"Why is it called 'throwing' a pot when you make one, do you suppose? It always makes me think of mud fights, clay flying every which way," Rose mused, running her fingertips around the curve of the lip of a large jug. Elanor chuckled at her sister's fancy and selected three cups from the display of crockery. The market was thrumming with life around them, they'd meant to get there early before everyone else was about but it had been such a comfortable, lazy sort of morning that getting up had been a task beyond them.
"Seems your family's always buying cups on market day," the plump gammer working the stall commented. Elanor grinned and offered the price in silver pennies.
"Our brother Pip's been doing the washing up. He's trying his best, but it's a bit rough on the cups."
The old lady laughed, waving Elanor's money away. "Ah, I remember what that's like. My little ones are all grown with babes of their own now, so my cups and bowls never crack and shatter with slipping from small fingers. Take these to your Mam with my good wishes."
"Thankyou!" the girls chimed happily, stowing the cups away in the basket Rose carried.
"We could buy some ginger beer and those nice turkey slices that the Dragon sells, since we've got some unexpected money now," suggested Rose. "Take it up the hill and call everybody out for a picnic."
"It's going to rain before long, we'll get things to take back for an ordinary indoor lunch though."
"Rain? El, don't be stupid, there's not a cloud in the sky."
"Still, it's going to rain. And don't call me stupid, you ninny."
"I didn't call you stupid, I said you were being stupid. Which is true enough and therefore you can't get uppity with offence at my saying it. How on earth could you know rain's coming?"
"My scar." Elanor held her palm up, the pad between her thumb and wrist bisected by an old but unfading mark, a thin white line that daggered down like lightning. "It always stings when the storms are coming."
Elanor's hands were equally suited to writing, sewing, and other precise tasks, but as a general way of it she favoured the uninjured one for most things. The skin around the old scratch was always a bit stiff, and on days which the weather chose to shift became uncomfortable.
"Oh, all right then." Rose shrugged with a guilty blush. "You could have said."
"I just did," Elanor retorted. "Rose, stop looking so droopy and timid. It's just a little mark on my hand that hurts when damp's on the way. It's hardly like I sit at home and grouch about the ache, I don't let it bother me any more than Uncle Merry worries about his own on his forehead. It's a nice day, it's not raining yet, and we've got three pennies that nobody needs to spend on anything important at our disposal, so stop doing your flawless impression of a wet blanket."
"I think scars are horrid things." Rose shivered. "I'm glad I don't have any, they seem terrible burdens."
"No." Elanor shook her head with a laugh. "Not really. You can't trust Uncle Frodo to have a proper perspective on things, if you took his word for everything you'd expect the world to be so much effort that nobody would get anything done. You know what he's like." Elanor put one hand to her forehead and sighed, speaking her next words with a melodramatic lisp. "Tham! Rothie! My flannel'th warm and my pillow'th need fluffing."
"El, don't make fun," Rose chided. "That's cruel."
"Isn't." Elanor dropped her hand and hopped down the lane on one foot and then the other, the market's din fading into the distance as they walked away. "I can say it if I want. What's he going to do, ring his sick bell at me feebly until I say I'm sorry?"
"Elanor, stop." Rose looked truly upset, so Elanor held her tongue and continued her impromptu hopscotch. The edges of the laneway were yellow with gorse, bright as gold in the sunshine.
"Do you still feel like turkey or shall we stock up on jelly cakes and sausage rolls?" she asked Rose, coming as close as she ever did to apologising for teasing.
"Hmm... jelly sounds -" Rose began, her words cut off by two boys leaning on the fence beside the road, calling out as they sauntered over.
"Look, Bran, it's two of the Gardner witches. They turn hobbits into frogs, I hear, and straw into wool. Going home to cast some spells, are you? Put some newts in a stewpot to get your Dad elected again?"
The tips of Elanor's ears began to turn pink with rage.
"Can't hear me, is that it? Don't understand what I'm saying? Don't you care? Well, where there's no sense there's no feeling, my mother says."
"They say so best who say so knowing," Rose shot back, keeping her eyes on the road ahead. "Just ignore them, Elanor."
"The boys are cracked and the girls are wicked, and half of them are bastards anyway. Is it true that Mad Baggins drinks blood, then? My mother says she saw him down near our pigpen with red all round his mouth, and two of the piglets were missing next morning."
"You probably ate them in your sleep," Elanor hissed. "You're certainly pungent enough to have been mucking about in a sty."
"Oooh, she speaks! The Elf witch sinks to talk to a regular hobbit, who'd have thought it? But then, she's not half as bad as that Frodo Baggins. My mother says he went off years ago to try and help a king or find a treasure, or something peculiar anyroad, and then he lost his nerve and went bad. That's why one of his fingers is gone, that's what they do to criminals in foreign parts."
"Elanor -" Rose said in alarm as Elanor whirled about to face the boys, but the warning didn't come fast enough to stop El's fist shooting out and planting the closer of the two in the dirt of the road, blood arcing out from his nose.
"You crazy bint!" the other shouted, pushing Elanor back hard enough that her feet almost skidded out from under her. She retaliated with a rake of her short fingernails down his arm, and the fight was on in earnest. Rose stepped back from the scrabbling, snarling tangle of limbs; dust clouding the air and coating the neat linen of Elanor's dress in muck.
"El, don't, El, stop," Rose pleaded, but Elanor's eyes seemed to barely see her younger sister as she fought the two boys who had dared to insult her kin.
"Girls? What's going on?" Frodo's voice made Rose jump in surprise, and she grabbed at his arm gratefully.
"Uncle, it's El, she's fighting those boys and I don't know what to do."
"All right, Rose, hush. Hie, you lot, stop scuffling like chained dogs and be off, then! Elanor, come here." Frodo beckoned her over, wincing in sympathy at the purple-green bloom on her cheekbone. "Oh, El, your Mum and Dad have enough trouble with the boys and Daisy getting into this sort of predicament. What on earth made you so angry?"
"Doesn't matter." Elanor shrugged, doing her best to keep the sullenness out of her voice.
"Well, I don't think that bruise is going to be as bad as it could be, but we'd better get a balm for it anyway." Frodo inspected Elanor's injuries with the trained eye of one who lives in a houseful of rambunctious young folk. "Rose, dear, if you want to come with us you're welcome, but I can give you some money if you'd rather go look at the bangles and beads and ribbons."
Rose nodded eagerly, hurrying off before the second windfall of the day could be retracted.
"She's so much like Sam," Frodo said thoughtfully, watching as Rose walked away. "It makes me worry."
"What do you mean?" Elanor's voice was curious. Frodo shook his head as if to dismiss the question, and then paused, thinking, and nodded to himself.
"This is as good a time as any, I suppose, and I've been meaning to talk to you. Want to come to lunch at the inn with me? You can have chocolate in your milk."
"Uncle, I'm not eight anymore," Elanor laughed.
"No, you're not," Frodo agreed with a slightly wistful sigh. "All right, you can have whatever it is that lasses drink when they think they're too old for chocolate."
They sat inside, the sky above looking too overcast by now for outdoor eating to be sensible.
"What did you want to talk to me about, Uncle?"
"Elanor, I worry about Rose because I know she'd do anything in the world I asked of her."
"Yes, she's like Dad in that, isn't she? I hadn't thought of that before."
"Yes. And it makes me worry because it means she might get very badly hurt someday."
Elanor blinked in surprise, taken aback by Frodo's urgent tone and words.
"You're not like that, though," he went on. "You don't need me to be a hero figure like little Rose, you joke and make fun of my whining all the time." Frodo smiled as Elanor tried not to blush in mortification. "I know that if things ever got truly bad -" At this they both looked down at the old scar on Elanor's palm. "That you would do what you needed to do. I know it isn't fair to ask this of you, but life's often like that. Those who can accomplish a task are the ones called to do it, even if they should never have been asked in a fair world. Rose is too much like your parents, and the boys wouldn't have the heart to either. Their love is too strong."
Elanor's jaw clenched, and she blinked hurt and angry tears away.
"Oh, my Elanorelle, no, I didn't mean that. I know the name-calling and the jokes don't mean you don't care about me. All the hobbits in the Shire put together don't have as much capacity for love as you do. But you've never been a sentimental type."
"You're saying all this because it's March soon, aren't you?" Elanor almost kept the wobble out of her voice. "It's a neat little irony, isn't it, that one of your sick, dangerous times is so close to the day where I get older each year."
"Elly, dear heart..." Frodo swallowed, his eyes are bright as Elanor's own. "I can't protect you from myself, but I can make sure you're ready for that task on your own. I would say that I'm sorry, but I'm so selfish, and... anyway, let's get some food, eh?"
Elanor nodded, glad to have the difficult and painful discussion done with. Sometimes she hated being the eldest, the trusted confidante. But that was how things were, and that was that.
"There used to be an inn near Brandy Hall," Frodo was saying as he scanned the chalked-up specials above the bar. "Called the Finch and Bairn, but everyone called it the bird and babe. They made wonderful pumpkin soups, which were inexpensive enough for tweens to buy with rag money. And there was one lad - just about your age, really - who used to sit in the bird and babe and write tragical poetry and wait for his Luthien to appear."
Elanor smiled as Frodo told the story, blinking away the last of the sting in her eyes.
"This lad's cousin got terribly exasperated with the lovesick sighing, especially considering that the fair maiden of the constant poetry had quite utterly failed to materialise. The cousin came in one day and pick up the lad's cup of water and tipped it unceremoniously over his head, and said 'folk who think their glass is empty all the time end up with a wet head'."
Elanor covered her mouth with her hands in an effort not to laugh, instead giving in to her other impulse: to reach gracelessly across the old scarred table and hug Frodo tightly.
"And did the boy ever find his Luthien in the end?" she asked playfully as they broke apart. Frodo shook his head.
"No, but what he ended up with was just as good. The thing is, I've never really lost that melodramatic streak, despite Merry's sage and drenching advice. I still see the glass as empty unless something reminds me otherwise. I think of that first year back in the Shire and it could have turned out to be so different if I hadn't been so surrounded by metaphorical glasses being tipped end-up on my head. Your mother and father... in all my wildest daydreams I never expected such luck in finding them, in having them find me. But it wasn't just Sam and Rosie that saved me. I was - I still am, much as we all pretend it isn't so - hollowed, raped by the burden I carried. And that would have been the end of me, save for one tiny thing, one small gift that carried me through the darkest of nights."
"The Evenstar." Elanor nodded. Oh, thank goodness for that miraculous gem that had saved their Frodo.
"No, my silly dear. Not the Evenstar. The sun star. You see, Elanor... it feels strange to say this, it's not the sort of thing your mother and father think about if they can help it, so I've never put it into words before now... the ring was created out of cruelty, malice. It didn't just take life from those who bore it; it took their hearts and thoughts. But you..." Frodo's voice wavered, his chin and eyelashes trembling as he spoke, his gaze never leaving Elanor's face. "You were this small, sweet, beautiful thing, and you'd been forged from love. You had been created simply through the existence of Sam and Rosie together, and suddenly I knew that there was something in the world a thousand times more precious and powerful than any ring could be. You didn't take life, you were a life grown out of joy and into a brand new hobbit. And that made me hope for the first time, in all that despair, that perhaps life could bloom in me again, if there were things so much stronger than the poison in my heart. No, don't speak, not yet. I've wanted to tell you this all your life. All the babies have taught me this in their unique ways, because you are all unique - that's the wonder. I love you all more than the whole sky could give me breath to say. And every time I feel joy, or sorrow, or pain, or boredom, or mirth, I remember the fist time I held you in my arms and saw your tiny face. Whole oceans of love for you poured over me, and made my head as wet as it could ever be."
Frodo paused to breathe, and Elanor tried to find her voice to speak, the words coming to her in a measured, careful rhythm that collapsed into chatter as she went on.
"I remember when Farry was born, how Uncle Pippin looked, and how Aunt Dinny was crying but told everyone that she wasn't hurt, nothing was torn badly, but she kept crying and crying, and Uncle Merry was too and so was Aunty Stel and then Aunty Stel started laughing and put her hand on her belly and said that the little fellow inside was kicking to come out and play with his new friend. But mostly, I remember Uncle Pippin's face. It almost hurt to see it, the light in his eyes. I thought for certain his heart would crack in two from the force of his happiness. I never imagined anyone felt that about me."
"We all do, El. You were what we fought and died for, the idea of you and your sisters and brothers."
"No. Not died. You didn't die. You lived." And now the tears overwhelmed Elanor, and she began to sob. "I had a dream once, Fo, that the story ended as it does in the Red Book, and -" Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Elanor shook herself and wiped her eyes with a snuffly laugh. "Mum would check out temperatures for fever if she heard us talking so. Terribly unhobbity conduct, she'd probably accuse you of getting me drunk, too."
Frodo laughed at that, shaking his head. "Our conversation might not be properly in keeping with our race, but our conduct is. Big People would think it quite odd to laugh and cry so much in so little time, and in a public inn. They wouldn't think it was ordinary at all."
"But..." Elanor shook her head in disbelief. "Don't their hearts explode from keeping everything in without a vent?"
"Somehow, no. Perhaps it's why they're so fond of weapons, it gives them release to strike a blow."
"Pfft." Elanor waved her hand in derision. "Do you think the pumpkin soup here is as good as out Buckland?"
"Let's see, shall we?" Frodo suggested with a smile.
The pumpkin soup was very good, as were the small loaves of new bread that came as a side dish. Frodo told a story of when Pippin Took had been very young and had declared to his parents that, instead of inheriting the Thainship, he wanted to work in a bakery.
"Merry talked him out of it eventually. Explained that most bakers actually have to sell cakes and rolls to other people and not eat them all."
After their cheerful meal, Frodo and Elanor went for a meandering walk down along the edge of the river. The threat of rain still hung heavy and low in the air, but no drops had fallen yet.
"Why is it called 'throwing' a pot? Rose asked this morning and I don't think I know the answer."
"Hmm. Might have to research that. I'm sure at least one of the books that clutter every surface and underfoot in the office at home has a satisfactory answer," Frodo said. "Your Dad probably knows, anyway."
Elanor nodded, satisfied with this, and scuffed at the scrubby grass with her foot.
"Uncle, you know those letters from Gondor that arrive from time to time, the ones with the stories in them. Do they make you angry? Do you laugh at them? Or," Elanor ducked her head, letting her bright hair fall in a curtain as a shield from Frodo's possible answers. "Do you wish it could have been like that?"
"You mean the romance sagas about Sam and me? Oh, El, I'm surprised your heart doesn't explode, with all the secret worries you keep there. Aragorn sends them to us because he finds them entertaining, the polite ladies of his court revealing such epic and debauched passions in their writing. I don't think your parents and I have ever thought much about them at all, except for vague amusement at some descriptions of my flawless skin." Frodo rubbed at a cluster of pockmarks along the curve of one eyebrow, the legacy of childhood measles. "It's like marble statues in the Mathom House museum, really. The original idea of the things might have come from what happened, but the writers have taken it and made it into something new, something their own. The characters they call Frodo and Sam aren't my, or your father's, property to control. That part of us belongs to the world, now."
"That's why you've never fixed the ending in the Red Book, isn't it? Because it's the way things have to end for Frodo in the story. People reading it in future years won't understand, they won't see how terrible and horrifying it was if they think it had a happy ending. They won't know what a difficult quest it can be to find life and love sometimes. How much effort a happy ending takes to maintain."
"Yes." Frodo nodded. The mud was thick and dark and sticky between their toes as they wandered. "I do write stories of how it really is, sometimes, though. For my own fancy, because you're all growing up so fast and I want to never forget what these years were like to live. Sometimes I daydream that in a hundred generations, when the Red Book is almost considered a fairy tale, some inquisitive tween will find all my extra papers filed away in a box - that is, if I ever become organised enough to do any neat filing - and maybe share the stories with a few friends. And then they will begin to argue about which ending is true, until they realise that it barely matters at all. Because it was all so much bigger than the people in the middle of it."
"Will there still be hobbits then, Uncle? You really think so?" Elanor gazed out into the distance, her eyes following the twists and curves of the river ahead. "I wonder. Folk still call a good thing a 'proper fourteen-twenty', as if they're sure another year so good will never come. And the hobbits are changing; more are being born fair-haired and pale-complected each season. Even the old names are dying out, and it's not just because you and Dad brought back so many new ones from your journey, in the years before you left there were already Fastreds and Firiels turning up in many of the great families, Orald and Forn on twin boys or Clair and Isobel on sisters."
"Change isn't the same as loss, dear one. Everything changes. Here, crouch down and put your hand in the river water. No, here, where the current's strong. Cup your fingers. See how the water pools and overflows? You can't hold back change; you can't hold a ripple frozen in your hand. But there's always more water, more ripples. Hobbits are skilled at adapting, if they weren't I'd see the reason for your worry. But we're hardy stock, we don't die easily and we breed prolifically. The time of hobbits is long from over, no matter how changed out way of life becomes through the ages."
"Look at that, you great galumphing brute, your footsteps are so heavy you've disturbed all the worms in the riverbank," Elanor teased, standing and wiping her hand dry on her skirt. "Look at them wriggling about. I wonder if we look as strange to worms as they do to us?"
They walked for a while in silence, each caught in their own thoughts. Eventually Elanor spoke again.
"I wonder how different the real Luthien was from the one in tales and stories. She was very brave, anyway. I think more people are than most suspect, actually. I think most folk would do grand things, dangerous things, if they had to. At least, I like to think so. I like to think that all parents know that their babies are precious as Elven jewels and stones, too."
"I hope you never lose that faith, dearest of Els." Frodo smiled. They stood there, parent and child in all but blood, sweetest of friends, and then their touching moment was rudely interrupted by a fat raindrop falling onto the end of Frodo's nose.
Laughing, they ran home as quickly as they could in the downpour, the hems of their clothing spattered with mud by the time they got there.
"The afternoon did get away from us, didn't it? I'm going to go write for a while and then go to bed, I think. Don't give me that look, Miss, when you're as ancient as I am you'll have early nights whenever you can too."
Elanor laughed, kissed Frodo on the cheek, and went to hunt down her brothers and sisters. Frodo sat down at his desk, making notes of his conversations with Elanor, planning to write it out in full in the morning light. But once he'd started writing, as often happened, he forgot how to stop, and after several hours of work Frodo put his head down on the desk, closed his eyes, and began to snore.
"Frodo dear?"
Frodo blinked, sitting up and peeling off the piece of paper that had decided to stick to his cheek. Sam was standing beside him, smiling.
"You're always here when I wake up," Frodo said, smiling back. "I really am the luckiest hobbit in all the world."
"Oh, I can think of a few others in line for that title. They all live under this here hill, though," Sam replied. "Come on, come in to bed."
Frodo let Sam help him to his feet, and they walked down the now-dark hall together. Rooms of sleeping children branched off on either side, and Bag End felt like the snuggest place to be in the warm night, residual rain still pattering outside.
Rosie was watching the wind in the trees through the bedroom window, silhouetted by the faint lights of other homes down the road. With her hair braided back off her face and the high collar of her nightgown (a Yule gift from her eldest son and several inches too long at the ankle) at her throat, she looked like the newlywed young mother of many years earlier, the lass who had stood transfixed in a doorway by the sight of her Sam asleep in the arms of the haunt-eyed bachelor who shared his home with them. In that long-ago moment, Rosie had been afraid that her hard-won happiness would be taken from her, the dream shattered.
Now, the Rosie that young girl had eventually become smiled, turning to look at the solid, loving companions who shared a life and home and bed with her.
"What was my Rosie thinking of with such a serious look?" Sam asked, catching her up in a hug from behind and nuzzling at the graying curls twisting free of their ribbon.
"How things change, my Sam. My Dad's mother used to say 'everything changes, nothing is lost'. It's a nice way of thinking, isn't it?"
"Yes." Frodo joined them by the rain-spotted window, the branches outside shifting in patterns of light and shadow. "It is."
"Samwise!" Rosie said suddenly in surprise. "Your feet are covered in dry green paint."
"Ruby and Robin had to save Primrose from a nasty dragon. Knocked over most of the hay in the loft as they did it, and when I went to give them a scolding they said I was a troll come to eat them. This here paint's Elvish wards and magics, seemingly. Now, Frodo, don't pull your shirt over your head like that, you know it stretches the shape out of your buttonholes. Here, stand still."
Rosie smiled indulgently as Sam unfastened Frodo's shirt and slipped it off his shoulders. Frodo's body, despite the standard balladic descriptions of pale silk and sensitive smoothness provided in tales and stories, was a map of remembered aches and ordinary living; from the friction burns on the back of his neck and the more defined and equally malevolent looking slice on one shoulder to the ink stains on his fingers and the small paunch above his trousers. Like Sam's, like Rosie's, Frodo's body told the stories of all the places time had led him, good and ill alike.
"What are you pondering so dour-like, then?" Rosie teased. "Whether the moon is made of yellow cheese or something equally mad, I shouldn't wonder."
Frodo shook himself and grinned. "Nothing, nothing. To bed?"
"Well, I wasn't intending to go apple-picking in this getup," retorted Sam, now clad as Frodo was in a sleeping shirt.
Frodo climbed in under the freshly washed sheets, breathing in the scent of the pillows with a contented sigh.
"Mmm, this bed smells like soap and lavender."
"Well, enjoy that while it lasts, for Sam had cabbage with dinner and we'll be holding our breath before the night's out."
"None of that now, go to sleep."
"Your feet are cold, Frodo. Should make you go sit with them up on the hob for half an hour."
"You're just unnaturally warm. Hot-blooded with a temper to match."
"Now then, the pair of you, I've got a mayoral meeting tomorrow noon, and if I drowse off during an important speech I'll place the blame where blame is due and eat cabbages every night for a week to get you back."
"You wouldn't dare, Sam. Rosie would box your ears."
"I'll box your ears in a minute."
"All right, enough. Hush," Sam said firmly, drawing them both in close against him. He kissed them both goodnight and smiled as they kissed each other, and then they settled down to sleep. The room was quiet but for gentle breathing and the sounds of rain until Frodo spoke again.
"So why is it called 'throwing' a pot, anyway?"
~
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