Standing on the narrow street, Torry thoughtfully rubbed his cheek, still smarting from Cally’s slap. He turned back to face the door into the Scholar’s Hall. Something in his sister’s reprimand reminded him of his uncle, Garrison Greenlake. It wasn’t the slap, for Uncle Gar never, as far as Torry could recall, struck anyone in the family. It was her unflinching stance, the certainty in her voice, and the clarity in her eyes. Her truth could not be denied, even if it conflicted with what he was certain he knew or, more precisely, with what he felt.
Cally was keenly intelligent, and also had inherited a common sense that Torry remembered from his Uncle Gar. The man had an unerring talent to see through difficult twists plaguing conflicted hearts. Quite often, Uncle Gar would be the peacemaker in childish squabbles. Strolling back to his horse behind Town Hall, Torry recalled a lesson his uncle tried to teach him in his boyhood.
In the spring of his eighth year, Torry was just beginning to feel his draw to the forge and anvil. Uncle Gar, the metalsmith in the Thornley-Greenlake clan, noticed Torry’s fascination and at first gave him only fetching tasks to test the boy’s resolve. No task seemed too menial or discouraging for the young Greenlake and by the beginning of Forlithe, Uncle Gar had Torry bending his first little hooks.
That time of the year often saw farmers in their wagons laden with early crops and trundling south along the Greenway to the market stalls in Bree. Often, they would water their horses at a Thornley or Greenlake well, and catch up on local gossip. One morning, Bob Quince and his boy Tim rolled into the Greenlake dooryard on a small wagon carrying several baskets of early-on potatoes. One of the wagon wheels had loosened and provided just enough of an excuse to stop by and make the easy repair while Quince chatted with Torry’s father. As Bob and Ben visited and secured the wheel, Tim wandered to the anvil where Torry’s hammer rhythmically rang.
Although they were the same age, the Quince boy was smaller than Torry, as was the Quince farm barely more than a subsistence plot compared to the Greenlake’s large and choice fields. Whereas Torry was well-fed, clothed, and shoed, Tim was barefoot and his oversized ragged hand-me-downs desperately clung to his scrawny frame. To the young Greenlake’s mind, these differences proved his obvious superiority over the Quince’s, and so when, with meek cheer, Tim offered, “Wha’ cha doin’?”, Torry slammed the hammer down against the anvil and growled, "Standing in my own yard, at my own anvil, minding my own business.” Without waiting to see Tim’s disappointment with the rebuke, Torry continued his pounding, paying the Quince boy no further attention.
Tim took a step back, bewildered and rebuffed, and was returning to his father’s wagon when a thick forefinger poked Torry’s back. Garrison Greenlake leaned close to Torry’s face as the boy spun around and froze beneath his uncle’s firm gaze and lowered voice. “Before we are anything else, whether rich, poor, Man, Dwarf, Hobbit, or Elf, we are one thing first. Any guess what that might be, Greenlake?” Uncle Gar’s use of the family name proclaimed this exchange as an important lesson, one that Torry was expected to take to heart. The boy shook his head, not wanting to guess wrong. “We are all people, Torry, and we have a lot more in common than all of our differences put together. If you want real respect as a man, you’d best learn to give it as a boy.”
Torry nodded slowly, but quietly wondered why he should care if someone like a Quince should respect him. His uncle read the question in the boy’s eyes and, to Torry’s surprise, answered it. “The Bree-lands remain a good and safe place when we all realize that envy and scorn just pull us apart, make us weak. Common decency and respect help keep us strong.” Torry nodded again, accepting his uncle’s words on faith, but the lingering uncertainty on his young face prompted his uncle to continue. “Just try to remember this as you grow up, Greenlake. The time should come when you’ll see it for yourself.” To punctuate the lesson, Uncle Gar jerked a thumb at Ben Greenlake and Bob Quince, working together as neighboring farmers should.
Mounting his horse, Torry recalled Uncle Gar’s words, and the look on his face when he offered them. Cally had just worn that same look, spoke in the same tone, and caught up his mind just as his uncle had. His sister was right, at least on one point. He had disrespected her judgement by insulting those she deemed worthy of her affection. Still, she was his sister and he would always seek to protect her out of his brotherly love.
Torry prodded his horse into a trot and towards the Staddle gate. The lane climbed past the hedged park and leveled as it stretched to the city wall. Vendor stalls and wagons were tucked in between shops and their keeper’s homes, and drying laundry hung from lines strung over the lane between the taller buildings. Another mid-morning in Bree hummed with the voices of the townsfolk and the sounds of their peaceful toil. The gate through the hedge-covered city wall stood open to allow the usual daily traffic between Bree and the hobbit village of Staddle. To the north of the gate, guardsmen trained or gossiped outside the Watch station. Some knew Torry and greeted him, either welcoming him to the Watch, or giving him friendly teases about taking the Oath. “Word gets around fast”, Torry thought as he returned each greeting in kind.
To the south of the gate sat a large house, now an orphanage. A small stable was wedged in between the house and the city wall, and was kept by the Watch station. It was well-shaded and offered troughs of water and hay. The stable’s thatch roof was lifted several feet above its man-height stone walls by poles tall enough to allow a mounted rider to easily enter. The gap between the walls and the roof allowed daylight in and air to breeze through. As Torry rode in, he could hear children playing, and looking through the gap at the back of the stable he saw Clay Cob sitting on the ground behind the orphanage amidst of crowd of cheerful youths. They were all laughing at some game being played. Rather than dismount, Torry watched them for a while, surprise lifting his brow.
Cob sat cross-legged on the ground, laughing gruffly as children climbed on him, the boys to wrestle playfully, the girls to deftly stick wildflowers into his thick and wiry hair. He gleefully grumbled and growled while the children darted in and out around him, calling out “Get the bear!”. His massive arms swung slowly around to deliberately miss them or gently lift one away to be briefly pinned to the ground and tickled. “Who would have thought”, a voice next to Torry mused.
Torry turned to see Watcher Tal Greenshoot, who had followed Torry from the Watch station and had stepped up onto an upturned bucket to peer over the wall into the backyard of the orphanage. Torry shook his head. “You’d think he’d be more likely to eat them”, he thought, rather unkindly, and would have said it aloud had not his earlier ecnounter with Cally caused him to reconsider. “Didn’t think he had any mama bear in him,” Torry replied instead, recalling the story often told about Clay Cob. He was the older half-brother to the Traitor of Archet, Calder Cob, and was supposedly half Beorning, which most folks either didn’t understand or just didn’t believe.
Clay had a good reputation until the raid on Archet. Revenge stole his heart and mind afterwards, and for a time he spent his mostly self-imposed exile from the village searching for those responsible for turning Calder against his own people. Rumors of Clay’s gruesome acts were only whispered, but after nearly being killed in his pursuits, Clay recovered much calmed. Perhaps his revenge had been satisfied, or maybe Cally was right in her assertion that it was Cutch Crane who’d talked Clay down from his self-destructive precipice. To see Cob now in this child’s play was easy to take but hard to believe.
Torry exchanged goodbyes with Tal, and turned his horse out of the stable toward the Staddle gate. He’d changed his mind about visiting Clay just yet, resolved to avoid creating another disrespectful encounter that day. He would not abandon his brotherly duty to protect Cally, but neither would he again make presumptions when asking about her well-being. Carelessly ill-informed opinions would only push them apart, as his had earlier in the morning.
Passing through the gate, the cobbled lane became a wide and well-beaten dirt track winding down into Staddle. The south side of the village edged against Little Staddlemere, a pond with dark and still waters smoothly reflecting the surrounding trees and drifting clouds. A gazebo stood nearest to the pond, and served as a gathering place for villagers and neighboring farmers, and from which conversation and pipe smoke would commonly waft. A pair of Watchers stood inside the gazebo, leaning against the railing and chatting with a hobbit couple.
A few paces north, a covered well marked the center of Staddle, a little village comprised of a variety of shops and homes nestled in hobbit holes. Constable Tanglerush sat on stump outside a hobbit-hole shop, sipping her mid-morning coffee from a steamy mug. Torry dismounted and approached, drawing out the Mayor’s letter. “Good morning, Constable. I’m Torrance Greenlake, and Mayor Tenderlarch sent me to you to meet up with a … Millaray Boggs?” Torry recognized the Constable, but didn’t recall that they’d ever met. Tanglerush looked him over as she swallowed and stood, then set her mug down on the stump before accepting and unfolding the parchment.
“Pleased to meet you, Greenlake, and welcome to the Watch. We’ve been expecting you.” As she read the letter, Torry said, “I understand Boggs is a member of the Watch. I hear she is a hobbit...?” His voice trailed off as he reached for a polite way to ask of her abilities, not wanting to disparage a hobbit’s diminutive stature. Tanglerush looked up with a grin from beneath knitted brows. She avoided the temptation to tell Torry the tale of Millaray and the troll, but as she returned the letter, she slyly said, “She’s as fit as she needs to be, and easily clever enough. Once you’re settled on the road together, tell her I said to ask about the Heirloom.” The Constable called one of the Watchers out from the gazebo, sending him to fetch Millaray Boggs.
