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I feel very young when I am at home again, and I mislike the change almost more than anything on earth. In our old farmhouse, I am not a grand musician or a promising student of the best artists New York can offer, or a young man in love these last months with the fair Annabella.
I am not even Maglor.
Instead, I am Macalaure, called by every voice but Maitimo’s, expected to mind half-grown brothers and wash tattered linens and scrub vegetables before supper.
If I cross my father’s path, I am expected to do more than that. Or at least I was; things are different this year. If Formenos will not allow me to change within its walls, the world has still changed around us. This is not our first Christmas of fearful silence, but it is the first since our immeasurable loss.
(Am I unloving, or too loving, if I often forget that my grandfather is dead?)
Athair is not a ghost. Not yet. He is suspended somewhere between grief and anger, trapped by stormy silence. He sits at table with his fork clenched in his hand, his eyes burning sightless holes in the air, unfeeling towards Mother and Maitimo, who vainly try to gain his notice. Curufin tries too, I suppose, though at least Athair speaks to him, if only concerning their work in the forge.
Were the circumstances different, I would speak more openly and critically of Athair’s plans for the “education” of my younger brothers. Celegorm is now eighteen years old, and though he can read and write (I think) he is no better prepared for a profession than a common farmhand.
Granted, he has no taste for professions. He has often told me so.
No matter. Though it has been a subject of concern for years, I could not mention it now; not with Athair as brittle as the ice that forms these cold nights and melts these warm mornings.
(It is a mild winter.)
I am sitting in the dark, in the room Maedhros and I have always shared, with my cláirseach cradled in my arms. While there was still light—and then after, while my candle yet burned—I was writing. Good writing, too, I think—but I never know until a day or so later, when I can read it without stars and tears in my eyes. Tonight, a melody found me immediately following, and so in the dusk I played, very softly, letting myself forget the shameful youth imposed upon me. Forgetting, also, that death could touch me. Forgetting that interruption was likely to upend my lofty hopes for genius.
As it was, no one came. Now I have played myself out, and it is dark, and I am both alone and lonely. It all comes rushing back; all the discomfort of the day.
This is why I feel young. Because whether I am chased after for chores, or hiding away from strained voices and yet more strained silence, I am not the driving force of my own future.
I am Maglor, and Maglor is, if not a musician, only second son, a half-confidant. Not enough.
The door is flung open.
“Maitimo?” I say, startled myself, but hoping to forestall his fright at finding he is not alone in the dark.
He gasps. “Lord! Why don’t you have a candle?”
“I had. It went out.”
He hums under his breath and slaps his pockets. After a moment, he rattles something in his hand. “I’ve a tin of matches. And a candle myself. Didn’t expect to find you here.”
“Where else would you find me?” I am being a little pettish, I know, but not without reason. I have not seen him since breakfast. It was the same yesterday. It is sore to be reminded that the only person who truly enjoys my company (other than Mother, perhaps, and the twins, but they do not count, exactly, being either obliged or beholden) does not enjoy it enough to seek it out very often, when there are other demands on his time.
His searching look is lit up yellow and umber in the sputtering flame. “Have I offended you?” he asks, and I can hear the fraying in the weave of his voice.
It stops my accusations on my lips. I am not offended; I am only hurt. It is not my fault that the lines between the two blur on occasion. “No,” I say. “But what have you been about? It is late, and you smell like earth.”
“I was in the garden.”
“After dark?”
“No,” he says. “I was taking the twins to see the stars, but I did not change my gardening clothes.”
I lay my harp down as gently Mother used to lay her babies, and rise to take the candle from him. One of my legs has fallen asleep, and so I hobble rather awkwardly across the floorboards.
“Is it cold out?” I ask, when his chilly fingers brush mine.
“Not overmuch.” He moves towards the chest of drawers as I set the candle in the stand, replacing the melted stub I burned there hours ago. There is a basin and a pitcher atop the chest, already filled with water for tomorrow.
I know from painful experience that it is icy to the touch, so near the window.
“Suppose I went to bed without washing up,” Maitimo says, in a speculative tone. “There’s not so much grime spread over me.”
“Just enough that Mother will be able to plant cabbages in your sheets tomorrow.”
He laughs. I smile to hear it. “You have made your point, Macalaure.”
I feel frozen in sympathy when he strips off his shirt and splashes water on his face and neck, swearing all the while. It is always rather entertaining to listen to his creative display of invective. “Jesus!” he yelps. “Sweet…infant…not a blasphemy…Lord ha’mercy…” Another splash. “Fuck, that’s bad. Oh, Christ. Oh, Fuck. Where’s my nightshirt?” He begins to rifle through his drawers like a madman.
“Here,” I say, taking pity on him and unwinding a blanket from around my shoulders. “Put this on.” Up close, I can see the gooseflesh standing out on his arms. His teeth are chattering.
“You’re an angel,” he says, taking it gratefully. “You’ve warmed this wonderfully. Now, what I’d give to warm my insides.”
“Haven’t you some whiskey left under the bed?” I ask carefully. We don’t often speak of his drinking.
He answers in the midst of pulling the lately discovered nightshirt over his head. “Long gone, cano.”
I wrap my harp in its flannels and set it in the corner. My sheets will be warmed because I have been sitting atop them so long, but Maedhros’ bed will be cold. Striving for heroism, I say, “Shall I fetch us some hot bricks?”
“Don’t trouble yourself,” he says, padding barefoot over the floor dragging back the covers. I myself wear woolen socks in bed all winter long, bricks or no. But Maedhros tears off shoes and stockings both as soon as he can.
“Shall I put the candle out yet?” I ask.
“No…not yet.” He has burrowed under his blankets but now he rolls onto his side, twisted like a long cigar, propping himself up on one elbow. “I’ve scarcely seen you.”
“I was writing.”
“Ah. How went your writing?”
“Well.” It is not as cold as it has been in this room, but unlike when we were small, I am alone in my bed and must warm my hands under my arms, not pressed between both of his. “I was not looking at the stars, but I was seeing them. I was thinking of the constellations that we know, and telling a story of those we do not.”
“The twins found Cassiopeia. And Orion is brilliant, though all would be sharper if it were twenty degrees colder.” He sighs. “I wonder why that is. Why the harsher weather shows the brightest stars. I am sure one of my schoolmasters explained it to me, but I have forgotten. At any rate, your song will be splendid.”
“If it becomes a song,” I say. “It is only a poem now. The melody came to me quite separately. I do not know if the two belong together.”
He considers this. Then: “I never cease marveling at your mind. If I was trying my luck as a bard, I would hum whatever ditty came into my head, and then try to rhyme…oh, fight with night with light, I suppose. Something very simple. Something with few syllables.”
He is ever first among my patrons. My tutors’ praise may be harder won, but I am secretly most pleased by Maitimo’s worship of my work. “I shall let you in on a little secret,” I say, lowering my voice to a dramatic whisper. “Sometimes it is as simple as rhyming fight with night with light.”
That makes him laugh again.
We must both be tired, because he says, “Smite,” just as I say “Blight,” and we begin to laugh very giddily, as I am sure we have not since—since the awful summer.
“It isn’t even funny,” I wheeze. “At least, not as much as watching you blaspheme about cold water.”
“A low blow,” he says. “Those icy trickles. Murderous.”
“Fuck,” I say, dragging it out more like fook, which is how Maedhros says it, and how our grandfather would have, if he ever cursed. “Fuck, Macalaure, it’s as cold as the devil’s balls.”
“Shockingly crass, cano,” he says, pretending to be appalled. “Even for me.”
I feel comforted enough to be older brotherly again, so in a pause of our snickering, I ask, “How were the twins?”
“Happy to be taken out of doors when they would usually be abed.” He frowns; the lines around his mouth made harsh by candlelight. “They feel it all keenly. The more so for their innocence.” He coughs. “It must be difficult to have been…to have been without a care for so long and then…”
Sometimes it is strange to think that we lived the same childhood. How can he believe that any one of us is wholly innocent, at least of our parents’ squabbles and the deep unhappiness that seems to cling in our too-Irish blood? I do not believe that. I see Athair, and the legacy of Grandmother Miriel, and soon I will be unable to forget that Grandfather is dead and gone, I suppose. It will be more unhappiness layered over all that’s gone before.
Quietly, I say, “They have cares. You know they do.”
The candle burns on, but something in him flickers out. “Yes,” he says. “I’d be a fool to think otherwise. I am a fool, wanting to think otherwise.”
“You have hope,” I say, as if he does not give away his hope to me and all the rest far more than he keeps it for himself. “That isn’t folly.”
(Our grandfather’s ghost hangs in the room, at that.)
“Come with me tomorrow,” Maedhros says, his voice a bit roughened. He must be tired, after all. “Will you come? To the garden, I mean.”
He never asks for my help with his chores, because he knows I do not like the farmwork, indoors or out. But how can I refuse this one request? He would not ask unless he needed me.
“I will,” I say. “And then we both may be grimy and cold.” But I put a smile in the words as skillfully as I like to think I can put a poem to a melody, and he smiles back at me when he reaches to snuff the candle out.
Whether it makes me selfish, or childish, or too tied to home and to him—
I must confess I am glad that he needs me.