Marigold Gamgee had always done everything exceptionally well. To be good, thorough and useful – that was the best path to take for the youngest child of a large and hardly well-to-do family, or so she had gathered early on. From her days as a wee lass tending to the bumps and scrapes of her family, a role she had assumed entirely on her own and that had earned the pet name "our little healer," to folding the napkins for her father's luncheon as the only child, at 35, who had not yet married or gone off – as Samwise had – to parts unknown, there was nothing in the world that Marigold did half way. In fact, in her life she had given up on just one thing.
When it happened, the midwife, Mrs. Bracegirdle, lost no time in telling the Gaffer – in the middle of market, within earshot of half of Hobbiton – that her last apprentice, Marigold Gamgee, had been the biggest disappointment she had ever known, and if all he did was marry her off, consigning her to a life of cooking and wet nappies, he would be the biggest idiot in all the four farthings. The Gaffer had scratched his head and likely forgot her words just as soon, except to complain to the other gaffers at the pub of ungrateful daughters and the time and effort it took to educate a healer – all gone to the dogs. But Sam, once he had gotten back from his adventure and heard the news, had set the gears in his mind to turning.
In fact, Sam could not help but notice that Marigold still did her work with speed and efficiency: nimble fingers pressing gauze onto wounds and spoonfuls up to lips as she tended to the wounded in the Scouring of the Shire – and this with her being fresh out of the Lockholes herself, a fact that made Sam want to resurrect Lotho Sackville-Baggins so he could kill him all over again. She was more subdued than usual, certainly, but still the same old Marigold, particularly as she ate and gained back her charms. So the fact that she staunchly refused to work for Mrs. Bracegirdle – or for Dr. Boffin, who had called upon her personally and offered to teach her a different healing art – seemed to her brother passing strange.
Sam had always been shy around lasses, even his own sisters, so Marigold could tell that he was wrestling with how to ask her what went wrong. But in the end they had settled on a wordless understanding that she would tell him when the time was right. And then Mr. Frodo had offered for Sam and Rosie to come live with him, to which Sam and Rosie had replied that they couldn't possibly accept such an honor, and then the three hobbits had gone back and forth like the passing of a cup of tea between them until it all turned to steam. In the end, a compromise was reached. That compromise was Marigold.
"You're a right capable lass, Mari," Sam had said as she cleared up after supper, the two of them staying back as the rest of the family, a rambunctious group, had scattered to perform their evening ablutions. This was a routine they had settled into after Sam's return. "I know it didn't turn out as planned, that midwife work of yours, but there's still a lot you can do with yourself…"
Bit by bit, Sam had explained what had happened to him and Frodo in their travels, and what would now be expected of her. And Marigold had acquiesced easily. Perhaps too easily. She ought to have been put out that the whole thing was essentially planned already, except for the little matter of her consent, but she was not.
She had "met" Frodo Baggins when she was but a wee lass, some time after he had moved to Hobbiton to live with Mr. Bilbo from a place called "Buck-Land." She had known of him before, of course, but tied to her mother's apron-strings and occupied with Sam in learning her letters by drawing them in the sand, she at first had paid little mind to the new young master.
One day, though, as she had strayed from her playfellows, a little older by then and allowed to go farther from home, she had taken it into her head that it would be nice to climb a tree and see all the way to Eastfarthing, and perhaps even beyond. For Sam had been coming back more and more from his lessons with odd words on his tongue - place-names that weren't easy to pronounce or remember, but whispered like the wind and danced like fireflies on a midsummer evening.
It was, as she recalled, a linden tree that she had climbed.
She had climbed nearly to the top, singing a song about the love of a Tookland lad - a cautionary tale of the places he'd take your heart, learned from her sisters - when all of a sudden the branch under her went "snap" and the leaves around her began to move, all upward. Before she knew it she had hit the ground with a heavy thud, a white-hot pain slicing through her leg. Her vision went white as well.
When she came to, her leg still hurt, and so did her head. But she was being lifted up from the forest floor by a pair of strong arms, though they were not her Gaffer's or her brothers'.
"Shh, I've got you." The voice was not immediately familiar, though not wholly strange. She had heard it in the past, in polite greetings and kind comments on a fun game, a pretty dress, or ball returned to the snot-nosed bairns of Bagshot Row. The accent was strange — more rolling languor than most hobbits she knew, but also a deliberation to every word.
He spoke to her like she was his own.
"Let's get you home."
The hobbit's chest was clad in soft linen. His body was warm and smelled clean, mixed with the smell of pipeweed and of something else nice: not tree bark or leather, but a softer cousin of the two. She looked up, and through the white pain that clouded her vision, she saw a pair of blue eyes, dark hair, and a tall, well-etched nose and cheeks. She wondered if the creature who had found her was a hobbit after all, or perhaps an elf from Mr. Bilbo's stories.
Ever since that day, Frodo would visit the Gamgees often. Marigold, too, would go from time to time to Bag End to bring her father and Sam their luncheons. They all became good neighbors and friends, and soon the story of how Mari met Mr. Frodo by falling out of a tree became a jolly good joke to both families.
In retrospect, as Marigold had learned about the hobbit body, it struck her as strange that in a moment of pain she could remember such details so clearly. She had thought back to that moment many times over the years, as others spoke of Mr. Frodo as odd, fey, and much too given to reading books and wandering far from home. At times, when such talk came up she even felt compelled to defend him, but being by nature shy and accustomed to fading into the background of her large and boisterous family, she often could not find the words.
She thought of it even now, as she stood outside of Bag End, having arrived some minutes early as was her custom. She liked to catch her breath before starting a task. But it would not do to dream too much when there was a job to be done, so she squared her shoulders, adjusted her bag, put on a bright smile and knocked on the round green door.
