Arwen was sitting with Elboron when Aragorn returned to their room, and she looked up at him expectantly.

"Katie has had a nightmare; Elrohir is with her," he told his wife. "But this little one has had no bad dreams!" he said, sitting down on Elboron's other side and putting his hand on the child's head.

"Maybe Katie saw the orcs," Elboron said in innocent sincerity. "They scared the guards, I think. Maybe that was why the guards went away. I'm glad Katie didn't go away. I didn't see the orcs. Katie made me shut my eyes."

Aragorn and Arwen's eyes met over Elboron's head. "What do you mean?" Arwen asked him gently.

"She said I had to close my eyes, and not to open them until she said so," Elboron said ingenuously. "I was good. I didn't open my eyes."

"That was very good," Aragorn said seriously.

Elboron nodded. "I wanted to see, but I didn't look. I always look around when my Daddy carries me on his shoulders. But Katie said, Don't look."

After a pause, Arwen said, "Well, I think it is time you shut your eyes again and went back to sleep!" She picked him up and carried him over to the cot, tucking him again and bidding him a quiet goodnight.

"No wonder Katie had nightmares," she murmured to her husband as they both climbed back into bed. "Poor girl—such a brave thing to do."

000

Elrohir had his own suspicions about what had caused Katie's night terror, but he didn't voice them. He did not tell her everything would be fine. In fact, he didn't say anything at all, only held Katie as she sobbed.

Eventually she quieted somewhat and moved to sit up. He released her, though still sat close as she wiped futilely at her face with shaking fingers. She didn't meet his eyes. When she made no move to speak, Elrohir asked, "Do you want to tell me about it?"

She finally looked up at him, and her eyes filled with heart-palpitating terror.

"You needn't if you do not want to," he reassured her.

She tearfully shook her head and abruptly dove back into his arms, laying her head on his shoulder. "No, I want to," she said in a choked voice. She gathered her breath for a moment, then told her story, although it was interspersed with sobs.

000

Katie's arrival in Middle-earth was as abrupt as it had always been. She stood blinking in the early summer morning sunlight, her heart lifting with the thought that she had returned and might soon see her friends again.

Katie stood in the middle of a gently rolling green plain, the sun halfway up the sky above her, the sky itself a perfect blue, and a gentle breeze blowing. But a strange sound sent shivers down the girl's spine, and she turned around to see where it might be coming from.

The sight that met her eyes burned itself horribly into her memory.

A battlefield. Dead bodies littered the ground—the bodies of men and horses mangled and tangled together on the grass.

And that keening wail—it was a child crying. Somewhere in that mess of horror was a terrified child. Even as she stood there, Katie could make out the word "Mama!" in the hoarse cries.

She never doubted for a moment what she had to do; she only wondered if she could do it. Slowly, as if she were walking to her own gallows, Katie began to make her way across the field of death.

The stench was almost overpowering. The smell of fear and blood and death—and the smell of orcs. Orc bodies littered the meadow among the bodies of men; they outnumbered the humans almost two or three to one.

Katie wanted to raise her head and not look at the bodies about her on the ground, but many of them lay so close together, she had to watch her step and pick her way painstakingly toward the center of the carnage, an overturned wagon from which the crying seemed to be coming.

Hacked and torn limbs, crushed faces… Once Katie stepped on the arm of one of the dead bodies and slipped, almost falling. In absolute disgust and terror, she crouched and vomited.

Sobbing, her eyes streaming, she wiped her mouth with her sleeve and moved on, trying desperately to get to the crying child.

After what seemed an eternity, Katie was beside the wagon, which was smashed and tilted so far, it was almost upside-down. She got down on her hands and knees and crawled underneath it.

A startled sob sounded in the warm darkness, and then there was silence. When Katie's eyes had adjusted to the light, she saw a little boy laying there, staring at her with wide eyes in a tear-stained face.

"Are you hurt, Sweetie?" Katie asked in the kindest voice she could muster after her ordeal crossing the field.

The little boy sobbed once in relief and nodded. "My leg hurts," he said pitifully.

Katie crawled a little closer and took a look at his leg as best she could in the relative darkness. It was bruised, and on closer examination, she discovered that it was broken—not badly, but broken.

She would have to splint it up. Katie scoured her mind for all the skills she had learned from Doronien, the healer she had spent time with in Mirkwood. She would need something stiff to splint the leg with, and some cloth to use as bandages… Well, that was easy; the wood of the wagon itself had been splintered into thin shafts that would work fine, and the child himself lay among a mess of blankets. Katie hunted out two serviceable pieces of wood and managed to rip some strips from the blankets as bandages.

"What's your name?" she asked the child as she worked over his leg.

"El-Elboron," he answered, wiping at his face with little hands. "Son of Faramir."

Katie stopped and looked up at him, startled. "Faramir? The Steward of Gondor?"

"And Prince of Ithilien," Elboron said, pronouncing the word carefully.

Katie bent back over her work. "What happened?"

Elboron gave another sob. "I was supposed to go to visit the King's house. And last night, we were going to stop and make a fire, but there was shouting and Bargon told me to hide and not make a sound, and he put blankets over me. And then—" His voice began to shake again. "There was a lot of yelling, and orcs hissing, and the wagon turned over and I hurt my leg. But the orcs went away, and I guess Bargon and the others did, too. Maybe the orcs scared them. They scared me."

"They scare me too, Sweetie." Katie finished tying off the splint. "Do you know where the King's house is?"

"They said it was by a big lake," Elboron said.

"What Lake?"

"I don't remember."

Katie bit her lip.

"Bargon said, 'We will be there tomorrow. And maybe you will hear Elves singing by the lake in the evening.' The Elves at home sing really pretty."

Elves singing by the lake in the evening. It rang a bell in Katie's mind.

"Was it Lake Evendim?" she asked.

Elboron nodded, recognizing the name.

Katie remembered learning about Lake Evendim in one of her lessons with Erestor, poring over maps in the library of Imladris. The Lake was in Arnor, northeast of the Shire. If Elboron were coming from Gondor, and was almost to the lake, they had to travel north-west, curving up between the hills of the Emyn Uial and the Baranduin.

"I'm sure the Elves at Lake Evendim will sing prettily too," Katie said, beginning to back out from under the wagon. "We're going to go find the Lake now." Elboron's face lit up at this pronouncement. Katie pulled him with her out from under the wagon, careful not to jostle his leg. Just before she pulled him out into the sun, she paused.

"Do you ever ride on your Papa's back?" she asked him. He nodded. "Well, I'm going to pull you out of here, and then you're going to sit up and I'll carry you on my back. But I need you to do something for me. I want you to shut your eyes tight, and don't open them for anything. Don't open them at all until I tell you to. Can you do that for me?" Elboron nodded solemnly, as only a five-year-old could. "Okay, shut your eyes now."

Elboron shut them obediently, and Katie pulled him out into the sunlight and the field of death. She maneuvered him around until she got him on her back, holding around her neck, then picked him up piggy-back style and began to pick her way north across the meadow.

"Are your eyes still shut?" she reminded him, trying to keep her voice calm and to ignore the sights about her feet.

"Yes," Elboron answered.

When she had finally gotten out of the carnage, Katie made north for a bunch of hills, and walked some distance between them until the field was lost entirely from sight.

"You can open your eyes now," she told her charge. "You did a very good job of keeping them shut."

After a moment of silence broken only by the sound of Katie's steps across the grass, Elboron suddenly asked, "What's your name?"

"Katie," she answered. It came to her mind to say Katie Johanson, but instead she said, "Katie Elvellon."

"Oh! Are you a Dwarf?" Elboron asked.

Had Katie been feeling a little better and less traumatized, she would have laughed. "No; do I look like a Dwarf?"

"No, but I've never seen a Dwarf-woman," Elboron said ingenuously. "Only, Gimli's name is Elvellon too, and he's a Dwarf."

"Do you know Gimli?" Katie asked, surprised.

"Yes, he comes to visit Legolas. Legolas went to visit the King, too. I like Legolas."

"I like Legolas, too."

This launched Elboron into a number of long and confusing stories about his friend and his home, but he eventually fell silent. It was no wonder. The poor child was exhausted, and had had no food or water since the day before.

Katie herself was soon very tired. It was no problem to carry a five-year-old on one's back for a short distance, and another thing altogether to carry him hours upon hours across rough terrain with little rest, no food, and no water. She probably could have gotten a waterskin and some food from the supplies in the wagon, but she hadn't wanted to stay in that horrible place any longer than she had to.

She found herself walking bemused in daydreams—or rather, day-horrors. Everywhere she looked there were corpses, and every time she shut her eyes, dead faces leered at her. More than once, she felt ill and had to suppress it. Once she couldn't, and knelt down, giving way to dry heaves that left her stomach sore.

"Are you sick?" Elboron asked timidly from her back.

Katie choked back a sob. "I'll be fine, Honey," she said, trying to reassure herself as much as she was reassuring him.

000

Elboron dozed off halfway through the morning, and at noon, they reached a small stream. Katie decided it had probably come from the Baraduin. She woke Elboron and put him down, and they both drank thirstily, Katie relieved to finally wash the taste of vomit out of her mouth. She longed to bathe, to wash the smell of death off of herself. There was blood and gore on the bottom of her shoes, and blood and dirt on her jeans. But she had no time, and she didn't relish the idea of walking for the rest of the day with wet shoes and socks. The scent of the battlefield hung about her like a cloud until she was terrified by it.

Elboron didn't seem to notice it.

After a short rest, Katie picked him up and began to walk again. She began to get scared as they didn't seem to be reaching any sort of landmark, any dwelling or signs of civilization. Sure they should have been there by now? Elboron said his guard had told him they would reach the King's house that day. But when that day? If they were planning on getting there in the evening, riding all day, then Katie would not make it to the Lake on foot before nightfall. She and Elboron would have to spend the night out in the wilderness, with orcs around.

That was the other thing that terrified her. Orcs had attacked Elboron's caravan, and left none alive. That suggested there were still orcs out here, and she was walking alone and exhausted, carrying a child who couldn't run away by himself. Every suspicious rustle from nearby trees, and every sound of the wildlife made Katie's heart jump into her chest. More than once she paused, her heart thundering, and more than once she tried to quicken her pace, suppressing the urge to run.

By late afternoon, it was all Katie could do to suppress the urge to collapse. She had eaten nothing all day and carried a child on her back for miles, besides having one of the most traumatic experiences of her life. She felt she would soon fall dead on the sward, and no one would ever find her. Tears of exhaustion and fear and despair fell silently down her cheeks. She suppressed the sound of her sobs so as not to scare the child.

She seemed to march asleep, and it was a great shock to her to hear her name spoken. Looking up, she saw four familiar faces coming toward her. It was the most welcome sight she had ever seen in her life.

"Oh, thank God," she managed.

000

Katie was shaking by the time she had finished this recital, and Elrohir was worried for her.

"I can still smell it," she whispered. "Death. I smell it all around me." Fear was in her voice; it trembled pitifully. "I'll never get rid of it! I'll smell it for the rest of my life!" She was practically hyperventilating.

"Shh," Elrohir said soothingly, exerting as much healing influence as he could, and surrounding her in an Elven serenity. "You will be free of it eventually." When she had calmed somewhat, he added, "Now you must sleep."

"No!" She clung to him desperately. "All I'll see is their faces!"

"No you won't," he said calmly, detaching her from him and tucking her in. He sat in the chair by her bed and let her hang onto his hand. "You will dream nothing. Close your eyes."

She did so as obediently as Elboron had done as she carried him off the battlefield. Softly, Elrohir began to sing: a low, strange song that sounded as if it were sung by the ancient earth itself. In a few moments Katie's breathing had slowed as she drifted into a dreamless sleep. But she still held to Elrohir's hand, and he did not move away.

TBC

AN: A page and a half longer than usual, but I didn't want to break in the middle of Katie's story.

In rereading the last two chapters, I realized I made a mistake: Sam and Rosie had eight children by this time, not ten! Mea culpa—I'll change it when I get the chance. Elanor is 15, Frodo is 13, Rose is 11, Merry is 9, Pippin is 7, Goldilocks is 5, and I believe Hamfast is 4 and Daisy is 3. According to the family tree in the appendices of RotK, Primrose should've been born the year before this, and Bilbo this year, which is how I got ten. But the first version of the epilogue doesn't mention her, while the second version does… It's all very confusing, but since more Hobbit children means more characters for me to juggle, I'm leaving it at eight.

Interesting fact: The name Bargon is a Sindarin version of Henry.

IwishChan: Yes, Ham is rather adorable. Poor Elboron? What about poor Katie? She's the one who walked the entire day carrying him on her back!

ElvenRyder: All the names of Sam and Rosie's children are from canon. Aragorn and Arwen had a son named Eldarion and some unnamed daughters. When Aragorn is dying he says that Eldarion is 'full-ripe for kingship', and since Chieftains tended to take over their duties at the age of 90, that would mean that Eldarion is born in the year 30 of the Fourth Age (this information from the Encyclopedia of Arda). This story takes place in the 14th year of the Fourth Age, so Eldarion won't be born for another 16 years yet.

Alaterial567: Ooh, midnight showing of HP GoF! Don't tell me anything; I'm seeing it Sunday night.

Fk306: Now we know. She's extremely traumatized.

Skye: lol The dust-bunnies can't shed any more than me… I swear I'm losing my summer coat, just like our cats. It's incredible.

Ravens Destiny: I'm glad you like it when Elladan gets hit, because that'll probably happen some more by the time we're done. :)

Arlindor: I've got one sibling. I love him, but one is enough for me!

Madd Hatter: Yep, she's in shock a bit.

Ames' Maiden: Oh, do guess! I love hearing my readers' theories… and then telling them I can neither confirm nor deny them. :)

EresseElrondiel: I'm gonna have to make me one o' them.

Mira-hime: That's actually a very good theory. I hadn't thought about that one. And don't worry about your English; it's better than a lot of stuff one reads on the net! Where are you from?

Lady Jammchra: What do you do for a living? Do you work in publishing? Yep, Katie's a bit of a Storm-crow.

Thalion: Yeah, I feel really bad for the poor girl. She's seen a heck of a lot of death in Middle-earth, hasn't she?

RenegadeKitsune: lol Yes, the cliffy: a fanfic writer's best friend!

Laer4572: lol Yes-huh! Tolkien himself said so: "One must stop somewhere" (Letters, #144). Ha! lol Ah yes, chivalry is great, isn't it?

Dreamer: lol Thank you!

Megara: lol You're not excited or anything, are you?

Thanks also to Tara, miget girl, SAGA123, Contia Mirian and Almenel!

Please review!