Chapter 39. Thorn: Element of Surprise

Their weeping was disturbed by a soft voice, arms that slipped around them both, hugging tight. ‘Tuck? Are you hurt? And who are…?’

Bucca looked up, to see the face of Tokka’s Primrose close at hand, and the latter gasped. ‘Bucca? Is it you? We thought…’

Prim had always been able to tell Bucca from Tokka, from their earliest days, one of the rare hobbits who had that ability. Though they never had been able to fool the Thorn, they had deceived their own mother, upon occasion, switching their clothing and parting their hair on the opposite side than the one their mother had assigned early on in their childhood, to be able to tell them apart.

But Primrose had always known which brother was which. She liked to say that she had married Tokka a-purpose, and that she could scarcely bear Bucca’s company, though she always smiled when she said such a thing. And she marvelled at how people could mistake one (identical) twin for the other.

‘Prim,’ he whispered, staggering to his feet, still holding young Tuck, for the youth still grasped him tightly, as if he’d never let go.

‘I thought… I thought…’ Tuck sobbed. ‘Da…’

‘O my lad,’ Prim said, tears coming to her own eyes. ‘O’ course you thought…’ And she gently pried the lad away from Bucca and sat herself down, rocking him in her arms as if he were a much younger child, a faunt that had fallen and scraped a knee, perhaps. ‘O my lad,’ she repeated.

Bucca blinked and wiped at his eyes with his sleeve, then stared in astonishment. ‘Prim?’ he said. ‘Is it really you? I’d not have known you…’

‘You knew me at first sight,’ she said, most of her attention on her son.

‘Yes, but…’ Bucca said.

‘There you are with your “buts” and “how evers”,’ Prim answered. ‘You could talk a troll into the dawning, you could, with your “what evers”!’

‘I…’ Bucca said.

‘And always talking about yourself!’ Primrose scolded. ‘Me, myself and I, as if they’re the three most important hobbits in the land! How about a little bit of “you” for a change?’

‘You…’ Bucca said, and really, it fit well with what he was trying to say, if only Prim would give him a chance to say it. Prim wasn’t dressed in skirts and wrapped in a shawl, as he’d last seen her, but in shirt and jacket and trousers, and she bore a bow over her shoulder, and a quiver on her back, and a knife in the belt around her waist. But he was interrupted again.

‘That’s a little better,’ Prim said. ‘But that’s neither here nor there. I need to get my lad to shelter, a warm drink, a bite to eat and some rest. He’s had a terrible blow, he has, thinking his father’d come home, to find t’was only yourself.’

‘A fine welcome…’ he began, stung.

‘Welcome! Welcome!’ Prim interrupted. ‘We’ve had a Watcher here, each day, by your father’s orders, for months, looking out for your return, not to mention your brother’s, though how he should be able to find us is something that’s beyond me… and don’t tell me that you don’t bring word of him, even now! You’ve been gone long enough…!’

But the anxious, half-hopeful look in her eye belied her brisk chatter.

‘I don’t,’ Bucca said, at last breaking into the stream of words.

‘You don’t… what?’ Prim demanded, rearing back to eye him sternly, though her hand continued to pat and rub at her son’s back in a soothing manner, and then she rested her chin on Tuck’s curls, and added in a murmur, ‘There, there, my love. There, there.’

‘I don’t bring word of Tokka, sorry to say,’ Bucca said. ‘I’d hoped to find him here.’

Primrose took a shaking breath, dismay in her eyes, that she as quickly put away again. ‘There, there, Tuck,’ she said again, her voice husky with emotion, though she cleared her throat immediately after. ‘Well, he’s not,’ she said defiantly. ‘And where have you been?’

‘I…’ Bucca said, and somehow the polished explanation he’d prepared to present to his father, and whatever other elder hobbits might be with him, escaped him now.

‘You went off with that son of the King,’ Prim persisted. ‘Surely he had word of the hobbits who went to serve the King? And if he didn’t, then one of his brothers, or the King himself…!’

She spoke boldly enough here, in the privacy of the forest, with only themselves there. Bucca had a sudden memory of Primrose, clinging tightly to Tokka’s arm as they stood in a crowd of hobbits behind the Thorn, while that hobbit spoke with the Men who had come, representing the King.

And then he remembered… ‘The King is dead,’ he said bleakly.

Prim’s mouth opened and closed again without a sound, as she stared at him through wide eyes.

‘I have no news of Tokka,’ Bucca continued. ‘He was last seen on the battlefield, with Marroc and the others, in the midst of things.’

‘He would be,’ Prim said, finding her voice, belying the sudden tears she sought to blink away. ‘There, there, Tuck-lad,’ she said, looking to her son and back to Bucca.

‘Marroc, that is,’ she went on. ‘And I’m sure that Tokka followed him there, into the midst of things, to keep a watch over him. If there’s any trouble to be found, to be sure, that hobbit could find it!’ (Meaning Marroc, of course.)

‘To be sure,’ Bucca echoed, with a sigh. He’d hoped, against hope, to find Tokka here. Of course, considering his earlier fright, that none of his family had survived the sweep of Angmar’s forces across the face of the Shire, he supposed he ought to be overjoyed to have Primrose fussing at him. ‘Where are the others?’

‘Others?’ Prim said in irritation. ‘Why, with Tokka, I’d assume!’

‘No,’ Bucca said, ‘not the archers. I mean, where are the rest of the hobbits of the Marish, and Stock, and the Yale? My father, and mother, and…’ he’d been about to say “my sweet Comfrey” but was forestalled by Prim’s abrupt movement, as she rose to her feet, picking up her son and setting him on his own feet before her.

‘There, my Tuck,’ she said. ‘Stand up, lad; stand proud, as your father taught you.’ She ruffled her son’s curls with her fingers, and wiped at his face with the edge of her shirtsleeve. ‘Enough of this. Go, and tell your grandfa that Bucca’s come, and we’ll follow after.’

Tuck nodded, tears still streaking his face, and threw his arms around his mother in a brief hug, before turning and dashing into the forest, quickly gone from their sight.

Something that had been clenched tight inside Bucca’s chest had let go at her words. His father, at least, had survived the journey through the winter forest, had survived the flight though they’d had time to take but minimal supplies with them, as they fled to uncertain shelter. Shelter! he thought, looking at the canopy of trees above his head. They would have been denuded of leaves in the winter months, and the snow had been falling heavily when Bucca had parted from his family. If this is shelter, then one roof beam and no walls make a house!

‘And my mother?’ he asked, ‘And…?’

‘Come along, now, and be sure you follow closely in my footsteps,’ Prim interrupted. ‘You don’t want to get caught in the traps we’ve laid, for unwary intruders.’ She turned away from him and began to move quickly, her feet so light she might have been dancing.

‘But…’ Bucca said to her retreating back, as he hurried to catch up. He was hard-pressed to keep up with her. He hadn’t done much in the way of running any distance, in recent weeks, and the past few days he’d been riding, and his nether regions were somewhat tender from that exercise.

‘Keep your voice down!’ she whisper-shouted over her shoulder. ‘And keep up! And no more “buts” will I allow this day, Bucca of the Marish!’ Somehow in that brief backward glance she divined his difficulty, and adjusted her pace to accommodate him, though they still went swiftly.

She turned her face forward again, and there was nothing for it but to jog along behind, at the best pace he could manage, keeping as close as he could, that he might avoid whatever mysterious “traps” she’d mentioned.

And as he ran, he wondered…