“The Burned Hand . . .”

It was a weary sort of day. A dreary sort of day. And it was raining as well.

“Weary, dreary, and my eyes are bleary from the rain in them,” Sir Peregrin Took mumbled aloud to himself as he sent droplets flying with a shake of his head. “Sound’s a good chorus for a song,” he chuckled, though the chuckle was no more lively than the day, and it finished with a sigh.

He had just come off duty. Having walked to the Citadel in the rain that morning then listening to it falling all through the day, he now was out in its light but steady fall once more. Pippin scuffed along the street, eyes downcast, watching his feet swishing, not splashing, through puddles and rivulets in his path on the white stone pavement.

He stopped. Stared. Backed up a step.

The rivulet before him, somewhat wider than most, was grey. It was nearly black at times as Pippin stood watching its waters flow by. Grey. Dark grey. Light grey. Black. Never clear. He slowly turned and began to walk along it, against its flow. He would see why this water looked so dark.

Pippin kept his head down; the dark water flowing past him on its way through the City stayed to his left. No need to look up to see where he was going. Just follow the water. He didn’t see, until he arrived at the guarded portal; the rivulet ran beneath Fen Hollen, it flowed from Rath Dinen. Pippin looked at the door ward, who looked solemnly back at him. They did not speak, yet the man turned and opened the door for the Ernil i Pheriannath to pass through.

Once again, Peregrin Took did not look up. He followed the small stream of ash-filled water.

For he knew now ‘twas ash that blackened the rivulet.

The young Knight of Gondor stopped when he saw the water flowing down a few deep but shallow steps.

He knew these steps.

Pippin finally looked up. Looked at the ruined, blackened, burned remains of the House of Stewards.

He stood and stared at the desecrated tomb as an eerie crawling feeling made its way from the soles of his feet up his legs and spine, eventually closing his eyes while sending a shiver throughout his body.

Ashes in the water. Ashes.

He was so glad he had not stepped into that water.

His eyes slowly opened, pulled not toward the source of the stream but to something off to one side. A man on a horse. At first, fleetingly, he thought they had moved but now saw it was a statue of some long forgotten king of Gondor. A white figure upon a white horse made of the white stone that made the White City that was set into the eastern most end of the White Mountains.

A white figure on a white horse. Pippin closed his eyes once more.

He was wrapped well against the wind, the wind stirred by the running of the great white horse, held firmly yet gently by the arms of the White Wizard.

*Tall ships and tall kings
Three times three,
What brought they from the foundered land
Over the flowing sea?
Seven stars and seven stones
And one white tree.*

Seven Stones. Seven Palantiri. Seven Seeing Stones of the Kings of old.

*“I wish I had known all this before,” he heard his small voice saying against the rush of the wind as Shadowfax ran. “I had no notion of what I was doing.”*

*“Oh yes you had,” the voice of the White Wizard chided. “You knew you were behaving wrongly and foolishly; and you told yourself so, though you did not listen.”*

He had. Pippin had said that to himself while standing over the Wizard with his prize in his hands. And Gandalf had heard, though he had seemed asleep. Was asleep. Like the game Pippin and his sisters had played as children with their father. They would say something strange over Paladin as he lay napping. Then sometimes, later in the day, he would get an odd look on his face and ask about what they had said, unsure of when he had heard it. For Pippin knew that if the old wizard had truly been awake, Gandalf would have sat up, grabbed the wrapped stone away and most likely shaken him till his teeth rattled loose in his head while again reminding him that he is a fool of a Took.

But the wizard had not.

And Pippin had stolen away by himself. And he had removed the cloth from around it. And he had looked into . . .

. . . fire.

Pippin’s eyes flew open, his mind flying away from the memory of the vision at the heart of the Stone. A voice filled his ears. Not His voice. A caring voice.

*“No, the burned hand teaches best.”* Pippin heard Gandalf say in his memory. Unlike Paladin, in Pippin’s childhood, Gandalf had had no trouble placing in his mind when he had heard Pippin scolding himself. Pippin had understood the wizard’s meaning then and it still rang true in his heart, an old adage of the Shire from the lips of one well acquainted with hobbits and their ways.

His eyes were drawn to the ruined tomb before him.

Burned hands.

Had Denethor not known? Had the Dark Lord not hurt the Steward as He had hurt the small hobbit at whom He had laughed? Denethor had used the Stone, used it many times, used it until it used him. Until it used him up and sent him to the flames.

Burned hands clasping the Stone. Ashes in the rivulet of rainwater.

The people of Minas Tirith would soon clear away the rubble of Denethor’s pyre. Another house for the dead would be built, for there was still a line of Stewards. Rain would eventually wash the ashes away or they would become part of the earth surrounding the tomb. The Rath Dinen would no longer be scarred; the horror that had once marred its peace would someday be forgotten.

Sir Peregrin Took turned away from the charred tomb, suddenly grateful for the pain he had endured. Pippin stood straight. He no longer scuffed his feet as he left the Rath Dinen to join the Fellowship in their house in the King’s City. He had learned the lesson taught by his burned hand.

*quotes and bits of quotes from “The Two Towers”, the chapter “The Palantir”