The Adventures of Frodo Gardner
Volume I Where Many Paths and Errands Meet By Dolores J. Nurss
Chapter 29, Part 29 On
the Origin of Hobbits (November 10,1451)
Murmurs of amazement
wafted through the company, from elf and dwarf alike, at
what the old ent said, as the sunlight that flickered
between the leaves warmed them at their work. Treebeard
went on, speaking Gandalf's words. "'M�rglin was an
elven-maid of the dark-haired Noldor folk, but of no
great family, born here in Middle-Earth--Hollin, to be
precise--and not from Valinor. Like many of the Hollin
elves, she labored as a jeweler and a crafter of light
wares. She was small for her kind, and often overlooked,
underestimated because she seldom spoke except by the
work of her hands, which, while lovely in its own right,
often got lost amid the marvels fashioned by those who
had studied under Aule himself. But she had nimble
fingers that loved to bend the softer metals into
filigrees--copper or gold, silver or tin, it little
mattered to her, lead even, if she wanted a leaden color,
for she cherished the result more than the rarity.
"'Often
she worked with dwarves, because she felt less small
among them, and they did not regard her as stupid for her
silences, loving silence much themselves. They admired
her handicraft, and found work for her to do, when her
own people forgot to call on her at all.
"'She fashioned her filigrees like vines and fronds
and flowers, twigs and fruit and leaves, as elves often
do, and butterfly wings, and feathers, and ripples of
water, and all the fair things of nature. Then, inspired
by a dream one night, she made what she thought was a
handsome copper lattice for a lantern, resembling a mesh
of roots. But her family found it graceless; they shook
their heads and wondered what to do with such a
daughter--and then they did with her what they always
had, which was to do nothing with her at all. She had
grown used to this.
"'So, ignored and alone, M�rglin took the root-lamp
back to her workshop among the dwarves, but just as she
prepared to melt it down for other use, a dwarf named
Roin stepped in and stopped her. He admired her lamp and
bought it from her for beryls, which he'd observed her
setting in her other filigrees for leaves. He told her
that the beryls reminded him of her green, green eyes,
and then he blushed, surprised to utter such words out
loud--and then he fled while she stood by the crucible,
wondering.
"'M�rglin started to take note of Roin after that.
Like her, he did not have much in common with his own
people. He liked to linger in the higher chambers where
the light spilled in through shafts, sparkling in his
rough, red curls; he said that he could see his work
better by daylight than by any lamp. He had a ruddy, tan
face where the other dwarves looked pale. When others
delved downward, which is sensible in a dwarf, Roin felt
drawn to delve upward, and often broke through, and then
got laughed at for his folly as the dirt crumbled in on
top of him.
"'In doing so he frequently came across roots, and
they interested him. Roin wondered what food they sought
in soil, and if you could compound this food entirely
from minerals or whether it needed something else
besides. He wondered what, exactly, roots did with the
minerals once they gathered them, and by what magic did
they change the stuff of earth into wood and bark and
leaves and fruit--oh, marvelous transformation! And so he
came at last, from the ground up, to wonder about trees.
"'None of his own sort had the slightest interest in
Roin's curiosity, so he resolved to ask an elf--surely
the elves would know the answers to all his questions.
But elves for the most part frightened him--tall and
haughty creatures that they were, strange with the light
of Valinor in their eyes, mingled somehow with the more
baleful fire of Feanor. Roin could not quite see how one
should approach an elf, or whether one should even try,
apart from a straightforward business deal or matters of
shared craft. Except...he did recall one elf more
approachable than the rest--one, furthermore, who cared
about things like roots.
"'So, shyly at first, Roin asked M�rglin his
questions about trees, and she answered, first by shaping
him models in metal or clay to illustrate her points, as
usual trusting her fingers more than words. Later she
brought him topside to walk among the trees themselves,
and showed him much, saying little, leading him by
degrees to figure out the workings of the woods for
himself. And so, without trying, she stumbled across the
way that dwarves prefer to learn. He loved her for that,
at first as a friend, who could understand him like no
one else ever had, and she loved him, at first as a
friend, because he found wisdom in her that others had
passed by. They spent many days together, sometimes deep
in the shops working side by side, sometimes walking hand
in hand in the forests above ground. And no one noticed
but themselves.
"'Then one day he said to her, "I dreamed last
night of a silver tree with golden leaves, and on it,
right before my eyes, there swelled a jewel for a
fruit--a jewel of rare beauty, coruscating with all the
colors of the rainbow." She gasped at his words,
saying, "I had that same dream last night, except
that the fruit fell into my lap!" Then they gazed
into each other's eyes, wondering that they should become
so close as to share one dream, and right then they knew
that they had fallen in love indeed.
"'At that time Sauron, in disguise as Annatar, Lord
of Gifts, had begun to stir up whisperings of elves
against dwarves and dwarves against elves, dragging up
old grievances out of their graves to make them walk
again among the living. As it turned out this effort did
not go very far in Hollin and Khazad-Dum--not with the
alliance so convenient for both nations. But M�rglin and
Roin heard much that frightened them, and they did not
stay to hear the rumors peter out. In secret they pledged
themselves to each other in marriage, asking nobody's
permission. Then they fled through Khazad-Dum, into
Lorien, and then across the river to the lower reaches of the
Greenwood, far south of Thranduil's more favored marches,
where few among elves or dwarves set foot.
"'It took a long while for either of their peoples to notice their
absence. Long separations matter little to long-lived peoples. Even
when they did discover it, neither kind imagined that Roin and M�rglin
might have gone away together. Eventually everyone figured that they
each must have relocated somewhere else within their own vast
communities, and gave it no more thought.
"'Roin and M�rglin made their home in a lone
mallorn tree that had sprung up far from its fellows,
from a seed perhaps dropped by a passing bird. M�rglin
wove twigs into flets in the boughs above, connected by
spiraling stairs of sturdy bronze filigree that she and
her husband had cast together from local ores, while Roin
delved the main home underneath. The roots of that tree
made a lattice for their roof, which the two of them set
with crystal panes to let in the light that they loved.
Here they made snug their home, and they tended the tree
lovingly that protected them.
"'Roin found tourmalines of
many colors in the veins of a nearby cliff; these he cut
as gems for M�rglin, who pressed them into the bark in
fair designs and coaxed the living wood to grow around
them, so that the tree became bejeweled and glittered in
the sunlight, and all the birds came 'round to admire it,
building many nests. Thus the couple never lacked for
song, though they had left the minstrels of their peoples
far behind.
"'A raven in particular took a liking to the tree,
for all ravens love shiny things; he befriended the
couple, who named him Mormel. Often he would play in the
air about the tree, now graceful, now clownish, now
performing such aerial feats as would make them gasp for
delight and astonishment. Sometimes Mormel would carry
flowers up from Roin to M�rglin in one of her flets,
sometimes he would carry back down to Roin the latest
piece of M�rglin's handiwork (often these days a basket
or other craft from what the forest provided.) Mormel
made his nest not merely in the tree, but right in
M�rglin's favorite flet, and the family became three.
"'I too, delighted in hovering about that tree. I
confess that I sometimes let my other duties slide to
linger there. I composed some of my greatest masterpieces
among dreams for the family that lived, root and branch,
in the jeweled mallorn tree, just for the joy of watching them
smile in their sleep.
"'There came a year when M�rglin swelled like a
ripening fruit, and in due time brought forth a tiny
daughter. A daughter! The one thing that a dwarf prizes
more than all the gold and jewels and mithril he can
mine, aye, and any other thing that he could name. Roin
fell to his knees and wept for joy, praising Aule and the
Creator of Aule for blessing him in such astonishing
fashion, saying, "Now I know that I have pleased my
maker, and not done ill, to marry beyond my own
race." But when his wife put the baby into his arms,
and the little fist first grasped his beard, the joy of
Roin went beyond all words, and he stared speechless into
the blue eyes of the center of his universe, and all the
world stood still. The child's mother named her M�ryave,
Jewel-Fruit in her own tongue. What secret dwarvish name
her father gave her I will not reveal, except to say that
it showed his gratitude.
"'Mormel, of course, went careening through the air
in every direction at the baby's first cry, crowing his
heart out as though he had hatched her himself! Then he
dived and caught a rabbit, which he brought back as
though little M�ryave had been a chick of his own to eat
such things.'" Treebeard chuckled just as Gandalf
had. "'Oh, Treebeard, you should have seen that bird
hop from foot to foot, bobbing his head, so pleased with
his birthday gift! After they got through laughing, Roin
cooked the rabbit and fed it to his wife to build her
strength up, and they thanked the raven for his
thoughtfulness.
"'M�ryave had hair as dark as her mother's, but
curling like her father's. To grace that hair M�rglin
fashioned a pretty little diadem of copper branches
intertwined, and Roin cut the last beryls that he owned
into leaves to grace it. Oh, how their daughter laughed
with joy to see herself in the mirror wearing it! Having
no special occasions in her life, M�ryave wore the
little crown while playing in the mud or racing 'round
the tree--a grubby little princess, sovereign of their
hearts and hopes.
"'In all of Middle-Earth you could not find four
happier people. M�ryave grew up small but healthy,
loving her parents, her raven-friend, and her home
beneath the tree, surrounded by a bright and pretty
garden that she planted for herself. For M�ryave carried
on her father's curiosity about how things grew, and her
mother's love to let them grow. Mormel brought her every
sort of seed that he could find, and she sowed them
everywhere, then studied which conditions suited each
kind best.
"'A broad meadow stretched out nearby, filled
with sunshine like a little kingdom of light, and here
she planted a wealth of grains and vegetables. Her sturdy
little body made a joy of hard work; sometimes she would
run dancing between the rows for sheer delight in the
living things within her charge, as Mormel swooped and
swirled for pleasure in the air above her. Where elves
preferred the treetops and dwarves the earth's depths,
M�ryave cherished the place between, the living soil
squishing up through her oft-bare toes; she could not
imagine living either above it or beneath it--she
belonged in it. Oh, but she was a muddy child! But her
mother only laughed and taught her to wash her own
dresses, and let her be.
"'No happiness lasts forever in Middle Earth. While
Roin and M�rglin built their home, Sauron taught
ring-craft to the elves. When M�rglin gave birth to
M�ryave, Sauron cast the Ring of Doom. War soon
followed.
"'Roin and M�rglin saw smoke beyond the
mountains and wondered, but did not return. Far from
it--they believed that elves and dwarves had turned
against each other once again. How could a family such as
theirs, then, ever find any home save what they already
had? Battles came and went without them, over places of
importance far away. Roin said, "Let them war among
themselves, if that is what they want, and let us keep
our peace!"
"'Alas! The war would not let any live in peace for
long. The jewels of the tree caught Sauron's eye,
flashing from a distance in the cold moonlight. He had
his own uses for jewels--as lenses and the bits of
drills, as focuses for magic, or ground up for their
minerals. He sent crebain to spy upon the jeweled tree.
Mormel the Raven recognized them as a perversion of his
own kind; he knew their tongue and heard them cawing out,
with malicious delight, their intent to carry tales of
evil purpose. So he fought above the trees with all who
neared his nest, by his lone beak and his own few claws,
shrilling out his battle cries high up in the air.
"'But
more crebain followed, blackening the heavens with their
wings, many claws and many thirsty beaks and more behind
those, till Mormel fell dead from the sky in a tumble of
blood and black feathers plummeting to the earth.
M�ryave wept and did not understand, nor could her
parents explain to her, for they had never seen the
crebain before.
"'That night the orcs arrived, to investigate the tales their spies had
brought to them--aye, they investigated all right, with torch and sword
and axe! Dwarves make mighty warriors, and elves have fought with much
renown, but neither Roin nor M�rglin had ever fashioned weapons, nor
did they own any, nor had they any experience of war--and they were
only two, against a company. Elf and Dwarf made weapons of whatever
came to hand to defend their child, but what hope did they have there,
in their home, against such an enemy?
"'So Roin ordered M�rglin to flee with
M�ryave while he covered their escape, and the battle became
one standing all alone against a greedy horde. Roin
fought off the invaders with his shovel like a pike, in
the fury of a father and a husband defending his family's
lives. He slew many orcs before he fell; I alone, of
those who love the light, witnessed the valor of his
stand, as I hovered in spirit over him. I will attest
that many heroes sung in great renown showed less resolve
and hardihood than this one forgotten, ill-armed dwarf.
"'At last he fell a final time, and did not rise up again;
then did the rains crash down to wash his blood into the
land, for I had no other way to weep. Yet Roin succeeded
in the last thing that mattered to him, for M�rglin and
M�ryave escaped indeed, and lived to see their home go
up in flames behind them, a gash of light in the veil of
night, a fire writhing in the distance within a tower of
smoke.
"'For the orcs burned down the tree, of course, the
better to rake the jewels from the ashes rather than
having to pry them from the living wood. These gems
turned out to have less value than the orcs expected,
though, mere tourmalines, after all, of little use for
Sauron's work.
"'Yet something drew the Dark Lord in person
to that spot, after the orcs had done with it--some
loathing for fools who would bejewel a tree for no
purpose that he could see, or maybe he sensed there the
birth of his own demise, and the destruction of the ring
born on the same day as the ring itself. Sauron felt a
need to quell something he could not name that emanated
from this spot. He needed to crush it utterly. He gazed
down into the ashen ruin and saw the start of a
foundation already excavated. Here--though he had no love
for forests--he built the Necromancer's Tower.'"
The ent fell silent, his slow breaths pacing out the
length of Gandalf's pause--for Treebeard took seriously
Gandalf's admonition to repeat his words exactly. Those
around him had long since ceased all labor, so they sat
silent, too--waiting.
"'Some would say,'"
Treebeard at last said heavily for Gandalf, "'that I
involve myself too closely in the lives of those I work
with, that I let my heart get in the way of my
efficiency. Saruman used to point this out to me
regularly, in fact. But Irmo has often assured me that
this trait makes him favor my work above all others. On
that day, though, I wished for Irmo to command me to
unlearn this habit that so often has torn my heart in
two! I cannot tell you, Treebeard, how hard I had begged
permission to intervene for this family. I begged to send
dreams telling them to pry the jewels out of the tree
before any of this could happen. I begged to warn them,
at least, so that they could hide for awhile and then
rebuild in some other nearby tree--I had some stout ones
picked out. I wanted to teach them warcraft in their
sleep, or if nothing else I wanted so badly to blast the
orcs with such nightmares as would drive them all mad! On
that day, for a brief time, all pity for the slaves of
darkness failed me, and all faith, and almost all wisdom.
The hardest obedience of my entire history was to stand
by and allow events to take their course, and trust that
somehow all of this would work out in the end. Only love
for my master stayed my hand, though I thought him the
worst of fools.
"'Eventually it did work out, though it took me long
to accept. The child and her mother fled through the
woods and found a colony of men to give them refuge by
the Anduin's banks. "The Plain Folk", these
men called themselves, or "The Ones Overlooked", for they had gone into hiding long
ago, when the Kings of Numenor had decayed from bringers
of knowledge and culture to tyrants in search of plunder.
The Plain Folk taught themselves to desire nothing that
conquerors might want, but lived for the joys of food and
drink, rest and work, marriage and children, and whatever
beauty life might bestow unasked. No mortals could move
through the woods more unobtrusively than these, and this
often saved their lives. They went barefoot for the sake
of silence, and some had already begun to develop tough
and hairy feet to suit the life they led. Desiring to be
overlooked, they prized small women beyond the tall, and
they found little M�ryave breathtakingly exquisite--a
living jewel.
"'M�ryave fit right in with their ways, for she had
the strength of a dwarf, the stealth of an elf, the
endurance of both kinds multiplied, and a joy entirely
her own. She needed nothing better for the hard, good
life ahead of her. In no time at all she found a husband,
a man named Halmer Tulch, and with him found again at
last the happiness she thought gone up in smoke with her
childhood home. She taught him how to delve a dwelling
into the earth, with a bit of garden just outside the
window. Soon a few others in the village tried such
homes, and found them warmer in the winter and cooler in
the summer than anything they'd had before.
"'One day M�ryave woke up bemused, and went to her
mother, desiring counsel beyond the wisdom of men.
"I dreamed," she said, "that you, and
Father, and my own dear Halmer stood before me, each with
a box in your hands, and that I had to choose one of them
to open. You, mother, offered me a box of wood,
beautifully carved and yet alive, with leaves and
blossoms growing from it--nothing could ever slay that
wood. Father offered me an iron box, jeweled and chased
with precious metals--it would last a long, long time,
though someday rust, but as a treasure it went beyond
price. And my husband, Halmer, held out to me a simple
box of clay, so fragile that it already showed its first
cracks, though it held together well, with a smooth and
shapely grace entirely its own. I felt torn--I loved all
three of you, and did not wish to slight anyone by my
choice. But then I realized it is natural for a wife to
love her husband best of all--why resist it? The nature
of the box did not matter to me nearly so much as the
hands that held it, so I reached out to Halmer's box, and
I lifted the lid--and out flew a butterfly!" At that
she laughed and said, "Wasn't that a strange dream,
Mother?"'"
"'"It was a true dream," M�rglin replied,
as tears coursed down her face, though she smiled on her
daughter. "Illuvatar has offered you the choice of
which kind you shall follow--elf, dwarf, or man--and so
you have chosen. You shall share the lifespan of your
husband, and his fate after. The butterfly is your soul,
which shall not stay earthbound forever. It is well, my
child--for there is no curse I know of more bitter than
to outlive the one you love."'"
Treebeard sighed, and Frodo heard the echo of Gandalf's
own sigh. "'M�rglin did not bear her curse for
long. Orcs raided the village, and she died while
visiting a friend. The Plain Folk rebuilt further down
the river. This time many more of the people dug their
houses into hills, for they saw that in the last raid
orcs had overlooked the earthen homes.
"'In the course of her life M�ryave gave birth to
two daughters and a son, who married in their turn and
had many children between them. Within a few generations
almost everyone in that small community had dwelf-blood
in their veins, and each generation stood shorter than
the last, as the winters deepened and their feet grew
tougher and furrier with every child born. The
pure-blooded men eventually became the fathers of the
Breelanders, though they never forgot their links to the
smaller folk, at least not in their hearts. As for the
others, whatever travelers came upon them called them
Holbytla, the dwellers in the soil, and they themselves
forgot that they'd had any other name or ever needed to
hide, yet the old customs held; they remained content
with all that kings and conquerors are foolish not to
want.
"'Thus came to Middle-Earth the smallest,
softest-seeming folk to ever walk this land. Yet it was
these--these!--who toppled the Dark Lord at the last,
unbending to his will. Do you know, Treebeard, what
Galadriel found, when she broke the foundation of the
Necromancer's tower and laid bare all that lay
beneath?'" Treebeard asked himself, in Gandalf's
voice. "'A child's diadem, of branching copper
filigree, set with beryl leaves. That was the secret
thing that Sauron had to crush beneath his towering pile
of stone! And yet, by some miracle that even I cannot
explain, the tower never could rest easy, for that soft
copper wire had not bent in the slightest, in all those
years of weight!'"
At that point Treebeard did a strange thing. He turned to
Merry Brandybuck and, groaning with the effort, managing only by slow hard stages, he
achieved what no one had ever seen an ent accomplish
before--he knelt. He gestured over Thranduil on his right
side, and Gloin on his left. "Bless us, Meriadoc,
son far-off of M�ryave! Bless all ents, and elves, and
dwarves, and let all rift between us end this day!"
Merry blinked at him, bewildered. "I...I do not know
how," he said.
"Hm, well, just wish us the happiness of
hobbit-kind. For those who own such happiness shall have
no cause for division. And Eowyn, Lady of Ithilien, join
us here, too, for your people are the heirs of the world
we leave behind, and hobbits are more kin to you than
anyone." So Eowyn joined them.
And still the hobbit
stood before them, perplexed. Treebeard rumbled, "Go
on--it is needful, Merry my friend. This day's healing
concerns more than Legolas. Your blessing would seal what
we have all gathered here to obtain."
So Merry solemnly said, "In the name of, of the Council of the West,
and especially Gandalf and Irmo who saw their will done, I wish all of
you, and your peoples, the peace and happiness of hobbits." A tightness
left Frodo's breast that he didn't know he had; he felt like he looked
on unstained sunlight for the first time in his life, there in that
glade.
Treebeard smiled as he creaked back up to his feet again.
"Well done, Master Merry! Happy was the day that you
first wandered into my woods."
"Sure, well, thanks--I mean, you're welcome, or,
well, hey, let's get the rest of this mess cleaned up
while the sun shines, shall we?" Everyone then
returned to the clean-up, and before long the meadow
hardly looked like they'd lingered there at all.
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