A Better Place - The Hobbit Fanfiction

Alternate Entry Fifteen - A Bright Holiday

“Move, Mabyn!” Bofur shouted, and I scrambled to the side, having been looking out over the frost-dusted landscape of Erebor, Dale and Long Lake, with Mirkwood rising behind the last. This truly was a beautiful place. I couldn’t have chosen a better home.

The tree crackled at the base, swaying, and Bifur gave it a shove to send it curling down against the rocky and mossy slope. As it slapped against the knarls of patched, stiff grass and stone I watched frost dust up from beneath it and smiled, then began to clap. “Well done, boys! Now how do we get it back?”

The brothers stooped and boosted the heavier base of the trunk up into their arms. “We drag it! Mabyn, you can take those leftover branches if you want. They sure smell nice.”

“Oo good idea!” I began piling them into my arms. “I could make a wreath or garland or something.”

“My entire house is going to be green by the time you’re done, isn’t it?” Bofur grunted from within the tree’s furry branches.

“You’ll love it,” I huffed from within my own branches.

When they saw us laboring to carry our tree and tree-pieces down from the foothills then up into the mountains several dwarves broke off what they were doing to help us. Soon there were nine dwarves carrying the tree properly instead of two dragging it, and two dwarf-ladies by the names of Byrnhild and Runi had divided my load into two large thirds for them and a much smaller third for me.

“I can carry it!” I insisted as Runi unpiled my arms beyond what I considered was fair.

“No no, chit. Let us help you—you haven’t got enough meat on your bones yet.”

And here we were with this again. I fervently hoped the dwarves wouldn’t see me as disfigured and undernourished for all my life, but perhaps once they got to know me better they’d realize I was now of perfectly healthy proportions for my age and size, as well as my supposed lineage. I had made no attempt to convince the dwarves that I had elf-blood in me, as I had let the elves believe, but human blood and childhood malnourishment they could believe.

I heaved a sigh. I wouldn’t be having people say I was ungrateful as well as deformed. “Thank you, Ladies. What are your names?” They told me, and I smiled, repeating them as I looked each of them in the twinkling eyes to find places for their names and faces in my mind.

“So what’s all this for?”

“It’s for a holiday from my realm,” I cheerily explained. “I’m having a Christmas celebration.”

“What’s Christmas?” they wanted to know.

“Christmas,” I heartily began, “is when all the little boys and girls line up socks on their hearths and get sweets stuffed into them if they’ve been good, and coal if they haven’t. They also bring a pine tree inside and decorate it, and if the little lads and lasses have been behaving themselves the past year a fat man in a red velvet suit squeezes down their chimney, trespasses in their homes and leaves supposedly anonymous gifts for the children under the tree. Everyone else gives and exchanges gifts too.”

“Sounds a bit dodgy,” said Byrnhild, and Runi nodded her agreement.

I shrugged. “Never said it didn’t. Most traditions and myths sound odd to those not raised with them though don’t they?”

The two admitted that they did indeed, and we carted our pine boughs up the many stairs to Bofur’s house. The tree barely fit through the door but dwarves are persistent, and they managed with a minimal showering of needles.

I say ‘minimal’ because at least a shovel would not be required to clean them up.

I had already discussed with Bofur how we would need to keep the tree alive, and he’d devised a deep pail wedged between a number of boards that would both support and water the tree. I’d filled the pail already. I had also, the day before, collected a pail full of rocks and dirt to dump into the pail around the trunk of the tree to stabilize it once the tree was in. I was confident if I did it well enough the tree wouldn’t go toppling down in the night.