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

something of that tale. The point is that the Vow was given, a deal was sealed. The rest we’ll never know now.”

“Like a get out of jail free card. Or the Letters of Transit in Casablanca.”

“Except this was real.”

Cadence relaxed her watchful eye and laughed from a depth of peace that surprised her. “Yeah. Real. I believe … for real.”

* * *

That night the man once known as Barren ate somewhere at three in the morning sitting on a stool in a diner called The Eat. After that, he walked out and hitched a ride to anywhere.

Anywhere ended up being Texas City, Texas. He stood at night on a bridge over a dredged canal, beneath a drooping yellow sky.

There it was, a vast world clear to the hazy horizon of interweaving pipelines, tanks sized from hills to horses, valves, gauges, flanges, heat exchangers, absorbers, pumps, containment pits, shacks and metal buildings, all overlaid with soot and black pools of oil and water and crud. Behold a wonder, a hundred, nay a thousand, giant flares whooshing, roaring, lighting anew like a never-ending fireworks display. He stood there, his pupils wide with awe, the flares reflecting in his eyes like a coal sack of troll candles.

The next night he was far away. The sky dark as upon it floated a barnacled moon sculling on a flow-tide of black clouds. He pulled the small leather pouch from within his shirt and opened it as it hung from the cord around his neck. He dug deep with his fingers, as if trying to catch a living thing. Finally he pulled out his hand and opened his fist. There gleamed a simple ring, silver-hued, almost smoky in color. Its only adornment was the restless flow of rich, satiny hues in its surface, like the folds of a wizard’s robe.

He had not looked at it until this moment. He had kept it secure in its pouch. He suspected it had an august heritage, perhaps once intended by the Dark Lord for some unsuspecting king, some future wraith. He knew to wear it was perilous so long as he walked within the reach of that power.

But now he felt beyond that realm. His errand he had acquitted well. The meddlesome fragments of Elvish, including much of the Tale of Ara, were now cast out to their destruction. A shame, but unavoidable if he was to, as they say here, be his own man. He knew that the ring was responsible for the quicksilver increase in his ability to learn and speak their language. Perhaps magic would come of it. He took it from his palm and put it on his left index finger.

He breathed deep and focused on his surroundings.

The night was coming. He stood in the middle of a crossroads over which trees leaned, so massed and drooped with kudzu as to be unrecognizable except as the hulking shapes of night ogres. A few late fireflies played in the boughs and made momentary eyes among the leaves.

Here, he thought, is a place where souls pay an evil tithe or be taken.

He imagined the crunch of gravel, forewarning a legion of his otherselves trudging the road this sultry night, coming to each take back their piece of him.

He looked about, pondering the itinerant’s question: whether some escape, some secret gate lay within these bordering thickets.

He knew that world and those times were gone, and no escape waited in this world.

With that, he chose a direction and began to walk swiftly away. He accelerated to an easy jog, his aspirations high. In his head played the theme from Shaft, the sixteen-note Motown high hat, Isaac Hayes funking up the tempo. “Whoo is the man …”

He had a further errand to attend to. A bit of evening things up. Something he alone had devised.

In a moment he was at a distance from the crossroads, another itinerant disappearing forever into the Great American Night.

Chapter 43 PIECES

The Topanga Commune Organic Restaurant had changed the menu — out with the squash and corn, in with the broccoli and spinach. The creek burbled. The overhanging oaks, brown-leaved and asleep, waited for spring.

Cadence had a letter sitting on the table in front of her.

“Go ahead,” said Jess, nodding at it.

They often spent lunch hours here. Sometimes talking, sometimes just letting the time pass. These moments wouldn’t last, they both knew, but they were important for now.

“OK,” she said, and opened the envelope from the Los Angeles School District. It was an offer for a full-time position teaching fifth grade, beginning in September. Yes, fifth grade. The age when a child’s ability to project and believe takes root or begins to wither in a long, weedy path of self-disappointment.

She wanted to work in that garden. She had a week to decide.

She handed the letter to Jess and said, “What do you think?”

He read the letter. “Take it. You should stay here.”

These days they talked like the reunited orphans they were, piecing together fragmented bits of a family. They knew that some pieces, a lot really, were missing forever. Others were being fitted together — cracked fragments of an enigmatic picture that was her father. Little details, tears, regrets, laughing. A lot of guilt de- crusted and examined and then put aside, like odd jigsaw pieces that you can worry over forever, or just throw over your shoulder and get on with the rest of the puzzle.

He summed up a lot of the pieces in a few sentences. “I never knew my natural parents. Osley is my adopted name. I made myself up out of whole cloth after that. The name ‘Grande’? I got it from a dingy little coffee shop. In Seattle in 1970. A Starbucks, maybe the original one, trying to survive after the folk-music coffee house era They got their name from Melville’s first mate to Ahab. I took the name of their drink size. I never knew who to tell. Even Arnie. I never told anyone. So what’s a name?”

“That’s poor comfort a couple of generations later, Grandpa, but well, I guess we’re in good company. Even Tolkien borrowed names.”

“Maybe we should change it.”

She laughed. “Hardly, I like it. I was born with it. I’m keeping it. So are you. This is all just gonna stick from now on. OK?”

“OK.”

“After all …”

“What?”

“A name is a promise that something exists. It’s strange, but for the first time in my life I feel that way about myself.”

The pony-tailed waiter, John, came and cleared their table. They ordered a shared pot of the tea of the day, specially imported from some Malaysian village.

She looked at Jess. “So what did you decide about the Forest? Are you, we, going to keep it open?”

“I think so. It keeps things interesting. For me it’s like, well, traveling without leaving home. The old weirdness of the road sometimes just walks in the front door.”

“Grandpa. There are some things we haven’t talked about.”

“Really? Because we’ve done a lot of talking.”

“I know, but I wanted to wait a bit.” She looked at him, studying his eyes. “Did Ara deserve to be erased? Like a traitor?”

His look of astonishment was genuine. “What do you mean? She was a heroine. She saved them all.”

“But the record from Frighten, the account of her betrayal?”

“Rubbish. That was a snippet, a passing black cat that can mislead you, a misguided fragment of history. Look, if future historians dug out a Leni Reifenstahl flick, like Triumph of the Will, from the rubble of our civilization, they’d think Hitler was a stern but benevolent guy who ruled the world. It’s all happenstance.” Then he stopped. “You never saw the last chapter that I left on the desk?”