Chapter Twelve

“I remembered not too long after you left,” Kira told Dr. Grimwig the next week.

“Your mother said you took it rather badly.”

Kira shrugged and tried to put a smile on her face.

“You must not try to dwell on your loss too much.  Be content that you survived.  I must admit, I never expected that you would climb up a tree and over a river to save something like that.  It was… daring.”

“It was the Red Book.  I was supposed to take care of it.”

The doctor hastily handed her his handkerchief.

“Doctor, am I ill?”

“Why would you say that?  No, you’re still recovering—and you’re grieving, too, which happens to all of us when we lose something dear to us.  It will get better with time, though I must admit I’ve never heard of anyone grieving over a book before.”

“It was a special book.”

“I’m sure it was.”  He laid a hand on her shoulder as she wiped at her eyes, then her nose.  “There, there—I’m sure it’ll all be better now.  How have you been sleeping?”

“Well enough.”

“Your aunt said you’ve cried out a few times.”

“They’re bad dreams.  People I’ve read about getting washed away.  I can’t stop them.”

“Are they particularly troublesome?  If you have difficulty sleeping your mother can fix you a tea that will help.”

“I can deal with them well enough,” said Kira.  “They will go away eventually, though, won’t they?”

“They should, with time—as the memory fades.”

“I don’t want it to.”

“The bad memory, I meant, of being alone and falling in.  Your experience in the canal was... harrowing.  But if you’re still sad over the book, I’m sure there are others you can read.”

Kira solemnly shook her head.  “I shall never read again.”

He clapped her on the back.  “You’re far too young to be making such grandiose statements.  I think you have a thing for books, Kira—that’s been made completely clear by now.  In fact, it might be a good idea to have one on hand this winter and get your mind off things.”

“No, not this winter.  I don’t think Mother or Aunt Penny would approve, even if I had the heart to.  Didn’t reading get me into this mess?”

“Well, yes and no.  But that doesn’t mean it’s bad.”  Dr. Grimwig heaved his shoulders, dismissing the entire subject of Kira’s emotions to somewhere far Outside.  “Well, your body’s sound again and it should continue to be so provided you eat all six meals each day.  It’s the best advice I can give anyone this time of year.  If you have any problems, tell your mum so she can find me—otherwise I don’t think I’ll need to see you again until next month.”

*  *  *

Even though Aunt Penny had been given leave to depart, late at night Kira overheard her telling Mother that she would not until she was certain that her niece would be well.

“Are you sure?” said Mother.  “You have your own family to look after.”

“They are in the safety of Brandy Hall.  And you are my family, too.  Kira may be getting better, but she liked that book too much.  She’s been sullen the whole week—oh, if only I’d had my way with the Master and she hadn’t learned to read!”

Kira strained her hearing.  “You couldn’t have known, Penny.  I’m sure we all would have done things differently if we had.  But thank you for staying—I am sure it will not be for much longer.”

“I hope not.”

So when, in four days’ time, Aunt Penny came in during tea to have a talk with Kira, Kira was hardly surprised.

“Are you feeling better?”  It was an innocent question, but Kira sat up in bed nonetheless.

“I don’t need to sleep as much as I did last week.”

“That’s good.  And how are you feeling about that book?”

“I’m feeling as well as can be expected.”

Aunt Penny smiled.  “That’s not what I asked you.”

“No, then.”  Kira took a gulp of tea.  “I feel dried up, like all the magic’s gone and died inside me.”

“Magic?”  Aunt Penny raised a sceptical eyebrow.

“Sorry; I should have put that better.  I’m miserable.”

“Kira, darling, you sound like Andric when he’s in one of his moods.  You’re not due to be a tween yet until another four years.”

“I’m grieving, Aunt Penny; what did you expect?”

“It was only a book, you know.  It’s not the end of the Shire.”

Kira wrinkled her nose at her at her aunt, shrinking into the pillow propped at her back.  “Well, it feels like it is.  And you wish you’d kept me from reading, which I can hardly blame you for since sometimes I wish it myself.  But there are a good many better things to wish for, like that everyone else could read, or that Tom weren’t an oaf, or that Frodo had never sailed—”

“I wish I’d kept you from reading?  Wherever did you hear that?”

“From when you were talking with Mum.”

“Kira, you should have been asleep that late at night!  You’re losing sleep over this?”

Kira answered Penny’s question with a glare, and deliberately took a scone from the tray on her lap.

“Kira!  This is no game!  You need to pick yourself up; I don’t care how upset you are!”

“Aunt Penny, it wasn’t an ordinary book.  The—the Travellers wrote in it—Sam Gardner wrote in it, over a hundred years ago!  It was so ancient, and so important to so many people!  They’re probably sad, too.”

“Well, you’re not them, are you?  You’re a Proudfoot; you’re not a Took or a Gardner or even a Brandybuck.”

“Actually—”

“And I don’t care if you’re descended from Merry the Magnificent on your father’s side.  You’ve had as little to do with them as possible, and just because you have a bit of that blood in you doesn’t make you one of them.  So don’t act as if you are!  We—your mother especially—are very worried about you.  You barely got out of that river with your life.”

“Well, they’re at least my friends.  Why can’t I cry, if only for them?”

“Because you’ve been crying for over a week already.  Can’t you at least put this aside long enough to get a good night’s sleep?”

Kira could only shrug.  “Just leave me alone, Aunt.  You don’t even understand why I’m said.”  She put the uneaten half of her second scone back on the tray.  “I think I’ve lost my appetite, Aunt Penny.  I’m sorry.”

“Kira…”  Aunt Penny looked about to say more, but she only sighed and took the tray from the room.  She made as if to shut the door behind her, but turned back and kept her eye at the crack in the door.  Her niece had hugged her knees to her chest, and was proceeding to thud her head into them.  Silly thing, she thought, but suddenly Kira shuddered and went limp.  Crashing the tray on the floor, she rushed back in.  “Kira, are you ill?”

There was no response.  She laid a hand to Kira’s cheek; it felt remarkably cool.  Kira did not move, not even to breathe.  Trembling, Penny checked the girl’s pulse.

It was there, though faint.  But the girl looked more dead than asleep, or even fainted.  Silently she kept vigil over her form, waiting but dreading to know what would happen next.

*  *  *

Kira had expected the blackness to return to her.  She did not expect to rise from it and see her aunt there, demanding to know what had just happened.

“I—I don’t know, Aunt Penny.  I must have fainted.  I’ll try not to let it happen again.”

“Kira, it looked much more serious than a faint.”

“Maybe I’m still sick, then.  I don’t see what all the fuss is.”

“Kira, don’t ever do that again, especially not in front of your mother.”

“I couldn’t help—”

“I’m sure you couldn’t.  But still—don’t!  Now, I’m going to clean up the mess I made when I ran in here to see if you were still living, and then I shall watch you until your mother returns from town.  Can I trust you to stay awake while I’m cleaning?”

“Aunt Penny, the last time this happened was when I found out the book was gone!  I don’t even know what happened, and I’m certainly not trying to faint!”

Her aunt seemed to take this well enough to rise from the stool next to Kira’s bed.  “Then it has happened before?”

“Once.”

Aunt Penny left the room, and the sound of sweeping could be heard from the hallway.

It was going to be a long, horrible winter, Kira decided.

*  *  *

Two days later found Daffodil running into Kira’s room, skidding to a halt on her knees at the bed, and in the same action bringing Kria’s hands into her own.”

“Kira!” she cried.  “Glad Yule!  I’m so happy you’re better!”

Kira fumbled for her pillow, set it behind her back, and sat up, rubbing her head.  Belatedly she gestured to the bedside stool for Daffodil.  “Yule?  Is it Yule already?”

“First Yule, at any rate.  And a very happy one, too, since your killjoy mother and aunt are letting me in to see you.  When it gets warmer out I think Roly and Tom and I are going sledding.  I wish you could join us.”

“I don’t.”

“Oh—well, I suppose I can understand that.  But Tom is awfully sorry for everything that happened.  We all are.  If we had known you were going to almost drown…  Oh, I’m so sorry, Kira, for everything that’s happened to you, and every part I had in it!  I checked every day to see how you were doing,” she added.  “We were all very afraid for you for a while.”  She squeezed Kira’s hands and tried her best to smile.

“The book is gone.”

“What?”  Daffodil paused.  “Oh, how terrible!  After all you did to save it that must have been a nasty shock.”

Kira blinked and dashed her hand across her eyes, trying not to wallow in self-pity.  There was a pause as she tried to think of what to say next.  “I do thank you, Daffy, for finding help.  I realised I should have asked you to before you left—if I had known you were getting someone, I probably would have stayed on the ground.”

“It was nothing, Kira.  You would have done the same thing for me, I’m sure.  Though I’ll never know what possessed you to go after that thing in the first place…”

Kira shivered.

“I guess I’d better not ask, though.”

Kira gave one short nod.  “Thanks anyway.  I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself now, but thanks.”

Daffodil gave a little laugh.  “And here we are talking about sad things and it’s Yule!  I made you something, you know, if you’d like it.”

“Certainly.”

Daffodil handed her a very small parcel wrapped in cloth.  “Open it!”

Kira unfolded the cloth to reveal a very small bit of lace.

“It’s not very much I know,” said Daffodil, looking at the doily.  “Mother only started teaching me this month.  In fact—if your mum will let me I could come and teach you.  Then you’d know what to do with yourself!”

Kira smiled in spite of herself.  “What do I do with it?  I could hang it up on my wall.”

“Or it could be a cap for that stuffed dog of yours.  Where is he, anyway?”

“I don’t know—probably somewhere under my bed.”

Daffodil got off the stool and disappeared beneath it.  Kira heard some coughing below.  “Heavens, how long has this lain uncleaned?  I think this is the largest number of dust mice I’ve seen under a bed.”

“I don’t think Mother’s paid much attention to sweeping this past month, Daffy.”

“Too true!  Is this it?”  An arm snaked out and plopped a dust-covered item on the bed.  It was the dog.

“Yes,” said Kira.

“Okay, I’m coming out now—what’s this?”  Daffodil had mostly emerged from under the bed, and she was tugging something with her.  She looked at it.  “I thought you said it was gone!”

“Open it,” said Kira.

Daffodil, with a bit of effort, heaved on about half the pages to open the book right in the middle.  “Oh.  That’s so odd—when I last saw it…”

“It was a book,” said Kira.

“Right.”  Daffodil pushed the book back underneath.  “There,” she said, plopping down on the bed, her hair all dusty from her adventure.  “I remember this dog from long ago, now that I see him again.”  She picked him up and began to dust him off.  “Eek!”

Kira sat bolt upright.  “What is it?”

Daffodil had dropped the soft toy.  She shook her hand out, letting fall to Kira’s coverlet a bug—not too big but not very small either, and one of the disgusting crawly kind at that.  It was dead.

“It must have gone there to escape the winter,” said Kira.  She lifted her sheets, letting the carcass fall to the ground.  She finished dusting off the dog, and placed the doily atop its head.  “What do you think?”

“Looks rather odd with one ear missing.”

Kira smiled.  “Happy Yuletide, Daffodil.”

“Happy Yuletide, Kira.  I’m glad you’re back.”

*  *  *

Soon after Daffodil left Mother and Penny entered.  “Glad Yule!”

“Mum, why didn’t you tell me it was Yule?”

Aunt Penny spoke.  “We hardly had the chance to!  Daffodil was banging on the front door at dawn!”

“I should have been able to keep track of the dates,” Kira ruminated.  “I know it’s harder for me to make gifts during the winter, but I like having the chance at least to think about it.”

“Kira,” said Mother, “you’ve been too busy healing to worry about that sort of thing.  Don’t fret about it now.”

“Mother, if I had something to fret about, maybe that’d let me focus on healing a little more.”

“I’m not sure if I understand you, my dear.”

Aunt Penny caught the look Kira threw her.  “I think she means that if she had something to distract her she wouldn’t be so troubled.”

“Troubled?  But it’s Yule!”  Mother took hold of both of Kira’s hands.  “Now, I wasn’t entirely sure if you’d be up to eating the regular Yule meals this winter, so last night your aunt and I took up all of the dried mushrooms from the fall, found some salt ham and mutton, and made you a whole three kettles full of stew.”

Kira’s mouth watered.  “All of the dried mushrooms?”

“And every drop of it’s yours for the eating,” Aunt Penny put in.  “Over the course of the winter, I should add.  It’s not quite sick food, you see, but it is hearty and nourishing, and there’s nothing that cheers up a hobbit more than good food.”

Kira smiled gratefully at her benefactresses.  She had never had her own private supply of food before.  One thing was certainly better, wintering at home—she received very personal attention when it came to meals, especially at Yule.  Last winter she had been lucky to have a small quantity of cold goose and some mincemeat brought into her room.  She did not think that she could stomach either, now, at least not for a good while, but her family had already seen to remedy that with the stew—all the dried mushrooms?  “Does this mean I can have some right now?”

With a wink and a smile Penny left the room.  Kira realised with the alacrity of her aunt’s return that it must have been left simmering on the kitchen stove.  As she tucked into the bowl of stew, she said, “Daffodil must have at least smelled this on the way out—and in.  What a pleasant surprise, but how did you manage to keep it that way?”

“We made her promise not to tell before we let her see you.”

Kira laughed at this.  “Mother, Daffodil wants to come in once a week and teach me tatting.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea, love.  It’s about time you started learning something new again.”

The whole day was spent in Kira’s room, laughing and sharing old family tales.  And Kira laughed and did not mind salting her food with tears.  When night fell she hoped.

*  *  *

Second Yule was more subdued than First, though Kira did not quite understand why until she remembered that a year ago she had finished her primer and started Bilbo’s tale.  But she shook off the memories for now and ate roast chestnuts brought steaming from the fire, and when she sat up in bed she tucked her feet under herself so that a little feeling returned to the right foot.

A week later Daffodil visited and started teaching her the art of lace.  She had previously tried her hand at some of the other cloth-crafts, but if anything fell out of place it always unravelled.  This kind of lace was all knots, though, and Daffodil showed her the various forms she had learned.  Daffy told her that if you got really good at it you could make basic pictures in the lace, flowers and fruits and vines and trees.  Kira’s attempts were bumpy and uneven, but not much worse than her friend’s.

But through the week she imagined lace tapestries of trees that shed liquid light, and went over the forms in her mind.  The loops could be drops of light, at the very least, but picture-lace involved another method that she knew nothing about, though she could try and figure how it worked.  She would have to remember to ask Daffodil to leave a pair of the fine needles with her next time; she could beg the string from Mother or her aunt.

A few more visits and Daffodil brought in an apparatus of her mother’s: a paper-and-pin set with many, many bobbins of string that created sheets and sheets of lace in beautiful wavy patterns.  They tried briefly to reckon out the method, but were too afraid to mess up the pattern as it stood.

Daffodil had to leave before it got dark, winding her feet in a few rags to protect them from the snow; but she left the lacemaker behind and Kira mused on it until the light was too dim.  The lace looked, she realised, like a wave, with endless crests of water.  They created a rhythm: too high and it would subsist; too low and it would rise again.

*  *  *

She had never noticed a shrub on her little black isle before, though she had the feeling it resembled the thorn bushes in Mordor.  Ignoring the black water, she stared at the plant until she saw that it was oozing sap that plinked down onto the rock.  Where did you come from? she thought to the bush.  The water was making noises, too; she had never noticed that before.  It was probably because she wasn’t looking at it and it wanted to make its presence known.  She turned to look at it, but it was not trying to swallow her island this time.  If anything it had receded, but it was gaining again, inch by inch.  There were no storms in this little land.

She thought over everything that had lain in her mind for the past month, whether fully or only half-buried, and walked to the water’s edge.  And what are you?  What do you want?  No answer from the water, of course, but for once it was in motion and not trying to make her see the horrid dreams reflected in it.  After several minutes’ thought, she stooped down and dipped her hand in it, half expecting it to dissolve.  Almost instantly she felt a tug out to the sea, and jerked her hand, still whole, away.  It was dry.

The water stilled as she slipped deeper into the realm of dreams, daring her to look within.  Viciously she kicked at it, to disturb the surface.  What do you want? she asked the blackness again.  And her eyes were drawn to the ever stilling water.  No!  I don’t want any more dreams; the waking’s hard enough!  Leave me alone!

And this time a voice answered her, though she did not know whence it came.  Would you forget at night, then?  You forget enough at day.

I don’t forget, you ninny!  And I don’t want to, not even if it means this!

Very well.

But I don’t want this, either!  Why can’t you just go away?

But there was no answer.  The water pooled around her foot.  Could you at least stop the dreams?  They scare me.

The water increased now, but it did not pull at her.  It was going to swallow the island again, she decided.  Her skirt floated up in the water, then as the water took it grew heavy and sank.  But there were no vague images within the water, though she looked down at it, just black.  Still standing, she hoped her plea had been heard when the water closed in over her head.