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It Takes a Took  by Dreamflower

CHAPTER 13

Rose had taken a startled look at the scene in the study, and then hurried to prepare the athelas tea. Sam sat next to Frodo. He had taken his friend’s cold left hand and lifted it up to the white gem at his throat; as it came in contact, Frodo’s hand closed on it almost convulsively, and his ragged breathing began to steady. The trance-like expression on his face gradually softened, and a very faint glow came from between his fingers.

After only a few moments, Rose came in, bearing the steaming cup, wafting its reassuring fragrance. Sam held it to Frodo’s white lips, and as he sipped, he gave a shudder. “Ah,” he sighed. He relaxed into Sam’s embrace.

“Sam?” he looked at his friend with a touch of embarrassment and confusion.

“I’m afraid we forgot the date, Mr. Frodo.” Sam was ashamed of himself. He had no excuse to be forgetting this.

“I did not forget, Sam. I just did not want to be a bother to you.” Frodo’s voice was more tired than Sam had heard it in a long time.

“Mr. Frodo, how can there be talk of ‘bother’ between us, after all we did together?” Now Sam was hurt that his master had not wanted his help.

Frodo shook his head, and rubbed his scar. “I am sorry, Sam. I just did not want to upset you, or frighten Rose. And truth be told, I thought if I ignored it, it might go away and not happen at all.”

He got up rather shakily, and the turn seemed to pass. “I believe I will go to bed now. Things will be better in the morning.” But the blue eyes were haunted, and Sam knew that there would be little sleep for Frodo this night, or if there was it would be troubled.

Little sleep for him, either. He looked up at Rose, who had stood silently by. She placed her hand on his shoulder, and he covered it with his own.

________________________________________________

Pippin’s hold on his cousin was awkward. With his broken leg, he could not get close enough to hold him comfortably, but he did the best he could. In his Tookish lilt, he murmured “It’s all right Merry, come back to the light, now. He can’t hurt Frodo anymore, you killed him, remember? It’s all right, Merry…” The sound of Pippin’s gentle voice penetrated the fog in Merry‘s mind, and his distress began to abate.

The water heated, and Diamond brought over the basin of steaming water, and Lavender crumbled in the precious leaf. The scent soon lifted all their spirits.

Merry shuddered, and gasped, and color began to return to his face. He looked at Pippin. “Frodo! Pip, he’s--”

“Shush, Merry, Sam’s with him, he’ll be all right.”

Just the door opened. It was Paladin. “What’s all the commotion?” he asked with a worried frown. Then he took in the sight of his nephew. “Oh.”

“Father,” asked Pippin, “could you do us a favor?”

“Of course I will, son. What is it?”

“Merry is worried that Frodo may be ill also. Could you send a messenger to Bag End? Just to relieve his mind?”

“Certainly, I’ll see to it at once.” He looked at the healers. “Mistress Lavender, do you need anything?”

“No, Thain Paladin,” she answered. “I think that we will soon have everything settled.”

He nodded and backed out, relieved in one way, that it was not something more serious, yet troubled all the same. He remembered Pearl’s account of Merry’s illness last spring at Crickhollow. He wondered how much longer these two lads would continue to be troubled with these horrible night terrors.

Pippin was smoothing Merry’s brow, and his cousin seemed to have calmed after his fright. He looked up at the healer. “His arm is still cold, but not icy. Strider used to lave it with the athelas water--it seemed to help. At least he‘s not running a fever this time.”

Lavender nodded. Diamond held the basin while her mistress took a soft cloth and wet it in the fragrant water, and began to wash the cold arm. Right now, she was doing as she was directed, by one who obviously had experience of a sort with the problem. But when the crisis was over, she was going to need some answers.

“Pip,” Merry struggled slightly against Pippin’s awkward grip. “What about Frodo?”

“It’s going to be fine, Merry. Father is sending a messenger to Bag End right away.” Pippin blinked away the tears that were trying to form in his own eyes. Trust Merry to be thinking only of Frodo at a time like this.

He turned again to the healers. “There is a small porcelain box in the drawer with the athelas. There’s a special tea in there made up from it. I think some of it would help.”

Lavender paused in her treatment of Merry’s arm to give Diamond a nod. The apprentice quickly found the little box and prepared not one, but two cups of the tea.

She held one of them up to Merry’s lips, and he took a few small swallows.

He soon grew drowsy, but before he drifted off, he looked up at Pippin again. “He really is gone, isn’t he?” he whispered. “He can’t hurt Frodo anymore..”

“Yes, Merry. He really is gone, thanks to you. Get some rest, now.”

As Merry’s eyes closed in slumber, Lavender eased him away from Pippin’s embrace. “I would imagine your arm is uncomfortable.”

“It is rather pins and needles,” he said. “Thank you,” this to Diamond as she handed him the second cup of tea. A good idea. It would stave off any impending nightmares of his own. Merry did not need to be disturbed any further. He sipped it slowly. He was puzzled. He could not understand why Merry was reacting to Frodo’s anniversary this way.

__________________________________________________

Sam stood in the doorway to Frodo’s room. The moonlight showed him moving restlessly, clutching Arwen’s jewel for all he was worth. He seemed to have once more fallen into ill dreams, but at least he was not in the awful trance-like state that Sam had found him in at first.

Rose came up behind Sam. “This is how he was last spring, Sam, when he was so ill, and did not want me to tell you. Except for the pain in his shoulder--that is different. What can we do for him?”

“Other than what we’ve done already, Rose-love, I can’t say as I know. Strider and Lord Elrond, even old Gandalf, they didn’t think he’d ever get over it, I don’t think. But it’s better than it was before Queen Arwen gave him her jewel. Only thing is, I think using her jewel makes him sad.”

“Better a bit sad than in such a state as he was tonight.” She slipped her arm around her husband’s waist. “Come, my Sam, let’s go to our own rest. There’s naught else we can do tonight.”

Sam allowed her to draw him away, but his troubled gaze lingered on his master.

____________________________________________

Lavender let Pippin drink some of the tea in silence, before she put forth her question. “Young Peregrin, I think that you had better tell me what this is all about. This is not idle curiosity now, this is in aid of his health--” she nodded at the peacefully slumbering Merry, “--and yours.”

Pippin nodded. She was the healer, and without Strider, who would have known instantly why this happened, he was going to have to make her understand. “I don’t fully understand myself. This should not have happened *now*, not to him.”

“Tell me what you can.”

“I’ll do my best. But do not blame me if you do not believe me. The truth of this sounds mad enough.” He sucked in his cheeks, and pursed his lips in thought, and after a moment continued. “Did you hear about the Black Riders that invaded Buckland right after we left, and attacked Crickhollow?”

Lavender nodded. Fredegar Bolger had been distraught afterwards, and she had attended him once he had come home from Buckland. He would not say much about it, but enough to know that there had been Big Men, seeking Frodo Baggins, with ill-intent. She had always assumed that they had been sent by Lotho Pimple. It was the most logical explanation.

Pippin looked at her. “I know what a lot of people think. But those Black Riders had nothing to do with Lotho. They were Nazgûl, servants of--” his voice dropped to a strained whisper, and his green eyes grew haunted. “--of--of the Dark Lord in Mordor.” He shuddered, and took a sip of the tea, inhaling the healing fragrance, and reminding himself that Sauron was destroyed, and Aragorn was King, and they were home, now, *home*. His voice grew stronger. “The chief of them, you will have heard of, for every hobbit-child learns the story of the last King, who fought against the Witch-king of Angmar.”

Lavender and Diamond looked at one another. That battle, from which no hobbit had returned, had been over a thousand years ago. How could that be?

Pippin shook his head. “Believe me or not. You want the truth, here it is. Anyway, about two weeks into our journey, they caught up to us, at a place called Weathertop. He stabbed Frodo with a poisoned blade. It was a miracle he survived at all. Lord Elrond had to cut into him, to get a piece of the poisoned blade out of him. But Frodo has never been the same since it happened. And it seems that when the anniversary of the day it happened arrives, he goes through it all over again, as the King and Lord Elrond warned us might happen.”

Pippin stopped for a moment, and looked fondly and proudly at Merry. “Anyway, much later in our travels, well, Merry and I got separated. He ended up at a battle in the company of the King of Rohan’s niece, who is a great warrior herself. The two of them slew the Witch-king. But there was some kind of spell at work; Merry’s sword arm went cold and dead, and he was cast into a dark melancholy that almost killed him. Strider saved him. ‘The hands of the King are the hands of a healer.’ But Merry also seems to re-live his experience on the date it happened. That’s why I don’t understand what happened tonight. Merry slew the monster on the fifteenth of Rethe; this is *Frodo’s* anniversary.”

Lavender nodded her head. “I think I may know part of the problem.” She glanced at Merry’s slumbering form, and reached for her pendulum. “Since he sleeps, I will ask you--do you think he would mind?”

Pippin shook his head. “He might. But if it will help him, go ahead. If he wants to be angry later, he can be angry at me.”

Diamond watched intently as her mistress swung the amber over Merry’s prone form. If she concentrated, she could see much of what Lavender saw.

“He’s sleeping peacefully now,” said Lavender. “I think all will be well by morning.”

Pippin shook his head. “So why did this happen?”

“Mr. Peregrin, you are aware that there is an unusually strong bond of affection between the four of you, who went away?”

Pippin blinked. He didn’t understand. “That’s what some people have told me. It doesn’t seem all that unusual to me. That’s just the way things are. After all, we’re family, except for Sam, and he might as well be, with everything we went through.” He said this last a bit defensively, as there were still some people to be found who did not approve of his friendship with the gardener.

“Trust me, young Took, there are brothers who are not so close.” She sat back for a moment in the chair by his bed, and put her finger up in front of her lips, as she tried to think of the best way to explain. “You have heard of the saying ‘family ties’?” Pippin nodded. “Now it helps to think of them as actual ties, cords binding you together with the ones you love. All of you have the strongest I have ever been privileged to see.” She stopped and looked at Merry. “He has a tenacious nature.”

Pippin gave out a short surprised bark of laughter. “Tenacious? That’s the best word for Merry I have ever heard!”

“He is holding on very tightly to those cords. In fact, he has pulled them as tightly as he can, especially the ones to you, and to Frodo Baggins. It is putting a strain on him. He is fearful of losing both of you. This makes him pull even harder. He is reaping the result of this; he is more aware of both of you, even when you are not present. But if he does not learn to loosen the cords, he will be lost when they inevitably break.”

Pippin’s protest died on his lips. What if he *had* been killed the other day? What of Merry then?

Lavender saw the realization dawn. She carefully did not say what else she had seen: that the cords to Frodo were already beginning to fray.

___________________________________________

Rose had finally gone to sleep, her breathing soft and even.

Sam lay awake. He wished he could cry, could weep, could mourn, but he did not. This was a pain that gripped him from the top of his head all the way down to his toes, and left no room for tears.

In the Black Land, Sam had seen despair, agony, fear, even hatred for the Ring and for the Dark Lord, in Frodo’s eyes. But at least there had been feeling, emotion, there.

Tonight, he had seen nothing but emptiness in those eyes, as though Frodo were too weary even for pain.

But that’s all right, he thought. I have enough pain for the both of us.

 





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