Chapter Text
Bilba was weeding her herb garden when, just by chance, she raised her head and saw the plane about to crash in the Bracegirdle's field.
It skimmed through the summer sky like a black star falling from the constellations, totally silent in its descent. Bilba could not even understand what she was seeing for a moment, with the sun in her eyes and the sweat dripping from her brow. By the time she had rubbed her face and looked up again, the plane had vanished behind the rise of Bag End. And then Bilba heard a low rumble and the squeal of warped metal. At once she knew the plane had landed far, far too hard.
Off the hobbit bolted, vaulting the back fence and sprinting over the roof of her home. There was dirt on her hands and neck, and her skin was pink from a day in the sun, but she forgot her exhaustion as she ran. Her skirts were tied up around her knees to keep them out of the garden, and when her father's battered, straw hat flew off her head she left it behind without a backwards glance. All she could think about was that terrible wrenching sound, the torn carapace of a steel dragonfly, rivets popping and its precious contents hurled down into the earth.
Bilba couldn't see the plane from the top of the hill. A thick copse of elm trees stood between her and the field beyond. A few ribbons of oily, black smoke was rising into the sky, but there had been no smoke when the plane went down, so perhaps there was still hope of survivors. She ran down the long grass, through the thickets and into the copse. As the trunks thinned ahead of her, Bilba made out the scene of the crash at last.
The field lay full of clover this season, to fertilise it for next year's crops. Through the blanket of white flowers had been rent a long furrow in the earth, exposing roots and dark soil. The cockpit of the plane, completely missing one wing, lay at the end of the trough. Scraps of black and blue metal were scattered as far as the edges of the field, one jammed upright in the earth very near where Bilba stood. The smoke rose from patches of oil at the tail of the plane, burning like merry wisps luring travelers in the marshes. There were great, black bursts of soot-melted paint all across one side of the plane, but whatever inferno had caused them was now gone.
Bilba stumbled through the clover, watching her feet for shards of metal or glass. A few yards from the rear of the plane lay a shattered crate. Its contents were a trunk of black wood, wrapped in oil-skin that had torn open in the impact. The trunk stood exposed, upright and to attention as if it waited nonchalantly in the front hall of a respectable homestead. It had what looked like a carving of the sun on its lid, a pentagon surrounded by rays of light. Bilba saw this much and went on without stopping. There was something moving beside the plane.
A dwarf with a mane of black hair hiding their face, crawling on hands and knees away from the wreck. They were in a dark, brown leather jacket and trousers, and blood coated their knuckles. As Bilba ran towards them, the poor creature fell forward on their face.
"By the mother," Bilba whispered as she knelt and took hold of the dwarf's arm. "Can you hear me, my dear? Can you speak?"
The dwarf was still clinging to consciousness, and rolled onto her back when Bilba heaved at her arm. She was a woman of indeterminate age – Bilba did not know enough dwarves to make a safe guess – her beard thick on her chin and trimmed neatly up to her lower lip. Blood streamed down one side of her face, sticking thick locks of black hair to her cheek, and she held her hands half-open away from her body. Vicious, red burns covered her palms and fingers. Her mouth moved in a silent prayer as her gaze swayed, unfocused, across Bilba's face.
Bilba glanced across her body, but could see no other signs of blood or rent clothing. There was no telling how battered she was beneath her thick, pilot's leathers, but for now it looked like her head might have got the worst of it.
"What's your name, eh? Can you tell me that much?"
The dwarf blinked. "Thorin," she murmured, and the effort sent her into a fit of coughing. Smoke on the lungs, no doubt. It could be deadly, but there was nothing Bilbo could do but keep her calm and rested.
"Stay awake a little longer," Bilba told the dwarf, pushing the strands of hair away from her eyes. "I'm going to help you. You'll be alright."
If it was a lie, Bilba didn't care. She got up and stepped over the dwarf's legs, hurrying to the cockpit of the plane, which had completely separated from the tail section. An empty seat hung open to the air, its belt swaying faintly in the breeze. In the nose Bilba could see the second figure of a human.
She had to climb up inside the cockpit to reach her, smearing her hands with oil, hard edges of metal digging into her feet, her skirts catching on dial frames and rivets. The woman inside sat staring through a windscreen that was smeared with blood and oil, the glass pocked by tiny holes. But her gaze was focused on the field of clover and she looked almost content. Her hands were still wrapped around the plane's stick. She was breathing in small, rapid gasps.
Bilba noticed that her jacket was pierced by holes the same size as the ones in the windscreen, through which dark stains had seeped into the leather. She felt her throat seize up.
She reached for the pilot's seatbelt, trying to look everywhere but at the holes in the woman’s chest. She stared instead at the twisted buckle of the belt, and the patch stitched proudly on the pilot’s arm. The Fishermen, it read, with an embroidered shape of a gold dragon beneath it. Bilba knew that name, from the papers and the propaganda talkies – the ones they'd seen before the invasion, of course. The Fishermen were the elite airforce of Dale, Erebor's closest ally. This plane was very, very far from home, and still in terrible danger. Bilba had to hurry.
"It's alright," Bilba said to the pilot as she strained to open the buckle. Her voice sounded more like her mother's than her own. "We'll get you out of here."
The pilot's eyes snapped around to look at her. Her breathing grew stronger. "Is… she… alright…?"
"Your dwarf?" Bilba wrenched the buckle open at last.
"The princess," the pilot whispered, her eyes wide and her pallor growing hideously pale. "Get her… away… take her… home…"
She doesn't know what she's saying, Bilba thought to herself. She's in a different world. She would immediately forget that word, beneath the sight of the blood and the burned plane and the scar torn open through the clover-flowers. "I will, I will," she soothed, hardly aware she was speaking. "But let's get you out, shall we? Come on, can you sit forward a little? Lean on me— Ms Fisherman? Ma’am—"
The pilot's gaze had settled on a place behind Bilba's shoulder. Her shoulders relaxed, and her head slowly tipped forward as if she was falling asleep. Her hands still clutched tight to the throttle. Bilba shook her shoulder, watching for some flicker in those empty, staring eyes. There was nothing beyond them.
Swiftly, losing her caution, her heart racing, Bilba climbed out of the plane. She staggered back to the dwarf, who was still breathing steadily, and tried to convince her to stand up. It was no good. Thorin – if that really was her name, and not some confused word in her own language – was struggling just to keep her eyes open, and Bilba was far too small to drag her more than a few feet.
"Wait here," Bilba laid her down again amongst the clover, her face turned up to the blue sky. "I'll be back soon."
She ran all the way back through the trees and up the hill, not even noticing the fox that barked at her as she passed. She was shaking when she reached Bag End, and her limbs felt so exhausted that she couldn't climb back over the fence and had to go a little way along until she reached the back gate, half overgrown with gorse. She tore the plants away and wrenched the old hinges open.
She had to go quickly. Any moment now, someone else who'd seen the plane fall might come looking for it. She could not let the dwarf be found. The orcs would come, they would take her away, and they would arrest Bilba for interfering. Or worse.
The wheelbarrow was lying in the garden where she'd left it. Bilba seized its handles and took it out the gate, down the hill and through trees to the field of clover. The dwarf was sitting up a little on her own now, and Bilba managed to maneuver her into the barrow with some pushing and short-tempered words. She looked comic, curled in the filthy wheelbarrow with her legs hanging out the front and her head tipped back to stare, dazed, at Bilba's face. But now Bilba could – despite her trembling legs and aching arms – move her a little easier, by dragging the wheelbarrow backwards and looking over her shoulder every few moments.
It seemed to take forever to get the dwarf back to the house. The birdsong had come back, and the smoke of the plane had dissipated. She had to drive the wheelbarrow right in the front door, getting mud all over her beautiful carpets and scratching her antique wooden floors. But at last, she helped the dwarf out of the barrow and onto her guest bed, boots and all.
Bilba set a pot of water on the boil and went to the closet in search of old, clean sheets to use as bandages and cloths. As she pulled a fold of white linen down from the told shelf, a thumbprint of oil streaked across it.
Her head began to spin. Bilba stepped backwards and sat down on the bench in the hall, staring at the black streak on her mother's white linen. She looked at her palm. There was more oil, and dirt, and blood, not just the dwarf's but also her own; she'd split her palm right open, lugging the wheelbarrow all the way up the hill. She hadn't noticed the pain until now.
All she could see behind her eyes was the dead pilot sitting in the cockpit seat, holding onto the controls of the plane. She would be sitting there still, nameless and alone, the flies beginning to gather at the bloody punctures in her chest.
The enormity of what Bilba had done swept over her and she had to clutch her hands in her lap to keep them from shaking. If they caught the dwarf in Bag End they execute both of them, she was quite certain. But what else could she have done? That terrible rift in the white field, and the dead pilot, and the burned dwarf... If Bilba noticed there were tears on her cheeks, she made no attempt to brush them away. In the other room, the pot began to rattle as it came to a boil and she jumped up and ran to save it.