A/N: Oh, happiness! Reviews! You don't know how that makes my day. Marigold, thank you very much for your kind comments and for the note about Sam's age. Of course, you're absolutely right, and I don't know how that fact fell out of my head. Needing a new brain, I guess. Anyway, I've fixed it and reposted now. P.N.Batgirl and eiluj, than you also--I truly appreciate the encouragement. EloraCooper4: no need to apologize for anything! You've been my most loyal reviewer, and I love your detailed comments.
On with the show!
Chapter 7: Two Meetings
Buckland - 1484 SR
Pippin is singing a very silly song as we walk along, one of those with what I always call a -folderol chorus, though I am not entirely certain whether the nonsense words belong to the song, or if Pip has merely put them in because he's forgotten the proper ones. It's not in my dear cousin to let such a thing stop him, and in a part of myself it takes me back to my youth, as if I am walking once more with Tom Bombadil. At any rate, my heart is much lightened this morning, after a good, long lie in and an excellent second breakfast. It's a fine thing to ramble in the Shire with the sun on one's face before the fading of the year.
I feel sorry that I left Pip sitting on his own so long yesterday, though he seems to have put his time to good use, as my grandchildren all were rather subdued this morning, causing me to suspect a surfeit of romping in my cousin's company. I do love to see their bright faces lined up along the table, though it amazes me rather how much they all resemble me, as if my face was the final mold for all future generations of Brandybucks. It makes me feel somehow that I will not be leaving the Shire after all.
I must see that when this book is closed, and I set down my pen, that a copy finds its way back to Brandy Hall. Magnificent I may not be, in truth, but it is in the nature of Hobbits that we wish to be remembered. Dear Strider will see to it, I think.
"Hurry up, slowcoach!" Pippin calls to me, so very quick still for all his ninety-four years, though a little rounder than he used to be. "The sooner we get there, the sooner we can eat!"
I can't help but laugh at him, at the way time has been entirely unable to dim his enthusiasms. So often I've wondered, *whatever would I have done without my Pip?* If that troll had fallen in only a slightly different direction, or a stray arrow found him when we drove Sharkey's ruffians (or should I say Saruman's?--no, I think I will not; he was not worthy of that name, at the end) from our home, if the Flux that swept the Shire in 1426 and took my little Floramonde had struck him only a little harder. Every day I ask the Valar, *When we travel, let us not be parted, when we come to our final rest, let me go ahead.*
"Oh, dear me, Merry!" Pippin exclaims. "You look like Old Rory when you wear that face." He grabs my hand, dragging me forcefully up the breast of the hill. "There now, we can see half of Buckland, and the mist over the Old Forest and a handful of lads and lasses on the millpond, and the Bucklebury Ferry being poled across." He dropped the picnic basket he'd been carrying quite carelessly to the ground, making me fear for the bottles inside. "I wonder who's coming to visit?--I can't make it out from here. How I do love this hill! Remember when what we could see from here seemed the scope of the entire world?"
"Very well," I reply, wrapping my arms round him from behind, my face just beside his, so that I see what he sees. We've stood this way so often since we were lads. "Aye, but it's a lovely morning, Pip."
"The loveliest," he answers, and we stand there a little, breathing in distant woodsmoke and the lighter perfume of the mist as the sun burns it away. "Where were you so late last night, Merry? I'd expected you for tea."
"I am very sorry to have kept you waiting--though I must say, the Post does reach Buckland, even if we are a strange and foreign land. Did you never think of writing to say you would come? I thought you'd be terribly occupied with the duties of the Thain."
"Oh, that," Pip laughs. "Faramir may have it. I think I'm quite done with Thaining now."
I can't help but laugh with him at the made-up word, but I know that half his lightness is put on for my benefit. He worked as hard as anyone, except perhaps dear Sam, to rebuild the Shire after the wars, and he's performed his duties all these many years with dignity and all the honest fairness of his brave and decent heart. But for all we've experienced, all that's come near to breaking me, Pippin has remained Pippin, always and forever a being of goodness and joy, my rock that I've clung to, when all the time I was thought to be the strong one.
"My Pip," I say, "Not even a troll could crush you!"
"No, not even a troll!" he laughs back, "Though it tried very hard at the time. But I won't allow you evade my question: where did you go?"
The truth was, I'd meant only to stop by the bonny green place where my Estella and little Floramonde and my mum and dad lie, only to stop and pay my respects after the day's business concluded, and perhaps talk to them a bit.
Mum would have understood best, I think, in her Tookish heart what I mean to do. And Floramonde, daughter of my own heart, would have loved Rohan, with its wild fields and the galloping horses. How fair she was, my little one, gentlest of all my children!
My dad would not have understood my leaving this last time, any more than he understood when I followed Frodo, but he would bless me still, I think, as he did then, and be glad, after all, that Buckland is left in good hands.
Estella was hardest to say goodbye to, as I crouched on my old knees beside where she lies, tidying the grass, picking off the drifted leaves. Every spring, flowers burst above her, first the crocuses in Solmath, then Rethe's daffodils and Astron's tulips. I know that Sariadoc and Esme-lass and Stella will see that brightness never fails.
I confess I wept many bitter tears over my dear one's last bed, and I hope that she will understand why I will not lie beside her, until we meet on that far shore, young and joyful and golden again, as we were when I saw her walking through the barley on Litheday, with daisies in her hair, the year after our return.
"I went to say goodbye to *them*," I say softly. Pip understands. His hand gently caresses my arms, now crossed over his chest.
"I've done that too," he confesses, "Said goodbye to mum and dad and Pearl. And the living ones too. Pervinca is very angry with me, but Pimmie understands." He pauses, the both of us watching a falcon rise overhead. "Was that a peregrine?" he asks.
"No," I answer, "It was a harrier, as you very well know. You're always looking for peregrines."
"Do you think they expected me to be fierce, when they named me? My mum and dad? Of course, there was no thought of Thainship then."
I remember Pip's naming-day, in a vague way, for he was born in a difficult time in my young life and some of those memories are more muddled than the ones before or since. "I think," I say, "That they thought it a handsome name, and they were running out of words that began with 'P.'"
For some reason, this makes Pippin laugh uproariously.
It's good to have Pip here with me, after all these years of to-ing and fro-ing from Buckland to Tuckborough and back again. We've had our responsibilities, both of us, and while we understood the value of what must be done, it's good to know now that for all the goodbyes that must be said to friends and family and home, there need be no more goodbyes between we two. When Pippin isn't here, I miss him. The day I watched him ride off on Shadowfax with Gandalf for Minas Tirith (the fifth of March that was, in the year of the third age 3019, or 5 Rethe 1419 in Shire Reckoning--I like to be precise about these things, a habit I picked up from Frodo) and the day I watched from the walls as my Pip rode off again to battle (less than a fortnight later, that was, though it seemed an entire age).were the days I came closest in my life to utter despair.
There is no life in me without my Pippin.
I hug him tighter then, perhaps too tight, for he wriggles a bit, grunting, "Oi! Mind the ribs, Mer! You're dreadfully strong for an old Hobbit."
I ignore that, mostly, but I do loosen my hold. "Do you know something else about this hill?" I ask. "It's where Frodo first met Gandalf."
"Is it?" Pip turns his head to stare quite hard at the gnarled old tree behind us, us if expecting an old man in grey to pop out of its shadows. "Is it really, now?"
*****************************************************************************
Bag End - 1389 SR
Second breakfast at Bag End, Frodo discovered, was almost as ample as First Breakfast, with toast and bacon and apple slices stewed with cinnamon and sugar, and perhaps a boiled egg if one felt like it. Being a bachelor, Bilbo rarely ate at the formal dining table unless he had guests, preferring the clean, polished oaken table tucked before the kitchen fire, convenient to the kettle and the range. Bilbo had dishes of fine pale-brown clay painted with intricate designs, and as he loved to cook and also to eat, the fare was quite equal to anything served at Brandy Hall.
Frodo had always admired Bilbo, and found his company quite agreeable, ever since he was a little lad, for Bilbo was full of songs and marvellous stories, and always quite ready to listen to Frodo's imaginings, a rare quality among Hobbits, since even the Tooks and Brandybucks tended somewhat toward the practical, and after a certain age did not spend much of their time thinking of fanciful things. Even his dear little Merry, though always excited to hear a new tale, had no understanding that Frodo made up the stories he told out of his own head. In fact, he'd once seen Merry searching his room quite diligently when he thought Frodo was out, on a quest for the book with all the wonderful stories.
"I wanted to look at the pictures," Merry had said.
The thought of his little cousin made Frodo hang his head over his tea and wonder what Merry might be up to at that moment. Having his own second breakfast, Frodo supposed, though at Bag End one rose later in the day, and one's meals were subsequently pushed forward. In fact, that morning (his first in his new home) it had been the grumbling of his stomach that awakened him, with the sun much higher in the sky than he was used to, rather than the tumult of a young cousin leaping onto his bed with claims that it was quite, quite late and time to start the day.
No, he remembered, most likely Merry would *not* be up and about at all. The picture of little Merry wrapped up snug on soft cushions in the back of The Red Swan's pony trap tugged at his heart. How still poor Merry had been, his face pale, his round cheeks hectic with fever. Frodo kissed his hot brow before the trap rolled away, and wished his young cousin good speed, but Merry's normally bright eyes were glazed and Frodo doubted he'd heard.
"Frodo, lad," Bilbo said to him, in his forthright yet comfortable way, "Don't distress yourself too much over the little lad. The Brandybucks are strong stock. I'd wager young Merry will pull through and be back terrorizing Brandy Hall before the week is through."
There was wisdom in that, Frodo knew. Through some special blessing of the Valar, he supposed, Merry had always been an unusually hearty lad, often with more energy that he knew what to do with. Although he'd suffered the usual childhood ailments of sniffles, sore throats and earaches, he always seemed to shake off in a day or so what would have taken another young Hobbit a week to recover from--as Frodo had good cause to know, from all the times he'd been confined to bed trying to recover from illnesses caught from his unstoppable small cousin. For all the numerous occassions Merry had fallen out of trees or into swift-moving water or down hills, he'd never taken more than a few cuts and scrapes, or at most a twisted ankle or wrist.
Frodo sighed, then glanced up into Bilbo's glad old face with its twinkling blue eyes and shock of grey-white curls. "Yes, Uncle Bilbo" (when he'd arrived the day before, his cousin had told him that now he was to live there, with Bilbo as his guardian, he might as well call him by that name--since though he was too old to be a father, the title of uncle suited him nicely). "Yes, it's just..." Try as he might, Frodo couldn't put what he felt into words. After his parents drowned, but before Merry's birth he had lived in a world of dreariness and sadness, without color, without light, and with only the adventures of his imaginings for company, for he'd no cousins of his own age at Brandy Hall, and the local lads and lasses who were not his relations had taken either to shunning or tormenting him, as a stronger animal will prey upon a weaker. It wasn't even that they meant to be cruel, it was that, somehow, his sadness and his silences offended them, and because of this he'd been nearly always alone, and often near despair. His Uncle Rory and Auntie Menegilda understood him very little, and it wasn't until he'd discovered in his Cousin Esme a similar well of sorrow that he'd enjoyed the comfort of any confidant.
And still, talking of sorrow was not the same as feeling joy, and soon enough his Cousin had been confined to her bed, in hopes, the healers said, of keeping yet another child of hers from slipping away.
He still remembered the murmurs and the whispers, the shaking of heads. He'd been absolutely convinced that this little lad or lass would be lost too, and the fellowship he'd newly forged with his older cousin would be broken upon the rocks of a grief too great for her to bear. They'd spent long hours together, the two of them, reading, talking, even merely gazing out the windows, Esme's hands still and silent, for although the well-meaning aunties and cousins of the Hall brought her bits of cut-out fabrics, threads and buttons and wools to make clothes for the expected little one, Esmeralda would not put her fingers to them.
"Why?" Frodo had asked her, stroking a delicate soft cotton with his fingertip, but Esme's green Took eyes stared back at him fiercely, and he'd known well enough--his cousin did not expect there to be a child to dress in those tiny clothes.
As she reached her seventh month, her belly mounded like the moon beneath the bedclothes, Esme began to sew upon one little dress, and one little dress alone. Frodo watched her closely then, his cousin's slender, clever fingers taking a thousand tiny stitches, tucking and pleating the minute gown. The garment constructed, she began to stitch fancy work upon the breast and sleeves and hem. He'd seen such little dresses on babies before, worn on their naming-days and then laid carefully away.
It made him glad, the thought that Esme believed her little lad or lass would have a name, and be looked upon by family and friends, loved and cuddled and blessed. And then he'd noticed the terrible grief upon his cousin's face as she stitched so carefully.
She wasn't making the gown for her baby's naming, but for its burying day.
Seeing that, he'd run out of her room, down the corridor and out the Western door. The cold, raw air burned his face for the weather was unseasonably chill, even for late in Winterfilth, and all the world seemed tired, grey and sad, as if it had been weeping a very long time.
It had been one year today, he realized, since he'd met Cousin Esme beneath the Willow by the riverside, and they'd planned to run away together. Now Frodo wished he had gone after all. That he was living amongst the Elves and would never have to be with Hobbits anymore.
He ran until he'd reached the tallest hill in Buckland, panting madly and with a tearing stitch in his side. It seemed impossible that the world should be so cruel as to take a little lad's parents, or a sweet lady's children. Where were the Valar who were meant to watch over them all?
Throwing back his head, Frodo shrieked into the unfeeling air, "You can't have him, you can't have him! He's ours, and we need him!" A strange feeling twisted his heart, half fear at his own temerity as so addressing the guardians of the world, half the grief of a sad young Hobbit who desperately wanted a friend. "If you let us have him," he whispered, "I'll do anything. Anything you ever ask of me, even if I have to leave the Shire and travel to the ends of the earth. Even if I must suffer and die. We're made for happiness here, and I seem to have lost all of mine."
Only then did Frodo notice an old man in a grey robe, sitting with legs stretched out before him and his back against the bole of a leafless tree. The old man puffed at long-stemmed Hobbit pipe, gazing up at him thoughtfully with blue-grey eyes that were bright and faded all at once.
Frodo stiffened. He'd seen dwarves a time or two, visiting his Uncle Rory, and once thought he'd glimpsed a band of elves, far in the distance, wreathed in flowing golden light. This, however, was the first Big Person he'd ever seen, and his immediate instinct was to take flight and hide himself with all the cleverness of his kind.
'No, stay my little lad. Sit beside me," the old man said, touching the drifted leaves by his side.
Frodo moved cautiously, not sure if he should trust this being who was, after all, so very, very large, and was rather dirty and unkempt, and carried a sturdy staff. Yet, something compelled him, and he sat where the old man indicated.
The Big Person blew a smoke ring that wasn't a ring, but instead a tree, then one that looked like a dragon and flapped its wings. "You," the old man said, "Are not a Brandybuck."
"I'm half Brandybuck," Frodo answered, surprised by his boldness. "I live at the Hall. And...and...they know I'm out here."
"Do they?" the old man answered. "Curious." His next smoke ring resembled a mountain. "I'd thought you'd run out all alone and very unquiet in your mind, without telling a soul your destination. You are a Baggins, or I'll eat my hat."
As this item of clothing was very tall, very pointed and quite thick and felty, Frodo thought the old man had good cause to be glad his statement was correct.
"I am a Baggins," he answered truthfully, giving the little bow his mum had taught him when he was only a small lad. "Frodo Baggins, at your service and...er...your family's." He said the last bit doubtfully, not sure that such a being would stand possessed of such a mundane thing as a family.
"Ah, Frodo! Son of Drogo Baggins and the lovely Primula Brandybuck."
"They're dead," Frodo blurted--the first time he had ever said such a thing. The bald truth made him feel hollow and weak.
"Yes, dear boy, I know," the old man answered, his eyes shining with kindness. "And a very hard loss to bear indeed."
Frodo nodded with a lump in his throat.
"I am Gandalf, Frodo Baggins," the old man said. "I am a wizard."
"Gandalf!" Frodo exclaimed. "Not the Gandalf of Cousin Bilbo's stories, who tricked the trolls and called eagles and fought Goblins and Wargs!"
"Yes, indeed," the wizard replied, bowing slightly from the waist with one hand over his heart. "One and the same."
"Oh!" Frodo breathed. He'd never thought to meet a wizard of any sort, much less the one who'd pushed his older cousin out onto his adventures.
"Now, lad, who were you calling to so loudly now, waking an old man from his nap?"
Frodo hung his head, not wanting to say. He felt foolish and ashamed. "No one," he muttered.
"Are the Valar no one?" Gandalf asked. "Do you call the guardians of the world no one? That was who you were petitioning, was it not?"
Frodo scuffed with his bare toes in the damp earth. "Yes," he answered, in a small voice.
"They take such vows seriously, you know, my lad. Are you truly prepared to give what you have offered--not now, while you are so young, but at some time in your life? What is it you fear losing that you'd make such a promise?"
Frodo looked up, finally daring to meet the wizard's bright, inquiring eyes. "Cousin Esme's so afraid her baby's going to die," he said. "And I...I'm afraid too. I'm so lonely Gandalf. I should like very much to have a little cousin who would be my friend."
"Ah," Gandalf said, "So that is it, is it?"
"I suppose that's not a very great thing," Frodo answered. "Not to them."
"I think their answer to that question might surprise you, young Frodo Baggins, " the wizard said, his lined and weathered face radiant with kindness. "And I hope, as well, that you are never called to fulfill your promise, but live out your life here in the Shire in great happiness and peace."
Frodo nodded; that was a good thing to hope.
"He will be called Merry," the old man said softly. "Meriadoc Brandybuck. He will have the Brandybuck eyes and a rascal's smile and if you are ever called out to the ends of the earth, he will go with you gladly. Be sure you take those, Frodo, who will go with you gladly." Gandalf reached up, taking Frodo's small hand in his large, gnarled one, warming his chilled fingers. "Now, go back inside my lad, and tell your poor cousin to be of good cheer, for she will have her heart's desire and learn to laugh again. Tell her Gandalf says it will be so."
And Frodo ran back to the Hall, fast as his legs could carry him, bursting once more through the Western door, along the corridor and into his Cousin Esme's chamber.
"Gandalf says," he panted, "that your baby will be born, and will be a little lad, and he will grow up and be my friend. Gandalf says!"
Esme put down her embroidery, then took it up again, the little dress crumpled in her hands so that she pricked her finger on her needle and blood spotted the small gown. "Gandalf says so?" she breathed. "How can this be?" Her face grew pale, then brightened again and the brightness returned also to her eyes. "Saradoc!" she called aloud. "Saradoc, come listen to what Frodo says."
On Yule Eve, that year, Frodo was sent to Cousin Merimac's chambers, to sleep in little Berilac's room. Cousin Beryl, Merimac's wife, helped him hang his Yule hood on the end of his bed, tucked her small son in tighter and wished Frodo good night.
"Will the Grandfather know where to leave my things?" Frodo asked her, as she moved to blow out the light--even though he suspected that he'd grown nearly too old to believe in the Grandfather anymore, and suspected that the sweets and nuts and little toys that appeared each year in his hood had perhaps more to do with the uncles and aunties and grown cousins of Brandy Hall. Still, it was nice, on this night at least, to believe. He felt heavy and sleepy with good Yule food and the dancing and games, and quite ready to take for granted a number of things.
"He will know, Frodo dear," Beryl answered. "And perhaps, by morning, there'll be some other lovely thing for you, as well."
Frodo lay snug beneath his quilt, listening to small Berilac's snores and wondering what his surprise might be. Something lovely, Beryl had said. A new book? A game? Some nice inks with which to draw?
Very early, before first light, Cousin Saradoc woke him with a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Frodo, lad, would you like to see?"
"See what, cousin?" Frodo asked sleepily, his eyes heavy in his head as stones.
Saradoc laid a finger on his lips and lifted him out of bed, helping Frodo to put on his dressing gown. Silently as only Hobbits can, they tip-toed from Merimac's rooms and along the corridor to where he and Saradoc and Esme lived. His cousin's eyes, Frodo noticed, were very red, perhaps with tears, but his smile stretched so broadly it threatened to split his face.
"In here, lad," he said, still whispering, as he ushered Frodo into the great bedroom.
Esme lay propped up on many pillows, covered over with a quilt Frodo had not seen before. She'd circles under her eyes, and her curls were flat and damp, but she glowed with a joy Frodo had never seen before on his cousin's face. He began to weep a little because it reminded him of his mum's face when she was very proud of him.
"Lift him up, Sari," Esme said, in a tired but joyful voice, and when his cousin's strong hands had deposited Frodo on the empty side of the bed, he saw that Esmeralda held a small something in her arms.
Gently, she unfolded the soft, light blankets that covered her small bundle, and Frodo saw before him the most perfect little Hobbit lad he'd ever beheld.
"He's so new!" he breathed, brushing a tiny clenched fist with his fingertip. The baby's hand opened, and to Frodo's great surprise clutched onto him quite tightly. With his other hand, he brushed the little lad's plump small legs, his rounded belly with the odd little bit of string that was the cord, the dimpled arms. The baby's mouth opened and he made a happy, hungry squawking sound.
"Very new," Esme agreed, kissing the honey-colored fuzz at the top of the baby's head--he'd more honeyish fuzz on his tiny toes, Frodo was amazed to observe. He gave another demanding squawk, little turned-up nose wrinkling and his eyes clenched up as if he meant to cry, but it seemed that he was laughing instead.
"Merry!" Frodo said, suddenly unable to do anything but grin. "Happy Yule, Merry!" He couldn't help but bounce a bit on the mattress, but not too roughly, because he didn't wish to hurt his cousin.
"Frodo," Saradoc said, laughing now too. "How did you know the baby's name?"
"Well," Frodo answered, perplexed, "What else could he be called?