Chapter 69. Interlude continues

My head is bowed down to the ground, while a grey hazy world surrounds me. The once solid-seeming trees to either side are grey and insubstantial, cloaked in drifting fog. Vague shapes move around me, speaking strings of words that elude my grasp. Their touch comes and goes, as ephemeral as the trees.

Only Bert's hand on my neck keeps me from drifting away. 'Steady, Bill, there's a good fellow.' The tween's words are laced with sobs; I would comfort him, but I cannot seem to move, not even to lift my head. My body, when I try to perceive it, to determine what the problem might be, resolves into a knot of pain. I hear Bert sniff back his tears, and then he speaks again, but evidently not to me. 'Can you dig him free?'

The words make no sense. Have the foresters not yet dug Alder free of the tree?

Feather touches on my lower limbs send shooting pains from hoof to hip or shoulder, and I cannot suppress a moan – which is answered by the renewed sound of weeping from the tween who bends before me, his arms encircling my lowered face.

After some time – however long it is, I cannot determine – it seems the shadowy figures have granted Bert's request. Bereft of the supporting soil, my limbs fold as of themselves, and I settle to the ground despite Bert's pleas. 'No, Bill! You've got to—'

'He's completely used up his strength,' another Hobbit voice quietly says close to my head, though his figure is but a shadow to me. 'Even were we to lift him up, to stand him upon his feet once more, I doubt whether he could manage to walk down the slope...'

'How are we to get him down, then?' Bert gulps, his arms tightening about me.

'And that sudden jolt he took when one of the lines broke,' the other nearby voice continues, as if the tween has not spoken, 'is all too likely to have torn muscle and sinew, thus inflicting acute injuries atop the accumulated strain from pulling against such a heavy weight with all his strength.' The voice speaks in what I once heard one of my hobbits call "a cultured tone", resembling the speech of the three hobbit cousins who have formed part of our Company, or the two wizards of my acquaintance, or the Lord Elrond when he came out to the meadow with Gandalf to talk to me about our journey. 

My Sam speaks more simply, and the words he chooses to use are easier for me to follow. Young Bert does much the same. As a matter of fact, I might have trouble following this other hobbit's speech except that Tall Hat's Voices are still with me, somehow conveying the meaning of the shadowy hobbit's words to my mind.

'Oh Bill!' Bert sobs.

'Steady, lad,' soothes that other voice, though at least the words he chooses now need no explanation on the part of my Voices. 

And then the older hobbit turns away, I deem, for the next string of words sounds muffled, and I cannot make out any meaning at all, not even with the Voices' help.

However, I can perceive a lessening of the misty figures that were surrounding me. Soon, I can sense that only Bert and the unnamed older hobbit remain nearby. Bert's arms still encircle my head, and he whispers broken words of comfort. The other hobbit's hands – reminding me somehow of this-Bob's deft touch – move over and around the remaining tufts of my shaggy winter coat, gently probing the flesh beneath. It hurts, but I am too spent to squeal or even lift my head.

'His breathing is still more rapid than it ought to be. At this point, I think it tells more of discomfort than representing a lingering sign of effort.' The older hobbit has returned to stand at my head, and I can just make out his hand in the mist that swirls before me, resting now on the tween's shoulder. I wonder if Bert has been injured somehow? For the hobbit's way of speaking reminds me of overhearing Tom Pickthorn speak, in days past, as well as his son more recently. Did someone summon the healer?

The world goes from dimness to darkness, and I hear no more.

*** 

I waken – at least, I think I waken – to the most curious sensation: I seem to be floating!

I consider what I am feeling for what may be a short time or a long time. Though time may be passing, I have no way to make sense of it.

At last, I determine that I am not buoyed by the waters of a wide and deep-running river, for though I am chilled, the chill comes from within me and not from the swirl of icy waters against my skin. In other words, I have not swooned while swimming. As far as I can work out, I have not met a fate like that of those poor black horses, forced to bear Shadows upon their backs and swept away by raging waters.

Rather than floating in deep water, as was my first impression, I seem to lie upon a soft-yet-strangely-unyielding surface. Even so, I cannot feel beneath me the cold, hard ground or even the unstable soil of the slope where I so recently met my doom. There is also an odd sensation of movement, and though I cannot see more than shadowy figures, I hear voices sounding on all sides. 

What is it? I ask the Voices. What is happening? Has Death come to set me free of my pain, to carry me away to where ever it is that four-footed creatures go when their bodies will no longer sustain them? Have I died?

No answer.

Am I dying, then?

But the Voices still do not answer.

What happens to ponies after they die? I remember wondering to myself in my broken-down shed after witnessing the death of Vervain's unfortunate horse. But of course there was no one with me in that miserable place to offer any sort of answer, not even a guess or a jest.

As a very young foal, after encountering death for the first time in the form of a frog that did not jump when I nudged it with my nose, I asked my dam the same question. She answered me with a question of her own, fondness infusing her tone. Aren't you the curious one?

But I should really like to know! I protested.

I'm sure that you would, was all she said. And with a nip at my withers, she took herself off to the other corner of our little meadow, and began to graze, and had nothing more to say on the subject when I asked her again later.

Gandalf died, and he was sent back, but I never heard of such a thing happening to a four-footed beast. As for me, I am certainly not a wizard, with powers beyond a pony's understanding.

Another memory surfaces, of the Old Pet sitting on the Elves' meadow, surrounded by my hobbits. Youngest has been asking questions, as is his wont, and the old hobbit throws back his head and laughs. 'Such a gloomy topic to be pondering on this brilliant day!'

My Sam seems faintly scandalised, though he remains silent and stands a little to one side, as if he is distancing himself from the cousins' lively conversation.

The not-quite-Merry hobbit pretends to clout Youngest on the side of his head. 'I don't know what gets into you sometimes, Pip! Why in the world would you want to know more about death?!'

'Because Elves don't die!' Youngest blurts. What a curious notion! 'Well, Glorfindel died, but he came back!'

The Old Pet laughs again, though his chuckle has more of a thoughtful than a jolly sound.

But Youngest has not quite finished. 'And I've been wracking my brains to remember all I ever heard about the Feast...'

'Battering your brains is hardly wise of you, Pip, considering how few brains you've been able to exercise, much less display by this late date,' the rather-not-Merry hobbit says acidly. Perhaps hobbits find death an uncomfortable topic? For my fellow Walkers have never discussed it in my hearing, except for their worries about Master dying – or worse – after he was stabbed... At least I do not have to worry about worse happening to me. At least, I believe that is the case.

I hope so, anyhow.

'...and I've never heard mention of a Man at the Feast*, not a one!' Youngest says. 'And so I asked Strider...'

'You asked Strider!' the Master says, sounding amazed.

The Old Pet chuckles and puts his hand to his mouth to say aside to the older cousins, 'Never discount the lengths an inquisitive young hobbit will go to when seeking answers to his or her questions! Why, adventures have been known to come about on less provocation than merely wanting to know why or how!'

'Or what or where,' Master says, and he slaps Youngest on the shoulder. 'Ah, Pip.'

But Youngest has pricked his Merry cousin's curiosity. 'And what did Strider tell you, Pip?'

Youngest digs a reluctant toe into the turf. 'It sounds perishingly dull...' he says slowly.

His cousins stare at him. 'What is it?' he asks. 'Why are you all looking at me in that way?'

The Merry hobbit shakes his head. 'Only you could make a word-play about such a thing...' he begins.

'I would never!' Youngest protests vehemently.

'You just did,' Master says quietly.

But it is the Old Pet who speaks next. 'The Halls of Mandos,' he says. 'That is where Elves and Men go after they draw their final breath...'

'And Mandos spits out the Elves again after a time, and sends them back into the world!' Youngest breaks in, animated once more by his wonder. 'But not Men! It is a wonder to me...'

'It is a wonder to Men as well,' the Old Pet says, patting Youngest on the shoulder. 'As a matter of fact, such wondering was actually the cause of a great deal of trouble in the past...'

The next thing I know, he is beginning a lengthy tale of a long-ago and far-away place called Númenor. In this particular story, there are many strange names I have never heard of and, thus, the story holds little or no meaning for me. Such difficulties do not seem to trouble my hobbits, for soon they have settled to either side of the easy chair they carried out to the pasture earlier for the Old Pet's comfort, and they are sprawling on the ground in varying attitudes of rest and attentiveness.

Grazing, I move away, and soon I lose the thread of the tale.

A backwards glance, some time later, reveals that Youngest has fallen asleep, though the two older cousins are still listening intently. My Sam, as well, though he sits a little apart from the others, and looks as if he is holding himself ready to jump to his feet should one or another of the gentlehobbits make a request of him or issue an order.

Thus, I am none the wiser, and perhaps, neither is Youngest.

What happens to ponies after they die?

The thought is dim and far away. Perhaps I am on my way to find the answer, floating through the air like a soaring bird, or perhaps a wraith.

I draw a shuddering breath, and then I feel the touch of Bert's hand as the tween reassures me. 'All's well, Bill. All is well. Steady, my brave fellow.' Since I feel as if I am moving, though admittedly not under my own power, then he must be moving as well, as (from the feeling of his fingers continuing to stroke my outstretched neck) he is staying right by my side!

If only I could have my wish, my one wish, to see my Sam again.

*** 

Author's notes: 

*In my version of the Shire, hobbits "go to the Feast" when they die, where, it has been said, there is no time, and all they have ever lost is restored to them, and their loved ones surround them always and forevermore. In all my searching of Tolkien's writings, I have never found any hints of what happens to hobbits after they die.

Some of the phrasing in this chapter was drawn from 'The Choices of Master Samwise' in The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.

***