[Envinyatar]

‘You look like you been ground up in Sandyman’s Old Mill,’ said Cook, pushing the sugared bun back toward him, glaring all the while. He picked it up and took a small bite to satisfy her, but she was having none of his mannish tricks. ‘I know you’re not going to rest like you should, so get some food in your belly to carry you along, you stubborn fool.’ She watched while he went through the motions of eating, his mind leagues away.

The bun finished, she poured him another cup of strong tea with honey, and laid a plateful of scrambled eggs in front of him. ‘Go on,’ she chided, ‘Beren collected those eggs from the hens just yesterday. You wouldn’t want to waste the fruits of his labors, would you?’

Her mothering was having the desired effect on him. He finished up the eggs. His appetite picking up halfway through the plate, he also managed a rasher of crisp Shire bacon, two slices of toast with thick strawberry jam, and a slice of melon. Sitting back in his chair, a fresh cup of tea cradled in his hands, he gave her the ghost of a smile. ‘No need to thank me,’ she said, sipping on a cup of her own. ‘Things always look better on a full stomach . . . leastways that’s what my Gran always told me, and I’ve always found it so.’

Soon, she was back at the stove, making platters of eggs and bacon for the guests at the Inn and directing Ruby and Buttercup in the making of toast and cutting up more melon. Derufin took the opportunity of this activity to slip out the back door. Buttercup winked at him as he did so, and cleared his dishes away with a wave of her hand.

It was too late to sleep now, or so he reasoned as he made his way to the stable. Uien had been up, he noted, and taken care of the horses. ‘Thank the stars,’ he thought to himself, ‘that her wandering feet brought her here!’

He stopped at the pump in the yard and drew himself a bucket of water for washing. No sense in inflicting the aftermath of his night’s hard ride on any who came near him. The sun was warm on the east side of the stable, and he was hidden from any who might come into the yard by a hedgerow that shielded him from view of those coming in from the pathway to the Inn. Stripping his shirt off, he bathed himself, washing away the dust from the road and the layer of sweat from his ride. His hands, as he soaped his face, brought him the message that he needed a shave. He reached in the open window of his room and grabbed the kit bag on the table near his bed. ‘I’ll have to do this blind,’ he chuckled to himself, hoping the razor would be kind enough to spare him any nicks. And indeed, there was only one tussle with the blade, and that near the small scar on the left of his jaw. And it was small, and quickly stanched with pressure. As a last measure he washed his hair. His old shirt stood in as towel and he dried himself off, pulling his clean hair back at the last with a thin leather cord.

Finished, he dumped the water along the hedgerow, and rinsing the bucket, left it to stand near the pump for someone else’s use. ‘I’ll wash this later,’ he told himself, rolling his dirty shirt into a ball and tossing it in a corner as he returned to his room to put on clean clothes.

Uien had been there, he noted. Picking up the star from the table he turned it carefully in his hands. What a gift she has . . . is . . . he amended, setting it next to the crane. He looked at his own rough hands and sighed, thinking how clumsy they were in comparison. Still, they are what I have, and they will have to do, won’t they?

Dressed, and ready for the new day, Derufin inspected the horses for any needs. The Inn pony had thrown a shoe, and he replaced it with a new one, giving Nettle an apple from the basket for good behavior. Satisfied, there was nothing more urgent, he retrieved his own carvings from under his cot and went out to the yard, to sit on the bench beneath the great tree.

The sturdy little wooden ship was finished, her mainsail bearing the pennant of the six-pointed star, affixed with linen thread borrowed from Ruby. In her hold were the figures of the crew he remembered from her stories, and some of the creatures she had spoken of they had met on their travels. Though often, he recalled, she had been exceedingly vague, as Elves can be, on the details of those encounters.

Taking out his knife, he began roughing in the outlines for the two of the last three figures he wanted to do. The smell of fragrant cedar shavings curled around his boots and clung to his lap as he worked. A boy of twelve years he thought, smiling to himself, just on the edge of young manhood . . . and his twin sister, her mother’s beauty already shining from the features of her face.

Lost in thought, and the feel of the wood as it turned in his hands, the cares of the day slipped away with the passing hours.