Under Cloud and Under Star by StarSpray

Six

The Elves, after they learned enough of the Common Speech to have a proper conversation—and they learned far quicker than Peony could have learned their tongue—had loved to tell her about their woodland home. They had lived there for a very long time. Limwë, maybe, had once lived somewhere else, but the others had all been born in the woods north of the Sea of Rhûn. Long ago they had traveled down to the sea to fish and swim and trade with other Elves and with the Men who lived all around it. But then the Enemy had come and they'd retreated into the woods, and even after he'd been defeated they had not really come out again.

And now they were here, and the wood was gone. In Peony's imagination it had been rather like the Old Forest on the borders of Buckland. She wondered now, passing in through the dead and burned trunks, whether the trees had tried to fight back, like they were rumored to do sometimes in the Old Forest. She hoped they had, and that they'd killed a few of the orcs that had come with axes and torches.

She stayed on Apple, and kept close to Maglor. As they passed deeper into the wood they began to find bodies. Some were orcs—easily recognizable though Peony had never seen one before—and a few looked like Men, but most were Elven. Peony pulled out her handkerchief and pressed it over her nose and mouth. Maglor looked very grim, and his eyes were very bright, like a fire had been stoked behind them.

The worst sight was the place where the village had been. Once it had been a sprawling settlement with houses on the ground and in the trees, but now it was all destroyed, burned and torn apart and looted. Their companions were already at work digging out the bodies and lining them up in what had once been the center square. There was space there for a large fire pit, and Peony could imagine the parties that had been held there, and the lovely elvish voices all singing merry songs together.

"There may be survivors hiding in the surviving forest," Maglor said to Peony. "Let us go search for them."

"Shouldn't we help here?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Not yet. I want to be sure there are no wounded who need us first. Come. There is a patch of grass there for your pony."

Once Apple was picketed, Peony hurried after Maglor, who moved with long, quick strides toward the patches of wood that had survived the fires. It was a relief to step beneath green leaves and breath the smell of living things. Peony slipped away from Maglor so they could cover more ground, and passed quick and silent over the carpet of leaves and pine needles. She stopped often and squinted up into the tree branches. Elves were strange folk, and she thought it was as likely that they would hide high in the trees like squirrels as it was they would find shelter on the ground. The thought of climbing so high made her shiver. But she did not see anyone. Not even real squirrels.

When she met with Maglor again he shook his head, and they passed on to the next bit of living wood, though they kept their eyes peeled even in the dead bits. But though they searched all afternoon, they found no other Elves, living or dead. Peony saw a single squirrel once at a distance, and and heard the distant cawing of crows, but that was all.

On their way back, however, Maglor halted suddenly, listening intently. "What…?" Peony began, but he shushed her, holding out a hand and closing his eyes. Then he crouched to the ground and pressed his ear to the dirt, as Peony stared in amazement.

When he straightened he said, "Come." And took off at a run, leaping like a deer over a large fallen tree. Peony scrambled after him, promptly getting herself caught up in a tangle of branches and nearly tearing her skirt to shreds. Fortunately he did not go far, or else she would have lost him, but he stopped at what had once been a merry brook but was now choked with dirt and ash and fallen branches. There a small figure huddled in the shelter, if it could be called shelter, of the crown of a once tall and proud oak tree. The branches around the figure almost looked, to Peony, like the bars of a cage, and she shuddered. Maglor crouched before them and spoke quietly in the Elven tongue.

When they looked up Peony saw a brown tear-streaked face, and pale green eyes beneath a fall of dark tangled hair. It was a child. Hard to tell the age, of course, but of a size and stature with Peony, who forgot herself for a moment and stared open-mouthed. Even in Rivendell there had been no Elven children. The child did not look at Peony, but once they recognized Maglor they scrambled out of their hiding place and threw themselves into his arms. He picked them up, holding them firmly. Peony winced at the strain it must be putting on his shoulder, but if it bothered Maglor he didn't show it.

When they returned to the others, Silivren leaped up from where she was sorting through some bits and bobs that survived the destruction. "Lagreth!" she cried. The others turned and came running to take little Lagreth from Maglor's arms, embracing her and kissing her face, all of them weeping and full of questions. But Lagreth did not say a word, only clung to them and wept. Peony looked away, feeling very much a stranger. This meant looking at all of the bodies laid out in preparation for burial. They were covered with what cloth could be found, but the sheer number made Peony want to weep.

How could anyone want to do something like this, even the Dark Lord out of the old scary stories? She turned away and went to wrap her arms around Apple, who nuzzled at her pockets in search of his namesake. "I'm sorry, Apple, I don't have any treats for you," she said. "I don't even know if apples grow here."

Once she'd recovered herself Peony took a deep breath, inhaling more of Apple's horsey smell than of the smoke still hovering around, and turned back to help in whatever way she could. These Elves did not build cairns. Instead they dug deep into the ground, in several long trenches, where they carefully and gently laid the bodies, singing songs of mourning and chanting the names of the dead. Peony and Maglor helped to dig, but Hethwes shook her head and would not let them help lay the bodies in the graves. That was for closer kin, she said. So Maglor sat and sang a song of his own, in a language that was not like the Elven tongue of Hethwes and Limwë and the others. Peony had heard it before in Rivendell, mostly in the Hall of Fire when they sang very old songs indeed, though none had been so sad and low as this one. Little Lagreth, who still had not made a peep, sat beside him with tears running silently down her face. Her hands were bandaged where they had been cut on branches and stones in her flight from the attack, and she had been close to starving when they found her, but she would eat very little of the food they'd tried to offer her.

Peony went off to the green parts of the forest to try to find something edible, but came back empty-handed, except for clean water that she'd found by sheer luck in a tiny little stream bubbling along as though it had no idea that anything was wrong. She'd sat down beside it and had a good cry before filling up the water skins. Through nearly all of her journey Peony had not felt particularly homesick, though of course she missed being able to talk to her sisters or to write to her friends and various relations—her last letter had been to Cousin Bilbo, and that all the way back at the Lonely Mountain. But she'd not particularly missed home, the Shire, until now, with its clean little rivers and rolling hills and not an orc or Red Eye in sight—and only one dragon, made of wood and painted green to hang over the door of Hobbiton's best inn.

When the burials were done—well into the night—Maglor took them back to the green bit of wood where the stream was so they could make a proper camp, and not sleep in beds of ash. Peony curled up beside Lagreth; they were of a size and could share blankets. The last thing Peony saw before drifting off to sleep was Maglor, a dark shape against the bit of starry sky that peered through the trees, as he stood gazing into the woods.

Peony's dreams were troubled; a figure with a great red eye blinking on its chest kept appearing as she ran through a dark wood, until she stumbled through the door into her own family's hole in Long Cleeve, but it was dark and empty and everything covered in dust, and when she stepped back outside someone she could not see asked where she had been, for didn't she know it had been one hundred years since she'd run off into the wilds?

She woke with a start when someone touched her shoulder. It was Maglor; Lagreth was just stirring as well, but the others were already gone. The light was pale and dim with the coming dawn. "We are leaving," Maglor said.

"Where are we going?" Peony asked, sitting up with a yawn. Her back hurt, and when she looked she discovered a gnarled old root had been jabbing into her all night.

"West," said Maglor. "There is nothing and no one left here. I have promised to guide them to the Havens."

"The Elf Havens off past the Tower Hills?" Peony said. "I know where that is."

"Do you indeed?"

"Certainly! You'll have to cross through the Shire to get there, you know."

Maglor smiled; it very nearly reached his eyes. "Then our roads will lie together for quite a while."

After washing and eating a few bites for breakfast from their dwindling stores, they set out. Limwë and Silivren had led the others in a thorough search for goods and things that had survived the looting, and while they did not find much they found enough for everyone to put on a new set of clothes. Once they were all ready they set out, with Lagreth perched atop Apple, and Peony walking beside Maglor at his request. She had been on the western roads far more recently than he had, and he wanted to know what her plans had been for going back home.

"Well," she said as she stepped over a fallen tree branch, "I hadn't quite decided, actually. It would be easiest of course to go back the way I came, to stop at the Lonely Mountain again, and pass through Mirkwood and through the lands of the Beornings, and then up through the High Pass in the Misty Mountains to come back down to Rivendell. And from Rivendell it's but a hop skip and a jump back to the Breelands and the Shire. And in your case, an extra hop on to the Elf Havens."

"Mm. But you were thinking of going another way?"

"Well, yes. The year's going to be turning soon, and that means poor weather for travelers in the mountains, and I was curious about the lands to the south—Gondor, you know. I met some merchants from there selling perfume and rosewater from a place called Imloth Melui."

"If you come to Imloth Melui this year, you will be too late for roses, I'm afraid," said Maglor.

Peony sighed. "I suppose so. But it would be easier going, to pass down that way around the Gap of Rohan. But I don't know anything about Gondor except that there is a place with beautiful roses, and also there is a city called Minas Tirith. And I don't know anything about Rohan at all."

"They are horsemen in Rohan," said Maglor. "But that is all I know of them. I do know the Gap, though, and it would be an easier road to take in the waning of the year, though it is north of Gondor, and far from the roses of Lossarnach." He glanced behind him at the other elves, who walked together clustered around Apple, speaking quietly in their own tongue. Maglor's face was pinched with concern, but Peony was unable to tell why. No one was hurt, and if they all had to tighten their belts a bit—well, that would be soon fixed. Maglor said finally, "The sooner we make the river crossings, the better I will feel. We must make for the fords at the joining of the Carnen and Celduin, though it may be busier than we wish."

"A good place to stop and trade a bit," said Peony. "Some extra food in exchange for a song, maybe. Travelers always love to hear new songs." Maglor smiled, but it was fleeting, and he did not answer.