Chapter Forty-Four: Bungo and Mahal
T.A. 2903 Yavanna's Fields
Death, Bungo thinks upon opening his eyes, has a way of bringing a lot of life's little details into sharp focus without leaving him with the need to tie himself in knots to justify it all. It's done and there is nothing more to do about itt, no one else left to answer to and no more changes to make.
He was not, he thinks as he relaxes back into too lush grass, a good husband. Nor was he a particularly good father. He knew what he was getting into with Belladonna when he approached her, intellectually anyway. He had seen similar situations play out as a child in couples who had married for money or security only to discover the other side of their life-bond. He had witnessed the collapse of more than one marriage but had, foolishly, believed that it would not end the same way for him. Belladonna's dwarf had rejected her, after all, and it was likely she would never see him again.
That had been his first mistake.
His mother had expended a great deal of energy telling him that this marriage was a fool's dream. Doubtless she will spend much of the afterlife doing the same. Belladonna would not, could not, love him as she did Frerin. They had been made for one another after all, and that left no room for a third. On some level, however, she had loved Bungo and he had loved her. He had wanted his marriage to work and not just because he had needed an heir and the respectable image that went with it.
Belladonna was strikingly beautiful, if a little thin, and somehow her wildness (which he later came to resent in mother and daughter both) only served to make her more attractive. Her sorrow, heart break, had been a good way to ease himself into her life and in some ways, he made himself indispensable to her. Made her laugh instead of cry, paid little compliments to boost her confidence and listened attentively to her stories even when they horrified him. In short, he did everything in his power to makes her love for the dwarf transfer to him, aided by Frerin's own reluctance to stand up to his family or accept that Belladonna might be trying to move on.
She never really did.
Even though she didn't talk to Frerin until she was nearly ready to bring Bluebell into the world the dwarf remained a key part of her life. One he came to resent more and more after the first letter became several and then they turned into visits. His daughter, his own flesh, began to idolise the dwarf prince and adore Frerin above her own kind, her own kin.
She was a child and Frerin was the hero of so many of Belladonna's stories. A hero who clearly adored the faunt and indulged her in all the ways an uncle could. He should have seen and understood it, but his own jealousy hadn't allowed it. Jealousy fuelled by the rumour mill of the Shire, by the accusations of affairs even though he trusted his wife. It soured his relationship with both wife and daughter and created a distance between them that, even had he survived, he could never have bridged.
He had become bitter and angry and it had destroyed his relationship even with Bluebell long before he had uttered those words.
"I am sorry, Bungo," a voice says, and a woman sits beside him. She is tall, beautiful, and his mind supplies her name without prompting.
"Lady," he replies respectfully.
"I never wished this pain upon you," she tells him, "but it was necessary."
"Necessary?"
"Yes. Bluebell had to be born, and her life-bonded mate will join her to improve the future for hobbits and dwarves."
Bungo sighs, it had to be a dwarf.
T.A. 2941 Elsewhere
These children are in a terrible state, Mahal thinks as he looks at the unconscious dwarf and hobbit. Too thin, too tired, poisoned by the earth and the stone that should sustain them and weakened by that which brought them here to make the Choice. The Arkenstone shrieks when he picks it up, the sound of a half dozen enraged voices.
"I don't know why you're angry with me," he says mildly as he turns the stone over. "I'm not the one that caused all of this." Although perhaps things would have been better if they hadn't interfered in the first place. It was done for the best then, as it will be now.
"We should never have let it get this far," his wife says as she joins him. All they can do, for the moment, is wait for their guests to wake.
Fortunately, in this place, time means only as much as they need it to.
"There's nothing we could have done differently," he replies. "The only thing left is to try to fix the damage done."
They wait patiently and, typically, it is the girl who wakes first. It is gratifying to see that she checks on her companion first, although hardly a surprise given the amount of work they put into making these two. The boy wakes easily under her touch and they spend a minute taking stock of each other until they realise they aren't where they started and they are being watched.
"Are we dead?" She asks.
It isn't unreasonable and nor would it be the first time a couple has met here to chose which afterlife they would enter. This time, however, it gives Mahal a great deal of pleasure to answer in the negative.
"You are here because there is something we need to ask you to do, and some answers you deserve," Yavanna replies, she has always been better at this part. "Come, see."
She waves them over, leading them to a large silver basin filled with a mist that swirls with all the colours of the world. As they gaze into it the mist clears, leaving only a liquid that slowly becomes an image, and they can see a column of weary dwarves approaching the mountain in the earliest days of its colonisation.
"Hobbits!" Bluebell exclaims as her ancient ancestors greet Fili's. The focus shifts enough to show a meeting between a young dwarf with eyes of pure mithril and a hobbit maid who bears the same indigo orbs as Bluebell.
"That's Algirk Stonesinger!" Fili exclaims. "Frerin used to tell us about him. They said that his Stone Sense was so powerful he never died, he just became part of the mountain. They never mentioned any hobbits, though."
"Of course they didn't," Yavanna hisses. "A great many of my husband's children went to a lot of effort to erase mine from your history."
"A lot of yours did the same," Mahal replies mildly.
"Yours started it," she says, a little petulantly but he knows better than to call her on it. Her people aren't as hardy as his and suffered greatly for far longer while looking for a new home.
"Bringing your people together began as a solution to a couple of problems. They were of our making, but they were problems all the same." He decides to get them back on track. The image in the basin shifts to show a wedding, small and intimate in the way of dwarves, but with an abundance of flowers and several other touches that also mark it as a hobbit wedding.
"The marriage of Liliana Tuck and Algirk, son of Ulirk," Yavanna says. Fili scrunches his face as though he's considering objecting but holds his tongue. "It was the first of many such unions and its effects were two-fold. My children, who have never been warriors, gained allies who would protect them, and the dwarves birth rate increased until their population was growing rather than declining."
"Orcs invaded only fifty years after Erebor was settled," Mahal takes up the story. "Algirk and Liliana had seven young children of their own in the mountain and the war was going badly. Erebor was newly settled, many of her occupants were too young or poorly suited to fighting and many of the hobbits fell ill due to being cut off from the earth that sustained them. It didn't matter how many warriors Liliana's people healed or how high and thick they coaxed the trees and bushes around the mountain. Nor did it matter how bravely Durin's folk fought and how quickly Algirk and his people shaped the stone. The orcs were too many and they were winning."
Fili is obviously familiar with some version of this story but Mahal doubts that it is the true one. More than likely all he has ever been told is that the dwarves eventually won, that Algirk used the song of the stone to defeat the threat to their home and that is how he got his name.
"It was the death of their only son, after the loss of three of their daughters, that prompted Algirk and Liliana to ask us for help," Yavanna's voice is quiet, regretful, and Mahal reaches for her hand in support. "It was forbidden, of course, for us to help directly but we hinted that if they worked together, they might touch the living heart of the mountain and convince Erebor, herself, to help. We miscalculated."
Their guests watch as a wave of while light sweeps from the mountain reducing the orcs to twisted wrecks. The hobbits and dwarves, however, all appear to be healed of their injuries and they stumble around the decimated enemy with faint expressions of horror on their faces, horror which is reflected in the faces of the young ones now watching. The focus shifts to a cavern that Mahal knows they must recognise as the throne room of Erebor. It has a great, unshaped column of dark stone and gold rising from the centre, and Algirk and Liliana stand before it with one hand each on the stone and one holding the other tightly. Mahal can see the moment Fili and Bluebell recognise the glow coming from them as the same light which shines from the Arkenstone.
"What did they do?" Bluebell whispers, stepping into Fili's arms as she stares.
"They woke the mountain," he replies, "and they became part of her as a result."
He lifts the Heart of the Mountain into their line of sight. It's quiet now and the light of it has dimmed from an angry shine to a patient glow. His wife touches the stone with a light finger and, slowly, the colours drain from it until nothing more than a dark rock remains and the indistinct forms of three hobbits and the same number of dwarves stand before them.
"We travelled extensively after the war was over," Liliana takes up the tale, and her voice carries the strange echo that comes from the dead. "We realised that we weren't aging as we should be and when we were inside the mountain we were joined so completely that our joys and our sorrows affected her. We stopped travelling when our granddaughter married into Durin's line and the longer we stayed in the mountain, the more we became part of her. Until, one day, we woke up and we were the mountain. It was the price we paid for her help."
"And as long as there were hobbits and dwarves in and around the mountain the land was safe and healthy," Yavanna smiles. "Two other pairs had to join with her heart to protect Erebor and her inhabitants in the early days, but after that the people and the mountain flourished."
"But the dwarves left," Bluebell points out, "and Legolas told us that the hobbits migrated not long after."
"None of this is taught in our history," Fili insists. "Algirk Stonesinger has become a story for dwarflings. Bluebell's people have no knowledge of any of it either, she told me it was all lost."
"In every race there are those who believe they are superior," Mahal sighs. "They believe that the other races are lesser, and that purity is more important than prosperity."
"The ones that think that usually have too much wealth anyway," Fili snorts.
"Indeed," Mahal grins at him. "One such group gained a great deal of influence over the council of Erebor in the years leading up to their migration to Ered Mithrin. They went to a lot of effort to eliminate as much evidence of the alliance with the hobbits as possible. They even went to the extreme of delaying their departure just long enough to advise the Men who were settled in the area of certain talents the hobbits had. I believe it was done with the express purpose of driving the hobbits away, just in case the Grey Mountains proved unviable. They couldn't remove the hobbit blood in their own lines, but they could prevent more being added in the future."
"And my people hid our history with the dwarves to prevent any of us from coming back in case the Men remembered and tried to exploit us," Bluebell concludes sadly.
"Yes, child," Yavanna nods.
"But the Arkenstone felt so angry," she says. "You hated us," she directs this to Liliana, the only one of the shades to have spoken. The ancient hobbit woman smiles sadly at her.
"We lost half of our children," Liliana replies. "And we were forgotten by the other half when they finally returned to us. We were sad for a long time, and without the hobbits the land sickened and mourned. But we would have recovered, in time, had our heart not been found and cut from us. Our hobbit children were gone, but we still had our dwarves and they still loved us." Her face is wistful, sad, and so terribly lonely. "We thought they still loved us."
"But how could they?" Algirk continues, his voice an angry snarl. "How could they when they had forgotten us? They found our heart, cut it out and shaped it. They had forgotten everything. They forgot our sacrifice, forgot our truth, forgot everything we had to give so that they would have a safe home."
"They hurt us," another hobbit adds, "chipped away at us and removed tiny parts of us. They reduced us, called us the Heart of the Mountain, the Arkenstone, and turned us into nothing more than an empty symbol."
"We tried to call to them," the final hobbit says and she's easily the angriest of all of them. "But they couldn't hear, they wouldn't hear. They took our children, they abandoned us, they forgot us. They destroyed us. So, we abandoned them. We stopped keeping them safe."
"You called the dragon," Fili's voice is horrified.
"We did. We called the dragon and decimated the land," another dwarf says, his ears have slight points to them making his hobbit heritage clear. "To punish the Men too, for helping drive the hobbits away, and to give us peace, to let us rest."
"We will spend eternity in that mountain!" The last one roars. "We should have been remembered!"
"Mahal," Fili breathes.
"Yes?" He replies and grins when the boy flinches. Such levity is out of place in the circumstances, but he's been ever the opportunist. "Forgive me, I haven't had the chance to do that in far too long."
"Being remembered isn't what it's about!" Bluebell sounds stricken. "You were supposed to keep them safe. It didn't matter if they remembered you or not, you were there to watch over them! All those people! All that pain!" She begins to weep in her lover's arms and Fili glares at them as he holds her.
"Why are you telling us this?" He demands. "It can't just be so that someone knows the truth."
"It's so we can fix this," Yavanna says. "The land around the mountain is all but dead. Without the Arkenstone the taint will continue to spread and draw in more dark creatures unless it is stopped."
"What can we do?" Bluebell turns teary eyes onto the stone and Mahal sees understanding fill them. "You want us to join with it. You need Fili and I to become part of the mountain too."
"In part," Mahal nods. "We also need you, Bluebell, to convince some of your people to return. Enough of them to begin again, to heal the land as Fili and others like him will heal the stone. We need you two to help us begin once more and make it all as it should have been."
He watches the pair exchange long looks, then breathes a sigh of relief when they nod their agreement.
"How do we do it?" Fili asks.