The dwarves tried to make me partake of their midday meal later on that day, but I refused on the grounds that I was well-fed in the elven camp.
"Honestly," I insisted. "Every time I pass by a cook-fire someone offers me food. The humans are at it too since Thranduil implied that he'd hate them forever if they didn't treat me like a knocking princess."
The dwarves guffawed. "Just how did he put that about then?" Dwalin wanted to know.
"Picked the Master up by his collar and shook him probably," laughed Bofur.
"No actually he was quite civil about it." I sipped at the hot mug of mead I had permitted them to bestow upon me. "The Master put Thranduil up in his own house the night we passed through Laketown, though that house was a bit burnt around the edges. When I said I was hungry my guard for the day took me there and all those fancy men-the Master, Thranduil and Bard-were all in there talking and not looking at each other and tragically ignoring all the food laid out on the table. Thranduil introduced me to the others as his daughter and the Master offered me food and after I'd had a bite to eat I left. I think he was just making sure the humans would look out for me too."
"Or ensuring they'd be on his side if you were ever found somewhere not in the presence of the elves," Dori said grumpily.
"Well yes that is also a possibility," I said with a wry twist to my mouth. I knew better than to think the Elvenking valued me for my brashness and my singing. My singing wasn't all that good-my songs were just different. He valued me because he knew the dwarves valued me, and that was likely the lot of it. Still, it had been nice to pretend. It had been fun to tease him too.
"I get the distinct impression," Bofur began contemplatively, smirking, "that our Mabyn probably put the Elvenking a bit at a loss when first he met her."
We were sitting in a cross-legged circle again, and I was sitting slightly facing to my right so my left ear was closer to the center. I still had to focus to hear those in his direction though, not that there were many. When sitting down to our food-and in my case drink-there had been a flurry of entertained pushing and tripping as the majority of the dwarves tried to find space on my left side so they wouldn't be ignored on my right, as they apparently had been in the first half of our tile game.
"Are we right, Mabyn?" Bofur asked as the others chuckled, evidently agreeing it was so. "Miss 'frog spit' and whatever else you said that made absolutely no viable sense."
I stuck my tongue out at him. "Well, I did tell him off once."
They shouted to beg me, 'with what, for what?'
Grinning, I explained, "Well, we were having an argument I think. Actually I think he was trying to interrogate me the morning after you lot scurried off. Anyhow he asked me something that in some way suggested I was being two-faced and I retorted that of course I was, I didn't treat everybody exactly the same because not everyone wanted to be or was warranted to be treated exactly the same, and doing so was along the lines of wearing the exact same outfit to every event and he, being who and as he is, said in his lofty voice 'oh do explain' or something along those lines. So I said-what was it I said. I said whoever had taught him that wearing such fancy clothes as he had on into battle was a fool and that was that. We glared at each other a whole lot, early on."
"I would imagine there would be a bit of disparity between your points of view," Bilbo put in, and I nodded, eyebrows raised.
"Oh most certainly. Took me ages to work up the courage to stand within an arm's reach of him."
"You seem quite comfortable with him now," Kili pointed out. "You let him pick you up."
The dwarves must have excellent sight, or they were passing around that spyglass. "Well that was a bit of a personal experiment on my part, to see if I could get over my fear of someone whom I logically believed did not intend to hurt me. Men in positions of power tend to make me antsy, you see. And we talked a lot while I was there-I told him stories and sang songs and told him bits and pieces of where I was from. So I get myself to stand a little closer every day.
"Then of course he got the idea of using my apparent comfort with his presence to endear the humans to him, among likely other things," I said with a grimace and a sigh. "If I hadn't been so willing to go along with it he likely wouldn't have brought me. It takes two to pretend we're a happy little family."
"How does his son feel about your 'family'?" Thorin asked from where he was standing leaned against a pillar, a mug of something else steaming in his hand. He was only absently listening to us, but he did speak up with questions every now and again.
My lips puckered as though to say 'who' before I remembered the lineage. I so rarely saw Legolas and Thranduil together, even here. "Legolas? He.... I don't know. He doesn't talk much. Maybe he's antisocial? But he....seems wary of it. I think his father views people as tools first, and Legolas sees them as people first. I think he's worried I think his father is truly attached to me. We hardly ever spoke though so he doesn't know me well enough to know I'm secretly antisocial and mistrustful too so in truth I'm using Thranduil almost as much as he's using me." I shrugged. "I was bored, and going to talk to Thranduil in the afternoons was a sort of game we played with each other. He tried to get me to talk about you or myself and I found ways to pretend I'd mistaken his question or I wasn't ever at all avoiding it of course." They chortled.
"Oh come now," I said back to them, appealing. "You know I'm much too polite to avoid an honest question."
"How old are you?" they shouted as one.
"Shut up."
We all laughed at that one. At least some of my old spice was coming back now that I was with the feistier fellows who had let me show it and given it in return.
Soon after that we heard a distant voice calling my name and, guessing they wanted me to come back, I shed my layers and went to the wall. Tauriel and Legolas stood together on the far bank of the stream again. I waved, and Bifur handed me the loop of rope. I eased over the ledge and the dwarves lowered me down.
Tauriel ran across the river to meet me this time and lifted me in her arms. When we reached the other side she let me walk since I hadn't felt the need to take my boots off, and the three of us walked back to the camp. Bard turned away from the outcropping where he stood when he saw us safely back. I didn't understand his interest but he has every right to it. Maybe he would find me later and I'd get it out of him. He was as reticent as any other non-dwarf man I'd met in the last few months but a girl could always try.
"Are the dwarves entertaining?" Tauriel wondered on the way. Legolas left as soon as I was within the ring of the sentries but she lingered.
"They are. They're a lighthearted folk for the most part. They showed me a game with tiles. I lost spectacularly since I couldn't read them. They tried to help me but none of it was sticking in my head."
She frowned. "Are you having memory problems?"
I shook my head, "No, not necessarily, I'm just distracted. I'm worried."
"Distracted by what?" she wanted to know. "You have no responsibilities here."
I lifted a skeptical brow at her. "You don't believe that and you know it. I have what I suppose you'll call 'confused loyalties'. They hurt, even if I love the people they're tied to."
"You love your dwarves?" She lightly smiled, though I could see a film of worry in her eyes.
"They're like my brothers."
"What are we?"
"Aunts and uncles," I decidedly said. "Certainly not siblings, you all know too much. Granted I don't really know what siblings are like since I've never had any."
Tauriel smiled fondly down at me. "Well, we do like you, regardless of what you may see."
As she walked away I called after her, "Will you tell Thranduil I'm sorry?" She paused and looked over her shoulder. "That he doesn't approve," I finished.
She nodded, and left.
I spent the afternoon doing very little. I found Thranduil eventually, and since it was about that time I sat at his side and softly sang for him. For a change of pace I also recited a poem I'd heard a piece of once then researched and memorized.
"I lay me down and slumber
And every morn revive.
Whose is the long-night breathing
That keeps a man alive?
When I was off to dreamland
And left my limbs forgot,
Who stayed at home to mind them,
And breathed when I did not?"
I didn't have his interest yet. But the progression of the poem would find it.
"Why are you so busy
With this or that or good or bad
Pay attention to how things blend
Why talk about all
The known and the unknown
See how the unknown merges into the known
Why think separately
Of this life and the next
When one is born from the last
Look at your heart and tongue
One feels but deaf and dumb
The other speaks in words and signs
Look at water and fire
Earth and wind
Enemies and friends all at once."
His eyes flicked up but he didn't look at me.
"Look at the unity of this
Spring and winter
Manifested in the equinox
You too must mingle my friends
Since the earth and the sky
Are mingled just for you and me."
He was watching me now. I watched him back. "You know my loving them doesn't mean I love you any less. It in no way reflects on you."
"It does when you are supposed to mine."
"Your what? Your possession or companion? I know better than to think you permit yourself to have friends. You don't want to like anyone enough that they might hurt you if they disagree with you."
"Declarative words coming from a child."
"I was born an adult."
"How fascinating for you."
I rolled my eyes and entertained myself the rest of the day by singing about loyalty and apologies. I already knew I couldn't sing loud enough for the dwarves to overhear.
By the next day the dwarves were getting bored. I had picked up on some of this the day before but hadn't known how to help. When I came up the wall though the dwarves after greeting me mostly went back to the chores they had set themselves to: sweeping, dusting, picking up rubble that Smaug had left behind. Sweeping and dusting I could do, so when I found a broom or a rag around I picked it up and followed the dwarves around where necessary.
"I can hardly believe this is your home," I breathed as Dori, Ori, Nori and Bofur showed me through a wide, columned hall hung with heavy tapestries. The tapestries had once been rich and vibrant in color, Dori had told me, but had faded with dust and age. "This is magnificent."
They raised their chests and beamed with pride. "That's a library, over there," Ori eagerly pointed out.
I had always loved libraries. I beamed. "May I see it?"
"Of course, of course!" They guided me quickly forward, carefully not touching my back but my shoulders or my waist. They threw their weight into opening the aged double doors before me and I stopped just inside the threshold, gasping.
There was a magnificent long curving desk off to my left, gleaming beneath its swaths of dust, and the bookshelves before me were easily forty to fifty feet tall, draped with ladders, long-darkened lamps strung between them. One of the foremost shelves had tipped against its brother in the vibrations of the dragon's forceful entrance two centuries ago and its books lay in a tattered wave before us. I took another couple careful steps, sank because bending at the waist had started to hurt more than I could manage, and lifted a cobalt-bound book with several loose pages. I straightened them when I opened it, using only the tips of my fingers in fear the binding should crumble, and examined the spidery characters written on the pages.
I offered the book to Ori, who stood closest. "What is this one about?"
He glanced over it then gingerly took it from me, holding it up to read the front cover. "It's a book of poetry. They don't seem to have any unifying theme," he mused as he turned a few pages forward and back.
I smiled. "Is dwarven poetry any good?"
He blushed and shrugged. "I like it."
Eventually I grew tired of walking, if not exploring, and we returned to the task we had been after before I'd initially wandered away. I wasn't able to focus on the ground as well as I had been earlier and walked close to the wall so I would have something to keep me walking in straight lines. As it was we soon had to cross a wide, arch-roofed hall and I was having a particularly hard time by then. I kept my fingertips on the wall as long as I could as I crept away from it, clutching a faded emerald blanket around my shoulders, and took tentative steps toward the dwarves as they spanned the hall easily. They were nearly across when Nori, who was in the back, turned to make sure I was following, then rushed to my side when he saw how my steps were wavering side to side. He took my arm to balance me, hesitant to wrap an arm around my back, and helped me across the open space I couldn't navigate.
"It'll pass," I breathlessly assured them when Nori and I reached the others. "It's just a symptom."
"How long have you had it?" Bofur asked, dumbfounded. They still weren't accustomed to watching me stumble for no visible reason. The last times they had seen me do so we had either been weakened by spider poison or I'd been wearing inadequate shoes. But they had seen me run among branches, and would never have expected they would see me now struggling to cross an open floor.
I found a small smile. "It's been coming and going for weeks for a few reasons. Thank you, Nori, for helping me."
They made me sit against the wall when we returned to the cascade of rubble that had come down from the ceiling where a higher floor had collapsed. The dwarves and I had swept up all the dust already but now they were piling the chunks of rock against the wall. The second task was something I was unable to help with anyway, so I sat quietly, chatting with them for a while, watching them at their work. It was as I was seated there that I noticed a glimmer underneath an angular chunk of rock Dori was attempting to turn over. I went to his side and crouched to reach beneath the slab and recovered the glimmering thing.
It was a ring. The large stone was a reflective shade of marvelous blue; tiny vines of gold wound and twined around the gem.
"What is this?" I asked, holding the ring up to Dori and putting it in his palm when he gave up on lifting the slab on his own. He joggled it in his palm with a grin.
"That's a sapphire," he said gladly. "Looks like Smaug missed one."
"Missed one what?" Bofur asked, returning from a pair of boulders he had been kicking across the scratched stone floor. Dori extended the ring to him in answer. Bofur grinned as well.
"I thought sapphires were purple," I said, curious.
"They can be all kinds of colors," Ori answered. "You didn't know that?"
I shook my head. "Only rarely did I ever see gemstones, and I'm sure half of the ones I saw were only colored glass anyway."
Bofur punched Dori's arm. "Let's show her the rest. Smaug had it all piled up anyway, so it's not like we'll need to open any treasuries."
"Can we?" Ori asked, eyebrows and corners of his mouth lifting hopefully.
Dori shrugged. "I don't see why not." He glanced at me.
I knew what had just flashed across their minds: it wasn't like I would be taking it anywhere. I wasn't about to live my life elsewhere or anything. The worst I could do was sneak a piece into my pocket for the elves, but I knew they trusted me not to do that.
Dori waved us forward, and I saw that the other four had difficulty not running as they led me downward, toward hallways that opened wider and wider, until we reached a last narrow hall and Bofur, who was in the front, whirled and threw his hands up. "Wait, wait!" he said. "Mabyn, close your eyes."
I did so, and Dori and Nori took my hands so they could guide and steady me. I still slid my feet, afraid to come across a crack in the floor or a spare broken pebble. I felt a change in the temperature as we passed through a doorway, and a change in the way the light touched my eyelids. The air smelled metallic and the space felt strangely full.
"Carefully," Dori said, solicitously guiding me forward. My feet slid on a layer of round slips of metal and his grip and Nori's grew firmer as they held me up. I winced as the muscles in my back stiffened and my shoulders pulled at the skin. "Nearly there," said Dori. "That should do it." Their hands loosened as I found my balance on a spot I'd heard them kicking free of coins.
"Open your eyes!" encouraged Bofur, and, smiling at his enthusiasm, I did.
I sucked in a sudden rush of air as if I'd been drowning, lurching back in shock from the reflection of the massive heaps of gold surrounding us, like heaps of flickering candle flames. "Oh my goodness," I said breathlessly, staggering backward into Ori, who chuckled and put me upright again, holding onto me so I wouldn't sway too far when I turned to apologize to him and saw an even larger wall of gold behind him. A man could go blind in here, looking at so much wealth he as an individual could never appreciate himself. There came a point, in richness, that one ceased to feel rich, I supposed. If one had so much gold that a thousand gold pieces felt like a thousand pretty grains of dust, what else could possibly hold any value?
They let me gaze open-mouthed about me, they just as entertained by my floored expression as I was flattened by the collected wealth. They did want to show me individual things eventually though.
"Look at this one, here Mabyn." Bofur showed me a slender necklace of diamonds.
"And this one." Ori showed me a goblet embedded with rubies.
Dori showed me a silver jewelry box inlaid with malachite and emeralds.
Nori displayed a strange piece of jewelry that clasped in gold above the elbow, ran in slender chains to the matching clasp around the wrist, and the chains wove and braided together until splitting for four gold rings.
"And look at this!" said Ori, presenting up a gold and pearl necklace.
The necklace was in inexplicable ways what fascinated me the most, of all the treasures the dwarves dug out to exhibit. It began with a simple gold chain around the throat, then another a little lower. But the second was hung with loops and loops of further gold chain until it looked like lace. Hanging in the mouth of each half-circle loop was an iridescent, ivory white pearl, shined to such brightness that I could see individual coins reflected in it. The lacy loops hung to the bottom of my breastbone when I held it against myself just to see how it would look.
"Take it," suggested Bofur. "I somehow doubt you've had much nice in your life."
"No," I said blithely, "but neither is it mine to take." I handed it back to Ori.
"The fourteen of us are all entitled to a share of the treasure," he told me. "Accept this piece as a gift from me to you, it'll come out of my share."
I shook my head, but smiled at his hearty generosity. "Still no, but thank you very much for the offer. Pretty as it is it still looks cold, and it's heavier than anything else I've worn. I'll stick to what I've got."
Bofur pursed his lips as Ori reverently set the necklace aside. "Fine then," he said at last, strolling off down the narrow path that had been quickly swept through the coins, looking left and right as he surveyed the amassed treasures. Then he said "Aha!" and bent sideways to scoop up a triangular chunk of deep indigo stone that would fit comfortably inside my fist. He tossed it in hand a couple times then brought it back to me. "Take this then. They're fun to turn in hand, looking for the lights inside."
Tentatively I took it. It had the weight I associated with gemstones, and the depth of color, but rocks weren't my strong suit. I knew more about bigger things like weather and oceans and continents. "What is it?"
"Fool's amethyst," he said, as I turned it carefully in my hands, inspecting it with a soft touch. Stone it may be, but it was all precious to me in its beauty, whatever its name. "Virtually worthless. We put it in windows when we don't feel like coloring the glass. Take it," he urged, when still I hesitated, even as I continued turning it over and over, already fascinated with its internal fractures and planes. "You can look for answers when you're bored or thinking." He grinned.
I looked at him. "Really?"
He rolled his eyes and even his head and shoulders, so dramatic he was determined to be. "Yes, Mabyn. For when the elves are being uppity and you've nothing better to do but tolerate them."
I shook my head at him but I accepted the stone. "Thank you."
Kili, Fili and Ori wanted to show me a game after that, one which I might have been skilled in once but certainly didn’t have the coordination for now. Kili had carried from home a small pouch of tiny pebbles in his coat pocket, which he and Fili showed me the use of. Kili tossed it once in hand, then he and Fili stood across from each other and kicked it back and forth, bouncing it off their knees, feet and elbows. I laughed to see them—this was the sort of game I would have loved to learn proficiency in.
“Try it, Mabyn,” Kili urged as Ori came forth, and the brothers included him in their game. It was clear the brothers had had far more practice than the scribe, but the three youngest of the company were quite enjoying themselves nonetheless. “Just try bouncing it off your knee or toe.” I suppose they realized I had limited mobility in my arms these days.
At last I buttoned up my overlarge coat and stepped forth, leaving my blanket heaped against the wall I’d been sitting against. “Is there a point to the game?”
“Don’t be the one who drops it,” said Fili, and started the game this time. He and Kili bounced it back and forth a number of times, before Kili’s eyes flashing toward me warned that they were going to pass it off.
I managed to bounce it off my knee, startled even though I’d been warned of the pebble-filled-sack’s arrival, and it shot off sideways. The boys chuckled and Ori fetched it. We tried again.
This time I managed to hit it with my toe but my foot went too far forward and I lost my balance, stumbling to my knee and tipping sideways onto my hand. I righted myself well enough, but when they tossed it to me the third time and I overbalanced backward Fili casually disengaged himself from the game, leaving it to myself, Ori and Kili, and strolled to stand somewhere slightly out of my sight.
“Don’t move quite so quickly,” Kili suggested. “You’ll hit it too hard.”
“Well then don’t hit it toward me so fast!” I laughed. “Tie a string to it so you can slow it down.”
“Ah, I’m not sure how well that will work.”
Ori nudged the ball in my direction as lightly as he could. I kicked it and went sideways. Fili’s reason for his self-dismissal became apparent when I felt his hands swiftly hooking under my arms to keep me upright and put me back on my feet. “Thanks,” I said, and tried to hit the sack again.
Fili’s station behind me became increasingly useful as I got tired from the simple game and soon struggled to even touch the sack and maintain my balance in the same reach. I noticed how careful he was to never touch one of the places on my back that hadn’t been deemed safe, and how he managed to never pull on my arms and stretch the ruined skin. I would have to thank him warmly for that later. I don’t know if I could have been so considerate.
I made a point to return to the elves before they called for me that time. As I was halfway down the wall a brief horn blast startled me and I jumped. I could see nothing over the high lip of the balcony but soon I saw two elves dashing toward the river. The dwarves had called them so I wouldn't have to walk through the water. When I met the elf who strode across to meet me I spun back before she lifted me to grin and wave to the dwarves to thank them. Bombur, a horn in hand, waved back.
I was especially glad to see that it was Bombur who had thought to call them for me. He and I hadn't spoken directly since he'd fallen into the dark river in Mirkwood-he had forgotten the several weeks we had spent traveling together, and not long after he'd woken from his enchanted sleep we had been separated. Of all the dwarves, even Thorin, he knew me least, and was least comfortable treating me as familiarly as the others did. I missed his mirth.
I kept the indigo stone mostly hidden while with the elves, regardless of Bofur's suggestion. I didn't want them to think I had been bought.
(pg370)
Last Edit: 23 December 2014