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Spring Awakenings  by daw the minstrel

I borrow characters and settings from Tolkien, but they are his, not mine. I gain only the enriched imaginative life that I assume he intended me to gain.

Many thanks to Nilmandra for beta reading this chapter. 

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8.  Flood

A hand shook his shoulder gently.  “Legolas,” Annael’s voice urged, “wake up.”

Legolas’s eyes snapped suddenly into focus, and he saw Annael bending over him, looking concerned.  “What is it?” he demanded, years as a warrior who needed to come alert instantly standing him in good stead now.

Annael grimaced.  “Galivion sent me to fetch you. You need to come at once.  Some of the food has been stolen, and there are signs that the thieves were Men.”

For a minute, Legolas gaped at him, unable to take in what he was being told.  “What do you mean, ‘stolen’?  How could Men possibly have stolen food out from under the noses of Elven guards?”

“It seems there were no guards,” Annael told him, somewhat dryly.  “Anyr told Galivion that it never occurred to him that anyone would steal from them.”

Legolas was normally even tempered, but he suddenly found that events in this settlement had been too much for him, and he wanted to take someone by the throat and shake sense into them, although he was not yet quite sure who it would be.  He spat a word he had learned from his bodyguard, Beliond, who possessed a spectacularly large and colorful vocabulary.  The corners of Annael’s mouth quirked, and he raised an eyebrow as he stepped back to allow Legolas room to rise. Legolas flung his blanket aside, pulled on his shoes, picked up his weapons, and followed Annael down from their flet toward the one where the food was stored.

“Have I overslept?” he asked Annael, seeing that there were Elves stirring on the flets around them.  The sky was so dark with clouds that it was difficult to judge the time from the position of the sun, but his innate sense of time suggested that it was not much past dawn.

“No,” Annael answered.  “Anyr has been rousing his people early because the Men have asked for help in building another barrier against the rising river.  I told him to leave you alone because you are supposed to be on leave after all.”  Annael’s tone was full of the sympathy and indignation that one warrior feels for another whose leave has been cut short, and even through his rising anger, Legolas felt grateful affection for his friend.  “Beside,” Annael added, sending a sly sideways glance at Legolas, “you were out late last night.”

Legolas could not help smiling but he offered no explanation, and Annael contented himself with an answering smile.  They were approaching their destination now, and Legolas sobered as he looked ahead and saw a tight-lipped Galivion standing between Anyr and an angry Tinár.  Several other Elves from the settlement were watching the scene uneasily.

“The Men would never have stolen our food,” Anyr was protesting. “They are our neighbors.”

“Then what do you make of the tracks?” Tinár demanded.  “Surely even you are competent enough to see that they are Mannish?”  An indignant murmur arose from the onlookers.

This could not continue, Legolas thought irately, hearing their anger and seeing the beginnings of resentment even on Anyr’s placid face.  “Silence!” he snapped, and Tinár turned to him in surprise.

“Did Annael not tell you what this fool has allowed to happen?” Tinár asked.

“I said ‘silence,’ and I mean that you are to hold your tongue!” Legolas cried, stepping close to Tinár and leaning into him as he had occasionally seen Ithilden do when reprimanding warriors, and indeed as his brother had, on rare occasions, done to Legolas too.  The technique seemed to work on Tinár, just as it always had on Legolas, because his mouth dropped open and he blinked at Legolas in astonishment, but he did stop talking.  Legolas had the fleeting thought that he was going to have to tell Ithilden what had happened and ask him not to assign Tinár to any patrol in which Legolas was serving.  He did not see how they could go back to being fellow warriors after this little episode.

He glanced at Galivion, who looked none too pleased himself but had a diplomat’s sense of what should and should not be said.  Galivion gestured toward Anyr.  “Anyr will tell you what has happened, my lord,” he said in a neutral tone.

The settlement leader’s brows drew together in perplexity.  “When the Elves who were to fix the morning meal went to get the supplies, they found that the two large sacks of dried meat were missing.  I cannot understand it. Perhaps they have just been misplaced.”

Tinár snorted but said nothing, and Legolas could see Galivion’s mouth tighten as if he too were having trouble keeping quiet. “Were there signs of an intruder?” Legolas demanded.

“Tinár and I found tracks,” Annael told him, gesturing toward the side of the flet where the forest was thickest.

Legolas started to follow Annael in the direction he had indicated but halted when Tinár began to move with them.  “Wait here, Tinár,” Legolas said, his irritation growing even further. “We do not want the tracks any more disturbed than they have already been.”  Galivion caught at Tinár’s arm and held him, or Legolas was not altogether sure that the obnoxious warrior would not have followed him despite his orders.  Legolas went to where Annael was waiting, crouched over a muddy spot behind the bushes near the flet where the food had been stored.

As Legolas approached, Annael pointed to the ground.  “Here and here, you see?”  Legolas squatted next to him to look at the marks that lay at the edges of some of the previous year’s fallen leaves.  “Two people, I think. They were trying to be careful, but they were not careful enough,” Annael observed, “and you can see, the prints are Mannish.”  Legolas had to take only one look to know that Annael was right.

“Have you followed them at all to see where they lead?” he asked.

Annael shook his head.  “I was with Galivion and Tinár, coming back from washing in the stream, when we found the excitement by the food storage flet.  Galivion sent me for you right away.”

They both stood up, and Legolas looked off into the woods with his face grim.  Someone had stolen food that Elves had sacrificed to provide.  Children needed that meat.  The muscles in the backs of his shoulders tightened as his fury rose.  The thieves would not be allowed to get away with their offense, and Legolas did not care if they were Anyr’s neighbors.  It was one thing if the settlement Elves chose to share what they had been given, although that was still a problem, but it was quite another if the Men were helping themselves.

“Take Tinár with you and find out where they went,” he ordered, hearing the tightness in his own voice.  “Galivion and I will go to the Men’s village with Anyr and see if we can learn anything.”  Annael nodded and beckoned to Tinár, who came toward them at a trot with his gaze fixed resolutely away from Legolas.

“Let us see where the tracks lead,” Annael told him, and Tinár nodded with obvious satisfaction in his face.  Legolas suspected he had wanted to go after the thieving Men without waiting for orders from anyone. He supposed he could ask Galivion if that were true, but he was not sure he wanted to deal with knowing anything more about Tinár’s difficult behavior.  Annael and Tinár immediately disappeared into the trees going north from the settlement.

Legolas returned to where Galivion and Anyr were waiting.  “They will track the thieves,” he told Anyr.  “Galivion and I will go with you to the Men’s village.”

The settlement leader nodded, apparently dismissing all thoughts of the theft from his mind as something for which Legolas had now taken responsibility.  “Morning meal is being served in the clearing where the children play,” he said. “Let us get something to eat and then we will go. The Men are trying to keep the river out,” he added with apparent amusement as he began leading them away.  “They want us to help in filling bags with sand to build a barrier. I do not think it will do much good, but it makes the Men happy to try.”  Behind Anyr’s back, Galivion actually rolled his eyes, making it clear to Legolas that he, too, was nearing the end of his patience with the whole situation.

In the clearing on the small rise, a large pot stood over a fire and an Elf was ladling porridge from it into bowls for Elvish children and adults alike.  As Legolas approached, Tuilinn entered the clearing with four Mannish children in her care, including the two little ones Legolas had seen her detach from Ethau’s cloak on the previous day when Tinár had accused the Man of stealing the vegetables. Legolas wondered now if he should have paid more attention to Tinár.  That thought did not improve his testy mood.

He got a bowl of porridge and was turning away from the campfire when Tuilinn approached him, having sent the children to get their morning meal.  For a moment, warmth rushed through him and he smiled at her hopefully, but her face was serious this morning.  “Is it true that you think that Men have stolen some of the food?” she asked without preamble.  The tone of her voice made the question sound like an accusation.

He was even more annoyed by her lack of response to his smile than he was by her tone.  “Two bags of dried meat are missing and there are Mannish footprints near the flet,” he snapped. “What would you think?”

She flushed.  “I am very sorry that the food is missing, because I know the king sacrificed to send it and people here need it.  But I do not believe the Men from the village would have taken it.  That is just not like them.”

“I will not accuse them without proof,” he said stiffly, “but if they did take it, then I can assure you that they will regret their actions.”

“But they would not do it,” she persisted.  “It has to have been someone else.”

His patience was at an end.  “I do not know that and neither do you,” he said sharply.  Then he stepped around her and went to sit next to Galivion.  Only his awareness of how precious food was made him choke down the porridge in his bowl.  How could he ever have thought that Tuilinn was gentle and sweet? he asked himself angrily.  She was as stubborn and foolish as Anyr, and he wanted nothing more to do with her.  He glanced to where she was making sure the children were eating and found her turning her head sharply away as if she had just been looking at him.

“Are you ready?” Anyr asked, coming to stand in front of Legolas and Galivion.  The other adults and the older children were all gradually leaving the clearing on the trail to the Men’s village.  Legolas nodded grimly and rose.  He intended to question the Men thoroughly about the theft.  Anyr and Tuilinn might be both soft-hearted and soft-headed, but he was his father’s representative here and no one had ever accused Thranduil of being either of those things.

At that moment, the skies opening and rain began to pour down upon them. Wonderful, he thought.  That is just what I needed.  He pulled up the hood of his cloak, and without a backward glance at the maiden, he followed Anyr toward the Men’s village with Galivion close behind him.

The walk took over half an hour, and by the time they got to the Men’s village, Legolas’s cloak was soaked and rain was dripping off his hood.  He was so absorbed in his own anger and discomfort that it took him a minute to realize that they had emerged from the forest onto the edge of the grasslands where the village lay.  He stopped dead in his tracks, and next to him Galivion sucked in his breath.

The devastation before them was beyond anything Legolas could have imagined.  The banks of the river were even lower here than they were at the Elven settlement, and the flood waters of three days ago had evidently risen high and fast when the barrier holding the river back had been breached.  Directly in front of Legolas, lodged against a large rock, was what had once been a small wooden cottage.  It lay with its walls collapsed in upon one another and its roof in pieces on top of the other debris.  As he looked at it, he realized that the force of the rushing water had torn it from wherever it had once stood and swept it to rest in its current location.

Despite several days of cleanup efforts, debris still lay everywhere.  Uprooted trees mixed with washtubs and broken benches and the rubble of rocks from the river. Legolas saw a child’s cot tangled with the pieces of a wagon.  Moreover, mud covered everything, although it was now washing off in streaks in the pelting rain.  Muddy water still stood in pools around the cleared area where the Men had been trying to put the pieces of their lives back together.

To their right lay the river, and Legolas could hear its warning roar from where he stood. It had risen alarmingly since he had last seen it, and only the barrier the Men had erected along its edge now kept it from sweeping through the village again.  Elves and Men worked together in feverish haste, shoveling sand into bags and then piling them along the edge of the rushing water.

“Shall we look for Crydus?” Galivion asked, sounding for once uncertain.  His eyes met Legolas’s, and Legolas saw the same dismay he felt.

“We can look for him later,” he decided.  “Just now, I think we need to help these people.”

“I could not agree more, my lord,” Galivion answered, and the two of them hastened to the river’s edge to join the others.  Legolas picked up a shovel and Galivion seized one of the roughly sewn bags that lay in a nearby pile.  Then the advisor held the bag open while Legolas shoveled sand into it.  When the bag was full, Galivion tied the top in a knot and heaved it into place on top of the wall of bags that stood about three feet high, and they started again.

For an immeasurable amount of time, Legolas labored at building the wall that was meant to protect the Men’s village.  He shoveled and then he traded places with Galivion and handled the bags while Galivion shoveled.  All the while the rain fell and river rose.

As he worked, he found himself thinking about Tuilinn with regret.  I should not have snapped at her, he thought.  She was only saying what she thought.  She was concerned about these people, and she knows them far better than I do, after all. A hand touched his arm, and he jerked around to find Annael standing next to him with Tinár just behind him.  He had been so absorbed in his thoughts that he had not heard them approach. Galivion drew near to hear what they had to report.

“We followed the tracks,” Annael told them.  “They led north and then disappeared in a stream. The thieves apparently waded in it in an attempt to hide their trail.  We looked for a mile or so in either direction and could not find them again.”

Legolas frowned at him.  “So they did not come in the direction of this village?”

Annael shook his head. “Not that we found.”

“But they could have come here,” Tinár insisted stridently.

And suddenly the strain and frustrations of the last two days became entirely too much for Legolas. He rounded on Tinár almost gleefully, glad of having a likely target for his anger.  “We have no evidence that any of these Men took the food, Tinár,” he spat, “and until we do, you will cease speaking of them with anything other than the respect due to allies of your king.”  He moved in closer, narrowed his eyes, and dropped his voice to a hiss.  “You will cease accusing them and being rude to them, and if I see you so much as looking at them with a sneer on your face, I will report you to the troop commander for disrupting a mission that your king has decided is vital and for refusing to follow orders. And,” he added, seeing that Tinár was about to protest, “the orders you will follow are mine, because I am in charge here.  When we go home, the situation will be different, but here you are to act as if when I speak to you, I am speaking with the voice of Thranduil himself. Do I make myself clear?”

Tinár must have seen something of the fire Legolas felt in his eyes because he swallowed convulsively.  “Perfectly clear.”

“Good.  Now get a shovel and start making yourself useful.”  With that, Legolas turned his back on Tinár and picked up his own shovel to start work again. When he glanced back a few seconds later, Tinár was scooping sand into a bag that Annael was holding open.  He did not look happy, but he was doing as he had been told.  Legolas found that he felt better.  He was still wet and two bags of meat were still missing, but those were things he could not remedy at the moment, whereas it turned out he could remedy the annoyance he felt at Tinár.

Galivion held a bag open for Legolas. “Well done, my lord,” he murmured.  “Lord Ithilden could not have done it better.”  Legolas threw him a surprised look.  He admired his oldest brother’s self-assurance and authoritative manner, and he never thought of himself as being even remotely like him.  He bent to his work, feeling better than he had felt all day.

As his thoughts drifted to Tuilinn again, a sudden question struck him.  “Galivion,” he asked hesitantly, “do you know if Anyr left anyone to help Tuilinn with the children?  Surely he did not leave her with them by herself.  The river must be rising there too, even if the ground is higher than here.”

Galivion frowned. “I do not know. In truth, though, Anyr’s strong point does not seem to be planning for possible problems.”

Legolas gave a rueful smile at this understatement.  “I think I may go back to the settlement to check on her and the children.  You stay here though.  The Men need all the help they can get.”  Galivion nodded and moved off to take a shovel from an obviously exhausted Man.  Legolas had been startled today to see how easily the Men tired compared to the Elves.  He glanced at the rising wall of sandbags that was so far holding the river at bay. The rain was easing, and that should help somewhat, but they still had to survive the flow of water from upstream.

He started back along the path leading to the Elven settlement.  Now that he thought about it, he was really worried.  By this time, the water must surely be over the banks at the settlement. The children usually stayed on somewhat higher ground, but it was not all that high.  They could take refuge on a flet, of course.  If they had not done so already, he would suggest to Tuilinn that it might be a good idea.  His heart beat a little faster at the idea of seeing her. He would apologize for being snappish earlier, he thought.

The path sloped down slightly, and suddenly he was wading in water up to his ankles.  He stared at the water in dismay.  He could not see very far down the path here because it turned, but he could see that dark water was lapping at the trees on either side of it. Increasingly concerned, he lifted himself into a nearby oak and climbed until he reached a spot where he had a clear view of the scattered parts of the settlement.

He looked first toward the river, and although he knew where it was, he could no longer see its borders because its waters had overflowed and spread to either side in a wide, brown lake.  Judging by how high it reached on a cottage wall, the water was more than two feet deep and was rising fast. Even as Legolas looked, it swept a fallen tree limb past the cottage, tearing off one of the shutters in the process.

For a moment, he stood on the oak branch, frozen in shock. Because the sandbags were keeping the water out at the Men’s village, he had not realized how high it would be here. Then he began to move hastily through the trees, jumping from branch to branch in the direction of the clearing where Tuilinn normally cared for the children.  He judged that he was about half way there when he heard a child crying from off to his right, and he immediately veered in that direction.

As he approached the sound, he slowed, scanning to both sides.  Through the screen of branches, his eye was caught by movement, and when he drew close, he saw that he was nearing a flet occupied by four small children.  Three of them were Elves, but the fourth was the little girl he had seen clinging to her father’s cloak on the previous day.  It was she who was crying.

“Tuilinn!” she sobbed.  “I want Tuilinn, and I want Talet too.”  One of the Elvish children, whom Legolas recognized as Ródien, had his arms around her, but his eyes were big with fear.

“Tuilinn is coming back, Astiaa. She said so. We have to be brave.”

Legolas descended hastily to land on the flet, startling them all.  Astiaa stopped crying and they all turned quickly toward him with alarmed faces.  Then Ródien brightened.  “It is one of the warriors who came from the king,” he said in an awe-struck tone.

Legolas smiled at them as reassuringly as he could.  “Where is Tuilinn?” he asked.  He was astounded that the maiden could have been so careless as to leave these little ones here by themselves.

“She went back to get Talet,” Astiaa blurted.

“And the other Mannish children too,” Ródien added.  “They cannot climb very well, and they cannot travel through the trees, but then we are too little to do that yet either, and Tuilinn says they can do other things, so we must be kind.”

Legolas looked down at the quickly rising water and felt a sudden stab of fear.  He had seen Tuilinn with four Mannish children that morning, and only Astiaa, the smallest of them, was already on the flet.  He could not imagine how Tuilinn was going to get three children through the flood on her own.

He looked at the four children who were watching him with round eyes.  Astiaa was hiccupping a little.  He hated to leave them on their own, but he did not see what else he could do. He felt faintly guilty for his earlier judgmental thoughts about Tuilinn.  He could only image what she must have felt when she had gotten these little ones here and then had to leave them to go back for the others.

“I will go and find Tuilinn,” he told them. “You must all stay here and take care of one another.” For a moment, he thought that Astiaa in particular was going to protest, but Ródien nodded.

“Yes, captain,” he pledged for all of them. Legolas could not quite suppress a smile at the promotion Ródien had just so generously given him.

“I will be back very soon with the other children and Tuilinn too,” he promised and then took to the trees again, moving toward the clearing where he had seen the children that morning.  He had traveled most of the way when he caught sight of Tuilinn. She had a child on each arm and a third one, whom he recognized as Astiaa’s brother, Talet, clinging to her waist as she struggled through the water that was swirling around her halfway up Talet’s chest.  When Legolas spotted her, she had stopped and was trying to shift the children so she could pick up Talet too.

He scrambled hastily to the ground and waded toward her. “Tuilinn!” he called, and when she turned toward him, her face sagged with relief.

“Take Talet,” she nearly sobbed, jerking her head toward the child.  Legolas scooped up the little boy and then took a second child too from Tuilinn’s arms.  Talet was shaking and wordless with terror.  He flung his arms around Legolas’s neck and buried his face in his rescuer’s shoulder.  The other child was a little girl. Her lower lip was trembling, and she was biting it in an effort not to cry.

“Can you go carry that child through the trees?”  Legolas asked.

“Not safely,” Tuilinn said, her voice shaking. “She is too little to hang on by herself, and I need both hands to go that way safely.”

“Then we will walk,” he said, his voice as reassuring as he could make it.  “Go!”  He waited until she had started moving and then followed behind her, keeping an eye on her and his arms tightly around his two precious burdens.  “Astiaa is waiting for you,” he murmured to Talet, rubbing his cheek against the child’s hair. “I will have to tell her how brave you are being.”  The little boy lifted his tear-streaked face for a moment and then buried it against him again.

Ahead of him, Legolas could see Tuilinn dodging out of the way of a broken tree branch being swept along in the flood and threatening to knock her down.  The water rose steadily, and by the time they reached the flet, it had reached the top of Legolas’s thighs.  He looked up to see four small, pale faces peering over the edge of the flet.  “Talet,” Astiaa cried.  Her brother looked up at her but said nothing.

“Wait!” Legolas called to Tuilinn, who was shifting the child she carried in her arms, plainly making ready to try to climb to the flet with her.  He handed the little girl he carried to Tuilinn.  “I will take Talet up and then come back for you and the others,” he said and was away before she could protest.

He emerged onto the flet and then, carefully, he bent and set Talet on his feet. For a second, he thought he was going to have to pry the little boy’s arms from him neck, but abruptly, he let go and stumbled into the arms of his little sister.  “Do not worry, Astiaa,” he said, in the first words he had spoken since Legolas had picked him up. “I will take care of you.”

Legolas did not linger but made his way to the ground again as quickly as he could and snatched a second child from Tuilinn’s arms.  The water was tugging at all of their legs, and he felt a stab of panic that, burdened as she was with the last child, she might not be able to keep her feet.  He put his free arm around her shoulders and steered her toward a fork in the trunk of the tree.  “Brace yourself in the fork,” he ordered and made sure she was securely wedged before he took the child he was carrying to the flet. 

By the time he got to the ground again, the water was swirling at Tuilinn’s waist. He jumped into the water and took the last child.  “Go!” he ordered, prodding Tuilinn, whose anxious eyes were still on the little girl. “I will bring her.”

Tuilinn looked at him with huge grey eyes, and then turned to clamber up the tree, her soaked gown clinging to her legs.  Legolas came up right behind her and set the last child down.  He turned to see Tuilinn sink to the flet as if her legs would hold her no more.  For the moment, he ignored the children and crouched next to her and then sat and put his arms around her shaking shoulders.  “This was my third trip,” she gasped.  “I was so frightened for them.”

“They are safe,” Legolas crooned, stroking her wild hair.  “They are safe and so are you.  They were lucky to have you. No one could have been braver.”  He looked up to find seven small faces watching them solemnly.  He smiled at the children as brightly as he could.  “She will be all right,” he assured them.

Immediately, Ródien nodded. “When she is better,” he said, “will you show me your sword?”

With her face pressed against his chest, Tuilinn suddenly laughed.  She looked up at Legolas. “What will Anyr say?” she asked in mock dismay. “You have turned one of the children into a would-be warrior!”

Legolas smiled back at her.  He had decided that she was sweet after all, even when she was soaking wet and still shaking with the after effects of terror.





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