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Chapter Text

Of course, it wasn’t quite that simple. 

I think the King assumed that Dad was some kind of Hobbit leader. But most normal people in the Breelands thought that Dad was (on a good day) a bit of a dreamer and (on a bad day) a bit of an idiot. Well, he is a Fallowhide , they’d say, and roll their eyes and get on with their day. 

Uncle Blanco was Dad’s most enthusiastic supporter. He would have set off to the Bridge of Stonebows the day after we got back to Staddle, if Dad had only agreed to come too. 

But Mum, predictably, was furious that Dad had gone without telling her, and furious that I’d gone too, and even more furious that nothing had actually gone wrong and we’d come back with our swirly new Charter.  

If it had all gone wrong and we’d been hurt, she’d have moved earth and sky to help, of course, but as it was, she turned Dad out to sleep in the shed overnight, and everything I said, she sniffed dismissively at me as if her nose was about to fall off. 

But she got over it.  And once she had, she started to see what a good idea it was, to cross the River and have a land all of our own. 

“It’ll be a good deal of work,” she said to Dad, when he got back to the hole and she’d let him come in and settle himself rather cautiously at the table. “And just when I’ve got things straight here, too.” 

“You’ve never been afraid of hard work,” Dad said coaxingly, and not mentioning Mum’s usual list of complaints about our hole. He's good at not saying the wrong thing, as well as saying the right one. 

Mum sniffed. 

“It’ll be worth it.  We can build a new hole. One with space for a proper bean-row, and a well to hand, maybe.  Or a cistern, even, with a tap all our own.”  

The nearest well in Staddle was in the middle of the marketplace, and carrying water back to the hole in buckets was a right old nuisance. But it was always so busy around the well, not to mention muddy in the winter.

Mum sniffed again, but this time it was a very thoughtful sniff. 

The next day, she put on her best bonnet and went visiting her Harfoot relatives. She visited Nanny Goiswintha and her family, then Aunty Cixilo and Cousin Gamba in Staddle, and came back looking rather smug. 

Then next week, she took a whole day and went with Aunt Egilo, who’s married to Uncle Blanco, over to talk to Aunt Egilo’s family in Bree.  But nothing else happened.

I told Oatalie and Ness all about Norbury, and they both thought we were all going to be stuck in Staddle forever more. 

*****

It was a warm, muddy winter that year. Not much frost, and the grass went on growing right through to Yule.  The wheels of the big carts the Men use made a right mess of the back lanes.  Thick glutinous mud: it stank and it stuck to everything.

Mum had to wear boots to run errands, and she didn’t let me go out because my feet are still growing so I can’t have boots yet. Mud in the hair on your feet is just horrid, but it’s awfully boring to be stuck at home with nothing to do but spin thread.  Obviously you do have to spin thread, if you don’t want to wander around with no clothes on, and I don’t mind it if I’ve got other things to do. 

I was getting pretty good at spinning by the time the rain slackened off a bit, the sun came out, and the lanes began to dry out. The hedges were full of yellow primroses, pink campions and bluebells.  

Dad went south of Bree for a couple weeks to help with the lambing and when he came back, he didn’t plant oats nor beans.  I asked him why, but he just said he was waiting for Mum. 

*****

And then, quite suddenly, it was all decided.

I only found out the day before, and I just had time to go say my goodbyes to Oatalie and Ness and the Sweetbriar girls.  The Sweetbriar’s Mam had decided their Gran was too old to travel and so they couldn’t join us. 

Then we were packing and ready to be off.  

There weren’t that many went with us from Staddle. There we were, yawning at the dawn with our feet all cold with dew on the grass. Three families: us, and Uncle Blanco and Aunty Egilo, and Nanny Goiswintha and her little dog-cart. 

Oh, it was strange to be leaving, when half the Big Men weren’t even up yet, and the chimneys and windows dark, as if we were a dream. 

And then we came down the kingsroad to Bree.  The sun was well up by that time, and we saw them all waiting for us in the sunny meadow outside the west-gate. 

Young mums with babies crying on their backs, curly-haired Harfoot men carrying their spades and hoes, donkeys and ponies laden with bundles of clothes and bedding or sacks of potatoes. A handful of pigs and sheep being herded along by boys and girls with sticks.  

A way behind the sheep, there were three small cows, all with bells around their necks, and two with  calves following behind. 

Four foolish Fallowhide lads with not much to carry had made up a song, and were dancing as they sang it, arms around one another’s shoulders. 

Mum was smiling nervously. Dad hugged her. 

In the middle of all the noise and fuss, there was a little crowd of older ladies - mostly little Harfoots with dark curls, but one of two taller, fairer Fallowhide ladies, all with their best bonnets on. They called out to Mum to join them.  

All the ladies had all brought pies and seedy-cake and plenty of sandwiches, of course. But they didn’t have bundles on their backs, and I could see Mum was thinking that the respectable ladies might not choose to come with us. 

That would be a problem. If the ladies stayed in Bree, most of their families would too. Even those that came with us to begin with might go drifting back to Bree if things got difficult. 

Mum and Auntie Egilo talked about this a lot, in the days before we set off. 

If only a few of us went west, we wouldn’t have all the people and the skills we needed to build our new land. We’d be poor hunter-farmers, scratching out a living in the wilds, and have to come all the way to Bree to do our trading.

We all sat down in the sun on a hillock by the road, just outside the shadow of the gate and there we had a Feast.  A Way-Feast and Breaking of Bread, like in the old stories from the wandering days. 

I could see Mum was worried when she got out her pies.  She’d gone for cheese and potato, and it was clear as day that she was thinking she should have brought cake instead. Almost all these ladies were from Bree, not Staddle: she didn’t know them well. 

Cake would have been the safer choice. I was holding my breath, I tell you. 

But first Aunt Egilo, then the two Fallowhide ladies, and then nearly all the ladies in bonnets took a slice of cheese and potato pie. 

Then I knew it was all going to be all right.

There wasn’t a crumb left of that pie for the children, but I didn’t even complain.  Anyway, there was plenty of other food for all of us to share. 

So we ate, and talked, and one by one, the ladies gave their men the nod, and they kilted up their skirts for walking, and sent lads running to bring out their bundles from their homes inside the Bree-walls. 

Then Mum nodded to Dad, and he got up and stood in front of us all on the road.  Uncle Blanco went and stood beside him. 

And Dad held up his walking-stick.  “We’re off!” he shouted. As everyone was getting to their feet, he turned towards Bree, and he said the old rhyme:

“Apple, thorn, and nut and sloe,
Let them go! Let them go!

Sand and stone and pool and dell,
Fare you well! Fare you well!”

We all joined in, everyone but the babies. And with that, we all turned our backs on Bree together, and started walking west, along the king’s road towards the Baranduin river, and the Bridge of Stonebows. 

Mum wanted me to walk with her and the ladies in bonnets.  They were so respectable, they were all spinning thread with their drop-spindles as they walked, and I just knew that I’d have to spin too, and would get all the little jabs and comments if my thread was lumpy. 

After her triumph with the potato pies, I reckoned she could cope on her own and pretended not to see.  

I went off to the front to walk with Dad and Uncle Blanco and the singing Fallowhide boys, who, it turned out, had come over from Archet, and were called Bob, Cob, Rob and Nob. Honestly, what were their parents thinking?

I reckoned I should get to lead the way as much as Dad.  After all, we both of us went to Norbury to see the King. 

******

It was very different, travelling all together, from travelling just with Dad, or from going into Bree from Staddle for the festival. 

The ladies set the pace, and they decided where we should stop each evening.  

It was quite hard to work out who it was that made the decision.  One person would suggest, and then it would be chatted over for a little while, and then without anyone quite saying a definite ‘yes’ or ‘no’ we’d either all stop, or go on a bit further and decide to camp somewhere else. 

It was quite a well-ordered journey, with the people who had tents or carts all positioned neatly. Everyone had a job to do, from getting the firewood to making sure the cattle and sheep didn’t wander off or blunder into the tents. 

Nobody stayed up late, or slept in after sunrise, and we all started the day with a good cooked breakfast, even though we had to be a bit careful about what we ate, since we had to carry it all, not to mention all the supplies we’d need for the rest of the year.  

Mum was hoping not to have to send back to Bree for anything too much, at least until we’d worked out how to pay for it. 

The livestock meant we had to move slowly.  You can’t expect a milch-cow to walk all day with her calf, I learned.  We’d never had a cow, so I didn’t know much about them, but on the way from Bree to the Bridge of Stonebows, I learned to milk Clothilde the cow without getting trodden on or her knocking the bucket over.  It’s the most annoying thing in the world when you have the bucket half-full of milk and it’s all going well and then a big hoof comes swinging out of nowhere and all your milk’s spilt. 

Well, nearly the most annoying thing in the world. 

Even more annoying is when you’re trying to milk a cow who’s already a little twitchy about being in a new place being milked by someone without much practice, and then a couple of elves come out of a bush singing a little song about your very serious expression and how hard you are trying not to knock the bucket over. 

And you jump up to tell them to clear off before they scare the cow, and slip on a cowpat. 

There may be a more annoying thing than that somewhere in Middle-earth, but if there is, I don’t know what it is. 

Do you know, cows have tongues that fit perfectly into their nostrils, so they can pick their noses without fingers?  Astonishing. I’ve got a little cousin that would love to be able to do that. 

*******

It was late afternoon when we reached the river and saw the great stone bridge ahead of us, with its three great wide arches and the river running clear and bright under it.

 When I got to know the Baranduin better I learned that a lot of the time it’s brown and muddy, but it was clear as golden glass that day, as Dad and me and Uncle Blanco and the donkey too led the way across the bridge into our new lands. 

The excitement lasted about half a day.  Then the rain began. 

I don’t know who it was that built the Road, long ago, but they knew what they were about. It’s raised maybe a foot or so, and so it stays dry even when the low green river-sides are squelching. You could see why there was so much goat-willow growing: it wasn’t exactly a swamp, but it was clear when we woke in the morning mizzle that you wouldn’t want to dig a home there. 

Dad and I were feeling pretty downhearted that morning. It felt like we’d led everyone into this soggy wilderness of damp grass and goat-willow and really we should have thought it out a bit more. 

The children were all miserable and arguing after a wet night, the babies were wailing and even the donkey looked about as peeved as a donkey can.

Mum, mysteriously, was cheerful. “Come on then!” she said bracingly. “According to that fine charter you’ve been flapping around so proudly, Marcho, this land of ours is forty leagues from west to east, and fifty from north to south. There must be plenty of fine hills and light soils for digging in such a big place. I don’t want to settle in the first spot we come to. We’ll need to have a good look about.”

“It’s only spring-time,” Dad said, rallying a bit under the beam of Mum’s determined cheerfulness. “We’ve got a good while to poke about a bit before we need to start thinking about the winter.”

So we went on along the Road.  You could see that the land had once had people living in it. Here and there along the road were old orchards, all overgrown but  bright with blossom, or a hedge that had been laid once to keep the cattle in, and although there was no more field to enclose, the trees still spread sideways in an orderly line along the old hedge-bank. 

After a few days we found a roofless cottage with a paddock overrun with hazel and quickthorn. We wondered what had happened to the people who had lived there. Maybe they know about that, in Norbury, maybe at the university, if you knew the right person to ask. 

The cottage was so old, there was nothing left. The wood had long rotted away, and only the remains of the old stone walls were left.  I thought at first they had been built for hobbits, since the sills of the windows were right down where we could easily peer over them.  But Dad dug down a little with his spade and you could see that the land had risen up around the old building. I don’t know if the leaves had fallen there so many times that the land had got higher, or if the walls had sunk. Either way, it seemed a sad place to me. Though, Uncle Blanco reckoned that the fallen stone from the old walls might come in handy for building with, if we settled there-abouts. But none of the ladies liked the land about the cottage much, and we soon went on. 

The land rose a little as we moved slowly westward, and we discovered there was a smaller river running back to the Baranduin just a little to the north of the Road. You could see it now and again from the road.

We’d run out of most of the food we’d brought with us by then, apart from bags of oats and flour.

Dad’s theory was that we could hunt - and it’s true, the woods were full of birds and squirrels and deer. Dad and Uncle Blanco went out with their bows and shot a couple of deer, while the rest of us took a day off walking and looked for food along the Road and up in the woods.  

But there was... something in the woods.  Dad saw it first, just slipping around a tree in the distance. Then later, Nob found some fur and part of a footprint. It might have been a fox.  

We hoped it was a kind of grey fox, because if it wasn’t a fox, then it was a wolf. 

Nobody had seen wolves around Bree since long before I was born, but this wasn’t Bree.  This was a long way from anywhere that anyone lived.  That’s the kind of place you get wolves.  We all knew that. 

After that, we kept the little ones close, and nobody wanted to go too far from the Road to start hunting, or to look for good places to build. 

It was too early in the year for fruit or mushrooms, so we ended up eating a terrible lot of roots and leaves. There was plenty of wild garlic and onions, and quite a lot of wild carrot, but I tell you, you can eat an awful lot of wild carrots and garlic and not be properly full. 

The day we found an old potato patch near the Road was the best day. Not the right time for digging up roots, Auntie Egilo said, but we were hungry. We went through that potato patch like there was no tomorrow, I don’t think there was a single potato larger than a pea left in the soil afterwards, and Mum got to make her cheese and potato pies again.  I’m pretty sure no cheese and potato pie has been appreciated more, even though we had to use some of the precious salt making the cheese.  

The Fallowhide boys found a hive full of bees and tried to steal the honey, but they got proper stung doing it, specially Cob. He was all puffed up that day, but the next day he was worse, and his face all red and he was sick, too — though I don’t know if that was the bee-stings, because there was something going round all of us.  Most of us just had the trots for a bit, but a couple of the little ones got it bad.  

I was roped in to find herbs, since I wasn’t taken as bad as most people, and so I was busy gathering blackberry leaves and stewing them up to make a tea when I wasn’t milking Clothilde or trying to coax the baby cousins into eating roasted roe-deer.  

Then Nanny Goiswintha decided that the best thing for the runs would be marshmallow root, which only grows in wet soil.  We probably could have sent a few people to look — but there was the wolf. Maybe even more than one. 

In the end, we all decided we’d be happiest if we all went to look for marshmallow root.  Together.  Even the pigs and the sheep and the cows. 

We’d just come to a place where there was a big old three-cornered stone standing tall by the roadside that day, and we didn’t fancy walking all the way back to the wetter land by the Baranduin by then, so we turned north away from the Road towards the Water.  

Of course, there wasn’t anything you could really call a path. A deer-track, at best. And soon it wasn’t even that. 

We were all pretty grumpy by that time, I’ll admit, but we were grumpier by far, by the time we’d managed to find our way through the brambles and the overgrown thickets. 

When the full May moon rose over the Shire, we’d come stumbling down through the willows to the long grass of the riverside. It was a clear night so we didn’t bother with putting up shelters.  We just flomped down by the water. 

We were tired, we were cross and hungry, and the sick babies just would not shut up.

I stomped off. Stupid of me, probably. But I really needed a few minutes, and to wash my face, and to be away from the sound of babies.  

I didn’t think about wolves, I didn’t think about what would happen if I had a fit and fell in the river.  I just stomped. 

And then, I saw white lights glimmering on the wooded slopes across the river, and heard them singing.  

Elves. My first thought was: oh no , not them again. 

I was more than ready to hand them their pointed ears on a plate. I could just imagine Mum perking up hopefully at the sound of singing and I thought: she’s going to be SO disappointed. 

The one came across the river, all in dark green with a white lantern in his hands sending sparkles across the the dark water as he stirred it to ripples, wading through. At least he wasn’t singing.

I went over to give him a proper warning that we really were not in the mood for elvish revelling, and I got to the bank just as he came up glittering, all wet and dripping like falling stars. 

“I am called Telpyn,” he said, very serious. First serious elf I ever saw.  “I heard the wailing of children across the water. Is all well here?”

I’d taken a deep breath ready to send him to right-abouts, but of course, then I couldn’t. I let out my breath in a big puff and just shook my head, like a sad toddler. I can laugh about it now, but I tell you I felt as if I were three years old and had just grazed my knee and couldn’t find the words to tell anyone.  He just watched my face, and waited.  

Then, somehow I ended up telling him all about the sick babies and the bee stings and getting the dog-cart and the sheep through the brambles, and eating the horrible carrots, and he listened all silent, with his head on one side. 

Then he said “Wait here for a little while.” and he went away again across the water. 

I just sat there feeling empty and hungry on an old tree-trunk in the blue night-shadow, while the Moon lifted above the trees to look down on me.

Then, just as I’d decided he’d gone and I should go back and start thinking about going back to find the others and getting out my blanket, they came down the hill again, a whole line of lanterns swaying against the dark hillside. 

They were singing, but it wasn’t a mocking sort of song. I couldn’t make out the words, but it was... Wholesome. Comforting, even.  

They waded through the river — it was a shallow place anyway, and they’ve got long legs — and then Telpyn came back and took my hand. A strange sort of hand he has. Very long fingers. 

We made our way back along the river-bank to the others, and when she saw us, Mum got up and came over all aggrieved to demand to know where I’d been and didn’t I know better than to go anywhere with the Fair Folk (that was her trying to be polite and very rude at the same time.  Oh, Mum!) 

But Telpyn was even better at wrangling Mum in a mood than Dad is. 

He went down on one knee and said to her: “A joy to meet others that wander lightfooted on the land! I met your daughter by chance and by starlight. Among my people that is thought a happy chance. We would share a meal with you this night, o Lady of the Harfoots, if you wish it.”

Mum loves stories about elves, though I don’t think she’d ever met one before.  She didn’t need that much persuading. 

Before I knew it it was all her idea for the elves to come to dinner, and she was trying to work out what we had left that we could cook for them. 

But luckily the Elves were ahead of her.  They’d brought firewood with them. We could have collected that, to be fair, but we’d just been so tired from making our way through the pathless undergrowth, most of us had just sat down where we were and not even thought about it.

They laid a fire and got it blazing in no time, and then they brought out elf food. It was a bit different to the kind of thing we were used to, of course but it was not bad at all.

Loads and loads of lovely potatoes cooked in different ways with loads of stuffed onions and garlic,  and little sweet things a bit like flap-jacks, only made with nuts and parsnips, not oats. Little hard salty sausages that Telpyn said were made from wild pigs. There were wild carrots, but they were a lot better dipped in salt or a sort of creamy garlic paste stuff, which they carried in sea-shells. I’d never seen a shell from the sea before. 

Even the most snobbish of the ladies were won over. 

Not to be outdone, our ladies got out the best cups and a big tea-pot and quickly made tea: we still had plenty of that that we’d brought from Bree. 

Luckily, good old Clothilde the cow was still in milk despite all the walking she’d had to do, so we did have a little milk, and some fresh cheese that we’d made that morning before setting off. There wasn’t much of it to go round, but we did at least have something to offer our guests.  The elves were all very impressed with the cheese: they don’t have any cows, they told us.  

I took Telpyn to meet Clothilde and her calf, and although they weren’t best pleased to be woken up, she blew at him approvingly when he scratched her ears. 

I don’t know quite what the Elves did for the babies, or poor Cob and his swollen face, or the sheep that had a limp, but after a while, the babies stopped crying, and Cob had filled up on potatoes and gone to sleep, and even the sheep wasn’t limping in the morning. 

We could have done it without the elves.  We would have jolly well got on with things, one way or another. 

But it was so good to know that the land the King had given us wasn’t entirely overgrown and lost and forlorn. That we weren’t entirely alone. There were still people there who loved the land.

A good meal and a night’s sleep does wonders.

It was a sunny morning, and the Water shone blue before us. In the morning light we could see that the land around us was a wide rolling valley, lifting up north and south all clothed in spring green, and there was a high Hill across the water, where the Elves had come down with their lanterns the night before, with long gentle slopes, just right for the digging of hobbit holes. 

But we weren’t sure what the Elves would think of that.  After all, they were here first.  It seemed a bit odd that the King hadn’t mentioned that.  What if this land was all Elfland and they wanted us to go away?

Of course they thought this was outrageously funny.

Dad screwed himself up to go and ask them what they thought about us building a new town for hobbits somewhere hereabouts.  

They laughed and went on splashing each other with water in the river. Honestly, I could have drowned the whole bunch of them. 

Anyway, I dragged Telpyn off on his own, and made him understand that this was really important, and got him to take it seriously. 

“I would not call this our land,” he told me, once I’d explained that we really must get this sorted out. “We do not dig holes, or drag ploughs through the ground, and if you wish to do so, that is no business of ours, O Hobbits. This was a land of Men, and not so very long ago, as we count it: there are trees here by the water that well remember their hands.”

“Where did these Men go?” Dad asked him, frowning in worry.  

“I do not know where Men go,” Telpyn told him, and to be fair to him, I could see he was trying not to smile at the idea in case the smile made me cross again. “To the great cities, perhaps?  East to the war, or south to the harbours of Men... I remember my friends who dwelt here once, but I do not know why their great-children went away.”  He shrugged. “My people are what your King, and his Elven friends out of the West call Green-elves. We do not build towns, as you wish to do.”

“But you don’t mind if we build one?” Mum demanded, making sure she had got all of this straight. 

“If you build your town for Hobbits here, then we will come and visit you, from time to time, in a season, ten years or a hundred,” Telpyn said, and smiled so that his long face lit up in delight. I found I was smiling too, as if I’d caught his joy from him like you might catch a cold. 

 “You are no servants of the Enemy,” he said. “Your voices piping are pleasing to our ears, and you walk light on the green grass, as we do. Why should we complain of you making your homes here, any more than we complain of the badger in his sett, or the beaver in his dam?”

That day, we all put up our shelters along the bank and began to cut wood to build the first houses. 

All the while we worked that summer, cutting wood, clearing brambles and piling them up into great thick hedges to keep the sheep safer from wolves, digging small holes that might become proper homes later, while all the while, the elves came and went and laughed at us. We just had to put up with it. They had turned out to be good neighbours, after all. 

Anyway, all that time, we were talking about what to call our new town, once it was built.

We came up with all kinds of ideas - the hill had an elvish name and so did the river - should we use one of those?  Or name it after Dad (that was Uncle Blanco’s idea, I don’t think even Dad liked it much) or after the King. I thought Bywater was a lovely name, but Nanny Goiswintha said that could be anywhere. 

In the end, we just called it Hobbiton.