Chapter 4: Speed Dating.
Disclaimer: Still don't own LOTR. Nor The Magician's Nephew. Nor any of the films or TV shows I'm borrowing bits of...
Thanks as ever to Lady Peter for looking bits of this over and making great suggestions.
OK, heads down, pens and paper at the ready, fingers on buzzers, it's competition time... Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to identify the films/TV series in this chapter. They all feature cast members from LOTR. Answers in a review, please. Virtual black pudding and eccles cakes dipped in black treacle for the successful entries. What do you mean, that'll result in no entries? Alright, I relent. Virtual chocolate brownies and a shout-out for successful entries. Bonus points if you spot the film in which Peter Jackson puts in a cameo as the village drunk!
5 is for Zees Muse on the unlikely chance that she ever ventures this way.
Charlize had the idea on one of her endless shopping trips. We were looking at cheap costume jewellery in Boots and she suddenly pounced on some rings, with cheap paste stones made of some sort of plastic resin.
"Green for out, yellow for in," she announced, triumphantly.
"What?" I asked, rather lamely.
"The green rings take us to the wood-between-worlds, then I use the yellow ones to jump into pools till I find the pool that leads me to Middle Earth."
"Oh, yes, obviously. When you put it like that I can't possibly imagine why I didn't see it before."
She borrowed a fiver off me and bought the rings, then we retired to a quiet corner of the local park. Carefully, we put the green rings on. Suddenly I was aware of a tugging sensation. The world dissolved into coloured patterns which swirled round our heads. I found myself being dragged upwards through the swirls, then through darkened space studded by stars. Suddenly light appeared above my head, dappled, the way light looks as it falls through the surface of a swimming pool when you're swimming under water. Then, in less time than it took me to register this underwater feeling, we broke the surface and found ourselves in a silent wood, with tall trees with trunks set in green turf, and, between the trees, stretching into the distance, occasional pools of water like the one we'd just emerged from.
"Blimey, it worked," I said.
Charlize simply gave me a killer look. "Of course. Did you think I was faking it about the dwarves, or the Medieval village? Or the Nazgûl?" The thought had, of course, crossed my mind, but I realised admitting to it would be a really bad idea.
"You wait here," Charlize continued. "That way we know which pool to jump back into. I'll explore each of the others in turn." She strode off to the nearest one, and, slipping the yellow ring on, jumped in.
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1. The Red Queen
Charlize found herself in a bright room, sunlight streaming through little diamond shaped panes of glass in the windows. The room itself was not unlike the rooms she'd seen on the school trip to Bramall Hall, with walls of white plaster panels between dark oak beams and uprights. She glanced down at herself, and was delighted to see that she was wearing a gorgeously embroidered silk dress. Rich panels of brocade down the front of the bodice gave way to a wide, gathered skirt which swished elegantly round her legs. This is more like it, she thought. A slight noise behind her caused her to turn.
There, on the other side of the room, was Galadriel. But everything about her appearance (save for those incredible eyes) seemed wrong. Her hair wasn't flowing and golden. It was set in tight red curls about her head. She wore a lace cap on top of her head. Her dress wasn't flowing and elegant. It had a fitted bodice, wide gathered skirt and big puffed sleeves, all very elaborately embroidered, and a lace ruff round the neck line. Charlize's inspection was interrupted by an imperious voice.
"Don't just stand there gawping, girl. Show the French ambassador in."
Charlize hustled over to the door and opened it. In came a tall, dark-haired man. He was strangely familiar, with a prominent nose, strong jaw, melting brown eyes and a very athletic build. Charlize ushered him into the room, her mind frantically trying to place him. Then it came to her. He was the man out of one of the pictures on the wall of her dad's games room at home. "A captain of men". The words from Lord of the Rings rattled around her head. "Faramir," some part of her mind chipped in rather unhelpfully, because it clearly wasn't him. This man, on the other hand ... he'd been famous a decade or so earlier... Yes, definitely a captain of men, specifically, the captain of the eleven men that constituted Manchester United. What the heck was his name?
The man swept a deep bow. "Your Majesty," he said, in a thick French accent. Everything clicked into place. That old supporters' chant from the terraces. Without meaning to, Charlize uttered her thoughts aloud.
"Ooh, Ah, Cantona..."
"What did you just say, girl?" asked the Queen.
"Oops, wrong film," said Charlize, and slipped the green ring back onto her finger.
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I had almost nodded off when suddenly I became aware of a stirring in the pool a few feet away from my resting place. Charlize stepped from the water onto the smooth green turf and made her way between the tree trunks to where I lay. She sat down and told me about what had happened. First, though, she had to remind me of why we were here at all; the wood seemed to have a strangely soporific effect, and a little time spent there seemed to make one forget why one was there at all.
She told me about her encounter with the red-haired Galadriel, and Captain Cantona. The story seemed vaguely familiar, but the sleepy atmosphere meant that somehow I couldn't grasp hold of the relevant memory. The atmosphere seemed to be getting to Charlize too. As she told the story, her speech got slower and slower, and she started to repeat things she had already said, then forget details of the story. She had almost drifted off to sleep when I reminded her why were here.
"Aren't you going to have another go at finding Legolas?"
"Oh, yes," she said, in a slightly absent tone of voice, then gave her head a shake. "What do you mean, 'another go'?" she added.
"Well, you've just been into one world, but it turned out to be the wrong one..."
"Did I? Was it? I suppose you must be right. Okay, let me try the pool over there."
And with that she wandered across the turf, popped on her yellow ring, and jumped into another pool.
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2. Shaken, not stirred
This time, Charlize landed in an ungainly heap on the floor. The floor was swaying rather violently. An earthquake? she asked herself, alarmed by the prospect. Then she looked up. Scenery flashed past the windows, and she realised she was in a moving train. At the far end of the carriage, a dark haired man was tied to a chair. Despite the ropes holding him in place, he somehow exuded an air of casual menace and dangerous attractiveness.
"But who's this?" came an incredibly posh voice from behind her. She turned, half expecting to see Julian the Deputy Nazgûl again. But it was Boromir! A clean-shaven, much younger Boromir. A very, very hot Boromir. He stepped towards her, and pulled her to her feet, before kissing her savagely. Charlize tried to push him off, thoughts swirling round. This isn't meant to be happening: he's not Legolas. Mmm, not bad, though. Breaking the kiss, he pushed her roughly back to the floor.
"She tastes of strawberries, James," Boromir said.
"Wrong film," muttered Charlize, and slipped the ring back on.
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This time, I really was asleep. Charlize had to shake me to wake me up. She filled me in on the details of her encounter with Boromir, once more seemingly forgetting the story almost as fast as she told it to me. Again, I reminded her why we were here (it took quite a lot of mental effort on my part to remember this – I seemed to be on the brink of forgetting everything too), then she found yet another pool to explore.
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3. Ooo Rah, Master Chief!
Charlize found herself lying in mud, surrounded by a group of mostly men and one woman, though it took a couple of looks to make sure of this, since the woman sported combat fatigues and a buzz cut. It was like the PE lesson from her worst nightmare – a man with a gun standing over them, forcing them to do press ups and sit ups by the hundred. She glanced around looking desperately for help. And then found it – her eyes settled on Aragorn. He was dressed strangely, in fatigues, and his hair was short. He was clean-shaven, except for a neatly trimmed moustche. But it was still unmistakably Aragorn. She started to speak, when his voice cut her off.
"Pain is your friend. It will keep you awake. It will tell you when you're hurt. It will bring you home safely. But do you know the best thing about pain?"
"SIR, NO SIR," yelled the mud-splattered people around her. What was this? Some sort of masochists' summer camp? She didn't know how they could find the breath to yell that loud. After the exercise, she could barely speak. But Aragorn supplied the answer.
"It tells you you're still alive."
Charlize struggled to do another press up. Half way through, she felt a boot in the small of her back, and looked up to see Aragorn staring down at her. He held her gaze for a moment, then addressed the troops again.
"You may have noticed a bell on the west edge of this training ground. At any time, if you feel you cannot take this, that bell is your salvation. Go to it, ring it three times, and you will be out of here."
The woman with the buzz cut spoke in a firm, determined voice. "Sir, I can handle this, Master Chief, Sir."
"Well, I can't, and I don't want to either," Charlize burst out, then staggered over to the bell and hit it sharply three times.
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4. Take the Blue Pill
Her next foray into a new pool led to an even stranger place. She landed with a bump amid some rubbish bags next a dumpster, in a squalid alley. Some sort of urban nightmare landscape surrounded her.
A running figure emerged from the shadows at the end of the alley. A tall, slender woman with slicked-back short dark hair and a knee length leather trenchcoat sprinted past, knocking Charlize out of the way. She ran at the most ridiculous speed, with jerky movements. It was like watching a speeded up film. Suddenly, from the shadows, two men appeared, also moving ridiculously fast. It was almost as if they'd materialized from nowhere. They wore dark glasses and dark suits. But the mouth and jawline of the one in the lead was unmistakable.
"Elrond?" said Charlize.
The men ignored her for the moment. Their attention was focused on the woman, who dived into a phone booth at the end of the alley. Picked up the receiver. And disappeared. Charlize's mouth dropped open. Agent Elrond turned to Charlize. His face was grim and threatening. And the tops of his ears were definitely not pointed.
"Oops, wrong movie," said Charlize, slipping on the green ring once more.
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5. Steal from the Rich
This counted as a near-miss, surely. She was in the wrong movie, but at least it was The Hobbit, so she could take comfort from the fact that she was in Middle Earth, albeit 50 years or so too early. Not that this would be a problem if she was an Elf. She'd have all eternity to find Legolas. She looked over at the male figure looming out of the shadows towards her. Thorin Oakenshield! Except that this Thorin Oakenshield didn't have a beard. A faint hint of rather sexy stubble, but definitely no beard. And he was normal, human height. (Either that, or she'd turned back into a blooming dwarf again.) And he looked incredibly good in a tight black leather tunic and trousers. (Okay, if he looked that good, she could live with being a dwarf, so long as she was a pretty one). He towered over her, forbiddingly.
"So, a wench wearing leggings This can mean only one thing. You are one of Robin of Locksley's outlaws." He grasped her chin in an iron fist, and turned her face up so she looked straight into his eyes. "Tell, me, where is Robin's encampment?" He held a dagger against the side of her neck, the point almost breaking the skin. This guy wasn't messing around. To heck with how hot he was, it was time to make a quick exit.
"Mumfle," said Charlize, whose jaw couldn't move in Not-Quite-Thorin's grasp. She slipped the ring back on...
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6. Love amidst the corpses
Only to find herself in a morgue. Surrounded by corpses. Eurgh. And the one she was looking at certainly hadn't died of natural causes. She heard footsteps and ducked rapidly behind a cupboard. Then the sound of another corpse being placed on one of the empty mortuary slabs. A woman's voice cut the silence.
"Set down, set down your honourable load,
If honour may be shrouded in a hearse,
Whilst I a while obsequiously lament,
Th'untimely fall of virtuous Lancaster."
Good grief! The woman sounded like she'd escaped from a really dull English lesson. She continued in a similar vein for quite a while. Charlize struggled to follow what she was saying, but managed to get her head round the idea that this was a dead king, and that the woman was the widow of the king's son (apparently the body on the other slab), and they'd both been murdered by the same person. Harsh, Charlize thought to herself. Then suddenly she heard footsteps, then a new voice. The voice was unmistakable. It was Gandalf, of all people, also speaking as though he'd escaped from the same really dull English lesson.
"Sweet saint, for charity, be not so cursed."
"Foul devil, for God's sake hence and trouble us not," the woman replied angrily, and launched into a long, complicated speech, the gist of which was that Gandalf had killed both her husband and her father in law. Eventually she made the accusation point blank: "Didst thou not kill this king?"
"I grant ye," Gandalf answered. Charlize's mind was in a whirl. Okay, she might have got this wrong, because the language was a real struggle, but Gandalf seemed to have just admitted that he had killed both of them. Surely Gandalf didn't just go around murdering people. Had they deserved it? Did this mean the woman was a bad guy? Was she maybe a spy of Saruman's, like Wormtongue had been? What was going on? She sounded so sincere though. The argument was really heating up now, and even Charlize had to admit that the language, though complicated, had a certain something.
Charlize peeked round the cupboard. The woman wore a 1930s style coat, with a fur collar. Gandalf looked quite different too – his hair was short, and slicked back, he had no beard, only a pencil moustache, and he wore a military great coat and carried himself with a swagger. What was it with all the moustaches? Why did men grow such unattractive facial fungus? Charlize dragged her mind back from this digression and tried to pay attention to their words again.
"Then God grant me, too,
Thou mayst be damnèd for that wicked deed.
O he was gentle, mild, and virtuous," the woman said, sounding anguished
"The better for the King of Heaven that hath him," Gandalf replied, his voice smooth and suave.
"He is in heaven, where thou shalt never come," she said. Gandalf actually had the cheek to reply that then the dead man ought to thank him for having sent him to heaven. Charlize was shocked. This wasn't the friendly, avuncular wizard she was used to. He was a complete slimeball. The woman seemed to agree. She continued, the embodiment of cold, focussed fury, "And thou unfit for any place but hell."
Gandalf's voice dropped to a soft, caressing whisper, and said, "Yes, one place else, if you will hear me name it."
"Some dungeon," the woman replied sharply.
"Your bedchamber," Gandalf murmured.
Yuck, he's coming onto her. Over her dead husband's body. The dead husband he killed. What the heck is this? Whoever wrote this movie script was one sick so-and-so, Charlize thought. She listened uncomfortably as Gandalf's seduction continued. To her utter horror, it seemed to be succeeding. Eventually the woman left. Gandalf stayed, apparently talking to himself.
"Was ever woman in this humour wooed? Was ever woman in this humour won?" he said smugly.
Okay, make that one extremely sick so-and-so, Charlize amended, mentally. She shuffled uncomfortably and knocked the cupboard. A metal implement fell from the top and clattered to the ground. Gandalf whirled round to look at her. The look in his eyes scared her even more than Not-Quite-Thorin's dagger had.
"Oops, gotta go," said Charlize.
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7. Peace Lily
Out of the autopsy suite, into the crime scene would have described things perfectly, were it not for the tricks Charlize's memory was playing on her. She was in a small suburban living room, surrounded by people in white paper suits and hoods, with masks on. A man with short, red hair, wearing police uniform walked into the room, and made his way up to one of the people in the suits.
The man took a deep breath, as though psyching himself up for a difficult situation. "I have something important to tell you and I didn't wanna do it over the phone. Janine, I've been transferred. I'm moving away for a while."
"I'm not Janine," said a male voice from within the paper suit. The policeman, sorry, police officer, looked embarrassed, then went over to the other paper-suited figure. Charlize looked at the figure's face (at least the part that was visible above the mask). Those eyes! Incredible, beautiful, almond shaped, ageless blue eyes. Absolutely unmistakeable. It was Galadriel again. Galadriel the crime scene technician. How the heck could the guy with the red hair have been so dense as to mistake her for someone else? Specially when the someone else was a bloke.
"Janine," said Dense Guy, "I've been transferred. I'm moving away for a while."
"I know. Bob told me."
The row unfolded as Charlize listened. Dense Guy eventually came up with the totally clichéd line "It's not that long ago we were talking about getting married."
"Yes, but you were already married to the force, weren't you?" said Galadriel. Charlize nearly snorted at this; it sounded exactly like the sort of dialogue from the daytime soaps her mum listened to. Dense Guy was such a dork, Charlize thought to herself. If Galadriel's next words were anything to go about, the Lady of the Golden Wood thought so too. She claimed that his job was all he cared about. Dense Guy whined that this wasn't true, there were other things in his life besides the job.
"No, you're right, you do have that rubber plant," Galadriel said.
"It's a Japanese Peace Lily," he whinged. Charlize could stand it no longer.
"For heavens sake, Galadriel, this guy is a complete loser." (She made "loser" stretch out in a sing-song voice.) "Go back to Celeborn. Please. Don't waste any more time on bad romance, day-time TV-stylee."
The last thing she saw as she slipped the ring on was Dense Guy bridling with indignation.
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7. All at Sea.
Finally she'd done it. She couldn't mistake those finely chiselled cheek bones and that jaw line anywhere. The ground was rocking alarmingly once more, and she realised she was on a moving ship, a sailing ship. Perhaps they were already on their way to Valinor. That would be quite convenient; cut out all the dull battle stuff and cut straight to the happily-ever-after bit.
Charlize wasn't the best of sailors, but what the heck. Her dream Elf was within sight. However, something wasn't quite right. His hair was dark brown and curly, and, as he finally turned and met her gaze, she realised his eyes were brown. The brown eyes could perhaps be put down to passion. After all, she remembered from the films that they did sometimes change colour at moments of heightened emotion. When she hit the pause button on that deliciously coy sideways glance during Aragorn's coronation, for instance, they were definitely brown. But the hair! What had become of those fabulous blonde locks, the silky hair that looked like it would flow through her fingers like spring water.
"And who might you be?" said a woman's voice from behind her. Charlize turned to see a very beautiful, gamine-featured young woman, in a man's shirt and breeches, wearing high sea boots and brandishing a fearsome sword. More to the point, in between glaring at Charlize, she was giving some very possessive glances in Brunette-Leggy's direction. Sword or no, that aroused Charlize's ire.
"I might ask the same of you," she said.
"Elizabeth Swann, captain of this ship," said the woman. "And I think I've had quite enough of you eyeing up my Will." With that, she bundled Charlize over the side of the ship into the water.
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So, virtual chocolate brownies and a shout-out for working out what the films/TV series were. Bonus points for saying which one Peter Jackson puts in a cameo role in! Entries in a review (you know you want to...). Answers will be posted at the end of the next chapter.
Yeah, yeah, I know I did the changing eye colour joke in another fic (for those who haven't read it, the make-up artists on LOTR weren't always consistent in remembering to put in Orlando's blue contact lenses).
Thanks to Sleepy Hollow, Borys and Sandy for the reviews. Yes, Enid Blyton was one of my targets in the last chapter.
Next: Someone may, possibly, get a snog from Leggy. But it might not be Charlize. Mwah ha ha.