Tales of Older Days (8/8)
Title: Tales of Older Days (8/8): Post Scriptum
Author: Clodius Pulcher *cough*
Characters: Erestor, A Heroine, An Urchin, A Villain, A Dragon Cub, HenchDwarves and Others. Reappearing in this chapter: A Joker, A River-daughter.
Rating: PG-13.
Book/Source: LotR, Silmarillion
Disclaimer: I am not J.R.R. Tolkien and I make no money from this.
Note: My word, I seem to have finished this at last! Bet you didn't see that coming, did you? To ignoblebard and gogollescent I owe inspiration and encouragement, as ever. MEFA 2010 Second Place (Genres: Humor: Incomplete).
Summary: Disappointments in store for Lady Inez and the urchin both, I fear. Remember that long-anticipated trip to Imladris?
Wordcount: 3341
it was a dark and stormy night | the patter of tiny feet | indulge your local narrator | sleep under stone | inez and the machine | adventures of a most lurid kind | a shade repetitive
~ post scriptum ~
At about the same time that Lady Inez was driving her Dwarves furiously towards the moonlit Weather Hills, Iarwain ben-Adar opened his door and burst out laughing. Ponies grazed at the foot of the hill, mere shadows in the dark, and on the wide stone threshold stood a heap of bags and the two people he had been expecting. Erestor looked much the same as ever, if perhaps a little grim, but Melinna was bundled up in her husband’s cloak and had pulled the hood close around her face. Only the tip of a stray pink braid betrayed her.
“It’s not much of an improvement, is it?” Erestor said critically. “If you ask me, she’s lucky to have any hair left at all.”
“Yes, all right, very funny,” said Melinna, rather shortly. She let the hood fall back to reveal her colourful head. “May we come in?”
Iarwain uttered a chuckle that made his beard quiver and his whole plump body shake mirthfully. He ushered them into the bright chamber.
An hour ago, food had been set out on the long polished table; and there the better part of it remained, despite the depredations of Iarwain’s youthful guests. At the head of the table sat the River-daughter with lilies round her, flickering fair and brilliant for all her domesticity, which they all knew was only a temporary phenomenon anyway. She rose at their entrance and came over the clean flagstones to greet them, her white arms shining like river-washed stone under the gleaming lamplit waves of her yellow curls.
Before Goldberry could speak, the dragonet skittered out from under the table and launched itself at Melinna in a frantic whir of silver wings. The impact jolted her: she took a step backwards and found herself besieged by Miss Gogollescent Ferny, who had shed the overlarge coat and battered boots and was bubbling with impertinent questions pertaining to Melinna’s new hairstyle. Distractingly, the dragonet dug its talons into Melinna’s shoulder and purred frost happily down her neck, its tail twisting into her lurid braids. It was chirruping in a painfully high pitch. After a moment of this, syllables emerged, much to her surprise. “Melinna!” it was saying, “Melinna! Erestor! Melinna! Hello! Yes! Hello! Hello!”
“What are you?” said Melinna, taken aback. “A parrot?” She looked accusingly at Iarwain. “Have you been teaching it to speak?”
Iarwain was grinning all over his wrinkled ruddy face. “Damn you,” she said, wholeheartedly, and reached out to Goldberry, taking care not to dislodge the dragonet, which was obviously in no mood to be dislodged.
“Melinna, sweet friend!” said Goldberry and embraced her. She was as cool as river-water and laughter glimmered in her shining eyes. “The dear children have been missing you...”
The dear child before Melinna bounced eagerly on its grubby besocked tiptoes and demanded loudly to know all about what had happened in Bree. Gogol seemed to have been subjected to soap and water, although this had only begun what would obviously be a lifelong battle against a natural patina of grease and dirt, and her hair spiked up in damp black ruffles. Meanwhile the dragonet nibbled Melinna’s ear in its loving way and hissed when she tried to unhook it from her tunic. She could only look at them helplessly. They were very much awake and she was very tired now, and her ridiculous hair seemed still full of smoke.
Erestor nudged her, gently enough. “Let her sit down,” he told the urchin, and tickled the dragonet clinging to Melinna’s shoulder until it meeped and flickered its snakish tongue at him. “We’ll talk over supper.”
The meal had all the rejuvenating properties that could be expected of food produced by the River-daughter and Iarwain ben-Adar. Goldberry poured water from a tall pitcher and smiled in her bright, knowing way. “Why, nought but a little adventure,” she said merrily, when Erestor inquired what had brought her home so soon. “For Old Man Willow does not sleep, you know, not even for the little ones.”
He sighed. “Gogol,” he said. “I thought I told you to behave yourself?”
The urchin’s protestations were undercut by the dragonet, which curled up in Melinna’s lap and snickered in a decidedly vulgar fashion. “Never mind,” said Erestor, waving off Gogol’s babbling. He leaned both elbows on the table and pushed his hands back into his dark hair, so that the skin pulled taut over his temples. “We were going to talk about Bree.”
Melinna closed her eyes and sipped cool water until she could no longer taste blood or the acrid aftermath of firework-powder. The dragonet was kneading her thigh and breathing cold mist against her knee. She could feel the prickle of its talons.
Absently she stroked its long narrow head...
~*~*~
She had woken from Mandos, as if from a dream.
The tapestry-clad Halls and Elwing’s anxious face had shimmered into the queasy, whispering dark. Melinna closed her eyes once, twice and then again, and blinked, and opened her eyes to a roof of taut canvas. All around were the cramped confines of a solid Dwarvish wagon crammed with peculiar objects and pieces of twisting metal and suspiciously unpleasant-looking implements. She had been laid out like a corpse in cloth on the wooden floor. Her body was agonisingly stiff and her throat was very dry; she was wracked at once by a coughing fit so violent she feared for her ribs.
A hairy Dwarvish face peered down on her, apparently in concern. Sunlight glowed behind him and blazed in a blurry halo off the polished metal of his armour. She recognised Mili through a blur of tears.
Then a shadow materialised and hit him over the head.
“Next time, you can be the distraction,” Erestor said, while she was still blinking. “You might even make it to the meeting point then. Elbereth! What have you done to your hair?”
She finished hacking up her lungs while Erestor immobilised the unconscious Dwarf and continued to pass pointed comment on the extreme lack of common sense required to walk straight into the hands of someone like Lady Inez. This was easily ignored, since Erestor was mostly getting his own back for Melinna’s remarks the last time she’d fished him out of a similarly sticky situation. She paid just enough attention to work out what had become of the urchin and the dragonet, then concentrated on trying to remember how she had come to be installed in this particular wagon with her hair this particularly revolting shade of pink. There had been the dragonet and the Dwarves and the lady and the Machine... and then the Void... and Eärendil and Elwing, and then the Halls of Mandos...
‘Dangerous trinkets’, someone had said. And there were a great many interesting things stashed in this wagon that might well fall under that rubric.
She cleared her throat and regretted it. “Where’s the lady and her little pets?” she asked Erestor hoarsely. “Do we need to hurry?”
He pulled tight the final knot and glanced up under his arched brows. “No. I sent them to rendezvous with a wight on the Barrowdowns. She left a few behind to guard the wagons. Six, to be precise, not counting this gentleman. I thought he might be useful.”
Melinna appreciated his precision and his edge. “What did you -”
“In one of the other wagons.” There was blood on his tunic, but none on his face. He had knocked Mili out with the haft of his knife; the blade had been clean, but that meant only that Erestor took good care of his weapons. “It had a big wooden box with a very big lock. I thought we might take a look inside while we’re here.”
“Ah,” said Melinna, recognising the Machine.
She had almost regained her composure, although her throat was burning. She watched Erestor glance calculatingly around the wagon. His eyebrows went up. “My,” he murmured, “straight from the dragon’s hoard, d’you think?”
“Looks like it. About that box -”
“Hm?”
“There’s Black Script all over the inside. Some kind of complicated machinery, too - and she was very careful about opening it, so I’d put money on it being trapped. We should destroy it. Take out the gems, if we can. It - well, it was - very odd. I’ll tell you later. It’s why my hair’s like this. I think. Well, it must be.”
Erestor gave her a thoughtful look and, after a moment, nodded. “Nothing that colour can be up to any good,” he observed. “All right. We’ll do that. But first...”
He gestured to Lady Inez’s assembled curios. “What about this lot?”
Melinna shrugged. “Take what we can, and any documents, and destroy the rest? They must have ponies to pull the wagons. We can use them.”
Erestor glanced around the wagon again. “I think,” he said, “I’m going to need a bigger bag.”
In a chest they found bags full of uncut gems. Melinna tugged loose the drawstrings of one and thrust deep into its contents. Mostly rubies, she thought, together with a handful of other precious stones. She drew out a diamond and three huge pearls and looked at them nestled snugly in the palm of her hand. “Not valuable enough,” she remarked. “Trinkets only, I suppose.”
Erestor was briefly quiet. Then he said, “Remember going pearl-fishing at Balar? And the things the Dwarves of Nogrod made us? That jewellery?”
“I remember losing all but the hairpins when they sacked Menegroth.”
“Let’s fill our pockets. We might as well.”
They set to work on the wagon’s contents. By the time they had assembled such objects as could realistically be removed, and begun brutally dismembering those that could not, Mili the Dwarf was starting to stir. He made no sound, which was wise of him, but from the corner of his eye Erestor caught the flutter of the Dwarf’s beard as his breathing changed. He put his finger to his lips at once. “The beast’s in Kat Ferny’s house,” he said clearly, causing Melinna to stare at him in surprise. “The girl too. I thought it’d be safe enough, since Lady Inez took the woman off to the Barrowdowns. Is that Dwarf awake yet?”
Mili’s short, sturdy body lay markedly still. “No,” said Melinna, understanding, “no, he’ll be under for a while yet. So we’re going to pick up the children, and then -?”
“Straight off to Imladris, of course. We can take the Road. They’ll never catch us - not if we take their ponies. They only have little legs.”
She grinned at him. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. Good plan.”
The tied-up Mili had moved not at all during this exchange, very sensibly. He continued not to move as they stepped out into the abandoned stableyard - Erestor remarked that they would be back very soon to check up on him - and no sound of any attempted escape from bondage was heard during their rummage through the next Dwarvish wagon. This contained armour, weapons (including those taken from Melinna, which she recovered with some relief), food and, in a heavy iron chest at the very back, a sulfurous black powder packed carefully into yellowing linen sacks. Erestor dipped a fingertip into the stuff, sniffed it curiously and said, “Do you know what this reminds me of?”
“It looks a lot like Mithrandir’s firework-powder to me.”
“Me too. Oh, me too.”
They shared a grin. “That should make life easier,” he added. “All this stuff should burn very well, in theory, but Dwarves always were good at fireproofing things. Let’s see how explosion-proof their wagons are.”
The stableyard was still empty when they slipped between shadows to the wagon that bore the Machine. There were no other horses in the stables and the Inn itself was unusually quiet; Lady Inez’s party must have occupied it to the exclusion of any other guests. She had discouraged local interest in her business rather thoroughly. “I wonder how the lady’s getting on with that wight?” said Erestor, glancing up at the sky. It was paling in the east as the summer sun began its slow descent. “We should have a couple of hours yet - as long as no one comes to check up on the wagons. I doubt they will. There aren’t any Dwarves left in the building.”
That was because Mili’s defunct guards were all stashed tidily in the back of the third wagon, where the Machine would otherwise have stood alone in solitary splendour. The greenish-black wood and silver trimmings of the huge cabinet glistened ominously in the fading light. “I thought that lock was ugly the first time I saw it,” said Melinna, paying no heed whatsoever to the rather sad heap of metal and broken flesh behind the Machine. “Don’t you think?”
“Not in keeping with the overall aesthetic,” Erestor agreed. “Much like your hair.”
“Thank you.”
“Not at all. So what do we do? Take an axe to it?”
“That’s not very subtle,” said Melinna. “On the other hand, it’ll get the job done.”
They left the Machine a ruin of splintered wood, shattered glass and brass gears. The lever lay like a long silver club amid the wreckage. Once the case had been cracked open, Melinna sifted through the remnants for crystals, which she pried loose with the point of a knife, but Erestor found a piece of complex machinery from the Machine’s door that looked suspiciously like a firing mechanism. Nearby were darts arrayed in neat little chambers. “You were right about traps,” he noted. “I think I’ll take these darts, just in case.”
After that, it was only a matter of secreting sacks of firework-powder at strategic points around the wagons, loading Lady Inez’s artefacts onto the Dwarves’ ponies and then setting fires small enough not to burst into full flame before they were safely out of town. “I think we can call it a day,” said Erestor. He set a blunt knife down on the wagon floor an arm’s length away from Mili, who was maintaining his excellent impression of an unconscious Dwarf. “Have we behaved like honourable Elves, do you think?”
“Why should we?” said Melinna. “Honour gets you only an early grave.”
He chuckled and came away.
No one stopped them as they led the ponies out through the town to the East-gate, although it had been market-day and they attracted plenty of odd looks from the inhabitants of Bree. They emerged onto the Road itself and pushed the ponies to a smart trot, slowing only when the leftwards bent of the Road was about to take them out of sight. Erestor halted and glanced back at the town. “It’ll be a while before we’ll be welcome again in these parts,” he remarked. “Look - smoke.”
Around the corner, they divided the pony-train, since there had been more ponies than artefacts. Those that were not needed they let loose to the north of the Road; the rest they led onto the South Downs, taking care now to conceal as many traces of their passing as possible. “She’ll be too angry to think straight,” said Melinna, meaning Lady Inez. “Let’s hope, anyway. Anyone with eyes could see where we’ve gone. But I think she won’t notice. I think she’ll just charge on till she finds us. Or rather, doesn’t.”
“It’ll be dark anyway,” said Erestor. “Let’s go the long way back to the Old Forest and see if Iarwain’s house is still standing. I’ll bet a ruby to an iron nail that child’s been up to no good.”
“I wouldn’t take it.” She was twisting her fingers thoughtfully through her pink braids. “I wonder if this’ll wash out?”
“Can’t you dye it, if it doesn’t?”
“I think I might have to.”
She spoke glumly. He laughed a little and led the way deeper onto the Downs.
~*~*~
And now they were comfortable in Iarwain ben-Adar’s house under Hill, and safe, as all who came beneath Iarwain’s roof must be. Goldberry had left them and a soft rain pattered over the thatched eaves; it would dampen the moors, Iarwain said, and wash away the most obvious signs of their passing. The ponies grazed down by the Withywindle, the dragonet drowsed in Melinna’s lap, the urchin was yawning in her corner and Erestor had brought a bag of the smaller objects to the table, so that he and Melinna and Iarwain could look through its contents. This was more an exercise in curiosity than anything else, since it was almost midnight and no time for serious investigation.
Across the table, Gogol was reaching for a nearby artefact. Melinna leaned over and whisked it out of the urchin’s grubby paws. “Hands off,” she admonished. “You don’t want to get your fingers burnt. Again.”
Gogol sighed and settled back into her corner, although she seemed too sleepy to manage a proper sulk. She was curled around Iarwain’s tall hat, for some reason, and her lids drooped over her bright grey eyes. Melinna thought the urchin was about to fall asleep where she sat.
She turned her attention to the artefact Gogol had attempted to purloin, which was a peculiar and very heavy set of goggles wrought from ornate brass. A complex lacework of patterns lined the bulging rims and there were tiny buttons set into the solid right-hand arm of the brass frame. Nothing happened when she pushed them. The lenses were purple glass; when she held the goggles up to her eyes, the room remained unchanged, other than gaining an odd fuschia cast.
She set the goggles down on the table. “Odd,” she said. “I wonder what these do?”
“Who knows?” said Erestor, not looking up from a contorted puzzle in silver. “We can look at everything again before we leave.”
The urchin sat up at once. “Are we gonna go to Imladris now? Can we? I wanna see an Elven city!”
Erestor’s eyebrows lifted. “No!” he said. “Imladris is the last place we want to go right now! Where do you think Lady Inez is headed?”
Gogol’s lip quivered. “But I thought...”
“We’re going west to see Lord Círdan at Mithlond. Círdan’s the oldest Elf in Middle-earth and Mithlond is a genuine Elvish city, so you can take that look off your face. Once we’ve had a chat with Círdan, we might take the scenic route back to Imladris. Elrond will want to hear all about this and I wouldn’t mind a trip round Lake Nenuial. We haven’t been that way in a while. And yes, if you behave yourself, we may take you with us.”
The urchin looked somewhat reassured. It was not until after she had been shooed away to bed, however, that Iarwain tugged his beard and said, “And your Lady Inez?”
“Oh, she’ll be back,” said Melinna and picked up the brass goggles again. The metal was warm on one side from the fire and its weight was comforting; she turned the artefact over thoughtfully in her hands. She was seeing Lady Inez again, all gold and glamour: the hardness of those fine eyes and the set of that deceptively dainty jaw. “Mind you,” she went on, “it might be a while. We smashed her toys and stole her pet and now people know about her. She’ll know that when she can’t find us. People will be looking for her. But she had plans. ‘Political experiments’. She went to all the trouble of stealing a dragon’s egg from the dragon and she’s going to be angry. I doubt we’ve seen the last of her.”
Erestor settled back and stretched his long legs out by the hearth. “If she can find us,” he said lightly. “She must be halfway to the Misty Mountains by now. We won’t see her again before we reach Mithlond. After that - better people have tried. Did we ever tell you about the time we were in Gondolin, a year or so after the city was sacked, and found a cache of white wine still intact in someone’s cellar -”
The silver dragonet in Melinna’s lap sneezed ice everywhere. “Aññolë!”
THE END (for now)
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