Disclaimer: I do not own the Hobbit.
So I admit, this would have gone up sooner if I hadn't decided to watch a certain show. For those of you who haven't seen it, GO WATCH PUSHING DAISIES! It has Lee Pace as a pie maker, how is that not adorkable?! Damn you sassy elf king and your puppy dog eyes.
Anyway, google it people.
Enjoy.
'Stay on the path, stay on the path, stay on ... the path ...'
The poorly kept path they had been walking on lead them around and around, like a snake coiling in the long grass, but it wasn't bringing them closer to their goal. Every once and a while one of the dwarves found a pale flat tile of the Elven Road, but dirty covered them up so well it could have been a common stone leading them astray. This proved to be true, for the 'path' lead to a ravine filled with roots.
They had gotten themselves lost.
The dwarves had disbanded and tried to retrace their steps, but found no sign of the path. Their despair resonated like bells as they looked, and looked ... and looked.
"I don't remember this place. None of it's familiar."
"What hour is it?"
"We don't even know what day it is."
"Is there no end!"
Marie felt her mind slipping as she tried to recall the last time that they had stopped to rest. They must have at some point, the food bag she had been carrying felt lighter. Maybe she had dropped them.
'Stay on the path, stay on ... the path ... what path?'
Marie chanted this phrase over and over while she trudged along behind Bofur, who in turn was blindly following Nori who followed Dwalin. No one was truly leading them at this point, not even Thorin. It was so very hard to tell what time of day it was, for no light could pierce through the canopy.
The forest seemed stuck, like in the Goblin Tunnels. That strange world where life and death were tangled, like webs.
Marie felt dizzy. 'Ring around a rosy, a pocket full of posies.' Had she been playing those silly games again? She must have been dizzy, for she was hearing Radagast's voice in her head.
'Nothing grows anymore, at least nothing good. The air is fouled decay, but worst are the webs.'
Marie's head was splitting open. She could hear everything, from the crunching of leaves she stepped on to the groaning of the trees, if trees could groan.
'Webs ... webs everywhere.'
Even the webs were whispering to her.
She ducked her head as she wiped her brow, and saw her feet going backwards.
She blinked and she was standing still. Hadn't she been walking just a minute ago? No, and five of the dwarves had been waddling aimlessly around one tree. She was just standing there watching them.
'Ring around and around, round and round in a circle ... oh blast it! We're going in circles.'
"Look." Ori stopped the circle and picked something up off the forest floor. Dori took it from him, "A tobacco pouch. There's dwarves in this woods."
"Dwarves from the Blue Mountains no less. This is exactly the same as mine."
"It is yours Bofur." Marie brought her hands to her face and rubbed her eyes until she saw spots. She had to think, but thinking was so hard to do. She rubbed harder to drive out the illusions. "We are lost."
"We're not lost." Thorin growled as he paced back and forth, like an animal trapped in a cage. To Marie he certainly looked the part. "We keep heading east."
"Which way is east? We've lost the sun." Oin said.
The company's angry grumbles grew louder, and they began to shove and pull at eachother. The mounting tension had reached its breaking point.
Marie backed away from the brawl, but she did not see the root protruding out from the ground. Her heel caught on it and she went backwards.
It took an eternity for her to fall. Her arms flailed uselessly before her like the arms of a doll and her vision became clouded with yellow and red. It was like she was falling through water of the Brandywine River as a child, sinking lower and lower into the black and leaving the glistening sunlight above.
Her delusions were literally knocked out of her when her head finally collided with the ground. The world went silent and all Marie could do was look up at the canopy in a moment of well needed clarity.
'That's it. The sun, we need to find the sun.'
Beyond the dark canopy above them, there was the sun. All Maire needed to do was get past it.
A shadow loomed before her face and Marie weakly lifted her hand to brush it away, but she was surprised when another hand took it and pulled her up. It didn't take long for her recognize the familiar grip, and the tickling of fur against her nose when she collided with the hand's owner.
Twice Thorin had offered his hand and twice Marie had taken it without a second thought.
'No time for that Marie. Remember, sun, the east, very important.'
She gave a little shake of her head and her hearing returned, only the sound of angry jabs and dwarvish insults from the others were muffled.
Her head was throbbing from the pain and she unwittingly resting her forehead against Thorin's chest. This must have surprised him and Marie could feel his hand hover at the back of her head.
Thorin said something, but Marie couldn't make it out what over another noise. Not from the dwarves, but the whispers again.
"Do you hear that?" She muttered.
Thorin shifted his body away from her causing Marie to wobble on her feet.
'Wait, do go ... what?' Marie was surprised at herself and began tapping the side of her temple to knock out the thought.
"Quiet!" Thorin's voice broke through the muffled wall in Marie's ears with a sharp pop. "We're being watched."
The dwarves went deadly quiet.
Marie too this opportunity to take some action and quickly selected a tree. With great haste she began to climb.
"Miss Marie what are you doing there?" Balin asked with a quizzical look. Marie paused and looked back down at him. The forest didn't appear to have affected him as strongly as the others and her had his wits about him, Marie hoped he did.
The others still seemed lost as they blankly stared up at her, except Thorin who looked more frustrated.
"We need to know where we are. If we don't, we are going to end up killing one another before too long."
"Well yes but ..."
"I'm faster. I'll be back in a moment."
"But Miss Mar ..."
"Don't move from here or you'll get even more lost."
Marie resumed her ascent and hurried up the trunk, leaving a very confused bunch of dwarves behind.
"Miss Marie! Be careful!"
The hobbit did not take her time climbing like she used to, she did so with as much speed as she could muster. She could already feel her mind succumbing to the forest's poisonous air once again. She dug her fingers into the tree and pulled herself up and up, regardless if she could feel some unspecified liquid that oozed out when she pulled away the black bark.
She was running out of time, the wooziness was taking hold of her, making her eyelids droop.
She reached the top and pushed frantically through the leaves. The light hit her face and drew from her all the poison. Her fatigue faded as she breathed in the fresh air greedily and looked around. The whole canopy was a great field of red, topped with the golden sky of the sunset and thousands of dark blue butterflies dancing across the canopy.
For the first time since entering Mirkwood, Marie finally saw something beautiful.
"I ... see a lake!" She called out, hoping the dwarves could hear her. "And a river ... just ahead of us!" That was not all she could see. "There's the Lonely Mountain! We're almost there!"
There was no response from below.
"Hello?! I know which way to go!"
Still nothing.
'Don't tell me they wandered off?'
She finally heard something. A branch snapping somewhere below. Marie moved the leaves about to see what had made that noise but was distracted by one of the trees in the distance, swaying violently.
"That's odd." Marie squinted to see better in the glare of the sunset. Whatever it was, it was coming right at her very quickly. Marie panicked a little and ducked back up the canopy but lost her footing. She had stepped on something slippery which propelled her forward and right back down into the forest. She plummeted down into what she thought to be her doom, but she landed not on the ground but in a web.
It was spread across two trees like a net, sticking to her legs and arms and hair as she struggled to sit up. How had she missed all the webs on her way up?
The sound of another branch snapping made her stop wriggling and look up. Out of the masses of white webs that were strung through the trees, a giant spider with an inky black hide crawled out and came down towards Maire. Unlike any spider she had ever seen, it hiss and screeched as it came closer and closer with large sharp pincers bared at her
The spider landed right above her, trapping her between eight long legs and six pairs of beady eyes bearing down on her.
In the present circumstances it would perfectly normal for anyone with an innate fear of spider to cry. Marie did and she felt she was acting out a childhood nightmare, only this was real.
She would have been screaming bloody murder but she was hyperventilating terribly. All that came out were wheezes and half baked sobs as she tried even more earnestly to free herself. She managed to free one arm and her small sword from the sheath but her body pulsed with so much fear and adrenaline that all she could do was shake. She was suffocating on her screams, her heart was racing.
As the spider tossed and turned her, wrapping her up into a cocoon with its limbs, Marie was trapped in the midst of a panic attack.
Her eyes rolled back in her skull and she was falling again, sinking back in the dark abyss.
xxxx
Marie couldn't remember exactly when her fear of spiders started.
Perhaps it was that time when climbing the Party Tree when she was ten, and she had stumbled across a nest. Or when she had been gardening with her father and was bitten on her fourteenth birthday. Or it was that one nightmare as a little girl that did it.
Whatever the incident that triggered her fear, it didn't matter. She was dead anyway.
Was she dead? She was still thinking, and breathing too.
She sent a thought to her big toe, which twitch in response.
As she came further out of her state of shock, she heard a clicking noise and felt her back scrapping along something. Her heart rate started picking up again, but she quickly stopped it getting any faster with some calm breaths and opened her eyes.
She tried to assess what had happened after she fainted and where she was now, which proved difficult to do as she was covered her to toe in a web cocoon. She could vaguely make out the branches above her head but clearly saw the giant spider that had caught her press its pincers right into her face.
Marie panicked again and bit her tongue to shut out the fear, letting the foul insect walk over her. Her fingers tightened around the hilt of her sword that lay against her thigh, and when she could take it anymore her arm shot up. The spider shrieked as the blade cut through its middle, its legs twitched and curled in pain. Marie used the sword to push the eight legged creature off her and over the edge of the tree branch she had been dragged across.
With the deed done, Marie sat up and quickly peeled slippery cocoon off her, shivering in disgust.
'Now ... where am I?'
The hobbit glanced up and saw that the branches she had been looking at housed more than just more webs and dead leaves. Marie clasped a hand over her mouth to stop any noises from coming out. It was an enormous nests teaming with many, larger spiders hauling in other cocoons. To Marie's horror, they were the unconscious forms of the dwarves.
The grip on her mouth tightened as she crawled awkwardly along the brand to hide behind the trunk, and not a moment too soon as one of the spiders crawled up the tree behind her. Marie tasted blood on her tongue as her teeth bit into her palm. Its legs came within inches of her shoulders.
'It's okay Marie, it's okay, just don't scream. They can't see you.'
She removed her hand from her mouth.
A thought came into her head, and it involved her ring.
She reached into her pocket, her finger passing over the iron key and map before she found it, still shining bright with its untold secrets as she brought it to her face. After the last incident, it may have been a terrible idea to use it, but if she did not do something ... the imagery alone made Marie squirm. The growls and clicking was getting more frantic inside the nest.
She closed her eyes and slipped the ring onto her middle finger.
This time if felt like she had taken a deep breath as the magic enveloped her, shocking her system like cold water but bringing with it chills that awoke her senses.
"Kill them, kill them now."
Marie's eyes shot open. Had she heard correctly?
"Eat them. Eat them now."
She stood a crept closer to the nest as the last of the dwarves had been strung up. It couldn't have been the spiders. Spiders don't talk.
"Eat them now while the blood is running."
"Their hide is tough but there's good juice inside"
Marie stood corrected. The spiders were indeed talking.
"Stick it again. Stick it again,"
"Yes, again, Again. Stick it again."
One of the cocoons shook and a large foot kicked one of the spiders. If Maire had to take a guess, she would say that Bombur.
"The meats alive and kicking."
"Stick it again."
"Come. Let us feast."
"Feast! Feast!"
"FEAST!"
The spiders swarmed from every corner and every shadow, causing Marie's fight or flight instincts to kick in, but fear for her companions outweighed her anxiety issues and she felt driven to act. She looked around at her feet and found only bones.
She grabbed one and tossed it into the forest, where it crashed and fell to the earth. The noise caught the spiders' attention.
"What is it?"
"What is it?"
"Feast?"
"What is it?"
They crawled out of the nest and hurried to find the bone. Marie ducked down to avoid a collision with one that climbed the branch above her head.
They were gone
All but one.
Bombur was trying to get loose from his sticky trap when the spider slunk down from above, all six of its eyes full of greed for the plump dwarf. The spider had its back to the hobbit as it turned him with its two front legs.
"Fat and juicy. Just a little taste."
The adrenaline coursing through Marie forced her hand before she knew what to do. She hacked at the spider's thorax and cut off a large chunk of it. The spider gave a blood curdling cry and turned, screaming right into Marie's face. Her sword bounced off its pincers as she tried it cut it again, but her second attempt was more successful with the removal of the end on its legs.
The spider tried to fight back, but it wasn't easy to hit something you can't see.
"Curses! Where is it?! Where is it?!"
Marie gripped the pommel with both hands good and tight as she remembered a striking method Fili had shown her. She raised the sword to eye level with the point direct at the spider, and in that moment she viewed the spider as the embodiment of her fear and drove the blade into its head.
"AAHHGGG!IT STINGS! SSSTTTINGSS!"
Marie yanked the sword out as the spider fell from the nest. Its carcass made a loud thud once it finally reached the ground. Marie removed the ring and the world went back to normal. She felt strangely giddy. She had stared her fear right in the eye, all six of them, and came out triumphant.
"Sting huh? Not bad." She held up her sword, the blade was soaked with thick tawny coloured blood. "Very well then, Sting you shall evermore be."
She used the newly dubbed String to cut down the dwarves down from the nest, whilst keeping an ear and eye out for the spiders lest they came back. As the last of the cocoons fell, Marie peered over the nest's edge to observe. The webs allowed for a safe, slow decent to the ground where the company groaned on impacted and wriggled around like white caterpillars. Only instead of butterflies, thirteen disorientated dwarves emerging from the cocoons.
"What happened? Disgusting what is this?"
"How did I end up upside down?"
"Where's Marie?"
The hobbit in question opened her mouth to call down to the dwarves, but yelped as another spider suddenly appeared. It lunged, forcing Marie backwards to evade the pincers. She stabbed the spider's belly, but as it fell its legs trapped Mare in its embraces to take her with it.
It branch the spider hit jolted the poor hobbit's small body violently and knocked the air out of her. With a final crunch the spider landed and Marie climbed out of its legs. She groaned and rubbed her tail bone.
'Falling? Why must it always be falling?
It dawned on Marie that she was rubbing her behind with the hand she had been holding her ring with, but she didn't have it in her hand now.
She padded herself down nervously.
"Where is it?" She couldn't have lost it. Not now.
'No no no no no no NO! My ring! Where is it?' She dropped to her knees and searched the forest floor for it, dread gnawing at her mind. She had to have her ring back.
Nothing else mattered anymore, not until she found the ring.
Her head snapped up, like her name had been called, and she saw a glint of gold just a few feet away. Marie smiled, but that smile did not last. The earth under one of the tree shifted and a grotesque beast with a body like a centipede crawled out. It whole back was covered in a white shell, all the way over its head and down its spear like legs. As it came in full view of the forest's dull light, its legs tapped at the gold ring with dumb innocence.
"Stop touching it." Marie seethed, but the creature did not head her. This riled within Maire anger like no other. A powerful biting sensation, possessive and wild that only grew with the creature's ignorant prodding at the ring.
She raised her sword and with it charged at the strange beast with brutal force, slamming the elvish steel on the hard shell. Guttural noises passed through her gritted teeth as she hacked aimlessly, praying that she would break through the tough hide and kill the creature before it took her ring.
Maire slipped Sting under its neck and slid it under the shell. With that she plunged the sword into the soft flesh of the neck. The creature shrieked pathetically as it bled out quickly, but Marie didn't care. All she saw was the ring. She plucked it up from under the creature greedily and whispered to it, "Mine."
Marie blinked in surprise. Her voice did not sound like her own.
'Wait ... what was I ...?"
When she could pull her gaze from the band of gold, she observed just what she had done.
The shattered shell, the dismembered limbs all over the ground, blood on her hands. She did all this?
'What have I done?'
She wanted to blame the ring, desperately, but she couldn't bring herself to and she didn't know why. What came over her? Maddness?
She had been so driven by her rage she had failed to hear the sounds of battle and the cries of dwarven commands coming from just beyond the thicket. One voice, in all its gruff distress, stood out the most to her and made her stomach churn.
"Thorin."