H. G. and G. K. C.

 

The Lord of the Rings: Shelob’s Lair (Part Four and Last)

 

The Tale

Sam knows nothing of this history of Sauron and Shelob: he knows only that a feeling of fear and menace is growing on him, slowing his steps and making it hard to follow Frodo. Frodo is rushing forward, a strange, exhilarated mood upon him after being free of the tunnel. But Sam notes the glittering blue of Sting in Frodo’s hand, and that the light in the tower still gleams red even though the sun has set. ‘There’s Orcs about, and worse than Orcs.’ He thrusts the revealing light of the Phial into a pocket and draws his grey Elven cloak around him.

Suddenly, with the terror of the light removed, Shelob issues from a black hole in the shadows. ‘Most like a spider she was, but huger than the great hunting beasts, and more terrible than they because of the evil purpose in her remorseless eyes. Those same eyes that he had thought daunted and defeated, there they were lit with a fell light again, clustering in her out-thrust head. Great horns she had, and behind her short stalk-like neck was her huge swollen body, a vast bloated bag, swaying and sagging between her legs; its great bulk was black, blotched with livid marks, but the belly underneath was pale and luminous and gave forth a stench. Her legs were bent, with great knobbed joints high above her back, and hairs that stuck out like steel spines, and at each legs end there was a claw.’ It is the worst horror Sam has ever seen, and it is moving with a terrible speed.

Sam gathers his breath to shout out a warning to the heedless Frodo, but he only manages a few words before his mouth is clamped shut by a long clammy hand from behind. Another grabs his neck and he is tripped by something wrapping around his leg, and he falls backward into the arms of Gollum, who gloats that he’s finally got ‘the nasty hobbit.’ He won’t hurt the Master, oh no he promised, Shelob will have him, but he has the ‘filthy little sneak.’ He spits on Sam’s neck.

But fury and desperation about Frodo makes Sam more violent and strong than Gollum expects from the ‘slow, stupid hobbit,’ and he slips partly out of Gollum’s grip, freeing his mouth. His hands still hold his sword and Faramir’s lebethron staff, and he tries to turn and stab the treacherous creature. But Gollum is too quick for him; he grabs Sam’s wrist and with a vice-like grip, forces him to drop the blade, with his other hand still tightening on Sam’s throat.

‘Then Sam played his last trick. With all his strength he pulled away and got his feet firmly planted; then suddenly he drove his legs against the ground and with his whole force hurled himself backwards.’

Gollum falls over with Sam’s weight on top of him, and with a hiss he loosens his hold on Sam’s neck, though he still holds his sword hand. Sam twists away, pivots, then brings the staff down with a whistling crack on Gollum’s arm. Gollum squeals and lets go, and Sam immediately follows his attack with another blow, aimed at his opponent’s head but landing instead on the squirming creature’s back. With a crack the staff breaks.

That is enough for Gollum. He’s used to sneaking attacks from behind; his ‘beautiful plans’ have gone awry since the unexpected appearance of the Phial and its light. And now he’s faced with a furious Sam, ‘little less than his own size,’ who sweeps up his sword faces him, ready to fight. Gollum squeals, leaps away like a frog, and is running back into the tunnel with amazing speed, before Sam can reach him.

In fury, Sam starts to chase him, but Gollum is gone back up the reeking tunnel. The stench suddenly reminds him of Frodo and the filthy monster that is pursuing him. ‘He spun around, and rushed wildly up the path, calling and calling his master’s name. He was too late. So far Gollum’s plot had succeeded.

Bits and Bobs

Frodo’s strange mood is called ‘fey.’  Fey is related to the term fay, or fairy, and is a Scottish word denoting something doomed or fated, and therefore partaking of a heedless nature, caring not for consequences. It can be related to the feeling of someone lost in the woods who is suddenly overcome by the manic urge to run, not unlike the ‘panic’ said to be caused by Pan among the shepherds in the wild.

Shelob’s eyes have a ‘fell’ light. This sense of the word means ‘of terrible evil or ferocity.’ It comes from the Middle English from Old French fel, nominative of felon (wicked ‘person’).

Shelob is described as ‘most like a spider.’ Two outstanding features that are unspiderlike are her horns, which I do not think many (if any) illustrators have included, and her neck. Spiders tend to have only two segments, their head and their body, without a connecting section.

The marks on Shelob's belly are called livid. "Livid has a colorful history. The Latin adjective lividus means "dull, grayish, or leaden blue." From this came the French livide, which English borrowed as livid. The word can describe flesh discolored by a bruise or an appearance deficient in color. Eventually, it came to be used for the complexion of a person pale with anger (i.e., "a person livid with rage"). From this meaning came two new senses: "reddish," as one is as likely to become red with anger as pale; the other was simply "angry" or "furious." -Merriam Webster Dictionary.

We are given an interesting detail in that Sam is only a ‘little less’ than Gollum’s size. Height? Weight? Both? Sam is generally portrayed as ‘solider,’ not as gangly, anyway.

Gollum’s vindictive nature ruins his ‘beautiful plans’ when he stops to gloat a while over Sam being in his clutches, where he can finally pay him back for his ‘nassty’ attitude. There’s a saying in Middle-earth: ‘Oft evil will, will evil mar,’ sometimes expressed as ‘Oft will hatred hurt itself!’ Here is a fine example of the working-out of that principle.

Well! Only one more chapter of The Two Towers left, and it’s a doozy. I started working on the book on February 20, 2023; that means so far it’s been 1 year, 3 months and 28 days. The early chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring went a lot faster and I was able to cover most in one post. I think I'll see if I can't cover The Choices of Master Samwise in one go, no matter how long it gets. I think I only managed to 'summarize' the last 2 and 1/3 pages of Shelob's Lair in several more pages than the book.

Mother Goose on Father's Day

Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes_ With Sterling Holloway (1964) - YouTube

 One of the things about Mother Goose poems that always impresses me is how many of them turn out to be rags and tags of actual songs that were popular once upon a time; that the origins and even authors of the rhymes are known, that they are not all of them so-called 'folk' poetry, and are not even truly 'ancient' (two or three hundred years is not really ancient). It sometimes makes me wonder what bits and pieces of songs we listen to today might survive to be Mother Geese of the future. What tags or 'ear-worms' would you consider likely candidates?

Three Queens and a Pair: Into the Archive

 

Yesterday I got the two-movie collection of Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)/Mary Queen of Scots (1971) in a nicely boxed set. I spent a large chunk of today watching them and marveling at the strange interweaving familiarity of their actors. Not only that, they were both produced by Hal Wallis, who in his time had produced The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, Becket, True Grit, and Rooster Cogburn, among many others.

Anne of the Thousand Days, besides having Richard Burton as King Henry the Eighth and Genevieve Bujold as Anne Boleyn, also included John Colicos as Thomas Cromwell (the same historic figure Leo McKern played in A Man for all Seasons). Colicos was famous to us pop culturalists as Kor, the first Klingon shown on Star Trek (in An Errand of Mercy) and as Lord Baltar in Battlestar Galactic.

The cast also includes (by a strange coincidence) Michael Hordern as Thomas Boleyn, Anne’s father, and William Squire as Thomas More. Squire had been the voice of Gandalf in Ralph Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings and Hordern was the voice of Gandalf in the 1981 BBC radio adaptation.

John Anthony Quayle played Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (a part played by Orson Welles in A Man for all Seasons). He also played important roles in such major studio productions as The Guns of Navarone (1961), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Operation Crossbow (1965), QB VII (1974) and The Eagle Has Landed (1976).

Peter Jeffrey played Thomas Howard, 3^rd Duke of Norfolk. He also played King Philip II of Spain in the BBC serial Elizabeth R (1971). Also in 1971, he played Inspector Trout in The Abominable Dr. Phibes, a role he reprised in 1972 in Dr. Phibes Rises Again. Also in 1971, he was Count Balogh in Countess Dracula, and in 1988 the Sultan in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

Mary Queen of Scots boasted an equally impressive cast:

• Vanessa Redgrave as Mary, Queen of Scots
• Glenda Jackson as Queen Elizabeth I of England, reprising her role from the BBC show in the same year
• Patrick McGoohan as Mary's half-brother James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray (famous to us as Edward the III in Braveheart)
• Timothy Dalton as Mary's second husband Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley (just saw him in The Three Musketeers)
• Nigel Davenport as Mary's third husband, James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell
• Trevor Howard as Elizabeth's advisor Sir William Cecil
• Ian Holm as Mary's advisor, David Riccio (Bilbo!)

Friday Fiction: Aftermath

 

AFTERMATH

 

     It was a late – a very late – autumn day.  The great chamber at the heart of the New Royal School lay closed and stuffy; no-one had been in or out for two weeks. The only moving things there had been the climbing and declining rays of sunlight across the walls and the shuffle of spiders now and then in the high corners of the room.

An abrupt clanking of the doorhandle broke the silence, setting echoes that seemed to startle and stir the innumerable shelves of books and papers and set them rustling with the inrush of air as the door creaked open. A Morgish muzzle poked cautiously into the room, followed by a black beard bristling nervously beneath. There was a loud, inhaling sniff.

     “H … Hello?” A voice quavered hesitantly into the echoing chamber.

It was followed the next instant by a squawk as its gangly owner was pushed stumbling into the room. Almost immediately behind him came a stern, matronly Morgess, her plain shift the mellow yellow color of the staff proctors. She crossed her arms impatiently as the Morg caught his balance, then adjusted his green tunic, brow wrinkling.

“Was that absolutely necessary, Ena?” he grumbled.

“What, you were waiting for an answer, Master Grax?” she said flatly. “We’ve got too much work to do clearing this place out without wasting time.”

“Well, you never know,” the Morg said vaguely. He cut his cut his eyes around the room. “After all, history is full of stories … lingering presences, you know … it doesn’t hurt to be respectful ...”

He shivered.

“Don’t you feel something?”

The stolid Morgess shrugged.

“He wasn’t the head of my department. Just the Grand Master of the School.”

Grax’s jaw flopped open.

“But he was Korm!” he protested. “The greatest scholar of his generation, if not in all the history of Forlan! Student of Belmok! He discovered the treasure of the Lost City of the Moon! Almost the last living of the Goldfire Questers!”

Ena shrugged again and raised an eyebrow.

“As I recall, he had them looking in the wrong place to begin with, which almost led to their deaths,” she said, her voice dry.

“Well, nobody’s perfect.” Grax looked around and tangled his claws through his stringy beard. “Honestly, though, can’t you feel something … personal in the air?”

“Of course,” Ena said briskly. She stepped over to the grand desk that was the centerpiece of the office. Grax followed in her wake. “My old Madra explained it to me before I even became a proctor and started the job. My uncle had passed away and I thought his room was haunted. She told me it was like this.”

She pulled out the chair and sat down by the desk and began examining the objects that cluttered the top, straightening papers and books.

“The most essential part of a person is the spirit or mind, and very close to it is the body, which picks up and discards material as it goes along.”

“Well, that seems pretty obvious.”

“Right. If we didn’t have bodies, there’s no way we’d know anybody else has a mind. When the spirit that gave the body form is gone, the body collapses into mere material … but that material is how we knew the spirit was there.”

Grax snorted. “What does that have to do with … well, hauntings?”

“There’s a third circle of existence that most people don’t think about, and that’s the influence a person had on things while they were alive.”

Ena finished straightening the desktop and stood up, eying the room critically as she moved toward the bed.

“You mean like their legacy, their influence on history?” Grax moved over and sat down himself. Now that Ena had broken the ice, as it were, he found himself filled with awe to be sitting at the great Morg’s desk. He ran a reverent claw slowly along the edge.

“It’s even more personal than that.” The old Morgess went over to the bulky wardrobe next to the bed, swung open the door, and looked over the contents. Her nose wrinkled at the stale smell.

“The things a person collects … the things that only he uses … they’re like the armor a twister slug leaves behind when it changes. The bug is gone elsewhere, but there’s a hollow shell where he used to be, in the shape of what he was.” She shut the wardrobe. “Eventually it collapses or something else takes up residence.”

Grax’s eyes widened.

“I don’t think it’s quite respectful to speak of Master Korm as a slug. He was a great person.” His claws were wandering over the desk drawers with an eagerness of their own, feeling the knobs in anticipation. “Who knows what great legacy he’s left behind for other scholars to find? Who knows …?”

Almost unconsciously he pulled a drawer open. Surprised at his action, he looked down, stopping in mid-sentence. He went still.

After a moment he cleared his throat.

“Why do you suppose,” he asked shakily. “That anyone would save a drawerful of nail-clippings?”

“What?” Ena barked, hastening to his side. She stared down into the drawer.

“Ugh. Well, that’s going into the fire, for starters.”  

Grax shook his head.

“That’s just … odd.”

“Well, they do say it never pays to look too deeply into the great ones’ lives. You’ll find they all raise their flap to shit.”

“I suppose so.” He wrinkled his muzzle. “I suppose we’d better buckle down to work. The next High Master will be wanting to move in soon.”

“That’s so.” Ena looked around with an assessing eye. “Looks like more work for you than me. How many boxes do you think you’ll need?”

The other Morg around helplessly at the shelves bulging with books and papers.

“About twenty?” he ventured.

“Let’s make it thirty. It’s always better to have too many than not enough.” She walked over to the bed – a rather simple and narrow piece of furniture, Grax thought, for the legendary hero – and began stripping the bedclothes, folding them neatly at the foot. “By the way, any idea who the new High Master will be?”

“I only know it won’t be me.” He sighed. “There are a few candidates of course, but none stand out. How can you replace someone like Korm?”

“And yet he will be. No-one’s irreplaceable. Like my madra said when the old King died, you can stick your hand in a bucket of water and take it out again, and the hole that’s left is equal to the absence in society what’s felt when even a great one passes.”

“That seems rather cynical,” the other sniffed. He pulled a scroll out of his pocket and began perusing the list written there.

“But practical. Life, as they say, goes on.” She turned from her work. “What’s that, then?”

“A list of bequests and whatnot,” Grax said distractedly, eyes running over the scroll. “Some special gifts of books to various persons and places.”

His lips moved mumbling quietly, then he looked up in dismay at the overcrowded shelves around them.

“How the hell am I supposed to pick them out here? It’s like looking for particular stalks in a field of wheat!”

“Oh, be quiet!” Ena flipped the last folds of the sheets and turned her attention to the wardrobe. “Big as the chore is, bit by bit it gets done, don’t it? That’s what we say downstairs.” She opened the door. “Huh. Not a lot of clothes for a Master. And pretty shabby, too.”

“Vanity was not one of his weaknesses.” Grax sniffed. “Not like some Masters I know.” He walked over to a nearby shelf, turned a corner to the back, and began scanning the books there.

Ena grinned.

“I bet I could name a few you’re thinking of.” She wrinkled her nose. “I think these can all go on the scrap pile. They buried him in his best, I suppose.”

“Yes, of course,” Grax said absently, as his eyes flickered over the titles. He muttered, reading them to himself as he bent close to see. Suddenly he stopped and gasped in astonishment. “What the --,” he began slowly, brow furrowed, anger in his voice.

“What? What?” The old Morgess came hurrying over gleefully to join him. She thought she heard scandal in his voice and was eager for a little spice on this dull job.

She turned the corner and found Grax leafing through a volume, an appalled expression on his muzzle.

“What is it?” she asked excitedly. “Our revered Grand Master been secretly reading some fiery romances?”

“No, look at this! Just look!” He pointed one shaking claw at a blue seal on the book’s spine. “This is from the Great Library! No-one is supposed to remove this! No-one!”

Ena shrugged.

“Surely the Grand Master could …”

“No-one!”

Ena shrugged again.

“Well, one book …”

“No, look!” Grax waved his arms angrily. “Look! Shelves upon shelves of them. There must be almost two hundred books here!”

Ena whistled long and low out of the sides of her muzzle, eyes wide.

“Oh, he has been a naughty boy!” she chortled. “Well, all sins must out, they say.”

Grax covered his eyes and rocked his head, moaning softly, before straightening up and tugging his beard in sudden resolution.

“Well, this one mustn’t. It would be bad for morale, and even worse for discipline. Just think what would happen if it got around that Korm … Korm, of all people, was a … a … a book thief!” He spat the words out. “Next thing you know our shelves would be bare, with the students using his example as an excuse.” He wrinkled his brow. “But how to get them back in the library without anyone knowing?”

“Simple enough,” Ena said breezily. “I’ll just bring an empty cleaning cart over tonight, load them up with some rags on top, and wheel it over to the archives. Sprinkle ‘em around on the tables here and there and let the librarians sort ‘em out. Believe me, nobody notices cleaners going around.”

“You’d do that for me?” The other Morg relaxed visibly. “That would be very helpful.”

“Never you mind.” The old lady patted him on the shoulder. “My job here is pretty light. Never knowed a Master of any grade to be so monk-like in his living. His personables are hardly worth giving to the School’s thrift store. But all this …” She indicated the stuffed shelves around them. “I don’t envy you and your assistants going through all this.”

Grax barked shortly.

“Oh, it’s like sorting out a dragon’s hoard for us. A pleasant task, once the guardian’s out of the way.”

Ena looked dubious.

“Well, if you say so.” She looked around. “Well, I guess the first once-over’s done. I’ll go get some carts for the lugging and by tomorrow ‘twill all be clear for you scholar-squirrels to gather your nuts. Best meet me back here in an hour so you can direct me about them books.”

“Yes, yes, I have a few things to attend to right quick, then I’ll be back.” They moved to the door, where Grax paused and looked around with a little shiver. “I don’t think I’d fancy waiting here all alone until then.”

“Don’t let it bother you none,” Ena grinned. “In my experience, dead folks is the least dangerous kind.”

The door shut firmly, and the key clicked in the lock. The echoing footsteps died away and all was silent for a while. After a while, a voice for those who could hear spoke up apologetically.

“Oh, dear. I really did mean to return those books … sometime, you know. There just never seemed to be a good time.”

“In the last one hundred years, you mean?” The other voice was gruff, but noncommittal.

“Well …”

The other voice changed its tone.

“Have you seen enough? Are you ready to go now?”

“I was just wondering how …”

“No, it is enough.” The other voice was firm but sounded a little exasperated. “It’s always the same with you scholar types, curious about what happens next. Well, what happens next is there’s work to be done elsewhere.”

The first voice began to fade away, interest in its tone.

“I thought it was going to be some kind of rest …”

The second voice sounded amused as it too faded.

“Where we’re going, work and rest don’t have separate meanings. Perhaps the closest word here in this world is play.”

“Well, that does sound interesting …”

And then they were gone, and there was only silence in the hollow dusty chamber. 

Finished First Draft 9:49 PM

7/10/2021

Notes:

Well. Though there are more stories and story fragments filed away already, I hope by next Friday to have some absolutely new content prepared, perhaps finally the continuation of Thrand. This story puts a kind of a button on the 'Korm' strand of Tales of the Morgs, although I wouldn't rule out another one popping up from the 'between times.' Its origin, of course, stems from my wondering about the fate of my own 'archives' once I am gone. Ena's observations, especially about the 'shell' idea about a kind of afterlife, are my own, but the water and bucket observation is from an old poem.

The Indispensable Man Saxon White Kessinger (1959) Sometime when you’re feeling important; Sometime when your ego’s in bloom Sometime when you take it for granted You’re the best qualified in the room, Sometime when you feel that your going Would leave an unfillable hole, Just follow these simple instructions And see how they humble your soul; Take a bucket and fill it with water, Put your hand in it up to the wrist, Pull it out and the hole that’s remaining Is a measure of how you’ll be missed. You can splash all you wish when you enter, You may stir up the water galore, But stop and you’ll find that in no time It looks quite the same as before. The moral of this quaint example Is do just the best that you can, Be proud of yourself but remember, There’s no indispensable man.

Five Years Ago in June

Five years ago at this time I had just been baptized, it was the end of the school year (Kameron’s last year, and so the last of Susan’s kids’ school), and I was trying to get the Guest House into some sort of order. This was the time I gave Tom Villareal most of my Playmates Star Trek ships, and I was trying to winnow out some of my books by offering them for rock-bottom prices on Facebook. Kenny was very interested in having the books, and as it turned out Tom was heading for Florida soon, and he agreed to take them out to Kenny. So I ended up not selling them at all but sending them to a good home.

I remember in my cleaning madness I had offered quite a few of my Patricia McKillip books for sale but ended up keeping them. In fact, I have since added to them. I was just then writing JABS, a Bureau of Shadows-adjacent tale that is still unfinished.

Since this was a time before I started getting Medicare/Medicaid, a lot of my diary-keeping was involved with plotting and planning how to get my meals, with a depressing number of donated leftovers, peanut butter sandwiches, and especially packs of ramen making their appearance.

On the upside, the chihuahuas and Kylo (the Rottweiler) were still alive, although Kylo was having trouble with her poor leg already. And it was rainy just then, too. It’s nice to have a diary to look back on and compare and contrast conditions.

 

Wideo Wednesday: So We Link Our Hands and Dance

Today is the twelfth, and in twelve more days it will be Midsummmer’s Day. In preparation for that, I offer these twelve pieces of music, either ancient or ageless, whose cadences (dreamlike or merry) seem fit to tread a measure to at such a time. There are pieces from The Lord of the Rings, Excalibur, Restoration, Shakespeare in Love, Amadeus, and Rob Roy, with performances by Kitaro, Dead Can Dance, The Chieftains, Loreena McKennitt, and Simon and Garfunkel. Listen and dream.

Kitaro - Pray - YouTube

The Lord of the Rings Bilbo's Birthday - YouTube

dead can dance-saltarello - YouTube

Carl Orff - O Fortuna ~ Carmina Burana - YouTube

Restoration "Zeit der Sinnlichkeit" - Soundtrack - 30: "Newcastle (Traditional)" - YouTube

The Passing of the Elves (Sindarin lyrics with translation) - YouTube

Shakespeare in Love- The De Lesseps' Dance - YouTube

Bubak And Hungaricus - YouTube

MacAllistrum's March - Mairseail Alasdroim - YouTube

Jenkins, Ratledge: Adiemus - YouTube

Simon & Garfunkel - Scarborough Fair (Full Version) Lyrics - YouTube

                          The Mummers' Dance - YouTube