[piosenniel]

Cotman Bolger of Stock waited in his room until the gathering of Hobbits in the Common room had dispersed. He kept an eye out his window for their departure, as he sat in the overstuffed chair he had pulled up to it and smoked a pipe or two. At long last, he saw them dribbling out in twos and threes, some of them still talking heatedly to each other.

He had ventured down earlier, and hearing a little of their angry speeches, decided he did not want to participate. ‘No use making general accusations and getting yourself all worked up,’ he thought to himself. In his long career as a trader from Bree to Bywater he had met many of the Big Folk, and for the most part he found them no worse and no better than Hobbits. Both races had their good points and their bad. ‘And some of each, it’s sad to say are just plain rotten to the core.’

Mistress Piosenniel was kind enough to draw him a half pint and fetch him a bite to eat from the deserted kitchen. All of the staff having gone to the meeting called by the Mayor at the Town Hall. He had just settled in at a table by the small fire, with his sandwich and his ale, when Prim came rushing through the front door of the Inn. He was surprised when she approached him, asking him to come speak to those gathered at the Mayor’s meeting.

‘I can’t for the life of me think that I would have anything of any importance to say, Miz Prim. I only passed through Whitfurrows on my way here.’

Prim fixed him with a cold eye. ‘You must know something of what’s going on, Cotman. I know you told Cook enough to upset her. Just come and let them ask some questions and see what you can fill in for them. Cotman sighed, and took a last swig of ale, then pulling on his light jacket, he followed Prim out of the inn and toward the meeting.

It was the skilful questioning of Sam that finally brought the details to light. Cotman, at first, had been bombarded with questions, shouted out willy-nilly from the crowd, he was tongue tied and muddled, pulled here and there by the desperate eagerness of the group for information.

It was in Bree, Cotman said that he’d first heard rumours from his Hobbit customers about certain, unsavory Big Folk grumbling about the raw hand they’d been dealt since the King made his proclamation. Just grumblings though, and those had started, as far as he could recall around New Year’s time, just after the first of the winter brewings were done.

Several months later he recalled he was moving some stock of tea, salt, and sugar through Budge Ford, and on up to Scary and Brockenborings, and all along the way he heard stories Big Folks being seen, always, of course at a distance and at dusk or later, and always disappearing down some small ravine or dip in the land and disappearing. Not regular sightings, but just enough to keep the topic fresh in the conversations heard round the Inns in the area.

Some of the good folk in the lowland area of the East Farthing - Yale, as he remembered - got together with their neighbors in Whitfurrows and Budge Ford and hiked about looking for any real clues to these sightings. They had covered a large area over the span of several days and found nothing for their trouble. It was beginning to be thought that folk were conjuring up phantoms from the evening shadows.

Then the phantoms had turned real just a week or so ago. Two small children had been snatched. No notes were left asking for any sort of ransom, and not a clue could be found of where they had been taken, though a large party of searchers had once again combed the area. Hobbits in the East Farthing were frightened. Guards had been set up at Hay Gate to monitor all who crossed into the Shire proper from the East.

Someone stood up and asked about the two children who were taken. Did the kidnappers steal into a burrow late at night and take them from their beds?

‘Now that I do know a little more about,’ he said. ‘I know one of the families. The child had a habit of wandering off on his own and not paying attention to the wishes of his parents. He had sneaked out late at night, bent on some errand of his own and never returned. About nine or ten, I think he was. The other child was younger, and wandered away from the family at an evening picnic supper, following some whim of his own, or so I heard.’


Rumour and conjecture were growing. There were tales spreading that Big Folk had crossed the Brandywine south of Buckland and were planning an attack from the Overbourne Marshes. Or that enclaves of them were hiding in Woody End or north of Woodhall. Each of these reports had been checked out by the local deputy and a duly formed band of searchers, but nothing of any substance had been found.

‘It’s funny,’ he said, drawing his comments to an end. ‘The country side seems to just swallow them up, and we can’t find them no matter where we look . . .’

[ April 01, 2003: Message edited by: piosenniel ]