Lightstep flinched, but she gave an infinitesimal nod and gathered her energies as Shout readied his blades.

'Lightstep, now!'

She dropped as the knife left his hand and wheeled through the air to embed itself into something on the branch above where she had been but a heartbeat before. A hissing scream fractured the air and over it, Shout called out to Seer.

'Down, now!'

As Seer rolled off to the left, Shout released another knife which hit something living, a thing that shrieked in pain and shook the branches.

'Behind...' Lightstep shouted up, but Shout had already sent a third knife over his shoulder.

Jumping down, he found a landing spot and glanced up. Visible now amongst the boughs and branches, three spiders in various degrees of pain, with knives sticking into their faces, wiped legs frantically at their eyes trying to shift the blades.

'There's another in the oak,' Shout said as Seer lined up an arrow and shot the first spider dead from the tree.

Lightstep already had an arrow nocked and sent it up into the canopy. The spider had no time even to scream before its limbs spasmed and it tumbled, dead, on the ground at their feet. She jumped back, wrinkling her nose, and Shout sent an arrow up to finish the one he'd wounded with his blade as Seer provided the same service for the last of the injured creatures.

Four bodies jerking in death on the ground, and Shout went to retrieve his knives from three of them.

'Thank you, Shout!' Lightstep said with a shudder. 'I find there is some killing I do not mind quite as much as I had previously believed I did...

'Strange things, close up,' Shout said, pulling his blades out and cleaning them off. 'You'd say ugly, but some of the colours on some of their limbs is almost pretty...'

'Even the creations of Melkor are ultimately the creations of Eru Ilúvatar,' Lightstep said. 'But we cannot leave them here, can we? Consider if the herds come back? The scent will keep them away.'

'Consider if the spiders are moving into this part of the canopy,' Seer said. 'Better for the herd to make its foraging place somewhere safer.'

'Still, can't just leave them here. Not out in the open, drag them off and into the undergrowth.'

'Good idea,' Seer said with a nod. 'Of course, they'll never believe this back in the village.'

Shout got hold of two spider limbs and began to drag the beast off towards the bushes. Its body was only a little longer than a fox, he realised; it was mostly limbs and they were three or four times the length of the body, making it seem far more imposing than it really was.

'I shouldn't bother telling them, then.'

'But I have to report... and it was a pretty good fight!'

'It was not!' Lightstep said with scorn. 'Shout did all the hard work!'

'This is true. And, yes, at the time, it was alarming... what alerted you, Shout?'

'Suddenly got a scent from the oak. It connected with the image from the other day, sticky leaves and spiders... then I saw how there was a branch growing wrongly behind Lightstep, and it was a limb with a spider at the end of it.'

Lightstep shuddered.

'I am grateful, Shout. I do not like to think...'

'I'm sure you'd have realised in time.'

'Well, however it is, I am sorry, but I have to call our sojourn finished,' Seer said. 'There was so much more I wanted to show you, to explore with you, my friends, but the fact is, I ought not have set off with just two of you, and we ran into trouble. Had Shout not been so quick and good with his knives... our parents, our kin, our Elders will complain if we stay out, and I must report the deaths... even if I do make it sound less exciting...'

'If you need me to back you up, Seer...'

'And me,' Lightstep added. 'If ought I can say will help...'

'Thank you. Would you... there will be time, now... come back home with me?'

They set a watch that night, even though the trees assured them all was well, and Seer moved them back towards the main trails, even though the others didn't realise it; they had come close to real danger, and if the elders in the villages got to hear about it, perhaps they would not let him take out any more groups. So perhaps Shout was right, best not to boast about spiders slain.

Slowly, sadly, for none of them were ready to leave the forest, in spite of its spiders, they broke camp and set off, Seer leading them back towards the place where they had left their other selves behind.

'The waystation isn't that far,' Seer said. 'And from there, it's only an hour or so to the main trails to my village.'

'We're not as far from a settlement as I thought, then?' Lightstep asked.

'No; I try not to plan the route, but the hunters sent to the Einior who told me to keep tight, this time, and told me to work from the closest to home I could. There are way-flets all over the forest for us, and in better times we can roam for scores of days...'

'But not now.'

'No, Shout. Not now. Sorry.'

'It's been good, though. Seeing how the forest works, how it fits. Going so far but only being a little way from where we started. Shows you could explore forever and not see the half of it.'

'Yes,' Lightstep said. 'And how it is all interconnected; you explore one region of the forest, but through it you can hear beyond to the rest... it is wonderful!'

She stepped forward and gave Seer a brief hug.

'And you have shared this amazing secret with us! Thank you!'

'You're welcome. I just wish...'

'Yes.'

'Yes.'

An hour into their hike back, a falling call from the trees, a whistled signal Seer responded to with a call of his own.

'Hunters!' he said, after exchanging a few more signals. 'We should wait here.'

Scant seconds later, a swish in the canopy and two green-clad hunters jumped down. They had wide, wary eyes and wore the bifurcated boots favoured by their kind, soft-soled and separating the big toe from the rest, the better for balancing and gripping the branches. One drew her bow, the other his knife.

'Don't be alarmed,' he said. 'My leader is on his way. But you are the walkabout group, yes?'

'Yes.'

'Was there not a fourth in your group? What happened?'

'He could not come,' Lightstep said. 'Seer decided – as our companion Shout has an excellent knife arm – that a small and safe tour would be no harm. We were so keen...'

'Well, and I am glad you have not lost someone. But when it is known...' He shook his head. 'Besides, there are dangers; a sighting of a small group of spiders in the area; and we lost their trail...'

'You will find them in the undergrowth near the glade where the hinds gather of an evening,' Lightstep said. 'Four of them, at least what remains of them.'

'Dead? All four?'

Seer tried for a confident shrug unsuited to his years.

'I said Shout here was good with a knife,' he said.

The group leader, hearing the story on his arrival a few minutes later, grinned and shook his head.

'Audacious, still! Fern, go ask the trees about this. Then ask them to bespeak the home tree with word the youngsters are safe...' He paused to exchange glances with his elves. 'And then shall we...?'

'Why not?' the elleth said.

'When will they get the chance again?' the ellon seconded.

'Agreed, then. Fern, off you go. Tell the home tree we will come the long way round.'

The elleth departed, running into the forest and up into the canopy and the captain turned to the youngsters.

'The reason you young people take short names on your wanderings comes from us, the hunters. It is easier, quicker, more confusing to an enemy. So the elleth is Fern, my friend here is Brook, and I... I am Swing.' He nodded at them. 'And you three, once Fern comes back... you are coming with us.'

And it was amazing. For a whole week more the three younglings had the best initiation to the forest they could have wished for; even Seer learned things. They ran through the canopy and up and down the trees like the little black squirrels; they revisited the herd of deer and were able, under Fern's instruction, to get near enough to see two fawns born, on different nights, to see them stand on shivering, unsteady limbs and suckle, and their pelts dry, their mothers nuzzling them lovingly. They fished and swam and laughed, and learned the secret language of the hunters.

One of the first things they had done was revisit the site of the spider battle. Brook whistled.

'Three dead of knives, one of bowshot. Shall we have a little target practice, see how you shape against us?'

And so they learned. But better, here they learned with the hunters, Shout showing them his skills with the tumbling knives and sharing his techniques with a laughing, flirting Fern. But so busy was he with his lessons that he didn't notice and when Fern apologised later, he was a bit embarrassed he hadn't seen it.

'I am sorry,' she said. 'For I thought, from your stature, that you were already of age and just here belatedly. If I offended or alarmed you...'

'I? No, not at all... I didn't... yes, I am very tall, for my age, and look older. But do not worry; I was not offended, Fern. Think no more of it.'

And Fern nodded and tried very hard not to, but failed; she was not uncomely, and while she would never have dreamed of flirting with one under age, she was used to being noticed, to eliciting some response...

As for Shout, he didn't give it another thought, nor would he, not for another thirty years, at least.

But for the moment, he ran easy in the forest and found he had friends, at last.

Finally, the time came for them to collect the trappings of their old lives, to hug and try not to weep, and to name themselves, each to the other. The hunters withdrew for an hour to give them privacy for this intimate farewell that was also, oddly, an introduction.

Seer started.

'My name is Bregon,' he said. 'And I love doing this, exploring the forest. When I am older, I would like to be a hunter. Or a warrior. Or perhaps, if there were such a thing, a combination of both.'

He scuffed his boot in the toe of the sandy soil.

'My name is going to be Nestoril,' Lightstep said. 'When I come of age. For that is what I want to do, to be a healer, and I have already started training. That is why this is my last chance to explore the forest; soon I will be the most junior of underhealers' assistants at the court's healer hall... an honour indeed! But now, they call me Caraneth.'

'Thorion,' Shout said. 'Except I'm nobody's son, especially not an eagle's. I was, once. Parents died, dragons, north. Brought up by nice people, Fasdes and Cadudor. Not my real parents.'

'If they have loved you and cared for you, surely...?' Lightstep began, but Shout moved quickly on from the pain of talking so about his past.

'And the village youngsters are all far younger than me, follow me round, and if they get into trouble, I get the blame. Didn't think, until you said, Lightstep, about changing my name when I get old enough. It might be wise; it feels sometimes like I died with my parents...'

'Have you no-one of your own?' Lightstep asked.

'Got a sister, a bit older. She runs the business, would have me with her if she could. But I think Fasdes sort of likes me. She's our healer, Lightstep, if you're passing, ever, come and say hello.' He nodded to Seer. 'That goes for you, too.'

'We will,' Bregon said, nodding and trying not to gape at Shout. The confession – admission – of who he was, who his parents had been, stunned him. half the world had heard about the dragon attack on the little trading train, and the other half should be told; it had been a massacre and any who survived had to be marked out by the Valar for special work later in their lives...

'Tell me about the elflings in your village,' Lightstep said as they went on, under the escort of the hunters, towards the way point where they had met. 'They sound quite a handful...'

Knowing this was probably the only time he would have chance to properly sound off about how he felt pestered and annoyed and... and bullied, bullied by little elflings fifteen years his junior, it was a relief to get it off his chest.

'I don't mind them,' he said. 'But I want to practice my knife throwing, and there they are, darting around the targets. Even though we arranged special times for me with the Einior, so everyone knows when I will be there and throwing... but still, there they are, running in front of the targets, hiding behind them and jumping out at me... and I am supposed to not hit them? Am I their parent, their sibling? Of course I am not! Yet I am the one blamed when word gets round they have been running about again!'

'Oh, I do feel for you!' Lightstep said, even though she was laughing as she said it. 'But perhaps they take it as a mark of your skill, that you do not hit them.'

'I would rather they sat behind and catcalled or cheered,' he said. 'One of these days, I am sure something bad will happen. And it will be my fault.'

He didn't realise, of course, that all the while he had been sharing his concerns with Lightstep, Brook and Swing and Fern had been swapping glances over his head and wondering what in the name of all the Valar the Einior of Thorion-Shout's village was doing, allowing such a promising youngster to be tormented in such a fashion...

At the waypoint they parted with many assurances of continued friendship. Such promises were always made at these moments, and sometimes, if not often, they held true. But at that moment, none of them knew it for a fact.

'But, Thorion,' Bregon said. 'If I am allowed to take out another group, it would probably be good if I could say I had an excellent knife hand willing to help me... were you asked, would you come out again with me, as my second, perhaps?'

'Would I?' Thorion said, grinning. 'It would be an honour, indeed!'

'Well, we will have to see what the Einior says. But I would like that.'

'And now farewell. For the now, at least.'

The hunters split up, Brook with Thorion, Fern with Lightstep, Swing with Bregon.

'For we will see you safe home, each to your villages. And, Bregon, it means I will be able to speak out for the admirable way you comported yourself, for the skill with which you led your group.'

Thorion saw the trail to home some time that evening with a heavy heart. Brook saw the slump of his shoulders, and smiled.

'There will be someone glad to see you, I hope?'

'Yes – Fasdes and Cadudor, my foster parents. It is just – having been so free, to return to being so careful...'

Brook clapped him on the shoulder. 'Go and hug your naneth – and before you tell me, she is not your naneth, well, she isn't – and yet, she is... hug her anyway. But first lead me to where your hunters live, that I may beg a bed for the night.'

'Of course. But... if you wish, I am sure there will be a place for you at our fireside.'

'I'll think on it, penneth. Ah, who is this?' he asked and an elleth with her hair barely contained in her braids came to the door of a work hut and put her hands to her mouth.

'Naneth,' he said, as Fasdes came forward with arms outstretched hearing the word he used. 'It's my naneth, Fasdes.'

And although he didn't see, when she hugged him, Fasdes was crying, but her eyes, fixed on Brook, were grateful.