It was a quiet day on their journey, one of the few, where all seemed relatively at peace, having had enough to eat, a dry place to sleep and decent weather in the day. Bilbo was quite enjoying the sunshine from atop his pony when he caught a snippet of the slightly unhappy sounding conversation happening between Balin and Dwalin, a little ahead of him in the lineup.
"No, no, I'm telling you that makes him our great great nephew, not our cousin!" Balin said with no small amount of irritance. "It isn't that difficult Dwalin."
"I still think you're wrong, that dwarf is older than me! He is not my nephew." Balin all but sputtered in return, "That doesn't matter! The age has no affect on the relation, you halfwit."
"Well, we're so distantly related I don't see how it matters."
"It matters." At this point, the rest of the company had fallen silent and was listening in amusement. Bilbo distinctly heard a snicker from either Fili or Kili from somewhere behind him and was sporting a smirk himself when Bofur decided to break the slightly moody quiet that had fallen between the brothers.
"So Bilbo, I hear Hobbits have many relations, you must have some complicated family trees as well." Bilbo could only laugh in response.
"You have no idea…Hobbit's have a great many children much of the time and it can indeed make things rather confusing if not complicated. I believe I have three young cousins named Paladina, but two of them call me uncle since I'm a great many years older than them and they're both from the same paternal line so I always end up referring to them as Paladina-who-wears-skirts and Paladina-who –often-wears-trousers….even when they're together. "
Bofur gave a laugh and many of the dwarves looked on with raised eyebrows.
"That sounds like a nightmare." Fili said, somewhat under his breath, quickly followed with a not-quite-as-understated comment of "I don't think I could stand to have that many relatives!" From his younger brother. "It's bad enough with as many as we have." Bilbo chuckled at that.
"There does tend to be a lot of, everyone in everyone else's business. The Bagginses especially. They're all very concerned with being respectable, and if they see or hear anything about you that sounds out of the ordinary they are quite likely to titter on about it until the cows come home. Of course no one will ask you about it or try to clear up the mess-" At this point Bilbo stopped himself and took slow calming breath, as he felt a slight pounding start in his ears.
"Have a bit of a history with them then?" Bofur asks with a knowing smirk.
"Oh a bit."
"Well what about the other side of your family?" Bilbo glances up and sees the ever present curious expression of Ori staring back at him from two ponies ahead and smiles.
"The Tooks, well, they are quite different. Very different in fact. One of the most wild Hobbit family lines there is."
"Wild?" Nori turned in his saddle. "Hobbits?"
"Oh quite. One of my uncles once knocked a goblin's head clean off with a club."
"Truly?" Ori squeaked.
"Oh yes, my own mother even had quite a few adventures. That's how she met Gandalf."
"So what sets these Tooks so far apart from the other Hobbits?" Bilbo tried not to look too surprised when Thorin's voice floated back to him. He didn't think the Dwarf was listening.
"Oh well…a few of the other clans have their theories but the Tooks themselves speak of Fairy blood somewhere far back in the line."
"Fairies? Really? Is that….can that be true?" Kili asked this time.
"Oh I didn't used to think so…."
"But you do now?"
"Well….there are certain things about the Tooks…they are even better at remaining unseen than other hobbits. They often seem to have rather good luck and well, if you get on the bad side of one….bad things always seem to happen of their own accord…Once after my cousin Lobelia spread a rumor about my mother doing….well….unmentionable things on one of her past adventures, she walked into her larder the very next day and found it infested with rats. Had to throw the whole lot of it out."
"That's all very interesting laddie but a bit circumstantial." Bilbo nodded in agreement.
"That's true, and I'm sure an awful lot of what's attributed to our fairy ancestors has absolutely nothing to do with them….but some things…some things there's just no other explanation for." The hobbits voice had gone hushed and the dwarves around him exchanged looks of varying curiosity and hesitance.
"And what might those things be?" Dwalin finally asked after an extended silence, seemingly startling their burglar out of his own thoughts.
"Oh, well…it's….well there's an old legend in the Took family…of a fairy mother and her child…You see….Oh I'll butcher it if I try to tell it…"
"Oh come Bilbo, we love a good story." Fili spoke up from the back of the line.
"Well...alright I'll try. You see, there once was a young fairy mother whose daughter was lost to a great winter, at a very young age. Everyone was very distraught at the loss of such a young life, but none so much as the mother."
The entire company settled into silence, quite immediately. Bilbo probably should have guessed with how it starts. Children were precious to dwarves, as they were to hobbits as well! But it was somehow different in a race that bore few and far between. The death of a single child to them was as great a tragedy as there ever could be.
Of course Bilbo didn't know much about their thoughts on women, only that they didn't speak much of them but when they did, it always seemed to be with quiet reverence. He felt suddenly self conscious and cleared his throat.
"As it goes with fairies, children of the forest as they are, they were to lay the child out on the forest floor, and keep watch over her until the trees gathered back their young daughter.
"Only the trees did not take her. Day after day she would remain unchanged by nature, looking as though she was merely sleeping. The fairies urged the mother to let her daughter go, as this wasn't an uncommon thing among their kind. Fairies hold bonds unlike most other races, clinging to a part of each other's spirits in an almost physical way. Holding on so tight at times that even in death the spirit will still cling by a thread to the body it would otherwise leave, held fast in the grip of another.
"But the mother refused, so engulfed in her pain at losing her daughter she could not let go. Even as the other's left she would remain, gazing on the child's face each day and wishing and hoping with all her soul to have her back. Then at night, she would dream of her daughter, lost in the forest and alone, trying to find her way home. She soon found that changed however, where she had once dreamed of her daughter, as if from above, she suddenly found herself lost in the same forest, quite apart from the young girl but longing to find her, to reach her. Each night she would venture deeper into the dark trees, feeling her daughters presence just out of reach, coming across a great many obstacles but always managing to get through, by sheer force of will, by longing and love. She would wake up in exhaustion and fight through the day, only waiting until nightfall when she could continue her search.
"She felt herself coming closer and closer to the girl but somehow could not find her, could never reach her, she felt as though she was traveling in circles for days when it finally came upon her that she recognized the forest she was in. It was just as their home had been before the great winter had passed and she suddenly knew without a doubt just where to find her. For when she was frightened, there was a certain small tree she chose as her hiding place, with roots lifted just so, where only she could fit, and there the mother found her child, frightened and alone but waiting, hiding away from the dangers of the forest that tried to take her away and together they found their way back, back the way the mother had come in search of her daughter until one morning she awoke, and so did the young girl.
"And so she took her in her arms and carried her back to their home, where the others looked on in astonishment. Fairies are a magical folk and so they asked her 'what magic is this? What have you done that no other could do before?' and she told them 'I found her in a dream, and I brought her back with me.'" There was an eerie silence that followed until Bilbo cleared his throat once more and muttered, "And um…and that's the end."
There was a solemness that had fallen on the group and Bilbo quietly regretted telling the tale, even with the happy ending it was a bit morbid.
"That is quite a tale Bilbo." Bofur offered quietly.
And then from up ahead Thorin spoke once more, turning on his mount to view the hobbit's face. "That it is, but what about it, may I ask, has you convinced that fairy blood does indeed run through your veins?" Bilbo blinked back at him for a moment and glanced down at his own saddle, taking a deep breath.
"That…well that is another tale…perhaps another time I'll tell you." Where either Fili or Kili, or perhaps even Ori, would have asked him to tell it now, they remained silent in the wake of the very serious and somewhat melancholy way he spoke.
Bilbo had known loss in his life. Death was not an uncommon thing in any place, and when you live to be a certain age you are bound to come in contact with it. However, never had he seen it in such magnitude, and so very bloody.
He struggled to catch his breath as he sat on the stone steps, leading into Erebor's walls. His ears were ringing and he felt very much like he might throw up. All members of the company were accounted for but for three. Three very important dwarves whom Bilbo could see in his minds eye, laid out and bloody, unmoving and unfeeling. Try as he might to blink the images away, they remained. He had been searching with the others through the battlefield, looking for any sign of the three but found little. When he had stumbled over what he thought was a very large rock and instead found it to be the head of an elf he had tried to stifle the bile rising in his throat but couldn't quite manage it and vomited all over the ground. A rough calloused hand had then picked him up by the back of his shirt and set him on his feet. "Why don't you go wait with the healers, Bilbo?" Dwalin had said, "We'll be sure to fetch you as soon as we find them." Bilbo had quickly agreed, nodding and getting a solid slap on the back in return before Dwalin had turned around and continued on his way.
At the time he had thought anything would be better than looking through blood and guts for what might be his friends but the healing tents had been even worse, overrun with wailing and crying out, from the patients as well as their relatives and Bilbo had quickly retreated to the only out of the way, relatively quiet place he could find. He tried to inform Oin where he would be but the older Dwarf was so busy (and so deaf) he doubted he had heard.
Though marginally better than sifting through corpses, the waiting was agonizing and Bilbo ached for something to do. Anything to keep him from the bloody images that swam in his mind. He was at a loss and simply hung his head in his hands and tried to breathe and ignore the stench of death that permeated the air. He kept telling himself things would be fine. They would find them, Thorin would be ok and even if he still hated him, it would be alright. Everything would be alright as long as Thorin and his nephews were ok.
