#mumblemumble

“Why always set a watch upon the shore?” said Elwing. “Are you afraid that Círdan will come and pardon you?”

Not all the bitterness in her voice was for him. He had never uttered a word where she could hear, and she had no cause to expect an answer. He said without thinking, “I hope your husband will come and ransom you.”

The mist had taken on temporary direction and fell in a fine drizzle. She looked more Beorian hooded: she had the shape of her grandfather’s eyes, the flat set of his jaw, his little ears, and his high shoulders, thrust into view when her hair was covered.

She had also, to be sure, the even-toned skin and gray gaze of her grandmother, the gracious strength of the Sindar, and double-jointed wrists, which might have come from anywhere. To hear her crack her knuckles after dark was a spell against sleep. Because from the first she had moved like a maid of his own people, it took him time to believe that---at rest---she was a stranger. He first saw humans in Finrod’s train: Finrod who had a knack for bringing home strays under ideal circumstances, through no fault of his own, and who looked, on a borrowed horse, weary, inattentive, and ready to oblige. A poor rider once tired out with roaming, he had a way of being jostled understandingly. Just so he must have ridden out from Nargothrond—but no, for his band had gone on foot, and at all odds he had been angry, which had its focusing effect on Finrod’s looks, if not his mind. Maedhros remembered. But weary, diligent and weary: so he must have been when he set tooth to the wolf.

It wasn’t an auspicious cove in which for the captain to lay anchor. They had fled north and west around the cape, crossing brown wastes and pale sand, until the beaches grew rocky and high cliffs reared above the hills, as if land that laid down for thirst had drunk its fill at last of the brimming sea. From the mist, then, they should have taken refuge in a notch at the foot of the cliffs, where shingle crunched underfoot like an aisle of autumn leaves; but she stayed just outside the mouth, unwilling to go in. With slender hands half-curled at her sides, like hare’s feet, she stood slack-featured and all demure, but her soft voice lost its velvet on her—wearing—surety: “He can’t. Return here, and be a prisoner? His duty lies west.”

“As our duty is the keep of his wife? Where are your sons?”

“They’ve banished me. I find there were no women among Túrin’s outlaw band. And having packed lembas for Beleg, Melian would never follow him into the wild.”

He had difficulty following this, and she interrupted his calculations. “Where are Eluréd and Elurín?”

Because he was so unprepared, he felt almost nothing: indignation shot up and shrank like a shadow cast by a brand. He said, “Were you never told?”

“I have been told—by madwomen who pitied me. That was kind, but now I am among you. You’re elves. Your own people despised you for the sack of my city, they turned and fought beside my guards. So where are they?” She said it gaily, without any conviction, her smile thoughtful, and a hitch in her breathing. She was playing games with herself. “You would have sold them to me, had you kept them. How long ago did they escape?”

Again he heard his own silence—at least, he heard the shrieking of the gulls.

Elwing began to hum, like that would prompt his memory. She hummed, slow and out-of-step, a bar of the tune Maglor had worked that night inside the tent, which the air hoarded. Then in short order his knees gave out.

His hand, splayed under him on the wall of the cave, was like some warning nailed there; below the wrist he didn’t feel it, the pain in it was stones felt through a sack, while if it had been his he would have felt nothing at all. And his cloak, now: his cloak that she had mended was heavy and it clung. He met her eyes with an effort. The helmet’s visor fell if he raised his head too far. He said,

“They were left in the forest to starve. You should have heard it from me earlier, but I thought the tale reached you, long ago,” as word of your survival came to me. “I’m sorry. You are right in that it was none of my will or Maglor’s; Lossel and Égon could have told you that, and they had not died in defense of your tower.” Although he knew why his fighters turned, and even perceived that it wasn’t beyond hope that the Havens should have endured, if enough stood aside, still he didn’t forgive their deaths, who died and achieved nothing. He was glad at least that Amras hadn’t wavered at the end; hadn’t, like Amrod and Dior’s sons, slept his way into death, lain down and dreamed atop the steps of Elwing’s court.

“But you must have killed them.” She stared at his feet. He took off his helmet, in case he would need something blunt for a club. “Who else could have done it? And you didn’t, for you are not mad.” She came close and put a hand on his pauldron, little finger trembling while the rest all but held; going to her toes and back down in an instant she said, “Listen, it will be kept secret, for I’ve no way to go and none to tell. So I ask you once more: where are my brothers?”

“Dead,” he said, “like my brothers; frozen.” Her hand relaxed, her grip settled in something loose and sure. In another moment she would think to let go; all he could do was wait, the time to strike was past. He hung the helmet on his hook. “I searched for them, but I was a stranger to those woods. My brother Celegorm ordered their deaths—you may recall what he did to your grandmother, mad or sane. Or his servants did it in remembrance of him, I couldn’t make it out. They died without telling any living where they left your father’s heirs or why they did that cruel deed. Celegorm died even earlier. We were destroyed that night in truth, if it’s a comfort to you. But by dawn the snow lay deeper than the waists of the ancient trees... I myself almost lost this other hand.” He held up the back of his hand to her, though the scars from frostbite were long healed. “Don’t tell your sons they have uncles living, in fallen Doriath.”

She cast back her hood and stepped back; she was taking down her hair, winding it through her fist as rope she would not purchase. Then she pulled.

“Stop. Think where you are,” he said, dropping his light style—cold, as he would have been to a friend in need of numbing.