5. A Cry In The Night

An anguished cry tore Saradoc from his rest, alarm and sleep still fogging his thoughts.  The broken moan from the next room finished to clear his head, however, and he rolled quietly from the bed.  Esmeralda was already gone, most likely to the nursery, and he sighed in relief.  He had almost convinced himself these last few days that Pippin’s warnings had been unnecessary, that home had been the simple cure for Merry’s restless soul.  He had told her nothing of the fears their nephew had shared before leaving.  He now hesitated outside his son’s room, hand upon the door, and steeled his heart against what he might face beyond its threshold.

He pushed it open quietly and found the room ablaze with light.  The bed itself was a wreck, pillows tumbled, sheets tangled, and Merry lay upon it, arms out flung against some unseen thing.  Esmeralda knelt beside him, face awash with tears.

“What’s happening to him?” she asked, voice rising with panic.

Saradoc settled himself on the edge of the bed.

“Dark dreams,” he said softly, stroking damp curls back from his son’s tear-streaked face.  “Pippin warned me before he left.”

“Pip?” Merry murmured brokenly, turning wide and unseeing eyes towards his father.  “Are you going to bury me?”

Esmeralda choked back a sob, and laid a trembling hand against Merry’s cheek.

“No, my Merry-lad, no….  All’s well, go back to sleep, my bonny boy, go to sleep…”

Saradoc sat, thunderstruck, and listened to her croon soft nonsense words to their son, as she had when he was small.

As the young hobbit slowly calmed and fell into a deeper sleep, he gently gathered his wife into his lap, though she held fast to Merry’s hand.  He stared hard at the pale crisscrossing scars that marred the strong wrist, dark with sun upon the white coverlet, and a cold knot of anger and fear coiled slowly about his heart.  What darkness had touched his bright-eyed lad?