Stories of Arda - Lord of the Rings Fan-Fiction Archive

A while ago, Dreamflower sent me the cutest little bunny holding a scroll in his tiny hands...er... paws. He looked so harmless, sitting there, so appealing, with his wide-eyed, innocent look.

"Merry and Ferdi remembering some childhood adventure from before Pippin was born."

Considering that Merry was eight, when Pippin was born, and Ferdi was seven... the two must have been *very* young at the time! And so this story within a story is set between the time Bilbo adopted Frodo and took him away to live at Bag End, and before Pippin's birth.

Merry is seven, and Ferdi is five-almost-six, if I've done the math correctly. They are visiting for a month or more at Whittacres Farm, for Merry's mother is sister to Paladin Took, and Ferdi's father Ferdinand is Paladin's closest friend, a cousin-closer-than-a-brother, rather like some other cousins who are well-known in hobbit circles. Pimpernel is four years older than Ferdi, and Rosemary is one year older than Pimpernel.

The framing story is set after Just Desserts, as the King's Counsellors and their families and some very special friends are on their way from the Lake to the Brandywine Bridge, where most of the party will return to the Shire, but a few--Farry and Ferdi and an escort of guardsmen--will continue on to Gondor.

I had thought the story irretrievably lost, but found a rough-draft copy right around the time of Dreamflower's birthday, and so put it back on my writing list, as a belated present (as at the time I was quite tied up with another birthday offering). So here it is, once more. And more to come, if all goes well.

You know I have trouble doing things quickly and easily. It's either a drabble or a novel with me. Well, this probably won't be a novel, but since it's only outlined and not completely written to the end in draft, who knows how long it will end up to be?

So, in the following chapters, please accept this token of my esteem for a wonderful storyteller and purveyor of plot ideas.

Chapter 1. In which the hobbits try to establish that adventures are not all that common

It had been an easy day of travel, in part for the old man's sake. Jack, though his health had been much improved with the news that he was no longer barred from the Shire by the King's Edict, having been presented a much-decorated certificate to that effect, was still feeling the effect of age and old injury. Even the King's healing hands had no remedy for that.

The night was young, and the travellers sat around the fire, roasting wild mushrooms the hobbits had gathered as they walked, and there was much laughter and cheer in the group, some of whom were going home, and others, on their way to adventure. Or something to that effect.

'Now, Jack, whatever you might think, hobbits are not in the habit of having adventures...'

'Not if they've grown into their common sense, that is,' Ferdi said smugly, and nudged Pippin with the point of his elbow. 'Of course, some never do seem to grow into common sense.'

The fire popped, sending sparks spiralling upwards, as if they sought to dance with the stars that studded the sky above the high treetops.

'I beg your pardon,' Ferdi said, sitting upright and putting on his most prodigious frown. Merry, however, was not quenched. Ferdi, after all, was a younger cousin.

'So my finding young Pippin in the middle of nowhere, seeking Bag End (though he was in actual fact headed for the South Farthing, as I recall), was something out of the ordinary?' the old man said, drawing on his pipe. He looked up and nodded in appreciation as his adopted son, Robin, drew a blanket around his shoulders, over his cloak. Though the night was mild, his old bones were not so resistant to the chill of sitting on the ground as they had been in his younger days.

Merry laughed, jabbing the stem of his own pipe at the listeners. 'Might have been, if my cousin were not so very Tookish,' he said.

'Speak for yourself,' Ferdi said. 'As if you were always one to sit sensibly by the hearthside... you were every bit as bad as our little cousin, and worse! For you were not content to brave the dangers of the wild by yourself, but drew your younger cousin into mischief with you!'

'O now,' Pippin said in defence of Merry. 'It was my own idea to follow Frodo... Merry wanted me to stay, but I couldn't let them go off by themselves into danger.'

'I didn't mean that time,' Ferdi said hastily, putting out a staying hand to Pippin's arm, with a look of apology.

'That time,' Jack said, his eyes bright with amusement. 'Just how many times have you led your young cousin astray, Master Meriadoc?'

'And not just that one younger cousin,' Ferdi said. 'Pippin is not the only younger cousin he has drawn into...' he paused, with a look of distaste, as if the next word offended his palate, 'adventure.' He gave Merry a dark look. 'Quite a corrupting influence, I fear, but then, you know what they say about Brandybucks!'

Jack laughed heartily, while Robin looked mystified. 'Not fit for your tender ears, lad,' the old man said at last, as his laughter quieted, and the teen nodded, though from his look it appeared he'd be asking young Faramir Took about the matter at a later time. 'A corrupting influence, Master Merry! I'd never think it, to look at you. You are every inch a proper hobbit... much as Bilbo must have appeared to be, before Gandalf inveigled him away from his comfortable smial...'

Merry laughed. 'That,' he said, 'from one who was known to sleep in the notches of trees and blanket himself with dry leaves when nestled in a hollow log...'

'That was not adventure,' Ferdi said with dignity. 'It was a necessity.' He raised his chin, all the better to look down his nose at his older cousin. 'Not at all like the time you led your little cousin astray, and him barely more than a faunt at the time...'

'Pippin followed Merry into danger from his earliest days, did he?' Bergil said. He had walked around the perimeter of the camp, checking in with each guard in turn, and had reported to the Captain of the travelling company that all was quiet. Most of the hobbits were already asleep, and these remaining by the fire would be seeking their bedrolls as soon as they finished their pipes, according to their custom.

'Indeed,' Ferdi said, and added with another dark look for his older cousin, 'but it wasn't Pippin I was thinking about just now...'

'Do tell, Uncle Ferdi,' young Faramir said in his best coaxing manner. 'Is this about the time that you and Uncle Merry took the pies from the windowsill...?'

'Then was it the time you and Uncle Merry decided to ride the ponies in the field, for a lark, and...'

'Perhaps it was the time that he and Merry decided to look for Oliphaunts,' Pippin put in, leaning back and drawing on his pipe so that the glow lit up his eyes with mischief. 'Though I was only a faunt at the time, I remember the scolding they got...'

'It was before you were born, as a matter of fact,' Ferdi said loftily. 'And I don't think they told you about it, for they didn't want you to get ideas in your head about wandering off... not that it stopped you...'

'Before I was born? And a story I haven't heard?' Pippin said, leaning forward again. He drew up his knees and circled them with his arms. 'Well, you mustn't stop there! Tell on!'

Merry was bored silly. Every summer they came from Buckland to visit Whittacres Farm, and every winter his Uncle Dinny and Auntie Aggie and cousins Pearl, Pimpernel and Pervinca came to Buckland for Yule. He much preferred the latter: At least in Brandy Hall he could escape the attentions of his giggly cousins. Well, Pearl wasn't all that giggly. She was something of a sensible lass, who had learnt how to bake gingerbread and apple tart, and when she did such things she usually asked Merry and Frodo to sample her baking "to make sure it all turned out right".

Merry frowned and then for some reason he found it necessary to blink fiercely, and in the end he fisted his eyes. Frodo had always come to the farm with them for past visits. Always. But now he was Uncle Bilbo's lad, living at Bag End. The Brandybucks had stopped over on their way to the farm, and they'd stop again on their way back to Buckland, but it wasn't the same thing at all!

His cousin Ferdibrand had not been much comfort. The little lad was only five after all, due to turn six in another month, but not much more than a faunt. Why, he still sucked the two first fingers of his left hand! It was quite as babyish as sucking one's thumb, something that Merry, at the grand age of seven, had left far behind him. The worst thing was that Ferdi had an older sister, and every time the lads got properly dirty she'd swoop upon her little brother and carry him off. Their mother was a prim and proper Bolger and did not seem to understand that farms are dirty places, and proper diversion necessitates soiling.

'Such large words from such a little hobbit!' came a laugh behind him, and Merry realised he'd been grumbling aloud. He whirled and coloured. 'H'lo, Uncle Ferdinand,' he said. Not truly his uncle, but Ferdinand was as close as a brother to Uncle Paladin. "Dinny and Dinny" the two of them were called, when they were together. Very silly, in Merry's opinion.

'I am in complete agreement!' Ferdinand continued, swinging Merry to his shoulder.

Without his meaning it to, Merry's face broke out in a grin of delight, to see the world from this high vantage.

'Proper diversion necessitates a goodly amount of soiling,' Ferdinand continued. 'I have yet to convince my wife of that fact, however. She seems to think that young Ferdi is more doll than laddie. 'Tis a good thing he doesn't mind splashing in the bath!'

Merry pulled a long face at this, and the grown hobbit laughed again, and dug in his pocket, coming out with a sticky sweet. 'Here,' he said. 'I'd only give it to one of the ponies, after all, and it's not good for their teeth.'

Merry took the treat and popped it into his mouth, crunching down on pepperminty delight. 'Thanks, Uncle Dinny,' he said with a grin.

Ferdinand swung him down again and stood him on his feet. 'Don't mention it,' he said with a grin of his own. 'If it comes to the ponies' ears, they won't be talking to me for a week!'

Whistling, he walked off toward the field, halter and rope over his shoulder, ready to begin another training session.

Merry debated whether to watch, or to go into the smial in search of sustenance, for it was that difficult time too long after elevenses and not soon enough before luncheon, when the kitchen was full of bustling and young hobbits were likely to be scolded and sent away again, empty-handed, so as not to spoil their appetites when mealtime was so near.

The rumbling of his tummy decided him. Things went much as he'd anticipated, however, and he found himself thrust out of the kitchen into the hallway. Hearing giggles, he froze, but realised quickly that the sound came from one of the bedrooms. In point of fact, it came from the bedroom his girl-cousins shared. There seemed to be a great deal of chatter and merriment coming from the room. Indeed, they seemed to be having a better time than Merry at the moment!

He wondered what they'd found to do, his Whittacres cousins and Ferdi's sister, to fill up the long stretch between meals. Usually Merry could fill the time by following his father like a young shadow, but Saradoc and Paladin had gone up to Waymoot Market, and had expected to stay the night before returning. Merry had never spent a night away from his mother, yet. He had begged to go along, but his father had only laughed and tousled his curls. 'Someone's got to look after the ladies, my lad,' Saradoc had said. 'What would they do, without you and young Ferdi to watch over them?'

It was a heavy responsibility to bear. Finger-sucking Ferdi wasn't much help, truth be told. Merry doubted he could count on the younger lad in an emergency.

Creeping down the hallway on soft hobbit feet, he peeped cautiously in at the doorway, and froze in horror and consternation.

It was as bad as any expected horror of the past, like the knowing that it would be liver for Uncle Merimac's birthday feast, every year, without fail.

It was worse, partly because Frodo was not here to bear it with him. (Frodo could make the awfullest faces whilst consuming his portion of liver, without the grownups noticing, and making Merry forget his own distress into the bargain, even though he had to eat the horrid stuff in order to have a slice of the birthday cake for afters.)

It was worse, partly because it was clear to Merry that he could not stand by and simply watch such torture inflicted on an innocent and helpless young hobbit; he could not in all conscience simply walk away. No, if there were a rescue to be made, it appeared that he must be the rescuer.

Ferdi stood miserably on a small stool, fingers firmly in his mouth, his eyes enormous, a look of long-suffering on his face. Merry had seen such a look on one of the Hall's kittens when his visiting Took cousins had taken it into their heads to dress the poor creature in baby's gown and cap and wheel it about in a pram.

The poor lad was well-decorated. A Maypole might have more ribbons, and a grandmother more lace... and the giggling lasses were draping ever more elaborate windings around him, pinning them in place, and enthusing about the "gown" they were creating.

Little Ferdi saw Merry hesitating in the doorway, and a flush of shame rose in his cheeks even as the tears rose in his eyes. A fat tear rolled down his cheek as he tried hobbitfully to blink away his distress.

Pimpernel, to her credit, seeing the trickling tear, said, 'O now, Ferdi-love, is it so bad as all that...? Pearl, perhaps we oughtn't...'

The little lad gave her a grateful look, but Pearl, her mouth full of pins, muttered, 'Don't move, Ferdi! We're nearly finished, and then we'll call Mum and the Aunties to admire our handiwork...' And Rosemary, Ferdi's older sister, who in Merry's opinion ought to have been protecting her younger brother instead of taking part in humiliating him, told Ferdi to keep still.

Merry stopped to hear no more. 'You have the right of it, Nell!' he said as he rushed into the room and seized Ferdi's hands. 'Jump down!' he ordered.

Ferdi jumped, yelping as the sudden movement forced several pins into tender flesh. But bravely he followed his saviour from the room at a run as Merry turned and fled.

'Very brave indeed!' Pippin laughed, jabbing at Ferdi with the stem of his pipe.

Ferdi gazed speculatively into his mug of icy springwater, but if he had thoughts of dousing his cousin's enthusiasm, he kept them to himself. 'Saved from a fate worse than...' he murmured, and shook his head. 'Really, Merry, if you hadn't...'

'And that was the adventure?' Pippin said. 'Fairly tame, that. Why, my sisters put me through much worse in my time...'

'Not at all!' Merry said, getting into the spirit of the thing. 'Why, that was only the beginning of it all. There's more, much more. Ferdi, you cannot stop there! You have got to tell the rest of it.'

'You don't have to tell it if you don't want to,' Jack said, putting forth a sympathetic hand.

'I'm surprised he's told it at all,' Bergil said with a yawn. 'Our Lossarnach cousins tried to do the same to my little brother, a year or two before the siege, and he wouldn't leave my side for months after! As a matter of fact, he could hardly be pried away when they sent the little ones off in the wains before the siege. He said the Orcs that besieged Minas Tirith were hardly worse.'

'Hardly,' Pippin said cheerily. 'Sisters and cousins can be particularly heartless.'

Ferdi raised his gaze to meet Merry's, and the two of them laughed at the same time.

'I got them back, however,' Ferdi said, 'little as I was, and I have them to thank for the adventure that followed.'

'Lasses? Adventure?' Pippin said. 'My sisters?' His eyes narrowed. 'Pimpernel, perhaps... but Vinca was even younger than yourself, Ferdi, and Pearl much too sensible.'

'Not "adventure" in the way you mean,' Merry said, and for some reason he gave a snort. '...and Pearl was not always sensible. Frodo told me how the two of them caught two of the ponies grazing in the far field; he boosted her onto one of them and hauled himself onto the other and the two of them had races and jumping contests...'

Ferdi laughed, but all he said was, 'It's not Pearl's adventure I was thinking of...'

Merry rolled his eyes up to gaze at the treetops, black against the moon, and began to whistle softly.

'Not my news to tell,' Ferdi said smugly. 'However, she was partly responsible for the adventure that Merry and I...'

'And surely that is "your news to tell",' Jack said with a grin. 'Hobbits having adventures? I can scarcely credit my ears.' He winked.

'That can be remedied,' Merry said, rising. 'I happen to have a bottle of a very fine quality, that I packed for medicinal purposes, just in case some mishap should befall us between New Annuminas and the Brandywine Bridge, and I'm sure that a dry mouth will be nicely remedied thereby.'

'Very fine quality?' Pippin said, pricking up his ears. 'As fine as the Hall's finest?'

'Not quite,' Merry said, his chin high, 'but the finest the royal cellarer could supply, besides the Hall's finest. It would be silly of me to carry my own brandy back to Buckland, after all.'

'About as silly as walking to Michel Delving with a five-year-old in tow,' Ferdi said, 'and you not yet having seen eight years yourself.'

'What?' Pippin said, nearly fumbling his pipe in his surprise. 'Michel Delving?' But Ferdi only shook his head and began to rub at his throat with a solicitous hand.

'Half a moment!' Merry said, and was as good as his word, returning with a stoppered bottle. Ferdi obligingly poured out his mug into the bucket that stood ready near the fire, in case of stray sparks, and after a few sips, he nodded.

Chapter 3. In which a young hobbit discovers the delights of forbidden filth

Little Ferdi stumbled, hampered by the fancies winding round his legs, and Merry jerked him to his feet. 'Quick!' he hissed. 'Do you want them to capture you and complete their foul designs?'

'No!' Ferdi said. 'But how...?' He didn't have to say that the lasses were bigger, and had longer legs, and didn't have pins in their skirts to hamper them from hiking their garments up to free their legs for running.

Merry, however, had quickly formulated a plan. 'This way!' he shouted. 'They'll never follow us if we...'

'No-o-o-o-o-o!' wailed Pearl and Pimpernel together. 'Not the pigsty, Merry, you wouldn't!'

'Ferdi, stop!' Rosemary shouted, trying to sound coaxing. 'Ferdi, I've a pocketful of sweets! Ferdi!'

Ferdi, to his credit, young as he was, did not slow or alter course at this inducement. Hitching up his "skirts" as best he could he plunged after Merry, ducking between the rails of the fence that contained the pigs in their muddy yard.

'I wouldn't, wouldn't I?' Merry turned to call in triumph, but his feet slipped in the mud and he sat down with an oomph.

'Stand still, Ferdi!' Rosemary said, abruptly slowing to a walk, digging in the pocket tied around her waist and coming up with a handful of sweets that her father spoilt her with on a regular basis. She held them out at an arm's length, as if wooing a wary pony, and her voice became the sing-song of the experienced pony handler. 'Steady, lad... stand still and the nasty pigs won't hurt you, Ferdi.' Her voice shook just a little, for she knew how dangerous a broody sow could be.

Ferdi wasn’t afraid of “nasty pigs”. He thought pigs fascinating creatures, as a matter of fact, and rather envied them into the bargain, for they were allowed to get as dirty as they wished, with no older sisters hauling them off to mother and bath just as the fun was beginning.

‘Merry, get out of there!’ Pearl hissed, easing herself through the fence, while Pimpernel had taken off at a run to fetch one of the hired hobbits, who could be heard whistling on the other side of the barn. ‘Grab Ferdi’s hand, pull him out, but get out, before she sees...’

Too late. The broody sow had seen the interlopers and tensed, and now she was staring menacingly at the young hobbits, her tail wagging furiously.

‘Stand still!’ Rosemary was still saying, and Pearl was telling them to ‘Get out of there!’ and Merry was thoroughly confused and wishing desperately for Frodo.

At that moment, Ferdi cast himself down in the mud. ‘Look!’ he cried, rolling in delight. ‘I’m a dirty piggie!’ He ended on his back, looking up into the blue, blue sky, overjoyed to have finally got just as dirty as he’d ever wanted. The mud was cool and squishy, and soothing to the places where the pins had pricked him, and he lay still now, sighing happily, oblivious to any danger.

Pearl and Rosemary gave wails of distress, speeding the hired hobbit to the pen, for he thought the sow had already savaged the young hobbits, from the sound of it. He grabbed up a hayfork and vaulted the fence, ready for battle. His worst fears were confirmed, seeing the young hobbits motionless in the mud.

‘Here, you!’ he said, brandishing the fork. ‘Come, lasses, get them out of there whilst I hold the old sow off!’

Rosemary ducked through the fence to join Pearl, each lass taking a young hobbit by the hand, but Ferdi wasn’t ready to go, and let himself go limp. In trying to yank him to his feet, Rosemary slipped and fell, sitting down with a howl.

Pearl got Merry up and out of the pen, pushing him through the fence, and bravely turned back to help Rosemary. ‘Get him up!’ she said, hearing an ominous snort from the sow.

‘Hurry!’ the hired hobbit said, making little pushing motions with the fork, to keep the sow distracted. ‘I don’t know how much longer I can hold her off!’

Seeing that Paladin’s prize sow weighed twice as much as the hired hobbit and children put together, it was a real concern. Hobbits, as a rule, didn’t go into the pen when she had new babies, not if they didn’t have to, not until she settled down and her little ones needed less protection, in her opinion.

Rosemary managed to gain her feet, and she and Pearl between them lifted little Ferdi, still defiantly limp, and carried him to the fence.

‘Steady, lass,’ the hired hobbit said, backing to the fence, fork held before him. ‘Steady...’

And in another moment he’d dived to safety, and crisis over, the mother pig ambled back to her little ones.

There was a scream, then, from the kitchen doorway, and in the next moment Stelliana was there, hugging little Ferdi to her bosom, unmindful of noisome mud, and Eglantine was hurrying to join them, demanding an explanation, and in the next breath sending Pimpernel, who’d run to the kitchen next to fetch the mums, off to have one of the hired hobbits ride for the healer, seeing Ferdi so limp and still in his mother's arms.

Ferdi sat back and looked to Merry. 'I'm not quite sure,' he admitted. 'I was half-smothered in my mother's embrace, and didn't see much of what happened until the healer pried me away again.'

'And said there was not much wrong with any of us that wouldn't be put right with a bath,' Merry said with a snort. 'Which, of course, you didn't mind at all!'

'Exactly,' he said. 'And then there were the scoldings!' He rolled his eyes. 'Such scoldings, I can tell you...'

Chapter 4. In which a young hobbit contemplates the unfairness of life in general and his life in particular

‘It’s not fair!’ young Merry fumed, sitting down hard enough on the bed to produce a satisfying bounce, but of course it was wasted on both the young hobbits sitting there, for they were contemplating other delights now forbidden them.

‘Not fair,’ echoed the younger lad in a miserable whimper, followed by a sniff. Merry, casting a look in little Ferdi’s direction, saw a face quite as woebegone as his own, and worse. His cousin’s chin was quivering, and tears threatened to spill.

O but you were, sorry to say, cousin—it must be remembered that you were quite a little lad at the time, barely out of gowns...

You stay out of it, Pip! You were still a twinkle in your da’s eyes, at the time...!

‘I’ll be happy to fetch more apple tart, Mum!’ Pearl carolled, her voice carrying clearly down the hallway from where the rest of the family were at tea, and her tinkling laugh followed. ‘At this rate, we’ll eat up all that was baked today, and have none left for the morrow!’

‘You don’t have to shout,’ Merry muttered, though he suspected that Pearl was speaking to be heard by more than just the merry hobbits gathered around the tea table. Apple tart was Merry’s particular favourite.

‘Not fair,’ he said again, but he said it low, for he certainly did not want his voice to carry as Pearl’s had. He was in enough hot water as it was—and it wasn’t fair!

He and Ferdi had to go without tea treats (they’d been allowed all the bread-and-butter they wanted, with a cup of cambric tea each, taken in the kitchen while the rest of the family celebrated in high style in the parlour, good table linens and all, as if to rub the lads’ noses in their disgrace. And then Ferdi had upset his mug of tea all over the table and himself and Merry, and at the resulting outcry Pearl and Rosemary had come to escort the lads to the bedroom, where they were forcibly put into clean, dry clothes (perhaps their fourth set of the day) and told to lie down on the bed for a nap.

After Pearl and Rosemary were well gone, of course, the lads sat up. It was the least they could do to show their defiance.

‘If my father were here,’ Merry began again. He’d said it several times already. It had a lovely sound.

‘Your father is here!’ he said bitterly. ‘But your mum has him so wound around her least finger that he wouldn’t take our part, no not at all! Just said a little bread-and-butter wouldn’t hurt us, and we were likely wearied anyhow from our “great adventure”, and could use a nap...!’

Ferdi hung his head. ‘He was sorry,’ he lisped. ‘Auntie Aggie’s pretties...’

‘Well, Pearl and Nell and Rose had no business taking the pretties in the first place!’ Merry snapped. ‘ ‘Twasn’t our fault they were spoilt in the pigsty...’

‘Well it was, rather,’ Ferdi said, unexpectedly firm. He was the one, after all, who’d rolled in the mud with the pigs. And he’d do it all over again in a heartbeat, apple tart or no apple tart.

‘Then fine!’ Merry said, glaring at his little cousin. ‘You take your punishment, but don’t drag me into it!’

Seems to me over the years, he’s been dragged “into it” a lot by his younger cousins…

Poetic justice, perhaps, for his having dragged Frodo “into it” in his turn...

‘I just wish my father were here,’ Merry said again. ‘He’d set things right, he would!’

Ferdi sighed heavily and then thrust two comforting fingers into his mouth, mumbling around the impediments. ‘He’d take one look at Auntie Aggie’s red eyes, and he’d heap your plate high with bread-and-butter, he would!’

Merry began to re-think his half-formed resolution to go and find his father, no matter how far away the hobbit might be (all he had to do was follow the road that ran past the farm from Whitwell to Waymoot and beyond), to plead his case and at least find equal punishment for the lasses who’d begun the affair. Eglantine had been devastated at the loss of so much finery—the lasses had taken all they could find from her sewing-box, and it was a cruel blow indeed, as she’d just bought her supplies for all the sewing for the coming year, with the proceeds of the fleeces Paladin had sold at market last week.

It had been decreed that punishment enough for the lasses would be to wear their frocks plain until next year’s sale of fleece. Not even their best frocks would sport the slightest amount of ribbon or lace or pretty trim. Dismal wails had greeted this pronouncement, and Merry had heard Pearl and Pimpernel whispering that they’d take it up with Paladin when he came home, and surely he’d see reason.

The lasses didn’t seem to realise that they’d doomed their mother to the same fate when they’d spoilt the family’s supply of finery, nor that their father likely wouldn’t have the coin to spare for more.

Merry, somehow, had grasped this fact, overhearing Stelliana and Ferdinand talking to Rosemary. Stelliana, of course, of the wealthy Bolgers, could afford any frills or furbelows her heart desired, for herself or her little daughter—and Rosemary, when she wasn’t following father and uncle about in their pony-training, was often dressed like a little princess to suit her mother’s taste. It had been a terrible blow for the proud Bolger to hear her husband pronounce that Rosemary must share in her cousins’ disgrace, and wear plain and unadorned frocks for the coming year, including the high festivities of Yuletide. (And Rosemary, boyish as she was, didn’t seem to mind half so much as her mother... it was hardly a punishment at all, as Ferdi observed in his innocent outspoken way, and it was hardly fair that he should be scolded for speaking his mind!)

‘Well someone ought to set things aright!’ Merry said. ‘At the very least, the lasses should bear as much blame as we do! More, really!’ To him, the lack of apple tart far outweighed plain dressing. But then, he was a lad, and more likely to think of his insides than his outsides.

He sat, fuming, a while longer, and then sat up straight, exclaiming, ‘I’ve got it!’

Ferdi, who’d fallen asleep, jerked awake and rubbed at his eyes with his fists. ‘Got what?’ he said with a wide yawn.

‘I know who can help us!’ Merry said, bouncing on the bed in his excitement. Quite a satisfying bounce it was, and in appreciation, he bounced a few more times, causing Ferdi to chortle with glee and add a few bounces of his own.

‘Silly Took!’ Merry said, slapping Ferdi on the back and standing to his feet for some proper bouncing. ‘There’s no king!’

It didn’t even matter that Pearl came down the hallway, full of wrath at being sent away from the tea table to deal with the unseemly noises coming from the bedroom. Merry hardly heard the scolding, and didn’t mind at all that he was sent to lay his head upon one pillow, and Ferdi to the other pillow, and that Pearl laid herself down, grumbling, between the two of them with a stern admonition to “Be quiet! Not another word! Do you hear? Or else Uncle Dinny will come down himself to deal with the two of you!”

He didn’t even mind that Ferdi fell asleep again fairly quickly, and that Pearl did too, their light snores mixing in a harmony of sorts.

He blinked away sleep and put his hands behind his head, splaying his elbows to the side. He had a lot of thinking to do.

Chapter 5. In which a young hobbit’s resolve grows, and he decides to set his plan into motion, in the interest of justice

The youngest hobbits were up with the rest of the family for early breakfast, tucking into their bread-and-butter and bread-and-jam with great appetite, washing these down with quantities of cambric tea, accepting the soft-cooked eggs offered them while the others scattered to the early chores. Pearl was old enough to help with the milking, but Pimpernel had recently been taught about gathering eggs, and so Pearl accompanied her younger sister at this task, holding the lantern and directing Nell’s every move as is the duty of an elder sister.

Esmeralda was quite touched when her Merry slipped down from his seat and reached his arms as far around her as he could, hugging hard, his muffled words difficult to discern but having something to do with love. ‘I love you too, my darling,’ she said, returning the hug.

Little Ferdi followed suit, bringing tears to Stelliana’s eyes and a fond smile from Ferdinand. Merry, to his credit, did not seem as irritated as usual at the mimicry as he had earlier in the visit, when he’d bitterly protested Ferdi shadowing him and copying his every move.

‘O lovie,’ Stelliana said, squeezing her little lad. ‘Really, Dinny, I think he’s sorry for what he did yesterday.’

‘Aw, now,’ Eglantine said, rising from the table. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ She turned to the pantry, coming out with two plates that contained generous portions of apple tart. ‘We saved some tart from tea, last night, for it was baked especially because it’s Merry’s favourite. It hardly seemed fair to eat it all up without him.’

Merry brightened and nearly reconsidered last night’s plans, but then Pervinca lisped, ‘An’ do we get pitties on our dwesses, Mama? If they get cake?’

Esmeralda leaned forward to place a hand on Eglantine’s, laying Merry’s plate upon the table. ‘We will make it good, Aggie! After all, it was Merry’s fault, and Ferdi’s...’

‘Yes,’ Stelliana said earnestly. ‘No need for you to suffer, dear, for our son’s doings!’

Eglantine looked troubled, while little Vinca clapped her hands together in hopeful delight. ‘But Paladin,’ she said doubtfully. ‘He’d never accept charity... We work very hard for what we hold, and he wants no hobbit’s pity for the burden he must bear.’

Ferdinand cleared his throat and looked pointedly around the table at the three young hobbits left there, glaring from under his bristling eyebrows. The topic of the farm family’s debt to the Thain was hardly a topic to be brought up in front of the children. Though Paladin nominally owned the land he farmed, passed down to him from father and grandfather before him, his grandfather had borrowed heavily, years ago, after heavy flooding had nearly wiped out farm and family, leaving his descendants with repayment that more than matched the rent a tenant would have paid to use land the Thain held for the Tooks. Of course, when the final payment was made, sometime in Paladin’s lifetime, there’d be no more to pay, whereas if he were leasing land the lease would end with his death. It was a fine thing to have land to pass on to one’s sons. Unfortunately, Paladin had no sons.

Merry’s resolve quickened. It was not fair that Auntie Aggie should suffer for something her daughters had done, and yes, even though Pearl and Nell and Rosie had spoilt the batter, so to speak, he and Ferdi had burned it in the baking, to complete its ruin. But Uncle Dinny would only see the offer to replace the pretties as “charity” rather than restitution for wrongs done.

Merry didn’t care a fig if the lasses had their pretties for the year; he rather thought they ought to take their punishment, even as he scooped apple tart into his mouth. (It wasn’t warm, for one thing, so he really had had his punishment; it hadn’t been lifted.) But Auntie Aggie... Yes, he thought with a nod. He needed to take this situation to a higher authority.

He’d half thought of going to Bag End, to talk to Frodo, but now he could see that this was something even Frodo couldn’t solve. No, and he couldn’t bring it to the Thain, for Mistress Lalia would take it into her head that Paladin was unable to pay his debts, and she might cancel the repayment contract “for Paladin’s own good” and reduce him to a tenant on what had been his family’s land. Rent payments would be less, Merry knew, from something Frodo had said on last year’s visit to the farm, but the land would no longer be Paladin’s. Merry felt rather strongly about the matter, seeing that the land was also his mother’s, her being Paladin’s sister! He certainly did not want to see the land pass out of the family and into the Thain’s holdings!

Yes, Merry thought with a nod. Michel Delving was in a different direction from Bag End. He had a vague recollection of seeing it on the map, hanging on the wall of his grandfather’s study. He’d have to go to the Northwest, and not to the Northeast after all. The easiest thing, of course, would be to take the road to Waymoot and then over to Michel Delving, but Paladin and Saradoc would be returning by that road sometime today. If they were to find Merry on the road, he’d be in bigger trouble than ever, and it would be no help to Auntie Aggie at all. He’d have to head across the fields and count on his memory of the map and his sense of direction. He had a pretty good sense of direction, from following Frodo all over the land surrounding Brandy Hall, and Bucklebury.

You were setting off, alone, across the fields...? And what were you, seven years or so? My word, Pippin, is there something in the water at Whittacres Farm that encourages young hobbits to wander at such a tender age? You were about that, were you not, when I found you wandering...

Ah, yes, I forgot your faithful shadow, the sheepdog. And you, Master Merry, did you have a sheepdog following you, to guard you from foxes and such?

I think you know already, from the smile on your face, my Lord King. Ah, yes, he had a faithful shadow of his own...

Followed me everywhere, he did, drove me half out of my wits with his persistence! Difficult to get away from him, and the questions he would constantly be asking...!

Ah, Ferdi, I see you gave Merry plenty of practice in dealing with younger cousins before Pippin came along...

Now, Merry, calm yourself. Here, I see your cup is empty. Let me pour you a little more of the King’s brandy. (Pest! Hmph!) ...but you have them all sitting on tenterhooks, waiting the rest of our adventure. Indeed, I myself am waiting with bated breath. Do go on, before I turn blue... Not my best colour, you know. Green suits me rather better...

Enough, Ferdi! (Thanks, yes, this brandy grows better with every sip.) Now, let me see...

Chapter 6. In which a young hobbit discovers that naps can be a very useful practice, indeed

Merry stayed close to Uncle Ferdinand for a good part of the morning, not wanting his girl-cousins to include him in any of their diversions, this day. Little Ferdi had much the same idea, staying as close to Merry as a shadow might, almost as if he had some idea of what was in Merry’s head.

How would he get away from the little nuisance? How would he escape the notice of the lasses, for that matter? And then he nodded as the pieces of his planning fell into place.

Though he’d freed his mind with the younger lad, the previous day, he had no intention of dragging a sniffle-nosed, wet-bottomed, finger-sucking faunt along on serious business; why, the Mayor would take one look at young Ferdi and call for a nursery maid to carry them back to their mums!

On the contrary, I’m understating the state of affairs, to spare your feelings, cousin!

After second breakfast, Rosemary dragged young Ferdi off for his morning nap, protesting sleepily.

‘Well, Merry-love,’ Esmeralda said with a bright smile. ‘Will you be off to help your “Uncle” with the ponies again? Or would you like me to ask Pearl to read to you, or would you like to walk over to the Bankses with Auntie Stellie and me, for elevenses?’

‘Really, Mum,’ Merry said, affecting a yawn behind his lifted hand even as he rejoiced at the news. His mother would be gone for elevenses! And his Aunt Eglantine would likely not disturb his apparently sleeping form, if she thought him exhausted enough to sleep until the noontide meal—he already knew this, because Ferdi had been allowed an extended morning nap three days earlier. He’d have plenty of time to distance himself from the farm—and searching hobbits. ‘I do think I’ll take myself off for a nap as well.’ He covered his mouth again, fearful that his cousins would see his smirk and become suspicious.

‘Lads worked hard this morning,’ Ferdinand said with an approving nod. ‘Young Merry stood upon a bucket and brushed everything within reach—you ought to see how the ponies shine! He’s got quite a way with the beasts, Ally... make a fine rider someday, I’ve no doubt.’

‘Well, Merry,’ Esmeralda said, hugging her little son. ‘Your father will be so proud to hear that you’ve been a good help.’ She savoured the feel of little arms about her neck and then, with a laugh, put him away. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you at noontide.’

Stelliana appeared in the doorway. ‘Ferdi’s asleep already, the little lamb,’ she said. ‘Will Merry be coming with us, along with the lasses, or will he stay and help Dinny?’

‘He’ll be staying,’ Esmeralda said. ‘A moment, Stellie, and we’ll begin. You’re sure you don’t mind, Aggie?’

Eglantine smiled at her visitors, much too thoughtful to let on how nice it would be to have her kitchen to herself, just for a few hours. She loved visits, truly she did, but the rare quiet of time to herself was a thing to treasure. With nearly everyone out of the smial, and the lasses gone with the visitors to the Bankses’ neighbouring farm, and the little lads asleep, why... she might get some work done on her birthday presents, without anyone the wiser.

And so Merry allowed his mother to escort him to the bed the lads shared, and he laid himself down beside a gently snoring Ferdi, and his mother drew a light covering over him and kissed him tenderly. ‘Sleep tight, my love,’ she said.

‘And you,’ he answered, with a yawn, catching his mistake only when she chuckled. ‘I mean, say hullo to the Bankses for me,’ he said, and his mother patted his back with a soft assent, and rose, and was gone.

Soon the merry voices of the lasses, hushed by Esmeralda’s warning of the “sleeping lads”, had passed the doorway, and the smial fell silent.

Merry pushed his covering aside and arose, creeping on soft hobbit-feet to the doorway. He peered down the hall to the kitchen, but saw no movement. He moved down the hall like a little ghost, and at the kitchen doorway caught a glimpse of Eglantine in her rocking chair, rocking softly, her head bent over her knitting.

That was awkward. He’d secreted bread-and-butter, from breakfast, in a handkerchief in his pocket, but he’d found himself hungry halfway to second breakfast and had devoured it all, while Ferdinand was tying up another pony to be groomed and young Ferdi was peppering his father with questions.

And he’d not had much chance to put away something at second breakfast, though he’d managed to tie up several scones as the lasses were clearing the table. Still, he’d hoped to seize more provision towards the journey.

Ah, well. Michel Delving couldn’t be so very far away. After all, Uncle Paladin and the hired hobbits went there every seventh year, to cast their votes for Mayor at the free fair, and they wouldn’t be leaving the farm and animals and chores for too long a time! (He didn’t know that the Bankses did the Tooks’ chores for them, while they went to vote, and then the Tooks did the same for the Bankses.)

He moved back to the bedroom, taking the pillows from the lasses’ room on his way, and without too much trouble he made the form of a sleeping hobbit lad under the covering, next to Ferdi, with a shaggy brown muff of Pearl’s to approximate his curly head. Stepping back, he admired his work. Yes, the lump under the covers looked very like the sleeping lad that lay just beyond.

Stifling a self-satisfied snigger, he eased himself from the room, tip-toeing to the side door on the opposite side of the smial from that that led from the kitchen to the farmyard—not the front door, leading to the parlour, but the side door that, when propped open at the same time as the kitchen door, let a breeze blow through the smial on a summer’s day, like this one. The front door was almost never used, and so Merry did not trust the hinges not to creak. No worry about squeaking hinges with a propped-open door! He just had to scan the yard, to make sure no hired hobbits were about, and...

Eglantine looked up with a start. It was nearly time for elevenses, and she hadn’t even put the kettle on! Of course, with all the hired hobbits out in the field, and the visitors and her daughters at the neighbours', there were only herself and the little lads to do for. It wouldn’t take more than a few moments to slice bread and scramble some eggs.

She folded up the shawl she was nearly finished knitting and laid it away, stretching fingers cramped from two hours’ steady knitting. ‘There, now,’ she said, with a satisfied pat. ‘Ally’s gift all but finished, and next I can start Stellie’s, and by the time my birthday comes round I ought to have everything done.’

She walked down the hall, surprised that she’d not been interrupted by hungering lads, but peeking in at the door she saw two lumps on the bed, drowned in sleep and so still that it looked as if they’d sleep another hour, at least.

Very well, then. She’d scramble a few eggs for herself, and wait until the lads awakened to stir up their meal. She didn’t fancy feeding them eggs that had sat, keeping warm, for any length of time. It just didn’t seem wholesome, somehow. No, she’d scramble some eggs, heap them on toast, and then perhaps she’d lie herself down for a nap, for it certainly seemed a comfortable idea at the moment, with the smial so unusually quiet and peaceful.

Chapter 7. In which two young hobbits set out in search of justice, that a wrong may be set right again.

Merry looked all about, but he ought to have looked behind as well, for hobbits creep very quietly indeed when they wish to do so, and Ferdi got his start early in life...

What’s that supposed to mean, I ask you?

It means that the ruffians who tried to trespass in the Tookland didn’t have a chance of going unnoticed, though they never knew they were being watched... until the trap was sprung, that is.

Ah. Well then.

Had Merry looked behind him, he’d have seen that he was being followed by a small skulking shadow, fingers in mouth and special soft blanket over shoulders. (What a baby you were at the time, Ferdi, I still have no idea how you were canny enough to form a sleeping hobbit with a rug and all our spare clothing, nor how you worked up the courage to follow me into the Wilds...) In any event, he didn’t look behind him, but only to the sides, to make sure that none of the hired hobbits were about, and as luck would have it, they were working in the far fields at that moment. And Auntie Aggie was humming to herself in the kitchen, and all was quiet.

No, he didn’t discover his shadow until he’d reached the little wood on the far side of the cabbage field, where he went to earth to consider. He nearly fell over when he heard a voice behind him. ‘So, where are we going?’

‘We?’ he said in outrage, and then remembered to keep his voice low. ‘We? There was to be no “we” in the matter!’

‘But you said,’ young Ferdi protested, and in his distress at Merry’s rage his fingers went back into his mouth and his wide eyes glistened in dismay.

Merry, turning back to the farm, saw one of the hired hands leading a plough pony into the yard. Dragging Ferdi back and leaving again would not be possible, and leaving such a young hobbit here alone was unthinkable, and sending him back across the cabbage field would alert the adults that Merry had wandered, and they’d never give him another chance, not this year, anyhow! ‘Very well,’ he said, forcing calm. ‘You’ll have to come along.’

Ferdi nodded solemnly. That’s what he’d thought was supposed to happen. He’d been a part of the trouble, spoiling the pretties in the mud, and so it weighed on him to be part of the solution.

‘Well now,’ Merry said, getting his bearings. He led them away from the farm, to the opposite side of the little wood, and stepped out onto the verge of a field of waving hay. The Sun was still in the morning part of the sky, and so he must turn his back on her, to be facing to the West, and then he must turn a half-quarter or so to the right, to be bearing northwards. He made a note of his shadow—his truly shadow, that is, the one cast by the Sun and not the one that dogged his steps, asking in a plaintive voice, every so often, if they were “there yet?” It would serve as a guide of sorts, he thought, trying to remember what Frodo had taught him on their walks in Buckland.

They crossed the hayfield through high stalks taller than their heads, and an adventure it was, to be sure. At the end of the hayfield was a hedgerow, and forcing their way through they came to a small and dusty lane. It went in the right direction for a fair distance—at least, they’d walked long enough that the Sun was overhead in all her glory when the lane crooked so that it looked as if it might go to the North Farthing—how far was it to the North Farthing, Merry wondered?

‘This way,’ he said, indicating the hedgerow to their left. They stepped through, into another field—potatoes, Merry thought. It was hard work, going across the tangled plants, but Ferdi didn’t complain and of course Merry would not.

After that field, there was a hedgerow, and a lane no wider than a track, and beyond another field, this one of grain. They plucked barley from the heavy heads and chewed the corn as they went, and felt all the stronger for it. Next was a field of marrows with their twisting, ankle-catching vines, and they must go carefully. At last they climbed over a stony wall into a sheepfield, and across, and such a long way they'd gone already! Then it was through a stile on the far side, into a field ploughed but perhaps not yet planted, for no plants were showing their green yet, and at the end of that field another copse, and after the copse, a wide and rolling expanse of meadowland. Ferdi stared, and Merry muttered, ‘I had no idea the Shire was so big.’

‘Are we nearly there?’ Ferdi said, tugging at Merry’s sleeve.

‘Bound to be,’ Merry said. ‘We’ve walked ever so far. Come,’ he said, taking pity at seeing the weariness in his littler cousin’s face. ‘Let us sit down, by the stream there. I’ve a little put by in my pocket, and we might as well eat it before it’s battered to crumbs. Why, it’s long past noontide! Look at the Sun, halfway down the sky—goodness me, it’s teatime already! But I think we’ll be in Michel Delving by eventides, or even before.’

Ferdi followed Merry to the stream and immediately plopped down with a sigh. Their “tea treats”, stale as they were and seasoned with what’s found inside pockets, especially pockets of little lads, tasted like a feast, and the water from the stream that they lifted in cupped hands was the finest draught they could imagine. “As good as the Hall’s finest!” Merry pronounced, and as far as Ferdi was concerned, Merry ought to know.

Well, he ought.

At such a tender age?

Have you never heard the epithet, “Drunk as a Brandybuck”?

Ferdi!

As a matter of fact, I had had a taste or two in my life, strictly medicinal in nature, of course.

Of course.

Enough, Ferdi. Now, Merry, if you’d be so kind... You were saying...

Chapter 8. Meanwhile

The little stream chuckled and murmured, soothing her wearied guests to half-dream, and soon, warmed by the sun, gladdened by the food and drink, and tired out with so much unaccustomed exercise uninterrupted by the care of older sisters and cousins, mothers and aunts, well... soon the young hobbits slumbered in the soft, flower-studded grass.

Things were not quite so peaceful at Whittacres Farm, however. The hobbits there would not be taking tea after their interrupted noontide meal, and the search was spreading to neighbouring farms. Hobbits tramped the fields and woods, calling and whistling.

Earlier, the hobbit mums and daughters had breezed in on a note of laughter and cheery chatter. They’d had a lovely visit at the neighbouring farm, delicious elevenses, Cousin Lindy having baked her famous berry tarts, and had brought a basket full of the treat back to Eglantine and the lads.

Pearl had laughed at the first, when she and Pimpernel were sent to waken the lads for the noontide meal, on finding the made-up hobbits under the covers. Clever little fellows! I wonder what game they’re playing! She’d remained cheerful as they peeped under the beds and in the wardrobes, coaxing. Come out, now! We’ve brought back with us Lindy’s berry tart for afters!

She’d been stern when they’d pushed open the parlour door, peering into the shadows of the room, kept for best. Do come out of there, lads... Merry, you know better than to play in the parlour... And she’d been frankly a little cross at her mother’s mild scolding, when the lads were nowhere to be found within the smial, and they were sent to the yard and near buildings to look and call. It wasn’t her fault that her little cousins had played a trick on Mum!

It would serve them right to come late to the nooning and have their proper scolding... they’d come out of hiding when they were hungry, after all, which oughtn’t to be long, considering how often young hobbits were hungry.

Uncle Ferdinand joined the search, sure that they’d turn up the lads in “two shakes”, and three hired hobbits put down awl, axe and shovel; and a tumble of sheepdog pups, nearly grown enough to sell away, obligingly joined in with their mother, though they of course had little idea what it was all about.

They searched all the outbuildings and the nearer fields, and then Ferdinand sent word to those bustling about the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on the noontide meal.

And so young Dorry stood in the doorway, awkwardly twisting his cap in his hands. ‘I’m sorry, Missus,’ he said. ‘They’ve not been found yet, not anywhere in the buildings, and Master Dinny’s sending to the neighbours for more to take up the search.’ He bobbed a short bow to the gentlehobbit visitors, and hastened away.

After a moment of dumbfounded stillness, Stelliana sank to the well-swept flagstones of the kitchen floor with a shriek on realising that her tiny lad was not just playing “I hide and you seek me”, had not been in the haybarn playing with the kittens or tumbling with the puppies, had not been following his father about, had disappeared from his bed. Eglantine, more worryingly, stood as if struck, her habitual smile fading away into bewilderment, before she put a hand to her head and swayed.

And her, only up out of bed a week ago, Esmeralda thought, catching her and pushing her into the rocking chair. She turned to snap out orders, her voice raised above Stelliana’s maundering. ‘Nell! Fetch your Uncle Dinny, I don’t care if he’s still looking! Pearl! Send someone for the healer! Now!’

She’d been too worried about Eglantine to think about her missing Merry, though worry gnawed about her edges as she put on the kettle to brew some tea, and returned to Eglantine to take hold of her hands and urge her to breathe, slow steady breaths, that’s right, Aggie...

Eglantine, who’d lost a girl-babe, born too early a few weeks before, with a worrisome amount of bleeding on Eglantine’s part... She’d been on the mend at last, but now... what ill effect might this happening have?

And so Esmeralda pushed down her worry, explained it away. Merry was adventuring, that was all. He was playing “Bilbo’s Journeying” and was likely in the copse at the end of the potato field, pretending himself to be in Mirkwood, hiding from spiders. He’d been quite taken with the Mirkwood part of the tale, thinking it perhaps another Old Forest like the one at their back gate.

She’d gone so far as to send one of the hired hobbits (who'd been crossing the yard when she looked out, upon hearing the clattering of pony hoofs that meant someone was riding to fetch the healer, as she'd ordered) to the copse, to find the lads.

Ferdinand came in and seeing that Esmeralda had Eglantine in hand, he took charge of Stelliana. ‘Come now, my love...’ To no avail. He lifted her bodily in his arms and bore her to her bed, to await the healer’s coming.

What a worry you were to your mothers!

And sisters, and cousins...

Aye, and while all the worry and stir you were sleeping peacefully by the stream... There’s no justice in it.

No justice at all... but I imagine there were some consequences when they got home again!

Well, there would have been, had they found us then and there, but of course, they didn’t...

Well I should say there were plenty of consequences to be had, and before they found us...

Such that they didn’t punish you afterwards for scaring them out of their wits? O my!

O my, indeed...

Well, don’t stop there! Tell on, I say!

Chapter 9. In which young hobbits discover the perils of a watery grave, and have a narrow escape

Little Ferdi wakened, stretched, looked all around. Was he dreaming? He felt then, more strongly, the urge that had brought him to wakefulness... But where was this place? How did he come to be here?

...but the sound of running water was an agony to him, in his present state, and so he jumped up, wrapped his special blanket more snugly around his neck, and hurried a little way away, to relieve his discomfort, and when he finished, he looked about again, wide-eyed and wondering.

That was Merry, it was, slumbering in the grass beside the chuckling stream, but where were all the grown-ups?

He remembered then, that they were nearly to Michel Delving, to right a grievous wrong. He went to Merry and pushed at his shoulder, but his cousin just slapped at him with a sleepy murmur.

Bright pebbles sparkling in the bed of the stream caught Ferdi’s eye just then, and he ventured closer. That was a pretty one, there, just the colour of his mother’s milky mare... He touched a cautious foot to the trickling water and shivered. It was cold! But wouldn’t his mother’s eyes shine when he held out to her such a pretty stone! She always cooed at him when he brought her a present, whether stone or crumpled flower or bright leaf.

He eased his foot into the water and followed with his other foot, feeling in amazement the flow of the water around his ankles. Why, what was dangerous about a stream? It simply wanted to play a game of tug with him, no more than that!

He reached down to fish the milky stone from its bed. It was smooth and rounded in his fingers, and he hefted it in satisfaction before slipping it into a pocket. Next a coal-black stone, like his father’s second-best stallion, and then a dappled stone, and a grey-and-red stone...

Before he knew it, he was up to his knees in the water, and the stones were harder to find but all the more precious for the effort. But it was hard to keep his balance, with the water pulling at him.

And then there was a shout, and a splash behind him, and he lost his balance then and fell, and for a moment he flailed in a panic, before he realised that something was gripping him tight, at the shoulder of his shirt, and a childish voice was yelling, scolding, shouting at him. In his fear and confusion he spun towards that illusion of safety, something to grab onto; he grabbed, felt cloth in his hands, and then something pushed him down in the water. His head went under and his terrified scream was abruptly cut off. He gasped and instead of air, choked on water. Blackness swam before his eyes.

And then the sun was shining in his eyes, dazzling him, and he felt solid ground under his back, and the uncomfortable lumps of the stones he’d collected in his pockets, and his coughing brought him air, sweet air, and he thought he’d never get enough of the stuff.

The sun was blotted out, suddenly, and Merry was there, bending over him, shouting unintelligible words.

Ferdi tried to push him away, and suddenly, incomprehensibly, Merry had fallen on him and was hugging him tight. He didn’t feel like wrestling, and so he yelled, ‘Get orff me! Get orff!’

Merry got off, pulled him up by his shirt, and slammed him to the ground again. ‘You blasted Took,’ he was sobbing, and he slapped Ferdi hard as he spoke, scarcely knowing what he was doing. ‘Tooks don’t go in the water, don’t you know that? Tooks don’t swim! What were you thinking? You might have drowned yourself... might have drowned us both!’

‘I wasn’t swimming!’ Ferdi protested.

Merry stopped his slapping and sat back, wide-eyed, gulping back his tears. And then, inconceivably, he began to laugh, a wild and ragged edge to his laugh to be sure, but laughter it was. ‘You certainly weren’t!’ he gasped at last, before falling upon Ferdi again in a hug, saying as he arose again and sat back on his haunches, ‘I thought I’d lost you, that the stream was about to carry you away...!’

‘It was only playing,’ Ferdi said in surprise. ‘It was only playing a game of tug, and I-hide-and-you-seek-me with the pretty stones...’

‘The stream... playing...’ Merry echoed, and then, very sober, he shook his head, and taking Ferdi’s hands in his, he looked deep into his littler cousin’s eyes, making sure he had Ferdi’s full attention. ‘Never trust a river,’ he said earnestly. ‘Not ever, Ferdi! It can seem to be playing, chuckling, all friendly-like, and then you miss your step and it sweeps you away, and you never see your Mum again, or your Da, or your sister, or your Gran, or... or... or anyone, ever again!’

‘I never...’ Ferdi whispered. He knew his mother wouldn’t let him anywhere near the Water, which ran along the edge of the larger pony field, but he’d never known why.

And then both lads were sitting up straighter, starting to their feet. For there were voices on the wind, the plaintive sound of a horn, voices calling their names!

Merry said something under his breath, something that sounded like one of the hired hobbits when he’d hit his thumb with a hammer while making repairs on a shed a few days past.

Ferdi stared at him, uncomprehending, until an explanation came to him. They were in trouble! He’d gone splashing in a stream and the evidence was all over himself, and all over Merry! They were soaked to the skin, and their clothes were wringing wet, even Ferdi’s blanket was sopping, cold and wet and not its usual comfort.

‘We’re so close!’ Merry hissed. ‘They cannot take us back now, not yet!’

He seized Ferdi’s near hand, and Ferdi held on to his blanket with his free hand, and of one accord the two sprinted, as fast as their legs could carry them, toward the woods looming at the western edge of the meadow. So fast did they run, that they hardly took note of the dark shadows of the trees reaching out as if to devour them, as they ran under cover of the forest's eaves, and good hiding.

Chapter 10. In which young hobbits find a questionable refuge, and the searchers jump to conclusions

Good hiding! Good hiding! Two little ones, barely out of faunthood... and a wood!

A wood in the middle of settled farmland...

And at least it was daylight, and the searchers were close...

Not close enough, from the sound of it!

It was dark in the little wood, dark and shadowy after the sunshine of the meadow, and the searchers’ voices came more faintly, and then not at all. Merry ran on, pulling Ferdi after him, until at last he saw a fine hiding place! ‘Twas a hollow log, the opening something of a tight fit for even such young and small hobbits, but they were very young and small after all, and somehow managed to squeeze through the opening. Happily the log widened, the further in they went, and soon they were able to turn themselves about and stare at the light peeping in at the entrance.

Merry never thought about whether it might be a burrow, habited by a wild creature, and a lucky thing for the two of them that it held neither rabbit nor stoat--the former likely to scare them out of their wits in that dark place, and the latter likely to attack them, possibly with dire consequences. The walls were rough, catching at their clothes, and the floor beneath them was coated in a blanket of decaying leaves, soft and dusty.

They listened for a long while, while their panting breath quietened and the trembling in their legs eased, only to shrink back at the echo of a great shout. The seeking calls resumed, at first louder and then fainter again, before dying away altogether.

Merry waited some time longer, just to be sure, and when little Ferdi whimpered at being in such a dark and confined place, the older cousin hushed the younger without mercy. At last, when light from the entrance began to dim, Ferdi’s whimpering rose to a wail, and Merry could not calm him.

‘Very well!’ he hissed. ‘We’ll go out, and surely on the other side of this wood we’ll find Michel Delving, and eventides!’ And he moved toward the dimming light, pulling the sobbing tot after him. ‘Hush!’ he kept saying, but his troublesome little cousin just would not hush. He could only hope that no searchers hovered nearby, to hear and sweep them up and off to Whittacres Farm once more.

***

But the searchers were nowhere nearby. As a matter of fact, just about the time the Sun was halfway between teatime and eventides, the searchers had entered the little meadow with its gurgling stream. The hired hobbit who found the little jacket beside the stream raised a great shout, bringing all at a run who had been searching within hearing distance. They had conferred and scattered, calling, some even venturing a little way under the trees before becoming discouraged by the dark and quiet under the trees. Surely young hobbits would have preferred sunshine to shadow!

After much calling and casting about, the first to reach a terrible conclusion sat himself down rather abruptly, his legs suddenly shaking with reaction and altogether too weak to hold him. There was a cry of alarm from another, nearby, who made his way to the side of his stricken companion, only to sink down himself at the muttered words he overheard. More were drawn in at this sight, a gathering crowd, turning away from their search, and there were added cries of dismay as speculation spread.

Swept away, and drowned!

Hobbits made their way downstream for nearly a mile before returning to report no sign of the young hobbits. By the time they returned with their grim news, the shadows were growing long, indeed. It was with heavy hearts that they turned their steps back towards Whittacres Farm, bearing the abandoned jacket, all that was left of the two wandering lads, to all appearances.

They’d have to search by torch and lantern-light, if they were to continue searching at all.

If they were to continue searching at all...!

Calm yourself, Pip; of course they’d continue searching! Why, Uncle Dinny would’ve spent the rest of his life, searching for his little son, apple of his eye, as Ferdi was (though I’ve no idea why, the little rotter...)

Some gratitude!

Gratitude! After what you did! Why, we’d’ve been found hours earlier if not for...

If not for your insistence on staying in that dark, dank hole until the light was dimming enough to scare your littler cousin half out of his wits!

Peace, Ferdi, or we shall never hear the end!

(Only half out of his wits? Only half! And as if to say he recovered them!)

Aye, peace, the both of you, and someone be so kind as to tell on! The moon is high, the fire is low, and we’ll be up all night at this rate...

Then throw another log on the fire!

Yes, my Lord King, at once.

There. That’s better. Pour Master Ferdibrand another cup of that good and heartening drink, there, and Master Merry another cup of his own. Surely storytelling is thirsty work, or so Bilbo often told me.

Yes, my Lord King... Here you are, Master Ferdi...

Thank you, Captain. Very kind, I’m sure. And thank you, my Lord. I can see why they made you King; very sensible and commanding as you are.

Yes, well, this sensible King very sensibly wishes to seek his pillow before the dawn comes stealing, and so he commands that you continue the story before the night grows any older.

Yes, my Lord King...

Enough of that! Get on with the story!

Really, Pip, I’d think you of all people would allow me to show some respect to the King--very well! Very well! Leave hold of my cup, I’ve barely had a sip! --and I’ll hush and let Merry, irritating and long-winded fellow that he might be, go on.

You’re calling me...!

(Shhh. Pot - kettle - black. Now do go on, and let Ferdi sip himself into some semblance of calm, or we'll never get through.)

(Well, when you put it that way...)

Now, Merry, get on with the story, do, if you please. You're keeping the King waiting, you know.

Yes, of course, Ferdi, for I'd never want to keep the King waiting...! Now, let me see...

Chapter 11. In which quiet is, as quiet does

Softly the little ones crept along, down the narrowing tunnel, towards the dimming light that beckoned them into the open air. Merry was first, as was only right, as he was the older cousin and responsible for looking after the younger one. It was an annoyance that Ferdi kept a firm grasp of one of his feet as first they crawled, and then squirmed forward, but it was also a reassurance that the littler hobbit was right behind him and wouldn’t lose himself--as if he could lose himself, hidden in a hollow log!

Merry wrinkled his nose at an unpleasant odour that wafted in at the opening of the log, brought by a chance breeze, a little puff of evening air to stir the sleepy leaves and blow the Sun to her rest, as in the bedtime stories Frodo had told him so many times. He winked away a little moisture that came with the thought of Frodo, and sniffled just a bit, bringing more of the musky smell to his nostrils. He hadn’t noticed it when they wormed their way into the log, but it was strong now, and for the first time in this adventure he thought of wild animals and the places they claimed for their dens. He was glad this log had proved empty!

But the odour made him frown. ‘Ferdi,’ he said.

‘What?’ piped the little voice behind him.

‘You didn’t,’ he said.

‘Didn’t what?’

‘Mess yourself, you didn’t mess your breeches, did you?’ He thought his littler cousin was past the time of accidents, but they had been in the log for a long time, several hours, if he reckoned correctly!

The littler cousin, insulted by such a suggestion, refused to dignify Merry’s question with an answer.

‘Ferdi!’

The only answer Merry had for his pains was a tighter squeeze on his ankle.

‘Ferdi! Did you?’

Silence.

‘Ferdi!’

To his disquiet, the hold on his ankle suddenly disappeared. Such insubordination must be swiftly dealt with, if he was to keep order at all.

‘Ferdi! If you don’t take hold this minute I shall leave you here and go on to Michel Delving by myself!’

The hold resumed itself, though Ferdi still would not speak, not to answer Merry’s repeated question, nor any other remark. If not for the tight hold on his ankle and the tickle of hot breath against his feet--and the bad smell, of course--he’d think himself all alone in that dark and confined place.

At last he stopped asking. They’d have to deal with Ferdi’s embarrassing problem when they were out of the log. Merry didn’t intend to put up with such a stench all the rest of the way to Michel Delving, no matter how close they were. And the Mayor wouldn’t take them seriously, if...

The stream, that was it, they’d go back to the stream, and Merry would make Ferdi wash out his things in safely ankle-deep water, no matter how cold and miserable the little rotter would be, putting on and wearing the wet things in the cool of the day. The mental image of his shivering cousin was both satisfying and uncomfortable to contemplate. But Ferdi deserved the misery, the better to teach him to mind himself in future.

I beg your...

Hush!

At last Merry reached the end of the log. He heard Ferdi give a whimper behind him as his body effectively filled the entrance, blocking the light, but he paused anyhow, to strain his ears.

Though he heard no voices, no snapping of twigs, no sound at all, not even birds singing their eventide songs, still, the hairs rose on the back of his neck. They were so close to Michel Delving, he certainly didn’t want the grown-ups to find them now and take them back! He thought perhaps someone might be hiding, just beyond the log--he saw the bushes quiver. No, it was just the little evening breeze, teasing again, and the musky smell washed more strongly around him, and was as quickly snatched away by the breeze.

Very quietly, he pushed with his free foot--much as he felt like kicking little Ferdi in the face, accidentally of course, as he pushed himself out of the entrance, well, it wasn’t the done thing. Very quietly, he eased himself into the open air.

As quiet as the small hobbits had been, the fox waiting above the opening had been quieter.

Chapter 12. Meanwhile

At just about the same time as Merry pushed his way out of the hollow log, Paladin’s waggon was turning in at the lane to Whittacres Farm. The waggon’s occupants were singing lustily and in fine harmony, a song of Bilbo’s composing, but Paladin broke off at the sight of every window pouring forth light into the gloaming, and figures moving about between home and barn, stable and byre, some with lighted lanterns though the Sun had not yet pulled her darkening bedcovers over the Green Hills, not completely. The western side of the hilltops were still glowing with sunset, and the farm itself was bathed in shining golden light, soon to dissipate, but beautiful to behold.

‘Ah,’ the good farmer said. ‘It is so good to come home again, and look! ...They’re expecting us.’

‘Of course they are,’ Saradoc answered. ‘We told them we’d be back sometime between teatime and eventides, and here eventides are nearly upon us...’

Paladin chuckled. ‘And here I was a-worrying, about bringing guests unexpected and unannounced...’ and one of said guests laughed, a hearty sound, for he’d not come empty-handed from Waymoot Market and he fully expected exclamations of delight from Eglantine and the lasses as he produced, as a magician might, wonders from the large bag resting in the back of the waggon.

Why, it looked as if half the neighbours were there to meet them, and smoke was streaming from the chimney, and good smells were on the air.

‘Ally is used to directing meals for the entire Hall; what’s a few more mouths to feed, to her?’ Saradoc said, turning with a wink to the other guest, riding behind them in the waggon bed.

But the faces that turned up to them as they drove into the yard were not cheerful and welcoming. Worried, they looked, and relieved to see them, and some other emotion they could not yet name.

Paladin pulled the ponies to a stop and jumped down from the waggon before the wheels had quite stopped turning. ‘What is it?’ he demanded of a hired hobbit who’d hurried up to meet the waggon. Others were milling around in seeming chaos, but Saradoc, peering more closely, thought he saw some purpose in their movements, and he jumped down too.

At the same time the hired hobbit greeted him. ‘Master Dinny, I’m that glad to have you home,’ he was saying.

‘Aggie,’ Paladin said, turning anxiously towards the kitchen door, but the hired hobbit caught him by the sleeve.

‘Beg pardon, but the missus is... well, she’s as well as can be, considering the shock...’

‘Shock,’ Paladin said, his initial relief at hearing his wife was, perhaps, well, evaporating as he turned over in his mind what the meaning of this might be.

His guest took charge then, taking him by the elbow and steering him toward the kitchen door. ‘I’m sure we’ll work out what it’s all about yet, Dinny.’

‘I thought--perhaps a welcome,’ he murmured, caught in the pit of his stomach by an unnamed fear. Saradoc took him from the other side, speaking soft reassurances that meant nothing, not after he’d so nearly lost his Eglantine, just a few weeks before, with the child that had been beyond the midwife’s saving.

‘Yes, a welcome,’ his guest said, ‘come along now Dinny, and...’

They entered the kitchen, to find a hive of activity, none of them of the immediate family, but all of them too busy bustling with the final preparations of enough food to feed a muster, to talk to the new arrivals or even notice them much, perhaps thinking them just come from the crowd of hobbits milling about the yard. At this, Paladin turned grey and had trouble catching his breath. It could only mean some tragedy had come to the farm, and no time yet to send a rider with a message to try and intercept him on his way home from Waymoot.

‘The parlour,’ Saradoc said with decision, pulling in that direction, and so they went down the corridor past the formal dining room, the polished dark wood table covered with a cloth and already groaning under a weight of food, to the parlour, where weeping and murmuring were to be heard.

Pausing on the threshold, the new arrivals saw, to their discomfort, a host of weeping wives and daughters, surrounded by helpless comforters offering tea, and encircling arms, and sympathetic tears of their own.

‘Ally!’ Saradoc said, dropping Paladin’s arm and striding to where his wife sat, holding a little jacket--it looked like Merry’s, he thought absently--to her streaming eyes. Stelliana was there as well with young Rosemary, their arms tight around each other, both of them sobbing as if their hearts had broken, and Eglantine...

Paladin walked softly to the rocking chair where Eglantine sat, dry-eyed, rocking quietly, looking at nothing. ‘Aggie?’ he said. ‘I--I...’

She didn’t look up at him. Her face was pale, and she paid no mind to her sister, standing beside her, pressing upon her a cup of cooling tea. Neither did she seem to notice her three daughters, huddled at her feet, clinging together and weeping wildly.

For want of anything else to say, Paladin gulped and, catching sight of the two hovering uncomfortably in the doorway to the parlour, he said, ‘I've brought Bilbo Baggins and young Frodo to share eventides with us... They’re stopping with us overnight, on their way to...’

Bilbo could see that things were very wrong indeed, and he neither smiled nor bowed, as he always did on greeting Eglantine, nor did he spout any of his usual flattery about the lightness of her baking, but he took Frodo by the arm and squeezed very lightly, as if to offer reassurance in a world gone badly out of kilter.

Paladin’s voice trailed off as Eglantine slowly looked up at him.

She took a sobbing breath and said, ‘They’re dead... drowned... and it’s all my fault.’ She buried her face in her hands and repeated, ‘All my fault. All my fault.’ And then she said no more.

Chapter 13. In which a hobbit surprises himself

Merry fell silent, causing his listeners to start up.

‘But then, what...?’

‘You cannot leave it there!’

‘More brandy?--no, I see that your cup is still well filled...’

‘Merry!’

At last he looked up and shrugged. ‘That’s all I know,’ he said, ‘until I wakened, quite some time later. They told me it had been a fox, and that we had been found...’

Pippin turned eagerly to Ferdibrand. ‘Then you must take up the thread, Ferdi!’ But his urging trailed off in puzzlement, and growing concern, for Ferdibrand was staring into his own cup, frozen in memory.

‘Ferdi?’ he said more gently.

‘Ferdibrand?’ said the King, his healer’s senses stirring.

‘Ferdi,’ Pippin said softly. ‘You cannot leave the tale there... It is one you’ve never told me, nor Merry either, and so if you don’t tell, and he doesn’t know... How can you leave us hanging, here at the narrow end of a hollow log?’

‘I’ve never told you,’ Ferdi said, adding, ‘I’ve never told anyone, truth be told... They asked, but they did not press me, when they saw....’ He looked up, his eyes shining with moisture. ‘Ah, the dreams,’ he whispered. ‘For days, weeks--months after!’ Anger came into his countenance then. ‘Just whose idea was it to tell this tale?’

Pippin refrained from pointing out that he’d been the one to bring up the matter, earlier in the evening, when they’d all been relaxed and laughing.

‘Then now is as good a time as any,’ Elessar said softly. ‘Lance the boil, and let the poison out. You’ve held the memory to yourself much longer than was good for you.’

There was a long silence while the listeners looked from Merry to Ferdi, but Merry merely shook his head helplessly: He truly had no memory past the moment he’d emerged from the log.

‘Aye,’ Ferdi sighed at last. He smiled faintly. ‘I suppose it does make a gripping tale for the telling, and a shame to leave it off at the exciting part.’

‘The little ones will never get to sleep at this rate,’ Pippin said lightly. ‘You’ve got them all stirred up and imagining the worst sort of imaginings.’

‘Not at all,’ Ferdi said, and swallowed. ‘Not the worst, I mean.’

‘Certainly not!’ Merry said staunchly. ‘Why, the worst would have been for the fox to slay and devour us both! And that didn’t happen! A rescuer must have happened upon the scene just in the nick of time!’

Ferdi smiled again. ‘Oh aye,’ he said. ‘The rescue came just in the nick of time, indeed.’

‘I love a good rescue,’ Pippin said, leaning closer and using his most persuasive tone. ‘Tell on, cousin, do.’

‘You know we older cousins could never resist him when he uses that tone,’ Merry said in a conspiratorial manner.

‘Too true,’ Ferdi whispered, and then he drew a deep breath and sighed it out again. He drained the brandy he held, as if to garner courage, and put the empty cup to the side with a final air, as if to say, Ready! And then he took up the thread of the tale.

***

Little Ferdi loosed his hold on Merry’s foot as the older cousin began to pull himself out of the opening of the log, for while it might have been satisfying to see Merry fall upon his face, it would not have been productive for Merry to fall on his nose. Ferdi did not want any more scoldings; he was put out as it was, already, by the high-handed tone Merry’d taken in the past few moments.

He bit down hard on his tongue to stop his whimpers as his older cousin pulled away, blocking most of the light coming in. Then the bulk of Merry’s body had cleared the log, and he was pulling his legs out, ending on all fours as if playing at “pony”, and Ferdi began to creep forward, only to freeze in terror and consternation as a dark form flashed down from above, and Merry disappeared under a descending layer of shaggy red-brown fur.

And then Merry was screaming, and Ferdi put his hands to his ears and squeezed his eyes shut, for surely this was a nightmare; it could not really be happening! It couldn’t!

But Merry’s cries still came, even through Ferdi’s muffling hands, and the littler hobbit couldn’t not look; his eyes popped open, and yes, it was real, and more terrible by the moment.

It was a fox--he’d seen the pelt of a fox on more than one occasion, pinned to the side of the barn to dry after a hunt. Uncle Dinny had no quarrel with foxes that kept to the woods, but when a fox would begin stealing chickens, he and his neighbours would assemble together with their dogs for a hunt, and they’d hunt and kill foxes until the chicken killings stopped--the only way to be sure they’d found and taken care of the culprit.

Ferdi had never seen a living fox before, but this creature reminded him more of a dog than anything else, for it had Merry by one shoulder, shaking him furiously. And then, horribly, it dropped the lad, dancing away, jaws parted in a silent laugh, and as Merry tried to crawl away it darted in to bite at him and jump away again.

Ferdi had seen one of the farm cats playing with a large rat, nearly of the cat’s size, in just this manner. Jump in, worry at the prey, jump out again, circle, find another hold, shake.

The fox was killing Merry!

And then, somehow it came to the young hobbit, what he must do. He could not cower, trembling, in this log, while the fox continued its deadly sport.

He dug frantically in his pockets for the pretties he’d picked up in the stream. Smooth and round they were, nicely weighty in the hand. Closing his fingers around one, he drew his hand up again, pulled himself half-out of the log, and then all the way out, dropped silently into a crouch. He was fully vulnerable now; the fox could not get at him in the safety of the log, but out here in the open... He was glad the fox was half-turned away.

Merry’s screams ceased suddenly, and he hung limp in the creature’s jaws. The fox laid him down on the ground and pawed at him, then opened its jaws to take its prize when...

A stone whizzed, catching the fox hard and painfully behind one shoulder, and it yelped, took a few steps away, seeking cover before turning for a brief survey of the danger.

It was only another baby hobbit, and not a threat at all!

Furious, growling, the fox advanced on the tiny figure, but instead of retreating in a panic, or falling to the ground, quaking in fear, the little one drew back its hand. Another stone flew, striking true, and the fox yelped again, shaking and pawing at its head, and when it raised its head it looked out of only one yellow eye.

‘Go ‘way!’ Ferdi shouted, digging out another stone.

The fox decided that retreat was the better part of valour, but it was not willing to relinquish fresh meat. It snarled and circled away, its brush tail thrust out at a stiff and angry angle, its glowing gaze fixed upon the stone-thrower.

Suddenly it darted in to seize Merry’s shoulder in its teeth, and growling it began to half-carry, half-drag the limp body away.

‘No you don’t!’ Ferdi shrieked, flinging another missile, which caught the fox square on the muzzle, making it drop its prize. ‘Go ‘way, and leave Merry alone!’ More stones followed, each one finding its mark, and at such short intervals that there was no question of turning and attacking the thrower.

Surely catching a rabbit would be easier than this! The fox turned tail and fled.

Ferdi stood clutching his last stone, his chest heaving. The fox was gone. Was it? Yes, it was gone. Limp with reaction, he let the stone fall at his feet and stumbled to Merry, incoherently entreating the older cousin to waken, to speak to him, to say something, anything!

Was that rustling noise the fox, returning? Ferdi snatched up two of the stones that lay on the mossy ground, having done their work. He stood to his feet, clenching the stones in his fists, turning slowly to survey his surroundings.

It wasn’t safe to stay here in the open. The fox might return at any time.

He couldn’t go for help and leave Merry here. The fox would come back and eat him, or drag him away to its den and eat him there. He couldn’t let the fox eat Merry!

As his gaze circled the little clearing, his eye fell once more on the hollow log. Yes! It had been their refuge before! Though the fox had waited outside to catch them, it hadn’t tried to get at them when they were in the log. The opening was too small.

He’d get Merry into the log again, somehow; shove him down, far down where the fox couldn’t get him, and then he’d climb out and gather up the stones once more, the marvellous pretties, gifts of the playful-but-treacherous stream--the fox had been playful-but-treacherous, too.

He realised that he was babbling aloud, and somehow he’d come to be sitting down beside Merry’s crumpled form, and there were fat tears rolling down his face. He shook himself. This would never do. He had to get Merry safely inside the log, and then he had to go for help. Michel Delving was just on the far side of this wood, Merry’d said. He’d go and find the Mayor, and bring back help. That’s what he’d do.

Wiping at his face with his sleeve, young Ferdi struggled to his feet and considered his older cousin. Merry was as big as himself--bigger, and he didn’t think he could carry him. He tried taking Merry’s hands and dragging him, but this made his cousin moan piteously.

At last he found he could roll Merry after a fashion, and so he rolled him across the mossy ground, toward the log. How he’d get him into the log, that was another matter, but he’d do it somehow. He’d walked halfway across the Shire, nearly to Michel Delving, after all, and he’d bested a ferocious predator.

Somehow getting Merry into the narrow opening and down the hollow shaft seemed child’s play by comparison.

Chapter 14. Interlude

It was not to be so simple as the little one had planned. By dint of sheer stubbornness, he managed to get Merry up onto his shoulders. Talking to Merry as he struggled, he pushed up, straining hard, got his cousin’s head and shoulders into the opening, and somehow worked the limp body far enough into the log that it stayed when Ferdi faltered; and there was Merry, half in and half out of the log, legs dangling.

‘There you are, Merry, there you are, nearly safe now,’ and a furtive, frightened look behind him to see if the fox had reappeared, ready to leap. ‘In you go, Merry, in you go...’ Merry’s legs sticking out of the log reminded him horribly of a garden snake he’d seen once, that was in the process of swallowing a mouse. Though he was panting and exhausted, he redoubled his efforts. A push, and a shove, and suddenly Merry was sliding down, and Ferdi scrambled after.

He made Merry as comfortable as he could on the bed of crumbling leaves, working by feel in that dark place, tucking his own soft blanket around Merry with a pat, much as Ferdi’s mum or older sister might do, tucking Ferdi in for a nap.

And then he looked up, to where he knew the entrance to be. He blinked hard and fisted his eyes. Yes, that was the entrance, and yes, the darkness there was slightly less dark than in the log. But it was dark. Somehow night had fallen as he was pushing his cousin to safety.

Night had fallen, and darkness had closed in, and was waiting outside the log to devour him.

Ferdi felt in his pockets for the comforting weight of a pebble or rock, but his pockets were empty.

Mum? he whimpered. Da? He gulped down his tears and tried one last time. Rosie? He would, at the moment, have welcomed his older sister’s fusses and scoldings, would have thrown his arms about her neck and wept joyous tears.

There was no answer, only the silence of the ominous dark, and Ferdi cowered against Merry’s limp form. He pulled a corner of the blanket over his head, and jammed his two fingers in his mouth, but he found no comfort there.

***

There was little point in searching the stream in the dark, by lantern-light, though Ferdinand was out there with a few of the neighbours, and Saradoc joined him not an hour after his return from Waymoot. Paladin remained with Eglantine, with what little comfort he could offer. Most of the neighbours went home, to see to their evening chores, promising to join the hunt in the morning if the lads had not yet been found.

Bilbo insisted that Frodo lie himself down and rest, if not sleep, for the tween had a bit of a rasp in his breathing--perhaps a cold coming on--and the night air was chilly.

Frodo protested bitterly. ‘But Merry’s out in that same night air! What if he’s cold, shivering, frightened...?’

There might have been something more than warmed milk with honey and a little brandy in the mug Bilbo brought the tween, urging him to sip it down until it was gone. Some time halfway between eventides and middle night, Frodo slept at last.

Chapter 15. In which a youthful hobbit musters his courage

Frodo awakened groggy and not sure at first where he was. He sat up slowly, his head spinning in an unaccustomed way. He swung his legs out from under the blanket that covered him - when had he gone to bed? He could not remember.

Instead of jumping to his feet, ready to greet another day of adventure, surprise, and unexpected delights, as had become his habit since Bilbo had taken him in, he sat slumped, staring dully at his legs. At last it occurred to him that he was fully dressed... he’d gone to bed fully dressed, not in a nightshirt, not tucked up between smooth, cool bed linens, under a cosy coverlet. No, he’d been laid down upon a bed, and covered with a blanket, in carelessness or haste.

That might have happened in the old days, in Brandy Hall, where so many had been watching over him that sometimes he’d been overlooked, with aunties assuming that one or the other had seen the poor orphaned lad to his rest. It had been most convenient to be overlooked, at times... especially when the mushrooms were growing thick in old Farmer Maggot’s fields.

Come to think of it, he remembered this groggy feeling, swirling in a dim mist from the past - the day his parents had died... yes, they’d drugged him to insensibility, that first night; they’d sent him off to sleep when it seemed he might never sleep again. And so, seeking to give him relief from pain, someone - likely Bilbo, who’d be looking out for him, or perhaps the healer - someone had dosed that mug of sweetened warmed milk...

Resentful, he shook his head to clear it. They needn’t treat him like a babe! He was a tween, after all, no longer a child, to be cozened and coddled.

And then he ducked his head, to hide the flush of shame that rose in his pale cheeks, for to entertain such thoughts was to be the worst of ungrateful beasts, as Lobelia Sackville-Baggins would say. She’d given the tween quite a lecture on gratitude not long after his arrival at Bag End - he’d been exploring the neighbourhood, to see how different things looked to him now that he was a resident of the area, and not a mere visitor, and he’d not had the wit to duck into the hedgerow on her approach.

He did not want to be an ungrateful beast, with all that Bilbo Baggins had done for him!

No; he’d be strong - yes, that’s what he’d be, strong, a prop and a stay for the old hobbit, in this terrible circumstance.

His heart lurched within him as he thought of the particulars of this particular circumstance - Merry! - an anguished call, that he kept within himself only by the measure of biting his lip until he tasted blood.

He drew a shuddering breath and arose from the bed.

Chapter 16. In which a youthful hobbit takes up the search

The world was wrapped in clinging mist, damp, cold, and unpleasant. Frodo shivered as he made his way across the shrouded fields, following the directions of a chattery mum labouring in the kitchen to cook up quantities of food for the searchers who’d be in and out as the day progressed. In answer to his question, he was told that Bilbo had gone out with the first group, just before the dawning, and wouldn’t he like to stop long enough for some bacon and eggs, ham and sausages, bread and... He managed to put her off by grabbing up one of the ready-made packets of food, neatly tied up for a searcher to sustain himself in his endeavour, and promising to return for a hot meal later.

The chilly mist dampened his clothes, clung to his hair in droplets, weighing him down, making him feel uneasily like he’d been pulled, gasping, from the grasp of a cold river. The vision of two little lads, cold and drowned, rose before him, and he put out a hand, groping as one blind. He blinked fiercely to clear away the tears blurring his vision, and trudged on.

He could hear the calls of searchers now, mist-muted and eerily distorted, and he saw the occasional yellow smear of a lantern in the grey dullness of this day. On he stumbled, not noticing the sound of tumbling waters until he’d stepped off the bank into the little stream itself with a splash and startled shout.

He heard an answering shout, muffled but rapidly approaching, and then hands were pulling him out of the water, and a drier cloak than his own was wrapped around him, and he was being sat down upon the bank.

‘There, lad, all’s well, the stream didn’t get its hooks into yer.’

‘Ye’ll want to watch out where ye step, lad. Look at’ee, wet t’ th’ skin! I’d say go back to yon farm kitchen, warm up by the fire afore ye go out again!’

‘And don’t come out by yourself, you benighted coney! ‘Specially if you don’t know the lay of the land!’

‘Ye said rightly, Eber, ye said rightly!’ A clout on the shoulder. ‘Now get up, lad, afore ye shiver yersel’ to smithers! Do ye want one o’ us to go back wit’ ye?’

Frodo shook his head. ‘No,’ he mumbled, ‘I’ll find my own way back. Don’t stop searching on my account.’

‘Good lad,’ one of them muttered, slapping Frodo on his other shoulder. ‘Get along with you now.’ There was a push to get him moving in the right direction, and he moved on obediently, hearing their talk fade behind him.

‘Oughter send someone along o’ him...’

‘Too late now, have to send out a search party to find him in this...’

‘Hope we don’t have to send out a search party for him in this...’

‘Hope they don’t have to send out a party for us...’

He’d quite lost his bearings, though he’d intended to return to the stream and work his way along the bank. Quite likely others had already done so. But he had to see with his own eyes, he had to find Merry, little Merry, blue-lipped and shivering, rather like Frodo himself at the moment...

He stumbled into a shambling run, raising his voice in desperation. Merry! Merry!

As if to mock him, faint calls returned through the mist. Merry! Ferdi-lad!

Something black and threatening loomed before him in the mist, reaching for him, but he didn’t see it. He ran with his head down, with no idea of danger until a shocking blow knocked him to the ground. He briefly saw stars whirling against a black background, raised his hands to his head to encounter incredible soreness and warm stickiness--blood!

He blinked away the dizzy feeling and, gathering his courage, looked up to see what had brought him down. The mist was darker here, darker all around him as if some terrible giant had taken Frodo into his mouth and was about to chew and swallow... and then he realised that the tall dark teeth hemming him in were really trees, and he lay in a little copse. He’d run into a tree, as a matter of fact, and done himself some damage.

He sat up in a mossy clearing, the pounding of his heart slowly fading. The moss was soft and damp (though he was damper, and so did not notice). The fog twisted around the trees in ghostly swirls, and the calls of the searching parties were dim and far away.

Frodo sat, dully staring at the vivid green before him. He plucked up a handful of moss and let it drop again, a neat clump, and then he picked it up again and fit it carefully back into the dirt-shape it had made on leaving the earth. He smoothed the moss gently, and when he took away his hand the clump was a part of the velvety carpet once more, without a trace of its disturbance. Without a trace... like Merry.

At this thought, Frodo threw himself face down upon the moss and sobbed out his misery, his loss, even the nagging guilt that had he been there, Merry would never have gone wandering alone. Well, not alone, but with only another young hobbit barely out of faunthood. Surely they’d been drowned, or found by a fox, or...

Something knobby and uncomfortably hard was under his elbow, standing out from the cushiony moss. Frodo sat up again, rubbing at his eyes. He’d have to go back to the farmhouse, join one of the search parties...

He picked up the stone that had disturbed his elbow, hefting it in his hand. A fine throwing stone, smooth and round, not the sort of thing you’d find in a mossy clearing, but more likely in the bed of a stream, worn by running water. Frowning, he noticed other stones scattered about the clearing, more of the same, of just the size to appeal to a young hobbit.

He caught his breath. Had he found sign of Merry and Ferdi?

Getting slowly to his feet, Frodo essayed a tentative call. Merry? Ferdi-lad?

He took an uncertain step and lurched to the side, raising a hand to his aching head. Steady now, Frodo, he told himself. He could almost feel Bilbo’s steadying hand on his shoulder, almost hear the heartening voice, encouraging him. You’ve a fine mind there, lad; now think things through! A little seasoning never hurts the stew...

Seasoning... In his mind’s eye, he could see Bilbo holding young Sam’s hand in his, measuring salt and herbs into the small, upturned palm, then taking his hand out from under with a firm, ‘Now, just sprinkle it gently over the pot, not all in a lump, lad! We’re in no hurry! Good seasoning takes time and care!’

He could remember little Sam’s expression, wondering eyes, tongue protruding slightly in concentration as the young hobbit carefully distributed the herbs over the simmering stew, while Bilbo plied an expert spoon in following. There'd be no sudden lumps of bitterness in this meal! Don't just dump the whole handful at once, willy nilly... Don't just take off at a run, without considering the whole of it all... Think things through...

Still cradling his head, blinking a little to clear his vision, Frodo surveyed the little clearing. The stones were scattered, true, but most lay in the same area where he’d fallen. He should think they’d be found at the base of a tree, had the young ones been shooting at a target... and why had they left such smooth, round, inviting stones to lie, and not gathered them up again?

Haste, he thought. They were in haste, and did not have time to pick up the stones again. And they were throwing at something, not just a tree... He cast about the clearing, concentrating fiercely, shoving the ache in his head to the background, not important now, deal with it later.

Merry! he called again, and heard echoes of his call from outside the copse.

The moss was stirred up, as if two lads had wrestled there. Two lads... but the stones told another story. Some struggle had taken place, Frodo was certain, and now he began to tremble once more. Merry! he whispered.

He didn’t know what drew his eyes, then, to the log, propped up on a large stone at the side of the clearing, hollowed by weather and time. The den of some animal, he guessed... And a sob caught him in the throat. Some animal... The lads had blundered into this clearing, and been taken by a predator, after a valiant but all too brief struggle. Overcome, and dragged into the dark, dank lair.

The hairs on the back of Frodo’s neck rose as he stared at the log, at the marks on the mossy ground. Yes, a body had been dragged across the clearing... He was almost sure of it.

Head pain forgotten, Frodo whirled, seeking a weapon, blood-red fury blazing in him, a thirst for revenge. He took up a stout stick and advanced on the log, his jaw set, eyes snapping. Merry’s murderer would pay!

Chapter 18. In which a youthful hobbit calls for help

In silence, Frodo peered down the dark throat of the log, leaning forward until his head blocked any light from entering. Frowning, he pulled back a little, but it didn’t help, much. A torch. That was what was wanted. Some of the searchers carried torches; others carried lanterns. Frodo had nothing but his wits.

In the absence of light, he did the next best thing he could think of. He held his breath and listened. In the distance he could still hear voices calling, but he concentrated fiercely on the pool of darkness before his eyes. Yes. Something was there. Some thing, breathing softly. Wrath rose within him. Some horrid thing, some ravening monster that had overcome and devoured little Merry, some creature of the darkness...

The Dark. Even as his fist clenched tighter around the stick, a scrap of memory incongruously floated through his thoughts. The creak of the door wakening him, opening sleepy eyes, seeing tiny Merry creeping cautiously across the floor by the dim light of the watch-lamp. Fwo? Fwo? Putting out glad, welcoming arms, pulling the mite into the bed, snuggling under the warm covers, exclaiming over small, icy feet. Merry had come often to Frodo, when a nightmare interrupted his sleep, or the Dark became too dark for him to bear.

With a sob, he brought the stick down hard on the outside of the log. Crack! He’d drive the creature out of its hiding, and crush its skull as it emerged. Crack! Crack! Crack!

But no creature emerged, not even a mouse. He listened again. Nothing.

Crack! ‘Get out of there!’ he shouted. Crack! ‘Take that, foul fiend!’

Still it cowered in silence within the darkness. Peering into the log, he thought he could see the sparks of eyes. ‘I’ll get you out, yet,’ he muttered, and changing tactics, he thrust the stick down the hole, hard.

A terrified shriek, fear mingled with pain, rose to meet him, and he pulled back in confusion. This was no fox...!

Sudden sick realization took him. One of his cousins was still alive in there, in the fox’s lair. He’d battered one of the little lads in his efforts. The fox had dragged the child into the den, both children more likely, devoured one and left the other for afters.

‘Merry!’ he called eagerly. ‘Is the fox still there?’

There was no answer, but Frodo was heartened that there was also no snarl, no growl.

‘Merry?’ he said, as gently as he could, considering that his heart was racing and he was breathing hard.

Soft sobbing answered, and his horror was renewed as he recognised little Ferdi’s voice. Little Ferdi, yes, that’s who he was hearing, Ferdi, but not Merry, no trace of his well-remembered voice. Merry would never have left little Ferdi alone. Not willingly. Frodo shook with a sudden chill, but then he set his shoulders and lifted his head. There was still a little one here, needing help.

‘Ferdi?’ he whispered.

The sobbing stopped, but listening carefully Frodo heard the catch of the youngster’s ragged breathing.

‘Ferdi,’ he said, working encouragement into his tone. ‘Ferdi, it’s all right. You’re safe now. Come out, little one.’

Not a sound.

‘Ferdi,’ he said again, and then he turned away to raise his voice in a wild shout, though it would likely terrify the youngster further. Help! Help! I’ve found...! He didn’t know quite what he’d found. Little Ferdi, certainly. And what was left of Merry? He scarcely dared to hope... but better that, than never to know where his little cousin’s bones had come to rest. He yelled at the top of his lungs, scraping his voice raw, but suddenly Bilbo was there, Bilbo’s arms enveloped him, he was pulled against Bilbo’s scratchy waistcoat, the metal buttons cold against his cheek, Bilbo’s voice soothing him.

Here now, lad, I’m here. How do you come to be...? No matter. No matter. Help is here.

There were wondering murmurs, and Frodo pulled away from the old hobbit’s embrace at last, gesturing at the log with the stick that still hung from his hand. ‘There,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘In there. A fox’s den, I think…’ He swayed, but Bilbo caught him and eased him down, settling his lap under Frodo’s back, keeping him from the cold dampness of the ground. Dazed, Frodo fought to keep his eyes open. Even as he lost the battle, he felt Bilbo’s fingers gingerly exploring a soreness on his forehead.

‘Fox!’ several voices said in unison, wowing in and out of Frodo’s consciousness.

‘Here, take the torch,’ someone said, and he seemed to see through the mist in the air (or was it the fog in his brain?) a yellow glow, a shadowy figure tentatively easing a lighted torch in at the entry to the log.

‘Have a care!’ Bilbo said sharply, and somehow that brought things more into focus. ‘You’ll have the log ablaze before you know it!’

‘With things so damp?’ the torch-bearer grumbled, but someone else said something about scraping dry wood from under to start a fire, of a rainy day, and Frodo was drifting off again, lost in memories of tramping about with Bilbo...

‘They’re in there, all right,’ a voice whispered, and Frodo smiled in his dream. They’d found a bird’s nest, and climbed to see the eggs... Bilbo’s fingers were soothing, and he was telling someone to “Take off your coats and lay them over the boy! He’s hurt!”

‘We’ll have to chop them out.’

‘Or saw them.’

‘Chopping’s quicker...’

‘Aye, but what if we should chop them, I don’t wonder?’

Frodo faded away.

Chapter 19. ...which is not quite the end of it

As it turned out, neither chopping nor sawing was employed in extricating the little ones. Both were deemed too dangerous. Why, one of the little ones was unresponsive, certainly, but the other was awake, or so it appeared from the glint of his eyes when they shone a lantern down the log, though he made no sound nor move in response to their entreaties. What if, when the chopping or sawing started, he became so frightened that he moved the wrong way, at the wrong moment? Why, the rescue might turn to tragedy!

‘What we need,’ Bilbo said thoughtfully, though he was still sitting on the ground, cradling Frodo’s head and shoulders, and could not see into the log where some of the searchers were peering with the help of a lantern brought by one of the late-comers--much safer than a torch. ‘What we need,’ he said, clearing his throat and raising his voice, though his hand never left off its gentle soothing of Frodo’s pale, bruised forehead.

‘Ahem!’ he repeated, and several faces turned toward him in surprise, perhaps expecting some dire pronouncement about the tween’s injuries. ‘What we chiefly need,’ he said, ‘is some way of fetching them out of the log.’

Disgusted looks were exchanged at this, but he paid them no heed, continuing with his thought. ‘A crook,’ he said, ‘that’s the thing! We need to fetch these young lambs out of danger...’

A near neighbour clapped himself on the side of the head in consternation. ‘Aye!’ he said, ‘the auld hobbit has the right o’ things! A crook, that’ll do!’ he said with an emphatic nod, and was off at a jog, for his farmyard was closest.

The gathered rescuers’ tone changed from mingled entreaty and reassurance to mutual encouragement, as they congratulated each other on finding a solution to the problem. Those nearest the mouth of the log murmured cheer to the lads within, even while they exchanged worried looks. Some of the searchers had taken off to fetch the anxious fathers from amongst the search parties, and another had been sent to inform the healer that the lads had been found, and would be brought to Whittacres just so soon as possible. She’d likely be ordering hot bathwater, and brewing draughts, in anticipation of their arrival. Yet, the lads were so still, had they perhaps taken a deadly chill in the long, cold, damp night?

Ferdinand and Saradoc arrived about the same time as the crook-bearing farmer, deluged with breathless explanations and having to pull free of restraining arms to reach the log. A litter arrived at the same time, intended for Frodo, but Bilbo put off efforts to take the lad from his arms, “Just wait a moment until we see how this comes out. He’ll be wanting to know, when he comes round again, and it’ll go ill with me if I don’t have an answer for him!”

‘Stand back, now!’ the crook-bearer said importantly.

‘Rather like fishing, I’d think,’ someone observed to another.

‘Perhaps a net,’ another said, but all were too interested in the drama unfolding, to break away and fetch a fishing net for another possible try.

Slowly and with much care, the first of the lads was fished out. Ferdinand gave a choked cry, taking the stiff, staring body of his little lad into trembling arms, pressing little Ferdibrand to his heart. ‘ ‘Tis all right, now, laddie,’ he repeated, over and again. The child suddenly went limp, his eyes closed, and his father, after an anguished exclamation, bent his head and began to weep into Ferdi’s damp and filthy curls.

Saradoc waited, his breaths shuddering in and out, arms partly outstretched as if to catch his son from a tumble, though he was a step or two away from the log, having moved back to give Ferdinand room as little Ferdi emerged.

The crook-bearer muttered to himself, the lantern-bearer moved the light a little closer in answer to the mutters, everyone held their breath and then...

‘Got ‘im!’ This was said in an explosive burst of pent-up breath, followed by a murmur of “Steady. Steady, now,” on the part of both the crook-wielder and the light-bearer.

Saradoc crept closer, at the last holding his arms under the opening of the log as the crook drew out his unconscious son. ‘Merry,’ he sobbed, but he resisted the temptation to hug his little lad, instead sitting himself quickly down and resting the lad on his lap, to begin a fearful examination.

Bilbo called for the hovering rescuers to “give them air!” but none paid heed.

As the buttons of the torn shirt parted, there was a combined oooh and not a few winces of sympathy, to see the dark bruises parading down young Merry’s shoulders and upper chest, teeth-marks plain. Saradoc impatiently dashed the tears from his eyes, then sucked in his breath as he eased the shirt from his lad, revealing other bruises, obvious bite-marks, as well as matching bruising proceeding down the little one’s back.

‘Fox, for sure,’ one of them said. ‘Shook him to break his neck.’

‘Shook him to death,’ another said gravely, but Saradoc contradicted.

‘He’s alive,’ he gasped, ‘breathing, and...’ he saw the small fingers clench and relax again, ‘...and moving!’ For good measure, he felt gingerly of his son’s neck, but could feel no obvious break.

Ferdinand was persuaded to let go his death-grip of little Ferdi, and examination showed a few bruises and abrasions, perhaps from falling down, but no marks of violence on the part of a fox. There was much head-shaking and awed talk. Clearly Merry had taken the brunt of the fox’s attack, in defence of his littler cousin, and somehow managed to win free to the dubious safety of the log.

Coats were wrapped around the lads, but their fathers insisted on carrying them back to Whittacres. The litter bearers looked to Bilbo, but he waved them off, easing himself to his feet as if he were nearer fifty than twice that many years. He hefted Frodo in his arms. ‘He’s a long lad,’ he said, ‘but there’s not too much meat on his bones for me to be carrying him.’

And carry Frodo he did, all the way back to Whittacres, in the train of the others bearing their precious sons, and the crowd of rescuers surrounding them. They’d all go back to Whittacres for a bite to eat, a bit of chatter to relieve the nerves, and then go back to the duties of the day, and likely a nap later, to make up for searching through the night.

Whew. All’s well that ends well, I’ll say.

Not quite ended, yet...

I’d like to know what your mothers said, on first sight--no, on the other hand, I wouldn’t!

It’s no wonder you got off without a scolding. What they must have thought, Merry!

Fought off a fox on his own, wounded as he was, and saved his little cousin!

Enough from you, Ferdi! You’ve had years to set the record straight...

Truth be told...

Ferdi? Is it well with you? Ferdi-lad?

...eh? Beg pardon, was there something you wanted, Merry? Quite forgot where I was there for a moment.

You said, “Truth be told...?”

O aye, that I did. (long swig, sigh) Truth be told... I never wanted to think of it again, nor speak of it. That fox haunted my dreams for days after, and...

And, what?

And... well, little child that I was, I suppose I feared I’d speak him back again...

Speak him back again? You're not making sense.

He makes perfect sense, indeed.

Strider?

Peace, Pippin. You thought, Ferdibrand, little little child that you were, that speaking of him might bring him back in truth, back to shake Merry to death, to spring at you perhaps.

Aye, my Lord. (shaky laugh) I can see why they made you King. Very sharp, you are. Good listener.

But that’s not the end to it, not quite, you said.

No, Master Robin. Not quite the end of it.

Chapter 20. In which nearly all the adventurers are borne to their beds

The lads were safely back... or were they?

O the old healer Sweetbriar, mouthing meaningless platitudes, had shooed away the hovering lasses who with everyone else crowded around the returning heroes. The rescuers marched into the smial and down to the parlour, where they were greeted with shouts and cheers from the crowd.

‘Mum, they’re found! They’re safe!’ Pearl cried, and Eglantine slowly lifted a face bleached of all colour, to say in a trembling voice, ‘Safe? Found? Safe?’

‘Aye, my love,’ Paladin said gently, after a sharp glance from one limp figure to another, pressing into the already crowded room. He did not know if he quite spoke the truth, but he took comfort from the fact that Saradoc’s and Ferdinand’s faces were anxious rather than grim. He stood to his feet and lifted Eglantine in his arms. She felt alarmingly insubstantial... She’d lost a great deal of her substance in the illness that followed the loss of the babe, and now he realised once more just how much. ‘Come, my heart,’ he breathed into her curls. ‘Now you’ll rest.’ He hoped with all his heart that the next words would prove true. ‘All is well.’

The crowd parted a little, and he brushed between Saradoc and Ferdinand with little more than a nod of shared gratitude.

Sweetbriar went from one lad to the next, assessing the condition of each with a touch, a keen look, a sniff of their exhalations. ‘Right,’ she said, looking up from Frodo, who was last as Bilbo was behind the others. ‘Let’s get these young fellows safely into beds, and we’ll see what needs to be done.’

Bilbo carried Frodo to the bed the tween had slept in the previous night. Someone had made it up with fresh-smelling linens. Pearl came behind him, ducking under his arm as he entered the room, and she pulled the coverlet down and plumped the pillow. ‘Here,’ she said, breathless. ‘Lay him down, and I’ll fetch a basin and cool cloths for his poor head.’

Bilbo laid Frodo upon the snowy linens, wincing a little at the lad’s dirty, dishevelled state... ah, but linens would wash, and the young one didn’t seem too discomfited by the dirt. He needed rest and warm covers more than a bath at the moment. He sank down on the bed and gently stroked the discoloured forehead. ‘Frodo?’ he whispered. ‘Lad, can you hear me? You’re safe, the lads are safe, and all will be well.’

‘Merry?’ Frodo murmured, moving his head upon the pillow, though his eyes did not open.

‘Shhh,’ Bilbo hushed, smoothing back the tousled curls. ‘Merry’s well,’ he whispered. Though he’d heard exclamations of dismay from the rescuers, he’d also heard Saradoc’s gasping He’s alive! and ...moving!

True to her word, Pearl was back with the promised basin and cloths, holding the basin before Bilbo so that he could wring out a cloth in the cool water before laying it on Frodo’s forehead.

‘Is he going to be all right?’ she whispered anxiously.

Bilbo smiled up at the lass. He’d known there was some affection between the twain, for they’d both been at mischief, on one of his previous visits to the farm before adopting Frodo, when Frodo and Merry had come together to spend a summer month there. They’d taken a picnic and two ponies and been caught racing their ponies across a broad meadow at break-neck speed. Ferdinand’s wrath had been directed mostly at Frodo, him being the elder of the two, but he’d had a harsh word for shamefaced Pearl, nevertheless. Bilbo had been impressed with the way the lad had moved to stand between, as if shielding Pearl from Ferdinand’s anger. He’d shouldered the blame despite Pearl’s tearful denials and insistence that she too was at fault, and he’d taken the brunt of the punishment that followed: No tea, and no supper. But Bilbo had seen Pearl, sentenced to all the washing up with no help from mum or sisters, slip a goodly portion of food onto a plate and cover it with a cloth before turning with a start to pour out a last mug of tea for gently inquiring Bilbo. And he’d caught a glimpse of an empty plate under the lad’s bed next morning...

He came back to the present with a start, drawing his hand over his face. My, but he was feeling weary, now that the emergency was over. He’d not slept, and he’d tramped the fields the better part of the night and morning with the other searchers. Certainly he felt better than his nine-and-ninety years might warrant, but it would be good to sit, to rest, to watch over Frodo until the healer came.

‘He’ll be fine,’ he murmured, to himself, and to Pearl. ‘He’ll be fine.’

Sweetbriar followed Esmeralda and Saradoc, bearing Merry off to their room, for her instinct told her in that first hasty examination that he was worst off of the three. ‘Lay him down,’ she said unnecessarily, and immediately she pulled his shirt away from his body, forcing her face to go still and serene though her eyes were scanning the obvious injuries, and her mind was going over the possibilities of unseen hurts. ‘A fox, someone said?’ she muttered.

‘Someone,’ Saradoc affirmed. He’d stood back to let the healer work, pulling Esmeralda with him, steadying hands on her shoulders, both watching eagerly.

Sweetbriar hummed softly to herself as she moved gentle fingers over the bruising. She felt of Merry’s neck, and prodded gently at his abdomen, which made the lad moan softly though he didn’t waken. ‘He’s lucky,’ she said at last, looking up. ‘I don’t feel any serious damage, underneath the skin. Time will tell, of course.’

‘Time?’ Esmeralda whispered.

‘Sleep’s the best healer now,’ Sweetbriar said briskly, rising to her feet and rubbing her hands together. ‘I’ll send Viola with soothing cream for the bruising, and he’ll bear watching. I’ll sit with him for a little, that you may wash and eat and rest,’ (she took in Saradoc’s rather rumpled condition, quite unusual for the heir to Buckland), ‘and then you’ll watch over him and call me when he speaks.’

‘Speaks, yes,’ Saradoc stammered gratefully, his heart settling once again into a steady beat. He sank down on the bed a moment, forgetting the healer’s injunction to wash and eat, and smoothed his little son’s wayward curls, and Esmeralda sat herself down on Merry’s other side, wincing a little at the bruises she could see, wanting to take him in her arms but refraining as he seemed to be peacefully sleeping.

The old healer’s gaze went from mother to father with their little lad between them, and she nodded to herself. She didn’t like the grayish tinge to the Brandybuck’s countenance... bit more o’ strain, perhaps, than had been good for him. She’d send a meal along, with a pitcher of soothing draught, and if the parents fell asleep watching over their little son, well none of the three would be the worse for it.

After she’d stopped in at the kitchen, to order meals for Bilbo, Brandybucks, and Tooks watching by loved ones’ bedsides, she went to see to tiny Ferdibrand. Barely out of faunthood, that one, and to have been stalked by a fox! ...and likely to have witnessed Merry’s sacrifice, why, she wasn’t surprised to find him curled into a tight ball, and unresponsive to Stelliana’s tearful pleas.

It was difficult to ease away the tot’s filthy clothing, and after she got a peep at his torso Sweetbriar desisted. Little Ferdi showed none of the marks of being shaken by a fox, much less bitten. ‘We’ll leave him be,’ she said. ‘Just keep talking to him, singing, letting ‘im know he’s safe. Poor little ‘un. He’ll be better after a night’s sleep...’

A night's sleep! Aye, that's got a grand sound to it. I've always thought sleeping a good occupation in the middle night.

Merry, dearest, what are you doing? You said you'd smoke a pipe and perhaps have a sip, and come to bed thereafter...

Just let them finish, my darling, sweet, obliging cousin. I'll never have the end of the story out of them if you stop them now...!

(wisely, finger to one side of her nose) Ah, one of those stories, is it, Pip? Or is it that you're leading my beloved into mischief, keeping him up well past his bedtime, and...

(all innocence) Only babes and doddering oldsters have bedtimes, Merry? Which is it, in your case?

Hold your tongue, Ferdi-you-rogue! Or my Merry will never come to his pillow, and I'll have nowhere to stick my cold feet...

Ah, Nell, you're awake as well? Aye, he's behaving abominably. Look at him! Now he's keeping you up as well as myself! How many more poor innocents will suffer at this rate, I ask you? It's a scandal!

We cannot have that! Abuse away, dear cousin, and I'll kiss Ferdi and make up for it later (and perhaps that'll encourage him not to go on about it all night as some long-winded Tooks have been known to do).

Now you're in trouble with your wives! You had better finish the story, and quick!

(Yes, much worse to be in trouble with our wives, than, say, with the King of North and South and places between...)

But it seemed little Ferdi was not improved by a night's sleep. When the dawning Sun peeped in through the windows, her eyes bright and her cheeks rosy, she beheld a weeping Stelliana, holding her little lad in her arms, rocking him gently and imploring him to speak to her.

Ferdinand stood helplessly by, opening and closing his hands as if seeking some employment, something to do to help the situation.

'Now, now, what do we have here?' the old healer said, bustling into the room. 'Come now, Mistress, you're frightening the little tyke with your carrying on!'

Stelliana gulped at this and sat up a little, but little Ferdi never moved nor made a sound. His eyes were tightly closed, his arms hugging his drawn-up legs.

'Come now,' Sweetbriar crooned, sitting herself down beside the distraught mother. She held out her arms. 'Come now,' she repeated, and managed to transfer the lad to her own lap, gently stroking the tousled head.

'All's well, Ferdi lad. All's well. Frodo's head hurts him, but he's managing some sort of breakfast, and Merry spoke a few words, but a little ago. He asked how you were, and what would he say if I told him?'

But Ferdi did not move. Sweetbriar began to rock, slowly, and hummed a soothing tune.

At her little brother's lack of response, young Rosemary crept from the room, her fist jammed tight in her mouth, tears brimming.

'He doesn't know us,' Rosemary sobbed, and the two engulfed her between them, a comforting embrace.

'Doesn't know you?' Pearl said. 'Did he look up into your faces and ask who you are?'

Rosemary shook her head. 'No, he doesn't even look,' she said brokenly. 'He's rolled into a ball, and he won't move or speak, as if he's a hedgehog and we're his deadly enemies... as if he's not here, and safe... Mum's afraid he's lost his wits and won't find them again!'

But Rosemary blinked. 'No...' she said slowly, thinking hard, and then she shook her head, hitting herself on the thigh with a fistful of annoyance. 'Silly of me, but no, he's not... He doesn't have his blanket.'

Pimpernel was matter of fact. 'How can he be safe without his blanket?' she said. 'I'm surprised none of the grownups thought of it first.'

She marched into the room to tell the grownups exactly what she was thinking, and found herself marched right out again by Ferdinand. He told her in hushed tones that now was not the time, and to go off and play now, or do her chores, or eat breakfast, or something, but that Ferdi needed peace and quiet and he wasn't going to get it with a little lass chattering away.

Pearl was already off to the parlour, to search and see if the special blanket might have been dropped there, or kicked under the furniture, or something.

'I'll look,' Rosemary whispered, and eased the door open a crack. Her father, seeing her, did not shut her out, but he did put his finger to his lips. She nodded and crept into the room. Tears pricked at her eyes, to see her little brother lying, just lying there in the healer's embrace, while old Sweetbriar murmured reassurances, echoed brokenly by Stelliana.

Pearl returned to an indignant Pimpernel, spreading empty hands. 'Not in the parlour, nor the kitchen,' she said. Rosemary emerged from the guest room and shook her head.

'The yard, then,' Pimpernel answered. 'Or it might have been picked up and put in another room by mistake. The washing?'

They split up to search the smial, for it would be faster that way, as well as less noticeable to adults, who might shoo them out altogether if they were thought to be making nuisances of themselves. Pearl tiptoed into Frodo's room, where Bilbo was chatting pleasantly and tendering spoonfuls of scrambled eggs and chopped ham. At the old hobbit's inquiring look, she said, 'Just checking.'

She made a circuit of the room, ducked down on the far side of the bed to lift the coverlet and peer under the bed. Not even a speck of dust; her mother was a thorough hole-keeper.

'Mmm,' Pearl said non-committally. 'You haven't seen a little blue blanket anywhere here, have you?'

'Blue blanket,' Bilbo echoed, met Frodo's gaze, and shook his head. 'None around here,' he said. 'But there are plenty of blankets in the press; I saw them when I tucked up Frodo-lad, here, to make sure he was warmly enough covered.'

'Thanks,' Pearl said. She looked in the press, but of course Ferdi's blanket wouldn't have been put away there, dirty as it must have been after his adventures.

'Had a bit of a tiff with a tree,' Frodo said. She was glad to hear him sounding almost like himself.

'Who d'you think?' Frodo retorted, and then winced and lifted a hand to his head.

'Come now, lad, finish your breakfast, and then I think you're for another nap,' Bilbo said.

Pearl moved toward the door, but turned back to ask, as if it had just occurred to her, 'So where did you find them? How far had they wandered?'

'Far enough,' Bilbo said. 'Halfway to the Lonely Mountain, at least as far as a faunt would make it out.'

'They were on a far journey, for sure,' Frodo said, but he wisely refrained from nodding agreement. 'It's a good thing the stream didn't carry them away.' He shivered a little at this, and blinked, and swallowed hard, but then Bilbo brought a spoonful of eggs to his mouth and he was back in the present moment once more.

'Stream,' Pearl said, and at Bilbo's warning look she turned the subject. 'But you didn't find them there.'

'No, it was the copse,' Frodo said through a mouthful. 'On the far side of the sheep meadow,' he added, after swallowing.

'They were hiding in a hollow log,' Bilbo said. 'Come now, lad, just a few more spoonfuls... Pearl, my dear, we'll tell you all the tale of their finding after Frodo's had a bit more rest.'

She nodded at this broad hint. She thought she knew the place, especially after listening to bits and pieces that emerged from the babble of the rescuers, gulping at their mugs of tea and comparing stories about how young Merry had undoubtedly thrown himself into the path of an attacking fox to give little Ferdi a hope of escape.

She met Pimpernel and Rosemary in the hallway. 'Not waiting for the laundering,' Pimpernel said, 'nor in the kitchen, nor the study, nor...' and Rosemary's words tumbled over hers, describing all the other places in the smial where Ferdi's blanket wasn't.

'Twouldn't be in the barn or byre,' Pimpernel said, 'and I looked all about the yard, but unless it's totally mud you'd see the blue standing out from the ground.'

'We have to go off, go to where the lads were found, and search from there all along the way here,' Pimpernel said. 'He'd've taken the blanket with him, especially if they were on a journey to the Lonely Mountain or some such.'

'All along the way here?' Pearl said. 'That could be miles of searching—how do we even know what path they wandered?'

Chapter 22. In which it is shown that not just lads have conspiracies and adventures

On their way out of the smial, Pearl was called back to the kitchen, to help with the washing up. Pimpernel, thinking quickly, grabbed a basket from its hook by the door and brandished it aloft. 'Eggs!' she said succinctly, and ducked out the door, grabbing Rosemary's hand as she went, to pull the visiting cousin after.

To cover their escape, Pearl went quickly to the washstand and plunged her hands into the hot and soapy water, scrubbing vigorously at the first plate she found, dunking it in the rinse water and laying it ready to be dried and put away. Her Banks cousins, having come as soon as their milking was done to help out in the emergency, quickly took up the task of putting away. As Eglantine was a Banks, her kitchen was arranged much as her own mother's had been, making the task easy.

'Where's--?' Violetta Banks began, but Pearl chose that moment to break into song, selecting a catchy tune that her cousins had no choice but to follow. And follow they did, gaily winding their harmonies with Pearl's, until the kitchen rang with sweet song, lightening the hearts of all who heard them.

Hand in hand, Pimpernel and Rosemary sped from the farmyard, across the fields. It would be quicker than by farm road, Pimpernel explained in gasps. She still clutched the egg basket, and any hobbits who saw them assumed they'd been sent to gather cress or herbs.

They had to drop hands when they came to the first stile, climbing over, and the next field had been ploughed and so they must pick their way with care. They saw no sign of the lads' footprints, though there were plenty larger in the dirt, no doubt left by searchers. 'They probably went by another way,' Nell reassured an anxious Rosemary, who was fretting that they'd missed the right way. 'Frodo told Pearl it was the copse just past the sheep meadow...' Another stile, and astonished cows lifted their heads from their grazing to stare at the interlopers. They had to take care in this field for a different reason! Another stile, another field, and another...

Nell clutched her basket with a white-knuckled hand as they passed the last fence into the uncultivated meadowland, the grass short-cropped by occasional visits by sheep. A stream ran through it, quiet-seeming waters that nonetheless ran deep if one strayed more than a step or two from the pebbly bank.

Rosemary was breathing hard by this time, and she pulled Pimpernel to a stop beside the stream. 'A moment,' she gasped, and Pimpernel found herself glad for the chance to catch her breath.

'This must be where they found Merry's jacket,' Rosemary said at last, when she was able to put enough words together. 'They said it was by a stream...'

'And Frodo said the copse beyond the sheep meadow,' Pimpernel finished, pointing to the trees that rose before them, crowding together as if to mimic the forests found to the east.

It was dark and quiet under the eaves, and their feet made no noise on the mossy ground. 'Here, somewhere,' Pimpernel said, at a loss.

'A log,' Rosemary said. 'I heard them saying that they fished the lads out of a hollow log...' She stumbled, with a little cry of pain, and sat down abruptly, rubbing her ankle.

Pimpernel dropped her basket and fell to her knees beside her cousin. 'Don't tell me you've turned your ankle!' she said.

'Very well,' Rosemary said, trying for all the dignity she could muster, though she had to bite her lip hard to keep the tears from falling.

She explored the ankle with surprising gentleness, considering how roughly she'd spoken, and sat back with a sigh. 'I don't think you've broken it,' she said.

Nell rose and began to walk off, untying her apron as she went. 'I'll be back directly,' she flung over her shoulder.

'Lovely,' Rosemary said to herself. 'Gone for help, I suppose.' She sighed glumly. Ferdi ill, and now she had to injure herself and cause her parents further worry. Could she do nothing right?

She pawed idly through the moss, seeking the hard, round object that had felled her. It turned out to be a stone, smooth and evenly curved. Her fingers closed around it; it had a nice heft to it, a proper stone for the throwing. Looking ahead, she saw more stones, scattered about, seeming at random, but a closer look showed a pattern. There was a little group of stones here, where she sat, and another little group a little way over there. Hmm. Stones... thrown?

She looked ahead, peering through the dimness under the canopy of trees. This would be the perfect place to play of a sultry summer's day, she thought idly. Her breath caught in her throat as she saw a small circle of deeper darkness in the shadows ahead. Could it be...?

The hair on the back of her neck prickled with sudden apprehension, and she thought of the beasts to be found in shadowy hiding. Spiders, hanging from the trees, or foxes, or stoats, small but dangerous, a badger, or... While she was five years older than Ferdi, she was still just a young hobbit lass, and injured as she was, a fox might think her easy prey.

Though it gave her ankle a twinge, Rosemary moved to gather all the stones in reach, piling them in her apron, a satisfying weight, holding one clenched in her fist when her gathering was done. She kept wary watch on that darker patch among the shadows, somehow convinced it was the lair of a wild and dangerous beast.

As it was, she wrenched herself around and nearly let fly when her neck hairs prickled again, to warn her of something coming up behind her. Luckily she kept her fingers tight on the stone so that it did not leave her hand, to smack the approaching Pimpernel, who'd've taken a dim view of such goings on.

Nell carried in her basket her dripping-wet apron, drenched in the stream, and bent to tie it about Rosemary's ankle. 'There,' she said, and then noticed the pile of stones in Rosemary's apron. 'Very pretty, I'm sure,' she said, 'but you'd have done better to keep still.'

'Don't you see, Nell?' Rosemary said with sudden insight. 'The lads were here! These are the very stones Merry flung at the fox, to save my little Ferdi!'

Pimpernel gasped, taking up a stone in a reverent hand. 'The very stones,' she echoed in a whisper.

'There,' Rosemary said, pointing at that patch of blacker blackness. As Nell started forward, Rosemary caught at the hem of her dress. 'Careful,' she said. 'It may well be the den of a beast.'

'I'll be careful,' Nell promised, picking up another stone a little further on, and continued bravely with stones clenched in both fists.

She turned to call in an intense whisper, 'It's a log!' and turned back to fling one of the stones, hard, against the wood of the log, eliciting a hollow sound. She picked up a stout stick that lay nearby—Frodo's stick, if she had but known it—and advanced on the log, bringing the stick down hard. 'Hi, you!' she cried. 'Out of there! Out, I say!' She beat upon the log with a storm of blows, finally stopping.

Pimpernel hefted her stick, testing its weight much as a warrior would weigh a new sword in hand to try the balance. She nodded satisfaction, drew a deep breath, and stepped to the opening, stick held before her, in the event of the charge of some outraged wild beast, maddened by the assault upon its den.

Pimpernel nodded, not taking her eyes from the opening. With a sudden lightning motion, she thrust the stick down the hole and then sprang back, landing lightly, listening with all that was in her.

She stepped forward again, inserting the stick with more caution this time. She poked and prodded, hearing a rustling as of leaves, and then feeling something soft. Soft? She shuddered as her mind pictured some frightened animal, crouching, but she fished a bit with the stick, trying to feel out the dark interior of the log.

The stick seemed heavier as she began to withdraw once more, feeling resistance to her pull, and she stopped and swallowed hard, fighting down her fear. Something was clutching at the stick, and if she drew it out into the dim daylight, it would launch itself into her face.

She let go of the stick for a moment, hooking one of its broken-off branches over the edge of the log so that it couldn't slide (or be pulled) out of reach, and picked up a stone, holding it ready in her fist. Then she took the very end of the stick once more in her other hand and slowly began to tug it out.

It was a little like fishing, she thought, the feeling that something was adding weight to the end of the stick. Slowly, cautiously, she pulled it free—and there, hanging from the end, was a filthy mass that might have been blue under the clinging dirt and leaves.

'I've got it!' she shouted, turning round to wave the stick in triumph, the blanket swinging like a banner. Leaves flew free and caught in her hair, but she didn't care.

Pimpernel wasn't listening. She'd taken the blanket from the stick and stepped a little way away from Rosemary, in order to give it a good shaking. Debris cascaded down, some of it carried away on the breeze, and Rosemary, watching, blessed her cousin's foresight.

'There,' Pimpernel said, returning. She draped the blanket around Rosemary's shoulders. 'That'll help, a bit,' she said.

'Go and fetch help! Leave you here, alone, with wild beasts all about!' Pimpernel was indignant at the thought. 'I hope you're joking!'

'Of course,' Rosemary said, cowed, though she was the elder by a year. 'Of course I am. We're safer together, after all. So do we wait until they miss us, and the hunt is up once more?'

'Will you be serious?' Pimpernel hissed. 'You're as bad as your Uncle Ferdibrand for making light of heavy matters!'

'Now,' Pimpernel said, evidently thinking hard. She was clutching the stick-turned-club-turned-fishing pole, turning it over in her hands, examining it closely. 'I think it'll do.'

'I do. Up you come, Rosie, lean on me, there's a dear,' Pimpernel said, sounding much like Eglantine at the moment, and began to tug at Rosemary's elbow.

It was difficult, but Rosemary managed to gain her feet, or foot, rather, without putting weight on her injured limb.

'Don't move,' Pimpernel said, letting go to draw Ferdi's blanket from Rosemary's shoulders.

'I'm not going anywhere,' Rosemary said, rather obviously. She only hoped that Nell would hurry up whatever she was about.

Pimpernel wrapped the blanket about the larger end of the stick and eased it under Rosemary's arm. 'Here,' she said. 'Lean upon this, and grab it with your hand.'

It might tickle a bit, but the blanket softened the wood, and Rosemary found she could balance on her good foot and the stick.

'Right-o,' Pimpernel said. 'Now for it.' She grasped Rosemary's other arm and waited.

Rosemary moved the stick forward, then leaned on it and took a hop, steadied by Pimpernel. She looked up, her face brightening. 'I think it might work!'

They made slow and painful progress, having to rest often, but they made progress all the same.

By the time the Sun was nearly at her highest point, they were only halfway back to the smial. Rosemary was puffing with effort, and frankly feeling sick at her stomach, but toiling grimly along. She could only imagine her mother and father, should she be missed. Another search...! No wonder Pimpernel had scolded the idea of waiting until they were found.

Pimpernel, of a wonder, had abandoned her plain talk and was murmuring steady encouragement as she helped Rosemary along. 'That's it, dearie. You've got it.' It rather reminded Rosemary of doing her needlework under Auntie Eglantine's tutelage. Auntie Aggie was every so much more patient than Rosemary's own mum, and she had to stifle a giggle at Auntie Aggie's voice coming so strongly from Pimpernel. Of course, she was a little dizzy, and the Sun was beating down on their heads, and they hadn't thought to wear their hats as they left the smial...

There was a distant hail, and neither of the little lasses heard it, so intent were they on their hobbling progress. Both shrieked a little at the sudden advent of a grown hobbit, coming up behind them and stopping them with a large, work-worn hand on the shoulder of each, but Pimpernel calmed quickly, knowing him for one of her father's hired hobbits.

'Here now,' he said. 'What's to do?' He caught up Rosemary in his arms as she sagged.

Pimpernel, ever mindful of what was important, caught hold of Ferdi's blanket as the stick fell from Rosemary's grasp. 'I'm so glad to see you, Ned,' she gasped. 'We were playing, and Rosie hurt her ankle...'

'Well now,' the hobbit said. 'Tis a good thing I saw you as I was ploughing...' and he gestured to the field beyond, ponies standing where he'd left them. He shifted Rosemary in his grasp, waved to his fellow worker, took good hold and began to jog down the dusty farm lane. Nell hastened to follow. 'We were just about to unhitch and return to the yard for noontide, and a rest... Tom'll bring the ponies in. I'll have ye home safe in two shakes,' he said.

Chapter 24. In which something precious is restored, and what was lost is found again

Though she was out of breath when they reached the smial, Pimpernel had been watching for her opportunity. It came as they entered through the kitchen door. Ned paused, waiting out the exclamations, to ask Pimpernel's Aunt Hellebore, overseeing the last of the noontide bustle, if the healer was still on the premises?

Pimpernel quickly wrapped Ferdi's blanket about Rosemary's injured foot, a bulky bandage of sorts.

Rosemary suppressed a gasp of pain, as the eyes of the two conspirators met in complete understanding and accord. Pimpernel would likely be pushed aside, even shut out, but Rosemary would be borne to her parents—and by extension, to Ferdi's side.

'She's here, still with the little lad, as a matter of fact, poor wee bairn. They say as he's not moved nor spoken all the morn, and his poor mum is nearly out of her wits with worry.'

Hellebore looked up, really looked up for the first time, not a quick glance away from her carving but a full-fledged look. She put the knife down (a good thing, too, as Healer Sweetbriar had enough to deal with already) with a thump and shrilled, 'Now what have you little 'uns been doing with yourselfs, I'd like to know!'

'We were just playing—' here Nell allowed herself a small fib, in the interest of sparing the adults further alarm, '—in the yard, Auntie,' and seeing her aunt twisting hands in apron she gave a little nod, confirmed in her belief, strengthening the expression of sweet innocence she was maintaining.

Ah, my Nell, now, telling untruths? You'd not do such a thing, would you? At least, not to the face of your loving husband...

Never, Ferdi mine, you set your mind at rest and don't trouble yourself a moment more about it...

'I did!' Rosemary put in, with just the right amount of quaver in her voice to stop Ned from telling where he'd found the lasses, and to push on through the kitchen and down the hall to the guest rooms, in search of the healer. And Rosemary, to her relief, had been able to tell the absolute truth!

Pimpernel followed, but it was much as she'd expected. Ned had pushed open the door, as hushing noises emanated from the room to greet him, erupting further into soft exclamations. And then the door had swung shut in Pimpernel's face, and she was left there to listen to muffled conversation, and pounced upon a moment later by an anxious Pearl.

'Where were you all the morning? I had to do your work so that no one would notice you gone! Gathered the eggs, and...'

'And many thanks, Pearlie,' Pimpernel said, grasping her older sister's arms and giving a triumphant little shake. 'We did it!'

'What, found Ferdi's precious?' Pearl said, while pulling Pimpernel down the hallway. She was positively chattering with relief. 'Merry's going to be all right, they said, and Mum's ever so much better... Mistress Sweetbriar said a few days of rest, a few good nights of sleep...' When Pimpernel resisted, wanting to know what was going on in the guest room, she added, 'You know what Mum or Da would say, should they find you listening at doors! Rosie's in there, I gather?'

It was to be some time before they “let her out again” however, and Paladin's daughters had to hang on what clues they could garner from the comings and goings.

Pimpernel, after changing into a clean pinny, elected to help in the kitchen after the meal, that being the place where news was brought first, as a rule. She was complimented by her aunt for her industry, drying plates and mugs and cutlery, covering food and putting it away in the pantry, sweeping the floor several times.

All the other helping neighbours had gone on home after seeing the family, visiting relations, and hired hobbits fed, leaving only Hellebore and her eldest daughter to oversee the kitchen and run trays back and forth between the guest rooms and kitchen. Young Frodo had sat up at table to eat and been sent off to nap once more, Bilbo had taken himself off for a walk, Paladin was in the fields with the hired hobbits, Eglantine curled up with her youngest, Pervinca, both of them sweetly asleep, even the visiting Brandybucks were napping... It was a time of welcome peace, and Hellebore and Pimpernel might have been the only hobbits awake and stirring in the Shire, if one were to judge from the homely noises in the kitchen. Clink of glass, swish of broom, snap of a cheery fire, and Hellebore humming as she tidied away, that was all.

'Why don't you go out to play?' Hellebore said kindly, seeing the little lass plying the broom yet another turn around the room.

'I,' Pimpernel said, blinking rapidly. Looking up into her aunt's face, she thought the truth would be well received. 'I just have to keep busy,' she said. 'It helps, somehow.'

'That it does, my lass,' Hellebore said, her tone gentle. She took the broom from Pimpernel's grasp, however, stood it in its place, and sank down in the rocking chair by the hearth, patting her lap.

Pimpernel took her up on her invitation, snuggling close. Ah, but it felt good, her aunt's soft and ample lap, after the exertions of the day!

Hellebore began to rock and sing, softly, as if she knew the child's weariness. Ah, but it had been an anxious time for all, since the lads had disappeared the previous day!

Pimpernel stifled a yawn, but her eyes were closing of themselves when Healer Sweetbriar bustled into the kitchen.

Hellebore half-started up, Pimpernel in her arms, but the healer was wearing a satisfied look. 'Don't stir yourselves, my lasses,' she said, holding up a staying hand. 'I've just come to put together a bite to eat...'

'Little Ferdi? ...and Rosie-lass?' Hellebore said, but she'd started rocking again, and her hand was soothing on Pimpernel's back.

'He's sleeping, for the first time I think, not all curled up in terrified knots as he had been since they found him, poor wee mite,' the healer answered. 'Exhausted, I should think. A-worrited that something or other might snatch him from his mother's loving arms, I've no doubt, and yet at last he finally knows, somehow, that he's here and safe...'

Pimpernel gave a sigh and relaxed fully into Hellebore's embrace, as the rest of the conversation faded from her hearing.

There was a general sigh all around, and then the old man said, 'All's well that ends well, as they say.'

'And they all got up out of their beds next day, and did the same again, or so all the nursery tales go,' Pippin said with a stretch and a yawn that had him fumbling to catch his pipe as it fell from his mouth. He lifted it again, drew on it, only to find it had gone out some time before.

'Yes, nursery tales,' Pimpernel said, fixing him with a stern look. 'And from the look of you, baby brother, it's about time the tale ended and little hobbits took themselves off to bed!'

During the general laugh that followed, Ferdibrand leapt to his feet and extended a courteous hand to his wife. 'I can take a hint,' he said. 'I'm off to seek my pillow before she turns a gimbled eye my way!'

'Ferdi!' Pimpernel reproached, and her husband was all solicitousness as he helped her to her feet and turned her toward their waiting blankets.

'Off to bed with you now, Farry,' Pippin said to Faramir, who was blinking away sleep, though he'd managed to stay awake through the end of the story. 'I'll be along shortly.'

Bergil's eyes met the King's keen gaze, and he nodded in reply to Elessar's unspoken thought, and stood straighter, for he'd leaned against a sturdy tree to listen. He would make the rounds a last time, make sure the changing of the night watch had gone smoothly, before seeking his own bedroll.

Pimpernel came hurrying back. 'Ferdi's singing a back-to-sleep song,' she said a little breathlessly. 'It seems one of us stumbled over the feet of the littlest on our way to our pillows...'

'And you forgot something?' Pippin said. 'Or simply wanted to make sure Baby Brother didn't linger too long?'

'Hah,' Pimpernel said. Her grim gaze went from Pippin to Merry and back again. 'I had a little piece of unfinished business!'

'Did you, now?' Pippin began, but Pimpernel shook her finger in his face. She had the advantage, standing over him as she was, while he still reclined on the ground, pipe in hand.

'Nor you, either,' she added, swinging to stare down at Merry, whose mouth was opened though no words had yet had the chance to emerge.

'I wouldn't think of it,' Pippin said, putting pipe down and hastily raising both hands in his best placating manner.

'Hah!' Pimpernel repeated, clearly not convinced. She put her hands on her hips and stared back and forth between younger brother and cousin. 'Don't you dare think of it!' She rightly read Merry's puzzled look. 'And don't play Innocence with me! If I hear one word of your making sport of my dearest and his special blanket... He was only just out of faunthood at the time!'

'I wouldn't think of it,' Merry echoed Pippin. The eyes of the two met, and they shrugged at the same time, and then looked back to Pimpernel.

'See that you don't!' she ordered, and then picking up her skirts she hurried back before Ferdi should miss her.

'Who needs a special blanket when he has a Nell of his own?' Pippin said, at his most whimsical, and Merry chuckled.

'And so you have it,' he said, turning to Jack. 'And as you see, elder sisters can be quite as fearsome as Orcs, or even more so.'

'Into perpetuity,' the old man said, nodding agreement. 'But I should like to know...'

The King laughed. 'Pippin called you “a proper hobbit” and I can certainly see why! The two of you are cut from one cloth.'

'Only one “but” shall I allow this night,' Pippin said, affecting a wizardly tone and somehow making his eyebrows bristle as he spoke.

'What was Bilbo's surprise?' Jack said. 'All my questions have been answered, but that one. 'Twas said he was well pleased with himself, upon arriving, before news of the young hobbits' drowning shattered the pleasant anticipation... What were the wonders in his large bag, that he intended to produce, much as a conjurer might?'

'Trust a conjurer to wonder such a thing,' Pippin said, but then he began to laugh, and Merry joined in.

'What was it?' young Robin said, now wide awake, though he, like Farry, had been fighting sleep during the last part of the story.

At last, Pippin regained enough breath to tell. 'Though I hadn't heard that story of the wandering young hobbits, Bilbo's magickal bag was spoken of for years after! I certainly heard of that!'

'Ah,' Jack said. He did like to hear of "magickal bags" having plied one of his own for so many years.

'Bilbo had stopped in the market at Waymoot,' Pippin said. 'And you know how he was, about a pretty face. Always giving away handfuls of sweets to little ones with large and wondering eyes, he was, and if he saw a woebegone maiden, why... he would mount his bright charger, in a manner of speaking, take up sword and shield and slay any dragons that presented themselves.'

'Not many people do,' Merry said, with an elbow for Pippin's ribs. 'If Ferdi were still here, it would be time for him to speak his usual, “None of your nonsense, now, Pip” and I must say, I'm tempted to follow his example!'

'There was a down-cast maiden in the market, you see,' Pippin said. 'Frodo and Bilbo walked past her stand after meeting Paladin at the market, and arranging to ride with him to the farm.'

'A down-cast maiden,' Jack said. 'Sounds as if another story is in the offering.'

'It's an old story,' Pippin said with a chuckle. 'Her table was full, and her old gaffer had told her she couldn't go off with her sweetheart on a picnic until she'd sold all.'

'Not just,' Pippin agreed, 'but weavers of fine fabric—ribbons, for one thing.'

'Fripperies, and furbelows,' Pippin said, 'the way I heard it told, Bilbo pulled one thing after another out of his magical bag, until it seemed as if the world would end before the supply of dainties...!'

And so it ends as it began, with older sisters (who might be likened to orcs, or perhaps trolls), and yards and yards of lace and ribbon and beads and whatnot. At least Ferdi is safely out of it at the end, unless one considers that he is firmly in Pimpernel's clutches...

Now that the story is finished, it leaves behind the working title Dreamflower's Bunny and takes on its finished form, including a proper title. Sorry if you thought you were getting a brand new story.

For some reason, the following old Middle English folk-song runs in my head whenever I turn my attention to this story.

Perhaps it has to do with the fox who features in the tale, or perhaps that Ferdi grew up to become that leader of the Tookish Resistance known as "the Fox" during the time of the Troubles. In any event, you'll find a number of versions on the Internet, along with the notation that it's an old Cornish song, and dates from a ballad of the 1400s.

1 The fox went out one winter night, And prayed the moon to give him light, For he'd many a mile to go that night. Before he reached his den, oh! Den, oh ! Den, oh ! For he'd many a mile to go that night, For he'd many a mile to go that night, Before he reached his den, oh !

2 At last he came to a farmer's yard, Where the ducks and geese were all afear'd. "The best of you all shall grease my beard,

Before I leave the town, oh! Town, oh ! Town, oh ! " The best of you all," &c.

3 He took the grey goose by the neck, He laid a duck across his back,

And heeded not their quack ! quack ! quack! The legs all dangling down, oh ! Down, oh ! Down, oh ! And heeded not their, &c.

4 Then old mother Slipper Slopper jump'd out of bed And out of the window she popt her head, Crying, " Oh ! John, John ! the grey goose is dead,

And the fox is over the down, oh!' Down, oh ! Down, oh ! Crying, " Oh ! John, John!" &c.

5 Then John got up to the top o' the hill, And blew his horn both loud and shrill, "Blow on," said Reynard, "your music still,

Whilst I trot home to my den, oh!" Den, oh! Den, oh! "Blow on," said Reynard, &c.

6 At last he came to his cosy den, Where sat his young ones, nine or ten,

Quoth they, "Daddy, you must go there again, For sure 'tis a lucky town, oh ! " Town, .oh! Town, oh! Quoth they, "Daddy," &c.

7 The fox and wife, without any strife,

They cut up the goose without fork or knife. And said, 'twas the best they had eat in their life, And the young ones pick'd the bones, oh ! Bones, oh ! Bones, oh ! And said, 'twas the best, &c.

From:
http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/english-folk-songs-schools/folk-songs-schools%20-%200165.htm

See also:
http://www.folkinfo.org/songs/displaysong.php?songid=15

http://www.jstor.org/pss/537636 (A Medieval Carol Survival)

O The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night by Lindelea