Chapter 17: The Great Escape (Angharad)

(~***~)

As the children were escorted back from their tea with the Prince, Angharad caught Ginnar's eye and looked purposefully up at the roof. The young dwarf didn't know what she meant. He was sweating over the keys hidden in his clothing. As soon as they were delivered to the nanny, he made a fuss about wanting to get into his comfortable play clothes and changed himself. Angharad caught on and demanded the nanny attend to her and assist with the removal of her fancy gown. While the nanny was distracted, Ginnar slipped the keys out of his tunic and hid them deep in their little cabinet.

Angharad decided that she needed a bath after all that fussing. She had been catching on lately that the woman would do what she told her, within reason. When the nanny went outside to heat the water, Angharad whispered to Ginnar.

"We need to leave as soon as we can. The longer we wait, the more likely the missing keys will be discovered. I was certain they would notice at the menagerie gate. I do not know how we got this far. Some god is smiling on us for a moment," she spoke in a rush.

"But how will we get to the workshop?" Ginnar asked. "Even if we are free, we will surely be seen crossing the courtyard no matter what time of night we try."

"That is why I was looking at the roof earlier," Angharad explained. "We have to climb over the courtyard, like the roof tile men did last week."

Ginnar was alarmed by this idea. "I cannot climb over a roof like that, even if you can, elf!"

"I thought the dwarfs were fierce climbers in their mines," Angharad jibed at him. She had long since caught on that a challenge would be more effective than trying to coax Ginnar. "Or do you wish to stay here for the rest of your life?"

Ginnar growled at her, "Fine! I will climb. The translator always brings you to your dance lessons in the afternoon. You should try to speak with him then. Get a message to the rebels that we wish to join them. He has been good to us – I hope we can trust him not to tell before we can run." Angharad nodded seriously at him as the nanny reappeared and ushered her out to bathe.

They had a plan.

(~***~)

Night came and went. The soldiers they feared might appear suddenly and demand the stolen keys never arrived. The morning Eastron lesson was the same as always. Then the translator escorted Angharad to her dance lesson and she took their next big gamble.

"Sir," she said as quietly as she could while they were in a lonely spot in the garden. "There is a meaning to your pin, isn't there?" She knew she had him when his eyes shifted quickly and nervously to her at that comment. She hoped it meant what she thought it did. She would gladly join a rebellion against the Emperor now.

"We – Ginnar and me – are going to leave. Tonight if possible. We cannot wait. We wish to join… your friends. There is a place where they receive gifts from dwarfs. Do you know it?" she asked.

"No," the translator replied. "Don't tell me. No one is to know everything. That's enough. I'll give them a message that you'll wait for them at the place where they receive gifts from dwarfs. Go, go, we cannot linger here speaking of this!"

As the translator hurried Angharad along to her last dance class, Xiaoqing lifted her snake's head from the grass where she had been hiding. An escape plan, interesting. She considered running to tell someone immediately but decided to wait. She wanted to know how they were going to get free of their chains and make their way out of the garden – even the juicy chaos telling would cause was not worth missing that explanation.

(~***~)

The children tried not to show how jumpy they were all day. The hours wore on painfully. When night finally came and their nanny urged them to go to sleep so she herself could rest, they lay in on their stiff mattress one last time, waiting for the woman's breath to even out.

Angharad was praying to Elbereth with all the vigor in her little heart for guidance. She found she was scared that they were leaving this place of relative safety for the unknown. But every time she was tempted to stay, she remembered that they wanted to trap her poor parents here, too. She hovered over the place where their song whispered faintly in her spirit, trying to gather all her courage to escape and lead them away from the clutches of the Emperor. She reached for Ginnar's hand in the dark and held it tight.

The young dwarf, for once, only gripped hers back. Again and again he wanted to tell her that this whole plan was insane and he would not go along with it. But somehow – miraculously – she had secured the precious keys for them. As she had said, this chance would not last. It was now or never. And, he thought to convince himself, he was not about to be bested by an elf.

When the woman was finally asleep the children moved as silently as they could. They gathered their play clothes – the only somewhat practical option for this task – and the keys, and snuck out of the hut. They changed, then ran for the palace gate. They did not want to waste a moment of darkness, for they had much ground to cover before dawn.

They arrived at the gate without incident. Angharad realized she'd never crossed the garden at night. She was relieved that it had been silent and still, rather than teeming with bat demons or some other nasty surprise. The children huddled in a bush near the exit and fiddled with the keys until the figured out how they worked. Finally, unrestrained for the first time in months, they prepared to scale the garden wall.

Xiaoqing slithered out of the dark at the base of the gate, hissing softly at them.

"Look at you clever babies!" she taunted them. "However did you manage to get the keys to your bonds? Perhaps I should call a guard…"

Angharad almost laughed. Her intuition had served her well, it seemed. For the first time in a long time, the elf had the feeling that the Valar really were looking out for her.

"Oh, but then they'd catch you too," she replied back to the serpent in a matching tone. "That would be a shame, since we took the trouble of getting your key as well."

The snake turned into her human form and let a bark of laughter erupt from her throat. She was a connoisseur of skillful tricks. This one she heartily appreciated.

"Well played, well played," she said with delight as Angharad handed her her own key.

"Will you come with us, demon?" the elf asked. "We'll share our route out of the palace grounds with you, but only if you'll keep it secret."

"I'm suitably impressed with you today. I think I will follow you," Xiaoqing replied as she removed the hated silk cord from her throat. These youngsters had thoroughly captured her interest tonight.

"Fine," Angharad replied. She expected little from Xiaoqing at this point, but if the demon didn't reveal their plans that was at least something.

Ginnar was already at the wall, working out how to climb over. He and the other dwarf children had, of course, played on the rock walls in Aglarond before, but he was nervous about all this high-stakes climbing. To his relief, he found the path upwards intuitive. Angharad followed close behind him. At the top of the wall, they flattened themselves down and looked around them. No guards appeared to be nearby, so they shimmied down and huddled in a decorative hedge to scope out their path forward.

Xiaoqing joined them in a few minutes, looking peeved. Climbing up walls was not her best skillset, but she wanted out and the little ones appeared to have a real plan.

"What next, then?" she whispered to them in their hedge.

"We're going over that roof to the left side of the grand courtyard, then down to an artisan's workshop on the bottom level," Angharad explained. She didn't want to give away more than that until they got there. No reason to let the tricky snake get ahead of them and sound an alarm.

"Over the roof?" Xiaoqing said with surprise. Was this the naïve confidence of the young, she wondered? Desperation? She rubbed her hands against her throat thoughtfully. These younglings seemed as independent as any baby snake and, today, they appeared to have luck on their side. Over the roof it was, she thought.

Angharad nodded and dashed across the open space between the garden gate and to the nearest building, staying low until she was up against the wall they needed to climb. From the shadow there, she looked around again and gestured that they should follow her. Ginnar and Xiaoqing ran after her. Angharad realized she hadn't thought about how they would get up to the roof. The walls were smooth, as were the columns holding up the first level of curving roof above them. As she looked at them in confusion, Xiaoqing shook her head at the young elf.

"It seems your plan has some holes in it. How lucky that we've found each other," she commented. She changed into her serpent form and wound her way up a column to the first roof level. Angharad had begun looking for a way to follow when she was gripped by a scaly coil. Xiaoqing lifted each child up behind her, repeating the feat up two roof levels until they all crouched on the end of a high, tiled curl. Ginnar felt sick looking down at the courtyard below them. He began to waver unsteadily, but Angharad pulled him back against the tiles.

"Come on, child of Aulё. Not going to let a height get the best of you, are you? My father used to speak of the great deep mines your people would descend down in Moria," she tried goading him.

"Yes, with safety ropes," Ginnar replied, his throat tight with dread. The ground seemed to stretch down and away from him for miles. It was impossibly far to fall. But when Xiaoqing began to slither across the tiles, keeping low in the shadow that the curved roof threw off, he made himself crawl after her. He was not going to let a height get the best of him – the elf was right.

They progressed as silently as they could manage. They could hear guards passing beneath them from time to time. They were close to the place where they would need to descend when a wind gusted down the steep roof, making them brace themselves to keep from slipping. Ginnar's foot caught on a loose clay tile, which flew out and over the edge, crashing to the ground beneath them.

The three escapees held their breaths and waited, flattened into the shadowy curve of the roof edge as they could hear a pair of guards running up to the fallen tile.

"I don't see anything up there, but maybe we should tell the watch warden," a young-sounding voice said.

His companion scoffed. "Don't bother yourself. They just replaced the tiles on this building the other day. Seems like one of the workmen was slacking off is all. Believe me, it's not worth the fuss he'll make. Chances are he'd make us climb up there – do you want to do that over a loose tile? Come on, let's go."

Angharad could feel her heart pounding as the guards moved away. She took a steadying breath. She closed her eyes and imagined her ada encouraging her – just as he had when she climbed a tricky tree or tried to figure out how to do a cartwheel.

"Where should we get down, Ginnar?" she whispered.

Ginnar pointed to the far edge of the building. Xiaoging surged ahead of them. As soon as Angharad got close enough, she wrapped a coil around the girl and dropped her down, repeating this move until all three of them were back on the ground.

Now it was Ginnar's turn to take the lead. He guided them to a doorway on the ground floor, which was locked with a thick padlock. This, at least, was a problem he'd planned for. He had been collecting tailor's pins and a few nicked stone chisels that would serve as rudimentary lock picks since he had first seen the tunnel. He was good at picking locks – it had been his claim to fame among the dwarflings of the Glittering Caves that he could get them all through any locked door. The little dwarrow tinkered with the padlock as his companions watched nervously, pressed into the thin shadow of the building. Finally, the lock relented and opened with a 'click'.

Ginnar peeked into the familiar building where the indentured dwarfs' workrooms were, hoping they had not posted any guards.

"I don't see anyone," he whispered back to Angharad and Xiaoqing, motioning for them to follow him. He tiptoed down the hallway until he came to the jade workshop where he had been spending hours every day for months. The door was closed, but this lock was even simpler than the last – it sprung open for him after only a few jabs.

In the workroom, Ginnar began moving aside the furniture that covered the tunnel entrance. Finally, he revealed their escape route with pride.

"Good work, mellon nin!" Angharad beamed at him. Ginnar was about to climb into the hole when Xiaoqing interrupted them.

"Infants, hatchlings, my darlings," she crooned with amusement. "Is this your plan? Just crawl down this hole and disappear? What's on the other side? How will we cover it up again once we're in the tunnel? What do you think will happen when we're discovered missing, the padlock is found broken, and the guards enter this workshop to find an exposed tunnel?"

Ginnar and Angharad shot each other embarrassed looks. Xiaoqing was right, they had not thought everything through.

"There's a root cellar on the other side, we're going to wait there for the rebel group to come and go with them," Ginnar said sheepishly. "They pick up weapons the dwarfs smuggle to them there…"

Xiaoqing was entertained enough with their shortsightedness that she wasn't angry. How did little ones manage to make foolishness adorable sometimes, she wondered.

"You told me you had a plan, not three quarters of a plan. You would be found in that cellar by lunchtime tomorrow," she jibed at them. "Not to worry, babies. Aunty is here to fix it for you. Now that we're all in the same boat, I'm invested in your success. Wait here for my return."

The green snake slithered out into the hallway. After a few minutes the children heard some crashing noises. They looked at each other in alarm and confusion – what was she thinking? They needed to be quiet.

Xiaoqing returned, looking as smug as a snake can look. She was holding a sack in her mouth, which she dropped at Ginnar's feet. Then she proceeded to make a mess of the jade workshop with her tail: knocking over work stools and slamming cabinets open.

"What are you doing?" Angharad whisper-shouted at her.

Xiaoqing morphed back into her human form – the hole was way too small for her as a snake.

"I broke down the door on the other side, towards the servants' exit into the city. Everyone knows demons love both chaos and jewels." she replied with amusement. She opened the sack she'd dragged in, displaying the raw gemstones she'd found in another work room.

"Here, I'll share the spoils with you, comrades," she offered them a few of the precious stones, which Ginnar did not hesitate to stuff in his pockets. Even if Angharad didn't understand money, (which they did not use in Valinor,) the young dwarf knew that having some valuables as they headed into the unknown couldn't hurt.

"They're going to blame all of this on you now," Angharad said thoughtfully. Their unexpected companion had likely done enough to lead them in the wrong direction. Smart.

"Indeed they will," Xiaoqing said with delight. (That confused Angharad.) "And no one will be surprised at all. Any demon who could escape confinement would take a little time to cause some damage on their way out. I should thank you – you've done a lot for my reputation tonight."

The serpent lady began pushing a few lighter items of furniture towards the entrance to the tunnel. She looked down the dark hole and sized up her fellow escapees. The little dwarf was the only was one small enough that he might be able to turn around completely in the cramped space.

"You go last, tiny craftsman," she told him. "Pull these chairs over the hole on your way out, will you?" She figured the dwarfs who had been smuggling weapons out would be eager to shore up their rudimentary efforts at covering the hole at the first opportunity they could find. It would have to do.

Xiaoqing crawled into the tunnel and began inching her way down its length. It was a tight fit, but she was petite as a woman, so she could just manage it.

Ginnar motioned that Angharad should go next. The elf approached the hole, starting to feel nervous. She put her head in and looked down. She could see nothing. Only the close stone walls descending into darkness. Something deep in her being screamed against going into such a place. She took her head out and let out a shaky breath.

"How long is it?" she asked Ginnar, trying to bolster her courage.

"It only takes a few minutes to get to the cellar," Ginnar replied. He thought Angharad suddenly looked a bit peaky. "Not too frightened to go underground are you, elf? The way I hear it your da did not scare so easy – not in Moria, Aglarond, or even at the door under the mountain."

Angharad glared at him. She felt insulted until she realized what he was doing. Just as she'd given him a challenge to help him face the climb over the roof, he was prodding at her pride to help her overcome her fear. She appreciated the effort once she understood it, although it wasn't the most helpful method for her.

Instead, Angharad closed her eyes for a minute and tried to imagine what Legolas wouldsay to her. She could picture his face: calm, warm, encouraging and – in this circumstance – firm that she would need to do it even if she didn't want to. 'Ok ada,' she thought. 'I can do it.'

She took in a deep breath and climbed into the tunnel quickly before she could get too nervous to start again. She crawled until the darkness completely surrounded her. She could hear Ginnar behind her, the furniture he was pulling over the entrance behind them scraping across the floor.

Her body had started trembling slightly and she paused to gather herself. The light is up ahead, just keep going, she thought. But it felt like the walls were closing in on her and she could hardly breathe. She felt Ginnar approach behind her until his hand touched one of her ankles.

"Keep going, friend," he whispered to her. Another challenge would have helped him the most, but he wondered if it wasn't her way. "Just like our translator said at the dance. Just close your eyes and imagine your family waiting for you on the other side. What would that famous grandda of yours say, eh?"

But it was not Thranduil who she imagined for this. She would show off any new skill or interesting find to grandfather, but when she wanted help doing something daring, she would go to Legolas. Her father was always teaching her, she realized, even when she hadn't noticed it. She brought his face into her mind again and tried to think of what he would say now, seeing her stuck in the dark. He'd helped when she'd faltered before. Just take the next step, nettё. Do not worry about anything else. Just one more step.

One more step, she thought to herself and moved one hand, then the next. Just the next step, she kept saying to herself over and over until, finally, one of her hands hit air instead of stone. She opened her eyes and the entrance to the cellar was before her. She climbed out with relief and sat down on the floor, feeling drained.

Xiaoqing was watching her with her arms folded, one eyebrow quirked. Ginnar followed close behind Angharad out of the tunnel.

"Well, this is where we part," the demon said to them. "I don't know if the rebels will help you as you hope, but I know they wouldn't help my kind. That was a pretty good escape for such fresh little hatchlings," she complimented them. "I think you're going to survive this after all."

The children watched her climb up the ladder, look from side to side at the top, then disappear.

"Here, hide behind the barrels," Ginnar directed Angharad. He pointed to the symbol carved into the wall above them. The parcels of weapons he'd helped bring down were still there. How long had the dwarfs said it was between pickups? Ginnar hoped that the translator would succeed in getting a message to the rebels, and that they would be inclined to help. It was a cellar full of food and drink: he supposed they could survive down here for two weeks if it came to it, but it wouldn't be pleasant.

"Good job, friend," Angharad said to Ginnar, thankful once again for his company.

"Aye, well done, elf," Ginnar replied, patting her knee. It was starting to feel less awkward to do things like this. She was swiftly becoming the best friend he'd ever had. He wondered if this is what it felt like between the older dwarfs who had been in battles together. They tended to stick together forever after things like that.

The youngsters huddled in their hiding place to rest and wait. It had been a long night, but they had done it. They were free.

(~***~)

Author's Note

If you're wondering how big Xiaoqing is in her snake form - take a look at The Sorcerer and the White Snake photos online. The snake demons can control their size somewhat, but even as small as they get, they are massive. Easily big enough to reach down a story and pick something up with their tails.

It's super interesting to me that this all-OC all the time story line is holding interest more than the other one! I did go back and re-read Ch. 10 because there's a character arc that's supposed to carry through to Ch. 16 and I realized I hid the ball a little too well. Ch. 10 came out fluffier than I meant to to. So I went back and tried to fix that - I'd be curious to know if you think that actually improved anything. After Ch. 16 Lossrilleth's character arc will take a backseat anyway - time for the lads to have the spotlight. The two threads still have a really different feel, I know.

If you have any comments on either story line I'd be interested to hear them. What in this thread is most engaging for you? Thanks for reading, in any case.