Middle-earth, and all who dwell within it, belongs to Tolkien. I am grateful to him for growing this beautiful garden in which our imaginations can play. Please review!

Betta slept fitfully and dreamed dark dreams, but when a knock woke her in the early hours of the morning, she could not remember them. The sky was light, but it was early. She sat up, and her bones protested the treatment; the floor was less comfortable than the grassy ground she usually slept on, and her arm was no proper pillow.

The knock came again, and she pulled herself to her feet. Her knife was strapped to her back where it had cut a divot in her spine. She answered the knock before it could come again.

"Yes?"

A young girl, one of the kitchen maids, stood in the hall. Her cheeks were red from laughter and she grinned boldly at Betta who was not nearly so awake as the girl. "You're wanted downstairs, ma'am," she said, giggling.

"Wanted?" Betta wasn't used to being wanted anywhere, but to be summoned like this, in the inn of a town where she was a stranger, was something new to her. "Who wants me?" she asked.

"Dwarves," the girl said. "Pretty dwarves, ma'am." The girl couldn't be more than twelve, but her smile was older than that.

Betta remembered that she wasn't quite a stranger here anymore. "Two pretty dwarves?" she asked.

The girl nodded.

"Then they can wait 'til I've washed and eaten. Even a dog won't leave his kennel until he's had breakfast."

"Shall I tell them you've said so, ma'am?"

"No!" Betta shook her head. "I'll go down. I need food in any case. Tell them I am coming."

"Yes, ma'am." The girl hurried back down the stairs.

Betta closed the door, but she did not hurry. She splashed cold water over her face and hands to wake herself. She put away the candle and dumped what was left of yesterday's dinner out the window into the alley behind the inn. For a moment, she considered climbing out after it and escaping, but she did not.

It was a foolish thought, and she had wanted the box opened and the answers found for so long that she wondered at herself for having it. But she hadn't planned on bringing dwarves with her. It was beginning to feel as if they were the ones bringing her with them. If it weren't for Fili's determination, and his decision to keep the pearl in his own pocket, Betta's courage might have failed her. She might have turned back from the journey ahead.

The history that she had inherited with the box was dark, and it took more from her than it gave. Always, the answers to important questions were like rabbits: they bred more questions.

.

Fili and Kili were waiting for Betta when she came down to the common room. They kept to themselves on one side of the large space full of tables and stools. The long bar against the far wall was empty. In the evenings, the common room was bustling with locals and miners and traders, all sharing news and telling tales, but Betta had never gone down for it. She sat above, listening to the noise through the floorboards.

It was early in the morning, but late enough that those with work to do were off doing it. A pair of old men sat in a sunny corner near the door playing at a game of stones. A third man, the fat night-watchman who more often slept on the floor of a pub than in his own home was passed out on a bench in the corner, still sleeping off his night. Betta envied him that he had been left in his bed. She was greeted by the dwarves as she entered, and they were far more cheerful than she was.

"There she is, the guide for our great quest!"

Fili stepped forward to meet her. Their talk with Thorin had gone so well that even he had woken in a good mood that morning, but Kili had warned him that Betta would not want to set out so soon. As Thorin Oakenshield's heir, Fili was not used to his will being denied. There were not many dwarves who would stand against him when he set his mind to do a thing, unless it were that they stood with Thorin on the other side. Even Kili usually followed him without question, and Kili was more often going his own way into trouble than following anyone else.

The woman was another story. Fili might have left her behind if he did not need her to read the map they were following. It went against his grain to humor anyone, but humor her he must if he wanted to convince her to go with them on this quest. It had been Kili's idea to come to the inn personally to tell her what they had planned.

"We heard that you have not broken your fast," Fili said. "Come, we've ordered food." He led her to a table in an isolated corner away from the old men and the sleeping one. "How was your sleep?"

Betta was suspicious of his change in mood, but not so much that she did not accept the food when it was brought. There was bread and butter, but also a bowl of the inn's infamous mash that the innkeeper called porridge. The miners who ate it called it a name that Betta would blush to say aloud.

Fili was impatient, and it did not take long for him to forget that he was there to convince her and not to order her. He waited only long enough for her to eat a bite before speaking. "Have you translated the map?" he asked her. "Do you know in which direction our path lies?"

"North," she said. "The same direction as it lay yesterday, and the day before. I spent all the night awake and reading the pages. I told you, it cannot be done in a day!"

"We do not need the whole map redrawn for us," he said, "only the first stage."

"Why are you in such a hurry?"

"Why are you not eager to go?" Fili asked.

Kili put a hand on his brother's shoulder; he knew that Fili was impatient, and sometimes he spoke rashly when he was crossed. Kili had wanted to go alone to deliver their message to Betta, without his brother. He knew that he was considered handsome by the standards of Men, even if most Dwarf women thought his beard was too thin. But Fili had insisted on coming with him, and now his brother was on the verge of starting a fight that no one would win.

"We must leave now if we are to have any hope to avoid the bitter cold of winter," Kili explained.

"Today, or in two days, it will still be cold," Betta said.

"We mean to leave today," Fili said. "The better we know our path, the better we can prepare. My brother and I have already sent for a number of things that we will need. Kili says that you will need warm clothing. And better boots, from the look of things." He frowned down at her heavy shoes, worn from long travel. "How did you manage to cross the hard ground of Enedwaith in those?"

"Well enough," she said. "I will buy what I need for myself. And I need no other boots."

"As you wish. But you had only ten silver coins to pay to the dwarves who opened your box. If you have come into some other money, that is good luck, indeed."

"Not all of us have the wealth of a mountain at our backs," Betta muttered.

"Look at it this way," Kili said, interrupting his brother again. "We are purchasing what supplies we will need. You may accept the help or not, as you wish."

"And if there is no treasure?" Betta asked. "You mean to say that you won't demand repayment then? As your brother delights in reminding me, I have little money to spend in that way."

Fili frowned, but again, it was Kili who spoke. "No. No repayment, and no boots, either," he said, with a look at his brother. "You know best what you need after your long walk from Anduin, but we know that we will need food stuff and clothing for winter, all of us. The more that we know of our path before we begin, the better we can prepare for it."

Fili looked at his brother in surprise. It wasn't often that Kili thought farther ahead than his next meal, but he had known better than Fili how to convince Betta. Already her anger had softened, and she looked thoughtful.

"I do not know the end of the path, not yet," she said, "but I know that we will need to go east and north, over the northern Hills of Evendim, I think, but not through them. And then… farther north, I believe, but the landmarks there are beyond my knowledge. I do not know how far."

"Then we will follow my path," Fili said. He looked at Kili, who shrugged. They had argued that morning: Fili wishing to go his own way from the start while Kili thought that they should consult the map first. "There is a ford across the Lhun that is three days ride east of here. You want more time, and you will have it, but I will have a clearer path to follow once we reach the eastern shore. I refuse to wander the frozen wastes without direction. Make your preparations."

Fili stood up to go. "At midday, my brother and I will wait for you on the road to the Gates. From there, we ride east and on to seek your treasure."

Betta nodded, and the dwarves left, but her thoughts were on packs and supplies, and measuring the long leagues ahead. Those empty hills were more dangerous than the miles of Rohan or Dunland where homes were few and unwelcoming, but still there were homes.