I couldn’t accustom myself to walking with a bandage wrapped around my foot. My boot felt tight, my skin felt stiff, and overall everything felt constricted. I accused Freda of using more bandaging than was necessary just to vex me and she didn’t even look up from her crocheting as she drawled, “I can’t rule that out as a possibility.”
I stomped along mostly entrenched in my own absentminded thoughts because I didn’t want to accidentally vent my frustration on anybody. It was a cheery sort of frustration though.
We reached Hobbiton in the second week of August. I was all for knocking, as were the other women, but Dwalin, Bofur and Gloin claimed Bilbo had told them to walk right in. I disagreed, but they had calculated our arrival to be exactly three minutes before four, so Bilbo would have time to put a few more cauldrons of tea on, I expected. They barged in while the two ladies and I shouted warnings ahead of them to Bilbo. The result of which being that while we were yanking on the men’s jackets (Gloni and Gimli didn’t quite know what to make of all this or whose side to take so they stayed back and stayed out of it) and the men were pushing forth we ended up landing mostly in a heap in the center of Bilbo’s entryway. He opened the door and we all flew forward several steps before someone in the front tripped and we all fell on top of them. I ended up on the top because I’d been in the back, and sat up from where I was seated on Freda’s legs. “Oh I quite like this,” I said decisively. “Payback.”
Freda shoved me off and I rolled to the rug at Bilbo’s feet. “Hi Bilbo.” I grinned.
“I’m so glad you all visited!” cried Bilbo, grabbing me under the arms and hauling me to my feet. “And you’re even on time.”
“I don’t think you own enough teabags for the lot of us,” said Freda as she helped Fraeg to her feet and left Gloin to his own devices. Only Gloni and Gimli had been able to avoid our topple, and stood by smirking at the rest of us.
“That’s why I invest in loose tea,” Bilbo quipped, waving us all toward the kitchen. “Easier to dry and reuse. Come on, come on, let’s get the table gently into the hallway before you lot drop it and break the legs like you nearly did last time.”
I was the only one to leave my shoes in the entryway, for which Bilbo thanked me and the dwarves stared at me. I only shrugged. “I like being barefoot.”
Gloin, his sons and Dwalin took the dining room table carefully into the hall at Bilbo’s directions and with a great deal of pointing. Bofur shouted out introductions and I gave Bilbo a proper hug.
“Bilbo, your house is beautiful,” I said, walking through it with my head thrown back. “I love the shape of the ceilings. Does it keep warm well in the winter?”
Bilbo launched into a history of Bag End (as it was apparently called) as the dwarves very rudely raided Bilbo’s pantry. I pointed this out with no small concern to Bilbo but he flapped a careless hand. “Oh don’t worry, I’m used to it.”
I stared at him, mouth open. “What did they do last time they were here?”
He stretched his suspenders with his thumb and grinned. “Far worse.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh gracious. I feel like the ladies and I will be mothering all the boys by the end of this.”
“Good gracious is that a rabbit?” Bilbo pointed. “Someone help me catch it, it shouldn’t be in here.”
“No no wait that’s my rabbit!” I grabbed him by the arm. “Remember the little one I picked up months ago? It lived! I named her Greenly.”
Bilbo chuckled, astonished. “Really! Will she….”
“I don’t think she’ll poop on the floor. If she does I’ll clean it up.”
“Oy! You lot gonna eat or what?” Dwalin called from the hall and we spun.
“I thought we were just having tea!” I shouted back.
“Hobbits can’t sit down without having food. Come on, there’s sandwiches.”
“Is there even tea?” I asked, and Bilbo and I strolled over to the table.
“I’ve got some lemongrass tea,” Bilbo offered solicitously, pointing toward various jars in his pantry before he sat. “And this one’s a blooming tea—those are fun to watch and sit with. This one has rosehip in it….”
“I’ve never had tea before,” I said, choosing a seat. “Surprise me.”
“You’ve never had tea?” Bilbo exclaimed, and the women stared at me. They had already poured themselves cups. “Well sit down—”
“I am sitting down.”
“Sit down and I’ll pour you one of my favorites.” He scrambled for another tea strainer and another teapot, filled the latter and hung it in the hearth.
“How have you been, Bilbo?” I asked him, adjusting to so I was sitting on my toes with my knees tucked under my chin. “Hobbiton is gorgeous. Have you always lived here? How old is the tree down by the river and the bridge? Do you catch turtles in that river? It’s slow enough. There’s a tree on the other side about to fall in the water though, you should build up the bank in front of it. Otherwise it’ll kill that tree.”
“Pipe down, feistytongs, and put this in your mouth so the rest of us can get a word in edgewise.” Bofur stuffed a cheese-spread roll in the direction of my face and I grabbed his wrist to protect said face, wrenched the roll out of his hand and did as was suggested, for the sake of his sanity if nothing else.
“How do you make this cheese, Bilbo?” I wanted to know through the bread. “It’s delicious.” Bofur put a warm hand over my mouth and I stuck out a foot to kick him in the side. “Lemme go, fool!”
“Hush up and give the rest of us a chance to talk, Mabyn!” He grabbed my ankle and yanked. I slid half-off my chair.
“You’ve got to say the magic word!” I pulled out the other foot and employed it.
“Please, please be quiet for a minute or two so the rest of us can talk!”
“Fine!” I retracted my foot and sat back the way I had been before. Bilbo settled a pretty cup of tea before me and made me promise not to break it, it was over a hundred years old, and I asked him to give me a different cup so I wouldn’t feel the weight of so much responsibility over one cup. He said no, enjoy it, just be very careful with it please, then he finally took his seat.
There was indeed a lot of chattering going on now that I wasn’t dominating the conversation. I felt Greenly bobbing between my feet so I squeezed sideways under the table and brought her up. She peeked up over the edge of the table from my lap and I offered her a spinach leaf. Sniffing, she accepted.
We spent a good three hours sitting at the table and talking. There was a lot of eating and drinking going on at the beginning, which waned after the first hour, and by the time we realized there was no more food on the table Bilbo realized it was suppertime and promised to lay out an excellent meal for us if we’d just excuse him to the kitchen for an hour.
“Bilbo, you want any help?” I asked after him, barely beating Freda to it.
“No no, I’m just fine, thank you.”
The boys decided to go sit out on Bilbo’s front lawn to get reacquainted with their pipes and after Fraeg and Freda grabbed their stitching we joined them. I had nothing with me with which to occupy my hands when they were in idleness but I was still happy. It was getting easier to let a little time slip by without making something of it. No one here had ever accused me of laziness. No one here had ever snarled or growled or charged at me either. It was a good feeling, as strange as it still felt.
“What does that taste like?” I asked Bofur, nodding toward his long pipe.
He raised his eyebrows and wound the spout into the lapel of his jacket. “Want to try it? It’s already started, so all you need to do is inhale. Not too big a breath! You’ll choke—” He chortled as I did just as predicted and hacked, my lungs feeling gray and scratched.
“It tastes like I chewed on charcoal,” I wheezed, handing it back.
Bofur accepted it with a grin. “You’re supposed to hold it in your mouth a bit, taste it, before inhaling.”
“Taste what? My imminent death?”
“The flavors,” he admonished. “And clearly you’re not one of the special few who appreciate them.”
“I’m not sure appreciation is what you’re experiencing. Are there hallucinogens in those?”
“Are there what?”
“Never mind.”
We waved at a pair of passing, curly-headed hobbits, who eyed us all suspiciously. They kept walking. No wave back, I noticed.
Dinner was a slightly quieter affair than tea had been, on account of us having already made a lot of our greetings over the previous meal. But only slightly. Greenly didn’t want to sit in my lap so was sitting between my feet. I dropped vegetables down to her on occasion.
The dwarves were perfectly happy to regale Bilbo with a detailed summary of our travels past and back to Hobbiton, and especially happy to explain the foolish or ridiculous things I had done in the meantime. I very peaceably permitted this, as I pointed out to them more than once when they tried to get a rise out of me.
“It’s not like you’re telling him anything that isn’t true,” I pointed out at one point, crumbling some of Bilbo’s marvelous cheese over the dumplings he had made. “And it’s not like he wouldn’t be terribly surprised by any of this either. He’s seen some of my antics.”
“We’re all a little surprised by you on a regular basis, Mabyn,” asserted Dwalin. “None of us have ever seen you at full capacity before.”
I snorted. “Full capacity. I’m not a pirate ship.”
“Could have made a good pirate,” said Gloin. “Considering the way you climb. You’ll have to show the boys how you climbed the curtain when we get back to Erebor. You promised.”
“And since when have I ever given you the impression that I would break a promise?” I demanded, throwing a granule of off-white cheese at him.
And of course even the dwarves ran out of things to tell Bilbo he’d missed eventually, so Bilbo’s turn to entertain us arrived and he very thoroughly scandalized us all with the tale of how he had returned to find all of his belongings being auctioned off and his vulture-emulating relatives picking over his home and valuables.
“There are still a great many people who haven’t laid eyes on me yet and still think this is all a conspiracy,” he told us over his steaming mug of tea. “Not a day goes by that I don’t get troupes of hobbits from down one way or another stomping past my house and waiting for a glimpse of me. Half of those who’ve seen me still say it’s a trick!” He shook his head. “I’ve had to buy back half my furniture and I still can’t find all of it.” He sniffed.
“I can’t say I haven’t said hobbits are suspicious creatures before,” said Bofur with a smirk, leaning back in his chair and tipping it onto the rear legs. I wondered how long I should wait before sneaking my foot under the front legs and jiggling them. “Always certain someone’s going to foible them.”
“Foible?” I asked.
“Swindle,” Bofur clarified.
Bilbo was shaking his head, a crease between his brows. “I don’t think that’s how it’s used?”
Bofur thumped back down onto all four legs. Opportunity lost. “How do you think it’s used then?”
“Well I don’t know but I’m fairly certain that’s not it.”
Bofur flapped a hand at him. “Well argue with me when you’ve got an argument then.”
Bilbo stood up from the table and trotted off into another room. We heard books shuffling. He came back with what appeared to be a massive dictionary and he sat back down to spread it in his lap. After several seconds he cried, “Aha! There it is. ‘Foible: a small weakness, defect or flaw’.”
Bofur shoved his chair back. “Let me see that. That’s the only definition? Ah—it isn’t! Read that one.”
“ ‘The weakest point on a sword blade, between the point and the middle’.” Bilbo gazed up at Bofur, a smile starting in the corners of his mouth. “I don’t think you’ve got an argument, my friend.”
Bofur harrumphed a great deal and sat back down in his chair with every ounce of exasperated dignity he could muster. “So suspicious they even have to pick apart your grammar!” he declared while pointing down the table at Bilbo.
“That’s not grammar, it’s vocabulary!” Bilbo refuted.
Bofur threw a radish at him. “The host has rest his case and now may retire!”
Needless to say Bilbo did not retire, but he did rest his case and the dwarves moved onto a new argument or discussion—it was often difficult to tell the difference with dwarves. Soon they were engrossed in something only dwarves could comprehend so I turned my chair toward Bilbo and began a conversation with him regarding gardening.
“No no, not hot water—it shouldn’t be steaming,” he corrected. “Just let the water warm up over the fire for a couple minutes until it’s perhaps a little warmer than body temperature. The warm water sort of wakes the seedlings back up, especially the younger ones.”
“The older plants don’t like warm water?”
“No I’m sure they do they just have deeper roots and don’t need the reminder that spring came back.”
“Got any more of that fish, Bilbo?” Gimli asked, finishing with his plate and pushing it back. He patted his belly. “Either that or some spotted rabbit might be nice about now.”
“Shut up,” I said, just as affable as I had been when they had been teasing me about climbing a tree to escape from coyotes.
“Have you ever had rabbit, Mabyn?” he wanted to know. “It’s not bad, in truth.”
“I haven’t had the opportunity.”
“Would you pitch a fit if we shot some on the way home?”
“Nope help yourself.”
“So why is it you object to us eating one rabbit and you so callously ignore the lives of all the others?” he theatrically teased. “They’re fluffy too.”
“They don’t follow me around.”
He chortled and elbowed Gloni. “We’d best keep close to this one, she’ll decide we aren’t worth keeping around either.”
I rolled my eyes. “Do carry on. It’s so clear I love having the lives of my pets diminished.”
Gimli started, then bent and reached beneath the table, righting himself and settling Greenly comfortably into his lap.
I was sitting on my toes again because I found it surprisingly comfortable. That and Bilbo had run out of chairs with cushions. I pursed my lips.
“You feed this one so well, she’d be nice and juicy,” he argued.
In an instant I’d planted my toes on the edge of the table and launched myself across at him. Greenly scampered and Gimli’s chair crashed backward.
Bilbo was shouting as I latched onto Gimli’s shoulders. “I asked you to stop,” I huffed into the thick hair over his ears. He squirmed, shouting his own even louder than Bilbo, who feared his newly refurbished house would be reduced to shambles because the dwarves were fighting. Dwarves in a good mood could be destructive. In a bad mood they were downright catastrophic. “I asked nicely.”
“Get off!” he hollered, trying not to squash me as we rolled around on the floor. He outweighed me by a large margin and was also a great deal stronger so almost the moment I got a grip on any part of him I had to switch it as he pulled free. “You knew full well I was only joking.”
“I don’t give a damn what you think I know!” I shouted back at him as he threw me off and I jumped back on again, wrapping both arms around his neck from behind. He’d been standing but overbalanced and toppled sideways again with my assault. “I don’t trust people I don’t know, and I don’t know you!”
“We’ve travelled together for weeks!” He grabbed one of my arms and unwound it so I wrapped my legs around his thick waist and we stumbled out into the parlor, which was less crowded by the chairs and table.
“You belong to a race that can live hundreds of years surely you know how paltry a couple of weeks are!” He yanked my other arm off and I snarled.
I noticed that Gloin and Bofur didn’t seem too concerned to see two of their children going at it on a parlor throw rug. Even Freda looked amused. Bilbo gestured wildly at us and exclaimed, “Isn’t one of you going to do something?”
Gloin and Bofur stood with their shoulders together and arms crossed. They glanced at each other. “A copper on yours giving up first,” said Bofur, and they shook hands on it. At Bilbo’s horrified expression Gloin threw his head back. “Oh, Bilbo, a harmless scrap never harmed anyone. It’s not like they’ve broken anything.”
“And that’s not to say that they soon won’t!” Bilbo shot back.
Gimli was muttering a stream of curses as he tried to dislodge me without damaging me. I’d given him my arguments for why his teasing had offended me and now had nothing else to say, but my face was turning purple with my determination not to be the one to give in first.
We rolled toward a spindly looking table and Bofur caught Gloin’s eye. They sighed as one, disappointed they wouldn’t get to see who would have won the bet, and strode forward to each grab a handful of fabric and drag us apart. Bofur set me on my feet and brushed me off and Gimli straightened several feet away, glowering, giving me a look that clearly said he didn’t know what to make of me now. I straightened my back.
“What was all of that for?” Gimli finally burst out. “You know I was only teasing.”
I raised my chin. “I know. I was only making a point.”
Gimli growled. “And just what point might that be?”
“Don’t ever threaten the living things I love. Not even in jest. I am not accustomed to being allowed the luxury of loving people who deserve it and now that I have it I will let no one else touch it even to tease.” I was looking him sharply in the eye and was coldly satisfied to see that he understood some of the chill my former life had had to make me so frigidly protective of the warmth I had in this one.
Bofur clasped a hand on my shoulder and tugged me sideways. “Come on. The last of the food’s getting cold.”
Five minutes later we were all back in our seats and silent. Our forks clinked against the platters, knives scraped along bones, and the seats creaked whenever someone uncomfortably shifted his weight. It was the politest we had ever been in Bilbo’s house, but I think I was not the only one who wished we could bring some of the rudeness back.
I was the first person to go to sleep—right after supper, as I was tired of all the quietness and I wasn’t interested in sitting up and smoking as many of the others were. A couple hours later Bofur came to sit with me a moment, knowing from the way I was fidgeting that I hadn’t managed to fall asleep yet.
He cleared his throat. Bofur only did that when he was uncertain or uncomfortable. I decided not to turn over and look at him just yet, not wanting to pressure him. “You know, jumping over a table and sitting on someone and then purposefully pointing out how their ribbing might hurt you was rather more of a punishment than a reprimand.”
I sighed. “I know.”
“Then why do it?”
“Because I am used to being ignored,” I murmured. “I am accustomed to being in pain. I want to turn my life into one where when someone hurts me I am miserable, not resigned to it, having just expected that something bad was waiting to happen. Doing it this way makes people understand how I feel, and how I’ve felt. A sharper pinch than it needed to be, probably, but I know very well it was effective, and it was a warning to everyone who heard me, not just to Gimli.”
The darkness held a long silence. I ran my finger back and forth over a pill in my blanket. “You think about life like it’s a series of battles to be premeditated and won,” he finally said, astonished and unnerved.
“I know.” I breathed. “That’s all I’ve ever known.”
“You’ve changed, Mabyn. You’re not the carefree little sprite we picked up in the mountains.”
“I know. But my life was over then. I could afford to be careless because I had nothing left to lose.” I turned over and gazed clearly up at him “I have everything to lose now, and I will do anything it takes to protect it.”
We were all yearning for Erebor by the next morning so we left by lunch. There were many heartfelt goodbyes to be said, and Bilbo sent me off with a cloth bag of loose tea that I’d decided I loved the day before. We said our farewells in the dwarvish way, with much back-slapping and gaiety, and finally made our way back off down through Hobbiton and toward Bree.
It took at least a week for Gimli to get back on cheerful terms with me. I acted just as friendly as I had before the Greenly Incident and after a while he came to the understanding that my temper came and went as fast as dandelion fluff on fire. We went back to our jokes and laughing and I threw acorns at his back when he wasn’t looking just to see how long I could make him turn to try to find whatever was striking him. Gloni just shook his head when he saw what I was on about. Fraeg laughed.
I was glad we both found out that the other didn’t hold a grudge.
(pg163)