A/N: Random website plugging of the day: I've had a few people ask me how I envision the Wargs for this series. Generally I think of dire wolves/large canis lupis, but there's one picture of Carcharoth that really inspired my impression of Gonaki at Rolzo Tolkien . com: http:fan. theonering. net/ rolozo/image /sjogren?hide-9 &filenameberenluthien. jpg. The picture is by Per Sjogren, Tolkien owns LotR.
Merry and Pippin were finding their new friend very interesting indeed. Treebeard had put them upon his shoulders once more, carrying the young hobbits to the center of a large, secluded clearing some miles from his home. Within this place, they had been introduced to a variety of tree-like ents, with wise old yellow eyes and bark-like skin. The ents had resembled a wide variety of different trees. All of them seemed to share Treebeard's placid, unhurried demeanor, although their calm seemed ruffled by events in Fangorn Forest. Their voices, on the edge of comprehension, rumbled in tones of rustled leaves and muted thunder.
"Stay here." Treebeard put the hobbits down at the edge of the clearing in which his fellows gathered. "I will return for you when the moot is finished."
"How long is it likely to take?" Merry asked him. They had drunk more of their host's entdraught before leaving the premises, but that single glass each wouldn't last the young hobbits all morning.
"A very long time," Fangorn's voice held a tone of gravelly forbearance. "We speak of things worth saying, and in our language, anything worth saying takes a long time to say."
Merry nodded. "So, Pippin and I will just go look for some grub, then," he said with a vague wave towards the forest.
"Not by yourselves." The ent cautioned them. "That tree you mentioned, the one that once tried to eat you, hroom; I believe it was a huoron. Root and twig, but I had never imagined them becoming that feisty. The huorons are similar to ents, but they do not move so much. Never forget that they are powerful when angered, though, leaf and lichen, very powerful indeed. They reside throughout this forest, so it would be best if you stayed here, where you will be safe with us." Treebeard motioned with long, branching arms to include his fellow ents.
Merry had no desire to encounter another live tree like that cursed willow in the Old Forest, just outside of the Shire. While he was certain that Treebeard would do his best to help the hobbits if they should find themselves in trouble, there was no guarantee that he would find them in time. It had been pure luck that they had gotten help the last time. But still, this clearing was fairly close to Fangorn's garden, so it was likely that there were animals about. And wherever there were animals, food was apt to be found not far away. "Er, I don't suppose there'd be anyone willing to go with us, just for a few minutes or so?" Merry scratched his head. Much longer around these ents and he would be "hrooming" and "huruming" too.
"We won't keep them long," Pippin added. The younger hobbit scanned the assembled moot, hoping to find one that moved faster than the others did. Treebeard followed his gaze. After a moment, the old tree-herder motioned to a willowy ent; small and young compared to the rest.
As Treebeard began his greeting in the slow, deep rumbles of old entish, the young ent cut him off with a few matching tones and nodded. "It would be my pleasure," the willowy newcomer replied before turning to introduce himself to Merry and Pippin. "My name is Quickbeam, as I tend to be rather hasty, for an ent. I take it you two are the hobbit folk Treebeard met?" Quickbeam gave his elder an apologetic look as the young hobbits introduced themselves in turn. Satisfied, Treebeard left for the council with the admonishment to keep safe and not act too rashly.
"What did you say that upset him?" Peregrin asked the tree-herder as Quickbeam lifted them to his supple, branching shoulders.
"Treebeard was saying 'good morning' to me. If I had let him finish, it would be nighttime by the end of his greeting." There was a mischievous twinkle to the ent's mismatched amber eyes that made Merry think they would become fast friends with their new guardian. "I believe there's some good rabbit-hunting ground not far south of here. Entdraught is all very well and good, but Fangorn forgets that you are free folk, and not trees, and so your bellies may crave variety."
"Rabbit sounds wonderful," Merry replied, helping to boost his cousin to the ent's shoulders. A short while and a few snares later, both hobbits were lying sated upon the forest floor. Even after his third coney, Pippin still idly popped a few early raspberries into his mouth from a nearby bush. "Now this, this is the life," Merry gestured with a berry swiped from his cousin's hand. They were still green, but the hobbits had found nothing to complain about in this regard. "Best I've eaten in ages."
"Really?" Quickbeam asked, his amusement plain in his whispery voice. Even a young ent such as he had outlived the hobbits by far; having seen a century for the small folk's every year.
"Oh, yes, ages and ages," Pippin agreed. All three companions were having trouble maintaining straight faces, but the younger hobbit was making an admirable attempt. "These are better than Farmer Maggot's mushrooms, and that's a high complement."
"Oh, I don't know about that," Merry rejoined him. "They need a bit more time to ripen, if they're ever going to be as good as the raspberries were in my day."
"Yes, but we don't have to steal them." Pippin had a point there. The conversation slowly lapsed, after a few polite inquiries from Quickbeam, and Peregrin's cheeky response not to meddle in the affairs of hobbits, for they are rascals and love to gossip. Merry, at least, was willing to entertain the ent's questions in order to live up to his race's standards, but Pippin, full, drowsy, and at peace for the first time in many days, did not bother to attempt to keep track of the threads of talk. He instead listened vaguely to the whispering of trees, now quiet and soothing, now booming as if in the throes of a thunderstorm. "Do you think they'll make up their minds anytime soon?" he asked idly.
"As Fangorn has said, probably not for a long while yet," Quickbeam replied. He too, though, stopped talking, listening to the distant entish. Suddenly, he lowered his arms for the hobbits, swinging Pippin to his shoulder.
"What's wrong, Quickbeam?" Merry asked him, tightening his grip as the ent moved faster than any of his kind that the hobbit had yet seen.
"The council is coming to a decision, one I fear it will regret," he replied heavily. "It is time for me to speak my part in this moot."
His uprooted passengers traded wary glances. Merry was sure they had impressed upon Treebeard the dangers that would come to Fangorn Forest, whether the ents chose to take part in battle or not. What decision could they be coming to, if Quickbeam was in such a rush to stop it? "Is there anything we can do?" Merry asked. The ent, however, had already begun his argument, his voice bellowing angry tones in the old tongue of his people. More than one member of the moot looked up in alarm as this vision of fury advanced upon their ring.
Quickbeam barely paused in the clearing, however. He continued marching, and one by one, the others followed after in their uneven, stiff-legged gait. Faster than Merry had thought possible, they came to the edge of the forest. A tower, its color dimmed by smoke and dirt, stood in the middle of a large ring of interconnected pits. The forest had been clear-cut and blackened for as far as the eye could see. A high dam stood in the distance, cutting off the flow of the Isen River. And further off in the other direction, dust rose from the trampling of an army. "Well," murmured Treebeard. "This does indeed give us much to consider."
It didn't take long to get out of Emyn Muil with Gollum's help, although it certainly felt like a long time to Frodo, with Sam grumbling the entire way. The younger hobbit seemed to cling to Frodo, unwilling to let the walking skeleton of a creature get closer to his friend than he was. "I don't see how you put up with that little stinker," Sam commented to the ring bearer. The older hobbit shrugged, mentally reminding himself to talk to Samwise about his paranoia once they settled in for the night. At that moment though, they needed to catch up with Gollum. "Where's he taking us now?" Sam wrinkled his nose at the foul stench on the air. It had grown since their departure from Emyn Muil.
"Come, now, hobbitses," Gollum's sibilant, frog-like voice drifted back to them with the smell of decay. "There's a secret path here. A dark path. Quick and quiet, where nassty orcses don't go. Orcs don't use it. Orcs don't know it. But Smeagol does." The skeletal ape motioned towards a strip of waterlogged vegetation.
"A swamp," Samwise muttered distastefully. "Are you sure about this, Mr. Frodo?"
"Let's go, Sam," Frodo Baggins followed the wildly gesturing being. Gollum had taken a liking to Frodo after the elder hobbit had learned his true name, but the rivalry between Sam and his long-limbed assailant was as strong as ever. The only thing that kept them from all-out battle was their mutual devotion to the ring bearer.
"Trust Smeagol, follow Sméagol," Gollum said encouragingly. "And don't follow the lights, fat hobbit."
"What do we have to worry about lights for?" Sam asked. If he squinted, he could make out distant fires in the swamp, too small for campfires, yet eerie in their bright green flames all the same. "You sure there's no orcs in here?"
"No orcses, sstupid hobbit. They march and march around for miles, around this land. A great fight happened here, and all the elveses and orcses went to light their little candles in the swamp. Follow them, and the hobbitses will be lighting their own candles, gollum." A snaggletoothed, predatory grin accompanied this statement, as the thin shadow flitted before Sam.
"I don't like this," Samwise muttered again, focusing upon his feet. The path was none too stable, and Gollum was forced to double back often to make sure that his followers were keeping up with him. He grabbed one hobbit or the other with his snaking arms whenever they appeared in danger of falling, accompanying his help with pleas to hurry them along and whispered cursings of the clouded moonlight. No matter his reassurances about the lack of orcs, Gollum seemed paranoid of followers. Or perhaps he simply hated the light, after living so long in darkness. Either way, it did little to reassure Frodo. He trusted their guide, as he had little other choice now, but the parallels betwixt guide and ring bearer drew stronger with every day and every step closer to Mordor.
Sam, too, feared the moonlight, but only for its shadows. The flames danced at the edge of his vision, but he did his best not to watch them. Whether or not Gollum was right, the bog-lights were uncanny in the darkness. In the moonlight, it was all too easy to imagine the flames as restless spirits of long-forgotten warriors. More than anything else, Samwise watched his feet, as every squelching step made him uneasy. It was because he had just gotten his foot stuck in the mud again that he missed Frodo's plunge. Yanking upon his restricted member, and doing his best to ignore the slinking, yellow-eyed beast that muttered sillibant curses at him, he did not see Frodo walk straight into a deep pool of muddy water with his eyes focused blankly upon a guttering flame in the distance.
Gollum hissed, flowing to the downed hobbit's side without seeming to need to pass through the marsh between his former position and his new one. Roughly, the bony arms yanked Frodo from certain slow death. "Don't follow the lights, hobbitses." His yellow eyes glowed as he chastised his rescued charge. He leveled a cautionary glare at Samwise, which was amply returned. "Come," he spat the last word, depositing Frodo on a more stable patch of ground.
Sam, freed of his own muddy shackle, came over and tried to brush some of the filth from his friend's clothes and hair. "What happened? Are you all right, Mr. Frodo?"
Wringing out the worst of the water from his cloak, the elder hobbit stilled Sam's hands. "I suppose I was – distracted," he said quietly. His voice still did not sound like he was concentrating very much upon current matters. "There were people down there, spirits. Elves, men, orcs, all dead, all rotting. They – they tried to bring me down there with them." Frodo shivered, and Sam knew it was not simply caused by the damp. The darker-haired hobbit reached inside his wet tunic for the chain about his throat. He fingered the ring upon it and let loose a deep breath. A more reassured, but still distant expression settled upon his face. "Let's go on, Sam. We shouldn't spend any more time in this swamp than we have to."
"I couldn't have put it better myself," Sam returned his old friend's wan smile. "Now where's that slinker got off to?" With squelching steps, the two set off after their shady guide. A slight wind stirred the stench of the marshes, bringing the moon free of the clouds. Caught in the bright light, Gollum hunkered down, throwing his long, pale arms over his frog-faced head. "Now what?" Sam muttered.
Gollum continued to gibber, shaking as Frodo reached down for his bony shoulder. "What's the matter?" Frodo asked delicately, with no small hint of trepidation when just what could be wrong came to mind.
"The Pale Face shall give us away!" Gollum wailed. "They will ssee us, and then we must go back to their nassty dungeons." Keeping a lank arm over his scraggly, greasy hair, he rushed for a collection of leafless bracken and dove beneath it, huddling in the mud.
"Pale face?" Sam inquired doubtingly. A long, bony finger pointed up at the moon. Sam turned, and saw a black shadow steal across it, followed by the same high-pitched shriek they had heard along the great river. Frodo stared after it, seemingly hypnotized. Sam grabbed hold of him and lunged after Gollum. Keeping a hand over his friend's mouth to keep him from crying out, Sam spent a fearful eternity crouched in horror next to his enemy. They would not quickly mend their differences, but in this moment, it was their similar terrors that mattered. Another scream faded off into the distance. "Are they gone?" Sam whispered, releasing Frodo. The dark-haired hobbit stared strickenly up into the night sky.
"They is never gone," Gollum whispered grimly.
""Not until they find us." Frodo's expression was distant and tormented, watching the twinkle of the far-off marsh lights.
Gollum gave Frodo a long look and then nodded. "We must protect the Precious."
Frodo nodded back, gripping the Ring tightly beneath his shirt. "We will."