The meadow was green, though with clover not with grass. There were cows moving around at the far end of it where a small stand of trees offered shade from the still-hot autumn sunshine and while they looked over, brown eyes gazing disinterestedly at Pete, they showed no inclination to leave the shade and investigate him. He eyed them back, more cautiously: cows were big and, more importantly, valuable. No matter how he might claim he was defending himself the local courts would be sure to demand that he paid for the costs of an injured or dead animal. When he was sure that they weren’t interested in him he glared at the clover as though it had done him a personal wrong, and stalked through it across the meadow.
Insects darted up into the air, jewel like eyes and filigree wings fluttering and sparkling in the sunlight, as he walked stiffly, aggressively, across the ground cover. He ignored them; a week ago he’d been trekking his way through a swamp and the insects there were viciously bloodthirsty creatures that had sapped his will to swat everything that moved. These seemed happy to get out of his way and return to their business, whatever it might be, after he had passed and he was stoically delighted about that. A smell, one he couldn’t place but assumed was that of crushed clover, rose up around him making him think of green things and freshness and he felt his shoulders relax just a little and his gait became less of a stalk and more of a stroll.
The end of the meadow came far too soon and a waist-high stone wall barred his progress until he vaulted it, one hand gripping a large rough weatherworn stone and his feet landing smartly on the mud-and-rocks path on the other side. There was a slight squelch; clearly the path wasn’t entirely dry. He made sure he had his balance, let go of the wall and looked around.
“Where the bloody hell is this Shire, then?” he muttered. The path, and it was clearly something used mostly for driving cattle along and couldn’t be graced with a better name, led round a corner in one direction where more tall, old trees grew obscuring his view, and back around the edge of the meadow in the other direction. It wasn’t quite the way he’d come, but it was close enough that he wasn’t going that way without something to justify it, and there was no sign of buildings, no smoke from fires or chimneys, and nothing but the likelihood of ending up back in the swamp.
“Onwards,” he muttered. He had an idea that talking to himself like this was a sign of madness but there was no-one to ask about it except for perhaps the cows and he didn’t like to think about what it might mean if they answered him. Even if they just moo-ed.
The path bent only reluctantly round the tree, narrowing substantially and making it feel like the tree was somehow an obstruction and an inconvenience. He edged by, his rough leather jacket, much weathered from his travels, rubbing scratchily against the bark of the tree trunk and wondered how the farmer who owned the cows ever got them past this. Then the tree was gone again and he could see the stone walls that divided the land up into fields, meadows and paddocks and hinted at humans somewhere about, and the path that led up a gentle slope and then over the top. With little else to do he sighed and stomped up the hill to see what could be seen from the top.
There was another stand of trees at the top and the path led up just to one side of them. He stopped, resting a hand on the waist-thick trunk of a tree with yellow-green leaves that seemed to be fluttering in a breeze Pete couldn’t feel and looked out. Finally there was signs of life, though they were odd: there were half-sized houses that seemed to be dug into the earth here there and everywhere. Paths, mostly with low stone walls to the sides of them, did run through but rather than defining the settlement they seemed to be habitual routes between doors. The whole thing had a distinctly organic feel to it that seemed unnatural to Pete.
“You can get lost now,” said a gruff voice from somewhere near the ground. Pete looked around first, and only then down. There was a short man with a shock of curly brown hair peering up at him and sucking on a briar pipe.
“Sauron’s breath!” Pete jumped backwards, one hand reaching for the hilt of a sword that wasn’t there. “A bloody knee-high!”
“That’s hobbit to anyone who doesn’t want to be cut down to size,” said the hobbit taking his pipe out of his mouth. “And I mean that entirely literally, just in case you’re having trouble with your thinking.”
“You’re all supposed to be dead!”
“Then I’m a ghost. Boo!”
Pete shook himself, but didn’t approach the hobbit. He was fairly certain that they weren’t a ghost but he’d seen some odd things on his journey, especially through the swamp, and wasn’t keen on meeting any more.
“I met a knee — a hobbit,” he said. “They’re called knee-highs in the Lowlands, you know. He was a bit odd.”
“There’re no hobbits in the Lowlands,” said the hobbit with the pipe. He inhaled from it and a smell of blackcurrant rose up on the air. “Hobbits don’t leave the Shire much, except maybe those over at Bree and they’re not real hobbits. Halflings, they are, and a bit special with it.” He tapped the side of his forehead as he said special and looked at Pete as though he should know what that meant.
“It was just the one,” said Pete. “A traveller. Well, a mercenary, actually. Said his name was… something strange. Happy, or Sneezy, or something like that. Only had one arm. Kept going on about the Shire and Froggo and a grand elf wizard.”
The hobbit with the pipe stared down at the Shire and smoked his pipe quietly. After a minute or so, when Pete was wondering if he was just ignoring him, he said in a thoughtful voice, “Would that be Frodo by any chance? And perhaps Gandalf the wizard?”
Pete thought about it. “Maybe,” he said, reluctantly. “Froggo had a bag of some kind, I recall that. And the Shire was empty, all the knee-highs were killed by some trees. Though that had to be Happy raving as trees don’t kill people unless they fall on them.”
“Frodo Baggins,” said the hobbit. He took the pipe out of his mouth and carefully tapped it out on a flat stone that looked like it was used a lot for the purpose. “Oh dear, oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.”
“Look, I’m just here to see if the Shire exists,” said Pete. He hesitated. “And Happy might have said something about a valuable ring. So if you just hand a nice ring over, say gold, or maybe silver, I’ll take it and go and we’ll say no more, right? I’ve had to kill a lot of things on my way here, and will probably have to kill more on the way back. A knee-high or six isn’t really going to bother me.” For a moment he had a flashback to the swamp and the thing that had an orc’s head and six legs and strange arms that seemed to grab at things that weren’t there but somehow were and had limped off with his sword sticking out of its chest.
“Look,” said the hobbit sounding sad. “It’s a bit more complicated than you think.”
“I don’t think much,” said Pete. “I just do. And I really, really want to go home right now. So ring, cash, whatever. Just find something to make it worth my while and I’ll be on my way. Pick someone you don’t like and I’ll throw in killing them for you too.”
“No,” said the hobbit. “You make a convincing argument, I’ll give you that, but it’s not me you need to talk to.”
“You’ll do,” said Pete. “Do I have get my knife out?”
“No,” said the hobbit. “And it won’t do you much good, neither. That wizard you mentioned? Well, he’s here. And he’s already collected up all the valuable stuff.”
Pete drummed his fingers on his empty scabbard. “That sounds like stalling to me,” he said.
“It’s the truth. Gandalf the Magnificent, Gandalf the White, whatever he’s calling himself this morning, is holed up, hah, in the Inn of the Shire and is holding the whole Shire hostage. You want to kill someone? Go kill him. But he’s been killed once, by a Balrog no less, and he came back, so you need to do a better job of it than the Balrog did.”
Pete stopped drumming his fingers and eyed the hobbit warily. The hobbit eyed him back just as warily.
“Happy might have mentioned PTSD,” he said.
“That’d be the only thing he didn’t lie to you about then,” said the hobbit.
“Right,” said Pete. “Right. Only… I shouldn’t go believing any knee-highs then, should I?”
The hobbit glared at him. “You’re only making trouble for yourself calling us that,” he said. “How’d you like it if I called you Whitey Too-tall, huh?”
Pete nodded. “I’d probably cut your throat.” He drew his knife. “And every way I look at this, that’s probably the right thing to do at this point anyway.”
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