BLUEBERRY LEMONADE
By Febobe (Frodo Baggins of Bag End)
They weren't supposed to grow here.
It made absolutely no sense. None whatsoever.
Even Sam admitted it. That first year he'd scratched his head till Rose fussed that he'd go spot-bald if he didn't stop.
It hadn't been a good day. Frodo remembered that all too well. He had been ill again, too sick to get out of bed for days, then too apathetic to even attempt it. He'd been pondering decisions again, which always left him feeling hollow inside, dark and tight and sick at his stomach.
But then Sam had come in, white as a ghost, while Rose was trying to get her patient to eat some of the green beans and fried taters she'd made, with sweet corn pudding and sliced tomatoes, ripe and red as robin's breasts, strawberries and cream, a lunch fit for the King and Queen themselves, though Frodo had been trying to go back to sleep, and didn't want to see it.
"Mr Frodo - " he'd said in hushed tones, eyes wide. "You - you've got to come outside. There's something I have to show you. . .you won't believe me if you don't see it for yourself, nor Rosie. . .I don't understand it, not one bit, but it's happened."
He had risen reluctantly then, sighing as he sat up, allowing Sam to help him dress quickly in plain breeches - dark caramel - and the blue shirt Rosie handed them to offset the pallor of poor health before letting Rosie run her hands through his tangled mop of curls. Then Sam lifted him and carried him down the long panelled hall of Bag End, Rosie following, making for the outskirts of the Party Field, where Sam had planted rows of trees to replace those felled by ruffians. Most seemed quite ordinary - apple-trees, boasting green fruit on their boughs; plum-trees, heavy with beautiful ripe fruit; cherry-trees, their lovely fruit sparkling in the sun - yet in the centre of the row stood an odd-looking tree indeed. It bore yellow fruit, and smelled of summer and Minas Tirith and hints of flavouring in elvish dishes.
Rosie's mouth dropped open.
"We had pickled limes and lemons once, on my birthday, when a travelling saleshobbit from Bree came, and was sellin' them special. . .Mr. Bilbo bought them for all the children in the neighbourhood that day. And once we got some to make lemonade for one of my brothers, when he'd been real sick."
"We had it from fresh ones, at feasts, for Queen Arwen's wedding," murmured Frodo, still blinking in surprise.
"It just don't make no sense!" muttered Sam, shaking his head. "They had 'em from the South, and offered me lots o'seeds, but we talked about how the Shire just. . .doesn't grow these things real well, not hot enough or something. . .so I didn't take any. But I did take a package the elves made up, of fruit trees from Rivendell, to. . .to remember 'em all by. . .but I'd never have thought. . . ."
"But look at it." To his surprise, Frodo was the first to interrupt. It was like a flash of memory, recalling all of that. . .painful, but pleasant as well.
"The soil ain't right, nor nothin'. . .haven't been waterin' as much as those need. . .but look. . . ." Shaking his head, Sam clambered up the stepladder he had left beside the tree, bringing two lemons down and offering them for Rose's and Frodo's inspection. "Perfect. It's like it was made for here, somehow, but I can't understand how it grows. They wither up and die out."
"Well, perhaps it likes you!" Rosie had teased.
"It must be one of the Lady's blessings," Sam insisted, shaking his head. "She was right special like that, y'know. She'd have known."
They'd made lemonade then, two years ago, when it happened.
And even now, the third summer of its blooming, Sam still muttered over and over that he couldn't understand. . .he was glad as could be, but he couldn't understand it.
Frodo took a long sip from his glass. Rosie had made blueberry lemonade, his favourite, which tasted to him like sunshine and Rivendell and Ithilien and Elanor's tiny smiles and Bilbo's stories and Sam's grins and Rosie's laughter all pressed to juice and squeezed into a drink. Today was a very good day: though weak, as he always was these days, he felt well enough to sit outside, watching Sam fuss with the trees while Elanor played on the grass with her dolls and tiny tea-set, still more interested in keeping her world inviolate than in inviting her family in.
And why not? Let her have it. Let her hold it fast. Such a precious thing.
He nearly choked on another sip, laughing as Elanor tasted a lemon wedge from her dishes, making a decidedly sour little face at the unsweetened taste of it, and promptly returned her attenttion to her own tumbler of blueberry lemonade, which she drank from with both chubby little hands, dribbling a bit down her chin now and then. Rosie was resting for once, eyes closed; they'd brought lunch outside. It was one of the days Frodo found himself with a considerable appetite. . .enough to steal cookies from Rosie's freshly-baked batches on the cooling-racks, and enough to eat every bite of lunch: sandwiches cut into quarters - mushroom, cucumber, watercress, tomato, chicken, hard-boiled egg. . .corn on the cob, dripping with sweet butter. . .whole peaches. . .green beans and new potatoes, fresh from their garden. . .fried chicken. . .fresh rolls and sweet corn muffins. . .lemon jelly. . .blackberry cobbler. . .cherry cobbler. . .fruit salad in glasses, sparkling green and purple grapes and fresh strawberries sliced up and tossed in with blueberries, with a heavy layer of cream on top. He'd finished the sampler Rosie had given him, then asked for more jelly and cobbler and mushroom sandwiches, downing his third glass of blueberry lemonade, making her grin and Elanor giggle.
"I was thinking of vegetable soup later this week. Air smells like rain, and that's the best rainy-day dish I know, even for summer."
Listening to Rosie's sleepy murmur, he nodded, looking back toward the strange tree. "That sounds good. I'll help you cut things up for it. . .safer than my making the cornbread. It wouldn't be burned, but it wouldn't taste right."
"True. You can Elly-sit instead."
Frodo laughed and took another sip from his glass, settling back lazily into his comfortable spot on their picnic-blanket.
'Some things will grow wherever you plant them, if they're meant to grow there,' Sam had said once, when Frodo marvelled at the beauty of the exquisite mallorn tree now filling the centre of the Party Field. 'Don't matter none, I reckon, whether things *look* right for it. . .they just *are,* and somehow somethin' can thrive where nothin' should grow at all, by rights, even when the soil looks and feels as dead as the Black Land itself. And those, I reckon, are the most beautiful things a body'll ever see in a lifetime, and better'n we could ever hope. They grow out o'nothing, it seems. . .or everything. Even when they're as out o'place as a mallorn - or a lemon tree - in Hobbiton.'
It shouldn't be true.
It couldn't be.
And yet it was.
~
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