The battle was over. Meriadoc the hobbit was standing in the middle of the field, among the bodies of men, orcs, horses, trolls and wargs, and it was difficult to distinguish the dead from those who were still living, the moans of the injured from the wind howling through emptied armours, through spears still stuck in the ground, through the hundreds of arrows covering an oliphaunt’s carcase. The smell of sweat, of blood and of something else made him certain that this was no dream. Not another nightmare born from a troubled, short sleep after a day’s ride with the Rohirrim, when all his worries and anxieties apparently left him alone, only to come back under a subtler haunting shape. His worries and fears for what was waiting for him at the end of the ride, his anxiety and distress for the others, his friends and kin whose fate was now so detached from his own.

No, this was real.

And yet, there was this other strange feeling at the back of his consciousness. Something he could not really put a finger on, something that almost suggested him that he had already been there, seen that horror, smelt those foul smells…

And Éowyn! Oh, Éowyn! Suddenly he remembered: his shield-sister, what they had just done together, the Witch-King and his maddening shriek…where was Éowyn? And then Merry saw her, laying on the ground, pale and motionless. He blinked, for he was sure, a moment before, that it was not the lady’s body he saw laying on that spot, but a horse’s. Was his brain so muddled with pain and sorrow as to play tricks on him, deluding him with false hopes? Fool of a Brandybuck…that was Éowyn, fair and beautiful despite Death around her, upon her.

Weeping, Merry started walking slowly toward her, but tripped over a tree branch –or this he wished it was, for he did not want to think it could rather be a severed arm -and fell. Sprawled on the ground, too weary and miserable to get up, through the veil of tears still in his eyes he saw something else: King Théoden’s broken body, just few steps away from himself. And then the great king slowly turned his head toward the hobbit, and Merry felt that glazed stare upon him. “What are you doing here, Master Holbytla?”. Those words and that stern, disapproving look pierced Merry’s heart with more cruelty and abruptness than any sword blow ever could. “Why has my esquire broken my command?”. Crying, Merry tried to reply, to explain it was only love that drove him to that desperate road, but his voice seemed to be choked, either by the sobs, or by exhaustion, shock and despair. Unaffected, Théoden started speaking again, but as the words were leaving his lips, Merry felt that something was going to happen, felt it even before it actually happened. “You never do what I tell you to do, son”. Merry tried to scream, but any breath seemed to have left his throat. “You only cause troubles to yourself and to everyone close to you”. Laying there on the Pelennor field, covered with blood and uttering those reproachful words, was not Théoden king of Rohan now, but Saradoc of Buckland.

******* *********** ***********************

Merry woke up, his heart thumping so fast and hard that he thought the sound of it could be heard echoing through all the chambers of…where was he? Recollections of reality came back at him: Rivendell. They were in Rivendell again, on their way back home, to the Shire, together. The Ring has been destroyed, the war was over, the Enemy defeated. So why was he having those dreams again? Last time he had vivid and terrifying nightmares as such, it was during his recovering at the Houses of Healing, when everything was still so dark and uncertain. Thanks to the Valar, he had forgotten the details of those nightmares. He could only remember vague images, of him standing by Frodo at the top of Mount Doom, and then even more confusing bits. But one part was still so upsetting that he thought he could never get rid of it: in those dreams, he had tried to take the Ring from Frodo, there at the edge of the abyss of fire. But it was not something he wanted to try and remember after all. Frodo was safe now, he and Sam had succeeded in throwing the Ring into the fire and came back to them, no matter how horrifying and despairing those dreams had been.

Everybody was asleep in the House of Elrond now, and all was silence. Not wishing to go back to sleep, maybe back to another nightmare, Merry decided to get up and go outside, to let the cool air of the night refresh his spirit and his mind.

Rivendell was somehow different now, than the way he remembered it last time they were there, almost one year ago. Peace, light and hope had been brought back to Middle Earth with the destruction of the ring, but a strange atmosphere of sadness and emptiness seemed to linger still in Rivendell. It was Winterfilth, almost, if his keeping track of time was correct, but it seemed that this time autumn was going to stay longer there.

Or maybe it all was just in his mind.

Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t notice that someone had joined him in the columned patio, until Pippin spoke. “What are you doing outside, at this time of night, Merry?” Merry smiled. There had been other times, when he was staying at the Great Smials in Tuckborough, or when Pippin was staying at Brandy Hall, or when they were both visiting Frodo at Bag End, that he would get up in the middle of the night to get some water, or some food, or to do something else that needed be done, and more often than not his younger cousin would wake up too, and followed him to ask what he was doing.

But as he turned, Merry didn’t see the usual young hobbit rubbing his still sleepy eyes, but a grown-up, wide awake, with a shadow of worry on his face. “Hullo Pip! I was hungry. I am going to the kitchens to get myself some warm milk and a couple of scones, maybe. Join me?” He cheered, for he was sure that the nightmare would be completely forgotten the morning after. He still remembered now that it had something to do with his father, something awful, but he also knew that it was just a dream, that Saradoc didn’t have anything to do with the horrors they had experienced. He knew that the Shire was safe, untouched, and that the four of them would soon be there. Of that nightmare would maybe remain only a trace, some very thin and broken threads of a cobweb, in some hidden corner of his mind.

**************
TBC

Crickhollow, 1420 SR

“Wake up! Merry, wake up! Now!”

Pippin was shaking him, a frightened tone in his voice. Dawn was near, and some dim light filtered into the room. Merry managed to focus on his cousin’s face, after gazing around the room with a lost, wide-eyed look.

“You were having a bad dream. A very bad one, from what I heard from my room”.

“I am sorry I woke you up. I am so sorry”, said Merry, still breathing fast.

“Don’t be silly, you old ass. I am going to make some chamomile tea, and then we can talk about it”.

“Pippin, I don’t need any chamomile tea. And I don’t want to talk about anything. It was just a bad dream, we all have bad dreams, and anyway I have already forgotten all about it”

“Now you don’t understand. I’m going to make that tea for me as well. You scared me” Pippin’s voice shook a bit, adding: “You terrified me. You were shouting my name”. Merry’s eyes widened, as shreds of the nightmare flashed in his memory, hitting him suddenly and making him jump slightly.

It was that dream again, still haunting him. He was having the same nightmare too often lately. Maybe not exactly the same, but the feelings and sensations that trailed after them, even later during the day, were always the same. He had done a terrible mistake, badly disappointed someone…was it his father, was it King Théoden? Sometimes it seemed to be even Lord Elrond. But this time it was Pippin. Pippin, surrounded by orcs and uruk-hai, was shouting at him. In the dream, Merry felt himself to be like a distant observer to the scene, while an angrier rather than frightened Pippin was yelling at him, saying that his situation was all Merry’s fault, that he had gone against everyone’s advice…then Gandalf came, picked Pippin up and shook his white head at Merry, before riding away and leaving him alone.

Sighing, Merry got off the bed and went into the kitchen, where Pippin was stirring spoonfuls of honey into a large cup of steaming tea. He sat at the table, accepting the cup from Pippin, who smiled and proceeded to do the same with another cup for himself.

Time passed in silence, the two cousins sitting in front of each other and sipping their tea. Daylight was growing stronger, while morning birds started to softly sing. It was only when Pippin put his cup down and seemed ready to open his mouth that Merry spoke. “Alright, Pip, you know we’ve been discussing this already. You know I don’t feel guilty anymore for the things that happened to you… to us…when…” he looked down at the cup in his hands for a second, and then he went on. “We have already settled that it was none of my responsibility, that you came along by your own accord” His eyes brightened, adding: “I know you are fully capable of making your choices and taking your own responsibility. You definitely proved it”.

Pippin smiled, a smile full of tenderness and affection. For few moments more, he waited for his cousin to go on speaking again.

But as Merry seemed now lost into the observation of the dregs in the bottom of his cup, Pippin moved his hand across the table, put it over Merry’s hand and gently squeezed it. “It’s not only my name you call out at nights. It’s not only me you feel guilty about.” He paused, and sighed. “I know you, Merry: we’ve been friends and brothers since ever, and I’ve grown to know you even more during our journey. You, me, Frodo and Sam will never be the same again since we left. You may feel that folks here in the Shire will probably never truly know, truly understand. But we do, Merry, we do know and understand. We’ve been through all that together, remember?”

Still not looking up, Merry answered “When we started our journey, I knew we were going to face danger, fear, hardship and pain. But not such darkness! Sometimes it feels like that night in Bree, hundreds of years ago, when I first met the Black Riders...like sinking in deep waters…”

Pippin shook his head angrily “No! It is not possible! When Aragorn healed you in Minas Tirith, he said that your heart would not be darkened! He said it…”

“Oh, Pippin! One thing I am grateful for is that you didn’t get to be exposed once more to that dreadfulness! You have experienced it at Weathertop, you know how it makes you feel”

Pippin cringed. Of course he remembered. And he also remembered that Merry had been exposed to it other two times, and the last had been almost a deadly one.

Almost guessing his cousin’s thoughts, Merry started again “I don’t remember much of the days after you found me on the way to the Citadel. It was as if I didn’t exist anymore: not just my body, but my entire self. I was myself part of that darkness, a drop in those deep and dark waters. Worse than death itself. But voices were telling me that I wasn’t even allowed to die, and that the nightmare was forever”. Pippin’s eyes were brimming with tears. “I didn’t dissolve completely into that ocean of desperation because somehow I knew, I was certain, that the voices were lying, that Middle Earth still existed, that Frodo and Sam were still fighting, that you were alive…and then a fragrant smell overcame that stench, a little light appeared in the darkness, and Aragorn’s voice calling my name sounded like music among those jarring, discordant voices. Poor Éowyn…she was already so sad and desperate before we rode to war. I wonder what she held on to, alone in the darkness…”

Among the tears, Pippin was going to say something, but Merry started again “And yet…Yet it was only their Breath we suffered. I cannot even imagine how Frodo managed to survive that evil blade so close to his heart, to go on with that cursed Thing whispering to his soul all the time...”

The thought of their cousin made both Merry and Pippin silent. Sam had told them how Frodo had been found sick earlier that year, and for the three of them it was clear that if hope of rebirth still existed for themselves, for the Shire and for all Middle Earth, very little of it seemed to be left for the one who brought this about.
----------------------------------------------------------
TBC

They were calling them ‘lordly’. Meriadoc Brandybuck and Peregrin Took, the tallest hobbits of the Shire, dressed in magnificent attires from faraway lands, the young heroes who fought off those who had brought death and destruction in their peaceful country. Folk admired them riding, singing songs, telling stories. But what did folk know?

Sam had been the first of them to start getting his life back in the Shire. Not his old life, of course, the one of the shy, quiet gardener who dreamt of elves and never set a foot too far from home. Though the details were unknown, folk knew that Samwise Gamgee’s part in the strange, big events of the last year had been a relevant one. But most of all, he had married Rosie Cotton.

Merry seemed to envy him sometimes. He envied Sam’s ability to concentrate on the present, to find a balance between what they had been before the start of the journey, and what they grew to be at the end of it. But then Merry knew Sam better than that. He knew that, just like himself, Sam didn’t like to talk much about his own worries and his own troubles. He and Sam were too similar in that, so Merry was able to sense that Sam’s happiness was not complete, that he was, in a way, torn in two. Sam’s return to his home, his life with Rosie, were still clouded by the thought of Frodo and of his strange condition. Torn in two. They all were: Sam, himself, Frodo, Pippin. The Travellers. That was what they called them, and that was what they would remain, forever, even long after their return.

A sudden noise snatched Merry’s mind abruptly away from his flow of thoughts. It was only a nightbird on a tree, scared by the passing figure on a horse, but after so many nights of watches and walks in the danger, the hobbit’s senses were still always tense and alert. Merry was riding back to Crickhollow, after an evening at Brandy Hall. He left as soon as he could, as the great hall was getting too stuffy, crowded with relatives, aunts, cousins and third cousins, friends of the family and families of the friends. He normally didn’t mind much, but now he felt he’d rather have some peace and quiet. And some fresh air. He had arrived down to the Brandywine banks. Apparently, not only his thoughts were meandering freely, but also his path. The river run calm and the sound it made had a soothing effect on Merry. He almost felt that the water, clean and fresh as he remembered it since he was a very young lad, was there to wash the land.

Why would everybody always ask him tales of battles, of fighting, of how he and Peregrin Took had bravely defeated hordes of ruffians, blowing his horn and brandishing his sword? Why nobody ever cared to ask about how Frodo had defeated the luring powers of the Ring, how he hadn’t given up to total darkness, how he had fought, alone, the deception and temptation of the Enemy? Probably, nobody even knew about that, about what the real War had been. That was also why he left the Hall so early that night. The Battle of Bywater, the killing of Saruman, of Grima, of the chief ruffian, of all those men…Those were not the tales he wanted to have been asked, but rather those he wanted to forget. After the horrors of the big War, such a huge one for a poor little hobbit, the least he expected was to find that those horrors had actually reached and attached also the Shire, his home. And that they still lingered there after the war had ended. How could that happen? Had there been a way, maybe, by which he could have prevented death, blood and desolation to even enter the Shire in the first place? 

“Stop that”, he said to himself, resuming his ride “There is no way you can go back and undo what’s been done”.

He had almost arrived home, at Crickhollow, but again he had taken another little detour, almost unaware of it. He was now at the entrance gate of the Old Forest, the starting place from where it all begun. Maybe his thoughts were a bit muddled by tiredness, maybe also by the numerous pints of ale that his uncles and cousins had kept handing him merrily, but as he was standing there, Merry found himself contemplating the idea of going in there, right then. Follow the same journey they had done two years ago, and then backwards, and maybe he would come out whole again, clean and new as he was before. He had actually started to dismount slowly, still lost in thoughts, when the pony, already nervous for the strange atmosphere of the forest, suddenly neighed and reared up. Caught by surprise, Merry fell backward and his head hit a flat stone. The pony rode away, leaving him unconscious on the ground.

TBC

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