The Mirror Crack'd by AdmirableMonster  

Interlude: By the Lakeshore

LAST TIME on The Mirror Crack'd: Maedhros and Anniavas kissed underneath the mistletoe, and Anniavas tentatively decided they were friends.

THIS TIME on The Mirror Crack'd: Months before the events of Yule at Himring, a young Elf searching for her brother finds a monstrous creature on the shore of Lake Helevorn.

Warnings for mild terror and gore and some injury.

Part 2. Malhof.

Three months before Yule, shores of Lake Helevorn.

Lisgon had been missing for over a day, and Arveril didn’t know what to do.  If he was dead, it was her fault—she was his sister, and she was seasons older, and she had been supposed to be watching him.  She knew how much he liked to wander and explore, and he’d just started walking.  But she had been distracted trying to build a city for the beetles, and when she had looked up, he wasn’t there anymore.  

She paced back and forth in the little woven willow nest that was her very own—her father and mother had helped her grow it over this past summer.  She was supposed to stay here, while all the grown-ups went out to look for Lisgon, but he was her brother, and her responsibility.  The woven basket she had tried to make to distract herself lay unfinished, abandoned, in the corner.

There were bad things out there, she knew; ever since the great fire, dead things and monsters stalked the forests.  She wasn’t allowed out by herself.  But now her little brother was out there, and he was out there alone, and it was all her fault.  If she didn’t get him back, her mother and father would probably never speak to her again.  Or maybe she would turn into a ghost out of shame, leave behind her body, and go wailing through the trees.  She wouldn’t have a tree burial.  She’d be lost and crying in the woods forever and ever.

What if Lisgon was out there now, preparing to turn into a ghost and wander around forever lost?  What if a monster was about to eat him?  She had to go and try to find him.  Maybe her parents would forgive her if she could bring him back.  Maybe she would forgive herself.

Thus decided, she told herself she had to be sensible about this.  She packed herself a quick lunch of bread, cheese, and berries—enough for her and for Lisgon, so that if she found him she could succor him from starvation like the ancestors had done on the great Journey that was never completed.  Then she fetched her small training bow with its blunted arrows—it probably couldn’t kill a monster, but it might be useful as a distraction.  She strapped it to her back, and then, in a rush of inspiration, went and found the big knife with the pearl-inlaid handle she had been given when she started learning to cook.  That could be used to kill a monster.  It was of Dwarvish make, and Dwarves made the best heroic weapons.

Where would Lisgon have gone? Arveril asked herself as she made her way down the trail.  If he had gone towards the heart of the village, surely someone would have spotted him before he got very far.  But if he had gone into the forest, she could not imagine her parents not being able to follow his trail.  That really only left the path down to the lakeshore: it had been unseasonably dry and windy, and he might not have left footprints in the sand, or they might have been covered.  What if he had drowned?  She started to run, the too-large knife pounding unpleasantly against her upper thigh.

She was panting, lungs burning, by the time she made it down to the lake.  It used to be clear and sparkling, but now the waters were black, and nothing grew near it.  They got their water from the rains and from the springs that flowed down from Mount Rerir; though the nearby Dwarvish settlement had set up a clever kind of device to purify the water, it sometimes failed or broke down.  Arveril’s aunt was a healer, and she spent a lot of time among the Dwarves and the Men, who took ill easily.  

She hadn’t known what she expected to find, not exactly—except the fear of finding her baby brother’s corpse—but what she did find was almost as scary and as terrible.  A great set of drag marks started at the water’s edge and came up the shore, and the pale sand was caked with brown-red stains all round.  In the midst of the confusion of tumbled sand were the footprints of an enormous wolf, and at one edge, biting into the side of the stiff and bloody sweep, was half a tiny Elven print.

Arveril made a tiny, terrified squeaking noise.  Had a monster really carried Lisgon off? 

Her first impulse was to run back home and look for her parents.  But if there was any chance at all that the monster hadn’t eaten her baby brother yet, she couldn’t waste time going to alert anyone else.  That could be enough time for it to get hungry and decide on a snack!

She settled her Dwarven blade very carefully in her hand, then thought better of it and strapped it back to her thigh so that she could use both hands for the bow.  She could shoot once, drop the bow, and grab the knife, if she needed to.  She strung the bow and wished her arrows were sharper, then began to follow the trail of havoc.

The marks in the sand wound northwards, in the direction of Mount Rerir.  She had only followed them a little ways—over one hillock of blood-marked sand and down the other side—when she saw other signs.  A great white tentacle, torn loose by the root and leaking ichor.  Heavy marks in the sand where a wolf might have stood and howled defiance.  There were dark things in Lake Helevorn now; her parents had often cautioned her of them.  But most of the time, wolves—at least the kind that were too big—were dark things, so shouldn’t they get along?

She turned the bow over in her hands.  It felt too light.  She felt too small.  Come on, she told herself.  She’d failed at being a big sister once already.  She wasn’t going to fail again.

Up she went, following the trail, up the next dune and along the shifting top of the sand.  Then to the rocky scree above, where the trail of blood continued, and where she found a sweeping trail of crushed plants and disturbed pebbles as well.  Her courage almost failed her as she crested the top and saw that the it went down the other side and into a forbidding, shadowed cavern, barely more than a crack in the hill-side with crushed ferns to either side.

She wished she had a lantern.  She wished she knew how to sing light into being.  But she didn’t have either the item or the knowledge.  All she had was the trail, and her bow, and her knife.  She wouldn’t be able to shoot the bow in the dark, anyway, so she put it back and got out the knife, gripping the handle with both hands.  With her weapon shaking in her hands, she went down into the darkness.

She had to tread carefully to avoid tripping on loose rocks.  It wouldn’t do Lisgon any good if she stabbed herself with her own knife.  After a while, her eyes started to adjust, and she saw that further in, there was a faint watery daylight glow.  She also started to hear the noise of something very large breathing stertorously, the sound distorted and twisted by the stones walls through which it curved to reach her.  

Before she could get so frightened that she wouldn’t go on, she heard Lisgon’s voice.  Her little brother was babbling quietly.  He didn’t really speak yet, but he did make noises that sounded a little bit like talking.  But he usually didn’t do it around strangers, or when he was scared.  So why was he doing it now?

It calmed her down a little to hear him, so when she turned the corner and saw the strange sight bathed in the single watery sunbeam that had wormed its way down from a some deep crack in the earth overhead, she didn’t immediately scream or try to stab something.

A great golden wolf lay on its side in that faint light, far larger than the shy grey wolves of the forest.  Its muzzle, throat, and the long white fur of its belly were all crusted with dried brown blood.  It was breathing in dragging, labored breaths, and there was a piece of tentacle still looped about one ankle.  Lisgon, hair draggled and face marked with mud, was scooted close against it, gently patting its flank and babbling to it.  Although he was grubby, he wasn’t harmed at all, and as Arveril stared, the big wolf raised its exhausted head and looked at him the way some of the Mannish dogs looked at their puppies.

Then it made a soft, anguished noise, and its head dropped to the ground again.

“Oh, no,” said Arveril.  “Oh, you can’t die now—not when you saved him!”  She ran over.  “Hold on,” she told it rapidly.  “All right?  You have to hold on.  I’m going to get help.”