第 109 页

TT: Fine.

BUDB: Sports aside, you come to us on a scholarship that recognizes scholarship as well as athleticism. What course of study are you interested in pursuing? Do you have a major picked out?

TT: No.

(Cont. on pg 3)

Beleriand University Daily Bugle, December 15 2014

FRESHMAN MAKES IMPACT AT CHAMPIONSHIPS

Túrin Turambar, notoriously reticent freshman scholarship student and rising star of the University’s undefeated rugby team, has continued to turn heads with his staggering performance at the league championships this past Saturday. With a performance many are calling ‘fearless’ ,‘ terrifying’, and ‘questionably legal’, Turambar decimated the competition, leading his team to an overwhelming victory over Angband College at Anfauglith Field.

(Cont. on page 5)

Beleriand Eagle, May 21 2015

BELERIAND STUDENT ACCUSED OF ASSAULT

Area police are currently asking for any information on the whereabouts of 19 year old Túrin Turambar in connection with an assault committed on Doriath Ave at approximately 2:30 am last night. The victim, recent Beleriand graduate Saeros Orgel, claimed in his statement to police that he had a history of conflict with the suspect...

(See ASSAULT, 10a)

“Some press clippings, these are,” muttered Celegorm, shuffling through the folder of newspaper cutouts that Mablung had collected from among the belongings Beleg had left behind in their apartment. “Busy kid, I guess.”

“That’s one way of putting it. What do you know about Túrin’s family?” Oromë turned the car onto a side street and Celegorm frowned, setting the folder by his feet.

“Why would I know anything about his family?”

“His dad was Húrin Thalion,” said Mablung from the back seat.

Celegorm turned around. “Thalion? You mean the World Cup hero?”

“Yeah,” said Mablung. “And the spy.”

Oromë shook his head. “We don’t know that.”

“That’s what everyone says – ”

“I know it's what the people who used to harass Túrin at school say. But all we know is that it seems Húrin was doing work overseas for the government after he retired – and no one seems clear on the nature of that work – and he hasn’t been seen since the early oughts. The nastier rumors say he defected, but I think many find it possible he was captured or killed. All we can say for sure is that he’s been gone for at least 15 years and even his family doesn’t know anything.”

“Quite the career,” said Celegorm, looking out the window. “Winning a world cup and then being a spook slash traitor?”

“Alleged traitor. At any rate, Túrin barely knew his father before he vanished, and his family had a tough time with him gone, especially with the suspicion around the circumstances of his absence. The family had to split up soon after the fallout of Húrin’s disappearance, I think mostly for financial reasons. His mother and little sisters are god knows where, I don’t know if he’s seen them any more recently than he’s seen his father.”

“So who the hell was he living with?”

“My impression is that it was a number of people, foster families and the like, nothing particularly consistent. But in the years leading up to college, he ended up with one family – well, person – in particular.”

“Why haven’t any of them reported him missing? For that matter, why isn’t anyone worried about Beleg going missing?”

“I’m worried about Beleg going missing,” said Mablung loudly. “But that’s it, see? Túrin mostly stayed with Beleg during the holidays, but Beleg doesn’t exactly have a normal family situation either. He’s literally never mentioned parents the entire time I’ve known him, and if he stays with anyone it’s this crowd of half step cousins or whatever, and there’s so many of them that I don’t think anyone keeps tabs on whether Beleg is there or not. I went and poked around a bit when I was looking for Beleg. I didn’t wanna alarm them or anything, so I didn’t say much, but none of them have seen him in months. Those who had even given it a thought said they assumed he’d been in a place of his own since last summer – well, he had moved in with me, but,” Mablung scowled. “We know how that turned out.”

“So basically it’s like they were each other’s assigned bus buddies on a field trip,” said Celegorm cheerfully. “Raise your hand if your buddy’s missing, right? But the check-in system falls through when they both vanish.”

“Do you think this is a fuckin’ joke, man?”

“Chill out, I was just making a little analogy, see – ”

“We don’t need analogies, this is someone’s life!” Mablung looked like he was only retraining himself from lunging forward with difficulty. “And for the last time, I am the one who raises his goddamn hand when Beleg’s not there in your stupid analogy.”

“Okay, okay, you’re right, sorry.” But Celegorm was only half paying attention, narrowing his eyes at the run-down houses they were passing, the rumble of the processing plant audible even inside the car. “Talk about the sketchy part of town, Jesus. Glad we’re not walking.”

“Hard to see how the 99% live, rich boy?” muttered Mablung.

Celegorm ground his teeth and half turned in his seat. “I get that you’re stressed, but yo, give me a break. I am not in the mood to play ‘more oppressed than thou’, so just shut – ”

“We’re almost there,” said Oromë, his deep voice cutting through Celegorm’s snarl. “Rein it in.”

Celegorm threw himself back against the seatback and drummed his fingers on the armrest as Mablung shoved himself against the door and hunched into the hood of his sweatshirt. Celegorm ignored him, looking over at Oromë instead. “Where are we almost? Who are we going to see?”

“The person who coached him in high school,” said Oromë, turning into the driveway of a small, stone house that had clearly once been well tended but was now in disrepair. “The person who kept him off the street and who made sure he actually got somewhere. The person who gave him a home for three years.” Oromë pulled on the emergency break and shut off the engine. “Mîm.”

-

The doorbell didn’t work, but even Oromë’s most respectful knock was too loud for the house’s inhabitant to ignore. They heard footsteps shuffling behind the door, the rattle of a chain, and then the slide of a deadbolt. The man who opened the door was somehow ageless; the face that was almost entirely obscured by a thick black beard could have been youthful or ancient and no one would have been any the wiser. He was short, far shorter than either Celegorm or Mablung, and would have looked child-sized next to Oromë had it not been for his barrel chest and broad shoulders. He looked up, and then further up, his dark eyes decidedly wary. Celegorm and Mablung could hear the little bones in his neck pop as he tilted his head fully back to examine Oromë.

“Hello, Mîm."

“Aldaron,” Mîm said, a rough, gravelly voice that sounded like it came from somewhere beneath his feet. He took a drag on his cigarette, then tossed it down on the front mat. Oromë stepped on it hurriedly while Mîm studied the three of them another long moment.

Then he shut the door in their faces.

Oromë immediately knocked again, polite but insistent.

“Go away,” growled the voice from behind the fogged glass and wrought iron of the door. “You think I haven’t learned by now that visitors are bad news?”

“It’s important,” said Oromë. “It’s – ”

“It’s not my business. No, by god, don’t tell me what it is, I know it’s not my business. The only business that involves me is my own, and I am not so foolish as to think I can dodge the bad luck of others, not when I haven’t managed it umpteen times before, so just – ”

“It’s about Túrin.”

There was a long pause. Then the door swung open again and this time Mîm looked resigned but unsurprised. He let out a heavy sigh and shook another cigarette from the pack in his breast pocket. “Of course it is. I say ‘bad luck’ and ‘Turambar’ can’t be far behind.”

Mablung made a sound that might have been a snort.

“I have to say,” Mîm added, jerking his head at Oromë, “I am surprised to see the likes of you in this part of town.”

“I am sorry for showing up announced. I tried to call, but the number listed in the phone book appeared to be disconnected.”

Mîm grunted. “It’s been disconnected since the break in. And I wouldn’t have picked up, anyway. Come on in, and your little entourage,” he said, eyeing Mablung and Celegorm and then turning back into the house. “Turambar, eh? I should have guessed.”

“It stands to reason,” he said, later, as they crowded around a low table in a dim kitchen and he poured four cups of strong, dark tea from an old teapot. “What else do you and I have in common but the boy? I figure we haven’t spoken since you first called me about recruiting him, back in his senior year. But when I saw you on my stoop, I had a moment thinking maybe Aulë had sent you.”

“Aulë,” Celegorm started to say, looking surprised. “Why would – ”

But Oromë cut him off. “You’re right,” he said, looking at Mîm and accepting the cup of tea with a nod. “We’re here about Túrin.”

“And Beleg,” put in Mablung. “Cúthalion,” he added, challengingly. “You probably haven’t heard of him, he might not have the Turambar rep, but he’s – ”

Oromë put a hand on Mablung’s shoulder and Mablung subsided. “Yes. Túrin and Beleg, another member of the team, are the reason we are here. They are both…missing in action, so to speak.”

“I read about what happened last summer,” said Mîm, fixing a sharp eye on Oromë. “The boy being charged with assault and all that. Do you believe the charges?”

“Beleg never believed it,” said Mablung as Oromë released him. He ignored his tea and planted his elbows on the table. “He always thought there was more to that story, he was obsessed with finding out what. It’s why he went looking for Túrin, and it’s why he’s still out there.”

“Is it, now. If he’s found Túrin, like you seem to think, then why hasn’t he come back?”

“Because he’s obsessed with that kid,” said Mablung, in frustration. “He found him, he told me so, but there must be some reason Túrin doesn’t want to show his face, because that was about the last I heard from Beleg before he disappeared off the face of the earth with him.” He banged a hand down on the table, making the cups jump, and Celegorm reached out to keep Mablung’s from overturning. “What is it about Turambar that makes him so damn compelling to people?”

Smoke curled from the end of Mîm’s cigarette as it flared red and retreated another centimeter, drawing dangerously close to the thicket of his black beard.

“I’ve asked myself that,” he said, and dropped his cigarette carefully into the ashtray. “But anyone could see the kid was special. That’s why I let him stay with me, even though he was as much trouble as he was worth. That’s why Thingol discovered him as a teenager and decided he was worthy of his charity, for all that came as a mixed blessing. That’s why you recruited him, no doubt.” He jabbed a finger at Oromë, who inclined his head. “And that’s probably why your friend wasn’t going to let him vanish.”

“What was so special about him?” demanded Mablung. “Okay, fine, he is a good athlete and not an idiot, and he’s not hideous looking or anything, but as far as I can tell he’s touchy as hell, grumpy as fuck, and likely to go off at the drop of the hat.”

“There’s more to him than that,” said Mîm, and he absently turned over his empty teacup. “It wasn’t what he could do so much as what he did. And how he did it.”

-

The thieves had come to his house the year before. They’d broken in one night wearing ski masks and wielding baseball bats, and one of them, the tallest, a gun. They’d taken everything of value Mîm had, though there was little enough of that at this point, and had broken his collarbone for good measure when they saw him going for the phone.

Túrin had a place to sleep in the dorms by that point, but he still came by some weekends to tell Mîm how he was doing. They'd take a Sunday afternoon to sit in silence together and drink tea, maybe listen to the game on the radio, and let Túrin recount how his training had been going. So it had been Túrin who had found Mîm the next morning, his arm tucked to his chest in a makeshift sling as he worked to right the lamps and bookshelves knocked over the night before. It had been Túrin who had gone pale with fury; Túrin who had gone off in a rage when he found out what had happened, despite Mîm’s insistence that all they needed to do was file a police report, get his arm to the hospital, and count himself lucky nothing worse had happened. Mîm cradled his rage close to his chest like a broken bone, let it out in almost prayerful curses and the words he had shouted after his assailants as they retreated into the night.

But Túrin was never one to restrain his rage.

It was Túrin who had stormed off, and Túrin who returned, a day later, with most of Mîm’s stolen belongings. He had apologized that the money was gone, but the things of personal value he had retrieved – Mîm’s wife’s wedding band; his son’s Purple Heart; the gold chain Mîm had been wearing around his neck the night of the break-in. Mîm took back his treasures wordlessly, and Túrin told him that he wouldn’t have to worry about being bothered anymore; he’d “had a word” with the ones who’d done it and “they won’t be giving you any more trouble”.

Mîm believed him.

Túrin was that sort, he said, sitting over the low table, turning the cup over and over in his hands. The type you trusted when he told you not to worry, even when you knew better. The type you believed.

And when one day Mîm had come home to Túrin sitting in his kitchen with a bunch of strangers, lean and rangy and ill-dressed, Mîm hadn’t questioned him like he should.

He had his suspicions, later, when he overheard the conversation. His suspicions grew when he listened less to the words than to the voices, and recognized some from nights past, even though this time they weren’t muffled by ski masks.

But he did not make Túrin explain himself.

“You don’t have to worry about them,” Túrin had said, a hand on Mîm’s shoulder. “They’re idiots, honestly, but they aren’t so bad.”

“I can make this work to our benefit,” he said another time, the night before he returned the amount Mîm had lost, in creased bills.

And Mîm had smoked, and turned his teacup over in his hands, and mistrusted the strangers, but had faith in Túrin, despite it all.

They won’t give you any trouble.

Not anymore.

Not unless they want to answer to me.

-

“And they didn’t,” said Mîm. “They didn’t want to answer to him. He scared them, young as he was, inexperienced as he was, green as he was. He was special. Anyone could see it.” He blew out a stream of smoke. “He was terrifying. Anyone could see it.”

There was another pregnant pause. Celegorm was looking at the doorframe, where there were old splinters where the door had been kicked in.

Mablung was less preoccupied. “Okay, so he was getting in with this same gang that robbed you. He was establishing ties with the criminal underworld, sounds about right.”