Challenge #36

A third anniversary
Merry meeting Culassisul. A tent. Wild strawberries.

* indicates a quote from ROTK

This story refers to something that happened in my story “While We Dwelt in Fear”
Beta by Marigold and Llinos

S.R. 1422

A Different Anniversary

Merry sat there in the tent, staring at the canvas walls, thinking. Night had barely fallen when Pippin claimed to be exhausted and went off to bed. Merry had waited only a brief time before heading into the tent. Although he felt incredibly sleepy, he had no intention of going to sleep. Pippin would not be spending this night alone in his own room as he would have had they stayed home at Crickhollow.

“It’s been about six months since Frodo left,” Merry sighed as he thought. “He got ill with every anniversary of his wounding at Weathertop and by Shelob. Sam’s been happily married now coming on two years. One would think that might help, but I know he has had a bad turn each year when Frodo would have his from the spider’s bite, Sam’s being from wearing the Ring. Poor old lad, it must have been horrible thinking Frodo was dead and there he was left all alone with the Ring.” Merry sighed again. “Then there is my own turn for the worse.”

At first, they had all been too relieved that the War was over. There had been the occasional rough night, as well as times when their various aches and pains arose to remind them of what they had each experienced. But, they hadn’t thought much about what might happen when certain dates, certain anniversaries, rolled around. Then Frodo was so silent when they came to the Ford or Bruinen on the sixth of Winterfilth on their way home from Rivendell. His shoulder pained him, and darkness filled his eyes. Yet, the spell had been short lived, by the next evening Frodo was fine with no lingering gloom or pains.

Merry and Pippin hadn’t thought to suspect there might be dark reminders of their own encounters with the evil of the Dark Lord, Merry recalled grimly. They had not been dreading the arrival of those dates. It was only in looking back that he had become aware that Pippin’s first anniversary had passed uneventfully. The realization that there would be rough times for either of them had come with Merry’s own plunge into darkness on the fifteenth of Rethe. Later they learned Farmer Cotton had found Frodo in a fit of darkness and despair on Rethe the thirteenth, one year after his being stung by Shelob. While Sam hesitantly admitted he had not been well himself that day and the next while in Needlehole on his forestry work.

Merry shivered and his thoughts went off in a painful direction for a few moments before for he brought them back under control.

“I have all that to look foreword to in about a fortnight’s time,” he sighed heavily. “Then, then there is Pippin.”

Merry glanced over at his cousin. Pippin lay facing him, sound asleep in his bedroll. The light from the lantern showed a trace of creases between Pippin’s eyebrows while the occasional soft moan escaped his lips.

“Why don’t you go through what we’ve gone through, you little miscreant?” Merry whispered at his sleeping cousin. “I’ve shared a home with you for nearly three years now, two of which you should have had the screaming terrors this night, but no, not you. No, you have nightmares as bad as mine at other times, but never this night when by all rights you ought to be miserable. I didn’t think about it the first year as we weren’t expecting any such troubles. Last year . . .” Merry paused.

Last year had been most curious. He seemed to barely remember it. He knew they had been expecting Pip to have a horrible night on the fifth of Rethe. He remembered Pippin had decided to stay up all night to see if that would make a difference. Yet, as night fell, Pippin said he was exhausted, just as he had this evening, and gone off to his room. Merry had meant to follow him, then he had intended to check on the lad in a while, lastly, he reckoned he’d hear Pippin if he had any nightmares. Come the morning, Merry had awakened in the chair in the parlor where he had been sitting when Pippin had gone off to his room. Pippin came out of his room a few moments later, bright, cheerful and looking extremely well rested. Neither of them said a word about anniversaries or nightmares.

“This is the third year since you looked into that stone, and yet the anniversary has gone by, as near as I can tell, uncelebrated by the terrors that have visited the rest of us upon our various anniversaries.” Merry leaned forward to better address his sleeping cousin. “I intend to find out why.”

In the lantern light, he could see a faint sheen of sweat upon the lad’s brow.

“Ah ha! So it isn’t all sweet dreams and peaceful slumber for you after all. I should hope not,” he said heatedly, then instantly felt bad. He really oughtn’t be wishing for Pip to go through what he and the others did each year. “And yet, why don’t you? With what happened to you, Pippin, you . . . He . . .”

Merry’s thoughts raced through his head. He had been so shocked. He had been so hurt. He had been so . . . disappointed. He had turned away.

He had thought the lad carried enough brains in his head to understand that there must be a reason Gandalf had been so swift and sharp with him. He had fallen asleep thinking the young fool would have enough sense to wait until morning.

Then Pip had cried out in the darkness. Merry had run with the others, trembling from head to toe. And Pippin had looked dead, pale and stiff with glassy eyes that looked at nothing. Relief flooded through him when Gandalf called the lad back, but it was short lived when all Pippin did was spout a stream of words in an odd sounding voice.

It was making him ill.

He had feared he would be sick all over himself. He had turned away.

He felt sick, and frightened, and sick, and worried, and sick, and . . .

angry.

Then Merry heard Pippin’s words to Gandalf and an icy chill flooded into him. *”Then he came,”* Pippin said, terror raising the pitch of his voice. *“He did not speak so that I could hear words. He just looked, and I understood.”*

The Dark Lord, the being they all feared above all others, had been in his young cousin’s mind. He had been inside Pippin. He had mocked and hurt his cousin, cutting and pulling his very being to pieces.

“And I wasn’t there for you, Pip,” Merry sighed. “I was angry with you for being such a fool, later I was even angrier at myself for not staying awake with you. I wasn’t there for you Pippin.” Merry closed his eyes and hung his head.

For a moment, the reason he had suggested they go camping was forgotten. It had not been to search the warmer spots of the forest’s edge for the first of the wild strawberries as he had claimed. Forgotten was the curiosity over Pippin’s lack of debilitating spells when this night came each year. All Merry was left with was his own pain and regrets.

A slight breeze touched Merry’s cheeks. It tugged lightly at the ends of his hair. The scent of autumn leaves drifted around him, catching his mind.

It was Rethe, not Winterfilth nor Blotmath.

His eyes opened as he raised his head.

She sat upon the blanket Pippin had spread beneath his bedroll. He was on his back and she held his head in her lap. Gently she caressed Pippin’s face and hair with long slender fingers. She was singing over him in words Merry did not understand, nor really even hear. He felt them swirling about him like the leaves that drop from the trees in the autumn of the year. They were light and warm and free.

Merry had never seen her before yet it didn’t seem at all strange to him that she was there. He stared at her.

“Who are you?”

She paused in her singing, turning her sharp featured face to him. Green eyes danced with warm green lights.

“One who loves him, The Falcon who is a child of my child.” The warmth of the lights in her eyes flooded into Merry. “One who loves you as well, for you are the child of my Emerald Bright.”

Merry said nothing. The small being gently yet firmly held his mind.

Pippin stirred uneasily, and for a while, her attention was on him. She again sang her song. Again, peace flowed around the two hobbits, dancing on the melody. She sang until Pippin was lying quietly once more.

“I was not there,” she said softly, more to herself than to the hobbit who also loved her Falcon. “I tried but I could not be. I was hindered, thrown aside like a discarded puppet. And I wept.”

A chill crept into Merry’s heart. He knew exactly what the lady was speaking about.

“I wasn’t there either. I mean, I was there in the dell where we were resting, but I had gone to sleep. I wasn’t with him. He was alone.”

“A burden we share, child of my Emerald Bright.” She placed her right hand over Pippin’s heart; her left she rested upon his forehead. Again she sang.

Merry’s eyes began to droop, his head kept tipping forward. He felt comforted and safe.

“You now have your answer; you whom my Falcon loves as a brother. You were seeking it so desperately that I decided to grant you the knowledge. It is my debt to him upon which I make payment each year on this night. He will not face this night alone until he has gone to where such memories trouble the heart and mind no longer.”

Merry looked deeply into her eyes. Nothing existed in the world but the green depths and dancing lights of her eyes.

“Henceforth this night shall pass for you in deep slumber as it has before. Be comforted in your heart.” She reached out and tenderly touched Merry’s forehead. He felt himself falling as softly as down to land on his blankets and pillow. His eyes closed, and he knew no more.

He was never sure that it hadn’t all been a dream and never spoke of it to his dear cousin. Whatever it was, whoever she was, Merry never again wondered about nor begrudged Pippin his peaceful anniversary night.