Many Paths to Tread by Arveldis

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Many Paths to Tread

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March 3017

Merry settled back against the trunk of the willow, stretching his legs out in front of him. A light breeze stirred the graceful branches, which brushed over the sunlight-dappled water of the pond and trailed among the cattails that grew in thickets at the water’s edge. 

Next to him, Pippin lit his pipe and pocketed his tinderbox, and the warm, earthy scent of pipeweed soon filled the air, complemented by Pippin’s steady stream of chatter about the various pies sold at Bywater’s market.

Merry tilted his head against the willow trunk and looked up through the long-limbed branches to the cracks of sky that showed between them. Sunlight peered between the puffy clouds that floated serenely across the sky, stippling the pond with light and shadow. 

“Mrs. Cotton’s blueberry peach pie is particularly good, especially when she serves it with a bowl of sliced peaches and custard—” Pippin broke off and sat forward, his attention caught by someone walking along the footpath on the far side of the pond. 

“Why, it’s Cousin Frodo!” Pippin exclaimed, standing and waving. “Frodo! Come join us!”

Frodo stopped and waved in recognition, then followed the curve of the pond bank to where Merry and Pippin sat before the willow.

Pippin tugged Frodo to the ground so that he sat before them with his back to the pond. “What are you doing in these parts, Frodo?”

“I was following one of Bilbo’s old paths—or trying to. He kept a record of his favorite walking paths, and one of them starts just east of Stock and leads away north, up the Brandywine for a stretch—all the way to the North Moors, if you’re inclined to go that far, and perhaps even farther. He never took me with him on it, so I thought I might try to find it myself.” He took the spare pipe that Pippin offered him and lit it, looking thoughtful. “But the path has proved elusive.”

“You might have asked me to help you find it,” said Merry. “I’ve travelled up and down the Brandywine, as far north as the hills between Quarry and Dwaling and as far south as Haysend, where the Withywindle joins the Brandyine—just before the marshes, where it gets too boggy to paddle a raft.”

“Perhaps you can help me find the path and point me north toward Quarry,” said Frodo. His gaze strayed to the north, and Pippin’s spare pipe hung between his fingers, forgotten. 

Merry studied Frodo. A curious expression had come over his face, and his mind and mood seemed distant. “Would you go farther north than Quarry, up to the North Moors—to the boundaries of the Shire?”

“If my feet lead me there,” Frodo said.

“All this talk of adventuring,” said Pippin, leaning back against the willow trunk and drawing deeply from his pipe, “when this is the perfect afternoon for smoking and talking in the sunshine. And anyway, the Brandywine will have swelled from the recent rain, and the ground around it will be too soggy for a proper walk. You ought to take my advice and stay here with us, Frodo. We were planning to go to the Golden Perch this evening, and the more company, the merrier.”

“A bit of wet ground is no bother,” Frodo said. “Bilbo endured worse on his journey.”

“What did Bilbo say about the path that made you want to take it?” Merry asked, curious as to what had inspired Frodo to wander so far from Hobbiton, and to what might have caused his odd mood.

Frodo was silent for a moment. “He mentioned that if you travel far enough north, you will see the ruins of the ancient kingdoms of Men—great fortresses upon the hilltops and cities tucked between the arms of the hills and crumbled by the side of the road. Some you can see from the borders of the Shire, looking across the Brandywine to the Bree-land hills, and some you can see from the high places of the North Moors, looking into Evendim.”

“But the Big Folk are long gone, and all that land is an empty wilderness,” said Pippin, “and the better for it. We’ve no need of Big Folk butting in where they’re not wanted. Those in Bree at least know not to cross Buckland and don’t bother with us.”

“Maybe so, but Bilbo told me many tales of the old kings and kingdoms—not as many as he told me of the Elves, of course—but enough that I wished he had taken me with him on some of his farther-flung adventures.” Frodo paused, tapping the dregs of pipeweed out of his pipe. “I wish I were more like him, sometimes. I don’t think I’ve become the hobbit he hoped I might become; I’ve become too fixed in one place, and yet at the same time restless—but the sort of restless that not even a good walk can cure.”

Merry watched Frodo closely with growing concern. “I don’t think Bilbo would have wished for you to be more like him. He wasn’t so adventurous until Gandalf took him away, and then he came back changed. If anyone was restless, it was him. Perhaps it’s just because you’re drawing near to fifty. Some of my cousins became out of sorts at that age.”

“It’s been many years since Gandalf visited the Shire,” said Frodo, and his hand moved to his breeches pocket, slipping inside.

Merry wondered at the change in subject, and his face must have shown his confusion, because Frodo continued. 

“It’s not like him,” Frodo explained. “He used to visit regularly, and then his visits stopped nine years ago, without a word of explanation. I do hope the old fellow hasn’t gotten himself into trouble.”

“He’s a wizard,” said Pippin. “They’re odd folk. Everyone knows that.”

“He was a friend to Bilbo, and he’s been a friend to me ever since Bilbo left. I should hate to think that that was the last I shall ever see of him.”

The conversation fell into a lull, and Merry tilted his head back and watched the clouds pass overhead, mulling over Frodo’s words and odd mood. He thought that Frodo was more like Bilbo than he realized, talking of strange lands and people and the desire to wander to the borders of the Shire and beyond. Bilbo had become odd in his later years, as dear as he was to Frodo, and as fond as Merry was of Frodo, and it seemed whatever oddness had come over Bilbo was now afflicting Frodo. 

Merry had heard rumors of Frodo’s wanderings, of how he strayed far from Bag End and had been seen walking over hills under the starlight and venturing into the dusky shadows of the woods, and of how he had been seen talking to strange folk—dwarves, and probably the Elves who passed through Woody End, too.

In fact, Frodo was becoming exactly the sort of hobbit Bilbo had become, but without any of the strange adventures that had prompted Bilbo’s change. 

Merry studied Frodo from beneath his eyelids, trying to note any difference in his appearance, other than his uncommon youth and vigor. Frodo sat in silence, his hand still in his pocket and his gaze distant and unfocused, paying no mind to the tune that Pippin hummed.

A cloud passed over the sun and cast Frodo’s face in shadow. For a moment, his expression was troubled, but then the cloud moved and the sunlight shone again upon the pond, and Frodo’s face cleared and returned to the present. He handed Pippin his pipe and stood up. “I think I’ll look for the path a little longer, while the daylight lasts, and if I don’t find it by evening, I’ll join you at the Golden Perch.”

He waved goodbye and set off around the pond, singing softly under his breath in another tongue, and disappeared down the bend of the footpath.

Pippin pocketed his pipe, looking toward the great oaks that Frodo had disappeared behind. “Does he seem different to you?”

Merry nodded, but he kept his thoughts to himself. It wouldn’t do to spark concern where there might be none. Perhaps it was his nearing middle age that was making Frodo restless, or perhaps it was Bilbo’s absence and living by himself that was turning him odd.

But worry still gnawed at Merry’s heart, and he looked with concern at the spot where Frodo had vanished behind the trees, wondering what the answer was to this strange riddle. 

And he feared that one day Frodo might disappear into the wild like Bilbo had and not be seen within the borders of the Shire again.

 

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March 3021

March dawned with birdsong and much gaiety, for the Shire hardly resembled the broken, beaten country they had returned to. The Shire was in the bloom of springtime, and everything seemed new and hopeful. Indeed, many of its inhabitants seemed to have forgotten the horror of Saruman’s reign and spoke of it now only in gossip, as they did of the Long Winter of long ago.

But despite the joyous air, worry niggled at Merry’s heart, for although Frodo had disappeared almost entirely from the talk of the Shire, Merry still heard the occasional whisper about the oddity of Master Baggins. He had heard from Farmer Cotton of Frodo’s strange fit of illness the past spring, and last fall Sam had mentioned with concern Frodo’s mutterings about his wound that had occurred on the anniversary of Weathertop.

The middle of March now drew near, and Merry suspected the strange illness would afflict Frodo again. He did not mention his concerns to Pippin, who hadn’t been told of Frodo’s intermittent illness, and he did not want to worry Sam, who was already flustered about Rosie’s pregnancy.

But the middle of March came and passed with no word from Sam, who was now greatly occupied with preparing for the baby. And so Merry rode from Crickhollow to Bag End, under the guise of helping Sam prepare. And as he sat with Frodo and Sam that evening in the twilit garden as Rosie rested inside, he watched Frodo closely.

Sam chattered on about the gifts he and Rosie had received to welcome the baby, and Merry listened with half an ear, watching as Frodo’s hand crept up to the white gem he wore on a chain around his neck. Frodo’s hand curled about the gem, his gaze distant. Something about his expression seemed hollow and lost, and Merry recalled what Sam had reported Frodo saying last autumn about his wound from Weathertop never healing. But the anniversary of Weathertop was not until autumn, and Merry guessed that whatever occupied Frodo’s mind now had a different cause, or at least that Weathertop was not the only cause of Frodo’s distant mood.

He seemed not unlike he had in the year before leaving the Shire for Rivendell, caught up in thoughts that strayed far away and took his feet far over the hills of the Shire. But when Frodo had then been wracked with restlessness, he now was quiet and detached, absent in mind if not in body.

“Mr. Frodo has been very gracious about everything,” Sam said to Merry, “never complaining about the fuss and the mess.”

Merry wondered if it was distraction rather than graciousness that kept Frodo from mentioning—or, likely, even noticing—the commotion of the preparations.

Frodo returned from wherever his mind had wandered and smiled, his hand falling from the gem. “It’s not every day a baby comes, Sam.”

“True enough, but it’s not every day Bag End turns upside down to make ready for one, neither,” Sam said.

“I can hardly hear the noise from the study, and even if I could, I wouldn’t mind it.” Frodo patted Sam’s arm. “You need not worry on my account.”

“Someone has to look out for you, Mr. Frodo,” Sam said earnestly, and Frodo laughed.

For a moment, it seemed to Merry that whatever might be afflicting Frodo had vanished, and the Frodo he had known in his tweens had reappeared, vivacious and full of vigor.

“It’s Rosie who you should be looking after," Frodo said with a smile. "She’ll need you at her side for this, and for many days after, too, I expect.”

“And I will, I will,” Sam protested. “I’ll look after you both, and the baby, too, for a good long time.”

Frodo smiled, but it didn’t meet his eyes. “I’m sure you will, Sam. I’m sure you will.”  As Merry watched, Frodo’s hand slipped around the gem again, and he looked west out over New Row and past the mallorn and saw something that Merry couldn’t.

And Merry wondered as he had in the year before the Quest if Frodo might one day leave them and never return.