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Daisy had been fidgety again, so Elanor was in with the little ones for most of the evening. Goldy had knocked her bed-time glass of milk over onto the coverlet and pouted up at her older sister petulantly, saying "want Mumma", and Hamfast had complained of a sore toe that somehow prevented him from cleaning his teeth and had begged for Mumma too.
But Mumma was lying in bed feeling poorly, as usual. Elanor did her best, but she was no match for the capable hands of her mother and the children made her feel the difference keenly. By the time she got them all tucked in and dozing, she was ready to fall down dreamless herself.
She padded through the near-silent smial, keeping one hand against the curve of the wall to guide her way in the dark. The parlour lights were still burning, the red-gold light through the tinted glass of the lamps making the room look warm and soft.
Rosie was asleep in the carved rocking chair, errant curls of hair ghosting over her forehead like cracks in pale china. She looked so wan, so tired and frail, that Elanor's heart wanted to tear in two. There was something sick and bad inside her mother, had been for months. What if it never left? What if Mum ended up with the burden of poisons and wounds that she'd never suffered? And perhaps the baby would be a bad sort, if it managed to come at all. Elanor thought of her noisy, difficult brothers and sisters, who were really little sweetlings underneath it all, and tried to imagine what a truly awful child might be like.
"All right, El?" a tired voice asked from just beside her, and Elanor whirled in surprise. Frodo looked at least as tired as Rosie, worry and illness and a dark twist of fear competing for space in his clouded eyes. Elanor bit back on the cruel words she wanted to say, because it was all greys and maybes and Fo hadn't asked for any of this, really.
"Yes, Uncle. I'd better be getting to bed." Oh, her heart hurt. Why was everything so confusing, why did love and pain go together like they fitted?
Hot tears of anger stinging at her eyes, Elanor pushed past Frodo and ran for the safety of her bedroom. Thank goodness she was eldest and had a place of her own, where the only confusing thing was the puzzle Sam-dad had made her out of two twisted nails. Elanor wanted to curl up on her bed and have a good cry into her pillow, let some of the confusion out.
She misjudged the number of doors she had run past, though, and when she'd pushed one shut behind her she found herself in the study.
The Red Book stood on its stand, as always, a child's handprint in sticky marmalade residue smeared in one corner of the cover. Merry, that had probably been, he was just getting old enough to try and muddle out the words of the story on his own. Elanor's breathing evened out as she rested her back against the door. She turned, snibbed the lock, and sat down on the carpet. She'd always liked the study, it smelt like autumn all the time.
The window was slightly open the light breeze outside rustling the loose pages strewn about. Elanor felt that this was one of those moments where the world is as thin as a soap bubble, all sorts of things just on the other side of a shimmery wall. Anything could happen on a night like this, especially to a thirteen-year-old girl with a head full of stories.
Perhaps it was because she was so tired, and everything in the world seemed so large and confusing, but for a moment Elanor felt as if even stories might be close enough to touch. Close enough to weave into the fabric of the world. Before she really knew what she was doing, Elanor stood up and walked over to the wooden stand beside the fireplace.
Carefully, surprised as always at the weight of the volume, Elanor lifted the book and placed it on the desk, opening it to the last pages. Even after all these years, nobody had bothered to change the ending that was written there. Frodo saying goodbye, sailing away out of the story, Sam-dad coming home to El and Mum.
"It would have been better, perhaps," Elanor murmured, feeling so sleepy she couldn't really keep her eyes properly open. She'd stopped feeling like she needed to cry, and her hands were steady as she ran her fingers over the ink of the words. "I wish, I wish, I wish..."
Just as she finished speaking the third 'wish', a particularly strong gust of wind battered against the side of the Hill, blowing the window wide open and sending papers whirling around her. The book's pages fanned up like a flapping bird, and Elanor stepped away from the table in surprise. She must have caught her heel on the edge of the carpet, because the next thing she knew she was flat on her back, and the wind had stopped.
Rubbing the back of her head, which she'd cracked on the floor, Elanor sat up. She felt quite awake, now, and the dreamy mood was broken. It took her a few seconds of checking for bumps and bruises before she noticed that the room was suddenly alien, somewhere she had never been before.
Oh, it was the same room, with the same lovely old furniture and nice big fireplace, but nothing else was as it had been a few seconds earlier. The ink bottles on the desk, which Frodo habitually left open to the air and doomed to dry out, were stoppered neatly and lined up just so. The messy collection of papers and books on the shelves was tidied, too, as if nobody used them very much. The Book was there, of course, but Merry's jammy fingerprints were missing.
"It... I couldn't have, could I?" Elanor whispered to herself. It wasn't possible, after all.
She crept over to the desk, suddenly feeling nervous in the very room she'd spent at least half her growing-up in. Frodo kept a block of very expensive and extremely delicious chocolate in the lefthand drawer of his desk, which Elanor had pilfered small chunks from many a time. If that was gone, Elanor would know that things were somehow all switched about and shaped to fit her sort-of wish.
There wasn't any chocolate, only the little blue book that Elanor recognised as her own. She'd been given it when she was ten, back in the real - back in the old way that things had been. It had made her smile, all the bits and pieces her Fo had thought she might like to look at. This book wasn't nearly as ragged as her copy, of course, having rested unread in a dusty drawer for a lot of years. This other Elanor hadn't gotten hers yet, obviously.
"But there's isn't another Elanor. It's me, now," Elanor whispered to herself. How queer that was, to think of.
She pushed the door open, not really that surprised to find that it wasn't locked. It was tempting to explore everything, find out each and every change in this new world she'd found herself in, but Elanor was overcome by a sudden sleepiness and had barely put her head on her pillow before the sun was tickling her eyelids and waking her up.
Mum was cooking eggs and sausages for breakfast, singing one of those silly nursery songs she liked so much. Elanor, who hadn't heard her mother sound so jolly and healthy in months, ran up and gave her a kiss.
"Good morning to you too, miss." Rosie smiled. "What's got you so cheerful, then?"
"It's a cheerful sort of day," Elanor replied with a shrug.
"Yes, it is rather, isn't it?" Sam-dad said, coming in and catching Mum up in a big hug. Elanor clapped her hands in delight, because they both looked so nice and solid and ordinary and well. Noisy baby-cries came in suddenly from the big bedroom, and Elanor skipped down the hall to greet her baby sister in this lovely clean new world.
"Hullo Daisy!" she cried, picking the little girl up and ticking under her arms. "Isn't it nice? Mum and Dad are happy, and Uncle's in Valinor where he won't ever be sad or sickly ever again. Oh, but I'm glad I made my wish."
Daisy put one chubby fist into her mouth and dribbled a bit in response.
"And you won't have a bad brother or sister to worry about, either, because Mum's not in a family way and all poorly from it." Elanor paused, then shook her head and smiled. It was hard to stop smiling. "No, that's not right for me to say, really, for no baby's ever really wicked... why, I fancy even Aunt Marigold would have been nice enough if she'd had you and me and the other little ones to grow up with. P'rhaps the baby would have been rather sweet, since Uncle was and all. When you're bigger I'll teach you how to listen to sea-shells, and hear the ocean."
"El, Fastred's here!" Pippin called, wandering down the hallway past the big bedroom with his hair knotted up in a mess and his pajamas buttoned wrongly. Elanor laughed again, because it seemed that her brother was a messy thing no matter how different the world got.
Fastred looked the same as always, all freckled and nice and ordinary, except that he had two big fishing rods over one shoulder. The Fastred Elanor had known didn't like going near water much, on account of his brother's accident when they were small.
"What's got you so cheerful?" he asked.
"That's exactly what Mum asked me!" Elanor laughed. "Aren't I allowed to be cheerful?"
"Here." Fastred handed her one of the fishing poles as they walked down towards the Bywater Pool together. "Yes, you're allowed to be cheerful, I'm just wondering what's made you that way in particular."
Elanor hesitated for a moment. Fastred was her dearest friend, she loved him just as much as any of her brothers and sisters (in fact, she rather thought of him as the older brother she didn't have, though he'd never liked her calling him that - Fastred's own experience with older brothers did not leave the term as a compliment), and if anybody was likely to believe her, it was him. So as they walked, Elanor explained the strange happenings of the night before and the changes to the world this morning.
"So you'll have to tell me all about everything that might be different, so I don't make mistakes when talking to people," she finished as they reached the edge of the water.
"All right, if you tell me about how things were before last night," agreed Fastred. "It must have been terribly interesting, growing up with Frodo Baggins. I can barely remember him, and I don't expect that you would at all in the ordinary way of things."
"No, I don't suppose I would." Elanor cocked her head to one side. "How terribly queer! I hadn't thought of that, I must have been just six months when he sailed away. Poor Rose-lass and Fro and Merry and the rest, never having him to play with, though I'm sure Mum and Dad were good playmates on their own."
"They always have been when I've visited," Fastred said with a nod. "Bag End's the nicest place in the whole Shire. Are your brothers and sisters any different now?"
"I don't know, I haven't seen them yet," admitted Elanor. "Rose-girl's been a bit melancholier than usual lately, though everyone's been a bit dour with Mum being sick and all. I worry Rose is going to grow up sad. She hates being the only girl with brown hair, she wanted the new baby to be dark like her."
"She's sad here, too," Fastred said. "But only sometimes."
"Yes, only sometimes," Elanor echoed. "Everyone has sad days, really. Do Mum and Dad seem to miss Uncle very much?"
"If they do, they hide it well. They give away a lot of mathoms and coins and things on his birthday, and make a special donation to all sorts of charities and libraries every Yule, but otherwise I don't think I've ever heard them talk about him."
"Uncle loved Yule. I wonder if they have it in Valinor? He used to get lots of dried oranges and spinning tops and glass baubles and put them in his coat, and then he would chase all us children around and around the garden. Only he wasn't really chasing us, because if he caught us he'd just sit us on his knee and make silly faces. 'What has Old Mad Baggins got in his pocketses?' he'd ask, and we'd put our hands in and find all the things I just told you about, or toffees, or little pots of bright red ink to write holiday stories with."
Fastred smiled, as much at Elanor's happy grin at the memory as at the story itself. "It sounds wonderful. If I had an Uncle like that, I don't know if I'd be so happy to wake up and find he'd vanished."
Elanor's smile twisted into a pondering curl. "I'm not really happy that he's gone. I'm happy that the sad parts are gone, even though that means a lot of happy parts are too. It was very difficult, sometimes. I've got a scar, here -" Elanor turned her palm up to show Fastred, then stared at it in surprise. "Well, there you are, my scar's disappeared. The sad things are coming untrue. But I used to have a scar there, because I'd had to fight Uncle one day when he was sick. He had bad turns, and now he'll be healed and whole over the sea."
"Hmm." Fastred nodded. "I expect you're right, Elly, seeing as how you're the one who saw what it was like."
"Yes," Elanor answered, and they settled down to fishing.
That evening Elanor helped Mum make supper and then wash up afterwards, and went to sit and talk to Sam-dad while the little ones were put to bed.
"Not too late, my lovely girl, you're still too small to sit up for long," Sam-dad said. "When you're bigger you can stay with me, but growing hobbits need their rest."
"I wanted to ask about Un-... about Frodo of the Ring, Sam-dad," Elanor said, pushing her hair behind her ears. "If you ever wish he'd stayed."
"Well, my girl, I'll show you something if you like. I've left this part out, when I've read the Book out to you lot, because it's too much for little ones to get their head around. Fairy stories and happy endings all tied up with the real way of things would just confuse them. But you're so big now, getting bigger every day it seems, that I think you're old enough to understand."
Sam-dad pulled the Book down and opened it to the last pages, and Elanor breathed in sharply in surprise. In this Book, someone had bothered to fix the ending. The story finished with Frodo deciding to stay, sitting down to dinner with his family and looking forward to a good life in the Shire. Not always well, not always happy, but good.
"Is that how you wished it ended, Sam-dad?"
"Don't think I don't love my life, Elanorelle, for I do. But your Mum and me, we miss him. And it could have gone like that, I'm sure of it, just as it could have gone like it did. I figure that both ways are right, like, and since one's being told each day with living, there's no harm in telling the other way on paper."
Elanor patted her father's arm comfortingly and nodded. "Yes, I think you're quite right."
When everyone else was asleep and the smial was dark and quiet, Elanor climbed out of bed and walked to the study as silently as she could, which was very silent indeed.
There was lots of spare paper in the study, and lots of ink too. Elanor chose the red sort, because it looked strange and gory on the tip of the quill and she wasn't so old as to be above appreciating good gore. She lit one candle with a match that flared up with a hiss she was sure would wake everyone, and settled down to writing.
She wrote about a family a bit older than the one sleeping in the rooms around her, a bit bigger. A slightly older Elanor who was a little more graceful, maybe, because fiction is where wishes can sometimes come true. She wrote about parents who loved their children and missed their Frodo, and an ending that was happy even if it wasn't perfect.
Then Elanor folded the pages up and put them in an envelope and sealed it all up with bright red wax, and sat back at the desk.
"There. Er, I'm not really sure who it is that I'm talking to right now, and if I'm speaking too quietly for you to hear I apologise but my family are all sleeping. But I'd just like to say thankyou very much for granting my wish, and I'm very appreciative, but I've had a long think and I reckon I'd like to change it back. So I've written some of what might happen in this world, so both ways keep being told. And if the Book says that it ends one way, there's no harm in following the other, if you follow me. Oh, spit, I'm sounding all shy like Sam-dad sometimes does. Look, I don't know who you are but I'm just a hobbit who wants her Uncle back now, please, and I'd like Mum to get better and have another nice baby, because I do like my brothers and sisters even if they are awful sometimes. I don't know what to say to make the thought come out right. I want this world back on paper and I want the proper world back for living, and that's that. Not because one is better than the other, but because one suits a story better and the other one's more suitable for hobbits to live in. I'm sure Fo wants to be remembered as a noble hero who sails away, because that's the sort of twit he sometimes is, but I'm sure that the Elves don't bother with Yule and don't play chasing games. So it's better that paper-Fo plays the hero and the ordinary one has the ordinary way of being alive. Much more logical." Elanor paused, took a few breaths, and tried to stop herself from crying. "Please? I wish, if that's what you want me to say. IwishIwishIwish."
Nothing happened. Elanor felt very afraid.
"Please," she begged. "I want to go home." She put the envelope with her little ending-story in it in the pocket of her apron and paced back and forth. "This Elanor can be the other Elanor that doesn't exist here. I'm not nearly so right to be a character in a noble and tragic ever after, I get messy and I fight with my brothers and sometimes I pull Rose's hair and I..." Her heel caught on the edge of the carpet and she fell flat on her back.
"El?"
Someone was knocking on the door. Elanor got up went to open it for them. Strange, she hadn't remembered locking it. As soon as she saw Uncle Frodo standing there she jumped at him, knocking him breathless and almost sending them both sprawling.
"El, what's wrong? Are you crying, lass? I didn't want to upset you."
"Oh, Fo, I'm not upset. I just wanted to hug you so tight that you'd never ever be able to leave."
"Leave?" Frodo looked down, smoothing Elanor's golden curls off her face. "Where would I go, silly?"
Elanor sniffled and smiled. "Nowhere, I suppose. I just felt very much like hugging you, really."
"Well, that's nice." Frodo gave her a big squishy hug in return, and tickled under her arms. "Your Mum's not going to be poorly for much longer, El, I know it's been especially hard for you. But maybe it'll be worth the trouble in the end."
"Yes." Elanor nodded, then stepped away from her uncle and turned to look at where to Book rested amongst the mess of the desk. A sharp corner dug into her leg and she reached into her apron pocket, pulling out the little envelope. It should have surprised her, finding it there, but somehow it didn't at all. She walked over and tucked it between the last page and the back cover of the Book, and set the whole thing back on the stand.
"What's that you put there, Elanor?" Uncle Frodo asked.
"A different way things could have ended. It doesn't matter now," Elanor explained. "Come on, I want to give Mum and Sam-dad and you goodnight kisses before I go to bed."
~
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