Minor Battles
by Andy Longwood
The apples had been gathered now. Barrels of dried slices were sealed and stored in the cellars, beneath jars of apple butter and apple sauce and spiced apples floating in golden syrup. Pies were baked and set in windowsills to cool, and whether they were left untouched until dinner or stolen by mischievous children beforehand, they were enjoyed. Apples found their way into dishes and pockets and baskets, and the smell of cinnamon and baking fruit blew out of the village on the cool fall breeze.
Only a few had been left following the harvest. They clung stubbornly to their gnarled branches in an ancient tree by the river, impudent in their unattainable position, bright green and visually alluring.
Déagol leaned back as he stared at them, hanging innocently at the top of the old and enormous tree.
"I'm not climbing that," he said flatly. Beside him, Sméagol shaded his eyes with his hand and looked up.
"It's not that high," he said, peering up at the apples. "It just looks that way because we're so low."
"I'm not climbing that," Déagol said again.
"You said you wanted apples and I told you I knew where some were, and that's where they are. Don't think about the height. Think about how nice they'll taste when we've got them," Sméagol insisted, his stomach growling faintly.
"Well why don't you climb it, if you're so hungry?" Déagol snapped, glaring at his cousin.
"Because you're a better climber, and I'm too big to get up there."
Déagol scowled dangerously. "Are you saying I'm short?"
Sméagol, easily a head taller and a stone heavier than his cousin, looked down at him and said "Yes. And that's a good thing, because you can get into places that I can't, which is why you've got to climb the tree."
"Climb it yourself," Déagol muttered, and started to leave.
"Oh please?" Sméagol whined. Déagol turned back.
"Why does it have to be those?" he asked plaintively. "We ate plenty of apples last week, and there's a whole barrel in Grandmother's cellar. I want an apple just as much as you do, but can't we just steal one like always?"
"The barrels are sealed, and Reynard's guarding the fresh ones, and he said if I got within an inch of them he'd hang us by our toenails over the privy."
Déagol frowned. "That means two weeks of mucking out his barn, right?"
"Probably."
Déagol looked disgruntled. "He's gotten inventive."
"Besides, this is good for you," Sméagol said. "It's about time you stopped being afraid of heights. Grandmother says that you have to confront your fears. Just like when I took a shortcut across the pen where Reynard keeps that mad bull of his."
"But the bull chased you out and nearly got you before you got over the fence, you're still afraid of it!"
Sméagol sighed. "Don't ruin my metaphor. Do you want apples or not?"
"What's a metaphor?"
"It's when you say something without saying it. Climb!"
"Are you sure it can hold me?" Déagol said doubtfully, looking at the gnarled tree. Broken branches jutted from it at odd angles, and it creaked ominously in the slight breeze.
"Positive," Sméagol said confidently. Déagol looked up at the apples, which swayed greenly in the slight breeze. Déagol groaned softly.
"All right," he said. "Help me up."
Sméagol scrambled over and dropped down so that his cousin could stand on his shoulders and reach the lowest branch, which creaked ominously as he took it. Sméagol stood up slowly, grimacing with effort.
"We're going to stop stealing pies as soon as Aunt Tremelda perfects hers," Sméagol grunted, straining beneath Déagol's weight. "You're getting heavy."
"Shut it," Déagol snapped as he pulled himself onto a branch. Sméagol shrugged the strain out of his shoulders as his cousin's weight was lifted from them, and stepped back.
"Don't use that one, it's all rotted," he advised, watching Déagol's progress. Déagol gave the tree a sullen glare that was meant for Sméagol and released the branch he had been about to pull himself up on. He leaned his head back to look at the apples, still a good distance away, and climbed a bit further. Sméagol shouted helpful advice from the ground, most of which Déagol ignored. He continued to climb until the apples were within reach. He watched them like a hawk. They looked even better up close. He reached out to grab one, but a twig had snagged his curly hair and was pulling at his scalp. He started to brush it out instead. Sméagol was shouting something from the ground. He sounded annoyed. Probably just mad that Déagol wasn't still hurrying to get the precious apples -
Suddenly the branch he was standing on creaked ominously, and then it snapped, leaving Déagol dangling from a shaky limb twenty feet above the ground.
"I told you not to stand on that one! Aren't you listening to me?" Sméagol shouted. Déagol shrieked wordlessly and wrapped his legs around the trunk of the tree. The branch he was holding bent with a snap, and he threw his arms around the trunk as well as it fell off and tumbled to the ground. Below him, Sméagol darted nervously around the tree, dodging falling twigs and watching his cousin.
"Are you all right?" he shouted.
"I can't get down!" Déagol wailed.
"Yes you can!" Sméagol looked around for suitable branches that Déagol could use to make his way to the ground. There were none. He grimaced nervously. "Just . . . not from where you are," he said. Déagol wailed unhappily. "Hang on for a moment! I'll get help!" Sméagol shouted, and took off towards the village. Déagol craned his neck around to watch.
"Wait! Don't leave me here! Sméagol!" he shouted, but his cousin continued to run, and Déagol groaned furiously. Why was he always letting himself get into these messes? Just because Sméagol was his best friend, he always had to do whatever harebrained scheme he came up with. And why did he bother?
Well, mostly it was because Déagol was generally just as eager to do whatever it was Sméagol suggested. But this was just too much. Now he was stuck in this stupid tree with no way down, and it was cold out, and the bark was digging into his face, and his arms were getting tired, and he was probably going to fall to his death in a few minutes. That's what he got for doing bad things, like spilling ink on Grandmother's good table cloth when he and Sméagol had snuck into her study last week. They were looking for her good cane with the gold knob on the end, in order to better re-enact the battle of the Last Alliance. It was Déagol's turn to be Gil-galad, and he needed a spear. They buried the tablecloth by the river and no one was the wiser, but clearly these things caught up to you. It was bad energy, that's what it was. It built up and led to things like this.
Déagol's lower lip trembled as he reached out and grabbed one of the apples. He whimpered, took a bite, made a face, and threw the apple away. It was sour.
o-
The village was emptying as the light faded. It was evening, and people were going home now to loaded tables and large families, and maybe a half-pint and a smoke before bed. Sméagol darted among the lingering crowd with purpose. He would find his uncle. Reynard was tall, and he had a ladder, and he could be counted on to rescue someone even if he'd just been chasing that same someone out of his barn with a stick the size of a wizard's staff the other day. Reynard could get Déagol down and be a hero again, and Sméagol would be a hero by association, and heroes got rewarded, maybe with pie or seedcake, and of course Déagol would get most, being the victim, and Sméagol would share most of his anyway because this was kind of his fault –
Suddenly a bone-chillingly familiar voice shrieked his name and Sméagol froze like a frightened rabbit. Instantly he began to calculate venues of escape, defenses for potential accusations, but by then it was too late. Aunt Tremelda strode towards him, her mean little eyes set on his face, her plump hands curled into tight fists. Sméagol watched her approach with an expression of fear normally reserved for those facing an oncoming army of crazed orcs under the shadows of Mordor.
"I didn't do it!" He shouted, purely out of instinct.
"Didn't do what?" Aunt Tremelda asked, narrowing her eyes severely.
"I don't know yet, but whatever it was, it wasn't me!"
Aunt Tremelda was a severe woman with a pinched face and mean, suspicious eyes. She had been married once but widowed soon after, and during moments of insensitivity folks insisted that her husband had been killed by the sheer force of Tremelda's meanness. She had no children, and as such, had been able to devote herself to the culinary arts for fifty years. There was no competing with her prowess in the kitchen. Even Grandmother's cooking was never quite as good as Aunt Tremelda's. Sméagol and Déagol generally tried not to steal from her, because she had a tendency to ostracize any convicted or suspected thieves from her table for months on end.
"Come with me," she ordered.
"I can't, I've got to find –"
"Don't talk back," Tremelda ordered. "I have something I need you to help with –"
"But, Uncle Reynard, I – "
"You respect your elders, boy!" Tremelda shouted, her face blazing red with righteous fury. "And don't interrupt!"
Sméagol stood in miserable silence.
"Well? Are you coming, or not?"
"But Aunt Tremelda – "
"Is that a no?" Tremelda said, in a dangerous voice that promised a certain end to access to all culinary triumphs ever produced by her hand.
"Déagol, he - "
Aunt Tremelda turned away, suddenly an inexplicably calm. "I suppose I'll have to find someone else to taste my apple cobbler for me, then."
If Sméagol were any more frozen on the spot, he would have been frosting over. His eyes widened as he hastily weighed the conflicting values of loyalty and eating well.
"Will it take long?" he ventured hesitantly, when he found the decision unusually hard to come to.
"Not long at all," Tremelda said. "I need an outsider's opinion. And I seem to remember a pie gone missing from Roselda's windowsill just last –"
"I didn't steal it!" Sméagol shouted, terrified. "Wasn't me!"
Tremelda smiled. "Regardless, won't you assist me? I will be so grateful. In fact, in the wake of my gratitude, I might entirely forget all the events of the past week, particularly around your Grandmother."
Sméagol looked down the path, adding a voucher of innocence from Aunt Tremelda, of all people, to his mental scales. His stomach growled audibly.
"Well, as long as it doesn't take long," he said, and followed his aunt to her home.
o-
Half an hour later, Sméagol stumbled out of Tremelda's house with his hand on his stomach, groaning slightly. His aunt had been busy – her kitchen was filled with variation upon variation of her already fantastic apple cobbler, and Sméagol had been ordered to try them all in order to determine which variation was perfect. When he had objected, halfway through, that all of them had been the best cobbler he'd ever tasted in his life, Tremelda had fixed him with a glare like to sour milk and informed him very coldly and in no short words that he was an idiot, and that the recipe "needed" something, and that he'd know what it was when he tasted it. Of course, the first plateful had been absolute heaven, but that was before he realized there were about twenty more variations he'd be ordered to try after.
Night was coming, and he began to stumble home, his memory dimmed by overeating. A half-moon illuminated the darkening sky and the light waned quickly in the west as he plodded down the path, rubbing his aching stomach and vaguely wondering why he had the overwhelming feeling that there was something important he'd forgotten.
Suddenly he heard footsteps behind him, and then someone pushed him hard on the shoulder so that he spun around, head spinning, forcing down a wave of nausea. A nightmarish vision in a torn tunic leered at him in the half-dark, its pale skin marked with livid red scratches, twigs and leaves tangled in its dark, curly hair. Sméagol looked at it blearily.
"Oh good, you got down. Help me find some parsley, I feel sick," he said.
Déagol pulled debris out of his hair furiously. "Where have you been? I've been looking for you for half an hour, and that's not counting the time I took to fall out of a tree that you made me climb in the first place! Just what have you been doing?"
"Er, well, it's a funny story, really –"
"It had better be. It had better be the funniest story you've ever told in your life, because if it isn't, I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill you until you're dead, and then I'm going to kill you some more. I'm going to hunt your ghost down, and kill it. That's how much I'm going to kill you."
Sméagol gulped, partially from nerves, partially from digestive discomfort. "Well, I was going to find Reynard, 'cause he's got the ladder, you know, and I was running 'cause he lives on the other side of the village when Aunt Tremelda shouted at me and wouldn't let me talk, and then she made me taste apple cobbler 'cause she still thinks it needs something and, well, she wouldn't let me go until now and I sort of never found Reynard."
Déagol simply stared at him.
"But it's all right, because obviously you're down, and you're alive, so there's no harm . . ."
"So, you weren't able to find someone to rescue me because you were too busy being held hostage by Aunt Tremelda, who was forcing you to eat sweets?"
Sméagol nodded.
Déagol said, "I'm going to kill you now," and punched him. Sméagol reeled back, his reflexes slowed by great quantities of sugar, and Déagol was on him again, punching and scratching like a mad creature, and Sméagol heaved him off with a shout. Déagol started to scramble up, but before he could, Sméagol dropped on his chest and pinned him to the ground, using his weight to keep Déagol down. Déagol choked as the air was forced out of his lungs, and grabbed at his cousin's face.
"Sméagol! Déagol!" A furious voice shouted, and both boys froze in the middle of their acts of violence, looks of fright spreading across their faces. They released each other, stood up straight, and turned around, doing their best to look if not innocent, then at least remorseful.
"Hello Grandmother," they chorused, more or less in unison.
The matriarch of the River Folk was unusually tall, for a woman. Her hair was gray throughout, yet remained thick and curly like the hair of a young lass. Her face was deeply lined with age, but her eyes were brighter than most of the other adults, even the ones younger than her. She was very, very old, yet she had retained her health and wisdom long past the age when most people's minds began to lose their sharpness.
Sméagol and Déagol were more than a little in awe of her. She knew things that most people couldn't possibly imagine on their own. She wielded supreme authority and every child was made to sit up straighter and speak more politely in her presence. Yet sometimes, Grandmother would sit next to you on a grassy hill in her fine skirts, and if you had something, a treasure of some sort – maybe a stone with a round hole, or a shell you found in the river, or something pretty that had washed up on the shore – Grandmother might ask about it, and admire it with you, and never order you to rid yourself of such trash. If you were very lucky, Grandmother might tell you a Story – and because she was Grandmother, you would know that no matter how fantastic it seemed, everything she told you was true.
"It is too late for misconduct," she said, and anger radiated off her in waves. This was not like Aunt Tremelda's panicky, vicious anger – this was deep and terrible anger that filled one up with the horrible realization that Grandmother was Disappointed. Sméagol and Déagol shuffled their bare feet in the dirt.
"It's not my fault –" Déagol said, but Grandmother looked at him so severely that he fell silent. Sméagol, who was more familiar with Grandmother's moods, did not bother to defend himself.
"I do not care who started it, I do not care what it was about. Whatever argument you have, you may sort it out on your own, but I am disgusted to see you resorting to physical violence. Both of you," she said, her severe gaze moving slowly across both of her grandsons.
"Sorry Grandmother," they chorused. Grandmother sighed. In truth, she would have normally worked through the issue with both lads, to avoid more trouble, but she had had a very long day, and she was tired. A scuffle between children was the least of her worries.
"Déagol, go home. Sméagol, come with me," she said, and Sméagol stepped sheepishly up to her side. A bruise was darkening on his left cheek, and he touched it tenderly before shooting Déagol a resentful glare. Déagol glared back, fiercely and angrily, and he walked past them as they began to leave for Grandmother's home, while he walked, limping slightly, to his own house.
"Welcome home," his mother said, looking up from the kitchen table as she heard the door slam and saw Déagol stalk by. She was cutting up vegetables for stew. She raised her eyebrow at her son's disheveled state. "Busy day?"
"I hate Sméagol and I'm never speaking to him again," Déagol growled, grabbing a mushroom from his mother's cutting board and nibbling it morosely.
"Oh," said Roselda, reaching for another mushroom. "Shall I take all this down, so that I can remind you of it tomorrow when you've made up in time to commit something unlawful and irritating together?"
"Déagol threw a nearby tomato a dirty look, knowing better by now than to direct it at his mother.
"Why do you hate him this time?" Roselda asked, with a knowing smile.
"'Cause he'd rather eat pie than not let me get hurt," Déagol muttered sullenly. His mother sighed. Roselda liked to think that without Sméagol's influence, Déagol would be a perfect little gentleman who never got into scrapes and always respected his elders, but then again, Roselda also liked to think that small fairies painted designs in the frost on her window in winter, and, if she was getting very imaginative, that money grew on trees. Roselda was idealistic, but she was not stupid.
"Are you beyond healing?" she asked. "Shall I call for an undertaker?"
Déagol grumbled a sullen "no," from around his mushroom.
"Then you'll get over it, I daresay."
"I will not, and I'm going to my room," Déagol mumbled, and left with his mushroom. Roselda heard him slam his door a few seconds later, and she shook her head.
"Tweenagers," she said, with a knowing smile, and went back to chopping carrots.
o-
Reynard was almost five feet tall, and as such, he was a giant among the River folk. He was generally regarded as a fine hobbit and a good person to have sober during a barfight, but not someone to owe money to. He was a blacksmith by trade, and he was just on his way to the smithy when he rounded a corner and was struck by a small person in a big hurry, who fell over. Reynard looked down curiously.
"Morning, Déagol," he said, reaching over and hoisting his nephew up by the arm. Déagol brushed himself off fiercely.
"Morning, uncle," he said. "Have you seen Sméagol?"
"I think he was heading to the river," Reynard said. "He's awfully jumpy today, have you noticed?"
"I can't imagine why," Déagol said through gritted teeth. Reynard smiled obliviously and ruffled his nephew's hair.
"You have a good day," he said, and continued on his way into town as Déagol ran down the path to the river.
He walked along underneath the bank, carefully close to the edge. He saw nothing for a while, but then he heard something over the sound of the river. Someone was whistling, quietly, and Déagol saw Sméagol sitting on a hill a ways up the bank, leaning against a tree. Déagol glared furiously and quietly up the hill until he was behind the tree. He looked around it. Sméagol was still there.
Déagol stepped in front of him, and Sméagol jumped up.
"You owe me an apology," Déagol growled, crossing his arms angrily.
"Fine," Sméagol said, narrowing his eyes. "I'm sorry you're a stupid violent git, how's that?"
Déagol swelled with fury. "What did you say?"
"Do you know how much my face hurts?" he said, pointing to the black bruise dominating his left right cheek. "I got a headache last night like you wouldn't believe – "
"Oh shut UP!" Déagol shouted angrily. "You selfish bastard! You know I hate heights, but you made me climb that stupid tree –"
"Made you? I hardly made you!"
"Yes you did! And when I got to the top, you know what happened? I tried to eat one! I tried to eat one of the apples, and it was sour! SOUR! I couldn't even eat it! You made me risk my life for an apple that I couldn't even EAT!"
"You punched me just because I got abducted and couldn't get help!" Sméagol shot back.
"You didn't get abducted, you just decided you'd rather let me get hurt than miss a chance to eat sweets!"
"Stupid little liar!"
"Fat bastard!"
Sméagol shoved him. Déagol shoved back. Then they were screaming and biting and flailing again, slipping out of headlocks and struggling to force each other over, punching and kicking every chance they got. Déagol jumped on Sméagol's back and began punching him.
"You're always getting me in trouble!" he shouted between punches.
"Me? You're always getting ME into trouble!" Sméagol objected, elbowing Déagol in the stomach and throwing him off his shoulders. "Besides, I haven't heard you object to a prank yet!"
"That's only because you're too busy thinking of ways to get me killed!"
"I do not! And anyway, you help!"
"You always start it!"
"YOU always start it!"
"Do not!"
"Do too!"
Sméagol charged at Déagol, meaning to knock him to the ground, but Déagol dodged instead and grabbed at his cousin's back. He meant to get him in a headlock, but Sméagol stumbled, fell, and rolled - dragging Déagol with him down the side of the hill.
The force of the fall sent them both tumbling over the edge. They rolled down the hill, b
They landed at the bottom with thuds, one after the other. Déagol tried to push himself up, but fell over again. The world was spinning. Sméagol pulled his arm out from underneath his back and let it flop on the grass. New bruises were already beginning to darken on both of their bodies, and the leaves spun dizzyingly above them. They lay there, groaning quietly, and were still.
Brilliantly colored leaves drifted around them quietly in a soft wind, and the river splashed in the background. Sméagol and Déagol lay in the dappled shadow of the shedding trees, their aching limbs motionless as they waited. Someone was going to have to initiate the ritual of apology sooner or later.
After a moment, Sméagol reached quietly into his pocked and pulled out a battered piece of cheese. He munched quietly, staring up at the remaining leaves. Déagol turned his head to look.
Sméagol held out his hand. "Want some?"
Déagol eyed it, a little warily. "Who'd you steal it from?"
"Your mum."
Déagol's stomach rumbled as he considered the consequences. Well, Mum at least valued his life, and wouldn't kill him, like, say, Aunt Tremelda. He leaned over and took the cheese.
They ate in silence for a moment.
Finally, Sméagol sat up on his elbows and glanced over at Déagol.
"I'm sorry about leaving you," he said softly.
"Sorry about hitting you," Déagol said.
And that was that.
They sat in silence again, leaning against the hill and resting their battle wounds. Déagol found some rather squashed blackberries in his coat pocket and shared them, and they watched as a few more leaves fell from their branches.
"I've been thinking," Sméagol said after a moment, licking blackberry juice off his fingers. "About what we should do when we're come of age."
"Hmm?" Déagol mumbled, around a mouthful of cheese.
"We'll build a boat," Sméagol said, "A really big one. And then we'll go down the river, and see where we end up."
"What, just sail down it?"
"Don't you wonder where it goes?"
"Well, yes, but how will we eat?"
"We'll fish," Sméagol said. "It won't be hard. We'll be on the river already."
"But we're terrible at fishing," Déagol pointed out. Sméagol rolled his eyes.
"We'll get better at it," he said. "Look, it will be great, all right? We won't have to do chores or mind Grandmother and nobody will yell at us for getting in trouble, and we'll go and see things none of them have ever seen before. We might even go all the way to the sea. We've never seen the sea before."
Déagol looked down the river with interest.
"Grandmother says that everything began across the sea," Sméagol said, watching Déagol carefully for signs of agreement. "She says that when you're by the sea, all you can see is water – right up to the horizon. It's like . . . like last year, when we climbed to the top of that mountain, and looked out across the forest, and the trees went right up to the end of the sky. It's like that, only water. Water and sand and grey ships crossing into the west."
Déagol watched the river, a small smile, playing on his mouth. "The elves cross it when they want to go home, she said. We could go there. We could go to where the elves leave Middle-earth. We could meet an ielf/i" he said wonderingly.
"We could ask what they're going to," Sméagol said. "And maybe – maybe one will let us go with him. We could be the first hobbits ever to cross the sea."
Déagol's eyes grew round at the thought. "Will we ever come back?"
"Of course we will. That's the whole point of going away. To come back and tell everyone about it."
Déagol nodded. "That's good, then. We should do it."
"We'll start building in spring," Sméagol said cheerfully, pulling more cheese out of his pocket and handing a piece to Déagol.
"I am going to beat you one of these days," Déagol said conversationally, through a mouthful of cheese. Sméagol snorted.
"You will not," he said. "You haven't beaten me in a fight yet."
"I did once," Déagol objected. "Remember last year, when we got lost in the cornfield and you said it was my fault and I got your arm behind your back and –"
"Yes, yes," Sméagol said, waving his hand dismissively. "But you only won that 'cause you snuck up behind me, and besides I wasn't feeling well, remember. I ate a bad apple that day."
"Of course you did," Déagol said, rolling his eyes. "Bad apple, was it? Or maybe I'm just too fast for you."
"If you're so fast, how come you've only beaten me once, and unfairly?"
"Well anyway, I'm going to beat you one day," Déagol said. "It's bound to happen sooner or later."
Sméagol shrugged. "I suppose it's possible."
And so it was, for there would always be arguments, and there would always be apologies. These were minor battles, and they were easily erased. They knew this, deep down. Violent as fights were, they were fleeting in the end. Soon it would be winter, and there would be more pranks and more scuffles and cabin fever that caused fights of epic proportions, and then spring would come; and there would be a great rush out of doors to the icy-cold river, where there would be arguments about who was the better swimmer and great care taken not to be the one to leave the water first, because that would be a defeat in itself. There were summer fights and fall fights and fights between seasons, and apologies from both sides as circumstance dictated. Sometimes you won – sometimes you lost. That was just the way it was. And it always would be.