Author's note: I have nothing important to say at the moment, other than
imploring you to review my story. The lack of reviews is rather depressing,
particularly since it takes me ages to type up each of these chapters.
Happy reading. Peace, love, and Baggins!
Disclaimer: I own naught. My best friend Linda owns me. (Heeheeheehee, feel special, Linda! ~^.^~)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~ ~*~Chapter 3~*~
Quivering, clutching her best friend's arm, overcome with terror, Libby watched the other members of their small traveling band with wide blue-gray eyes as she silently willed the accursed black forms to leave. She bitterly hoped that they would miraculously depart, leaving the seven travelers in peace.
Unfortunately, this was not the case. The black shapes continued to advance, drawing their swords. Libby gulped, desperately wishing she and April were armed. Fists certainly would not suffice in this case. Libby had taken self-defense in gym, but she somehow thought that the "rules" were different if the other had a weapon and she didn't. In other words, we're screwed unless April or I somehow twist a sword away from them.. Best we can do is stab them back with our fading strength.
April was hardly less petrified than her blonde counterpart, and her small fists were trembling. She yearned to go in for a punch, but felt as if an invisible force were rooting her to the spot where she should. Her knees felt like jelly, and her legs trembled as she struggled to remain upright. On a sudden impulse, she seized a hold of Libby's right wrist, gripping for dear life. Her friend's fingers curled in response, gripping her back around the dully-spiked bracelet on April's own wrist, making small indentations in her palms.
Merry and Pippin, the two youngest hobbits in the group, the youngest beside herself and April, launched themselves flat on the ground. For a fleeting second, Libby was tempted to follow suit, before common sense informed her that that action would be to no avail. Instead, the two were forced to helplessly witness the attack, still clutching each others' wrists in death grips. Sam shrank to the side of the hobbit Frodo, who was visibly shivering as if suddenly finding himself thrust into a cold climate without a coat. Suddenly, shockingly, Frodo seemed to disappear into thin air. April was still watching Merry and Pippin, feeling pity for the two Halflings while feeling as if she would fall to pieces from dread, but Libby was staring at the empty space which Frodo had been standing just a moment before, flabbergasted. She had just enough composure remaining for her jaw to drop in a gape at the discombobulating spectacle.
The five towering figures, which appeared to be empty cloaks, immediately headed for the vacant space. Sam suddenly tumbled to the turf, either from being knocked aside or his knees buckling, as one of the fell creatures passed him by. April blinked to see if her eyes were in working order, wondering why it had left Sam in peace in lieu of ending the hobbit's life on Middle-Earth that very instant. Was her illness jumbling her mind again? She did not notice Libby fall forward onto her knees as they gave way, no longer able to support her weight.
After hearing what sounded like a high-pitched shriek of death, which Libby thought was imprisoned in her own head, a hallucination of the panic, Strider had leapt forward, a flaming torch in both his hands, lighting the cloaks of the deadly figures aflame. Libby's mouth was still agape, her expression shocked. It was April's voice that brought her back to the present, rousing her from her trance.
"Are. are y-you okay?" April stammered, looking dreadfully shaken, her Asian complexion sallow with fear. She pulled Libby to her feet- to her surprise, Libby realized that her knees had given way on her and she hadn't even felt the lurch of discomfort as her overused joints struck the ground. The tremulous tenderness returned in full measure to the shins, shooting down from her knees, slightly exacerbated from hitting the stone, as April had helped her stand back up. Merry, Sam, and Pippin had also extracted themselves from the ground, and Pippin started pacing around, perhaps hoping he could rid himself of the horror of what had just occurred merely by walking it off.
"Yah!" Pippin had suddenly staggered over something, and was now lying flat on his face. His friend Merry pulled him up and gave a gasp of horror after seeing what Pippin had literally stumbled over. It was Frodo, and he appeared lifeless from the angle in which Libby and April were standing. He was motionless, and didn't appear to be breathing. The hobbit was facedown on the grass, and his sword was underneath his prone figure. The senseless hobbit appeared deathly pale, and a twisting of the features conveyed the message that the hobbit had suffered severe pain upon fainting or dying, whichever he had done..
"Mr. Frodo! Oh, my master!" Sam had given an anguished cry. "Oh no, oh, dear! What are we to do?" The horrified hobbit's face was haggard, worry outlined in his face. The small creature dropped to his knees, bending over his friend's limp form, seizing a hold of Frodo's hands. "His left hand- it's very cold!" The hobbit Merry prodded it with his finger, and his heart sank as he found that Sam was right. The small hand felt as if it had been freshly drawn out of a vat of a substance colder than ice, liquid nitrogen or such.
"My- God," Libby muttered with discomfiture, gazing at the unconscious figure of Frodo Baggins, still in a state of shock. "He's not dead, is he?" the tall blonde added fearfully, voicing the dread everyone else shared. Aragorn swiftly walked over to the bunch of companions and bent over Frodo, studying the hobbit intensely. The Ranger passed a hand over Frodo's cyanotic lips to seek the faintest whisper of breath, and cautiously explored the whole of the small body with his eyes and hands. One gently prodding finger discovered a small tear in his shirt on the left shoulder. The Ranger felt a nefarious sort of sense radiating form the area, his Numenorean ancestry coming into play with this activated sixth sense. Drawing aside the slightly travel-worn cloak and tunic, Strider revealed what appeared to be a small puncture wound on his left shoulder with blood slowly oozing from it at a rate slower than expected from a stab wound in that region. Ripping off a clean piece of cloak, Aragorn applied gentle pressure to the wound to stave off the hemorrhaging flow of blood. The leakage let up relatively quickly, almost as if what Frodo had obtained was merely a small slash from paper or aluminum foil.
"He's not dead, but alas, he is in a very bad way," Strider purported brusquely, stroking the left arm of Frodo, which already had an additional cold feeling to it. "Pick him up, somebody, Libby, April, Merry, Pippin, Sam, one of you, and lay him near the fire. I'll return presently." With a shrewd glance lingering on April and Libby, Strider debated whether to ask the two girls to accompany him. The Ranger was unsure whether to have confidence in Libby Artlong and April Neverton, and was pondering whether they ought to be left alone with the hobbits and the helpless Frodo. Suddenly realizing that the girls, unlike the hobbits, were unarmed, he decided that if they did have ill intentions and attempted anything, Merry, Sam, or Pippin would be able to resolve that without much effort, as they had the swords. "Be careful, all of you." At that, Strider disappeared into the blackness of night.
Libby attempted to lift Frodo by herself, as she was the tallest and weighed the most of all there, but found that Frodo was too heavy for her to lift easily, unaided. She was thin, despite her weight, as most of her weight came from the density of her bones and her powerful legs. She definitely had some noticeable flab on her, predominantly around the midriff and her arms, but she was nevertheless thin. "April, help me!" April came over and helped Libby lift Frodo off the ground, and then the black-haired girl bore most of Frodo's dead weight in her arms while Libby supported him so April wouldn't inadvertently drop him. They began ambling towards the fire at a dawdling pace, for Libby was obliged to bend down pretty far so her arms would be at the same level as her considerably shorter friend. When the girls came to the fireside, April and Libby gently sank to their knees and set Frodo on the ground. The hobbit's head lolled to the side and he did not stir. Merry, Pippin, and Sam followed them and the five companions bent over their motionless friend. Frodo did not appear much better even from the heat; his face was beginning to have a sallow hue to it. Libby noticed that Frodo's diminutive fist seemed to be clutching something tightly, but she decided that she didn't really care what it was. Perhaps Frodo, not unlike herself, had the tendency to clench his fists when angry or in pain. The blonde often had hints of nail-marks in her palms from her form of anger management. More than usual lately, Libby had found herself clenching her fists, fighting back the urge to sock a solid object such as her bookcase at home.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After what seemed like ages of speculations about what would happen to the injured hobbit, Frodo began to sob slightly, more of the small vestige of color departing from his already anemic face. Libby thought that he seemed to be coming to, but the hobbit appeared to be in the throes of a nightmare, thrashing and moaning. Libby rested her hand on Frodo's left arm, and with a jerk of her stomach, she noticed that it was stone cold. This was most likely what the others had spoken of previously. Recoiling, she thoughtfully mused, "I think we ought to add more wood to the fire," thinking that perhaps the sick hobbit was catching a chill. Merry and Pippin immediately got to their feet, in order to fetch some more wood. Pippin, who had been sitting between Merry and Libby, didn't noticed that Libby's legs were stretched out straight in front of her, and he accidentally blundered over the tall girl's right ankle. "AIEE!" Libby began grousing impulsively, before April clapped a hand over her mouth. Taking a deep breath, Libby managed to calm down and ignore the fresh wave of pain in her shin.
"Oh, dear, I'm sorry, Libby, I wasn't watching where I was going," Pippin said. Libby struggled to her feet and patted Pippin on the top of his head. "It's okay, Pippin, really, I'll help you guys out." Merry, Pippin, and Libby began walking around the environs, leaving April and Sam to watch Frodo. The three of them began picking up large piles of sticks and firewood, the three walked back to the fire. When they returned within earshot of Sam and April, Merry suddenly realized that Libby appeared to be walking with a limp. It was the second or third time he'd spotted her walking in an odd manner within the twelve or so hours they'd been together.
"Excuse me, Libby, but why do you walk so oddly?" Merry asked, his brown eyes staring at Libby's steps. She seemed to be favoring her right ankle over her left, and trying to conceal it.
Libby forced a hollow chuckle. She knew she was shuffling her steps and her ankle was spastically turning inward every now and then, but she wasn't about to fall into her habit of complaining with Frodo lying by the fire showing no signs of life besides his rapid, shallow breaths. "Oh, I dunno, I didn't know I was walking weirdly."
Pippin's hazel eyes also noticed Libby's wobbly gait, and he knew she wasn't being entirely truthful about how she was walking. "I didn't hurt you, did I, Libby? I'm sorry if I did."
Libby gave Pippin a strained smile. "No, you didn't, it's okay, I'm okay" She quickened her steps and threw the entire pile of firewood onto the pile where she'd formerly been sitting, busying herself with tossing each piece of wood one by one on the fire. She was no expert at living in the wilderness; her only experience had been the week and a half of living at Camp Star Lake, one of the more annoying weeks of her life. She had not appreciated sleeping on the wooden floor of a lean-to in a sleeping bag much too short for her. It would have suited someone of April's stature well, but even though Libby had only been thirteen then, she had already hit the height of five-foot-six and a half, which was certainly taller than the average woman. Mosquitoes, campfires, wood-gathering, preparing food, five-minute showers, and the lack of a soft mattress was not a sort of lifestyle that agreed with somebody of Libby's temperament, which was on the priggish side. This situation she was in now, in comparison, made Camp Star Lake look like a five-star hotel. This time, mortal danger was in the mix, none of them had sufficient warmth other than the fire, and rations were scanty. This was like her NJROTC textbook's survival unit come to life- if only she had bothered to memorize the chapter doing the term paper, rather than just altering the text from the book and selecting random facts!
"That's because she was already hurt from yesterday.," April put in, getting up and starting to help Merry and Pippin with the wood. When the wood had all been piled onto the flames, the whole lot of them knelt around Frodo, once more.
"What did you do, Libby?" Pippin asked, to break the foreboding silence as all gazed upon Frodo's prone form.
"What do you mean?" Libby asked, frowning, having put the conversation about her limp out of her mind as she gazed upon the unconscious hobbit's small body, silently willing him to come around.
"How'd you hurt yourself yesterday?" Merry added, obviously wondering the same thing as his other half, Pippin.
"Well, let's just say I speed walked a little too hard," Libby replied curtly. Yes I still wasn't good enough.
"Why did you walk too fast?" Merry asked. Libby frowned, thinking that Merry was implying that she'd stumbled deliberately.
"I kind of had to, it was a race with rather high stakes!" Libby repeated impatiently. She wasn't a huge fanatic when it came to repeating herself, and she had thought that saying that it was speed walking too fast was kind of obvious. Merry reminded Libby of her inquisitive friend Traci, whom Libby loved to death, but often was annoyed by when she sought a bit too much detail for Libby's liking.
Merry frowned, seeming a little put-off by Libby. He was still confused, but decided against asking more questions, as Libby was evidently in a standoffish mood. "I'm sorry, Merry, I'm just so scared." Libby said, biting her lip. Once again, her temper had gotten the better of her, and in front of somebody she barely even knew! That was sure to give a good impression of her mien.
"Hey, I think Frodo is waking," Sam said, speaking for the first time in a long while after he had recounted a black shadow slithering past him, his voice filled with utmost relief. It was true, Frodo's blue eyes had just flickered open, pained and confused.
The ashen hobbit stared blankly up at his companions, who were bending over him, through a kind of mist, and then he spoke, making no sense whatsoever. "What has happened? Where is the pale king?" he asked, going wild-eyed
Libby gawped at Frodo, perplexed. "S-sorry? I'm sorry, you're just making no sense." After a while, they learned that after he had vanished- Libby noticed that Frodo didn't mention what made him vanish, although she was wondering if it was the odd thing mentioned earlier- the Black Riders had come into extremely clear focus, at least for him. He had drawn his sword as three figures swiftly advanced toward him, their eyes seeming to bore holes through him. The tallest of the three bolder Black Riders had a sword in one hand and a knife in the other, with the dagger-hand and the knife itself glowing with a pale, ominous light. As Frodo had stabbed at the foot of the crowned Rider with his sword, he had felt an icy, yet burning pain pierce his left shoulder, and he said he'd "reappeared" as he'd passed out.
There was a pregnant pause. Libby, filled with curiosity, wished to make inquiries about what Frodo meant by "disappear" and "reappear," but decided against it when she remembered that she had always been annoyed by overly intrusive people, no matter how good a friend they were. If she wanted to tell somebody something about herself, she would. April knew things about her nobody else did while barely asking a question. Even if she began to pry, it was so subtly that April, the dearest of friends, seldom vex Libby. April surely had her flaws, and Libby could pick them out if asked, but none of them considerably irritated Libby Artlong, a girl notorious among her friends for her rapid mouth and short fuse coated with gasoline or some other flammable substance.
"Where has Strider gotten to?" Sam mused, stroking Frodo's curls as his friend moaned with agony. He was beginning to wonder, once again, if Strider was really trustworthy; the man had a foul appearance to him, and a shady, secretive demeanor. Frodo shook his head, not really focused on his surroundings. He desired to just slip into the darkness that seemed to be enclosing him. "Don't let go, Mr. Frodo," Sam muttered. "Don't leave us, don't leave your Sam."
Merry, noticing that Frodo seemed ill at ease and in pain, decided to turn the focus off him and onto somebody else. "Libby, are you sure you're okay? Let us see your knees."
"What are you talking about, Merry?" Frodo asked weakly, summoning some of his strength and turning his head to glance at first Merry, then Libby.
Libby felt heated annoyance stirring within herself, but then she glanced at Frodo, whose attention was now on her, rather than his misery. Her embarrassment evaporated as she suddenly realized that she could possibly distract him from his pain.
"Okay, but it really isn't a pretty sight," Libby admitted. April moved closer to her friend, as Libby had not yet shown off the track injury to her. She rolled her left capri leg above her knee, wincing slightly as the back of one of the silver studs chafed the contusion on her knee.
"Interesting colors," April, remarked, and Libby chuckled slightly. Merry and Pippin also managed to crack the smallest of smiles, but Sam and Frodo remained solemn. "Got the gangsta look going on there with the leg rolled up, you know? Too bad you're not wearing long pants."
Libby snorted, surprised that her usually staid friend was making wisecracks about things besides their most twisted of inside jokes, April was normally serious except about certain topics that tended to alarm people such as the preps in her school. "I know, right? I just need the bandanna, too, this is more liked a screwed-up gangsta look." Libby rolled up her other pant leg. "There, now I'm wearing the kind of shorts which went out with the 1980s. Seriously, I've seen pictures of tight shorts this length in my really old editions of Teen magazine. My gosh, I hope my hair doesn't wind up looking like them, though if I never wash it again, I will resemble a West Side Story gangster. Oh, and I forgot the weapons they loved to carry on them to finish each other off, I need one of those switchblades they love. lucky for us that girl in my grade, you know who I mean, didn't have anything on her when she started messing with us, or we'd have kinda been screwed big time, and her threat wouldn't have been empty."
The hobbits exchanged mystified looks as Libby and April had their practically one-sided conversation, filled with slang terms of teenagers of the River City High student body. They didn't have the faintest inkling what the terms West Side Story, Teen magazine, gangstas, bandanna, screwed, screwed-up, or "the gangsta look" meant, and they were utterly perplexed. As the Common Speech of Middle-Earth was filled with idioms confusing to April and Libby, such were the slang terms of 21st century high-schoolers.
"The 1980s aren't for many decades from now," Pippin pointed out, chortling. Libby frowned, once again perplexed. "Didn't Strider say that this was 3018?"
"To him, yes," Pippin confirmed, "but I'm talking about Shire- reckoning, where it's the year 1418."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Shire-reckoning?" Libby said, frowning with confusion. The term seemed familiar, but she couldn't quite place her finger on it. "What are you talking about?"
At the same instance that Libby was asking Pippin to clarify Shire- reckoning, Pippin asked, "Hold on to what? What am I supposed to hold on to?"
Libby laughed. "Good one, Pip. It's just another way of saying 'wait a moment' or 'wait a minute,' you know?" It was slightly irksome that their differences in dialect was causing the confounded hobbits to explain her slang terms, but then again, she often had to do them the same discourtesy.
Pippin was still utterly baffled, and feeling unaccountably foolish, decided against asking Libby to clarify more. Instead, he said, "Shire- reckoning is our dating system. Hey. are you okay, Frodo?"
Frodo seemed to be muttering something inaudibly. Sam leaned close to hear his indistinguishable babble, then said, "He's asking for Libby to move closer to him." This Libby did, and she beckoned April to follow her. Pippin and Merry followed behind the hobbling Libby, whose pant legs were still rolled up above her legs.
"April's- right. Those are- interesting colors," Frodo said, eyeing the bruises glaring back at him. One was a purplish-blue, on her left knee, and the other, on her right and his left, was yellow-green. "They didn't harm you, did they?" Frodo asked, anxiety dawning in his blue eyes.
Libby shook her head of crimped blonde hair, which was now frizzing about her head from all the time she had raked her fingers through it in an attempt to comb it out. She now looked like a cross between a human and a lion cub forming its golden mane. "Naw, I just kinda got clumsy in a race and fell over the metal thingy I was jumping over."
"You fell over a sword... wouldn't you be cut from that?" Frodo asked, slowly and deliberately. He thought that perhaps he could use Libby to distract himself. He assumed Libby was just adding an extra letter to the word "thing," perhaps her odd speech could be understood with time. Time. Time was a thing Frodo did not want to even think of right now. If his qualms were correct, time could be running might short for him indeed. The shadows seemed to be growing ever prominent, and he was looking at Libby through a sort of fog, although he could still discern colors even by the shaky firelight.
Libby smiled at Frodo. "Not a sword. I don't think the track coach would exactly allow that! No, it was just a hurdle- a metal bar held up by metal poles- No, not the kind you're thinking about, April!" April had a slow smile forming on her face, doubtless from one of the myriad of inside jokes they shared. "Get your mind out of the gutter!" Remembering that the hobbits might ask what she meant by her expressions, she hastily added, "Don't ask, just more of our native slang terms." She rubbed the angry bruises in what she hoped was a surreptitious manner, not wanting to seem like she was making the mere bruises a mountain out of a molehill. Frodo, after all, had a stab wound in his left shoulder, and was lucky to be alive. She, however, couldn't explain the coldness in his body. "Frodo, do you need my sweatshirt?"
Frodo shook his head, frowning at Libby, remembering that he girl had not been wearing long sleeves, and half of the skin on her arms was bare, along with her wearing very short pants. "No- I don't want you to be cold on my account."
"But- you need it more than I do," Libby argued, starting to pull it over her head of blonde hair. April gently pulled her hands off. "He's right, it would do us all no good to have two sick members," April whispered.
Suddenly, a dark figure appeared out of the shadows. "April's right, you know, Libby, it's very kind of you, but you're already thin and probably get cold easily. and I see you're hurt anyway yourself," he added, eying an odd swelling of her right shin that even Libby herself had not noticed, having not taken the liberty of comparing the size of her right shin and her left.
Sam jumped up with surprise, standing protectively over Frodo, drawing his sword swiftly. Strider bent down at Sam's side and said something that Libby couldn't make out, and Sam seemed to relax as he sheathed his sword into its scabbard.
"Not from them," Libby said quickly.
"I didn't think so," Strider said honestly, "and I'm sure I was no help, earlier today, I am sorry." He still wasn't sure whether to completely trust the girls, but her intentions seemed kindly enough.
"I don't get cold that easily and I'm not skinny!" Libby said, this time, removing her sweatshirt completely. Goosebumps immediately began popping up on her exposed arms from the sudden shock of cold air.
"You see, you could catch cold," Strider said. "Is your ankle bothering you even the faintest bit? It looks rather bigger than your left?"
"I don't need it!" Frodo insisted. Strider turned sadly to look at the injured hobbit. He probably did, yet he had a feeling no amount of covers could help him, as he suspected that the coldness was a product of the wound. "Libby, please put your shirt back on, though even that probably isn't nearly enough for you, I'm freezing and I have a lot of covers over me!" Libby sighed grimly and heeded Frodo's wishes, slipping the River City sweatshirt back over her head, messing up her hair further. April couldn't help but be slightly amused, knowing that Libby would have a few words to say if she came to see her reflection in the mirror.
"I feel no pain," Libby said, biting her lip, reddening, and looking away, her usual mannerism when she wasn't being entirely truthful.
"I somehow don't believe you- but I won't be able to help either one of you out much until later. Frodo, what happened?"
Frodo repeated his account of the Black Riders, and it was nearly identical to the one from before. Once again, he didn't mention how he had become invisible. Strider's concern appeared to increase markedly after hearing Frodo's words, and he ordered the group to keep the fire going and Frodo warm. "But Libby, keep your shirt. The same goes for you and yours, April," he added, referring to April's black leather jacket, which she also had offered to Frodo. "You girls really are far from being dressed sufficiently, especially you, Libby. I'm used to heat and cold, but you're only, how old did you say, Libby? Sixteen? And a girl?"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. I think I can be just as tough dealing with temperatures as guys," Libby blustered belligerently, springing hyper-speed into her feministic point-of-view. "Good grief." Her blue eyes darkened somewhat, as she had taken umbrage at Aragorn's words.
"Sorry, I mean a girl as in a child- even an age such as sixteen is young to me at my age," Strider said. "Sam, can we talk?" Libby watched as Sam and Strider talked in private. "Guard him well!" Strider ordered after his brief conversation with Sam Gamgee, and then he departed, leaving the group by themselves once again. After the back of the tall, lean Ranger had faded into the distance, the three younger hobbits and the teenaged girls settled back to keep vigil over their wounded companion. Frodo seemed to be fast sinking into a state of delirium, his complexion etiolating by the minute. At sporadic intervals, Frodo would scrunch up his face in pain or mutter nonsense.
Disclaimer: I own naught. My best friend Linda owns me. (Heeheeheehee, feel special, Linda! ~^.^~)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~ ~*~Chapter 3~*~
Quivering, clutching her best friend's arm, overcome with terror, Libby watched the other members of their small traveling band with wide blue-gray eyes as she silently willed the accursed black forms to leave. She bitterly hoped that they would miraculously depart, leaving the seven travelers in peace.
Unfortunately, this was not the case. The black shapes continued to advance, drawing their swords. Libby gulped, desperately wishing she and April were armed. Fists certainly would not suffice in this case. Libby had taken self-defense in gym, but she somehow thought that the "rules" were different if the other had a weapon and she didn't. In other words, we're screwed unless April or I somehow twist a sword away from them.. Best we can do is stab them back with our fading strength.
April was hardly less petrified than her blonde counterpart, and her small fists were trembling. She yearned to go in for a punch, but felt as if an invisible force were rooting her to the spot where she should. Her knees felt like jelly, and her legs trembled as she struggled to remain upright. On a sudden impulse, she seized a hold of Libby's right wrist, gripping for dear life. Her friend's fingers curled in response, gripping her back around the dully-spiked bracelet on April's own wrist, making small indentations in her palms.
Merry and Pippin, the two youngest hobbits in the group, the youngest beside herself and April, launched themselves flat on the ground. For a fleeting second, Libby was tempted to follow suit, before common sense informed her that that action would be to no avail. Instead, the two were forced to helplessly witness the attack, still clutching each others' wrists in death grips. Sam shrank to the side of the hobbit Frodo, who was visibly shivering as if suddenly finding himself thrust into a cold climate without a coat. Suddenly, shockingly, Frodo seemed to disappear into thin air. April was still watching Merry and Pippin, feeling pity for the two Halflings while feeling as if she would fall to pieces from dread, but Libby was staring at the empty space which Frodo had been standing just a moment before, flabbergasted. She had just enough composure remaining for her jaw to drop in a gape at the discombobulating spectacle.
The five towering figures, which appeared to be empty cloaks, immediately headed for the vacant space. Sam suddenly tumbled to the turf, either from being knocked aside or his knees buckling, as one of the fell creatures passed him by. April blinked to see if her eyes were in working order, wondering why it had left Sam in peace in lieu of ending the hobbit's life on Middle-Earth that very instant. Was her illness jumbling her mind again? She did not notice Libby fall forward onto her knees as they gave way, no longer able to support her weight.
After hearing what sounded like a high-pitched shriek of death, which Libby thought was imprisoned in her own head, a hallucination of the panic, Strider had leapt forward, a flaming torch in both his hands, lighting the cloaks of the deadly figures aflame. Libby's mouth was still agape, her expression shocked. It was April's voice that brought her back to the present, rousing her from her trance.
"Are. are y-you okay?" April stammered, looking dreadfully shaken, her Asian complexion sallow with fear. She pulled Libby to her feet- to her surprise, Libby realized that her knees had given way on her and she hadn't even felt the lurch of discomfort as her overused joints struck the ground. The tremulous tenderness returned in full measure to the shins, shooting down from her knees, slightly exacerbated from hitting the stone, as April had helped her stand back up. Merry, Sam, and Pippin had also extracted themselves from the ground, and Pippin started pacing around, perhaps hoping he could rid himself of the horror of what had just occurred merely by walking it off.
"Yah!" Pippin had suddenly staggered over something, and was now lying flat on his face. His friend Merry pulled him up and gave a gasp of horror after seeing what Pippin had literally stumbled over. It was Frodo, and he appeared lifeless from the angle in which Libby and April were standing. He was motionless, and didn't appear to be breathing. The hobbit was facedown on the grass, and his sword was underneath his prone figure. The senseless hobbit appeared deathly pale, and a twisting of the features conveyed the message that the hobbit had suffered severe pain upon fainting or dying, whichever he had done..
"Mr. Frodo! Oh, my master!" Sam had given an anguished cry. "Oh no, oh, dear! What are we to do?" The horrified hobbit's face was haggard, worry outlined in his face. The small creature dropped to his knees, bending over his friend's limp form, seizing a hold of Frodo's hands. "His left hand- it's very cold!" The hobbit Merry prodded it with his finger, and his heart sank as he found that Sam was right. The small hand felt as if it had been freshly drawn out of a vat of a substance colder than ice, liquid nitrogen or such.
"My- God," Libby muttered with discomfiture, gazing at the unconscious figure of Frodo Baggins, still in a state of shock. "He's not dead, is he?" the tall blonde added fearfully, voicing the dread everyone else shared. Aragorn swiftly walked over to the bunch of companions and bent over Frodo, studying the hobbit intensely. The Ranger passed a hand over Frodo's cyanotic lips to seek the faintest whisper of breath, and cautiously explored the whole of the small body with his eyes and hands. One gently prodding finger discovered a small tear in his shirt on the left shoulder. The Ranger felt a nefarious sort of sense radiating form the area, his Numenorean ancestry coming into play with this activated sixth sense. Drawing aside the slightly travel-worn cloak and tunic, Strider revealed what appeared to be a small puncture wound on his left shoulder with blood slowly oozing from it at a rate slower than expected from a stab wound in that region. Ripping off a clean piece of cloak, Aragorn applied gentle pressure to the wound to stave off the hemorrhaging flow of blood. The leakage let up relatively quickly, almost as if what Frodo had obtained was merely a small slash from paper or aluminum foil.
"He's not dead, but alas, he is in a very bad way," Strider purported brusquely, stroking the left arm of Frodo, which already had an additional cold feeling to it. "Pick him up, somebody, Libby, April, Merry, Pippin, Sam, one of you, and lay him near the fire. I'll return presently." With a shrewd glance lingering on April and Libby, Strider debated whether to ask the two girls to accompany him. The Ranger was unsure whether to have confidence in Libby Artlong and April Neverton, and was pondering whether they ought to be left alone with the hobbits and the helpless Frodo. Suddenly realizing that the girls, unlike the hobbits, were unarmed, he decided that if they did have ill intentions and attempted anything, Merry, Sam, or Pippin would be able to resolve that without much effort, as they had the swords. "Be careful, all of you." At that, Strider disappeared into the blackness of night.
Libby attempted to lift Frodo by herself, as she was the tallest and weighed the most of all there, but found that Frodo was too heavy for her to lift easily, unaided. She was thin, despite her weight, as most of her weight came from the density of her bones and her powerful legs. She definitely had some noticeable flab on her, predominantly around the midriff and her arms, but she was nevertheless thin. "April, help me!" April came over and helped Libby lift Frodo off the ground, and then the black-haired girl bore most of Frodo's dead weight in her arms while Libby supported him so April wouldn't inadvertently drop him. They began ambling towards the fire at a dawdling pace, for Libby was obliged to bend down pretty far so her arms would be at the same level as her considerably shorter friend. When the girls came to the fireside, April and Libby gently sank to their knees and set Frodo on the ground. The hobbit's head lolled to the side and he did not stir. Merry, Pippin, and Sam followed them and the five companions bent over their motionless friend. Frodo did not appear much better even from the heat; his face was beginning to have a sallow hue to it. Libby noticed that Frodo's diminutive fist seemed to be clutching something tightly, but she decided that she didn't really care what it was. Perhaps Frodo, not unlike herself, had the tendency to clench his fists when angry or in pain. The blonde often had hints of nail-marks in her palms from her form of anger management. More than usual lately, Libby had found herself clenching her fists, fighting back the urge to sock a solid object such as her bookcase at home.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After what seemed like ages of speculations about what would happen to the injured hobbit, Frodo began to sob slightly, more of the small vestige of color departing from his already anemic face. Libby thought that he seemed to be coming to, but the hobbit appeared to be in the throes of a nightmare, thrashing and moaning. Libby rested her hand on Frodo's left arm, and with a jerk of her stomach, she noticed that it was stone cold. This was most likely what the others had spoken of previously. Recoiling, she thoughtfully mused, "I think we ought to add more wood to the fire," thinking that perhaps the sick hobbit was catching a chill. Merry and Pippin immediately got to their feet, in order to fetch some more wood. Pippin, who had been sitting between Merry and Libby, didn't noticed that Libby's legs were stretched out straight in front of her, and he accidentally blundered over the tall girl's right ankle. "AIEE!" Libby began grousing impulsively, before April clapped a hand over her mouth. Taking a deep breath, Libby managed to calm down and ignore the fresh wave of pain in her shin.
"Oh, dear, I'm sorry, Libby, I wasn't watching where I was going," Pippin said. Libby struggled to her feet and patted Pippin on the top of his head. "It's okay, Pippin, really, I'll help you guys out." Merry, Pippin, and Libby began walking around the environs, leaving April and Sam to watch Frodo. The three of them began picking up large piles of sticks and firewood, the three walked back to the fire. When they returned within earshot of Sam and April, Merry suddenly realized that Libby appeared to be walking with a limp. It was the second or third time he'd spotted her walking in an odd manner within the twelve or so hours they'd been together.
"Excuse me, Libby, but why do you walk so oddly?" Merry asked, his brown eyes staring at Libby's steps. She seemed to be favoring her right ankle over her left, and trying to conceal it.
Libby forced a hollow chuckle. She knew she was shuffling her steps and her ankle was spastically turning inward every now and then, but she wasn't about to fall into her habit of complaining with Frodo lying by the fire showing no signs of life besides his rapid, shallow breaths. "Oh, I dunno, I didn't know I was walking weirdly."
Pippin's hazel eyes also noticed Libby's wobbly gait, and he knew she wasn't being entirely truthful about how she was walking. "I didn't hurt you, did I, Libby? I'm sorry if I did."
Libby gave Pippin a strained smile. "No, you didn't, it's okay, I'm okay" She quickened her steps and threw the entire pile of firewood onto the pile where she'd formerly been sitting, busying herself with tossing each piece of wood one by one on the fire. She was no expert at living in the wilderness; her only experience had been the week and a half of living at Camp Star Lake, one of the more annoying weeks of her life. She had not appreciated sleeping on the wooden floor of a lean-to in a sleeping bag much too short for her. It would have suited someone of April's stature well, but even though Libby had only been thirteen then, she had already hit the height of five-foot-six and a half, which was certainly taller than the average woman. Mosquitoes, campfires, wood-gathering, preparing food, five-minute showers, and the lack of a soft mattress was not a sort of lifestyle that agreed with somebody of Libby's temperament, which was on the priggish side. This situation she was in now, in comparison, made Camp Star Lake look like a five-star hotel. This time, mortal danger was in the mix, none of them had sufficient warmth other than the fire, and rations were scanty. This was like her NJROTC textbook's survival unit come to life- if only she had bothered to memorize the chapter doing the term paper, rather than just altering the text from the book and selecting random facts!
"That's because she was already hurt from yesterday.," April put in, getting up and starting to help Merry and Pippin with the wood. When the wood had all been piled onto the flames, the whole lot of them knelt around Frodo, once more.
"What did you do, Libby?" Pippin asked, to break the foreboding silence as all gazed upon Frodo's prone form.
"What do you mean?" Libby asked, frowning, having put the conversation about her limp out of her mind as she gazed upon the unconscious hobbit's small body, silently willing him to come around.
"How'd you hurt yourself yesterday?" Merry added, obviously wondering the same thing as his other half, Pippin.
"Well, let's just say I speed walked a little too hard," Libby replied curtly. Yes I still wasn't good enough.
"Why did you walk too fast?" Merry asked. Libby frowned, thinking that Merry was implying that she'd stumbled deliberately.
"I kind of had to, it was a race with rather high stakes!" Libby repeated impatiently. She wasn't a huge fanatic when it came to repeating herself, and she had thought that saying that it was speed walking too fast was kind of obvious. Merry reminded Libby of her inquisitive friend Traci, whom Libby loved to death, but often was annoyed by when she sought a bit too much detail for Libby's liking.
Merry frowned, seeming a little put-off by Libby. He was still confused, but decided against asking more questions, as Libby was evidently in a standoffish mood. "I'm sorry, Merry, I'm just so scared." Libby said, biting her lip. Once again, her temper had gotten the better of her, and in front of somebody she barely even knew! That was sure to give a good impression of her mien.
"Hey, I think Frodo is waking," Sam said, speaking for the first time in a long while after he had recounted a black shadow slithering past him, his voice filled with utmost relief. It was true, Frodo's blue eyes had just flickered open, pained and confused.
The ashen hobbit stared blankly up at his companions, who were bending over him, through a kind of mist, and then he spoke, making no sense whatsoever. "What has happened? Where is the pale king?" he asked, going wild-eyed
Libby gawped at Frodo, perplexed. "S-sorry? I'm sorry, you're just making no sense." After a while, they learned that after he had vanished- Libby noticed that Frodo didn't mention what made him vanish, although she was wondering if it was the odd thing mentioned earlier- the Black Riders had come into extremely clear focus, at least for him. He had drawn his sword as three figures swiftly advanced toward him, their eyes seeming to bore holes through him. The tallest of the three bolder Black Riders had a sword in one hand and a knife in the other, with the dagger-hand and the knife itself glowing with a pale, ominous light. As Frodo had stabbed at the foot of the crowned Rider with his sword, he had felt an icy, yet burning pain pierce his left shoulder, and he said he'd "reappeared" as he'd passed out.
There was a pregnant pause. Libby, filled with curiosity, wished to make inquiries about what Frodo meant by "disappear" and "reappear," but decided against it when she remembered that she had always been annoyed by overly intrusive people, no matter how good a friend they were. If she wanted to tell somebody something about herself, she would. April knew things about her nobody else did while barely asking a question. Even if she began to pry, it was so subtly that April, the dearest of friends, seldom vex Libby. April surely had her flaws, and Libby could pick them out if asked, but none of them considerably irritated Libby Artlong, a girl notorious among her friends for her rapid mouth and short fuse coated with gasoline or some other flammable substance.
"Where has Strider gotten to?" Sam mused, stroking Frodo's curls as his friend moaned with agony. He was beginning to wonder, once again, if Strider was really trustworthy; the man had a foul appearance to him, and a shady, secretive demeanor. Frodo shook his head, not really focused on his surroundings. He desired to just slip into the darkness that seemed to be enclosing him. "Don't let go, Mr. Frodo," Sam muttered. "Don't leave us, don't leave your Sam."
Merry, noticing that Frodo seemed ill at ease and in pain, decided to turn the focus off him and onto somebody else. "Libby, are you sure you're okay? Let us see your knees."
"What are you talking about, Merry?" Frodo asked weakly, summoning some of his strength and turning his head to glance at first Merry, then Libby.
Libby felt heated annoyance stirring within herself, but then she glanced at Frodo, whose attention was now on her, rather than his misery. Her embarrassment evaporated as she suddenly realized that she could possibly distract him from his pain.
"Okay, but it really isn't a pretty sight," Libby admitted. April moved closer to her friend, as Libby had not yet shown off the track injury to her. She rolled her left capri leg above her knee, wincing slightly as the back of one of the silver studs chafed the contusion on her knee.
"Interesting colors," April, remarked, and Libby chuckled slightly. Merry and Pippin also managed to crack the smallest of smiles, but Sam and Frodo remained solemn. "Got the gangsta look going on there with the leg rolled up, you know? Too bad you're not wearing long pants."
Libby snorted, surprised that her usually staid friend was making wisecracks about things besides their most twisted of inside jokes, April was normally serious except about certain topics that tended to alarm people such as the preps in her school. "I know, right? I just need the bandanna, too, this is more liked a screwed-up gangsta look." Libby rolled up her other pant leg. "There, now I'm wearing the kind of shorts which went out with the 1980s. Seriously, I've seen pictures of tight shorts this length in my really old editions of Teen magazine. My gosh, I hope my hair doesn't wind up looking like them, though if I never wash it again, I will resemble a West Side Story gangster. Oh, and I forgot the weapons they loved to carry on them to finish each other off, I need one of those switchblades they love. lucky for us that girl in my grade, you know who I mean, didn't have anything on her when she started messing with us, or we'd have kinda been screwed big time, and her threat wouldn't have been empty."
The hobbits exchanged mystified looks as Libby and April had their practically one-sided conversation, filled with slang terms of teenagers of the River City High student body. They didn't have the faintest inkling what the terms West Side Story, Teen magazine, gangstas, bandanna, screwed, screwed-up, or "the gangsta look" meant, and they were utterly perplexed. As the Common Speech of Middle-Earth was filled with idioms confusing to April and Libby, such were the slang terms of 21st century high-schoolers.
"The 1980s aren't for many decades from now," Pippin pointed out, chortling. Libby frowned, once again perplexed. "Didn't Strider say that this was 3018?"
"To him, yes," Pippin confirmed, "but I'm talking about Shire- reckoning, where it's the year 1418."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Shire-reckoning?" Libby said, frowning with confusion. The term seemed familiar, but she couldn't quite place her finger on it. "What are you talking about?"
At the same instance that Libby was asking Pippin to clarify Shire- reckoning, Pippin asked, "Hold on to what? What am I supposed to hold on to?"
Libby laughed. "Good one, Pip. It's just another way of saying 'wait a moment' or 'wait a minute,' you know?" It was slightly irksome that their differences in dialect was causing the confounded hobbits to explain her slang terms, but then again, she often had to do them the same discourtesy.
Pippin was still utterly baffled, and feeling unaccountably foolish, decided against asking Libby to clarify more. Instead, he said, "Shire- reckoning is our dating system. Hey. are you okay, Frodo?"
Frodo seemed to be muttering something inaudibly. Sam leaned close to hear his indistinguishable babble, then said, "He's asking for Libby to move closer to him." This Libby did, and she beckoned April to follow her. Pippin and Merry followed behind the hobbling Libby, whose pant legs were still rolled up above her legs.
"April's- right. Those are- interesting colors," Frodo said, eyeing the bruises glaring back at him. One was a purplish-blue, on her left knee, and the other, on her right and his left, was yellow-green. "They didn't harm you, did they?" Frodo asked, anxiety dawning in his blue eyes.
Libby shook her head of crimped blonde hair, which was now frizzing about her head from all the time she had raked her fingers through it in an attempt to comb it out. She now looked like a cross between a human and a lion cub forming its golden mane. "Naw, I just kinda got clumsy in a race and fell over the metal thingy I was jumping over."
"You fell over a sword... wouldn't you be cut from that?" Frodo asked, slowly and deliberately. He thought that perhaps he could use Libby to distract himself. He assumed Libby was just adding an extra letter to the word "thing," perhaps her odd speech could be understood with time. Time. Time was a thing Frodo did not want to even think of right now. If his qualms were correct, time could be running might short for him indeed. The shadows seemed to be growing ever prominent, and he was looking at Libby through a sort of fog, although he could still discern colors even by the shaky firelight.
Libby smiled at Frodo. "Not a sword. I don't think the track coach would exactly allow that! No, it was just a hurdle- a metal bar held up by metal poles- No, not the kind you're thinking about, April!" April had a slow smile forming on her face, doubtless from one of the myriad of inside jokes they shared. "Get your mind out of the gutter!" Remembering that the hobbits might ask what she meant by her expressions, she hastily added, "Don't ask, just more of our native slang terms." She rubbed the angry bruises in what she hoped was a surreptitious manner, not wanting to seem like she was making the mere bruises a mountain out of a molehill. Frodo, after all, had a stab wound in his left shoulder, and was lucky to be alive. She, however, couldn't explain the coldness in his body. "Frodo, do you need my sweatshirt?"
Frodo shook his head, frowning at Libby, remembering that he girl had not been wearing long sleeves, and half of the skin on her arms was bare, along with her wearing very short pants. "No- I don't want you to be cold on my account."
"But- you need it more than I do," Libby argued, starting to pull it over her head of blonde hair. April gently pulled her hands off. "He's right, it would do us all no good to have two sick members," April whispered.
Suddenly, a dark figure appeared out of the shadows. "April's right, you know, Libby, it's very kind of you, but you're already thin and probably get cold easily. and I see you're hurt anyway yourself," he added, eying an odd swelling of her right shin that even Libby herself had not noticed, having not taken the liberty of comparing the size of her right shin and her left.
Sam jumped up with surprise, standing protectively over Frodo, drawing his sword swiftly. Strider bent down at Sam's side and said something that Libby couldn't make out, and Sam seemed to relax as he sheathed his sword into its scabbard.
"Not from them," Libby said quickly.
"I didn't think so," Strider said honestly, "and I'm sure I was no help, earlier today, I am sorry." He still wasn't sure whether to completely trust the girls, but her intentions seemed kindly enough.
"I don't get cold that easily and I'm not skinny!" Libby said, this time, removing her sweatshirt completely. Goosebumps immediately began popping up on her exposed arms from the sudden shock of cold air.
"You see, you could catch cold," Strider said. "Is your ankle bothering you even the faintest bit? It looks rather bigger than your left?"
"I don't need it!" Frodo insisted. Strider turned sadly to look at the injured hobbit. He probably did, yet he had a feeling no amount of covers could help him, as he suspected that the coldness was a product of the wound. "Libby, please put your shirt back on, though even that probably isn't nearly enough for you, I'm freezing and I have a lot of covers over me!" Libby sighed grimly and heeded Frodo's wishes, slipping the River City sweatshirt back over her head, messing up her hair further. April couldn't help but be slightly amused, knowing that Libby would have a few words to say if she came to see her reflection in the mirror.
"I feel no pain," Libby said, biting her lip, reddening, and looking away, her usual mannerism when she wasn't being entirely truthful.
"I somehow don't believe you- but I won't be able to help either one of you out much until later. Frodo, what happened?"
Frodo repeated his account of the Black Riders, and it was nearly identical to the one from before. Once again, he didn't mention how he had become invisible. Strider's concern appeared to increase markedly after hearing Frodo's words, and he ordered the group to keep the fire going and Frodo warm. "But Libby, keep your shirt. The same goes for you and yours, April," he added, referring to April's black leather jacket, which she also had offered to Frodo. "You girls really are far from being dressed sufficiently, especially you, Libby. I'm used to heat and cold, but you're only, how old did you say, Libby? Sixteen? And a girl?"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. I think I can be just as tough dealing with temperatures as guys," Libby blustered belligerently, springing hyper-speed into her feministic point-of-view. "Good grief." Her blue eyes darkened somewhat, as she had taken umbrage at Aragorn's words.
"Sorry, I mean a girl as in a child- even an age such as sixteen is young to me at my age," Strider said. "Sam, can we talk?" Libby watched as Sam and Strider talked in private. "Guard him well!" Strider ordered after his brief conversation with Sam Gamgee, and then he departed, leaving the group by themselves once again. After the back of the tall, lean Ranger had faded into the distance, the three younger hobbits and the teenaged girls settled back to keep vigil over their wounded companion. Frodo seemed to be fast sinking into a state of delirium, his complexion etiolating by the minute. At sporadic intervals, Frodo would scrunch up his face in pain or mutter nonsense.
