I was one of the first ones up the next day, unfortunately. I was better equipped to deal with hunger than the dwarves and poor Bilbo, but that didn't do much for my mood. What did cheer me, at least temporarily, was when Bombur rolled over of his own accord and sat up. "Where are we?" he wanted to know, utterly baffled at our surroundings.
"Bombur!" I exclaimed. "You're awake!"
"Well yes," he said, looking doubtfully at me. "But who are you?"
I stared at him. "Oh hell." I reached out a foot and nudged Oin in the shoulder. "Oin, wake up. Bombur's awake."
Oin had been perfectly inclined to ignore me until he heard that, at which point he scrambled up and faced his fellow dwarf, face wanting to show happiness but wary because of my worried tone. "Bombur?"
"Oin," Bombur greeted, still looking around uneasily. "Where are we?" He looked askance at me again, but my explanation could come later.
The others were waking now, and besieging Bombur with questions even as Bombur besieged them. The portly dwarf didn't remember anything of the last weeks, or even the last months. Last he could recall he had been feasting at Bilbo's house at the start of their journey. He wasn't at all pleased to have woken up after such a lovely long dream of feasting as he'd had, particularly when we had to tell him there was no more food.
"Why ever did I wake up!" he cried. "I was having such beautiful dreams. I dreamed I was walking in a forest rather like this one, only lit with torches on the trees and lamps swinging from the branches and fires burning on the ground; and there was a great feast going on, going on for ever. A woodland king was there with a crown of leaves, and there was merry singing, and I could not count or describe the things there were to eat or drink...."
"You need not try," Thorin grumbled. "In fact if you can't talk about something else, you had better be silent. We are quite annoyed with you enough as it is. If you hadn't waked up, we should have left you to your idiotic dreams in the forest; you are no joke to carry even after weeks of short commons."
So on we went. Our only chance of surviving now was to find the end of the forest, and that we could not do while we sat idly by. I trudged with my hunger in silence, but Bombur wailed at the weakness of his wobbly legs and the others all bellowed at him that his legs could take care of themselves now that they had done the last week's work for them, and no one was much patient with his complaints.
We slept in a jumbled line again that night, because there was no other way. Distant strains of laughter like dark, oily ribbons kept me awake longer than I normally would have had to wait for sleep to find me, but eventually it did, and I relinquished myself gratefully.
I was no longer aware of myself when I stood up. My feet were far away and the rest of me felt like water. Somewhere in my consciousness I saw that there was a ring of flickering lights off and to the left of the path, white and glowing. I could hear flutters of song and chatter. Their ethereal voices called as though to me alone.
"Mabyn!" Bofur was calling my name, but I couldn't hear him. There was no one between me and the lights, just a few trees, and when I lifted my foot there was nothing to stop me from going to them.
"Mabyn! Stop!" He was cursing as he tried to hop through the dwarves between us without robbing them of their highly coveted sleep. I heard him stumble but his panic didn't register with me. I was three steps off the path already. The dwarves Bofur had woken were erupting into grumbles and curses of their own, but as soon as they saw the cause of Bofur's desperation they joined him in their efforts to call me back.
"Mabyn! Mabyn, come back!"
"Mabyn, stop!"
But I couldn't hear them. The lights were still sparkling like a twist of stars through the trees ahead of me.
"Pass me a rope!" That was Fili. One was handed over, and frantically he tied the end into a loop. I heard the rope drifting through the trees behind me and then sliding back when it missed. He threw it again, and I lifted a hand to touch one of the lights now hovering in the air before me.
The lights went out. At the same time the coarse rope fell down my shoulder and when I jumped, slipped to the ground. I blinked.
"Mabyn!"
I was awake. My breath shattered into my lungs as I realized how far I'd gone. But then....I couldn't see where I had come from. I didn't know where I was going.
"Mabyn, over here!"
I spun. "Over where?"
"Here, Mabyn, can't you see us?"
I was trying very hard not to panic. "No, I can't."
"Turn to your left. Walk this way."
But left, right, straight and forward suddenly had so little meaning. I started walking, and for a moment the voices swelled so I began stepping faster to reach them sooner, but then they started to fade, and I panicked, and I spun again and had no idea where to go. I heard crashing as the dwarves tried to follow me but I couldn't see them. All of the trees looked the same. And then there were no voices. I was lost.
I could not describe, even were I given a decade to do it, the depth of the despair that weighed upon me. When the darkness swept in around me I felt my way to a tree and climbed as high as I could, reasoning that most things that wished me harm would be too heavy to reach me. Under that same stream of thought, the next morning, when I finally woke, I leaped from tree to tree whenever possible, which was nearly always, since the trees were so tightly grown. My wrists developed terrible aches from catching myself, but thankfully I was able to convince myself to stop flying and falling when I knew I was more likely to fall to my untimely death than to find the rest of the Company at this rate. When that night fell I pinched myself into a trio of branches high into a red oak and slept as best I could.
When I woke the next morning I felt inordinately stiff, and the air in my lungs felt far more solid than soft. The reason for which was soon apparent-I was suspended somewhere, wrapped in something that utterly darkened my sight, my limbs all bound together, and nearly no air.
By the end of that day, I was numb from toes to shoulders with my body's disuse.
Past that I don't know how long I was in the tree. Every now and then I felt muffled sharp taps against my cheek or sides, and heard distant scratched voices from outside the cocoon I'd been woven into. I suppose the spider webs I had blithely admired before had now been swaddled around me.
Another day I heard the voices flurrying around me in a parched excitement. They must have found more meat to hang. I wanted to be close to the Company again, but not if that meant they were up in the trees with me. I squirmed, wondering if this time I might be able to thrash free, but my bonds stretched with me, just enough to taunt me, but not enough to let me free.
Another long silence arrived.
But then the sounds began to change. I heard an angry chattering, far off, like something had been knocked over or stolen. The spiders began to scream as someone began to sing, taunting them, and I heard great weights crashing to the forest floor as if all the spiders were falling down. Some unheard noise called them off though, and they scuttled in various directions to chase it.
Nothing much happened for several minutes, until I felt the branch I was dangling from jiggling. A vibration went through the webbing as something sliced through the top of it, and then the vertigo took me as down and down I fell.
I thumped down far more easily than I would have expected, not knowing how high we were, but I suppose the fallen leaves helped the matter. With the sliced threads at the top of my cocoon I was able to work and thrash my way out of most of the webbing, tears in my eyes to be breathing full air again, not the small bit that had been stale in with me for so long. I realized as I fought free-great strings and swaths of the web still hanging off me, and wrapped around-that my shoes had at last been lost, but I should manage until we reached the town, or we could use one of our empty water-skins to make suitable boots, if we still had anything to carry out of this wretched place.
"Fili!" I cried, spotting him before any of the other struggling dwarves spotted me. I was so very happy to see any of them that I threw myself weakly at him in my relief, wrapping my arms around his ribs.
"Mabyn, you're alive!" he said when he put a foot back to brace himself. "We feared you were eaten for certain."
"Not yet, no," I said, releasing him. "Nibbled at my toes a few times."
Fili's smile-and those of all the others-faded when he saw my face more closely.
My shoulders drooped. "What this time?" I couldn't remember. My stomach churned and my head writhed, but for the moment my joy overturned my physical unwellness. The spiders must have poisoned us to take us quietly. I could tell the others were suffering similar effects by the way they walked and held themselves.
"There's a nasty bruise and scrape down your cheek," he said, pointing hesitantly to my right side. "And a long cut down your left forearm, it looks like," he said when I lifted my left hand to touch the opposite cheekbone. It had been my grades, this time; for once he'd been sober enough to both get the mail and to read it. He hadn't liked that they weren't perfect.
"I'll be fine," I sighed. "Is everyone here?"
We began to count. "Where's Bilbo?" I asked.
"You!"
I spun and stumbled at the wrath falling upon Thorin's voice like gray ash and snow. He pointed at me.
"We should never have let you accompany us. We would never have lost the path if you hadn't willingly left it." He stalked toward me and I hastily retreated, terrified of the look on his face.
"I'm sorry, Thorin, I'm so sorry!" I insisted, feeling smaller the closer he came. "I should have tied myself to my pack, I should have thought to prevent it-"
"You should have accommodated for your own known defects!" he shouted. He swirled a hand behind himself, to gesture to the dwarves untangling themselves dimly behind him, but the way I interpreted it he was reeling it back to strike me and I instantly cowered, throwing my arms up to protect my neck and my face. He froze.
And then the spiders came surging back.
Thorin ran forward the last two steps, grabbed me by the back of the tunic and threw me behind himself, into a lumped circle of roughly the right amount of dwarves, some of whom were thankfully still somehow armed. I should have asked them for a knife weeks ago. I stumbled onto my behind and had to immediately roll out of the way of Dwalin's thudding feet as a spider attacked from his side as well. But then Dwalin and Nori were yanked away and thrown, and I, either in my cowardice or awareness that I would only be a distraction to the dwarves if I was caught, cowered away from the brief opening the spiders tried to reach through.
"Mabyn, here!" Balin shouted, weapon in one hand, beckoning with the other. Our circle was deforming as individuals were drawn off or forced back, and I was no longer safe. But then none of us were.
One of the beasts grabbed Ori by the boot and dragged him away. I had been running to Balin's request, but when I saw the fright on Ori's face I skidded into the leaves and mulch, and charged back the way I had come. I caught the spider by one of the many legs and hauled myself smoothly up, until I was seated straddling the monster's head. Snarling, I fisted one hand and held on with another, pounding down on its crystalline eyes as fiercely as I could. In spare seconds I watched the dwarves spinning and leaping about, and realized I had never seen them fight before. They were incredible to watch. My hair had long since lost its mass of braids so it flung all about me in a tangled mess.
"Watch out!" shouted Dwalin, and bashed in the creature's bulging face. Dark fluid spattered over my face and the front of my tunic and I toppled backward off of its convulsing form. An unidentified pair of hands fastened under my arms and tossed me back onto my feet, then yanked away again. A thick rope of web shot out beside me but I careened away from it. A hairy leg swept my feet out from under me and I slammed down onto my back. Before the following set of poisonous jaws could crash down on top of me I threw my feet over my head and rolled away. Seconds later that particular spider collapsed.
Other spiders were still crawling in. Two were sliding down from their webs. I threw my head back to watch them in horror, and my shock when a smaller creature leaped out of the trees to follow one of them down nearly dropped me to my knees. He had pale hair, and gripped the web thread until he landed on the spider's back, burying a knife into its head. He bounded off, skidded on his back beneath another and gutted it, then smoothly stood and had an arrow already nocked and pointed into Thorin's face.
I started forward, but then I heard wood and sinew stretching and realized that we were entirely hemmed in by tall, slender archers, with braided hair and pointed ears. Bilbo had pointed ears, but not like these, and these warriors certainly weren't hobbits. I froze, trembling. I was slightly separated from the others; Dori took me by the elbow and tugged me back within our ragged ring.
"Do not think I won't kill you, dwarf," said the first, light-haired one. "It would be my pleasure."
My mouth dropped open, aghast with his manners despite our imbalanced situation. I'd even taken in a breath to tell him so when Dwalin clamped a hand over my mouth from behind. I squirmed, elbowing him in the gut, and he released me but shook his head down at me, muttering darkly, "Elves."
What creatures didn't this place have? I was already intimidated, but this only furthered that. My insides were quivering. If Dwalin, the largest and one of the strongest of us, did not want me to speak to them, then I would try to avoid their notice as thoroughly as possible. My stomach wrenched and I winced, trying not to let my discomfort show. I'd been able to avoid it until now, but standing still the sick wretchedness inside had caught up to me.
A howl behind us made us spin. "Kili!" Fili shouted, but was unable to go to his brother's aid on account of the elves, who refused to let him pass. When I spotted another elf coming soaring down from within the trees I was certain she was going to kill him. But instead she shoved off of the back of one spider, temporarily stunning it, and assaulted another. She put an arrow through its neck, then approached it and followed with a dagger through its head. The arachnid she'd stunned flew up behind her and she spun to meet it, knife and short bow both flashing. She downed it in seconds, twirled to shoot the one that was attempting to make Kili's leg part with the rest of his body, then leaped about again, for there was a fourth spider creeping from behind her. She caught its descending jaws with the wood of her bow.
A fifth spider was quickly closing. "Throw me a dagger!" Kili hollered, watching it approach. He stood weaponless. "Quick!"
The elf woman gave the spider she was battling a feral grin. "If you think I am giving you a weapon, dwarf, you are mistaken!" In a single movement she slashed through the underside of the spider's throat, twisted and threw her dagger into the eye of the one stalking Kili. It sank, with a crunch, to the ground.
I wasn't as tall as the others, and could barely see anything more than the higher movements. "Kili, are you all right?" I called out. Nearly all of the elves turned to look at me when I voiced my concerns. I supposed I stood out from the others.
"I'm fine," he returned, glaring up at the elf-woman with mistrust in his eyes. She pointed him toward the rest of us, a hand pressing the back of his shoulder when he made no rush to follow her command.
"Search them!" the pale-haired male commanded, and the woman who had saved Kili presumably repeated the order in their own language.
I shrank back when the dozen elves closest to us stepped forward, even if they had slung their bows over their shoulders, and Balin put a bracing hand on my shoulder. He too was scowling, but he didn't look nearly as afraid as I felt, and that helped....somewhat. Since my own clothes were far less bulky than the heavy coats and vests of the dwarves-I didn't even have shoes-less effort was wasted on the elf-woman before me's attempt to find the weapons I wasn't carrying. With a hand on my shoulder she turned me to touch through my overabundance of hair, tugged at the bottom hem of my tunic so any knives hidden below would show through, then stood and ignored me again. She'd had to crouch to reach me properly.
None of the others appeared frightened. Resigned, offended, frustrated, annoyed, angry-but no fright. How could they not be terrified of such people?
When next I turned I saw the pale-haired elf balancing the slender point of Thorin's sword beneath his chin, and I gasped. Again the elves looked at me; why was it that my expressing emotion perplexed them so?
"Not just a thief," said the pale elf, "but a liar as well." And then he shouted something harsh, which we didn't understand, and the elves moved in on us again. I shrank back again, but this time a male elf caught my arm and pulled me out from behind the dwarves. Each one of us was having our hands bound before us. My hands slipped right through the iron rings, so he produced a length of thin rope and tied me firmly that way.
"It'll be all right, Mabyn," Fili said when he saw my petrified expression. "They have no reason to harm us."
"Do people need a reason?" I wanted to know. I felt my stomach lurch and my entire body lurched with it. Recognizing the convulsion, every elf within arm's length of me recoiled, but none of us had had anything to eat in days-no matter how sick I was nothing was going to come up. I nearly wished it would; I would vomit on the elves' arrogant boots.
When they realized there would be nothing foul emitting from my stomach, the elves closed in again. They yanked me up from my stiff crouch and shoved me into a two-column line with the others. Nori was at my right. His countenance was uncertain, wary, worried. At least with those emotions I wasn't the only one.
None of us was healthy enough anymore to feel as though we could walk long distances without folding in on ourselves. We'd all been poisoned, and gone hungry for days, and been trapped immobile for at least one, though I suspected two in my case. I stumbled more often than the others, catching my bare toes against roots and rocks. Nori tried to help me up but with his hands bound the elves found his assistance too slow, so every time I tripped a slender hand descended to grip my arm and pull me back up again.
It was at least an hour before we reached the place they must have come from. It was carved out of the forest's natural bedrock, pale gray and blue, with tall columns carved to look like they had been braided. The doorway alone was at least seven times my height. They marched us in as we stared about ourselves, awestruck, and then began leading us down.
The stairs were damp, and slick beneath my feet. We were led down into a set of winding dungeons, where the dwarves were thrust into green-barred cells in ones and twos, apparently at random. I was waiting miserably for my turn when one of the elves took me by the arm again and tugged.
I wasn't to be kept in the same place as the dwarves. I gasped when I realized, eyes going wide, and dug my feet in. "No! I want to stay here!"
"Mabyn!" The dwarves had realized too. Thorin had also been led to a cell a little ways away, but he at least was within shouting distance, I believed. I feared that I would not be, and at any rate I didn't want to be cut off even only in sight. The dwarves rushed to their bars, hands gripping tightly, and shouted my name and reached for me as the elf's grip adjusted to both of my arms and tightened.
"No! Please!" I begged. "I don't want to be alone again!" My feet skidded against the slick stone and I had no strength, particularly with my hands bound, to put up more of a fight than a ladybug against a praying mantis. There was nothing I could do.
I was dragged forcibly down to a different cell, on a different level, where all of the cells nearby were empty. My hands were unbound and I was shoved just as unceremoniously into a new living place of my own. As soon as I slid to a stop inside the cell's shadows I rushed to the bars as well, but the door was already locked, and was too heavy for me to even rattle.
We were trapped. I nearly fell into the stone-hewn wall beside me, my arms clutched tightly to myself, and scraped down to sit upon the ground. I knew from the way the howls of the dwarves had faded that we were no longer within listening distance, no matter how loud we thought we were.
I passed the hours by singing. An elf striding by dropped a skin of water just outside my door and I immediately stuck my hand through to take it. After that, and a bit of thought, I started by matching my own feelings. It had worked well in the past.
"Now it's found us like I have found you
I don't want to run, just overwhelm me.
What if this storm ends? And leaves us nothing
Except a memory, a distant echo.
I was pinned down, I want unsettled,
Rattle cage after cage, until my blood boils.
I want to see you as you are now,
Every single day that I am living.
Painted in flames, all peeling thunder.
Be the lightning in me that strikes relentless."
"Cover my eyes, cover my ears
Tell me these words are a lie.
It can't be true, that I'm losing you
The sun cannot fall from the sky.
Can you hear heaven cry?
They're tears of an angel."
"My love, leave yourself behind.
Beat inside me,
Leave you blind.
I hope you have found peace.
You were searching for release.
You gave it all,
Gave into the call.
You took a chance and,
You took a fall for us.
You came thoughtfully,
Loved me faithfully.
You taught me honor,
You did it for me."
"If I die young, bury me in satin,
Lay me down on a bed of roses,
Sink me in the river at dawn,
Send me away with the words of a love song.
Lord make me a rainbow
I'll shine down on my mother,
She'll know I'm safe with you when she
Stands under your colors oh and,
Life ain't always what you think it ought to be, no,
Ain't even gray but she buries her baby."
(pg122)
Last Edit: 22 December 2014