Books in "The Winter House Trilogy"
Snowstorm
Icebreak
Melted
Author's Note: This first book follows the plot and events of the Fellowship of the Ring (the movie). I've simplified it, fixed some parts and added my own little twists to it here and there. All rights go to Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Warner Bros, Peter Jackson, yeah, you get the picture. I only own Millie, Samantha, Marley, and Elizabeth. Enjoy the story, please read and review, and no flames, thank you.
...So, if you haven't noticed, I am revising and editing this story that everyone adores. I am enjoying my little revising process, and with summer coming up, I figure this would be a good time to do this. I hope you all enjoy!
-Luv2Dream1212
PS: The LOTR characters don't come in until Chapter 2, they're mentioned, but don't actually appear, sorry for any inconvenience. Also, there are many references to "The Summer Room" in this, as this story comes after it anyway.
CHAPTER 1
EXPLORING GONE WRONG
"Well girls (and guys) here we are." said Dad, when we pulled up to a large, 2-story vacation house in a clearing in the snowy woods. My dad's four-wheel-drive parked right out to the side of the house.
"Dad," I said, "You do realize that we are adult women now and you're still calling us girls?" I questioned.
"You forgot about me." Chimed the familiar male voice of my best guy friend Marley, normal in pitch as most men, whilst it had been very high when he was a teen.
"...And grown men." I finished.
"You're still my little girl." He smiled. I smiled back.
"Mill, you didn't tell me your vacation house was in the middle of the woods." Intervened my friend, Elizabeth, from the back seat, seeming disappointed.
"Oh, c'mon Liz, I'm sure it'll be awesome." said my other best friend, Samantha (Sam) from her spot next to her.
"How come you intervene," said Elizabeth jokingly, "You haven't taken your face out of that book since we hit the road."
"Lord of the Rings is amazing," she replied, "Especially Samwise."
"Yeah it is and we all know you're madly in love with Sam." I said before getting out of the car. They followed me. We opened the trunk to get out our suitcases; spending New Year's here at our winter getaway house in Tahoe with my friends was going to be fun.
"And I suppose Frodo and Boromir have something to say about that?" said Sam. Elizabeth snickered.
Marley rolled his eyes from the seat beside me, "I see things haven't changed since middle school."
"Oh, shut up Marshal," Sam, his fraternal twin sister replied, "We are entitled to say what we want."
"...and how about Legolas?" I replied, "Does he have a complaint?"
Elizabeth glared at us before grabbing her pillow. I smiled, we'd all been friends since 7th grade and now we were sophomores in college. That was a grand total of nearly eight years.
"You guys are hilarious," said my dad, "C'mon, your mom, your sisters, and your brother are already inside." he said to me before leading us inside.
The house had a comfy feeling; it looked like the inside of a log cabin. It had a fireplace and mounted buck antlers above it. It smelled like wood, cedar, and cinnamon and the floors were wooden, save for the rug thrown out in the middle of the room.
"C'mon, I'll show ya'll upstairs to our rooms." I said, before heading up, the three of them trailing behind. All four doors stood side by side.
"Ooo," said Liz.
"Fancy," said Sam when I'd opened the door to one of the rooms. There was a small entertainment stand with a TV on it, a queen sized bed, a night stand with a lamp and above the bed, a painting of a black bear fishing on a river. There was also a small closet on one side and a window on the other.
"Who wants this one?" I asked.
"Me, I do." said Elizabeth. She put her suitcase in her closet before stripping off her outerwear (jacket, scarf, hat, and gloves) and hung them up. She had curly red hair pulled back in a braid now and had on her maroon sweater that had been of our high school spirit wear. It had gold lettering on it and a gold outline of a powerful mountain lion jumping with claws outstretched, brown fur boots and jeans. We turned off the light and closed the door before heading down to the left hand side and opened the door to Sam's room, it was identical to Elizabeth's room, save for the painting, which was a herd of deer in a forest in autumn. She dropped her stuff before we headed to Marley's room, which was also identical, except that the painting was of a rushing river. He put down his stuff and hopped into the bed.
"I assume you're not moving." Sam verbalized.
"Nope." He replied.
"Lazy ass. Well okay, but dinner's in a few."
"Whatevs." He replied.
Next, we walked into my room and deposited my stuff. My room looked just like the other ones except the painting was of a wolf back striding through the snow.
Once we'd all put down our stuff, it was dinner time for everyone.
Now, let me introduce us, I'm Amelia Lorena Reed, Millie. I have longish length, wavy auburn/ strawberry blonde hair and light blue eyes. Today I had on a light-green and white striped knit sweater, over a white camisole top, jeans, and light brown Converse boots with pink laces. I'm 19 years old. I'm 5'5.
Then, there's Elizabeth Maria Douglas (Liz or Lizzie), she has blue eyes and she's 20 years old. As already stated she had wild curly red ringlets, which come down to about her shoulders. She is 5'4
Next, there's Samantha Vinnie Carlyle (Sam). She had brown eyes and long, brown hair. She was wearing a long-sleeved purple shirt, jeans and black fur boots. She's 19 like me. She stands at 5'1.
Finally there's Marshal Grayson Carlyle. He's six feet tall and he has shaggy brown hair and brown eyes. Today he had on his signature blue jeans and a black sweatshirt. He's 19, of course. Elizabeth is a little older than us. However, although we are all technically adults we still have the mind-set of year 9 teenagers. So, in all honesty, we aren't exactly mature and we still have fun, for God sakes, even Christmas is still exciting.)
By the way, Sam, Marley, and I wear glasses.
After dinner, we decided to do some wandering through the halls. Exploring, if you will. I showed them my parent's room and my sibling's rooms, my sisters Nikki and Rose shared one with a bunk bed and Johnny, my little brother got to sleep on the couch pull out bed in the living room. Yeah, my dad wasn't really paying attention to counting when we bought the house, but since we normally bring guests when we're up here, having 5 rooms is OK. Anyway, we headed through the halls when we came upon a door that'd I'd never seen before at the end of the hallway downstairs.
"I never knew we had an extra door here." I said. "Hmm," I slowly turned the knob and the door creaked open, revealing a long, dark staircase. "What the Bloody Mordor?" I said, referencing Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings at the same time, (I'm famous for that), "Sam, lemme' see your flashlight." I said. She unfastened the blue mini flashlight form her belt loop and gave it to me. I turned it on and shined it down the steps. "C'mon guys." I said.
"You mean," Elizabeth froze, "Down there?"
"No, to the bathroom, yes down there!" said Marley sarcastically.
"I don't know-" But Sam and I were already headed down the creaky stairs.
"The things I do for my friends." muttered Elizabeth before heading downstairs after us, and Marley trailed behind.
Downstairs was cold, dark, and dusty and it looked as if no one had been down there for a long time. When we got to the bottom, I briefly shined the flashlight around; the place looked as if it'd once been an office of some sort. Piles of papers and dusty books were littered about the room and in one corner stood an old bookshelf, and next to it, a desk. On the desk stood something that looked like a diary and some old fashioned pens next to it and an old candle whose wax was nearly gone and an old fashioned pipe layed neatly next to the candle. There was also a chair.
I walked over to the chair and opened the diary. On the first page was written, barley readable, scraped in ink, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Outline by J.R.R Tolkien. Interested I turned to the first page, to what appeared to be the titles of the books in order, "The Hobbit", "The Fellowship of the Ring", "The Two Towers", "The Return of the King". On the next page there was what appeared to be a synopsis of each book.
"Guys, come look at this." I said to my friends. They rushed over and peered over my shoulders.
"It's the outline for the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings." said Sam. I continued to turn the pages to the cast of characters, plus descriptions, several pages for each book.
"He must have been an organized person." said Elizabeth.
"Not a neat writer though." Sam put in from her spot where she had begun to search the bookshelves, until she pulled out a large, heavy, thick dusty book with a leather brown cover and a black ribbon for a bookmarker, "Look at this." she lifted the outline from the desk and set the book on top. She blew some dust from the cover, it read, The Hobbit & the Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien. We opened the book and began to skim the pages.
"Are you guys thinking what I'm thinking?" I asked.
"No kidding," said Elizabeth, "It's the original copy of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings."
"Not original, original," said Sam, "The first typed copy."
"If everything's here in this basement, that only means one thing," said Liz.
"This is where Tolkien wrote the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, all of his books, in this very place, this very house." I said.
"This must have been where he used to live..
but why are all of his writings down here?" Sam asked.
"The people who cleaned out the house put all of this down here without even bothering to look at it because they were too lazy to deal with it." I answered.
"I suppose, but why here in Tahoe?" Elizabeth replied.
"Who knows, but this stuff is amazing." said Sam.
"Can you imagine how much money we could get out of this?" Marley put in.
"No," I said, "Don't even think about it, this stuff is important and special and I don't think Tolkien would ever want to sell it."
"Then what do you suggest we do?" asked Marley.
"I think we should protect this stuff, and take care of it." said Sam.
"Good idea." I said, "That's what I was thinking, we could dust them and clean up this place, and keep them in the shelf."
"We'll have to wait until morning though, it's too dark now, in the meantime, why don't we do some more exploring down here?" suggested Liz.
"Yeah OK, starting with finding a light switch." I said.
Suddenly Sam said, "There's more down here than meets the eye. Come help me move this bookshelf over." We looked at her and then shrugged before pushing the shelf over farther to the left. Then, OMG, an outline of a door! I ran my hand across it looking for a way to enter.
"How do we expect to open that?" asked Liz.
"Umm, uhh, OPEN SESAME!" I said. The door didn't budge. Marley laughed and I glared at the pain in the butt. I tried other passwords but none worked. Things like, Open please, Let us enter, password, Let us pass, please open and even our names, but none worked.
"Try this," said Sam, she cleared her voice and uttered these words loud and clear, "One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the Darkness, bind them." a tiny crack became visible at the center and we all said it together. The door began to glow until it finally opened, ahead of us, showing what seemed like endless darkness. We were silent for a bit when I said, "Well come on, what are we waiting for?" I shined the light and began to walk into the darkness. The path continued as a straightway for what seemed like forever until it seemed to get narrower and narrower and stopped at a dead end.
"Nothing," said Elizabeth.
"Wait a minute…." said Sam and walked over and touched the wall, before walking back.
"What's that gonna do?" asked Marley. Suddenly, there was a harsh wind and the wall began to churn bright colors.
"Whoah," We all said before laughing at our 4-way jinx. I carefully tiptoed over.
"Careful Millie." Elizabeth warned. I touched the swirl lightly with a finger and found myself being sucked in, I screamed.
"Mill!" yelped Elizabeth, "I'm going after her." She jumped in with Sam trailing behind, dragging Marley along.