Whatever
you do...
Meriadoc
was lying on the floor. He opened his eyes and after a few minutes he came to
the conclusion he couldn’t see a thing. Meriadoc tried to get up, but soon
noticed he couldn’t; he felt like he was glued to the floor or something. He
panicked, because this was not a situation a hobbit wanted to be in. In the end
he managed to calm himself down and took a deep breath. He closed his eyes for
a few seconds and when he opened them, he could see, far, far away a little
light. No, it was no light, not really at least, it was a light beam that was
reflected by some kind of round object. Suddenly the object started to move
towards him. It started to move faster and faster. And then, suddenly, Meriadoc
saw what it was: it was an axe. A giant axe.
“Oh dear!
Why do I always get stuck in situation where I’m glued to the floor and a giant
axe is coming right at me!” Meriadoc yelled.
“No, no, my
friend, that’s not quiet true,” a voice said. “This is only the first time you
got stuck in such a situation.”
Meriadoc was certain he had heard this voice
before, but he just couldn’t remember where he had heard it.
“So don’t
go making things worse then they actually are, okay?”
Suddenly
Meriadoc remembered whose voice he heard: “Frodo? Frodo Baggins?” The voice
burst into laughter. “Frodo! You have got to help me! I’m about to be split in
half by a giant axe!” The voice spoke no more and the axe was now very close.
It came closer and closer. “Please! FRODO!!!!!”
With that
Meriadoc opened his eyes and jumped up. Unfortunately he had been unconscious
for an hour or two and his legs weren’t strong enough to carry his weight yet;
so Meriadoc fell on the floor.
“Ouch…” he
mumbled. He lifted up his head and he immediately saw two things. He saw one
pair of feet and a giant axe. “AARGH!!!” Meriadoc jumped up, but fell down
again because his legs were still too weak. Then he felt how the person that
stood in front of him lifted him up and put him back on the sofa, where he had
been lying.
“You ought
to be more careful, Meriadoc!” said a low voice. Meriadoc looked up and saw
that the person with the giant axe was in fact Gimli the dwarf.
“Surprised
to see me, aren’t you?” grinned the dwarf.
“What…how
long…”
“You mean:
‘What am I
doing on this couch?’ and ‘How long have a been unconscious?’ don’t you?”
Meriadoc simply nodded. “Well, let me see…
“Me and my
friend Dumbar are on our way to a tiny dwarf city in the North of Middle-Earth.
I won’t bother you with the details.” At this Meriadoc’s jaw dropped, because
normally dwarfs can’t wait to tell anyone who wants to hear it, about
themselves. “Yeah, yeah, no comments, please. Anyways, I wanted to step by and
see how you all were doing, so me and Dumbar travelled to Hobbiton. When we got
here it took an unusual long time before someone came to open the door. And
when you finally opened the door, you could only say ‘long time, no see’ and
faint right at my feet! I don’t suppose you remember any of that, do you? No?
Thought so, anyways, I picked you up and carried you to a couch. I left you
there to go and see if there was anybody else in Bag End. Me and Dumbar heard
some noise in one of the corridors, but we didn’t know which one – by the way,
did anyone ever tell you, that someone could get lost in this house?- now where
was I…oh yeah! I found Sam and his wife and a lot of Hobbit children in one of
the bedrooms. When I told them you had fainted, your wife Estella immediately
hurried of to help you. Sam had just told some of his children, I believe they
were called Frodo and Merry, to clean up the mess in the hallway, when we heard
someone scream. Me and Sam ran to the place where the sound had come from and
there we found Dumbar. He had not seen Peregrin, who had been lying on the
floor, and had accidentally kicked poor Peregrin in the head. So now we had two
knocked out hobbits! Not to mention two hysterical wives…”
“What do
you mean with that?”
“Well, your
wife Estella was certain you were going to die and Peregrin’s wife Diamond gave
Dumbar a very hard time. In fact, he felt so insulted that he has left and
travelled on by himself. I didn’t go with him, because I first wanted to make
sure you were alright.”
“Ah, well,
ehm, Gimli, if my wife was certain I was going to die, where is she now?”
“She
is…er…helping the others…”
“With
what?”
“With
something very important, I got to go! Bye!!!”
And there
Merry was, all alone, on a couch, in one of the many rooms of Bag End. After an
hour or so, in which nobody had come to talk to him, he finally managed to get
up and walk around a little bit. It still cost him a lot of energy, so he lay
down on the couch again.
Suddenly
Meriadoc heard someone passing his room. “Hey! Is anybody out there?!!”
The door
opened and in came Elanor, Sam’s oldest daughter. “Hello Meriadoc,” she said
softly, “How are you?”
“I’m
reasonably well, thank you.”
“Good, you
kn…” BANG!!!! Suddenly the hallway was filled with noise and nervous voices.
Elanor opened the door and looked into the hallway. The noise came closer.
“Sorry, but I have to go!” and she ran out of the room, slamming the door
behind her. In a few minutes, the sound had died away again.
After
another hour in which no one seemed to even care a little bit about him, Meriadoc
got up once more and decided to go and see what was going on. In a corner of
the room he was in, he found an umbrella which he used as a walking stick. He
opened the door and looked into the hallway. Nothing unusual here. Meriadoc
closed the door behind him and started shuffling towards another corridor,
determined to find out what was going on in this place.
He had been
shuffling around for several minutes, without seeing anything or anyone. This
changed when he reached the Eastern wing of Bag End. In one of the corridors
some of the paintings were ripped down and their remainders lay on the floor.
Meriadoc found it odd no one had taken the time to clean them up. Then he heard
some noise two corridors down the main hall. As he shuffled towards the sounds,
he could hear the sounds where actually the voices of young hobbits. He opened
a door and he saw Primrose, Bilbo, Ruby and Robin (the four youngest Gamgee
children) hiding under a table.
“What are
you doing there?” Meriadoc asked.
“Why are
you walking around with an umbrella?” asked Ruby in return.
“Well,”
said Meriadoc, “I’ve been knocked out for a few hours and I have a little
trouble with walking. That’s my answer and now I want to know yours.”
“We’re
hiding!” squeaked Robin.
“From who?”
“From the
mean dwarf man!” the little hobbit said.
“Huh? I
don’t think I understand what you mean.”
Primrose
crawled from underneath the table and said: “We were all looking at our new
baby brother, when a dwarf came in, who told daddy you had fainted. Estella
screamed and ran out of the room. Daddy got mad at us, not only because of all
the mess we’d made in the main hall, but also because our potato fight had
probably been the reason you fainted. He sent Frodo and Merry to clean
everything up and then all went really fast. We heard a large scream from
somewhere in the house and daddy and the dwarf ran off. A few minutes later dad
came back to tell us that some other dwarf hadn’t seen Peregrin and had
accidentally kicked him in the head. Diamond went really mad and ran out of the
room as well. Everybody, except for Rose and Elanor, who remained in with mum,
went to see what happened. When we all got there, we saw that Diamond had an
awful fight with the dwarf who had kicked Peregrin. This dwarf was very mad and
so was she. The other dwarf, the Gimli guy, and dad had just picked up Pippin,
when that other dwarf got so mad that he found it necessary to destroy some of
our paintings with his axe. There was debris everywhere! Everybody had to hide
and the four of us ran in here and we do not dare to go out, oh no!”
Meriadoc
sighed. “Don’t worry. The mad dwarf, his name is Dumbar, has left Bag End.”
The four
young hobbits were very relieved. However, they did not wish to stay in that
room alone and went with Meriadoc to see if there was anybody in the living
room, who could tell them how Peregrin was doing.
The nearer
they came to the living room, the more noise they heard. Someone appeared to be
singing a song. The sound was horrible. When they stood in front of the living
room door, they heard someone cry: “Hey-ho, hey-ho, I’m a clown, so don’t
frown, cause I’m a clown, hey-ho, hey-ho!”
Meriadoc
put his hand on the door knot, while the four hobbit children took a few steps
back. With one big push, Meriadoc opened the door and the light that came from
the fire pit blinded him for a second. Luckily for him, he did see that an
object was flying right at him and he quickly opened the umbrella to use it as
a shield. Something hit the umbrella and fell on the ground. It was a book.
When Meriadoc lowered the umbrella a little he saw an odd event. In a corner of
the room sat Estella who was trying to calm down Hamfast and Daisy and in
another part of the room stood Faramir and Goldilocks, for once not fighting. Gimli,
Sam, Frodo, Merry, Pippin and Diamond were standing around one of the tables.
Everybody looked stunned.
On the
largest table in the living room, Peregrin was jumping up and down; he had tied
his jacket around his head as a head scarf and he was busy throwing books
around the room, while singing: “Hey-ho, hey-ho, I’m a clown!”
What has
happened to Peregrin? How hard was he kicked in the head by Dumbar? Has he
completely lost his mind? What can the others do now?
Coming
soon: chapter 4: …do not forget anything!!!