Chapter IV

Merry woke up, wrapped in darkness.

He tried to move, but his body seemed to be trapped into that warm, suffocating darkness. He tried to scream, but the lack of air in his lungs turned the scream into a gasp.

He knew that feeling, he remembered it…Old Man Willow!

He moaned. No, not again! But was it "again", or was it "then"? When was he, where was he? Desperate, confused, he closed his eyes against the darkness, and started to dream.

In his dream, Merry thought he was in a bed in a room, a familiar one, and Pippin was sitting next to the bed. Nice dream, he thought, and went back to sleep.

But something –or someone- was trying to snatch him away from it, trying to shake him awake. Fighting against it, against the fear of waking again in the smothering darkness, Merry got lost in a whirlwind of images, sounds and sensations, a confusion of dream and wake.

Then finally his eyes snapped open, and his consciousness settled in place. Reality was the bed in the warm room, with himself all tangled up in sheets and coverlets, and Pippin's face smiling at him, a mix of concern, relief and affection in his eyes.

"What…?" Merry started to speak, but cringed in pain, his head pounding as if filled with a thousand dwarves at work.

"Better not move yet, Merry", said Pippin, putting the wet cloth that had slipped away back over his cousin's forehead. "You hit a stone hard enough even for your Brandybuck head".

Merry's reply was cut off immediately: "I know what you are going to say. But Tooks would never even dream of approaching the Old Forest at night. What were you planning to do? What possessed you last night! Can you imagine what kind of thoughts crossed my mind, when I saw your pony coming back here, alone, early in the morning!"

Last night? Morning? It was indeed almost daylight again. Had he really spent the whole night outside in the chill?

Seeing that puzzled, befuddled expression on his cousin's face, Pippin's own expression softened. He chuckled, and said "I am going to prepare some breakfast. I will be back very soon. In the meantime, you'd better meditate over your misdemeanours".

But thinking and meditating was still too painful for his poor head, decided Merry, and so he waited, snuggling up in the warm cosiness of his bed and his room in Crickhollow.

It didn't take long before Pippin came back, holding a tray overloaded with scones, apples, bread, butter, jam, and two teacups. Somehow, he managed to bring it up to Merry's bed without toppling everything over, placed it safely on the nightstand, and sat next to it.

Seeing that Merry had begun to eat cheerfully a bit of everything, Pippin sighed and smiled, relieved, and started doing the same, determined not to let his cousin beat him over breakfast.

Only when the tray remained empty, the two hobbits felt fulfilled.

"It's time to talk, now", said Pippin, yawning.

Merry, still picking the few crumbles left on his plate, looked up at him "It is funny how often we end up having big talks after a meal in bed. This all looks so familiar, you know… How did you find me this time?"

Lighting his pipe, Pippin told Merry about how he had suddenly jumped awake the night before, without any apparent reason, and how he had managed to go back to sleep again, having checked his cousin's room and seeing that he had not come back home. After all, this would not have been the first time that Merry had decided to stay in Brandy Hall for the night, after a family meeting.

"But when, sometime before dawn, I heard the noise of a horse clopping loose around the house, then I was certain that something wrong had happened. My heart dropped when I went out and I saw your pony, alone. He was still so nervous and edgy that I had to soothe and calm him down before I could get him. Stars, I was so nervous and edgy myself!"

Although there were no more crumbs left in his plate, Merry kept fiddling with it, to avoid looking his cousin in the eyes.

"Merry, you know I am not as good as you are in handling horses. Still I succeeded not only to calm the pony down, but also to ride him up to the Forest, the very place that frightened him so much. Actually, it was the pony himself that led me there. That's how I found you."

Merry turned slightly, to set the blatantly empty plate back on the nightstand, but his action was stopped halfway, his arm still outstretched and holding the plate over the tray, when Pippin went on: "And you know, that was not the strangest thing of the night"

"When I found you laying there on the ground, you were covered with leaves, different leaves from –I don't know- every tree around the area. It looked as if the trees had wanted to drop their coverlet over you, to protect you from the cold of the night."

TBC