CHAPTER ONE (IN THE HOSPITAL)

So then—

Yes, I know I said I couldn't remember exactly what happened, but I made some educated guesses to start the story effectively! Nobody wants to hear a story that starts with somebody waking up and not remembering anything.

Thank you. See, he agrees with me.

So then, I woke up.

I was in a room. All the walls were made of some sort of wood that was neither light nor dark.

I sat up and looked around. I was in a bed far too big for me. My hair was still in a braid, but it had gotten loose and fuzzy.

Some grown-up was in the room, behind something like a portable wall that looked like it was woven out of lots of little strips of wood.

"Excuse me," I said to the grown-up, "do you know where my parents are?"

The grown-up stood straight up quicker than anything I had ever seen. Her hair was brown (which I had seen before), but it was a strange, greyish brown, like dirt covered with a film of dust. Not at all like the redder browns I was used to. She babbled incoherently about something— it almost sounded like she was saying words and sentences and things like that, but not quite. Like a baby trying to learn to talk.

Maybe I had just startled her. "Excuse me," I said again, "do you know where my parents are?"

She kept babbling.

Evidently she had been damaged in the head. I would have to go find someone who could talk if I wanted to get back to my parents.

I got out of bed and went over to the door. My head hurt a little, but not enough to worry about. Most likely it would go away after I found my parents and drank some water.

The grown-up babbled more quickly and loudly, coming toward me like she was going to pick me up.

I pulled the door open and ran through— something was very wrong with that woman. She shouted, and chased after me. I ran faster.

There were people outside, and they all looked surprised to see me. I ran through the crowd, through all the little spaces-between-people that were just wide enough for me. Surely the grown-up would have to slow down to get through without knocking anybody over.

I ran, and ran, and whenever I had to choose between a big room and a small room I chose the big room. There would be more people there, and eventually somebody would see why I was running and help me.

Soon I was in a very big room indeed. The people were more spread out here, since there was so much space, so I just started running in the closest thing to a straight line I could. I turned my head around to see how close the grown-up was— too close! I kept running, and—

Ran into something, and fell down.

The something was another grown-up. He was taller than the one that had been chasing me, but not as tall as my papa. He started talking, but said nothing I could understand. A feeling of congestive dread started to settle in the back of my throat— it sounded exactly like that mad-woman's babbling.

The grown-up that had been chasing me caught up to me, and started talking to the taller one. She sounded almost like she was apologizing for something. The taller one said something back, and they went on like that for a little while.

They were looking at me, which I did not like. I started slowly backing away from them.

The shorter grown-up made an angry face and grabbed my arm.

"Get away!" I shouted, and I tried to kick her in the legs with both of my feet at once.

It did not work. I fell down again on the hard floor, pulling her down with me. She let go a little, though, so I kicked her again to make her let go all the way.

That did not work either. She stood up, angrily, and started dragging me back to the room where I had woken up, hissing at me in her babbling not-language.

I grabbed her arm with my free hand, and pulled my face closer to her hand. I would bite her hand, she would drop me, and I would run away to find some people who could talk.

"Stop," said the taller grown-up, with a strange accent.

"You can talk!" I said. The shorter grown-up dropped me, and I fell down again. She still looked angry, but there was some shock mixed in now, and she took a few steps away and stood there.

"Thought thou I could not?" asked the taller grown-up. Now I knew what he sounded like! He sounded like an old person being formal. Though there was another accent too. A little like a sailor's accent, maybe, but I had only ever heard that once or twice.

"Yes," I said. "Who are you? Why did you not talk before now if you could?"

"In thy hearing I have said much," he said, "to answer thy second question."

"It only counts as talking if you say real words," I said. "But could you answer the first question before we talk about the second?"

"I am the king," he said.

That was a lie and I knew it. The king came over to dinner sometimes, because my papa knew him, so I had seen him. The king was taller than this grown-up, and his hair was a different color, and he talked differently, and all sorts of other things. I said all that, and then said, "...and if you knew who I was, you would have said something different. My grandmama is very important, you know, so that makes me important too."

"What is thy grandmother's name?"

"Grandmama, of course! I just told you."

"Dost thou know thy parents' names, then?"

"Mama and Papa!"

He went very quiet for a moment. "Dost thou know thine own name, at the least?"

"Mama and Papa call me Meldë," I said.

"Is that thy name?"

"Probably," I said. "Other people call me other things, but Mama and Papa always call me that."

"What things do other people call you?"

I shrugged. "Too many things to remember. I could tell you about Mama and Papa's horses, though! They said they would find a lovely red one for me when I am old enough, just like Papa's, and that way all four of us will match, and—"

He had stared blankly into the distance as I talked. After the part about me and Papa and Papa's red horse and my hypothetical red horse all matching, he said something short and angry in the babble-language, then switched back to real words to say, "That is enough. I thank thee for thy words."

"You are very welcome," I said, curtseying like Mama did, "but where are the other people who can talk? I have more words, and they are no use without someone to hear them! And understand them, of course. Words are no use if nobody understands them, you know, and—"

"Lindwen can speak," he said, waving a hand at the short, angry grown-up. "Near all in this kingdom can."

I giggled, and now that someone who could understand me was around I said what I had thought before. "Near all? They talk like babies."

"How so?" he asked quietly.

"They just babble," I said, "like babies trying to—"

"I see," he said, even though I had not finished. He was staring very hard at something to the left of my head. He almost sounded angry again. I turned around to see what he was looking at, but somebody must have taken it away, because I only saw people like the ones that had been walking past the whole time, and he had not gotten angry at them.

But he was a grown-up, and they never made sense. He had interrupted me three times, which was rude, but if I pointed it out he would act as if I were the rude one. "Thank you for seeing," I said, because it seemed like a good thing to say. I did not say anything else after that. I was hoping he would go away.

The angry grown-up had walked up behind me while I was talking to the grown-up who could talk but was not the king, and she grabbed my hand again, far more tightly than she really needed to. I twisted my face up tight and put my teeth together to keep from shouting, because I did not want her to know what I was planning to do, which was bite her hand and kick her legs and run until I found some sensible people who could talk.

The grown-up who could talk but was not the king said something in the babble-language, and the angry grown-up let go of my hand enough that it stopped hurting.

I thought about this. Even though the grown-up who could talk was not the king, the people who could not talk must have thought he was a little important. The angry grown-up did not seem like the sort who would do something somebody told her to do unless that person was important. Of course he could not be very important, or I would have seen him talking to Papa or Grandmama.

Biting a grown-up's hand, kicking her, and running away did not sound like the sort of thing any grown-up would like, and it sounded even less like the sort of thing a slightly important grown-up who thought he was the king would like. I would wait until he was out of sight before biting the angry grown-up's hand, kicking her, and running away.

I waited. The angry grown-up took me one way, and the grown-up who could talk but was not the king walked the other way. In a few moments I could not see him at all, even though he was taller than most of the people who could not talk.

I bit the angry grown-up's hand and kicked her legs. She screamed, and she dropped my hand, and I ran.

Fin

A/N

I started this story about four years ago, as my Silmarillion-obsessed younger self's experiment to see if a red-haired captain of the guard could be explained into a predominantly silver-haired or dusty-brown-haired Mirkwood, as I had always imagined it before the Hobbit movies were released. I could explain it in the end, and after a few overhauls to make the plot less complicated I had written what you see today. This story does contain Silmarillion and HoME lore, but understanding of those should not be necessary to understand the story.