A/N: The world of Middle Earth is the creation of J.R.R. Tolkien and the property of somebody other than me. This story is for Day 12 (cider) of the 25 Days of Fic Challenge.
Hey ho, merry ho! Bitter apple sweet!
Hey dong, derry dong! Press it with our feet!
Daisy Lambsdown stomped and whirled with the cider pressers, feeling the apple slices squish beneath her broad hobbit feet. Stomp, turn, link arms, spin your partner, and around you go! The song and the dance blurred into her heartbeat. She was the apple and she was the grindstone. She was the tree and she was the cider.
Hey doll, derry doll! Fruit from seeds springing!
Ding dong, derry dong! Bombadil's bringing!
Before the time of Daisy's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents, in the last years before Hobbits first set foot across the Branduin, a spry little man in a bright blue jacket walked the gently rolling hills.
Here and there he stopped to listen to the birds and the bees, to the sun and the breeze—maybe to the earth itself. He cocked his head and he closed his eyes and he listened very closely.
Then sometimes he dug a strong brown finger in the ground, and in the hole made by his finger, he dropped an apple seed. When the song of the land was right, he dropped row after row of apple seeds in the places where soon the Hobbits would come.
The Hobbits had to dig their smials and plant their grains, but the cider apples were there to welcome them.
Hey doll, derry doll! Apple on the tree!
Ding dong, derry dong! Fruit for you and me!
Pippin spit the apple from his mouth and reached in his pack for a pinch of fondant infused with spearmint, a travel gift from his daughter-in-law Goldilocks. "Cider apple," he said.
"Here?" Merry poked the gnarled tree with a stick as if he expected it to bite. "No dinner till we see Meduseld, then. Best be moving along, Pip."
"You wouldn't do prod an Ent like that." Pippin strapped the pack onto his piebald pony. "Look at how even the rows are. This was an orchard, once."
"When Treebeard asked about whether we'd seen Entwives in the Shire. . . did you ever wonder if the apple trees used to be. . ."
"Not for a long time. It was after I'd been Thain for a few years, there was one morning I was walking the cider orchards, and the trees seemed to lift their arms and dance in the breeze. They seemed almost alive. That's when I wondered if there was someone who could say a word that would release them, and what would happen if he did."
Hey ho, merry ho! Raise your glasses high!
Hey dong, derry dong! Hearth-fire warmth is nigh!
A/N: The cover image is Johnny Appleseed, from Howe's Historical Collection. Both his appearance and his insistence that apples must be propagated from seeds "as nature intended," rather than by grafting, reminded me of Tom Bombadil.