by Стив Хиллард
And now the race began. Her frantic hands trying to work the lock, the sound of the thing as it crept closer, the noise made by a talon groping up on the platform. The organic creak of a great bulk being lifted up as the leg took up a full weight, to be followed by another.
Come on, lock!
She heard the plush, velvety sweep of the second leg, the brush of the belly squelching up to the concrete floor of the platform — none of it was as terrifying as the possibility she now faced as she blindly stabbed the key in the lock: was this even the right key? It slipped into the slot, she turned it, pushed against the resistance of years of rust and grime, and then it gave. The hasp opened, the chain fell, and she opened the door.
This time she did look back, stepping backwards through the door into the blackness as she turned and faced the thing. She shone the light — up and up as the spider reared and moved its forelegs with exquisite delicacy toward her. They stopped on the wall above the door as she slammed it shut. The thing seemed far too big to get through, even if it could figure out the door handle.
She turned to see where she was, expecting some new horror.
The light described a room, piled with old rail tools and a few scattered and rusted metal lunchboxes. A pool of water occupied the center, somewhere between an inch and a thousand feet deep. Above, a thin waft of light intertwined with a seep of water flowing down through crevices and storm drains from street level fifty feet above. It was still daylight somewhere far above, and the last autumn rain sought its way down.
Cadence stood motionless for a long time. No sound came from outside the door. Perhaps it was waiting out there. Patiently, oh so patiently, she thought with a trembling inward chuckle. Her eyes adjusted, her heart slowed a little, and the room began to be visible without the flashlight. She shut it off and watched the pool. It almost glowed as the seeping drip sent out oily ripples in overlapping patterns.
She stepped forward and looked down.
At first there was nothing to see but the ripples. But, as she watched, there seemed to be other patterns, movements deeper down. These ebbed and then flowed back with more definition. When she looked directly down into the depths, she thought she could see a light. After a moment it came into better focus, as if the image, in moving closer to the surface, was bringing with it color and clarity.
She stared for what seemed like a long time until she saw, as if through a screen of leaves in a forest, an array of slender plantlike creatures moving as a group. They swept by in graceful and exotic patterns, more purposeful than decorous. This was followed by a fleeting, jarring image of the Head Librarian. He was engaged in a conversation on what appeared to be a videophone. He had a subservient expression; he was being dressed-down by a gray haired man in the video screen who looked like nothing if not a Hollywood producer.
Then the image warped into a graceful waterfall, thin and bright in the sunshine. Through the veil of falling water, Cadence saw a young woman huddled with swaths of hair curled about her unshod and furry feet. She looked, for all her plain and simple beauty, alone and profoundly sad.
Cadence knew at once it was her. Ara.
She was looking at Ara through a small cascade of water, someplace where autumn spread a palette of intense colors. As Cadence gazed, Ara turned and stared back, at first startled, but then overtaken with wonder. Their eyes, despite the ripples here and the waterfall there, followed each other as Ara turned and crawled toward the vision that was Cadence. She looked, tilting her head in curiosity, and reached through the waterfall. The pool trembled as the hand stopped just short of breaking the surface. Right there, in that dank room with the distant traffic of Broadway rumbling overhead and the drip-drip of water, the female halfling looked at Cadence and said softly, “I have seen you in your strange clothing. Are you a water-sprite that will cover me with forgetfulness?”
Cadence didn’t know what to say. The accent was odd, indefinable. She wondered what she must look like to Ara.
Ara continued, “I believe you are no sprite. You are lost down in there, in a world far away from here. Would you reach out and do as I do, offer to touch my hand?” Her fingers extended up to the very surface of the pool.
“Yes,” Cadence said in a hushed breath, and extended her hand. The water should have been an inch deep at most, but her hand continued down disappearing past her wrist. She stayed very still. The water had turned murky, and though she worried that something might take her hand away in one awful bite, she kept it there. Something brushed her skin. Then she felt fingers touch hers. The water calmed and the face, probably much like her own, showed the relief of unexpected, friendly company.
Ara spoke, “I hope we meet again.” Then her eyes widened and her hand withdrew suddenly. “Do not stay! Something seeks you, just as it has lured away my Amon from me. Go now. You are in danger!” Her eyes were wide, as if she saw something that Cadence did not. Quickly Cadence looked behind her. When she turned back to the pool, the image was gone and the surface looked again like a muddy pool, its calm punctuated by the hypnotic drip-drip.
Cadence felt a moment of decision teeter crazily before her. She knew Ara was fated. She should do something to communicate with her — reach out, jump in, something. But the moment wobbled away. Hesitation hung in the air like a bitter rebuke.
Cadence now had to take care of herself. She went back to the door. She heard nothing but silence. She waited, breathing slow and deep, until she dared to open it. Her flashlight searched the platform and the train tracks. The dust on the platform was smeared in places, but she couldn’t tell her own tracks and clambering marks from anything else. She squinted to see further out, but could only pick up reflections of metal from the support beams around the tracks. Had that been what she’d seen? Were those the eight eyes that had stared at her? The hard reckoning of fear told her not to return that way. She went back into the dank room and followed the pool slivers of blue-gray light dancing on the walls. She swept the flashlight beam around until, behind a stack of lumber and an old-fashioned ticket booth, she found another door. It groaned and creaked, but opened just enough to squeeze through. After a few more terrified steps, she was in a stairwell. It led up several flights.
She emerged into the blinding light and blaring sounds of West 130th Street. The door closed and locked behind her, an innocuous rusty thing imbedded in a graffiti-stained brick wall. Cadence’s hand flew up to hail a taxi. She couldn’t get out of this neighborhood fast enough.
Chapter 23
OCTOBER 25. 9:08 P.M
By the time she got halfway through her story about the lost subway stop, Osley wouldn’t stay still. When she got to the spider part, he got up and paced his hotel room, clasping his hands to his ears in fearful denial.
“I told you to be careful! It’s all coming apart at the seams now.”
She looked at him, seeing something she never imagined from the many whacko sides of Osley. He was cringing down on the bed, his head lowered, his old-man fists tight as earmuffs to his head. His tears dripped and puddled on the carpet. A sob, like she’d never heard, except from her mother when her dad died, wracked through him. She stood for some moments, and then went over to sit beside him. She put her arm on his shoulder.
Finally he wiped his nose and eyes on his sleeve. “I’m sorry, Cadence. I wish I could … could tell you more.” He stood up now, fired by some fearful resolution. He drove a fist into his palm and looked at her directly. “You must go home. Now! Forget about finding your grandfather. I’m sure he will write from wherever he is. If he doesn’t, then he’s gone. Leave it at that.”
He looked about, picking up his things and making ready to leave.
“Os, hold on. Look, I’m not going anywhere. Not until I get to the bottom of this. It’s all intertwined. These … monster things, the Tolkien documents, the Elvish writing. And Ara. We owe her. She won’t survive unless we keep on this. Maybe you can’t understand that. And most important, my grandfather, he’s in here some
how. I can feel it. Besides, you know what?”
He stiffened further, chin up. “What?”
She smiled. “I need your help. You’re the only guide I’ve got in this. Please.”
His demeanor softened. “On one condition, Cadence. Only a few more days. And absolutely no more wandering off on your own.”
“Deal,” she said, before he could reconsider. “You were going to say something about this spider-thing I thought I saw.”
He exhaled and drew in a deep breath, as if recentering himself. “Well, remember the name I was trying to figure out when you left? It was Errour. The document says she is the oldest and most vile of the Great Spiders of Mirkwood.”
“Now you tell me! Anyway, it was all very confusing. Except this, I stink like a garbage fire”
“So then what happened?”
She told him, and when she got to what she saw in the pool, he came out of his funk.
“That’s it, don’t you see! That’s a passage! A place to go through. Maybe it was worth it. You saw her, my God. Ara!”
“Yes, I … think so. So let’s go through this. I need to read everything you’ve translated so far.”
He got up and gathered an unruly stack of hotel stationary and yellow legal pad sheets crisscrossed with sentences, mark-outs, and lines. It was readable, but barely. She scanned the pages.
“So, is Ara still alive in this story?”
“Yes, for now. I’ve been tracking her. And so have others. Read this.” He clutched a handful of yellow pages.
Cadence read, holding the pages for a long time and seeing a dark trail:
Hafoc became restless and soared away, back to the north, as if scanning for pursuing trouble.
Staying to her southerly bearing, Ara came at last to a frost-stiffened wood. Through it there was but one path, hugging the bank of a fresh stream that led down a wooded defile that grew ever narrower. One other path joined from the side, and by this way entered bloody drag marks, as of a man’s body rudely hauled by his feet. These marks were accompanied by the heavy boot prints of a band of men, their feet hastily sidestepping the bloody grooves. Ara slowed. She bent over, her eyes trying to read this tale in the dirt and leaves. She was hesitant to catch up to the track-makers, but the steep gorge offered no other way. Turning back would mean days of lost time, days she already counted as deficit. She smelled the air and surveyed the encroaching forest, then moved on, keeping to the side of the trail.
The path continued into an ever more dismal forest. Trees grew over the widening and now stagnant stream, as if trying to cover it up. The water eddied in dark pools and emptied toward a small mere that she could glimpse through the trees. She heard men’s voices, urgent and labored with fear. She left the trail and came upon them, staying hidden but close enough to listen.
Before her were arrayed nine men in heavy battle gear, all facing away and staring down into a rocky cove. They were still gasping for air, swords and bows at the ready. At their feet, where the drag marks went into the water, the pool boiled with bloodshot gore, its dark waters frothing with a red and green infestation of writhing serpents. A black upwelling brought a foul reek of decay and sulphur. Some of the men turned away. Closest to the pool was a large man, evidently the leader, bearing a princely helm hooped with boar-shapes and surmounted with a ridge of shining black bristles. To his right was a smaller man dressed in the cloak of some monkish order. The smaller man spoke loudly to the large man. His voice had surprising articulation and power.
“Is there no true God in this land, that he would allow such blasphemy to exist?”
The leader spoke. “Your new god is for you, scop. I know not who has forsaken whom to beget this corruption. I do know that a man’s life is too brief to do more than glimpse such things, and his one true tale is the only creation he can master, if at all.” Fastening the leather strap of his helmet and checking his battle gear, he raised his sword and continued. “This abomination, however, shall finally end if I can bring Hruntings’s sharp edge to the task full measure.”
One of his companions broke in. “Be wary, my lord, the heat of her blood has melted other great swords.”
“Yes, Talis, so I saw long ago in the great hall at Thornland. There, behind the king’s own chair, made fast to the wall, is an esteemed relic. A great blade of ents, those mystical giants of long ago. All that’s left is a bladeless hilt, its stub of damascened steel diminished to a gory icicle. Her scalding blood may eat all that it touches, but I need but one swift stroke!”
With that, the large man deftly tossed Hrunting into the air. As it twirled and caught flashes of light, he leapt feet first into the pool. So agile was he that in midair his hand closed solidly on the hilt even as the water splashed and took him. His companions closed to the bank and watched. The serpents slithered away and his golden helm glistened for a final moment as it sank into the murky depths.
Another man then spoke. “We will wait. That blade has what now seem ill-boding runes. I fear for Beowulf this day.”
Then the man looked at the monk and continued. “And you, scop, have you more to show from your relic trade? Will holy nails and wood splinters save us now? Shall I suddenly trust in your fantastic tale of a god that forgives all? Shall I abandon the known gods given to us by our grandfathers, the gods of our sage elders who, unlike you, have wintered into wisdom?”
“Your heart will be your guide, sire.”
“For now, our watchfulness will be our guide.” The warrior laid aside his shield and stood watching the pool. All of the band gathered beside him and stared into the now still and silent water.
Ara, unsure of the motives of these rough men, quietly moved back and then examined the trail ahead. The way was clear of the drag marks and bore no witness to evil. She hurried on, leaving the band at the mere’s edge, their tale for others to tell, if they survived.
Cadence looked up and over at Osley. He was consulting the key less and less now. His eyes and hand danced to the rhythm of his own translation. She thought about the blood that melts swords, and the movie Alien and Mel’s warning “Don’t ever bet your life on a trivia contest.” Then her eyes returned to the pages, wanting desperately to catch up with Ara:
The hobbitess moved swiftly all that day, emerging into a plain that left her visible and uneasy. Hafoc returned and stayed close by, nervous and jumpy in his movements, and so aggravating her disquiet. She skylighted the horizon by dawn and dusk, and so spied, far away, what she thought were twin figures following her trail. She changed her path and patterns and often doubled back, but they stayed true to her bearing, as if reading the very marks of stumbling and sliding on rock and branch. They held back, sure and relentless and patient.
She finally lost the sense of their distance and so redoubled her pace. The land rose and became increasingly rocky. It led to a promontory among foothills that were but miniatures of the mountains that loomed ahead in ranks of shade, a range of purple summits remembered from the map she had seen. Everdivide. She reached the small promontory at sunset and climbed and looked back. She scanned the horizon and then looked down. She froze.
Below, no more than a mile away, close enough that her scent was still fresh, loped the pursuers. Two in number and man-like, they stooped low as they ran, like hounds fixed on the spore. The fast-setting sun propelled their shadows far to their sides. They disappeared from her view behind an outcrop, so that only their shadows were visible. These became long penciled creatures, wild and outlandish in their movements, wobbling on exaggerated legs independent of the flesh and blood hunters that now ran full out to secure her fate as their prize.
Their shadows stopped suddenly. They were relieving themselves, like wolves or jackals do before the final chase.
She scrambled on in sheer panic. She stumbled and flushed a covey of wild brautigans that rocketed along with the wind and passed only a foot off the ground through a gap in the rocks before veering up and away. She made for the gap, climbing up uneven tiers t
hat may have been steps for giants with unmatched legs.
At the top she was forced to stop. Before her rose a darkly- veined mountain wall that rose thousands of feet, sheer and void of pathways. Only among the debris field at its base, perhaps a half-mile away, did she spy a darker place, a crevice or, if she was lucky, a cave. Hafoc took wing in a wild flurry and she sprinted toward that spot as fast as she had even run in her life.
The page ended. Damn! She has to make it! thought Cadence. She was finally crashing into exhaustion. She put the pages down and sank into the room’s overstuffed chair. She felt the calm helplessness of the lost. The reputation of Elvish was true. It led down strange paths. She, they, Osley, me, Jess, all of us, utterly lost in Mirkwood. But only my grandfather is missing without a trace. He’ll be gone a year on Halloween, and I’m more confused than ever. Well, her pragmatism chimed in as she keyed her cell phone, at least I still have an appointment app on this.
Chapter 24
OCTOBER 26: 8:50 A. M
Sunday morning. Her appointment at nine o’clock. Cadence arrived early at the office of L’Institut des Inspecteurs, which seemed to be open just for her visit. Per Mel’s instructions, she brought an envelope containing three pages, including the original note from Tolkien to her grandfather.
The receptionist noted her name and chirped, “Are you French? Es-que vous parlez francais?”
“Uh, non.” The best she could do from ninth grade French.
“Wait here, please.”