say, with a deep curtsy. He is little more than a pair of eyes peering out above a heap of furs. When he stands, I am again reminded of his height, of the breadth of his shoudlers.
He is a large man, with a large face, and large hands.
He looks like something dragged out of the ocean depths, pale and inhuman.
“A chill April day, Thuringwethil,” he says. “You are a warming sight. Will you indulge us with your permanent company, or does the world call upon you to ravage it?”
“Oh,” I say, taking the cup of spirits he hands me, “I have ever so much ravaging left in me.”
“Mercy, I expected no less. Ever you are admirable.” Bauglir’s tongue darts out to moisten his lips. “Most admirable. And what of your…gift?”
“I thought your generosity in…accepting it was a favor to me.” I smile, knowing of what he speaks, and declining to reveal what softer, deeper feelings he might suspect of my kind.
Womankind, not wolfkind, that is.
“I consider it to be no favor, my friend, when it will in time produce a good deal of use for me. You are ever employing your arts with something that would approach genius, were the arts in question not so…corporeal.”
He hasn’t given me enough whiskey to listen cheerfully to his prattle. “I shall make my rounds,” I say. “I wanted to see this establishment for myself. Not much of an establishment yet, is it?”
“There are rooms,” he says. “Rooms being built. But most are underground. We could board you there, as well as—”
“Cells, are they? For your beloved Feanor and all his many sons?”
He laughs. He strides about his tent as if a light has been kindled in him. What he is imagining is surely more gruesome than anything my hands and teeth have ever made. “They are burning down my railroad, Thuringwethil.”
“A great pity,” I concede.
“I will have justice,” he says softly, closing his hand around the whiskey bottle as if to caress or choke it. “I will have my own justice. Feanor’s fingers will be mine first, then his hands…then the stumps of his arms, his shoulders…” He is smiling.
I am bored.
Then the tent flap is flung open, not only by the wind, and I turn, with languid disinterest, to greet Mairon-Annatar, my oldest and most vexing friend.
Oh, said Curufin, trying to pretend that he wasn’t very nervous to see Celegorm standing in the door of the smithy. It’s you.
The sweepings danced under his hand, pricking the flesh of his palm, as he thoughtlessly brushed them away without the protection of a glove.
Celegorm sniffed. His nose was running in the cold. Didn’t see you at supper.
I’m tinkering. Not hungry when I’m tinkering.
He wondered what Celegorm saw when he looked at him. Curufin had worked long and hard at honing Celegorm’s disgust; he had not expected it to turn against him.
He had not intended such—such a blunder.
What are you making?
Relief. He must not yet trust it, but the feeling persisted all the same. More stars. Like you asked.
Celegorm grunted his agreement. Then—
What’s that?
“There are two,” Annatar tells me, leaning too close so that his thin lips almost brush my ear. His furs smell rank. One cannot be choosy with the scent of men, in my profession, but I would rather blood be fresh.
I lick my teeth.
“Two blades,” I say in coquettish disbelief, as if I have not several already. “Now, whatever should I use them for? And so clumsily are these handles wrapped—what were you thinking—”
“That is my mark,” he says darkly. “The mark of the eye.”
I turn them, one in each hand. The blades are narrow, sharp but a little rough along the central grooves. If dipped in poison, they would hold enough to sting.
“An eye?” He has been taken with eyes forever, for he loves to wait in the shadows, all-seeing, as he hunts. “You will not always be watching me, will you?”
“I should like to, ma chère.” His voice lowers, but as his voice is naturally a high one, it breaks and trembles when dragged down.
In ecstasy, he would sound like such a fool.
Wanting to punish him for his forwardness and his awkward gift, I turn abruptly and thrust the edge under his bristling collar, finding the skin there with the point. He bares his teeth at me.
“I do not like them very well,” I say. “But I am a practical woman, and you are a skillful man.”
That knife, said Celegorm. I—it is Mairon’s mark.
Is it? said Curufin. He recalled no mark of Mairon’s, but guiltily, he admitted, It was hers.
You kept it. Celegorm had more reason than this to be angry; to be angry with Curufin for his dealings with women especially, dead or alive. The blade that nearly killed me. Why?
Curufin summoned up his courage, founded solely as it was on his craft, and said, To understand it.