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My grandfather’s study has scarcely changed at all in the time since I last visited it. That was a hurried occasion, late in the shocking spring. I paused only to bid him farewell (at his request) before I was packed off to Washington for restorative study under the guidance of Madame Nienna. The escape, then, felt unrealistically absolute—and it was.
All this was a few months ago. In truth, it feels like an age entire has passed us by—as if I really did traverse some other plane of existence, departing the mortal one. As if, fleeing my past, I drank of knowledge and sustenance known only to old gods.
There. I am rhapsodizing while waiting in the doorway of the beautiful, still-kindly room, and I ought not to. I left behind the confusion and weariness of Astor Place, only to return refreshed for a disaster at the heart of my home. That is the truth of it, and today I am visiting Grandfather Finwe, not to say farewell, but because there is a serious and dreadful matter to be talked over.
(Mama is still abed. Aredhel is not at all herself. My brothers look to me, and I—I can only look at my father, fearful and wondering that he is still here.)
Are Grandfather’s steps slower than they were a few months ago? Does he move less surely?
“Fingon,” he says, closing the distance between us. He takes my hand first as if we were two gentlemen meeting in a parlor. Then his natural good humor and deep-rooted affection overtakes us both, and he envelops me in a tight, familiar embrace.
It is all the more familiar because he is taller than me, and thinly built, and when his arms close round my shoulders I can well imagine that it is not only my grandfather—
(I have not spoken to Maitimo, since. For the first time in my life, I do not know whether I shall ever speak to him again.)
(I remember that Madame Nienna asked me, at our first meeting, whom I was trying to heal.)
“Grandfather,” I gasp out, short of breath on account of my nerves. “I received your note.” It is foolish to say as much; of course I received his note. I am here, am I not? Here, being led among the rich-colored wood and the shining, gold-lettered books—soon to be seated at the well-worn table with its chess game forever half-played atop it.
“Capital,” he says. “I would have followed it myself soon enough, if you did not appear—but I knew you would come, my boy. You have been the most dependable creature since you were growling and rolling over my carpets like a little bear-cub.”
Like a wolf-cub, I think, with the bitterest of pangs. It is a hard lot, I find, at my embarrassingly tender age, that I still cry as easily as a girl. Easier than some—Aredhel can be so shockingly stoic, when she puts her mind to it.
I do not let the tears rise any higher, just now.
“Everyone is still recovering,” I say, taking my seat “And so it is best, I think, that I visit you. F-father would be so sorry, not to welcome you properly if you were to call on us at home.”
At the mention of my father, Grandfather Finwe looks as if the weight of every one of his years has doubled upon his shoulders.
“Fingolfin,” he murmurs, half to himself. Then he recollects that it is I, Fingon, who have come to see him, and draws the back of his hand swiftly over his eyes. His gaze, when it returns to me, is bright. “You and I must put our heads together, m’dear,” he says, in the warm tone of old. “Your grandmother is not here at present, though I have consulted her as often as my own heart. All to no purpose—as of yet. Alas, I do not think our Sunday dinners will be comfortably restored without a little exertion on our parts. How shall we doctor our loved ones?”
“I do not think we can,” I answer gravely, my heart thundering under my ribs. “I do not think it is a matter for doctoring, Grandfather.”
He surveys me in silence. I do not suppose he expected that answer, but nor is he very surprised by it.
“I will not despair,” he says quietly, after a long moment. “No—no. For longer than you have been alive, Fingon, there have been…chasms deep between my sons, and between our family and the world. I do not pretend to understand why it is so. I do not know why love and hate mingle so curiously together in our blood. But I will not—”
He pauses.
I cannot forget, not for even a moment, the way my mind and body, my voice and my falsely capable hands, failed me when my father faced his death.
Feanor—whom I will not name my uncle today—held Father’s life in the crook of his trigger-finger, and seemed to think nothing of it.
Grandfather’s voice, Grandfather’s movement, Grandfather’s trust: these were our salvation, if such it could be called.
Feanor, I beg you—if you love me—
“I will not despair,” Grandfather says again. “And nor must you, Fingon.”
I feel almost as if Grandfather has set the chessboard in between us, and is playing, not as a friendly and informative guide, but as a fierce opponent. But of course this cannot be so—of course he would not wish for me to suffer more.
For an instant, I wish that Maitimo was here to help me understand, but then I remember (as I must always remember, these days) that Maitimo is only Maedhros now, and not his familiar self at all.
“What does it mean,” I ask, “To despair over circumstances such as these? Is it despair to expect that—that my uncle must make amends for what he has done?”
“It was the madness of a moment,” my grandfather says heavily. His long fingers stiffen and clench. A fist, with nothing to strike. A bullet, with nothing—
He says, “God above, what I would not give to undo it!”
“He—” I am angry. Not at Grandfather Finwe, exactly, but at—at whatever blind impulse that drives our family to set aside a wretched past too quickly. “He has not so much as written a note of apology, you know.” (Grandmother has written my father several letters, hastily addressed and longer than any of her usual missives. She has nothing to be sorry for.)
Grandfather rises abruptly. I am not afraid of him, but I am afraid of the uncertainty beating in my heart, throbbing in my ears.
“Life laughs at us both cruelly and kindly,” he says, pacing beside the handsome shelves, his white hair aglow in the summer sunlight that slips between the window shutters. “How often I wished to bring my sons together under one roof, to believe that we could meet as one family though all the world was against us. And then, in Fingolfin’s very home…”
I stand up, too. I cannot afford to be so diminished in height. “Your sons could meet under one roof,” I say, “If only my father and Uncle Finarfin were there. It is Feanor who has caused this trouble—always Feanor!”
Always Feanor. I know him to be brilliant; I have yearned for his praise in my turn, though never so much as the sons whose light dims my own in every regard. I am not so skilled at raw survival as Celegorm, nor can I undertake fine craftsmanship like vicious little Curufin. I cannot play and sing a tenth of a part as well as Maglor, for all my practicing.
I could not rival Maedhros in anything, and I have never really tried.
Why does Feanor lead all of us, those whom he loves, or hates, or is indifferent to in turn?
Why is it always Feanor?
I really do fear that I am going to weep at last.
Perhaps Grandfather realizes this too, for he ceases his pacing and steps towards me, slowly and carefully, as one might approach a skittish horse.
I step forward when he opens his arms again; I do not know what else to do. I am young, foolish, hopeless, and beginning to sniffle against his shoulder.
“We must forgive them, Fingon,” he whispers against my hair. I hate that I am reminded of Maitimo again. “We must.”
“Whom?” I whisper, desiring to defend my father with my last shred of valiance, but it is not enough.
He does not answer me.