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There are only so many ways to be all that you are. Stamp and scratch at the door, whine and worry—they do not come. Their voices rise and fall, their voices shake through the walls in little rushes of sound, of anger, of running in a closed room.
(They do not come.)
By and by, you give in. You know you are doing what you ought not—quiet, Huan, he said, stay Huan—and so you lay your warmth down against the coolness of the stones. There is so much warmth in you. There is so much coolness in the stones.
(You wait.)
When the door swings open and the air changes, your heart gets you up and makes you run. Your heart is like this: it is all of you.
There are many strangers—strangers whose scents you know, but still strangers—filing out. But you go on. You go in.
They have all remained, like so many parts of one body: your master and everyone else who belongs to you.
“—shut the door,” the sharp one is saying.
You put your head on your master’s knee, and his hand falls atop it. He is sitting slumped, like something has hurt him.
There is no happiness here.
“Maitimo, you must be exhausted,” says the frailest, the rabbit-like, the lake-water one.
The red boy says nothing. He is waiting, just as you were, for the door to open and life to flood out.
Hand, hand, hand. Your master’s hand is so lifeless, his fingers unmoving. It is another way of being gone.
“I don’t suppose you thought of preparing us,” the sharp one snaps. “Before unburdening yourself to a crowd. But this is the new Maedhros we are to expect, I suppose.”
“Curufin,” says your master, a low growl. Your hackles rise.
“Don’t you reprimand me, Celegorm. You were as useful as a knot on a log just now. So be it. I’m man enough to admit I was rather alarmed that Maedhros has been silent on the subject of Anne McCalagon, of Doriath, of the man who killed Athair—”
“Silent?” the frail one is not so frail now; he is leaping from his seat. “If you don’t—”
“That’s enough.” The red boy speaks at last. “Curufin, no doubt you would have done what you thought best, in my place.”
“And what would I have thought best?”
“I don’t care to guess. Be that as it may, you shall have to endure the new Maedhros, or else do what Bauglir used to threaten, and cut out my tongue.”
“Maitimo—” a chorus of voices… but only the voices that call him that, the kind name of the past. (You understand names.)
But the sharp one is relentless.
“Keep your tongue, and use it. How long did you know about Thingol’s daughter? How long did you know about Anne McCalagon?”
“It doesn’t matter,” says the one who smells like earth and young birds. “It doesn’t matter, and you damn well know that, Curufin, so shut your trap.”
“Caranthir to the rescue,” the sharp one sneers. “How touching.”
“You are right, Maglor,” the red boy says, the legs of his chair dragging back as he pushes himself, up, up, sky-touching with the lines of his shoulders, the proud angle of his neck. “I am tired.”
They do not call for him again. You blink, and blink, taking in what light comes from the false suns ranged about the room.
At the door—his steps dragging as his chair dragged—the red boy turns. Your master’s fingers move behind your ears. He hurts you a little, as he is hurt himself.
“I learned all that I know while others thought me dead,” the red boy says. “Perhaps I shall have to keep at it.”