The village of Gamwich has no farms or markets like the other villages of the Shire, but it does sustain itself with a dedicated culture of hunting and fishing. The forest of Arassien has always been plentiful, although perhaps never truly tamed. The rivers from multiple waterfalls converge at the large pool which the village is built around, and the hobbits spend much of the morning laying out nets through them to catch the fish from the Lhûn before they head south to the Water.
We made some progress in finding the tree-markings in the forest surrounding the village, but the ones discovered were too worn or damaged to be of much use. I made some inquiries among the village hobbits on whether they knew of any trees tended by elves, but given how recently developed the village was accounts were scarce on such encounters. I may be one of the few elves to have visited the village. Occasionally they had been visited by ‘big folk’ from the northern Lhûn, whom I suppose were Rangers passing through the Shire.
The dwarf Vigdi had also been making inquiries, on the correct herbs and mushrooms to be gathered in the forest. He was rather more successful, receiving many notes from a Miss Puddifoot about the correct preparation of rare plants. His sale of fresh potatoes from Tighfield made him particularly welcome among the villagers, for their own stocks had run low due to what they referred to as ‘several accounting errors’. Not that the hobbits had to worry much about finding food, for there is always plentiful produce and quarry in Arassien. The local bounders of the village use a path along one of the hills for hunting wolves, and occasionally bears also.
Deciding to look further out, we ventured up the hunting trail to the ‘bounds’ of the Shire, the now-familiar pile of stones that serves as a wall. From atop the hill we could see the waterfalls that flow down to Gamwich, and besides the largest of them the mostly-intact remains of a small fortress. Once it was Ost Lagorath, the ‘fort of the rapids’, one of the few to continue after the collapse of Arthedain. But long-abandoned now, for I doubt even the Rangers remember how maintain the old keeps.
The trees by the wall appeared to resemble what we were searching for. ‘The bend of these trunks indicate they may have been grown for shipbuilding’ I told the expedition. ‘The curved wood is essential for constructing a hull.’ One of the trees even looked as if it had once borne a marker but like the others it had been worn away. This might have been the lost grove, but without the rune-markers present it could just as well have been anywhere from here to the main river. In any case, this was too close to the Shire’s land for the Ered Luin to harvest.
On returning to the village, I was asked by one of the grocers if I could join Miss Lily Brownlock and her friends for tea late this afternoon by the edge of the pond. These invitations were also given to Lorin and Vigdi on behalf of the ‘Yondershire Antiquarian Society’. Apparently the hobbits of Gamwich were eager to take on the task of researching their village heritage, and through most of the day a number of them had been comparing old village records.
The Antiquarian Society had established a wooden table under one of the grove trees overhanging the pond. Although as the meeting was called to order, Miss Brownlock clarified that the society usually met at Mr Clayhanger’s house at Nobottle. So this was more a meeting of herself and Miss Wingard Puddifoot (the only active members currently in Gamwich) along with anyone else who was willing to help out in return for afternoon tea.
The first order of business was the serving of the tea. It was mushroom tea, with a strong smell of honey. Miss Puddifoot said that when the bigger folk used to visit the forest they preferred honey flavour to their mushroom tea, so she supposed the same may be true of elves and dwarves. With this, I came to realize that the meeting was brought about more by Vigdi’s interest in old mushroom recipes than my questions about the tree-markings. Evidently, the secret to diplomacy with the hobbits is to bring along a good cook or two.
From what was discussed, I was able to confirm that the oldest ledgers and diaries these villagers possessed only dated back to about eighty years after the loss of Edhelion. Since the retreat south to Duillond would still have been underway it is likely the forest was well-tended when the hobbits arrived, but not formerly occupied.
Miss Brownlock did bring up the subject of ‘fairy trees’, which was a folk legend more associated with Tighfield due to its proximity to such ‘non-hobbitish’ territories. It was said that they never wilted or caught fire, and hobbits who slept by one of these trees dreamt of strange lights in the distance. More importantly, they were sometimes described as having ‘fairy-marks’ on the side of the trunk near the branches. Miss Puddifoot mentioned that her second uncle (which I assume to be the father of a second cousin) had once encountered a ‘fairy tree’ while exploring up in the hills and offered to point it out to us later. I have the impression that to the folk of Gamwich the bounds of the Shire are more of landmark to find one’s way back home than an actual boundary.
The crate of freshly-picked mushrooms could not be located, and so naturally a second round of tea was no longer possible. Lily Brownlock held that good discussion cannot be without good food and drink, and so reconvened the society meeting for today. We all said farewells, and then Lorin picked out a handful of dwarves to investigate this tree before nightfall.
It was somewhat further out than our hobbit guide had first indicated. With all the eagerness of a hunter after prey, she led six dwarves and an elf beyond the near hills. We narrowly avoided a number of bears, but did run into a few wolves. The dwarves were used to dealing with worse but I was surprised that hobbits could venture this far out unaccompanied. I suppose they have become skilled at hiding from wild animals.
Eventually we came to a hill overlooking a small river that flew down from the mountains. The ‘fairy tree’ was part of a number of large trees by the edge of the hill. While the sun had begun to set, I could make out a rune-mark hidden under one of the branches. To examine it further I moved closer to the branch. Which was why I did not immediately notice the arrow pointed at me, nor the man who had notched it.
