Huorns

What they are

The Huorns are the least understood of the tree-folk of Fangorn. Treebeard did not explain them fully even to Merry and Pippin, and the hobbits could only pass on what they had gathered. The Ents describe two paths that meet in the Huorn. An Ent may over long ages grow sleepy and tree-like, losing the power of speech and the habit of moving, until it stands rooted for years at a time. Conversely a tree may grow wakeful and Entish, developing a will and something like a voice, and learning to move. Both end in the same state: a being that is mostly tree but that has an inner life, a memory of wrongs, and the ability to move and act when roused.

The name itself is Elvish in form, and the Ents seem to have used it loosely for any of the deep trees of Fangorn that had a will. Treebeard's herding was chiefly concerned with them: he woke the sleepy and calmed the dangerous.

Nature and behaviour

Huorns are dangerous. They have grown dark of heart, not from any corruption by the Enemy but from long resentment of axes and fire, and they hate Orcs above all things. They can move with astonishing speed when they choose, and they wrap themselves in shadow so that it is hard to see them move; travellers see a wood where there was none before and never notice the trees coming. In daylight or at rest they seem ordinary trees, and only the Ents can tell what they are. They still have voices of a kind and can speak with the Ents, and it was Treebeard's fear that without the Ents to guide them the Huorns would become wholly perilous to any who entered the forest.

The War of the Ring

The Huorns played a decisive part in two battles of March 3019. When the Ents marched on Isengard, a great company of Huorns followed them, and it was they who surrounded the valley so that no fugitive escaped. On the same night the Ents sent the Huorns south to Helm's Deep. By dawn on 4 March the Deeping-coomb below the Hornburg was filled with a forest that had not been there the day before. When Théoden and Aragorn rode out and the Orcs of Saruman broke and fled, they fled into that wood, and none came out. Afterwards the wood was gone, and only the dead were left. The Rohirrim were terrified and would not go near the trees; Gandalf told them not to fear the wood but to leave it alone.

The Old Forest

The Old Forest east of the Shire was, according to Treebeard, a surviving fragment of the same primeval woodland as Fangorn, and its trees have the same Huorn-like character. They shift paths, crowd travellers toward the Withywindle, and are ruled by Old Man Willow, whose heart was rotten with malice and whose power stretched through the whole valley. Tom Bombadil alone could master them. Merry, who knew the Old Forest from childhood, remarked in Fangorn that Fangorn's trees felt less hostile than the Old Forest's, and the comparison suggests that the Old Forest's trees, unherded by any Ent, had gone further along the path to darkness than the Huorns of Fangorn.

Fate

After the war the Huorns remained in Fangorn under the care of the Ents, and some were doubtless planted in the Treegarth that the Ents made of Isengard. As the Ents dwindle the Huorns will be left alone with their resentments, and Treebeard's warning suggests that in time the forests of Middle-earth will grow more dangerous rather than less.

At rest a Huorn looks like any old tree of Fangorn: tall, grey or dark of bark, with deep roots and a heavy crown. When it moves it is shrouded in a darkness of its own making, so that observers see only shadow and the sudden presence of trees where there were none. They can cover miles in a night. Their eyes and voices are not described; the hobbits felt watched in Fangorn and heard creaks and groans that seemed to be speech.

Huorns have no culture of their own. They obey the Ents when the Ents are present to command them, and Treebeard spoke of them as his flock. They retain memories, especially of injuries, and a hatred of Orcs and of all who bear axes.

Huorns arise from within the people of the Ents. Some are Ents who, after long ages, have grown so tree-like that they no longer speak or move except when roused. Others are ordinary trees that have lived so long among the Ents and in such old forests that they have become wakeful. Treebeard did not say which kind was the more common.

The Huorns remain in Fangorn and in the Old Forest. They survived the War of the Ring intact and were part of the forest that the Ents planted in the ruins of Isengard. With the Ents dwindling, their future is one of increasing wildness.