I have found it convenient to keep records of our misfortunes. You are reading, my good Sir (or Lady, I'm not finicky about these things), an adaptation of one, and therein lies a problem.
Gollms and I are amazing at adapting when we have a common Goal. When there isn't one, we flip a coin – a quirk we'd picked when prisoners in the Greenwood. Folk there do it all the time, and madder still, they 'discuss' their 'results'!
Elves. There's just no hope for them.
(And my side appeared only 1891 time in 3789 cases! How is that fair?)
We flipped one now, and I lost. Again.
Now, Gollms and I have very different notions of what we want our story to run like (as usual), and he insisted that the Incident on the Road be included. Remember, it is his whim, and not mine.
(Technically, it happened in the Wild, and the nearest road was, like, leagues to the right, but such trifles don't register in the world-view of my worse half.)
The Yellow Face was grilling us. Bees buzzed busily in bushes. Not a wisp of breeze touched our brow. In short, the conditions were abominable and conducive to mistakes.
Half-starved, we stumbled across the Staff of Wizard Radagast.
Very rude.
To our credit, it looked like the handle of a shovel. There was the blade and all. Fortunately, we aren't high. We didn't end up nose-to-leather-boot.
'Hello, fellow lost one, well met!'
(Gollms had been experimenting with alliteration again. His language plummets to 'corny' when we blunder into Chaldeans; but that is nothing against what Hobbits rile him up to, ha, ha.)
'Hello down there,' the Wise One replied with equanimity, and thrust the shovel into the ground an inch away from our hand.
We scooped backwards. While the old dear is mostly harmless, if you don't mind his jabber, he is a bit… easily distracted by birds, flowers, flashy black Fellbeasts etc. Better not to take your chances.
'Heard nothing of the Mearas Mystery?' Gollms asked shrewdly. (Hmm, 'Mearas Mystery'… I might use that one myself.)
'Is there one?' Radagast inquired, to be forever removed from the List of Suspects.
'Sort of,' I mumbled, since Gollms was going all puffy and huffy and would only delay our departure.
'Oh, you youngsters. Always catching butterflies,' Radagast remarked, digging on.
(How do I know it was him? One, there was the Staff. Two, the Pointy Hat. Three, if in the middle of nowhere you meet someone with little more than a Hat and a Staff in the way of worldly belongings, installing a sign 'Beware – Manve's Eagles Cavorting Grounds!' – you meet Radagast, and no mistake.)
Gollms signaled me to wait, using an emergency neural path. I obeyed. Hard to ambulate using one leg and one arm.
'Need any help?'
'Really? Are you interested?'
The poor nut rejoiced at the prospect of free manpower.
'Yes, in bread and butter. We surely are.'
He looked behind us. Probably, one of them eagles whizzed by.
'There's nobody else here,' he said soothingly, as if reading our thoughts.
'Splendid,' Gollms grumbled. 'Now spill, old man; we shall audit.'
He hemmed and hawed, but finally we sat down and picnicked to our hearts' content. Some data, too, came to light, but first we had to listen to his sorrows, which were many.
He had (at last) learned of the mess which Gandalf &Co had left of Izengard and Helm's Deep and had a Talk with Ents which he had to cut short (small wonder there) 'cause they'd heard about a mysterious Sapling of the White Tree and wanted Equal Propagation Rights. It gets lonely after hundreds of long years in a cold world. Unfortunately, he could not help them, and, weary of travelling and fighting, they returned to the deeps of Fangorn.
Radagast then looked around him, saw blood-crusted ruins and sooty battlefields and went to the Golden Wood for another handful of dust. Typical wizard's logic.
He believed he'd inherited the whole of Middle-Earth to make ticking again, what with other Istari gone, Elves dwindling, Men self-absorbed and Orcs unenlightened. (He hardly ever thought of Dwarves, except in the tree-logging department.)
Naturally, he was wrong. The real men of enterprise could not leave their land without proper guidance.
First Theoden came to his senses in the Houses of Healing. It was jolly decent of the old man to retire, even though he remains the uncrowned King of the Mark, since he'd bought the Races. Then Gollms and I woke up in our lair – though for a goodly while we steered clear of trouble. Alas, hot blood and all that – we had to get back into the thick of it. Then Saruman and Wormtongue paddled back: the one had the prudence to go to ground and the other – the gall to waltz back into the Golden Palace.
(And of course, there is always Gandalf – though we, by an unspoken agreement, did not speak about him. Just to be on the safe side.)
Radagast welcomed Saruman back into his soggy fortress, gave him a purpose in life – to clean the debris, re-plant the woods and re-sow the meadows, etc. – and went on his merry dusting way. I daresay he was much cheered by the news. Such a weight had been lifted off his scrawny shoulders!
'The mearas,' Gollms prodded. 'Heard anything about it lately?'
'Only that it won,' Radagast said simply.
'Repeatedly. And now they can't find him!'
'Sure, you can't find the winner,' said the wizard, and stretching he returned to his noble if not overly intellectual labor.
'Blast,' Gollms said in the privacy of our skull.
'Wait,' I said out loud. 'Who was Shadowfax's main opponent?'
It was something which we would be told immediately when we reached Theoden's stables – and yet I wanted the Wise One's take on it. Call me a fool; sometimes it pays to follow spontaneous urges: it makes the little cogs of mind to click into place –
'Time,' shrugged Radagast. 'It's always time, ain't it?'
So much for insight. We ran onwards through the gorse, careful to leave the sign behind and no fatal obstacle in front of us – that's how you use geography. In another day we reached the Mark.
It was as we remembered it – plain, green and full of Horse-riders who were plain, green and full of themselves. (Isn't it curious how elves crawl into every other word?) They let us pass; Gollms swore they muttered unpleasant things behind our back. It mattered little.
The women, though.
They were silent.
Rohan housewives have never been into betting. Still, with such a feministic role model they now prefer to say they are into winning, and everyone knows a mearas is a capable competitor – a decided genius.
The Horse had challenged the whole kingdom. Many would lose if it weren't found. But the women were logical; therefore they would lose if it were.
And 'Scapegoat' doesn't look good on your C.V., trust me on that.
