11 Winterfilth (October), Third Age 3020
I arrived in the Shire smelling faintly of apple woodsmoke and rain, a scent that seemed to put the hobbits at ease even before I spoke. Harvestmath had thrown its bright shawl over Hobbiton: garlands of dried corn and marigold, lanterns carved into grinning gourds, strings of paper bats fluttering like a flock of silly shadows. The Party Tree wore ribbons in every autumn hue. Children ran under it with sugared tongues and sticky hands, their pockets heavy with toffees and caramel nuts.
I am not often drawn to crowds, but joy has a way of calling me by my first name. Besides, a Ranger in the Shire makes some folk stand taller and others duck; I prefer to be the kind of guest who sets shoulders at ease. So I braided a few maple leaves into my hair and let a hobbit tailor talk me into a green cloak with embroidered wheat at the hem. “Not a costume, mind,” he insisted, “a compliment to the season.” I obliged him and bought two slices of apple pie I didn’t need.
Music rose from beneath the Party Tree, fiddles quick and bright, a drum keeping time like a good heart. I let myself be pulled into a reel by a pair of sisters dressed as “mischief and mischief’s friend,” which seemed accurate. We spun until the stars blurred and the lanterns steadied them. I laughed aloud (how rarely I do that among pines and wet rock) and I think the Tree laughed with me, a small clatter of leaves like applause.
Between dances I helped a flustered baker rescue a tray of cinnamon buns from a curious pony. “He’s a good lad,” I told her, turning the pony’s head with a scratch under his forelock. “Just thinks sugar is a kind of grass.” The pony huffed hot breath into my palm, unimpressed by my defense.
As twilight bruised into proper night, a cry went up. The Haunted Burrow had opened. It was a hobbit-hole borrowed for mischief, its round door painted midnight and set about with cobwebs that looked determined to be caught in your lashes. The queue formed fast. Children daring each other in escalating whispers; braver parents pretending not to be braver parents. I stood in line with them, because courage is a muscle and laughter is a salve, and both can be exercised at once.
Inside was a marvel of harmless frights. A corridor narrowed and widened in a trick of light. Somewhere a kettle lid clattered on cue and sent half the line jumping. In one parlor, a ghostly tea set poured itself (a boy behind a curtain, I later learned, operating a lever with solemn dignity). In a bedroom, a bed sighed and shifted as a skeleton in a moth-eaten nightcap tried to sit up and failed, which made its menace endearing. I startled at a perfectly placed mirror and heard my own sharp breath, which made me grin. My worst enemy has often been my own reflection in the dark.
At a bend I felt a tug at my cloak. A child dressed as a bat—too-small wings stitched by a too-proud grandmother, no doubt—peered up and whispered, “If you get frightened, you can hold my hand.” I solemnly thanked him and did exactly that as a painted spider descended on an obvious string. We both pretended the string was invisible. It is good to reward craftsmanship.
When we emerged, the night had thickened into velvet. Lanterns pricked the hill like tame stars. A troupe of storytellers was beginning, one voice low and dramatic, the others chiming with sound-effects—door creaks, owl hoots, the universal hobbit “boo!” which fails to scare anybody and delights everyone. I lingered until the punch bowl drew me away. Ginger and apple and some mischievous splash of something that put roses in cheeks. It was then a Took in a scarecrow hat sidled up with a proposition.
“Wistmead,” he said, eyes bright with conspiracy. “You look like a lass who can find north in a bucket. There’s a corn maze there with a mind of its own. Come test it.”
Wistmead lay deeper in the woods, tucked where fog puddles and the moon likes to sit and think. We went by lantern-light, our small procession steadily less solemn as the path filled with laughter. The town had decked itself in that particular Shire bravado. Everything bold, everything friendly, even its scares wearing a wink. The corn rose tall, its tassels whispering with each breeze like a chorus repeating a secret.
At the edge of the maze stood a sign: ENTER BRAVE, EXIT HUNGRY. We split into teams with the seriousness of generals, and then immediately lost all seriousness as a hidden whistle shrieked and turned the first corner into a theatre. The paths forked and doubled back. Sometimes a door in a corn-wall swung open onto a laughing hobbit who demanded a riddle toll (“What has ears but cannot hear?”, “Corn,” said every child instantly, triumphant). At one dead end, a scarecrow threw its arms up and groaned. I short-bowed to it and it short-bowed back, and we parted on excellent terms.
Somewhere in that rustling puzzle, I fell into step beside a girl dressed as a spider, her legs made of stuffed stockings that flopped as she ran. She told me she was seven and planning to be Very Brave tonight to earn extra candy. “Courage grows by being fed,” I told her. “Same as ponies.” We were both very brave when a jack-o-lantern popped from a trapdoor and blew smoke rings like an elderly dragon with a sense of humor. After we found the exit (to great applause and a bell that took its job seriously), she pressed a wrapped candy into my hand. “You were brave,” she declared, and scuttled off to new heroics.
Beyond the maze, long tables waited under strings of lanterns. The air was poetry: roasted squash, butter, onions, the sweet burn of cider. There were “spider pies,” their crusts laced in eight clever legs, filled with blackberries that bled cheerfully onto plates. I took two slices, because I respect art. I ate standing, listening to the night’s litany. Someone had started a quiet song, a harmony of low voices and clinked cups. When the jugs of Fognoggin arrived, the chorus grew merrier. A renown of Wistmead, that ale—like walking into a cloud that had good news and wanted to share. I sipped carefully. I prefer to remember my laughter.
At some point, a hobbit lad in a scarecrow vest clambered onto a barrel and declared a dance. I found myself swept into another circle, this one muddy at the edges and carefree in the middle. The earth held us steady, a promise the wilds and the Shire share.
Later, when the music eased and the lanterns softened, I walked a little away from the burble and buzz. The edge of Wistmead meets the trees like a seam sewn by a careful hand. I listened. An owl commented, thoughtful. Somewhere a fox thought better of crossing a path with so much clatter. I hummed a few bars of the river-song I carry for skittish horses and frightened thoughts, and the night folded around it, content.
Harvest is a word that tastes like gratitude when you say it. All day the hobbits had given thanks with their hands. Cooking, carrying, hanging garlands, sharing. I stood under those patient stars and gave thanks with mine, empty though they were. For fullness without conquest, for courage without blood, for a joy that does not need to be wrestled into shape. My work often calls me where fear makes the world small. Tonight I watched a whole village make the world bigger with laughter and pie.
On the way back toward Hobbiton, the fields breathed out fog as if releasing a long-held sigh. The Party Tree still had dancers under it, though their feet had slowed and the tunes had become the kind you keep in your pocket for sad days. A child asleep on a bench clutched a wooden bat mask. Someone had hung a sign at the Haunted Burrow’s door: CLOSED UNTIL TOMORROW, BOO TO YOU.
At the inn, I traded a harvest token for a small paper bag. It contained three sugar mice, two toffees, and a mint. In my room, I ate the mint and saved the mice for whatever dawn brings.
This is not my usual road. No brigands, no blighted thickets, no broken wings to set, unless one counts the paper bat a child dropped which I rescued and tucked into the crook of the Party Tree. But there are many ways to tend a world. Tonight it meant holding a lantern in a maze until small feet found me.
Tomorrow, I will take the path that leads away, as I always do. The wild keeps its own feasts, after all. Yet Harvestmath will ride with me for a while—the clatter of fiddles, the warmth of the Fognoggin I didn’t quite finish, the taste of blackberry “spider” on my tongue, the solemn bravery of a little bat who offered me his hand in the dark.
Some nights the world needs a sword and a bow. This night it needed someone to clap along and make room for wonder. I am glad I knew which to bring.