Daughter of Starlight

Chapter Thirteen: Weapons?

When the barge finally stopped, Bard began toppling barrels, letting us know it was safe to come out.

Bilbo and I burst out from beneath the fish, gasping for fresh air along with everyone else. My eyes landed on Bard speaking to a man and pushing a coin into his hand.

Once we were all out of the barrels, we gathered on the dock in one big cluster. We all smelled strongly of the fish we left behind, but it was better than being submersed in them.

Bard led us through the streets of Lake-town, which were basically a huge interconnected web of bridges surrounding the houses that were so closely packed together. The entire company had to walk in a single file line, the platforms were so narrow. The thing that I noticed, though, was that the entire town seemed to be stricken with poverty. People were dressed in clothes that were all but rags, everyone looked either hungry or sick, and the town itself was just plain filthy. The Lake-town I knew proudly called itself Esgaroth, and it had been bustling and wealthy place where everyone was happy, healthy, well fed, and well dressed. This was the complete opposite.

I also noticed that as we walked, we earned all kinds of stares from the citizens of Lake-town, particularly me. Their awed gazes told me none of them had seen an elf in real life before, yet they seemed to recognize dwarves when they saw them.

Bard stopped when a young boy of about fifteen or sixteen in human years came up to him. He was dressed similarly to Bard in woolen clothes, a hide coat, and laced boots.

"Da," he said, sounding a little frightened. So this was Bard's son. "Our house, it's being watched."

Bard looked at all of us, his brow furrowed as he tried to think of a solution to get us into his home without whoever was spying on him and his family seeing us. It was quite the predicament, trying to hide thirteen dwarves, a hobbit, and an elf.

Finally, Bard told us, "There's another way to get to my house, but you aren't going to like it at all."

"What way is it?" I asked. When he told us, we all wore expressions of disgusted shock. Even as we protested, we all ended up going through with it.

I take back what I said earlier about being in a barrel of dead fish being the most disgusting thing I'd done in my life. Entering someone's house via the toilet completely tops the list.

After Dwalin and Bilbo got out of the toilet, I followed, wondering if now was the perfect time to get sick like I had promised myself back in Mirkwood.

Bard's son helped me out and told me to go upstairs, where I hoped it would be warm. I was on the edge of collapsing from my nearly frozen limbs.

"Da?" I heard a young feminine voice ask. "Why are there dwarves climbing out of our toilet?"

"Will they bring us luck?" I heard a much younger voice ask just as I made it into the home. There were two girls who I assumed to be Bard's daughters. One seemed to be almost an adult, and the other was about half her age. They both had the same brown eyes as Bard, but they their hair was light brown in color compared to their father's dark brown.

The younger girl stared up at me as soon as her eyes landed on me.

"Sigrid!" she exclaimed excitedly. "Is she an elf?"

"Tilda," Sigrid scolded her sister, drawing her away from the stairs that the company was climbing up. "Don't stare. It's rude."

"It's fine," I told Sigrid, then smiled at her little sister. "Yes. I am an elf."

The little girl grinned up at me in wonder. I guessed that she would have been happy to stand and stare for a very long time until her father told her and Sigrid to warm up some of his old clothes for the company to wear.