Chapter 20
INKLINGS VI
Part of the recording of this session was corrupted by, of all things, a melted Cadbury bar. The transcript begins somewhere midway in the evening.
“… no great imagination to believe that there was once real magic in the world. What is certain is that it no longer exists, save perhaps in little glimmers of wonder. It was lost, shattered into fragments. And with that shattering the world changed. Heroes and their feats were fated to shrink to misunderstood words garbled into turns of phrase and dusty poems. Things of great moment became mere lists. Heraldic honor rolls became names without import, save to stir troublesome feelings of something sadly lost. We are left with vague recollections of more vibrant times when each day mattered. What say you to that, Tollers?”
“Quite so, Charles, but even if such was the fate of their feats and their names, their tales deserve better! My goal, at least, is to resurrect some of that moment before the Loss of Magic. Who knows, just as characters in a story sometimes know they are part of a tale, so all of us might someday be in a story. Even you, Jack!”
Laughter.
“Now the ale is full to your taps, that’s for sure.”
“And we would be idiots to believe our ramblings benefit anything other that the cleaning rag that will follow our empty glasses.”
“If any of our musings were remembered by the listening walls and this stout-hearted carving post of a table …”
“Better yet, recorded so your outlandish remarks could be tallied against you in the future, Ian!”
More laughter and indecipherable banters.
“Perhaps, but regarding one’s life as a story, whether ultimately preserved or in time utterly forgotten, is still not the worst of philosophies.”
“So, how are your actual writings coming, Tollers?”
“Not so well. I have aspired to write a ‘philosophical thriller.’ Something a bit deeper about the nature of reality, perhaps. Put all this myth and legend into a modern time, let the struggles happen in a contemporary world somehow connected to the old. Yes …”
“And, Tollers, just last week you said that in the fantasy world you visit in your tales …”
“I said, to be precise, ‘In that world you are not dreaming, you are in a dream of another’s weaving.’ The questioning of this story-cauldron is about perilous realms and their shadowy marches. To put a point on it, whether elves are true and exist independently of our tales.”
There is a moment of silence.
“Are you in jest, Tollers? You would have us believe that?”
“Your beliefs are your own, Ian, but I’ll wager a show of hands around the table will fall to the elves’ favor. Very well. Let’s see who agrees.”
Shuffling, mugs being put down, a rustle of clothes, mumbles of agreement.
“The bet also was for our bill, and so we’ll add another round to Ian’s burden before Miss Sarah sends us home!”
“Ha! Hear, hear!”
Laughter.
Chapter 21
OCTOBER 24. AFTERNOON
After more hours of brooding concentration and scribbling, Osley began to open up. “Ara definitely is on an epic journey, headed south. Here’s a typical passage that I can pretty much read on its face. Bear with me.”
He held up the page and read it to Cadence.
Ara struck due south and before she realized it, she was lost in Myrcwudu, the great remnant wellspring of mighty Mirkwood itself! A darker forest, perhaps, than what may lie even in the full depths of that haunted realm. All life that could flee, even the great spiders, had long ago abandoned this drear world. She stumbled forward in the pervading gloom that would not give back its pathways.
To either side were immense, desiccated tree trunks, like beings frozen in writhing torment. Their numbers faded into the mist. At her feet, the leaves rustled like a living membrane as they parted to create a track before her and forever close the one behind. She had no choice but to go on. Hafoc flitted from branch to branch, afraid to fly more than a few feet and nervous at resting on the old limbs that seemed to reach out with grasping fingers.
She trod warily, resigned to the single, winding track the forest offered. She sensed that time was forgotten here. In the far world outside this gloom, events would run their due course and leave her far behind. The waxing moon would grow and gloat over the trap set for the Bearer. He was already moving fast to his fate while she was caught in the black heart of the Forest of Doubt.
Here the unlucky traveler contended with the most terrible of foes. Not the dim murk that seemed to flow before her. Not the legendary troops of man-sized spiders that guarded the outer reaches. No, here she faced something darker and more subtle.
Hemmed in by fallen trunks that, to her, were as walls many times her height, shadowed by a murky gloom that only grew thicker, and watched by a presence implacable and unyielding, she quit the false trail. She crawled away and curled into a frightened ball. A veil fell across her eyes. A false veil, for it portrayed that her Amon was lost forever. She imagined his face, his eyes grey-hued like a morning mist with the sun shining through. Eyes she would never see again.
As the darker dark of evening came to Myrcwudu, a glistening fog seeped from the forest floor. It pooled in the dells and flowed among roots that spread like the gnarled fingers of dirtied and downfallen giants. Ara got up and stumbled, directionless, lost in a desolation of spirit that seemed to whisper, You are vile and pointless. An insect. Scurry now.
The terror of her insignificance built itself in her mind, like a cairn of rocks heaped up one by one. The very idea made her both fearful and infuriated. If it meant anything to be a Halfling from Frighten, it was to carry a wounded pride. She was wretched and thus she was dangerous. She tried to resist the fog, but it was unrelenting. She stopped, for no apparent reason, as a cockroach might, and waved the antennas of her soul in a desperate search for direction.
Myrcwudu’s answer was no answer.
She scurried forward. Deft footfalls paced on either side. Things unseen scuttled and rustled. Once, Ara heard, far ahead, a long, plaintive sound that was something between a whistle and a cry. But for the stillness, it might have been the saw of the wind through a knothole. She froze and waited, but its maker, if there was one, did not reveal itself.
The opalescent gloom thickened until she unconsciously put her hands in front of her, as if parting cobwebs. She had to find shelter. She peered and groped until she discovered a massive, upended tree. The base of the tree was covered with roots, like a snarl of dirty hair. She could just see within these a mouth-like entrance that beckoned her. She parted the roots and, heedless, put her head in the gaping mouth. She tumbled in. To her surprise, the interior was clean and dry. It felt safe. She summoned Hafoc to perch on a limb near the entrance and she squirmed inside. There she curled into the thin comfort of her cloak.
Huddled there, like some subterranean grub, Ara listened to the night sounds of Myrcwudu. It was an ominous, horrible orchestra. Whisperings of gibberish mixed with anguished cries, as of some passing column of sad and penitent beings. An owl screeched as it passed high overhead. A raucous warbling of some unknown bird cut through the ongoing creak and groan of the giant, ruined trees. In time, the haunted melody swirled into the eddies of her dreams.