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

by Стив Хиллард

  She nodded in vague understanding, following his darting, conspiratorial eyes.

  “Your grandfather I knew. Tolkien I knew. Not since those days of chaos and revolution have I spoken of this.”

  “Yes?”

  “Listen carefully, for if you have come here with this clue, you are no doubt in possession of a tale that will stretch and entangle with its root and branch. Beware of this: there are things evoked by lost stories, by words even, that have a life and a will of their own. Seek out a tale’s origin and you are likely to find another. Keep searching and you may stumble upon that realm where the word and the beast mingle as one.”

  She was torn between the crackpot ramblings and the rational look in the man’s eyes. She decided to sit for just one more minute.

  “The Eye and the Shadow may have been vanquished, or like the swirl of smoke that enwreathed all ere it passed, may have diffused into new form. Like the banal evil that accumulates in our time. But other eyes remain, many with places and powers that have not yet come into focus. I perhaps know something of these documents you possess, and I know also that their rediscovery, even after so long a time, will not go unnoticed.”

  Now she was surprised. “But how could you know?”

  “Quiet! You know so little, you will bring them here again just by your blundering questions! Be still and learn! Your grandfather was but an errand keeper picked at random. He was sent away with it, precisely because even he didn’t know where he was going. He was, however, a respecter of both ancient lore and secrets of his times. Thus he was entrusted with the last remnants of the tale. Perhaps only by chance, he came to play a role far beyond his natural destiny. Beyond that I can say little of his path, save that your presence here tells me much. Perhaps not enough, however. Tell me why you have come here.”

  “I …” She paused to swallow; her mouth had suddenly gone dry. “I want to know where he is, and whether some documents he left, sort of a missing account of a famous heroine, are authentic.”

  “Authentic? You mean real? If it’s a tale, it has a truth of its own. We are all sent down paths and live in worlds that we can only know as ‘real’ by what our heart says. We can’t exist except by believing. What you mean by your question is, I fear, something more … base. Something smelling, perchance, of profit?”

  He stopped and stared at Cadence. His insinuation made her even more uneasy than his lunatic ramblings.

  “Perhaps you have these documents? Are they in your possession?”

  Her guardian senses were up. She felt, could smell, the low-grade fear that was enveloping him.

  He went on, “Time works against us. You must trust me this much. Go out of here now. Do not walk around. Come to the library at Columbia tomorrow at the second bell. It is my day house. Then I will tell you more. Nights of swift rain and lightening claws are no place to risk encounters with the creatures of this realm or any other. Now go!”

  Cadence got up. She glanced briefly at the bartender. He nodded knowingly, and she walked out to face the hawk, the swooping wet wind.

  The rain and whipping gale had gotten worse. Luckily — amazingly, she thought — a taxi still waited at the curb, its hazard lights blinking, its wheels resting hubcap-deep in water that threatened to flood the sidewalk. She ran to it, opened the door, and piled in.

  With a lurch, the taxi took off. It surged into southbound traffic, heading for midtown. No questions, no hellos. She wondered if the driver even knew she was in the backseat. Through the scarred Lexan partition and the erratic light flickering across the smeared windshield, she could barely make out the figure hunched over the steering wheel.

  “Hello!” she said, knocking on the partition. No response. The cab swerved left and right through the traffic as if, plausibly for New York City, the driver was hired fresh from a country without cars. Water cascaded on either side as the taxi boated and crashed through the overrunning street and deep-pooled potholes.

  It slammed to a sideways stop at a red light at West Seventy-fifth Street. Cadence knocked again and the figure turned, fumbled with the partition, and slid the window open.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Do you want to know where I’m going?”

  “Yes.”

  “Algonquin. Forty-fourth between Fifth and Sixth.”

  “Yes.”

  Approaching headlights played over him in flowing bands of light. His hair was cut down to the scalp, except for a low rough mohawk cresting over his head to a peak that accented the cross-strip of his opaque Wayfarers.

  “I’m … Travis. Just relax now.” He looked to be in his mid-twenties, despite his creased features and mature demeanor. Military maybe, she thought. The problem was, the picture that stared back at her from the driver ID pocket was of a man who looked, if she had to take a wild guess, Ethiopian. She looked at the meter. He hadn’t turned it on. At West Fortieth Street the taxi finally had to stop. She didn’t say a word, just threw a twenty at the driver and jumped out.

  The light turned green and the cab lurched forward, kicking and swerving like a whipped horse.

  By the time she stumbled into her room at the Algonquin, the cold and wet had seeped down into her skin to unleash rounds of shivers. This wasn’t the first day she had expected. The cab ride, the loony people at the West End, the sudden change of weather, all foretold some fever settling over her body and her search.

  She left her drenched clothes in a pile on the floor of the room, turned on the hot water in the tub, and poured in the entire mini-bottle of complimentary lavender bubble bath.

  A froth of bubbles began to grow, and she went to the closet. There, behind the extra blanket and pillows on the top shelf, she had stashed the valise. She pulled it down and put it on the bed. She sorted through a few of the documents and stopped at a page filled with baroque Spencerian flourishes. With some concentrated effort, this was readable. She got in the tub and relaxed, holding the page above the bubbles as she read.

  In a flash she sat up again, the bubbles splashing over the tub’s edge. She thought about the story gleaned from the scroll a few days ago. Days that now seemed distant and wasted in that vigil-land of grading papers, hanging out at the Forest, and waiting for the impending foreclosure sale. Her heart galloped as she read and heard the rising din of horns and hoof beats …

  As the ancient warning horns blew, Ara cast a torch upon the signal fire outside the gate, drew her sword and leapt to the center of the lane. Turning to face the darkness out of the east, she felt vindicated. Just as she had at the foot of the Capturing Tree. The others had eaten too much, no doubt drunk too much, and fallen asleep in the inn. And now the Wraiths, or some group of them, had come to this crossroads hamlet.

  Suddenly she heard them behind her. They had entered the village! She turned to see them approaching.

  A black cyclone, a wall of shadow and thundering hoof beats came up the lane. Sparks ignited from the clash of iron shoes on cobblestones. Streaming manes emerged from the dust and she quickly backed away to the gate bars, holding her tiny sword in two-fisted defiance before her.

  On they came, a torrent slashing at village folk who stumbled out from their homes as the great horns blared.

  As clear as full moonlight, she saw a skeletal hand emerge from the blackness of the foremost Wraith, marveled at the radiant, jeweled ring heavy upon one finger, and saw a power of angry red light emerge from that hand to blast the gates asunder. She was thrown aside, tumbled and rolled, and only regained her feet to face the Wraiths as they swept past. “Halt!” she cried.

  To her amazement, the last of the Wraiths suddenly reined his horse and turned to her. The horse’s nostrils poured plumes of smoky breath in the chill air. The Wraith spurred and came before her. He bent over, long robe flowing down, his face obscured in the shadow, and hissed, “A halfling-lass, is it?”

  She tried to take a swipe with her sword, but her arm moved like honey in a Frighten January. She felt herself being lifted by some forc
e, like a cold, grasping cloud all about her. The power drew her to the cowl beneath which hid something she did not want to see. She stared into that blackness as the bony hand slowly pulled back the shroud.

  She had no voice to give release to the terror she saw.

  The bubble bath slowly collapsed and the water grew still. Cadence sat thinking about the unspooling mystery of Ara. Who was she? Did she survive? After what she’s facing, who am I to fret at storms and cabbies?

  Chapter 12

  INKLINGS IV

  The sounds of books and leather bags being unceremoniously piled on benches, followed by an irritated voice.

  “It’s gotten a bit under your skin, hasn’t it Tollers, that the Times called your book a ‘mere fairy tale’?”

  “If the staff is the distinguishing mark of the wizard, and its possession empowers the holder, wizard or not, to flash it about, then these fools are worse than slacking apprentices!” “Is that an answer, or are your feathers just ruffled?” “It doesn’t bother me at all. There is more in the world than those who sell words by daily tonnage appreciate. I start with words, and with the knowledge, wrought from my own learning, that one can often feel one’s way back from the word to a story from an earlier time. After all, what better guarantee can there be that a thing exists, or at least did exist, than the fact that it has a name? And if it has a name, then there must be a history, a story, attached to it.”

  “Hello. I’ll raise a glass to that, whatever it means.” “What it means, Ian, is that we can remember something long forgotten by attending to the very word that once referred to it. I would hope that my stories yet leave room for other minds and hands. That, anyway, is my intention and my hope.”

  “Very well, to those future stories!”

  Clinks. Slurps. Ahhs.

  “I confess, tracking words has been a consuming passion for me. Many names in my stories are borrowed or, at least to my mind, discovered.”

  “Isn’t that a bit cheeky of you?”

  “Cecil, you and I are bosom friends, so I take your own cheek in good spirit. The answer is yes. I borrowed ‘Middle-earth’, ‘Mirkwood’ and ring-giving from a deep well of Norse legend, ‘orcs’ and a lot more from my beloved Beowulf, and, I dare say, ‘hobbit’ from a list of imaginary creatures I found in the Denham Tracts. There are many more. Perhaps too many, but I treat them as drill bits. Names are something to bite into the bedrock of myth that belongs to us all — even to you, Cecil, as you clutch your empty flagon!”

  “From all the bits of stories you’ve read to us here at this table, I would’ve thought the ‘Middle-earth’ you describe was your own invention.”

  “Hardly. It was there all along. Some part of it, I suppose, I have peopled. Much more of its territory remains for others to fill. As we’ve discussed before, the term is a wonderful, evocative linguistic artifact. It is a land of vaguely menaced borders, dim dangers lurking just beyond our ken, and moors distant from the light of the keep. A place bounded by monsters that refuse to flee.”

  “Perhaps, Tollers, your stories should start with someone to warn the reader ‘Beware the spell of words. They are unstill. Sleepless they are, bearers of meaning deeper than you wish to delve. They hunger. They wish to evoke stories unbidden and feelings foreign and troubling.’”

  “I have already have met this oracle. And I fear I know the truth of this message all too well.”

  “Tollers, let me ask this respectfully, is there more here than you are saying? This document trove, of which you tell us little, has clearly upset you. What is your disquiet? Do those ‘words’ whisper to you, separate from their voice on the page?”

  “Cecil, I detect your cynic’s ear. My answer is yes. Better still, we have with us a witness, quite able to testify on this strange aspect. Here! My summer assistant, Mr. Osley, whom you have met, has had to sit here and slurp his ale double-time to keep measure with you and Jack.”

  “Here! Here! Don’t be shy now, not becoming to a Yank. Speak up lad!”

  A new voice is heard, barely audible to the hidden microphone.

  “Well … uh … since you ask, I know this. Professor Tolkien has asked me to work on organizing and translating an unusual collection of documents. Some of them are in a language that I would say is — I know this sounds odd — true Elvish. It is not invented or imagined, but as real as Mr. Lewis’s breathless prose. It is a proper language in all respects except this: it is alive. The more we study it, the more … restless it becomes. Meanings change. They scurry on an unstill path.”

  “Well, young master, you learned to dance well at the foot of your mentor. May I offer one compass for your stay here at Oxford?”

  The sly winks and nods are almost audible.

  “Why, yes sir.”

  “On those forest paths, stick hard to the real trail. Keep your feet on the ground and your nose for those six points of Sheaf’s Stout to which Jack has introduced you. I have no doubt that, in the morning, the sheer size of your head will keep you grounded.”

  Chapter 13

  OCTOBER 21: MORNING

  By nine a.m., Cadence was eating breakfast in the Algonquin’s Round Table Room and taking in the ambiance of the hotel. It truly was a grand old great-aunt of a place. It was partial to dark wood paneling and presided over by a highly competent if entrenched and fuss-budget, staff. The hotel manager brought her the New York Times and unfolded her napkin for her and asked if she was enjoying her stay. He exited with a professional grace. Just as her orange juice came, she settled back and opened the paper.

  Her cell phone rang to the high brass notes of Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. She muted the sound and checked the screen. The display read CALLER ID UNAVAILABLE. As she accepted the call, the voice launched right in.

  “Any progress?” It was Mel.

  “Sort of. I’m here having breakfast at the Algonquin. Thank you for that. I went to a strange bar on the Upper West Side. Remember the menu I showed you that’s initialed JRRT? That place. I met a one-eyed bartender. Oh, and I talked to a madman, a street person who speaks bad Shakespeare, like a C-list Marvel Comics character. Anyway, he says he met both Tolkien and my grandfather. He’s a loon, but he may be all I’ve got. I also got rained on big time and had a weirdo for a cab driver,” she added, even as she could already hear Mel’s fingers drumming on a table. “Not much progress, huh.”

  “You’ve been there maybe twenty-four hours, relax.”

  “Oh yes, it seems Tolkien, or someone pretending to be him, hung out at the West End. Years ago.”

  “Uh-huh. Listen, don’t despair, because I’ve got news about our good professor Tolkien.”

  “Like what?”

  “Get this. The critics at first hated him, then, as with all successful writers, they adored him. But they all call him the Great Borrower because he treated prior stories and sources like, as they put it, a dragon’s horde — something to be routinely looted. Or more politely, to be ransacked at will and without attribution. His stories are populated with creatures, proper names, places, happenings from works by Shakespeare, Finnish literature, Sir Gawain, you name it.”

  “Yeah, I thought that …”

  “Here’s just a few examples of the borrowed names, nouns, and other stuff. I jotted them down for you. For starters, the word hobbit. Then it goes from there: Frodo, Bilbo, Gandalf, Middle Earth, Bag End, Hasufel, Edoras, Mirkwood, Midgewater, Wormtongue, Medusheld, ents, wargs, balrogs, woses, and roughly two-thirds of the various dwarf names. The list goes on and on.”

  “OK, but what’s wrong with borrowing when he used it to create such great stuff?”

  Her waiter unobtrusively placed her breakfast before her.

  “Precisely, my dear. Tolkien felt no unease in this. To him, every name and every tale was a place to begin a new story. Which reminds me. Hell, I’m just a professional middleman, but I’d say Wagner’s opera, The Ring—about the one ring that could rule the world, and the remaking of the mythical sword
that was broken — all sounds pretty familiar. Except Wagner wrote it in 1869. In any case as Tolkien said, the road goes on and on.”

  “Yes. So?”

  “So it means we’ve got the moral high ground. Tolkien’s view was that any story that borrows from older stories is a fair and natural part of the process. You see, creativity and innovation thrive on borrowing.”

  “Mel, don’t take this the wrong way, but your inner poet must be trying to get out. You don’t strike me as one to rely on moral high ground very much.”

  “Very true!” he laughed. “Nor will the ones I am about to talk about. They are the wielders of the power. They will seek to stifle and destroy anything new that is attributable to Tolkien even if it is authentically his.”

  “Well, if you read what’s barely readable in this so-called fourth book, it looks like maybe he wrote, or at least translated, some small part of it, but by far most was written by other people, maybe at different times in the past. As in long, long ago. If you read it literally, it comes from some very strange place. Not his story book Middle-earth, but someplace different. The real one. The one he tried so hard to imagine. Ninety percent of it needs translation if that’s even possible. It’s just runes and stuff.”

  “Let’s don’t get carried away. Parts of this may seem a little strange, but no matter.”

  Cadence turned away from a nearby table of patrons and hunched over the phone. She dropped her voice. “‘Strange’ seems to be the operative word here.”

  “Well”, he said, “I could have said ‘curiouser and curiouser’. In the vein of odd things, though, I just learned an interesting factoid about our Good Professor.”

  “I can’t wait. No, honest, I want to hear it.”

  “He was a spook.”

  She rolled her eyes and laughed, as if he was a pure nut case. “You mean Tolkien’s a ghost?”