Author's Note: I was inspired to write this over a year ago, but I'm just getting around to posting it now after finding it on my computer. It's a little idea I came up with after being Kate Wetherall for Halloween and discovering it's quite difficult to fit any rope thick enough to hang on to into a bucket.
Info: Irmo is essentially the god of dreams. Morgoth is the Big Bad of The Silmarillion.
Disclaimer: I do not own The Mysterious Benedict Society, Lord of the Rings, or The Silmarillion. I'm just posting this for fun.
Enjoy!
Kate set down her bucket for the night just next to her bed where she could reach it easily while lying down, as always. She lay down in her little bed near Anna and Talia, the only other girls in the circus anywhere near her age. Most of the people wouldn't go to sleep for hours yet, but apparently ten wasn't old enough to stay up any later.
"G'night, Kate, Anna," murmured Talia, the youngest.
"Good night, Talia," said Kate. "Good night, Anna."
"Sleep tight, Talia," said Anna. "You too, Kate."
Soon Kate heard their breathing slow and Talia even snored faintly for awhile, but Kate was not tired at all. Her thoughts wandered over her day, life with the circus, until finally arriving at her bucket. She really needed some new stuff now that she was staying with the circus. One of the trapeze artists had mentioned that rope was very useful, but either it was bulky and heavy and wouldn't fit in her bucket or it was thin and wasn't supposed to support a person and would hurt to climb or hang on anyway. Her fishing twine was very useful already, anyway.
Kate drifted off wondering why she couldn't find the perfect rope.
A few hours later, she suddenly woke to find that she was not in her bed at all.
Kate sat on a little bench in a garden. As she looked around, she realized these were the most beautiful gardens she had ever seen anywhere. Kate could not even imagine that gardens like this could exist.
Among the incredible trees, flowers, and fountains, Kate felt relaxed and yet alive, and both more than she had ever felt before. She thought she might get up and drink from one of the fountains, so she did and felt completely refreshed.
Kate thought she might explore the gardens a bit, which was what she did best, and looked around for where she might begin. As she glanced over the trees, she glimpsed a tall man in gray sitting on the bench. It was the same bench Kate had just been sitting on, though he looked as if he had been waiting for someone.
She walked over to him. "Hello," she said oddly timidly, for she sensed that he was powerful and different from other people.
"Hello, Kate. I am Irmo," he said somewhat slowly.
"Where are we?"
"We are in Lorien, my gardens. My elder brother has seen that you will aid us to combat Morgoth's shadow on Arda."
Kate listened carefully, but was frowning by the end. "Huh? Where's Lorien, who is Morgoth, and what is Arda?"
"I apologize, Kate, if these names are unfamiliar. But you will be doing my… family and I a great service, so we shall aid you. The people here have great skill in some crafts that have been forgotten by your people, and my brother and I have a gift for you."
Kate quickly considered this. "How do I know I can trust you?"
"Follow your intuition. But before you must leave, take this." Irmo smiled and handed her a coil of rope. It was long, light, and seemed to take less space that it should. "It is strong and will not break or fray or weaken."
"Thank you… sir," Kate added, taking the coil of rope and looping it over her broad shoulder. Irmo seemed like a man who deserved the honorific that Kate rarely used. "Is it magic, that it never breaks?"
Irmo hesitated, unsure what the girl would think of the truth. "Not quite, but Elves… some of us here have great skill in making rope, and many other things."
"Elves?" Kate asked more quietly. "They exist?"
"Yes, if you must know, and some years ago you might have met one. My brother wished for me to tell you, if you were curious, that when you meet Reynie and there is peace, tell him about this and ask about Sam Gamgee."
"Tell Reynie about this and ask about Sam Gamgee," Kate recited. "I promise I'll take really good care of the rope."
"Be careful, Kate, and good luck."
"Thank you…" murmured Kate as Lorien faded to black.
Kate opened her eyes. Such a strange dream, she thought. Glancing over at Anna and Talia, she saw that they still lay there and nothing had disturbed them. She drifted back to sleep.
Kate woke up early as always and sprang out of bed. She changed into jeans and a t-shirt before the others were awake and put on her belt. As she lifted her bucket, she noticed that something was different. Kate looked inside and found, perfectly coiled around the sides of the red bucket, a gray rope. Suddenly, the events of the dream came flooding back like the memory of something that had happened in the night. It was the rope from her dream.
A little later, when Anna and Talia woke up, they found Kate fingering her new rope. She had been testing it and it was more than she had ever imagined could be real. "What's that, Kate? We never saw it before."
"A dream come true," Kate answered faintly, as if only partially awake (though they knew that Kate was nearly always alert). "A dream come true."
One day, after Mr. Curtain was finally in prison, Reynie was sitting outside on the lawn. He was sitting on a bench, reading a copy of The Silmarillion. Kate, perched above him in a tree, called down, "Reynie, what are you reading?"
Reynie looked up, then shouted back, "The Silmarillion. It's like a prequel to Lord of the Rings."
"The one with Sam Gamgee?"
"Yes, that's Lord of the Rings."
"Do you know who Irmo is?"
"Yes, he's in this book. Why?"
Kate climbed partway down the tree, then jumped the rest of the way to land in front of Reynie. "Do you believe in dreams? That they can be true?"
"I've never thought about it much, though if it's possible to transmit messages into people's minds, I suppose it could be possible."
Kate took out her rope, fingering it. "Feel this. It's better than anything I've ever seen."
Reynie felt the rope. He had not seen many ropes at the orphanage, but it was a very fine rope. "It looks like a good rope to me."
"A few years ago, when I was still with the circus, I had a dream. I remember it perfectly clearly, better than I ever remember dreams. In it, I was in a garden called Lorien. There was a strange man named Irmo. He said something about him and his family wanting my help to combat Morgoth's shadow, whatever that was.
"Anyway, he gave me this rope. He said it would never break or get old or damaged. He said to ask you who he was if I still remembered. I forgot about it while we were always worried about Mr. Curtain, but I just thought of it now.
"Irmo… Lorien… yes. Here. What a coincidence it's in this book!" Reynie slipped a bookmark in his spot and flipped towards the beginning to a page entitled "The Valaquenta". "The Valar are the powers that helped create the world," Reynie explained.
Kate quickly read through the section. "It makes so much sense!" she exclaimed. "That explains who everyone was. But what is Morgoth's shadow?"
Reynie sighed. "I suppose he meant darkness and evil and how we faced Mr. Curtain. But what about the time your rope got lost?"
"I'm not quite sure. I woke up the next morning, and my rope was coiled in my bucket as always."
"So is Arda real?" Reynie pondered.
"Arda?" Kate asked.
"Middle-Earth. Lorien. All the places in this book."
"I suppose they must be, since they gave me a rope," said Kate. "Irmo said that Elves were real too, and that I might have met one a long time ago."
"Elves too?" Reynie asked. "So it's true that everything in Lord of the Rings happened thousands of years ago."
"It must be," said Kate. By the way, who is Sam Gamgee, and why would Irmo mention him?" Reynie smiled and explained to her. Kate smiled at the story as well. "Maybe I'll ask Sticky if he's seen a copy of Lord of the Rings I can borrow."
Kate's rope never failed her, and Reynie never heard more evidence that Arda was real. He always wondered about it after that, but never mentioned his ideas nor Kate's story to anyone. Neither did Kate.