Disclaimer: The characters and settings contained in this story are the creation of J.R.R. Tolkien and are the property of the Tolkien Estate. They are used as the basis for a work of fan fiction, from which no profit is made.

Missing

Prologue

“Pippin?”

“Peregrin? Peregrin!”

The cries echoed through the evening as dozens of hobbits searched the grounds around the Great Smials.

Paladin and Eglantine came, at last, face to face with each other before the Great Door. They stood staring a moment, each noting the other’s arms were empty, before Eg finally reached her hands out to Pad.

“There – there was nothing in the creek,” he informed her as he held her close, her curls tucked under his chin. “And nae among the cattle, or the ponies either,” he said hoarsely.

Eg looked up with tears running down her face and said plaintively, “But, then, where is he, Pad?”

“I dinna know,” the young hobbit’s father answered and squeezed her close as he looked the dusk-filled horizon above her head. “But he’s got to be found.”

Chapter One: "Many Happy Returns"

(earlier in the day)

“I don’t want to be here, Merry,” came the low statement behind his ear, pitched to be heard beneath the sprightly tunes, as Merry approached the food table set up upon the lawn of the Smials.

“Frodo!” he said innocently, turnign to face his elder cousin while continuing to fill his plate. “Whatever do you mean?”

“You know very well,” the Baggins hissed, crossing his arms over his chest and glancing about to make sure they were not overheard. He ducked his face away from the relatives who tripped past on their way to the dancing. When they had passed, Frodo raised his head again to say,

“I am no longer in the mood for” – he glanced about again and then lowered his voice still further to hiss “birthday parties!” as he glowered at Merry.

“Hoy! Really, Frodo,” the almost-tweenager said as he handed the plate, now stacked high with all sorts of comestibles, to Frodo and began to fill another. The music being played upon the lawn, the claps of the hobbits who merely sat and watched the dancers and the shrieks of the youngsters at play echoed behind him as he continued. “It’s not my fault you forgot it was your own cousin’s birthday.”

Frodo still whispered, but popped a raspberry off the top of the plate he held and began to nibble on it as he responded. “Pearl is much closer a cousin to you than she is to me, Merry, as you ought to know,” he stated.

Frodo bent his face to intently examine the contents of his plate while Merry’s back was turned as he filled up the second platter.

“Oof! Hoy! What’s the idea—“ Merry half-turned, his plate tipping precariously, a sauce of melted cheese dripping onto the biscuits below it. “Pip!” he sighed in annoyance.

The 12-year-old shook his curls from his face and danced a step backward from his impact with Merry’s legs, a smile still on his face.

“Merry! Merry!” he chirruped, dancing from one foot to the other. “Hoy! Look’it!”

He held up a party cracker before his cousin’s face and pulled at both ends so that the papers released with a loud pop and a faint hiss and mist of smoke emerged.

“See, Merry! Isn’t it a good one?” Pippin asked with youthful exuberance.

Merry felt the plate lifted out of the hand he still held over the table behind his back and then saw, out of the corner of his eye as he bent to talk to Pippin, the older cousin stalk away, his back stiff.

“Ah, Pip,” Merry sighed, turning back to the smaller cousin and placing his hands on the little one’s thin shoulders. “You hurt Frodo’s feelings just now, you know.”

“What? Why?” Pippin’s brow wrinkled in concern, and he made as if to dash off after the Baggins, but Merry held tightly to his shoulders.

“Pip. Look at me,” he said seriously, and Pippin turned back to lock his green eyes with Merry’s hazel ones, his chin trembling slightly.

“I didn’t mean to hurt Frodo’s feelings!” he squeaked.

“I know you didn’t,” Merry said kindly, and reached one hand up to brush a curl away from Pippin’s forehead. “But, you se, that smoke from the cracker reminded him of Gandalf’s last firework at his birthday party last year. The one where Bilbo went away.”

“Oh!” Pippin said, distressed, and tried to run off after Frodo again, but Merry still held him fast. “I didn’t know that,” he said softly as he gave up trying to get free and tilted his head back for a better view of Merry. “I fell asleep during the fireworks,” he said, “so I missed that one.”

“Mmm,” Merry said distractedly. He held on still to Pippin, but his gaze had wandered toward the line of trees in the direction Frodo had gone.

Pippin followed his eyes and then looked down at his own feet, twisting his hands together. “Merry,” he whispered heavily, and the Brandybuck’s eyes swung back toward him. “Frodo misses Bilbo very much, doesn’t he?”

“Aye, Pip,” Merry sighed heavily in return and gathered his cousin close in a hug, resting his chin for a moment atop the curly head. “That he does.”

Chapter Two: "Festive Heirs"

Merry pulled back a moment later and rested his hands on Pippin’s shoulders again, bringing their foreheads together. “And that’s why we’e got to help him, because he misses Bilbo so much, and he doesn’t have nay other real family,” he informed Pippin with certainty. “Did you know that Frodo doesn’t think he shall ever like birthday parties anymore?”

“But—“ Pippin piped up, confused as he glancd out from beneath Merry’s arms to where he could see his sister Pearl and some other tween lasses near her age involved in a dance that had them twining a ribbon about a pole.

Merry ignored him and kept talking. “Why, he’d even forgotten it would be Pearl’s birthday while we were here when he agreed to come along on this visit! And a lucky thing, too, or I would never have got him to come to this party,” Merry continued, sounding quite satisfied with himself.

“But,” Pippin’s brow furrowed again. “I thought he didn’t like birthday parties anymore. You just said!” he poined out crossly and stomped his foot.

Merry’s eyes wandered toward the trees again. “Sometimes, Pip, a hobbit is confused and just doesn’t know what’s good for him,” he said quietly, then turned back to look at his younger cousin to say, “That’s why I have to help Frodo. So I might need to spend some extra time with him on this trip, all right?”

“I can help!” Pippin’s face lit up as he responded eagerly. “I know lots of fun things to do! We can make Frodo happy and we can go bird’s nesting and skip stones and have picnics and go berrying and—“

“Pip,” Merry had said some moments before, and Pippin trailed off.

Merry sighed. “Those things all do sound very fun,” he said kindly, “and perhaps we can do some of them.” He looked toward the trees again. “But Frodo is in a rather quiet mood a lot of the time right now, I’m afraid, and it’s rather hard to get him to run about and play. I think he likes it when I just sit quiet with him and talk, or read, sometimes,” he said contemplatively, almost to himself, then looked into Pippin’s eyes to ask, “You understand now, don’t you?”

Pippin nodded, then looked at the ground as he whispered, “You have to help Frodo.”

“That’s right.” Merry laughed and reached over to the food table to snag a large handful of biscuits, plus a strawberry.

“Here.” He pressed the biscuits into Pippin’s hands, and popped the berry into his mouth. “You’ve spent enough time by the food tables, you shold get something for it,” he said, and then laguhed again and tousled Pippin’s curls as he got up to head toward the trees. “You look like a holly bush, abloom with its red berry come Yule,” he snickered as he walked away.

Pippin, his hands ful of biscuits and his mouth full of bright red strawberry, couldn’t respond as he glanced down his front at his dark green velvet breeches and the matching jacket Mama insisted he kep buttoned, as it was nae summer yet, she said. He shrugged inwardly. Whether or no Merry thought he looked like shrubbery, ‘twas no reason to waste a perfectly fine berry.

“So?” Frodo asked languidly from where he lay on his back beneath a tree, letting the cheese sauce dribble into his mouth off a delicate, crisped pastry, the dough originally coated only in sugar and rolled into the openwork shape of a rose. “Did you make him eat the sauced biscuits and the bread that fell into the berry juice, as punishment for running into you?”

“You don’t seem to be objecting to the taste,” Merry commented as he sat next to Frodo and retrieved the other plate. Both looked suspiciously picked over. He would have to make another run back to the tables soon, he could see. He looked in that direction in time to see Pippin scurrying away, toward where some of the older relatives sat.

“He knows what he did wrong,” Merry told Frodo, picking up a bit of particularly pungent cheese for which Paladin had a fondness and popping it in his mouth.

“Ah,” Frodo said, “but do you?”

Merry stared at him around a mouthful.

Frodo sighed. “I have worked it out, you know, dear Merry. You did indeed know that it would be Pearl’s birthday while we visited, and that there would be a party we would be expected to attend. And you decided that we should, and we would, even knowing how I currently feel about such parties, and without asking me.”

A silence stretched between them as Merry stared at the plate on his lap and Frodo stared in turn at his younger cousin.

“Well, Merry?” he finally prompted. “Why?”

“You need to cheer up,” Merry finally said defiantly, corssing his arms over his chest and staring back at Frodo with his chin jutting out. “I know Bilbo’s gone and that you’re sad he left and all, but you can’t stop doing everything cheerful that a proper hobbit should, just because he’s gone.”

Frodo started to speak, but Merry continued past the interruption. “I’ll be twenty this Winterfilth, a tweenager, and my Dad says he’s going to help me start learning more about taking care of things, and of hobbits. I don’t intend to have any acting so sad as you when I’m Master if I can help it, and I mean to!”

Frodo fought against amusement, despair, admiration and exasperation before he answered in a logical tone. “But, Merry, it’s still your grandfather who’s Master, and I’m not your responsibility.”

“You’ll always be as much of a Bucklander as anyone to me,” Merry said stoutly, choosing to ignore the rest of Frodo’s statement for the time being. His eyes strayed briefly to the plates of food, but he forced them back onto Frodo with resolve. “And I should like you to stop being so sad!” he added in a tone of pretween resolve.

“Oh, Merry,” Frodo sighed, lying back upon the grass and placing his arm over his eyes. “You don’t understand,” he uttered heavily.

Merry studied the grass beside his knees when he heard the next words, though, sighed under Frodo’s breath as they were, he doubtless wasn’t meant to:

“And you never will.”

He did not, however, hear the two other words that accompanied that sentiment:

“I hope.”

Chapter Three: "Bed In Summer"

Pippin paused a few feet behind the chairs set out upon the lawn of the Smials where some of the elderly relatives were dozing, or talking. Among them were both Lalia the Fat and his own grandmother.

He glanced off in the direction of the music and dancing. Still silly lasses’ dances. Nothing he wanted to do, he thought as he took a bite from one of the biscuits he held. Da was dancing with Mama, likely just to be nice to her, Pippin decided. Older hobbits did that, sometimes: they did silly things, like dance what lasses wanted, just to be nice.

Pippin’s eyes roved the party as he continued chewing on the biscuit. There – in a far notch of the field – that’s where the lads and lasses who’d been playing with the crackers had gone. It looked now that they were getting up some sort of game. That should be fun!

Pippin grinned and took a step in that directon, now bearing a slightly smaller handful of biscuits.

Then he faltered, catching sight of another hobbit grouping. Merry and Frodo were over there, off under a tree, and they looked to be talking quite seriously – when they weren’t having a tussle over their plates.

Pippin frowned and looked down at the biscuits he held, then at the backs of elderly hobbit heads.

Merry was being nice to Frodo, just like Da did for Mama, ‘cause he was an older and more responsible hobbit. ‘Twas why he couldn’t share Pippin’s room as usual on this visit, too, he’d said: he had to look out for Frodo.

Pippin licked some biscuit crumbs off his lips and shyly sought out the back of his grandmother’s head. He took a tentative step toward her.

Grandda Banks had died in the last year, so ‘twas likely she was still sad. Pippin didn’t remember much of Grandda Banks – just the terribly loud sneezes that punctuated his only very occasional visits to their farm, or his grandparents’ to the Smials. His sisters had each, in turn, gone to stay with the Bankses for a time upon occasion, but, when he asked, Pippin had always been told that he was too young yet to do the same.

“Twasn’t the true reason, probably, Pippin thought reflectively as his small feet soaked in the cool, green grass as he softly walked toward his grandmother. After all, he’d gone to Bag End, now, with just Merry and himself, hadn’t he?

He stopped behind Grandmama and took a deep breath before stepping round to the front of her chair. Nodding, Violet Banks started up again as she felt small eyes upon her. She was about to ask about his presence when Pippin abruptly thrust a biscuit toward her. A bit shyly, he asked, “’Twould you like a biscuit, Grandmama?”

Oh. Violet blinked at the film that persisted in clouding her eyes and looked closer at her unexpected benefactor. Eg’s little lad. The one she barely knew, as preoccupied with her husband’s health as she’d been, and Eg just as much worried about that of her son. Now, though, ‘twas nothing standing between them, and Violet smiled a wrinkled smile and reached out an age-spotted hand to take the biscuit.

“Yes. Thank you, lad,” she said in a creaky voice and then, having got the biscuit nearly to her lips, she patted her lap with the other hand. “Would you like to sit here with me and eat your own biscuit, Pippin?” she asked tremulously and near held her breath. Like as not, the lad would be afraid of her, shy around strangers as they were when they were young.

Pippin did hesitate slightly, but then he nodded and climbed up onto Violet’s lap. They sat quietly munching their biscuits as other hobbits’ talk droned around them and the music tinkled from the field.

‘Twas nice here, Pippin thought with a bit of surprise, and relaxed a wee bit more into his grandmother’s soft lap. Why, ‘twasn’t that hard a’tall to be nice like the grownups.

Violet felt him relax and smiled to herself. When she had finished her biscuit, and Pippin was nearly halfway through his second, his head now pillowed against her chest, she began softly humming in the back of her throat.

He blinked a couple of times, and then his eyes slipped closed as he slowed in eating his biscuit until only a small crumb was left clutched in his hand. Violet smiled and carefully extracted the remaining two biscuits he still held in his other hand, passing them out to the hobbitesses on either side of her, as she began to sing:

“In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candlelight.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.
I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet
Still going past me in the street.
And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?”

* “Bed in Summer,” by Robert Louis Stevenson, from A Child’s Garden of Verses

Chapter Four: "In the Twilight"

Twilight had deepened upon the grounds of the Smials when Pippin awakened and sat up, rubbing his eyes.

“Hmm?” Grandmama stirred slightly beneath his lap. “Child?”

“Oh!” Pippin said after he had turned round to see that her hands, as well as his, were empty of biscuits. He remembered that he had had more he had meant to share before he fell asleep, and he jutted his lower lip out determinedly as he squirmed from Violet Banks’s lap and informed her, “I shall have to get you another biscuit, Grandmama.”

“That’s nice, dearie,” Violet muttered sleepily, and riased her hand to pat his curls. It fell away empty, though, because Pippin had already scampered away out of reach. Violet returned to her half-slumbering state, nodding off along with some of the other elderly hobbits, whilst others continued to chatter, or to play at simple games held in their hands.

His sister Pervinca was now playing a game, too, along with several other young hobbits, Pippin could tell as he walked toward the food tables, still yawning occasionally or rubbing his eyes at times. He could see the bow tied atop Pervinca’s curls bobbing as she darted about in the game across the field from the dancers.

‘Twas still dancing, and still – or again, Pippin thought ruefully, as he stuffed a piece of cheese which remained upon one of the serving platters into his mouth – still that boring lasses’ stuff. He made a face that had nothing to do with the pungent cheese. He must have missed any fun dances while he was taking care of Grandmama.

He looked toward the dancers again, squinting into the twilight. Aye, Da was still being nice to Mama and dancing with her again, and now Merry and Frodo were there, too, dancing with Pippin’s cousin Morning Glory Took and his sister Pimpernel, while Pearl danced with a lad Pippin didn’t know.

Pippin looked away from the dancers and grabbed another handful of biscuits, intending to return and share with his Grandmama. As he took a step in that direction, though, he heard something coming from the side of the yard which ran along the road to Tuckborough. Pippin stopped, glanced once more at the dancers, shrugged, and then followed the noise, which came from the opposite direction.

The shadows deepened as he walked, and he did not see the soft grass change to a darker hole which usually supported a post for the line on which clothes were hung out to dry. For the party, the clothesline had been removed and a table placed over the stumps of its posts, but that table had somehow become jostled out of the way earlier in the evening.

Pippin’s foot impacted with the remaining part of the post, and he tripped, sprawling forward and rolling down the slight rise which separated the yard from the road, the biscuits – including the one he’d been munching on – falling from his hands as he tumbled.

He had begun a small squeal when first he tripped, but as he fell, Pippin had the breath knocked out of him, so that the only sound he produced when he stopped rolling to lie in the road, his head having struck a sharp rock, was a small moan. After that, he lay both quiet and still.

The only sounds upon that patch of road were the hum of insects and the footsteps, snatches of muttering, and animals’ whufflings that Pippin had heard before.

Frodo adjusted the wick upon the lamps, causing the shadows about the room to grow short and then long, distorting the corners of the room.

He yawned and turned as Merry, from across the bed, demanded, “Well?” He managed to sound as if he had his arms crossed across his chest and his foot tapping demandingly, despite the fact that he was actually in the midst of tying his nightshirt, his light-colored curls sticking oddly out from his head where he’d drawn it over them.

“Well?” Merry demanded again. “You had fun, didn’t you?”

Frodo sighed and fluffed his pillow. “I had fun, Merry,” he said to the pillow before climbing into the bed.

Merry nodded, satisfied, and began arranging what had been the contents of his pockets on top of the chest of drawers. “I knew you would,” he said with satisfaction. “Morning Glory is quite pretty, isn’t she? I shouldn’t be surprised if that’s the sort of hobbitess you’d slip a ring onto the finger of one of these days, hey?”

Merry chattered on, oblivious to Frodo suddenly sitting upright behind him and casting a nervous glance at the pocket of his trousers where they were flung across a chair.

“I mean, the Master of Bag End has to wed someone, doesn’t he?” Mery asked as he turned away from his neat piles to face Frodo with a grin.

“Frodo? What’s wrong?” His smile faded as Merry took a tentative step toward the bed.

Frodo closed his eyes and let out a heavy sigh, shaking his head at the thought of Bilbo’s legacy. “Bilbo was Master of Bag End bfore me, and he never married, Merry,” he said. He opened his eyes to fix his cousin with another of his grave looks. “Thank you for trying to help, Merry, but I do still miss him. I still think it may have been too soon for another birthday party,” he said kindly.

“I – I just wanted to help,” Merry said, wrinkling up his nose so he wouldn’t cry.

“I know, Merry,” Frodo said in the same kind tone. “And thank you. But—“ He left the sentence unfinished and shrugged, then patted the pillow next to him. “Why don’t you come to bed?” he asked.

Merry blinked fast and shook his head, reaching to draw on a dressing gown. “I have to say goodnight to Pippin first,” he said.

“Oh. All right,” Frodo said, sliding down to lie beneath the covers. “You can blow the lamp out when you come back.”

“Pippin?” Merry hissed into the door of his cousin’s room. “Are you still awake? Pippin?” He sidled through the doorway into the room, holding his hands out in front of him in case of any unexpected obstacles as he made his way to the bed.

Merry knew better than to assume no answer meant no Pippin. The lad could be playing a trick on him or, even if he were asleep and Merry left without the promised goodnight kiss, he knew he would have to ‘fess up about it to his little cousin the next day, and Pippin would be hurt.

“Pippin!” Merry hissed again, having reached the bed, where he felt about and found it empty. He reached for Pippin’s lamp and turned it up to see that the bedclothes were undisturbed.

Merry kicked one of the storage drawers that made up the base of Pippin’s bed closed and turned the lamp down again. There really was no other place for the lad to be in his own room. Aunt Eglantine and Uncle Paladin must have carried him from the party. Likely Pippin had fallen asleep.

Merry belted his dressing gown tighter and went through the door of Pippin’s room that led to the rest of the family quarters. He knocked timidly on Uncle Pad and Aunt Eg’s door when he heard soft voices behind it. The voices stopped abruptly, and Uncle Pad soon opened the door and stood looking at Merry.

“Yes. What ‘tis it?” he asked his nephew, his brow furrowing with light concern.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Uncle Pad,” Merry whispered. “It’s just that I promised, this visit, that even if I wasn’t sharing a room with Pippin that I’d be sure to tell him goodnight.”

“All right,” Paladin said, and looked at Merry quizzically, waiting for him to continue.

“So,” Merry prompted after a few moments’ silence, “may I come in to say goodnight?”

“Come in to say,” Paladin repeated, his brow furled, and then he said with sudden certainty. “Pippin isna in this room, Merry.”

“He isn’t?” Merry asked, his face furrowing in his own confusion as he began to feel the beginnings of alarm. “But he isn’t in his own room, either,” he pointed out.

“He—“ Paladin’s face became grim, and the door closed for a second before reopening as he emerged pulling on his own dressing gown.

Merry scampered to keep up at his uncle’s heels as Paladin’s tall strides crossed the quarters to place him before his daugthers’ doors.

“Pearl!” he called as he knocked upon the first one, and then pushed the door gently open.

The lass who had just turned 27 sat up in bed, rubbing at her eyes. Her curls still hung in ringlets about her face, loose ends of ribbons escaping from some of them.

“Da?” she asked, blinking her eyes against the light which came into the room through the open door.

“Pearl, is your brother staying with you tonight?” Paladin asked, gripping tightly to the side of the door.

“Nay,” Pearl yawned. “Nay unless he has snuck within. Pippin! Pippin?” she called, waving her hand half-heartedly over the bed and toward the space beneath. “Pippin? Are you in here?”

“Nay,” Paladin muttered, pulling Pearl’s door shut and going on to Pimpernel’s. She did not answer his calls from the doorway, and he pushed open his middle daughter’s door to the sound of her snores. Paladin reached behind him and pushed Merry into the room to look around. Pimpernel slept on, one foot dangling out from beneath the covers, while her hand hung off the corner of the bed diagonally opposite. Merry found no signs of Pippin.

At Pervinca’s doorway – her door stood open – Merry and Paladin both relaxed as they saw two lumps in the bed. “Go ahead, lad,” Paladin said, pushing Merry forward. “Say your goodnight.”

Merry tiptoed to the side of the bed and bent to touch the top of the lump opposite Pervinca’s face.

A funny expression came ovedr his own face, and he whipped the blankets back to reveal a large stuffed sheep, just as Pervinca sat bolt upright and shrieked.

“Pippin? Pippin? Peregrin!”

The cries echoed through the night as dozens of hobbits searched the grounds around the Great Smials, their lanterns bobbing as they bent to look into nooks and crannies among the outbuildings.

Paladin and Eglantine came at last face to face with each other before the Great Door. They stood staring a moment, each noting the other’s arms were empty, before Eg finally reached her hands out to Pad.

“There – there was nothing in the creek,” he informed her as he held her close, her curls tucked under his chin. “And nae among the cattle, or the ponies, either,” he said heavily.

Eg looked up with tears running down her face and said plaintively, “But then, where is he, Pad?”

“I dinna know,” the young hobbit’s father answered and squeezed her close as he looked at the dark horizon above his head. “But he’s got to be found.”

Frodo had heard the comment about the creek as he searched in the shadows of the steps leading to the Great Door, and he suppressed a shudder as he remembered another loss, and another twelve-year-old lad.

He moved toward his Brandybuck cousin, gently putting a hand on Merry’s shoulder to stop his pacing the same bit of ground, his lantern swinging to and fro.

“Merry,” Frodo said gently, “you have to help if you want to help look.”

“I am looking!” Merry exclaimed, spinning round to seethe at Frodo as tears fell from his eyes. “It’s got to be thorough!” he informed Frodo. “We have to look for anything that could help us find him!”

“Merry,” Frodo let his hand fall to his side and looked at the ground. “Whatever happens, it’s not your fault.”

Frodo knew he didn’t sound sincere, but he just hoped Merry could take this wise bit of advice better than he had, himself, when it came from Merry’s father in relation to Bilbo’s disappearance.

Merry glared tearfully at him again. Evidently not.

“Frodo,” Merry said tightly as he swung his lantern toward the ground again, “we none of us even missed him.”

Pippin whimpered at the swaying beneath him. ‘Twas making his head and his tummy hurt, ‘twas. He opened his eyes a slit and then closed them, for ‘twas dark either way. He whimpered again.

Blearily, Frodo rubbed a hand across his eyes as he sat upon the steps before the Great Door. His other hand was draped about Merry’s shoulders. Merry’s eyes were reddened, too, from lack of sleep and from crying, as the two stared at the party remnants upon the lawn in the new day’s morning light.

Tattered bits of ribbon lay here and there upon the grass, and the cloths hung crookedly upon the tables where they had been pushed aside in the night’s searching, smears of food remains streaked haphazardly across them.

Also found upon the ground of the Smials was the stump of the clothesline post, smeared just slightly with what, when a healer was consulted, she confirmed was blood. Nearby, a few remaining crumbs that had not been consumed by enterprising birds or squirrels marked where a circle of biscuits had once lain.

Where the rise of the lawn met the road beneath this spot, the dirt showed tracks. Tracks of wheels which had cut into it over the years, resurfacing inevitably in the same spots after each spring’s new application of gravel. A criss-cross of fresh tracks, laid in the dust the night before, of waggons which had departed from the party.

Occasionally, to the side, a lone hoof- or footprint stood out before blending back in to the melange that covered the road between the Smials and Tuckborough. Many hobbits, the night before, had passed that way.

Frodo heard a bell struck somewhere within the Smials and shifted slightly.

“It’s time to go in,” he said softly to Merry. “Are you ready?”

Merry lifted his wobbling chin to look Frodo in the eyes.

“He’s still gone, Frodo,” he said in a wavering voice, though he did not cry this time.

“Aye, Merry, I know,” Frodo sighed. His eyes tracked the flight of a bird which flew across the sky heading eastward, perhaps to travel eventually beyond the Shire.

“I know,” he sighed again, and then stood and extended a hand to help Merry up. “Come on, then. Let’s go and get some breakfast and hear what Paladin has planned.”

Slowly, taking Frodo’s hand as he stood but still sweeping his eyes back and forth across the lawn, Merry followed.