Work Text:
It is hard to be the last person holding a grudge, I think. I don’t question whether I am right; I know I am. I’ve always known my own mind, whether in small matters like asking to be called Galadriel rather than Artanis, or in graver matters such as whether to keep hating the Feanorians.
We have left a trail of blood behind us on this journey—our blood, our family’s blood. It had no cause to be shed but for our half-family’s pigheaded pride and selfish cruelty.
I thought Finrod would always be allied with me, in this stance of judgment, but I assumed too much. He has softened lately, and is practically friends with Maedhros again. Finrod is so philosophically minded—such a humanist, really—that he can’t help looking at someone as worked-over as our eldest cousin without having mercy.
For myself, I don’t even like to look at Maedhros.
Fingon and Aredhel, of course, were never as hard on our cousins as they pretended to be. Even when they said bitter words all the way west, I could see the distant look in their eyes. The when-will-I-see-him-again look, which meant Maedhros for Fingon and Celegorm for Aredhel.
It was their mother and brother who died! Their father whose gold was stolen! I do not understand it. I’ve never felt that magnetism—that which has, for some, the strength enough to cover all sins.
But here in Mithrim, where everyone cheered for Maedhros taking his first steps again, and people stitch him new clothes and squirrel away new tonics for his every ailment at the slightest provocation—here in Mithrim, where Caranthir is allowed to terrorize the kitchen and Celegorm the hunting ground—everyone forgives and forgets, be the transgression a storm or a suicide.
Lord, I am so lonely.
Spring is coming, opening up the earth, sending out shoots of tough grass, filling the shrubs with buds. There are many more evergreens here than in the East, so the change is not so sudden as it was in the river-valley where Formenos was, or even in the City, where we always lived.
I loved to walk with Father in the springtime, holding his hand when I was small, carrying my bonnets by their strings when I was older.
As soon as I was out of Mother’s sight, off came those dreadful, frilly things.
Tell me about the world, daughter, Father used to say, and I knew even then that he was humoring me fondly, but I still tried.
Nobody cares for my opinion of the world now. My sense of justice has doomed me to this fate. I am too dour for Aredhel, too caustic for my brother. Turgon has never been my favorite, but I find I have more in common with him than anybody else. At least I will not have to hear Maedhros sainted by his lips! But now that Aredhel has brought back a skulking boy of mysterious origin from parts unknown, Turgon’s mind is turned elsewhere.
I don’t want to be friends with this Maeglin, any more than I want to mind Sticks and Frog—they are so very naughty—or hear about Celegorm from Aredhel. And so, here I am: alone, and lonely.
I am a little embarrassed for forgetting who Silas was, even though I remembered him afterwards, from our camp on the other side of the bridge.
Of course, those were troubled days—wild and uncertain, even before Fingon disappeared and then returned, lugging Maedhros all in pieces.
Well, with one piece missing, anyway.
Silas is taller than he was. He has filled out his shoulders and chest, which is only natural, I suppose. Whoever was running the slave-camp up in the hill-country wasn’t feeding him or any of the others well. I remember how thin Estrela was, with those ugly weals across the palms of her hands. Finrod made a point of befriending her at once, which I think means her face shocked him the same way it shocked me.
I haven’t his easy way with people, nor his indefatigable desire to right all wrongs. That is, I was not so readily friendly, to Estrela or anybody. I did try not to shy away from her missing eye.
When there are good people suffering, we must push ourselves forward a little more, a little more. That is the point of Finrod’s primary virtue, and I can grasp it in the abstract. I can do my best to be more like my brother, even if it must be in smaller steps.
But what about the villains of our lives?
Silas does not think Maedhros a villain, because there was some matter of Maedhros organizing their escape—though I have never heard the same version from two people, I must say. I do know that Haleth led part of our company (including Wister, in fact) up the mountain, and helped to set them all free. What part Maedhros played, I haven’t inquired about. I’m sure he was heroic, in his way. He’s always had such verve and fire—and most of all, a way of listening attentively that can really draw a person in.
All the more reason, I think, to be wary.
Still, I am sorry that Silas is leaving so abruptly. Of all the people I am trapped with—forever and ever—he promised to be an interesting one to talk to.
Oh, and wouldn’t Mother shake her head to see me now?
If you hadn’t gone away, Artanis, if we had only talked this over, we could have made a life for you here that—
I linger by the gate in the cool morning hours when he and Wister take their leave. I feel a little foolish for doing so, since people with nothing better to do but play checkers will talk whenever they see a girl doing anything. This is something that has not changed since we came west.
I despise the limitations of my sex everywhere.
Silas notices that I have come to see him off. Perhaps he still feels a little shaken by my odd ways. I am a strange one—I know that.
Suddenly desirous of not seeming odd, I smile at him, even though smiling is a difficult business for me also. Father used to say I looked like a little wildcat, grinning.
They are about to head to the stables, so I do more than simper (or grin): I extend my hand.
“Have a safe journey,” I say, shaking his. “The cattle would not know what to do without their latest keeper.”
Stupid of me! He isn’t the cattle’s keeper. He’s one of Haleth’s Haladin.
But he grins in return, his teeth bright against his warm, dark skin. “If you ever come to Doriath I shall introduce you to them,” he says.
Wister is watching us curiously, but he turns away when I look at him. Wister has always been a jokester, and thus I steered clear of him in our traveling days, preferring Wachiwi.
“I would much rather learn other things about Doriath,” I say. “And the whole land south of here, and wherever else you have ridden. Birds and beasts and landscapes. Not just cows.”
Silas pauses, shifting from one foot to the other.
I realize, despairing, that I must have sounded wistful.
He mumbles something.
“Beg pardon?” I say.
He raises his voice a little. “Do you get letters here, in Mithrim?”
I do not comprehend, and then I do—and a welcome little warmth blossoms in me, such as I have not felt since we first set out, when I was full of hope and willing to be cramped in the back of a wagon under quilts and pots and pans, hiding as long as I could.
Hiding was supposed to give me a better chance at freedom.
“We do,” I say. “There is a post at Hithlum where we collect them.”
He slaps his forehead, chagrinned. “Of course. Well, I’ll send you a letter. All right, Wister—I’m coming.”
Then he is gone.
I spend the rest of the morning in unhappy solitude. What this really means is that I sit in the corner, badly mending a pair of trousers. I am painfully aware that Maedhros is reading the damned copy of David Copperfield that Finrod brought back from Hithlum. He is also wearing a new striped shirt that is likewise, in essence, from Hithlum—Aredhel bought the cloth, Judith and Estrela stitched it, and now it is draped across his shoulders as if it can hide his unnatural thinness.
I don’t like to see him so thin. I don’t wish to see him dead, or in pain. Isn’t that enough?
The hall is relatively quiet, after breakfast, for the weather is fine and everybody is busy with work out of doors. I should be in the open air myself, leaving this mending for somebody else—but I grew tired several weeks ago of always leaving a room because Maedhros entered it.
I break my thread, and find I forgot to bring as much as I needed to my corner. I cross the room to where Judith is busy at her quilting.
Maedhros’ head bobs up as I pass and down again, so quickly that I almost question my own sight.
“There you are, dear,” Judith says, in her comfortable way.
I take the thread and cross back—and there it is again. He is watching me, and pretending not to.
It makes me angry, that he could be spying even now. He did used to spy on us—on all of us—when we lived in New York. He made so merry, and poured so much wine at Grandfather’s dinners, and asked endless questions about Father’s business and Uncle Fingolfin’s business—but not always when Uncle Fingolfin was there. For of course it was all a plot of his father’s, to learn the workings of our family—the family that included Grandmother, the kindest woman ever to walk this earth—and destroy it from the inside out.
You have succeeded well enough at that, Uncle Feanor, I think grimly. But not at staying alive yourself.
With my thread coiled in my hand, I pause sharply at the table.
His eyes are fixed on his book. His left hand lies flat across the fold of its pages. His right wrist rests on his lap. It still shocks me, to see him without a hand.
“Maedhros,” I say, quiet but sharp. “Did you have something to say to me?”
The line of his shoulders tenses. He does not raise his head.
“No,” he says. It is little more than a whisper.
I open my mouth and shut it again. I take my thread back to my corner, but after another moment passes, I realize I cannot endure another second in this room. I race to the backdoor, wanting out, and nearly crash into Sticks, who is running some errand in the kitchen yard.
She glares at me. I do not heed her. I am not a child, and I will not be drawn into a child’s quarrels.
And yet—
Behind the western walls of Mithrim, the ground slopes up and to the north. Aredhel and Wachiwi and I took Estrela that way to train her—it feels like an age ago, now. Aredhel was the one who needed to be skilled at sparring, as it turns out. Aredhel was the one who rode away to Hithlum, leaving me behind.
I can’t bring myself to blame her, since I nearly lost her.
I would not say so in those words, because she would claim (and Fingon would claim, and maybe Finrod too) that this is the same logic they apply in forgiving our cousins.
It isn’t the same, and I know it. I know so much about the world. I do.
Maedhros flinched away from me like a dog from a boot. I saw Russandol the slave, not my charming cousin. Whatever excuses are made for him, he knows how much I hate him.
The realization has left my stomach hollow, my mouth sour.
I do not know what I want, exactly, but it isn’t this.
(Finrod has told me a little of Maedhros’ hurts, those that are hidden under striped cambric and dark wool. I am not the one who scarred him. I would have—I think I would have said that he should be arrested, for what he did, but I wouldn’t have ordered what was done to him. Death without death. A savage game played in flesh and blood.)
The world is full of foolish people, I said bitterly to my father, when I was all of eleven years old.
He tipped his bright head towards me, as if the weight of my thoughts was pulling at him.
There are many absurdities, it is true, he said. Whims and inconsistencies can be spotted everywhere amongst our race. But a good deal of what goes wrong with men and women, Artanis, is fear.
Am I afraid of Maedhros?
How came we here, that Maedhros should be afraid of me?
With every attempt to tell myself that it is deserved, that it is satisfying, I find myself thinking of Silas. Silas was a slave just as Maedhros was, and I cannot wish that the punishments he must have endured should exist anywhere, for anyone.
Not even for my traitor cousin.
By holding a grudge—rightly so, I know that I am right—I have somehow managed to appoint myself the judge of all I survey. It is a heavy task. I bury my face in my hands. I don’t weep. I am not like that.
I only want to shut out the world awhile.
My mending is just passable; my embroidery is even less impressive. I avoided honing either skill throughout our journey, and indeed, I’ve only taken up a few things in need of patching because the men share equally in the labor with the women. I wouldn’t contribute, otherwise: I would shoe a horse rather than be consigned to women’s work.
As such, however, my skills are quite limited. I do the only thing I can: I take a bit of wool, which has been dyed a fine shade of blue, and I felt it. Felting is something I learned because it wasn’t as boring as sewing or knitting. I had a whole Noah’s Ark of felted animals, at one time.
When I am finished, I find Estrela, who is drawing a detail of a map with her curly head bent low. Her hair is very pretty, and reaches to her shoulders, now.
I should compliment her, but that would seem obsequious. I clear my throat like a man, instead.
“Oh, Galadriel,” she says. “What is it? I hope the children haven’t been—”
“No,” I say. “They are nowhere to be seen.” Supper is about to be served, so they could be anywhere…but I expect that they are getting underfoot in the kitchen. Before that can worry her, and make her jump up and run away, I hold out my humble attempt.
“What is it?”
“It is a bookmark,” I say, hoping that my face and voice reveal nothing. “You seem to know what everybody likes. I suppose you know if anybody has need of such a thing.”
I look her full in the face—full in the eye—and wait for her to accuse me of kindness.
She does no such thing. The crooked line of her mouth remains serious, civil.
“Thank you,” she says. “I shall put it to good use.”
I did not owe anybody a debt.
Still, my heart is lighter now.