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Pippin is no longer the Fool of a Took, and he misses it a little.
He sits on the checkered window seat, nursing a tea with milk over the accounts. The figures won’t quite come together, and they’re starting to dance before his eyes.
Outside, his sister Pervinca and her friends are playing battledore and shuttlecock.
It is one of the first days of spring – when the warmth is still uneasy, and the greenery sparse, with many piebald patches on the ground.
But the sun rolls high in the sky, and it traces its path a little higher each day. There is a silver warmth in its rays as the breeze blows cool from the river. The air blooms bright on the players’ cheeks, and their cries are high and thrilling in the air.
One of them rushes and barely catches the shuttlecock with the edge of her racket. She hits it with a huff, and another points and cries out. The other voices echo and ricochet as the shuttlecock falls short of the net.
Pippin turns away.
Perhaps later, he will walk down the muddy road and have a drink at the inn. For learning how to arbitrate disputes and make numbers come together is a difficult business.
On the way, he will probably see some girls, walking arm and arm, the long-awaited warmth an excuse to look like confections with colorful ribbons. They would titter and pretend not to look at him, and he would bow, but he would not stop to speak to them.
He thinks about them plenty, but he is not ready for them yet.
He wears his citadel garb wherever he goes, but why, he cannot explain. It makes him feel better, that’s all he knows.
At the pub, things will be merry as ever, and people will be eager to hear his stories and not pooh-pooh them for once in his life. Before, things that happened Far Away were never of great import. But now, once the Outside World came knocking down their doors, is no longer idle business to speak of such things. Word of Pippin’s deeds at Bywater has also reached his home, and suddenly, people want his opinion, and they want to know what else he has done.
He is a fool no more, and he can drink at the pub for free as long as he tells stories. And somehow in the telling, the troll he felled grows larger each time. First, he was the height of four hobbits, then the height of a tree and broad as a haystack, and finally, he is so tall that he blots out the sun.
It makes him blush to think it, but when a tale grows and twists in the telling, there is no turning back. In which case, let is grow, and he will grow with it. For what does it matter? Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin are the only ones who know what a troll is really like, and they do not mind. They probably know what it’s like, too, to sit in a pub and tell stories of things that happened far away.
But then again, maybe he won’t go to the pub. He is getting tired of it.
The door to the parlor opens, and Pervinca comes in. She is wearing her woolen cardigan, and her skin is pink and her curls blonde and frizzy.
“’Lo, Pip.” She smiles, pouring herself a cup of cider from the pitcher on the table.
“’Lo, Vin.”
“Want to come join us?”
Pippin shakes his head.
“No, my leg’s giving me trouble.”
“C’mon. You can be on Violet’s side. Any team she’s on has an infinite advantage. She’s ripe for a handicap.”
She drinks the cider slowly, swishing it over her tongue.
Her eyes are merry and green, and she raises her shoulders. With an innocent smattering of freckles over her nose, she won’t stop looking at him.
“C’mon, you should play.”
She finishes her cider and turns on her heel, but stops in the doorway.
Outside, the girls are calling to each other, their voices like bells. The figures before him look more opaque than ever.
“Alright,” he says, rising from his seat. “But no making fun of my serve, alright? I’ve been out of practice, and my sword arm’s made it even worse. It’s a completely different way of gripping it, you see.”
Pervinca nods, and her eyes are merry.
“Alright,” she says, “but you won’t have that excuse forever.”
“No, maybe not, but I’ll take it as long as I can.”
Together, they step out into the chilly sunlight.