SR 1419

'I'm sure mother has worried herself sick by now,' Hildy says, sitting in the shadow of the pear tree, the branches laden with growing fruit, the courtyard spreading out before them. 'And Rosebud–'

'What of your sister?' Berilac asks, from where he sits at Hildy's side, plucking at an errant blade of grass. The summer sun slants overhead, from the west – the day is falling to its end. One more day, one more dark day, another day ended, in what has become an awful, dark, and too-long year. He's stopped worrying himself with whether Merry will ever return – if he will, then he will. And Berilac won't be cross at him, he won't – for all he knows he has that right. Saradoc needs him, but he needs his son, more – so, in knowing that, Berilac knows, one day, that Merry will come home.

'Of Rosebud?' Hildy, beside him, shrugs, and looks sideways at him. 'Ah, you know. She's stronger than you might think.' Hildy hesitates, then – if Rosebud's stronger than one might think, that's not just her own truth, but truth for dozens of hobbits other than her. Hobbits can be pressed, but that needn't mean they break. 'Anyhow,' Hildy says, going on, 'she likely hasn't even noticed that I'm gone.'

Berilac laughs at that, for he can't help himself, and Hildy joins him. Then, after, as silence stretches out beneath the pear tree, and out across the courtyard, where other hobbits are milling about, and the Wedmath day is burning, the sun shining down, bright, Hildy laughs again and says, 'I'm probably worrying myself to some sickness. But I wish I could let mother know that I'm well.'

When Hildy had first come, he'd been happy to see Camellia, had told them about the troubles gathering, as a storm, in the Tookland – but it had been months now, since he'd first come. The Men had come, soon after that, and Hildy had thought they'd followed him, somehow – and then, Regimas Brandybuck had died, out on the courtyard stone. Lives had been lost, and others had been stolen – it isn't safe, leaving, but Berilac thinks he might go mad, if made to stay here, anymore. The Men had cut down trees, had burned villages, had arrested hobbits for cheek, and less – Celandine, and Merimas, both, were gone, and there was no way to know if they still lived.

'Write your mother,' Berilac says, coming from those thoughts. 'Write her, and I'll see your letter delivered, even if means that I do it myself.'

Hildy protests, with half his heart – but Berilac insists, and Hildy relents.

So he goes, after telling his father, and his uncle – and promising them, both, that he'll return. 'Don't do it,' Saradoc tells him (Saradoc, who is only so strong as the mask he wers, who weeps sometimes in the darkness of the night, and asks for nothing, but Berilac offers him the comfort of his silence, for it is due him, and his honour). 'Don't do it – if we lost you, too–'

'I have to,' Berilac says. 'I have to, to know I can. If you tell me not to, then I'll run off – but I'd rather not. Not plotting, in secret, and running off – I'll go, and I'll return. You've my word on that, uncle – father.' He looks from one of them, to the other – he needs them to understand. And he thinks they do, his father first and then his uncle.

'I wish you'd reconsider,' his father says. 'What happened to Mim...' But he says no more. For what happened to Mim is nothing more than what happened to Cellie, and Moro – anyhow, Berilac knows he can't save them all. They've gone somewhere he can't follow, where no sane hobbit would want to go.

So he goes, and then he comes back, and it's funny how better he feels, for having put himself at such risk. Better to take himself back to Brandy Hall, to carry a letter back for Hildy, to be his uncle's right hand, with Merry now away. He can do this, he know he can – not just for his own sake, or for Buckland's, or even for his uncle. He knows now he's doing this for Merry, and so, in knowing that, he knows that he will see this darkness through to its end.

If the darkness ever ends.