Part III - Three Plagues
Wiljon stood with an elbow propped on the mantle above the hearth, looking into the flames; brooding. The light and the shadow granted quarter and took ground in a dance of war played out over his face. A tankard of ale listed slightly in his hand, having been offered, politely accepted and now held untouched as was his way.
The room was silent but for the popping and hissing fire and the uncomfortable sound of waiting which is altogether not quiet. He had been asked to speak, wanted very much to speak. Now that it came to it, there was a stifling in his heart, an uncommon sensation for Wiljon, to be sure. He knew the heart of a fox crouched in low scrub as the hounds and the hunters beat the leaves. Something had awakened to him.
"Ignorance, dread and cruelty," he breathed for he could not even muster a mumble. When last had he felt so terrified?
- - -
Upon an eve in his twelfth spring his mother had come into the Chetwood to collect him. No boars chased him that day but no friends had joined him for spying on Blackwolds or catching spinners. On the day he was taken under the pall of dread his mother had seemed sad and stern all at once. She had suffered no hiding games but had commanded him come out at once and so he had for it was entirely out of the ordinary that she demanded anything of him.
Mersa had once been very comely but hard work and sorrow had lined a face that should still bear the hints of youth. "Wil," she said as she took him by the elbow. "We are going." This was a mystery to confound his already reeling sense of his mother. And she was by no means bluffing. She carried no food and no pack yet still she walked him all through the afternoon and into the evening until they were just outside the town of Bree.
His fears of the first moments had withered and now his curiosity was piqued, but she would have none of his questions until after they bedded down. There had been no supper but he had grown accustomed to that over recent months. In later years he would come to realize that Mersa had been failing for some time but his absence, his lack of understanding of the household had blinded him to the fact.
"There is a place we must go before it is too late," she said to him as they lay in the grass beside the road. That was the most she told him all that day.
On the following morning, she hurried him through Bree and out the north gate to a countryside he had only glimpsed from his furthest treks into the hills surrounding Combe and Archet. Now he was walking along behind his mother through lowlands busy with farms and market folk. From a great distance he saw Shirefolk and thought they were children until he realized there were no elders making them carry heavy loads. But Mersa kept them away in the pasture fields away from other travelers so it was some years yet before he would get a good look at a hobbit. She was driven, he remembered thinking, like one of those prisoners the Combe watch occasionally marched through town in chains. Now and then he spotted grim expressions upon her face as of one in fierce argument, but never did she speak elsewise than in the softer tones of a mother with a young boy in tow.
They camped again far north of Bree where mountainous looking hills seemed to be closing in on both sides of them. He regailed her with a story of outsmarting some Blackwolds in the Chetwood as they nibbled some hard-breads she'd bought as they passed through the market in town. Though she had ever been careworn for her wayward son, she had always delighted to hear of his exploits and victories, even if she had to mask the joy with admonishments. On this day, the last day of his childhood, she smiled at his story but nothing more. And Wiljon pretended that her lacking enthusiasm was due to his having told the story before. He fell asleep under the stars that night searching his mind for some adventure which he had not already told her.
At foredawn they began their day, finishing the bread as they followed a beaten road up into a pass. It was a wearisome ascent and though Mersa did not complain once, Wiljon thought often of it. It began to wear on him that she was being terribly unfair, that she was being spiteful and highhanded. He wanted to refuse to go any further until she explained this journey and herself.
Then they crested the saddle between the hills and looked down into another town, smaller than Bree but bigger than Combe. His excitement grew. Many wild thoughts passed through his head as to what reasoning would have her uproot them from home and come here. But his memory of the town at that time and what may have happened in it drained from his mind. Sometimes he had the sense that they stayed on a few days though he could not recall anything about that time. At others they passed right on through to the bridge and the gathering of buildings left no lasting impression on his memories. But to the bridge they did pass.
Wiljon knew it was a bridge even though it looked like a barn at the top of a narrow hill. He could see the gorge over which it spanned. This was a rare thing indeed. The ponds, quagmires and shallow streams of the Chetwood and Combe were not to compare with what he imagined a true river must be. And when his mother led them to the right of the hill and down the slopes to the stone foundation of the bridge he was elated. It would be a grand thing to look down into such a natural beauty. Not, he imagined, unlike gazing upon the old ruins out in the Midgewater.
He ran a few paces ahead of her and stopped short to peer down into the ravine. The river was like a glistening snake a mile away down in a hole. So far down it was that even the echoes of its hasty passage through the hills could not climb up to his ears. There was only the wind and his mother's humming.
He turns to his left to find her standing directly under the bridge, eyes closed and chin up, gently swaying as she hummer some tune. Suddenly, Wiljon knew dread, fathomed the danger of just two more steps for her. Reflexively he jumped back a pace and called out to her.
Slowly Mersa turned, still swaying, her arms slightly lifted as if she was inviting a hug from someone who would not come close. She opened her eyes and smiled wanly at him.
"Oh, Wil, don't be afraid," she soothed and closed her eyes again as she continued to rock from one foot to the other in a torturously slow circle. "Your father first kissed me on this spot," she sighed. But not even the spectre of his unknown father could shake him from concern. He begged her to come away from the edge before she fell.
Her shoulders sagged and she stopped, facing the gorge. "Can you not see, my son? We have already fallen. There is only solace beyond the reach of the creeping dark."
Mersa turned then and looked at him with those same sad eyes and stern posture and he met her stare, looked right into her eyes. When the irises seemed to turn a fiery orange he tried to blink his way out of the day dream but instead the fire engulfed his world as stout, bearded dwarves where forced back by the conflagration against a precipice over a burning lake. This he saw and remembered though he'd never seen a dwarf in armor before much less any cavern so deep that the only light came from molten rock.
Horror-stricken he watched as the last dwarf fell and became a hobbit, battered and bleeding, kicked to the side of a scorched pathway by the iron-shod feet of gigantic orcs as they marched other dirty hobbits in chains through a savaged countryside. Wiljon shuddered, but could not look away.
The orcs paraded their slaves with whips and howls before a tall man in mail adorned with spikes and grisly trophies. He seemed to be standing upon a wooden staging that was rocking, slightly for the man seemed to lean casually this way and that to keep his feet. Then he lifted a heavy arm with a wicked spiked club and roared. Wiljon saw that he was captain of some strange boat, one among hundreds, and it was belching black smoke into the sky from its deck. Running before its prow was a gilded vessel with burning sails and cracked hull, peopled with a slender folk who refused to look back at their pursuers even as their ship sank in its vain attempt to reach an empty western horizon. Why wouldn't they look?
Grief-stricken he tried to turn away but his eyes only found the sun high above, and he was transfixed for it was extinguished from the sky in instant and all the world was left in darkness.
All the world save for one glinting spot far in the distance. Wiljon tried in vain to run towards this light, the shape of a man showing light from his very being, but so very far away. Who was it? What did it mean? Could any of it be brought back?
At last the figure held up its left hand to him, an offering, a beckoning and Wiljon reached out his own even as what he beheld resolved into his once-fair mother.
"Please!" he cried.
And she, with a sad and knowing regard, looked from him to the outstretched hand he had not taken. "The Fourth is come, my son," she replied then willfully tilted backwards, falling out of any darkness or light.
- - -
Frowning, Wiljon straightened and placed the ale on the mantle. He put away his frown as he turned to those gathered 'round and met curious stares with a purposeful gaze of his own.
"As any of you have, I have now traveled to every horizon and I have witness the same plagues upon us all. I number them three though many would argue there are more. Ignorance, dread and cruelty. As sure as Winter follows Autumn each leads to the next. Each invites the others."
"I ask myself, each day: Am I born into the Fourth Age or am I here to shut out the darkness of the Third. On all the borders of all the realms and, yes, in their hearts as well, I see creeping darkness. There is a doom upon Middle-Earth, a blight. But what shadow of the past ever cast down the light? I say to you: what evil dare match not just man but elf, dwarf and hobbit in fellowship? I say to you that we are mighty! That so vile a usurper as we now face must array fell orcs, desperate men and ensorcelled spirits upon our horizons whilst stoking our worst fears through black arts is cause for hope! Such an enemy must live in terror of us. And that is a promise of victory ringing true in uncertain times! I cry out to you! Stand! Stand, not cower, before the coming darkness!"
End.
((Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed.))
