Chapter Eighteen: Bestest Friends

It was with trepidation in his heart that Merry rode in the cart approaching the Great Smials for his annual summer visit. All the news coming out of Tookland had been good, but he had learned to his chagrin last year just how much Uncle Paddin’s letters never got around to saying.

They let the stable hobbit take the ponies as Merry and his mother dismounted and began to approach the doors.

“Essie!” Aunt Eg called from the approach to the gardens, waving a handkerchief. At the same time, a small blur topped by sandy curls launched itself around the Smials from the other side and streaked toward Merry, colliding with him at such speed that he was forced to grab on to avoid toppling over.

“Merry!” Pippin shrieked. “Merry, you’re late! Did you stop for a long luncheon? Did you bring me any? Da says I’m always hungry and I’ll eat him out of home and hole, but I don’t think he’s mad, really, because he laughs when he says it, and anyway, I can’t eat apples or other crunchy things too good right now because one of my front teeth fell out -- see?” He opened his mouth for a display and a brief pause of breath, then squirmed around so that he was hanging near upside-down in Merry’s arms.

“Merry, put me down, because I want to show you what me and Everard built with sticks but it’s on the other side of the Smials and I have to take you there, you’ll never find it on your own, we hided it good! Merry, put me down!”

Merry held his little cousin tightly around the knees, despite the affronted green-eyed glare that stared up at him from just below his kneecaps. He remembered the last time he had seen Pip, and last summer, and blinked back a couple of tears even as he beamed.

“I missed you, Pip,” he informed his cousin simply. “I want to hold onto you a while longer.”

“Hullo, Everard!” Pippin suddenly cried out from upside-down in Merry’s arms, punctuating his cry with a large wave that bounced him about a bit. “Merry’s here now!”

Merry watched Everard stop, give him a hesitant wave, then break into a run toward the yard with a huge grin on his face as another cart pulled in. He turned back to Pippin with a sudden fear of a different kind than he’d ever felt with his cousin before.

“Pip?” Merry asked, his voice close to trembling. “Did you miss me?”

“Oh, silly,” Pippin began in an oddly pitched voice. “Merry, put me down, my head feels funny!”

Merry hastily set him on the ground, where Pippin staggered a moment, then righted himself and continued in his normal voice.

“Of course I missed you! But you don’t live here, so I have to have somebody to play with when you’re gone, and Pearl’s old and Pimpernel’s a lass and Pervinca’s a lass, too, and anyway, I don’t want to play lasses’ games, and Everard’s lonely because -- just because -- and so I play with him because he’s lonely and he can help me reach things that are high up and he lets me pick all our games and he gave me a mathom once that was a broken-off doll’s head and I thought it wasn’t very nice but I found out he didn’t know how to fix it so we had Mama make a new body and we gave the doll back his sister Teatime -- her name’s really Four O’Clock, but Da calls her that because four o’clock’s teatime, you know, so it’s funny -- and she wasn’t mad at Everard anymore, and now we’re friends, but you’re my bestest friend, Merry!”

It was a couple of hours later that they were lying on their back near the edge of the garden, idly eating strawberries.

“Pippin,” Merry suddenly said seriously, rolling over to prop himself up on an elbow. “Do you remember last summer?”

Pippin swallowed his strawberry and watched his fingers intently as he licked the juice off them before finally answering quietly, and without looking at his cousin, “Yes, Merry.”

“What I’d like...Do you remember...” Merry made these false starts, then finally blurted out, “Who put you under the bed?”

Pippin sat up and looked up at Merry, then flicked his gaze just for a moment across the garden at the group of teens and tweens playing a running game near the archery field. Everard was among them, happy to play once again with his brother, returned to the Smials for a summer visit.

Pippin looked back to Merry, meeting his gaze square-on, and said, in all seriousness, “A dragon.”

Then he added hurriedly, “But it’s all right now, because I got big and strong and brave, like the Bullroarer, just like you said, and I made the dragon go away.”

“Oh, Pip,” Merry swallowed around a sudden lump in his throat, then pulled his cousin into his chest for a tight hug. He whispered into the curls above a pointed ear. “I think you must be one of the bravest hobbits in the Shire.”

The End