Pippin had a very strange day. Granted, he had a number of strange days, in which things that never happened to anyone else happened to him, but there was something more to this one and he knew it, and he knew he’d figure it out eventually but not for a good time yet.

He was out playing in the reeds of the Honeybourne, which was by far the nicest and sweetest river that ever ran through Tookland, when out of nowhere a Big Person walked up to him and started playing with him. There was nothing particularly wrong with that, for she was very kind, but she was also big and that frightened him a little because grown-ups were big and she was bigger than they were.

She spoke very kindly to him, and asked him his name, and made a boat for him out of the reeds and they cast it off together. But when he asked her what she was doing here, what with her being Big and all, all she said was that she was passing through the countryside and she would not stay long enough to trouble anyone.

After about an hour she said she had to leave, but first she wanted to ask him one more question: had he learned his letters yet?

Pippin was very proud to say that he had. She held out a sheet of parchment for him, only it was very thin and white as a cloud—like nothing he had ever seen before—and a piece of charcoal, and asked him if he could write his name.

He did.

The Big Lady smiled, and folded up the parchment, and thanked him. He was a little distraught that she kept the parchment, because he had signed his name on it and it was such a strange color, but before he knew it she’d said goodbye. Curious, he crept after her to see where she was going.

“Yes,” she was saying to a tall Big Person in a great coat. “I’ve got all four of them now. They really are nice fellows but I know it isn’t right to stay.”

“Quite right,” said the Man. “Wouldn’t want to alter the timestream, now, would we?”

“Thank you,” she said. “I needed a bit of a holiday.”

“Well, after what you’d been through last time I figured you deserved it, just a bit.”

He heard a door open and close—that’s odd, he thought, there weren’t any holes or houses around here.

He peeked forward just a little more. Behind a tree there was a great big blue box quite unlike anything he had seen before. Pippin very nearly ran after it, but just then with a great shriek the light on top of it started flashing and the box flickered before his very eyes!

Then Pippin ran, but by the time he reached the place where the box had stood, it was gone, and it never came back.

It was very strange indeed, and he knew if he worked at it, eventually he’d be able to figure it all out. But he didn’t have all the pieces he needed just yet, so he put it into the back of his mind to be puzzled out later.