Chapter Three

Concerning Hobbits

As my feet left the last wrought step, voices from the same direction joined the smell. Following both my ears and nose now, I passed through a small cluster of trees that were not mellyrn on my way up the steep slope. Nearby, four small people were gathered around a smaller campfire. One had a saucepan in one hand and a fork in the other. I assumed this to be the source of the bacon aroma.

One of the group looked up and, as he was facing in my direction and I was out of the trees, he saw me. I froze. "Look, Sam, someone's smelled your cooking." The words carried.

The back of my mind told me nothing about these four, so I walked a little closer. "It is true, I did-" The words coming out of my mouth were not the ones I was thinking. I knew, somehow, that they meant the same, but they were not English. I thought consciously about the sounds of the thoughts and tried again. They came out correctly. "Smell the bacon, that is," I added to the rephrasing of my first words.

"You're not an Elf!" the one with the saucepan said, half accusing.

I met his eyes. "When did I ever say I was one?"

He went scarlet and nearly dropped the pan of sizzling bacon. "Sam!" One of the others took it out of his hand. I noticed the bacon was exactly how I liked it, just cooked, halfway between gooey and crisp.

"Sorry, Mr. Frodo," 'Sam' said to the current saucepan holder. And then, to me: "What are you, then? You look like an Elf. You speak Elvish."

So it was Elvish! "I'm as human as you are." I looked down at pointed ears half-hidden by curly hair and tough, bare brown feet. "Or perhaps not."

The smallest of the small whatevers piped up. "Oh, we're not humans. We're hobbits." He sat back, looking very pleased with himself. "I'm Peregrin Took and that's Meriadoc Brandybuck and Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee." He pointed at the one who had first noticed me, the one who held the frying pan, and the one he had taken it from.

Sam was the most heavy-set of the uniformly tubby creatures, but his was more muscle than fat. I would have call Merry the handsomest, for he had the angelic face of a born mischief-maker, as did Pippin, whose pointed chin was perpetually underneath a grin. But my eyes dwelt of Frodo longest. He had an edge, a haunted, eldritch quality, as if not quite in this world all the time. "And what may a hobbit be, Peregrin Took?"

"I'm usually called Pippin. Most hobbits look something like us, and they live in the Shire, which is west of here, and, well, that's all, I suppose."

Hobbits. Well, you learn something new every day. "May I join you?"

"Of course. Sam, is the bacon done?" Frodo peered at it dubiously and gave the pan back.

"Just about, Mr. Frodo."

I eased my almost six foot frame onto the mossy ground, spreading my hands over the fire. "No bacon for me, thank you."

"Just as well. It was about to go off, anyway. We'd carried it all the way from Rivendell," he added in an undertone for my benefit.

"Pippin!" Frodo gave him a look, having overheard.

"Well it was. And we had," Pippin persisted.

"That won't stop you eating your share, or more, Mr. Pippin." Sam obviously knew the hobbit's habits. My laughter at this stopped abruptly when another figure appeared beside me.

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