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My dearest uncles -
No, that won’t do, will it. He sighs at the inkpot as though it and he have disappointed each other and begins again.
My honoured uncles -
Well, hardly.
Celebrimbor Tyelperinquar, once the youngest to be carried over the sea in the dark rocking hold of a ship where he was too afraid to look at the water, listens now to the sigh of waves on pebble shores beneath his window and lets the thought of it calm him. May Elwing hear him in whatever form she bears now, feathered spirit or finned ghost, and know he seeks to bring her children safely home. May Eärendil pause at the prow of his ship and believe once again that nothing is without hope.
He begins again, the parchment before him an expanse of blots and strikes and attempts once again. Father would have chided him for not using a slate for this - why waste ink when you don’t even know what you want to say? (Implied: how can you not even know what you want to say?) But he needs the reality of it, the smell of the ink and the roughness of the parchment beneath his fingertips.
Elwing wrote on birch bark the last time she wrote to them on Balar at all. He’d wondered vaguely where they even had birch in the land of saltmarshes and sand dunes, and who’d taught her to use it - surely the exiles of Doriath hadn’t kept so devoutly to their own ways she’d chosen it for that reason? But he hadn’t asked, and now he can’t ask. Perhaps they’d merely had more birch bark than parchment to spare.
No mind. There’s little use dwelling in the past when there’s work to be done in the present. He has never had much success in convincing any of his family to reconsider their actions but he must try.
He does not believe the children are dead.
My uncles, whose names I knew before I knew my own,
I write from the court of Ereinion Gil-galad but I do not write in his name. I write as your kin and as my father’s son still. What grief and the jewels did to him they stand to do to us all, one way or another. I will not beg you to turn from this path as I begged him to turn from his; I will only speak to you as one of the few left in this land who knew you both before any of this befell us all.
There is no need to tell you what we found when we came ashore at Sirion. I will say only that there were survivors, both defectors from your armies and people of the town; and that several of them swore to us that the reason none could find Eärendil’s sons was that you took them as prisoners when you rode away.
I have no power to compel you, no jewels to trade with you for the lives of two half-elven children. I seek only to know that they live. Please, tell me that they live.
In regard and in memory,
Tyelperinquar, son of Curufinwë.
It is long days, eternally long days and weeks and months, before the response comes. The exhausted messenger near-stumbles as she climbs the sea-washed stone steps up from the docks. There are no half-elven children with her - not that he’d expected it, really - and she does not have the air of one who comes in joy and celebration, but there in her shaking hand is a sealed parchment.
Tyelpe,
While I find it little surprise that you should play for favour in Gil-galad’s court, you can hardly expect me to entertain you. If you wish to claim your place in your father’s family you are free to fulfil your father’s oath and search the sea for the stolen Silmaril. If you do not, cease bothering me.
Maedhros Feanorion
It is not an answer. It gives nothing away about the children, shows no inclination to negotiate, no regret for the blood he and Maglor shed, no calls to alliance, no pleas for peace. The Silmaril is gone and so, most likely, are the children.
Nevertheless: it doesn’t say that.
Winter draws in a cold shroud over the isle. Fewer birds fly south from Beleriand now and those that do travel in oddly-shaped flocks, slow and straggling and broken. An archer brings down what he thought was a goose to find it red-eyed with a mouth full of teeth. There is little contact now with whoever still dwells to the north and they have no way of knowing what haunts the empty halls of Nargothrond nor what walks among the burned trees of Doriath. They are the last ones left in the last places left, or so they have begun to think of themselves.
But spring comes once again.
Celebrimbor departs once the days are long enough to make travelling worthwhile and the grasses are starting to grow lush and green enough to sustain his horse for the long ride east. Gil-galad offers to send escorts, guides - company, even - but Celebrimbor refuses it all. If the children are still alive as captives at Amon Ereb then it would take an army to free them anyway and at least if he travels by himself, anything that befalls him in this rash, foolhardy endeavour will befall him alone.
And it’s almost certainly pointless. They’re monsters now, his uncles. The best he can hope for is to know where the children died. Would half-elven children like the twins are be taken into the halls of Mandos? No way to know and no-one now to ask.
He sails to what’s left of the town at the mouths of Sirion and tells himself he will not turn his head away from it, but it’s been a year now since the town fell and there’s a strange peace in what’s left of it. Sea lavender grows in the streets and birds sing in the ruins. Pink thrift is already flowering on the banks of the cliffs; he gathers some, unsure why.
He knows the way east. He’s always known the way, really, and from here it’s simple enough: skirt the edges of the great dark forest and head north and east until the line of the Andram becomes visible on the horizon, and then turn to the east and the rising sun and the distant fortress that he can only assume still stands at Amon Ereb.
He’s sure his approach is watched. They’ll guard this whole plain like dogs, he knows; no lone rider would be allowed to approach unseen. But no guards confront him, no voice hails him, and - at least, he’s grateful - no arrows find him, as he reaches the gate and halts.
A guard lumbers to his feet, looking annoyed. “What do you want?”
“I come to seek the welcome of my uncles,” Celebrimbor says. “Ask them if this is the hospitality they extend to their kin.”
The guard snorts, and shrugs, and disappears. A stable-hand sees Celebrimbor standing at his horse’s head and pointedly ignores him.
What’s left of the Feanorians seem to be doing well enough. The walls are in good repair, the paths are swept clean, and horses and people alike seem not to want for food. It’s the emptiness of it that strikes him above all else. Perhaps this is part of whatever performance of bored indifference his uncles (his uncles, as if he still has a pack of them - there’s only two of them now) have put on for him, but he doesn’t think so. Between those who fell at Doriath and those who fell at Sirion and those who finally saw horror enough to turn on their own armies and fight alongside Elwing’s defenders, there were simply not many who returned. And no sign of children, not the half-elven twins nor any others.
“Nephew,” Maglor’s voice sounds loud in his ear - he always could creep quiet as a cat. A hand thumps down too hard on Celebrimbor’s shoulder. “You must have travelled for weeks. Won’t you join us for dinner?”
It’s a surreal meal, a strange welcome. The food is good; there’s water and wine aplenty. They discuss the challenges of crop growth in recent years (here, it seems, as on the lands inshore from Balar, growing anything has become an ever-more perilous endeavour: sometimes the crop will flourish, sometimes it will fail and mildew for no clear reason, and sometimes it will turn to something strange and wrong, heads of corn that bite like snakes or weep when harvested). They share a few careful memories of Aman.
Celebrimbor’s last letter is not mentioned, and nor are the missing children. No-one speaks of the dead. For all that’s discussed it could be a casual visit, albeit one devoid of song and laughter. Better than Nargothrond at the end, surely - probably - surely - song and laughter aplenty there but it was all blackened at the core, rotting fruit like the berries here he’s warned not to harvest if he travels further on.
And why would he travel further on? They must know why he’s here. They know he’s alone and they have nothing to fear from him (even if they still feared anything, and he doubts that greatly). Are they waiting to see if he’ll break first?
Fine, then, let him break first. He doesn’t need to win. He only needs to know.
“What became of those two children from Sirion?” he says.
“Two, were there?” Maedhros plays with the goblet he holds in his left hand, thumb running over the carved running deer that decorate its cup. His tone is one of vaguely bored tolerance.
You know there were two. “Twins,” he says.
Beside him Maglor says nothing. Maedhros shrugs: “How should I know?”
“At least tell me where they fell. Give their parents a grave to mourn, for pity’s sake -”
“But their parents are gone, Tyelpë!” Maedhros roars, and he’s smiling but there’s no laughter in it, no joy at all. “Their parents have gone to the sea like so many others of our coward kin. Why should they care? Why should you?”
Maglor, then. Maglor was always quieter, more inclined to mull over hard things in his head before speaking them into the world. Celebrimbor turns to him and to that calm, cold stare. “The children are Turgon’s grandsons,” he says, refusing to say were.
But Maglor is like stone. “Then maybe you should search the mountains for a hiding place. What do you care what became of them? We’re the monsters you think us to be, nephew - what are two more children.”
“Then why won’t you say? Why won’t you say, if you’re not ashamed?”
The sound of his own raised voice echoes around them like a sudden intruder in the hall. Maglor gets to his feet with no further word and leaves. Maedhros goes back to the grilled lamb he’s eating and says, almost casually, “Don’t you sound like your father, Tyelpë.”
Tyelpë, little Tyelpë, once the baby, once the treasured one. Tyelpë, once the first of a generation that began and now will end with him.
There’s nothing more to say. There never was. He watches Maedhros eat in a dull, sickened silence, thinking what a fool he was to ever come here.
And then Maglor reappears and now, surreally, with a child at either side of him - two boys with dark hair and grey eyes dressed in the finest-embroidered clothes and rich red capes, each with a circlet upon their brow. They each hold one of Maglor’s hands in their own and they look at Celebrimbor as though he’s a stranger they are mildly surprised to see here.
He stares at them, wordless. Two princes of the Noldor look back at him through Elwing’s grey eyes.
“What have you done,” he says. “What have you done?”
“There you are, Tyelpë,” Maedhros says without slowing at his meal. “There’s your stray children.”
What is there to say to all of this. What is there to say, before the ears of the children shown off to him like… like prizes, he wants to say, but it’s not. Like princes. Like grandchildren of Fëanor.
He hears them sing, in Quenya and in Sindarin both; they have fine voices and have already learned to sing harmonies. He hears them recite poetry by heart. Their manners are faultless. They tell him they can ride horses now, that they have one each (“hill ponies,” Maglor says, “those furry little ones that look like bears with hooves, but they’re treated like war chargers here,”), that they’re learning to play the harp although Elros is better at it, and that next year they are to have their own real swords once they’ve proved themselves with the wooden practice blades.
And they don’t speak of their parents, and they don’t speak of Sirion; and it was a year ago now, or more, and they’re young but they must know, they must remember. There’s no way to ask them. How can he ask them? Are you prisoners? Are you afraid?
They don’t seem to be afraid.
And so he goes along with it, even though he feels he’s complicit in a mirage of lies. He praises the children for their skills and their songs and their manners. He lets them show him the Tengwar lettering they have so carefully mastered now, better than he had at their age. He smiles. He smiles.
It’s afternoon of the next day before he says a word of it. The children are playing with Maglor, building a fortress out of loose stones; Maedhros watches from a distance that is hopefully too far away for word to carry.
“Tell me the point of this,” Celebrimbor says. “Are they hostages? Do you intend to demand something for their return?”
Maedhros seems unsurprised to hear the question. “We would trade them for two Silmarils if you had them. Anything less? No.”
“This is - you can’t keep them like this! This is wrong, this is cruelty.” Somewhat undermined by watching a laughing Elros barrel into Maglor’s side, head-first. “You slaughtered their city, the blood ran down the streets - you orphaned their mother - you tore Doriath apart - you think you can make up for that with bedtime stories and lessons in poetry? What are you doing? It’s false,” Celebrimbor says.
“It isn’t false.” And the sneer and the hardness and the anger all fall away from him, and for a moment he’s something both young and ancient himself. “We’ve done all that. There’s not much of us left now, not of what we were when we first came here. And they’re children growing up in this land that’s rotting beneath us. I don’t think they have any chance whatever we do, really. You'd think the same if you could bear to face it. So if we can do anything and it'll end the same way, why can't we do this? Why can't we give them this for the few summers they might have it?"
The sound of the children’s laughter carries through the air.
“I don’t know what you’re doing,” is the only thing Celebrimbor can think to say.
“I don’t know either.” And then Maedhros draws himself back to sharpness, like the edge of a knife. “Farewell, then, nephew. Please give our regards to Gil-galad, and pass on greetings from the children as well. Perhaps they’ll wish to visit once they’re grown.”
This, in the end, is the one thing Celebrimbor leaves knowing with certainty will not happen.
And then, in the end, it’s the one thing that does.