Glimpse of the Hidden Past by StarSpray

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Chapter 1

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The ruins were exactly what Cameo had hoped they would be—crumbling stone covered with moss and ivy, bare hints at once towering walls, now reduced to a maze of rubble. "Now this is what I was talking about!" she said, grasping at Dani's arm excitedly.

"It's a bunch of rocks," Dani said as Cameo released her arm in favor of running the rest of the way down the footpath. She followed at a more leisurely pace, tucking her hands into her jacket pockets. "You know, when you pitched this trip you said it would be romantic."

"Capital-R-Romantic is what I meant," Cameo said over her shoulder. "I thought the fact that I was waving around my Shelley anthology at the time made that clear. Graveyards! Ruins! Nature! Feelings about nature!"

"You say that like I'd notice," Dani grumbled, but not seriously. She liked things off the beaten path as much as Cameo did, even if her excitement came from a different place. "Ooh, Cam look at the lichens!"

They wandered through the labyrinthine ruins together and apart, calling to each other when they found interesting things or views, both of them with their phones out to take photo after photo. Cameo found little patches of flowers peeping out of cracks in the stone, and a tangle of wild roses hanging heavy and red over a portion of wall, so thick that the stone underneath was utterly invisible. It was near another portion of the ruins that stood taller than most of the rest, weathered grey stone spotted with moss and lichen, and warmed by the hot summer sun. Cameo wandered around one of the corners, looking for a bit of shade, and when she put her foot down it went much farther than she expected, and she tumbled down with a yelp through a tangle of ivy and rotted-out wood. It wasn't a long fall, but she landed hard enough to temporary knock the air out of her lungs, and getting her breath back was a painful process that felt like it took a thousand years.

When she could breathe again, Cameo fumbled for her phone. It was, miraculously, unharmed, and she was able to pull up the flashlight to shine it around herself. She had landed in what looked like a small cellar, or storage room, or something. It was mostly empty, except for a couple of boxes comprised of rotting wooden slats. Probably they had been filled with straw once, but that was long since decayed to dust. Carefully, Cameo sat up, coughing as she inhaled dust and stale air. Overhead she heard Dani faintly calling for her, but her attention was caught by something that reflected the light of her flashlight in the far corner. Cameo set her phone down carefully so that the light more or less filled the space, and crawled over to the shiny thing. It was a glass orb, or maybe some sort of dark stone, perfectly round, about the size of a soccer ball. Surprisingly, it didn't seem to be at all damaged in any way—no chips or cracks or any flaws at all were visible on its smooth surface. Cameo sat cross legged in front of it and carefully reached out to touch it. It was cool beneath her fingertips, but warmed rapidly, and she wasn't sure if she imagined the little spots of brightness that flared and faded where she touched it.

Cameo picked it up, but nearly dropped it-it was much heavier than she'd expected. Somehow she'd assumed it was hollow, but clearly that was wrong. She settled it on her lap and carefully turned it over, looking for some sort of marking or carving that might tell her what it was, or what it had been used for. But there were none.

Then she saw it again, little flashes of light, this time appearing deep in the center, like stars flaring into life and then going out, or fireflies winking at dusk. She leaned closer, hair falling forward around her face and blocking out the light from her phone. And then it was like she wasn't sitting in an ancient cellar anymore, but she was peering through trees into a glade full of fireflies, and white flowers bobbing in a breeze she couldn't feel. There was a dark figure sitting beneath a tree across the glade with a flute at his lips, swaying as he played, and in the middle was a woman, clad in pale blue, with her hair like dark shadows flowing around her as she danced.

And then the image changed, and Cameo was standing in front of (and above? It was like she looked down on the scene) her own house, where her parents were sitting on the back deck with beers, watching her brothers and cousins splash around in the pool; their dog lay beneath Dad's chair, dozing in the sun.

There was Paris as seen from above at evening, the Eiffel Tower lit up like a Christmas tree, and the Seine glowing with all the reflected lights; and the Great Wall of China looking as though it were new-built, and manned with soldiers; and two armies in pitched battle on an open plain. And there were mountains, snow-capped and wreathed in cloud, and as Cameo squinted into the image she thought she saw something very large moving though the peaks, and then another very large something—as though a pair of giants were playing catch with boulders as big as cars.

There was a fleeting image, though sharper and more vivid than the rest, of a man with long dark hair in thick braids, and something like fire shining in his eyes, bent over a red-hot piece of metal with an expression of such intense concentration as he hit it with a hammer that Cameo nearly flinched. This was replaced by a great black banner waving in the breeze, emblazoned with a tree of silver and white, with a crown over it and seven stars flashing as though they were real and not just bits of jewel and thread. Three of these grew in size and brightness until they hovered before Cameo, until they were scattered, one shooting upward toward the sky, the other sinking into darkness and heat beneath the earth, and the other thrown in a brilliant arc to splash out of reach into a dark sea.

Cameo straightened abruptly, blinking as she returned to herself, the orb just a dark bit of stone in her lap now, although it still felt strangely warm. She carefully set it back on the floor. All that was visible in it now was her own reflection, oddly clear, her dark hair and pale face looking almost luminous in its dark surface.

"Cameo!" Dani's voice was louder now, coming from the hole. "Holy shit, Cam, are you okay?"

That was a good question. "Y-yeah," she said, pushing the orb back into its shadowy corner. It could stay there for another couple of hundred years, as far as she was concerned. That had been weird.

"What's down there?" Dani asked.

"Nothing, anymore," Cameo said. She killed the flashlight on her phone and slipped it into her pocket. "Help me up?"

"Yeah, sure." Dani grabbed her hands and helped her clamber up the hole. "Watch the wood, it's sharp. Jeez, you are covered in dirt."

"Well, yeah, I fell into an old hole." Cameo dusted herself off as best as possible, with Dani helping, but the thing about dust was that it tended to cling. "Want to head back? I think I need a shower."

"Are you sure you're okay?" Dani asked. "You didn't hit your head, or…?"

"I knocked the wind out of myself, but I'm okay."

They headed back up the path and into the sleepy little English town where they had a room at a stereotypically charming bed and breakfast. It was nearing dinnertime by the time they made it back, so Dani set about finding a place to eat while Cameo showered and changed. She spent longer in the shower than she needed to; every time she stopped paying attention she thought about the things she had seen in the orb, and her mind kept catching on those stars, or gems, or whatever they were…

"Are you sure you're okay?" Dani asked again as they left the bed and breakfast. "You're awfully quiet."

"I'm fine." Cameo hesitated. "But I did—I did find something down there. In that hole. It was really weird."

"What was it?"

"I'm…really not sure."

They reached their destination: a small restaurant with a guy in the corner playing guitar—but not the sort of guy who thought he was the next Big Thing and sat in coffee shops playing 'Wonderwall,' to try to get girls, this guy was playing classical guitar, and he was really, really good. Both Cameo and Dani were distracted from the weird thing at the ruins while they were seated, both of them caught up in the music while they tried to concentrate on the menu. It didn't help that they were seated quite close to the musician. He sat on his chair with his long legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles; his face was difficult to make out beneath a thick mass of dark hair that tumbled in waves and curls over his shoulders.

"Okay," Dani said after they finally ordered and received their drinks. She leaned forward. "What'd you find in the weird hole in the ground?"

Cameo wrinkled her nose. "You'll probably just think I did actually hit my head," she said.

"Just tell me!"

"Okay, okay." Cameo described the orb, and what had happened when she touched it. Dani's brow furrowed as she described the different scenes. "And that's it," Cameo finished lamely, after trying and failing miserably to describe just how bright and beautiful those last three star-gem-things had been.

"Cam," Dani said evenly, "seriously. I'm not completely illiterate."

"…What?"

Dani pulled out her phone and tapped at the screen. A minute later she held it up, revealing a picture of the same tree-and-star design that Cameo had seen in the orb. "'Seven stars and seven stones and one white tree,'" she quoted. "Sound familiar?"

"Oh my God, where'd you find that?" Cameo demanded. "That's it, that's what I saw—" Dani zoomed out of the picture, and it turned out to be Billy Boyd in his Gondorian soldier uniform from The Return of the King. "…What."

"I read The Lord of the Rings too, you know," Dani said.

"No, but—that's from—really?" Cameo sat back. "Oh shit, it was like—what're they called, those seeing stone things? Pippin touched one—"

"Those seven stones I mentioned," Dani said. She tapped at her phone again. "Palantírs. Or Palantíri, I guess. Did you know there's a whole wiki devoted to Middle-earth? Anyway, nice try."

Cameo frowned. "I'm not making it up," she said. "I haven't read The Lord of the Rings in years." Dani sipped at her water, looking extremely skeptical. "Okay, fine, we'll go back tomorrow and I'll show it to you."

Just after their food arrived, Cameo had to use the restroom. As she crossed the dining room she got a prickling feeling on the back of her neck, like someone was watching her. She glanced over her shoulder and, for a split second, met the gaze of the musician. His eyes were very bright, such a light grey as to almost be silver, and they held an intensity that reminded Cameo, of all things, of that smith she'd glimpsed for just a moment in that montage in the palantír. But as soon as their eyes met he looked away, continuing to play his guitar as though it held his full concentration.

It was probably nothing, but she still felt relieved when she reached the restroom and was out of his line of sight.

When she emerged, there was a new musician, this one playing a violin—and nowhere near as well as the other guy had played his guitar. And he, Cameo found, had paused by their table to talk to Dani. He left before Cameo reached the table. "What did he want?" she asked Dani as she sat down.

Dani stabbed a crouton and frowned when it broke in half. "Oh, nothing. I just complimented his playing when he got up. He's new in town, apparently, and we talked a little bit about the touristy stuff, and I mentioned how cool those ruins were."

"Did you tell him about the lichens?" Cameo asked.

"I did, but he was about as interested as you are. Anyway, his name's Max, and he seems nice."

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The next morning they headed back up to the ruins, and met Max coming back down the path. He stepped aside to let them pass, and Cameo did a double take. He was wearing a backpack, and the shape of it, as he continued on back towards town, kind of looked like he was carrying a bowling ball inside.

Sure enough, when they reached the hole that Cameo had accidentally made the day before, the storage room underneath was devoid of strange orbs. "Huh," Dani said as they crouched together in the patch of pale sunlight, both of them with their phone lights shining into the gloom and casting sharp shadows behind the bits of boxes and rocks.

"It was here," Cameo said.

"I believe you," Dani said. "No, really," she added when Cameo gave her a look. "I thought you were joking before, but you wouldn't hold onto it this long." She paused. "That musician. Max. He was right by our table."

"He had something round in his backpack just now," Cameo said.

"Did he?"

"Yeah, I saw it." Cameo straightened, and hoisted herself out of the hole before helping Dani up. "Did you think there was something…I don't know. Weird about him?"

"Like what?"

"If I had a better word than weird I would use it."

Dani shrugged. "He seemed normal. There was some weird scarring on his one hand, like he burned it a long time ago, but that's all. Do you think he knows about palantírs maybe being real?"

"I mean, the evidence points towards yes."

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They left the ruins, and continued their tour of England and Europe, the rest of which included more museums and still-standing castles than ruins, although they did spend a pleasant afternoon wandering around Tintern Abbey. The palantír and the mysterious guitarist named Max were mostly forgotten, until they got on the plane back to the US. Dani fell asleep quickly, leaving Cameo to find her own entertainment, since the in-flight movie was some action movie with more bullets than plot. She ended up back on the Tolkien wiki that Dani had found before, reading about palantíri. She remembered the scenes in The Lord of the Rings, and it occurred to her that it was odd that she had been able to see anything, since as far as she could tell it took a fair amount of willpower as well as—the right, maybe? Aragorn had said something about that, she was pretty sure.

More interesting was the article she found on the Silmarils. Cameo had not read The Silmarillion, but she thought now that maybe she should. The whole conceit of Tolkien's work was that he'd found old manuscripts and translated them for a modern audience, or something, but Cameo was starting to think that maybe that wasn't so much a conceit as the truth. Which was insane.

She put her phone down and stared out of the window at the clouds. Elves and hobbits and magic seeing stones…she didn't think it was really true, but if it were, the world had suddenly become a much more interesting place.