[Bêthberry]

A MEETING IN THE FOREST

The Shepherd of the Trees strode towards Thenamir, each great foot splayed widely as he did and pressing deeply into the forest bed. His movements were sturdy and rhythmic, but he did not hurry. "Hum shrah hum shrah, rhum mabrah," intoned a hollow voice coming less from his mouth than his throat. "You need to ask when one of yours is even now holding a flaming brand aloft? After having already torched our brothers? And whittled cruelly a sturdy arm severed from another brother?"

Somehow, the voice broke Thenamir's fear; it drained out of his muscles and left them instead with a wary urgency. He rose to his feet but spoke to the Dunlending first. "Ulfwine, douse those flames. Or I'll inter you myself in that mulch and give you lichen and moss for a winding sheet."

Ulfwine stepped back, cowered as much by Thenamir's ferocity as by the great-limbed giant and the harrowing trees. Confusion and fear trickled down his back. He stumbled; the brand fell, its flame snuffed out more by the dank earth than by his desperate pawing with cloth-covered hands, sniffling as he did so.

"Shrum, shrum. llalla rhummah." The words murmured around the enclosure and the trees appeared to stand down a bit. The air, which had seemed taken up before, ran back into the enclosure. Leaves now ruffled, audible for the first time, and branches quivered. Yet palpable anger still hung in the air.

"Rhumm limbah rhummah. You are guests in our forest yet you act so inhospitably. You ask what we intend to do. Should we intend to do anything? You seem capable of doing enough harm to yourselves. You have lost companions, several. Maybe if we wait long enough you will accomplish your own demise. We can wait and watch. No sense being hasty."

The sunlight steamed into the enclosure and the forest floor appeared to heave and bend but it was only the stirring of the pine needle bed as Arenia and Kalohern, covered, shook off their stupor. Catching sight of the rough, impassive giant, Arenia flinched and then swallowed a single word, "Ahrhoom," before kneeling stock-still. The Shepherd looked down, way down, at her and for the first time small waves of meaning broke through his black eyes. "Hum lalla, lalla rill, hill rhum," they whispered to each other. "Treetop," Arenia said.

"Yes, Forest Child, Taurelien . Come, come back to me," the Shepherd said, reaching his gnarled, knobby hands out and lifting her high onto his shoulders where her head became hidden in the upper most brambles of his hair, drooping in flat sprays. Her arms encircled his forehead as she nestled closer to him. Memory pooled in his eyes as he thought of this only entling he would ever know. Then he slowly lifted her down and placed her on a weathered, decayed stump. "A fine way you have of thanking us, joining with this hasty bunch of tumbleweeds. I suppose you can explain yourself, Taurelien?"

Arenia hugged her legs, showing as she did the hardly-healed scar of her encounter with the Warg. She looked over at Kalohern and then Thenamir and finally at Gurthden. "Stupid of me to revenge on a Warg. Too stupid. Nearly lost his life as well." Here she nodded quickly at Gurthden. "I speak few words, but I repay, Treetop."

The Shepherd turned to Thenamir. "It seems this one who we have nurtured, you have protected also." Had Treetop not been so tall, Thenamir might have sat down again, feeling the ground give him some stability, but he remained standing so Treetop could read his face closely. His mind plundered the folktales of his nursery days for the ways to deal with the forest people. He swallowed hard and willed his face to soften in homage to the giant.

"We have been forced to decisions we did not want to make. We have a road to take and must recover it, for our business does not lie in the Forest, although it might lie with the Forest. We cannot achieve this without your help. We need safe passage over the Mountains, out of sight of Dunlender or wild man, beyond the vigilant eye of any who would detain our business. It is our own and not for any others to know. We cannot fight the entire forest." Thenamir swallowed hard again.

Treetop looked down on him. "Hasty, I see. We have barely finished with the damage you have wrought." He surveyed the faces of the others who had nearly been ensnared in the malevolent stupor. The dwarf made him twitch, but he did not want to take sides. He knew that the wizard was no longing respecting the forest either. Smoke and more smoke was beginning to blow regularly from the south, and there were trees he no longer heard from. Fear and exhaustion lined these faces and the one who had spoken as if in dream to the Starkindler was now becoming anxious, jumpy. "Decidedly unentish that one is," Treetop thought. "Why couldn't someone take their side, the Forest's side," Treetop thought again. It was a surprising number of thoughts for so early in the day. He thought back over the long ages to when the entwives lived among the trees. He thought forward to, to what? His thoughts lingered over the long years of his life. They were and were not pithy. "Shrum shrah hum, shrum, llalla, rhummah," he said to himself.

"We promise no more fires," Thenamir finally said, luring Treetop out of his revery. "Hroom humh. It could be done, in good time," answered the Tree Shepherd. "The trees will not forget their anger, but perhaps I can keep them from hindering you. That you would avoid all eyes I cannot promise. There is one who is crafty, prescient, and who commands land, forest, creatures. Perhaps you would do well to consider making his work more taxing. Confuse him of your aim."

So it was decided, after a considerable time from the men's point of view, that they would travel to the foothills near Wellinghall under Treetop's auspices, climbing then to the headwaters of the Entwash, where passage might be found around the Last Peak. Perhaps Methedras would shield them from the eyes of Isengard, eyes which saw too easily everything which passed through the Gap of Rohan. Perhaps.

[ October 23, 2002: Message edited by: Bethberry ]