Hinder

XVII. Relics of a Secret Past

She stared at the scar on her palm in her right hand. Only she knew how and where it originated from: Aragorn's broken shard of Narsil slicing open her palm in Bree. Scars and memories were her only souvenirs of Middle-earth.

"Reminiscing again? You've been doing that a lot lately."

Rowan looked up into the mirror at Claire standing behind her, braiding her hair. Drea, the makeup artist, had finished with her a while ago and stood at her station, screwing back on foundation tops. Because of her accident, Tyler cancelled a week of shooting Sorcha's scenes—the character she played—to make sure she was alright. Even though the paramedics assured him Rowan was.

"Just thinking about everything... I've been through." She almost said 'that has befallen me'.

Taking a chance, she asked, "Have I ever told you how I got the scar?"

The hair-dresser nodded. "That one on your hand you received on the set of Can't Be Held when you were 'escaping' that prison and your hand slipped on some barbed wire. The scar through the right side of your stomach was from a freak accident on the set of Killzone when the explosion shot rebar through you. You tried to warn Zachary Paul that your mark was too close to it, but he wouldn't listen. The one on your left side is from a car crash gone wrong in Barely Dead—the passenger door ripped off and nearly sliced you open and almost paralyzed you. And last week, you were knocked unconscious from a prop mishap." Claire shook her head. "You have the worst luck on movie sets."

She would have to remember all of that when someone asked about her scars. The last one, though, was real, and she didn't consider it bad luck—the accident had sent her to Middle-earth and become one of the beloved characters in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It made her realize to respect herself—she wasn't second in anything—and opened her heart again in finding love with Boromir and Éomer.

But Claire didn't know that, nor would she ever.

"I suppose so."

Drea snorted. "There's no suppose so. You've officially gained an 'accident prone' title around the set. It'll follow you from now on."

During her week-long break, Rowan had gone with Claire to buy The Lord of the Rings books at the local town's bookstore. Everything after the point where Rowan had arrived in Bree with Aragorn occurred, just as it did when she was there. Legolas had upheld his promise on not telling the hobbits she wasn't originally from Arda. Reading Éomer's reaction to her so-called 'death' broke her heart—Tolkien mentioned that he mourned for days and would probably never recover.

When Claire came into her trailer that evening to find her sobbing uncontrollably, Rowan explained she always became a blubbering mess when she read that part in The Return of the King. She wondered if Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, or Gandalf ever told him the truth...

Watching the movies on her laptop wasn't easier. Even though she noticed subtle differences between the actors and the real characters, they were still them. Viggo Mortensen was Aragorn. Orlando Bloom was Legolas. Elijah Wood was Frodo. And so on.

Karl Urban drew her eye the most because he was Éomer.

The actress Peter Jackson got to play the role of Rowan, lady of Gondor—Vanessa Evanson—did a good job, but of course Rowan thought she could've played herself better in the film. Sixteen years ago, she wouldn't have known she was playing herself... or would she? Or would Rowan have existed in that epic since she hadn't gone back to the Quest of the Ring yet?

She rubbed her head with a sigh. All these time travel timelines were giving her a headache.

"Are you okay, Rowan?" Claire asked. "Does your head hurt?"

"No. No, I'm alright. Confusing thoughts."

Claire finished braiding her hair and stepped away. "Sorcha's back."

Rowan looked into the mirror.

Long, reddish-brown hair with pieces braided back from her face and deep green eyes. No, that was the Rowan Boromir and Éomer fell in love with, and the woman who befriended the Fellowship.

She would keep this look as long as she could.

Done with hair and makeup, Rowan got out of the chair to head for the clothing trailer for her costume. Time to return to the role she's always known—in the modern world and in Middle-earth. A helper.

And she would be proud of it now.