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Chapter Two

Family History

"Welcome home, Hero. Your world awaits you."

Alison's eyes snapped open when the strange voice finished echoing in her head, consciousness returning to her in a jolt of panic.

A line of clear blue sky greeted her above, not a cloud to be seen, which she found odd; it had been dusk when she left the coffee shop to go home, but now it looked like mid-morning. The smells of sweet earth and grass were also foreign to her. Why was she outside, lying unconscious in the park? What had happened to her?

These thoughts prompted her to sit up, but she gasped and clutched her head when a lance of pain went through her skull. She was injured now, too, apparently. First, she ended up outdoors with no memory of how she got there, and now, she had a head injury. At least that explained her lack of memory. Beyond that, however, everything was a big fat question mark.

"What the hell?" she groaned, probing the back of her head, where the pain was the worst. She hadn't been expecting an answer, so when a voice suddenly spoke from behind her, she jumped violently.

"Ah, excellent, you're awake!"

Alison scrambled to her feet, her sneakers slipping in the dirt as she whirled to face the direction the voice had issued from, nearly sinking to her knees when her head gave an immense throb of pain.

She looked up at a looming figure of a man clad in gray woolen robes, with a pointy gray hat perched atop his equally gray hair and a long gray beard to match. He was old, his face lined and wrinkled, and leaned on a tall staff held in one hand. He looked vaguely familiar, but it wasn't until she met the old man's eyes—sparkling blue and sharper than a blade—that she realized it was the man from the bus stop all those months ago, Mr. Grey.

"You," she breathed. "I knew I wasn't crazy. You were there, at the bus stop, and then…"

And then you weren't, was what she wanted to say, but it didn't make any more sense to her now than it did then. How could he have just vanished? And now they were here, wherever here was, for this was not the park in her town, she came to realize. There were hills instead of trees, and she was surrounded on all sides by miles of green and brown land, not just a few acres of jogging trails and park benches. What was going on?

"Where am I?" she said instead, the pain of her head and panic making her voice brittle and breathless. "What's happening?"

"Peace, child," Mr. Grey said, holding up a hand. "Your questions will be answered in time, but for now, let's take a look at your head."

Alison raised a hand to her head protectively, narrowing her eyes. "What did you do to me?"

"Nothing, physically," he said, seemingly unaware or simply uncaring of her suspicion. "The crossing between worlds is hardly ever a pleasant experience, but a spell or two should alleviate your pain."

Alison made no move to come closer when he beckoned, staring at him in utter confusion as his previous statement hung in the air.

"'The crossing between worlds?'" she repeated. "What the hell are you on about?" She looked him up and down, his odd attire stirring up a familiar image. "Wait, is this why you're dressed up as some sort of…wizard? Did you kidnap me and take me to some shitty fantasy convention?" She backed up several steps, her panic rising, but the madman dressed as a wizard only smiled benignly.

"No, Miss Ashburne, I did not kidnap you," he said. "I am sorry your summoning was so unexpected and unpleasant for you, but I assure you, it was entirely necessary. We are short on time, you see, and I had to get you here as quickly as possible."

"Where is here?" she demanded, waving her hand to the unfamiliar landscape around them.

"Middle-earth, of course," he answered. "But if you wish me to be more precise, then we are in the Shire, close to the borders of Hobbiton."

Alison stared, her panic solidifying into a heavy ball of dread that settled in her stomach. The Shire? Hobbiton? But those places weren't real. They were fictional, plucked from the pages of an equally fictional book.

"Oh, my God," she whispered, suddenly light-headed, and the incessant throbbing at the base of her skull wasn't helping either. "What the hell is happening? None of those places are real! Middle-earth, the Shire, Hobbiton—"

She stopped speaking, her mouth hanging wide open as a sickening realization hit her. Mr. Grey had had a book with him at the bus stop, a very familiar book…

"The Hobbit," she said, the name that was once so familiar to her now sounding alien on her tongue. "Are you trying to tell me that this is The Hobbit?" She looked back to the man, her eyes widening. "Are you supposed to be Gandalf the Grey?"

Mr. Grey—the name now made her want to curl into a ball and laugh herself into insanity—smiled at her. "Indeed. A pleasure to meet you again, Miss Ashburne."

"I'm going crazy," she said, shaking her head and letting out a faint, high-pitched scoff that sounded nothing like her at all. "I've officially lost it. There is no way that this is real. You are not real."

"I am very much real, I can promise you," he said, frowning. "All that is happening right now is real, and all that will happen will be more real than you could ever imagine, should you choose to aid us."

"I—what?" Alison said, aghast. "Aid you in what? What's going to happen?"

"That you should know already," he said. "After all, it was one of the reasons why you were chosen."

Alison couldn't take it anymore. This old man was psychotic, and all she knew was that she was far away from home, with no way of getting back unless she escaped, and she wouldn't go down without a fight if he planned to kill her.

"You're mad," she spat, and turned on her heel and ran.

She sprinted through a soft golden field of wheat that seemed endless, the green hills beyond it melding with the impossibly blue sky. With any luck, there would be people who could help her beyond those hills, and she spurred herself on faster, her heart pounding in her ears and making her head positively wail in agony, but that was the least of her worries.

Alison lunged out of the field and started to run up the nearest hill, her sneakers slipping on the grass and her lungs heaving for air, but she pushed herself forward nonetheless, her backpack slapping against her back as she ran. She hadn't even realized she'd still been wearing it and contemplated taking it off to lose the extra weight, but something told her she'd come to regret that later, so she kept it on.

She reached the top of the hill and slowed, allowing herself ten seconds of rest before continuing. She could hear no sounds of pursuit over her ragged breathing, but stopping for too long was just asking to be caught. She doubled over, fighting against the churning in her stomach, but staggered back and let out a choked scream when a shadow loomed in front of her.

However, the shadow was not Mr. Grey—or whoever he really was—but instead, a squat, plump little man who stared at her as if she had just fallen from the sky. His clothes were plain, bright cotton, and a straw hat capped his curly brown hair, reminding her of a farmer. He was perhaps half a foot shorter than her, and he ogled at her in bewilderment, disregarding the goat he had been pulling along by a rope completely.

But Alison was not bothered by the fact that she had plowed into this stranger's yard uninvited and looking like she had been running for her life. What bothered her were the little man's feet.

They were very large, larger than her own, and bare; he wasn't wearing shoes of any kind, and his feet were covered only by thick, coarse hairs that matched the locks on his head. Alison's heart flopped despairingly as she registered this fact and recalled the main character of The Hobbit.

"Are you… You're not a hobbit, are you?" she asked, already fearing the answer.

The little man said nothing. He only nodded.

Alison swallowed hard, looking around the hill and taking in her surroundings from above. The land stretched out on every side, green and gold and empty, with hills and fields and streams, and she knew then with utter certainty that she was not in Texas anymore, but somewhere else entirely—a world that should, by all logic and reasoning, be fictional.

"Well, shit."


Gandalf found her at the top of the hill, leaning against the trunk of a wide oak with her head in her hands and the contents of her backpack strewn in the grass at her feet.

"You're really him," she said hollowly when his gray robes swished to a stop in front of her. "The wizard, Gandalf the Grey."

"Yes," he answered simply, planting his staff into the ground. She could feel his gaze boring into the top of her head. "Only one name out of many, yet they all mean me."

When she didn't speak, he nudged her abandoned iPhone with the butt of his staff. "Ah, I should've told you; mortal devices do not work in this world."

"I think I got that," she said. She had tried everything to turn her phone on, but the screen remained black and blank. Even her damn calculator wouldn't work.

Gandalf sighed from above her, but his voice was gentle when he spoke.

"Come, Miss Ashburne. We can talk more on the Road; I think we have intruded long enough."

He nodded to the small cottage behind them, where the hobbit Alison had encountered earlier stood with a hobbit woman who had to be his wife, peering out the round window to them. At Gandalf's gesture, however, the two hobbits ducked down, the pale blue curtains twitching back into place.

She made to move but fell back with a groan when her head throbbed spectacularly.

"Ow," she moaned, clutching her head.

"Oh, yes," Gandalf said as if finally remembering she had sustained an injury. "Sit still, Miss Ashburne, or else this will be very unpleasant."

She wanted to retort that her whole situation was already very unpleasant, but she remained silent and unmoving as Gandalf muttered something in a strange language, the crystal embedded in the top of his staff glowing as he waved a hand over her. Almost instantly, the pain vanished, and she let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

"Well, that confirms one thing," she said. Gandalf raised his bushy eyebrows at her. "You're definitely a wizard."

She could see him grinning beneath his beard. "Well, I should hope so."

With her head feeling loads better, Alison gathered her things and accepted Gandalf's hand up, trying not to cringe at the weirdness of feeling real flesh and bone on a person who shouldn't exist, her mind still unable to wrap around the idea of fictional characters and places being real.

They slipped and slid down the hill until they reached a nice cobblestone road, and Alison fell into step beside the wizard as they began to walk. She watched the vivid wildflowers lining the path blow lazily in the summer breeze, and was glad that at least the season had remained the same as back home. She wasn't particularly dressed for anything much colder, considering her tank top and shorts, but a sudden memory made her turn hesitantly to Gandalf.

"Mr. uh, Gandalf?" she said and went on when he hummed. "Weird question, but, er, did you happen to see a pair of pants lying around anywhere? I'm pretty sure I still had them when I fell…"

"Do you mean these?"

From within his robes, he extracted her jeans. She snatched them from his hands quite rudely, though she was too busy marveling at their familiar texture to care much. Gandalf must've found her odd for being so sentimental over a pair of pants, but they were her pants. Pants from home.

They continued down the road in silence for several minutes. Gandalf seemed content to leave her to her own thoughts as she drank in all the new details around her, curious and exhilarated. She found herself touching random things they passed, such as the wooden signs erected in the forks of the road that pointed directions, and the long grasses and waving flowers that bordered the cobblestones, as if every tangible thing she encountered only solidified this new world.

"A lovely little place, isn't it?" Gandalf said, breaking her out of her thoughts. "I have always been rather fond of the Shire and its inhabitants."

"The Shire," she repeated carefully. "Why did I end up here? Isn't this place where all the hobbits live?" She'd only ever read The Hobbit, but she knew some things from The Lord of the Rings books, though not a lot.

"Most hobbits, but not all," he said. "The more adventurous ones choose to stay in villages such as Bree, with the 'Big Folk,' as they call us."

He gestured to her and himself, and Alison frowned; she wasn't a very tall person, but she supposed that compared to hobbits she must seem so. He never answered her other question, though.

"I think you misunderstood me," she said. "Why am I here? Not just in the Shire, but in Middle-earth? You said something earlier about a summoning…"

Gandalf hummed. "You mentioned before that you have read that charming little book, The Hobbit." When she nodded, he mirrored her. "Then you know what happens, yes?"

"Uh, basically," she said. "It's been years since I read it, though. A lot of the details are hazy." When he frowned, she backpedaled a bit. "But most of it, yeah, I can recall."

"Good," he said, giving her a measured look she did not like at all. "That's good."

They rounded a bend in the road just then, and Alison halted in her tracks, her questions forgotten at the sight before her. An entire village lay before them, nestled in the hills of what the sign to her left depicted as Hobbiton. Despite the odd lettering, the words seemed to be in English, to her intense relief, though her heart quickened anyway.

She hurried after Gandalf once her initial shock wore off, for the wizard had kept moving along without her, but she still gaped at her surroundings, especially when more and more hobbits began trickling into view the closer to the village center they got.

There were many low houses with round doors spread around, with hobbits all dressed in bright clothes and with curly hair and bare feet that were just as hairy. They milled about, running errands or doing chores or simply relaxing in their gardens, all short and squat, and all staring at the wizard and her in poorly concealed suspicion and curiosity.

At the reminder of where she was, she turned back to Gandalf, partly because she wanted answers, and partly to escape the intensity of the hobbits' stares. "So, Mr. Grey—Gandalf, sorry—God, this is going to take some getting used to—er, what exactly am I doing here? You never answered me."

"You are an Ashburne," he said as if that explained everything, but she frowned.

"Yes, I am, but what does that have to do with all this?" She waved her hand to the village and the hobbits around them, and now Gandalf was the one to be puzzled.

"The Valar chose you," he said, his brows furrowing. "You are an Ashburne, and they called upon you to return to this world."

"I'm sorry, what?" she said. "Who are these Valar? And what do you mean, return?"

Gandalf stopped walking, and she followed suit as the wizard faced her fully. "You mean you do not know of the Oath?"

"What oath?" she said, her confusion and exasperation mounting by the second. "I don't know anything! Gandalf, what's going on?"

"Oh, dear," he said, and she wondered if that was the wizard's equivalent of, Oh, shit. "Well, this might pose a problem."

"What?" She shook her head. "Okay, back up; from the beginning. Who are the Valar?"

"Powerful beings who act as emissaries for this world under the Creator, Eru Ilúvatar," he said. "They are not gods, though some worship them as such. They watch over Middle-earth, and though they rarely interfere directly anymore, they do send help occasionally." Gandalf looked at her meaningfully. "Like you, for example."

Alison blanched. "What?"

"I believe your next question was what was meant by your return to this world," Gandalf said, ignoring her, "and after that, the meaning of the Oath."

"Yeah, that would be helpful," she managed to choke out, her panic rising once more as her questions kept building.

Gandalf hesitated, looking around and seeing the watchful eyes upon them, before putting a hand on her shoulder and guiding her down the road.

"Such things should not be spoken about so openly," he said before she could ask, and she kept her mouth shut, partly from the wizard's warning, and partly because her anxiety was like a fist clenching itself around her throat.

After several minutes of tense silence, they came upon the center of the village. It was a stone square filled with stalls of all kinds and hobbits selling their wares out of them, from cloth to produce to fish and anything in between. The spices in the air smelled so good the scent made her stomach growl, reminding her that she hadn't eaten anything since the coffee shop, which now seemed a lifetime away.

Gandalf led her quickly through the market, however, heading for a low-lying building on the outskirts of the square, the sign above the door proudly proclaiming it to be The Green Dragon Inn.

The ceilings were so low that Gandalf had to stoop to get in, but Alison found herself moving about with ease, her five-foot-one frame fitting in nicely with the small building and its even smaller occupants.

Gandalf led her to a table by the back fireplace, where they would be more secluded from the few patrons sitting inside the inn's tavern. A plump hobbit woman pattered up to them not long after they had taken their seats, glancing them over warily but still smiling politely as she greeted them.

"Afternoon, mister and missus," she said. "Lunch just finished up a half-hour ago, but I can still fetch some bread and cheese if you'd like."

"Yes, please, my dear," Gandalf said. "And a mead too, if you don't mind."

The hobbit woman bobbed her head, turning to look at Alison.

"Er, nothing for me." She held up the water bottle that had been in her backpack and shook it, so the contents sloshed inside. "I have water here."

The hobbit woman looked to her water bottle as if it offended her, but she only nodded before moving off, leaving them alone once more.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Alison whirled on Gandalf. "Speak. Now." Realizing that she was facing a real-life wizard, however, she tacked on a "Please" at the end of her demand.

"I believe the easiest way to begin is to start with your family," Gandalf said, lacing his fingers together on the table before him and looking far too large for the seat he was in. "What do you know of your family history, Miss Ashburne?"

She frowned. "Nothing, really. I know that I come from an old family, and a lot of them were soldiers, but that's about it. My dad never liked to talk about his family." She shook her head. "I don't even have any extended family; it was just him, my mom, me, and my two siblings."

"Soldiers?" Gandalf echoed. "My dear, your family was more than just soldiers—they were Heroes!"

"I guess," she said, scrunching her nose. "A lot of them got medals and stuff—"

Gandalf shook his head, cutting her off. "Not just war heroes, Miss Ashburne—Heroes, in every sense of the word. Your family is descended from the First Hero himself, Eleon Ashburne."

Alison stared blankly. "Who?"

Shock and a hint of exasperation crossed the wizard's features. "You do not know who Eleon the First is? The First Hero of the Ashburne Line, born of the House of Hador in the First Age?"

"Wait," Alison said, holding up a hand. "Are you saying that my ancestor, this dude named Eleon… was from here? Middle-earth?"

Gandalf nodded. "Indeed. The legend says that Eleon disappeared after the War of Wrath, fleeing to another world beyond this one that not even the Valar would dare go to. However, before he departed he swore an oath to the Valar, that whenever Middle-earth should fall into peril, they would call upon a descendant of Eleon to take his place and become the next Ashburne Hero. There have been six after him, including you." She gaped. "You are now the Seventh Hero of the Ashburne Line."

"Oh, my God," Alison said, putting her head in her hands and feeling as if she had injured it all over again.

"Here we are!"

The hobbit woman hustled back over, depositing two plates filled with bread and cheese in front of them and a tankard next to Gandalf's elbow. She seemed oblivious to the tension hanging in the air around them and Alison's murderous glare that was now fixed upon the wizard.

When she had left again, Alison leaned close to the table, her frayed nerves finally seeming to have snapped at the wizard's admission.

"I am nobody's damn hero, and my family certainly was not, either," she hissed. "Since you really are a wizard, though, work some hocus-pocus and get me the hell out of this place."

"I am afraid I cannot do that," he said easily, unintimidated despite her threatening tone.

"And why not?"

"Firstly, because the spell that brought you here was an extremely complex and dangerous piece of magic—it took me months to work it properly." He bit into his bread, chewing thoughtfully for a moment before continuing. "And secondly, it is not up to me to send you back to your world, Miss Ashburne. You are here at the Valar's bidding, and Eleon's Oath binds you to this world until it is fulfilled, one way or another."

Alison did not like the sound of that at all, but she grasped for anything that could help her.

"Isn't there another wizard who could send me back?"

"Yes, there are four other wizards in this world, but they will tell you the same thing as I, for they serve the Valar, as well."

Alison stared down at her plate, suddenly not hungry anymore as tears welled in her eyes, brought on by frustration and an overwhelming feeling of helplessness.

"So, I'm stuck here?" she asked, trying to keep the tremor from her voice, but it leaked through anyway.

Gandalf gave her a sympathetic smile. "Unfortunately, yes, for the time being. Perhaps when the Valar feel you have fulfilled your oath they will allow you to return to your world."

"But I have a family," she protested. "My mom and my brother and sister—they'll be worried sick when they've found out I'm gone!"

But Gandalf was already shaking his head.

"Time moves differently here than in your world—the mortal world," he said. "You could be gone for years, but still return to the precise time and location you were in before crossing over."

"Like Narnia?"

The wizard frowned. "Like what?"

Alison just shook her head. "Nothing."

With her prospects of going home growing ever dimmer, she asked the question that would undoubtedly be the nail in her coffin.

"And this oath…" She swallowed, her throat tight. "What do I have to do to fulfill it?"

Gandalf paused in his chewing, looking her over with piercing blue eyes that seemed to read everything about her within that moment, and she suddenly feared she knew the answer.

"Join the Company of Thorin Oakenshield, of course," he said. "You have been chosen, Alison Ashburne; the Quest for Erebor is the price you must pay to return to your home."

And with that, she promptly fell to the floor, passed out cold.


Until next time!

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