No sooner has the disappointed hat buyer stormed out of the shop when even bigger trouble walks in.
Sophie had no time to recover. There was the sound of wheels and horse hoofs and a carriage darkened the window. The shop bell clanged and the grandest customer she had ever seen sailed in, with a sable wrap drooping from her elbows and diamonds winking all over her dense black dress…. The lady’s face was carefully beautiful. The chestnut-brown hair made her seem young, but… [25]
Firstly, what is she doing in Market Chipping, such a long way from the Waste (which is not where the anime locates it, in the hills above Sophie’s home town)? And how did she manage it? Her altered appearance must be consuming enormous amounts of energy; by my calculations she’s about 150 years old. Is she like Sauron (on a much reduced time scale), nursing her ancient grudges while years turn into decades? Did she lose a Ring of Power somewhere out there, which likewise has been regrouping its own strength, desiring to return to its mistress? On the other hand, she’s a mortal, not a Maia, yet she seems to be getting stronger and more powerful instead of growing “thin, sort of stretched,” like Bilbo Baggins. [LotR, Book 1, Chapter I]
Clearly there is some force on the loose in Ingary that confers suprahuman power. The Witch is not herself that force, but she has apparently succeeded in hooking up with it. In this she reminds me of another, lesser-known mortal character in The Lord of the Rings:
The rider was robed all in black, and black was his lofty helm; yet this was no Ringwraith but a living man. The Lieutenant of the Tower of Barad-dur he was, and his name is remembered in no tale; for he himself had forgotten it, and he said: ‘I am the Mouth of Sauron.’ [LotR, Book 5*, Chapter X]
We never learn the Witch of the Waste’s name, either. I have seen her given one in fanfictions, but I like the namelessness. It shows the depth and width of her self-recruitment into physical and spiritual servitude to some greater, evil other. And it’s a good example of DWJ’s use of allusion to illuminate her very economically-written characters.
This encounter is going to push Sophie right past the Threshold and out the door, and I will have much more to say about it. I think I won’t try saying it tonight, however; after a bad insomniac spell last night, I’m feeling pretty thin and stretched myself.
~~~
(*There are so many editions of LotR out there that when citing it I generally default to Tolkien’s original division of the entire work into six “Books.” Thus Book 5 is the first half of The Return of the King.)
Among the Frogs 