Other Worlds Than These

[Varnafindë]

"I haven't seen anything looking like that one," Barufiniel answered, "but ... well ... I know that once, more than three hundred years ago, there was a portal - a different one - somewhere in Rohan, that at least once let people go from our world to a different one and back. I don't know whether it happened more than once ... but the one time it did happen, those who went through it and got into a different world, were my parents."

She hardly dared look at the others. She knew how hard it had been to believe for the very few people she had told it to. But she had to finish with the whole truth.

"I was born in that other world," she told them, "I lived there for five hundred years. Then we sought for the portal in order to try to go home, and ... someone helped us. He sent my parents to the West - without the help of a grey ship - and he sent me through the portal, back into Rohan. And then he closed the portal so that it would never work again."

[Aikanáro]

If anything, Rivailen felt a hint of relief when the woman Anahera walked away from them. It would have been difficult to decide what to do about her, unconscionable to leave her there alone and empty-handed, and unthinkable to take responsibility for her, unless one of the others wished to do so.

No, Rivailen had more concern for the words of the Elf, Barufiniel, who had answered the question she had wanted to ask before Anahera's arrival. It was an answer, however, of the sort that invited only more questions.

'Tell me of this world,' she implored Barufiniel eagerly. 'Was it alike to the Fields of Sifral? Lush green lands under bright skies as far as the world stretched?' Rivailen did not think it likely, but it was the only image she could bring to mind when striving to envisage another world, that or the West-land of the Elves, and if she was wrong, then Barufiniel could help her to imagine another, a world untold of in all the stories she had heard.

'And how,' she asked then, 'did your companion close up the portal? Was it Elven-magic?'

[Earniel]

Beryn felt a bit sorry if her words had upset the woman enough to go stalking off without another word. But they had no real answers for her, and she hadn't like the answers they had given her. They had no right to stop her from going anywhere she wished. And by going north she'd undoubtedly would find the little town where Beryn had hoped to spend the night. Perhaps she had calmed enough by then to be reasonable.

What Barufiniel was telling them was more immediately interesting. Beryn still wasn't entirely convinced that other worlds existed, but those portals had to lead somewhere.

But how did one even know one was on another world? From what Beryn had heard the world they were on could be surprising in its own right. It was said that the Elves in the west had ships shaped like swans that actually flew across the sea, and that further south you went, way beyond Gondor, people turned pitch black. If that wasn't extraordinary and already outwordly, Beryn didn't know what was.

But she didn't want to insult the Elf like she had apparently insulted the strange woman. Barufiniel seemed to know a lot more about portals than anybody else in the neighbourhood and Beryn was curious enough to keep her doubts to herself and just listen. The Elf seemed to think at least she had been on another world, and it wasn't Beryn's place to contradict.

[Varnafindë]

Barufiniel raised her head, surprised and relieved at the fact that the others hadn't brushed her off as a liar right away. They even wanted to hear more about the world of her childhood!

"I don't know about the Fields of Sifral," she said, "but if they are vast fields stretching out even more than the Plains of Rohan, then my world was nothing like them.

"I grew up in a land called Narnia. It's only a small country, but it varies a lot. It has got fields, meadows, hills and valleys, even some forests, but never more than a few miles of each - there are even some mountains, even though those are really on the border to the unknown wildlands in the west.

"My father used to say that Narnia reminded him of the Shire, and I agree with him. The closest countries aren't very different - but there's a large country in the south where there are deserts as well."

She smiled wistfully. She had left Narnia three hundred years ago, and she had gotten used to living without it - but talking about it brought back so many memories.

"And our companion had magic of his own," she added. "He was ... he was the creator of that world. They tell that in the beginning he had sung the world into being - almost like the Valar did with our world. He appeared to people at times, and that day he appeared to us and sent us out of Narnia.

"I don't know how he did it, though. I guess he just commanded those two trees we had gone between, not to let people through any more."

[Aikanáro]

After she had heard Barufiniel's explanation, Rivailen couldn't quite bring herself to believe it. Not all of it. That Narnia might exist was possible. In fact, from the way Barufiniel spoke of it, Rivailen would say that it did exist. That look on her face when she spoke, when she remembered, that was genuine and not the look of a person telling a tale.

She had heard too the story that the world was sung into being. Irnilla, the old woman who had taught her her craft, had also told her many such stories. They could not all be true, not in the real sense, that they had actually occurred. The story of the world-song was an Elven one, though, and it did not surprise her that Barufiniel held to it.

And that last, that she had met the creator of Narnia's world? There was an impossibility, no matter which way one chose to regard it. The creator was outside the creation, not a part of it.

Rivailen resisted the urge to query the point. It was what Barufiniel wished to tell them, whether true or not, and they were strangers, she was hardly going to start a debate with the woman out here in the middle of the plains.

Instead, she smiled at her. 'Narnia sounds like a wonderful place. Not at all like the Fields of Sifral, you are right, but beautiful all the same. I would not be surprised if you miss it, if it was home to you.' She thought for a moment, looking back at the place where the portal had been. 'Do you suppose that woman Anahera...was she from your Narnia?'

[Midge]

Aerin had been a few days in the plains of Anórien. Though she quite enjoyed the solitude, she did notice the sameness of everything. Every so often, a creek or tree would appear before her and she would be glad to see something other than grass for a while.

She mused about this. Magor, her friend, had taken her to see many sights in Middle Earth that she'd never planned on seeing. Though most of her time in Rohan had been with villagers who were excited to see an Elf, never having seen one before, she had glimpsed the White Mountains both afar off and up close. Magor had taken her to the Glittering Caves as well. Then in Gondor, of course, she'd seen the Argonath and Minas Tirith, both glorious monuments to the work of men. And of course she'd grown up in Lothlorien, full of Elven wonder, mystery and beauty, thanks to the Lady Galadriel.

Naturally, she thought. If there are great and mighty works to be seen, then it stands to reason that there must be un-great and un-mighty works, which in themselves are worth seeing for very different reasons.

And with that, she began to look at the plains around her very closely, trying to discuss with Glaeren what those reasons for worth might be in this very lonely and plain place.

[Aikanáro]

Rivailen turned towards Beryn as she spoke of the dragon. It was certainly a problem, she could see that. Such a creature roaming the countryside would eventually cause trouble. Yet she wasn't quite sure what Beryn thought they could do about it.

'What would you suggest?' she asked her. 'Even if we rode after it now, we might not catch up to it, and if we did? What could we do with it? You would keep it? It is small now, but given time it may not remain so.' Rivailen shook her head. 'I would not do it harm before it has shown any sign that it is harmful to others, either. To what end would we search for it?'

[Earniel]

"Harmful?" Beryn looked incredulously. "It's a dragon. How many dragons have you heard about that were not harmful? It's only a matter of when, not if before it does someone harm. No one in their right mind would try and keep dragons. Even wild bears make better pets and I can know."

[Aikanáro]

Rivailen frowned. 'Aye, and I suppose you have seen many a dragon, to know such things? I did not suggest you keep it for a pet. I only asked what you would do. I have heard many tales of dragons. Some that were dangerous, yes, but others only avaricious, and more still with no more malice than any other beast. I have also,' she added, lowering her voice a little, 'heard tales of would-be dragon-slayers, and those are the tales only told when the fire is burning low and the children gone to bed. Until this day I did not believe any of them could be true.'

[Varnafindë]

"I have met a man - or a Hobbit rather, a Halfling by the name of Bilbo Baggins - who had spoken to a dragon," Barufiniel said. "That dragon wasn't necessarily evil - but he was cunning, and when he was hungry, he was very dangerous. He was shot by an archer who had been told where to find his weak spot, but by then he had already destroyed much of the town where the archer lived. When he died, he fell into the lake of the town, and I have been there and seen his dead body down at the bottom of the lake.

"We ought to find out where this dragon ends up - and if there is another portal opening to his world later, perhaps we could get him to go back. I don't think the world that he and the woman come from is Narnia, though. What little she spoke in her own language, didn't sound Narnian."

[Midge]

Aerin, in her careful study of the plains, had somehow almost missed the bright flash. It caught the corner of her right eye, and her Elven reflexes turned her head quickly enough so she could see what it was. It lingered, though and so she could ponder while she stared at this white swirling circle of light that she had never seen before. And she'd seen some pretty strange things.

Her ponderings were interrupted by an outburst coming from the grass almost at her feet.

"Goodness gracious me!" The voice had three noticeable qualities about it. First, it was certainly female. Second, it sounded older, like the woman she met when Magor dragged her to his grandmother's house. She had been a pleasant woman, lovely and kind. That quality comforted Aerin. The third quality she couldn't quite place. The voice sounded... snuffly, almost like the speaker's teeth were not arranged in the normal fashion. As much as there was a difference in the voices of Elves and Men and Dwarves, so there was another difference in this voice. One she'd never heard before.

The fact that the voice came from so close alarmed her. Had she allowed something to creep up on her, unseen at such a close distance? Did she dare call herself an Elf?

She drew her sword and held it aloft, hoping against hope that she wouldn't have to use it.

"Who are you? Where are you? Show yourself!"

[Varnafindë]

What on earth had happened?

She had fallen - there must have been a hole in the ground behind those bushes - but she wasn't lying on the bottom of a hole, she was lying on grass, on plain grassland!

Nightshade had never had such a surprise in all her life.

It took her a few seconds to realize that she ought to check whether the fall had hurt her, and she quickly moved all her limbs a little and gave a satisfied grunt when everything worked all right. Then she got enough to her senses to really look at the tall figure she had noticed.

It was a woman.

She had seen the Telmarines only a few times, and always at a safe distance, but there was no doubt that this was a woman like the Telmarine women, and like Queen Susan and Queen Lucy.

The woman had a horse, but Nightshade soon dismissed it - it was no Talking Horse, just an ordinary dumb one. Like the Telmarine women would have.

Had she been trapped by Prince Miraz' spies after all?

As if to confirm her worries, the woman drew a sword and challenged her - but as if she hadn't seen her in the grass.

Should she try to run away? But there was nowhere to hide, other than in the grass. (And where had the bushes got to? She couldn't see them any more.)

Should she pretend to be just another dumb beast? No, there was no use, the woman had already heard her speak. If this was a spy out to kill Old Narnians, she would have to fight her. She had her teeth and her claws - she might not be able to kill her opponent, but she could hurt the other enough to give herself time to run away to some safe place. Some safer place, anyway.

But still, at the same time something told her that this was something different. There was a smell of fear, of alarm, not of aggression. Perhaps the Telmarine woman wasn't a spy after all. Perhaps she could be persuaded to see the truth about the Old Narnians.

Nightshade decided to risk it.

"I'm right here," she said and rose on her hind feet, giving up the cover of the grass. "I live at the other side of the forest, and my name is Nightshade."

[Aikanáro]

'Then we shall find someone to write that letter for us,' Ashkaio told Elspeth gently. He could write, yes, his childhood tutors had not let him alone until he could produce fine Ruvikan script, but he supposed that would be as unintelligible on this world as the inn-sign had been to him.

He looked at Elspeth a moment and wondered if he had not been too hasty with his offer. What was he asking, really? That she leave behind everything she knew, just to have the life she wanted? As if that were an easy choice.

'As for the rest,' he said then, 'we need not decide anything now. And in truth it need not be in Tathera, if you did not want that. I am sure your world has orchards too, does it not? You might set up business here. It would be more difficult, as you would be going against custom, but with courage it might be done.'

He set down his tankard on the table and smiled at her. 'I just know that Aycharindel would never forgive me if I told her I had met you and made no offer of help. And Aycharindel dan-Isidaesh is the woman that I am going to marry someday.'

[feawen]

"Oh" Elspeth smiled at him, "You are getting married, she sounds very nice, we had better get this all sorted so you can go home to her!" She finished the last of her beer, suprised to feel slightly light headed as she stood up. "One of the trades in town can write, im sure if i offer him a good price for my things he will be willing to wrtie a letter to papa!" she wondered why such a finely dressed man should not be able to read and write, but then again maybe Ashkaio had people to write his letters for him?

[Aikanáro]

'That, then, is what you shall do,' Ashkaio agreed, 'and we shall find a messenger to take it back to your family. You must assure them that you will come to no harm whilst you are with me, and tell them of the importance of what it is that we set out to do.'

He smiled back at her. 'You are right to think I wish to return home soon. We are set to be married at the Feast of Spring next year, Aycharindel and I. She is tall and stately, and she has the sharp blue eyes that are seen in her line and so rarely in others. Except in the paler peoples of the north, I should say, but they are not then so striking. The match between us was agreed two years ago, but she was fourteen then and I seventeen, and my mother rightly judged us too young. Last year she came to court, and I-' Ashkaio's smile widened, 'I am quite in awe of her. She has sophistication and grace beyond her years, and a gentle heart, and she is fast friends with my sister...and with me, from that time we have spent together. It was we and not our parents who decided that we should wait no longer.'

'So you see,' he continued, 'I cannot see it as such a terrible thing, to marry, although it is true that I would not say the same had Aycharindel been bad-tempered, or cruel, or hideous to look upon, but then I doubt my parents would have agreed to the match, were that the case.' He sighed. 'I do worry for her. I suggested she leave court and go back to her father's household, but she would have none of it. She is probably at this moment up in one of the towers of the city, with Lontir and Halli and all the rest of the court's Tathera-born. But then likely you do not wish to listen to all my praise for a woman you have never met,' he said softly. 'If you wish to go now to sell what you have brought, I shall wait here for you.'

[Midge]

Aerin was shocked to say the least. She'd expected to see a Man or possibly an Orc, though it was doubtful an Orc could mimic that kind of voice, or maybe a Halfling, considering the grass.

What she saw instead was not Elf, Man, Dwarf OR Hobbit. It was clearly a beast. In all her journeys, Aerin had been acquainted with many types of animals, and she knew this one immediately. As strange as it seemed, she was TALKING to a badger.

And she was dumbfounded. "Oh. Er... Uhm." She looked down at the sword she held in her fist. No doubt she no longer needed it. If this beast proved to be an enemy, a simple bowshot would take care of it and so the sword was sheathed.

She had the presence of mind to know several things at that moment. She knew there was not much of a forest anywhere near at the moment. She knew that she had had no strong drink of any kind, not even miruvor, at any remotely recent times. She knew that there was a badger standing on its hind legs, talking to her in a grandmotherly voice. She knew that some beasts could speak in Westron, like Wargs, and that some people could speak in the languages of beasts. She also knew that she'd never heard anything remotely special about badgers.

So all she said was, "What are you doing here?"

[Aikanáro]

Ashkaio listened carefully to make out what the strange woman was saying. Her speech was different to theirs, and she spoke of snow. He had heard of snow, white flakes that fell from the sky and rested upon the ground in places where it was so cold that even the waters froze. Such things happened only in the far north of the lands he knew, in his world, so far north that few Tatherans ventured there even for trade.

He did not think that he could answer her questions. He knew of no city or household named Nolow - and why should he, he thought to himself then, she was of this world and not his! In asking him for direction she had chosen perhaps the one person in this village least likely to have answers for her. His eyes followed to the place where she was pointing, and it was unclear to him quite which thing she meant. 'That?' he queried. 'The building there, it is an alehouse, an inn.' He had the feeling though that she was rather more lost than that, and it was not the building itself that she had been gesturing towards.

There was little Ashkaio himself could do to remedy that, however, and so he simply bowed to her. 'I am Ashkaio Mirat dan-Kazhrun of Tathera, and this is Elspeth of the River Eru,' he said. 'I must tell you, unfortunate as it may be, that I have no ships.' She must have mistaken him for a merchant trader, he guessed. 'I have not encountered your people - do you know of the Nolow?' he asked Elspeth then, turning back to her.

~-~-~-

'Farewell,' Rivailen replied, giving Beryn a nod of approval. 'I shall look forward to the telling of that story, should we meet again. See that you travel safely!' Rivailen was, if not entirely convinced by Beryn's assertions that she would not harm the dragon unduly, comforted by the fact that she had made them. It meant that she would think before she did anything. In Rivailen's opinion, half the troubles of the world were caused by people who did not think long enough before they acted.

Now, if only she could prevent herself from being one of those people on occasion!

As Beryn was leaving them, Rivailen turned back to Barufiniel. 'Do you suppose we ought to wait here longer?' she asked the Elf. 'In case there is more to be seen, and one strangeness follows another? Or shall I show you the way to the village? It is about two hours' travel, and it is better we arrive before dark.'

[feawen]

"Never heard of them" Elspeth shrugged. "Sorry!"
Anahera was even more puzzled more, no one know of her people, no one understand her and she still did not know what that thing was!
"What is building?" Anahera asked, lengthening the unfamilier word. "There bad smell, too much noise!".

[Aikanáro]

Ashkaio now thought that he was beginning to understand. She wasn't talking about the building, but about the village, about civilisation itself, such as it was. Only that could explain such puzzlement. Yet if she came from some snowy northern region, this could hardly be the first settlement she had encountered along the journey.

He turned back to her, and spoke now more slowly and deliberately. 'This is a place where people live. Many people. It is called a village, and the buildings are the structures that they live inside, to keep warm and dry. Do your people not have such?'

And then, not half a second later: 'Did you come through a doorway to get here? A round door between the snowy land and here?'

[Varnafindë]

"I don't think we need to wait for more strange things," Barufiniel answered, "if there are more things we are meant to see, I suppose we will bump into them eventually anyway - if we don'ẗ, I guess we weren't meant to see them. And if we need two hours to reach the village, that's something we know about, not something that may or may not happen - and something we can do something about.
So yes, please, I would like to be shown the way to the village. I agree that it's better to arrive before dark."