When last we left our trio, they were in a pretty tight jam. Will Betta save the brothers? Are our favorite dwarves still alive and able to be saved? It's time for another episode of Quest to Forochel: The Exciting Adventures of Fili and Kili...

It seemed as if a month had passed while Betta stood looking about the cave, searching for some clue as to how she might save Fili and Kili from becoming the Snow-troll's next morning meal; and yet, it could not have been longer than a few moments, for the sliver of the moon rose no higher and the sky grew no lighter. There was no easy escape from the cave. If the dwarves were awake, they might have managed something clever, a distraction or a swiftly fought battle leading to a brave retreat into the cave behind the troll's frozen porch… assuming that it was not a blind, a blunt cave with no exit.

But the dwarves were not awake, and Betta had only herself and her own plans to lay. She could make no use of the troll's scavenged goods, nor of the fire – he would catch her before she could get close to it. She looked upwards, her eyes accustomed to seeking guidance from the stars, but saw only the roof of the cave.

If it were not for the frightful inhabitant underneath it, the ceiling of the troll's front porch might have been beautiful. The heat of a century's cook fires had risen and melted the snow and ice above, sending trickles of water running in thin rivulets down the walls where they froze again in streaks and gentle waves. The mixture of soot and many-colored snow dyed the white ice until it shone like the mother-of-pearl insides of a sickly oyster.

There was a great hole over the fire pit in the center of the ceiling and a little back toward the black cavern. It would let in only a short beam of sunlight at midday, but enough that Betta guessed the troll would retreat from the front of the cave at that time. So, the back cavern was no shelter for them; the old sentinel would know every tunnel and passage if there were any.

There were other holes and pockmarks in the ceiling besides the one over the fire. Just as there were bubbles in water, so were there pockets of air frozen into thick ice. Over time, the combined freezing and thawing had exposed those pockets, leaving flutes and trumpets in places two or four feet thick. Only a diffusion of sunlight could come through those even on the brightest of days; although, a few were as straight as the one over the fire. They were of no use to Betta. Even if she could find a large enough hole to squeeze herself through near to the back of the cave, and even if she had long enough rope, she could not hope to lower herself down to the dwarves without being seen. She would be caught like a spider on a thread, easily captured or simply clapped between the troll's huge hands.

"Bite the flesh and crunch the bone. Roll about, roll about," the old snow-troll chanted to himself. His voice was slow and deep, resounding off the smooth walls and out through the wide front door. Betta could hear his song echoing in the valley below.

The fire was warm and inviting, and she wished that the troll would leave his home. Take a walk, she thought at him, and let me go to my friends. She looked down into the valley. The sky had grown almost imperceptibly brighter, like a pail of water poured into a vat of blue dye. Morning was coming, but not soon enough!

And then, the thought struck her: she knew from the old tales that the hill trolls and cave trolls of the south were vulnerable and turned to solid rock if caught outside in daylight. Were their cousins, the snow trolls equally helpless before the sun? If she could trick the troll into leaving, the sun might win the battle for them. If she could only get him to go far enough, she might creep into his cave and rescue the dwarves.

But how does one trick a troll into leaving his warm shelter when the night is old and the sun is rising? The fading echo of the Sentinel's song gave her the only hope she had. If she could convince him that there was another, tastier meal outside, he might go in search of it. Judging from the large pile of meat already caught, the troll was greedy and would not let a mouthful pass his cave without trying to catch it. And, hadn't they heard his heavy steps thudding outside the standing stone yesterday? The troll obviously had other caves and other shadows that he might hide in so that he could hunt in daytime when the clouds were thick over the sun.

There was her chance. She must lure him out, but safely! It would do no good if the old troll caught her, too.

Betta looked up at the holes in the roof again, at the twisted tunnels they made through the ice. She remembered how her uncle Beregil had cupped his hands to his mouth to increase the volume of his voice, and the way that Andur used to speak through his twined fingers to make his voice sound like the Lord of Wind when he told the old stories to his young niece and nephews. Betta knew that she could not shout from the mouth of the cave without drawing the troll to her, but she might call down from above and perhaps confuse him by the echoes of her voice. To do that, she must climb.

As she stared up at the ceiling, she flexed her right arm carefully. The shoulder was still hurt, but stronger than it had been. Fili's skill in healing was greater than he admitted. And yet, she did not know whether her arm was strong enough to bear her weight up the more than twenty feet to the roof. Outside the cave, the ice was cracked and showed many stones frozen upon it both small and large enough for hand or foot to hold. She had climbed many tall trees in her time, but never with frozen fingers.

Betta looked once more into the cave. She saw the hideous, flat face and black eyes of the troll. She saw Fili's unconscious body lying in the snow, his cheeks were red from being warmed by the fire, but his expression was slack and too pale. Kili had rolled off of his brother and now lay behind him; she could see only his arm, bare-handed and out-stretched as if he searched for his bow that lay broken on the pile of weapons many yards out of reach.

She could think of no other plan, and her time was running out. Gathering what strength she had left, Betta stretched up her arms and began the climb. At first she struggled, and her courage quailed; her arm pained her and she feared the fall, but soon her body remembered the tree climbing of her youth. Her hands and feet began to find their holds with ease, and she worried only that her injured arm would give out. Twice, her shoulder seemed to slip out of joint and each time she nearly lost her hold, but her fingers gripped tighter and her gloves stuck to the ice by the rough leather and heat that soaked through from her sweating palms. She clenched her scarf between her teeth to stifle her cries of pain and finally heaved herself over the top of the wall and onto the roof that jutted out from the steeper side of the mountain behind.

The top of the troll's front porch was sloped gently and she must still hold on with her left hand or slip down again, but she was able to lay still and rest her right arm for a few moments. Below her, through the ice, she could hear the old troll muttering to himself as he prepared to cook the main course.

Slowly, Betta dragged herself to her knees and crawled toward one of the larger holes. She had seen it from below and knew that it was nearly as wide as the great gap over the fire. It was wide enough for her to slide through if she was not careful and she would have avoided it except that it allowed her the best view of the cave below and was very near to a smaller hole that was as twisted and convoluted a trumpet as she could hope to find.

Lying beside the larger hole with her mouth close to the trumpet that she had chosen, Betta could see the fire crackling in its bowl, the wet stone floor around it, and a small pile of leather and clothing torn into scraps. She did not care to consider how the troll had collected such personal material from the bodies of his victims. She could see his huge shadow cast upon the nearest wall but could not see the dwarves.

The troll was moving about the cave now, going to the corner for a few more logs for the fire. Soon, it would be one of the dwarves that he took up, tearing off their fine leather coats for the pile and casting them naked into the boiling water. The cook pot was rusted and cracked at the edges, but full and large enough to submerge a whole dwarf.

"It shall be a proper stew this day," the old sentinel said to himself. "Not goat. Not horse. What are they? Dwarves, yes… that's right. That's what those hairy creatures were called. Nasty things with sharp iron… Haven't had dwarf stew for ages upon ages past… but they'll boil up nice, melt the meat from their skinny little bones."

Betta heard him make a queer sound then, as if he were smacking the lips that he did not have. She swallowed her fear. They had no time, but what should she say? Her uncle's tales came back to her, one in particular that was a conversation between the talking eagles of the north and the Lord of Wind as he flew beside them. She did not know what her voice would sound like, coming down from above, but it was as good a plot as any.

As she put her mouth to the trumpet in the ice, she saw the troll rise up from the fire and turn toward the back of the cave; she spoke quickly, calling down through the hole in the roof, "Ho, there! What have you found?"

Betta lowered her voice and tried to make herself sound wind-like and inhuman, but there was no need. The twisted ice echoed and distorted her words, hollowing them out just as an old conch shell might hollow and draw out the breath blown through it.

The sentinel gave a start and looked up. He couldn't remember the last time that anyone had answered him with words, and certainly no one ever greeted him first.

"Ho, there! Who, there?" he said, looking around. "Who speaks to me? No one. It is the wind." He turned again, reaching for the dwarves. It had been so long since he had had a conversation with anyone but himself that he had forgotten that he must wait for an answer.

"No one?" Betta called, interrupting him before he could grasp one of the brothers in his fist. "It is no one but the wind," she said, "for the wind I am. Have you not heard me whispering? I have spoken to you before."

The whispering wind spoke to everyone in this place, but the old sentinel turned around and surveyed his front porch. He was not as stupid as Betta had hoped, although his thoughts had been slowed by the long, frozen years. Orcs took very little brain work to catch, but he was too practiced a hunter not to realize that the voice he heard came not from the wind but from an uninvited guest.

"The wind, is it?" he said, his beady eyes looking into every crack and crevice of the cave. "Well, if wind you are, then I have heard you before. You moan and you groan, you shriek and you sigh, but you do not speak with words. Why speak you now? What have you to say to me?"

Betta crossed her fingers and said, "I am cold and lonely. I wish for company. Come out and visit me."

The old sentinel was not so easily fooled, but he was annoyed. He shook his head and cried, "Come out? Come out! What care I if the wind is cold? I am warm inside and I have two fat dwarves to keep company in my belly. Why should I come out?"

The troll's words were light, but his eyes were sharp. He was beginning to guess where the voice was coming from, and he suspected that his visitor was not the wind but another dwarf, a companion of the two that he had already caught, who was lurking about and trying to draw him out with mocking words.

Betta did not see the danger. All she knew was that the sky was growing brighter and the troll was once more reaching towards Fili. She could not risk him picking up either brother. If he grew impatient or angry, he might crush them out of hand. "Those two are all cloth," she said quickly. "I have seen them. They are nothing but skin and bones. If you want a meal, you must fatten them up first!"

"Fatten them up? No!" the troll said, angrily. "Why waste good meat by feeding it to other meat? They did not hunt for it. They will not eat it. Be gone, Wind, if wind you are, but I think that you are not. Where there is one dwarf, there are a dozen, don't I know it! Enough to make a pie!"

And with that, the troll – who had not been reaching for the dwarves at all but for a thick tree trunk from the wood pile – snatched up his club and swung it over his head. He had finally decided where the voice was coming from and, in fact, had seen the corner of Betta's cloak fluttering in the wind outside the large hole near to where she lay. His club struck the ceiling with a resounding crack almost exactly beneath her. The whole cave shuddered and large spears of broken ice rained down from above. One razor-sharp block fell and exploded against the stone floor near to Kili's head. It would have crushed his outstretched arm if he had not snatched it back and covered his face just in time. Betta did not see him move; she was too busy clinging to the icy roof, struggling to keep from sliding off. She fumbled for the knife at her belt, thinking to sink it into the ice, but the troll swung his club a second time, and the hole next to her cracked. She lost her grip and slid down through it, falling feet first and nearly twenty feet to the hard ground below.

So lovely to be back with you all to finish the ongoing tale of our trio. I hope you had a wonderful month off and will forgive me for taking such a long hiatus. I promised I'd be back and here we are. You didn't even have to wait for December ;)

-Paint