NOTE: See my author bio for the Introduction to this story.
by Sally Gardens
Prologue: Molly
Of the first thirty-six years of my life, I remember nothing. The rest, I remember only too well.
This road I walk is isolated. To my left rise the hills; atop them, a tower, said to overlook the sea. I consider the ascent, but decline. I will meet the sea soon enough.
And the sea, may it be, will be ready to receive me.
I am one of the only Hobbits in the whole Shire to have read the Mayor's great book. There was a day, some seven years ago—before he became Mayor, of course—when I chanced upon him sitting under a tree near the Green Dragon, cradling an untouched mug of beer between his broad, calloused hands. I had never seen a look of such aching deep sorrow as I saw in his eyes, staring as they were over the green hills and golden leaves of the Shire, seeing none of it. Wrapped though I was in my own despair, I could not help but ask if anything was amiss.
"Aye," he said, his eyes still bleak as a gray winter's day. "Though I have won, I have lost, and all the gold and all the fine houses in the Shire will never fill the loss."
I feared to say it, but say it I did: "You speak of Mr. Baggins, sir?"
He looked to me, then, and nodded, affecting the look of cheer which all Hobbits learn from early on to cover their troubles. "I do, lass, but no mind. He's gone to a better place, better for him, leastways, even if not for those of us left behind."
I, of course, being both genuinely concerned and incurably inquisitive, then inquired as to what this better place might be to which Mr. Baggins had gone. And that was how I got to read the Mayor's book, and so learned the story of how Mr. Baggins and the Mayor together saved our Shire from destruction, and learned why it was that Mr. Baggins looked so distant and sober those last two years after he and his companions had returned from afar, and learned how it was no mere wanderer's journey that had set him to take to the sea, but a flight to a better land, a better place than this broken and wounded world where evil lies in wait to devour innocence, a place in which he might at last find peace from the memories that tormented his waking and his dreaming. Too deeply hurt; that was what he had said. The Shire had been saved, but not for him.
Nor for me, I think, as I continue along my darkening road.
The invaders...
Ah! Had I known, had I known when first the Big Folk set foot in the Shire, I would have fled: to the woods, to the hills, to the sea, I would have fled, and taken my chance on the Wild. It could not be worse than—
A cry overhead. I open my eyes, see a streak of white against the dusk. A sea-bird. My journey is almost ended.
I put aside the memories of the Occupation and think again on the Mayor's book. He had been so very eager to share it with me, would have read the whole thing to me himself, start to finish, had I not learned my letters. I warrant that I am no scholar, and it took a great deal of concentration to make it through Mr. Baggins' learned prose, but I made it through, all the same, returning every morning as soon as it was decent to show up on Bag End's doorstep, and spending all the day in Bag End's study until hunger and the lowering rays of daylight pried me away.
"If only more folk cared anywhere near the way you do," said the Mayor often as he looked up at me from where he worked at his desk.
That had been the fondest wish of Mr. Baggins in the writing of the book: Read them things out of the Red Book, he had said, and tell them of the Great Danger, so that they will love their beloved land all the more.
And then he had departed.
And now I, too, having arrived at the sea, will likewise depart.
I am not sure why I chose the sea. There were many ways I might have chosen, many roads to freedom. Perhaps a part of me felt a kinship, a connection, with Mr. Baggins. Like Mr. Baggins, I have been riven by the wounds of war beyond all hope of healing. Like Mr. Baggins, I have come to realize that I will never be the Hobbit I was. The Shire lives on, but like Mr. Baggins I can no longer live in it. And so, somehow, though I never did anything so heroic as he to save the world, or even a village, it seemed appropriate to follow in his footsteps to the sea, even if I can follow no farther than the Havens. I like to think that he would understand.
I stand, solitary, upon the gray stone quay. My jaw is set, my gaze is stern, or so I fancy it would look to an observer, were there any. This is, I am told, the Elven Haven, but there is no evidence of Elves or of anyone living or working in this place. The Elves, I suppose, keep well hidden in this day from Mortals, but no matter. Drawing a deep, strong breath of resignation, I look over the twilit gray waters and lift one foot, thinking of Mr. Baggins.
That you might love it all the more.
My foot halts, hovers as sudden tears blot out the sea. All at once I understand, and understanding brings both hope and grief: hope for myself, as I bring my foot back to rest upon the solid earth; grief for Mr. Baggins, as the sad truth strikes me: that he himself failed to understand the very words he had spoken.
A great, great love for the Shire bursts through me, greater than ever I cared for it before the invaders forever scarred my life. For nigh unto ten years I'd thought they'd robbed me of all hope of joy in my life, only to find, on the brink of casting aside that life as a broken thing to be discarded, that in truth that life was all the more precious for its fragility, and for its endurance in the face of that fragility.
Streams of salt water course down my cheeks, adding to the sea, joining the tears once shed by the Mayor and his friends.
Ah, Mr. Baggins, Mr. Baggins, if only you knew...
And suddenly, somehow, I am sure that he does know, now, and that the grief I feel is joined with his own, a weight of regret so great that not even the sundering of the worlds can hold it back.
My tears stop flowing, and I blink my eyes clear as I look to the horizon. For a moment, only a moment, and I think I may be imagining it, it seems as if I can see that Straight Road of which the Elven lore speaks, rising up from the earthly sea to the abode of Great Powers. And for a moment, only a moment, it is as if I see a gem of white glimmering brightly upon a band of silver. But I blink again, and I tell myself it is only the Evening Star shining on the silver-gray line where the sea meets the sky.
For time beyond counting I watch as the twilight deepens to darkest night, and the sea is but a shadow among shadows. Then, at last, I offer a prayer for Mr. Baggins to whatever Powers might be listening, and then I turn my back to the sea and find shelter on the edge of the woods. If Elves are near, I will come to no harm this night. And in the morning I will take again to the road, this time in the light of the day, walking back into the morning sun to embrace the life that awaits me in the beloved land I had very nearly forsaken.
And someday, soon, when an older and wiser Mr. Baggins returns along this same road to home, I for one will not be in the least surprised.