In the Shadow of the Star: Part 1

[Child of the 7th Age]

Westra lag wegas rehtas, nu isti sa wraithas...

A straight road lay westward, now it is bent...

This tale is written in the spirit of The Lost Road and the Notion Club papers, the beginning portions of two books that Tolkien never completed, but whose fragments appear in HoMe, volumes V and IX. Both of these explored the idea of time travel, not in terms of an actual machine such as other writers have postulated, but rather by dream journeys, which show how the power of myth can escape explosively into the present.

The tale itself is set in the eleventh year of the Fourth Age, shortly after the completion of the Voyage of the Lonely Star. It takes Tolkien's view of dream journeys one step further, postulating that there may be certain circumstances in which visions and reality actually coexist in our world, with no certainty at all as to which state is actually in the ascendent.

In his time travel fragments, Tolkien suggested that, with the destruction of Numenor and the obliteration of the Lost Road, the only way for Man to reach the Blessed Realm was through the vehicle of dreams. This story builds upon that notion. It assumes that the dreams of characters like Cami and Bilbo and Maura, who exist only in another time and place, actually had the power to influence a particular locale in Middle-earth, to bring it onto another plane of existence, much as Tolkien viewed the Blessed Lands.

In this story, for a very brief instant, the Green Dragon Inn becomes a place where the boundaries between dream and reality disappear, and it is possible for individuals not actually present in the Fourth Age to travel to the Inn and speak and meet with each other. In this particular locale, the normal notions of time and place have been suspended, or perhaps transcended.

When we read the Lord of the Rings, we are left with a similar impression of the dissolution of time/space boudaries in regard to the House of Tom Bombadil and, equally so, in Lorien. Because we are only mortals, it is not possible for us to sustain this level of reality for an extended period. Sadly, we are not Tom Bombadil or Galadriel, but mere folk who live and die. The dream portal of the Green Dragon Inn is indeed a temporary one and, in the end, must dissolve, leaving the characters from outside the Fourth Age with little choice but to return to their separate paths.

[ September 15, 2003: Message edited by: piosenniel ]