Chapter 12. Home Is Where the Hart Is
A week after they'd found him in the berry garden, Wallas was on his feet, seeming fully recovered except for his halting speech. When the hobbit had first indicated he wanted to get out of the bed, just after finishing breakfast, Gorbyl had helped him dress in some of long-ago Wallas's old clothing, kept folded in the clothes press waiting for their owner's return. The fine fit of the clothing only reinforced his conviction that the recovering hobbit was his own son, returned to the Wood after unknowable experiences.
'My... my own clothes?' Wallas asked.
'These are your clothes now,' Gorbyl said. 'The clothes we found you in aren't fit for rags.'
'What...?' Wallas said. 'How...?'
The old hobbit shook his head. 'I don't know, lad,' he said. 'I don't know what happened to you, but you were at death's door when we found you in the berry garden.'
'Berry garden?' Wallas asked, then said, 'Show me. Please.' Perhaps he was naturally polite, or perhaps he'd heard Gorbyl talking to Flam about forgetting to use please and thank you consistently.
In any event, the old hobbit nodded and sat himself down next to Wallas. 'Here now,' he said. 'You're a solid-enough fellow. Put your arm over my shoulders and stand up when I do.'
After they stood up together, he instructed Wallas to take a few steps whilst he provided support to the fellow. 'Don't want you to fall on your nose, after all,' he said. When they'd walked to the bedroom door, they were greeted by the two lads' cheers, along with a solemn Lark who simply nodded and said, 'Good.'
Wallas pulled his arm from Gorbyl's shoulders and bent to address the lass. Though he was a bit wobbly, it was clear that he was rapidly improving in terms of balance and strength. 'How is it with you, Lark?'
She shrugged, but then stared into his face and said, 'You don't know me. You're not my da.'
'Now lass,' Gorbyl began, but Wallas held up his hand as he straightened, still looking into Lark's face.
'I hope to know you,' he said. 'If you'll give me the chance, that is.'
But a child's heart is not always easily won. 'I have eggs to gather,' she said, and turned on her heel.
And when Gorbyl opened his mouth to speak to her about her behaviour, Wallas caught his eye and shook his head. 'Don't,' he said. 'I think she...' he paused, and a faraway look came into his eye.
'Are you remembering something?' Gorbyl asked slowly, pushing down excitement lest he scare the memory away somehow.
Wallas came back from where ever his mind had wandered. '...she needs some time,' he said, and blinked. 'I remembered someone... but she's gone again.'
'Dove?' the old hobbit ventured in a whisper, but Wallas shook his head and repeated, 'Gone.'
'No worries, lad,' Gorbyl said, patting Wallas on the shoulder. 'It's a good sign. You had a flash o' memory just now; I could see it in your eyes. More will come in time. I'm sure of it.' His brows knitted in thought. 'The memories may come first in small flashes and be gone again, or they might come in your dreams. And from what I know, if you tell me or the childer about your dreams as soon as you awaken, you'll have a better chance of holding on to the memories they bring.'
Wallas favoured Gorbyl with a keen, questioning look. 'Are you a healer?' he said. 'I don't... remember if you said...'
The old hobbit chuckled. 'I'm an herb-gatherer, lad, so I do work with healers on occasion. And I spent the better part of a year in their company, back when Bolham's band was worrying at the ruffians that young Pimple Baggins loosed on the Shire. Mine is no seven-year knowledge,' he said, naming the term of apprenticeship that most healers served at the beginning of their training, 'but still, they taught me a lot, there in our hiding in the Wood as we cared for the sick and injured and wounded.'
'An herb-gatherer,' Wallas said, and the faraway look was back. 'My da...' he said.
'What about your da?' Gorbyl said, again adopting the quiet tone that, from his experience, could encourage half-remembered memories to become clearer.
'I remember herb-gathering,' Wallas said vaguely. 'I used to help him in the Wood...' And then his eyes focused once more, and he goggled at Gorbyl. 'Does that mean...?' he said, and wonder shone in his eyes... and a small dawning of hope, perhaps?
'It just may be,' Gorbyl said, patting him on the shoulder again. 'We'll just go on as we are unless something happens to turn us from our course.' He added, more deliberately, 'My boy.'
'I want...' Wallas said, and continued, '...to see the Wood! To...' After another momentary pause, as if he had a basket on his arm and was gathering the words from the ground at his feet, he said, 'To renew our acquaintance!' And then, to Gorbyl's delight, he laughed and poked the older hobbit's arm. 'Didn't think I had it in me, did you?' he jested.
'O nae,' the old hobbit said, returning the poke. 'You've much more in you, I'm sure! But make haste as slowly as need be, Wallas. Don't strain your brains by wracking them, as Gorbas always used to tell you!'
'Did he now?' Wallas said, and he smiled. 'Sounds like just the thing an older brother would say.'
'As it was,' Gorbyl said.
Wallas nodded. 'Be that as it may,' he said, and stopped as if savouring the phrase that had emerged so smoothly. Then he gestured towards the door of the cottage ahead of them, which Lark had left open when she'd gone to feed the chickens and gather eggs.
'I'm always reminding the lass to close the door,' Gorbyl said apologetically as they walked towards the doorway and the gold-and-scarlet Wood shining beyond.
'Children take time, and if you'll give them the time, in time you'll see the reward,' Wallas said, and cocked his head. 'Where did I hear that?'
'It's a common enough saying,' Gorbyl responded. 'Dove said it often to you when the lads were only faunts.'
An expression of pain crossed Wallas's face. 'I wish I could remember,' he said wistfully. 'I've missed so much of their lives... you'd think I could remember them for the years I was here.'
'You will,' Gorbyl encouraged him. 'If you give it the time, in time you'll see the reward.'
They paused at the threshold, drinking in the sight of the flame-coloured canopy under an intensely blue sky, accompanied by a faint smell of wood smoke and crumbling leaves and leaf mould. 'How could I have forgot this?' Wallas said, drawing a deep breath.
Gorbyl nodded. 'It's ever changing and yet ever the same,' he said. 'The Wood looked just like this, that autumn when the ruffians came and began to harry the Shire-folk with their cruelties and thievin' ways. And it looked very much like this when we finally chased them away again a year later!'
'Ruffian traps,' Wallas said thoughtfully, and Gorbyl clapped him on the back.
'Aye!' he said. 'That's right! You and your brother and a few others of Bolham's band grew quite skilled at digging pits and covering them over, as well as setting snares for Lotho's louts to step foot into!'
'I remember...' Wallas said in wonder. 'I do remember that...'
They stepped out of the cottage, and walked across the large covered veranda that Gorbyl had built, years ago, for a place to hang wet laundry of a rainy day, or to sit and watch the rain, or to enjoy some extra shade in especially fine weather.
They walked out into the yard, the fallen leaves crunching pleasantly under their feet. Both of them drew a deep breath at the same time, let it out again, exchanged a wry glance and laughed. 'How I love this season, when the Wood dons her brightest gown and dances under the autumn sky,' the old hobbit said. 'The squirrels are storing up nuts, and so are we! And the berries are still to be found in the brambles, though perhaps not as thick as they were a month ago...'
'And wandering hobbits can also be found in the brambles,' Wallas said slyly. His speech was coming more smoothly, Gorbyl noted, for he did not seem to be groping for the words he wanted as much as he had previously. He had great hopes that the younger hobbit's memories would return in the same way his speech seemed to be recovering.
But before Gorbyl could guide him towards the bramble patch that constituted the family's berry-garden, Wallas stopped at seeing the target fixed to a mound of dirt. When Gorbyl had built their homemade shooting range, he had placed the butts with forethought so that the archer would be shooting into the woods and not towards the smial or byre or coop.
'Our own archery butts,' the old hobbit said now, noting his younger companion's curiosity. Was that a look of keen interest in the fellow's eye? Casually, he added, 'I've been teaching the lads to shoot...'
'Good,' Wallas said. 'I thought they looked old enough.' And then he looked surprised, and said, as if to himself, 'How do I know that?'
'You're an archer yourself,' Gorbyl said, 'remember?'
But Wallas shook his head.
Gorbyl whistled sharply, and Flam soon appeared in the doorway to the cot. 'Bring Wallas's bow case and quiver!' he said to his grandson, and Flam waved a hand and disappeared again.
Soon the lad was jogging towards them, carrying the quiver of blue-feathered arrows and bow case.
Wallas slowly took the bow from its case, but to his surprise, the unstrung weapon did not look at all familiar. Even so, when he closed his eyes, somehow his hands seemed to recognise the feel of it. He opened his eyes again, but fumbled in his attempts to string the bow – and ultimately failed. From the corner of his eye, he saw Flam's mouth open, but old Gorbyl shushed what ever the child had been about to say.
Wallas closed his eyes once more, running his hands over the bow before stringing it in a swift, smooth motion.
Why, I can string and nock and shoot with my eyes closed! rang in his memories, a familiar-sounding voice, though he could not have named the speaker.
And perhaps you can string the bow and nock a shaft with your eyes closed, he thought. But no one can shoot and find the target so!
He slung the quiver over his shoulder and fumbled to select an arrow. 'This is not as easy as it looks, I fear,' he murmured to the wide-eyed lad. Nocking the arrow, too, was difficult so long as he was thinking about what he was doing. He drew a deep breath, closed his eyes, and forced his muscles to relax and then, once again as smoothly as if he'd been born to the bow (or so my brothers used to say to me, the voice in the back of his mind whispered, but that was wrong – he couldn't trust that voice – for he'd had only one brother, Gorbas, as far as he knew), he touched the shaft to the string, felt it nock, and drew.
But his troubles returned when he opened his eyes to mark the target. He adjusted his stance without thinking and did his best to aim. His fingers seemed like a stranger's to him, and the bow, with his eyes open, transformed from a familiar presence to a stiffened piece of unliving wood. Doggedly, he completed the motion. Aim. Release.
'Missed,' he said aloud, watching the shaft speed past the mound, having bypassed the target by a wide margin.
Gorbyl stepped forward and laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. 'You were at one time a fair shot, as I remember,' he said. 'It'll just take some practice to hone your skills once more, I deem. Even the finest of archers must practise.'
'A far cry from the finest of archers, I am,' Wallas said ruefully. 'Still, perhaps I can paralyse a deer with laughter when my arrows miss him by a mile, and...'
His self-deprecation was interrupted by a high-pitched scream that arose part-way between the shooting range and the coop. All of them turned – Gorbyl, Flam and Wallas – to see a wild-eyed stag, pawing the ground, head lowered to bring his rack of antlers to bear on... tiny Lark! ...her egg basket hanging forgotten from her arm, her eyes wide with terror and her face devoid of all colour.
'Stand still, lass!' Gorbyl cried in a shaking voice. 'Don't run from him! Walk away, slow-like!'
But the maddened creature charged.
In little more than the time it might take to wink an eye, Wallas reached over his shoulder, retrieved – by the feel of it alone on his fingertips! – an arrow tipped with a wicked hunting pyle, and nocked and loosed in a smooth motion without even seeming to take aim.
All three archers standing there – old Gorbyl, Wallas, and young Flam – stood frozen, staring as the bow thrummed on a deep note and the arrow sped to the target. Wallas, shooting by instinct and relying purely upon the memory his muscles retained, rather than using his head, had so skilfully aimed that the hart ran straight into the arrow's path as he charged, head down, at the petrified child in front of him.
The power behind the speeding shaft knocked the deer from his feet, and as he tried to rise, a second arrow hit home, and he staggered and sank to the ground.
By the time the second arrow found its mark, Flam was already running to his small sister, and Gorbyl followed more slowly, his hand pressed to his chest. Young Gorbi practically flew from the doorway of the cot, where he'd paused on seeing Wallas draw the bow, so that the brothers almost collided as they reached their sister and fell to their knees in the dirt and crumbled leaves, begging Lark to speak to them. For the tiny lass had dropped to the ground as the hart charged and now curled in a small, terrified ball, hiding her eyes from onrushing death.
Wallas still held his bow at the ready, a third arrow nocked to the string, as he moved to the fallen stag. It looked to him as if the second arrow had impacted in or near the beast's heart, bringing it a mercifully quick death. As he stared in disbelief at the results of his split-second shooting, he heard Gorbyl's voice, soothing, 'There-there, lass. All's well. All's well. But if a rutting stag challenges you, you must never drop to the ground! Just back away, slowly, lass. Climb a tree if you can. Remember that for me, child.'
Half-listening, but reassured by the old hobbit's words and tone that little Lark was safe and well, Wallas reached the deer. When he was certain the creature was dead, he un-nocked the shaft he'd held in reserve and slipped it back into his quiver, then closed his eyes and took a steadying breath.
Wallas heard Gorbyl's voice approaching, and opening his eyes, he turned to meet the old hobbit, trying to put on a smile and speak lightly despite the tension still zinging through his frame. As he started to say, 'Meat for the pot,' he was interrupted when Lark launched herself from her grandfa's arms. Somehow, though the bow was still in his hand, Wallas managed to catch her in mid-air and pull her to his chest.
The little one was gulping and sobbing, and Wallas held her close, secure, murmuring words of comfort. 'You're safe, my lass. Safe...'
And then he heard the words she was repeating, over and over, laced with her sobs. 'Da...! Da...! You saved me! O Da...!'
He felt Gorbyl's hand on the bow and surrendered it, gladly hugging Lark against his chest, the fingers of his bow hand now freed to stroke her hair gently. 'My little lass,' he said. 'My own.'
***