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You Can Lead a Took to Water  by Lindelea

And so, here we come to the end of all things, in this story at least. That's one WIP finished. Thank you for coming along on the journey, and for your patience. Wishing you the best in these difficult times.

Dreamflower, I dedicate this story to you. Happy Birthday (or unBirthday), and many happy returns.

Chapter 12. All's Well that Ends Well

After breakfast, Paladin and Eglantine were gratified to see every one of the hired hobbits go over to Robin, individually and in pairs, bow to the Man and heartily shake his hand, offering profuse thanks for the "finest meal" they had "ever remembered enjoying, and then some!" Mardi, needing to be off about a healer’s business, spoke his thanks as well and slipped quietly out the door somewhere in the middle of the queue of hired hobbits.

Robin, for his part, remained seated to receive their thanks and blessings, that they might more easily look him in the eye without him towering over them, a sensitive reaction on his part, Eglantine thought.

Young Pippin took advantage of this state of affairs to climb into the Man's lap, where he helped by accepting each accolade with a solemn nod as Robin's due.

At last, the final worker, Nod the forehobbit, had tendered his appreciation and filed out after the rest through the doorway to the yard. Pearl stood up from her seat and began to clear the table, and her younger sisters followed. First they'd put away any remaining food in covered bowls in the pantry, and then they'd scrape and stack the dishes and bring them to the washbasin, once it had been filled with steaming water from the kettle, with soap beaten in, and tempered to hand-washing temperature with cool water from the bucket by the stove. The scraps would go to the pigs, and the dishes would be scrubbed and dipped in steaming rinse water and laid on the cloth-covered sideboard to be dried and put away.

Paladin lingered for a few moments more before going out to the haying. It would take some small amount of time to harness the ponies and hitch them to the haywaggon, after all, and Nod was a competent hobbit, well worth his wages, and more. He took the Man by the hand and said, 'I thank you, Robin, for a fine meal, one that will take us well through our morning labours, and even beyond.'

Eglantine lifted the spoon she was using to scrape scrambled eggs into a bowl and shook it at him. 'Don't you dare!' she said. 'I'll have the late nooning on the table promptly at one o' the clock, and don't you or your hobbits come belated to the table!'

All laughed at her fierce expression, so unlike herself, even the Man, who said to Paladin, 'I certainly wouldn't, if I were in your shoes!'

'Luckily for me, I don't wear any! Shoes, that is,' Paladin responded promptly. He went over to Eglantine and kissed her cheek. 'No worries,' he said. 'The food won't go a-wanting.' And to Robin, he said, 'I fear this is more of a good-bye than a farewell, considering your experience here amongst the Tooks.'

Thankfully young Pip, who was examining the shining buttons on the Man's shirt, carved of some exotic substance that shone with pearly highlights, didn't seem to catch the sentiment.

'Not all the Tooks,' Robin said obliquely. 'I have found the vast majority of them to be good-hearted and open-handed, ready to help a stranger in need and offer friendship unlooked for, into the bargain.'

'The family have been more likely to befriend tall folk than your average Shire-dweller,' Bilbo confirmed, but then his mother had been a Took, and old Gerontius had been well-known for befriending strangers along the ways and paths of the Tookland and bringing them home to supper, sometimes to the consternation of the rest of his family.

Young Frodo nodded, his eyes shining.

'Well then, Master Robin, I must take my leave,' Paladin said, against a background of clinking dishes as Pearl began the washing up.

Robin gently lifted Pippin from his lap and set the lad on his feet, then unfolded himself from his sitting position, stood as tall as he might under the circumstances, and tendered a deep and respectful bow to the farmer. 'My thanks to you, Dinny, for saving my life.'

The farmer smiled. 'I should say it was more young Pip who can claim that honour.' And so Robin bowed to the small lad and repeated the sentiment, and Pippin, to his credit, returned the bow and murmured an appropriate response.

'I'll have you know, Dinny, that young Pip was in good hands, the whole time,' Bilbo said. 'And now that you've met the Man yourself, I'm sure you'll agree with me.'

'I'm sure I shall,' Paladin said, though he wasn't quite sure what the old hobbit was getting at. Well, Bilbo and Frodo would be visiting for the next fortnight, anyhow, he thought. They'd be staying until the Brandybucks arrived for their annual summer visit, and then some days after so that Frodo and Merry might spend much-needed time together. When old Bilbo had originally adopted the lad and spirited him away from the Hall, young Merry had stopped eating in his grief, and the adults had scrambled to find a solution. Thus, shared summers at Paladin's farm, and regular visits between Bag End and Brandy Hall were now obligatory.

In any event, he'd seek some clarification from Bilbo later. For now, he needed to make hay whilst the Sun was smiling brightly on the Green Hill country.

After the door closed behind the good farmer, Eglantine found it necessary to intercept their honoured guest as he moved purposefully towards the washstand and piles of waiting dishes. 'Ah-ah-ah!' she said. 'You cooked this magnificent feast! Don't expect to do the washing-up as well!'

'Do you fear my depredations upon your dishes, good Mistress?' Robin said gaily. He scooped up four mugs, waiting on the cloth-covered sideboard to be dried and put away, and began to juggle. Even half-crouching as he was, to avoid brushing the ceiling, he kept the mugs expertly circling in the air as he moved to the waiting cup hooks and put each one away with a flourish.

Laughing, Eglantine put up a staying hand, resting the other over her heart. 'No,' she said at last, 'but I haven't laughed so heartily in too long a time!'

Robin bowed with a grin. 'At your service, Mistress.'

'Don't you Mistress me if you know what's good for you, young Man!' Eglantine said. 'Aggie's quite good enough for the likes of you!'

'Aggie, then,' the Man conceded. He looked down at small Pip, who'd followed him like a dog at heel, and tousled the curly head. 'And young Pip. But what's this?' His hand came away bearing a ha'penny, which he bestowed upon the little lad. 'Has your mother not yet taught you not to keep your coins in your ears?'

As everyone laughed at this, and Pippin clasped the coin to his heart with both hands, the Man bent closer, adding quietly, 'I owe you my life, lad, and I'll never forget that. Or you.' He moved to his pack, strapped up by the door (for in between his self-imposed cookery tasks, he'd tightly rolled his blankets and put them away, along with the freshly washed, sun-and-wind-dried, and neatly folded clothing Eglantine had piled beside it). 

As he hefted it now, preparatory to easing the first strap over his shoulder, his eyebrows rose. 'But what is this?'

'We added a few good things,' Eglantine said. 'Little comforts, and ways to say thank you again. A jar of my own homemade brambleberry jam, a bottle of cordial, some bread and cheese and sliced ham for your luncheon as you walk across the fields to Bywater...'

The Man blinked a little, and his voice was husky as he sketched another bow. 'I – I don't know what to say, Mis– Aggie.'

Eglantine found her own eyes a bit watery, so she injected extra briskness into her tone as she replied, 'That's a fair sign that nothing is needing to be said.'

Pippin had twigged to the fact that his tall friend was leaving. 'Do you have to go?' the lad cried, hugging the Man's leg and looking way, way up into Robin's face with a pleading expression.

Robin shrugged his pack onto his back and crouched slightly. 'I must,' he said. 'Why, I wouldn't want to get your parents in trouble, lad. The Thain – and his esteemed mother, Mistress Lalia, well, they take a dim view of Men in the Tookland, I'm sorry to say.'

Pippin swallowed hard, and then he stood himself up to his full (though diminutive) height and set his chin in a firm line. Through his tears, he declared, 'Well, if I'm ever Thain, I'll give you a Pass to wander the Tookland to your heart's content, I will, a Pass that's good all the time, and you won't have to break any rocks to earn it, neither!'

'Either,' his mother corrected, even though she was reeling at this evidence that the small lad had heard at least part of Robin's sad tale.

All of the hobbits left in the kitchen – Eglantine and her children, and Bilbo, and Frodo – followed Robin out to the yard, where they stood, singing and waving him on his way, until at last, he passed out of their sight. Then, with a sigh, they went on with the tasks of the day, imagining the tall figure, whistling as he passed over the fields to Bywater.

*** 

'Yes, we were in the Shire when we ought not to have been,' the old Man said quietly to his listeners, Big and Small alike. 'I knew it well, he knew it perhaps, and little Rob knew it not at all, for to a little lad it was merely a game of hide-and-seek. I was trying to win the trust of the little mother and her son... and he goes a-shouting...' 

'You pulled a coin from my ear,' Farry said, remembering. 'You said, "Hasn't your mother taught you to keep your coins in your pocket?" ' 

Meeting the old Man's eye, Pippin said, 'Those were your first words to me, as I recall, all those years ago, when I was about the same age as Farry was when he was at the edge of the bog.' 

'I was remembering you as I said them,' Gwill said. 'I saw you, the little Shire-lad I'd known upon a time, in the face of your son... and I knew at once who he was, and his mother with him.' 

'And you were deep in the Shire, and not wanting the Shire-folk to know,' one of his listeners prompted when the old Man fell silent, as if in deep thought.

'And I saw a hobbit in the bog, head drooping, face nearly in the water,' Gwill said softly. 'He clung to the branches that had been shoved out toward him, but it was all too evident that the chill had robbed him of strength and the water would soon rob him of life. I thought perhaps he was drowning in the water, unable to swim, but as I moved to wade out to him, the little mother shouted a warning. "It's a bog!" she shrieked, and my heart sank, for I saw no way to save him. But then... I thought of the rope in my pack. If I could get the rope to the drowning hobbit somehow... but how? I was too heavy to risk the branches, myself. And the lads...' 

The old Man swallowed hard and looked to his adopted son, so quiet and pale, his life still hanging in the balance. Sorrow mingled with pride as he spoke on. 'Will stood firm,' he said. 'It came to me to send him across the branches. I told him what was in my mind, and he hesitated not a wink. He shed his coat, his shirt, his cloak and boots and tied the rope round his waist, even as little Rob clung to him and begged him not to risk himself. "I cannot lose you too," he wept, poor little lad, bereft of mother and father and grandmother, all he knew and loved save one. But Will...' 

And the old Man's tone was suffused with quiet pride. 'Gwillam, he said, "I've no choice, Rob. Would you have that little fellow there lose his own father, as we've lost ours?" And as I could not see the face of the hobbit in the bog, I thought it as likely to be yourself, Master Pippin, as anyone. And I remembered how you saved me, on a summer day long ago in the Shire, when fever had taken me and I nearly drowned, lying with my face in the stream that ran through Whittacres Farm...'

*** 

'Gwill o'Dale, and Gwillam and Robin, sons of Gwill,' Pippin said grandly, raising his voice though silence reigned in the crowded market place, nestled there under the shining spires of rebuilt Annúminas. 'I proclaim you Shire-friends, nay, heroes of the Shire, who have, with your selfless and courageous actions, won the gratitude of Thain...' 

'...and Master,' put in Merry, at Pippin's side. 

'...and Mayor!' Samwise said decidedly from the Thain's other side. 

'...and so, we grant you and your descendants the freedom of the Shire, from now and henceforth!' Pippin said, extending three rolls of parchment, each tied with a bright ribbon. 

Gwill took a shaky breath, and his eyes glimmered with tears as he looked to the King. 'My Lord?' he whispered. 

Elessar nodded with a smile. Who was he to gainsay Master, Mayor, and Thain?





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