A Better Place - The Hobbit Fanfiction

Alternate Entry Twelve - Return to Erebor

It was the last week of October when we finally reached Erebor. All of us picked up our steps when we passed through Dale to the mountain. I briefly saw Bard gesturing toward the top of a building while speaking to a pair of stonemasons and beamed, waving enthusiastically when I saw him. He grinned, shaking his head at me, and lifted a hand in return.

“So Mabyn,” Fraeg said as we approached the main entrance to Erebor, which had been one of the first parts of the mountain to undergo repairs. The statues on either side of the entrance were still cracked and missing chunks, but by the looks of it the chunks were being fitted back in and carved to match the exteriors.

My head snapped up from where I’d been stroking the dusty white stone of the road between Dale and Erebor and trying to guess what kind of stone it was. “Right you are.” I slid the straps of my pack down my shoulders and thrust it into Gimli’s arms. He stared at me, looked down at the pack I was pushing against his chest, and raised his eyebrows. “Take it or I’m not climbing,” I said. He rolled his eyes and took it, throwing it over his back on top of his own pack. I surveyed the curtain, pursing my lips back and forth, and dropped onto my bottom to tug off my boots. Everyone was watching me either expectantly or curiously now—Bofur, Dwalin and Gloin were smiling. I looped my boots over my neck by their laces, rubbed my hands together in anticipation, and charged the wall.

Because it was something I hadn’t done before I dodged several dwarvish stonemasons and stone-crafters and climbed the statue. Forget the ladder, I leaped directly onto the toe of the left statue’s boot and clambered up by the carvings of the laces to the knee, where I followed the handle of the dwarf’s massive ax all the way up to the top of the dwarf’s broad head.

I thought about stopping to wave from there but my blood was running hot with glee and I was already panting with exertion, so I paused at the head of the statue just long enough to chart my path all the way up, then dove upward into that one as well.

To say that I climbed the stone face is an understatement—I swarmed up that wall. I was in the prime of my health and good humor. I began hearing the dwarves standing on the balcony above shouting to one another and exclaiming but as it threw off my balance to look too far ahead of me when climbing vertically I didn’t tip my head back to see them leaning out over the wall to see me. I heard them calling for rope, but the rope was never lowered. I guess they saw that I was managing perfectly well on my own.

I was well winded by the time I reached the top, and even having watched me for the last sixty feet at least the chivalrous dwarves up top couldn’t resist reaching down to grasp my arms when I came within reach and lifting me over the lip of the wall and back onto horizontal ground.

“What in all hells are you on about, lass?” one demanded, clapping a heavy hand onto my shoulder as though to steady me, leaning down to look me in the face.

I grinned, flushed with my victory, and turned just once to wave at my dwarves down on the road beneath me. They waved back and hurried inside with their wagons. To the horrified dwarf I said, “I was showing them I could climb it like I said.” My chest was heaving, but it felt wonderful.

He continued ogling me. “You what?”

I patted his wide hand where it rested on my shoulder, trying to set his anxiety at ease. There were a great many people on top of this balcony staring at me. “I’m Mabyn, Bofur’s foster daughter. I climb really well. I climbed this wall before the Battle of Five Armies last year. Gloin’s son didn’t believe me when I said I’d done it even when Gloin, Dwalin and Bofur backed me up. I was proving it to him.”

“I’ve heard about this lass, Hevkor,” said one of the other dwarves. “To the best of my knowledge what she claims is true.”

Hevkor just shook his head as though pained, lifted his hand from my shoulder and waved at me. “Go talk to your father, lass. I don’t even know what to make of this.”