Bella guessed that Thorin Oakenshield's standing within his own people wasn't exactly strong. Of the thirteen dwarves, most were related to him in one way or another. Fíli and Kíli were his own nephews.
He seemed to trust these relatives, and every so often he would regale the company with tales of the Lonely Mountain in its glory days.
The journey from the Narnian coalition's valley to the spatial passage took two days on foot. That first night, they camped in the open.
The fat dwarf Bombur was the best cook of the lot, so the job of preparing meals fell to him.
Even out on a temporary camp, the dwarves hadn't skimped on provisions.
It didn't take long for Bombur to lay out a spread in front of Bella.
"Thank you. You're an excellent chef." Bella gave him a thumbs up.
Golden-brown fried pork chops, beautifully made little cakes, a large bowl of potato-and-beef soup, and a plate of fragrant wheat bread that smelled good enough to eat on sight.
Bella popped one of the little cakes into her mouth, then picked up a large ladle and took a sip of the beef soup.
"That's incredible. Delicious!"
The fat dwarf scratched his head, blushing at the praise.
"Honestly, my cooking is just ordinary. Before we came out here, we passed through a little town called the Shire. The food those halflings make—now that is real cooking!"
Once the topic turned to food, Bombur couldn't stop talking.
Bella smiled. The Shire? Hmm. Sounded like an interesting place.
The next day, after another half-day's march, Bella and the company finally reached the spatial passage they had come through.
"So this is the tunnel to Vanaheim? The turbulence in this space is a mess. Personally, I don't recommend going through here."
Bella closed her eyes and felt out the spatial coordinates the way a Soul Traveler does.
Then, as though putting on a show for the dwarves, she sketched runes, golden lines, and a swarm of geometric figures into the air.
She was analyzing the coordinate nodes.
"What's she doing?" asked Kíli—widely agreed to be the handsomest dwarf in the company—to old Balin.
"How should I know? Some mage trick, I'd wager."
When she'd finished analyzing the coordinates, Bella turned to Thorin Oakenshield. "This spatial anchor looks like it's in the middle of the sea. Didn't you say you came here from the mountains?"
Bombur erupted at that. "We did! We live in the Blue Mountains. You head south from there, you reach a gulf, then the open sea. There's a little island in the sea—"
"Quiet!" Thorin Oakenshield cut him off mid-ramble.
Bombur's rank in the company was at the bottom—the kind of fellow anyone could knock around—let alone their leader. He clapped a hand over his mouth and didn't dare say another word.
Bella had no intention of meddling in dwarven internal politics. Fairness was a dream; making it real was something else entirely.
She reported her findings. "This passage is extremely dangerous. No telling when it might collapse. I can cast a spell to send us straight to Vanaheim. Brace yourselves—I'll make sure we don't land in the water."
Once the dwarves had given her their various versions of "go ahead" and "no objection," she raised her right hand and traced a portal as tall as a person in the air.
The dwarves trusted her, and since none of them knew the finer points of teleportation magic, they walked through it one after another, chests out, heads high.
"Hey—we're back!"
"Not a bump!"
"That was amazing!"
It had to be said: Kamar-Taj's teleportation magic, refined and codified across multiple generations of Sorcerers Supreme, was easily the safest teleportation system in existence.
Bella's teleportation was built on Kamar-Taj's theoretical foundation as well—smooth, safe, efficient. Even fragile, delicate beings wouldn't feel much discomfort from it, let alone rugged, thick-skinned dwarves.
Gazing at the familiar fields around them, and at the sea on the far side of the plain, the dwarves were swept up in the joy of homecoming. Even Thorin Oakenshield's stony face cracked into the suggestion of a smile.
Though the Lonely Mountain, their destination, lay at the eastern end of this world, and the teleport anchor Bella had used was at its westernmost point, they were still thrilled.
"The Blue Mountains Bombur mentioned earlier—where are those? Do you need to head back that way first?" Bella asked.
Thorin Oakenshield pointed to the far edge of the water. "See that gulf? That's the Gulf of Lune. North of the Gulf of Lune lies the Blue Mountains, where we live. No—we don't need to go back. We set out now. East. To the Lonely Mountain."
Several of the dwarves exchanged glances. They had all been born in the Blue Mountains at the far western edge of this continent, and had little real sense of the Mines of Moria in the east, let alone Erebor beyond that.
Home, to them, was the Blue Mountains. Erebor? That was a place they'd heard Thorin go on about countless times.
But none of them dared voice an objection. Thorin was king. A king's word was law.
Seeing the mood among them sour a little, white-bearded, white-haired Balin stepped in to smooth things over.
He turned to Bella. "Magic really is useful! Tell me—do you think I have the aptitude to learn? I know I look old with this white beard, but I'm actually still quite young."
Under Bella's strange sidelong look, he ducked his head. "All right, all right. I admit my age is a touch advanced. Probably too late for me to take up spellcraft now. I've only got about eighty years of life left, by my estimate."
The way he said "only" eighty years made it sound like he was about to drop dead on the spot.
That kind of offhand boasting made Bella's teeth ache.
"Uh—do dwarves have any taboos around age? How old are you? And them?" She gestured toward the dwarves up ahead.
Old Balin stroked his white beard. All the sharpness he'd shown charging through the White Witch's army in full plate was gone. He looked every inch an old man now.
"I'm two hundred seventy this year. At most another eighty years in me, I'd guess. Thorin is quite a bit younger—he's nearly two hundred. The rest of them are all under a hundred. Young ones."
Bella looked at the young ones frolicking through the fields up ahead. These were the hundred-year-old youngsters.
Her eyes pricked with tears.
Between her Isu bloodline and her Soul Traveler traits, her own lifespan still wasn't guaranteed to outlast Balin's by much.
Balin missed the shift in her mood entirely and kept right on asking about magic.
"If I were to study spellcraft, how long would it take? You think fifty years would do it?"
"About that, yes."
"That teleportation spell you just cast—how long did that one take?"
Bella held up three fingers. Balin's face collapsed. "Thirty years? That's far too hard!"
Actually, three months—
Bella had no intention of teaching dwarves magic. Her telepathic magic she could pass on, but where Kamar-Taj knowledge was concerned, she needed to be careful.
Bella and the thirteen dwarves continued on to the port city not far away—the largest port in all of Vanaheim. The elves called it Mithlond. The dwarves and most of Vanaheim's human peoples called it the Grey Havens.