Author's Note: Grateful acknowledgments to Niphredil of Doriath for permission to quote from her wonderful songfic "It was a Hard Doom that Had to Fall." Primula's rhyming words to her son were written by Niph.

Thanks to Di and Faramir for pre-readings and suggestions.

Thanks to the Harem ladies for friendship, conversation, and more fun than I've had in years.

Thanks to Tolkien for giving us this world and these characters to explore. To be able to do so is payment enough; I would never take money for writing about them.

~~~~~

"But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends." Quenta Silmarillion

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To everyone there comes the day when childhood, in its timeless halls, ends, and mortal life begins.

In memory, his dad was always laughing. Drogo Baggins sported the loudest, brightest waistcoats for miles around—everybody said so—not to mention the girth to show them off to best advantage. Frodo loved to curl up with his ear to Dad's chest, the bright brass buttons cool against his cheek and the laughter booming deep inside like a great drum. There was a pleasant odour of pipe-weed always clinging to Drogo, and then and ever after it brought to Frodo the new-mown hay, the fresh breezes, and the deep blue skies of all the fine summer days of the world.

In memory, his mum's eyes were like those skies. His earliest recollection was of her bending over him, her dark curls surrounding her face in a braided wreath studded with meadow flowers and little jewels. Her smile was beautiful and soft, her voice was like drops of warm rain, and although everything she ever said to him was filled with love and pride, he recalled these words most of all:

"As fair as an elf-child, and gentle and kind,
Yet as brave as a warrior, with a high and deep mind."

They lived in a cozy suite of rooms, one of the finest in Brandy Hall, with plump chairs and fat featherbeds, a stone fireplace where they cooked first breakfast, and a big round window looking out over the River. Frodo's mum was Primula Brandybuck, daughter to the old Master of the Hall, Gorbadoc the Broadbelt, and sister to the new Master, Uncle Rorimac. Uncle Rory managed Buckland and the Marish with a loud voice and a firm though fair hand, and every hobbit for miles around respected him.

Although Brandy Hall was not the biggest hobbit-mansion in the world—Great Smials, the Took cousins' hall far away in the Westfarthing, had that distinction—it was much the grandest and best, with pony rides and boating on Brandywine in summer, and in winter the Yule fires roaring in the Great Room, bright holly and sharply-scented pine boughs wreathed and swagged everywhere. And all year long there was feasting and singing, as much as any hobbit could want.

There were lessons, too. Each day Mistress Prettyfoot came from Bucklebury, and everybody sixteen and under had to learn their letters, their numbers, and their Shire history. Frodo had a few cousins—Reginard Took and Rico Bracegirdle, in particular—who liked to woolgather and play truant, and who when they got taken down for it sauced the poor mistress unmercifully. But Frodo loved every lesson. Naturally the schoolmarm doted on him and could not praise him highly enough to Mum and Dad. "He has a fine mind, a scholar's mind," she'd say. "He'll soon have learned everything I have to teach him, and then what will I do?"

Every morning, after mushrooms and bacon, apples and scones and butter, Mum would kiss his forehead before she sent him off, saying, "Study hard, Frodo. Learn your lessons well. You'll need them one day." Then Dad would give him a wink and a huge crushing hug and say, "And after that, play hard. It's another fine day to be off with your cousins. There's no better place for a young hobbit than Brandy Hall. No better place for a hobbit of any description, come to that."

It was true. After luncheon Frodo and never fewer than two dozen cousins would be off, running till dark all over Bucklebury and the nearby countryside in search of a patch of sweet buckberries or a new crop of plums, running to see a fallen gate or an overgrown lane no one had noticed before, a newly foaled pony, a newly dropped calf, always running because they could burn the green energy of childhood no other way. With all the laughter, the high spirits, the stories, games, and lessons, and best of all the sumptuous meals six times a day: at Brandy Hall there was so much to do, and to eat, and to play. Drogo and Primula saw to it that Frodo's childhood was filled with love and joy. And throughout his life their legacy remained a light that neither time nor suffering could stain.

~~~~~

If anything could dim the happiness of that long-ago boy and his parents, it was this: for as long as he could remember, Mum and Dad had been promising Frodo a baby hobbit. Secretly he wanted a sister, a hobbit-lass he could hold in his lap and brush her dark hair and wait on her hand and foot like a princess. Because of course she would be a princess—didn't Mum always tell him he was a prince? Anyway, he liked girls. He liked boys, too, for the particular things that boys enjoyed when girls weren't near—coarse jokes, roughhousing, the joys of finding something dead and disgusting washed up by Brandywine.

But girls were another matter. They were an endless source of fascination and delight—and, in the end, a mystery. They always seemed to know some outrageous secret about you, which they just happened to be sharing in ecstatic wide-eyed shock the very moment you came along. At the sight of you they'd squeal and scatter like geese. Which, instead of making you wonder what you'd done to make such a laughingstock of yourself, always made you strut like a gander.

When his sister came he would ask her to explain all this. But time passed and there was still no baby hobbit. Frodo never doubted that she would come eventually. There was nothing his parents could not—or would not—do for him. It was true they were older than some mums and dads, but they were not too old for babies. And the Shire-folk were a fertile people; you never heard of anybody who was childless against their wishes—although every now and then one of the gammers would remark that there just didn't seem to be as many little hobbits as in the old days.

As time went by Mum got more and more frantic about it. She came from folk with big families, Brandybucks and Tooks. So did Dad. This garden should have grown more than one blossom, sturdy and handsome though he was. So they would stock up on various herbs and potions the midwives thought might help, and she and Dad would go off to Crickhollow by themselves for a day or two, and when they got back Mum would be much more cheerful and would promise Frodo that it shouldn't be long now. But nothing ever happened.

She would put on a brave face then, and take Frodo in her lap and say, "Well, if I must have only one, then let it be my sweet prince, my hobbit-lordling:

As fair as an elf-child, and gentle and kind,
Yet as brave as a warrior, with a high and deep mind."

Frodo always blushed fiercely at this, and Dad would wink at him and say, "Come now, Primmie, you'll fill the boy's head with notions."

"But it's true. He'll be great one day, the greatest hobbit the Shire has ever seen."

"Well, needless to say I'm delighted to hear it, my dear. But how can you possibly know?"

"I've always known. It was placed in my heart the moment I held him for the first time."

"Every mum says things like that," Frodo would say, though his heart burst with happiness whenever she talked that way.

"Yes, they do," Mum said, "But this is something more. You are so special a gift to me. And your love, opening at once almost as soon as you were born, foretold to me the greatness of your spirit. Who are you, Frodo Baggins?"

"I'm myself, Mummy."

Then Dad would come and put his arms around them both, and for a time all sorrow and disappointment were forgotten.

~~~~~

Frodo was nearly twelve, and the baby-longing was now acute. Mum's nephew Seredic and his new bride had taken over Crickhollow for the summer. So instead of honeymooning Mum and Dad went for picnics and long walks in the countryside, anything to get off by themselves for a bit. On the evening of the 13th August they set off for a sail in the moonlight. They kissed Frodo good-night and sent him down to join his cousins. This was a peculiarly Brandy Hall kind of treat: twenty or thirty young hobbits collapsed in a heap on the floor of the Great Room, clothes and all. Of course they had their own trundles in their parents' chambers, but what fun was that to a pinching, giggling mob curled up right there beside you on the floor, shoulder-to-shoulder and hip-to-hip?

The weather had been hot and muggy so there was no fire, but a thick pipe-weed haze lingered in the Great Room long after the grownups had gone to bed. Frodo fell asleep with his cousin Melba's thick straw-coloured braid across his face. Some time after midnight he was awakened by the sound of urgent voices outside, in the courtyard. It did not concern him, because Uncle Rory kept the world safe. In the meantime the heap of sleeping hobbits had shifted. He brushed his cousin Reginard's sandy-haired foot off his neck and turned over, curling flank-to-flank against Melba and falling back to sleep.

~~~~~

The Lord Ulmo, guardian of the waters of the world, seldom came so far up Baranduin, preferring to tend to matters in the remotest reaches of the Great Sea. And so he was not there to confront the nameless thing that arose from some brackish sump in the Old Forest and oozed through underground fissures into Withywindle, then slithered downstream into the brown waters of Brandywine and upstream toward Bucklebury, where in capricious malice it capsized the boat of two hapless mortals. Too late their cries came to the River-woman, Ulmo's servant, who upon her arrival could do nothing for the Little Ones but cast a spell of peace and surrender over their agonized air-starved flesh, thus easing their passage from the circles of the world.

~~~~~

He woke up with a start. Something was wrong. The Great Room was empty. The floor was cold, his cousins had vanished, and he was alone, a rare and disquieting thing in Brandy Hall. An unnatural silence blanketed everything. He wondered if dragons had invaded and by freakish chance he was the only one left. Waking up a little more, he saw that full daylight was streaming in the windows. Maybe I'm just a lazy sleepyhead today, he thought. He roused himself and padded up the tunnel to Mum and Dad's rooms, hoping he wasn't too late for first breakfast and too early for second.

There was no welcoming aroma of mushrooms and bacon to greet him. Mum and Dad weren't there. Their bed had not been disturbed. It was all made up just as it had been the evening before, with Mum's best white lacy gown laid neatly across it.

His heart began to beat hard. He ran from the bedroom and back down the long tunnel with its succession of round doors. The parlour where Rory held forth was deserted. Hundreds of people lived in Brandy Hall, yet there was no one anywhere. Even the kitchens were silent. This was almost as terrifying as the fears that were beginning to beat upon him. He ran outside, through the big red door, through the empty courtyard, and down the wide steps to the embankment. Then he stopped short.

Every hobbit in Brandy Hall was there, by the River. Practically everyone who lived in Bucklebury was there too. The noise ought to have been worse than a cyclone. There was hardly a sound. Aunt Amaranth, Mum's maiden sister, and Rory's wife Aunt Menegilda had Frodo's cousins all herded together around one of the lamp-posts. All of them, even the grown-ups, were huge-eyed with fear. His aunts ran about frantically, trying to keep the little ones contained. Rory and his brother Uncle Saradas were speaking in urgent shrill whispers to the farmhand Cotto, the fisherhobbit Mott, and a brace of shirriffs. Everybody else hung back, deliberately leaving a wide clear space around Frodo's uncles, and around a small boat that lay upside-down upon the lapping brown verge of Brandywine.

Now his heartbeat was deafening. He searched the crowd for Mum and Dad. He couldn't find them anywhere. Anxiously he scanned the faces of his cousins and aunts and uncles. Most of them would not even look at him. Those who did had the most dreadful pity in their eyes. He stumbled toward Melba and Reginard, always close by when you needed them. When Aunt Mennie saw him she cried, "What are you doing here?"

"What's happening? Why didn't you—" Frodo began, but someone gave a shout and everybody turned at once.

A haywards' waggon, drawn slowly by two huge grey ponies, came rounding the bend in the road from south Buckland. The driver and his companion looked grim and sad. In the back of the waggon, under a coarse tarp, lay two lumped, still forms. No one spoke or even breathed as it slowly drew to a stop.

"We found one just above Haysend, caught in a tangle of roots," the driver said, climbing down. "The current had the other one fetched up against the grindwall." Rory nodded, then stepped forward and flung the tarp aside. Aunt Menegilda flinched and pulled Frodo against her, pressing his face into her ample waist, not letting him see them, his Mum and Dad, washed up by Brandywine with no more dignity than some luckless fox or badger, dead and disgusting....

There was a collective gasp, a moan of dismay, a slow swell of weeping and keening. Mennie didn't want Frodo to hear any of it. "You shouldn't be here," she chittered. "Inside with you now. Inside with you." She got him by the arm and half-pushed him, half-pulled him up the steps and through the big red front door of the Hall.

"Why didn't you come and get me?" he shouted, wildly struggling, half crazed with shock and horror. "Why did you leave me behind and let me wake up all alone? Did you think I wouldn't find out?"

"What could you have done?" Mennie shouted back, half crazed herself. "Save me, but I am trying to spare you the worst of it, boy! Why are you fighting me like this?"

"Let me go! Let me go!" He broke free of her painful grasp and ran up the tunnel to his parents' rooms. He flung himself on the nubbly white coverlet and buried his face in his mum's lace gown. It smelled like her, like lavender. She was not going to wear it now. She was never going to wear it. There would be no more mushrooms and bacon, no more eyes blue as summer skies gazing on him with love, no more jolly waistcoats and booming laughter. There would be no little hobbit-sister.

Anguish and terror so utterly overwhelmed him that neither his mind nor his body could contain them.

~~~~~

He didn't think he slept, but when his cousin Esmeralda called him for tea he had to fight his way back from a terrifying dream-place. Ezzie was his favourite of the younger grown-up cousins, very much like Mum and in more than looks. Though he didn't want to go downstairs and face the others, he trusted Ezzie to know what was best for him. He did not resist as she took his hand and silently led him, still half in the twilight dream, down the tunnel. Slowly the other half of him awoke to the real nightmare. It was true. It hadn't come untrue while he slept. They were dead. His throat ached, and there was a dizzy throb behind his eyes. He couldn't catch his breath.

But sleep had been no better. In his dreams he heard Mum calling to him, her words echoing and distorted as though they came from across a great chasm. He knew he must find her, for she was moving further and further away from him, and soon that lovely voice would be lost to him forever. He thought he was running through a terrible storm, trying to follow her through rain and booming thunder and cracks of lightning. In one brilliant flash the woman who spoke with Mum's voice was revealed. It was not Mum. It—she—was something huge and beautiful and terrible. And yet her voice was so sweet! Despite his terror he bent his soul and will upon her words, straining to remember each one. But her speech was no longer the speech of hobbits. It was a language both melodious and rich, and yet utterly alien. He could understand none of what she said. And he wanted so desperately to understand!

The dream was like a final, bitter gift, offered but in the end denied him.

All song and laughter had departed from the Great Room. No one wanted to look at him. Even Reginard and Melba turned away. But Esmeralda brought him his tea and sat down beside him, gently brushing his hair off his forehead. Obediently he put the cup to his lips, but he couldn't swallow for the dreadful ache in his throat. He felt stunned, concussed.

"Oh, I know it's so hard, but you really must try to eat something, Frodo dear," Ezzie said. Mennie and Amaranth hovered over him, carefully watching his face.

"Well, he's dry-eyed as can be, bless him," Amaranth said.

"Good. Good. There's a brave lad," Mennie said. "A brave, brave lad."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NOTE on Chapter One "You are so special a gift to me. And your love, opening at once almost as soon as you were born, foretold to me the greatness of your spirit." —A paraphrase of words written by Tolkien to his son Christopher in Letter #64, 30 April 1944.