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It has always been a subject of fascination and amusement to me that Thuringwethil, as barren-breasted a whore as ever I knew, should get herself a son. I did not wholly believe her motherly tale until I clapped eyes on the boy, favored with her nightshade looks—though not her sweet cruelty, which I liked far better. With my permission, her little Maeglin was deposited at Diablo—or as I have sometimes fancied calling it, Thangorodrim—and the second wonder of our brief benevolence was that Mairon did not slit his throat and sip his marrow the moment he arrived.
One of the dreadful woman’s letters told me all I needed to know on that score: Mairon was in the dark as to the boy’s parentage.
If he knows I dote on another creature, he will kill him, she wrote. Keep it to yourself, if you think the boy may be useful.
It was her way, to turn a burden of her own into a grace for others. I found confirmation of this when having offered the boy lodging upon my arrival, I found that he had already frequented the Mountain while it was being made mine.
She had assumed my good will, it is true, but over time I found no reason to rescind it. At first it was to keep her in fine humor. She was remarkable in my employ, for her sex. She served in the only profession a woman can, with honesty, and she served me up many a choice morsel of human decadence with her witty pen.
Now she is dead. Her son is made more useful to me because he will have a heart for wrath and torment.
He does not know this yet.
I have an errand that I will enjoy far more than breaking the news to a mewling child, but when duty calls, I face it—to spurn or answer it, as I see fit. Thus I tread my way to Maeglin’s little room, which was his mother’s. I find him playing with a little vial of scent in his nimble fingers.
She promised me that his hands were good. I should have told Mairon her secret, otherwise, and watched what followed—fine humor or no.
“My dear boy,” I begin, and am immediately suffused by secret glee, most unbefitting of the news I must share. But those words have had cause to fall from my lips quite recently, and not with reference to this sniveling child, who looks as if his head is empty of thought and ambition. “I am afraid I have something unpleasant to tell you. May I sit down? These are my quarters, too, you know—all this mountain is my quarters, but I know you have made this chamber your own.”
He rose when I came in, and now we sit together. He on the narrow bed, and I on the only chair.
“I am not a child,” the child says. “I can—I can bear whatever you have to tell me, sir.”
“Uncle,” I remind him. “Call me Uncle.”
“I can bear it, Uncle.”
He does not interest me. He is too shrewish—too inexpressive. Anger could change that; vengeance could ripen him. The fine skin is good, and his hands are good, but alas, he is not beautiful.
I confess, to my eyes, his mother was not beautiful. Still, I shall speak well of her.
“Your mother has been my most valuable information, Maeglin, did you know that? She has braved many dangers to tell me about the doings of men who wish to hurt me…who wish to forestall progress and hurl us back a hundred years, two hundred. She did all that by lifting her skirts.” I wait to see if he blushes at this frank description of her work, but of course, he does not. Thuringwehtil may have birthed him, but she did not want to be a mother, and she left him, more often than not, to the care of gentler-hearted sluts than herself.
“Thank you,” is all he answers: little more than a whisper.
I am impatient, and in truth, I am neither uncle nor father. I am maker, and I am unmaker, but it is a sad defeat of progress in itself that I am tasked with carrying the weight of the dead.
“Your mother is dead,” I tell him, for once choosing the path of simplicity.
He almost interests me, then, in the way his thin body shudders silently, folds in on itself, and goes still.
When he recovers himself enough to speak—long enough that I am impatient thrice-over—he asks,
“How did she die?” and I tell him.
“Her throat was cut. An ugly business, and I am very sorry, but I have…” I pause here, for the proper effect, and then continue, wondering how it is that Thuringwethil can have brought in so much coin and not have a stitch or trinket, seemingly, to her name, “I have the best satisfaction a man like yourself can be offered in such a trying time.”
He stares at me, doe-eyed and insensible.
“Her killer,” I say. “Her killer is at present in our tender care, receiving all of Annatar’s most strenuous attentions. You remember Annatar, do you not?”
He nods, still quiet.
“I shall make sure that this monstrous murderer survives long enough for you to take a hand to him, Maeglin. I am a man of my word, and I promise you that.”
Then, able to bear the sight of this lesser offering no longer, I get to my feet, and grip him by the shoulders, even kissing his forehead as I would the son or nephew or creation that he is not.
Down in the pit of the blast, down where light does not reach unless it is kindled, Mairon has his forge. There my steps tend next, with far greater eagerness than brought me to Thuringwethil’s old door.
My greatest work hangs there, unmade, ready to be shaped.
I set my hands to its pliable wounds.