PART ONE: ANACHRONISM

Chapter XLIII: The Eagles Are Coming

It wasn't a quick process but a slow, drawn-out fall. The tree shuddered, and then the roots released a long, low moan. Slowly, inch by inch, the tree started to lean over the edge of the cliff.

"What's happening?" My grip on the tree branch tightened.

"Hold on!" roared Thorin.

The tree tilted backwards. Its roots clung to the ground, groaning with the effort. The trunk of the tree was now leaning over the edge of the cliff, giving me a fantastic view all the way down to the ground. It was a long way.

"Kíli!" cried Fíli, somewhere in the branches above me.

"Fíli!" cried Kíli, somewhere in the branches below me.

Then gravity got the best of the tree, and all of a sudden, we were plummeting down. I screamed. Dori yelled. The fires crackled. The roots snapped. The wargs howled. The orcs jeered. Azog watched with an expression of mad delight on his pale face.

You'll be happy to know that we did not fall off the cliff. Some of the roots had managed to hold onto the mountainside, even as the tree dangled off the cliff edge, running parallel to the ground thousands of feet below.

Dust and pine needles flew in all directions, and I wrenched my eyes shut, holding onto the branch for dear life. The problem was that gravity was working against me. My hands started to slip, and my body slid down the branch.

I screamed, but before I could lose my hold on the tree entirely, a strong arm wrapped around my waist and lifted me to safety.

The roots shuddered in protest, but they held steady for the time being. Around me, the pine needles and tree branches trembled violently. But, as the tree remained firmly in place, everything stilled.

"Even after all that, I cannot get rid of you," said Thorin. I couldn't tell if he was sad or relieved.

I opened my eyes and saw that Thorin had me by the waist. We were wedged between two thick, tree branches, Thorin using his free arm and feet to keep us in place.

When the tree stopped moving, Thorin gripped the branches above his head and hauled us upwards until we were lying on top of the trunk—our heads leaning over one side and our feet the other. A gust of wind rolled through and the tree started trembling again. I wrenched my eyes shut and refused to open them until the gust of wind had passed.

"How are we still alive?" I asked.

Thorin grunted in response. I assumed that meant he had no idea either.

"Thank you," I said.

Thorin nodded. "Just do not look down."

I looked down. It was a long way. The ground had become blurry and almost unrecognizable. There was the green of the forest trees and the blue of a river, but other than that, the ground was like a dark water color painting where everything had run together. My head started to spin, and a scream bubbled in my throat.

"Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it." I repeated those words over and over again. "Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Thorin…I'm thinking about it…"

Thorin wasn't listening to me. Using the light of the fires, he scanned the tree, soundlessly counting the Company.

Bilbo was closest to us. His chin was resting on one of the branches, and he was trying to pull himself up into a stable position. Thorin grabbed Bilbo by the scruff of his neck and hauled Bilbo onto the tree trunk. Bilbo lay next to me, gasping and panting with the raw terror of it all. I understood his pain.

Glancing along the tree trunk, I saw that Fíli and Kíli were shouting motivational things at one another as they tried to haul themselves up to safety. Dwalin was hugging a thick branch tightly to his chest as his legs dangled into the air below. Óin and Nori were holding onto the same branch. They were both trying to convince the other to move to a different branch, but neither one was willing to budge. Glóin was clinging to the tree trunk a little past them, and Balin was trying to catch Thorin's attention. His pink cheeks huff and puffed with the effort. Bofur was encouraging Bifur in khuzdul as Bifur clung to a tree branch, his face growing paler by the second. Bombur sat near the end of the tree, his great weight causing the trunk to curve downwards. Behind him was Gandalf, who had used his staff to haul Dori and Ori back onto the trunk of the tree. The two dwarves were white-faced and gasping with fear.

"Thorin," I said, determinedly looking up at the night sky instead of the ground below. "What are we going to do?"

"Do not worry," said Thorin. "If you fall, you will Skip."

"But what if I don't?"

"Then your luck has run out."

"Thorin," I said. "When someone is facing their fears, you're supposed to say comforting things to make that person—me—feel better. It's a matter of character."

"My character has always been this way."

"Bullshit! When I was six-years-old and Skipped to Erebor when Smaug was attacking, you were so nice then."

"Must you bring that up? It is because you did not know how to talk constantly then."

"I don't talk constantly now!"

"Do you two not have better things to talk about?" asked Bilbo. "Such as the fact that we are all about to die?"

I made the mistake of glancing down again, and all my paralyzing fear came rushing back. "Bilbo, don't bring that up!"

Bilbo blinked. "It is a rather pressing situation."

"Leave her be," said Thorin. He wasn't looking at us. His face was turned towards the party of orcs who were pacing along the wall of fire. The flames illuminated Thorin's face with a brilliant, orange light.

"What are you looking at?" I asked.

Thorin did not answer. I followed his line of sight and saw that the pale blue orc was glaring back at Thorin. On the other side of the dancing flames, Azog sat astride his white warg. The beast trembled with anticipation, and Azog gripped his rough blade. Thorin watched with growing rage, perhaps remembering the death of his grandfather.

Thorin and Azog stared at each other for what I swear was a good two minutes. I couldn't imagine what Thorin was feeling, facing the orc who had murdered his grandfather. The tension was so thick, I could've cut it with the Sword Breaker.

The Company called out to Thorin. Balin was still trying to get him attention. Dwalin was starting to slip off his branch. The tree trunk had curved so much under Bombur's weight that Dori and Ori had started to slide down the trunk. Bilbo was trying to talk to Thorin about how they were going to get out of this situation, but Thorin was paying him no mind. The Company's cries fell on deaf ears.

And then, Thorin got to his feet.

In that moment, as Thorin stood on the tree trunk, gripping the hilt of Orcrist. I knew three things for certain: 1) Thorin had never looked so majestic before in his life, 2) Thorin was going to do something brave, 3) Thorin was going to do something stupid.

Azog squinted at Thorin, as if trying to figure out what Thorin was going to do. As the truth slowly dawned on Azog, a smile spread across his deformed face. As if to say, "Come at me, dwarf."

Thorin took a step forward. The tree trembled slightly.

Thorin took another step forward and another. He smirked. The tree had not fallen out beneath him. Another step.

Stupid idiot. Stupid idiot. Stupid idiot. Stupid idiot. Stupid idiot.

"Stupid idiot!" I screamed. I pressed my hands against the rough bark of the tree and pushed myself into a standing position. "Thorin, you stupid idiot! I told you not to do anything stupid—and look at yourself!"

Thorin took another step towards Azog.

"At least acknowledge my existence, you idiot!"

I took three steps forward—practically sprinting down the tree trunk—and caught Thorin by the shoulder, spinning him around to face me. I drew back my right hand and slapped him. "Get some sense into your head, Thorin!"

Okay, I lied. That's not what happened. You know me—as if I could ever be that coordinated.

What really happened was I stood up on the tree trunk and realized that one wrong move would send me falling to my death.(Never mind that I would probably Skip before I hit the ground, debilitating phobias don't pay attention to details like that.) My hands shook, my knees knocked together, and my heart thundered in my chest. I didn't want to die like that.

I sprinted/tripped across the tree trunk to grab Thorin's arm. "You idiot! How could you put me through this? I told you not to do something stupid and here you are doing something stupid—Thorin!"

He spun around to face me. "Ana?"

And, you know what, we did fall. I stumbled into Thorin, knocked him off balance, and suddenly the two of us were toppling from the tree.

Down we plummeted. The wind whistled in my ears, whipping my hair in all directions. I clung to Thorin as tightly as I could. Maybe, maybe, I would Skip before we hit the ground. Then we wouldn't die. We wouldn't die. Oh God. I wasn't Skipping. We were going to die!

We didn't die.

We landed on something soft and warm. My hands touched feathers as we began soaring upward with the uncomfortable beating of wings beneath us.

Thorin sat up. "Eagles…"

Dozens of giant eagles had arrived at the scene and were attacking the orcs. With great prowess, the birds swooped down from the sky and plucked the screeching orcs from the cliff. Azog roared, and his white warg retreated, the other orcs chasing after him. The eagles then scooped up the Company from the falling tree. And, suddenly, we found ourselves away from harm and soaring through the air on the backs of eagles.

Well, I wouldn't say entirely safe from harm.

I was lying flat across the eagle's back, my face buried in the eagle's feathers and my eyes wrenched shut. "Don't tell me not to look down," I said. "Because you know I will look down. And I don't want to look down."

"We are on the back of an eagle," said Thorin.

"I know," I said. "Eagles are shifting, unstable things. I could easily fall off an eagle's back. This is even worse than the time I was carried to war by a talking tree."

Thorin decided it was better not to ask about the talking trees.

I clutched the eagle's feather's between my fingers and shuddered. "If Stewie drops me, I will not be happy."

"Stewie?"

"The eagle."

"You named the eagle?" Thorin sighed. "I should not be surprised."

Thorin watched me for a second before turning to survey the Company. I followed his line of sight. There were about twenty eagles in total. Gandalf rode on the back of the head eagle, his gray hair blowing in the wind. Sharing an eagles, Fíli and Kíli laughed and joked with one another after having survived the near-death experience. The eagle carrying Bombur looked a little disgruntled with the situation (yes, eagles can look disgruntled). Dori and Ori looked just happy to have their lives. Bilbo and Bofur rode together on the back of one gorgeous, tawny eagle. The bird kept soaring up and down, shifting place in the group constantly (I was really glad that I wasn't riding that eagle. I would have cried the entire flight). Glóin and Bifur were lying on the eagle nearest to Thorin and mine, while Nori, Óin, and Balin shared the light brown eagle at the rear of the flock. Dwalin had his own gold-brown eagle. Thorin and I were somewhere in the middle of the group, our eagle flying a little below the others (something I was very grateful for).

"You're lucky Stewie was here," I said. The eagles made a sharp turn to the left and I closed my eyes again.

"Do you not mean that you are lucky that Stewie was here?" said Thorin. "You were the one who caused us to fall from the tree."

"That's because you were being an idiot. I told you not to be an idiot, but you decided to be an idiot anyway. I don't approve of your idiocy. I'm the idiot, remember? You're the level-headed one who tells me when I'm doing something stupid—not the other way 'round!" I felt the eagle shift beneath me and I groaned. "Oh God, it's a long way down."

"I was only doing what I had to," said Thorin. He wasn't looking at me.

"What?" I snapped. "Attacking an armed orc on a massive warg? In what scenario do you win? Who were you helping?" I glared up at him. "What happened to reclaiming Erebor? Or are you going to return home in a coffin? We can kindly ask Smaug to let us burry your remains under the mountain—maybe he'll be merciful and make our deaths quick! What were you thinking? What were you thinking?"

Finally Thorin turned to glower at me, a crease between his brows. "We were between falling to our deaths and being killed by orcs. I figured we had better chances with the orcs."

"The eagles were coming."

"I did not know if—" Thorin stopped himself. He scowled at me for a moment, as if he was having some sort of internal struggle, and then he said, "You are right."

I blinked. "I am?"

He ignored me and said, "When I began this quest, I swore to myself that I would not let my emotions control me, yet I just tried to take on a battalion of orcs on my own." The next few words seemed physically painful for him to say. "You have my thanks, Ana."

I was at a loss for words. "You…you…should have…you should have…" I stopped. I caught sight of the ground so very, very far below and buried my face in my hands. "I'm going to be sick."

"What?"

"I keep seeing myself going splat on the ground, and I don't want to die like that."

Thorin sighed. "Stewie will not let you fall."

"Yes, he will," I moaned, still refusing to move my hands away from my face. "I don't think he likes me very much."

"Well," muttered Thorin, "I cannot fault him there. You have been shouting for the last few minutes."

I settled into silence, because I genuinely was afraid that the eagle would find my chatter annoying and decide to let me fall to me death. However, silence gave me time to think, and well, of course I ended up thinking about what had just happened. It still frightened me to think of Thorin charging through the flames to fight Azog and his white warg. No matter how many times I imagined it, I couldn't see it ending well. All I could see was Thorin's body spread across the forest floor, blood trickling onto the burnt grass beneath him.

"I'm glad," I said softly.

Thorin glanced over at me, an unasked question in his blue eyes.

"I'm glad I stopped you from fighting Azog."

His mouth twisted into a sort of half-smile, half-grimace. "Yes, I can be stupid at times."

"At least you admit it," I said. "The worst are the people who don't admit their stupidity. Like the elves. Arrogant elves, they think they're all-knowing." I glanced at Thorin. "You get it. Everyone else looks at me weird when I say that I dislike elves."

"Our reasons for disliking elves is different," said Thorin.

"True." I couldn't argue that.

"After the Lonely Mountain was taken from us, after Smaug had taken up residence in our halls," murmured Thorin, his gaze fixed on the snow-capped ridges of the Misty Mountains, "my people were lost. Dale was blackened by the dragon's fire, and its people were as homeless as ours. We went to the elves of Mirkwood, people who had sworn an alliance with my grandfather, but when we asked for refuge, they turned us away, called us beggars. My people were forced to wander the Wilderlands, cross the Misty Mountains, and scatter across Dunland. No one helped us. Not the elves of Mirkwood, not the elves of Lórien, not the elves of Rivendell, though we asked for their aid. We dwarves stood alone, and we survived, undimmed and unwearied., but we never forgave and we never forgot the words of King Thranduil. 'The dwarves of Erebor have fallen and yet they stand before me demanding as if they were still mighty. The Woodland Realm gives no shelter to proud beggars.'"

We both sat without speaking for a moment.

"When I was fourteen, I Skipped to the Wilderlands and encountered some Mirkwood elves who were traveling to visit their kin." I had never told this story before, but I felt that I could tell Thorin. He'd understand. "I had met Elladan and Elrohir before, and I'd thought that all elves were that friendly. But these elves weren't like that. They invited me to travel with them, but every step of the journey, they teased my height, mocked my intelligence because I hadn't lived for thousands of years.

"At first, I thought that kind of mentality only belonged to those two elves or just Mirkwood elves, but then I was in Rivendell, and there were elves I liked there, like Arwen and her brothers, but many of the elves considered all us mortals—humans, dwarves, and hobbits—to be the same. They talked to us as if we were children and often spoke in Sindarin when we were around so we would not be included in their conversations. The only person they deemed worthy of proper conversation was Gandalf. The same thing happened in Lórien, they all thought I was beneath them. And Galadriel, she treated me like a tool that could be used to save Middle Earth, not like a human being."

"And, what made things even worse, was that no one calls them out on it. I hear people telling dwarves all the time that they're pigheaded and greedy, which is true, but no one tells elves that they're arrogant asses. I know not all elves are like that, but a lot of them are. So, I guess, over time I wanted to be the one to call them out on it, make fun of them a bit, show them that they aren't any better than the rest of us." I shrugged. "I probably don't do a very good job of it. No one takes me seriously anyways."

There was a pause, and then, Thorin shook his head. "I expect no less of you."

I squinted at him. "I can't tell if that was an insult of a compliment." I glanced down at the eagle. "Stewie, what do you think?"

Stewie did not respond.

"He's a little shy," I said.

Stewie leaned forward slightly and started to descend.

"What's he doing?" My grip tightened on the eagle's feathers and all attempts to have a meaningful conversation ended. "Don't kill us—you just saved our lives, letting us die now would just be undoing all your hard work."

"He is not going to kill us," said Thorin. "He is going to land."

Thorin was right, of course. All of the great eagles descended in unison, using their wings to guide them. Down they went, soaring with grace and ease, into a green, lush valley. The walls of the valley descended, forming a sort of basin through which a river flowed. In the center of the valley, a stone pillar rose upwards. I couldn't tell if the pillar had been made by some sort of being or by nature itself. With rough with jagged sides, the pillar was about twenty feet in width, the top forming a flat platform that we could stand on. The eagles—one by one—descended and deposited us on the top of the stone pillar. Then, the eagles soared away back to their nest in the Misty Mountains.

"They couldn't have set us down on the ground?" I asked as I sat down in the middle of the platform and refused to look over the edges of the pillar. "It's like they're laughing at me."

"You are pathetic," grunted Dwalin.

"I do not think you are pathetic," said Bofur. "Everyone has their fears. Your fear happens to be heights."

"Thank you," I said with a smile. "You are as ridiculously lovely as always."

Bofur beamed at me. "Why thank you, Ana."

"This loveliness is making me ill," said Dwalin.

"You're just jealous," I said.

"We have just survived a dangerous situation," said Bilbo. "I suggest we do not argue amongst ourselves but remain amiable."

I nodded. "I like Bilbo's suggestion."

"You like any suggestion that does not cause harm to you," said Balin. "We have long since learned that your input means nothing most of the time."

I tried to think of a valid argument in my defense, but there wasn't one, so I simply said, "I have the occasional moment of brilliance."

"Can we find a more constructive topic of conversation?" asked Nori. "Like how are we going to get down from here?"

"The answer is quite simple, Mister Nori," said Gandalf. "We must climb down."

I laughed. "Have fun with that. I'll just stay up here until I Skip home."

"That could be quite a long time though," said Bilbo.

"Then I'll just jump down. I should Skip before I hit the ground."

"I am confused," said Dori. "You are terrified of heights, but you can jump down from great heights because you know you will Skip before you strike the ground…why are you afraid of heights in the first place?"

"That is a very good question," said Bilbo.

The eyes of the Company fixed on me, waiting for an answer.

I shifted uncomfortably and said, "There's a difference between when you jump from a height of your own free will and when someone pushes you off. I can jump from great heights after much practice."

"You practiced?" asked Balin.

"Yeah. After I accidentally lost my friends, Bonnie and Nick, in Middle Earth, I needed to find them. But I didn't know how to make myself Skip. So I stood on the roof of my apartment building for an hour each day and thought about jumping. I was sure I would Skip before anything terrible happened to me, but there was always this doubt. I kept imaging that something would go wrong and I would splatter the sidewalk with my brain matter going everywhere." I shuddered.

"That sounds dreadful," said Dori. "Perhaps that is the reason you are so terrified of heights."

"You may be right," I said. I tried to pretend that I didn't notice the Company looking at me with pity.

"Uncle?" asked Kíli, thankfully turning the attention away from me. "What do you see?"

The Company turned in unison to see what had captured Thorin's attention. The dwarf stood at the far east edge of the pillar, looking out over the vast, green forest of Mirkwood. The trees were a tangled mess, their crooked branches bent over as if they were trying to hide from the sun. Mirkwood stretched far into the distance, until it met the horizon. And—where the land and sky met—a lone mountain appeared, vivid and daunting in comparison to the pastel world around it.

"The Lonely Mountain," murmured Thorin.

"It looks a lot smaller than I remember," I said.

"It is far away," said Gandalf. "Things that are far away have a tendency of appearing smaller."

"Thanks, I didn't know that." My voice was dripping with sarcasm. Then, I added, "Thankfully, I don't have to walk the whole way with you guys."

"We have to walk?" asked Bombur. "Could the eagles have not carried us further?"

"I like walking," said Dori.

"The eagles are not our personal transportation," sad Gandalf.

I nodded. "They have eagle stuff they have to be doing."

"Like what?" asked Bombur.

"Like making nests and feeding their young," said Bofur. "The eagles' families might become worried if the eagles are away from home for too long."

"Aw," I said. "Can we just have a moment of silence here to appreciate Bofur's loveliness?"

Bofur turned bright red.

I glanced over at Thorin and saw that he had not moved from the edge of the pillar.

"So that is Erebor," said Bilbo, staring out at the shadowed mountain. "I did not know places like this still existed in the world."

"They do," I said. "You just have to look."

Bilbo smiled down at me and said, "I do believe the worst is behind us."

That line! I fell over laughing. Just…just…poor Bilbo, he had no idea what awaited him.

Yeah… I laughed for a good five minutes straight.