Estel gave his waiting nightwear half a minute of thought but his head was still spinning with his mother's words, her possible explanations for the twins' absence. Could she be right?
She had said that he need not be worried if Elrond was not. And his adar did not seem worried, he had to admit. Quite the contrary, whenever he asked, his father would offer the same reassurances that his mother was fond of quoting. 'Elladan and Elrohir would be alright', 'they could take care of themselves', 'they were capable warriors'… And while Estel did not disagree with any of these statements, there was one important detail that the grown-ups seemed to forget.
His brothers had promised! They had promised him to return on time, and they would not simply stay longer to spend time with the Dunedain rangers when they could be home spending time with him instead.
His face a mask of determination, Estel turned away from his bed and opened the heavy door of his room. He would have to tell his adar that there was reason to be worried, that he should send Glorfy to look for them. His brothers were in trouble.
But Elrond was not in his room across the hall. Not about to let that stop him, Estel tiptoed down the long corridor of the family wing on silent feet until he reached the central staircase. Looking over the balustrade, he found it deserted; The house was strangely silent - just another reminder of his brothers' absence.
A sudden flash of gold and Estel ducked behind the parapet for cover before carefully peeking between the balusters and downward. Yes, there could be no doubt, that was Glorfy. And he was hurrying. In three large strides the seneschal disappeared from view and barely a heartbeat later Estel was on his feet and on his way down the stairs. Something was happening!
He reached the bottom landing and, pressing his back against the wall, carefully leaned sideways to glance around the corner. The corridor was empty, but bright light spilled from the open doors of the council chamber. That was odd. It was never used at night!
Holding his breath Estel rounded the corner and stepped further down the hall. He hugged the shadows, and set his feet soundlessly, just as Glorfy had shown him on one of their raids of the kitchens, their quests to retrieve the golden treasure of Imladris, honey cakes.
Behind one of the ornamental pillars in the hall he slunk into the shadows, willing his body to meld with them and his heart to beat less furiously. He held his breath and strained his ears, and finally, finally, heard the words that drifted from the council chamber, drowning out even the furious beating of his heart.
"At least we now know where they are." That was Glorfy's voice! And Estel's heart skipped a beat. Surely he was talking about Dan and Ro!
"Indeed," his father replied, "but Gildor's meeting with them was six days since, and according to the message they were not too far from Iarwain Ben-adar's domain when they set out. If they had not encountered dangers in the Old Forest they would have been here by now."
"Travel alone would have added two or three days to their journey and exploring the forest could easily account for another two," Glorfindel replied, his voice measured and calm. "I would not consider them delayed until another two days hence."
There was a heavy sigh that seemed to come from his adar and then Glorfindel spoke again. "They can take care of themselves," he said it pointedly, as if half in jest, "as you keep telling Estel."
"I know, I know," Elrond responded but he sounded tired and Estel could just about imagine him sitting down heavily in one of the ornate carved chairs around the big round table in the room beyond. His adar did so sometimes, especially when he got messages about Estel's "misadventures". It struck him then, suddenly. Glorfindel's reassurances, that heavy sigh: his adar was worried! His mother had been wrong! And that meant his brothers were in danger!
In his agitation Estel did not hear Erestor excusing himself to fetch wine for them all, nor did he notice the soft footfalls of the advisor as he came closer. Erestor on the other hand had no trouble spotting him.
"Estel? I dare say you should be in bed." He raised an eyebrow pointedly - and he could do father's 'look' almost as well as Elrond himself. Estel swallowed guiltily.
He thought about arguing, about making excuses, but in the end, need drove his tongue. More than anything else he needed to know: "Are Dan and Ro in terrible trouble?"
A warm smile came to Erestor's face then and he gestured kindly for Estel to leave his hiding spot and walk ahead of him down the hall. "No, Estel, they are not. As you have often been told these last few days, your brothers are more than capable of looking after themselves." Estel was about to interrupt but Erestor silenced him with a look and continued: "Message has reached your father this evening that Elrohir and Elladan have crossed paths with Gildor Inglorion, a friend of your father and of Lord Cirdan in Lindon. Little happens in Eriador that Gildor does not learn about on his travels. It seems he asked your brothers to investigate a rumor of unrest in the Old Forest."
"What kind of unrest?"
"That Gildor did not know. He was only relaying a message himself from Iarwain Ben-adar who dwells at the edge of the forest. It seems that the trees were uneasy."
"The trees?" Estel was skeptical. What danger could trees possibly fear?
It seemed Erestor could sense his doubt as they walked up the stairs and turned towards the family corridor. Amusement tinged the advisor's words when he replied: "Yes, the trees. You would be surprised, young Estel. The trees of that forest are rumored to move, to pass word on the wind that brushes through their leaves and to hedge in the unwary and the lost." Despite himself Estel shuddered. But before his unease could turn to worry, Erestor continued: "Yet your brothers are neither and it was the elves that once awoke the trees and taught them to speak - Elrohir and Elladan will have nothing to fear from them."
They reached the door to Estel's room then and dutifully the boy reached up to open it and slip inside. It was time to don his sleepwear and head to bed before his mother reappeared. Yet before he could cross the threshold, Erestor called his name, stopping him. The advisor seemed uncharacteristically in thought, as if giving voice to an idea that had only just occurred to him. "If you wish to know more about the bond between the elves and trees, perhaps you should ask your father to take you to the Twins' Wood tomorrow."
"The Twins' Wood?" Estel asked. "Where is that?" But Erestor wouldn't answer. Instead the smile on his face had turned into one of quiet amusement.
"Ask your father," he said mysteriously, before turning his head and adding, "your mother approaches, you might want to hurry into your bed."
Faced with the imminent arrival of his mother while he was still dressed, Estel let Erestor leave. Sometimes the advisor could be equal parts frustrating and fascinating.
-o0o-
Dismounting, Elrohir bowed before the small and ancient being, thinking it better to take the lead while they still waited for the Valar to fulfill Elladan's request for patience. "Iarwain Ben-adar," he greeted, raising a fist to his heart and bowing "Gildor Inglorion asked us to come see you. He says you are concerned about the trees in the Old Forest."
Impossibly, at his words, the eldest's eyes crinkled with unbridled delight, his red cheeks creased with dimples as he burst into laughter. Even as Elrohir exchanged a bemused look with his twin, Tom opened his mouth.
"Afraid of trees,Inglorion, now he must be mistaken.
Tom fears no leaf, no root, no bough,
Tom Bombadil is master.
Tom knows the song of willow old,
and Withywindle older, -"
he took a breath and dipped his voice as if conceding a point,
"Yet something moves beyond his realm,
something younger, colder.
But come inside, for food and drink,
step inside my hearties.
Fair Goldberry has warmed the food,
the better for the talking."
At a cheerful whistle from Tom, Talagor and Belroch turned and walked towards the stables as if they knew the place. Bemused Elrohir watched them go. Strange things always happened in this dell at the edge of the Old Forest and along the course of the Withywindle, where Tom Bombadil made his home.
Elladan muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, "come along my hearty" and nudged him forward. Together they followed their yellow-booted host into his small stone house. As if they had arrived just when expected, they found that their arrival coincided perfectly with the preparation of food and that the table was decked and waiting, with a bright fire in the hearth spending pleasant warmth to dispel the cold outside.
The dancing fires chased away the last remnants of the lingering shadows from the Downs. And since Goldberry insisted that they not talk of evil things while eating, they spent the evening exchanging more pleasant stories instead while sharing wine and song. Elladan, most likely in an effort to forestall hearing more of Tom's own songs, offered to sing for them and Elrohir closed his eyes as he listened to his twin's voice conjure up images of home, of a valley bathed in the light of the evening sun, of ice melting on far off peaks and waterfalls tumbling down mountain slopes, mingling with the sound of pearly laughter. He could almost reach out and touch the stone balustrades of the stairs that led to the front door, smell the hay stacked outside the stables and imagine his friends, his family sheltered there, secure, content, away from the darkness that prowled outside.
But just then a sudden wind shook the house and Elrohir shuddered and opened his eyes. His gaze met that of Elladan who had faltered mid song - for all the laughter and the shielding influence of Tom Bombadil, the forest was not a peaceful place. And they had come here with a purpose.
"Thank you, fair lady Goldberry," Elrohir said as Tom's wife cleaned the table and disappeared into the kitchen, almost as if giving permission to discuss graver things in her absence.
"About Gildor's message, Iarwain -," Elladan began, but was quickly interrupted.
"The word I sent, it's true enough, of trees that should be sleeping. The halfling's hay they sought to take and suffered heavy losses. Now darkness guides their thoughts and deeds yet not their own's the evil. Something lurks beyond Tom's realm that sets their leaves a-quaking."
"Something is rousing the trees to anger and violence?" Elrohir asked, but Tom shook his head.
"No. Something's rousing them to fear. Or, fear's a-rousing them to deeds they'd otherwise refrain from. The halflings talk of unnamed dread and beasts of eight feet tall. But autumn's come and Tom can't go and keep Goldberry waiting."
Elladan nodded, seemingly satisfied that Gildor's message had not been sent in error. The account of Tom matched the reports that the rangers had gotten about the attack on the Hedge of the Hobbits' Buckland. But what had provoked the trees to attack? What had roused them enough to make them move in the first place?
Elrohir could not recall accounts of the trees of the Old Forest doing more than bewilder confused wanderers and drop branches on unsuspecting heads. For all the anger he had felt in the forest in the rare visits in the past, he had never actually seen the trees move. The only true danger had been the orcs hiding between the thick, dark stems of oak and willow. This new malice, matched by the ever spreading darkness in Eriador outside, did not bode well.
As the evening wore on, Tom talked more. He told them of Old Man Willow, whose heart was black but whose strength was green - a cunning tree that ran the forest in silence, but was normally aiming to keep out intruders rather than to lure them in, waylay and snare them. He controlled all willows along the Withywindle valley, Tom said, a deep cleft that they should avoid if possible.
Among his ceaseless rhymes, the ancient being wove songs of power, relayed words of ancient times that he said would put the trees back to sleep, asking him and Elladan to do just that on their way through the forest.
Put the trees back to sleep and find and rout the evil that had awoken them in the first place - the first glimmer of doubt stirred in Elrohir. Despite Tom seemingly having full confidence in their abilities, this seemed like more than he and Elladan had bargained for.
At long last Tom Bombadil bade them to retire for what was left of the night. And early on the next morning, when fog hung thickly over the dell, clinging to the boughs of the trees at the very edge of the forest, they set out. Faced with dark firs and cedars, with an air thick with anger and malcontent and an ancient, silent grudge, it was hard to believe Tom's words: that the forest itself was not evil, that something inside it had disturbed the trees and forced them to attack.
He tried to believe in the Eldest's assurances, tried to conjure the feeling of kinship that he usually felt among the trees of his home as they approached the guarding elms at the forest's edge. Still, as Elladan and he ducked beneath the first low-hanging branches one thing was clear - they would find no welcome here.
-o0o-
A fine mist filled the valley, rising above the waters of the Bruinen, to be torn away by the winds falling from the peaks of the Misty Mountains. It clung to the woods, rising from the tops of firs and pines as if a hundred bonfires were alight within the forests.
It was a peaceful sight, and yet it troubled Elrond. Why he could not rightly say, but there was a sense of wrongness in the air and it reverberated in Vilya. The ring was restless on his finger, heavy with foreboding, hovering at the edges of a vision that would not come. He had felt it for days, had tried to stave it off. But it had doubled in intensity after yestereve, after receiving the message from Gildor. Something about his sons' venture into the Old Forest caused him unease.
In this age, even the elves avoided entering the forest that was for the most part under Iarwain Ben-adar's protection and oversight. The old being had kept the spirits of the witch king out of the wood, had kept the trees safe, kept their minds on digging soil and drinking water. He had done a much better job of it than the elves of old who had awakened the ancient vast forest that had stretched from east of the Misty Mountains all the way into northern Eriador. Unlike them he had stayed at the forest's edge, had taken up a role as shepherd of the trees after the ents had left. He had not forsaken them as the elves had forsaken both woods and glades of Middle Earth.
And yet … and yet, he had asked Gildor for help with unrest in the forest that was beyond his reach, perhaps beyond his capabilities. Troubles that sparked concern even in a being this old and powerful. What danger were his sons seeking?
Before he could consider the thought further, Elrond realized that he was no longer alone. The uncertain shuffle of slipper-clad feet gave his new visitor away and he gestured to the space at the window beside him without turning around. "Come, Estel. Join me by the window, the valley is beautiful this morning."
Estel stepped up dutifully, stretching his curly-haired head above the windowsill to look outside. His lips curled in distaste, "It is foggy, ada."
Elrond chuckled. "Aye, that it is. A very astute observation." He took a deep breath of the fresh air that wafted inside through the window and when Estel kept up an uncertain silence, decided to break it himself. "The men of Numenor thought there was magic in the mists: spirits and powers of the Ainur given immaterial shape."
Estel's eyes shone with interest, just as he had predicted. "And is there?", the boy asked, "Magic in the mists?"
Elrond smiled. "Not generally, but it should never be dismissed outright. There is much magic, as men call it, in this world - if you know where to look."
His adopted son looked thoughtful then and went back to looking out the window, gazing at the fog as if trying to see a sign of Manwe or Ulmo themselves in the gathering of water and air. But after a moment his curiosity waned and it became clear to Elrond that, despite the mist, Estel was looking for something specific, gazing out into the valley, searching the mountain sides and river bends.
"Adar?", he eventually asked, his voice uncharacteristically small.
"Yes, my son?"
"Where is the Twins' Wood?"
Elrond felt a sudden rush of memory at the mention of the old forest, a pang of guilt when he thought of the place that he had not visited in many yen. Though he should have. His earlier thoughts about the Old Forest came back to him now, reminding him of the duty the elves had to the trees they had awoken. The duty they had to the forests they had created - a duty they had forsaken. Just as he had abandoned that wood. It seemed that he was little better than the elves of old.
Estel must have misread his silence, for he rushed to explain: "Only Erestor mentioned it yesterday, he said I should ask you to take me there, so I could better understand the nature of the trees in the Old Forest. I…" he broke off suddenly, his face turning an entertaining crimson as he realized that he had just given away that he had overheard his, Glorfindel's and Erestor's conversation about the twins' whereabouts yesterday night. The boy hung his head.
"Do not worry, Estel. Erestor already spoke of your meeting in the hallway yesterday." Of course his advisor had failed to mention that he had set Estel up to ask for this walk in the Twins' Wood. Sometimes, his dear friend was too cunning for his own good. Still, Estel was clearly intrigued, by the prospect, willing even to forego his endless questions about his brothers' safety and the likely day of their return to ask after the trees instead. It was an encouraging change, for the boy had been too morose and subdued for the last few days, disappointment and worry dimming his spirit. Elrond should encourage this diversion.
And, if he were being truthful, Elrond owed it to the trees of the Twins' Wood to visit once more. He had helped plant the trees of that wood, had watched oak and aspen and birch grow from smallest seedling to towering tree. Yes, in recent yen he had avoided the memories that lingered beneath the boughs, but not all memories were of evil when they told of happier times - even if those times had passed.
"It is a good idea, Estel," he decided at last, "get dressed and then meet me here and we shall visit the Twins' Wood together."
Estel was a bundle of unleashed glee as he dashed off, beaming brightly. Elrond turned back to the window where, in the distance, between the lifting cover of the morning mist, the Twins' Wood was a warm speck of green, a serene beacon - an open invitation to those who would heed it.
-o0o-
A/N: Thank you to everyone who left a review. You are the reason I postpone going to bed to post this - even though it's been a loooong day. I hope you continue to enjoy this story.