Tales of Older Days (3/8)
Title: Tales of Older Days (3/8): Indulge Your Local Narrator
Author: Clodius Pulcher *cough*
Characters: Erestor, A Heroine, An Urchin, A Villain, A Dragon Cub, HenchDwarves and Others.
Rating: K+
Book/Source: LotR
Disclaimer: I am not J.R.R. Tolkien and I make no money from this.
Note: Still flocked! Many thanks again to gogollescent and ignoblebard for the original inspiration, the ongoing encouragement and (of course) for beta-reading. And special thanks to redheredh for the linguistic assistance. :'D
Summary: "You," said Melinna, while the dragon’s purr spilled white mist in cold plumes down her neck, “are going to be a problem.” And what a problem! MEFA 2010 Second Place in Genres: Humor: Incomplete.
Back to It Was a Dark and Stormy Night
Back to The Patter of Tiny Feet
~ indulge your local narrator ~
Let’s pull back and take a longer look at what happens next...
“- don’t even know if it’s male or female -”
It’s almost dawn. Up in the lodging-room of Kat Ferny’s alehouse, Miss Gogollescent Ferny sprawls out on a tatty rug and stares at a dragon. The little beast is curled up in Melinna’s lap, head resting on its folded forepaws and the silvery tip of its tail twitching sleepily against her leg. Absently, the Elf strokes the dragonet’s feathery ears. Occasional glimmers of blue beneath translucent eyelids suggest that it is still awake.
Above Gogol’s head, the Elves are talking quietly in some silky Elvish language that Gogol does not understand. She doesn’t care. Her wrist hurts quite a lot and she’s lightheaded from sleeplessness, but she’s looking at a dragon! And she’s in a room with Elves! And she’s leaving Bree and going to some Elf-city! With the Elves! And a dragon!
Her thought process is somewhat circular, admittedly, but that’s what lack of sleep does to you.
“- or what it eats -”
One of the dragonet’s eyes winks open, blue as sky-silk. Gogol catches her breath.
“- keen on cheese, by the state of the larder -”
Down in the kitchen, meanwhile, Kat Ferny is recovering her composure with a tankard of home-brewed ale. Most of the white mist has cleared, but the air is still icy and a dribble of water creeps dark over the floor from the thawing larder. She’s trying not to think about what she saw sitting in there when she crept down earlier. One of the Elves assured her it was nothing to worry about and normally the coins that materialised in her hand would have convinced her that he was right.
She hasn’t seen it since, anyway. It was gone when she came around, along with her errant niece and the other Elf. She doesn’t think this was a coincidence.
“- can’t feed it cheese all the way to Imladris -”
Kat Ferny empties her tankard and gets up determinedly. There’s an empty basket by the door; she hooks it over her arm and goes out into the grey morning.
The latch snicks quietly shut behind her.
“- never know where Radagast is when you need him -”
Upstairs, the dragon kneads Melinna’s knee in a cattish prickle of needle-sharp claws. Gogol is swimming too deep in the blue memory of a summer afternoon to notice the Elf wince. She’s barely aware of the lodging-room starting to come apart into hazy fragments.
“- is bound to know, and since we were heading that way -”
A soft thump interrupts Erestor. Gogol has keeled over. Luckily she’s close enough to the floor that this will have no unpleasant consequences. The Elves break off their conversation and exchange startled glances; in Melinna’s lap, the dragonet blinks its innocent blue serpent-eyes, nestles its head against its paws and attempts to line up the syllables of the first word it ever heard in this shiny new world.
It’s going to be a beautiful day.
~*~*~
Now let’s take a look at a different part of Bree.
A certain sleepiness hangs over The Prancing Pony. The kitchen staff are just waking up and a stablehand yawns over his broom, but the guests are mostly still asleep and so is the landlord and his wife. The common-room is empty except for one person when Kat Ferny sidles inside, her hood pulled low over her thin face.
She slides onto the bench. The Dwarf nods a solemn greeting. “Got it?”
Kat Ferny gulps. “It’s hatched!” she wails. “Right there in me larder!”
The Dwarf groans. His eyes are bright beneath his bushy brows.
“Uh...” says Kat Ferny tentatively. “Do I still get the money?”
There’s something rather disconcerting about the way the Dwarf’s beard bristles. He mutters something in the rocky Dwarvish tongue and adds portentously, “Old Dwarvish saying. Means, ‘O the times! O the customs!’”
“Oh,” says the alewife, confused and indefinably impressed. “So the money -”
“No, ma’am. You don’t get the money.”
~*~*~
And here’s a very nice room on the Inn’s upper storey, where a woman sits poised before a mirror, drawing a brush through her golden locks. She’s not thinking about very much, except possibly about how convenient it is to be so strikingly blonde and startlingly beautiful. It really turns people’s heads. Especially Dwarven heads; the race’s peculiar demographics mean that most of their men are rarely exposed to feminine charms.
Very convenient. And anyway, she likes the colour. It reminds her of a certain once-upon-a-time when life had been all about jewels and jewellery and precious metals, binding gold into trinkets the precise shade of the curls falling through her fingers...
A tap at the door breaks into Lady Inez’s reverie. In the mirror, Mili’s beard appears through the doorway, somewhat in advance of Mili himself.
“Ma’am,” he says respectfully. “It’s about the Thing. There’s a bit of a problem...”
~*~*~
“- so that’s sorted, then -”
Back in Kat Ferny’s alehouse, the Elves are still talking in Elvish. Gogol has propped herself fuzzily against the wall and is trying to work out exactly what just happened. There was an endless chasm tumbling upwards into the lapis lazuli sky...
She’s distracted by a flutter of silver: the dragonet has woken up. It chirrups. The sound might have been timed to hide the tell-tale noises of Kat Ferny slipping back into her kitchen from two pairs of keen Elven ears.
“It’s probably hungry,” says Melinna, dropping back into Westron. She tickles the dragonet under its chin. “Hmm?”
The dragonet nuzzles against her fingers. Then it successfully pronounces a word that makes both Elves wince, ruffling its spine-spikes with obvious pride. Gogol sits forwards eagerly, fascinated all over again.
“It can talk!” she exclaims. “Añ-ño-lë. What does that mean?”
“‘Sugar’,” says Melinna firmly. “That’s what it means. And you’re not to repeat it! No, not you, either!”
This last comment is addressed to the dragonet, which chirrups curiously and repeats itself anyway. Melinna blinks. “No!”
Down in the kitchen, Kat Ferny is putting the kettle on. Most of the ice in the larder has melted and the window’s ablaze with yellow dawn. It could be any early morning for an alewife in the sleepy town of Bree.
And then Mili the Dwarf kicks down the door.
~*~*~
We may now confine our attention strictly to the lodging-room, where two Elves, one urchin and a very small dragon were suddenly very glad to be already awake.
The room was at the back of the ale-house and possessed a narrow window, through which (with a little effort) it should just have been possible for an Elf to slither. This hypothesis was immediately confirmed by Erestor, in motion even before Gogol had got to her feet. A two-storey drop stretched out between the window and the scrap of a garden that lay below; but the alehouse had been built by the Men of Bree, who were considerably shorter than Elves, and Erestor was light on his feet. He landed easily and without doing a great deal of damage to the flowerbed, although Kat Ferny was unlikely to appreciate his consideration, given the swath cut through the pansies when Melinna flung their bags down after him.
A thunder of iron-soled boots announced the Dwarves on the staircase. “You next,” said Melinna briefly to Gogol, who found herself being dangled out of the window at arm’s length without having caught her breath for long enough to protest. For one horrible moment, she was sure she would fall; and then, just as Melinna let go, Gogol found herself caught by Erestor and set down on the ground.
She gulped and stumbled off to one side, crushing a couple of marigolds. Here came Melinna lithely out of the window, dropping confidently into Erestor’s hold. The chirruping dragonet was caught up safely in the crook of her arm.
Overhead, it sounded as though the Dwarves had stormed the lodging-room. “Time to move,” said Erestor in swift, soft Sindarin. He released her, reaching for his bag. “You take the children, I’ll distract them.”
“All right.” She switched into Westron. “Gogol! Come here! and give me back my cloak!”
Erestor vanished around the side of the alehouse. Gogol goggled, all her instincts offended, as Melinna drew up her hood and pressed back against the stone wall, enveloping the three of them in the folds of her shadow-grey cloak. The Elf’s arm was clamped firmly around her, or she might have scurried after Erestor. An attempted ‘meep’ from the dragonet was swiftly stifled. “Don’t make a sound!” hissed Melinna.
The next few minutes passed very slowly. It was probably just as well that Gogol, swallowed up in the Elven-cloak, was blind to the Dwarvish head leaning round the corner. Melinna held her breath and exhaled only when the head withdrew.
There. She counted to twenty. That should do it.
“Come on,” she said briskly. “Gogol, what’s the least obvious way out of town?”
Gogol’s route through Bree was naturally circuitous and involved a number of rather unpleasant alleys. The mud lay treacherous underfoot and the streets glistened damply after the stormy night, although the sky was paling into a clear and rain-washed morning above the tiled roofs. Even as they ducked into the shadows of crooked walls and hurried through other people’s empty gardens, they encountered startled looks from the odd passerby. The town was beginning to wake up.
It was assisted in this by the Dwarves and their iron-soled boots. The racket they made was clearly audible from all sides of Bree. This caused Gogol to look frequently uneasy, especially when angry shouts could be heard alarmingly close by, but they made it almost to the West-gate without ever crossing paths with the Dwarves. Somewhere at the other end of town, Erestor’s long-legged fleetness must have been making him decidedly unpopular with his diminutive pursuers.
The gatekeeper was just opening the gate. Gogol tensed herself to spring forward -
A hand caught her back. “Wait,” said Melinna intently.
The bristling beard of Mili the Dwarf emerged from behind the gatekeeper’s lodge. “Sugar,” said the Elf in that silky Elvish language. She slung her heavy bag into Gogol’s arms, causing Gogol to stagger slightly; the startled dragonet followed suit, much to Gogol’s surprise. It seemed inclined to be indignant about such summary treatment. “Shush, you,” said Melinna, pinching shut the dragonet’s muzzle. “Behave.”
She was pulling off her grey cloak, which she draped around Gogol’s shoulders. It was far too long for Gogol and dragged in the mud.
Gogol gaped up from under the hood. “What -?”
There were two other Dwarves with Mili; they disappeared through the gate, evidently taking up position on the other side of the hedge. The gatekeeper had vanished into the relative safety of his lodge. Mili positioned himself stolidly in the middle of the open gateway, axe in hand. His helmet was polished to a mirror’s shine.
“Listen,” said Melinna in a swift undertone. The dragonet meeped and made a futile attempt to clamber back into her arms; she unhooked its pewter claws from her tunic, returning it firmly to Gogol’s bewildered clutches. “I’m going to talk to them. You stay here until you see a chance to sneak past us. Head west for the Old Forest. If Erestor or I don’t find you first, you’re looking for a couple called Goldberry and Iarwain ben-Adar. Got that?”
“Yeah - uh -”
“Good girl.”
She gave the unhappy dragonet one last pat and went lightly out into the sun.
They had been hiding some fifty yards away from the West-gate, halfway up a gentle hill. Melinna drew her sword and strolled down the slope just far enough to exchange words with the Dwarf without having to shout. Her unheralded appearance seemed to surprise Mili, although possibly that was because she was there alone.
“Good morning,” she said in Khuzdul. “I believe you were looking for me.”
The Dwarvish tongue was not commonly heard now that Durin’s city had fallen; it had been rather rarely heard even before that, since Dwarves tended to be secretive around other races. In this respect, Melinna’s advantage was one of Elvish antiquity: several ages of the world earlier, she and Erestor had dwelt for a time in Nogrod and Belegost, the Dwarven mansions later destroyed by the sinking of Beleriand beneath the sea. It plainly puzzled Mili to hear an Elf speaking Khuzdul; his beard acquired a pained expression and he lowered his axe.
“‘He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason’,” he replied soberly in the same language, which made Melinna blink; and then, which made Melinna blink even more, he continued in flawless, if rather stilted, Sindarin, “There is no need for our business to be transacted in my ancestral tongue, sir. I am quite competent to converse in yours.”
“So I see,” said Melinna, amused. The quotation was familiar, if not particularly relevant; it was a pleasant surprise to find that such ancient lore still lingered even among the vagabond Dwarven clans. “Very well, if you’d rather. What business would you like to transact? And tell me, where did you pick up a dragon’s egg? I hope you managed to get away without leaving a trail; I’d hate to think of an angry dragon following you down the Greenway to Bree.”
“That is no concern of yours. Return to me the hatchling and the thief, sir, and you shall be troubled no longer.”
Melinna shook her head. “Can’t do that,” she said and smiled at him. “The girl ran off with it. Besides, I can’t help but feel that someone who’ll go to the trouble of stealing an egg from a cold-drake is the last person who should be allowed to bring one up. Who’s your Lady Inez and why are you following a Mannish woman?”
The Dwarf stared back at her, unblinking. “That also is no concern of yours. Where did the thief go? And where is your companion?”
“I haven’t a clue,” said Melinna, with cheerful mendacity. “Where’s your mistress? Back at the Inn?”
“The lady,” said Mili stiffly, “is not my mistress. Our agreement is one of mutual benefit -”
“- and she just happens to give the orders? Well, if you say so!”
Mili’s beard was beginning to look decidedly put-out. “Are you mocking me, sir?”
“I would never mock a Dwarf,” said Melinna sweetly. “You make such a delightful mockery of yourselves unassisted. What is it your elders used to say, ‘it is a great thing to know one’s vices’?”
“‘When, O Elf, do you mean to cease abusing our patience?’” the Dwarf retorted in kind. His brows lowered ominously. “Do you take me for a fool? I can see that you are the Elf who drew my men off on a wild goose chase. The thief and the hatchling must be in the company of your friend. What, sir, have you to say to that?”
Melinna was a shade surprised.
“That’s a rather good guess,” she said. “Well done. What would you like me to do about it?”
“I’ll leave that to Lady Inez to decide!” snapped Mili and gave a piercing whistle. The other two Dwarves appeared immediately through the West-gate; they both held longbows, arrows nocked on the string.
It was hard to quarrel with arguments of such calibre. Melinna sheathed her sword. An interview with Mili’s mysterious benefactor might well be interesting, if no obvious opportunities for escape turned up on the way to the Inn, and meanwhile Gogol and the dragonet could put a safe distance between themselves and Bree. Erestor was bound to have some sharp words for her later, of course, but that was another matter entirely.
“Very well,” she said lightly. “Take me to the lady!”
~*~*~
Some time after the little procession had disappeared into Bree, a pale face peered cautiously out of the shadows. No danger presented itself, either in the alley or in the street beyond. The gate stood open.
In her arms, the dragonet wriggled furiously. “Ow!” said Gogol, discovering too late the dangers of clutching a cat-sized creature with rather more than cat-sized claws. She bundled it up in the extraneous folds of the Elf’s excessively large cloak, hoping to baffle the beast in silky Elvish cloth. “Stoppit!”
The whining noise it made was intolerable. Gogol abandoned all hope of stealth, clutched the dragonet and Melinna’s bag as securely as she could, and tumbled headlong down the hill and out of the West-gate.
Overhead the sky was bright with morning, blue as the dragon’s eyes. The Road was rutted and thick with mud. No sounds of pursuit followed, which might have reassured Gogol, had she been in less of a hurry to get away from Bree. She splashed heedlessly through puddles and potholes, not caring about grime or that the Elf-cloak dragged behind her through the filth. Nor did she stop running until her legs gave out; and since Gogol was something of an expert at absenting herself from awkward situations, she was well beyond the crossing of the Great East Road and the Greenway by then.
Exhaustion shimmered dizzily. Gogol scrambled across the dike with its thorny hedge, collapsing scratched and breathless onto the springy grass. The sun was warm on her face. Swathed in her coat and Melinna’s cloak, she found herself sweltering. In a moment, she was going to throw up.
She didn’t. It was a close thing, though.
Presently, when the dragonet’s whining and scrabbling became too insistent to ignore, Gogol dragged herself into a vaguely upright position and threw off the Elf-cloak. From its folds erupted the dragonet in a fury of silver. It was hissing white mist again, ice crystals glittering between its sharp little teeth. Gogol eyed it warily and wondered whether she would actually be able to catch it again if it ran away.
“Hey -” she said aloud. “Ain’t my idea, this. The Elf said to. You know. Melinna.”
The dragonet glared at her. Its tail switched wrathfully in the grass.
It occurred to Gogol that it was time for breakfast, a meal to which she was firmly attached. She had just run several miles on little sleep and less food; no wonder she was feeling shaky now. Maybe food would sweeten the dragonet’s temper.
Maybe there was food in Melinna’s bag.
She got as far as unknotting the bag’s fastenings. At this point, her perfectly innocent intentions were foiled by the dragonet, which launched itself at her in a blaze of spitting rage. A freezing blast drove Gogol backwards, yelping. She rubbed the ice from her eyelashes and saw the dragonet perched smugly on the bag, apparently under the impression that it had been assigned the solemn duty of guarding Melinna’s possessions. Frost was forming on the leather beneath its claws.
“Oh,” said Gogol. “Uh.”
By now she knew better than to meet the dragonet’s eyes. No breakfast, then. Maybe she could find some berries or something along the way. There were bound to be berries, right? People sold berries in the market all summer. She liked berries. No problem. As long as she could get the dragonet to cooperate.
“Tell you what,” she said. “You sit in the bag, right? An’ I’ll carry you in that...”
The dragonet, of course, was perfectly oblivious to this sensible suggestion. When Gogol reached gingerly for the bag’s leather straps, however, the dragonet refrained from mauling her or blasting her with its wintry breath. Gogol took this to mean that she would be tolerated as long as she kept her hands out of the bag itself. It fluttered its wings to keep its balance when Gogol swung the bag onto her back; and when she pushed herself unsteadily to her feet, it clawed its way nimbly to the open top and slithered inside. The chirrup that emerged was decidedly imperious.
So that was that. Gogol gathered up the Elf-cloak and looked around.
An emptiness of green slopes stretched out on all sides, capped here and there by tooth-like standing stones. Bree was still visible behind her. West, the Elf had said. That might have meant more to a girl who hadn’t spent her whole short life in a town, but Gogol was nothing if not tenacious. She had heard enough tales in her aunt’s alehouse to know the Road passed close by the Old Forest. All she had to do was to follow the Great East Road.
But it would be stupid to walk on the Road itself. The Dwarves had ponies; if she stayed on the Road, they could catch up with her easily. She should walk across the downs instead, like a proper Ranger’s brat. And that way she could look for berries at the same time.
Determinedly, hungrily and very unwisely, Gogollescent Ferny set out into the Barrowdowns.
On to Sleep Under Stone
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