[Envinyatar]

Derufin gave Andwise a clap on the back, smiling widely as he nodded toward where the four Hobbit lads could now be seen speaking with Jinniver. ‘Nicely done!’ he said. ‘I’ll have to stow that in my cap for when my sons act up a little bigger than their britches.’ Andwise looked up at him, a questioning look on his face. ‘When we have our sons, that is,’ Derufin said winking.

‘And what might be happening if all those sons you’re dreaming up turn out to be daughters, laddie?’ inquired the Hobbit, a grin on his face. ‘Tis not up to you, you know. It’s pot luck as far as that all goes!’

Laughter welled up from the man. ‘Oh, I think then my sweet Zimzi will have to take a firm hand with the girls if it’s needed. I’m afraid their Da will be silly as a goose around them, and think they can do no wrong.’

Andwise joined in the laughter. ‘Led by the nose, eh? With their dimpled smiles and big eyes . . . you think you’ll be lost, eh?’

Derufin’s face clouded for a moment, his grey eyes darkening. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Lost for certain.’

Andwise made no comment on this brief change in mood, instead he drew the man over to where he was working on the front door for the cottage. ‘What do you think of this, Derufin? I’ve just finished sketching out most of it, but I needed to ask a question or two before I finish it.’

Around the border of the oak door were drawn small, twining vines of ivy with sprigs of holly interspersed throughout. ‘Faithfulness, friendship, and happiness round the door to your house,’ the Hobbit said. Andwise traced his finger round the seashell with the smaller engraving of a five pointed star on it. It was drawn just slightly off center to the middle of the door. ‘Now Cook’s told me Mistress Zimzi’s from up north, by the sea, and she said she had it on good authority that her family traced itself back to those sailors who fled east when the Star Isle fell.’ Derufin nodded, saying it was so. ‘Her name is one of the old ones from that place,’ he confided to the Hobbit. ‘It’s Zimziran. Beloved Jewel, her mother told me.’

‘But what about you, Master Derufin? There’s not much known about you before you set foot here in Bywater. I heard when you were a much younger man, you fought for the King in the War. But beyond that . . . well you’re a fair cipher.’ Andwise pointed to the blank space next to the star. ‘What shall I put here . . . for you?’

Derufin was taken aback at the question, and sat down on an upturned bucket for a moment to think it over. There was one he’d told his whole story to, but she was far gone. The war, the good friends and neighbors he’d marched off with in youthful abandon . . . the little band who’d come back . . . and they to losses of their own. Derufin’s young wife and little toddling daughter killed by Orcs just before the brave few of Ringlo Vale had returned home. His son, born when he was away, dead, too . . . and only the charred foundations of their little house remaining, where the valley winds sifted through the ashes at night leaving only the fired bones. He could look at it now, after all these years, without a great feeling of empty despair threatening to undo him.

With a gesture toward a nearby bench, Derufin bade Andwise sit with him a moment. And with an economy of words, he spoke of where he’d come from and what had happened. ‘I’ve laid that part of my life aside. Worried it to the marrow for a long time,’ he spoke low, ‘and now I’ve made my peace with it.’ Derufin shook his head as he gazed to where the door lay on the trestles, waiting only to be finished. ‘I cannot think what you might put for me. But it cannot be that place from where I came. That sad, lost man’s gone, and I’ve come through to be here . . . right here. And my Zimzi at my side.’