Things are still so lighthearted here, it was nice to watch much of the movies yesterday to remind myself how deeper and darker this book gets. Anyhow, we’re free of the wight, and the next logical thing to do is eat lunch.
Tom explains how the hobbits’ ponies, not surprisingly, became friends with Fatty Lumpkin when they were housed at Tom’s for two days. They ran to find him last night in fear, and he seems to indicate that this is a part of the reason why he was able to locate the hobbits so easily. For now, Tom will ride Fatty Lumpkin along with the hobbits to the East Road, as he can’t bear to let them out of his sight for any longer.
So Tom will accompany them to the road, but no further. That appears to be what he would consider the edge of his lands, and he has to get home anyway. Living out in the woods takes a lot of work, you know. It’s between nine and ten in the morning, and the hobbits, realizing they haven’t eaten since yesterday’s lunch break when they fell asleep, finish the food that Tom had packed for them. In the meantime, Tom arranges the treasures from the barrow into a pile on the hillside. Apparently, if the items are taken away, by anything, the spell over the barrow is lifted, and no wight will ever return. He takes for himself (or for Goldberry) a blue brooch, and gives the hobbits each a dagger, deadly yet beautifully made.
These mark the first weapons that the hobbits have carried! (Aside from the ring, if you consider that to be a weapon, which it is in a way.) I know for a fact that the make and powers of these daggers becomes important, but we’ll get to that much, much later.
Interestingly, Tom looks at the brooch he picks up “as if stirred by some memory.” Backstory? Is this one of those moments where we see a glimpse of something in Tom’s life that was never really fleshed out?
It seems that way. It’s entirely possible in my mind that Tom could have even owned this brooch before, if he’s as old as we think he is, and totally forgotten it. It is set with blue stones that look like flowers or butterfly wings. Seeing as Tom wears blue, maybe it just reminds him of himself, in a way. I can’t say for sure.
“They gleamed as he drew them from their black sheaths, wrought of some strange metal, light and strong, and set with many…”
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