Chapter 3

Moisture was heavy in the air, a stagnant, heavy breath of decay. With the putrid smell, the dark aura of malevolence and the rustle of the high leaves above like a dark whisper of evil plans, all the forest seemed alive. Alive and hostile.

Elrohir closed his eyes and rested his hand on the trunk of the tree in front of him. Its bark was rough under his fingers, calloused from old age, wind and rain, overgrown with moss and prickly lichen. He extended his spirit and probed deeper. Beyond the bark, in the heart of the tree, where its strength whispered of time gone by and things forgotten, slumbered a potent anger. Longing and resentment.

Calling on his fëa, Elrohir reached out to the tree with his spirit, soothing, calming, reassuring. His lips moved silently, forming the words of the song Tom Bombadil had taught them, blending easily with the melodies from home, the songs of praise towards the Valar. It was easy to see the link, the affirmation that it had been the elves that had awakened these trees many long years ago, when the world was yet different.

But the elves had moved on, and they had left the trees behind, unguarded, uncontrolled. And in their absence, a dark seed had taken hold and grown inside this forest. He could feel it in the air and taste it on the wind, hear it in the rustle of the leaves as the trees railed against his and Elladan's very presence, their intrusion into the trees' midst.

Slowly, the tree in front of him calmed, its rebellious spirit dimmed. Its anger was quenched - for a while. But this was just a single tree. One tree in a forest that had been falling much deeper into darkness than he had expected, farther than any accounts that he had heard had told. Had they been remiss in leaving this forest to the protection of Iarwain Ben-adar when the old being's sense of good and evil, of duty and repose, was so whimsical?

Removing his hand from the tree's bark, Elrohir turned to Elladan who was just opening his eyes after working on another tree. "This is not working," his brother said, frustration coloring his words, and threatening to spill over into anger. "We can spend the entire day and all of this week, and will be no closer to the other side of the forest, or to calming these nefarious trees."

Elrohir had to agree. They had been at it for hours, talking to the trees, expending their fëa and their energy in a feeble-seeming attempt to calm those closest to them, to gain them even a few feet of movement forward. The trees were obstinate. Overgrown with lichen and trailers, their boughs lined with thick brambles and dense underbrush, roots and branches raised or lowered constantly to impede their path, to make any progress forward, westward impossible. Sending the trees to sleep helped, but only insofar as that they were no longer actively blocking them. Their path remained difficult and treacherous. And there were only two of them - seemingly set against every tree in the forest.

"Iarwain Ben-adar suggested that it was not the trees that were to blame, but another darkness that had come to infiltrate the forest."

"He also said that 'the elves began it, it will be the elves who can send the trees back to sleep now'." Elladan's voice was laced with derision, but Elrohir only chuckled, determined not to share into his twin's frustration.

"Technically he said:
'Elves of old they woke the trees,
taught them all their singing;
now's the time, Tom thinks, hee-ho,
you sang a lullaby'."

Elladan glowered at him, but that only made Elrohir laugh harder. And it was good to laugh, the gloom of the forest seemed to retreat and for a moment the world seemed brighter.

But Elladan's complexion did not improve and Elrohir sobered. "I think we should rest awhile," he offered as a token of peace.

Elladan accepted and they sat down, weary from the strain their efforts had placed on their spirits. Opening his pack to retrieve their few remaining provisions and their water skins, Elrohir had to concede that his twin was right in that at least: they could not continue at this pace. Neither their provisions nor their energy would last.

The Old Forest was less than twenty miles across, they should have been able to reach the High Hay of the hobbits before evening, yet already the light beyond the canopy of trees had passed midday, turning towards the golden orange of evening. They would have to camp out here tonight. Another day lost ere they could return home.

Elladan had come to the same conclusion: "We will not make it much farther before nightfall. At our next rest we should set up camp."

Elrohir nodded. "This might have gone much faster if we had a wood elf with us," he lamented.

"This forest is too dark for even the elves of Thranduil's realm. The air is filled with whispers of foul thoughts and fouler deeds, enough to stir the soul, and fester unease." Elladan's voice was dark, no longer with anger but with foreboding. "Rage and hatred, so blatantly displayed; it fouls the soil and poisons the air. These trees are evil."

Despite himself, Elrohir shuddered. But he did not agree. "They are angry and resentful, but they respond to our songs still."

"Until we are gone again. Something wicked is stirring up their hatred, infesting their roots and their thoughts. Can you not feel it?"

Instinctively Elrohir looked south and west, towards the valley of the Withywindle, the one clear path in this wild, treacherous forest. He knew what Elladan had felt, what he had sensed himself in the trees. Another thought was guiding the ash and aspen, firs and oaks, directing them the way Elladan suggested, setting the entire forest against the elves in their midst. "Yet that is not the evil that Iarwain Ben-adar told us to seek," he pointed out.

"No," Elladan agreed. "But I grow weary of our chosen path. Let us face the root of this forest's evil and carry on then. We cannot hope to put all the trees to sleep, but we can face their master." His eyes shone with a steely determination, unyielding, uncompromising. And though Elrohir would have preferred to avoid the ancient evil at the heart of the Withywindle valley, he knew that there would be no swaying Elladan now. And more likely than not his twin was correct. After all: all paths in this forest led to Old Man Willow eventually.

-o0o-

Moisture was heavy in the air, still lingering from the morning fog that had covered the entire valley. With the wetness glistening on his skin, the warm air caressing his face like breath and the rustle of wind in the high leaves above, all the forest seemed alive. Alive and welcoming.

Its rich earthen smell was like an embrace, and the trees seemed to lift their branches in greeting, in deference. There was a sense of joy in the air. And it was infectious.

"Ada!" Estel breathed, rendered speechless by the feeling that surrounded him, but not cowed. "Erestor was right, the trees are alive."

"All things that grow are alive, Estel," his father responded patiently, his voice even and Estel turned to look at him.

"Yes, but," Estel floundered, frustratingly unable to put his thoughts, put this feeling into words, "but these trees are different, they are … happy." Did his father not feel the same sense of joy that the trees were sharing?

Behind him Elrond breathed deeply, and exhaled almost in a sigh and when Estel turned he was surprised to see a look of sadness on his father's face. "Perhaps they are," Elrond conceded. "They were planted and tended with great love, and though they were not awakened as trees once were in the days of old they have more presence than most of their kind. They are aware, caring - and they have been abandoned."

Estel turned sharply at the note of recrimination in his father's tone, wondering at how anyone could abandon a forest. "They seem content… and joyful," he eventually said when the silence stretched. It seemed that his adar needed to be told this - and anyway, it was not a lie. The trees were happy, he could feel it, even though he could not truly explain how he knew.

A squirrel rushed by, busy on a hunt for acorns that littered the ground here, next to three majestic oaks. Not much farther stood a row of beeches, followed by firs and spruce, a lively, mismatched collection of trees that flourished and grew together. There was a wild, untamed beauty to this forest. And yet it was clear that the trees here had been planted, they could never by themselves grow in this diversity, in these patterns of two or three trees of the same kind grouped together.

"Did you plant these trees, adar?"

Elrond laughed, but the lingering sadness remained in his words. "No, tithen pen - or at least I was not the master behind this work of art but merely a low disciple." He laughed again when he looked at Estel, and this time at last it sounded genuine. Perhaps some of his own incredulous disbelief had shown on his face and amused his adar, Estel thought. Try as he might he could not imagine his father being a disciple to anyone nor not being a master at everything.

"It is true, tithen pen," his father reassured. "Celebrian planted these trees." Estel perked up instantly at the mention of the twins' mother. She was very rarely mentioned by anyone in the house, least of all by Elrond or by Dan and Ro. And whenever someone did speak of her it was always with a fraction of awe, a glimmer of regret, a note of wistfulness and longing. He had never heard tell of what she had been like.

"She always considered herself closer to her woodelf kin than to her Noldorin roots, seeing beauty in the untamed and the living. It was freedom and growth that she most wanted for her children and so, on the twins' begetting day -" Estel couldn't help himself, he sniggered. Adults were weird. "She planted the first two trees into this wood, and another pair every twelve years thereafter - a dozen each yen." Elrond continued unperturbed.

He reached out a hand to rest on the nearest tree and closed his eyes and Estel wondered what he could feel within the tree. Copying his adar's move Estel followed his example. The bark was rough under his hand, cold and calloused, moist with the growth of moss and lichen, but also fresh, crisp and clear. And the sense of joy that he had felt in the air of the forest did not waver. "They loved her dearly," Estel said, awed by the surety he felt. That was the reason for the trees' happiness - they remembered Erond's wife and rejoiced at the chance to share her memory with his father.

"We all did," Elrond answered silently. But the sadness seemed to have lifted from his voice for the moment and Estel saw the opportunity to seize his chance.

"Show me everything!" he begged.

-o0o-

They packed their things and set off once more.

Just as Elladan had predicted, the path down towards the Withywindle was almost smooth, their trek disconcertingly easy when compared to their toils so far. The trees seemed to bend their branches away from them, opening a passage for him and Elrohir. But despite the faster travel, Elladan knew it for what it was: a web ensnaring the unwary, a trap baited and ready to spring. Old Man Willow would be waiting.

Elladan, however, was done delaying the inevitable. He would rather face whatever the ancient tree had in store than waste his and his twin's strength in a futile task to quieten the trees one at a time. He had stumbled over too many a raised root today to be in the mood for further games. The Old Willow might be waiting but it would not expect him.

Iarwain Ben-adar had spoken of the willow as of a disgruntled tree, too sentient, yet immobile, a lost lamb without shepherd. A Huorn. Yet there were other, darker tales in Rivendell. Stories of a dark spirit sent to turn the forest, similar to the ones that had infested the Barrow Downs, yet more powerful. Stories said that it was trapped within the tree, or had taken it to host, there to weave a web of branches and roots, a stranglehold on the entire forest, a poison that ran from tree to tree.

And after spending most of the day bending his spirit against the slow but unyielding anger of the Old Forest's trees, Elladan was inclined to agree with those rumors. Something more than a simple tree gone bad was at work here. Something more wicked, more powerful.

It set his teeth on edge. And he and Elrohir had only just finished their latest hunt for the dark beasts of the enemy. The old anger and festering hatred that had been stoked by their fight against the orcs in the Angle was still strong, still close to the surface - and his own anger was still all too easily summoned. Now, it fed on the dark miasma that lurked beneath the trees, turning every bough into an enemy, every rustle of leaves into sinister whispers. His hands were balled into fists at his side as he strode ahead, trusting Elrohir to follow him on this dark path towards a reckoning.

He would face this overgrown device of the enemy and rid Middle Earth of its existence. Branches bent ahead of him, yielding to his anger, making way for him to pass even as he willingly followed the path they laid out for him. It was their folly, for he was not a victim falling prey to their snare, but a hunter come to claim what lay at the center of the web.

A rustle of leaves sounded behind them and was momentarily overshadowed by the deep, ancient rumble of immovable things in motion. He more felt than saw Elrohir hesitate and turn around. "The way back is shut," his brother said.

So be it.

Above their heads, the canopy turned a darker, more tenebrous green as they continued along the smooth path beside the Withywindle. They were making good speed on their new chosen path, and the sun was barely touching the horizon by the time they had crossed another time the distance they had worked all day to cover. Yet despite the early hour of evening, the light was starting to fail. Branches and leaves above them were becoming so thickly intertwined that the waning sun was almost blocked entirely and a darkness descended that did not match the hour of day. A darkness that permeated the very air - a darkness that was more than just the absence of light.

An evil spirit dwelled nearby.

Elladan could feel it call to him in whispered voices that carried on the wind, warnings, threats. They meant to frighten, to confuse, to weaken his resolve. But they fell short of their mark, for the song resonated with the anger in Elladan's spirit, merging with it, igniting a symphony of dark thoughts. Instead of fear, Elladan felt kinship with the old tree. The same resentment of the ever increasing number of orcs, with their axes and greed; the same hatred towards those that would destroy all that was good in this world.

The path in front of him dipped towards a shallow gully, a small valley and at its center, its long trailing branches dipping into the waters of the Withywindle itself, stood the Old Willow. Elladan could see its leaves quake, could hear the whispered thoughts it carried. Yes, they were alike, he and the willow, they shared this hatred, shared the desire to bring an end to their enemy, to kill everything that moved on two legs.

"Elladan?"

He started. There was concern in Elrohir's voice, enough that it protruded into his preoccupied thoughts and cut through the whispers of the tree, cutting the strings of the enchantment that he suddenly realized it had been weaving. The willow had seized upon his hatred and fed it, twisted it to its own purpose, trying to blind him to his mission.

Taking a deep breath to clear his head and lungs, Elladan turned, intent on reassuring his twin, on uttering a warning. He never got the chance, for that was when the Old Willow struck.

-o0o-

A/N: A day late, but here it is: the next chapter. I hope you like it. The plot (and the forest :D) certainly starts to thicken and finally we get a real cliffhanger. My deepest thanks to everyone who left a review so far - your words mean so much to me and I'd love to hear your thoughts on the newest chapter.