Chapter 3. Look Before You Leap

It was still full dark when Tolly reached the fishing path, and he wondered if Wren had sped faster than his wont, early as it was, and carefully as they’d gone in the darkness, with only a lantern to light their way. On a spring day the Sun ought to be peeking over the horizon by six, and so he could only imagine that the bedroom clock had been wrong, or why would it be as dark and cold as any winter morn?

The path was slippery with snow, and he dismounted, tying Wren to a nearby tree before he struggled up the hill. He didn’t want to lead the pony up, and down again, and risk a fall. It did not occur to him to wonder at the snow on the ground; it seemed to him an unusually heavy spring frost, perhaps, for he’d never known it to snow at this time of year.

Reaching the top of the bluff, he cautiously made his way along the path. Strangely enough, the path was intact, well back from the edge. Perhaps the engineers had been here, after the rescuers left, and the whole time the hobbits of the escort were combing the banks of the Tuckbourn for the bodies, they’d been carving a new path to take the place of the one fallen in.

He got down on his belly and inched toward the edge, holding the lantern over and peering down, though it made his head swim. It was a good thing he was lying down, dizzy as he was. The wild water had gone down since the previous day, quite a way down, but there was no sign of Ferdi’s body caught anywhere directly below the bluff.

Tolly nodded to himself, and lifted the lantern up again, though it seemed to have gained tenfold in weight, and he inched his way back to the path. His front was covered in mud when he stood to his feet again, but what did it matter? He’d probably look worse before the search was over, and mud would wash... though he thought he’d take a cold bath, rather than hot. The snow and mud had felt cool and refreshing, as a matter of fact.

He started down the hill to his waiting pony, but part way down his feet slipped out from under him and he ended by sliding down on his back, and he lost his grip on the lantern, and couldn’t see it anywhere, when he fetched up at the bottom of the trail. At least he was now evenly coated in mud, head to toe and on all sides.

Wren threw up his head at the apparition his rider presented in the dawning light—a mud-hobbit, to all appearances. The gelding calmed, however, when Tolly spoke, for the pony recognised the familiar voice, and he allowed his master to mount without much more than a snort.

Tolly guided him along the hill until they reached the stream. He craned upstream, blessing the receding of the waters that left the banks exposed, banks that had been hobbit-high in water the last time he’d seen them. He expected, however, that since Ferdi’s body was not hung up on any of the branches, on either side, that his old friend had been pulled downstream for some way.

They’d gone a mile, or maybe two? ...the previous evening, before they lost the light. He’d cover the same ground and beyond if need be, now with the water so much lower, and hope that he’d find Ferdi sooner than later. He was beginning to wish for that hot bath, now, as a chill seized him, rattling his teeth.

There was a mist in the air, or perhaps before Tolly’s eyes, and no matter how many times he wiped his hand across his eyes, the mist did not clear. They paced slowly along the bank of the stream, while Tolly scanned ahead on both banks, to no avail.

And then... heat coursed through his veins, as suddenly as if he’d been struck by lightning, and almost by reflex he loosened the clasp of his cloak, throwing the garment down without thinking much about it, peeled his leather gloves from his hands and dropped them as well, for what did a sweltering hobbit need with gloves? He opened his shirt buttons to let the cool morning air bless his burning flesh as they walked along, and sighed. He was so heated! The air must be warming. Of course it was, for it was springtide, was it not?

The plumes of mist from his pony’s nostrils must be steam, for surely Wren was as heated as Tolly himself on this furnace of a day. It did not occur to the head of escort that he could see his own breath, or if it did, it was with the merest interest—he was so overwarmed, he too was breathing steam.

He didn't know how far they'd gone when all thought of his own discomfort fled, in the sight he beheld. There was something dark in the streambed! A dark lump, that might have been a rock... The shape resolved itself in his fevered brain as his old friend, lying face-down in the water, drowned.

With a cry of grief, he flung himself from Wren’s back, not bothering to secure the reins, and floundered into the stream. The freezing water felt uncommonly good, bracing even, though he regarded streams with as much suspicion as most other Tooks. His younger brother Hilly had a fascination for water, and Tolly’d had to wade into the stuff often enough to pull him out, when both were little lads. But he’d never known water to feel so refreshing before!

If it weren’t for the fact that Ferdi had drowned in this water, Tolly would have blessed the stream for its effect on him. He no longer felt as if he were being boiled alive in his own sweat.

He wallowed to his knees, and a little past, before he reached the dark form, calling Ferdi’s name, for all the good it would do. And reaching his goal, he stopped, putting out a trembling hand, just short of touching the hunched figure. He did not want to grab Ferdi’s shoulder; he did not want to turn his friend over; he did not want to gaze upon the drowned face.

And yet he could not just leave the hobbit here, in the stream. No, he must do what was needful, and so he reached out a trembling hand.

Ferdi’s shoulder under his cloak was hard as rock, and ice would be less cold, Tolly thought, and the cloak was roughened by the tumbling of the water. Tolly grasped the shoulder firmly with both hands and gave a mighty heave, but instead of turning his old friend, lifting Ferdi to his shoulder, to haul him from the stream, he found himself overcome by dizziness. ‘Come along, Ferdi,’ he muttered. ‘I need to bear you back to Nell. She’ll be wondering what’s become of you...’

He seemed to hear his old friend’s infectious laughter. What are you about, Tolly, hugging river-rocks? I could say the same about your Sweetie! What would she say, if she were to see you at this moment?

River rocks. River rocks. The words tumbled in Tolly’s fevered brain, mixing with the chuckling of the stream. He blinked and when he forced his eyes open again, as wide as he could manage, it seemed to him that he was indeed draped over a large boulder in the middle of an icy stream, with rills of frost encrusted around its edges.

He wondered for a vague moment how he had come to be here, and then the chuckling of the water filled his senses, and the black of the rock expanded to envelop him and he knew no more.