I have decided to come back to fanfiction, if only as a way to celebrate finally publishing the first chapter of my first original novel! It's called "The Luckiest Man in the World" and it's a biography written just for you by the 67th President of the United States of America! His love letter to zoomers and millennials really. His words, not mine.

It's a speculative future fiction novel. You can find it on and Subscribestar as soon as you remove the spaces out of the following hyperlink.

p(a)treon. com(/)KarmicAcumen

Subscribestar. com(/)the-peckish-black-hole

The Peckish Black Hole is my SM handle. I hope to see you drop by! And since this website eats hyperlinks to this day, I had to add spaces and brackets here and there to make sure it stays in complete. Just delete them when you look it up.

As far as fanfiction goes, I've decided to only focus on the two most popular ones. This means that one is Master of Wood, Water and Hill.

The second one will be the long-awaited sequel of Harry Potter and the Deus Ex Machina. A LOT of people have been asking me to write it, some as recently as this past week!

Provisionally, I'm thinking of using P(a)treon/Subscribestar for early reader / beta feedback as well. Which means that I'll be posting bits and pieces of upcoming chapters there as they are written (for free, just so we're all liability-free). Chapters will be posted here only when they are actually done in full, as usual. Since I'll be working on more than one story, though, it will take 2-3 months at the earliest between updates for each.

Hopefully I can actually establish this routine fully, though ultimately it's down to how much interest my novel gets.

The Song for this chapter is Antti Martikainen - Brocéliande

Cardolan – 3: The Unspent Glory

"-. .-"

It had always been one of the great mysteries of his life that people need more than intelligence to act intelligently. He would never genuinely consider Thorin Oakenshield a stupid dwarf, for example. The rest of the company might be a different matter altogether though, considering recent developments. Other than the unfaithful warrior, possibly.

None of whom were in any position to opinionate, given the situation. Especially the dwarf beating against him as though getting away was all that mattered in the world.

Song and Stone! He cherished all the People new and good, even those disabled or crippled, but would that it were reciprocated ofttimes! Linnar's lad was ever just one or the other, never both, he should still understand. The rusting axe stuck in his forehead rendered him inarticulate and occasionally blustering, not simple! A tragedy that it robbed him of the spoken word, beyond whatever Khuzdul grunts he occasionally remembered while signing, but what he was doing now was everything but signing. And speaking should be the farthest thing from his mind.

The dwarf choked and flailed against him, clawing and gasping in the black, trying to escape his hold in a desperate struggle to reach the light that trickled from on high. He didn't understand. The surface of Withywindle glimmered far above them. Far too far above them. The stream was never so deep, not even at its slowest around the Lake surrounding the Glimmering Isle. The Old Grey One was feisty! It was old and angry and did not distinguish between arms of death and those of burden. It would rid itself of the one whose death by iron it could not deprive all the same, even if it meant hurling them down the Water Paths.

No matter. Swimming amidst the black was the first trick he learned, long before he even knew of Hill, Water and Wood. Before Light. Before Wind. Before Music, when he'd barely achieved any sort of thought. Before Stone thawed to Fire inside his mould. Before he got around to finishing living the first day of life upon the world. Before he even learned his first word.

Definitely before he learned of it being possible to live with an axe in your head. Or stuck most other places for that matter. That was a new one.

What he was about to do was also a new one. Or at least it would be the first time he was on the giving end.

From the depths of his midst to the top of his lungs, he inhaled the Water. It was hard not to gag and choke in a body so unaccustomed. But he drew in in the Water until he could draw no more, and then rolled the flagging dwarf under him, leaned over him and exhaled into his mouth everything but the Water.

Linnar's son jerked and ceased his flails, eyes wide if only from the shock of it.

The axe head scraped harshly against his own forehead, but he let the feeling sink into the endless depths of his memory and hugged the dwarf close, then tightened his hold just so.

The dwarf wildly gasped his last breath of air back into his mouth, and with this he had the Water and the Wind to lead them both back to Wood and Hill.

He hurled himself and his burden back, tucked the thrashing dwarf against his chest, looked up until he was facing down, then blew out the air in one great ring of glittering bubbles.

The Water smoothed around them and light breached the fathomed depths, guidance bright and farthest possible thing from angry. A proper feel, he thought with what probably didn't pass for wittiness. But appropriate, given the way he and the other plunged through the hoop of bubbles.

There was no angry way to say 'bubbles.'

They breached the surface of a waterfall amidst smooth river stones, moss-covered bark, birdsong, and half of all the shades of every leaf in the world. Fronds and petals and needles alike hung and fell from trees that grew close and tall into an unbroken canopy. It stretched far and wide and cast a half-light upon all things that lived and didn't. There was not one glimpse of the sky anywhere through it all. That was good. It meant he found the way to precisely where he wanted amidst all other places that lead in and out of Wood, Water and Hill.

Linnar's boy flailed about, gasping for air one moment and choking on mouthfuls of foam the next. His mind failed to catch up to the reality of the shallows they were in.

He himself was long past such displays. From the depths of his midst to the top of his lungs, he exhaled the Water. Then he breathed in the Wind and exhaled again. And again. And again and again and again until he breathed nothing but breath.

Birdsong and all else living was silent when he was done. It left the toil of the dwarrow next to him the only sound out of place in the eternal dusk. Even that was winding down and growing in length and distance. Flesh and mind moved more and more out of synch with each other to make room for the Light, faint though it was so deep out. In this, too, he could relate. The flow of things was different here, and the light of Sun and Moon and Stars was nowhere to be had.

He grabbed the dwarrow from under the arms and dragged him to the shore. Linnar's get crawled and stumbled along, mind too slow to even conceive conscious will its own. He was still in tune with the rest of the world more than himself. Would remain so for at least a sunturn, thwarted by the Light even all the way out there in the thickest shade.

Probably not as long as he himself took the first time, though. He hoped to be there for it, but that was far in the future. If indeed it would happen at all without a glimpse of the First and Oldest. The Now called him, and called for him to move or ponder.

So he stood in the Wood and pondered.

He pondered the place from whence he'd swum, but it was barely different from all else he ever dreamt. He pondered where he could go also. But that, too, was less a destination and more a return to that which had already borne him hence, back when his life was less dreaming of dreams and more doing. He pondered where he had come from. He pondered where he might head now.

The moment loomed before him.

He felt the faintest stirrings of delight. Such a long time since he had been adrift, with no portents in sight! Oh, wouldst that he bore forth in else than this crude husk. His first had been but ore and Stone, but even that fit better in this place than this vessel of bone and blood. So soft if not as raw, it was fresh and untrained in every art that ever was. Alas!

Still…

For want of portents, he would make do as he always does.

And here and now, when portents don't abound, it could only be time for a song!

From the depths of his midst to the top of his lungs, he inhaled Wind and Wood scents.

Only to falter upon the sound of a distant judder twanging against his ears from far off, carrying forth the renewed sounds of birdsong and whistles and stalling any plan to bring forth any of his own.

It brought him no gloom.

Instead, the whistling that followed turned delight to elation whole.

That first Note…

Elation swelled into yearning unbounded and he was suddenly rushing through the woods so fast that he almost missed the weak moans and mumbling far behind.

Oh, thou dream! Even mastered it vexed him when he but wanted to indulge wants his own.

He stopped, turned around, marched back to the stream bank and found Linnar's descendant gripping blindly at the world, dazed from new time on his mind and tongue twisting around every new scent and color he tasted every other blink. Sympathy swelled within him at the sight, along with a spark of shame over having discarded him so swiftly. The sight before him was no different from himself of yore, back when he was ten times as slow and less than half as keen. At least before he gained will and might to call his own, he'd managed with help and guidance. Now, it seemed, it was his turn to pass it on.

The Wood crooned throughout him as it basked in the second Note. He stood with head backwards and closed his eyes, relishing every last moment of it. His mind was in tune with the flow within and without this World within the World.

Only when it was over a breath and age later did he look back down, at the dwarf laid out on the mossy forest floor. Even descended from miners and smithies and simple folk with simple tastes, even slow and stretched as his mind was across the Now and Thence, whatever the dwarrow picked up of the Note was enough to leave him lax and languid.

In the end this, too, was no matter.

Ordering and handling him with the ease of long personal experience undergoing the same, he soon had the dwarf on his feet and stumbling along after their joined hands.

The third Note carried them from dusk to evening shade, from thickets of yew and redwoods to more seldom birch and airy maples rich with fruit and bird flights. Larks and swallows flew through their crowns even as squirrels and hares dashed up, down and amidst their trunks.

The Fourth lured them further inwards, boots shifting dirt and foliage as they passed through close-knit thickets of rain-soaked palm and rubber trees. The rain still dripped from the leaves like a song unto itself, the song of a glad water coming down like silver. How well and true! Always this lot seemed as if rain had just ended, with new water running downhill under the boughs. As every other time he passed this way, he laughed and was glad, even as his companion could but stumble through the underbrush in his wake bewilderedly.

Then came the fifth Note, and the scent of the rainforest became thicker, headier, less wood and more hints of salt. The shade lifted some more and the forest became increasingly speckled with Treelight. Thin, long, pitching beams of white, silver, gold and every other color and off-color he cared to name. Which was many of them indeed but far from all, for even the Namer of Names never managed to name them all. Nor the myriad of creatures big and small scurrying, dashing, stalking and lumbering around them, some out of sight and some not hardly. Their boots sunk through leaves and mud up to their ankles. Still he trudged forward, not at all perturbed but instead emboldened when they finally reached the greatest of the mangroves. Here the smell of salt grew thick with a brackish scent that rose from the murky waters sloshing around bush and tree roots. They were full of grown water birds and baby chicks of all stripes swimming and diving after scurrying tadpoles. Seed-feeding birds, fish-hunters and scavengers alike lounged in the branches or flitted here and there also, even as raptors perched on the highest boughs of the trees he and his companion passed ever by. None attacked others and neither did they fear.

There was no Death in this Light true and free.

It was on the Sixth that salt water gave way to strong earth speckled with green once more. They walked out of the marsh up the mouth of a stream that washed their boots and feet all clean. He stopped there to drink from the fresh water. The drought invigorated them, a blessing after that trek that could well have lasted hours or eons. There was never a perfect way to tell in this place, even among sights as familiar as these. Fir trees of all sorts and heights stretched to the left and right as far as he could see, with no path through them to be found on mere fancy. Even game trails escaped his sight, though he knew well it was not for their lack. Nor for want of the Treelight either, though it could surely have achieved that and more. It was stronger here. Fittingly, none of the trees making up this final picket had and would ever lose their green coat of leaves, be they soft as silk or sharp as needles.

It was here, during the Sixth, that Linnar's get succumbed to Life and Light overwhelming.

Decision loomed before him once more.

Here, at least, he was not wholly bereft of portents. Would they were all of home and bliss rather than pain! Linnar's boy fell to his knees beside him, moaning in agony as rusted axe grew orange-hot a-cleansing. That decided him as much as anything else on that last stretch. He turned, put himself between the dwarf and the Light and drew him inward, face over his heart and arms around him whole. The heat of the axe lessened some, pulling from the addled dwarf a moan of relief that shook them both down to the bone. He basked in it as all good deeds should be basked in, but did not tarry elseways. Instead, he started walking backwards, pulling and leading the staggering dwarf further and further in, past firs and shrubs and over wood chips loosed from bark that fed the lush blanket of moss and grasses for ages upon ages. Woodlands, critters and plants glittered everywhere, gleaming and shimmering every shade as he gazed upon them. No color was out of place, but every last tinge was weighty like nowhere other. Such was the nature of life when filled to the brim with the Light of Everything that ever was and never hadn't not been.

The seventh Note came and stayed with them through the whole of the last span, longer, louder, nearer than all the ones before it and still not staggered at all. It ended just as the woodland ended and they reached the last bulwark of that scape. Behind and above, he knew, was a great wall of trees. All trees that were and could ever be, grown short, wide, tall and together. Commingled. Twined and intertwined here and tether in a wall. The First Wall that ever was. It was taller than one could see, farther than one could think. It was such that no place there was for Light to trickle through from the place within unremitting. A pity and a mercy both, for few could unaided suffer even the cambered slivers that seeped through copse and canopy. A pity and a mercy that there was no place for light to flow unhindered. No place save for a hole in the ground. The hole in the ground right behind him.

The hole in the ground right behind him that sloped forth and down and was lit with the Light reflected off the water on the other side.

He pulled the dwarf along and down, steadied him down the slope until it evened out, and finally they were stood on the bank.

Then he let go, grabbed the axe head, and yanked.

Linnar's descendant lurched violently with a cry. His eyes snapped open wide only to shut in pain less than a moment past. Then he choked on his last gasp, toppled forward and fell face-down in the turf deathly still.

But not dead in truth. Whether still of mind, breath or heartbeat, or even all combined, none who found this place could ever be so snuffed.

He turned away from kinsman downed and towards the clearing. The Light had him then. It was all-engulfing, brighter than the brightest glare, blinding without blinding. It routed all thought from his mind as skin and eyes accustomed to light ephemereal basked for the first time in Light which was everything but.

It was enough to strike one dumb. Leave any other who might have come still and ramrod. A statue stiff and wracked for a year and a day with every feeling save dismay.

That such did not happen to him was a bittersweet grace at best. Though a first for this body, it was not a first for him. That came and passed long since. How could anything ever compare to it? How could he do anything but gaze up to the Tree?

Alas that old hats, too, can fit poorly. His eyes could not bear the radiance.

With a shuddering breath, he looked back down and watched instead the unplugged depths that went unseen. Sights and scenes shone instead throughout it, at end of the rays that sunk into the water. It brought back sights midst trees, meadows, forests, hills, skies, towns, tents and glades all over. The images flitted in and out of sight beneath the ripples. People blinked in and out also, from tallish Men in cloaks clasped grey, to dwarrows odd and kinsmen known. Some wet their thirst by brooks. Others fidgeted awkwardly aside lakes built around underground memorials. The surface broke suddenly upon the last image, water rippling sharply. A tiny wren-like bird burst out from underneath the surface and shot for the far shore towards the Isle.

The song proper started then, low and slow and lilting. Birds chirped amid plucked cords and the sound of whistling. It wakened a longing in him, new and old and heavy. It filled him with haze of haste, thick and fast and heady. Try he did to look again, to the Tree unending. Still he failed, but that was fine! Time and song were with him.

He would turn to rock and dust before he missed the chance to sing the Melody, especially a song of such a sort that he had heard before!

He'd never thought to hear in full this number. His father-guide was singing up his sire!

The flute began its round and so he was resolved. From guess and memory he saw the coming rounds. Good songs needed a drum to roll. For want of such, though, hop on a stepping stone! There were none here and the lake was deep, but if stepping stones he wants then stones he'll get. Many are in the world for Water Paths to call, even in haste!

He stood until the third beat and then he jumped. And when his feet struck the lake atop, water splashed at his feet but he did not drop, and the thump was like the very drum he wanted heard.

The sound rippled all over the lake everlasting. So he stepped forth again, once, twice, thrice and hop again! When the lute joined in answer to the woodwind, his rhythm was all set. Step by beat by step he wended, then hop a drum and tread again and on. Hop and stomp and stomp and drum the steps until chord and woodwind joined in one. The lute then first went still. Upwards went whistles long and clear. But chords sounded regardless, even as fiddles long since quiet were heard once more across time and memory, singing upwards from lake and light for all around to see. So forth until mid-way through the melody. So forth until he stood mid-way to the far shore. All the while, the rusted axe grew hot and bright in hand so he let it free.

There was no death under the light of the First Tree.

It fell with a splash to parts and times unknown, exchanged but not with tools dropped forth by him of old.

And so, half-way to shore and mid-through longest note, it was his hand that took and plucked the chord.

Sound elsewise stopped. No else played on. Far lute fell still. The woodwind ceased. Grass and cloak whirled roundwise as surprise and marvel seized his guide-father and his father far on the shore ahead.

And so naught was heard in the Glade Everlasting, save chords plucked by his clever fingers and their echo ere long. It flew onwards and back across the Glimmering Lake, unbreached by beast or bird calls known. Joy filled his breast until he felt like bursting, pride and delight filling him wholly at the act. He'd brought the All to total hush! And look at guide-father, stock-still and stood astonished at his stunt. Surprised to see him, awed and stunned. The chants of kin rose up through Water paths from elsewhen at the sight. A sight so wondrous but so odd! By deeps and skies, he'd made him proud!

So proud that he missed his cue to pick back up. It was the strangest and most shocking sight he'd ever seen in his life.

But they were not bereft. Guide-father's father stood beside, and he was right alert. Guide-father's flute he took, thick and long and speckled. He brought it up to breathe and play just as his part was settled.

Fast then surged the melody, off and quick a-rising. Forth strode guide-father's own lord, was he really smiling? Shook himself the Singer then, moved to stand aside him. Pulled he did from water clear, fiddle long and gleaming.

Thus did three join in and played into memory, instruments entwined through Song and Melody. He could not fathom it growing even richer still, but it did. Drumming leaps drowned more in song than splashwater. Flute sung high only to be out-sung in turn. Guide-father's fiddle rose and rose thereafter, strong and grand and challenging to All. And as it did, guide-father's gaze was locked on him, sharp, firm and inspiring until it seemed to him as if his kinsmen were all there beside him. Young and old out of time and memory, they sung along, beat on their greatest drums and chanted in one voice.

Then came the peak. And it was all the wonder he could have hopes to hear.

It was not jarring. Nor was it sudden. But it stood out all the same just for its source. It came from on high. It came as a reprise of all the tunes already told. It came from a leaf blown. How proper for surroundings such as these, its own!

It was glorious and spoke of minds and hearts already joined. It filled every gap between the notes they hadn't known, blending everything together in its own, joyous pattern at odds with nothing of itself unlike every other song he could ever care to name.

His eyes were drawn unerringly to the source.

It was above. On high. Iarwain Ben-adar. Orald. Forn. He who is Eldest and knew the world when it was nameless. Perched high atop the greatest of the bough of the First Tree well aloft.

He was lying haphazardly on his back with one leg hanging astride the branch, swinging lazily and seeming as if his big, yellow boot was just about to fall off. The only other detail he could see of him was a bit of his brown beard sticking out from under the hat covering his face, and even that was almost hidden behind his blue coat and its rumpled color. The incongruous sight struck him dumb and jarred him out of dream and kin chants. The ancient didn't even deign to look at them!

He almost forgot to resume his lute song. It would have ruined the whole song just as it reached the very end, so jarring the scene was. Fortunately, he didn't miss his cue – alas poor guide father! – and the song reached its end thorough and true. But he himself didn't.

"Akhrâm'addad!" The moment his final chord elapsed, he tossed the lute out in the sand and charged with a joyous cry. His booted stomps carried him over the last step stones, past the beach sands and leaping forward in a rush. Guide-father barely had time to brace. It would have availed him none anyway, so small and light as he ever was. But that was alright. He was old hand at this. He knew best out of all how to judge speed and spans.

His sprint ended with him sliding the last stretch knees-first and his arms around guide-father's midriff. To the depths with deportment, who cared about scuffed knees? Light, life and love, he has all of it here! Even if he has to spend the rest of his days all in this kay, what else but joy should he feel for living again after he died to the black king? His guide-father was here. Guide-father sings again and now he lives again. His father's father too! Father of his guide-father. Grandfather? He couldn't wait to meet him! Let him live deep while he lives. Let him spend years just basking in the strong beat of glad hearts of his most dear. Let him feel the taste of ripe meat on his tongue even, the sweet tang of mead to see him through long weeks, because why not? For all the noise she made about the dwarrow and their axes on her trees, the Queen of the Earth didn't seem to balk at creating a whole slew of meat-eating horrors to torment, murder and strip the flesh off the more meek and peaceful of her creatures. Why, it was enough to drive one to-

"LOOKOUT BELOW!"

Tom Bombadil suddenly belly-flopped in the lake.

The water burst mightily outward in a gigantic flux, then back and upward in a huge spout only when it was already too late for the rest of them. A literal tidal wave as tall as five dwarves atop one another swept forth and washed them off the inner isle's beach. He barely had time to sputter and spin madly in the current, unknowing of here everyone else disappeared. Too soon it seemed like he was sinking back into depths unfathomed. And before he could think of spitting out some air to follow to the top, the Master passed underneath him. He was looking up straight at him with smile blithe and bright as the rest of him, fully seen in the deepening dark as if he stood in the noon sun.

That was as far as his mind got before Tom Bombadil used a cane of wood to bump him on the brow, and up and up he fell.

He burst out of the water a choking, coughing, sputtering mess, and struggling to disentangle himself from some roots or other that he didn't remember being there. Or anywhere. Drenched or not, though, the dwarf immediately began to feel very hot as well. There had also once been armies of flies buzzing round his ears, but now they were dead silent. Sleepiness fought his attempt to stand every step of the way, but he struggled as mightily as he could to break its hold. Even as his mind unfogged, though, he struggled to take in his surroundings. An eerily gentle noise was on the edge of his hearing, nothing like the Music in the dream. And what a time to dream a dream! How had he dozed? When? Why?

The last thing he remembered since Thorin and company caught up to them and gave them a piece of his mind was fighting through his drowsiness to go check on the ponies. He recalled that two had wandered off and he had just caught them and brought them back when he heard the loud noise of something heavy falling into the water. The other noise was like the snick of a lock when a door quietly snaps shut. More of the same then alarmed him enough to rush back to the bank. That's when he found Dori in the water close to the edge, with a great tree-root that had sprung over him out of nowhere. He also remembered that Dori hadn't been struggling either, even though he was drowning. He'd had to drag the big dwarf back onto the bank. But there was something else. Something important he wasn't remembering.

The details of the dream fought him as well, every time he tried to grasp at them. This, though, at least was nothing new. When it came to dreams he seldom remembered anything, save when he dreamed of dreaming, and even then he rarely kept anything but knowing of the strangeness of such vagaries in the waking world. Odd and fancy turns of word sometimes bubbled, like right now, but this was not the time for such rumination! He lifted his heavy eyes to find the sight of the old and hoary willow-tree. He had somehow wound up on the other side of the stream. The company had camped under it after Thorin and the rest finally found to the pair of them. Not that it was much of a task, lost and wandering dumbly through the woods as they had ended up. The only surprise was how quickly they had caught up.

Kili's addled thoughts cleared by the expedient of Bofur crashing down next to him with a splash.

"Gah!" the dwarf sputtered, stumbling to his feet in the brackish water. "Mahal wept! The tree! It threw me in!"

"Do you know, my prince," Dori had said, memory finally alight in his mind. "The beastly tree threw me in! I felt it. The big root just twisted round and tipped me in!"

Tree…

"… The willow!"

Kili and Bofur waded back to the bank as fast as they could, only to find barely half the company not stuck or trapped or lost somehow. Even worse was understanding the click that he had heard before he went under. Dwalin had vanished! The crack by which he had laid himself had closed together, so that not a chink could be seen. And Thorin too at some point, though no one was sure if he'd gone the same way or not. Even worse off than everyone left was Fili, who was trapped! Another crack had closed about his waist. His legs lay outside, but the rest of him was inside a dark gap, the edges of which gripped like a pair of jaws.

"Fire!" Kili gasped, an ember bursting out of his numb mind. "We need fire!" His eyes fell on the doused campfire. "What happened to the fire!?"

"We tried!" Ori wailed from nearby, standing crookedly and rubbing his eyes in wide-eyed panic. "The Willow almost split Fili in half!"

Suddenly the branches of the willow began to sway violently. There was a sound as of a wind rising and spreading outwards to the branches of all the other trees nearby, as though the anger of the willow tree was out to spread over the whole Forest. Everything from reeds to low and hanging vines started fluttering and moving about, grappling and twisting at their limbs. The branches of the great willow also started lashing about, as if to strike them down. At the same time, great roots began to break out through the ground, hitting, tripping and drawing increasingly foul cursing from everyone that nonetheless could little mask the panic rising fast. Kili had to throw himself backwards, and even then he stumbled and fell on his back.

Then, without any clear idea of why he did so, or what he hoped for, Kili took off at a run along the path crying for help. "Help! Help! Help!" He almost couldn't hear the sound of his own shrill voice: it was swallowed up by the willow-wind and drowned in a rush of leaves and winding stems almost before the words left his mouth. He had never felt a panic as terrible as this!

Suddenly, though, he came to a halt. It might have been jut wishful thinking, but it sounded almost like there was an answer! But it seemed to come from behind him, from deeper in the Forest at his back. Beofre he could wonder if he was going mad, though, Bofur and Ori both jerked and rushed to join him where he stood. Soon, there could be no doubt: someone was singing a song. A smooth, whimsical voice was singing carelessly and happily.

Then he started wondering if he was mad all over again because it was… The song was…

Hey then! What's this then, gone thunk-a-clanking?

Fight anon, come abscond, bad be that graftling!

Old man, Willow-man, wrong grown the sapling!

Half hopeful and half afraid of some new lunacy, Kili, Ori, Bofur and all the rest of the dwarves not snared by the creature one by one now all went still. Suddenly, amidst the sinisterly merry summation of their irreparable situation, the voice rose up loud and clear and burst into song.

Hey! Come dreary lot! Waterlogged Hadhodrim!

Fast comes the weather-wind and the storm a-roaring.

Down aright atop the Hill, singing forth the sundown,

There my clever son there is, Bombadillo's scion,

Clear glimmer amidst the dew, brightest at the sundown.

Bungo Baggins I, hapless guests a-wrangling,

Come to take you to my boy, can you hear me calling?

Hey! Come dreary lot, brook-doused sods out of your mines,

Bilbo, Bilbo, Bilbo, busy is amidst the skeins!

Grumpy Willow-man, you tuck your roots away!

Bungo's on a mission now, no Tom on the way.

Bombadillo home he is, crowning his sweet darling.

Tantrum yours my business is, do you hear me laughing?

The dwarves stood as if enchanted. The wind puffed out. The leaves hung silently again on stiff branches. There was another burst of song, and then suddenly, hopping and dancing along the path, there appeared above the reeds a beaked, velvety hood. With another hop and bound there came into view a hobbit more hobbitish than any they had ever seen, or so he seemed. He was as short as war proper, as tall as was proper, as jolly as was proper, as barefoot as was proper, and he strode ten times as silent as all of them combined on their best day, his leathery soles passing through grass like gliding on a breeze. His coat was greener than grass, his honey-brown hair peeked out from under his cowl, his face was creased with wrinkles of laughter, and his eyes were even greener than everything else on him. With one hand he stroked the tops of cattails and reeds as he passed, while the other held a bag over the shoulder by the strap.

"Help!" cried Ori and Bofur, running towards him with hands stretched, having clearly heard and understood not a word of what the newcomer was saying. Kili stood ramrod straight, feeling like he wanted nothing more but to lay down and dream at the worst time all over again.

"Well now, steady there!" cried the unexpected hobbit, holding up one hand, and Ori and Bofur stopped short as if they had been struck stiff. "Now, my hefty fellows puffing like a bellows, what's the matter here then? Do you know who I am? I'm Bungo Baggins. Tell me what's your trouble! Hurry now, storm and miscreants are afoot. You don't want to be caught out here if you've any sense!"

"Our friends are caught in the willow-tree," cried Ori breathlessly. "Fili's being squeezed in a crack!"

"One of me brothers is gone too!" gasped Bofur. "Tossed in the water, like half of the Company! And those who got through only got snared in the roots! Glon and Balin fought past, but I can't see anything of them anymore!"

"Oh dear," sighed Bungo Baggins, slipping past them towards the strife. "Old Man Willow! I knew it would be him! Tom would freeze his marrow cold if he were here, sing his roots off, sing a wind up and blow leaf and branch away. No matter, that can soon be mended. I know my own tune for him. Old Grey Willow-man! I'll sing him round his madness, back to the gloom and cowardice of his yester-yore if he doesn't behave himself. Old Man Willow!" Setting down his bag carefully on the grass, the hobbit ran to the tree. Low vines tried to trap him but they shied back at his glare. Hanging boughs tried to smack him but the hobbit leaned away and lashed back at the branches, tearing out a long sprig at the base as he bounded over and past dwarves snared and fallen. There he saw Fili's feet still sticking out — the rest had already been drawn further inside. Bungo put his mouth to the crack and began singing into it in a low voice. They could not catch the words, but evidently Fili was aroused. His legs began to kick. Bungo sprang away, and with the hanging branch he'd claimed before, smote the side of the willow. "You let them out again, Old Grey Willow-man!" he said, smiting once each tell. "What be you a-thinking of? You should not be waking. Eat earth! Dig deep! Drink water! Go to sleep! Master here I may not be, but my song is the Song all the same and I say Sleep!" He then seized Fili's feet and drew him out of the suddenly widening crack.

There was a tearing creak and two more cracks split open on the opposite sides of the large trunk, and out of it Thorin and Dwalin sprang as if they had been kicked. The earth thudded heavily as they crashed upon it, grunting breathlessly as if taking their first air in too long. Then with a loud snap the cracks closed fast again, a shudder ran through the tree from root to tip, and complete silence fell.

There was dead quiet as the dwarves of Thorin's company picked themselves off the ground and out of snares and water, bar one that was nowhere in sight but none had mind enough left to mind.

Bungo Baggins tsked. "I do so wish only one problem presented itself at a time. The world and life would be so much more orderly then. Alas that neither is prone to such abstract notions as orderliness and convenience." The hobbit shook his head. "Well, my big fellows!" he said, tilting his head so that he peered into their faces from beneath his hood, clean and unruffled as though he'd undergone nothing untoward. "You shall come with me! Worry not for your straggler, I know wherefore he rests. He'll be with you anon, alive and true, more so I dare say than ever! But that's all the talk you're getting now, storm approaches and night will find us soon. Tom's table is all laden with yellow cream, honeycomb, and white bread and butter. He and Goldberry are waiting on my son, but my son waits on me so I am done a-tarrying! Time enough for questions around the dinner table. You follow after me as quick as you are able!" With that the hobbit picked up his bag, and then with a beckoning wave of his hand went off along the path eastward, humming and singing as he traipsed.

Too surprised, relieved and tired to talk, Kili looked along with everyone else to Thorin who glared tiredly back at him for getting them into this mess even as he hugged Fili close to his chest, murmuring stilted somethings. But he gave a weary nod all the same, however grudging, so all followed after the hobbit as fast as they could.