Chapter 28. Over

Farry fell silent at last. He’d talked himself hoarse with that last story. He thought he might go and see if he could find any more of the scarlet elf cups, though he’d stripped the immediate vicinity. Failing that, he’d break off some hazel twigs, peel their thin bark, and chew on it. It wouldn’t be much, but it would be better than a parched mouth and the cramping emptiness he was feeling in his middle. As it was, they had talked the night away, and the forest was slowly brightening around him.

‘Uncle Ferdi?’ he said. ‘I’m just going to see a hobbit about a pony.’

‘You do that, lad,’ sounded hollow from the darkness of the pit. ‘See if he’ll give you a ride to the Cockerel whilst you’re at it.’

‘Ha ha,’ the young hobbit responded dutifully. 

‘Farry –‘ his uncle’s voice stopped him as he started to push himself to his feet.

‘I’m here,’ he said at once, letting himself settle to the ground again. It wasn’t as if he had to hurry off anywhere in particular.

‘It looks lighter up there... is dawn coming?’

‘Yes Uncle,’ Farry said. ‘We’ve talked the night through, it seems.’

‘And, what of the sky? D’you think you could find your way to the Cockerel this morning, perhaps?’ Ferdi’s voice sounded unutterably weary. Defeated, even. Farry shivered at the thought that his uncle might be resigning himself to abandonment and death, even as he used the last of his breath in a final, desperate effort to try and save his nephew.

‘Heavy clouds, Uncle.’ He forced cheer into his voice. ‘It’s growing colder. P’rhaps it’ll snow.’

‘P’rhaps,’ was all Ferdi said.

Farry listened to the silence stretch for a few breaths, and then he said, ‘I’ll be right back, Uncle.’ He waited for Ferdi to say that he wasn’t going anywhere, but apparently his uncle was saving his breath, so he nodded and said to himself, ‘Right.’

Getting to his feet was more difficult than he’d anticipated, and once he was standing, he swayed so alarmingly that he thought it prudent to drop to his hands and knees once more. It wouldn’t do at all to fall into the pit.

He crawled a safe distance away and rose again. He found himself weaving and staggering, and somehow it struck him as comical. ‘Drunk as a Brandybuck!’ he announced to the trees around him, and chortled. In the next moment, he stumbled and measured his length face-down on the ground.

What’re you doing? phantom-Haldi whispered in the back of his brain. Farry-lad! Pay attention!

‘I don’t understand,’ little Farry said. ‘I certainly wouldn’t get all silly! No matter how cold and tired and thirsty I got!’

Haldi crouched to look the youngster directly in the eye. ‘But that’s the nature of the beastie, lad... you would.’ His face serious, he added, ‘Tell me again, what you remember of Hilly in the bog.’

The young son of the Thain abruptly sobered, and the escort nodded. ‘O aye,’ the older hobbit said. ‘From what the Mistress recounted, he was as jolly as a drunken hobbit, there, as the cold dragged him down into its clutches, stealing his faculties from him... and she would have tried to make her way out to him, trusting to the precarious safety of the branches she’d shoved towards him, to try and pull him out, but that he retained just enough wit to stop her from putting herself in danger, leaving you, barely more than a faunt, alone in the Wood.’

Farry shivered, breaking up the memory, causing it to fade and tatter as mist in the face of a sudden breeze. ‘Got to build up the fire,’ he said aloud. He fisted his hands and relaxed them again, preparatory to pushing himself up, and noticed that he’d fallen onto a patch of velvety moss.

Another memory stirred, dim in the back of his mind, and he rested his forehead on the cold, damp ground before him, for something told him it was critically important. Not only the cold, but lack of water and food was telling on him. Something inside himself was telling him he would not last for many more hours without help. And help was days away...

‘Fire-watch,’ he whispered. Yes! He’d been in the study one day, playing on the hearthrug whilst the grown-ups discussed serious matters. They’d been talking about the woodcutters and foresters who lived in the Woody End. The Mayor was responsible for the Shirriffs and the Post, the Thain was the master of the Shire-moot, and captain of the Shire-muster and Hobbitry-in-arms, and Buckland was a law unto itself... but fire was a menace to all in its path.

Pippin had wanted to know if anyone kept watch over the woods in the Shire, and if so, who? And how would he, as captain of the Shire-muster, know to call hobbits together to battle a blaze?

It seemed the hobbits who lived in the forests of the Shire had a loosely organised Fire-watch, working with the Mayor’s Messenger Service and the Watch (more generally, Shirriffs and Bounders). Those who lived and worked in the woods were familiar with where smoke ought to be seen or smelled, and so there was an understanding that any unaccountable smoke, either sight or smell, was to be investigated by anyone who discovered it. As a result, a number of hobbits might converge separately on a traveller’s fire (which had the benefit of sitting down together around the fire and swapping tales and sometimes flasks of strong drink), or they might come together, drawn by the smoke of a fire – still small, if luck was with them – that didn’t belong in the wood; together, they could beat it out before it grew large enough to require calling on the resources of a muster of hobbits.

Deep in the Wood as he was, he realised only in this moment that he hadn’t smelled smoke for the last half-day of their travels, and apparently no one had, up to this point, noticed Farry’s fire. He had kept it small and manageable: just large enough for warmth and protection, but small enough that he didn’t burn up too much wood too fast, considering the energy it took to gather the wood in the first place.

‘A – a big fire,’ he whispered to himself. ‘I need – need a big fire, bonfire, singing on and on fire...’ And he giggled at the sound of the nursery rhyme, seeming so out of place and time here, before taking himself once more sternly in hand. ‘Big fire,’ he repeated, and clenching his hand, clutched moss. ‘Lo – lots of smoke,’ he said with a nod. ‘Just like you showed me, Haldi.’ He nodded again, to show the escort his understanding.

And so he removed his jacket, retaining his warm woollen cloak, and filled it with handfuls of moss. The cold was both a blessing and a curse; by the time he returned to the fire, he was shivering violently, but he was also more alert than he’d been. 

He shook out his burden of moss, put his jacket back on, damp and dirt-smeared as it may be, and held out his hands to the fire as if he could scoop its warmth to himself, doubly grateful for its presence. He’d just warm himself, and then he’d build up the fire, much bigger, and when the wood caught and started to burn briskly, he’d add the moss to make smoke. He’d ask Ferdi’s advice, first, as to how big a fire he should make to attract attention. He wasn’t sure he had the energy to collect more wood. How slowly should he burn the wood he had, to make it last long enough?

When his teeth had at last stopped chattering, he said, ‘I’m back, Uncle.’

But there was no answer from the pit.

Starting up, he called, ‘Ferdi! Uncle Ferdi!’ But he might as well have been alone there in the Wood.

In a panic, he began to throw all the wood remaining in his pile onto his fire, and once that was done, he threw the moss on top for good measure. Then he huddled together, hugging his knees, staring at his work. Suddenly he shook his head and passed his hand over his eyes.

‘Fool of a Took,’ he muttered. ‘How long can that possibly last? You’ve doomed us both with your thoughtlessness.’ He tried to rise, to go out into the surrounding trees and gather more fallen branches, though he’d have to go farther, having scavenged all the wood nearby. But weakness claimed him, and he sank down on the ground again.

If he’d had any tears left to him, he’d have wept them then and there. All he could do was sit there between the roaring fire and the yawning pit. 

He began to realise that he was too warm – for the moment. ‘No cause for alarm,’ he muttered to himself. ‘It won’t last all that long.’ For relief from the heat blasting from the fire he’d made, he laid himself down on the welcome chill of the ground.

Oddly enough, he felt peaceful. Even sleepy.

*** 

Returning to his own part of the Wood always brought a sigh of relief, Shirriff Dunnock thought to himself. He was hardly a far-traveller – though he was better-travelled than most who lived in these parts, seeing as he was one of three Shirriffs charged with keeping order in the Eastfarthing, which in these quiet days meant mostly rounding up livestock that had wandered, and watching for any sort of trouble, whether Man (unlikely as it might be, with the King’s Men and Bounders doing their job with extra care these days) or beast. As a matter of fact, the hunt to deal with a dangerous pack of wild and stray dogs had taken him and the forest dwellers he’d deputised far from home. 

Those dogs would menace neither deer nor hobbit in future, so it had been worth the trouble. Still, it would be good to stop in at the Cockerel and quaff the best beer on the Stock Road, one of the benefits of Shirriffing in this district.

Except... he might have to put off anticipated pleasure a little longer. He slowed, then stopped, adjusted his quiver on his back and raised his nose, the better to sample the air. ‘D’you smell that?’ he said.

Robin Brambleburrow scratched his ear. ‘Smoke?’ the forester said doubtfully. ‘Could be someone as lives hereabouts...’

‘We’ve come too far to be smelling fire from the Burrowses’, and not quite far enough to smell smoke from the Longholes’,’ Dunnock said. He knew every hobbit-hole in his district; often stopped in as he made his rounds, to pick up a bite to eat and a bit o’ the latest gossip. Why, simply being on friendly terms with the widely scattered residents of the Woody End did half his job for him, he found, for they were more likely to notice something out of place in their familiar surroundings than a wandering soul like himself.

‘The Cockerel, maybe?’ Robin’s cousin Chaffinch said hopefully. He threw back his head and sampled the air. But Brambling, Chaffinch’s brother, grunted and shook his head. He was a forester of few words, but he was solid and dependable and a decent shot with a bow.

Dunnock agreed with Brambling. ‘Too far,’ he countered. ‘Though it’s coming from that direction. Whatever it is, it’s between us and the Cockerel.’ He sniffed again and adjusted his stance. ‘A little to the west, perhaps.’

‘That’s handy,’ Burdock Brushbeater said. An herb-gatherer, he lived a few miles to the north of the Crowing Cockerel. ‘Won’t have to go too far out of our way to investigate.’

‘But a wild-fire, this time o’ year?’ Chaffinch said, scratching under his cap. ‘Most likely just a traveller’s fire.’

‘A traveller, this time o’ year?’ Robin mimicked his cousin. ‘What hobbit in his right mind would be camping in the depths o’ winter, when there’s a perfectly good Crowing Cockerel only a few miles from here?’

Brambling snorted.

‘Probably one o’ them daft Tooks,’ Chaffinch said, and Dunnock hushed him. Working for the Mayor as he did, he didn’t think it wise to disparage the Tooks and by implication, the Thain.

‘Come along, you lot,’ the Shirriff said. ‘There’ll still be beer a-plenty at the Cockerel if we come a bit later than we’d planned...’

‘Dunno about that,’ Burdock grumbled under his breath, but he shouldered his own quiver and began to trudge in the direction the Shirriff indicated.

*** 

Some time later, Burdock tapped Dunnock’s shoulder. ‘Smoke’s gettin’ less,’ he said. ‘It’s as Chaff said, just a traveller’s fire, more’n likely. We don’t have to stop...?’

Dunnock said stubbornly, ‘It’d be worth my feather if it’s something more serious than that. If’n you want to abandon me, just for beer, go ahead. But don’t ask for any favours in future...’

At the irritation in the Shirriff’s tone, the herb-gatherer subsided. ‘I was just trying to save some trouble,’ he said.

‘The smoke is getting less,’ Robin affirmed, trading glances with his cousins, ‘but all the more reason to take a look, make sure our careless traveller has put his fire out properly and not left it to burn itself out, and burn the Wood to the ground...’

‘We don’t even know it’s a traveller!’ Burdock protested.

‘But it could be,’ Chaffinch insisted, for that had been his idea in the first place, and he was the type to see an idea through, once he’d had it.

And in telling the story later at the Crowing Cockerel, it stood him in good stead, as his listeners stood him to congratulatory mugs of beer while he regaled an appreciative audience.

For even though the smoke continued to lessen, so that the Shirriff himself expressed a doubt as to what they’d find... in the end, they were all flummoxed when they reached the clearing, to see the nearly burned-out fire.

‘You see, a traveller,’ Chaffinch said triumphantly, even though he was in the same moment disgusted with the irresponsible fire-maker. ‘And look! He didn’t even put it out... just left it to burn down by itself. Didn’t scatter the coals, nor kick dirt over it, neither!’

But Dunnock had spotted something beside the fire, that had looked at first like a pile of clothing, lightly dusted by the snow that had lately started sifting down, but there was something about it... ‘What in the name of...?’ he muttered, and then he broke into a run, the others following belatedly. ‘It’s a child!’ he said.

‘A child!’ ‘Here in the Wood!’ ‘Alone!’ the others gabbled. ‘Who would –?‘

‘Probably one o’ them benighted Tooks,’ Chaffinch muttered under his breath, and Robin hushed him, for Dunnock had gently taken up the limp figure and turned it over, to reveal that Chaffinch had the right of things.

‘Not just any Took,’ the Shirriff muttered. He began chafing the lad’s cold hands. ‘Farry? Young Master Faramir? D’you hear me, lad?’

‘Son o’ the Thain?’ Burdock gasped, falling to his knees beside them. ‘Here, Dun, let me see him.’

And knowing that the herb-gatherer had some knowledge of healing, Dunnock eased the lad into Burdock’s grasp, even as he ordered the others to scavenge as much wood as they could find, and quickly, that they might build a warming fire. Then he sat back and watched Burdock examining the child, feeling a terrible fear at the realisation that he could not see the small chest rise and fall. Was the lad even breathing? Had they come too late?

‘He’s alive,’ the herb-gatherer pronounced, ‘but I don’t like the look o’ –‘ He looked up from scrutinising the lad’s fingers. ‘Gi’ me your water flask, Dun. Mine’s about out; I wasn’t sparing, thinking we’d be coming to the Cockerel soon enough.’

*** 

Author’s note: some text drawn from “Of the Ordering of the Shire” in The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.

***