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It would have been a pretty thing, once.
The metal was a dull, mottled color, and it was twisted and torn so that it barely resembled a circle. But if you held it up to the light and half-closed your eyes, you could almost see the elegant gold, sparkling here and there with vibrant gems long since fallen out.
Few hobbits did this, of course; golden crowns were for high tales in distant lands. Most simply scoffed and said that it was only a bit of pot metal twisted into a funny shape. Only the young and the fanciful told stories about it, wondered what Man or Elf might have worn it, long ago.
No one kept the mathom for long. It was an unsettling object, for all its dull appearance. When you held it in your hands, you could feel… something. Something that suggested great age, and great power. It was an uncomfortable feeling for a sensible hobbit, who could recite their family tree back a thousand years but somehow knew that this thing was much, much older.
Once, at one of the Old Took's midsummer parties, a young hobbit asked the wizard who did the fireworks about the mathom. (It was only a matter of time before he noticed it in any case; the thing was bound to show up at any large party.) He took quite an interest in the twisted bit of metal and asked many questions, wanting to know where it had come from, how long it had been in the Shire, and so on. The hobbits couldn't rightly tell him; it had been a present for as long as they could remember.
“It makes me feel all funny when I hold it,” the young hobbit told him. “Why, it seems to think that it's older than the Shire.”
“Certainly it is older than the Shire,” the wizard said, giving her such a sharp look from under his great brows that she leaned backwards. Suddenly he laughed, loud and long. “Hobbits,” he said, shaking his head. “Even if I told you the names of the Elves who once bore this upon their shining brows, it would still be nothing more than a curiosity kept by people who reserve their curiosity for what the next meal will be.”
Then his face turned thoughtful and perhaps a little sad, and he said, much quieter, “And perhaps that is as it should be.”
His audience, who were quite bewildered at this point and beginning to be irritable, took this as an opportunity to go see what the next course was (the Old Took had excellent food at parties, everyone agreed). All except the young hobbit.
“Will you tell me about the great Elves?” she asked, turning the circle of metal around in her hands. “Only it feels so old, and if I was that old, and no one remembered what I was anymore, I would be lonely.”
The wizard looked at her for a long time, and it seemed to her that his blue eyes looked right through her—but in a kind way, somehow, so she didn't mind too much. Then he nodded, and took a seat on a nearby table. “Ah, where to start… Many ages ago, before the Sun and Moon were placed in the sky, there was an Elf King named Finwë.”
He told her a story so fantastical that she could hardly believe it, of feuding elves and shining gems and beings so powerful they could sink a continent in their battles. Every time she found herself doubting his words, though, she would look down at the mathom—the crown, though it was too large for any hobbit—in her lap, feeling its heavy, solid weight and cool metal surface. It was real, and that meant that the wizard's story was real too.
“But how did it come to be here?” she asked, forgetting that he had asked her that very question some hours earlier.
“I cannot see the path it took. It was last worn some three thousand years ago, and many things can happen in such a span of time.” The wizard looked up at the sky, now full of stars, though the sun had not yet fallen when he had begun his tale. “And soon your father will want to know why I am keeping you from his party.”
“Will you tell me more of Elves when you next come to the Shire?” she asked eagerly. “I feel as though the story you have told has only been the top layer of the cake, and I haven't reached the strawberry filling yet.”
He gave her another look, considering this time. “Very well.” Then he nodded to her, stood up, and went away to set off the biggest round of fireworks Belladonna Took had ever seen.
A little more than a decade later, a young hobbit woman traveled to Rivendell with Gandalf the Grey. She took with her a strange, warped metal circle, and when the Lord of Rivendell saw it, he sat down quite abruptly and stared at it for several minutes.
Belladonna, who had at first been a little awed by this figure from the wizard's stories, began to feel concerned for him, so she offered him some mushrooms she had picked on the journey.
The Elf chuckled, a bit of color returning to his face, and gently handed her back the metal circle, handling it with reverence. “I thank you, Mistress Took, but I am well. I was merely… remembering.”
Belladonna's eyes widened. “Of course you remember it! Oh, I've always wanted to know- if it's not too much trouble, I'm sure you're very busy, but would you happen to know how it might have ended up in the Shire?”
“The last time I saw this crown, it was in a tent on a battlefield, an age ago. After the battle was over, there were those who said that it should be mine, but I did not want it. I ordered it packed carefully in one of the baggage carts, but somewhere in the chaos of the long journey home…” He raised his hands, palms up, an elegant form of a shrug.
Belladonna ran her fingers over the ancient metal. “Do you want it now? If it should have been yours, all those years ago?”
“No.” The answer was quiet, but firm. “However it came to be in the Shire, it does as much, if not more, good there than it would anywhere else. Let it be a mathom, and bring no more grief to this world.”
Belladonna had nothing to say to that, so she simply put the mathom back into her pack. After a moment of silence, she said, “Well! Now that that's sorted, could I trouble you for elevensies? It's been a long time since second breakfast.”