Note: Thank you for your patience regarding the delay in posting chapters. A nasty virus took me down almost a fortnight ago. Though I'm no longer sleeping more than twenty hours a day, I'm having to catch up in various RL areas, and I've had to adjust my writing schedule. Going forward, the intended Monday/Friday postings will change to Tuesday/Friday for the foreseeable future. Think good thoughts, if you wouldn't mind.

Chapter 60. I perceive a change in the weather

This day, Bob-the-ostler arrives early, quite as if nothing out of the ordinary happened yesterday. However, his face looks pale by the light of the lantern he bears, and he blinks and seems to have difficulty seeing.

'So dark,' he mutters, as if to himself, and he goes on to light all the lamps hanging on the walls, something I only remember seeing twice in this place. The first time I was here was one of those times...

***  

It was the day that Fear overcame the town, and all the other horses and ponies broke free and fled through the Gates that ought to have been shut tight until the dawning – but were not. In the growing light of morning, I stood all-a-tremble in my poor excuse for a shelter, which had, at least, been strong enough to prevent me from escaping with the rest. In all honesty, I remember little of the voices that sounded in the overgrown yard, bargaining, I suppose, with Ferny sounding coarse and triumphant, and the others quieter and not quite so jolly, though equally insistent.

When the door creaked open, I recognised the innkeeper, though not the hobbit with him, who turned out to be the stable master and who shook his head when he looked at me. 'It's even worse than I remember, Master.'

'Beggars cannot be choosers, Bob,' the innkeeper answered. 'Now let's get him out of here before that blighter Ferny doubles the price or adds a boarding fee!'

'But you've already counted the coins into his hand,' the hobbit countered.

'I wouldn't put it past him,' the innkeeper grumbled. 'Now, take him to the stables and do what you can for him.'

'Poor old half-starved creature,' the hobbit said under his breath. 'Just as I expected, Ferny demanded thrice his worth...'

'Come along, you slowcoach of a hobbit,' the Man snapped, not sounding like himself at all, from all the previous times I'd heard his voice. I shied away from him, for he smelled perturbed.

But the hobbit immediately soothed me with soft-spoken words and gentle hands. 'None will harm you, old fellow,' he said. 'Come away, now, lad... Come away from this dreadful place.' His nose wrinkled, and I saw him glance from the mouldy hay to the dry water bucket.

Ferny's voice, sounding from the weed-infested, overgrown, trash-cluttered yard, set me to trembling again. 'What's the matter? Have you changed your mind? No refunds, as I told you!'

From the smell of him as he eased a loop of rope around my neck, the hobbit's smile and cheery voice must have been forced, though they seemed genuine enough. 'All is well, Mister Ferny!' he said, his tone as cheerful as any I'd heard coming through the inn's open windows of a summer's eve when I'd stood tied up outside, waiting for Ferny to finish drinking and laughing and shouting. 'And... we're on our way!'

'I trust you'll take good care of my poor old pony!' Ferny called after us, and then he shouted with laughter.

'I'll go ahead and let Mr Brandybuck know we've taken care of this business,' said the innkeeper once we were in the street. He looked me up and down and seemed more dismayed than before. Confirming this impression, he dropped his voice to a near-whisper and added, 'By the clear light of day, he looks to be on his last legs.'

But the hobbit shook his head and disagreed. 'There's some good breeding there,' he said (to my surprise, for I had never met the fellow before so far as I could remember). 'He may well surprise us all!'

*** 

And now the ostler is at my head, interrupting my thoughts, and the fingers of one hand are stroking my neck, whilst he digs in a pocket with the other and brings up a carrot. 'You certainly have surprised us all,' he says as I sweep the carrot from his palm and crunch it pleasurably, and I wonder if, somehow, he has heard my thoughts and memories just now. 'Just look at you!'

*** 

He said much the same thing on the two previous occasions I'm remembering. On that first day, after he led me into the stables, he tied me in the central area and directed the grooms who were just standing around, seeming rather at a loss (but of course, I understand now, that they were! – for they'd just lost all the horses and ponies in that place), to 'light all the lamps, and be quick about it! I want to have a good look at him.'

A good look meant a thorough going-over, as it turned out, from ears to tail and the poll betwixt my ears to the frog of every hoof, as well as the inside of my mouth. Since I was the only four-footed beast there, all the other grooms joined in, as well. By the time the innkeeper came to the stables, a small group of hobbits surrounding him, along with a tall, dour Ranger, my entire coat had been brushed to remove dirt and matted hair, and balm had been applied to the sores from my stiff and ill-fitting harness, and Bob-the-ostler had sent off for a warm bran mash.

The ostler introduced me to the hobbits who would become my own, quite as if he thought I should understand him. And the innkeeper turned to one of them and said, 'I'm that sorry; I could not persuade Bill Ferny to take less than twelve silver pennies for him, old and starved as he is...'

'Poor old fellow,' said the one I would come to know as the Master, and he gently rubbed at my neck, quite as if he understood how it felt to bear an unbearable burden.

'He doesn't look quite like dying just yet,' the Bob-hobbit spoke up cheerily. 'In fact, he may well thrive with you lot to look after him, compared to what I knows of Bill Ferny's tender mercies!'

Though he might not have known it, he spoke the truth.

The second time all the lamps on the stable walls were lit, so far as my experiences in this building have gone, was after the Other Ranger brought me here, to wait for my Sam to return. Before leading me to the tie-stall, where he groomed me, the ostler directed Ham and Bert, who'd just returned from nuncheon, to light all the lamps. With the aid of their bright light, he examined me from head to toe, as on that previous occasion, occasionally clucking over one thing or another. At last, he slapped me on the shoulder and said, 'Whatever those Shire-hobbits may have been doing with you, you appear to be sound and strong despite your obvious lack of feeding!'

*** 

After the last lamp has been lit, this morning, I mean, not on one of those previous occasions, I find myself wondering if this-Bob wishes to make another careful examination. But no. He fetches none of us from our resting places, to stand in the well-lighted central space; instead, he walks slowly around the perimeter, stopping to peer into each stall, both occupied and empty, as well as the large storage area, the tack room and the granary. Because I am in a loose box, I am able to stand head-outwards and watch him, nickering softly and nodding whenever his eye falls upon me. Which makes him smile, for some reason, and so we continue until he reaches me at the end of his circuit.

'It looks like they've done a good job,' he murmurs, stroking my nose.

'O' course we've done!' Ham's voice sounds from an empty stall, where he was sleeping on a cot as is the practice in this establishment. As I may or may not have mentioned, the grooms here take turns sleeping with us. This-Bob had the duty on the night the ruffians attacked the town, and that was why he was "on the spot" when he heard them approaching the stables. 'We couldn't have done any less, if only for your sake, Bob!'

'For my sake!' the ostler echoes, seemingly startled at the thought, and then he chuckles and shakes his head. 'I'm not quite dead yet, I'll have you know.'

'You were – just about,' Ham answers. 'And from what old Butterbur told us, you hadn't ought to be here now!'

'Where else would I be?' Bob says.

But Ham holds up his hand. 'I knows what you'd like for me to say,' he answers. 'But I'll not stand by and watch you work yourself into the grave... I heard what young Tom said last night! And you, of all folk, ought to have listened to him!'

'All is well, Ham,' Bob insists.

'If you call half-dead, and still not fully recovered, and maybe never fully recovered, "well",' Ham argues. 'Why, you can barely manage to make your way in the dark with the help of a lantern... You'd do best to go out your door by daylight hours only, as young Tom said, and I wasn't the only one to hear him say so!'

'As if I'd lose myself between my home and these stables,' Bob chided the stable hobbit. 'Why, I could find the way blind-folded! And have!'

'Just because you won that wager with Nob doesn't mean your head – your eyes – are working as they should now.'

'I am well,' this-Bob maintains, his voice as patient as ever, though the tremble I can feel in his fingers as they rub under my jaw gives the lie to the words.

Ham must have his own way of knowing, from the stubborn set of his jaw and his stern reply. 'We'll see what the Master has to say about that.'

'Ham, I...' 

But the stable hobbit marches to the heavy door as if he doesn't hear the words at all. As he shoves it aside, the liquid sound of melting, dripping icicles briefly intrudes upon the quiet of the early-morning stables until Ham pulls the door closed again from the outside, shutting us in and himself out.

After a moment of quiet, this-Bob sighs, and his fingers still momentarily, and then they resume their pleasurable rubbing under my jaw.

But all the ostler says to me is, 'Following on the heels of the recent patch of cold and snow we've been having, the snows are melting apace, they are, and springtide'll be here afore you know it.'

***