The days became shorter, but they were not filled with less activities. Maglor and Maedhros kept the young boys occupied so that they would fall fast asleep at night and did not have time nor energy to complain. Elrond and Elros began to adjust to their new life, but they still missed their parents greatly. There did not pass one day where not one of them was crying at night.
Elros had become friends with the cook and was helping prepare the meals. The evil elf brothers did not like that as they feared that the boy might poison their food. But the cook was loyal to them, so they had him watch Elros very closely.
Elrond was at times allowed to go into the village and meet with the healer. He taught him much lore, from binding wounds over the sicknesses of Men to the science of the herbs. The evil brothers were careful not to let both children into the town at the same time. They were sure that neither of them would run away on their own, only as a pair.
Winter passed and the twins helped out with the planting the seeds and tending the gardens and acres where all elves worked together. They worked very hard for elves of the age of 14 which was very young. There came a day, shortly after the celebration of the spring festival that neither Elrond nor Elros could truly enjoy, when Maedhros and Maglor called the twins to the fireplace in the evening.
"Maedhros and I," Maglor began, "will be leaving for a few weeks." He paused and looked at the boys. "We have an urgent matter to attend, and we have told Naht to look after you and to make sure that you keep up with your studies."
Elrond wanted to moan. Naht was a cruel sadist. Whenever he was supposed to teach the boys something, he did so in the most horrible way possible. There was this one time where Elros had been instructed by Naht to retrieve a fishing net from a pond. Only half-way in did Naht tell the boy that there were electric eels in the pond. Elrond had not been allowed to help but when his brother returned, he was shaking from the many electric shocks he had had to endure. And some of the fish had even bitten him! Luckily, Elrond had been able to care for his brother with the knowledge in medicine that he had gained.
"How long will you be gone?" Elros asked.
"Just a couple of weeks," Maglor reassured them. "We will meet with some of our kin."
"To search for the Silmarils?" Elrond wanted to know.
"That is ultimately the goal," Maedhros muttered. He had been staring into the fire, lost in thought.
"Now go to bed. We will leave tomorrow in the morning. Joht will come by every morning for your sword practice. You still have meetings with Mahtos, the healer, and Mebat, the cook. I have asked for Naht to teach you more of the history of our people. We expect you to behave."
With that, Elrond and Elros returned to the tower where they shared a room. They read a bit more in one of the books they were given and then they went to bed. The time before sleep was their only free time, and since they were not allowed to be outside or playing in the house, they read the books they were given. Some of the other elves of the village had also given them books to read and be educated. They wondered whether Maedhros and Maglor knew which books they had been given because some of them dealt with philosophy and ethics that millennia old elves had dictated their writers or that some elves had gathered from talking to other elves. This way, the twins gained wisdom and an understanding of the nature of all people of Middle-earth that Maedhros and Maglor were neither knowledgeable of nor interested in.
That night, however, Elrond could not sleep.
"Elrond?" his brother asked after a while.
Elrond was glad that it was not just him who was unable to doze off. "You are thinking about fleeing," Elrond whispered.
"It is our chance."
"It is dangerous," Elrond commented
"Maedhros and Maglor are not there to order anyone. The only person really keen on keeping us here is Naht."
"If we fail, we will never see the sunlight again." Elrond was not sure whether he meant being killed or locked up in the cellar.
"We have to try. We have to find other settlings of elves or Men and ask whether someone has seen our parents," Elros pressed the idea further.
Elrond felt a tear running down his cheek. He hadn't thought of mother in a few days, but at the mention of her all the memories flooded back into his consciousness. "Tomorrow, we will plan our escape," Elrond agreed. This was foolishness, nothing but utter foolishness.
The day of the departure of Maedhros and Maglor had come and as soon as their and their company' horses were out of sight, Naht grabbed the long hair of the boys and pushed them inside the house. "Today, I have to teach you about the flight from the Valar," he said and indicated them to sit on the cold stone floor. The twins had already read about the flight from the undying lands and the kinslaying in one of the history books they had been given by a civilian in the town. They knew that Naht would give them twisted truth or blatant lies. Therefore, Elrond rather thought about running away.
It was a foolish endeavour, that was clear. The easiest thing would be to run away at night. That made the persecution harder, but the escape itself as well.
"I have come up with an idea," Elrond said when the twins had been sent to their room to study Sindarin grammar.
"When we are allowed to get ready in the morning, the room is just three meters above the ground. We can jump down and hide in the herb master's basement. Mahtos will be in the forest to search for plants and small animals. Once Naht has realised we are gone, he will send the whole town out to look for us. We wait until nightfall, before some of them return to gather supplies for a wider search and leave for the enchanted forest. With a bit of luck, we can find the river again and follow it deeper into the forest."
"There we'll die."
"We have to pick up supplies. We can steal them from Mebat. It's not right, but we have no other choice."
"Anything is better than being here," Elros muttered.
"Well, here we have food, and water, and we receive education. But I need to know what happened to mum and dad," Elrond said and felt another tear running down his cheek. Angrily, he wiped it away. He was so mad at the sons of Fёanor. Sometimes, all this anger came up in him and he just wanted to punch someone. He remembered what Nagla, a woman he had met on the fields, had told him: Just breathe. Slowly in, slowly out. Until your breath is calm. Then count to ten. You will find your anger disappear. In the beginning, it hadn't worked at all. It had just made him angrier. And sadder. And then angrier again. But he had repeated this over and over again, and now he had become fairly good at accepting it. There were some things he just couldn't change – at least not now. Getting emotional about it would just make it harder. He had to learn to differentiate between not giving up a task and realising when it was futile. Give your best – but toiling at the impossible would just diminish your valuable resources.
He realised he would miss Nagla. He had only talked to her a few times, but she was a point of tranquillity for him, and she seemed so wise.
The next evening, they prepared the plan in detail. Elrond did not feel good about it, but he just couldn't continue with at least having tried to find his father. Even if he died in the process. He stopped at that thought. He wasn't ready to die. Maybe he would come back to that thought when it was time.
Around 6 o'clock in the morning, Naht woke the twins by dropping a bunch of metal swords on the floor. They both shrieked up, but Naht had already picked up his gear and returned to the living room where he would sharpen his own sword and drink a glass of 'morning wine' as he called it.
Elrond and Elros went to the bathroom where they washed with some water that they had brought up the evening before. Naht watched them enter the room from the corner of his eye. They were not allowed to close the door. Elrond and Elros inside were very silent. They changed into the day-clothes and looked out of the window. It was indeed quite high. Down there below was grass, but only a few metres ahead would the stone-bed of the river start.
"Now or never," Elrond said and took his brother's hand.
"For mum and dad," Elros said and they both jumped down. They rolled on the floor and even though it hurt tremendously in the first moment, Elrond was glad they hadn't broken anything. They grabbed each others' hands again and ran towards the back entry of the house. The cook Mebat would probably not be here yet but gathering herbs and vegetables fresh from the gardens. Elrond felt bad stealing, but they needed supplies. They took some fruits and bread. Then they rushed into the town, but not through the main road, but they took a detour over the fields and gardens.
As they had expected, the healer Mathos was not in his store. They entered quietly and went down into the cellar. It was a small cave with wooden columns and the walls were full of shelves with all sorts of medicine and herbs. Elrond knew half of them already. Mathos had already been very patient and calm with him. He felt a bit bad for leaving him, but Mahtos knew that Elrond and Elros were being kept without their consent. He had never mentioned what he thought about it and Elrond wondered how many people in this town supported Maedhros and Maglor and how many were just afraid of them.
Time passed. They heard Mahtos return but he did not go into the cellar. More time passed. It was quite dark without a candle and the only light came from the upper level. Elros and Elrond did not dare too move much. Elrond had lost any count for time when suddenly there were loud voices in the front room upstairs. He could not make out what exactly they said but Naht must have alerted the rest of the town about the disappearing of the twins.
"When shall we leave?" Elros asked.
"We have to be patient," Elrond muttered. "They need to start searching the surroundings of the town."
"When is it going to be nightfall?"
"I'll have a look."
"Be careful, Elrond."
Elrond crawled towards the stairs. He did not hear anything move upstairs. He climbed the first few steps when suddenly he heard the door swing open. Elrond froze. It was Mathos with another elf, but they were only interested in grabbing some torches from a drawer and then they left again. And indeed, the sky has darkened already.
"Maybe in an hour," Elrond said when he returned to the hiding place with his brother.
And so they crawled back upstairs an hour later. Torches had been lit and they could see where the elf were walking and searching. Elves good see well at night but when you were looking for something or someone, additional light was not a disadvantage.
Elrond and Elros kept to the backyards of the houses and slowly began to make their move towards the forest. The problem would be the long fields where they could not hide at all. Once they reached the corner of the town, they saw a lot of movement all over the fields.
"We will never get past them," Elros muttered.
"We will keep near the crops. We will crawl on our knees and keep low."
They ducked and began to move forwards. They moved very slowly, an all fours, constantly waiting and watching the lights. It took them at least an hour and Elrond's whole body was aching, but finally the end of the crop fields was in sight.
Suddenly, he felt a breeze of wind. It was not that he heard the footsteps approaching or the breathing of the elf. Elrond knew immediately he had not paid enough attention to his surroundings, and he knew that this would be the last time that he did the mistake. He halted while his brother kept crawling forwards. Then the elf behind Elrond reached down and tore the half-elf up by his hair. Elrond gave a shriek that that Elros turn around and scream.