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

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 facade, 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.

* * *