I quickly looked around a few corners in the hope of picking up the trail again, but soon resigned myself to failure. It could have taken too many different paths.
Curiosity brought me back to this one book. Did it really tell the story of Feanor's magnificent and yet so doomed jewels? I felt compelled to find out, so I took it from the shelf.
It was rather small, compared to the tomes usually found in Minas Tirith, but when I opened it, I found the its pages were delicately thin and in fact it contained more pages then most of those tomes. The letters were even more surprising, as they were written with a stunning precision, each line being perfectly aligned and all letters of one kind looking exactly alike. I wondered whether it could truly be the work of a master calligrapher; it looked to me more like the work of some machinery.
"There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he first made the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made. And he spoke to them, propounding to them themes of music..."
The book did indeed tell the history of our world from the very beginning and it did so very well. The author was given as J.R.R. Tolkien. I supposed by then that he must have been a Numenorean, since I doubt that any contemporary historian could write such an accurate record of the former ages. Did they have machines to make books in Numenor, I wondered? Once again I mourned all the wonderful things that Ar-Pharazôn's(1) folly had lost.
When it came to the time after the flight of the Noldor, parts of what I read were new even to me. Of course, during that time little information about the tidings in Middle Earth came to Valinor, but after the war of wrath many stories were told and so the general picture was known to me already. This Tolkien, however, had researched the time very thoroughly.
When I finished reading about the war of wrath and the book was not yet at its end, I expected it to continue with the story of Numenor up to the time of the author. When I turn the page however I was surprised once more, as the next chapter was named "Alkallabêth". The word did not have any meaning of historical importance before the fall of Numenor, so the book could not have been written there. I read on, eager to find more details of Middle Earth's History, but now also intrigued to find out when the book will end.
I found that it also contained a brief, but precise account of the Last Alliance and still it went on. When I came across the death of Eärendur(2), I stopped reading. Who could this Tolkien be, I asked myself, that I have never heard about him nor seen any books like this before?
As I looked up from the book, I saw that the shelf contained more books from the same author. So I picked one of them, hoping that it might give me more clues on who this Tolkien was. The title of the book was The Fellowship of the Ring, which gave me an eerie feeling, but I began to read nevertheless.
"When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence..."
Just half a sentence, but I was stunned. The mere fact that Tolkien mentioned Mr. Baggins was surprising enough, but what really baffled me was the fact that Bilbo had not and has not yet lived for a hundred years. For a moment I had to lean on my staff, feeling completely dizzy.
When my head stopped spinning I remembered that I was no longer sitting in Minas Tirith and concluded that this riddle could not be solved without taking into account how I had come to this place. So I thought about those junctions, examined a few in my vicinity and finally chose one that I passed several times. Suddenly I had an idea.
To confirm it, I made an experiment: I took a book, stood it upright in the middle of an aisle and knocked it to make it topple over. Then I stepped through one of these rifts. Looking back I saw the book topple once more. Two more steps in that direction and the book was back in the shelf. Walking back I glimpsed a lightning fast moving image of myself. When I stepped back through the rift, the book was lying on the floor again. These ways did not only twist directions, they altered the flow of time as well.
Now things began to make sense: I have never heard about him, because he has not yet written its books, most likely he is not even yet born. He is, or better, will be, a future historian.
(1) The last king of Numenor, who was seduced by Sauron to break the ban and sail west to conquer Valinor, thus triggering the destruction of Numenor.
(2) The last king of the northern kingdom of Arnor, who died less then two centuries before Gandalf came to Middle Earth.