The four days after the Dwarves and Bilbo encounter the Wild Hunt and the enchanted stream are dismal indeed--little food or water, the endless dark and dank of Mirkwood, and the labor of carrying the sleeping Bombur. Add to that the eerie distant singing and laughter that they hear sometimes, which can only come from Elves, beings none of the party truly understand or trust.

Some hope is kindled when Bilbo climbs a tree to see if the "accursed forest" is nearing its boundary, but he sees only treetops and butterflies because the tree he is in grows in a valley. He and the disappointed Dwarves do not realize how near to the end they are; indeed they are very close to if not inside the borders of the Elven Kingdom of Thranduil, father of Legolas and one of the few golden-haired Elves in Middle Earth not of Galadriel's line.

On the fourth night out from the stream, the company finishes the last of the food and water, and the joyless morning brings only hunger, thirst, rain, and hopelessness. Only Bombur's waking provides an unexpected bright spot, and even this is blighted by his constant complaining and descriptions of the feast he was having in his dreams.

On the night of this fifth day, Bilbo and the Dwarves begin to see lights and to hear laughter and voices in the forest: Thranduil's Elves at their feast. Chasing the lights, the smell of food, and the sound of cheerful voices leads the group off the path into hopeless confusion. They are soon completely lost, as they were told they would be if they strayed from the path. Once again Bilbo is left behind in the melee,alone in the silence and darkness, and miserable. He does not realize he is on the brink of discovering his own particular greatness on this adventure.

As we have seen before, all the element of faerie are still here, with a special emphasis on the old injunction not to leave the appointed path or something bad will happen to you. But Dwarves never really listen, do they?

It has always intrigued me that the Mirkwood Elves are so different from those in LOTR and the Sil, and never more so than here where their teasing and somewhat malicious magic has far more in common with all the old tales of folkloric Elves than with Legolas and Galadriel. . . .What is the true nature of Elven magic in Tolkien's world, after all? And are the Elves in The Hobbit so different because it was originally a children's story only tangentially connected to the rest of the legendarium, and he chose not to substantially change their character when he linked the works later?