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One morning in bright Tirion, Feanaro’s eldest son fails to rise from his bed.
Feanaro does not learn of it until the midday meal, himself having worked through the night on a new gem, and slept overlong in his forge.
When Maitimo does not appear at noon, Nerdanel’s lips tighten a little and she confesses that none have seen him all day.
“Perhaps he is merely tired,” she says.
Tired.
(His mother had been tired. His first memory was of her saying so. His mother was always tired. “You must let her rest,” he remembers being told. But she rested and rested until finally the valar took her and she slept forever.)
He rushes to his son’s room. The door is not locked, which is convenient, but not reassuring.
Maitimo is asleep, and for a second Feanaro is certain that his fea has flown. But when he leans close, he sees that his eyes still move beneath their lids in dream.
Feanaro hesitates to disturb his son. (“Do not trouble your mother now, she needs her peace.”) But it might yet be nothing. It might.
When Feanaro shakes his son by the shoulder, he becomes rigid as death for the moment of two breaths. Then his eyes open.
It is not nothing.
The light in them is wrong. It is no longer quite like treelight, new and bright and growing still. It reminds him of firelight, brighter, hotter, yet more uncertain. It is as though his fea has grown white-hot within him, as though it is too large for his hroa and becoming ever hotter under pressure.
But it is not this that seals his child’s doom, that Feanaro recognizes.
There are many descriptions for despair. Feanaro has heard them all his life, reminisced by those who traveled the long journey and carry with them the ache of ancient times, as well as whispered by gossips who do not deserve to hold his mother’s name in their mouths. Feanaro has hoarded them up and cataloged them, the first great study of his earliest childhood. Despair is called a darkness, an emptiness. There are things within Ea, the Vanyar say, as told to them by Varda, which are like to inverse stars. They are like holes in the fabric of what is, and they draw all things to them, even light. It is said that they are like to stars, not only in their greatness, nor in their relationship to light: the one outpouring, the other receiving; but further, that they are themselves stars, or rather what becomes of some few of the greatest stars in death, collapsing inward and devouring themselves utterly, until all that is left is a consuming dark. Some say that thus even the works of Varda herself succumb to the marring, and in the end, Melkor who was, still remains triumphant in Ea. But others say that these unstars are the works of Varda’s hands also, and indeed they are not evil, for they sustain the very shape of Ea, and all things turn round them. They say this as though it is good, as though it makes them less terrible, and not very existence more.
Despair is often described as an absence, as though it is something missing from a person, rather something added. This, however, had always seemed to Feanaro an error. He looks into his son’s eyes now, and they are deeper than they ought to be, than any child’s by rights could be. He knows this look from his mother. He remembers when he was very small, and he looked into his mother’s eyes, and infinity looked back. Despair is not an absence, it is a presence, not a lostness but a certainty. And Feanaro has always had a terrible, fearful conviction that it is wisdom. That it is fate, reaching back across time and describing the truth of Ea.
His mother, after all, knew everything. His mother, after all, was perfect.
His mother was perfect, and so, of course, is his son.
Maitimo stares at him thus, for a moment, long and short and eternal. Then he closes his eyes and turns away from him. He does not speak.
It is unexpected, shocking. Feanaro never thought it would come like this, to his son, without reason or warning. He has worried for Nerdanel, frantically, with each birth, though a little less each time, till after Tyelkormo he had thought them safe. Nerdanel had worried for Feanaro, a little, at Maitimo’s begetting, though afterwards she was confident in the results of their first experiment, and thought all Feanaro’s worrying mere silliness.
It is unexpected, but it is not strange. It feels inevitable, as though he should have expected it. Maitimo, so solemn and so clever and too good to be true.
Finwe found his research, when Feanaro was a child. He had found the notebook filled with everything that Feanaro could learn of despair. It was hardly a scientific repository, disorganized, filled with everything from solemn proclamations of the valar to scurrilous rumors, to Feanaro’s own childish musings. Finwe had been furious, when he found it, but more than that he had been afraid.
“Why do you dwell on this, my son?” his father had said, and he trembled as he said it.
“Because I must understand,” Feanaro had said.
His father misunderstood. Feanaro is nothing like his mother. He studied despair, not because he was drawn to it, but because he did not, could not understand it. Life that might have sustained many was poured into him, and he was overflowing with it. It was a sort of blindness, he always thought, that made him incapable of seeing the abyss beyond himself. He wanted to know, but he was never in any danger of falling. He tried to understand, but he never has, not truly. He thinks perhaps it is beyond understanding, or at least beyond his. He knows things about despair, has collected accounts of it, but he does not know it in himself.
So it was unexpected, and yet it feels inevitable. Feanaro did not suspect the possibility, and yet he feels that he ought to have. Surely it was obvious? Surely he should have known his line was cursed, that nothing that comes forth from him could prosper?
Maitimo has always been so quiet, so serious, and so wise. He is nothing like Feanaro at all.
“Maitimo,” Feanaro says, though he knows not what else to say besides the name, “Maitimo,” as though his son has merely wandered into danger, has swum too far out to sea and is at risk by being swept by the tide, and Feanaro need only call him back to safety.
“Go away, none of this is real,” Maitimo says.
Feanaro does not go away, of course.
Maitimo falls asleep, and Feanaro just sits there and holds his hand.