Chapter Fourteen

Kira had a little under two weeks to adjust to the idea that she had promised to… whatever she had promised to do.  She kept a watch on the window, and rejoiced when she saw the first bit of ground free from snow.  It was brown, of course, but brown was the colour of growth and within a day’s sunshine it had turned a marvellous shade of green that she had almost forgotten about over the winter.  The Tree Party looked to happen right along schedule this year.  Now that the sun was getting brighter each day and that everything smelled so fresh, it was hard to look at her room as the sickroom now, and in spite of herself her feet itched to get out of bed.  But then Kira remembered that thing had changed so much since she had last been outdoors, that a major piece of history had been lost forever, and that sobered her up quite a bit.

Nighttimes were still a problem for her.  The day that she had talked to Aunt Penny she had resolved not to welcome the blackness anymore, but that meant staring right into the water every night and dreaming.  A part of her had hoped that the dreams, or better yet, the island itself, would go away with her resolution, but she had no such grace.  Aunt Penny had said it would get better.  She hoped she was right.

So on the third of April Kira set her foot out on the rag rug in her room, then slid it down to the cool brick and stretched her arm behind her back, ready to shoulder half her body’s weight once again.  This is where I belong, she thought, but a part of her still felt she belonged back in bed, or better yet, in the Canal.  She tried to lock that part away.  She forced a smile, walked as best she could down the hallway, and sat at table with Mother, who was still a little tired from her earlier ordeal.  They had managed an unspoken arrangement not to speak of that again.

Kira gradually got used to hobbling about the house again, and she and Aunt Penny helped Mother start this year’s annuals in the little indoor pots.  “We’ll be starting business a little late this year,” said Mother, “but that can’t be helped, can it?”

And then, when the last of the chill waters had run off into the nearby streams, Kira opened the smial’s front door and stepped outside.  Tears sprang into her eyes, though that could have been the sudden gust of wind that blew at her face.  She rambled through the country, vaguely wondering where everyone was until she remembered that Aunt Penny was out at the market in town, and so probably was everyone else.  So much the better: Kira was not in the mood for company.  She sat herself beneath the tree that she had fallen asleep under, and tried to sort out all that had happened from then till now, and what would happen after.

April sixth came all too soon for Kira’s apprehensive mind.  Daffodil had not come to visit since she had been so mean to her.  And if she was nervous about facing Daffy, how could she bear even the sight of Tom without either bursting into tears or running up and pummelling him?  But the party was important to Aunt Penny, and still more important to Mother.  She was bound to go, for good or for ill, and even if she weren’t she’d only be putting off the inevitable.

So with a heavy heart she rode in her uncle’s old cart, the same that had taken her to and from Buckland last year, and travelled east to Hobbiton in time for the party.

No one really recalled why there was a feast there anymore.  Though it was the Elves’ New Year, this theory was generally scorned because only the Gardners believed (and even then, didn’t believe too loudly) that elves were real.  Of course it was also old Sam Gardner’s birthday, and his mayoralty would not be forgotten for a long while.  But Kira had always held with the idea that it was the anniversary of the great Party Tree’s first flowering.

It truly was the centrepiece of the event, after all; at least to the children, for whom the feast must have been made.  And it almost never failed to bloom in time for the event, and the ground would be littered with leaves of gold.  It was said that whoever got the first flower would be blessed with exceedingly good luck the next year; but whether this came from a time when the tree was a great deal smaller, or whether the tree had wisdom enough to bestow flowers upon worthy hobbits below was unknown.  Kira had never gotten one, though once she had been fortunate enough to see one drifting down, but she had memories of standing under the tree with the other children, singing,

Mallorn, mallorn, elven tree,
Cast a blossom down to me!

Of course she did not know what it meant at the time, and she doubted anyone but herself thought it was more than mere doggerel now.

She and her friends had gone to the Tree Party as long as she could remember.  But there was no genuine reason for her to go aside from the large amounts of free food: her friends usually left her to strike up old acquaintances with, say, the Hornblower brothers, or distant cousins from the far reaches of the Farthing, and they would have nothing to do with the lame girl that tagged along behind them.  So after eating her fill and trying to butt into a few conversations, she usually just left the group and went over to the Tree, even if she was supposed to be too old for that sort of thing.  She remembered hearing the story of its origin, but it had never mattered to her then.  Kira had just known it was a beautiful tree, and she liked to sit underneath its wide and lofty boughs, long after the younger children gave up on their quest, and smell its fragrance.  Then it was time for quiet stargazing until Mother called her back to the Burrowses’ cart, which would take them all home.

She hadn’t been able to go last year, for the snows had lasted far longer than usual; but Daffodil had told her that it was an awful drag, that winter had gone on so late that the Tree hadn’t bloomed in time.  But at the time she hadn’t even missed the party.  Smaug was flying over Laketown, and Kira wouldn’t have missed that for all the parties in the Shire.  She sighed.  This year’s winter was far worse than last’s had been, no matter what anyone else said.

The sun felt pleasant on her face as they drove along the East-West Road.  No one spoke, though Mother held her hand and smiled at the upward turn of Kira’s fortunes.  Kira just felt sick as she imagined forcing herself into society once more.  Still, she could not help but smile when she caught a glint of gold and white in the distance.  That would be the mallorn.

It was only mid-afternoon, but already the entire Party Field was packed.  Kira was content to take her first meal with the Brownlocks, whom she had not seen in over a year, and answered their question about her health and the disaster over winter as meekly as she could.  Normally this was the portion of the party she was anxious to get over with; today, however, it was a pleasant buffer between now and what was yet to come.  As the Brownlock family began to drift away from the table Mother asked Kira if she thought she were up to going over to the children’s tables on her own.  Kira hesitated.

“I think she’ll be fine, Rosemary,” Aunt Penny put in with a meaningful look at Kira.  “It’s rare that she gets a chance to be around so many children, and the presence of one of us would spoil it, wouldn’t it, Kira?”  Kira swallowed the bile in her throat, kissed her mother on the cheek, and rose from the table to seek out her friends.

“You’ll come to me straightaway if you feel ill or tired, Kira,” added Mother.  Kira simply nodded and walked away before either her emotions betrayed her or she lost courage.  But she did not seek out her fellow teens just yet.

First she had to bid the Tree hello, now that she finally knew what it was.  So she sat at the edges of its shade and let the perfume wash over her, half-listening to the sing-song of the children begging boons from it, who did not understand.  Funny that we can’t believe in elves even when they’re right in our midst, she thought.  Hullo, mallorn.  I’m sorry it took me so long to see you for what you are.

After a few more minutes of contemplation she got up again.  Better to get it all over with…

It was not hard to spot her friends in the midst of the slightly shorter tables, with benches that had been cut down to a child’s height.  Lingering near the part of the food tent closest to the area, she waited until Daffodil rose to refill her plate, and then walked along beside her.

“Daffy, I’m sor—”

With only the smallest glance in her direction, Daffodil cut her off.  “Don’t be.”

“No, I didn’t mean what I said to you.”

Now Daffodil stopped and turned to her.  “Don’t lie to me, Kira.  I’m not a fool.  Maybe you put it harder than you should have, but you meant it all the same.  You can’t go back to who you were and that’s that.”

Kira chewed her lower lip.  “Yes, but I was still wrong on some things.  Look, here we are, it’s spring, and I’m alive and talking to you.”

“Well, of course you are!  You can’t just give up on life like that, even if all the doctors in the Shire say you’re going to!”  She clapped Kira on the back; Kira stumbled forwards.  “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.  And you’re right, of course.  But… Daffy, if you can put up with my eccentricities… you know, I didn’t mean that you weren’t my friend anymore.”

“I know that,” said Daffodil, and her smile nearly lit up her eyes.  “Maybe you are different, Kira, but we can work through that.  Just as long as you find someone else to talk tales with.”

“Who, Tom?”

They both laughed, and when Daffodil dropped her plate Kira picked it up and took it, claiming that the right of food must go to the hungrier first.

*  *  *

Laden with food, the two lasses made their way back to the table.  “Tom’s in rather high spirits tonight,” Daffodil commented.  “I wouldn’t cross him if I were you.”

“I’ll try not to,” said Kira.  And likely fail, she added.

Suddenly a shout was raised from the table in the distance.  About half the children got up to gather around them.  “Look who’s back!”

At the front of the party were Tom and Roly, who practically ran to see her.  “Kira!”  Kira and Daffodil stood stock still, and Kira tried her best to still her hammering heart.  “I’m very sorry, Kira,” said Roly, “for what I did last fall.  I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Kira studied the hair on her foot.  “I know,” she said quietly.

“Are you the girl that fell in the river?” asked one of the other children.  Without even waiting for an answer, the rest of them pelted her with questions.  “Wasn’t it scary?”

“How’d it happen?”

“My dad said you drowned!”

Kira’s heart raced.  Get me out of here, she thought to no one in particular.  Finally, she managed a response.  “Er… dinner…”

“Sorry,” said Tom, in a voice loud enough to quell the others.  “It’s not polite to make a hobbit go hungry, especially someone who’s been ill all winter and is only just recovered.  Let’s go back to the table.”

And the group shuffled back so they could all resume the subject of food.  Tom walked on the other side of Kira, who did not look at him as he spoke to her.  “You really had me worried, this whole winter,” he told her.  “Why did you risk your life for that thing?”

“It mattered to me,” said Kira, “not that you hadn’t already worked that out before.”

“Well, yes, it mattered to you, but it’s not worth your life!”

“You’re right;” said Kira, “it’s probably worth more.”

“Kira, every time I think I can’t be amazed anymore at your… your idiocy, you go and prove me wrong!  What’s wrong with you?  Even after a whole winter, you won’t—”

They had reached the table.  “Tom, leave me be.  It’s been a nasty winter, and I don’t want spring to start off in the same way.”

It was difficult for Kira to focus on food and the questions at the same time, so she ignored her sudden celebrity until her plate was mostly clean.  When she pushed it away, the questions returned.

“How did you manage to get out of the water alive?”

“Daffy brought help.  You should really ask her; she was the one there.”

“But wasn’t it awful, being sick for so long?”

Yes.  “Well, I’m stuck in bed each winter as it is…”

“What was it like?” asked one of them, a younger hobbit whose sense had not quite caught up with his curiosity.

Kira only shuddered.  The clamour was starting to stifle again.  The voices swirled around her; she was feeling dizzy.  And amid the whirlpool she caught out one stream of talk:

“I heard she’d fallen into it from a tree… but what was she doing in the tree to begin with?”

She opened the eyes she’d been squeezing shut to see where the voice had come from.  The girl who had asked it was sitting across from Tom.

A half-sardonic smile spread across his face.  “She was going after a book.”

“A book?”  Tossing her curls back, the girl laughed.  More children took notice.  “Whatever for?”

Tom shrugged.  “She said it mattered to her.”

More laughter.  Get me out of here, thought Kira.

Daffodil touched Tom’s shoulder.  “Tom, you’re making Kira uncomfortable.”

“So what if I am?  If her book matters enough that she nearly got herself killed for it, I’m sure she won’t mind a little extra talk about it.”  The laughter gave way to silence.

“Tom,” said Daffodil, and she pointed him towards Kira, who had nearly sunk below the table.  But it was too late.  Kira stood up, livid.  “For the records, Tom, not that you think there’s any point in keeping them, I wouldn’t have ‘nearly gotten myself killed’ if you hadn’t thrown the Book in the old oak to begin with.”

“You still didn’t have to go after it.  You could have kept your wits instead.”

“I’ve lost my wits?  I’m the one that can read, I’m the one that thinks about the outside world, I’m the one that tried keeping you from ruining something so important.  Who’s really lost his wits, Tom?”

“It wasn’t important, Kira, and I didn’t ruin it.  That was either the wind, or it was you.”

“Tom, you—”  Kira lunged across the table, but Roly had stood up behind her, and restrained her.

“In fact, either way it was you, because I wouldn’t have thrown that book into tree if you hadn’t been reading it all the time.”

“But you didn’t have to, Tom.”

“And you didn’t have to go after it.”

“Right, because I could just sit there and let three Ages’ worth of history get forgotten, just like that.  Don’t think that I was only ill because I fell into the canal!  Don’t think I’d have been perfectly healthy over the winter if I’d let it fall without at least trying to save it!  If you knew how much we’ve lost—”

“See?” said Tom, turning to the crowd.  “She thinks the Travellers’ Tales are real!”  The children laughed again.

Get me out of here, get me out of here, get me out of here…  Kira sank to the grass, the energy of her rage flowing from her in tears.  The blackness rose about her, and panicked, she began to fight it, but her efforts were only serving to make it rise faster.  In desperation she forced an image of Mother’s face into her thoughts.  The blackness slowed, then stilled, then ebbed.

Finally, she opened her eyes again.  The conversation at the table had long turned to some other, safer topic; only Daffodil remained with Kira.  She put her arms around her.

Kira looked at her with reddened eyes.  “Leave me alone,” she said.  Daffodil quietly rose and walked away.

In another five minutes, someone rushed over to the table, breathless, saying that the musicians were tuning their instruments.  There was a great bustle as the table emptied itself, and Kira walked back to her seat on the bench and heavily sat down.

Just as she thought she was alone, Kira felt a hand upon her shoulder.  It was Tom.  “Hey,” he said.  “Sorry if I hurt you.”

But Kira made no reply.  Tom shrugged and left.

Kira was now left alone to the stars.  She gazed up as they glimmered in the darkling sky.  Without even thinking about it, she began to make out the constellations.  There, that’s the Hunter. And the Plough, too.  She turned her eyes towards the glow that remained as the Sun sank into the Western Sea, and caught the sweet glimpse of the Lonely Star.  And that’s Eärendil!  The tears began to flow again, but she did not sob as she stared into its beauty.  Elbereth Gilthoniel, I don’t want to die!  I don’t want to die!  She slid off the bench and onto her knees in the spring grass, barely noticing the clatter of her crutch behind her, only feeling the cool air drying her tears even as they fell.

“Kira?”

The voice barely reached her in her thoughts.

“Kira Proudfoot?  Is that you?”

Something about its timbre struck her, and she turned to look at its owner standing beside her.  “Kerry!” she cried, and reached over to hug his legs tightly.

“Whoa, whoa!” said Kerry Brandybuck, sitting down next to her.  He placed an arm around her shoulder.  “Shh—what’s wrong?”

“I tried so hard, Kerry—I really did, and I thought I was getting a lot better, but then Tom had to be so mean, and—”  She broke off her sentence.  “I’m sorry—here I am babbling to you and you don’t even know what I’m talking about.  This isn’t a good way for you to see me again, after so long…”  She fished about for a hanky, but Kerry handed her one before she could find hers.  She wiped off her face and blew her nose, then looked up at him earnestly.  “The Book is gone.”

“I know—or at least we’d gathered as much.  The Red Book of Westmarch, you mean?”

Kira nodded miserably.  “You’re really upset, aren’t you?”

“Not at you, Kira.  We don’t blame you in the least.”

“Thank you.  It’s not really my fault—it was a gust of wind that toppled it, no matter what Tom says—but I still wish I had done things differently.”

“We all do.  But I—my family and I, all the Families, in fact—have had a whole winter to mull it over, and so much help from one another.  We tried to contact you, but nobody would let us.  ‘Stupid Travellers’ influence,’ they called it.”

She chucked ruefully.  “‘Stupid Travellers’ influence’ indeed.  You’ve made a believer out of me, and I repaid you by destroying your most important artefact.”

“Don’t say—”

“I know, I know.  But it’s queer, all the same; things shouldn’t have happened the way they did.”

“No, they shouldn’t have—but you never know.  I know it’s shaken up the book community rather badly, hopefully enough that we’ll take a greater interest in sharing rather than storing this sort of thing.  We’re already going through all our collections and trying to piece together the parts we’ve lost.  If anything, this disaster was caused by our own bad stewardship of the books.”

“We let the Memory die,” said Kira.

“Something like that.”

“But why?  I’ve had this feeling for the longest time, that something’s horribly wrong in the Shire and we either ignore it or don’t do anything to fix it.”

“I’m not the person to ask.  We’re just the younger generation; we follow our forebearers and try not to judge their actions.  They have so much more experience, and have dealt with so much more…”

“But you think there’s something wrong, too?”

Kerry nodded, and for a few moments they gazed at the stars together.  “So, what exactly happened at the canal?”

“Tom—one of my friends—took the book from me, because he thought that I was spending too much time reading and not enough time playing.  Then he threw it up in the old oak, and I went after it.”

“I had guessed as much…”  He heaved a sigh.  “How far we’ve fallen!”

“But you still blow Merry’s horn from Rohan every November, don’t you?  And the mallorn still blooms.”  They looked over at the Party Tree and watched the children singing to it.

“Bah,” said Kerry.  “I’m not used to talking all reflective like this.  Let’s see if we can find you—oh, hullo there!” he cried, suddenly raising his hand high up in the air and waving at a person in the distance.

“Kerry, I’ve been looking all over for—oh, Kira!”  Sandra Fairbairn, clad in a plain grey dress, made her way over to the two hobbits and sat on the other side of Kira.  “I’m so sorry for everything—it was the original, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was,” said Kerry.

Kira looked from one to the other.  “You know each other?”

“Of course!” said Sandra.  “Kerry brought us the bad news when he learned of the accident.”

Kerry gave a wry smile.  “I’ve been serving as crying shoulder for Kira these past minutes.”

“Have you?”  Sandra smiled.  “That’s uncommonly kind of you.”

“Tell you what,” said Kerry, “I’d better give both our dads the news.  You sit and keep Kira company, and you can come and find me when you’re both done.”  He got up and walked away.

For a moment they stared at his retreating form.  “What was that about?” said Kira.

“Oh,” said Sandra.  “He probably just guessed we’d want some time to talk over all that’s happened without him butting in.  He’s like that.”

“Is he right?”

“I think so,” said Sandra.

“What’s he doing here, anyway?  What are you doing here?”

“Do you think the Families would miss something as big as the Tree Party?  Especially since we know what it’s for?”

“But it’s only one night!  And he lives all the way over…”  Kira waved her hand vaguely to the East.

“Well, we’re also having a bit of a conclave, seeing as our one great unifying manuscript’s now lost.  You’ll be summoned to it later, so each of the heads will hear firsthand exactly how it happened.”

Kira gulped.  It sounded remarkably like a council, or a trial.  “No complete copies?”  She knew the answer, but could not but hope.

“None.  That’s what this is for: trying to bring together all the copies we have in the three libraries, and seeing how much we’ve lost.  Of course, even if we had a complete copy it wouldn’t be the same.  It was really the handwriting—I never realised until then how much of a difference it made—that was the magic of the original.  During some of the most dreadful parts—like going through the Black Land—it was as though the words themselves were reluctant, as though he didn’t want to remember them or write them down.  Did you get that far in the book?”

“I finished that part.  I—oh, I would have returned it to you, the elvish legends rather daunted me; but then Tom was so nasty that I decided to start on them anyway.  If I had given it back to you…”

“If I had never given it to you in the first place!  What a fool I was, thinking the Book would be safe from all harm if I let it from my sight!”

“Sandra…”

“I know.  We shouldn’t dabble in what-ifs.  But, you see, I had only wanted you to believe in elves.  Do you believe in them now, Kira?”

“Of course I do.”

Sandra smiled, though not nearly as cheerfully as she had when Kira had seen her in Westmarch.  “Then there’s some good that’s come of this whole mess.”

Kira shrugged.  “I don’t think it was worth it.  If I hadn’t learned to read, well, I’d be as ignorant as the rest of us, but you’d still have your book and I’d still have my friends.  Sometimes I rather wish I hadn’t.”

“Don’t you ever say that!”

“Why not?”

“Your mind and heart’s a lot more important than a bunch of words, Kira.  We still have copies—”

“Not complete ones.”

“Some copies, of the most important stuff, and if the original really was the only way to get you to believe I’d give it to you again.”

“Truly?”

“Well, I’d like to think I would.”  She sighed.  “It’s just been so difficult.”

Kira put her arm around her.  “Has everyone said it’s your fault?”

Sandra sighed.  “Not to my face, no.  But it is mine, all the same.  I knew how important it was when I gave it to you.  We didn’t know—though we’d guessed—that you cared about it by November, too.  So,” she said, “I’m the one that’s responsible.”

“But you’d do it again?”

“I hope so.”

“Then you’re a great friend, Sandra, and I’m sorry that I’ve given you grief for it.  I wish you lived closer, and that Mum would let me associate with you.”

“She won’t?”

“Well, she wouldn’t if she knew about you.  I got in a mite of trouble for visiting the Fair with Kerry’s sister, and I can’t imagine she’d have a more charitable view of you.  And now everyone knows I’m a hopeless bookworm, liable to gallivant Outside at the drop of a pin.  I’ve lost everything: I lost my respectability for the Book, I lost my friends for the Book, and then I lost the Book, too.”

“I wish I could say something to cheer you up, but it seems as if we’re losing everything these days.  First Grandmother, then the Book, and now the King, too…”

“What?”  The chain of words somehow managed to link itself with the sombre clothing she had seen on Sandra and Kerry, a few other hobbits scattered throughout the party, and even a couple of children at the table.  “Oh, dear…”  She closed her eyes and wept the silent tears again.

“Kira—oh, I’m so sorry; I thought you knew!  The heralds came to the Bridge last month—Elessar is dead and his son Eldarion is now King.  I didn’t mean to distress you…”

“No, but—”  Kira paused to sniffle.  “It seems like everything leftover from the Third Age is gone now, and most people don’t even know!  I didn’t even know most of it until just now!”

“You probably would have known about the King if you hadn’t been stuck inside for so long, Kira.”

“I thought he was going to live forever…”

“Kira, he’s mortal like us, and he’d already reached two centuries!  You can’t grudge him his rest—whatever that may be.”

“Well, I thought he was going to live long enough that I could see him.”

“I didn’t get to see him either, if it helps.  He left Arnor for the last time the year before I was born.”

“But you got to see Elanor.”

Sandra gave another one of her sad smiles.  “Oh, you would have loved her, Kira.  She used to tell the most marvellous stories—not only from the Red Book, but her own memories of the Travellers, and her journey to Minas Anor when she spent a year in the King’s Court with all the fancy lords and ladies.  I used to want so badly to go there.”  Her eyes glistened.  “I think I was more grieved when she died than when I heard the news about Strider.  She was our last tie to the Red Book—our last tie to Frodo, too, barring all his namesakes.  She remembered him, you know.”

“Remembered him?  That’s impossible!”

“Not quite,” said Sandra.  “And she didn’t remember much.  But she was very bright, even when she was so young, and it didn’t take her long to learn how to talk.  And as soon as she could, her father asked her if she could remember the other hobbit who had held her and sung her to sleep.  And she did, so he told her, in language she could understand, that this was a very dear friend of his that had gone away.  And every day after that he asked her if she remembered Mr. Frodo, until she was old enough to understand how important it was and daily bring up her memories herself.  She told us that he used to say that a memory is one of the most precious gifts you can have… how it helps you go on in dark places…”  Sandra broke off and dashed the sleeve of her dress against her eyes.  “I still can’t quite believe that she’s gone.”

Kira was silent for a while, not wishing to intrude on something as holy as this friend’s grief.  But Sandra seemed to have mastered her tears—either that, or there were no more left to be shed.  “What was the memory?  Did she tell you?”

Sandra nodded.  “It wasn’t much, though, as I said.  I suppose it was the sweeter for being so faint.  Just… the gentle sound of his voice, the soft touch of his hand on her brow, and a pair of twinkling brown eyes, looking down with love and sorrow.”

“I should have liked to know her—to talk elves with you and her as you promised.  At least she told you.  Now I’ll never get to see anyone who knew the Ring-bearer.  There’s no one left.”

“Ah, but isn’t that the way everything has to go?”

“I suppose so.  But I don’t like it, all the same.”

“I don’t like it, either, dear.”  For a few minutes the two girls, united by their loss, sat there, but then Sandra remembered at the last that she still had to go and find Kerry, since he had given both of them the slip last time.  “You won’t be too upset on your own, will you?  Come to think of it, you should probably go find your mum or something; she must not have heard from you in a while.”

Kira looked at the position of Eärendil on the horizon.  “Not quite yet.  Usually she finds me at the Party Tree, anyhow.”

“All by yourself?”

“I think I’ll rather need it tonight.  I need to think.”

“Are you sure?  I could introduce you to all of my cousins of various degrees that are your age.  Kerry’s sister Merina would be about the same.”

“I’ve met her,” said Kira, and she felt a sudden longing to see Merina again and possibly many other, similar children.  “But I don’t think I can manage too many more people right now, if you take my meaning.  Besides, wouldn’t they all be dancing?”

Sandra nodded.

“Well, I can’t keep them from that.”

“I suppose not.  But I really must go now—I’ll get to see you again, hopefully?”

“At least next year, if you’re here again,” said Kira.

“That’s so long!—But it’s better than nothing, I suppose.  Goodbye!”  And with that, Sandra rose and left in search of Kerry.

With her friend gone, Kira felt as if all of her emotions were released from the bottom of her heart to pour down through her feet to the ground.  She limped over to the tree, where most of the children had given up on singing.  Elanor, the Book, Strider…  Strider, dead?  She sank to her feet at its bole, drawing her knees up to her eyes.  Why?  She looked up at the fair tree around her and half-expected it to wither up like Laurelin, just to spite her.  What am I to do?  The rejection, the reunion, the comfort, the cataclysmic news—all of these rushed back to her and she felt a surpassing weariness that kept her from even attempting to sort out her tumultuous feelings.

She rose again, turning to look at the tree.  She laid a hand on its silver bark—it almost felt alive, to her.  Mallorn, mallorn, elven tree; cast a blossom down to me!  She did not say it, but she thought it and channelled all the needs, all of her joy and pain, into the living wood.  She turned around, waiting to see if a flower would come drifting down to her on the wind.

None came.  She should not have expected anything different, really.  The weariness washed over her again, and she laid herself down in between two great roots.  Within minutes she was asleep.  She did not dream.

*  *  *

It took Rosemary five tries to awaken Kira, so deep a slumber she was in.  “I told you she was not ready for this,” she told Penny.  “Look at how exhausted she is from all that effort!”

Penny only shook her head and helped the half-sleeping Kira make her way across the field into the cart.  She had not seen the girl so close to peace in a long time.  Kira slept in the cart, and when they arrived at the Proudfoot smial, she was too tired even to change out of her nice dress before she went to bed.

“I think it’s high time I went back home,” Penny told her sister once Kira was soundly asleep.  “I’ll leave tomorrow.”

On a sudden impulse Rosemary flung her arms around Penny’s neck.  “Thank you so much,” she said, “for all you’ve done.  I don’t deserve a sister like you.”  Then she let go and smiled.  “You need to see your own family—and your husband, too, I daresay.  I’m sure I’ll be able to look after Kira by myself, now that it’s spring again.”

“I hope so,” said Penny; and when the next day Kira was awake and cheerful she departed.