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Turukáno is very young when he meets the girl he will eventually know as Elenwë. The first time he sees her, she’s walking through Tirion with her mother — he is taken aback to find that someone can be so golden. Her hair reminds him of nothing so much as the topaz he had been cutting earlier in the day, glimmering in the mingled light of the trees. He stares a beat too long, smitten, and sensing him she turns to look — for a moment their eyes meet, his too stormy to ape Telperion, hers too pale for Laurelin (but blasphemously, more beautiful, to him!) — and her eyes dance, and he is sure he hears a teasing whisper in the breeze, saying here is a treasure not for you.
The second time he meets her is Findaráto’s doing. Turukáno learns an important lesson then that he will learn many times over in his long, long life — be careful what you tell your family! For Findaráto is so delighted by Turukáno’s childishly inadequate description of the girl — her eyes, Findaráto, they are like the light of Laurelin gleaming on these white stone walls! —that he decides to intervene, and composes a song — without Makalaurë or Findekáno, at Turukáno’s frantic behest — and sings it in the square on the next market day.
At first she is nowhere to be seen, and Turukáno is so relieved that he finds it in himself to laugh at Findaráto’s antics.
She’s a Vanyar. He knows that much from her golden hair and eyes. Her mother was as beautiful and noble of face as his grandmother, but not as well dressed — so probably not royalty. Likely she comes down to Tirion rarely — likely he’ll never see her again. Turukáno nurses this heartache like a fledgling in a nest, lets it burgeon and turn his demeanor rather sour. Findaráto, noticing this, offers enthusiastically to perform his song every market day, and begins an encore immediately — at which point Turukáno realizes it is almost certainly time for him to head home.
Naturally, as he turns away from his well-meaning cousin, cheeks flushed with embarrassment, he walks right into her.
“Excuse me,” he manages, blushing furiously. She smiles at him gently.
“What a funny song,” she says. “Just last week I met a Noldor boy in the market, and I thought he had the eyes the color of the clouds over a high mountain. It might even be said that this same boy met a girl with eyes the color of light glancing off stone walls, or something like it. Yet it must be coincidence, for—” here she stood on tiptoe, and peered over Turukáno’s shoulder — “for that is certainly not the boy I saw, who is singing it. Strange that he and she have had the same experience just last week, and that he stands here now to lament it!”
Turukáno is struck dumb. He stares at her with his mouth half open, having never looked less like a boy who will one day be High King. She takes his hand gently, introducing herself as Elenwë. I am surely in love with you, he thinks, but what slips past his fool tongue is “But that’s a boy’s name!”
But she must have heard the first thought anyway, for she laughs softly, and that evening walking through the market stalls, talking with Elenwë, he feels something new and bright in his heart — please let me keep this, he prays to unseen forces — whether to the Valar or something else, he does not ponder.
———
“What secrets do you keep, Turukáno?” It is his brother’s light voice, catching him at the foot of the back stairs. Behind him stands their eldest cousin, his strange silver eyes gleaming like a cat’s in the shadowed stairwell.
Findaráto had joined Fingolfin’s house for breakfast, as he sometimes did, and Maitimo had too, as he rarely did. Findaráto had eaten with them today for a rather altruistic purpose — he was to be Turukáno’s cover — to sell a story to his family of a hunting trip together out in the forests to the south — no contact for a few days, don’t mind them, back soon — and while Fingolfin had nodded and smiled indulgently, Maitimo and Findekáno had exchanged raised eyebrows and a funny expression that Turukáno could not interpret. Closer than kin, he thought bitterly, observing their silent rapport. Sometimes it felt to him that Findekáno, his own brother, loved him less than his cousin — as if his birth family was his second choice, and he would spend every moment with Maitimo instead, if he could.
Now it seems they have caught him in a lie, but he isn’t one to back down — while Findaráto has proved a steady ally, Turukáno has less trust for his rather talkative brother, and none for Maitimo — once a secret reached one son of Feanor, it would reach them all, and from there his father would have his head on a platter (or worse, insist that they invite Elenwë to meet the family!).
“Only a hunting trip,” he says lamely. “It has been some time since we have gone, just the two of us.”
“You must tell us what game you recover,” says Maitimo, smirking. His eyes glint as he turns, moving silently back down the hallway. Findekáno throws him one more open smile and says earnestly, “You can always talk to me, Turukáno,” then disappears down the hall after Maitimo without so much as a backwards glance.
This is exactly why I can’t talk to you, thinks Turukáno with irritation. Everything I say to you is telegraphed to the sons of Feanor. He does not understand (even as he fibs his way out of the house at Elenwë’s behest) why his brother shadows Maitimo so.
———
Time moves like amber in the years of the trees, and elven love is slow, and long. He and Elenwë have loved each other for enough time that he no longer knows himself without her. When she one day brings up marriage, and children, Turukáno is surprised — his eldest cousin is unmarried, as is his older brother — but with all his heart he wants to marry Elenwë, and so at last he introduces her to his family.
By that time, Fingolfin’s house is not what it once was. Findaráto still visits, but no one (except perhaps Findekáno) has seen Maitimo in a long, long time. The sons of Feanor have followed their father into exile.
All of Fingolfin’s children pretend that they do not know of the armory growing below the main hall. All of Fingolfin’s children pretend that they never saw Feanor’s sword pointed at their father’s chest — and even more so, that they never saw the threat of violence in Fingolfin’s eyes.
And of all of Fingolfin’s children, by some turn of events, the ever-serious Turukáno is by far the happiest. Írissë welcomes Elenwë with open arms and obvious familiarity, praising her beauty, her dress, her ability to tolerate her middle brother — Anairë welcomes her a bit absently, as she often does these days, but no less warmly for it. Írissë takes Turukáno aside to tell him how happy she is for him and for Elenwë, and tells him that she will always support him. But Fingolfin is surprised, and Findekáno is surprisingly bitter. Fingolfin at least puts on a polite show for Elenwë, though not without shooting Turukáno a mildly disapproving look. From that look he knows how lucky he is to be the younger son, to openly follow his heart. His eldest brother greets her perfunctorily, unable to shake the heavy mood that always seems to sit on his brow these days.
“At long last, Turukáno reveals his secret,” Findekáno says sardonically. The tone sits wrong in his bright voice. He sounds like Feanor, thinks Turukáno uncharitably.
Yet nobody protests the union, and soon they are all reconciled in the excitement of planning a wedding.
In the few weeks of preparation before the wedding, after invites have been made and a time and place set, Turukáno takes to wandering the halls of his father’s house. Sleep eludes him, though for no ill reason— nerves, and excitement too, as he can hardly wait at the thought of sleeping next to Elenwë every night, and it seems superfluous to do it by himself now.
So it is that he is the only one awake, the house shadowed in the mingling of the lights, and making his way to the balcony just past his brother’s room when he suddenly gets the feeling that he is being watched. Hairs prickling on the back of his neck, he turns suddenly, and finds himself face to face with Maitimo for the first time in years.
His beautiful cousin is a wreck. Little can be done (in that time) to dim the light of so fair a face, but his clothes are torn and dirty, and he is streaked with grime, as if having ridden or run for a long time without stopping for rest. His silver eyes are rimmed with red. If Turukáno didn’t know better, he’d have accused Maitimo of crying. Instead, what he says is
“What are you doing here?”
Maitimo’s throat works for a moment, and he looks strangely wrong-footed for someone found intruding in another’s house.
“Forgive me, Turukáno. I had to come.”
“Why? Why do you skulk here in the middle of the night? Surely you do not think my father so cruel as to turn you away if you knocked on his door. Or is it your own father you hide from?” Turukáno asks, a bit too loudly, a bit too angrily. Findekáno had often compared their cousin’s silver eyes to the light of Telperion, but Turukáno fancies that he sees instead the glinting steel of Feanaro’s blade, turned against his father.
“I — ” Maitimo’s voice fails him, and Turukáno is not so bitter as to be unmoved.
“Are you alright?” he asks, more gently.
“I — yes. I heard my cousin is to be married. I came to say — to say.” Here he trails off and looks at Turukáno, pleading.
Turukáno is disturbed by the look in his eyes, does not understand it.
“Congratulate me, if you will,” he replies, after the silence drags. “But I will not disinvite you to my wedding, you know. We are still family.”
Maitimo’s eyes widen. “You – ”
Just then the door behind them opens, and Findekáno leans out, half dressed and half asleep. Turukáno looks at him apologetically — it’s not particularly polite to have a midnight argument in front of someone’s door, and Findekáno has clearly been woken up by it.
“Turukáno,” he mumbles, “what’s wrong?” Turukáno half opens his mouth to reply with he doesn’t know what — I can’t sleep, I’m so in love, she’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me, but I’m going to miss you, and Irissë, and will you please come visit me — but before he can say anything, Findekáno notices Maitimo standing frozen in the shadows. “Russandol?” he asks, and his voice is so small.
“Fińo,” Maitimo says softly. “I’m sorry. We heard the news in Formenos and I thought — I didn’t think — I came to say congratulations.”
Findekáno laughs softly, as if this isn’t absurd — their banished cousin sneaking around their house in the middle of the night, after his father tried to kill theirs. Turukáno is somehow reminded of Elenwë, of the way she laughs at him, whenever he puts his foot in his mouth. Indulgently. Lovingly.
It jolts Turukáno, and he begins to see.
“Surely you didn’t think I was getting married,” Findekáno says now.
Maitimo buries his face in his hands for a moment, the picture of embarrassed relief.
“I wasn’t sure. I wouldn’t expect you to forgive —”
“I did.”
Maitimo lowers his hands and they look at each other for a long moment, and Turukáno is frozen between them. This is why, this is why!
“I should go,” Maitimo says at last. “My father will be missing me in the morning.” His right hand jerks forward, making an abortive motion towards Findekáno, and then he turns and slips out onto the balcony, and is gone.
The two brothers stand in silence for a moment, Turukáno staring at Findekáno, and Findekáno looking after the place where Maitimo dropped out of sight.
Finally, Findekáno sighs, and assumes his role as the older brother.
“You should probably come in,” he says. “We have a lot to talk about.”
In those hours, the brothers understand each other. Turukáno talks about Elenwë, and Findekáno apologizes for his cold reception and professes to count her as a sister already, wishing only that he had known of her importance to Turukáno earlier; and Turukáno explains with no small degree of embarrassment the resentment he had always harbored towards Maitimo for taking up so much of Findekáno’s time and trust, but how, after loving Elenwë so long and so deeply, he finally recognizes their bond for what it is. He does not need to say that he does not trust Maitimo — Findekáno can read it in his eyes, and he owes his brother the kindness of not spelling it out. But to himself, Turukáno thinks with relief that as long as Feanaro’s family stays far away in Formenos, he can trust his brother with all of his secrets.
———
Itarillë brings them a joy unknown. Turukáno cannot contain himself — he is happy, so happy. Irissë and Findekáno are happy too, and they visit frequently to dote on their small niece. Anairë smiles vaguely at her first grandchild though she does not play with her. Fingolfin rubs his chest absently and does not smile at all.
Itarillë is still too small for festivals and crowds, so he and Elenwë are at home together when the Darkness comes. They hold hands, not understanding, unable to comprehend the threat of danger or death; Itarillë sits between them, silent, and does not cry. But presently they hear the sound of elves in the streets outside, and the voice of Feanaro rising above all. Extracting his hand from her grasp, Turukáno kisses Elenwë on the cheek and steps outside.
It is dark, dark even beyond the light of the stars, which are hidden from view by something unnatural. Torchlight glimmers on the faces of the Noldor, distorting their features. Turukáno’s stomach twists in fear. He sees Findekáno, standing beside their father at the base of a podium and at the podium, of course, is Feanaro, sounding less grieved than triumphant as he decries the Valar and declares vengeance on Morgoth. Their father speaks out in response, but his voice does not carry like Feanaro’s, and whatever he says is lost in the crowd. There are tears in Fingolfin’s eyes but he says nothing further. His face is set and grim. Turukáno is frantic to reach his brother and father, needs to know what’s going on. The crowd thickens and clamors and he is swept along in its current. He tries to get Findekàno’s attention, but his brother’s eyes are fixed somewhere else. Turukáno does not have to follow his gaze to know who he is looking at.
Shoulders slumping, he turns to make his way back to his home, to his family. He should never have left them. As the Noldor clamor and cry out and the war frenzy builds for the first time in their veins, panic seizes his throat and his heart, and he finds himself shouldering people out of his way, shoving a path through the crowd. He is struck by the sickening sense that his family will not be there when he returns.
Excruciating minutes stretch to hours before he reaches the door, and he tears it open. Soft voices cut off immediately at the loud intrusion. He blinks, adjusting to the dim light of the forge-lanterns that have been placed around the room, and sees his wife with his sister and daughter, all gathered around the table, all safe. Irissë rises first and throws her arms fiercely around him, and he looks over her shoulder to see Elenwë’s reassuring smile, and his small daughter’s oddly solemn quietude. Whatever comes, we will remain together, he thinks. “We will,” promises Irissë aloud.
——
And they do. When it becomes clear that so many of those dear to him will go — Fingolfin for duty, Irissë and Findaráto and Artanis driven by the promise of adventure, Findekáno by devotion to both father and traitor — Turukáno feels as if he is being shredded apart. The morning they are to leave, he goes to seek his mother. She embraces him with more sorrow than warmth and he knows she will not go.
“There is a sickness in the Noldor, Turukáno. It is our part not to fight in this way, but to grow and fade without question, as is the will of the Valar. If they choose to trap us here, then let us remain. You do not have to go. Do not let Feanaro deliver this final blow to our family.”
He finds he does not agree with his mother. Later, he repeats her words to Elenwë.
“I know,” she says softly. “I know we do not have to. But I know you are going, and so I will too.”
She takes one of Itarillë’s small hands, and he takes the other, and together they go, and let the sons of Feanor decide their fate.
———
Elenwë was as the light of Laurelin on the white stone walls of Tirion. Radiant, gentle, making everything she touched seem all the more beautiful and kind. For all Fingolfin’s house had sequestered weapons in secret, she had touched none, nor had she indulged any craft which could be turned to violence. At Alqualondë, she brandished no weapon, and after the battle she dressed the wounds of Teleri and Noldor alike, and because she was a Vanyar none raised a hand against her on either side.
Later she cried alone on the beach, her back to the sea and her face to Aman, and Turukáno standing near her with Irissë in his arms could say nothing but I’m sorry, I’m sorry, and wonder what sickness had spread to him to make him kill.
When the ships burned and their Doom was pronounced, at last she returned to his arms with something like resignation, but not quite love.
“We do not have to go,” he’d said before the Helcaraxë.
“You do,” she had responded.
But thinking of such things does him no good now, because Elenwë is dead. When the first man fell on the ice and was hurt, she had treated his wounds; when the second fell into the ice and was lost, she had stared after him with wonder — the simple, natural way of death, so foreign to them weeks ago, so easy to come by now. And within days she too fell, and there was no one with the skill to heal her, and frost colored her face and her eyelashes until all of her golden light was buried in a casket of snow, and in that casket they left her.
And Turgon sees it over and over again in his mind’s eye. With perfect elven recall he sees her fall, sees her turn to frost. He sees more than that — he sees Feanor wielding the Silmarils like a jealous lover, sees him waving a sword at his father before they knew what death tasted like — sees him standing in front of a crowd and provoking them to madness, and sees his sons following every ill footstep of their father like obedient beasts. And Turgon hates them all, with a blinding hatred that keeps him warm.
For months, Aredhel carries little Idril, because in his grief and rage he is hardly aware enough to do it himself. Fingon carries her too, sometimes, but Turgon does not register him. The concept of his brother fades — all he can see is that last confrontation with Maitimo in the hallway of their own house, those filthy fingers reaching out — his brother is yet something else the Feanorians have taken from him. In his mind Fingon is already gone, just like Elenwë.
But I am still here, Fingon says to him insistently. I love you, and you will not lose me. And when the Noldor host stops to rest, Fingon is there, arms around him and Aredhel and all of them wrapped around Idril, who thanks to his siblings has not lost so much as a toe to frostbite (the rest of them have, and worse). And as the days turn into long, uncountable years of cold and darkness, and Idril — despite everything! — grows, and becomes fierce, and kind, and inquisitive, and rather like Turgon himself — Turgon begins to wake up. The wind still whispers to him, Elenwë, Elenwë, Elenwë, but so too does Finrod chatter lightly by his side, assuaging its voice, and so too do his brother and sister speak gentle words to him, and so too does his daughter ask him questions about everything under the stars, and grow into — it is hard to see much in the never-ending blizzard, but he has a father’s certainty — the most wonderful daughter ever to have been. And so even across the ice, Turgon keeps his family, and fiercely does he promise the wind that he will not take part in another betrayal, nor will he suffer one.
———
When dawn rises over his father’s host, Turgon feels the first stirrings of pride for his family, in this new world. He loves them, and he is confident they will stay together. They set up camp at the shores of Mithrim, and no one from the Feanorian camp comes to greet them, so Fingolfin takes his eldest son across the lake, and someone on the other side strides to meet them. Turgon watches from across the lake, and is able to make out their figures if not their words.
It is his cousin Makalaurë. Makalaurë (Maglor now, as he soon learns) — looks tired, and the crown suits him ill, having apparently been fit for his father and never adjusted. Turgon had once been close with Maglor, but now it is the least he can do to not feel rage, and pity is far from his heart. Fingolfin is bowing his head at the obvious loss of Feanor, but before he can exchange words with this ersatz king, Turgon sees Fingon lunge forward and grab Maglor by the shoulders, and shake him, shouting some question. Maglor moves a hand to his sword, causing Fingolfin to tense and do the same — and Turgon does not need to be within earshot to know the question that his brother is shouting.
Hours later, they come back with news. The Feanorian camp is in disrepair and has made little headway against Morgoth. After burning the ships, they had ridden directly to Angband, where Feanor was slain; they withdrew again to Mithrim and remained there, except for one ill conceived attempt to treat with Morgoth, during which they lost Maedhros (Fingolfin relates this part of the tale, and Fingon is silent, but Turgon sees his jaw tremble). Fingolfin wants to treat with the Feanorian camp; he seeks unity. Turgon expresses the impossibility of finding such, and his opinion is met with enthusiastic agreement from those who had lost loved ones on the ice. These people begin to draw closer to him than to his father and brother — his band of bitter hearts, he thinks to himself.
Fingolfin eventually decrees a week of negotiations. He travels to the Feanorian camp, apparently less afraid of what the traitors might do to him than of what his own angry host might do to them. During these early days, Turgon sits quietly with Fingon, who mostly stares into space, coming to himself only to speak with Idril, who is taken by the varied scenery of Hithlum and begs to be accompanied outside. Aredhel gently extracts young Idril to give Fingon more space, and Turgon wonders if he was the last to figure it all out. But soon Morgoth sends black smoke belching from Angband and they are all trapped inside their tents to avoid the noxious fumes that cloud the sky and block the light of the newborn sun and moon.
“I cannot stand this inaction,” Fingon snaps near the end of the first week. Their father and Aredhel have been gone all day, and Turgon, Idril and Finrod have admittedly been poor companions, completely absorbed in the study of maps (a hobby which Fingon never managed to find interest in). He has spent all day staring north, as if he can drill a hole through canvas and smoke alike and spy Maedhros, who is purportedly still imprisoned at Thangorodrim.
“There is little we can do,” says Finrod lightly. “Our kin have had thirty years to gather intelligence, and it is up to your father to coax it out of them, so that we have a fighting chance.”
“Do you think he will succeed?” asks Idril.
“In gathering the intelligence? Maybe. In unifying our camps? Likely not. He is too divisive.” Finrod shrugs, and Fingon turns for a moment, narrowing his eyes at his cousin to see if the insult was correctly perceived, and Finrod clarifies, “Fingolfin angers them perhaps as much as Feanor angers us. Whether or not it was his fault, he was central to the confrontation that led Feanor to these shores.”
“We do not need them,” Turgon hears himself say. “We are far better off without the Feanorians than with them. They know only how to cause pain. I for one shall never have dealings with nor trust their ilk again.” He dislikes how his cousin and brother look at him with something akin to pity, and is much more gratified by his daughter’s fierce nod of agreement. A child well raised, with strong values! He thinks proudly.
Suddenly Fingon leaps to his feet, shouldering his traveling pack. “Turukáno, I would speak with you,” he says.
Turgon raises an eyebrow and after a moment rises smoothly, following his brother outside. Fingon is fiddling with the strings of his harp, though he makes no attempt to play.
“What is it?” Turgon asks. Fingon looks up at him, eyes searching. Turgon is suddenly struck by how small his elder brother is — a whole head shorter than him, and narrower too. He has the sudden strange urge to usher him back inside, to shield him from the rest of the world, and what he might find there.
“I know a way to mend the rift between our houses,” he says softly. Turgon knows immediately what he intends, and his throat tightens with dread. Fingon looks steadily into his eyes. “I would not have you thinking I do not love you, and I would not have you feeling that I betray you. But if I succeed, we will be able to bring both camps together, and unite against our common enemy. And it will ease Father’s heart too, I think. Greatly he desires to mend the rifts with his brother’s house.” He’s painfully earnest, and something in Turgon twists.You will die, Turgon thinks. Your devotion will kill you.
“Be honest,” Turgon snaps, and his voice sounds strange to his own ears. “It has nothing to do with us. The politics are your cover story. You would throw your life away selfishly, for one who does not deserve it. You choose him over your family every time.”
Fingon flinches at his words, and Turgon feels more pained than vindictive.
“I do it for father,” he says softly, and Turgon snorts, disbelieving.
But his brother only draws him into his arms and holds him tightly for a moment, then releases him and starts down the path out of camp — fiddling with his harp-strings as he goes.
Weeks pass, and Turgon is sure his brother is dead. Fingolfin begs to know where Fingon has gone. He leads a search party that returns empty handed, and after that he floats through the camp like a ghost, making no attempt to treat further with Maglor, no attempt to integrate their camps. Turgon worries his father will fade, as some had on the ice. Idril and Finrod are convinced that Turgon knows something, but he feels he is sparing them by not telling them the truth — or perhaps he cannot face it himself, that Fingon has followed Maedhros, again, after everything. Aredhel finds the courage first — after two weeks she tells their father that Fingon has gone to find Maedhros, though whether he told her or she figured it out for herself she does not say. She says she waited this long to speak up in case he returned, and then begins to cry.
Yet long after they had given up, indefatigable Fingon does indeed return. He has been blessed by a creature of Manwë, who deposits him at the outskirts of Fingolfin’s camp. Turgon is on watch, and he gives a shout when he sees the eagle alight, wondering what it portends; he and his fellow guards run toward it. The eagle lifts away before they reach it. Turgon raises a hand against the sudden wind caused by its wings, and when he lowers it, he sees his brother standing in front of him, struggling to lift a bundle of rags that drags on the ground. “Turukáno!” he cries, and his voice is thick with tears. “Help me!”
Turgon is frozen. The guards around him are moving, three elves closing in on Fingon, surrounding him and his burden. Two of them lift the bundle from his arms, and one of them braces an arm behind Fingon’s back, gently lowering him to the ground as his legs give way. “Help me,” he says again, but does not seem to be aware of it. He is weeping openly. Turgon stares. The bundle of rags has a bone sticking out of it. The raw, broken white end gleams, and raw, putrid flesh oozes below it. It steams like a bloody maw in the cool morning air. It looks like part of a man’s arm.
Gradually he becomes aware of someone saying his name. It is not Fingon, but one of the guards he had been patrolling with. “Get the healers! Get your father! Turgon!” Finally he finds it within himself to move — without looking at his brother, he runs back to camp, and yells for the healers, and for Fingolfin. ———
Turgon does not seek out his brother the first day. Some part of him that had awoken the day Idril was born take hold, and he feels he needs to protect his daughter — telling her that her uncle is alive, but he is busy now, for he has rescued someone who was hurt very badly. He keeps her away from the healing tent, away from the gossip, and draws her into map-reading instead. One thing Maglor had been willing to share were the maps they’d begun making of their excursions into surround lands, and he and Idril are both entranced by these, poring for hours over the inked world of Beleriand until he drifts into sleep at the reading table. But the next morning he wakes from an uneasy sleep to find her missing from the tent. A scrap of paper on the table bears a hastily scrawled “back soon!” and nothing else.
Flying to his feet, Turgon tears out of the tent and across the grass, rather uncaring if he looks like a madman in his rumpled robes. “Where is my daughter?” he inquires of the first person he sees, and the next, and the next. He’s met with apologies and averted eyes. Finally he bursts into the healing tent and is rather unprepared for what he sees.
His brother is there, slumped in a chair, wearing the same sodden clothes he left in. His sister stands behind him protectively, perhaps angrily. Fingon’s hair is a tangled mess and he looks as if he hasn’t slept since he left the camp. His eyes, and all of the activity in the room, are centered on its patient, a shaved, emaciated thing with purple crescents for eyes and a black slash for a mouth. A scar, one of many but fresher than most, slashes from its jaw through the left ear, to the top of its head — like it had been split in half and sewn back together. Turgon is no stranger to horror now but his heart drops into his stomach at the sight. In the sunken orcish frame and scarred face he recognizes Maedhros.
“Where is my daughter?” he asks anyway, since it’s what he came here for. Fingon turns to him, beaming for some absurd reason, and stands up quickly and hugs him. Aredhel, who had been standing near him, flops down in his vacated seat. Turgon draws him close, burying his face in his brother’s hair, then coughs.
“You stink,” Turgon says astutely. Fingon and Aredhel laugh, and warmth floods through Turgon despite everything. For a moment, he believes they’ll be alright.
“Idril went across the lake to the Feanorian camp,” Fingon says. “She wanted to ask our cousins some questions about the maps.”
The warmth flees Turgon instantly.
“What?” he snaps. “And you let her?”
Fingon looks back at him, guileless. “We are reuniting the camps. They know we’ve rescued Maedhros —” here he glances at the golem on the bed, and swallows roughly — “they know we’ve brought him back, and they see it as a sign that we can heal the rift between the Noldor. Father is across the lake as well.”
Turgon steps back from his brother. The wind breezes through the tent, and whispers Elenwë, Elenwë, Elenwë, turning his blood to ice. He turns his head to the thing his brother brought back and racks his heart for pity, finding only bitterness that Maedhros the traitor, Maedhros Feanorion, could have somehow survived, when so many elves — Elenwë, Elenwë, with every beat of his broken heart — had died.
I love you, but I cannot love them, he wants to say. But the words catch when he looks at his brother, who is watching him with that hopeful expression he still manages to wear. When Turgon’s angry, the look strikes him as patronizing, even though he knows it to be sincere. Today he lets it feed his anger.
“You and father may prostrate yourselves in front of those murderous traitors but I will not. And my daughter will not.” He spins and strides out of the tent. After a moment’s silence, Aredhel quietly follows him out.
———
Idril cheats him of the satisfaction of storming the Feanorian camp by being back in their tent when he arrives. He bites back the impulse to yell at her, though why he wants to he cannot exactly say — she hasn’t done anything wrong, other than consort with her mother’s killers. You are her mother’s killer, too, whispers the wind. Elenwë, Elenwë. He wants to cry.
Aredhel sweeps into the tent behind him without even glancing in his direction and sits across from Idril at the table.
“So, young one, what have you found?” asks Aredhel. Turgon moves to stand behind his daughter, glancing over her shoulder at the table. Idril’s eyes are shining and she eagerly shows them a piece of parchment. Not a map, Turgon notes, but a design.
“I met Curufin,” she says to Aredhel. “I told him you sent me” — Aredhel is prepared for Turgon’s scathing glare, and merely raises an eyebrow before looking back at her niece — “and we looked at the designs together. Father, you have to see this!” So Turgon lets himself be drawn in by his daughter’s enthusiasm, trying to forget that this damned sketch came from the mind of Curufin (and trying to forget too that Aredhel has obviously forgiven enough to rekindle her friendship with Curufin, and perhaps Celegorm as well). It is a beautiful piece of work, for building a fountain that can run continuously on a circular and self-purifying water supply, and that when positioned correctly can even function to tell the time of day. But despite Turgon’s genuine appreciation of the design, his dismay at its progenitor must be too obvious, because Idril pauses several times to point out various flaws that she and Turgon ought to improve, ultimately summarizing that the design is only a rough start, and writing Curufin off as a rather second-rate architect compared to her father — and Turgon laughs at the doggedly loyal untruth, wondering if he should be ashamed that his young daughter can read his weaknesses so easily, or if he should just accept that it is love, and family. Aredhel smiles at him, and at Idril, and stays with them.
Fingon does not leave Maedhros’ side.
———
When Maedhros is — not well, but better — Fingon and Fingolfin escort him to the Feanorian side of Mithrim (though the borders have become much looser now, and many move and settle across it).
Fingolfin returns as High King.
———
After the Dagor Aglareb, Turgon itches to leave Hithlum. He rides long with Finrod, and Idril and Aredhel with them, and they explore many great lands to the south, following the coast of the great sea, to the West of which lies Aman, and the lush lands between the sea and the flow of the Sirion. They range far, and Idril dreams aloud as they travel, imagining beautiful cities built in the cradling limbs of mallorn-trees, or halls carved of stone in the side of a mountain, or wrought of pearl beneath the waves. Turgon dreams too, but silently (as does Finrod, though Turgon does not know it at the time). He dreams of a city by the sea, not unlike the one his daughter conjures up — a monument to the domain of Ulmo, windows west to Valinor. Yet more and more he begins to dream of something else — a gleaming city, its tiled streets reflecting golden like the light of Laurelin on white stone, a city with many gates, and beautiful fountains, where none can reach him, where none can hurt Idril, and where he can create beauty that will be safe from Mandos, and unmarred by the sons of Feanor (though he will have one or two of those time-telling fountains). It will be secret, he thinks. A secret closely kept, of a city more beloved by its residents than the Silmarils were by Feanor. A city of great strength and great beauty — a golden city, an unshakeable monument to Elenwë, a city that she would have loved. He tells none of his companions of this dream, even as it grows, and as he begins to slip into contemplative silence more and more often.
“Turgon, it’s like you’re disappearing,” comments Finrod blandly. Turgon blinks, slipping back into conversation with his companions. For minutes or hours he had forgotten he was on horseback. He can feel his sister’s eyes on him.
He’ll have to figure out which of their smiths he can trust.
———
“Father, I will ride to Nevrast with Turgon.” Aredhel stands with her arms crossed, as if daring Fingolfin to contradict her.
“Sit down, dear, and have some dinner,” he says mildly. High King Fingolfin is witnessing the movement of his people across Beleriand, and has made no move himself. Just yesterday, Turgon had announced his plan to relocate to Nevrast. Tomorrow he plans to travel there, leading a large group of smiths, to begin building the settlement. In a year, his company will move.
Maedhros and his brothers will scatter across the North and East, watching Morgoth, heading the siege. Turgon feels this is a just price for them to pay, and though he loves them little, he admits to feeling safer with their fierce guard on Beleriand. When Maedhros had announced his and Maglor’s intention to secure Himring and the Gap, Fingon had nodded along with his father, declaring it wise, and a task well suited to Maedhros. Moments later he had agreed unflinchingly to his father’s proposal that, as the crown prince, he remain in Hithlum. Turgon had searched his brother’s face for some other reaction and seen none. He rarely knows what Fingon is thinking these days, and knows the reverse is probably true as well.
But Aredhel he understands better. Sometimes she has a faraway look in her stormy eyes, and he wonders if she sees the same golden kingdom as him. He’ll tell her soon, he thinks. She deserves to know, and to come with him, if she desires.
He tries not to think about his father, or Fingon, too much. It is still years away.
“So,” says Fingolfin, drawing Turgon back to the present. “to Nevrast then? Tomorrow, already?”
“There is much to build,” says Turgon. “We will lead the first group of smiths, and return within the year, to bring the rest of our people forth.”
“And Idril?” asks Fingon. “Idril will come too. She has dreamed a thousand designs for the streets of Nevrast and she will want to take part in their construction.”
“She has quite a talent,” says Aredhel proudly. Fingolfin smiles indulgently.
“When shall I have further grandchildren, then?” he asks, looking at Fingon and Aredhel with teasing accusation. Aredhel snorts, but Fingon pales as if struck and looks down at the table. Turgon thinks he understands why Maedhros went to Himring. He leaps in to spare his brother, bringing the subject back to Idril.
“She certainly is talented,” he says to Aredhel. “My daughter has enough ideas to employ our smiths for a century, to build Nevrast and more.”
Fingolfin laughs. “What more could you want, after your beautiful city by the sea! Already I imagine it will rival Tirion-upon-Túna.”
“Well,” says Turgon. “Perhaps there are even more beautiful cities in store.”
Fingon looks up and smiles at him. “What secrets do you keep, Turukáno?” he asks teasingly, but Turgon feels the jest like a sliver of ice in his heart. It stabs at the walls around his golden city.
Here is a treasure not for you, whispers the wind, jealously. He loves Fingon, and his father, but they love the Feanorians, and so he cannot tell them.
———
One hundred years at Nevrast pass in prosperity and joy. Not all of his people are eager to leave the city by the sea. But once they see Gondolin, Turgon knows — he knows — that they will treasure it as Feanor treasured the Silmarils, that they will love it as he loved Elenwë. On the night they choose to disappear, Idril takes his hand, smiling, and Aredhel puts a hand on Idril’s shoulder, and together the three of them lead the way to the golden city. The wind whispers to him, reassuring. Elenwë, it promises.
He hasn’t seen Fingon, or his father, in years. He loves them, but he is an architect, not a wordsmith.
He does not know how to tell them goodbye.