Chapter 11. 'Nothing further happened...'

The rest of their time in the marshes was uneventful by comparison.

Of course, young Faramir chaffed Pippin-lad good-naturedly about having fallen into the bog. 'I mean, you may be named for my da, but that doesn't mean you have to follow in his footsteps quite so thoroughly...' 

'Do you mean to say I cannot hope to become Thain someday, even though I bear the same name – or almost the same name?' Pippin-lad said with a laugh. 'Pity, that! I don't know what my parents were thinking... P'rhaps they ought to have called me "Peregrin" instead! It seems they fell short in calling me "Pippin"!'

'Well,' Farry said, lifting his hand to his face and speaking behind it, as if he might be telling a secret. 'You never know... For all we know, I might end up in Ithilien with my Mannish counterpart! And if the Thain and Master decide to remove to Gondor, why, then you and your brother Merry may find yourselves asked to step in, considering the similarity of names...'

Ferdi snorted softly, and Haldoron suppressed a grin at the young hobbits' nonsense. At least the byplay was keeping the teens awake and alert and paying attention to every step they took.

Nevertheless, both Ferdibrand and Haldoron breathed sighs of relief as they left the last straggling pools and reed-beds behind them and the ground under their feet began to rise once more, signalling the end of the marshes.

'If you were to write an account of our travels,' Pip-lad said to Faramir, now walking side-by-side rather than in a file now that the party had left the boggy ground behind and were treading a satisfyingly solid surface, 'as Mister Frodo did, you might say, "Nothing further happened in the marshes..." – just as he wrote in his account telling about the journey after the Shadow flew over them on their way from Hollin to Caradhras the Cruel.'

'Nothing further happened that night,' Faramir murmured. 'I remember the time we visited, and your dad read to us from that page, and I saw my da wipe a tear from the corner of his eye. It startled me so, I've never forgotten.'

'It was because of a conversation they'd had that day, I think,' Robin said. 

The two teens gaped at him. 'What?' Farry said. 'You weren't even there!'

'Not that day in the Gamgee's parlour or kitchen or wherever it was you took tea,' Robin said, for he'd heard gossip at the Great Smials that the Mayor did not always honour the Thain's high position but served him tea in the kitchen! It had made him laugh at the time, for he was fairly sure from hearing his parents and his Uncle Ferdi talk about the Thain that serving tea in the kitchen had not been the Gamgees' idea at all.

'That night, rather, as they walked on,' Robin continued. 'It was something I overheard the Master tell the Mistress once, when Master Merry had asked for my help in hearing his cases. My parents brought me to the Hall and left me for a week, and then they came and took me home again, though the Master did his best to convince them to remove from the Woody End to Buckland, or even leave me there and let the Brandybucks foster me, since I was too young to be apprenticed.'

'Ah,' the two youngsters said, though the Man walking ahead of them (and also listening quietly) was puzzled. The Master of Buckland had asked for the help of a child, not old enough to leave his parents, in hearing and judging cases? Having served as Elessar's Steward of the North-kingdom, Haldoron was wearyingly familiar with hearing cases. As a matter of fact, it had been his failure to properly judge a case he'd heard that had landed him on this remedial journey. He wondered if Ferdibrand might explain if he were to later ask the Hobbit walking by his side.

Perhaps if I'd asked a child to help me, justice would have been done that day, and I would not have sentenced three innocents to hang, he thought bleakly. If not for the Hobbits' interference, those deaths would have taken place as ordered. More and more as they travelled (and they'd not even reached Weathertop yet), he was thinking that this enforced journey might turn out to be a blessing of some sort.

'What was it you overheard?' Farry wanted to know.

'Well, Master Merry was talking about how lovely Hollin was, and that he thought that once Elves have lived in a land and loved it, the land will be long in forgetting them. He described Hollin as having a wholesome air. And then he talked about leaving the valley by way of an ancient road, and wondering about the people who had built the road. But as they were walking through the darkness, the Shadow passed overhead...'

'That's right,' Pip-lad confirmed. 'That's what it says in the Red Book. Though it was Gandalf who talked about a "wholesome air", if I'm remembering right.'

'That sounds promising,' Ferdi said aside to Haldoron. 'I might actually be looking forward to seeing Hollin, if that's the case.'

'You probably are,' Faramir said wryly, though he was responding to Pip-lad rather than his uncle. 'Your dad reads a little aloud from the Red Book every evening, doesn't he? And when he reaches the end, he simply starts over again!'

'He doesn't want hobbits to forget what Mister Frodo did,' Pip-lad said low. 'Even if it's only Gamgees that keep the memories from fading away.'

'Well, anyhow,' Robin said, to spare Pip-lad's feelings, 'Master Merry talked about how his younger cousin started asking Frodo about writing a book, and how Frodo – who was almost invariably the soul of patience with the tween – humoured him, though he'd not shown any sign of writing a book before that moment.'

'Except, of course, when they were at The Prancing Pony in Bree,' Pip-lad said. 'For that was the reason Mister Frodo gave for visiting the Bree-land; to gather information about Hobbits living outside the Shire.'

'And they might have believed him if he had not slipped the Ring onto his finger there in the common room,' Haldoron muttered. But only Ferdibrand, walking at his side, heard him, and wondered.

'Exactly!' Robin said. 'But Pippin somehow got Frodo to agree to write a book, and then he very earnestly suggested that the older cousin write, Nothing further happened that night, when he reached that part in the narrative... the part where they were, currently, in the story, as it were.'

'He did just that!' Pip-lad explained.

'But he didn't mean it at the time,' Robin said.

'I don't take your meaning,' Faramir said.

'The older cousin was simply humouring the younger, to reassure the tween and lighten his mood after the Shadow had passed over earlier.'

'How do you know that?' Pip-lad wanted to know.

'It was what Master Merry said,' Robin replied. 'He knew that Frodo was humouring their younger cousin, but he also knew what the younger cousin was thinking, for the two of them... I've heard my mother say the two of them are "joined at the soul".'

After that pronouncement, the Hobbits walked in silence for a time, and so did the Man.

At last, Farry prompted, '...he knew what the youngest cousin was thinking...?'

Robin went on, 'Master Merry knew that young Pippin was thinking that if Frodo were to resolve to write, Nothing further happened that night, then nothing further would happen that night!'

Ferdi turned his head and spoke then. 'It's a common phenomenon with Hobbits when they're young,' he said. 'Magical thinking, I've heard it called.'

'I suppose that makes sense,' Faramir said quizzically. 'Wizards use words to make magical things happen. Like Gandalf and the Moria Door.' One side of his mouth twisted as he added, 'But I gave up on magical thinking years ago, for it never seemed to make any difference.'

'Speak friend and enter,' Pip-lad said softly.

But Haldoron was thinking of Farry's rejection of the idea of magical thinking. The lad was only a teen! By Ferdi's and Robin's accounting of Hobbit ages, as they'd explained to the Man, the son of the Thain should still be well within the bounds of innocence and trust. Was his lack of wonder due to his experience with the child-stealing ruffians, or was there more to the lad's jaded view? There's a story here that I do not know, the Man thought to himself. I wonder how I might find it out? He'd discovered that when the Hobbits got to telling stories, he almost always learned much more than if he asked them direct questions.

'But he did!' Pip-lad said. 'He did write just that in the Red Book!'

'And that was the point of the story Master Merry was telling Mistress Estella that evening,' Robin said. 'For he was talking about the first time they returned to Bag End after Frodo Baggins sailed away with the Elves. They found his study just as he'd left it – a bit tidier, perhaps – and young Pippin opened up the Red Book and paged through it as if he were looking for something, and he didn't stop until he found it. Nothing further happened that night.'

'And it didn't!' Pip-lad said stoutly. 'Or, at least, that's what my dad told us when he read that part aloud to us...'

'Then perhaps there really was some magic in the tween's thinking after all,' Faramir said, but then he shook his head. 'No,' he added. 'I'm sure it was only a matter of coincidence.'

I'm not so sure of that, Haldoron thought to himself. For they were travelling with a Wizard, after all. But he kept his thoughts to himself. 

'O' course,' Pip-lad Gamgee said, 'they had that conversation – about writing a book I mean – whilst they were still in the middle of that night, the one where the tween was hoping nothing more would happen...'

'If you have a point, it sped right by my head,' Faramir said.

'That empty head of yours?' Robin said, playfully cuffing Faramir's curly top. 'Why am I not surprised?'

'We're having this conversation now, after we've already left the marshes behind!' Pip-lad said. 'To do any good, we should have talked about writing a book with magical words while we were still in the marshes!'

Ferdi caught Haldoron's eye. You see? his glance said. Magical thinking. The Took then nodded, somehow conveying the thought, Relatively common in a Hobbit child and even a tween.

'P'rhaps we ought to have had this conversation before you stepped in over your head!' Faramir said sourly.

'P'rhaps we should have!' Pip-lad said, but his tone was more thoughtful than sceptical or joking.

'No doubt,' Robin said, and then as if to divert the younger Hobbits, he went on, 'So tell me, Pippin, what happens after that point in the Red Book? For Master Merry went no further in the story he was telling the Mistress...'

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Author's note: Pippin fell in at the Midgewater Marshes in my version of the journey found in The Tenth Walker here on SoA. This chapter also draws from an earlier short story, 'Nothing further happened that night...' in the short-story collection This and That here on SoA.

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