Fic, The Hidden Valley, Primeval/The Lord of the Rings, 12

[fredbassett]

Title : The Hidden Valley
Author : fredbassett
Fandoms : Primeval/The Lord of the Rings
Rating : 12
Characters : Claudia/Nick, Arwen/Aragorn
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Summary : Claudia finds herself in a very precarious position on the wrong side of an anomaly.
A/N : Written for louisedennis’s Denial Stocking last year. Ooops, I forgot to repost!

“I’ve got you!” Claudia did her best to sound calm even though she was balanced precariously on a narrow ledge above a deep gorge on the wrong side of an anomaly. “Stay still.”

The little boy stared at her out of scared blue eyes and sniffled quietly.

Claudia tightened her arm protectively around his waist. “What’s your name?”

“Billy.”

“Nice to meet you, Billy. I’m Claudia. I’m going to boost you up to stand on my shoulders then you’ll be able to scramble back through the light. OK?”

He looked up at the anomaly, sparkling in the warm sunshine, and nodded shakily. The spinning shards of time were hovering in the air above a wider ledge about two metres above Claudia’s shoulders. The climb probably wasn’t too difficult – providing you didn’t look down – but there was no way she could risk leaving Billy standing on the ledge by himself while she went for help. The anomaly already looked weaker than it had been a few minutes ago, so there was no time to lose.

“I need you to do something for me when you get home, Billy.” She took her phone out of her pocked and carefully zipped it inside the pocket of the one-piece all-weather suit he was wearing. “Give this to your mum or dad and ask them to call Nick. His number is in there. When he gets here, you need to show him where the light was. Can you remember that?”

He nodded.

Claudia didn’t have a lot of experience with children, but she estimated he was about six years old. “Can you repeat that to me, Billy?”

“Show … Nick … where the light was …”

“Good lad. OK, here we go …” Claudia braced one foot on a piece of jutting out rock and with both hands firmly on his hips, Claudia lifted Billy onto her knee. “Can you find anything to hold onto?” She could see him groping for a handhold, then he nodded. “Try not to kick backwards, Billy. We just need to get your feet onto my shoulders now …”

Claudia was under no illusions about how dangerous the next part of the manoeuvre would be. If Billy started flailing with his feet, she could easily overbalance, but with the anomaly fading before her eyes, waiting for a rescue was out of the question. The only reason she’d followed him through in the first place was because she’d had no mobile signal and the anomaly hadn’t looked strong enough for her to waste time going for help to what she presumed was Billy’s parents’ farm.

“Right, on the count of three … one … two … three …” She gripped Billy’s hips and pushed him up. He scrabbled at the rockface with his Wellington boots, sending a shower of stones clattering down into the ravine but he didn’t kick out. He found a small amount of purchase in a crack and she was able to heave him up so that one foot found its way onto her left shoulder and a moment later he was balanced precariously, reaching up to the ledge above while she steadied his legs.

“Think … I’m OK …” he stuttered. She heard him suck in a deep breath then his weight on her shoulders eased and she watched as he pulled himself up, his hands and arms reaching through the anomaly.

“Good boy, you can do it! Remember, phone Nick …” Claudia got a hand under one failing boot and pushed up as hard as she could, then he was through, green wellies disappearing into the rapidly fading light.

Before Claudia could weigh up her chances of following him, the anomaly flickered and died.

At the same moment, a large chunk of the ledge under her feet crumbled away and then she was falling …

****

She’d heard Ryan’s lads joke that falling was perfectly safe. It was the landing part that could kill you. Not the most comforting thought as she alternately slithered and fell down the steep scarp, heading all too rapidly for the river tumbling over cascades in the river at the bottom of the valley.

Her precipitous descent was slowed by the occasional bush clinging tightly to the rocky slope but never enough to bring her to a halt. Rocks and stones clattered below her and Claudia could feel the skin being stripped from her hands every time she tried to hang onto a clump of passing vegetation.

Her screams echoed around the valley as she slid and fell, smashing into rock with bruising force as the breath was knocked from her body, leaving her unable to do more than gasp in pain.

Claudia flung her arm out to a slender, red-berried tree clinging tightly to the grey rock. For a moment she thought all she’d succeeded in doing was dislocating her shoulder, then she realised she’d come to an abrupt halt, with her feet still scrabbling for purchase beneath her as she flung her other arm around the trunk, holding to it as tightly as she could, desperately hoping it would continue to bear her weight.

“Hold tight!” a man called from below her.

“I am doing!”

The bark of the tree was rough against her cheek. Claudia clung to it with no intention of letting go, doing her best not to look down. She was still too far above the river for comfort. She could hear movement below her and soft breathing as the man climbed closer and closer then came into her line of sight.

Dark raggedly cut hair and a sun-browned, strangely familiar weather-beaten face.

He shrugged a coil of grey rope off his shoulder and quickly secured it around the base of the tree, tethered himself to it by a short length of rope then slipped the other end around Claudia’s waist and tied it tightly.

“Spiders!” Claudia gasped, as memory flooded back of an anomaly call out in Norfolk that had pitted the team again giant spider. Giant talking spiders.

“There are no spiders in this valley, my lady, at least not the kind you mean.” He smiled reassuringly at her. “I had not expected to meet you again. Are you injured?”

“Bruised. I don’t think anything’s broken but I’m not sure.” She knew that the seductive rush of adrenaline in a life-threatening situation was quite capable of masking incapacitating injuries.

“If you cannot climb, I will lower you down, but the slope is not as steep now and there are others below you that can help if needed.”

Claudia nodded. Her heart was still hammering in her chest and she was starting to shake as the shock of the fall began to set in, but she carefully unhooked one arm from around the tree and reached out for a handhold on the rock and then felt below her for somewhere to rest her foot. Then one careful movement after another, she started to edge her way down the cliff. Whenever her hands or feet were in danger of slipping, her rescuer effortlessly held her weight and it wasn’t long before a pair of strong hands held her waist and called out something in a melodious language she didn’t recognise.

“You are safe,” a woman’s voice said.

Claudia turned to face a dark-haired woman with an ageless, ethereally beautiful face, dressed in a long, silver-grey tunic belted over soft blue trousers tucked into knee-high leather boots.

“Thank you,” Claudia said, leaning back against the rock wall at her back, letting relief wash over her as she started to shake.

Gentle hands stroked her hair off her sweaty, bruised face. “My name is Arwen,” the woman said. “Welcome to Rivendell.”

****

Claudia sipped a warm, lightly spiced red wine and stared up at a velvet black sky studded with vivid silver stars. A soft woollen blanket wrapped around her shoulders kept the slight chill of evening away. The clothes she was wearing were Arwen’s while the numerous rips in her own caused by her rapid descend down the ravine were being mended.

The man she now knew as Aragorn put a log on the brazier that burned brightly in the centre of a small terrace overlooking the river. “The watchers say the light has appeared briefly at the fourth hour past midday for the past two days.”

Claudia smiled. “Then I hope the third time’s the charm for me.”

“We have that saying here, too.” Arwen said. She looked up at the sky. “Are the stars the same in your land, Claudia?”

“They don’t seem as bright where I come from but in my world, it is unusual to see them in true darkness.” Claudia leaned back in the carved wooden chair trying to pick out constellations she recognised from the myriad twinkling lights.

She’d worked on the anomaly project long enough to be privy to the reports that didn’t find their way into the official record, Not everything that happened in their jobs was easy to explain rationally, and she’d long since given up trying.

If she made it back to her own world, she suspected this would be another story only told late at night accompanied by alcohol.

Arwen smiled and refilled her goblet. “Your star will return, Claudia, and you will not have to climb alone, I promise you that.”

****

Claudia looked up the cliff at the two long rope ladders that had been rigged from metal pegs hammered into rock cracks above the ledge where the anomaly was expected appear. Aragorn was already in position above one of the ladders, securely belayed so that he could lifeline her up to the anomaly, then all she would have to do was step sideways, back into her own time.

The thinly woven grey rope was already tied around her waist as she waited as calmly and patiently as she could, trying not to think about what would happen if the anomaly didn’t return.

“Take heart,” Arwen said softly. “And be ready to climb.”

A heartbeat later, a sunburst of golden light sprung out against the grey rock high on the cliff.

“Climb!” Arwen urged.

Claudia sucked in a deep breath and took hold of the slender wooden rungs of the ladder, feeling Aragorn tug lightly on the lifeline. “Climbing!” she called.

Beside her, on the other ladder, Arwen matched her rung for rung, murmuring words of encouragement. Claudia was bruised and aching from the battering she’d taken in her fall the previous day, but with Arwen at her side, she climbed and kept climbing, knowing that Aragorn would not let her fall.

“Not far now,” Arwen said, her voice showing no sign of exertion. “Your home awaits you, Claudia.”

As Claudia drew level with the anomaly, she turned to the woman who had become her friend, even though they had only known each other for such a short time. “Will I ever see you again?”

Arwen smiled. “This is the second time you have encountered Aragorn, so maybe our worlds are more entwined than we know.” She reached out and pinned a brooch in the shape of an eight-pointed star to Claudia’s jacket. “Think of us when you see the stars of evening and we will think of you.”

Claudia smiled at her. “Thank you to you both. And thank you for your gift.”

She stepped off the ladder, feeling the rock ledge beneath her feet.

With a last look at the hidden valley, Claudia made her way back to the gently rolling chalk uplands of the South Downs, feeling the cold prickle of time between two very different worlds playing over her sensitised skin.

“Incoming!”

Claudia recognised Ryan’s voice,

Strong hands grabbed her and swung her away from the anomaly.

Claudia fumbled with the rope around her waist, freeing the knot and tossing the rope back into the sparking light.

Nick dashed over to her and enveloped her in a much-needed hug,

“You got my message.”

He touched her bruised cheek gently. “Are you hurt?”

“A bit bruised, but nothing too terrible,”

“You’re back, that’s what matters.”

She smiled at him. “Yes, I’m back.”