Frodo Gardner paused to wipe the sweat from his brow with a sweep of his sleeve. Nearly lunchtime, and this area was done. He swung the bucket of weeds from the ground and made for the compost heaps. Da would be pleased with how well it was all looking. The mallorn must be – he tipped his head back to see it all as he made his guess – oh, 40 feet high by now. It had stopped reaching for the sky, he thought, and its branches were spreading their welcome shade further and further across the Party Field – the Remembrance Gardens, he corrected himself. Though most folk still used the old name, he had to admit. Well, that was the use most of them made of it, the wide space under the branches being a perfect dance floor, no matter what the occasion, and plenty of occasions were celebrated there.

Only the older folk seemed to appreciate the planting his Da (and Frodo himself as soon as he was old enough) had done, from the boundary walls to the dancing square: beds and borders and walks, and seats – plenty of seats so you could sit and enjoy the colours and scents. Da had insisted on the seats. "Many's the time we could have done with more to sit on than sharp rock or wet sedge tussocks," he'd said, "and maybe remembering comes easier if you're sitting down, 'specially if you're getting on a bit."

Frodo doubted that those who came and sat, did much remembering, now. It must be twenty years since the mallorn was planted – no, Elanor was 22 now, so the tree must be in its 23rd year. Perhaps his Da was right, and the folk who came really did think back to the reasons the field had been transformed. Maybe they really did remember the moving speech their Mayor had made at the Dedication Ceremony. Frodo had been only six at the time, but he remembered. He remembered the crack in his Da's voice when he'd reminded everyone present (and everyone had been present, though Frodo suspected that this had a lot to do with the Dedication Feast) – when he'd reminded them of how the Shire had suffered, and how the Darkness had been prevented from covering everything.

Most people had taken it that he meant the Rousing of the Shire, and had raised a cheer for Da and the Thain and the Master of Buckland, both present in their war gear; but they and Da had quieted the cheering, and Da had spoken a few choked words about the Ringbearer and his quest. Frodo might only have been six, but he knew the way his Da looked when he was holding back tears. Others might not have noticed, but Frodo knew. Just as he knew how his Da sounded when he cried. You didn't forget something like that; it was frightening for a child, and Frodo still hated the feeling it gave him, even now he was entering his tweens. Hearing your Da cry took the ground from under your feet, the safety out of your world.

Frodo didn't think that anyone else knew that sound, especially not Mam. They might know when Da got choked up for happiness, like when their Tom was born that spring – Frodo could never think of a scrap like that as Tolman, but he'd grow into it. But the tears Da shed in this garden were bitter – bitter and sharp as the place where he shed them, in that part where no-one else seemed to go.

Even before work had begun on the turning of soil for the trees and shrubs and perennials, that part of the garden had been made. No-one had understood why Samwise Gamgee, who had always made the most beautiful gardens in the Shire, had suddenly seemed to take leave of his senses and started planting stones and gravel. Up there in the driest corner, where even the weeds had struggled to grow and the rocks under the earth had broken through the soil, Sam had added more rocks and stones and a vicious covering of the sharpest shale to be found. No wonder no-one else ever went up there, not even to follow Sam's expressed wish that they should look upon what might have been, the better to love the beauty of the rest of the garden, of the whole of Middle Earth.

That was where Sam went to shed those bitter tears. Frodo had known that his Da disappeared from home in the gathering dusk, to return long after he was asleep, and as soon as he was big enough to get up to and through his bedroom window, he'd followed. A long way in the dark for little legs it had been, and when he'd caught up at last, and heard those terrible sounds, he'd burst into tears himself. And Da had found him, and hugged him, and tucked him back into bed, and his world had righted itself again.

He'd never told anyone, and he never would. He didn't know why it was easier for Da to do his remembering up there on the corner made barren waste; why he should want to go there to grieve for the Ringbearer.

He knew why there was always a pot of forget me nots there, though.