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

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 somehow. 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