"Why did you save us?"

The question catches me completely by surprise as I am putting the twins to bed. "What?"

"You killed lots of people at the Havens. So why did you save us?"

It wasn't saving, exactly: amongst the booty and the bodies there had been two terrified little children; what else could I have done? But I cannot say that, or I will be asked why I killed their mother—and how does one explain an unbreakable oath to four-year-olds? I was still grieving for Pitya at the time, but I certainly hadn't been looking for replacement brothers.

"I cannot say exactly," I find myself saying. "But I am very glad I did."

"Are we your children now?"

Another difficult question—much as I would like to, I cannot for a moment let myself pretend that they are my sons. Sometimes one of them will slip and call me Ada, and I have to remind him that I am Maglor. "No and yes. You are my foster children, so you are my sons in a sense, but I am not officially your father."

"Well, our father is coming back," said Elros, "so we know that." They are both convinced that someday their father will show up and reclaim them.

"Where is your wife?" Elrond asks.

I stare at him in shock. Children do switch abruptly from topic to topic, but this? "How do you know about my wife?"

He points to my hand. "You always wear a wedding ring. But we've never seen your wife."

"That's right." I sigh. "You have never seen my wife because she still lives in Valinor. She didn't come to Middle-earth with me."

"Why?"

Begging her, pleading that she accompany me; Lótë weeping as hard as I was but refusing to leave…even remembering that moment fills me with anguish. "It is a long story. A sad one, a complicated one, and there is no time for it."

Yet the twins are willing to give up a bedtime story for more information; Elros crawls onto my lap, sensing that I won't make him go back under the covers. "What's her name?"

"Laurelótë." My beloved Laurelótë, more beautiful than any flower Yavanna could have created. "We all called her simply Lótë, though."

"But you're Macalaurë!" says Elrond. "So you had almost the same name!"

So Lótë and I had heard ever since we met that autumn evening on the path leading to my home—she had been suggested as a wife for Russandol, but as soon as we saw each other it was obvious whom she was meant to meet. "Yes, and that's why we called her Lótë."

"Did your children stay with her also?" Elrond again, and this time he is asking about what is by far the greatest sorrow in my life: Both Lótë and I had wanted many children, but as the years passed none came. We did everything possible, asking every healer we could find for help, until finally we were told to go to the Valar. There, Manwë told us that it was not part of Ilúvatar's plan for Lótë and me to be given children. We had pleaded with the Valar, offering everything we could, but this was from Ilúvatar and there was no changing it. As if to make matters worse, that very evening, as we were trying to absorb the fact that our house would never see children, a messenger came telling us of the birth of my brother Curufinwë's son.

"Maglor?" Elros tugs at my sleeve, bringing me back to the present.

"No. There were no children."

"Oh." There is silence for a time. Elrond somehow finds the room to join his brother on my lap.

"So is that why you saved us?" he says suddenly. "So we could be like your children?"

I have not considered that, but now it seems to make sense. "Perhaps that is so."

"Do you love us?"

That I can answer for certain: "Yes. I love you both as if you were truly my children. And because I love you and care about you"—when did I start to sound like my mother?—"I'm making sure that you both get enough sleep. Back to bed, now."

"But Maglor—"

"Now."

"One song?"

"One song, once I see that you're listening." Yes, that is my mother speaking, and I suppose this is how I would have sounded had I ever been a father.

They listen. Once both are under the covers Elros says, "Now a song?"

"Yes. Which would you like?"

They look at each other, apparently reading each others' minds. Ambarussa did this as well—a kind of constant osanwë that everyone marveled at. After a moment Elrond looks up at me and says, "Arimelda Hínanya."

I am hardly surprised: the old Quenya lullaby has fast become a favorite of theirs. "Arimelda hínanya, arimelda winenya…." Before I reach the third verse they are asleep—or pretending, at any rate. I stop singing after "tulnel ar rehtanen", kiss them both, blow out the candle, and walk as quietly as I can to the front room.

Russandol looks up from his book. "I heard you singing to them."

"Yes."

"Arimelda Hínanya. That's the one Amil always sang to us."

"Yes." I settle into a chair facing away from his and resume editing one of my symphonies. "It's become a favorite of theirs."

"Not something more familiar?"

Cymbals would do better than the tambourine. Mark. "Apparently not."

"Do you feel well?"

Erase—no horns needed there. "Fine."

Russandol puts his book down and walks over to me. "Macalaurë, why so taciturn?"

"It was another question-and-answer session." Ever since they stopped being afraid of me, the twins have been asking about everything from my begetting day to my favorite candy. "They wanted to know about Lótë."

"And?" he says cautiously.

"I told them about her." I consider transposing an entire movement down a key, then decide against it. "Not a lot—just her name, that we called her Lótë, that she remained in Aman and that we bore no children. They did not ask a great deal about that."

Russandol pulls another chair up beside me. "I sense that there is something you want to say."

"Yes." I put aside my music; now my mind is too full of Lótë to concentrate."She would adore them. Elros and Elrond. They are everything she ever wanted; that I ever wanted. Russandol, she would have loved them, would have been a mother as I am a father to them, and now she is a world away."

Suddenly I remember an evening, many yéni gone: Lótë and I in our house—we had lit a fire simply for atmosphere. We were newlyweds, optimistic about everything and sure that children would soon make such quiet evenings a thing of the past. Lótë was reading, and I was sitting at my harp, playing a sonata I had recently composed. I rested against the sounding board, enjoying even the vibrations of the music. Lótë, seeing the rapture on my face, had remarked, "Do you already love that instrument more than you do your wife?"

I had immediately abandoned my instrument to assure her otherwise. She was the only force in the world that could tear me from my music, and I loved her all the more for it. I loved her simply for existing, and, many, many years after leaving Aman, I was able to admit to myself that I am glad she stayed behind—likely she would have been injured otherwise, or even killed, and I could not have borne that.

"Macalaurë—you will see her again someday."

"When? When will that be? At the End of Arda? When I am finally killed trying to find Atar's baubles? Russandol, you who never married cannot hope to understand how I miss her." I get up. "I'm going to bed."

"Have a good night, then."

I stare into his face, sympathetic and incapable of ever understanding. "You who never married can say that."

On the way to my room I stop at the door to the twins' room. They are certainly asleep now. Tomorrow they will wake me by calling at my door and, if I don't respond, jumping into my bed and pulling my blanket off (once they stopped being afraid, they became extremely familiar). I will give them breakfast, and then their lessons—they are fast learners; already they can read simple words, and I feel no end of parental pride. They will play and watch me (and try to help) practice my music, and in all be like any other family.

But this cannot continue forever, I know: As I told Russandol, someday he and I will be called upon to fulfill our oath, and I cannot drag innocent children into my doom. No, someday I will have to give them up.

The thought of this hurts almost as much as not having them in my life at all. Yet…better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, as the saying goes. The pain of losing can be near-unbearable, that is true. But I would happily trade one more day with Lótë for all the joys in the world. And these children…priceless.

One day, but not now. I close their door and go at last to my own room, and to sleep.

-finis-

Arimelda Hínanya is my translation of parts of Sinéad O'Connor's "My Darling Child." So beautiful. And thanks to eiluj for picking up on some mistakes that I was rather dumb not to notice.