TAOCW: Meeting the Palantir

Meeting the Palantír

Cherish Monica Woods, or “Cherry” as everyone called her, was spread-eagled on her plush, twin-mattress bed covered with sheets, blankets, pillows and obsolete teen fashion magazines from a bazillion years ago. She stared, bored, up at a ceiling speckled with glow-in-the-dark star stickers of various sizes that weren`t glowing because it wasn`t dark. The room was lit by a classic-style nightstand lamp beside her bed that was painted over with flowers of white and red from when she was a little girl. Everything in her room was neat and tidy, from her mantle decorated with a dozen or so trophies, ribbons and other awards, to her bookshelf that also held CDs and the magazines that weren`t on her bed, and then to her dresser, where a peeking drawer revealed every individual article of clothing was properly organized, so that she didn`t have to struggle with the question every average teenage girl faced “What am I going to wear today?”.

She turned her head and looked at her digital alarm clock next to the lamp. It said that the time was 8:00 P.M. Groaning, she got up from her bed, pulled on a green hoodie from her closet, went downstairs, and walked out the door to the garage, where her bike was waiting. She had told her parents that she was going to see a friend. This was the truth, but the real reason she was heading out was because she had a stranger to meet, someone her new friend Savannah knew that she said could help her help her dad, who was Shields` new police chief, when her family had moved into town. With her brilliance, she`d always been eager to help her dad with difficult cases, so she wanted to meet this somebody who could be of big help to them. She biked downtown to where she`d been told to meet him, the old Shields Metropolitan Theater, which had been abandoned for some time. It was in fact scheduled for demolition.

After parking her bike, she walked through the formerly ballroom-worthy double doors that were the theater`s front entrance. Passing through the even more ornate and falling-apart lobby, which was carpeted in a still-soft red fabric, had numerous old portraits of black and white and color posters announcing shows from Hamlet to Death of a Salesman lining the walls, into the dark, unlit main room, which had moldy wood floors, rows upon rows of dark , soft seats, some ripped up or taken away in random spots, and a stage that looked ready to collapse if someone so much as put a toe on it, judging from how termite-infested, worm-eaten and hole-ridden it was. Cherry didn`t see anyone at first, but then she heard someone say, “It seems the want-to-be detective has arrived.” It came from behind her.

Whipping around, a light turned on above him, making the face underneath his black fedora obscured. She noted that he also wore a black jacket and jeans, accompanied by matching black boots. He was a little taller than her, and was thin, but not skinny, with short, black hair. When he pulled his hands out from behind his back, she saw that they were ghostly white. She then let go of a breath she didn`t realize she`d been holding since he`d spoke. But she remembered clearly the freezing of every nerve and bone in her body for an instant once he spoke. His voice was low, but not deep, chocked full of intelligence and mystery. He spoke again.

“Savannah told me that you were someone who was looking for information, in order that you would help your father solve more cases. What is it you want to know about? The drug trade, kidnappers, or perhaps the people who made the first death threat against your daddy? And his family? Which consists of you, your Goth sister Violet, brothers Boyce and Scott and your mother the lawyer.”

Cherry gasped, as she hadn`t heard of the death threat, but also at how he knew her entire family and Savannah couldn`t have told him that. Barely keeping her breath, she asked him, “Who are you?” He took three steps towards her, close enough for her to see his devious smile and his deep, violet eyes that seemed to peer into her very being. He said in reply, “None know my true name, and few know me. To them, I am the Palantír.”