Mirkwood: A Novel About J.R.R. Tolkien

by Стив Хиллард

  Well, so be it.

  A muse was flitting about, ready to land on her shoulder, whispering a sketched composition with pounding horses and the waning moon that was a clock running on Ara’s fate.

  She sketched for an hour and dozed and looked out the window. The countryside rolled along, telephone lines arcing from pole to pole, looping the land together like big stitches. Fields with crop rows whipped by, hypnotizing her to sleep. She awakened to the first reds and yellows of fall, flashing by in the boughs of trees. As darkness again settled in, she sped past decaying bridges thickened with vines that seemed to harbor small, leering faces beneath. For the next few miles, a gauzy, grey twilight hugged the world and was punctuated by a series of bonfires that burned merry hell in open trackside fields. They belched up smoke and flame, as if they were signals for some invading night army. To Cadence they were especially disturbing because they were wild and untended and uncontrolled.

  Four years she had spent at Colorado State, pledged Tri-Delts, did the events scene, went out with football players, and never once went to the big pregame bonfires. She would get sick just thinking about it. She turned away from the window and nestled and closed her eyes to dream of more pleasant things.

  She awoke to the sound of thunder and angry spanks of sheet rain punishing the train window. She looked around. It was still night. Her heart was pounding. Somewhere, somehow, the change she at once coveted and feared was coming closer. Drum beats rumbled in her mind and mixed with the noises of moving steel and wind.

  She put her face to the window and cupped her hands around her eyes. She peered out into the flickering nightmare of a Class V thunderstorm. Lightning rippled across the sky and gave substance to the silvery veils of rain. Passing pools of water glinted in the flashes and watched her like the eyes of passing strangers. Then, as a core of ragged bolts created a kind of flickering openness to all the unpeopled night, she passed a country crossroads where five cloaked horsemen circled inward in council, their mounts pluming nostril smoke and strange blue light. One rose in the stirrups and pointed a finger at her, his outstretched arm moving, keeping dead aim on her as she sped past.

  Then, as if it never existed, the scene passed.

  She abruptly pushed back from the window. Just black glass now, complete with smeary hand and nose smudges on it. She stared at her reflection.

  There would be no more sleep this night.

  The train outraced the storm, streaking toward a new dawn of breaking purple and yellow light. After awhile, she heard the clink of rails followed by a highball wail mimicking those tones of sadness and regret. “ You know the sounds?” the man had asked. Now she knew.

  She listened and heard a wheel-click, suddenly tripping into that rare short-rail click-clack, click-clack for a minute or two.

  She was approaching something that had been kept from her. Maybe it was just some factoid about the Tolkien documents; maybe it was another puzzle-piece about Ara. She hoped it was some truth about her family. Not magic, not a fairy tale. Just gimme truth, she prayed.

  Chapter 8

  THE POOL

  The water here, like the light that seeped down to this deep, sub-street level, was a thin, greasy gray. Both found their way through the street grates to fall into the hairline cracks in the concrete. The resonant drip-blip, drip-blip had resumed its endless, lonely cadence.

  Across the littered concrete floor pooled a great splatter of water, as if something bulky had heaved forth from hidden depths.

  A darker shadow hovered now in the corner. So very still, but alert to its strange new surroundings.

  This thing warped into the shape of a man, whose very breath was the moan of windswept crags, whose walk was the grass-rustle of treacherous heaths, whose voice was the crack of bones. This thing — this man named Barren — had come for Cadence.

  The name New York City meant nothing to him, but he would learn. Fast. That was his talent.

  BOOK II

  “O see ye not yon narrow road

  So thick beset wi’ thorns and briers?”

  — “Thomas the Rhymer”, anonymous 17th century poet quoted by J.R.R. Tolkien in On Fairy Stories

  It is not down in any map; true places never are.

  — Herman Melville

  The book sits still, waiting for my eye to glance away. There! Did it not shift ever so slightly? Does something sprout along its spine? A ripple runs now beneath the cobbled skin of its cover. Words have power. I dread it, but soon, in the day, I will pick up this tattered volume. I will read and another world will exist.

  — The Scissor Sharpener (Journal)

  Chapter 9

  INKLINGS III

  The discussions this Tuesday evening wandered from academic standards to gardening, and then faltered altogether, until the following exchange:

  “Well, not to jump into politics this late, but what about the story in today’s Guardian?”

  “Today’s what?”

  The sound of a folded newspaper being opened and scuffled to fullness.

  “Here, Ian, you troglodyte. Today, July 16, 1962, page one, ‘Government Unveils Cambridge Five As Spies. Great Damage Done’. It gets worse. ‘Kim Philby, a graduate of Cambridge’s Trinity College, revealed as double agent for Soviets.’”

  “At least not an Oxford man.”

  “Don’t be too proud, Clive, there are foxes in every henhouse.”

  “My God, what’s happened to Queen and Country, and all that?”

  “Tollers, you’re quiet. Why the down face? Jack, you tell us.”

  “Well, as his friend, I know some of this, but its up to him.”

  “Eh, Tollers?”

  “Come along, we are your fellows here.”

  “I worked with him.”

  “Who?”

  “Kim Philby.”

  A long, questioning silence.

  “All right, now that you’ve wilted the spinach, tell us. Enough of myths and old men’s tales for tonight. Come on.”

  “Very well. Hardly Top Secret anymore, I suppose. Much of it is already declassified. Here it is — just before the last war, I was briefly an agent for the government, for her Majesty’s Secret Service.”

  “You rascal! Another of your secret gates, Tollers.”

  “As you know, I published The Hobbit in 1937. I had what I thought was a modest reputation for scholarly work with languages. I was recruited by S.I.S., as part of their code-breaking effort. I was assigned to Bletchley Park, the cypher school. Alan Turin, who finally broke the Enigma Code, was there. Hitler’s agents were scouring the world in search of a ‘living cipher’—an organic language that changes its apparent meanings on its own and is thus immune to code-breaking. He was understandably concerned with his security, and so wanted an impenetrable code to be used by his personal cadre of bodyguards.”

  Someone takes a big slurp of ale, sets down his glass, and belches.

  “Keep going, we’re on pins.”

  “During that first month I was part of a team that followed reports of far-flung Nazi agents studying obscure tongues — Ket in Siberia, Na-Dene in Arizona, Vandalic in Prussia. I remember some jokester in our group passed around a compilation of Burrough’s language of the Great Apes, as spoken by Tarzan. Things soon got very serious, however, when I was unexpectedly approached, at my Oxford office, by two gentlemen. They claimed to be scholars of Norse mythology. They said they wished to explore the connections between Beowulf and older Norse legends. They spoke in particular of a collection of ancient documents that told of rings and elves and orcs. I told them such were staples of ancient Norse and Old English texts. They added that these documents displayed a ‘living language’.”

  “At their urging, I looked briefly at one example, an apparently ancient document. It was fascinating but something told me not to let on. I told them I could not fathom its meaning. I reported the encounter to my superiors. One of the men that debriefed me was Philby, already a shadowy triple agent it seems, wi
th known links to Von Ribbentrop and others in the Third Reich. He asked about their collection of documents. Sometime later, having completed my pending projects, I was relieved of duty without explanation. I didn’t ask questions, and happily returned to Oxford.”

  “And then?”

  “My life was very busy with teaching and writing. I didn’t think any more of my S.I.S. experience until recently … yes, Clive?”

  “Sorry to interrupt, but Sarah tells us we are past our curfews.”

  “Excellent, for there’s little else for me to tell.”

  “Next Tuesday, then?”

  “Ah, yes, Clive will be reading. We’ll no doubt forget where we were just now.”

  “Goodnight all. Don’t forget your hat, Jack.”

  Shuffling and packing up and goodbye sounds.

  * * *

  The following teletype was discovered in declassified files of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), now a museum, at Bletchley Park, north of London:

  September 6, 1939. Field Report. Station X. Documents referenced in Tolkien, J.R.R. interview retrieved from subjects Glaus and Spearman. Said subjects, formerly members of Anglo-German Fellowship Union, likely Nazi operatives. Documents in their possession comprised of archaic parchments and scrolls with much runic text, believed stolen from historical collection of Lord Grivenhall at Ashburnham. They are deemed unlikely to contain “ubersprache” sought by Hitler under his Seigfried Directive. Subjects turned over to S.I.S. for interrogation. Tolkien status with GC&CS compromised. Documents retained in original barrister’s case and stored at Loch Uiguenal with notation for possible later delivery to Tolkien, who will be relieved of duty. Philby, H.A.R. 794XGCCS.

  Post-script: Spearman had in his effects several 8 1/2 × 11 b&w photos, apparently movie-production stills, signed by Leni Reifenstahl, with her compliments to Joseph Goebbels. Her inscriptions translates to: “I trust we can soon complete the Fuhrer’s movie project, Nacht der Dökkálfer.” That means “Night of the Dark Elves.” Unlikely this is a code, so I consider it to be a curiosity for another time.

  The movie stills, and the referenced movie, have never been found.

  Chapter 10

  OCTOBER 18

  Barren had been in New York City for one day. At first, he hid in a doorway, covered in a filthy blanket, studying the onslaught of noise that was as the clash of arms on a furious, never-ending battlefield. He traced the many sounds, each to their sources. He even saw the rampaging red beast of a machine that emitted wails and whoops as if it had been wounded and refused to die. He had an infallible instinct for danger, and here he quickly felt safe. More important, there was little magic to be worried about. He moved into the streets. The things that surprised him most about these people were … well, where to begin?

  Their faces were an obscenity, scrubbed and as bereft of hair as the arses of babies. Most of these moonlike visages were topped by hair that framed the face in ridiculous lengths and shapes, and the hair itself was often painted with dyes. As if that were not enough, some humans wore devices like sticks tied together and holding pieces of glass or obsidian before the eyes. Many wore blinking shell-like objects, clinging to their ears as they talked insanely to themselves.

  The smells were worse. They were overpowering, so redolent of alchemy and artifice that it gagged him. The faces all carried an odorous trail of exotic unguents to make the natural stink of man and beast seem like perfume on a warm spring night. Barren was used to reeks that would shame a buzzard off a gutcart, but this was worse. He would, as always, adjust.

  He stood, draped in his blanket in a long underground grotto filled with people scurrying like a disturbed nest of termites. His study was progressing well. These beasts were soft, obsessed with themselves, assaulting each other with the obscene displays of their faces, but seeing precious little, so that he could move among them without worry.

  Later that day, he waited in a partially wooded expanse, surrounded by the noise and crowds. Swans and geese swam in a small lake. Autumn still grasped root and branch as it was pulled once more into the coldness of the earth to make way for the oncoming Snow Giants.

  Here he was as invisible as a tree in a dense wood, and for just a moment he closed his eyes and let rest enfold him. He dreamt at the edge of sleep, hearing bulldrums echo and talk in the far distance. Summons to an ancient mustering.

  But his instincts told him otherwise. He roused to wakefulness and studied this park.

  It reminded him of a place he’d been as a boy, long before a troupe of dark minstrels had come to his hamlet. A place he knew before he had gone away, half voluntarily, half seduced by the wonder of escape from the drudgery of long toil and early death that was his family’s lot.

  Once in that long ago, on a brilliantly hued autumn day with smells that were colors all their own, he sat beside a lake. He half-reclined in a bed of straw grass three feet high so that he was almost hidden at the very edge of the water. The sun dipped toward day’s end. The sky was so blue and beset with soaring cloud ranges of white and pink and purple that it made him ponder the very miracle of each slow and sonorous breath. A flight of elusive Lórien ducks, bespeckled in black and white with eyes of gold, circled and then came down in formation, cupping their wings and landing without a sound on the water not ten feet from him. Their leader looked at him with eyes like yellow diamonds in the angled sunlight and floated sideways, drifting with the slight breeze. At that moment, through the mutual submission of their gazes, he knew he could master any animal — for the hunt or the table, but most of all for the sheer communion of taking life.

  That was the day that defined the axis of his being.

  Today, however, had present duties. Some deep instinct, informed by the Dark Lord’s direction, told him where he might search. It is time, he thought, to dress and act as these fools do.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t perfect his act quickly enough. Clad only in the stained blanket he had stolen from a sleeping form in a doorway, he was picked up by two city policemen at nine a.m. on Tuesday, the 19th of October, 2009.

  He could have killed the officers without effort, but he knew that would attract more attention than was wise. He was familiar with these types of village officials, reeves or wardmen or whatever they were called here, and cooperation with them was easiest at this point. The language spoken here was strange, loud and simple. He knew he could master it quickly.

  They bound his wrists with chained bracelets and took him into one of the large boxes that moved mysteriously, without the aid of beast or slaves. He soon learned a few new words: “loitering” and “Riker’s Island”.

  He declined to speak for a long time, even as he was shuffled before petty officials. A woman asked him questions, but she grew fearful and left. Within a few hours they took him across a bridge to a place where he felt more comfortable, a drear and decaying keep made of red bricks. He guessed the sign above the gate read RIKER’S ISLAND. Inside was a warren of rusty steel bars and metal doors. They freed his wrists and led him into a larger room filled with a score of men. Later, they showed him a cot for sleeping.

  After the guards left, one large and tattooed man scowled and offered a particularly and universally expressive pleasantry. Barren intuitively understood. Amused, he approached the man. In a few moments, no one in the room would speak to or come near Barren. The larger man crawled on his belly on the floor like a cur put to the whip.

  Barren spent time observing what he learned was called “TV.” It was a portal through which images of small people and things and events could be observed. He watched and studied without sleep: movies, news, reality shows.

  By the morning of the third day he had learned much. He conversed with some of the men in the room, who quailed at first but eventually cooperated. One showed him his collection of little illuminated manuscripts. “Comics” the man called them as he began to show them to Barren.

  Barren now absorbed this world with voracious appetite. That ev
ening he was approached by a guard. He was handcuffed. He was taken to a small room. A man came in — tall, lean of frame, cropped blond hair, and dressed in fine cloth with a colorful bit of fabric at his neck. He was not a guard. The man began to talk, most of which Barren could understand.

  “My name is Bossier Thornton,” he paused. “Detective, Criminal Investigations. You have the right to remain silent.”

  No reply.

  “Can you speak?”

  Silence.

  “What is your name?”

  More silence.

  “Do you know where you are?”

  Barren studied the fool in front of him. He could read him as plainly as auroch tracks. The man was stupidly ambitious, and therefore worthy of contempt. Barren decided to play with him.

  “I’m in … Riker’s Island?”

  “Good. Now do you know where that is?”

  “It’s either in New York City or a place in a … Mar-vel co-mic.”

  The detective leaned back.

  “How do you know which?”

  “I’m learning to read. Co-mics. I’m here. The guys have them in there. I read that Riker’s Island is a place that holds bad guys and … super villains.

  Bossier was an ardent fisherman of the shoals and bays of the criminal sea. He sometimes took the Riker’s duty out of curiosity, just to see what sorts of people were getting caught in the net. This was an odd fish.

  He flipped through the thin processing file for this detainee. “Where are you from?”

  “The Source.”

  Bossier looked up, prepared to give this guy the don’t-be-a-wise-ass speech. He stopped. With the certainty of a mug shot or a positive DNA and prints match, or a rap sheet of prior convictions — none of which existed anywhere for this man— Bossier knew that here was a killer. He knew it from the man’s eyes. They were steel marbles, glistening ball bearings, that saw everything as prey.