Subject: I would unironically read an entire series of this.
Author:
Posted on: 2022-01-14 13:35:04 UTC
Holmes and Whitson are delightful, of course, and the transposition of the RACHE scene! -chef's kiss-
Clearly this is yet another one of the Shire's excellent cultural exports, right after The Great Shire Bake-Off! Not as gritty as The High Hay, but still a very respectable procedural mystery romp with a dedicated fanbase. Hemson shippers unite!
I'm not completely sure, and it could just be an author taking liberties for a story (in which case ignore this), but yeah
https://archiveofourown.org/works/27180052?viewfullwork=true
Our protagonist (suspected Mary Sue, no flaws evident) is Lunessa, a half-witch half-elf... child of a made up witch and Elrond. It's not awful, but we still get our fair share of whackiness. So yep.
(also I'm back, sup. been awhile, don't expect y'all to remember me but hi :))
(also also,"it's blade" and "shined" making an appearance)
My badfic reporting may be coming with a slightly high frequency, but this is so delightfully insane I just had to bring it here. I'm tempted to believe it's a troll fic if not for the SPaG. In a nutshell, an African-American lady is poofed into Middle-earth by people wearing white sheets, who are supposed to look like what you think it is, and romances Thranduil. Warning for a very brief reference to a real-life terrorist group, naturally.
Taylor Martinez is a police officer. Normal, right? Correct! She is! Only problem is, when you're African-American; not everyone says so. Then when after a run-in with the Ku Klux Klan, she finds herself in a place where no one shares her ethnicity. Will she be accepted? And, just as important, will she find love?Even if it doesn't include that particular triggering reference, our Suvian is an annoying brat who somehow belongs to a made-up elf ethnicity called Mornedhel (and how and why she ends up living most of her life as a human in modern United States is never made clear), and there are background elf OCs with suspicious names Edwenor, Leithiandir and Thorontur.
That doesn't mean the story is good (it really isn't; can we say "trivialization"?), but it does mean that, as a white person, I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot spork.
~Neshomeh
It's the whole fanfare about "supporting PoC" and the… ahem… white sheet people that made me initially believe it was a troll fic. It's too over-the-top to be taken seriously.
Actually commenting because you brought Sindarin into things...
Glancing through the story, it's not surprising that there's no explanation for how a "Mornedhel" wound up in modern Earth - the story only runs a few paragraphs after that revelation! Amusingly, there's also no proof that she even is one - Thranduil seems to have just looked for any text relating to dark-skinned elves and assumed it applied. She's lucky he's not calling her a daughter of Caranthir the Dark!
Basically, movie!Thranduil is hecka racist. We already knew that.
hS
This magazine article on a professional cosplay of Thranduil and his wife was all fine and dandy up until they claim those two are Lothlórien silvan elves 🤦♀️. P.S. this may be me nitpicking, but they appear to be avoiding the term "cosplay" even though that's what the photoshoot essentially is.
This isn't just a bunch of nerds dressing up for personal enjoyment, this is a professional photo shoot with professional costumes and makeup. We don't generally refer to stage or film acting as "playing pretend," either; same reason.
That said, the article loses credibility with me in the first paragraph, when it starts going on about how all the Elves "glow with the radiance of every twilight, bathed in the dew of every sunrise" and so forth. First of all, blech, that's some very purple prose right there. Second, with regard to glowing... like... maybe? If they ever set foot in Aman, certainly they have the light of the Two Trees about them, but the Sindar who lived all their lives in Middle-earth, like Thranduil? Ehhhh, I dunno. I guess their spirits would still look brighter than the edain's, but I'm not sure it shows on the surface the way it does with the Calaquendi.
That said, serious Tolkien geeks are probably not the intended audience here. Pretty pictures go brrrr. {= )
~Neshomeh
That doesn't take a very deep geek to spot 🤣; I'm pretty sure people who've only seen the movies can catch that one.
Thranduil's virulent racism against Silvan elves is an invention of the Hobbit movies. It's easy to miss that he's supposed to be Sindarin in the books, but in the movies it's crystal clear.
(I have no idea how one winds up pinning him to Lorien, though.)
hS
That one is actually more obvious than his ethnicity.
P.P.S: Great, now I'm getting reminded of how phenomenally sexy Lee Pace's performance is.
Looking at the photo, this Thranduil with the pure silver hair (even though he's explicitly blond in the book) does resemble Celeborn, and the wife does look like Galadriel.
I guess because I started typing something in the message body, but changed my mind? Maybe I left a space behind, or something?
... Well, while I'm here, I'd almost believe they did mistake Celeborn for Thranduil, but in that case I wonder why they wouldn't bother to name Galadriel, referring only to "his wife." It's definitely strange either way.
~Neshomeh
badfic number 3 - I should stop browsing AO3, but eh
https://archiveofourown.org/works/9135979/chapters/20759761
read if you wish, SMUT alert, legomance alert except there's a thing with Thranduil too... ice witch...
What.
Also, there's a joke waiting to be made, about Ylesia...
This time, say hello to the implausibly named uncanonical daughter of Thranduil instead, who's somehow Arwen's cousin. That's not the number 1 goof however; that would be Glorfindel's somehow being Elrond's child in this fic. It's a bit fascinating that the fic knows the existence of Glorfindel, but not Thranduil's name or the correct family relations of everybody else.
Nobody that we know of ever defeated a Balrog without being slain at the same time,
I only recall Glorfindel, Ecthelion, Gandalf.
*At least in the mature Legendarium. If you go back to the earliest versions of the story, you find things like Rog and the House of the Hammer of Wrath killing them in job lots. Admittedly they also die in the attempt, but it's a different view of Balrogs to the final version which takes down Gandalf.
hS
why oh gods why Legolina?! cries
Legolin is the name of a river in Beleriand.
Nother badfic, this one's a crossover, and far, far worse. NSFW. https://archiveofourown.org/works/7619158/chapters/17344195 TW, hopefully that spoilering/censoring works)
Featuring drumroll please:
Veela/Aragorn-descendant Harry, Professor Legolas (and they fall in love/become mates because apparently that's how Veelas work)
A dead evil!Ron and Ginny
their, they're and there, it's and its
A scene break which isn't indicated in any way
Commas? No. Grammar? No. Understandable? Barely. Bad smut? Yes
Brain Pain (in large quantities)
But it can't be that bad. I've seen wackier Sue offsprings, usually on fics in the early 2000s.
Lune-ssa would mean "their (sg.) blue". My guess is that it's supposed to be "from the blue" or "from the darkness", which would be Lunessë and Lunassë respectively, and people do like to slap an A onto words to turn them feminine...
But that's Quenya, and Elrond's family use Sindarin. Also, um, what's a witch? That's not a species in any bestiary of Arda I've ever read...
Actually she looks kind of refreshing: a proper traditional Legoluster Suvian! She even calls him "Legolas Greenleaf" as if it was his surname! It's just a shame it's a) so long and b) descends into smut (at least per the tags), otherwise I might be tempted to do something with it.
hS
also i found a fic that referred to Thranduil as Thranduil Greenleaf lmao
Lmao, yeah that was my first thought. I mean she is just making up something to sound cooler (originally I thought she had just made up a female istari, nope, she says she's the last member of the species.)
Also her eyes turn weird colours when around Legolas, just so it's absolutely 100% totally clear they're soulmates!
Does the Witch-King of Angmar count?
Is it Lunessa's species, no (apparently she's the last one) Is it probably the closest thing to a "witch" in actual LOTR, yes.
Anna, Ann, Ariel, Ella, Laura, Marion are all plausible elf names 🤣
Anna: Quenya, "Gift". It's... debatable whether common nouns can be used by themselves as names. The obvious example is Luthien, whose aftername Tinuviel is just a poetic term for a nightingale. But a) it's an aftername, not a birth name, and b) it was given by a mortal. More typically, I'd expect to see a suffix or prefix attached (as indeed with Luthien itself, "daughter of flowers").
Ann: Sindarin, "Gift". Exactly the same situation as above. Ironically, this means that "Anna" could be an archaic Sindarin name, Ann-a, "of the gift". (Sindarin generally dropped the -a genitive suffix, but it survived in Doriath.)
Ariel: plausibly Quenya, "noble daughter", from Ara+iel. This would actually be identical in Sindarin.
Ella: dubious. I can make it Quenya, "starred", but it would be an active participle rather than an adjective, uses an archaic word for star, and would probably be Elila instead. It's also an old pronoun, "from you", and the Telerin word for "Elf". I don't think anyone would use it.
Laura: well, laur is the root for "gold" in both Quenya and Sindarin, but there's no obvious -a suffix for it other than that old genitive again. So it could just about be archaic Sindarin "of gold". (Quenya would retain the "e" in laure; laurea is an adjective for "golden".)
Marion: good Quenya for "son of the House". Whether you'd actually call someone this, given that Sauron's original name was Mairon, is debatable - the Sindar do still refer to the Vala Orome as Tauron, so maybe they see similarities differently. (Of course, "Marion" is less recognisable than "Marian", which is not Quenya.)
So yeah, I'd accept Marion for any Quenya speaker, and Anna and Laura as Doriathrin Sindar. Marion would be a male name; I'm not sure if Sindarin sees -a as a feminine ending (Quenya kind of does, hence Varda).
It would be hilarious to write a short story about Luthien's childhood, with her handmaids Laura and Anna. Anna's pet-name for Laura is Lauren, "my Gold"; Laura just calls her Ann, "Gift".
(I'm totally going to spend the afternoon coming up with other plausible names for this.)
hS
... and I can offer many proper Elvish names!
DORIAN - S., Land-Land (but officially King-Land)
RACHEL - archaic S., star-wain (modern version would be 'Rasgel')
KATIE - Q., back road (would usually be written 'Catie', but see Helkaraxe)
MARIE - Q, Garlanded hand
ABIGAIL - S., spark a little after
So there you go! You could legitimately write a story where Luthien hangs out with her buddies Laura (rhymes with cow-ra), Rachel (rhymes with J.S. Bach-el) and Abigail (rhymes with... uh... the 'ai' is an 'eye' sound).
hS
Something something victim writing "rache" in an attempt to point out the wain-driver before they die...
I do not mind admitting, my dear Meri, that I came close to fainting when I saw the scene. It was one of the Big Folk, a Ranger by his garb, laid flat upon his face outside the Hay Gate. Were it still dark, one might have thought him asleep, as indeed the Shirriff had when he passed by about the middle night. But the cold light of dawn revealed the unnatural stillness of his body - and the blood that had dried on the road about him.
Hemlock was there before me, of course; I have never known her to be late when there is news of blood on the ground. Such crimes are uncommon in our Shire, and as such the Shirriffs are not well equipped to deal with them. That is where Hemlock Holmes comes in; she calls herself a "Consulting Detector", and is called upon whenever the Shirriffs find themselves out of their depth.
"Ah, Whitson," she said, looking up with a smile entirely at odds with the grisly scene. "Come, tell me what you see."
I passed through the gate and gingerly approached, tying my hair back as I went. It is one of Hemlock's quirks that she never calls me Juniper, or June, or anything other than Whitson; I am not in the least certain she even knows my given name. I crouched down, careful to keep my skirts clear of the pool of blood, and looked at my friend. "I see much that I would rather not," I told her. "A Ranger of the Big Folk - murdered, I should suppose, by some bandit or creature out of the Old Forest."
"Quite so," Hemlock agreed. She pointed at a few features of the body, which to me seemed little different from any other. "Of course you can see that he had travelled far recently, probably in the Trollshaws; but though the old wound still bothered him at times, it was not enough to slow him down. It is curious about his knife, though..."
I frowned down at the sheath on the Ranger's belt. So far as I could tell, it was a perfectly ordinary knife, if sized for one of the Big Folk: suited for eating, hunting, and defence at need. I was about to say as much, but Hemlock had already moved on.
"Tell me, then," she said, nodding past me at the open gate, "what you make of that."
I turned and gaped. There were elegant Elvish letters on the gate, a handspan tall and a good three feet off the ground, written in what must be our victim's own blood, and spelling a single word: RACHE.
"That is-" For a heart-stopping moment, I thought the word to be evidence of an Elvish hand in our murder; but then I recalled that of course, the Rangers used both Elvish letters and the runes at need. "I suppose the poor man must have written it himself," I said. "'Rache' - it is no word I know. Could it be his name?"
Hemlock gave me that slightly disappointed look I have come to know so well. "Shirriff?" she called out, beckoning to the nervous hobbit beside the gate. "I believe I have something of interest."
The Shirriff approached, shivering despite the warm day. "I do hope so, Miss Holmes," he said. "I don't want to have to look at the poor man any longer than I have to, if you get my meaning."
Hemlock gave him a brief smile which suggested she got nothing of the sort. "I have determined that the Ranger was killed just before midnight," she said briskly. "If you would begin asking at the nearby houses, hopefully you will find a witness. The murderer would have approached up the Newbury road, though I cannot guarantee they returned that way."
The Shirriff's look of astonishment was second only to my own. "Just a moment!" I said, taking my friend's arm. "Surely you cannot mean to say one of our people did this!"
Hemlock treated me to that same thin smile. "You have been falling behind in your studies, my dear Whitson," she said. "Do you not recall the map of the southern lands I lent you two weeks ago? Rach, the singular of raich, as in the Sindarin name of the road to the White City, Imrath Gondraith."
I looked down at the Ranger, then back at Hemlock none the wiser. "Something to do with stone?" I hazarded.
Hemlock Holmes sighed. "The word means Stonewain," she supplied. "By the E in our message, we can deduce that the word was not completed - but see how close it comes to the gatepost? There can only be one further letter to write, and the only logical way to complete the word is to add a lambe."
"Rachel," I repeated blankly. Then it clicked. "Rach-el; I know that word! It means Elf; but in the old poems it stands for..."
"Star," Hemlock confirmed, "with the whole meaning Starry Wain. And the only Starry Wain I know of, besides the one in the northern sky, is the inn at Newbury." She took my hand and led me through the gate, back into Buckland. "You see, Whitson? When you bother to pay attention, it's quite elementary."
Because "Wain" is a Hobbitish name for the Plough, and Hemlock was right there. Carnë is literally 'scarlet' in Quenya; properly I should have used Sindarin Caran, but I prefer the Quenya.
(Re 'midnight': by the height of the message Hemlock deduced that it was written by a hobbit, who must have been the killer, and interrupted by the Shirriff passing by. Quite why the killer would do that, I have no idea; Newbury is close to the Old Forest, so perhaps there's a connection there.)
hS
For reasons I did not understand, we left our ponies with the Shirriff and made the trip to Newbury on foot. It was a pleasant enough stroll, and by the maps I had back home I knew it to be less than three leagues all told, but we could have ridden to the Starry Wain in less than an hour.
But Hemlock Holmes would have none of it; and furthermore she refused to keep to the road. Before we had gone a mile she had me climbing fences and pushing through fields of corn, cabbages, and carrots, and the High Hay was looming close on our left.
"Miss Holmes!" I stumbled over a ploughed furrow, caught myself and hastened after her. "Should we not return to the path? Even if anyone came this way, we could hardly find trace of them in these fields!"
"Traces?" Hemlock barely glanced at me. "We are not looking for footprints, Whitson; I already told you where the killer came from! But why - ah, that is the crucial question." She stopped suddenly and pointed at the Hedge. "There! Do you see?"
I stumbled up alongside her and peered at the wall of greenery. "There does seem to be something hanging there," I said uncertainly. "It catches the light, but I cannot make out its shape."
"It is a spoon," Hemlock told me, though she could have no better view than I. "A ladle, I should hazard; and quite likely unused, if you can imagine such a thing."
"I am having difficulty doing so," I confessed. I had rushed out of my hole after only one breakfast, and had since eaten only a hurried elevenses at the Floating Log. I had been looking forward to a leisurely lunch at the Bridge Inn, but Hemlock's haste had put paid to that plan, and my stomach was protesting the lack.
Perhaps Hemlock heard its grumblings, for she smiled kindly across at me. "I believe we can return to the road now," she said, and glanced up at the midday sun. "If we cut through the mushroom grove over there, we will come upon the track right by the fork - and that will place us less than an hour from Newbury."
As usual, my friend was entirely correct. Half an hour later, we pushed through a small copse of fruit trees and found ourselves facing a signpost. The three wooden hands pointed north to the Bridge, west to Bucklebury, and east to our destination. Hemlock nodded in satisfaction, and was about to take the third way when I caught her hand.
"Look!" I exclaimed, pointing at the grassy verge beneath the post. "Another spoon!"
"Excellent eye," Hemlock said, stooping to collect the ladle. It seemed entirely unremarkable to me, other than its unusual location, but she turned it in her hands as if fascinated. "Yes, just as I thought," she murmured. "Miss Whitson, see if you can turn up any more of these."
I frowned down at the grass, and caught another flash of sunlight on metal. "Yes, here is a second - and a third, down by the post…"
"If you will address yourself to the question," Hemlock said, tucking her own spoon into her pack, "I think you will find there to be seven in total."
A quick rummage through the grass brought my count to five, and when I spotted a sixth ladle leaning against the back of the sign I knew the great detector had done it again. "How in all the Shire did you know?" I asked her, straightening up.
"I should have thought it was obvious," Hemlock said with a slight smile. "Come, Whitson - I am certain now that our quarry awaits us at the sign of the Starry Wain."
"The Sign of (the) Four" being the second Sherlock Holmes novel. I'm not doing all four novel titles, mainly because I can't make "The Valley of Fear" relevant (though "The Valley of Fëar" is a funny option).
The story as a whole is now A Scandal in Buckland, and the next chapter will be The Hound of the Brandybucks.
hS
Even before we reached the inn, I noticed something was wrong. I had not visited Newbury before, but at that time on an autumnal afternoon I would expect any town in the Shire to feel very much the same: streets bustling as the farm-folk brought their harvests home, children playing underfoot, and in general the good Hobbits of Buckland enjoying the warm weather before the winter set in.
Yet if Newbury was not quite empty, it was far quieter than it ought to have been as we made our way up the earth road. Those few people I saw hurried on their way as if desperate to reach their homes, and I caught not a few glancing nervously towards the dark Hedge to the east and north.
Hemlock gave no indication of noticing anything amiss. She strode up to the inn in the centre of town, distinctive by its hanging sign of the bright Starry Wain, and rapped her knuckles on the door.
There was no answer. Hemlock knocked again. Then, and only then, did she frown and look around. "More spoons," she murmured. "Yes, that makes sense."
I followed her gaze, and found that many of the holes and houses nearby had ladles hung from their doorknockers or windowsills. "Does that mean something?" I asked, trying to follow her thoughts.
"Of course it means something," Hemlock said, turning back to the inn and knocking a third time. "But why don't they answer?" she asked, staring up at the black and silver sign. "It is almost as though they aren't even here - but no, there were seven spoons, they must be in there."
I coughed, remembering my search at the fork in the road. "Is it a good time to mention that I only actually found six of them?"
"Six?" Hemlock looked sharply at me. "But you said seven."
"You said seven," I reminded her. "And you are usually correct on these matters."
"Usually." Hemlock swung an accusing gaze back to the sign of the Starry Wain. "Ah! Usually will be the death of us. My dear Whitson, the whole art of deduction lies in testing one's suspicions, not simply accepting them!" She thudded her fist against the door one last time, achieving no more result than the previous attempts. "Quick - what time does the sun set in this season?"
I blinked at her in bewilderment. "How can you not know the length of an autumn's day?"
"That's why I keep you around," Hemlock said briskly, but she smiled as she did. "Come, Miss Whitson, an answer if you will!"
I squinted up at the sun, counted the days since the equinox, and gauged the rumbling in my stomach. "I should say we have about three hours," I hazarded.
"Then the road is too long; we shall have to take a more direct route." Hemlock caught her long skirts in one hand and hitched them up, tying the fabric in a rough knot that lifted her hems well off the ground.
I sighed, knowing what those bare shins portended. "I would really have preferred to avoid trekking cross-country," I said, following her example.
"Then you ought to have counted your ladles correctly." Hemlock caught my hand and grinned at my weary expression. "Come, Whitson - the game's afoot!"
My friend led me south-west, directly towards the setting sun. We followed farmers' tracks when we could find them, but for the most part we jogged through fields, scrambled over fences, and picked our way through woodland too broad to divert around. Despite our precautions, my skirt soon became snagged and tattered, and my feet and hands were stained with brown and green.
After an hour had passed the land began to rise, and the ploughed fields gave way to more decorative landscapes. We found a narrow path and followed it up the hill towards a distant column of smoke that portended houses and proper roads again.
Suddenly Hemlock stopped, so abruptly that I ran into her back. She caught me and set me back on my feet, then held up a hand to her ear. "Soft, Whitson," she said. "Do you hear the hounds?"
I frowned and tilted my head. There was a distant barking, but only what one would expect from a town's dogs at play. "I suppose so," I said, "but I can see nothing remarkable about that."
Hemlock Holmes grinned at me. "Exactly," she said. "We shall make a Detector of you yet. Now, onwards - we must reach Brandy Hall ere the sun sets, or all will be in vain!"
One chapter to go, in which Hemlock will resolve all our mysteries, including:
hS
I stood back nervously as Hemlock rapped on the largest front door of Brandy Hall. I was quite familiar with the Town Hole and Mathom-house back in Michel Delving; in Hemlock's company I had even visited the Great Smials in Tookborough. But all of those magnificent burrows paled in comparison to Brandy Hall, the vast complex of tunnels which filled Buck Hill to overflowing.
As Hemlock raised her hand a second time, the door swung soundlessly open. In most well-to-do homes we would have been greeted by a minor cousin of the family, or perhaps a dedicated servant; but Marmadoc Brandybuck had been answering the front door of the Hall since the reign of his grandfather, and wasn't about to stop just because he was now Master of Buckland himself.
"How can I help you lasses?" Marmadoc the Masterful asked, resplendent in his finery. "Hopefully it won't take too long - we were about to sit down for dinner."
Hemlock smiled, seemingly utterly unaware of how intimidating he was. "Greetings, Master," she said with a deep curtsey. "I apologise for interrupting your meal, but this is a matter of some urgency."
Marmadoc's eyebrows rose, and I wondered what he must think of us: two Hobbit-girls barely half his age, our clothes tattered and grass-stained, our voices betraying our Westfarthing heritage. I felt sure he would have some choice comments to make on our appearance, at the very least.
My friend didn't give him a chance. With a small cough, she straightened up and met his eye. "Forgive me, I have quite forgotten my manners. Hemlock Holmes, at your service."
The Master of Buckland slumped, as if he were a balloon and all the air had been let out of him at once. "Miss Holmes," he said, in a weary voice. "I had heard a rumour you and Miss Whitson were in Buckland; I hoped it was wrong."
Hemlock said nothing. She merely stood there, smiling faintly, as Marmadoc let out a long sigh.
"She is in one of the cellars," he said. "I can take you to her." He began to turn, then hesitated. "I trust… that is, I would ask you to be gentle with her."
Hemlock inclined her head slightly, but her eyes were flinty. "As gentle as I can be," she said, and that, the Master and I both knew, would have to suffice.
Marmadoc led us through the warrens of Brandy Hall to a small chamber, a waiting-room of some sort from which a single closed door led into the cellar. Curiously for an indoor setting, there was a bell-pull hanging beside the door, wrapped about with a ribbon decorated with small stars. Hemlock gave it a glance, then turned back to the Master of Buckland.
"I don't think you should be here," she said bluntly. "It will go… easier if you are not."
Marmadoc nodded his acceptance. He opened his mouth, but could find no words; and so with a bow he left us.
"Whitson," Hemlock said in a low voice, "I know you have deduced much of what has happened." (I had done nothing of the sort.) "But I would ask that you allow me to explain it myself. There is only one acceptable outcome to this adventure, and I must guide everyone involved to it."
"Of course, Miss Holmes," I said with a slight curtsey. "As always, I am at your service."
Hemlock gave me a quick smile, and crossed to the bell-pull. She took it gingerly between two fingers, examining the winding ribbon, then drew in a deep breath and pulled. Before the sound of the bell had died away, she tugged a second time - then another, and another, until seven chimes had sounded in all.
With a protesting creak, the door swung open. The girl who looked out was younger than me, with dark circles under her eyes and tear-stains on her cheeks. "Hemlock Holmes," she said, "and June Whitson. I suppose you'd better come in."
There were seven of them, seated about a long table covered with the remains of at least three meals. All seemed to be Bucklanders, but beyond that they ranged from a man who must have been at least eighty to the girl who had opened the door. She could barely be into her tweens, but she was the clear leader of the group.
"I don't believe there is much need for introductions," Hemlock said, standing at the head of the table as the girl returned to her seat. "You all know my reputation, and I assure you it is not exaggerated; and I know what I need to of the Starry Wain." A gasp rippled about the table, and Hemlock smiled thinly. "In a way, I can admire your work - you offer comfort to your people, in a way that harms no-one." She turned to fix the girl with a hard look. "Usually."
One of the other Hobbits stirred. "It isn't just comfort," she protested. "We're protecting people from the Old Forest. It's Elvish magic, is what it is."
"Perhaps," Hemlock said, with a flick of her head. "Certainly it has the shape of it. I suppose it began in the inn, when one of you remarked that the real Starry Wain, or the Burning Briar, or whatever one calls it, was first known as the Sickle of the Valar, and placed in the sky by Elbereth herself as a guard and warning." She looked about the group, her eyes darting from one to the next. "And so you began to use it as a token of protection against the… Forest. You saw its image in the ladles you hung from the Hedge and on your doors, and you began to inscribe its name in the Elvish letters."
The girl hunched over in her seat. "Was that how you found me?" she asked. "The writing?"
"In part," Hemlock said. "You were on patrol, like a Shirriff, yes? Walking the boundaries of Buckland to hang your spoons."
"The trees have been restless," one of the group said angrily. "Everyone in these parts knows there's something stirring in the woods - we have to keep it from attacking the High Hay again!"
"And so you looked out of the Gate," my friend said, looking only at the girl, "and you saw a figure, tall and dark and terrible. And you knew, you knew that it was a… a creature from out of the Old Forest, sneaking around the Hedge. You slipped through - he could never have heard you, not one of the Big Folk - and you came up behind him, and you took out your little knife…"
The girl gave a strangled sob. "I didn't know!" she wailed. "He looked so huge and monstrous, all covered in furs like a great bear! I had to- had to protect-"
"And so you killed him," Hemlock said flatly. "You killed a Ranger of the North, and he never even knew you were there. His own knife," she glanced at me, "was still in its sheath. And then you took his blood, and you used it to invoke the protection of Elbereth on the gate."
"Then the bridge guard came by," the girl said hollowly, "and he had his lantern, and I saw…" She shook her head, then dropped it to lie on her folded arms.
Hemlock sighed and turned to face me. "So she fled," she explained in a low voice. "The spoons at the road-fork were a message. Had there been seven, they would have meant the group should gather again at the inn in Newbury; with only six, the meaning was that something had gone wrong, and they needed to retreat here." She looked down at the weeping girl. "Back home," she said. "Isn't that right, Miss Brandybuck?"
"You don't know that." The oldest of the band spoke up, folding his arms and glowering at us. "You've never seen her before - she could be anyone!"
"The hounds," Hemlock said. "Do you remember, Whitson? The hounds were all at home."
My eyes narrowed as I finally put the pieces together. "But the Master must have heard about the killing by now," I said, "just as he had heard about your arrival. He would not want a killer loose in Buckland, so they should have been out hunting."
Hemlock nodded. "Or, if they had already caught the killer," she said, "there would have been uproar in Bucklebury, and we should have heard that. The peaceful scene we encountered could only mean that the Master knew who the culprit was - and had reason to protect her."
The girl stiffened in her seat. She raised her head, wiped her eyes, then shook off the comforting hands of her fellows and got to her feet. "Miss Cleome Brandybuck, at your service," she said in a firm voice that barely betrayed her despair. "I am prepared to suffer punishment for my-" She faltered a little. "My mistake, but please, I beg of you - my father knew nothing of this. Not until I…" She wrung her hands together, unable to say the words.
"I believe you," Hemlock told the daughter of Master Marmadoc gently, "and I do not want to see you punished."
A wild hope flickered in Cleome's eyes. "You… you don't?"
"No," Hemlock said, her own eyes hard. "I want you to make restitution; and that is a far harder thing."
"I…" Cleome looked down and clasped her hands together. She took a deep breath and nodded. "I am ready," she said. "What do you demand?"
I took a step forward and touched a hand to Hemlock's shoulder. I wanted to remind her of the Master's request - gently, gently! - but could not find the words.
My friend understood me all the same. "That is not for me to say," she told the girl softly. "Your victim was a Ranger of the North. His people are few and scattered, but they maintain a camp up at Deadman's Dike. You must go there, bring his kinsmen news of his death, and seek their judgement."
Cleome shuddered, tears falling afresh down her face. I could not help myself: I stepped past Hemlock and wrapped an arm around the girl's shoulders. "It won't be so bad," I told her, though the thought of making that journey gave me shivers of my own. "There haven't been any battles up there for hundreds of years, and it's only a hundred miles. It could be quite the adventure!"
My words didn't have the soothing effect I was hoping for. Cleome Brandybuck looked up past me, meeting Hemlock's gaze with pleading eyes.
Hemlock held her like that for a few moments, then nodded slightly. "Miss Whitson is quite correct," she said. "I don't think the Rangers up at King's Norbury - that's its true name, Miss Brandybuck, and the dead there lie peacefully in their barrows - I don't think they will be too harsh in their judgement." She pursed her lips in thought. "Nor do you need to go alone. There's a young lady of my acquaintance, a few years older than you, who would be more than happy to guide you." She nodded again, decisively. "Yes - I think you and Miss Belladonna Took would be very good for one another."
The year is 1285 in the Shire Reckoning, just about 60 years before one Bilbo Baggins went off on his own adventure. Belladonna Took is his mother, one of the three remarkable daughters of the Old Took. Cleome Brandybuck is one of the two unnamed daughters of Master Marmadoc; her brother Gorbadoc is Merry's great-grandfather. Cleome is the Latin name for a type of flower; her extended family includes both Salvia (sage) and Malva (mallow), so it seemed a plausible option. I'm calling her younger sister Arivela, another name for the same flower.
Not mentioned, because I didn't want to add any more endings, is that Hemlock has absolutely no belief in mysterious powers out of the Old Forest - they sound like superstition to her, not testable facts. In this she is completely wrong. :)
And no, June doesn't get to have dinner with the Brandybucks! They're heading out immediately for Tookborough, and will have to grab something on the way.
This was fun. ^_^ Perhaps someday I'll come up with another one, but for now, Hemlock and Whitson: A Scandal in Buckland is complete.
hS
My LOTR hobbit love and Sherlock Holmes obsession have fused to create this. 10/10, amazing, waiting on the edge of my seat for the next chapter :DD
This was a really, really fun read, especially as the Sherlock Holmes stories and Lord of the Rings are two of my most beloved old fandoms. The concept of a murder mystery set in Middle-earth is already pretty cool, but the LotR-ification of Sherlock Holmes was just flawless in this entire excerpt. If my art knowledge went beyond stick figures, I'd be very tempted to draw Hemlock and Whitson now.
In other words, my day has been officially brightened. :)
Holmes and Whitson are delightful, of course, and the transposition of the RACHE scene! -chef's kiss-
Clearly this is yet another one of the Shire's excellent cultural exports, right after The Great Shire Bake-Off! Not as gritty as The High Hay, but still a very respectable procedural mystery romp with a dedicated fanbase. Hemson shippers unite!
I want to see that. Right now.
And by which I mean see if their existing names already make plausible elf names, and translate them if they don't. We already have Ariel, now for the others…
Whose names are probably easier to elven-ize, because they (mostly) don't follow normal naming and are literally easily recognizable English words that reflect their themes. Let's just do the main characters: we have Tinker Bell, Rosetta, Iridessa, Silvermist, Fawn and… Vidia.
There are twelve canonical Disney Princesses (plus a whole lot more princesses who are Disney, but I don't have that kind of time), so let's work down the list.
hS
Is that not how most people pronounce Laura? In other matters, we need an Luthien & oddly normally named fic lol
In the American dialects I'm familiar with, Laura is usually pronounced more like "lore-ah" (hence the variant spelling Lora) or "law-rah."
Abigail rhymes with "beguile"!
I quite like the meaning of Marië. Seems the most plausible as an epessë.
~Neshomeh
Ohhhh, yeah, not American, probably why. Makes sense lmao. But all of this name stuff is really interesting too lmao!
No, the Silmarils do not spark joy.
Two words, in fact. Condo is an unusual form of Quenya cundo, "Lord", usually found in compounds. But from back in Tolkien's early days of writing Qenya, when he still used K, we also have Kondo itself - meaning "dragon".
hS
Granted, a dragon may claim that all things in the hoard spark joy for them...
Tidying Up with Marië Kondo, now available to stream on all Elvish palanbaeth sites! Right after Menegroth and The Little Mole, obviously.
Are there several ways of pronouncing it?
Why go with normal names when you can stick vowels together and say "done", obbbviously
Give it up for the only daughter of Celeborn and Galadriel who is not Celebrían. Marvel at the oftentimes hilarious purple descriptions, get your brain rattled as to how Elrond's canonical children still exist in this version, and facepalm at the good ol' Legomance.
Two chapters and already enough to warrant a kill.
I haven't even read it yet but I already dread/look forward to it expectantly!