02 – TRANSCENDENCE

A summer downpour beat against the asphalt, sending steam hot and sticky up into the night. Waterworks Road was for a few hours well named, for the warm rain gushed down the gutters and spilled across the road in a driving hazard of sliding sheets. Dutifully braving the weather, a white and yellow bus groaned into the curb. The thunder of rain near drowned the hiss of its doors swinging open, and a woman stepped awkwardly into the street. The doors slapped shut, the vehicle laboured away into the night, and the woman popped a spotted umbrella to life. Suspending it above her head, she dashed westbound down the street, dodging puddles in the footpath with feet more steady and movements more slick than other women of her age and build. She halted for a brief moment, meditating on the brilliant sparkle of the orange streetlights on the surface of a puddle; there was something magically electric, she thought, about nights like these.

But Flynn did not stop, hurrying the wet journey of three streets to her apartment. She approached the 'follicular enhancement' (men only!) studio next to her home, made a flying side-step from the footpath, and skittered up her front path. Abandoning all grace, Flynn collided with her front door and stopped to regain her breath. Turning the key in the lock she heard its click and pushed the door open. It creaked inconspicuously in a poor effort to welcome her home.

An hour later she was showered and dressed in heavy-duty corduroy pants and hiking boots, peculiar for this retiring time of night. After a meal planned to provide long-lasting energy and protein, she sat at her kitchen table staring fixedly at the doorframe. There sat a rucksack packed with supplies befitting someone embarking on a short camping trip. The only out-of-place addition was a sizeable heap of dried fruit and meat more suited to the scullery of an 18th century sailing ship, and a small, combination-locked safe containing an ancient scrap of paper. One last sort through the bag confirmed to Flynn that she was ready for anything. Or at least, she was ready for anything she could conceive of, and anything outside of her imagination's boundaries was the fault of an un-moderated childhood spent in front of the television.

Flynn took the mini-safe from her bag, unlocked it and removed the poem, which she had rolled inside a plastic pill container. She was afraid that folding it would cause it to crease and tear, though it showed no signs of wear to begin with. Replacing everything in her bag except the poem, she pulled on an all-weather jacket and shouldered the pack, tightening the straps. The poem she clutched in her hand, and she stood in the middle of her kitchen, trembling slightly like the moments before the first time her mates had pushed an ecstasy pill into her hand behind the playing fields' clubhouse and goaded her into swigging it down with 6 cider; the same year she had given up on school altogether. Flynn stared at the vellum, her face hot with adrenaline. This was it.

This time she read the poem aloud, quickly incanting the first two lines. More swiftly than last time came the vaguely familiar roaring like a strong wind in her ears. Faraway voices rose from scattered whispers to a cacophonous crowd. Fighting against the strong anaesthetised feeling and her body's wish to fall into endless sleep, Flynn fought to focus her will on reciting the last two lines. Voice strained, she carefully pronounced the final words. The poem, almost drowned by the maelstrom in her ears, was complete.

Annon o Arda, edro hi ammen
Fennas o ardhon, lasto beth lammen
Aníron sen dôr si gwannad
Teli si an cefn galad!

(Gate of Arda, open now for me,
Doorway to the world, listen to my tongue
I desire to now leave this place
I come now to the earthly light!)

Flynn passed out quickly, tumbling like a split sack of potatoes to the parquet floor. Her shoulder hit the kitchen table corner on the way down, but the pain went unnoticed until she returned, after what felt like a lifetime away. In that instant her body remained, but Flynn was gone.

- - - - -

Awakening was black; her mind was heavy. Her body registered pain. Flynn had the strange sensation that her mess of limbs made as much sense as if she had just turned into a talking squid with a hangover. She wondered if that would have been preferable to this. And it occurred to her momentarily how stupidly unprepared she was. She knew nothing at all of time travel, or even if that was what she had done. What if she had ended up with her ears on her knees and a zipper on her forehead? Or no forehead at all? In all her physical preparation and all her research into the world of Tolkien, she hadn't, she realised, quite thought this through.

Flynn cautiously flexed her fingers, checking they were all still present and accounted for. She kept her eyes clenched shut, unwilling to face reality just yet. If it had not worked, if the poem had been something entirely other than what she thought and she was still at home in her kitchen, then there was only bleakness and disappointment to face. And if the poem had been something magical, but not quite what she assumed, then there was the matter of figuring out where or when she had landed. And if... And if the poem had worked properly? If Flynn was in Middle-earth...? She was afraid to have failed; she was even more afraid to have succeeded.

If she did open her eyes she might have realised that she had been flung out of the ether into the branches of a thick tree in a particularly dense forest, and being the Tolkien connoisseur she was, she likely would have guessed that she was in either Fangorn Forest or Mirkwood. The latter would have been the correct guess, but as yet Flynn's main concern was the horrible throbbing head that accompanied the return to consciousness, and the nausea that accompanied the time travel. Groaning a horrible groan as she peeled her eyes open, she struggled to sit up. More pain ensued. A twig or five snapped underneath her and suddenly she was aware of being suspended in a low canopy. Flynn held her breath, eyes darting back and forth across the surroundings. It couldn't have worked. Could it?

But unless she had, in her strange altered state of consciousness, navigated the half hour journey to the closest such forest near her home – on foot no less, and not fully awake – then she was very definitely in Middle-earth. Lips slowly stretching into a disbelieving smile, she sighed and leaned back against the boughs. She contemplated the ground. The forest was a dim, close knit of hoary, ancient trees. Little sunlight pushed through, and the air was heavy and hot. Flynn was accustomed to humidity, but something nevertheless instilled a stifling, suffocated feeling within her and she had a great desire to be out in an open space as soon as possible. Two forests related by murkiness of character stood out in her knowledge of Middle-earth geography, and she wondered: was this Mirkwood or Fangorn? To herself, she whispered, "Where am I?" The forest swallowed her words like thick carpet on a cinema wall, and her voice went unheard.

Deciding that the business of hanging around in a tree asking herself questions she couldn't answer was fruitless, she clambered ungracefully down. With a fortifying breath she straightened her clothes and adjusted the pack on her back. Its weight was reassuring. Flynn had practised the art of survival. She could do this.

She set off, picking her way through the crowded undergrowth. The sun had begun its slow descent from high noon and she could see she was travelling west, though to what end, she could not know. There were dangers of travelling West in any of the forests of Middle-earth: in the major woods, Mirkwood, Lórien and Fangorn, taking a course due west would almost always lead her to mountains or water or both. There was, of course, the issue that she would not know the mountain ranges from each other simply by looking, unless of course the Misty Mountains were in fact constantly cloaked in mist. Pushing down a bubble of inner panic, she told herself she might just have to trust dumb luck.

An hour passed and still there was no indication of running water, no hopeful trickle of life that might grace her ears. Flynn stopped and leaned against a tree. Slipping the pack from her back and unbuckling it, she reassessed the visible contents. A stack of sandwiches wrapped in greased paper and the locked box sat at the top, where they had been when she left her home, concealing an all-in-one paperback copy of The Lord of the Rings – with appendices – wrapped in acid-free paper. On a sudden thought, Flynn withdrew the poem from her pocket gingerly and held it up to her eyes, squinting. The text was gone. Turning it over, and over again, there was nothing to see. Flynn swallowed. There was no way to go back now.

She squashed the bubble of fear in her and replaced the vellum inside the locked box. She dug a hand inside her bag and produced a laminated photocopy of a map and a compass. A quick check of these items indicated that her bearings were correct. There was little to do but press on with the search for something familiar. She stuffed them back inside the pack, wiped at her shiny face with her palm, and continued stomping onward.

Later, she stepped out of the thinning forest and stepped finally out on to soft grass, leaving the trees behind. She scanned the horizons north and south. The forest stretched on in both directions as far as her eye could see, and in front of her, to the west, were bare vales with no hint of civilisation. Far away she fancied she could see mountains, but there was low cloud and she could not tell for sure. With an exhausted sigh, she slumped down against a tree, drawing her knees up and pulling her arms around them. A cool breeze rippled through the leaves above her, and she shivered.

Suddenly from a thicket of bushes to Flynn's right, a muffled snort came, and then a low grunt, and a distinct snuffling sound followed. Flynn cursed softly to herself, her voice snagging on fear. A shudder wracked her bones and sent a wave of ripples across her skin. She slowly rose to her feet, knowing that whatever this creature was, its vocal uttering could not have been that of any of the friendlier species. Licking her dry lips, Flynn locked her gaze upon the general direction of the noise, barely daring to breathe, while the word, 'Orc' flashed across her mind.

The bushes rustled; Flynn's heart seemed to halt. From low in the undergrowth emerged a pair of sharp tusks attached to a fat, squat creature. She recognised the wild boar instantly. It sniffed at the earth, seemingly unaware of her. She loosed a sigh of relief: it was certainly not an Orc, and it was arguably more attractive. But her relief was short-lived. The boar's keen hearing discerned her careless stray breath and its head shot up. Black eyes locked on her. She froze. The boar snorted loudly and something primal flashed in its eyes just then, and suspecting very strongly that this was only the beginning of a worse threat, Flynn took off like a shot.

Frantically she dodged her way between trees, bounding over fallen trunks, and trampling heaps of leaf litter. But to her horror, the boar made hot pursuit. As she dashed away in panic, Flynn stole a glance behind, but this was her undoing. She did not see the large rock rooted firmly in her path, and with a painful whack her leg met it with all the grace of an airborne refrigerator. The rock, made mockery of her speed and sent her flying in the air with terror painted across her face. She landed awkwardly on her stomach, and a loud splash rang out as she crashed into shallow waters.

Spluttering and rolling on to her back, her relief at finally stumbling across a stream was short-lived. The boar rushed nearer, leaping with effortless ease over the rock that had betrayed her. Crying out in choked fear, her hand flew to the hunting knife sheathed at her belt and, squirming in the shallows, she freed it and struggled to pull herself into a battle-ready position – although the best she could do was get up on to one elbow, squashing her bag underneath her. If she was going down at the hands – or hooves – of a wild boar after mere hours in Middle-earth, she would at least do some damage first.

The raging boar took one last flying leap over the rocky bank, making for her belly. Flynn raised her knife and watched in a rapt kind of horror that played in slow motion and froze her body, fate rushing on like a freight train. But the boar's flight was abruptly stemmed. A thin arrow pierced its throat, and a second later, another followed, skewering its side. It fell in a twitching heap on to Flynn.

Stunned for a moment Flynn lay, barely breathing. Repulsed, she pushed the boar away with great effort and rolled on to the bank. Staring in disbelief, a pair of soft-booted feet appeared by her face. She glanced up to see a slender hand extended towards her, and with awe and not a little fear she regarded the face beyond the hand for a moment. It was male, and stern, and unreasonably, unjustly attractive. Then suddenly remembering she had a the blood of a dead animal all over her and her clothes were slowly acting as trawler nets for pond life, she grasped the hand shakily and allowed him to pull her to her feet.

Flynn regarded the man, then the dead boar, and then the man again. She swallowed. For such a long time she had desired to regard a living, breathing Middle-earth inhabitant, and here she found one, and he was certainly a pleasant sight for bewildered eyes. His face was broad and strangely delicate, with deep-set brown eyes and high cheekbones offsetting wide lips. Dark hair fell in shocked curls that struck his shoulders in waves, and he appeared, for a moment, amused at her expression. Raising a long, curious eyebrow at her, the man spoke. But it was a garble that Flynn could not, in her wildest dreams, begin to understand. She stared at him dumbly for a minute, and he cocked his head expectantly. Was this Westron? Was it Rohirric? The man considered her for a moment with curiosity, and then spoke again. This time, to her Sindarin-trained ears, she could mostly understand.

"Reveal your purpose, stranger, by order of East Lórien," he said. At least, that's what Flynn thought he said.

Flynn was startled. How could such abrasive words be carried on such a charming voice? With a moment she found her voice and ventured her first real Sindarin outside a chat room filled with obsessed Tolkien fans. "I mean no harm," Flynn said falteringly, suddenly a bundle of nerves now that she was faced with actually speaking Sindarin to someone who was fluent. This was not going to be easy. She swallowed and continued. "I am – I was, uh… trouble." A pause. "I do not know what I do here. I have no bad purpose," she answered, and then swallowed nervously.

The man's jaw was tense. Had he understood her strong accent? He sized her up cautiously. Intense eyes joined Flynn's and she couldn't help but feel as though they paralysed her, captive.

"You are a wanderer from afar," he said, half stating, half enquiring.

"I... Yes."

The man issued a short breath through his nose that spoke to Flynn of arrogance and suspicion. "Such folk are not often trusted," he said hastily. "Now tell me, what is your name?"

"Flynn," she replied steadily. "My name is Flynn." At least that sentence was easy. The next one would prove rather more essential: "I swear I harm not bring." The man cocked an eyebrow again and Flynn scrabbled again in her brain, cringing. "I swear I bring no harm." She smiled nervously, and when the man said nothing, continued, "I have no weapons. I carry what you see." Casting her eyes down at her wet form, embarrassed, she was sure he would think her some wicked sorceress. There was something altogether unnerving about him; his voice so demanding yet so richly toned, and his intense glare radiating control. Flynn had no desire to inflame him, sensing a strange volatility in his energy. She ventured, "And your name, sir...?"

The man blinked and his eyebrows arose ever so slightly. "Ellos."

Flynn smiled politely as one always does when meeting someone for the first time, though she felt distinctly that she was the only polite one here.

Ellos stared at her for a moment longer. "Where do you intend to go?" he asked.

"I do not know," Flynn admitted. "I lost; I do not know where am I. And quite tired."

"And quite wet, and it grows dark," Ellos added to her pidgin Sindarin, inclining his head to the sun sinking behind the mountains. "Are you quite certain you have no fell purpose?"

Flynn nodded. "Certain. I could not hurt pig," she confirmed with a smile, finding it was far easier to understand this language than actually to pull together the words and structural conventions necessary to use it.

"No? And yet I have never seen a woman wield a knife in the face of an animal the way you did," he commented.

"Honest," Flynn admitted, "I do not know what I thought I would do. I am glad you shoot well." She tried to smile disarmingly; if this man decided she was a threat, she was doomed.

Ellos looked her up and down. Twice. He said, "We are on the north-eastern border of Eryn Lasgalen, and my journey is southward."

"Eryn Lasgalen!" Flynn repeated, unable to keep the excitement from her voice. "We in northern Mirkwood?"

Ellos raised one eyebrow again, ever so slowly. "Yes, that is what it was called, perhaps a hundred winters ago. It is strange that you use the old name, as you are surely even younger than I, and were not alive when it was still the dark wood," he said evenly. "And it is strange, I must say, that you speak the Elvish tongue of the Sindar."

Flynn swallowed, preparing the Sindarin words for the excuse she had formulated in advance. At least these words were well practised. "I studied many texts of the past, for I am a scholar of history," she explained. "Many are written in Sindarin, and so I must learn it."

The pressing gaze of the Man fell upon her hard and she inwardly shivered under its weighty suspicion. Finally, he said, "Very well. Come. You must journey with me, if you wish to meet with my people."

Flynn nodded, "I would like that." She released a tiny sigh of relief, inwardly deciding that this was finally her lucky day. Ellos may not have been the nicest man in all of Middle-earth, but he at least was a welcome sight for weary eyes. Flynn followed as he set off.

- - - - -

Evening descended unhurriedly across the sky in a periwinkle glow, gradually dissolving into the familiar inky black of night. The air was still. Earlier, in the brilliant orange of dusk, the two travellers had picked a path from the fringes of Eryn Lasgalen and begun a steady course along the edge of the forest. The tiny stream's rugged, stony banks sloped sharply down to a thin crevice that narrowed the stream to, at times, a tiny trickle. Flynn was not familiar with this waterway, knowing now that the nearest river of any size was the Anduin, the Great River, some fifty miles to the west. This little trickle, inconsequential enough to be left off maps, ran ahead of the travellers as if to beckon them to follow, and follow they did; Ellos going ever lightly and quickly as a seasoned woodsman, and Flynn attempting an imitation.

Shortly after setting off, she cut into Ellos's quiet calm. She needed to acquaint herself better with this individual who had so effortlessly rescued her from certain fate. Flynn asked in a soft undertone, "Ellos, where go we?"

Without looking at her, Ellos answered, "I make for the area near Dol Guldur, to acquire a horse and secure swifter passage to my home in Gondor."

Ellos's simple sentence opened up a can of worms for Flynn, who upon hearing these familiar place names was ever more curious as to the year in which she had arrived. Knowing that Dol Guldur had gone, through the ages, from being an innocuous place, to a stronghold ruled by Sauron's minions before and during the War of the Ring, to a relatively safe and haphazardly rebuilt elven outpost again, Flynn ventured a subtle question. "Is Dol Guldur not unsafe to venture near?" she asked.

"Not in these times of peace," Ellos replied. "I would expect that, if you have read so many texts, you should know it was re-claimed by Lórien after the War."

"Yes, of course," Flynn affirmed. "I just... I did not know if it was safe now."

"It is certainly not the place it once could have been, had evil never come there," he said. "There is an outpost of elves north of it, maintaining East Lórien, though the Lady of that great realm of Lothlórien is now gone."

A picture sketched shakily in Flynn's mind: she had arrived after the War of the Ring, and even after the departure of Galadriel, who had sailed to the safe haven of Valinor in the year 3021, thus marking the end of the Third Age and the beginning of the Fourth. Flynn also knew that Galadriel's lover, Celeborn, had not sailed with her, staying to reconstruct Dol Guldur and the land of East Lórien. Excitement grew in her belly – perhaps she would find herself in the presence of people who had known this famous and powerful Elf? "Ah, of course," she said, chancing her luck by trying to sound casual through the thick accent, "I forget now how many years it has been since the Lady is said to have sailed."

Barely registering breathlessness though he walked swiftly and purposefully, Ellos said, "It is one hundred nineteen and one half years, by my count, if you begin the year from September as most do."

Flynn nodded, pretending he had jogged a memory she already held. She could fairly guess where the characters she loved would be now. Aragorn would have long since been crowned King of Gondor with Arwen as his queen. In fact, if she recalled correctly, he would probably be just coming to the end of his long, bicentenarian life, or perhaps had even recently passed away – and if so, then Arwen would be gone, too. Flynn halted for a moment, struck with the sadness of this. Who would actually still be alive, this late after the Third Age's end?

Flynn knew Legolas had been enchanted with the southern lands and had been granted his father, King Thranduil's permission to bring elves to Ithilien and begin a new settlement. He had even been granted the title Lord of Ithilien while Faramir was Ithilien's Prince. Flynn was sure Legolas had not left Middle-earth for the Undying Lands before around 120 of the Fourth Age, so he would still be alive here, and if so, then Gimli would be present somewhere, too. Frodo would be gone, departed with Galadriel, but the hobbits had remained, though now it would only be their descendants who lived on in the idyll of the Shire.

In fact, anyone not graced with immortality would surely have perished by now: Éowyn; Faramir; Éomer; and all the men of Rohan and Gondor who lived during the War of the Ring. The only canon characters who should still have been alive were the dwarves and the elves, and of the latter, only those who had not passed into the West. She wondered if there would be anyone left she would recognise by name, and whether it was worth coming here at all if she could not meet some of those whom she had read about so many times. She rubbed her face with her hands, frustrated, and continued walking. In a little while she ventured out again and asked, "May I ask how you, too, speak Sindarin, if you are Gondor? Uh, from Gondor?"

"Ah yes. The lady of course wishes to know the unimportant details," the Man said, slowing.

Flynn marked his tone: cocky, mysterious, and perhaps invocative of more. Undeterred, she replied, "I am sorry – I do not mean rude, but it interests me. We both speak a language we should not."

Ellos looked sidelong at her. "Some of us better than others. If you must know, it is because there is much elven blood in me – so much so that I am, in fact, half-elven. It is thus my duty to speak the tongue of my ancestors."

Flynn gave him a look of interest but inside her thoughts raced. Half-elven? As far as she knew there was a finite number of half-elven individuals in Middle-earth, and so small was the list that she could remember every one of them. Among the company of the half-elves there was no 'Ellos', who looked like a Man – albeit a gorgeous, model-like Man – and spoke like an Elf. She glanced at his face trying to gauge his thoughts, but he remained expressionless, concentrating on the path trodden by his nimble feet. For a moment she was afraid, for this man was either not who he said, or she knew less about the events after the war than she thought.

Flynn took a pause to evaluate his form. He could be dangerous if he chose to be. He was tall and well sculpted, as she expected most of the men to be, and his chest and shoulders, though not overly broad, showed an unassuming strength. He wore dark breeches and a long, brown tunic underneath a dark leather jerkin. On his forearms he wore the vambraces – wrist bracers – of the archers. A leather belt at his waist held the ensemble together, and provided somewhere for him to hang a small pouch. A long grey cloak was fastened about his neck. It spread at the back with a large hood that allowed his bow and quiver, attached to a leather harness across his chest, to protrude enough that he could access them quickly.

Flynn licked her dry lips nervously and decided that, whoever Ellos was, she was going to have to trust him a little, at least until they reached this elven outpost or they came across others on their way. She asked, "How quickly do we reach Dol Guldur?"

Ellos stopped then and tilted his head up slightly, seeming to scan the horizon, before looking back in the direction they had come as he shielded his eyes from the sinking sun. "It is five days day since I left the Old Forest Road and turned south. There are many miles between us and Dol Guldur. If we keep a good pace, it will be ten days before we reach the outpost."

Ten days seemed like a very long time in the company of this haughty supposed half-Elf whose politeness left something to be desired. But without him Flynn knew she did not stand much chance of survival after her food stores ran out and she grew too weary to hunt. She only hoped he was as gallant and trustworthy as she had always thought the men and elves of Middle-earth to be. When he moved off, she followed him, gripping the straps of her pack and remembering well the knife at her belt.

It grew dark slowly and Flynn thought that it must be springtime, given the length of the day and Ellos's estimation of the half-year since September. Often times as they walked her unskilled feet caused her to stumble and trip now in the dark, but always, somehow easily, Ellos's hand shot out to steady her arm precisely in the right moment, his dark eyes marking her for a brief moment before returning to their path. When the sky had been black for some hours and Flynn's stomach growled for dinner, Ellos halted abruptly and glanced around. They stood by the edge of the forest and he listened for danger and watched for movement. A moment passed and, satisfied, he turned to Flynn. "Stay here," he commanded softly. "I will collect kindling. It is high time to eat and perhaps take some rest. You must be quite hungry."

Flynn nodded and acquainted herself with the ground. Ellos had not yet moved to leave. The nearly full moon illuminated the stark angles of his face as he stood above her, regarding her weary form. He squatted quietly before her and said, "Do not worry. I will be close by, and quick." Flynn only nodded as Ellos stood again and quietly moved into the trees.

Flynn did not hear him return, and was startled when his feet appeared beside her. He set about arranging a fire and soon it was kindled, and from his pouch he produced a bread-like food and offered to her a wafer. Accepting, she wondered if it was the intriguing elven way bread, lembas. She took a tentative bite, and was taken by the exquisite taste; sweet, with a nutty warmth that pleased the palate. Ellos smiled as she took her first bite, and he went to the stream to fill a flask, and they shared its cool liquid. Suddenly Flynn remembered the food she had packed and, as if to prove she was not some wicked sorceress from afar, she offered Ellos a sandwich. He poked at it quizzically, lifting the bread and sniffing and studying the contents before eventually deciding that it was, in fact, food, and accepting it.

They faced the dark contours of the Vales of Anduin stretching out before them and dined in silence. Flynn could almost feel the body beside her though they did not touch. She shivered lightly, wearing fewer clothes than he, and leaned against her pack. Ellos collected his cloak from the ground and offered it to her. She gratefully accepted with a smile and lay on the ground by the fire, exhaustion taking its toll.

Ellos smiled at her. "Sleep, Flynn, if you can, and I will take watch this night," he said in a low register. She tilted her head in his direction, stifling a yawn before meeting his eyes. She bid him goodnight, but sleep did not come quickly. Flynn lay awake for what felt like hours, unsure of this mysterious stranger and unwilling to trust him enough that she could sleep. Her head buzzed with the strange reality of being in Middle-earth, but was this really a Man of Gondor – or half-Elf of Gondor – she had fallen in with, and was he even on the 'good side'? She could not yet know, and he made neither move nor sound as she lay with eyes closed and ears open, and eventually the silence beckoned to her, and she could not fight the will of slumber.