ff.net hates me, I swear—I just discovered that it cut off the last page of this chapter. Why? Who knows. Let's try this again, shall we?
Chapter 11: She Walks Through the Fair
Buckland, 1484 SR
Ambling home from the hill with Pip by my side, I've been thinking of a Litheday, oh so very long ago now. The past is with me always, but the sadness that caught hold and shook me so roughly yestereve has quite dispersed, driven off by my cousin's cheerful company and the sweetness of memory (and, I suppose--though I would not say so much to Pippin--by the hope of what comes after all this, when the grey curtain over this world parts).
I would not say it, for if anything saddens my dear Pip it would be such words, and today life has sweetness and savor, which makes me in no hurry to rush away.
"Gather up all the moments of sweetness," my mum once said to me. "Gather them up like berries, Merry, and make something lovely of them."
I smile, remembering that: a little basket half empty; my fingers and mouth stained purple with juice, so that I could not be made tidy again without a good, brisk wash and an entire change of clothes.
Then I glance over at Pip and see he, too, is remembering, perhaps that same Litheday as well, but that his eyes are wet.
"Pip?" I say.
"Let's go at once," he blurts out suddenly, with a sharpness in his voice I'm not accustomed to hear, much as I know he's not being cross with me, but only his own apprehensions. "To Long Cleeve, I mean, Mer."
"Get it over with, Pippin?" I respond, somehow not able to resist the urge to tease him, for Pip's expression is very much that of a young lad most reluctant to have an aching tooth pulled, no matter that it will ease the pain.
"Merry!" Pippin says chidingly, "She is my wife."
More's the pity, I think, but smile in a manner I hope Pip will recognize as placating.
"That she is, Pip. Let's stop at the Hall, toss a few things into a bag and have a word with Sariadoc. We can stop at the Bridge Inn tonight."
"That's my practical Merry," Pippin says, shifting the picnic basket from one hand to the other.
"I can take that, Pip, if you'd like."
My cousin waves me off. "No, no, Merry, that's quite all right."
"I'm not so feeble I can't carry a basket."
Grinning suddenly, Pippin passes it over to my hands, and the thing is cursedly heavy--all the empty bottles, plates and cutlery, I suppose. "What on earth did you put in here, Pip? Stones?"
"Large, heavy ones. Did you want me to take it back, Mer?"
"No. Thank you. Kindly." I'm trying very hard not to breathe heavily as, freed from his burden, Pippin increases his pace at least twofold--though fortunately, he takes pity on an old Hobbit soon enough, and slows again.
"D'you think he understands?" Pip drops back to set his own hand to the basket-handle, just by mine, so that we both share the load.
"Er...who understands what, Pip?" One must be patient, at times, to unravel my cousin's musings.
"Why, Éomer King, Mer," Pippin answers. "Do you think he understands how old we are? Even if we had been the lads he thought us..."
"Which you were," I put in.
"Which I was," Pippin agrees, "And you not so very much older, my Merry. Still, it's been sixty-five years. We'd be quite aged enough in Man years. Has he any idea you're 102 now?"
"He's my King, Pip," I answer, wondering why we're having this conversation. "And nearly as old as you. For a Big Person, that's positively ancient, you know."
"I don't like to be old," Pippin says suddenly, in a voice I've never heard from him. "Inside I'm not. Inside I'm just Pippin, and I'm wondering if the apples aren't ripe, and if today wouldn't be a good day to go scrumping, or for a last plunge in the river before it's too cold. But then, Merry, I catch hold of this old Hobbit in the looking-glass and wonder how my dad got in there in my place, and how I could possibly have been fifty years the Thain, and how these adorable small Hobbits running round the Smials could possibly be my grandchildren. How could Pippin Took, that scalawag, that impetuous young fool, have this white hair and these aches in his joints? None of it seems real to me, Mer."
Pippin's green eyes flash up at me, just as they ever were, even if the skin around them is more lined than it was of old, and I see exactly what it is he means.
"Only you seem real to me, now," he says, "Because no matter how I change, your love is the thing that never will. Merry, do you understand what that means to me? I would follow you again into Moria, into Mordor if I had to, much less to Rohan and what comes after."
I'm not prepared for Pippin to let loose of the basket, and the sudden, added weight causes it to crash from my hand.
"So you must promise me, you must promise me, my dear," Pippin cries, nearly shouting, his fingers twisting now into the fabric of my jacket sleeves. "To hold on just as long as you possibly can. Don't go on ahead of me, whatever you do. Stop the journey if it gets too much, but don't rush on ahead of me."
I'm not accustomed to this from my Pip, and his sorrow shocks the breath from me. He's read my thoughts, as always, and I'm sorry to have hurt him with his knowledge of me.
"Pip," I say, wrapping him up in my arms. "Pippin, my love, even if a year is an instant, in the place beyond where the curtain parts, that instant's too long to be apart from you. I promised never again, didn't I? At Cormallen, I promised you. Did you think I've changed since then?" I pat his back and put him away a little, still holding tight to his arms. "So, tell me now, where does this come from? Have you been thinking too hard again?"
Pippin laughs, bending down his face to wipe his eyes on my sleeve, as if he were a sad little Hobbit, no more than four years old, as I can still remember him. "Yes, I suppose I have. Always a mistake for us Tooks. Put it down to fear, Mer--I've faced Orcs and Trolls and Ruffians, but I'm terrified of my wife."
I give him a small shake, not content to let his sudden grief by so easily, but Pippin only smiles to see the raising of my brows.
"I was just afraid... thinking too much, as you said... of the years between us. What if you went seven years on ahead, and I...?" Pippin shakes his head, denying all such sorrow. "No, no, I won't think it, Mer."
"That's good, my Pip," I say.
"So, quickly now, let's get home, and pick up those bags. I declare you shall stand me a pint and a pipe tonight at the Bridge Inn, for making me think this way."
"Gladly," I laugh, slinging an arm round his shoulders, and it isn't until we're on our ponies and ten miles down the Bridge Road that I realize we've left the picnic basket behind us, all alone on the side of the hill.
Michel Delving, Litheday, 1422 SR
"Merry? Merry, did you see her just then?" Pippin tugged hard on his cousin's sleeve, hoping to attract Merry's wandering attention back to him.
"What?" Merry's chin jerked up as he startled--obviously, wherever he'd been, it was nowhere near the ale pavilion, Michel Delving, or the glories of the now-once-more-annual fair on this bright, warm Midsummer's Day. "I'm sorry, Pip? Did you ask me a question just then?"
Poor old Merry, Pippin thought, his face creasing momentarily with sympathy. He drew his fingertip gently over his cousin's palm, which lay open before him on the table. There, broken blisters lay over callus. Merry's fingers were torn as well, in a number of small ways, because Merry had been working (tirelessly, it might seem to others, though Pippin didn't have to look hard to discern the deep weariness that underlay his cousins every look and word) to knock down each last one of the ugly Man-houses and buildings that had sprung up during their year's absence, and see that proper Hobbit-homes went up in their stead.
Noble work, Pippin thought, And good work. Work that needed to be done, he supposed. Only it was the way Merry went about it, with a sort of painful desperation, that hurt Pip's heart to see.
"I asked if you'd seen her," Pippin repeated, patiently, though his heart was no longer in the question, really. Merry was missing Frodo, he knew, missing him dreadfully, in a way that went beyond anything any Hobbit in the Shire might have understood. Even Sam, Pippin suspected sometimes, might not have plumbed the depths of Merry's despair, for Sam, after all, had not deserted his master, his friend, but been there, every step of the way. Gone with him even to the Cracks of Doom, while Merry had not, and Pippin knew his cousin took that pain deep into his soul, and was filled nearly to overflowing with the sorrow and the shame.
Pippin suspected Merry told himself any number of things in the quiet of his bed at night, and shed any number of tears he did not allow Pip to see, and thought, while it was true there also there might have been any number of things Pippin might have tried to say to ease Merry's torn heart, he did not say them, because he knew, just now, his cousin was not prepared to hear.
He wrapped his fingers gently round Merry's chill right hand. "It's nothing, Mer. Just..."
A spark of life leapt back into his cousin's eyes, and his cheeks rounded in a true Merry-smile. "No, Pip, you said her. So now you must tell--and truthfully, mind--what lass has caught my little Pip's eye?"
Pippin growled at him, slapping Merry's arm--though he knew his growls were never precisely threatening, even amongst Hobbits. "Now you mean to tease me, and make me feel a right fool, and what would the king think if he heard you call a knight of Gondor 'little Pip?'"
"Perhaps that we have remained as we were more than we've changed, and that young Hobbits who fly over the moon for pretty lasses are bound to receive at least a bit of teasing from their cousins." Merry continued to grin at him, eyes twinkling, and Pippin was so very grateful to see that familiar expression on his dear cousin's face that he would have borne any amount of jesting only to have that look remain.
"Who is the lucky lass, anyway, that my Pippin fancies so?"
Pippin opened his mouth to sing the girl's praises, but at that moment Berilac Brandybuck flung himself down on the bench by Merry's side, caught hold of his cousin's pint and helped himself to a generous drink.
"Have you seen her?" he demanded.
Merry flung up his hands in despair. "What I can clearly see is that both of you've taken leave of your wits."
"Who's that, Berilac?" Pippin asked.
"Diamond Took," Berilac replied, signaling the pot-girl for an ale of his own, and another for Pippin as well. "Cousin of yours, I suppose, Peregrin? You know, from up Long Cleeve way?"
"Distant cousin," Pippin said, ready to fill Berilac in on the precise connection between his own branch of the family, in and about Tuckborough, and the North Tooks of Long Cleeve--but just then his ale arrived, and he spent a long moment slaking his thirst instead. "Ah, that's the stuff!"
"Diamond Took," Merry repeated wonderingly. "Do I know her, Pip?"
"You met her once, at Yule, I believe." Pippin replied thoughtfully. "Remember, when quite a lot of us went in to raid the pantry, and I climbed up the pantry shelves and you bumped me, and I spilled the big honey-pot just on top of her head."
"Oh, yes." Merry laughed. "How she screamed at that! Even louder than you, I believe. But that would have been twenty years ago now, I'm sure."
"And I'm very sure she won't remember, aren't you?" Pippin paused to gulp his ale, feeling suddenly far too nervous for a soldier of the king. "I mean to say, she's grown up quite a bit since then."
Berilac laughed appreciatively. "That, I imagine, she has--though I certainly didn't know her then. At least she won't associate me with you two."
"She's the one I was telling you about, Mer," Pippin cut in. "Prettiest lass at the fair--prettiest, anyway, that's not married to Sam Gamgee." Pippin could not contain the grin that threatened to split his face. "Hair like black silk."
"Eyes like stars," Berilac chimed in.
"Did you see her hands?" Pippin asked. "How can hands, of all things, be so very extremely lovely?"
"Of course, she's surrounded by admirers," Berilac mused mournfully. "Wouldn't see much in the likes of me. You might stand a chance though, Pip--future Thain, hero of the Battle of Bywater, Liberator of the Shire..."
Pippin felt himself blush scarlet. "You know I don't like to talk of those things, Berry." He glanced over at Merry's face, seeing that the old, easy grin had faded, replaced by that bleakness that too often took its place.
"Pity you're not wearing your Gondor livery, Pippin," Berilac continued. "That can always be counted on to ensnare a lass."
"Since when have I wished to ensnare anyone?" Pippin answered, trying to keep his voice light, in fitting with the older Hobbit's teasing. "And some things, I'd say, are best left behind us."
The pavilion began to fill as a stream of brawny young Hobbits filed in from one of the athletic competitions—the hammer-toss, it appeared, from their gestures--laughing and talking, filling the confined space with their noise.
"I think..." Merry rose abruptly. "I believe I'll..." He never finished the thought, only laid down a handful of coins for their ales and left the tent without another word.
A cloud passed over Berilac's face as he watched his cousin depart. "He'll be all right, won't he, Pip? His mum and dad are worried, I know, but he won't talk to anyone at the Hall, just goes about breaking up those cursed Man-houses as if he meant to slay a dozen dragons."
"I know," Pippin said quietly. "And I believe he is—trying to slay something, I mean to say. Or at least to somehow take back the harm that's been done to the Shire, as if he could somehow carry it all away in a load on his back."
Berliac nodded, tasted his ale and pulled a face. "There's our Merry to a 't,' isn't it? Go after him, Pip. See if you can't bring him back and make him happy again. If anyone can do so, it's you."
But what if I can't? Pippin asked himself, a thought that always disturbed him, for he'd once thought he'd be all his cousin would need, and now...
Let it only be said that Frodo's departure had badly shaken his confidence, as well as Mer's.
Still, he flashed at Berilac the best smile he could and left the pavilion, standing on his toes (though he hardly needed to, being the tallest Hobbit there) to see if he could spy where Merry might have taken himself to.
Try as he might, though, Pippin cold not make out anywhere a flash of honey- ed curls rising above the Hobbit-heads all around. What he did catch sight of was a glister of long black satin, a dimpled cheek, a pair of eyes as rich and vivid a blue as Frodo's had ever been, just slipping past him—until, that was, Pippin stopped her with a word.
"Ah... er... Diamond..." Knight of Gondor and hero of the Battle of Bywater he might be, but Pippin was still sometimes a bit shy when it came to speaking with girls.
Diamond paused. Stopped. Turned. Her eyes flashed at him—stars above, but she was tall for a lass, and Berilac had been correct, absolutely, stars were, indeed, exactly what her eyes resembled, if stars were blue as a fair evening sky in summer. Her skin shone pale gold and her lips had that sweet Tookish curve, meant for smiling.
She'd an older Hobbit with her—her mother, Pippin surmised, for she'd an aged and faded version of Diamond's lovely looks.
"And who might you be, young sir?" this older Hobbit asked of him.
"Ah... Pippin. That is, Peregrin Took, from Tuckborough." He straightened, attempting to look noble and imposing, and wondering how badly he failed.
"The Thain's son," said the older Hobbit thoughtfully, and a glitter came into her eyes as of silver coins falling. "Diamond, darling, greet your cousin Peregrin."
"Peregrin," Diamond repeated, in a tone that seemed to hold equal parts boredom and impatience. "My service to you and to your family, I'm very sure."
Maybe she's only tired, Pippin thought. Maybe she's a bit shy with lads, as I am with lasses, certainly she can't know how she sounds.
"And... and... er... mine to yours... and... uh... theirs..." Pippin was fully aware that he'd begun to make a fool of himself, and how was it that he could save Faramir, or slay a troll, lead a hundred Tooks in battle and still not manage to talk comfortably with a pretty lass? He was blushing furiously, on fire all the way up to the fuzzy tips of his ears. How Merry would laugh if he saw him now!
"Dear Peregrin!" Mistress Took burbled. "We haven't seen you since you were a little lad! Do you recall, Diamond dearest, the little boy with the honey, from when you were small?"
Why? Pippin thought. Why, why, why must you mention that now? Isn't twenty years enough to drive that incident out of memory?
"Oh, yes," Diamond said, her star-like eyes narrowing. "Oh, yes, I remember you now."
Merry despised in himself the weakness that drove him away from the crowd, away from his Pip (who would surely be concerned for his well-being) even from Berilac, who was, after all, his cousin as well.
He hated, too, that the fair, two days of innocent pleasures he'd enjoyed in varying ways since he was a lad, should fill him now with such panic, as if every congregation of people, Big or Little, was a return to the battlefield. The chilly sweat that truckled down his spine, the coldness of his right hand, the catching of his breath and rapid drumbeat of his heart against the walls of his chest all shamed him.
He must master this. He must.
Bad enough that he'd been sent away, in disgrace it seemed, from work that needed doing—indeed, the he couldn't bear to leave undone. Worse still to be sent all the way here to Michel Delving, with his cousins as his keepers, his mum and dad's words still burning in his ears.
"Take him, Pip. Take him. It doesn't do for Buckland to see him like this."
"Yes, Esme, my dear, that will be best, I think."
And that was true, because far from being any sort of hero, he'd brought shame to himself and his family by his deeds, and soon enough he'd been known by names he'd rather not hear, that they would trouble him, as "Mad Baggins" had never troubled Bilbo, for Merry had always longed to be thought well of, as Bilbo had not.
Because, after all, when he'd fallen to pieces he'd done so quite publicly, not kept quietly to his eccentric self, as Bilbo always had done.
Walking briskly, he'd already crossed to the outskirts of Michel Delving, and now Merry began to run as if entire bands of Orcs raced behind him, at his heels.
It had all begun as a simple enough task from his father: to oversee the destruction of the last of the huts and ugly two-storied Man-houses that still clustered round the Brandywine Bridge. Except that "oversee," to Merry, had never meant lording it over the other Hobbits under his command. It had meant going in, shirt off and sledgehammer in hands.
So he had worked through a long hot Forelithe morning, and when the others had stopped for elevenses and luncheon, followed by an ale or so and a lie- down in the shade, he'd kept on, because none of it must remain. None of it, not a badly-formed brick or a mean, narrow casement or a poorly-painted sill, and though Merry's hands stung with sweat and the broken blisters even his tough oxhide gloves could not prevent, he was not able to stop himself.
Was not able to. No matter what he might wish. Choice had no part of the matter.
He swung the heavy hammer for what might have been the thousandth or the millionth time and a wall exploded into rubble, a shower of grit and gravel that rained down on his head, bruising his skin and sticking in his hair, whilst his eyes streamed tears that might even have come from the dust, though he told himself he would not cry, not ever again, for what was there left in all the world to weep over now?
Again, Merry gathered himself and swung, nearly spinning himself round with the force of the hammer-blow, the impact reverberating through his aching shoulders, his mind teeming with swarms of thoughts he'd no power left in himself to resist.
not for this, not for this, not to come home to all this ugliness and would he have stayed and been happy in time if it hadn't been for this? all the fighting and the killing, the pain and dirt and ruin if not for the smoke in our sweet air and the filth in our clear waters and the glory of trees cut down, terrible out in the wild world but all so much worse when it's home?
would I have been able to make him love me, love Sam and Pip and Rose and little Elanor enough to not need the sea and the ship? wouldn't we, or circle of love, our round shining band have sufficed and not the hole left inside him in the size and shape of the ring, growing and growing until it was all he could see? that bloody ring and why hadn't I been the one, the one to carry it for him or go with him and help him, perhaps if I'd been there and Sam too we would have been enough, enough to combat Gollum's evil, enough to fight the monster, enough to keep him here, only I didn't, I didn't, I let him go on almost alone to that terrible place when I'd said I would follow him all the way to the ends of the earth, because this was all my fault, after all, a vow make for the sake of my miserable small life and I'd promised when just a small lad, but I didn't go, did I, after all? and even though we had to draw the Orcs away, we had to, Pip and I, there was no helping that, still we shouldn't have stayed in the forest, Pip yes, but what earthly good was I?
should have run, should have run back to the boats and followed, always better with boats than Frodo, always better in the wild, better at finding my way than a pair of Townhobbits, should have caught him up... Sam and I together could have done it, and up at the Cracks of Doom, with the evil voice of the ring in his mind, he would have listened instead to my voice in his ears, would have listened to his own Merry, because we always do... listen... listen to one another, Frodo and Merry, as long as I can remember and probably even further back than that, and then he would have thrown it away willingly, bit of a struggle but willingly, no claiming or biting or terrible dance on the edge of death and then no boat away, don't care if it's to the best place that ever was or will be, can't bear to have my Frodo gone, not like that, not forever and ever, and...
Bricks and stones rained on him, battering Merry to his knees as he choked on the clouds of dust rising around him, then covered his face with his hands and sobbed until his skin was thick with a mud of dust and tears and blood whilst he screamed aloud, "Can't bear it, Frodo! Can't bear for you to be gone!"
There were kindly voices, then, Hobbit voices, strong hands taking his arms. His right hand flopped down so that the sun glared in his eyes, because he couldn't feel it anymore, except the pain and the cold, as the other hands led him out of the rubble and sat him down, on a green and grassy place beneath a tree that had been planted and old before his grandfather was born.
Strong arms went round him and gentle hands stroked his hair, but Merry couldn't stop sobbing, not if it was to save his life.
Except that, after a while, it did stop. Not because the grief left him, but only because he'd grown too tired to cry anymore.
As Merry fought for the ability to breathe again, there was Pip gazing down at him, the corners of his mouth quirked up and kindness in his eyes. "Feel any better now, my Mer?"
Merry shook his head, for he didn't feel better. He felt exhausted, ashamed and nearly hollow with grief.
"Merry's not hurt, is he?" Was that Berilac's voice? Merry supposed it must be—no other voice he knew was so deep, almost comically deep, really, as if every word his Brandybuck cousin spoke came from down in the bottom of a well.
"Hurting, but not hurt, I'd say," Pip answered lightly. "Help me get him to his feet, Berry, and walk him across the Bridge to the Inn. I b'lieve our Merry's had enough destruction for the day." As he spoke, Merry felt the pressure of Pippin's hand on his dead arm, but not the warmth of Pip's touch.
"Not done, not done," Merry moaned. Couldn't Pippin understand that every last bit of it must come down, every ugly house and factory, every vestige of Big People and Saruman's spite in their land? Everything must be put right, right and Shirelike, clean and sweet and lovely again, as it had been when they were innocent and young.
When they were innocent and young, three short years before.
"But, don't you see, Merry?" Pippin asked, voice lilting, "That was the last of it. The last in all the Shire, I expect. You can rest now, Merry dear. It's all done with. All done now."
But Merry could not see: everywhere he looked he saw ruination.
Merry pulled up panting madly, his feet and legs and trousers all furry with the dust of the road. Where he'd come to, he could not have said, only that he'd found himself on a narrow track between fields of barley, green and tender under the Litheday sun.
Merry felt, suddenly, the balance of the year teetering, the past behind, the future ahead, on this day that did not truly belong to any year.
He stopped, finally stopped, as if he'd been running for years, for the first time in a long stretch of constant motion, and heard the birds twitter in the air, and felt the sun hot on his hair and smelled the sweet brown richness of the tilled and planted fields.
"Oh!" he cried aloud, also quite suddenly, and the tears that sprang to his eyes were, for once, not tears of grief, lost and bitterness, but because he'd tasted, in that moment, the sweetness of the earth, as he'd thought he might never taste it again.
Along the path toward him walked a lass, crowned with daisies, her green skirts swaying like a bell, and a basket over her arm. Merry thought, seeing her from afar, that it might be that he knew her, and when she came close, and the basket fell down from her hand, he knew it to be so, knew her absolutely, for her hair was brown and rich like the earth, and her brown eyes full of a clean warm light, and her body ripe and bonny and round.
She walked to him without shyness or fear, lifting her hands (oh, so warmly) to cup his face, and Merry's own arms wrapped close, so familiar and loved and necessary to him that they might have been together, loved and loving, for a hundred years, and not apart for three.
"Estella!" Merry breathed, in wonder and delight, but Estella said nothing, only raised her lips to his and claimed them, her mouth sweet as apples at the end of summer.
But summer was not ending for him now. Indeed, Merry felt the warmth—the fullness of the year—had only begun to begin.
But in Michel Delving, Pippin could not help but wonder why, when he took Diamond's hand with her parents beaming on, her fingers did not warm in his, and when she smiled at him, why here eyes did not light, and when he kissed her, only a small, chaste little kiss, over in an instant, her soft mouth remained still, cool and perfect as a rosebud in June.
Or like a lovely pond frozen over by winter.
He wondered, too, why only his heart seemed to beat fast and why, really, Diamond's mother and father should be smiling at him so widely, and so very, very, very much.