The Wood Was Burning Fast, and the Snow Still Fell

7 Solmath, S.R. 1312

Aunt Citrine had in fact, stayed four more days, and therefore so had Uncle 'Gar and Chop. She had wished to make certain Bilbo was well on his way to recovery; also, she had been assisting Mistress Rose and Miss Sage in the village with their patients. The catarrh seemed to have run its course. There had been no other new cases since Bilbo had fallen ill. Still, many who had been ill were slow in recovering. His aunt had said nothing of her worries about Bungo and Belladonna to Bilbo, but he had caught her giving them worried looks and he could tell that she was not happy with their progress. They still had lingering coughs and both of them seemed to get out of breath after even the least of exertions--especially his father.

Bilbo had said farewell to his Took kin reluctantly. He was going to miss their presence in the smial, especially Chop, though his cousin seemed far more grown-up than ever before.

Once they had gone, life returned more or less to normal, or what passed for normal in this bleak winter. The supplies provided by the Thain meant they could have regular meals--although they were somewhat limited in variety, and the three limited themselves to two servings, or sometimes even one. Perhaps their illnesses had blunted their appetites, because that did not seem nearly the hardship it once had. But winter continued.

As Solmath arrived, weary hobbits would have welcomed the usual dreary weather of the second month of the year. Normally Solmath was cloudy and rainy and chill. This year it was clear and cold and the snow showed no signs of melting away, although there had been no new snowfall since the last week of Afteryule.

That changed on the seventh. Bilbo woke to looming snow-laden skies that morning, and he shuddered--not with cold, but with dread. How much snow this time? He'd been chopping wood the day before, and he realised with some shock that the stack of wood which had seemed so endless after the ice storm now looked painfully small. Was there enough there to get them through until spring? And when would spring happen? In some years there had even been signs of snowdrops this early, but not this year.

He washed and dressed quickly. He should probably bring in the day's wood as soon as breakfast was finished this morning.

He went to the kitchen; as he approached, his heart gave a lurch to hear his father coughing hard--it sounded to Bilbo nearly as bad as when his father had been still ill, and his heart gave a lurch.

"Papa!" he exclaimed, as he went into the kitchen.

Bungo looked up at Bilbo miserably, as he drew in a wheezing breath. Bilbo saw his father dressed in his outerwear, and an armload of firewood lay scattered near the kitchen door. Belladonna was approaching her husband with a spoon and a bottle in hand. It was a cough elixir Aunt Citrine had left for such occasions.

"You should not have tried to bring in the wood, Bungo!" she scolded.

"I was going to bring it in this morning, Papa!" said Bilbo. "Truly I was!"

Bungo drew breath cautiously. When he did not immediately begin coughing again, he drew in a deeper breath and then said in a low voice, "Oh, Bilbo! I do not doubt you, son! But you should not have to still be doing everything!" His father shook his head in frustration. "It breaks my heart to see you having to do all of the hard work! It is my responsibility to keep my family warm and fed!" He spoke more forcefully and suddenly began to cough again. Bilbo looked up to see his mother had gone white, and appeared to sway briefly. He pulled out a chair for her, and then finished seeing to breakfast: they were back to plain porridge and tea again. Afterwards, he bundled up and went out to bring in enough for two days. He also brought the snow shovel back inside, propping it in the broom closet by the larder door.

After a second breakfast of tea and scones with some of the pear preserves that the Tooks had brought, the little family was glum but resigned.

"We are going to need to be more careful with the firewood. We will heat only the parlour and the kitchen from now until the weather breaks. We will also sleep there. We'll bring featherbeds, blankets and pillows into the parlour, and we will keep the fire there banked as low as we can most of the time."

Bilbo and his mother nodded.

"Bungo," said Belladonna,"I have been thinking perhaps you and I should go through the mathom rooms. We've any amount of old furniture and such that we no longer use; if necessary we can break it up for firewood."

Bilbo shook his head. "Mama, those rooms are dusty. I do not want you and Papa spending time in them until I can get a chance to dust and clean them!" The memory of his father's coughing spell that morning was still fresh in his mind. He did not think he could bear to have either of them sick as they were before. He did not know if he could do that again.

"Oh, Bilbo!" his mother exclaimed. Tears stood in her eyes.

He set his face. "I will get to it as soon as we are through eating," he said. "It's not like I have anything else to do anyway."

That night, Bilbo curled up with his parents in front of the parlor hearth on the featherbeds that had been dragged from the bedsteads; the three of them were piled with blankets, and Bilbo was warm enough except for his nose. It was just about the only thing peeking through the blankets, and it was freezing.

He was exhausted. The mathom rooms had not been dusted since his parents had fallen ill last fall. But now they had been dusted and aired, so that Bilbo thought they would be safe enough to spend time in them. He hoped they did not have to chop up the old furniture, but he remembered how small the woodpile was in the morning. If they had not decided to ration the wood more strictly, they would have been out of fuel in less than two weeks. With the new measures they were taking, it would probably last three, but if winter did not break soon. He shuddered, nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with their dire situation. Even so, his father pulled him closer, pulled the covers up higher. The body warmth helped to calm him, and soon he drifted off to the sound of his parents' gentle breathing.

12 Solmath, S.R. 1312

It had snowed off and on for five days. Never long enough to snow them in again, but the second day, Bilbo had needed to shovel his way to the woodpile once more. He had brought what was left right up next to the back door, and there was probably enough for another week and a half if they were very careful.

His parents had chosen a couple of broken bookcases and a few rickety chairs as the first things to go if it came down to breaking up the furniture. He hoped it didn't come to that. Surely it would warm up again some day.

At least he was sleeping better now. Perhaps it was childish to be so comforted by all of them sleeping together now in order to keep warm, but it reminded him of when he was very young. His parents seemed to be better as well. Mama hardly coughed at all now, though she still seemed to get breathless with very little exertion. Papa continued to cough, and he had given up his pipe "at least until this cursed cough is gone" which had made him rather cross for a few days. But at least the coughing spells were no longer so long and so hard as they had been.

In an effort to stave off boredom, Bilbo and his father had resumed his lessons, but he found it hard to keep his mind on them today, perhaps because it was arithmetic. Bilbo was not nearly so fond of numbers as he was of tales. And he found the more complex problems his father set him now to be very frustrating. Right now he was ready to throw his slate across the room, for he had come up with two different answers to the exact same set of numbers and he could not seem to reconcile them at all. He feared to try the problem again, lest he come up with yet a third answer.Just then, there was a knocking at the door. Bilbo gave a start and dropped his slate with a clatter. His father who had been dozing in his armchair by the hearth woke with a jerk. Belladonna was in the kitchen preparing luncheon, so Bilbo got up to answer the door, wondering who'd be out in this kind of weather. Still, he was glad of the interruption.

To his surprise, it was the Postmaster, Ned Brown. "Come in from the cold, Mr. Brown," he said. "I will call Papa."

"No time, Master Bilbo. A postrider finally made it from Overhill after all this time, and I've a mort of letters to deliver." He took a bundle of letters from his battered leather pouch and handed them to Bilbo. Bilbo instantly recognized his Uncle Bingo's handwriting.

He closed the door behind the departing posthobbit, and looked at the letters in his hand, then returned to the parlour. "Papa, here are letters from Uncle Bingo. There are at least ten of them."

Bungo's eyes widened in surprise as he took them and glanced them over. "It seems that none of these were delivered since before your mother and I fell ill. I suppose it took longer for the roads to be cleared between here and Overhill."

Bilbo nodded. While the distance was shorter to Overhill than it was to Tuckborough in the other direction, the lay of the land meant that the snow was much deeper in some areas of the road. His father was examining the dates on the outside of the letters, and Bilbo decided to let him read them in peace. "I'll go see if Mama needs some help with luncheon," he said.

Belladonna was finishing up the meal as he entered--soup made of dried vegetables, bread toasted with a small sprinkle of Pincup cheese on top, and a jar of mixed pickles from the supplies Gerontius had sent. She was making tea to accompany the meal, and Bilbo began to lay the table without being told.

"Who was at the door?" she asked him.

"Mr. Brown. A postrider finally arrived from Overhill, and there were many letters from Uncle Bingo. Papa's reading them now."

"Well, he can tell us about what your uncle has to say over lunch. Go fetch him, please, son, and we will eat."

Bilbo went back into the parlour, calling out cheerily, "Papa, Mama says that lunch--" he broke off abruptly at the sight of his father. The letters lay scattered on the floor, and his father was sitting forward, clutching at his chest. His face was as white as Bilbo had ever seen it, his lips nearly blue, and sweat was beaded on his forehead. Bilbo ran over to him. "Papa?"

Bungo looked up at him miserably, barely able to raise his head.

"Mama!" Bilbo shouted. "Mama! Something's wrong!"

Belladonna hurried into the parlour, and at the sight of her husband turned to Bilbo. "Go! Fetch Mistress Rose or Miss Sage at once!"

Bilbo raced to the front door, grabbing his jacket from the peg, but not bothering with his scarf or cloak, much less his mittens or leggings. He raced out of the smial and down the lane, floundering in a small drift of snow at the verge before he began hurrying down the road. Mistress Rose and Miss Sage were now staying in town, at the Rumble's smial, in order to be more accessible to the villagers in an emergency. Bilbo kept thinking as he ran: "Please be there! Please be there!"

Fortunately, both of them were there, and at Bilbo's news, they grabbed their satchels and followed immediately.

When they arrived at Bag End, it was to find that Belladonna had helped her husband to lie down upon the pallet where the family had been sleeping, and was helping him to sip a cup of willow-bark tea. "It was all I could think of," she said, "for his pain."

Mistress Rose nodded. "That's good. Let me examine him," she said, pulling off her pendulum. "Sage, I need the foxglove tincture..."

Bilbo and his mother retreated to a corner. His mother had picked up the scattered letters from the floor.

She put her arms around Bilbo's shoulders. "I know now what brought this on, son. Your Grandmother Laura..." she shook her head, and Bilbo stared up at her in mute comprehension.

Now this horrible winter had stolen both his grandmothers.