“So, is it Maeglin, or Lómion?”
Maeglin shuddered. Lómion was an innocent boy who lived in shadows. Lómion was his mother’s beloved son. Lómion never hurt anyone. “It’s Maeglin.”
Berries and Bones
Chapter Notes
"Naneth" is Sindarin for "mother"
Maeglin opened his eyes and immediately squeezed them shut again with a whimper. The damage had been done; tears ran down his cheeks from the pain.
“What’s wrong, Maeglin?” Celegorm’s voice was gentle and steadying.
“The light. It’s so bright. I can’t stand it.” Maeglin winced. He shouldn’t have admitted that. Now Celegorm would think him some evil creature, halfway at least to being an orc, and he wouldn’t be so wrong; hadn’t they whispered that about him even before? He heard a flap drop, and the light dimmed a little, but not enough. It was followed by a ripping sound, and a piece of soft, smooth fabric was pressed into his hand.
“Try that over your eyes. Should be thin enough to see through.”
Maeglin felt the weight of the silk and doubled it before tying it behind his head. Cautiously he raised his eyelids again. Through the strip of black silk, the light was bearable, and everything was shrouded in a comfortable dim haze. He sighed in relief.
“Better?”
“Yeah. Thank you.”
“Were you this sensitive to light before?”
Ah. Here it comes. “Angband made you a monster and I don’t want you here.” He told the truth, not knowing what else to say. “Only when I first left Nan Elmoth as a child. We did everything by night there. I adjusted.”
“New bodies are a pain in the ass for a while. Your fëa tends to pull bits and pieces from what it remembers as being you, and often not the ones you wish it had. It’s like new shoes, you gotta break it in before it’s comfortable. If it’s easier for you, we can sleep by day and be up at night. I don’t mind.”
Maeglin started to tear up again from the kindness of this person who didn’t even know him and was willing to go so far. No one in Gondolin had ever been as thoughtful. “I think I’d better try to get used to daylight again.”
“Suit yourself.” Celegorm passed him a round of dense, dark flatbread and a piece of fish. “I'm gonna head out in a bit, check some snares and maybe pick berries. You wanna come?”
“Sure.” Maeglin bit into the flatbread and was quietly stunned. He tasted chestnuts and acorns, and the mildly sweet, earthy flavor took him back to his childhood and his mother singing by starlight. They'd laughed when he asked for nut bread in Gondolin, and showed him the fields of golden wheat and barley that stretched over the plains of Tumladen. He hadn’t expected ever to eat it again.
“This is yours.” Celegorm tossed him a bundle of clothing, fine blue wool and linen with silver embroidery around the edges. “Your mother made them for you and sent them along. But for wading through berry brambles, you might want to just borrow something of mine.” He poked through his scattered belongings until he came up with a pair of leather pants and a linen shirt that had seen better days. “No need to worry about spoiling these.” He grinned.
Maeglin still stared at the tunic in his hands. “She wants me dressed like a Nolofinwion prince?”
“Well, that is what you are.”
Maeglin laughed bitterly. “Once maybe. Not anymore.”
“You know, Fingolfin gets to decide that, not Turgon. And I don't think Turgon—”
“If you don't mind, I really don't want to hear that name. Or think about it. Or talk about it. Or—”
“I got you.” Celegorm gently took the clothing back and stowed it in a little trunk, carefully refolded. “Just, this is here for you when you want it.”
So never, Maeglin thought, but he didn't say it. He felt awful to reject a gift from his mother, but he couldn't imagine wearing it. It would be an insult to all the people who had put faith in him as their lord and their prince, people who had died cruelly at his word. Living at all was probably an insult to their memory. He wasn’t sure Námo understood these things. Maybe this whole endeavor was a bad idea.
Celegorm left the tent to give him some privacy, and Maeglin heaved a sigh and got dressed. Celegorm’s clothes were a little big on him, but he belted in the pants, and they fit well enough. They were simple work clothes, stained and worn, not so different from what he’d favored in the mines and the forge, and he felt much more himself in them than in the shapeless grey thing he’d worn from the Halls.
The green-gold light that filtered through the leaves was enchanting and soft, and as he followed Celegorm, looking about at all the beauty of the forest, Maeglin began to think perhaps everything wasn’t unmitigatedly awful after all. Nan Elmoth had been far thicker with ancient, gnarled trees that shut out the rest of the world, but these trees seemed friendly and inviting. He heard the chattering of birds and squirrels and saw, far off, a herd of elk with their young.
They came to a clearing where a trunk as broad as Maeglin was tall had fallen, taking a swathe of smaller trees down with it. In the pool of light, a thicket of blackberries had sprung up, and their fruit gleamed like red and black jewels. Celegorm handed Maeglin a basket of woven rushes, and they began to pick. Maeglin moved carefully around the thorns. Curious, he popped one of the ripe berries into his mouth, and gasped at the explosion of sun-warmed juices, sweet and tart and rich with delight that had been missing from his grey aching days.
“Go easy there,” Celegorm called to him after a few minutes. “Your stomach’ll need time to adjust too.”
Reluctantly Maeglin slowed down and started adding berries to his basket again. He spotted a glimmer of gold on the forest floor and went to investigate. He plucked the yellow mushroom and peered at the webbing of thick ridges on its underside. It smelled brightly of apricots. “Celegorm? Are mushrooms here the same as in Beleriand?”
“Depends.” Celegorm came over to look. “Ehh, chanterelles are chanterelles everywhere. You’ll find some things you haven’t seen before if you keep an eye out, but if you recognize one, it’ll be the same as what you know or close enough as makes no difference. Honestly there were a lot more poisonous mushrooms to worry about there than here.”
“In that case, I think I see another. These used to be my favorites.” Maeglin gathered as many as he could find close by and then returned to the berry patch.
“You grew up in the forest, right?” Celegorm asked. “You seem comfortable here. Did you like it?”
“I was a child. It was all I knew.” Maeglin was quiet, thinking, long enough that he figured the moment was over, but Celegorm hadn't seemed to mind his awkwardness yet. “I did like the forest. I used to wander a long way under the stars. I knew every tree for as far as I was allowed to go. It was better than being at home.”
“Were there other children around? I used to go to the woods to get away from all my brothers, but sometimes I'd drag them along for adventures.”
“There was only me. Naneth would wander with me, especially when I was small. She was the only one I could really talk to. Then we fled to Gondolin, and…and I…I learned you can be just as lonely in a city full of people.”
“I tried to track you guys down when I realized you'd crossed our lands and had that asshole on your tail.”
Maeglin could feel Celegorm's grief and shame bleeding around the edges of his words and clamped down hard on the momentary urge to reach out. The thought of another’s mind touching his brought foul memories of pain and torment, and he doubted he'd ever welcome it again.
“I couldn't reach you in time. I'm sorry.”
It's not your fault, Maeglin started to say automatically, but then he thought perhaps it was. If Celegorm had tried harder, had caught up to Eöl before he saw them, his mother might still be with him. Maybe he never would have been captured. Maybe he could have died with honor, protecting his city instead of gaping in horror at what he had done. “I want to go back. I'm…very tired.”
Celegorm gave him a look as if he knew what was going through his head, a look full of pity Maeglin hated. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“No. I can find the way.”
Celegorm whistled, and Huan came running from wherever he'd been exploring. “Go with him,” Celegorm told him. “Just in case you run into something or get turned around,” he said to Maeglin. “He'll keep you safe.”
Maeglin nodded his thanks and walked away, the huge dog at his side.
Being alone was no better. He made it back to the tent and collapsed on the pile of furs where he’d woken. He kept replaying the scene Celegorm—Turgon—someone should have prevented, his father’s hand on the javelin, his mother dashing in front of him, himself frozen in terror and utterly powerless. As powerless as he’d always been when it came to his father. Those hands had hurt him in so many ways over the years. They should have been his undoing. Her death should have been his, if he hadn’t been such a coward.
He studied his own hands. They were undeniably his father’s; whereas Aredhel’s had been sturdy, strong, and gentle, he had inherited Eöl’s long and delicate fingers that never managed to look like a smith’s no matter how many callouses and scars from the inevitable scrapes and burns he accumulated. All those marks were gone now, and there was nothing to draw his attention from the underlying lines.
Maeglin swallowed hard. He remembered one terrible afternoon in Angband—he thought of it as afternoon; underground he couldn’t know—when he’d been tied down across a table from Mairon—Sauron; he didn’t have to call him that anymore—and had watched and screamed as Sauron broke every bone in those slender fingers, slowly, one by one, weeping his crocodile tears all the while and begging him to betray Gondolin so he could stop. He’d healed them after so it left no trace; nothing he’d done had left a trace, unless you counted the scars on Maeglin’s fëa. Maeglin wondered what it would take to break them again himself. If they’d heal back crooked and knotted and spare him the image of his father every time he looked down. If it would be worth the risk of losing his craft. Hell, wasn’t his smithwork of his father too? Maybe he’d be better off without it. But who would he even be if not a smith? Huan was nosing at him; he pushed him away.
“Hey there. You wanna talk about it?”
Maeglin jumped. He hadn’t noticed Celegorm enter the tent. He hadn’t realized he’d been crying. “No. I really, really don’t.”
“All right. Want a hug?”
Maeglin tried to make himself refuse that too, but a desperate longing rose up in his throat, and he sobbed and flung himself into Celegorm’s arms.
Steel and Stone
Maeglin screamed. The twin Silmarils loured above him in the gloom. Morgoth opened his mouth, and black shadows poured from it, wreathing and oozing around him, burning his skin like acid wherever they touched. They breathed whispers of torment, and Maeglin knew too well by now what that meant—what it truly meant in all its shades and tempers. Sitting at his master’s feet, gazing up at him adoringly was Mairon, his hair glowing softly like the red flame of a forge fire, lovely, so achingly lovely, and he turned and smiled at Maeglin, his mouth far too full of sharp, sharp teeth.
“Maeglin. You’re in Aman. You're safe.” The voice was gentle and husky with sleep. “You're in my tent in the woods, remember? No one can hurt you. I'm here.”
Maeglin gasped and sat up. A wet tongue licked his face, and a huge, furry head butted against him.
“Huan! Don't be a jerk! He might not want you there.”
Pulling him closer, Maeglin buried his face in Huan's fur and clung to him, trembling. Celegorm reached over and rubbed his back. “It—it was them,” Maeglin forced out shakily. “M-Morgoth and Sauron. They—” He whimpered and couldn't manage another word. The last few days had been so mild and pleasant; he’d started to think maybe he'd escaped the darkness, but there it was, lurking and ready to devour him.
“They can't ever hurt you again,” Celegorm was saying. “You’re safe here. I'll keep you safe.”
“You can't keep me safe.” Bitter scorn rose unbidden, and Maeglin gave it rein unthinkingly. “You couldn't save your own brother. You left him to rot there. I know what they did to him.”
Celegorm drew a harsh breath, but he kept his tone light. “Yeah, well, I was a scared little dumbass then. But here I've got my own Vala at hand; Oromë is my…husband, for all practical purposes, and he'll show up the instant I ask. Hell, for that matter Huan took Sauron down himself. You can trust him if you don't trust me. Nearly tore his nasty throat out, didn't you boy? Who’s a good dog?” He scratched Huan's ears.
Huan thumped his tail, and the tightness in Maeglin's chest eased. “I saw the scars on his throat,” he whispered. “You are a good dog.” They spent a while petting Huan together while he reveled in the attention, until Maeglin curled up again under a soft fur with Huan's head on his chest and the steady sound of his breath calming him. “I'm sorry I said that. About Maedhros,” he murmured softly.
“Nah. That's fair.”
*
It was raining when he woke again, a dismal grey morning that turned everything to mud. Maeglin reached for his blindfold and decided a single thickness was enough. Celegorm had lit a fire, the tent flap propped up to partially shelter it, but it sputtered along half-heartedly. He offered Maeglin tea made of spruce tips and more of the nut bread Maeglin loved with berries and honey. Maeglin had little appetite, but he nibbled at his breakfast and let the piney tea warm him. There was little to do in the confines of the tent. Celegorm seemed more taciturn than usual; he sat poking at the fire and staring into it morosely.
Maeglin started straightening up; Celegorm didn't appear to care where he'd left most things as long as they were within easy reach, but Maeglin felt much better when his surroundings were tidy and ordered. He folded clothes, stacked dishes neatly, shook out the furs and rearranged them. It didn't take long, and then he was back to sitting with nothing to do. The burst of initiative had sapped his energy, so perhaps that was just as well.
Celegorm stretched and came inside, grabbing a bundle of leather Maeglin had left untouched. He paused and looked around, then studied Maeglin. “I got no metal for you to mess with, but there's a couple of good carving knives. Or…uhh…leather and sinew, if there's something you wanna sew. And there’s always arrows that need fletching and clothes that need mending, if you just want to keep your hands busy.” He flopped down outside again, right at the edge of the shelter, and spread the leather over his lap.
“Why would I do your mending?” Maeglin asked irritably. “I had servants for that in Gondolin.”
