Adult-FanFiction.org : Lord of the Rings

Sleeping Beauty	By : SilentNiobe Category: -Multi-Age > Het - Male/Female Views: 6613 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own the Lord of the Rings (and associated) book series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 19
- 20
- 21
Author's Note: I promised I would post the next chapter soon and so I did. I have finally replied to all reviews and I would like to thank you for all your wonderful comments and support; they really keep me going. I am afraid I could not get any help with the German dialogue this time, so if you find any mistakes please let me know. That said, I hope you enjoy the chapter. :-)
Disclaimer: See Prologue.
/translations/
Chapter 19 – Greyham
“You are late.”
Alice willed her lungs to breath in a sigh of relief at the words. Her heart warmed at the gentle smile of the old man and the sparkling eyes shining mischievously under his thick white eyebrows.
“Are you Mr. Greyham?”
She could not control the trembling of her voice. It was him. She had found him. She knew it the first moment she laid her eyes upon him.
“Yes, Alice, and I was expecting you much sooner,” he replied with a crooked smile and opened the door fully. “Please come in.”
Alice had to force her legs to move. After all this travelling and searching for the truth, she had finally found the person who held the key to solving her puzzle. Her amazement had rendered her muscles numb, still unable to believe how close she was to seeing her Prince again.
She walked into the room looking around her with childish wonder at the antiques hanging on the walls or dusting on the shelves, the old books and parchments lining up in the bookcase on the other side of the room. She assumed this was the living room, as there were two couches of Victorian style and a small elaborately curved coffee table in the middle. The smell of the house reminded her of the old archives section in the library… dusty, musty, ancient… it was the smell of history and she immediately relaxed; such environments always made her feel at home.
She took off her jacket and seated herself when Mr. Greyham gestured to the couches. Johan sat beside her silently, looking at the old man skeptically. Mr. Greyham, on the other hand, seemed very comfortable as he lighted his pipe with a match and, taking a large whiff, he exhaled slowly, regarding both Americans with interest.
“I would offer you some tea, but I can tell you have come here for answers and you want them with no further delay. Am I right Mr. Sanders?”
Both cousins looked at Mr. Greyham surprised.
“How do you know my name?” he asked, his voice colored with a little tint of suspicion.
The old man gave them another crooked smile.
“How do I know Alice’s name? Why was I expecting you?”
His questions sounded rhetorical to Alice, so she did not speak. Truth be told, she was still trying to register what was happening.
“I know many things,” Mr. Greyham finally said. “So let us skip the introductions and move to the questions that matter, shall we?”
“What do you know about the myth of the Enchanted Prince?”
She blurted out the question without thinking, eager to learn the truth about the myth and her role in this story.
“What do you want to know about the myth of the Enchanted Prince?”
The question of the old man made the red-head pause for a moment. What did she want to know about the myth of the Enchanted Prince? There were so many missing pieces of the puzzle that she didn’t know where to start. Closing her eyes, she tried to put her tangled thoughts in order. But it was not her mind which spoke the burning question; it was her heart.
“I want you to tell me that it’s real. That he existed. That I am not in love with a figment of my imagination.”
The words left her lips in a rush, unfiltered thoughts, unmasked desire, flowing in a single breath and demand.
“My dear, you are wearing this pendant around your neck and you still question his existence…?”
Mr. Greyham seemed truly troubled by her confession and his eyes grew sad. He shook his head and lowered his pipe, the smoke coming out of his lips in a sigh.
“I cannot say I did not expect this,” he said after a while. “I understand it must have been hard for you to believe it, let alone accept it. And the pendant around your neck tells me you did not accept it in the end. On the other hand, the fact that you have travelled all this way means that you have started to reconsider everything… am I right, Alice?”
“Y-Yes.”
She nodded and looked down partly in embarrassment, partly in confusion. How much did this man know about what had happened between her and the Prince?
“How long has it been since he stopped visiting you in your dreams?”
“How do you know about that?”
Alice looked wide-eyed back and forth between Johan, who had been so silent the past few minutes that she had completely forgotten he was sitting next to her, and Mr. Greyham who had voiced what she had considered until then as unspeakable. It was one thing herself confessing that an elf Prince visited her in her dreams, but to hear it from another person was relieving and disturbing at the same time.
“About a month,” she replied lowering her eyes again; she had still not forgiven herself for being so wrong that night.
“Have you started having any visions?”
“What, you know about her visions too??”
Both Alice and the old man ignored Johan’s exclamation once more, lost in their exchange of information.
“Yes.”
“And they have started coming more frequently now, right?”
“Yes, they do. I see a girl, who is supposedly me, and Legolas… just different scenes every time,” she said stumbling for the right words to explain it.
“The mending and violent breaking of the bond you share has unlocked your memory… and what you see are memories of your previous life.”
“But how can these be my memories? You say that my memory has been unlocked and everything, but these memories cannot have been stored in my mind because I have not experienced them…” Alice trailed off confused, her mind still yearning for the comforting touch of logic.
“Your soul has experienced them in your previous life. And they are your memories because memories are imprinted on the soul… and the soul is confined in neither place nor time.”
“Man, it sounds definitely creepier when you explain it.”
Alice did not react to her cousin’s comment, trying to take in everything Mr. Greyham had just told her. Indeed, it made absolute sense. Her soul, Alysse’s soul, had experienced everything she had seen in her visions. It was when the bond she shared with Legolas was mended that she had her first vision… and when it was broken and she discovered the pendant around her neck, her soul was so roughly awakened that all her important memories started rushing forth, making her lose consciousness in their intensity.
“Mr. Greyham, we are going to look for the castle the night of the next full moon. We tried last month, but afterwards we found out it only appears under the full moon of August… so even though we were in the right place, it was the wrong time and nothing happened.”
“And nothing will.”
Both cousins froze at the old man’s words.
“What do you mean?”
Alice could hear her heart beginning a wild staccato in her chest.
“The wizard had clearly warned the Prince that he should not use any other means than his words to persuade his wife.”
Alice was at a loss.
“I… I don’t understand, sir.”
“He showed you he is real with the necklace; and with that, he broke the spell. You can no longer see the castle, Alice.”
She remained still. For a moment she didn’t even breathe. She could only feel a familiar cold veil unfolding in the pit of her stomach and rendering every single inch of her body completely numb; God, how she hated falling apart.
“’Tis fortunate, then, that the wizard expected this to happen and provided an alternative,” Mr. Greyham said with a gentle smile and squeezed Alice’s hand in a comforting manner.
Her heart decided that it would hold onto the cold veil for a little longer before she entertained any hope. The train was climbing to the top now, but how long before the next fall of this rollercoaster ride…?
“I assume you have read the manuscript I gave to Professor Bianci,” the old man continued.
“Yes.”
This time it was Johan who answered.
“The wizard wanted to make sure that the true story of the Prince would survive the passing of time and, should the Prince fail to convince his wife, the woman would know what to do and what to look for.”
“So the man who told the story to the farmer was the wizard himself…?” Alice finally spoke, her voice not hiding her amazement. “What happened to him? Did he die?” she asked again, after Mr. Greyham nodded.
“Who knows…?” he shrugged and smiled. “What matters is that even he could not protect the manuscript from the wrath of mankind and a very important part was lost in a fire… which is why you do not know about the rings.”
“What rings?” Alice asked confused.
“Perhaps you should ask your friend… Andrea, if I am not mistaken.”
“Whoa, whoa, wait…” At the mention of the woman he loved, Johan decided it was time to participate actively in this conversation. “What does Andrea have to do with all of this?”
“Johan, Andrea was the one who told you about the myth, right?” Alice asked him in an effort to fit the pieces of the puzzle together.
“Yes, her Grandmother had told her the story…” he answered still confused.
“Then I suggest you talk to her,” Mr. Greyham said as he leaned back on the couch and lit his pipe again.
“And I suggest we do it right now,” Johan muttered under his breath, his hand sneaking into his pocket to find his cell phone.
Dialing the blond woman’s number, he could not help but wonder what Andrea’s role had been in the whole situation. His mind immediately started creating scenarios of their meeting being not so accidental in Rome and of all the things she could be hiding from them... from him. But why would she keep such a secret? Why would she deceive them, knowing how desperate they were in finding the castle?
“Hallo?” /Hello?/
His imagination had started running wild, when the German’s voice sounded at the other end. Putting her on speakerphone, he let the cell phone on the table.
“Hey Andrea, it’s me.”
“Johan, warum sprecht Du Englisch?” /Johan, why are you speaking English?/
“Because I’m with English company and you’re on speakerphone,” he replied with discomfort.
“Oh… okay...” The woman sounded confused.
“Andrea, we found Mr. Greyham,” he started explaining.
“You did?? Oh my God, this is wonderful!!,” he could almost she her dazzling smile; how he hated turning it into a frown.
“Don’t get too excited yet… He said you know about some rings… and I would like to know why you never told me about them…” He could not keep the last part from slipping through his lips; he almost felt betrayed at discovering she might have deceived them in such a manner.
“What rings…?”
Andrea’s tone clearly indicated she didn’t have a clue of what they were talking about. Johan exchanged a look with Alice and they both turned to look at Mr. Greyham expectantly.
“Andrea, what did your grandmother give you before she died?”
The silence following the old man’s question was deafening in its implications.
“How… how do you know about this?”
The German’s voice was trembling with restrained emotion, making Johan’s heart constrict for not being there to hold her in his arms. He knew how close Andrea was with her grandmother and how much her loss had cost her; they had been dating for a few months when she had lost her fight with cancer.
“What did she tell you, child?”
“That they have been passed down in our family for generations for safe-keeping centuries ago… and that I should give them to my grand-daughter, as she did.”
“Did she tell you what they were for?” Alice jumped in.
“No, she didn’t…”
“The purpose was forgotten with the passing of time, like the myth of the Enchanted Prince suffered many changes,” Mr Greyham said, taking hold of the conversation once more. “The wizard had foreseen that the woman would not go alone into the castle. In a vision he saw two Guardians, a male and a female, leading the woman through the forest and walking into the castle with her. However, since it was impossible for anyone save the woman to see the castle, he had to create two rings which would enable the Guardians to see and enter the castle once worn.”
“I thought they were just some family heirloom with historical value…” Andrea’s voice said from the other end of the line coloured with amazement.
“Your family has lived in this village for centuries, Andrea,” Mr. Greyham told her, his eyes glued somewhere past Alice. The red-head followed his gaze to the portrait of a woman hanging on the wall behind her; although the face did not look familiar and she didn’t know whether it was original or not, she was certain it held elements of the Renaissance era.
“That’s true. Although nobody lives there anymore, my family owns a mansion near my parents’ house which was built in 1627; my ancestors fled to this village because of their protestant beliefs,” Andrea explained, Mr. Greyham nodding his agreement even though she couldn’t see him.
“The wizard needed someone near the castle to keep the rings and pass them down to their descendants, so that they would eventually reach the Guardians. He stayed with your family for a while, as a hiding protestant monk. Once he was sure the family could be trusted, he gave the rings to your great-great-grandmother and asked her to keep them safe and pass them on to the grand-daughters of the family, until the time was right and the rings reached the hands of the Guardians.” The old man paused for a moment and smiled. “And so they did.”
The two Americans looked at him in confusion, until they heard a gasp coming from the cell phone.
“Oh mein Gott… Johan, sind wir die Wächter!” /Oh my God…Johan, we are the Guardians!”
Alice didn’t need to speak German to understand what Andrea had just said. Her eyes wide, she turned to Johan who stood unmoving, his face betraying his shock.
“You are right, my dear,” Mr. Greyham said and looked at the two cousins. “You and Johan will lead Alice through the forest and in the castle to her Prince.”
“So this solves the mystery about the two Guardians…” Alice murmured to herself, her teeth worrying her lower lip in thought.
“Andrea, where are the rings now?” Johan asked, finding his voice back fully recovered from the shocked state he was in moments before.
“Safe in my old room; I’ll fetch them on my way to your parents’ house when we meet for the full moon,” she said with excitement. “Scheiße! I have to go, I am fifteen minutes late for my meeting! I’ll call you later!” /Shit!/
Johan opened his mouth to say ‘goodbye’ to Andrea, but the blond woman had already hung up. He looked at the cell phone relieved: his first love had not deceived them after all. And how awesome was it that out of all people the two of them would be the Guardians? It was as if they were destined to be together! His heart warming at the thought, he turned to smile at his cousin, only to find her tapping a finger on her chin in thought.
“What’s wrong?”
Alice turned to look at him and shrugged.
“We are missing something,” she said finally resting her gaze on Mr. Greyham. “You said I cannot see the castle anymore because by breaking our bond and giving me the pendant, Legolas has broken the spell.”
The old man did not reply, so she continued.
“That means I cannot go inside and find Legolas…” she trailed off, watching Mr. Greyham’s lips slowly turning into a sad smile. “So… how am I going to fix our bond and find him?”
“You will have to die.”
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