3. A Sticky Situation

“Pippin?” Merry whispered, searching through the store room frantically. Aunt Eglantine had just placed the squirrelly hobbit-lad under his care for the evening during the Yule party, and he didn’t want to get in trouble for losing him after the first fifteen minutes. He had turned his attention to a pretty-looking lass for not even one minute, and when he turned back he’d seen the eleven-year-old slip off between groups of adults towards the store room.

“Peregrin Took! Where are you?”

A call came from the back where the large barrels of flour were kept. “Merry? Is that you?” One of the barrels was missing its lid. Merry crept towards it in and peered over the edge. There was Pippin, sitting in the barrel and covered from head to toe in flour. Merry’s stomach did a little flip.

“Oh no, Pippin…”

Pippin grinned. “I’m Gorbadoc! He has white hair, and when I saw it, I thought that it must be fun to have hair that isn’t any color, so I decided to turn my hair white too! Only I fell in the barrel by accident. Can you help me out?” He lifted his hands up to Merry, and Merry took them and pulled him out. To Merry’s horror, he began to dust himself off. The flour flew everywhere. Merry grabbed his hands.

“Pippin! Stop!”

“Why?”

“If your mother finds out I let you crawl around in a barrel of flour, I’m in trouble!”

“Why is that different from normal?” Pippin said cheerily. Merry grimaced.

“And you will be in trouble too.” Pippin stiffened, keeping perfectly still so as to keep from letting even the smallest grain of flour fall from his clothes and hair.  Merry fought an enormous grin.

“You just get up to your room as quick as you can without leaving much of a trail. Change your clothes and clean yourself off. And don’t let anyone see you!” Pippin nodded and dashed off, leaving a sprinkling of flour in his wake. Merry sighed and got out a broom.

After he had swept away all traces of flour and replaced the lid on the barrel, he followed the trail of white that Pippin had left, obliterating it with the broom as he went. By the time he got to Pippin’s room, he was sneezing so hard that tears were running down his face. He dried his eyes and opened the door to find Pippin’s dusty clothes lying in a heap on the floor and Pippin dunking his head in the washbasin. Merry’s eyes widened.

“Pippin,” he said slowly. “How much flour did you have in your hair, and how much water do you have in that basin?”

Pippin lifted up his head. “I don’t know, Merry. I had lots and lots of flour in my hair, because that’s where I wanted it, and I didn’t have very much water left because mama used most of it to clean me up just before tonight.” His curls were dripping wet flour onto the floor.

“Do you remember what happens when you mix flour and water together?”

“Sure! It gets sticky. Do you remember when- oh no.” There was a look of terror on Pippin’s face. He ran his fingers through his hair, and they came away with globs of a paste-like material. He tried to wash his fingers off in the basin, only to find it was full of the same pasty substance. “Merry! Merry! What do I do?”

Merry grinned. “We could go and dunk your head in the Brandywine.”

“Mer-ry! I’m serious!”

“Well, we’ll have to do something before it dries…”

“We could get a towel and rub it off.”

“Let’s try that, then.”

Twenty minutes later, Merry held in his hands a slightly sticky towel and beheld an amused Pippin, whose hair stuck out in hard spikes. Pippin touched his head gingerly.

“I have horns!”

Merry groaned. “We only helped the stuff to dry faster! What can we do? Wait- we can try to brush it out, or something. Now that it’s dry, it won’t stick to the brush- it’ll flake off!”

“But I hate having my hair brushed!”

Merry ignored Pippin’s protests, picked the brush up off of Pippin’s desk, and began to work the flour out of Pippin’s hair.

“Ow! Ow! You’re pulling on a knot!” Pippin wailed. Merry stopped and inspected the knot of hair and flour.

“This knot’s under all of your other hair,” Merry mused, fingering the knot. “I don’t think anyone would really notice if we cut it off…”

“PLEASE cut it off! Cut off as many of the knots as you can!”

“I’ll be right back. I know where mother keeps her sewing scissors. You keep brushing your hair out.”

Merry left Pippin to his arduous task and snuck down the hall to his parents’ room, keeping a wary eye out. He found his mother’s scissors and got back to Pippin as quickly as he could.

“Got them!”

Pippin’s face lit up. “Good, because I found another knot here, and here, and here…”

Merry sighed and began the process of cutting away the snarls.

After nearly an hour of cutting hair, cleaning clothes, and sweeping away remains, Merry and Pippin surveyed their work critically.

“I don’t think we did a shabby job, do you, Pip?”

Pippin shook his head. “No, it isn’t so bad. My head feels lighter, though,” he said, running his fingers through his curls. “Wait, Merry, did we rinse out the basin? I think it still has wet flour in it.” At that moment, Pearl Took burst into the room.

“There you two are! We’ve been looking for you for the past hour. Didn’t you hear us calling you?”

Merry and Pippin glanced at each other. “N-no, we didn’t hear you,” Pippin said uneasily.

“We were in here the whole time, if you were wondering. It was… too hot down at the party, so we came here to cool down.”

“I know! I’m too hot myself,” she said, fanning herself. Her cheeks were flushed and pink. “Do you mind if I use your washbasin, Pippin?”

Merry and Pippin looked at each other and grinned wickedly.

“Why no, Pearl.”

“Yes, go ahead.”

“Thanks.” Pearl dipped her hands into the slightly hardened paste in the basin and brought them to her hot face.

“Run!” Merry whispered to Pippin, and they shot out the door, Pearl’s angry shrieks following them down the hall.

“PEREGRIN TOOK! MERIADOC BRANDYBUCK! GET BACK HERE!”