~The Cave~

The cool summer breeze rustled through the trees in the orchard as Peregrine Took walked through the old familiar paths of his father’s land. He and Merry had grown up playing in these orchards and fields and had decided to take their families there that summer for an extended holiday. Pippin very rarely went back anymore since his father’s death nearly twenty years ago.

Pippin stopped by an apple tree and reverently touched the trunk, his thoughts flying to far away places. As he did so, a young hobbit lass of about fourteen walked silently up beside him.

“Are you all right, Uncle Pippin?” she asked, gazing up at him with Merry’s hazel eyes.

“Yes, Eryn, I’m fine,” he replied. “Did you want something?” he questioned, turning to look at Merry’s youngest daughter.

“Could you tell me a story, Uncle?” Eryn asked curiously. “Tell me a story about you and Da.”

“Walk with me, and I’ll tell you,” Pippin said, holding his hand out to her.

She accepted it and followed, skipping along beside him. “Tell me about when you were my age,” she said, quickly adding, “Please?” as her mother had taught her.

“All right…One time my cousin Frodo came to this very farm when I was a lad your age,” Pippin began. “Of course he was a bit older than me, as he was thirty-six by then.”

“How old was my Da?” Eryn questioned.

“Your Da was twenty-three,” Pippin told her. “Now let me tell the story. He’d come over with Cousin Frodo from Buckland…

My Da had told us not to wander off, your Da and I, and he went to town with my Mum and sisters, leaving Frodo in charge to watch us.

Merry and I figured Frodo would be more fun than my Da, so we didn’t heed his warnings, and ran away from Frodo the first chance we got, just for fun.

“Oh, how bad of you!” Eryn exclaimed. “Was he afraid when he didn’t find you?”

“Shh, and listen, child,” Pippin said with a grin. “Who said he didn’t find us?”

“You and Da are good hiders. Da told me himself,” Eryn responded confidently.

Pippin chuckled. “Yes we are, but not that time,” he said and continued…

We wandered all over the farm, to places I didn’t even know existed on our land. We headed in a circle going north, wandering through this orchard to get some apples to eat, though Merry thought to bring cheese and crackers.

We knew Frodo would be searching for us, so we headed through the wheat fields to lose any trail of footprints or crumbs we’d left behind. But before long we heard him calling for us in the distance.

“Did he sound angry?” Eryn asked. “I would be angry if you ran away from me.”

“He didn’t sound angry, only slightly annoyed. You see, your Da and I were always playing tricks on him,” Pippin responded, continuing with his tale…

In the fields we knew there was a giant rock with a cave in it, but my Da had always told us to stay away from it. But when we were running through the fields, trying to stay away from Frodo, we ended up right outside the mouth of the cave.

“Come on, Pip,” your Da urged me, entering the cave a little ways.

I hung back, because I was afraid of the dark, as it were. “But my Da says we can’t go in there,” I told him, trying to get out of going in.

“Well, your Da’s not here, and Frodo’s gonna catch up with us at any moment,” Merry responded.

Eryn gave a little gasp and stared at her Uncle. “That’s not very smart of Da. If one of us children disobeyed like that we’d get in big trouble,” she said tsking her tongue like an annoyed mother.

Pippin smiled and laughed. “Yes, I’m sure you would. But you see, that’s because your Da learned all his lessons when he was young and is now teaching you how to be good hobbits.”

Eryn grinned. “What happened next?”

Merry grabbed my wrist and dragged me in just as we heard Frodo approaching.

“He won’t ever find us in here,” Merry said to me, turning to watch as Frodo passed by in the wheat.

“What do we do now?” I asked, still feeling a bit scared.

“Now…” he shrugged. “Let’s eat!” he said, pulling the apples he pilfered from the orchard out of his pocket. “And we can talk, just us, in here.”

So we sat down, trying to get comfortable on the hard ground to eat the apples and finish off the crackers, but were too late. A shadow passed across the entrance to the cave, our lonely source of light, and I heard Frodo’s voice behind me say, “What are you doing in here?”

I turned around slowly and he looked at us, quite annoyed.

“You know it’s not safe here, Uncle Paladin said you couldn’t come here,” Frodo told us, helping me to my feet and grabbing Merry’s sleeve. “You’re supposed to be helping me look after Pippin, not get him in trouble.”

“We just wanted to talk,” Merry complained. “Vinca found out about our last hiding place, in the shed, and we had to move, even though she swore she wouldn’t tell anyone.”

Frodo’s look softened, and he said, “All right, I’ll leave you alone to find a new hiding spot, but you must promise not to come here, agreed?”

We smiled happily and hugged our elder cousin. “Thank you,” we said in unison. 

At that moment, something fell on my foot and I squealed, my toe suddenly throbbing.

Frodo and Merry looked up, and Merry instinctively pushed us away as the ceiling collapsed above us.

“Oh no!” Eryn exclaimed. “Were any of you hurt?” She seemed as concerned as if it had happened just yesterday.

“Well, Merry was, and Frodo a little bit, but since I was much smaller, Merry’s push sent me further away so I was fine,” Pippin said as they entered one of the crops that a nearby hobbit worked for the Thain. He looked up at the sun, then pulled a couple of apples from his pocket. “Hungry?” he asked. “Storytelling always makes me hungry.”

“Yes, thank you.” Eryn accepted the fruit and began munching it hungrily.

Pippin took a bite of his own, then waited a moment before continuing…

We couldn’t see for a few minutes until the dust settled, and then I saw Frodo, sitting up, his arm bleeding from where a rock had cut him, and Merry lying on the ground, one of his legs trapped under some debris.

I’m sure Frodo saw how scared I was, so he very calmly began to free Merry’s leg, all the while talking comfortingly to us.

Once he freed Merry’s leg, and found out that it was broken, he turned to me and hugged me.

“It’s all right, Pippin,” he said. “I’m going to carry him very slowly to the house. You’ll have to go ahead of me and get his bed ready and go fetch a healer.”

I nodded and he let me go. I rose as he fumbled around in his pocket, as if suddenly remembering something.

Pippin paused a moment, suddenly remembering the brief panic on his cousin’s face, and finally realizing exactly what Frodo had been looking for.

That cursed Ring had been bothering his cousin that long before the Quest and Frodo had never said a word until he was discovered by Merry and Sam.

“Uncle Pippin? Are you all right?” Eryn asked, looking up at him concerned.

“Yes. I’m sorry,” Pippin said, shaking his thoughts away. “We learned afterwards that he’d lost his mother’s locket, that he’d gotten after his parents died…

I dashed down the road as fast as my legs would carry me, and I’m still surprised that the healer understood a word I said, as I was in hysterics by the time I got to her house.

She calmed me down by giving me some cookies as we headed back to the farm.

Turned out Merry’s leg wasn’t too badly broken and Frodo’s arm didn’t need stitches, but we didn’t look forward to telling my Da what had happened.

“Were you in big trouble?” Eryn asked.

“Well, my Da figured we’d had sufficient punishment from the cave-in, but Merry and I weren’t allowed to have company for at least two weeks because we’d disobeyed my Da.”

“Oh, that’s good. You deserved it, you know,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Yes, we did,” Pippin said, smiling.

“Is that the end of the story?” Eryn questioned.

“Yes.”

“That was a lovely story, Uncle Pippin,” Eryn stated. “I liked it.” She smiled at her Uncle.

“Good, I’m glad.” Pippin stroked her hair and said, “I think I hear your mother calling you. Why don’t you run and see what she wants.”

Eryn hugged him tightly and said, “Thank you for telling me that story,” then dashed off to find her mother.

Pippin smiled as she went, then turned and walked a few steps further into the field until he found himself at the mouth of the cave. No one had gone in since the day it had collapsed, but now Pippin entered it again.

He saw something shiny on the floor amidst the jumbled rocks and bent to pick it up. He dusted it off with his thumb. It was Frodo’s locket. He smiled briefly, then left.

Later that summer when Sam, Merry and Pippin visited the Havens, as they did every year they threw a bottle with messages to Frodo into the sea. But this year, the bottle also contained the locket.

They had no assurance that the bottles actually reached him, but they all felt better sending them anyways.

“I really hope he gets this one, though,” Pippin said softly as they turned away from the shore.

“I’m sure he will, Pip,” Merry said, already envisioning the look on his cousin’s face when he opened the bottle. He had no doubts it would get to Frodo.

Far across the sea from Middle-earth, a lone hobbit stood on the beach watching as the awaited bottle floated closer.

~The End~