Chapter eighteen
Other than the occasional sounds of the forest, the thud of fourteen pairs of feet hitting the endless path pounded in my head. I had to concentrate on my uneven gait in order to stay balanced. It left surprisingly little room in my head for other thoughts than a jumbled emptiness. Like this dammed forest.
"Do you hear that?" Bilbo tugged on my shirt.
"Hear what?" I croaked back.
"I –I... I think I hear water,"
Slowing my footsteps, I cocked my head, straining, but I heard nothing at all but a few general disconcerting sounds of the forest I had grown used to. Bilbo's wide little ears twitched a little.
"I'm sure," he looked at me anxiously.
I turned the other way and Thorin shrugged at me tiredly.
"Your ears are the sharpest among us," he nodded to Bilbo. "Can you tell what direction it is coming from?"
Frowning, Bilbo scratched his neck and stopped walking for a moment. "I am sure it is ahead," he announced.
There was little we could do but continue on. We could hardly leave the path; so hopefully, the water would come near to us. Gradually, my ears picked up the sound of gurgling water.
"Wait," I licked my dry, cracked lips. Stopping again, I listened. It really was the sound of water! "There really must be a river or stream nearby,"
"See," Bilbo smiled.
Swallowing dryly, I clutched at my water skin, ready to drain it dry before a long awaited refill. The leather crackled under my fingers as I twisted the crumbling cork off. A calloused hand fell upon mine. I looked up.
"Tallis, we don't know if we will pass the water let alone if it's reachable or even drinkable. Hold on a little longer until we see this river before you drain all you have left." He gazed at me imploringly as I found myself staring at the open water skin, unable to look away. Gently prying it away from me, he sealed it and returned it to its place, hanging from my pack.
Though the elvish salve seemed to be working, however slowly, beads of sweat still formed at my hairline and my upper back grew increasingly damp. The feverish shivering was worse in the morning, but it abated over the course of the day before the night came and the whole thing would start all over again. At least it didn't seem to be getting any worse. Last night, after I lodged myself against Thorin's side in the dark, we slept curled beside one another. I woke with my head on his chest and his arm around my shoulders, the metal of his brigandine shirt warmed by my heat. Shuddering and coiling tighter around myself, I sought the stronger, dwarven warmth that radiated off of him. He soon woke with yawn, and an odd, disbelieving smile brightened his face for a moment as he looked at me blinking at him before it became worry. We had tried so hard to not touch before, but now, with Mirkwood eroding our wills, touch came simply and naturally: him helping me up with arm around my waist, me brushing hair from his face as he knelt down to help me check my wound. I suppose it was the same with the entire company, however. Exhaustion, hunger, thirst, and the watchful darkness of Mirkwood seemed to have taken our voices and we communicated through touch –perhaps too discouraged to speak, but all the same reassuring one another of camaraderie with a pat on the shoulder, a grip of the hands when passing things to one another, a gentle ruffling of hair, and sleeping as close to one another as newborn kittens. With touch, we reminded each other of that all this was still real.
"I can see a river!" Kili's voice, filled with relief and excitement came from up ahead.
"Not too close!" Thorin yelled at the ones at the front. "Wait! Remember what Beorn told us!"
Strong and fast, the oily black current carved away at the loamy dirt of the forest floor, creating no gently slope into the water on our side. It was simply a drop of about half an arm's length down to the water from the bank.
"Beorn told us of a river that holds a terrible enchantment," Thorin sighed, "This seems to be what he spoke of. No one is to touch the water."
Looking as black and as thick as pitch, the water still beckoned my parched throat seductively.
"There is no way across." Balin called to us. "There must have been a bridge here long ago –you can see the posts that once held it aloft."
There were two very mossy wooden posts near the brink. The wooden planks and the rope of the bridge had long since rotted away and we peered uncertainly up and down the river, but there was no other bridge to be seen. Squinting through the gloom, I could see the posts on the other side of the river about twelve yards away.
"I think there is a boat!" Bilbo cried out.
I looked towards the direction he pointed at. Sure enough, there was a shadow of something that seemed to be pulled up onto the sloping bank a few feet away from the posts on the other side.
"Pass me a rope," Thorin rummaged in his pack.
Bofur handed him a coil and Thorin set to tying it to the hook.
"Stand back," he warned, and he threw the hook at the boat. It landed in the water with a splash. He grumbled and dragged it back, hesitating before touching the wet rope. He didn't fall asleep with enchantment, so it seemed harmless in a few drops. Throwing it again, he landed it in the boat with a thud. Gently tugging the rope towards him, the hook finally caught and it went taut as he drew. Nothing happened. Dwalin placed his hands on the rope and pulled too. Then it was Dori. Then finally, with a snapping sound, all three of them fell backwards and Bilbo suddenly caught hold of the slack rope and was yelling that the boat was coming our way and that the hook was loose and that the boat was drifting away! I leapt forward with a grunt of pain, but stabbed my crutch towards the spinning black boat and managed to just catch it before it sailed away gaily down the current. Heart pounding, I drew it to the bank and Nori and Fili leaned down to grab a hold the little vessel.
Thorin dropped his pack into the boat and lowered himself in. It seemed safe enough. "Fili, Gloin, and Dori –you come with me first. Be on your guard. Hopefully the owner of this boat will not be waiting for us on the other side."
"There are no oars," Fili pointed out.
Kili tied another length of rope to another hook and threw it off as hard as he could. Pulling it tightly, the rope held fast. It must have tangled into the branches on the other side. He handed his end to Thorin so he could use it to pull the boat to the far bank. Thorin took the wet length of rope and hook from Bilbo and tied it to the little empty oar stirrups on the side of the boat.
"After we are on the other side, use this to pull the rope back. Here –," he handed it to me, "let it out as we pull ourselves across,"
I nodded.
"Balin, Ori, Bilbo –and you, Tallis come next –then Oin, Kili, Bofur, and Bifur, and then Nori, Dwalin and Bombur in the last boatload."
.
After I clambered onto land again, I drew an arrow from the quiver Beorn had given us and I bent my bow, joining Thorin who had unsheathed Orcrist. No guardian of the boat came. It was unnerving nevertheless. I felt more exposed than before, if that was possible. Finally, Dwalin was on our side with the coil of rope around his arm and Bombur was grumbling at being last and ready to climb out of the boat when something shot towards us from the trees. Out of the murkiness up ahead it appeared and bowled over Gloin, Dwalin, and Balin and readied itself to leap over the river. Pivoting on my good leg, I drew another arrow and released both at the same time, overtaking the beast mid-leap piercing into its hide. It stumbled as it landed on the other side and the sound of hoof beats faltered to a stop and a thump of a heavy body falling.
I let go of a shout and the smell of venison was already filling my nostrils when Bilbo let go of a wail.
"Bombur has fallen in! Bombur's drowning!"
Thorin let loose a flood of Dwarvish curses and snatched the rope from where it lay from when Dwalin had been knocked over by the hart. Looking wildly, we managed to see the top of Bombur's red beard floating above his head in the water. Thorin threw the rope and a hand caught it and we were able to pull him to shore. Swearing in fright, we hauled him out of the water spluttering, but when we laid him on even ground, he was already fast asleep with the rope clutched in his hand so tight we could not pull it from his grasp. And we could no wake him. I got onto my knees to check the beating of his heart and his breathing, but they both seemed perfectly normal. He just slept on no matter how hard we pinched, slapped, yelled or threatened.
The hart had bore down on Bombur, probably, and he had fallen backwards off the boat in fright and sent it spinning away downstream. We could not even go back to the other side to retrieve the beautiful sack of meat just laying there waiting to be eaten.
"Shh..." Thorin shushed our nattering complaints and the sound of dim horns and the sound of dogs far off to the north reached our ears.
We quieted and stood very still. Elves. It must have been. But I did not cry out help. I was not sure what the elves would have done to a group of dwarves wandering the forest, or the human and the hobbit that travelled with them. Silvan elves were not so gracious and patient as the Eldar. Especially if they were hunting. Something white caught my eye.
Iluvatar. It was a hind and two fawns, white as snow. My mouth watered. Drawing two arrows from my quiver, I let them loose. They missed. The deer still stood unmoving. Kili now had seen them too and he knocked an arrow and let it loose. It buried itself in a tree. Kili and I gave one another a confused look before snatching up our arrows and let them rain down towards the deer.
"Stop!" Thorin cried at us, but it was too late.
The deer fled, all our remaining arrows missed and our bows were now useless again. It was to be a long, gloomy night.
.
.
"It's time to switch!" Kili complained.
Him, Bofur, Dwalin, and Nori were carrying the still sleeping Bombur as we shuffled our way down the path.
Everyone ignored him.
"We've carried him for long enough –Fili –switch with me!"
"It's barely been an hour," Dwalin ground out through his teeth.
"How would you know?" Kili snapped back, "We can't even see the sun anymore. A day could have already passed."
"Don't be stupid," Fili snarled at his younger brother.
"Then you carry him!"
"You're just shirking from work!"
"You're the one not carrying him!" Kili turned to his brother in rage and let go of the handle of the stretcher Gloin and Thorin had fashioned from branches and a sleeping roll, spilling Bombur onto the ground with a thump.
"Kili!" Tired and hungry as Thorin was, his voice thundered at his nephew, "Either you keep your mouth shut, or you carry Bombur yourself!"
Fili smirked.
Thorin did not miss it. "Fili –you should know better than to argue with your brother. You two –," he reined in his anger with a deep intake of breath, "You two should have stayed away, but since you both have come, act like grown dwarves. I don't want to be minding you like children."
The dwarves rolled Bombur back onto the stretcher and none too gently, for try as we might, we could not find too much pity to spare for the fat dwarf who slept with a smile on his face and had to be carried like a useless sack of grain we could neither eat, nor rid ourselves of. He had been asleep for three days, and sometimes even turned over or twitched in his sleep. I wanted to slap his silly, wistful face. My leg –my leg was healing, but not well. It was not well at all. I loathed seeing it, day after day. It was showing signs of growing over, and there was absolutely not a thing I could do about it. No longer using the elvish salve, my skin began stubbornly healing on its own. The deep ruptures beneath the surface did not look, nor smell promising.
Today, the forest had slowly thinned around us. The green tangle had given way to a vast expanse of beech trees that marched in rows as far off as the eye could see. Grey trunks, straight as pillars, stood silently like the columns of an infinite great hall. There was finally wind and a watery, weak light. The air was finally moving. However, the silent and unfriendly watchfulness of the forest persisted.
Hahaha...
Nearly twisting my neck, I turned suddenly as a disquieting laugh far away reached my ears. Judging by the expressions on everyone else's haggard faces, my wits were yet to be truly addled.
"That doesn't sound like a goblin or an orc," Thorin whispered.
"It sounds... It sounds like an elf." I murmured back hesitantly.
Hahaha...hahaha...
"That doesn't sound like an elf," Bilbo had moved right up against my leg.
"Silvan elves are very different from the ones you met in Rivendell. These elves have never seen the Lights of Valinor. Their ties to the trees and the wild are very strong... and sometimes, well, they can be uncontrollable." I placed a hand on his thin shoulder.
Aaahhhhh... aaaaahhhhhh... hahaha...
The eerie voice was very, very far away, but it was most definitely singing. Beautiful and strange, it sent a shiver shooting up my spin and caused the hairs on my neck to stand straight up. It did not comfort me. The singing in Thranduil's halls had been much different than this. But again, I had never been in a situation where I had gone wandering off into the woods to sing creepy, wordless songs with the elves, so perhaps they had done it also when I was living with them, and I just hadn't known. But I was still afraid. Mirkwood had always been dangerous –even when it had been called the Greenwood. But now, with what the forest had become, what of its inhabitants?
.
Our voices grew hoarse with disuse and our eyes grew dull with despair. We hurried through the beeches for nearly two days, plagued day and night by the singing and the laughing before the path sloped down into a valley and the beeches were crowded out by oaks. Soon finding the single species of tree, the oak, just as unnerving as the beeches, my eyes darted around in the murky darkness; tense and waiting for the next surprise.
"Will this accursed forest never end?" Thorin gritted his teeth as we stopped to rest. "Somebody must climb a tree and see if the edge of the forest can be seen."
We all looked at Bilbo.
"Wait a second..." his eyes widened, "I don't think –,"
"You are the only one light enough to climb to the highest and thinnest branches. Don't worry; we'll pick a tree that grows into the path, just to be safe."
Bilbo coughed, unconvinced, but we forced him up a giant oak with its roots almost growing through the path to the other side. Up and up and up he went, until he disappeared into the leaves and vanished from sight. A little while passed and the rustlings of the hobbit climbing stopped.
"Bilbo!" I yelled, "What can you see?"
There was no answer.
"Bilbo!" Thorin roared, nearly deafening me.
Impatiently stamping my good foot, I wanted to scream. Bilbo was a selfish little thing, if he was up there in the sun and wind and ignoring us here at the bottom. After a whole lot of yelling and threats, we heard the sound of snapping branches and watched as leaves drifted down and rustled and finally, the hobbit returned, scratched and fairly wind tossed. What I would have given to be wind tossed. But my leg throbbed happily, reminding me that climbing a tree was out of the question.
"And?" Bofur demanded.
Bilbo shook his head, "I couldn't see any end to the trees. They go on forever!"
He was met by a wave of disappointed wails.
"Sorry," he said, "but the sun was shining and the wind was so cold and there were huge black butterflies everywhere, velvety and fluttering about by the hundreds! I suppose they would have been purple emperors if we were in the Shire."
"Stop," Gloin snapped.
"Please," Balin finished.
Bilbo stopped and we trudged on.
.
.
I opened my severely empty pack and looked inside. There were a few pieces of impossibly stale seed cake. Closing my eyes and hoping something else would appear; I searched through all the pockets, but came up, again, only with the bits of seed cake. Thorin made everyone gather up all the last bits of food and we divided it equally. We all only were able to get a mouthful each. My stomach let go of a wild growl, but I patted it gently and ignored it the best I could. It would have to learn to have to do without food. Opening my water skin, I tipped it back carefully and the last few drops spilled into my mouth. And without water, too, it seemed.
It rained later that day. Only a few fat drops collected on the branches actually made it down to where we were, and running about trying to catch dripping water falling from the top branches of a tree with your mouth does not quench one's thirst.
The only scrap of comfort, if you could have even called it that, came from Bombur.
Waking up, he proceeded to inform us that he had no idea where he was and could not understand why he was not at Bilbo's house. He seemed to have forgotten everything that had happened after the dwarves had cleared Bilbo's pantry. Setting him down, we tried convincing him of the events that had happened since, as he had a very difficult time believing us. After he heard that there was nothing to eat, he sat down and started crying, great huge tears running down his face.
"I was having such beautiful dreams! I dreamt I was in a forest rather like this one, but with lamps and fires and a great feast going on and on –forever! A woodland king was there with a crown of leaves and there was merry singing and I could not count nor describe the things that were there to eat or drink."
"You need not try," Thorin snapped, "If you cannot talk about anything else, be silent, for we should have just left you and your idiotic dreams in the forest; you are no joke to carry even after weeks of little food."
There was nothing else we could do, but tighten our belts around our empty bellies and hoist up our empty sacks and packs and slog along the track towards our inevitable fate of starvation. At times I found myself contemplating the leather I was wearing. Boiled leather was edible. I would have gladly wandered about naked if I had the water to boil my leather in. I told as much to Thorin, who looked at me a little strangely and concernedly before telling me to keep my clothes on for now. Continuously wailing on and on about hoe his legs were too weak to carry him and he wanted to lie down and sleep, Bombur finally refused to go a step further and he flung himself down on the ground.
"Go on, if you must," he flung is arms wide, "I'm going to just lie here and sleep and dream of food, if I can't get it any other way. I hope I never wake up again,"
Bofur stood beside his brother, leaned down and smacked him across the face. Bombur stayed resolutely motionless.
"Get up," Bofur ordered.
"No."
Balin's voice suddenly came from up ahead. "What was that? I thought I saw a twinkle of light!"
All of us turned to look towards where he was pointing. There were red twinkles a long ways off in the darkness, but another sprang up beside it and we were all up and off, even Bombur, racing towards it and not caring if it was trolls or goblins. The light ended up to the left of the path when we were level to it and the dancing of the flames were a good, long ways away off into the trees.
"MY DREAMS ARE COMING TRUE," Bombur gasped and nearly threw himself off the path before Bifur and Bofur held him back.
"A feast would be no good, if we never came back from it alive," Thorin reminded us of Gandalf and Beorn's warnings.
"But without a feast, we shan't remain alive very much longer anyway," Bombur said and my mouth watered in agreement.
We argued for a good long while, no one wanting to get lost, and no one wanting to be the one in the scouting party, but no one wanting to move on without trying to find food. Finally, we decided to all go together, despite the risk of never returning to the path. Our hunger decided for us.
Every root and log and branch was bent on hindering us as we stumbled and crawled quietly towards the glowing torches. I discarded my useless, bothersome crutch after a while and grit my teeth as pain shot up my leg. We stopped when we were close enough to see that a dozen elves were sitting about a huge fire in a clearing and were eating, laughing, and drinking. The smell of the roast meats was so enchanting that we were soon wandering involuntarily into the clearing, words of begging already on our lips.
The lights went out as we stepped into the circle. Someone kicked the fire out in a shower of sparks and we could no longer find the food, or one another. Blundering in the gloom, we shouted frantically until we finally found one another again and hunkered down in a clump to wait dejectedly for morning. But when Dori was on watch, he saw the lights again.
"They are coming from over there and there are more of them than ever!"
This time, we went in single file, clutching at one another's backs.
"Bilbo goes first to talk to them," Thorin pushed the hobbit forward, "He's too small to be of threat and they won't hurt him,"
"They won't?" he squeaked and was thrust forward into the light.
Out they went again and we descended into panicked yelling and groping. We finally calmed down to count ourselves, but try as we might, we couldn't find the hobbit.
"I've just stepped on something alive!" Dori screamed. "Oh," he panted, "It's Mr. Bilbo!"
Relief flooded through me as we manoeuvred our way towards the hobbit and Dori.
"Bilbo?" I shook him.
He snored peacefully. I shook harder, and harder. And harder still.
"What?" Bilbo was not pleased. "I was having the most lovely dinner in my dream!"
Everyone groaned.
"You've gone like Bombur," Gloin accused. "Don't tell us about dream food –dream dinners are no good and you can't share them."
"At least they are likely to be the best I'll be getting in this place," Bilbo muttered and lay down with us.
.
Kili woke us next, "Another fire! It's just sprang up now along with torches! And listen! There's singing and harping!"
No one got up but Bombur. There was no point trying. But as we all lay there, listening to the sounds of a feast and smelling wafts of scent coming off the honeyed venison on the spit, we could not resist and we tried again. Thorin and I stepped in first. There was dead silence. Out went the fires, up went the black smoke and the world tilted as I fell forwards. I was asleep before I hit the ground.