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The next day Cadence had a hunch. She decided go back to the library to check on her own on Professor Tolkien’s brief visit at Columbia. Charming an intern at the research desk paid big dividends. In that random way that old records yield clues, the intern found a batch of index cards, held together with disintegrating rubber bands, crammed in a drawer. There, miraculously, was a card for the Professor’s materials left behind when he departed the University so long ago.
An hour later, she stood, backpack and notepad in hand, at the entrance to C-ar-47. The notation, inscribed like runes over the arched brick entrance, was itself a relic. It predated by ages the cataloguing systems of Mr. Dewey and the Library of Congress. The intern told Cadence the code referred to the seldom-visited “inactive archives” section of the library. “You know, where they keep the stuff no one ever wants to see, but they’re not supposed to throw away?”
“Like what?” she asked, milking him for more information.
“Like old handwritten notes, lecture transcripts—there’s a box or so for every professor who ever taught here or even just visited and didn’t take it with him. Sometimes the boxes are books and office stuff, you know pictures, paperweights—that kinda thing.”
“So, how do I find something in particular?”
“Alphabetical, by last name. If it’s not there, then by year. If nothing turns up, try by subject or just snoop. It’s all a mess.”
“Ooo-kay, but …”
“And here’s the catch. After I unlock this door,” he had his hand on the steel cage door that ran almost to the top of the arch, “you’re on your own. There’s a sort of diagram of the place over there on the wall, but don’t trust it too much. When people do come down here, they’re always complaining that they got lost. No one’s scheduled down here through this weekend. Not many people know it exists. Anyway, this door only opens from the outside. Entry, no exit. The only way out is down at the far, far end. You’ll find it.”
She wasn’t so sure. He turned the key and pulled open the door with a disquieting heave. After a squeal of rusty iron hinges, he extended his arm to usher her in.
He shut the gate behind her, wished her good luck, and left.
The diagram was in a dusty frame on the wall and wasn’t very helpful. Several labels had been crossed out and written over. She studied it anyway, especially the long corridor that seemed to lead to a stairs down to a warren of stacks that was a virtual maze. Then she stepped around a corner and saw the corridor. It led off into an indistinct haze. Occasional high windows, mullioned and unwashed for decades, dotted one side of the corridor, filtering a thin, grey light past a barrier of dirt and cobwebs. Dust motes floated lazily in the few intact rays. The shadows of tree branches moved like snakes across the linoleum floor.
She stood and stared. This undulating floor, leading down this mystic hallway, was a crossing. Her heart thudded in tandem with jumpy internal juju drums that talked up and down her spine. As she prepared to move forward, she knew her steps, once taken, could not be retraced.
So here I go! She stepped forward with an explorer’s panache.
She made it all the way to the end of the corridor, and then down the dim stairs into the maze of shelving, before she heard the sound.
Like a doe hearing a fallen branch, Cadence froze. In the waiting silence, she recalled and interpreted the sound: the furtive movement of feet and rustle of clothing by someone sneaking. Now the only sound was the hiss of a radiator. It was as if they were waiting — each for the other — with the infinite patience of the hunting ritual. Cadence the Hunted held perfectly still. She looked carefully and made out the shadow of a bookcase, tilted and surreal, along one wall. There was a silhouette attached to it. Tall and thin and still, as if waiting. A man. No mistake.
She couldn’t wait anymore. She grabbed a heavy book off a shelf and stepped forward. Provoke the thing. It did not move. She stepped again and came around the corner of the bookcase. She was met by an untended cart, laden high with books and boxes and casting an improbable shadow. She laughed out of fright. After a moment she turned around to look at different rows of boxes, squinting at the labels, realizing time was moving on. Q … R … S ….
Tolkien’s box, when she found it, was exactly in place and disappointingly small. It was sealed with masking tape that had long since given up its glue to the dry heat from those creaky radiators standing as derelict sentinels along the walls. The tape fell away as she pulled on the lid. As she opened the box, she smelled, amazingly, the earthy scent of pipe tobacco. She saw clumps of partially burned tobacco scattered over a stack of papers, as if carelessly left there by a harried pipe smoker. On top of the papers was a note, precisely placed and long since yellowed. It was scrawled in an unsteady hand that looked like the Professor’s. She turned and moved over to catch the light from an incandescent bulb that looked like it had burned without interruption since Edison.
She unfolded the note. It began, “To Whom May Follow.” She read the note, uncomfortable as an outsider witnessing a private ritual. She paused over Professor Tolkien’s warnings. A “spell” … take heed … a key … Beware … monsters do not depart.
She fingered down through the other papers. There was an article dated 1967 from the University of Leeds Review:
A remarkable document has been discovered in the collection of antiquities found in the estate of the late Grivendall Thurston, Earl of Haymart, and attributed to the library of his great-great-grandfather, the (at the time) notorious eccentric, and now merely famous, “Mad Librarian,” Sir Robert Cotton.
The document apparently was saved from the great fire at the improvidently named Ashburnham House in 1731. The world’s only original of Beowulf also partially survived, scorched and brittle and mingled with other documents, to be lost again for nearly a century. The particular document in question here has been authenticated as an example of Old English poetry dating from 860 AD.
“These things surface from time to time,” said Allison Mansur, the head librarian at Columbia University. “After all, Beowulf itself, so far as we can tell, lay lost and unread for seven hundred years, from the time of the Norman Conquest until its discovery in a Copenhagen library in 1815.”
“But,” he continued, “this specimen is rather remarkable for both its age and its potential place in Anglo-Saxon studies. Some of the material has yet to be translated, due to the strangeness of its symbols, a system not heretofore seen. In a nutshell, it appears to be a lament written by an ancient king in his own hand. The manuscript, as part of the bequest, is housed at Columbia University, where the Earl maintained close ties since his days as an exchange student.”
Stapled behind the article was a page of notes by the Professor:
The manuscript, which I have now translated, is by all indications authentic. That means that it is well over twelve hundred years old. The unaccountable fact, unless I have misplaced my wits somewhere, is that this poem echoes elements of my forty years of writing. Perhaps my musings and myth-creation have not been far off the mark!
Cadence was hungry to see the actual translation. She found the pages and stepped further down the aisle, directly under the bare light bulb. She whispered out loud the Professor’s rendering of those ancient words, the hushed sound spilling over into the empty stacks:
So, the tale of a King can ne’er better be told than by his song.
I am Pazal and this is the ballad of my bitter truth.
Before victory’s wealth brought to me overfilled stores, and slavery and fear to my foes,
Princes, strong of limb, tall and fair, stood with liege-gifts
before me in this great hall.
She skipped down and started again, reading what seemed to be an important passage:
By the rites of ring-giving and vows attendant did we confirm our just roles.
Oh, even by Valar’s measure, was that mead-hall fit for the clouds.
Taller than the trunks of the greatest fir-trees did its timbers soar,
Smiling ranks did my Princes array, even as they spoke with a mighty voice,
“Hail King! Liege-Lord and Defender!
Generous to us beyond our worth’s measure!”
Thus ran the years, in our Kingdom hard by the Western Sea,
Where stood we our sentinels on rocky crag, at forests edge,
and far to the North
On beaches barren but for the sea-monster’s bleached bones.
Hard it was!
The war-scars long stitched my bone-locker with pain that renewed itself, each day ever fresher.
Tolkien had scribbled a note here: “The blunt energy of these lines, the gold of men of old, enmeshed in woven spell, is the bard’s gift to us today.”
Waiting for the enemy that came only by rumour As creeping fog and distant sounds that give no battle But unsettle as no din of war could ever muster!
Here Tolkien had underlined portions of the text:
One day in my great hall, proud of my mastery,
I admitted, in courtesy, an errand from another kingdom.
Sweet words, echoing my own boasting estimate, did he speak,
Visions, of power greater, did he lay before me.
And the Source that would its certainty insure
An ancient Ring of Spells.
A token of an alliance of equals, did he offer,
The rites of ring-giving were registered,
The Vow of Protection duly scribed
Like the unthinking swipe of a broadsword to bloody some last innocent at battle’s end, I spoke hastily,
“’Tis done!” said I,
And no king would take back words so spoken.
Now of fell work to full grasp filled were my hands.
To other kingdoms did I travel
And extolled the virtues of the Ring-Giver.
And others sought to repeat my grand alliance
So that, in time, less than a double-handful of us, esteemed kings of lineage and grace, did compare and carefully assay the wondrous craft of these tokens.
The Professor’s own words followed: “Much is lost here. However, in the same hand on separate parchment and perhaps much later in time, the poem continues. My translation is as follows,” and he continued the verse:
Generations of the lives of men have passed.
I wear the tattered robes and horror-geild
As once I did strut with finest fur and emblazoned shield bright with honor,
The banners of my kingdom have long rotted in the seeping drench of storms and roofs unmade by fire and ruin.
My bone-locker gone, replaced by this mist of a body—
A bitter turn for one so proud of his limbs, sword-stewards that could unleash such havoc in battle!
Of my own folly was I ensnared and unmanned by this Ring!
Mark This! The Vow of Protection lies unspent and
unfulfilled—The leather writing in which it resides, moldy and ragged, now forever lost.
She finished and held the pages. A final note of Tolkien’s translation was at the bottom:
This poem found by I, Thygol, leader of the Cerian Band of the Free, in a pouch on the stinking carcass of a winged beast on the plains where we fought the Black Army.
Cadence searched the rest of the box. At the bottom was a separate manila envelope. She opened it. It contained two items. First was a small, rough piece of hide inscribed with runes as obscure as they were magnificent. On a second, larger piece of leather, as thin and supple as doe-skin, was an elaborate diagram, an intricate wheel with scores of spokes interwoven with Elvish characters. This had to be the translation key—except for one problem: it looked more indecipherable than even the Elvish. Finally, at the very bottom of the box, lay a disintegrating napkin from—she paused and smiled ruefully—Ye Olde West End Bar. On it was scrawled a sort of map:
Take 1 train / 137th stop
137th ===130th (Old Stop) ===
door (padlock/key hidden) == the pool
This last was perhaps nothing or, if she believed just a little, finally a real bricks and steel rails clue. She pocketed all the documents, put the empty box back, and, looking behind as she went, set out to find the only exit.
Hours later, she found Osley in the familiar corner booth at the West End. She sat down across from him and eased her newfound documents under his nose, just as he was pondering the apparently curious remnants of his blue-plate special.
He began reading, carefully studying the Professor’s notes and the poems. He sat bolt upright when he opened the manila envelope with the wheel figure.
“Where did you find this?” He sounded excited, almost angry.
She told him. He reflected for a moment before taking her hand and looking her straight in the eye.
“Cadence, you must be careful! Don’t go off on your own like this.” He held the translation key up in his hand. I haven’t told you some things because … because I want to protect you. This all has to be sorted out carefully. One day at a time…”
“I don’t have a lot of days.”
“Stop! Please. This is becoming very dangerous.” Then he added, “and I’m sure we will find your grandfather. I will help you.”
She was astounded at his tenor, the light of a real person breaking through. He was like a man imprisoned in his past, struggling to get a message out, even if he could never escape.
He patted her hand. Then he took it back and shook his head. The prison warden in his mind was back. “Now, for what you have found in your foolish venture. You indeed discovered some leavings of good Master Tolkien. And you have with you fragments of a lost poem, a tale by one of the Wraiths. Do not come here and wheedle that you have nothing you can put your hands on, that you lack still your ‘proofs.’”
“But what have I got?”
“Quiet! Be still! Proof enough you have of something more important than these documents. Your own heart and courage! Descending to that dank hole in the library was no idle holiday stroll. Now that you have proved it, you need not do so again.”
He stirred in his seat, presumably looking about for spies. Then his eyes stopped at the bar and she followed his gaze. The one-eyed bartender was nowhere to be seen. That seemed to make him more uneasy, as if his back wasn’t covered. He leaned across the table and continued. “Let me tell you something— whether you believe it or not—of the errand they have sent you on. But before the ‘they’ and the ‘errand,’ you must understand what you are really dealing with here. And let’s get something straight about your grandfather. Never seek too hard for someone that intentionally disappears. No pics, no prints, no DNA, no records. That says a lot. If you need more proof, look at me. If they couldn’t find me, a Top Ten Fugitive—yea, I’m sure you’ve figured that out— how could they find your two-bit, itinerant, derelict, legend-in-his-own-mind relative? The borderland of fable and reality is hard country to track a man.”
He waited, letting it sink in, and then continued. “Now, that being said, the day your grandfather departed with the documents, Mr. Tolkien sat where you sit and told me of his deepest thoughts, which I have long remembered but never repeated to anyone. He said—”
Osley’s eyes seemed to deepen and he spoke as Tolkien would, gazing directly into Cadence’s eyes.
“With my work I carved a window through which could be seen portions of a world. In that world there are things older and grander than I have been able to discern. But they are there nonetheless.”
She nodded, almost believing that Professor Tolkien was speaking to her.
“My journey is closing. It is for others, perhaps, to find and tell those tales. Let others follow, root and branch, where they may lead. After all, Middle-earth truly existed long before me and will exist long after.”
Osley paused here, gathering his memory even as it seemed that Tolkien might have gathered his thoughts.
“That is precisely why this trove of true Elvish—priceless beyond measure—remains so important. For now, however, let it sleep. I fear it will again grow restless and by its very being summon the restive hauntings I fear.”
“This was the night before he left,” Osley said. “He spoke those last words with sadness. But just before getting up from that seat, he smiled a bit and said in a tone that almost seemed to wink with relief—”
“‘The moon’s the same body one sees from my home on the coast at Bournesmouth. It waxes full here at its proper time. I take that as proper reckoning and a portent for good. To my dear Edith I go now and let these mysteries take their own path. I hope Jess, the Sharpener, dispatches his errand well. You have been a good friend. Good-bye.’”
Osley seemed spent by the effort to recall (she was afraid to think “invent”) this long-ago conversation.
“And with that we shook hands and he left. I never saw him again.” Osley paused in thought, “I miss him. He was a great and just man. He was better to me than I deserved. He once said he could not tell if this … gift was from the Dark Elves. If so, it might be laden with purpose and peril far deeper than we realized.”
Osley stopped and looked up. “But let us now turn back to you, Cadence. What of all this so far can we make sense? And what is your next step?”
She thought for only a second. “Simple. Do I stay or do I go? Like the song.”
“The prudence of going may now be best,” he said. “Your mom would have approved of that.”
She looked at him, wondering how he might have so astutely pegged her mother. Before she could say anything he rose, said “Very well, good night,” and left.