Cadence looked into the mirror of the train window and studied the part of her that were her dad’s features. His, of course, were an echo of the man whose journal she held. She unzipped a pocket on her backpack and took out a tinkling assemblage of keys and chains and little gewgaws, all of it anchored by a polished tooth four inches long and punctured by a hole with a small welded chain, looped though it.
A talisman with interrupted history.
Up till this moment, all she knew was that it had been her father’s. He used it for his truck key, but couldn’t find it that fateful day, so he grabbed the spare off the keyhook. The fire’s orange glow was already spilling over the canyon rim and sending Halloween shadows through the house as he gunned the truck and took off. She knew the story of the fire line and where it happened. She still had videotape of the news reports, including interviews with firefighters who had been there. One of them even spoke at the funeral.
Three years later she asked that man to tell her what really happened. He told her there were two dozen men and three pumper trucks lined up at the narrows at Old Topanga Canyon Road where a cluster of cabins stood. The canyon walls were steep, closing almost to creek side. The fire had already crested behind them so they couldn’t retreat more than a half mile. The fire crew chief said, “This is where we’ll fight.”
The fire was coming fast, the wind shifting and blowing its furnace-breath down the narrow sandstone corridor into their faces. Still unseen, the red monster stalked up around the canyon bend, its shadows dancing clear up the orange-lit walls. Then it turned the corner. It bellowed and raged like a furious living thing, then gathered force and marched forward.
They’d cut a line up the canyon sides, their fire hoses quickly draining a rubber dam placed in the creek. Three pumps sprayed huge plumes of water into the air, challenging the beast.
It stepped into the first plume. Hose-drenched trees erupted like match heads. The water boiled in the air as it arced, steam hissing as the beast thrust out a fiery arm. The spray only angered it, like acid on the back of rippling red flesh. It lashed out another tentacle, and the next moment they were surrounded on three sides by walls of Day-Glo red and orange.
Arnie was there. He had said he was going to help his friend defend his cabin. It was so like him, trying to do right but never getting it together. He was driven by something he could no more discern than a meteor understands its destiny before it flames out in the silent night sky.
Six men died that night — Arnie and five firemen. The fire finally grew impatient or bored, skirting a last piece of canyon and sparing the cabin en route to once again confront its old nemesis, the ocean.
Thinking about it rekindled her utter hatred for fire, the abomination, the true rough beast. The recurrent dragon that stalked her inner landscape.
Chapter 6
INKLINGS II
All evening the group had discussed issues of faculty and politics, and only at the end came about to literary topics.
“Jack, I want to return to this term ‘Mirkwood’, of which you are a fan. What does it mean to you?”
“Tollers, whose absence to the loo will at least allow me to get a word in, is the historical authority. But to me, it is the place where tracks disappear and no line of sight exists. Once you are in there, it becomes the Forest of Doubt.”
“Yes, Cambridge, exactly.”
“Now, now, let’s not stir up that rivalry.”
“Well, sounds like life sometimes.”
“Exactly, we all stray into Mirkwood now and again. Getting out, into the place where belief can exist and be a proper guide, is the trick”.
The sounds of footsteps, shuffling of chairs.
“So I heard you speak of Mirkwood. Bandying ancient words in my absence could be dangerous.”
“Well, then to you, Tollers, since you borrowed the term from Jack, what is the essence of Mirkwood?”
“Hah! He’s the pickpocket of my purse of ideas! But to your question, I’ll skip the lecture on its deeper roots, its role in Eddic Poetry, its references in Scott’s Waverly and elsewhere, and get to its essence. It is the physical embodiment of Elvish language.”
“Oh, well that’s a turn then! Anything else to add for those of us less learned in such?”
“Yes, we’ve heard you talk of both, but never together. What do they have in common?
“Elvish, I found, has aspects deeper and wider than I thought as I sought to, well, re-invent it. My poor linguistic attempts, Quenya and Sindarin, are just that. Real Elvish is far deeper and more mysterious. To call it a language is to gravely, perhaps dangerously, underestimate it. Elvish and Mirkwood are alike because each has paths that shift before you. Each beguiles and hides its truth. Dangerous things, Elvish and Mirkwood.”
“You seem to have some new thoughts on this. You were, ah, telling us last week about this … trove of documents?”
“Ah, yes, I suppose I did mention them. I’ve sorted a bit of it. It’s mostly a collection of bits of history that I’ve yet to decipher. The pages look as if they were torn out of many sources, Old English, more recent scribblings, and, the bulk of it, pieces of writing that indeed seem to be a form of Elvish. Curious, really. I’ll get to the bottom of it in due time.”
“Sort of an ancient clipping service, eh?”
A sigh of exasperation.
“I suspect, Edwin the Inquisitive, that it is more a bundle of writings about some forbidden topic, all literally ripped out of ancient libraries.
“And these are from … your ‘Middle Earth’?”
“Well, the name is not mine to begin with. It is a term of long pedigree — mittle-erde. It is found, surprisingly, in the earliest existing fragment of Old English we have, called Caedmon’s Hymn. A line that goes like this:
A softly spoken song, perhaps in Old English, is sung by Tolkien. There is a period of silence before he begins talking again.
“It means ‘Then the guardian of mankind the eternal Lord, the Lord Almighty, afterwards appointed the Middle Earth, the lands of men.’ It was scribed as the monk Caedmon sang it, aet mude, “from his mouth” in about 680 A.D. It is, put simply, our centered Northern World, with all its legends and myths. In a sense it springs fully developed from Beowulf where, if my count is correct, it is mentioned a dozen or more times. Indeed, if you recall from Jack’s reading of a few Tuesdays ago, even he has created adventures in a similar Middle Earth. Sadly, one peopled by his poor take on me. In any case, it is no one’s invention and no one’s property.”
“Returning to your find of these strange documents, they must have been someone’s property. How did they come to you?”
“Like an orphan, a changeling, left swaddled in a barrister’s valise on my front stoop.”
“Well, at least they were free.”
“Like you fancy this ale will be tonight, Edwin. Pony up the tab and let’s be off to home!”
Chapter 7
OCTOBER 18
After the stop in Salt Lake City, Cadence plumped her pillow, reclined the seat, and settled in for the moving picture show of cross-country rail travel. October rain splattered the window, soon to beget snow in the high country — that same day, in fact. The train labored up Soldier Summit, passing tight side valleys, some desecrated by mining waste. She watched one roll by, complete with a leaning wooden mill and tailings pile. New gingham curtains in the windows of a cabin were a poignant touch, though barely noticeable among the yard cars and wrecked pickups and a garden that had gone to yellow and droop with the first hard freeze. A trail of smoke cut sideways off the stovepipe chimney in the dank cold, as if it couldn’t leave this godforsaken place fast enough.