The Stone

By Marla F. Fair - Part One of Two

It has come back to haunt me as I always knew it would. 

I have never spoken of it.  Indeed, I never meant to again.  It was not that I was ashamed, though shame there was attached to the doing, but rather that in speaking of it I feared I might call it back and lose my way again.

I look into my son’s eyes.  They are wide and wondering.  He is sharp and quick-witted as his namesake, but innocent as we all were before the dark time; before that day when Gandalf returned with his cart full of fireworks for old Mr. Bilbo’s birthday party and everything changed. 

‘Why did the wizard take you with him to the great city of Gondor, Dad, and not cousin Meriadoc?  Why did you get to sit before him on Shadowfax and become the King’s man?’

I know the answer he expects.  I was a Hobbit among Hobbits; a Halfing Prince as they called me in the city, and a doer of mighty deeds.  He has heard the tales of Fangorn and the breaking of Isengard, but there is one he has never heard, for I have never told it.  Even now to think of it causes my blood to run as cold as if one of the Nine had arisen from the endless darkness of their doom to wing overhead, shrieking and seeking once more.  

How do I tell him? 

It was the moment that changed me forever. Oh, I had grown up before that—and I mean in more than height.  Though Treebeard’s brew lengthened my arms and legs and tousled my hair more than is a Hobbit’s normal wont, it was the Barrows and Moria, and the hateful time spent among the Orcs that stretched me in ways it is still hard to explain.  But most of all, it was watching dear Frodo struggle with his burden, even though I little understood when he and Sam left us what that burden was, or how great his sacrifice would be in the end. 

I miss him still, though many years have passed.  I think of him often.  Frodo alone understood.  We talked once or twice before he departed for the Havens; though it was all so fresh with him that the words he spoke were few.  Gandalf tried, but he was timeless and powerful, and contesting with giants and battling demons was part of his stock and trade.  Aragorn, the King, had an inkling—for he was mortal and closer to me in kind—but he was all steel and strength, and in the end it was his right to touch, to handle; to own.

Why was I chosen to ride with Gandalf on the white horse and to speed across unending miles through countless unnamed lands?  Why, my son?

Let me tell you of the stone.

                                                                                            ***

“Pip?”

Meriadoc’s whisper came soft as a Hobbit’s footfall and seemed strangely out of place as it fell between the honeyed words of the madman who spoke from the tower window high above them.  From their vantage point on the lowest step of the great stair of Orthanc they had watched the tide of sentiment amongst their friends and allies turn from a desire for murderous vengeance to a kind of quiet enthrallment, and for a moment Pippin had feared that the valiant men of Rohan who surrounded them would give in, so immediate and powerful was the persuasive tone of that compelling voice.  But then King Theoden had spoken, breaking the spell, and Gandalf had tossed all caution to the wind and shown his true colors—so to speak.  Pippin cringed as the wizard declared he was now the ‘White’ in a mighty voice that seemed to sound from the very heart of Middle-earth, and used his new authority to cast Saruman from the council. 

At that moment Meriadoc pointed toward the sky.  Pippin's eyes quickly followed his friend’s finger.  “What?  Merry, I can’t— ”

There was a great ‘crack’; an ear-splitting sound such as one might have heard had a bolt of lightning snapped an ancient oak in two.  Pippin's hands went to his ears and his head jerked towards the balcony.  Saruman’s staff had broken and shattered and was sending jagged bits of wood raining down.  He side-stepped a large one that seemed bent on doing his head damage and moved towards Gandalf just as the wizard cried ‘Go!”, and obediently—if defiantly—Saruman went.  Pippin whistled with relief when he saw the evil wizard disappear and turned back towards Merry, only to see his friend raise his hands defensively and duck.  Curious, Pippin's attention was once again drawn skyward.  Something else was falling; something small but of great weight.  It whistled through the air, barely missing Gandalf’s head, and struck the stone step behind him.  The rail rang and snapped.  The stair cracked and splintered.  And then the object, a round shining ball deep as jet but pulsing with a heart of dark fire, rolled down the steps.  The wizard paid it no mind; his thoughts were bent elsewhere.  But Pippin saw it and it fascinated him.

As if time had slowed he watched it drop.  One step.  Two.  Five, and then ten.  Twenty.  It passed him and struck the muddied ground and still Pippin stared, consumed by its perfection; overtaken by its infernal beauty.   He continued to gaze at it as it soundlessly rolled away, heading for one of the vast black pools that dotted the area surrounding the tower and then, like a sleeper awakening after a long illness to find the one thing he cherished most slipping away from him, he jerked and took a step forward.  The ball’s pace slowed but it kept rolling; calling to him as it did. 

‘Do not let me perish, Perigrin Took’, it pleaded, its voice at first soft and inviting.  ‘Such beauty cannot be allowed to fall into the abyss; such a precious treasure must not be lost.”   Then, when he failed to respond, it's tone changed.  ‘Fool of a Took!  If it does, will it not be your fault?  The water is a deep black hole; a well.  Remember Khazad-dum.  If I fall, what new evil may awaken?’ 

Pippin could see Merry out of the corner of his eye.  His friend had risen and was coming to his side.  Merry spoke his name, but he paid him no mind.  Pippin’s foot left the stair and he began to run even as Gandalf turned from the battle of wills to speak to Aragorn, and the two of them began to descend.  At the edge of the dark still pool he caught the black ball with both hands.  It had not touched the water nor caused a ripple.  With a sigh of relief, Pippin picked it up and then he stopped to gaze at the dark object; round and smooth and perfect as no perfection he had ever known.  What was it?  He had thought it just a simple stone; nothing more than a pebble cast with malice from the giant hand of Orthanc, but there was something more. 

Something....

Knitting his brows together, Pippin shifted his fingers so they circled it.  The stone was curiously heavy.  He tilted it one way and the other, but the fire he thought he had seen had cooled...or had never been there in the first place.  The stone seemed quite dull and dead.  Had he only imagined it had spoken to him?  He stared at it hard, concentrating, and thought—just for a second—that something awakened in it and stared back, but then Merry called his name again and his friend’s hand came down firmly on his shoulder.  Pippin started guiltily, though he didn’t know why, and pivoted just as the long-legged Aragorn and Gandalf the White turned their attention to the last dozen steps.  The wizard’s eye caught his and he smiled.  Then he saw the stone and it seemed the light that was in them dimmed as if a sudden storm had come upon him unawares.  The wizard stiffened.  His aged eyes narrowed, and his feathered eyebrows took flight, winging above the deep gullies of care and concern that time had etched into his face.

“Here, my lad.  I’ll take that!”  Gandalf endeavored to keep any hint of anxiety from his voice, but did not entirely succeed.  Aragorn frowned and followed his gaze.  The lanky ranger drew a breath and shifted forward even as the wizard hastened down the steps. “I did not ask you to handle it,” Gandalf said as he plucked the black ball from Pippin's fingers and immediately thrust it under his cloak, masking its wonder and beauty.  “I will take care of this,” he said.  Pippin wilted under Gandalf's fierce gaze, but held his ground.  The wizard remained still, staring at him for a dozen heartbeats.  Then he nodded to Aragorn and turned away to talk with Gimli who had come to his side and asked about Saruman.

Pippin watched them go and felt curiously aggrieved; as if he had somehow been wronged.  He stared at his hands.  They were empty.  Just like he felt inside.

“Pip?”

It was Merry.  He was shaking his shoulder.  Pippin glanced at his friend.  “Yes?”

“Gandalf said it is over.  Let’s go.”

Pippin stared at him without seeing for a moment and then he nodded.  With the nod came a deep frown. 

Somehow it seemed to him, it had just begun.

                                                                                           ##

            After a day spent saying farewell to the Ents and tying up loose ends, and an evening of weary travel that brought them to the end of the valley, they made camp.  The moon was full; her silver face bright and high in the night sky, and the air was chill.  They lit a fire and for a while Pippin lingered close to it, seeking comfort, but it would not come.  He had not known peace the whole day.  Instead a curious restiveness had settled on him, as if he had somewhere to go or something to do that he had forgotten.  Finally, frustrated and exhausted, he gave up trying to grasp smoke and went to lie next to Merry in a corner upon a pile of bracken.  It was softer and more inviting than expected, but still he couldn’t get comfortable.  Pippin shifted first this way and then that, until at last Merry sighed and turned to look at him.

“What’s the matter?” Merry asked.  When Pippin didn’t reply, he began to go on about this and that as was a Hobbit’s habit.  “Are you lying on an ant hill?” he asked at last.  

Pippin listened impatiently.  No, he wasn’t laying on an anthill, he answered as Merry drew a breath, but he wasn’t comfortable either.  He was tired but not sleepy, and curiously cold.  As he continued to exchange words with his friend he shivered and pulled his cloak close, only half aware of the conversation until it turned at last to Gandalf. 

“You had the luck,” Pippin said then, “riding with the old wizard.”

Merry yawned and leaned back, burrowing into the crisp brown leaves and thistle-down.  “...we were talking no secrets.  But you can go with him tomorrow, if you think you can get any more out of him—and if he’ll have you.”

Pippin’s head snapped towards him.  “Can I?”  He was as breathless as if he had run a long race. “Good!”  Then a puzzled, even a wary expression settled on his face.  “But Gandalf's close, isn’t he?  Not changed at all...”

Merry agreed and disagreed.  He began to talk about the wizard again and as he did, Pippin’s attention strayed.  Suddenly, without conscious choice, he was back at the bottom of the steps and the black stone was rolling past—slowly, ever so slowly; its dark beautiful face reflecting the light of the stars above.  He raised his hands and stared at them.

“...and then he was just told to go, and he went!”

Pippin’s small fingers curled as if they longed to hold something and the fact that they didn’t, for some strange reason, had begun to make him cross.  “Well, if Gandalf has changed at all, then he’s closer than he’s ever been.”  He drew a breath and paused, almost as if he was afraid to give voice to the next thought.  “That glass ball, now,” Pippin began and his hands twitched as he spoke, “he seems mighty pleased with it.”  His voice fell to the soft sound of a whisper over a grave.  “I wonder what it was.  It felt so very heavy....”

Meriadoc stared at him.  He frowned and sat up.  And then, since Sam—the Hobbit with the most Hobbit-sense of them all—was no longer there to do it, he quoted the Elf, Gildor’s, warning.  “ ‘Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.’ ”

Pippin protested.  “But our whole life for months has been one long meddling in the affairs of Wizards....”  He was quite put out by the fact that his friend was defending the wizard against him. “I should like a bit of information as well as danger.”   Then, as the image of the black stone began to fill his mind’s eyes again, he added softly, “...I should like a look at that ball....”

Merry gave him a proper dressing down.  He told him to go to sleep and seemed quite put out that his Took inquisitiveness was somehow outdoing a Brandybuck’s.  Merry promised he would be more curious in the morning and then turned over and went to sleep. 

Pippin tried to imitate him, but sleep—though he invited it in—remained a stubborn stranger on the threshold.  He was cold and ill at ease and his arms ached.  He held them out before him, meaning to stretch them, but cupped his fingers and suddenly felt the stone in them instead.  He closed his eyes against what he knew was a secret and sinister desire, but found when he did it only intensified the fire that burned in his brain.  He wrapped his arms about himself and rolled in his blanket, seeking to drown the desire in sleep, but the action only brought renewed visions of the black stone trapped in the voluminous folds of Gandalf’s cloak.  Uncomfortable and anxious, Pippin tossed and turned, trying for all the Shire was worth to think of something else.

But there was nothing else.  There was only one thing in all the world; in fact, there was only one world, and it was round and dark and glistened, and deep in its heart, it pulsed with fire.

Continued in Part Two