Chapter 20. Put Back Together
At the cot in the Wood, upon hearing the sound of ponies in the yard, Bolham made a staying gesture to the others in the room and got up from the hearth. 'Steady, old friend,' he said to Gorbyl. 'We'll sort it all out.' His long strides quickly took him to the door and out to the yard, where those who remained in the cot heard him raise his voice in greeting.
After a long pause, those inside heard several voices engaged in a low-voiced discussion on the veranda outside the front door. The discussion went on for a seemingly long time before the door opened to admit The Red, followed by...
'Ferdi!' Pippin said, starting up, only to sink back down at Agate's staying gesture as she entered immediately behind Ferdibrand. 'How...?'
'The Mistress came looking for me in the crowd,' Ferdi whispered. He grimaced and looked to Agate, who had paused beside him.
The healer smiled and put her finger to her lips. 'No harm done, lad; at least, we can hope so. Of a mercy, you kept your voice low...'
Ferdi nodded but did not speak again. Though he might have been expected to go immediately to Tolly, he remained just inside the door, as if waiting for further instructions.
Agate touched Ferdi's arm and then moved to the hearth where she crouched over Gorbyl, her skirts pooling on the floor. 'Old friend,' she said gently, smoothing the old hobbit's straggly hair back from the ashen forehead. 'I'm sorry to see you've fallen ill. But you're not fevered, I'm glad to see, so we'll take that as a boon.'
She settled to the floor beside him and unobtrusively continued her examination. At last, she looked up to meet her husband's gaze. 'He's labouring under a terrible strain,' she said, and then she looked into Gorbyl's face with a compassionate smile. 'I think I know what it's about.'
'O' course you do,' Gorbyl whispered.
'Have faith,' Agate said. 'My husband is a wise hobbit; and for all his youth, I deem the Thain has his share of wisdom as well. We'll sort all this out. Now,' she said, adopting a brisk tone though she continued to speak softly. 'Bolham told me of his conversations with the childer over the past few weeks; and just now, he filled me in on what happened after he arrived here with the Thain... How is the hobbit now? The one we all thought was Wallas – only he wasn't?'
She held up a cautioning hand. 'But all of you, keep your voices as low as you can if you should speak. For the sake of the hobbit in the other room...' She was obviously speaking of Tolly and not Hilly, sitting at his older brother's side.
'He swooned, there at the door, when Uncle Red arrived – he probably told you – and since then, he's just been lying there, even after they carried him to his bed,' young Gorbi said quietly. 'Just lyin' there, not moving or speaking, just as when he first came to us.' He swallowed hard. 'His... his brother has been talkin' to him, but he doesn't answer. He doesn't even open his eyes, fro' what we've heard.'
'Thank you, lad,' Agate said. 'That's valuable information, and I think I know where we ought to start.' She nodded at Bolham, and he patted Ferdi's arm and then crossed to the hearth, sat himself down, and took Lark onto his lap.
To the hovering Tooks, Haldi and Ferdi who still stood by the door and Pippin seated near the hearth, the healer explained, 'I've seen this sort of thing before – when we were hiding in the Wood from the ruffians, they'd bring ill or injured hobbits to the healers where we were hidden in the fastness my husband and his band dug for us under the roots of the great trees deep in the forest. There, we cared for them as best we could under the circumstances.'
'You've seen this kind of thing before?' Pippin asked, his eyes alight with curiosity despite the seriousness of the situation they found themselves in at the moment. Remembering the healer's caution, he spoke just above a whisper.
'O aye,' Agate confirmed. 'This kind of thing,' she echoed, 'though from several different causes. For one example, lightning struck a group of our hobbits one day, and one survived while two were killed. I dunno if it was only the lightning that left him dazed and speechless – though that's as likely an explanation as any. Or the shock of it might've tipped him over the edge, as it were, for despair was already eating at him. There seemed no end to the Troubles, that Summer, and he'd seen the ruffians capture his brother and watched them march him off to the Lockholes, helpless to save him... All I can say for sure is that he never did regain all his memories again.'
Young Gorbi gasped, then covered his mouth with his hands.
'No,' Agate said to the wide-eyed children. 'It wasn't your da, watching them march Gorbas away, but it might well have been the same with him, had he been in the group the lightning bolt struck down. Instead, his grief and horror took Wallas a different way... to where he could not settle to a peaceful life for not knowing what had happened to Gorbas. And so he went searching, time and again...'
Little Lark gulped back a sob, and Bolham gently stroked a wayward curl back from her forehead, for there seemed to be no happy outcome for the little ones as things currently stood. It was as if they'd lost their father all over again.
'Another two hobbits suffered a loss of memory from mishaps that happened during our time in the Wood...' Agate paused and then continued, 'One was injured in a fall from a tree, and the other had been thrown from his pony.'
Her pleasantly neutral healer's expression faded, and she added, 'And lastly, early on in that terrible Summer, five members of the band were captured by ruffians, and ill-used; rather than marching them to the Lockholes, the rogues tormented them for some days before Bolham and Harlow could work out a plan to rescue them. Lotho's Men were trying to break them down, you see – their spirit, their will...' her voice hardened, '...in order to gain information that would enable them to capture The Red.'
She looked to her husband, whose face was equally grim, before resuming her story. '...but after night fell on that last day, Bolham himself led a group of hobbits out o' the Wood. They surrounded the barn where the ruffians were "working", set it afire, and shot the Men as they emerged... and then a few courageous souls braved the flames and went in to carry their brothers and cousins to safety.'
Shot the Men as they emerged...! Pippin thought, sickened at the thought. And yet...
'By then, we knew we were fighting for our lives,' Bolham said quietly. 'It was a desperate time.' His expression, haunted with the memory of the drastic measures he and his hobbits had been driven to take, reminded Pippin eerily of Hildibold's face after the Battle of Bywater. Tolly's brother, his quiver empty, had held his last arrow in his hand for a long moment after Frodo jerked his arm to spoil his aim and keep him from shooting. Hilly had been targeting the ruffians who had surrendered and sat upon the ground at that point, unarmed, their empty hands pressed tight against the backs of their necks. After he had unnocked the arrow, he'd clenched it in his fist – and then the Tookish archer had dropped the missile as if it burned his flesh.
Frodo had shown mercy – to Saruman, to the defeated Men who had carried out his orders. But perhaps the north-Tooks had not had the luxury to choose similarly when they'd fired the barn to free their fellows.
And as for their Southern relations, the Tooks...
In the early days after Pippin returned to the Tookland to take up the office of Thain, his cousin Fortinbrand, a history-keeper at the Great Smials, sought him out on one of his nightly walks through the back corridors of that ancestral, many-tunnelled mansion. Fortinbrand had been more wary than welcoming, but at least he was not openly hostile like so many others in those early days.
'If you want to do right by the Tooks, then read the records,' he said, part of the unsolicited advice he'd come to offer to the new Thain. 'I'd recommend starting with the most recent and working your way backwards... that you might understand your father better, the battles he fought – not all literal battles, mind,' he'd added, holding up a staying hand, '...the choices he made, and why, and how living under his leadership affected the Tooks and helped shape them into the weapons they are today. You can fight against them, or you can reach out to take them, risking a slash or cut, and with a firm grasp, wield them for the greater good.'
Not long afterwards, Pippin had set aside time to go in search of Fortinbrand in the Great Place of the Tooks, deep in the Smials. Lost in memory – when was the last time he'd followed this particular corridor? – the young Thain had made his way past the Old Took's shabby old room to the storeholes where the records were kept. Though he hadn't found Fortinbrand, the records-keeper he had found directed him to a particular crate holding a stack of papers with a folded note on top. 'Fortin left that for you; he seemed to think you'd be coming along one of these days...' the ancient hobbit, looking quite as old as the history he guarded, had told the new Thain.
Two-thirds down in the piled papers Fortinbrand had assembled for his benefit, Pippin found Paladin's account of the Troubles. And since he was reading backwards in the historical records, it wasn't long before he found the page, dated in early summer, when the Thain's orders to the Tooks guarding the borders had changed from "Taunt Lotho's Men and lead them into the traps; warn them, but if you must shoot them, aim to wound" to the deceptively simple, chilling, "Shoot to kill".
When he'd finished reading the last of the papers at the bottom of the crate, the young Thain bowed his head and wept. 'Father, I misjudged you,' he said brokenly to the empty room where he'd hidden himself away after the business of the day was done, that he might read without interruption. 'O Da... if only you might have told me...'
The silence in the room drew Pippin out of his thoughts of the past, and he raised his bowed head to find Bolham's gaze fixed upon him. 'O aye,' he whispered. 'Desperate times.'
Agate nodded at her husband and then at the Thain, and speaking more slowly, she resumed her narrative. 'Those rescued hobbits seemed to be sunk deep within themselves; for the most part, they neither spoke nor seemed to see or hear any of us... And then, one of them, when I called him by name, told me that was not his name.'
'Not his name?' Pippin echoed, puzzled.
Agate's eyes filled with sudden tears, and she said brokenly, 'He – and the others, as we discovered after he provided that key piece of information – would answer only to the epithets rat or scum or vermin or rubbish or filth, for those were the "names" the ruffians had assigned their prisoners.'
Into the shocked silence, Pippin spoke. 'In the Lockholes, the ruffians took away their prisoners' names and gave them numbers to answer to,' he murmured, staring into the distance. 'They severely punished hobbits for the "crime" of speaking another's name instead of a number.' He met Ferdi's troubled gaze then, and nodded sympathetically, remembering the poor wretches they'd carried out of that dreadful place on the day the Travellers had freed the prisoners at last, Fatty Bolger among them.
Agate nodded, 'Yes,' she affirmed. 'From what I've heard when I've talked to healers from the South-lands, our rescued fellows seemed to respond in a very similar way to the worst-affected of those blighted hobbits who were released from the Lockholes.'
The healer was silent for a long moment. At last, she said, 'We did all we knew to heal the wounded, whether in body or mind or spirit, there in the Wood in those dark days. In desperation, I tried everything I'd ever learnt, as well as many things I hadn't learnt – even to applying thoughts and ideas that crossed my mind in an idle moment. We healers also made careful notes on what seemed to work – and what didn't.'
She smiled without humour. 'Hiding in the Wood meant there was no dearth of writing materials... Smooth, white bark makes for a relatively decent substitute for fine paper or parchment – and the pieces too small to write upon can be cut into slivers and brewed into tea of sorts! ...and wood for charcoal-making is abundantly available. And charcoal, ground to a fine powder and mixed with honey, makes a workable ink, as you may know.'
Pippin nodded. Make do, or do without had become a byword during the Troubles.
'Thus,' Agate said, dusting her hands as if dismissing the ghosts of the past and turning firmly to the present problem, 'I've an idea of how to go about this. Trial and error it was, at that time, and our earliest efforts made things worse instead of better, at least in some of the cases.'
'Worse?' Ferdi said uneasily, though he retained the presence of mind to whisper.
Agate smiled. 'I'm fairly sure I know what not to do this time,' she said.
Fairly sure, Pippin thought, unsettled, but managed to hold his tongue.
Bolham tucked Lark into the crook of his elbow, got up from the floor, and offered Agate his other hand to help her up. He then settled close beside Gorbyl in her place and restored Lark to his lap.
Agate went to the door of the bedroom. 'The Thain would like to speak with you, lad,' she said, obviously addressing Hilly.
'I would?' Pippin mouthed in surprise.
Bolham nodded, catching his eye. 'You would, and you do,' he said very quietly.
Hilly followed Agate out of the room; together, they moved towards Pippin, who scrambled to his feet, wondering what he was to say. The healer, however, soon solved that problem. 'Tell this hobbit he must listen to me and heed my words,' she said. 'But even as you speak, keep your voice as low as you can, and do not say his name aloud.' As she spoke, she began to lead Hilly towards the front door where Ferdi stood.
Pippin naturally followed them. 'Cousin...' he began, and then he broke off. 'I beg your pardon?' he asked the healer.
Agate smiled. 'It has not escaped our attention that the Tooks listen only to the Thain...'
'Or the Steward,' Bolham interjected.
'Whatever. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say Whom-ever,' Agate said. 'Any road,' she continued, turning back to Hilly, 'if we follow the right road, that is, I think we can gently jostle your brother's memories back into place, and fairly quickly into the bargain. Whereas, should we try and force him, he might lose himself for many more weeks... or months... or even altogether.' She eyed Hilly closely. 'Do I have your attention?' she asked, adding quickly and urgently, '...but keep your voice down when you answer me!'
'I'm listening,' Hilly said quietly.
'Well then, perhaps Tooks have some sense after all and don't only listen to their Thain,' Agate said. 'We'll give it a go, anyhow. Now,' she said to Hilly. 'You must stay right here, by... by... your cousin,' she said, indicating Ferdibrand. 'The both of you stand there by the door and do not move from this place, do you understand? And from this point onward, you mustn't speak – not any of you South-landers, that is – until I invite you to do so.'
To Hilly, she emphasised, 'Your brother especially must not hear any more of your voice, lad – I suspect he's heard too much of it already...'
Hilly looked stricken; he opened his mouth, but when the healer held up a staying hand, he closed it again and swallowed hard.
'Good lad,' Agate said to him. Then she went into the bedroom where Tolly lay. The hobbits in the outer room heard the murmur of her voice go on for a long time, starting and stopping, flowing and ebbing, though the words were indistinguishable.
And then the visiting Tooks straightened and stood staring, though they stayed in place and remained silent as ordered. For now they heard the familiar sound of Tolly's voice, answering!
For perhaps as much as an hour, the murmurs continued. Hilly and Ferdi, standing with Pippin and Haldi by the front door, shifted their weight as the time dragged on, but they did not stir from where Agate had ordered them to stay.
After the voices in the bedroom finally fell silent, Agate came out into the main room wearing a solemn expression. Without speaking, she moved as far from the bedroom as possible, all the way to the door leading to the yard, and then she gestured to the huddle of Tooks, and they surrounded her. In a whisper, she said, 'Your hobbit is of two minds – quite literally. A part of him, the greater part at the moment, though there's little enough of it, is "Wallas". For he's been living the past weeks as Wallas, and everyone has treated him as Wallas and shared their memories of the hobbit with him, and he's taken in those memories and tried his best to make them his own.'
Pippin, Ferdi, Hilly and Haldi all nodded, their expressions sombre. Was the Tolly they'd known lost to them? And to his wife, Meadowsweet, who at this moment did not even know he'd been found alive?
'His own memories are shielded – blocked,' the healer went on, 'tucked carefully away, as treasured old linens might be folded and gently laid to rest, saved because of the precious embroidery Great-great-grandmama stitched on them.' She looked from face to face. 'I know they are not gone beyond reach, however, because of his dreams. People... places... he described many of them to me just now, though they have remained mostly hidden from his waking mind.'
She continued, 'He knew his brother immediately, though he didn't know who he might be or why he recognised him.'
Then to the Thain, she added, 'I think he fainted when he saw you because yours was one of the faces from his dreams. 'Twas his memories, trying to come to the surface, but Wallas himself pushed them down, though without knowing he was doing so, as it were. The "Wallas" in him – the "Wallas" he was becoming, I mean, was trying to protect himself as best he could.'
'And so?' Pippin wanted to know.
'I've been leading him gently along the path, probing his memories as deftly as possible without pushing him off the delicate balance he's achieved. Think of it this way: he's on the knife's edge. He could fall to one side or the other – reject all of Wallas's memories, or all of Tolly's, or even lose his footing and fall upon the blade and lose everything... to become like one whose wit has fled, sitting and staring at nothing, neither hearing nor seeing nor acknowledging anyone who tries to reach him.'
'Have mercy,' Hilly whispered, shaken. Agate might have been describing a close cousin who'd been released from the Lockholes and who'd withered... and died... soon after.
'You said Hi—his brother had talked to him too much already,' Ferdi murmured, barely remembering in time not to mention Hilly's name. 'What if I try?'
'You're too close,' Agate answered gently. She held up her hand when it seemed he would have argued. 'We don't want to do anything to jar or shake him.'
'He's on a knife's edge?' Pippin questioned. 'Then how is he to come to stand on solid ground once more? You described three possibilities, but in every one of them, he'd lose something of himself. Or – worst of all – he could lose all of himself.'
'We want to gently integrate – bring together – his divergent memories to make him whole again,' Agate said. She pressed her palms together in the air and folded her fingers down, briefly clasping her hands together in illustration. 'But for now, I must ask you to wait a little longer. After we'd talked, and I'd listened, and divided the threads I'd heard until I could perceive both Wallas and Tolly clearly, I told him to sleep.'
'And he obeyed you?' Pippin said, amazed. 'Did you give him a draught?'
'No need,' Agate said. 'It's a knack I hit upon, in talking with those sadly confused hobbits in the Wood during the Troubles. I could do the same to you, simply use a certain tone of voice, and a few other tricks along with it, and you'd fall asleep until I snapped my fingers to waken you.' She smiled. 'But I think it best that you all stay awake and on your toes for the time being.'
Bolham, still sitting by the hearth, smiled at the Tooks' stunned expressions.
'I'm going to waken him now,' Agate said, 'more or less. 'We're going to walk together, in a manner of speaking, go a bit further along both paths, hoping to bring them ever closer, until they converge at last into one...'
'How will you know?' Hilly whispered.
Agate smiled. 'I'll let you know as soon as I do,' she said. 'But bide here, and – as I warned you before – hold your tongues! Do not speak. We are at a critical point in the process, and I don't want the sound of your voices, any of them, to wash out the road we're treading. Yet, listen and watch for my call and come as quickly as you may when I do summon you. And, I need not tell you, listen closely to my instructions and follow them to the best of your ability when your turn comes.'
She returned to the bedroom, and soon the flow of murmured conversation resumed. Bolham smiled to himself and shook his head. Silent Tooks! he thought to himself. And Tooks listening to a healer and obeying! Almost impossible to imagine! And yet for the love they bore the hobbit in the other room, these Tooks would, without doubt, comply with the healer's orders to the letter.
After a time, the conversation seemed to wane, then stop. The healer looked out of the bedroom and quickly found the Thain, for he'd scarcely budged from the spot he'd occupied earlier, standing with Haldi alongside Hilly and Ferdi in silent support. She emerged, moved to his side and spoke in a low voice. 'Haldi told me as we pulled up in the yard that you and Tolly knew each other as children.'
Both Pippin and Haldi nodded.
'Good,' she murmured. 'I want you to come in and introduce yourself to him now, Thain.' But when Pippin turned immediately towards the bedroom, she held him back to add, 'As simply as possible. As a friend from his childhood, nothing more. And – do your best to show no surprise at anything he might say.'
Pippin nodded again. 'I can do that,' he whispered.
He entered the room just behind Agate, who bent down and took Tolly's hand. Although Tolly, lying propped up with pillows, seemed to stare at nothing, his eyes half-closed, the healer did not make any effort to claim his attention but spoke gently as if confident he heard her. 'Hullo again, lad,' she said. 'I've someone here who wants to greet you.'
Pippin stepped forward and sat down on the bed in obedience to Agate's subtle gestures. 'Hullo,' he said calmly, following the healer's lead and not speaking Tolly's name in greeting him. 'I'm Pip.'
Tolly's gaze seemed to return from a far distance as his eyes opened fully and he focused on Pippin's face. A frown wrinkled his brow. 'You're not Pip,' he said.
'I'm not?' Pippin asked, bemused.
Tolly shook his head ever so slightly, still scrutinising Pippin's face. 'You're older than Pip,' he said, 'and…'
'And?' Pippin said with as much encouragement as he could muster.
'And taller,' Tolly said, and then, as if the effort to remember had exhausted him, he went away again.
'That's good,' Agate said quietly.
Remembering he was to show no surprise, Pippin glanced askance at her but said nothing.
'I think he's remembering something of his past,' she said, 'when you were still a tween.' She smiled at the young Thain. 'Not all that long ago.' She then said, 'Take his hand, but do not speak again unless he speaks to you first. I'll be right back.'
As they waited, Tolly's eyelids drifted closed. Pippin studied his cousin's expressionless face, wondering what might come next.
Agate returned a few moments later with Haldi in tow. 'Tolly,' she said, explicitly naming her patient this time. When the hobbit did not respond, she snapped her fingers, and his eyes opened. 'That's better.'
And then Agate nudged Haldi, and the escort started. 'Remember,' she said in an undertone, and then she beckoned to Pippin to stand up from the bed and move to her side.
Haldi went to the bed and sat down on the edge. 'Hullo, Tolly,' he said, and waited.
Tolly turned his head and silently scrutinised Haldi for a time that seemed to stretch on interminably.
Pippin fought the urge to fidget; he almost felt as if he ought to hold his breath, for Agate was taut with expectation, and he had the sense of something intangible happening, of puzzle pieces moving and swirling atop the surface of a deep-running current, edges touching and then turning in the current and touching again at different points.
Haldi broke from his locked gaze with Tolly and looked towards Agate, clearly questioning, but the healer nodded firmly towards Tolly, silently directing Haldi's attention back to the hobbit half-reclining on the bed.
All of them waited, not moving, not speaking. The hobbits in the outer room were equally silent, even the little ones. Perhaps Bolham had something to do with that. So quiet was the air within the cot, Pippin heard a burning log pop on the hearth in the outer room. He fancied he heard the shower of embers that followed.
At last, Tolly said slowly, as if he had to hunt for each word. 'Haldi... How did you come to be here? And where are we, exactly?'
'We're in Wallas's home,' Haldi answered, but that was all.
After a short silence, Tolly said, 'Wallas...?'
And then he blinked and said, 'I remember...'
'What do you remember, Tolly?' Agate said gently.
'I remember Wallas,' Tolly said. 'Or... that's not right. But I remember being Wallas...'
'Thinking you were Wallas?'
'That's right,' he said. 'Or... Wallas helped me? I was... empty, and he filled me?'
Agate's lips tightened, betraying her inner tension, but she forged ahead, going carefully. 'Or his loved ones helped you think you were Wallas when you could not find Tolly...' At the hobbit's puzzled look, she said, 'Wallas is not here, Tolly. Remember? You put on his life, as someone puts on a suit of clothes, and you wore Wallas just so long as you needed his warmth and shelter, until you were healed enough to put on Tolly again.'
'But Wallas was here...' Tolly said, sounding confused but strangely insistent. 'Is here...'
'You have memories of Wallas,' Agate agreed delicately. 'And I think you ought to hold onto them, even as you step into Tolly once more. Can you do that? They are precious memories, and they've become a part of who you are, even if you were living as Wallas at that time.'
In sudden capitulation, Tolly said, 'I can do that.' He nodded to underscore the words.
'Quickly!' Agate said to Haldi, and the escort rose from the bed and hurried out of the room.
He was back almost immediately with Hilly. 'Go to him!' he hissed to his fellow escort.
As Hilly advanced, slow and hesitant, to the bed, Agate directed him further, saying, 'Speak your brother's name.'
This was one order Hilly was happy to follow without consulting the wishes of the Thain. 'Tolly?' he whispered as he reached the bedside.
'Again, louder.'
Hilly cleared his throat. 'Tolly? Tolibold?'
Tolly seemed to see Hilly for the first time, and he smiled, his eyes lighting with wonder. 'Hilly!' he said. 'You won't believe this... I've had the most incredible dream!'
And then Hilly fell upon the bed, and the brothers embraced, and when Hilly sat back to wipe the tears from his face, Tolly said, 'But why are we weeping?'
'Why ever not?' Hilly replied. Which, oddly enough, Tolly seemed to find an acceptable answer. Hilly hugged him again, saying, 'Welcome back! How I've missed you!'
'I'm glad to be back,' Tolly answered. 'But was I away?'
'No,' Agate said quickly. 'You were always right here. And things will become clearer to you in time. But you are right here, Tolly, and your memories of Wallas are true, and so are your memories of the time before Wallas, your memories of your life as Tolibold. They're all true, and they're all part of you. Do you believe me?'
'I feel I must,' Tolly said, though he sounded more than a little bewildered.
'Good,' Agate said. 'Hold fast to those truths, then, and we'll go and greet the rest of your loved ones who are waiting for us in the other room.'
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Author's notes:
More on Paladin's "shoot to kill" order during the Troubles can be found in the last few chapters of The Rescue.
The incident Pippin remembers from the Battle of Bywater is recounted in this drabble.
Fortinbrand, a Tookish historian, first appeared in The Thrum of Tookish Bowstrings, Part 1.
Some turns of phrase were drawn from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, especially the chapter titled 'Prologue: About Hobbits'.
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