Aulë stood quietly, as around him wild men and hobbits chattered oblivious to his presence. A strange occurrence perhaps, but an even stranger place… a market, though hardly much of it, considering how…how few resources these people had. Just a few stalls with nothing more exciting than a woollen blanket, food didn't even seem to be out on display, too little of it to waste rotting in the sun.

They were so thin, and small – the people here – why, even the orcs looked fragile as if a single gust of wind would knock them over. Yavvanna had done her work on the forest behind them, but the land where the village stood was still desolate and sterile. No crops would grow here, no oats, or wheat, or even barley would grace these fields…how these people had managed to live so long in a place like this, Aulë didn't even want to think about it.

Besides, his mind was far too preoccupied on not thinking about…about the North, about what lay there, about why it…why it seemed so very important all of a sudden that he should be going in that direction, rather than towards Rohan. After all, if Fëanor had been in Dunland when it had died than clearly Rohan had much more need of their help…and yet, he felt the call northward.

'Mister Smith,' the great lord of the smith blinked as the small boy – hobbit and wild man, both lived within him – appeared almost seemingly out of nowhere beside him.

'My mother sent me to get you, your wife says it's time to leave. To go onward to the horse lords.'

'Yes, yes onwards…to…tell me boy, what lies North of here?'

'A great deal I'd imagine.'

'Give me a straight answer boy, not that run around you gave my wife.'

The child scowled, emphasising the unpleasant features he'd inherited from his mother's side – the Drúadan people would never be beautiful, even as gentle and sweet as they were.

'If you mean the land, there's worse than the dead earth here – but if you mean the people then I couldn't tell you if they live or not, but I find it terribly unlikely. But there's a dwarf kingdom, a Northern Man Kingdom, the Bree Folk and the Shire…but don't go there, everything goes to die there.'

'And you could show me, show me the quickest path, that is if you've truly been there before.'

'You will die …they all die there…that's what happens over there. You'll be dead just like Dunland. That's where the pathway through leads, north where even the Dead are too afraid to go. Besides I can't go with you…Grandmother already chose mother as your guide, she'll never let me come along.'

Aulë fished in his pocket and brought out one of the largest and most delicious looking apples the boy had ever seen, even if his memory of other apples was as faded and bleak as his father's face.

'If I can get us through Dunland unharmed, will you promise to show me the way north.'

And the child, bewitched by the fruit nodded with such a joyful eagerness, that it almost made Aulë regret the danger of the request. Almost.

'Well, then, to Rohan we must go.'

'No, no, I forbid it.'

'Grandmother already said I could, and she's the chief, so I don't see the problem here.'

'The problem here, is you're not going. End of discussion, it's much too dangerous.'

'Mother, if we all operated on that reasoning than we'd never do anything at all. The village is as dangerous as any place, year by year the trees hide us less from the sights of the dead, and worse. So really where I carry my gun makes little to no difference at all, except for one thing, out there we're in the company of living gods, and here we are not. At any minute we could be ambushed, you're in far more danger just standing there yelling at me than I'd be out there.'

'Are you quite done?'

'Almost…really, if you take the time to think about it would be a sign of great negligence on your part to leave me behind, why I could be killed, or worse yet turned.'

'Silence, I will not be talked to as if I'm one of your silly little arguments with your friends, something to be weaselled out of and negotiated round. I am your mother, Boromir, my authority trumps your grandmother on matters of your well-being. Now that is all the argument, I will give you. Turn around and go home before the others catch up to us.'

'But mother I made a promise, and by Drug law a promise must be kept no matter what.'

'A promise to who? Who made you promise something, not your grandmother I hope for she should know better?'

'No, but she wouldn't let me break it even if I wanted to, you should know better than that mother.'

There was no huge visible sign that Diamond Took had admitted defeat, but simply by the mere fact that she did not instantly grab her son by the arm and march him back home to the village, Gandalf knew that she had.

They set out at what seemed like quite the pace, down from the hanging ledge that the village – those plain structures of mud and straw – perched on like a nest of a great eagle. Diamond, still half-enraged by her son's disobedience, marched a head of the party, her long legs making strides that other hobbits Olorin had known in his years – even in their prime – would have been hard pressed to match.

I say 'seemed to' because it also appeared like nothing around them was changing to match. It was simply the same grey, grassless plain from now until, well the land hit the horizon. Behind them the village grew smaller and smaller, but nothing, no other settlement or structure, rose to meet them in turn.

'We cannot stop, we stop we slow down and if we slow down, we'll be caught out here after sunset.'

Said the hobbit mother.

'And?' snarled Aulë.

'Do you wish to die? Do you wish for them to find you? Because I can promise you Lord Smith, once darkness falls over this land, that is all that will. There aren't people here my lord, the Rohan are gone, whatever remnant of them fled up into the mountains once the plague took hold. All you will find in this land come sunlight is dust, dust and the crawling remnants of the dead. But come sun down they will march in their droves, in their ranks and they will descend upon anything living. Not even the stone beneath our feet survived such an onslaught.'

And as if to emphasise her point further, she kicked a stone close to her foot. It didn't fly into the air or at Aulë as one might assume it should have, no, all that stone did was crumble. Crumble into nothing more than dust in the wind. That was all this land was now, no grass, no crops, no green things living, and certainly no people. There would be no one that they could rally, no warriors or long forgotten heirs to the throne that would arrive in the nick of time to save the day. All there was between Middle-Earth and complete consumption into this…this land of the dead was them – four Valar, one Maiar, and two hobbits, one of whom was not even of age yet.

Hope, if it had ever existed at all, was far away and beyond even Aulë's reach.

Somewhere, where the Kingdom of Rohan once stood

The hobbit lass…matron…mother…had led the party of what was it now…five, six…along a well-worn dust path that seemed almost invisible unless you were really, really trying to find it.

'That's the way all hobbit paths work.'

Said her precocious young son, who seemed all too eager to relay all his knowledge on the matter, whether his audience were willing or not. Maybe it was a good thing, after all if the air hadn't been filling with the chattering narrative of ancient hobbit road-builders, then it would just have been the silence of the dead air. Ashen to taste, and hard to see through, the thick clouds that made up the sky of Rohan…of what had once been Rohan…were a dismal sight.

Olorin tried not to focus on them, or the child, or the young hobbit mother leading them down this strange lifeless road…he tried not to think about anything really. It was all too…all too painful. Everything made him remember those he had led through here once before, of the men of Rohan who fought so bravely for their land, of the men of Dunland who'd never even gotten a chance to. He certainly didn't let himself think about…about the hobbits that had come through this land once before. He'd recognised Diamond Took as young Peregein's wife purely because he had always been very good at faces, and she had such an unusual one – but he didn't really know her. He'd maybe seen her once before he'd left Middle-Earth, as a tired face waving her husband off on his journey to see his friends away at the Grey Havens. If he remembered correctly, she'd been ever so slightly pregnant at the time.

Had that been the boy chattering away to one of the four Valar now about ancient hobbit road-building customs – no, no the timeline was off. There must have been another child…but where was it now? Was it one of the masses of unnamed children running wild in that village, or was it…was it gone, buried in a shallow little grave, along with its father? Was Pippin Took alive? Were any of the people, the friends and loved ones Gandalf had left behind on the shores of Middle-Earth alive anymore? Of course, they were mortals, death was an inevitability…and yet to have died in a world like this one, it was almost too horrible to imagine.

As night began to creep up upon this terrible land, Diamond Took led them away from the long dead plains of Rohan and up into a small nook between the large rocks that littered the vile place. It wasn't until they were right upon it, that he saw it was actually a cave.

'Everyone in…there's no going anywhere after nightfall.' Said the tired hobbit mother, and Olorin…and Gandalf did what he was bid without complaint.

'See,' said the boy somewhere from behind the old Maiar. 'I told you; no one can hide something in plain sight like a Hobbit can.

In the dark of the cave the fire crackled low, and Vairë lay awake listening to the others snore around her. If a mortal ever heard one of the Valar snores, than perhaps they would not be so quick to hold them in such high regard. Turning over again, as beside her the great Smith sucked in air that had probably just wanted to die anyway, the Valar lady gave up all hope of sleep. Choosing instead to stare mindlessly ahead of her to the mouth of the cave where a hobbit and Wizard sat, highlighted by the eerie light of the moon. Their voices were low, and almost comforting. And perhaps someone else, someone who was not Vairë, lady of Mandos, would not have been able to hear them. But she was, and this is what she heard.

'Mrs Took,' began the former wizard, his eyes locked on the flashing of the thunderstorm in front of them. 'How did it come to be like this?'

'I thought you'd already know, seeing as you're back.' Came the voice from the silhouette of the hobbit.

'We knew some of the story but not all of it.'

'You know about the dead then?'

'And their master, yes, but I don't know what happened to the Shire…or your husband.'

'The Shire's dead, there's the missing piece…it's as dead as the land out there. And Pippin…' she stopped, and her voice filled with the sort of pain, perhaps Olorin would never truly understand for himself.

'Pippin is gone, there now I've filled in the blanks…what else do you really need to know about over there? It's not like any of you will ever see it again.'

'Perhaps,' said the displaced Maiar. 'Perhaps so, but then who are we to guess at the grand plan of our maker.'

The girl laughed at that.

'Grand plan? You really think anyone, no matter how high or powerful planned this? What kind of terrifying deity do you worship, you stupid man? I tell you this the grand plan derailed ages ago, and no matter how much we pray or scrabble not even Eru Ilúvatar himself is going to put it right again. Probably finds it all too funny.'

Gandalf smiled for some strange reason at that…but the girl didn't really notice him at all, too engaged in her rant against her maker.

'Oh, isn't it hilarious, watch them…watch them all run and weep over each other like it'll mean anything when the world reaches its final chapter. No one will remember the name of Diamond Took or my sons when the earth finally gives up its seemingly unending battle with you…you creatures of the west. It would have been better if my father's kind had done what he intended us to do, died in that forest in the first age slaughtered by the arrows of his favourite children.

'But we didn't, and he has never forgiven us for that. We are cursed as a race, cursed to be forgotten…what does the Shire's death matter now that the kingdoms of Men have fallen to the dead? Every hobbit name that has ever come before will be forgotten in the wake of the pain of greater races, who cares that the Gamgees died buried alive in the sands of Rhûn, when a horse from Rohan lost its shoe that day? Who cares that Merry Brandybuck lost his head to Ellsar the Mad's wrath, when it was Gondor who had to live under the fool? Who cares…who cares if he murdered Faramir…if my son lies buried in a ditch or walking around with the rest of them? Lifeless shells, keeping their heads down so that the true dead…the dead that we should never have forgotten can have reign over all.'

'Mrs. Took…Diamond…where is your husband?'

It is a gift possessed by very few of the Valar to truly see the truth, yet it is a gift that the greatest of their weavers has always possessed.

And as she hears the silence, the young hobbit hisses out from between her clenched teeth this is the truth which Lady Vairë sees.

Once there was a girl born of two peoples, her mother a drug and daughter of a chief. Her father a hobbit and son of a rich line.

She grows up in a forest, wild, free and very much loved.

And then one day, during a war she doesn't understand she meets a young hobbit of her father's name. Perhaps a cousin, but very distant indeed.

And she falls in love herself, though she doesn't know it when he leaves to continue on to the white city.

And then it's over and things should go back to normal, but they don't because the dead have come.

It still takes years for real change to move the people of the Drug though. When the Earth of Rohan shakes and crushes their forest under its heel, even then many only move to the nearest forest…to the Fangorn Forest.

But not Diamond.

And not those who follow her.

No, their path will lead them farther a field than that, to a land made of mostly nothing but fields. To a land of rolling hills, and little red doors in the side of them.

To a land she believes the dead will never touch.

She is wrong about that, but of course she doesn't know that yet.

This is how the tale of Diamond and Peregrin Took begins but it is not how it ends.

That's yet to come.

But Vairë will see it none the less.

This is what Vairë sees when she closes her eyes now.

Smoke.

Darkness.

Death.

Death is all around the young hobbit mother and her two children.

Diamond and her sons run from their hole in the ground. Not a nasty smelly dirty hole, nor a dry Sandy hole with nothing much to sit down in. No, this was a hobbit hole, which should have meant comfort but didn't. Not anymore. Not in any real sense, not anymore not since the dead had returned.

Instead, it was a prison, or as good as. They could not leave it, not without risking possession or so said many of the Tooks that Diamond now found herself surrounded by. At first it hadn't seemed so bad, well technically speaking – of course having a swarm of ghosts ready to kidnap and possess you and everyone you love, steps from your front door would never be what anyone would consider good. But then again, she had been certain that there were those who had it far worse. Those without food or shelter, those without the loyalty of the Tooks.

That Brave and most noble of all hobbit houses.

And at least the meals were nice enough at first, for the stores of the Tooks should have lasted for years, but the bellies of hobbits are deep and so did not last at all. As the weeks dragged on the bread begun to taste stale and the stews, they ate became much more thinned out.

By the fourth week there was no fresh water anymore. The Tooks had a cellar of wine and a few barrel fulls of mead but that was about it.

If times had been different, better, saner, Diamond would never have let the children drink such things, at least not till they were grown. To her mother's people it was unthinkable to let a child imbibe alcohol. And yet they had lived in a land where fresh and clean water had been all too easy to find. And she was no longer in that land.

Over the months and months Diamond and her sons were stuck in that Smial, that massive Smial that had once been so filled with laughter and love, things became gradually worse.

First the food began to run out in earnest.

The screams of the dead grew so loud at night that nobody slept anymore.

And tensions had never been worse in the Took family.

Especially towards the half-breed, Diamond Took.

Diamond Took, with her missing husband.

A Husband she hadn't seen since the dead had come; a husband no one had seen since the dead had risen.

There were whispers.

Terrible whispers.

She's a strange creature, the voices from around doorways hissed.

Unnatural, all those travellers from up in Rohan are. Whether they be Hobbit, Drug, or some strange mix of both – their ways are not ours. Hisses one voice. There ways are strange. Hisses another.

How soon did the dead arrive after the strangers came?

No one can quite remember.

But it was not long after.

They're all sure of that.

And of course, everyone knew that Pippin Took, Thain in more than just name was gone now.

Less than useless to the family in its crises.

His son, as much as a hobbit as he could be with a mother like that, was still only a boy.

Too young to lead.

Too young to take care of them.

They would have to do it themselves.

She tried to blank out the voices, but they would never really leave her – no more so than the screaming of the dead.

Have to find their own way to feed their babies bellies.

And then the old ones, those old Aunts and Uncles that had never seen the need to strike out on their own with their family so near, began to disappear.

And the stew suddenly had meat in it again.

And then there weren't any old ones at all.

That was when she'd known they'd have to leave.

It didn't matter how loud the dead screamed at night, or how lost her husband was – she would not let either herself or her children end their days in some else's cooking pot. Her eldest, Faramir, was probably safe – being the Thain in name if nothing else, and mostly hobbit in his looks and manner. But even then, ambition was a poison in the blood of the Tooks in a way it never was in other hobbits – who knows how long a hungry Took cousin could hold out against such a meal, when all that stood between them and the family title was one weak little boy, who wasn't even fully hobbit in the first place.

So, in the end, Diamond Took did not regret her decision to take her children away from the 'safety' that the Tooks provided.

This is what Olorin sees.

Death.

The whole land is soaked in it.

Death walks the the rolling hills of the shire like a Took might walk an adventure or a Baggins a holiday. Lazily, quickly and all other kinds of words that end in "ly".

Death takes many forms in the minds of hobbit-kind in general. Sometimes it is a spirit free and weightless like a breeze in the hottest of summers. Other times death comes with a face. Perhaps he is a grey-haired hobbit, with a long nose and moustache. Perhaps he rides at the front of a fine hunt, seeking the souls of hobbits who didn't have the good sense to die at home in their bed.

Other times he is a she, with her belly rounded with a babe that will never now know breath. Perhaps she comes for the souls of children lost in the wild. And sometimes death has no face at all, for he has forsaken that mortal claim long ago. He is the faceless one, the ender of all things that run across this Middle-Earth, the great equalizer.

Olorin sees each of these faces as he watches the memory of the young hobbit mother and her two sons run through the haunted land of the Shire.

He doesn't want to watch, for he knows already what will happen – for he is more than mortal and this is his curse as much as it is Vairë's. But he must, for he was foolish enough to ask the question and now he cannot look away from the answer.

Mrs Took, where is your husband?

This is where she finds him.

At the edge of a river that had once separated the the Took Lands of the Shire, with the rest of it.

He is dead.

His spirit at least.

But the body is still in use…just not by Mister Took himself.

She sees this.

Knows it is too dangerous.

And yet she loves him, has to know that there is nothing of him left before she can move on. And so she goes to him, places her hand on his stooped shoulder and says his name pleadingly.

But it is too late.

Pippin Took is dead.

The memory is garbled and faded after that, overwhelmed with grief and guilt so he has no idea how she survived. Only that she did, and her eldest son did not.

Suddenly they're back…back in the present, or as close to a present as one of Ilúvatar's children can ever come to.

And with a tear stricken face, she turned to him and her smile was wide and manic.

'Why don't you know sir? He's everywhere, that's the gift of the Ganyman…that's the gift your kind stole from us.'

Behind them Gandalf could hear the ever so distinctive clicking of a Goblin trap.

'You really didn't think we were just going to let you get away with it again? Every time one of you tries to help it only makes things a hundred times worse for the rest of us.'

'So, this is the game you play, is it Diamond Took? You let your only living child fall into a Goblin trap to spite a people you have never met and know nothing about?'

A sharp turn of the head to reveal that the child had rolled away from where his mother had set him – near the lip of the cave where he should have been safe. He was gone, surely as the rest of them were. The enraged mother turned to stare at the Maiar, who had not moved a muscle since last he spoke. And with hands that trembled with rage she raised her weapon.

'You will find Mrs. Took, that everything we do is ultimately for his glory, even our deaths, and no matter how hard we run from him he will always be there.'

'Funny, my husband said the same thing' said the mad mother as she pulled the trigger of her gun back. 'Right before he killed my son.'

Bang!

But she did not shoot him.

This Vairë saw as the truth.

No instead the young hobbit mother had aimed over the former wizard's shoulder. And the sparks from the weapon lit up their faces against the dark of the night.

Olorin was still, his eyes wide and shocked. He had expected to die this night, maybe even by Diamond's hand. But she had not granted him this reprieve.

Diamond was shaking, her weapon barely held still in her own trembling grasp. Her face was stained with the tears of her grief and rage, but she had not hurt him. She hated him, hated them both, but she had not shot him.

'Better with the Goblins, than what comes for the three of us now.'

And in her curiosity Vairë stepped away from the edge of the Goblin trap – where she had been standing as the sad memory of Diamond Took washed over her. She stepped away until she stood at the lip of the cave and looked down. Looked down at the creatures that even now slithered, and swarmed up the rock face. Reaching for the cave in which they stood, and with every moment they grew closer and closer.

'Look,' said the hobbit mother finally letting her weapon fall against her folded legs. ' If you stamp on the ground now, where your people and my son once laid, you might be able to trip the trap again. The goblins will keep you safe, or as safe as a person can be in this land. Do not ask me to follow – this is my time and this is my task.'

Neither Vairë nor Olorin looked away from the climbing dead flesh that was the army of the Dead. But at least Vairë still had enough of her mind left to answer their guide.

'As it is ours this night, Mrs. Took.'

And hobbit, wizard and Valar stood upon the lip of the cave that night and looked down into the darkness waiting for their enemy to reach them. This night they would not run, or cower against the weight of the dead. No for this night, and perhaps for only this night…they would be heroes.

There were certainly worse ways to die, after all.