CHAPTER EIGHT.
When we all cut each other loose from our bindings, we found ourselves quite happy to be alive, and greatly thankful for Bilbo's wit. If he didn't realize Bert, William, and Tom would have quite the trouble with their gullibility, we probably would have been cooking in some sort of stew. Everyone, except for Thorin with his too-majestic-for-you attitude, made a great effort to thank him for his quick thinking. At least he had determined something about himself that could be useful at times.
"You are lucky Bilbo had the smarts to keep the trolls at bay until sunrise." The old grey wizard puffed his pipe and tapped petrified Tom on the ankle as if to confirm he could not move. He then shot Thorin a pointed look, "And I suppose you only had nothing but the gumption to wriggle in your burlap."
Thorin, in his prominent displeasure, turned to face Gandalf with a straight expression. "Tell me Gandalf, where did you go?"
"Ah- looking ahead. The path is quite treacherous from here." The wizard casually leaned on his staff.
"And what brought you back?"
"The king behind."
Thorin seemed pleased enough with his answer, and the hint of an arrogant smile passed across his face.
"Oi, there must be some kind of troll hoard around here since they would have needed shelter from daylight." Fili suggested as he raked through a few bushes. He had taken to rooting around the camp looking for anything he could find, like most of the other dwarves.
"Aye," Gloin agreed, and the bunch joined in consensus at the probability of a hidden stash somewhere. In excitement and eagerness, they all looked to Gandalf as if he knew more about the whereabouts of a concealed cave than they did. By this point in our journey, even though it had been barely over a week, I understood the value of a trove of treasure to a dwarf. So naturally, I was not surprised at their thrilled expressions when Bilbo popped into view to point in the direction of a door he found leading into the earth.
"Over here!" The Hobbit called, "There is a door, but I believe it's locked!"
Gandalf followed Bilbo's voice and came face-to-face with the door before the lot of us. It appeared more old and decrepit than it actually was, mostly due to the poor hygiene and lack of care the trolls inflicted upon the entrance. With every attempt, the grey-bearded man could not force it to budge. No spell existed that he knew by memory could cause the lock to give way.
"This is quite the tricky lot. Trolls dealing with an enchanted door like this is very strange." He emitted a quick ring of smoke into the air and fixed himself on a stump. No one made a move for several more minutes in an effort to pry the door open.
Bilbo suddenly jumped from his resting point. "Oh! What about this key?" He pulled a large, rusted latchkey from his pocket and in turn earned a few groans from his audience, "When the trolls were busy with you all I found it by the fire. Naturally I forgot I had it in my pocket when we'd been apprehended..."
I jumped to my feet, felt the sensation of my clothes clinging to the sweat of my body, and snatched the key from his hands. My impatience (and everyone else's) erased any polite notion from my mind and there wasn't another minute I was going to wait for Bilbo to open the door. The sun now beamed down almost in the middle of the sky, and even I could feel that we wasted precious daylight each moment we remained by the troll hoard.
I pulled with all my might and even tried pushing with my weight a time or two, but with the key turned and mighty entrance unlocked, my small body could not manage to bring the door to move, and the dwarves had erupted in laughter. I glowered at them and Gandalf gave me a warm smile, and I could tell that even his eyes were chuckling at my puny state. Perhaps it was because of all the years I chose not to participate in any sort of physical activity that I brought this upon myself.
Gandalf gently waved me aside and promptly tugged the door open, very easily compared to my struggle, and an indescribable foul stench filled the air. A cough erupted from my mouth and my hands flew to my nose. Obviously, the sacks and unidentifiable bones weren't the last of our torture.
"In the name of Thrór, what is that horrible smell?" Balin choked before he backed further away from the entrance.
With his head tucked into the door frame, Gandalf's eyes searched the cave. "This is a troll hoard, not a Hobbit hole. You won't find pretty things down here."
With my nose still covered, I followed Gandalf down into the dark recesses, scanning for anywhere I could possibly step without crunching on something dead. This place was far beyond my germaphobe threshold. Bilbo proved the most reluctant to enter anywhere near the vicinity of the hole the trolls had made for themselves, and only stumbled in after everyone else due to a firm shove from Gloin. Wuss.
"Be careful what you touch." Gandalf warned and lit his staff, which reflected off of a pile of gold, swords, and rusted armor.
He didn't have to worry- I didn't plan to touch anything in that nasty hole.
Bifur, Gloin, and Nori particularly took interest in the gold and proceeded to dig madly in the dank floor of the cave so they could bury it.
I stopped to give them my best quizzical look before Bilbo stumbled into my back. "What the heck are you doing?"
"Making a long term investment!" Gloin offered while the other two nodded and continued to dig with their bare hands. "Where's the spade?"
To stumble upon this place again for a small pile of coins after reclaiming all the treasures held in Erebor seemed like a ridiculous idea, and I rolled my eyes and snorted in amusement. My legs took me deeper and deeper down into the darkness still behind Thorin and Gandalf, who were now distracted by an old pile of swords, and I caught a glimpse of something smooth and dark snaking through the dead leaves covering the floor.
And that's exactly what it was- a bloody snake of all things.
Now anyone that knew me particularly well would know that my fear of snakes extended far beyond pretty much any other fear I possessed. The thought of anything wriggling, slithering, and fanged that creeped around my feet terrified me. My breath hitched in the back of my throat and prevented me from screaming, and I stumbled backwards, almost to trip right over Bilbo.
The little Hobbit, who still managed to appear stately even under his dirt and grime, fell rearward onto the bed of leaves. "Ouch! Careful, Lizzie!"
His hand traced the dirt and leaves to prop himself up and caught on something beneath the natural jumble. Bilbo fumbled around before pulling something that resembled a sword- a very small one at that- out from underneath himself. The hilt was bound in a fine black leather and was sheathed in what looked like a sturdy animal skin. When he unsheathed it, the blade was of fine work that I'd never seen before.
Gandalf reached over Bilbo's curly light brown locks to take the sword from his hand and examine it himself. The old wizard's brow creased while he thought before handing it back to him. "You should keep it, it's a fine blade of elven make. You could not wish for a finer blade and I'm afraid you will probably need one." He paused, pulled Bilbo to his feet, and put his hand on the Hobbit's shoulder. "But remember, sometimes courage is knowing not when to take a life, but when to spare one."
Both of their attention quickly left Bilbo's find to Thorin, who had uncovered what looked like a collection of much larger elven blades. Knowing that they were crafted by his self-proclaimed enemy, Thorin refused to touch any of them. Gandalf muttered something about Thorin's pride and stubbornness before Bilbo found himself enamored by his new discovery and I turned back to the dim outcropping.
From the dark came a voice that seemed to whisper with the rustling of the ground beneath our feet. "And where is yours? You have yet to find your worthy gift, earth-bound."
My eyes darted to the others, who seemed deaf to what I'd heard; they remained on about their business. I shook my head in confusion. Maybe the troll stench got to my senses. Nothing else presented itself to be alive in the cave except, well, the snake. It positioned itself curiously near the wall, with its beady dark eyes peering up at me.
"Or perhaps, moon-daughter, there is a treasure here for you that is not tangible."
Oh Jesus, the snake was talking to me. One part of me was fascinated, and the other thought I was completely crazy.
"Perhaps there is wisdom here for you, or a love, or a tale of your past. You come so far from whence you came." Its tongue darted from its mouth and it curled its body around the old remains of what looked like a rotting miniature chest which the lock had rusted off long ago.
"W-wha-" I sputtered, but the snake hushed me before I could continue my incoherent sentence.
"Take the chest, it has waited on you for many moons." And in the blink of an eye, it had slithered back into the cover of the shadow without a trace of its path.
I reached down and grabbed the weathered wood to find that it almost crumbled in my fingers.
"Lizzie! We've got to move on and get out of this place! Come on!" Kili's distinct masculine voice rang over the walls of the cave. Suddenly my shock and distraction vanished and I pressed the small box close against my chest as I became eager to exit the dirty troll hoard once again.
No one seemed to take notice of my acquisition as we all stepped out into the fresh air and daylight since they rushed to their ponies to pack them with the various things they'd found. Ori and Nori troubled themselves with a pile of pots and pans made of pure gold, Gloin with what looked like an elven axe, the two brothers Fili and Kili with the swords Thorin had found, and finally Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur brought out herbs that had been stowed away for use as cooking spices.
As we packed, I had no intention of opening my box for some reason I did not know, and I handed it to Kili to put on his pony for safekeeping. He gladly obliged before he pulled me up onto my usual spot in the saddle in front of him.
"What's in the box?" He asked as Daisy began to trot along underneath us.
"I'm not sure... I haven't opened it yet." I sighed as the promise of rain threatened overhead. Only four days since we left had been sunny, and I was tired of being drenched from head to toe on a regular basis. My clothes were becoming a sepia hue from the dirt and I felt like I desperately needed a bath. "I just kind of uh- grabbed it as we were going out."
I didn't exactly feel like explaining that I took it because a snake told me to. He would probably think Bofur's stories and my general exhaustion had gotten to my head. I was beginning to think maybe even everything had gotten to my head.
Not long after we'd found our way but a few feet down from the entrance of the troll hoard, the sound of fast approaching feet- some sort of animal I guessed- echoed through the woods. The company erupted in shouts and disengaged from their horses so they could draw their swords from their holsters. Gandalf instantly went bounding to Thorin, asking if he'd told anyone of his quest.
"I-I've told no one I swear! What is the meaning of this?" For once, the dwarf king let a look of distress pass over his features.
And then breaking through the underbrush and low branches of the surrounding forest came what looked like a makeshift wooden bobsled attached to some of the largest rabbits I'd ever seen. A goofy looking aged man in robes the color of the woods called them to a stop and barely managed to keep from running our ponies over. My first thought when he burst into the clearing was, my God, what is he on? His eyes gleamed wide and fearful and his beard and hair were a wreck.
"Radagast?" Gandalf stepped forward to the man and put his palm on his shoulder. "Radagast the brown what are you doing out so far?"
Kili and I exchanged bemused glances before Radagast spoke.
"I've been searching all over for you! I came to tell you-" He paused for quite an awkward interval, "Well, It was on the tip of my tongue... Oh! Wait..."
His eyes widened and his mouth remained open, as if he had become frozen. Gandalf furrowed his eyebrows and then moved to pull one of those nasty stick-looking bugs right from Radagast's mouth. I almost gagged and had to avert my sight to the stump beside Daisy. Wherever this man had come from, it had to be one of the weirdest recesses of Middle Earth.
"It was nothing at all, just a silly stick insect!" Radagast laughed and Gandalf placed the bug into his hand.
But really, what was he on?
"Now Radagast, was there something you were meaning to tell me?"
The wizard looked stunned, as if his train of thought had been broken again. His face darkened before his voice seemed to drop to a hushed tone as if the forest eavesdropped on his words. "There's a darkness moving over the eastern lands. Monstrous creatures came out of the Dol Guldur, where a necromancer-" He said the word in such a tone that made most of us shudder, "-has taken up residence."
"A necromancer? Are you sure?" Gandalf questioned him with guarded carefulness.
Radagast nodded and glanced about the forest. "It's best we don't speak about it here. We should move to the east where Elrond's walls will bring us safety. I know most of all of the foul ears around these wood."
A/N: Some pretty sneaky things are starting happen around Middle Earth... hmm. :)
More plot heavy and not so Kili-centric, I know, but give them a break, they're constantly bombarded by adventure and wonder! When things settle down a bit we might see some romantic development. But in the mean time, hope you're enjoying the ride.
Love and appreciate you all, without a doubt.