Here's a surprise.  Thanks to Shirebound's birthday, I have a new story for this little group.  Anyway, Happy Birthday to Shirebound and here's a bit of Bilbo and Frodo.  I originally posted this to my Live Journal so you may have read it there.  


BARKING UP THE LONG TREE

“And what do you have there, my lad?” Bilbo asked leaning in for a closer look.

The young hobbit lad hurriedly covered the paper with both arms, still clutching a stick of charcoal tightly in one hand.  “Nothing,” the child pronounced, a serious expression on his face.

Smiling ever so slightly, Bilbo nodded.  “I see.  Still a work in progress then and not ready for viewing?”

The eight-year-old frowned as if thinking this over and then said, “What does that mean?”

“It means that your work isn’t finished and you’d rather not share it at the moment,” Bilbo explained patiently.

“No,” the youngster said firmly.  “It’s nothing.  I’m not doing nothing.”  As he spoke, he tried to cover even more of the parchment with his charcoal-smeared arms. 

The child had been stretched out on the floor of Bilbo’s study working away when Bilbo had entered the room.  Earlier, while clearing away the tea things, Bilbo had somehow lost track of his very young cousin.  There had been no noise to alert Bilbo that the child might be up to mischief and not being used to having a little one around, Bilbo had completely forgotten that young Frodo was there.  It had been almost an hour before Bilbo had remembered his visitor.

Sitting in his favourite chair by the fire, enjoying the silence, and nicely filled up by the lovely jam tarts that Belle Gamgee had made, Bilbo had nearly fallen asleep thinking about what a nice late evening snack the remaining tarts would make.  Then, he’d snapped wide awake when he recalled that a good portion of those tarts had been gobbled up by young Frodo Baggins.  The same Frodo Baggins whose parents were relying upon Bilbo to look after their child for the day while they took care of business in Hobbiton.  The very same Frodo Baggins that Bilbo seemed to have lost some time after tea.

Bilbo had bolted up from the chair and searched frantically for the lad until finally spotting two tiny feet stretched out from behind the old sofa in the study.  The rest of the lad was out of view.  For a frightening moment, Bilbo imagined that Frodo had fallen and was lying unconscious and bleeding amid the stacks of books he kept piled behind the sofa.  Then, mercifully, he’d heard the sound of charcoal on parchment and seen one tiny foot move.  The lad was unharmed and, unlike many youngsters of Bilbo‘s experience, was entertaining himself quietly with only the help of parchment and charcoal nicked from Bilbo’s desk.

Too relieved to scold the child for pilfering, Bilbo had made his way behind the sofa for a look at the lad’s project only to find that young Frodo was unwilling to reveal his work.

“I understand.  You aren’t doing anything at all, but if you *were* doing something, what would it be?”  Bilbo asked squatting down beside the child.

Frodo blinked.  Adults could be very confusing sometimes.  He relaxed his grip on the charcoal and placed it careful on the edge of the parchment.  “But I’m not doing nothing,” he said still not certain what this elderly relation might want.

“No, of course not,” Bilbo smiled.  “But if you were to imagine that you were doing something worth sharing, what would you be doing?”

The word ‘imagine’ triggered a smile from the lad.  He seemed to light up from within and he looked at Bilbo with interest.  “If I imagined something then I’d be in the tallest tree in the whole Shire with my best dog,” Frodo said.

“You have a dog that can climb trees?” Bilbo asked sounding impressed.  He was very amused by the idea of this tiny lad perched in  the upper-most branches of a tree with a dog sitting beside him.  He wanted to know about this amazing, imaginary, dog and he wanted to get to know young Frodo better.  The lad was a most uncommon child.

Frodo nodded.  “His name is Fetchit and he and I climb trees all the time.”

“Fetchit?  That’s an unusual name,” Bilbo observed.

“I named him after one of the tricks he can do,” Frodo explained.  “I can throw any stick and he can fetch it as quick as you please so I just call him Fetchit.”

“How many dogs do you have?” Bilbo asked.

“Two,” Frodo said holing up two dirty fingers.  “I have Buck and Fetchit.  Fetchit is my best dog.”

“Because he can climb trees,” Bilbo said.

“No, because he’s big enough to ride,” Frodo corrected.  “I ride him all the time.  He’s as big as a pony and he’s fast too.  I get on him and he runs right up a tree with me on his back and I don’t fall off ever because I hold on tight and because Fetchit is a good dog.”

“That’s very impressive,” Bilbo said, and indeed it was impressive.  The child had a wonderful imagination.  “I don’t suppose you have a drawing of Fetchit, do you?” 

Frodo thought about it for a minute and then said, “If I show you it, will you be angry?”

“I don’t think so,” Bilbo said.  “Why would you think that I might be angry?”

“Because I might have drawed Fetchit with some things I found in here,” Frodo said watching Bilbo closely to see how he might take this news.

“Well, I don’t think I would be angry if I knew that from now on, you would ask my permission before using my things,” Bilbo said.  “I can see how important it is that you make a drawing of this wondrous dog, so I am willing to overlook your transgression this time.  In the future, I will not be so lenient.  Do you understand?”

Frodo blinked and shook his head.  “No.  What’s a trance-gressum?  You said you could look over mine but I don’t think I have one.”  Frodo held up the charcoal and grinned hopefully.  “Is this one?”

Struggling not to laugh, Bilbo shook his head.  “A transgression is, well, never mind what it is just now.  What I was trying to say is, I won’t be angry with you as long as you ask me before you use my things the next time.”

“Oh,” Frodo smiled.  “I can do that.  I’m good at asking for things.”

“Most children are,” Bilbo smiled.  “Now, may I see your drawing?”

Slowly, Frodo sat up, uncovering the parchment that he had been hiding.  “It’s not so good as the drawings on your desk of that dragon but it’s pretty good,” the lad said hopefully.  “My Mum says I’m good at drawing.”

Bilbo looked at Frodo’s artwork and smiled.  In one corner of the parchment, was a drawing of a very big animal with big ears and a tail. It did look very much like a dog and sitting next to the dog was a smiling stick figure that could have been a child.  Both were in a very big tree that had only one limb at the top.  The tree started at the bottom of the parchment and went all the way to the top corner.  “That is a very big tree,” Bilbo said.

“Wait,” Frodo said excitedly, getting to his feet and hurrying over to a stack of parchment that Bilbo had not noticed before.  “You haven’t seen all of it!” 

Bilbo watched in stunned silence as Frodo placed piece after piece of parchment end to end until he had a line of drawings that covered the length of the room.  On all of the sheets, save the one that showed the dog and the smiling stick-hobbit, all that the child had drawn was two parallel lines running the length of each page so that the very tall tree went on for twenty pages.  “That isn’t really as tall as the tree is, but you ran out of parchment so this is all I can draw of it.  It’s lots bigger.  You have to imagine the rest of it,” Frodo explained. “Oh, and Buck, my other dog is hiding behind the tree so you can’t see him in this drawing.”

“That is a very big tree,” Bilbo managed to say.  It was also a very expensive tree since the lad had used Bilbo’s finest parchment for the drawing.  Bilbo winced inwardly at the fact that most of the sheets were only marked with two shaky lines.  But then again, the lad did say that this was the tallest tree in the Shire.  Bilbo supposed that he should be grateful that the lad ran out of parchment because he suspected that Frodo could never run out of imagination.  He chuckled, thinking of Buck hiding behind the tree.  “That is a very impressive drawing and Fetchit looks like a splendid dog.”

Frodo grinned proudly.  Most adults would have asked a bunch of silly questions and given him reasons why a dog couldn’t be up a tree but his cousin, Bilbo hadn’t done that.  He liked Bilbo very much.  He was different from other adults.  “You can hang this in here if you want to,” Frodo said shyly.

“I’d like that,” Bilbo said.  He looked at the line of parchment.  “I may need to get a ladder first though.”  This was a marvellous child.  Bilbo couldn’t wait to see what kind of an adult this clever, imaginative, lad might become. 

“I can draw you a ladder if you have more of this parchment,” Frodo offered.

“Perhaps this time, I’ll just use the ladder that I have in the barn,” Bilbo said quickly.

The end

GW            03-29-2009