Chapter 9

“Ouch.” Pippin limped over to the campfire, supported by Merry and Frodo. Merry helped him sit down as Frodo put the now-filled water skins in the tent.

Once Pippin was settled, Merry sat down next to him and reached over to put the remaining logs on the fire. “Ow,” he hissed. He examined his arms and found three angry red mounds, two on his right forearm and one near his left elbow that stretched the skin achingly when he moved his arms. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to roll up his sleeves after all. He checked his neck and legs and found another bite near his right ankle.

Sam came back then, arms loaded with fresh firewood and kindling. He took over the job of building the fire from Merry and banked up the fire to a roar before joining his master in the tent. He closed the tent flap behind him and knelt next to Frodo. “Well?” he asked.

“We should have enough food to get us home,” Frodo stated. “But I don’t know if we should rest here or move on. It’s a long hike back home from here, but I don’t imagine they want to do any more walking tonight. Yet if we stay here, we’ll just have that much more we’ll have to walk tomorrow. At least neither of them are allergic. Still, I want to get them checked by a healer as soon as possible. We need to keep an eye on them, Merry especially. He was stung the most; he might get ill yet.”

“How long would it take to get back?” Sam asked.

Frodo shrugged and dug through the packs for food. “A whole day of steady walking. We’re nearly at the topmost part of the woods and there are no short cuts from here.”

Sam pondered all this as he took the items his master handed him, piling them up on the floor between them. “May’s nearby,” he offered. “Needlehole’s close to here, closer’n Hobbiton at any rate.”

“That’s kind Sam, but I don’t wish to impose on your sister.” He smirked and gave Sam a mischievous wink. “I don’t want it getting back to your Gaffer that I got you chased by a swarm of wasps. He’ll never let me take you anywhere again.”

Sam laughed then, something he had been struggling not to do since they emerged from the creek and Merry and Pippin had stood there looking so comically miserable. “I’ll be certain not to mention it to him then. I doubt May’d be there anyhow, now I think of it. She was going to visit with Hamson after the Free Fair and she’d not be back yet. Maybe I should of gone with her when she asked,” he mused.

Now it was Frodo’s turn to laugh. “If you only knew then what you know now.”

Sam chuckled, then looked at his master critically. “Are you certain you weren’t stung, sir?”

“I’ve checked myself over. I’m fine,” Frodo assured. “And you?”

“Not even a scratch,” Sam said and fell silent in thought. He was trying to remember all the plants they had passed by today and where they were. Though he had no mind for maps, Sam could usually memorize the lay of the land after one casual pass through, especially when it came to plants – exempting thistle mazes of course. “Mr. Merry said he found some aloe at our last camp. Could be there’s some more hereabouts, but I don’t remember seeing any. Did you catch a glimpse of any, Mr. Frodo?”

“No, and it’s too late to go looking for any now,” Frodo said, thinking hard. He had been nearly thirteen when he and some of the other lads from the Hall had inadvertently walked into a beehive. What had the healer used? “Did you see any goldenseal, slippery elm or juniper berries?”

“I saw some berries. There’s some bushes nearby, just a small click into the woods,” Sam said. “I can go fetch some.”

Frodo nodded. “We can make a tea with them to help wash out the poison, and crushing some more for a poultice should help relieve the pain of the sting.” With that plan decided, Frodo quickly made up his mind about what to do next. “We’ll rest here tonight and leave early in the morning. We should be able to reach Bag End by nightfall if we don’t get waylaid again.”

“Yes sir.”

They were silent for a moment, both of them exhausted and worn, and still a bit on the damp side. The heat was slowly drying them off though, even in the darkness of night. Frodo combed his fingers through his drying curls, looked about the tent and down at his clothes, then dissolved into giggles.

“Sir?”

“I’m sorry, Sam,” Frodo said between his laughter, “but the looks on their faces as they were running up to us…” he trailed off into another laughing fit.

Sam laughed again, more freely this time. “And the look on your face, Mr. Frodo, when you realized what it was as they were running from. However did they manage to make that happen I wonder?”

“I don’t want to know,” Frodo managed to get out and they both doubled over until they were clutching their sides for air, tears in their eyes.  

Near the fire, Merry and Pippin sat miserably. Merry managed to keep from scratching at the itching, throbbing, burning stings but the pain was nearly unbearable. Pippin wasn’t even trying. He was holding tight to his calf, pressing against his solitary bite, glaring at Merry. The laughter from the tent did not improve his foul mood.

“Are they laughing at us?” Merry said and finally noticed Pippin’s hostile regard. “What?” he asked.

“What? What?!” Pippin cried resentfully. “What do you think? You just couldn’t leave it alone, could you? You just had to dig up that blasted onion, didn’t you? ‘I’m not competitive.’ Please Merry, you couldn’t even lose to a vegetable!”

“Oh like you would have done any different!” Merry shot back, his temper flaring in an instant. “You’re worse than I am and don’t deny it.”

“No, you’re worse. When I’m curious about something, I ask questions. When you’re curious about something, you fiddle around with it until you send a hornet’s nest after us!”

“Is that so? You’re conveniently forgetting about the time you wanted to know what a cat would look like with no fur,” Merry countered. “And the time you glued Granddad’s desk clock to the ceiling because you wanted to know how strong the glue was. And the time – ”

“That’s enough, Merry,” Pippin interrupted, his voice strained with barely controlled anger. “I never got you stung or bitten by anything, much less giant monstrous wasps ready to bite our heads off.”

“They weren’t that big, and besides I was stung much more than you were.”

“Good! You should have been!”

“Maybe if you had been running faster, you wouldn’t have been stung at all.”

Pippin narrowed his eyes dangerously, making the sharp angles of his face take on an ominous appearance. “So it’s my fault I was stung?”

“Well at least you can admit it.”

Before Merry could blink, Pippin was on top of him, hitting him with frustrated fists. Merry fell backward and rolled them over, delivering a few punches of his own, and was rewarded with scratches and pulled hair. He yelped in surprise and pushed himself off his cousin, only to reach down and pull Pippin to his feet so they could fight fair.

By the time Frodo and Sam emerged from the tent, Merry and Pippin had each other trapped in head locks, both of them fighting for balance while simultaneously trying to trip each other over. Sam just shook his head at the sight. He was used to such things, having two older brothers and having spent so much time with the Cotton lads. He shrugged sympathetically at Frodo and went in search of the berries.

Frodo watched Sam disappear into the night and sighed deeply. He then cleared his throat – loudly. “Boys,” he said.

They stopped struggling instantly and looked up.

“What are you doing?” Frodo asked sternly.

Quick as lightning, the cousins released each other. “Nothing,” they said sheepishly and sat down at opposite sides of the fire pit, their arms crossed over their chests while they stubbornly refused to look at each other. Glad that at least the fighting was over, Frodo motioned his friends to sit closer together. He wasn’t going to go back and forth between them. They grudgingly complied, but continued to face away from each other and Pippin went back to clutching his leg.

Frodo knelt to examine their bites and instantly removed the youngster’s hand. “Don’t do that, Pippin. You’ll only spread the poison,” he warned.

Merry hummed satisfactorily and Pippin began fidgeting with the desire to attack Merry again. Frodo noticed this but knew the best thing to do was ignore it. If he said anything, then he’d have to listen to Merry and Pippin competing over each other as they tried to tell Frodo their sides of the story, and Frodo didn’t particularly care to hear either of them.

“We need to make sure the stingers from the wasps didn’t break off under your skin,” Frodo explained matter-of-factly. “I’ll have to get them out if they did and that could hurt, so sit still.”

Merry and Pippin submitted to their examinations. Pippin’s bite was clean, but the one near Merry’s elbow was not. Frodo heated his knife over the fire to sterilize it, let the blade cool, then slowly and carefully scraped the stinger loose. Merry bit his lips against the pain, and while he cringed he caught a satisfied smirk on Pippin’s face. Only Frodo’s presence between them kept Merry from reaching over and smacking that smirk off Pippin’s face. As if reading Merry’s mind, Pippin stuck his tongue out and grinned devilishly. Merry clenched his fists tight and pointedly looked away again. When Frodo was done, he ordered Pippin back to the opposite side of the fire before starting dinner and boiling water for the tea.

Sam came back then, his shirttails serving as a pouch to hold the dark purplish berries. He deposited the berries on a plate and prepared the tea and poultice as best he could. For the poultice, he added a handful of dirt to the berries, knowing the dirt would help even if the berries were not the right degree of ripeness. When both were finished, he spooned out two cups of tea and handed them to Merry and Pippin. He noticed Pippin’s hand then, the cut a slightly swollen red line. He frowned at this and retrieved the honey also when he went into the tent to look for the small coil of rope he had brought and the last of the clean handkerchiefs. He returned to the cousins shortly and put all this on the ground between them.

“You brought rope too?” Merry said before he could think.

“Aye, sir,” Sam answered. “You always need rope.” He cut the rope into six small chords and sat in front of Pippin. “I’m sorry, Master Pippin, but I’m no healer and I don’t know if I made this right. I suppose it’s better’n naught though.” He gently smeared the crushed berries onto Pippin’s sting and tied a handkerchief over the bite. Then he held up Pippin’s hand and examined it closer. “You’ve been scratching at this.”

“It was itchy,” Pippin said.

“I reckon it was, but I wouldn’t scratch it any more if I were you. You’ll get it infected next,” Sam warned kindly. He spread some more of the honey on the cut and tied another handkerchief around Pippin’s hand. He then moved on to Merry, repeating the poultice treatment four more times.

“You know what also works for stings? Baking soda,” Merry said knowledgably as Sam worked on his forearm. “You mix a bit with cold water to make a paste. Uncle Mac showed me once.”

“We’ll do that when we get home then,” Sam said.

“What? You mean you don’t have any baking soda?” Merry said lightly. “I thought you had managed to bring the entire pantry with you, Sam.”

Sam shrugged and moved over to Merry’s elbow. “I wasn’t planning on doing any baking, Mr. Merry,” he said, then grinned. “I wasn’t planning on wasp stings either, but I’ll be sure to add baking soda to the checklist for next time.”

“Along with the taters and mushrooms,” Merry added.

“Aye, sir, along with those.”

Sam moved onto Merry’s ankle then, working gently but surely all the while. Merry hardly noticed the gardener’s touch, but the relief from the poultice was nearly instantaneous.

“Maybe we could get Aunt Tina to make another one of those weskits for Pippin to keep him out of trouble,” Merry supplied next and was rewarded with a glowering glare from Pippin.

“Then she’d have to make one for you too, Mr. Merry, meaning no disrespect,” Sam replied, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth as he tied the last handkerchief into place.

Frodo and Pippin laughed at this and Merry regarded the gardener with mild surprise. Was Sam quipping with him? He smiled despite his pain and misery. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “But I had found some onions and I know you said you wanted some.” He fished the onion out of his pocket, where he had quickly stored it for safe keeping before running for his life. He held it out. “I thought I’d bring you some, but this was all I could manage.”

Sam took the vegetable, a look of wonder and amusement on his face. “That’s right kind of, Mr. Merry, but you needn’t have bothered.”

“It wasn’t any bother,” Merry said before he could think and was rewarded by three sets of skeptical eyes. “Well, maybe it was a little.”

“Aye sir, just a tad,” Sam agreed. “Thank you, Mr. Merry.” He pocketed the vegetable and went to help his master cook.

Merry wondered what, if anything, this could mean. He knew better than to get his hopes up, and he knew only too well that he would probably wake up in the morning to find Sam once again properly distanced from him. He bit back the bitterness and frustration as best he could and came to a decision. Before he left for home, he would get Sam alone and speak plainly with him, no matter what might come of it in the end. Sam deserved no less and it was far overdue. Only, he still didn’t know what to say or where to begin. He sighed and fell into silent contemplation.

Dinner passed quietly, and Merry and Pippin turned in soon after. They had just finished a long and eventful day, and Frodo couldn’t blame them for being tired. Of course, they were also just trying to avoid each other, but Frodo wasn’t too concerned about their fight. Come morning, they would be back to their regular bantering as if nothing had happened. A half hour later, Merry and Pippin were breathing deeply, and Frodo and Sam were finishing the pipes they had been enjoying on the rock before they were so abruptly interrupted.

“What shall we do with the rest of our night, Sam?” Frodo asked at length. He was tired himself and rest was inviting, but he was not quite ready to turn in yet.

Sam considered the question, then picked up a twig. He drew in the dirt two sets of four lines crossing each other to form a grid. “We can play biscuits-and-scones. I’ll be the biscuit and you be the scone?”

Frodo fished a small twig from the unused tinder and selected his square.  

Pippin woke to pitch dark night all around. At first, the only sounds he heard were the deep, even breathing of his slumbering companions. Then he heard high above the whispering of the wind through the treetops and far off in the distance the soft singing of crickets. Nearby was the scuttling of animals through the underbrush, most likely rabbits, squirrels, lizards and other such small and harmless creatures.

He yawned and rolled over to his side and closed his eyes. He was drifting off to sleep, grateful for the lack of the sound that had woken him on the last two nights. It had sent shivers up his spine and set his heart to hammering both nights.

He was on the edge of sleep, sinking back into a pleasant dream of chocolate-covered strawberries and caramel apples when he heard it. Same as the previous two nights, it was just faint enough to make him doubt it was really there. In fact, the first night, he had thought he was imagining it because of Sam’s story, but the noise had continued for far too long and in a pattern completely unfamiliar to him. And now it was back, still as always on the edge of hearing, constant and melodious. Someone was whistling.

Pippin clamped his eyes shut and forced himself to be completely still, hoping the sound would go away. It did not. The whistling continued, the same ageless tune, moving casually back and forth on the dark and hidden horizon. Then the rustling of the animals in the underbrush started to sound like footsteps, and the gusts of the wind through the treetops became the sound of someone pushing their way through the bushes, and the chirping of the crickets stilled as they did when someone comes near.

‘You’re letting your imagination get the better of you, Peregrin Took,’ he silently berated himself for all the good it did him.

His heart was hammering out of control now, his breath was short and he had to force the air to enter his lungs. A hot prickly tingling like many needles started at the base of his neck, and the heat slowly spread over his head, pulling the skin tight, and down his back to his arms and legs, the needle pricks following to drain the blood from his limbs and leave him cold and trembling.

‘Stop this!’ he told himself. ‘There’s nothing there and you know it.’

Then all went silent and for one long unbearable moment, the world was bereft of sound. And then…

My sweet bonny lass,
Forever lovely…

That did it. Without even a thought in his head of anything other than the desire to hide and be protected, Pippin shot out of his sleeping roll and into Merry’s. He squirreled down into the sheltering blanket, and in his sleep, Merry’s arms automatically encircled him and drew him close.

The world of noise returned to normal, and even if the whistling did not stop, Pippin was no longer afraid, safe as he was in his friend’s embrace.
 
 
 

To be continued…