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

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 force, 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