Because no matter how much you eat at Yule, there’s always leftovers. A follow up to “The Twelve Days of Yule”.

A/N: I had started to write this a long time ago but could never finish. I have been stuck at the point where Rosie goes to the kitchen for food, and have never been able to figure out what happens from there. I guess it was just waiting for the right bunny to come along and start nibbling on it.

Sam’s Hat

Foreyule 1419 SR
Bywater, the Cotton farm
 

“What’s happened to all of you, Sam?” Rosie asked. “You’re still as quick with a smile and easy with a laugh as you always have been, but you sit in thought more oftener than before and even I can see the hurt in your eyes though you hide it well from others, even Mr. Baggins. And Mr. Baggins now, he’s…” and here Rosie struggled for words and her many thoughts from the long sleepless nights since the Travelers’ return came to trouble her pretty face. Finally she settled on, “He’s a shadow of a shadow; I don’t know. And Mr. Meriadoc and Mr. Peregrin riding about so tall and fair with their songs and their stories. You’ve all changed so I hardly recognize you sometimes. What happened?”

Sam answered, “I can’t bear to tell it, not here. There are some things as shouldn’t ever be spoken in the Shire, some things that you oughn’t to hear.”

“That’s not your decision; it’s mine and I want to know.”

“That’s a tale for another day, Rosie,” Sam said, reluctant to agree. “Mayhap in the spring, when the sun is shining and the flowers are in bloom and the telling of it won’t seem so grim.”

“It hasn’t exactly been a picnic here either, Sam, and I’ll not be put on the back burner, not anymore. I need to know, so that I’ll know you again,” Rosie persisted.

“Very well. Let’s go to the barn. We’ll picnic in the hayloft, like we used to when we were young,” Sam said, reminded of this custom by Rosie’s words. “I’ll tell Mr. Frodo where I’ll be, and you get the food ready.”

So Rosie slipped out of the study to the kitchen, leaving Sam alone for a rare moment of silence. Sam sat on the edge of the chair, the warmth of the room seeping from his bones as he thought of the day to come. He could have stayed there all day, but as he told Mr. Frodo once so long ago, it’s the journey that never gets started that takes the longest to finish. With this thought in mind, he pushed himself out of the chair and went to the parlor where his master was poring over his mail.

Frodo looked up from his missives as Sam entered and noticed immediately the tight look on his friend’s face. He raised his eyebrows in question and Sam nodded. They had both known this day was coming, since their return and everyone had so many questions, with very little time to spare to ask them.

“Do you want me to come?” Frodo asked.

Sam shook his head. “I’ll be all right, I think,” he answered. “I don’t think I’ll tell her everything, not know. Just enough to please her curiosity.”

Frodo nodded and held out a hand. Sam took it, and Frodo squeezed reassuringly. “I’m here, if you need to talk afterward.”

Sam nodded and squeezed back. “I know,” he said, but he wouldn’t bother Frodo with his dark thoughts. His master had enough of his own to struggle with.

Sam went to the kitchen to find Rosie already gone. He pulled on his coat and followed her footprints through the frost to the barn. He climbed up to the hayloft and was pleased to see she had managed to pack a feast and two thick wool blankets in the short time she had. Then he frowned, wondering where and how such alacrity had been born in one who had never had to hurry before. He thought of the Cottons smuggling food to his father, as well as anyone else who might need it. He knew, from the little he had heard, that they smuggled more than just food: hobbits to Tookland to seek refuge, information to the rebels who needed it, medicine to those who were ill and couldn’t make it to the healers, who were watched so closely during the Troubles. They would have had to be careful as well as quick to avoid the Ruffians.

‘Very quick,’ Sam thought, looking at the spread again. ‘No picnic indeed,’ he thought with a sinking feeling. He had never offered to hear Rosie out about the things she had seen and been through. He would remedy that now though, once he was finished with his task.

He sank into the hay next to Rosie and wrapped himself in a blanket. She poured him some whisky, all they had to drink besides water, pulled from the river and boiled over the hearth. They both drank deep and long, to warm themselves as much to give them courage for the conversation ahead of them. Still, they sat in silence for many long moments, each wondering how to begin.

Finally, Rosie drew a deep breath and nudged Sam in the ribs with her elbow. “Well?” she asked. Such a simple question. Such a difficult answer.

“Well,” Sam began, “it all started when Gandalf come back early last spring, or the spring before last now, and told Mr. Frodo about this Ring as he got from Mr. Bilbo.”

He told her everything, or nearly everything, paraphrasing there, elaborating here. He kept the darker parts as brief as he could, not wanting to say more than he needed on that account, but he told her nearly everything of Rivendell, Lothlórien, Ithilien, the field of Cormallen, and Minas Tirith after the war. He told her about their return journey back, telling her of Rohan and meeting the Ents at Isengard, admitting to seeing Sharkey on the road in Dunland. This time, he was brief about Rivendell and even briefer of their return down the Great East Road. He stopped his narrative when they reached the gates of Buckland.

“And that’s that,” he ended with a shrug. She knew the rest of the story well enough.

By this time, it was late afternoon. The pale sun outside had done little to warm them throughout the day. Much of the whisky was gone, as well as the food, but they were both as sober as could be, rather unfortunately to Sam’s mind as he closely watched Rosie’s troubled face.

She hadn’t said anything at all during the long telling of his tale, but she seemed now to be struggling over many different thoughts and questions, all of which were vying for attention. She took another sip of her whisky and licked her lips, her soft brown eyes focusing on some far off place.

“Rosie?” Sam asked after a time.

Rosie shook herself back to the present and looked at Sam. He was pale under his brown skin and troubled, but otherwise whole. 'Or mostly whole,' she amended to herself. 

Before the Troubles, when they were children and just bosom cousins and best friends, she had seen him naked many times, washing from a long day of hard work or hard play, or splashing in the Water when he thought no one else was about to see. She'd had only glimpses of him since his return, once when she accidentally walked in on him while he was changing, or one more memorable time after the fighting was over and her mother realized he was injured. He had insisted the injury was nothing important and already healing, but Lily had refused to hear it and saw him out of his shiny mail.

They had both been shocked at what they saw, for the mail had hidden it well. Before, a robust and hail hobbit with a healthy bulge of girth about his belly, he was now thin, once-starved bones taking on the appearance of freshly-restored fat, but still slim and well-packed, his muscles hardened with trials they couldn’t begin to imagine. He had been strong before, but now he vibrated with a sort of strength that rather scared Rosie, all the more startling for how deprived and weakened he had clearly been. This was not her Sam, not at all. And yet it was, for he had seen their shock and managed to make them laugh by telling silly, nonsense stories while they stitched up the gash to his shoulder, his last if not his first of such injuries.

He was still recovering his appetite, more readily than poor Mr. Frodo, but it would be a long time before he looked a proper hobbit again. ‘Not that he isn’t a proper hobbit,’ she thought. ‘He’s just more now.’ More of what though, she couldn’t say.

She reached out a cold hand and he fumbled with his blanket, freeing one of his hands to take it. “I see you’ve been through more than I thought,” she said, “and there’s much left to tell still, or my name isn’t Cotton. But perhaps you are right. Those stories are best told when it’s not so gloomy already.”

Sam smiled wanly at this and his hand tightened around hers in grateful reflex. His shoulders relaxed considerably and some of the color began to return to his face.

“Just answer me one more question?” she asked, and the wariness returned to his features in a blink. He nodded, slowly. “What exactly happened to the hat I made you? I worked hard on that you know, and it was meant to see you safe through your travels. Seems you could have kept better track of it.”

Sam’s face took on an odd transformation, from wariness, to bewilderment, to confusion, to fear, to nostalgia and finally settled on wry humor. His mouth quirked into a sheepish grin and he shrugged helplessly.

“Well, we woke up in that barrow, as I said, naked as the day we were born,” he answered at length. “There weren’t no clothes nor hats to be spied anywhere, and once we were out, well, we couldn’t reckon going back in.”

“But this Tom person you met went in,” Rosie said. “You could have had him root about for it, as he didn’t seem bothered none by what all was in there.”

Sam considered this point for a moment, then shrugged again. “We were just that glad to have the sun on our faces,” he answered. “I guess I should have thought of it, only I didn’t and now it’s rather too late anyhow. I weren’t the only one to lose my hat though. Gandalf went away with a blue hat and come back with a grey one. Now that I think on it, we never did find out why, having other matters to worry about. Mayhap he stole it from Saruman, or Sharkey as you call him.”

“Well, whatever happened with his hat, I’m glad he leastways got one as matched his robes,” Rosie said practically. “That blue one always did bother me.”

And finally Sam laughed, a true laugh, full and hearty that reached his eyes and ached his sides, and sent them both into giggle fits. They laughed long and hard, and though the sun was sinking in the west, the hayloft glowed with warmth and light. They knew then they would be all right.
 
 
 

The end
 
 

GF 12/27/08