The last of the winter snow had melted and turned the quiet streams into frothing torrents. Most of Ammeline’s time had been spent gathering more herbs and food to replenish her stocks. With the abundance of wild mushrooms now growing in the woods Ammeline decided to take the excess into Michel delving to trade for some new tools and other bits and pieces.
The square in Michel Delving was thronging with folk going about their business and there appeared to be several traders selling their wares. In the centre of it all musicians were entertaining traders and customers alike. After picking up a new set of pestle and mortar, a sickle and a new sturdy knife Ammeline set off to see about getting her old crossbow re-braced. The old battered weapon had been passed down through the family for many years and only really saw use when she needed a door stop or went gathering in the more remote parts of the Shire. The re-bracing, she was told, would take a few hours so she decided to take the old book that she had been studying and sit out in the square whilst the work was done.
As she listened to the music coming from the market Ammeline opened up the large red leather bound book and began to scan through the pages. The latter pages of the book, containing the more fanciful looking plants, she disregarded. She had never seen anything in The Shire that looked like them before so she put them down to an over active imagination on the part of the author, the earlier pages containing the plants she defiantly knew she studied more closely. In several places notes had been made in margins and Ammeline was pleased to see it had been written by someone who knew a lot about healing and remedies. The odd thing was that not all the writing beneath the beautifully painted illustrations concerned the plants, rather it did but appearing as written poetry or lyrics to songs instead, some even had small lines of music written in various different styles.
Had it not been for the text on the uses of the plants Ammeline would most likely have donated it to a family to give to their children, so convinced was Ammeline that it was a piece of fiction more akin to a children’s book of stories and rhymes. But there were still some ideas that Ammerline was determined to research and test for herself, just in case.
Ammeline looked up to see Griffin Bunce returning with her crossbow. She thanked him kindly and offered to pay but he refused and told her she had more than paid for his services when she had saved his thumb following an unpleasant accident with a chisel last autumn.
Ammeline passed through the crowd of traders still hard at work and made her way towards Tuckborough. Although they did not know it yet someone there was going to have a nasty fall from a tree whilst trying to pick some apples.
