Chapter Text
First Age, 538
It is a glorious sunset. Clouds in hues of red, golden and purple streak the sky as the flaming vessel of Arien slowly nears horizon. The white crests of waves of unsettled waters reflect light: a dazzling glitter, more wonderful than the gemstones worked by the hands of my people. Another time, this beauty would have moved me. Now I merely want to fall face down in the coarse grass and weep. For hours. Maybe for days.
But I cannot. I still have one brother left. My eldest brother is standing on the cliff, a mere step away from the sheer drop. Silent and moveless, he has been standing there since after midday, and I have been afraid to go near him, even to speak. I have been afraid he would take that one last step over the edge. But then, maybe today we all took a last step of another kind.
The clouds that obscured the setting Sun for a while now break, and a slanting ray falls upon the stone-clad burial mound and two branches of blossoming wild white rose, their thorny stems stained with my brother’s blood. After we raised the mound, he broke these branches from the rosebush unheeding the thorns, laid them on the stones and went to stand on that cliff overlooking the Sea. He did all that in silence and has uttered no word since then. I tear my gaze away from the white blossoms, now painted by the sunset, and take a step toward him, summoning my courage to speak at last.
“Brother...” My voice trembles despite my attempts to keep it steady. “Brother, we should leave this place.”
There is no reply for a while, but then...
“Something is down there.” The sound of his voice seems strange after the long silence. “Do you not hear?”
“Brother, please...”
“No, listen!” He interrupts me turning his head, and I breathe in relief to see his eyes clear again; they were so veiled and lifeless before. “Listen closely! There are voices.”
I come to stand beside him and listen, and, startled, realize that he speaks true. My hearing, usually so much sharper, has likely been dulled by terror and despair, but now I too hear them – thin, high-pitched voices, calling out miserably amid sobs.
“Help! Nana, Naneth! Help!”
“Children...” I whisper in dismay.
“The tide is rising,” Maedhros says quietly. He stands still yet awhile, as if unsure, but then turns resolutely, his gaze intent on the edge of the cliff some twenty steps away. “There may be a way down.”
There is a way down, a steep rocky path, in part blocked with large stones broken off the cliff, but at length we descend to a small bay. The shore is empty. Only a thin strip of dryland is left visible, as the incoming tide washes against the pebbles. To the north the bay stretches for some hundreds of paces ere disappearing beyond the bend of the land, but we stand at its southern end where steep cliffs are stepping into the Sea. The crying voices have fallen silent; there are merely the waves, the wind and the wailing of seabirds.
“Where are you?” my brother calls. “Speak, so that we know where you are!”
There is silence yet for a while as we stand at the waterline straining our hearing. Then – a shuddering voice.
“Here...! In the cave!”
The sounds come from beyond the cliffs. My brother casts a swift look at me, then wades in the water. I follow.
We round the cliffs; the water at their furthest end is already reaching above our knees. Another small bay opens to our sight. Here the coastal rocks are even closer to the waterline. The waves already wash against them and the mouth of a cavern, its entrance less than five feet wide and some ten feet high. The voices come from there.
The cave is not large. Its walls are smooth and dark, lined with streaks of lighter stone here and there. Upon a narrow ledge on its further end, maybe waist-high, sit two tiny dark-haired boys, shivering in the chill, damp air of the cavern, holding fast to each other, their tear-streaked faces turned towards us. I freeze. Their faces are a mirror-image of one another: the boys are twins. Maedhros draws breath sharply. The thought that has just crossed my mind apparently has occurred to him also.
“Who are you?” His voice, sudden and harsh, rings out in the small space. “What are your names?”
They do not reply but withdraw to the furthest end of the ledge staring at us for a while with wide, terrified eyes. Then they turn away and embrace one another more tightly. The crying grows louder.
“Do not be afraid.” I say in a low voice slowly moving closer. “Do not be afraid. All will be well. How did you end up in this place?”
After a few moments one of the boys hesitantly turns towards me.
“I... I am Elrond, “he voices amid sobs. “Lanwen, our nurse…she... she took us here. She told us to be quiet. She said... she said she would come back for us. But she did not. We waited and waited. Then water started to rise. We climbed up here, and... and Elros tore his arm on the stones... and...” The words are again lost in crying. The other boy’s arm is bleeding.
They are indeed who we thought them to be. Elwing’s children. I look at my brother. His eyes reflect some struggle he clearly fights with himself. Then he shakes his head sharply and draws his hand over his face.
“Fear nothing.” His voice has lost its sharpness. “Fear nothing. We are here to help.”
The other boy raises his face from his twin’s shoulder.
“Did... did Naneth send you to save us?” His thin, pitiful voice is nearly lost amid sobs.
A shadow passes my brother’s face again, but he does not allow it to linger.
“Yes,” he replies quietly, yet firmly. “We are here to save you. Quickly now, the tide is rising fast! Come here and hold tightly, we will carry you out of here!” He approaches the ledge and reaches out towards the children.
“You have only one hand!” Elros gasps.
“Yes, I lost the other,” Maedhros replies impatiently. “Now, do you want to get out of this cave, or would you rather stay?”
The boy says nothing but allows to be lifted off the stone shelf. I pick up Elrond; he wraps his arms around my neck so tightly that I laugh.
“Little one, I need to breathe. Do not be afraid, I will not drop you.”
We carry them outside and around the cliffs; water at their furthest end is already reaching up to our waist and it is still rising, surging around the stones. The other bay, too, is almost completely under water that sparkles in the rays of the setting Sun, nearly on the horizon now. At the foot of the cliff my brother halts.
“You will have to sit on my shoulders now,” he says to Elros. “I will need my hand to get up there.” He points to the steep path.
Elros nods and obeys. But as soon as they start to climb, he asks, curiosity in his voice fighting fear, “Where did you lose your other hand?”
“Far from here, in the north,” Maedhros replies. “In a very evil place.”
“Why do you go to such places?” Elros frowns.
“That is not a story I would tell children.”
We climb in silence for a while.
“Who are you? You said that Naneth sent you, but we do not know you!” We have not yet reached the middle of the path when sudden fear rings in Elrond’s voice. “You go to evil places, and you are strangers! Lanwen said we should not follow strangers!” While we hesitate with reply, the child in my arms starts to struggle, attempting to free himself. “We should not go with you!”
“We are not strangers, Elrond,” I say, desperately attempting to keep my balance on the path and at the same time to retain the hold of the boy. “Do not wriggle, or else we shall both fall.”
“But if you are not strangers, then who are you?” His voice breaks in a sob again; he is still struggling.
But while I am still searching for words, my brother has already found them.
“We are your father’s kinsmen, Elrond,” he replies. “We are your distant uncles, cousins to your great-grandfather Turgon. I am Maedhros. He is my brother Maglor.”
I freeze inwardly as my brother gives our names so freely. But the terror I had expected does not appear in children’s eyes. Apparently, they have been spared the knowledge of the threat we bear to their family. Instead, they calm. Elrond ceases struggling and tightens his hold, so that I have to remind him again that I need to breathe.
“Sorry, uncle Maglor,” he murmurs, loosening his grip.
This stabs my heart. They accept our kinship so easily. They are so trusting, these children, whose mother we saw casting herself into the Sea, Silmaril burning like a star on her breast. In desperate flight she ran to the cliffs, pursued by our damned Oath, and seeing no escape from the narrow ridge, she turned and took a step over the edge. She fell in a flash of light, her arms stretched like the wings of a bird in flight. Frozen, we watched her fall; this sight would haunt me to the end. As would the look in my brother’s eyes – terror and self-loathing, and to that were added despair and fury when shortly afterwards we found our younger brothers dead, Amras leaning over Amrod’s body, as if attempting to protect his twin. They were both pinned to the ground with the same spear. That sight threw Maedhros in mad rage. Like a spirit of vengeance he rushed along the streets of Sirion, sparing none in his way. He stopped only when there was none left to oppose him, and some of those fallen by his hand were our own people who had dared to stand against their lord’s frenzy.
Our people, less than a half of the host that set out from Himring, are now eyeing us with wonder and some measure of fear as we appear over the edge, our clothing drenched in seawater, each of us carrying a frightened child.
“Make ready to depart; we shall camp further in the forest,” Maedhros orders. “It will be less windy there.”
He whistles to his horse and lifts Elros on the back of the black stallion; the boy sits there frozen, eyes wide, but the fierce animal stands stone-still at his master’s command. My brother takes his pack that lies in the grass, straps it to the saddle and mounts. Then, after one last look at the stone-clad mound, he turns his horse toward the road, and we follow.
The Sun has already disappeared beyond the Sea, leaving only some scattered purple clouds on the horizon; chill wind blows from the west shaking the tassels of the coarse grass growing amid the cliffs. I ride last with Elrond. Ere the road makes a bend I check my steed to a halt and look back at the last resting place of my brothers – a small patch of hard stony earth beside the Sea they both loved. The mound looms like a dark shadow in the twilight, but it seems to me that I can still discern from a distance two tiny patches of white – the flowers upon it. I avert my eyes and nudge my horse forward. I still have one brother left.