Chapter One: Suebusters
The leaf crumbled in her hand. It was a melancholy sight, as each of the brown leafy fragments, individual members of a royal and ancient family of foliage, tawny participants in a genre encompassing all such relics of vegetation, were forever severed from their brethren, isolated, and thrust away to a grave of inevitable decay. Death it was, on a petite scale, but a death that carried with it the future promise of rebirth. The texture of the leaf was dry, parched as if by a thousand year drought, and as wrinkled as the hide of a pox-ridden old man. An imaginative soul might have conceived of the sparse brown surface as providing the parchment to the quill of the leaf's wiry stem. Irrigetta-formerly-Susan sighed. During the two-hour wait for her Elven Prince there was nought to do but twist her platinum ringlets and crunch the dying leaves of Mirkwood Forest. Such monotony, following, as it did, ecstasy, was profoundly hostile to her sense of rightness.
Irrigetta-nee-Susan's transportation to Middle-earth had been swift and efficient. Time itself froze and frayed as the radiant portal manifested before her, conveying her from the comforts of her mundane home to the mystic world of fantasy. Mirkwood Forest was not quite as she had expected, being gloomier, messier, and more tangled than anticipated. The trees, autumnally dour and wild, were widely spaced, but the undergrowth was everywhere. Helping herself to some berries, she reflected that it was altogether different from the park where she had once walked her dog. The forest was silent, and no birds sang in the branches above. Nevertheless, someone was expecting her. There, neatly folded upon a tree stump, lay luscious velvet garments. She had gingerly picked them up, wondering who would have left such things in such a place. Elves, she thought, it had to be Elves. There was something enchantingly quaint about the garb, as though it were rather too good to be true, but much to her surprise it proved a snug fit. The fabric was to die for: the green and purple truly brought out the deep indigo of her eyes, a fact confirmed by her pocket mirror. The mirror itself, a polished little item if not quite an heirloom, had been a present on her seventeenth birthday. Irrigetta-not-Susan carried it with her wherever she went. It was so important, after all, to ensure that one was presentable, especially when one was about to meet the Heir to the Woodland Realm. Ah, Legolas, she thought, we will be together always. While she had never met the Elf, she knew instinctively that there was destiny at work here: why else had she been whisked away?
There was a rumble in the distance. Irrigetta Susansbane looked upwards: it was mid-afternoon and the sky, clearly visible through the canopy of leaves, was bright blue. It followed that the strange noise could not have been the thunder of an approaching storm, which was a relief, for she did not wish to get her new clothes wet. But there it was again. Louder this time. Irrigetta UnSusan knitted her eyebrows. There was something out there. It was certainly not spiders, again, a fact for which she was thankful. Spiders, even ones of normal size, were decidedly icky creatures, but they did not make this sort of racket. Indeed, the thing sounded vaguely like machinery: machinery that was coming closer. Could it be the work of the Dark Lord? Surely not: Orcs would never dare venture into the Woodland Realm with Legolas and his bands of Elven archers maintaining constant vigilance.
Whatever it the thing was, it was crashing and crushing towards her through the undergrowth. Then she saw it. Irrigetta-not-Susan gasped. Such things did not exist in Middle-earth: how could it have come here, where such a monstrosity had no business? It was large, though not so large as to be unable to squeeze its way through the trees, dull and metallic, and diabolically loud. The great tread ate its way through the vegetation. It was a thing from her world. It was a tank.
The metallic beast shuddered to a halt a few yards from where Irrigetta-once-Susan stood. She waited, tense, unable to flee. Then the hatch opened and a figure appeared. It was a man, she could see that. Yes, certainly a man, not an Orc, or even an Elf, but he was old … and strange. There was something of an austere 1930s schoolteacher about him, with his brown waistcoat and tie, and coat sleeves patched with soft leather at the elbows. His hair was grey and thinning, and his face was clean-shaven. 'Respectable' is how Irrigetta-was-not-Susan's grandmother would have termed his appearance: respectable and unassuming. Between his teeth he clenched a tobacco pipe with vice-like determination. Irrigetta-never-Susan did not recognise him, as he looked down at her from atop the tank.
"Go away," she shouted. "You don't belong here.
The man removed his pipe. A smile crossed his craggy features. "My dear," he said, in a crisp, genteel accent that would not have been out of place at the BBC, "I would say much the same about you. This is not your world. I would advise you to return."
Irrigetta-perhaps-Susan snorted. "This is my world now. I am here to marry Legolas and live happily ever after. And there are no tanks in Middle-earth."
He nodded. "That is true. I regret using this infernal device of Saruman, but it was the only way to find you in time. I shall write it out immediately when I return. But you, young lady, had better go back to wherever you came from."
"You go back," pouted Irrigetta-perhaps-not-Susan. Then it struck her. "Write it out? Who are you?"
The man laughed. "You may call me Ronald."
"Ronald? As in McDonald's?"
"No, as in John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. I am the creator of this Universe, and you, sorry to say, have no part in it. Neither do I, to tell you the truth, so we had both best be going before things start to happen."
She was about to protest again when there was a sharp twanging noise to her left, like the plucking of a violin string. The sound briefly hung in the air, then suddenly something punched into her gut, knocking the wind out of her. She tried to cry out in shock and pain, but she had lost her breath. There was a vicious stabbing sensation in the vicinity of her stomach. Irrigetta-no-more-Susan looked down. She had been hit by an arrow. She could hardly believe it, yet there it was, grotesquely sticking out. There was blood. She had been … shot.
Tolkien cursed. "Legolas," he called out, "How many times have I told you that you do not have to kill them?"
Irrigetta-forget-Susan slumped to her knees. The pain, the pain. Legolas…
Then, though her agony, she saw a tall, slender figure striding towards her through the vegetation. Relentless and stern, he carried a bow. And a sword… Legolas?
"Is that you, Legolas?" she gasped
"Yes," said the Elf. Then the sword came down, and sliced off Irrigetta-faux-Susan's head.
From atop the tank, Tolkien groaned. "Legolas," he said, shaking his head, "we have been over this. Killing her is completely unnecessary. She can be written back to where she belongs."
Legolas turned to look at Tolkien. His grey eyes were cold. "She was a manifestation of evil, Professor, and must be purged from this world lest more evil things break through. And have you not also told me that on dying, such beings are returned whence they came? So she is not truly dead."
Tolkien drew on his pipe. He was uncomfortable. "Yes, Legolas, that is correct. But this young lady could have been written out. There was no need for bloodshed…"
Just for a moment, a hint of a grim smile crossed the Elf's face. "Written out like Sauron, perhaps, Professor?"
Susan awoke from her daydream with a start. A cold draft was coming into the room. Closing her recently purchased copy of The Lord of the Rings, she got off her bed and went to shut the window.
