CHAPTER FIVE: Coconuts
In which much silliness occurs, and Eicys finds herself in serious trouble. Again.
Eicys was taking deep, calming breaths.
They weren't helping.
Okay, she thought. Okay. That's Isengard. So this is Fangorn. I'm in Fangorn frickin' Forest – I'm gonna die! No, stop it, get a grip, Eicys. Okay. Um… That means… That means that thing back there was an orc! An orc, fer the love of… of… Augh! How is this happening?
And what's happened to my sister?
As if on cue, Eicys heard a noisy crashing in the underbrush. She scrambled behind a tree with a speed that would make an Olympian stare – terror-induced adrenaline does have its benefits. She stayed completely motionless, until her fright was interrupted by a muffled "Ouch!"
"Cebu?" Eicys breathed. She took her courage in both hands, and edged around the tree trunk until she could see what was happening on the other side.
Eicys' sister was stumbling along in the middle of a gang of orcs, her flyaway curls full of forest debris, her hands tied behind her back. Eicys scowled. Tying up Cebu was a privilege reserved for her sister alone.
Behind Cebu came three other captives: Dilly, Eredolyn, and Tuima. Dilly was stalking along wearing her dreaded Stoic expression – her face was perfectly calm and composed. Eicys knew that at this point, Dilly could have a broken leg, a terminal illness, and a personal thunderstorm following her around, and that expression wouldn't go anywhere. Dilly got like that sometimes.
Eredolyn was bouncing around, peering at trees, gawping at the minutiae of the orcs' armor, and generally acting quite terrifyingly weird. She had dried blood in her hair, and reddish-brown streaks decorated one cheek. Her eyes had the unfocused look brought on only by a bad concussion, absolute fanaticism, or intensive medication. Or possibly all three. It looked as though she had at least two of them down pat, and could use the aid of the third.
Tuima's expression, on the other hand, was sharp enough to have been carved out of ice. She looked… weird. Almost inhuman.
And speaking of non-humans…
Eicys swallowed. The orcs surrounding her sister and friends (and Tuima too, though Tuima was decidedly neither friend nor relation, thank goodness) were much bigger than the twisted goblin-thing that had chased her. That orc had been about her own size. These were huge. There was clearly no fighting them off with a dagger and a bit of luck.
Suddenly one of them stopped. He sniffed.
A lump of ice formed in Eicys' stomach.
The orc nudged a companion. "Smell that?" he asked.
"What?"
"A Man. Orc-blood. An'…" He grinned. "Summun's got a weak stomach." Eicys cringed and wrinkled her nose.
"It's jest the pris'ners," said the orc's companion.
"None o' them have bin throwin' up. Nah. I reckon there's another 'un 'round here."
The lump of ice began to grow. Frozen crystals crept through Eicys' veins and stabbed at her heart. She edged backwards, silent as a hobbit.
"Hey. The cap'n doesn't know about a fifth 'un. If we catch it…"
Two very nasty grins. Eicys fought back a whimper.
"You delay the glam," said the second one. "I'll go catch it."
"Oh, you will, huh? I don't think so. I smelled it out, and I'm gonna – " The orc broke off with what could only be a swear word. "There it goes – listen!"
"Well, go get it, maggot-brain! I'll keep the others here if yeh give me half, got it? Don't take too long, or we'll march out an' leave yeh to the demon-trees."
The orc gripped its spear and took off into the undergrowth, grinning horribly.
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"We're stopping?" asked Eredolyn, puzzled.
"Don't complain," said Dilly. "I'm in no hurry."
"I want to see Saruman."
"Look, Eredolyn – "
Tuima interrupted. "It's Eicys," she said. Cebu's head came up sharply.
"What about Eicys?" asked Dilly.
"Weren't you listening? There's an orc going after her. His companion is up there arguing with the captain. Honestly, you three might as well have stuffed your heads with wool."
A certain tightening around Dilly's mouth said that her patience had been rubbed well past raw. But they'd had enough outbursts for one day, she figured. Now was the time to save their strength. She had a nasty suspicion they were going to need it.
"Hold on," she said abruptly. "Cebu, you're bleeding!" A trickle of red was running from the corner of Cebu's mouth.
The redhead nodded and grimaced. "Ischy," she said, her voice oddly muffled, then bent her head to her wrists. It looked as though she were gnawing at the ropes.
"Cebu, what are you doing?".
Cebu looked up, and they saw a black point protruding from her mouth like a bizarre tongue. "I shnap'd the head off tha' ahrrow," she explained thickly. "I'sh really shar'." She returned to hacking at her bonds, curly hair swaying madly around her face as she sawed. Suddenly, there was a startling loud SNAP!
"What was that?" asked Tuima, as orcs swiveled around to eye them suspiciously.
"At wis un o iy rohts."
"…I'm sorry," said Tuima, with scathing courtesy. "Was I meant to understand that?"
"I think she said, 'that was one of my ropes'," translated Eredolyn.
"Oh, of course," said the Elf. "Well, this is easy: next time I want to understand one of you, I should just give myself a concussion and everything will become quite clear. If I ever feel the urge, in a decade or two, I shall be sure to let you know. Oh, and you do realize that it's a common practice with orcs to dip their arrowheads in poison?"
Cebu looked up, shocked, then violently spat out the arrowhead. "You could have said something earlier!" she cried.
Tuima raised an eyebrow. "I thought everyone knew that."
Cebu stared at Tuima with the expression of someone who believes firmly in the basic goodness of everyone around her. You could almost see the cogs grinding as she tried to reconcile that belief with the looming contradiction that was Tuima.
Dilly had less trouble reaching a conclusion. "You know something, Tuima?" she said conversationally. "You're a jerk."
Tuima smoothed her features into an expression of Elven calm and looked away, her back very stiff. Meanwhile, Cebu had gone back to the problem of her bound wrists, trying to wedge the arrowhead between two rocks and scrape the rope across it. Eredolyn moved to help her, bent over until her short-cropped hair dripped blood across the stones. "Just one more strand…" Cebu muttered, straining, then lost her balance and collapsed as an orc kicked her unexpectedly in the ribs.
"Stop lickin' rocks!" snarled the orc. "And what was that snappin' noise?"
The Immies stared at each other, at the orc, at the sky. "Um…" said Cebu, edging in front of the arrowhead.
"I want an answer!"
"Um…" said Cebu frantically.
The orc raised his fist, and Dilly hurriedly intervened. "It was my back."
The orc squinted. "Huh?"
"My back," said Dilly in a voice of steely nonchalance. "It's been creaking and snapping ever since you threw me down here."
"Yeh expect me to b'lieve that?"
Dilly shrugged. "No," she said.
The orc blinked, off-balance. "Well…" he said. "Well – I don't!"
"Oh, darn," said Dilly. "You've caught me."
"Too right, I did," snarled the orc. "Yeh think I'm stupid?"
"Well done," said Dilly.
A pause. "Well done what?" asked the orc.
"Nothing," said Dilly. "That was sort of the point."
Thoroughly frustrated by now, the orc took refuge in threats: "Well, stop yer bones snappin' or I'll snap 'em for yeh!" he said viciously. He stomped off, muttering.
"That was close," Dilly said. "And slightly surreal." Then she noticed Cebu scrabbling on the ground again. "What are you doing?" she hissed. Cebu sat up with the arrowhead back in her mouth and resumed sawing on her ropes.
"No! Cebu, don't do it!" whispered Dilly. "They'll hear you!" But her friend paid no attention. "Cebu…!"
"Everyone start singing!"
There was a startled silence while they all stared at Eredolyn.
"Singing?" Dilly asked skeptically.
"Yeah!" said Eredolyn. "The noise will drown out the snapping!" She grinned at them.
"That's stupid," said Tuima.
Dilly, who had been about to say something similar (but considerably more tactful), suddenly discovered she was a big fan of Eredolyn's idea. "No, it's not," she said. "Come on, everyone. What should we sing?"
"The coconut song!"
Dilly blinked at her concussed friend. "Um… Okay."
A few moments later the ancient trees of Fangorn Forest were being treated to a full-throated rendition of I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts. And of course the same orc came back.
"What're yeh doin' now?"
"Well, we're singing," Eredolyn replied with manic cheerfulness, as Tuima and Dilly bunched themselves in front of Cebu to hide her sawing.
"Singing?"
"Yep," said Eredolyn. "It's called I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts. Wanna hear?" Without waiting for an answer, she began, waving a reluctant Dilly to join her.
"I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts (deedilydeedee); there they are a-standing in a row (dum, dum, dum), Big ones, small ones, some as big as your head-"
Right there the music ended abruptly, because of course no one knew how the rest of the song went.
The orc stared at them. He was clearly unused to prisoners who sang merry nonsensical ditties, and was trying to figure out how to react. At last he settled for the classic, "Yeh make one more peep an' I'll cut yer tongues out!" and stamped away. The Immies watched him go with a collective sigh of relief.
"So… how does the song end?" Tuima whispered.
Eredolyn looked almost as blank as the orc had. "I dunno… never thought about it before. Huh."
The Elf seemed to take this as further proof that her fellow captives were a few stanzas short of an epic, and merely looked resigned. After a while her head came up, and her eyes narrowed intently.
"What?" asked Dilly.
"The orc who went looking for Eicys is back. I can't hear what he's sayi – " Tuima stopped. She looked almost queasy.
"What?" asked Dilly insistently. "What?"
"He said she's dead," said Tuima. "Eicys is dead."
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A/N: I have to apologize; I know this chapter was on the goofy side. In our defense, when we Immies wrote this story we were hyper giddy girls with no idea it was going to turn into a gritty epic adventure. Which it will, actually. We've got narrow escapes, tragic death scenes, swashbuckling sea battles, seriously hilarious misunderstandings involving Haradric butterflies… Tuima even falls in love at one point, which is a sight to be seen.
Just give us a few chapters (and a couple of reviews!). We'll get there.
This sort of thing always happens. It is an example of crudely done Narrative Causality, and while highly convenient to the Author, frequently results in suspicion and/or cynicism in Characters. Eicys is, however, exempt at this point: having spent most of her life as a real person and not as a Character, she is not yet in tune with the nuances of life in narrative form. (Such are the hazards of Girl Falls Into Middle Earth fanfics. It's the written equivalent of turning into a cartoon halfway through a movie).