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

disappeared. Right after — out of the blue — she got the telegram. Yes, the old-fashioned yellow thing delivered for a price for people that distrusted phones, much less even understand the internet. It read:

Cadence: I would like to see you in Topanga. We have much to catch up on. I vow I won’t leave you.

Jess

It was short and awkwardly to the point. The word— “vow”—was particularly desperate. Like a drowning man yelling for help to the only person left on shore who might listen. And she’d arrived to find a disappearance. No pattern leading to renewal, no cycle to redemption. No answers to any of her questions.

She glided through the last turn before the beach. Dwarves. Spells. Things unstoppable. When there are no clues, everything is a signpost hidden in the overgrowth.

The only sure thing was the blue-margined court document peeking from under the valise in the back seat. “Essentially an overdue bill,” her lawyer, Everett, had told her. “Pay two hundred thousand dollars within thirty days or your grandfather’s estate will be seized and liquidated and the money shelled out to his creditors.”

That would be it for the Forest, this car, his documents, all of it. After foreclosure and one hell of a garage sale, what would be left? Zip. Nada. The man might as well have never existed. The last trace of him snuffed out of existence before she could even get a handle on him. An erased person, she thought, except for me and his bills.

She downshifted catching the green at the light to Highway One, and glanced at the dashboard clock. It told her she risked being late for the lunch she’d pulled every string she had to set up.

Soon she was stuck in traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard, at what must be the world’s slowest intersection. The reason was obvious. Huge billboards, upgraded to full digital displays, loomed like monstrous, angry televisions over a sea of gawking drivers. People weren’t driving, they were watching. The screens closest to her advertised the newest, epic remake of Tarzan. It flashed the word “Ju Ju” in immense red letters and she could just hear, over the traffic noise, deep thuds of jungle drums emanating from the screen. She shook her head in disbelief, saw a sudden lane opening, and gunned ahead.

By the time she got access to Little Santa Monica Boulevard, missed the ivied entrance to the Peninsula Hotel, and inched around the block, she knew she’d have to dig deep into her purse and valet park. And still be late.

She pulled to a jumpy stop, handed the keys to the attendant, and opened her purse to deposit the valet ticket and gather her thoughts. She looked at her purse. It was from Macy’s, some obscure brand called “Borunda”, which sounded like a country in Africa. It cost twenty-five bucks. It had never held more than a few hundred dollars. In twenties. This purse that could never save her grandfather’s — her — property. She closed the latch and hefted the valise and tried valiantly to slow her nervous walk. She wanted to run. Her heels clacked as she entered the tiled foyer and saw the restaurant. “The Belvedere Restaurant in Beverly Hills”, to be exact. She tried to gather her thoughts. Everett told her that Mel had recently fallen on lean times, but still had one hell of a Rolodex. He was once a journeyman editor for a publishing house in New York. A description which suggested sepia-tinted days when stacks of manuscripts would wait patiently and whisper: Bide your time. A well-told tale is timeless.

A waiter escorted her to a table flanked by palms amidst the gauzy, canopied white light of the restaurant veranda. At the table loomed Mel. He was twiddling a business card. A hefty amber drink and an iPhone sat by his right hand. He had a face made for print media. Thinning hair, angular features that formed a kind of broken reef, in the middle of which rose a prominent, craggy island of a nose, a great bumpy nose, long-battered by waves of single malt scotch. He had peculiar blue eyes, like the ocean, like salt and wind and sun-fade. They beckoned in the peculiar way of a very perceptive drunk. He looked as if he had squinted and seen some distant light, some rare existential truth, through the bleary long lens of booze and ill fortune.

She recognized the look. From long ago, from her own dad’s eyes. Cadence smiled nervously at Mel across the breeze-rippled tablecloth.

Calmly, he continued to twiddle Everett Marlowe’s business card. Everett, Mel’s roommate at Duke, Class of ’83, was Cadence’s attorney as administrator for the estate of her grandfather, recently declared “Missing, Presumed Deceased.” The lawyer was, as they say out here, a close personal friend of Mel-the-Agent.

Suddenly, like a conductor’s initial baton flourish, Mel tapped the card on the table and poised it in the air. He turned his right side toward her and his right eye gave a peculiar knowing squint, like that of an old conniving pirate. It was a look that offered intimacy and demanded candor. “So … Cadence,” he paused. “Everett told me about you and your … interesting find. But first about you. You’re just out of school?”

“Yes. I graduated last year from Colorado State … University.” She felt more secure adding that last part. “I was an art student, with a film studies minor.”

“I see.” His iPhone came alive and vibrated across the tab-letop. Mel’s hand deftly silenced it. “Cleveland State. Fine school.” She grimaced like a good alum, but held her tongue. He glanced at some text on the screen. “You got family?”

This was awkward territory for her, but that engaging eye made her feel she could confide in him.

“No, not really. My mom passed away two years ago. My dad, he … died when I was younger. So my eccentric grandfather was it. And now he’s disappeared.” Mel put Everett’s card down and took a drink as he studied it, as if there were still some deeper meaning to its sparse information. Cadence looked into the depths of her iced tea for some normal conversational tidbit to throw out. Finding none, she waited until he looked up, again with the narrowed eye, and spoke.

“Everett said you have something interesting to show me.”

She fumbled with the valise, nestled like a Pomeranian on her lap. “Well, yes, I found … my grandfather had these manuscripts, actually.” She dug into the papers in the valise. “I found all this in a peach crate in his attic. I, it, I think it’s … some of it’s by J.R.R. Tolkien.”

“Hmm. You and everyone else wish they could find just that. I’ll share some things with you in a bit. Hmm.”

A cloud passed over the seaswept atoll that was Mel’s face. He looked at her like this fifty-buck breakfast at the Belvedere was a very expensive use of his very valuable time. In other words, The Big Favor was being bestowed. It was time for her to deliver.

She ransacked the valise for a moment, stopped and looked at a small, brittle page with hand-written lines, then thrust it at him. Mel sighed and took the page. He squared in his seat and put on his reading glasses and his eyes began to track down the yellowed scrawl. Ever so slowly, his focus steadied as he read:

I fear that I no longer have the will to withstand their presence. They conspire to have me destroy all that is contained in these writings. Much of it they believed destroyed long ago. Now they will spare nothing. They will return. So that these pages are not snatched from my own hand, I hereby set them, through my new friend and purveyor of sharpening services, into what I hope will be a sea of conflicting currents and untraceable tides. On these shores in New York City, I hereby gift these manuscripts to Jess Grande for safekeeping.

JRRT

Mel’s right eye inquired of the worn leather valise, pondering the raggedy shoulder strap attached with bits of tie-dyed cloth.

“So what else is in there?”

Cadence looked up, her hand already forearm-deep in the documents. She swept out another page, this one torn and frayed as if it had spent years trapped in the corner of a desk drawer. Mel took it and read:

The halfling entered his room, quietly humming the singsong tune of the elderly. The sun slanted in, motes of golden dust in the air and a perfectly halfling-sensible bed looking out of place amongst the draperies and refinements of the chamber. A robed and hooded figure was sitting there. On his bed! With his book! His special precious book. The figure was tearing out pages and smearing others with a sheep’s wool wad of ink.

“I beg your pardon sir, but you are intruding in my quarters!” Anger rose in the halfling’s chest now. Then the figure looked up and pulled back his hood.

“Old friend,” sighed the wizard. “I left you to tell the tale, not dress our fellowship in wasted details.”

“Details? What may those be?”