The Blood Bush
It was a blizzard the likes of which had not battered Mirkwood in decades. The snow, blowing sideways and every which way, whipped amongst the shrieking tree branches and piled itself recklessly into huge obstacles across every animal track - not that any animal was foolish enough to be anywhere but snug in its den today.
An Elf and a Man, clinging together to stay upright against the gale, staggered along those paths as best they could. Despite their combined years of woodcraft, it had just become very obvious to both that they had lost their way.
"Legolas," gasped the Man. "I am sorry. I must stop for a little. I can no longer breathe."
"No apologies, Aragorn!" returned the Elf, who was in no better state. "We must find shelter immediately." He narrowed his eyes against the blinding, frozen wetness, trying to make out exactly where they were. A terrible dismay passed over his face.
"What is it?" asked the Man, who had turned his back to the worst of the wind and could not, in any case, see what Legolas was staring at.
"We must push on," said Legolas. "It is the Blood Bush." Aragorn squinted in his turn, and saw only a thick stand of bare trees and shrubbery, heaving in the wind.
"Can we not find some shelter amongst those bushes?" he asked.
"Nay, it is the Blood Bush," repeated Legolas. "It is an ancient thing, neither evil nor good, but here since the beginning of Arda. It will offer shelter - yes it will, but at a high price. All Elves avoid this place," They had drawn together now, heads close, and spoke in each other's ears.
"What price?" asked Aragorn urgently. For relief from this frozen purgatory, he was prepared to pay. Cold tears were on his face, though he was not weeping. His body was losing feeling, even where pressed up against Legolas' most welcome warmth. His breath was frozen in his nostrils.
Legolas looked at him with concern. "A company may shelter here, but first the bush will draw blood from one member. And I will pay, for I am the one who lost our way, and it is my fault you can go no further." He started towards the shrubbery, but Aragorn was before him, running.
"I am the weakling! I will pay!" he cried into the wind, and before Legolas caught up with him, the Man had been rudely captured and entwined in sinuous branches.
"No!" yelled Legolas, trying to reach his friend, but he too was caught and held fast, watching helplessly as the Man was roughly prodded by bare branches and pulled by snaking vines towards a rugged tree-trunk. "Aragorn! Oh, Eru! Drop your cloak, my friend!"
Aragorn did not comprehend. "It will go on and on until blood is drawn! Drop your cloak!" cried Legolas again. Aragorn used his last half-second of freedom to strip away his cloak and shirt, leaving him bare to the elements, and to the wrath of the ancient creature.
Bound tightly to the tree-trunk, the Man writhed under the assault of sinuous vines and cracking branches. The blows descended all along his back and legs, without pattern and without surcease. He tried not to cry out, and did not understand why he tried. The vine around his neck tightened and his cheek scraped roughly against the bark of the tree. He saw the angry swaying of the Bush around him, and the ever-blowing snow - and Legolas.
The Elf was straining against a vine that held him cruelly around the middle, and try as he might, he could not quite reach Aragorn with his outstretched hands. As the flailing of the branches turned his back into a mighty flare of heat, Aragorn focused on the Elf's anguished face, the deep blue eyes, the cheeks flushed in distress, the sensitive mouth. The Man felt as if somehow Legolas pulled half the pain away and bore it himself. "Help me," said Aragorn, despite himself, and Legolas' face floated, ever more disembodied, in the harsh snowy world.
"I am here," said Legolas, reaching vainly for him again.
Still there was no blood. The pain grew, and Aragorn's groans were forced from him, and the light seemed to fade from the edge of his vision, and still there was no blood. It came to him in his near-delirium that the Bush was enjoying this, and he heard the dry dead leaves laugh around him in confirmation. "Take my blood now; I can bear this no more," he confessed weakly, on a gasp. He convulsed as a mighty blow, harder than any of the rest, ripped across his back.
"Thank you," whispered Aragorn, and "Blood!" cried Legolas, and the dry leaves flew and fluttered explosively into the howling gale.
Both of them stumbled to the forest floor as they were released, and they watched in awe as the same branches which had tormented Aragorn piled themselves as if by magic and ignited into a fire, while the remainder of the Bush weaved and knotted itself tightly into a cocoon around them, protecting them at last from the storm.
Legolas' first care was to examine the thin trickle of red which oozed from the deepest of the many welts upon his friend's back. But it was already stopped, so he applied himself to spreading liniment from his pack gently, ever so gently.
Even so, Aragorn made a sound of discomfort. And embarrassment.
"Ignore it," he said tightly. "A man's body is a nonsensical thing."
"But I am in similar case," Legolas informed him with a little smile. "You can have no idea how… appealing you are. So brave, so strong, so vulnerable."
To make him stop saying ridiculous things, Aragorn kissed that little smile, and in return received a look that told him he was on no account to apologize for doing it. Then Legolas and Aragorn found other uses for the liniment, and in the snug shelter and serene crackling of the fire took their comfort together at last.
Later, as he lay carefully but happily in the Elf's arms, Aragorn surveyed the woven branches around them and the burning fire. "How is it possible," he mused aloud, "that such comfort and pleasure should lie in the heart of such pain?"
Legolas brushed the back of his hand along his lover's cheek. "Is it possible you have read more Elven lore than you have admitted to me?" he asked.
"I doubt it," said Aragorn. "Why?"
"Because you are quoting the ancient wisdom. 'In the heart of the pain lies comfort, and in the midst of that comfort lives joy. That is the lesson of the Blood Bush.'"