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THE CAVE OF WORLDS
Chapter Three – Nimîr 'nAmatthani (Elves of Aman)

The tooth fairy hadn't shown up. Not even the Easter bunny graced Jessica with his appearance. Instead, Ladrengil had bombarded her with questions about her home, as though he was trying to figure out where she lived by its description. He concluded that she probably came from a place called "Yôzayân". He asked her several times if she had traveled here with the "Adûnaim" and somehow gotten separated from her family on the way. He voiced the thought several times that her fall probably was the missing link, and that they had thought she was dead, as he at first had thought as well.

In return, she learned that Inzilolôrêth was a forest so beautiful that the trees shone with gold, and every person who could string a tune together tried to make a song for it. "Fairest of all singers is my son," Ladrengil repeated for the nth time. "My chest opens to let my heart fly free when his voice is singing alone."

"So you said," Jessica sighed. Ladrengil had spread his immense cloak on the ground for her to lie on without killing anything. By now it was early afternoon, and the air was becoming stiflingly hot in the sunshine, where Ladrengil had put her to keep the trees from danger. At home it was mid-winter, and to save money on the energy bill, her parents turned the thermostat off and dressed everyone in sweaters during the day and thick, flannel nightgowns during the night, which Jessica was beginning to regret as the early summer sun pelted her brow and made sweat bead on her forehead. This reminded her that when she left home, it had been about midnight. Her mental clock was telling her that it was five in the morning, and trying to force her to go to sleep.

She desperately tried to keep awake by making an algebraic equation for the amount of jetlag she was experiencing and guessing how many time zones she was from home. She became so wrapped up in her calculation that she began to mutter it out loud.

"D equals the number of times I have drifted off per breath that Ladrengil has taken; X equals the number of hours since I have landed here; T equals twenty-four, for the hour that my mind thought it was when I landed here; and Y equals how tired I am. DX+TY. DXY-T. X(Y-T)/D."

Jessica stopped. Ladrengil was staring at her. "My breathing is equal to 'di'? What were you talking about? Is the heat affecting you?"

"No." Jessica blinked rapidly, trying to keep her head clear enough to answer. "It's something that I had to learn in school." Her words were slurring. "Hade… hated it, but I need to stay awa-" She yawned. Next thing she knew, she was wrapped up like a tortilla in Ladrengil's cloak in the shade, and he was pouring lukewarm water on her face and neck. Her hands and feet felt like they were on fire. "Awake," Jessica muttered. She opened her eyes. Ladrengil had sat her up in his lap and was holding his water skin to her lips.

"Drink," he whispered. "I must to carry you to the stream, and you must to stay awake." He busily gathered up his pack and put it on his back. "Nethwen, stay awake."

Jessica nodded slowly as Ladrengil picked her up. "Stay awake," she repeated.

The journey to the stream could have taken hours or seconds, Jessica didn't know. All she could do was answer Ladrengil's "Stay awake!" by repeating it. Then suddenly, the jostling stopped; the "Stay awake" chant ceased, and Ladrengil was forcing her to gulp down another mouthful of that horrid, lukewarm water. She had an odd picture in her head of the snow covered playground, and her bare legs being buried in the snow by her laughing peers. She was about to protest when she opened her eyes. She was sitting in a stream. Ladrengil was splashing water on her face and muttering something under his breath. The snowy playground was nowhere to be seen.

"Ladrengil!" Jessica turned to the new voice, to see a very tall woman with black hair running to them, carrying a jar. "I firieth eno thlaew?"

"Nethwen echuia!" Ladrengil answered.

"What?"

The tall woman stooped, filling the jar with water from the stream. "Nethwen," she said, smiling kindly, "Sogo hen."

"What?" Jessica looked up at Ladrengil. "What did she say?"

"She offers you a drink."

Jessica took the jar and stared at the water. "But it came straight from the steam; it's not clean!"

He gaped at her as though she had told him he was really an insect. "This water is very clean!" he said at last. "They don't keep their livestock upstream, and they put waste in a pit yonder."

"But this is the wilderness; all of the water is dirty."

"Man de phresta?" the woman asked, looking back and forth between the two.

"Nautha i nên gwaur."

The woman stepped into the stream and knelt in the water before Jessica. Holding the jar before her, she looked into Jessica's eyes. Jessica's insides froze up; she couldn't breathe. The woman's eyes had fire in them, and they seemed to burn a pathway into Jessica's soul. Finally the woman looked away and took a long draught, then offered Jessica the jar. She took it without any further protests.

Several hours later, she had learned that the woman was Tuilineth, and that she was Ladrengil's mother. She didn't speak the language that Ladrengil called "Adûna," and she, like her husband Handir, was an exile from a far away place named "Amatthani." When Ladrengil mentioned the name of the place, she left the room to gaze to the west, and she stayed there until the stars had risen and the night chill had set in.

To Jessica's surprise, Handir made the food instead of Tuilineth, and he cooked extremely well. The evening meal was simple, only bread and soup, but it filled Jessica better than any meal she could remember. The food made Jessica feel a warm drowsiness that tingled in her fingers and toes. Her chin drooped, and they led her to a bed. Finally comfortable, she drifted off to sleep.

Somewhere in the night she began to dream. A child stood before her, but was it a child? Its skin was wrinkled, and its eyes had such advanced cataracts that they were completely white at first glance. The child was dressed in brightly colored robes, which sparkled with gems sewn into the cloth. It wore the same necklace that Jessica had found at the cave. They stood staring at each other for several minutes; then the ancient child raised its withered hand, palm upturned, and whispered, "Hepabasei, kilima-lu loh le plamapeara luk!"

Though she didn't actually understand the words themselves, her heart understood what the child meant – repent and be forgiven. She tried to say, "What did I do?" but the child's language came out instead.

The child reached forward and pulled the necklace out from under her nightgown. "Ngi sé la-leredn. Kilima-lu!"

"The necklace is mine; I found it!" Jessica replied, the words again coming out in a jumble of foreign sounds.

The ancient child grabbed Jessica's hand and held out its gnarled finger. It glowed like a cattle brand, and the child began to draw on the back of Jessica's hand. First it made a V, then another V on top of it, upside down. Then it drew a square on top of that, intersecting with the V's in the same places that the V's intersected each other. "Lan téth sé pléígna," it said, the words sounding suspiciously like: "So be it!"

Immediately, flames leapt into the back of her hand, gnawing fiercely at her bloodstained skin. Jessica shrieked, flailing her hand around, trying to beat out the fire. As the pain was beginning to become unbearable, Jessica awoke, still cradling her hand. Ladrengil's parents were holding her down, their faces pale and their jaws clenched. She held her hand before her face and saw the symbol that the ancient child had drawn branded into it.

"Boe anden gwad," Tuilineth hissed, unwrapping the cloth from her hands. Ladrengil looked about to protest, but upon seeing her fierce face, he nodded meekly.

"What?"

"She says that you must leave."

"But..." Jessica choked out, trying to keep herself from crying.

"I will take you to my home, in Inzilolôrêth."

"Ci ú-hael, Ladrengil! I thrach dîn degitha Lothlórien!" Tuilineth stormed out of the room.

Jessica turned to Ladrengil, but he shook his head. "I will not translate that. Let me see your hand." He glanced over it left the room, returning shortly with a small phial and a strip of cloth. "It heals burns," he explained, then poured the stinky goo in it onto the burn and wrapped it. "We will leave tomorrow."


The gray hints of morning were forming on the eastern horizon. Overcast blocked out what little sunlight peeped over the mountains. In the Albright household, the lights were turning on. Children had to be pulled from their beds, homework collected, food shoveled into them, and the drowsy students pushed out into the cold, bundled up like little Eskimos to walk to the local elementary. Jessica's mother opened the door to her room, and turned on the light. "Jessica, stop dawdling; it's time to go to school!"

Hearing no response, she walked in, kicking aside the dirty laundry that Jessica had left on the floor. "Jessica!" She stopped. The sheets were unmade, but there was no daughter in them. She stared at the empty bed for a few seconds before for running to the bathroom down the hall. No daughter. She tripped on a toy that one of her twin sons had left out in her rush to their bedroom. "Jake! Peter!" she yelled, trying not to let her voice crack.

"We're up! We're getting dressed!" one of them called back.

"Have you seen Jessica?"

"No."

A chair screeched as it was moved out of the way of the refrigerator in the kitchen. "She'll be downstairs, helping herself to breakfast," she whispered, and calmly descended the stairs. Her husband was groggily sucking down a cup of black coffee, and peering into the refrigerator for something to eat. "Edward, have you seen Jessica?" Her voice strained.

"No, why?"

She turned away. "It's probably nothing; she probably wanted to get to school early."

He set the coffee cup down, suddenly very awake. "Jess never wakes up early to go to school. A few weeks ago she threw a fit, pretending to be sick."

Wringing her hands, she turned around. Her face had turned a deathly grey color, as tough all of the blood had been leached out of it. "Last night she told me," she stopped, trying to regain her composure. "She told me she went trough the door from her daymares."

Edward peeked out the window, at the fresh blanket of snow on the ground, at the thermometer nailed to the windowsill. "Oh Hadil, it's so cold out there!" Spinning, he grabbed the telephone off the wall and began to dial. Nine… One… he couldn't finish. His body quaked with sobs, and he held Hadil to him as though he was dying in the cold himself.


Jessica was half asleep when Ladrengil pulled her out of bed. "Come! It is midmorning!"

"Can't I sleep…"

"No, you may not. Behold how high Ûrê is in the sky!" He gestured widely to the glassless window cut into the wall. A chilly morning draft came through it. The sun was just above the treetops, alighting their leaves like green jewels.

"But I'm so cold…"

"Then come to the fire and warm yourself." He gave her a walking cane that had been freshly carved. The grip was padded with wool cloth. "I made this for you, so that I need not carry you to relieve yourself ever again." Jessica blushed a violent purple, remembering the embarrassment she had suffered when Ladrengil had to help her use the pit that served for a toilet. "Remember to pick leaves before the need arises."

"Thanks," she mumbled and hobbled over to the fire, where some embers still glowed.

Why was her mind so full of inconveniences? The pain in her leg felt very real, her heatstroke the day before was real. The clumsy embarrassment of the pit the day before was real. And that dream with the ancient child, why was she in so much pain? In all of the frightening dreams that she could remember, she always woke up right before she hit the ground or the monster caught her. But in this one, the monster had gotten her.

"Here is some bread and cheese. And here," he plucked a large bundle off the table, "are some necessities that my parents gathered for you. They put shoes in there to save the ground from your feet and gloves so that you can touch something without killing it. Last but not least, my mother presents you with this cloak." He unfolded the heavy, dark green material. "That was mine when I was young."

Jessica stared at it, and limped over to the table. "Why are they being so kind? Last night I thought your mother was going to throw me out."

To her surprise, Ladrengil laughed. "Send a lone child out into the wilderness? No one would do such a thing. There are no friendly peoples for hosts of miles in any direction. The least they could do was give you supplies and send me with you. Thus, you are my responsibility. I will find your home, and I will bring you there if I must. To that I swear, for that is what I would expect if my son were lost in these vast wilds."

He looked to Jessica, but she wasn't listening. She was staring at the space before her. "The door, the door I came through is here!"

"What? Where? I see only the door to the yard."

"It's right in front of me," Jessica's voice squeaked. She reached out into the air before her and grabbed something. Then, Ladrengil saw.

The door was unlike any he had seen. It was made of gray stone, with great metal hinges that borrowed organically into the stone, as though the metal had been alive. It was then that Ladrengil saw the ground beneath Jessica's feet was changing, becoming sparkling obsidian, and her body and the door were transparent. She yanked on the pin; the door opened with a thunderous growl. Light came from beyond it, blinding Ladrengil for a second. His heart filled with fear, and he screamed, "No! Don't enter!" He reached to grab her, but a violent blast threw him back. When he opened his eyes, Jessica was lying on the ground a few feet away, coughing. The door and the volcanic glass floor were gone.

Jessica began chattering, "Someone was there. An old man was in the way. Something pushed me away from the door."

"That door is evil," Ladrengil gasped, brushing dust from himself. "I felt it in my heart. Don't go through the door again."


Author's Note

Adûnaic translations:
Yôzayân – Númenor
Adûnaim – Númenóreans
Ûrê – the sun

Sindarin translations:
I firieth eno thlaew? – Is the girl still ill?
Nethwen echuia! – Nethwen awakens!
Sogo hen . – Drink this.
Man de phresta? – What is the matter?
Nautha i nên gwaur. – She thinks the water is dirty.
Boe anden gwad. - She must leave.
Ci ú-hael, Ladrengil! I thrach dîn degitha Lothlórien! – You are being unwise Ladrengil! Her curse will slay Lothlórien!

The Ancient Child wasn't speaking any language of Tolkien's. That language is mine; you may not use it.
Translations:
Hepabasei, kilima-lu loh le plamapeara luk! – Criminal, repent and I will forgive you!
Ngi sé la-leredn. Kilima-lu! – This is not yours. Repent!
Lan téth sé pléígna. – So be it.

The reviewer's guide:
Did you understand what was happening?
What do you think of the introduced characters?
Are your Mary Sue alarm bells ringing? If so, why?
What did you think of the parent's reactions?
The use of foreign languages, did it work?
Does it leave you wanting to read on?
Did you see any grammar or spelling mistakes?
Did anything in this chapter bother you while reading it?
What did you like about it?