I’ll wander through your outlined plot in rough order. So, the arrival: surprisingly, I have no problems with it! Sauron is explicitly not dead after the Ring is destroyed (though he is permanently depowered). The idea that over the next six thousand (per Tolkien) years he could sneak out into the Void, and figure out a way for Melkor to get a tiny tendril of power into Arda to drop Amy back in time – sure, why not? It’s about Sauron’s level of sneakiness, too – he likes to use stealth as a blunt instrument. ‘I shall sneak my Nazgul into the Shire, then have them run around hissing at people in black cloaks! I am a genius!’
There’s a glorious quote from Tolkien about Sauron: Gandalf he did not understand. But certainly he had already become evil, and therefore stupid, enough to imagine that his different behaviour was due simply to weaker intelligence and lack of firm masterful purpose. That… really does sum the Dark Lord up.
Language is a problem. You say Amy ‘knows’ Sindarin and Quenya. For the sake of argument, I’ll assume Ardalambion S/Q, though any reconstruction will handle the same. The problems are three:
-While reconstructed Quenya is reasonably coherent, there are no native speakers of Quenya outside Valinor in the Third Age. The only person Amy will meet who grew up with it is Galadriel (and possibly Elrond, depending on what Maglor decided to raise him on). Of the Fellowship, we know Frodo has enough to say ‘hi’; Aragorn probably reads it fairly well, but may not speak it (apart from rote phrases); actually there’s a decent change that Boromir knows a little – but on the other hand, those sound like the lessons he would have ignored in favour of useful military stuff! Betcha Faramir speaks the ‘Elf Latin’. But it’s not a tongue you could use to communicate in the Third Age, is my point.
-The Dunedain speak Sindarin, as does Legolas – but we don’t. Sindarin is very fragmentary. Ardalambion has an article consisting basically of guesses at the verb system; we have no verb ‘to be’. Amy could probably communicate with Halbarad using nouns (’I mass’ for ‘bread’, for instance), but that’s about it.
-And the main one… people in Arda don’t speak English! They speak Westron, and that’s going to be horrendous for Amy. For starters – the names are all different! She could maybe get Halbarad to take her to the Prancing Pony by asking (in Sindarin) for ‘roch ylf sâd’, ‘horse tankard place’, though since ‘ylf’ also means ‘brand’ she might end up at a stable which brands horses instead! But the Pony wouldn’t have a name she could understand, Bree wouldn’t be called Bree, even Barliman would actually be called something incomprehensible (‘Butterbur’ is a translation of ‘Zilbirâpha’) – she’d have no way of knowing she was in the right town! (A list of all known Westron words is here, if you want it.)
For that matter, once she joins the Fellowship (oh yes, we’ll get there) – she’ll have very little chance of working out which is Merry and which is Pippin. Unless Razanur ‘Raz’ Tûk happens to mention his surname, how would she know?
Speaking of Westron: Kali is a boy’s name. In fact, it’s Merry’s name (and has the same meaning).
So, how to get out of this bind? Obviously you could have Sauron magically let her understand Westron, but that’s… pretty boring. So… why not learn Adûnaic? That’s the language Westron (Adûni, technically) is descended from; with a grasp of Adûnaic (as much as that’s possible), she could probably make herself understood – insofar as you could understand someone from the time of Chaucer. (It’s also a good language to raid for ‘Kali’s’ name – it could be an old family name. Though Bree-folk used floral words… ‘Kulbî’ means, roughly, ‘Potatoes’, if you like. Or ‘Inzil’ means ‘Flower’.)
I’ll move on from language now ^^. If Halbarad struck up a friendship with Amy, he might well take her and ‘Kali’ to Karningul (sorry, that’s ‘Rivendell’ in the translation). And since elves aren’t magic, it’s entirely possible Elrond couldn’t cure whatever the problem is, and that there might be a southern plant that could help.
You seem to be implying Amy leaves Bree after Frodo (sorry, Maura) reached Rivendell. That should be okay; while Sauron’s got his eye on the West, he has no reason to care about Amy, ‘Kali’, and a random Dunadan. So she should be fine. The Fellowship wasn’t chosen until shortly before departure, either, so that’s okay.
(As to where the herb is found: the idea of it as a Haradrim plant is nice. Either Minas Tirith or Dol Amroth could have a stock; the Houses of Healing in M-T presumably get supplies from all over Gondor. Boromir might be a better person to say they have it – while Aragorn did spend time in Gondor, it was a long time ago.)
Mm… how did she get into the Fellowship? The answer has to be ‘Elrond chose to put her there’, but why? I’m going to go with ‘Boromir’; he’s the best person to escort her to Minas Tirith (and bless the Gondorians for using Sindarin names!), and he’s already said he’ll travel with the Fellowship until it’s time to break off. The idea of sending Amy along with them makes as much sense as sending Boz – this isn’t a war-party, after all! Aragorn, Legolas, and Elrond would have no problem with the fact that she was female, and in fact would be baffled at the suggestion that there could be a problem. Not sure about Boz or the hobbits, and I know Gimli (for his name, see here) would have issues – the dwarves protect their women (because there’s less of them).
But of course, that messes with the ‘Nine’. In this case, I suggest my ‘Tenth Walkers’ Pippin idea – Elrond toyed with the idea of sending Pip (Raz) back to the Shire as a messenger, so in this case, he should do it! Only this is Pippin we’re talking about – he would absolutely chase after the Fellowship anyway. And I doubt Gandalf (no Westron name, ‘Mithrandir’ is ever-useful) would send him back once he’d arrived…
So, how could she impact the plot? She’s read the book, right? Here’s some ideas:
-Tell Gandalf what’s in Moria. There’s… not really an alternate path to take (Caradhras rejected them, the High Pass is full of orcs, the Gap of Rohan is full of Saruman), so I suspect Gandalf would still go through. He might even still die – I mean, knowing there’s a balrog doesn’t do you a lot of good when it’s a balrog. But it’s something she might well do.
-If she doesn’t… well, Galadriel can read minds! She can also speak Quenya, which means that unless Amy is very good with languages (ie, she’s picked up more than just very rudimentary Westron), Galadriel is one of the few people she can hold an actual conversation with. The Lady of Lorien would probably take the time to do so, as well – she’s pretty nice like that. Though don’t expect her to try and make Amy feel better - if she deserves to feel guilty, the woman whose mother named her ‘Man-Maid’ is going to make sure she does. Nicely, of course. ^~
-The reason the Fellowship sailed down Anduin was to avoid making a decision as where to go. The reason Boromir didn’t go off by himself was that he wanted to take the Ring to Minas Tirith, though he didn’t really talk about that much. If Boz fastened his hopes onto something else – say, Amy, who’s given away several times that she knows the future - he might well have gone straight from Lorien to Gondor. Then the Fellowship would be able to… let me check a map.
Right, the best route if you’re not hesitating about where to go is across Anduin as high up as possible, then down through the Brown Lands to the northern Ash Mountains. With Aragorn in charge, they probably wouldn’t aim for the Black Gate – and with Gimli on hand, they might well be able to find a way through the northern mountains. With the Fellowship on a different path, and Boromir back in Gondor with a genuine Seer (and there’s precedent for those – Glorfindel prophesied the Witch-King’s manner of death, and Malbeth the Seer predicted Aragorn’s trip through the Paths of the Dead) – but with no March of the Ents – it’s anyone’s guess how the War of the Ring would fall out.
But let’s say you don’t want to do that (you should, though!). You’ve got your Amelia!Sue available to meddle things back into line, so you can use that to drive the Fellowship down to Rauros. Then what happens?
Um… Amy doesn’t go with Frodo. Sam only manages because, well, he’s Sam, and Frodo needs him. Unless Amy somehow kept track of him in the forest (and she wouldn’t, he’s a hobbit), she’d have no chance of catching him at the boats. Unless, I guess, she used her foreknowledge and went straight there? But Frodo wouldn’t have taken a boat if he was being watched, and I don’t know what he’d’ve done instead.
She also doesn’t get captured with M&P. Why would she? The orcs were looking for halflings. They’d just kill her.
Which means she’s there with Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli when everything’s over. And that could be quite a change: with four people, Aragorn would be able to split the team up. Two could go after Frodo and Sam, and two after Merry and Pippin. I think he probably would, too, though what the divisions would be, I’m not sure.
Alternately, he might still deem the Ring beyond their help – but decide to set out for Minas Tirith directly himself. I believe he says in canon that he’ll take up Boromir’s responsibility to defend the city. That would mean a trip directly down Anduin – and he would probably take Amy with him (since that’s where she’s heading), leaving Legolas and Gimli to hunt Merry and Pip.
At that point, the story is pretty stable – most of the actors are in the right places. Aragorn wouldn’t look in the Palantir, so Sauron wouldn’t attack as early, which would mean that Mordor wouldn’t empty as Frodo and Sam arrived. You also wouldn’t have the Paths of the Dead – which means the Corsairs would reach Minas Tirith. But they’d do so long before Sauron’s army did, and could probably be defeated.
But let’s say you didn’t want to do that… and this is the thing. We could keep rejecting possible changes until the cows come home, but ultimately, you want to change the plot. The only question is where.
(That was three pages. En… joy?)
hS
