Image created by AI
OOC – Author’s Note:
This story recounts a live RP session held as part a weekly series called "Signs Along the Road". Each week there is a new RP hook. If you would like to come along, please reach out to Naridalis. The series does refer to the Company of the East Road and can be used as a way to ICly introduce your character to the kinship (whether you wish to join is entirely optional).
Additionally: This piece was shaped with a little help from AI. It provided assistance on things like the structuring, some names, shortening some verbose language/ideas as I'd written them, and it gave me the odd turn of phrase here and there. The heart and shape of the story are my own, but I realise it is important to be transparent about my use of AI assistance.
This Week's Hook:
"A caravan bound for Bree has gone missing upon a trail that weaves through the Chetwood. Some whisper of brigands, though no sign of raiders has been seen in these parts of late. The paths lie quiet, yet the wagons have not come through, and folk grow uneasy as goods go undelivered. With the Company’s own caravans soon to depart along this route, there is cause to ensure the way is safe, and so a scouting party will be sent ahead. The Chetwood keeps its own secrets, and it is not always kind to those looking to uncover them."
"Oath in the Chetwood"
Grandfolk in Bree will tell you that there are places in the Chetwood where the air smells wrong, and where voices carry in a way that is not right. They say a caravan went missing there near the turn of the season, when the last warm rains slipped down from the downs and the nights began to smell of leaf-mould. Most in the town shrugged and said brigands, or wolves if they wished to be kinder. Then they took their ale and minded their own business. But the Company of the East Road had a mind to send their own wagons west before winter, so they put their heads together and decided to learn what had become of the lost. No one wished to ride a path that swallowed friends and gave no word back.
They say the hunt began in the lumber camp past Combe. That the foreman, had told them what little he knew. That there had been a storm, he said, sharp and short, with wind enough to make the upper boughs of the Chetwood's largest trees tremble and creak. The caravan must have taken shelter somewhere along the lesser trails by the lake, as no one saw them on the main road. He said he hoped for the best, which is what men say when they fear the worst. He wished them luck and pointed at the track that leads deeper, where the road softens to mud and the trees crowd close.
So the Company went under the leaves. They say an elf of Lórien walked with them, quiet as a shadow and armed with a bow (Naridalis). Hobbits padded at her heels, quick-eyed and quicker with their hands when branches needed shifting or knots needed loosening (Tihovic and Garibald). Others came too. More elves if you can believe it... there was a swordmaiden (Rasberiel) and lastly another, though this one was a lot older by the looks of the light in her eyes... (Daewen) but I know little of such things myself.
The way I've heard it, the forest had that slow, listening hush that keeps tongues still. So, they marched through much of it in silence. The ground gave with a wet sound beneath their boots, and the last threads of the morning’s mist clung low over pools and wagon ruts by the time the trail bent toward the water of the lake.
The shore curved gently, green with moss and reeds that bent in the wind and traced soft lines across the water. A huge oak had fallen nearby, its roots lifted high and tangled with stones and wet soil. If you touched the trunk, you could feel a chill beneath the bark, as I hear it, and it made everyone uneasy.
Now here the tale splits a little, as it will when it is told five winters in a row beside five different fires. Some say a man stood near the roots when they arrived, with heavy shoulders and a glance that could weigh a stranger in a heartbeat. Others say he stepped out later, when the Company had gone to their knees and begun to peer among the torn roots and bush for sign of the caravan. Either way they call him a Beorning, though others scoff and say no such folk come so near to Bree Frodefast. They say he told them the birds had seen what men could not.
There was some scoffing at that point, let me tell you, though mostly from the littlefolk. For it is also told that one of the elves could speak to the birds as if to friends met on the road. T'was the older of them I think, and she had the patience for the quick chatter of the birds! Well, a small flock did she attract, and they settled along a fallen tree and listened, in their own feathered way. When the elf had finished, they say her face had grown grave, for the birds had watched the caravan huddle in a nearby hollowed great tree when the storm had come upon them. Aye, as the birds told it... the caravan had pushed their wagons into the hollow itself of the great oak by the lake. But by night another tree had come down, trapping them within. The birds did not understand where the people had gone thereafter, for they took shelter themselves.
So the Company thanked the birds and followed the lake to find the hollowed old oak; which was less a cave and more a tunnel running the length of the old oak’s heart. The Beorning was said to have followed them also.
One of the hobbits went in, as only the littlefolks have a knack for tight spots. He trusted his hands more than his eyes and moved by feel, slow as a badger in a hedge. When he came out, they say he reported that, the wagons were found within. So too were signs of bedding and cooking. The little things of life were all in place. Yet there were no people.
But when making his same way out, he happened to look up into the hollowed oak above... and they say his mouth was set open in fright! For he saw a terrible sight. He spoke low, as if the trees would hear otherwise...
He said that the bodies of the caravaneers were part of the oak. Aye... you've heard me right. PART of the old oak. Not placed there. Not laid. But bound by root and branch and taken in. Limbs and faces swallowed by living wood. He saw fingers with bark running over them. He saw a cheek pressed flat against grain as if the tree was part of it. I tell you this not to frighten you, for the telling of it made the much older folk than me afraid.
Anyway, out came the halfling then, pale as milk and shaking. He told them everything he had seen inside that hollow. The wagons, the bedding, the pots and all... but of the people he reported that they were not gone; for they were a part of the oak itself. The others listened in silence, the air heavy around them. It was clear enough then what had happened to the caravan.
They all exchanged uneasy glances, and then, as they began to spread out around the hollow to take stock of what they had found, something caught the eye of one of the elves. The swordmaiden, who had sharp eyes and a sharper patience for picking about in mire, lifted a length of chain the colour of old moonlight. Burried beneath the roots of the fallen tree that had blocked the way to the hollow it had been... and not alone was it, for a goblet lay nearby, very thin at the lip and scored with marks of old. There were other things, all with that same oldness to them. The storm had ripped them up out of the ground with the tree, but the land did not want them seen.
This is the point in the tale where the Chetwood shows its true face. For as they turned the finds over in their hands and wondered at them, the lake stirred as if a great fish had moved. Mist gathered out over the reeds and pushed inward toward the shore. It took a shape. The shape took a voice. They say it was a woman if you stood far enough back, but if you came close there was no edge to her, only the thin run of light within water, and that light kept changing. Her words carried without sound, like the way a whisper becomes clear in a church.
She said the caravaneers had taken what the roots had kept safe for longer than many of them had been alive. She said an oath had once held her to this water, and that oath had frayed the way rope does when it rubs and rubs on wood. The storm had broken the last fibers. Her binding had slipped. When the caravaneers took the trinkets, the snare for thieves sprang shut. Those who touched the relics were caught under the same law that bound her. The tree took them. The tree swallowed them. Until the taking was undone, nothing could be coaxed free.
It is hard to say what is a threat and what is a sorrow when such voices speak. They say the elf of Lórien answered with respect, for she knew not to bait old powers. Others nodded and set aside their fear. The hobbits squared their small shoulders and did what hobbits do, which is to eat to settle their nerves, and then to work. Aye, the Company began to gather what the storm had thrown loose. No one argued about sharing the silver. No one joked to ease the mood. They worked as if a child slept nearby and might wake if they clattered. Back into the hollow went the hobbit once more to collect the trinkets taken by the caravan too.
They set each piece back into the soft earth of the mound by the roots. They smoothed the soil with their palms. The elves sang under their breath a little, not to command, but the way a person hums to help a knot loosen. When the last trinket went down and the soil was pressed over, the light on the lake grew thin and washed away the mists. The shape that was a woman grew less than a person and more than a thought. She lifted a hand, if it was a hand, and the reeds bowed without any wind to return her to the water.
They say the Company heard then a sound from within the hollow that was not bark rubbing, and not the groan of wood settling, but something like breath. When the brave hobbit went in again and shouted for rope, the others came helping. Vines that were all about like iron began to slacken. The Company did not need to cut with knives.
A man slipped free, like a fish drawn from a net. Then a boy. Then two more men, one so tangled that they had to lift him, slow and careful. One of the elves bound scrapes and wrapped hands that shook so hard the cups rattled when they tried to drink some tea.
No one died that day, or so the best tellers say. It took time to bring them all out. When the last of the caravaners sat on the damp earth and looked at the sky as if they had forgotten it, the spirit at the lake had grown thin as dawn fog. She spoke a last time. Many in Bree remember the words as told differently. Some say she thanked them. Some say she gave a warning. Some say she asked for quiet to be kept. All agree that what she meant was this: her watch had ended. The mound would be left in the care of time. The living should leave the dead their secrets.
The combe logging camp foreman would later swear that the birds followed the Company for half a mile, flitting ahead to wait at the next turn as if they wished to escort them back to what men call safe.
There was little talk on the walk out. They kept to the main track and did not test any short way they did not know.
Somewhere along that walk, they say, the elf of Lórien paused and looked back at the dark mass of trees in the Chetwood. If any words were spoken, they were not put into the tale. Some things are left on the path, so they do not come into town.
In the days that followed the story climbed the lanes of Combe like a cat and settled itself in the eaves, and from there to Bree. A farmer swore that his uncle’s best mare had balked at the lake track even before the storm, and this proved that animals know what men do not. A tanner's wife told her sister that her mother had warned her never to pick up old silver found in roots, for it belongs to the ground, not to hands.
Since then, young folk aee known to to go out into the Chetwood in twos and threes to see if the reeds of the lake indeed whispered when no wind moved them. The wiser of the lumbermen though keep their saws away from that place. If a tree comes down there, it is left where it rests. Tale of the Beorning too was spoken of softly at first, and then less often, and then not at all.
As for the Company, they did not boast. They checked the roads that week with care. They spoke to a sergeant of the Watch and told him the truth of it, mostly, though they kept the shape of the lake’s voice to themselves. The survivors were seen about the Prancing Pony for a time, walking with that slow step that comes when the body has been a prison and then is not. After a fortnight they hired places on various southbound carts and went away.
If you go to the water and take the turning the birds are said to favour, you will find no sign of the hollow now, but the mound sits somewhere there and keeps its secrets. If you look too long, your eyes will begin to make faces in the wood grain of the trees, and you will be wise to blink and look away as quickly as you can.
They say the Company of the East Road turned their wagons toward autumn after that, with a new caution in the way they planned their stops through the Chetwood and some of 'em even gained the habit too of asking trees for leave before camping under them.
You may believe as much of this as you like. Ask the lumbaryard foreman in Combe and he will give you an account that would match my own. But if you wish to walk in the Chetwood near the water, do it with quiet feet. Keep your hands out of the roots. And if mist gathers and takes a shape on the lake, lower your eyes and speak with respect. Some watches have ended, and some have not.
You can find more tales along the road here: "Signs Along the Road"
