The wind was blowing from the southeast, bringing with it a cool tang of question. All manner of exotic perfumes wafted upon it: a promise of mountain meadows, of rivers and valleys and mysteries beyond ken. A hint of distance, and strangeness, and the coming chill.

The young hobbit sat back on his haunches, knees and toes bearing firmly into the dirt, shoving a wavy forelock back from his brow. He turned into the wind, nostrils flaring; it chilled the sweat upon his forehead, lifting his shirt from his damp breastbone and nape, blowing the hair about his cheekbones and singing into his ears. Giving a quick, involuntary shiver, he scrutinized the distance—easy to see the entirety of the east/south horizon here on top of the Hill: fields, burrows, rocks, chimneys, the road that fed into the East road and wound like a ribbon into a distant grove of trees surrounding the Bywater… and was there something on the road? Perhaps so. His keen eyes squinted against the hazy light of late afternoon and determined that perhaps there was someone coming—looked to be, anyway—then he shrugged and put the wind to his back and bent once again to his task of weeding and mulching the beds nearest the stone path. The little whisper of wanderlust fragmented and grounded, following his fingers into the earth, heeding the immediacy of its tending.

Not that he was normally of a mind to look too far past the borders of his world. But somehow this time of year would make him tense; it would shiver along his spine like water trickled over his flesh, frigid from the deepest well. He wasn’t sure if it was the changing in the air, the shift of wind from soft westerly to brisk easterly, or just that everything growing seemed to start packing its baggage, so to speak, burrowing down for the coming of winter.

Like this garden. To one that didn’t know, it might seem unchanged. Bag End was usually a rigorous splash of daily changing hue and today was no exception. The arbours still hung with roses and rose-hips; rhododendrons dappled the grounds here and there with shades of amethyst, white and crimson; and the lawn was still the near-poisonous green of a wet summer’s legacy, offering repose beneath trees laden with fruit. However the summer’s vigorous bloom had come and gone; the winding pathways were quieter, more now a muted watercolour than brilliant oils.

The young hobbit could feel it to the tips of his fingers, the subtle change in the moist earth. It was as sure a sign as the coolish wind still alternately teasing and whipping his thick hair. The ground was closing, beginning to prepare for the season’s coming sleep.

"Mind that you don’t pull out those bits." This gruff instruction instigated from across the yard, its originator an older hobbit who was wrestling with a set of plumbing directly outside a window of the spacious burrow centring the gardens. He picked up and let fly a tiny stone, which landed unerringly into a wispy clump of white-flowered greenery directly to the right of his assistant’s furry toes.

"But they’re weeds!" the youth protested, looking up in surprise.

"Th’ Squire don’t think so." Stooped, linsey-clad shoulders shrugged, the gesture encompassing the many vagaries of the upper classes. "So leave ‘em be, boy!"

With a sigh and an upward twitch of sandy brows, the young gardener bent down once more, digging his square hands in the dirt and carefully avoiding the proscribed weed. Though he was not yet thirteen, he already had solid layers of muscle banded over his forearms and biceps; his shoulders were broad and sturdy, his face and arms were ruddy from constant sun and wind, his hair bleached to the colour of rose-hued wheat. Had he but known it, he looked a very youthful and handsome picture of the older hobbit—his father—who was mumbling varied grievances toward the erring water spigot.

But his eyes were his own. Grey-green with a splash of sepia at the corona, as if sunlight had been captured and held against storm clouds, they didn’t miss much. Even when his father’s insistence upon protocol held his body in check, his eyes were rarely so constrained.

The garden was as changeable as the day; still and lovely-quiet, then suddenly jibing as a drift of fall air took it. As the clouds scuttered across the sky, shadow and sunlight equally patching the landscape, only the wind and the birds and his father’s occasional quiet growls at the master’s insistence on newfangled contrivances impacted upon the boy’s ears. He felt a pang akin to ecstasy as he knelt there giving homage to the growing things about him. He enjoyed what he was doing, felt a deep-set sense of satisfaction at seeing something thrive beneath his tender and care. Let those gentried lads whine about dirt under their fingernails, or their fussy sisters try to wear monstrous silly hats to save their complexions from the sun! As for himself, he liked the feel of the sun on his eyelids and cheeks, adored the feel of the loam between his toes and in the palms of his hands, the soft dampness of a drizzly rain hanging in his hair. No matter to autumn dreamings or south-east winds—there was nothing he’d prefer doing right now, unless it was his own garden, his own trees. Maybe someday he’d have a place to call his. It wasn’t a pipe-dream, no matter what his father said.

Another sound bracketed the garden’s eastern boundary—at first quiet, then louder, a rhythmic pace coming closer and from behind him, carried in fitful bursts on the gusts and the quiet. The lad frowned and once more sat back on his haunches, twisting to peer over past the gate and to the small lane before it.

"Ah!" said his father. "I’ll bet it’s that Brandybuck. Mister Bilbo said ‘twas likely he’d show today."

The boy thought back. Sometimes he’d listen avidly when the grown-ups were speaking, for all manner of things could be found out just by being still and observant. But today mister Bilbo had set a toothsome snack before him and promised some time with the reading later, and he’d been quite taken away with the thought and the snack both, not heeding whatever else the two elder hobbits had said.

Shod hooves clattered up the rise from the east; a dapple-grey pony and a two-wheeled cart came to a halt before the gate, springs creaking as the driver let down the drag to hold the vehicle in place on the hill.

Bilbo Baggins himself came striding out of the front door, leaving it swinging wide open. "Welcome!" he called across the gardens. The youth shot a quick look at his father; the older hobbit narrowed his eyes and jerked his head back to the turned-up earth, indicating that he was to mind his own business.

The boy did so, bending his head. But his eyes were still his own. They slid up beneath his brows, inspecting every aspect of the scene before him.

A great bear of a nattily-dressed hobbit dismounted the cart, hailing and giving mister Bilbo a slap on the back. Mister Bilbo almost went flying, re-gathered his footing and his dignity with a hmph and a tug to his cuffs.

"Saradoc, you’re early!"

He recognized the name. There weren’t many who didn’t. His father’s comment—‘that Brandybuck’—suddenly made more sense, but the given tone had been slightly scathing, not exactly proper address for Saradoc Brandybuck, the Master of Brandy Hall and Buckland. And his father was a great one for things kept proper, even within the realms of idle chat.

"Well, I didn't have much time today, so we took the ferry afoot then picked up our cart on the west side. No going upland twenty miles to the bridge, and no wait at the Ferry." As the Master spoke, the young gardener watched him attend to the pony’s harness, unhooking the overcheck and loosening the rein. As he took a large stone from the driver’s box and dropped it beside the grey’s metal-shod forefeet, clipping a ground-tie rein to the noticeable weight, the Master ordered impatiently, "Get down, lad, and properly greet your Uncle Bilbo."

Uncle Bilbo? Lad? Sam discerned a sudden movement from the driver’s box; the Master’s broad figure had all but hidden a second passenger. That arrival stood, snatched up a dark jacket from the bench, then leapt down about the wide-spoked near wheel and stood there warily.

It was indeed a lad, but he was distinctly the oddest-looking individual the youthful gardener had ever seen. His head seemed too big for his body—or perhaps that was because there wasn’t enough body under it, at least by proper hobbit standards. He was all too slight and spare, with lanky, almost spidery arms and legs. Pale, too—though it could have been the effect of a riot of very dark hair against fair skin that made him seem so. His forearms and legs seemed just as pale, however, draped in colours that were rather sombre for youth. Those clothes were certainly well-crafted—breeks, waistcoat, jacket flung carelessly over one arm, all dyed a matching shade of indigo. Even the thin linen of his brown shirt was expensive. This must be ‘that Brandybuck’, all right, dressed like that.

The newcomer seemed to feel eyes upon him, for he cut his own sideways and unwittingly locked gazes with the young gardener. Dark brows quirked but the newcomer still didn’t move. Just peered sideways quizzically—arrogantly, if truth were told. Even his eyes were odd. No matter distance, it was obvious they were too large for the thin face, and it was as if a wilful reserve filled the newcomer’s expression, a demeanour so deep and sharply peculiar that it made the breath catch solidly in the gardener's own chest.

A hiss from his father interrupted the stare-down; the bent-over youth started and lowered his gaze almost gratefully. He realised that not only had he had been holding his breath the entire time, but he’d almost pulled up a still-blooming perennial. Taking a deep breath and huffing disgustedly to himself, he pointedly turned his attention back to his work. Unnerving as the moment had been, however, when he had another clandestine opportunity to once again peer upwards he found himself in fascination taking it, his hands slowing over their work.

The Brandybuck lad was no longer turned towards him, instead being greeted effusively by Bilbo. The smartly-clad back was slumped, but somehow still ramrod-shot as any fireplace poker.

"So you’ve finally come back to Hobbiton, boy! I’m glad you’re here. Come on in; no matter how good the springs are, riding over the county roads can be disturbing to the system. I’ll reckon you’re ready for a long drink of water and a snack."

The dark-haired lad's answer was to turn to the cart and nab a pack from the box, angling it onto his shoulders. He then went unswervingly to the back of the cart, let the gate down and started to haul at something. In response to this, Master Saradoc rolled his eyes skyward and strode forward to the cart.

"Here, boy, you'll need help with that—"

A low, short answer from the lad, unintelligible but obviously negative. The Master gave an exasperated sigh, brushed with barely-concealed annoyance past his passenger and laid hands on the trunk, hauling it from the bed with a grunt.

The lad stepped quickly back and simply stood there. His face was averted, downward-cast and unreadable, but there was definite tension in the cant of his shoulders, and the clench of his hands. Bilbo was also watching this byplay, but he had the most curious and comical expression on his face. A grin lifted the young gardener’s lips at this; he shot a wary glance backwards to make sure he wasn’t being observed. The spigot was once again occupying his father's attention, thank goodness, because Bilbo turned and saw him smirking. Mortification turned to relief, however, as the irrepressible master of Bag End simply shrugged, then winked at him and continued speaking lightly to his guests.

"I think you’ll find things a little quieter here on the Hill. I expect you’ll find it particularly so after Brandy Hall and its copious companionship!" There was a slight dig in the words which obviously rated the older Brandybuck—he frowned ponderously—but the new lad didn’t seem to catch it, nor did he respond overtly to Bilbo’s friendliness. This, of course, didn’t seem to faze Bilbo one whit. "Life’s been a little too quiet about here lately, to tell you the truth."

"Only you would say that, Bilbo," Saradoc laughed suddenly, hefting the trunk onto one broad shoulder with careless ease. "Tired of counting all your treasures?"

Bilbo smiled wickedly. "Tired of explaining why I’m not!"

The Brandybuck lad gave the two adults a seemingly-pained look, then as Bilbo gestured he simply turned and let himself be led toward the house. The Hall Master swept into the door with large strides that gained him entry before both the other hobbits.

Sepia-grey eyes surreptitiously followed them. The other youth was obviously aware of it, because he glanced through shuttered eyes over one shoulder at him as they passed. The sun burst out from behind a cloud and kindled russet flame in his dark curls; the young gardener openly gawped at the sight, which seemed suddenly and oddly apropos considering the newcomer's attitude.

Bilbo saw the exchange of glances. His mouth tucked up into a small grin and he stopped. His young relative nearly ran into him, guarded expression turning quite puzzled and more than a little alarmed as Bilbo grasped him by one arm, turned him about and led him right back to the boy grubbing in the dirt. "Here, then. You’re obviously both curious, so why don’t we get introductions over with right now? Stand up, young hobbit."

Slowly, dirt dropping from his fingers, the young gardener stood. Over his shoulder he could feel his father witnessing this latest breach of custom with something akin to agony.

Bilbo, however, was smiling broadly beside his visitor, whose gaze still seemed fixed to the stones of the walkway. "You two met, but it was some years ago. Probably don’t even remember. Lad, meet Samwise Gamgee. Sam, this is my… well, just say he's my nephew who’s been living at Brandy Hall—Frodo Baggins."

Baggins? Nephew? Well, perhaps the lad did resemble Bilbo a little, at that—pale and slight and narrow-shouldered, with a determined and smart cant to his chin. However any resemblance ended there; the boy’s nose and cheeks were sparsely freckled, his downcast lashes like soot smudges against them. The sun retreated and the wind gusted, blowing once-again murky curls to even moreso obscure his features; a free hand raised to shove a portion of it behind his ears. Sam wondered for seconds if he was even going to be acknowledged; determinedly finding his manners and his tongue he touched dutiful fingers to his forelock. "Pleased to meet you."

"The pleasure is mine." Eyes still downcast, mien suggesting anything but, Frodo held out his hand. Sam peered at it, then at Bilbo, who gave him an encouraging nod; Sam started to reciprocate, hesitated with a look at his own palm, then quickly dusted his mulch-caked fingers against his breeks and took the proffered hand. The grip was almost absent; Sam wanted to groan inwardly—not only at the refusal to look him fully in the eye or the accent, precise and well-learned, but even moreso the too-yielding handclasp that suggested Frodo Baggins had most likely never done a day’s honest work in his life.

All he needed was to have to deal with another useless, toffee-nosed hobbitlad. There were enough of those about Hobbiton without importing them from Buckland…

The toffee-nosed hobbitlad straightened, as if aware of being measured. The grip within Sam’s hand tensed with rather remarkable strength. The shuttered eyes raised and focused directly into his, a brand shoved into the fire. They were blue as an autumn sky, strangely clouded on the edges: sullen, startling. Sam’s own eyes widened; the only other sign he gave at this astonishing and unnerving return of his scrutiny was to angle his head and raise his eyebrows. It was only with the ease of long practice that he was able to paste an amiable smile on his features, refusing to take up the glove tossed and denying the impulse to squeeze back.

Anyway, his dad was always going on how he didn’t know his own strength. As little as this fellow was, Sam might unintentionally break something.

"You’re close to the same age, I think," Bilbo continued, seemingly oblivious to the silent interchange. "How old are you, Sam?"

"Thirteen next April." Sam found himself meeting the challenging glance with one of his own, hardly believing what he was doing even while he did it. The brilliant, resentful eyes went wider, fitfully wavered.

"Well, Frodo will be… oh, I forget now… how old are you, lad?"

"Twenty later this month." Frodo dropped his gaze and quickly withdrew his hand, making Samwise wonder if he’d actually sensed the challenge in the grip. Or the startled almost-answer in those eyes, both previously and just now, which did not raise to his again. Or his own rising to it, as if he was on a level with such as this lad, and could actually think to wrangle place like an equal with a mere meeting of eyes and a challenge of favour…

Sam felt dizzy, realised that he’d been holding his breath yet again and let it out with a slow, silent exhalation.

"When this month?" Bilbo said with sudden interest. "You know, my birthday’s this month as well."

"The twenty-second."

"Oh, that is very interesting—so is mine! Destiny, boy, destiny!" Bilbo enthused; Frodo looked sideways at him with furrowed brows and Sam wondered if that painfully solemn face might break if it smiled. "Well, only a brace of years between the two of you lads, not much at all, that… and Frodo, this is Sam’s father, master Hamfast Gamgee."

Frodo turned with distant affability to the older gardener who walked up with a habitual tug to his forelock. "Pleased to meet’cher, young master. I’m just the Gaffer, if it please you. That’s what most folks call me round these parts."

"It is a pleasure to meet you, sir." Frodo held out his hand once more in automatic politeness; the Gaffer was even more taken aback than had been his son, both at the ‘sir’ and the outstretched hand. He wiped both hands on his shirt and touched the boy’s palm briefly, then waited politely.

Bilbo nodded in satisfaction. "Well, Gaffer, we’ll get out of your way. Come on, Frodo-lad." He started for the burrow, but not before he’d turned back to grin at Sam, a twinkle in his hazel-blue eyes that promised much. Sam grinned back, absently to be sure, and returned his gaze to the Brandybuck lad, who was following Bilbo with his eyes still fastened to the walkway. He disappeared with his uncle into the front entry of Bag End.

Funny. He didn’t look old enough to be a tween.

"Samwise." Bilbo Baggins, Esquire, and his prominent visitors were well away, so Gaffer Gamgee was back to business. "We’ve plenty to do before teatime."

"Yes, Dad," he said softly, his eyes still fastened on the open green door as he knelt back down to where he still had a good hour’s work mulching the borders.

That one… that Frodo. And it wasn’t just his looks—though those certainly weren’t common, and he could no more put a name to that than he could to anything else about him. It was as if… as if he didn’t even belong in the same place as the rest of them. He was keenly aloof, hard-edged as full moonlight but… awkward, somehow. No, that wasn’t quite right. Not awkward, not at all. Wary, like some deer stepping from the boundaries of the thicket and onto the meadow to graze, all the while tensed and primed for the leap that would snatch him from danger at a moment's notice. Frodo seemed… oh, so much more uncomfortable than made sense. As if even his own skin was not a place he'd choose to be.

Sam had seen a few river folk in his time—not that he’d ever been there but they’d certainly come into Hobbiton—and he’d certainly met his share of odd Tooks—Bilbo being one of them—but he'd never seen any hobbit with this particular quality about them. There was something unnatural about it, being all bound up in such a strange fashion. It just didn’t add up, any of it, to the likes of a normal, well-to-do hobbitlad. Sam mused further on his fascination, both riveting and off-putting, and when he still couldn’t put a label to it frowned irritably. Whatever it was, it more than likely meant trouble. Perhaps things ran differently in Buckland, but it didn’t do to be so different in Hobbiton. People noticed.

They would certainly notice Frodo Baggins.

From above him, the Gaffer clapped him on the shoulder. "Come help me with the spigot, will you, boy?"

Sam nearly jumped out of his toenails. His father gave him an odd look, then jerked his head toward the smial and the offending bit of plumbing. "Samwise?"

"Yes, sir." He rose, followed his father’s hunched back. Years of stooping over earth and plough had made Hamfast shorter than he’d been in his youth—or so it seemed to Sam, who’d shot up only recently to enough of a height that he could look his father straight in the eye.

"Well, that Brandybuck’s polite enough. But he’s a queer lad and no mistake."

Somewhat perturbed to hear his own thoughts so blatantly echoed by his father, Sam mumbled a positive-sounding response, then, "I thought his name was Baggins, like mister Bilbo."

"Aye, but his mother was river folk. Blood will tell. Mind you stay clear of him. Odd as a cross-eyed cat, and you don’t need to be mixing with your betters, ‘tennyrate. Hold that… that’s it."

Sam sighed and reaching out, held as directed. The spigot was damply chill in his hands, the leak obvious. The Gaffer went on talking, his voice quiet.

"Wild as hares in March those riverhobbits are, in that commune at the Hall. Mind you, I’m not saying a word against mister Bilbo. If he’s odd-like then so be it; he’s been very good to the Gamgees and a proper gentlehobbit. Maybe he'll put that Brandybuck to rights. I’ve heard about that lad and not much of it good… been a lot of trouble even to his river kin... here, take this and… here."

"He don’t look like trouble," Sam stated quietly to his father’s back. He looks like…

"Well, I don’t always hold with what I hear, but when it comes downriver from more than one source..." the Gaffer shrugged, wiped the damp spigot down, took a spanner and started cranking. "Heard he’s got light feet and they can’t keep him in the Hall for his running away. Sly. It’s pretty common knowledge that there was talk before of sending him here ‘cause he kept getting the Master’s son in all sorts of trouble, and the poor child barely fourteen. Has a temper, too; Miz Lobelia was talking only a fortnight ago about how he’d tried to throttle her boy…"

"Get that!" Sam snorted with a sudden giggle; he couldn’t help it. "He choked Lotho?"

"Master Lotho, Samwise," the Gaffer censured. But the disapproval didn't last long; a wide grin seamed further his lined face. "Well, aye, nowt you mention it, seeing that young dandy in person, ‘tis hard to believe he’d be able to even stretch his soft mitts ‘round that Sackville-Bagginses’ bull’s neck, en’t it?"

"Aye, an’ Miz Lobelia’s not known for keeping a tale unstretched, neither," Sam muttered.

"Well, that’s the proper truth, boy, but I’ll not hear you say it anywhere else, mind."

"Like I would, Dad!" he protested.

"Just see you don’t. Some truths en’t to be told in the range of your betters, no matter how much they burn the tongue." His father grimaced at the spigot, gave it a good whack with the spanner, then started cranking again, his words shooting forth in bursts as he did so. "Miz Lobelia’s likelihood for truth or no, her boy was sent from the Hall."

"Probably for causing trouble." Sam had certainly had his own bouts with Lotho Sackville-Baggins, all of them one-sided and none of them pleasant. "You know that one’d skin a snake alive for the fun of it."

"And those riverhobbits en’t likely to turn on one of their own, neither. We’ll likely never know the truth of it, but ‘tis the truth that it’s not the only row that Brandybuck’s been in. Blood will tell out, that it will. If he’s anything like his mum, he’s trouble, all right."

"His mum?"

"Aye. Now she was a rare one, through and through, half Brandybuck but more Took than any lass should be cloven to." The Gaffer frowned at the spigot, gritted his teeth as his fingers slipped on the recalcitrant metal, then continued in bursts as he struggled, "Fey as a bitch fox, she was. Would go off haring about in that Old Forest and the wild. Spooks and ha'nts, all of it. Mad doin's. Even more, there were rumours that she knew more about elves than was proper."

"Elves," Sam muttered. "Like mister Bilbo. You know, Dad, I think Frodo must look like an elf does..." Having spoken it aloud, the underlying root of his fascination with the older lad blossomed and bore fruit and made sudden hard sense. But Sam was sorry he’d said it the moment it passed his lips.

"Catch him!" Gaffer snorted. "Like an elf. And when have you ever seen an elf?"

"Haven’t," Sam admitted. "But there’s pictures of them in mister Bilbo’s books..." Stories, and songs, and magical places, and Sam felt his heart leap within his breast at the untoward hope of this new boy with his resentful mouth and his strange, splendid gaze somehow having a key to such treasure.

"Books!" his father expostulated. "You’d do better to finish your chores here, ‘stead of reading all them fancies and fool-f’r-alls. Not that I’m minding, the Squire teaching you your letters. Can’t be too much harm there. But elves! Hmph!"

"Dad—"

"And that’s master Frodo to you, Sam-lad. The boy’s gentry and don’t you be forgettin’ it. Baggins or Brandybuck or Took, they’re all the same to us, en’t they? And if he looks like neither, then that’s all to the worse for him, because mind you, there’s always been talk about his mother…" he pulled himself up short, seemed to remember that he was speaking to his son and not some pub companion. "But we’re not speaking ill, now. Not with 'em gone..."

"Gone?"

"Dead. Both of ‘em." Gaffer lowered his voice even further. "Drowned on the river."

The last vestiges of Sam's own puzzled irritation at Frodo’s attitude fled, overcome by sympathy. "Both his parents? At the same time? Oh Dad, whatever happened?"

"Ah, it’s been a good while, now. Maybe five-ten years? ’Twas a mystery at the time, that’s for sure. Buckland took the lad in, charity and family ties; he’d no brothers or sisters and the old Master—Rory Brandybuck himself—was brother to the boy’s mother. Some folks said it was a strange chance, right enough. Decent hobbits, particularly one the cut of mister Drogo, en't lightly gadding on the river, I'll say that much. There was talk of madness and foul play. But I’m not believing all of what I hear."

A sudden clatter sounded from within the window of the burrow; the Gaffer started, peered upwards at the sill, then grunted and fell silent.

Sam stared at the spigot without seeing it. For all that he sometimes thought he’d gladly trade his family in on a nice, quiet room, to imagine Number Three Bagshot Row without his father and sisters was nigh onto inconceivable. He’d lost his own mother some time back, birthing a tiny brother who’d not survived either, and his older brothers were moved away, but to have no family? No one to come home to, no one to snuggle and struggle with over the chairs next to the fire, no bustle in the kitchen and protesting uproar when bedtime was announced...

Poor Frodo… no. Poor master Frodo.

* * * * * *

"Let me fix you up with something for the road, old son. Unless you’ll stay to tea?"

"Thank you, no. I must be moving on; several more stops tonight and the pony’s got a job to start tomorrow at the Hall."

"Running the press, I’ll warrant!"

Saradoc chuckled. "Well, we are a-midst harvest, after all."

"I’m surprised you yourself came," Bilbo furthered.

"It needed to be done."

Frodo followed the conversation from where he’d stopped just inside the doorway to the kitchen, his eyes sliding back and forth between the two older hobbits. Bilbo noticed this, turning deliberately to him.

"Fix yourself a drink of water if you want, lad," Bilbo directed. "Pitcher’s on the counter. I’ve something to give Uncle Brandybuck from the cellar, then we’ll be back directly and get you settled in, all right?"

"Yes, sir," Frodo answered. Bilbo led Saradoc to the back side of the kitchen and they both vanished down a narrow hallway of stairs. Frodo watched them go then let loose of his bag, dropping it to the floor and looking back the way they’d entered.

The connecting rooms were well-appointed, if cluttered, and oddly enough there was a neatness to all of the scattered piles that suggested perhaps there was order within seemingly random chaos. Even the kitchen smelled earthy and sweet, with the slight, lovely mustiness of preserved pages and leather bindings. It felt… comfortable, Frodo realised, probably because the entire house—or what he’d seen of it so far, anyway—seemed a huge book and parchment repository. A slight smile touched his lips at this, eyes hungrily scanning the various bits of bound and loose papers. He might be sent in disgrace from Brandy Hall, but it looked as if here at Bag End he would have plenty of the kind of company he preferred to attend him in exile.

He could only hope that Bilbo’s gregariousness at Merry’s party hadn’t been the result of too much ale. But his older relative seemed fairly friendly here as well.

Perhaps this was the answer. It was calm, here. Calm, and unobtrusive to the senses, and for the first time in a while Frodo allowed himself a small, longing quiver of hope.

It had been a long ride and the water they’d brought had long since gone tepid—cool water would be a blessing about now. Firmly turning his attention back to such mundane matters, Frodo started looking for the promised pitcher. The kitchen area certainly wasn’t even a fractional size of the common one at Brandy Hall, but for a single hobbit it was comfortably large. Pots hung from the wooden beams above as well as sprays of herbs left to dry; the fire was banked to embers in the kitchen hearth and a black, well-seasoned kettle hung from its crook above the heat, lightly frothing steam from its spout. The table was slightly dusty and looked seldom used, cloth-covered dishes and several crocks were placed at one end. But where was the sink?—ah, there it was, in the corner. Not only a sink, but also an inside pump! For one person?

Cousin Bilbo must be very well off, indeed.

Frodo crossed over to it, took a thinly-hammered metal cup from the ledge above it and poured water from the pitcher standing in the sink. He took a brief sip, fingers tracing the beads of condensation on the pewter surface of the cup, then drank deeper. The water was good, clear and cold, no silty aftertaste that the Hall water sometimes had depending on how high the overflow from the river was running.

Curiously he peered at the darkened back entry leading from the kitchen and presumably to more burrows. He could hear Saradoc’s rumbling voice from below—most likely in the cool cellar—and suborned his curiosity at what the remainder of Bag End looked like. Turning back to the kitchen and walking toward the front of it once more, sipping from his water, Frodo glanced at the crockery and oddments placed in the corner shelves—well-dusted, unlike the table—and ran his hand along a strangely shaped bit of silver-threaded stone placed, without much regard, between a small mirror and a empty butter crock.

The voices of the two gardeners drifted in from just outside the cracked-open kitchen window. Frodo frowned slightly, took another noisy sip of his water. That lad—Sam, wasn’t it?—Frodo would have never taken him for as young as he claimed. He looked a lot older, certainly a lot more filled out and mature. Browned and sturdy, quite tall, handsomely stocky and muscular—the kind of well-considered and favoured looks that guaranteed pleasant notice. No one would be second-guessing that lad’s true heritage or nature. Sandy hair streaked almost rose-colored with sun, a freckled nose snubbed and sunburnt. Eyes lashed with more rosy gold. And those eyes, all too forthright yet changeable as the day; clear and grey yet in the sunlight becoming a warm amber. Seemingly soft and affable, yet…

A shiver coursed through Frodo as he recalled the anomalous sensation of meeting those sun-sparked eyes. There had been a relentless and deceptive consent in that face, lit brightly beneath the illusion of compliance. The lad was flint to steel, scraping sparks—not bothering to spend unnecessary strength in battering at walls, but content to merely find reaction against them.

Frodo drained his cup and stared at the window's sill, not truly seeing it.

Once that lad had started, he'd kept staring. Even when he thought Frodo wasn’t paying attention, he’d stared. It wasn’t hostile, somehow. It was… Frodo wasn’t sure if he could put a name to it, or a name to his own feelings at being the recipient of it. Strange, one would think that he’d be well-used to curious stares by now. Nor was he sure whether he liked this particular scrutiny or not. There was an unnerving and unshakable conviction underlying it. Why? Why would the son of Bilbo’s gardener be concerned with him, anyway?

The voices came closer, burred with an accent just different enough from Buckland talk that Frodo had to pay close attention to make them out. They stayed under the window, floating in over the open casement.

"Wild as hares in spring those riverhobbits are, in that commune at the Hall. Mind you, I’m not saying a word against mister Bilbo. If he’s odd-like, then so be it; he’s been very good to the Gamgees and a proper gentlehobbit. Maybe he'll put that Brandybuck to rights." Several grunts and clanks. "I’ve heard about that lad and not much of it good… been a lot of trouble even to his river kin..." The voice trailed off into murmurs, but the answer to it was very young and clear.

"He don’t look like trouble."

It was almost petulant, challenging. Frodo’s brow furrowed—why would the lad even bother to speak up? Fingers tracing over the pewter in his hand, he stood rather numbly as the older gardener proceeded to dismiss his breeding, temperament and reputation with equal loquacity and lack of venom. Frodo thought he’d heard it all, but this patently unaffected, matter-of-fact way of speaking of it unnerved him. And adequately informed him as to why the gardener’s son would stare.

As to the gardener himself, his next statement informed even more.

"…bitch fox, she was. Would go off haring about in that Old Forest and the wild. Spooks and ha'nts, all of it. Mad doin's. Even more, there were rumours that she knew more about elves than was proper."

Frodo stilled.

"Elves, like mister Bilbo?" There was a soft wonder in the lad's voice that strangely settled Frodo's trepidation, merely to be dashed by the next words. "You know, I think Frodo must look like an elf does…"

Hard, slender fingers clenched on the metal cup, shaking. His stomach clenched even tighter, making Frodo dizzy. The exterior voices faded beneath interior ones, murmurs and chuckles tied to the sound of his own pulse, thrumming all too loudly in his ears and temples. How foolish, to think that just leaving the Hall would stop any of it. The next audible mutter from the older hobbit drifted on the wind then became clear once again:

"…folks said it was a strange chance, right enough. Decent hobbits, particularly one the cut of mister Drogo, en't lightly gadding on the river, I'll say that much. There was talk of madness and foul play…"

Dizzy was an understatement. Reality curved about him with stark suddenness. Frodo screwed his eyes shut, put a hand to his forehead. He’d left this behind. He’d left it all behind, and this was a totally new place and circumstance, and he would not do this! Taking a gasp of air, he willed the waking apparitions silent and still.

No. Not here. Not now. Please…

"Frodo!"

Reality tilted, slamming him back with amazing solidity. Frodo started and the cup slipped from his fingers, fell to the floor with a sharp clang. He whirled to see his two older cousins standing not too far from him. The look upon Saradoc’s face suggested that this was not the first time he’d so summoned him.

"Frodo," Saradoc repeated heavily, "Bilbo was talking to you."

"I’m sorry," he muttered. From the corner of his eye he saw Bilbo give Saradoc an odd glance as he bent down to fetch the dropped cup. Thankfully it was empty.

"It’s no matter, Saradoc," Bilbo assured. "The lad just didn’t hear us come in, that’s all."

Frodo peered at them, trying to swallow back the unevenness of his breathing, hoping against hope that he looked more normal than he felt.

"I have to leave, boy," Saradoc furthered woodenly. "Do you have all your belongings from the cart?"

The lad nodded, looking down. Two beats of awkward quietude, then suddenly there was a hand under his chin, picking his gaze upwards. Saradoc was standing over him, eyes concerned and not unkind. "Frodo…"

Frodo tensed back before he could stop the motion; the recoil was slight but unmistakable and Saradoc pulled his hand back almost immediately, light blue eyes flattening into resignation. From behind them Bilbo’s gaze had fastened upon them once more, and there was something so uncannily and acutely cognizant in the old hobbit’s eyes that Frodo was forced to drop his own gaze beneath the insistence of it. He suddenly remembered being the recipient of that expression several times during Bilbo’s stay at Brandy Hall. It made him no more comfortable now than it had then—less, in fact.

Apprehension swamped him, and for several moments Frodo would have done anything in the world to take back his recoil from Saradoc’s well-meaning hand and convince his uncle to drive him back to the Hall, or to the Smials, or even to the White Towers. Just take him far from here, shunt him off to some other place where there would be no direct, cunning, questioning gazes from mad, rich uncles, no blunt curiosities from purposefully-pleasant young gardeners. Just take him away somewhere, anywhere he could skirt the undeniable knowledge that he was being left once more, deposited and abandoned yet again on some unknown doorstep, and with even fewer defenses, somehow, than when he’d been a child…

His eyes flew to Saradoc’s and beseechingly held to them, silent and stunned.

"Here, lad." Bilbo purposefully broke the silence, his eyes darting from each of them and settling firmly upon Frodo, who flinched as if he’d been struck. Bilbo’s eyes were no longer narrowed and piercing upon him, but very wide and all but sparking with intended good humour. "Get your bag, will you?"

Mutely, Frodo did as bidden. The motion, and Bilbo’s voice, and the mundane task, all seemed to shatter the odd panic. Bilbo continued, "Go back the way we came in, and at the entry keep going on back. Your trunk's in the hallway and your room’s there—in fact you can take over that whole side of the smial, if you want. Plenty of space here."

The displacement receded further, scattered to settle within his stomach, dying away into a peculiar and welcome numbness. "Yes, sir," he whispered.

"Go on, then. Get settled in a little and I’ll come for you once I’ve seen Uncle Brandybuck on his way."

"Yes, sir," Frodo murmured again. Before he turned away he threw Saradoc another darkling, uncertain glance; his uncle was staring at him, obviously thrown and confused.

"Frodo…"

It was too late, anyway. Too late to go back. Too late for any of it. Frodo hefted his bags over his arms and turned away.

"Frodo."

"Goodbye, Uncle."

Frodo could feel their gazes locked to his retreat, burning like a brand, but he didn't turn, didn't respond. Didn't give in.

* * * * * *

"What in the nine thousand names of the Valar and their minions was that all about?"

Saradoc unloaded a sizeable box filled with darkly glazed bottles onto Bilbo’s walkway and loaded up the amply-filled basket into the back of his wagon—pipeweed in exchange for the spirits he’d just deposited on the walk. Behind them the Gamgees were both now working next to the burrow; the burrow’s owner stood fiercely behind him, hands on hips and brows drawn together in a mighty frown. Saradoc leaned against the back gate of the cart, looking at the other bottles in the back without truly seeing them. Instead he saw the expression that had been on Frodo’s face moments ago in Bag End, pleading and afraid of… of what? He had no way of knowing. All he did know was that he’d never seen such a look on the lad’s face before…

Except just before the boy had collapsed on that bloodily misbegotten morning when they’d all thought Peregrin drowned.

"Saradoc…"

"Bilbo, I don’t know, all right?" he snapped, then closed his eyes. "Maybe this was not the right idea. Maybe we were wrong to agree to him coming here…"

"Maybe you were wrong to keep him from here as long as you did."

Saradoc straightened, turned to face the older hobbit defensively. "Now see here. I told you—"

"You didn’t tell me the lad was in bleeding purdah."

"That’s not it… Bilbo, it’s complicated."

"I can see that it must be." Saradoc opened his mouth to speak, was overridden. "I’ve never before seen chit or child at Brandy Hall like him! The lad looks like a picked chicken! He’s hollow-eyed and pale… he’d blow over in a good wind… he’s nothing like to the one that I saw at your boy’s birthday and that was only over a fortnight ago!"

Saradoc’s face set itself into granite. "As to Frodo looking like he’s not slept or eaten; I know he eats. I’m not sure he’s slept. All he’s done is wander the Hall at night and disappear during the day—"

"And you let him?"

"Do you honestly expect me to lock up my disturbed relatives like mad dogs?"

"So you think he’s mad."

"I didn’t exactly say that."

"What are you saying, then? Exactly?"

"Esme told you what happened in her letter to you…"

"She said that the boy has been getting more and more belligerent and strange, and that the crowning achievement in this was a scene with disobedient boys and a supposed drowning, which disturbed Frodo far more than it should have done—though considering how his parents died I’m not sure why it was so surprising that it would have disturbed him—but it did, and so much so that he became ill and scared his little cousins half to death. She of course did not mention anything of her part in this entanglement…" Saradoc started to angrily speak, but was again overridden by the small dynamo that was Bilbo on a rampage, "but from my vantage point it’s not too terribly difficult to see who came off the worst in the confrontation. You should have let me take him home with me—as I suggested, you remember!—and maybe the whole thing could have been avoided."

"You’re so sure that Esme caused that." ‘That’ was a flick of one broad hand toward the burrow, and Frodo. "You don’t even—"

"Your brother Merimac saw it. Paladin knew, though he said naught to me about any of it, nor would I expect him to. Even the fair Eglantine, whom it is hard to convince of the baseness of anyone, could see that Esme and Frodo were set on a collision course."

"Esme did not start whatever is going on in that lad's head—"

"She certainly put the finish to it, didn’t she?"

"No, Baggins, she did not. I was the one who confronted Frodo about his negligence with the boys, and I was the one who decided that he had to leave the Hall. And so far as to who ‘put the finish’ to that lad, I think your Elvish friends have more to do with that than any hobbit at the Hall could boast of."

"The elves! They’re always the proper scapegoat, aren’t they?"

"Scapegoats are innocents," Saradoc retorted furiously. "What they did to Primula was not innocent. It was criminal."

"And you know so much of what they ‘did’ to her, do you?"

"They killed her, killed her as surely as if they’d sunk her boat themselves!—and if I’d realised before what else they’d done…" he broke off.

Bilbo was uncharacteristically quiet. "And what else," he said softly, "have they done?"

"I should think you’d know the answer to that better than I." Saradoc turned back to the wagon, looked it over, fists clenched.

Closing his eyes, Bilbo visibly swallowed his ire. "Well. Is there anything else I should know, other than you’ve brought me a young hobbit who looks as though you’ve taken a crop to him on much more than a needed or necessary basis?"

Saradoc bristled once more, stiffening from where he’d bent over the back of the wain. "And what is that supposed to mean?"

"Brandybuck, I’ve eyes in my head. The boy’s petrified of you."

"Only a few times in his entire life with us have I ever laid a hand on that lad, in punishment or otherwise!" Saradoc snapped back. "By his choice. Frodo has never invited me to so much as touch his sleeve. Never. I learned long ago not to even try."

"That’s preposterous!"

"Fine, then. Let me tell you a few things, Baggins, since you’re so free with advice on matters you know absolutely nothing about. Do you really think that you were our first choice? Quite frankly you were the last!—and one of the few places outside of Smials. If they didn’t have their own difficulties right now, he’d be there and not here, believe me. I even considered putting Frodo on the river with my brother, but with his scattered ways and the company he keeps, Merimac has less business looking after a naïve young lad than even you!"

Bilbo opened his mouth to retort; Saradoc beat him to it. "Both of you have the potential to fill that lad’s head with even more muck than it already is. My brother’s sudden fascination with Frodo is at least understandable, if not very well-timed, but as to your sudden need to have your young cousin’s presence? I don’t even begin to understand what that’s about, other than the both of you are just as captivated by things that most decent hobbits would let be. You didn’t give a good damn about him before!"

"Your wife’s fixation on keeping the lad bound to the Hall assured that I couldn’t."

"Rot! You’d all but forgotten he was alive, I’ll warrant, until he piqued your interest by being so fascinated by your wild stories. So based on this, and on a few hours of acquaintance, you think you understand him? I’ve news for you, Baggins. What goes on in that lad’s head is not normal, and beyond fathoming, and you’ve your own responsibility to claim in what made him this way!"

Bilbo narrowed his eyes.

"Don’t play the innocent with me—you were in it up to your oh-so-charming neck! You’re cursed lucky that Dad loves you and won’t hear anything said against you, that he never blamed you for any of what happened with Prim, and that Drogo was too much the gentlehobbit to call you out and make you answer for even one solitary rumor!!"

"I take your meanings," the older hobbit said slowly, quietly furious, "and your warnings, insulting and oblique though they may be."

"Oh, spare me!" Saradoc snapped. "I didn’t think it was even possible to insult you! The real reason Frodo is here has nothing to do any longer with what’s acceptable or rational, it comes down to plain necessity and responsibility. You were the one that encouraged Prim with the elves; you’ve helped make this situation, and it’s far past the time that you should have to live with it!" He slammed the wagon back shut, making the pony start and lurch forward in his harness.

Silence. Bilbo’s eyes were still half-shuttered, peering at his cousin as if he were seeing him for the first time. The wind gusted once more, sending a cloud over the sun and greying the landscape; over by the burrow the Gamgees, father and son, steadily ignored the vehement, half-muttered conversation. Even if they could manage to hear it, a doubtful occurrence in the fitful wind, there was no indication other than they had both jumped when the Master had slammed his tailgate shut.

Then Saradoc shook his head and began to latch the closing pins. "This is getting neither of us anywhere. Bilbo, you said it yourself in Buckland. He’s one of your closest living relatives. He’s old enough now that you have the right to know him—more, he has the right to know you. We’ve told you what has happened; you still agreed to take him, and I have three other deliveries to make this afternoon." Going to the pony, he smoothed a hand over the grey crest, took up the tie-weight and heaved it into the driver’s box. His eyes giving the harness a quick once-over, he started to set the overcheck. Mid-gesture he met his cousin’s eyes.

"For once in your life, try to care about something other than what you want or need. This is about Frodo Baggins, not Bilbo Baggins. It’s about what the boy needs, which nothing in the entirety of Buckland seems to be able to supply. He was getting worse and worse at the Hall, Bilbo. You might be the only hope he has left for a normal life."

Bilbo’s jaw clenched; he said nothing.

"Whatever ‘normal’ means, that is, at a place like Bag End." Saradoc finished hooking the overcheck, gathered the reins and swung up on the cart, muttering a deprecation at the creaking springs.

Bilbo watched him mount. "What the boy needs, you say. He says his birthday’s this month."

A heavy frown. "I know when his birthday is."

"He also mentioned it's his twentieth birthday. Quite a major rite of passage, so to speak, becoming a tween. You don't care that he has to spend that birthday away from his family?"

"I didn’t choose the timing of this." Broad hands tightening on the reins, Saradoc looked away and down the Hill, took a deep breath. He then turned back to Bilbo, grey eyes lit with a sudden concern that neatly chopped off whatever response Bilbo was set to make. "Just take care of him, Bilbo. Please."

"I intend to," Bilbo answered stoutly, then softened the words with a slight smile. Saradoc's mouth twitched in something that might have been an answering smile, then he leaned forward and loosed the drag. The little cart rolled slightly on the incline and the pony braced against the shift in weight; Saradoc made a short chirp and the little grey started off.

Bilbo watched the cart trundle down the hill, then sighed. What under the brightest stars had he gotten himself into?

* * * * * *