DISCLAIMER: Not mine, but I can pretend Sam is!

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"But where are we going?" Frodo asked as he followed Sutta Hooe through the labyrinthian corridors of her home. It grew warmer and more fragrant the deeper they plunged into the House's depths. "And just how big is this place anyway?"

Sutta Hooe did not turn her head or break her smooth stride as she answered him. "We are going to my...workplace, you could call it, Master Frodo. We all have much work to do."

Sam stopped as they came to the top of a flight of twisting stairs that spiraled down into darkness. "Are we going underground?" he asked with a quiver in his voice. He hated going under good solid earth; it reminded him too much of Moria.

"No," answered Sutta Hooe as she began to descend the flight. Her dark gown swished away layers of dust from the stairs. "We are still above ground."

Frodo shook his head, eyes wide with disbelief. "That's impossible! Forgive me, lady, but your house can't be that big...I mean, it didn't look that big when we were outside it."

"Ah!" said Sutta Hooe as she turned around with a mysterious smile on her face. "My House may not look large, Master Frodo...but it is bigger inside than it is outside. Its whole is greater than the sum of its parts." As if in response to Frodo's question, the hum from the wall outside, always present, grew louder and higher in pitch. With another smile directed at the slack-jawed hobbits, she turned and continued to descend the stairs.

Still reeling from the mind-boggling implications of what she had just said, Frodo and Sam stumbled after her down the steps. They traveled down into a warm, moist darkness, lit infrequently by torches that burned red and with no smoke. The air was heavy and laden with spices, and like the Tower of Healing in Siobhangé, the walls seemed to whisper to themselves as the trio passed through the strange land of stone and scent.

Sam tried to count the steps, but lost count around two thousand five hundred. After that, there was nothing to keep his mind from focusing on the soft sounds coming from the walls around him. They seemed to be speaking in a tongue he knew, and if only they were a little louder he could catch what they were saying, and then he would know all the secrets of the world...oh, how he wanted to know...

He crashed into Frodo's back. Without him realizing it, Sutta Hooe and Frodo had reached the end of the stairs and were now facing a heavy grey door. It was carved with many ancient runes that had a distinctly fey look to them, and Sam thought he caught a glimpse of some he recognized before Sutta Hooe had raised a hand to the door and it melted away into the floor.

Beyond the door was a sheet of steaming, fragrant water. It totally blocked their passage, but Sutta Hooe merely passed through it without a flinch. Frodo and Sam glanced at each other nervously, then squared their shoulders and walked in.

To their surprise, they felt nothing but a gentle breath of wind against their faces, and in an instant they were with a large, brightly-lit, circular room. In the exact center of the chamber, Merry and Pippin, aged faces relaxed in sleep, lay on a high dais. Kerra and Gandalf were already there, on opposite points of the platform, hands clasped before them and eyes closed.

"What is this?" asked Frodo breathlessly. "What is happening?"

"Hush!" said Sutta Hooe. "No more words. Be still." Silently, she directed them to stand at two opposite points of the dais. She herself took up a place at the
very top, and Sam slowly noticed that the platform was cut into a vague star shape.

What new magic is this? he thought. What are we doing to poor Pip and Merry?

His question was soon answered as Sutta Hooe drew a phial of an amber colored liquid from within the depths of her robes. She uncorked it, and whispering strange words in a forgotten tongue, she threw the fluid over Merry and Pippin.

The effect was almost immediate. The light within the room went out, and a smell of burning filled the air. Sam nearly choked, both with repulsion and with fear, and could barely follow Sutta Hooe's directions when he heard her voice telling them to place their hands upon the platform.

When he had done so, the platform turned icy cold under his hands. Sam tried to pull his hands away, but they were held fast to the cold wood. The table thrummed under his hands, and he was sure that if all around him was not black already his vision would be going dark and blurry. Sutta Hooe was chanting something wild and twisting at the head of the table, and the chant suddenly turned itself inside out and into a song that Gandalf and Kerra soon joined. Counterpoint and melody and basso continuo melded together, seeking to draw something out of Sam that he did not know he had possessed, and frighteningly he found his own voice joining the feral choir in the darkness.

Something was building on the bed, something was growing and changing and shaping and flowing and he was afraid, but not with a fear like the one with which he had looked upon Mordor. This was a deeper fear he had forgotten; the power of what he himself could be capable of when darkness crept upon him and knocked upon the door of his heart.

Before he could follow that thought through to its conclusion, the song had ended and all that could be heard was a soft sobbing coming from the head of the table. The light was growing brighter in the dark again, and Sam realized with a jolt that the light had never gone out; the darkness had only grown stronger and swallowed it up.

Sutta Hooe was on her knees, arms wrapped around her body as she wept. Kerra and Gandalf hurried to her side, faces exhausted and concerned.

"What happened?" asked Gandalf. His voice was weak and very, very tired.

Sutta Hooe managed to gasp out a few words through her tears. "She nearly saw me...she tried to catch me! Oh, Lady help me!" Her eyes were large and frightened, and her voice was not her own: it belonged to--

"Anemosi!" yelled Sam, and ran forward to Sutta Hooe. He met her eyes and nearly cried out when he saw that they were no longer deep and black as night, but clear and shining as mithril. "Anemosi! It's Sam!"

"Sam!" It was terrifying, hearing Anemosi's voice come from Sutta Hooe's mouth. "Sam! She's hunting! She nearly broke me! Oh Sam, hurry! We can't keep hiding forever---" Her voice was abruptly cut off as Sutta Hooe fell to the floor. All was silence for a moment, then a moan from the dais made Frodo shout out.

"By Elbereth, what has happened here?"

Pippin and Merry were waking up, but it was not the Merry and Pippin that had first greeted Sam and Frodo at the door of Rainwall House. It was the Merry and Pippin of the sweet, long past days of the Shire.

Kerra gasped. "It worked! Sutta Hooe, it worked!" She turned back to Sutta Hooe, who had been lifted to her feet, shaking and still weeping, by Gandalf.

Gandalf shook his head. "It was a great risk, Lady Kerra. We have succeeded, yes, but you see what happened."

"Anemosi spoke through her!" screamed Sam in desperation. "She's still alive!"

Sutta Hooe's eye's flicked up to meet his. "Yes, she did, Master Samwise, but it is not the good tiding you think it is. During this working," she gestured
towards the dais, where Merry and Pippin, looking young and extremely confused at being so, were blinking at her, "I was open to not only Anemosi, but Lanal for just a moment. I do not know if Lanal is conscious of my presence yet, but now she has an inkling. She left me out of her reckoning for too long; after this, she can no longer afford to do so. Rainwall itself shall come under attack." She sighed and moved unsteadily away from Gandalf's support.

"Masters Meriadoc and Peregrin, come forward please." They clambered off the dais with an agility they had not possessed for years, and stood before her, looking a little nervous, but still cheerful and proud.

"I have given you a great gift, little masters," she began softly. "The five of us have. You have regained, for a time, the strength and vigor of your youth. Your obstinate good natures, I fear, you have also retained. You seem to have kept them over the years, and do not seem inclined to lose them at any time." She smiled gently at them, and they grinned back, relieved they couldn't be punished for being happy all the time.

"However, this transformation depends on several factors. This magic is very old, and requires a sacrifice from each of its workers. If any harm should come to any of the five here that joined in this spell-working, you shall suffer an echo of that pain. And if they fall in battle, or to Lanal's power, you shall feel that as well. This change is not permanent, and can be undone if enough of the givers fall. It will give you strength for the task ahead of you, but it does not grant immortality. It is a gift, and may be taken from you at any time. Guard it closely, and use it well."

They nodded solemnly, hardly daring to meet her eyes. With an air unrivaled by any queen before or since, Sutta Hooe gathered her dark gown around her body, and, looking taller and sadder than ever, turned and left the room.