Part I

Thain's Heir

Pippin woke. For a moment he lay in his bed, blinking, as the world resolved into the order of his bedroom in Great Smials. Dark. He glanced at the windows and knew it was far from morning.

He was groggy and confused. He began to reach for his wife, but Diamond lay on her side, turned away from him.

Pippin propped himself up on his elbow and looked at her for a long while, the curve of her hip, the slimness of her shoulder, the tension that never left her neck where it met her collarbone. Her hair, almost straight, almost white. So rare among hobbits, Elven hair. How beautiful she was, how rare, how precious. Like a jewel forever out of reach.

He slipped out of bed and stood. The cool air of early spring stung his bare skin. He donned a robe, picked up his pipe from the bedtable, and slipped out of their bedroom.

He made his way down the halls and passages of the Smials. Sometimes he still got lost in his own home. Pippin was born in the farmhouse at Whitwell. He'd visited the Smials only on family occasions. Then his father became Thain and they moved in.

He did know how to find the pantry, or the nearest one to his room at least. He made himself a couple of butter sandwiches, decided on tea instead of ale, and went to the nearest parlor.

This was one of his favorite spots, where Diamond seldom ventured and which therefore was always a slight mess. Pippin liked it that way. It had a thick carpet, a sagging old chair, a few old books from the library, and solitude. He stoked the banked embers in the firebox into life and sat there for a long time, toasting his butter sandwiches and sipping his tea.

Halfway into his snack he heard footsteps in the hall. He waited as the door opened and a fellow sleepless wanderer peered inside for an unplanned but completely unquestioned meeting.

"Good evening," he said to his cousin Merry.

"Good evening." Merry ambled into the room, also in his robe, wearing a nightshirt. "Bad dream?"

"Why else? What about you? Bad bed?"

"The bed was fine. I just couldn't sleep anymore."

"Cup of tea?"

"That would be lovely."

Pippin fetched a cup for Merry and the pot of tea from the pantry. He placed the kettle by the fire to keep warm. Merry had sunk down onto the carpet, his feet to the fire.

"I've missed you," Merry said, taking his tea.

"You should visit more often," Pippin responded.

"I try. Often you're away."

Pippin snorted. "Father keeps me busy."

"That busy?"

"Of course. I don't know how you do it, cousin. Between the wheat, hay, orchards, and livestock … and the incessant politics …" Pippin shook his head. "Half the time I muster the sheep and shear the Bounders."

"You would muster sheep. Don't worry, my dear. It gets easier."

"For me? I doubt it. You've always had a head for running things. What do I know but jests, songs, and warfare? I'm obsolete before I'm old." Pippin checked his tone. "My, I sound horridly bitter."

"Not too much," Merry teased. "A bit. What have you to be bitter about?"

"Nothing, I suppose."

"Your father?"

"That's never going to change. I'm used to it."

"Sisters?"

"Same."

"Diamond?"

Pippin shrugged.

Merry turned to him. "Surely it can't have gotten so bad."

"It was no good to begin with."

"Pip," scolded Merry. "Don't be ungallant. You're a knight, after all."

"That's not funny."

"I'm not trying to be."

Pippin exhaled.

"It was arranged," consoled his cousin.

"So was yours!" he replied. "But you love Estella. You always did. And Stella loves you, completely."

A sad smile played on Merry's lips. "Yes," he said. "I do love her. And I don't know why, but the poor girl's convinced herself I deserve her." He reached for the sandwich Pippin held and tore off a chunk to munch.

Pippin watched him. "How is she? I haven't had a good conversation with her yet, since …" Since her last miscarriage.

Now it was Merry's turn to shrug. "She's beautiful. She's wonderful. It's not her fault, you know. Bolgers have always been fruitful." He stared into the fire, munching a bite of food with a few crumbs lingering on his set and dimpled chin.

Pippin couldn't stand it. "Now who's sounding horridly bitter," he teased, hoping to lift the moment.

"Cheeky," Merry said. Then he went on, "You have a child, Pip. That's something I can only dream about. Isn't that something worth building on?" He went and ran his fingers through Pippin's curls, recently trimmed. "Looks so strange," he muttered. "You look like a molted bird."

"I decided to cut it short," Pippin replied. "For a change." He managed a grin. "It's very refreshing," he said, "and, you know, everyone else always wears them bushy, or long. Too long. Elves, you know, you can't tell them apart sometimes."

Merry scratched at the high dome of Pippin's forehead, through the stiff, spiky tufts of ruddy gold. "But it makes you look old, Pip."

"Good. I feel old."

"You're forty-one." Merry pulled his hand away. "That's not old. I'm the one entering into broad middle age."

"Well, you are quite fat," Pippin said. "You might get bigger than Sam."

"Attacking my vanity indeed. I can only imagine how disrespectful you shall be once you become Thain."

"Oh, don't." Pippin turned away. "Don't call me that. I hate that. Titles and ceremonies. You don't know how much I'm starting to despise all of it." He hugged his knees, evading Merry's eyes. "Sometimes I want to go back," he wished, "back, just a little way, you know, into a past that slipped by me too fast. To be just Pippin again. Silly little Pippin. Your Pip. And you, just Merry, my Merry."

"Fool of a Took. I'll always be your Merry."

Pippin looked at his cousin, and his heart bent.

"Of course, Estella might have an objection or two," Merry added.

When they were young, Peregrin Took may have launched himself upon his cousin Meriadoc for the jibe and the insinuation. But neither he nor his cousin were young any longer.

Pippin considered this, and then decided to launch himself upon Merry anyway, for old times' sake.

2.

How Merry loved Estella. Pippin had realized it later than he should.

Merry had always been great friends with Fredegar Bolger; they, and Folco Boffin, had composed the tight-knit circle of friends centered on Frodo Baggins. Pippin, much younger, couldn't wait to become part of their group. It helped that Frodo adored him; and as for Merry, Pippin had considered him a brother from his earliest vaguest memories.

As the years drifted by, the sons of Shire gentry settled down. Folco became a solicitor. Frodo inherited Bag End and the Ring. Fatty stayed fat. Merry remained close to them all, but Pippin became his most certain company. But whenever Brandy Hall became too much, when Merry wished to escape his parents, when Frodo and Bag End were too far away, in space or vision—then Merry went to the Bolgers' house in Budgeford, beneath their grove of oak trees, with pipeweed in one pocket and Pippin in the other, to see Estella.

Estella had always been pretty, with a crown of dark, shining curls and rosy cheeks on a fair, joyful face, and now as a grown hobbit and husband Pippin understood the moments he had espied as a thoughtless tweenager between Merry and Estella among the falling oak leaves in years of autumn evenings in Buckland. They had loved each other, he understood now; loved each other, perhaps even pledged their hearts to each other, through many days of their young lives. When Merry left with Frodo on what would become the Quest for Mount Doom, Estella waited for him, as faithfully as Rosie Cotton had waited for Sam Gamgee. After the battle of Bywater, Merry had taken the newly-freed Fredegar home, and Pippin accompanied him to the Bolger house. Estella had met them at the door. A little bit thinner, a little paler, but with brown eyes sparkling still, she cast herself upon Merry like a lost and weary traveler who finally recalled the face of home.

Old Will Whitfoot presided over their wedding that fall, in the same grove of oaks where their friendship had turned to love, and there was hardly a hobbit in Budgeford or Bucklebury who wasn't invited. Merry's mother Esmeralda represented Brandy Hall. Pippin knew Saradoc was unable to attend, and why, and anger and resentment flared in him against his uncle, even though he knew that his uncle's vices were by now compulsions he couldn't master. Pippin could forgive his uncle his weakness, but he found it hard to forgive any cause of Merry's grief.

Merry had stood tall and grand, magnificent in the gilded leather and mail and field-green cloak of Rohan. Estella shone in her dress of ivory satin, a Bolger heirloom, with asters woven in her hair. They pledged their love to each other through the days of the sun and the nights of the moon and the nights of stars alone, through springtimes, summers, and winters; through autumns and harvests for as long as they breathed. When Merry kissed his wife, no one failed to be moved, and the immature, adolescent jealousy still in Pippin's heart melted away at the sight of his cousin's joy. Then Merry had taken Estella into his arms, and laughing and singing the pair went to the great white pony that had come from Eomer King. Merry lifted Estella onto the pony, and himself behind her, and they galloped off down the lane and through the woods and fields of Buckland.

"So when are we marrying you off, Mr. Pippin?" Sam had asked him at the reception.

Pippin had laughed. Marry? Was there any hurry? Pippin hoped not. He had grown handsome at last, and he enjoyed sowing his oats. Marry, indeed! It wasn't as if he had a one true love, like Merry, or Sam.

"Peregrin? Peregrin, dear." It was his mother, with his aunt Esmeralda, and with them, a young lady he did not know.

"Peregrin," said Esmeralda firmly, grasping his hand and pulling him to her, despite his towering over her. "I want you to meet a cousin of yours. This is Diamond, cousin Sigismond's daughter from Long Cleeve."

She was wearing a light blue cotton dress, and a pale blue ribbon in her hair. She was as slender as Frodo, and her skin was as pale as frost. Her hair was so fair, and fell to the small of her back. Her expression was downcast as she approached him, but when she looked up Pippin realized what Merry had meant when he described the lady Eowyn of Rohan. "Pale and cold and beautiful." So was Diamond of Long Cleeve. Her eyes glittered with hard tears. Around her neck, upon a Dwarven chain, was a single jewel of her name.

She curtsied. "Milord," she said, with a voice like a snowfly.

To me? Pippin didn't know what to think. His father was "his lordship," his mother "her ladyship"; Aunt Esmeralda got by on "Mistress". Was she trying to compliment him? She couldn't be. She held her backbone so straight Pippin had an absurd image of her shattering.

It moved him. "Milady," he responded, bowing gravely and deeply, as a knight of Gondor should.

She said nothing. Briefly she glared at him, and Pippin saw unbreakable pride in her, and realized she felt humiliated among the resplendent company. His pity grew. He asked her politely to dance. She accepted, and stumbled her way through the dances that he had assumed everyone knew. He held her gingerly, fearing she might break. She never once looked up at him.

Now Pippin knew why Diamond Took had been so cold, so bitter, so hopeless. Raised to remember she was a Took, a descendant of the Bullroarer, she had to grow up in a small village cut off from the rest of the Shire, in genteel poverty. Her pride and breeding were all she had, and she learned to feed on it like ice.

Oh, she was beautiful in her own way; and on their wedding night, she had allowed him to attempt to kindle some fire in her; but there was little to be done. She pulled away from his attempts at passion after Faramir was born. Sometimes, when he would wake in the night in a cold sweat, fleeing from a dream of war, his wife would simply turn over and leave him to his own devices.

"Peregrin," she told him once (she never, never called him Pippin), "please don't think I require you to honor me in the privacy of our bedchamber at the expense of your own pleasure. We have done our duty to our family and our country with Faramir."

"But I only wish to make you happy!"

"Thank you. But I'm tired."

"But, Di …"

"Peregrin, let's not pretend our union is more than what it is."

"And what, pray tell, is that?" Pippin asked her, his temper flaring. Then just as his anger faded, leaving him sorrowful. "Have I not been good to you, my dear?"

"Only because they expect you to," Diamond replied. "You hate it."

That night, Pippin left Great Smials, riding recklessly, black as a wraith upon his silver pony, through the dark and sleeping Shire, down the Southfarthing to an inn by the borders where Merry and Folco had reported the company was hospitable.

Pippin wondered yet again at the irony of this world, that Merry and Estella who loved each other would be the childless ones.

Sometimes, when he couldn't sleep, when the Black Gate weighed on his dreams, he'd make his way to the gardens of the Smials, and gaze into the west, seeking for Eärendil. The light of the only known remaining Silmaril shone in his eyes. Then he'd think of Frodo, with a steadfast and abiding envy.

3.

A month after Merry and Estella returned to Buckland, Pippin made a decision. He went to Hobbiton to see if Sam Gamgee could talk him out of it.

He stabled his pony at the village mews and proceeded up the Hill on foot. It was a busy morning, for spring was come in its full glory to the Shire. Pippin admired the budding trees and the freshly-sown fields leading up to the Row. Hobbits saw him and tipped their hats or nodded; some of the ladies curtsied. Pippin smiled back. Had all the faults and foibles of youth been forgiven as they beheld him? He loathed to disappoint them.

He turned the path and paused for a moment, letting the sight break his heart as it nowadays always did. How many times as a lad had he strolled up this road, or more likely ran pell-mell, up to the gate and the grand hole at the summit of the Hill, to see Bilbo or Frodo? Pippin felt a wave of, of all things, homesickness. He shook his head sharply, as if it were a pest he could dissuade. He didn't like that feeling; he never had. He resolved to be sunny and amiable with the Gamgees.

"Uncle Pippin!" was the greeting given him by Elanor, minding her younger siblings in the flower garden. "Mummy! Dad! Uncle Pippin's here!"

"Mr. Peregrin!" said Mistress Rose, poking her head out of the kitchen window. "You should have let us know you were coming for a visit! I would have had time to prepare something for you!" The bright-cheeked young matron appeared in full in the doorway, an infant in one arm and a pitcher of milk in the other. "How long are you staying? Where's your pony? Is my Samwise expecting you? He should have told me if he was."

Pippin finally got a word in. "Rosie," he said, "I'm not here for a visit. I need to talk to Sam. Please, where is he?"

Rose's smile faded a little, although it refused to die completely. "He should be out back. I'm sure …" She looked over her shoulder, and sure enough, there came her husband, being led by a determined Elanor.

Sam Gamgee's hands were brown from working with the soil, and he wiped them on the cloth produced by his wife. But his calm, steadfast gaze never left his friend's, and Pippin felt that Sam already perceived much of what was in his mind and heart.

"Rosie, dearest," said the Mayor, "could you bring out a bit of tea for us? Mr. Peregrin has something on his mind."

They sat among the roots of the great tree on the hill, gazing out over Hobbiton and Bywater and the green, growing Shire. They said nothing for a while, just gazing out over their little corner of the world.

"Do you like it?"

Pippin was startled by Sam's question. "Like what?"

Sam took out his pipe and with its stem gestured at all that surrounded them.

"Oh," said Pippin. "Of course I do. It's all I ever wanted."

Sam puffed on his pipe and watched him.

Pippin sagged. "No, you're right," he said. "That's a lie. It's always been a lie. In Minas Tirith, after the Battle of the Pelennor, I told Merry that we Tooks and Brandybucks weren't meant to live on the heights. I was lying even then. Even as I said it, I wanted to try those heights again. I wanted to see the deep places, the high places."

"You wanted to travel."

"I wanted to see … everything." Pippin looked away, at the stones among the grasses at the roots of the great tree. "I missed the trees and flowers and fields of the Shire in Minas Tirith, but once I got out of the city … I went with Faramir and Eowyn to Ithilien, do you remember?"

"I remember. You came back smelling of wildflowers."

"I rolled in them! I asked Faramir everything about them, and about Ithilien, its history, its people. About Minas Ithil and Minas Anor and Osgiliath, and the roads that led to them; roads that still stretch farther than I ever dreamed the world could go." Warmth coursed through his heart. "I want to follow those roads, Sam. To see things no hobbit has ever seen. Do things no hobbit has ever done."

"You've done things like that."

Pippin kicked turf loose. "The war doesn't count." Then, abashed, he picked up the clod and patted it back into place.

Sam's son appeared with a basket. "Mum said you'd be wanting some cakes and buns with your tea," he said to his father. Pippin was staring at him, and he stared back, making Pippin wince.

"Hello," Pippin said.

"Hello," the lad replied. He was a stout, healthy child with wavy, sandy hair like his father's. But his eyes were blue as forget-me-nots. "I'm Frodo."

Pippin smiled. "I know. I saw you when you were a baby."

Frodo smiled back. "I'm named after Dad's friend." Then, interested in something else, he scampered off.

Pippin turned to Sam. Sam only shrugged.

Rose had prepared some seedcake and sweet buns stuffed with cheese. Pippin sank his teeth into one, and remembered the taste of his childhood.

"I wonder," he said, afterward, "if there are, far in the east or south, hobbits who don't have teatime."

"There might not be any hobbits at all."

Pippin was far from horrified. "I wonder," he said again. Then, realizing something, he asked, "You've not spoken with Merry about me, have you?"

"Now Mr. Pippin," said Sam, "we're just a bit concerned, is all. You've become awful grave in your majority years. We miss our old sunny Pip, we do."

"Well, I miss him too. That's why I …" He hesitated for a moment, suspecting that his intentions, his plans, once spoken in the light of day over tea and cake, would seem like a particularly Tookish madness; then he spoke them anyway. "I'm going away, Sam. I want to leave the Shire and travel. I want to see that world of which Minas Tirith and Edoras are only a taste. I want to … to discover the names of all the stars and all the living things, and the whole history of Middle-earth and Over-heaven and of the Sundering Seas." I miss you, Gandalf.

Sam listened. "That's a tall order," he said.

"Too tall for a hobbit?" joked Pippin. "Perhaps so. Still, I'm taller than most."

"Your dad won't be happy."

"That is nothing new."

"What about Diamond?"

Pippin said nothing.

"Your son?"

Pippin laughed. "It will be better for him, I think …"

"To live a few months, or years, without you?"

"To live without seeing how much his mother despises me." His expression was ugly, and he knew it.

Sam said nothing.

"I'm not asking for your permission, Mayor Gamgee."

"No, you're not, Mr. Took," Sam replied in the same tone. "And I couldn't stop you if I tried."

Pippin realized that Sam was remembering Frodo. But the Mayor only took a sip of tea, steadfastly gazing west.

4.

His will indeed was set. Pippin made his arrangements as quickly and discreetly as he could. Within a week he had his affairs squared away, numerous courses charted, and packed the notebook in which he had been diligently recording every scrap of information he could find from the Smials' library-records of the kingdoms-in-exile and of lost Númenor. It was not only Merry who had learned to be a scholar.

He was packing when he felt a presence in the doorway. It was his wife.

Diamond gazed at him, still with that same expression that seemed to see him and find him exhausting in the same breath. He had endured that look too long. He preferred her resentment and her pride to this wintry absence of fellowship.

Now she spoke to him. "Your father is beside himself."

Pippin continued his chore. "He'll get over it."

"The whole town is gossiping."

"Really. About what, I wonder."

"They say you're running from scandal."

"Wonderful," Pippin exclaimed. "That means you can go to a solicitor and claim a divorce. I won't contest you. In fact, let me direct you to Folco Boffin, he's an excellent lawyer, does all our titles. He wrote our matrimonial paper, surely he can tear it up."

"Where shall I say my husband has gone?"

How cold she could sound sometimes. Pippin realized he was not a hobbit with limitless pity. He was not Frodo.

"Tell them whatever you wish," he told his wife. "As long as you remember me to my son."

He was startled to feel her hand upon his arm. He let her steer him around to face her.

"If you want him to know you," she told him without guile or heat, "come back to us after you're done."

He looked down at her hand, so pale and delicate, resting on the White Tree upon his surcoat. He gazed into her face, hoping to see a reason to stay. But he could read nothing in her eyes, nothing like what would have kept him there. He turned away, removing her hand from his breast, and she let him go.

"Be kind to my mother," he said. "Don't let my sisters bully you."

"I don't intend to."

Pippin nodded. "Di," he started to say. "I'm sorry."

"Oh Peregrin. No you're not."

It stung him. "I would have …" he began, but she was a stranger, and no explanation could be enough.

So Peregrin son of Paladin II, Knight of Gondor and Guard of the Citadel, forty-one years young, left the Great Smials of Tuckborough, riding South. He had a great many plans as to where he was going, but in his heart had not an idea if he would ever return.

He rode without pause, leaving the villages and farms of the Tookland behind, the Green Hills guarding his back like fading mountains in a lost fairy land. Through scented fields of sprouted sunflowers and newly planted pipeweed in acres upon acres he rode. He was making for the edge of the Shire at Sarn Ford; but at the Ford, he was brought up short by a figure barring his way, robed in green.

"Merry!" Pippin said, dismounting and coming up to his cousin. "What are you doing here? What's wrong?"

Merry glared at him. "I can't let you leave like this, Pip," he said.

Pippin groaned. "Why not? I explained everything to you already. I thought you understood! You, of all people …"

He stopped himself as a pair of hobbits behind Merry led a magnificent filly onto the road. Her coat and mane from muzzle to ear-tip and from withers to the last strand of her tossing tail, was a silvery, shimmering black. She was saddled and bridled with gear of black leather affixed with gleaming silver metalwork. A double stirrup explained how a hobbit could mount.

"You can't dare all those endless roads Sam mentioned on just a silver pony," said Merry with a grin.

"Merry," said Pippin, approaching the horse. "This is one of yours, isn't it?"

"I named her Swallow," said Merry, stroking the animal's neck and side. Pippin could see the shine in his cousin's eyes. "I raised her from a foal as a steed for you. Black and silver—I know how fond you are of your Guard livery."

Pippin was speechless. Merry handed him Swallow's reins. "She is yours, cousin. We're the only hobbits tall enough to ride a steed like her, and I have duties here." He stepped away, and tears glistened on his eyelashes. "She's a good horse, and I hope she'll prove capable on the journey ahead of you. She runs hard for long distances for the joy of it. She'll get you to Gondor at least, and in less than a month."

Pippin, overcome, seized his dearest friend in his arms, and hugged him for as long as he could. "Take care, old boy."

"I always do," Merry replied.

Merry's servants transferred Pippin's small pack from the pony to Swallow. Pippin climbed up the double stirrup with little difficulty. The world seemed larger from upon her back.

Merry looked smaller. Pippin reached down and took his cousin's hand in his. Memories leapt unbidden of another parting, ten years and more in the past, in what seemed to him was another lifetime, another Age of this world.

"Won't you come with me?" asked Pippin, not knowing himself if he jested.

Merry grinned. "This is your adventure, Pippin. You don't need me anymore." He paused. "You do have an idea where you're going, I hope?"

Pippin did. He closed his eyes, as if to say the word were to give in to all his dreams in one moment.

"South," he said to his cousin. "I'm going south, Merry."

Merry's eyes widened. "Harad?" he said.

Pippin shook his head. "Far Harad. Deserts, and jungles, and oliphaunts, and heavens know what else."

Fear, admixed with a happy envy, came to Merry's face. Pippin waited for his cousin to say something more, but no admonishment, or plea, came.

Only one request did Merry make. "Just come back again, all right?"

Pippin, uncertain, nodded. He didn't know if he would, but for Merry, he'd try.

He leaned to Swallow's ear and whispered, "Let's fly," and gave a small kick.

Swallow walked forward, began to canter, and then broke into a gallop, Pippin gripping her reins, onto the bridge over the ford, and out of the Shire at last. Behind him, he heard a horn sound long and broad, a blessing for a journey, and knew it was Merry.