Chapter 8. On the Wings of a Song

The man walking in the lead raised his head as the breeze brought a scrap of sweet song to his ears, and he lifted his hand to halt his companions.

 ‘What is it?’ the youth whispered, and he hushed his smaller brother as the young one tugged at his arm. ‘A wood sprite?’

The man suppressed a chuckle and answered, ‘It is one of the little ones. I’ve heard the song before, when they travelled in Gondor and sang songs at the great feast.’ He cocked his head and added thoughtfully, ‘Very like...’

 ‘So we capture it, and ask it to lead us to the gold, just like in the old stories Gran told,’ the little boy said eagerly. His brother hushed him again.

 ‘Not quite that easy,’ the man whispered. ‘They’re shy folk, shy of us Big Folk, anyhow, and this is their home. If they hear us coming, they’ll disappear in a twinkling, whisk round the edge of a tree or into a thicket and we’ll never know where they went.’

They crept towards the music as quietly as they could.

A hobbit under most any other circumstance would have heard their approach and hurried away to warn the Bounders, were he close to the borders of the Shire, or a Shirriff otherwise. Diamond, of course, sick at heart and exhausted from her efforts, shivering from the cold and damp and the chill of sitting on the ground, was too involved in her singing, her last gift to Hilly, to hear. Farry, snug in his mother’s cloak, was dozing in spite of his fears, overcome at last by cold and weariness. Hilly, of course, heard no more than the faintest echo of Diamond’s song, for he was failing quickly, eyes closed, his face slipping dangerously close to the water as he relinquished the fight.

The man paused behind a tree to take in the scene: little mother cradling a young one, her head drooping wearily as she sang. A pony stood to one side, holding one leg off the ground, obviously lamed. Stranded travellers, obviously in need of aid. Why, they were sitting on the damp ground, without a fire as the chill of night began to descend!

He moved forward without thinking. He had nearly reached the hobbits when the mother became aware of him and the two companions that followed, breaking off her song in a gasp, raising a tear-streaked face to stare into his eyes.

 ‘I mean you no harm,’ he said quickly. ‘I didn’t even mean for you to see us, but it seemed as if you were in need of aid.’ He bowed. ‘Jack, son of Robin, at your service, little lady!’ It wasn’t his true name, of course, but it was one of the names he used in his travels. ‘Wandering conjuror and master of pleasing illusions.’

The tiny hobbit stirred and his eyes widened at seeing the man, though he showed no fear. Jack bowed once more, reached slowly towards the little hobbit, and drawing his hand away from the tiny ear, showed a silver penny between his fingers and thumb. ‘What do we have here?’ he said cheerily. ‘Hasn’t your mother taught you to keep your coins in your pocket?’

 ‘Jack!’ the youth shouted, and Jack turned angrily to hush him. Did he want to bring all the hobbits of Tookland down upon them, with their sharp tongues and sharper weapons? Not to mention the fate that awaited any man caught in the Shire and turned over to the King’s Men.

 ‘Keep your voice down, Will,’ he said brusquely, but the rebuke died as his eyes followed the pointing finger to a bow, incongruously hanging from a tree limb, pointing down, to...

He started forward.

 ‘It’s a bog!’ the hobbit mother cried in warning, and Jack stopped as he felt the first warning give of the land under his boots. He scrambled backwards, slinging his pack from his back, scrabbling desperately for the slim rope therein. He’d heard it was of elven-make, though having won it on a wager he really had no idea of its provenance. In any event it was slim and light but very strong.

 ‘Will!’ he snapped. ‘Tie this round yourself and see if those branches will hold you. It’s his only hope!’ The hobbit in the bog did not stir at the upraised voice of the Man, and he was dangerously close to drowning.

The youth shed his boots, cloak, coat and shirt and took the end of the rope, even as the boy pulled at his arm. ‘But Will, it’s a bog!’ the smaller brother said desperately. ‘I can’t lose you too!’

 ‘I’ve no choice, Rob,’ Will said. ‘Would you have that little lad lose his father, as we’ve lost ours?’ He knotted the rope securely, knelt down, and began to creep cautiously over the floating branches. They sank under his weight, but held him up enough that the mire could not get a grip on him. Behind him, he heard the hobbit mother gasp, He’s drowning! and Jack’s urgent, Hurry, Will!

 ‘This is not as easy as it looks,’ he gritted, but he pulled himself along the length of branches as quickly as he dared. The hobbit lay face down in the water, unmoving. He was cold as death as Will reached him, took him under the arms, and began to pull. He felt the rope tighten about him as Jack commenced to haul away from the bank.

The branches sank deeper under their combined weight, and Will held his breath as his head went under. The bog resisted as he fought to pull the hobbit free, but just as he began to despair of winning the fight the resistance lessened, and suddenly eased. He felt the kiss of the quagmire beneath the branches that supported him, growing more insistent as his knees became mired. He managed to pull free and swing sideways, staying parallel to the mire that lay beneath the water, pulling the hobbit with him, pushing against the branches with his feet to impel them towards safety. He gasped as his head broke the surface of the water, and he heard his young brother’s desperate cry. Will!

 ‘I’m coming!’ he gasped. ‘Half a moment!’ It was something more than half a moment before Jack pulled rescuer and rescued onto safe ground.

The hobbit mother and lad fell upon the rescued hobbit, but Jack pushed them away and lifted the limp body, laying Hilly over his arm and whacking him firmly on the back. ‘Come on,’ he hissed. ‘Breathe now.’

At last Hilly coughed weakly and vomited a small amount of water. ‘That’s got it,’ Jack said. ‘Now we need to get all of you warm, before you catch your deaths.’

Diamond’s face was pale and strained, and she was shivering. ‘Warm,’ she said vaguely. ‘A lovely sentiment. Bath and fire, supper and bed.’

 ‘Come along, then; we’ll see what we can do,’ Jack said, affecting cheer. He hefted the half-drowned hobbit in his arms and turned back the way they’d come; it was away from the track that led through this part of the woods. He didn’t want a casual traveller to see their fire and investigate. As a matter of fact, they’d been about to go to ground for the night when they’d heard the singing.

Will lifted the hobbit lad, who began to chatter away, full of bright curiosity and spilling over with questions, and young Rob took the hobbit mother’s arm and began to help her along.

 ‘Pony’s lame,’ Jack called over his shoulder when Will hesitated. ‘Leave the beast and I’ll come back for him as soon as we have a fire going to warm you.’

He led them to a sheltered hollow he’d noticed, where a tree had fallen in a windstorm, lifting a great knot of tangled roots into the air. The bole of the tree, with the wall of roots to one side, made a shelter of sorts, and a fire here would not be easily seen unless one passed very close by.

Starting a fire was no trouble to a wanderer like Jack, and soon after it caught he stripped Hilly’s sodden clothes away and wrapped him in his own blanket, laying him as near the fire as he dared. Will had donned shirt, coat and cloak again and wrapped his nether parts in the blanket he shared with his brother, while his trousers steamed before the fire. Rob and the little hobbit were digging rocks from the mossy ground and placing them by the fire to warm; these would be tucked into Hilly’s blankets.

Diamond sat shivering by Hilly’s side, on a pile of ferns that Jack had arranged before settling her there. She stared blankly into the fire, but stiffened when Jack gently touched her shoulder. ‘I go to fetch some water from the stream,’ he said, ‘and soon we’ll have a hot drink for everyone.’

She murmured her thanks, her voice all but inaudible in her own ears. She was sleepy, and though she recognised the signs of deadly chill she found it difficult to care. Farry sounded cheerful, thankfully, and he was moving about, keeping warm with the exercise of obtaining rocks for blanket-warmers. She didn’t need to worry about him just yet. She would close her eyes for a moment, no more, before rousing herself to deal with everything. Men, she thought disjointedly, and Farry; Hilly, and lamed pony; danger, and gold...