JANE 9 and ½

In which they go somewhere very dark…

The climb down towards the entrance of the mine was slow, torturous and like slowly descending into a pit, all the light was sucked out. The ground was slippy and sticky and smelled vaguely of rotting fish. Now that it was less cold, all the snow collected on her hair and clothes started melting and she could feel icy water trickle down her back. She was glad she was a girl, as the beards the men, wizard and dwarf wore were thick with frost and starting to melt. Gandalf wrung his beard and then swung it over his shoulder. Jane looked on in awe and prodded Boromir to look, but he was less impressed by Gandalf's beard antics, perhaps because he had been on the march with men before and had seen a lot stranger things, or perhaps because his suggestion of going through the Gap of Rohan to "his city" had been ignored, continually. No wonder he felt no one paid attention to Gondor or its needs. Gandalf's beard, swaying over his shoulder as he walked, cheered Jane up a bit, because her surroundings were gloomy. The mountain, which had once been full of dwarvish activity had clearly fallen into disrepair some time ago, perhaps hundreds of years, looking at the stone archways that were falling apart. Or, thought Jane, conversely, they had never been finished, It gave her the impression that it was very old and that the mountain they were about to enter was even older.

Everyone around her looked depressed. Jane thought it was probably because they had been defeated by the snow and weren't relishing going into the dark. It was a forbidding place, colourless, lifeless, so still and echoing, the only movement the wispy mist blowing through it. Still, thought Jane, I can feel my feet now, looking around at the solemn faces. Even the horse looked sad.

Why does Bill remind me of Eeyore? Wondered Jane. Is it because he looks so depressed?

Gimli was the only happy, animated face, as he was going on about how his cousin was going to give them a royal feast and was describing all the dishes they would be eating and the ale. "Where do the food go in Gimli?" she asked Boromir.

He smiled. "His stomach is a mine," he said.

"Ho ho ho Boromir make a joke!" teased Jane. "Soon pigs fly," she said.

"I will have you know, Jane, that when not tramping around mountains on a suicidal mission, I can have a sense of humour," Boromir told her.

She looked up at him. "Hmm. We will see," she whispered.

"Ah," said Gandalf. "Frodo, come and help an old man," he said.

"Wizard," said Jane, tiredly and pedantically.

"An old wizard then, thank you, Jane," Gandalf amended. He took Frodo under his arm and they had a secret conversation, looking an odd sight together. Gandalf smoothed his now dry beard out and let it hang in the usual place, while talking to the Ring Bearer.

"Ah, the Walls," said Gimli, pointing at some walls. Jane looked on disinterestedly.

"Ah, the rocks," she said, pointing at rocks, "ah, the sky," she said, pointing at the sky, "ah, the fellowship," she pointed at the fellowship. Gimli scowled.

"Jane," warned Boromir, shaking his head at her.

"Hrrumph, as I was saying, ah, the walls…of Moria!" Gimli pointed again, a little more impressively and they all looked at the vast walls.

In truth, the walls were very impressive in that they were very tall. Jane thought them incredibly ugly.

"Dwarf walls are invisible when closed," said Gimli, acting as a tour guide, tapping the wall with his axe.

"Ah, the invisible walls!" said Jane. Boromir gave her a look and she chose to sit on a rock and wait. She hugged her knees and thought about food.

"….their own masters cannot find them," said Gandalf.

"Why doesn't that surprise me," muttered Legolas.

Gimli started growling, which rather surprised Jane. They kept walking for some time along the walls, so Jane was forced to end her repose and follow them until they came to the edge of a rather murky and smelly lake. Jane made sure that her feet went nowhere near the still water, carefully treading over the roots, branches and stones.

After about twenty minutes, Gandalf started stroking the wall, which in Jane's sleepiness was odd even for him, until she remembered what he was doing. Muttering to himself, he traced a dark metal along the wall, which Jane could only just make out and then looked up at the sky. Dark clouds past over the moon, and cleared it, leaving it big and round, like a plate, and it shone down on them and something wonderful and beautiful happened. The metal lit up, as if fluorescent but certainly luminous and a enchanting elvish door appeared, reminding her of their craftsmanship back in Rivendell. Stars and swirls and beautiful symmetry and their beautiful and foreign runes appeared glowing on the dark stone.

"It reads, "The door of Durin, Lord of Moria. Speak, friend, and enter."

"What do you suppose that means?" asked Merry.

Gandalf answered, confidently, "Oh, it's quite simple, it means if you are a friend, speak the password and enter." Jane rolled her eyes.

He raised his staff to the door and shouted something impressive in Elvish. Nothing happened and he frowned and looked about him. He raised his arms and shouted something different, but no less impressive. He looked worried.

"Nothing is happening," said Pippin. Gandalf started trying to push the door open.

Jane sat down again and closed her eyes for a bit.

A plopping sound woke her up, and it felt like hours had past, perhaps because in sleeping a moment can feel like eternity and a long time can feel like a blink. In reality, barely twenty minutes had passed, but Gandalf's desperation had increased tenfold and the rest of the Fellowship were starting to doubt their leader.

I'm too cold to put up with this, she thought.

"Mellon!" she cried. The doors slowly swung open, with a creak and a groan, revealing a darkness that made the light they had been sitting in look like daylight. The entire Fellowship turned to look at her, in amazement. She smiled smugly at them and raised her eyebrows. "Oh yeah, underestimated me, didn't you," she said in English. "Where's Bill?" she asked in Westron, suddenly noticing his absence.

"We had to let him go, Miss Jane," said Sam, sadly. "The mines are no place for a pony," he said, looking at Aragorn. Jane pouted, she would like to have said goodbye.

"Let's go, then," said Gandalf. Everyone picked up their bags and Pippin threw a last stone into the lake.

"No!" said Jane, panicked. Pippin looked at her.

"What's wrong, Jane?" he asked.

She looked at the lake.

"You shouldn't have disturbed the water," said Aragorn, staring worriedly at the strong waves in the lake, that a few pebbles wouldn't have created with a ripple.

"Into the mine, everyone," said Gandalf, ushering them in.

"Now, for a little light," he said, Jane watched him as he screwed his crystal into his staff, the words of Gimli washing over her head and Gandalf blew onto his staff and it lit up.

Gimli was still laughing when the light hit the stone staircase and the edges of the tunnel and they saw the corpses. "A mine!"

"This is no mine," said Boromir, softly. "This is a tomb," he whispered, looking at the goblin arrows piercing dwarf skulls, the sunken bodies, just chainmail and an axe.

"Nooooo," moaned Gimli, in horror.

Jane placed herself carefully behind Frodo, looking out to the moving water behind them. She could see nothing, but she had a hand on her bow, waiting for an attack. Aragorn and Boromir drew their swords and looked into the mine. "We make for the Gap of Rohan," said Boromir. "We should never have come here, now get out of here, get – Jane what are you looking at?" he said, caught off balance at Jane who had raised her bow at the entrance. She looked over to him instinctively, for the most fleeting of seconds, and that was when the monster chose to strike.

A tentacle shot out, aiming for Frodo, but Jane pushed him out the way and it grabbed her foot and pulled her along. She could see Boromir's terrified face upside down as she dropped her bow and struggled to get the knife that had been resting idle for a long time in her right boot. Adrenaline was pumping through her veins and all she could hear was a pounding in her ear. She lunched and grabbed the knife and struck at the tentacle, Pippin and Merry hacking it with their little swords and they cleaved it in two.

She scrambled to her feet just as five tentacles rose from the water and pushed over the hobbits and one wrapped itself around her feet and pulled her high into the air.

Swinging wildly about upside down, she cut the tentacle holding her and fell, screaming, ten foot in the air until another one caught her. A giant, monstrous head emerged from the dark waters, so hideous and vast, with its mouth wide open, displaying grey, dirty and terribly sharp teeth, rows of them , an evil mouth intent of eating her.

She fell in the air again, screaming, but this time someone strong caught her. It was Boromir, and he ran shouting back through the door into Moria, and the monster followed, crawling on its tentacles, it crashed onto the walls and Boromir dropped Jane so she could run and the walls crumbled and tore down and everything went black.

Jane was on the floor; she couldn't see anything, but she could feel that she was sitting on some bones. "Oh my god, oh my god," she whispered, panicking, feeling completely alone in the pitch dark. She got to her feet clumsily, backing into a wall. Everything hurt, her back and legs where she had been dragged along the stones on the ground, her ankles where the tentacles had wrapped themselves tightly around her bones, and her head was thumping. She started to hyperventilate and put her arms out in front of her, wanting desperately for one of the Fellowship to come and touch her, so she could feel another person. She was shaking terribly.

Someone touched her hand and clasped it and drew her in. "You are safe, little one," said Boromir's gruff voice, from the darkness. "Calm down," he asked her. She buried her face into his chest, where his growly voice vibrated and she tried to breathe. Gandalf lit his crystal again and the dim light illuminated dusty scared and concerned faces.

"Are you hurt?" asked the hobbits together, in a jumble. Boromir answered for her.

"She'll be fine in a minute."

"Sorry," she whispered, after a few seconds, when she had calmed down. "I was scared." She let go of Boromir and looked round at the rest of the Fellowship who were dimly illuminated by Gandalf's staff. "I don't like the dark," she said, apologetically.

"I have your bow," said Legolas, and handed her back the bow that she had dropped.

"Oh, thank you," she said, gratefully. Looking up at Boromir she said, "Well, that's the important thing," she joked, braving a smile.

"I'm glad you're unhurt," said Pippin sweetly and gave her a hug. She smiled and patted him on the back.

In the dim darkness and the draft the decimated bodies of dwarves and goblins glinted at Jane and the stench of burning flesh hung in the air. She had never been anywhere so relentlessly dark before, where the blackness went on forever.

"We have now but once choice," said Gandalf. Jane looked back at the blocked off entrance, where the dust was still settling. She put the knife which she had been gripping back in the sheath in her boot and stood up. Now, she said to hersefl miserably, they just had a couple of nights in the mine and a battle with the goblins to look forward to, oh, and a fight with a balrog which loses us Gandalf.

"I hate mines," she said. Everyone, especially the elf, looked like they agreed with her.

"We must face the long dark of Moria," continued the wizard. "Be on your guard...there are older and fouler things than the Orcs in the deep places of the world."

Jane tried hard to imagine what Moria would have looked like when it was under the dwarvish rule and not decimated by the forces of evil. She thought it would look grand and solemn, but she could not imagine it every looking cheerful, or imagine happiness deep down in the mines. It was too intense, to grey and dark and too empty to inspire cheer.

"Quietly, now," encouraged the wizard, interrupting her thoughts. "It's a four day journey to the other side. Let us hope that our presence will go unnoticed."

And now it was littered with dead bodies and goblin graffiti of dwarvish blood. Even without it, the precariously narrow bridges they had to walk over, the deep caverns, with unused mining equipment, was eerie and sinister.

"Four days," she whispered. That was an awful long time to spend in the dark, she thought.

"Don't worry, little one," said Boromir, behind her. "I'll look after you."

Jane had been counting on that.

Oh dear, it's been such a long time since I updated! Shame on me! However, I thought getting to eleventy-one reviews was something of a sign so i have determined to finish! And I miss Boromir/Jane interaction. And basically, any old excuse to think about Boromir for a long period of time.

Anyway! I hope you enjoy it, tell me what you think. It's only half the chapter, the other half of Moria is still being written.