After a rough punch-it out with my prologue, I have decided to delete it. Now I have another friend helping me iron out a few wrinkles in the plot, TheScornfulRoman, so, here is yet another revision. I'm sorry if you are tired of them, but I am a perfectionist, and this story refuses to leave me alone.

Disclaimer: In this story, I use some settings from J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and some of his characters, like Galadriel, and I claim no copyrights of any of Tolkien's great creation.

I ought to tell you about pronunciations of what I created. The "e" is always pronounced "ee". So Vernala sounds like Veern-al-a. "É" is pronounced like a normal "e". Yes, I have created a pseudo language to go with the world being introduced. Plus a map. And mythology. And history. And the common dress. And the… I'll be silent now. Yes, I do have a life; thank-you for your concern.

Read and enjoy.

THE CAVE OF WORLDS
Chapter One – Hi-kallaba Minalô! (She Fell From the Sky!)

Algebra made no sense, especially at 11 o'clock at night. Jessica's pencil doodled at the graph she was supposed to be figuring out. In her imagination, the lines became a mighty stallion with Queen Elizabeth perched on top. "Oh, poor little child," the queen said, reaching down with her pale, graceful hand. "You need not do that horrid math." Then, with a gracious smile, the queen vanished, and Jessica's algebra was still unfinished.

She sighed and continued her doodle, drawing detail on a dress. Doodling was her favorite pastime in algebra class, because the teacher was boring and the subject matter even more so. The desk she sat at was covered in her algebra homework doodles, and its drawers had many more such sketches piled in them from biology and health class.

This doodle was a picture of herself, well, almost herself. She had given herself thick, shiny, straight, black hair instead of her thin, dark-brown hair, and a slim figure instead of her real, overweight one that she hid with baggy clothes. Jessica liked to think her drawings were good, but she was too terrified to show them to anyone. Besides, they were her fantasies; it was nobody's business what she wanted to be.

Loud music and drunken shouts interrupted her thoughts; her stoner next-door neighbors were having another party. She hated this neighborhood. Jessica turned up the radio and tried to concentrate on her homework, but it seemed to be out of focus. The lines on the graph became symbols caved into dull grey stone. Jessica sat back, realizing that she was having a hallucination.

She had seen this hallucination before. The first time it had appeared, Jessica was nine years old, playing by herself on the playground. It frightened her so badly that she ran to the school nurse, thinking that she had schizophrenia. The nurse told her parents, and they found Jessica a psychiatrist. Dr. Shirman met her whenever her parents could afford it, and gave her cherry-flavored lollipops. Her latest visit had been initiated by an accident.

The hallucination always the same: a door, a heavy stone door, covered in odd symbols. A triangle with three diagonal lines through it took up the larger part of the door, and a diamond shape inside the triangle was full of little symbols, many so tiny she couldn't see them without getting closer. Jessica had tried to see the symbols on the door, but the door never got any closer and after enough inching forward and squinting she had forgotten where she was and had run into a wall.

While listening to Jessica explain what had happened, Dr. Shirman had folded his hands in his lap and said, "You told me that it is a door; have you ever tried to open it?"

Jessica shook her head.

"Perhaps you should open it. If you do," he mimed an opening door with his hands, " you will know what is beyond it. Knowing what lies beyond it will remove the fear of it, and the door might stop appearing."

Now, Jessica waved her hand through the door and pretended she was holding the sliding bolt that kept the door closed. She felt something cold touch the palm of her hand. The bolt seemed solid, made of metal. Jessica groped at the bolt until her hands rested on the pin used to open it, and shoved. For a moment nothing happened, but then a heavy, low, grating noise filled her ears. Suddenly she felt a strange sensation in her chest, as if someone was roughly pulling her up, out of her chair. It was the heavy feeling from flying up into the air on a roller coaster, all of her guts squishing into her belly button. Just as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped.

When Jessica opened her eyes, she stood at the mouth of a cave, not a natural cave full of stalagmites and slime, but one that was carved into the mountain, with its entrance made of huge blocks of elaborately wrought limestone. Along the sides of the entrance someone had carved strange hieroglyphs; to Jessica they resembled only chicken scratches. Sunlight illuminated the dusty red floor for a few feet in, then vanished into a far more powerful darkness.

I must still be hallucinating, Jessica thought. She took a step closer, but she felt a sudden chill. The more she looked at it, the deeper and more unnatural the shadows became. She turned around to poke about the outside for a while, where sunlight still ruled. She would conquer that dream-fear later.

The cave was cut into the side of a small desert island, she discovered. She could see the shoreline only about a hundred meters from where she stood, but between her and the shore odd and interesting artifacts were scattered. Knives, buttons, cups, metal things of every imaginable and unimaginable use were lying in the dry desert sand outside the cave. She pulled a pretty little necklace with a red jewel set in it from the ground, and stuffed it into her pocket. A sudden urge to put it back before anyone saw her act overtook her, and she pulled it out of her pocket. The jewel sparkled brilliantly, and Jessica hastily stuffed it back in. Her body came alive with goose bumps, as though someone was standing behind her, taking a deep breath to scream accusations at her. She turned around, but no one was there.

Behind a pile of golden platters, she found a path. It led to the shoreline, so Jessica looked around in the dry, yellow dunes by the water. She found a very old sword wedged between two rocks. The leather and wood in the hilt had rotted away from centuries of waves and wind washing over it, and it looked rather funny, just sticking up there in the tide line. She ran over to it, and tried to yank it out, but it wouldn't budge, and she got her shoes wet. Jessica scampered away from the water laughing, briefly wondering why the blade hadn't rusted from the water.

She wandered around until she found a low cliff overlooking the bay. A large rock was perched near the edge of the cliff, so she climbed it and stared at the glimmering ocean. From her perch, Jessica saw that a little ways out under the water, there were chariots, shields, spears, and swords sitting in the water like so many lost souls. It was strange. So incredibly silent. For the first time she realized how empty everything was. There was no grass anywhere. No birds in the air. No life. Just the evidence that there once had been. A little unnerved by this realization, she jumped down and headed back to the cave.

Once there, she explored outside the entrance for a while. There was nothing much of interest there, just mountains and mountains of junk that she picked through trying to find something interesting. A triangular gold piece caught her attention, so she stuffed it in her pocket. Seeing nothing else of interest, she walked back to the cave entrance. Jessica was about to step in, but stopped. The cave seemed to have a feeling of dread hanging around it, like a heavy shroud or a veil in widow's black. The soft smell of something rotting crept through the air to her, and she stepped backward, and tripped and fell. Jessica thought she was going to hit the ground, but she kept on falling. She screamed and suddenly, it stopped.

She was lying on the floor by her desk. Her mom was hurrying over, her brows furrowed. "What's wrong? Did you fall?" she asked in her heavy Arabian accent.

Jessica stared at her mom for a second. "I think I fell asleep; I had a weird dream."

Her mother nodded, gave her a hug, and said, "Well, don't worry about it; dreams aren't real. It's midnight; go to bed."

"Mom, it was about the door. I opened it."

"What is behind it?" Her mother picked up the pencil that had rolled off Jessica's desk.

"A desert island." Jessica made a face. "I thought my inner conscious would be more interesting."

"Well," her mother said, straightening her headscarf. "I came to say that it is almost midnight. You need to go to bed. We'll talk about this in the morning. I'll call your doctor."

"Okay, mom."

"I'll see you in the morning."

"Okay," Jessica mumbled and stumbled downstairs to brush her teeth.

She took her time brushing her teeth and undressing. Something about the shadow intrigued her more than it frightened her. How could she go back? Perhaps she could go back when she was half asleep, or perhaps, she could try meditating, though she didn't know how to meditate. The cave wasn't real; after all, it was a dream world. As she pulled off her shoes a little bit of yellow sand fell out, but she didn't notice it. She squeezed out of her jeans and saw a strange lump in a pocket as she carelessly threw them on the floor. Curious, she poked at it with her toe. The soft sound of tiny pieces of metal scraping against each other was barely audible. Perhaps her mind was playing tricks on her because she hadn't explored the desert island enough.

She finished undressing, pulled on her hideous, neon green flannel nightgown, and reached into her jeans pocket. Jessica almost yelled as her hand revealed the necklace and the coin from the cave. She pulled the necklace out and held it up to the light. It was pretty; the stone in the center seemed to give off a strange light. Jessica crawled into bed and put on the necklace. She lifted her arms and tried to clear her mind of all thoughts. Instantly, the door appeared before her. The door opened easily, as though its hinges had been oiled, and the opening sucked Jessica onto the desert island.

This time she walked into the cave, despite the nagging sense that she shouldn't be there. Another door with the strange glyph on it stood to the left, hidden in an unnatural shadow. Next to it, the cave took a sharp turn to the right, and dissipated into vague darkness. Sitting alongside the wall was a pile of papers, scrolls, and huge books covered in a language that she couldn't read, but which looked oddly familiar. Jessica peered around the corner, but an eerie whisper began, a chant in two languages at the same time. "Dnara-lu ma," and "Come here." She decided that the door was less creepy.

Jessica opened the door, but saw nothing beyond it. She peered farther in, took a step through the doorway, and found there was no floor. She lost her balance and fell into the black, inky gloom.

Stars sprinkled the world around her, as if she was in space. A tiny dot grew before her. It looked like Earth, except that its continents were shaped differently. Clouds drifted over dry, yellow land and gathered beside black mountains. A swirling hurricane grew in the sea, while the sun shone brightly.

As the planet grew bigger and bigger, it came apparent that she was going to collide with it. She twisted and squirmed, but the planet loomed larger and larger. There was no escape. She held her arms out to embrace it, and entered the atmosphere. To her surprise, she didn't burn up. She fell very slowly. There was no wind. She turned her attention to the world below her. A dark green smudge blossomed in a pool of dull brown, bordered by sharp, white mountains. The green was a forest, she realized. The brown was grassland. The mass of green separated itself into trees, and suddenly, Jessica felt the wind. It began slowly at first, but then it pushed against her, trying in vain to stop her progress. The wind made her eyes water, blinding her. She didn't know until it was too late that she was heading straight for a very tall tree.

A great deal of interesting history had occurred in the western part of Middle-earth by the early Second Age, but here in the East, in Fangorn, the world was relatively untouched. An Ent soaked up rainwater and light as he had done for hundreds of years, watching a grove of cantankerous oaks. He had left his duties to drink by the stream, as he did every morning. This morning would be like any other, if a child hadn't have dropped from the sky and onto one of the oldest trees in the grove. The limbs of the tree were sorely damaged its the attempt to catch the child. The child's forehead had speckled the bark of one of the greater limbs with red when it struck. All this the oaks explained to the Ent. Explanations didn't change the fact that the child was motionless, bleeding from a deep gash in her forehead, and that her limbs were bent in far too many ways. Ents know little of children, especially injured ones, so the Ent left in a brisk pace to find some Elves.

Luckily, his search was not long. He met the son of his Elven friends, named Ladrengil, who had been visiting Fangorn with his son and another Elf. They were taking their time walking during this bright and cheerful morning and enjoying a chat with the boy, when the Ent found them on the trail and hailed them. "Do you not think it a little unnatural that you walk with such haste?" greeted Ladrengil.

"Hoom... no. I found a child; I do not know how to help it."

"Where did you find this child?" asked Ladrengil's companion.

"My oaks say that she fell from the sky," the Ent paused, "though they are very jolly trees; they may make tales for their merriment. Hoom, the child is broken, I fear."

"That is sad news. Lead me there." The Ent lifted them to his shoulders, and strode back south in his strangely hasty fashion.

When they reached the spot, flies had already gathered. The child's cushioned face was already disfigured with red, infected pox, and the blood was starting to clot over her head wound, in a feeble attempt at self-preservation. The child's leg lay at an odd angle.

Ladrengil turned to the Ent, sighed, and said, "I will take care of this. You can leave if you like. I am certain that you have other things to do." The Ent thought for a second, and slowly strode away.

"Daddy, what happened?" asked his son in Elvish.

"I must dig a place for her to sleep."

"She would want to sleep underground?"

"Yes. Run along towards Lothlórien, I will meet you there later."

"Are you sure, Daddy?"

"Yes, Curulaer. If you run fast enough, I will not meet you till Caras Galadhon."

Curulaer grinned at the challenge, and took off at a break-neck speed to the north. Ladrengil looked to his friend and said, "Make certain that he travels in safety." His friend nodded, and took off after Curulaer.

Ladrengil sighed at the unlimited energy of youth, and pulled out a knife. When he was certain that the Ent and his son were no longer in sight, he carefully cut a branch off a tree, taking care not to harm the tree, and sharpened the branch till it could serve as a digging tool. He paused for a second to look at the girl. A deep sorrow in him stirred as he thought of the parents of the dead child.

Now that he looked closer, it looked almost as if she was breathing. Puzzled, he reached for her neck to feel for a pulse. As he did, he saw a thin, golden chain. He lightly touched it, and an invisible hand grabbed him by his shirt and threw him back. He struggled to his feet, but tiny, icy cold hands clang onto one of his wrists. He tried to pull himself free, but wherever the hands touched became numb, and the numbness spread into his chest, encircled his heart, and dragged his mind into a dark, icy sea. The last thing he saw before his eyes clouded over was a transparent figure standing over the child.

At this precise moment the dead girl awakened and threw up.

Author's Note

The chapter title is in Adûnaic.

The reviewer's guide:
Did you understand what was happening?
What do you think of the introduced characters?
Is the foreshadowing good?
Are your Mary Sue alarm bells ringing? If so, why?
Does it leave you wanting to read on?
What do you expect to happen next?
What parts of the prose do you think need to be improved?
What grammar or spelling mistakes did you see?
Did anything in this chapter bother you while reading it?
What did you like about it?