Chapter 5
"What will we do with her?"
Legolas lay wrapped in his grey Lorien cloak, open eyes focused not on the stars flickering through the tree-branches, but on deep inner dreams.
"Maybe I should learn to sleep with my eyes open, then there would be no need to set watches, the orcs would run from the sight." Gimli sat by the fire. Eryn slept on her stolen sheepskin, curled around the bundle of pups a few feet from Legolas. Finlos and Ancalinte, were pale snowdrifts just out of reach of the firelight. Thulesilme lay in his den, gleaming eyes watching the dogs.
"Indeed. A Dwarf snoring with his eyes open would terrify even a Nazgul."
"Hmmph! I thought you were asleep."
Legolas sat up. "I was." He looked at the girl. "What did you say?"
"That I think Lin could use another daughter." the Dwarf said with an air of finality.
A line of Elvish flowed forth like a mountain stream.
"I do not have a head full of weasels!" Gimli glared out from under his eyebrows. "And I think that Elves are just jealous that they cannot grow such magnificent beards." He tugged thoughtfully on his forebraids.
"I think I hear the chirping of new hatchlings. Have you combed that lately?"
"Hehh!" Gimli reached for a bit of leftover rabbit. He rose, found another small log, set it on the fire, careful to do it quietly. He cast a glance at the girl, still sleeping.
Legolas saw the look in his eyes, gentle under the gruffness, almost fatherly. He half smiled.
Gimli looked up, his face as set and solid as rock. "It's the sensible thing to do, my friend. She can't wander about the wilderness forever. Her family is gone. Her kin are scattered, she has no idea where they are, if they survived the War of the Ring." He saw the look on his friend's face, like a shadow of the sea-longing; the sad, distant look he got when he heard gulls. "Have you a better idea?"
"Olonnen."
I was dreaming on it. "She would not stay with the settlers."
"Take her back to Minas Tirith then, there are yet Rangers there. Perhaps some who know a second cousin twice removed on her father's side. Or something."
"Urentin cuia eryn." Her heart lives in the woods. "I wonder where her grandfather's folk are?"
"Gone to the Uttermost West, no doubt."
"The Avari refused the Call long ago. They belong to Middle Earth. They seldom get the sea-longing."
"Then they're still here, somewhere? Where?"
"That tale hasn't been sung down through the generations." Legolas stared unblinking into the fire. He missed the wisdom of Ranger and Wizard. Even the earthy common sense of one small Hobbit gardener would be useful now.
"Then she has only a stubborn Elf to care for her." Gimli said.
"And a rock-headed Dwarf."
"Ehh." the rock-headed Dwarf was silent for a moment. "There is also the matter of the goat."
"She needs the goat."
"You cannot simply take someone's livestock without compensation. And it's going to be very difficult explaining to Lin's family how we are using it to raise more "wargs" to eat more of his sheep. Unless you can convince them to prefer leaves and grass."
"They are what they are. Predators. They belong to this forest. They're part of its...gaer galadhremmin ennorath." There were simply no words in the common tongue to explain the concept of how all things were part of the great world tree, a complex tapestry where one pulled thread could unravel all. He thought of the new farms, the clouds of sheep, like the forefront of a storm, sweeping over the grass. The burned clearings, new timbers, trees felled without song. Fangorn and his kin would guard the heart of the forest for a few ages more perhaps, but on the marches of this oldest of all forests of Middle-earth Legolas could see the threads were beginning to come loose.
"When Thulesilme is well again, he'll just go down there and eat more sheep. Unless we take him somewhere else." Gimli said.
"We might. But it would not solve the problem forever, if indeed, he did eat the sheep. There would one day be more sheep farmers, and less forest. And there are the pups."
"All four of them." muttered Gimli.
"If you are going to discuss my fate, you might ask what I thought of the matter!"
Elf and Dwarf turned in surprise to find Eryn glaring at them from under her wild pony mane.
"Some people sleep with their eyes open, I learned to stay awake with mine shut."
Elf and Dwarf exchanged glances. "Aa." Legolas said, "And what would be your choice in the matter?"
She stood, making herself tall. "Not to stay in some settlers' cabin, baking bread and pounding clothes on river rocks."
"Then where would you go?"
"Where I always have. Into the wild. You have no need to be concerned about me."
"Well we are anyway." Gimli said.
Legolas still had a hard time reading the Dwarf's face, so thoroughly covered as it was with hair, but he thought he saw something softer than the usual badgerish stolidness there. "Man pida gurdh?" he asked the girl.
What says your heart? She looked from one to the other, searching the mine-deep eyes of the dwarf, the sea-grey eyes of the elf. "I can sleep on the ground, I'm handy with a bow. I can skin a rabbit, find athelas and other herbs, track a deer, know which mushrooms are safe to eat, and how to care for horses and dogs and..." She paused for breath, trying to read their faces, suddenly unsure of herself. Then the words tumbled out, like puppies from a den
"Take me with you."
Legolas gave her the startled look of a fox who has had a cub pounce on his tail.
"There's much you could show me. How many trees have you seen grow from acorn to ancient giant? How did you get Thulesilme to let you take care of him? How did you find the female, after all the rain? How can you dream with your eyes open? What do trees whisper about? How...
"Ai ai! " he raised a hand, motioning her into silence.
Gimli said, "It wouldn't be proper for a young lady to travel with..."
"I'm no lady." she frowned then, not sure that had come out right.
"Heh." Gimli said, "Perhaps not. No lady would try to turn me into a hedgehog with her arrows, or take a goat without proper payment." He eyed the sheepskin, "And your bedroll does not look like something that was found wandering in the woods."
This Dwarf-face, Legolas could read, it was the kind of face he'd seen on his own father's many a time, when he had not entirely lived up to the King's expectations.
"First," Gimli said, "you need to repay Lin for his goat. Then we will discuss your travel arrangements." His eyebrows sat over his dark eyes like badgers defending their burrows.
"I have no money."
"Then you need to think of another way."
"There is no other way."
"There is always a way, even if one must hack through the side of a mountain and forty-two orcs."
"I need the goat."
"So do they."
"They have many goats, and one other for milk. That one will care for the young of this one. And there are more to come. I saw two who were large with young."
"That's not the point."
Legolas's eyes went from one to the other; more and more this looked familiar. Like the discussion of his father and sister; when she had ridden out over the mountains, without his knowing, losing horse and baggage and nearly her life.
Eryn glared at the Dwarf, turned and sat by the fire again. She reached into her quiver and pulled out a handful of brown-fletched arrows. They were all of the same make; the same brown goose feathers, the same workmanship, only the bands of color under the feathers were different. She laid down three arrows, banded with white, "These I found in the mother of the pups." A half dozen more, banded with red and blue, "These I found at the edge of the forest, near the farm where I got the goat." She looked at Legolas, "Made by the same fletcher, don't you think?"
"Likely."
"I think a goat is not nearly enough payment for the life of Thulesilme." She glared at Gimli again.
"They were defending their herds." Gimli said.
"They don't belong here, in the edge of the wild, with their sheep and their cabbages and corn. They don't know anything about the forest. About galadhremmin ennorath."
Legolas leaned forward, picked up the red and blue-banded arrows. "What creature were these in?"
"None. They lay in the leaf litter by the forest edge. My dogs found them, growling and snarling at them, as if..." she frowned, "But they are the same as the others, and they must have come from that farm."
"The red and blue ones are Cal and Cam's. And the others seem to be made by them, but they did not use the white crest." he looked up at Eryn, "You have dealt with orcs before. What do you know about wargs?"
"Only the stories. Evil spirits wearing wolf shape. I think some followed us once, but Finlos and Ancalinte kept them away. Barely. I saw their eyes glowing from beyond the firelight, they did not act like real wolves. And the dogs growled and snarled all night. If their hair could have stood up, it would have stuck out like a Dwarf's beard in a gale."
"You never shot any?"
"No. Well, yes, but I missed." she looked a bit embarrassed, "I found my arrows the next morning."
"We fought wargs at the feet of the Misty Mountains once. In the morning, only my spent arrows remained." Legolas said.
"You can't kill them?"
"Yes, you can, but they vanish with the sun. The forms their spirits wear are destroyed by the light."
Eryn picked up the red and blue arrows again.
"Cal's tale of two wargs was true, then." Gimli said. "But Thulesilme and his mate must have tried to eat some other farmer's sheep. One who traded for his arrows with Cal or Cam."
"More likely a stupid settler in the woods who could not tell a dog from a deer." Eryn snapped.
Legolas laid the broken shaft from the male alongside Eryn's arrows. They were the same.
"Perhaps someone shot them thinking they saw wargs." Gimli added.
"They do not need to think they see wargs." Eryn said. "They'll kill anything that looks like it might be dangerous, that they do not understand. Would that I could find the one who belonged to this." she picked up one white-striped arrow, eyes as dark as storm clouds.
"What would you do?" Legolas said softly, "Drive off their herds? Burn them out? Kill them in turn?"
She met his eyes and looked quickly away. She stared into the fire for many long heartbeats. Finally she looked up at him, "Well what would you do? You're an Elf of the Wood. Have you not seen what they're doing to this land?"
Ai. He met her grey eyes, then looked away into the fire himself. He had thought no farther than healing Thulesilme and finding the goat thief, and the pups. Seeing them raised, perhaps, and set free where they belonged. Seeing the rest of this great forest, and other places, before he followed the Call and left Middle-earth forever. Bringing some of his folk out of the Greenwood to tarry in the fair province of Ithilien for awhile before they too, answered the call.
When he spoke, his voice was barely louder than leaf-whisper. "I have fought my battles. It's not my world anymore. It is yours. "Man agorthadh?"
What will you do?