“Just up there, the big one to the left. No your other…that’s the one! Bring it here.”
Qais descended from the stepstool to deliver the book into the open arms of an elder hobbit. He couldn’t help but smile as the old gent bustled to his desk behind the counter to lay out the overlarge tome.
“This is it. Thank you, my boy. Don’t know what I would do without you.”
Qais chuckled as he sat at one of the few tables that had been built for Big Folk in the small cluttered shop.
“You’ve run this place near forty years now, Mr. Figwort,” the young man reminded him. “I think you could have managed a little longer without me.”
“Oh, sure,” Mr. Figwort tutted as he pulled a monocle on a chain from one pocket and fitted it under his right white brow. He squinted, moving the candle around on the desk as he frowned at the book, then took the eyeglass out and secured it over his left eye instead. “That’s better…What were you saying, My. Caraway? Oh, yes. Once upon a time I delighted in the business of running up and down these ladders, but in my old age, it helps having one of your folk around on occasion for when I’m just feeling the right sort of lazy.”
Qais smiled as he looked around the old bookkeeper’s shop. There seemed as many books stacked on stools and floorboards as there were on the shelves. He was young enough it was no trouble stooping to retrieve them under stacks, but he imagined being older, a tall rickety thing, and how nice it might be to have a small spry chap to help him out now and then.
“You’re kind to let me stay here,” Qais said as he tugged on the embroidered ribbon he used as a bookmark and opened to where it had kept his place.
“Quite alright, quite alright. You help the customers as much as myself. I would hire you, if I thought you had the time. I see you at the Hall nearly as often as here. I hear you do good work. Quite young for a solicitor, though, aren’t you? But then all you Big Folk are young.”
Qais shrugged. He looked young, but he was barely a youth anymore. He imagined he would look sixteen well into his twenties. His mother had never shown her age, either, and her beauty had been the envy of the homestead. He winced. It still pained him when thoughts of her crept up on him.
“I learned the law from one side. It was not much trouble to learn the other,” he shrugged. Truth was, his journals could recount his journey from Bree-town to Ashforde-upon-Brandywine better than he could. Leaving the Watch had given him the peace he didn’t know he had needed, and his studies of country law filled his life with the quiet, purpose, and distraction no hobby could. “Wouldn’t have made it this far without you, Mr. Figwort. Much easier to study in the quiet of a country bookshop than in that grand tavern up the road.”
“Too true, too true…” Mr. Figwort muttered, then the sound became wordless mumblings, and then a gentle hum as the old bookkeeper
Qais turned back to his own work. The Hall on the Hill where Ashforde’s public records were kept was where he did most of his research, but there was something special about sharing the cramped, cozy bookshop with the aging hobbit. It made him feel of use, as if he were doing more by helping the old gent bring books down from the high shelves than he did representing farmers and the guilds come tax season.
It had been a quiet enough life, these last three years. Ashforde was a growing town. The more residents moved in from the country, the more work he had, drafting wills, settling property disputes, and negotiating trade agreements between the town’s merchants and the more wealthy folk from Bree-town and Trestlebridge. He’d taken a bed in the boarding house at the base of the hill from the town’s tavern, the Bear and Barrel, and did not have an answer for any of his neighbors when they asked when he would find a proper place. He spent his time between there, the tavern, the Hall, and Mr. Figwort’s Bookshop. He had enough home cooked meals provided at his neighbors’ kitchen tables that he did not often miss having a kitchen of his own.
Of course there were things about Bree that he missed. He traveled there often enough, and the countryside had not changed. The same farmers he visited to respond to threats of wolves as a Watcher he now visited to assist in legal disputes with neighbors. He still travelled to see his old captain, Curnden, and tolerated (and secretly appreciated) the gentle ribbing the old man always gave him for hanging up his boar cloak and fur. “When are you going to get your wits straight and come back, lad?” He felt both a smile and a pang thinking of it.
“Qais—” The young man looked up to see the back of the hobbit’s shaking head. He knew that tone, knew that Mr. Figwort only forgot to call him ‘Mr. Caraway’ when he was flustered, or distracted, or deep in a project. Qais secretly smiled. Few called him by his first name anymore, and it made him feel a little more at home.
“I need another one. The one with the gilding on the shelf up there. Now where is it? Ah, yes, do you see where I am pointing? That one right there. Careful now.”
“Right away, Mr. Figwort,” Qais responded as he stepped up on the low rung of the ladder to reach for a book he could have easily just plucked off the wall. “Is this what you’re looking for?”
“Yes, yes! Thank you, my boy. This is exactly it. Oh, yes yes yes…” the hobbit trailed off as he disappeared again behind the counter and set the book up on a stand to compare with the one he’d laid out on his desk. His muttering became rapid, excited, almost chirping. Qais could only listen, shake his head, and quietly laugh.
