For a long time, they sat in silence, and then Betta sighed. "And now to the point of my tale," she said. "We must have a look at this mark that I have been forced to carry; although, I cannot say whether it will have any bearing on the quest at hand…"
"If there is any chance that it does, then certainly we must look," Fili agreed, "but as a friend, I make no demands upon you. No dwarf would wield the razor lightly, and it is your choice whether you will suffer your hair to be cut again. I only say that if you agree, I offer my services as barber. With one arm injured, you would do a butcher's job if it and I fear for the fineness of your skin."
Kili smiled into his hand but said nothing.
Betta nodded. "That is true enough," she said. She sighed again. "The hair must be cut, but we will not test your long blades upon it. In my bag I carry my father's razor which proved true to the task once before."
She directed Kili to her pack, for he was sitting nearer to the baggage. He was able to find and retrieve the razor as well as her mother's mirror and the old bone comb that had begun their troubles. Fili set more snow on the fire to melt, while Kili sat and examined the tools that he had found.
The razor was simply made, a thin blade set in wood that was stained from travel and worn smooth by the use of many hands. It was older than her father's ownership, but the blade was still sharp. Kili handed it to his brother who set his stone against it all the same and made sure that it would cut cleanly. He and his brother shaped their beards with the short knives that they carried in their belts, but the razor held a finer edge and would be better suited to the more delicate task.
Kili held the little polished circle, Betta's mother's mirror. He held it in the firelight and admired the workmanship. "There is silver inlaid in this," he said, looking closely at it. "The craft is remarkably well done for a Man-made thing, and the etchings are finer than I would have expected."
"It was fashioned by my mother's father," Betta told him. "He worked metal as a hobby when he was not too tired from toiling in the fields. It was a gift to my mother on her wedding day and she gave it to me in the weeks before her death."
Kili handed it back to her. "It is fine work," he repeated, apologetically.
Fili said that the water was ready. Betta was clearly unhappy about what must be done, but she sat herself to it before him and, now that he knew how to look, he could see that the section of hair on the right side of her head was shorter than the rest, though it had nearly grown out in the years of her travel.
"Are you ready then?" he asked her.
"It should have been done long ago," she said.
He took that as agreement and, after using the comb to gently tease the knots from the hair that he would cut, he raised the razor and began to slowly trim back her hair.
It was slow work. Fili made sure that he did not cut a single strand more than was needed to reveal the tattoo. He was determined that she would be able to cover the bare skin if she wished and, though he could not avoid the cutting altogether, he meant to do as little damage as possible.
Betta sat still as a statue carved in stone. Her hands were clasped tight in her lap and her face was pale and anxious. Kili kept up a continuous chatter to distract her, but the most he could work out of her was one or two small smiles. She was thinking not of her hair or of the last time it had been cut, but of her mother's hands that had so often combed out her long locks. When Elwen had suffered the fever of her final illness, Betta would often lie beside her on the bed, and her mother would tangle her hands in her daughter's hair and be calmed by it.
Fili continued to cut, watching each shinning strand fall until there was a dark shadow against the white snow between his knees and her back. He first cut the hair short, and then shaved back what was left until the skin was smooth to the touch. He used the warm water to sooth her heated scalp, but they had no shaving balm in the wild. With every scrape of the razor, he felt Betta wince. For a dwarf to shave his beard would be a physical pain; there was not much difference for a woman and her hair.
When the task was done, he had bared a scant few inches of skin, pale after being hidden from the sun for so long. Hardly three inches by two, the design curled back and behind her right ear. It was intricate and completely meaningless. Kili came near to see it, and the dwarves recognized several of the small runes drawn within the lines as being similar to the writing upon the cornerstone of Ankor, but they could not read them.
Fili gave Betta the warm cloth that she might press it against her raw skin and he said, "When you are ready, if you wish, Kili will draw out the design for you to keep. He has the better hand at such fine work, and we might scrape the marking onto a scrap of leather. You will never need bare your skin again to any man against your will."
She looked up at him, and he looked away, feeling how personal was the act that he had performed upon her.
"Thank you," she said. She looked down at the cut hair that lay upon the snow. She picked the knot of it up in her hands. "My mother was so fond of my hair…" she said, rubbing the soft strands between her fingers. "It was nearly the death of her to come home and see what my father had done. Perhaps it was the death blow that began the fever which would eventually kill her…"
She squeezed her hand into a fist, and then threw the hair into the fire. The scent of it was sour and Kili wrinkled his nose at it, but she smiled. "It is over now," she said. "I will not think of him again."
.
For half an hour, Betta sat with her hair pulled back and let Kili draw out the design. She looked at the drawing, and also at the original in the reflection of her mother's mirror, but if she knew what the markings meant, she did not tell the dwarves. All agreed that it seemed to be an old family crest, but they were glad to leave the deeper investigation of the matter until morning. Kili was beginning to yawn and showed that the night was telling on him.
"I still say that you ought to let my brother braid back your hair," he said, rolling out his blanket. "You can have little objection to his hands upon you now. At least he will not be using a razor."
With that, he turned on his side with his back to them and closed his eyes for sleep. He was still awake and listening, of course, but knew that more teasing would gain no new ground with his brother.
Betta sat before the fire, her head bowed and her fingers touching the smooth new skin under her hair. She felt again the stubborn knots and snarls that tied her remaining locks together, and she sighed and reached for the comb.
"I would be glad to do it for you," Fili said, "if you are willing. It is your choice."
She smiled. "There have not been many choices for me in my life," she said. "I think that in this, it matters more if you are willing. If you are, then I would be grateful if you could tame this mess of tangles. It has frustrated me greatly on our journey and I have been too stubborn to ask for help."
Fili smiled and shook his head at her. He took the comb and once more sat down behind her. He began to tease out the tangles, remembering a time when it was Kili's hair that he had been forced to unknot. As a very young dwarf, his brother had been too fond of running wild over Dunland and returning with mud and twigs in his hair and short beard. It had been Fili's task to clean him up in time for dinner, but those knots had been far worse that the tangle of Betta's hair, and the task had been less pleasant to perform on a squirming dwarf lad.
Fili glanced at his brother, who had begun to snore. He smiled, and then he frowned. He looked down at the woman before him. "If it is not too late for me to ask a question…" he began, but hesitated.
"Ask," she said. "What shall I refuse you after all you have done for me?"
"We have not done so very much," he protested.
"You have seen my shame and still call me friend. That is no little thing," she said. She looked back at him and smiled. "Do not argue with me, friend. Ask your question."
"Your youngest brother," he said, and saw the smile fall from her lips. She turned her face forward again and he went on with his combing. "You need not tell me if it pains you to do it, but I wonder… you say that your brother drowned in a river, but I have also heard you tell Kili that you consider yourself to blame for it."
"Not in the way that you think," she said. He thought her shoulders hung a little heavier. "I went out to swim on a summer's afternoon when the sun was hot. I often did, and always one of my older brothers followed to guard me, though they thought they kept themselves well hidden. On this day, Calenas followed me and, without his knowing it, Annandil who was only seven years old followed him.
"I was in the water when I heard the splash and a cry. I saw my older brother running along the shore and Annandil was struggling in the water. He had fallen out of a tree and into the stream near to where the river bent and rushed through a passage full of many rocks. He was too small to fight the current and was drawn into the narrows. I swam after him but could not reach him and I was nearly dragged down and crushed. Calenas pulled me free of the water, though it was not easy and I fought him, thinking only that I must reach Annandil. But when I looked out from the shore, he was gone."
Fili's eyes had drifted back to his own little brother again.
"We found his body two days later and far downstream. My mother blamed no one, my father blamed me, and Calenas blamed himself for not realizing that my headstrong little brother would be always tagging behind someone."
Fili was silent. He had ceased his combing. Betta looked back over her shoulder and saw his sad eyes. She followed his gaze to Kili's sleeping form and guessed at his thoughts as well.
"You have no other brothers or sisters?" she asked him.
He shook his head.
"Then I hope that you never lose the one you have. Calenas was not the same after that day. None of us were, but he suffered the greatest change. It was not five years later that he became a soldier, and within a year of that date he was dead, the first of my brothers to fall in war."
"He was a strong man to live so long with his grief," Fili said. "I do not think that I could live a day without Kili."
"Calenas did not live longer than Annandil," Betta said. "Every day after that day my brother searched for death and it took him five years to find it. A woman has not the same luxury; there was work to be done. But now I journey north, and if I find death there then I will not hesitate to meet him and rejoin my brothers, my uncles and my mother."
Fili frowned, but then he shook his head. The gloomy hills had infected his thoughts and he turned his attention back to Betta's hair. The tangles were gone and he set aside the comb. Running his fingers through the soft locks, he separated them into sections and began to braid. He made sure to leave several loops that might hang to cover the bare patch that he had shaved, but for the rest, he tied them back secure in an intricately woven cap that fell down across her shoulders.
The dwarf-women of Ered Luin would have laughed at the clumsiness of his handiwork; their skill at this craft was unrivaled even among the elves, though none but their own kin had ever seen the delicate braids that they wore inside their mountain homes. All in all, it was not a bad job, and Fili smiled proudly at Betta's compliments when she saw his work in her mirror.
His task finished, Fili took out his blanket for it was nearly the hour when he would reawaken his brother to take his turn at the midnight watch. Betta prepared to take her rest as well, but as she was laying out her blanket, she looked up and then stood up suddenly with a cry.
"What is that?" She pointed down the hill beyond the light of their campfire.
Fili turned to look.
At some point, while they had been speaking, a mist had appeared on the road below them. As they looked down upon it, the leading edge of it rolled westward and out of sight, leaving rolling waves of tattered gray like a slow and sluggish river between the hills. Here and there, it peeled off like tributaries down into a valley or ravine, glowing in the starlight. The snow and cold air should have made mist an impossibility, but there was no denying what they saw.
Fili stepped toward the mouth of the hollow to get a better look, but Betta caught his arm. "Do not leave the stone. It cannot be safe," she said.
"And we cannot escape it by hiding in here," he answered. He squeezed her hand but took it from his arm and stepped into the open.
The mist seemed to be washing up the hill toward the stone, but had stopped a dozen yards from the opening. Looking left and right, Fili could see that it was an illusion that the smoke had stopped. It climbed up the hill and spread its fingers above and below them, cutting them off on all sides but also held back in all directions always a dozen yards from the stone as if there were some ward upon the rock that protected them.
Fili cursed under his breath. There was no sword forged that could cut a line in smoke, and he could taste the magic of it on his tongue. Betta had woken Kili, and they both stepped out beside him.
"I hope that I am still dreaming," Kili muttered, surveying the scene.
"You are not," Fili said.
"I hope that it will be dispelled by the dawn," Betta said. "That is not a river that I wish to swim day or night."
Fili did not answer her. In his heart he suspected that even if the dawn did chase the mist away, it would be back again at dusk and grow stronger the farther east the company traveled. They had passed two nights between this stone and the last, and there was no reason to think that they could reach the next stone before nightfall - if there was a next stone. What would have happened to them if the mist had overtaken them upon the open road?
He did not know, and he did not dare to speak his fears and worry his companions. "It seems that we are safe from this new danger tonight," he said. "It does not come near the stone. Take your rest," he said to Betta.
Kili had stepped away from the stone and had drawn his sword as if he meant to take a swing at the mist. Fili caught his arm and pulled him back. "Do not wander far on your watch tonight, Kili," he said. "You must be near enough to come inside if the mist draws any nearer. We must trust to our good luck that it will not enter the stone itself."
"I do not trust this stuff to do anything," Kili said.
"Whatever it might do, we are trapped here tonight. We must wait to see what the morning brings."
Fili returned to his blanket, but he could not sleep. Looking across the fire, he saw that Betta, too, lay awake with her eyes on the mouth of their cave. Kili sat just inside it, his back to the fire and his face toward the mist. There would be no sleep for them that night, and perhaps not any night after.
This chapter is in part dedicated to papertowel1567, the winner of the long-ago My Favorite Chapter Challenge (ch 48). I bet you thought I forgot all about you :)
-Paint