February, Year 3018 of the Third Age
Ralph returned two hours before sunup with grass in his coat and the blood of Orcs in his teeth.
Stormkettle sat in the branches of an oak and waited for him. “Anything?” she croaked.
Ralph shook his head wearily. “It is worse. Dunleadings have burnt the Westfold. I found dead men and Orcs at the Fords of Isen, and only one alive to talk, and he said nothing of use. And there is a pile of still smoking bodies at the boarder of the woods, did you see?”
Kettle tipped her beak. “Damn and blast, yes, I saw. Horse-lords came in the night, killed the lot. Bloody good show if you ask me.”
Ralph didn’t seem to be listening. He sagged where he stood, leaning against the bole of the tree. “He’s been gone for two months now, Kettle. The longer we find no sign of him the less likely that…”
Kettle resettled her plumage with a shock of snapping feathers. “F--- no!” she said violently. “Ralph, damn it, you mustn’t think like that! We’ll find him. We will.”
The wolf looked down. “Yes,” he said. “We will.”
“There is something you should know,” the raven said eventually. “We have visitors.”
Ralph’s head came up sharply. “What?”
Kettle looked steadily back at him. “Follow me.”
She took to the air and Ralph followed helplessly after her, calling soft, urgent questions that she would not answer. Eventually they came to a stop at the foot of the lookout where he had first met her.
“A figure came walking here,” she muttered, “the day after you left. Nevermore, curses, oh nevermore! He wore white and bore a staff, but was not the wizard of Isengard.”
Ralph cut a sharp look at her. “You’re sure?”
Kettle hunched deeper into her ruffled plumage. “Oh, bloody stumps, yes. Yes, yes, yes. His eyes were blue fire, bits of f---king sky, but he was kind. He spoke to Treebeard, and to me, and to the trees, though they would not answer.” She looked down at him. “They speak to none but their tree-herd and to you, when you dream, did you know?”
Ralph nodded absently. His attention was focused ahead, face turned upward to the lookout.
Kettle sighed a rusty bird-sigh. “Go and see,” she said, “I’ve got more f---ing ground to cover, and rumours of new monsters at Isengard to investigate.”
She took to the air, but Ralph hardly noticed. There was a new scent on the air, one he had never come across before. Like…like new grass and mushrooms, spring water and turned earth, and though he didn’t know it then, baking bread and clean cotton.
As he would soon find out, it was the scent of Hobbits.
---
On-Site Journal of Erin Berenger
Alpine dig-site 8, Rohirric Region, Misty Mtns
Tuesday, August 31, 2010, Seventh Age
I’m going steadily round the bend.
Last Wednesday, I thought I saw a tree with eyes.
This time, I’m pretty sure I saw one move.
Oh, gods, please don’t let it have moved. Or don’t let me be insane.
I’m honestly not sure what’s worse.
Things have been getting stranger and stranger since we found that name over at Dig 5; ‘Ralph’. You know, every time I think it, I get chills. I keep wondering if it has something to do with the jars I found…
Which makes no sense, because, honestly, why would it? What do big stone jars covered in weird super-healing residue have to do with an ‘orc-wolf’ that lived and died thousands of years ago?
And why the hell would it have anything at all to do with trees that have eyes and freaking move?
I keep feeling like the answers are here, I just can’t find them…
---
February, Year 3018 of the Third Age
Ralph stepped up onto the table top of the lookout and all movement there seemed to stop.
Treebeard gazed at him with those liquid amber eyes, giving the Entish approximation of a smile, but saying nothing.
At his feet stood a figure in blazing white robes, with a mane of matching hair and a beard that flowed past his collarbones. As Kettle had said, there was a white staff in his hand and his eyes were bright as hot noon skies. His gaze focused on Ralph with immediate interest, and the wolf was so affixed by this that he almost didn’t notice the two persons standing beside the wizard.
But then his nose reminded him to pay attention, and his eyes found them; a pair of little two-leggers, with awfully big hairy feet for those so small, and sunbursts of curly hair framing their faces. They wore clothing unlike anything Ralph had ever seen on a two-legger; waistcoats and loose trousers that only reached their shins. They and their scent – things familiar and hopelessly distant – perplexed him exceedingly.
Their expressions though, were something he was becoming familiar with.
Fear.
“Gandalf,” the smaller of the two breathed without taking his wide eyes from Ralph. He unconsciously reached back with one hand towards the wizard, who took the hand in his and patted it comfortingly.
“It is alright, Pippin,” the wizard said, in a low, rich voice. “This, I believe, is one of Treebeard’s companions, are you not, wolf?”
Ralph tipped his head – it is always wise to be polite to a wizard. “I am. My name is Ralph. I live here, and have for five years now. Might I ask who all of you are?”
The little two-leggers stared at him, eyes popping. Pippin said, “Oh, great, now wolves and trees talk.”
The wizard chuckled. “I am Gandalf the White. These are Masters Meriadoc Brandybuck and Peregrin Took, both Hobbits of the Shire.”
Ralph sat, tilting his head to one size with an air of puzzlement. “Hobbits?”
“Little Folk,” Gandalf explained further, “Halflings.”
The wolf’s jaws parted in a canine grin. “Because they are half the size of everyone else?”
“Hey!” The taller Hobbit – Meriadoc, Ralph guessed – had recovered his nerve apparently, as he glared at the wolf with bright eyes. “You can’t go ‘round just insulting folk!”
“If all folk were as bite-sized as you, I don’t think I’d have much trouble from it,” Ralph said, still grinning. “Though do forgive me, I meant nothing by it. The pair of you puzzle me though. How in Arda did you get here?”
“That,” Gandalf answered, “is a very long story, and would be best told by walking. It is a little too exposed here, for my liking.”
The wizard led both Hobbits over to Ralph, and without so much as a by-your-leave, lifted Pippin and set him on the wolf’s back, just behind his shoulder blades. He turned to look at the Halfling and the pair of them blinked at each other in mutual wide-eyed surprise.
“Err,” said Ralph.
“Um,” went Pippin.
“Much more comfortable than being carried by a tree-herder, I assure you,” Gandalf said, and lifted Meriadoc to settle him behind Pippin.
Behind the wizard, Treebeard let out a slightly grumpy ‘hroom-hoom’ but made no objection.
Gandalf smiled. “Come along,” he said, and led the whole party down from the lookout stone.
Ralph looked over his shoulder at his passengers. “Hang onto my ruff and grip with your legs,” he advised, and loped down, keeping his stride long and even.
As the descended, Ralph heard Pippin murmur, “Well, Merry, in all the ways I saw our day starting I never saw it starting like this.”
Ralph chuckled to himself.
To the east the sun rose, painting the sky red.
---
“So, wait a minute,” Pippin said, with the air of someone trying to put his ducks in a row and having very little success, “you’re a Warg?” Ralph could hear the frown in his voice. “But…you don’t look like a Warg. I’ve seen pictures you know.”
Ralph smiled. “Well, no, I suppose I am not, though my parents and siblings are Wargs.”
“How can that be?” Merry put in.
“I’ve no idea. A trick of fate, or blood.” Ralph snickered. “Or perhaps something more scandalous than Úlfa let on.”
“Úlfa?”
“My mother,” Ralph explained. “Although perhaps Hemming was not my father…” He barked a laugh, “oh, that would have stuck in his craw, the evil old sod. Ha!”
“Is that why you can speak the tongues of Men then?” Pip asked. “I didn’t think ordinary wolves could.”
“They cannot,” Treebeard put in. “They, hmmm, yes, they are simpler creatures. Ralph is something, hum-rummm, something quite new.”
“Treebeard is right,” Gandalf added. “Wargs were not always Wargs, you know. They were a great race of wolves, the warriors of their breed, taken into the service of Morgoth and bred with other darker things to make a true monster. It gave them greater intellect and powers of speech, but it also made them more bloodthirsty, more savage…though,” he laid a hand on Ralph’s shoulder, “they could not have known what would be done to them. Their beliefs played into Morgoth’s hands; they thought him a god.”
“They still do,” Ralph said quietly. “He still lives in our pantheon.”
“Wargs have gods?” Merry asked, greatly surprised.
Ralph smiled.
“They may be savage brutes, but savage brutes still have religion. It is my religion too, you know. There are still figures to be proud of there, however subjugated. Like Isangrim, the Grey Masked, who could become invisible and take the shape of a man. And Vulfolaic the Dancer, the one with stars caught in his pelt and feet that made no sound where they landed. Oh and Daciana…Daciana could sing in all tongues and breathe moonlight…”
Ralph sighed. “I always liked them better than the Sun-Eater and his warriors. Who wants to worship an overgrown world-ender and his murderous whelps?”
“Err, not me,” said Pip.
“Me either,” Merry added, “but how’s a wolf supposed to eat the sun?”
“Fenrisúflur is said to be a very big wolf. When he walked he would scrap the night sky with his ears and lightning would fork through his mane. One day, a wolf called Mánagarm, the Moon Hound, was seized by the spirit of prophecy and foretold that Fenris would grow so big that only the sun would satisfy his massive appetite…”
And so, as they walked on and on to Wellinghall, Ralph told the Hobbits stories from the wolvish elder days; some tales from before the service of Morgoth, some that had grown up in the dark and hellish breeding pits of Mordor, where wolves had stopped being wolves, and become something worse…
They were cresting a ridge – and Ralph was just coming to the climax of the tale of Larka the Snow Mistress – when there was a manic beating of wings overhead, and Kettle dropped out of the sky, coming to rest upon Treebeard’s branched shoulder.
“Ralph!” she shrieked, “I think I’ve found him!”
The wolf froze. “You’re sure?”
The raven threw out her feathers in a storm of rattling plumage. “No. No, not sure – curses, curses! – but it is better than nothing. A grey cart horse in the city of
“You don’t know for sure?”
“I daren’t get closer. They have been shooting crows of late. Ill luck, I tell you, ill luck!”
And she broke off into a stream of curses that had both Hobbits gasping.
“Kettle! Sorry,” Ralph muttered. “She does that. Gandalf, I have to go. If it really is my friend, I have to see for myself.”
“I understand,” the wizard murmured, and helped the Hobbits down from Ralph’s back. “Good luck to you, Master Wolf.”
Ralph watched as Pippin climbed back up into Treebeard’s branches, smiling and waving to him. Ralph smiled back and wagged his tail, putting his muzzle under Merry’s foot when the Hobbit missed a foothold and nudged him upwards.
“Be safe,” he said, adding over his shoulder as he took off downhill, “and don’t go annoying the huorn!”
He took off into the trees; a blur of grey with the wind at his shoulders.
The last he heard of the Hobbits was Pippin saying, “I quite like him.”
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