Christmas is a fad.
The others don't believe it when he says this, they make excuses and allowances for their strange little cobbled together holiday. How its been here for two thousand years already. He almost laughs at the person who says that, it is only through the fact that it is Fanny that he manages retrains himself.
Instead he states a simple fact.
"And in another two thousand years it will be something else."
They look uncomfortable when he says this, every one of them, they do not like to be reminded that the caveman, the simple savage, has seen more of their people's history unfold than they will ever be able to learn.
He loses interest in the conversation after that, Christmas, the current name for this winter festival has never held much interest for him. He is vaguely aware of the other ghosts talking about their happy memories with the holiday, the people they shared it with - Pat and his family, the Captain and his monarch, Kitty and her vile sister. He knows he is being unkind, he knows that deep down there is joy and merit to this winter festival. To feasting and taking merriment in the the darkest cycles of the moona. There certainly had been with the others that had come before it, the winter solstice of the ancient pagans, Saturnalia of the Romans, other feast days and celebrations whose names have become lost in the tangle of his memory.
But its the arrogance of this belief that just because their holiday, their religion, is dominant now, means that it will always be so, that rubs him the wrong way. When someone had been around as long as him, everything was a passing obsession.
Still, he decides when he observes Mike's excitement at his family's visit, at proving himself a man and provider by hosting the celebration; and Alison's gentle hope at nothing more than singing a 'Christmas carol', that this year, he will keep his opinions and himself, to himself. He cannot really enjoy it as they do, he has been dead too long for that now, but he will not ruin their joy with his common sense.
At least not this year, anyways, not the mated pair's first year in their own home. Now next year, well, if they lasted that long they probably could handle anything Robin could dish out.
Lately Robin has made a conscious effort not to 'drift away', as Fanny had once called his tendency to fall back in to times that had come before. After all, there is so much going on in the present now, with Alison and her Mike there. She may no longer scream as loudly when he jumps out at her anymore, but she is still something so new and alive that just her presence could entertain a ghost for years, decades even. If she lasts that long.
Being mean again, he doesn't want to be mean, not in that deep kind of cynical way. Not anymore, it is why - he will step back. Will not spend his time switching the lights on their little tree on and off until they shatter into a hundred colourful pieces. Though that certainly would have been fun to do. Will not follow poor Mike round the house messing with and flickering the lights, until the man broke down and screamed at the spot just over Robin's head to 'go away'.
Not this winter festival, instead he has settled on finding a private spot, a spot where the others will not so easily stumble upon him and just sit. Letting the memories claw his mind back down to meet them again. He never picks a memory, never makes a conscious choice to focus on just the one, it always comes and finds him, if he lets it. If there was no longer enough to distract him anymore.
And there won't be, not this Christmas anyway.
He closes his eye and waits for the memory to come.
And waits.
And waits.
But no matter how long he closes his eyes for and tries to block out the sounds of the world around him, the memory never comes. He is still here, trapped in the present. Strange he never would have thought himself so...stuck before, before Alison, before Mike and the living life they breathed into the house by their mere presence.
Finally, in frustration, he opens his eyes again and tries not to sigh. Well, this was pointless, he'll have to try and find some other way to keep out of the way. Maybe he should curl up by the fire, or slink off into the shadows and pretend he does not exist. Try and remember what it was like when he almost didn't, when he was not Robin, or Rogh. When he was not family or spirit, when he was nothing more than a shadow on the ground.
Maybe he is just sulking, forever left out, forever a little unsure how to handle the Others and their celebrations. He had enjoyed watching the Winter Festivities of the Saxons and even the Normans, enjoyed the tales of Saturnalia that Rowena had weaved for him on the cold days of the year. But it is different with the other ghosts, different to actually interact with the people who wanted to celebrate. Who wanted to talk about their memories of celebrating. Particularly hard when Robin has no memories of his own people's celebrations of such times, at least none that would stay with him past a drifting off period.
Maybe they didn't have them, Robin wasn't sure who had said that - it sounded insulting enough to be Julian, or Fanny, or the poor Captain with his too sad eyes. But no, why would they care about his people, enough to even speculate on them. It was Pat, poor sweet little Pat, who still seems enamoured with the idea of Robin and his long dead people. Sometimes he says things that are very insulting indeed, but Robin never corrects him, what was the point? Who but Robin is still around to be insulted?
With such depressing thoughts still swirling in his mind Robin drifts away from his secluded spot, and finds himself moving towards the entranceway of the great house. Where, he can already see that the other ghosts are crowded round the doorway. He stands at the edge of their group and tries to peer over the far higher heads of the Captain and silly Thomas Thorne. But it is no good, Robin can't see anything and the other Ghosts' constant chatter mean he can hardly hear anything either. Their voices blend together and muddle in his head, until he isn't even sure why they are standing there, let alone why he still is.
He should go and sit in the shadows again, pretend he is one of them and no bother to anyone, at all. Sulking maybe, but not entirely untrue he thinks. He is just about to turn around, maybe make a show of storming off in a huff...but then the ghosts part. Flinching out of the way with painfully bought practice as the Livings walk by. Alison first carrying some kind of food on a platter, and then two other women, one older with short spikey grey hair, the other younger and fuller in body. Fat and smiling, like only the most beautiful of the Family's women. He remembered that at least. Their skin was a dark brown colour, like Kitty's, like Mike's. Like the old gods of the Others, in the very dawning of this upper world of theirs.
The three are chatting and laughing, but they are going by too fast for Robin to catch exactly what they are laughing about. The ghosts almost close ranks behind the three again, but the sound of other voices, voices of the living, flick them back like a whip to the face. Another woman slightly thinner this time, with long swinging braids tumbling down like black waves from the top of her head comes through the path the ghosts have made next. In her hands she carries a kind of plastic basket, at least those are the only words Robin currently has in his head to describe it. And inside the basket is a baby with same face of a god, smiling wide, and gazing up at the ghosts in genuine joy and wonder. Robin knows already that some infants can see them, just as Mary does, but neither of them had mentioned it when the other Ghosts had been demanding to know if there had ever been anything like what Alison could do.
He knows why he had kept quiet on the subject, but he wonders why Mary had, if she felt no compulsion to keep the fact to herself anymore. Maybe one day, he will find the courage to ask her, maybe one day he will find the courage for a lot of things. But for now, courage is not the name of the game at least not where the ghosts are concerned. For the woman with the child has caught up with the first three livings, her lovely voice ringing high with a laugh that makes even sulking Robin smile.
And then Mike is there, his face all scrunched up in annoyance. Funny Robin had thought only he could make the living man make that kind of face. And then Robin turns his eyes to the living person walking by Alison's mate's side, and even though it shouldn't have been possible since he is already dead, Robin feels his heart stop inside his chest.
For the person walking beside Mike now, may have been very strange in all manner of ways, but the most notable thing about him is that he is very, very small. Small, with large, hairy feet, and leaf shaped ears.
Robin, Robin is certain he didn't faint then, but on the other hand he still finds himself waking on the floor hours later, with no sign of Mike, the stranger, or any of the other ghosts around him. Had he dreamed it, fallen into a fake memory? But then why was he here in the entrance part of Button House? A place he never really went unless they had visitors.
But it couldn't be...could it...no...Small Ones didn't exist. They were just fairy tales, old children's stories the Wanderer had tricked him with. Weren't they?
They don't exist.
These were the words that Robin continues to repeat to himself as he peels himself from the floor, and begins to move through the house with his usual lumbering gate. They were just myth, that was what his other fathers and all his mothers had assured him every-time they told him or one of his many siblings a story of the strange small people, with the large feet. They'd only told them those stories when they were very little, by the time they had begun to train with weapons, or learn the arts of herbs, or the other trades, most Family members hardly even recalled the old legends of childhood.
The Wanderer hadn't forgotten of course, he'd spent his whole life looking for those mythical tiny folk. And maybe Robin would have as well, if the old crook hadn't abandoned him with the Folk of Mahal. A pain in his chest, an old ache, an old regret, he had never returned to his foster parents. Never seen their faces again, never returned the stone, that terrible Arkenstone to their hands.
He had failed them, just like he had failed Owa.
These were the thoughts that had ensnared his mind as he walked into the main living area, the one that Alison and Mike generally used for sitting and talking, and the daily chores of living. The people, the new people in the house are sitting and talking as well, their outer furs - jackets, he corrects himself - had been peeled from their backs and they sit now in jumpers, and warm scarves. The house is still a cold thing for livings he reminds himself.
Mike and Alison are no where to be seen, probably gone to do something vaguely related to the holiday, like cooking or covering every available surface in shiny metal things. Oh sure, that made sense. The two young woman are sat on the main sofa, a thin metal phone clutched between them. They watch something on its screen, giggling in wicked glee, it reminds him of his own sisters, when they were about to play a terrible trick on himself or one of his brothers. Behind them, Kitty leans over their heads, desperately trying to make out and understand what they're laughing at. She giggles too, but it is more childish, the attempts of a younger sister trying to keep up with the japes of her elders.
On the smaller sofa, the older woman with the spiky grey hair sits talking to someone. The way her body is angled makes it impossible for Robin to see the other person.
"I think I'll just pop into the kitchen, help Michael with the sprouts. You know, I can't sit around doing nothing on Christmas. It just isn't right, isn't how I'm made. You don't think he'll be annoyed do you?"
"Why would he be?" Says the unseen person, the deep rumble of the voice revealing them as male. "It's a lot of work, cooking your first Christmas, or Ringmas, dinner by yourself. I know I wouldn't have minded my Mum showing up to give me a hand."
"Oh I know that," says the older woman, a slight irritation in her voice perhaps revealing the last embers of an old argument, long beaten into the ground of time and age. "But Micheal can be so sensitive about these things, he wants to be the adult this holiday. But I can smell that he's already burnt something, I don't want to hurt him but I can't let Christmas dinner be ruined."
"So, just show up and start helping, don't give his ego time enough to argue. I'm sure he'll thank you when its all done." says the unseen man.
"Yes, yes you're right. That's what I'll do,"and with those words she stands up quite abruptly, revealing at last exactly who she had been speaking to all this time. It was the Small One, his skin dark, his face that of an elder, and the hair on the top of his large feet grey and curly, not quite as white as what little hair remained on his head.
As the woman leaves, he turns and speaks over his shoulder to her.
"While you're doing that, could you make sure that it wasn't the Ringbread he burnt. My mouth's been practically watering for that all year."
The woman snorts, but makes no other sign that she had heard him.
And then she is gone.
Leaving the small one alone on the couch.
Slowly, Robin lowers himself to sit in the newly vacated cushion of the sofa, and stares unabashedly at the small person on the other end of the seat. Maybe, maybe he is wrong...maybe this 'man' is just a very small Other. With pointed ears and big feet. He remembers that film, the one that had sparked the memories of Gimli and Legolas within him again. There had been people there with large feet and pointed ears, but they were Others - you could always tell by the shape of the skull. And he vaguely remembers Mike and Alison complaining to each other how silly it was to use camera tricks like that, when they could have just hired...hired actual...actual hobbit actors.
He doesn't know what the word hobbit means, although it was used several times in the film, but it was hard enough to focus on the storyline without making the Livings stop it every twenty seconds to answer Robin's linguistic questions. So he hadn't asked what they had meant by hobbit...he wishes he had now.
The small one on the other end of the sofa suddenly shivers violently.
"Oh, this place is cold. I feel like a ghost walked over my shadow." He says gazing at the spot where Robin has sat down with a high level of suspicion.
"Mike did say it was haunted, Dad." Says one of the young women on the couch.
Dad.
That was another word, a modern word, for father.
He us the woman's father then, no, he was both women's father. He can see it in their eyes, both copper, a strange colour for a human to have. But not for a child of Mahal, and Gimli had always said in those times he could be persuaded to talk about them at all, that the Little Folk had been related to Mahal's folk. That they had in fact been children of Mahal themselves.
The Small One on the sofa closes his own copper eyes then, and breathes out in the kind of slow controlled way that Owa had done when she was trying to focus. When she was trying to focus on the voices of the gods.
"Well, he's not wrong, there is something here. Something old, something very, very old. So old, I don't think its human."
At these words Kitty straightens from her position behind the other sofa, and looks at Robin with confusion and worry deep in her eyes. They are not used to being so easily perceived by the living. Not even now with Alison and her strange gift. The old Lady Button had never believed in psychics and the like, and so had never allowed them on her grounds. And this felt like something more than the gifts of men.
"Powerful too, I don't think I've ever felt something like it. It's like it's glowing, glowing there beside me. It's not human, it's not hobbit, it's something older than that, something that came before us."
Robin doesn't know how he feels about continuously being called 'it'.
" Me not it, me man."
He mutters under his breath, although he does not expect to be heard and indeed, he is not.
"I see light before my eyes, green and blue, all the colours that exist, and some that never will now."
That sounds like a disturbingly close description of the Arkenstone. Is it even Robin the Small One is seeing, or at least sensing? Kitty looks actually afraid now, afraid enough maybe to go running to Alison or maybe even Fanny. And the idea of someone, any of the ghosts discovering Robin's connection to that ancient and terrible stone fills the caveman with an old kind of terror. Half shame, half protective instinct. Or at least that is what it feels like when he steps away from the Small One on the couch, and moves over to where Kitty stands her eyes still wide and frightened. He tries to make his voice go as soft and comforting as it can as he says.
"What we eat for Christmas? You show me?"
Kitty looks at him then, still more confused, but then she nods slowly as if pleased to be given a reason to leave the room.
It's not enough to stop her talking to the others, he didn't really think it would be.
They look at him now strangely, or they would if they weren't so carried away with their Christmas celebrations. Fanny follows on Alison's heels, demanding that she cut down a tree. He can't help muttering about the absurdity of putting a tree inside your cave, but he does it very quietly - because he can't bear them looking anymore.
He knows that Alison has planned, or is planning, something special for the other ghosts. He does not know why he is so sure he has not been included. That in this time of great stress, and relatives with their snark, Robin has been forgotten. It is a good thing he tells himself.
He does not want to be noticed.
Does not want to be stared at.
He does not care that on the day there will be no present for him, that he will not be called away to another room by the living lady of the house for a special moment like the others. He does not let himself feel sad, or happy, or any kind of emotion at this at all. Because, he tells himself, this is what he wanted to happen.
He wanted to be forgotten, at least for one day.
It is still going to hurt, just a bit on the day, but what is one more hurt after thousands of years of them already piled high on his doorstep? He does not let himself think on it much. Instead, he sticks close to the Livings, the ones that neither see him or know he is there. Well, that's not true. The father, the Small One, he can sense Robin, or something about Robin anyway.
But he doesn't know it is Robin that makes him shiver, that makes him turn his head this way and that trying to get a glimpse at whatever...whatever seems to be haunting his son's house. It is still strange to think of this Small One, this hobbit, being the father of Mike who Robin had always thought was a man. In the species sense of the word. Although now he thought of it there were similarities between the two of them. Their eyes for one, both dark copper, and then there were the pair of pointed ears that Mike sported. Robin had never thought anything of that, men had pointed ears all the time - hardly ever leaf shaped, but look at Robin's face, he was hardly one to point and laugh at the oddities of someone's birth.
Robin observes the two of them now, from his safe vantage point near the great fire place at the centre of the room. Mike is scolding his Father once more, after having just escorted his Mother out of the kitchen by the elbow. Again. Apparently she somehow kept getting in even though he had locked the door.
It's a funny face Mike is pulling now, frustrated and angry and sad all at once.
He wants to prove himself, show himself as a man, or at least an adult, in the eyes of those he loves. Robin no longer questions how sometimes he just knows these things. He used to think that maybe it was because he was a ghost, that was how he saw things clearer than the living. But none of the other ghosts do that, so there goes that theory.
Maybe it was because he was Family.
Nope, the Family had been basically normal men - barring the Mog-urs and Medicine Women of course, but Robin hadn't been one of those in life so that didn't explain it either. It was probably something to do with the Arkenstone. Lately it seemed all strange things had something to do with the Arkenstone.
Mike's father is shaking his head again, drawing Robin's thoughts back down to the present. Really, if he were thinking sensibly, this is the person who Robin should be avoiding. Really if he were thinking sensibly he would have gone back down to the basement. Put his ear to the ground and tried to hear the thump, thump, thump of the Arkenstone below the ground.
Actually, that wasn't very sensible at all. He probably should just stay here, curled up in front of the fire. Sit. Stay. Like Mike had said. Show he was a good boy, at least in this portion of his life. Mike is gone, out to do something for Alison, something to do with the holiday. Going to find a tree or some silly nonsense like that.
Yeah, and Robin's people were the savages.
Once Mike is gone, his father smiles, as if he's just heard a really funny joke but just hasn't bothered to say it out loud yet.
"Right, I think we should go help Mike with that tree, don't you?"
There is no other living in the room, the Small One's mate and daughters having grown bored about being confined to the same space for so long had wandered off ages ago. They were probably in the kitchen, continuing to make the dinner. Now that Mike is off to find a tree, there is no one to stop them.
"I mean, he can hardly find a good one outside, at night, in those dark woods. And what kind of father would I be if I just let him go off by himself. You coming?"
And when he says this last bit, he looks right at Robin. Or rather at the spot just over Robin's head. There is no one else in the room. He must be talking to Robin. And with that certainty in his mind, Robin gets up from his spot by the fire, and can't help the smile that come to his lips as he says...
"I come."
As Robin follows behind the Small One, this sire of Mike, he talks. The Small One that is, not Robin, there would be no point. For while this person might be able to sense something when Robin is near, they can't really talk to each other. Not like Robin and Alison can.
It's not the same gift, the same power as the likes of Alison and..and...Rowena held within their grasp. It's something else. Something very different.
"You see," explains Mike's father as he unlocks the boot of his family's car. "I'm a Ganyman by trade, do you know what that is?"
Robin does not. He doesn't say so though, what would be the point? It is better to just stand and listen as he is chatted at. After all, he doesn't want to miss any of this.
"No, I don't think you do. I don't get the feeling of hobbit from you, but I don't think you're quite human either, are you my dead friend."
Robin is human.
He is of the race of men. Just...a different kind of man than the sort that walk around today.
He hadn't thought that had made a difference, at least in death. After all they were all, mostly ghosts here - whether Family or Other they all stayed. Yet the way this man, this Small One, talked, it was as if Robin was inherently different in spirit to the other ghosts.
Robin watches as from the boot of the car the Small One takes something large and mechanical. He hefts it over his shoulder and then, after closing the boot with a heavy hop and a shove, turns towards the woods then.
"Don't worry, Mike's always doing this sort of stuff. Wants to make out he's a big man, when he's still just a kid. Only just turned thirty three. If he had things his way I'd just stay back in the house, and let him get himself hurt. Well, no thank you, I'm a parent and I won't just sit around twiddling my thumbs while my son puts himself in danger. Were you ever a parent?"
Yes, several times over.
"Yes, I'm getting the feeling you were. I'm sorry I know it must be hard losing them."
It was, is, it's one of the many things that Robin just doesn't let himself think about anymore.
"Ganymen are, how do I explain this... we're kind of like the shepherds for the dead. We help them pass on to the next world, you understand?"
He helped people be sucked off?
Could he help Robin be sucked off? What about the others, could he help them be sucked off too?
"Well, not all the dead just the hobbit dead. Well the hobbit and the goblin dead, they're our cousins after all, when you take the long view of things. I usually can't sense much from the ghosts of men, just a bit of chill in the air. And even then I'm not always sure if that's them or just this British weather. But you're different, I could sense you - though you don't feel like a hobbit at all."
So he could not help them be sucked off, well, that was disappointing.
"Do you understand me?" asked the Small One, this 'Ganyman'.
"Yes," he continued even though there was no way that Robin could have possibly answered. "Yes, I think you do. Good, I hate to think I was just making nonsense noises. I wish you could answer back, but maybe that was a bit much to hope for."
If they had been inside Robin would have flickered the lights to show the Small One that he understood. That he was there, and he could hear every word out of his mouth.
But they aren't inside anymore.
They are in the forest.
Amongst the tall fir trees that Fanny and her husband had ordered to be planted.
As they walk the Small One keeps talking, and talking, and talking. Telling Robin all about his life. How he met his wife - 'A human, my mother was livid' - the birth of his children 'all as tall as her of course, we were a tad releived. It's no easy thing being as short as a hobbit in a country made primely for humanity's needs'.
Robin lets his words roll over him and thinks, thinks of the legends of childhood. Of the old hole, the little burrow of his boyhood loneliness. Were those still real? Probably not, even hobbits, the small folk, the Small Ones had out grown the world that Robin had lived in.
Now they had cars. Now they had tele-phones. And now most of all they had loud machines that cut down trees faster than you could blink.
The tree falls aside under the administrations of the machine in the Small One's hands, to reveal the stunned and slightly angry face of Mike.
Mike, who Robin had thought had been just another man of the Others. But who, all this time had carried the blood of legends, of hobbits, of Small Ones within his veins. And as his eyes pass from the living man, with his pointed ears and metal coloured eyes, and the argument he is about to start with his tiny father, to the ghosts that stand behind him, he realises something quite striking then.
Mike is clearly not the only one with such a striking lineage.
The Captain is scowling at Robin, as if the man of the Family had encouraged the father to upstage the son on purpose. The Captain with his pointed ears standing out stark against his military haircut. And his narrowed, metal coloured eyes.
And Robin, Robin the Caveman, Robin the strange, he who had once been called Rogh of the Family, Rogh of the Moona Tribe, son of the Wandering Father. The boy who had followed that liar into the wilderness in the hopes of seeing legends and maybe a sister again, couldn't stop the laugh that comes out of his mouth then.
For it seems he'd wound up finding those legends anyway.
The others don't understand. They think he is laughing at Mike or the other ghosts' shocked faces, but that is okay. Or they think him mad. But that is typical, and for once he finds he doesn't mind it all.
Things like that just don't bother him anymore.
Not with Small Ones still in the world.
He finds he actually feels merry, almost jolly.
You never know, maybe this Christmas thing would catch on after all.
The End