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

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

  Стив Хиллард

  Enter Mirkwood, the Great Forest of Doubt Bold new author Steve Hillard's wildly original debut, Mirkwood, re-invents J.R.R. Tolkien as a man haunted by the very myths he rewove into his famous works. As much literary criticism as boisterous epic, this episodically-driven plot explores the blurred borderlands where ancient tales, lost heroines, and epic journeys are stalked by dim monsters that will not be still. In 1970, Professor Tolkien makes a little-known visit to America-and sets in motion elvish powers embodied in a cache of archaic documents. Destinies are altered, legends become real, and two heroines must race for their lives in vastly different worlds.

  Mirkwood: A Novel About JRR Tolkien

  Mirkwood: A Novel About JRR Tolkien, Heroines,

  And Exodus from Middle Earth

  Or

  Pardon Me, Did You Just

  Come Through That Portal?

  Steve Hillard

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, save those allowed by fair use, is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  To my own grandfather Jess, who while distinct from the Scissor Sharpener, shared with him a country man’s eye and an authentic sense of adventure.

  To my children, Jessica, Scott and Stephanie, who sat abed as we read aloud the entire Lord of the Rings. It was they who asked the question: “So, where are the heroines?”

  To my best friend, Dennis, the original proprietor of the Mirkwood Forest.

  To my assistant, Veronica, who braved all the edits.

  To Professor Tolkien, whose work inspires generations to tempt a secret gate and travel yon bonny road…to fair Elfland.

  And finally, to my wife Rosita, who paced my progress with a rigorous and loving eye, and encouraged me to do the most important thing: finish the book.

  The curious history of the “Tolkien Documents”, witnessed herein as fully as can be restored, is based on translations, journals, tapes, and interviews with those principally involved. How those sources have been placed in sequence — both amenable to the reader and probative of their authenticity — will be made clear in the reading. You may probe for the truth yourself, but take care. A tale can be a dangerous thing.

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  J.R.R. Tolkien — Reknowned Author and Professor

  Jess Grande — Proprietor of The Mirkwood Forest

  Cadence Grande — Granddaughter of Jess

  Mel Chricter — Media Agent

  Osley — No Data Found

  Bossier Thornton — Assistant Detective

  Brian de Bois-Gilbert — French Forensics Expert

  Aragranassa (Ara) — Female Hafling

  Pazal — Wraith

  Barren — Assassin

  The Dark Lord — Just As You Might Imagine

  BOOK I

  These creatures live to me as I am creating them. Twere I to finish, they would become wooden, lacking in life. Thus, the tale must go on. It is, after all, one belonging to all who would but participate and find its first steps, beside a secret gate.

  — J.R.R. Tolkien, Letters

  If ever a name signified a realm of dangerous enchantment, it is “Mirkwood,” The Great Forest of Doubt, whose pedigree of reference extends back 800 years in the known literature.

  — Franz J. Heibowitz, The Mythical Forest

  Through Mirkwood to fulfill their fates, the young fairy maidens flew.

  — Eddic Lays (Icelandic, 13th Century)

  Chapter 1

  1970: AN ARRIVAL

  As he deplaned at what was then Idlewild Airport, the old man was scarcely recognizable as the chipper Merton Professor of Anglo-Saxon Literature who enthralled his students at Oxford. His lively gait had slowed to a shamble. He hugged a barrister’s document case, its contents bulging, its latch reinforced with knots of twine. His flashing brown eyes retreated beneath brows that sprouted like dark, untended weeds.

  He shuffled through a turnstile at customs, glanced at himself in a mirror, and cut his eyes away. His gaze returned to study his image in the glass. Gone were the smile creases that always radiated from those eyes. The forehead, usually noble, now mapped a gulag of deepened liver spots. His hair, typically a groomed roller of white-capped gray, retreating as if into some mythical northern sea, now splayed out like moldy hay.

  Why be surprised? he thought.

  His trans-Atlantic sleep had been elusive, shattered by dreams of menace and chase. It distilled, as always, into the nightmare of the giant spider — the apparition that haunted him since he was bitten as a child in his native South Africa.

  Moments before, as the plane banked in approach, he had glimpsed the Manhattan skyline rising through a pinkish, fog-shoaled dawn. The World Trade Center towers, each under construction and exotically aglow, regarded him like outlandish stalks bearing glassy, multi-faceted eyes. His muse of myth and language hovered near. Watchers, she had whispered, guardians over secret gates.

  He weaved through the crowds to arrive at baggage claim. He felt panicked, as if slipping unmoored into a churning river of people and unintelligible loudspeaker announcements. Two awkward turns and he finally saw the sign. Taxis, yes. He fumbled in various pockets and pulled out a note. Despite being jostled, he stood his ground. He held the note outstretched in one hand while his other hand clutched the barrister’s case tightly to his chest. On the note was typed:

  Algonquin Hotel. 59 W. 44th Street. Four nights

  Someone, perhaps his wife Edith or his travel agent, had hand-written below this, “Nice place for writers, a favorite of your fellow Inklings.” Then the typeface continued:

  Columbia University. 116th and Broadway. Department of Old English Studies.

  A final notation was scrawled in his own eccentric hand: “See Os! West Inn (?) Bar. Beware Myrcwudu.”

  He crumpled the paper against his chest, put it back in his pocket, gathered his other bag, and set out in the direction of the taxi sign.

  John Ronald Reuel Tolkien steeled himself. Go now and bar this fell gate, the muse breathed. Before it is too late!

  For a man about whose life it would be observed, “after 1925, nothing much happened,” this lion of letters trudged in fear for the first time since he was eighteen at the Battle of the Somme.

  Chapter 2

  2008–2009: DOCUMENTS

  Thirty-eight years after Professor Tolkien came to America, the last connecting thread to his visit hummed, taut as a tripwire, across a razor’s edge.

  In a canyon on the outskirts of Los Angeles, in an unlit room, sat the soulless thing. It adjusted its dark cloak and hood. Its gnarled hands, one bearing a heavy ring dulled by long wear, moved a sharpening stone in a slow, steady rhythm. The stone ground against a steel blade with a sound like teeth grating against chalkboard.

  On and on. Screech and scrape. Back and forth.

  The Wraith Pazal relished the exquisite sharpness of the blade. He could take all the time in the world.

  Eventually, six feet of freshly honed steel gleamed across the kitchen table spread with a worn red calico tablecloth. The sword was notched on one edge, its grain interwoven with ghostly, writhing images. Next to it, Abbott and Costello (in the guise of salt and pepper shakers) observed with horrified mirth. Beside them, a table top chorus line of mint-condition Barbies gestured from their original boxes like game show presenters.

  Bud and Lou, the mint-in-box Barbies, the hooded figure, the great sword — all
convened in stillness. The clocks — even the owner wasn’t sure how many there were — ticked and chimed and tocked as if in harmony with the dark and rustling woods outside.

  This moment waited for Jess Grande to come home to his leaning, weathered, creaky, dusty — in all, very Topanga-like — little business establishment cantilevered over the creek and known as The Mirkwood Forest. In fact, the Forest, as locals called it, was in its very dustiness and leaning and weathered façade, a perfect reflection of Jess.

  Almost luckily, he was late.

  Because it wasn’t just another fall night.

  It was Halloween.

  As midnight approached, Jess arrived at the door. He stood and listened for a long time. He wrestled out his keys and struggled in clinks and rattles with the wobbly lock bolt. He opened the door and stepped inside. Even before the door snicked shut, he felt the silence. Every clock had stopped. He quickly reached beside the door and hefted his walking stick, sturdy companion and fearless “equalizer” for thousands of miles and at least a score of brawls in unnamed saloons and forgotten diners along lonesome highways. He stood ready. The moment, timeless and unmeasured, ran on and on, as if a hushed and expectant mist were gathering. Faraway, something bellowed and cursed.

  It may have been seconds, perhaps hours, before pain ripped away the fog and he could again think clearly.

  The unexplained wound in his leg seeped an exquisite stream of fire. He hobbled in the colorless light of the gallery. A table fell over. Glass broke and pointless knick-knacks clattered across the floor. Like an incongruous yellow night-moth, a telegram flimsy fluttered down to rest briefly in a swath of moonlight that revealed:

  Cadence: I would like Topanga. We have much won’t leave you.

  Jes

  The flimsy lifted again, escaping his shambling steps and hiding beneath an over-stuffed chair.

  The night of meeting finally had come. Each desperate, lunging step down the hall, each year of the long parade of the last decades, each unexplained late-night sound jerking him awake to a heart-pounding vigil in the dark — all presaged this moment.

  A voice spoke, as if far away but approaching fast, “Sharpener, halt!” A glimmering sword point flashed by him.

  He stopped, exhausted, leaning against the wall. Outside, to the squirrels hovering in branches, a pale flicker swept through the interior of the Forest.

  Inside, Jess sweated and faced his pursuer. The hooded figure was large, standing impossibly there in the prosaic reality of this money losing, two-bit, little nostalgia shop.

  The voice came in a low hiss. “You possess a tale not of your hand, entrusted to you by thieves!”

  “I … own them. They’re just some old scrolls.” Even as he said this, Jess felt the sinking weight of a long dormant falsehood finally being confronted.

  “Do not trifle with me, Sharpener. Give me the Book!”

  Jess remembered the grey-and-white haired old man who had given it to him, the promises made, the secrets long kept, the miles and miles traveled since then. He remembered the little wound of the mind, unhealed through the years, that someday, somehow, to someone, he would have to answer for what he possessed.

  That moment had come.

  “I destroyed it,” he said, summoning a reserve of false courage.

  “Your lie befits your life. Will you grovel now? Will you watch us take the girl, the only precious you have left?”

  Jess’s walking stick was inexplicably missing. He stood empty-handed before the intruder, flat-footed and defenseless.

  The flashing sword point rose, poised to plunge deep into his chest, and open the throbbing sack of his heart. As the blade readied for the final thrust, he could almost feel the sharp entry, the chill serum of the burning ice of stars pouring in. The hood of his attacker flared, and Jess felt the last staccato tugs of reality shredding free at the seams. It was, ironically, as he had always suspected.

  He almost submitted to the trance, but then fixed on the hateful words: “take also the girl”.

  No way, he thought, not my granddaughter. She’s on her way! He held on, trying to think of a plan. Any plan. In the end it wasn’t elegant but it would do.

  He fell back through the doorway into the next room, scrambling to find an iron handle set flush in the floor. His hands, blind as moles, found the heavy metal ring and pulled hard. A cover lurched open and Jess dove head first into the black abyss. The cover fell back with a solid, close-fitting thump.

  Pazal stepped into the doorway and paused, searching in the darkness that to him was as the noonday sun. His prey had disappeared!

  The great sword swung in an arc and crashed into the doorframe, spraying wood and cleaving a rent inches deep in the cheap doorframe.

  Along the creek side beneath the trapdoor, the brush rustled as Jess — once known as the Scissor Sharpener — scrambled for his life. He would again travel the long gray road of anonymity.

  Behind him a restless wind, precursor to a coming storm, seethed through the trees. A tide of clouds covered the night. The tiny shop stood silent and empty.

  * * *

  As fall next returned, the missing man’s granddaughter sat on a pleasantly cool Saturday morning at a creek side table on the grounds of the Topanga Commune Organic Restaurant. The table was a half-mile upstream from the Forest. Cadence Grande smiled at the clusters of birds that sang in accompaniment to the low burble of Topanga creek. She had a bright, happy face, framed with shiny black hair bobbed pixie-fashion. A face attractive, if not beautiful, as much for what it said as for its features. A tailored nose and a wide mouth quick to smile, but it was her green eyes that truly spoke. They were arresting, settling firmly on whomever was talking to her, not flitting away. Normally, they said that here was a studier, a person of confidence and resolve. If they now flashed an occasional beacon of cynicism, it was because nothing had been normal since her arrival in Topanga last fall.

  As she arranged her table, a tall pony-tailed waiter approached, doing his best Billy Jean dance steps along the flagstone pathway.

  “How’s Miss Pixie today”? He wiped his hands on his apron already floured and spotted with the morning’s bread making. “The usual?”

  “Good morning, John. That would be great. How’s business?”

  “Not bad, unless you got bills.”

  She thought for a second. “Ah, do I know that one. Can’t pay them, can’t ignore them.”

  He laughed, left, and returned quickly. He presented her with a scone and the signature coffee procured, so the menu boasted, from a tiny Zapatista village deep in Chiapas.

  She sat and had her breakfast. It dawned on her, as it often did these days, that she was sitting alone. Not for lack of friends, great and true friends. Not even counting the seventy-plus on Facebook. Not for lack of men either. She had been in a serious relationship, but it hadn’t worked out. Now she was seeing a pragmatic young man named Bruce.

  No, the alone part was a deeper feeling, something that lurked beneath and unbalanced her confidence, like a giant squid brushing the keel of a becalmed sailboat.

  The truth was, like many arrivals in Los Angeles (or, in her case, re-arrivals after a long absence), Cadence had begun to see her life as a movie. Ridiculous but true. And it helped. Helped to put into perspective the main scenes. Her father dead since she was fourteen, his interrupted presence somehow still around here in Topanga. A man whose own death he would imagine as an ongoing journey of the soul. Her mother, gone two years now. A woman whose own demise she would hold to be an unaccountable accident disrupting a practical plan. The dreamer and the to-do lister. They couldn’t have been more different.

  Of course, at this point, Cadence didn’t get to ask them any more questions.

  She let the movie roll to the next scene. Every time it played, it was shocking. Her mother reaching out with shrunken, bird-claw hands. Sitting bedside, Cadence could feel the hot malignancy, loose and raving, burning through the last timbers of her mother’s life
. A conflagration so extravagant, so unconscionable, as to be beyond reckoning.

  And it wasn’t the first fire to scorch Cadence’s psyche. The truth was, deep down, Cadence hated fire. As surely and profoundly as Ahab abhorred his whale.

  She combed her hair back with her fingers. It was a new habit, impatient as if trying to sweep away the mental haze that intruded on her since returning to Los Angeles. A brume with a faint tang of burning, like the acrid tinge of smoke from an over-the-horizon inferno. She knew exactly when her inner nose first detected it.

  She let the last real of her movie play.

  Scene Six. Cadence, the orphan, arrives in Los Angeles. She is filled with hope. She finds a big surprise. Her grandfather Jess, her last known family member, is inexplicably gone. It isn’t the shock, or the guilty moment of bitterness. It is the empty feeling. No, a chasm. Hell, it is the Marianas Trench, the Challenger Deep, the Valles Marineris of empty feelings. Maybe melodramatic, but when she looks over that straight-falling edge into the abyss it eats up everything. Just at the moment she found a reason, a foothold, in her grandfather’s urgent telegram, the ground beneath her had fallen away. The owner of so many answers to so many unanswered questions … vanished. Only that tinge of mental smoke hanging in the air.

  Oh Baloney! Cut the drama and get a grip!

  Thank God for the inner voice of her mother’s mops-and-brooms wisdom. That would carry her past all this. She took a deep breath and looked at the table.

  Before her lay her folio sketchbook, along with something new in her life: a pile of fifth graders’ papers. This was good. She relaxed into a smile, thinking of the quirky innocence of her students.