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The Farmer's Son  by Lindelea


Chapter 19. Fading Echoes

Middle night, 25-26 September

Eglantine was suddenly awake, though only a moment before she had been dreaming, uneasily perhaps, from the tension in her body as her eyes sprang open, though the dream itself was gone. She was panting, as if she’d run a race, and as she pulled up the covers she shook suddenly, as if seized with a chill that belied the warm bedding. ‘Dinny!’ she whispered, against her better judgement. The unfortunate hobbit had already gone two nights without sleeping, and here she was disturbing him once again…

…only to realize, as she reached for his comforting bulk, that his side of the bed was empty, and not even any lingering warmth there, as if he’d been gone a long time.

‘Dinny!’ she said again, louder, sitting up to see the hollowed place in the pillow where his head had rested, when they’d sought the bed a little earlier than usual – yes, he’d been to bed, and now he was gone from the bed, and it was cold, so cold, she thought incoherently.

Likely he'd gone to the privy, she told herself, for the weather continued fine, no need to use the chamber pot. He'd be put out to think he'd disturbed her slumber, so she'd just stay in the bed and wait for him to return. She'd wait... Surely he'd be back before the parlour clock chimed another quarter.

The time seemed to stretch out into eternity, and she remained cold, and huddle as she might in the blankets she could not seem to get warm. Where was Dinny? She waited. And waited.

At last, after what seemed half the night (though the clock did not chime, so it couldn't be that long, now, could it?) she thrust her feet out from under the covers, fighting down the half-formed notion that something waited in the shadows, beneath the bed perhaps, waited to seize her with a clawlike hand. ‘Nonsense,’ she muttered, sitting herself up and seeking the floor with her toes. She threw back the bedcovers in defiance of the darkness and stood to her feet. ‘Dinny?’

Silence drowned the slumbering smial. Eglantine might have been the last living soul left in a lonely world; no snores, no stir of bedding, no sleepers’ heavy breathing, not even the ticking of the dwarf-made clock.

Fighting fear, she tiptoed from the bedroom and slipped down the hallway like a ghost, past the other bedrooms, silent and shadowy. Eglantine dared not peek in at the doorways, for fear she’d find all the beds mysteriously empty, or worse.

The side-door of the smial stood ajar, allowing a deathly chill to creep into the smial though there was no breath of a breeze to stir the air.

She crept to the door and peeped out into the still and black night. With no moon to light the sky, the yard seemed ominously dark, though as she pushed at the door, she looked up to see a multitude of stars scattered across the sky, their light somehow too cold, too distant, to do aught but make the shadowy yard seem darker, more silent.

She could just make out Paladin’s bulk, standing a few feet from the door. ‘D-dinny?’ she ventured, her voice quavering with chill at the very least, and perhaps unease, though she hugged herself tightly and fought down her fear, unwarranted as it seemed to be, a mere fancy.

‘Dinny,’ she said, a little stronger, advancing into the yard. She saw the shadow of her husband move as he turned, moved to her, and suddenly his arms were around her, warm, and she hadn’t realised until that moment how cold she’d been, how very cold, chilled almost to the heart.

‘Aggie!’ he said, warm breath ghosting in her ear. ‘What in the world? Out without even a shawl! Come in, before you catch your death…’

She gave a shiver at that, though at the same time a smile surprised her – she was the one who usually fussed about someone catching their death, and here was Dinny…

‘I might say the same,’ she managed, though her teeth threatened to chatter. ‘What are you doing, my love, leaving your warm bed to stand out in the cold…!’

‘The stars are so bright this night,’ he said, as if changing the subject. ‘I got up to see… and…’

‘To see the stars?’

‘To see the night,’ he said, and she was puzzled. Why would anyone want to see the night? Stars, she could understand, for there was something fascinating about them following their courses, faithful in their nightly dance, but… night? Night was time for sleeping, for the most part, unless you were watching with an animal that was sick or birthing, or by someone’s sickbed. Or deathbed, something whispered in the back of her mind, and she shivered again.

Paladin was immediately solicitous. ‘But you have caught a chill,’ he insisted, steering her into the smial and closing the door firmly. ‘A cup of tea?’

‘Nothing wrong with me that my pillow can’t solve,’ Eglantine said. Her husband hadn’t slept for two nights, and tonight was making a third, and though a hot, bracing cup would be welcome she was not going to be the one keeping him from his own pillow, no indeed! ‘The blankets, now, they’re lovely and warm as well.’

He chuckled low, and after making sure the side-door was securely latched against night breezes, he steered them down the corridor towards their bedroom, his arm warm around her waist. And now, as they passed the other rooms, Eglantine could hear the heavy breathing of sleepers within. Why had the night seemed so silent, only a little while ago?

By tacit agreement, they stayed quiet, not talking until they curled together in the bed. ‘That’s better,’ Paladin murmured, making sure Eglantine’s cold soles rested on his own feet’s woolly warmth. ‘Much better.’

‘…but what were you doing out there in the yard in the first place?’ Eglantine wanted to know. ‘In the cold, in the dark…?’

‘I was thinking of our lad,’ Paladin said, his arms briefly tightening as his wife drew a sharp breath.

‘You think…?’ Suddenly her unsettling dream, her unreasoning fear returned full force.

‘Nothing of the sort,’ Paladin replied, soothing, one hand pulling free from his embrace to rub gently up and down her back. ‘I was thinking that they ought to have come safely to Crickhollow this evening some time, or on the morrow at the very latest, even if they stopped for a long time at the Golden Perch in passing…’

Come safely rang in Eglantine’s ears, and she seized on the words.

‘Come safely,’ she echoed. ‘Then why were you standing in the cold, in the dark, to look at the night?’

He hugged her closer. ‘I've been unsettled the last few days, ‘tis true,’ he said. ‘And no wonder, what with Ferdi and Tolly gone missing, and that terrible dream, as if a warning, and Ferdi’s nightmare about Frodo…’

Eglantine waited in silence. At last Paladin was unfolding the reasons for his unease, somewhat, for he’d not talked about his dream the other night, just when she thought he would. He’d merely shrugged it off, and they’d gone to bed, with her none the wiser.

‘…but if aught had gone amiss, we’d have had a messenger pretty quick, I'd think,’ Paladin said. ‘If Frodo were hurt along the way, I'm sure our lad would keep his wits about him, send Samwise for help, or leave Sam to tend Frodo whilst he sought help, and in any event, he’d’ve sent a quickpost rider with a message, I've no doubt.’

‘No doubt,’ Eglantine said, beginning to relax again.

‘And as there’s been no word, I'm sure all my fancies have been just that: fancies,’ Paladin said. ‘No truth in ‘em at all.’ He essayed a chuckle. ‘Too much spice in the sausages, as you said,’ he added.

‘And the something wrong?’ Eglantine said, wrinkling her brow. ‘We both felt it. We both felt… something.

Paladin rolled away and shook his head against the pillow.

‘There was,’ Eglantine insisted. ‘Something.

‘Something,’ Paladin muttered. ‘For the life of me, Aggie, I can’t think… What ever it might have been, that feeling, it’s not there now. Somewhat was amiss, the last few days, an itch I couldn’t scratch, something I couldn’t put my finger on, but now…’

Though it went against her natural inclination, foolish fancy as it was, Eglantine found herself holding her breath and reaching, stretching, with her ears and heart and all of her senses, really, listening hard, to what, she couldn’t really say. Listening for something she could not define, nor, apparently, could her husband.

‘It’s gone, whatever it was,’ she said to herself, but Paladin heard, and he rolled over again to envelop her in his arms.

‘Whatever it was,’ he said with a yawn. ‘Likely fancy, and foolish lads who partook of too much medicinal brandy and forgot all about their hunt.’

Eglantine pursed her lips at this, and might have said more, but in the next moment she felt Paladin relax, and then he began to snore. Just like that! she thought to herself with a mental shake of her head. She lay very still, not wanting to disturb him, and it wasn’t long before she drifted off as well.





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