I am sitting on the roof of the open stalls of the Hookworth Stables, looking up at the stars, quiet except the sound of horses occasionally neighing or stomping, and the slightly labored breathing of one mare beneath. There's a village arrayed before and below me; I can see smoke rising from chimneys, warming houses in the late autumn chill, and lantern-light from windows. But there's not a sound, not even wind. It's easy to imagine myself as alone as I truly feel I am now. Or I could imagine I was back in the hills above Marton, as driftless and unsure of what should come of my life as I truly feel I am now.
A few days ago I had a very dark night and crawled back to the Sizzling Turtle, to waste more of my coin than I can spare on more ale than I can handle. I awoke not at my camp, or even at the house I'm being allowed to use, but in a pile of hay near the stable. The sound that woke me was Miss Brynleigh loading things into the saddlebags of her noble horse Jack. When she saw me at the stable so early, perhaps she assumed I'd gotten an early start on my work; she smiled at me, though she also seemed troubled.
An axe was repeatedly splitting logs somewhere inside my head, and every word she spoke was punctuated by another thud; my eyes didn't want to focus. I'd had way too much ale. I'm not sure if she noticed. She was speaking quickly, about a letter she'd received, a promise she had to fulfill, and that she would be away for some time -- I think she said a week, but I'm not entirely sure. And that I would be in charge of the stable while she was gone.
Doubts about whether I was ready to tend the stables without her guidance flooded into my thoughts, but the axe kept thudding and I couldn't find words until after she'd already ridden away, leaving behind smiles and reassurance and encouragement.
As my head slowly cleared and the axe-blows slowed and stopped, I set to work, thinking my days would be over-full and I might have to set aside some of my sword training. When evening came I was only starting to feel caught up, as I remembered I'd promised Haritha I would bring her the undertunic that the snapping bowstring had sliced, so she could sew it for me, and my laundry, so she could wash it. I had felt uneasy about this all along. She owed me no favors; after all, I'd never been able to be any help for her. Perhaps I also felt already, without realizing it, that it would be better for us to take a few steps farther apart. But a promise is a promise. Though I offered that I could sew the shirt (my stitching is crude, to be sure, but it holds), she insisted on doing it, even as she seemed baffled to hear that I would be away in Hookworth for at least a week, and there wouldn't be time to leave her my laundry. Was she upset that she wouldn't see me, or relieved? It would probably be better if it were the latter. We both need to find our own separate lives, I think.
I stopped quickly at the Pony to leave word with Master Butterbur about where the bowstring could be sent, and left him a coin to pay the messenger. What I didn't know is it had arrived days earlier, and Butterbur had forgotten. I might have saved a silver piece, had he remembered. Had Miss Adri been there I might have saved another, as I had to pay a scribe to write down a note from me to her, in case she got word about taking me to Imladris, to explain why I wouldn't be in town for a while. And then I left Bree behind me for the last time for a week or more. (Well, almost, but I'm getting ahead of myself.)
Clearer of head the next day, I found that there's really not as overwhelming an amount of work as I feared, and I wouldn’t even have to give up my sword training. Autumn is a quiet time in the stables. Foaling is done, and the year's foals are sturdy on their feet now, needing little extra care. Few people are setting out on long journeys with the weather changing, so there are no calls for preparing horses or mending tack. And Miss Brynleigh had left the stables well-stocked and caught up on everything. By the end of that day I found myself wishing the bowstring had arrived, or that it was the day for Mister Aren to train me in the sword, as I had time full of silence and empty of anything but my own dark thoughts.
Instead, I found a ladder, climbed onto the stable roof, and whiled away the hours staring at the clouds, and whittling, and singing to myself, and doing nothing. As I had spent my whole misspent youth, heedless of the need to choose a trade or take the reins of my own life. I'd been so full of remorse for that idleness that I kept jolting myself with guilt, and having to remind myself that simply being here, ready to help the horses if they needed something, was indeed my duty for the day, all others being met.
My thoughts naturally circled around and around the darkness that had led me too deep into a keg of ale a few nights before. But as I patiently peeled away slivers of wood until the shape of a small lamb emerged from the block, I peeled away the layers of trouble and doubt, to find a quiet calm at their center.
It would be nice if I could say that center held an answer, some epiphany, a solution to my troubles. Or even certainty. Indeed, everything remained as it always had, and I had no better answers to anything. Save perhaps one: I felt more sure that, when I returned to Bree, it would be time to draw a sharper line between myself and Haritha, to help her find her own life, and me to find mine, separate lives. To do this while remaining friendly would be a challenge, but I felt like it would be necessary.
But while I found neither answers nor certainty, nor any new clarity of thought, I did find a different kind of clarity, the emotional clarity of calm, or perhaps acceptance. Resignation, perhaps. Surrender, maybe. But in any case, a tiny morsel of calm I could hold in my hand, like a reassuringly simple wooden lamb.
Perhaps that calm is part of why, now that the bowstring arrived, with Master Butterbur's apology, my aim seems better than it has been since I started to learn the right stance. Or perhaps the bowstring is of better quality. But as I spent some of my idle hours with the bow, my wooden lamb watching me from a stone wall beside me, my arrows sank into the hay-bale dead center as often as not.
This afternoon, there was a terrible thunderstorm, a last gasp of summer carrying the cold of coming winter in its lashing winds. A bolt of lightning kissed a tree on the hillside that rings the village, and a huge branch cracked off and fell tumbling down the slope, dislodging stones all the way down. One of the younger mares spooked, and burst out of her stall to run terrified into the pen. Luckily, the outer pen gate was closed, or she might have fled into the cloud-dimmed gloom. By the flashes of lightning I could see her, running around in a terror, threatening to do further hurt to herself against the fence in her panic. There was already a gash along her side below the left shoulder that was matting blood in her coat. It all happened so quickly that I didn't have time for what I would think later, that this challenge was far beyond me; instead, I ran heedless into the pen and approached her, slowly, keeping my posture non-threatening and my voice as calm as I could, yet at the same time, firm and authoritative. The lightning now danced over the Midgewater Marshes, making the mare's eyes flash, but I was persistent and soothing and, wooden lamb clutched in my hand, calm; and eventually she let me lead her back into the stall.
Her injury was serious; she was losing a lot of blood. Had the stall door scraped her a bit higher or a bit lower, it would have been far more, and she would likely have died. But the wound could not be left or merely bandaged, or it would still have been enough to leave her life's breath there in the hard soil and soft straw of the stall. As it would have been on my undertunic, my stitching was crude and ugly, and strained her dearly-bought calm farther, but it kept her alive long enough to bring her to the southern gate of Bree, where I paid the stable-keeper to replace my clumsy loops with fine stitches. He assured me that, ugly as they were, my efforts had saved the mare's life. Though this left me determined to improve, it also made me feel, for the first time in longer than I could remember, that there might be one thing I could someday become passably good at.
The mare is right below me now, in the open stalls. I can hear her breathing. She's still unsteady and nervous, but growing a bit more calm with every deep breath. Just as I am, here on the roof, looking at the stars, my little wooden lamb clutched tightly in one hand. Perhaps I can never hope for certainty, or safety, or companionship, or strength, or clarity; but maybe a tiny morsel of calm would be enough.
