"Come here, you little maggoty maggots! I'll put a maggot hole in your maggot bellies! Maggots, maggoty maggoty maggots! That is my favourite word, can't you tell?" Dorothy the Uruk hissed as he pursued the two terrified hobbits deeper and deeper into the thick forest.
"You're just trying to be gross!" Merry retorted bravely, even if his voice did squeak a little bit. "Climb a tree, Pippin, he won't be expecting that, not in a forest!"
"Right!" Pippin agreed, and began to hunker up one. "Ooh, and when we're done we can harvest some leaves and -"
"Pip, this is not the time to be thinking about inhaling stuff!" Merry looked all around and nodded in satisfaction. "I knew it, he's gone."
Pippin peered down at him from the taller branches. "Right, but even so, Merry, wouldn't it be a good idea to climb more than one foot off the ground, just in case he shows up again?"
"Don't be stupid, Pippin, there's no – AAARGH!"
Dorothy had seized one of Merry's hairy ankles and was grinning in triumph.
"Now for some illuminating lectures on the mating habits of various indigenous species of maggots!" Dorothy declared menacingly, wielding a cruel iron fist of the Uruk.
"Oh no, anything but that! Anything! Even Gimli's Urban Legends and Boromir's Gondorian horn playing!" Merry cried despairingly.
Dorothy frowned at him. "No, you idiot, I'm going to kill and eat you."
"Oh thank God!" Merry shrieked.
"Merry!" Pippin yelled. "I'll save you! Just as soon as I figure out how I'm going to go about doing that!"
And then he noticed that he was clinging to a wooden nostril.
"UGH! WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN!"
The giant wooden face blinked in shock and furrowed its wooden brow at Pippin. Then it peered down at the Uruk brandishing his iron fist at Merry.
A large wooden foot came up, and then down.
SQUELCH.
And that was the end of Dorothy. Millions wept that day.
"MERRY, RUN!" screamed Pippin as he flailed about in the thing's giant hand.
Merry just gaped, and was then scooped up.
"OW! You're crushing us!"
"Yes."
It took about an hour for the wooden mouth and tongue to work its way around that word.
"Well can you stop, it's been an hour!" Merry bellowed into its giant wooden eye.
"No."
"Why not?" Pippin asked, wincing, after another hour.
"Because you are little orcs, Buhhr-ahh-rooh-uhr."
"We're not orcs, we're Hobbits!" At this point, Merry and Pippin had pretty much given up on life – it had been twelve straight hours of the wooden hands tightly squeezing them as the walking, talking tree stomped deeper into the forest.
"Never heard of a Hobbit before."
"Hey. That one didn't take you forever to say," Pippin exclaimed, gazing up at the face.
"Well, I'm getting more used to speaking, ain't I? I can go faster now, can't I?"
"I suppose," Pippin agreed weakly, massaging every part of himself that he could reach. Merry was simply glaring daggers at the massive wooden creature. After a sideways, apologetic look at Merry, Pippin asked, "What are you… a spruce?"
The thing blinked disdainfully. "I am an Ent. An orc wouldn't know what an Ent is, of course."
"We're hobbits, not orcs!"
"I don't know if you are Hobbits, but the Wizard will. That's where we're headed."
"The Wizard?" Merry finally spoke up, looking alarmed. Pippin shot him a questioning look. "Saruman!" Merry hissed by way of explanation. "No, don't take us there, please! He'll kill us!"
"Don't be stupid, he doesn't even have a staff anymore," the Ent scoffed.
Merry and Pippin glanced at each other.
"Well, Pip," Merry began after a moment, "It's been nice… knowing you." He hastily looked away and brushed at his eyes.
"Yes, Merry, it was always a blast," Pippin agreed, his lip trembling and his eyes brimming.
"We had some good times," Merry sniffled.
"Yeah. We sure did. Like when we stole all of Farmer Maggot's crops and his family went hungry for the winter."
"Why the hell is everything 'maggot' with us? But yeah, that was good. Or the time when we locked Farmer Maggot in his outhouse and stole all of his crops and his family went hungry for the next winter."
"Or when we stole all of Farmer Maggot's crops while he was at the joint funeral for all of his children who had starved to death."
"Wow, you guys are the lousiest people I've ever met, orcs or not," the Ent said. "Ah, here we are!" and with that, he dumped them unceremoniously on the ground at the feet of a tall Wizard.
"Merlin?" asked Pippin in genuine awe, staring up into the familiar face.
"Well, at least now I can use that 'fool of a Took' line," Gandalf sighed, frowning down at the stupidity of Pippin.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU KILLED THEM?" Aragorn was screaming in a field not too far off.
"I mean, we killed them," Eomer said patiently. "And then we made a bonfire and roasted marshmallows."
Legolas looked horrified. So did Gimli. But they were already too horrified to care that they were once again experiencing the same emotions.
"BUT THOSE WERE OUR FRIENDS!" Aragorn bellowed into Eomer's face. Eomer's horse, Ponce-de-Leon, chuffed and tossed his head magisterially, as if to suggest that Aragorn learn some manners.
His rider, however, snarled, "Those Uruks were your friends? Prepare to die, spies of Saruman!" As one, the entire company of Rohirim which was gathered behind their leader pointed their spears at Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli.
"Whoa, whoa," Aragorn exclaimed, alarmed, as he and his two companions were forced back to back in a small triangle. "There's no need for that!"
"Who are you?" demanded the Rohan prince fiercely, pointing his spear directly between Aragorn's eyes.
"Why don't you go ask your mother?" Gimli suggested loudly. Aragorn somehow found a way to contort himself so that he could avoid being impaled by Rohan spears while still throttling Gimli.
"I would cut off your head, dwarf, if it stood but a little higher from the ground," Eomer said disdainfully.
"You would die before your stroke fell!" Legolas said, suddenly holding his ridiculous bow taut, an arrow aimed at Eomer's face. A pom pom or two swung casually against his elven forehead.
"Oh pretty boy, you do care," snivelled Gimli.
"No, I'd just really have missed your ineptitude. It keeps things interesting."
Aragorn rolled his eyes and spoke directly to Eomer, who was now glaring at Legolas suspiciously. "We are friends of Rohan. I am Aragorn, son of who the hell cares, and my party and I were tracking the Uruks because they carried with them two Hobbits."
"Small, little things, one tenth the size of me," Gimli grunted anxiously.
"More like three quarters the size of you," Legolas scoffed.
"What are you talking about, I'm enormous!" Gimli declared proudly. Aragorn rolled his eyes again.
"No, they would have been only children to your eyes." Now he gazed up at Eomer hopefully.
Eomer looked at the ground. "It was dark, it would have been hard to distinguish friend from foe if they were not on horseback. We left no one alive."
Gimli punched himself in the face in his grief. "NO! Not the ones! With the hair! And the eating disorders!"
Eomer was very moved by this outburst, so he gave Aragorn and Legolas two horses, Marquis-de-Sade and Marco-Polo, and sent them away to look for the hobbits, offering his well wishes and an early apology for when they likely would discover the charred corpses.
Eowyn was wearing a beard.
And that beard was made out of her hair.
And it made her look not just a little bit like a blonde Confucius.
She was wearing said beard because while wearing it she could walk past Wormtongue and he wouldn't even spare her a second glance, and this for Eowyn was a most welcome and refreshing change of routine. Her hair was now but shoulder length, and she was wearing some of Eomer's clothes which he hadn't room for when he'd packed and gone.
Today she ducked past Hama, skirted around Gamling, slipped into the dining hall, in which, propped up on one of the long tables on top of a very comfortable bed made of an assortment of root vegetables, was her injured cousin Theodred.
"Morning, lad," Theodred murmured from where he lay, and he managed a weak, mocking smile.
"Shut up," she scolded him, but she hurried over anxiously. "Has there been any improvement?"
She fussed with his bandages as gently as she could, and did her best not to grimace when she saw the deep, angry looking wound in his chest. "Well," she said, searching for how she might end this sentence. "At least it's not, any… more… infected…"
Theodred sighed, and it sounded to Eowyn as though it took an inhuman amount of effort to do even that. "Eowyn, we both know how this is going to end -"
"Don't talk like that!" she hissed at him. "You're going to be fine!"
Theodred smiled sadly at her. She couldn't bear to look at that smile. It was too knowing, too kind. He was right, and she knew it. "Did you bring any more of that concoction thing, with that peasant weed in it?"
"Longbottom leaf," Eowyn told him. "And yes. Did it help?"
"A great deal," he said hopefully.
"Okay, I have some. But drink it slowly, Theodred, or it'll go to your head."
Theodred took the mixture from her and tossed it back. She frowned at him. He grinned weakly back. "Now I'll be able to sleep, at least," he explained. Eowyn rolled her eyes at him and pulled a chair over so that she could sit nearby.
He did eventually sleep, after they had laughed together at stories from their childhood with Eomer, and, grudgingly on her part, at her beard. The next morning Eowyn woke with a start, her back aching from sleeping in a wooden chair all night, and it was to find herself staring at Grima Wormtongue, whose face was inches from hers, and it was also to find that Theodred had passed sometime that night while they both had slept.
"Mmm, this is orc blood, want some?" Gimli called over his shoulder at Legolas and Aragorn. They had just followed some big hairy Hobbit footprints into Fangorn forest, and Gimli was tasting a congealed black substance on a leaf.
Legolas and Aragorn stared at him.
"Well, obviously it's orc blood, there's a squashed Uruk lying right next to that stuff, and why in the name of all that is Elvish would you put that stuff into your mouth?" Legolas asked him finally.
Gimli frowned. "Because it tastes good, duh."
Aragorn shook his head and stared back down at the enormous tracks that had taken the place of Merry's and Pippin's.
"It looks like a spruce. But spruces can't walk."
"Well then why would you know what spruce tracks look like?" Legolas demanded, annoyed by his companions' bizarreness.
"Look, I don't know, I'm just reading the signs." Aragorn stalked over to Gimli irritably and licked some orc blood.
Legolas's raised brow raised even higher, though, because his elf eyes caught a glimpse of something very dangerous. "Hey, morons! The Wizard approaches!"
Aragorn and Gimli stopped licking blood and stared at Legolas. "The Wizard?" Gimli asked.
"Do you mean Saruman?" Aragorn asked, gripping the handle of his sword.
"Must be!" Legolas hissed. The three of them quickly grouped together.
"Don't let him speak," Aragorn said, slowly unsheathing his blade. "He will put a spell on us."
A bright beam of light appeared between a clump of ancient trees, and Legolas shot an arrow at it, but it was sent spinning away. Aragorn swung his sword, but it burned and he dropped it, howling in agony. Gimli threw his shoe.
"OW! Mother-" The wizard within the light exclaimed furiously. Gimli grinned triumphantly. "You threw a shoe at me? A SHOE? What's wrong with you?" Out of that bright, blue-hot light stalked Gandalf, glaring daggers at Gimli, whose triumphant grin evaporated instantly.
"Well, it worked, didn't it?" Gimli said humbly, scuffing the ground with his toe.
Legolas knelt reverently, and Aragorn fell gracelessly to his knees. "But you're supposed to be dead!" he shrieked.
"I was dead, you idiot. I was killed a million jillion times! First by Saruman, then by the Balrog a bunch of times, then I was trampled to death by orcs a hundred times over, and let me tell you, resurrection is not an easy thing to do once!" Gandalf rubbed a big red lump on his forehead where Gimli's shoe had hit him.
"Oh, well, Gandalf, I love you so much!" and with that, Gimli flung himself at Gandalf's waist, which bowled him right over.
"Get off of me! And what's that you're calling me?" he asked, as he disentangled himself from Gimli and brushed his robes off. "Gandalf? Ah, yes, that was what they used to call me. Gandalf the Grey. That was my name."
"Yeah, pretty much. Except that one time Boromir told you that you were Gandalf the White," Aragorn said.
"I am Gandalf the Robin's Egg Blue."
"… What?" asked Aragorn.
Because getting resurrected wins you ALL THE PROMOTIONS if you're a wizard. Also, the seriousness of Eowyn's part shall be attributed to Theodred's death, not to Eowyn being a lady, unlike the previous chapter. That is all.