A/N: For Eva. I delved back into LOTR and Silmarillion lore with a passion, thanks to your Story Request 1, "What happened to the Entwives?" While this serves as my entry, it's also a personal journey into a fandom I've gobbled up hungrily, savoring Tolkien's fantastic resurrections of myth and legend. Thank you for the opportunity!
With its brooding limbs and blackened, twisted trunks, Fangorn forest seemed to be nothing but decay. The life of the forest, which had once seeped through in starving rivulets, squeezed its last drops so that the thirsting Huorns did much like their victims: They grew cold, and their gnarled branches stiffened to rot and die.
Of course, this could not be the fate of Treebeard and his brothers. The Ents would continue to exist, becoming ever more tree-ish. Their strength could not be contained by the seasons or the death of the forest around them. Nan Curunir, the valley in Isengard southwest of the forest, had been stripped of nutrients, stymying the forest's natural passage around Dunland. The lower lands lay in waste, still thick and poisonous with pollutants, but with time it would revive itself. And Ents had time, lots of time.
Though the King had encouraged their spread through Eriador, what was there in a newborn forest to delight an Ent who had no Entings to shepherd it? Treebeard was much too rooted to concern himself with moving about a fledgling state of Olvar once more. Instead, he eyed the plains of Rohan lazily as Man flourished. The villages had grown up like mushrooms each time he blinked, it seemed.
The Elvish verdure of Lorien and Mirkwood merged, as Lothlorien touched the brink of Fangorn northeastward. Yet, the Elves came no further. There had once been a time when Elves and Trees spoke in perfect accord. In Treebeard's estimation, the Elves of the Fourth Age had little notion of this sort of familiarity; and the Ents were no longer inclined to cultivate this communication. Yet, nothing would persuade old Treebeard to manage a flock of seedlings, though the trees withered around him.
The Huorns were the first to 'voice' their dissatisfaction by prodding and pressing their tortuous finger-like roots right between the eldest Ent's toes! It was most uncomfortable. It took Treebeard a short two weeks to make his discomfort known. He bellowed with a force that shook all of Fangorn.
"Ah, you have finally risen from your nap, then," observed Quickbeam.
"My good friend, how long have you been waiting for my nap to conclude?"
"I should say a very long time, but, knowing your thoughts as to the length of such a thing, it would not be considered so long a measure in your estimation."
Treebeard tried to give a boisterous laugh, but it came out rather dry and moldy.
"Now that all who wish to be are present for the Entmoot, I should get on with what I had hoped to propose for some time now." Treebeard's eyes traveled around the circle. The Ents were indeed gathered; all but Beechbone. It was all he had time to observe before Quickbeam continued at his impossible pace.
"Though some of you might wish to continue in the task of growing more tree-ish, there are those of us who would like to go the way of the new birches in the north."
Treebeard sighed; and, of course, this took a long while. "I see no need to make a hasty decision. What has commended this plan to you?"
Quickbeam ignored the hint that his decision was precipitant, answering, "After Beechbone's fall, those of us who are still somewhat bendable felt it was a sorrowful end for our kind. We'd much rather follow the saplings along the Glanduin."
"We?"
"We tried to include you, but you've been difficult to stir. We waited years. In that time, we've seen the regions developing northward. If we cross in the spring, we will have plenty of time to help the Olvar develop and thicken before the frost returns."
"What do you say to this, Leaflock?'
"I shall stay with you."
"And you, Skinbark?"
It took a week before the Ent could answer that he had a desire to see the north country at least to the edge of the birches. "The noise of men has left me quite unsettled, being so near to them," Skinbark admitted.
Treebeard would not be budged. He wished to remain in his beloved Fangorn.
"I shall be sorry to see you go, my friend," he told Skinbark. "But, you've always been so fond of the trees in the north. Remember to send back any message of the Entwives, should you glimpse them." There was something in his sigh that intoned how improbable finding them would be.
It seemed only a little while to Treebeard before the forest floor shook beneath him. His stiffened legs were pained to catch himself. On waking, his eyes lit on a verdant, fertile vista. His first thought was to wonder if he had been uprooted somehow from his own forest home. Then a movement below caught his attention, and he looked down to find a very young, very boisterous Enting! He thought then that he must be having a vivid dream of the first age again, until the rascal rapped his side with a force that should have split his limbs wide open!
"Are you Treebeard, the one they call 'Eldest'?"
"Well…" It was all Treebeard could get out before the young whippersnapper interrupted.
"I've been sent to tell you the Entwives are found. Have been found for quite some time, Sir, but those old tree-ish papas of ours are so slow. They said they had to wait around for us to get a few more rings around our middles to send us to find you again. You are Treebeard, right?"
"Why…"
"There's another one we're suppose to tell, a Greenlock or something…"
"Leaflock-,"
"Yes, Sir. He's the one who is ever so tree-ish over there, I'm guessing. Must be most disagreeable for him."
"You young sapling! What do you know about discomfort? You've been standing on my foot for a half a day now!"
"Oh, sorry! I thought it was just part of the forest floor. It's a wonder I found you at all. You are mightily overgrown, meaning no disrespect, of course."
Treebeard didn't know whether to laugh or to scowl at the swaying nuisance. It's true, his bellow started in a rather unprepossessing strain, but it turned into a resonating guffaw by its end. The Enting imitated his laughter with his own green attempts, and the forest echoed the sounds of life around old Treebeard.
He gazed down tenderly at the Enting, and with a wizened smile asked the question that had haunted his mind for millennia. "Could it be – Is Fimbrethil still….?" He could not complete it. Hope was too great a thing at his age.
"Fimbrethil? Oh, you mean Wandlimb the aged?"
"Wandlimb the lightfooted."
"Perhaps she was in your time, Sir. She's 'the aged' now."
A sigh like a thousand winged birds taking flight broke from the eldest Ent.
"Take me to her."
"But, I don't think – I mean, it's a long way! I don't think you'll be able to make it."
Treebeard began, and it was a painfully slow progression. After a month, he groaned and told the Enting, "I'm in no state to travel anymore."
"I gathered that, Sir. We've only mustered a few meters. You know, I can take word to her. I'm known as the fastest! I'm Quickbeech, son of Quickbeam. I know these woods like the backs of my branches!"
It cannot be said that Treebeard was exactly happy to see Quickbeech go. He shed many tears in the days that passed, brought on by sheer joy to see an Enting among the trees once again and the disappointment at not seeing his beloved Fimbrethil. Yet, it was a tiresome thing for an old, old Ent to keep up with the flurried pace and speech of the young, flexible generation.
Quickbeech did return and sooner than Treebeard had thought possible. Why, he'd only gotten his eyes closed good before that young rascal was knocking his trunk to splinters again!
"There now, young fellow. I'm not the spry one to sway with such blows as you give!"
The Enting left off his assault on the bark-like sides of Treebeard and began the recitation. "I'm to tell you she's never forgotten you, and that she forgives you."
"Forgives me?"
"Um-hum. You wouldn't come, she said. She had her orchards and vines to tend to, you know. We have ever so many now."
"Where? Where is she?"
"In the forest of Forlond, northwest of what funny old Tom Bombadil calls 'the little folks' land'." It was said as though Treebeard should have known it already. "We have a great friendship with Elves there. Still, the Entwives were pretty lonely before they found our papas again, my mama told me. They thought you'd been destroyed by Orcs and fire, so they followed the migration to the west. But then that jolly Tom sent a song through the cantankerous Withywindle from his very own Goldberry. She sang this song, you see, about nice, strong Ents in the lands south of the friendly little folk. My mama says they scared the bobbits silly, traipsin' through along the corners of their green towns to enter the infant forests in the South. Well, it took awhile for them – with the Entwives and the Ents both being so everlasting slow - but they finally found one another!"
"So they found them at last!" Treebeard marveled before remarking, "'Hobbits', son. They're called 'hobbits'."
Quickbeech didn't seem to notice the correction. "And that's all I know 'cause my mama gets all misty-eyed and starts blowing her nose when I ask her what happened after that. I'm to be pledged to Slenderbark come the harvest! She's the prettiest of the bunch. The way she sways is a sight to behold! The birds follow her 'round and get tangled up in her cornsilk locks. She's got this throaty hum that shakes up my insides to hear it – can make most anything bloom with a few notes…"
Quickbeech thought nothing of his quick turn to a different subject, though it was a few minutes into his reverie about the fair Slenderbark before Treebeard queried, "'Bunch', did you say?"
"There are fourteen of us. My twin brother wooed her first, but she wanted me. She told me so."
"Twins!" Treebeard's head was spinning at the thought of such a multitude of Entings.
"Didn't you see him? My brother, Swiftbough, came with me last time, along with Yewblade and Benderblade. They're twins, too."
"More twins?"
"Four sets of 'em and no less!" While Treebeard was still digesting this, Quickbeech sidled closer to him to whisper in his very overgrown ear. "There's a Huorn over there just a eavesdroppin' his limbs off! Ya want me to teach him a lesson? I'm good with the meddlesome sort."
"No, no! Let him hear it!"
"Hear this, Olvar!" It rolled forth from Eldest like a trumpet, trembling the ground on which they stood, shaking the leaves and boughs of the trees and verdure around them.
"Onodrim thrive and grow like the Children of Iluvatar!"