Beta reader: Dragonfly the Diligent
People seemed to have enjoyed the interplay between Gimli and Edwen Nana, so I'm adding a new chapter that features the nursemaid and another character. Farflung, you may notice two lines that I lifted from your review. The Tolkien quotations from LOTR come from TTT, Bk. III, Chap. 11, "The Palantír."
Starlit Hope: Thank you!
MoroTheWolfGod:Hey, it's good to hear from you!
Farflung: Yes, there is a scene in Troy in which you are only a fraction of an inch from seeing Orlando Bloom's bare essentials. Enjoy! I've already gone twice.
Dragonfly: Hope this one gives you a few giggles, too.
Melissa: This chapter should be good for a few additional laughs, I hope.
Karri: Glad to have been of service!
SilentBanshee: Oh, you liked that game, eh? I looking to see if I can fit in another travel game, 'I spy something [red or blue or whatever]'.
Joee: Your wish, as always, is my command. Here is a second 'hair-raising tale'.
Everyone was fond of Edwen Nana. In the Fourth Age, even the Dwarf Gimli became attached to her after he had had a chance to recover from the shock of her tonsorial assault upon his person. Warriors wield swords and spears; Edwen Nana wielded combs and shears. Everyone knew this to be so, and in her presence all took care to cover their hair if it happened to be untidy or in need of a wash. She would swoop down upon anyone who neglected to take this precaution, and, willy nilly, the unfortunate malefactor would find his hair being twisted and pulled and scrubbed into a respectable state. Even Thranduil was not safe from her ministrations.
In all her long years serving in the Great Hall, there was one person, however, with whom Edwen Nana had hesitated to trifle—a Maia, actually. That would have been Gandalf, of course.
To Edwen Nana, Gandalf was a walking affront to tidiness. Whenever he appeared at the Great Hall, his cloak would be torn, the hem and sleeves of his robe would be splattered with mud, his fingernails would be grimed, and his boots scuffed. Before the great War of the Ring, there was only one time that he passed sartorial muster, and that was the occasion when he arrived wearing an elegant robe that he had borrowed from Saruman because the robe he had been wearing—which itself had been borrowed from Erestor—had been shredded as he forced his way through a thicket.
After the War of the Ring, when Gandalf had formally assumed the mantle of the White Wizard, Edwen Nana found his appearance less objectionable, although she still clucked her tongue at his wild fly-away beard and his hair, which, to her mind, required much more attention than the strip of cloth with which he occasionally pulled it back into a pony tail. The events in this episode, however, took place before the War, near the end of the Third Age, when Edwen Nana still found both his garb and his hair to be dreadfully offensive.
Matters came to a head, so to speak, after Gandalf had been roaming about in pursuit of some peculiar creature that the wizard insisted would be the ruin of the West if it were not captured and questioned. Seemingly, this creature preferred the most loathsome of locales, for one day, after fruitlessly pursuing his quarry for several months, Gandalf stank of muck and mire when he wearily dragged himself into the Hall. Aragorn was visiting Mirkwood at the time, and so filthy was the wizard, that even the grimy Ranger found his presence unbearable. Certainly this was a most extraordinary turnabout of the usual state of affairs! As for Legolas, for the first time in his immortal life, he wished the Maia would light up his pipe, for he believed that the odor of pipeweed would have been much preferable to the reek of the Istar.
A bath was at once drawn for the wizard, and, after first checking to see that the door was bolted—Gandalf knew Edwen Nana's reputation!—he sank into it with a sigh. He had not, however, consented to having his clothes taken away for laundering, and those garments lay on a bench by the tub as he bathed.
"I will brush my cloak and robe," he had told Thranduil when the King offered to have the wizard's clothes cared for, "for I am only stopping the one night to ask Aragorn to take up the hunt for the creature Gollum. There would be no time for my garments to dry, and I do not wish to wander the wild in a damp robe and cloak."
Thranduil had furnished him with a nightdress so that he would not have to put on his dirty clothes straightaway, but in the morning he planned to don them again and set out once more.
To Edwen Nana, however, this was tantamount to blasphemy. Putting dirty clothes on a clean body! She would never countenance such barbaric behavior! If only she could quickly sew a grey robe that Gandalf might be prevailed upon to wear in the morning. Ai! Edwen Nana was a talented seamstress, and mayhap she could have pieced together a gown in one night, but there was no grey cloth to hand, and Gandalf was very stubborn on that score. "I am the Grey Wizard," he would declare. "Not White, not Brown—Grey!" Very well then! She resolved that she would somehow spirit away the wizard's clothes so that he would be forced to remain in Mirkwood whilst they were laundered and mended.
Perhaps Gandalf anticipated some such attempt, for he hugged his bundle of clothes to his chest as he walked from the bathing chamber to his room. Once in the chamber, he did not set the garments down until he was certain that the door had been locked. After turning the key, Gandalf rattled the handle to be sure that the door was quite secure. Only then did he relax. After smoking for a little while, he at length set down his pipe, snuffed the candle, and turned in.
No lock, however, could deter Edwen Nana, as both Tawarmaenas and Legolas had learned to their grief (but occasionally to their relief as well—Edwen Nana had developed her lock-picking talent in order to be able to quickly rescue elflings, for it is a well known fact that younglings have an unaccountable fondness for getting themselves locked into rooms, wardrobes, and trunks.) Standing quietly by the door, she had seen the strip of light vanish when Gandalf had snuffed the candle. She waited, however, until she no longer smelled the odor of pipeweed, for she judged that by then the wizard would surely be asleep. Quickly and expertly, she picked the lock and slipped into the chamber. She moved without a sound not only because she was an Elf, but also because she was a naneth, and all mothers, Elf, Dwarf or Man, are practiced at creeping into bedchambers to check on their sleeping babes. Not even Glorfindel could have moved as quietly as Edwen Nana did that night.
She walked softly to where Gandalf lay. She looked down at him. The wizard seemed asleep, but with lids not fully closed: there was a glitter of eyes under his long lashes. Edwen Nana stepped back hastily. But Gandalf made no sign; and, drawn by determination and stubbornness, Edwen Nana crept up again from behind the wizard's head. His clothes, rolled into a tight ball, lay close by him, between his right arm and his bent elbow. His hand seemed only just to have slipped off the bundle.
Edwen Nana looked about the room. There lay a towel. Carefully she rolled it into a ball. Then, moving swiftly, she eased the bundle away from Gandalf and quickly substituted the towel. At that moment Gandalf moved in his sleep, and muttered some words: they seemed to be in a strange tongue; his hand groped out and clasped the balled-up towel, then he sighed and relaxed once more.
Unfortunately, Edwen Nana's triumph was to be short lived. As she stepped back from the bed, she tripped over the wizard's staff, which had been resting against the footboard. It clattered to the ground. In a trice, Gandalf was awake and springing from the bed. Edwen Nana kicked the staff under the bed so that the wizard could not make use of it, but Gandalf seized the end of his garments and gave a mighty yank. The robe came out of Edwen Nana's hands, but she did manage to maintain her grip on the cloak. Gandalf flung the robe to the side and then tried to pull the cloak away from her. A mighty tug of war ensued. First one, then the other had the advantage, but all in all it was pretty much a stalemate.
Suddenly Edwen Nana released her grip on the cloak, and Gandalf fell over backwards, tumbling head over heels across the bed, flipping right over the mattress and landing on the floor on the other side. He came to rest with his head down and his legs up. His nightdress, of course, pooled around his shoulders, and Gandalf let out a yelp when he felt the night air upon his nether regions. He at once let go the cloak and made a grab for the nightdress to tug it upwards towards his knees.
"Hah," crowed Edwen Nana, seizing the abandoned cloak and tossing it in the direction of the door. Now for the robe! She stalked toward it with the intensity of a wildcat absorbed in the hunting of its prey. Gandalf, however, righted himself and scrambled toward the garment. The adversaries reached it nearly simultaneously. Edwen Nana flung herself on top of the robe, and Gandalf flung himself on top of her.
Unfortunately for Gandalf, it was at that very moment that Aragorn, attracted by the noise of the scuffle, came leaping into the room, sword in one hand, torch in the other. He was met by the astonishing sight of Gandalf sprawled on top of Edwen Nana, who, as she had got her hands on the robe, was smiling with delight. This set of circumstances of course led Aragorn to a mistaken conclusion.
"Oh, Gandalf, I am sorry," he stammered in dismay. "I did not mean to intrude. I will leave at once."
"No! No! No!" shouted Gandalf at his retreating back. "Come back here—oh, be still!"
Edwen Nana, a shrewd elleth, had immediately perceived what the Ranger was thinking, and she was giggling uncontrollably. The wizard rolled off her and stood up.
"Oh, Mordor take it," he huffed. "Launder those wretched garments if you must. I will depart tomorrow in soggy clothes, and it will be your fault if I develop pneumonia and perish in the wild. Then Middle Earth will fall to the forces of the Dark Lord, and your fixation on cleanliness will be entirely to blame!"
"Tell me, Master Mithrandir," retorted Edwin Nana, "for how long have you wandered Middle Earth?"
"Oh, I can't think offhand—a millennium or so, I suppose."
"And do you really think that remaining a few days in Greenwood will prove such a blow to your grand scheme? And, really, how will you even be able to creep up upon your prey if it can smell you coming? The birds themselves shall soon be dropping from the sky as you pass beneath them, for they will be overcome by the stench of your garments. Why, I imagine there are some Orcs smell better than you do!"
"You know little of Orcs, woman! I smell nothing like one. Perhaps somewhat like a Troll, yes, I will concede that. But I will not be compared to an Orc!"
"Oh, a Troll! That's nice!"
"Silence! I have already said that you may wash my garments. What more would you have!?"
"Well, Master Mithrandir, if you don't mind me saying so—"
"I do!"
"—your beard and hair," Edwen Nana continued unperturbed, "have clearly not been trimmed since Círdan bid you welcome at the Grey Havens. Doesn't that shaggy mane of yours get in the way when you go into battle? How can you even see to slay your foes? And that bushy and tangled beard! It is lucky that you are a fighter, not a lover, for should a maiden wish to kiss you, 'twould take her ten minutes to find your lips!"
"That has never been a problem in the past!" huffed the wizard.
"Oh, I doubt that!" scoffed Edwen Nana.
"You don't believe me," growled the Istar, moving toward Edwen Nana, his eyes dark. (This latter phrase, 'his eyes dark' is required according to the rules governing fan fiction passion, which read as follows: "No character is permitted to enter into a state of arousal unless his eyes turn dark. If necessary, stop the action so that character may insert contact lenses. For additional requirements for scenes involving passion, see under 'bruised and swollen lips' and 'aching manhood'.")
A little while later, Gandalf was lying in his bed, smoking his pipe and looking very relaxed and satisfied. "That will teach her to meddle with my staff," he gloated. Suddenly, however, it occurred to him the 'her' in question, had succeeded in not only making off with his leggings, cloak, and robe, but also his nightdress, which had somehow been dispensed with at some point. The wizard was altogether in the altogether, save for the sheet that he now anxiously clutched to himself, as if he feared that Edwen Nana would suddenly reappear and reive that as well.
"Oh," he groaned, "my plight has never been worse, no, not even when that warg was pursuing me so doggedly. Yes, it is indeed worse to have a woman on one's tail than a warg."
As for Edwen Nana, she sat contentedly by the bushes where Gandalf's garments had been spread to dry. The cloth was heavy and the day overcast, so it would take at least one full day for them to be ready, mayhap longer. In the meanwhile, she had sent to Lake-town for several bolts of sturdy grey stuff.
"I shall sew several garments for him," she thought happily. "At least one set will be to hand whenever he visits the Great Hall. He will be able to change into fresh clothes and leave the dirty ones to be washed so that they will be waiting for him upon his return. Yes, that plan will do nicely. Indeed, I shall send garments to be kept at Imladris and Lothlórien as well. He will never want for grey robes. White, of course, would suit him better, but it would never do to dress him in that color, for it shows dirt too easily." Edwen Nana sighed. "Well, mayhap someday, when he is less of a rolling stone. Now, what to do about his hair," she mused. "That will, I believe, require a return visit to his bedchamber."
Gandalf stayed another fortnight in the Great Hall, and each morning the Elves were puzzled to notice that Gandalf's hair and beard seemed to be a little shorter, a little tidier, than they had been when he had retired the night before. None of the Elves could account for this strange state of affairs. In fact, in all the years to come, whenever Gandalf visited in Mirkwood, this phenomenon reoccurred. Aragorn did have his ideas about the matter, but he kept them to himself. Well, he may have shared his thoughts with his good friend Legolas, for that Elf rearranged the rooms somewhat so that Gandalf had a chamber next to Edwen Nana's. Of course, this may have been a coincidence. I will leave it to you to make up your own mind upon the matter.