Chapter 23. Similarities and Differences

On the far side of the Bridge, the land on the left side of the Road rose steeply. Walking on the Road as they were, the travellers found the way wide enough to walk abreast rather than some of the New Company leading while the others followed in their footsteps. Thus, the conversation flowed as they walked along at an easy pace.

'According to the map I studied, tracing this part of their journey, we're supposed to turn northwards not too long after crossing the Last Bridge,' Ferdi said, eyeing the forbidding landscape without enthusiasm as he walked. 'Do not try to tell me they climbed these slopes with a pony! ...much less a wounded hobbit...'

'If that is your wish, then I will not tell you such a thing,' young Pippin Gamgee replied with a straight face, but at Faramir's snicker, he covered his mouth with his hands and chortled. 

'Patience, my friend,' Haldoron said to Ferdibrand. 'We are to watch for the first opening we see, and then take it.'

'That reminds me of an old joke in the Shire,' Ferdi returned. 'When you come to a fork in the road, take it!'

Haldoron's face was a picture of puzzlement. 'I do not understand,' the Man confessed. 'How would someone know which fork to take?'

The younger hobbits burst out laughing together. At last, Robin Bolger gasped, 'The one in the road, of course!'

Haldoron exchanged glances with Ferdibrand, then shook his head. 'Perhaps it's a matter of "You had to be there at the time...",' he suggested.

'Perhaps,' Ferdi allowed, though one corner of his mouth twisted in a wry smile. 'Or perhaps it's simply a misunderstanding based on a difference between our cultures...'

The two youngest Hobbits looked at each other and rolled their eyes at such talk, which did not seem to fit with walking a rather dusty road under the bright Sun.

'Farry?' Robin asked, perhaps wondering at the teens' rudeness.

Behind his hand, the young Took murmured to his older cousin, 'A formal discussion seems better suited to a solemn convocation, I should think.' He threw his arms to the sides, narrowly missing Robin and Pip-lad. 'A day like this is simply begging for a song, or joke that sparks a hearty laugh. Why, I feel almost as if I could fly the rest of the way to Rivendell...!'

Pip-lad shook his head. Though he was no longer laughing, his face shone with glee. 'I'd like to see you try...' he said. 'What a sight that would be!'

Ferdi was still talking. '...but if it were a spoon lying in the road, there'd be much less difficulty...'

Haldoron slapped his forehead with his hand. 'Take the fork!' he said in sudden understanding.

'There you have it,' Ferdi said in satisfaction. 'Where Rangers must so oft be thinking of bearing and distance and potential hazards along the way, Hobbits are...'

'...invariably thinking about food!' the Man said. 'Fork...' he said, pointing to one side and then the other, 'and fork...' he added, pantomiming eating with such an implement. At last, he nodded. 'You have the right of it in pointing out the differences that led to my misunderstanding just now. Yet so many of the jests I've overheard from Bilbo, years ago, or your cousin the Thain, more recently, might as well have been spoken around a table filled with Guardsmen...'

'But then,' Ferdi put in quietly, 'I've no doubt they would have been at pains to offer such banter as Men would easily understand so as not to offend their listeners.'

Haldoron stared at the Hobbit in amazement. 'You told me your Thain assigned you this "small commission" that you might learn to better understand and communicate with Men,' he said slowly. He took a deep breath and added in a lower tone, 'Yet I think there is more to you than meets the eye, Master Chancellor.'

Ferdi shrugged and grimaced. 'All of us have untold depths, I suspect, Men and Hobbits alike,' he said. 'Still, my Thain has sent me in search of common ground...'

'And I think you have found it,' Haldoron returned. 'At least, you have revealed much deeper thinking about similarities and differences between Men and Hobbits than I, myself, have ever employed.'

'One of those differences would likely be that your foes were Orcs,' Ferdi said. 'And so you – the Northern Rangers, I mean – had to learn to understand their way of thinking in order to survive over the centuries.'

'Rogue Men as well,' Haldoron amended.

'And as a Man yourself, I should think you already knew something about the thought processes of Men – including rogues,' Ferdi maintained. 'In contrast, I doubt that Men would perceive any potential threat from Hobbits and feel the need to adjust their talk to suit! Whereas, Shire-folk have long been shy of Men – even wary.' He cocked an eye upward at his companion. 'As a troll or perhaps a giant would be to you, so Men are to Hobbits.'

Receiving Haldoron's nod, he continued. 'Hobbits learned long ago to defer to much taller folk,' he said. 'It would seem only good sense to avoid giving offence...'

'If not disappear altogether,' Haldoron said thoughtfully. 'Explaining why Men's knowledge of Hobbits, with the exception of the Northern Rangers and the Bree-landers, faded to legend, tales to tell by the fireside concerning Halflings.'

'But the Bree-Hobbits appear to live in harmony with the Men of Bree,' Ferdi said contemplatively, suddenly taking the conversation in a different direction. 'Tell me, do the two groups share the same sense of humour?'

'More or less,' Haldoron answered, but for the first time, he wondered if perhaps the Hobbits of Bree, when amongst their own, shared a private sense of humour that might not be obvious to a Man, even as their counterparts in the Shire did? 'The common room in The Prancing Pony has seldom lacked storytelling or talk or song or laughter, from my memories of the place. Though I must confess that we Rangers kept to ourselves, for the most part, preferring to observe others from the shelter of a dark corner.'

Ferdi's eyes lighted with a sudden thought. 'But amongst your own,' he said, 'I should imagine you have your own stories and songs – and aye, even jests! For I cannot imagine any possibility that joyless creatures would be able to maintain the heart and courage to protect the North-lands from Orcs and other dark things for centuries...'

Haldoron smiled faintly, and his eyes looked into a far distance for the next few strides. When his gaze returned to Ferdi's face, he said quietly, 'Indeed, Ferdibrand, I would not call Rangers joyless creatures...'

'But your humour is your own,' Ferdi insisted. 'For I heard Elessar make you laugh upon a time, and yet for the life o' me, I could not understand why. And when I asked Pippin later, he merely shrugged and said, Private joke. I thought nothing of it at the time, for many families have their own "private jokes" that will mean little or nothing to others.'

'You had to be there at the time,' Haldoron quoted.

'Exactly,' Ferdi said. 'But what were we talking about before we took this side trail...?'

'I believe I had just mentioned that we were to watch for the first opening we see, and then take it.'

'That's right!' Pip-lad said. He and the others had listened quietly to the conversation as they walked along. The Man suddenly wondered what the younger Hobbits had made of the topic, but the young Gamgee was all business now. 'About a mile past the Bridge, the Red Book says...'

'That is, if we choose to follow exactly in their footsteps, knowing what they did not know,' Haldoron interrupted.

'I don't like the sound of that,' Ferdi admitted. 'What did they not know, again?'

'Mister Frodo did not describe the country they travelled through in glowing terms,' Pip-lad said, causing the Man to look sharply at him in renewed surprise. The Mayor's son continued to remind him more of a scholar than a careless young Hobbit, especially when he shared insights he'd gleaned from hearing his father read aloud and discuss the account in the Red Book.

As a matter of fact, Elessar himself had not described this part of the journey in glowing terms, either, when he had gone over the maps with Haldoron. Nevertheless, the Ranger-guide held his tongue and left the talking to the Gamgee teen, curious to hear what the lad might say.

'What sort of terms did my cousin use, then?' Ferdi asked.

'Forbidding was one,' Pip-lad admitted, but then amended, 'No, not forbidding... Let me think... Threatening, he wrote.'

'Somehow threatening sounds worse than merely forbidding,' Ferdi murmured to Haldoron.

But Pip-lad hadn't quite finished. 'Sombre...' he said, tilting his head in thought. 'And sullen... even unfriendly! Ominous... I think that's what made me think of forbidding.'

'Lovely,' Ferdi said under his breath, but the Gamgee lad heard him and chortled again.

'No,' Pip-lad said cheerily. 'I'm quite sure that Mister Frodo did not use the word lovely, not at this point in the journey!'

Pathless, as well as wet and cheerless, or so Elessar said, Haldoron thought to himself.

The New Travellers walked on in silence until, about a mile to the east of the Bridge, a narrow ravine that led away northwards divided the steep hills looming on their left. As of one accord, the walkers stopped to study the forbidding gap, studded with dark trees and lacking any obvious pathway. 

'They were avoiding the Road and trying to find a different way,' Ferdi said after a moment of thought. 'But we are not labouring under the same constraints! Why not keep to the Road—' and turning his head to address Haldoron directly, he added, '—instead of following your kinsman's disastrous short-cut!'

Haldoron merely shrugged. He had no objections to taking the short road as opposed to the long one. On the other hand, he was keenly aware of his status as guide and observer, not leader or decision-maker.

And, as the Man had already half-expected... 'No!' Faramir objected strenuously, following up with, 'That wouldn't do at all! Why, we'd miss seeing the things Bilbo described from his first adventure: the Stone Trolls, the Trolls' wood, and the Troll-hole!'

'Surely we could walk along until we reach the path whereby they returned to the Road, and then we can turn to the North and see the sights,' Ferdibrand argued. 'A short-cut of sorts, in the best tradition of the term. We can walk directly to the Troll-wood, see the Stone Trolls – and even camp there overnight, as they did – peek into the Troll-hole, and then go back to the Road and on with our journey!'

'That would be appropriate if this were merely a walking party,' Faramir countered. 'But remember, Uncle, we are living a history lesson... and how can we do that if we do not walk in the footsteps of the original Travellers?!'

'I cannot fault him for his thoroughness,' Ferdi said under his breath to Haldoron, and then sighed. 'Very well, Nephew,' he said aloud. 'Your argument is, indeed, compelling. None of the arguments I might muster are strong enough to counter the case you have presented.' He took a deep breath, let it out again, and concluded, 'I yield.' His tone was formal, and he bowed to the teen as if to punctuate the thought.

Haldoron heard a wide-eyed Robin Bolger whisper to Pippin Gamgee, 'Just like a debate amongst the Tooks at a solemn convocation!' In that moment, he remembered that Robin's mother was a Took, allowing Robin, despite his Bolger surname, to attend and vote in assemblies held by the clannish Took family. Another scrap of information that came to mind was one Elessar had conveyed regarding Ferdibrand's role in training up Faramir to follow his father as Thain.

'Very well,' Faramir said, dismissing the argument and turning towards the narrow valley. 'Shall we?'

'After you,' Pip-lad answered with a bow, sweeping one hand before him in invitation.

'Not at all,' Farry said, but he was not playing the game the other teen had initiated. Instead, he turned and gestured to Haldoron, saying, 'If you wouldn't mind, Haldor... I should think that Aragorn took the lead here. It was, after all, his short-cut.' 

Thainly were his tone and bearing – unconsciously so, but in that moment, the Man could hear the echo of Thain Peregrin's voice speaking through his son's simple-seeming request. Though only a teen, Faramir had his father's knack of conveying an order with such grace and tact that he might have been conferring an honour or asking a simple favour.

But all the Man said in answer was, 'Of course.'

***