As The Stars Wheeled By

As The Stars Wheeled By


The sky above Cane Cottage is vast, and tonight very clear. A low hummock some short distance away from Budge Hall, crowned with the briars and roses that lent it their name, it is a tiny smial, filled with dusty shelves and comfortable old furnishings. It has only two bedrooms, and the kitchen is rather small. It was never meant to shelter a growing family, and the décor is country quaint and simple. It is a place best suited to memories and the quiet passing of time, a gammer’s home, a widow’s retreat; and now, that lonely peace is mine.

The stars wheel endlessly above, and rolled into my improvised nest of heavy blankets upon Cane Cottage’s brambly crown, I lose myself in remembrance of the past. Old maps of the constellations lay abandoned next to me, the winking lights like old friends now, spinning tales and painting pictures for me of far away lands and distant events. The thick scrolls, well protected within the crackling leather of their case, had come tumbling into my arms as I set the beleaguered study to rights.

I have no fear of those Tall Folk that reportedly roam the Shire now, for what could they possibly want with someone like me? Cousin Rosamunda makes quite the fuss off locking gates and shuttering the windows at the Hall, but I’ve seen no danger skulking across the vast pasturelands and fields that extend here as far as the eye can see. All is quiet in Bridgefields…

The ragged scream cuts through the drowsy reverie the stars inspire, and terrified curiosity wars with the bone-deep instinct to stay still, unnoticed and unthreatened. The low murmur of feminine voices and the soft sob of pain that follows that first awful crescendo resolves the dilemma; something has happened at the Hall. Doors open and shut, and I rise in time to see a trio of ponies gallop northward, towards the Brockenbores, while candlelight paints golden beams across the gardens that separate Cane Cottage from the main smial.
Gathering up blankets and scrolls, two minutes on the spiraling path down sees me at my own door. But even as I make my way up towards the short steps that lead into the Hall kitchens, the lights have gone, darkness and silence filling the large smial.

“Rosamunda? Odo? Is anyone there? What’s happened?”

I wait with bated breath, straining to hear some reply, some stir of living souls behind the sturdy wood of the door. And all the while, the most awful imaginings spring into my mind, of those Mannish ruffians I’d so blissfully dismissed, of noisome shadows that haunted legends and tall tales and were now said to have regained substance, drawn in by the turmoil in our once peaceful Shire. I think of young Estella, sleeping somewhere within, innocent and vulnerable, and Primrose’s twin faunts, fresh as morning rain and unspoiled by the fears of their elders, and I cannot sit out here wondering what mischief is afoot in this smial, among those who took me back when I had nothing left.

The knob turns silently, the door whispers wide, and I wonder that I have not noticed before now just how strange it is that every hinge is so conscientiously oiled into quiet operation. The kitchen is familiar, despite the lack of light, and I stand very still, waiting for a sound, a draft, a hint of illumination. The smial itself seems to be holding its breath, and I cannot stop the shiver that ripples coldly up my back. Something is definitely wrong, and just as definitely secret.

The barest tremor through the hardwood beneath my feet nearly makes me scream, and I take a deep breath, advancing slowly towards the hallway that runs straight from the kitchen to the front door. The parlor to the left is a moonlit nightscape of lacy neatness, an extension of Rosamunda’s kitchen domain. To my right, the paneled door to Odovacar’s study is half open, and the faintest ray of light glows against the darkness, a tiny triangle at the rumpled edge of the sober rug before his desk. And now, when it is all but revealed, the soft squeak of the trapdoor below is impossible to mistake for anything else.

Standing beside it, I cannot imagine what could be waiting below, and a part of me has no desire to explore it further. It would be easy to simply walk away, back to Cane Cottage and the cold undemanding stars. It would be simpler. That cry… It had held more than common pain. And to hide this way, in one’s home, from one’s own, in times like these… Trouble waited beneath those floorboards. Danger. Pain. Feeling, caring…

The rug slides back easily, and the simple finger holes carved into the surface of the trapdoor give me a sure grip. These hinges too had been well greased. Light floods up, revealing a rude stair, and the master of Budge Hall crouched uncomfortably upon it, arrow knocked and ready.

“I thought you too old for foolish curiosity, Nora,” Odovacar rumbles, lowering the bow with a relieved grunt.

“I was worried…”

“Let her by, Odo. Let her reap the reward of her concerns.” Rosamunda sounds in equal parts irritated and grimly pleased, and stepping down into the bolthole, I quickly understand why. The Troubles have not bypassed the Bridgefields after all… they’ve simply gone, quite literally, underground.

Before I can even see anything, the scent of blood wafts up, and a host of imagined memories, all bad, rushes across my senses. Six months is not nearly long enough for even dark fancies to fade. He is young, so young, and the blood is all so very very red in the candles’ glow. Young Estella, barely out of her tweens, has her hands covered in it, and I belatedly recall the interrupted apprenticeship that has been another casualty of the Tall Folk’s presence within our borders. She looks barely older than her charge, and it is strange to watch her nimble fingers gently cleanse the gaping wound, directing her mother with an assurance I’ve never witness in the smial above.

The hours pass, the candles dwindle. There is little I can do but fetch and carry, yet it is impossible for me to go from here. I could do nothing for my Berangrim, but I can imagine someone like Estella drawing away his pain, wherever he had wound up after that strange fracas near Tookland. I certainly hope someone did that for him, or that he had no time to feel the agony this young hobbit is groaning beneath. They had returned my husband to me clean, quiet and composed, and in some way, for the sake of whatever hobbitess was waiting, praying, in vain somewhere, I could pay a little of that kindness forward, here and now.

Dawn lights the sky, washing the night’s stars from the graying heavens, and the water from the pump at the bottom of the kitchen steps is blessedly cold.

“It was a kindness, for it to end,” Estella murmurs, hands swimming endlessly against each other beneath the running water, though the blood is already long gone.

“Perhaps.”

“It was, I’m sure of it.”

She pulls away from the pump at last, moving wearily through the garden, eyes fixed to the sky. There is only one star there now - the last to fade, as it is the first to shine - and as she runs her fingers among the rosemary, bruising leaves to release their sharp scent, I hear her murmur a familiar and heartbroken prayer.

“Let there be kindness for my love, beyond my reach, till we be rejoined…”


The stars are bright above Cane Cottage when the sound of hooves echoes across the night. Star maps and blankets are quickly stored, and there is journey bread and fresh fruit in the basket that I leave beside my door as I make my way up through the garden. It will be gone before dawn, the beds and cots in the second bedroom unmade.

Because some doors once opened can never be closed, and some secrets can never be unlearned.






A/N: Writtern for the "Never Have I Ever Challenge"

A. A mystery from the First Person Limited point of view
B. Stars/the cosmos.
C. Character list: N

Big Thanks to Vlad for the beta!