Yola

Of the newspapers that I had gathered I had now read the Breeland Herald and discarded it while I put the others back into my pack to be read later. There was nothing in that paper, that had helped me in my search for Yola, my “real” mother. Here in Bree, I had met only trouble and nothing to further me in my search.

The very first thing I did on my first day in Bree was to write to Pa and Ma to tell them I had arrived there safely. I tried to imagine how they would feel right now: having to tell me that I am not their daughter and then, shortly after that, for the first time see me leave home for an indefinite time on a possibly dangerous journey. Poor Pa and Ma!

They will always be Pa and Ma to me, I told them. And I took it upon me to come back home to them as soon as I could. For this place where I grew up, it was still my home and the two kind, sweet, caring hobbits that I grew up with: I’ll always be their child and they’ll always be my special parents, even if they did not conceive me.

“Can I keep this note?” I had read it over a dozen times and still was puzzled by what it implied: Pa and Ma were not my “real” parents, My real mother’s name was Yola, Yola Plumblossom. And my real father? No name. It was deliberately erased from the note. By Yola? By that old gammer who had delivered me to Pa and Ma? By someone else?