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

by Стив Хиллард

  “‘Get on with life?’ People would die to have the privilege of peeking into the window before you!”

  “I appreciate that, really I do. But there’s only one piece of essential information that I need to figure out. What happened to my grandfather? For the moment, though, I’ll settle for your answer to a more practical question: who are you and what are you really doing here?”

  “Too big a question, my child. But, as I grow older, my fears change. A great irony. I used to fear discovery. Now I fear dying anonymous and missing the chance to know those dear few in life who are left to me. Even worse, leaving behind a great debt, unpaid and gathering interest for eternity.”

  He almost stopped but then regained himself. “So here are a few clues that I have not spoken of in decades. My name once was Osley.”

  “Great. Very nice to meet you.”

  “And one other thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I know Elf.”

  “Elf? Come on!”

  “Yes, the language. But only the written part.”

  “I don’t suppose Berlitz offers a total immersion course. You converse in Esperanto too, I suppose.”

  “No need to be cynical.”

  “What do you mean you know ‘Elf’?”

  “I hinted at bits of this before. As I told you the other night, I was teaching here. I had to … leave the United States for a while. To let things cool down a bit. A fake passport was the easiest part. I used my University levers and spent a time at Oxford with Professor Tolkien. He introduced me to these documents and to the Elvish language. I was, to put an image to it, very much The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. I became lost in the Mirkwood of these documents. Dreams replaced the thin skein of reality I’d managed to knit together. That’s why, as I’ve told you, when I returned here things weren’t the same. They are never the same. Later, I marched in the aimless army of the homeless. Deep beneath these streets I found places utterly lost to the diagrams of the city engineers. Doorways to hidden rooms.”

  “You mean you live underground?”

  “Did. These days, I sleep in city shelters and eat in soup kitchens. Listen, by the time I was nineteen, I was part of the revolutionary vanguard, one far-out chemical proselytizer. I wore my hair long, adorned my face with wire-frame glasses, and made the phrase ‘Tune in, turn on, drop out’ an achievable goal for everyone that cared to open the gate. I was the Henry Ford of psychedelic drugs. If I was that kid today, I’d be an entrepreneurial geek. I’d own EA or Narcross Ventures, I’d be inventing computer games that make millions. Such is the tyranny of the Five Percent Departure.”

  “The what?”

  “The Five Percent Departure. In life, as in geometry, what starts as a slight alteration of direction seems like no big deal, just a deviation. But as the lines lengthen, as time moves forward, that five percent makes a big difference. You end up a long way from where you thought you were headed.”

  “So where’s Elf fit in?”

  “Ah, yes. The Professor had worked out several invented Elvish languages from remnant sources, the Welsh Karbindoos for one. But these documents only showed that his languages were a pale imitation of the reality. The power and breadth of true Elvish, even slightly comprehended, is breathtaking. It captivates the reader like a fly in a web. That’s why I came back to the United States. I was overwhelmed. I fell away. I had to. The Professor, stalwart to the grit, stayed to his task. But I’ve disclosed too much already.”

  “So you still remember how to read it?”

  “You don’t ‘remember’ this thing. It’s really a logic path, and a dense one. Not unlike the organic chemistry I once knew. Of course, as I discovered, there are deeper subtleties. Elf can be playful or diabolical. It deliberately misleads. It hides. It reserves its true import for the, shall we say, native speaker. So grazing on the most amateurish level, I can translate some and do a passable, if unsophisticated, job. If you’ve got someone else for the task let me know.”

  Perplexed, Cadence tented her hands, bit her thumbs, and looked back into those sad eyes. The man behind those eyes wasn’t needy, he was lost. She decided to take a chance. “Great, so you can decipher some of these documents?”

  “Look, I still am the novice on this, which is to say, the wise king in the world of the utterly clueless. Which is pretty good. I can probably translate the ones in basic Elf. The ones that look like Old English or Anglo-Saxon, that not even Chaucer would’ve found readable, no. There was once a kind of key, and to get anywhere we would need that.”

  The fall of a book in some nearby stacks, like an angry clap, startled them both.

  Osley leaned down to the tabletop and whispered like a wind battering against the eaves. The voice of the prophet returned.” We have talked like fools! We must leave at once. First I, then you follow.”

  Then he stopped. A curtain inside him seemed to part. “Those … long ago things that stalk and edge closer. They have reappeared. They grow desperate enough to approach the watch fire of our diligence. Cadence, be careful. I will tell you more when I can. I will see you at the West End Bar. Tomorrow at ten.”

  “In the morning?” But he was gone. This guy had a tedious way of coming and going. And he never told her where those archives were.

  That evening Cadence found Osley’s trail on Wikipedia, the article dated March 2, 2005:

  Osley, Ludwin A.

  Legendary elusive genius and fugitive chemist, Osley was a follower of the LSD cult of Dr. Timothy Leary (“Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out”). He pioneered the mass-production of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in the early 1960s, while he was still an undergraduate at the University of California at Berkeley. His academic records, partially missing, state that he was admitted to UC Berkeley at the age of 16 from Los Gatos High School. He had a double major of organic chemistry and linguistics. Osley branded LSD capsules he mass-produced as “Osley’s Blue-Dot.” He operated out of mobile laboratories hidden in semi-trailers that crisscrossed the United States.

  Sought by FBI and state authorities in numerous jurisdictions, Osley was reportedly non-violent and apolitical. He associated with “psychedelic” rock bands such as Lothar and the Hand People, Country Joe and the Fish, and Electric Banana. There are no known photographs or fingerprints, and his California DMV records are missing. He frequented legendary venues such as The Family Dog emporiums on Filmore Street in San Francisco and Colfax Avenue in Denver.

  Osley was last seen in August, 1967. He was dropped from the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List in 1975.

  Cadence fidgeted with the Wikipedia article, checking the footnotes and clicking through links to old articles in the Los Angeles Times and Rolling Stone. She leaned back and sized up her situation. For some reason, she was sure he posed no danger. The danger was in the terrain they were traversing.

  She felt like a small forest animal, easing through the oneway gate in a camouflaged live trap. She was inching forward, tantalized by the elusive, irresistible scent of a secret.

  Chapter 18

  OCTOBER 23

  The next day Cadence had a hunch. She decided go back to the library to check on her own on Professor Tolkien’s brief visit at Columbia. Charming an intern at the research desk paid big dividends. In that random way that old records yield clues, the intern found a batch of index cards, held together with disintegrating rubber bands, crammed in a drawer. There, miraculously, was a card for the Professor’s materials left behind when he departed the University so long ago.

  An hour later, she stood, backpack and notepad in hand, at the entrance to C-ar-47. The notation, inscribed like runes over the arched brick entrance, was itself a relic. It predated by ages the cataloguing systems of Mr. Dewey and the Library of Congress. The intern told Cadence the code referred to the seldom-visited “inactive archives” section of the library. “You know, where they keep the stuff no one ever wants to see, but they’re not supposed to throw away?”

  “Like what?” she asked, mil
king him for more information.

  “Like old handwritten notes, lecture transcripts — there’s a box or so for every professor who ever taught here or even just visited and didn’t take it with him. Sometimes the boxes are books and office stuff, you know pictures, paperweights — that kinda thing.”

  “So, how do I find something in particular?”

  “Alphabetical, by last name. If it’s not there, then by year. If nothing turns up, try by subject or just snoop. It’s all a mess.”

  “Ooo-kay, but …”

  “And here’s the catch. After I unlock this door,” he had his hand on the steel cage door that ran almost to the top of the arch, “you’re on your own. There’s a sort of diagram of the place over there on the wall, but don’t trust it too much. When people do come down here, they’re always complaining that they got lost. No one’s scheduled down here through this weekend. Not many people know it exists. Anyway, this door only opens from the outside. Entry, no exit. The only way out is down at the far, far end. You’ll find it.”

  She wasn’t so sure. He turned the key and pulled open the door with a disquieting heave. After a squeal of rusty iron hinges, he extended his arm to usher her in.

  He shut the gate behind her, wished her good luck, and left.

  The diagram was in a dusty frame on the wall and wasn’t very helpful. Several labels had been crossed out and written over. She studied it anyway, especially the long corridor that seemed to lead to a stairs down to a warren of stacks that was a virtual maze. Then she stepped around a corner and saw the corridor. It led off into an indistinct haze. Occasional high windows, mullioned and unwashed for decades, dotted one side of the corridor, filtering a thin, grey light past a barrier of dirt and cobwebs. Dust motes floated lazily in the few intact rays. The shadows of tree branches moved like snakes across the linoleum floor.

  She stood and stared. This undulating floor, leading down this mystic hallway, was a crossing. Her heart thudded in tandem with jumpy internal juju drums that talked up and down her spine. As she prepared to move forward, she knew her steps, once taken, could not be retraced.

  So here I go! She stepped forward with an explorer’s panache.

  She made it all the way to the end of the corridor, and then down the dim stairs into the maze of shelving, before she heard the sound.

  Like a doe hearing a fallen branch, Cadence froze. In the waiting silence, she recalled and interpreted the sound: the furtive movement of feet and rustle of clothing by someone sneaking. Now the only sound was the hiss of a radiator. It was as if they were waiting — each for the other — with the infinite patience of the hunting ritual. Cadence the Hunted held perfectly still. She looked carefully and made out the shadow of a bookcase, tilted and surreal, along one wall. There was a silhouette attached to it. Tall and thin and still, as if waiting. A man. No mistake.

  She couldn’t wait anymore. She grabbed a heavy book off a shelf and stepped forward. Provoke the thing. It did not move. She stepped again and came around the corner of the bookcase. She was met by an untended cart, laden high with books and boxes and casting an improbable shadow. She laughed out of fright. After a moment she turned around to look at different rows of boxes, squinting at the labels, realizing time was moving on. Q … R … S ….

  Tolkien’s box, when she found it, was exactly in place and disappointingly small. It was sealed with masking tape that had long since given up its glue to the dry heat from those creaky radiators standing as derelict sentinels along the walls. The tape fell away as she pulled on the lid. As she opened the box, she smelled, amazingly, the earthy scent of pipe tobacco. She saw clumps of partially burned tobacco scattered over a stack of papers, as if carelessly left there by a harried pipe smoker. On top of the papers was a note, precisely placed and long since yellowed. It was scrawled in an unsteady hand that looked like the Professor’s. She turned and moved over to catch the light from an incandescent bulb that looked like it had burned without interruption since Edison.

  She unfolded the note. It began, “To Whom May Follow.” She read the note, uncomfortable as an outsider witnessing a private ritual. She paused over Professor Tolkien’s warnings. A “spell” … take heed … a key … Beware … monsters do not depart.

  She fingered down through the other papers. There was an article dated 1967 from the University of Leeds Review:

  A remarkable document has been discovered in the collection of antiquities found in the estate of the late Grivendall Thurston, Earl of Haymart, and attributed to the library of his great-great-grandfather, the (at the time) notorious eccentric, and now merely famous, “Mad Librarian,” Sir Robert Cotton.

  The document apparently was saved from the great fire at the improvidently named Ashburnham House in 1731. The world’s only original of Beowulf also partially survived, scorched and brittle and mingled with other documents, to be lost again for nearly a century. The particular document in question here has been authenticated as an example of Old English poetry dating from 860 AD.

  “These things surface from time to time,” said Allison Mansur, the head librarian at Columbia University. “After all, Beowulf itself, so far as we can tell, lay lost and unread for seven hundred years, from the time of the Norman Conquest until its discovery in a Copenhagen library in 1815.”

  “But,” he continued, “this specimen is rather remarkable for both its age and its potential place in Anglo-Saxon studies. Some of the material has yet to be translated, due to the strangeness of its symbols, a system not heretofore seen. In a nutshell, it appears to be a lament written by an ancient king in his own hand. The manuscript, as part of the bequest, is housed at Columbia University, where the Earl maintained close ties since his days as an exchange student.”

  Stapled behind the article was a page of notes by the Professor:

  The manuscript, which I have now translated, is by all indications authentic. That means that it is well over twelve hundred years old. The unaccountable fact, unless I have misplaced my wits somewhere, is that this poem echoes elements of my forty years of writing. Perhaps my musings and myth-creation have not been far off the mark!

  Cadence was hungry to see the actual translation. She found the pages and stepped further down the aisle, directly under the bare light bulb. She whispered out loud the Professor’s rendering of those ancient words, the hushed sound spilling over into the empty stacks:

  So, the tale of a King can ne’er better be told than by his song.

  I am Pazal and this is the ballad of my bitter truth.

  Before victory’s wealth brought to me overfilled stores, and slavery and fear to my foes,

  Princes, strong of limb, tall and fair, stood with liege-gifts

  before me in this great hall.

  She skipped down and started again, reading what seemed to be an important passage:

  By the rites of ring-giving and vows attendant did we confirm our just roles.

  Oh, even by Valar’s measure, was that mead-hall fit for the clouds.

  Taller than the trunks of the greatest fir-trees did its timbers soar,

  Smiling ranks did my Princes array, even as they spoke with a mighty voice,

  “Hail King! Liege-Lord and Defender!

  Generous to us beyond our worth’s measure!”

  Thus ran the years, in our Kingdom hard by the Western Sea,

  Where stood we our sentinels on rocky crag, at forests edge,

  and far to the North

  On beaches barren but for the sea-monster’s bleached bones.

  Hard it was!

  The war-scars long stitched my bone-locker with pain that renewed itself, each day ever fresher.

  Tolkien had scribbled a note here: “The blunt energy of these lines, the gold of men of old, enmeshed in woven spell, is the bard’s gift to us today.”

  Waiting for the enemy that came only by rumour As creeping fog and distant sounds that give no battle But unsettle as no din of war could ever muster!

  Here Tolkien had und
erlined portions of the text:

  One day in my great hall, proud of my mastery,

  I admitted, in courtesy, an errand from another kingdom.

  Sweet words, echoing my own boasting estimate, did he speak,

  Visions, of power greater, did he lay before me.

  And the Source that would its certainty insure

  An ancient Ring of Spells.

  A token of an alliance of equals, did he offer,

  The rites of ring-giving were registered,

  The Vow of Protection duly scribed

  Like the unthinking swipe of a broadsword to bloody some last innocent at battle’s end, I spoke hastily,

  “’Tis done!” said I,

  And no king would take back words so spoken.

  Now of fell work to full grasp filled were my hands.

  To other kingdoms did I travel

  And extolled the virtues of the Ring-Giver.

  And others sought to repeat my grand alliance

  So that, in time, less than a double-handful of us, esteemed kings of lineage and grace, did compare and carefully assay the wondrous craft of these tokens.

  The Professor’s own words followed: “Much is lost here. However, in the same hand on separate parchment and perhaps much later in time, the poem continues. My translation is as follows,” and he continued the verse:

  Generations of the lives of men have passed.

  I wear the tattered robes and horror-geild

  As once I did strut with finest fur and emblazoned shield bright with honor,

  The banners of my kingdom have long rotted in the seeping drench of storms and roofs unmade by fire and ruin.

  My bone-locker gone, replaced by this mist of a body—

  A bitter turn for one so proud of his limbs, sword-stewards that could unleash such havoc in battle!

  Of my own folly was I ensnared and unmanned by this Ring!

  Mark This! The Vow of Protection lies unspent and