Chapter 6: Binding Wounds and Bonding Friendships
Bella had escaped the mountain, but she did not know where she was. She had lost everything; her hood, cloak, food, provisions, pony, and her friends. She wandered on and on, till the sun began to sink westwards, behind the mountains.
"I seem to have made it to the other side of the Misty Mountains!" she exclaimed. "Where have Gandalf and the dwarves got to? Oh, I hope they aren't still in that mountain."
She wandered on, out of the little high valley, over its edge, and down the slopes beyond. After a while she sat down, and pulled out the ring from her pocket. It was a plain gold band, and it was rather small. Bella slipped it onto her finger, and admired the look of it. Walking over to a small river she glanced down to have a sip when she noticed something. There was no reflection in the water! "I'm invisible!" she gasped. Taking off the ring, she watched as her reflection appeared in the water.
Now she began to wonder if perhaps she should use the ring to go back into those horrible mountains and look for her friends. She had just made up her mind to do so when she heard voices. She stopped and listened. It did not sound like goblins, so Bella crept forward carefully. She was on a stony path downwards with a rocky wall on the left hand; on the other side the ground sloped away and there were dells below the level of the path overhung with bushes and low trees. In one of these dells under the bushes people were talking.
She crept nearer, and suddenly she saw peering between two big boulders a head with a red hood on it: Balin doing lookout! She could have clapped and shouted for joy, but she did not. She had slipped the ring back on, for fear of meeting something unexpected and unpleasant, and she saw Balin was looking straight at her without noticing her.
Wanting to surprise them, she edged closer until she could see Gandalf and all of the dwarves. They were discussing all that had happened to them in the tunnels, and wondering and debating what they were to do now. The dwarves were grumbling, and Gandalf was saying that they could not possibly go on with their journey leaving Ms. Baggins in the hands of the goblins, without trying to find out if she was alive or dead, and without trying to rescue her.
"After all she is my friend," said the wizard "and I know quite a few of you have grown fond of her. I feel responsible for her, and I wish to goodness that you hadn't lost her!"
"She has been more trouble than use so far," said Dwalin. "If we have got to go back now into those abominable tunnels to look for her, then drat her, I say."
Gandalf answered angrily. "I brought her, and I don't bring things that are of no use. Either you help me look for her, or I go and leave you here to get out of the mess as best you can yourselves. If we can only find her again, you will thank me before all is over. Whatever did you tell her to run off for Thorin?"
Thorin looked ashamed, and angry at Dwalin. "I did not know if we were going to be able to hold off the goblins, so I demanded she run ahead. I'll go with you to look for her."
Some of the dwarves looked shocked at this. "As will we!" said Kili, Fili, Balin immediately, and all of the others after a long moment. Even Dwalin conceded after the frightening glare Thorin sent him.
"There is no need for that," Bella said as she slipped off the ring and walked into view. Good gracious, how they all jumped! Every single one of them appeared shocked and delighted. Thorin and Gandalf looked the happiest, and when Thorin walked over to her and placed a hand on her shoulder, she blushed very deeply.
"How?" was all the mighty king could stutter out, his hand still on her shoulder.
"Hobbits can be quite sneaky, you know," she said as she placed her hand over his. Before anyone could blink, he enveloped her in a huge hug. Gasps came from the crowd of dwarves. She gingerly wrapped her arms around him, her heart beating loudly in her chest from the contact.
After a moment, he released her and stepped back. "Good to have you back." Questions were suddenly thrown her way by everyone and she did her very best to answer all of them without mentioning the ring. At the end of her tale, it was Gandalf who spoke up.
"What did I tell you?" he chuckled. "Ms. Baggins has more about her than you guess." He gave Bella a queer look from under his bushy eyebrows, as he said this, and the hobbit wondered if he had guessed at the part she left out.
As Bella took a step forward and removed her outer cloak due to the heat, she heard Ori gasp. Everyone turned to look at her and she glanced down and gasped herself. The place where Gollum had bit her on her shoulder was seeping blood down her torso and it showed through her under shirt. Thorin carefully came over and pulled her shirt down enough to expose the wound, and she heard him inhale sharply. The bite would was deep and inflamed, obviously infected. Stepping back, Thorin's hand released her shirt. "It's nothing," she murmured. "Just a small bite."
"That's not nothing," Thorin said, his eyebrows furrowed. "It needs to be dressed before we head out. Come with me."
Too stunned to say much of anything, Bella followed obediently away from the silent dwarves and wizard, who watched them go with curious expressions. Once they were out of sight, Thorin placed down his pack and began to rummage through it. He paused for a moment to throw his cloak at her. "Take off your shirt and use this to cover your – uh – chest." Bella would have giggled at how flustered he was and how he couldn't look her in the eye, except for the fact that it was a very awkward situation.
Turning around so her back was facing him, she pulled off her shirts, being careful not to aggravate the wound. Pulling up his cloak, she held it against her chest. "You can come sit in front of me here," Thorin said in a strange voice, but Bella ignored it and sat down in front of him so that her injured shoulder was closest to him. She pulled all her hair over to her opposite shoulder so that it wouldn't get in the way.
"What creature did this?" Thorin asked as he took a wet rag and began to gently wash the wound. At first she jumped from the contact, but eased once he put his free hand on her uninjured shoulder to steady her. He did not remove his hand after.
"It was Gollum," she said, her brows furrowing. "What a retched creature that was! I hope to never encounter him again for the rest of my life!"
A small chuckle escaped Thorin. "This creature seems to bother you more than the goblins do." As he placed down the now filthy rag, he grabbed another one and handed it to her. When he saw her confused look, he said: "The infection has to come out of the wound somehow, so I'm going to try as gently as I can do get it out, but you may want to bite on that just in case."
Nodding her head and trying to keep the fear out of her eyes, she placed the cloth between her teeth. Thorin's hands gently pried the wound open a little bit, causing a bit of pain to flare until he pressed down slowly but firmly. White hot pain shot through her shoulder, and she let out a strangled whimper as her body automatically tried to move away. Clamping her jaws on the cloth, she felt a few tears of pain start to pool over her cheeks. Glancing down, she saw that pus and blood were beginning to pour from the wound.
It only lasted for a few minutes before Thorin stopped, moving his hand down to her mid back. "You did well," he said, as he grabbed a clean rag and wiped the pus and blood from her shoulder and arm.
"Sorry you had to do that," Bella said softly as she took the rag out of her mouth. A blush of embarrassment burned her cheeks as she turned away from Thorin.
"Don't apologize," he said in a slightly harsh voice. "You were injured and I'm helping you as I would do for any member of this company. Besides, it's my fault you were hurt."
A soft guffaw escaped her mouth. "Your fault? How do you suppose that?"
"I told you to run," he said as he dipped his fingers into a pot of some sort of thick substance. Lifting his hand up, he began to rub it onto the wound, and Bella sighed as the coolness of it soothed her heated flesh. "It was for me that this quest was started and that you were invited along."
Bella shook her head and locked her blue eyes on his. "You did not force me to come Thorin. I chose to. Under no circumstance did you ever take my will away from me. Even if I knew what would happen before I left, I would still be here." After a moment, she added: "Although I probably would have killed Gollum on sight if I knew that this was what that retched creature was going to do. I'll probably have one hell of an ugly scar after this."
Thorin quirked an eyebrow at the venom in her voice by her last sentence. "This ointment here will prevent scarring," he said, as he continued rubbing the substance into the wound. After a few moments, he wiped off his hands and grabbed the bandages. "Lift your arm for me, please."
Doing as he said, Bella lift her arm and watched as his hands expertly wrapped the bandage firmly around the wound. Once he was finished, he turned around so that she could change back into her shirt. Fully dressed, she turned to face Thorin. "I'm done," she said. When he turned around, she handed him back his cloak. "Thank you, for everything."
"You're very welcome, Bella," he murmured back, granting her a small rare smile. Her heart did a flying leap at the sound of her name coming from his lips. They walked back to the group in silence.
Once they returned, they saw the dwarves standing with all their gear. "We must be getting on at once," said Gandalf. "They will be out after us in hundreds when night comes on; and already shadows are lengthening. They can smell our footsteps for hours after we have passed. We must be miles on before dusk. There will be a bit of moor, if it keeps fine, and that is lucky. Not that they mind the moon much, but it gives us a little light to steer by."
So on they went. The rough path disappeared. The bushes, and long grasses between the boulders, the patches of rabbit-cropped turf, the thyme and the sage and the marjoram, and the yellow rockroses all vanished, and they found themselves at the top of a wide steep slope of fallen stones, the remains of a landslide. When they began to go down this, rubbish and small pebbles rolled away from their feet; soon larger bits of split stone went clattering down and started other pieces below them slithering and rolling; then lumps of rock were disturbed and bounced off, crashing down with a dust and a noise. Before long the whole slope above them and below them seemed on the move, and they were sliding away, huddled all together, in a fearful confusion of slipping, rattling, cracking slabs of stone.
It was the trees at the bottom that saved them. They slid into the edge of a climbing wood of pines that here stood right up the mountain slope from the deeper darker forests of the valleys below. The dwarves and Gandalf caught hold of the trunks and swung themselves into lower branches. Bella, of course, couldn't reach, but was grateful when a hand shot out and had pulled her up the tree. Thanking the person, she was shocked when she saw that it had been Dwalin.
Soon the danger was over, the slide had stopped, and the last faint crashes could be heard as the largest of the disturbed stones went bounding and spinning among the bracken and the pine roots far below.
"Well! That has got us on a bit," said Gandalf as he jumped from his place in the tree. As the dwarves jumped down, Bella was pleasantly surprised when Dwalin grabbed her waist and lowered her down to Thorin, who grabbed her carefully. Once on her feet, she thanked the two men and blushed. "Even goblins tracking us will have a job to come down her quietly."
"I daresay," grumbled Bombur; "but they won't find it difficult to send stones bouncing down on our heads."
"Nonsense!" Gandalf snapped. "We are going to turn aside here out of the path of the slide. We must be quick! Look at the light!"
The sun had long gone down the mountains. Already the shadows were deepening about them, though far away through the trees and over the black tops of those growing lower down they could still see the evening lights on the plains beyond. They limped along now as fast as they were able down the gentle slopes of a pine forest in a slanting path leading steadily southwards.
"Must we go any farther?" asked Bella grumpily after she walked into a tree for what seemed like the tenth time that night. It was so dark that she couldn't see her fingers when she waved them in front of her face.
"A bit further," said Gandalf.
After what seemed ages further they came suddenly to an opening where no trees grew. The moon was shining into the clearing. Somehow it struck all of them as not at all a nice place, although there was nothing wrong to see.
All of a sudden they heard a howl away down hill, a long shuddering howl. It was answered by another away to the right and a good deal nearer to them; then by another not far away on their left. It was wolves howling at the moon, wolves gathering together.