Fallow

Chapter 2

Innocence

The warm room, slanting spring sunlight and the dry discussion of legal tenets in formal Westron were making Frodo drowsy.  Paladin’s explanation had sated his curiosity about the matter and since Pearl was reportedly content with the arrangement, there seemed little else for him to be concerned with.  He was certain Bilbo and Paladin would work out any other difficulties to all parties’ satisfaction without needing his assistance.  He slid deeper into his comfortable chair.

The knock that started him to wakefulness came some time later.  He blinked, struggled to a sitting position and tried to look cognizant. 

Eglantine had returned to the parlour with Pearl, now dressed in a manner more suited to a girl on the verge of her tweens; a pale yellow dress with ruffles of white eyelet lace and a green sash.  It looked new and Pearl looked positively defeated wearing it. 

Her light brown curls had been braided demurely down her back and her delicate bare feet had been washed and thoroughly brushed.  Her skin, now that the mud was off it, was lightly freckled and slightly browned as if she spent more time out of doors than most well bred girls liked to.  Frodo could not see her eyes, but he remembered their colour, bright green flecked with brown.  The image of them beseeching her father returned and he wondered again how content she really was with the plans her family had for her.

“Pearl,” greeted Bilbo politely.  “You know my cousin and ward, Frodo Baggins.”

The girl glanced over at Frodo without interest.  “Yes,” she answered.  “He has brought cousin Merry to see Pip a few times.  Welcome again to Greenfields, Frodo.”  She spoke the automatic politeness, as if she knew her mother would jab her in the ribs if she didn’t say something pleasant.  Frodo distractedly felt the slight, but his attention was now drawn to details about the girl that he hadn’t noted under the mud.

She’d have to have been nineteen, if his math was correct.  A child still to someone possessed of his sage twenty-six years, but poised to become a very beautiful young lady.  Her face was as perfectly formed as any lass’s he’d seen and the slim, athletic body beneath it moved in a way that was quite captivating.  Unlike most girls of his acquaintance, who walked with an exaggerated and deliberate sway that looked unnatural (and uncomfortable) to his eyes, she had a raw and easy native grace about her, even while obviously humbled.  There was no artifice; she was exactly as she appeared: a beautiful girl who seemed completely unaware of her budding femininity.  It was an intriguing combination.

“We’ve been discussing the proposal Lalia has made to your father,” continued Bilbo, peering shrewdly at the girl.  “He told me that you would not be opposed the arrangement.”

“No, I wouldn’t mind.  Lalia has always been a friend to me.  Attending her would be no burden.” 

“I’ve known others who attended on Lalia,” Bilbo pressed.  “Their experiences have not been good ones.  Are you aware of her reputation?”

Pearl looked him in the eye.  “I am,” she said, with certainly and a little defiance.  “She is a strong willed matron, but has never been anything but kind to me.  We have an understanding and respect for each other.  She values my strength.”

The defeat in her demeanour was gone and Frodo saw her lift her head in arrogant pride.  She stared down at her mother, who frowned, seemingly irritated by Pearl’s unladylike manner, and then levelled her haughty gaze at her father.

And there she faltered.  It was clearly Paladin whom Pearl looked to for support and guidance, not her mother, and it was Paladin’s stern look rather than Eglantine’s disapproval that now checked her.  Frodo felt a stab of pity for the girl.  How must she have felt being rebuffed by the parent she favoured?  He found himself wondering whether she was moving into Lalia’s service or simply running away from what must have seemed like rejection from Paladin. 

“Aye,” agreed Bilbo.  “I will agree with you there.  She’s a powerful lady and appreciates a strong will.  You may be a match for her in that respect, but take heed.  She has four times your years and experience.  Never trust her.  She will see that as weakness, mark my word.  And always remember that it is your choice to stay or leave.  They cannot compel you.”

Pearl hesitated, then nodded and thanked him. 

“Very well.”  He placed his hands on his knees as if the matter was settled and he was ready to push on to the next item on the agenda.  “If I may, I’d like a few words with Eglantine and Paladin.  Frodo?”  Absently, he gestured the boy up from his chair.  “Would you take little Pearl out for a stroll?  It seems far too glorious a day for young hobbits to miss by falling asleep in stuffy rooms.  Go outside and you both enjoy the sunshine for me.”

Frodo blushed, stood and gave Eglantine a little bow.  “Of course, Bilbo.  I would enjoy that.  Pearl?”

It was much more a case of Pearl taking Frodo for a walk than Frodo taking Pearl. 

Once out of the smial, she abandoned all pretence of feminine deference and headed out for the Green Hills at a run.  After a moment’s surprise, Frodo followed, his longer legs allowing him to catch up and keep pace with relatively little effort.  She ran up the slope of a sparsely forested hill and wove her way through thickets of spruce and fir.  Next she dropped down into a sandy dell, its bowl filled with rainwater and small green frogs, emerging cattails and hummocks of rushes.  Cold seemed to have settled into the hollow as well and Frodo was glad when the tireless Pearl climbed back out of it.  The next hill was tall and crowned with thick oaks, and he found himself growing warm as she pushed on. 

She hadn’t spoken, had barely even deigned to look at him, and Frodo was beginning to feel very put out by the behaviour.  When they came to the peak of the hill under the oaks, Frodo grabbed at her arm just as her mother had done.

But though Pearl had tolerated Eglantine’s censure, she would have none of it from Frodo.  With a contemptuous snort, she wrenched herself free and dashed across the hill’s barren crown to dive into the thick growth on the other side.  Frodo muttered angrily and followed.

“See here!” he cried, pushing away the laurel and stumbling down the slope.  The next hollow was broad and open and warmed well by the sun.  Pearl had come to a stop at a small rivulet that ran by the foot of the hill and this time, when Frodo came up behind her, she didn’t flinch.  “At Bag End, we welcome our guests and make them comfortable!” he said, picking laurel leaves out of his hair.  “We do not lead them in a frantic chase across the countryside!”

She flicked him a look but didn’t answer.  Her attention was on a great apple tree that grew by the stream, the wrinkled remains of last year’s crop still clinging to its branches.  Further up the far bank lay the remains of an old, forgotten smial, overrun with weeds and brambles, its garden still sporting a bloom of crocus and forsythia.  As they caught their breath, she studied the tree’s gnarled branches, as if reading its enigmatic story in the pattern.

“This was my tree,” she murmured suddenly.  “Mother wouldn’t allow me come out this fall and pick it.  No one else would come so far for one tree’s crop and so its apples went to waste.  See?  Most lie rotted at its feet.”

“I see,” answered Frodo, not certain what else to say.  Pearl looked sideways at him. 

“If I leave those last few on the branches, they won’t bear this year.  Someone should at least pick them off.”

Frodo looked up at the tall, twisted tree.  “It’s awfully high – and I am not exactly dressed for climbing,” he said.

“No one has asked you to,” she retorted.  A flicker of contempt crossed her features and Frodo felt a responsive spark of anger flare up inside him. 

“I suppose you are going to climb up there?  You are hardly dressed for it either.”

Her head snapped around defiantly, but there was something else in her eyes; weariness, as of someone who had had to prove a point far more times than should have been necessary.  She unfastened her cloak and then immediately began unlacing the yellow dress.  Frodo took a step back as she pulled the frilly contraption over her head. 

“Now I am.”  She pushed the dress towards him.  “Hold this, there’s a good fellow.” 

He sputtered cotton away from his face.  Pearl wandered the little opening as if searching for something, dressed only in her undergarment.  He felt his face grow hot when she bent to pick up a long stick that had fallen by the stream.  Her small clothes were thin, not translucent but nearly so, and as she tested the stick’s strength and reach, Frodo could see every curve of her developing form clearly. 

But Pearl seemed not to care, nor to have any idea that her scantily clad form might have elicited a response from him.  Intriguingly, she did not seem aware of her own invigorating, youthful beauty.  Frodo found her manner unexpectedly appealing.

“Aren’t… aren’t you cold?” he managed, trying unsuccessfully to avoid staring.

She propped her stick against the apple tree’s trunk. 

“A little,” she admitted, her brief irritation seemingly forgotten, “but I’d rather not incur mother’s wrath again today.  Which I would if I ripped that dress.”  She swung nimbly into the branches as she talked.  “Though now that she’s taken away all my trousers, I expect I will end up shredding a few of them.  Perhaps she thinks she can make me a lady by forcing me to dress like one?”  She pulled the stick up into the tree after her and began knocking the shrivelled apples off their branches. 

“I’ll grant you, that is probably what she’s hoping to do," she continued.  "Poor mother, she’s never been able to fathom me.  What a mercy she has Pimpernel and Pervinca.”

Frodo sat on the bank of the little stream, safely out of the range of the falling apples.  “Everyone thinks their parents don’t understand them,” he shrugged, “and that they are the only ones that have ever been so misjudged.  That’s part of growing up.”  He cast a pebble into the brook.  “Be thankful you have parents to rail against.” 

The girl stilled in the treetop and Frodo felt her eyes upon him.  Trying to think of a really stinging retort, most likely, he thought.

But when she spoke, her voice was not indignant, but soft and sad.

“I suppose it would be harder not even having them.  I am sorry, Frodo.  I didn’t think.”  After another moment’s silence, she started on another branch.  “You are right, I should not complain.  My parents have been very understanding, considering.  And mother isn’t trying to aggravate me, she simply wants me to be happy, to marry someday and be accepted.”  The bitterness in her voice made Frodo look up again. 

“Is that such a terrible fate?”

She thrust determinately at a wizened apple at the very top of the tree.  “It is not a fate for me, cousin.  I’ve no desire whatsoever to become someone’s wife and bear a herd of children for some dull-eyed gentlehobbit.  I’ve not even the slightest whim in that regard.”  She gave a last thrust at the fruit that remained defiantly out of the reach of her stick.  “Things changed after Pip came,” she sighed.  “I don’t blame him, please don’t think I do, but…”  She shook her head.  “I just wish I had been born a boy.  If I had, no one would think ill of me for wanting to feel the dirt under my fingertips, the sun on my back, and for preferring the wild places of the wood to a kitchen hearth.”  She propped her bare arm against a branch, looking tired.  “Instead, they tell me that one day I’ll grow out of all those things that I now cherish.”  She blew the curls out of her face with a frustrated sigh.  “I’m sorry, Frodo … I don’t mean to burden you.”

“It’s all right,” he assured her, feeling suddenly very mature and wise.  He'd been nineteen during his last year in Buckland; not a tween yet, but beginning to feel the uncertainties of adolescence.  He knew what a difficult time it could be.  “I am happy to listen.  I was your age once.” 

She laughed and the sound ran up his spine like the shock of ice.  “You sound like Bilbo, and yet are you so much older than I?  I don’t believe you’ve come of age yet either, Mr. Baggins.”

Frodo flushed.  “I dare say I’m more experienced in the world than you, Miss Took.  You should listen to your elders.”

She made a rude noise and dropped her stick out of the tree.  It landed neatly by Frodo’s feet.  Then she began her own careful descent.  The bark was rough and it left fresh scratches over the marks of many older, like scars on her legs.  She didn’t complain, but when she reached the ground, Frodo took out his handkerchief.

“Here, let me take care of that.”  He brought her to the water and sat her on the bank.  Pearl paddled her feet while Frodo washed her scrapes in the icy water.  Her legs were muscular, lean and warm, but after he bathed them, they broke out in goose bumps that made the soft, golden hairs on her leg rise.  Frodo shivered and retrieved Pearl’s cloak, bidding her wrap herself in it for warmth, and so that he would not stare at what else the cold water had raised. 

“I don’t understand, Pearl," he said, trying to guide his mind back down more wholesome paths.  "You describe yourself as a person who values her freedoms, and yet you say you want to bind yourself to Lalia?  How is that freedom?” 

Pearl shifted uncomfortably.  “It’s not like that,” she insisted, looking away from him.  “Mistress Lalia understands me.  She is not bitter and spiteful like people say, she’s just strong, like me.  She’s had to be.  It makes her seem hard to those who don’t know her.”  She frowned in silence for a long moment.  “She's the only one who understands," she whispered at last.  "And she wants to help.” 

“She is going to teach me to be the keeper of Great Smials," Pearl continued, more firmly.  “No matter who succeeds Ferumbras, though of course that will be father, my situation would be secure.  She is getting old and needs to pass the ordering of the house to someone she can trust.  And she’s chosen me as that person.  Don’t you see, Frodo?  As the keeper of Great Smials, I would have power enough not to have to bow to the dictates of convention.” 

That sounded to Frodo more like something Lalia would have said than Pearl herself and it left an unpleasant taste in his mouth.  “That doesn’t seem much like freedom,” he said.

She avoided his eyes again.  “It… isn’t.  Not true freedom.  But it’s independence of a sort, and I fear it’s the closest thing to it that I can ever hope for.”  She rolled the hem of her cloak between her fingers as she continued.  “And from there, I can help father.  Lalia listens to me.  I’ll make sure she endorses him.  He’ll see.”

Frodo shook his head.  “It’s your decision, Pearl, but I must tell you, as an impartial observer hearing the details, I am not entirely comfortable with this.”

She cocked her head at him ruefully.  “Have you another suggestion, cousin?” 

“Well…”  He hesitated.  With the bees buzzing about them and the call of unseen songbirds filling the bright air, what he’d wanted to say suddenly seemed impossibly forward.  He wished to tell her that she was lovely and that there would surely someday come a lad who would win her heart.  But the morning had grown comfortably warm in the little hollow and Pearl had let the cloak slip from her shoulders.  In her damp, sleeveless shift, she looked breathtaking and yet as innocent as the first bloom of spring.  He could not help but stare. 

"I think…"  

The bright sun made the material almost translucent.  Gauzy shadows defined shapely, emerging breasts and the sweet curve of a feminine waist.  Where he had washed her scratches, her thighs remained bare so they could dry and the sight reminded him what her creamy skin had felt like.  She then turned to look up at him and a reflection off the water made her green eyes glow.

He almost forgot he was a gentlehobbit. 

“That is, I believe… I mean, it is my opinion that you are being premature dismissing your parents’ hopes for you out of hand.  You are quite… lovely.”  He had to avert his eyes to finish his thought.  “And, and I think you do the lads of the Shire a disservice by not even giving them a chance to win you."

She blinked and then peered up at him critically, as if just noticing his nervous sweat and growing agitation, though if she suspected that she was the cause of it, she gave no sign.

“Going to Great Smials doesn’t mean I can’t marry,” she said thoughtfully.  “But honestly, Pervinca’s the one the lads will be knocking down the door for, not me.”  Her mouth twitched into a frown.  “I’ve played with the lads from Tuckborough since I was old enough to walk, but even though fellows my age have already begun courting, none have ever shown an interest in me.”  She shrugged.  “I used to think that I would marry one of those lads, but…”  She studied him thoughtfully.  “Mother says the way you feel about a hobbit you want to marry is different from how you feel for a friend.”  She said the words almost as a question, but when Frodo didn’t comment, she shrugged.  “I guess it doesn’t matter anyway.  It’s not as if there’s a path beaten to my door.” 

In profile, her pensive face lit by the sun off the water, she was even more striking. 

Frodo knew he was widely regarded by the mothers of Hobbiton and Bywater as the most eligible prospect in the East Farthing.  They were constantly setting daughters, carefully coached in the game of flirtation, unguarded in his path.  He was well practiced in the game, and it was relatively easy to resist a manipulative or cunning coquette, but against Pearl’s lack of guile, he found himself utterly defenseless.  She simply was as fresh, untouched and radiant as she appeared, and against such honest purity he had no counter.  His guard was completely undone.  He drew in a breath.

“If there isn’t one, then the lads ‘round here are blind."

~*~

TBC