"Deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised."
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
Chapter 4: The Ghosts Beneath the Hill
I left Tom and Goldberry the following morning carrying a pack of supplies and wrapped in a wool cloak. It made a nice compliment to my jeans and flannel shirt, but it kept out the fog.
"It will not hurt to go, whether or not you go believing," Tom counseled over breakfast. "Answers made be found in dreams as well as in earth, and you already know your way."
Rivendell, I thought, even as he was saying this. Of course I was going to Rivendell. I had not woken in my own bed anymore than I had gone to sleep in it, and dream or no, there was nothing I could do except play it out.
A psychologist had said as much to me, after my mother's death. "Do what you need to do to get through this. Trust your intuition. Often enough it will take you where you need to go."
I hadn't gone anywhere. I'd stayed home, and gradually I'd stopped checking in with the psychologist. As I wasn't showing any signs of extra personalities or developing a drug habit, he'd left me alone.
Now my…intuition (I gritted my teeth as I thought the word) was taking me to Rivendell. Or at least this dream was. I would stop in Bree, maybe at Weathertop. Maybe I would fight a few Ringwraith along the way.
I laughed aloud, into the morning. The sun was just beginning to dispel the morning mist, and Tom Bombadil's house was long behind me. Truth be told, I wasn't as concerned as I could have been about whether this was a dream or not. I was enjoying the walk, enjoying the quiet. It had been so long since I'd had any quiet. Jimmy and John were over every other night, and I had new neighbors, and my old high school history professor, Mrs. Nicolini, had started popping her head in since my dad had gone. She seemed to think I needed looking after.
I had a habit of leaving empty beer bottles out, hoping to frighten her off with my wickedness.
The journey to Rivendell, as my scattered childhood memory of The Lord of the Rings recalled it, was rather daunting. I had never traveled that far on foot before. The most I'd ever done was an all day hiking trip with Geoff, and Dad had met us at the other end to drive us back to our home and a bonfire. I didn't have any money – didn't even know what passed for money in Middle Earth, and I wasn't armed.
In fact, if I was honest, I was being extremely foolish.
I stopped dead in my tracks. Why had I expected Tom to think of things like money and knives? The man practically lived in a frog pond!
How was I going to make it through Middle Earth without a knife? I felt frantically along my pockets, sighed in relief when my fingers found the familiar bulge of my pocket knife. Okay, that was settled then. I wasn't entirely helpless.
I thought of the Ringwraith and realized I was.
I remembered this was a dream and wondered if I'd wake up when they killed me.
I thought – just for a moment – that this might be real, and if so, when was I? I hadn't thought to ask Tom. Were there even Ringwraith to worry about?
While I was having these thoughts, the sun rose higher, but the fog thickened.
I'd spent more than enough of my life in the country to know this wasn't right, and as the mist gathered around me, it slid along my spine, and all the deeper parts of me were instantly convinced this was no dream.
I stiffened, slid my fingers in the pocket containing my knife. My fingers slipped along the cool metal, unable to get a grip in the damp. I didn't remember this part of the books well, but I remembered I wasn't the only thing in these small hills.
Then I heard it:
Cold be hand and heart and bone
and cold be sleep under stone
never more to wake on stony bed
never, till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead
In the black wind the stars shall die
and still be gold here let them lie
till the Dark Lord lifts his hand
over dead sea and withered land.
I felt sick.
The pocket knife came out, and I turned slowly in a circle, wishing desperately for something to put my back against. Some of the fog was solidifying, or maybe shapes were appearing through it. I gripped my tiny knife harder, feeling my hold on it lessen as I did. I wasn't going to win this fight, not with anything from Switzerland.
Then, from the vestiges of my childhood sprung an old song I barely knew, and it slipped out from my lips before I knew what I was doing:
…Courage see me through. Heart I trust in you, on this journey to the past…*
When I told Geoff about it later, he laughed…a lot, but just then it wasn't so funny, because the nearly materializing being in front of me stopped, and its hesitation lasted just long enough for another song to cut through the fog:
Get out, you old wight! Vanish in the sunlight!
Shrivel like the cold mist, like the winds go wailing,
Out into the barren lands far beyond the mountains!
Come never here again! Leave your barrow empty!
Lost and forgotten be, darker than the darkness,
Where gates stand for ever shut, till the world is mended.
The wight shrieked, and I felt cold on my face. I shut my eyes against it, and when I opened them again, the wight was gone, and the fog was fading.
I looked at Tom. "Nice timing."
"I remembered you would not know the wights, might not know the danger. But you have a stout heart to face the world with…"
He turned from me as he spoke and vanished into a crack in the hill, his words echoing back after him. I waited, and when he reappeared he had a short sword with him.
"It is light enough for a maiden's hand," he explained, holding it out to me hilt first.
I accepted it gingerly. "I don't really know how to use this."
"You will learn, as you learned how to use your feet, as you learned how to use your wits. You will need all three to get you where you are going."
"And more besides," I muttered.
"And more besides. Now, make for Bree. Wear the sword where others can see it, and don't let on you are unused to it. Wear it like your cloak and courage."
"Thank you," I said.
"Farewell, Lady." Tom smiled. "I must away to Goldberry. May you meet no more evil on your journey, and find what you seek at its end."
*Additional Disclaimer: This song is from Anastasia.
