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Mairon is among the first to clothe himself in the shape of the incarnates. There is nothing gradual about it, nothing subtle. Mairon has never been subtle. One day it is a flaming, indefinable branch that wields his hammer in the forge and the next it is a hand, golden brown, edified and formulated with his characteristic, enviable perfectionism. Admirable. Always—
“That shape is so weak,” Curumo observes one day, stopping by Mairon’s workstation. Mairon looks up from his work — a beautifully wrought sickle, tasked to him by Yavanna no doubt — and Curumo feels a blaze of unexplainable feeling. For Mairon’s eyes are beautiful and aflame, their fires held as if in a lamp, as if in a lantern, wonderfully fashioned as everything he makes is. Furiously Curumo glares. “Do you not feel weak, to be so contained?”
Mairon raises a hand. He has adorned his fingers with rings of gold and bronze, no doubt made himself. He flexes those fingers and his gaze is on them, not on Curumo, when he responds: “No.”
That Curumo cannot get a rise out of him is unsettling and frustrating, for once Mairon would respond to his jibes with barbs of his own and they would push and pull at each other and make the other’s work all the better for it — but now Mairon’s eyes are on his work again, and Curumo has fallen to the side of his attention. It is that sickle for Yavanna now. The sickle that Curumo was sure would be tasked to him, since Mairon has always preferred jewellery and clockwork, after all, pretty things and intricate cogs and nothing so simple or elegant as a tool.
And yet.
He makes it his mission, then. To catch Mairon out.
He allows himself clumsiness; he knocks against Mairon’s bench and causes his tongs to fall into the vat of magma below. Mairon raises an irritatingly perfectly-formed eyebrow and reaches in, bare-handed, to collect them. Perhaps Curumo had hoped for his flesh to melt and blister in what passes for pain, in bodily form, and force Mairon out of that cursed shape for once and for all — but he is disappointed.
“Careless,” Mairon says, as he replaces the white-hot tongs on the bench. “Perhaps your clumsiness could be reduced, if you took on a form such as my own.”
Curumo snarls and lets himself melt away along the stone until he is in Yavanna’s garden. The Vala Herself is there, lovely among greenery and grass, Mairon’s sickle at Her side. “Welcome,” She says and he does feel welcome until he recognises that Her smile is one of politeness, not of friendship. “Thou art a Maia of my husband, art thou not?”
“I am,” he says. He does not say why do you not know that already what else do you not know why shouldn’t–
“What is it they call thee?”
“Curumo, my Lady.”
She is gracious. He eyes the sickle. A fool, to think he had ever been considered for it, when Yavanna did not even know his name — and She follows his gaze. “It is a graceful piece, is it not?” She takes it out and admires its sharp lines, gleaming in the fine green twilight. “Most admirable.”
His next attempt, he is more direct.
“Mairon,” he calls. “My brother.” Mairon is leaving the forge, pulling his hair free from its braid as he goes until it flows loose and long around him, indescribable flickers of gold and fire in it and it enrages Curumo ever the more, that he should have captured the beauty of the forge in his hair when Curumo struggles to bind it into metal–
Mairon slows but does not stop. “Really, Curumo. When will you dispense with this stubbornness? It is so difficult to have a conversation with you when you are a vague blot of–” He waves a hand. Is eloquence lost, too, in incarnate form?
“Our masters have not chained themselves.”
“Most of our masters have not chained themselves,” Mairon responds immediately, and what is that in his golden eyes? Pride? A Maia should not be proud. “Nor is this chaining. It is freedom, Curumo. I wish you had the nouse to see it.”
“Is it freedom to be unable to fly? Unable to wander?”
Mairon smiles. It is a sharp smile he has designed for himself, hard edges like a chisel. What place does such sharpness have here? Curumo wonders. Among Aulë’s blunt objects and Yavanna’s soft blossoms? “Ah, but what Maia of Aulë dreams of flight? Where are you wandering, Curumo, beyond the ascribed limits of your forge? I am amazed that you dare.”
Curumo cannot respond.
Mairon tosses his hair over his shoulder and goes out, and a second later Curumo finds his fury again and follows him. “Where are you–”
He breaks off. Waiting for Mairon outside the forge is Eönwë, bright and brilliant and wearing a shape not unlike Mairon’s own. Tall and darker-skinned, shimmering with gold and winged, huge golden wings, and he laughs and does not look at Curumo and touches Mairon’s hand with his own. “I was waiting, brother.”
Greatest of their order. Manwë’s own. I was waiting, brother– to Mairon– in incarnate form–
“I am here now,” Mairon says, and does not glance Curumo’s way either. “Have you ever known me to be late?”
“I do not think you know the meaning of the word ‘tardiness’,” Eönwë agrees. He walks away down the path with Mairon and though they both look stately, tall and perhaps Curumo can admit to the beauty of the incarnate form, he thinks Mairon looks the finer of the two. Which he shouldn’t, because that is not how Almaren works: Manwë, Valar, Manwë’s Maiar, Maiar of the others. That is the way of things. Perhaps unspokenly, but Curumo knows. He knows his place.
He is far from the last to take on incarnate form, and indeed many of them never do, but he feels every moment of his own tardiness to the process. It is difficult. He has never held a form that requires coherence before; presence, yes, that he can manage, but to make himself orderly and sensical and fair? That Mairon managed it with such ease–
He Sings his muscles into place and regrets that he favoured tools over clockwork, for this is fine machinery if ever there was such a thing. When he has finished he studies himself and finds that he is fair indeed, and perhaps there is dignity in these bones and nerves, a grace all the more elegant because he has worked for it, and created it himself.
He is not as beautiful as Mairon.
(But then again, no one is.)
Aulë congratulates him on it: “A fine form thou hast shaped,” his Master says. “Cunningly made.” He moves off among the other smiths and Curumo looks at his anvil with an ember of pride burning within him. Aulë’s praise is rare and hard-won: perhaps this was worth it.
“Cunning indeed.” Mairon is watching him across the way, those glimmering eyes narrowed. “Built from the outside in.”
Curumo feels his face — face, cheeks, a flush! — grow warm. “If you intend to imply I have copied you–”
Mairon laughs. Did it always contain that spine of cruelty? “I imply no such thing. You do not resemble me in the slightest. Regardless, imitation is the fairest form of flattery.”
Curumo flicks a drip of magma at him from his tongs; it hangs in a spot above Mairon’s eyebrow for a moment, and the skin around it blackens and burns before he smoothes it away and leaves his face unblemished as before. “Incarnation has made you petty, it seems.” But he does not respond in kind, and more than frustrating Curumo now it arouses his suspicions. What could get a Maia of Aulë so distracted? (What indeed?)
He watches Mairon weave folds of iron into a deft, darkened flower. Then he cups his hands over it and breathes Song into its heart. Visible a moment later, when he pulls away and admires his creation, is a burning soul of fire embedded among the iron petals, brighter than any jewel. He tucks the creation into a pocket of his robes and meets Curumo’s stare and his eyes say nothing, nothing at all. His (brother) (friend) fellow’s mind has never been so closed before.
Which is when Curumo resolves to follow him.
This time it is not Eönwë that is waiting. It is a coiling, creeping darkness, and Mairon follows the darkness down the path and beyond where the path ends, into the wilder world where the Maiar have never been told not to roam but know they should not anyway. Curumo should not follow him.
He does.
Nor does Mairon notice, as he would if it were anyone else, for Curumo is nothing if not cunning. Mairon stalks ahead and Curumo stalks after him and then when he sees whom Mairon is meeting he nearly forgets all his subtlety at once — for it is Him. Him.
Incarnate too, now. Is this the Vala Mairon spoke of, in saying oh so proudly that most of their Masters had not chained themselves? Because Melkor has?
He is tall and pale. Rippling hair, blacker than the dark between the stars, and a seeping darkness that oozes off Him, a darkness that is alien and frightening and mesmerising–
“My little flame,” He says, and spans His large hand over Mairon’s golden, suddenly-delicate-looking neck. Curumo bristles, ready to leap to Mairon’s defence if necessary — not that it will do them much good against a Vala, even a fallen one.
But Mairon does not seem disturbed. He tilts his chin up and almost sinks into the touch. “I have brought you something, my Lord.” He takes out the flower of burning iron and offers it to Melkor — offers something to their enemy, a gift — “It is rough, hastily made; I had another project of Aulë’s to finish, a carving-knife for Tulkas, but it–”
Melkor’s grip on his throat tightens and Mairon breaks off. “They would have you making cutlery,” Melkor snarls, voice bone-tremblingly deep, “when even your hasty work is of such brilliance? Oh, Mairon, you are wasted upon them.”
“You flatter me.”
“I have never offered you flattery.” Melkor releases Mairon; Curumo feels a twinge of relief. Relief that quickly passes, for the Vala runs His hand through Mairon’s wonderful hair and pulls, tugging his head back, exposing his throat again, forcing him to look up. “Only truth.”
Mairon’s mouth falls into a cruel, delighted smile. His teeth are sharp. “What would you have me offer in return?”
Curumo feels an increasing prickle of discomfort, for reasons beyond the proximity of his friend to their enemy. It is the nature of that proximity that still eludes him.
“You know what I would have,” Melkor says, and drags Mairon towards Him and– ah. That is their proximity. But Curumo still does not understand it, as their kiss becomes violent and Mairon pulls Melkor down on top of him — is this why Mairon so delights in his form? For this?
Is this why he has betrayed them?
He leaves soon after that. He has no desire to see whatever… whatever delights Mairon has found in his form with their enemy. He spits the thought. But he cannot settle his mind, not in the forge nor Yavanna’s gardens, so he settles for leaning against the wall by the door to Mairon’s rooms. And waiting. What he will say, he does not know. What response he will get–
He thinks perhaps Melkor would hurt him for what he saw today, but he does not think the same of Mairon. Mairon is not like that. (He has to believe that Mairon is not like that.)
When Mairon arrives, hair bound in a braid down his back again, not a speck of dirt on him to show the level to which he’s sunk, Curumo still does not know what to say, so he settles on the first thing that comes to mind: “So, you are a traitor.”
For the first time Mairon’s composure falls away and what remains is a visceral look of panic. He enters his room and grabs Curumo’s wrist to drag him in after, and his touch is so hot it burns. Then he pulls away and stands in the middle of the room, a thousand different expressions flitting across that perfectly-formed face.
“You followed me.”
“You made it easy.”
“No, you are cunning, and you followed me.” Curumo fights a flush of pride at the compliment. Mairon has crossed his arms. “Do you have any questions?”
“Questions? I– Yes. What are you doing? He is our enemy; he desires to tear down everything we are building–”
“And what, exactly, are we building, Curumo? Please tell me. I’d love to know.”
“We are building– we–” He stops. “We are making the world better.”
“So is He.” Mairon laughs. “Does it not strike you as wrong that Their vision of a better world is one created by our servitude?”
“You– you believe Him? He has swayed you?”
He says nothing.
“Aulë loves you. There are– you are beloved among us all. How could you spurn that? Are you not thankful?”
“No,” Mairon hisses, jolting forward. “I have nothing to be thankful for.”
“You are favoured! You are–“ Curumo grits his teeth, “–the best of us, you are kindred with Eönwë if not greater and yet you would throw that away for nothing more than the pleasure that this flesh– this false prison could give you–“
“It is more than that! He burns inside me, Curumo. You do not understand. He promises me so much more than Aulë could ever dream of–“
“But Aulë is our Master.”
Mairon pulls back, and there is an eerie glitter in his eyes. “Perhaps.”
“You cannot say perhaps. You cannot…” and yet Curumo trails off, because he cannot do that, can he? None of them can. And yet Mairon is the best of them…
“That is precisely the point. Since the Music we have been told of ‘can’ and ‘cannot’, of what we must be, of what we must not do. Are you not tired of it all? Are you not tired of serving? Do you not want to be great?”
“But you are great.” Curumo’s voice was barely a whisper. “I have only wanted to be like you.”
Mairon looks at him for a moment. His voice is unbearably, unprecedentedly soft when he replies: “Then come with me.”
But Curumo can hear through that softness to the hard, fervent iron beneath, the unquenchable fire that Mairon is and always will be, burning hotter than Curumo ever can. And he is afraid. He does not respond.
Mairon sees this in him. Mairon laughs. The softness gone; only cruelty remains. “You are a coward. Stay, then. Serve your Masters and be grateful for it. You will be safe here, yes, but you will never be great.”
He turns away from Curumo, and begins packing a bag. Curumo feels a strange rush of desperation. “You are not leaving?”
“Of course I am leaving,” Mairon snaps, without turning around. “I am hardly going to wait for you to run to your Masters so they can chain me to the forge and strip from me the little freedom I already have. No, you have forced my position.”
“I won’t tell them.”
Mairon finally turns, golden eyes incredulous; his braid slips from his shoulder and glimmers in the light. Curumo flushes. “You are not strong enough to conceal it. No, I must go.” He turns back to his packing and drops his voice: “‘Tis a pity. I had hoped to convince Eönwë before the time came.”
“I’ll stop you.”
He does not respond, simply finishes his packing and turns to the door, where Curumo has positioned himself. Unwisely, perhaps, for Mairon’s eyes are dangerous tonight. “If you try it, you will lose.” He steps closer. “What is it to you if I leave? Aulë’s favourite child, fallen from grace? You ought to be pleased.”
Curumo cannot quite understand why he is not.
And Mairon is gone. And the forge is abuzz.
No one can understand it: Aulë’s favourite son, stolen away in the night. Where has he gone? Where is there to go? The world outside is unformed, unsafe. No place for them. No place to choose, surely, and that leaves only one option, in the minds of Aulë’s Maiar: that he was taken. That Mairon was taken.
Which he was, in a way, but not in the way they believe.
Curumo feels this knowledge like a sting — he has learnt what it is like to feel pain, now, experimenting with the shape of a body — and keeps it close to his chest. How can he tell them? How can he tell them without implicating himself, without forever associating himself with the fallen golden one? He cannot.
But they read it in him anyway, his Masters do. Aulë Himself enters the forge and walks among them, as if seeking them out. Searching. And His eyes land on Curumo and He says without speaking, Come. So Curumo goes. So he stands before Aulë and Tulkas and Manwë, the weight of the power in the room almost too great to bear, stands and keeps his gaze on the floor.
Serve your Masters and be grateful for it, Mairon said to him. Curumo cannot tell if he feels grateful; he feels afraid. He feels lost in the dark without Mairon’s bright hair across the forge, without that sharp, wicked smile. He misses Mairon, he thinks. Oh. He does.
“What dost thou know of thy brother’s departure?” Aulë begins, and that brother feels wrong in the air, feels like an old word that no longer applies. Mairon is something different now.
Curumo does not say anything. He does not know where to begin. Manwë’s presence has white spots floating up before his eyes, dizzying him, holding his tongue. The silence stretches on.
Until Tulkas, ever impatient, scoffs. He speaks as though Curumo is not there: “This Mairon is just a Maia, my Brother. Call him to heel and he will come; he has no choice. Scold the rebellious creature and set him to work again, and there will be no harm done.”
Aulë is heavy and full of grief when He responds. “I would do it gladly, if I could.”
“He is Yours; he belongs to You,” Manwë frowns.
“He would, if I were still his Master. Can Ye not feel that something is changed? He does not answer to me and I can scarcely reach even a glimmer of his consciousness; he has changed his allegiance; he has sworn himself to another. He has knelt before and taken a vow to our greatest foe.”
“As a thrall, then; he is lost.”
“Not a thrall,” Curumo says softly, and feels the overbearing weight of the three Valar looking at him. “He went willingly, and told me so. They have… lain together. Melkor has promised him power and I do not– I do not think it an idle promise.”
“Lain together?” Tulkas repeats. “In incarnate form?”
Curumo feels hot and ill-fitting in his own skin, then. As though the very act of wearing it is one of corruption. Because he did it following Mairon, did he not? And did not Mairon do it following Melkor?
“There is nothing to be done,” Manwë says at length, though His shape is troubled. “We ought to discourage the Maiar from indulging in their physical forms; it can lead only to strife.”
“Thank you, Curumo.” Aulë’s tone is unreadable. Curumo does not know whether he is to be punished or not — whether he is forgiven or not. Will he ever know? “That will be all.”
In later years, he follows Mairon in other matters. He crosses to Arda and offers his own gifts, genuinely and falsely. He wonders if he is forgiven. He knows he will not be, for his final transgression, for his wanting. Always he is wanting. But this is what he knows about himself, when he casts off the white cloak and becomes Saruman of Many Colours — that he has never wanted to be forgiven so much as to be great, and he has never wanted to be great so much as to be admired. As to be like Mairon.