[Child of the 7th Age]

Everyone was having dinner with Faramir, that is everyone but Child and Birdland and Pio.

Child was below deck and, being a good hobbit, had managed to burglar her way into Piosenniel's cabin. She knew she should not be rummaging around in her things, but she did not care. The last few days, she had worked so hard at being a scholar that her brain felt as if it would explode. She needed to be a hobbit again.

All this work had established certain things. Kali's dream obviously referred not to Numenor but Beleriand. The three islands, and she had checked this on the map, were Tol Morwen, Tol Fuin, and Himling. And Angara's first riddle had definitely made reference to hiding hobbits in Numenor. She had not yet looked at Angara's second set of clues, but she promised to do that later, And she did plan to spend some time in the Minas Tirith library tomorrow. Perhaps then they could decide where to sail.

Now, however,her mind dwelt on something else. It appeared that, wherever they were going, it involved time travel. That meant using Pio's nautical and time-travel device that had originally been attached to the ship's helm.

Now Child had a theory about this device. This clever instrument had been made in the Fourth Age. She know it could convey a ship precisely and accurately from a specific place in the Fourth Age to another specific place in the Seventh Age, or it might do the same from the Fourth to the Third Age. Child was less certain, however, about its precision and accuracy when dealing with ages from the distant past.

It was one thing to deal with a world where the ideal of history operated, and quite another to deal with ages where myth and legend were the norm. History and myth were simply not the same thing, either philosophically or chronologically. The First and Second Age were definitely different from those that came later. The Third Age, she thought, might be borderline.

Child worked over an hour with the device using different dates and places, and then judging what the actual destination would have been if they had utilized these settings in real life.

Her results were astounding. It was quite clear there was a definite distortion whenever she put in very ancient dates, especially those from the First and Second Age. The device clearly showed that you could aim for a particular age and get there. But within that age, your results were variable. If you wanted to visit coastal Beleriand during the flood, for instance, you might find yourself some 50 years earlier on the River Sirion at the time of the fall of Gondolin. Or, if you wanted to go to the west coast of Second Age Numenor, you might end up in the Bay of Eldamar, Second Age, knocking on Manwe's front door. Child remembered uncomfortably how some men who had sailed unbidden to these lands had been swallowed up in the earth.

Geography and time could be mastered, but precision was definitely lacking. No matter how much research Child did, no matter how many documents she discovered, using this time travel device was a bit like playing a cardgame where every third card was a joker.

The hobbit in Child took delight in this: it was almost like playing a game. The scholar in her despaired how they would ever get to the specific place and time that they needed to be.

Child scrawled a note to Pio and another to Mith explaining all this. She left one on Pio's desk plus a note of apology for burglaring her cabin, and slid the other under Mithadan's door, which she was careful to do without picking the lock. She made a mental note to tell Veritas, Rose, and the others as soon as she had a chance. She then returned to the feast which was still going on.

Bird and Pioalso slid into the hall late and beckoned Child over to sit by them.

[ July 12, 2002: Message edited by: Child of the 7th Age ]