Happy Christmas! Wishing you and yours an abundance of comfort and joy in this holiday season.

Chapter 53. Comfort and Joy

 ‘You’ve found her!’ Healer Ceolwen exclaimed as the King’s long legs took the steps into the House of Healing two at a time, only to break off in confusion at recognising the Prince of the Halflings in Elessar’s arms. ‘My Lord! What’s happened?’ They had been making ready for any possibility—the little princess had wandered in a wood, and who knew what the toddler might encounter?

 ‘Athelas!’ Elessar snapped out.

  ‘At once, my Lord!’ the healer said, and rather than turning the task over to an assistant, she abandoned dignity and ran to the herb-room herself, while others scattered to fetch a basin and a kettle of steaming water or to run ahead of the King to throw open the door of a room made ready for emergencies.

Hearing the hobbit’s thin wheezing one assistant quickly heaped pillows on the bed, that the King might set the hobbit down propped-up in a sitting position. Running feet were heard in the corridor and Ceolwen skidded into the room, carrying a cloth which she presented to the King. ‘Athelas,’ she gasped.

As Elessar unfolded the top layer of the cloth, revealing two of the wondrous leaves, the basin arrived, and right behind it the hot water. Elessar took the leaves into his hands and breathed upon them. As he crumpled them, a living freshness filled the air, and all in the room found themselves breathing more deeply. Pippin’s nostrils flared as if to take in the scent, his mouth gaped, though the painful wheezing continued and his face had a bluish tinge.

The King cast the leaves into the freshly poured water and held the basin before Pippin’s face. ‘Breathe, now,’ he said. The hobbit did not appear to hear him; his eyes were half-closed and fixed in concentration as if by sheer will he continued to draw breath despite the failure of his body.

Elessar nodded to Ceolwen to take the basin. She sank down on the bed, holding the basin almost under Pippin’s nose. Elessar bared Pippin’s chest, took up a clean cloth, soaked it in the hot athelas-water, and laid it upon the straining ribs. ‘Breathe,’ he said again.

Pippin swallowed, an acknowledgement, and Elessar continued to wet cloths and lay them down until Pippin was covered from throat to diaphragm, and he renewed each cloth as it cooled, talking all the while in a soothing, encouraging voice.

 ‘The muscles are relaxing, the pain is easing, it’s growing easier to draw the air in and out...’ and so forth, as the healers and assistants watched, their own breath stilled as they silently willed the gasping breaths to continue.

At last the breaths came slower, deeper; the hobbit relaxed against the sustaining cushions. His eyelids drooped, he swallowed again, and some of the tension left the eagerly watching King. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘That’s right.’

 ‘Strider,’ came faintly, a mere breath.

 ‘Don’t try to talk. Breathe, old friend. Gather your strength,’ Elessar ordered, one hand moving to Pippin’s forehead.

Pippin’s eyes opened; he seemed to see the others in the room for the first time. ‘Go,’ he whispered. ‘Leave us.’

 ‘Go,’ the King affirmed. ‘I’ll call you at need.’

Ceolwen nodded and gestured to the others to follow her from the room.

 ‘How?’ Pippin whispered.

 ‘Did I not tell you to be still?’ the King said in exasperation.

Pippin ignored him. ‘How can you?’ he pressed. ‘You pour strength and courage into me, even as your own heart is broken, your courage gone, and dark fear overwhelms you...’

Though he did not remove his hand, Elessar turned his face away and closed his eyes as grief rose in him once more.

 ‘I saw her swept away,’ Pippin whispered, and the King took a ragged breath of his own.

 ‘But—hear me, Strider!—I saw Hilly go after her, and Bergil... Hilly’s as stubborn a Took as ever was born, and Bergil for all his height is practically a hobbit himself. They won’t let the stream have her, if I know aught about anything.’

 ‘Save your strength, Pippin,’ Elessar said, his voice low. ‘Unless you want to tell me how you got into this strait.’

Though Pippin’s face no longer had a bluish tinge, it was still as white as the pillows that supported him. Yet a strangely defiant look came upon him, and he set his lips. ‘Into this strait?’ he echoed. ‘I saw Liriel...’ he broke off, not wanting to add to his old friend’s grief, and added, ‘...and Hilly following, and I was so startled I missed my footing and fell down the bank.’

 ‘You didn’t just knock the wind out of yourself,’ the King said, his hands gently probing the battered ribcage. ‘No broken bones, at least, but your breathing...’ He listened more sharply, and moved one of the cloths to place an ear against the hobbit’s chest.

When he rose again it was with a frown and a penetrating look. ‘Why did you conceal the fact that you’re ill?’ he said.

Watchful, the hobbit replied, ‘I know that the hands of the King are healing hands, and athelas can do a great deal, but you admitted yourself that it cannot heal all ills...’

 ‘You have a cold,’ the King interrupted.

Pippin relaxed slightly. ‘Is that what it is?’ he said more lightly. ‘I thought it was only the dust we stirred up in the ruins of Old Annuminas the other day; it made me sneeze most dreadfully! I really didn’t feel all that badly this morning when we set out, and I didn’t want to disappoint anyone. They were quite looking forward to our picnic, you know!’

 ‘Quite,’ Elessar said dryly.

There was a stir in the doorway, and then Diamond was there, hurrying to Pippin’s side, seizing his hand in hers as she burst into relieved weeping. ‘O Pippin!’

 ‘Diamond, love!’ Pippin protested, though he was too weak to sit up and take her in his arms to comfort her. He had to content himself with squeezing her hand and forcing a wide grin to reassure a frightened-looking Faramir. ‘All is well, love, truly!’

 ‘All is well,’ Diamond echoed in a gasp, and laid her head upon his breast. ‘O my love, I thought...’

 ‘I know what you thought,’ Pippin said hastily, before she could express the thought. He did not want the healers here poking and prodding him, plaguing him half to death before deciding there was nothing to be done. He’d already been through such, more times than he cared to think after the Old Gaffer’s Friend had nearly carried him off, and frankly, life was too short as it was, to be bothered by more of the same. ‘But the truth of the matter is, I have a cold.’

 ‘A cold!’ Diamond said, sitting up, her eyes wide with alarm.

 ‘That’s all it is,’ Pippin said, patting her hand and putting on a bright expression. ‘Don’t look at me like that; it’s merely a cold and that’s all! O I admit I foolishly missed my footing at the top of the bank and tumbled over, but there’s not much wrong with me that a few days’ rest won’t put right.’

 ‘At least you didn’t break a leg as Mayor Sam did,’ Diamond murmured.

Pippin sat up, or tried to, anyhow, before his weakness forced him to sink back against the pillows. ‘Sam? Broke a leg?’

 ‘He did,’ Diamond affirmed. ‘They’ll be carrying him here, next thing.’

It was not quite the next thing. First there was a babble of voices in the corridor, rapidly approaching, and Arwen burst through the door, little Liriel in her arms. ‘Found!’ she cried. ‘Saved! Plucked from the waters!’

Elessar rose from the bed with a glad cry and enveloped wife and child in a fervent embrace. ‘How?’ he breathed, but took no more time for wondering as he buried his face in his daughter’s damp locks and breathed deeply of her living scent.

 ‘Hilly!’ Diamond whispered, seeing the tall guardsman following the Queen, bearing a blanket-wrapped hobbit in his arms.

 ‘Mistress,’ Hilly said. ‘I trust all is well with you. If you won’t be needing me, I believe I’ll take myself off for a rest.’

 ‘He’s been battered black-and-blue and half-drowned,’ Denethor said soberly, ‘and I don’t think he could stand up if he tried... but the princess wouldn’t be here, if not for him.’

 ‘Go on with ye,’ Hilly said in irritation, pushing at the guardsman though it made him wince to put his muscles to such effort. ‘It wasn’t all that much. The river did most of the work, and I just let it carry me along. And it was Bergil who...’

 ‘Hilly,’ Pippin intoned seriously, his voice grown somewhat stronger as his breathing steadied, ‘you have got to learn to give credit where it’s due.’

 ‘Credit?’ Hilly said in outrage. ‘Credit, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time?’

 ‘You saved Farry,’ Diamond protested, ‘and now you’ve saved little Liriel!’

 ‘I had the bad luck to fall in a bog,’ Hilly retorted, ‘and...’

 ‘And the good luck to fall in a river,’ Pippin said, adding in the manner of one who has argued long and hard and up until the present time unsuccessfully, ‘and perhaps at last you’ll admit that a hobbit learning to swim is not such a bad idea after all.’

 ‘Totally unnatural,’ Hilly said stoutly. ‘Unless that hobbit is a Brandybuck. And you know what they say about Brandybucks!’

 ‘But not in polite company,’ Pippin said hastily.

 ‘What do they say about Brandybucks?’ the King asked, diverted from examining every inch of his daughter to make sure no lasting harm had been done.

 ‘Tell you later,’ Pippin said behind his hand. Of a wonder, Diamond laughed.