Chapter Two

A Fateful Day

Arda

May 4, TA 2941

Kate had never liked Bree.

Perhaps it had something to do with the smell; mud and excrement always permeated the air in the village of Men, turning it sour and noxious, and in the warm summer months it became even worse when the nauseating scent of the slaughterhouses was blown upwind, the flies following close behind. She slapped one of the said flies away from her cheek as she made her way up the main street of the village, leading her horse by the reins through the sucking mud and careful to avoid the carts and wagons clogging the area.

Merchant season was in full swing, with travelers from all walks of realms seeking coin and shelter within the dingy village. Kate bypassed their stalls and wares, boasting fine silks from the Eastlands or supple leather supplies brought from Rohan and other trinkets and finery from Eru-knew-where. The merchants weren't very likely to receive many high-paying customers in Bree, where most of the inhabitants were either farmers or millers or shopkeepers, but the villagers still puttered about curiously, their conversations teeming with gossip and speculation.

"C'mon, girl," Kate said, clucking her tongue and pulling on her mare's reins lightly, steering her away from the thickest of the crowd, where people were beginning to take interest in a lone woman and her horse. "This way."

The sun was sinking, the shadows between the shops and shanties lengthening at her feet, the air becoming cooler on her sweaty brow. She could hear the chirping of crickets as she made her way to the top of the hill, where her destination was set proudly on display: The Prancing Pony.

It had been some odd months since she had last seen the inn, but it looked the same as ever. The windows still beckoned with cheery golden light, the scents of ale and warm bread temporarily overtaking the rest of the stench, with the same old, peeling sign swinging haphazardly above the door.

Her stomach rumbling at the thought of Mrs. Butterbur's famous stew, she led her horse to the back of the inn where the stables were, nodding at the boy who came to help her.

"Evening, miss," he said, tipping his thatched cap. He couldn't have been older than fifteen, but the dirt on his face made it difficult to tell. "How long will you be keeping your horse here?"

"Oh, a few days, at the most," she said. "Could be more, could be less."

The boy looked at her curiously. "No business, then?"

She quirked a brow, waving a hand to her rugged appearance. "Do I look like a fine merchant to you?"

"I wouldn't say merchant, but I would be bold to agree with fine," he said, grinning mischievously, and her brow rose higher. Cheeky little thing.

"Bold, indeed," she said, and his grin widened. "However, you are a bit young for me."

"I'll be sixteen at the end of the month," he boasted, standing taller.

"And I'll be twenty-three," she said drily, "but good effort."

He shrugged modestly, taking her horse's reins from her. "That'll be two silvers."

"Two?" She narrowed her eyes. "It was one and a copper the last time I was here."

"Mr. Butterbur upped the price to two silvers and a copper," he said. "I'm giving you the discount here."

Kate rolled her eyes. "Thank you. I'm sure you helping me save me that one copper will make a world of difference."

He smirked. "I could charge you full price."

"Oh, fine." She removed the coin pouch from her waist, fishing out two silver pieces and dropping them into his outstretched hand.

"Pleasure doing business with you," he said, winking. "I'm Ben, by the way. Just ask for me whenever you need to be off again."

"Thanks," she said, turning away from the stables after giving her horse one last nose rub.

"Oi!" he called after her. "Don't I get your name too?"

"Perhaps when you're older," she said over her shoulder, chuckling at the incredulous look on his face as she rounded the corner to the inn. She stepped inside the low building, the din immediately sweltering her in noise as she approached the small desk where the books were kept, having to ring the bell twice before Mr. Butterbur puffed over, his face red and shiny with sweat.

"Miss Miller!" he boomed upon seeing her. "Good to see you, good to see you! It's been some time, hasn't it?"

"Two years or so," she said, nodding. "How's Anne?"

"Wonderful as ever," he said, opening up his ledger. "You know she had a babe? A beautiful boy; named him after me! Barliman the Second!"

"You have a son?" she said. "Barley, that's incredible!"

His chest swelled with pride as he jotted her name down, his face becoming ruddier with pleasure.

"Thank you, thank you…" he said. He pulled out a key from beneath the desk and handed it to her. "Room number thirteen, last right on the second floor. Will you be joining us for supper?"

"I wouldn't miss your wife's lovely cooking for the world, Barley," she said, winking. "Let me toss my things upstairs and I'll be back down."

Satisfied, he nodded and went back behind the bar while she headed up the stairs, emerging onto the second landing. She found her door and unlocked it, entering a bland but comfortable room, fitted with a single bed, a wardrobe, a nightstand, and even a little desk set up in the corner, connected to a smaller space that held a basin of water and a bar of lye soap.

Kate dumped her belongings on the bed, a small rucksack filled with only the basic necessities with a bedroll tied to the top. She had always preferred to travel lightly, never knowing what could happen the next day and not wanting to be bogged down by too many things in case she had to make a run for it. Middle-earth, she had learned, was no picnic, and it took her soon enough to start having some wits about her.

After freshening up a bit, she ventured downstairs again, scanning the packed room for an empty seat. Ducking through the boisterous crowd, she eventually came to a lonely little table hidden in the back corner behind the hearth, and she took a seat, pulling out a deck of playing cards from her pocket.

"Miss Miller!" Barley's wife greeted as she came over, plunking down a tankard of ale before her. "Barley told me you had whirled in again! What brings you to Bree this time 'round?"

Kate looked up at the redhaired, freckled woman. Though Anne closely resembled a cherub, in Kate's opinion, the innkeeper's wife was as sharp as a blade and had a knack for knowing when people were lying through their teeth.

"Just passing through," Kate said easily, beginning to set up her cards for a game of clock solitaire. "I came from Rohan; I bought a horse there and trained her before coming back west. She's out in the stables if you'd like to see her tomorrow. Her name's Molly."

"You know, I think I might," Anne said, giving her a gap-toothed grin. "Did Barley tell you the good news?"

"Of course," she said. "Congratulations, to both of you! I'll bet he's adorable."

"A right bugger is what he is," Anne snorted, but Kate could see the fondness in her eyes. "Keeps me up all night! Aye, but he's sweeter than a peach, that one. I'll have to introduce you."

Kate smiled. "I'd like that. And I'd also like some of your excellent stew if you don't mind."

Anne winked at her. "Already warming some up for you, darlin'. I'll bring it over in a moment."

Kate thanked her and went back to her card game. She'd been taught it as a kid growing up in the group home, and she'd often play it whenever she got too bored or lonely, a habit that had crossed over with her whenever Mahal had summoned her five years prior.

Adjusting to Middle-earth had been the hardest challenge in Kate's life so far (she dared not think of the looming quest just yet), and for her first six months, she had made sure to curse Mahal's name every single day for taking her from Boston. Her first week had been particularly grueling, but what else had she expected after showing up in some random village of Men, starved and half-mad with thirst and dressed in the oddest clothes the villagers had ever seen? The attention had been extremely uncomfortable, and once she had been fed and watered and given a change of spare clothes that had belonged to the butcher's dead son, she had been on her way, anxious to escape their scrutiny.

In Boston, she had assumed complete anonymity; with so many people, a lone seventeen-year-old girl was nothing out of the ordinary, but in Middle-earth, it had made her a target for gossip and potentially other sinister things. It wasn't uncommon here for teenagers to run amok without parents or a family, but as small and rural as the villages were, a stranger was hardly welcomed.

She had spent a year flitting from village to village in a place she had learned was called Dunland, sleeping on stacks of hay in barns or beneath the stars in pastures when the nights were clear and cool. She had lost a significant amount of weight, as well, since food was scarce and she had no money, and after she had stolen a loaf of bread and some cheese for the first time she had cried herself sick and refused to eat for two days as punishment to herself, so thieving was out of the question. She began to ask for work where she could, but no one wanted to hire someone so young, especially a girl.

However, the week after her eighteenth birthday (from what she figured, anyway), she found her saving grace in the old, shriveled form of a crone named Reyna, who had owned an apothecary in a nameless village along the Great East Road.

Blind as a bat and meaner than a bull, Reyna had taken an interest in Kate when the girl once dropped in for a jar of salve to apply to her fingertips, which she had burned in her campfire the night before.

"How'd you manage something like that?" the old woman had asked her as Kate sifted through her pockets, trying to find loose change to pay for the salve.

"It was an accident," Kate had grumbled, too embarrassed to admit that she had tripped while trying to swordfight with a stick (even though she had no idea how to use a sword in the first place).

"Some accident," Reyna had replied after checking her burns. "Are you sure you aren't just stupid?"

"Are you sure you aren't and been mistaking it for blindness this whole time?" Kate had snapped, her frazzled nerves and consuming terror over being pitched headfirst into this strange world and now being mocked by some old lady making her temper spill over.

There had been a heartbeat of silence before the woman threw back her head and laughed, her coarse voice like the caw of a crow.

"Feisty little thing," she had said after she had calmed. "You want a job?"

Kate had blinked; she'd just insulted this woman, and now she wanted to hire her? When Kate had asked her why, the woman had just grinned with yellow teeth.

"You amuse me," had been her simple reply. "Come in tomorrow morning. And call me Reyna; don't bother with any of that ma'am horseshit."

And so Kate had worked there for several months, learning which herbs would cure what, which ones could be used as poisons, and even learning how to heal some minor injuries when the villagers would show up with broken bones or bleeding gashes. Reyna had become her mentor, but even more than that, Kate's first friend in Middle-earth. Though annoying and crass at times, she had been lively and wise, and thanks to her, Kate adapted more quickly to her new world until she had become almost comfortable with her new lot in life. She had even trusted Reyna enough to tell her of the task Mahal had assigned her to, and though the woman had been skeptical at first, she had soon come to accept it. However, things changed for Kate five months after she had begun to work under Reyna when the old woman had fallen ill, and nothing could cure her.

"Please don't leave me," Kate had cried by her beside one night. It had been raining outside, and that combined with the throes of Reyna's struggling breaths had been the only sounds. "I can't do this alone. I-I'm so scared."

That had been the first time Kate had ever admitted it aloud. Surviving in Middle-earth, the quest she would have to take… She couldn't do it. Mahal had made a colossal mistake in choosing her. She didn't know how to fight, how to hunt, how to take care of herself in this strange land. All she could do was tell the difference between weeds and suture some skin. She was useless, and she was afraid.

"You are a fighter, Kate Miller," Reyna had said, her voice rasping throughout the small room they occupied behind the shop. "Aulë chose you because you are a survivor. Look here."

She had brushed one of her worn fingers across the inside of Kate's right wrist, and the younger girl had flinched as she pulled up her sleeve, revealing the parting gift Mahal had left her more than a year before: a tattoo of a crown, inked in black, with seven stars marked above it—her terrifying reminder of what she had yet to face. The mark she had not told anyone but Reyna about.

"His blessing follows you, even now," Reyna had said. "Fight, Kate Miller. Thrive. Become the best you can be. I know you will do…great things…"

And just like that, she had stopped breathing.

Kate had only stayed for a week more after that. Reyna, as it turned out, had left her a sizeable amount of money in her will, and combined with the coins she had saved from working, she could now afford to carve out a life for herself somewhere else. And so, after the funeral in which she and the gravedigger had been the only ones present, she hitched a ride on a spice wagon out of the village and had never looked back, taking Reyna's advice and doing her best to thrive in Middle-earth.

She learned stories and lore and songs from the merchants she traveled with and in the inns they would frequent, even catching onto some phrases in other languages, like Elvish or Dwarvish. She could calculate currency rates and barter with the best of the merchants, and slowly, she began to acclimate into Middle-earth society.

She met hobbits and dwarves, but preferred to stick with the race of Men—fantasy creatures still made her leery, even if she now knew they were real and shared an entire world with them. Elves were simply out of the question. She had been told they were a dwindling, secretive bunch, and that suited her just fine. She was not one to run off in search of adventure, and in her opinion, the elves could stay hidden.

She traveled frequently, nonetheless, in the territories of Men, and west of the Misty Mountains (figuring she would, quite literally, cross them when she came to them). Her favorite place by far had been Rohan, where she had spent the last two years training her horse and learning how to fight under the guidance of Rodric, son of Rodrhim. In the months since her departure to Bree, she often found herself thinking of him, and wondered if when all was said and done, she would get a chance to say goodbye to him before returning to her own world.

Those five years had accumulated to now, with her sitting in The Prancing Pony, playing clock solitaire, drinking ale, and occasionally spooning a bite of stew into her mouth. Despite her relaxed outward appearance, Kate was very much alert, keeping her ears pricked and her eyes roving, hesitating on the door to the inn every so often. She fingered the tattoo on the inside of her forearm anxiously, beginning to wonder if she had timed her arrival correctly. The details of Tolkien's books had become hazy over the years, but the Company had departed Hobbiton at the end of April if she remembered right. And they would undoubtedly have to stop for supplies or comfort before truly setting out on the Road, which had led her to Bree in the first place, as it was on the route they would be taking. She even had it traced on the map she kept in her breast pocket.

It was nearly midnight when Kate's patience began to thin. After two bowls of stew, several ales that she was sure her head would not thank her for later, and countless games of cards, the inn had slowly begun to dwindle, until it was only her and several other patrons still seated in the bar.

Where the hell are they? she thought in annoyance. Hey, Mahal—care to give me a sign or something? What do you even do all day? Help me, here!

"You look exhausted, Kate."

Kate started in her chair, her head snapping up from where it had been drooping towards the table. Anne stood with her hands on her hips, wearing a thick woolen robe over her nightgown and looking down at the tired woman.

"'m fine," Kate mumbled, stifling a yawn—unconvincingly.

Anne's brows inched higher up her forehead. "You were about to start drooling on my table. Why don't you get yourself on up to bed?"

"No!" Kate said, a bit too quickly, and she grimaced when Anne's brows nearly disappeared into her hairline. "I mean, no, thank you. I, er, I'm waiting on somebody."

Anne scoffed. "Really, lass, of all the men in this village you choose Ben? Don't be fooled, the boy is far too young—"

"Ben?" Kate repeated. "As in the stable boy?"

When Anne nodded, looking suspicious, Kate nearly choked. "Valar, no! Not him! Somebody else…"

She trailed off when Anne continued to look dubious. She sighed and rubbed her temples. "I'm fine, Anne, really. Please, I just…this is important."

Anne's eyes tracked over her for a long moment until she finally dropped her arms, nodding. "Aye, I see that. You never do anything without reason, Kate Miller, I know that. Just be careful, aye? We get a lot of strange folk who roam in here after the moon's peak."

That's what I'm counting on.

Kate nodded, smiling faintly. "Thanks, Anne. I will."

Satisfied, the innkeeper's wife retreated to her private room with her husband and son, leaving Kate alone at her table. The three merchants who had been the only ones left with her had finally fallen asleep at their table, their drunken snores the only sound in the empty bar.

Kate shuffled her playing cards apprehensively, trying to keep her hands busy so she could stay awake, but her movements were becoming sloppy, sluggish. It seemed her long days of traveling had caught up to her, and the ale she had consumed was making her head fuzzy and thick like she had been stuffed with cotton.

The night slowly began to wane into the wee hours of the morning, and by three o'clock, Kate was fast asleep, snoring just as loudly as the merchants only a few seats away. Perhaps it had been for the best that night; the Company of Thorin Oakenshield would not crest the Brandywine River until the dawn of that day, and they would not be in Bree until mid-morning.

Kate, of course, would not find out about this until she was awoken by Anne the next morning, still passed out at her table and with an ace of spades stuck to her cheek. And Kate, of course, would instantly be out the door of The Prancing Pony, tearing through the streets until she found someone who was not supposed to be real, but decidedly was.

And needless to say, Gandalf the Grey had only one thought that crossed his mind when he saw a young woman barreling toward him on that fine May morning: Well, this should be an interesting day.