Chapter 6: Missing
Green Hill Country - 1389 SR
Dawn came as a lightening in the green ceiling of leaves over Merry's head, but the young Hobbit scarcely noticed. Every part of himself was given to making the air go in and out of his tired lungs, in making his aching legs climb and climb over rocky, branch-strewn ground, through creepers and underbrush and vines. Weariness overwhelmed him to the point that he scarcely noticed his small feet bleeding or the lightness in his head. He'd stopped singing hours since, or playing small games to occupy his mind and allay his fear. The only thought left to him was, *Frodo, Frodo, Frodo.*
Now and then he felt rather than saw other Hobbits, and during those times would bury himself deeply in a thicket or hollow until the danger had passed him by. He crossed a big road just as the shadows had begun to lengthen, darting quickly as he could into the cover of trees on the far side.
When his family came to Tuckborough to visit Merry's Took cousins, they always left Buckland with the sun at their backs, stopped to rest when it stood overhead, and traveled on again with the sun in their faces. That was what he needed to do now, Merry realized--walk with the sun in his eyes until it sank away, then try not to get turned around in the dark. He knew it would be safest to keep the road in sight, so as not to get lost, but that would also make it more likely that he'd be caught.
Merry plunged deeper into the wood. He mustn't get caught. He mustn't. Not after coming so far. His legs protested against taking one single step more, but he would not let them stop him, even though he'd begun to lurch and stagger as he walked. His ears felt hot, and his cheeks, and thin lines of sweat ran down his backbone, even though his arms and legs were icy-cold. It was only when he tripped on a net of brambles and wasn't able to push himself up again that he knew he could not go on.
Neither could he lie there on the ground, where anyone who happened by might find him. He crawled through the underbrush until his shoulder struck against the ancient, half-decayed bulk of some fallen forest giant and his groping hands located a small burrow of some sort, large enough for Merry to creep inside and curl up in--which he did, knees to his chest and cloak wrapped round as much of his body as it would cover. The floor was sandy and Merry had gone far past the point of minding its slight dampness. Head pillowed on his arms, hood pulled over his face, he slept.
After a long while he woke, desperately thirsty. Merry brought out his small water bottle and drank until it was empty, running his still-dry tongue around the metal rim to catch the last drops of moisture he could find. His pack still contained one apple, some cheese and a good part of the loaf of bread. Merry looked at the food a long while, but it no longer seemed to appeal. The one bite of cheese he forced into his mouth tasted rotted, and the dry bread only made him cough. With his little knife he cut a slice of the apple, chewing and sucking on the fruit until the last of the flavor had gone--but he could not seem to get his throat to swallow the pulp.
All he wanted was water, and to find it he would have to leave his hole, no matter how he wished to lie curled in the little burrow until the heaviness in his head and the aches of his body went away. Clutching the empty bottle, he climbed out into the open, glancing around cautiously to make sure of his safety. Birds and squirrels were there with him, but not a Hobbit to be seen. Merry shut his eyes, waiting for his sense of direction to return, feeling the wind on his cheek and the direction of the sun on his face.
When he was sure of himself as he could possibly be, Merry set off. The rolling hills grew no less steep, and the woods and copses no less dense. He'd walked for hours, he felt, before he smelled the kind of plants that grow near water, and then it was only a small pond, scarcely more than a puddle, bubbling up between two gnarled roots. Merry flung himself down on his belly to drink, sucking up the cold liquid until his stomach felt swollen. He filled his little bottle, wishing he'd thought to carry a spare, knowing he hadn't thought enough of how hard this journey would be. He hoped his mum didn't miss him too much (not as much, at least, as Merry missed her) and more than half of him wished his dad would come striding suddenly through the forest, scoop him up and carry him home again.
Thinking of his mum and dad, Merry could not hold in his tears, and he wept long and hard, until his head ached and his body felt so wrung out all he could do was lie down on the pond's bank and sleep again.
When he woke, thick night had fallen and his sense of direction had failed altogether. His limbs had gone so cold he could hardly feel them, and he knew, suddenly, that if he did not get moving he would die here, in this deep wood, and him mum and dad and Frodo would perhaps never know what had become of him. He began to walk again.
A different dawn arrived as the wood at last began to thin. Merry could not have said which dawn it was, how many had gone by since he left his home. The day promised to be the warmest so far, and Merry soon felt too hot, so much so that he removed his cloak and coat to relieve the worst of the heat. He came out the edge of the forest into a thin, grey light.
It did his heart so much good to see open ground again that Merry began to weep, limping as fast as he could out into the cornfields that stretched before him, so glad to be out of the forest that for a moment he paid no heed to any possibility of danger either before or behind. It was then that a dusty, rustling, powerful something swept down upon him, knocking Merry off his feet at the same moment an unimaginable pain tore through his left shoulder.
Merry screamed, struggling wildly, the air thunderous above him, his toes now barely brushing the tops of the tall corn. The thing that held him, that hurt his shoulder so badly, was clawed and hooked, and Merry at first thought he'd somehow been captured by a dragon, but when he looked up in his struggles he saw dense, barred feathers, scaled legs, a yellow eye.
His heart stopped with terror. Dragons might be objects of fear in songs and tails, but every young Hobbit knew the things of which he should truly be wary: pikes in the Brandywine, foxes, badgers and bears in the woods, and in the sky...the larger hawks and owls.
He hadn't watched, he hadn't been careful, and now he'd been caught, dragged upward by the owl's powerful wings.
With his free hand, Merry reached up, beating at the leg that held him, even as the claws dug more deeply into his flesh. The owl shrieked at him, its flight dipped and side-slipped with his struggles, the cornstalks beat at his dangling legs.
At last, Merry caught hold of the leg, pushing his body away from it with all his might, despite how the cruel claws tore his small shoulder. The owl screamed again, jealous of its prey, but at last he was dangling free. Utterly unable to hold on any longer, Merry fell.
He lay for a long while on the dusty soil between the rows, his breath harsh with terror, his body trembling from head to toe. Why hadn't he thought of owls? Why hadn't he thought of anything? His mum would be so frightened, thinking what might have become of him, and his dad too. Perhaps they'd even written to Cousin Bilbo, and to Uncle Dinny and Auntie Egg in Tuckborough.
Merry's tears of terror gave way to those of bitter regret. Much as he loved Frodo, what he'd done was foolish and wrong, and could only have caused his family dreadful pain.
Eventually, Merry picked himself up, cradling his injured left arm tenderly. Red soaked the front of his shirt, but Merry tried not to look. Seeing so much of his own blood in one place made him feel dizzy and sick. His mouth and fingers and toes had gone numb and his head hummed.
Worst of all, he'd no idea at all where he was, or how many leagues lay between him and his destination. Blindly he chose a direction and began to walk. To his surprise, when the cornfield ended, there was a road, a smallish dirt track but a road nonetheless, and not very far at all along the road at all lay the tall, carved pillar of the Three Farthing Stone.
Merry sat down suddenly on the dusty track. The Three Farthing Stone! The meant he'd come almost to Bywater, and from there it was no distance at all to Hobbiton.
Merry shrugged out of his pack, which no longer contained anything he wanted and hurt his sore shoulder besides, and began to run along the track. The Stone was not quite as near as he'd thought when he first glimpsed it, but Merry came nigh within what he guessed was an hour and laid his hot, dusty cheek against the cool, rough surface.
Despite his pain and weariness, however, Merry would not allow himself more than a brief rest, not when he'd come so close to his goal. He quickly found his way to the post road, his small feet pattering on the paving as he moved on in the shuffling gait that was the closest he could achieve to his normal all-out run.
Soon he began to encounter other Hobbits traveling the road, and was forced to waste much time diving into tall grass, or gutters, or behind trees, so that night had nearly fallen by the time he finally staggered up the Hill and so to Bag End. His sight had filled up with a fog of pain, tears and weariness, and had the door to Bilbo's home been a duller green, he might not have found his way there at all, but gone stumbling on into the deep of night.
Merry could not use his left hand, but he struggled to reach the knocker and let it fall, hearing the thud echo deep inside Bag End. He waited then, telling himself he'd see Frodo, any moment now he would see Frodo, and everything would turn right again.
But no answer came to his knock, even when he dropped the knocker a second time, and a third. He'd been raised to know it was extremely bad manners to enter someone's home without an invitation, and Frodo and Bilbo would surely be home soon, wouldn't they? Perhaps he'd even passed them on the Bywater Road one of the times he'd hidden himself--he knew Bilbo to be fond of The Green Dragon Inn.
Merry sat down on the doorstop to wait, but he was too weary to sit up long. Lying on the doorstop was hard and cold, and in the midst of his many discomforts, the young Hobbit could not bear it. * Perhaps Cousin Bilbo will not mind so very much if I go inside,* Merry thought, putting his hand on the shiny brass knob. *Not if I don't touch or break anything.*
But when he tried to raised his hands to the knob, his left arm would not lift at all, or even move, and his right hand did not have the strength to turn the knob on its own. Weeping with frustration, Merry dropped once more to the stoop, bending his small head with its snarled, dirty curls down over his knees. All he'd wanted was Frodo, to feel Frodo's arms around him--how could his cousin not be here when he needed him so badly?
Merry picked himself up again, wishing more than ever that he'd never left home. His stomach burned and ached with hunger, and every part of him trembled, hurting his injured shoulder. Sadly, he shuffled round Bag End to the garden. At least it was peaceful there, and the late-blooming flowers smelled sweet. Merry laid himself down on a little wooden bench , tucking his cloak around himself as best he could with only one arm. Curled up beneath this small warmth, he slept.
In the night, his slumbers thickened, filling with terrible dreams of swooping owls. Merry lay shivering, not really awake or asleep, pained and weary beyond anything he had ever experienced, and angry with himself in some distant part of his mind. He'd set out to find his Frodo, and yet he doubted his quest. He'd let his suffering make him believe his goal wasn't worthy, and maybe he hadn't deserved to find Frodo after all. Maybe he hadn't even reached Bag End at all, but still lay in the dark of the forest, dreaming of all he desired.
Why was he so hot and cold at the same time, and why did his shoulder ache so?
He woke when a Hobbit hand touched his cheek and gazed into gray eyes too near the earth to belong to a grown up. In fact, when Merry looked closer, they appeared to belong to a lad a little older than himself, about Berilac's age--his face was a bit rounder than Merry's and yet a bit less babyish, his hands were bigger and he appeared to be taller.
"Lie still now," the lad told him softly, in the accents of Hobbiton. "You just lie still there, while I fetch Mr. Bilbo."
Merry's eyes slipped shut again. It would all be over now. All the badness would end. "Frodo," he called, in a voice so small and hoarse it could hardly be heard. "Frodo, please come to me."
He listened to the sounds of running, Hobbit feet slapping the hard-packed paths, then the familiar, so-beloved hand was stroking his brow, pushing Merry's tangled curls out of his face.. "Oh, Merry, Merry!" he cried. "What have you done, you bad little Hobbit?"
Merry made a small sound, but could not speak. Frodo's arms were catching him up, holding him with a tightness that was agony to his injured shoulder, but Merry did not care. No pain was too high a price to feel Frodo's arms around him again. He buried his face in Frodo's shirt and waistcoat, snuggling in as he had since he was very young, rubbing his nose on the soft fabrics. Frodo did not smell the way he usually did. He smelled of forest and earth, and that confused Merry--wasn't this Hobbit holding him his cousin after all?
Merry pushed away, lifting his face. Yes, there was Frodo's chin and Frodo's dark curls and his blue, blue eyes, but the whites of those eyes were reddened, as if he'd not slept, or been weeping, and indeed the tears were pouring down Frodo's cheeks.
This perplexed Merry. What was Frodo crying for? They were together now.
And then it struck him: Frodo had called him bad. His Frodo thought he was bad. Merry's chin trembled and tears flooded his own blue eyes. "Please love me, Frodo," he pleaded in his tiny rasp of a voice. "Please love me still. It's been so hard to reach you."
Frodo held him tighter still, his fingers clawed into the back of Merry's waistcoat. "Love you, Merry? How can you say that?"
*Oh*, Merry thought. He'd never pictured this, that all his pain and effort would only push his cousin further away and make Frodo not love him anymore. His world spun out of all reason, and his heart broke with a terrible sound that Merry was sure all of Hobbiton must hear. The all of a sudden he could not hold his head up, or keep his eyes directed ahead, or do anything but sink into a deep, dark place.
A small body lay in the bed beside Merry, soft and heavy and warm. Honey-brown curls nearly the same shade as his own straggled over the pillow.
*Oh, so it's my new cousin!* Merry thought. *And he is a lad after all! How has he grown so big, so soon?*
Something in that didn't make sense, and so Merry examined the notion more carefully. His cousin could not be born yet, much less grown bigger than him. And this, he remembered suddenly, was not the Great Smials, but Bag End. He recalled, too, the things Frodo had said to him: that he was bad and unworthy of love. His broken heart ached in his chest.
Merry moved carefully, wondering if he could sit up, but his own body felt heavy, and terribly weak. His left arm seemed to be tied fast against his stomach, indeed, the tight bandages ran all the way up to his shoulder, as well as across his chest, hurting him badly. Merry set to work with his teeth and the deft small fingers of his right hand, worrying the knots until they began to loosen.
But the little Hobbit beside him sat up suddenly, caught hold of his hand and held it tight. "Oh, no, Master Merry, you mustn't! Mr. Bilbo says you'll hurt your poor shoulder if you fuss with those, and I was put to watch you while Mr. Frodo slept."
Merry studied the lad's broad, pleasant face, which looked very kind, and more than a little worried. If he were to undo his bandages he might cause this young Hobbit trouble, and that would be an act unworthy of a future Master's son. He gave a small nod.
The lad set Merry's hand tenderly by his side, giving a small pat for good measure. "Did you really walk all the way from Buckland like they say?" His brow furrowed, as if he could not comprehend such a distance. "And you only a little 'un."
"I'm seven," Merry told him, in the same small, raspy voice that seemed the only thing left of his normal one. "Or almost. I'll be seven on First Yule."
"Well, they do say Yule babies are born lucky." The young Hobbit's eyes widened. "And as my da told me, 'Samwise, I'd say Young Master Merry is more than proof of that.'"
Samwise? Merry thought. What an odd name! He tried it his mouth, feeling the soft middle and the little hisses at beginning and end on his tongue.
"Well, *Sam*, that is," the young Hobbit said, "My da works Mr. Bilbo's garden."
Merry did not feel any superiority of position. Mostly, he felt only the sadness that this Samwise would see Frodo every day, and he would not, for he possessed no illusions that he wouldn't soon be sent home.
And indeed, he soon heard him own mum's rapid footsteps on the floors of Bag End, and then she was bursting into his room. "Merry! Oh, my Merry!" she cried, bitter tears already flowing from her moss-green Took eyes. Bilbo trailed behind her, and the look he gave Merry was stern. Merry himself felt his face get hotter than ever, because his poor dear mum had gone terribly pale, and her eyes were swollen not only with the weight of recent tears, but with the tears of many days. Her hands trembled, trying to touch every inch of him, and then her knees were folding. Bilbo and young Sam pushed a chair in behind her before Esme could fall to the floor. Her face pressed against the edge of the bed and her hands clutched so hard on Merry's unbandaged arm the fingers bit into his skin.
Bilbo left momentarily, returning with a small glass that he set to Esme's lips. "Drink, my dear," he told her kindly. "Your little one's safe now. You've nothing to fear."
But his mum's eyes were full of shadows, Merry saw, shadows he had put there. And somehow he knew all the sorrys he could say in the whole of his lifetime would not be enough to take them away again.