IN THE SHIRE-RECKONING by Diane Finnis-Robb  

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Part Two; Chapter Twelve "Greenholm"

   The party of hobbits and their ponies went forward in the open lands around the Chalk hills for a few more miles. They were still confused regarding how long they had been asleep and uncertain as to what had happened to those unquestionably dangerous Big Folk who previously accompanied them. Youngbuck told them, with some surety, that those men would not trouble them again, which comforted some of his friends, but he could not exactly say how he knew this to be the case. So they all moved cautiously at first, avoiding any other chance meetings. Yet before noon of that new day, feeling that they had quite skirted the western edge of the Delvings, they turned directly north and returned to the Road. However much time had been lost to them (only one dangerous afternoon and dream-filled night, or so they hoped) the day was now fair and a soft breeze played in the air around them. The walking was easy and the ground moving forward was firm beneath their feet. The Road itself was largely unbroken here; laid with great stones on more or less even ground. Grasses had managed to break through in many spots, but the Road seemed not to notice nor care. Its paving stones had lain undisturbed for countless hundreds of years and seemed to beckon the travelers on and into new lands. The bellies of the hobbits were full, or at least satisfied, and they had renewed their purpose to reach the western edge of the Shire by nightfall. It would be some days later that they would discover this was indeed the noon of the third day of Lethe, last of the Summerdays, and Berty’s private plan to look into the west on the anniversary of his father’s disappearance would indeed come to pass.

   They were on the western side of the Chalk hills and now well past the developing settlements of the Delvings. Berty noticed that Poppy, and even the Zaragamba brothers, stopped in the Road and looked back for a few moments. All of them could see the smoke of the Delvings’ homefires, their kilns and their inns lying over the hills and behind them; they could each imagine sleeping in nice clean beds rather than such a long time of marching and sleeping on hard ground which lay before them. Berty thought again of this morning; of waking to notice how master Undundol had made some kind of cushion from their cloaks to lay between Poppy’s game legs to give him comfort in his sleep. He wondered who else had noticed this, but, in a moment, knew it didn’t really matter. All seven of these hobbits, regaining the Road again now west of the Shire’s furthest settlement, were not looking back in fear of going on but looking back at what they knew they were leaving behind. Berty had been planning this for months himself and there was something in his own restless nature which made looking back seem unimportant. But he would not disturb his friend’s thoughts on this; he knew that he had forced this situation on them in his own way, so he let them take the time to consider their own loss in a way which he did not.

   The Road turned somewhat south then after and the land there was dotted with widespread slopes of green leading into wooded valleys with groves of alder and birch. They saw no one, and quite expected not to, but birds flew and called over their heads and they saw foxes, hares and other creatures who were curious enough to come out and meet them.

   Even here in the unpopulated west of the land there could be seen the grasses, shrubs and fields of wildflowers that made up the Shire. There were many clusters of trees about, some of them exceedingly taller than these young Shire-hobbits had ever seen before, but even this far west the Shire remained excellent farmland; cleared and tended and long since emptied by the Men of the north. If the great trees were trying to claim it back (as they always do) then their pace was slow (as it always was) and the land now lay before the hobbits in peace and at rest. Only the great stone road that went quietly across it, and had done so before the memory of Men, dared to disturb these slumbering hills. The birds were in small numbers and their calls were sweet and unfamiliar to all the hobbits. Occasionally they heard the buzzing or chirping of insects which might otherwise have remained unnoticed; for the hobbits and their ponies walked many miles together in silent admiration of the land.

   Then, towards the late afternoon, the Road began to rise and turned sharply west again and, suddenly, as if in the lightning of a storm, the countryside opened up before them. Here they were met by a long range of even green hillocks stretching out like a pale curtain of mist. The wooded areas were growing thicker there and finally Berty knew where they were. In the far distance he could now see the mountains well that his father had tried to capture in many of his drawings that had outlived him at home in Sarehole. But now Berty beheld something which he had never been able to understand from those drawings; for three long vertical lines, like eraser marks, emerged from the ground to cut the green curtain beyond. Three white shapes, ‘columns’, he thought as he inspected them now, impossibly tall, stood between the hills where the hobbits were and the distant mountains beyond. Their bases were shrouded in the gentle fog which lay over the land extending for many, many miles. And far off still they were, but it was not yet late afternoon when Berty and his friends came there so the Sun was not yet behind them and they now glimmered with a milky luster brighter than the sky. Here the seven hobbits (and their four stalwart ponies), who had gone further west than most other hobbits had ever dared, saw for themselves the White Towers of the Elves.

   ‘Glory and stars,’ Poppy heard himself say, ‘that is a beauty like never I’ve seen.’

   He was right, of course. Only two hobbits of record had ever before looked out west from this spot into the enchanted lands which bordered the Shire. Gondo and Twoody had come here together twenty-five years before and seen these gentle hills dissolve into a greygreen curtain of mist. They had seen these same tall towers and marveled then just as these younger hobbits did now. Yet Berty, more than all the rest, remembered his own family history. He knew that together Gondo and Twoody had gone even further; down into those hills where the grasses end and into a gentle wooded vale just south of the Road. They were accompanied then by strange companions that they had met along the way- Elves, Twoody had called them- and the two explorers were shown great courtesy by these guides from the neighbouring land.

   At the first.

   But then, by what Twoody had called ‘Enchantment’, Gondo had gone missing into that grey unknown beyond following those unusual folk into his oblivion. And so Twoody, filled with the remorse of this loss, never spoke about this place where Berty and his friends now stood or its beauty. Or, when he did, it became a warning. Seeing the land stretch out before him now, feeling the temptation to follow the Road to those great white towers just as his own father did, Berty was reminded of the times he spent in his uncle’s office of deeds listening to the cautions Twoody offered to intrepid and would-be settlers who wished to go into the far west. He decided to quote that advice here for his friends:

   “Yes, yes, the Road does run on much farther and there is a chain of low hills there, just as you have heard. The “Far Downs” we call it, and it is indeed a pleasant country filled with grassy rolling hills,’” the Youngbuck said in a high and officious sounding voice. The Zaragamba brothers did not know quite what to make of this change in their new friend, but the smile on the faces of the other Shire-hobbits showed them that there was some joke being played here which they did not yet understand.

   “‘The beauty of that place,’” Berty continued in his affected tone, “‘as one of the only hobbits who has ever seen it, I cannot deny. But have you wondered why no hobbit will settle there?’” He paused for a moment, cocking an eyebrow in mock seriousness. His friends the Bucklanders were quite taken by this impersonation of his uncle and laughed accordingly, but the Zaragamba brothers, having never met the famous Theudebald Swiftalk, still could not understand the jest. So the Youngbuck returned to his own manner of talking, directing much of it at these new friends. ‘And then my uncle, a wiser orator than most folk give him credit for, would hang his speech with a pause and cock his most forbidding eye at any brave youngster willing to travel beyond the community of our cities,’ Youngbuck explained.

   ‘“Oh, it is beautiful and lush,’” the Youngbuck continued, returning to a higher, more stern register of his voice in the impersonation of his uncle Twoody, “‘but I must caution you that the Far Downs stand at the very edge of our safety; for beyond it is the land of the Elvenfolk and, oh, in greatest honesty and as most reliable witness I can tell you that to have congress with those Elder People is to invite danger upon yourselves. Oh, yes, very dangerous indeed. For the Elves, you see, have held these lands since the changing of the world and want no curious visitors nor well-wishing wanderers, no bold travelers or enterprising traders and will tolerate no encroaching encampments. No, if I were to advise good and careful hobbits to go into the west of this land and make homes for themselves I would, as any true advisor should, sue for caution. Go to the Delvings! New cities are being made there which will be the envy of all our countryfolk. Or, if cities are not to your liking, find some open lands in any of the Four Farthings. By the stars, we have plenty of room here in the Shire to keep even a hermit happy. But a hermit’s life is less than suitable for a hobbit, I should think. Do not, if I may be so bold as to advise you, go alone and unsupported into the undiscovered west and into danger. Stay near to your own hobbit-kind in this place we have been given. We of the Shire should stick together!’” And here he gave Gormadoc Zaragamba a broad slap on the back and an enthusiastic tug of his arm, drawing him into the lighthearted folly of his impersonation. “No, no, no and even once again no, I would say. Let our strange neighbours to the west be alone as they wish, and show the good hobbit-sense to leave well enough very well alone.’”1

   ‘Your uncle said all of that, did he?’ Bovo asked, smiling broadly. Gilley and Poppy stood beside him, also smiling, but with some reservation. Theudebald Swiftalk, Youngbuck’s uncle Twoody, was one of the most respected people of the Shire’s brief history and for those two it was a bit embarrassing to see him lampooned in this way, even by their good friend who was, after all, Theudebald’s adopted son. Bovo, of course, had no such reservation in his humour regarding family.

   ‘Oh, yes, all of that and more,’ Berty answered. ‘All of it genuine, of course,’ he continued, ‘for my uncle Twoody knows no other way to speak. I’m probably cruel to imitate him so...’ and here Youngbuck let his voice trail off as he came forward and stood looking with his friends over the very edge of the Shire. ‘I shouldn’t mock him, really. I can believe that he very much feared sending anyone into this land because of the regret he felt over my father going forth. I never really doubted his quite honest concern for hobbit safety in the advice which he gave to others. But now, looking upon the western hills as he once did...’

   And here there was a long pause among all of the hobbits for none had encountered such singular and untamed beauty in a landscape ever before. Lausa and Bucklander alike, the openness of these hobbits’ futures had never so acutely coincided with the possibilities of the land before them. Looking out into the green hills of the Far Downs all of Twoody’s warnings for caution seemed ridiculous to them; like the umbrella carried by an old gaffer on a bright and cloudless day.

   ‘I trust the intentions of my uncle and his unwillingness to send hobbits into a place that he felt was dangerous,’ Youngbuck said quite calmly. ‘Maybe this is why I’m sharing with you all of Twoody’s words as we come to the end of our journey.’

   ‘Gormadoc,’ he continued, turning his attention to the three brothers, ‘I doubt that away in the Tookland you have heard any of these concerns regarding the Elves, and if I have made light of the warnings through mummery, well, that was wrong of me. But as we stand here looking out onto this land, this forbidden place given to hobbits by the king yet left unexplored through the hesitations of my uncle, well...’ And then the words ran out of the Youngbuck. He, like all of the hobbits, found himself standing in a great cluster together on the Road and, both individually and together, gazing west into their futures. Berty had, with a great sense of responsibility to his friends, tried to share, even in jest, his uncle’s concerns about the west. He had tried, with comedy (for the concern had quite left him now that he was here), to give his uncle’s familiar warning.

   But he could only manage it as a joke; a caution which Berty, himself bereft of a father through mischance in these lands though he was, found it hard to believe in.

   These seven hobbits stood together at the furthest edge of the Shire deciding what they now should do. Twoody’s warnings, important though they may prove to be, mattered very little to willing pioneers who looked down into the farthest reaches of their safety and saw only promise.

   For the land left them speechless.

 

   There was indeed a magic about this land which any hobbit, cautious and perceptive people as they were, could readily feel take its hold of their spirit and quiet their usual cautiousness. Youngbuck and his friends felt, and easily succumbed to, the undeniable wholesomeness in the air. It has long been said, here and elsewhere, that much evil must befall a country before it wholly forgets the Elves if once they dwelt there.2

   Of old, in an age of the world long before the imaginations of hobbits and before the coming of the Sun and Moon, the Elves were awakened. ‘The Age of Stars’ those Elder People had later come to call their memories of the world’s beginning, for then there was yet no time; no day nor night to delineate the moments of their experience. Such a funny and specific invention ‘time’ must have seemed to an endless people; requiring as it does, some way, irrevocably attached to the world, to say with great assurance that this thing inarguably happened before that other. In the Age of Stars (or so other hobbits in later stories did come to hear from their more friendly relationships with Elves) the heavens above were fixed as was the firmament of Middle-earth beneath one’s feet. Only the wind in the air and the flowing waters brought news from far off places and all else was still. All the world was a gift to these Elder People, timeless as they were, which they were meant to discover in their own ways.

   And long they traveled in these lands naming all of those things which they discovered and awakening them as well. For the Elves, later calling themselves the “Eldar”, were the inventors of language and, through that very singular power, they taught harmony to other living things. Tree and Stone and flowing waters were their friends and the Elves gave them names and spoke with them in secret tongues which few mortal people like hobbits had ever bothered to learn or could now understand. They taught the mosses to grow along the north side of trees and stones very long before the brightness of the Sun would matter. They talked with birds, teaching them to use song to protect one another, to flock and to grow their own language and their own communities outside of the many predators who assailed them. The birds took this advise to heart and soon after spoke with few others but their own kind. The Elves awakened the trees, or so it has been said, and told them and their shepherds3 how to settle down into the earth, to talk with rock and stone so that together they might make beautiful gardens of Middle-earth from their agreements. Some say they awakened the mountains with their speech, but the mountains were proud and would not give them any notice or reply, so the Elves, no stranger to pride, let the mountains be and rode over them looking for new friends in the world of Arda who might give them a less cold reception. Rivers the Elves listened to in that Age before the Sun and Moon, before the lighting of the Two Trees, but the rivers had their own language and the Elves, enraptured as they were by the riversongs, could not make it their own.

   But of course these are the stories of the Elves from very, very ancient times. None of this would be known by Shire-hobbits like Berty and his friends as they stood upon the Road, awe-struck, and looking into the West. They could feel the promise in the land with no understanding of its history and the part that the Elves had played in it.

   The Lausa, those three Zaragamba brothers, had come from a land which was continually torn by the battles of Men. They had been born and had grown up learning to remain watchful of wolves and goblins and many more unkindly creatures. They walked cautiously through the Weather hills away in the east. Their holes had been large and fortified (as well as any hobbit hole had ever been), for discovery in such a place could prove to be disastrous. But like all hobbits, the Lausa had a great affinity for sunlit hillsides, open skies, shady groves and easily-tilled earth. And they had come and found such land in the southeastern reaches of the Shire, the ‘Tookland’ as most folk called it. Yet there were many Lausa in the Tookland still, many cousins, aunts and uncles, four- and six-times removed by marriages as they were, and few had yet been given the gift of a home to call their own. Now Gormadoc and his brothers Marcoul and Olo stood in a land of unquestionable beauty, wondering about the dangers which may lay beyond, but ready to make a fresh start.

   The Bucklanders, this peculiarly entitled group of second generation Shirelings composed of Berty and Bovo and Poppy and Gilley, were younger than their new Lausa friends. As children they had watched the roads and the towns and the holes and public houses of their community grow and prosper, but they had never known, as their parents once did, the struggle and hard choice of coming into a new land and leaving everything else behind to build a future. Perhaps as the Bucklanders stood there they thought back to the wild plans they had made over these past few months for their own futures; their shallow desires to assert themselves as adults, to make bold statements about their maturity and independence. What had seemed like a rebellion formed months ago, their ‘Stolen Feast’ or their ‘Great Disappearance’, could not be measured against the unexpected opportunity which now lay before them. They not only saw the opportunity of their independence but felt the call to acquit themselves just as their own parents had done in the founding years.

   ‘Glory and stars,’ they heard Poppy say again, breaking the silence of their gaze. ‘I have never seen anything quite like what I see here. Tell me, Youngbuck, am I likewise enchanted?’

 

*****

   The party did indeed reach Twoody’s old campsite at Greenholm before nightfall. Although it had lain abandoned for over a decade, the old pony path from the Road into the southern woods had been cut relatively wide and was easy for Bovo to find; for Twoody had never meant for this place to be hidden and had hoped for many years that Gondo would come to find his way home to it again. The seven pioneers entered into that old path on the western edge of the wood and, without having to go very far, they found the old hollow tree where Twoody had made a home.

   The tree was older and far greater in size than any which the hobbits had yet encountered. What variety it might be was unknown to them, but the wood was quite dark, almost black, and the northern and eastern sides were covered in bright green moss. The spread of its ancient arms, though long dead and bare of leaf, had made a kind of clearing in the wood around it. There Youngbuck and the others found the remains of an old and overgrown garden of local wildflowers, some sprouting from old clay pots that had cracked to let their plants free to rejoin the ground beside them. Beyond the garden there was the remnant of an old stone cooking stove and nearer to the tree itself a weathered cupboard and pantry with rusted and tarnished cookware and old clay cups.

   ‘Your uncle Twoody built this, Youngbuck?’ Poppy asked as the hobbits were walking around and exploring the place.

   ‘He and my mother didn’t speak to me of the west, Poppy, or of his time here,’ Berty replied, ‘but, yes, he did build this. For many years after my father’s disappearance Uncle Twoody would spend much of the summers here hoping for his return. This was, or so he once told me, the place where they parted.’

   ‘Well, he seems to have done a good job of making it comfortable,’ Bovo said. ‘There’s a worn but well made door here on the north side. Shall we venture inside?’

   ‘I will, but it’s not nearly big enough for all of us inside,’ Berty said. ‘Why don’t the rest of you begin to set up camp for the night. Poppy, maybe you can put that old stove to some use, eh?’

   Youngbuck hadn’t exactly ordered what was to be done, but all the hobbits took his meaning; he wanted to go into the old hollow tree alone. Quietly the others took the packs down from the ponies so that they might take their rest. Firewood was rather easily gathered nearby and another well-cut old path revealed a small stream with cool running water which Twoody must have used during his own time there. Before long the travelers had a camp set up under the old tree’s boughs, the ponies were watered and Poppy had cleaned the grill of the old stove enough to start cooking some dinner. Youngbuck came out of the tree then, maybe an hour after first going inside. He shut the little round door behind him and came over to the campfire to sit beside his friends. There was something so clear in his manner of doing this that his friends, even the new friends among the Zaragambas, could read as defining; he did not want the place to be further disturbed. He then walked the perimeter of the tree’s outstretched boughs and, after much time assessing his uncle’s handiwork, returned to join his friends. With him he brought a long rod of fallen deadwood, black and knotted and leafless, but very straight and about half of hobbit height. While the meal was cooking Youngbuck sat very much to the outside of the others and began carving down this fallen bough into a walking stick.

   It was early in the evening on the last of the SummerDays in Year Twenty-Nine of the Shire. Berty had come to the place from which Gondo had departed and gone into the West twenty-six years before.

   They had a good meal together there in the Greenholm garden and, despite Youngbuck’s quietness, began to talk of their plans for tomorrow and the next few days. Together they had reached their first intended goal and now was the time to think about new beginnings.

   ‘We’re safe enough here, I should think,’ Gilley began, planning things as she did when the way forward seemed uncertain, ‘but given Twoody’s warning, we might want to set watches tonight. Bovo, you slept later than the rest of us; I nominate you for first watch,’ she said with a little smile.

   ‘Oh, yes,’ he replied calmly. ‘I’ll do that. For I think I’d like to wake before the dawn and see what hunting I might find down near the stream. Would anyone like to come with me?’

   ‘I would, sir,’ Olo said. ‘I’m a fair shot with my own little bow.’

   ‘Good,’ Gilley said. ‘If we’re to begin our mapmaking here we will-’

   ‘No, not here, Gilley,’ Berty interrupted, rising out of his mood, and leaving his carving behind. ‘I think we should start to survey the lands around either side of the Road just as the Young Took had wanted us to. He promised that land to the Zaragambas here and I would like to see at least one Tookish promise fulfilled, whether he likes the result or not.

   ‘There was good tillable earth in the western faces of the Far Downs, where we first saw those towers,’ he went on to say, ‘and direct access over the Road there puts us but a good days walk into the Delvings. We might submit deeds there quickly with Uncle Clooty before the Swiftooks have a chance to respond. Tell me, cousin Gordo, where is your family? Might they be sent for discreetly?’

   Gormadoc looked at Youngbuck as if he was beginning to understand what the younger hobbit had in mind. ‘It may be so,’ he said, doffing his cap and scratching the top of his head. ‘We might send Olo and another southeast from here toward Nobottle, where most of our folk await news-’

   ‘“Nobottle?”’ Bovo asked. ‘Where is this unlikely place to be found?’4

   ‘It is the farthest west we Lausa, “Tooklanders” as you may say, have come over the Broken Road from the Ford,’ Gormadoc went on to explain. ‘It is not far south of where we met Master Undundol the other day and I do not mind telling you that there were times of danger then when my brothers and I thought to escape and go there to be with our folk. 

   ‘Nobottle isn’t even a town yet, you see,’ he continued, ‘just a place at what we see as the very ending of our travel into the west along the Broken Road that is mentioned in our treaty with the Bucklanders. Some crops were planted two years ago, and it was our families, my brothers and mine, who went there to see them attended to. There are a few other families there now, not more than four or so, and while the land in that place is accommodating enough we are spread too thin to get any real building done. That is why my brothers and I came to Waymeet; hoping for some better chance to build a burrow in the west. But there are many of the Lausa folk who wait there as we did. Perhaps two hundred or so; our own families, from newborn to goodwife, being about sixty in number.’

   ‘Sixty!’ Bovo, said, ‘my dear Zaragambas, you have indeed been busy! Youngbuck, I am certain that my father knows nothing of how expansive the Tooks have been for, if he had, he would have been most alarmed and apoplectic. Oh, for the first time in days I wish that I was home to give him this information! The Flumoxxed Firebrand! Hah!’

   ‘Your father, Bovo, brave and loyal as he is, sees the Lausa and the Tooks as an invading force,’ Youngbuck said calmly, trying to remove the adversarial potential in this conversation. ‘We should not, any of us, submit to this kind of thinking, despite past differences. I do not know the goals of my uncle Childy’s in spreading so far and so rapidly into the west, but of my cousins Gormadoc, Marcoul and Olo I wish them and their families only the best.’

   At this the brothers, still seated, all doffed their caps and bowed their heads offering their open hands in a gesture of friendship. But the Youngbuck continued speaking.

   ‘What your father, Bovo, and at least one of my uncles, doesn’t understand,’ Youngbuck said, ‘is that no hobbit should at any time find themselves in war or contention with other hobbits. We are a kinder folk who excel only through our capabilities to work together and never through heated competition. My uncle Twoody warns us not to go into the west while my uncle Childy drives his folk to settle there first. My uncle Clooty builds great works wherever any of us are assembled. All three have their reasons; I will not question the merit of these reasons if I am still to respect my uncles. But these three have not worked together for the good of the Shire since I, and each of you, were children. Whatever their plans are for the success of the Shire here in the west we are the ones to to now make those plans for ourselves.

   ‘For some reason which I cannot guess at, my uncle Childy believes it is important to hold the western edge of the Road while my other uncles are less concerned with this,’ Youngbuck said calmly. ‘I do not understand all that he means with this plan. But I think he is right; if there is danger to the West, why would we not set some border here? And I can also think of no reason why the Zaragambas, promised this land as they have been, should not hold it in good faith for all the Shire’s people; northern or southron alike.’

   Here Youngbuck stood, for even he recognized that the weight of his speech had grown in importance among his friends.

   ‘No hobbit, despite what they may have been told as children, is at war or in competition with another hobbit’s success,’ he said. ‘Indeed, no hobbit of the Shire who holds the King’s land should want for anything other than the safety of all his kindred hobbits. I don’t know what my uncle Childy teaches his folk of competition but I will not lose faith in my people so much as to believe that any hobbit anywhere longs to see others of their folk driven to want.

   ‘Gormadoc, Marcoul and Olo, I will happily do as I have promised,’ the Youngbuck pronounced, ‘and make maps for you that may be filed in Buckland or the Delvings and thereby assure your rights as western border guards to all of the Shire. I don’t know what other opportunities your Young Took, my cousin Reginard, may have looked for from this arrangement, but I trust that you shall keep your watch over those lands for the good of all the Shirefolk. Am I wrong in this assessment?’

   ‘No, sir,’ all the Zaragambas said in their turn. Gormadoc, eldest among them, went further in his pledge, standing to meet Youngbuck and to shake his hand as if in affirmation of a solemn vow; ‘No, for we come to the Shire as free-minded hobbits and not as partisan soldiers, sir. We would not look for our homes, something we have long sought after, to become bargaining chips in some petty game. If our houses and our holes are to truly be our own then no fractious debate should divide us from such good friends as yourself.’

   ‘Ah, cousin,’ Youngbuck said, ‘it is sad that the years and the events have separated us until now. I think that our families on both sides might have gained much from our discussions.

   ‘Yes, very well we agree then,’ Youngbuck continued. ‘So I say that your families away in the south must be sent for; discreetly and immediately. In this way we may together develop a settlement on the western slopes of the Far Downs as quickly as possible; and, if this can begin without the Young Took’s notice, all the better. Gilley, from the few maps I’ve seen, the land south of the Chalk hills should be largely even and flat. You’ve probably got the keener sense of direction than the rest of us; will you accompany Olo and help bring the Zaragamba families here as soon as possible?’

   ‘Aye, Youngbuck, and surely,’ Gilley said. ‘I’m eager to meet these Lausa “goodwives” and rejoin them with their “goodgrooms”.’

   ‘And,’ Bovo added with a smile, ‘get them ready and on the road before they know what hit them.’

   ‘Gormadoc, if they are to go straight southeast from here how long might it take Olo and Gilley to come to Nobottle?’

   Gormadoc looked away, as if he could penetrate the night and the surrounding trees to see the settlement of Nobottle in his mind. ‘Well, as you say, Youngbuck, once they cross the last of the Chalk hills that land is flat and filled with meadows. I think they should return much the way we came and then head due south from the last of that line of hills. Olo, you could find your way to Nobottle from there, could you not?’

   ‘Yes, Gordo,’ the younger brother replied.

   ‘Good. Good,’ Gormadoc went on, still looking to the southeast. ‘I would put it not much farther than twenty miles as a crow flies between here and there; but, lacking the perspective of crows, they must take the surer course to the Chalk hills and south or they may wind up missing Nobottle all together. There are empty lands there and many chances for their course to be turned. But, if they leave tomorrow before first light over the way we have already traveled then they may hope to reach Nobottle by sundown.’

   ‘Let us hope they have found at least one bottle by then,’ Bovo said, ‘to help welcome our Gilley.’

   ‘And,’ Gilley said, ‘let us hope you do not drink the last of ours before I return.’

   ‘I can only hope,’ Bovo said smiling, ‘for I am poor at promising.’

   ‘Good,’ Youngbuck said, still standing to address the others. ‘Once again our Plan has changed with fresh insights. No hunting trip for you, Olo, nor nightwatch for either you or Gilley. You’ll sleep now as you can and be better prepared to go before the dawn.

   ‘But watches should still be kept,’ he continued. ‘Bovo and I will set the first and awaken cousins Gordo and Marcoul after middle-night. Poppy, I want you to sleep the night through as we will need your help in setting our roadside camp when we come to it in the morning.’

   ‘But, Youngbuck,’ Poppy said cautiously, for he did not like to second guess any of his friends, ‘should I not watch with Bovo? I woke this morning to see you sitting on a hill and, to be frank, I’m doubtful that you slept that night as the rest of us did. If I am wrong in that then please tell me, but won’t you take some rest now?’

   Just as Gormadoc had looked to the southeast hoping to penetrate night and forest and hill, Berty looked off into the west. It was, for Poppy, Gilley, the Zaragambas and even Bovo, a long moment in which no one dared to speak. Then, with a slow turn of his head to the right, the Youngbuck gazed upon the hollow tree of Greenholm and with great sureness said; ‘Thank you for noticing, Poppy. But I will not sleep here.’

   And with that, just as with the closing of Greenholm’s door, the conversation was at an end. The hobbits pulled out their bedrolls and tied up their ponies. They put out their cookfire and washed their pots in the nearby stream and, one by one, saying very little else to one another, they went off to sleep.

 

*****

   After hours on watch together, sitting silently under the barren black boughs of the hollow tree with the stars at their brightest and the Moon himself moving to middle-night, Bovo finally decided to ask a question of his friend:

   ‘And how did you find this place that you have waited all your life to see, Youngbuck?’

   Berty did not respond quickly, though Bovo knew that he did not search for the right words to say but, forthright as he was in saying things, hesitated over what his words might mean. He stopped the carving of his walking stick, which had so distracted him from his friends for the past few hours, and with his usual honesty replied:

   ‘It was sad, Bovo. It did not fill me with sadness over the lost father that I have never met, but for the adopted father who has raised me. All those years he had awaited his friend and all those years he had been disappointed.’

 

end chapter twelve

Chapter End Notes

Notes (09/08/2025)

1) This is a more-or-less complete translation of Twoody’s earlier speech as given in Chapter Twelve of Part One. There it appeared as published in “The Shire-reckoning” as a caution to all hobbits traveling west. Berty would not know of this publication of course, for it happened in the year of his birth, but I picture him hearing his uncle repeat much of it in the Assayer’s office for most of his young life. It felt necessary to bring it back here for this next generation of pioneers.

2)  This bit is a nearly direct quote from LotR’s “The Ring Goes South”. In writing this chapter I was staying at my brother-in-law’s house in a very green and pastoral suburb of Philadelphia. I had started teaching LotR to an extended reading group and somehow had decided that describing the enchantment of the land, a key subject of Tolkien’s work, should really be the substance of this chapter. Indulge me.

3)  The “shepherds” that I’m talking about here are, of course, the Ents. I would love to write about Ents but, sadly, this, and even the larger work of The Fall of Arnor, does not coincide with that desire. Maybe my interests and my instincts will change that notion somehow. We’ll see.

4)  So here is a place where maps and research somewhat divide themselves. The map that I’ve been using shows that “Hardbottle” is a settlement in the southwest of the Shire. Some might remember it as the place that the Sackville-Baggins hail from, so I thought that it would be appropriate to use here. But research on other sites tell me that Hardbottle is in the northwest of the Shire, which actually makes more sense in terms of the etymology. “Nobottle”, shown in the north of this map, should be where Hardbottle is. It is a creation of Christopher Tolkien’s from some of his earliest maps; he then thought it meant a place with no inns. But the word origins, in Hobbitish and Old English, make it to be “new dwelling”. So much word nerdery in this process!

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