The middle aged woman started a fire in the hearth at the corner of her house and threw two logs in it to feed it. She hung the pot over the fire and poured some water in it from the jug on the table, then, after putting the jug back where she took it from, the woman took a bucket and went outside and made her way towards the well in the yard behind the house, the weather was good and warm as spring should be, even in early evening. Her three dogs ran towards her and jumped around happy to see her. The woman passed through, brushing their hide gently saying something sweet to them and filled the bucket and returned to the house to pour the water in the pot. She repeated the process once more and started cutting some vegetables and the two conies she had hanging over the fireplace. She fed the fire with two more logs and then stirred the content of the pot slowly, in the same direction in medium speed several times and then leaned over to take a long sniff of the steam. She nodded to herself approvingly and covered the pot again. She turned and went to the pantry for some leaves of tea, a good dinner with a good tea she thought when she came out of the small room and sat down to prepare the teapot while waiting for the food to boil.
It took the better part of an hour for the content of the pot to start boiling and the woman got up to stir it one last time when her three dogs outside started barking and running around the yard like as if they went crazy. The woman approached the window and pulled the curtain aside, half expecting to see someone coming up from the road around the pond, but no one was to be seen. She opened the door and looked again before turning to the dogs.
-Hush! There’s no one there!
She went back inside but wasn’t fully convinced, there was a knot at the pit of her stomach, faint but it was there despite her best attempts to brush it away. The dogs didn’t address their barks towards the village. They weren’t barking at anything in particular, they were running around and barking at nothing.
-They must have smelled something that bothered them. The woman muttered and put the teapot over the fire.
The dogs stopped. They whined in apparent fear and scratched at the door. The woman opened it and the three rushed inside and ran down the stairs where she had their cages. They almost forced her to the floor, that’s how eager the dogs were to get inside, and the woman looked at the road once more, the sun was setting but she could see as far as the village still. The path was empty and the village quiet. What is it?! her mind insisted and she pulled the curtain aside once more to look outside when something came to her mind. She took the shawl from the hanging rack and went outside. She turned left out of the door and turned left again, going past the small house behind hers and followed the path up and looked ahead at the horizon.
Far from the village, in front of the setting sun, she saw a gathering of clouds and shuddered. They were gathered over the Barrow Downs and it seemed to her as if she saw a whirlwind that touched them at its highest and she was certain that it touched the ground at its lowest. The woman shrank back and tightened the shawl around her neck and shoulders, suddenly she felt very cold and took some steps backwards, then turned and hurried back to her house. She heard her horse in distress in the stable behind the house and approached the wooden structure and muttered something to the frightened animal in an attempt to calm it but to no avail. The poor animal wouldn’t calm. She walked along the wall of her house and just before turning right to head to the door she stood still. The frogs that reside around the small pond outside her house started croaking all together. It was an ominous song as if they were announcing some kind of arrival at the house. The woman rushed inside, almost dropping the wheel by the door, and took hold of a bag of salt, she took a fistful and threw it in the fire and it started cracking, then she opened the door and straightened the boot that was next to it and poured salt along the doorstep.
-Fortune keep me safe from this. I haven’t harmed anyone, may any evil that comes this way turn away from me by the wheel or kicked away by the boot!
She closed the door, locked and barred it and poured salt along the doorstep from the inside and then along every window in the house.
-Go away! I haven’t done anything to you!
The frogs soon went quiet but she could hear the storm from nearby for most of the night. At last at some point before dawn it went quiet and she managed to get some sleep.
That night Buckland was covered by a strange yellowish mist and in it the Hobbits could see the faint image of a hunched person walking around with a lantern as if looking for something. It looked like the figure was hunched and every now and then it was picking up stones.
-Whoever it was, they picked up stones and looked at them, then they threw them away and moved on.
That’s what the brave ones said on the next day, the ones who dared look out of the window after the strange whirlwind appeared over the Barrow Downs past the Old Forest. The older Hobbits started telling tales of old, the younger ones were skeptical and the brave ones wanted to venture East.
