Chapter 18. Nightmare

Farry sat, numb, not noticing the passage of time, the increasing chill in the air, the shadows creeping upward from the ground as the last of the Sun’s light played upon the treetops.

But the voice speaking in the back of his mind was growing increasingly insistent. Farry! Pay attention, lad. What would you do first?

He thought it was Haldegrim’s voice. Take deep breaths to calm yourself, lad. And he heard himself answering, as if in a dream.

‘But you sent them away!’

‘That I did, laddie-mine,’ Haldi answered calmly. ‘That I did.’

‘But... we’re in the middle of nowhere, afoot and alone... I thought you were escorting me to Whittacres, to visit Aunt Pearl and her family! Not...!’

‘Not alone and afoot in trackless territory, aye lad?’ The escort bent to see eye to eye with the young hobbit. ‘Actually, ‘tis “a little commission for the Thain”, it is.’ He eyed Farry sternly. ‘Your tutor reported that you’ve been daydreaming in your lessons, lad, and so your da thought you might be wanting something more interesting, that you could sink your teeth into.’

‘I – I don’t follow,’ Farry said. What did dismounting, helping Faramir down from his pony, and then shouting and sharply slapping the rumps of both ponies to send them galloping away have to do with making lessons more interesting?

‘So, lad,’ the escort said. ‘You now, at this moment, find yourself lost and alone, no one to help you.’

‘You’re here,’ Farry said with a question in his voice.

‘Ah, but no, I’m actually not here, for all practical purposes,’ the escort answered. He caught Farry’s eye, his own gaze demanding. ‘What if you’d been able to escape those murdering ruffians, nearly four years ago, before the Muster was able to track them and rescue you? In the middle of the high Green Hills, as you were? What would you have done then?’

‘I –‘ Farry answered, but he came up short.

The escort nodded and straightened. ‘So we’re to have a little lesson here, today,’ he said. He suddenly grinned the reckless grin that Farry had often seen, waiting with the rest of the young Tooks for an archery lesson, for the headmaster invariably insisted that his young charges should be on the spot, ready to learn, well before each lesson’s beginning time. 

Thus, Farry and the other teens had the opportunity to watch the hobbits of the Thain’s escort at their own practice until their reserved practice time was over – perhaps by the headmaster’s design, Farry had thought to himself more than once. Haldi sometimes wagered with Hilly at the practice butts, goading the younger escort into paying more attention to his aim, or so Farry had observed whilst the other teens stood clumped in small groups or sat in the grass and gossiped, occasionally cheering a well-placed shot or hissing or whistling derisively when an escort missed the central circle of a target. 

Yes, Haldi now had that same look on his face, as if he was daring Farry to exceed his expectations, and he abandoned his careful, formal manner of speaking that the hobbits of the escort assumed amongst the Smials Tooks and around visiting gentry, his Tookish lilt thickening as he said, ‘Sure and certain, our ponies will come galloping into the courtyard at the Smials at some time or other, most likely a little later today, and there’ll soon after that be a Muster called at the Smials – and p’rhaps all of Tuckborough, I’ve no doubt – and hobbits will be preparing to search in all directions.’ 

He smiled faintly and scratched his chin between his gloved thumb and forefinger. ‘I imagine, even, the Thain will call on your Uncle Ferdi and Renilard to try and backtrack the ponies to narrow the search in one direction, all the quicker to find us – to find you.’ He chuckled and shrugged, then pulled his cloak a bit more snugly around his neck. ‘Sorry, lad, I almost forgot that I’m not here.’

‘It’s a game,’ Farry said slowly.

‘You might call it that. But a deadly serious one,’ Haldi said. ‘So, laddie-mine, what is it you need to think on? What do you need, to live, that is? At least, long enough for the Muster to find you?’

‘I suppose, if I were bleeding, it would be important to stop that,’ Farry said. That was one of the first lessons taught in the archery instruction for young Tooks, emergency measures for someone who was injured.

‘O aye,’ Haldi said seriously. ‘There is that. And what next, I ask? What’s the quickest thing that could kill you?’

‘Having air to breathe?’ Farry guessed. ‘I mean, not having air? Like the old saying, While there’s breath, there’s life.’

‘That would be true,’ Haldi said. He made a show of looking around. ‘But I don’t think you’re in danger of drowning hereabouts. No bogs or streams nearby.’

At the mention of streams, Farry suddenly realised he was thirsty. ‘But our flasks are tied to our saddle pads!’ he said in dismay. ‘We need to find a source of water!’

Haldi shook his head and sat himself down on a nearby log, for they’d stopped upon reaching the edge of a copse that boasted, as Farry had absently noticed before he dismounted, at least one “good climbable tree” or two. The escort began settling his cloak as if he anticipated a long wait. ‘Sorry, lad, but there’s something else to consider first.’

‘But I’m thirsty!’ Farry said.

The escort smiled faintly. ‘As am I. But I happen to know that a hobbit can go a good three days without water before he’s at risk of dying. And our Mayor Sam and his Master Frodo went very far on very little water, in a land much harsher than this one, indeed, or so the Thain has told us.’

‘Food,’ Farry said, then shook his own head. ‘No, for it seems to me that a hobbit can go even longer without food than without water.’ He grimaced. ‘Though it sounds a great deal unpleasant to me!’

‘All right, then,’ Haldi said, his soft Tookish lilt growing stronger as a fey light came into his eye. He tilted his head. Are ye no’ feelin’ a nip o’ the cauld, laddie-mine, e’en as we speak?

Farry came back to himself, out of the past, out of the strange dream that had come over him, to find himself shivering. ‘Frost-fairies,’ he whispered to himself, and his breath came out as a mist, a sign that the temperatures were dropping rapidly from the almost-pleasant winter afternoon. Looking up at the rapidly fading sky, he could see the thin mares’ tails of clouds, now darkening to deep rose and purple, were thickening ominously. ‘Shelter, Haldi,’ he said aloud. ‘Shelter’s the thing, even more than food, or even water.’ A hobbit lacking shelter in adverse conditions could die in a matter of a few hours.

He hoped Ferdi’s cloak would be sufficient to keep his uncle warm in the pit trap. If the dry-well had remained dry and had not filled up with water, if Ferdi hadn’t fallen into water, that is, he might not die of a chill. He might very well have died of the fall, though, Farry-my-lad. As for himself...

He couldn’t risk falling asleep on a tree branch without a rope to tie him in place. He might very well die of a fall himself, and if he didn’t die, he might wish he had if the dogs remained in the clearing. And even wrapped in a thick cloak of warm Tookish wool, he was shivering cold as the air grew damper, somehow more of a bone-chilling cold than freezing but dry air would have presented.

You’ve often heard our cousins make sport of Ferdi for sleeping in trees or hollow logs, phantom-Haldi said in Farry’s memory. Well there’s a good reason for it! The Tooks who ventured outside of the Tookland in the days of the Troubles had to take their shelter wherever they could find it. For some it was a haystack or a byre or an abandoned smial, for others a hedgerow or even a ditch in dry weather, but in the woodlands...

Was it his imagination, or had he seen the shadow of a hollow, slightly higher up on the tree? Some animal or bird of prey might be lodging there. He’d have to bake that bread when it was risen. No point fretting about it when he didn’t even know if the hollow was real or a trick of the light. There was only one way to find out. Farry climbed. One branch. Two. 

Yes. He could see the hollow now, slightly above him, where a branch had broken off. He reached up, only to feel a mixture of relief and disappointment. He wouldn’t have to contest with an owl or a stoat over this hole as it wasn’t really a proper hole at all. But...

His fingers could feel the softness of crumbling wood, even holes where woodpeckers had drilled for insects. He might be able to make something of this after all.

Carefully, he pulled his knife from its sheath. It wouldn’t do to drop it, not with those dogs waiting below. Keeping a tight grip on the handle, Farry began to scrape away at the decaying wood. He found he could dig his knife in and loosen the wood, then pull large chunks away with his free hand whilst he steadied himself with his knife hand. It took some nerve on his part, but he kept at it. One benefit was that the physical labour was warming. It was also keeping him from feeling sleepy.

He didn’t know how long he dug at the rotted stuff, pulled it free, let it fall to the ground as he carved out a sort of rough shelter. It might have taken half the night, for all he knew. When he’d started, the Man in the Moon had peeped out at him through thickening clouds, then shone behind the clouds, but as both the night and Faramir’s work progressed, eventually he could no longer see the moon. He didn’t know if it had set, or was now hidden behind a heavy cloud cover. A wind was rising in the treetops around him, portending a coming change in the weather.

He pushed through the outer wall of the tree to sudden emptiness – and fumbled the knife. With a fearful cry, he lunged for it but stopped himself abruptly on second thought. He wouldn’t do himself any good if he should impale himself on his blade in the inky blackness inside the tree, now, would he?

Carefully, he felt his way past the wall of crumbling wood, and then he groped his way downward along the inside of the hollow space. Another horror would be if the tree were hollow all the way to the roots, and Farry fell down the hole, to become trapped. The searchers might never find his body. He breathed a sigh of relief to find roughness under his hand, a sort of floor, there inside the bole. And resting on that coarse surface was his knife!

Reclaiming his tool, he scraped away at the sides of the opening he’d made until he had a hole large enough to crawl through. He put his knife back in the sheath. Holding tightly to the sides of the entrance he’d carved, testing his weight on the decaying wood by inches, he slowly, cautiously, crept inside. Even after he’d let most of his weight settle to his knees, he held on to the lip of the entrance for long moments. But the “floor” of his improvised shelter held him without the slightest indication of giving way.

With a sigh, he fumbled to settle his hood firmly on his head and then curled himself into a tight ball inside his cloak. Now that he was no longer concentrating fiercely on digging out a shelter, on not dropping his knife, on keeping his balance on the branch and not falling, he gave in to shuddering sobs. 

He wept until he had exhausted himself, his eyes hot and swollen, his nose clogged, before he was able to allow sleep to claim him. In that curious state between waking and sleeping, he heard the rising of the wind, the creaking of the trees around him. He felt his own refuge bend and sway, but the floor beneath him remained steady.

His last thought as he slipped into restless dreams, shaking with an occasional dry sob of disbelief and numb despair, was to wonder if Ferdi had survived the fall, and if so, how his uncle was faring at the bottom of the ruffian trap.

***