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“Those two children…”
The followers of Fëanorians would say this, then fall silent for a moment, take a swig of alcohol, and turn to other matters.
The first time Elrond heard this sentence, he thought they were talking about himself and his twin brother. He was perhaps six, or seven—he could not be sure. In the first year after their capture, his sense of time had been in ruins: each day long and grinding, yet each month too short to remember a single face. He only remembered a damp tent, rain falling outside, several men smelling of blood gathered around a fire, speaking in low voices, while he and Elros huddled together in a corner beneath the same blanket, pretending to be asleep.
“Those two children…” someone said again.
“Enough,” another voice cut in. “They’re dead anyway. What’s the point of talking about it?”
Dead. The young Elrond already knew what that word meant. It was everywhere in Havens of Sirion—bodies lying in pools of blood, twisted faces, unmoving forever. It was the word for when his mother leapt into the sea.
But he did not know who those two children were. Later, when he asked his foster father, the answer came only after a long silence.
“They were your mother’s two brothers,” Maglor said softly.
“What happened to them?”
“They died.”
“How?”
Maglor did not answer. He only drew the boy closer, wrapping a trembling arm around his narrow shoulders.
Gradually, Elrond and Elros realized that some would look at them differently.
“You’ve been very lucky.”
One day, a veteran, drunk, said this as he clapped Elrond on the head hard enough to nearly knock him over. “You’ve been really lucky, you know?”
There was a deep scar on the man’s hand, running from the web between his thumb and forefinger to his wrist.
Years later, when Elrond chose to become a healer, he learned to distinguish between different kinds of wounds—and would suddenly recall that it had been a bite mark, and begin to tremble uncontrollably.
“Did you know,”
One day Elros said without looking up, his tone flat, “we almost died like that too.”
Elrond set down his pen. “What are you referring to?”
Elros raised his head. On a face identical to his own was a weariness he had never seen before.
“We could have been abandoned as well. Just like our uncles were.”
Later, he asked Maglor. Maglor did not deny it. He lowered his gaze, like a statue weathered too long by wind and rain, his voice hoarse, barely audible. “…That was true.”
“…Who gave the order?”
“No one,” that beautiful voice trembled. “It was… utter chaos. Madness.”
“And them?” Elrond’s voice shook as well. “Did they know their fate?”
Maglor did not answer, because the answer was too simple. Those two six-year-old children knew nothing. Before they died, they knew only cold and hunger. They did not know of kin-slaying, nor of oaths.
The sons of Fëanor, of course, felt guilty. In the years that followed, their foster fathers tried everything, in vain, to repay twice over what had been taken. Maedhros taught them how to fight and survive. Maglor taught them letters and lore, and how to read the long genealogies filled with names. Eluréd and Elurín—the last princes of Doriath, grandsons of Lúthien, sons of Dior—had been abandoned in the depths of a forest at the age of six by Fëanorian followers, and were slowly forgotten.
But the poets and bards would not sing of their deaths. Such a tale was too slight, too thin to bear the ambition of any poet seeking to recreate an epic, and of little interest to those who gathered each day in their homes. They wished to hear of grand wars, tragic oaths, treasures beyond price, the pride that dared to raise a sword against the Valar. That past held only the bleak deaths of two children—thorns that could not adorn the glory of kinslayers.
The truth was pieced together only as they gradually grew older.
Some said the forest was cold that night. Some said the children were still crying when they were taken away. Others said that Maedhros later returned to search for them, but found nothing.
Were they shoved into the woods? Gently set down with soothing lies? Or simply cast from a horse like waste? What was the last sound they heard—the gnawing convulsions of hunger, or the eager howls of beasts?
No one spoke of these things, because no one knew. The poets would not dwell on the terror and grief of a survival owed to regret; they were too busy composing and praising imagined memories of warmth and love, unforgettable for a lifetime.
On the night they finally pieced the truth together, he and Elros lay curled in their bed, sleepless, unmoving, breathing as quietly as possible, ears straining like startled birds—listening—until the footsteps outside the tent receded.
He would always remember those two names. He would remember that he, too, had once been six. How far could a six-year-old walk in a forest? How long could he run? How many nights could he endure hunger?
It could have been them.
And those men were just outside the tent. Some of those men had once thrown two children into the forest—and then returned alone.